Hello there, listeners. How are you me here? Mike Bennett? And
as you can probably hear, I'm rather stuffed up in the nose department.
I've got allergies and I don't know what it is. You know, it's
a sort of a nose sneezy, eyewatery type allergy. I've eliminated everything it
could possibly be except the dogs. I kind of draw the line eliminating the
dogs, as you can understand. But that's all I can think it is,
you know. So we got you know, like air filters, these
Hepper air filters, and got one upstairs one downstairs. Were in a way
all the time. They seem to have made a difference, but I have
no idea what they're filtering out, dog whatever. And I contacted my GP.
I saw my GP and he did something called a rast test, took
a blood sample and you know, to send off for a rast test.
But that was weeks and weeks and weeks ago, and I still haven't heard
back. And I called him up when I said, what's the problem,
and he said, oh, they do only do it to us. It's
been nearly a month now and I've still not heard from them. So touched
up. I don't know, you know, I just have to keep taking
sort of decongestions and the like, oh dear, oh dear for me and
my stuffed up hooter. But yeah, so what's going on. It's been
a while since I put a podcast out in the free podcast feed, certainly,
and I think that's mostly because it hasn't been a great deal happening in
my life, nor with the television series. Unfortunately. The writers strike,
then the actors strike, ground all that to a holt. You know,
it's just building up momentum to start pitching. You know that the people involved
in the show were going to pitch it, the actors, the writer,
the producers, from the heads of drama, from the companies involved, and
then the strike's kicked in and that was that. So now now that the
strikes are over, they're kind of getting ready to get back to it,
but of course no, sooner do they do that. Then it's Thanksgiving,
and everything in Hollywood stops for Thanksgiving, you know, for the days before
and of course the days afterwards googous people have to travel and then travel back
and then there's a kind of a wooly period between Thanksgiving and the holidays,
you know, the Christmas huneker, all that holidays, so nothing really goes
on then, and then it's the new year, so I guess if anything's
going to happen, it will probably be in the new year. I don't
know. It takes time, you know, that's said earlier on. You've
got the momentum issue. You get everybody's dates lined up because you're you're dealing
with people on two continents, two time zones. When can you do it?
When can you do it? You know, when can the buyers do
it? You know, you've got to get it all lined up, and
it takes time. So God only knows when it'll be, but fingers crossed
when it eventually does happen, then they will get a good result. So
yeah, that's where we are with a TV series. What else is going
on? Oh? My website now, I don't know if you've looked at
my website Mike Bennett author dot com in recent weeks, possibly even months.
You know, I don't visit it very often myself because it's primarily a blog,
and like I say, not a lot happens to me, so I
don't go there very often. But if you have been there, you may
have seen a dirty, great red warning from Google saying, ah, fishing,
fishing, don't go in here, this is a dangerous site turned back,
which is what I discovered. You know, I went to check out
my website the other day because I wanted to put up a blog post,
and bang, I was greeted with that turn around go back to safety nightmare.
They didn't contact me, you know, to say, hey, your
site's been flagged. I had no idea this was the case at all.
And nobody goes to show how often my site is visited by people. Nobody
contacted me to let me know either, you know, from my listeners.
So when I found out, of course, I flipped my wig, which
isn't easy when you're bold and not wearing one, but I flipped my wig
anyway, and I contacted word Press, I contacted Google, which did nothing,
and I contacted my web guy, Jason, and said, what are
we going to do? So he had a look at the site and he
said, I can't see anything wrong with it. You know, I think
that's probably a mistake. But there's this tool that Google offer which allows you
to scan the side. So I went to Google, got this tool,
used it scanned the site and of course, what did it tell me.
It teld me, yeah, there's a problem with this site. But it
didn't tell me what the bloody problem was. You know, I didn't say,
oh, see this link here, that's dangerous, or you see that
post there, Oh that's that's a bit hooky. Nothing, nothing at all,
just there's a problem, you know, fix it. How am I
supposed to fix it if I don't know what it bloody well is? So
what we did, me and Jason, you know, we said, let's
delete this, let's delete that. We deleted a couple of things. So
having deleted a couple of bits and Bob, I got in touch with Google.
There's an option, you know, re scanned the site. So I
clicked that and it's just told them what we've done, and I underscored the
fact that we have no idea what the problem is. Please tell us.
And they got back to me in about a day and said, oh,
good news, your sit it's fine now. Thanks didn't tell me what was
wrong. Personally, my belief is that the problem was with them. I
just think they misidentified the problem problem, you miss misidentified the fake problem,
and then just blocked my bloody side. But they didn't have the courage or
the honor to stand up and admit we were wrong. I'm afraid our AI's
cocked up. But then they wouldn't do that, would they, because they're
just a great, big, faceless corporation run by quiet ais all over the
place. Never mind the book. The important thing is that everything is back
to normal now and my side is working as normal. Huzzah. What else
is going on? Oh, I've kind of I've got into photography. I've
found a hobby. You may recall, if you've got a really good memory,
that I said some time ago, about a year ago, that video
was my new hobby. The problem with video is you make your videos,
you spend an awful lot of time on them. You put them online,
because that's the point of the damn things. You put the thing online and
nobody watches it. You know. You get your stats back and you think,
oh, how's it going? How did that video do? And it's
like this video was viewed a one hundred times or something, and then it
says average watch time like ten seconds, And I thought, oh, this
is a complete waste of time, isn't it. I'm putting all this work
into these videos and people aren't watching them, and people who are watching them
only watching them for ten seconds. So I stopped all that. You know,
I thought, this is a complete waste of time, waste of time,
waste of effort. And so that was all over, and I was
stuck. You know, what am I gonna do? Now I've got a
hobby anymore. So I took my camera and thought, right, I'll start
taking some pictures, and so I did. And then a friend of mine
who goes to this photography group sort of class come group whatever. I don't
know what it is, to be honest with you, but you know,
I joined that and I've been going for about a month now, just over
a month, and I'm really enjoying it. It gets me out of the
house. You know, that's one good thing because I tend to spend a
lot of time in the house. So it's nice I got. I get
to go out of the house, and I get to meet people and talk
to people and you know, learn something, learn about photography, which is
really cool. And I've taken some nice pictures. Yeah yeah, I wouldn't
say they're stunning, but they're nice. And I've put them onto my Instagram
page and yeah, you know, it's its own reward. You don't care
whether you get any likes or whether people watch it for ten seconds or watch
it look at it for ten seconds or ten minutes. Is irrelevant, isn't
it. It's own reward, and that's the most important thing. So yeah,
photography, I mean joining it. Yeah, that's that's my new hobby.
What else? What else is going on in my exciting life? I
suppose you being a listener and most concerned with my writing. What's going on
with your writing? Mike? God, my nose is so blocked. I'm
writing Underwood Pinch season eight, and that's being podcast at Patreon, and that's
my writing project. You know. I'm writing chapters of that, and like
I'm writing forwards into the story, so chapter twenty twenty six, sixteen,
five, nine, whatever. But I'm editing and releasing the earlier podcasts in
the story, the early chapters in the story at Patreon. And it's quite
strange, you know. I mean that's the way I always work. But
this particular book that I'm writing now hasn't got a title yet, it's just
season eight. Is really difficult because although I know where it's going to go,
I've got this roadmap for where the story goes. It's it's it's quite
big and complicated, and all these new people keep coming into the story because
because there's there's so much scope and room for them to do. So.
One of the nice things about a book like the original Underwood and Flinch is
it's a very small story. You know, this is the setting, these
are the characters. This is the beginning, the middle, and the end.
Easy. But as you go on with the saga, the story gets
bigger and bigger, and the characters become basically more numerous. And this one,
which I'm writing at the moment, I'm really hoping will ultimately be the
last book in the series, because it's when you create a world, a
universe, it's just that much harder to sort of keep it all straight in
your head. You have to keep going back hackened. You know, did
I ever say anything about this in book one or book two or book three?
Ord was that mentioned before? Do I need to write this with reference
to what I've said earlier? Can that be wrong? Do I need to
go back and completely rewrite that book? I don't know. Do I have
to completely redo this one? It's very tricky it's very tricky. It's it's
a it's a juggling act on a high wire with sharks in a pool will
underneath you. So yeah, that's that's that's what I'm doing now. Writing
wise. As for the free podcast, the season five, the new season,
season five will be starting in the new year when I can't say,
probably February March. I was thinking, you know, so that's something to
look forward to in one episode a week. So sorry, my nose,
hard work. My wife Pauline was going to do this with me, but
she's she's feeling a bit ill today. Nothing serious, nothing serious, it's
just you know, under the weather, and doesn't feel like podcasting with me.
But we did a recording the other day when we talked about what's on
our TV, and I'll share that with you now here we go what's on
our TV? And what's been on our TV? What has been on our
TV? Lots? Yes, since last we spoke. I've got a list
here. Oh good, because it's hard to think of them, isn't it.
I can tell you what's been on our TV. Gen V. Oh,
yes, we watched gen V and we enjoyed it very much. Yeah,
it's the boys spin off on Prime. If you haven't seen The Boys,
we recommend that we enjoy that. Yeah. Usually spinoffs aren't great with
a lot of shows, especially especially spin offs centered around young people in high
schools or colleges. This is actually really good. But it's really good.
Yeah, we enjoyed that very much. What else have we seen? We've
seen we're watching at the moment, The Crown. Oh, yes, that's
been very controversial. It's been slaughtered in the press. I don't see why
at all. I mean, we watched. We watched the episode because they
were all giving out about the fact that quote Princess Diana's ghost appears, and
we thought, well that that sounds a bit weird. But of course you
watch it and it's not a ghosts it's just the dramatic device. Yeah,
it's a narrative device. Yeah. Yeah, where a person who has got
like kind of unfinished sort of unsaid unsaid things with someone who's now dead,
has that opportunity disorder because you through that device, you're able to see that
that person has things they want to say. Yeah, unresolved issues, unresolved
issues to the person who has now passed away. Of course, when you
do this in real life, you just walk around saying, oh, you
know, why did you have to die so soon? I never got the
chance to tell you how much I loved you, or I know, I
never got that opportunity to to you know, to just you know, be
friends again. You know, but we had to have that bloody argument,
didn't we. Oh but you know that that kind of thing, and so
this is just a visual representation of that sort of thing. I mean,
it's been lot I was using six feet six feet under. Yeah, it
goes back to Shakespearean place, it does. It's just it's just it's the
unconscious of the of the of the character who is alive engaging with the person
the character who is dead. Yeah, there's a lot of hysteria and kind
of like, ah, Prince William's wearing a pair of headphones. What would
do He's a fifteen year old? I know, yeah, god, you
know, I mean, I don't know. That was kind of in the
British press. I don't know what the rest of the press is like,
but I just thought it was all a bit hysterical, absolutely stupid. So
far, it's been quite I've enjoyed it very much. If you like the
Crown if you've enjoyed The Crown thus far, you know the previous series,
and you've gone to this one, you've read these bad reviews, just ignore
them and watch it because it's it's up to part and the actress he placed,
Diana. It's just uncanny, isn't she. She really is and is
very good. Dody was very good. And of course Dominic West has perfected
his Prince Charles. He may not he may not look like him, but
his mannerism and behavior is bang on. And mild Of Staunton is just the
Queen. She is the Queen. Now, yeah, she she does the
speech to the nation and it's just like listening to the queen, looking at
and listening to the Queen. It's quite remarkable. So I hope she gets
an award for that. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah, she's superb.
So it's really good The Crown. You know, don't be deterred by
the band reviews. It is very good if you like that sort of thing.
Also, also, we've we come we came to the end of Seinfeld
for the ompteenth time. So now we started watching Friends, you know,
because Matthew Perry died and we've started you know, rewatching Friends probably the first
time since the nineties. Yeah, I'd say so, and we dropped out
I think from friends somewhere along the line, because you just seemed to be
going on forever, didn't I think we're probably done the puple of my conference.
Yeah, so we're starting that again, and it's all right. Yeah,
Well I don't like around Ross. I didn't used to mind him.
Yeah, you know, he was just doing it. There's Ross, But
now he just comes across as such a whiney guy. Yeah. It's very
whiny, isn't isn't it. It's always moan. He's got the kind of
poor me, poor me, poor me, full of self pity. The
guy's a complete milk soop. However, on the other hand, what we
have enjoyed rewatching a bit is Fraser. Yes, we've seen we've seen some
Fraser. Yeah, and they're very good. And also Peep Show, Yeah,
which is kind of it's very funny, but it's kind of depressing.
But it is extremely funny. It is extremely funny. It's the same anyone
who doesn't know, they probably know already. But it's the same people who
wrote Succession. It's before or long before Successions. It's absolutely brilliant. Yeah,
and it's absolutely brilliant. It's very dark, it's very dark. Yeah,
people are really horrible, really horrible, but some of it is very
funny and very observed as well. Oh yeah, that's another one for you
if you haven't seen it. And also there's one a couple more. One
we didn't like was the Fall of the House of Ussia. I couldn't get
on with that. I couldn't get on with it. Yeah. I know
a lot of people. I see a lot of people in my facebooks.
Oh yeah, it's great of the House of Russia. But I just didn't
like it. Yeah, I was boring. Yeah, I suppose that's what
it was, bottom line. Boring. Yeah, so I didn't like that.
It's a shame because I really loved Midnight Mass, you know, the
same same writer, but saying that I didn't like the Haunting of Hill House
or the other haunting thing they did. I didn't like that either. So
you know, he's got like one out of four for me, Midnight Mass
was brilliant, but the other three not my thing. And one more that's
the last one then was I checked out her watch History Wilderness. See this
is the problem isn't it. We don't know them that we don't know.
We don't connect the names at the show with the show itself. It was
the one with Jenna Coleman. Oh, she was in America and she married
the guy I've got Nick. The synopsis off Amazon deliciously twisted thriller starring Jenna
Coleman. Live and Will seemed to have it all, a rock solid marriage,
a glamorous new life in New York, until Live learns about the affair.
Enter the American road trip she's fantasized about. For Will, it's a
chance to make amends. For Live, it's a very different prospect. A
landscape where accidents happen all the time, the perfect place to get revenge.
It was good. I enjoyed that. I enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah,
I don't remember it completely forgotten it. Oh no, I remember,
Yeah, it was good. It keeps you, you know, rolling along
with you. It's kind of disposable TV. Hence can't remember it very well.
But then you know, yeah, I don't tend to retain that sort
of thing in my memory. I think it's like food. You know,
you don't remember the details of every meal you've eaten. You know, like,
what did you eat sort of five days ago? Don't remember? You
know it was nice, probably, of course it was nice. I cooked
well, yes, yes, but typically you can't you can't stay No,
they don't be memorable. Yeah, but that's it's kind of like that.
You know, if you enjoy it, then you eat all of it,
and if you don't enjoy it, you push the plate to the side.
You're going to tend to remember that more than you are the meals you're enjoying.
I think so many of these TV shows these days are just things you
chew on of an evening, eat, swallow, go to bed next day,
do the same, do the same again. You know, it's very
rare that a show just kind of goes like Squid Game. Yes, I
only seen it once, but I remember it completely Midnight Mass likewise. But
but you know, things like Wilderness good though it was, don't remember it.
Yeah, it's gone, disappears, fish and chips just ate it.
That's about the end of it. So yeah, there you go, a
deliciously a deliciously twisted thriller, but not strictly speaking, a delicious meal.
What's on our TV? So there, that's what's on our TV and it
was I was just I was listening to that was reminded, you know,
talking of Princess Diana of because you watch you watched the episode in the Crown
where she's dead and the country finds out, indeed, the world finds out,
and you're reminded of how people were so upset at the time, and
it was like mad, It was just mad. I remember we'd moved down
to Brighton and Pauline was working at British Airways and she was doing shifts up
at Gatwick Airport. She was checking agent and I was I was working as
a as a gardener, you know, around with the councils, digging holes
and mowing grass and things, and I was I was sitting at home.
It was a Sunday and I got up, I think I was hungover,
and I sort of sat down on the couch, turned on the news and
banged there it was, you know, she was dead. And it came
as such a massive, massive shock that I just started crying. It just
kind of overcame me. And I didn't understand why, because I wasn't a
Royalist, I wasn't particularly fond of Princess Diana. I didn't have any mugs
of her or pinups. You know, she was just somebody that was on
the television all the time. But I suppose, you know, she'd been
on television and in the newspapers for such a long time that you really got
to feel like you kind of knew her, but in a very different way
to say you knew the Queen or Prince Charles, because they were quite no,
they were very conservative, and they were very restrained, whereas she was
much more forthcoming, and you really kind of felt like you, I suppose
had a connection with her, even though has to say at the time,
I didn't feel like I had any connection with her. I had no interest
in her at all. But she was just there. And of course there
was the business with her divorce, you know, and that was all very
sad, and I suppose you can't help but take sides in these things,
especially when there's a kind of a media narrative around it where you are being
pushed a little bit into sympathy for her. I don't know, but yeah,
I did feel sympathy for her at the time. Whether that was because
I was being steered that way or just because you know, that's just a
natural reaction to seeing somebody who's getting such a sort of a rough ride from
the people that the family she's married into. I don't know, but yeah,
I suppose I did feel very very sorry for her and compassionate towards her.
And when she died, it just came at me like like it did
everybody, like it's a bolt from the blue. It's not like she'd been
ill, you know. One day she was alive, next day she was
dead. And it was such a horrible accident as well, So yeah,
it just just just took me back to it. I'd completely forgotten that,
you know, that I reacted in that way. I don't know react to
celebrity death in that sort of way, but yeah, John Barry, do
you remember the composer John Barry? When he died, that upset me a
great deal. I loved John Barry, you know. I thought he was
absolutely brilliant and I loved his music and I still do. And the idea
there would never be any more John Barry music just really got me and I
broke down. What can I tell you? When I was a kid,
when I was a little kid, The Persuaders was on television, and this
was my favorite show of the week. I just adored The Persuaders, and
I think one of the things about it that I liked so much was the
theme by John Barry, which was just amazing. You know, it was
like nothing else that I'd ever heard, and it stayed with me, you
know, for years and years, even when The Persuaders wasn't on because of
course, back in those days, when a show was not on television,
it was gone. The music was gone. It's not like now you can
just go on the Internet and there's the music. If you didn't have the
music, you didn't have it. I remember we had an album by Jeff
Love and his orchestra Top TV Themes, and it was like cover versions,
and there was a cover version of the Persuaders theme, but it was crap,
but you know, it helped me remember the theme for years. And
then of course I grew up and moved on, and it wasn't until the
nineties that I actually got my hands on a vinyl copy second hand of The
Persuaders and other themes by John Barry, which again my wig flipped, and
I took it home and a rushed home, put it on the record to
the turntable and there it was again, first time in years and years and
years that theme fantastic. It wasn't on CD at the time. And yeah,
which of course is complete diversion into irrelevant subject matter. Sorry about that,
ladies, and you gentlemen, you know, death, celebrities, weeping,
stupid man. I don't know. But what else? Last thing I
guess really is social media news. I've joined Blue Sky. If you're on
Blue Sky, I'm now on Blue Sky, So if you search for me,
you'll find me because I'm in quite early. Even though it's been going
for a long time. I managed to bag Mike Bennett, so that's my
hand. Also, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding me. Is it
any good? You may wonder, is Blue Sky any good? Well,
you know it's obviously it's a Twitter sort of clone, and yeah, it's
all right. I mean it works kind of like Twitter. Well it is
like Twitter, only it's a bit clunky at the moment. You know,
it's still in beta. So one of the problems is like if you let's
just say, you put up a picture, for example, and you go
to your feed and you want to see it, it's not there. It
hasn't changed if you want to see your change feed, you've got to close
the app, come out of it, and then open up and go into
it, and there it is. There's your picture. It's arrived. And
similarly, because there are so few people on there. I mean there's millions
of people, I'm sure, but you know, so few people that you
want to follow because they're all still on Twitter, even though they don't like
Twitter. They're still there because Twitter is the only kind of place where the
conversation is going on and everybody wants to talk to somebody, don't know,
everybody wants to be heard. So that's where why people are still over there
at Twitter x if you will. So there's only a few people worth following
on Blue Sky. At the moment, I was following Neil Gaiman, you
know, and he's mad into it. You know, he's always tweeting,
let's just call it tweeting. He's always tweeting away. And the consequence of
this was he's the only person I saw in my feed. You know,
I'm following a few people, but Neil's always had it. So Neil Gohman
said this, Neil Gamon liked thatan Neil Gamon retweeted this, and so I
thought I got to get rid of him. So I unfollowed him and went
back into my feet to see what it looked like. It hadn't changed at
all. It was exactly the same. So again I had to close the
app, leave the app, go back into the app, look at it
again. And now Neil is gone. I'm happy to follow him again at
a later date when there are some more people on there, but right now
there's not because nobody can get on there because everybody, if you want to
get on there, you need to get an invitation or wait for the endless
que to be approved. Goes down. But yeah, so blue Sky,
it's all right. Twitter is still much more interesting regardless of the unpleasantness that
goes on. I mean, I just I don't engage with it, and
it doesn't engage with me. It's kind of like a bad smell in that
room. If you don't want to smell that smell, don't go in that
room. That's the way I look at it. So yeah, I guess
that's it from me for now. Then, ladies and gentlemen, thank you
for listening, and I'll be back in your ears again, you know,
when I've got something to tell you when when something else has happened in my
life. And hopefully when I do, it'll be great news about the TV
series and my nose will be clear and I'll know what my allergy is,
and hopefully it won't be the dogs. Gee, what am I going to
do? You know, the wife she'd rather get rid of me than the
dogs. So yeah, well let's hope that it's it's not them, but
I don't know what else it could be. Oh, okay, yeah,
thank you for listening. Pip, Pip and Cheery. Oh this has been
a Mike Bennett production obviously, I mean, who else is it going to
be? And now a word from RII voiceover artists. Now you can get
Mike Bennett's Patreon podcasts in your Spotify air for just three dollars a month.
You can rejoin the UNFC sign up at Mike's Patreon. You know you need
it, You know you do