Yoink!

Still can’t quite believe it– we won a BAFTA!  Thank God my wife forced me to go to the ceremony!

Thanks to BAFTA for the nomination and the judges for ruling in our favour. I worship ‘Peep Show’, am hugely enjoying ‘The Inbetweeners’ and the only thing better than the first series of ‘Outnumbered’ was the second series of ‘Outnumbered’. It really was the “group of death”, and I can’t believe we came through unscathed. A small mercy was that the awesome ‘Pulling’ was not, for some unfathomable reason, in the running. Had it been, well…I don’t like to think about it.

Thanks to Talkback, and to Channel 4 who stood by the show when no-one would have blinked if they walked away early on.  Thanks also to all those online who passed on their congrats, and apologies to those whose enjoyment of the TV coverage was spoiled by my premature Twittering (one of the unforseen hazards of the Twitter deal, I guess). Also, sorry if you posted a complimentary tweet and I didn’t get back to you. At one point they were just gushing in and it was impossible to keep up.

Of course, a salty salute to the cast and crew for all their hard work over the last few years. It’s really very moving for me, seeing a large group of professionals working as hard as they possibly can to make some ridiculous concept of mine come to life. Thank you all, whatever series you worked on.

Last but not least, thanks to all the people who came and sat in the audience and provided us with our laugh track. Every so often I’ll hear the old “I don’t need to be told where to laugh” line trotted out, but those who utter it are missing the point. The audience is not there to tell you where to laugh, the audience is there to remind us to be funny. And you have done your job admirably. Because, well, I don’t know if I mentioned it or not, but…we won a BAFTA!

At last! It’s my official charity retweeting policy

I have been receiving a few requests for retweets from people on Twitter who are engaged in various worthwhile charity doings, and up until now I’ve been dodging a decision on what to do about them. Sir Stephen has this to say about it, and my problems are similar, though obviously on a much smaller scale.

Basically, if you do one, you have to do them all, and if I do them all, eventually my Twitter feed will just be an endless stream of charity requests, and that’s no fun. Also, it won’t be much use to the use to the people who are looking for publicity if people start unfollowing me as a result of the flood.

So because I’m lazy, and not clever, I’m just going to copy what Mr.Fry’s doing.  Put the hashtag #glinnerRT somewhere in the body of your post and every week I’ll pick one at random to retweet. Can’t say fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff….can’t say fffffffffffffffffffffffffff…can’t say ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff….can’t say ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffairer thhhhan ttttthat!

(Going to do them every Wed)

Auto-Tune The News makes bad news feel so good

(Thanks to @telmekus for the tip)

Don’t fear the baby preacher!

This baby’s satirical take on religion rivals the work of the late, great Bill Hicks. (via Videogum, again)

Christian Mime. As unpleasant as it sounds.

This is one of the worst things ever. What are they doing? As Videogum pointed out, “Where’s ‘trapped in a box’? Where’s the OBJECT WORK?”

There’s a moment about 3:48 in, where you realise the thing ends at 7: 11. That really shook me, that bit.

Oh, if you’re ever interested in hiring K&K, here’s their website.

‘Snakes on A Plane’, TV Edit

I have watched this many times now, waiting for it to be less funny, and it’s just NOT HAPPENING.  ‘Snakes On A Plane’ was interesting for, like, a second, and then it was the most boring thing in the world. But a DVD of this TV edit would always be within reach at my house.

(via Paul Scheer)

A special experience in moviegoing entertainment!

There are so many things to love in this trailer, it’s impossible to know where to begin. No, I know! The film is set in 1994! (Thanks, Christine!)

Jaw-dropping behaviour from The Daily Mail

This is incredible. While we await the response of the PCC to our petition protesting the Express/Dunblane scandal that the press won’t cover (STILL not as important to the broadsheets as Sachsgate, apparently), here’s a piece of mindblowing cynicism from the Daily Mail to take up the slack.

Apparently, the Daily Mail in Ireland and the Daily Mail in the UK are currently running seperate campaigns about the HPV Vaccine. Nothing unusual about that, you might think. It’s an important subject and the Daily Mail has a duty to be concerned.   But, y’see, ha, ha, here’s the thing.

The two editions of the paper are running campaigns both for and against the vaccine. That’s right, in Ireland, the newspaper is very firmly for it, but in the UK, on the other hand…. you get stories such as this.

Over to Martin Robbins…

“Are they insane?! They’re printing scare stores about the dangers of the HPV vaccine in one country, while simultaneously campaigning for its introduction in another. It’s so absurdly cynical that I can’t quite form the words to convey just how shocked I am by this. Even by the piss-poor journalistic standards of the Daily Mail, this takes quite some beating.

What this means is that those of us who believed that the Daily Mail had some editorial, ideological stance against certain vaccines (such as MMR) were in fact wrong. The Daily Mail position on vaccines is whatever sells newspapers – and if those positions are completely self-contradictory, or might cause a bit more cancer in the readership, then who cares, as long as the advertisers are happy?

In many ways, this is worse than being anti-vaccine. Anti-vaccinationists may be cranks, but at least they ultimately care about the people affected. The revelation that the Mail is pushing two contradictory positions on a major public health issue on either side of the Irish Sea, proves once and for all that they don’t give a crap about the impact such stories may have on their readers. It’s a whole new level of sick. It’s crossing the line where misguided becomes truly evil.”

As Ben Goldacre, author of ‘Bad Science’ put it, “looks like the reasoning is to attack any government healthcare decision by pretending it’s dangerous.”

Thanks again, unaccountable press!

(Props to all on Twitter who helped with this post.)

Songsmith tackles the global financial meltdown

(If you don’t know what Songsmith is, read this first.)

(via David McC)

Why they want to make it a crime to take photographs of the police

Justin McKeating found this interesting picture of a police medic at work: “Now, I’ve never had any medical training so can someone more knowledgeable please tell me what the above procedure is called and what it’s used for in a medical capacity?” Link to post. (Link to Amjamjazz’z original photo)

(Thanks to @loveandgarbage for the tip. Justin is @chickyog )

Of course, everyone’s talking about this. Another thing they would have preferred you hadn’t seen.  I guess if I was a policeman, I too would like some privacy when I’m walking down the road with a stick.)