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

“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