Just remembered another gorgeous bit of Howe Gelb rambling from last night’s show. “Humans love patterns. Remember we all thought Ziggy Stardust was a concept album? Just a bunch of songs… We made a pattern out of it…” >>

I tell you what comedy show wouldn’t get made today. All the comedy shows I’ve tried to get made in the past and didn’t get made either. It’s hard to get comedy shows made. They’re not inevitable. They don’t need to be stopped by sinister outside forces.

NEW DISCOMFORT BLANKET: TOMORROW! We talk about the appeal of 'found footage' horror, looking at The Borderlands, Elliot Gardner's exemplary 2013 film of priests and technicians digging up bad stuff in a rural church. EXCLUSIVE to the paid #BrokenVeil Patreon channel. patreon.com/BrokenVeil?u...

As one of the world’s oldest parliamentary democracies, we might have to accept that we can’t take our country back, and if we do, they’ll just give us vouchers.

Thinking that the most patriotic thing you could do is to stick some flags on lampposts to raise awareness of that ITV documentary last night. Strange that patriotism is always just diet racism, rather than an impulse to defend your country from born-to-rule sociopaths who are provably hurting it.

Since it's the equinox again... Seasons lag. This is why

NEW DISCOMFORT BLANKET: TOMORROW! We talk about the appeal of 'found footage' horror, looking at The Borderlands, Elliot Gardner's exemplary 2013 film of priests and technicians digging up bad stuff in a rural church. EXCLUSIVE to the paid #BrokenVeil Patreon channel. patreon.com/BrokenVeil?u...

Can’t help noticing that Reform’s scaremongering discredited figure for the cost of migration to the UK economy is almost exactly the excess amount that our taxes will have to bear due to the COVID overspend exposed in that ITV documentary last night. Who do you really think cost us c£200bn?

I can’t believe ITV forgot to put Toby Jones in their PPE / VIP lane exposé. How is anyone in government meant to know it’s important? Also: when are we going to get action on the threats to the Danebury Metal Detecting Club?

Small boats: TV coverage - day after day after day after day.... PPE scandal: TV coverage - let's stick this powerful, enraging documentary on at quarter past ten on a Sunday night.

The ITV exposé on COVID now turns its sights on testing. I was stunned in 2020 when Sir Paul Nurse - Director of the Francis Crick Institute - told me he’d written to the government to offer the services of the Crick (the biggest biomeolecular lab in the country) - and never got a reply…

Thank you whoever tipped me off that Howe Gelb was playing tonight after I mentioned my love of Giant Sand here. That was an astonishing piece of mad, intimate, theatre. I’ve never seen anyone pull off a show in that way. The pre-gig music was Ivor Cutler. And it was not a million miles away…

As I enter my late middle years I find myself thinking more about the nature of forgiveness, and how much more positive it would be if, rather than endlessly and desperately parroting the far-right, Starmer were simply to be trampled by geese while rollerblading in the Dordogne.

Politicians insisting they are merely spouting “common sense” are saying they themselves, and their trade - debate, parliament, politics itself - are unnecessary. The big twats.

It’s not going to get better, because it isn’t what they said it is, so it can’t do what they said it could, and this stuff is a feature not a bug. The next question is what to do when all the investment pulls out. Cos that’s going to take some real people down with it.

My ten fave sitcoms: Not Like That, Exploding Andrew! The Clinic Stu vs. Stu I Married a Hen The Doggers Help I’m a Liquid No Further Questions M’Lud Graham Cubed The Gravy Men Whatever Happened to the Gravy Men?

Friends fear he's watching The Prisoner again (in a random order) instead of whatever he's meant to be watching from the Golden Peak Age Of Television Being Too Long No Fun And Slightly Disappointing.

Writers should all be excited that Gen Z hate making or receiving voice calls so much that we can have this golden age of plot-assisting non-connectedness back soon.

If I do cancel my Disney subscription, as a protest, I just realised I can still watch all the Marvel and Star Wars and Alien and Simpsons I want. Good old physical media. The best way to not have to depend on the whims of corporate dicks. Pay once, and when they pivot fash, you don't have to.

Jay Chester, 28, who strives to ensure that everyone is always happy with them at all times, reportedly failed to factor in that people have conflicting needs and desires.

I blogged about #FawltyTowers just after the death of Andrew Sachs. This is what I wrote. I also had some thoughts on that Ian Main memo. firstlastanything.co.uk/2016/12/05/t...

Cleese obsesses about the negative response to Fawlty Towers as a pisspoor “Prince of Denmark” (forgotten Ronnie Corbett vehicle) but the comment is fair enough, if you’re only looking at the potential of a script or concept, not the finished show. The US remakes prove it’s lightning in a bottle.

Every time a new sketch from the Mitchell and Webb show comes on my feed as promo, I watch it, and then it’s really good and I laugh - even if I’ve already seen it on the show - and I’d like to say thank you for that feeling because I’d like it to happen more often all the time a lot thanks. Thanks.

Thomas Skinner, the “bosh” oaf off Strictly, went to the same fee-paying Essex school as Douglas Adams.

That oi-oi Apprentice twat on Strictly is basically a St George’s flag on an Ongar roundabout that’s been brought to enchanted life, and also moves as nimbly as a piece of vandalised transport infrastructure. If he doesn’t go out week one, for Britain Is Horrible reasons, we’re basically doomed.

OK… Cheers Ever Decreasing Circles Smell Of Reeves & Mortimer Community The Simpsons Absolutely The Day Today Detectorists Silicon Valley Monty Python’s Flying Circus Nope. YOU CAN’T CHOOSE TEN. I’m just getting started… Hang on. Ghosts. Fawlty Towers. Victoria Wood As Seen On TV. Mr Show…

Are we sure Disney’s share price crash is to do with Kimmel and not that weird last episode of Alien Earth where the Haribo ad kids have a pet xenomorph now?

2) I believe strongly and without good evidence that I can tell what podcasts a comedian is listening to by their standup. 2b) listening to podcasts is a really good way to feel like you’re thinking about something without actually doing any thinking about it. Podcasts are the pianola of cognition

The amygdala is the part of the paleomammalian hindbrain that responds to panic and threat stimuli by raising legitimate concerns.

To make this brilliant Aitchison painting work for the cover for The Dad - a last minute change - I had to flip the image, so the dad’s face wouldn’t vanish under the Ladybird colophon. Which then meant cutting out and reversing the label on the custard tin. The things we’d do…

Since many of us are cancelling streaming services, now might also be a good time to support writers and artists. Times are extremely tough for creatives, so why not buy a book, commission an art piece, sign up for a Patreon, tip your favorite creators. Everything helps.

The reason they come for comedians early is that a comic license is surprisingly easy to revoke. You just have to stop laughing. Comedy is about safety, spreading that feeling of safety, intimacy, shared values, group strength. They don’t want you to feel safe. They want you to feel scared.

In brighter news, TIM HAS NAMED A SILLY TRAIN. I love that he disallowed Leafy McLeafFace on principle. #BrokenVeil

The idea that badly informed people who’ve had their chains yanked by billionaire press barons also pay their licence fee, so will need to have their misinformation parroted back at them or they’ll complain is backfiring within the BBC brilliantly.

This is good news for chimps, as two drinks a day is 14 units, the recommended safe amount for adults. Well done those apes! What an example to set.

Ended up saying this in the book, that direct polemic is always less effective than wearing your opponent’s clothes and dancing about like a prick.

This is having your cake and eating it

I’m off doing a bunch of these dates with Josienne to launch her new album and short film. If you loved her theme music to #BrokenVeil, you’ll love it. Come along!

Today’s wake up music is Giant Sand at unsuitable volume. Forgotten how much I like this shit.

Looks like we’re going to boycott companies, one of us at a time, again, and tell each other we’ve done it on social media. The “carbon footprint” approach to dealing with societal collapse, corporate unaccountability and creeping fascism. Shopping it all better. Doesn’t quite feel enough…

I really don’t like long movies but I really enjoyed Tàr. It cleverly sets its metronome early, with an overture, so you fall into tempo with it. It was (despite looking like a genius-flick by numbers) nothing like I expected. A haunting modern ghost story about power and guilt. It’s on the iPlayer…

I hear Jeremy has split from Corbyn and is suing his former surname.

Alien prequel pitch: the story of the “Space Jockey” but it’s basically like National Velvet, with colossal biomechanical space horses.

“Our words have made you rich.” Should be in Latin under the various worldwide writers’ guilds’ logos. The audience doesn’t (only) want cowardice, formula, timidity, boredom, branding, caution. You take the money, you deal with the fallout of people talking openly to one another.

Actually it’s about ethics in late night tv comedy

This Channel 4 Trump Vs Truth thing is oddly compelling. The twat says what he feels. Then the plain text says what’s actually happening. But the world we’re trapped in is one that now always prioritises what people feel. Not what’s actually happening. This show underlines the power of feeling.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if Trump stayed overnight in Windsor Castle but tomorrow, the royals just come out and wave, and he doesn’t. It’s never mentioned again. But on Sunday, by the town hall, the whole of Windsor, rich and poor, gathers to tuck into this enormous fuck-off pie.

All Of Child’s Fondest Memories Times When Dad Trying To Make Up For Things https://theonion.com/all-of-child-s-fondest-memories-times-when-dad-trying-t-1819577766/

Alien: Earth reaches the “Chris Pratt has a load of tame velociraptors” stage of making your iconic monster truly terrifying by turning it into a sheepdog.