Megan Black - Just For Fun

It was Ashley Stein who introduced me to the music of Megan Black. Speaking of the Scottish songwriter, who performed at Ashley and Gillian's Women In Music: It's Brutal Out Here event last month, Ashley said "She's kind of what I imagine Janis Joplin would have been like to talk to, as a person?" Like La Joplin, Black has clearly been blessed with the kind of knock 'em dead combination of voice and stage presence that comes along all too rarely.

While 'Just For Fun' was released in 2022, it's not included on Black's album of that year, Deadly Is The Woman, which is a shame. A stand alone track that struts like a champion and snarls with style, it serves as a particularly epic calling card for Megan Black. We have certainly not heard the last of her.

A brief, baffled discussion of mermaids and sirens in music

As regular readers will be aware, the release of a new Florence + The Machine song tends to be a bit of an event. It's especially an event if it's been signposted and hinted at for weeks beforehand by:

Exhibit 1: A TikTok of Florence Welch striding through what appears to be a churchyard in full winter coat, dress and boots while singing about how England is "Only ever grey or green" over a heavy synth track.

Exhibit 2: A TikTok of Welch in the bath in full mermaid tail, complete with fangs, singing in her highest, most eerie register.

I don't know who is orchestrating the Florence + The Machine publicity campaign for Dance Fever, and it's related tracks, but, bloody hell, they like to tease. 

Anyway, 'Mermaids' was released yesterday.

Coming in at just over four and a half minutes, it's a highly cinematic dark synth pop opus delivered in five acts which includes possibly my favourite lyric of the year so far:

"Hugging girls who smelled like Britney Spears... and coconuts"

In 'Mermaids', Welch is clearly drawing parallels between some of the more sinister mythic and folkloric depictions of mermaids and sirens and the activities and attitudes of drunken young women on a night time blitzkrieg around town.  

Girls who glitter while "Striding glorious and coatless in the rain" well on their way to a "Cheerful oblivion" that Welch misses despite herself.

In making this link, she also (it is assumed) unwittingly reminded me Honeyblood's 'Sea Hearts': A song about two young women having an equally boozy night out on the town, which also references mermaids and sirens, and which is well served by the accompanying video in which a mermaid emerges from the sea and goes to a house party/bachanalia in Glasgow. 

"We're the breakers and the waves" sings Stina Tweeddale "And we break hearts, break hearts, break hearts that get in our way"

I've been trying to come up with other examples that combine the fearsome qualities of drunk young women with the equally fearsome qualities of mermaids and sirens, but I haven't come up with any more yet. Should any suggest themselves to you, please let me know.

Songs of sirens and mermaids in the more general sense go back through the decades, centuries and millennia: From the sirens who sang in order to shipwreck sailors in Homer's The Odyssey, to a folksong about mermaids that seems to have existed in the early 20th Century in both the US and UK, to 'Song To The Siren' (both the Tim Buckley original and This Mortal Coil cover version) and - in recent years - more cuddly singing mermaids such as Disney's Ariel (The Little Mermaid) and Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monk's The Singing Mermaid, adapted as a theatre production for young children by Barb Jungr and Samantha Lane in recent years. 

Naturally, the beautiful but sinister mermaid and siren have a long history in art and literature more generally: As both Florence Welch and Stina Tweeddale are no doubt aware. And it's been fun to dive into it in anticipation of this blog post.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, fellow Florence + The Machine fan InkLungs has made a Spotify playlist on the theme of sirens and mermaids. 

Women In Music: It’s Brutal Out Here

Two former Music Business students from Edinburgh College, Gillian Morrison and Ashley Stein, are bringing a new one day conference for women and gender minorities to Edinburgh on 6th April

Photo of Calton Hill, Edinburgh by Adam Wilson on Unsplash

“There were very, very few other women in my class,” says Gillian Morrison, remembering her recent experience as a Music Business student. “There wasn’t a lot of female teachers either - it just felt very, very male dominated.”

The knock on effect of this for her as a student was that she often found herself in situations that felt slightly “more intimidating than it really should have been” At networking events, for example; “You’re on edge more. You feel very outnumbered.” 

After finishing her course at Edinburgh College, Gillian joined the institutions artist in residence programme “I wanted to use the opportunity to create something that I would have liked to have had as a student.” She explains, “And give that to the students who are currently doing those similar degrees.” She wanted to create a network “that is fuelled by this kind of conference we’re putting on, so that students coming up can meet each other, women already established in the industry can come along. And it’s just a place to talk about the thing we all kind of think and we talk about in secret to one another in the women’s toilets but never really say out loud like in an open public space. So, it was really important for me to craft that space.”

In putting on the event she has joined forces with another former Music Business student, Ashley Stein, who completed the same programme of study a few years earlier and who, like Gillian, has been working as an artist in residence at the college for a few years now. 

“I started before Covid” she explains “I didn’t really get the chance to do a lot of stuff so they kept me on for a while.” One of the events she was able to put on was “a conference with some funding from Edinburgh University last year, looking at what the music industry would be like post pandemic for women. How we would build it back up.”

The event went really well and “I’d always hoped that I could do something like that again so it was really good when Gillian joined the college and our old lecturer, Mike, asked me to help her out with it [the conference].” 

Women and music and gender and inequality are “kind of like my whole background basically” she explains, adding later that gigs and event management are also an area of expertise for her “and I did a lot of that stuff when I was doing the music business degree as well.”

Gillian was in her first year when Ashley started as an artist in residence. “At that point, I just thought she was a teacher at the college.” she says. Ashley taught a couple of Gillian’s classes on event management “And then obviously Covid happened, and then I finished my degree and I came back and I’m like ‘Oh, she’s a person and a peer! That’s really cool!’ I’d known of her before but I’ve kind’ve got to know her through this, and it’s been such a delight.”

The event, Women In Music: It’s Brutal Out Here, will take place in Edinburgh on April 6th. There will be an early start to allow for lunch and networking, followed by three panels. The event concludes with an evening showcase from 7:30pm, featuring some of Scotland’s best talent including Megan Black and Niamh-Sunshine.

Niamh-Sunshine is one of the current crop of Music Business students whereas Ashley met Megan Black at a songwriting retreat in January and describes her as “very, very cool” she explains that “She’s kind of what I imagine Janis Joplin would have been like to talk to, as a person?” as well as being “an incredible artist”.

The Creative Women’s Network, the subject of the first of the three panels, was originally started by Gillian alongside the head of the music degrees at Edinburgh College, Annette Chapman, while Gillian was still studying her Music Business degree. “Towards the end of my time at the Uni, or college, I was hearing a lot of stories from other female students about kinda… incidents that were unfortunate” she says, cautiously, “And we went to Annette to deal with it.”

Chapman was “Just as angry as we were about it. So I worked quite closely with Annette over the past year to develop… what was once originally just going to be a group within the college. But it’s quickly expanding it’s outreach to women and female professionals outside of the college, to create it’s own little eco system for nurturing people coming up in the industry and giving people a chance to kind’ve shape the next generation, hopefully make it a little bit nicer.”

"We are here so why are we so invisible to these people? What’s stopping us from headlining Glastonbury? What’s stopping us from getting to Glastonbury at all? Or to get to other places or to be signed to record labels? Why are we seen to not be here when we clearly are?” - Ashley Stein

Another theme to be discussed at the conference is the denial of the existence of women musicians by todays music industry, particularly live music and festival promoters, a state of affairs Ashley is understandably furious about.

“We continuously get told that women are not present within the music industry” she says, citing Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis’ recent comments following Glastonbury’s failure (again…) to book any female headliners for this years festival, as an example of this. “Even her, who is like technically one of the most powerful and mainstream women in the industry, who has a lot of power over decisions that are made. Even she’s just like ‘There’s not enough of you, there’s not enough women at high levels to come and play at this festival’. Like, I get having Elton John, I get it - it’s his last tour - cool, I like Elton John, I’m happy for him playing Glastonbury. But why’ve you got to have two men either side of him?” If Eavis was unable to secure the one female headliner she approached, Ashley says, why didn’t she have backups she could ask who were also female? “That annoys me” she says, with classic understatement. 

Ashley Stein

“We’re constantly being told that us, as women, are not doing enough. We’re not picking up guitars, we’re not making bands, we’re not doing this, we’re not doing that… Where it’s completely frickin’ untrue because we’ve been doing it for a million years. We are here so why are we so invisible to these people? What’s stopping us from headlining Glastonbury? What’s stopping us from getting to Glastonbury at all? Or to get to other places or to be signed to record labels? Why are we seen to not be here when we clearly are?”

The problem, you suspect, is not with the women musicians: It’s with the event organisers, live music promoters, record labels and other arms and components of the music industry who wilfully fail to notice them and who display a jaw dropping lack of curiosity and initiative when it comes to actively looking for them.

The second panel of the day, Gender & Neurodivergence in the Music Industry is a topic that is very close to Gillian and Ashley’s hearts. Both are neurodivergent: Gillian has autism and ADHD, Ashley has dyslexia, ADHD and OCD. Through talking to each other, and to friends, they stumbled across something they felt was both un-discussed and very important:

“Most women in music that I’ve spoken to have claimed to have some kind of neurodivergance, whether it’s dyslexia, ADHD, OCD…” says Gillian, “We’re everywhere - and we don’t talk about it. And that’s mad to me because I wanna scream from the rooftops about how many of us are here, and how we work, and how we are supposed to be here.”

“We were just like ‘Oh my God, we have to do that’” says Ashley,  “it just suddenly seemed really important”

Although both she and Gillian were diagnosed as adults in 2019, she feels that lockdown may have played a part in a perceived increase in women (both musically inclined and otherwise) asking to be referred by GP’s for diagnoses*. “I think a lot of people - especially women - started to realise this is probably what they have got going on, and I think everybody that I know who hasn’t already got a diagnosis is on a waiting list to be diagnosed with neurodivergent stuff.”

Having had just over three years to sit with and come to terms with her diagnoses, Ashley now feels she wants to “Talk about it, I want to dig into it.” Also “I want other people to know that they can still achieve lots of stuff, they can still do immensely well in whatever they want to do.”

"I just thought I had to muddle along with this, I have to struggle with this because I have to deal with it, but… The more you talk about it, especially with people that have similar experiences, the more you realise you don’t have to struggle with it. Life doesn’t have to be as difficult.” - Gillian Morrison

There are established correlations between neurodivergance and the creative arts: Just google ‘Famous people with Autism’, ‘Famous people with ADHD’, ’Famous people with Dyspraxia’ or ‘Famous people with Dyslexia’ and you'll find a lot of musicians and actors.

“Our brains work in a specific way that means we’re really creative” says Ashley, “and that’s awesome, it’s a really awesome thing to be, to have going on. It doesn’t always feel like it because you have to work twice as hard to get by a lot of the time, and it can be really frustrating: I’ve certainly found it extremely difficult like even now, but… it’s something to be talked about and celebrated and especially among women and gender diverse people. A lot of us are like that - it’s cool - and we need to have some sort of way of discussing it with each other and I think it’s important, basically, yes.”

“It’s really important to have these conversations among creatives” says Gillian, “because I know that through working with Attitude Is Everything [Gillian is one of their Future Leaders] there’s a whole load of things that I didn’t know about my diagnoses. I’ve been diagnosed since 2019, like Ashley, so I’ve known for a while and I’ve come to grips with it for a while but there were certain things I didn’t even think of ’til I started working with them. Like asking for special requirements or like asking employers or lecturers to be slightly nicer to me with deadlines or use more concise language. And I just thought I had to muddle along with this, I have to struggle with this because I have to deal with it, but… The more you talk about it, especially with people that have similar experiences, the more you realise you don’t have to struggle with it. Life doesn’t have to be as difficult.”

Gillian Morrison

The Future Leaders Initiative is run through Attitude Is Everything’s Beyond The Music project explains Gillian “Where they try and improve a disabled representation in the music industry” she was allowed onto the project because of her neurodiversities and “They gave me a lot of support, and extra training, and a lot of like confidence and stuff that’s been really, really useful.” The programme is “coming to a close now and I’m really upset about it, but it was really, really good to understand my place in the industry as someone with a disability, and also how else to make the industry more accessible for other people. Because it’s one thing to climb up the ladder and it’s another thing to help people up the ladder as well I think.”

Both women say that they’ve enjoyed working together on the conference, despite working in wildly different ways because of their neurodiversities.

“You plan all this stuff and you’re really chaotic” says Ashley, “but when you look at someone else and they’re doing the same thing you’re just like ‘Oh my God, what are you doing?’ like ‘How do you live like that?!?’”

They both laugh.

“It’s been quite funny” concludes Ashley, “and eye-opening.”

I ask them if they’re nervous about the event now that it’s only a week away.

“I’m not” says Gillian, “because part of me always trusts Ashley blindly, that as long as she’s involved it’s gonna work out fine.”

The conference is the first event she’s ever put on as the impact of Covid meant that she was unable to put on events throughout the time she was completing her degree course. “So this is really scary; it was really ambitious to do a conference first!” she laughs.

Ashley makes music and Gilian would like to; this desire for creativity was part of the reason why she chose to take a music business course. The pandemic has meant that it’s “had to go on the back burner for a while” but she’s still keen to do it. She’s just picking her moment. “Ashley told me, when we were working together, about Girls Rock School, and I’m really, really keen to try that. So, not right now, but… maybe.”

Both of them would like to see their new conference continue, and grow, in future years.

“I really enjoyed this” says Gillian “so if I ever get the opportunity to run it again, either next year at some other point - especially if it’s with Ashley - I would absolutely love it. I know live events can be quite stressful but I think this has been the best case scenario, with Ashley. I would quite happily do this again for years and years and years if I get the chance.”

Ashley is firmly in agreement. “I’ve had a really, really good time. Cos I’ve usually done this kind of stuff by myself, and it’s very stressful and difficult. So it’s been really cool to actually work with someone else on it.”

When she did her own women and music post-pandemic conference last year “So many people were like ‘You should do this again, you should do this again’ and I was like ‘I don’t know how I’m gonna make that work, I don’t have a team, I don’t have anything…’ I was just a bit like ‘I don’t really wanna do it again’ because it was really hard on my own. But now “I’m just like ‘Oh, actually, could do this again’”

“It would be amazing to run this every year and to make it bigger, and do it in a bigger venue.” She admits “Or take it places as well. And I think it’d be really good for the both of us as well.” She and Gillian could use their experience to “Go on to talk to conferences. Up here we have Wide Days, which is a music conference, and there’s Resonate, which is in Scotland as well…Yeah, there’s loads of cool stuff that I think could come of it, for ourselves as music business people.”

Taking their experience as neurodivergent women “From our conference into other peoples and asking if we could come and speak at other events about that, and start bringing that into the mainstream view of everybody at these other kind of events, where they’re not talking about it. I think that would be really, really cool” she says. “I’d love to do it again. I think it could become an annual thing and it could become really really big.”

Do you see it going on a Ladyfest kind of trajectory?

This question inspires a very happy “YAAAASSSS!” from Gillian.

”Yes, that would be my vibe.” Echoes Ashley, “That’s always been something I’ve wanted to do. I’ve run so many gigs that have got all female lineups, all queer musicians, all that kind of stuff… so it would be really cool to bring the two things together and have like a proper, full on, big venue, different panels, different wee events kinda thing…”

As for future plans:

“I’m in the middle of setting up a business that will be a social enterprise that will run music business workshops and courses and stuff for women and gender minority musicians, in person, because I’ve done that before.” Eventually there will be a website as well “Kind of like LinkedIn Learning but for musicians, and much cooler.”

She wants to link all of this up to big events like the conference “Because that’s what I’ve always done. So I want to bring all of these things together and get a whole crazy Ladyfest vibe, for sure. Think that’ll be great.”

More immediately, Gillian has plans to volunteer at Glastonbury this summer “Which is really exciting cos I’ve never been to a festival before, so why not start with Glastonbury?”

“Yes” says Ashley, in mock stern tones “Why not?!?”

Having just emerged from a period of heavily structured time at university, Gillian is enjoying having free time to work through things and “Kind’ve do what takes my interest”

Women in Music: It’s Brutal Out Here takes place on April 6th at The Voodoo Rooms in the Speakeasy, Edinburgh. Doors open at 11:15am. Attendees are then welcome to eat their lunch and network before the conference begins at 12:15. The showcase will run from 7:30-10pm. Tickets are available here.

*Statistically, girls are far less likely to be diagnosed with ASD [Autistic Spectrum Disorder] or ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder] than boys. Women are also much more likely to be diagnosed in adulthood for both conditions than men are.

Florence + The Machine - Just A Girl (Official Audio)

The original No Doubt version of 'Just A Girl' was a fast, relentless and unyielding slice of angry ska tinged pop punk released in 1995. It followed in the wake of 'Don't Speak', the bands epic alt ballad, which spent three weeks at number 1 in the UK.

Given that Yellowjackets (season two of which will be featuring the Florence + The Machine version of 'Just A Girl') is set partially in 1996, the choice of the song feels like no accident: The songs lyrics lambast the many ways in which girls and women are made to feel powerless and controlled by society but, at the same time, Yellowjackets is a thriller with a female dominated cast which has, at its heart, the long term impact and trauma of a kind of female Lord Of The Flies series of events on the adult survivors of a plane crash.

I mean, you can see why they thought of Florence Welch, can't you? Darkness? Check. Rage? Check. Pain? Check. 

Under the hands of Florence + The Machine what was once a pretty straightforward song becomes a sprawling, multilayered, highly atmospheric and sinister journey into the abyss. "Don't, in any way, hold back" the brief might well have been, though - according to Welch - it was in fact to create something "Deeply unsettling". Reminiscent in places of Miranda Sex Garden's equally creepy take on 'In Heaven (lady in the radiator song)' from Eraserhead*, Welch has been given free range with her vocals, meaning that at times she steers close to Gwen Stefani's original vocal (Stefani was an early musical idol of hers) and at times allows her vocals to soar to ethereal highs or lower to angry growls, depending on what is required. 

The Dance Fever tour is currently in its Australia and New Zealand leg, and there has been a certain amount of excited anticipation amongst the Florence fan networks on Twitter in recent days about whether the band will perform 'Just A Girl' live or not. 

Whether this happens or not, the Florence + The Machine version of 'Just A Girl' represents a tremendous tour de force.

* 'In Heaven (lady in the radiator song) is taken from the 1993 album Suspiria, which also features Katherine Blake delivering an incredibly maudlin, slow down gothic jazz take on 'My Funny Valentine'.

Overcoats - Never Let You Go (Official Music Video)

The third of four (yes, FOUR!) new songs released by Overcoats in recent months, the highly infectious 'Never Let You Go' reveals (much like this weeks new song, 'New Suede Shoes') the bands firm commitment to sophisticated pop songwriting coupled with impeccable harmonies.

'Maybe I love the drama', they confess, 'Knowing I could lose it all' in what proves to be a particularly strong central hook and, with just those two lines, I'm convinced. Not only that the third Overcoats album is going to be an absolute banger, but that 'Never Let You Go' could well be in with a shot of being my song of the year.

It's to be hoped with the release of their third album, Winner (out next month!) that the bands slow-but-steady rise in the US will continue, though it would also be nice if they got some recognition this side of the pond as well. I'm reminded of my early days on (pre Elon) Twitter, when - in the wake of the latest round of excuses by promoters for not booking more women to play festivals - they re-tweeted a report from a US publication, in which promoters claimed they couldn't find any women to book, with the immortal line: "We're literally RIGHT HERE!" 

If only promoters over here would take note, and book them.

Jake Yapp has unwound

Yesterday was the final episode of the 20 long run of Jake Yapp's Unwinding on Radio 4Extra and, I have to say, I will miss it grievously. 

Since the beginning of January it has become part of my evening routine; like a cosy pair of slippers. Albeit, in this case, a cosy pair of slippers in bright colours, possibly held together by gaffer tape, with safety pins and all sorts of other gubbins attached.

I didn't blog about the wonderful innovation that was Friday Night Is Music Night in my previous post but, for me, this has been a strong highlight of the series run. Even threatening to overshadow the legendary Celebrity Soup Of The Day. Essentially it involved Harry The Piano taking up residence in the studio on Friday evenings with an assortment of singing and non singing guests, being challenged to recreate popular songs or pieces of music in an entirely different style. Toyah singing metal was a highlight, as was last nights suggestion of "'I Got Rhythm' in the style of someone who don't".

Some of my favourite moments across the 20 episodes would include, in no particular order:

• The jingle for the 'Higher, Lower' game.
• Samira Ahmed's spirited and geeky defence of the Cliff Richard film The Young Ones during Culture Wars.
• The night when someone won Dolly Parton on Celebrity Soup Of The Day (with, I think, Potato And Leek)
• The night when Jake, in his nonagenarian persona Dora Dale, was himself won by a contestant on Celebrity Soup Of The Day.
• Jake's final night jingle for producer Laura Grimshaw
• Toyah Willcox being quietly bemused by the premise of Celebrity Soup Of The Day
• Anton Du Bec phoning in to the show, after having being won on Celebrity Soup Of The Day, to talk about life with his new owner.
• The entire run of Where To Mate?, which I hadn't encountered before.
• Susie Blake's continuity announcement for Love Island.
• The Boring Talks episode about Model Villages
• Terry Wogan the show cat
• The Eastenders theme in the style of Beethoven

I've had a look at what's on between 7pm and 10pm Monday-Friday next week on Radio 4Extra and I must confess to a strong sense of disappointment. Mainly because it all seems so, well, random... and I haven't quite re-adjusted to the loss of the Crime and Thrillers slot yet.

February can be the cruellest of months.

Jake Yapp's Unwinding

Comedian, writer, regular presenter of Radio 4Extra's Comedy Club, surrealist... Celebrity Vegan (with a good line in Salted Beetroot)...

Jake Yapp is holed up in Scott Mill's BBC studio with a broken chair and microphones that still have tinsel wrapped around them. He has been given the somewhat daunting task of keeping Radio 4Extra's notoriously (and increasingly) vocal audience happy throughout January. It will not be an easy task.

Regular 4Extra listeners were already seriously narked, given the BBC's announcement in 2022 that it intends to bin the station off entirely at some point in the next three years. In the dying months of the year however this sense of frustration was amplified by a series of unexpected and radical changes to the existing Radio 4Extra schedule, which saw - amongst other things - the end of the Crime and Thrillers strand between 8pm and 9pm. The changes inflicted on the station in recent months might not be as extreme as those inflicted on Twitter by Elon Musk in the same period, but the level of reported unhappiness has been much the same. Jake Yapp's Unwinding will be going out every weekday evening between 7pm and 10pm, replacing the old Classic Comedy, Crime and Thrillers and 9pm documentary slots. It is, indeed, a gamble. Will it work? 

Yapp began well on Monday evening by launching into a polished and suitably misanthropic re-working of 'It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year', but the initial vibe of the show was confusing. On one level, he seemed to be working up an extension of the kind of material he would have delivered, between comedy shows, in The Comedy Club (which continues in the 10pm - Midnight slot seven days a week, albeit presented by continuity announcers instead of comedians as previously) but on the other hand the jingles particularly give it the feel of an afternoon show on Radio 2. Which is a little jarring at times. It's possible that Yapp or producer Laura Grimshaw have realised this as, by Wednesday night, said jingles were being much more sparingly used.

Essentially, Unwinding's format consists of Jake, his special guest of the evening (Monday was Jessica Fostekew, Tuesday was Isy Suttie, Wednesday Sara Baron) and producer Laura talking, inviting and reading out contributions from listeners, plus regular content such as the already legendary Celebrity Soup Of The Day, the more hit/miss Culture Wars and interviews with those of interest to the comedy world, such as former Muppets and Spitting Image puppeteer, Louise Gold. In-between all of this, he plays extracts or (in the case of shorter content) full episodes of comedy shows, podcasts and book serialisations and makes use of suitably self depreciating/withering anti-endorsements from his more serious BBC colleagues: The Huw Edwards disclaimer played at the end of each show is hilariously withering. As Yapp himself put it on Wednesday night, it's a bit like a Radio 2 show only playing comedy extracts instead of records. Though I'd say it's more like The Comedy Club as a magazine show.

Some comedy show extracts are integrated more easily into this three hour show than others, with 15 minute shows faring better than 30 minute ones on the whole. Some of the longer shows can bear being chopped up and interrupted, for example John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which is made up of self contained sketches, but some feel a bit less well integrated, such as the chopped up episode of Women Talking About Cars on Wednesday night, which didn't chunk as well.

This is a minor point though as the show clearly has legs and much to recommend it. This would include Yapp's interviews, particularly with Louse Gold who, in part 2 of her interview (broadcast during the Wednesday episode) talked to Jake about being the first person to operate the Queen's puppet and voice it for Spitting Image. She watched the Queen's funeral with the Queen's puppet next to her on the sofa.

Similarly good is the serialisation of Daisy Buchanan's eye opening satirical novel Careering, the fly-on-the-wall esque cabbie comedy Where To Mate? and episodes of The Boring Talks, which go out after 9pm when the show takes on a slightly less chaotic energy. Monday's Boring Talk was given by a teenage ice cream van driver, Wednesday's by a pencil enthusiast. 

In terms of the original content created by Yapp alongside Grimshaw and his guests and contributors, Celebrity Soup Of The Day has been the established star of the show since Monday, but some of the Culture Wars 'debates' also deserve a mention. I wasn't sure about The Culture Wars debate on Monday, but I was won over by Tuesday's during which Grimshaw earnestly tried to find a negative thing to say about custard as Suttie and Yapp chugged (and gargled) the supermarket own brand variety of the yellow stuff in the background. The custard chat, sandwiched as it was either side of an episode of Where To Mate?, was sublime. Somewhere in there things took an increasingly surreal turn, leading to discussion of a pudding inside a pudding inside a pudding, which was daft enough to remind me of the swiss army cake in Undone (Series 2, episode 2: "It's a cake but it also contains lots of little more useful cakes that come out the side")

The nightly re-cap of the previous nights episode of Celebrity Soup Of The Day is so hilarious meanwhile that it's in serious danger of eclipsing the (admittedly fine) feature itself, coming as it does with a suitably hoarse male Hollywood style voiceover, giving listeners the impression that they're listening to a more surreal episode of Dragon's Den. 

It would be easier to command you to listen to Celebrity Soup Of The Day than it would be to try and explain the concept or, indeed, the rules. At a basic level, it involves a member of the public trying to guess what the soup of the day is at a particular UK pub or restaurant, but there's an element of jeopardy as the caller must 'stake' a celebrity of their choice and the class of celebrity must represent how confident they feel in their guess. The delight on Wednesday night when Martin the listener correctly guessed that the soup on offer at a certain pub in Blackburn was indeed minestrone and that he hadn't sacrificed Clive Myrie, was palpable. I think this means Martin gets to 'keep' Myrie as a sort of talking point, perhaps in the living room. The madness is catching...

It was this moment, more than anything, on Wednesday that reflected the point when the show format started to feel more familiar and comfortable, like a pair of slightly angry, opinionated scruffy slippers. That listeners seemed incredibly exercised about bread bins on Wednesday also backs this up, surely providing Yapp with a future topic for Culture Wars. 

It was also nice, again on Wednesday, to have the people from BBC Upload on, talking about the new creative talent scheme and how you can submit stuff to it. You basically record it on your phone then upload it and it gets watched and shared across the BBC's socials. Plus there's a festival, workshops and other stuff. "This sounds disturbingly warm and supportive" commented Jake.

It has occurred to me that part of the reason why I'm loving this show so much is because it basically occupies the same slot that The Funster Show did on Signal Cheshire in the early 90s* Unwinding serves a similar function, albeit with more sophisticated but equally surreal content: They haven't had an exploding cuckoo clock that went off for three days straight yet, but the jingles and endorsements are in a similar territory. On Signal Cheshire the madness of The Funster Show was enhanced by the fact that the playlist was dominated by the likes of Utah Saints and Altern 8, whereas Unwinding has to work harder to create that energy. 

I suppose the big test, for me, will be whether the show format works once I've gone back to work. (If Jake and Laura are reading this: My excuse for not being back at work yet is that the students aren't back in yet, so neither am I. As to What Have You Been Doing To Justify This... Erm, writing this?) as I'll be getting up a lot earlier then and going to bed earlier as well.  That said, the gentler tone of The Boring Talks might be as soothing for me as an old episode of Wimsey or Cadfael would have been around the same time.

Jake Yapp's Unwinding is broadcast Monday-Friday, 7pm-10pm on Radio 4Extra throughout January

*A quick google reveals that there were several different versions of The Funster Show, all with the same presenter, broadcast at different times across the Potteries and Cheshire and Greater Manchester on different stations within the Signal Cheshire/Signal Stoke/Piccadilly Radio networks. I'm thinking of the version that was broadcast around about 1991 ish on what was then Signal Cheshire which used to be KFM and was broadcast from Regents House in Stockport.

Image one a screenshot of Jake Japp in the studio

Image two bowl of soup by Victoria Shes on Unsplash

Image three a pair of slippers and stripy socks by Philippe Jausions on Unsplash