Day: October 6, 2003

I read my London News Review on the tube into work this morning, possibly in the vain hope that the other people in the carriage might think I’m cool and interesting and at the forefront on some new magazine publishing phenomenon. I’m not sure anyone even noticed.

The magazine is excellent, though, and I will definitely be subscribing, although I am slightly disappointed to see that Richard Herring has recycled one of his old Warming Up entries for his column (that is, assuming he actually knows he has a column; maybe the chaps at hanging day were running a bit short of material and just copied it off the web and didn’t tell him).

Still no news on their launch party. It’s gone from happening “in September” to “the second half of October” to “around the launch of issue 1”. If it’s more than 36 days in the future I won’t be too happy…

David Blaine tucking into a big plate of chips

I feel it is utterly in keeping with the mindless banal tedium of the exercise to report that we thought about going to see chubby-faced David Blaine in his little box at the weekend.
But couldn’t be bothered.

Instead, I filled my desire to see magicians doing daft/outrageous/insensitive stunts in an effort to impress by watching fellow ex-Bristolian Derren Brown not shooting himself on “live” TV. Actually, for all the hype, the show was quite entertaining. Brown is certainly an excellent showman. Despite the fact that we all knew that it was probably a trick, and wasn’t actually live anyway, and therefore could not have resulted in his gruesome death and some very messy camera lenses, there was still a genuine tension in the air in our living room when he came to pull the trigger repeatedly with the gun at his temple. Making it look like he had messed the trick up by firing one of the empty cylinders away, then pretending to need time to compose himself before firing one more empty one at his head and then the real bullet away from his head was a particularly inspired move.

Now that chubby Blaine has done the pretend starvation thing (some news feature I saw the other day pointed out that he hasn’t lost much weight at all and suggested they might be switching him for a double in the dead of night – so if you see a shabby, dark-haired, unshaven chap wearing a nappy in the Aberdeen Angus Steakhouse tucking into a plate of chips you’ll know why), I just wonder where this is all going to end.

Seriously, what’s next? David Copperfield parting the Red Sea? Paul Daniels being crucified and then rising from the dead?