The Audio Oubliette

You may have noticed a distinct lack of postage around my gaff of late*. Which probably means you'll have ended up with one of those irritating little postcards thingies from the royal mail saying, 'Someone's sent you a letter! We're not going to tell you who they are, or what they've sent, but they've fucked up on the number of stamps and now you're going to have to make a 28 mile round trip to the nearest depot and cough up £1.19 to find out!' Or something like that.

And it always turns out to be some sodding crap you've got no interest in, doesn't it?

Anyway, I digress. The reason I've not been about for a while is that I've been down in Bath, sitting in an airless cupboard, locked away from the sunshine, while recording the unabridged audio version of Blind Eye. See? That's me there...



To be honest, when they asked me to do it I thought, 'Yeah, why not? How hard can it be?'

Bloody. That's the answer. It's bloody hard. And I'm not talking, 'changing the oil on a Fiat Panda' tough, I'm talking 'performing keyhole surgery on your own kneecaps' tough. With a potato peeler.

And to make matters even worse, the book's full of Polish names like: Lubomir Podwoiski, Gorzałkowska,Wisniewski, Bielatowicz, Gorzkiewicz... none of which are pronounced the way they look. And that's before we even get on to the actual Polish.

The pain. THE PAIN!

Luckily I had expert guidance in the personage of Jennifer, head honcho at Talking Issues,** sitting on the other side of the glass and putting up with ... well, me for a whole week (normally she's used to professional actors, who know what they're doing and stuff). Ably supported by the lovely Caroline and Sue.



In addition to doing all the audio books in the world (this may be a slight exaggeration on my part) they also do spoken word editions of the Economist. Which is pretty cool and gets a HUGE number of downloads every week.

Now I can hear you shrugging your shoulders from here. Stop it. I'm not banging on about the Economist thing merely to big up the company, no: this is shameless self-promotion! That's right, after about a decade in the professional voice-over wilderness, I have made my triumphant return. Fed up with listening to me fluff my reading of chapter fifty two for the umpteenth time, Jennifer got me to read one of the stories in this week's Economist instead. So business leaders the world over will be listening to me telling them about how Dubai frowns on displays of public naughtiness.***

Hurrah! Fame at last.

* Ooh - he sounds just like something off the Sweeny, doesn't he?
** Plug, plug: If you have an audio need, why not contact Talking Issues - your one stop shop for all your reading-out-loud-stuff needs.
*** Free download if you're a subscriber, or a paltry £4.00 if you just want to know what I sound like after four days in the studio.

Ruminations of a fiscal nature

I've been doing a lot of shouting at the TV lately. Now you're not to think that this is some sort of insidious side effect of turning forty (forty: Dear Hairy Jesus and His Amazing Performing Fishies...), I've been a TV ranter for years. And Years. And years.

It's not that I enjoy hurling abuse at the little people on the idiot box, it's just that they so fucking deserve to be ranted at. And every year the world of TV seems to give ground to a few more morons, idiots, and tosspots.

Take the current plans to rescue the economy, or as it's officially known, 'Quantitative Easing'. Which appears to be wank-weasel speak for 'AAAAAAARGH! IT'S ALL GOING DOWN THE CRAPPER! PRINT MORE MONEY: QUICK!' How stupid do they think we are? Do they really think that slapping a technical-sounding name on it is going to make us all nod our empty little heads and go, 'Yup, them there financial guys sure do know what they is doing. Yup, yup, yup...' Presumable to the sound of banjos playing and incest. Call it what it fucking is, and stop treating us like sodding imbeciles.

But what really roasted my toast was the statement that, 'Hopefully this will get the banks lending again...' Hopefully? What kind of responsible fiscal policy includes the word 'hopefully'? 'Hopefully' is a word better suited to sentences involving full-frontal nudity. Unless the sentence also includes the words 'Anne Widdicombe', in which case it's not such a good idea after all.

And I should point out that I'm not against 'Quantitative Easing'. I'm neither for it nor against it. It's not something I have a strong opinion on (other than the whole wank-weaselry required to come up with the term), not like, say, people who wear white socks, black trousers and black shoes. It makes you look like a knob, OK? Remember the Michael Jackson videos, back when he still had a face that could pass for human? What was he wearing? Black trousers, black shoes, and white fucking socks. Now, I'm not going to say that wearing this sartorial cluster-fuck is going to lead to your nose collapsing while you're prosecuted for child abuse and your monkey turns to a life of hedonistic excess ending up in it ODing on the toilet with a burger in one hand and a copy of Love me Tender in the other, but it's a possibility, OK? That's all I'm saying.

The idea that anything will 'hopefully' encourage the banks to stop acting like the biggest bunch of irresponsible, greedy cock-ferrets we've seen in ages, is a bit rich. 'Hopefully' my pert and fuzzy bum.

Look at the Royal Bank of Scotland - She Who Must Be Kept Further And Further From Anywhere Civilised People Congregate, Lest They Chase Her Through The Village Streets With Burning Pitchforks and I have been thinking about moving house. Buying somewhere even further out in the stick than we live in now. Because, quite frankly, I'm tired of the neighbours complaining about the agonised screams of dying hitchhikers coming from my basement. So I phoned up my local RBS and asked them if the Credit Crunch (which sounds like a breakfast cereal for kids who want to grow up to be accountants) was making it more difficult to get a mortgage with them. 'Oh no,' says the woman on the other end of the magic talking bone, 'our policy for lending hasn't changed at all.'

Good for them. Nice to know all that government money we spent bailing their -- insert colourful expletive here -- company out wasn't a complete waste of time. And then I went in and we talked mortgages. And then she told me what the arrangement fee was going to be. £2,000.00 And then I tried hard to suppress the urge to urinate on her desk.

Two thousand pounds. To arrange something that was free about six years ago. Two THOUSAND pounds*.

Hmmm, yes, it looks as if your lending policy hasn't changed at all -- you're still looking for new and inventive ways to screw us all over. Bravo. Well done.

And then there are the banks offering their customers 'free financial advice'. Right, because they've done such a good job managing our money so far. It's like taking child-rearing advice from a rabid badger. A rabid chainsaw-wielding badger. With your genitals in its scabby paw**.

Could I make a brief appeal on the behalf of the nation: can we all be allowed to kick a banking executive in the groin every time another shitty financial story comes on the news? I think it would make the world a happier place.

Would make me a lot happier anyway...

* OK, OK - you got me, I'm exaggerating for comedic effect. It was £1,900.00
** This does assume that the badger is capable of operating a chainsaw in the first place, and is able to do so one-handed. Or one-pawed, I suppose. And where the hell is a badger going to get a chainsaw from in the first place? What sort of idiot sells a dangerous item of horticultural equipment to a badger with rabies? And where did the badger get the money from in the first place? Probably mugging old ladies with it's sycophantic posse of tattoo-covered biker squirrels. Fucking evil badger bastards.