Thoroughly Good Blog

Royal Albert Hall

Like the rumble of a distant timpani roll, the BBC Proms season nears its start.

I ended up trotting up to Prince Consort Road this evening to drop off the passport pictures for my season ticket, using the opportunity to time exactly how long it takes to go from High Street Kensington tube station to the Royal Albert Hall.

It felt like it was a considerably shorter route, although the journey home via South Kensington confirmed that there's really nothing in it at all.

It's ridiculous. The more I look at it in the cold light of day - to be a part of the media industry it seems one has to look at things at objectively as one possibly can - all I am really getting excited by is a great long series of concerts which stretch out over the summer. They're mostly from the same venue too. There must be countless concerts in the capital and up and down the country throughout the rest of the year too, and yet this particular concert series always sets my heart racing. It's like Christmas all over again and a completely different Christmas from the Eurovision-related hysteria I always succeed in getting myself succombing to.

This year sees me purchasing a season ticket for the first time. I'd always sworn blind I was a radio and tv consumer, preferring to imagine the interior of the Royal Albert Hall over actually being there. Now I feel as though I want to be a part of it and, it seems, a season ticket is the best way to subscribe.

Roll on Friday and the First Night.

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I hate Sunday evenings. There's always a moment when the end of the weekend creeps up on me and I begin to fear the coming week. It's normally around the same time I rapidly start reviewing the weekend's events as if to eek out the joy as much as I possibly can.

Friday night was unexpectedly good Greenwich's Up The Creek comedy club. Our Australian host (whose name escapes me) did a fine job warming up the assembled crowd and introducing the acts. One man didn't do quite so well - it was the first time I'd sat on the front row and witnessed a comic "die" on stage - but this was a footnote to the revelation which was Sally-Anne Hayward. Keep your eyes peeled for her. She's a marvel.

Checking out the programme

ENO's production of Candide drew to a close on a Saturday after a shamefully brief fifteen day run at the Coliseum. Simon and I got along to the matinee performance where a full house saw a punchy first half if a little longer than expected second half. Stunning performances from Toby Spence (Candide), Alex Jennings (Voltaire), Beverley Klein (Old Lady) and Mark Stone (Maximillian) whose meteroic rise in

the world opera always brings a tear to the eye. The political messages may have seemed a little hamfisted, but finally getting to see a full production of Bernstein's pastiche was a real treat. The programme book smelt good too.

Photographs taken (if they're any good you'll see them "somewhere" this coming week), a script prepared for Wednesday's early morning shoot and my season ticket for the BBC Proms finally purchased, it really does feel as though I'm on the brink of summer.

Top tip from BBC Click is www.adrive.com.

What do you find interesting or unique about your family history?

When I was eight or nine-years old I would look on in wonder whenever my freelance TV news cameraman father would say "I'm just out to do a job for Anglia. There's a police enquiry kicking off about something or other."

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It was a few years before I reached the age where he felt sufficiently comfortable to let me tag along with him when he went to deliver his films to Anglia Television in Norwich. I remember wandering around the building with him looking at it all and thinking "I'd love to do the same as my Dad some day, but I just can't see myself doing it."

This morning I end up delivering a video I've produced to a similarly well-known broadcaster in central London, twenty-odd years after I first toured Anglia Television. This morning however, I wasn't delivering a 16mm film cannister. I was delivering a Flash video file on a USB stick.

Family history has a tendency to repeat itself in the most unexpected of ways, it seems.

I was travelling through New Cross late this afternoon. A sick feeling grew inside me as I did so.

New Cross is, like Lee, Sidcup and most recently Holloway, an area of London with notoreity. It's there that the most shocking of recent murders occurred.

This recent news, like that of the news of the recent teenage murders, has had a significant effect on me and my friends. Each new death registers similar gut responses, each increasing in intensity. "What the hell is going on ?" and, as suggested by a friend this morning, "how can we do something about it?"

I've no idea how to resolve the problem. I sincerely hope we can find one .. soon.

I'd heard talk of a Facebook application which tracks who views your profile and, perhaps more arrestingly, one which alerts you when you've been removed from a friends list. I'd dismissed it when my friend told me about it. "Nobody in their right mind would install that application," I'd snorted with derision.

In case you're not a Facebook user or if you are and you don't understand what I'm banging on about in the opening gambit, let me explain. One of Facebook's major advantages in terms of managing one's friends list is that should you find yourself in a situation where you want to "remove" one of the people on your friends list you can do so without them ever knowing. It says so when you click on the remove button. I know. I've done it often enough. "They'll never know I've done this. It's the best way."

The reasons I've had for removing people from my friend's list have been largely self-centred. As someone who frequently suffers as a result of misinterpreting electronic communication and worrying that others might possibly misinterpret similar electronic presentations of my own, I figure the fewer people I have to worry about on a distribution list the better. Facebook is just that. Nothing more than a email distribution list with a few pretty bells and whistles. Keep the distribution low(ish) and there's a little bit less to worry about whenever I do something - anything - on the internet.

Consequently, I have from time to time, engaged in a spot of culling. The principle is the same as pruning the bushes outside my front door. There are some people who don't engage on Facebook and clearly haven't logged in to the system for months. If they're not engaging then their presence on my list is only serving to boost my own popularity. Seems a little exploitative on my part. Best cull them.  

With the action of removal confirmed, I've always been amazed when some people have almost immediately got in touch saying something along the lines of "Ouch" or "You fucking bastard" but never really appreciated how it is they knew what I'd done. Did they spend all day refreshing their friends list, cross-checking a list of database entries with a diminishing list of friends on their profile? Did their friends alert them via SMS or telephone call as soon as the dastardly deed had been done?

Nope. They had the "Who deleted you?" application installed on their profile. They were emailed the moment I'd clicked on the remove button. It was like an ambulance was rushing across town swerving in and out of long lines of traffic intent on alerting the victim of the callous act I had just committed. "Jon Jacob has just been an arsehole. You've been removed from his list. Quick. This is an urgent call to arms. Send him a snotty message."

Of course, not everyone responds in the same way. In fact, there has even been one ocassion when the action was carried out in the belief that I had the application installed myself. I hadn't. The only disappointment I experienced when I'd discovered I'd been removed from that person's list was the realisation that the person in question had beaten me to it. I did so want to be first.  

I did try installing it yesterday afternoon after a friend had let slip on his news feed that he too had installed it. I followed my nose. Maybe I should join the throng, I thought. Maybe it would be worth my while to keep an eye on what's going on. I clicked on the checkboxes and pressed confirm. A sick, dirty feeling descended soon after.

Why did I care what people did with their friends list? Contrary to what some might think, my day to day happiness is not predecated on the number of friends I have nor whether those same friends remain my Facebook friends or not. My online persona is very different from my real-life persona anyway. I never go out of my way to offend someone either in person or online.

Consequently if someone feels they're getting tired of my virtual friendship why should I care whether or not they remove me from their friends list? Why would I want to know if they did remove me? Is it really that important?

Inherent in the almost real-time alerting capabilities of this pernicious application is the understandable desire by some to monitor exactly who they think their friends are and who are not. Such a facility is no different from statistics monitoring and, whilst some organisations may regards statistics as vital in terms of monitoring their successes and failures, personally I'd prefer to keep my sights set on being the best person I can be rather than doing what I think everyone would be like me to do.

Seconds after I'd installed the Facebook application I quickly removed it again. I don't want that kind of thought process hanging over me. I have plenty enough to deal with anyway just recently. Lets keep things simple, I thought. And, of course, there's a moral highground to occupy as a result of this action. I do so love the moral highground.

So the conclusion is short. Seeing as I don't define my day to day life with my activities in a virtual space, I really couldn't give a flying fuck if you want to remove me from your friends list or not. In fact, if you do you might do me the good service of messaging me first so that I don't have to wade through the list and cross-check against my rather paltry spreadsheet of contacts.

Even if you don't, I figure I'm well-adjusted enough to know that removing my name from a distribution list doesn't mean that much anyway. Admittedly, there are one or two people who I wouldn't help even if they were on fire, but for the vast majority of people I'm happier in my ignorance.

Go ahead. Delete me if you want. I don't care.

What is a childhood memory that still haunts you?

Being dropped off at school on what my parents considered was the first day of term, only to discover from the two cleaners working away in one of the classrooms that school started a week later.

Gracious me. "About" 200 people complain about the fact that two men kiss in an advert for Heinz Deli Mayo.

What happens as a result? Heinz pull the advert after only a week on-air.

I consume most of my TV time-shifted. As a result of which, most adverts pass me by at 30x the normal speed, the new Heinz included. But it was news that Heinz had pulled their advert which prompted me to look for and watch it .. online. Me and a considerably large number of other people, I'm sure.

Good for Heinz. They've succeeded in pulling off a successful campaign online. They may not have intended it to be this way and I'm sure I won't buy Heinz products as a result, but still the whole affair has raised their profile.

Online campaigns on my mind, I started ferreting around on YouTube for another advert I'd first seen on the internet. Ladies and gentlemen, please switch your YouTube player to full-screen for the utterly adorable Pam Ann.