The episode of Imagine… about the history of television is now due in week 50.

There you go, that tells you everything. Waddya mean, you don’t know from BBC week numbers? Have you got a second for a quick story? The BBC numbers weeks so that instead of planning for November 21, you can say Tuesday of week 47. Fine. Makes a lot of sense if you’re a TV or radio producer making, I don’t know, a six-parter: you can say it’s on weeks 10-15 or whatever. And it helps at Radio Times too.

Oooh, want to know a secret? Next time you see an issue of Radio Times, look at the barcode on the front. In the top corner there’ll be a two-digit number: it’s the BBC week number. You can’t believe how handy that is.

And I know I keep calling it a BBC week number when you’re thinking it’s a week, it’s numbered, it’s not a BBC invention. But just sometimes, it is. Week 1 is the first week of the year, right? What do you do if the first complete Saturday-Friday week begins on January 4th? I can’t remember the dates now but a couple of years ago when I was still doing TV reviews for BBC Ceefax, we had the situation where the BBC made one decision about what week 1 was, and the rest of the TV industry went the other. For an entire year I was lost: when they said a tape was for week 38, did they mean my week 38?

Er, that wasn’t the story. The story was this. BBC week numbers go from January to December. But my wife Angela works for the Health and Safety Executive and they also number their weeks.

From May to April.

After the first major holiday scheduling disaster, we’ve abandoned week numbers in my house.

William

PS. Week 50 is about three weeks away, we are in 47 now. Currently it looks like Imagine… TV Pioneers will be on BBC2 at 22:35 on Tuesday 12 December but it’s still subject to change.

I sat in on a recording for a DVD commentary yesterday: can’t tell you what the DVD is yet, not because I deliberately try to be awkward to you but I just promised. I’ll tell you when the DVD comes out and actually you’ll hear some of it, partly because I’m sure I’ll nick a few choice moments from the commentary track at that time, but also because the cast and crew answered my questions.

After I’d gone.

I went to this recording for a good dozen reasons, starting with how I wanted to meet the producer after we’d talked a lot, and because I really like the piece he’s working on. But there was also that the session was in the BBC’s Broadcasting House and I haven’t been there for work in a decade. Television Centre and BH, I don’t know what it is about them but they’re special: they’ve got that simultaneous feel of being alive now, of working to the future and of being steeped in the past. Er, so maybe I do know what’s special about them.

I know I’m an anorak here but I also know I’m not alone. However they did it, the BBC has made BH terribly important and just getting lost in the corridors again was fun.

So that was me, that was all I was after, but this ‘ere producer, ably demonstrating why he’s a producer, was determined to get me an interview with the writer of the DVD title. I wanted it too, I admire the guy’s writing, but there was a lot of work going on there yesterday: if I ended up being just a lemon earwigging the commentary from the control room, I’d be happy.

And in the end things did, inevitably, take longer than expected and typically for the best of reasons: it was a group commentary track and it sounds fantastic. I can’t wait to hear the ones for segments that I didn’t hear.

But I also can’t wait to hear my answers. I left in the afternoon but this producer suggested I leave a couple of questions for the writer and he’d get the answers recorded if there was time. I left there thinking this was a nice bloke who had no chance of getting them recorded: obviously his DVD comes first, there was also a limit on the studio time, and nobody in this world can read my handwriting.

Only, I just got an email from him. He did get the writer to answer my questions and what’s more, the whole group chimed in with the answers. Hopefully I’ll have the recordings soon and while parts relate solely to the project that was recorded this week, I might be able to steal some of it and get it to you in one of the next couple of UK DVD Review podcasts.

It’s just, well, eerie. The way it went, I said hello and goodbye practically simultaneously to most of the group who cannot have had any clue who was looming over them like that. And then while I was forlornly and, for a while, fruitlessly looking for the BBC Shuttle Bus outside BH, they were effectively talking to me.

I wonder if I’m being rash saying I’ll play you the bits of the tape I can. I haven’t heard it, I wasn’t there, maybe I’m going to get some beautifully recorded dialogue full of whispers saying “Who was that guy anyway?”,”Does his wife let him out looking like that?” “He has a wife?”

William

One day I’ll remember my username and password to get on to this thing.

If I could’ve remembered it yesterday, I’d have told you that the site I mentioned the other week, BBC Good Food, is up and running in every sense: I’ve seen the stats for the first few days and it’s just boomed into life. Please add to their good fortune by having a look at BBCgoodfood.com, especially if you’re a foodie.

There was a launch party for it in London last night, lots of drink, lots of food and – you’re already wondering this, I was wondering it, everybody else on the list was wondering it – yes, the food was indeed good.

But I also wanted to talk to you about the Radio Times feature I mentioned without actually saying what it was. I’ve delivered it and it was one of those that’s so much fun you hate handing it over, but I think by not saying what it was about I either looked coy or grandiose. That or rude, I’m havering. But it’s habit, sorry, a longterm habit that comes from how you never know what will happen to a piece.

For instance, I was commissioned for a magazine feature in summer 2005, wrote it, got paid quite nicely, and it’s never run. I was asked to update it this summer but fortunately it didn’t run then either because I completely blew the assignment.

And it happens. You haven’t told me what you do: is this the same for you? It’s rare that the piece vanishes, it’s more often that you get chucked off it – though that’s only happened to me twice and I found it much, much rougher when I was an editor and had to fire a writer – but it’s routine that something changes. With this latest one, for instance, that’s for Radio Times and it’s tied to one specific episode of a series so if BBC2 bumps that episode to January, my feature goes with it. (And BBC2 has been making an amazing number of schedule changes lately; the delay for production on Top Gear set cats amongst pigeons.)

Plus, if that show does air in January, it might be up against bigger shows and my feature shrinks to a paragraph. I expect I’ll have a byline on this one but there’s plenty in RT that I do which doesn’t; I think now that I’ve finished with it but even today there was a call about a detail so I never regard it as really finished until it’s on the shelf at WH Smith’s.

And I never, ever say what I’m writing about.

Except now. You read this far, how am I at tantalising? The BBC2 programme is an edition of Imagine… celebrating the 70th anniversary of television and I’ve honestly forgotten when it’s supposed to air but it’s soon. And RT is currently intending to run a feature about how Radio Times has covered TV since the start. That’s it.

But, grief, I had a good time doing it, most especially when I found a little unexpected connection. You think Radio Times came before television, because radio came before television, and, er, you’d be right, but wait till you see what I found.

William

…what else you find on the way. I’m doing a feature for Radio Times that’s involved researching back issues far, far further back than I’m normally supposed to for the On This Day column and it’s, well, it’s weird. The paper stock they used in the 1920s feels wrong, it’s sometimes glossier than you’d expect yet the printing, the actual text on the page, sometimes looks like it was done on a typewriter.

And the attitudes, the assumptions that plainly went without saying then but are mysteries now or hopelessly innocent. There’s going to be plenty of this in the final feature but I also kept finding things that are off the brief and though I can’t use them, there is one I really want you to see.

The Radio Times: April 18, 1924 issue, p149, col 2
“Amongst Bournmouth’s distinguished listeners is Mr Thomas Hardy, O.M., the great Wessex novelist, who has not hesitated to give helpful advice concerning the station programmes.”

Isn’t that fantastic? Thomas Hardy alive and being a right pain in the backside to BBC Radio Bournmouth, or whatever it was called then.

What’s “O.M.”?

William

Something I think you might like: there’s going to be a BBC Good Food website from November and it has everything you might imagine, plus a really nice extra.

You know how the best ideas seem incredibly simple and even obvious in retrospect? The editor of the BBC Good Food website, Vic, has decided to have a glossary of food terms – and to show you how to pronounce them. I think there are some 300 terms, something like that, ranging from ingredient names to wines and grapes, cooking terminology. All or most have a phonetic spelling along with the detailed description.

And then about 70 or 80 of the most difficult or contentious have also got a voiceover: click the button and you’ll hear exactly how to say them.

It’s my voice.

I just delivered the last recording this afternoon.

And I’m so proud of getting to do it: BBC Good Food looks like a superb website, I’m really chuffed to have been involved.

William

There’s this thing going on, perhaps you know about it: a blog called the Red Right Hand suggests we put up online a single page of script. It should be something you wrote in the last year, it should come with no explanation, no context.

Presumably no prize, either, but there you go. The event, if that’s the right word, is being called One Page 2006 which suggests there may be a One Page 2007. By then, I may even have written two pages.

Now, I don’t know how to embed a nice thumbnail of it, but otherwise, here’s mine:
William’s one

William

Hiya,

Purely because there are so many nice new people on the list this week, this is an earlier than usual note about an earlier than usual edition of UK DVD Review.

It has nothing to do with how the moment I hit send to you, I’m out the door and driving to the Lake District. I’d ask you to come, you know that, but this is my wedding anniversary, you understand.

But I can take up your entire weekend and well into next week with all the excellent DVDs that are now out, though this does make me wonder why I spend the greatest part of this week’s show jabbering on about a film that doesn’t work. There’s this film, right, and it’s actually possible that I am the only man in the UK who’s seen it. Not very, very probable, but actually possible. And I want to talk it through with you, less like a review, more like a therapy session.

The week’s other releases are much more straightforward: you’ve got one brilliant TV series that happens to be rubbish too, one comicbook film that doesn’t do anything for me but everybody else loves it, and one superb Hollywood star in one blink-and-you’ll-wish-you’d-missed-it thriller.

And this week’s One Year Ago Today DVD release is a cheat. Total cheat. I could justify it, but it’d be a rationalisation and I feel we’re beyond that. So I tell you, I’ve got an excuse to play you a bit of a film I adore and I’m going to take it.

Have a listen over the iTunes Music Store or nip straight to here:
http://homepage.mac.com/william.gallagher/pod.htm

Gotta go, Angela’s revving the engine. Have a good week,
William

They’re the most highly-awaited and, face it, highly-hyped DVDs and what happens to them?

The price drops like a stone.

After you’ve bought ’em.

It’s the new UK DVD Review feature I wish I hadn’t started now yet am compelled to continue: what DVDs came out exactly one year ago and how little would it cost to buy them today? That’s a rather long name so instead I call it Oh-My-God-It’s-Only-£5.99.

But, come on, chin up, you’ve had a full year’s enjoyment out of that disc. You have, haven’t you? Or is this like your copy of Lost in Translation which I know is still in its shrinkwrapping since 2004? Still, hey, it’s in a nice box, it looks good on your shelf.

And while we’re bright-siding here, look at it this way: you can’t have bought everything last July. So if it turns out that you’re as scared of this week’s new Final Destination 3 as I am or you’re no more fussed about Rome than I’ve managed to be, you can still ferret around the bargain shelves and get some great titles. Okay, one great and one all right. July 2005 wasn’t a goldmine.

But.

As well as looking at old releases and new ones, it’d be a bit thick not to take a peek ahead to a superb release due in November. Let’s just say that it’s truly one of the greatest TV comedies ever made.

It’s truly one of the greatest TV comedies ever made.

And if you recognise that gag, just you tune in to the new UK DVD Review for more:

Hope you’re well – and thanks to Piers, who pointed out that my blog was a sensible place for this weekly rabbit.

William

Listen to this.

I was at the Birmingham Rep theatre today for a masterclass on writing television and one of the speakers talked about how you get sacked from shows and how it feels like a knife wound but is actually routine. And she gave reasons, explained certain things and it was all interesting but the key thing was that she was precisely, I mean precisely, recounting my own Crossroads experience.

I’ve always been quite flip about Crossroads before, always being sure to say that I plainly wasn’t good enough, always being very fair about what the show did to me. But the first truth is that it was a knife wound. I couldn’t keep my first TV writing gig and, yes, 90% or more of the script that aired was word-for-word what I’d delivered but that just means I can’t see the improvements. I am blind to how to write television, or at least soaps.

The second truth is that this cut me far, far more than I ever admitted to anyone.

And the third truth is that it cut me far, far more than I ever admitted to myself. I mean, this is five years ago now and yet this afternoon I felt a weight lifting off me.

More, this speaker’s subsequent advice about how to handle it was almost precisely how I did: I know we would all hope to be professional about things all the time but this situation warranted a hissy fit yet I was pretty fantastically professional. It’s the only thing I’ve been proud about in the whole exercise. And now I think I know I was right.

But there was more. The day wasn’t all about soap but it was an important part and discussing the complex demands of a soap (for instance how you structure five stories, how you handle 30 speaking characters in 28 minutes, how you try to pace and build) I kept on hearing things I had instinctively done on Crossroads.

Now, it was hardly a bill of health: I did lose the gig, after all. But it means I should have been able to move on to another show, it wasn’t the arterial slice I’d believed. And of course since I didn’t even try to move on then, I did truly blow it all.

It’s five years ago now and that’s a lot of time to have wasted. But I do know that, whatever one might think of my writing, it genuinely is better now than it was.

So I am invigorated and do you know what my sole remaining regret about this entire issue is?

That I didn’t hit delete on this blog posting. Forgive any arrogance about how I plainly think I can write television: you know I’ll write again when I’ve got even the slightest evidence to show you.

William “Unusually Confident of his Writing Ability” Gallagher

I may have a while, it’s half past midnight. But I’m sitting here waiting as this week’s items of mine for BBC Hereford & Worcester make their very slow way across the BBC webmail system. (No offence to BBC Webmail, I couldn’t do my job without it and I’ve tried, but this one thing is always very slow.)

It’s because I’m uploading a large attachment, it works out at just under 1Mb per item and I send four at a time so you can understand it choking a bit.

But while I wait, how are you? If you’re waiting for anything too, have a look at this: http://pavementandstars.blogspot.com/ which contains a description of using cards and corkboard for planning your screenplays. It’s thoroughly explained, it’s unquestionably the right and sensible, even proper thing to do, yet I cannot. I was going to tell you why, but I’ll wait until we know each other better. But just because I can’t do it, doesn’t mean you can’t so do have a look.

Still waiting. Okay, may I tell you how my day’s been? This is more for me than for you, though I do suspect you’ve already thought that, as it’s been my idea of bliss.

How do I tell you this without a lot of “And then I…” bits? Hang on, my email’s conked. I just to give it a nudge.

There you go. Okay, I won’t bore you with the hour-by-hour chronology but overall I’ve spent today researching in the library, writing a response to a Radio Times reader who was very gratifiyingly full of praise of my On This Day column but had issues he wanted answered. I did a photo shoot for the opening of a studio – and, wow, standing up on a step ladder, directing 12 people who all did everything I asked, who I somehow managed to keep giggling and laughing so that they look fantastic in the shots, and then prepping 40 shots to immediately go to a magazine that was waiting. More than waiting, its pages had gone to press, the editor was just holding one back long enough for these shots. And then I spent the rest of the night until now recording my BBC Hereford and Worcester stuff.

So I’ve done print journalism, academic research, photography and radio work in one day. I’m a lucky bastard but I know it.

Hope you had a good ‘un, too.

William