JAM guest wins award

JAM guest Owen O'Neill has won an award for having one of the best shows at Edinburgh.

O’Neill, who has been performing at the Fringe since 1985, won for his poetry and stand-up show "Owen O'Neill Is A ***t And So Is Seamus Heaney".

Anyone who saw the show might like to let us know which particular four-letter word ending in T is involved. I can think of two, one much worse than the other!

this week's show...

I'm assuming will be the one with Paul, Clement, Pauline McLynn and Owen O'Neill. If anyone would be kind enough to email me panel, winner and subjects I'd appreciate it and will be able to update the website.

Clement's standards slip

Someone sent me a pic of the panel at the recent Edinburgh recording and .... Sir Clement Freud was in an openneck shirt! Somehow I thought Clement woulde never be without suit and tie.

Mind you - he still looked well dressed. For a man who is clearly no oil painting, he always seems to look very stylish.

Paul also always looks sharp in his clothes...

This week's show - your favourite bits

Post here any thoughts on the show this week - as I say I haven't heard it so let me know your favourite monments!

Apologies

Sincere apologies to all those who have tried to post comments here. I had it on a setting whereby I had to approve comments - but there was no setting for me to be made aware there were comments to approve.

Anyway comments are now on and I've published all the comments that have been submitted. There are a few spam ones, so I'll see how many we get and I may put it back on semi-moderation if there are too many.

I've also tried to reply to some of the comments. Feel free to post more often. Give me a guide what you'd like to read here and I'll try to respond as time allows. One person thinks I write too much about the stats and things. Which could be fair comment. I suppose I feel I should leave the reciting of lines till I do the transcript. But who knows - maybe I'll do things differently if there's a consensus...

If a lot of people comment maybe I'll start a discussion forum. Let's see how this goes...

best, Dean

thanks!

A surprising number responded to my request for help - thank you! As I've yet to have a single comment, I rather assumed no-one read this. It seems there are at least a few...

yes...

I managed to update the site - I don't have subjects and the winner though, so if someone wants to send me those, you'd be helping me out! Also I fear my typing is worse than usual on this unfamiliar keyboard so let me know if it looks askew...

Edinburgh show 1

featured Paul, Clement, Ross Noble and Janey Godley. Janey blogged about her appearance...



I appeared on the famous BBC Radio 4 show ‘Just a Minute’. This show is so huge and wonderful I was so scared I would fuck it up and have to be thrown into the nearest wheelie bin for my lack of talking skills….but I think it went just fine.





For those interested Janey's blog is here - http://janeygodley.bravejournal.com/

I haven't heard the show - I'm on holiday in the US and so far haven't found an Internet cafe where you can listen to things...

I might try and update the site a little though - I hate it to be out of date...

Two women at Edinburgh this year!

Looks like the season will end with the second Clement/Graham Norton/Pam Ayres/Marcus Brigstocke eppy.

Edinburgh

The team for one of the shows at Edinburgh was Paul, Clement, Pauline McLynn and Owen O'Neill. I thought Owen was one of the weaker guests of recent times. Pauline was okay - hopefully she'll get involved more and it doesn't just become the Paul and Clement show.

The first Edinburgh show is being broacast this Monday.

It's a safe bet that the panel will include Paul, Clement and two different people - one of whom will be a debutant.

Pauline is the first person since Paul Merton to do three shows in their first season (excluding the ITV version of the game). She's also only the second woman to appear in an Edinburgh show - Jenny Eclair in 2001 is her only predecessor.

These Edinburgh shows will be the 29th and 30th from the Fringe.

Another top show

Charles Collingwood won for the first time - the first person to join the list of winners since Ross Noble nine seasons ago. He's someone I haven't fully rated - but I thought he was very good today and also very sharp on the buzzer. If he continues to appear regularly, he could climb the list.

The BBC isn't saying who will be in the first Edinburgh show next week - I'm hoping for three regulars and a guest, rather than two guests.

Sue Perkins was also very good I thought.

Another great show

Ross Noble won and won easily. For the third week in a row it was a sensational show - lots of points, lots of laughs, and the odd silly fight. Reminiscent of the days of Kenneth, Clement, Peter and Derek.

Ross and Tim need to be asked back - lots!

I thought Clement and Paul were better than usual - both are competitive and like some competition.

I hope we get good teams at Edinburgh!

More on Wendy's departure from East Enders

She didn't like her plot lines!

Richard 'quit soap over wedding'

Actress Wendy Richard has revealed she chose to quit BBC soap EastEnders after producers made her character remarry.

"I didn't think it was right," she told the Sun newspaper. "I work by instinct and have to believe what we're doing."

Richard has played Pauline Fowler for nearly 22 years and is one of just two cast members who have been in the BBC One programme since it started in 1985.

"I just couldn't believe Pauline would remarry," she is quoted as saying. "I made myself ill fretting about it."

Richard denied there was any tension between her and actor Ray Brooks, who plays Pauline's new husband Joe Macer.

However, she admitted she finds their scenes harder to perform than those she shared with former on-screen husband Bill Treacher.

"I don't think there is the chemistry there that I had with Bill," she said.

"I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, 'You should never have got married.'"

The former Are You Being Served? actress, who will leave Albert Square this Christmas, said she was sad to leave the show but that "life has to go on".

"I'm not retiring, I'm just leaving EastEnders," she said.

this week's show

Was certainly the funniest of the season so far - because Paul Merton was at his brilliant best. Paul is by some distance the best of the current players of the game and was outstanding on his life as a tattooist and talking about his boyfriend kept in Clement's fridge, while supposedly discussing the London Marathon.

This led to something that I have never heard on the show before - the subject was changed in the middle of the round! Nicholas has sometimes added to the subject mid-round but never changed it before. In this case the subject for the last four seconds became "Simon", supposedly the name of Paul's boyfriend.

I thought Julian Clary was particularly good. He has been in great form in the two Greenwich shows.

Next week Ross Noble and Tim Rice are the guests - should be good!