The Dom Joly interview

Back some time towards the end of 2009, October at a guess, I was watching a repeat of Trigger Happy TV on 4Music (a UK TV channel). This was a TV series that captured my imagination when it was first broadcast in the year 2000, I would have been around 16 at the time.

The Stephen Moyer interview

"Finally someone people will have heard of" was how my editor described the opportunity to interview True Blood's Stephen Moyer in his email. I'd never heard of him. I only knew of True Blood from tube station posters advertising the fact it was showing on the FX channel on satellite.
Time to do some research.

An evening with Pat Sharp & the twins

All the way back in July an email came through my electronic letterbox with details of an Xbox game launch. Not really standard Hecklerspray fare, but at the heart of it was an opportunity to interview Pat Sharp and the twins from Fun House.

Nothing about the choice of Pat Sharp to promote 1 vs. 100 made sense. The Xbox publicity woman at the event described their ideal celebrity; someone who embodied the spirit of quiz shows, the quintessential question master. Surely Bob Holness or Henry Kelly even?

The Motorola Dext launch

Sixty-seven miles up Millbank Tower, and after many glasses of champagne, a playboy comedian/presenter is announcing the phone that might just save Motorola’s bacon.

Nearby tech journalists were none the wiser as to whom this man was, yet they still rejected our theory that it could be Dave Berry. Simply asking one of the PR people, and waiting for them to ask another PR person was all we had to do Keep reading at Hecklerspray

Richard Herring is a racist

Yesterday’s Guardian published a piece by Brian Logan which illustrated how comedians such as Richard Herring and Scott Capurro are inherently racist and offensive.

Scott Capurro often offends his audience, he tells Logan he can justify that because an audience doesn’t often get a chance to inform the performer that they are ‘fucked up’.

Interviewing Mr T

Amongst people with Macbooks and laptops in the NFT's cafe I sat scribbling onto a sheet of A4 in an embarrassingly low-tech fashion. The sheet happened to be a map with the location of the venue for a Snickers ad campaign launch in London Bridge. The scribbles were to be the questions I would be asking Mr T, formerly of Rocky III and The A-Team.

Behind the scenes

I've decided to take this blog in a slightly different direction. While this is subject to whim, hopefully I’ll have enough material to sustain it.
With growing up comes a dwindling desire to be angry and ranty about what I now view to be the trivialities of the world at large, and these people or issues aren't generally worth the energy or the space they end up occupying on the internet's hard drive. That said, I’m almost definitely going to contradict myself in the near future.

Anyway, what is this new direction? The plan is to chart the observations and experiences of a fairly normal person (me) as they (I) attend industry events, launches, and interview the famous people. Think of it as a background to the articles I write for other websites, or a blog version of Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach if you will; but on a better channel, and with no Jason Donovan.

TV Preview: You Have Been Watching

Every now and then we like to catch a virus just to mix things up a bit and remind our immune system that it still has a role to play in our continuing existence.

To keep things interesting, given that it is summer; we decided to go with the common cold. As males we know how devastating this can be, with days of unrelenting torment and an extra 15 minutes added to getting up rituals spent futilely pumping enough drugs and various homeopathic remedies into our bodies until we feel we can connect with the outside world. Keep reading.

TV Preview: The Take

Can you imagine an East End gangster drama which doesn’t star Danny Dyer? Moreover, can you imagine one which wasn’t directed by Guy Richie?

It isn’t an easy concept to fathom; god knows sometimes we don’t want to. Unfortunately it isn’t our choice; Sky 1 is forcing us to picture such an idea because of their new 1980s 4-part drama The Take, starting tomorrow. Keep reading.

TV Review: Hope Springs

In the early 20th Century, the Suffragette movement fought and campaigned to give women independence and the vote, but what has modern woman done with this privilege?

They’ve made Hope Springs, what a waste.

The opening scenes draw heavily from Hustle, and any prison based drama you can think of. Throughout proceedings the viewer is reminded of the sanctity of sisterhood, sisters doing it for themselves, female empowerment, bra burning, and some other related cliché. Keep reading.

TV Review: Reggie Perrin

Writer Simon Nye and Martin Clunes have teamed up again to present this remake of the much revered Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin starring Leonard Rossiter.

If you listen carefully you might just be able to hear him turning in his grave, assuming he wasn’t cremated of course. Who knows. Keep reading.

TV Review: All the Small Things

You might think that creating a TV programme off the back of a song by a guitar-based pop group was a bad idea, and you’d be right, mostly.
All the Small Things won us over quite early on with a choral rendition of Bond theme Nobody Does It Better. It is a shame that the rest of ATST didn’t quite live up to the high bar they’d set themselves.
Keep reading

TV Review: The Apprentice S5 Ep1

We’re the best there is, ever was, and ever will be. In fact, we’re the Jesus of business and we’d kill every child ever used on a Huggies or Andrex advert to win, the cuter the deader.
That’s right, The Apprentice is back! Just in time too, as we need something to fill in the time between series of Dancing on Ice.
Keep reading

TV Review: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

Stewart Lee is to the world of comedy what pans are to a chef; pretty vital unless you want cold beans, and nobody wants cold beans.
This man possesses razor sharp comic timing; somehow he can make any innocuous word comical. One small inflection or miniscule tweak of his expression conveys more than any amount of high pitched puerile drivel from the crosseyed one from Mock the Week or pretty much anyone from BBC Three.
Keep reading

The Restaurant is coming back!

Remember that reality TV show which was a bit like The Apprentice but focused on the contestants’ restaurant-owning acumen rather than the art of arse-kissing Alan Sugar called The Restaurant? Well it is back for a third series.
That’s right, Raymond Blanc is returning to judge nine couples who think they can run an eatery because they once threw a successful dinner party and think they can join him in restaurant-running-Disneyland.
Keep reading

TV Review: Moving Wallpaper

The Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach concept was unusual for ITV, it was quite innovative and possibly even a teeny bit good.
Worry not however, as they weren’t going to allow this anomaly to continue unfettered.

If the phenomenon of the original format passed you by, here is a quick recap. Moving Wallpaper and Echo Beach were shown back to back. The former was a knowing parody of a TV production office which was creating a beach-based soap aptly called Echo Beach.
Keep reading

TV Review: Red Riding: 1974

It isn’t in our nature here at hecklerspray to be complimentary about TV shows, films, actors, or anyone or anything come to think of it, but this is a well deserved exception.
The first film in the trilogy of screen adaptations is set in 1974 and follows the story of a young journalist returning to his native West Yorkshire.
Keep reading

Interview with Mr.T fool!

As some of you may have heard, Mr T is in town, promoting either his new masculine manifesto or some delicious chocolate bars.
Who can really say which one is true with any certainty? Well, we can. Mr T is in the UK to promote Snickers. Watch the infamous confrontation here

TV Review: Law & Order: UK

Michael Barrymore, Les Dennis, Shane Richie, Keith Chegwin, Bobby Davro, Bradley Walsh. What do they all have in common?
Their very mention triggers a feeling of drowning in depression? They’re cheap, tacky, polyester-suited, out dated Bognor Regis seafront entertainers? They are people who should never appear on television unless they are being pumped full of dry rice then offered a glass of water? Yes. Those things are all true.
Keep reading

For hire?

While cruising the highways this morning I spotted a young lady waiting to cross the road. It took a while for me to come to this conclusion as for a long time I couldn't decide if she was soliciting her services to passing motorists or not.
I can only suggest that if young ladies will insist on dressing like ladies of the night, and walking alongside our beautiful network of roads, that they adorn some kind of "I'm not for hire" sign. Of what form that could take I don't know. Maybe if they just avoid displaying pictures of the major credit cards on their torso, all would be well.