Ben Elton opens new college performance centre

how to fight loneliness

The journo in the corner

The England cricketer Andrew Flintoff once described his first meeting as a young Lancashire intern with his all-time hero Ian Botham.

“I just dropped my shopping,” he said. “I didn’t know where to look.”

For such a recognisable and seemingly confident personality to admit to bashful hero-worship suggests there is hope after all for the socially inept among us.

I recently found myself in a similar situation at a certain media event in London.

I arrived unfashionably early, and after chatting briefly to the press officer, was left cowering in a corner, buried in my notes as a procession of national journalists, broadcasters and academics entered and hobnobbed before me.

There was the BBC’s home editor, Mark Easton; Saturday editor of the Times, George Brock; former Olympian and sports journalist Matthew Syed; and City A.M Editor Lawson Muncaster.

I disappeared further and further into my corner, drinking the complimentary tea like it was going out of style and reading and re-reading the press release in hope of discovering a formula for invisibility.

You may have guessed from all of this that I am not a good networker. I never have been.

Put me in a room filled with people I’ve never met before, place a drink in my hand and tell me to “mingle” and I descend into a navel gazing, quivering wreck.

Not very convenient for a journalist, you might say, given that the old adage of “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” could have been invented for the fickle world of media.

One a one-to-one basis, I’m usually fine. I can laugh when I need to laugh, I can nod and look serious, heck I can even stretch to a witty remark now and again.

But as a newly qualified rooky, how do I go about introducing myself to people who have been to more press briefings than I’ve had hot dinners?

People whose profound discourse I was reading only yesterday in The Guardian were now standing just feet away providing what more sure-footed colleagues would describe as “the perfect networking opportunity”.

I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to chicken out.

I stuck to my corner, eventually following the crowd into the event, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief and choking on my supreme embarrassment.

Maybe in the future, people will no longer communicate face to face and the phrase ‘social networking’ really will be confined to the impersonal comfort of technology.

Until then I remain the journo in the corner, my innate awkwardness shining through for all to see.

In praise of radio

WHEN ASKED to describe his reaction to the invention of the radio, German physicist Albert Enstein said: “Radio is a kind of very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.”

A mangled kind of explanation from arguably the greatest genius of all time, but you can see what he was getting at.

Before the invention of the magical box we have come to know as the ‘telly’, families used to crowd round the wireless and listen for news of events from around the globe, interspersed with the occassional Noel Coward play or spot of frivolity from the likes of Arthur Askey.

Simpler times, some might say. In this modern age of ipods, bendy buses and ‘Kit Kat Orange’, it can often be hard to keep up with the latest trends in technology.

Not a day goes by, it seems, without another channel appearing on TV – the BBC is spreading itself increasingly thin across it’s ever expanding empire – but online radio is the pot of gold at the end of this digital rainbow.

I recently found myself with an unexpected day of leisure, so rather than going for a healthy walk in the country or visiting one of the capital’s many culturally enlightening galleries, I decided to stick some hot cross buns in the toaster and settle down for an afternoon of radio.

There is something brilliantly comforting about Radio 4’s classic quiz show ‘Just a Minute’. No matter what is going on in your life, you get the feeling that it will always be there.

You could be standing in the burning wreckage of your flat, your treasured possessions going up in smoke as your spouse bids you farewell for the final time, and still you would raise a smile as Clement Freud attempts to talk for 60 seconds on the subject of ‘what I did on my summer holidays’.

The main thing that struck me as I surfed through the stations and indulged myself in radio goodness is that everything is so much slower, and better off for it.

Television is becoming overwhelmed by the constant need to keep the viewer from switching over, flashing graphics and blaring adverts, just in case we get bored and contemplate doing something more wholesome with our time.

Radio, on the other hand, assumes that it’s listeners are more patient, and thus there is more opportunity for the ‘aimless ramble’ – an intergral and neglected part of communication.

On his Sunday afternoon music show, actor and writer Stephen Merchant is a master of this art.

The conversation between Merchant and his co-presenters spanned a variety of topics, very few of which I can recall off the top of my head, but such is the nature of this kind of unplanned spontaneous setup.

Comedians Adam and Joe have a similar ethos with their Saturday morning slot on 6 music, but to the point where they are just saying the first thing that comes into their head – and it’s very, very funny.

You don’t get that kind of spontaneous humour anywhere else. At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old man, TV is packed to the rafters with ‘comedy’ panel shows which masquerade as platforms for comedians to indulge in topical banter, but are in fact as carefully staged and scripted as the Labour party conference.

So here’s to radio, the oft-neglected orphan of the digital revolution. Next time you find yourself pulling a cat’s tail, think of Einstein, and let yourself drift off into a magical, wireless world.

Sam Blackledge

Couple get engaged on rollercoaster

A loved-up couple had the ride of their lives on Friday when they got engaged on the tallest rollercoaster in Europe.

Jenny Harold, 28, took advantage of the February 29 leap year tradition to propose to boyfriend Patrick Hyde on the Stealth ride at Thorpe Park.

Rollercoaster enthusiast Patrick, 26, said he was amazed when Jenny popped the question.

Jenny kept her plan secret for almost two months, telling her now-fiance that the day out was a late birthday present.



“I did think something was amiss,” said Patrick.

“My birthday was a month ago, but she just kept saying ‘I’ve got something planned’.”

The couple, who have been an item for more than a year, had one of their first dates at the theme park so it was the perfect setting for Jenny’s proposal.

“I’m glad it came together – it could have gone horribly wrong!” she said.

“I just feel completely relieved.”

Stealth was introduced to the park in 2006, and now goes from 0-80mph in 1.9 seconds, producing G-forces of up to 4.8g.

First printed in: Surrey Advertiser Online

"You're like... the coolest person I've ever met and you don't even have to try"

Every so often, a film from the left field of the American movie industry has critics and cinemagoers alike falling over themselves to garnish it with praise and, very often, awards.

Last year Little Miss Sunshine scooped two Oscars - best actor for Alan Arkin and best original screenplay – unprecedented for a film with a budget of just ₤8million and no major stars.

In 2008, Diablo Coby’s Juno looks set to be the surprise hit of the season, having made an appearance in almost every top ten list of the past few months.

Telling the story of a 16-year-old who finds herself pregnant by her best friend, Juno is a witty, fragile, perceptive piece of work that says more in 92 minutes than an army of Orks and Hobbits could in more than nine hours.

Ellen Page is the undoubted star, and with a spot hosting Saturday Night Live lined up for next month, she will surely enjoy the dazzling Hollywood limelight for a while longer.

Page’s depiction has been described as spunky, quirky and razor-sharp, but there are subtleties to her performance that go deeper than her delivery of the BAFTA winning script.

She seems to defy the character’s tender years, to the extent that the penultimate, brutal labour scene serves as a jarring reminder that this all-conquering, Stooges-loving tomboy is in fact just a child herself.

Plaudits must also go to the solid supporting cast. Michael Cera and Jason Bateman - reunited after the tragic cancellation of Arrested Development – share low-key, intimate moments with Page, while Allison Janney and J.K Simmons are perfect as Juno’s parents, even more confused and lost than the teen herself.

The Academy Awards may not adorn this sleeper hit on February 24 with so many other great films vying for honours, but it’s a little gem to be cherished in an industry so obsessed with doing things on a grand scale.

Sam Blackledge

First published in Surrey Advertiser Online

the death of journalism?

The Guardian came over all self-pitying and masochistic today.

On Comment is Free, Martin Bell believes that newspapers and TV networks are "retreating into a comfort zone of celebrity stories, consumer news, sport, health-scares and crime...the coverage is mawkish, exploitative and highly speculative."

In MediaGuardian, Nick Davies goes one better, suggesting that the media is involved in the "mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda." Journalists have become "passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest," he says. "Not journalists, but churnalists."

While it is frustratingly true that much of a journalist's work nowadays involves wading through a sea of PR guff, most of the reporters I have met over the past year seem to be in it because they care about issues and want to tell the truth. If the Murdoch empire and increasingly media-savvy press departments block the way occassionally, then we'll just have to find another way around.

S