My World Book Night experience

World Book Night giveaway‘Excuse me, tonight is World Book Night, when 1 million books are being given away for free around the country…’ 

So began my spiel for giving away my copies of Nigel Slater’s wonderful autobiography Toast, as part of the inaugural World Book Night.  

You would have thought that giving away free copies of a book would be really easy, wouldn’t you? Well, it wasn’t quite as simple as I’d expected.

I went to my nearby Tesco Express/petrol station. Not the most natural of places, but that’s the point. I wanted to give the books away to complete strangers and try and engage with people who wouldn’t necessarily walk into their local Waterstones.   

The reactions I got were very mixed. For some people, the act of being handed a free book resulted in a beatific smile, which naturally made me feel happy.   

Others completely (and studiously) ignored me, while some looked as if I was holding a stick of dynamite when I proffered one of the copies.   

I dispensed 30 copies this afternoon (the remainder have another destination) and it took at least 45 minutes to give them away, which I thought was a long time. You may think differently.  

My 7yo daughter found it hilarious and mildly impressive that I was walking up to complete strangers and talking to them – actually I think her presence made me look less of a weirdo than if I’d been in my own. 

So what were my overall impressions? 
1) Unfortunately people are naturally suspicious of anyone offering to give them something for free. 
2) The DE socio-economic class are far more likely to ignore you and look at a book with distaste. 
3) On the bright side, I got a lot of smiles once I explained what I was doing (and that I wasn’t selling anything)
4) It was great fun and I really think that I’ll have spread the ‘reading’ love to lots of people. 

Congratulations to Canongate’s Jamie Byng and all the other publishers who set this up, all the other 19,999 book givers and everyone who took one of the free books and whose world may be changed in some small way, after reading it.

To find out more about World Book Night, visit their website www.worldbooknight.org

Cast of Dallas – where are they now?

Lots of excitement among those over 35, when it was announced earlier this month that Dallas was going to return to our screens with some of the original cast playing themselves.

Yes, Larry Hagman and Linda Gray are likely to be back as JR and Sue Ellen Ewing, 20 years after it finished its run.

UPDATE (15 June 2012): The shiny, new, updated series of Dallas – complete with returning original cast members, Larry Hagman, Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy – is now being broadcast

UPDATE (16 February 2015): Added extra information to update a variety of the actors’ lives

But given the passage of time, what has happened to the likes of Cliff Barnes, Lucy Ewing and Ray Krebbs? I decided to do a bit of sleuthing and find out what’s happened to the cast of Dallas?
Continue reading “Cast of Dallas – where are they now?”

Why won’t Virgin and Sky Atlantic play ball?

Steve Buscemi in Boardwalk EmpireToday is 3 days before the launch of Sky’s new much-trumpeted US channel, Sky Atlantic.

Kicking off with the widely-lauded Boardwalk Empire, Sky Atlantic will be ‘the’ place in the UK to watch all of HBO’s output, according to the blurb, having done an exclusive deal, pinching the likes of Mad Men from the BBC and Curb Your Enthusiasm from Channel 4.

The good news for the 10m Sky subscribers is that Sky Atlantic won’t be a premium channel, so no additional fees (unlike Sky Sports or Sky Movies).

However, there are another 3.5 million paying TV customers that won’t be quite so impressed (me included) and that’s because they’re Virgin Media customers. And the reason? Because even though Sky Atlantic costs nothing extra on Sky, the two competing organisations (along with BT Vision) have been unable to reach an agreement to show it.

For the past two months, Virgin Media customers have been taunted by endless trailers for Sky Atlantic, because we all know that we won’t be able to watch it. We may have the fastest broadband around, but we won’t be able to watch Boardwalk Empire because Sky hasn’t agreed terms with Virgin.

Messageboards have been awash with speculation about this ever since Sky announced the launch of Atlantic almost a year ago back in 2010, but Virgin’s breakthrough has not been forthcoming.

This isn’t the first time that Virgin and Sky have been at loggerheads. On various occasions, Virgin has refused to show Sky channels, but eventually agreements have been reached.

This, however, looks to be a bridge too far. Virgin has promised continued TV on demand, along with an increase in other services, but for a large number of people who are interested in high-quality TV, this will be scant consolation.

Some people will – as Sky desperately hopes – ditch Virgin, but it’s more likely that a high number will use slightly less legal means to watch some of the programmes, which means that no-one is the winner, least of all Sky, as well as HBO who sold the shows to Sky in the first place.

So come Tuesday night, I won’t be among the millions watching Boardwalk Empire on Sky. However, I do hope I manage to get to watch it somehow. Anyone got it on DVD?