Happy new year, although I'm not really feeling that good to be honest after downing half a large bottle of WKD last night whilst watching Jool's Holland's what I believe to be 16th annual Hootenanny which was pretty enjoyable.
The bands and artists performing included Martha and The Vandellas who sang just about all of their biggest hits, Sam Sparro, Adele who did two songs including a version of the Etta James song from the Diet Coke ad in the mid-90s, The Ting Tings who did three of their hits, Duffy who did the same although luckily "Warwick Avenue" wasn't one of them, but she was joined towards the end of "Mercy" by a certain Lenny Henry.
There was also Dizzee Rascal with Chrome and Calvin Harris, The Hold Steady, and special guest appearances from Dave Edmunds, and Annie Lennox who performed her 1992 solo debut "Why" and an otherwise embarassing rendition of "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from the musical "Showboat". Ugh.
Other stand out performances were Finnish Harmonica act Svangg and top British female soul vocalist Ruby Turner who looked stunning as always.
Those in the audience included Jool's mate Rowland Rivron, Jo Brand, Lenny Henry (although his wife wasn't too well) who whenever I see on television, I end up shouting "OOOOOOOHHHH-KAAAAAAAAYYYYY!" in the same way as his "Algernon" character from Tiswas.
There were also appearances from Arthur Smith, Jon Culshaw and Dara O'Briain who it seems was quite a big fan and worshipper of Dizzee Rascal.
Although the funniest guest had to be Al Murray who whenever Jools went up to him and asked him a question, his only response would be "Hootenanny!".
Overall it was a pretty enjoyable show.
I've just had a gander at Off The Telly's Review of 2008 and I pretty much agree with most of the points made about the year's television such as the embarrasment and contrived rubbish that was "Brittania High", Paul Merton's rather awkward improvisation show "Thank God You're Here" Graham Norton's forgettable "The One And Only", and Peter Kay's two hour advert.
On the positive side there was "The Kevin Bishop Show", SCD, The X Factor and even better was the second series of "Britain's Got Talent" although I think there's more to it than just Ant & Dec presenting even if they add more fun to the show than most other presenters on shows of this sort.
And the comments about the media fallout really are spot on as I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Emily Maitlis's reading of Frankie Boyle's joke about the queen
on Newsnight was embarrassing.
Then again if it was Gavin Esler, or Jeremy Paxman who was
interviewing Mark Thompson then I probably would have found it hilarious.
On a slightly low note there are a few videos on the home page including one from TV Cream looking back at the people from television we've lost in the last year which is brilliantly put together.
However there's also videos of Lee And Herring's reunion for a special performance of TMWRNJ at the Lyric Theatre and proves that they've still got it after 10 years and make perfect comments about how they got away with stuff on their Sunday lunchtime show that they would probably get suspended or sacked for now.
Although the reason they got away with it all was probably because then BBC 2 controller Jane Root wouldn't bat an eyelid to the show.
The performance starts off with a live rendition of the theme tune done in a distictive style although it's nowhere near as good as the original Richard Thomas composed and performed theme from the original TV series giving quite a nod to Ray Monk's theme from the ITV daytime series of a similar title.
Ray being not just a composer of many superb sig tunes, but also has the ability to play the William Tell Overture on his teeth.
I would say however that the theme tune to TMWRNJ was one of the stand out parts of the programme and grabbed my attention first out of everything else although I was disapointed when they cut it down in series 2 despite it overall being funnier than series 1 where they just got on with the jokes and cut down on the magazine type parts of the show that made the first few programmes awkward.
In fact I reckon that tune's even better than any of the stuff Richard did for "Jerry Springer The Opera".
Despite the loss of the False Rod Hull series 2 was entertaining although the reason for the character's absence was because unfortunately the real Rod Hull died the week before the first show went out and they thought it wouldn't be very good to include a new set of sketches featuring Kevin Eldon impersonating him trying to get "free green jelly".
However Rod made a brief appearance at the end of the series and it was all done in good taste as they never directly made fun of the real Rod, to the point of getting him on the final Fist Of Fun to confront his imposter.
However another of the series highlights was when the duo looked into comedy punchlines with the funniest being "And Then I Got Off The Bus".
One person who caught onto that joke was one of my dad's work colleagues
John Cornwall who brought it up whilst I was having a browse on the duos website
in my Dad's office there.
Bearing in mind that at the time we didn't have internet access at home.
The series was pretty much a talking point at school during it's transmission and even people such as Steve Wright on Radio 2 admitted they were fans of the duo.
And on the Circle Line pub crawl in November last year our very own Matty ID said he was a fan of the duo all those years ago.
I'll be seeing Richard doing his own stuff in Leicester Square later this year with a performance of his latest show "The Headmaster's Son" although he's also performing it at the Penny Theatre in Canterbury so in the not so ideal situation of returning here after finishing University, I hope he makes that place a regular stop off point.
It's also worth showing this very funny clip of him dealing with a very unpleasant heckler.
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