How To Hold Your Breath

Last year I went to see a show at the Royal Court called “How to Hold Your Breath.” It was crudely simple. It transposed the action desperate people take in the poor world to make it by any means necessary to the rich one. It showed a Europe in freefall, and its desperate, broke, unprotected citizens – that is Dana (Maxine Peake) and her sister - trying to get out. It goes in a fiercely straight line to oblivion: miscarriage in transit, prostitution, territorial disputes with other women also forced into prostitution, and ultimately death by drowning in a horrific sea crossing.

It’s crude because the scenario is crude. There is no arc; rather a depth charge to oblivion. I found it profoundly moving. Not because of my identification with a central character whom I was rooting for but, because, to my shame, I hadn’t considered what that action might be like if it was me. Us. No doubt you had. But I hadn’t and it shook me up.

I read Susannah Clapp’s review of the show and for the first time in my life I genuinely understood the meaning of that antiquated phrase “bourgeois.” Clapp bemoaned that the brilliant Maxine Peake – and she is very very good – needs “a clear and incisive story. And she does not get it. Is catastrophe inevitable, is it the result of a chain of events, or is it woo-woo inexplicable?” Quentin Letts kept his rep in check, farting out: “How To Hold Your Breath is so pessimistic it could have been created by Private Fraser from Dad's Army.” In answer to the first question: yes, as things stand, that outcome is inevitable. In response to Letts’ guff – yes it is pessimistic, and in the case of this particular narrative, are there grounds currently for anything other than pessimism?

Given we are in the privileged part of the world – notwithstanding our own indigenous poor – in the cultural sphere we have nurtured a curious addiction to hope. And indeed, certainty. The biggest criticism of Harris’ play from Clapp and Letts is that it asks too many questions without providing clear answers about why this is happening and how it could be avoided. I can’t for the life of me think why Zinnie Harris should spend one second answering her own questions. She’s a playwright. Her job is to ask questions and and tell the truth. A personal story and moment of discovery and therefore change which many aspiring playwrights will recognise from dramaturgical processes of varying rigour as the mantra of “how to write a play” is refreshingly absent here. Because all Dana (Peake) is trying to do is survive. Flip Letts’ backhanded compliment on its head that “it is a mark of Miss Peake’s stage skills that we still hold some interest in Dana’s fate” and perhaps imagine that an urgent, truthful, unsentimental, fearless and no doubt flawed (what isn’t?) piece of theatre needs an actor of Maxine Peake’s ability to yank us through this unrelenting descent into hell.

Clapp signs off with the bafflingly rude: “How not to write a play.” I think it is exactly how to write a play. It’s not Zinnie Harris’s responsibility to champher the edges of a crystal clear narrative into something that offers hope, answers and personal discovery. After this week, such an occupation feels horribly misplaced.

Dan dan d-dan, d-dan dan dan dan...

The things you say. You’re unbelievable. Really though. There are some things people say with utter relaxed conviction that are remarkably offensive. To me. Like...

You: “Knock yourself out”

Me: “No. Really. You knock yourself out. I just wanted the empty chair sitting next to you.”

Or

You: “I’m a perfectionist.”

Me: “Oh, are you? That’s interesting. I’m a lazy fat feckless arsehole whose response to pretty much anything is ‘yeah whatever – that’ll do (burp/fart).”

Or

You: “Take care of yourself.”

Me: “Sorry? What? Thank you for your concern. I was going to play dodgems at Bristol Airport but now, having spent some quality time with you, I think in fact I’ll ‘take care of myself’ instead.” This is especially shaftish given that it is normally uttered as you are leaving a property/passing through some sort of threshold so that you don’t have time to come up with a decent riposte like... “Shutyerface fatso” or something like that. Also, it’s also unlikely anyone who you genuinely really like will say this to you. Beware. Be very. Ware.

Or

You: “Take it easy.”

Me: “Inappropriate. My wife has just been assaulted. (she hasn’t, and I’m not married but she might and so might I - what does this chafool know?) I think on balance ‘taking it easy’ is not the required response right now. Going mental would probably be better. But thanks for your concern. Take it easy m8.” 

Or

You: “See you at the tech” (an actors' joke for when you’ve done a read through of the script on the first day of rehearsals for a play. Still not making you laugh? Further explanation required - the "tech" referred to is the "technical rehearsal" where all the lights, sound and set are all co-ordinated at the end of the rehearsal process so that the show looks professional when it opens to the public. The joke is that after just one reading of the script, the actors are ready for the public, but of course, they're not!).

Me: “Ha!                                              Ha!                                         Ha!”

Or

You: “She’s a special girl. You’re a lucky guy.”

Me: “I am, yes, in many ways. Firstly to be talking to you, you recently divorced middle aged ‘silver fox’ leering all over my pregnant girlfriend of twelve years, and secondly to have retained the affections, after all this time, of someone whom without your timely reminder that she’s nice I would treat like old oily rag in the bottom of a thing. Don’t know how I managed before you sashayed along in your chinos. Thank heavens all round for you.”

Or

You: “Fuckin A, man.”

Me: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Or

You: “The thing about communism is that it’s a great idea but it just doesn’t work. Look at what happened in 

Russia.”

Me: “Wow. No, you’re absolutely right. That is a fascinating insight.

Or

You: “I don’t take no for an answer.”

Me: “Is that why you’re such a nice person?”

Or

Marc Bolan: “Life’s A Gas.”

Me: “No, it’s not – it’s deadly fucking serious. As The Flaming Lips (I’m not actually a fan, no) correctly observed, “everyone you love, one day will die.” The stakes are higher than a bit of fatuous gas...Mr Bolan. There is intolerable pain around every corner (cancer, bereavement, divorce, toothache), which is why we have to embrace life, live it to the full and laugh whenever the opportunity genuinely presents it. Because, as you well know, life is terrifyingly fleeting and when it’s over what awaits is an eternity of nothing so please, let us not labour under the misapprehension that “life’s a gas.” Rather it’s a tiny flickering flame on the end of an ever shortening match stick, so highly strung though I might be, I’m going to take it seriously. Me babba.”

Man Gas

The last couple of weeks I’ve been a little dismayed by the public profile of my male brethren. Not actual people – but the peculiar individuals we get to see on the radio, telly and tinternob. Jeremy *unt kicked it all off with his spectacularly useful “personal opinion” that abortion should be limited to 12 weeks into a pregnancy. There is something singularly bewildering about a man wading into a debate they are uniquely unqualified to comment on. A couple of weeks later came the journalist Mehdi Hasan defending himself on the Today programme for this article claiming he can be anti-abortion and left wing. As he described the backlash against him he seemed to be missing the big question of who actually gives a toss? I was more sympathetic towards the woman presenting the pro-choice side of the argument who sounded genuinely tired about having yet again to discuss a distinctly female subject with two men. Surely this is a penis free zone no?

Of course there are countless women who have tiny hearts and when push came to shove would think Hitler was actually doing a “really good job in getting the country back on it’s feet again” were they in 1930s Germany – lackofsouldom is not gender specific - but removing men from this debate would at least be a start.

A few days later a familiar narrative raised its nonsensical head again, brought about by Hanna Rosin’s publishers flogging her book “The Death of Men and The Rise of Women.” The author and publisher are of course blameless – they’re just trying to sell a book – but there was no excuse for the pithy male on the radio, commenting earnestly - you’ve heard this before – how men, without wars to fight, and with women now competing with them in the jobs market have now become obsolete and are in crisis.

But they’re not though. Are they? Not really. When I walk out my front door, the men I see don’t appear to be hobbling around, bent over in existential masculine angst. Usually they’re going to work, or buying some beans, or driving their car or something. Likewise, the women I see don’t tend to walk around with their fannies out standing over the throat of withered men screaming “I WIN YOU DIE!” Usually they’re going to work, or buying some beans, or driving their car or something.

Consider if there was a war to fight – well there’s one really dangerous one right now – and quite a few men have gone out there to fight in it and die – how would men fare? Well, I for one would probably start crying, which as far as I'm aware isn't very useful on the battlefield. So would most men I know. I know some harder people and they could do the fighting but I couldn’t and I don’t want to. But I think when people say “wars to fight” they mean Nazi Germany, in that you don’t get to choose, so that effectively what men really want is the spectre of fascism threatening humanity’s annihilation. The Good Old Days.

A further speciman was on the radio, just days later, plugging his (almost certainly bad) book and describing in the process how every man needs a shed. Why? Where’s the woman’s shed? Does he hate his family that much that he needs to go and sit in a dark room on his own? To be happy?  

If men really are in crisis, it’s probably because they can’t stop the projectile sewage spewing from their mouths. Nobody wants to hear it. In fact – given the history of global suppression of women, evident in the fact that in “history” there aren’t really very many “women” – there’s very little of use men can say about gender politics and gender specific issues like abortion. What they can say safely is this: That they are pro-feminist and anti-sexist. That’s about it. Exasperatingly, some men will attempt to claim that they are feminists – you know the kind – teach yoga, wear hemp, inflict sustained psychological abuse on their partners - thereby missing the fundamental pre-requisite of being feminist: being a woman.

Ironic really – that the sexist stereotype of women “gassing away” should now be far more appropriately attributed to a certain type of man who really, for want of a better way of putting it, should simply shut up.   

Theatre In Education - Bristol Ferment

Theatre in Education is theatre in schools, youth clubs, non-theatre institutions often for young people, usually issue based and accompanied by an interactive workshop.

Actors doing acting, director Rikki doing directing, seated far side

I had the idea for Theatre In Education about two years ago. A TIE (Theatre in Education) company enter a youth club and get taken hostage by the kids inside. It’s based on a real experience I had, working with a real TIE company as an actor. We walked into a volatile atmosphere one evening in a youth club in Lawrence Weston and I had an epic one second daydream in which we were indeed taken hostage and given a monumental lesson ourselves. I didn’t actually think this would happen – we went on, did the play and workshop; the kids were fantastic and all was a great success – but I thought it would be quite funny if it did. To somebody else.

I’ve shared this idea with friends a fair bit and the general reaction is nonplussed – so what?  A good friend asked – why would you want to write that? And there are loads of reasons. Here are some:

1 I find few things more entertaining than the rapid fire exchanges of teenagers. These exchanges are in turn witty, absurd, wise, naive, outrageous, immensely quotable, loud, proud and hopeful. What’s not to like about dialogue like this? In my experience also, teenagers don’t tend to like to be seen as being overtly clever, so the more astute observations they make have to be disguised as regular shit talk. This is a useful exercise for writers who can be given, in moments of weakness to basically saying what their entire play is about through an impassioned line of dialogue from its central character – eg: “And that’s why you killed the NHS Mrs Thatcher – because you hated your mother!” or something else bad. This sort of weakness is I presume what led Luigi Pirandello to say demand, over a century ago that"Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy."

2 It’s a closed time/closed space play. I.e: a play set in a single location in “real time.” It’s a relatively rare form given that there are not many opportunities to do it – many stories require a longer time frame – we need the past to fully appreciate Willy Loman’s downfall in Death of a Salesman for example. It wouldn’t work so well if he came back from work one evening and over the course of 75 minutes got really cross. The advantage of closed time closed space is that it’s fundamentally dramatic: it’s a play so we need to end up somewhere very different from when we started and we’ve got 90 minutes, not twenty years, to do it in. The stakes therefore have to be bloody high from the off. Actually In fact, this play is not closed space – there’s a scene in the car on the way to the youth club and back – but I’d like that to be audio – so that we hear the company getting closer to the pandemonium that awaits them while we watch the kids in their youth club. On sat 21^st we’ll stage the car journey and that makes sense given the context. But you know – halfway there 

3 My experience of TIE is great – but many friends of mine have concerning stories to tell about ill-trained companies knocking out below par productions of issue based drama in search of grants to fund their lifestyle. Only a damn fool would condemn the entire TIE industry, but it’s an alarmingly crowded bath, and it’s reasonable question to ask is it all in fact good enough? Which takes me to perhaps the part of this I find the most exciting.

4 The bad play. The awful spoof play is one of my favourite things on the planet. And we have one in this script.

5 It’s a large cast play with characters ranging from age 15 to 50. I’ve always wanted to write a large cast play – the truth is unless you’re hugely successful you’ll never have one produced; I’m actively encouraged not to write large cast plays for this reason – but we may as well all give up now if we settle for that.

6 A play like this requires a group of people who collectively possess a wider range of experiences and training than you might normally find in a single company. I'm not dissing traditional drama training - 3 of our company have been through that process (and are very very good actors) and many are about to enter it, but many haven't and they have an aliveness to their performance that drama training (in my opinion) can stifle in all but the most talented and resilient actors. 

But that doesn’t answer what it’s about. Well, I think it’s about responsibility and disconnection. It is a huge responsibility to enter into a neighbourhood and make work that directly corresponds to the perceived lives of the people there. It's sensitive territory and you need to be incredibly skilled to get it right. I've always thought that if in fact people's lives are difficult, the last thing they need is a theatre company to present to them how shit that company perceives their lives to be. The youth orchestra programme in Venezuela strikes me as doing far more for young people in poor neighbourhoods because they open horizons. Rather than take "theatre to the kids" take them to the theatre. The writer David Eldridge grew up as a working class boy in London's East End - incidentally, he enjoyed this lifestyle - it's worth remembering that many people in "disadvantaged" situations quite rightly don't consider themselves to be disadvantaged at all - but it was a school trip to a theatre (The National I think) to see King Lear that changed his life and got him into theatre. Depressingly, this was the result of earning a scholarship to an exclusive public school that could afford outings like this - as we know not everyone is afforded this opportunity. Secondly, given that we enjoy such bewilderingly unequal standards of living  it's inevitable that fellow human beings are going to fundamentally fail to understand one another when they have so little experience in common. Everyone in this play is doing their best - however flawed and misguided. 

How have we got here? Having worked in TIE as an actor many times for a very good company, I’ve basically just taken all the good decisions they made and made them bad and ended up with Cut The Rap theatre company: convinced that all children love rap music and are impressed by swearing and simulated sex. This play is not a broadside against TIE - to be honest it's more fun than that. I hope.

Who is this we? How do you get nine actors to play the kids in the youth club? Well I contacted Tin Can Collective (previously Made in Bristol) who were so impressive in Bassett last year and recently caused shockwaves in Bristol and London with their devised piece I Would Not, and they decided they’d get enough out of the process to make it worth their while. They’re not being paid (beyond expenses). I wouldn’t normally bring cash up but it’s relevant when considering the growing absence of the large cast show from all but the best resourced organisations. From where I’m sat in the rehearsal (at the time of writing) they look like they’re having a great time working with Rikki (Henry) our outrageously talented young director. I think it’s fair to say they’re loving him – but you’d have to ask them to be sure. Many of them are off to drama school at the end of the “summer” and this is one of their last projects together. Even still, this project is only happening because they are giving their talented labour for free and for that I am uber grateful. Our other collaborators are Ben Callon and Emily May Smith who’ve just graduated from BOV theatre school and Felicity Montague who’s done...loads. Together we make 14 in the room. There’s been no sitting round tables – just action and enthusiasm. We’ve only got one day left – and I don’t want it to be over. We’ve agreed we’ll semi stage with scripts in hand the first three quarters of the play. It’ll be rough, but an audience will get a sense of the spirit of the thing and that’s all that matters to me.

But while they crack on – and I delete the odd line and explain the odd thing – I’m sitting in the corner writing the rest of the play. It’s a majorly good thing to look up and see all your characters in action and write something for them in the future.

Me by laptop, Rikki far side, actors in middle

It’s curious thing writing a project and getting people together who excite you to collaborate in it – Tin Can, Rikki, Felicity – now Ben and Emily. You start off as the focal point and as the company bring the script to life and bond and lark about you increasingly fade away. You’re outside and watching – and they’re inside, being. Indeed, Rikki doesn’t even want me there for the last day of rehearsals – either they’re all set or Rikki thinks I’m a plum. Or both. Mind, having acted in various projects, it is quite nice when the writer, you know, goes away. Even if everyone thinks the world of them it’s still fun to take the piss out of the odd bit of dialogue or laugh at something weird they said because they were being a weird writer person. I imagine when they all hook up next week they’ll be more concentrated on getting ready for Saturday – not talking about me – but it’s nice to have the option of being rude about the person who isn’t there – it’s a good bonding exercise.

So I’m in the dark from now on. I’m just looking forward to Sat 21^st, 6.30pm at Circomedia in St Pauls. I’m so delighted with this group of collaborators. They’ve managed to make this script feel alive, and that’s a lot to ask for in five days. Hopefully you’ll be there too.    

  

  

Thought for the Day

Let’s not judge each other on what we listen to in the morning. As it goes I often listen to Radio 4 and Today. Inevitably I have to endure “Thought for the Day” from time to time. I say endure – but it’s about the only time I ever engage with the idea of religion and faith so perhaps it’s good for me. Especially when it’s the Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks who is about as much of a dude as anyone I’ve ever heard on the radio. This morning however it was Rev Dr Giles Fraser.

In a nutshell his gambit was this:  some banking firm (let’s call it JRP – why the frig not?!) recently lost 4 billion pounds in risk-taking blahs that went wrong (you don’t understand so don’t expect me to). So far so normal – these are the arseholes that are keeping you poor and your children poor. Yes, I’m sighing, I know they’re bad; they should be put up against a wall (yawn) and shot* – a light ticking off from the Church probably won’t make much difference. But no. Rev was thinking outside the box. “Risk-taking is part of life. If you eliminate risk, you pretty much eliminate life.” Yep – I’m with you there, Rev. “It’s a risk to believe in God or fall in love with someone – the God you worship may in fact turn out not to exist. [I’m paraphrasing here – I can’t be arsed to wait two days for it to turn up on Listen Again and quote Rev faithfully – it’s only a blog – and I really should be doing other things] The person you’ve fallen for may not love you back. And we cannot prove the existence of God – that’s why it’s called faith.” Whoa, you’ve lost me Rev, and that’s before the strangely persuasive argument you’ve just purported that God does not and cannot exist– ah but you’re a Christian and they don’t really believe in God do they? Not really. I live near a mosque and bugger me do those guys look like they believe in Allah. Anyhow, the hapless Rev had attempted to assimilate 3 wholly different types of risk culminating in the conclusion that unconstrained monetarism was synonymous with God. Quite remarkable.

Let’s take the 3 risks: 1) Bankers at JRP lost 4 billion pounds of other people’s money, safe in the knowledge that the business wouldn’t go bust and if it did, they could just go somewhere else and do exactly the same thing, and if, as happened a few years ago, all the banks went bust at the same time  - which might actually pose a threat to them personally in that nobody (including them) would be able to withdraw cash from a cash machine, then the taxpayer (words chosen carefully – I don’t keep my money in an offshore account – do you?) would be on hand keep them in a well-paid job. All things considered, not really a risk. 2) Falling in love. I’m not aware that people choose to do this – it sort of just happens. And normally they fall in love with an actual person, not just an idea that professes to love them eternally but routinely does bugger all to help anyone. Yes I know love dies – but rarely does it wither completely where there are two people committed to inspiring, amusing, challenging, supporting, romancing and caring for each other. Otherwise known as making a fucking effort. I don’t always do enough of this. And I know that if I don’t I’ll lose the love of an amazing woman. But because I live with her and she’s real – she exists – it’s possible she’ll give me an indication that I might need to try a bit harder. Love is something that exists between two people, not something you scream out to sea waiting for a reply that never comes back. Which brings me to 3) Faith in God. At first it bears a similarity to 2) in that it is rarely a case of free will but it differs in two key respects: firstly the majority of believers have been indoctrinated from childhood (a period in life when the process of falling in love – as we commonly understand it – is chemically, psychologically and physically impossible, despite the best efforts of the Catholic church). Secondly, those who do find God in adulthood tend to have self-esteem issues (and in religion find a necessary crutch to help them live) or serial killers (who are putting in the hard hours before explaining themselves in front of the big man). Both groups find it hard to find willing partners to take the “risk” of falling in love with. There is a third sector – those who have to convert to the religion of the person they’ve fallen in love with. But since they can’t help falling in love – let’s give them a break. Besides, they’re just doing it to get laid.

Having established then that Rev’s musing on risk taking is towards the utter bollocks end of the spectrum consider then what it all adds up to. According to Rev, the utter contempt banking firms like JRP or NOB or DIK or whatever they’re called show for the societies that fund them is analogous to our relationship with God: an omnipresent power we seem unable to rid ourselves off despite overwhelming evidence that it does more harm than good; benefits a tiny minority and enslaves an entire planet. Good work Rev. That is what you meant isn’t it?

*This is a joke – I don’t condone the killing of any bankers, nor the calling of any local councillor an obscene term in reference to the large house he lives in.

Blap Blap.

Ever gone “Blap! Blap!” in mock enthusiasm for something? Yes, it’s embarrassing if you think about it. Mortifying if you deliberate on it. Have I? Of course – like everyone else I’m a bit of a nob. Last Tuesday, desperate to catch the last 10 minutes of the Chelsea-Barca game the only place I could find in Easton showing it was The Black Swan. Excellent – massive screen, sound on. And come the final whistle, loads of men shouting “Blap Blap!” in celebration. It wasn’t funny.

My white middle class brethren have long had a strange predilection for aping the idiosyncracies of other cultures in the name of “comedy.” Safely ensconced in their left-liberal “I was against the war in Iraq” cosylifemobile they can confidently claim to be leagues apart from Bernard Manning, Jim Davidson and Roy Chubby Brown. “It’s ironic when I do it – I’m making a fool out of myself: pass me the ipad I want to sign that online petition about how ghastly it is in Syria.” Yes, you are making a fool out of yourself – but perhaps not in the way you think. I mean, you’re not Sasha Baron Cohen – he’s thought about what he’s doing. And he’s funny. You’re not.

Or are you? I’ve lost count of the number of “comedy raps” where a middle aged white guy says “Yo – homie” and (white) people piss themselves laughing. It’s rife. One of the more bum twitchingly excruciating examples was on Radio 4. Some turdboy was chairing what would have been an interesting debate between Keynesian and Friedmanite economists (Keynes: state intervenes and artificially stimulates the economy – Friedman: leave it all to the market). Prescient, no? Except that the cretinous fartman facilitating the event had taken leave of his senses, and in some leprous attempt to make economics “fun” was exhorting the roomful of academics and experts to state their preference by announcing “Yo Keynes!” or “Yo Friedman!” Oh dear.

Has this guy (or his producer more to the point) actually listened to any rap music? I doubt he’s heard Biggie’s first album. Or Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones.” Bet you he’s heard Eminem, though. The comedy rap can work – see Flight of the Conchords. But the point is they’re actually quite good. It’s funny because they can do it. They wouldn’t be able to do it if they didn’t listen to it – and like it. And so Rhymenocerous and Hip-Hopopotamus are absolutely priceless: it’s affectionate – and accurate. And they’re professional comedians so they’re good at being funny.

Even the terrific Crack Magazine are up to this nonsense, with their problem page being answered by a fictitious African (?) woman Mavis Botswinga. Here it is on issuu – page 13. At first I believed they really did get the sandwich lady from their local eatery to write their problem page which I thought a spectacularly fun and good move on their part. But unless I’m mistaken I think it‘s just bollocks. And unless I’m equally mistaken Mavis is in all likelihood a young white boy with an asymmetrical haircut. “Chill out, mate” Crack might say if they read this (unlikely) and they’d have a point. It hardly warrants getting one’s knickers in a twist, does it? No – in truth, it does not. And for someone throwing stones at people in print media I am standing in a spectacularly glass house. Of course, it’s also possible that this spoof column is being written by someone of African (big place, mind) heritage. In which case – well, it’s fine isn’t it? Otherwise, it’s a bit...I dunno...racist.

“Why do you care, Wayne? Why you so angry? Is it cos you’re short and you’ve just lost your job.” Very likely. I’ll be the first to admit there are few things duller than a left-liberal eggfest about whether people are using the appropriate language and oh my God what has Ricky Gervais done now? But given a) the British white historical track record and b) the fact that we’ve yet to attain a level of multi-cultural nirvana it might be prudent to leave taking the piss out of other cultures alone.    

The Death of Venue

I asked Eugene Byrne, Venue writer 1984 – 2012 what we could do to stop Venue’s “inevitable slide towards death” as he called it. His answer: a) don’t be owned by the Post and b) kill the internet.

OK.

Let’s start with b. Undeniably the tinterhighwaysuperhub made life difficult for listings magazines – given that all information on everything was available immediately. But never in the same place, and never with a single voice telling you what was shite and what was not. In 2012 if you want to plan your week and weekend ahead it’s still harder to find a more efficient way than a using a printed listings mag and a pen. Ironically, these mags are increasingly hard to find.

Venue, you might be surprised to hear, in the mid nineties was one of the first mags to register a url and have its own website (Mr Byrne’s work). Admittedly having stolen a march, it may have lost a little momentum as everyone else followed suit. However, there would have been something distinctly un-Venuey about an interactive multi-platform bells and whistles digital experience. Venue was never cool. It was bright, it was useful, it was funny and it was for everyone. Therefore not cool. Crack magazine is cool. It’s trendy, it’s niche, it’s young, it’s very good and proof that print media can flourish in today’s climate. Check them out: people at Venue have never looked this good No, Venue was for Families, Pissheads, Music fans, Bookish types, Grumpy Old Men and Twenty/Thirty/Fortysomethings. It was for anyone whose DNA prohibited them from voting tory. Not cool, not niche – just Venue.

Optimistically The Observer recently ran a feature about how young bright things are leading a boom in boutique subscription only magazines about different sorts of felt. But that’s not really Venue either, is it? The truth is that readership figures didn’t actually fall that drastically – ad revenue did: and that’s because people started to think Venue had become a bit shit. And that’s because it went weekly. And that’s got bugger all to do with the tinternob. That’s to do with the Post. Which brings me to b.

When Bristol United Press (owned by Northcliffe Media, owned by the Daily Mail Group) who own the Evening Post bought Venue and decided that it should go weekly – to aid listings - things were buggered, simply because there was not enough going on in Bristol and Bath on a weekly basis to keep the level of quality high enough. Constantly having to churn out another issue each week, there was not time to think strategically about how to navigate the tricky print waters of the noughties. Hence the covers featuring barbecued food and girls at festivals. I’ve been through the archive – there is a marked difference between the quality of the fortnightly and weekly Venue: it’s the same writers – it’s not like they suddenly “got a bit shit.” From then on it was a slippery slide. Changing into a monthly freesheet – a survival plan hatched by the staff – was a rather nimble move and presented an opportunity to get back on track. Venue Publishing has a brilliant ads team who are passionate about the magazine and were coaxing old clients from the weekly days back into investing serious sums in the magazine. It was entirely conceivable that with the revenue they were pulling in Venue could have gone fortnightly and separated from Folio. If it was an Indy. Ah.

Northcliffe are routinely hated. I’m hardly a fan – having started as editor seven weeks ago and now finding myself getting the bullet on the eve of Venue’s 30^th birthday, the timing seems uncanny. Did they really only decide this course of action in the last seven weeks? I’ll never know. The truth is they probably didn’t even know I’d been appointed. My boss, Dave Higgitt, by the way, had no idea. He’s a mate – not a twat (though some would argue). But Northcliffe are just doing what they do. We can hardly be surprised. Nor can any of us point the finger at Dougal Templeton, founder of Venue, for flogging the mag to them back in 2000. He made a packet and gave a packet to the staff. I gather it was a sell-to-us-or-we’ll-go-into-competition-with-you affair. Can’t help thinking the maverick, much loved, left-wing, irreverent Venue might have won that competition. Again, we’ll never know. Blaming Dougal for selling the mag is a bit like blaming your parents for your own shortcomings – completely stupid. It is curious however to hear him being interviewed by BBC radio about the demise of Venue. He’s never called me. But then why would he? He’s got nothing to do with Venue Magazine - he sold Venue to the Mail back in 2000.