Oh, the humanity.

Can anyone beat this for a moment of astounding self-obsessed loss of perspective?

Last Friday, I wanted to watch Have I Got News For You. My TV, for reasons to dull to mention, has two remotes: one to turn it on to whatever channel it was on last; and the other to change the channel. I could only find the first. I turned the TV on, and it was set to BBC4 (Oh yes, BBC4. I'm quite the intellectual, donchaknow) which was showing a documentary about the San Francisco Earthquake. All very well, but no good if you want a wry sideways look at the week's news. So, I hunted for my second remote. I lose this a lot, and it normally takes between 30 seconds and two minutes to find. But this time... nothing doing. Nowhere to be found. Five minutes went past, eight minutes... still nothing. By this time I was becoming that ridiculous 'But...this cannot be!' type of angry you get when a thing can only possibly be in six places, and you've checked them all ten times. I'd missed nearly a third of my show; the thing was clearly properly lost; it was looking like I might not find it for a while. And that's when - and here comes the point of this long-winded and astonishingly dull story - the narrator of the earthquake documentary said this: 'It was now that the true scale of the disaster began to dawn on them.' And I thought to myself- without the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness: 'Yes... same here!'

That's right. 1906: San Francisco is devastated by a colossal earthquake, leaving 3,000 dead and 300,000 homeless. One hundred years later: John Finnemore doesn't get to tune in to Have I Got News For You until half way through the odd one out round. Across the decades, united in suffering.

Although obviously if it wasn't for the Monday repeat, I'd win hands down.

If I keep this plug short enough, perhaps we can all pretend it never happened.

I have written a fifteen minute TV play, which will be broadcast today (Monday 15th) on BBC1, at 2:35. It's called Semi-Detached; and is part of a series called Brief Encounters. If you're an Imogen Stubbs fan, you will be interested to know it stars Imogen Stubbs. If you hate Imogen Stubbs, I advise you to keep well away. But also... what are you thinking? Imogen Stubbs is great.

Plus, the BBC7 monologues I wrote and performed are still happening, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/drama/shorts.shtml.

And that's all the pluggery. For now.

And Featuring: Ian Actor, as The Murderer, It Turns Out.

Don't you hate it when...

...you start to watch an episode of some long-running US drama, and at the end of the opening credits, you get this: 'Special Guest Starring : Ego McSpoilsport, as That Villain You Thought Was Killed Off Two Seasons Ago, But Will Be Reappearing In This Episode, In What Would Have Been A Fantastic Twist, Had Ego's Agent Not Ruined It By Insisting His Name Appear Here, In The Opening Titles.'

Oh. Don't you? What do you hate then? Oh. Right, third world poverty. Yeah, that's bad too.

Black sheep

Well, just back from the Finnemore family reunion, always an exciting occasion. Turns out my obnoxious cousin Zac is doing very well in the music business:

...whereas poor old Uncle Barry has fallen on harder times:

But then, we all have a hard time living up to great great great great great great great great great great grandad:




In less made-up news, should you have access to the wonderful world of the digital wireless, five two minute monologues written and performed by me are going out every so often as fillers on BBC7 over the next few weeks, as part of a series called 'Sketched' The first broadcast of the first one is just before 9pm this evening.