Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital Radio! (episode 12)

Following on from my recent blog posts about the return of the comic leg-end that is Alan Partridge to our airwaves, we continue with the series.

He's back hosting Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital Radio (with new sidekick Zoe Scott).

Episode 12 demonstrates that Alan has no idea what 'Uggs' means in modern parlance and if you give him 6 months notice, he can can borrow you a Range Rover 'like that'!

Comic Relief (1988-2011) - My Best Comedy Bits

Comic Relief has always captured my comedic imagination more than Chilrdren in Need ever has. Maybe it's because its being held every other year adds to the excitment of its coming each time a delicious new installment of this now legendary telethon is offered to us.

Since the Comic Relief charity was launched on Christmas Day 1985, it has raised over £650m for good causes around the world.

Along the way, it has made us laugh...and laugh loudly...

The first Red Nose Day was held in February 1988 and the second was in 1989. Since then, they have fallen one every other year - usually in the 2nd or 3rd week of March. The next is this Friday, 18th March 2011.

So, I'm dedicating two blog posts to celebrate this truly British tradition of supporting charity through comedy. This first one revolves around the comedy, my second will revolve around the music.

So, here are some of my Comic Relief Red Nose Day 'Best Comedy Bits'...

It all began here, in 1988.



In fact, it began 240 years earlier. In 1648 to be precise. Here, Blackadder: The Cavalier Years  finds our famous favourite at the heart of the English Civil War - on the doomed side of the Royalists!

Best moment - King Charles I (played with a good touch of Prince Charles by Stephen Fry) meeting Oliver Cromwell (an excellent Warren Clarke!). Brilliant!




From that original programme also, University Challenge with The Young Ones!




Moving on to 1989, Rowan Atkinson again takes the chair but this time as the host of the 'Master Member' quiz with Lord Hailsham, David Owen, Gerald Kaufman, Kenneth Baker, Leon Britton, John Smith, David Steel and Shirley Williams.

Love it!



Again from 1989, a special Who's Line Is It Anyway, hosted by Clive Anderson with guests Stephen Fry, Josie Lawrence, Paul Merton, and John Sessions.



From 1991, a Hugh Laurie news sketch. Whatever happened to him?!



1993 saw Mr Bean's Red Nose Day.


It also saw Victor Meldrew take a bath and ask that immortal question - 'Is Nicholas Parsons dead?!'



1993 also saw a special Mr Bean's Blind Date!



In 1995, we saw a new skating star take to the ice. It's Torvill & Bean!



Moving forward, 1999 saw The Vicar of Dibley meet Johnny Depp!



1999 also saw Alan Partridge sing Kate Bush!



2001 saw Eastenders get in on the Comic Relief act - keep an eye out for some of the good old characters from a decade ago! Also, gotta love the writers in the 'Story Conference'!





2003 saw comedic turns in a Comic Relief Blankety Blank by, amongst others, Matt Lucas as Su Pollard, David Walliams as Ruth Madoc, Martin Freeman as Johnny Rotten and Simon Pegg as Freddie Starr. Peter Serafinowicz meanwhile perfected Terry Wogan!



2005 saw Little Britain's Daffyd interview Elton John!



Here, Lou and Andy meet George Michael!



2007 saw the Nan Taylor take on the Banker in Deal or No Deal!



It also saw the return of a now married Vicar of Dibley in a Celebrity Wife Swap with Sting!



The latest installment in 2009 saw Davina McCall Vs David Tennant at Comic Relief Mastermind!

There's so much more that I could've chosen but it gives at least, a glimpse of our comedic talent doing good through the ages.

Keep an eye out for my next installment - Comic Relief (1988-2011) - My Best Musical Bits

A Japanese Tragedy & My Nuclear Dilemma

The pictures from Japan these last 36 hours have been almost apocalyptic. The sheer force of nature has wreaked its tragic magic on the poor residents of the port city of Sendai in north eastern Japan and early indications indicate that over 10,000 people are likely to have been killed by the tsunami that enfulfed their lives after the mamouth 8.9 magnitude tremor struck off the coast.

This initial earthquake has been confirmed as the fifth strongest to occur anywhere in the world in the past 100 years. It is arguably a blessing in disguise that the death toll is not likely to be substantially greater. The recent earthquake and resulting tsunami in Sumatra in Indonesia on Boxing Day 2004 was of a similar magnitude of 9.1 on the Richter Scale and yet it resulted in the death of almost 250,000 people.

As it is, the Japanese authorities are fighting to limit the loss of death. Every minute is critical and the next 24 to 36 hours are the most important in their rescue operation.

The Nuclear Question
As well as the basic impact that this event has had on Japan's populace and on its infrastructure, there is the added question of its impact on the nuclear reactor near-by.

Only this morning, a large explosion occurred at the Fukushima-Daiichi - or Fukushima I - nuclear power plant in north-eastern Japan, close to the epicentre of Friday's earthquake. It has renewed the debate about nuclear energy and its safety.

I stand slightly apart from the majority of those in my party who are staunchly anti-nuclear energy. Indeed, in my earlier years I was also of that mind. I voted in one of my earlier Federal UK-wide conferences in an Energy debate, against a pro-nuclear ammendment. But over the years, I've become more pragmatic on the issue. We have an energy gap and we need to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions and as nuclear is carbon neutral, it is at least an option that should be realistically thrown into the mix. In the meantime, we need to extend our basket of renewable alternatives which must be the future to release ourselves from our dependency on oil.

There are of course however, the safety fears.

Is it a generational thing? I'm too young to remember Chernobyl. I can't relate to the memory of seeing what befell the Ukrainian and Belarussian segments of the Soviet Union when that disaster struck on April 26th 1986. But the fears are there of course and the reality of a nuclear expolosion and its repercussions are alive to those who can remember such scenes and who live near a nuclear reactor.

Well, it must be noted that today's explosion in Japan doesn't seem to have led to the nuclear meltdown that it first seemed it might. Officials say the container housing the reactor was not damaged and radiation levels have now fallen. This of course is to be welcomed and hopefully the situation will now have stabalised.

A Nuclear Future?

But it does raise new doubts. Of course it does. The fact that Japan decided in the 1970s to fill their energy gap with the building of nuclear power stations despite sitting astride 3 teutonic plates is one it really isn't for me to question. Was it wise? In the geographic circumstances, it is questionable.

But what of the UK? It's not that I enthusiastically want nuclear energy, but a matter of pragmatics. We need to reduce our dependency on oil and nuclear at least doesn't contribute to our carbon concerns.

But am I comfortable with the idea of nuclear energy? No I'm not. It's understandable therefore that the majority of my Liberal Democrat colleagues place themselves clearly in the anti-nuclear camp.

But I however will remain open minded on this question. Certainly, despite the awful events of the last 48 hours in Japan, more open minded on it than I was 10 years ago when I opposed the nuclear option without looking at the wider, pragmatic view of asking, well, what right now, is the alternative?

Riverdance - The Greatest Show on Earth (My Love of Ireland)

I'm Welsh and mightily proud of it. But I'm also a Celt - I feel it in my bones.

I have a particular pull towards Ireland which goes back to before I can remember. Listening to my father's Daniel O'Donnell tapes in the car as a child imparted in me that balladic Irish sound and the names of the geographic landmarks of the Emerald Isle.

I find its history and politics fascinating and for followers of my blog that will have been clear by my regular posts on the recent general election there.

I've been to Belfast twice and fell in love with the city instantly. Despite the troubles, it has grown into a confident new 21st century city whilst still holding onto some of those old enmities. I've been up to (London) Derry too and it's another beautiful city. So enraptured was I of my first experience there in May 2007 that I got together a rag-bag group of 8 of us to go there to celebrate the '08/'09 New Year there too! I've only been to Dublin on one very brief though memorable occasion back in 2002 but I do desperately want to explore south and western Ireland. The Cork's, Limerick's and Galway's of the world are high up on my list of places that I want to visit.

There's something about the culture of the place and of the Irish joy de vivre that just bowls me over.

Nowhere can it be encapsulated better than in the memorising, hypnotic Riverdance. Here are Michael Flatley and Jean Butler leading the case as the interval act at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin in 1994.



For me, it sums up everything that is uniquely Irish. The passion, the history, the wonderful wonderful music, the melancholy, the precise, the sublime.

I love Ireland and if I ever had had the great misfortune of not being born Welsh and had had the choice of nationality left with me then I'd have chosen to have been Irish.

David Alexander - Wales' Other Tom Jones

I happened to be surfing youtube recently and fell upon videos for David Alexander.

David who you may ask? Well if you don't know him, he's the Welsh Tom Jones that we would've heard a lot more of had Tom Jones himself not beaten him to it.

He was born in Blackwood in south Wales and made his name on the social club circuit and worked as an entertainer in Pontins. He was of the same age as Tom Jones and though he made his name in the 1970s, he never managed the same level of success as his more famous Welsh compatriot and never quite broke out of the cabaret scene.

He died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of just 56.

How do I know of him? Because as a child, he was one of the voices I listened to endlessly due to my father's taste in music. We'd always have a cassette playing on our many journeys and it more often that not was the strong Welsh sound of David Alexander that I would hear. It wasn't long before the music that my father enjoyed listening too become the music that I enjoyed listening too as well. We had a few David Alexander tapes and though most of the songs on those tapes were famous covers of songs sang by others, they were all for me, 'David Alexander's music'. I know so many of his songs word perfect all these years later. Mind you, it does help that I kept those old tapes of Dad's after he died and will every so often have a fond reminscent listen to them.

His most famous song was 'If I Could See The Rhonnda One More Time' - it's a moving song which I have always adored. I suppose it's a Welsh thing. His voice has that Tom Jones quality but yet it's distinctively David for me.



But as I say, he covered others.

Here's one of my favourites which I'd blasted out on many a car journey across the UK as a child.

It may have been sang by Del Shannon originally but for me 'The Answer to Everything' will forever be a song sang by David Alexander...



Here's another. Again, it isn't a Bette Midler song for me, but a hit from the unsung legend that was David Alexander. 'The Wind Beneath My Wings'...



But his lyrics which most moved me as a Welsh child were 'I never again will go down underground' from Rita MacNeil's evocative and moving 'Working Man'.



Because he died so young, and because he never struck the big-time in the conventional sense, there isn't as much of a back-catalogue of his for us to watch.

But what a voice.

I rememer my father telling me at the time of his death that he had died suddenly. I think I recall seeing it on the TV. It was a surprise because he was so young and because I was a fan. I was 12 or 13 at the time and I can recall being saddened at the news.

So this is my little tribute to David for all those happy childhood travelling memories and to my also departed and missed Dad for introducing me to his music in the first place.