John Walker's Electronic House

Rum Doings Episode 72: His Dirty Parts

by on May.26, 2011, under Rum Doings, The Rest

In a sweary, adult-themed Rum Doings episode 72, we allow an email from a listener to provide a foundation for a good proportion of the episode. Which means we need an arbitrator, who exists in the form of special guest Judge Martin Coxall.

The email prompts discussions about the roles John and Nick bring to the podcast: Nick’s unabashed intelligence, and John’s desperate, failed attempts to try to be funny. Should we swear more? Should we not swear less? Is there anything wrong with the word “poo”? No. No there is not.

We introduce a new system for Nick to indicate when John’s trying too hard, such that Judge Coxcombe can interject with a ruling.

Once that’s complete, we move on to discuss super-injunctions. And Nick goes to some lengths to get himself sued into outer space. A pretty in-depth discussion of privacy, law and blackmailing follows.

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[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e72.mp3]
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20 Comments for this entry

  • John

    Mr Martin Coxall’s return pleases me

  • Entropy

    I was pleased until Shodan showed up.

  • Mike

    This time, I didn’t mind Martin as much as I was expecting to although three people WITH OPINIONS is just too much noise when they all start talking over one another.

    And I find John funny…

  • Xercies

    Yes I liked Martin last time because it didn’t sound all that jumbled, but this time it was basically just a lot of noise and trying to discern what was being said and the issue being raised. I found the first twenty minutes a bit…tiring actually I was wondering what the point of it all was and there wasn’t really but then it picked up again when you were doing the meaty discussion.

  • Dgesh

    Oh dear, that sounds very much like an email I wrote. Oh dear. Oh Johhhhnnnn, nooooo, that’s not how I meant it!

    No one could possibly ever doubt that John is hilarious and loved by everyone, this being so well established that to actually say it out loud would make one appear an idiot – it is simply an axiom, which my subsequent arguments took for granted.

    That was enjoyable and strange, hearing the very people I was criticising reading out and responding to my criticism (and taking the piss), thank you. I particularly enjoyed the relish with which John pointed out my comma-error at the end :D

    I’ll recover from my shock with a cup of tea and listen to the rest.

    Oh, I love Martin too.

  • mister k

    You mostly change my mind on injunctions. I wrote a post defending them, but you are right. The notion of getting out a legal injunction to hide your indiscretion is… disturbing. That said, I disagree that it is necessarily in the public interest that Giggs sexed a lady who he was not married to. Yes, it is interesting, but I’m still not convinced its actually something that is in the public interest. Your argument on advertising is reasonable, however. I just really dislike the tabloid obsession with people’s private lives.

    Its also possible that some of these famous people who have affairs may have understandings, but don’t actually want to have to explain said understandings to the public, as the public as a whole hasn’t really got on board with the notion of open relationships.

    I also note with interest that the best way to get one’s missive to rum doings read is to say mean things about John.

  • Nick Mailer

    Mister K: we were interested in gossip several tens of thousands of years before tabloids arrived.

  • mister k

    Nick: I am aware of our desire, I’m just not something we should satiate. There is a difference between “the public interest” and our interest. Basically, if there is a conflict of interest somewhere, then I would agree that a public interest argument could be made, and your argument on advertising is not one I can easily discard, but the hounding of celebrities private lives is frankly deeply unpleasant, and not something many could tolerate.

    Admittedly some welcome it, but did Giggs? He chose to kick a ball for a living, and then some gentlemen asked him to say that he liked their boots. I do see that his image is whats selling the boots, but I’m not convinced are hypocritical to merit tabloids pushing out stories. Importantly, I am certain that even if he had done nothing in his life but kick a ball, I guarentee that the Sun would have still attempted to run such stories.

    Injunctions are not the answer to this, and Giggs and the courts actions have been ludicrous, but I find a culture in which becoming famous means one loses all privacy deeply uncomfortable. I propose no solutions here, because I’m not sure they exist, although a more restrained media might help somewhat. I believe that the PCC’s own mandate says something about public interest in it, which most newspapers rampantly ignore.

  • mister k

    That first sentence makes no sense.. “I’m just not sure if its something we should satiate” is better.

  • mister k

    it’s…. I actually wish it’s indicated the possessive…

  • Alex

    “I find a culture in which becoming famous means one loses all privacy deeply uncomfortable”

    The only privacy that exists any longer is the equivalent of ‘security through obscurity’. We only think we have privacy because nobody cares enough to poke around and knock that silly notion from our heads. It can’t pleasant for people whose lives are held under a microscope, especially if their fame wasn’t a result of their own actions, but society would be worse off if we tried to legislate things to the way they were before we had mass media.

  • Gassalasca

    I can’t even remeber what the first time Martin was on was like, but this time I was grinning throughout. One of the best recent episodes.

  • Blissett

    Couldn’t disagree more with Gassalasca.

    The first half seemed entirely pointless. The EB White quote about dissecting a frog seems to apply quite nicely.

    Second half whilst a slight improvement was entirely devoted to a subject that would normally be the “official” topic to be entirely disregarded on the basis that there is nothing new after the blanket media coverage. You also alluded to the fact that the Trafigura case is the one that deserves the coverage rather than Giggs and yet proceded to fall into exactly the same trap as every other media outlet which seems rather hypocritical.

    And I’m not sure Martin Coxall actually exists. I think he may be an artificially generated composite of John and Nick’s more irksome character traits ;o)

  • Xercies

    @mister k

    There are celebrities that don’t actually get invaded by the press all the time and do share a bit of privacy. Its because

    1) They don’t do any outrageous stuff to merit them getting into the papers and just do whatever there work is.

    2 And crucially they don’t sell there stories to tabloid/magazines. This is the important part, I think once you start down the path of selling some of your life to these things then all of your life is open up to them. Basically your fair game because you didn’t mind that part of your life out in the open why should you have the other part of your life private?

  • Mister k

    I do not believe that is true. Reach a certain level of celebrity and tabloids will be obsessed. Giggs is clearly not a saint but as with every other footballer they poke into every aspect. You are correct that if you have a perfect louvre then they will not be able to get you, but is tgwtg really a standard snitch should be forced

  • devlocke

    For the record, just to settle one tiny thing, Rum Doings is, in fact, broadcast via radio-waves in the FM spectrum, in America. On the last Monday night of each month, I end my two-hour time-slot with an episode of Rum Doings.

    Since I’m only playing one per month, I haven’t gotten very far. As in, I’ll be playing episode 13 on my show tonight. But feel free to tune in to my show and hear for yourself, if you like; my station streams over the web at http://www.wrir.org in addition to our FM broadcast. I’m on the air from 1AM to 3AM, Eastern US time, Monday night/Tuesday morning.

    Anyways, yeah, by any definition, Rum Doings qualifies as a radio show. So THERE.

  • Entropy

    You realise, by playing one per month, you will get increasingly far behind, until Nick and John are talking about events from years ago?

  • devlocke

    It’s already happened! It amuses me to no end. I mean, I started 2011 with the episode 10 Now-Show extravaganza. That was originally in… 2009? (the astute among you will note that I missed a month; in February, I was doing a series on local music that was taking too long, and elected to not broadcast RD that month to try and get through all the local music in a more timely fashion).

    They still hold up. If an episode is particularly time-centric, I try to mention the original ‘broadcast’ date when I intro the ep, but the humor and the arguments, and all the other stuff that makes Rum Doings fun, remain fun even if they’re talking about something in the present tense that happened two years ago.

    When I started airing the Rum Doings eps, if I recall correctly, they had only been doing them weekly for a little while, and were not so great at sticking to their schedule; I figured at some point they would just abandon it, and if I only did one/month, I would be able to keep doing it for a while because I had a nice long backlog.

    Reception has been pretty evenly split between people bitching about me not playing music, once a month, and people who tell me they love it when I play those two British guys talking. I haven’t yet gotten anyone complaining about it not being relevant to the current day. :)

  • Emil L

    The podcast was great.