It's Connected To The Arm Bone

Managed to do something painful to my shoulder the other day. I was trying to get something down from the top of the wardrobe, and I slipped. I put out my hand, slipped a bit too much, and my hand slammed against the wall, while my body ended up staying pretty much where it was. Bone ground against bone. All a bit painful. I looked it up on the internet, typing in 'Have I dislocated my shoulder?' (and google can get a bit disturbing with what it offers you as you're typing in those first few words). While it's still - a couple of days later - reasonably wince-making, it doesn't appear that I've done anything to worry about, although I'm very aware that my body is doing extra work to stop my shoulder being quite so painful, meaning that even writing this blog entry is something of a exhausting chore. But that's okay; I'm reasonably confident that it's probably something of an exhausting chore to have to read it, too.

I haven't won the lottery this week (actually, that's a lie, I won eight quid on the Euromillions, you may have seen it reported in the national press) so it looks like I'll be unable to avoid returning to work next week. This is something of a worry, since I've felt this week that my mind has been finally clicking into place with regard to all the creative stuff that I've had on the boil since, well, forever. A good few of the short stories that I've been working on are almost complete, by which I mean they're a couple of drafts away from their final incarnation. I'm very aware that once work hits back in again, I might end up being too physically and emotionally exhuasted to work on anything. I'm always in awe of those people who have full time jobs and families who still manage to create thier novel, play or whatever, although I'm fully aware that procrastination and re-runs of Fraiser are the real enemies here. In a good news/bad news situation, I'm about to lose one day of work a week. Good news: this means I'm no longer working seven days a week, four weeks a month. Bad news: significant hit on my already meagre funds. Good news: a full day when I can actually catch up on the writing that I always say I can't get around to writing because I'm working seven days a week. Bad news: I might be lying to myself.

Another thing that I've been managing to work on this week is surgery on a play I wrote last year, called Four Play. It was part of the Brighton Festival Fringe, and seemed to be very well received, even if everyone agreed it was too long. I need to lose about forty minutes from it. Now, it's not just the precious writer part of me that found this difficult - I'm quite happy to hack out huge parts of anything I write, but there's a technical aspect to Four Play that means that I have to consider very carefully logistics of timing even when I'm editing out just a few lines. But I've had a few ideas this month that would seem to allow me to do that - I just now need to re-write the damn thing in the full knowledge that the next draft (and quite possibly the one after that) will be an incoherent mess. But it looks like something good might come out of it, and as much as anything, I should really acknowledge and thank the vast amounts of encouragement that I've received from those who saw, and were involved with, the original productions. More news on that as it develops.

The two other things I'm working on at the moment are a one-woman show, and improv classes. The one-woman show is written by, and starring a friend of mine, and it's the first time (as far as I can recall) that I've been a 'director for hire', which has its own, unique series of pressures. Luckily, it's being produced with the New Venture Theatre in Brighton, which I've always found to be an encouraging and nuturing atmosphere.

The other thing - the improv classes - aren't being held at the NVT (although I will be running acting classes there next month). It's been a while since I've been directly involved with improv, although it's really how I began to perform when I was in Brighton. (like most drama students, once I got my degree, I immediately stopped acting for about five years). I will be producing an improvised play next May as part of the Fringe, and it's going to be helpful to start up a 'boot-camp' for those actors interested in getting involved before the auditions kick off. Although, in truth, the workshops are as much for me to get my game back on as they are for any improvisers wanting to improve their skills.

As usual, details when I know exactly what's going on (I'm just waiting for the venue to be confirmed). I'm aiming to get a couple of the short stories finished (by which I mean final draft finished) by the end of this week. The aim is to enter them for writing contests (something that I've never done before), and once I've got enough, put them together on a kindle collection. Hell, if everyone else is doing it .

This Blog, Part 2

I went to see The Bourne Legacy this week, which isn’t a sequel to any of the other Bourne films. It’s not even a prequel, or what’s clumsily referred to sometimes as a ’midquel’, which is when the action takes in between the narrative of two previously existing films. The events of this one take place in a roughly parallel timeslot to the third Bourne film, so we get to see Paddy Consideine running around Waterloo Station again, presumably in footage lifted from the old film, but still earning the actor a few dollars like Marlon Brando did for doing nothing new in Superman II. So, while the events of the third Bourne film are unraveling, the events of this film kick off, giving a whole Russian Doll effect to the plot, as one story exists inside another. For this reason, (certainly no better reason), we’re going to call Bourne Legacy a ‘in-quel’, or ‘Inkwell’.


In fact, if the plot of Legacy resembles anything, it’s Terminator 2 – good version of bad guys is relentlessly pursued by newer, souped-up version of himself – but it’s at least the second film this year (after Prometheus) that is a ‘inkwell’ - very clearly not a sequel type sequel, but rather a film that ‘inhabits the same universe’. With a dearth of original ideas out there, and audiences increasingly reluctant to take a chance on anything they feel they don’t already know, this could be a future waggling thing in cinematic pop-corn shifters.
The concept has loosely existed for years in slasher movies: the casts of Halloween and Saw were sliced and diced with each new installment, to make way for the next group of soon-to-be-dead teens. Of course, in those cases, there was still a clear connecting factor: the psycho wearing the scary mask, until Final Destination went one further and dispensed with an actual physical killer. But still, the sequels came across like badly Xeroxed copies of each other, where, even if we didn’t have familiar characters to invest in, we at least knew pretty much how the plot was going to play out.
Prometheus was an interesting but flawed film that by and large was able to stand on the shoulders of the iconic Alien franchise to (un)invent a world we thought we already knew, while Bourne Legacy spends a great deal of its time reminding us that it isn’t about Jason Bourne. It does this largely by the method of having lots of people point furiously at a photograph of Matt Damon (something that the three films that were about Bourne did), and have worried government officials declare that Bourne is off the grid, and definitely not about to turn up anytime soon (again, something the other films did quite a bit). It surely can’t be too long before films manage to be set in the same ‘universe’ while not having an obvious character or narrative connection. In his novels, Stephen King has already achieved this, with characters making some blithe reference to some dog that went rabid/that hotel that burned down/that novelist who writes all the scary books, and it’s sort of already happened in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, although it’s possible that having two brothers in separate films is not quite creating the wide-reaching universe I’m talking about.
So there’s quite possibly a future here. Once a film has hit big, audiences are likely to pay more attention to anything that comes from the same source, even if it has nothing to do with what they’re familiar with (hence the massive amount of interest in JK Rowling’s forthcoming book, and, more depressingly inexplicable, the point of re-jacketing loads of soft bondage porn that’s been gathering dust on WHSmith’s shelves for the past ten years, confident that it will sell, simply because it now looks like Fifty Shades Of Grey. And of course, they’re entirely correct.

You have to be careful with Inkwells, however. They’re an entirely different beast from spin-offs, with which they could be easily confused. Therefore, no Adventures Of Moneypenny, in which our favourite secretary, still living in the 1950s, has a series of ‘Jane’ type adventures before being plonked demurely behind her desk to flirt coyly with an unsuspecting Bond. Likewise, UNIT is out. Apart from having a similar title to a Dennis Haysbert drama, a series depicting the adventures of Doctor Who’s favourite paramilitary team would inevitably suffer from not having copyright access to many of the villains that fans fondly remember them fighting. They might be able to get hold of the Yeti, but that might be a bit of a stretch week after week. And anyway, no-one would be able to agree if it should be set in the seventies or eighties.
No, an inkwell, if well written, inhabits the same world as whatever more famous film or TV programme has inspired it, but rarely, if ever, resorts to using the same characters or situations. That’s why, despite it seeming like an obvious choice, any incarnation of CSI falls at the first hurdle. Since I’ve brought this up, it probably falls to me to make the first suggestions, all of which will fail to impress miserably like an over-excited host of a party that suggests to a grim group of guests that they should try that game involving Rizlas, which briefly excites, before everyone realises that it doesn’t involve smoking them.
The Apartment At The Top: As Friends was one of the most popular series of the nineties, it seems reasonable that we should try to eke an Inkwell out of it, as long as we don’t attempt to base it on the further adventures of the original cast. As Joey proved, this will only prove to be a costly, horrible mistake. The Apartment At The Top is a chilling psychological nightmare as newly-wed couple David and Marion move into a top floor apartment that is significantly out of their price range (apparently the previous tenants had rent control), and fail to connect with any of their neighbours while slowly coming to terms with the implausible reality that despite living in the middle of New York, they are the only black couple within a ten mile radius. Shades of Rosemary’s Baby.

Blake’s Nation: Never mind the upcoming almost certainly about to happen re-boot of Blake’s 7, this continues directly from where the original left off, despite most of the cast having been killed off in a bloodbath. A new cast arrives, keen to start up a new civilisation dedicated to the ideals of their glorious leader. The series name is a cheeky in-joke referencing the 1970s serial’s creator. Actually, this one sounds quite good, BBC, if you’re around, I can get my BACs number to you as soon as you ask.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: Oh, yeah. Never mind, as you were.
Psycho House: Norman Bates dies while still in a pyscharic hospital, but before he does so, bequeaths his motel to an equally deranged patient who is then released and discovers all manner of weird goings-on at Chez Bates. Improbably, this one actually happened.
Elephant! The Musical: Briefly seen as a RSC money spinner during The Tall Guy, we get a few glimpses of this musical based on the tragic life of Joseph Merrick, but a full version doesn’t exist. Actually, with songs like Packing His Trunk and Somewhere Up In Heaven (There’s An Angel With Big Ears), I’d pay good money to see this.

Crown Jewels

Does anyone truly care about these photos of Prince Harry? I know I don't, and I'm starting this blog entry talking about them.

It's not exactly news; a Prince who's known for being a bit drunk and silly at times has spent an evening before going back into active service being a bit drunk and silly. I'm fuly aware that we're meant to expect a little more decorum from our princes - but we always have, and we've always been let down. After all, what else is Brighton's Royal Pavillion but the Prince Regent's dirty weekend getaway hut?

If anything, the people who should feel unable to look at themselves in the mirror this morning are those at The Sun who managed to come up with a reason to publish the photographs - being the first British newspaper to do so. Their main argument is that these photographs are freely available on the internet, and so it was 'perverse' to not publish them. I'm not sure I can follow this through as a sensible argument. Did The Sun's mother never ask the question regarding the age old problem: if everyone else was jumping off a cliff, would you do it too? Apparently, yes - The Sun would be racing to that clifftop, elbowing small children and asylum seekers aside as it did so. There are lots of things that are freely available on the internet, but The Sun doesn't feel compelled to publish those (I'm thinking specifically of those pictures of cats doing amusing things. I have no idea where your mind just went).

The Sun claims that it's an issue of freedom of the press, that it should not be stifled or gagged. This in itself is a noble idea, and one that should be defended and celebrated, but freedom of speech does not mean that you are contractually required to say everything that comes into your head. Just because you can say something, doesn't mean that you have to. Freedom of speech gives you the marvellous chance to, on occasion, just shut the hell up.

The Sun's defence of its actions is reasonably shaky - I'm sure that on legal grounds, it's perfectly sound, but equally I'm convinced that we all know it's to justify the publication of some photographs of a rich boy with no clothes on. If the newspaper felt that some service was being provided by these photographs, maybe it could go to further extremes: each time there was a horrific car acident, perhaps the newspaper could splash some lurid pictures of the maimed victims, as a sombre and caring reminder to drive carefully. Maybe next to some Keith Lemon Movie vouchers. You know, to make sure the entire family is involved.

Back To Brighton

I'm in a coffee shop in Brighton making two significant mistakes. The first is having chosen a coffee shop that comes with its own wifi access, meaning that the first real bit of writing that I've done this afternoon is the sentence and a half you've just read, and the second mistae is reading a book called The Edinburgh Fringe Survival Guide.

It's always the same at this time of year. Having not been at work for a couple of weeks means that I'm beginning to feel - well, you know, a human being, and having spent a week at the Fringe seeing a variety of great (and terrible) shows reminds me how possible it is to do the same. At the moment, my days aren't packed hour to hour with demands on my time, and so, despite my claim earlier, I am actually completing a bit of writing, and my mind is firing on at least two cylinders, trying to work out how easy (or at least possible) it would be to bring a show up to Edinburgh.

It is, of course, all about the time and money. Even those performers and companies that latch on to the valuable free festivals that have become so important in recent years have at least some disposable income to make a month away from real life a viable option. I've always claimed, and indeed assumed, that I'm in no way bitter - that's the way that the cards have been dealt, and in any case, I don't personally know of a single performer who hasn't worked incredibly hard for whatever degree of success they've achieved. But now I'm thinking I may as well get a little bitter. It's something to do, isn't it?

I spoke to a lot of performers this year who had found themselves in terrible shows, the quality of which was reflected in low audience numbers, and savage reviews. One actor I spoke to mentioned the review that the show in which he was appearing. Not only was the review better writen that the show, it struggled to give one star: 'And that was generous,' he muttered darkly. It must be disheartening for a company to repeat a show for at least two weeks of what's one of the world's biggest arts festivals to increasingly dwindling audiences, fighting against the positive word of mouth that's buzzing around - as far as you can tell - any other show in town.

What seemed to link these shows - apart from the fact that they were by all accounts dire - was that they were bankrolled by the director. At this point we should acknowledge that in these cases, 'director' refers only to the person with money and an ego, and not, as you might hope, any detecable charisma or talent. In at least two of these cases, the 'director' was doing the show as part of their PHD. I'm still not entirely sure what this indicates.

All of this doesn't stop me, each year, from coming back to Brighton in a slightly more creative frame of mind, finally working out what cuts and changes are needed in the show that people have been telling me for about ten years now that I really MUST bring to the Fringe, of having new ideas for stories/plays/stand up that invariably jostle for postion alongside the incomplete ideas I had this time last year before real life got back in the way. I often read of all these people who managed to complete their first novel in the half hour between waking up and going to work, and I honestly don't know how they managed it.

This year, then, I'm going to see if there's any value in the small and short. There's plenty of short story and short play competitions out there, all with, if not some critical recognition, then at least cash prizes. In some respect, this is what this blog is about. While there are few things more boring than a writer talking about what s/he's writing about (while they're talking about it, chances are they're no-where near getting to actually writing about it), I can understand why they do it: if they announce they're working on something, they have witnesses. Not an audience, but witnesses - people who can pull them up in a years time and ask them how that novel/play/joke/to do list is going. And if they've got nowhere with it: well, clearly they're not serious about it all.

Goodbye To Edinburgh

Yesterday morning was my last in Edinburgh, so I spent some of it in the Elephant House cafe, which I hadn't had a chance to do so previously this year. The cafe gets an extraordinary amount of negative feedback on sites like tripadvisor and foursquare, simply because it trades on the fact that JK Rowling is supposed to have begun writing her Harry Potter books there. This - the negative feedback - is a trifle unfair on the Elephant House, as it's an entirely understandable angle to pull. People who gripe about the cafe celebrating its (admittedly probably quite weak) connection with the world of Harry Potter are like those who'd want to firebomb an old house just because it had a blue plauqe stating that Arthur Conan Doyle once lived there.

Why wouldn't you celebrate the fact that JK Rowling (probably) wrote (some of) the early drafts of Harry Potter there? Frankly, I'm somewhat unconvinced that the story is entirely true as it stands, since popular myth tells us that JKR began writing the books while a young mum, and there doesn't seem to be a great deal of room to get a buggy in there. Although I'll acknowledge that it's probably got a hell of a lot busier in the last ten years.

Of course, that's one of the main reasons people complain on tripadvisor: that it's always so busy, packed with Harry Potter fans (thereby presumably overlooking the resason they were there in the first place). It's probably about as busy as the Black Medicine cafe on the other side of town which is smaller and a lot more awkwardly designed, but has a better system for reducing waiting time and lines at the counter. Plus, it seems slightly cooler than the Elephant House. Well, I once sat next to Will Poulter just before Son Of Rambow came out. I assume that counts for something.

What the Elephant House doesn't have, apart from the sign outside declaring that JK Rowling started writing her books here, is any mention of the boy wizard at all. There are, in respect of the cafe's name, a great deal of ceramic elephants, but Harry Potter appears to be wearing an invisibilty cloak.There's not even any reference to anything vaugely magical - not even a twig repesenting a wand, and you pretty quickly realise that the figure that Must Not Be Named is Warner Bros, doing everything it can to protect its product. That's understandable, but its a shame that its strength is so overeaching that the Elephant House can't even have anything on display like a witches hat, which by and large predate JK Rowling and the films by at least a couple of years.

I'm now wondering if it might not be a little too mean to write a film for Warner Bros that excusively deals with the adventures of a gang of elephants. Who live in a house. See how the cafe and WBs copyright department cope with that ...

What Show Are You Doing?

My last evening at the Edinburgh Fringe. I'm out in about a hour or so to see a couple of shows (and that in itself indicates all that is crazy about the Fringe ... for some performers and audiences, the day only really kicks in at around 6pm). One show that I'm seeing is research, of a kind. I'd meant to do a lot more research in the types of shows that I saw up here. I've got an improv show coming up in May, for the Brighton Festival Fringe, and since it's a long form style show, I thought that it would be instructive to see a few, 'specially as it's a type of improv I only have a bit of experience with.

But here's the thing. There weren't really a great deal of improv shows that leapt out at me. I think improv can be a bit of a tough sell, it's instructive to see how such a show can come across to me, someone who's actively seeking one out. The improv show that I'll be working on, due in May 2013 (since when did my calender start getting booked years in advance? Isn't that supposed to be a sign of success, or something?) won't exactly be an easy ride. Whatever else improvisation is meant to be, it certainly isn't simply making things up as you go along.

Had a lovely chat and coffee with a friend on what was her last day at the Fringe. Almost predictably, we got to lamenting how difficult it is to bring a show up here. Although, if we're being pedantic (which, all of a sudden, we are) she's already brought a show up here,last year. By sheer chance, it was the last show I saw at the Fringe before leaving in 2011, long before I'd met her. It was very good.

To be fair to her, and our shared laments, it was the uni that she was studying with at the time that paid most of the costs, otherwise it's doubtful that she would have been able to afford it. It's a depressing fact that money is a significantly more important factor in getting a show to the fringe than, say, talent. I've spoken to at least two people this year - who I didn't know - who felt trapped in shows that they absolutely hated, being directed by people who they thought were talentless idiots. The reason, then, that the show existed was because these directors had a bit of cash to throw around. And, bizarely, in both cases, because the directors were completing a PHD in Theatre. However, in both cases, the depressed actors involved said that I should really get along to see the show. Presumably after nearly a month, the flyering instinct never leaves you.

Three Kinds Of Me

So, I have a new upcoming project. This one has a bit of a quick turnaround, as the show goes up in October. That doesn't leave a great deal of rehearsal time. I'm not yet sure if the fact that it's a one woman show will make rehearsal more or less difficult. It's by no means a foregone conclusion.

One conclusion you may have correctly drawn from that first paragraph is that I'm not in it. The one woman in question is a good friend Sarah Charlsey (she's such a good friend that I even manage to spell her surname correctly occasionally), and she's written the piece that she will be acting in. It's not precisely the first time I've directed a friend - it's not even the first time I've directed Sarah - but this time, the dymanics are somewhat different.

First of all, I've been asked to direct someone else's creation (we'll pass over the small detail that I wasn't actually first choice. I'll keep that in reserve if things aren't going my way in the third week of rehearsal). Normally as a director, at least at this level, when it's all local, and a compartively small amount of people are watching, you choose your own project. Therefore, I have in my head (as I imagine a great many directors do) a bubbling pot of various images for possible in-the-future productions that may never happen. I have great opening images for both Three Sisters and Twelfth Night, both of which I imagine are far too expensive for any venue I currently have access to. Likewise, I have a whole series of ideas for a show that I tell anyone that will listen that I definetly will write a script for one of these days (it involves Victorian women using silks and Arial skills. I have yet to convince anyone - including myself - that that little detail isn't just for my benefit).

However, the goal posts change somewhat if you are directing your friend in the script they themselves wrote. I'm not exactly expecting to have any arguments regarding costume ('but they have to be wearing a Thomas The Tank Engine jumper, that's what the real David was wearing!'), but you never know. Quite often as a director (and indeed, as actor, designer, or most anything else) you play around with the expectations of the script: you know that such and such a scene is a moment when everyone's royally annoyed with each other, so you see how it will work if each actor plays it really positive and nice. Usually, the audience will pick up on the tension anyway, in a passive aggressive way. I'll let you know how it all goes; the first rehearsal is this week, after I get back from Edinburgh.

A Day Off. Sort Of.

Within the finishing line (for me) of Edinburgh this year, as I'll be leaving in a couple of days. I've enjoyed it more than I did last year, although it feels more like hard work this time round - the reviews I've been writing have felt like more of a struggle, particuarly in the instances where I've attempted to review things that are somewhat outside my 'comfort zone'. There have been a couple of things this year that I knew I was never going to review, simply because I liked the performer too much. I'm thinking specfically here of the likes of Daniel Kitson and Josie Long, who I happened to see on the same day. I knew that I didn't want to review them,  just see them as a punter, because I wanted to simply watch them without the need to make notes, and also (this may the more important point) there comes a time when it's entirely pointless to review performers you already expect to like and be positive about. There are a couple of acts this year that, keeping that in mind, I suspect I have written my last review for.

However, I feel like I've become a true Fringe veteran today because I 'almost' had a day off. In years past, I would feel like I was wasting a day up in Edinburgh if I wasn't seeing five or six shows. Considering it takes about five years to truly get a measure of the city, and there can be less than three minutes between shows, this way madness lies. But today was somewhat relaxed, and I had no desire to complicate matters. I still had one show to review at the end of the night, but the rest of the day was fairly empty. Which is not to say that I didn't fill it with a couple of shows anyway - Richard Herring's Talking Cock (actually the first time I've seen him live), and earlier in the day, Angela Barnes and Matt Richardson on the Free Fringe. Both shows were great fun, and both were crammed to the rafters with punters. It's very delightful to see such huge audiences attend shows headlined by performers you have at least a nodding aquaintance with. I'm sure I'll be boring people with 'I knew them' type anedoctes in less than a year.

The other way I know I'm a Fringe veteran actually started a couple of years ago, but I thought I'd gotten over it. However, it kicked in again today (or was it yesterday? It's the Fringe, I have no idea). It's the point where, as an audience member, you begin to take as keen an interest in the sightlines and lighting rig as you do the act on stage. I get frustrated by this, this niggling hope that at some point I might have the chance to bring a production up to the festival. Of course, at the moment, without recourse to a lottery win, this seems to be pretty much impossible.

These latter days of my Fringe visits are the most cruel - surronded by thousands of creative people, relaxed after a couple of weeks off, my mind begins to start actually having a couple of good ideas that might genuinely work as Fringe ideas, and just today I had an idea how to rewrite my Brighton Fringe play from a couple of years ago to get it to a Edfringe-manageable time of at least a hour and a half. Nobody seems to have told my head that in a very short time, it'll be back at work. It seems a shame to let it know ...

Where Is Everybody?

So, Edinburgh feels odd this year. Actually, that's an entirely meaningless sentence, since I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere is required to say 'Edinburgh feels odd this year' every year, no matter what's going on. I know that it felt odd to me last year, but I also know that was just me, that I wasn't really enjoying it, despite the quailty of the acts. This year, I'm having a better time, although I'm reasonably convinced the acts aren't.

I knew that I'd truly arrived on the Fringe this year when I'd seen a terrible show followed by a really good show (I think that's like, one of the rules or something). The good show was from Belt Up, an adaptation of A Little Princess, a book that I incidentally have never read, and now think that if I ever had a daughter to read it to, I might not be able to get past chapter one without having a massive emotional collaspe.

The really bad show, by the way, I'm not going to name. I feel bizarely lucky that I had to pay for it - I'd much rather wasting some cash on it than having to suffer a headache trying to think of something positive to say something about it in a review. It concerns me that some companies seem not to truly understand what the concept of this 'international' festival really is - you know, the idea that they might be seen by audiences.

Of course, that's what's odd about the fringe this year - audiences, or a seeming lack of them. For as long as I've been coming to the fringe (which isn't that long), the chatter has always been that the audiences are down on the previous year. This is always a claim that ends up getting shot in the throat the following month when the fringe society release their figures, and it's discovered that all manner of records have been broken. But this year, it feels different even when you're not sitting in a poorly attended show. It's out there - or rather, people aren't - in the streets, and in empty Pleasance Courtyards. You almost feel like this is what it's like in the other eleven months of the year.

On the plus side, at least it's easier to go down the Royal Mile. I even managed to get a flyer, and usually only the best people get given flyers. I know, because they told me.

Post Olympics

So, that’s it, then. Two weeks of watching the planet’s athletes doing what they do best are now at anend, and now Great Britain can go back to doing what it does best, namely, returning to a foul mood and not being quite so positive. It must have been quite a strain for the nation’s cynics over the last fortnight, like a middle aged man holding his stomach in when a pretty girl walks past.
Having little or no interest in sport, I ended up seeing little to none of the games. In fact, most of what I did see was essentially the opening and closing ceremonies, both at big screens – one in Brighton, on the beach, and the other, tonight, at the BBC Garden at the Edinburgh Fringe. There were, of course, these big screens in town centres all over the country, allowing people everywhere to soak up that atmosphere of fun, comradeship and support for the nation’s Olympians. Well, except in Worthing, where last week someone nicked the laptop and cable that were needed to transmit the footage from the BBC. Maybe in Worthing they assumed that basic thievery was an Olympic sport, and they were going for Bronze. And by ‘going for Bronze’, I do of course mean simply pinching it from a railway line.
However, the atmosphere at those screens was wonderful. A lot was said about how easy it was to get caught up in a sport that you had no real passion – or, indeed, fundamental knowledge – of, and that’s even more true within a crowd of amenable people on a sunny day getting swept up in all the high drama of, say, dressage.

We’ve learnt a lot from these games. We’ve learned that we’re in dire need of stronger role models than the cast of TOWIE. We’ve learned that despite what we’re continually being told, that actually most people are pretty fond of Great Britain. We’ve learned that an alarming amount of people want to sleep with Tom Daly, regardless of what they thought their sexuality was. And, I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned that every time from now one I use a taxi, I want it to be like the ones the Spice Girls use.