7383/19903
Glad to say that my little London transport hack is working well. My secret Northern Line car park has held good for me and the tubes in and back have all turned up within 2 minutes and I have saved myself minutes and pounds and only have to do about an hour of driving, instead of two (or more). Though fate, annoyed by me winning, decided to close my turn off on the A1 tonight adding ten minutes to my journey, which was a mean trick. But I survived, so take the fate. You will never kill me.
I had been full of energy for the last RHLSTP two weeks ago, but I was pretty tired tonight, which made things a bit more relaxed and not quite as sparky. But sometimes the relaxed and tired ones can lead into unexpected areas and the guest opens up to fill the awkward silences. Two good interviews nonetheless with the wise and together Joe Cornish who one feels has always had things on an even keel and the wise and together Zoe Lyons, who has got to a place of relative calm after a frenetic two or three years where things went pretty wrong, but from which she has emerged stronger.
Find out more by going to see her Bald Ambition tour. It sounds amazing.
Both really lovely and inspirational people, being interviewed by a clod. Who could want more?
I am enjoying the controversy over the Roald Dahl books being edited for politically incorrect language, mainly because I think the opposing sides are both wrong (and right) and thus being equally ridiculous. I disagree and agree with both arguments. I don’t like things being censored (especially clumsily so) but also think we have to be sensitive to the stuff our kids are reading. Whilst I am suspicious that this whole thing is a PR stunt that deliberately includes some revisions that are patently ridiculous, I have also come up against censors who have a list of banned words or ideas and are unable to apply context or logic to an individual scenario. When we put out series 2 of Fist of Fun on DVD, the BBC were suddenly much more cautious about what we could or rather couldn’t include. I didn’t really like the fact we were being censored at all - I was keen for it to be a complete record of the series, for fans who I knew would be aware that the show had been made 15 or 20 years before and adjust their mindsets accordingly. But I knew all the people buying it would be adults and also that they’d be fans of the show. It wasn’t (any longer) being broadcast into people’s homes and I knew it would be irritating for purchasers that they didn’t get the full shows. There was very little that they wanted to cut (and some of it was from the RHLSTP chat about the show, which was available elsewhere) but some of it was so inconsequential that it didn’t matter either way and in the case of where we took the piss out of a real little boy for being scared of Peter Pan (the joke was really about my character feeling superior to a child, rather than genuinely mocking a three year old) it did feel that in hindsight we shouldn’t have used his real name and I was happy to lose that whole bit for the sake of a real person.
But some of the suggested cuts (which were presented as non-negotiable, which they turned out not to be) were made by someone who didn’t understand the rules they were applying or the medium that the shows were going to be released in. The one I recall as an example of poor application of “the list” was from the teachers sketch, where Stew’s character was showing an inappropriate interest in one of this female pupils (played by a young Kelly Brook). It so happened that they were reviewing the show in the week that a teacher had run off to France with one of his pupils and the note came back “obviously in the light of current events we can not put that sketch out”. Which was ridiculous for many reasons. Firstly the sketch was about the inappropriateness of that kind of relationship and taking the piss out of predatory teachers, but mainly the DVD was not going to be put out for several months. It might have been wise to postpone the sketch from a TV broadcast, but this was something that had been put out years before the incident which would be watched months and years afterwards and no one would be thinking - that’s a bit off given that thing that happened all that time ago. As it turned out the sketch remained in the release and no one complained. There were some cuts and I didn’t like all of them, but they didn’t impact too greatly on the whole.
So yeah, maybe the person making the decision about the BFG’s black cloak had a list that said you had to be careful around the word black (though equally I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some other inference in the book, given Dahl’s form) and had been ridiculously overcautious. But equally I don’t think it’s worth getting in a tizz about the right to describe someone as “fat”. How are we meant to bully people if we can’t do that?
I wonder if anyone considered taking out all the references to chocolate less that also be considered insensitive, regardless of context? I’d actually really like to read Charlie and the Factory with no reference to chocolate. I think it would sell.
My inclination is to not change the books and let them slowly fade from view, to be replaced with new stories, but I suspect the people who’ve paid millions of pounds for the rights want to get as much value out of them for as long as possible. The changes that have been made do little to dent the general joyful inappropriateness of Dahl and take out some of the less joyful inappropriateness. I am for it and against it.
