Blog
1 November 2008
I can believe it’s been almost two months since my last post to this blog. And yet you’re still reading it. I guess I should’ve really posted this last night so that I didn’t have yet another month on my blog without any posts. Oh well.
Anyway, here’s what was keeping me so busy in October that I couldn’t find the time to post. And I’m actually going to try and keep it short for once:
The Mighty Boosh – Monday 6th October 2008
Saw these live at Sheffield City Hall. We had excellent front row seats thanks to Chris going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I didn’t watch series one or two of their TV series show when it was on BBC Three. I remember watching about five minutes, thinking it was a bit mental, and then turning over to watch something else. After seeing them do a bit of live stuff on TV another time, Suzy bought me the DVD box set of series one and two and from then on I was hooked. Series three was really good, so I was looking forward to finally seeing them live. Although this was obviously an expensive production, it still had that raw home-made-fancy-dress-costume feel to it like the Mighty Boosh TV series had. I enjoyed it.
Michael McIntyre – Wednesday 8th October 2008
Saw him live at Sheffield Lyceum. We had cheap seats up on the balcony thanks to Chris not going to buy tickets early on the morning they were released. I’ve always thought he was funny on BBC Two’s Mock the Week but wasn’t sure what he’d be like doing stand-up. I was pleasantly surprised that he was actually really funny and did a lot of those jokes where he’d keep coming back to them later. I enjoyed it.
Vampire Weekend – Wednesday 22nd October 2008
Saw these live at Carling Academy Sheffield. We were standing for this gig thanks to nobody called Chris going to buy the tickets. Despite having not heard all the album, I thought they were really good. I’ve downloaded it now and actually think they might have been better live than recorded. Nevertheless... I enjoyed it.
Apart from all that, Suzy and I have also been to a few wedding fairs, we’ve been busy decorating our new house, we went to try out the fixed price lunch menu at Loch Fyne (really good food for just £11 per person) and I’ve been reviewing yet another book for O’Reilly.
So there you have it. A very busy but enjoyable October.
Labels: music, personal, theatre, tv
24 July 2007
Things have been a bit slack on this blog recently. To be honest, I’d almost forgotten I even had a blog until I read this status update on Facebook around a week ago:
Christian is thinking that people should be updating their blogs rather than concentrating on Facebook.
For those who haven’t been reading my status updates on Facebook, here’s a summary of what I’ve been doing since my last post:
Sorry, Christian, I know that’s probably not what you meant, but it’ll have to do for now... ;-)
Labels: facebook, gadgets, golf, music, personal, tv, wii
8 March 2007
For the past few nights, BBC Three have been showing Kill It, Cook It, Eat It in which they’ve shown the slaughter process for cows, pigs and sheep in great detail. As a meat-eater, I felt almost obliged to watch this programme.
I’ve not much else to say about this really, other than I found it very insightful and it hasn’t changed my views on eating meat, except for making me wish that I had a really good butcher on my doorstep. In fact, the butcher explaining where the different cuts of meats come from and how to identify good quality meat was probably the best part of the programme.
Anyway, here’s a random-but-related fact: The butcher who appeared on the programme – John Mettrick – owns the butcher’s shop that was used for the special-stuff-selling Hilary Briss and Son in The League of Gentlemen TV series. (And you can view a photo of his shop in Hadfield which I took when I visited the real Royston Vasey in January 2001!)
Labels: food, personal, tv
23 October 2006
A couple of months ago, I read That Peter Kay Book, the unofficial biography of Bolton’s very own Peter Kay. Having spent a few nights staying away from home on a training course last week (without any Internet access in the evenings, if you can imagine that) I managed to finish reading yet another book – The Sound of Laughter: The Autobiography of Peter Kay.
If you’ve ever seen Peter Kay’s stand-up shows, watched his TV series and / or listened to his director’s commentaries on his DVDs, you’ll already be aware of how much crossover there is between all of his material; many of the jokes he tells on stage also appear in Phoenix Nights and stories told during his DVD director’s commentaries also often appear in his TV series. What you realise when you read this book is that practically all his comedy sketches, and particularly those found in That Peter Kay Thing, are based on actual events he’s experienced throughout his life. Does this make him less funny? Not at all!
Now, I realise this probably slows down my reading speed but whenever I read books, I tend to read them aloud in my head. (I know that’s a bit of a contradiction, but I’m sure you know what I mean!) As I was reading Peter Kay’s autobiography, I could imagine him speaking every word to me, especially because he writes very much like he speaks. I actually think reading it that way made the book much funnier – it’s often the way he tells them after all! Downloading his first chapter as an audio book a few weeks ago probably helped me to read it like this too.
Whilst reading the book, I felt as though I’d got quite a bit in common with Peter Kay. For a start, we’re both Bolton boys, so I know many of the places he talks about in his book. We were also both altar boys at church when we were younger. Neither of us are really football fans. We both hated P.E. at school. But we both loved drama and we’ve both been in a school production of The Wizard of Oz. As Peter says:
“I’ve always believed drama to be an important subject. It’s not just about play-acting, it’s about giving children confidence and ironing out their inhibitions. [...] I guarantee that they’ll exude charisma and confidence for the rest of their lives as a result of being taught drama.”
And I agree... of course! ;-)
Fortunately, I had more success with musical instruments than him; he ruined his saxophone by cleaning it with Jif in the kitchen sink and subsequently gave up learning how to play it. I managed to get ten more GCSEs than him, although we both passed our GCSE in Art. I didn’t have as many part-time jobs as him; I can count all of mine on one hand, whereas he might even struggle to remember all his. I found learning to drive much easier than him; I took one test and passed, he took and failed several...
So maybe we don’t have that much in common after all! I guess it’s a bit odd, but even though our lives were so different growing up, I can still relate to much of what he’s written. Is it just because we grew up in Bolton during a similar era (he’s just a few years older than me) or is his comedy so wide-reaching and clever that he can make everyone feel like they can relate to his experiences? Maybe we’re all just like Peter Kay, with hundreds of funny, sad, interesting and just plain boring anecdotes to tell about our lives.
Anyway, if you’re a Peter Kay fan, I think it’s worth reading both of these biographies as they really complement each other. Of course, just as you’d expect, there are a few parts of Peter’s life that appear in both books, but it’s always good to get two sides of the story.
Labels: books, peterkay, tv
14 September 2006
Whilst at the airport before going on holiday recently, I noticed WHSmith had That Peter Kay Book by Johnny Dee on display. Being a Peter Kay fan, I picked up the book and had a quick flick through. To my amazement, I immediately spotted that the list of Internet Sources towards the back of the book included the following:
<ruscoe.net/maxandpaddy>
“That’s my website,” I shouted to Suzy (despite her being stood right next to me). The author must have found my Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere Location Guide website whilst researching material for the book. Anyway, I called my mum and got her to order a copy from Play.com (just because it was £4 cheaper than WHSmith) so that I could read it when I got back.
I remember seeing Peter Kay on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross saying how he didn’t like the idea of someone else writing his biography, which is why he’s written his own (due to be released on 5 October 2006). I seem to remember him implying that all these people do is dig for dirt on a celebrity and publish it, making money off the back of their fame.
Having read Johnny Dee’s book, it’s obvious that he admires practically everything Peter Kay’s ever done. Of course, there are things in the book that Peter Kay won’t have included in his autobiography, but not because he wouldn’t necessarily want them to be published – more because he wouldn’t even know some of those things about himself! Contained in this book are some honest opinions from Peter’s school friends, teachers, other comedians, co-workers and various other people he’s come into contact with over the years, many of whom would never have divulged this information directly to him.
I thought I knew quite a lot about Peter Kay, especially coming from Bolton and reading many of the stories and articles that the Bolton Evening News printed about him, but reading this book made me realise that I knew practically nothing about him at all. Starting with his childhood, then the numerous part-time jobs he had before becoming a stand-up comedian, and eventually his slow rise to fame as a star of TV and film, Johnny Dee’s experience as a journalist has allowed him to speak to many of the key people in Peter Kay’s life – including Peter Kay himself – with each one providing amusing tales and anecdotes about his journey so far.
So where does my guide to locations used in Max and Paddy fit in? After reading the entire book, I’m pretty sure that content from my website was only used for a couple of items in the “The Little Book o Mis-Kay-Lany” at the back of the book:
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TRACKLISTING TO JERRY ST CLAIR’S SOLO ALBUM YOUNG AT HEART – this was possibly obtained from this photo of the fake album (as featured in Series 2, Episode 2 of Phoenix Nights) that I found whilst visiting the motorhome used in the series
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MAX AND PADDY’S ROAD TO NOWHERE LOCATIONS: ALL ROADS LEAD TO BOLTON – undoubtedly taken from my Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere Location Guide website
I thoroughly recommend this book to all fans of Peter Kay. Even when his autobiography is released next month, I’m sure it will be worth reading both of these books.
(For a more detailed review of That Peter Kay Book – or The Story of How Peter Kay Became Bolton’s Biggest Export – see Chortle.co.uk.)
For any of my readers that have never even heard of Peter Kay – you’ve either been living under a rock or don’t live in the UK – you can catch some of his work on Google Video, although it’s mainly just his John Smith’s adverts and short TV appearances.
Labels: books, personal, peterkay, ruscoe.net, tv
20 April 2006
Back in November 2002, we went to Blackpool for the day and visited Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks. Some of the waxwork models were so poor that I couldn’t resist taking photos of the best (and worst) examples to put on my website. I soon created the Waxwork Quiz which has now had almost 500 people attempting to complete it – but only 6 people have managed to guess 12/12 correctly!
Just over two years later, in November 2004, I was contacted by the producer of ITV’s Today with Des and Mel.
I work on Des & Mel – I came across your website which I enjoyed. I thought the pictures of the wax works were very funny and would love to show them on the show. Did you take the pictures? Would it be OK to use them!!!!!! I think Des would love them. Please let me know
Of course, I obliged, but only on the condition that I got a name check, a link to my website from theirs and a signed photo of Des and Mel. The photos appeared on the show on Friday, 26 November 2004, but it was a total disaster. Not only did they call me “Tony Roscoe” but when they tried to get the studio audience to guess who the waxworks were of, someone in the audience managed to guess every single one correctly! (I can only assume that they’d either visited my website before or had been to Louis Tussaud’s themselves!) To add insult to injury, they then said that I’d emailed the photos in to them! Honestly – as if I’d be so sad as to email photos into a daytime TV programme. Their producer had practically begged me to use them!!! A few weeks later, I finally received my “signed” photo. I say “signed” in the loosest possible sense since it was a digital print of a photo that had been signed. What absolute rubbish!
Anyway, I’d just about managed to get over that episode in my life and then all the bad memories came flooding back to me today when I was contacted by a researcher for a new Channel 4 “comedy panel show” who also wanted to use my photos! Again, I’ve obliged, but this time they can’t give credits for any pictures (apparently). But after last time’s efforts, that’s probably for the best.
The show is called “Best of the Worst” (or something like that) and should air towards the end of June 2006, so keep you eyes peeled in case my photos make it to the final edit!
See also:
Labels: personal, photos, ruscoe.net, tv
16 March 2006
Those of you who know me are probably aware that I don’t “do” books. They’re boring. There’s always something better to do than read. In fact, I don’t think I’ve read a proper book all the way through since leaving school. Even then, I only read books because we had to and, where possible, I’d always opt for non-fiction rather than fiction.
Well, all that’s about to change! Suzy bought me A Teaspoon and an Open Mind: The Science of Doctor Who by Michael White for Christmas. She’s bought me a few books now and I always feel a bit bad because I don’t read them. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I ditched reading the free Metro paper whilst tramming it to work in favour of my book – and, no, I’m not just sulking because they didn’t print my letter!
Despite all the highly scientific references, which I struggle to understand at 8:30 in the morning, this book is remarkably easy to read for anyone with an interest in the future, time travel, aliens, telepathy, teleportation or just science fiction in general. And it’s not just a book about Doctor Who; this is used purely a reference point for the author.
The book obviously covers far too much for me to comment on here, so I’ll just summarise what’s realistically going to be possible or not at sometime in the future:
- Time travel: Possible
- Aliens: Possible
- Interstellar travel: Possible
- Telepathy and telekinesis: Possible
- Supercivilizations: Possible
- Teleportation: Possible
- Robots and mechanoids: Possible
- Ability to live forever: Possible
- A transdimensional machine like the TARDIS: Impossible
I know some of that might seem a bit far-fetched, but you have to read the book to understand why something isn’t necessarily impossible just because it’s not possible yet. There’s one thing of which I’m sure though. Michael White’s arguments for why time travel and aliens might be possible are infinitely more convincing than Mark Haville’s arguments for why evolution is impossible.
Since this thing they call ‘reading’ was so enjoyable, I’ve already chosen my next book: Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. No doubt I’ll post something about that too once I’ve finished reading it. Just don’t hold your breath; it’s a big thick book...
(And don’t forget, you can always see whether it’s fair to judge this book by its cover over on Judge A Book By Its Cover.co.uk – where you really can judge a book by its cover!)
Labels: books, personal, tv
3 January 2006
I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, mainly because I’m totally incapable of keeping them. Previous years have seen me try to stop biting my nails (several times) and give up kebabs (which is actually impossible). This year, however, I’m going to try and do a couple of things: chew my food more thoroughly and post to my blog more frequently. Only time will tell whether I’ll keep to either of them, but since it’s the third day of the year already, it must be time I posted something to my blog. (Especially since the extra food chewing hasn’t been going too well over the last couple of days...)
Anyway, it seems fitting that my first post of 2006 should review what happened to me in 2005 – i.e. all the things I probably should have posted about at the time but couldn’t usually be bothered.
Warning: anyone with a low boredom threshold should probably stop reading now as I’ve just read the post before publishing it and I have definitely rambled on a bit too much...
January 2005
I’ve been researching my Ruscoe family tree for around five years, but over the last year or so I’ve started to take it more seriously and decided to visit Shropshire Archives in January 2005 to help fill in some blanks. Whilst we were in the area, I took the opportunity to have a look at where my ancestors would have lived back in the 1800s. If you’ve got the Ruscoe surname in your family tree, you might want to look at my photos from the trip, my Ruscoe Family Genealogy website and the Ruscoe Family Genealogy Google Group.
February 2005
I received a letter from a popular men’s magazine threatening legal action against me unless I removed photos of two TV celebrities. The images showed how the celebrities looked before and after they were photoshopped for the magazine. I received them by email and made them into Flash movies so that you could hover over each to see the differences. Needless to say, the magazine’s legal team didn’t like this, so I kindly agreed to remove them. I now get hundreds of disappointed visitors looking for the photos on my website each month.
I also made a gingerbread house for my sister’s birthday and Suzy helped me to build a snowman.
March 2005
We managed to get some tickets to go and see The Games being filmed in Sheffield for Channel 4 and watched a few celebrities compete in Olympic style sporting events. The line up included Craig Charles (comedian/actor/presenter), Princess Tamara Czartoryski-Borbon (model), Danny Foster (former member of Hear’Say), Kirsty Gallacher (presenter), Mel Giedroyc (comedienne), Chesney Hawkes (singer), Lisa Maffia (singer), Jonathon Morris (actor), Philip Olivier (actor), Kevin Simm (member of Liberty X) and Anna Walker (presenter). There’s not much else to say about this really. Chris posted an equally brief description at the time.
April 2005
We went to see Richard Herring at the Lescar. I’m not really a fan of his but I thought he was very, very funny. Chris Hill covered it at the time, so there’s no need for me to say any more.
May 2005
During the first Bank Holiday weekend, I built myself a brick barbecue in our back garden. It’s something I’d had planned ever since we moved into our house and, even though we only got to use it three or four times, it was worth the five trips to Wickes, sore arms, aching shoulders and the sunburnt neck!
I also finally updated my website (again) to use XHTML & CSS, moved my three-year-old weblog to use Blogger and was kindly given a Flickr Pro account, which I really should be making more use of. (Maybe that should be another new year’s resolution...)
June 2005
I travelled more in this month that I’d travelled in my entire life. First of all, we went camping in Malham, North Yorkshire for Andy’s birthday (like we did the previous year). Then we went on holiday to Florence for a week, also visiting Pisa whilst we were in the area. About a week later I then made a business trip to Montréal, Canada. (You can read a bit more about these escapades in my Around the World in 25 Days post.)
July 2005
Chris and Dawn tied the knot and I had another birthday, which was when I played Singstar for the first time. (Sadly, this was when we also introduced Chris Riley to the game and he now takes it quite seriously...)
August 2005
A surprising number of rather large spiders made an appearance in this month. I’ve not seen many of them since then, so I can only presume that they’ve been beamed back up to the Planet of the Rather Large House Spiders by their mothership.
September 2005
Suzy and I visited Combe Martin Wildlife and Dinosaur Park in Devon with Lil and Chris (see my photos) and I got to feed a lemur for the first – and probably last – time!
Google released their Gmail button for Google Toolbar, which enabled me to figure out how to add custom search buttons to the toolbar. They then released Google Blog Search which would later result in my website traffic increasing considerably as people found my blog posts much more quickly than they would through the normal Google search.
October 2005
October was an exciting month (for a geek). First of all, I wrote a script to check for Google Subdomains and found a few that people hadn’t seen before. One of these was purchase.google.com which might have inspired the folks over at WebmasterBrain.com to dig a bit deeper, resulting in them discovering the Google Purchases (AKA Google Wallet / Google Payments) sign-up pages. Incidentally, almost three months on and this new service from Google still hasn’t been released yet.
I decided to run the script again after reading a comment by Wouter Schut and discovered the Google Base subdomain. What happened in the days following my post about this discovery was remarkable. Within 24 hours, Google-watchers all over the world were discussing a new service that they didn’t even fully understand. As screenshots started to appear on the Internet, people were speculating what the new service would be capable of, which caused eBay’s stock to reportedly drop by as much five percent at points during the day! The Guardian and The New York Times – amongst many others – referenced my website and I was even interviewed by Business Week magazine! Incidentally, the title I chose for my post – All your base are belong to Google – was used all over the Internet, with some people even posting it to their blogs without even knowing why they were doing it!
November 2005
I finally went to see The League of Gentlemen live in Llandudno (as I’d mentioned earlier in the year) and the show was absolutely excellent, completely exceeding my expectations. It was well written, well performed and well worth the wait. My only real gripe was that it wasn’t long enough; the two 45-minute acts just went far too quickly! For any League fans didn’t get to see it, I’d definitely recommend buying it as soon as the show is released on DVD.
I also held my school reunion and bought myself a PSP. I actually posted an update around that time, so you can read more about all that if you like.
December 2005
T’was the week before Christmas and my sister gave birth to a baby girl, making me Uncle Tony and ending the year perfectly.
The End.
If you’ve read all the way to here, you deserve a medal! Please accept my most sincere apologies. When I started writing this post, I only intended it to be a brief look back at 2005 but then I got blogorrhea and I couldn’t just hit the delete button after spending so much time on it...
Happy New Year!
Labels: gadgets, genealogy, google, personal, photos, psp, ruscoe.net, theatre, travel, tv
8 June 2005
My mate Dave (yes, that’s right – the one Papa Lazarou always talks about) introduced to me to The League of Gentlemen (not literally) when I was in my 3rd year of uni. Their 2nd series was airing on BBC2 and I’ve been hooked on their work ever since. In January 2001, I visited Hadfield to take a tour around the real life Royston Vasey. When you walk around Hadfield, you really do feel like you’re in Royston Vasey; the local butcher even sells special stuff sausages...
Earlier this year I came across The League of Gentlemen Scripts and That book, which was released ages ago but wasn’t really very well promoted. I bought it Dave for his birthday hoping that he’d already have a copy so that I could keep it. (He didn’t have it, so I had to buy it again for myself.) It contains all the scripts from the series, biographies of each character, and loads of pictures. It’s an ultra-heavy hardback book that every TLOG fan should own.
At the moment, The League seem to be pulling out all the stops. Not only have they just released their first motion picture, but they’ve also released The Complete Collection DVD Box Set (all three TV series and that disturbing Christmas Special) and a new special edition of their Live At Drury Lane DVD, featuring five minutes of new footage from their hugely popular "Local Show for Local People". They’ve also got another live show planned for later this year titled "The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You" which I’ve just booked some tickets to see at Llandudno’s North Wales Theatre.
Until very recently, they didn’t have an official website (there were, of course, hundreds of "unofficial" fan-sites popping up all over the Internet) but with The League now moving from cult to mainstream, it’s not surprising to see official sites starting to appear. For anyone that hasn’t managed to track them down, here are the ones I’ve found:
And in case you’ve never been to any of the unofficial sites before, here are some of the better ones that have managed to survive:
Labels: books, film, links, personal, photos, theatre, tv
3 December 2004
Since I’m originally from the Bolton area, I know quite a few of the locations used in Peter Kay’s latest TV series on Channel 4. For any die-hard Peter Kay fans out there, surfing t’Internet trying to find out where those locations are, I’m proud to present "Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere Location Guide"...
Labels: links, personal, peterkay, tv
3 June 2004
http://www.christopher-hill.com/OldSite/archive/2004/04/07/2094.html
For some weird reason, Chris Hill wants to be at the top of Google when you search for the phrase Dermot Murnaghan, so let's see if we can help him achieve this strange desire.
Updated: 1 November 2005
Broken link fixed.
Labels: links, tv
6 May 2004
http://www.thomasscott.net/jim/
“Now then, now then!” This little web toy will let you make your own Jim’ll Fix It badge, with whatever you want written on it. Then you can save it, and upload it to your own web site, or email it to your friends. How’s about that then?
Labels: links, tv
