And Now, Let's Laugh At Brian Mawhinney

The great thing about the first hour of the BBC’s Election ‘97 coverage is the absolute glee that kicks in as soon as the exit poll drops. Peter Snow gets out his shiny new toys to show the landslide knocking Tories out all over the country, and then Paxman just butchers Michael Portillo for five minutes or so, gets interrupted by an OB with Paddy Ashdown, and then they come back so Paxman can go for another five at him. Also, at that stage, they didn’t think Portillo was going to lose his seat, so the night only goes downhill for him from there.

And then Frank Skinner interviews John Major and Tony Blair lookalikes, where he gets them to dance together while Skinner sings ‘Rock Around The Clock’. There’s nothing quite like a live General Election broadcast…

Weirdly, I also found myself down another nostalgia hole, one that has been somewhat time-locked due to the author. I finally broke down and read Planetary (it was essentially $4 for the entire series digitally on Amazon over Christmas and I thought ‘why not?'). It made me think, and even dream some thoughts on comics. One of Ellis’s problems (and somebody else a little more current) is that, in the end he’s too aloof and distant, too afraid of the cringe¹ to really land a lot of his work, and doesn’t have Moore’s skills to back him in the tour of the 20th century that Planetary starts out as. Still, it was better than Ministry of Space at the very least.

I then got curious, and yes, Ellis is still blogging away. Like nothing happened. There’s vague allusions to comics work…but who would publish him these days?