Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh sure, I'm not saying that something that isn't old isn't interesting or worthy of preservation, far from it. I can think of numerous examples offhand; Battersea Power Station in particular springs to mind for some reason.
It's a difficult area to be sure; beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Most stuff that passes for "art" these days is utter, pretentious tosh in my eyes, for example, yet others wax lyrical about it and get awfully cross with 'Philistines' such as I, for daring to suggest otherwise. However, it seems difficult - nay impossible - to imagine *anyone* who would seriously think that those 60s/70s shopping centres, offices and tower block homes were worthy of such treatment? (Apart from anything else, their shit design, materials and methods of construction mean that they *cannot* last much more than 50-odd years, sometimes even less)

Still, it is purely subjective I guess. Most certainly, and as a broad generalisation, at least from my own perspective, something that is very old - say 200 years or more - is very likely to be worth conserving?

If I had a Tudor house I'd paint it to look like Chris Moyles.

My shed would be remodelled to look like Aled.

Doesn't concrete rot, or something?

There's a stunning example of brutalist architecture in Shipley's clock tower.

I quite like the style. And the communist bloc buildings. Huge, hulking monoliths to the cause, rendered in concrete. Awesomes.

But whatever though, I sure hope Grim... doesn't want to still talk about Chris Moyles...

Funny how you never see them in the same room...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_cancer

Not my area of expertise, but pre-cast structures so beloved of the 60s/70s era are particularly prone. See also 'Hammersmith Bypass' and 'fucked', it being also borne of the same inglorious era, in construction terms.

(Ironically enough, innumerable Victorian bridges and viaducts etc. are all still standing well over a century since their construction. They knew what they were doing back then, apparently, as did even the Romans thousands of years before them... so much for supposed functionality and modernity, then? Eeeh, they don't make 'em like they used to... )

Hmm. Interesting. That might acocunt for the dwindling number of WW2 concrete barges on the Fal*. The remainder are used to support the mussel beds there.

* The Carrick Roads is the third largest natural harbour in the world, fans of natural harbour fans. It's up to 34m deep in places, too.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/decade-of-del ... s-1.823748

A lot of the concrete bridges here from that era are crumbling, the variation in temperature with the seasons combined with road salt and just lack of maintenance have combined into a huge problem. There are now calls for a Boston-style Big Dig to bury the expressway.

Oh, I don't disagree - but I think some things are given overmuch aesthetic credit by virtue of just being old. I think sash windows look awful and don't work terribly well. But then again, I'm something of an ascetic fascist when it comes to architecture.

The phrase 'period features' makes my skin crawl, and I've been known to advocate a rolling program of flattening and rebuilding from scratch all housing in the UK every 30 years or so.

I only know one person with a several hundred year old house, and that's Mr Kissyfur. The end fell off it.

Is that what they called you at school?

I can see where you're coming from to an extent, apart from the 'rebuilding every 30 years' bit, obviously!

'Period features' can certainly be problematic, I agree. When we bought Cavey Manor, the interior was all brass fittings & horse brasses, antique furniture and picture lamps, with red swirl Paisley carpets - it looked like an expensively furnished village pub - a cliche. We ripped all of this out and replaced with very contemporary decor and furnishings; lighting is always a problem with such low ceilings and small windows (especially as the house is bounded by massive trees on two elevations), but I'm personally very pleased with the end result. Just because something is old, it doesn't mean it can't be brought up to date, albeit the basic building fabric/envelope is the same. (Someone once unkindly remarked 'blimey, looks like Henry VIII has been to Ikea', which I thought was a pretty shitty thing to say - he was a tosser who lived in a crappy 1930s semi - but the interior is unexpected, after seeing the house exterior and grounds).





Poor sod. Bet that didn't come cheap; when things do go majorly wrong with these very old houses, they are fecking expensive to put right. Mind you, I guess the house had been OK for a few centuries by this time, so on the other hand it's not necessarily a bad reflection on the original design/build quality? Nothing's forever, afterall.

Wipe the meatball gravy off your chin next time.

Oi! I live in a crappy 1930s semi!

To be fair I certainly wasn't criticising him for that - we lived in a *tiny* two-up, two-down for years that would make a '30s semi look positively palatial. But, I did think it was a bit rich him saying that about our gaff (bear in mind also, this guy was a total knob). Even if I thought that about someone's house I deffo wouldn't just come out and say it, most especially if hopping onto their kind hospitality at the same time. I wouldn't be so rude or want to hurt their feelings.

Oh, fuck yes! Someone once came around with their boyfriend and he said "Are you going to get rid of the artex ceilings and redecorate this room?" and then proceeded to eat most of the food that we'd made four hours earlier that had been sat about as he 'had some jobs to do' so they were late. Possibly one of the most boorish pricks of a man I've ever met.

EDIT: Ask me about this a the cottage when MrsA isn't about.

EDIT 2: I still don't know what artex is and I don't ever spend a lot of time staring at ceilings.

EDIT 3: I'm grumpy now. I'm going to go and get my plastic dogs head and my fishing wire and see how long I can keep a canal boat from moving lest they run over Skippy the Labrador.

I'm generally in favour of conversation orders, the planning system, etc. The built environment is just as important as the natural one, and is often people's only regular connection with the past (or, at least, a Victorian's imaginary idea of what the past looked like).

I'm still not sold on much of what was built after the war, though. At the risk of sounding like Prince Charles, I think that after Hitler every time-traveller is entitled to have potshot at Le Corbusier and his followers.

So, yes, Chris Moyles.

I first listened to him on Radio 1 when he was brand new to the channel, I was working nights at the time and he did the 'pre-breakfast show show', it was some fucking crazy hour like 3am or 4am when he came on. (Going back to around 1996 here I'd say.)

He was really, really funny - literally had me in tears of laughter on a regular basis.

Then he got an afternoon show IIRC, and the more popular he got, the less funny he got, the more he surrounded himself with yes-men, and the more boorish, sexist, bullying and shit he got. His breakfast show I genuinely found almost impossible to listen to, it was just so bad compared to what he'd been before.

Moyles? The BBC should've fired the fat anti-semite fuck after his disgusting comments about Auschwitz.

Ve hav vayz off makink you talk!

I used to like Moyles on the early breakfast show - he totally sold out once he got the top gig.

Is the early breakfast show the one I was talking about?

Having Wiki-ed him, it appears that used to start at 4am, which sounds believable. (My shift used to run from 10pm to 7am, or something like that anyway.)

Night shifts have never agreed with me, so the fact that Moyles could get me laughing so much on the arse end of one of those shifts is a testament to how funny he once was.

(Mark & Lard still take the prize for making me laugh the most though, there was one occasion when they had the afternoon show on Radio 1 that I literally had to pull my car to the side of the road for a couple of minutes, because I couldn't fucking see properly through the tears of laughter.)

As above, it's good to Lambeth Walk.

I can't imagine there will ever be anything as entertaining as their shows on the radio ever again. Still miss them.

Indeed.

Loved them on the graveyard shift but I think they were probably at their best on the afternoon show. By their own admission they weren't 'morning people' and their morning show wasn't that great as a result.

But yes, lots of happy memories of laughing my fucking ass off listening to the graveyard shift and the afternoon show.

The Radcliffe and Maconie Show on Radio 6 is a consistently good listen.

I like Marc Riley's show because he plays good music. Can't fucking stand Stuart Maconie, though.

I did a gig with Mark Radcliffe's band a few years ago and a top bloke he was too. We exchanged autographs at the end of the night and my band got a mention on his show.

I also stole a doughnut of his rider.

Clearly one with no taste, as sash windows are lush. That was one of the bestest things about our Victorian place in London.

Are you sure you meant ascetic, by the way?


No no no, it developed a rustic personality to go along with the period features.

I am sure, yes.

The 10pm Monday to Thursday period was one of sheer, unbridled joy and wonder. I randomly came across a tape cassette which had a recording I'd made of one of their graveyard shift shows on it a while back. I genuinely got a lump in my throat listening to it.

There has been nothing since to match them.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
/

One Man and His Frog is one of the funniest things I have ever, ever heard.

When they did the "outtakes", complete with The Entertainer music, I was howling with laughter.

<Somerset accent>
"And you join us here at the Anusol Masters, where we are waiting for todays competitor, Arge Banglethrasset and his gorgeous bitch, Denise..."
</Somerset accent>

To be fair I probably enjoyed Adam and Joe's Radio 6 shows more. Mark and Lard had some moments of genius but there was an awful lot of it, mostly forgettable. Better in retrospect, like John Peel's shows.

I did like A&J, both on XFM and R6, but Mark and Lard were something I used to stay up late specifically to listen to - every night they were on I'd be listening to the radio on my headphones in bed until late oclock. I never once got bored, either.

Once they hit the afternoon and morning shows they did go a bit downhill, but then they were given a lot less freedom, particularly with the playlist.

I wasn't much of a John Peel fan, but that's another story.

What comments about Auschwitz?

...I never "got" Mark and Lard. I broke into a slight smile a few times but that was it; I just found their voices annoying for the most part, and there's only so many times I can find exactly the same joke funny ('Bloke or Bird', 'The Sixty Four Pence Question', Lard being the spoof interviewee etc.) - day after day after interminable day. (Plus their band, 'The Shire Horses', were shit too IMO)

I'm probably dead inside or something, but in my view if you want genuinely funny, witty radio, tune into R4 at 6:30pm on Fridays.

*nods gravely*
Yes, yes you are.


What's on that slot at the moment? The News Quiz? The Now Show?

The News Quiz at the mo' mate.
Used to love Dead Ringers when it was on, and I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue was always fairly hysterically funny - and is still pretty good with Jack Dee chairing it.

HA! The Radio 4 schedules are blocked at work.

ISIHAC is wonderful.

The News Quiz gets me my main fix of Jeremey Hardy, whom I am a little bit gay for. I'm really not sure why.

Man, JD's good, but Humph was a fucking legend. Their Alice in Wonderland Christmas Special was awesome.

It could do without Barry Cryer, though.

Hardy is just immense on the News Quiz. No-one rants like he does. I like Susan Calman as well.

The worst bit of The Now Show is the two minutes or so following the words "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Mitch Benn".

Ask your Porsche if you can borrow its soul and give it another listen.

The "not actually comments about auschwitz but massively reinterpreted by people who don't like him to beat him over the head with"

Basically he did that bbc1 family tree programme and commented that he didn't go to auschwitz on it, but everybody else does, like its a holiday and rite of passage that they must do on that programme.

I'm no moyles fan, but I'm a fan of deliberately twisting words to portray a non existent message even less.

Edit
Ah, word for word

Worse than Hitler, clearly.

You've mentioned your dislike of comedy songs previously, and in the main I agree with you, but Mitch Benn does come up with some excellent little pieces.

Ha. Yes. Some people do get in a tizz about things. Still, just imagine if he said Mecca instead or something, and then did a skit on Mohammed.

I model myself on Jeremy Hardy. Sadly this also includes dress sense.

One thing I loved about Mark and Lard was their not-even-vaguely disguised disdain for their mandatory playlists. Two favourites of mine were hearing five seconds of Ronan Keating before it sadly started 'skipping' and had to be replaced, and when that one song was saying:

"Do you, do you like it?
Is it, is it wicked?"

Mark just said, "No I bloody don't" and stopped it.

He's usually well enough dressed in a smart casual sort of way.