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Originally posted by Havak
He is not the only poor coach ever to win a big prize like that. You opinion of Clive Woodward would be pertinent here maybe?
He is not the only poor coach ever to win a big prize like that. You opinion of Clive Woodward would be pertinent here maybe?
Deano remains the man who won things with the team that Bob built (and couldn’t win a crossword puzzle with). There’s something in that whatever else Bob’s CV says.
But I find my veneer of shallowness quite useful.
Yes you are right of course – although I think Atkinson himself was a co-writer on the original series and I seem to recall him coughing to that possibly being a problem in hindsight.
Very true. The man of course never needs to work again. Did you ever catch the Vicar of Dibley – Curtis had his hands in that too along with another Comic strip veteran in Dawn French.
Oh yes and the latest series of Ab Fab is airing here right now. It may well be a season too far for it although last Friday’s episode with Robert Lindsay and Elton John (classic line where he asks Joanna Lumley’s Patsy “Didn’t I know you when you were a man?") and a plot around the Beatles and Abbey Road was funny I will admit.
Have you noticed I wonder that none of those innovative comedy series are made by or for ITV? Auntie beeb serves a very valuable function here in that she can afford to take ‘risks’.
The current government's phobia about the ABC reached Pythonesque proportions recently. The (now, thankfully, former) Minister for Communications, under whose jurisdiction the ABC falls, became obsessed with the ABC's reporting of the Iraq war, convinced that the ABC journos opposed the American invasion. Of course, as you'd be aware, any criticism of the American invasion of Iraq is deemed "anti-American". Thus the Minister was accusing the ABC of being anti-American. He produced a log of 87 complaints, mainly involving ABC radio's premier morning current affairs programme. He had transcripts of the host's introductions of the war reports, transcripts of the journo-on-the-spot's reports, et al. He'd had their words analysed, their syntax analysed, and even their (verbal) emphasis on particular words analysed. All of which, he claimed, proved that the ABC was "anti-American".
Lo and behold, an independent body found a handful of the complaints had a degree of merit, in that the reports were, at worst, "sceptical" of the reasons behind the attack on Iraq.
Such is what passes for government in this country.
The further problem with the ABC here is that, while a fiscal basketcase, they have also succumbed to the government's economic rationalist view that any public money spent on broadcasting should be spent as "commercially" as possible, meaning, ultimately, that they're simply competing with the commercial networks for ratings. Or trying to, and failing, because they don't have the commercial networks' massive resources. Thus the meagre resources they have are p*ssed against the wall. Tragically, risk and innovation went out the ABC window quite a few years ago.
Is this affecting Mrs Finbar? I’m not clear what area she works in.
Now, she's returning to producing. She has developed a telemovie that is doubling as a pilot for a TV series which is set, of all places, in Alice Springs. The Alice Springs component will be shot in January.
The temperatures will be a killer, and, she has discovered from other producers who have filmed there in summer, the flies are actually more of a problem than the heat. Standard procedure, apparently, is to set up a big fan very close to the camera gate in order to blow the flies out of the gate in order to avoid shots in which massive flies fill the frame. The trouble with that, of course, is that having a big fan running so close to the action makes sound recording a nightmare.Anyway, to answer your question - while she was at 9, the crew situation wasn't a problem for her, directly. But it was a problem for various local producers who struggled to get crews together. In the past, producing telemovies and the like, she ran into the same problem. Things should settle down now that we will see fewer American productions here. Thus, the American utterances about how much they loved working here, how great the country was, et al, will be proved to be exactly what they were - code for, "we're here because your dollar's f*cked and it costs us less to come all this way to shoot here than it would cost us to shoot in our own backyard".
The England team have a vast, top class support group, I think in this case more than others the power of the English team is reliant on more than the head coach.
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