Tim Worthington's Newsround
So what is this Tim Worthington’s Newsround business all about then? Well, it may share its name - sort of - with Children’s BBC’s John Craven-fronted daily current affairs roundup from the days before the ‘Broom Cupboard’ even existed, but in case you were worried, I’m not about to put on a shirt with a pattern a bit like the old Tunes wrappers and start babbling on about Giant Hogweed. It also shares its name with the blog that I had before I actually set up a proper more professional looking-ish website, and that’s more along the lines of what you’re going to find if you sign up to this newsletter. I may still mention Giant Hogweed every now and then, though.
The main reason I’m starting this is because very peculiar things are happening to a platform I used to rely on for promotion thanks to a very peculiar man who looks like a melting cross between David Walliams and Michael Jackson and acts like that bloke Steve Coogan plays who splutters ‘…but I want my tower!’ in The Day Today, and it makes a good deal of sense to try and get some momentum up and running somewhere that I have a relativity decent amount of control over. That said, I also would like to get back to writing impulsively a little more, much like I did on that long-defunct blog way back when, in between the more hefty and heavyweight projects. Part of my enthusiasm for this has been fired by the very satisfying reaction I have had to freewheeling observations on bewildering old newspaper and magazine ads over at my Patreon; if you’d like to join the small but merry band of subscribers and get exclusive content plus early access to podcasts and the like, rare stuff from the archives and even the odd free eBook, we’re over here. Honestly though, I’ll be happy enough if you just subscribe to this newsletter.
So what can you expect from Tim Worthington's Newsround? It’ll be a mix of alerts about new features and podcasts, recommendations of books, movies, podcasts and what have you that I’ve been enjoying lately, and probably some additional standalone new content too. After all, I do have a lengthy archive of semi-viral tweets like Horror Weebles, The TV That Time Forgot and that thing about thinking there was a flying cat in The Bible that really ought to have been elaborated on with a few paragraphs except I didn’t really have an outlet for that at the time, and that plank who makes the villain out of Venom look like a balanced and charitable member of society isn’t getting his dubious hands on them. So all in all, a little like a ‘Culture’ section from a Sunday newspaper if it was edited by Hartley Hare and an Aztec Bar. Well I did nearly say ‘DCI Gene Hunt’ there but I can assure you there will be none of those… views.
Anyway. There will be a proper one of these along soon, so you can work out for yourself whether that joke description actually works or not. In the meantime, here are a couple of links to a couple of recent new bits and pieces that you might have missed: Looks Unfamiliar with Mitch Benn on Star Turn Challenge, Mr Hicks from Grange Hill, Striker, Lines by The Planets, Night Raven and international celebrities acting in pop videos here and Toby Hadoke on The Red Hand Gang, Einstein A Go-Go by Landscape, After The Bomb, The Machine Gunners, Annika, Winter Flight, Strike It Rich!, Driving Ambition, Can’t Help Falling In Love by Lick The Tins and Golden Wonder Odduns here; It’s Good, Except It Sucks with Vikki Gregorich on Werewolf By Night here and Garreth Hirons on Venom: Let There Be Carnage here; my thoughts on Jodie Whittaker leaving Doctor Who here; and the final full rundown of my attempt to review every single movie on Empire magazine’s 1995 list of The 100 Greatest Movies Ever Made here. Yes I really did do that and no I’m not entirely sure why either. OK, which button do I press to cue in the next episode of Codename Icarus…?