A Thoroughly Splendid Update

Cor blimey, love-a-duck, what a busy time it's been, and continues to be. Life is tremendous, right now. Here's what I've been doing with myself, on a professional level:

SPLENDID!
As you may recall, with your big old brain, there exists a pilot for the Splendid sketch-show, which we screened a few weeks back. Part of the reason we held that screening, was to see how we could strengthen that pilot. As Splendid (with both a big 'S' and a small one) director Dan Turner fully explains on his blog here, we then decided that our preposterous pilot needed a final sprinkle of quick, visual gags, to round it off nicely.

With that in mind, a full day of shooting happened last Friday. While I was unable to attend any of the original, glorious eight-day shoot for the pilot, I was able to go along for the ride on Friday, and help out wherever possible. It was a bruising schedule, to be sure, but so full of fun, stretched out between a greyhound stadium in Essex and Elstree Studios. God, we shot some ridiculous things that day - including a sketch which is arguably the silliest thing we've yet done. It really was a joy to be able to walk up to a monitor, inspect the frame and announce, "That is utterly fucking preposterous"... and for that to be a compliment. What a day. Another highlight was sitting in the back of a car with Splendid man Richard Glover, high on Opal Fruits (known by no-one as Starbursts) and shrieking at each other as the day wore on and hysteria took over.

RADIO!
I'm firing party streamers all over the shop, making it notably harder to tell you about developments in Radioville. I have a sketch on prime-time Radio 4 this very evening, goddammit. At 6.30pm, it's episode four of the excellent comedy series Laurence & Gus: Hearts & Minds. I spent a number of weeks, earlier in the year, bombarding the show with sketches because I love the duo's idiosyncratic style. I was determined to make something stick, and finally, World's Most Placid Man was performed and recorded. Cue cake and bunting.

RED PLANET!
After the excitement of being a finalist in the Red Planet Prize competition and the ensuing workshop with Tony Jordan, I'm now well into the hard graft of developing ideas for new TV malarkey. A fun process, to be sure.

TEMPTATION!
Screeching Satan on a cock-shaped pogostick! Tempting Fates, the online drama series which I've co-written and storylined, is now in its second week of filming. It's being made by the wonderful people at Eye Film & TV, and will be visible and audible via the WWW later in the year. I'm loving what I've seen of the cast, and can't wait to see the results. Essentially a black comedy, Tempting Fates is about three female Fates, who sashay down to Earth in order to murder various human targets. My kinda concept.

JOURNALISM!
The first part of my Doctor Who Magazine interview with Tom Baker seems to have gone down well, which is a relief. The second part will be in the next issue, out August 20. Whereas Part One focused primarily on Tom's memories of Doctor Who, Part Two is much more about him as a person. This issue will also feature my studio report from recording sessions for the new BBC Audio drama Hornets' Nest, which sees Tom reprising his role as the Fourth Doctor. Brilliant. Lately, I've also interviewed Ozzy Obsourne and Spooks' Richard Armitage. Tremendous distractions from open Final Draft files, all.

In case you were wondering, the above photograph of Ozzy and I happened seconds after I asked him to tell me the bat-eating story, one more time.