Author: James Lark

I’ll be a bit quiet this August.

Except inofar as I’ll be singing, quite noisily, in a musical. And doing all sorts of radio interviews.

In that sense, I’ll be being quite noisy, I should imagine.

But in a Talk to Rex sense I’ll be quiet. If you do want to hear about me being noisy, we’ll all be blogging away over here, and you’re warmly invited to keep us company.

I seem to have accidentally caught a couple of minutes of Big Brother, which I found excruciating.

Let me make it clear: it’s not that I remotely object to these people being locked up in a house together. It’s just the televising of it that seems unnecessary.

This beats the New York Times. Easily.

This is a lesson in the dangers of doing early morning live interviews and getting quoted (or in some cases misquoted) directly from them.

But for all that I wish they hadn’t gone and written down the “bang bang bang” bit (not that it made a lot of sense when I said it either), I think it’s all worth it for the header: Prescott ‘difficult’.

I’m a bit worried about these apparent “physical scenes”, on the other hand. Are people going to be expecting some kind of Prescott ballet?

Yeah, sorry. What with convalescing from tonsillitis, rehearsing Tony Blair – the Musical and keeping some very odd hours, blogging has somehow slipped off my agenda. It may only be a coincidence, but the same time as my blog entries petered out, there was an alarming resurgence of activity on John Finnemore’s blog, hitherto dormant for months on end. I’m wondering if I’m the victim of some kind of black magic here. Even Alastair has managed to write something this week, including a description of me as “tragic and bedraggled” which pretty much sums up the current state of affairs.

But seeing as how I’m up to my ears in a groundbreaking piece of topical theatre, it would be remiss of me not to comment on the fact that Saturday night saw two simultaneous televisual explorations of the post of Prime Minister, both of them rather awful for different reasons.

In our publicity and press information for Tony Blair – the Musical we have been constantly reinforcing the fact that our aim is not to exaggerate aspects of Blair’s time in power to serve our own dramatic ends, but to try to give it a bit of perspective by seeing it through his eyes. I have also mentioned that a lot of recent comedy/satire/drama about Blair has completely failed to do this, and ends up either portraying Blair as stupid, or as an evil, power-crazed warmonger (for the record, he is neither). So I was delighted to find my views vindicated (again) by Channel 4’s The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair.

This wasn’t, I’m afraid, a clever combination of my 2006 Fringe show The Rise and Fall of Deon Vonniget with the one I’m working on now; it was a programme purporting to be a documentary in which moody pictures of Blair, his face in shadow and his eyes beady and calculating, were accompanied by dramatic music and histrionic voiceovers saying things like “this is the leader who transformed Labour into a ruthless vote-winning machine… a man who came to office promising to unite the nation only to bitterly divide it. A man who wanted to be a great reformer at home, only to take the country into bloody conflicts abroad…” By five minutes in I was wondering how we could have been so blind as to make an insane meglomaniac the most powerful man in the country.

Which was also the concept behind the BBC’s alternative programming, though their Prime Minister was considerably less nasty. Although yes, he was shown to be callous and to have blood on his hands, he was essentially a jovial character – a man who bounced around, winking at the camera and making jolly asides to dissipate the tension even in the darkest of situations. Although not the kind of company I would necessarily keep myself, he certainly wasn’t the grim, threatening monster that we saw in Tony Blair over on Channel 4. This Prime Minister was really a bit cuddly, all things considered.

Which was odd, because he was meant to be The Master, insane Time Lord, arch-rival of the Doctor and one of the most evil villains in the whole of time and space.

Perhaps the scripts were mixed up. But more likely this was just another example of the current production team on Doctor Who not knowing the difference between a good idea and a bad idea. For a tragically brief four minutes last week we got to see the Master as played by Derek Jacobi, who chose to be sinister rather than bouncy: this was a good idea. Replacing Jacobi with a Master who bounces around like a Chuckle Brother on crack: that’s a bad idea, that is.

So here’s the logo that everyone’s getting so upset about, though I can’t honestly say I care much. I don’t care much for the London Olympics at all so the fact that they’ve spent £400,000 of their absurd budget on a logo that looks like a puzzle you get in a cracker makes no less sense to me than if they’d spent it on hurdles. (My personal feeling on the budget issue is that the one hope for arts funding in this country over the next decade is in persuading somebody to include theatre as a demonstration sport in the 2012 Olympics.)

From what I could glean from The London Paper and Metro the other day (yes, I read them both because I like to get a balanced view) the thing about the Olympic logo that is causing the most outrage is that people see things in it. One Metro reader saw a swastika. And in The London Paper a Mr Whyte described it as “a Tracy Emin piece of dog poo” – strong words indeed. Clearly it is a veritable rorschach blot of a logo. I don’t quite know what to make of the fact that I see a woman with a perm giving a man a blow job, though I am sure other people will think that they know what to make of it.

But I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to read in The London Paper that 56% of people – 56% no less! – said that the design is “not very inspiring”. And a whole 4% said that it is “awful”!!! That must be quite a kick in the teeth to Tessa Jowell.

Then I scanned down to the bottom of the poll and found a sentence saying “Source: our reporters spoke to 75 people on London’s streets tonight”.

75 people? So that means that the “4%” that said the new Olympic logo was “awful” was actually only three people? And the “56%” who didn’t find it inspiring was actually not even fifty people?

I mean, why not just speak to one person? Why not print the factually correct percentage “100% of Mr Whytes felt that the design resembled a Tracy Emin piece of dog poo”? London is not exactly bereft of people, and The London Paper apparently sent out “reporters” (plural) to talk to them – so to get the opinions of 75 people (even if we include the time it must have taken to listen to Mr Whyte ranting about Tracy Emin) must have taken, maybe, twenty minutes? If that? What exactly were these “journalists” doing?

I reckon they were in the pub. In that respect, they probably have a lot in common with the people who designed the new Olympic logo, though since they’re probably not quite racking up £400,000 for their work I don’t think we should hold it against them.

James and I are now reaching a point where we are about to actually film a sitcom pilot that we’ve had knocking about for nigh on two years now. Naturally, we are filming it because nobody else will. It’s a sitcom pilot.

The delicate and diplomatic process we have been going through regarding last-minute rewrites has now reached the stage of petty squabbles (yet somehow that still seem worth squabbling over) about single lines: who should say them, whether characters should sigh before or after saying them, whether characters would prefer pink or blue and that sort of thing.

And woe to writers who indulge in such arguments – because invariably they tend to be more about whether they prefer pink or blue. Also woe to the writers who hire a director who is also a writer, thus tripling all such arguments and causing different sides to form on different opinions, and sudden shifts of power and occasional victimisation.

A notable discussion arose over the reaction of a female character to being told that women aren’t funny. The original script had her burst into tears and run out. The rewritten version had her hurl insults back at the other characters before running out.

My feeling was that, pain being funny (to my mind at least), the tears were funnier than the swearing. But always one to bow to the wider view, and being on a plane at the time of reading, I asked the person sitting next to me whether he thought a woman crying was funnier than a woman swearing, or the other way round.

He thought about it for a moment then said, “well, neither of them is as funny as a woman vomiting”. This planted an idea in my mind which developed into what I ultimately considered the most potentially humorous alternative, which went something like this:

—

ULRIKA: You’re all living in a different decade, aren’t you? Perhaps you’re not aware that there have been several all-female comedy shows over the last ten years?

DAVE: Yes, we’ve seen them.

STU: Not funny.

ULRIKA: (TO SALLY, PLEADINGLY) Sally?

SALLY: (SHRUGS AGAIN) Well…they’re not.

HUMPHREY: Thank God we’re agreed on that, at least. A load of young girls swearing, nothing but filthy one-liners.

DAVE: And no tits.

ULRIKA: But…but…

THE OTHERS LOOK AT HER, EXPECTANTLY, THEN STARE IN GROWING HORROR AS ULRIKA LOSES FULL CONTROL OF ALL HER BODILY FUNCTIONS AND SHITS, PISSES AND VOMITS REPEATEDLY IN A MESSY PUDDLE AROUND HER. FINALLY SHE RUNS OUT OF THE ROOM, SOBBING HYSTERICALLY AND LEAVING A MESSY TRAIL OF FAECAL VOMIT AFTER HER.

THERE IS A LONG, LONG PAUSE. FINALLY, DAVE DRAWS IN A DEEP BREATH TO SPEAK.

DAVE: Well, that was funny.

—

Neither my co-writer nor director seem to have taken to this idea, which I feel is a pity. I’d be interested to know what other people think is the funniest alternative, though – it may not yet be too late to do something about it…

Dear Sir/Madam,

Kindly don’t patronise your customers by assuming that the shortcomings of Stansted Airport can be disguised with notices claiming that delays may result from “improved security measures”. The fifty-minute wait in a claustrophobic corridor I experienced after midnight on Sunday was not, as any seasoned traveller could clearly see, the result of any new, lengthier process of passport inspection, but simply a result of your airport being too small.

Building a bigger airport might be one option, though I could equally suggest you might try letting in fewer flights – I imagine Stansted leaves a pretty sizeable carbon footprint, after all.

Reassuring though the Blitz spirit on display throughout the whole desperate experience was (and the whole thing did look and feel like a scene from a London-based war film), it’s probably worth remembering that Stansted is the first glimpse some people get of England. As things stand I imagine that even those flying in from developing countries are shocked (I was informed by a fellow traveller that Angola has a better system).

Also your ceilings are very dirty. Perhaps you could hand out long-handled mops to passengers on their way in – at least then they would have something to do while they waited.

Yours in airport-incubated tonsillitis,

James Lark

Alastair tells me that he found himself having to explain about my “artistic schizophrenia” this morning, after confusion arose over the fact that my newly-completed song cycle (which he is premiering at the Fitzwilliam museum this Sunday) bears little resemblance to Tony Blair – the Musical. Clearly my vaguely modernist tendencies, considered altogether too conservative when I was studying composition at university, are going to upset people hoping that Alastair will be singing a cycle of pastiche Cole Porter and power ballads with the odd lyric comparing Michael Howard’s face to an arse.

“Versatility” might have been a kinder word to use than schizophrenia, I feel. That said, the whole “popular” style vs “serious” style discussion seems a little odd to me when my harmonic and melodic language is pretty consistent throughout. But perhaps you have to be me to spot that.

The musical is going well, by the way. I’m very happy with at least 70% of it, Chris Mundy is doing a superb job of orchestrating it, the cast we have are unbelievably talented and I can’t wait for rehearsals to begin (just two weeks more to wait). I spent much of the last month stuck on Tony Blair’s final song, knowing that it had to strike just the right balance of pathos, sincerity and poetry, then Blair made a speech exactly a week ago that showed me exactly what I should be aiming for. Job done. He’s even chosen a perfect leaving date to tie in with our press releases.

Since I’m on the subject it’s probably worth reminding you that you can help the show out financially by buying a peerage at our website – and I have to say, the certificates of conferment we’re dishing out look pretty stunning on any wall. When I saw them I very nearly forked out for a peerage myself, before realising that I’ve already put an absurd amount of money into the show myself and probably ought to be able to claim some kind of royal title by now.