Shedtown - Radio 4 comedy series starts on 1st June

I have to go back to early September where for nearly a week the cast and crew lived and worked in Robin Hood Bay recording Shedtown on location before the weather broke too much.  Ha ha, the British weather kept us on our toes and made umpteen schedules out of date almost before they had come out of the printer.

The view out to sea showing some of the bad weather coming in!

The frst episode is called "Something is Gonna Change....

Who hasn't thought about running away from it all at some time or other? Throwing caution to the wind, wrenching oneself out of a long established orbit to head for the deep space of the unknown?
Barry (Tony Pitts) and Jimmy (Kevin Eldon) haven't. Until now. Friends since school days in a small town, they find themselves slipping inexorably and almost unconsciously into middle age.  Shedtown is a dream born out of quiet desperation. Throughout the series our wooden icon of escape and isolation 'the shed' becomes a symbol of possibility and change; a new community by the sea where our heroes can circumnavigate the mundane, once and for all.  It's the works day out for the workers of Blakeley Industrial Museum - and something's got to change.

Cast:
Barry ...... Tony Pitts
Jimmy & Johnny ..... Kevin Eldon
Colin ..... Johnny Vegas
Diane ..... Suranne Jones
Dave ..... Shaun Dooley
Eleanor ..... Ronni Ancona
Maureen ..... Emma Fryer
William ..... Adrian Manfredi
Nicky ..... Caron May Carly
Yvonne ..... Jessica Knappett
Father Michael ..... James Quinn
Wes ...... Warren Brown
Narrator ..... Maxine Peake
Music ..... Paul Heaton
Sound Design ..... Mike Thornton
Written and created by Tony Pitts
Directed by Jim Poyser
Producer: Sally Harrison
A Woolyback Production for BBC Radio 4.

Shedtown cast outside Unit Base at Robin Hood Bay

We had to record 4 episodes in 4 days across a range of locations, not least of which was finding a shed to record in. Of course we couldn't find a shed by the beach to record in so what did we do, well you will have to wait until next week before the second episode. I don't want to give the game away!

Anyway you can listen to episode 1 on Wednesday 1st June at 23:02 or if you miss it then pick it up on the Radio Player.

"Divided We Fall" wins Sony Award

Polly Thomas (Drama Producer) Chris Mann (Executive Producer – with award) Sohail Nawaz (Programme originator)  Val Wallace (Production Manager)

At last night’s Sony Radio Academy Awards, Mannmade Production’s drama serial “Divided We Fall” which was edited by Mike Thornton, and made for Preston FM won the Bronze Sony in the “Best Community Programming” category. It was the brainchild of Sohail Nawaz and his Northwest Muslim Community organisation, Shanbash.  Sohail is always looking for new ways to convey the message that the majority of Muslims are peace-loving and law abiding citizens and he hit on the idea of a radio soap to illustrate the paths to extremism. Mannmade Productions was commissioned to make the twenty part serial which was recorded in BBC Manchester’s drama studio, with sound design and editing by Mike Thornton and transmitted on Preston FM.  Chris Mann, the executive producer said:

“I’m delighted this gripping serial has been awarded a Sony.  It’s refreshing to make a drama with the freedom of expression a good community station can give you.   Preston youth were enlisted to give insight into their problems and street-cred to the dialogue, enabling the soap to bring to life the inexorable path to extremism and the tradgedy of violence”

Of Mike’s cotribution Chris Mann said….

We are all very pleased and you must take credit for all you did to keep the show on the road!

This is what the Sony Award judges had to say…

Preston FM Community Radio has taken a very difficult subject, directly relevant to the diverse communities they serve, and tackled it in a brave and accessible manner. Through the innovative use of drama they have raised awareness of the complexity of the issues around violent extremism, faith communities and social exclusion and used the medium of radio to increase public understanding.

Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus! on BBC Radio 4

A programme I worked on a while back has just gone out. It really is the last programme from All Out Productions. It is all about how Monty Pyton went over to Germany to make some TV programmes for German TV...

2011 marks the 40th anniversary of one of the Monty Python team's most bizarre and least known television adventures, two forty five minute specials they made exclusively for German television.
Roll up, it's Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus! This is the extraordinary tale of when the Pythons went Bavarian. Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Alfred Biolek, the man who persuaded them to take their comedy to Germany, all talk about how life on set began to imitate a Monty Python sketch.
German Comedy Ambassador, Henning Wehn, tells the story of how in 1971 the Pythons were flown into Bavaria, full of new original ideas for sketches, including pieces about the German artist Albrecht Durer, William Tell and The Merchant of Venice. They also adapted the popular Flying Circus Lumberjack Song into German and planned to sing it with the Austria Border Police Choir.
Only Michael Palin and John Cleese were capable of delivering lines in 'understandable' German. Despite extensive language coaching, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman were virtually incomprehensible. This may have added to the Pythons' trademark absurdity and surrealism, but confused the bejeebus out of the German TV audience. Realising this dream was becoming a nightmare, Alfred Biokek took the decision to make the second programme in English, with German subtitles added later. It proved to be a major hit on German TV, but all concerned decided it best not to repeat the experience. Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus! hears from Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Alfred Biolek about how they came up with the material for these special versions and listening to clips from both programmes, asks whether 'Pythonesque' really works when translated into German.
Presenter: Henning Wehn
Edited: Mike Thornton
Producer: Jo Meek
An All Out production for BBC Radio 4.

We had great fun with this programme adding a number of 'Pythonesque' moments along the way. If you didn't catch it on Saturday then grab it on iPlayer whilst you have the chance. There are some lovely stories of their experiences of their time in Germay as well as the challenges of making Monty Python work for the German humour and how some jokes didn't translate. You will hear that they can still sing the Lumberjack song in German to this day. For any Python fan this programme is a must, and even if you aren't, you will still find it very entertaining.

R.I.P All Out Productions

We are now Rycote & Olympus dealers - Rycote portable audio recorder kit release

My friends at Sound on Sound have just released a video from NAB 2011 covering a new product from Rycote. They have taken their excellent shockmount design technology and designed a shockmount for handheld flash card recorders. Not only that but they have a bundle which includes the handle, shockmount and mini wind jammer.



This is an excellent solution to the handling noise problems that comes with most integral handheld flashcard recorders.

Rycote Dealer

Another piece of good news is that we are now a Rycote dealer and so we can supply these or indeed any Rycote products. The price as mentioned in the video for the portable audio recorder kit is £99 including vat



The wind jammer for our preferred flash card recorder the Olympus LS-5 is £27 plus vat. Do get in touch if you want to more more or for a price for any other Rycote product.

Olympus Dealers

We are also now Olympus dealers as this has become our preferred handheld recorder. We have supplied them to a major broadcaster and one has been to Egypt and is now in China and another is in Rome.

The Olympus LS-5 recommended retail price including vat is £193.02. Do get in touch and we can put together a package for you.

Digital Detox and the effects of 24-7 connectedness

Jemima Kiss has written an interesting article in The Observer about her family's weekend digital detox by visiting a farm for the weekend. She starts by asking....

Twitter, Facebook, emails, and voicemail – we are overwhelmed by digital data, is it time to rebel against information overload?

We were brushing through wet grass in the early morning when we saw it – a flash of white drifting behind a small patch of trees, backlit by the sun. Crouching down next to my small son, we watched the unmistakable shape of a barn owl until he disappeared into the wood. The look on my son's face was part of a brief moment of magic, the kind of memory that we live for.  Ordinarily, my next thought would have been to pull out my phone and take a photo, send a tweet or record a video. Connecting is something I do unconsciously now. Tweeting is like breathing and photos and video have documented nearly every day of my 21-month-old son's life. The meaningful merged with the mundane, all dutifully and habitually recorded – my enjoyment split between that technological impulse and the more delicate human need to be in the moment. This is how we live.

She goes on to observe the effect the weekend had on her partner Will before going on to explain about some recent research...

The hustle we develop as we struggle to keep up with the pace of digital information has produced a restless, anxious way of engaging with the world. Desperate for efficiency, this seeps into our physical lives; I feel compelled to tidy while on the phone, to fold the washing while brushing my teeth. No single task has my undivided attention. A study by the University of California, San Francisco, last week concluded that constant multi-tasking gradually erodes short-term memory. And interruptions are a massive problem, taking anything up to 20 times the length of the interruption to recover. For those of us compelled to check email every few minutes, that revelation explains where the day goes.

This is concerning stuff because in this world where we are expected to multi-task, even us men, it shows that our productivity can be seriously effected. I have also recently finished reading The Winter of Our Disconnect by Susan Maushart which took the digital detox onto another planet by removing all connected technology including iPods for 6 months. I can throughly recommend reading the book especially if you have children as it shows just how ingrained our connectivity has become in our lives. Susan recounted not only the experiences of her and her family but also explores the relevant studies and she too debunks the multi-tasking benefits of the younger generation as a myth. Jemima goes on in here Observer article...

The author, former Washington Post journalist William Powers, is, like me, a true believer in the power and potential of digital technologies, but concludes that we need a little discipline to restore control over our unsettling, hyper-connected lives. [He] offers practical solutions, including advocating the use of paper as a more efficient way of organising our thoughts. The theory of "embodied interaction" asserts that physical objects free our minds to think because our hands and fingers can do much of the work, unlike screens where our brains are constantly in demand.

We try very hard to keep a digital Sabbath on Saturdays and do things as a family, and find it hard and liberating at the same time. When we are connected we tend to turn outwards, take a look at any screen activity, you are all looking at a screen, not each other, and if it is multiple screens then you will often end up with your backs to each other or at least only see the tops of heads if the device is a portable one. Once the computers are off and the phones put away then it is possible to have shared time together.

Belief on Radio 3 - another great listen this week.

Radio 3 are running another series of Belief this week which I had the pleasure of working on a couple of weeks ago and the first in the series received a very complementary review in The Guardian. Belief is a programme presented by Joan Bakewell that talks to artists, scientists and thinkers and asks them about what they believe and why.

Monday
Omid Djalili is a British Iranian and a member of the Baha'i faith, a religion which, although it only has seven million adherents, is geographically the second most widespread in the world. Omid's forbears were among its first adherents in 19th century Iran, a country in which those practising the faith are now persecuted. The core principles of Bahá'í doctrine are the unity of God, the unity of religion, and the unity of humankind. Omid's central belief is summed up in a quote from Teilhard de Chardin, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

Tuesday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the physician, poet and philosopher, Raymond Tallis. He is Professor Emeritus of Geriatric medicine at Manchester University but has made his name as much outside the field of medicine as within it. A humanist, he writes about the transcendence of human beings and is a vigorous critic of the kind of scientific thinking which reduces them to animals. According to Tallis, only humans can point, and in that action they transcend their biology.

Wednesday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the novelist Salley Vickers. Salley Vickers wrote her first novel at the age of fifty after careers in university education and psychoanalysis. Miss Garnet's Angel, the story of an atheistic, uptight woman who flourishes during a winter spent among the churches and art of Venice, became an instant bestseller. Her succeeding novels, including Mr Golightly's holiday and The Other Side Of you, also have a spiritual dimension, featuring angels, Old Testament prophets - and God. Even so religion's arch-critic Philip Pullman describes her as "a presence to be cherished." Listen to "Belief" and you 'll understand why.

Thursday
Tonight Joan Bakewell's guest is the composer Tarik O'Regan. O'Regan, a rising star among composers, says his best composition lessons were the hours spent as an idle percussionist at the back of an orchestra waiting for his moment to play. He spent most of his childhood summers in North African with his family before studying at Oxford, and brings both the influences of the muezzin and the chorister to bear on his music. His first opera, based on Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" will be premiered in the autumn.

Friday
Joan Bakewell's guest on Belief this Good Friday is the Texan-born theologian Stanley Hauerwas. Born into a bricklaying family, Stanley Hauerwas says the skills he learned there are the same skills which he now applies to his academic work - and which has led Time Magazine to call him "America's best Theologian." A pacifist and a provacateur he criticises an American identity he says is built on waging war, and a church often more concerned to make good Americans than good Christians.

Monday nights programme with Omid has been reviewd by Elisabeth Mahoney in The Guardian on Tuesday...

Omid Djalili tells Joan Bakewell his fascinating life story and explains why his comedy routine can be offensive. What a fine fellow Omid Djalili sounded on Belief (Radio 3). Articulate and engaging as he spoke about being a member of the Bahá'i faith, he also seemed delighted to encounter host Joan Bakewell. "I just wanted to meet you," he told her. "I think you're wonderful." Explaining a central tenet of his faith, he used her as an example: "The Joan Bakewell we see here is going to continue in some form, just in a different essence." This is excellent news. His life story was fascinating. While growing up in London, his parents opened their house to many Iranian visitors, which meant Djalili kipping on the sofa. "I never had a bedroom until I was 14," he explained. There was a funny frankness about his memories of this time, living in a house full of fleeting strangers, "some of them charming, some of them absolutely awful". On the issue of comedy, and his standup routine, which Bakewell noted can be "riskily offensive", Djalili explained that it's deeply connected to his belief. "It's all about making people conscious, starting with myself," he told her. Life, and religion, is one long process of improving yourself, he insisted, and improving your core self. Bakewell asked him to describe his core. "I'm a fat, needy man, pleading for attention," he quipped.

Talking of offensive jokes there was a joke that was very funny that we had to take out.

The Sub 2-Hour Marathon: Sport's Holy Grail on BBC Radio 4

Next Monday 11th April at 8pm sees BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary about developments towards potentially being able to run a marathon in under 2 hours. This was one of the last programmes I worked on for, the now defunct, All Out Productions....

Sixty years ago, people said the four minute mile was impossible: in 1954 they all gasped in disbelief when Roger Bannister proved them wrong. They also said the 100 metres would never be run in under 10 seconds and shuddered again when Jim Hines did just that in 1968. Will the 2 hour marathon be the next great sporting barrier to be broken or will it remain beyond human endeavour? The question polarises opinion among athletes, sports scientists and commentators worldwide.
BBC reporter and marathon runner Chris Dennis will explore whether it's physically and mentally possible to run 26.2 miles in 120 minutes.
In the hills around Addis Ababa, the current world record holder Haile Gebrselassie tells him what it felt like to run the distance in 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds, how close to the limit he pushed his body, but why he is still convinced the two hour barrier will be broken in the next 20-30 years. Other elite athletes, including the women's marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe and London marathon Race Director Dave Bedford also explain when and how they think it will happen.
The Olympic champion Sammy Wanjiru will argue that the sub 2-hour marathon is simply a pipe dream, a landmark too far. The Secretary General of World Marathon Majors, Glenn Latimer, who has worked with many of the world's leading athletes for 30 years also has serious reservations.
Chris also heads to Loughborough to the English Institute of Sport to meet Dr Barry Fudge who gets him on the treadmill so he can experience first-hand what it feels like to run a mile in 4 minutes 35 seconds, the pace required for a sub 2 hour marathon.
Presenter: Chris Dennis
Edited: Mike Thornton
Producer: Jo Meek
An All Out Production for BBC Radio 4.

There are two special moments for me in the programme. The first is when the presenter, Chris has a go at running on a treadmill at the sub 2 hour pace, and manages about 10 seconds, whilst commentating on his own achievement. The second is a sequence towards the end of the programme where Chris interviews a marathon trainer whilst running out in Addis Ababa. I supplied Jo with 2 headset mics so that she could plug them into two  Zoom H2 recorders, one on the Chris, and the other on the interviewee. and then we synced up the two recordings in the edit.
Especially if you are into running, or any sport, do try and listen to this programme as it explores the limits of human physical activity. If you do miss it then find it on iPlayer