The rather fab Red Scharlach has recently been featuring one of those blog ‘meme’ things, based around responding to five things that someone automatically associated with you; hence in her case it was ‘drawing/art’, ‘gin’, ‘yummy bits of food’, ‘good-looking men’ and ‘your amazing ability to predict even the most insane of plot twists’.
Intrigued, I asked ‘Red’ for five things that she associated with Out On Blue Six, and was duly handed the following list, which as convention dictates will be discussed one by one. NB this will not involve any discussion of dull ‘zoo vet’-based mid-eighties BBC drama One By One.
Fanzines – perhaps an obvious one, given that I first crossed paths with ’Red’ back in fanzineland, but it’s always flattering when someone mentions completely out of the blue that they remember my photocopier-powered ramblings about My Bloody Valentine and Pipkins and dull ‘zoo vet’-based mid-eighties dramas with no little degree of affection, and though those days are long behind us all (with the notable and highly recommended exception of This Way Up), I do like to think that Out On Blue Six is doing what little it can to keep the spirit of the age of uncorrectable spelling mistakes and unreadable captions scrawled under smeary photos alive in this blogtacular age.
F.R. David – a bit of a blast from the past, and a neat tie-in with the above, as outmoded-paper-based-time was when everyone’s favourite mirror-shared Europop purveyor of what passed for exciting chart sounds back when there were only four TV channels and one of them was showing a dull ‘zoo vet’-based mid-eighties drama anyway was a prime target for surreal lampoonery and effectively the ‘Oops/’Dinners’/Grimleys/Phil Cool Drinking Citrus Spring/Roland Rat Being Hit With A Cricket Bat/Sendhil Ramamurthy TV’s Mohinder From Heroes of his day. Time for a revival?
Kate Thornton – now this is an interesting one; for all of the continual employment as a sort of fall guy (fall gal?) stooge in whatever bit of absurdist nonsense about big TV events or the Large Hadron Particle Collider, not to mention the running gag about her being mouth-foamingly asylum-bound a while back, I do actually like La Thornton a lot. Though clearly uncomfortable with live television she’s not a bad presenter and doesn’t deserve the flak she gets (as indeed she doesn’t for ‘destroying Smash Hits‘, as so many tedious GRR GRR OBLIVION BOYS morons insist on regurgitating, as the contentious Smash Hits relaunch in question took place in December 1991, which was almost six years before she took over as editor and she was still at school at the time anyway), her more recent appearances on Radio 4 and Radio 2 have presented an intriguing and thoughtful ’Wham! Fan’s Eye View’ perspective on often relatively esoteric subjects, and while she’s certainly no Jonathan Miller there are many, many people in the media more deserving of the ‘GRR GRR SHE’S WORSE THAN DULL ‘ZOO VET’-BASED MID-EIGHTIES DRAMA’ hatred and bile that gets routinely flung at her. Or perhaps, as Left And To The Back recently suggested, maybe I am actually attracted to blondes with huge busts after all.
Wikipedia-Based Resentment – well, this is a tricky one… it’s not really ‘resentment’ as such, just a combination of suspicion (of any system that allows people to assume a position of self-imposed authority and rigidly enforce rules that in themselves aren’t particularly rigid to begin with), irritation (at the fact that, say, someone in America can deny outright that a robot from a popular British sci-fi TV series made an appearance on a popular British children’s TV series and wave all kinds of vaguely-interpreted ‘rules’ around on no more sound a basis than the fact that they’ve never heard of it themselves), and mischevious bemusement (at the likes of doubts being cast on Zero X’s status as a fictional spacecraft, berks called ‘Chovain’ almost throttling themselves in attempts to prevent any citate-able criticism of Ricky Hervaid’s homophobia from finding their way into pages, legitimate insertion of facts about a certain lead singer of a techno band into pages, ‘edit wars’ over dull ‘zoo vet’-based mid-eighties dramas etc etc). Of course this would probably all change if someone was to set up a Wikipedia page about Out On Blue Six, listing all of the running jokes like Vetoed Stylophone, Eve Myles Tits, The Peppipam etc…
Copping Off With Mystery Indie-Band Girls – oh alright then, it was Jenny Dull-Zoovet out of The Based Mid-Eighties Dramas.
