Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned

It got the highest ratings the show has had since 1979, it starred one of the most marketable and famous stars of popular culture anywhere in the world, it cemented Doctor Who as a Christmas fixture and scored a massively high audience appreciation index figure, so Voyage of the Damned was undeniably a successful episode of Doctor Who. I’ve a lot of sympathy with the view of Russell T Davies that Christmas specials should be extravaganzas, and I’m certainly not going to criticise him for ripping off The Poseidon Adventure when he is on record as saying that he wanted the show to be an homage to disaster movies. But all the same, I thought the episode had its problems.

It was enjoyable enough, don’t get me wrong: it was a decent runaround, and at times very funny. And Kylie was fantastic – I mean, Kylie Minogue in Doctor Who! And not in a “mid-career trough Street Fighter” kind of way either! And she was very good too, I thought – the role was written for her, of course, but she gave a well-pitched performance. Indeed the whole cast were excellent: Tennant was on utterly commanding form, and Clive Swift was thoroughly engaging and likeable, in contrast to his appearance as the lecherous Jobel in 1985’s Revelation of the Daleks. Only Clive Rowe as Morvin didn’t really shine, but as he was clearly not meant to be a likeable character Russell T Davies perhaps didn’t give him especially good material to work with.

My main problem with the episode was that I just didn’t care very much about the characters or what happened to them: the script was a typical RTD effort – indeed, it would be unreasonable to expect him to write anything else! – but had some of the shortcomings his Who scripts occasionally throw up. Above all, it was wafer-thin: not necessarily a bad thing, bearing in mind that these specials should be extravaganzas and not deep drama, but even so it was a tad unsatisfying. There were the usual twin climaxes: the showdown with Max and the saving of the ship. And while Astrid’s self-sacrifice was well-played and quite touching, it was also predictable as soon as the scene started – not least as Debbie Chazen’s character had sacrificed herself in an almost identical way a few scenes previously. And all that blather with the teleport stasis function was effective for showing the Doctor frustrated and unable to save Astrid, but the stuff about turning her to stardust or whatever just served to drag things out.

More generally, RTD makes a point of developing minor characters and giving them a bit of a back story, so that the audience is able to identify them as they face danger over the course of the episode. The problem with this is that the execution often makes them come across much like the patronising “human interest” case studies so often seen on TV news, where we are presented with sad relatives leafing through a photograph album to show how Normal People are affected by whatever-it-is. So the guests on the Titanic get a short scene to themselves each, and then are shunted off to meet their fate (or not), much like the journalist in Boom Town who talked to the Slitheen on the bog, the space station workers who joined the battle in The Parting of the Ways, the character played by Freema Agyeman in Army of Ghosts and others too tedious for me to remember. RTD isn’t the only writer guilty of these uninteresting minor characters we are supposed to engage with – think of the bride and groom in Paul Cornell’s excellent Father’s Day, for instance – and they certainly have their place. But compare them to Sally Sparrow, or even Billy, in Blink, for instance, and it’s clear that they are not always as well-used as they could be.

None of this matters in the context of a lot of these episodes, but given that the whole point of a disaster movie is for the viewers to sympathise with the various characters, when they prove unsatisfying there’s not an awful lot left. It’s particularly awkward when half of them are despatched in the same sequence, namely crossing the bridge. That said, Geoffrey Palmer was highly effective in his few minutes on screen, albeit playing a typical RTD line: “I’m doing a terrible thing, but I’m dying anyway and it’s all for my family” – I’m sure we’ve seen that before in previous episodes.

So, what remains? For a 70-minute programme, not an awful lot. It was slow to get going and slow to end: the farewell scene with Mr Copper was nicely played, but far too long. All told, the extra ten minutes of screen time don’t seem to have been used for anything much other than to avoid having to tighten the script up. Max Capricorn was amusingly played by George Costigan – who I did not recognise at all from Rita, Sue and Bob Too and So Haunt Me – but I struggled to care much about him. Given RTD’s warning to fans to avoid spoilers about the ending, I had rather expected the surviving Dalek from Daleks in Manhattan to turn up, but it didn’t happen. And the business with the Queen… well, I’ve nothing against a bit of fun now and again, but I can’t for the life of me see what it added to the episode. Why did it need to be there?

So, while a resounding success for the show, assessed on its own merits Voyage of the Damned was a moderately enjoyable but ultimately unsatisfying outing for the show. A bit like scoffing half of a selection box on Christmas morning and spoiling your Christmas dinner.

But full marks for annoying Christian nutters with the supposedly “Christian” imagery, which seemed to me to be totally vague and inoffensive, and I’m amazed but pleased they got so upset.

Christmas songs

I always enjoy looking out for less well-known Christmas songs. and have a goodly selection on my MP3 player for the holiday season: Christmas in Prison by John Prine, It’s Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas by Half Man Half Biscuit, I’ll Be Dead by Christmas by Keyop and many more. Christmas-themed indie compilations are of course a key source for these, and I picked up a rather nice one this year: A Very Cherry Christmas 3 from Cherryade Records.

Particularly excellent was the package: as well as the CD, there was a glittery Christmas card, a badge and two sweets, including a chocolate coin! It was like an indie Christmas stocking, in a jiffy bag.

I’ve only listened to about half of it so far, but it’s the at times enjoyable mixed bag you expect from these things: Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart and the Very Next Day You Sold It On Ebay by the Bobby McGees gets added to the list of Excellent Christmas Song Titles, while the refrain of “all I want for Christmas is a wank” by the Pocket Gods doubles my list of Gratuitously Rude Christmas Songs, alongside I’ll Be Fucking You This Christmas by Shaun Lee.

A year on the goggle box – Part Three: Comedy

Enough of the drama: what of comedy in 2007? This is a lot harder to pin down, and it’s far less easy to make a convincing argument for a show being good: if you don’t find it funny, that’s it. Steve Coogan’s Saxondale rather came into its own, I thought. Jack Dee’s Lead Balloon, also in its second series, compared less favourably: unlike Tommy Saxondale, Dee’s Rick Spleen is simply too unlikeable, being consistently mean, self-serving and of poor judgment, while never being able to admit any fault whatsoever – he’s simply too unsympathetic to make the programme rewarding viewing, in contrast to Saxondale, who is a likeable twat. It’s a shame, as Lead Balloon has a superb supporting cast – indeed, Dee is very good – but it leaves a bit of a sour taste in the mouth.

Also mining a seam of embarrassment humour is Peep Show. whose fourth series surpassed the third, being built around the nightmare run-up to Mark’s wedding to Sophie. The programme is drifting ever further away from the initial existential stand-off between Jez and Mark, however: as with Shameless, we already know the characters extremely well, but in a half-hour comedy the shift to having Things Happen to them works more effectively than in Shameless’s 45 minutes of drama. Another pleasant surprise on Channel 4 was the second series of The IT Crowd, which was significantly better than the first.

But, for all the traditional perceptions of BBC 2 and Channel 4 as the hot channels for comedy, my favourite of this year’s crop was on BBC 1. Not the Omad Djalili Show – as with Peter Serafinowicz’s BBC 2 outing, some of the material was superb but too much was so-so – and not the unexpectedly excellent Armstrong and Miller Show… and certainly not dross like The Green Green Grass, Since You’ve Been Gone or whatever it’s called, or My Family, if there was a series of that this year…

No, the best comedy show this year was, I reckon, Outnumbered, shown over only a fortnight in the early autumn. It was another “married couple with three kids” effort, but incredibly sharply written, in part by Andy Hamilton. Hugh Dennis and Claire Skinner portrayed a couple who mostly seem harassed and bewildered by the trap of parenthood, and who have significant family and work troubles to face up to as well. The latter provide the backbone of the plot in the series, but the focus of most scenes is the kids, played amazingly effectively for child actors – apparently they were allowed to improvise at least some of the time. The end result is deadly accurate (or, at least, plausible) and bitingly funny. There are moments of high drama, as dreams fade and worst fears are proved correct, but ultimately parenthood is presented as an overwhelmingly positive thing for the protagonists, without the show descending into schmaltz. If you get the opportunity to have a gander at the series, you should take it.

A year on the goggle box – Part Two: Other Drama

Surprisingly, I’ve concluded that the most consistently satisfying drama came from the independent sector this year. Even more surprisingly, perhaps my favourite series overall was on ITV – the third series of Doc Martin took the Martin – Louisa relationship on its full journey, and was utterly charming every step of the way. If it had a flaw, it’s that some of the subplots were perhaps a little too well-signposted and climaxed in a bit of an unsatisfying way, Pauline’s gambling addiction in particular. But the series didn’t shy away from being cruel to its characters at times, and ended on a pleasingly uncertain note that makes me anticipate the next series keenly.

Also from ITV, Secret Diary of a Call Girl was unusual for representing a half-hour drama – actually, with adverts, about 22 minutes. I’ve got all the episodes sitting around waiting to be watched, but curiously I can’t be bothered, and didn’t have the time when it was being broadcast. But it was probably quite good, if you like light drama arising from prostitution.

The Channel 4 stable also produced a bit of a mixed bag this year. I missed both Boy A and The Mark of Cain, so I hope they get repeated soon as I gather they were tremendous. Not at all tremendous was the flaccid fourth series of Shameless. It’s hard to pin down why it failed so miserably, as superficially its traditional balance of pathos and humour is more or less still intact. The key problem is perhaps that it was originally gripping because we were being let in on the lives of the characters, finding out about how they survived and seeing them respond to the challenges life threw at them in a way that was at time rough, but always warm-hearted.

Now the key emotional lynchpins of the series – Fiona and Steve, Kev and Veronica, and Frank and Sheila – have either left or split up, and we have pretty much got to know the other characters as well as we’re going to. What’s left is not a set of journeys for the characters to go on, but a series of Things that Happen to them: the show is reduced to being no more, and no less, engaging than Coronation Street, in which the plot is laid on top of the characters rather than seeming to arise naturally from them. The Maguires are essentially uninteresting, and the romance with Karen therefore has the same problem; even the traditional Debs-centric episode failed to engage me. Only the Frank – Sheila – Monica triangle was vaguely arresting, but that was resolved halfway through the run – Frank’s spluttered and inadvertant confessions to each of them in turn marked perhaps the only really successful scenes of the series. The climactic scene of the cast miming along to Take That represented its undeniable nadir, and really served to vindicate the brave decision to wind up Shameless’s superb contemporary No Angels after its third series last year. Unfortunately, we have a fifth series of Shameless to endure in 2008, which I fear will dilute its appeal even further.

Far superior to Shameless, perhaps surprisingly, was its stablemate Skins. I say “surprisingly” on account of the truly dreadful advertising that preceded the show, which made it seem utterly obnoxious. Frankly I’m not even sure why I even bothered to watch the first episode, but I’m glad I did: it’s certainly not a depiction of teenage life that anyone in the real world would recognise, and I suspect it will appeal more to people in their 20s and 30s than teens, but it was nevertheless a highly successful lesson in How To Make TV Drama.

The characters were interesting, generally sympathetic and consistently well-acted (the lead character played by the guy from About A Boy was unfortunately the only exception to the latter two points – he’s a difficult character to portray engagingly or sympathetically, but there can be little doubt Nicholas Hoult didn’t manage it). The episodes combined some slow-burning character and plot development with a focus on each main player by turn, often with a surprising amount of pathos. The last few episodes, in which Tony’s machinations finally and deservedly bit him on the arse, contained some of the most gloriously vindictive actions by any characters in any TV programme I’ve ever seen. The humour was sharp and at times a bit cartoonish, but as with Sugar Rush in 2005 and 2006 this generally worked, the Russian-set episode being the only one in which it fell down. The strained romance between Cassie and Sid was perhaps the sweetest relationship on the small screen all year. All told, this was much better than its own publicity suggested, and well deserves its second series commission.

Where American drama is concerned, I’m afraid I never got into Heroes. I saw the first couple of episodes, and they certainly seemed very good, but I just didn’t have time to watch the rest: they built up on my hard drive until eventually I just had to accept it was going to pass me by. That said, at around the same time I got totally hooked on DVD sets of Battlestar Galactica, which is utterly compelling character-driven drama, albeit with a sci-fi backdrop, that benefits from an instantly relentless pace, in contrast with the slow-burning Heroes.

The only other US drama that maintained my interest was the ever-dependable House. The second half of the third season didn’t have the same impetus as the first, which was dominated by the long-running duel between House and Tritter, but the characterisations and gripping medical scenarios made it eminently watchable up to its slightly surprising conclusion. I’m not sure whether Chase, Cameron and Foreman return to work for House next year, although apparently they all feature in the early episodes of the next series in some capacity or other.

Click here for the thrilling final instalment…
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A year on the goggle box – Part One: BBC Drama EDITED

Maybe I watch a bit too much telly – there, said it. Happy now? This isn’t a review of everything I watched in 2007: numerous repeats, Formula One, news programmes, digital channel repeats of The Crystal Maze, Takeshi’s Castle and Gladiators (largely while eating me tea, in defence) and some snooker were all in the mix. But leaving them aside, these are the programmes I watched that are probably worth talking about a bit.

The year started with two one-off specials of note, each from ongoing series: one was a triumph, the other a disastrous misfire. The latter was This Life +10, which seemed to make a point of taking everything that made the original series so engrossing and then carefully leaving it out: the result was an insult to a series that deserves to be remembered as one of the crowning glories of UK TV drama.

More happily, Invasion of the Bane was a highly effective pilot for Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. When the main series arrived in the autumn (and I’ve not watched it all yet) it proved to be first rate telly, with enough excitement to keep the kiddies interested but also some deft writing to keep the occasional older viewer interested… ahem, should there be any… All told, it was probably the best-written kids’ TV series since Press Gang. Elisabeth Sladen in the title role is probably 15 years too old for it really, but we can forgive the wish-fulfillment of the ’70s generation of Who fans who grew up with Sarah Jane in the TARDIS. Probably.

The parent series itself was certainly less consistent: although it was more popular than ever, and those of us who maintained during the dark days of the 1990s that, actually, Doctor Who was really good, can certainly feel vindicated by this, overall this series felt less sure-footed than the two before.

Making Doctor Who good is fairly difficult: making it consistent, given that there is a new set-up nearly every week, is extremely difficult: and while the high points have been higher with each successive season since the revival, the consistency has, for my money, been falling away.

Human Nature and Blink were each as high quality a piece of television drama as you’re ever likely to see, and let’s not lose sight of that. But they were also the only two episodes not based around the vision of Russell T Davies: RTD has done the programme, and British TV generally, an enormous service, but in my opinion his ideas are getting a bit stale. Daleks in Manhattan, for instance, proved an almighty mess: his brief of the titular scenario plus pig-men to writer Helen Raynor gave her a real poisoned chalice, and it’s hardly any surprise the end result had no internal logic or enticing qualities. Other mid-season stories were also a bit lacklustre: 42 was quite enjoyable for its pace and a terrifying performance from David Tennant, but was undeniably thin; The Lazarus Experiment was an uninteresting runaround; Gridlock totally fell apart in its final third and, like the climactic two-part story with the Master suffered from far too much telling and not enough showing – this in particular is a basic mistake an experienced dramatist like RTD should not be making.

On the plus side, I managed to remain totally unspoiled about both the Macra (shame their inclusion was totally pointless, but it was nice for ten seconds) and Derek Jacobi being the Master – the last twenty minutes of Utopia were therefore utterly thrilling, but what a shame such a balls-out cliffhanger was betrayed the following week by a cop-out resolution. Davies originally justified the use of the sonic screwdriver by saying that the Doctor should be challenged by evils he must defeat, but not simply stuck behind a door: this justifies the use of the screwdriver as a convenient device to keep the plot moving, but emphasises how unforgivable it is to use it as a plot device to resolve otherwise brilliant cliffhangers.

With the 2008 series being the last full series until 2010, it looks likely that RTD will move on and allow a new show-runner to take over for the later series: I hope this is the case, as I can’t muster much enthusiasm for the 2008 series (it seems likely Tennant will move on at the same time, and that the 2009 Christmas special will be his last appearance, although he has stated publicly that no decision has been taken, and I’m quite willing to believe him). I also hope the second series of Torchwood, due to start in the new year, rectifies some of the undoubted problems of the first series, notably the fundamentally unlikeable and seemingly inept central characters.

Sticking with the BBC for a while, Stephen Moffat’s Jekyll was enjoyable, but ultimately didn’t quite captivate me. It had an intricate plot, but it still felt a bit shapeless and meandering… The central performances were very good and it was all nicely done, but for some reason I couldn’t quite get excited about each new episode. Perhaps the characters were not given quite enough room to breathe by the plot, which got very stark very quickly; perhaps it wasn’t clear enough what each character wanted; perhaps the constant flicking back and forward along Jackman’s life didn’t do the structure any favours. There are rumours around Moffat becoming the new showrunner on Doctor Who, but as he is starting to get attention from Hollywood, writing a new Tintin film for Spielberg, it now seems that the timing isn’t quite right, which would be a real shame.

The BBC’s other flagship dramas also tended to fall into the “very good, but not great” camp. Robin Hood once again started with two really poor episodes before getting rather good, developing a surprisingly successful plotline around a treasonous conspiracy by the sheriff and also developing the Robin – Marian – Gisborne triangle in interesting ways. Thirteen episodes remains too many, however, for a series that has the same basic cast and setting each week – the breaking into the castle business doesn’t half get repetitive. I hope the BBC wrap it up with a triumphant third series and don’t try to keep it going artificially. I also hope they give the excellent Sam Troughton a bit more to do than provide the light relief!

Life On Mars was once again extremely well-played by all concerned, but I felt massively let down by the ending. We had spent two series with Sam Tyler pursuing his desire to get back to the present day, but when he ultimately rejected life in the present in favour of life on Mars, I was left feeling at best that Sam was a chump, and at worst that I had been well and truly taken for a mug by the writers. I will be interested to see what the sequel series ends up being like – it could be great. Or awful.

Murder drama Five Days went all high-art, and not very successfully: it focused on the effect a disappearance had on the families and police officers involved, without making the resolution of the mystery central to the storyline. Despite some fine performances, the end result was ineffective: the mystery itself was dull and the back stories were made interesting only by an over-use of coincidence and melodrama.

Remaining with BBC drama for a moment, the five Afternoon Play hour-long dramas on BBC One early in the year produced two real gems: “The Real Deal” was an amiable romance starring the always excellent James Lance (an overlooked contender for the Eleventh Doctor?), but even better was “Death Becomes Him” in which the central character’s apparently imminent death seems to have positive implications for his family and friends, all of which unravel when it turns out he has survived after all… I doubt it will ever be repeated or made commercially available, which is a shame, as it was an absolutely top-notch hour of television. I’m baffled as to why writer Paul Smith has not achieved greater success and acclaim when he’s capable of material of this calibre.

[EDIT] A show I totally forgot to include, but which thoroughly deserves a mention, is Jimmy McGovern’s second series of The Street. Truth be told, this is another show where I’ve recorded it all but not got round to watching it yet – except for the first episode, which was classic McGovern. In it, the central character opportunistically adopts the identity of his twin brother when the latter dies suddenly, and pretends that he has in fact died and his brother survived. Although the central premise is implausible, the meat of the piece comes from unpicking the consequences: the central character gets to see his own funeral, hears what people really thought of him, has to adapt to a very different lifestyle, finds out things about his brother he never knew, runs the constant risk of discovery by his grieving wife, children and mother, and begins to appreciate the good aspects of his old life that he had taken for granted. It was a masterclass in TV drama, and while the series may struggle to sustain that quality throughout (the first series was excellent, but some episodes had the edge on others), it remains a tribute to the BBC that it is willing to give McGovern his head in crafting this consistently high calibre series.

Click here for Part Two…

"It’s my fourth favourite service station…"

One of my favourite Rock Anecdotes is the story John Peel used to tell of running into Morrissey at a set of motorway services – I now forget which, Tebay perhaps? During the ensuing small talk, Moz made the radical observation that it was something like his fourth-favourite service station. Peel would round off the anecdote by expressing his astonishment that anyone would ever place service stations in an order of preference, and finish with the observation, “and I’m someone who likes to make lists.”

My appetite for making lists has deserted me a bit lately, which I’m broadly fairly happy about. Even more happily, however, Dan Paton’s hasn’t, and if you click on that link (or find him on Facebook if you have the necessary friendship in place) you will find a lengthy list of pros and cons of 2007, dealing with art, politics, life and all that. Be warned, it may leave you weeping into your keyboard asking “what have I done with my year?!” Likewise, if you venture into Dan’s epic Top 100 Albums of the year, you will emerge convinced you know nothing about music, whatever you thought beforehand.

It’s an absorbing and thought-provoking list: the best bit is where he describes this blog as “more edifying and cogently argued than almost anything in print” – Gawd bless ‘im! Cheers Dan! He’s right of course, but, y’know, nice of him to say it.

If you want to know the difference between me and Dan, you’ll find his list has more Pros than Cons; if I were to embark on a similar exercise, I’m sure the balance would be tipped substantially in the opposite direction.

However, as I said, I have lost my yen for list-making: in 2006, I reviewed every new album I heard, but this year I gave up when I called it a day with the old website. Curiously, having either reviewed online, in a fanzine or on student radio pretty much every new record I’ve bought for the last, ooh, I dunno, eight years, I have been deserted by any sort of compulsion to do so any more. The overview article I had planned for this blog is now something I can’t even be bothered with – possibly because I think 2007 has been a bit underwhelming for music. I will, however, be putting up a review of the year’s telly shortly – if you find in it the answer to the tortured questioning of what you did with the year when reading Dan’s blog, you’ll be in good company.

Some Abortive Evening

After I went to all the trouble of putting a suit on and having a shave, my evening was ended before it had begun by the Piccadilly line being suspended between Acton Town and Hammersmith – I could have attempted to get a rush hour bus between the two and then pick up a no doubt by then totally disrupted Picc line into town, but I would have been lucky to get there much before nine. Handily, TFL staff at Acton Town were still letting people onto the platforms and hadn’t put up any signs saying there was no service from the station. Bless ‘em.

As a modest consolation, I did get to see a flustered Jon Snow break the news that “Amy Wineglass” had been released on bail. No, really.

An HMRC moment!

Last night Dan and I wandered along to a gig he’d spotted at short notice, featuring Chris T-T and Misty’s Big Adventure. Both are to some extent cursed where I’m concerned: several times since moving to London I’ve tried to go and see Misty’s and it’s fallen through, making it now four and a half years since I saw them for the first time; and we missed most of T-T’s set supporting the Broken Family Band at Koko a month or so back due to show time confusion (to say nothing of the time I went to see him in Manchester and the whole band got stuck in a lift for an hour, leaving enough time for Chris to do about 4 songs solo).

To some extent the curse continues – but more of that later. The gig itself was utterly excellent: for starters, MJ Hibbett and Charlotte were there, which was a nice surprise. Apparently Dan and I combined own more suits than Mark does pairs of trousers. As for the music, Chris T-T combined old and new songs – I’m very much looking forward to his new record, Capital, early in 2008 – and ended with a surprisingly effective rendition of Little Donkey.

Misty’s Big Adventure were, in my humble submission, utterly brilliant. They are the closest thing we have at the moment to Madness (apart, if you want to be pernickety, from Madness, I suppose): superficially, they are undeniably both enormous fun and enormously funny, but beyond that they are strong musically, with buckets of tunes and some pointed, and at times poignant, lyrics.The manic sound is complemented by the bizarre sight of Mr Erotic Volvo, a face-painted loon dressed in a red jump-suit covered in blue hands who mimes and dances through all the songs. Yes, you did read that right. Grandmaster Gareth is an effectively urbane frontman, by way of a rather neat contrast, and with his beard in addition to trademark straggly hair, declares himself to be the most hairy he’s ever been in his life. My enjoyment was perhaps enhanced by being on the outside of a few beers by this point, but I thought they were just tremendous, and certainly one of the most joyful sets I’ve seen all year.

They were followed by a “supergroup” of the blokes from Black Box Recorder, and one each of Art Brut and David Devant And His Spirit Wife. It was a self-indulgent ramshackle mess, but was moderately enjoyable if you were willing to accept it for what it was. If it hadn’t been Christmas I probably would have been less sympathetic to it – who says I’m nothing but Bah Humbug, eh?

Eventually, and inevitably, however, the curse struck. I had availed myself of the offer Misty’s had on CDs: the new album, Grandmaster Gareth’s latest solo album, two tour CDs and a two-track Christmas CD, all for 21 quid – job’s a good ‘un! Foolishly, however, I placed the CDs in the outside pocket of my jacket: normally I’m paranoid about leaving stuff behind, but I must have been in an unusually relaxed mood for some reason, as by the time I got on to the Piccadilly Line from the Bakerloo, three of the CDs were no longer in my possession! Bah humbug!

Back on the radio! Briefly…

I was interviewed this lunchtime on Steve Rhodes’ Consumer Programme on BBC Three Counties Radio, on the subject of the Government’s proposed new tax laws on “income shifting”. Exciting, eh? If you’re sufficiently sad, you can probably use the Listen Again function for the next 24 hours or so – I was on at about 12:25.

It’s the first time I’ve done a proper interview from the “other” side, and it made me feel slightly nervous! But Mr Rhodes was extremely on-side, so from that perspective it was an easy interview and probably went reasonably well (I say this without having listened to it myself…). All told, it was slightly buzzy!

It was only after the event that I checked what the three counties in question actually are. At the same time, I noticed the station has a soap opera of some sort called – I kid you not – Feckham Hall – for a BBC local radio station, this is pretty scandalous stuff! Rather reminds me of the Social Democratic Alliance (SoDemAll) in Whoops Apocalypse!

Christmas in Prison

I’m only actually writing this post to give myself a break, OK? Usually I dislike blog posts that are just whinges, but I’m wound up about this. I may try and justify it with some cutting analysis at the end, but don’t hold your breath.

I have been trying to book a train ticket home for Christmas, and at three weeks’ distance ought to be picking about the right time: far enough in advance for there still to be seats, but close enough for the timetables and everything to be in place.

Well, this is true up to a point: I have certainly been able to explore, at length, the various closures for maintenance that are taking place around Christmas and the new year holiday. Now, if we’re going to have closures for maintenance, I actually agree that they should be over holiday periods: it’s uncomfortable for those of us trying to travel, but it’s better than inconveniencing the people who rely on the railways to get to and from work and earn their living.For much the same reason,s it drives me nuts that express trains are prioritised in timetabling and signalling over local commuter trains: passengers on the former are far less likely to be making regular or essential journeys, but because they pay more money, they are afforded the priority. That’s what you get it you try running public services like railways for profit instead of as public services. But likewise, I think the premise “if we’re going to have closures for maintenance” is also a false one: if the railways were being run properly as a public service, maintenance would not be done in such appallingly inconvenient globs, even if they are considerably cheaper.

And I haven’t even started on the main blast yet, have I? Here’s the trouble: seat reservations are, apparently, not available yet. If I want to book a seat – and on December 23rd, you can guarantee that if I don’t have a seat booked, I won’t get to sit down at any point on the whole journey – I’ll have to come back later. So I probably have a window of about two days, opening I know not when, in which I will be able to book a seat. This is on top of already having to compromise my journey heavily in order to accommodate the aforementioned maintenance closures. On account of these, I am having to stop at home for a couple of days longer than I would like simply in order to avoid a 6 hour journey via Birmingham, Reading and God knows where else.

So the bottom line is: endless palaver simply in order to meet familial obligations that, I suspect, are unlikely to be much fun anyway. I’m going to try a few more journey combinations in a minute, but I needed a respite from the Virgin trains website before doing so. On the subject of that online establishment, its most galling aspect – beating off stiff competition from some extremely poor navigation – is a message stating “User Error” when it goes wrong. Er, no – the user is perfectly correct, actually – it’s YOUR error! Would someone face to face on a platform tell a customer that it’s their error? I think not.

So, promised analysis: well, if you try to run railways for profit you end up inconveniencing the people who rely on them,and they cease to be run as a public service. But this isn’t necessarily an argument in favour of renationalisation: after all, there is no a priori reason why the assets themselves have to be in public hands. But the railways must be run by one body – the attempt to introduce “competition” into the system has produced bizarre market distortions, deteriorating services and massive inefficiencies, not least entire fleets of trains stood idle on sidings because different Train Operating Companies keep ordering shiny new ones without any obligation to consider using perfectly good trains that already exist. To say nothing of endless re-branding, increased need for track maintenance on account of trains being ordered that are heavier than the ones they replaced and wear the track out more quickly, enormous price rises for the aforementioned deteriorating service and hopeless overcrowding when the new trains are – oops! – half the length of the old ones. And who pays for this idiotic shrine to inefficiency? The taxpayer, or the customer – whichever way you dice it, we do.

Oh, and did I mention I don’t even like Chsitmas very much?