“The Blake's 7 Anti-Cat Device, and Frank”

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Yes, it has got a little ridiculous, but the cat has to be kept out of the basement at the moment until it relearns that it’s not supposed to go to the bathroom on the carpet, so of course we created something that looks like it came out of Series B of Blake’s 7 to keep Helvetica out. You’d be surprised how well it works.

And Frank. So Being Frank was released in the UK this weekend, but in a twist of fate, it’s already out on Amazon Prime Video here in the US. And it’s…well, you know everything that I hold on to about Britain in these times of fascists walking the streets and Brexit? Frank Sidebottom is that. Britain: “it’s crap in a funky skillo type of way.” There’s something about Sievey and Sidebottom that could really only happen in Britain. This absolute lunacy was given free rein on Saturday morning TV, touched so many of our lives and we never really appreciated just how lucky we were to have that craziness touch us until he’d gone.

And Panic On The Streets Of Timperley is better than Panic. Less racist for a sodding start.

It’s silly, I know, but Being Frank is everything I love about my country and everything I miss, even though most of it doesn’t exist any more. A world where a papier-mâché man-child sent you hand-written sheets of A4 via SASE, a world of Little Frank and Little Denise, insanely indulgent sets on Yorkshire Television, and a staple of all the shows you only watched because Going Live and Live & Kicking had terrible cartoons on in the 90s.

And yet it was never weird? It was just Frank Sidebottom. You never gave any real thought that it was strange to have this character jumping about the TV screen. He was just…there? Part of the country. Until he wasn’t.

Also, I had forgotten, until Jon Ronson pointed it out, that I had contributed to Sievey’s funeral. A time when Twitter was less of a nightmare device where everybody takes cover in the morning during Fox & Friends