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Stop what you are doing right now, get yourself to a cinema, and watch Downfall. It’s the best film I’ve seen for quite some time, and the best war film I’ve seen, ever. So go and watch it now.

The most exciting thing has happened. By virtue of having slightly copied an iconic David Bowie album cover for my show, I have gained a mention on the news page of the official David Bowie website, BowieNet.

I feel as though I’ve done something terrible audacious; I’ve dressed up as the Dame and somehow been welcomed into his family as a result.

I also feel like my career might have just peaked.

Last night I went to Cambridge’s premiere night-spot Life to discover that a large group of people had arrived in fancy dress. There didn’t seem to be any particular theme to their costumes, except that they all appeared to vaguely resemble circus freaks.

The normally dressed clientelle politely ignored the fancy dressers, assuming that it must have been some kind of stag night. But then somebody pointed out to me that the ridiculous false nose being worn by a man in a red cape was in fact his real nose.

It dawned on me that they might actually have been circus freaks.

Given that there are no circuses in town at the moment, I can only deduce that they probably weren’t, but it seems likely that they are the kind of people who might have been circus freaks in the glorious heyday of circus freakery. Since circus freaks are now considered more or less un-PC, these people have possibly found themselves pretty much out of a job – but the only way they can go out to a nightclub without attracting lots of attention is to dress up in the pretence of being out on a stag night.

Or perhaps they just like dressing up. I went round to see James Aylett on Saturday and he was dressed as the Sheriff of Nottingham, and nobody thinks the worse of him for that.

I was working on Radio Cambridgeshire’s Sunday Breakfast show this morning, and naturally the place was bristling with Pope-mania. We had special programmes on the Pope, local people talking about the Pope and occasional phone calls from listeners who wanted to add some balance to the programme by alluding to the Pope’s culpability for the spread of HIV in developing countries due to his attitude towards contraception (unfortunately I was not allowed to put any of these views on the air).

At one point we decided it would be exciting to do a live report from the Catholic church down the road, so I was given a huge metal-framed OB radio backpack which was probably donated to Radio Cambs in the 1970s. Thus laden, I set out along the road, to the visible amusement of anybody who happened to be passing. Catching my reflection in a shop window, I could see exactly why – put succinctly, I look like a Ghostbuster.

The photograph scarcely does justice to quite how foolish I looked. But I bravely carried on with my best Egon Spengler serious expression, and arrived at the Catholic church to deliver the following piece of stunning journalism:

Presenter: We’re going to go live to James now, who is at the Catholic church on Hill’s Road…are you there, James? Ah, I’ve lost him…

James: …hiss…crackle…Hello?

Presenter: Ah, there you are.

James: Yes, I’m just outside the …hiss…crackle…hiss… on Hill’s…

Presenter: What’s the situation there at the moment?

James: …hiss hiss hiss …just coming out of mass and…

Presenter: You’re breaking up, James.

James: …hiss… people…hiss crackle crackle…

Presenter: I think we’re going to have to leave you there, let’s move on and look at our website of the week.

For a glorious minute or so it was just like being on BBC News 24.

Also in the crazy world of religion, the Telegraph reports that famously gay consecrated Bishop Gene Robinson has declared that Jesus might also have been gay – his reasoning is that Jesus “spent much of his time with men”. By the same logic we could deduce that George Best, Captain Robert Scott, Robin Hood and indeed Pope John Paul II were also gay.

As if to prove that they can more than equal the liberals in their share of mentally deranged clergy, the conservative Anglicans have responded by saying that Gene Robinson should be “struck down by a bolt of lightning”.

It’s enough to turn a man Catholic…

It has come to our attention that half way through the broadcast of this evening’s episode of Doctor Who, Pope John Paul II passed away in the Vatican. The Pope had been known for many years as an ardent fan of the show, and it is believed that the shock of discovering that Gallifrey has been destroyed contributed to his final end.

We remember him with fondness, particularly for the support he gave the Uncertainty Division in its formative years, when he would let us rehearse in his rooms in Selwyn College, Rome. Of course the Pope was also a support to many other young performers, including John Cleese, Germaine Greer and Stephen Fry. At the Pope’s gala performance only a year ago, people turned out to show their support for the man who has been, in the words of Alan Rickman, “a very good man. Perhaps the goodest man of all.”

The Pope’s last words were “it is the end…but the moment has been prepared for.” He was then seen to blur and take on the form of a younger man with straight, fair hair. The next Pope has not yet been announced, but possible candidates are David Tennant and George Carey (though Michael Howard has also shown interest in the role, having expressed a desire to move on from his current position in early May). The Producer of the Vatican, Cardinal Russell T. Nathan-Turner, has indicated that he wishes the next Pope to be “more vulnerable and less eccentric”. He has dismissed rumours that the next Pope will be female, or that Tom Baker will be returning to the role.

We will naturally keep you informed as and when we get news, but in the mean time we acknowledge with sadness the passing of a great, great man.

James and James

You’re probably wondering what’s been so important that I haven’t even written about what I thought of the first in the new series of Doctor Who. Well, I’ve been busy. Mainly because of a show that I’m in called The Rise and Fall of Deon Vonniget (do come along). So I was in London for most of last week rehearsing that, besides fitting in meetings about a feature film that I’m writing and a musical I’m MDing. In my spare time I also managed to pop out to the West End and see The Producers, which I hated.

I’m now back in Cambridge enjoying the sun, though I seem unable to get out of bed at a reasonable time. I think Easter has taken it out of me a bit. Last weekend was horribly frantic, what with church services to do the music for, radio shows to produce and weddings to go to. And I managed to lose my housemate’s sleeping bag on a train from Bexley to Charing Cross, which didn’t help matters.

Due to some of the above I didn’t actually see last week’s Dr Who when it was broadcast, but thanks to BBC3 I managed to catch it a little later on. And what I thought was: generally stylish and exciting, Eccleston good, but it was all so full of breathless rushing around that there wasn’t time for any of the thoughtful characterisation or story development that Dr Who manages at its best. And the narrative itself was extremely sloppy – the Doctor defeated the Autons using “anti-plastic”, which is rather like using “anti-Dalek” – i.e. a cop out. I had started to worry that Russell T. Davies, expert though he is at writing about gay Manchunians (albeit ones I don’t think I would particularly want to spend any time with) might not have what it takes to write well-constructed portions of drama.

My fears have been allayed. Exterminated, even. The episode just broadcast, “The End of the World”, was the finest piece of TV drama I have seen since Stephen Poliakoff’s wonderful The Lost Prince. From start to finish it was magnificent; witty and inventive, hugely tense and exciting, and containing some extremely moving moments – a beautifully played scene in which it was implied that something terrible had happened to the Doctor’s people sent shivers down my spine. Perhaps what is most satisfying is that Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor gets better and better all the time, a wonderfully complex portrayal. (What a shame we’re losing him after this series…)

This was genuinely Dr Who at its best. All in all things look more than promising for the rest of the series – and its future.

One gripe: the title sequence looks like it was produced on Windows Media Player. And the theme tune is missing the middle eight.

I am now getting a childish thrill from the fact that Doctor Who is everywhere at the moment – it’s like it used to be when it was on TV in my youth, when everyone at school would be excited by last night’s cliffhanger. Now everyone is discussing the series again – every magazine is covering it in some way (even Attitude, for crying out loud…) and everyone in the media has something to say about it, from children’s BBC presenters to regional radio DJs and newsreaders.

I’m not one of these fans who is getting all nervy about whether it’s going to be any good. It can’t be any worse than the 1996 TV Movie, after all. And Project: WHO? on BBC Radio 2 yesterday evening made for largely encouraging listening: from what one can tell, the new series is witty, exciting, inventive and well-produced, with fine scripts, fine actors and a clear vision of what it wants to be.

I only had one quibble with what the Executive Producer said – he explained that he insisted that all stories had to have implications on the human race in some way – stories are not allowed to focus on entirely alien cultures, otherwise they won’t have any relevance to a 21st century audience.

With all due respect, Mr T. Davies, bollocks. Do I need to be a Victorian to see the relevance of Nicholas Nickleby? Do I need to be a talking beaver to feel involved in the events of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe? Is it impossible to relate to the beautifully constructed worlds of Iain M. Banks, having as they do no implications for the human race?

By preventing writers from creating entirely new worlds devoid of human interference, I fear Russell T. Davies is stifling the potential for creativity in approaching ways of making stories “relevant” to human beings. The first ever Dalek story couldn’t have been further away from the human race in terms of location – but it seemed to strike a chord with people, possibly because the idea of a race being forced to retreat into shells as the result of a nuclear war wasn’t all that remote to those viewers. Modern viewers are surely not too stupid to find similar parallels in these days of WMD, even without the human race popping up to make things “relevant”.

More alien planets, please. If I want human beings I’ll watch Newsnight.

Well…

…fom the BBC website. Just thought it was brilliant that the Doctors now fit on a 3×3 grid. Somebody ought to make a Dr Who rubik’s cube.

Popping back from the pub, what do I discover in my inbox, but an email from occasional album-recorders and all-round loonies, Garbage. Last time I looked at their website, Shirley Mason was still bitching about the boys deciding to rerecord all the drums, and other studio tattle, but now it seems they’re done with that, the album’s done, and it’s almost time to go and buy it.

The only thing dulling my excitement is the realisation that every other person in the entire world already knew about this on account of paying closer attention – but what, did I miss an earlier email or something?

I’m still very excited, though. And the video for the first single is in black and white, so it must be good. Unless my computer is on the blink.

Last night I watched Mary Poppins and I believe it may be the greatest film ever made.

Just tick the boxes – cinematography, gorgeous; performances, flawless (David Tomlinson turns in a performance every bit as subtle as Welles’ Kane, and Julie Andrews is almost inhumanly wonderful); scoring, magnificent (quite aside from the foot-tapping tunes there’s a strong element of leitmotif); choreography, breathtaking (for my money, “over the rooftops” is better than Riverdance); special effects, groundbreaking (the combination of animation with live action is still being copied less successfully); and most strikingly, a script so sharp you could slice carrots with it.

We all remember how much fun it is, of course. Actually, the writing is even more witty than I remember, with moments of knowing satire:

Michael: I want it to feed the birds.
Mr Dawes Snr: Fiddlesticks, Boy. Feed the birds and what have you got? Fat birds.

…exchanges worthy of Oscar Wilde:

Mrs Banks: She seemed so solemn and cross.
Mr Banks: Never confuse efficiency with a liver complaint.

…and moments of absolutely bonkers silliness which could have come from a Goon Show – my favourite:

Horseman: View hallooooo!
Horse (who sounds a bit like Alec Guinness): Oh, yes, definitely. A view halloo.
Fox (who has the most outrageous Irish accent I’ve ever heard): View halloo? Faith and begora, it’s dem redcoats again!

But it is a multi-layered script, with a running theme of the damaging effect of capitalism (Bert the Cockney is so poor he can’t even afford a proper accent, but he is free and happy whilst Mr Banks is trapped in the world of the bank – “they makes cages in all sizes and shapes, you know. Bank-shaped some of ’em, carpets and all…”) Banks’ attitude to his children and wife is frankly disturbing, bordering on the negligent – although he doesn’t do anything so obvious as slap Mrs Banks about, it’s very telling that while she marches up and down singing about “sister suffragettes”, when her husband walks in she turns into a meek, obedient wife who mainly says “yes George”. This is what makes Mr Banks’ ultimate redemption quite so moving – in fact, the climax of the film, when Mr Banks is humiliated before the assembled bankers, is perhaps its strongest sequence – although the events of the scene are absurd, it is lit and acted every bit as seriously as a sinister boardroom scene in a tense drama. For a Disney film it is astonishingly unsentimental and all the more effective for it.

But it is not a film that has been studied at length or that is discussed by film theorists in hushed tones, and the only reason I can think of for this is that they have been put off the film by that bloody awful bit where they all have tea on the ceiling, which doesn’t have any of the qualities mentioned above.

I suppose it’s too late for a director’s cut?