“Fame” may be rather overstating it, but “The price of Not-Being-Absolutely-Entirely-Unknown” doesn’t scan so well.

I also realise if you’re reading this, you’re likely to read the latest first: that does seem reasonable. So because I’ve done two entries in quick succession, let me say:

Previously on this blog… so many people listen to my podcast UK DVD Review show that my website was shut down. Now, read on.

I’ve coughed up the cash and – hang on, let me check, Apple said it’d take a mo but yes, www.williamgallagher.com is back. They’re dashed clever, these Apple types: the cost of upgrading my .Mac account to 2Gb of storage and therefore some greater amount of data transfer ought to be £35pa but because it’s an annual subscription and my renewal date is in July, the nice shiny total at the bottom of the form was just the fee from now until renewal. Who could resist £8.32?

Come July I’ll be thinking about it again, but there you go.

And it’s funny, I don’t think I know many people who pay for their email account anymore. But there was one day, three years ago now, when I badly needed to get a large document off my PowerBook and onto a PC at Radio Times and there was nothing I could do. The BBC email system was croaking, I could hook my PowerBook onto the RT network but only for internet access, I couldn’t see any of the same servers the PC could. So I tried a trial version of .Mac which allowed me to send the document immediately.

I thought that would be it, get that document across, forget about .Mac entirely. But it proved so reliable-as-a-rock, so much quicker than the BBC’s webmail, that I paid up at the end of the trial. And in those three years or whatever it is, I’ve received fewer than 30 spam emails. I don’t mean my junk filter caught ’em, I mean I didn’t get any, they were stopped at Apple’s end. It’s a bit annoying that I’m getting any at all but then I use my .Mac address a lot, I bandy it about, whereas I have a Google Mail account that I exclusively use for archiving work (at the end of the day I email myself the document) and though I’ve never given that address to anyone else at all, still I get more spam through it than I do my .Mac address.

So I’m happy for about 360 days a year; I ponder the fee for about five days a year but so far always pay up.

Next time, even more exciting details from my finances,
William

Now, am I popular or have I just been secretly downloading umpteen Hollywood blockbusters and for some reason parking them on my website?

I’m afraid that if you go to my site now, www.williamgallagher.com, you don’t get in. Apple’s switched it off because I’ve exceeded the limits on how much data can be transferred from it. I have to say that makes me feel great: enough people are grabbing my UK DVD Review podcast that I’ve been shut down.

From a quick look at Apple’s finger-wagging email, it looks like there’s nothing I can do until May 1st, the next time they check these things. I suspect in fact that if I pay the right people the right amount of money I can get the site back up, though, so I’ll look into that and my bank balance.

It’s definitely an embarrassing thing that one can’t get to my site. I suppose it ought to be cruel, cruel world that I have to pay more because the site’s a success.

But I just can’t help grinning.

William “Intolerably Smug” Gallagher

Folks,

As I write this I’m still making this week’s UK DVD Review podcast but within it I promise to tell you on here the prices for the DVDs I rabbit on about. I tell you this after I’ve mentioned all the myriad permutations of RRP and online prices, I could at least have mentioned it before and saved you getting out a pencil or telling your local DVD shop “Listen, this geezer, he says you should be selling it for a fiver off”, which always works.

Well.

Here’s the prices for this week. If you’d care to join me over here with the show itself, then I’m on iTunes – er, or I will be when I’ve finished this episode – at http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73802571

Or on my own site at http://homepage.mac.com/william.gallagher/pod.htm.

And those prices, at last, go thisaway:

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is £16 retail, £11ish online
Doom costs £20 RRP, £15 online.
King Kong (2005) is out for £25 in a two-disc special edition –is online at a mere £13
King Kong (1933) came out last year for a tenner, is now online for about six quid

And The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is in three versions. There’s a single-disc film-only DVD for £20.99 (weird price, isn’t it?), which is online for £12.99.

Then there’s a two-disc special edition which has an RRP £24.99 and is online £14.99.

Lastly, Amazon co uk claims a world exclusive with its RRP £50 set and online £35.99 which is the two-disc DVD plus books and the like, all in a wardrobe-style box.

William

I’ve been mocked for boasting that I’ve got nine bylines in this week’s Radio Times.

And you have to agree, I boasted. I deserve mockery.

But I was also doubted, can you believe that? There I am, minding my own business, very full of myself and big-headed, when this geezer mocks me and adds “Besides, I could only find eight.”

For the record, the new ninth byline is on a feature about BBC4’s 1973 season but then there’s the usual seven of me for On This Day and one last ‘un for the TV Stat on the letters page.

And wow, that Stat is a bugger to do. I’ve had nightmares about it, quite seriously.

Anyway, hi. How’ve you been? As I write this it’s Friday night, I’ve just delivered a half-hour sitcom script to that same doubting geezer (he, I and a few others have challenged each other to write a sitcom from scratch in two months), tomorrow I’m dancing and doing more On This Day; Sunday I’m a photographer at the NEC for a Sewing for Pleasure show.

You see? I tell you everything. Now, ‘fess up, what’s happening with you?

William

Can I tell you about this? I’m particularly pleased with a feature I’ve just had published in Radio Times. It’s the issue that came out today, covering 1-7 April, and with the Coronation Street cast on the front.

Which reminds me: that cover’s got RT a lot of attention today and RadioTimes.com has a video of the cover photography shoot. I’ve only been to a couple of shoots for anyone, just a single time for RT, so I find that video fascinating. If you’ve been to a million, your mileage may vary.

But could we get back to me? On page 27 there’s a piece about BBC4’s 1973 week. The week’s pegged around a repeat run of the drama Life on Mars and BBC4’s done quite brilliantly to cover every angle of this year.

My job was to research a) 1973 and b) BBC4’s plans.  The former was easy enough, the latter harder because – as I understand it – plans and schedules were being negotiated for quite a time so in theory anything could drop out or be added.

I had a really good time doing this. But I’d been warned that the feature would be primarily a photographic one; in the initial stage I purely delivered a list of items I recommended we get pictures for. (Did you know the Toy of the Year 1973 was the Mastermind board game? Nor did I, but I do now.)

Later it was changed and I was asked to provide effectively picture captions for a sequence of these shots. I wrote the amount I was asked for but with the expectation that it would be cut down to fit the room left on the page.

It was. But hardly anything was cut at all, I’m amazed how much the production desk squeezed onto this page. 

That’s it. I think the piece is funny, though if it is it’s because BBC4’s schedule is well done and the subs desk at RT added a nice gag for me. But I wanted to tell you while the issue was on sale.

And hang on, I’m in the issue for my usual seven On This Day pieces plus the TV Stat short so this week I get nine bylines in Radio Times. Blimey.

I just made a mistake on my UK DVD Review podcast, I’ve put it up with last week’s date. But in trying to fix it, I’ve stumbled across the fact that two people have reviewed me on the iTunes Music Store.

One gives me five stars, the other four. Isn’t that just fantastic?

The five-star one has nailed me completely: as well as the praise, there’s a funny crack about my Battlestar Galactica obsession.

Do you know, I think I feel taller. If the reviewers should read this, thanks very much.

William

So I was back at the library today. I found something else for On This Day that I can’t use.

Last time it was because I’d just missed the date (it was an item for late February or early March, I’ve forgotten now, and this coming Monday morning I’ll deliver On This Day for the fortnight up to March 24). This time because the thing I found was just too long.

Do you know of Peggy Ramsay? Literary agent? Not many agents get portrayed on screen by Vanessa Redgrave (in Prick Up Your Ears) and on stage by Maureen Lipman (in Peggy For You) but there generally aren’t many agents like this one. I never met her but I know Alan Plater who was one of her clients.

I found an Arena episode from March 17, 1989 which was devoted to her and the billing went into great detail about her most famous clients – yet it didn’t mention Alan. Something wrong here, I was thinking, as I turned to the feature on page 11.

Only to find the feature was written by Alan. And here’s my problem. Normally I can spot what’s known as a pull-quote really easily and since On This Day is about 90 words long, I have to find these nuggets, I can’t quote long passages from anything.

But this time I just can’t see where I can lift a line from. It’s not just that it’s all good, that usually means I’ve got plenty to cherry-pick from, but this feature was quite tight, quite woven. It was one feature rather than a set of staccato paragraphs and though this is what you would strive for when writing it, it’s a bugger when you’re trying to steal. Tune in on March 17, 2006 to see how I coped.

And as this is all about the On This Day feature in Radio Times magazine, may I correct an impression I might have given you the other day about RT mag? I just noticed that in mentioning how the magazine and the RT website are having a gallery of Hustle pictures that I’ve come across as thinking I was important in the selection of the shots we used. Nope.

The mag’s picture desk staff did everything. I ended up with, I don’t know, a couple of dozen shots they weren’t using and I chose six. Just wanted to put that right.

Just to update something: RadioTimes.com will now definitely have a photo gallery online with some gorgeous shots from Planet Earth, the new documentary series starting shortly.

It’s complicated but I wasn’t sure it would all happen in time and I got the call this afternoon to say it would.

By the way, I spent most of this afternoon at the Birmingham Central Library – you’ll never guess where that is – researching my On This Day column for Radio Times. Maddeningly, I stumbled across something too late to use. Can I tell you about it instead?

Radio Times 4-10 March 1978. The letters page includes an angry letter from a reader who claims to have been horrified when tuning in to Grandstand to find the commentator on a football match was a woman. Lots of blustery how-dare-you bits follow but the thrust of it is that football is a man’s world. And the person who wrote the letter? It was a woman. 

If I’m still doing On This Day next year (which I truly hope I am) and if I spot the note to myself in my rinkydinky FileMaker Pro database, you’ll see more details in Radio Times next year.

William 

Not sure where everything is yet but I’ve found the kitchen and the whole place is just more comfy than my old blog page. If I’ve not met you before, hello. How are you?

This was all meant to be a simple What’s New for my site www.williamgallagher.com site which is the home to the UK DVD Review podcast that you can also get through iTunes.

But I think it’s become something more, I’m not entirely sure what, and if I’m right that it’s developed then it’s because of you. Wow, did you freak me out when I discovered how to do a counter and saw how many people were flying by. Ta for that, it was a shock but a great one.

Now, I’ve been away quite ill – just man-flu, but it seemed bad at the time – and some things have happened. Previously on this blog, or its ancestor anyway, I’ve boasted that I got a gig presenting DVD reviews on BBC Hereford & Worcester local radio. Their Friday breakfast show focuses on the weekend, it’s still a news show but it’s got an entertainment side and dotted throughout the show are four DVD reviews. Each is one-minute long, I present them.

And if you just glazed because I’ve said this before, there is one teeny detail I always left out and it’s this: the gig at Hereford & Worcester was a trial.

Whereas what’s new is that the trial is over and the station’s asked to extend my contract for a further few months.

You know what’s supposed to happen, don’t you? They ask, I haggle, I play it cool, I haggle some more. But nope, I emailed back instantly saying “Yes, please”. I love doing this, though you’d be surprised how much work it is. The total running time is four minutes, four entire whole minutes but the average time it takes me to do is a bit over three hours, not including watching the films.

Also, I used to do the picture editing for the RadioTimes.com website and though someone else has taken that over – and she’s markedly better and faster than me, incidentally, so I doubt I’ll be getting that gig back – I am now working on the site’s photo galleries. It ought to be astonishingly easy: Radio Times magazine has a great picture desk team, the shots they take or get in are truly tremendous, all I have to do is pop them onto the website.

So that’s what I do. Just one is up and about now, a selection of photos from RT’s famous covers party:
http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/galleries/coversparty/01/

We’re hoping to add something to that next week, but I’ll tell you what if it works out. Also RT gave the cast of Hustle a compact flash digital camera and I’ve been looking over the shots they took. The best are going to be in the next issue of Radio Times and should be online shortly.

Otherwise, a script of mine won me a place on a mentoring scheme where a professional full-time script writer. I had a meeting about that right in the middle of my cold; I drove the hour to it with a hot-water bottle up my jumper.

So.

How’ve you been?

William