I thought I’d better mention the podcasts again:

Podcasts. Mmmm…

David is the guest on next week’s Desert Island Discs.

Sunday 19th July Radio 4 11:15 am…

I do love David Mitchell’s Observer column this week and not just because of the synchronicity with my most recent blog.

From David’s column:

Explaining why mid-terrace residents had no option but to keep the unsightly wheelie bins in front of their houses, a Chester resident said: “Otherwise they would have to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. Imagine doing that with three bins? It’s just crazy.”

I can almost hear the Oxfam advert: “This is Andrea. Every week, she has to walk three bins all the way down the street, round the corner and into the backyard. It’s either that or people will see her bins. It’s crazy, but you can help.”

What’s crazy is that, in the face of environmental disaster, when councils are at last prioritising recycling in a way most scientists would describe as “much, much, much, much, much too slowly”, people are moaning about ugly bins rather than grasping a fairly simple opportunity to do their bit. So you have to keep the bins in front of your house? Well, keep the bins in front of your house then, you moaning bastard.

Blimey it’s all go in Mitchell and Webb fan world this week!

Guardian G2 has David on the front today. Maybe that will help me take my mind off the realfe “are we the baddies?” who certain sections of the Great British Voting Public seem to think hold the answers.

“That telly is old, but it basically completely works, and I feel immensely smug about that fact. I mean, it’s colour and everything. And it does have a remote, yes. The only feature it doesn’t have – apart from widescreen and HD and everything else – is it’s pre-Teletext. But Teletext has come and gone, so you see it doesn’t matter! Slightly to my shame,” he adds, smiling, “I do have a fax – and that’s something I could have bypassed altogether as well. Who’s buying faxes now? Fools!”

“There’s lots of famous comedians I get on with very well,” he says, “but I’m slightly embarrassed about broaching the ‘So, shall we be friends now?’ bit. And I worry that I’ve been both over-familiar, and that I’ve been unfriendly. There are lots of comedians who I’d happily go for a pint with, but I feel a bit weird. It’s nonsensical really, because so many of my friends are people I know from doing comedy with at university. But now I feel befriending people I do comedy with is shallow, because it’s people Off The Telly talking to other people Off The Telly, as if you don’t want to talk to anyone who isn’t Off The Telly. But then,” he reasons, looking bemused, “the people I’ve always befriended are the people I’ve done comedy with.”

Meanwhile, at the BAFTA telly awards…

Best comedy performance
David Mitchell – Peep Show (Channel 4)

Oh good.

David’s episode of Just A Minute is on the BBC iPlayer right now….

Item! David Mitchell will be narrating an adaptation of The Death of Grass by John Christopher (writer of the Tripods trilogy that 30-something geeks might remember seeing the first two thirds of on the telly in the 80s) for the forthcoming sci-fi season that Radios 4 and 3 have coming up. As well as Mr Mitchell on narrating duties it also features Gus Brown (you know, from that sketch show and other things) and Abigail Burdess (ditto) as well as Jon Dryden Taylor who also did the adapting (and another one of those sketch writers who seem to be everywhere). Mr Taylor tells me David is “unsurprisingly brilliant at it” which is of course unsurprising. It’s on Radio 4 in the first week of March: five episodes from Monday to Friday at 10.45 am and 7.45pm.

Imagine that, but with voices instead of old book covers.

What’s going on at the moment? Well…

There’s another series of that other show about truth and lies with David Mitchell aka The Unbelievable Truth being recorded in London on 26nd February, 4th March, 22nd March, 26th March. Tickets are available at the usual place. It’s more fun that the other thing about truth and lies that he is in as it’s for the radio which means less production kerfuffles, a beter bar and he is the chairman.

David’s first Soapbox video podcast thing is up online. The picture below may be a clue to the subject.

But what’s Rob up to?

From BBC Press Release:
Jo Brand, Dragons from Dragons’ Den (Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden), Blue Peter presenters (Tim Vincent, Anthea Turner, Mark Curry, Diana Louise Jordan, Peter Duncan, Peter Purves, Janet Ellis, Helen Skelton), Dick & Dom, Keith Lemon & Paddy McGuinness and Robert Webb will be donning their dancing shoes for Let’s Dance For Comic Relief as part of this year’s Red Nose Day Campaign, it was announced today.

The show will be produced by Whizz Kid Entertainment for the BBC.

Spotted, today! (in the style of a terrible celebrity magazine):

TV funny man David Mitchell in Books etc Hammersmith Broadway looking at … shock, horror… books!

I love it when I get text alerts like a bloody stalker…

Coalfinger!