History is not all bunk

Hello again.

Hope you have all enjoyed your weeks and have had opportunity to take advantage of the early summer sunshine that has hit these shores. I get the impression that the beautiful people inhabiting this fair isle must be solar powered, you don't see them during the winter but all of sudden, they are there to be found in droves now that the sun has come out.

Well, my week was somewhat marred by the wrong result on Wednesday night in Rome. It was disappointing to get so far only to fall at the final hurdle, but what made the result harder to take was how United just did not turn up on the night. There is a time to be carrying out inquests into why United came up so short and possibly a future blog will explore that in more detail, but for now, let me just say that it is easy to forget how well Barcelona played because of the tepid performance that United put up on the night. In particular, the possession football that Andres Iniesta and Xavi displayed in midfield was a joy to behold.

Whenever United relinquished possession, I felt it would take five minutes to get the ball back. One of the common complaints of English footballers is that they are unable to keep possession of the ball. Well, a DVD of how Xavi and Iniesta managed it on Wednesday night will be more of an education than any coaching manual, their ability to keep hold of the ball and to change the tempo of the match was what gave Barcelona the platform to win the match. Oh well, one match should not undo a good season's work and I am sure that Sir Alex Ferguson will remind the players of this failure to drive their hunger to go one better next season.

Well, let's not wallow in self-pity any longer. It is only eleven players kicking a sheep's bladder along a cut up pitch, after all. Let's get down to the nitty gritty and consider some of the other talking points of the week.

3. History should be more than just grey text
This past week has seen it reported that History is not being taught adequately in schools and that children are now less knowledgeable about historical events than they have been in previous generations. I am not certain about how this particular trend has been measured unless they have pulled together a focus group of people from different ages and tested them on history questions, such as when was the Battle of Naseby, who was the king at the time of Guy Fawkes's attempt to overthrow the Government and who really won the Second World War. However this insight was gathered, I think that a good point has been stumbled upon.

First of all, as I prelude to everything else I go on to write, can I say that I love history and learning about historical facts. I did study the subject at school and indeed took it for my GCSEs. I thought that the teaching of the subject at my school was first rate in as much as the teachers did their best to facilitate good learning and were enthusiastic about the subject they were teaching, presenting it in a fun way. If you went to my school, you would know that such a teaching approach was not uniform across other subjects. I imagine that is one of the hazards of a comprehensive school education.

However, the one drawback of teaching in school back in my teenage years, and which at a pinch I imagine still applies today, is that the learning was very much dependent on the humble text book. The school history department had its very own resource room full of a plethora of history books, many of which had been defaced and dog-eared over the years by less keen students of the subject, who were only in class as a matter of compulsion. Text is perhaps the easiest way of conveying the rudimentary facts of the subject, but in terms of the audience reading them in order to learn, much of the knowledge the reader is supposed to acquire is lost due to its grey presentation.

If schools want to make history more appealing, and more significantly, of more educational value to their students then they need to get with the times and embrace technology and interactivity. Look at the success of Brainiac in terms of getting children interested in chemistry and physics. It presents the subject in a fun way, conducting experiments and blowing things up, something that tends to get people's attention and crucially, people do learn from the programme. Schools need to follow the lead of Brainiac and expand their resources far beyond books. Visual and audio resources should be available for a far greater part of the syllabus. Expeditions to relevant history museums or places of local historical relevance should be considered, while how about some role playing exercises? I'm sure the average would much rather dress up as a Tudor than have to wear their school uniform for the day.

It is often said that the main purpose of History is that it gives people a sense of perspective and it understands how the world we live in now has come to be as it is. It is also argued that the point of learning History is that we can learn from mistakes made in the past so as to avoid them in the future and this can provide people with more appreciation and enable them to show more humility for what they have. I personally think there is a lot of truth in these schools of thought, although I would say that if you provide that argument to the average teenager then the likelihood is that they will not want to learn.

If you look at the success of a number of history programmes on television, such as any of Simon Schama's series or even Andrew Marr's excellent History of Modern Britain, then it is quite clear that there is a captive audience for learning about history. It is also true, however, that much of the audience that will watch such programmes will have developed a comparatively late interest in the subject and the chances are that when they were at school, this is a subject that they would have shunned at the age of 14 when choosing what subjects to study for GCSEs.

I think there are a few factors that provide reason for this trend. Firstly, I think that as I have sort of touched upon earlier, History is seen as a slightly unfashionable subject at school. As a teenager, anything over two years ago tends to be regarded as ancient and so what happened 200 years ago or longer just holds no appeal. This is a problem that there is no real solution to because the very nature of the subject means that it is essential to deal with events from far back in time. Recalling my teenage years, I can remember that many fellow students chose their options by the not very scientific method of picking the subjects their friends were doing. Due to History having the perception problem of being the chosen subject of the nerds, it did tend to be shunned by the "in-crowd".

There is also another reason that History is sometimes cast aside among the more worldly wide teenager. While there are potentially lucrative careers ahead for those that study Economics, Geography or even Media Studies, the end game for successful students of History presents a much more narrow scope, with the possible exceptions of being a museum curator or an archaeologist, or indeed, a professional historian. In the fifteen years since I left school, I can honestly say that the knowledge that I accumulated from my days of studying History has served no practical use other than in feeding my recall in the pub quiz's History round. There are no real insights that History can offer when you are forging a career in office administration jobs in the voluntary sector.

And yet perhaps we are all missing the point. Maybe the purpose of History lies beyond providing a gateway into paid employment. As discussed earlier, there is a strong argument to suggest that learning History is essential in knowing how we all came to be here today. The skills learnt from this can transcend just one's working life or their future studies, but can provide the insight that enables people to better citizens, plus it provides some background in helping people to provide a considered argument, a skill that is required in many facets of our lives. Surely these benefits go far beyond serving us just in our professional lives and can lead to a more balanced society?

I think that it needs to be accepted that some of the barriers to making History a subject of the teenage masses are insurmountable. Some of the problems of perception are as much the fault of the teenage hormones as they are of the subject or the way that it is taught. People are simply more ready to engage in the subject as an interest in adult life because they have matured and first hand experience has taught them things that history also does and so they can more readily identify with these insights. Nonetheless, History does have a clear reason for being and those that do want to learn should be grabbed at an early stage and so schools should take heed and embrace as many resources as they are able to and not just rely on their printed material.

4. Variety is no longer the spice of life
So, another reality television series is over with Saturday night heralding the final of Britain's Got Talent. Am I alone in noting the irony of this title when the judging panel includes Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan? What exactly is Amanda Holden's talent other than being the obligatory eye candy? Let's face it, her biggest claim to fame is that she used to be married to Les Dennis before giving Les the metaphorical "it-err", as associated with Les's quiz show of many years. As for Morgan, it has long been realised that his main talent is simply his ability to be in the right place at the right time. Otherwise, I suggest he enters the Highland Games this year because although he is not Scottish, he certainly possesses the right attributes to know what to do with the caber!

Sadly, I missed the final of ITV1's Saturday night showpiece as I was out playing pool, but I gather that Simon Cowell's beloved Susan Boyle was defeated by a dance troupe from Essex. In fact, while this series appears to have captivated several million television viewers these past few weeks, I only watched one episode during its run. That episode was one of the heats and it was enjoyable enough fare featuring a bloke whose idea of a musical act was to use repeated flatulence, another young chap who looked like he belonged in the Foo Fighters singing soprano and a David Blaine wannabe who held his head underwater before doing some fire-eating, all the while his wife looked on. It seemed quite formulaic television, it is easy to see why it has attracted high audience figures because the programme is easy to follow and the audience has the ability to ultimately affect the outcome by voting.

I will readily admit that, on the whole, reality television as a genre does not really appeal to me. There are certain exceptions as there always are and I do try and watch The Apprentice and Dragons' Den whenever they are on and I happen to be in, but this is probably more because of my background as a Business Studies student rather than because I enjoy seeing publicity seeking people make an idiot of themselves in an environment that is out of their comfort zone. Programmes such as I'm A Celebrity and Big Brother hold no interest to me whatsoever. Who on earth in their right mind watches the live Big Brother round the clock on E4? In our everyday lives, I can think of nothing more tedious than spending time seeing what the neighbours are saying while eating their breakfast, so why do our attitudes change when watching television? I suppose the truth is that there is a hidden voyeur in all of us that finds it interesting to see what other people get up to in a confined environment and how the confines of that environment affects the human dynamics. Well, either that, or there just isn't anything else on worth watching!

Programmes like Britain's Got Talent and the X-Factor are, at least to my mind, car crash television. Therefore, the only time I really would watch either programme is at the very early stage when you have the preliminary rounds and therefore, the people who are entertaining simply because they are terrible. In particular, I enjoy the sense of delusion that some of the performers have when Simon Cowell and friends send them packing. They are in denial about their dreams being shattered and tell the judges they have made a big mistake and that they just chose the wrong song or the wrong routine. It is never because they simply have no talent because they are so wrapped up in their aspirations. It probably does not make me sound like a very good person to say that this is the most appealing aspect of these types of show, but the proof is in the pudding. These shows get their best ratings in the early episodes and for the final. If this makes me bad, then I am certainly not alone in the doghouse.

One of the interesting points that I heard raised this week is that the popularity of Britain's Got Talent demonstrates that variety performances are much missed on television. This is a complaint I have heard before from people of an era that can remember such spectacles as Sunday Night at the London Palladium. It is an argument, however, that I vehemently disagree with. The success of Britain's Got Talent, far from demonstrating that variety is missed on television, in fact proves exactly why it is no longer shown on television outside of talent shows.

People watch Britain's Got Talent because it is television that is easy to watch as a family on Saturday night and because the show features everyday members of the public who believe they have a talent, but invariably have far less talent than they believe. From what I have seen of the series, it has shown that some forms of entertainment that were bracketed in to the broad category of variety are so old hat in this day and age. Once you have seen one ventriloquist act, you have seen them all. People fire-eating ceased being entertainment when people stopped going to circuses. And magicians performing cheap card tricks is no longer seen as an act of genius, but just some show-off who knows how to bend the rules. In this series of Britain's Got Talent, even a five year old was performing lame magic tricks. The days of Paul Daniels wowing a prime time audience are thankfully a thing consigned to the distant past.

Surely the whole point of a variety show is to see the most talented performers in their own field showcasing their talents to a live audience. But how do you accommodate these performers all onto one stage? The best stand-up comedians and the best family entertainers are unlikely to fit onto the same bill as the best classical and contemporary musical acts any more because people are more picky and choosy about who and what they want to watch. Taking these broad categories of performers as examples, could you ever foresee a live variety performance with Jack Dee, Ricky Gervais, Jon Culshaw, Brian Conley, Bruce Forsyth, Katherine Jenkins, Jools Holland, the cast of Chicago, Take That, U2 and Darcey Bussell all sharing a stage on the same night, at the same location? It just would not happen because the audience that wants to see U2 does not want to see Take That and equally the Take That fans would not want to see U2. The audience that wants to see Ricky Gervais does not want to see Brian Conley and vice versa, while fans of Brucie and Darcey are going to be less enamoured by the Chicago cast's presence.

Cast your minds back a couple of summers to the Live Earth concerts. The audience were waiting for Elton John to top the bill but the floral industry's favourite tantrum throwing ivory tickler was running a few minutes late. In order to fill time, Ricky Gervais was sent out to entertain the crowd. Under different circumstances, Gervais would have been welcomed, but at a live music venue, the crowd came to see musicians, not comedians and consequently, Gervais far from warming the crowd up before Reginald Dwight took to the stage had the effect of de-energising them and was in fact booed by some sections of the crowd. Admittedly, Gervais's set was not his finest comedic ensemble but the main reason for the audience disapproval was that comedy on a music bill mixes as well as water does with electricity. The reverse principle would also be equally true.

The point is that in modern times, people are selective about what they want to see and when they want to see it. There are very few programmes on television that serve to meet the needs of a wide audience. Programmes are more likely to cater for a certain demographic, people of a certain age and with a particular interest. There are some exceptions, with Later with Jools Holland quite deliberately showcasing a wide range of musical talents so that there is a little bit of something in the programme for everyone and it gives people opportunity to go out and make a cup of tea when their less favoured musicians are performing. Above all though, the main selling point of the programme is the amiability of Holland in the role as mein host.

A point that I have made on these pages before and which I adamantly stand by is that people's yearning for nostalgia can be very misleading and some of the things people wax lyrical about now, were not so popular at the time. So when people talk about the good days of variety television, they are remembering Morecambe and Wise performing or Tommy Cooper performing a magic trick going wrong or telling a daft joke or they are remembering members of the Rat Pack performing to a live audience. This is all well and good, but for every Tommy Cooper, there was a Duncan Norvelle or Joe Pasquale. For Morecambe and Wise, the flip side was Cannon and Ball and if the Rat Pack represented the pinnacle of musical talent, the bottom rung was represented by Showaddywaddy.

Variety as a form of entertainment belongs in a different era, an era when people regularly went to holiday camps in Skegness or Whitby for their summer holidays and consequently, the comedians of the day performed night after night at holiday camps during the summer season, before heading back to the smoky working man's clubs for the winter. In this day and age, fewer people holiday at such resorts as they prefer to trust the reliability of the sun on the continent and the top comedians of 2009 perform sell out tours at large theatres across the country rather than small seaside venues. All the holiday resorts get left with are the middle aged comedians who are so down on their luck that they have to supplement their income by doing some window cleaning and a thousand and one Elvis impersonators. Admittedly, the current economic crisis is seeing an upturn in people holidaying at seaside resorts in the UK, but I very much doubt this will result in old school variety returning to popular mainstream taste.

The problem of nostalgia is not just confined to one's memories of variety. It also applies to situation comedies and to remakes of old programmes or old movies. A recent example of this has been shown by the critical response to the remake of Reggie Perrin. Although the programme has attracted good audience figures, television critics have poured scorn on it, saying it is not a patch on the original and that Martin Clunes was not fit to fill the late Leonard Rossiter's shoes.

Admittedly, I was not born when the original series aired back in the 1970s, but I have watched some episodes when they were repeated some years ago. I thought that the programme was funny in places but also rather dated and that essentially it was Rossiter's powerful performance in the lead role that made the programme. I personally preferred Rossiter's performance as the serial miser and bigot Rigsby in the timeless Rising Damp.

In any event, the remake of Reggie Perrin is not meant to be a straight remake of the programme but a modern day version of the tale in which the lead character plays out his existence in a dead end job with a company that makes disposable razors, rather than selling desserts as he did in the original series. What I thought the remake did particularly well was to make the character's experiences relevant to modern times, capturing well the office culture as well as the mundane routine associated with commuting. This is something that I can particularly relate to in my current circumstances, and I feel that the writers and Clunes's acting performance captured this particularly well.

Far from being a sub-standard remake, I think that the new version of Reggie Perrin has been a very good modern interpretation of the story and Martin Clunes once again proves that he belongs right up there amongst the best comedy actors that these shores have produced with a very believable and moving performance in the central role. Far from turning in his grave, I imagine that if Leonard Rossiter was still alive today, he would have marvelled at Clunes's performance in bringing to life his character to a whole new generation.

The ending to this series suggests that the commissioning of a second series is dependent on the ratings, but I really hope that Clunes and the strong supporting Fay Ripley and Wendy Craig will be back to continue the story next year. But this is the thing with nostalgia, people cannot see past what they remember the first time round, even if the passage of time has in fact blurred their take on reality.

5. Shearer might not be the Messiah, but he could be a very naughty boy
Well, reports of a bubble bursting in the North East of England last Sunday teatime were not without substance. Newcastle United's sixteen year stay in the Premier League came to an end after a feeble 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa ensured that the Magpies would be playing their football in the second tier of the English game in the 2009/10 season. The return of Alan Shearer, this time in a manager's suit was not enough to arrest Newcastle's slide, with the team winning just won of their final eight league matches while under their former number nine's stewardship.

In truth though, Newcastle's current plight is not due simply to recent results but more a legacy of a series of bad decisions taken at board level over the past few years, where those in positions of authority have allowed their hearts to rule their head and impair their judgement. Ever since Sir Bobby Robson was removed of his duties just four matches into Newcastle's 2004/05 campaign, the Magpies have lurched from one bad managerial appointment to another and with each poor appointment, they have also wasted an astronomical amount of money on players whose attitude or injury record ensured they were incongruous in achieving the club's set objectives.

Everything that is wrong with Newcastle's recent setup was demonstrated with the recent revelation that defender Sebastien Bassong was earning just £5,000 a week and has been offered a pay rise in order to persuade him to remain at the club next season. That Bassong was offered a pay rise is not the contentious point, what is shocking, however is that Bassong was earning so little all the while the permanently injured Michael Owen has reputedly been picking up a pay cheque of £115,000. By common consent, Bassong has been Newcastle's best player over the course of the season (admittedly he did not have much competition) while Owen is now living on past glories due to the ravages of injury and lost motivation. This extraordinary discrepancy in Newcastle's wage structure demonstrates an alarming absence of meritocracy and serves to prove where everything has gone wrong at St James's Park and also why their demise has received so little sympathy, as it has been self-inflicted.

Newcastle's supporters will now look to Alan Shearer to stay on and manage the club in the Championship next season, but as the banner on the final day of the season at Villa Park so pointedly said, who is Newcastle's next Messiah, Ant and Dec? This is where Newcastle have continued to go wrong and while you ultimately have to blame the board for making the decisions, the Toon Army support have to take some of the blame for their constant insistence that being "one of us" is a pre-requisite for taking on the Newcastle job. The continual championing of former Newcastle players to be managers of the club has done little to help the club's cause in recent years and what does it really mean to say that the next incumbent needs to "bleed black and white"? Surely, the most crucial aspect in appointing a manager is that they need to be experienced, be able to handle the pressure and know how to get the best out of players. At Newcastle though, there appears to be distrust of anyone coming in from outside the area.

The recent turnaround at Fulham, whose victory at Newcastle in the penultimate week of the season ironically did so much in consigning them to Championship football next season, is testament to what making the right managerial change can achieve. Midway through the 2007/08 season, Fulham were in the Premier League's relegation zone and looked certainties to drop to the Championship. They sacked their manager and replaced him with Roy Hodgson, a 60 year old Englishman who spent his formulative years managing on the continent with spells in charge of the Swiss and Finnish national teams, as well as having a short spell in charge of Inter Milan. Hodgson would not have been many people's first pick as the man to keep Fulham up, especially as his only previous Premier League experience had been over a decade earlier with Blackburn Rovers.

Yet, Hodgson confounded the critics by inspiring Fulham to an astonishing end of season recovery which culminated in the team winning on the final day of the season to stay in the top flight. Hodgson has subsequently transformed the West Londoners and in the 2008/09 season, Fulham have finished a full ten places higher than last season by attaining their highest ever league position in the top flight of seventh place. In achieving this, Fulham have also qualified for European football for next season, which goes to show that if you make the right managerial appointment, you can make such a difference and in a relatively short space of time.

These are the lessons Newcastle need to take heed of if they are to return to the top flight and are to re-establish themselves as a team with aspirations of winning honours. In the short term, they need to solely focus on returning to the Premier League at the first attempt, an accomplishment that all connected with the club would be well advised to not take for granted as the Championship is always an unforgiving division and looks likely to be very competitive next season. Newcastle will need to get some of their mercenaries and over the hill players off of their wage bill and will need to bring players in, but they will be signing Championship level players as reinforcements and there is no guarantee they will sign players any better than those playing elsewhere in the division.

The 64,000 dollar question is whether Alan Shearer will be persuaded to stay for another season. I expect ultimately Shearer will drop his excessive wage demands and will take on the job permanently. The irony, however, is that the manager Newcastle should have appointed two years ago and who may well have kept them in the Premier League, looks likely to be unveiled as the manager of their deadliest rivals Sunderland within the next day. The man in question is Steve Bruce, who is well known as a lifelong supporter of Newcastle who would jump at the chance to manage his hometown club. Instead, in taking the job at Sunderland, he would effectively be ruling himself out of ever managing the Magpies.

If Shearer does stay on at Newcastle, he will need to pick up the ropes pretty quickly and I think the club would be well served in bringing in an experienced manager or coach to work alongside him who would be able to challenge Shearer's thinking. Shearer's existing sidekick Iain Dowie is unlikely to be the right man to perform this role over the longer term as firstly he is likely to go back into club management himself, but I also sense that he is too chummy with Shearer and will therefore find it hard to question his authority. A more senior figure who has seen it all and bought the T-shirt is what is required to help combat Shearer's managerial greenness. Unfortunately, I doubt Coach Carter would be enticed by a cold winter on Tyneside!

I fully expect Shearer to be given the Newcastle job permanently, but ultimately only an immediate return to the Premier League will ensure that Shearer retains his status as Messiah on Tyneside, and is not just a very naughty boy.

6. Debra looks favourite for The Apprentice, but Kate to be the real winner
The hunt for Sir Alan Sugar's fifth apprentice is entering the home straight now with just a quintet of hopefuls remaining with this week's penultimate episode of the series seeing the obligatory interview process with Sugar's merry band of Rottweilers and Jack Russells. Imagine if any of his heavies were conducting a real life job interview, they surely would be contravening employment law with some of the questions they are allowed to ask. It is not so much an interview as a character assassination in some instances.

I have not watched this series as avidly as the previous series, due to the unfortunate scheduling of this series on the same night as Champions League football. Memo to the BBC, please air the next series on a Thursday night when I will be able to guarantee my viewing. However, what I have seen of this series, I would have to say that the male candidates in this series have been a disgrace to their gender. Only James remains of the male folk that started the process, and he really lacks the business acumen to stand any chance of getting beyond the interview stage.

To my mind, the most talented Apprentices this year have been the blonde bombshell Kate and the feisty, fiery saleswoman Yasmina. If the hunt was for my apprentice, these two would indisputably be contesting the final because they have demonstrated the best array of skills, have responded the best to pressure, have led their teams well when asked to and always contributed when amongst the ranks, but are also just very presentable people.

Despite this, however, I have a sneaky suspicion that Debra, the Alan McInally lookalike with a voice like Stacey off Eastenders is going to walk off with the £100,000 job in Sir Alan's corporate empire. She is younger than either Kate or Yasmina at just 23 and although she has shown negative character traits on the tasks during the series, she has also shown good business instincts and has fought her corner well in the board room. These are qualities that Sir Alan Sugar admires and I think he is suspicious of people who come across as too eloquent. Although Debra is raw around the edges, because of her relative inexperience, I expect Sugar feels he can smooth out these edges but can also leave her to get on with doing the job. In a time of financial uncertainty, more than ever Sir Alan is looking for a doer who is capable of the hard sell.

Yasmina to me looks like the stereotype of the common Apprentice runner-up. Consistently good all the way through and a very tough, headstrong cookie who is not afraid to say what she thinks, but ultimately someone Sugar might overlook because of her feistiness. He would be afraid that she would upset people in what tend to be male dominated corridors of power within his organisation. For Yasmina this year, read Claire Young twelve months ago or Ruth Badger back in series two.

In Kate's case, she almost suffers for being so photogenic. People I imagine look at her and think that she is just a dizzy blonde, whereas in fact, I think they might overlook her qualities. The Birmingham lass is a very presentable woman and I am not just talking in terms of aesthetic qualities, but she also has good communication skills and has struck me as being good at dealing with people throughout the process. It would not surprise me if she ends up the real winner from Apprentice series five as if her performance on the home shopping task is anything to go by, she looks a natural in front of the camera and so failure to win the series could prove a blessing in disguise, as a career in the media is surely more lucrative in the long run than managing Sir Alan Sugar's property portfolio.

Writing with a spring in my step

Well hello again everyone. I hope things have been good since we last convened. If you happen to live in the south of England, you should at least have enjoyed the glorious spring weather of the past week. Wall-to-wall sunshine, clear blue skies and temperatures in the teens have all added up to surefire evidence of spring having arrived. Sadly, however, you just know that it can't last and when this kind of weather should be prevalent come May, the wind and the rain will arrive. Guess we will just have to make the most of it while it lasts. But it is noticeable how people are more cheerful when the weather is good, and with much of what is happening at the moment being bleak and miserable, that is a much needed tonic.

As with a couple of my recent blog posts, I have decided to split up the blog to talk about a few different things that have gathered in my mind on train journeys to and from work and also through walking in the glorious weather of recent days. Better get cracking then I guess.

1. Komedia's troubles are no laughing matter
For those readers of this blog who, like me, are resident in Brighton, you will probably have read in the past week or so of the Komedia's current financial travails where it potentially may have to close as a result of unsettled debts to some of its key suppliers. For those who are not resident in Brighton and don't know what the Komedia is, basically it is a community theatre in the heart of Brighton's North Laine area which over the past 10 years has grown into being a popular niche comedy and entertainments venue in the city.

The Komedia was established back in the 1990s initially as a small, backstreet theatre which opened up in a small street off of St James's Street, close to the Palace Pier. A few years later as the Komedia's popularity grew and it started to draw more mainstream support in addition to its traditional student roots, the theatre relocated to its present location in the North Laine area of Brighton and over the years it has played host to up and coming comedians from the stand-up circuit, as well as a host of live music acts.

I can well remember the North Laine area before the Komedia arrived and in fact can remember what was at the present site of the Komedia before it became an entertainments venue. It was the Jubilee Shopping Hall, which was kind of like an indoor market traders' parade, with plenty of tat for sale at knockdown tat prices. Back in my misspent youth I used to be an avid computer games player and I used to buy games for my Commodore 64 from the computer games shop there for anything up from 50 pence. Back then, North Laine was seen as one of the rundown areas of Brighton which was given a wide berth by both residents and visitors to Brighton alike.

This recollection is highlighted particularly because the North Laine area has enjoyed a renaissance in the past decade and is now one of the most thriving, bustling areas in Brighton, with a mix of small independent traders, as well as a diverse choice of pubs, cafes and restaurants covering the main streets in the vicinity and the city's main library and museum situated close by. When the Brighton Festival occurs in May, North Laine can expect to experience a healthy portion of the action. While I would stop short of attributing North Laine's rejuvenation simply being down to the Komedia moving there, it has without a doubt played a significant role in the regeneration of the area.

So this begs the question, what has gone wrong with the Komedia? Well, the key thing to remember is that the Komedia is a not-for-profit organisation. This is something of an oxymoron in some respects because, after all, every business needs to make some kind of profit to keep running. But the Komedia is not set up for profitable purposes, the only income it makes is through takings at the theatre, admission fees, people drinking at the bar. The trouble is that the venue is relatively small and so breaking even against the cost of putting on a show is always going to be a recurring challenge.

What has intensified the problem for Komedia though has been the withdrawal of Arts Council funding. Having worked in the voluntary sector for much of my professional life to date, I can appreciate the problem that this will have presented. It stands to reason that wherever an organisation is largely reliant upon a single source of funding and that funding then discontinues, the rug will be removed from under the feet of those charged with running the business.

The world of funding, particularly where charitable grants and donations are concerned is a minefield where the funding provider is constantly looking for evidence of where its money is being spent and are sticklers for issuing caveats over what they will allow their money to be spent on and what they will not. I suppose that is fair enough, I mean let's face it, if any of us gave a donation of £100,000 to a business, we would insist on knowing where the money went and would request that it went into a worthy development rather than taking the business in an inappropriate direction.

And this appears to be where the Komedia upset the Arts Council to the point that the Arts Council withdrew its funding. The Arts Council wanted its money to be spent on the Komedia showcasing cultural talent from across the spectrum of the arts, whereas Komedia has tried to stay close to its comedic roots and attract people to the venue who will drink at the bar while they are there watching a gig or a live comedian. The Arts Council have taken the view that the type of entertainment Komedia is offering does not quite fit in with the more high brow, culture vulture oriented entertainment they want their money spent on and so they withdrew their funding, not least because they also took the view that Komedia did not need their funding because it is making income from having a bar.

Sadly, this is not an atypical example of the bureaucracy that exists amongst funding panels. All too often their agendas are decided by what a few committee members with tunnel vision sitting in a room want to see, rather than what is representative of what the wider public want. And unfortunately, because of the current economic crisis, funding agencies want to award less money but for greater outputs. While larger charities with more resources at their disposal can find strategies for dealing with this, this is bound to place a gradual strain on a smaller charity, where key workers are often part-time workers or may even work on a voluntary basis, as I believe some do at the Komedia.

This is not to say Komedia's owners are exempt from blame in how they come to be in their current plight. Clearly some bad decisions have been made by their top level managers and the business model that they have been operating has been shown to be flawed. You could also say that not enough consideration had been made by management towards an "exit strategy" for if their funding was withdrawn, as it now has. Most significantly though, they need to take responsibility for the confused way in which the Komedia has been positioned. The Komedia is an independent theatre and yet is trying to win more mainstream support while it is wishing to be a promoter of cultural events but is still most well renowned for its comedy evenings, not least because of its name. Komedia has tried to be all things for all seasons and so the paying customer is not quite sure where they stand, while they have also been preturbed by excessive admission prices and bar prices.

Where Komedia goes from here is difficult to say, but it certainly would be facing a grim future if the creditors that it owes money to are not satisfied with the payment plans it has which would seem to be to pay back less than the full outstanding amount. The voluntary sector relies on a certain amount of goodwill, but as Komedia has failed to deliver in the past, it would not be surprising to hear of creditors rebuffing these proposals and insisting on being reimbursed for the full amount.

The Komedia may not be the best entertainment venue in Brighton, but it has nonetheless played an important part in the regeneration of the North Laine area over the past decade. Given that Brighton is always actively selling itself as one of the entertainment capitals of the country, it is important that it retains a range of venues that offer those that like to be entertained outside of their home with a wide choice of entertainments and activities to sample. Losing the Komedia would be a blow to such an aspiration, so it is to be hoped that a strategy can be put in place to sustain the Komedia not just in the short term but over a longer period.

It may mean that the theatre needs to tap into some of the local business expertise and establish some alliances with some wealthy backers, and it may also mean having to consider being run more like a business. If tapping into this kind expertise can develop the Komedia and introduce a more coherent strategy, then "selling out" might prove to be a necessary evil and certainly preferable to hitting the wall.

2. Cheats can never truly prosper
Being something of an athletics fan, I had mixed feelings at Dwain Chambers's recent success at the Indoor Athletics Championships in the 60 metres, where he won the gold medal. On the one hand, I admired Chambers for having the guts to stand up and be counted and compete against many fellow athletes who will have been less than pleased to see him lining up against them. On the other, Chambers has always struck me as being a difficult man to like and although in the cold light of day, he has realised the error of his ways, he has not shown complete remorse for having taken performance enhancing drugs back in 2003, which led to his ban from competition.

In a way though, Chambers's success in the 60 metres in a British record time was quite possibly the best anti-drugs message that could have been made. After all, here is an athlete who we have to assume until proven otherwise is now running "clean" and he has gone and posted his best ever time over that distance without the influence of drugs, rather than when he had taken drugs.

Chambers is now 30 years old and I am sure he has had many moments of quiet reflection over the past few years where he has had cause within the confines of his own kitchen or living room to regret his misguided actions six years ago. Sadly, there is a paranoia within athletics and particularly within sprint races where every millisecond counts in order to be first to the finishing line and athletes sometimes will take a risk in order to get the gold, not least because many athletes feel that if they are not taking something, then some of their competitors will be. This is a sad state of affairs, but we live in a culture where a win at all costs mentality is often prevalent, not least where the corrupting influence of a not insignificant sum of money is involved.

The price Chambers has to pay for his foolish decision that he made when he was 23 years old is that these days he can only be a jobbing athlete. He is banned for life from competing in the Olympics, the blue riband event of his sport. His place at the World Championships later this year has not yet been ratified by the IAAF either. Meanwhile, the lucrative Grand Prix circuit, which offers athletes the chance to win prize money and appearance money through participation in their meetings, also appears to be a no-go area for Chambers. It is hard to feel sympathy for Chambers, as he did bring this all on himself, but he has served his 2 year ban from the sport and so perhaps, with the exception of the Olympics, it is time for him to complete his rehabilitation.

The daft thing for Chambers is that he is now probably at his absolute peak as an athlete. His win in a record time at the Indoors the other week was no coincidence. Not only has he seemingly got himself remarkably fit using legitimate methods, but he is now a more astute athlete than he was back in 2003. He always had the raw pace but lacked the temperament to bring the best out of his ability. It may be because he now sees himself as having a point to prove that Chambers has stepped up a gear, or more likely, it is just the ageing process. Linford Christie won Olympic gold at the age of 32 and in fact saved his best races for when he was past the 30 mark.

I'm not suggesting Chambers could take on Usain Bolt and come out on top, as clearly Bolt is an extraordinary athlete. But I do think that Chambers's success at the Indoor Championships will surely have been a bittersweet moment for him. He will have been happy to win and certainly happy to answer his critics. But when he relaxed in the ice bath afterwards, Chambers would not have been human if a part of him did not think ruefully back to his decision to take performance enhancing drugs in 2003 because his indoor gold medal proved that what was needed to enhance his performance was already inside him, in the form of self-belief.

Victory in that race must have brought home to Chambers how he had thrown away a promising career which he had the capacity to shape himself. It was a bad decision that Chambers made and I think he has made another bad call recently in releasing an autobiography that is supposedly critical of other athletes and of athletics officials in their handling of him. At a time when Chambers is needing to win any meal ticket he can, isolating himself further by re-opening old wounds is not the most advisable tactic and could rebound on him. If Chambers really needed to write his version of events, it would have been best to leave it until after he has hung up his spikes.

3. Quality not quantity is key for universities
There has been much debate and discussion recently about the levels of people going to university and of the proposals for tuition fees for students to increase. Understandably, there is an argument that has a sound basis that says that greater tuition fees will only result in university education becoming more elitist and will prove to be inaccessible for students who might well have the academic skills and inclination but whose parents lack the bank balance or American Express gold card. Clearly the best efforts must be made to ensure that a university education is a privilege bestowed on the most talented rather than the wealthiest students, but I think realistically we all know that the classless society that supposedly exists in the UK now is complete Utopia.

It is fair to say I come from a background where I would have been born with a plastic spoon in my mouth rather than a silver one and as such if I was starting at university now rather than in 1997, I just would not stand a chance of completing the course. I was quite fortunate in that I finished university just before student maintenance grants were done away with and so I was able to get through my four years at my Alma Mater, the University of Brighton, without incurring a massive amount of student debt. It helped that I was still living at home at the time, as I recall that some of my fellow students that graduated in the hot summer of 2001 incurred debts that ate a considerable chunk out of the starting salary in their first postgraduate job. It is no coincidence that more students are living at home now while an undergraduate since tuition fees were introduced and grants abolished.

The one fundamental flaw that the Labour Government has with regards to its higher education policy is the frankly absurd notion that 50% of all students in any given year should go to university. This is just impractical and does not do anyone any favours, the universities end up being oversubscribed, students who have no real motivation to be educated sign up because it means they can put off getting a job for three years (or six if you study Architecture) and invariably it is these kinds of students who drop out of a course after one term, while the students who do want to learn end up in crowded lectures and seminars.

The problem that the Government's "50% target" has brought about is that universities have increased the admission levels on their courses but they have only managed to do this by relaxing the clearance system. I remember a couple of things from my final year at university that home how the clearance system was no longer working as an adequate filter as universities became more obsessed with quantity rather than quality.

I left university some eight years ago now (you have no idea just how old that makes me feel). But even back then it was becoming evident how the clearance system was being relaxed. I remember speaking to a lecturer near the end of my time at university and they remarked on how the Business Studies course in my year had 120 students on the course, but in the equivalent course for the first years that year, there were over 200 students. I don't know for definite, but I would estimate that the freshers for the equivalent course in this academic year will be significantly more.

The other incident that brought home to me how the relaxation of the clearance system had resulted in a drop in standards was when I came to do an assignment in my last year at uni that saw me having to mentor two first year students. The two students I was mentoring had to supply me with a CV that contained their educational achievements. Now, when I applied for university you needed 4 A-C grades at GCSE level in order to be accepted for a place. However, I recall that at least one of the CVs I perused fell short of that number and also included a grade D in their A-level Business Studies, the very subject they were studying at degree level! I found the step up from doing GNVQ Business in my first year at uni a big one and I got a distinction, so I would have thought that this would have been a massive transition for the student whose CV it was.

As well as the Government's objective of getting 50% of further education students into higher education, the Government is also looking to push through a motion to raise the compulsory school leaving age to 18 from 16. I also believe this to be a flawed move because all it will result in will be more teenagers who are demotivated and want to leave education who are forced to stay in education and therefore will disrupt the progress of those who want to learn and possibly go to university. The great thing about sixth form is that it is a halfway house between school and uni. The culture is different to school, there is no "Yes Sir" or "Yes Miss", the tutor expects to be called by their name and because the vast majority of students at sixth form are happy to be there and because they are away from the more mentally deteriorating aspects of life at school, there is very little animosity at sixth form and so this proves to be conducive to learning.

Sixth form being the halfway house it is also provides a transitional period and so teenagers can gradually evolve into adults as they become acclimatised to a less formal, rules based setting. The problem is that if you make it compulsory to stay at school until 18, this transitional period is going to be eroded and the leap up to university will be steeper, while students that no longer want to be at school/college beyond their sixteenth birthday will be a disruptive influence on those that do.

The fact of the matter is that not everyone can be an academic. In fact, there are not enough jobs to go round for those who have an academic background. Too often universities shelter their students and paint them an unrealistic picture of what life will be like after they have attended the graduation ball and after they have picked up their scroll while wearing an oversized cloak and mortarboard. Some well meaning Careers Advisor will tell students about what sort of average starting salary they can expect when they get their first graduate job. The little bit of the small print they neglect to inform their students of is that there are only a finite amount of graduate specific jobs available, for the rest it is a case of starting from the bottom and working your way up like any other employee would.

Instead of overcrowding universities with students not up to the mark or detaining schoolchildren who have enough of their kipper tie and dodgy tuck shop rolls by the time they hit sixteen, the Government should be doing more to encourage those who found academia a struggle to get into learning a trade or accessing support to set up a business. If you look at some of the most well known entrepreneurs in the media gaze, Sir Alan Sugar, Duncan Bannatyne and Sir Richard Branson are all examples of entrepreneurs who were not outstanding scholars. But all of them had the drive, graft and entrepreneurial instinct to be their own boss at a pretty young age. Even Ian Beale showed his entrepreneurial talents by running the Meal Machine in his early 20s!

It would be good if schools, colleges and job centres could establish more links with local TECs to provide young people with the support they need to contemplate running a business without going through the conventional higher education route and which could provide support in planning the key things to get a business idea off the ground, such as writing a business plan, approaching a bank with a financial projection and dealing with tax.

There does seem to have been a recent rethink by the Government which has seen apprenticeships promoted as a viable alternative. This is a step in the right direction. OK, so the manufacturing industry is in terminal decline and so there will be a shortage of opportunities in those traditional jobs. But there are plenty of manual trades that non-academic youths can be trained for and which they may be most suited to, be they builders, plumbers, mechanics or electricians. And crucially, these are all professions that can lead to the opportunity for self-employment.

Maybe it would also be an idea for students to learn trades at university. I am not suggesting that any prospective electricians get let loose on rewiring the student common room nor do I advocate the wannabe chefs serving up dinner in the cafeteria, although I dare say some of their efforts would not be worse than the dumpy mashed potato fayre that is sometimes on offer. But a university based course to train to be a plumber which also gives the student practical first hand experience of the job could prove to be beneficial.

I recently encountered someone I knew from school who did not achieve academically and had no desire to go to university. However, he is a classic example of someone that has done well through his own hard graft and perseverance and he is now a qualified electrician who is running his own business.

This just brings home to me that while university can be a fantastic experience for many, it does not lead you to a promised land with a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. For those that are gifted academically and who have a good idea of where they want to go afterwards and where a specific qualification is essential, then university is right for them. But there are others whose skills lie away from academia and who should be given the best possible support in tapping into these skills at an early age.

There is too much emphasis on the quantity of intake at universities now due to Government policy and also due to simple economics. But the more that universities choose to relax their clearance systems, they will not get the cream of the crop and will instead see more and more students dropping out of courses, and possibly university altogether, after just a few weeks. A reduction in numbers and a review of the usefulness of courses on offer (wine tasting anybody?) should hopefully result in universities being a useful learning experience for the majority of students passing through them, and crucially in these times of uncertainty, the skills required to hold down a job upon graduating.


Well, that was quite a marathon. But in the words of Jimmy Cricket, "and there's more". I'll be back over the weekend to talk about a couple of other bits including Sir Alan's hunt for his latest apprentice.