Hauntingly Beautiful = Ukulele

On the radio show this week I mentioned this YouTube video, in which the life of former Doctor Who producer/writer/director Barry Letts was commemorated through the medium of ukulele.

I am GENUINELY not being sarcastic when I say I found this quite touching, and I hope that when I leave this mortal coil someone will sing my obituary in an online ukulele tribute. Probably without references to Moonbase 3, though.

(My only reservation is that a huge string section should swell up in the middle of the song, while the camera spins around and around and around – but that’s my main criticism of real life, too).

So thank you, Will Howells, for taking the time to strum through the tears, and thank you, Barry Letts, for making my childhood more magical. You will be missed.

Podcast Crazy!!!

As you probably know, The Outland Institute is not my only podcast. Oh no. I pod around. And this week the Boxcutters podcast celebrated it’s 200th show – to put that in perspective, in dog years we’d be dead by now. Our guest was Myf Warhurst, meaning I’ve now interviewed two-thirds of the Spicks & Specks team (and Adam Hills did once hold a door open for me, which is much the same thing). You can hear Boxcutters by going here, and remember you can download The Outland Institute podcasts here. Curiously, the TV Tonight website ran an article about Boxcutters‘ achievement calling us “a guilty pleasure”, which surprised me. I think of guilty pleasures as “eating a whole packet of Deb instant potato” or “jerking off in a supermarket carpark“. I would have considered Boxcutters to be simply “a pleasure“. Or even “a delight“.

Anyway, reaching this milestone made me think – what are these podcast things, anyway? So I decided to find out what the crazy kids were doing by actually listening to some of them. They’re surprisingly good – I had no idea. Here are some I’ve been enjoying lately (click on the titles to go to their websites)…