Hair

Yet another landmark on the road to adulthood yesterday: for the first time, I had my hair cut by someone I’m pretty sure was younger than me. He was an amiable Polish guy with a sturdy agrarian grip on my head, but he did insist that he couldn’t cut my hair any shorter. Now, I always have my hair cut very short, and then just leave it to grow for three months or more – this is clearly not something the barbers in London are used to, as I always have to ask them to take more off. Alas, he felt he couldn’t actually cut it any shorter (total rubbish – I have had my hair cut shorter many times before) and suggested shaving it number 7, I think, all over.

I’ve generally resisted just having my hair shaved, even leaving a “normal” length on – in the past, but decided to try it. And it looks OK – only slightly shorter than I’d normally have it cut, and almost certainly the shortest I’ve ever had my hair. But it’s obvious it hasn’t been cut – it does look quite different.

Most shocking of all, however, is how obvious it makes it that my hair now sits, shall we say, higher on my head than it used to. I’m definitely not thinning generally, but I’ve got a bit more forehead than was traditionally the case. Still, what’s there is still fairly thick, albeit moving backwards a little, and if my father is anything to go by I’ve got the thick end of three decades before it actually starts falling out on top noticeably.

This is a sharp contrast to some other of my older male friends, who I occasionally see from Facebook are unequivocally balding. This is especially startling for people I’ve not seen since school, when we were all 18. So I’m not overly concerned – indeed, I’ll stop now before I start sounding smug.

Newly shorn, I rounded off the day by seeing an old friend I’d never met before. All told, a pleasant day!

Sylvie Lewis

If you get the chance, you should go and see the marvellous Sylvie Lewis playing a rare UK gig at the Luminaire in Kilburn on October 25th. I am going to be in Scotland for work and am extraordinarily frustrated about this, as I have been wanting to see her live since I first heard her music earlier this year. Her songs are delicate, beautifully-crafted and above all romantic: she also has a lovely voice. I’m sure it will be a delight, and if you can’t make that, you should sample at least one of her albums, either this year’s Translations or (my slight preference) her 2005 debut, Tangos and Tantrums. A delightful talent.

Farewell to the Concrete Doughnut?

Far sadder than Ming Campbell’s departure, though perhaps no less inevitable, is the report that the BBC is planning to sell Television Centre, whereupon it will no doubt be knocked down and replaced with housing.

As a child raised on Going Live and Blue Peter, I find this extremely sad to contemplate: it’s an iconic building and really ought to be listed. But all the old BBC facilities are going the same way: Pebble Mill has been replaced by the Mailbox in Birmingham, and New Broadcasting House in Manchester – the third and probably least marvellous in the BBC’s trinity of English Concrete Monstrosities – is due to be knocked down when the new facility in Salford is ready. Big new BBC buildings have also been opened in Cardiff and Glasgow recently, and no doubt elsewhere too.

The move to Manchester is no doubt partly responsible, but only partly. The main problem is that television programmes are no longer made like they were in the 1960s when TVC was built. Digital editing has rendered the traditional “multi camera” format for drama obsolete, while high quality lightweight cameras make recording large amounts of a programme on location viable now in a way that it never used to be – hence the Monty Python “this room is surrounded by film!” sketch.

Indeed, it goes deeper still: TVC’s set-up used to be, as I understand it, that programmes would be shot in a studio, but actually recorded to videotape, or to film, in a separate suite in the basement. It seems weird now, but that and many other facets of its original design (albeit often now amended) have left TVC looking hopelessly out of date, and being used for fewer and fewer productions. It now seems to be more economical simply to rent out studio facilities as required, and shift the permanent things like news out to other BBC buildings.

Of course, the BBC has always had multiple studio facilities in London: Lime Grove was closed amid some fanfare in the early ’90s and the Corporation used to own Ealing film studios. Even so, a BBC without TVC is an idea that will take a heck of a lot of getting used to. I really must try and get in there for a look round before the bulldozers move in…

The forgotten monarchs

I was very pleased to see the new TV series The Tudors, about one of the most obscure and unjustly-forgotten of English dynasties. I have a history degree, so obviously I know all about them, but it’s good to see a mainstream TV programme telling other people, who probably have never heard of them, all about these often overlooked kings and queens.

I hope that this will be the first of many programmes – after all, one lavish period drama doesn’t go very far, and the Tudors could soon be forgotten again. What we really need is a set of documentaries on Channel 4 presented by a well-known historian – in fact, sod it, we really need several sets of documantaries covering the same ground, as one just won’t be enough. Perhaps the BBC and Channel 4 could commission some further dramas, concentrating one just one of them Tudors – maybe Elizabeth I, who is mystifyingly overlooked at present. Ideally there should also be a film or two for cinematic release, which would really rescue the Tudors from obscurity.

I’m fed up with all these films and programmes about kings and queens from earlier in the middle ages, after all – there have been so many I’m sure everyone is bored of them by now. So a big well-done to the BBC: more on the Tudors, please!

Lament for Ftn

When I finally aquired multi-channel TV, in this case Freeview, a little under a year ago, I found one or two channels especially good for providing repeats of forgotten gems: Rumpole of the Bailey and Jeeves and Wooster on ITV3, for instance.

After a few months, earlier this year, I noticed Ftn (apparently it stood for Flextech Television Network, despite not being properly capitalised and despite by this time being owned by Virgin). As well as a lot of crap supernatural programmes with that shameless exploiter of the vulnerable Colin Fry, it had some repeats of some serious guilty pleasures.

Gladiators, for instance, looks very different from a 21st-century perspective. Although seeming rather slow-paced and hammy, with lots of big hair in the earlier series, it actually has quite a few things going for it when compared to gameshows today. Firstly, it seems incredibly innocent: at no point do the show’s producers try to manipulate the contestants into bitching about each other, starting a catfight or bursting into tears. Wolf might push a few people over, but it is pure pantomime theatricality. The other thing about it is that it genuinely involved a lot of physical exertion, and at times risk: contestants (and occasionally gladiators) did, now and again, get knocked out, hurt their backs or lose a tooth. The games looked superficially gimmicky, but they required some genuine physical prowess, not just the ability to sing a bit and preen for the cameras. Back in the mid-1990s I would never have expected to have felt nostalgia for Britain under John Major.

Some TV programmes from childhood disappoint when seen from two feet further off the ground: not so The Crystal Maze, also sporadically repeated on Ftn (but only Richard O’Brien editions), which remains inventive, amusing and infuriating to watch. The Krypton Factor, by contrast seems phenomenally slow, but once you adjust to this again becomes quite enjoyable. These were some of the oldest repeats on Ftn: recently it was showing the 1987 series, for which the flight simulator had yet to become a regular fixture and was instead an innovation for the quarter finals. The difference in picture quality was also marked: I’m guessing this was down to some old-fashioned cameras being in use at Granada at the time, but I could be wrong. Much more recent was Fifteen to One, whose final series was partly-repeated over the last few weeks.

Other programmes did not stand up so well to being dusted down: early-90s editions of Bullseye with Jim Bowen making weak anti-EU jokes as part of the pre-game banter; and 3-2-1, with its mixture of cheesy quiz and cabaret light entertainment sections looking like something from before humanity had fully evolved.

A new discovery for me was Takeshi’s Castle, a cult Japanese gameshow from the late 1980s involving all sorts of outlandish physical challenges: it only hit the UK properly in 2003, being re-edited and given a scripted voice-over by Craig Charles. Much as Craig Charles strikes me as an essentially unpleasant human being, the combination was brilliantly effective and Takeshi’s Castle became yet another guilty pleasure. At other times Ftn even had drama repeats: Channel 4’s Teachers (but only the first series) and the early episodes of The X Files.

Ftn has now been taken off-air and replaced by Virgin 1: its scheduling was always massively arbitrary, with programmes vanishing without any explanation, but it was fascinating to see a cheap-as-chips channel in its final months. I don’t want to give the impression that I watched it the whole time, but I certainly used to dip into it if I had some time free in the evenings: it’s a shame it’s now no longer there. Awooga!