Ever since I started working properly in the media business, well-meaning friends and family will often ponder if I can get them an autograph for someone. This is a little tricky because:

• I don’t generally meet celebrities any more in my line of work anyway!
• Even if I did, it’d be very hard to interrupt an interview or a meeting with a “Oh by the way, can you sign this for my grandma?” or “Can we just pose for a photograph?”
• I’m terrible at asking anything of strangers. Unless I have to.
• How many journalists do you know who interrupt press conferences to ask for an autograph? It’s just not done.
• Most importantly, I’m usually the only Chinese person in the room. Which means:
  • They’re far more likely to notice me – I tend to stick out like a sore form even when I don’t say anything – and thus, form an opinion, good or bad.
  • The last thing I want to do is enhance the racist assumption that Japanese/foreign journalists are idiotic and don’t know the ‘rules’

Having said all that, outside of work, it seems to be OK. During one birthday celebration in a Soho pub, June Whitfield came into the pub. Before you know it, my then evil scum of workmates had corralled her into posing for a pic next to me – I’m not too sure where that picture has gone, but it’s around here somewhere, with the odd sock. And somewhere in my archives, I also have Woody Allen’s autograph.

Of course, it seems to be just me who has a problem with asking celebrities for autographs where I work. My friend Shari in New York, who’s a radio engineer, had her pic taken with Hugh Jackman and was very proud of it. Stephen Fry, as ever, is the realist and has the do’s and don’ts of approaching a celebrity.

Do you work in the biz, as pretentious people like to call it? Do you collect autographs or photographs, or just get on with it and work with them as colleagues?

Geoff Marshall with some dude

Y’see, he’d recently come back to the BBC after two years in America fraternising with our American cousins – and even worse, American ACTORS. And it had all rubbed off a bit on him. The endless video posts, the sheer confidence in walking up to strangers – and yet still enthusing about Doctor Who, music and the Pet Shop Boys.

He then told me that he knew that David Tennant was going to be on BBC Breakfast on 31 December, and he was determined to get an autograph with him – by essentially lurking down the labyrinthe corridors of BBC Television Centre until he bumped into him. But he needed some help. A wingman, to help pass the time. Did I want to do it?

Strange as it may seem, I didn’t jump at the chance. Ever since I started working professionally within the media industry I’ve never asked for an autograph – mostly because you can’t interrupt an interview with Ben Elton, Alicia Silverstone or Glenn Close to ask for an autograph. That just wouldn’t do. Plus, I’m usually hyperaware that in the highly unlikely event of any problems, my face will be the ones that the security guards remember for reasons I’ll go into in another post … Although when I was younger, I’d hang around stage doors (well, it was double Physical Education on Wednesdays) and I managed to co-opt Stephen Fry into saving my University projects. Twice.

This time, I reasoned, I wouldn’t be there for work, and besides, it’s David Tennant. The night before he hands over the TARDIS keys. So I brushed up on the do’s and don’t of approaching a celebrity and waited…

The next morning, I arrived at the ye early time of 8am, and joined Geoff thereafter as we kept moving from point to point on the hear-out for a Scottish accent, while trying to avoid the cleaners who kept asking if we knew where we were going.

And then we went back into main reception – where usually only taxi drivers and runners are – and there he was. Already patiently signing autographs for a few kids, while a harassed BBC runner hovered behind him, eager to move him into his warm dressing room. But oh no, we were between him and the main doors. Geoff asked him whether he could stop now or on the way back, and David, being the understanding man he is, said he’d be a while in the studio and best to do it now.

Geoff managed to persuade him for a photograph. Unfortunately, it was an iPhone – and have you ever tried taking a pic on an iPhone in a hurry when you’ve never used one before? Your fingers are everywhere except where they need to be! So after three blurred shots of Geoff with David Tennant, he made his apologies and ran into the studio.

Throughout it all, David seemed slightly stressed – well, you would be if you’re dashing into a TV studio to address the nation – but a thoroughly decent chap nice enough to stop for autographs on a cold Thursday morning when he didn’t have to.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. Watch Geoff’s video of this momentous occasion (via Facebook alas!)…

The fab EPIC trailer for the new series of Doctor Who, Spring 2010.

The trailer’s not pathetic. I am. because:

• There were tears in my eye at the LOGO. The fricking LOGO.
• Thanks to new BBC technologies, I can now finally embed a bit of Doctor Who content on my website. There’s absolutely no need to – after all, every Doctor Who fan knows where to go to get the new trailer. Or I could just send you a link. Instead, I am making a post simply to embed a piece of content that’s avaialble everywhere else. Go me.

Wow. Just Wow. Definitely a programme for the fans – as, in many ways, it ought to be. Although even for the fans, the writing was marvellous. It fooled me, feigning a left hook then throwing a right punch. And the way that Matt Smith turned out to be a bad dream…

Fortunately, I think there’s just enough information for the non-fans to get it, although perhaps not the vast epic scale of it.

Jumbled spoilery thoughts after the break….

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roll the dice has photoshopped an image of ye olde Thames TV logo to show how it would look for today’s London:

As a kid in 1980s mid-Wales, I would look excitedly every time that logo appeared, because it meant LONDON! COOL STUFF! AND GREAT TELEVISION! Well, The Goodies in their declining years… or Dempsey and Makepeace… and you don’t want to know the amount of internal yay that happened in my head every time the London Weekend Television ident appeared…

Of course, now it’s different. Almost all the ITV companies have amalgamated into one meaningless whole – and more importantly, there’s pretty much nothing worth watching on ITV these days. But those were the days, aye…

You may have seen a musical clip from the frankly genius idea of Silence of the Lambs: The Musical set to Lego:

Anyway, it turns out the musical is coming to London mid-January! Who’s with me? We can all wear night-vision goggles and adopt cod-Virginian accents! (or surgical masks and cod-posh-Welsh accents)…

I’m watching a Chinese Cantopop music video, which has all the stylings of a Mariah Carey / Britney Spears video shoot. Groovy dancers, a wind machine, and a made-up lead singer in a short skirt.

However, the only English-language lyric I can pick up is “Loneliness is my best friend”. Just to reinforce this fact, it’s repeated about 8 times with subtitles underneath, before reverting back to Cantonese.

Fortunately, with a bit of Googling magic, I can now reveal the song is Bianca Yu’s Still A Wonderful Life…

I think I’ve found my new hipster look for 2010.

I’m not too sure Google Translate does a good job with Cantopop lyrics though:

Neighborhood of a person dinner
Lit candles total available radiant
Black linen without a partner
Aroma had a comfortable night with me
Hard to meet the worry-free eating and drinking
Stressed the need to pay attention to Huazhizhaozhan
Fast repair the image of vulnerability
Then instead of hauling your hands I’m ready
Carefree to walk everywhere
* A person is willing to count on cold
Even if a person alone
A cruel diversion program
But I was still a refined *
I do not reason alone a vacation and then the time difference
Concerned about the love off like a light down
There is no road map to do a happy canvas
Random do like my home hotel
No opponent to make ends meet
I am happy every day I received a total shopping
Let me Tim newly installed additional temperament
You do not do not light easily manipulated
Chic is my code

and of course, Cantopop doesn’t have exclusive licence to use the word ‘loneliness’ in inappropriate places:

The last five minutes of The End of Time had me just staring open-mouthed in amazement at the TV, as this … no, THIS … no, no, THIS … became the most amazing cliffhanger of all. Which certainly makes one hell of a change from the usual Christmas episode where I switch off feeling slightly cheap, used, and disappointed.

But anyway, don’t look any further until you’ve watched The End of Time Part One AND the preview clip of Part Two…

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I’ve often thought that if you’re going to go to the bother of remaking a film or a song, you should at least do it a bit differently. Like the Pet Shop Boys doing Always On My Mind, or … the Pet Shop Boys doing Where The Streets Have No Name.

Anyway, we now have the new trailer for The Karate Kid, starring Jackie Chan and Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith.

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Picture the scene – you’re Russell T Davies, famed showrunner of Doctor Who and famed atheist. You’re at a Q&A just after showing a preview of the Christmas 2009 episode – your penultimate piece of work on Doctor Who – when a little kid grabs the microphone, in front of lots of journalists, and asks:

“Did you meet the Doctor or did you make him up?”

Which is pretty much the same as asking whether Father Christmas exists. The moral quandry – do you tell all or nothing?

I’ve seen two accounts of what RTD said next – via SFX and Ian Wylie (spoilers!) – which are both slightly different. But were you there?

and in Who-related news: Doctor Who star goes back to old school to direct nativity play