We don’t generally have comedy roasts in the UK. Imagine This is Your Life but instead of the avuncular Michael Aspel, you have George from Seinfeld. And rather than being surrounded by friends and family, the celebrity is encircled by past co-stars known to feel a strong sense of genuine animosity towards them, alongside C-list comedians itching to raise their profile whilst feigning mild interest in their work.

Bill Shatner occupies a peculiar space in the pop culture consciousness. Frequently lambasted by his own fanbase for his oft-imitated speech pattern; his hair (or lack thereof); his weight; his bizarre singing style and his proclivity for not turning down any work made available to him (American Psycho 2, anyone?), the man is also revered as a cult legend.

Hosted by Jason Alexander, who makes a completely valid point that you might never have heard of any of the roasters (and if that goes for the Americans, what chance do we have?), the agenda for the evening becomes clear. Everyone takes it in turn to approach the podium and insult each other. Then they insult Shatner. Then they pretend they don’t really mean it. Rinse and repeat.

It’s easy to ridicule Shatner, but to take the piss in an inventive new way might prove a little tricky. So how did the professional comedians come up with new material? Easy – they don’t; they merely resort to calling each other cunts.

After Shatner’s entrance to the studio on horseback (and why not?) he is ensconced in the Captain’s chair and almost immediately assumes the posture of a stroke victim. As with the majority of the guests, you get the strong impression that he’s desperately trying to smile through the pain of both the barbed comments from complete strangers as well as the awkward attempts at humour. He’s no stranger to self-mockery and seemingly takes the roasting well. Apparently the only off-limits topic was his finding his wife dead in a swimming pool.

Among the comedians taking part is Lisa Lampenelli. Apparently she’s supposed to be America’s Queen of Mean and yet her material is amongst the tamest. Reading her set from a crumpled piece of paper with a stilted Andy Parsons-esque delivery didn’t help endear me to her. Andy Dick, one of the few I’d heard of, spent the majority of the evening licking people. Others I recognised included Fred Willard, Farrah Fawcett, and Artie Lange of Howard Stern. George Takei and Nichelle Nichols were the only Trek stars who elected to take the opportunity to publicly vent their respective angers, and there are short pre-filmed segments from Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman and Sandra Bullock.

Shatner himself is mostly silent throughout. Every so often the camera will focus on his rictus grin for a reaction shot and you’d be forgiven for thinking the disc is skipping. Only Nichelle Nichols seems taken aback occasionally, but this is perhaps understandable given the nature of some of the comments thrown her way.

I’m not quite sure why this is only now coming to DVD having been aired on US TV in 2006 but after ex-Golden Girl Betty White makes an offhand comment about outliving Artie Lange, a prediction that almost came true after his suicide attempt earlier this year, I was morbidly awaiting a comment directed toward Farrah Fawcett regarding her mortality. The nearest we got was an advisement that she stay out of the sun. Close, but wrong kind of cancer.

I don’t have a problem with the concept of a roast, and I’m all for public tributes of celebrities done in a humourous, non-sycophantic manner. This was pretty much the opposite. Rather than displaying any genuine affection, each individual set was essentially a vicious diatribe followed by that clichéd phrase, “but, seriously, folks,” and then professing some adoration for Shatner that even he didn’t buy. I don’t know why this exists.

Thankfully the DVD is uncensored. I can only imagine how infuriating this must have been in the aired version with every other word having to be bleeped out. It is, though, strangely missing an intro segment with Bill Shatner calling Leonard Nimoy and asking him to be part of the evening. One can only imagine that Nimoy watched the original broadcast, went back in time courtesy of some red matter, and advised his younger self not to take part.

The only really enjoyable pieces are the sporadic pieces of archive footage of Bill hamming it up in various shows and commercials, just because he couldn’t turn down the paycheck… Ah, I think I’ve just realised why he agreed to this.

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On my recommendation they attended Robin Ince’s Darwin Birthday Spectacular at Norwich Arts Centre back in November; a touring version of his School for Gifted Children shows featuring Robin and Josie Long alongside folk musician Gavin Osborn and popular science writers, Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh. My parents both enjoyed it but my mum remarked that Robin seemed like an angrier Stewart Lee and that she had concerns about his levels of stress.

I talked to Robin about this (the comparison with Stewart, not my mother’s fears of an imminent cardiac arrest) during a recent interview for Den of Geek:

I’ve noticed with Stewart Lee, because we’re both middle-aged men with young children, our concerns have become similar. This is probably going to sound really highfaluting and awful but it’s as if the morality comes more and more to the fore and I think, “I don’t want the world to be this wrong.”

And yet one of Robin’s favourite pieces of cinema is the the first ten minutes of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake where the world turns to absolute shit. He is a paradoxical man.

Here’s another cut piece from our chat, where Robin discusses working with childhood heroes and not being able to find somewhere to hang his coat backstage:

One of the reasons I started in stand-up is John Hegley. Whenever I’ve worked with him it’s a tremendous excitement because I watched him when I was 15 years old and he’s someone that I think has carved out a brilliant career doing what he believes in.

I still have a signed Jeremy Hardy poster I got when I was 17 years old in Edinburgh. He was selling posters from his show for a pound for the Terrence Higgins Trust and now I find myself sitting next to him when I do The News Quiz.

I keep going on about Alan Moore, but it was one of the most exciting things doing a gig in Northampton. I was saying to a guy outside I was getting worried because what if Alan Moore was there? And yes, he is. He’s in the front row with his wife Melinda. I’m trying out a show that I’ve never done before and because of the shape of Alan’s hair you can tell when he’s laughing because there’s a certain movement in it. Then afterwards when I’m chatting to him and he goes, “You should come round to dinner at some point.” I’m going, “This is Alan Moore! I started reading him when I was ten years old in 2000 AD, Warrior Magazine, and V for Vendetta and now I can be in a room having a conversation with him and finding out things and learning stuff.”

These are all of the sides that make up for the fact that I’ve spent a lot of my time sitting on late night trains or at home full of self-loathing going, “That wasn’t as good as it should have been. I’ve let that audience down.” When I’m just sitting outside of a pub having a conversation with you I’m full of excitement and thinking, “What a magnificent world,” but tomorrow when I’m about to go on stage I’ll think, “What on earth are you doing? Why are you standing here about to show off to people and talk about things?” At the Lyric I saw my arm as I was gesturing in some routine and I thought, “I’m still wearing a fucking duffel coat,” such a British amateurish thing.

Robin’s flat was flooded with sewage a few years ago, destroying his prized record collection. Here’s a documentary he did for Radio 4 back in 2008 asking if his generation were the last to have such an obsession with music. It also features Stewart Lee, Andrew Collins and Lauren Laverne.

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Dave is obsessed with robots and dinosaurs so naturally they seemed ideal topics for songs. And Nathan and I had already written a moving ballad about a tyrannosaurus’ lament to God regarding His wanton destruction of their species earlier in the year. I only remember the chorus:

Dinosaurs!
They are bigger than now
Dinosaurs!
Some were bigger than cows (some were smaller)

Awful. Seriously, B-Oyster and N-dog? What made you think it was a good idea to write songs at 3am after downing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s? It’s hardly the heartfelt opus it was intended as so let’s just put extinct animals as a whole on the back burner for now. What else does Dave like aside from robots, then? Maxibons and a certain time-travel trilogy from the 80s. Okay, go:

I like to watch Back to the Future
Sitting on the couch next to my mum
Don’t know if it’s nature or nurture
But she said I’ve got a pretty cute bum

I turned and yelled “That’s way out of line!”
She looked hurt and I felt a bit mean
“And please stop calling me Calvin Klein!”
Then I left for good in my time machine

Unfortunately incest is perhaps not the ideal birthday topic. I hadn’t yet reached the verse about mother’s dubious uses for Nestlé’s delicious ice-cream based treats and hadn’t even begun to touch upon how Roomba would factor into the resulting mess. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’d even want to. Let’s try to write a song more about Dave himself:

You’re getting older now; you’re growing up
Doesn’t mean you can’t drink wine from a cup
Avoid responsibility
Celebrate frivolity
Still watch too much childrens’ TV
Criticise it ironically
You can forever be
Dave Rickmann

Aw. Lovely. I secretly like the fact that this conclusion of the song boils down to me giving Dave, despite his advancing age, permission to continue to be himself. The verses were all flattering comparisons of Dave to other much more famous Daves and were all written with the assistance of Carmen, who supplied all the genuine musical talent.

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I have no issue with the screenplay or Andrew Adamson’s direction taking liberties with the source material, especially when it serves to make the film better paced, less of a Christian allegory, and more exciting. I don’t remember Aslan biting the Witch’s face off in the novel and I’m fine with the removal of thinly disguised anti-Muslim sentiment. If, like me, you have a rolling production line of cousins the DVD is an easy guaranteed Christmas treat.

An ex-girlfriend of mine is a big fan of realism in films. Suffice it to say that when I dragged her along to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe she liked it up until the children walked through the wardrobe. I, meanwhile, left the cinema wide-eyed and full of childlike wonder. I couldn’t wait to get home, gorge myself on Turkish Delight, and thoroughly investigate furniture under the guise of “tidying up.” Our differing opinions on the film’s actual quality were merely a contributory reason for our subsequent break-up.

Technorati Tags: christmas, den of geek, lego, narnia, religion, the lion the witch and the wardrobe

I considered subverting the feature and entering The Sixth Sense; a film you surely can’t sit through more than once. Any ambiguity is relentlessly ignored in favour of beating you about the head with heavy-handed explanations, pretending it’s far more clever than it actually is, and lasting far too long. Throw in a couple of regional accents and it’s the movie equivalent of a Michael McIntyre routine.

I’ve decided on An American Werewolf in London because I saw it recently in Leicester Square over Halloween and had the epiphany that the reason I watch it so often is simply because that level of awesomeness cannot be fully appreciated by our human minds in one sitting.

• Watch it for the special effects from Rick Baker. Purely practical effects that stand up to this day and the film was responsible for the creation of the ‘Outstanding Achievement in Makeup’ Oscar.
• Watch it for a classic appearance of the Landis fictional film easter egg See You Next Wednesday. This time portrayed as a non-stop orgy.
• Watch it for the fantastic soundtrack; all songs with the word ‘moon’ in them, including a really jarring upbeat version of “Blue Moon” by The Marcels over the end credits.
• Watch it for the scene which would be a great teaser for an episode of Quantum Leap where David Naughton’s character wakes up naked in the wolf enclosure at London Zoo and utters the classic idiom “Oh boy”.
• Watch it and ponder why on Earth anyone would ever think An American Werewolf in Paris was ever a good idea, and what the hell Dimension expect to achieve with a remake.
• Watch it for the obligatory ‘Jenny Agutter gets her kit off’ scene. There are other movies where she’s much more naked but I was perhaps nine years old when I first saw this and it says something about how influenced by the film I was that I just adore sex in showers. And also leaping naked, teeth-bared, at nurses down dark alleyways.

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Ian’s hair had been gestating for over six months and now it was time for it to go. Like most low-budget hair-based indie films the world première would be streamed live through iChat to an audience of one half-dressed girl in Hollywood.

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Ingredients

• 200g butter

• 300g caster sugar

• 75g cocoa

• 1 egg

• 275g flour

• large teaspoon baking powder

• 50g white chocolate

• 100g milk chocolate drops

• 50g dark chocolate (preferably 70% cocoa or more)

1. Putting the butter in the microwave for a bit first, cream together the butter and the sugar in a large bowl.
2. Add the egg, baking powder, cocoa, flour and sugar. Shove it all in recklessly. Mix it all up until it’s an thick, sticky but even consistency. Stir in some chocolate drops now, if you’d like.
3. Break the dark and white chocolate into nice chunks with your hands. Or use a knife (whichever feels more natural).
4. Take a chunk of cookie dough and roll it up into a ball. Squidge a dent into the top of the cookie and place a few chocolate pieces into the middle.
5. Fold the dough back over the top of the cookie, so it forms a nice even ball again, then squeeze it so it flattens out a bit. Finish by arranging some more chocolate pieces on top of the cookie. It’ll look fantastic, but don’t eat it yet!
6. You’re aiming to cook the outside but leave the inside really melty and delicious. So heat the oven up to the temperature of THE HOTTEST YOUR OVEN WILL GO. Then put the cookies in on a baking tray for about 5 or 6 minutes.  They’ll look completely raw after that, and they’ll be really squidgy, but you can tell if they’re done by the chocolate on the top just starting to brown. Once they cool for five minutes or so you can feel free to pick them up and stuff them into your chocolate hole. You can freeze the dough the day before if you like and cook them for ten minutes in a hot oven for perhaps a better result, but I tend to want cookies immediately.

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The next day I conducted an interview with Jon for Den of Geek. We covered a range of subjects but during our last ten minutes briefly discussed a bit of the sceptical movement. It didn’t really tie in too closely with the media-related talk, so I’m publishing it here.

I’ve seen you a couple of at the Sceptics in the Pub meetings in Holborn and I know you attended TAM London the other weekend. How do you find those kinds of things?

I’ve thought a lot about this actually and the conclusion I came to is that the good stuff about them kind of outweighs the bad stuff. The main thing, as I tweeted about afterwards, is that sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand about what’s true and what’s not true. And not enough people do that and I think it’s really valuable. So there’s a bit of over-love of Randi but I just think they’re good spirits, and they’re factually right.

It amused me last night when Isabel brought up past lives and you slammed it as simply being wrong.

I was just a bit grumpy, but for fucks sake don’t we know by now that it’s bollocks? I was past-life regressed once and it’s so obviously a scam. You’d have to be an idiot to not think it’s a scam. What happens when you’re being regressed is you’re just desperate to please the regressor, so you just come up with fucking suits of armour and Joan of Arc and whatever shit you can come up with.

How do you define yourself then with regards to the sceptic side of things? Which category do you fall under?

Ooh…  I don’t really know. My main sort of problem is they can be aggressive and hostile towards believers. I was talking to Adam Curtis the other day and we were talking about the sceptics and he said the same things: there’s no life after death but it doesn’t matter because look at all the wonderful things in life. Adam’s point to me is “what about someone who’s just about to die?” and he’s got a point. There is some comfort you can take from religion and there’s no problem with that. So even though I know as well as I can know that the sceptics are right about everything the fact that they’re not particularly humane is the thing that stops me from being a 100% supporter. An atheist is a weird thing to call yourself, I think. My initial gut feeling about that is why do you want to advertise yourself in that way? I see myself as a writer.

One of my hobbies is to collect writers’ first published works which have never been reprinted. This is generally because either they’re not very good, or the publishers have folded. Jon looked horrified when I presented him with a copy of Clubbed Class and threatened to firebomb the shop that sold it to me.

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Like most hot girls who attempt it, at 2am on the 1st of November, Chris, Ian, Dave and myself spectacularly failed.

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