GMs most pertinent blog of its short history?

WE'RE not saying Noel Gallagher, former chief songwriter for the erstwhile Champagne Supernova hitmakers Oasis, cocks an ear to what emerges from GM HQ, but surely it can be no coincidence he sidled out of the band a week or so after we posted this?

George Pelecanos: An appreciation

AS a key partner in the tight group of former journalists, cops, novelists and old stagers who created The Wire, George Pelecanos has jumped out of the narrow genre of hard boiled urban crime writers into the rarified atmosphere of highly successful TV executives.
Thanks to the success of The Wire, of which Pelecanos was the writer and producer, he is now being heralded as one of the kings of American neo noir literature.
But long before The Wire, his previous novels, all set in his native Washington DC, put him in the top bracket of the great social commentators of his generation. Only Richard Price, Dennis Lehane and James Lee Burke can be seen as his equals - the former two also wrote on the Wire.
One of his latest two books, The Turnaround, is a breathtaking example of wonderful democratic fiction, not literary fiction, but fiction which tells a great story but which unveils some of the truths behind race in modern America.
Listen to a short extract from The Turn Around

It has, like most Pelecanos stories, great central figures. In this case Alex Pappas - a Greek American man scarred in a race-related fight he had the misfortune to be involved in, in 1972 and Raymond Monroe, a black man who was involved in scarring Alex.
It revels in the mundanity of ordinary lives and the simple pleasures people take to get through life. There is a tremendous humanity and sense of community in the Turnaround, another characteristic of Pelecanos' work.
Starting in 1972 in the run-up to the incident and then jumping to the present day it showcases Pelecanos' great gift for vivid nostalgia and writing evocatively about the past. It also embraces modern America's race politics and its treatment of its armed forces' Middle East veterans.
More pertinently, The Turnround sees Pelecanos do what he does best - writing the modern urban Western where stoic men face up to their responsibilities, being forced into taking action to protect their families and making up for the sins of the past.
It's a brlliant novel from a writer who has only rarely put a foot wrong.
Hear him speak about his latest novel, The Way Home, currently one of President Obama's holiday reads, below.

Library of Congress interview on The Way Home


Great Pelecanos interviews/ features
Pelecanos on his five favourite books
Pelecanos in the Socialist Review
Amy Raphael from the Observer - with a truly appalling headline
From the Daily Telegraph in July
On Blog Talk Radio
The Times puts him at Number 31 of all time
Here for the full list
The music of Pelecanos, Pelecanos and Washington DC, Pelecanos and the writing life to come later this week

Why John Bishop should win in Edinburgh

BISH is a monstrously talented comic, but really his greatest talent is to make everything he talks about seem funny, simply by his inflection.
Here's hoping. This from the Guardian's excellent Edinburgh Comedy fringe series on iTUnes presented by Miles Jupp.

Bishop's sermon is the gospel of pure comedy

RUNCORN-raised comedian John Bishop has been nominated for the Edinburgh Fringe's premier prize - the Eddies, awarded for the best stand-up at the festival.
It's clear that good things really happen to good people.
The nomination of Bish, as he is affectionately known to all who know him, is a great achievement for a man who is, according to fellow Liverpool comedian Keith Carter, 'the closest thing to a stand-up in the purest possible sense.'
Bish, and perhaps the nomination of Russell Kane this year, represent a return to acknowledging pure stand-ups, people with a set of stories and gags to tell rather than 'concept' shows.
Bish of course has pulled together a 'concept' for Edinburgh, but what will shine through is an inate ability to not only see the humour in almost any situation, but to deliver it superbly. He has the best timing in the business.
Bishop has also one of the best comic brains working in Britain today and has an ability to improvise and fly off the top of his head which brings to mind Robin Williams and Paul Merton at their best.

His Radio City/ City Talk show may not be gag heavy, but is always inventive and thoughtful.
When he was starting out, I had the pleasure to see him maybe 20 times and rarely saw him do the same gag twice in any of his 25-40 minute sets. On several occasions he ripped the roof off the Rawhide Club in Liverpool simply bantering with the audience.
Already with a burgeoning following in Ireland thanks to many appearances on network TV, Bish has to be the next big thing in Britain.

On a recent appearance on Michael McIntyre's high profile BBC programme, he stole the show with a keenly observed and warmly delivered seven minute set.

And warmth is the key to Bish, there's no harshness. He is frequently, apparently, left confused by modern life and in particular parenting, but what always comes from watching him is a sore gut from laughter-induced hyperventilation and the great positivity that there's a laugh to be had from any situation.
Go 'ead lad, hope you win it because it has been a long time coming.

The Bugle:The Trumpet majors of political comedy

THERE isn't a better satire show available anywhere on TV, radio or print than the free weekly podcast The Bugle starring Daily Show star John Oliver and recent 5Live Ashes presenter Andy Zaltzman. GM should really add the word period at the end of the last sentence to emphasise just how good The Bugle is like most bloggers would. But we won't.
Every week Oliver and Zaltzman, old friends from the comedy British circuit, discuss the important events of the week globally via an ISDN line and routinely kick the lining out of everyone from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Silvio Burlusconi to American footballer Plaxico Burress and Vladimir Putin.
It is a riveting joy for comedy fans across the globe because it breaks out of the ghetto of localised back biting which typifies much of satire and makes pertinent the first rule of comedy: idiocy by anyone in a position of power and prominence is funny.
Oliver, known to most British comedy fans as one of those who made the first series of Mock the Week go with the lyrical and swing it no longer has, has learned much from his time on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and now swings with the subtle glove of satire rather than the heavy fist of hate displayed in much of British primetime satire.
Zaltzman is, however, the grunt, the pack soldier who appears to do much of the work with weekly bursts of brilliant nonsensical facts which add a great dollop of surrealism to the show.
It is a self professed audio newspaper for the visual age which comes like most broadsheets with lots of sections you throw away. Unlike real newspapers, it tells you why you should throw them away and these sections are often the funniest. Much post modernist fun to be had if you like that kind of thing - and we at GM do.
It achieves that most wonderful of compromises: of being utterly savaging yet also being somehow gentle.
It takes in football, cricket, the machinations of the US legislative system, Silvio Burlusconi's libido and all points in between.
Have a look at the clips below and then head to iTunes to download 87 editions currently available.
It's a joy and opens up another debate: when should you start paying for content as good as this?
It comes from the News International stable as a Times Online product, is offered for free and as we know Murdoch is putting pay walls up on all his print products soon.
The answer is that we should all be paying for content as good as this because there is nothing better available in the English speaking world. BBC has nothing even approaching how good The Bugle is and only Oliver's real job on the Daily Show and its stablemate The Colbert Report rival it.
If that seriously overrated one trick pony Ricky Gervais can still colonise the iTunes chart as the highest selling audiobookist then a travesty is being played out.
Download The Bugle and see how comedy realy should be done.
Have a listen below at the youtube highlights, more to folow this week.
The Bugle on the BNP


The Bugle on oil resources and Iraq

Seamus Heaney and why poetry evokes the greatest memories

The full version of this podcast, which sees Heaney in conversation with his biographer Dennis O'Driscoll, can be downloaded from the website of the Lannan Foundation here

The Hold Steady Live: Acoustic and at full throttle

WOULD you like to hear the best rock band on the planet playing acoustic for free? Then you are in the right place.
This is another great podcast featuring The Hold Steady, this time from Chicago Public Radio's briliant Sound Opinions programme and what an archive it has. Please look at its offerings here.
The highlights of the show below see lyricist Craig Finn discuss his literary influences, what it's like to sing Rosalita on stage with Springsteen, why Joe Strummer's musical knowledge was encyclopaedic as well as Finn, guitarist Tad Kubler and pianist Franz Nicolay playing two songs acoustic.
I shudder to say this, but: enjoy.

Lyrical Influences

Springsteen, Dylan and Joe Strummer

Magazines & Daddy Issues (acoustic)

One for the Cutters (acoustic)

And go here to see the band playing well tight and loud for Yahoo's The New Now portal.

Noel Gallagher: Rock's great interviewee

NO-ONE could ever accuse Oasis of reinventing the wheel, their brand of British cultural magpie-ism sees them often derided as cheap rip-off merchants by the serious rock media.
However, this often detracts from band leader Noel Gallagher's great intelligence and engagingly witty personality, which rarely get a chance to shine on the page of music magazines.
The dominance of Noel's brother Liam as voice of the band, live and on record, also masks Noel's own brilliance as a singer. Well brilliance would be overstating it, but his voice has improved with age and is now an emotive instrument and his acoustic sets and B sides have long been a favourite of GM.
Hopefully these clips will give you an insight into the world of Oasis. The first is an acoustic version of B side Good to be Free and the other two - why he is a funny and engaging interviewee.
Again thanks to the wonderful Interface podcast at spinner.com for this free download, the highlights of which can be listened to below.



Good to be Free


On the M Ward, Edgar Jones Jones and music


Solo album, acoustic sets and annoying Liam

NO band has captured the imagination of GM in recent years as much as The Hold Steady.
Lead singer Craig Finn is the best lyricist working in rock.
We have already argued that their third record Boys and Girls in America was the long player of 2007 and they could be shaping up to be the band of the decade for us.
They are brilliant because they reflect the joyousness of watching Springsteen and the E Street - they are the sight and sound of a tight, loud guitar/ bass/ piano/ drums band peopled by musicians smiling and obviously loving what they are doing. That is an all too rare an example of the great rock journalism cliché in these days of irony and cleverness, a joyous, easy thing to behold.
Take the shoes off, clear a space around you and pogo like an eejit.
Although this isn't from it, check out the brilliant aol music showcase spinner.com for a fantastic five song live set and interview with Craig and guitarist Tad Kubler and Franz Nicolay.
This is just a great music promo. Hey, enjoy.

The king always be the king: Reviewing Pelham, 1,2,3

AND this is why the Good Doctor has been described as preternaturally fluent by radio critic Giles Smith. The bar is set to so highly in the world of film criticism that we shouldn't really bother with having anyone else.

Interview with Bradley Wiggins

Chapeaux to David Levene at the Guardian for this picture

Please read this brilliant interview with Bradley Wiggins by Donald McRae

How to write a Clarkson car review: Money for old rope free seminar

BEGIN by whingeing about the Prime Minister. Mention one eye, socialism, his Scottishness and waves of Albanians stealing public school places. (300 words)
Next, target the chief constable of a regional police force and his speed cameras. Creeping Big Brother/ stealth tax blah blah. Reactionary nonsense will do here. (300 words)
Lament the passing of the age of speed because of the two above people (150 words).
Remind people you punched Piers Morgan. (50 words)
Gratuitous mention of Zep, Camel, The Who or whoever the cool boys were into at boarding school. (100 words)
Mention (delete if not applicable): Aston Martin/ Ferrari/ Zonda.(60 words)
Say something like: 'Phwoarr, driving this is like Kristin Scott Thomas in a porno with Liz Hurley and Jody Kidd with the biblically epic AC DC blasting in the background as Victorian London shoots the French/ Germans (delete if not applicable) in the greatest prison breakout film, in the world.' (Should take about 500 words, but please ignore the multitude of nonsensical mixed historic metaphors).
Copy/ paste into email to Sunday Times, hit send and check that the Polish bloke clearing the gutters in your Isle of Man tax haven home for £25 hasn't stolen your child's grammar school place.
Retire smug.

Splash course in the newspaper design process

IT is time to embrace the inner geek, dust off the old encyclopaedia of fonts and go hog wild with an Apple Mac.
This great post about the San Antonio Express-News illustrates one of THE great pleasures of the newspaper journalist - designing the front page. Even better if we can twitter pic it through the process. That's big and small media right there.
Now GM has been involved in many a redesign and none, not one, ever added circulation. It always struck us a craven exercise in journalistic masturbation.
All those discussions about what message a font sends out and all that talking of tweaking horizontal scale and squeezing leading leads to hilarious heated debates in editorial leadership meetings driven by powerpoints complete with slides racing off the side of the screen accompanied by the sound of a racing car.
You can almost hear Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie spilling whisky and shouting: "Godammit to hell, John, do you think the people of Walton want a 1pt key line around their three column pictures? Blast it, I'd bet all the Scotch in Aughtermuchty and the BNFL regional award I paid £40 for, that they do."
Having said that, there are few things better journalistically than designing a newspaper page, and nothing better than doing the splash.
Have look here at an experiment from San Antonio.

Media Talk USA: News cartels

A MONTH or so ago I mentioned this brilliant wee podcast from the Guardian about the future of newspapers.
A couple of brilliant suggestions are made here. If the ecology of the media landscape is changing then the ecology of the newspaper model has to change also.
The newspaper, even major American city papers, will have to make do with smaller circulations and will be forced to penetrate their communities in a much deeper, more meaningful and less precious way.
Perhaps the ECHO or the MEN will be sponsoring not just big arenas but city wide book clubs, resurrecting newspapers in education projects and beginning multiple focussed conversations with their readership.
With profits on their way up again in the states, maybe there will be investment on the table for the new news economy and ecology.
Nothing new from GM here but have a listen and see what you think. It'll stay up for a few days.

Talk magazine & the magazine world's Gatsby moment

Thanks to Word magazine for higlighting this on Twitter and the perfect analogy used in this post's headline.
Read about the moment which signified the shift from old to new media.

Slackivism

"The best Web campaigns may be those that don't pretend to ask anything high-minded of their participants. FreeRice, a Web site developed by the U.N. World Food Programme, offers a game that helps players learn English and shows them ads to raise money for sending rice to poor countries. This may not be glamorous, but at least it gets some work done."
Morozov on the superficiality of many web campaigns.

Information cocoons

THE internet and the blogosphere are still trumpeted as the way forward for the news industry, but there is still no satisfiable means of aggregating everything that you are following in the way in which a newspaper or broadcast outlet does.
Stylistically there are abrupt shifts in style and tone to adjust to and then there is the terrible dilemma of actually believing everything you are reading - from originators to trolls et al.
However, the greatest issue democratically is the problem of cocooning, of readers only reading something which they are ideologically in agreement with.
Look at the recent flurry of birthers in the States, idiotically calling for Obama's birth cert to see what we mean here.
The initially false premise circulates ad nauseum and is given credence by virtue of that continued circulation. It's picked up by eejits like Lou Dobbs and the circle remains unbroken - more cack flows.
This great discussion is worth a watch in this issue.

The giants of the Giant of Provence

‘If it is true, as Victor Hugo says, that ‘martyrdom is sublimation, a torture that consecrates’, then Louison was quite right. His consecration in Avignon was, in my view, the crowning moment of his career.’
(With thanks to Resonance FM's peerless The Bike Show)

AS the centrepiece of a sporting memoir this sentence from 1950s French cycling legend Jean Bobet has to rank as the greatest ever written.
It’s beautiful, not simply because is supremely eloquent, but because it encapsulates the cut throat beauty of what it takes to succeed in Grand Tour cycling and physical courage of the greats. Please read the full extract linked below, it is the greatest piece of sporting memoir ever committed to print.
Bobet, speaking about his brother Louison’s heroic 13 minute win on Mont Ventoux in 1955 en route to becoming the first man to win three consecutive tours, opens up a world where men actually take themselves to the very edge of physical endurance. Men, who ‘fall off the black ravine’ as Jean puts it.
The Ventoux has a special place in pro-cycling, its much quoted lunar landscape and 22 kilometre climb at between 6.5%-8% in baking Provencale July (Tour) heat drags everyone to the limit.
Tom Simpson, who died within sight of the summit in 1967, illustrates that most often wrongly used of sporting clichés: he made the ultimate sacrifice for his sport.
Simpson did, but too often cyclists whose short careers are full of the glory of extreme physical exploits in the full glare of the public for minimal rewards, are also among those that make that ultimate sacrifice, either during or soon after their racing lives have finished.
The great Eddy Merckx took his hat off at the memorial of Simpson in a heroic winning ride which took him to his own physical limits in 1970s tour en route to his second triumph (of five) in the race. It was an example of the supreme brotherhood of the peloton then which has been shattered too often in recent years by the classlessness of modern (American) athletes.

On the Ventoux today, someone is going to race off for their own consecration, and that may be just for a second, third or fourth place on the tour or even much less. They race for small rewards, more often than not, simply a place in cycling's hallowed posterity. It may just be the crowning moment of a cyclist’s career.
How many of us would be willing to write ourselves so painfully into history thanks to one supreme effort, and how many of us will pay the price of either Bobet, Merckx or Tom Simpson?
Read Bobet's memoir of Ventoux from the Bike Show here

Who are the people pissing all over past glories?

DONAL MacIntyre ushered in, for better or worse, a new era of undercover TV reporting with his MacIntyre Undercover series for the BBC in 1999. Up to that point, and for a good time after, his courageous and insightful reporting redefined a genre of journalism which had been drifting towards obscurity or consumer gotcha-style Watchdog staidness.
The legions of TV honours which followed were rightly bestowed on the man and his team.
But, his new show on Virgin, MacIntyre's Toughest Cities, a repeat from Bravo from earlier in the year, sees him become a cut price Danny Dyer. Visiting hard knocks, asking them to play up to stereotype on camera and then talking up their hardness sotto voce seems to be his raison d'etre now.
His pitiful show on Liverpool's gangs was a case of disingenuous reporting at its very worst. Playing up the gang violence between two sets of ridiculous teenage crews high on strong weed, pills and Tupac CDs, he made a piece of televisual violence pornography on the back of the tragic death of Rhys Jones.
He then followed this up by taking part in ITV's celebrity ice dancing show - surely nothing needs to be said about that.
Maybe he pays for the better work by doing stuff that is patently beneath him.
But, as he now seemingly takes Ross Kemp's sloppy seconds, is he an example of one of those people who not only prove the Trainspotting adage that you get old and lose your edge, but that he is dramatically demeaning past glories by fronting simplistic, multi-channel age sensationalist bilge?
And if so, who are the others urinating all over their chips chasing the dollar by making stuff clearly benath a bar they set high earlier in their career?

The death of music reviewing - the Twitterverse is to blame

THIS latcheco seems to think that Twitter is going to kill off music journalism and that everyone is looking to this latest social networking site du jour and blogs for new music.
Perhaps he hasn't studied the business model of most social networking - what is going to keep it online 10 years from now? Where's the revenue stream?
Maybe everyone is a journalist now - actually no they are not. Just being able to write a review doesn't make you a music journalist - it just makes you opinionated, at best, and linked to the artist at worst.
If Paul Du Noyer or Dave Hepworth or Andy Gill or Pete Paphides or Caitlin Moran or Dave Fanning or Peter Guy (well maybe not him) say a record is good I may Spotify it (to coin yet another digital age verb) and then buy it. But I will never buy something thanks to a Twitter feed, which is prone to huge manipulation of the music companies anyway.
See what you think.

Life after death: newspapers and the re-invention of paper technology

SORRY to be the kind of parisite we have been decrying as the death of newsgathering, but Cyberjournalist carries this excellent article on the future of newsprint and paper-based reading.
I suppose it ultimately offers the kind of hugely insightful points that any fule no already, that we read paper and net sources differently - with a deeper analytical understanding coming from the former.
This has massive ramifications for lots of areas of net evangelism - not least online learning portals hailed as the future of higher education. Er, perhaps not yet.
But the points about what print can offer over the net is something we all should be taking note of. Bespoke print products like McSweeney's, although harking back to a bygone age of press, offer a vision of where our newspapers can go in the future. As we diversify into a more (multi-)community model coming with smaller circulation, perhaps we need to look at how print can serve these smaller publics.
We diversify into community education programmes (oops is that the spectre of Newspapers in Education?) and put on classes and become closer and more aligned with our communities - do we print these groups' newsletters and publications? Well, we can't do that if we haven't got presses we have outsourced to centralised units.
The Word magazine remains a glorious example of what smaller circulation, smaller staff models can do hand-in-hand with a vibrant online community and accompanying podcasts/ digital content. Its regeneration of MixMag is testimony to how a knowledge of the readership and good management can make a success of smaller circulations.
So, how do we produce local listings magazines, activist newsletters and bespoke print products which will ultimately have greater impact than throwing everything online and hope that people find it?
That's easy - because we always did - it's just we were chasing a new mistress who seemed much more comely, exciting and more rewarding than our previously staid existance. Like many another (late) mid-life crisis tryst, this new vision has not delivered all we thought she would. (Sorry for the sexist analogy folks).
Can print and accompanying digital content help us find new publics?
Undoubtedly, but at a local or regional level newsletters not newspapers may serve these communities better. Will at-threat newspaper groups in Britain reach these groups? Of course WE will.
But, in the language of recovery - we haven't hit rock bottom yet and have not been forced to accept that online revenues are not the way forward and a step backwards may just be the way forward.
Giving content away for free can't be right nor has there been any kind of profitable innovation suggested by those in the digiterati who say newspapers need to innovate to accumulate.
This step backward will be to look at rationalising the huge wastage of newsprint and produce more targeted products - hey, maybe even geographically specific editions again - and this in tandem with digital content is the future.
Unfortunately we need to replace the generation of skilled and knowledgeable journalists who may have left the profession who could have produced this content in tandem with these new communities.

Building new public spheres

AN excellent article from the Boston Review - flagged up by GM's New Media and Democracy editor, Clive McGoun of Manchester Metropolitan University. It is authored by Evgeny Morozov, an acacdemic and blogger who is thus far skeptical about the ability of the net to facilitate regime change in authoritarian states.
Much of his writing is brilliant and he is certainly emerging as one of the key voices in the debates over the internet and demoracy.
It is a brilliant analysis of some of the more determinist and optimisitic assertions for the power of the internet, blogging and mobile technology in political protest.
His conclusion is perhaps a worthy starting point - it's up to you to work back.
"The problem with building public spheres from above, online or offline, is much like that of building Frankenstein’s monsters: we may not like the end product. This does not mean we should give up on the Internet as a force for democratization, only that we should ditch the blinding ideology of technological determinism and focus on practical tasks. Figuring out how the Internet could benefit existing democratic forces and organizations—very few of which have exhibited much creativity on the Web—would not be a bad place to start."
Read the full article here

An inspirational piece of writing

THIS is the best piece of writing about the recent electoral success of the BNP in the north. And, perhaps, the best blog name out there.
Please check it out and post it as widely as you can.
Curry and Motown

The Parish Pump: It wasn't the vandals that stole the handles - let's take them back

IN a quaint turn of co-incidence for a neo-Habermasian community journalism advocate like myself, to be in agreement with internet impressario Jeff Jarvis is remarkable.
With the advent of Google Wave, the new all-singing-all-dancing browser/ interface from the internet collosus, the focus is again towards a hyper-local model for newsgathering and presentation.
A browser which unites and aggregates every aspect of our online lives is the ultimate goal for Google and a more fulfilling life under the cloud seems to be only a matter of months away. We can create and upload content, blog and flag content with simple keystrokes.
But, it still does not solve the problem of paying for newsgathering - it is still parisitic. But news still has to be gathered in a meaningful and accountable way for any number of ethical and democratic reasons.
And this is where hyperlocal has to come in.
Local is important to us in Britain and Ireland or we wouldn't have the vast numbers of local news outlets that we have sustained for more than a century since the development of affordable press and broadcast technologies.
But, at the local and regional level of news in Britain, the depth of content and engagement in local communities is being corroded by successive rounds of damaging cuts in personnel at news organisations.
In Februrary, and at one fell swoop, a couple of hundred years worth of accumulated local knowledge and talent left the Liverpool ECHO and wasn't replaced - even with cheap recent graduates or the even cheaper work experience/ interns.
We have to understand the uncertain business climates of the big news organisations making staff cuts face. The inherently fractured nature of the internet is not the friend of the centralised conglomerate news organisation - there are too many options for the consumer and these companies have always worked best moving towards monopolies where they could.
But Liverpool, like any similar sized city with a vast history and a highly defined identity needs news organisations rooted in its communities. News organisations, in this way, need social and intellectual capital - people who have knowledge and empathy with their communities in a micro and macro sense.
So how about this: let's summon the power of the community or third sector and devise and implement wide ranging education programmes and outreach initiatives aimed at media education which allows everyone to be part of newsgathering.
Let's have paid-for community workers and teachers embedded in their area telling us what is going on in their communities rather than newspapers and radio stations just reprinting missives from PR organisations paid to portray the activies of regeneration quangos in best possible light. (Among other travesties)
My example of how this could work is in the twin communities of Kirkdale and Kensington in Liverpool. I cycle through Kirkdale and am struck by how there is a huge degeneration of the area but that story hasn't been told - parts of it look like the Baltimore of The Wire.
Likewise the wholesale closures of shops and pubs throughout North Liverpool, thanks in no small way to the huge investments in city centre retail area, are stories which have not made any local media.
There are community groups in nearby Bootle who were working to highlight the injustices of regeneration programmes filtering money to big business 15 years ago - I know because I went to the Strand community centre to interview them. These people have not gone away - let's give them cameras and blogs and let them do their adversarial work. And let's train them to do so in an accurate and engaging way to maximise engagement with readers.
In Kensington, the Kensington Vision group have been highlighting the inadequacies of multi-million pound regeneration agency, Kensington Regeneration, via social and public journalism activism which points the way for the future of media at a macro level in the city.
Crucially, they also train 'ordinary' people to make their own radio, video and print products and get them up on the net. Now, that's a great social history project laden with that most corny of values - empowerment. (As Lewis Black says: 'I learned that word from Oprah'.)
The parish pump was the big buzz word for those of us involved in local and regional journalism until quite recently - it's just that there is no-one left to document those operating the handles.
In recent times, and in keeping with Dylan's lysergic visions of 1965, if the vandals had stolen the handles no-one would have been there to report it. That is, apart from the community activists who had no cash or means of accessing the regional media without first going to PR companies with the contacts to get published.
Let's train people to both operate and document the use of the parish pump. You'll see it will work, it is a no brainer.
And you know what? Free global social networking with the need of vast bandwidth and no visible means of raising the cash for it via advertising is not the answer. At least it is not the ultimate answer and is, at best, only a part of the overall solution for news' revenue quests.
Those of us involved in the media are too much in thrall to blogging, twittering and facebook poking and the fact that we can tell someone in Spokane, Washington that we think Peter Andre is standing strong.
This blinds us to the vast numbers of people who hate the blowhard, egotistical world of social networking's telling to one and all what you (mostly irrelevently) are thinking or doing at any one time.
The future does not lie in 140 character synopses of 'wa gwan' with you and your 'bredren' - no-one, to any meaningful extent, gives a Rat's A.
You may need a lie down and you also may be able to tell everyone from Starbucks in Tianamen Square to the Copper Kettle in Waterloo about it via your @dickhead Twitter account, but ultimately it's never going to be the future of journalism some contend it could be.
With this in mind, look to the blogs and pictures from Iran over the last two days and marvel at the true glory of community and activist journalism. Its glory is in the ability not to tell millions of people that Ronaldo may have shagged Paris Hilton but that a popular revolution is taking place in a nation which has huge ramifications for the rest of the world.
But also remember that journalism when done properly can make a difference to a pensioner whose bins haven't been collected by the council or 40 people opposing the closure of a community centre or thousands opposing the closure of a hospital or primary school.
Regional journalism's power is felt most keenly at the local level.
As Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh said in Epic, the 1938 poem recently voted Ireland's favourite,

"That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was most important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance."
(Emphases blogger's own.)

Suspect devices: The future for newspapers?

NEWSPAPERS 2.0 is the hottest topic on the other side of the Atlantic where a catastrophic downturn in advertising and circulations has seen everyone forecast the demise of everything from small town papers up to, and perhaps even including, the New York Times and Washington Post.
The Times has responded with a fully tweeted up, network savvy social networking editor Jennifer Preston who is now 14th on Twitter's hot 100.
However, the Times is also roadtesting the best mobile devices which could just save news organisations as the dead tree format becomes the anachronism everyone is predicting. Mind you everyone was predicting that Facebook and Youtube were going to be the formats of the future, both are still haemoraging multi-millions with no real signs of getting any of that cash back.
Say what you want, but these devices do look well sexy - but may get damaged when my paper boy drops one through the letterbox every morning.

Nytimes.com: Newspaper 2.0 - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Newspapers: A vision of the networked future

KCRW is a fantastic radio station from Santa Monica in Southern California. It is a public radio affiliate and broadcasts some brilliant shows and provides lots of brilliant podcasts.
Among its key staff are the brilliant indie kingpin Nic Harcourt who made his name presenting Morning Becomes Eclectic a one stop shop for live sessions from the hippest bands around.
The Simpsons' and Spinal Tap's Harry Shearer has a brilliant show, but my favourite is The Politics of Culture which is also available on iTunes downloads.
Here, the ever more annoyingly right Jeff Jarvis, media blogger, Guardian media online columnist and Professor of Journalism, argues that the future for newspapers is to mimic the success of google.
I think he has a persuasive argument.

Meanwhile, over at the new Guardian Media US podcast Jarvis is joined by husband and wife team Jon Fine and Laurel Touby where the future for newspapers is deemed to be an ecological shift towards deeper co-operation with smaller publics and a shift towards integration into all echelons of community life. They also ponder major US newspaper groups decisions to discuss price cartels.
Jarvis sees the death of newspapers imminently, I'm not sure.

The best GAA and cycling books

THIS month marks the official start of GMST (Gobshite’s Miscellany Summer Time). It sees the end of cycling’s first grand tour, the Giro d’Italia, and Armagh’s first match in the All Ireland Gaelic Football Championship.
Both started badly with a blood doping accused winning the Giro (Denis Menchov, albeit in very dramatic terms) and with Armagh taking a bit of hiding from Tyrone – the muck savages from over the sheugh. (Irish for drain – in this case the River Blackwater)
Summer starts with the Giro and the first round of the GAA provincial competitions and then moves to the great sporting monuments of the season: Le Tour de France in July and then culminates in the six weekend marathon of drama that is the battles for the two greatest team game titles on the planet – the All Ireland hurling and gaelic football championships.
Nothing tops gaelic games for righteousness on any number of levels. In terms of skill, physicality and stamina nothing comes close, no matter what those convict derived-brutish-enthral-to-Yankee-sport-Aussies decree.
Secondly, nothing comes close to engendering the true nature of amateur team sport in the face of encroaching globalised capitalism than the GAA, a sport whose heroes (usually) are linked in an umbilical fashion to their parishes, clubs and counties in a way that doesn’t exist in the modern world.
That millions travel to grounds across the 32 Counties, often on fools’ errands, and get up at all hours to watch it on satellite TV across the world in our diaspora enhances its righteousness yet further.
It is the very definition of an unthreatening, celebratory united Irishness that modern politics, partition and pretentiousness can’t kill.

Grand tour cycling, and le Tour especially, are the reverse of GAA as the ultimate expression of the individual in an endurance sport.
Thousands of kilometres through France, with several days over the highest mountains with roads, the drama lies in the simplicity of (usually) two riders battling mano-a-mano, eyes out up the highest peaks and in sharp, tough time trials.
There may be team tactics and politics which may have a greater or lesser influence on deciding who takes the maillot jaune (yellow jersey) depending on conditions, but usually one man is stronger than the other, and it is played out brutally in real time for all to see.
In 1987, Stephen Roche showed how far one (Irish) man has to go into his physical reserves to get the greatest prize in cycling. It transfixed the nation, even if Armagh lost the Ulster final on the day of the Ventoux time trial won by Jean Francois Bernard.
The commentary from Phil Ligget in this clip shows the fine line between defeat and glory - Roche went on and won this tour three days later.

The Tour renders the gladiatorial beauty of sport in its starkest most brutal way.
But this time of the year always sees me looking towards the best books, especially about cycling and GAA, to give me succour away on holliers in France. There’ll be no away days in Brittany or the Vendee this year, but the (re)reading will continue nevertheless.
So this is my download and keep guide to the best GAA and cycling books.

Push Yourself a Little Bit Further Johnny Green – former Clash roadie gives an outsider’s view on the surrealist, multi-coloured caravan of obsession that is Le Tour. Not a cycling book per se, but a book about the cultural and political connotations of the tour, the fact that it's by the man who used to catch Joe Strummer’s ‘Ignore Alien Life forms’ Telecaster makes it even easier to love.

Hurling: The Glory Years Denis Walsh – Why do amateur sportsmen put themselves through the tortures of professional sport? This is an insightful look at an ancient game in transition to modern sports practice. It has men living in tents and pulling lorry tyres up sand dunes for the love of their county, and for no other reason than that love. An unbelievable read, purchased for 25p in Southport.

Rough Ride Paul Kimmage - The multiple award winning Sunday Times sports writer was a domestique with the RMO team when he won Channel 4’s 1986 Tour rider competition despite being the lanterne rouge (finishing last). This book openly discusses the physical and mental hardships of racing a bike professionally day-in-day-out and the systematic use of drugs that often results from it. For that, Kimmage was accused of ‘spitting in the soup’ by fellow pros. However, reading the excerpts in the (still) old style broadsheet Sunday Independent while dangling over the couch in my ma and da’s house in the years post Roche 1987 were a thrilling insight for me into the fabled pro peloton.

An Illustrated History of the GAA Eoghan Corry - a peerless, beautiful, book that puts the Gah in its social historic perspective. Mick Mackey and Christy Ring cutting lumps out of one another, cardinals throwing the ball in for the final, the first Bloody Sunday, Mick O’Connell, Dublin v Kerry and the sea of Orange on September 22, 2002. THE essential toilet book. I’ll leave the Seinfeld reference unflagged.

Tour de Force Dan Coyle – despite the author’s Tyrone name, this is an insightful guide to the obsessive professionalism of Lance Armstrong. Not an easy man to like, Armstrong becomes more understandable from this study by Sports Illustrated’s celebrated writer. Armstrong’s attention to detail, his single mindedness come as a given. However, his need to control everything, including cycling writers however comes across as mean and small minded, no matter how favourable Coyle is.
The supporting cast of Cheryl Crowe (Juanita Crow), Robin Williams and Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell make the whole trip a bit more extreme, man, but the subsequent drug cheating fates of his team leave a gaping ethical hole in the achievements. Roberto Heras and Floyd Landis are both there prior to doping bans while former team mate Tyler Hamilton is present despite moving from the US Postal team to CSC.
A man of unresolved issues, Armstrong’s focus, despite its faults, is an inspiration – all truly, good sport books need an inspirational actor at the centre and this one has it. No matter how troubling the reading between the lines brings.

Dublin v Kerry Tom Humphries - This is, perhaps, the greatest book ever written about the intense rivalry betweens two teams in any sport.
The Dublin and Kerry gaelic football showdowns of the 1970s/1980s did, and for once the rhetoric is justified, transfix and divide a nation. My father hates gaelic football but my entry to the GAA family came watching Dublin Kerry in the living room of our old house in 1978.
Even at 5-years-old the colour and power of the occasion hit me. It changed me forever – all I ever wanted to do was play for Armagh at Croke Park after that. This book conveys the madness of amateur players physically and mentally torturing themselves for a sport.
At times brutal and tear-jerking, Humphries also shows why GAA writing is better than any on the Premiership. GAA players are amateur and are as yet not surrounded by a shield of PR and press offices, you get a sense of what the time and the people were about. It has access all areas to the deepest secrets of each team and none of the senior protagonists holds back.
It also shows the dark side of retirement, when the glory days are over – alcoholism, depression and death. But ultimately, it shows the camaraderie and glory of GAA teams that helped transform the games and the nation. The funeral scene near the end is the greatest set piece of any sports book I have ever read. A book to cherish forever.

The greatest abortion gag

The best ever joke about abortion debates - all bets are now off. No-one can beat this. Fact. Don't even watch the video - well, do - but Fetalmania is enough, it's incredibly beautiful as a joke. It is a pun in verbal and typographic terms. I salute the writer(s). The highest point of satire has been reached in this issue. Now stop.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Fetalmania
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Lance Armstrong makes a mockery of sports journalism's Jamie Redknapp Syndrome

LANCE Armstrong may not be flavour of the month with the French (or even flavour of the century), but if he keeps up this kind of performance he may just be a fixture on our TV screens when he finally unclips himself from the Look Keo race pedals. (picture by AP)
Video blogging from the Giro d'Italia, the three week grand tour cycling race happening at the minute (and where he has been riding into some good form over the last five days of racing BTW) he's also been showing people around his team Astana's facilities and talking to team mates.
And what an easy TV presence he has. Confident, as you'd expect, but funny, quick and at times sincere in his shout outs to people suffering from cancer. Surely, he has to be the new face of world cycling, whether journalists and a section of the Continental cycling public hate him or not.
More importantly he's a monumental improvement on the athletes turned TV 'personalities' getting gigs on the British small screen - Colin Jackson, Katherine Merry, Stephen Parry and James Cracknell are all literal personality black holes proving what is now known in journalism training circles as the Jamie Redknapp Syndrome, check out the last two posts here, it's worth it.
The first rule of the Redknapp Syndrome states simply that just because you have done it doesn't mean you have any talent in explaining it.
Chapeaux Lance, like everything else, he rewrites the rules.

The Undisputed King of Radio

THE king is back on primetime radio this September - years late - but let's salute Danny Baker nonetheless.
He's taking over the 9am Saturday morning slot that Eamonn Holmes has made a no go zone with his twin inabilities of not being able to read from a script written by the producer or finish a sentence without the words 'so it is.'
It seems BBC Radio 5 controllers have finally worked out that if you want quality radio you hire radio innovators with an inate feel for the medium rather than TV personalities with so-called cross platform appeal.
For this witness the welcoming back of Christian O'Connell while the lamentable radio presences of Holmes and 606's Tim Lovejoy are out the door. (Just Donal McIntyre and Gabby Logan left, the latter is great on TV but so lamentable of a Sunday morning on 5 Live that it's enough to unlapse the most lapsed of Catholic mass goers.)
But Baker's recent sojourn on the Tuesday night 606 Pirate Ship football phone-in (which finished tonight) was a bright, shining beacon of inventive, funny, interactive radio delight.
Baker has always had the ability to conjur radio gold from the smallest of thoughts - what's the wierdest place you've played football*? What are the wierdest things you've used for goals?** What's the most dangerous thing you've ever got into a ground?*** Do you know anyone whose name sounds like a football club?****
Anyone who listens to his Radio London show every day on the net will know how he keeps a cast of returning callers (Keithy Baby et al)and letters from across the globe spinning like plates above his head. Even those of us from outside the capital - hey Beeb there are some of us - are interested in the minutiae of life inside the M25.
His encyclopedic knowledge of rock, befitting an old punk NME hack, saw him get his mate Teletext Alex to do renditions of Bohemian Rhapsody and Slade's Merry Christamas Everyone with every lyric changed to footballers' names.



However, this series, one of his hardy annual questions,(you get used to them after years as a member of the Baker Treehouse listening to his dog and pony shows) got an incredible response. He asked have you ever stolen anything from a football ground and got a story about someone who lifted former Swindon keeper Fraser Digby's tortoise shell comb from his washbag.
He said let's get someone to write a song about that and 29 weeks later a host a parody songs with the title Fraser Digby's Washbag in title were the crowning glory of a show which may have saved the 606 from the banalities of a London-based Liverpool fans calling for Rafa Benitez's head while Alan Green goes off on a sanctimonious rant under the misapprehension that anyone gives a monkey's what he thinks.
Even Mark Lawson discussed it on Radio 4 as did The Word magazine massive.


Oh that radio is always this good, luckily I've now got about a hundred hours of podcasts featuring the Baker which I can listen to over and over again. (Most of the most glorious examples come from an ill-fated attempt at making money from podcasting with the ill-fated download operation Wippit a year or so ago, free downloads here.)
For the motherload of Baker and Danny Kelly's brilliant TalkSport shows from more than 10 years ago (I used to rush home from reporting on Tranmere to hear them) go to this site (more than a 1gb though) to download.
I don't want to let light in on magic but when Danny tugs your coat tail, it's worth listening. The 606 podcasts can be downloaded at iTunes, all 30 hours, you lucky, lucky people.
Roll on 9am on September 5.

* Columbian jungle with cocaine as the lines
** Dead lions
*** An antique blunderbuss and a set of chef's knives
**** Debbie County

The Great Middle Class/ Working Class dilemma

THE working class/ middle class divide is alive and well in many of us.
But tell GM how you simultaneously feel a Trotskyite traitor and a perennial lumpenprole?
Embrace both and reply with your own entries below.

I’m working class because no matter how gourmet a sandwich I have eaten, I’ve always thought it would be better with a layer of Tayto cheese and onion crisps.
I’m middle class because I have often made my own crisps for dinner parties.

I'm working class because I would never cross a picket line.
I'm middle class because I have only ever had to address this dilemma twice, once going into a museum coffee shop. (I am middle class because I use the words 'coffee shop' and 'Habermas' regularly.)

I’m middle class because I know Ute Lemper is well fit and she can sing a bit too.

I'm working class because I see Saturday night talent show TV with the bairn.
I'm middle class because watching ITV feels a bit like voting for Sinn Fein.

I’m working class because sometimes the only thing that’s going to quench my thirst is a pint of brown mix.
I’m middle class because I love the idea of micro breweries.

I’m working class because I have recently drunk Buckfast in my parents’ house.
I’m middle class because I know Shiraz and Syrah are the same grape.

I’m middle class because I absolutely, positively have to have a piano no-one plays in my house but is a great, if cumbersome, display space for some of the Celtic art pieces we got for wedding presents.

I’m working class because I can often feel like a class traitor playing jazz or world music.
I’m middle class because I have seen both Seu Jorge and the Buena Vista Social Club.

I’m working class because I hate people using foreign words in conversation.
I’m middle class because I have recently used the words ‘lingua franca’ to my mates.

I’m working class because I hate twats walking around with (literally) buckets of coffee with plastic lids over the top while out shopping.
I’m middle class because, at home, I grind my own beans (preferably Fair Trade Arabica).

I’m working class because I hate the word ‘movie’.
I’m middle class because I love the working class struggle of Ken Loach movies.

I’m working class because I am insanely proud my granda was an engine driver.
I’m middle class because my parents were teachers and I am a university lecturer.

I’m working class because I love a custard cream/ garibaldi/ Nice biscuit
I’m middle class because I have recently, in a supermarket, used the words: “Those are the same beautiful biscuits we got in that market in Noirmoutier in the Vendee.”

I’m working class because I hate the idea of selective/ private education.
I’m middle class because as soon as we could afford it, we moved into the catchment area of good Catholic schools.

I’m working class because I hate the Tories with every vestige of my being.
I’m middle class because all three councillors in my ward are Tories.

Ultimately, I’m working class because I worry about class.

The Writing Merseyside Project

SINCE viewing the addictive silver bullet mainline hotshot of Merseyside and alcohol in the rare oul times that was Awaydays the movie, GM has been in Scouse pride overload.
GM wants to collect the best pieces of recent journalism about Merseyside and publish them on GM. Please, send any great pieces of writing about the People's Republic to us.
So, here are some great pieces of writing about Liverpool and surrounding districts.
We heartily recommend GM's new Liverpool 1 Bureau chief, Paul Du Noyer's New Statesman piece after we snorted coffee through our nose reading it.
Paul Du Noyer on why Liverpool is the capital of the North, and,
The Guardian's Alexis Petridis on why Liverpool music scenes are unlike any of those in other cities
Kevin Sampson, author and screenwriter of Awaydays on new pictures of Eric's
Mike Chapple on why Merseyside pubs are great

Great Movie Soundtracks

AFTER coming home from watching Awaydays at FACT on Saturday I rather enthusiastically decreed that the film has the best soundtrack of all time.
True, it has some brilliant classics (Joy Division) and some highly desirable rarities (Cure outtake, pre-Midge Ultravox) however on second thoughts caling it the greatest of all time may be overstating the case somewhat.
But what are the best movie soundtracks of all time?
Here's 10 to be getting on with.
Trainspotting
24 Hour Party People
Grosse Point Blank
La Haine French was the language really invented for rap, or perhaps, vice versa
Do The Right Thing bit dated New Jack Swingy, apart from PE
The Harder They Come
Superfly Curtis, who else?
Shaft Isaac, who else?
This is Spinal Tap
Football Factory (shocking version of one of a great trilogy of books)

Away in some danger

KEVIN Sampson’s 1999 novel Awaydays was a firm favourite in Miscellany Towers on its release and indeed we interviewed the author (for the late and much lamented Liverpool listings mag Bigmouth) on its release at the arse end of the last century.
Even then, interviewed in the now closed Letters pub in Birkenhead (a key location in the novel) and before the massive success of Awaydays and his subsequent books, Sampson was intent on turning it into a movie.
And now a decade later he’s managed it and what a great success it is.
Centred around the quest for acceptance from working class football hard knocks of slightly posh 19-year-old West Wirral junior civil servant Paul Carty, Awaydays is ultimately a touching tale of unrequited love(s).
Written by Sampson, produced by David A. Hughes and directed by Pat Holden it is a beautiful evocation of Britain in the bleak early years of Thatcher’s Britain. (I think I may have written almost the same sentence in the original interview.)
Carty, a music and fashion obsessed suburban lad, wants to escape his humdrum existence after the death of his mother by integrating into The Pack, a gang of North End Birkenhead scally Tranmere Rovers hooligans who travel away to matches across the North of England looking for rucks with the skinhead gronks of Huddersfield, Crewe and Doncaster.
Carty’s entry into this world is via the friendship of Mark ‘Elvis’ Elways, a member of The Pack who hides his love of Ezra Pound, Syd Barrett and Sylvia Plath under a façade of Stanley knife drunken thuggery.
He also barely hides his love for Carty under the twin schizophrenic and anachronistic fronts of football violence and gig going in the small bohemian enclaves of late 70s Liverpool.
The film really works in that it ultimately improves the original novel by giving the relationship between Carty and Elvis an emotional depth that wasn’t there in the first place. Given the space to interact dramatically on screen, the dynamics of the relationship become heartbreakingly real and ultimately tragic.
Sampson, a master of Merseyside dialogue who drew favourable comparisons with Irvine Welsh when Awaydays came out, may just have found his real metier in scriptwriting.
The film also takes the book away from the then (in 1999) modish obsessions with the forensic detailing of 1980s Adidas trainers, trackie tops and the finer points of wedge haircuts which became the stock in trade of the legion of copycat hooligan publications that followed it.
It realises the hugely powerful human relationships which drive the story: Carty’s need to find a (good looking) girlfriend to fill the void of his mum, his sister Molly’s hurt at him not giving her more time in their grieving period and Elvis’ tragic inability to come out as gay in the macho confines of the working class environment in which he has grown up.
As Dr Mark Kermode pointed out yesterday on the Five Live film podcast it also works because it seems to have been shot on dull late 70s film which captures the mood of the era perfectly. Claustrophobic and washed out, it captures the bleakness of both the urban deprivation of the North End of Birkenhead, an area of Merseyside which has struggled to escape the pogroms of Thatcher’s social policies to this day.
It also captures the period without any of the knowingly ironic nostalgic tedium of the BBC's Life on Mars/ Ashes to Ashes franchise - the ultimately unrewarding and nonsensically cryptic televisual version of those Spandau Ballet/ Bananarama/ Curiosity Killed the Cat/ ABC reunion packages which routinely plague the arenas of Britain's largest cities.
However, it is in a handful of great performances where the film really succeeds. Nicky Bell and Liam Boyle as Carty and Elvis respectively are a brilliant double act and the latter really captures the torment of crisis stricken working class aesthete headed for smack addiction.
Stephen Graham as The Pack’s leader John Godden could have phoned his performance in from the set of a Guy Ritchie picture, but instead shines once again with a sure handed charisma few actors are blessed with. He is a hugely underestimated actor and holds The Pack together convincingly.
However the best performace is by Mancunian actor Holliday Grainger as Molly. She is just the correct mixture of vulnerable, loving and angry required from the original novel. Incredibly, she looks exactly like I imagined Molly when I read the book first.
Finally, the film has the best soundtrack of any movie, ever. The Bunnymen, early Ultravox and the Cure form the core, and drive the movie in much the same way as Public Enemy did Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
But, the combination of Nicky Bell looking uncannily like Ian Curtis, and the inclusion of tragic singer's music means it’s going to be solid Joy Division for a week or so at Miscellany Towers.
Now that has to be a great outcome of going to see any movie, even one you have waited 10 years for.

Loop's upside your head

IT’S been a testing time at Miscellany HQ recently with work and other issues meaning there's been no writing but we are back in the journalistic saddle today with a glorious two films/ two cinemas/ eight cups of coffee day.
First up was the second viewing of Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop which is a veritable feast of spot on satire and inventive verbal filth. There’s lots of lubricated horse cocks in purviews, policies being fisted to death and the best abuse of a fax machine by the angriest man in Scotland in any film of the year.
In terms of tight plotting and sub plotting there’s not a great deal of depth, it is an extended version of the TV show that spawned it The Thick of It, but in characterisation it is superb.
Peter Capaldi as the astoundingly foul mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker really comes into his boggle-eyed own, bullying Government ministers, ambassadors and journalists in an almost show stealing turn. Chris Addison and the ever wonderful Gina McKee as Government information officers Toby and Judy also qualify for honourable mention.
US improv veteran Zach Woods as the incredibly ambitious and obnoxious Washington state department junior staffer Chad is another revelation, his portrayal of an arse licking, backbiting Ivy League ingrate is spot-on.
Paul Higgins as Jamie, the aforemention angriest Scot, may just reprise his show stealing iPod hating spin meister, but he's still brilliant at it.
However, Tom Hollander as the hapless, ambitious career (New Labour) politician Simon Foster, is the real star of the movie. A vacillating eejit over promoted to Secretary of International Development who helps start a war by spouting metaphoric platitudes on Eddie Mair’s PM programme on Radio 4 is so realistic that it shows that as a satirist Iannucci remain’s the market leader in Britain.
Unable to deal with either his constituents or world leaders, he is an idiot who doesn’t recognise how his ambition to schmooze at the highest levels of the power structures is slowly killing his career.
But then, with Iannucci, his long term collaborator Tony Roche and Peep Show creators Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, this film was always going to be a wonderful, tightly scripted pitch perfect denunciation of the political classes.
The elected politicians are ineffective idiots bullied by unelected spin doctors and in the current climate of Smear-gate followed by Expenses-Gate, surely no film can have come out at a better time. Man oh man, but its prescience would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
GM has seen this film twice in a week and there may be another visit in the not so distant future.