Sir Antony Sher is the Ship, Blade is British

Last night, we popped over to Oxford to see Toby Hadoke’s one man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf. It’s warm, emotional, very funny, and really underlines the values of fan life, why those of us who are fans value our culture so much. The theatre was nicely crowded, especially for a 5pm show, and it was good to see Oxford Who fandom out on the night, and to meet Toby’s other guest, Doctor Who director Christopher Barry, and his charming wife. We hung around chatting for a while afterwards. I’m really looking forward to seeing Moths at the Gallifrey convention in L.A.. It’ll be like a homecoming gig.

My first time driving back along that road since the accident, and I’d very much like cars not to overtake in general, thank you, but apart from that I only got vaguely tense, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the scene of the crash didn’t resemble my memory very much at all, and so won’t be stuck in my head every time I pass. There’s an upside to my terrible memory.

Anyhow, my huge news for this blog: the lead role in my Radio 4 adaptation of Iain M. Banks’ ‘The State of the Art’ has been cast. The General Contact Unit Arbitrary will be played by no less an actor than Sir Antony Sher:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Sher

I’m delighted that one of Britain’s greatest actor knights, one of the definitive Richard IIIs, himself a writer of note, has thrown his lot in with us. I can’t wait to see what he brings to the part. We’re recording the week after next, more casting news to come.

From one side of entertainment to the other, and it’s an index to how my life is at the moment that I have to fit this into the same blog as that huge announcement, boss of Marvel Comics Joe Quesada just announced on his MySpace column…

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=92159514&blogID=398185740

That from issue five, Blade (as in the movies of the same name) will be joining the cast of my ongoing comic, Captain Britain and MI-13. The above comes with our lovely Bryan Hitch cover pencils for that issue. We’ve been teasing that a character not generally regarded as British (but he is, a Londoner born and bred) would be joining our heroes, and this is him. I can say no more, but I have plans.

On the same subject, our lead characters are ‘interviewed’ here by Tim Stevens, on the subject of whether or not they could step into the good Captain’s shoes, complete with four pages of glorious coloured Leonard Kirk art from issue two:

http://www.marvel.com/news/comicstories.3558.Captain_Britain~colon~_The_Replacements

And I’m interviewed here about that, on audio, by the guys at Climbing Shrimp Productions. Be warned, their style is 18 rated, not safe for work, as they say:

http://climbingshrimp.blogspot.com/

I’m pleased to say I’ll be going along to next year’s Redemption convention in Coventry:

http://www.conventions.org.uk/redemption/

And for those of you who follow music in Faringdon, may I recommend the BFG, the Big Faringdon Gig, which is being held to demonstrate the musical abilities of the many, many bands of our wonderful town. The rule is: no cover versions, only original tracks, which just goes to show that the talent of this place can rise above rock classics in pubs. Indeed, such was the demand for slots that bands had to be turned away. The BFG is on Saturday 5^th July, and forms the opening salvo of the following weekend’s Faringdon Arts Festival.

http://www.bigfaringdongig.com/

Music in this town is under pressure, but we’re still flying the flag. I’m still doing a little dance about the Tony Sher news. Until I see you again, Cheerio.