A lot of people know the song “Jilted John” by Jilted John, even if they don’t know it by name. Chances are, they probably think it’s called “Gordon Is A Moron” or “The Moron Song” or something like that. It sounds like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It got to number four in the UK charts in 1978, was performed live on Top of the Pops on no less than three occasions, and is rightly held as one of the greatest and most memorable singles of the late ’70s punk/new wave era. But for most people, that’s where the Jilted John story ends – as a one-hit wonder, a novelty record and nothing more. What most people don’t know, however, is that “John” actually recorded an entire album. And, what’s more, it’s a masterpiece.

Jilted John was, of course, the alter-ego of a young comedian and singer-songwriter named Graham Fellows – who would later go on to create the peerless John Shuttleworth, and appear in adverts for Yorkshire Tea. In its original form, the eponymous song was actually the B-side of a Rabid Records single called “Going Steady” – in which a not-so-jilted John told of his love for girlfriend-of-two-months Sharon – but on the radio, it was “Jilted John” that gained greater currency, and the single would eventually be re-released by EMI with the sides flipped. In the wake of the single’s success, Fellows and super-producer Martin Hannett regrouped to create an entire album. It had an absolutely fantastic romance-comics-spoof cover, came with a free gift of a “Mice and Ladders” board game, and was called True Love Stories.

Although the album was – by the standards of the single – something of a flop, it’s retained its status as something of a cult favourite. And I absolutely love it to pieces. So if you’ve never heard it – or, even, heard of it – before, allow me to educate you as to its genius…

The first track on the album is called Baz’s Party, and… well, wait. Let’s hold on and back up a minute. Nowadays, if you’re listening to the album, you’re probably listening to the 1999 CD re-release – especially since that’s the version on Spotify, iTunes and so on, and since, unlike me, you probably didn’t go digging through eBay to track down the original 12″ record (with the “Mice and Ladders” board still intact inside, fact fans!) And that version of the album has a couple of additions on it – notably, opening with the very first Jilted John song of them all, Going Steady.

And it’s good that it does, really, because Going Steady is a fantastic song, and makes for a much more welcoming opener. It’s criminal that it never made it onto the album’s original release in the first place – particularly for some reasons that we’ll come on to later. Here it is:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The feel and mood of this track set the tone for the rest of the album – although musically, it’s quite different from the keyboard-heavy arrangements that Hannett brought to the production of the album, having been recorded almost a year beforehand. John is young and naive, a wide-eyed innocent, declaring after two whole months that when he and Sharon have “saved up, we’re going to get maaaaa-rried”. Even if the word “Jilted” weren’t in his name, we’d know this happiness couldn’t possibly last – but for now, his feckless charm is endearing.

Although it makes a great opener musically, though, Going Steady doesn’t actually fit chronologically into the narrative structure that, as we’ll see, True Love Stories has at its core. Then again, neither does the actual album opener, Baz’s Party. That song initially creates a jarring effect if you’re listening to it on the re-release – because it opens with a snatch of “Going Steady” heard on a record player at the titular party, while a supposedly teenaged female voice – actually, quite obviously, Fellows himself – declares it to be a “great song” and asks for it to be played again when it finishes.

Baz’s Party, although funny (“I’m drinking as fast as I can / While we all sing Telegram Sam / And now the boys are dancing to / The silly dance / That skinheads do”), is a touch silly and slight, and probably doesn’t help assuage the initial impression that this is going to be just another “novelty” album. Neverthelss, and although it may appear earlier in the track listing than it’s chronologically supposed to – the version of John that it features surely comes from around track four or five – what it does achieve is establishing the style and tone of the character (even though arguably, on the re-release, Going Steady has already done this better). It also has a truly killer final line:

There’s a boy puking up in the lavatory
His name’s Baz -
It’s his party…

It’s from the next track, however, that our chronological narrative begins, and the concept album starts to take shape. I Know I’ll Never is a minute-and-a-half long call to arms sung by a younger John, as he declares in the brilliant opening lines:

I am reckless and I am shoddy
I’m an adult in a child’s body
I’m twelve years old and I rule O.K.
And I know I’ll never reach pu-ber-TAY! 

Having already been introduced to “Baz” in the preceding track, he’s referenced here as John’s best friend too - “Barry is my mate and we can sup / Two bottles of cider each and still stand up” – suggesting for the first time some kind of continuity between the album’s songs. This is carried forward into the next track, something of a companion piece titled I Was A Pre-Pubescent. The first properly “narrative” song on the album, this track tells John’s life story from birth up until his early teens – the main points to take away being the early death of his father and subsequent departure of his mother, and the fact that he and his sister were consequently brought up by their gran (although this fact creates its own continuity problems, as we’ll see).

Having re-emphasised the previous track’s message of just how much John enjoyed the simplicity of pre-adolescent life, however, …Pre-Pubescent ends on an alarming note:

One summer’s day in ’73
I looked in the mirror and it terrified me
For what I saw was quite out of place:
Bum-fluff and acne all over my face
I tried to speak, but when I spoke
All that came out was a croak
My voice had broken
I was a… pubescent, and it was sad

Following John into adolescence, though, is merely a cue for the album to hit its high point. There’s already been a tone that I’d describe as distinctly Adrian Mole (although obviously the album predates Sue Townsend’s novel by a few years) in the tracks up to this point, but it really comes to the fore in Fancy Mice. This exquisite song is a five-minute long opus in which, across a succession of increasingly laboured rhyming couplets, John barely pauses for breath. To attempt to describe it further would fail to do it justice, however, so all I’ll do instead is present it to you in its entirety:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of many, many brilliant details in this song, perhaps my favourite is the fact that John’s chosen name for his first pet mouse is Jane. If you like, you can just see this as being because “Jane” is quite an easy name to rhyme with a lot of words – but I prefer to think of it as a clever piece of storytelling detail, recalling that Jane was the beloved girl that John sat next to in primary school in I Was A Pre-Pubescent.

Unfortunately, after this masterpiece is when the album goes on to hit arguably its one major misstep – and it’s with the inclusion of a re-recorded version of Jilted John. It’s not that the song itself isn’t brilliant – and it’s certainly arguable that to have excluded it would have damaged the album’s chances of commercial success even further – it’s just that it really doesn’t fit. Having been re-recorded to fit in more with the production style of the rest of the album, it’s sapped of a lot of its original power and ramshackle charm – and although a theoretical relationship with Julie could be fit into the album’s narrative somewhere, it seems odd that the next track, The Birthday Kiss, is about John breaking up with Sharon – who, unless experiencing the re-released version of the album, the listener hasn’t heard anything about yet. It would seem to have made far more sense to have Going Steady (either in original form or re-recorded) show up at this point, and if Jilted John had to be on there it could always have served as track one. But hey ho. In the MP3 era, if we want to put together our own versions of favourite albums, it’s not like we can’t do so.

Anyway, none of this should detract from the magnificence of The Birthday Kiss, which is easily the flat out funniest song the entire album has to offer – a tale of unadulterated heartbreak at the youth club disco, culminating in this superb half-sung, half-spoken recounting of John and Sharon’s final conversation:

She said, “Let me explain, John!”
I said, “There’s nothing to explain, Sharon!”
She said, “I think there is, John!”
I said, “No there isn’t, Sharon. And anyway, my bus is here. So you can go back to Colin now…”
“Listen,” she pleaded, “I don’t fancy him! I was just giving him a birthday kiss!”
And I said “Oh yeah? For ten minutes? In the rain? I don’t believe you!
“Anyway, it’s not even his birthday!”

Although if there’s one problem with this otherwise perfect track, it’s that it throws up an odd continuity error – I Was A Pre-Pubescent had already established that John’s Mum and Dad were absent and deceased respectively, and that he lived with his gran. Going Steady had also made reference to this – despite being recorded beforehand – with the line “And my gran says you’re dead nice”. Although The Birthday Kiss does mention John’s gran (countermanding the earlier comment with “Anyway, my gran didn’t like you, she said you were dead common!”), the opening line states “I’ve just come back from the youth club / Mum and Dad are watching telly…” Which, in an album so otherwise carefully constructed, is a little odd to say the least.

The Birthday Kiss ends the first side of the original 12″ release – and it’s an appropriate break point. Because the entire second half of True Love Stories is an individual narrative of its own – a concept-album-within-a-concept-album, even. While the first half of the album had rattled through the first fifteen or sixteen years of its hero’s life, the second side tells a chronologically shorter, but significantly more detailed, tale. It starts with The Paperboy Song, as a now post-O-levels and newly-on-the-dole John ruminates on how much nicer and simpler things were when he was an early teen with a job delivering papers. Once again, that Adrian Mole-esque feel comes to the surface, particularly as John describes one of the highlights of his job:

At number forty-four
Lived a girl called Wendy Moore
And I sometimes saw her getting dressed
Through the window on the second floor
And once, I wrote her a rude letter
And put it in her Jackie
Well she stopped buying it
Called me a git
And told her brother to attack me…

The song culminates with, oddly, a short dialogue piece as John goes back to his old newsagent’s to ask about getting a job. The newsagent – also voiced by Fellows – tells him that, unfortunately, there are no jobs going; but the plot of the second side of the album is kicked off nevertheless, due to John’s meeting the new assistant, a girl named Karen (er… also voiced by Fellows).

The next track, True Love, sees the album venturing into a different direction musically – it’s cheesy as hell, but there’s a lot more depth of construction to it, and even Fellows’ vocal performance seems to have deliberately changed tone, reflecting the now-older John. Karen “her”self even makes a brief singing appearance right at the end, too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With John happy in love with Karen (his experiences with Sharon apparently not having taught him a sage lesson about jumping in with both feet), the album continues to get odder and odder. First, there’s In The Bus Shelter - an instrumental piece, with spoken dialogue over the top, as John and Karen, well… sit in the bus shelter, watching the world go by and eating crisps. That’s really all there is to it. It’s probably at this point that the decision to have Fellows do all the female voices feels its most misguided – but as with most of the album’s eccentricities, it’s carried along on a wave of innocent charm.

All is not as well in John’s world as he imagines, however, as we learn from Karen’s Letter - which, like In The Bus Shelter, is a spoken word track over an instrumental backing. This time, it’s a horrified John reading a quite literal Dear John letter from his beloved – who has decided to run away to London and find a job as a chamber maid in a hotel. He’s given hope, however, by the assertion that her actions have got nothing to do with their relationship – even though we the listener know that they surely must. This is conveyed in brilliantly subtle fashion by the portion of Karen’s letter that references her cousin Denise, who “ran away when she was engaged to Terry”. After all, why else make reference to a jilted fiancé if similar motivation isn’t also on Karen’s mind?

Apparently not noticing this, however, John follows the one natural course for a lovelorn teenager in the late 1970s – he hitch-hikes down to London to follow her. And this is where things get really weird. A second non-musical dialogue interlude sees John hitching a lift with a well-spoken older woman (I think this is Graham Fellows doing the voice yet again, but I can’t be entirely sure) – but that’s only the start of a whole new misadventure, as time has moved on when the song Shirley starts up, and we find out that… well, listen to the track yourself:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For a moment this almost feels like it’s going to be the beginning of an entire story-within-a-story – but sadly, the album’s rapidly running out of space. It’s a shame, as you can’t help but feel an entire third side could have been spun out of John’s adventures in London. Instead, however – without even learning exactly how John managed to escape the clutches of Shirley – we find in the album’s closer Goodbye Karen that he’s already given up on his quest:

For two whole days I’ve looked for you, Karen
I’ve been everywhere in London
But I can’t find you anywhere
And now I don’t care
I’m going back home 

There’s just time, however, for a moment of reflection that suggests our hero might actually have learned something from his escapade:

If it’s true
I mean the world to you
You would have let me know
And asked me to go… with you

And so, with a plaintive repeated refrain of “Goodbye, Karen…”, ends the Jilted John story. Although the CD re-release would tack on the single release of “Jilted John” – as well as two cash-in tracks by Bernard Kelly’s “Gordon the Moron” that don’t really merit much discussion (despite Kelly’s ever-present and oft-stated influence on Fellows, these particular tracks simply… aren’t very good) – that would be the last we’d ever hear of John, Karen, Sharon, Baz and the rest. It seems sad that they should be consigned to this solitary cult album, forgotten by all but the most avid of followers – and that Fellows himself would have to wait until the John Shuttleworth days before being recognised as the singer-songwriter of profound genius that he undoubtedly is (he did put out a solo, non-character-based album in the ’80s, but that sank with even less trace than True Love Stories).

But then, with a name like his, John was always going to be jilted by the world, wasn’t he…?

You can listen to True Love Stories on Spotify, or buy it stupendously cheaply from Amazon and iTunes. In case the rest of the article didn’t make it clear, that’s something I highly recommend you do immediately.

Postscript: Although True Love Stories appeared to be the end of Jilted John, it wasn’t quite. In researching background and audio content for this article, I discovered two little gems. First off, a track called “Mrs Pickering”, recorded in 1978 – presumably as an unused cut from the album – but eventually issued on a 1980 Rabid Records compilation called The Crap Stops Here. And secondly – and somewhat oddly – an entirely new song performed when Fellows briefly revived the character for a performance at the Big Chill festival in 2008, titled “Keira Knightley (Eat Your Dinner)”:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s terrific, but sadly it didn’t herald a new era of Jilted John material…

Nevertheless, whatever’s happening with the production at the moment – or what might be speculated as happening with the production – I still think there are a whole host of reasons to be optimistic. And, in my position as Official Red Dwarf Cheerleader, I feel it’s my duty to remind people of them.

Because the shows are great. Really, seriously, great. You can call me biased if you want, but anyone who knows me knows I’ve been plenty critical of Red Dwarf when I don’t like it. I know that due to my current role, I’d obviously have to be positive about the new series in public no matter what – but if I didn’t like the new episodes that I’d seen filmed, I’d simply avoid talking about them except in an “official” voice. As it is, though, I love them. Obviously, I can’t say too much about them without giving away things that aren’t meant to be given away, but here are just a few of the reasons why the return of the show fills me with so much joy:

• First and foremost, they’re funny. Each of the episodes I saw (four, out of the six – although in one instance we only saw somewhere between half and two-thirds of the total running time being filmed) had at least one absolutely huge audience reaction moment, but the genuine laughs are healthily distributed throughout the entire series.
• The stories are great. Strong, memorable, well-constructed plots, throughout the entire series. One episode - which I didn’t actually see being filmed, but have heard a detailed synopsis of – has a genuinely inspired and innovative central premise, one that I don’t think anyone has ever done before. It’s the sort of thing that carries on the fine tradition of episodes like “Future Echoes” and “Thanks for the Memory” in exploring inventive, original sci-fi ideas.
• It’s fan-pleasing. A few of the episodes are really heavily rooted in established Dwarf lore, and do things that we might never have expected to actually see on screen. But man, are they satisfying.
• Then there’s the final episode. Well. To say anything detailed about it would ruin the many, many treats it has to offer – but if it doesn’t immediately leap high onto the “all-time favourite” lists of the majority of fans, then the majority of fans are mad. It’s brilliant: thrilling, clever, funny, surprising, and even a little bit moving. It contains not one, but two of the best guest actor performances the series has ever had. And it has a final line that – no kidding – nearly moved me to tears right there at the recording.
• The lead cast are all on top form. Any concerns about not slotting back into the characters after such a long time away were fairly well alleviated by Back to Earth anyway, but across this full series they feel comfortable, happy and confident in these roles. And more than anything, this is the series that will dispel the myth that Lister and Rimmer are simply too old these days for the show to work. They’re not – the show has simply adapted its tone and premise to fit them.
• The guest actors, as already hinted at, are pretty much uniformly superb, too – I can’t think of a single bad performance across the episodes I saw, but I can recall at least three or four superb ones. A handful of actors get to play roles that are quite significant to the Red Dwarf mythos – and which rely on their being able to fit in with preconceptions a fan audience might have about them – and without exception they do so with aplomb.
• It looks amazing. Obviously, we haven’t seen the special effects, model shots and so on yet – but I remain confident that, even with whatever technical problems are currently going on, ultimately it’s all going to look and feel terrific. One thing is for sure, though – the sets, whether onboard Red Dwarf itself or elsewhere, are astoundingly good. The Dwarf interior, in particular, feels like a combination and culmination of all previous incarnations, and ultimately it’s almost like the ship how it always should have looked. Maybe I’m biased towards it having spent a day walking around its corridors (and, I’ll admit, pretending I was actually onboard the ship), but I fell in love with it before that, at the moment I walked into the first audience recording. It’s beautiful.

That’s probably about all I’d better say, anyway (though if you want more from me on the new series, I wrote a bit more about the actual experience of a recording day in my official capacity) – there’s a delicate balancing act in talking about this series, because everyone with any kind of connection to it – whether official or fan – wants to avoid ruining the twists and turns it has to offer before its broadcast later this year. But my point is this: the recent chatter on Twitter about model shots and music is just about the first negative-sounding word that has come out from anywhere connected to the production, and it shouldn’t cancel out the immense positive feeling from the episode recordings – the feeling that, quite simply, Red Dwarf X is just about everything that a new series of Red Dwarf should be.

It’s going to be amazing. And Autumn can’t come soon enough.

For those who don’t know about it, this tradition dates back to 2007, when I put together a Christmas compilation with the help of my LiveJournal friends. I wanted to put my favourite Christmassy songs together, but I also wanted to discover some new, interesting and slightly obscurer festive tracks. This album was the result. It’s been tweaked a little most years since, but the core structure and rules remain the same: it’s largely indie/alternative, but with a couple of more well-known and poppier tracks in there. In general, it’s supposed to consist of the tracks that you don’t just hear in every shop you walk into in December. So even if they’re good, you won’t hear things like “Christmas Wrappin’” or “Stop The Cavalry” here.

(The one exception is “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, which thanks to its status as The Greatest Christmas Song Of Them All is featured not only in its original form but also as a surprisingly excellent cover by My Chemical Romance)

This year, I’ve subbed in and out a couple of tracks – Jonathan Coulton’s “Chiron Beta Prime” and She & Him’s new version of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” were the things I wanted to add, so Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and the Pogues have made way (the latter because… well, as great as it is, it doesn’t really fit here, because it’s so widely-heard over the season).

Of course, if you like some of my choices but not all, you’re perfectly welcome to sub in your own tracks to make your own version! The album as it is here, though, is specifically designed to clock in at just under 80 minutes, and so to fit perfectly onto a CD-R should you wish.

Merry Chrimbo, and enjoy!

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (2011 edition) (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. Jonathan Coulton – Chiron Beta Prime (2:51)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. She & Him – Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (3:42)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

It’s an oft-stated truism that there aren’t enough “strong female characters” in movies. But it’s also a truism that whenever people do decide to put together a list of “strong female characters” from movies, they tend to zoom in on one particular word – and one particular interpretation of that word – and focus on discussing characters who are, literally, physically “strong”. Look up any list of the best female characters in film, and you’ll usually be presented with a list that is largely made up of (with the exception of perennial favourites Holly Golightly and Annie Hall) ass-kicking action heroines such as Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, The Bride, Trinity, assorted Milla Jovovich characters, and so on.

Some of these deserve their places on these lists (I’ll fight anyone who dares argue that Ripley, in the second film especially, isn’t the greatest action movie heroine of all time), and some probably don’t (hello Lara Croft). But I’ve also noticed a name that these lists don’t often tend to include – Fargo‘s Marge Gunderson. This despite the fact that she is, for my money, one of the best female characters in movie history. So in honour of International Women’s Day, and inspired in part by this latest from Kate Beaton showing up this morning, here’s a little bit about why.

Marge is the emotional centre of Fargo, a dark and violent black comedy about nasty and/or misguided people doing nasty things to one-another. She’s intelligent (showing a Holmesian display of deductive reasoning when first visiting the initial crime scene), kind, empathetic, insightful, funny, and satisfied with her lot – enjoying her work and a healthy and loving relationship with her husband that, while it doesn’t necessarily subvert traditional gender roles, certainly blurs them (their memorable introductory appearance is a flip on the classic “sleepy cop answers phone in middle of night” routine, as Marge takes the call while Norm trundles out of bed to make her some eggs).

Quite crucially, however, part of what makes Marge so great is the fact that she’s a woman. A problem with so many female characters considered as “strong” is that in order to be so, they’ve often had to make themselves become more like a man (Sarah Connor syndrome, if you like), taking on physical and/or emotional characteristics that enable them to play the same role as a traditional male hero. But in Fargo, although Marge is not averse to kicking ass and taking names – remember that she single-handedly brings down the brutal murderer Grimsrud with a well-placed gunshot – it’s her gender that sets her apart from everyone else in the film.

Fargo is all about the failures and incompetencies of men – men who succumb to rapacious lusts and desires (primarily for money, but let’s not forget the significance of the somewhat grim sequence in which the two kidnappers enjoy the services of a pair of bored prostitutes) – but at the centre of it all is Marge, the only truly competent person either on the side of the good or the bad. All around her are men acting or being stupid – Jerry, Carl and Graer, Lou (“I’m not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your police work, there, Lou”), even her old high-school classmate Mike – and she just calmly gets on with doing the right thing, the right way.

In addition to the powers of deduction that make her such a great cop, Marge’s intelligence is emotional, as well. Throughout the film, she instinctively knows how to approach characters in exactly the right way – taking different tones and approaches to the extent that she never comes off the worst out of a conversation (or an interrogation). Not that there ever seems to be anything planned or cynical about this – it’s just the way she is. And if I can say this without it sounding patronising, a huge part of this is undoubtedly the fact that she’s a woman (and an expectant mother, at that), making her empathy seem all that more natural.

In this manner, Marge “kicks ass” in a far greater way than any literal instance of high-kicking or smart-mouthed sassy quips from a hundred “empowered” (yet still strangely over-sexualized) cinematic peers. And she even finds time to be the film’s philosopher, as demonstrated by this really quite profound (and spoilerfic, obviously) sequence towards the end. A superb creation in both writing and performance (the film rightly won Academy Awards for both elements – the role being the finest and most nuanced moment in the particularly exceptional career of Frances McDormand, one of the best screen actors – male or female – of the last fifty years), she may not have the complex intrigue of Annie Hall, or the sheer bloody-minded determination and will of Ripley, but Marge Gunderson is still undoubtedly one of cinema’s greatest ever women.

“Hautman’s blue-winged teal got the 29-cent. People don’t much use the three-cent.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Of course they do. Whenever they raise the postage, people need the little stamps.”

I’ve been watching lately a fair few episodes from what I’d call the “Late Imperial” era of The Simpsons - that is, the era in which, at its best, it was still the best thing on television; but in which it wasn’t hitting its “best” with every episode. This has largely involved watching most of season eight, but I’ve also watched odds and sods from seasons seven and nine as well. And this got me thinking in more detail about a theory I’ve had for a little while, which is this:

I believe a Simpsons episode is more likely to be good if it opens with an in-universe TV show/film/radio show than if it doesn’t.

I’ve come up with this theory based on the fact that the “show within a show” kinds of fiction (largely covering TV shows, but also including movies and radio stations) often tend to be among the funniest and most memorable moments in the series’ history (particularly when they involve Krusty, Kent Brockman or Troy McClure). And for some reason, when an episode opens with one of these scenes, it instantly feels sharper and more imaginative than one that just brings us in to a random scene somewhere in Springfield or at the Simpsons’ home. This is particularly noticeable during these later seasons (and when I say “later”, I mean “later in the good period” – we’re going by the assumption that the programme is largely not worth watching, and thus non-existent in my head, after around season eleven), when it’s the more dull and boring episodes that seem to start in this mundane way, and the better ones that give the laughs by opening with – for example – the Krusty Komedy Klassic, or an edition of Eye on Springfield. It therefore feels to me like I’m simply more likely to enjoy an episode if it’s got one of these opening scenes (which from now on I’m referring to as “TV openings”, even though they also covers other forms of media).

So, I’ve decided to test it out. And count up data in Excel. And turn it into a graph. Because that’s how I roll.

The test, then, goes like this. I’m going through four seasons – the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth. This is because I think figures would be unfairly skewed by looking either at the first five seasons (during which the show is as close to consistently perfect as anything can be, and so attempting to graph it would be useless), or any from the tenth onwards (where I simply don’t know a lot of the episodes well enough to pass judgement on them, or where I know that the majority are too weak to offer fair data). This “middle period”, however, seems to be the most variable in quality – in that there can be utterly fantastic episodes in the same season as major stinkers – and so the most interesting to test out.

For each season, I’ve listed the episodes and – from memory, without looking them up or checking whether or not they have TV openings in order to avoid subconsciously skewing the data – given each my own rating out of 5. It’s worth noting that these are my own, personal opinions – I’m basing this survey on my taste, and not on any sort of general consensus or view of objective quality. I’ve also excluded, in each season, the Treehouse of Horrors and clip shows (or, in season eight’s case, the Spin-Off Showcase), as they stand somewhat separately from “normal” judgement. Finally, I’ve gone through and marked out which episodes count as having “TV openings” (there’s got to be a better phrase for this, right?), and which ones don’t. Here are the ground rules:

- The first scene of the episode has to feature an in-universe TV show, movie or radio programme, being watched/listened to by onscreen characters
- For the most part, the first shot of the episode should be a shot of the screen in question. However, I’m also allowing episodes that have an establishing shot (e.g. Bart and Lisa switching on the TV in In Marge We Trust) so long as it’s clear that the TV show is still part of the first scene
- Circumstances where the TV show in question is talking to us the viewer (rather than characters onscreen) shouldn’t count. Since I’ve excluded clip shows, Treehouse and the Spin-Off Showcase, though, I think the only example of this is The Springfield Files.

After that, I gave an average rating for each season, and then for each season’s episodes with and without the TV openings. And then I put it all in a graph. So without any further ado… on with the data!

Season Six
Although this season has a couple of episodes I’m not keen on – Bart vs Australia is the first ep, post-season-one, that I’d only rate at 2 out of 5 – it’s still remarkably strong on the whole. The average rating is 4.26. Nine of these episodes have TV openings, and they’re all pretty spectacularly good – five get the full 5/5 rating, and four get 4. Therefore, their average is a whopping 4.56. Meanwhile, the average of the 14 “without” is a mere 4.07. So far, so good.

Season Seven
The average ratings start to drop with this season – down to 3.57 already. Things are also much closer when testing the hypothesis – of the seven episodes that have TV openings, only one is a 5er (Two Bad Neighbors: “It’s the grand nationals of sand-castle building… preview!”) , while there’s also one I’d only rate at 2 (Scenes From The Class Struggle In Springfield, which opens with the family watching Bumblebee Man – I’m being generous by counting it). This all makes for an average of just 3.57. Meanwhile, of the remaining sixteen eps, there are four stone-cold classics (including Radioactive Man and Team Homer), and despite some clunkers, there’s an overall average of 3.56. So for season seven, it seems clear that opening with a fictional TV show doesn’t really make a difference.

Season Eight
Ah, the season whose watching caused me to have this theory in the first place. Will the figures bear it out? Well, the overall season rating is down again, to 3.48. But we’ve got seven TV openers again – and this time it’s a much stronger crop. The average rating is 4.00, with an excellent set that includes Bart After Dark and Homer’s Enemy. Even the weak My Sister, My Sitter (opening with an Eye on Springfield ep) can’t bring the average down too much. Elsewhere, though, it’s disappointment – the remaining sixteen episodes only average at 3.25, despite including Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment and You Only Move Twice. So in season eight the contrast is much more stark – the funnier, more imaginative episodes, on the whole tend to open with footage of a spoof TV show or film. But the mundane episodes on which this season often falls back are easily identifiable by not doing so.

Season Nine
Finally, a season that does still have its moments, but also a lot of duff filler. Average rating is just 3.30 – the only five-star ep I’d count in the entire season is The Trouble With Trillions. Interestingly, though, that ep doesn’t actually fall in the TV openings – and all of a sudden, my theory is thrown out somewhat. Because the five TV-opener eps include two rated at only 2/5 – making for an average of 3.30. This compares with the rest of the season’s average of 3.39. It seems that by this point, the makers had got bored of these sharp and funny pop culture spoofs – and as a result, the episodes that feature them are no longer generally the funniest.

Here, then, is how those four series graph against one-another:

ON THE WHOLE, HOWEVER
Despite season nine being the one at which the bottom falls out of my theory, it still just about holds true over the course of the four seasons. Of 92 episodes counted, with an overall average rating of 3.65, there are 28 with “TV openings” – and they hold an average score of 3.89. Meanwhile, the episodes that don’t have them only average 3.55. Therefore, the results are clear: Simpsons episodes that open with a spoof TV show or movie are (a bit) more likely to make me laugh than ones that don’t.

There. Was it worth all that? Probably not. But graphs are fun. And my mom says I’m cool.

If you want to browse more Blackwell excellence, there’s now – finally – a pretty much complete archive online, courtesy of this excellent site (a far cry from the days when searching for “…Dukla Prague Away Kit” lyrics would give you reference to something called “Sub-U-Dome”). And if you’ve never listened to HMHB, in the Spotify age there’s really no excuse not to start.

It’s funny ‘cos it’s true
Observational comedy at its finest. McIntyre, take notes. Actually, don’t.

Even men with steel hearts love to see a dog on the pitch
(Even Men with Steel Hearts)

When you’re holding tea and toast
And there’s no-one else around
Do you switch the kitchen light off with your chin?
(Lock Up Your Mountain Bikes)

Not long now before lollipop men are called Darren
(Totnes Bickering Fair)

Darts in soap operas: oh so wrong, oh so wrong
No-one’s scoring, and there’s too much chat between each throw
Worse than this, though, is when cheers are raised for the bull
Granted, bull’s a double and an out – but I know that they don’t know
(Surging out of Convalescence)

Opinionated weather forecasters who tell me it’s going to be a “miserable day”
Miserable to who? I quite like a bit of drizzle, so stick to the facts!
(A Country Practice)

She stayed with me until she moved to Notting Hill
She said it was the place she needs to be
Where the cocaine is fair trade, and frequently displayed
Is the Buena Vista Social Club’s CD
(The Light At The End of the Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train))

A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex And The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbot.
(Breaking News)

I want to perch myself halfway up a metal staircase with the Polydor girls and talk about meerkats
And come out with statements like:
“Well of course music these days is the slave of mammon, and as a result has become corrupt and shallow
Its real essence is industry
Its moral purpose is the acquisition of money
Its aesthetic pretext is the entertainment of those who are bored
Though yes, we’re really excited about going back into the studio
Hotly tipped, highly anticipated and slated for release”
(Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not)

So I’m walking down the road, and heading towards me
Is somebody I know, but not like a brother
He’s seen me, and we both realise that we’re going to have to put into operation
The tricky manoeuvre that is
Acknowledgement without breaking stride
(Soft Verges)

Neil Morrisey’s a knobhead
(Bottleneck at Capel Curig)

Poetry & wordplay
Blackwell has two particular skills as a wordsmith – first off, although not displayed as often as his humour, he can have a brilliant way with metaphor and phrasing. And he’s also a fan of making puns that wouldn’t even have occurred to anyone else…

They say “Plenty more fish”
I say “Amoco Cadiz”
(Keeping Two Chevrons Apart)

There’s a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets
(National Shite Day)

Nero fiddles while Gordon Burns
(Joy Division Oven Gloves)

Who’s afraid of Virginia Wade?
(Outbreak of Vitas Gerulaitis)

You never hear of folk getting knocked on the bonce
Although there was a drive-by shouting once
(For What Is Chatteris…)

Did you play in the Garden of Eden?
Were the goalkeeper’s gloves to you tossed?
‘Cos it seems to me you’re the reason
You’re the reason why Paradise lost
(Paradise Lost (You’re The Reason Why))

Your optimism strikes me like junk mail addressed to the dead
(Depressed Beyond Tablets)

On touching the trig point, I found my thrill
To the east Brokeback Mountain, to the west Benny Hill
I’ll give you the grid ref, you might like to go
SO224350
Could this be heaven, would that be the Severn
Twmpa, Twmpa, you’re gonna need a jumper
(Lord Hereford’s Knob)

I didn’t take much time convincing her:
“Baby, I’m from the Wirral Peninsula”
(A Lilac Harry Quinn)

Following a commendable stab at “Sylvia”, Helen shouted at the guitarist:
“Are you knackered, man?”
To which he replied, “No, I’m Jan Akkerman!”
(Tour Jacket With Detachable Sleeves)

Just downright funny
Sometimes the lines are just uncategorisably, indefinably, laugh-out-loud hilarious. Such as…

I’m gonna feed our children non-organic food
And with the money saved, take them to the zoo
(Totnes Bickering Fair)

I tried to put everything into perspective, set it against the scale of human suffering. And I thought of the Mugabe government, and the children of the Calcutta Railways. This worked for a while, but then I encountered Primark FM.
(National Shite Day)

U is for the Umpire, which I wish I’d been instead. You never hear a cricket crowd chanting “Who’s the bastard in the hat?”
(The Referee’s Alphabet)

Aleister Crowley knew my father
Or rather:
Business once took Dad up into the Glens
Where in a small hotel bar Crowley asked,
“Have you got change for the fruit machine, chief? I’m all out…”
(Get Kramer)

But I could put a tennis racket up against my face
And pretend that I’m Kendo Nagasaki
(Everything’s AOR)

I ring up Dial-A-Pizza
And say “That’s not how I would spell Hawaiian”
(Petty Sessions)

His paranoia is absurd:
“Are you thinkin’ ‘bout my bird?!?”
(On the ‘Roids)

I should have just got a job on the bins
The pay’s better and I’d know some hard blokes
And I wouldn’t have to pretend
That I know what “rhetorical” means
I could have been like Lou Barlow
But I’m more like Ken Barlow
(Lark Descending)

Oh help me Mrs Medlicott
I don’t know what to do
I’ve only got three bullets
And there’s four of Motley Crue
(Upon Westminster Bridge)

Curse those in charge of plots, curse these forget-me-nots
I’ve been sharing my innermost thoughts with an Edward Macrae
I’m inconsolable, and at times uncontrollable
Ah, but she wouldn’t know, ‘cos she’s two hundred metres away…
(Tending The Wrong Grave For 23 Years)

Have I missed your favourite? Drop it in the comments!

1. Your first comic
2. A comic that made you laugh
3. A comic that made you cry
4. A comic that reminds you of a place
5. A comic that reminds you of a person
6. A comic you received as a gift
7. A comic you gave as a gift
8. A comic about your favourite character
9. A comic you bought because of the writer
10. A comic you bought because of the artist
11. A comic you should have bought
12. A comic you’re glad you bought
13. A comic you lost
14. A comic you own, but haven’t read
15. A comic you should have read, but haven’t
16. A comic you’ve read that more people should have
17. A comic you own more than one copy of
18. An issue #1 you bought the month it came out
19. A comic you’ve read but don’t own
20. A comic you love in a genre you hate
21. A comic you’d like to see retold in another medium
22. A comic that’s significant to you as an object
23. A webcomic you love
24. A miniseries you never finished
25. An issue that made you drop an ongoing series
26 & 27. A poorly-regarded comic you like, and a well-regarded comic you don’t
28. A comic that’s inspired you
29. A comic that changed your life
30. The last comic you read

For the uninitiated – in 2007, with the help of my LiveJournal friends, I put together a Christmas compilation of my own, with a mixture of the handful of well-known Christmas songs I actually wasn’t sick of yet, along with some great suggestions for indie-orientated songs, a lot of which I hadn’t heard before. I’ve gradually honed the tracklisting since then – although this year I’ve made no changes – and posted it each December. People seem to enjoy it, so if you’ve been looking forward to getting your hands on a copy again, here it is!

(Note that although the tracklisting is the same as last year, at some point shortly I’ll be posting an additional RAR file containing a couple of “bonus tracks” that almost made inclusion this time but would have taken its length past the “fit on a CD” rule I set for myself. If you like the sound of them you can feel free to download them too and tack them on to the end.)

Download Now That’s What Seb Calls A Christmas Album! (via Dropbox)

1. Vince Guaraldi Trio – Christmas Time Is Here (2:44)
2. Murray Gold & Neil Hannon – Song For Ten (3:29)
3. Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You (4:01)
4. Fountains of Wayne – I Want an Alien For Christmas (2:19)
5. Loudon Wainwright III – Christmas Morning (3:49)
6. Low – Just Like Christmas (3:08)
7. The Ronettes – I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (2:41)
8. The Ventures – Sleigh Ride (2:22)
9. Grandaddy – Alan Parsons in a Winter Wonderland (2:59)
10. Bright Eyes – Blue Christmas (2:19)
11. Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (2:48)
12. The Vandals – Oi To The World (2:15)
13. The Beach Boys – Little Saint Nick (2:10)
14. Zombina & The Skeletones – A Chainsaw For Christmas (3:11)
15. The Ramones – Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) (2:06)
16. The Kinks – Father Christmas (3:43)
17. Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (5:24)
18. The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl – Fairytale of New York (4:33)
19. Spitting Image – Santa Claus Is On The Dole (3:48)
20. The Long Blondes – Christmas is Cancelled (4:29)
21. Half Man Half Biscuit – It’s Cliched To Be Cynical At Christmas (3:48)
22. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci – Christmas Eve (1:51)
23. Badly Drawn Boy – Donna and Blitzen (4:19)
24. My Chemical Romance – All I Want For Christmas Is You (3:45)

Dear Sir or Madam,

On the 17th of December the Romans celebrated Saturnalia. It was marked by high jinks and japes and reversal of social roles, in which slaves and masters switched places. It was a time to eat, drink, and be merry, and indulge in lascivious and licentious behaviour.

On 17th December 2010 we are serving the XXXXXXX Christmas Lunch at the London XXXXXXX XXXXXX…

Amazing.

(And it goes on to quote Catullus (“Saturnalibus, optimo dierum”) at the end, completely unironically and detached from the original context.)