Avatar BBC New Sitcom of the Year 2016 Awards

Good Evening and welcome to the very exciting but very poorly worded ‘BBC New Sitcom of the Year 2016 Awards’. We are judging the suggestions for sitcoms provided by you, the general public, and we are down to the last three.

There will, of course, be a very extensive and elaborate voting process which will commence once the three entries have been revealed. All you need to do is press one of the conveniently-placed buttons on your remote control to vote for your favourite.

Here are the final three entries for your consideration:

BookChop

Deirdre Hanginglass has a dream. Her dream is to own her very own bookshop in the centre of Ipswich. After gaining a wealth of knowledge following her stint in other shops, and with a hefty loan from the bank, she thinks she has found the ideal place. The only problem is that she can only afford half the rent.

Enter Leanne Pandonberry. Leanne is an aspiring butcher who has worked her way through butcher college to gain the qualifications needed. After her Auntie Maeve passed away, leaving a handsome gift, Leanne too seeks shelter within the confines of Ipswich city centre only to find prices just a little too much. Deirdre and Leanne decide to join forces and open the UK’s very first joint butcher book shop.

How can they possibly hope to cope working in opposite ends of the work spectrum? Can uptight Leanne ever hope to mesh with the laid-back antics of Deirdre? And who owns the mysterious milk crate in the back alley?

Dracu-later

Dracula is dead; killed by Jonathan Harker, crumbled to dust. Only he’s not. It was all an act to make everyone go away and leave him alone.

The outside world just wasn’t made for the Count and his crazy hoardes. All he wanted was to suck a couple of necks and nothing more. And with this in mind, he disappears into the shadowy forests surrounding his castle.

That is until he returns. The year is 1987 and life has moved on. The relatives of Van Helsing live on, unaware of Dracula’s continued life. The Count has met a most fortunate woman, Mabel, and following a successful romance moved in with her in a comfy semi-detached hovel in Middlesbrough. The house next door is up for sale and following a successful bid at a local auction the property is sold to… Milo and Janice Van Helsing!

Dracula now not only has to struggle with living in suburbia, and keep his job at Rumbelows, but also keep his true identity hidden from his new neighbours. Can he maintain his begonias and stop himself from sucking the local cats dry?

It would appear as though our final entry, ‘Apple Jews’, about a group of sexy young Jewish men and women working in an Apple store, has had to be disqualified for blatant product placement.

That therefore leaves only two entries in the running.

If you would like to vote for ‘BookChop’ please press the ‘slow’ button on your remote. If you would prefer to opt for ‘Dracu-later’ then please caress the button that looks like a meteor crashing into the sea.

Avatar What did you just say about beavers?

Reuben approached me last weekend because he had recently had a dream that had perplexed him and needed to know what it meant.

This is mostly his dream with details but with a smudge of embellishment on my part:

“Reuben is walking around school with his new fictional best friend, Daniel. They had decided to walk back home through the woods once the school day was over. The woods, though dark, were still light enough to be unthreatening. They had gone halfway through when they heard a strange noise and a bright blue flash, and stood at the base of a tree was a beaver.

They tried to get near but each time the beaver disappeared and reappeared in a different part of the woods. Sometimes the beaver would appear in different attire, and in particular as a Mexican. Reuben and Daniel split up and in doing so, one of them managed to grab the beaver. As the other approached, the bright blue light flashed and they had magically been transported to ancient Egypt.

It was at this point they realised it was a magical, time-travelling beaver.

The animal was tired; time-travelling is a very tiring experience. The only way to re-charge the beaver was to feed him a particular type of wood. Once this was done, Reuben and Daniel had to try to convince the beaver that they needed to go home, which was difficult because the beaver was worshipped as a God in this period of history.

After a fair amount of tussling, the beaver accidentally transports them to the post apocalyptic world of 2704. Then, through a series of mishaps, they also take in the sights of the Jurassic era, the Romans, pirates, Aztecs, Victorian era Britain, World War II and the 1980’s.

Eventually though they get home and decide to keep the beaver as a pet. It turns out he is called Harold. His full name is Harold “Carrot” Bevoid. In his time he drives a Beaver Delorean. His time is not specifically mentioned so they do not know what year he has time-travelled from.”

Something to do with puberty perhaps?

Avatar My Morning Snap-It

I love blurry photos. For some reason they really resonate with me and even though you may have spent ages keeping your hand steady to get that perfect shot only for it to look as though my eyes have photographed it for you (my sight is really bad…) it still makes me titter like a dormouse.

Yesterday Siobhan and I drove 175 odd miles to Manchester to watch My Morning Jacket. I took a handful of snaps of the gig but this in particular is my absolute favourite:

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It made getting back at 2:40am all the better for knowing I had this photo saved in my phone and in my heart.

It’ll never be on the front of a Hallmark card, which is for the best really… you’d feel fairly unappreciated if you received a birthday card with this on the front.

Avatar Progress report

Mr. Chang, the shady Chinese businessman financing Pouring Beans Productions’ new documentary film, has now seen a rough edit of “Railways with Smidge Manly” and discussed with me some changes that are still necessary.

Clearly the public are clamouring for the release of this important film, and any delay is going to be met with considerable impatience, so to help tide us over until it’s ready to go, here is a look inside the editing process. This is, in its entirety, the list of changes that I made, explaining Mr Chang’s instructions in full.

  • Wobbly –> red train pat etc. Vertically. + coming out of station at CP
  • –> –> –>
  • Platform-train tighter or clip inb. ? straight to speech on 2nd shot
  • Barry rustling – filter out?
  • Timetables – wind noise – change for station
  • Voiceover still not good (headphones)
  • Longer gap or music between good email and people we met.

I hope this sheds some light on the philosophical and ethical issues with which we are wrestling in trying to perfect our artistic vision.

Avatar Unusual Superheroes: The Car Man

I have a mild infatuation with comics and Kevin’s favourite, the graphic novel, but I have to admit that I was completely bamboozled by the superhero commonly known as ‘Car Man’.

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From what I can gather his special powers appear to consist of being handsome, oozing broodiness and the ability to seduce both men and women. He likes to walk around without a shirt on on hot summer days and stir up trouble. I expect he’s one of those troubled superheroes that keeps cropping up, with a tragic back story that is only hinted at rather than fully explained. That’s why he keeps dancing. Why does he keep dancing? He’s troubled. You see, it makes perfect sense.

His misfortunes continue when he struggles to hold his drink down, a bit like me after a pint and a half of cheeky dragon, and fails when trying to emulate his hero, Tyler Durden, from the popular book and film ‘Fight Club’ during his own fight club. The Car Man cannot live with himself knowing he sucks at the one thing that should ultimately prove him as the manliest man alive and thus gets shot by some bint on a staircase. In his final moments, the Car Man wishes he had better super powers because broodiness cannot stop a bullet. That’s why I always walk around with a pan lid strapped to my chest.

I don’t think that children will ever want to be the Car Man because he’s not fun like Spiderman or has gadgets like Batman. Ultimately he will struggle for mass appeal which is why you won’t see me with his confused, sweaty face on my lunchbox.

Avatar Sneaky peeky

Yes! It’s true: Smidge Manly, host of the hit TV show “Essex Highway”, will shortly return to our screens in an exciting new documentary, Railways with Smidge Manly.

In this new programme of as-yet unknown length, Smidge goes on a personal journey to discover the answers to questions he’s had since he was a child; questions like: what are railways? Who put them there? How do trains work? And can they feel love?

Here’s a sneaky peeky trailer.

(You can’t watch the Sneaky Peeky trailer any more because the sound was a bit rubbish and the actual film is now online. Why don’t you go watch the film instead?)

Avatar A lost classic

Over the years, our various Film Production Companies – Constantly Falling ProductionsAl and Chris ProductionsChris Productions and the world famous Pouring Beans Productions – have turned out one classic movie hit after another. But talk amongst fans often turns to the story, told in hushed tones around camp fires late at night, that there is another film that was made but never released because Al lost it.

Well, those stories are true, and what’s more, Al has found the missing film under a selection of gentlemen’s art pamphlets in his attic. For the first time in a decade, Al n Chris’s Big Day Out has been unearthed. It’s a thrilling story of teleportation, time travel and evil twins.

Obviously I can’t post it here ahead of its Leicester Square premiere, but I have chosen a short clip from the pre-titles part of the film that shows what an incredible find it really is. In the space of just 24 seconds, this clip contains brilliant acting, exciting CGI graphics, a powerful original musical score and some nudity. Enjoy!