Millwall: say "Hello" to your new deputy chief executive, Heather Rabbatts...

More Heather's Leaving Do

My old boss is now the deputy chief executive at Millwall FC. Boringly this is all the talk on the second floor at Channel4's Horseferry Road HQ.

"Regrets, I've had a few..."

Heather's leaving do

The boss (of the boss of my boss), Capo di Tutti Capi I suppose, finally had her final leaving do on the rooftop terrace at the Century Club on London's fashionable Shaftesbury Avenue between the steak houses, theatres and chinese herbal medicine joints. This is her making her final farewell address. I've always liked Heather - whenever there's a departmental do she lets her hair down and gets as lashed as the next person. It was a fun event and we didn't let the fact that the rooftop terrace is enclosed in a cheap looking tent and stinks of the sewer put us off.

Don't make the mistake I did. This one isn't the Century Club we went to - that one's in Century City and looks quite 'classy'. We went to this one. Interestingly, most of the positive comments about London's own Century Club on this review site, are a) anonymous and b) incredibly flattering about the owner:
"Very nice food and friendly receptionist! Good looking owner!
Rating: 5/5
by: Anonymous, 23 November 2004"
I wonder...

Catfunt and Dreamweaver: a match made in Heaven

Catfunt

I decided that I need to learn more stuff, partly to make up for all the stuff I'm forgetting ("What's that actress's name again?") and partly to stave off Alzheimer's. I can't do Sodoko as an Alzheimer's preventative - I think I'd rather have Alzheimer's to be honest - so learning new stuff seems to be the way forward. Why exactly I thought Dreamweaver would be the thing to learn is beyond me. Nowadays it comes free in packets of cereal and everyone under 20 in Hackney has been on one of the many DW courses that are being foisted on the young and unemployable. This is my first Dreamweaver page.

What is it with magazine editors wanting to be on telly?

The one thing you can say about Ekow Eshun presenting More4's The Last Word is that he's so awful he makes Tyler Brule on The Desk look OK. And that's saying something.

Help me out here, buddy. Build a free website.

You can build a free website today and you'd really be helping me out. The project that I work on at Channel 4, INSITE, is all about expanding the idea of Englishness and how it's been represented. So the only restriction on the websites is that they need to fit this brief somehow. We've had people in the workshops we ran last year tell their own stories (Bobby, the traditional Asian drag queen) or the story of their ethinic community (Pickled Cabbage, the story of Serbians in Bradford) but it doesn't have to be that specific. That's up to you.

Sea Palling: modern architecture

North Walsham

There were two of these fisherman's shacks on the beach at North Walsham. I like them a lot as they remind me of the Louvre's pyramids but in the dark stretchy fabric there's something decidely David Adjayo about them. The effect is slightly spoiled when some red-faced local puts his head out to scowl at you as you walk by while discussing the area's house prices and try to convince your husband to move there, all in a loud voice.

Face-Off

The Church at Trunch, Norfolk

Spent a few days in Norfolk with Yol pottering around North Walsham, Mundesley and those sort of places. We went to the church at Trunch which is quite beautiful and is well-known for its font canopy. But the thing I really liked were the rood screens with pictures of the 11 apostles plus St Paul. The faces were destroyed by Cromwell's men in 1643.

Own Art: interest free art (if you see what I mean)

Own Art

This is from the Photographer's gallery website and it's about the Arts Council's Own Art scheme. Basically you can borrow 2000UKP interest free to buy art from participating galleries. It's a great idea. The only thing I'm wondering is where did they find these two art-loving hookers to promote the scheme?

You could even become an art day trader buying art on borrowed money and trying to shift it for a profit before you have to pay for it - particularly as it's an interest free loan.

ChangingSchmedia

Changing Media: the Guardian thing the other week

I went to the Guardian's Changing Media Summit (summit=basement of mid-range hotel near a bus or train station) the other week and have been meaning to write it up. Yesterday I realised the reason I hadn't was that it was crap. Many of the reasons it was crap can be found here in RDH's blog.

Bird: the Charlie Parker story

The great thing about working from home is that it's OK to fuck around in the time you save by not travelling. So today this was watching the second half of Madame X which we taped the other night and selections from Clint Eastwood's Bird. One of my favourite bits of Bird is when Parker takes the red-headed jewish trumpeter Red Rodney on a tour of the deep South as part of his band under the billing of "Albino Red" (this being the days of segregation in the South) and makes him sing the blues in various juke joints. Forest Whitaker is exceptionally good as Parker.

Madame X, on the other hand, is a fifties melodrama where Lana Turner is almightily punished (the loss of husband, son, exile, alcoholism, whoring, madness and ultimately death) for playing around with Ricardo Montalban while her husband is away. I hope Montalban was a pretty good shag. Of course, Montalban's other great film is Star Trek: Wrath of Khan.