Serious about saving 6Music?

Well it’ll take more than a Twibbon….

Because of all the protestations so far The BBC Trust, who are the people with the ultimate say on what gets closed (and in fact the people that kicked this whole sorry mess off), have said this:

"if we find that there's massive public concern that we need to take account of, then we will go back to the Director-General to rethink the strategy."  - Sir Michael Lyons, Chair of the BBC Trust

They will not be able to close 6Music if there is enough additional pressure not to.

IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT SAVING 6MUSIC YOU MUST SEND AN EMAIL TO THE BBC TRUST REGISTERING YOUR COMPLAINT.

There are two ways you can do this.

Either…..

Go to the website the lovely people at 38degrees have set up to make it ridiculously easy to submit your protest in under one minute. Just follow this link.  http://www.38degrees.org.uk/email-the-BBC

Or……

My very limited experience of trying to get people to protest online is that some people are wary of entering an email address anywhere so just send your own email to The BBC Trust directly.

That’s what I did 9 days ago.

The email address is:

Trust.Enquiries@bbc.co.uk

My original email & the response from The Trust are below.

Feel free to cut & paste it into your own email (though it’d be better if you wrote your own text) just please, please, please send one.

If you have a “Save 6Music” twibbon but don’t send an email then you are an appalling person and I hope a tramp is sick on your shoes.

Conversely, if you do send one you rule and I hope you get snogged by Johnny Depp/ R. Patz/ Shakira/ Natalie Portman/ the star shag of your dreams.

Love to your mothers.

Doug

---

From: Doug Segal  
Sent: 02 March 2010 17:54
To: Michael Lyons & PA; Richard Tait; Jeremy Peat; Mehmuda Mian; David Liddiment; Janet Lewis-jones; Rotha Johnston; Patricia Hodgson; Alison Hastings; Anthony Fry; Diane Coyle; ZZChitra Bharucha; Trust Enquiries; SR Consultation
Subject: Re: Mooted closure of 6 Music

I'd like to register very strongly my objection to any closure of 6Music

It is absurd to say that commercial stations will fill the void it will leave behind.

Commercial stations are just that - Commercial, they will only produce programming that will maximise listening figures and therefore be appealing to advertisers.

It's for the same reason that commercial stations are failing to drive uptake of digital radio - why invest in a sector when there is scarce advertising revenue to fund it.

Furthermore the history of EVERY advertising funded media channel in this country shows that they have very little interest in broadcasting outside of the conurbations.

The ONLY way to guarantee that, for example, the people of East Anglia get a station that champions non main stream emerging music is if it is provided by a public service broadcaster like the BBC.

Please don't do this.

Regards.

Doug Segal

Their response was:

---

From: Trust Enquiries [mailto:Trust.Enquiries@bbc.co.uk]
Sent: 10 March 2010 18:09
To: Doug Segal
Subject: RE: Mooted closure of 6 Music

Thank you for contacting the BBC Trust, the governing body of the BBC, with your concerns about the future of the radio station 6Music.

As you may be aware, the proposal to close the station has come from the Director-General Mark Thompson as part of a wide ranging review of the BBC’s future strategy.

In July last year the BBC Trust challenged the Director-General to address questions about the scope of the BBC’s activities, focusing on how the BBC can most effectively deliver its public service mission and meet audience needs as well as deliver value for money. The full strategy, which is now available on the Trust’s website, is the Executive’s response to this challenge.

As part of his proposals to the Trust, which are focused on increasing the quality of the BBC’s output and setting a new direction for the BBC, the Director-General has proposed closing 6Music. The Trust is now consulting on all of these proposals, and we welcome your views.

We will of course take your email as a contribution to our consultation. Should you wish to know more about the overall strategy review and our public consultation, there is more information on the Trust’s website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/strategy_review/index.shtml

To be clear, a decision on whether or not to close 6Music will need to be made by the BBC Trust and we will consider any formal proposal to do so very carefully.

Our consultation is open until 25 May 2010.

BBC Trust Unit

Google - All hail our future overlords

Among other things, Soph's agency are one of the biggest mobile communications agencies in the UK and they have a guy who's job is bascially just to be a "pre-eminent expert" on what's going on in the world of "mobile".
This is an email he sent round the agency a couple of days ago.
Does anyone else find all this slightly creepy & ominous? Especially the bits I've highlighted.....


 From: James Tagg
    Sent: 12/14/2009 10:46 AM GMT
    To: ALL STAFF MEDIAVEST_SMG_TEAM_GBR; ALL STAFF STARCOM_SMG_TEAM_GBR
    Subject: Google's march into Mobile


Google are on record as stating that they believe most of their revenues
will come from Mobile in the future but up until recently it's been hard to
see how they intend to achieve that. However, the last month has seen some
significant developments in their push into this emerging area. A few of
the key highlights.


1. Their acquisition of Admob last month - One of the largest mobile
display networks in a $750 million deal.


2. Last weeks announcement that they are testing an app called Google
"Goggles" - a visual search tool


3. They are developing their own branded phone and are likely to sell this
direct to the consumer in early 2010 & bypass the Mobile Networks.


Google Goggles is arguably the most interesting development of the year in
mobile. It is a very simple idea. Point your camera phone at anything
(building, car, product) and it will tell you about it (what it is, prices,
reviews etc).  While this technology isn't that new, Google have all the
assets needed to make this a one stop shop which hasn't been achievable so
far by the likes of Wikitude, Nearest Tube or Snaptell. It's all about
having control over a vast database of information which they already
possess in the following Google properties.


Identifying buildings - Streetview image database
Prices - Google shopping comparison
Locations/Maps - Google Maps
Reviews - Google Reviews


They have actually had to come out and state that they won't allow the app
to work on identifying people until they have investigated the impact on
privacy. In theory you could snap a picture of anyone and as long as there
was an image of them in the public domain you could get info sent back on
who they were.


The App will launch on the Android platform (itself a brainchild of
Google). No news yet about what it means to advertisers but I'd guess they
will charge for enhanced search listings, delivering coupons etc. Android
will get a lot of noise next year as we see the conversation about
Smartphones broadening & moving away from the IPhone mania we have seen in
2009.


So Google will have a firm grip on Mobile Display, Mobile Search and may
even start to sell "new" space on their Google phone in return for
subsidised calls/texts. There is no mistake that they are manoeuvring
themselves into a position where they can control all areas of a persons
interaction with mobile without interference from outside parties. Don't be
surprised if they start making noises around SMS marketing - something that
is universal to all handsets.

3 light bulb moments in 1 day

Last Weds I slapped my forehead & said “Doh! Of course!” 3 times.

I am going to share those thoughts with you in the hope you don’t say “God, you’re stupid – Everyone knows that”

They are a bit trivial if I’m honest….

1. August 2005. I am playing 14 nights at The Baron’s Court Theatre, London.

It’s going well.

It’s the second week & thanks to a big poster ad campaign on the London Underground (click here to see it) we have totally sold out all 14 nights - 1st show to do that at that theatre for 17yrs so I’m feeling pretty good about it.

My friend Luke Jermay (this is Luke: LUKE’S SHOW ON THE STRIP IN VEGAS He has very, very, very many excellent tat’s) called my to ask if I could let him have some ticket for that evening but there wasn’t a seat left.

The theatre is sorta “in the round” (well, 3 sides) & every evening I would come out to centre stage, nod & say “good evening” to the stage left, then centre, then stage right.

That evening I walk out and this happens: “Good evening” turn, “Good evening” turn, “Good Evening Derren Brown”.

Luke had turned up with Derren & a 3rd guy I didn’t know & got 3 returns.

I was told afterwards that Derren walked in wearing a hat, scarf & overcoat in the middle of a scorching August day, walked to his seat, then stood up & took them off.

Not conspicuous at all then.

They didn’t stick around after the show as they were filming on the other side of London afterwards.

Anyway…. What occurred to me today was that when I spoke to Luke (who was writing Derren’s matireal at the time – Trick of the Mind seasons 2, 3 & 4) the next day & asked him who the 3^rd guys was he was really cagy, wouldn’t tell me & fobbed me off with “he’s a friend of ours”.

It occurs to me now – That was probably Derren’s well hidden boyfriend.

And I couldn’t describe him if my life depended on it.

2. Bob Kane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_kane) always claimed the visual inspiration for The Joker was Gwynplaine the character hideously mutilated as a boy as a punishment for his fathers crimes so that his face was perminatly disfigured into a rictus grin (picture of Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine here: http://bit.ly/6zHgX) from the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs. Much of the storyline is about his love for a blind girl who, alone, isn’t repelled by his face.

This film by the way is wonderful & freely available, in episode format, on youtube so you should watch it.

Anyways…..

Up until the movie The Dark Knight Returns all of the origin stories for the Joker run something like this:

Small time villain called the Red Hood steal diamonds (in some versions he is blackmailed into this by the mob holding his family hostage), pursed by Batman into a chemical factory, falls into a vat of acid/unknown chemical and emerges with his skin bleached white, his hair turned green, his facial muscles stretched into a permanent smile. This, not unreasonable turns him totally psychotic & he fixates on Batman being the cause of his disfigurement.

Chris Nolan however introduces facial scars & some sort of uncertain act of violence as the cause (The Joker tells two conflicting stories but either or neither could be true).

Can you say “homage” people…… Can’t believe I’ve only just worked that out…..

3. and most mundane of all….How cool would a traditional style tattoo of Golden Age Wonder Woman look?:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijFq_xbPaxxfWbyrqN7cxkbr0TtHRoyBHcB-D54C3tfcDdmczA__C35TjMF53QkE-ptgOnQ2EEavKxZbURl5nV4won5NNeJxAkIKpNvmYW2C_EEG44y5EegLtiKHkynyOcHqT1wqbwORk/s400/wonder+woman.JPG

http://michaelmay.us/09blog/09/0912_wwmontgomery.jpg

This all seemed so interesting when I started…. Sorry.

Best Football Day Ever.

Firstly, don't panic if you know nothing about football, while it would enhance your enjoyment of this post you'll still get it if you think the offside rule is something to do with measuring things

Let us begin...

In my previous pampered existence as a director of the UK’s largest Ad agency I was soooooooo spoiled.

Because I was personally responsible for spending around £90 million on advertising a year, media owners (newspapers, TV channels etc) would wine & dine me and invite me to fabulous things I could never hope to attend or do for free & spoil me while I was there.

The extreme end of the scale was:

3 all (yes ALL nudge, wink) expenses paid 5 star days in Amsterdam for Queens Day with chauffeurs, dinner & Supperclub etc & 4 days skidooing across Lapland staying in luxury lodges on the way.

Before you start….

a)     Yes…. I know. I think it’s obscene too, & did at the time, but would you honestly have turned it down?

b)     I’m now an struggling artist making, in a good year, about the same as a teacher (but I’m much, much happier).

c)      I did some Really Good Things^TM while in advertising. I reduced deaths by kitchen fires by 30% with the work I did on Fire Kills. That means I saved about 200 lives & I personally, on my own, bullied people into donating around £32 million worth of free advertising space for Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign across three years – They were my pro bono client.  I always felt that, because I was helping to safe guard the nations breasts, I should have been given a little card that, on production, would mean that women would have to show me their breasts by law. Oddly no one else did.

Anyway.  One of the more down to earth (relatively) perks was that, as all the major media owners maintained hospitably boxes at all the other London clubs & literally no one else in the advertising industry supported them, I would get taken to see my beloved Charlton Athletic get humiliated at all the London away matches.   

They’d struggle to fill all 10 places (because it was Charlton…) so I’d always be able to take Soph with me.

Despite what she may claim, Soph knows less about football than the average Tescos trolley boy knows about Sanskrit & actually cares less – but she does like a nice day out.

So….  One of the very last jollies I had, just as my mind reading business had got to the point where I was just about earning enough to live (frugally at that stage) on, I got taken to see Charlton play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on 22^nd Jan 2006.

I remember the date because I handed in my notice the next day & went full time as a performer.

The way these days worked was like this:

• 11am – Arrive. Get taken up to dining room thingy with view over the ground where bacon butties, fancy pastries & coffee etc would be waiting for us.
• 12pm – Start drinking for free.
• 1pm – Sit down for fancy assed dinner. More drinking. The “Ladbroke’s Girls” come round the tables collecting your betting slips
• Kick off – Take your seat in the stands, next to the directors.
• Half time – Go in for cheese, biccys & more alcohol
• Second half – Back in the stands.
• Full time – Go in for more free alcohol & collect any winning bets you may have made.

Fucking ACE day I think you’ll agree.

For me as a young lad growing up on a council estate in East London this would have been beyond my wildest dreams.

As a spoilt adult – I still thought is was bloody amazing & was very, very grateful.

This then is our, very high, base line for Best Football Day Ever. It get’s soooooooo much better :)

Some context for those of you who are not football statto’s (me included).

a)     At this point no one had taken a single point away from Stamford Bridge since Arsenal the previous April. I’m not sure, 11 home games into the season, if Chelsea had conceded more than about 3 goals at home.

b)     Charlton are rubbish. We had lost 9 or our last 11 games home & away.

c)      But…. Darren Bent had scored in the last minute of 6 of them.

d)     It was Marcus Bent’s debut for us.

We are sitting there before the game debating what bets to make & I persuade the entire table of 10 people to put a tenner on Darren Bent scoring the last goal of the game at odds of 14/1.

In the first half we play quite well & although we conceded a goal at 18 mins (Eidur Gudjohnsen 18yrds out on the volley) as a Charlton fan I was quite pleased with 1-0 at half time away at Chelsea – For us, that season, the fact that we weren’t 3 down was cause for celebration.

I should also say that we took the ever disappointing Rommedahl off, put on Marcus Bent & went from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 with both Bents up front at 39 mins.

Our seats shared the same aisle as the Directors seats so I was sitting at 10ft away from Abramovic, Ken Bates and all their guests and as I turned to go back to the dining room I find myself face to face with Pele.

Let’s just revisit that last sentence. I WAS NOSE TO FRICKKING NOSE WITH Pelé!

• 3 time World Cup winner.
• The only man to ever score 3 goals in a World Cup Final.
• A candidate for Greatest Player of All Time (Maradonna or George Best shade it for me but….).
• Voted Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee.
• Time magazine listed Pelé as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

MUTHA FUCKING PELÉ has actually bumped into me.

Now I have met & worked with many (real, not reality TV) celebrities in my time & I pride myself on staying cool, even when I met Tim Roth who is a big hero of mine – We just had a beer & a chat and I kept all my screaming fandom locked up inside.

But this was Pelé. 

I am ashamed to say that I seized his hand & started gushing about how amazing he was & what an enormous honour it was meet him – I dunno how much he understood because his English is rubbish but he eventually had to pry his hand out of mine.

Now lets just recap the day so far:

I’ve been taken on a massive jolly.

Charlton have played quite well

I’VE SHAKEN PELÉ’S HAND

You’d think this would be enough to qualify as my best football day ever but oh no, it got even better.

After the half time break we go back to our seats and Pelé waves and grins at me – Cool huh?

Second half we play well again & on the 58^th min Marcus Bent makes a well timed 15yrd run to get on the end of a Darren Ambrose though ball and delivers a looping header over the top of Cech.

1- 1!

On his Charlton debut Marcus Bent scores one of the few goals Chelsea have conceded this season.

W00T! That’ll do me right there.

Unbelievably, we hang to on the end of the match.

DRAW! Charlton have taken the first point at Fortress Stamford Bridge in 9 months.

Awesome!

As we go back for more drinks Pelé smiles and waves again.

The top of my head threatens to fall off as my widening smile nearly meets at the back of my head.

We need to recap once more:

• Great, luxury day out at someone else’s expense.
• I met Pelé, shook his hand & he smiled & waved at me.
• Humble Charlton took a point away from invincible Chelsea at home
• Marcus Bent scored a corking goal on his debut.

How can it possibly get any better than that?

It does…. 

The Ladbroke Girls return & hand us all our betting slips & £140 each!!!!

You’ll recall we all placed £10 on Darren Bent to score the last goal of them game, Marcus Bent actually scored the last goal.

Because the players are listed alphabetically they have scanned down the forms looking for “Bent” seen our bets next to “D. Bent” and paid out ON THE WRONG BET!

Have you ever even heard of that happening before?

We drank up and left as swiftly we could before they realised :D

So there you go:

• Treated to a luxury day out.
• Met Pelé.
• Drew the first blood of the season at Stamford Bridge
• Had a player score on his debut
• Got paid out £140 (£280 between Soph & I) on the wrong bet.

If you’ve heard of a better football day out I’d love to hear about it.

Rickinghall/Botesdale- A twitter travelogue

So some quick background on how an urban boy like me finds himself marooned in the middle of nowhere:

Soph & I used to live here: http://www.twitpic.com/873ti on the Southbank of the Thames right by Tower Bridge.

We also owned the 500 year old house I live in now and we stayed here at weekends.

To cut a long story short three years ago we decided that, given how fragile my mental state was at the time, we should downscale, sell the flat, use the money we made on that to pay off the mortgage on the house and move here permanently.

Soph now works just 3 days a week commuting into London and my business plan means I average 50/60 gigs a year.

Now I’m all better(ish) & in my right mind(ish) I often find it stifling and lacking in stimulating people to talk to on a daily basis – That’s where you twitpeeps come in and thank you for it :)

So I live in a tiny village of (I’ve just checked) about a 1,000 people called Rickinghall.

Rickinghall is about a half mile long and runs without break into another half mile long village called Botesdale. To me it’s one village but the locals get quit uppity about it.

Everyone knows everyone else. Almost everyone has cousins and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles in the village and the families are very interrelated.

I genuinely have seen no evidence of incest but I remain vigilant.

I live in the middle of Rickinghall so I am now going to walk to the end and walk back past my house to the end of Botesdale twitpicing all the way – I hope it doesn’t rain!

I'm not calling you a ghost, Just stop haunting me

Many people have asked about how my good deed for tiday went and as it was so awesome I have decided it is worth me writing it up.

Today we took a guy called Cecil Gosling from a nearby village 10miles to the chiropodist in my village.

Cecil rocked! He was 89 and couldn’t get around without a walking frame, motorised cart or a wheelchair which mean that I had to help him into the chair and winch (I kid you not) him into the bus.

Gordon (the twat who co-ordinates the Community Transport Service – Today’s quote: “I’m sorry to say that it’s successive goverments that have lead to this colourd children stabbing people. If they’d brought back the death penalty…..” Cock!) really patronised him but as I was wheeling him in and out and strapping him into the bus Cecil asked me in his broad Norfolk accent if I grew up in my village & when I said no he told me that he had lived there until he was 20 in 1940 and went into the army to fight in Normandy.

He was the son of the local policeman and grew up in the tiny police station that used to be in the village.

He then regaled me with some incredible stories of growing up in what was then a very busy village.

He was sharp as a knife and had some really poignant insights on the effects of the war on small communities where entire generatiosn of boys were wiped out.

His chiropodist was last so we spent an hour talking all sorts of stuff & trying to politely ignore Gordon.

Cecil was a really interesting guy with some really pithy things to say and I was just so aware that most of the time no one actually spoke to him on his level or listyened to him long enough to realise what a really intelegnt and eloquent man he was. It made me very sad.

We continued chatting as I drove him back home afterwards and he pointed out where all the shops that have now been turned into houses were in my village.

He said there used to be nine pubs. Nine!! It’s only a mile long stretch of road!

Before the war Cecil (who was a blacksmith) and his mates would each put a farthing into a kitty, start at one end and whoever was still standing at the end of 2 pints in each of the 9 pubs kept the money.

When we got him home (and after me nearly dumping him out of the chair twice – Need to learn how to do that) he showed me a commendation for bravery he had which was signed by Field Marshall Montgomery & a newspaper cutting about when he was sent home from the war temporarily with a shrapnel wound.

It was obvious that he didn’t want me to go but Gor-twat was outside honking the horn and pointing to his watch so I had to go.

He said he’d really enjoyed the trip and it just made me sad.