Author: James Lark

Neither myself nor my housemates would deny that our semi-regular podcast has been wildly inconsistent; however, I feel that we have achieved something in creating a podcast that is almost certainly illegal to listen to in Scotland due to their rather stringent blasphemy laws.

For people who are not interested in going back and experiencing the full indecency of a complete episode (if you are, episode six is the best place to start by the way) we have done a retrospective of the best (and worst) bits of 2007 which you can listen to here. This includes contributions from all manner of special guests, several genuine Priests (and a couple of less genuine ones), a feature on our now-infamous April fool’s day broadcast which convinced no less than three of our friends that one of us had died, and a lesbian re-enactment of the Passion.

The BBC’s unnecessary Christmas adaptation of Oliver Twist was, in spite of some excellent performances, one disaster on top of another; from the line “I’m the Artful Dogder, but you can call me Dodge”, to the conclusion of the plot nearly a whole episode too soon, to the glaring inconsistency of Nancy not being able to read but managing to turn out a wordy letter in copperplate handwriting, to the fact that director Coky Giedroyc clearly doesn’t know what an octave looks like on the piano, it was a sloppy, unintelligent take on a tale that Alan Bleasdale did perfectly well for television only eight years ago.

Neither was it clear why Sarah Phelps, somebody whose biggest previous credit is Eastenders, was chosen to adapt the thing. One suspects it was to “try to make Dickens relevant to people who like Eastenders“, but it was painfuly clear that Phelps’ words are unlikely to weather the test of time as well as those of Dickens (I refer you back to the “call me Dodge” example).

Still, a little part of me hopes that it was simply because somebody wanted to include the line “he ent worth it!”, which was finally improbably delivered to Rose in the final episode by none other than Mrs Bedwin. No doubt Charles would have written it if he’d thought of it…

In a burst of good intention brought on by the start of a new year and the rapid approach of old age, and sustained only by the feeling that if I give up this early in the year I will be a failure of a human being, I have taken to setting my alarm for a reasonably early hour each morning and jogging a few miles.

Far from making me feel like I am a healthier person and filling my body with happy endorphins, this has mostly caused me a short period of agony every day followed by feelings of nausea and exhaustion.

I am also trying to floss my teeth more regularly, and the resulting pain suggests to me that I might as well be pulling barbed wire across my gums.

I can’t help feeling that I was in a much healthier mental state when I was ignoring the need to floss and spending an extra half an hour (or so) in bed. It has also been pointed out to me that the man who popularised jogging in America died of a heart attack at the age of fifty whilst out jogging. I don’t have an equivalent story about flossing but I can’t help feeling there must be one – is there any evidence at all to say that I’m doing myself the slightest bit of good here?

It has been nearly three months since Alastair Bennett last managed to write something on his blog, though I know there are many who, like me, check it regularly in hope of an end to this drought. As a result of his inactivity his nemesis Mrs Gledhill has all but become a household name and I have found myself actually finishing pieces of writing (though I must point out the accountability of several other lazy bloggers for the latter consequence.

But for me the biggest tragedy of Alastair’s silence is that I know he did in fact write a blog entry a few weeks ago, he just hasn’t posted it yet. And indeed may never do so. The reason for this is that what he wrote referred to the fridge magnet poetry in our kitchen, and the poetry in question is so filthy that he is worried about the kind of attention it might draw when unleashed onto the world wide web.

I can sympathise with his dilemma. You may recall that this very blog received the attention of vast numbers of undesirables when James Aylett made an innocent comment about Harry Potter porn (and I occasionally try to tempt back this demographic by dredging up the whole sorry incident, mainly because I’m tickled by the idea of people desperate for some pictures of Hermione Grainger mounting a wizard getting landed with my witty musings instead).

But I would have liked to read Alastair’s thoughts on our fridge magnet poetry, and indeed I would like to see the poetry preserved in the websphere because it really is quite impressive.

I won’t type any of it out myself – we’re already going to be in enough trouble with the Harry Potter brigade. But since they’ve come hunting for porn, I suppose a photograph of our purple prose might satisfy some of their needs and won’t show up as filth in any search engines…

I’m very much enjoying the series of afternoon plays on Radio 4 this week, Nick Warburton’s Witness: Five Plays from the Gospel of Luke (do listen again) which have so far avoided all the usual cliches of gospel dramatisations and are telling the familiar stories in an insightful and fresh way with some well-drawn characters and great acting all round.

But I can’t help hearing shades of Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor Who in Jesus’ Northern tones…and let’s face it, since Russell T. Davies has so unsubtley drawn parallels between the Doctor and Jesus Christ, it’s hardly surprising that there are a few similarities in this very 21st century approach to the story of Jesus.

So I’m kind of hoping that when we get to the resurrection, Jesus will come back with a cheeky cockney accent and perhaps utter words along these lines of “cor, that’s amazing! Easter! I love it!!!”

I also hope there will be a Children in Need special in which a former Jesus, perhaps Robert Powell though I’d hold out for Willem Dafoe if at all possible, meets up with the new Jesus and they do witty banter about how how different Jesus was back in the 80s.

I’m not in the habit of blogging on other people’s blogs (let’s face it, the internet is finite and we have to preserve it as best we can) – but – that culinary experimentalist Jason Fout reacted in sheer horror to Paula’s deep fried butter balls is surely enough to at least try them…

I note two things in particular:

1. Yield is about 30 balls – enough for anyone, surely?

2. The overall rating for this recipe is two out of five – perhaps because the other three died before they could record their reaction?

According to the new trailer for Doctor Who‘s Christmas extravaganza, the Doctor is 903 years old.

Oh dear – this is going to upset fans of “Time and the Rani”.

In the all-important and frightfully busy last week of the Cambridge term, I can now reveal the shocking news that at one frightfully important member of the music faculty hasn’t been entirely focussed on the job in hand.

Whilst checking through the music tripos syllabus for some details necessary to a few of my own students, I noticed that the third year courses include one on Jesuits and music, entitled “One world is not enough”. So when replying to an end-of-term party invitation from my former Director of Studies and one of the music faculty’s greatest assets, the legendary Dr Martin Ennis, I happened to enquire in a postscript whether we might expect to see any more James Bond puns in future courses.

I also gave him a list of suggestions, which were as follows:

For Your Reise Only – Schubert and Muller
On Her Majesty’s Second Service – Byrd and Elizabeth I
Dr? No. – Brahms and Cambridge University
License to Drill – the use of household objects in experimental music of the 1960s
From Russia with l’oeuf – Paul Kiang’s interpretations of Shostakovich

Thanks to my obsessive nature, the email took considerably longer to write than my busy, end-of-term schedule really allowed for, but I felt it was worth it for the depth and complexity of some of my immensely clever puns (the Brahms one certainly requires specialist musical knowledge, and the Shostakovich one is so specific that unless you are acquainted with Paul Kiang and his egg allergy it makes absolutely no sense at all). Besides which, I was fairly confident that I had done absolutely all of the musical James Bond puns there could be.

So the response came as a bit of a shock:

I’m glad to see that you’ve been able to remain at the cutting edge of musicological research. You may be interested to know that one of the Part II papers for next year is a detailed study of Scarlatti’s ‘Cat’ Fugue. I believe the provisional title is Octave-Pussy. As ever, M

Naturally I wasn’t going to let that go, so I spent some hours coming up with a fitting counter-pun.

Dear Martin, yes, I’d heard about the Scarlatti course – hasn’t it been suggested by the same person who’s thinking of doing a course based on an unreasonable prejudice against recordings of Stravinsky’s music made by the Acadamy of St Martin in the Fields – I think it’s called Never Play Neville’s Agon? James

This time Martin’s comeback was swift, but disappointing.

I believe that students of global warming are also interested in For your Ice only

Not only an extremely weak pun but one which diverges from the musical theme of the contest. But by this stage Martin was no doubt feeling the pressure of doing end-of-term meetings and running the music faculty at the same time as desperately googling James Bond films and consulting Grove’s dictionary of music, so we’ll let him off. In any case, it was a good excuse to slip in a weaker entry of my own, so I quipped that students of Bach are very much interested in The Man With the Golden Section – academically sound, but dull.

This time Martin came back with a blinder:

And students of Stanford will doubtless enjoy Thunderbore…

and I was forced to resort to:

Whilst people who end up studying the height of Farinelli’s success at the court of Philip V will be looking in depth at a Castrato Royale…

Martin’s slightly bizarre and again amusical reply was:

I believe the Welsh are very fond of Dai, Another Dai – it’s often exclaimed at christenings.

By this time I had stopped sleeping and I was spending every spare minute desperately flicking between my CD collection and wikipedia, determined not to be defeated. My own students were ignored and my important emails went on the back burner as I hunted for a pun on Tomorrow Never Dies that wouldn’t have to resort to Welsh christenings. Finally the answer came to me, appropriately enough, during Clare college’s advent carol service, and I dispatched the following before going to bed:

I’m currently undergoing a thorough study of Rutter’s* success with the working title Moneyraker.

*cf previous musings

Martin’s hasty reply this morning indicated that a pressing engagement conducting the Messiah in Japan would prevent him from making an appropriate response. I know – the lengths to which people will go to avoid making James Bond puns.

Still, there are a few titles left over and since I’m now off the hook I suggest it would make for brilliant Christmas fun if you fancy finishing off the list. You might also try finding alternatives for Martin’s two non-musical entries in the series. Let me know what you come up with!

Having tired of listening to Cavalleria Rusticana on ENO’s patently unoccupied box office line (which cost me £12 on last month’s phone bill) I went into the Coliseum in person and picked up tickets for The Turn of the Screw.

This looks like being a fine production of one of my favourite operas, featuring talented soprano Cheryl Barker in the challenging role of Miss Jessel.

I was talking to Chris Mundy about it yesterday, though, and he admitted to a blonde moment on first reading about the opera in which he had imagined it was legendary Record Breakers presenter and former singer with Bucks Fizz Cheryl Baker playing the role.

Although the latter isn’t renowned for her skilful renditions of complex twentieth century art music (and I think I can say that even without offending fans of Bucks Fizz), I can honestly say that I’d still part with my money to see her doing opera.

Especially if the part of Quint was being played by Kris Akabusi.

A month ago every newspaper was telling me that the iPhone, the very latest in mobile phone wankerism, was in such demand that people were queueing around the block at midnight to get hold of one, and forking out huge amounts of money for the privilege.

Now I get three emails a day begging me to claim my free one.

Is it really that disappointing? Have hundreds of models been returned by dissatisfied customers (certainly I’ve never met anybody with one)? Or did Apple simply build too many of the things?