Joanne the Coach

First preview of the new series of Doctor Who

This looks ace - like Deadwood with added aliens. Can't wait.

TV company seeks people with fear of driving

 For those who have been asking, yes my book about fear of driving is almost

finished. I have about 45,000 words written and am just doing a final check that they all make sense. Then it goes off to the publisher to see what they think.

If you need some help with your driving right now, you might be interested to know that the AA is offering 2000 free two hour Drive Confident courses. Just fill in the form to apply.

Also, the TV series Dangerous Drivers' School is coming back to Channel 5 and is looking for participants. Here's a message from the production team:

"Do you have a son with a need for speed, or is your mum petrified at getting behind the wheel? Does your friend drive so badly you refuse to be their passenger, or are your grandparents housebound because they refuse to use their car? Do you suffer from road rage and think everyone but you should get off the road? If yes, then help is at hand.

Channel 5’s Dangerous Drivers’ School is back and continuing its mission to make our roads safer.

Last year the series turned 18 drivers from ‘accidents waiting to happen’ into safer drivers. In just two hours highly qualified AA instructors rectified a multitude of driving sins. They helped a mum get confidently behind the wheel after 20 years, a joyriding dad slash his speed so he could safely take his kids to school, and a motorway phobic join the rat run with confidence.

The new series wants to find vibrant, outgoing people of any age, from anywhere in the UK, who would like to take part in this great documentary. If you or someone you know needs to kill speed, gain confidence or banish bad habits, then get in touch with the team now.

Email: casting@matchlight.co.uk or call: 0141 342 2055"

We've all gone Looney Tunes

 

How many 60 year old TV programmes do you reckon your kids would sit through? How many would keep them totally engaged and wanting to watch again?

When Warner Bros sent us a Looney Tunes box set, I was amazed to find out how old these cartoons really are. I mean, they're even older than me and that's pretty ancient. But my 8 year old and his pals have been loving them. Here's their verdict:

I like that they are really old, but new to me because I'm only 8. They're very funny. They seem a tiny bit old fashioned, but not enough to be boring.

• Road Runner - I like him because he's all fast and it's funny when he escapes from the traps
• Wile E Coyote - He always tries to use traps but ends up trapping himself and I like this
• Tom & Jerry - You don't hear them speak and when ever the cat tries to get the mouse, the mouse always finds a clever way of getting away. I like it when they whack each other because you don't really see that nowadays
• Speedy Gonzales - He's all Mexican and I find it cool that he's the fastest mouse in Mexico. He uses a lot of speed. {Please note that we are taking velocity only}
• Porky Pig - He always talks in a strange voice and doesn't always get what he wants.
• Daffy Duck - He always wants to be the winner and needs to have it his own way. He's not a bully, but he does whack people round the head a lot. Hates Bugs Bunny.
• Taz - He's in a different land to the other Looney Tunes. He can chew through anything and is very different to the rest of his family. He gets in trouble for eating the furniture. I like him because he's an individual.
• Tweety Pie - When ever the pussycat tries to get him and he just gets away, he's very casual about it. He's cute and clever.
• Bugs Bunny - I like that he's always chewing a carrot. He's very clever and gets Daffy Duck in a lot of trouble.

This is a great value box set - you get 10 DVDs (one for each character) containing 900 minutes of toon action for around £20. Plus they bash each other over the head with frying pans A LOT, yet somehow manage to be much less violent than the likes of Ben 10 or Power Rangers.

 

Looney Tunes Big Faces Box Set is out now at a bargain £22.49 from Amazon.

 

Working mother confessions - A mother's work meme

 

A meme! I never get tagged in memes, and I have so much to meme about. So thank you very much to The Daily Mum for inviting me to join in this one. A Mother’s Work Meme started with mother.wife.me and is currently winging its way through the blogosphere .

Here are the rules:

   1. Post the rules. OK, I've done that, now what?
   2. Answer the questions in as much or as little detail as suits you
   3. Leave a comment on mother.wife.me so we can keep track of the meme
   4. Tag 3 people and link to them on your blog
   5. Let them know you tagged them
   6. Tweet that you're taking part using #amothersworkmeme

Questions:

   1. Did you work before becoming a mum?

  2. What is your current situation?

  3. Freestyle – got your own point you’d like to get across on this issue? Here’s your chance…

And, most importantly…. here are my taggees:

Sarah Ebner - Schoolgate at The Times

Mme Lindor - Salt & Caramel

Janice - A Working Mum

(don't worry guys I won't be offended if you haven't got time to do this 'cos you're working 'n stuff)

 

Aaaaanyway....

   1. Did you work before becoming a mum?
Yes I have always worked, mainly in a self employed capacity and mainly in media. Before I had my children I worked in TV as a producer on many chat shows. Probably the most well known were GMTV and This Morning. After I had my daughter I carried on doing sporadic shifts, but TV is very much a long working hours business and anyway what I really wanted to do was write. So I trained as a life coach and started building up work I could do from home and combine better with family life.

Being self employed means you are entitled to Maternity Benefit but little else. I deliberately timed having my second child for just after the benefit was due to go up. I don't think I ever totally stopped thinking about work for any length of time - being self employed means you are always on the lookout for the next thing and have to keep visible. So even if I was technically on maternity leave I would still be doing things like media interviews which didn't earn me any money but kept my profile as a coach up.

 

  2. What is your current situation?
I work flexibly, mainly from home. Over the last few years I have built up my writing more and more, but I still coach as well. I coach people from all around the world via phone. I also do consulting, broadcasting and a bit of public speaking - whatever comes along and pays the bills really. Currently I am finishing off my second book which is about fear of driving. Once that's been sent off to the publisher then I plan to do more feature writing.

Right now I work throughout the school day, stopping for the school run to pick up my 8 year old, then carry on in the evening and at weekends if I need to. I never mind working at odd hours because this is what means I can be there for my children when they need me. The big challenge is during school holidays - I've found it's unrealistic to expect to put a full day in and leave the children to go feral. They moan a bit about me working from home, but I point out that they would like the alternatives even less.

 

  3. A rant about working mums in TV

I always found that the TV industry was utterly crap in terms of the value of 'presenteeism' and a long hours working culture which rarely gets questioned. This is why women in television seem to disappear - you don't get many women with children in senior jobs in TV, certainly not outside the BBC. When you consider that many programmes are made for a family audience, it's ironic that the people making those programmes often have very little family time for themselves.

The world has moved on considerably in terms of working from home and other flexible options, but from what I can see the TV production industry has not embraced this, leading to many experienced people to leave. And then they go off and do creative things elsewhere, leaving the TV industry poorer for it.

 

Book review: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer

Thanks to the help of my bloggy friends, and particularly Deb of Carrots and Kids, I ended up choosing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as our book group book for this month. So far I'm 37% of the way through (thank you Kindle for that information) and it's terrific, I'm really glad I chose it.

Another book I enjoyed but couldn't face selling to book group is The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, which was sent to me recently for review. This is a re-issue of a spin off book from the Twin Peaks TV series. I was a huge fan of the series when it first aired, and have been watching it again recently, so was looking forward to revisiting the book too.

It's very odd and unsettling returning to a book like this many years after having originally read it - though that's appropriate, since odd and unsettling was Twin Peaks' USP.

I don't remember much about reading it first time round, other than that I galloped through it pretty quickly. This time, it felt like a much tougher read.

The story starts with 12 year old Laura, whose life very quickly takes a tumble into sex, drugs and violence. And this time round, reading it as the mother of a 12 year old, it's kind of hard to take. The book is more violent and more sexually explicit than I remember, but then maybe I am just more sensitive to that kind of thing nowadays.

Twenty years after it first aired, the cult of Twin Peaks still has a loyal following. The yearly US Twin Peaks convention still takes place, and there's now a Twin Peaks UK festival which has just had its second gathering.

I went to the first UK festival and met the legendary Log Lady (seen here with teeny tiny log, and me with cherry pie). It was interesting to see how many people there were too young to have seen the show when it started.

So for the new generation of Peakies, this book is a must read. Written by David Lynch's daughter Jennifer, it's a prequel of Laura Palmer's life before the events depicted in the TV show. I don't think it's over-spoiling to reveal that she dies in the end, and inevitably this casts a shadow over the whole book.

The new edition features separate forewords from Twin Peaks creators Mark Frost and David Lynch. Frost's is the more illuminating, whilst the enigmatic Lynch doesn't give much away.

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Simon & Schuster) is available now in paperback and Kindle formats.

Happy CyberHalloween

Come to my house and I might give you sweets, but then I would have to delete you afterwards...

NB This is our actual home carved Doctor Who pumpkin and not just a picture I swiped off the internets. How many sleeps until the Christmas special again?

Our cult TV tour of Wales

A walking holiday in Wales is a marvellous thing - the mountains, the lush, green landscape and the sheep are the perfect antidote to home life enslaved by the goggle box.

Unless, of course, you combine the two, as we did last week, and base your Welsh holiday around TV shows you like. 

First stop was Portmeirion, location for the Sixties classic The Prisoner. Be seeing you!

 

It's just like Disneyland squeaked The Offspring. That's right kids - a Disneyland you can never leave. Though the hotel is pretty dandy, so you might not want to.

Put that child down, I don't care if Davros sent you

Today I went to the John Lewis Christmas press preview, and you'll never guess who was there:

 

Yes, it's a dalek with a small child inside. It's OK though, he can escape.

 

Coming to a John Lewis near you soon, the inflatable dalek runs off a rechargeable battery, shouts Exterminate, and costs £199. The bad news is that it's only suitable for children aged 3 to 6. Because adults would never try and fit inside to have a go, would they? Oh no....

TV's fartiest moments

Of the many millions of blogs that exist, only this one has a category where Farty TV resides.

This category was born when I saw a casting call about a programme called Fart Camp, which was looking for contributors. The idea behind that was that very flatulent people would be taken away and given expert help. It never seems to have made it on air, possibly awaiting the invention of smell-o-vision.

So Farty TV is essentially an odious-sounding programme, that you would never want to be involved in making, watching or turning off. A real eyeball-burner of a turd, in other words.

Which brings me to this:

 

Ladies, are you tempted? We all aspire to look like celebrities, don't we? But don't get too big, 'cos they're looking for participants who are maximum size 18. And remember ladies, looking like yourself and being happy in your own skin is for losers.

I think I'd rather watch Fart Camp.

 

 

Think you can write for Cbeebies?

 

Makka pakka akka wakka, mikka makka moo!

Makka pakka, appa yakka, Ikka akka, ooo.

Hum, dum agga pang, Ing, ang, ooo.

 

Think you can do better than that?

Cbeebies is looking for new writers. You don't have to have written for TV before. You don't even have to be sane. All the details are here. Closing date: Thursday 14th July 2011 at 6pm.