One of the strange things about satellite TV is that it gives you a chance to time-travel. Sometimes even the recent past seems unfamiliar and like an alternate universe. I was flicking through the channels on a rare night in and came across an old episode of the Jonathan Ross show on "Dave". It made me stop flicking because a slightly familiar woman was singing, but it took me a second to realise who it was. It was a healthy looking, ungaunt, smart haired Amy Winehouse. There was some meat on her bones, though she could not be called fat. She looked great, voluptuous and sexy. She looked well. I wondered how long ago this had been filmed. It was hard to remember a time that she wasn't in the news looking skinny and strange and intoxicated.
The next guest also proved to provide a time-shift as well as giving me an opportunity to work out what year I had travelled back to. It was Shane Ritchie. Shane Ritchie! I had almost forgotten all about him. Yet at the time of this interview he was at the height of his powers and one of the best known actors in the country due to his part in the popular soap opera Eastenders. He was greeted like a minor deity, and again it seemed like a long time since such a thing was possible - almost like a different epoch - as strange and distant as when you see those old films of bowler hatted men walking briskly through the street to work in the 1920s. But Shane Ritchie gave me an opportunity to date the show as Ross revealed that the actor had just turned 40. A quick glance at wikipedia showed that this momentous event had happened in March 2004, so this show was just a little over 4 years old. Only 4 years. And yet Shane Ritchie was the biggest star in the country and Amy Winehouse looked like a normal human being. How things have changed in such a short period of time. It was slightly unsettling to get this glimpse into the Britain of four years ago. I can't believe I was a part of it. I am sure Shane Ritchie is doing fine in whatever he is up to, but you don't see so much of him, do you? I'm not taking the piss. After all you don't see so much of me either and you never saw as much of me as you did of Shane Ritchie, but it's a telling reminder of the transience of celebrity and the unimportance of all this shit. Still Jonathan Ross remains constant even if Shane Ritchie's star has descended a little, whilst Amy Winehouse's has risen, but at what cost. We were never really meant to watch this ephemera back years later, but doing so is oddly poignant and confusing. We know so much more than these ghosts of the past are aware of. Spooky!
Whilst I remember, the
programme fund is ticking along nicely, but I hope more of you will donate in the next few weeks (again not sure of the deadline, but be nice to have the programme ready for the previews, so it might be the end of May). Do remember to email me your address after you have donated, which a surprising number of you don't seem to have done. In fact I am a little worried that there is something wrong with my email address. If you've emailed in the last month expecting a reply and haven't got one, then do try again.
In other bad news it seems that we have so far failed to find a viable venue to do Christ on a Bike in this year in Edinburgh, so I might just be doing the one show after all. The deadline is tomorrow, so it doesn't look too good. But miracles can happen.
