Events

Previews of forthcoming events and reviews of past events.

Events

A Doctor Who weekend for two

30 April 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

David Tennant in some good clothes for onceSpend a weekend in a hotel in Cardiff? Not a totally attractive offer, but not awful: I spent Christmas last year in a hotel in Cardiff and it was actually very nice. All the same, how could a couple of days in a plush hotel in Wales’ capital be made even more attractive?

I know. How about if there was a leaflet available that told you where Doctor Who had been filmed in the city? Grabs you now, doesn’t it?

No?

Okay. How about if there was a blow-up Dalek as well?

Whoops. Disturbing now, isn’t it? It makes the claim, “We’re now seen as a sexy city to visit,” take on a whole new upsetting dimension.

Oh dear. I suspect the Park Plaza hotel is going to have to try harder for this particular cashing-in scheme to work. Perhaps they should talk to Travelodge about innovative ways to drum up trade?

Events

A Doctor Who weekend for two

30 April 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

David Tennant in some good clothes for onceSpend a weekend in a hotel in Cardiff? Not a totally attractive offer, but not awful: I spent Christmas last year in a hotel in Cardiff and it was actually very nice. All the same, how could a couple of days in a plush hotel in Wales’ capital be made even more attractive?

I know. How about if there was a leaflet available that told you where Doctor Who had been filmed in the city? Grabs you now, doesn’t it?

No?

Okay. How about if there was a blow-up Dalek as well?

Whoops. Disturbing now, isn’t it? It makes the claim, “We’re now seen as a sexy city to visit,” take on a whole new upsetting dimension.

Oh dear. I suspect the Park Plaza hotel is going to have to try harder for this particular cashing-in scheme to work. Perhaps they should talk to Travelodge about innovative ways to drum up trade?

Am I now a “BBC4 viewer”?

20 March 2006 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

It’s a question I’m grappling with on two fronts.

Front one: I’ve an invite to a BBC4 audience focus group, in which BBC4 viewers can comment on the network and be paid £50 for the experience. I’m grappling with the ethics of that one: can I, a media journalist, not only influence the content of a channel but be paid for it?. I suspect, despite the allure of £50 (there’s very little I won’t do for £50), that I’ll have to duck that one.

Front two: A new BBC4 game show is on the way, according to The Stage. Hosted by Julian Fellowes, Never Mind the Full Stops is all about the exciting world of punctuation, bad grammar and misspellings. Hmm. Must avoid severe temptation to mock pedantic middle-class gameshow hosted by a man called Julian.

However, I’d quite like to watch it. When I wear my sub-editing hat, these are exactly the kinds of issues I have to watch out for (hey, I’m off to the Royal College of Nursing next week to ensure all manners of naughtiness don’t sneak into their magazines). A nice show with pointers like this is just up my street.

So does that make me a BBC4 viewer? Am I becoming one of ‘them’? What a worrying idea.

72 bands of difficulty

20 December 2005 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Have you seen that Virgin viral marketing picture? You know, the one with the 72 bands cunningly hidden in a picture. I don’t have the answers. I know you all want the answers but I don’t have them. However, my sister (you know, the one who writes a cat blog with Charlie Skelton. Incidentally, that’s not the only thing she does with her life. Honest. I don’t want you to think she’s cat/Skelton-obsessed) does.

My sister’s clever about music things. She objects to Never Mind The Buzzcocks on many grounds, but the most baffling for normal mortals is that “The questions are too easy”. I was only able to help her with one band name on that picture, and she hadn’t got it only because she couldn’t identify the aeroplane type.

So, to get the full list, you can

  1. work them out for yourself (my sister advises that an easy way to work out who they all are is that they’re all signed to Virgin. Do you see what kind of level she operates at?)
  2. carry on Google searching
  3. add a comment to this blog entry, petitioning my sister to reveal the answers.

Incidentally, it turns out the version of the picture doing the rounds has had the left side chopped off, so there are a couple more bands to work with. The full picture is still on the Virgin site.