Warning: Contains spoilers. Mostly inflicted by the BBC when they spoiled this well-loved classic.

Don’t you just hate it when people slag something off before they’ve even seen it? I was guilty of that on Friday, when Steven Moffat popped into the Newsnight studio to talk about his reworking of Sherlock Holmes – chirpily trailed by Gavin Esler as “a bit modern, a bit gay”. Hmm. So I thought I’d better actually watch the thing last night. And now, after 90 minutes of my life I’ll never get back, I can honestly say: I hated it.

This was Sherlock Holmes for Doctor Who fans, as it would have been done had Conan Doyle lived in our time. Who wants smog and gaslight and rickets when you can have blogs and texting and nicotine patches? (Seriously – you’re replacing cocaine with nicotine patches?)

Fortunately for the BBC, everyone else loved it – judging by the unreserved, gushing praise on Twitter. And not just from the kids who don’t know any better – from those familiar with the original text and earlier adaptations too: “Better than Jeremy Brett!” “More faithful to Conan Doyle than Basil Rathbone!” Really? I despair. But I know I’m in a minority of one on this one. OK, maybe a few more than one. My friend Anna knows a thing or two about Holmes, having written TimeOut’s “CSI: London” trail, which takes readers on a tour of his haunts. Her response to my Facebook post hit the nail on the head for me:

The genius of the original Sherlock Holmes was that he used techniques that nobody else could imagine. Yesterday he used techniques that Derren Brown, police psychologists, forensic scientists and anyone vaguely web-savvy could have used. It makes no sense why the police would employ him.
ANNA FAHERTY

The whole confusing mess of a plot makes no sense when we have forensics. A Study in Pink was very loosely adapted from A Study in Scarlet. It had some similarities and a lot of deviations from the original. So why keep in the scene where Holmes bashes a corpse with a stick to see if it bruises? In a pre-forensic Victorian era, that would have been a useful insight. But the research is in on that one now… A good one to keep was Watson returning from war in Afghanistan, an obvious modern parallel – even if the Radio Times review listed it as one of the potential objectionable modernisms.

Some viewers will recoil from the very idea of BBC1 updating Conan Doyle’s characters to modern London, with texting (lots of texting) and police tape and GPS and a Dr Watson who fought in Afghanistan.
RADIO TIMES REVIEW, 25 July 2010

There is a lot of texting. It’s even overlaid on the screen – a televisual device I’d quite like, if only it wasn’t Holmes doing it. It’s not quite “Simples, Watson, LOL SH x” – but it’s not far off.

I get the appeal of an explainable superpower – high-powered perception. It’s what makes Cracker such fun. And it is explained very well, through a combination of CSI style visuals and yet more overlaid text to illustrate Holmes’s thought processes. But in 2010, by Victorian standards, everyone is a superhero. Who needs Holmes’s high-powered perception and encyclopaedic knowledge when you have the Internet?

Our Thoroughly Modern Holmes does also use the Internet. He has his own website, and Watson’s journal, of course, becomes a blog. He also relies on a smart phone. But these tools are bluntly used, and only remind us of his redundancy. Deducing that the victim arrived from Cardiff based on a damp coat and a weather app seems a leap. And if his perception is so high-powered, why did most people on Twitter guess that the taxi driver did it before he did?

I can’t see Sherlock Holmes as a timeless character. The stories require their Victorian setting to make sense. This modern reworking seems as nonsensical as Dickens characters brandishing their iPhones in a Yates’s Wine Lodge. Why not have Oliver Twist escape from Yarl’s Wood and fall in with a gang of hoodies? Make Mr Micawber a victim of the credit crunch, having been sold a sub-prime mortgage? Have Miss Havisham delete her Facebook account for good after Internet dating goes awry? Or – as suggested by @cjjmccray – why not have a picture uploaded to Flickr slowly aging while the subject, @DorianGray doesn’t age at all? How very modern that would be.

An enjoyable romp, maybe. But this mashup of Cracker and Doctor Who for the Lily Allen generation left me as cold as the corpse Holmes was beating up. I’ll stick with Jeremy Brett, thank you.

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I have been a huge Dr Who fan since the earliest days of Tom Baker. OK, It went a bit rubbish in those tricky Colin Baker/Sylvester McCoy years and, like the Tories, had to spend 16 years in the wilderness as a result. But its regeneration by Russell T Davies has been the televisual triumph of the century. It has brought the world’s longest-running science fiction series to a new generation, with modern production values, filmic special effects, and retained the heart and soul of the Whoniverse. And it’s British!

I am more a fan of Dr Who than David Tennant though. And I think that’s where things started to go a bit wrong for me this Christmas. By trailing Tennant’s departure a year in advance, and having him make SEVENTY-FIVE TV appearances over Christmas, he had already entertained us long enough before his swan song aired. We already knew the ending. We knew who was taking over. The mystery was gone. And the story was sacrificed for a televisual event and a farewell tour.

By the end of part one of  The End of Time, the Master had become everyone on Earth. Meanwhile, the Doctor had become everyone on television. It felt like The Editor was back in charge, broadcasting to all channels on Earth from Satellite 5. The whole thing became a Harriet Jones tribute act: ‘I’m David Tennant, and I’m leaving’. Yes. We know. Bye, then. Shut the TARDIS door behind you.

So it seemed a shame that, after such a huge build-up, this finale seemed to get bored of the story half-way through the final episode, when the 4th Bond turned up and surprised the 10th Doctor with his Big Red Book and hosted a Gallifreyan episode of This Is Your Life.

We expect the Christmas specials to be a bit silly. But this was a season finale, and suffered a little from the lack of a preceding series. We’ve become used to huge, epic, emotional stories in the final acts of these New Whos: Rose absorbing the time vortex and destroying the Dalek fleet; Rose being separated from the Doctor in a parallel universe; Martha walking the Earth for a year trying to save the Doctor from a fate as the Master’s prematurely aged prisoner; The Doctor-Donna saving reality itself from Davros and the Daleks.  These episodes usually have huge, series-long story arcs, emotional depth, clever three-dimensional-jigsaw plotting, and are incomprehensible unless you’ve followed the series for thirty years. They also have a focus on the companions: we see things through their eyes.

In this story, the Doctor had no companion – just his ex’s granddad, like an awkward family reunion. The companions were saved for indulgent cameos in the 20-minute ‘we just came for the wrap party’ bolt-on. I do like a full set on Dr Who – this worked brilliantly in the last finale, Journey’s End, at the end of Series 4 in 2008, where companions from all eras and three TV shows were cleverly folded into the plot. But, while Tennant’s lap of honour through time and space had echoes of Tom Baker’s Logopolis flashbacks, it mostly just felt like he was getting his coat and saying his goodbyes at one of end-of-the-pier immortal John Barrowman’s cocktail parties. And Ood Sigma calling last orders with ‘This song is ending’ (yes, we know) was a neon signpost too far.

The one nice twist was that the ‘he will knock four times’ prophesy turned out to be far more pedestrian than we expected, and that seemed fitting. But there was no real peril. This time it was the Time Lord President who clicked his fingers and pushed that annoying Whovian reset button to undo the Master’s Evil Plan. And then the Master zapped them and they went away. Not perilous at all. And the Master is a different kind of villain when he can suddenly jump like Wonder Woman and fire electricity from his fingers like the Star Wars Emperor. It is also a different kind of regeneration when it is portrayed more as a death. This, too, seemed to have more to do with signposting Tennant’s departure (we know) than Gallifreyan metaphysics. I’m sure Matt Smith won’t be calling on Derek Acorah to contact his previous selves: he’s still the same character. Same same, but different.

It was interesting to get a bit of an insight into the Time War we’ve heard so much about since 2005, and – for us Who veterans – to discover that the Time Lord President was Rassilon himself. I also think the ‘When Time Lords Go Bad’ backstory is a believable one, especially when you realise it was the Doctor who ended the war with the genocide of his own race. No wonder he’s been a bit glum about that for five years. I hope we see more of it though Matt Smith’s eyes. And if we can have Time Lords again, is there any chance we can get Kate O’Mara to come back as the Rani? Please? And what about Romana – she was left in some parallel universe back in the early 80s, wasn’t she, so would have avoided the Troubles back on Gallifrey?

I thoroughly enjoyed Tennant’s tenure – and even this finale. I just got weary of him by the end. Maybe that was clever BBC strategy, to manage our grief by making us sick of the sight of him? I’m almost looking forward to the Matt Smith episodes now. I’m certainly looking forward to Stephen Moffat taking over as Whopremo. Moffat has written some of the most interesting – and darkest – episodes of Dr Who: The Empty Child, The Girl in the Fireplace, Blink, and Forest of the Dead. Scripts with big ideas and complex narratives. Scripts that make full use of the fact that the Doctor travels in time and space, and play with, twist and subvert both.

To me, that is really what this show is  all about – the writing. The cunning device of regeneration ensures character continuity when the actor leaves. That is what has made it endure for 47 years. Who plays Who – however brilliantly – is secondary. And that is what seems to have been lost sight of at The End of Tennant.

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The truth is there are a number of seasonal songs I like. If I was lucky enough to spend Christmas on a desert island, these are the eight discs I would take with me. Enjoy.

8. Geoff Love and His Orchestra – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Ah, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. While nothing may say Christmas more to you than nu-metal anarcho-rock, it is Geoff Love who brings my ghosts of Christmas past chain-rattling into the room. As soon as I hear this, I’m transported to the 1970s, the suburban Midlands, and a house decked out like an explosion in Santa’s grotto. This album has been out of print for decades – but a couple of tracks have found new life recently on YouTube. Also available: Winter Wonderland.

7. Karen Carpenter – Merry Christmas Darling

I seem to recall playing the Carpenters’ Christmas album in the office when I worked as a researcher in the Psychology department at Staffordshire University in 1994. Happy days. I shared an group of offices called the ‘Mezzanine Suite’ with various researchers, lecturers and PhD students. We styled ourselves after the Bloomsbury Group. We put up Christmas decorations in October. We built a shrine to Kurt Cobain with Poundshop candles and a poster from Smash Hits. And we discovered in subsequent jobs that this level of arsing about wasn’t always appreciated. .

6. Kate Bush – December Will Be Magic Again

Just because: who wouldn’t want Kate Bush writhing in her pyjamas on a Snowtime Special for Christmas?

5. Vince Guaraldi – Christmas Time is Here

Vince Guaraldi was really my introduction to jazz – as far back as those Charlie Brown cartoons he scored. There’s also a version of this by a trumpeting Terence Blanchard on The Christmas Jazz Album which, in this house, has now replaced Geoff Love as our seasonal soundtrack of choice.

4. The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl – Fairytale of New York

This regularly tops many lists of favourite Christmas songs. I loved Kirsty MacColl, and she is sadly missed. I even tolerate her use of the word ‘faggott’ in this, which is a vile, offensive word in most contexts. BBC Radio 1  made a strange decision to censor it by dubbing it out a couple of years ago (I don’t know why – there’s a radio edit with a toned down lyric). What has been far more offensive at Radio 1’s is Chris Moyles’s popularization of the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘rubbish’ or ‘lame’, and the BBC’s defence of it. Is it pure coincidence that there is a resurgent culture of homophobia among young people, to the point where some of them are killing people on the streets?

3. Level 42 – All I Want for Christmas is You

This year, one of the new people I met on Twitter turned out to live almost next door to me – just around the lake. Lisa is a Level 42 fan, which is how I heard about this. She is not, though, quite as mad-stalking – and lucky – as super-fan Heather, for whom Mark King made this video. They also gave away the single for free on their website. I was never much of a Level 42 fan – but I like this.

2. John Lennon and Yoko Ono – Happy Christmas (War is Over)

It’s easy to judge a man who sings ‘Imagine no possessions‘ while blatantly wearing a fur coat and living in Kenwood House in the video – especially in these credit crunching times. But John and Yoko’s anti-war sentiment is worth remembering at this reflective time of year, now that we seem to be in a perpetual state of war to rival Orwell’s Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. It also lives on in the continued work of Yoko Ono and can be found on most social networking sites, which she actively uses to spread their pacifist ideas.

1. Tim Minchin – White Wine in the Sun

This was the Christmas number one I’d hoped for. I compiled this list before I heard the overexposed David Tennant’s Desert Island Discs this week (you can go off people, you know). He also chose this, not only as one of his eight discs, but as his one favourite disc. I am a fan of Tim Minchin’s work and world view. His lyric sums up my ambivalence about Christmas:

“I have all of the usual objections to the mis-education of children, who in tax exempt institutions are taught to externalize blame, and to feel ashamed, and to judge things as plain right or wrong. But I quite like the songs.”

I quite like these songs. Hope you do too, and had a fun, festive break. See you in the New Year!

Image via Wikipedia

Accusing the gay icon Danii Minogue of homophobia is a little like accusing Joanna Lumley of being anti-Gurkha. The Twitter backlash against her reveals the prejudice of the viewers – not the X Factor judge.

On last night’s X Factor, Dannii made a reference to reports in the press of the bisexuality of one of the contestants, Danyl Johnson. This was a reference to an interview he himself gave to the News of the World some weeks ago.  It was meant as a light-hearted contribution to the discussion around why Danyl was given a ‘girl’s song’ – and therefore the lyrics had to be changed – by suggesting there was “no need to change the gender references in the lyrics if we’re to believe everything we read in the press.”

Perhaps an awkward TV moment, maybe an ill-judged joke, possibly better left unsaid – if only because Danyl seemed uncomfortable with the comment (or was he simply upset at the other judges’ remarks? Seems more likely in retrospect – though at the time it just added to the confusion). But it was certainly not malicious, homophobic, offensive, defamatory, slanderous, bitchy or a slur – as the Twitter backlash has overwhelmingly described it. Certainly not as offensive as describing two of the Miss Frank girls as “bookends” and forgetting their names, Simon.

In fact, it was a very pro-gay comment. Why should he necessarily have to straighten up the lyrics?

The idea that it is offensive to suggest that someone is gay IS the thing that is offensive.  ‘Accusing’ someone of being gay or bisexual is not defamatory because being gay or bisexual is not a bad thing.

My first reaction was that she was shamelessly courting the gay vote, by revealing his sexuality to the nation (at least to those of us who don’t read the tabloids and were therefore unaware). Then I remembered he isn’t one of her acts – so was confused as to why she was helping him. Most of the rest of the Twitterverse, however, didn’t see it as a positive comment, and were busy launching a ’sack Dannii’ campaign and circulating the number for the Ofcom complaint line.

Now, we’ve all had a drink, and we all like a social media backlash; but let’s try and confine our online outrage to things that are worthy of it, hmm?

Dannii may have ‘done a Matthew Parris‘ in that she ‘outed’ someone on live TV whose sexuality was no secret anyway (Parris did that to Peter Mandelson on Newsnight in 1998).  But she certainly did not ‘do a Du Beke’, as many suggested. I didn’t see this, but I gather judge Anton Du Beke called someone a “Paki” on rival reality TV  show Strictly Come Dancing last week. That is clearly never acceptable. The equivalent in this case would have been for Dannii to have said “poof”, “faggot” or “queer”. There is no comparison.

Dannii herself insisted on Twitter that Danyl is fine and got the joke. Danyl tweeted that she meant no harm and they’re ‘all smiles’. Dannii issued an official apology via her blog, and on tonight’s live results show.

In the 21st Century, the idea that some people – including some pop stars – are gay, shouldn’t raise an eyebrow, let alone a backlash. ‘Outing’ them shouldn’t create a media furore. I object to the discourse of ‘coming out’ anyway, based as it is in an outdated assumption that one’s sexuality is something that should remain hidden (unless you’re heterosexual) or that we should pre-suppose that everyone is straight.

Today we heard the tragic news of the death of Stephen Gately. He was one of the first pop stars to ‘come out’ before he was ‘outed’ by the press in 1999. Will Young, Cheryl’s judges-houses judging partner and fellow TV talent show winner, told the world he is gay the day after he won the first Pop Idol in 2002. Both of these revelations caused some controversy at the time – but we quickly got over it.

Ten years on, Dannii has helped move the agenda on with her assumption that it is OK to reference these things not just when your pop career is well established and it won’t affect sales (would it?), not once you have won a talent show and it won’t scare off the vote (would it?), but on Day One of the live shows. She has long been a supporter of gay rights, and this latest unintentional contribution to the cause was brought about by nothing more than her lack of prejudice. It sadly conflicts with the prejudice of many viewers who still think that to be called gay is an insult – and, in their confusion, label it homophobia.

Didn’t anyone tell them you can’t please all the people all the time? Its attempts not to rock the boat have really backfired this time. The only people not offended by the Gaza decision seem to be the Israeli government.

Fortunately, we can rely on Tony Benn to tell the BBC off, do the right thing, and broadcast the details himself.

This unprecedented refusal to air the appeal – a first in over 40 years – seems to be a unilateral decision by Director General Mark Thompson. His rationale? Editorial integrity – which he claims would be harmed if they ‘took sides’. That doesn’t seem to have stopped them airing a DEC appeal just two months ago for victims of war in the Congo. Far from impartiality, this partial, political decision makes it clear whose side The BBC is on. Their other reason – that aid probably wouldn’t get through – doesn’t bear scrutiny. The 24 charities that make up the DEC probably have more experience of delivering aid on the ground and making that judgement than BBC executives.

In response to the refusal to air the appeal, the Stop the War Coalition recently organised a protest involving people marching on Broadcasting House and returning their TV licenses. There have been ritual licence burnings at other BBC offices around the country. Actors and writers have cut ties with the BBC. David Soul wrote an open letter explaining why he has cancelled his license. Mark Steel has summed up the whole sorry mess more eloquently than I ever could.

So this all got me thinking. Could I do the David Soul thing and rescind my TV licence in disgust too? Could I manage without TV? I could watch things on the iPlayer instead (perfectly legal without a license). I can still hire DVDs from Love Film. My iMac has a bigger screen than my TV anyway. And I’m supposed to be on an Information Diet after all.

I decided on a trial separation from my television to start with. It’s now been a week, and I can honestly say I’ve not missed it. The average viewer in the UK watches 4 hours of TV per day. That’s two months a year! Imagine what else you could do without the distracting, anesthetising influence of the goggle box. I’ve long suspected that a 14-month year is the only way to get through my to-do list. I might even get my book written…

I probably won’t tear up my license just yet. But my TV-free week has been a revelation. I have more time, I feel calmer, my insomnia is improving and I don’t feel I’m missing out. Occasional, deliberate, well-chosen viewing for me this year. Not TV as background noise. I highly recommend it.

But back to my reasons for falling out with the BBC. It’s not just Gaza.

There’s also the BBC’s strange, recent obsession with pandering to Middle England. Last week’s episode of Panorama (the last thing I watched), once the BBC’s flagship investigative news programme, was all about the self-flagellating, navel-gazing fallout from the Ross-Brand affair (yes, still). Should we swear on TV? What would Mary Whitehouse think? Etc.

My concern is this: the BBC have allowed themselves to be beaten into submission. It’s not entirely their fault. This is a dangerous path that started with the bullying Blair government, who scandalously blurred the distinction between ’state’ and ‘broadcaster’. But now the Beeb is not crawling and apologising to Alistair Campbell for airing a journalist’s claim that the Government’s  pre-war Iraq dosier was ’sexed up’ (correct, as it turns out); they are tugging their forelocks and wringing their hands before Daily Mail readers for a single ill-judged comment broadcast on a pre-recorded late-night comedy radio show that these readers didn’t listen to – which is worse. And the final straw is that they are now giving every appearance of prostrating themselves before the Israeli cabinet – which is unforgivable.

I’m pleased that Wossy is back on telly, even if I restrict myself  to watching his show occasionally on the iPlayer. But the Ross-Brand affair – or, rather, the BBCs (over)reaction to it – means that this is not an end to it. Middle England has smelled blood, and are marching in for the kill like the Countryside Alliance. If Outraged of Tunbridge Wells have their way, not only will Ross not be able to do his job, we will soon only be able to watch what they want to watch: a lowest common denominator, inoffensive, wallpaper pap of programming. Look out for schedules filled with Songs of Praise and repeats of Last of the Summer Wine. Yet they are not the only license fee payers – we all have to pay, and should all be represented.

My granny used to exercise strong moral judgement, and the royal ‘we’, over the remote control. One hint of controversial broadcasting infiltrating the front room, and she would exclaim, “we don’t want this!” and switch it off. It sometimes feels as if a minority of moral guardians would like to exercise such unilateral censorship on our viewing. That shouldn’t surprise us. What is depressing is that the post-Hutton BBC is too weak to stand up to them – and to any other interest group, such as those who would rather we didn’t look too closely at Gaza right now.

It’s enough to make me turn off, tune out and drop TV for good.

How fortunate, then, that he’ll be getting a nice royalty cheque for Christmas, since not one but three versions of his song Hallelujah are in the Christmas charts this year:

#36 – Leonard Cohen Himself
#2 – the late Jeff Buckley, whose version Cohen considered the definitive one; and
#1 – X Factor winner Alexandra Burke (no surprise there, then).

Rufus Wainwright was in Nice this year too. One has to wonder where his people were in this seasonal scramble. But the real winner is Sony BMG, who represent Burke, Buckley and Cohen.

So, Alexandra has won the battle of the Hallelujas. Now, I’m a fan of the X Factor, and Alexandra is a deserving winner. She has brought this secular hymn to a new audience – or possibly an audience who previously knew it as ‘the Shrek song’. But many Cohen fans were horrified at the thought of its repurposing as an anthemic TV talent show winner’s song, sung by a 20 year old girl. I had some sympathy with this view, and joined the Facebook campaign to get Jeff to the top spot. And #2 isn’t a bad result against the X Factor behemoth.

What’s really puzzling is how this is considered an appropriate Christmas song, just because it’s called ‘Hallelujah’ and has Biblical references. It’s really as bleak as we’ve come to expect from our favourite tortured poet. The Bible bits are all Old Testament, and the sex and violence parts at that – David, Saul, Bathsheba, Samson… But perhaps that’s what makes it a perfect seasonal song for today’s secular society. It has all the sound but none of the content of the Christmas message.

Now, if his anti-capitalist First We Take Manhattan or Everybody Knows were deemed carols de nos jours, even I might be persuaded to go door to door with a Victorian lantern. After all, what could be more Christmassy than a man called Cohen singing about sex, violence and consumerism?

See also:

• Just whose Hallelujah is it anyway? – BBC News Magazine, 17 Dec 08
• Jeff Buckley: A singer with the real X Factor – The Independent on Sunday, 20 Dec 08

I say roof terrace – more of a roof garden, complete with greenhouse stuffed full of beer. I imagine that was just for the party, and not the staff’s secret stash we were drinking.

Why the venue? It overlooks Norman Foster’s Gherkin – integral to the plot of the book. Despite my usual aversion to fiction, I am even reading it – and it’s rather good. Keith has also become a prolific blogger of late, and I’d urge you to check out both his personal blog and his Johnny Mackintosh blog. A model of author blogging if ever I saw one.

It’s all such nonsense. As any fool can tell, it’s not even a ‘gay kiss’ – it’s a hetero couple with the mother imagined as a New York deli chef. The message is: ‘mum’s sandwiches can taste as good as those from a deli if you use our mayonnaise’. The confusion of Outraged of Tunbridge Wells is at least the silver lining here – they’ve misunderstood the premise because it is now conceivable, even out there in middle England, that a gay male couple could raise a child. For Heinz’s little joke to work, one has to start from the premise that two dads is an absurd notion.

This makes Heinz doubly damned: 1) for pandering to the bigotry of a tiny minority; and 2) for being so 1978.

I know we’re having a retro revival here in the UK, with sky-high oil prices, public sector strikes, the shuddering last days of a Labour government, and Pentangle re-forming, but really. Do we have to go back to the bad old days when questions were raised in the House when Barry gave Colin a peck on the forehead in Eastenders? Today’s politicians are, of course, more enlighted. Nick Clegg has complained to Heinz, and Diane Abbott has tabled an early day motion condemning their behaviour.

One of the ironies of the “children could have been watching” brigade’s campaign, and Heinz’s response, is that it has simply drawn our attention to the fact that this ad was never shown at teatime anyway, because the product contains too much sugar and salt to be allowed to be peddled to kids. Another reason to avoid the top shelf in the condiments aisle.

Some people would be offended by an inter-racial kiss. Would that be an acceptable reason to ban an ad? That’s the question posed by Stonewall, who have called for the boycott. And we are boycotting. The Internet is a marvellous thing for organizing this sort of sanction. As of 2pm today, there are 10,125 signatures on the petition, and 4,168 members of the Facebook Group.

But, for some of us, it will take more than reinstating an innocuous TV ad for us to buy Heinz products again.

Here’s your Saturday subversion checklist:

1. sign the petition
2. join the Facebook Group
3. join Stonewall
4. email Heinz’s Director of UK Corporate and Government Affairs at Nigel.Dickie@uk.hjheinz.com
5. make your own Heinz ketchup using the recipe at www.topsecretrecipes.com

Julie couldn’t stay for the free drinks (there’s a first), but it was good to see Dave again – and three old publishing friends I’ve not seen for ages, who happened to be there too. I was half expecting Michael Aspel to turn up waving a Big Red Book by this stage, as far too many eras of my life came crashing together. (For the record, if anyone ever tries to do that to me, I shall take a very Bill Oddie attitude.)

The film itself is worth a look, and has already won an award in the States. As Dave said in the bar and on his blog, it’s not-quite-what-we-expect from him. It’s still a narrative documentary quest, but a more Michael Moorish project, with an anti-corporate message. IS it possible to drive coast-to-coast across America without using chain stores, restaurants, hotels and gas stations? Watch it and find out. It’s on More 4 on 5th February, and also soon to be available as a book and a DVD.

This question is currently being asked of Blade Runner: The Final Cut, with reviews along the lines of ‘isn’t it time Ridley Scott got a movie right first time?’ and ‘one for gullible sci-fi geeks only’.

I went to see it this week with a load of hardcore fans led by Jenna, who is sci-fi geeky enough – and young enough – to live up to being named after a character from Blake’s Seven.

I’ve long been a fan of science fiction dystopias. I wrote an extended essay on them for my English Literature O level. For me, Blade Runner is standard-setting and up there with 1984 and Brave New World for 20th Century classics. It’s the ultimate cinematic dystopia: an unrelenting, dehumanizing Fritz Lang world where it always rains in the permanent twilight and there’s not a single decent human being. I love it.

I am that gullible geek. Despite not having seen the film for a few years, it’s one that I remember pretty much scene for scene, line for line. I can spot the continuity clean-ups, the emphasis-altering line changes, the extended scenes, the inserted CGI. I’m fascinated by the folklore, and I want those DVD extras.

This final cut is a revision of style over substance. But that’s kind of the point: the real star of the show was always Los Angeles, 2019. And, like George Lucas’s reissues of episodes 4-6 of Star Wars, Blade Runner now looks stunning in modern digital, 25 years after the original.

Made in the days before mobile phones, digital photography, scanners, the Internet, genetic engineering, flying cars and neon umbrellas (OK, we don’t have the last two yet), it doesn’t matter that some of the imagined technology is now mundane or that some is as far off as it seemed in 1982. Blade Runner mashes up old and new technology in a way that is commonplace in our knowing postmodernity, but, at the time, was a startling contrast to most science fiction.

It’s this visual style that keeps it fresh. Blade Runner was always a visual feast, and now we see more of Ridley Scott’s beautifully shot unique vision and dark obsession. The one thing that does date it is the prominence of those super-brands of the future: Coca-Cola turned out to be a safer bet than Atari, TDK and Pan Am.

The 5-Disc Ultimate Collectors’ Edition came out at the same time as the film, in time for Christmas. Happy anniversary coincidence? Marketing ploy? I don’t think it matters to the fans.