#john finnermore

[hang-on-lil-tomato]

Glad I’m not the only one. I watched S2 once. 🤮🤮🤮 That was enough. I watched season 1 at LEAST 12 times. I’ve seen better written sit coms!

just finished another GO S2 rewatch.

what the actual duck!

[dukeofriven]

Finally sat down and watched Good Omens all the way through both seasons. Michael Sheen and David Tennent deserve some kind of medal for putting the show on their back and managing to drag it as far as they have. Unlike, say Jon Hamm and Shelley Conn, or Jack Whitehall and Adria Arjona, or Nina Sosanya and Maggie Service, they have actual on-screen chemistry, a charisma where the two of them play off each other so beautifully it is a problem because when they're not together on screen nothing has the same energy or verve (especially in season 1. which somehow managed to make Pulcifer even more ineffectual and inessential than the book did). Neil Gaiman and John Finnermore are some of my favourite writers (Cabin Pressure, for pity's sake), but in both seasons of the show the pacing takes a nosedive midway through, and Good Omens 2 doesn't have the excuse of the first season in having to faithfully-recreate a poorly-paced book. The finale of Good Omens 2 feels like modern television in a nutshell: a really intense, well-acted, emotional scene between two great actors that is faintly baffling given the narrative logic that doesn't exist to get you to that point. GO2 in particular reaches a sort of interesting intellectual high-point with Job (that it still chickens out of) and then fills the lead-up to the end with the world's slowest demon army and dropping interesting developments with Miranda Richardson in favour of her putting on some weird armor and... doing... something. A series of bizarre acting choices, perhaps. It's all sorts of disappointing. I can absolutely see why people latched on to it and praised it, because I can see all the bits they latched on to, and all the bits they didn't think about because most people don't these days which is why so many weak scripts go as far as they do. Seriousy, though, l kept waiting for someone to take Maggie aside and say 'she's really not actually into you, cut it out' and it never happened.

[londonspirit]

[thekenobee]

Air England. Proud to be a family business.

[kraniumet]

yes 💞💞 so true bestie

[unionjackpillow]

British comedian solves world's 'most difficult literary puzzle' becoming third winner in 100 years

Since the Daily Telegraph hides the JF story behind a paywall, ....

Rearranging the pages of a short novel that has been printed out of order doesn’t initially seem like something that might be described as the world's 'most difficult literary puzzle'.

But it’s easy to understand how it has only been solved twice when you find out it was written by a famous cryptic crossword setter and that there are 32 million combinations.

Cain’s Jawbone, a 100-page-long murder mystery puzzle, was last cracked in 1935 when two puzzlers claimed £15 in winnings, just a year after it was originally published.

Now a British comedian has solved the literary puzzle for the first time in 85 years, after submitting the correct solution shortly before the closing of a new year-long competition.

John Finnermore who writes his own crosswords for The Times, under the name Emu, said his comedy writing – he has created and performed in countless Radio 4 shows – was a helpful skill, as was the benefit of lockdown.

“The first time I had a look at it I quickly thought 'Oh this is just way beyond me.' The only way I'd even have a shot at it was if I were for some bizarre reason trapped in my own home for months on end, with nowhere to go and no-one to see. Unfortunately, the universe heard me,” he said.

Mr Finnemore set to work spreading the puzzle, which is printed on 100 separate cards out over the spare bed.

“Every so often I'd potter in, stare at it till my forehead bled, spend an hour online researching the history of Shrewsbury prison or something, swap three cards, move one back, and potter off again.”

The puzzle was written by the Observer’s crossword compiler Edward Powys Mathers under the pen name of Torquemada and consists of a murder mystery book published and bound with the pages out of order.

To make the mystery harder, the book is filled with surreal, meandering sentences and references to lesser known Robert Louis Stevenson novels and specific eighteenth-century French murder trials.

Published in The Torquemada Puzzle Book in 1934, readers were invited to reorder the pages, solve the mysteries and reveal the murderers.

The book was republished last year by Unbound, the crowdfunded publisher known for its experimental works, with a new competition launched in collaboration with Shandy Hall, home to the Laurence Sterne Trust.

The closing date for the competition was 19th September, this time with a prize money of £1000 - approximately how much £15 was worth in 1934.

It took Mr Finnemore six months to complete what the book itself calls an “extremely difficult and not for the faint hearted” puzzle.

But the 43-year-old has admitted that had an easier time than his predecessors as he used Google to help him out.

“I googled constantly,” he told the Telegraph. “I cannot imagine how the two people who did it in 1935 managed.

“If you were sitting in the British library and you were extremely well read and it was the same year it was written then maybe you could do it but unless you know off the top of your head the licensing laws of the 1930s then you should absolutely allow yourself to just google everything.”

“It’s not cheating,” he added.

Getting the final combination was, Mr Finnemore said, a cathartic exercise throughout a particularly turbulent year.

“The process of taking something that looks like chaos and gradually turning it into something that looks ordered and designed, and indeed is ordered and designed, that’s a very satisfying thing to do.

“It gives you a little rush of ‘Oh, the world should make sense’, if only I could spend enough time checking these cards or putting the pieces in this order. Maybe then it would all make sense.”

[olympain]

Where can I listen to Cabin Fever? Assuming it’s a John Finnermore quarantine project and not just fandom drabbles

It’s on youtube! So far there has been 12 episodes, here’s the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhTBp1DRfx4

[salsolakali]

It's the most wonderful time of the year

That's a not just a song this year. Let me prove it to you with this gentle reminder: On the 22nd (through the 27th): we have a Neil GAIMAN + Terry Pratchett's radio treat: Good Omens. I just can't type all of its awesomeness (Louise Brealey, Colin Morgan, Peter Serafinowicz...!!)so here are some nice links: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/cabin-pressure-good-omens http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-11-27/good-omens-terry-pratchett-and-neil-gaimans-radio-drama-gets-a-release-date-and-new-pictures

23rd and 24th of december we get the "Cabin Pressure" finale. The radio comedy to rule all the other radio comedies (let me be dramatic, please, these are roungh days ).The "Zurich" we've been eagerly waiting for ever since that golden day "Abu Dhabi" and its hilarious characters came to brighten our life.

And then, the culmination of all this fest: the Doctor Who Christmas Special with N I C K  F R O S T. Yes, imagine it, Capaldi's eyebrows AND Frost as Santa. And if it turns out that Santa is an Alien , then we'll have Twelve fightin alien-santa-Frost, and it's so overwhelming a thought I just can't think about it while attending my other daily duties.

(I know, last year was great too, even better one might say, but hey, we'll always have the food, hopefully. And the restoring thought of Sherlock Xmas Special in 2015. So let's just be grateful : it's a great galaxy to live in) Have a Jolly Holiday Season.

[enigmari]

Gonig through John Finnemore's blog posts about Cabin Pressure (and, admittedly, all his other stuff too) and found this gem.

[thekenobee]

Margaret Cabourn-Smith - Feliz Navidad from Dan Tetsell on Vimeo

[myfunnylittlebrain]

Making new friends, the problem with polymath bestselling authors and a history of choice.

[holmesisparamount-blog]

but... but where was the spooky story at the end...? :( Those were my favorites *sniff*

[superdupernonsense]

started smelling bologna and immediately thought, "what does this mean?" i laughed right after i thought it because i pulled a martin.

[floopowderchristmastroy]

Study in Brilliant

[thlayli-rah]

I love how the Cabin Pressure fandom is having a mental breakdown and the rest of tumblr is pretending not to notice

[hellouniversehowareyou]

Cabin Pressure Yverdon-les-Bains

And then suddenly, in the middle of something very important, the faceless cold voice of a serial killer from the studio of BBC Radio 4 told me it was the last episode of the present series.

What am I supposed to listen whilst knitting my 4th Doctor's scarf on Wednesday evenings?!!!