OK, the title’s misleading 
Chris Sharp and myself were caught on film for a segment on our local news ‘Look North’ on overcrowded trains. View the clip here, complete with me mopping my brow in the heat!
(Actually, the train wasn’t that overcrowded – there were odd seats everywhere, the most distracting bit was the lass holding the camera who kept shoving her arse in my face.)
There have been odd rumours and partial-stories floating around and I couldn’t really post about it until I was sure and filming had happened, buuuuuut now things have (or haven’t) happened…
I was contacted last week by a researcher from TV comedy pop quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks regarding them possibly using Obvious Pseudonym’s non-hit Keith Chegwin For A Day. Once we’d picked ourselves up off our collective floors, of course we said yes, signed the release forms, and hastily mixed a reasonable version of it (which you can download as a 320kbps MP3 here – lots of thanks to the people who listened and gave feedback on the mix, it’s quite hard trying to polish a turd).
Anyway, we’ve been waiting for filming to happen to see if it would actually get used, trying not to count chickens. Some may even say we got excited, and had a brief band meeting in Harry’s Bar in Wakefield to celebrate.
I got word this morning though that it wasn’t used due to time constraints, although it’s possible that we’ll get a mention in the ‘Missing Lyrics’ round (the airdate is Thursday 29th November, 9pm BBC2). Oh well, another rock’n'roll dream shattered!
However, on the OP front I can tell you that we’re in the process of sorting out the EP which will have the new mix of Cheggers on it, along with Disco Sauce and a couple of other tracks penned with the lineup of myself on keyboards and anything with a screen, The Man In Black on guitar, and Sminky Hotsauce plucking the thick strings of his love-bass. Depending on our collective workloads we might have this sorted by the first week in December, along with the new website and stuff. You may even be able to buy it as a proper limited-edition CD! Oh my goodness! You are spoiled!
In the meantime, if you’re on Facebook you might want to join The Cathedral Of Obvious Pseudonym, a support group for like-minded OP fans who really should know better.
Keep rockin’.
Many, many years ago – well, 1987ish – I discovered this programme on Channel 4 called The Orchestra, which consisted of a story told in mime and slapstick centered around a conductor called Julian Joy-Chagrin. The programme was prone to being shifted in favour of cricket, football, racing, well pretty much anything, so I ended up only seeing two or three episodes.
Since then, I have been on the search for copies of the programme. Tonight I was pottering around a few torrent sites when I thought I’d have a look (finding nothing as usual), but one thing led to another and I googled to see if I could find a DVD. Imagine my utter surprise and delight when I found Greg Donner’s website complete with downloads of all 10 episodes! Hurrah – but go easy on his bandwidth (for VHS rips they really aren’t bad quality either).
It is quite hard to find anything online about this show, so it’s a real find to not just get episode lists, but the episodes themselves.
(btw – in case you were wondering, the copyright on this is probably something of a murky area – the company owning the rights wents titsup and under Israeli law it’s got very confused!)
Peter Tuddenham has died, the voice of Blake’s 7 computers ‘Orac‘, ‘Zen’ and ‘Slave’. He’d had a good innings – he was 88 after all, but will still be sorely missed.
Myself and Matt met him at a London Comic Con a few years back, and he was a really nice bloke.
Got a call from Nicky as I was leaving work to say that the Sky+ box (Pace PVR2) was stuck in standby, and a power-cycle wouldn’t fix it. Got home and after researching lots of webpages about it I eventually came upon the conclusion that the HD was shagged. Popped another few drives in there and it’s still doing the same thing, so I’m thinking it’s probably the decrypt stuff that’s gone (it successfully goes to a firmware update holding down ‘Back Up’ on poweron but times out, and also won’t do a total reset/housekeeping on the drive).
Anyway, I’ve nabbed another Pace from eBay, a PVR3 in this case, and we’ll see what that brings. I’ll also haul down the spare old Amstrad Sky box from the loft – it should work with the Sky+ card as it stands to get the FTA channels.