A little bit of Heaven for just $2.99!

Hi there. If you came looking for information about A Little Book About Believing then please CLICK HERE, and you’ll find all the information you need to know about the book and the absolutely life-changing experience I and many others had at the healing center in Brazil.

If on the other hand you’re interested in what I’ve been doing more recently, then here it is: I’ve written a piece of fiction.

Let me introduce you to a locomotive of a thriller called Force of Habit: Sister Madeleine Investigates. It’s available from Amazon in the U.S. and Britain, and worldwide from Amazon.  It’s also downloadable from iTunes (in the iBooks section obviously), so you can read it on your iPad or iPhone.

Yesterday it swept majestically up to 5,000th on Amazon in the UK. Out of one million books that’s not half bad. Personally, I’d like to see it go a lot higher. But I can only do that with your help.

That’s why, for a limited time only, it is retailing at just $2.99.

Much to my delight, it’s already garnered a couple of sterling 5–star reviews. See those HERE.

From a satisfied reader: “Just finished devouring Force of Habit…when does the next book come out?  I am not the world’s biggest mystery reader – very particular about my reading – but this was really addictive. Great writing.”

And another:  “Refreshingly different. A brilliant mix of fast moving action packed mystery/thriller and humour…A brilliantly conceived plot with twists and turns that kept me guessing right up to the end. Highly recommended.”

MysteryNet, the site for lovers of mystery books, called it: “Action- packed to the very end.”  

A reader in the UK wrote: “I want Sister Madeleine to turn into a cherished literary character with more adventures to come.”

You’ll feel the same way, I’m sure.

A childhood dream becomes a reality

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write fiction. Specifically, a thriller. Detective stories and vintage murder stories were my fascination when I was a kid. I gobbled them up by the dozen, and long believed I was capable of creating one of my own.

But you know how it is. Life intervened. Things happened. I never got around to it.

The adult Peters struck it lucky. He was on TV and radio and traveled the world, writing non-fiction books about foreign cultures and spiritual matters. Which was wonderful and a dream come true. The younger Peters, meanwhile, who was still trapped inside the older one, nurtured another dream. He longed to pen a cracking good thriller, but in his own style.

Then one day, the older Peters – which is me, by the way, in case you were puzzled – turned a certain age and noticed that people he’d worked with back in his 20s and 30s were getting sick and dying well before their time.  Improbably, guys I thought would last forever were suddenly gone. There are no guarantees, as we all know. The call could come at any time.  Therefore I figure it’s vital to live out your dreams to the fullest whenever you can. Don’t die, as they say, with your music still in you.

So with that in mind – “It’s now or never,” I told myself – I shelved most of my workload for the next eighteen months and wrote Force of Habit. I did it for me, mind. To prove that I could. To validate the kid inside of me and make him proud.

It didn’t even matter if nobody else liked it, as long as I liked it.

But here’s the thing:  to my delight, the reaction from those who’ve read it has been incredibly warm and amazing. Beyond anything I could have hoped for.

“Dazzling,” wrote one.

“Compelling and brilliant. Relentless and frightening.”

“It’s so COOL,” someone else said. “I love it.”

Well, yes, me too. I’m as happy with this as anything I’ve ever done, and hope you love it as well.

Published by Penner Press, it’s lots of fun. A gripping wild ride filled with action, intrigue, humor, satire, and strange, unexpected twists.

My Life as a Nun’s Mentor

I had the idea way back in 1983. I was living in Golders Green, North London at the time, renting a small bedsit.

One day, a new tenant moved in next door to me. A nun. I remember her name: Sister Margaret Sherwood. Wonderful woman. Very toothy, quite oversized and shuffling, and absolutely  clueless about everything. She was on an apostolate, she said, which, as far as I could tell, meant she’d been thrown out of the abbey, a bit like Maria, and left to fend for herself.

Though Sister Margaret was in her 70s at the time, she’d led a cloistered life for decades and knew nothing – and I mean nothing – about the modern world. She had no clue how to use a can opener, for example. She’d never watched TV, made a Panini sandwich – in fact, she couldn’t cook a thing – and she absolutely marveled at the way my electric kettle boiled water all by itself.

“That’s fan-tastic!” she’d shriek. “How does it do that?”

It was quite bizarre. Like having Catweazel come to visit. Or the apes from 2001.

For the next three years we lived together in that house. During that time, I introduced her to the concept of convenience, leading her through the basics step by step, as you would a toddler, or someone who’s just arisen from a hundred-year coma, giving her simple instructions on how to cope with life outside the convent wall, such as how to make mushrooms on toast, how a water heater works, how to vacuum a rug without sucking half of it up into the Hoover, and generally demonstrating what’s what.

It was a life-saver for her, I realize that now, and also an intensely interesting character study for me. “Somewhere in this,” I recall thinking even then, “are the seeds of a really good sitcom, or book, or movie, not sure what – but something.”

And that’s where it began. The novel stems from that situation, though with a much darker, sinister edge, and a lot more car chases.

But there’s more. Somewhere back in the UK I have a reel of Kodak Standard 8 film showing a couple of friends and me on a bleak, blustery hill near Stockport, called Werneth Low. We were fifteen years old, so this was 1971. For reasons I would probably have been hard-pressed to explain even then, I spent all my pocket money that week renting an oversized nun costume, which John O, the tubbiest of us, put on, then ran around in like a maniac for the camera, doing karate chops and other faux martial arts he had absolutely no knowledge of at all. Beyond the fun of the indulgence, it was a complete waste of time and money. But funny. Very, very funny to watch.

However, it sowed another seed, one that’s stayed with me ever since, and which would turn, many years later, when combined with snippets of the Sister Margaret episode, into something good and cohesive and really worthwhile: my first novel, Force of Habit.

 A Christmas Gift Suggestion

Now, I’m aware this means I’m releasing two big, and very different pieces of work in the same year. My faith-healing adventure in Brazil - a little book about believing - continues to do well (last week it reached #6 on Amazon’s bestseller list in health and healing!). For that reason it was tempting to hold back and wait with the novel, so as not to confuse people.

I even had a consultation with a branding agent. I told him I have two books coming out – each radically different from the other. One’s a spiritual odyssey to Brazil, the second’s a mystery novel. What should I do?

He was adamant:  it’s too much. I’d be ruining my brand.  I must publish the novel under a pseudonym.

But why? Steven Spielberg made War Horse and Tintin this year. Very different. And look at Woody Allen. Over the years, he’s directed comedies, tragedies, a mystery, a musical, and several romances, some light, some dark – he doesn’t change his name each time, does he? And did he ruin his brand? Nope.

So, December 19th 2011, Force of Habit: Sister Madeleine Investigates will go on sale as an ebook, written by me, as me, in the hope that it will find an appreciative audience.

If you were given a Kindle or iPad for Christmas, check it out here on Amazon. (Also available on Amazon UK). Remember, it’s only $2.99. So come on, why not let the kid inside of you read the novel that the kid inside of me waited a lifetime to write? You might be pleasantly surprised.

‘Believing’ book: the missing chapter

Before A Little Book About Believing was published, an entire chapter had to be cut out. The book was feeling too long at the time, and friends, invited to be critical, blamed Chapter 17. Overlong, they said. Holding everything up. Get rid.

“It’s almost like two books in one,” someone added.

Well, no author likes to hear that. So clearly the excess weight had to go.

The question then became: what to do with Chapter 17? Where do I put it?

Easy answer: I’m putting it on my blog.

Chapter 17 features a run-down of 30 bright and in some cases unusual suggestions for things we can do to improve our health and save our life. Not should do, note. I’m not a medical doctor. In fact, I don’t know why I put the word ‘medical’ in there; I’m not any kind of doctor. I can’t advise anyone about health matters, and would never try to. The list is made up of ideas I learned from talking to people while I was at the Casa de Dom Inacio in Brazil. Ideas I take seriously, and which I and my partner have since incorporated into our lifestyle. With, I must say, highly beneficial results.

However, that’s us.

Every body is different, with different needs and its own special groundrules. It’s never going to be one size fits all. So if in doubt, be sure to consult the right kind of healthcare professional before doing anything to yourself. I am bound to say that for legal reasons, of course. But I also mean it. This is important. Don’t take it lightly. (Click on Disclaimer tab above to see how important.)

Having said that, I rather like these suggestions. They’ve made a big difference in my life.

In a world where cancer has us licked and heart disease and diabetes are rampaging through society, sometimes the power to make a difference begins, not out there, but within ourselves. It starts when we take full and personal responsibility for what we do to our body.

The list will begin at Number 30 and count down. It will start running on February 1st, and will feature the first three to kick us off, in the order that these ideas would have appeared in the book. Some are short, some long. But you might want to take one a day for 30 days and see if any of them make sense.

If you’ve still not read the book, by the way, please don’t miss out. The information and insights contained within its pages are life-changing. They’re making a difference to people all over the world. I’d love it if you were one of them. It’s available on Amazon HERE, and also on iTunes as an iBook.

Here is the list of 30 fascinating health and healing suggestions I learned in Brazil, in reverse order:

30.    Switch from an animal protein-based diet to a plant protein-based diet. “Published data show that animal protein promotes the growth of tumors…”[1] …whereas plant protein can protect our health. “Heart diseases,” Colin Campbell says, “cancers, diabetes, stroke and hypertension, arthritis, cataracts, Alzheimer’s Disease, impotence, and all sorts of other chronic diseases can be largely prevented.” How? By turning away from cadaverous protein to a diet based on organic fruits and vegetables.

29.   Eat raw, living, nutrient-rich food as often as possible. We’re talking vegetables, fruits, sprouted seeds, legumes, sea vegetables, and pre-soaked nuts. Most foods in supermarkets are processed. Processed foods are dead. Junk food is dead. Packaged, boxed, canned, bottled and most cartoned food is dead. Dead when you buy it and dead when you consume it. But all food is especially dead after you cook it. There may be vitamins and minerals and stuff in there, but the vital living enzymes that your body craves and which it needs to build healthy cells and enhance your immune system, can’t handle heat over 117 degrees F, so when you cook them, they pass out. Then they die.

Dead food with no living enzymes in it really isn’t food at all; it’s just stuff. Stuff you’re cramming in your body to fill you up. An hour later you’re hungry again. Why? Because your body’s starving. It’s crying out for nourishment. Which is how people come to overeat constantly and get fat. Instead, try fresh, living, uncooked, organic food. You’ll feel fuller faster and, once your body has the nutrients it needs, it doesn’t crave food again for hours.

28.   If it’s mass-produced or came from a factory, don’t put it in your body.  To stay youthful, bendy, strong, and disease-free, your system needs lots of clean water, exercise, adequate sleep, air, and good nutrition from living food. What it may crave, but does not need, is pizza. Or, for that matter, chips, cookies, hot dogs, lattes, pretzels, doughnuts, sugary breakfast cereals, artificial sweeteners, fried steak, meatballs, quesadillas, processed meats, refried beans, burgers, fries, sodas, or, I regret to say, cake. These “foods’” are acidic to the body and slowly poison it or else block it up.

“When cells live too long in an acidic condition, they adapt to it by mutating and becoming malignant. Long-term acidic conditions in our bodies provide perfect environments for cancer, and auto-immune diseases like AIDS to flourish.”[2] To insure good health, we have to declare sovereignty over our body, and that means closing our borders to outside invaders who would take us down and leave us for dead. It’s not just about the sugar or chemical contents either, or the hormones, or the antibiotics, colorings, and flavorings – it’s the salt too. Factory-produced food and restaurant-cooked meals tend to contain a lot of salt, which, eaten to excess, can lead to stomach cancer, strokes, cardiovascular problems, and so on[3].Therefore minimize your intake. And never use table salt, always kosher or sea salt.

“But does all this mean I can’t eat fries or hamburgers?” I imagine you’re saying, reeling from this terrible news. “After all, what’s more American than a hearty meal of burger, fries, and a soda?”

Well, oddly, the only thing more American seems to be premature death from obesity. Around 30% of us are officially obese[4]. One in three. It’s the seventh leading cause of death today. Go sit in your local shopping mall and watch the hundreds of porkers as they waddle by, with an ice cream in on hand and a super-sized soda in the other. I now believe, after a little research, that soda is death in a can. I wish I’d never drunk any. It’s been shown to lead to osteoporosis, obesity, and heart disease.  

27. Cleanse the body. For the past who-knows-how-many years, you’ve been ingesting boatloads of noxious substances – chlorine, hormones, pollution, pesticides, drugs, antibiotics, lead, fluoride, polyhydrocarbons, MSG, transfats, preservatives, the chemicals in detergents, and more. The body has a mechanism for detoxing you in normal circumstances, but we no longer live in normal circumstances. Chances are, you have many toxic residues still stuck inside you, and they’ll stay there, slowly poisoning you, unless you take specific direct action to detox, decontaminate your body, and flush them out.

Read up on this[5]. Seek advice about what’s right for you. Maybe try a series of flushes. There are many kinds, all good: a colon cleanse or colonic irrigation to aid the digestive and elimination process; flushing out the liver, gallbladder, kidneys, etc., plus ways to rid yourself of harmful parasites and heavy metals. Not enjoyable ways – but ways. Worth investigating.

26. Go on a fast. A fast is controlled starvation. Author Paul Bragg says we’re slaves to food – “Man digs his grave with his knife and fork.”

During a fast, you put your knife and fork away and stop eating altogether for a period of time each year – a day, a week, a month – to give your system a break. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Food is replaced with a drink, which may include green and fruit juices. When your digestive enzymes are not busy doing their job, which is to help convert food to energy, they get bored. To stay busy, they start flushing mucus and toxins from the colon, kidneys, pancreas, liver, intestines, and so on. Read up on fasting. Look into the different options and find one that works for you.

Extra note: My personal experience of fasting has been astonishing. Once a year in October I personally do the Master Cleanse program for two to three weeks. No eating, just a special drink packed with nutrients several times a day. During that time, after a short detox period, not only do I feel great, shed weight, empty out my system of toxins, and feel my body repairing itself, but apparently crystals are flushed from my joints, thereby heklping prevent arthritis. You can actually feel yourself peeing them away. The whole thing is a living miracle.

25.    Lose weight and keep it off. Three-quarters of all health care spending in America goes to treat preventable chronic diseases, including $147 billion annually on the problems of obesity[6]. Ageing well tends to be a privilege, not a right. Which makes being fat a death sentence. Most times, only thin people get to grow old. Seekers believe that robust health in later years is earned by effort put in during their earlier ones. It’s like a pension, and you pay into it over a lifetime by maintaining a reasonable body weight. Above all, stop calorie counting. Stop with the fad diets. Stop buying books and programs to help you lose weight. You’re wasting your time and money, while making a lot of other people very rich. Instead:

a) quit eating junk (see #28 above). In 2009 alone, Americans spent $109 billion on junk food. Aside from being acidic to your body, it is a major factor in making you fat. Research shows that you’d have to ride a bike for an hour to burn off the calories from a single bottle of Coke, and you’d have to walk for six hours to burn off a Supersized McDonald’s meal;

b) cut out refined sugar (as well as chemical artificial sweeteners[7] and any product containing the extremely fattening corn sugar (high-fructose corn syrup[8]), dairy products, and food made with refined white flour: pasta, bread, cake (sigh), etc;

c) switch to a diet based predominantly on plant-protein and raw, organic, fresh food;

d) cleanse your body in all the various ways mentioned in #27) above;

e) turn off the TV and actually do something useful and physically challenging with your free time; and

f) adopt and maintain a proper exercise regime every day.

If you do all this, how can you not lose weight? In fact, you’ll probably outlive the rest of us.

24.   Breathe. I know, you do this already, but for something that our daily lives actually depend on, we don’t have it mastered at all.

Mostly we take short breaths using the top of the lungs, when what’s needed is deep breathing from the diaphagm. This helps drain the lymphatic system, promotes relaxation and general wellbeing, and is vital to continued health. Also, and obviously, quit smoking. Fifty years ago smokers were regarded as cool and sophisticated. Now they’re looked on as hopeless addicts with low self-esteem and a death wish. It’s time to move on and breathe oxygen like the rest of us. And while you’re at it, buy some kind of air filtration system for your home. Or at the very least for your bedroom so that you’re not breathing pollution while you sleep.

23.    Take coconut oil. Experts see this as the golden Wonka ticket of good health. One tablespoon of organic, cold-pressed, extra-virgin coconut oil twice a day boosts the immune system. According to research carried out by Harvard University Medical School in 1988, it also “reduces the risk of atherosclerosis, heart disease, cancer, and other degenerative conditions.”

Plus, it’s good for the hair and skin, gives you bundles of energy, and helps maintain reasonable cholesterol levels and increased metabolism, which in turn can lead to weight loss.

And that’s not all. The oil aids digestion, and is useful as one stage in tackling liver and kidney problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, prostate enlargement, osteoporosis, Crohn’s disease, diabetes, HIV, and cancer.

Yet, in spite of all this, most conventional doctors are against it. “Yeuw, it’s a saturated fat,” they say, pulling a face, “and saturated fats clog your arteries.” They’re right, coconut oil is 90% saturated fat, and animal-based saturated fats do clog your arteries. But coconut is a plant-based saturated fat, and plants, as we know, are our friends. The idea that coconut oil is bad for you is a con trick. A lie put about in the 1980s by manufacturers of rival domestic oils in the U.S. to prevent this amazing tropical oil getting a foothold in the home market[9], when in actual fact coconut oil is a miracle product. It’s antimicrobial, antioxidant, antifungal, and antibacterial.

22.   Avoid storing up negative emotions, they’re lethal. Rene Caisse said: “Cancer patients have usually lived in relationships that have had serious negative impacts on their lives. Let go of hurts of the past. Deadly emotions can lead to cancer. Feelings used as weapons against someone, or self, can be as toxic as exposure to a lethal physical agent. Stay away from spiteful, negative, irritating, overbearing people. You don’t need friends who find fault. The magic key to curing cancer, to cancer prevention, is to live, to really live…full of vigor and hope…to live every true vital force in you.”

Tackle lingering dark emotional issues head-on. Let old hurts go, be rid of festering conflicts. Meditate, do yoga, Pilates, enjoy regular massages, hike, attend retreats – whatever it takes to stay positive, stress-free, open-minded, rested, and, above all, alive.

21.   Avoid the news. Ignorance has served me well over the years. There is no real news any more anyway; there’s only spin, polarizing opinion, PR, and propaganda neatly packaged and promoted as fact, usually with a view to startling members of the public, or recruiting them to a right-wing cause. So skip it. Take back your power of independent thought and judgment. Turn away from sensationalist “Breaking News” headlines and unscrupulous braying pundits who are willing to lie, deceive, misrepresent and exaggerate just to raise their ratings and make more money for themselves. Trust me, if something urgent happens, someone will tell you about it. People can’t wait to spoil your day.

20.    Fit your water supply with an activated carbon filtration system. Your body’s a sponge, millions of tiny holes held together with a seamless, vulnerable blanket of flesh. Whatever touches that blanket is absorbed into it. Regular tap water is loaded with chlorine. Each time you shower, your pores suck in cups and cups of chlorine, which over time can deplete your body’s supply of vitamin E, aggravate asthma, lead to skin problems such as eczema, and generate free radicals that lead to cancer. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1987, people who drink chlorinated water are twice as likely to find themselves with bladder cancer someday than people who drink water without chlorine in it. Twice as likely. And I can testify to that: my dad drinks cups and cups of tap water every day in his tea, and he has bladder cancer. Filter your water, guys.

19. Organic vegetables and fruits are healthier for you than those sprayed with pesticides[12]. If the cost of switching to organic is an issue, put your health first. Cut down on something less important. Suggestions for saving money:

i)              Unhook your Cable or Satellite box; claim your life back from the manipulation of TV companies and advertisers.

ii)           Quit going to bad movies. For the price of two tickets to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, you could have stocked up your fridge with salad for a couple of days or more.

iii)        Cancel donations to charities set up to research disease. In a lot of cases, there are already cures. If they were endorsed by scientists and put into general use, charities would go broke. They exist to exist.

iv)         Quit buying coffee in coffee shops (especially lattes; see #13 below). Ouch – I know. But would you rather be well or sick later on? Your choice. And this is an ex latte addict speaking.

18.    Avoid dairy products. Milk, butter and cheese products sold either on their own or as ingredients in other products are not good for you[11]. The advertisers lied. Too often, the milk was taken from unhappy, regimented, imprisoned cows and is loaded with growth hormones, antibiotics, and traces of blood and pus. That aside, the predominant protein in milk, known as casein, was found by T. Colin Campbell to be carcinogenic. There are other sources of calcium besides milk: dark, leafy vegetables, sardines, salmon, sesame tahini, and sea vegetables.

17. Fit your water supply with an activated carbon filtration system. Your body’s a sponge, millions of tiny holes held together with a seamless, vulnerable blanket of flesh. Whatever touches that blanket is absorbed into it. Regular tap water is loaded with chlorine. Each time you shower, your pores suck in cups and cups of chlorine, which over time can deplete your body’s supply of vitamin E, aggravate asthma, lead to skin problems such as eczema, and generate free radicals that lead to cancer. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1987, people who drink chlorinated water are twice as likely to find themselves with bladder cancer someday than people who drink water without chlorine in it. Twice as likely. And I can testify to that: my dad drinks cups and cups of tap water every day in his tea, and he has bladder cancer. Filter your water, guys.

16. Organic vegetables and fruits are healthier for you than those sprayed with pesticides[13]. If the cost of switching to organic is an issue, put your health first. Cut down on something less important. Suggestions for saving money:

i)              Unhook your Cable or Satellite box; claim your life back from the manipulation of TV companies and advertisers.

ii)           Quit going to bad movies. For the price of two tickets to Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, you could have stocked up your fridge with salad for a couple of days or more.

iii)        Cancel donations to charities set up to research disease. In a lot of cases, there are already cures. If they were endorsed by scientists and put into general use, charities would go broke. They exist to exist.

iv)         Quit buying coffee in coffee shops (especially lattes; see #13 below). Ouch – I know. But would you rather be well or sick later on? Your choice. And this is an ex latte addict speaking.

15.    Avoid dairy products. Milk, butter and cheese products sold either on their own or as ingredients in other products are not good for you[14]. The advertisers lied. Too often, the milk was taken from unhappy, regimented, imprisoned cows and is loaded with growth hormones, antibiotics, and traces of blood and pus. That aside, the predominant protein in milk, known as casein, was found by T. Colin Campbell to be carcinogenic. There are other sources of calcium besides milk: dark, leafy vegetables, sardines, salmon, sesame tahini, and sea vegetables.

14.    Quit playing dangerous sports. They put unnecessary strain on your joints. Joggers look so cool running along the sidewalk, but how many of them will need hip or knee replacements by the time they’re sixty? Take care of your body. Leave the stupid stuff like marathons, snowboarding, and wrestling to other people. Invest in a pain-free future – say no to overly-strenuous activity and yes to exercise. Brisk walking that breaks a sweat, swimming, yoga, Pilates, t’ai chi, dance – all worthy, gentle stuff. You’ll thank me later.

13.    Bounce for 10-20 minutes a day. Rebounding is like jumping on your bed when you were young, only this time, because you’re grown now and you bought yourself a mini-trampoline, you won’t get yelled at. Great for the heart, the brain, the muscles, but especially your lymph nodes – and you definitely want to stay on the right side of your lymph nodes[15]. The G-force created by bouncing for ten minutes per day on a rebounder squeezes toxins out of your cells, stimulating your immune system. Plus, it helps oxygenate the blood, increases lung capacity, and lowers cholesterol. Start gently and work up. Seniors especially. You’re not auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, people; don’t go crazy.

12.   Chew your food. If your stomach could be granted one wish, it would be to have teeth. But since that’s not going to happen, do it a big favor: eat slowly and chew. Chew, chew, chew. Food can be fully digested by the stomach only if it’s been mixed with saliva first, which is what happens in your mouth. Eat mindfully until your food turns to soup, then swallow. Never eat “on the go.”  

11.   Drink fresh organic green vegetable juice. Plants contain phytonutrients and are alive. Homemade green juices are therefore alive too. Juices packaged in boxes and bottles are not. They’ve been pasteurized and homogenized, killing the very enzymes you’re drinking them for in the first place. Fresh green organic vegetables, on the other hand, boast a treasure trove of enzymes that, when ingested into the human body, go a long way toward protecting it from future illness. Living foods feed living cells. So buy a juicer, and a good juicing book, and make your own. Alternatively, blend a bunch of green leafy vegetables – spinach, Romaine lettuce, parsley, collard greens and kale (cut the spines from the leaves first); throw in a green apple, a banana, a big squirt of lemon juice -  that way you drink the juice and the fiber in the pulp as well. Remember: drink slowly, don’t chug. It’s not Heineken, and you’re not in a frat house (unless you are, of course!) Slowly sipping your juice allows the saliva to break it down.

10. Remove toxins through the mouth. One in four Americans is afflicted with heavy metal poisoning – lead, aluminum, mercury, and others – as well as chemicals from pollution, household products, pesticides, contaminated food, smoking, drugs, and whatever else. Cleansing the body is one way to get these out. Another is oil-pulling, an ancient holistic technique dating back thousands of years. Each morning, a tablespoon of organic, cold-pressed sunflower oil is “chewed”, then swilled and swished around the mouth for fifteen minutes. Magically, this draws out multiple poisons from the blood stream through the mucus membranes of the mouth. Important note: Do not swallow the oil. It’s toxic. Once you’re done, swill the mouth out with warm salted water, then spit that out too. Oil-pulling is thought by Eastern doctors to see off a whole raft of maladies, including migraines, meningitis, encephalitis, cancer, glaucoma, heart and kidney problems, ulcers, and bronchitis. And even if they’re wrong and it doesn’t do any of that, at the very least swishing whitens the teeth and keeps the gums in the pink of health, saving money on dental bills.

9.    Dry-brush your skin. Before showering, rub yourself all over with a stiff natural fiber brush for five minutes. This aids detoxification and exfoliation, promotes skin renewal, helps the body absorb nutrients, lessens cellulite, boosts blood circulation, and combats premature ageing by tightening the skin. Important note: it also hurts. Don’t dry-brush your face with stiff bristles, it’ll strip your epidermis like a blow-torch. Use a soft brush or a flannel instead. Or, alternatively, try a natural body scrub.

8.   Invest in an Infra Red Sauna. Infrared works differently to traditional saunas (where you sit breathing in dangerous chlorinated steam the whole time), because it’s dry. Ceramic or carbon panels around the walls emit a radiant heat that penetrates the body’s muscle tissue to a depth of about 1.5 inches, raising your core temperature and making you sweat very hard. That sweat is removing toxins. Plus, infrared heat boosts blood circulation, fights inflammation, eases aches and pains, and even goes so far as to provide relief from broader ailments such as arthritis, headaches, heart disease, obesity, asthma, high cholesterol, low blood sugar, depression, infections, as well as afflictions of the immune system, such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and candida. If that weren’t enough, infrared heat has toxicity in its crosshairs: car emissions, molds, lead, nicotine, alcohol, sulfuric acid, and whatever else your body has absorbed. Toxins are cowards. When you sweat deeply, they head for the exit, fleeing from your muscle tissue and out through the pores.

7.   Replenish your body with superfood smoothies. Nutrition is the cornerstone of daily stamina and the key to staying fit and vital when everyone else around you is dropping like flies. But here’s the thing: we’re all different. Nobody knows the right combo of ingredients to put in your smoothie. So go online, find nutrition sites, research what your body needs. If necessary get advice from a nutritionist. Suggested organic ingredients to throw in your blender, though, include apple juice or soy milk (as a base), coconut oil, aloe vera juice, maca root powder, He Shou Wu[15], bee pollen; powdered goji berries; raw, unsweetened, organic cacao nibs[16]; raw organic honey; cellfood[17]; cold-milled hemp protein; ground flaxseed; cayenne pepper; organic green superfood powder, and fresh fruit, such as apples, bananas, blueberries, and melon.

6.   Get enough sleep. In bed by 10pm, up by 6am. This is not my rule, it’s Nature’s. Even if you don’t go to sleep straight away – doesn’t matter; lie down, close your eyes, and rest. It’s best for your body if you don’t eat at all in the three hours leading up to bedtime, otherwise your system has to work overtime during the night trying to assimilate it. A lot of insomnia is caused by people eating too late and not exercising enough to use up all the energy generated by the excessive amounts of food they’re consuming daily. The most rejuvenating form of sleep happens in the two hours before midnight. During the night, the body’s very busy. It removes dead/damaged cells, repairs muscles, balances fluids, purifies the blood stream, and engages in a general program of nourishing, cleansing, balancing, and rejuvenating. To do that it needs adequate rest. The correct amount of sleep varies from person to person. The optimum, though, is around eight hours. Every night. Without fail.

5.   It’s not paranoia; your toiletries really are out to get you. Commercial personal hygiene soaps, shampoos, conditioners, skin creams, and whatever else, are often loaded with harmful cancer-causing chemicals that get absorbed through your pores into your body. Invest instead in  products made from pure, natural ingredients. This applies especially to deoderants. The sweat glands act like a pressure-valve. They’re one of the body’s escape routes for toxins. Why would you want to plug them up with sticky chemical goo? Plus, avoid any antiperspirant product that lists aluminum among the ingredients. Aluminum has been linked to dementia, including Alzheimer’s. Check the label. If you see chlorohydrate or aluminum zirconium cholorohydrate, throw it down and run. Another tip: use an Ayurvedic toothpaste[18]. Standard toothpastes contain fluoride, which is poisonous in quantity, plus a bunch of other chemicals, artificial sugars, colorings, and flavorings.

4.   Poop regularly. Do I really need to tell you this? You must get rid of waste products. You wouldn’t keep a bin full of rotting trash in your kitchen, would you? You’d throw it out. Yet people keep dangerous putrefying waste in their stomachs for years and never flush it away. Some don’t go to the bathroom for days. Causes of constipation include milk, medication, dehydration, lack of exercise, and lack of fiber. Whatever yours is, track it down and try to stop it. Generally speaking, if your bowel is in perfect working order, you should be taking a small, but lovely firm dump after every meal. If you’re not, think about cleaning out the colon with colonic irrigation or a cleanse, and switching to a raw food-based diet for a while.

3.   Consider drinking bentonite clay now and then. Sodium bentonite is an absorbent clay of 60% silica that, when turned into a liquid, makes a great intestinal detoxifier and cleanser. You can buy it in bottles. It acts like a bounty-hunting sponge, tracking down metals, impurities, and free radicals, and carrying them out of your system. It can cause constipation, though, and be harmful if you do it too often. Read the directions very carefully.

2.   Invert. Turn your body upside down a couple of times a week, or at the very least get into a position where your feet are higher than your head. This uses the force of gravity to shift any build-up of sedimentary material out of the lower parts of your body, allowing it to be expelled. Otherwise it just sits there like an old woman at a bus stop. Get it out of your joints and cells now while you still can.

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[1] The China Study. Save your life – read this book.

[2]  Donna Gates in The Body Ecology Diet.

[3] According to a 1996 report in the British Medical Journal, and research conducted by Dutch scientists and published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 1996.

[4] Journal of the American Medical Association No 288.

[5] A good start would be Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation by Andreas Moritz. A gem of a book. Moritz is one of those visionaries that the old guard is desperately trying to silence, fearing that, if his information becomes widely known, it could adversely affect their bottom line. Support him. At least read what he has to say.

[6] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. $116 billion goes on diabetes, with several hundred billion more going to treat cardiovascular disease and cancer.

[7] Processed sugar is probably even more toxic than the products developed to replace it, such as saccharine – which causes bladder cancer in rats – and Aspartame, the Hiroshima of all artificial sweeteners, which is 180 times sweeter than sugar, and was once classified by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent, before the manufacturers got the law changed 30 years ago and it was allowed to be put in food. According to tests conducted on four thousand now-dead rats in 2005 by the European Ramazzini Foundation in Italy, Aspartame is not just dangerous, it’s been linked with obesity, arthritis, lupus, M.S., lymphoma, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disorders of the nervous system. (Sweet Deception, by Dr. Joseph Mercola). Mind you, whereas artificial sweeteners only start to kill us if consumed in unwieldy quantities, our dear old friend refined sugar, ingested regularly, operates with malicious intent from the get-go, slowly trashing and corroding our system. Avoid.

[8] Cancer loves sugar, apparently. It thrives on it. And fructose, which is sugar with an attitude, is the main component of high fructose corn syrup, or corn sugar as it’s often called, which pops up in thousands of processed foods, including Pepsi, Heinz Ketchup, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and Corn Flakes, Robitussin cough syrup, Ritz Crackers. Yoplait Yogurts, and Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice-cream. Even certain brands of wholegrain bread contain HFCS. Manufacturers use it because it’s cheap, and it’s cheap because the syrup comes from corn and the US government blindly subsidizes corn as if it’s a favorite son incapable of doing any wrong.  Corn sugar usage in foods has quadrupled in recent years. Oh, and guess what else has quadrupled. Obesity!

[9] Even the ISEO – the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils – the trade association representing the domestic edible oil industry, called out the whole “tropical oil being dangerous” scam-paign for what it was: bogus nonsense based on no scientific evidence whatsoever. But by then it was too late. Skittish food manufacturers were already switching to domestic oils – the hydrogenated kind. Remember those? They’re the ones that are really harmful. In fact, if consumed in quantity, they raise cholesterol and block your arteries in ways that coconut oil can only dream of.

[10] If you can’t always afford organic, at least do your best to steer clear of the produce most laden with chemicals. The Environmental Working Group, a consumer research body, produces a report listing what it calls The Dirty Dozen of the most contaminated produce. These are: peaches, apples, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, imported grapes, pears, celery, sweet bell peppers, kale, lettuce, and carrots. In E.W.G. tests, for instance, imported grapes were found to have eight different deadly pesticides sprayed on them. EIGHT!

[11] Organic raw milk from grass-fed cows is a different matter. It’s better for you on the whole than pasteurized milk, which has had the natural butterfat, most of the vitamins, and the good bacteria as well as the bad, nuked out of it. But it’s not widely available and the Federal government is engaged, via the Food and Drug Administration working at the behest of the giant corporate dairy industry, in oppressing its sale. Armed raids are regularly conducted on health stores selling raw milk products from small independent farmers.   The FDA claims pasteurization is the only way to make milk safe, whereas, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “[I]t is only milk raised in unhealthy conditions, from unhealthy cows, that requires pasteurization prior to consumption.” (www.drmercola.com)

[12] If you can’t always afford organic, at least do your best to steer clear of the produce most laden with chemicals. The Environmental Working Group, a consumer research body, produces a report listing what it calls The Dirty Dozen of the most contaminated produce. These are: peaches, apples, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, imported grapes, pears, celery, sweet bell peppers, kale, lettuce, and carrots. In E.W.G. tests, for instance, imported grapes were found to have eight different deadly pesticides sprayed on them. EIGHT!

[13] Organic raw milk from grass-fed cows is a different matter. It’s better for you on the whole than pasteurized milk, which has had the natural butterfat, most of the vitamins, and the good bacteria as well as the bad, nuked out of it. But it’s not widely available and the Federal government is engaged, via the Food and Drug Administration working at the behest of the giant corporate dairy industry, in oppressing its sale. Armed raids are regularly conducted on health stores selling raw milk products from small independent farmers.   The FDA claims pasteurization is the only way to make milk safe, whereas, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “[I]t is only milk raised in unhealthy conditions, from unhealthy cows, that requires pasteurization prior to consumption.” (www.drmercola.com)

[14] Lymph carries nutrients to the cells and takes toxic waste away. That’s its job. If you don’t get the lymph flowing regularly, toxic waste stays where it is, slowly poisoning your system.

[15] Asian herb, good for promoting long life, fortifying muscles and tendons, cleansing the kidneys and liver and, in turn, the blood; strengthening the back, knees, and hair.

[16] Good for anti-aging, building strong bones, lowering blood pressure. Packed with antioxidants, vitamin C, magnesium, and sulfur.

[17] Cellfood (Deuterium sulphate) is a dietary supplement invented by Everett Storey in the 1940s. For years he worked on developing and testing nuclear weapons, from which he contracted cancer due to all the radiation. So he devised this substance called cellfood to help his condition. It contains an abundance of minerals, enzymes, amino acids, electrolytes and dissolved oxygen. Good for: nourishing, replenishing, and oxygenating the body, and delivering nutrients as and when needed to the cell tissue. Ingenious.

[18] Ayurveda is a set of traditional Indian medicine practices dating back thousands of years and still utilized widely in South-East Asia. Somewhere along the line, those canny Indians got it into their heads that bringing the mind, body, and spirit into balance with a mix of good digestion, regular elimination, exercise, meditation, massage, healthy sex, personal hygiene, skin care, and moderation in everything, was the right way to go. Of course, if they’d been in the West when they came up with this idea, they’d have harassed by doctors, arrested, and jailed.

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The BBC. 15 amazing years. Done.

So there we are. It’s done.

My TV review slot on Radio Five Live is no more.

After almost fifteen years the end was long overdue and came at a good moment, not just for the BBC apparently, but for me too. I have a little company now, where I actually create stuff rather than sitting in front of a microphone talking about other people who create stuff. That’s way more positive. Plus, sometimes you simply have to move on. And that’s where I’m at.

Making magic: how to do a TV review when you don’t own a TV

What’s fascinating is that the slot wasn’t even supposed to be a slot at all. It began as little more than a serendipitous coming together of a lost journalist and a struggling network with time to fill and nothing to fill it with. That was in 1997.

I’d been in Hollywood a matter of weeks and things weren’t going well. Thoroughly depressed, I was facing the serious possibility of having to return home soon if my life didn’t shape up. Then, one day, everything changed. A close friend of mine, who happened to be working on a relatively new BBC radio nocturnal magazine show called Up All Night, catering mainly to truck drivers and milkmen, rang me in some panic and said, “Our U.S. TV critic has vanished, or possibly died. Anyway, he’s not answering his phone. Would you be a poppet and review some television for us for a couple of weeks while we find a replacement? We’ll pay.”

Pay? Great heavens!

Unfortunately, I didn’t own a TV at the time, which would make reviewing shows difficult, though not impossible. So…

“Yes,” I gushed. “I’d love to do it.”

In Hollywood, you always say yes, whatever the question. It’s one of the rules.

For the next month, as producers in London trawled the States for someone, anyone, who knew slightly more about American television than I did – there were roughly 380 million candidates at the time – I filled the gap. And for another month after that as well. And another. After which I guess they gave up trawling, because a year later I was still doing it, even though I still didn’t own a TV. Someone else in the house had one, so I did get to watch a bunch of shows if I had to; I wasn’t flying completely blind. But I could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be regarded as a professional TV critic. Additionally, before each broadcast I’d pop down to Ralph’s, our local supermarket, and hover around the checkout reading TV magazines and tabloids, researching something to talk about.

It was all very laissez-faire. Nobody appeared to care that I knew nothing, as long as it was entertaining. The slot was a three-minute filler, that’s all, which is an eye-blink in radio terms, so patches of ignorance could easily be masked by a guy talking very fast and giggling more than is right. Plus, it was done on the phone, lessening its integrity still further.

Problem was, I didn’t have a phone either! I shared a party line. This in itself presented countless problems.

Quite often, I would be sitting in my scruffy, mouse-infested apartment to the rear of the otherwise very beautiful Samuel Goldwyn Mansion right in the middle of Hollywood, jabbering live on-air to the BBC, giving my honest opinion about some show I’d not seen, when someone elsewhere in the house would come on the line and start talking over me. Or they’d suddenly dial a number and my voice would be drowned out by peeping noises. Or they’d go, “Hello? Hello? Who’s this?” The slot never went off without a hitch. It was always acutely awkward and nerve-wracking. But at the same time it was real! Real and spontaneous and entertaining and unpredictable – qualities that were valued back then; not stiff, over-prepared, and read word-for-word from a script, the way all other TV reviews were (and are). That’s what made it so refreshing and so un-BBC-like. Structure’s not my strong point, as you know – for instance, look at the way I’m rambling here – so I must applaud the producers of Up All Night for sticking with me, and it, for as long as they did.

Once, I remember, we’d just gone live; I was chatting happily to the presenter in London, when a well-hung naked black man climbed in through my window and ran across the room and out the door. He was being chased by another man, this one clothed and armed with a pitchfork, who also climbed in through the window and ran out the door. It was very dramatic, and, I should add, entirely representative of the madness that went on daily in that mansion. I’m surprised none of us got killed. Anyway, in that moment of crisis, as I expostulated, “Oh my god, there’s a big black man running across my room!”, history was made. I switched from talking about TV – which, let’s face it, I knew nothing about anyway – to discussing who the black guy was and why he was naked, which I knew A LOT about.

And that’s how it got started. The chatting, the cheekiness, the crazy Hollywood reporting about my life. For the first time, it gave people in Britain a chance to experience the real L.A., and what it’s like to live in this weird, mad place, from the inside – something they couldn’t find anywhere else on the radio. In time, it became known as ‘My Lovely Slot.’

Listeners, of course, adore stuff like this. And very soon what began as a brief fling turned into an ongoing affair. Within a couple of years I’d been upgraded from a three-minute filler on the phone to a five-minute filler on the phone, then ten minutes, then fifteen, until eventually I was given an entire half-hour every week to do my thing, despite complaints and protests. There’s always a small portion of your audience that really hates itself and, feeling helpless and unheard, takes their self-loathing out on other people, and usually – because they’re an easy target – media people, by endlessly writing in to whine about something you’ve said. When you’re in broadcasting, you accept that.

However, some of the protests originated within the show itself. That was the shocker. They came from the creator and presenter of Up All Night, Rhod Sharp, who, according to one of the producers, took a rebellious stand in the beginning against their new  ’TV critic’  getting any more air-time – “But why?” he groaned. “He’s not a real journalist!” – and even campaigned for the slot to be cut back. His reasoning, though, was flawed. Of course I’m not a real journalist. That’s the whole point of the slot. Even so, a more persuasive argument would have been: “But why? He doesn’t own a television.” Now, that might have worked.

But Rhod’s a sweetie-pie. Eventually he mellowed, as we know, and nowadays we’re practically in love.

The spirits speak

With the passing of the years, the half hour became a little more professional, I must say.

I quit giggling as much, for example. Then, in year two, I actually went crazy and bought a TV, so that I could start getting my information first-hand, which was a vast improvement. I invested in a phone, that’s another thing. And later I even managed to wangle a real, and quite fabulous, studio in downtown L.A. to broadcast from. Nobody who worked there seemed to have a clue what I was doing or why. By the same token, none of them seemed to have the authority to stop me. So I simply continued doing the show in that space, showing up every Tuesday evening no matter what for seven years, until some bright spark in management finally figured out that I had no legitimate reason for being there in the first place and changed the locks.

During the early bleak days, though, this little slot of mine, as silly and insignificant as it seemed, was my life-saver. Without it I could not have made it in L.A. The pay was risibly small, but it was enough. Enough to get me from week to week, if I didn’t eat much and walked everywhere instead of taking the bus.

The whole traveling-to-America thing had been a monstrous gamble anyway. I arrived here on spec with almost no money to my name and unable to earn any because I didn’t have a green card, so I was forced to rely totally on the kindness of strangers. And since strangers in L.A. are not exactly renowned for their kindness, that meant I was in survival mode every single day. Now, though, it’s been fourteen years and I’m no longer in survival mode, am I? I’m living quite the life. Things turned around in the end. I wrote books, had my own TV travel show, and got a regular gig on NPR over here.  So for the last half-decade or so, the slot has been done for pleasure only. Mine, if nobody else’s.

Rhod called me at home in October, the day after the axe fell. “Don’t be downcast,” he said, sounding just like he does on the radio. “There’ll be other opportunities.”

And yes, there probably will. But I don’t think he quite gets where I’m coming from on this. The ending of the BBC slot is not a bad thing. It’s a ‘thing’, that’s all. I tend not to fight change, I embrace it readily, and even a little starry-eyed at times, on the assumption that when one situation falls away, it’s only to make room for something bigger and better. It’s always been that way for me. And in this case that’s definitely going to be what happens.

How do I know? A psychic told me.

(Don’t you dare roll your eyes!!)

Back in September, I had one of my regular readings with a quite brilliant channeler guy in Oregon, and for the first time I heard myself ask, “When will my BBC slot end?” Don’t know why I was prompted to raise the issue, but I did. And he laughed, saying, cryptically, “Well, it won’t be less than a month, but it will be over by the end of the year. Just accept it.”

Oh my lordy! That soon?

He seemed very sure.  ”You want me to go without a fight? Seriously?”

“Yup.”

So when the day came and I heard the actual words: “It’s over”, it should have been no surprise. Yet I admit I was caught off-guard. I didn’t yelp or squeal or do anything girly, but I think I may have emitted a gasp.

“It  probably should have happened after ten years, not fourteen years,” I told the lovely Liam Hanley, Up All Night‘s editor. Which is true. I remember joking on-air with Rhod only a month before. I said they’d have to take me away in a body bag before I’d ever give up my slot. But I’d already talked with the psychic by then. I knew I was done for.

Winding things up, the BBC way

The young BBC man who called was extraordinarily polite and cordial, and probably nervous, wondering if I’d go bananas when I heard I’d been dropped. After all, he was most likely still studying for his GCSEs when I started this thing. To avert a crisis, he apologized sincerely for putting me out to pasture in this way, congratulating and thanking me as he did so for my long, devoted service, inadvertently making me feel gloriously cherished, brutally discarded, and very, very old, all at the same time.

I could have announced, I suppose, that it was my decision to leave, for the sake of my pride. But why?

Because if we’re heading down that road, why not go the whole way and issue one of those robotic statements that are euphemisms for ‘He’s been fired”, and which bruised artists routinely use to shield their pride?

“Cash is leaving to spend more time with his family.” (Which, since I don’t have a family, would make it an even bigger lie), or: “Cash is leaving to work on other projects.” (Okay. But strictly speaking is retirement another project?) Or even: “We’re taking the show in a new direction. We’re hoping to use someone who won’t cause as many listeners to complain.” (Er….oh…well, that might be nearer the mark, I suppose. Yes, use that.)

Anyway, that’s it – the bulk of it. We’re all squared away. Everyone’s happy. There’s no going back now.

Okay, I’ll take any questions.

Yes, you over there in bold, carrying the big Q.

Q. Will you miss doing your slot?       For a while, sure. It was engraved into my calendar all those years, week in week out – how could I not?

Q. Is your ego fragile right now?      It’s been a couple of months since I found out, so no, I’m over it.

Q. Does this make you feel old and over the hill?    Not as much as it used to when Rhod would go on vacation for a couple of weeks and be replaced by what sounded like bubbly children’s TV presenters.

These, I assumed, were considered the BBC’s best hope for the future. One or two were great – Giles Dilnot being one; now THAT guy has a career ahead of him – but the majority were mediocre, I thought. Humorless, awkward, and often floundering in the face of unscripted spontaneity, in ways that would have been inconceivable a few years ago, when you needed to have talent and years of broadcast experience to get on national radio, not merely a degree in media studies and lashings of youthful enthusiasm.

It struck me many times as I was doing the slot that, if this was how far down the bar had been lowered in terms of presenter acceptability, then inevitably the BBC would soon be wielding the axe on its more seasoned professionals. It’d have to, if only as a way to make the newcomers seem less like struggling amateurs.

Q. Will the audience miss you?      Hm, not sure about that. Some, maybe. But I know how I am with people who disappear from my life. I move on very quickly.

Q. Would you stay if the BBC insisted?      They’re not going to insist.

Q. This whole cancellation lark sounds very fishy. Why would the BBC axe something that is incredibly popular with listeners? Is there something you’re not telling us?   Ah, well…

How hate, not love, sometimes prevails

If anyone asks, the only reason I continued doing my slot for as long as I did was because, each time I so much as hinted that I might stop, I’d be deluged the next day with emails, tweets, and Facebook messages begging me to keep going. “You’re the highlight of my week,” some milkman in Cheshire would say, or a matron stuck on overnights in Essex, or a cab driver trekking around rain-soaked Liverpool in the dead of winter. “Your slot brightens my life. Please don’t go.”

Ah, but I must, you see. The other day, I said there more reasons why I’m leaving. The first was by far the most significant: it’s time to go. It just is. And here’s another.

Reason 2: the corporation’s new “Delivering Quality First” initiative.

In much the same way that the Bush Administration’s topsy-turvy “No Child Left Behind” policy led to almost every child getting left behind, and now nobody in America under 25 can spell, add up, speak in full sentences, or find their home town on a map, the BBC is delivering quality first at its news and talk flagship Radio Five Live by seemingly eviscerating it; cutting £5 million per annum from a network whose budgets are already pinched like an Irish pie-crust, forcing editors over the next couple of years to sweep aside anything that isn’t cheap or nailed down.

I regret to say that this includes me. I’m not nailed down; I have to leave. It’s progress.

A compromise idea was tabled: how about I give up my slot but continue to contribute to Up All Night the way I do to any other radio or TV network – casually, informally, and as needed? To me that feels like a horrible demotion. Agreeing to it would mean I was just so desperate to stay on the radio that I’d do anything.

But then fate stepped in anyway. A couple of days later, I received my very first piece of direct hate mail, at which point everything changed.

Haters are very vocal. 10,000 listeners may love what you do, but of course they won’t write to the BBC and say so. I myself adored the sitcom Better Off Ted, and was mortified when ABC axed it last year. Did I write in and tell them that? Nope. I’m too lazy.

Haters and whiners, on the other hand, are not lazy. Also, they seem to have a lot more time on their hands than the rest of us. They’re always writing in. Years ago, before emails and texts, they had to send letters, which were easily misplaced or ignored. Now, though, they have the immediacy of the Internet, and they use it to the fullest extent – especially, it seems, when it comes to my little slot. And so the final reason for my leaving is this:

Reason 3: there have been complaints. 

Face it, whatever you say on the radio is going to offend someone. If I suggest that the latest series of Doctor Who is shallow drivel, which it is, dozens of easily-pleased people with no taste will write in, saying I’m wrong and it was the best ever.

For every stand you take, there’s someone out there poised to take the opposite side. And that’s fine. It’s democracy in action. The more the merrier. As long as – and this is the important part – as long as producers, editors, and network controllers don’t yield to pressure and let a tiny minority dictate program policy, or, worse still, let them silence voices they don’t happen to agree with. Because then the tail’s wagging the dog and you’ve strayed into very dangerous territory indeed.

Years ago, when broadcasters received hatemail, it was seen as a good, even important, thing. A strong listener response  meant you’d pushed buttons and stirred up passions to the point where they’d been compelled to get off their indolent arses and physicalize their anger. And what’s art, really, if not an attempt to arouse passions in people?

But you can see the dangers, right? For creativity to flourish, artists need to be protected. They need editors and managers with a backbone, who believe that every kind of voice should be heard, not just the ones that try to please all the listeners all the time. Managers who place self-expression first and their own promotion prospects second. Managers who understand the value of originality and defend it, if only as a way to resist the relentless, slow, downward drag into mediocrity that haters represent. Managers with real balls, in other words. I’ve worked for a couple in my time, but I need hardly tell you – in a world of shaved budgets and increasingly homogenized blandness, they are rare.

Times are tough. Backbone is scarce. You can’t buy it in packs of six, not like in the old days. To stand your ground and support something of value when you’re under fire and anxious to keep your job – that’s a lot to expect. If the choice is to either fall on their sword in the name of integrity, or to take the easy way out by buckling to the irate demands of a few loony listeners (and maybe a couple of complainers within the BBC too, naming no names), my guess is that most producers and editors will buckle. I probably would too.

One piece of hatemail helped clinch the deal

But none of that is important. For me, there was one specific piece of hatemail that made all the difference. The exact-same day, unbelievably, that the BBC man called, I received my first-ever angry tweet about the slot. Came from a new follower in Essex. It was uncanny how it happened. A bizarre coincidence.

“I’m following you,” he announced, “so I can tell you that you make me cringe every time I hear you on the radio. You’re a buffoon.” This was quickly followed by a second tweet. He’d thought of something else: “Oh, by the way, just how affected can an accent be? Answers on a postcard…”

Nothing to be concerned about, you might think. Just a guy I don’t know venting his feelings about an affected buffoon he doesn’t know, and with every right to say what he said. But that’s not the point. I don’t believe in coincidences. Nothing happens by accident.

This listener wasn’t aware of it, but he’d sent his tweet at a watershed moment. On any other day his intentionally cruel words might not have mattered. But somehow, that one insignificant little nugget of malice felt to me like a sign. A sign of changing tides. Same way the BBC is changing. We’re told it’s about to start delivering quality first. Well, good. About time. And I’m sure savage budget cuts, a reduced talent pool, and overall limited resources will help bring that goal nicely to fruition. However, the very nature of the terminology tells you that there’s no room for me in that scenario.

After fifteen years of the best fun I could possibly have had in broadcasting, I’m feeling cornered. There’s no air in here any more. Broadcasters find themselves hemmed in by watchdogs, whiners, and waves of insidious, way-over-the-top political correctness, the fascist kind imposed by the fanatical minority, that crushes the human spirit and ruins everything for everyone else. It’s like waking up in the night to find your longterm lover trying to suffocate you with a pillow.

So we’re drawing things to a close.

No doubt all those people, like the hater guy in Essex, who loathed the slot – and there are many others, including a couple of the lesser-talented stand-in hosts –  will be rejoicing, popping corks, and organizing singalongs and pageants of their own at this news. And so they should. They won. Their efforts paid off. Let’s not shy away from the truth, nor take even an ounce of their victory away from them. Whatever jubilation they feel today was earned through rugged persistence over many months and years, even if their triumph is, when viewed in a fuller perspective, tiny, since it was only a matter of time before I left anyway. A month, three months, six months down the line – at some point relatively soon the slot would have drawn to a close. It had to. Which brings us full circle, back to the main reason, which is:

Quite simply: I’m done. The affair is over.

To conclude, then, because I really am rambling now…

My friend, the one who started it all off by calling me in a panic in 1997, was quick to reply when I told him what had happened. “Given that it was initially a temporary thing,” he said, “fifteen years is not bad.”

He’s right, it’s not bad. Actually, it’s better than not bad, it’s brilliant! And it extends to a time way before 1997, because I’m not just ending my BBC slot, I’m ending all my media involvement – TV, radio, the works.

I climbed aboard the broadcasting carousel at the age of 15, doing pieces for BBC Radio Manchester. At 16, a short animated film I made was shown on BBC1. Also at 16, I began contributing material to BBC  comedy programs, first for radio, then later – at 17 – for TV, with The Two Ronnies and Talking Telephone Numbers.  And it’s been going on ever since, alternating between radio and TV, both in the UK and more recently in America. That’s some carousel, my friends. It’s been terrific in every conceivable way, I couldn’t have wished for more. But now it’s time to climb off.

The wind-down began last year when I left Marketplace, the U.S. public radio show I’d been contributing to for more than a decade, and quit being a reporter. Already I’m no longer up to date on world happenings, because I don’t watch the news any more. To me, it’s a bunch of contentious white noise – complete strangers telling me in the gravest tones what I should be worried or frightened about. Well, I can do without that, thank you.

Better still, in January, with no slot to research, I plan to get rid of my TV altogether. This prospect makes me very happy indeed. No more surfing endless channels of nothingness looking for topics to discuss. No more setting TiVo for programs I would never record otherwise. No more having to magic an opinion out of thin air about some vacuous fly-by-night celebrity or a mindlessly indulgent and derivative sitcom that’s going to be cancelled in a month’s time anyway.

Above all, I can quit judging things. Things, shows, ideas, ratings.  That’s the best development of all. I was not put on this earth to be a critic of other people’s work, or to poke fun at their efforts, even though it’s what I’ve done for twenty years. My remit has a broader reach than that. There are the handwriting analysis skils I have, for instance, which are mind-blowing. Also, my new mystery novel has just been published: Force of Habit – Sister Madeleine Investigates. That’s waaaaaay more representative of the kind of artist I am, I think. I was born to create, not to tear down.

Which is why, hanging up the phone on Liam, our editor, on the day of the axing in October 2011, I found I had a peculiar fizzing sensation in my crotch, as if someone had poured champagne into my pants. This only happens on two occasions: a) when someone really has poured champagne into my pants; and  b) when massive life changes are afoot.

And that’s where I’m at as I write this. I’m embarking on a massive life change, switching from being a media guy, which I’ve been since I was a kid, to being a very happy and non-involved civilian. My career has been living proof that you can have anything you want, anything at all, if you’ll just dream big and be persistent. In my teens, I had a bunch of what seemed like impossible dreams, and every last one of them came true. I’ve been living in a bubble ever since, letting my childhood dreams play out. Now, though, I’m done. Today I have a whole raft of new dreams. Grown-up dreams that don’t involve broadcasting, and which will take the rest of my days to fulfill.

For some reason – don’t ask me why – I have a peculiar feeling that my life is just beginning.

So that’s it really. It’s been great. Thanks to Rhod, all the BBC studio managers, producers, and editors I had dealings with, most of whom were fantastic and exemplary pros, and of course the fans – all 15 of you – not only in the UK (13)  but worldwide (2), who tuned in each week, and who sent me such wonderfully supportive messages. To quote Gabriel García Márquez: “No llores porque ya se terminó… sonríe, porque sucedió.”

In English: don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.

Two final things:

1) Late breaking news: here are a couple of blog posts some lovely listeners wrote about the ending of the slot. One from Hugh McCallion and another from Stephen Duncan. Am I touched? Oh, for sure.

2) After so many fans of the slot wrote to him, the controller of Five Live, Adrian Van Klaveren, started sending out a robo-tweet: “Sometimes you have to make changes to keep progs fresh and try out new ideas/voices but we hope Cash will still appear on UAN…”. (It’s Twitter, so he probably ran out of characters, and meant to continue: “…doing something dull and safe that will upset fewer people.”)

Okay, time’s up. Gotta go before this gets maudlin. Or worse, bitter.

Missing you already.

Handwriting Analysis. Welcome to Life-Enhancement Central.

Having your handwriting analyzed can be one of the most loving and life-affirming things you’ll ever do for yourself.

It works like a mirror. How you write reflects who you are, not only on the outside in terms of your personality and character traits, but deep, deep on the inside, where nobody ever gets to see.

By taking a look into your own soul in this way, you are often able – perhaps for the first time in forever – to really see who you are, behind the barriers, behind any conflicts and doubts, and why you came here. We think we know the answers. We think they’re obvious. “Are you crazy? Of course I know who I am,” we say. But all too often that’s a story we tell ourselves.

The truth, when it comes, is very different and can propel us to a whole new level. I’ve seen it happen a lot. People begin at Point A, have their writing analyzed, and suddenly switch, heading off towards Point B.

You can drive the same beaten-up old car for years if things are going okay. But when it isn’t working properly,  sooner or later you’ll need to take a look under the hood and see what’s going on.

Handwriting analysis tells us what’s going on under your hood.

*

Back in the early Spring, I wrote an article for Spirituality & Health magazine about finding your path in life and removing blockages to your gifts and destiny. The response from readers was overwhelming, beyond anything I could have anticipated, telling me how moved they were and how it had changed their perspective on their lives. I was deluged in emails for months.

To read the article CLICK HERE.

They reacted in this way because I also shared with them some information about my own special gift – for analyzing handwriting. It turns out that most of us, at one time or another, get to a crossroads where we begin to question our path, our identity, even our purpose in being here. How come nothing seems to be working out? How come we don’t feel fulfilled?

I admitted to our readers that I’d never studied the subject, and yet had found, about 20 years ago, out of the blue, that I had a quite uncanny ability to see beyond the writing itself, sometimes into what seemed like the very soul of the person who wrote it. Their motivations, their strengths, their pain, their abilities, their insecurities, any leftover hurt from childhood, and so on.

Leading astrologer Kristin Fontana said about it on her radio show, “I’m blown away by it. It was simply incredible. I don’t recommend anything unless it’s top notch, but…I highly recommend getting one of these done.” (You can hear her going nuts over it by clicking HERE.)

It’s a strange talent – some kind of psychometry, I think – and therefore something that, initially anyway, I could think of no practical use for, beyond being a sort of weird parlor game or fairground sideshow trick that I would do at parties or when specific people asked me to. That, however, changed over the years. In time, I was forced to take it more seriously, not least because the reactions I got were consistently mind-blowing.

“Wow!!! What a gift you have. I have so much to think about since reading this. Thank you for sharing your gift and for doing it with such beauty and kindness. You are “right on” about everything…”  M.L.

“There was just so much that reflected me. I tried to find something (anything) that I can say  ”that is not me” or “that’s inaccurate.” I haven’t found anything”  D.B.

“My ‘report’ felt like a love letter from someone who knows me very well and who cares. I have read it several times and cried. I feel seen. It is truly a gift to me, not something I have often experienced.” D.W. 

And so on. As you can imagine, it’s incredibly heartwarming to receive comments like this, even though it’s for something that I don’t even feel I’m responsible for. I’m channeling the information about the person rather than judging them or their writing.

Similar comments came from Kristin Fontana when she interviewed me at length for her internet radio podcast recently. She was blown away by the analysis I did of her.

So what is this thing I do, then?

Well, quite honestly, I’m a little hazy about the details. It appears I am what is called ‘a truth teller’. Someone who knows without knowing how they know. Somehow, don’t ask me how, I have insights into people’s souls that allow them to see themselves for who they really are, free of encumbrances and judgments. That’s remarkable. There’s more information HERE if you’re interested in having your handwriting analyzed too.

As a journalist I denied this gift for years and years, until in the end, mostly because people kept saying how amazing it was, even I had to come around and admit, “It’s really potent, this thing I do.” And mysterious. A bit like crop circles. I may not know the how or the why of it exactly, but something’s definitely going on here, and it has the potential, it seems, to change lives and make people feel better about themselves.

Most times, all I have to do is stare at the writing and tune in to its vibe. Almost immediately, information about the person begins passing through me, sometimes at speed, sometimes slower, according to what the writer needs to know about their life, and I scramble to write it all down in as coherent a fashion as possible. That’s it. The process.

Once, a long time ago, I wrote to James Randi. D’you know him? He’s a Canadian stage magician (The Amazing Randi) who later upgraded from merely ‘amazing’ to being ‘really quite something’, after setting up a trust offering one million dollars to anyone who could prove they were psychic. It was meant as a sideshow, I think, intended to draw charlatan tarot readers, astrologers, and mediums (and he would no doubt say they’re all charlatans) into the light, the better to expose and debunk them. And a good thing too.

In my case – well, I don’t pretend to know much about all of that, but this handwriting gift seems peculiarly psychicky to me. So, I said to him, “Look, James, I’m not interested in your money – I’ll take it, of course; I’m not an idiot, but I don’t care about it – what I’d like is for you and your peeps to conduct exploratory tests in a laid-back fashion (if I try it under pressure, the whole thing goes away; I freeze up), and find out why I can stare at the handwriting of someone I’ve never met, seen, or spoken to, and instantly know a thousand tiny things about their life and behavior – because, hey, I’m a journalist, and even I can see that what I do is impossible. So come on, let’s debunk this together.”

Randi wrote back very quickly, interested but stern. Told me the first round of blind tests would include the handwritings of five complete strangers. “Fine,” I replied. Then the next round would involve ten strangers, and I’d have to get them all right. “Fine, let’s do it,” I wrote back. “I’m confident it’ll work. It always does.”

I never heard from him again.

Anyway, back to the article. Several weeks later, it appeared in the July issue of Spirituality & Health to a generally favorable response.

In some ways, it felt like a coming out announcement: “Dad, I have something to tell you. I’m psychic.” I even, at the end, said that if any readers would like to have their handwriting analyzed, I’d happily do it for them. An empty gesture really, to be honest. The last time I made this kind of offer, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I didn’t receive a single reply. Because people don’t quite understand what kind of analysis they’re going to get, they can’t convince themselves to have it done. I find that a lot. Only afterwards, once they read it, does its amazing value become evident, and they wonder how they lived without knowing this stuff. These days most of us type everything anyway; writing is a dead art. So, at most, I figured, maybe four people would get in touch.

But that’s not how it went. I was inundated.

Realizing that I am just one person and they were many, and it was impossible for me to satisfy the demand while still carrying on my other work in any meaningful way, I decided to charge a nominal submission fee, just to make it a two-way street. It’s only right – right? After all, you really only value what you pay for, and I know how life-changing this stuff can be in some instances.

In the event, I would say that, out of every ten readers who contacted me asking for their handwriting to be analyzed, probably 80%, on finding out that they might have to pay, shied away and were never heard from again. Because they didn’t understand the value of what they were getting and, as I said, assumed it was a parlor trick, they couldn’t bring themselves to pay for it. That was a huge surprise. However, it turned out to be the perfect filtering system, because otherwise I’d have been overwhelmed. (I average two a day, that’s all). Meanwhile, the remaining 20% continued happily on and were effusive in their praise of the analysis when they read it. I was blown away by their comments.

“I just wanted to let you know that your analysis was astoundingly accurate and enlightening. Even my family and closest friends would not have been able to articulate the entirety of what you did — especially with such a degree of detail and nuance. I have already found it quite helpful and I’m very grateful for your gift.” K.C.

“This analysis was amazingly spot on.  There is so much there. Reading it felt like I was getting a good, deep look at myself.” C.L.

“Thank you, thank you. I have some new intentions to set, some freedoms to focus on, each moment of the rest of my life to enjoy. You have a beautiful gift. I hope one of these days I run into you in person and I can give you a big hug.” M.M.  

“The first words out of my mouth were, “Oh my God, wow!” You are an amazing man, Cash Peters!! I am astounded at how well you know me…..you pretty much got me pegged.” K.K.  

Isn’t that something? It takes my breath away sometimes, the reaction. This thing appears to be a really big deal. It moves people. It uplifts them. Many times it gives them a renewed sense of direction. I was taken by surprise at how much, actually. Therefore for the month of July 2011, I put my life and the book I’m writing on hold and enjoyed an incredibly happy and stimulating experience.

So far so brilliant.

But then things started to get weird.

The world, I now realize, is filled mostly with wonderful, upstanding, generous-hearted people who operate only with love, compassion, and the right intentions. I enjoy doing their handwritings and always will. Then there are a handful of kooks and opportunists who are out to game the system and take you for all they can, often for no reason other than that it fills their time and gives them a sense of superiority.

• The first sign was when I heard from a dark-hearted cheapskate in Florida, who wrote claiming she was unable to view the page on my website, the one with the instructions and the fee on it. But she submitted her handwriting anyway, hoping to have it done for nothing. And you know what? I did it. That’s how I know she was a dark-hearted cheapskate. Like a fool, I jotted down some quick notes and sent them back.
• Then there was the actress who tweeted me to say that she’d LOVE to have her handwriting done, and I told her I’d be honored. However, since she was a celebrity, she clearly expected it to be done for free – no questions asked. Well, okay…. but you know what? I did have a question, as a matter of fact: are you out of your mind??? I simply directed her to the information page on my website, and, needless to say, she never supplied her handwriting.
• A single dad in Canada contacted me, claiming he had three starving kids and no money. But he was prepared to make a huge sacrifice, he said, and pay the submission fee anyway. And even though his writing revealed that he was pretty well off and most likely what he said wasn’t true, I decided to take him at his word. I gave him a full analysis for a third of the price, and refunded the rest. Afterwards, there wasn’t even an acknowledgement. Not a ‘thank you’. Not a peep.
• The actress contacted me, not about her handwriting, but asking for a copy of my new health and healing book. This time I relented and sent her one, thinking she might effuse about it to her vast army of followers. She didn’t. If I had it on elastic, I’d yank it out of her hands and back into mine, but it never occurred to me to do that.

In just three weeks, a fun project had taken a nosedive into craziness.

There were even, I suspect, a couple of graphologists who wrote in, testing me to find out how good this ‘gift’ could possibly be; or to see if they could smell snake-oil, as if I was some kind of conman out to fool everyone with my brilliant scam. A scam that, to work effectively, would require that I forfeit almost entirely my leisure time AND work time in order to sit at a computer for hours and hours and hours, staring at a piece of handwriting, trying to figure out what it meant – and all for what it cost back then, a measly ninety bucks!!! I’d rather sell boxes of oranges on a street-corner, quite honestly. At least I’d be out in the open.

Of course, it’s not a scam. The majority of people wrote back afterwards telling me how ‘spot on’ the analysis was – something I take no credit for, incidentally; I’m merely the messenger. While those I assumed to be graphologists never contacted me again. Most likely they were too busy staring at what I’d written, fuming, “Damn, he’s better than us!”

But all of that aside, it’s been amazing. Around 95% highly enjoyable, I’d say.

So enjoyable actually that I wound up putting both July, August, AND September on hold while I tackled the countless handwritings pouring into my fax machine.  Sure, it got a little messy and strange in places, but for the legitimate inquirers, the ones who entered into the true spirit of the experiment, I think we managed to generate some amazing results and maybe even change a few lives along the way. I mean, come on – what better way to spend the summer really?

“I want to thank you for opening my mind, my heart, and my whole being. It is extraordinary that you knew the whole me better than I ever knew myself. There is no dollar amount that can measure the value of what you have given me. I am truly grateful.”  K.B.

TV Swami – he worn out. A tad confused too, but very happy and satisfied.    

a little book about believing

I want to introduce you to my new book. These past few weeks it’s been gaining a lot of media attention and a huge response from the public. I am so incredibly grateful to all those who have written to me saying how much they love it and what a help it has been in their lives. I’ve been quite moved by the reaction.

So if I may, I’d like to give you some background to what happened, because it’s a lesson to all of us about the importance of having faith and remaining true to your vision, regardless of what anyone else says.

A Quick Turning-Dreams-into-Reality Masterclass

Years ago, while I was filming my TV show, I met an amazing guy who was worth many millions of dollars, all self-made. By trade he was a tiler. In the early days of his marriage he lived a modest life with his new bride, paying his way by tiling bathroom and kitchen walls and floors every day. That was the extent of his world. And back then, don’t forget, tiling was a grueling business, not the breeze it is today. Every tile had to be aligned painstakingly with the ones either side of it. Miss, even by a millimeter, and the whole thing would be left crooked. Which is why so many tiled floors or walls from around then had some flaw in ‘em that didn’t look right, remember?

Then this guy – let’s call him Mike – had a brilliant, brilliant but incredibly simple idea. How about if he made little splints that could be inserted between the tiles as he was laying them, ensuring that each one would be equidistant from its neighbor? Blindingly obvious, right? Yet, incredibly, nobody had thought of this before.

So, super-excited, he went to his wife, who by this time was heavily pregnant, and told her not to get too comfortable. “I have big news!” He was going to sell their house to raise funds to start a business, manufacturing tile spacers. Well, naturally the poor dear freaked out. She was numbed with anxiety, she told me, and thought he was nuts. And his friends thought the same. But Mike persisted, sold the family home, and launched his spacer company.

And guess what, they were a hit. Not only in the U.S. either, but all over the world, as you can imagine, as tilers everywhere rushed to buy this little widget that would make their job a thousand times easier. And each time a store sold a set anywhere across the globe, Mike got a cut of the profits. So much so that, by the time I met him, the money was pouring in so fast and in such volume that he’d already run out of ways to spend it. He had everything he and his now-thoroughly-convinced-he-was-a-genius wife could dream of. Yet still the money kept coming.

So what secret did Mike know that most people don’t?

Two things: 1) He had faith. Not religious faith, but a simple, unerring belief in the voice of his intuition, telling him to support his idea, overcome his doubts, go for broke, tear down the barricades of opposition, and persist. Never give up, in other words. ‘Faith’, someone once said, ‘is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation.’ Clear away the white noise and clutter that’s blocking the signal emanating from your soul, and let that signal guide you to your goal.

And the second thing he had: 2) was fortitude. Stickability. The drive and determination to follow his idea through from conception to birth.

Anyway, the only reason I mention this is because I went through exactly the same scenario last year. I’d given up three years of my life to write a book that my agent and my editor  were opposed to. It was quite a daunting time.

The Opposition

a little book about believing is not a religious book, but a fascinating and inspiring work about spirituality and nutrition. It’s like THE SECRET, only this time about health and healing, and could be the thing that saves your life.

Basically, I joined a group of 24 people on a life-saving trip to spend time with faith healer John of God. The results were mind-blowing. Miracles happened while we were there. Discoveries were made that were truly extraordinary. We saw things and felt things that we’d never experienced before. The biggest discovery of all related to healing. Doctors can take it so far, we found, but in the end only you can do what’s necessary to save your life. Faith healers like John of God may help too, but the individual must play his or her part, by making changes. As it says on the jacket, there’s only one savior, and it’s YOU.

In a world where, statistically, one in two people – that’s 50% of us – will likely be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives, and where we see our friends, loved ones, and workmates dying around us, this book is one of the most reassuring pick-me-ups you could ever find, especially as a gift for someone who has been misled into believing that cancer is an automatic death sentence. An oncologist friend of mine told me a few months ago, “The biggest obstacle to my patients getting well is their belief that they’re not going to.” Believing is everything.

Well, forgive me, but I thought this would make a terrific book and potentially help millions of people. My agent, though, was adamant – nobody would be interested. And I was crushed.

For about a minute.

Never down for long, I decided to change agents. Approached a guy I knew who worked for a big New York agency. He loved my previous work, and, sure enough, he loved this too. Adored it actually, and said so. “I couldn’t put it down,” he gushed in an email. Which, to be honest, is what everyone says. “It kept me awake at nights thinking about it.” Which is also what everyone says. So clearly he’d want to represent it, right? Wrong!  Too dangerous. “If I represent this, I’ll be in trouble. I come from a family of doctors. They’ll never forgive me.”

Unbelievable. I could not get this simple little joy-filled book through the system. A book that would not only entertain people and make them think, but might actually save their lives.

On the other hand, something I did realize: he didn’t really mean it was dangerous, did he? He meant it was new and different, and he was scared of it. That’s been true of many wonderful books in the past. Everything from Harry Potter to Chicken Soup for the Soul, they’ve all met with resistance at the start. Obstacles are part of the game.

It was then that it struck me.

What I was facing here was not opposition, was it? It was series of sobering encounters with reality, to help me clarify my intention and galvanize my resolve. That’s all adversity is. It clarifies and galvanizes. Only when you’re faced with obstacles and setbacks do you find out what you’re made of. Did I believe in my wonderful little book enough to keep going with it through thick and thin until it made it to the stores? That was the question.

YES! –  was the answer. Because, although I may lack certain qualities in other areas – God only knows! – I do have one quality which has got me through many a tight scrape in my life, and that’s fortitude. Otherwise called follow-through. Or persistence.

In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, I “…never, never, never, never give up.”

The Pay-Off

And sure enough, my fortitude paid off. The book is now a glorious, wonderful paperback. The kind of paperback I want to stroke and hug and flick through countless times, even though I know every word in it. Because I also know the amount of persistence it took to fend off the naysayers and get it to this point. If I built it, they would come, I was convinced of it.

And you know what? They did come. They came in impressive numbers, gushing praise, proving the naysayers wrong.

“Started reading the book last night at elevenish,” someone wrote on Twitter last week. “Read til 4am, passed out. Finished it today less than an hour ago. I have you and your exquisite little book to thank for changing my life forever, intimately and positively.”

I almost fainted.

“Your book is important, incredibly well written, and totally compelling,” someone else wrote.

And today I found another comment on Facebook: “Wonderful, surprising, challenging, eye-opening, sensitive, touching….I’m running out of words. Just get it and read it. You will discover things about yourself, and about everything else! It’s life changing!!”

On page 18 of a little book about believing, it says the following:

“In this book we are crossing a bridge into the unknown, ready to challenge some of our holiest preconceptions about health and healing. In my view that’s a good thing. The mere fact that we’re discussing this topic at all will bring us to a place of new understanding. A place where hopefully someday we, the ordinary people, may not be such easy prey for serious illness and can instead choose to be its master, or even avoid it altogether.

“It’s an exciting journey, one that requires a flexible mind, a willing heart, and a readiness to release ingrained attitudes.”

Releasing ingrained attitudes is what the book industry needs to do too, by the sound of it. If they can turn their back on my ‘little book that could’, what other gems are they not publishing either? If you too have aspirations to write a book – or do anything else, frankly – and you believe in it enough and feel like the idea came from your very soul, then maybe all you need is to summon the necessary amount of faith and fortitude, keep your head held high, and never, never, never, never give up ’til you push on past the finish line. Fortitude and faith made a simple tiler a multi-millionaire and bought an ordinary engineer a yacht. What could they do for you?

a little book about believing: The Transformative Healing Power of Faith, Love, and Surrender (Penner Press).

Read an article on Patheos.com written by Cash about the book and the power of prayer to help heal the body. 

Doctor Who: past its prime or out of time?

Tragic news, I’m afraid. Something terrible has happened to one of my favorite shows of all time. I don’t quite know how or where to start in describing the enormity of the problem. So why don’t we just throw ourselves into it and hope for the best?

Years ago, I worked as a freelance reporter on a BBC news show in Greater London called Newsroom South East. It was a pretty gruesome, routine job, but with one brilliant and major perk: I was given a full studio security pass, allowing me round-the-clock access to Television Center, the BBC’s large doughnut-shaped HQ in Shepherd’s Bush.

So  far, not terribly interesting. But hang on, there’s more.

Also broadcast from Television Center at that time was one of the best, most seminal drama series ever, and I mean EVER: Doctor Who. If you’ve never seen it, then I’m afraid there’s a large void in your life that nothing else will ever be able to fill.

Doctor Who at a glance

The fundamentals are so ultra-simple that even a child could understand them. Which is good, because it is, after all, a kids’ show, as well as being a show for the kid in all of us.

The nutshell version: it’s about a very old but extremely brilliant and eccentric man from another planet. He’s a Time Lord, the last of his race, who freewheels through time and space, sometimes alone, but usually with companions he picks up in transit. These companions are integral. They give him someone to say his lines to, for a start, rather than just thinking them to himself. Also, they’re there to: a) scream when they’re scared or captured, and b) ask dumb questions as they go along that will help explain to the viewer at home what’s happening.

Assistant: “Doctor, what does this button do?”

Doctor: “That? Oh, it makes the balloon matrix defigrigater drive inflate. Whatever you do, don’t touch it.”

But of course they do touch it. Sometimes twice. And the consequences are generally dire, prompting an invasion of this cosmos by creatures from entirely different cosmos, followed by hours of fighting and plotting to wrest planet Earth back from their grip.

It’s all extremely basic. You’d soon get the hang.

Oh, and one other thing you need to know: transport-wise, the Doctor scoots around the universe in a stolen and very temperamental vehicle called the TARDIS, an obsolete Type 40 TT capsule that, according to the instructions, was built to blend automatically into its surroundings, whether it be Pompeii in 79AD or the base camp of an expedition heading to the frozen wastes of Antarctica (see picture right; utterly inconspicuous). A nice idea, the program-makers found, but costly. So, rather than go to the trouble of thinking up new ways to disguise the TARDIS each time it landed in a new place, with all the resources that would mop up, the early producers hit on a shrewd solution: they told viewers, “The TARDIS’s ‘chameleon circuit’ has broken down. Now run along and don’t ask any more questions.” This meant that it would have to stay forever in the shape of a blue 1960s British police box, the kind that bobbies patrolling the streets would make emergency calls from (or sit inside and sleep). In fact, since 2002 the BBC has owned the design patent to the police box so that they can cash in on it with merchandising.

Along the way, the producers devised explanations to many other similarly vexing questions too.

Such as: “But wait, how can one guy, two companions, and a whole bunch of machinery fit inside a single small police box?” Answer: the box was bigger on the inside than the outside. “Ahhhhh, of course, I see. Thanks.” And “How come the interior of the TARDIS looks so different now to when the show started?” Answer: Easy, the TARDIS can reconfigure itself and basically do its own makeover more or less whenever it wants to. “Ahh, yes, sure. That makes perfect sense. Nothing to quibble with there.”

As for the more troublesome issue: “Surely, don’t alien civilizations speak different languages to us? How would anyone communicate?” they gave the TARDIS a fully-functioning inter-species translation capability. You speak – everyone else gets what you’re saying, anywhere within a fifty mile radius of the box. The Translation Matrix, as it’s called, also interprets the written word. Phew, what luck, eh?

You can even open the doors in deep space and still breathe – the TARDIS takes care of the whole oxygen thing too. Oh, and just in case, it’s indestructible. All in all, they had the whole space-travel thing pretty much sewn up.

In other words, no matter what the writers or producers sought to do in a story, however ridiculous and far removed from the original plan, TARDIS folklore would simply be amended to absorb it.

Anyway, at the start of each adventure, the TARDIS dematerializes in a new place in history or the future, or, very occasionally, if the budget’s running low, present day Cardiff, which is where the show is produced. At one time, the traveling aspect was considered thunderously amazing. The Doctor and his companions would pile out of the door and be awestruck. “Wow, look at this – we’re on a new planet.” Or: “Wow, Doctor, is this really Atlantis?” But not any more. Awe’s for old people. Nobody does awe convincingly any more.

For instance, the other week, they arrived at a 13th Century island castle, which, if this were real life, would be considered pretty cool and awe-inspiring and certainly worth a photo, yet the only comment was a glib, “Oh, we’re going all medieval, are we?” And off they went. They may as well have been visiting Tesco’s.

Monsters are also integral to the show. In the early years, this would amount to a bunch of men dressed up in giant ant costumes (named Zarbi, which is an abbreviated anagram of ‘bizarre’) or low-paid extras rolling around the studio floor in large wooden crates called Daleks. Later on, with advances in TV technology, the costumes became more sophisticated and the crates a little more streamlined. In the end, though, nobody was fooled. It was still just actors in outfits. Nothing has changed on that score.

Anyway, the joy of Doctor Who adventures – which, I grant you, isn’t immediately obvious from the above description – is the endless permutations on a theme that the idea allows. No adventure, no place, no time in history or in the future is ever off-limits – unless it would cost a lot of money to reproduce on TV, in which case he simply doesn’t go there. There’s plenty of genuine playfulness and affection thrown in too. Above all, despite the let’s-pretend world the producers created, it’s always had an edge of plausibility to it that kept us engaged, scared when necessary, and fond of the characters.

So there you have it. That’s Doctor Who. It’s also the essence of the current problem they have with the show.

What makes Doctor Who more important than, say, the science fiction you like?

Created by a Canadian, Sydney Newman, the show launched in quaint old black and white in 1963. Forty-eight years later, it’s still going.

I was there for the first episode, just as I’ve been there for every episode since, as well as two blindingly fluorescent and largely terrible spin-off movies starring Peter Cushing, which got most of the mythology wrong, and a lesser TV movie that blew a hole in the franchise so big that it almost saw it off for good.

Sarah-Jane is the one on the right.

Over the years, I have witnessed the Doctor regenerate multiple times (which, ingeniously, happens whenever the actor playing him gets too sick or very bored, or doesn’t gel with the public and ratings start to tail off, and he needs to be replaced.) I’ve also bought into the lives of countless of his young traveling companions along the way, many of whom, when I was in my youth, made up for the friends I didn’t have in real life. The best by far was Sarah-Jane Smith in the 1970s.

I was a lonely, bullied, isolated child back then, someone who took refuge in TV as a means of escaping real world rejection and terror, and I remember vividly how the news that Elizabeth Sladen, who played Sarah-Jane, was quitting the show in 1976, affected me. It shook my faith in grown-ups at a profound molecular level. So much so that I had serious abandonment issues for a long while afterwards. And I’m not kidding about this. Even my mother’s death didn’t affect me a fraction as much as Sarah-Jane’s departure from the show. To a kid’s eyes, it was a tragedy. I felt like an orphan. Though even then, even as this strange relationship was playing out, I wasn’t unaware of how odd it was for a child to have such a level of commitment to something he absolutely knew was fake and just a drama. Didn’t matter. It became the sole focus of my week and my life. Everything I did seemed to be just filling in time while I waited for the next Doctor Who to come around.

As I said, the show originally aired in black and white, and stayed that way for years before finally upgrading. When it did, we unfortunately still had a black and white set at home, which was no use at all. So each week on a Saturday afternoon, this peculiarly distant kid would take the bus into Stockport town center to visit a store called Nield and Hardy, because they sold TVs there. And for half an hour he would stand, with shoppers and assistants staring at him wondering if someone should notify the authorities, intently watching Doctor Who play out on a new technology being touted as a sensational alternative to monochrome and the Next Big Thing: color.

Such was my attachment to, passion for, and love of, this amazing show.

Years later, the lonely, isolated kid, who’d by now grown up to become a lonely, isolated adult, moved from the north of England to London, where he figured he wouldn’t get beaten up so much, and where, by some miracle, he was given free access along with his job to the legendary home of Doctor Who - BBC Television Center. It was the most wonderful opportunity. Not only that, but I happened to live a few streets away (coincidentally, with a woman who’d actually worked as a production assistant on several episodes). From then on, I would go along on Sunday afternoons to the BBC, flash my pass at the security guard, but instead of going to the news department offices – which would have been a pointless mission, since news in those days only happened Monday to Friday, never at weekends – I took the lift downstairs to the Props Department, where the real TARDIS, the one used in the show, was kept….and I would play in it.

I’m not embarrassed to say this either. Many Sundays over many months, I played in the TARDIS.

I was 34 years old. (Okay, this bit is embarrassing. And quite sad.)

There was even a trip to Pinewood Studios arranged once, I remember, which is where the Peter Cushing movies were filmed. So of course their props department had a TARDIS too. And I played quite happily in that as well for maybe an hour or more, only to discover that, the very next day, the police box was taken out and burnt, as a way to reduce the number of unwanted props at the studio.

These days, I like to think I’m a lot more balanced and nowhere near as lonely or distant as I was then. But it was touch and go for a while. Obviously, though, when one has invested this much emotional and mental energy into something, one develops a somewhat proprietorial interest in its welfare. As a lifelong fan, you want those who have guardianship of it to understand what precious cargo is under their control and to show a high degree of care for it. You want them to respect it and love it the way you do. And you’re constantly on the alert for when they’re about to screw it up.

That’s why I’m writing this. I’m doing it as a long-term fan. A fan who sees Doctor Who heading down the wrong road, and doesn’t like it one bit. Not one bit, d’you hear?

How Doctor Who got hijacked by misguided people

Another great advantage of hanging out at BBC Television Center in the 80s was that you got to be within arm’s reach of so many famous and influential types. On the side, I’d been writing material for another great TV show - The Two Ronnies. But this was just one amazing series out of many. Virtually every big household favorite came from TV Center.

I recall once cornering a woman called Biddy Baxter, considered a legend in British television for creating and running the kids’ magazine show Blue Peter. Having grabbed her attention, I proceeded to tell her in mind-numbing detail how I thought Doctor Who had lost its way and was becoming a disaster and an embarrassment.

“Oh really? Why?” she asked. “What’s happened to it?”

Quite honestly, I was shocked that someone so eminent would give over a couple of hours of her busy day to hear me explain. But that was how people were back then – they listened. Took in all different viewpoints and embraced them.

At the time, the show was being produced by John Nathan-Turner, who, I told her, was single-handedly wrecking it by making one cretinous decision after another. For a start, he brought in the insufferable red-headed all-singing, all-screaming Bonnie Langford to be the Doctor’s assistant – a calamitous selection. He’d also decided at one point to get rid of the police box idea and let the TARDIS be another shape, shattering one of its most iconic characteristics. Plus, his choice of actors to play Doctors #6 and #7 was appallingly miscalculated, I felt. Number 6 was Colin Baker (who was distinctly unlikable in the role). Then, after he left, came Number 7, a Scottish comedian and mime artist called Sylvester McCoy (real name: Percy Kent-Smith), who, for reasons known only to himself, played the Doctor as a clown. Then, when that didn’t work, as a sinister bizarro man with evil intent, which didn’t work either.

Within a matter of years,  it had become campy, ridiculous, cheap, and pointless. So it was hardly surprising, perhaps, that ratings fell into an abyss, as the show repeatedly missed its mark and went way off the rails. In the end, the unthinkable happened. The BBC cancelled it.

“They are completely missing the point of what the show is about,” I complained to Biddy, who made like she was genuinely interested, even though she must have been bored out of her mind.

“And what is it about?” she asked. 

“It’s about finding a secure place in a difficult, dangerous world. It’s about being in awe of the universe and adventurous in the exploration of it, but always having a safe spot you can run to when things get too dangerous. A spot where nobody can touch you, where you are in control. The TARDIS is a surrogate, albeit temperamental parent. That’s what it means to kids. The producer doesn’t understand that.”

Biddy, who no doubt realized that these were my own personal issues, not John Nathan-Turner’s, nevertheless assured me that what I was saying was valid and important. “I will tell him immediately,” she said. “Thank you for letting me know.”

And she hurried away. Possibly to alert Security.

Let’s fast-forward now to the present day. If you have a time machine, go ahead and use it. The rest of us will resort to a heading in bold letters.

How Doctor Who then got hijacked by smart people

In 2005, Doctor Who was rebooted under Russell T. Davies as a much darker, more troubling show. He took the whole thing very seriously, giving it a breadth, depth, and overall scope that made anything that had gone before seem as light and fluffy as lint from a tumbledryer. His best decision of all was to hire a young actor called David Tennant to take the lead.

Up to then, the title of Best Doctor Ever had gone to the 4th incarnation, Tom Baker, who was a mind-blowing iconoclast in the role. But Tennant was different. He raised the bar a hundredfold by making the alien Time Lord more human than ever, blowing previous perceptions and expectations out of the water, bringing to the show a pathos and soul that could have you laughing one minute and weeping the next.

A trust developed. There was a sadness and vulnerability to this character that we all identified with. Up until then I’d cared very much about the show. But when Tennant took over, I noticed that I started caring about him. He brought resonance and humanity and meaning to this hitherto crazy character that somehow went way beyond what it required. He grounded the Time Lord in verifiable feelings. His needs became our imperatives. The Doctor was a sad, distant, haunted, lonely man, we discovered – ah! – someone who couldn’t be happy for long. In playing with our emotions in such a broad, complicated way, this guy turned a show I’d loved as a kid, but which had become increasingly trivial and superficial, into something of importance, something of depth; something fascinating and gripping that was worth watching again.

Then Tennant left before he could become typecast, which was bad news. And I, like many others, experienced a real sense of loss all over again.

His departure episode was a little overplayed, I thought, but still managed to move me as much as any modern dramatic piece ever had. I didn’t want him to go, same way I didn’t want Sarah-Jane Smith to go in my teens. Though a middle-aged man by this time, I felt a pang of the same abandonment issues.

With David Tennant leaving, Russell T. Davies went too, and this was the really bad news. He’d shot his bolt, taken it as far as he could, he figured, so he handed over stewardship to Steven Moffat, a clever man who you’d think would be a natural choice, given that he wrote possibly the best Doctor Who episode ever, called ‘Blink’ (which, bizarrely, hardly featured the Doctor at all). However, he also wrote what was, to my mind, one of the very worst sitcoms ever, Coupling, which I thought was horribly unfunny and lame in ways that mere words cannot explain (unless you use unfunny and lame) and whose U.S. adaptation tanked after four episodes. This was not a good sign.

At the same time, David Tennant’s successor was named as 26-year old Matt Smith, a man deemed by many to be way too young and lacking the wisdom of a guy who is supposed to have lived many lifetimes. Indeed, at the time that I was ruining an afternoon of Biddy Baxter’s life by regaling her with my abandonment theories, Smith was five years old. And Karen Gillan, his current assistant, was barely a foetus.

By the way, those last few sentences contain all you need to know about what’s going wrong with Doctor Who currently.

David Tennant was the Doctor, bringing a complicated span of layers to the part, whereas Matt Smith is merely playing him, I feel. Not only that, but he’s playing him as a manic, ADD-afflicted, wisecracking for no reason, run-around-saying-things-faster-than-the-audience-can-catch them kind of uppity schoolboy. He’s taken the natural smarts of the character and his other-worldly eccentricity, and made them virtually all there is, top and bottom. Plus, the TARDIS is no longer a safe harbor and place of refuge, it’s become a traveling spa, one that has a swimming pool and which keeps breaking down and exploding or catching fire. To my mind, the producers have blown any mystique the show might have had right out of the water.

As a result, almost everything about this eleventh regeneration of the Doctor is silly and soulless. He lacks sufficient range and believability. I can’t tell you how many people have written to me saying the same thing – and that they’ve lost interest and quit watching.

On the face of it, Smith the person, when he appears on talk shows at least, seems to be fun, lively, if a tad adolescent. Maybe he’s not and I’m misjudging him. Maybe he’s more than that in real life and bursting with a depth that transcends his years. If so, may I suggest that he bring some of his real self to Smith the Doctor? I have no doubt whatsoever that he’s doing his very best, but it’s not working at a deep enough level to connect with me and, I suspect, many others. Good acting is an internal process. Just because a guy wears a serious face, for instance, that doesn’t mean he’s feeling anything. When a good actor is really feeling it, then I feel it too. A connection is made. How can that happen, however, when the whole thing is a jape, a series of sight gags, a droll excursion into absurdity?

If the show doesn’t take the emotional side of things very seriously, why should we? The peril the Doctor and his companions find themselves in seems wholly unreal, unmoving. There’s implausibility at every turn, which distances us still further. You find yourself shouting at the TV, “Oh, come on, that would never happen!” Even though you know that none of this would ever happen anyway, because it’s utter fiction. That aside, I’ve reached a point where I honestly don’t care if these people survive or not. I’m not involved in their lives. They’re just actors playing characters.

Example: a couple of weeks ago, the Doctor got shot. This, we were told, was a living premonition, advance warning of what really happens to him in 200 years’ time. Normally, that would be a tragedy. Yet when I saw him fall to the ground and just lie there, my only thought was “Good. Now maybe he’ll be replaced with somebody better.” And of course in a more recent episode there were two identical Doctors running around – a plot device perhaps engineered so that the duplicate could show up later in the story cycle and get shot, thereby saving the other one, or something along those lines. Shame really, because I was actually looking forward to a new guy coming in and making this show great again.

Speaking of which, on to Steven Moffat.

A Separate Heading

People constantly refer to Moffat as a genius. Deservedly so, I’d say. His ideas are clever, convoluted, and technically brilliant, and his past scripts have been extraordinary. For that he deserves his weight in accolades and thanks. But what use cleverness and brilliance and accolades and thanks, I say, if your show has no soul and has become a smug, bloated, overcomplicated, ludicrous farce?

Here are some reviews I read recently:

“Noisy, repetitive and obnoxious. The… sensory overload is somehow blindingly dull. The barrage of onscreen overstimulation will keep kids glued to their seats, but won’t make them care about or cherish the characters.” (The Diva Review)

“The action grows wearisome as it grinds on, and…becomes a succession of dazzling set pieces devoid of simple feelings.” Wall Street Journal.

No, wait! Those are reviews of The Adventures of Tintin.

And guess who wrote that.

Steven Moffat.

There was another review I saw, this time in The Guardian newspaper, in which journalist Nicholas Lezard says, “Coming out of the…film, I found myself, for a few seconds, too stunned and sickened to speak; for I had been obliged to watch two hours of literally senseless violence being perpetrated on something I loved dearly. In fact, the sense of violation was so strong that it felt as though I had witnessed a rape. I use this comparison not as a provocation or to cause unnecessary offence: I am using it in honour of a very good joke made by an episode of South Park, in which the cartoon’s children watch the final Indiana Jones film and are so traumatised by what they have seen that they go round to the police station and try to get Spielberg and his colleagues charged with the crime. “What did they do to poor Indy…?’… As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons.”

Now, of course, many hands went into the making of Tintin, it’s not just Moffat, and there’s no telling how much of his original script made it into the finished film, because other writers were brought in later to fine-tune it, so we need to be careful here, and also as fair as we can be to the man. Plus, when I saw the movie I liked it very much. There were some dumb, quippy parts, but generally speaking it was highly engaging. Even so, Lezard’s view about the film applies to how I see Moffat’s version of Doctor Who. I have a sense of violation.

(BTW, there’s a review on Collider.com HERE about the movie, giving it a C, that, were it not about Moffat’s Tintin, could, I suspect, just as easily be trying to describe the flaws in Moffat’s Doctor Who.)

The stories play with our minds now, not our hearts. It’s smart, fast, bright, and trying very, very hard to be engaging. A Rubik’s Cube of intricate components, slickly delivered and not impossible to unravel, obviously, but lacking the incentive to make you want to. The show is cerebral and shallow suddenly, rather than emotional in ways we can relate to, as the human component gets wedged into the tiny gaps between wisecracks. And even when there is emotion, when people cry at a loss or out of fear, it doesn’t touch us. It’s fleeting and contrived. Consequently, I find I’m not involved. Not the way I used to be under Tennant and Davies’ stewardship. Why? Because I don’t care about these latest people. I don’t recognize them as real. They’re quirky caricatures. They mean nothing to me.

Where once the series was packed with mystery and awe and presence and took its time to breathe, the new shows are glib and fanciful, filled with sudden left turns and surprises we can scarcely follow, because there was barely any build-up to them. Oh, Amy’s pregnant suddenly. Sure – right. Ah, River is, out of the blue, Amy’s daughter now, and simultaneously Amy’s best friend from her school days. Of course she is! Whatever you say. But it’s meaningless, don’t you see? Doctor Who in its present incarnation has become a series of long-term plot-points connected by one-liners and “situations.”  For some reason, the producers seem to have it pinned, not as a quality drama that spans generations, but as a science fiction sitcom in space with a few serious bits thrown in. I can’t tell you how depressed that makes me feel.

The issue is simple: in previous incarnations of the character, the stories have always involved exploring planets and historical or future time periods, saving lives, winning battles, outwitting enemies, whereas under Moffat’s charge, the show has become about the Doctor himself. He is the whole focus. Everything boils down to him – his problems, his death, his history, him him him. And that, in my eyes, betrays everything the show’s about.

My partner is American. He discovered Doctor Who during the Tennant years and became hooked. We’d watch it together and he would marvel at the intricacy and the mythology and the sheer inventiveness and craft that went into every episode. Now, too much of what was good has been eaten away. He often walks out during the show, saying, “They’re losing it, aren’t they?”

And he’s right. They’re losing it. And they’re losing me. And I don’t think they see it at all.

Spoilers!

My guess is that, somewhere between seasons, an expert with a graph and a Powerpoint presentation showed up in Moffat’s office and said, “Look, we’ve figured out that if you switch the intended demographic of the show away from older, established fans, and aim it more at kids, adolescents, sci-fi geeks, and the totally undiscerning who’ll watch anything as long as it’s fast and has running and explosions in it, the emotional quality might drop, but we’ll draw bigger numbers. Plus we can then sell it to kids, adolescents, sci-fi geeks, and the totally undiscerning in America too.”

This wouldn’t surprise me in the least. It’s how TV works nowadays a lot of the time. And, sure enough, ratings are rising nicely, though that’s no measure of the quality of a series. Look at how many truly lowest-common-denominator trashy shows are top-rated in America.

“Oh, and while you’re at it,” the expert with the graph must have said, “be a poppet and update the design of the Daleks and the TARDIS, would you? That way we can get the geeks to buy the merchandise all over again.”

I tweeted Steven Moffat recently on a whim, reminding him of the legacy he was carrying and how I thought he was spoiling something wonderful. “Glibness,” I told him, “is a sin in drama.” Alas, he’s no Biddy Baxter; he didn’t want to hear. He tweeted back, snarkily, “Okay, I’ll axe it immediately. Happy now?” Or something like that. I replied, “Don’t axe it, improve it. Take it more seriously”, and was promptly showered in abuse by irate Whovians, as they call themselves: fanboys and girls who are obsessive, like me, but without half the objectivity. They tend to cream themselves over Doctor Who no matter what, to the point where they’ll forgive the most major transgressions. I know that feeling, and it’s tempting to be that way, but it doesn’t help.

The third episode this season, about pirates, was a clunker, filled with moments of jarring implausibility and numerous attempts at jokes, the likes of which I’ve not seen since the Sylvester McCoy years. Quite a few sharks were jumped that night, and Moffat was justifiably pilloried for daring to put out such rubbish.

The fourth episode was penned by comic book writer Neil Gaiman, and was a good deal better, even haunting in some ways. It featured a junkyard of old dismantled TARDISes and the voice and soul of the TARDIS itself that had become locked into the body of a woman. Oddly, though, my partner still walked out. The episode, he complained, was unfocused, manic, and failed to captivate his interest. There was a lot of shouting, a lot of running about, some explosions, a lot of fast talking, and some one-liners that were meant to be funny. But in the end, where was the heart? (Well, okay, there was a bit of heart – but not enough, d’you hear?)

Despite the fact that the companion Rory died (which he does in most episodes), and Amy cried, and so did the Doctor, and therefore it should have been moving – it wasn’t. Tennant would have had me sobbing into a pillow. Matt Smith, the uppity schoolboy, left me cold. He acts the part, but somehow, to me, he doesn’t convey the truth of the role. This is slowly undermining the visceral power of the show to move and inspire and shock, turning it instead into a series of jokes and postures, dancing and Pythonesque prancing, crazy stunts and wrap-around conundrums. Plenty of brain stuff, but very little heart stuff. And it’s the heart stuff that counts. Ask Russell T. Davies. That guy knew a thing or two.

These are not exactly the Sylvester McCoy years all over again. Nothing could be that bad, although someone wrote from the UK to tell me that ratings are plummeting there. Hardly surprising if so. In my view we are in trouble here. The show is now hung up on its own cleverness. A hit in America suddenly, it’s become too big for its reboots. I’ve seen giant billboards on Sunset Boulevard here in Hollywood advertising it, and I can scarcely believe how far it’s come. Yet I fear the extent of its popularity is starting to strangle it, taking the last breath of plausibility from the concept in its efforts to please a specific youth demographic. For the Easter episode in the UK, ratings apparently plunged 1.5 million. That’s staggering, and worrying. It’s like learning that a dear old friend has just received a horrible cancer diagnosis. They may look fine and tell you they feel okay, but on the inside you know they’re slowly dying, one bunch of cells at a time.

That’s how I feel about Doctor Who now. We keep watching, because it’s on and it’s there. Doesn’t mean it’s good or that we haven’t noticed the obvious – that, one bunch of cells at a time, the spirit is dying. It all makes me very sad.

Since this post first appeared, I’ve heard from many annoyed Matt Smith fans, telling me, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Go get a life.” I consider that to be sound advice. Maybe it’s not a matter of whether my favorite show is better or worse, more that I’ve simply outgrown it. It is a kid’s program after all, and I am no longer that lonely, bullied, unhappy, distant child I was when Doctor Who started and my imagination needed somewhere to run to and hide each week. Nowadays, I believe I’m upbeat and well-rounded, and certainly very contented with my life. Maybe that’s why, for the first time, I honestly don’t care what the future holds for the Doctor and his jokey, glib chums.

So tonight I am doing something almost as unthinkable as when the BBC canceled the show in the 1980s – I am canceling it myself. Off the Season Pass list of my TiVo.

Friends, I have an official statement. Please gather round.

I – meaning me – formally declare that I am no longer a fan of this series. Thank you, people who make the show, for providing me with almost five decades of compulsive enjoyment. But it’s time. And I need some space. Like a middle-aged Trekkie finally realizing what a total doofus he must seem, and hanging up his James T. Kirk Starfleet uniform for good, I, after 48 years of love and adoration, have decided that I am all grown-up now and ready once and for all to let go of Doctor Who, as I did with Joe 90, Absolutely Fabulous, Monty Python, the cartoon Tintin, and many others, and not only move on with my life, but actually get one.

With that, then, I’d like to bid you all a very good night.

Okay, TiVo, do your worst.

TV Swami – he say NO to Doctor Who for all kinds of entirely valid reasons.

[UPDATE May 16th 2011]. After a little light toing and froing on a Doctor Who fansite, the gist of which was that they believe the show is the best it’s ever been, while I think it’s technically the best, but emotionally failing us in a big way, Steven Moffat himself pitched in with a snippy, “The ratings, reviews, and audience feedback are all superb. Disagree without me.” Needless to say, I disagree. He’s right, though – I overstepped the mark. We shouldn’t have included him in the tweets. I’ve said my piece. Discussion’s over.

[UPDATE: May 22nd 2011] Here’s something strange. Yesterday, I was flicking through the channels and inadvertently came upon Doctor Who. It was the Rebel Flesh episode. Out of habit more than anything else, I naturally began watching it. After 48 years, it’s a hard commitment to drop, obviously. But you know what? Everything I said in the blog post  applied to this episode too. It was dreadful. So poorly written and so emotionally uninvolving that after 20 minutes I fell asleep – which has NEVER happened before during this show. Furthermore, I have absolutely no interest in going back to find out how things worked out in the remainder of the program. That takes some doing, believe me. Seems I was right – the spell is broken after all.  We’re done, the Doctor and I.

[UPDATE: July 22nd 2011] Private Eye is running articles about chaos behind the scenes at the BBC in Wales where Doctor Who has been produced. According to them, a couple of problem-causing producers were let go in haste. Don’t know if it’s true, but if it is….well, I hate to say I told you so…. Something has gone very, very wrong with the show. It is now a silly, fatuous mess that has shot right off the rails.

[UPDATE: September 5th 2011:]  Over the summer I read some encouraging comments emerging from ComicCon, that Doctor Who might improve. It was going to become darker and more serious as the year went on, went the rumors. Ah, I thought, finally the message is sinking in. So I tuned in to the first episode, Let’s Kill Hitler, hoping it would win me back. Really, really hoping. But –  no. Oh my lordy, was it dreadful!! DREADFUL. The worst one since the dire pirates episode in the Spring, for which the show deservedly got a public drubbing. The story was, again, all over the place. An out-of-control whirligig of plot points and jokes, always trying way too hard, desperate to be clever, seeming not to care whether we followed it or not, and filled with manic shouting and running about and locking Hitler in a cupboard. Rubbish. Mental masturbation. And, I would respectfully contend, little more than the Executive Producer’s New Clothes.

That said, the next episode, Night Terrors, written by Mark Gatiss, was considerably better. Considerably. Not scary enough – story: little kid is frightened by monsters in his cupboard at night. Turns out he’s responsible for turning everyone he’s scared of into big, stiff, giggling dolls) – and of course I had to fast-forward through a lot of the dialogue, because everything’s a quip still – they’ve learned nothing on that score. But overall, it was better. Better and more engrossing, and very reminiscent of classic Doctor Who stories from the past. It had structure, good acting, and thankfully much less of the producer’s heavy-heavy ‘I have an overarching grand plan and here’s a meaningless clue to what it is’ plot-pointing, which is dragging the series to its knees – for me at least.

One of the best things I’ve discovered is that I can watch an hourlong show in about 25 minutes with my thumb on the FF button. So I skip the dross, kangaroo hop over the silly dialogue that infects everything now, and still stay broadly abreast, so that, hopefully, when a better team is put in charge of the series later on, I will be able to rejoin it and not feel as if I’ve missed too much. That’s the plan anyway.

[UPDATE: September 10th 2011]. Having established my particular ground zero last week with Night Terrors, which involved a new way of watching the show – mainly on fast-forward, stopping only for the action and skipping the horrible quippy dialogue, I applied the same technique to this week’s episode: The Girl Who Waited. Only, here’s the thing: I didn’t have to fast-forward at all. It was great. Really. Very enjoyable. They couldn’t help throwing in a few stupid lines of dialogue along the way – seems there’s no expunging those; someone on high must like them – but I found the story gripping, the execution of it fantastic, and once again it reminded me of the Doctor Who of old.

Seems the complaints to Moffat didn’t go unheeded. Not that I was the only one, mind; there must have been tens of thousands. Is it crazy of me to think that maybe my words on Twitter may have struck a chord at just the right moment? How fantastic. Because here it is, suddenly – a far better, more focused program that’s actually watchable for once in the longest time. Good job all round.

(I have amended the above para, BTW, after it was pointed out, quite rightly. that my ego had run away with me. Apparently, I mistakenly gave the impression that, due to my complaints alone, Doctor Who changed course, which is nonsense. (See comment below). But I do think waves of unrest most likely forced them to reconsider the tone as they went along. I hope so. That would be democracy in action then. However the current improvement was arrived at, the shows are better than what went before, for which we are very thankful. We are left hoping that things keep on improving.)

[UPDATE: September 17th 2011] The God Complex. Oh dear. I take it all back. Seems they learned nothing after all.

This episode had its moments. A few. Love the clown on the bed, for instance. And David Walliams’ eye movements. And the claustrophobic corridors. And the The Shining parallels. And the underlying dichotomy of faith and fear battling for supremacy. But otherwise, it lapsed once again from its slow path back to greatness, packed as it was with the usual raft of glib, needless one-liners, spots of drama school acting, and bursts of rapid cutting and weird camera angles, topped off with the ultimate confection: a man-in-a-costume minotaur monster with a papier-mâché head, sort of. Oh, and quick left turn: Amy and Rory departed from the show. Suddenly. Maybe. This, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be worried that the Doctor is about to get shot and up to a certain point wanted to prevent that happening, but now seem to have lost interest, same way we have. At any rate, no mention was made of that.

Anything could happen now. There seem to be no rules any more. It’s like someone went to a neighborhood non sequitur sale and bought everything they had.

On the positive side – and this is huge, so brace yourself, mateys – I saw glimmers here and there of a Matt Smith-style Doctor that I quite like. A-ha! Surprised? I’m serious. Wasn’t much. Looks in the eyes, twists of the head, tantalizing glances and intonation. There’s definitely something. If only the script weren’t plastered wall to wall with quips, I could eventually find myself warming to him, I swear.

Alas, it’s probably too late. The damage is done.

[UPDATE: September 25th 2011]  Closing Time. Words fail me. Except for unwatchable. One of the most excruciatingly horrible episodes ever produced. The sitcom in space continues to nosedive.

[UPDATE: October 1st 2011] The Wedding of River Song. Usual jumble, jammed with improbabilities and conjuring tricks that fooled the eye but left the heart begging for something tangible to go at. There were moments, definite moments, when it came close to redeeming itself. Not enough, though, and not in ways that felt truly satisfactory. The Doctor didn’t die. Why? Because there were two of him, one inside the other.

This was the season finale, and everyone in our house is mightily relieved it’s over. What an unsettling, uneven mishmash experience this has been.

[UPDATE: December 25th 2011] The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe. I was about to coin a word – moffatsturbation, to describe a self-flagellating, full-of-itself pleasure ride whose faux cleverness only pleased the person who wrote it and nobody else. Moreover, I’d read on Twitter that people in the UK were hating this year’s Christmas special. Horrible, they said. Self-indulgent, they said. So, with my thumb on the fast-forward button,  I sat down to watch. And you know what? I actually enjoyed it. I did. Yes, it was needlessly quippy, and yes it had sitcom moments that didn’t sit easily at all. (Moffat never learns). And yes, my partner walked out, disgusted at how stupid it was.

But then, almost like a Christmas miracle, it got better, and I actually began to admire the inventiveness of it. Kid opens Xmas present early, finds that one side of it is in the house, the other side opens up into a magical snowy forest, where people made of wood are desperate for help from acid rain. Sorry, haters, and sorry too to those who expected me to hate it as well, but I thought it was fine. Better than fine, a rather nice way to fill Christmas Day evening.

I quite shocked myself.

In seven days’ time, coinciding with the end of my BBC TV review slot on Radio 5 Live, I will be ceasing to watch TV completely. So there will be no more Doctor Who updates when it returns at the end of 2012. But at least my favorite show ever went out on a favorable note. Thanks  for that, at least.

The ‘Is American Idol Rigged?’ Challenge 2011

Oh, what fun we had last year. D’you remember?

In April 2010 I posted a blog entry explaining how I believed American Idol Season 9 was rigged by the producers to generate great, gripping television, by largely disregarding the votes of the public and just sort of letting through the contestants they thought would sell more records and dumping the ones they didn’t.

This was not random guesswork on my part, by the way. I had a system, and I laid that system down about two months before the finale, charting exactly how I thought the show would go for the remaining nine weeks. And lo, guess what! It followed my predictions more or less to the letter. And when it didn’t, there was a reason it didn’t. Which means that either: a) I’m a genius with a whole ESP thing going on, something we can’t entirely discount, or b) American Idol is rigged.

So, because the prediction game was such a hoot in 2010, and because I started watching the 2011 season tonight for the first time and feel there’s plenty of room for the producers to fix this season too, if that’s their plan, then I thought we’d try the whole thing again. The show’s received a make-over this season – my friends Jill and Scott designed and animated the dazzling new title sequence and logos, and did a fantastic job – plus it’s got new judges, and a new human side to it which has helped maintain ratings. But have the producers, I wonder, retained that one staple that seems to me such an important part of keeping the show on a ratings high? Are they messing with the voting this time?

Well, who can say? But there were hopeful signs of fakery on March 4th.

Example 1: The judges had to select a top 12 to move forward in the competition. Not a hard job. Frankly, it was absolutely obvious from the get-go who the 12 would be.

For instance, the woman with the bucket face that’s all rhomboid shaped, as if it was drawn with an Etch-a-Sketch, and who looks like she’s a singer by night and works on a fork-lift truck assembly line by day, had the voice for stardom certainly, but wasn’t attractive. Not at all. No sane 12 year old would ever post her picture on the inside of his locker. So she had to go. And that kid who looked and spoke like Rambo’s son, but who shocked everyone by singing like Jennifer Tilly in the shower, he was out. And that fool with the hair. Oh, and the sobbing dwarf in the cartoon professor glasses. All of them had to go. They didn’t stand a chance. No star quality. No charisma. That’s just how it is.

Whereas the little dark-eyed Hispanic guy with the lumpy head who, quite simply, is channeling God when he sings – he had to get through, even though he doesn’t connect with the audience much and his accent is so thick you could paddle a canoe with it.

This, I think, was the first sign of the show being rigged. Everyone loved Mr. Paddle. Everyone supported Mr. Paddle. He’s got star quality. So relegating him to the benches for most of the show and making us sit it out to see if the judges made Mr. Paddle a wild card pick was excruciating and blatantly phony, I thought. Of course he was going to go through! If I were a producer on this show, I’d pretend he might not be picked as well. What better way to build tension than a simmering sense of injustice?

Example 2: Towards the end, we came back after the break to find the judges deep in fake discussion. Ryan asked, “So, judges, have you made your final choice?” And Jennifer Lopez said, “No. We need more time.”

Oh yeah, really? But wait, I thought the order was agreed at a production meeting beforehand and given to the judges on a piece of paper to read. Surely they must know their verdict. It’s written right there.

But no. Cue Ryan’s acting, which he’s hopeless at, by the way. “Well, take your time,” he said. “Hey, here’s an idea…” Why not cut to a video of Jennifer Lopez’s new single while we’re waiting? My goodness, but that’s brilliant. And what luck that they had it all cued up, ready to go. Especially since they’d been promoting the thing for days and there were only nine minutes of the program left to show it in.

Example 3: They’re back to their old trick of saying, “America voted and….so-and-so is going home tonight.” Not, as it should be: “So-and-so got the lowest number of votes.” Read literally, that would mean they round up the bottom three contestants, then the producers get to choose which one goes home – which is to say, the one least likely to make them any money. (And there are a LOT of those this year, if not all of them).

The way they gauge this is most likely by the download sales figures on iTunes. The singer with the lowest sales each week leaves. But of course they do – if they’re not going to make any money for Fox, 19, the record company, or whoever else creams off a few cents, send ‘em home. Nobody will want to hear them sing on the American Idol tour anyway.

To read allegations about how Simon Cowell’s Britain’s Got Talent may be rigged, CLICK HERE

[UPDATE March 31st 2011]: On March 24th, Seacrest actually used the phrase, “The lowest number of votes….” for the first time in ages. I can hear the producers now: “For Christ’s sake, Ryan, mention the lowest votes thing this week; they may be onto us…” Yet, here’s what’s strange. The one and only week they mention the lowest number of votes is the week that they save the guy with the lowest number of votes and let him stay in the competition. Hm.

[UPDATE APRIL 10th 2011] Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer, was interviewed by Yahoo recently and he spoke about changing American Idol’s format. “Maybe if we change the rules next season,” he said, “maybe do the same thing we do on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’….so that America votes for the bottom three, and then the judges decide who goes home….I think that will be thought about.” Er…okay, I thought that’s what you already did.

[UPDATE MAY 12th 2011] You don’t have to be particularly eagle-eyed to notice that, once again, it’s not the person with the lowest number of votes who went home, according to Seacrest tonight, but rather Scotty was chosen to go forward to be in the final three, leaving James Durbin alone on the stage. But of course! He’s the least commercial, with his screeching and running around and fireworks, and the one least likely to bring in viewers to the finale in a couple of weeks and music-buying fans to iTunes. He had to go, I should think, simply from a business standpoint.

Anyway, you get the idea.

SO WHO’LL WIN, THEN?

Well, left to me, the finale would be between Scotty and Lauren. Haley’s improved a whole lot, but I still don’t like her as a performer. I’ve tried, but I don’t get her allure. She does give 100%, though, whereas Lauren gives 80% and the rest is a wing and a prayer. If I were one of the producers, I’d be asking – as I’m sure they have asked – who’s going to make us the most money in the long-run? Answer Scotty first, then Lauren. They have built-in audiences. Haley will make an album, then vanish,  and archuleta her way back to oblivion.  

Scotty

Scotty McCreery This guy doesn’t need to win, he has a huge career no matter what. A pipe and slippers guy, and actually quite adorable. With your eyes shut he could be 45 years old.  Alas, he does a weird bendy thing with his neck, which is unsettling. His one-note hillbilly cuteness is wearing a bit thin. He does one style only, but he does it brilliantly. At one point, the producers must have been looking at him, going, “We may need to get rid of this guy soon. He’s becoming a bendy-necked liability.” Next thing you know, he’s stopped bending his neck quite so much and gotten a little bit cuter, putting him on the fast track to this year’s title. One of the most consistently good performers, Scotty’s the contestant who, in a couple of decades time, will probably have a theater in Branson named after him. And possibly a municipal library. He’s been my absolute favorite since the auditions; I tipped him as the winner way back then, and I’m still behind him. I just think he’s goshdarned great.

AND IT’S SCOTTY FOR THE WIN! This is my big told-you-so moment. I backed this guy from the auditions and said he’d won, and he soared home. 

Lauren Alaina  She’s my wild card, because she definitely has star potential. Yes, siree. Plus, the judges love her to bits and want her to win sooooo badly, because they sniff another Carrie Underwood. Lauren’s a bit fat, but hey, look what happened with Jennifer Hudson. Problem is, when Lauren sings she lacks the final 20% of confidence needed to be a star, as if she’s belting out a song, but all the while thinking, “How can they possibly like me?  I’m sixteen and fat.” Some kind of self-worth issue going on here which prevents her going the whole way. It’s frustrating to watch. But there’s great potential there.

[UPDATE MAY 25th 2011] It’s so obvious that the stage has been set for Lauren to win. There hasn’t been a female winner for years, and the whole contest looks engineered to make her a star, with Scotty rolling in, hands in pockets, wearing a tight-fitting suit, a casual second. The judges are clearly backing her big-time. Even the coronation song that Lauren got to sing, the one she’ll release if she wins, was fifty times better than Scotty’s, which is “boring to the max, dude” (that’s how the kids talk nowadays).

But I’ve seen this happen before – the judges push one contestant, and fans of the other contestant, who are feeling aggrieved that their guy is getting left behind, try extra hard to have him crowned. Which is exactly what happened. They backed Lauren, so Scotty fans rushed to the phones and repeat dialed ’til their nails broke. My guess is: Scotty got 121.9 million votes, and Lauren got the dregs. Without a doubt, the best man won.

GONERS:

See how you feel now? Now that the rest of them are off the show. Suddenly, the aura of excitement surrounding them disappears and you find you don’t care any more.

Haley Reinhart She began as someone who performs as though she’s practiced a thousand times in front of a mirror. I believe she’s in the tail end of the competition because occasionally she really belts one out, and gets it right. She gives 100% each time because she’s not fat. So boys think she’s cute, and A.I. needs little boys to watch as well as little screaming girls. But nobody – I repeat nobody – is going to buy her music once this is all over. A Haley-Lauren finale is not impossible, but it would be very, very wrong, and I wouldn’t watch it. Luckily, that’s not gonna be the case. Annoying Haley is GONE. VOTED OFF MAY 19th 2011. Yay! She should have gone weeks ago, as you know, and it’s been a long wait, but here it is. Next week, Lauren and Scotty in the finale, people. I’ve thought all along that Scotty would win. But if he comes 2nd it’d be better for his career.

James Durbin The Tourette’s guy. Personable, with a good voice, but he has a nervous twitch going on. His eyebrows keep giving us a Mexican wave. Though God bless the guy for trying. He’s without doubt the most talented one. Of course, as a heavy metal singer, he’s very screamy, but when he sings a really good song, his voice quality is excellent. He’s the only singer this season whose music I have actually bought, which must tell you something. If he does win – and he may not, because the best one usually doesn’t; that way he doesn’t get tarred with the American Idol brush – he’s destined for a small career, sadly. GONE. VOTED OFF MAY 12th 2011. Am I surprised? A little, but then what about the twitch and the screaming? Are those marketable? What seems great on TV during a singing contest tends not to translate to the real world. Plus, he doesn’t sing about God and Jesus, and Scotty and Lauren do. Middle America loves God and Jesus songs.

Jacob Lusk He gives off emotion like he’s leaking radiation. You can feel him through the TV. That’s star quality right there. Anyone who can touch the audience like that has a healthy career ahead of him whether he wins a dumb singing competition or not. Very strange-shaped body. He’d be more convincing as a woman if he were actually in drag. If this were the 60s he’d be an automatic star. He seems out of place in this century. But I love him. Was top 3 material for a while, but then he kinda lost it.  The outfit he wore on April 27th made him look like a very camp Batman villain. He’s never fully recovered in my eyes. Nor in the American public’s eyes.GONE. VOTED OFF MAY 5th 2011. 

Casey Abrams (The guy who looks like he’s peering out of a toilet seat. Lots of talent and a real original, but I think America could get sick of him eventually. If he doesn’t annoy everyone to hell and back with his backwoods Amish good looks and eccentric behavior, he could make it through to the top 3 or 4, but he’s just plain annoying, so who knows?) The least likely to sell any albums, because his style is too vague and idiosyncratic. Whatever happens, obscurity awaits.  VOTED OFF BY THE PUBLIC 24th MARCH 2011, BUT SAVED BY JUDGES. VOTED OFF AGAIN, FOR THE FINAL TIME April 28th 2011. And not a moment too soon. The most annoying finalist ever. Only his parents loved him, I’m sure. 

Stefano Langone (The tween favorite. So cute you want to stick him in your top pocket. He jerks around when he sings and leaps about the stage like he just sat on a cheese grater and it won’t come out. His edgy, over-the-top mannerisms could kill his chances, frankly. Clearly he’s got control issues and won’t let the real him get through. But he has a wonderfully light voice. If he calms down he could make top 5 or 6. But he’s so full of himself, I do wonder whether anyone over 14 is connecting with him.)  THEY DIDN’T. HE’S GONE. VOTED OFF APRIL 21st 2011.

Paul McDonald (When you’re dealing with this level of horribleness, it’s hard to find the words – though “Aaaaaaaagh!” comes pretty close. This year’s Sanjaya. They always make sure one eccentric goes through. Wretched performer, with a voice like wind wheezing through shutters). Hard to see his clothes for the dazzle of his teeth. The show always has someone that people hate and can’t understand why he’s still on. Usually they’re voted off when they reach the final 7 or 8. Producers may keep him around simply to annoy us. (BINGO! GONE. VOTED OFF APRIL 14th 2011 – from the final 8.) 

Pia Toscano (Excellent voice, but such a cold fish. We know she’s good, and the best of the bunch vocally, but is there any excitement around her? No. Because she lacks showmanship and charisma, which is what makes a star. Of a fairly mediocre bunch, she currently seems the front-runner, but she’s not really. They liken her to Celine Dion. But I liken Celine Dion to the sound of an unoiled gate, so what can you do?) GONE. VOTED OFF April 7th 2011. A-ha!! I told you. Why was everyone so shocked? Good singer, but a real cold fish. Didn’t hold my attention. This week she was like a robot. You need some charisma if you’re going to win this thing, and also to have a career afterwards, and she showed week after week that she had none.

I think I know the real reason she went home, though: she was the clear leader to win, and it was wrecking the competition. So maybe the producers pulled her out of there. Set her loose, they thought, and she can make an album and start cashing in almost immediately. There’s always one shocker who goes home too early: Daughtry was one, Jennifer Hudson another, so this is very much on track.

Thia Megia (Bland, nothing type of singer, but sweet.) Variable chances. Not winner material by any means.  One could overdose on her saccharine charm very quickly. GONE. SENT HOME March 31st 2010, exactly on schedule.

Naima Adedapo (Unpronounceable name, ghastly performer.) Come on, seriously….  GONE. SENT HOME March 31st 2011, exactly on schedule. Am I good at this or what?

Karen Rodriguez (Sings to please her mother, but not an audience. Ghastly facial expressions. Performs like she’s standing in front of a wardrobe mirror with a hairbrush.)  GONE. SENT HOME 17th March 2011.

Ashthon Jones (Too much hair. Diana Ross she ain’t. And a winner she definitely ain’t)  GONE. SENT HOME 10th March 2011

For the record, the epic website Vote for the Worst has Paul McDonald as its pick for the worst this year, so naturally they’re urging people to vote for him so that he reaches the top two.

TV Swami – he watching American Idol with, not one, but two beady eyes.

BTW, if you liked this blog, maybe you’ll enjoy Cash’s latest book, Naked in Dangerous Places, too. I mean, anything’s possible, right?

 

 

Here’s what it looks like on the outside.

 

 

But wait, there’s more! Open it up, and there are pages inside. Loads of them. All hinged together for ease of reading. Irresistible.

Freedom 101: Come, join me in vigorously slapping down the publishing industry.

Today is an occasion in our home. My partner’s new book has just appeared on Amazon. One copy. That’s all. But it’s there, and soon it will be available on the iPad too. Our entire household – me, him, and the cats – is elated.

But it’s way more significant than that. This represents a turning point. Liberation. Rejuvenation.

This is our Egypt.

I hardly need to tell you, the American publishing world is in a time of great transition. We’re entering a literary ice age. Printed books are slowly becoming an outmoded technology. Next week, Borders will announce it’s going into bankruptcy. Our local Borders in Hollywood has a ‘for lease’ sign on the wall, and it’s not even closed yet. Barnes & Noble, once so vibrant, is now a chain of graveyards and shutting down branches.

Many people see this as the last gasp of glory for authors such as myself, before progress sweeps away our livelihood and we’re forced to get real jobs. Within a few years, as the iPad and other tablets rise to consume us, most people will view long-form reading as a drag, an antiquated pastime, and printed books themselves as ridiculously clunky, much like the first cellphones that were the size of housebricks or the first laptop, which actually was so heavy it used to crush your lap and make it hard to walk afterwards.

But this development is really a good thing and authors should rejoice.

Over time, the idea of writers needing publishers to support their work will fade. I’m even setting up a small epublishing company myself this year and putting out my own mystery novel, which is now complete and getting rave reviews from friends, even though they were charged with criticizing it and tearing it to bits, sparing me no mercy. I wanted it to be as good a book as it possibly could be. This way, though, I won’t need to go through the usual laborious process, waiting until 2012 or 2013 to see my work in bookstores (the same bookstores that will by then have closed due to lack of business). Instead, my work can be on readers’ Kindles and iPads by this summer, all cute and pert and lovely and ready to go. I am very excited by this prospect. We all should be.

*

I used to work for a show on public radio called Marketplace. At our office in Los Angeles we had a very long wall lined with bookshelves up to neck height. On these shelves were stacked copies of new books sent to us by lazy PR people at publishing houses in the hope that we’d give them a free plug on the air. We didn’t. And the reason we didn’t was because the books were crap. With rare exceptions, they were poorly written, derivative, boring, badly-thought-through, and exploitative junk. Nobody read them – not us, not even the members of the public they were intended for. At best they were ornamental. Same way they are in bookstores. Eventually, after gathering dust on the shelves for a month, they were thrown into bags and tossed out. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Regularly. Year in, year out.

Frankly, I could stop this blog here. That’s all you need to know.

In that one short paragraph, I’ve explained why the publishing industry in America is gasping for breath, like an old aunt with emphyzema.

Editors were slow to see their own demise. They have continued for years putting out mediocre book after mediocre book, seldom investing in anything good or original. They played safe for fear of losing their jobs, sticking wherever possible to yawn-making celebrity tie-ins, self-help books that made huge promises but which were really just previous self-help books with a different jacket, and shallow, awful novels aimed at dim people who could only take chapters that were four pages long, Beyond that, things were too baffling. In other words, many editors abused their role. They became predatory opportunists rather than creators and instigators, which is what they were meant to be.

Instead of using passion as their baseline, making it a goal to discover and nurture good authors and stick with them from book to book until they attracted a strong following, they became fickle and coquettish, the way debutantes are in costume dramas, putting out any old book that took their fancy. If one author didn’t make it big immediately, the next one might. This same mindless policy was rampant in the music industry for a while too, and look what happened there.

Publishers plowed all their resources into the production of books, but left no budget for marketing them. That is to say, they’d launch a product, then tell nobody at all that it existed. I mean, jeez, what bright spark thought that system up? It’s tantamount to sticking your book in a garbage sack, leaving it by the side of the freeway, and hoping motorists slow down and go, “Hm, I wonder what’s in that bag?” It’s not going to happen.

So the industry is dying. Printed books are heading the way of CDs and newspapers. And it’s their own f’ing fault.

Success right now is a fluke. Without passion as their compass, book editors simply wish upon a star that somebody – anybody – will show an interest in their products; they neither put their weight behind them nor show courage in the convictions of their choices. That is no way to run a business.

I even heard that the marketing team at my publisher once refused to give Oprah a bunch of free books to hand out on her television show as one of her favorite things. They refused to give the Queen of TV 320 measly books. Oh my god. In the Kitty Kelley biography that was out not long ago, Oprah called this “the dumbest move EVER.” And it is. But that’s publishers for you. They have brilliant editors, but often, I think, total morons as publicists and marketing people, and they make one lousy decision after another. Why? Because nothing hangs on it for them. They get paid whether a book sells or not. They’re not personally invested in anything they put out. If they were, it would be an entirely different story.

Another instance: years ago, when my book Gullible’s Travels- which was a really funny book, and went on to win the Benjamin Franklin Award for Humor – came out, the marketing department at Globe Pequot, the publisher, mailed 150 copies to the press. But only in theory. In practice what they did was write their own address on the label. So within days all 150 books came back again. By the time they were sent out a second time, momentum had been lost. It was a tragedy.

With the US version of Naked in Dangerous Placeslast year, another piece of work I’m extremely proud of, about the amazing adventure I had making my TV travel series, the complacency of the PR people charged with promoting it grew to become the stuff of legend. The miniscule effort they did put in was the equivalent of going over to the window, leaning out, shouting, “Hey, everyone – look at us. We’ve published a terrific travel book,” and closing it again before anyone could catch the title. Result: not one radio interview, not one review of note, not one mention in any major magazine or newspaper. Nothing at all.

And you know what? They don’t care. Since Naked came out, the same company has published about fifty thousand more books. Some of them may even be good. And I bet they’re neglecting those as well.

“How the hell do these people still have a job?” I kept asking myself.

Well, actually, they won’t soon. That’s the gratifying part. Due to a gigantic volume of idiocy, greed, and short-sightedness that’s gone on for years, a fine industry is on the ropes, and before they know it, a good many of these apathetic losers will be out of work. When that happens, we mustn’t feel sorry for them. Remember, they slit their own throats.

For too long authors have been writing their books in order to appeal to, not the reading public as you might expect, but editors, trying to second-guess what editors would like, in the hope of pleasing them and getting an advance for their work. That’s the wrong way to go about things. It stifles passion.

Strangely, the editors, for their part, were not interested in quality or uniqueness. They showed interest only in books whose author had an established following. This system existed, again not for the benefit of the reading public, but because marketing people were drop-dead lazy and couldn’t be bothered to publicize their products, beyond sending out a press release or making a couple of phone calls between coffee breaks. This, thankfully, is about to change too. In time, authors will be empowered to take over the process and market directly to their readers, cutting out publishers entirely.

*

And that’s why I’m so proud of my partner. He put his money where his mouth was and produced his own cookbook. A cookbook stuffed, crammed, jammed with fine recipes, each one of which we’ve eaten about two dozen times while he refined, played with, and photographed it (OMG, his cheesecake is the absolute best, and I’m not just saying that!)

The result is called Completely Delicious, and every ounce of the love and patience and caring he put into it is on display. It’s the real deal. I know I’m biased, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and any other professionally-produced cookbook out there.

Now, he’s lucky, of course – he has his own store in Beverly Hills, where he’s currently shifting several copies every day! But even so, what a coup. Here’s a guy who’s never written a book before and he’s beating the system. I hope more authors are inspired to do the same.

Inspired by this, I’m following him into the trenches. I’ve hired an illustrator, who is currently turning out fabulous work for the cover of my novel, and a designer is waiting to put it all together. Expect it to be available this summer.

Seriously, this is the future, people. A bright, shiny, new democracy. Where we, as authors, no longer have to hand our work over to companies that don’t respect it or have passion for it, the way we do, and where we can finally take control of our destiny, make our own decisions, and our own money. Remember, when you publish your own book, ALL the money goes to you, not just the measly 12% royalty the publishers decided to give you. That’s incredible.

So you see why I find this period of change so intensely empowering. I get tingles in my legs just thinking about it, although it may be the onset of diabetes from eating too much cheesecake, I’m not sure. But I’m betting that this is how the people of Egypt are feeling right now, and they haven’t even got a book out!

TV Swami – he get sidetracked today. But he have a point to make and he feel strongly.

Hey, wanna be on a list?

It’s pretty well known by now that the live TV Review slot I do each week on BBC Radio has acquired cult status in Britain. And by cult, I mean that we have 15 listeners. Tops. Seriously, that’s it. Due mainly to the fact that the show is broadcast during the night at a time when anyone who might find it remotely entertaining or interesting is past caring and has dropped off to sleep already.

Surveys suggest that our audience at that hour consists of truck drivers and nurses, and then only because, if they didn’t keep the radio on, they might fall asleep and kill someone. Plus a few students who were too drunk during the day to study and are having to stay up til dawn, cramming facts into their mind like wet socks into an overfilled tumble-dryer.

Then there are a tiny minority who actually enjoy the show and listen for its own sake. Many of these are institutionalized. For them, the sound of me talking on the radio simply helps drown out the voices in their head. Or the dull drone of their cellmate’s snoring.

Anyway, once we reached 15 regular listeners, a golden number, I thought it might be nice to compile a list of their names.

Two reasons.

First, because the day might come when we need a bunch of people to go and do something for us – storm town hall meetings, picket book-signings by celebrities we don’t like, or just to form a touring riverdance company. At times like these, 15 loyal listeners can come in very handy indeed. But also, by finding out who they are, I thought it’d make it easier to round them up and pop them off in the event that they become unruly or threaten to migrate to a different radio network.

So let me publish the list here. That way we’re all on the same page. At some point in the future, badges may be issued to these people, or possibly mugs, I haven’t decided, to commemorate their membership of this prestigious unit. In the meantime, if you’re interested, you can follow our progress on Twitter @cashpeters, and on my Facebook page.

The List of the Loyal runs as follows. Let the record be struck, let the record be respected.

#1 Simon Best

#2 Marc Fearns

#3 Paul Simpson

#4 Alastair Treliving

#5 Dave Shephard

#6 Tony Schumacher

#7 Craig Hirst

#8 Garry Strutt

#9 Samuel E. Robinson

#10 John Burdis

#11 Ethan Rayne

#12 Mark Cunnington

#13 Johnny Phipps

#14 David Harrison

#15 Gerard Thompson

There they are. Those are the 15 long-time listeners that we broadcast to every week. All of them men, for some reason. Maybe women see a certain futility in this exercise that the rest of us don’t. At least it’s now a matter of public record. Indeed, I believe this blog post is considered a legal register of their membership under Finnish law.

15, I know, is not a big number. Actually, by the standards of some lists – the list of people waiting to vote the present government out of office, for example – it’s quite paltry. On the one hand not enough to make an army, but, on the other, certainly more than we need to patrol a neighborhood and prevent looting, or to disrupt a taping of Strictly Come Dancing.

But wait – there’s more.

During the arduous months-long process of compiling The List, other people started asking to be on it too. Well, of course, that’s not possible, and I told them so. On a list of 15 people, there are only 15 places, any fool can see that.

However, the pressure was great and my resolve as weak as a 95 year old arm-wrestler, therefore I’m compiling a second list. A standby list, which is also official under Finnish law, for people who would like someday to be on the main list, and also for anyone who simply enjoys having their name on a list. Those who register for the Standby List are not without responsibilities. They will be expected to sit quietly, possibly for a considerable while, yet be ready at all times to step up and be counted if one of the original 15 should die, collapse from exhaustion after our riverdancing tour of the Pacific Rim, or get eaten by bears. You laugh, but it’s a real danger.

This, then, is the Standby List, as it stands right now.

#16 Victoria Diamond

#17 Ian Merridan

#18 Joy Ritchie

#19 Siobhan Hill

#20 Jonathan Matthewson

#21 David Hadfield

#22 Andy Carr

#23 Tariq Latif

#24 Carol Brown

#25 Sarah Jasmin

#26 Catherine Lister

#27 Bruce McDonald

#28 Ruth Kaye

#29 David W (last name to follow, if we can winkle it out of him)

#30 Mary August

Done.

A good and strong crew, born for greatness, but somehow sidelined to make way for other people who asked to be on The List before they did. Let the record be struck a second time, let the record be respected.

If you wish to be put on The List yourself and enjoy the obvious benefits, then contact me on Twitter @cashpeters, and I’ll make it happen. Please note: we are an equal opportunity group – it just doesn’t seem it.

So what are the benefits of being on The List, then?

Good question, thanks for asking. Well, the benefits are fivefold. Please fetch a pen, you might want to write these down. They are:

1. Exclusivity. That special feeling you get from being involved in something that only everyone who ever applies can be a part of.
2. Camaraderie. It’s a form of social networking, but without the networking part, so you can actually be quite anti-social and aloof if you want to, we don’t care. It’s not all about you, you know!!
3. Belonging. There are very few things you can be sure of any more. The whole of life seems to be in flux. But when you’re on The List, you’re on The List. That’s the end of the matter. Once you have your number, nobody can take that away from you. Unless you misbehave, in which case you’ll be stripped of your status and set upon by other people on The List who’ll thrash you like a Victorian orphan.
4. Order. The List is strictly numerical. What’s more ordered than that?
5. Finally, the really great thing about being on The List, as well as the Standby List, is that you could be mentioned at any time during the BBC broadcast each week, or, just as likely, not. This express lack of commitment on my part only adds to the excitement, I think.

So tell your friends. Spread the word. Get them on The List too. Let this be the kindling that sparks an entire self-combusting movement.

For anyone who, by this late stage, still has no clue what I’m talking about when I mention my BBC slot, you can tune in Tuesdays at 6.35pm (in the US) or Wednesdays at 2.35am (UK time) on BBC Radio Five Live and listen to Cash Peters’ TV review slot on Up All Night. I would, if I were you. How else do you stand a chance of getting on The List?

TV Swami, he proud of his followers and give them 5 magic carpets out of 5.

Hey, world. Come on, let’s be magnificent!

I’m just thinking. It’s the Holidays, right? Time of love and peace, etc etc.

So how about we all quit fighting each other for once, stop with the corruption and the greed, back off from confrontation, oneupmanship, cheating, competing, and lying, and save ourselves the sleepless, sweaty moments at 4am when we just lie there worrying about money, the economy, our jobs, our mortgages, car payments, or tuition fees? In other words, turn our backs on the cold hard mercenary aspects of living, and instead focus on the work of Narayanan Krishnan.

This guy will change your view of life. He exemplifies all that’s great about our species, as well as encapsulating the true spirit of this time of year. I loved his message so much that, once I’d stopped crying, I donated instantly.

“I’m just a human being,” he says with great passion.

“My lord,” I thought when I heard this, “so am I!” I forget that sometimes. We all do.

Hey, so maybe we should do our part. Call one friend or family member and say, “I love you dearly…..[insert name here], but this year I’m opting out of the consumerist hell that is Christmas, which forces me to buy stuff and give it away even though I’d rather not, and doing something magnificent with my money instead.” They’ll understand. In fact, maybe they’ll catch the spirit too and we can start a ripple, a Mexican wave of love and generosity. If that results in fewer sales of Playstations or iPads, I can live with that.

Ooooooh, I get chills just thinking about this. About giving. And I don’t mean a bunch of useless stuff, but rather love, hope, encouragement, acceptance and kindness. Things that matter. The sort of things Christ would have given actually.

Uh-oh. Now I’ve gone and said it.

P.S. Guess what happened. As I said, I was so swept up in this guy’s cause that I donated $50 to it a couple of days ago. Today, I’m in the local health food store and I find a $50 bill sitting in a shopping basket. Karma – so sweet.

TV Swami – he got the Christmas spirit suddenly.