Author: James Lark

Every time I input a new applicant into the database I’m working on I have to designate them as a “candidate”, which always causes my brain to start playing David Bowie’s very fine 1974 song Candidate, the repeated refrain of which is “if you want it, boys, get it here, thing” – so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to concentrate on my work.

“Gunmen who seized a Greek bus with 26 people on board have explosives and want to fly to Russia, one of the hostages has told Greek television.”

I’m not an expert, but shouldn’t they have hijacked a plane…?

I notice that there are fresh claims that Blunkett fast-tracked a visa for his ex-lover’s nanny.

The Home Office say these claims are ridiculous, but in these difficult times I wonder if it would be as well to lock Mr Blunkett up without trial for the next two years just in case?

It is estimated that, across the UK, up to 1 billion Christmas cards and as much as 83 square km of wrapping paper will end up in rubbish bins over the Christmas period.

In my opinion this is a disgraceful waste of trees which could otherwise be cut down, put in houses and decorated with fairy lights.

…I pointed out the extremely depressing undertones in Wham’s seminal hit Last Christmas.

This year I’m wondering if it’s actually more positive than I thought.

“Last Christmas I gave you my heart, the very next day you gave it away” – that’s definitely not happy, but “this year to save me from tears I gave it to someone special…”

I wonder if it could be about Jesus?

On that subject, last night I took part in a nativity/epiphany extravaganza for radio, which featured the Division’s very own James Aylett as Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, a role which he managed to make his own without even using a tea towel.

Along with all the other men he was also a soldier when it got to the nasty bit where Herod kills all the babies. At one point in the convincingly horrific soundscape James shouted “there’s some more of them getting away over there!” and I suddenly had an image of a row of babies running off down the street.

From then on my own soldier was doubled over with laughter and I shall never find the killing of the innocents horrific again.

Last night I stayed up to watch Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, and decided that it is an extraordinarily odd film.

For a film set in a WW2 Japanese PoW camp it captures the mid-1980s astonishingly well (ever wondered why David Lean didn’t opt for an 80s Japanese soft pop soundtrack to The Bridge on the River Kwai…?) The story meanders along aimlessly like a Ben Brafman-led improvised narrative crossbred with the Gay Samurai revue. The Japanese characters are marginally less plausible than Andrew Ormerod’s AEME character Mr Ocinowa (who was, I should point out, a puppet); David Bowie gives a mannered performance (though it’s not nearly as awful as Phil Stott would have you believe); Tom Conti, on the other hand, is rather good.

But it’s all terribly uninvolving, until quite some way into the film a beautifully still and bravely lengthy single shot of Tom Conti in solitary confinement allows his performance to grip the film without interruption. We then cut to Bowie, also in confinement, leading into a surreal flashback sequence where the word “mannered” ceases to be adequate to describe what Bowie’s doing – though for a 30-something he is disturbingly persuasive as a public schoolboy. And this subplot, involving Bowie’s younger brother, is strangely haunting and powerful.

But it’s all very odd. Worth losing sleep for, I think – but very odd.

Hmm. Fans may be interested to see that there’s a rather scary picture of me in the Ely Ensign this month.

Almost all of the facts in the article are erroneous, as is the photograph caption “James Lark performs on stage for The Uncertainty Division theatre company”. A better caption might have been “James Lark – a poor man’s Alan Rickman”. And such an alarming photo also seems rather at odds with the words right next to it – it’s put me off Church of England pensions, at any rate.

Being a wee bit exhausted yesterday evening, I collapsed on the sofa in front of The Smoking Room, a sitcom I am happy to say I have not had a chance to see before.

Predictable, poorly written, poorly acted, poorly paced, populated with unconvincing characters, yet with a distressing absence of funny lines, unoriginal, derivative, infantile and utterly unengaging.

Of course, sitcoms can get away with all of those things now by electing not to have a laughter track, excusing the paucity of jokes with pretentions towards dramatic significance like The Royle Family or delusions of being trendy and new like The Office.

Or maybe there is a laughter track, there just weren’t any places for people to laugh.

In any case, after twenty minutes I’d had enough, so I switched it off and went to bed.

It’s enough to make one long for an episode of Friends. (I can’t believe I just typed that.)

I have just discovered that there is a Saint Fagan.

Unfortunately, the usually brilliant Catholic Forum Index of Saints does not include any reference to him (or her), so I have been unable to ascertain whether he/she is in fact the Patron Saint of Jewish Stereotypes.

(Although Jewish stereotypes surely need a Patron Saint, the closest the index gets to Jews is Jesuits, and the letters “ster” only bring up “sterility” – the Patron Saint against it, that is, not for it. Casilda of Toledo seems a pretty safe bet if you’re sterile.)

If anyone knows anything about Saint Fagan, please get in touch. Otherwise I shall undoubtedly be sending him/her my prayers next time I’m appearing in Fiddler on the Roof.

I am entering data for a human resources department at the moment, putting into a computer the moribund details of other people’s job applications. I have noted that a depressing number of CVs open with a paragraph along the lines of “I am a highly motivated, enthusiastic individual with good communication skills, I respond well to challenges, enjoy team building and am keen to approach new tasks with highly-motivated team-building challenge-responding task-challenged-motivational people-based communication-friendly enthusiasm…”

Never has the word “individual” been so misplaced by so many people. Do any employers actually read what they’ve written, let alone believe it? And why start your CV with it, unless it is to distract employers from the abysmal lack of actual qualifications?

My CV begins with the simple paragraph “B.A. Music, Cambridge University – First Class Honours”. Is that why I am currently doing data entry…?

Maybe I should replace it with a vapid paragraph of meaningless adjectival vomit after all.

I’ve just come across one application from a Mrs Natalia Konovalova, and I’m thinking, why is she applying to be a kitchen porter when her name is crying out for her to invent a pudding of some sort? Probably meringue-based with lots of thick, unhealthy cream and chocolate sponge steeped in cognac. “Yes, please, I’ll have the Konovalova Natalia if I may, and profiteroles for my wife.”

Failing that, “Konovalova” should at least be a word used to describe the palava caused in the event of a con. (i.e. The Thomas Crown Affair is a film that leads up to a highly entertaining konovalova.)