A day in the life…

Another sticky, but only partly frustrating day. Lots and lots of marking, plus toweringly angry emails from students who tell me that their grades are 'wrong' and 'unfair', despite not collecting their work to find out why the grades have been awarded. I've done my best to explain that we can only mark the work, not the effort that's gone into it, and that doing a re-sit doesn't guarantee a better grade. Being kind, I didn't employ the first analogy that came to mind: that Hitler worked hard to establish the Third Reich but that didn't mean he deserved praise. (The less offensive version of this analogy is to point at Channel 4's output).

I've also tried to work out how to extraordinarily render a student to the United States as quickly as possible. (He wants to go, just didn't get round to it early enough and now it's a bit difficult). Having despatched him to High Chaparral U or wherever, I'm still hopeful of getting an exchange semester for me with the University of the Faroe Islands, or perhaps Greenland U. Anywhere cold and Scandinavian, basically.

I did have a very enjoyable morning though. One of my MA students came in for a tutorial. I'm getting a bit twitchy about time running out, but she's writing some really interesting things about country houses in late-1920s/early-30s middlebrow and popular novels: Waugh, Green, Wodehouse, Christie and various others. We talked about readers, women, characterisation, why mothers are almost entirely absent and a host of very interesting things. It's always good to talk about ideas and books to motivated students (a big cheer here too for those dissertation students I've already talked to ahead of their final academic year), but I particularly enjoyed today because her interests are close to mine. We don't work on the same material, but her stuff is close enough for me simply to enjoy and learn from what she's doing.

So despite the pitiless scorching heat and the sheer misery of marking, I'm feeling rather serene. Amazing what a bit of an old chat will do. That, and sneakily following both the Ashes and the Tour de France on the Guardian's minute-by-minute coverage. The regular habitués are like old friends, and the discussions are often more interesting than the regular commentary, where available - and perhaps more exciting than the action in places. The idea of watching a TV feed with Boycott, Gower or any of those pompous buffoons droning on now seems unbearable compared with the wit generated by one hack watching a TV in the newspaper office and the other learned, enthusiastic readers. If the dreaded New Media kills off the cult of Fat Matey Former Players Complacently Talking Bollocks In The Studio For Massive Cheques (as I gather the format is known), it can't come too soon for me.

OK, here's a little treat for you: the funny, erudite and humane Stewart Lee talking to students about 'Not Writing'. And lots of other things.

The last word on Top Gear

Stewart Lee - of course - skewers the Top Gear clowns rather accurately. And the last 30 seconds explains very clearly the comedic purpose of taking offensive comments and exaggerating them to demonstrate their offensiveness - a technique some of you didn't quite grasp when I did it a couple of weeks ago with reference to Mary Portas.

These boots were made for marching

Today's the day of the big National Union of Students and Universities and Colleges Union demonstration against this government's short-sighted and reactionary attack on higher education.

I'm not there. This is heartbreaking. It's a cause dear to me, and I love a good demonstration. The repetitive chants, the splinter groups plugging tired old dogma, the newspaper sellers, the thrills that rush through the crowd as someone does something naughty, the witty placards, the thwack of banner on helmet, the sinister clicking of hooves on concrete and the smug pretence that turning up is somehow rebellious (or useful). Feeling superior to the office workers staring at us through plate glass, the tiny, tiny possibility of serious violence.

Happy days…

Seriously though, I think the presence of thousands of people vocally objecting to a dumb policy is important, though it won't make any policy difference. These bastards need to know that there is opposition, that they don't have a mandate for all this. Certainly any Liberal Democrats with a university constituency should be shivering with fear. After publicly signing solemn promises to end student fees, they should know that they're guaranteed to lose their seats in 2015.

Follow the march here.

Here's Stewart Lee on the subject:

Phasers on stun

Hello campers. Enjoying the countdown to the weekend? We're only 28 hours from the Star Trek Marathon on an obscure freeview channel. At least, you are: I'll be doing bloody cultural stuff that's good for me, instead of goggling at Kirk's overacting, Scott's Scottish-Canadian-Los Angeles accent, admiring Hikaru Sulu's fencing technique, mimicking Chekhov's accent, raising my eyebrow like Spock and admiring Uhura's communications skills.

Oh well. I've got the original series on remastered DVD and the entire Buffy run - for work purposes, naturally. In tribute though, here's Urusei Yatsura's 'Phasers on Stun'. A classic in my world.



Last night, I went to see Stewart Lee in the company of many friends and quite a lot of our students. The support act was Simon Munnery: funny in parts. Lee was exactly what I wanted - a very clever man with a routine which was self-lacerating, intelligent and highly reflexive. His 'thing' is to explain what he's going to do, comedy-wise, do it, then explain what he's done - he even spent time on a gag satirising his own deconstruction of his routine.

Oh, I can't explain. Here's some Stewart Lee. He's funny and miles more intelligent than us.

The epitome of deadpan

I don't know if you're familiar with Michael Redmond - perhaps you remember his appearance as monosyllabic Father Stone in Father Ted. He's a great stand-up, and the subject of Stewart Lee's rant about plagiarism: Joe Pasquale stole one of Redmond's jokes and managed to make it unfunny.

Living on the shelf

I'm a bit of a collector - books and music mostly, particularly Left Book Club editions from the 1930s and 1940s, and vinyl indie stuff, but also literary theory, SF, kids' books, classical music and much else besides. I also like vintage leftwing memorabilia, such as posters and badges (if you have any, let me know). I've spent the morning transferring a pile of books like this (below) from my office desk to the shelves I've commandeered, after my new office mate gaily looked from her completely bare desk to mine and muttered that she 'couldn't work like that'. I'm trying here, I'm trying…

I thought I had a lot of stuff, until I met Mark, my colleague, who has a house literally full of 15000 books, organised on the Dewey Decimal system - there's a Maureen Lipman room, the critical theory wing, the 19th-century Women's Writing annex, and several thousand DVDs, unwrapped, to go along with the same films stored on VHS. Plus, of course, the collection of pulp books bought solely because the covers are interesting, or because the author once wrote something interesting under a different name, in a different genre.

How I admire him. Despite the lack of ceilings, safe wiring, hot water and sanitation, it's a house of fun.

But you don't have to be a squatter in your own home: ask Stewart Lee, who wrote an excellent piece on the subject of shelving in this weekend's Observer.

I Am Dissing You. To The Max.

Stewart Lee is one of my favourite human beings - seemingly shy and retiring until he's driven to puncture the pomposity and stupidity of the rest of us, all the while deconstructing the concept of comedy as he goes along.









He and Jonathan Meades should rule the airwaves. And possibly the country.

Should Sun journalists get the vote?

It's been all go on the Nazi front today: the Sun ran a poll on 'should gays be allowed in the government?' and Richard Littlejohn, the hateful Mail's vanguard nutter chuntered on, as he usually does, about all Liberal Democrats being gay and other weird expostulation.

Vacillating class traitors, yes. All gay: probably not, and who cares anyway? Thieves in the Cabinet - bit of a problem with that to be honest, but then, I'm against the landed gentry running the country too. I'm supremely indifferent about the proliferation of similar genitalia in Lib Dem beds.

So here's an antidote: Stewart Lee, Britain's finest comedian, and one of the country's most intelligent and thoughtful people, on 'political correctness gone mad' (thanks to Neal).