I’m off to Bristol this evening in preparation for yet another quiz show appearance tomorrow. This time it’s Memory Bank on Five (the channel formerly known as Channel 5), and once again it’s live.

The show has some general knowledge elements, but much of it involves remembering and recalling images. You’d think, if you knew me, that I’d be particularly good at that, but I’m concerned I’ll go completely blank. 15-to-1 was so much more straightforward.

So that’s Memory Bank, 11am-12pm, Wednesday 21st July, Five. Set your videos…now.

…which, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t stretch to making an exciting, coherent action film.

The sequel to the pretty average Spider-Man begins promisingly: the titles remind the viewer of the plot of that film while recognising the franchise’s comic book origins. But the movie quickly goes downhill: the obvious failure of Dr Octavius’s “inhibitor” is rammed home too hard to even be knowingly obvious, and the plot descends into repetitious action sequences, hackneyed, lecturing speeches, and trite romance. Over and over again.

When it wants to be funny, the film does pull it off, most notably in the lift scene. It is sometimes successfully self-parodying (e.g., the “eight limbs” gag) and gets away with some of the more ridiculous plot elements by playing on the established rules of superhero comics. There is a nice little cameo by Stan Lee, and the highlight must be Alfred Molina playing Matthew Corbett to his tentacle Sooty (although the “Kill him, you say?” dialogue is perhaps more reminiscent of Chris Barrie and Mr Flibble in Quarantine).

By the end, and running around thirty minutes too long, the film is a disappointment. And, while I don’t want to sound like Mary Whitehouse, with Captain Picard’s girlfriend from Insurrection being killed by a shard of glass and a severed limb, Evil Dead style, holding a chainsaw, no amount of patronising moralising should have got this a PG certificate.

Val Jones Nursery in Leicester are auctioning the yellow tie worn by Charles Kennedy during his televised speech at at the Leicester South rally last Tuesday. It’s signed by Charles and comes with a declaration of authenticity.
 
Funds raised will help buy toys for the nursery. To bid, visit the auction on eBay.

(Also available are autographed ties worn by Liam Fox and Gordon Brown on the campaign trail.)

The full story is in today’s Leicester Mercury.

I had my camera with me in Leicester but I was too busy campaigning to use it (did I mention we won?), so to make up for it, here’s a photo of newly re-elected MEP Diana Wallis, from her newsletter, at the Yorkshire and Humber Euro election count on June 12th. And who’s that peering over Diana’s left shoulder…? (There is a smaller, colour version on Diana’s website.)

Last night I watched The Secret Agent, an exposé of the BNP by an undercover BBC journalist based in Bradford, and was quite surprised to see footage from that very count. Although that could hardly claim to be the most shocking part of the documentary…