Adam Tandy

Love you, Ian Martin.

Maybe fish and chip shops (as a general term). Or cafés, as they weren’t really about coffee, and they often did takeaway food.

By the late 1960s the phrase “Chinese takeaway” was part of the idiom, but I don’t remember it being used to describe any other kind of restaurant, even Indian. I never heard it used to describe food. Wimpy had a take away window in some restaurants, but burgers weren’t much of a thing. Nor pizza.

That’s from a source in Massachusetts, which is why it says take out.

Hugely exciting news. Hoping for a Xmas 26 release with any luck.

Panel from Peanuts comic strip

AUUGH!

I might be wrong about this, but doesn’t Alison McKenzie have one of the old BBC ones?

I’m having goat stew for dinner tonight, à propos of nothing…

“Shall we just do old Who and the Shining? You know. For the numbers. Play the hits?”

“Yeah. I mean it’s an approach. But also…”

You know. Otherwise what is the point?

a man in a suit and tie is talking into a microphone with the words talk about it written below him ALT: a man in a suit and tie is talking into a microphone with the words talk about it written below him

As we enjoy today’s @bafta.org Film Awards, the glitz, the glamour, the stars, it would be really great if there was *some* acknowledgement from presenters and winners of the dire crisis the industry is in and the thousands of freelancers who are struggling to survive…

The contents got topped up every couple of months, fortunately. And I think double-action was a relatively quick innovation, dating from the 1860s.

I used some of the original powder when it was over 12 years old and it worked OK. My mother was not an habitual baker…

4oz tin of Borwick’s Baking Powder

200g tin of Borwick’s Baking Powder

Finally retiring my tin of baking powder, which cost 1/5 from the local VG corner shop and has been in the house since 1968. Made in Sussex.

And its upstart replacement, which cost 95p [19/- in old money] from Tesco in 2026. Made in Dubai.

Also, Caught On A Train. Both pieces where the precinct does not take precedence over performance. As soon as the thing becomes about production design rather than emotional storytelling, you’ve lost.

I could mention other shows here, but won’t, to spare the embarrassment.

Me, about the work of Wes Anderson.

Conversation with a Young Person yesterday evening made me realise that – for those not habitually attached to mainstream platforms like PSBs, broadsheets – the chaos is already here. Trotting out bollocks but entirely unable to cite any reliable sources.

would now be a good point to promote Leadmojo.co.uk/smelt?

My last EV was an Audi. It only ever did about 2/3 of its stated dashboard range; it was very heavy, and the battery hated going >50mph. My new Cupra is built around the same battery pack but is much more honest. Turn on the windscreen heater and it instantly drops the range down by fifty miles.

10am-12 27th March. The Comedy Toolkit.

I’m running a one-off Arvon online masterclass next month… Come along and we’ll take the spanners to some comedy. March 27th. Link here:

www.arvon.org/writing-cour...

I listened to a properly made radio play yesterday, and someone had done an edit pass on the narrator VO at a late stage for some reason that resulted in audible glitches in the audio stream on BBC Sounds. I think my listening setup is way too picky but it shows that modern production is not great.

God bless Ian Greaves.

Also: lots of dangerous sport opportunities in the armed forces, which can provide a bit more social (sports) mobility.

Alternatively, grabbing hold of the heroic role is exactly how Trump and Farage have built their powerbase, despite not standing up to any kind of scrutiny. They identify “villains” to drive their agenda and build popular support against them.

Very interesting. If the popular narrative is always built around villains, how can we ever have heroes again?

Well, UK repeats were factored in. It’s the long tail of secondary exploitation that’s often so hard to cover, especially with broken comedy.

Huge clearance costs, I suspect. That’s what scuppered the final DVD. I did clear for foreign territories but not videogram, and even to do that I had to beg for additional investment. And a lot of RadioActive’s stuff depended on music outside the TV blanket agreements. Shame.

Most directors aren’t thinking in 3D, except when they can make it work for them. Gravity was superb, and I went back to see it twice in 3D. And Pierre Coffin had huge fun with the credit sequence on one of the Despicable Me. Often though, 3D is an irrelevant bolt-on.

A lot of the time, the 3D conversion of movies is simply bolted on to a production afterwards as a value-added process. Unless stereoscopic effects are actually part of the creative intent they aren’t really part of the movie. They are part of the business, just like merch or commercial tie-ins.

My first ever computer graphic was written in ForTran77 subroutines and submitted as punched cards . I got the output back a week later as a piece of 35mm film. In a little can. It was The Future…

Thoroughly enjoyed Bugonia over the weekend.