Posted in December 2009 …

Dec 07 2009
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Arts & Entertainment

Russell Brand gets grilled by Frank Skinner

Daily Mail - Sack Them

It’s not often that I tend to watch these kind of things but tomorrow on Channel 4 sees something that might either turn out to be a damp quid or, as I’m hoping it will be, a must-see. Russell Brand gets interviewed by fellow comedian Frank Skinner as he talks candidly about his past, his addictions with various substances, and, most intriguingly, Sachsgate, which saw both him and Jonathan Ross criticised by the Daily Mail and its readers an outraged public. The one thing that might make this a must-see is the choice of interviewer. Instead of a well-known public figure or journalist, Frank Skinner, a fellow comedian who recently fronted a Panorama documentary on BBC1 regarding swearing in comedy. Brand will inevitably spill his guts out but it’s the questions that Skinner poses that determine whether or not we’ll learn anything of real interest.

Russell Brand: Skinned airs at 10pm tomorrow night (8th December) on Channel 4.

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Dec 04 2009
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Journalism

The right to take photos in public

London anti-war protests

This is a very interesting article in the Independent about how the right to take photos in public places is being curtailed more and more by the day as the police try to clamp down on it. I’ve found the recent attempts by the police to prevent people from doing something as simple as take a photograph quite ridiculous and in an age where YouTube and camera phones exist seems extremely redundant.

I incidentally take not one but two cameras with me at nearly all times (one is good at photos, one is good at video, if you were wondering why) because if something like the anti-war protests pop up – I happened to be in London on the day they occurred – I can document it, upload it, and share them with a global audience. That’s why people take photographs in the first place, professional or amateur – to document. Thankfully I’ve never been stopped by a policeman or policewoman but I still find it hard to believe we live in a society where we can be stopped by authority for:

…taking innocent pictures of tourist destinations, landmarks and even a fish and chip shop.

As we approach the end of the decade, one can’t help but feel that common sense is becoming more and more non-existent.

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Dec 03 2009
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Arts & Entertainment

We Need Answers

We Need Answers

I thought it was going to take a lot to create a television show that was more surreal and silly than Shooting Stars (the original series though, not the two rubbish comeback editions) but I might have found it.

BBC4 are showing a second series of a show hosted by comedian Mark Watson called We Need Answers. I say it’s hosted by him, it’s actually a joint venture between him, Tim Key, and Alex Horne that has been adapted from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to television. The simplest way of explaining it is that two celebrity guests have to answer questions that have actually been sent into one of those text services where you text a question and get an answer back. The questions range from the bizarre to the ridiculous. That’s pretty much the concept, and a loose one at that.

It owes a lot to Shooting Stars in many ways. The set is all garishly bright coloured, there are random sound effects and graphics, it’s made on a very low budget, some elements of parody, and a lot of silliness (best explained by Tim Key’s entrances on a moving armchair from behind the set, through some sort of cat flap, and towards the front of stage. It’s completely and utterly daft. Not everyone will like it but at a time where most comedy panel/quiz shows are based on witty humour, and in some cases a bit too try-hard, this is a refreshing antidote and a hidden gem on Freeview/Sky/however you watch digital television.

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Dec 02 2009
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Journalism

How youth reporters cover the GSMC

Blogging from the get-go

This is my last GSMC post, I promise. It does continually surprise me at the amount of students who don’t blog and the latest example was searching for information from the conference. In my brief Google search I found just:

And that’s about it. Of course, my search efforts got tiresome once I reached the fifth page and there might be some hidden posts lurking on page 54293, but that’s highly unlikely. It’s been said now for a few years that one of the best things a student journalism can do is to use blogging as a platform to self-publish. In an age where even potential employers might soon ask ‘do you have a blog?’ in a job interview, it’s starting to beggar belief.

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