A jolly good read

Ah - the joy of books. Immersing yourself in a good read can be therapeutic. For me, the year is made up, amongst other things, of a pile of reading material. Some good, some indifferent but all of these books will attach themselves to a memory. The books that went on holiday with me, the books that accompanied me on Tube journeys in and out of London, the book I was reading when Mum died.

One name that appears several times on my 2018 list is Mick Herron. He has created a bunch of misfit characters working on the very periphery of the secret service. They are quite unlovely and yet addictive. I rooted for them in Slow Horses, cheered them on in Real Tigers and worried about them in Spook Street. There's more to come in 2019 so hurrah for that.

The scariest read of the year had to be Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Not having seen even a minute of the highly popular TV adaption, I threw myself into the book and was rewarded with a vision of chilling bleakness. It's a grim story and unnervingly believable. Equally downbeat was Charles Bukowski's tale of a man dragging himself around dead-end jobs in the USA, Factotum. You could almost smell the poverty and stale beer.

It's good to laugh though and there were giggles aplenty courtesy of two Joesph Connolly novels, Summer Things and Winter Breaks. The characters are Ayckbourn-esque and the petty snobbery of suburban life lends itself well to these stories. There were also unintentional chuckles in Georgette Heyer's hoary 1940s murder mystery A Christmas Party. This ticked all the required boxes of a mansion house killing - sour owner, flighty niece, scheming nephew and an acidic butler. He didn't do it by the way.

A slow burn of a read is also appreciated so thanks to Jon McGregor and Reservoir 13. The story follows the reactions of villagers over several years following the disappearance of a young girl. Everyone has their own take on the mystery. Many have secrets that need to be protected.

Agatha Christie featured on my list several times and one of the novels I read during the summer, The ABC Murders, was dramatised by the BBC over Christmas. The latter was a little more earthy than Christie's novel though. She didn't really 'do' sex. Death on the Nile and The Mystery of the Blue Train were also entertaining despite being the best part of eighty years old.

Other honourable mentions this year go to:

The Dark Circle by Linda Grant - tales of a post-war TB clinic

Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch - what happens when the Met Police has to deal with the supernatural

Christadora by Tim Murphy - sex and drugs in Manhattan over a thirty year period

A Boy in Winter by Rachel Seiffert -  a tale of hope from Nazi-occupied Ukraine

Theft by Finding by David Sedaris - collected ramblings from the master diarist

The Shelf go the Unread still takes pride of place in one of the spare bedrooms. A wealth of loveliness waiting to be explored in 2019.

Going for a song

Here we are then, on the eve of the 63rd Eurovision Song Contest. As I type, the twenty six finalists are rehearsing their socks off in the confines of Lisbon's Altice Arena. For me, it's my fortieth consecutive contest as a viewer. Fortieth. Good heavens.

My Eurovision 'journey' - and yes, everyone has to have a 'journey' these days - began in earnest on a Saturday night in March 1979. I was mesmerised by the song contest. Not so much the songs though. Checking the running order for the show, I notice the Ghenghis Khan singalong from Germany, three people playing garden implements for Switzerland and the UK's lovely contribution, Black Lace. No, I was agog at the idea of a TV show being broadcast live from Jerusalem. I remember thinking about what it would be like to actually be there, in the International Convention Centre. What the young me could never have imagined was that exactly twenty years later, I was stood in the very same hall at the 1999 contest. The 1979 me would have been stunned.

Jerusalem 1999 was also my final contest as an accredited 'journalist'. It brought to an end six years of fun and games, schlepping between concert hall and press centre. Lots of partying and official receptions too. Full marks to the likes of Iceland who, in 1993, got everyone horribly drunk on some potent embrocation called Black Death. 'Douze points' to the 1994 Finnish delegation for saving many of us from starvation with what appeared to be a hot buffet without end. Three cheers for the Belgians who plied us with beer, the Croatians who served up cocktails in test tubes and the Slovenians who tempted us with plates of cured horse meat.

Nowadays, anyone working on the contest has to be available for two weeks. I only just about coped with seven days. It's knackering. Quite often there wasn't time to take in the sights and sounds of the host country. In Israel I made an exception. With a military guard, toting machine guns, I headed off for the Negev desert. Was it warm? Yes it was - 44 degrees. I bobbed around in the Dead Sea and shuffled around a kibbutz with the Estonian delegation. The kibbutz proved to be an eye-opener in that one of the Estonians had once lived there and had less than happy memories of the place. Which he put to the manager. The visit was brought to a swift end and we were herded out of the compound.

Since 1999 I've only been to a couple of contests. 2010 in Oslo was an odd affair in a hangar of a venue that had little atmosphere. Being part of a 20,000 strong crowd made it difficult to follow what was going on, particularly with Armenian and Azerbaijan fans trying to outdo each other with oversized flags. The 2013 event in Malmo was fun even if the entries were forgettable.

As much as I've loved traipsing across the continent over the years, currently it seems to have come full circle and once again I'm in front of the telly watching from afar. If the bookies are to be believed, we are on our way to Cyprus next year. I've always fancied Limassol in spring.

Saturday Night's Alright?

A Casualty of Saturday nights?

It was as if empires had fallen and life, as we know it, was over. There has been much hand-wringing over the past week as numerous journos feasted over the demise of ITV light entertainment juggernaut, Saturday Night Takeaway. Although we soon discovered that the entire enterprise was on a one-week hiatus whilst the team adjusted themselves to being down a presenter. On the show goes but less so, the prospect of Declan Donnelly mugging away to camera alone will no doubt see a ratings increase next week.

Saturday night telly, we were told, had died. It has ceased to exist. The real issue here though is that the whole premise of 'sit down Saturday' had withered decades ago. TV critics attempted to hark back to glorious days of yore. Days that featured the likes of 3-2-1 or Noel's House Party. Seriously? Saturday night TV has been in the doldrums for as long as most people can remember. Indeed, you have to well into middle age (box ticked there then . . .) to recall a time when the BBC, even more than ITV, got it right.

Yes, we drift back to the 1970s when the BBC were happy to kick off the evening with imperial phase Doctor Who (Tom Baker dashing through an up-and-under garage door painted silver), the Generation Game ("so what are the scores on the door Isla?"), the Two Ronnies (middle aged men in frocks) and a pot-boiler drama series such as Juliet Bravo or the more earthy American series, Cagney & Lacey (a couple of women shouting in a filthy toilet).

Scores on the doors . . .

The whole edifice of Saturday night telly crumbled with the passing of such shows and their gradual replacement with joyless offerings such as the numerous National Lottery quiz shows, the ascent of Mr Blobby or ITV's early evening filler You Bet! I was fortunate enough (hmm . . .) to be a contestant on the latter.  A lovely evening was had with the likes of Sally James and Melvyn Hayes, yet I'd not seen the show before and never tuned in again. I didn't even see the episode I featured in until some time later. I couldn't be bothered. That was the way with Saturday telly from the 1990s onwards.The Beeb realised that they could kill an hour with the soapy goings on in Casualty. Three decades of Charlie Fairhead taring into the middle distance. They couldn't be bothered either.

All Bets are off

ITV countered the BBC's lack of effort with endless casting shows. They have dominated the schedule for the best part of twenty years, whether it be Pop Idol, X Factor or the unloved The Voice. If not them, then a plethora of vehicles for Ant and Dec which is where it's all gone wrong for ITV. Too many eggs in one basket? Too much trust in the enduring popularity of a double act? With Ant now likely to be sidelined for some time, the commercial channel has a chance to maybe rethink some of their stately old shows. ITV is unlikely to ditch Britain's Got Talent or I'm a Celebrity  though and time will tell if a change of presenters will help or hinder ratings.

Will the BBC take advantage of ITV's misfortune? It's unlikely. The much-touted revamp of the Generation Game has been cut to just two episodes and there's probably not a lot to shout about until the clocks go back and the familiar staples of Doctor Who and Strictly return. ITV's schedulers are not doubt plotting as we speak.