John Walker's Electronic House

Rum Doings returns a week early for a very special tenth episode special. Very, very special. You may have noticed one subject comes up again and again, and in this episode we line a hundred sharks up in a row and jump them in spectacular fashion. For nine minutes. And then things return to normal.

Once normality is returned the subject not talked about this week is The Now Show. Which brings us to discussions of home made orange liqueur, the etymology of freelance, thoughts on drunkenness, and Nick’s stolen nitrous oxide. John’s hyper-evolved teeth come under scrutiny, what makes a good town, and wondering if it’s a good idea to cure cancer. And this leads inevitably to thoughts of environmentalism and the entropic death of the universe. And finally, what scared us as children.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

If you want to send us an email, it’s podcast@rumdoings.com. Or leave a comment below – we appreciate a little note to say hello, or how much you hate us.

And once again, the only thing we ask of your is promotion. Please blog, tweet, Facebook, IM, email, or whatever you wish, encouraging everyone you know to listen. Retweeting is massively helpful, and especially if you’re a world famous superstar. Join us in a couple of weeks for our Christmas Not As Special.

In Episode 9 of Rum Doings the topic not under discussion is whether it’s time we stopped funding the NHS. The topic under discussion is Neighbours. And that’s almost it.

No, come back! A Neighbours edition of Rum Doings was inevitable from the moment Nick first said, “Let’s record a podcast because I want to see how difficult it is to be good.” Neighbours – the Australian soap opera – has been something that has fascinated both of us since we’ve known each other – around fourteen years. Although neither of us have watched it for about six or seven. (You may well notice we talk about characters who are currently in it, who we had absolutely no idea were still around.)

There’s brief earlier discussion of Nick’s vestigial reproductive organs, our rule-breaking deviation from rum to a magical flavour-changing elixir, and the grammatical confusion of me/I that introduces our dominating topic.

Despite how rehearsed Nick’s opening to the discussion may seem, it’s all as spontaneous as ever. However, we did secretly decide we’d finally get around to talking about it this time. And we don’t apologise at all: this is our discussing why we found this programme so special for so many years. Although things do deviate in the last fifteen minutes, slightly.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

And another thing. We love that so many people are listening to Rum Doings. It pleases us greatly. So we need you to do something for us. We want none of your money, nor even your blood. We just want you to take the trouble to promote the podcast for us. Just a tweet. Or a Facebook post. Maybe comment on your blog, write a review on iTunes, or refer to it on a forum. Most easily of all, just retweet the link that perhaps alerted you to this post. It’s surprising, and pretty annoying, how few people have taken the time to do this – so come along, give us a link.

If you want to send us an email, it’s podcast@rumdoings.com. Or leave a comment below. We’ll read out emails regarding John’s new botty-friend and baby Judith’s poetic greetings in episode 10.

In the triumphant return of Rum Doings, delayed for a while by the birth of Nick’s daughter, Judith, we celebrate with the consumption of an Asda Smart Price meal. And indeed the possible consumption to follow.

This feast begins with a bowl of Asda Smart Price chicken curry, washed down with Asda Smart Price Dark Rum, with Asda Smart Price Chocolate Mousse to follow. Not discussed in the episode is John and Edward, whatever that might be, with instead the meandering topics covering Judith’s arrival, talking with our mouths full, and then alittlebitofpoliticsladiesandgentlemen. A belated discussion of Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time leads to thoughts on immigration and why we need more of it.

We offer a shout-out that probably won’t be too gratefully received, thoughts on parenting and being honest about ugly babies, considerations on the extraordinary nature of vanishing chocolate puddings, and then important matters of the bottom. John’s senility is gleefully highlighted by Nick, and Nick’s chicken hate hypocrisy is underlined by John. Then an astonishing discovery about chickens is unveiled. Find out about the time John was allowed to work in a hospital pathology lab, and Nick shares memories of his wife’s c-section. Oh, and John’s fat.

To subscribe to Rum Doingsclick here, or you can find it in iTunes here. To download it directly, right-click and save as here.

If you’d like to email Rum Doings, point your comments toward podcast@rumdoings.com. Send in poetic greetings to Judith Mailer, and indeed suggested names for John’s haemorrhoid. Now you want to listen.

We’d like you to encourage others to listen too. Please retweet, re-email, reFacebook, re-high-street-poster-campaign the link, tell friends. Maybe don’t tell them the haemorrhoid part. That can be a surprise for them.

I’m pondering the approach I will take for a story for Rock, Paper, Shotgun – the small spin-off blog from this site that I allow others to hang around on – about the role sleep plays in gaming. This may sound preposterous, but there are at least two interesting stories to tell, and the subject of game-related dreams is one all gamers can relate to. But I feel an overwhelming urge to write the post as a personal account of my own fears of sleep, making it all about me with slivers of science and theory occasionally sliding in. However, this would raise the ire of those for whom the Important Matter Of Gaming Discussion should not be sullied by personal account.

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Sorry about the lack of Rum Doings this week. This was due to Nick’s wife Victoria squeezing out a tiny baby human, which apparently was more important than recording a podcast. Please accept my sincere apologies for Nick’s complete lack of priorities.

Hopefully we’ll be recording a new episode at the end of this coming week.

In the meantime you can catch up on old episodes from here. Or you can subscribe to it on iTunes here.

And if you’re desperate to hear my voice, I’m on the latest PC Gamer podcast, saying rude things about idiots. I’d link to it but their website appears to be down just now.

Question Time this evening will be receiving a slight boost in ratings. With the appearance of the leader of the openly racist British National Party, Nick Griffin, it’s clearly going to be the largest audience the political debate programme will have seen in a long time. What’s not known at this point is what the consequences will be.

Many are arguing that giving the BNP a voice on a respected BBC programme legitimises them, and will increase their popularity. Others counter this by saying his views will be exposed and people will become more aware of the party’s racist and fascist nature. Each likes to accuse the other of patronising the population. But the point where everyone gets caught up is in the figure of 900,000 people who democratically voted for them.

One side likes to argue that these 900,000 people are confused about who the BNP really are, and would not vote for them if they really knew their bigoted values and opinions. Another side likes to argue these 900,000 people want a party who’s willing to stand up for Britain against Europe, or bring in real change, and they’re resorting to the BNP in desperation. What almost no one seems to suggest is the possibility that there are 900,000 hateful racist bigots who voted for a hateful racist party.

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In episode 7 of Rum Doings the topic not under discussion is how we can fix Broken Britain.

More readily discussed are John’s inability to sing and Nick’s desperate need to hear it, the scandalous gossip regarding John’s sexual impropriety with Nick’s wife, and the terrifying contents of some Super-8 film. And that’s in the first five minutes.

Loyal listeners will be relieved to learn that the episode contains the results of our experiments performed on all 3.5bn women in the world, and the resulting contention for the Noble Prize 100p prize. Then things descend into the usual arguing about hat doffing, the awfulness of the word “used”, and moist ladygardens. And the controversy controversy. And very much more, including a frenzied debate over the title “artist”.

To subscribe to the podcast click here, or you can find it in iTunes here. To download it directly, right-click and save as here.

Thank you to everyone who’s been plugging this for us. Please keep going. Retweeting is a tiny favour, but makes a huge difference for us. Tell your friends, colleagues, and so on. And please actually do this – you won’t believe how much help it is just to tell two or three people. If you want to email us at Rum Doings, send emails to podcast@rumdoings.com. We’ll respond to your questions in the next episode.

At the centre of so many of the current super-injunctions and and brain-meltingly bizarre libel decisions in UK courts is one judge, Mr Justice Eady. In my previous post I asked whether anyone knew whether he was the judge behind the Trafigura rulings. As it turns out, he was not. A fact that surprised the Guardian’s George Monbiot as much as it did me, as he explains in a fantastic piece about this man whose decisions have been described by appeal court judges as, “plainly wrong”, “legally erroneous” and have earned comparisons with the Communist party censors in the Soviet Union.

Eady, Monbiot explains, is a force behind the existence of libel tourism in this country, and a huge part of the reason why courts in other countries are creating new laws to protect their citizens from his potential rulings.

So often you hear stupid, loud people screeching about “free speech” and how theirs is being taken from them. Inevitably they’re being given absolute freedom to scream this with no one trying to stop them, and indeed are only spurting their self-important idiocy because they saw someone else disagreeing with them. But in this case the actions of the UK libel courts are a genuine example of free speech being at risk, and indeed completely denied.

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Today’s explosive reaction to the Daily Mail’s crude and ignorant article about the death of Stephen Gately has once again demonstrated the extraordinary effect of Twitter and Facebook. An effect that will increasingly merit consideration.

Jan Moir’s spiteful piece (originally titled, “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”) combined that niggling thought that I would contend all must have had on hearing the news of the pop singer’s early death, “But surely something dodgy must have gone on for a 33 year old to just die?” with a second, insidiously unpleasant personal prejudice of hers, “I’ve never trusted those gays. And what they get up to.” An opinion that, of course, is speaking directly to the audience of the newspaper. The Daily Mail has, for the 114 years it’s existed, never been exactly offering a liberal slant on the news. It’s famously the paper that supported Hitler long after it began to seem perhaps a little inappropriate, and hasn’t really improved its attitudes since. The central thought to Moir’s piece, “I always knew those gays were up to no good, and look, it’s got another one of them killed,” addresses the potential homophobia in the paper’s readership. (Astonishingly his death manages to confirm to her that gay marriage is a sham, unlike the near 100% success rate enjoyed by heterosexual marriage.) She then takes this to a new depth by going on to heavily imply (well, even state) that there’s been a cover-up of the real reasons behind his death, and that those real reasons are bound to be something to do with penises and bottoms. (I’m not going to go through the piece picking it apart – that’s already been done splendidly by Charlie Brooker.)

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In episode 6 of Rum Doings the topic not under discussion is what we can do about the dumbing down of British culture. Instead we primarily discuss sitcoms – so much so it becomes dangerously close to being a theme. There’s thoughts on what the UK and US sitcoms have in common, and indeed what they do not. Along the way we consider the anti-Semitism of Shakespeare, why Stephanie Cole grew into the wrong old lady (and is brilliant), and why you should never shh a pregnant lady. This, as you’d expect, brings us to our plans for scientific experiments on all 3.5 billion of Earth’s women.

Defining a sitcom proves to be far trickier than you’d imagine. Can it be an hour long, does it require an audience, how important is the situation? And is either nation better at irony? We also ponder on the private life of Jonathan Swift, the peculiarities of Bill Hicks, and the excellent tests on OK Cupid. Oh, and one of us turns out to be a murderer, and the other seeks the wrath of religious fundamentalists.

To subscribe to the podcast click here, or you can find it in iTunes here. To download it directly, right-click and save as here.

Thank you to everyone who’s been plugging this for us. Please keep going. Retweeting it helps it spread for miles, like a ghost-to-ghost call in Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators books. Tell your friends, colleagues, and so on. Make us famous. Make people love us. Or hate us so much they have to listen to the next one. If you want to email us at Rum Doings, send emails to podcast@rumdoings.com.