Tidy!

My Top 3

I had an unexpected email yesterday, from someone at the Evening Standard who’d read my take on the best british sitcoms (written in 2004) and wondered if I’d be interested in writing a few words on Gavin and Stacey winning a BAFTA and the state of sitcoms in general. Despite not exactly being an avid Standard reader, I am a fan of Gavin and Stacey, so I quickly tapped out a few paragraphs and emailed it over. I didn’t think what I wrote was particularly good (certainly less potentially libellous than my original) - writing hundreds of words is so much harder than writing thousands - but it was kind of fun seeing it in the paper today.

I know it’s best to best to cater to your audience, but sadly the short nature of the piece meant I wasn’t able to include any references to Ken Livingstone funding illegal immigrants bent on evil terrorism. Still, probably goes without saying to the average Standard reader. Anyway, thanks to Josh at the paper for including this URL in it.

On to more interesting things…. In between meetings today I managed to pop in to the British Museum to see The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock exhibition, and very good it was too. With about 150 prints covering a wide range of styles and subject matter, I thought the exhibition did an excellent job of examining American artists’ responses to the changing culture and politics in the first half of the 20th century.

Many of the images in the intervening period explore the changing urban landscape of New York, the onset of the Depression, the romanticised visions of the American heartlands by the Regionalists, the response to the rise of Fascism in Europe and America’s entry into the Second World War.

It’s on until September and admission’s free, so highly recommended if you’re in central London with a bit of time to kill.