“You can’t rewrite history! Not one line!”

That may be true, sir, but you can condense it into a handy ten-minute guide. That’s exactly what  YouTube user BabelColour’s done in his lovely video below – taken the 48-year history of the good Doctor’s adventures and edited them into a loving montage of episode clips.

See how many characters and monsters you can name in this veritable avalanche of geek history, which runs from the first episode originally aired in 1963 to last Christmas’s The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe.

Thanks to our own Rob Mclaughlin for giving us the heads-up on this one.

“Pickled in time like gherkins in a jar!”

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Ah, now this is good. Somebody has taken the trouble to edit a load of movie clips to the tune of Lionel Ritchie’s Hello. It doesn’t beat the real video, which included the infamous blind woman sculpting Lionel’s head. But this is still a hoot…

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Anyone who sat through all four seasons of Ronald D Moore's take on Battlestar Galactica is likely to appreciate this a lot (it's got lots of spoilers if you haven't seen BSG). Over at College Humor, they've basically stilled the plot into the style on an old console RPG game. Watch and enjoy...

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What’s not to love here? With little money and an impressive beard, someone by the name of dermotcanterbury has won our never-ending admiration for recreating - with the help of a few friends - the title sequence of Ulysses 31 in live action (you can find our celebration of the show here)

It’s a terrific video, and we hereby set them the challenge to do the opening titles of The Mysterious Cities Of Gold next…

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Remember when we first met John McClane?
Argyle picked him up from the plane,
And took him down to Nakatomi Tower
To meet with Holly.

Given that this is a good four years old, there’s a fair chance that some of you may have seen this before. Personally, I never had though, and I figured I wouldn’t be doing my civic duty if I didn’t bring it to the attention of any of you who haven’t had the pleasure of it before.

It is this: a Die Hard song, that brings together the four films. It’s by GuyzNite, and it is brilliant.

I’m grateful to the mighty Phil Ford – writer of so many wonderful things (see: The Sarah Jane Adventures) – for bringing it to our attention. Well, I nicked it off his Twitter feed, but I figure it’s the same thing. You can find his Twitter feed here.

Now, though: John McClane.

Warning: this video contains rude words, that haven't been muffled by a gunshot in a sell-out attempt to get a PG-13 rating.

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Not for the first time, director Michael Bay has offered rich pickings for a spoof video.

This one, the work of Sneaky Zebra, is an advert for a special drink, that can transform the most mundane, worthy of films into something the Baymeister himself would be proud of.

To be sure to heed the warning at the end, though: “May cause pregnancy in males”...

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We thought you might like this. It's our YouTube find of the week (and judging by the viewing figures, many other people's, too), and it simply involves this: two three and a half inch hard drives, playing the Imperial March from Star Wars.

Er, is that geeky enough for everyone?

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Matthew Crosby is a busy man. One third of sketch group Pappy’s, who are recording two podcasts and a pilot for E4, Matthew is also previewing his first solo Edinburgh show, Adventure Party. I caught up with him to chat about these projects and more.

Pappy’s have blasted onto the comedy podcast scene with two different shows. How did they come about?

We've been wanting to do a podcast for ages, and we end up doing two, and it's purely through the hard work and the perseverance of a couple of producers who wanted to sort something out. Colin Anderson in the case of Bangers And Mash, and Ben Walker in the case of Flatshare Slamdown. They came to us and said "Let's do something."

It's not that we're lazy; we know how to do live - we know how to book gigs; how to get on stage; how to perform live shows, but when it comes to editing and putting together a podcast, we kind of fall apart. We need someone else who can chivvy us along. It's nice to have someone who can help us out.

Your role in Pappy’s is as the authority figure. Is that quite a demanding role?

I never really feel stressed on stage. Critics will often say it’s forced bonhomie, but most of the time we really are as happy to be on stage as we seem. The other thing people seem to think a lot is that I’m genuinely angry. It is an act. Tom and Ben are two of my very best friends in the world, and if I was annoyed by Tom constantly going off script, I would just have to say to him before the show, “Sorry, but could you not go off script tonight,” but those are some of my favourite moments.

It’s useful for the audience to see someone on stage being angry. So if their patience is being tested, at least I’m there to go, “I know exactly how you feel, I have to work with the guy every day.” Ben represents the audience member with laughter, and I represent the audience who’s sitting there with their arms folded going “I can’t believe I paid fifteen pounds to see these guys.” If I was as genuinely angry with Tom as I claim to be on stage, I would’ve stopped working with him a long time ago.

What makes a successful sketch group?

For us, we just play to our strengths. As much as we can, we try not to be like other people. We got comparisons to Klang when we first started, but I think that’s because we were both different, and unlike most sketch acts, we didn’t use blackouts, and we addressed the audience.

Klang, coming from a stand-up background, did the same thing. None of us are good actors, I think we can write good jokes, but ultimately we were best at messing around and making the show feel as live as possible.

When I see a sketch act now, the ones I really enjoy are the ones that aren’t doing stuff I’ve seen other people do. The Beta Males are a good example. They’re an excellent new sketch act, partly because they’re not doing what The Penny Dreadfuls are, or the Idiots of Ants are, or Pappy’s are doing. They’re doing kind of long form story shows that could almost be like mini-movies.

Stewart Lee has a fairly monotonous voice. He’s not a high-energy act, but every single word and every nuance in his performance shows that he loves what he does. The same with [Daniel] Kitson. You can tell they’re people who genuinely wouldn’t rather be anywhere else than on the stage, and I think that’s really important.

All my favourite acts have a love of what they do. Too often, you see people who are two or three years into performing stand-up, and they’re treating it like a job. There’s no intuition, they’re just trying to emulate what they’ve seen other stand-ups doing, and there’s no fun in that. If you can’t make yourself happy, then what are you doing here?

It’s a great job to do, because you can make your own rules up, and admittedly, if you do want to be extremely strange and weird, it might take you a little bit longer to get to a position where you get paid for doing it, but at the same time, if you love doing it, you shouldn’t ever worry about that. If Pappy’s worried about getting paid for it, there wouldn’t be three of us in the team. We’d all do solo shows.

Speaking of which, you’re taking your first hour-long show up to Edinburgh this year.

I've done five Edinburgh's with Pappy's, and we've had a really, really good time, so I know how to get through without wanting to kill myself. I'm really genuinely excited - it feels like a holiday. When Pappy's decided not to do Edinburgh, I thought, “What would I really like to do in my month?” and the answer was to spend a month in Edinburgh.

So I decided that I'd put together this show, and that would be a fun breakaway from Pappy's for me, and also something a bit different. I love performing comedy, and I love doing stand-up, and one of the only downsides to doing Pappy's has been that my stand-up has had to take a backseat, so this is a great opportunity for me to do that and for it not to get in the way of Pappy's.

You’re on at the Pleasance Courtyard in the late afternoon – that’s quite a nice spot.

In January I decided I was going to do more stand-up, and then around March/April time I decided I might want to do an Edinburgh show, so I thought I’d do a bunch of gigs and see how it went. I started talking a lot on stage about Nando's and my agent was there one night, and she told Ryan from The Pleasance, who's a massive Nando's fan, and the next day I got a message on Twitter from him saying "We've got this spot if you want it."

I saw you at Geek Night Out back in February doing fifteen minutes on Nando's.

I'd been up in Leicester at the Comedy Festival with my friend Joel Dommett - I'm directing his Edinburgh show - and I came back down, and I'd been invited to do this Geek Night Out show, and I just didn't know what I was going to talk about. I thought, “Well, I do really like Nando's; I've been tweeting a lot about eating Nando's, I'll set it as a challenge for myself to see how long I can talk about Nando's,” and I genuinely surprised myself by talking for about fifteen minutes.

Not necessarily material but I could talk for fifteen minutes. I had the menu as well, which I'd nicked from one of the Leicester branches. Sorry, Leicester! So that was a really important gig for me - the first time I'd talked about Nando's on stage, and the first time I realised it was something I could do.

In the show now, there’s about twenty minutes of Nando’s-related stuff. The one thing I didn’t want it to be was wilful. I like comedy that stretches the form or moves the boundaries of what you can do on stage, but quite a lot of the time I find that comedy can be a bit wilfully obtuse.

When I first started talking about Nando’s, I had twenty minutes where I would only talk about Nando’s in clubs, and after a while, I think it became the joke wasn’t that I had funny material about Nando’s – the joke was, I’m going to talk about Nando’s whether you like it or not, and that’s not necessarily my particular brand of comedy.

Other than the Nando’s element, what’s the show about then?

Well, KFC... no, no… it’s about myself. It’s about me talking about myself and just trying to make sense of my life. Which sounds a lot heavier than it actually is. It’s not, it’s me talking about the sorts of things that are interesting to me; the Internet, specifically stuff like Twitter and Facebook, and what I was like growing up, being geeky and nerdy. I like geeky, I don’t necessarily like nerdy, but I’m more nerdy than I am geeky. So trying to discuss or examine the personality balance in my life. Or personality imbalance.

Is there more pressure when you’re alone on stage, as opposed to a Pappy’s show?

If I start relaxing, and Tom throws something to me that I need to deal with and I’m not on my mettle, then that’s a problem. More often than not, we’ll change lines or mess around or do something completely at odds with what was originally the idea of the sketch, then you have to kind of deal with that. With stand-up, I like to chat to the audience a lot, but if that’s not going well, then you’ve got a script. It’s different.

I don’t know if I enjoy Pappy’s better than stand-up; I’ve certainly done a lot more Pappy’s recently, so I’m quite enjoying the break. We’ve just finished a tour so it’s really nice to come away and go into this solo show. What I’m really glad of is that Pappy’s have got other projects going on that will make up for the fact that we’re not going to Edinburgh.

We said if we weren’t going to Edinburgh, we’d come up with other projects and the two podcasts happened and we got commissioned for a pilot for E4. People have asked why we’re not going, and if we’re breaking up and we can say no, we’ve got these other things to work on; we’re just taking a year off.

We’ve done five years – that’s a lot of Edinburgh shows - and we’ve been working together in some form or another since 2004, writing and performing shows, a bit of radio, a bit of telly... So it’s the perfect time to change tack and to try different things. We’re not stopping what we’re doing, we are writing another Edinburgh next year.

You mentioned doing TV, and you recorded a pilot in 2008, but nothing happened with that?

It was a very tricky show. We had a really successful year at Edinburgh in 2007, and off the back of that, we got offered lots of things that we said yes to. We went to the Melbourne Comedy Festival, we did a Radio 4 pilot, and we did this pilot for Channel 4 all within the same month. Ultimately we spread ourselves a little bit thin.

Personally, I don’t think the producer or the director necessarily understood what we did live as well as we did, but because they held those positions, we said, “Well, you’re the guys who work for telly, so you should have the experience,” and we took a lot of notes that we probably felt in our heart of hearts weren’t the right notes.

That’s the key challenge for us: capturing the live spontaneity and bringing it onto the telly. I didn’t dislike it, but it’s not as good as our live stuff. And also, we didn’t have a tremendous wealth of material to draw from; we’d done two Edinburgh shows.

Most people get to do small little things on telly first, the first thing we’d done was a half hour show that we wrote, created and starred in ourselves, so it was a bit ‘too much, too young’ for us. I’m glad we took a break and we really trust the team we’re working with at the moment to make sure that this show comes together.

In early May we did a run-through for the channel with a live audience, and the channel liked it. It’s a show called Mr And Mrs Hotty Hott Hot, which is like a beauty pageant, where everyone in the audience has the chance to be crowned as Beauty King or Queen. It’s a Shooting Stars meets Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush style show, but with Pappy’s hosting it.

Where did the gameshow idea come from?

The Hotty Hott Show is something I did at University in my early twenties, and it was just a silly idea that we really liked. I think what we do on stage is so live; it’s not like a stand-up act or a lot of sketch acts who erect a fourth wall and don’t address the audience. So we were thinking of the best way to capture that live-ness.

One of the reasons I think the pilot was unsuccessful was that there was no real reason for the Fun Club to exist. We kept saying, “We’ve got to save the Fun Club!” and “Pappy’s doing this,” or “Pappy’s doing that,” and there’s an audience sitting there watching going, “Who are you guys? And who’s Pappy? Why is there a Fun Club? And why do we care if it gets closed down, or opened up?” whereas with a game show, you come out at the start and you say, “Hello, this is a game show. At the end of the show someone will have won a prize,” and audience members understand that concept, and then it’s up to us to mess around with the format.

Shooting Stars brought Vic and Bob to an audience that was far greater than Bang Bang, It’s Reeves And Mortimer or Smell Of Reeves And Mortimer or Big Night Out ever did. Even though I thought those shows were incredible and brilliant, this was something that everyone could understand and fit their brains around – a celebrity panel show.

You mentioned that none of you are good at acting but you have done some... is that something you see yourself doing more of?

I like doing it. I always say I’m not an actor, I’m a performer. Performer is a nice term because it doesn’t suggest any level of competence; it suggests different criteria for which you can be judged. On TV, I’m always playing a slightly heightened version of myself, so it doesn’t really feel like it’s proper acting. I’ve been doing a thing with Trinny and Susannah, which I’ve really enjoyed, but because it was improvised it was a much easier performance. In that a lot of scenes we were improvising within were real scenes with real people.

Anything that feels like comedy I enjoy, whether it’s writing for other comedians, being in TV shows, doing live shows, doing stand-up, directing… The great thing about being a comedian is that there’s no right or wrong way to do it. John Bishop – he’s definitely a comedian; Josie Long is definitely a comedian; Maeve Higgins is definitely a comedian, and Tom Parry is definitely a comedian, but they’re all very different people doing very different things. Kevin Bishop is definitely a comedian, but he’s never done stand-up. These are all very different people all doing the same job.

Who would you cite your influences as?

I was just starting secondary school when Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out was starting, and I used to love it. I remember watching it and thinking that was something I could see myself doing, because it’s not a bloke standing there with a microphone talking about his life, even though that’s quite close to what I do now. It was very silly and big, and they had songs and costumes. There was an element of light entertainment to it. I also really loved Chris Evans’ Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. I always saw him as not a comedian, but very funny and very inventive.

I really loved an old video of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. I thought they were superb, and what they did was they often performed as variations on themselves. The typical rules of what makes you a comedian just didn’t apply to them. Spike Milligan was another, and I had tapes of The Goon Show, and it was really nonsensical and silly, and all massively influential.

When we started Pappy’s, we wanted to do sketch comedy for people who don’t like sketch comedy. Trying to work within a genre where you’re doing something that hopefully no one else is doing.

Do you see an evolution of your stand-up from when you started to now?

When I first started, all I wanted to talk about was things that happened to me personally and who I am. The acceptable face of narcissism, where there’s a room full of people all facing towards you, and you’re brightly lit going, “Here are some things that happened to me.” And I think that hasn’t really changed. When people ask what the show is about, except for the big bit about Nando’s, I suppose it’s just about me, talking about myself and things I’ve done, aren’t I brilliant/rubbish.

I’m sure if I had any video or audio of myself doing stand-up, which is out there somewhere, from when I was about 24, I’d watch it and cringe at the mistakes I’m making, or I would be able to hear the voices of the other stand-ups I liked at the time. When I first got into performing stand-up, I was really into people like Patton Oswalt and American stand-ups, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t speak with a slight twang.

I found out about Mr Show in 1999 or 2000 when the DVD came out. A lot of people who were surrounding that show also were stand-ups, like David Cross obviously, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Scott Aukerman, Doug Benson… so I started tracking down as much as I could about those people, and listening to those stand-ups and as a result of them, I got into other American stand-ups, like Todd Barry and Marc Maron.

I’m sure, if I heard myself at 24, I’d think I was just doing an impression of Patton Oswalt or David Cross, even to the point of lifting phrases or phraseology from them. You impersonate who you like until you find your own voice. And it’s starting to happen. Part of the reason for doing an hour is to try and help me find my own voice and see what I really want to do.

Since Richard Herring and Stewart Lee broke into doing solo stand-up post their double act, they kind of do an impression of each other and work off that character.

Yeah, you’re right, so do you think I’ll do two Brummie voices to compensate? No, but I’ve always seen the audience as the other part in the double act. It’s both my favourite thing to do and the thing I hate myself for doing the most. When I get it right, and when I talk to the audience and it works, it’s brilliant, but if I’m lacking confidence in the material, I’ll go “What did you say? What was that?” or “Why are you scratching your nose?” so I think I do have that need for a dialogue.

I have my computer on stage, so I’ve got my PowerPoint display I’m using for the show, and I was shouting at the display at the last preview I did, because it was messing up and that almost felt like the way I’d shout at Tom. It felt like a Pappy’s moment. I know there are lots of comics who write brilliantly crafted jokes, but it seems crazy to be in a room where you’re the only person talking for an hour. It stops it feeling like you’re reading from a script, it makes it exciting for the audience, because they’re seeing something new, and it also makes it exciting for you.

You’re going through the same lines every night, it’s lovely to be able to do something a bit different. Maybe it inherently shows a lack of confidence in the jokes I write for myself. Quite a strange defence mechanism, where I’d sooner go with stuff I’ve never said out loud before and no script than go with stuff I’ve either said before or at least written down and worked out, and I know leads somewhere.

Matthew Crosby, thank you very much.

Adventure Party runs from the 3rd to the 29th of August at the Pleasance Cellar at 4:45pm (except 16th). You can book tickets here.

Follow Matthew on Twitter and read his blog to keep up to date with his stand-up dates.

Pappy’s Bangers And Mash and Flatshare Slamdown are both available on iTunes.

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Here's a YouTube video that made us chuckle, given that we're purveyors of asking the exact same questions to everybody. It's been put together as a warning to potential interviews of Hugh Laurie. The message is this: stop boring Hugh.

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Ever wondered how Jerry Bruckheimer and his collaborators come up with their imaginative movie ideas? Well, wonder no longer, because we have a magnificent video that shows the Hollywood producer’s creative team in full flow. Called Bruckheimer Pitch Meeting, the sketch is by writer filmmaker Nathan Gotsch, and it’s certainly brightened up our Friday morning.

New guy Mike turns up for his first day at Jerry Bruckheimer Films, and is completely unprepared for the pitch meeting that’s about to take place – not that this matters, since the yes-men sitting around the table are as bereft of ideas as he is. A couple of our favourite pitches: “Days Of Thunder meets Top Gun,” and “Con Air meets Kangaroo Jack”.

Worryingly, some of the other suggestions in the film will probably be made into real-world blockbusters over the next few years…

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It Is Rocket Science! began life as an Edinburgh show and is now a four-part series on Radio 4. Presented by Helen Keen and starring Peter Serafinowicz as a space narrator, the show explores the history and future of space travel.

What can people expect from the show?

A surprising amount of factual information! I've tried to bring lots of characters that people might not necessarily know about from astronomy and space into the story.

Everybody knows the story of Galileo being persecuted and disbelieved, but the stories that we start with in the first episode are of the three fathers of rocket science, who are still very obscure figures. We wanted to bring those people in to the public consciousness, while at the same time making an entertainment programme.

The second episode, we go into Wernher von Braun and John Whiteside Parsons, Satanist and Nazi, so it kind of writes itself.

We recorded it all in one night at the beginning of December. Obviously, they'll go out week by week but they'll stay online. So, if people want to come in, say, at week three, they can still hear the other two episodes and get that sense of the great, carefully plotted narrative arc.

The show has been around in some form since 2008 when you took it to the Edinburgh Fringe, and you returned with it again in 2010.

Yes, I went back to Edinburgh with a rejigged version of it.

How rejigged was it?

There were quite a few new bits in it, and it was really nice to bring it back, because it was the first show that I'd done and it felt like it had grown a bit.

Most people, when they do their first hour show, they get all their material and stick it together and usually put a bit of filler in and give it some sort of implausible title. And I knew that wasn't going to work for me, so my first show was pretty much written from scratch, which was a bit of a steep learning curve.

So, what had you done before?

I'd done bits and pieces of stand-up, but me and my writing partner had won a Channel 4 competition, which we thought was going to be a gateway to fame and fortune which, of course, it wasn't. So, we were doing a lot more of the writing side of things. That was how I got into stand-up, but it was primarily driven by wanting to be a writer and write scripts and make programmes, rather than specifically wanting to show off.

How easy was the show to adapt for radio?

It was such a visual show and you're making it audio-only, so it was just like "We can do anything with this!" And that's the thing with radio. You can set it on another planet, you could set it in a space station, and we did think about all those things. We were very excited going through all these weird and wonderful ideas, but Gareth Edwards, the producer, was not entirely convinced. So, in the end, we just went for a simple idea of just me making my own space programme with a computer-based narrator that I've cobbled together from various sort of kitchen appliances and a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and a calculator.

And that's a familiar simple concept I guess, a series of voices in a studio in front of an audience.

I wanted there to be a story, I didn't want it to be "Oh, this is just someone talking about space." I like the idea of the world behind it. Obviously, an implausible world, and I couldn't build a space narrator that sounds like Peter Serafinowicz in my bedroom, sadly. I wish I could!

At what point did Peter get involved?

Really late on, actually. I remember initially feeling so embarrassed talking about this idea of having this space narrator. I was an only child, so I had a lot of imaginary friends. So, I think it kind of grew out of that, but Gareth really liked it and suggested Peter for it. I think they go back quite a long way, because they worked together on Spaced, so they've known each other for years.

There're Robin Ince's yearly Lessons And Carols For Godless People events, and his Infinite Monkey Cage show, and Josie Long adapted her science show for Radio 4 last year. Why is comedy so drawn to science lately?

All the time, those things have been going on I've been wondering, "Should I listen to this? Should I not?" It kind of feels like it's coming at the end of all these other shows, but we've been doing it for years and it's something I've been interested in for a long time.

When I was at school there wasn't a lot of popular science that you could just go into bookshops and pick up. I was working in a bookshop when Simon Singh's Fermat's Last Theorem was coming out, and since then, there's been this big explosion in popular science books.

I compèred Bright Club in the Wilmington Arms, so about room for a hundred people, and they were turning people away. They had fifty-odd people wanting to come in who just couldn't.

I just think people have this really great hunger for information, which maybe isn't being satisfied by the educational system as it stands, or when people are younger they're not that interested in it.

There's the whole sceptical movement and I guess they need something to laugh at in their spare time.

Yes, when they're not debunking! I stood in for Robin Ince last minute at a conference in Manchester called QEDCon and it was brilliant. I was quite nervous about it, because everyone's heard of Robin Ince and no-one's heard of me, necessarily, and they were a brilliant audience. I'm not a huge active part of it, but it interests me, because this whole aspect of looking into things and cutting through the bullshit you get in the media.

How do you find the demographic of your shows?

I think everybody kind of loves space. You get people bringing their precocious kids who've got telescopes who come along and say ,"Yes, I was aware of Tsiolkovsky. Did you know..." and you're just thinking, "Wow, you're eight and you're wearing a bow tie. You're a bit freaky." And you get older people who remember the fifties and sixties really well and remember the optimism at that time, and they really like it too.

That's the wonderful thing about space, and you see it on a much bigger scale with things like Wonders Of The Universe, and how popular that's been. A picture beamed back from Hubble is one of the best things to see and you don't need to know anything to look at the picture and go, "Wow, that's really beautiful. That's out there, somewhere." There's this little contraption that looks like it's made from tin foil which has opened its eye and taken a picture for you and beamed it back to Earth. I tear up just thinking about it. And also, I've got a cold.

There's something very democratic about it. Obviously, if you've got binoculars or a telescope, it's easier, but anyone can look up at the night sky. Astronomy is one of the few fields where you can be an amateur and still make quite a big contribution to what's actually been discovered.

There was the recent thing of someone filming the launch of the Discovery on an iPhone from their plane window.

Yes, the technology now is so much more widely available. There was a thing about a year ago where there was a father and son in America and they put an iPhone in a balloon and sent it up and they got these amazing pictures of the curvature of the Earth. It's mind-blowing that you can do that with a piece of technology which is in the grasp of most people with a reliable income.

If you could, would you book a seat on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipOne?

I would love to. I must admit, when I was a kid, I had unrealistic expectations of what it was going to be like in the future. I didn't even want to be an astronaut, because I thought it would've gone beyond that. I thought I'd be able to go and live on Mars and that would be completely normal.

Can you tell us some of your influences, both scientific and comedic?

There's a weirdly British tradition of passionate amateurs who go on to become a very recognisable spokesperson. David Attenborough, being a prime example, doesn't have any qualifications, but everyone thinks of him and Life On Earth. And Patrick Moore, who's never studied for any scientific qualifications in the university sense, but yet, the maps he drew of the moon were so detailed and precise they were used by the Soviets when they were trying to get Lunar One to land on the Moon. Also, people like Jonny Ball. People who are not necessarily coming at it from an entirely informed serious academic perspective, but just coming at it from the perspective of something they really like.

Brian Cox is brilliant and Wonders Of The Universe is amazing, but I still hope there's some kind of niche somewhere for people who are coming at it from a slightly different angle. Sometimes I think it's quite nice if you can just fall into something because you're interested in it.

I had a recording when I was growing up of Woody Allen, who talks about all kinds of weird things and philosophical complexes, and that gave me the idea that stand-up is about anything. It doesn't have to be immediately recognisable, because you can make it relevant.

What's next for you after the show?

On the 12th of April, it's Yuri's Night (celebrating fifty years of human spaceflight) and I'm doing a show called Spacetackular with a chap called Matt Brown, who's a bit of a space nerd and also the editor of The Londonist. I hope we're going to have some comedy and some proper science and we're encouraging people to come in fancy dress, dressed as their favourite spacecraft or figure from space history or figure from science fiction. A niche comedy gig for space geeks who like dressing up!

I'm working on a new show, which is kind of again a bit science-y but not so much space this time, more about the future, quite a nebulous broad theme. I'm quite into robots and there are links there with space.

And I'm going over to Ireland in a couple of weeks and I'm doing a event for sceptics in Aberdeen, which is slightly unfortunate, as I've got a joke about it in the first episode, comparing the vast empty coldness of a universe without creation or culture to Aberdeen, which may not be perfect timing!

Thank you, Helen!

It Is Rocket Science airs on Radio 4, Wednesdays at 11pm.

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This is really quite inspired. The clip below comes from a hidden camera show of unknown origin (please fill us in if you know!), where someone has had the idea to put a ghostly looking child, straight out of a Japanese horror film, into the middle of a hotel corridor.

You can see the results for yourself...

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Now here's some good news. You may have read our story a few weeks ago about the proposed RoboCop statue in the film's home city of Detroit. If you did, you'll remember that the mayor of Detroit, one Dave Bing, nixed the idea when it was suggested on Twitter.

According to the latest reports, however, it appears that the story may yet have a happy ending. A campaign started on the website kickstarter.com has so far raised around $50,000 to put towards the construction of a RoboCop statue. The project is being managed by Imagination Station, an organisation that specialises in regenerating rundown areas of Detroit.

"We're currently discussing how to branch this project and fundraising into bigger and bigger things with a better and better impact on Detroit," the project's Brandon Walley wrote on the Detroit Needs A Statue Of RoboCop page on Kickstarter.

While Walley admits the process won't be particularly cheap or easy ("It turns out to be a pretty expensive process," he writes), the plan is to create a seven-foot-tall metal version of the 80s law enforcer, which will stand proud in Roosevelt Park.

We just hope they can make the statue talk. A giant RoboCop shouting "Uphold the law!" to passers-by would make any walk in the local park more interesting.

Kickstarter

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For a legion of movie geeks, 1987’s RoboCop is an action cinema classic, jam-packed with absurd violence, quotable lines (“I’d buy that for a dollar!”) and an iconic central character in the shape of its titular tin law enforcer.

Even the pair of meagre sequels and a poverty-stricken television series hasn’t sullied the memory of Paul Verhoeven’s lip-smackingly satirical film, and while there’s been talk, in recent years, of a reboot with Darren Aronofsky at the helm, the Reagan-era RoboCop remains an enduring favourite.

On Twitter, one user, known simply as @MT, made the not unreasonable suggestion that the city of Detroit (the setting for the movie’s unforgettably brutal antics) should erect a RoboCop statue in the law enforcer’s honour. After all, Philadelphia has a statue of Rocky…

Woking in Surrey has a gigantic Martian sculpture to commemorate HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds (which, incidentally, is quite spectacular)…

Stirling, Scotland had a 12-ton statue erected in remembrance of Mel Gibson’s iffy historical epic, Braveheart…

The Braveheart statue (which makes poor Mel look like one of the aliens out of Battlefield Earth screaming at a seagull) was so unpopular that it was removed in 2008, but we’ll gloss over that.

Anyway, we’d maintain that a statue to RoboCop would be a fitting tribute to its contribution to the cultural history of Detroit – after all, who can forget the moment where Robo walks away from an exploding petrol station, or the bit where he kills dozens of bad guys in a disused warehouse? Admittedly, much of the film was actually filmed in Dallas and Pennsylvania, but we’ll gloss over that, too.

Sadly, the mayor of Detroit has nipped any suggestions of a RoboCop statue in the bud. Responding to the idea on Twitter, Mayor Dave Bing said, “There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.”

We recently contacted Mayor Bing with a further suggestion – that while a RoboCop statue was perhaps beyond the pale, maybe a monument to his hulking nemesis, ED-209, might be feasible. Sadly, we’ve yet to receive a reply.

More news on the RoboCop statue campaign as it develops.

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Whichever way you cut it, the world of geek media belongs to men. Even when women are the kick ass stars of TV series (Buffy, Alias, Dollhouse) or films (Resident Evil, Tomb Raider), men still make up most of the supporting cast, appearing in distinctly greater proportions than we see in the real world.

It reflects a sad fact of cultural production. We may have come a long way since female author, Mary Anne Evans, had to publish under a pseudonym of George Eliot, but it's blokes that still run the show.

Which is why The Girls on Film is such a breath of fresh air. On paper it sounds like a parody project. A troupe of female actors take on iconic scenes from cult movies, from Fight Club, Star Trek and The Town, reading the same lines, acting the same parts as the men. But the results are no laughing matter.

This is a fan film project that creates powerful, dramatic results on a shoestring budget. And, while the performances here often highlight the differences between men and women, they prove that females are just as watchable in these parts as their male counterparts.

So, Den Of Geek salutes The Girls on Film, a project that proves it's about time women were given as much screen time in action, sci-fi and cult flicks as men.

Here's a scene from the female version of Star Trek.

The Girls On Film

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There's little we can say in these words that you'll want to read. We figure you're here for the singing dog. So here he is. Win.

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This time last year, we had a thought. Were there any of you out there who, in time for Halloween, had carved yourself a pumpkin with a geeky edge to it. You did not let us down.

Thus, as Halloween rolled around again this year, we wondered: could you do it again? Could you take a simple pumpkin, and turn it into something quite majestic. The results you can see for yourself here.

Just look at them, too. You've been inspired by everything from Sin City and Batman through to The Bride Of Frankenstein and The Evil Dead.

A massive well done and thank you, then, to our crack team of carvers, who have ensured that the pumpkins here didn't suffer for no reason. And if you want to inspect any of the work here, just click on the picture to make it bigger.

Happy Halloween...!

There's no shortage of fan-made movies to be discovered online, but it's rare to find one that looks quite as sharp and polished as this one. We're talking about Judge Minty, a fan movie featuring the character of Judge Dredd, but centred around Minty. He's the John Wagner character who decides, after long service on the streets of Mega City One, to take the long walk to bring law to The Cursed Earth.

What we've seen thus far is the work in progress trailer for the film, but it's some piece of work. Take a look and see what you think, and we'll keep you posted when more footage appears...

Eleanor, Camille, Beattie, Hannah, Rose and Jess may sound like the plucky heroines of a lost book by Enid Blyton but together they are Lady Garden, born out of a mutual love of performing comedy and Julia Davies. Since they've formed they've picked up great reviews and their own residency in London.

With their new Edinburgh show coming up, I met up with the girls minus Jess and prayed I didn't piss them off in case they beat me up.

Lady Garden Member Fact Files:

Name: Beattie Edmonson
Age: 23
Comedy Heroes: Bill Hicks, Larry David, Julia Davies, Chris Morris
Favourite Comedy Shows: Jam

Name: Eleanor Thom
Age: 25
Comedy Heroes: Bill Hicks, John Cleese, Charlie Chaplin, Julia Davies, Caroline Aherne. Connie Booth has got to be in there!
Favourite Comedy Shows: The Royle Family, Fawlty Towers, Big Train, Jam, Brass Eye, all that kind of stuff!

Name: Rose Johnson
Age: 24
Comedy Heroes: Tina Fey, Julia Davies, Armando Iannucci, Chris Morris, Ricky Gervais, Larry David
Favourite Comedy Shows: The Office, The Thick Of It, Nighty Night, Kath And Kim and Arrested Development

Name: Camille Ucan
Age: 23
Comedy Heroes: Julia Davies, she's my main one, really. She's the first one I think of, my absolute comedy hero!
Favourite Comedy Shows: Obviously, Nighty Night, Human Remains. I do also love The Thick Of It, Nathan Barley, and Fawlty Towers, if I was going to go really old-school.

Name: Jessica Knappett
Age: 25
Comedy Heroes: Oh this is so hard, there's so many! Julia Davies, I love all League of Gentlemen.I love all that kind of stuff. Chris Morris is a genius. And then Victoria Wood, Eddie Izzard. I'm a big fan of The Mighty Boosh.
Favourite Comedy Shows: Of all time, probably Brass Eye. It just hasn't dated. I'm a really big fan of Alan Partridge as well. I love Nathan Barley. The Office, Extras and Nighty Night.

Name: Hannah Dodd
Age: 23
Comedy Heroes: Julia Davies, Chris Morris
Favourite Comedy Shows: I absolutely love League Of Gentlemen, Nighty Night, Human Remains. Dark stuff, really. Jam, things like that.

Hello, girls. So, how did you all meet?

Rose: We all met at university in Manchester. We were all studying various incarnations of English, Drama and Film studies. That kind of thing. And there wasn't a lot of opportunities to perform comedy at uni, like stand-up and sketches. So, Eleanor and Camille set up a comedy night that we all took part in various guises.

We weren't Lady Garden then, it was a big thing with about 30 different people involved. Then we did it again at the Comedy Store and that went really well. So, we formed Lady Garden and went up to Edinburgh in 2008 and we've been going ever since.

What made you set up a comedy night? Was the circuit at the time not something you were interested in?

Camille: It's like Rose said, there wasn't anything. There was a drama society and lots of others where you could perform in, but none of them did comedy. So, Eleanor suggested that we put a night on and made it so that it was an opportunity for people.

The first show had to be all new material that had never been performed before. So, it was just a different opportunity to what the drama society was offering. They would put new writing on stage, but more often it was pre-written plays.

But yes, this one was specifically for comedy and new writers, so it gave people a chance to try stand-up or performing sketches.

Eleanor: I wrote a sketch that ended up being half an hour long! It never got shown, but I had a lot of material that I wanted to try out but didn't want to do it on my own. I thought that, if I felt like that, then there must be other people who want to try stuff as well.

There's a lot of you, how does it work to have so many people to work with on stage?

Beattie: I like it!

Rose: When it's six people on a stage, you have a relationship with someone else and they have a relationship with someone else, etc. I think that's a really interesting thing that not many other people get to explore.

Hannah: We can do all sorts of things as well, because there's so many of us. We've got a proper cast!

How do you write your material with five other people involved?

Hannah: It works in many different ways. We write by ourselves then come together and read through it. Then edit it together and chat about how it could be better, how we're gonna stage it or whatever. That past few weeks, we've been writing in pairs and that's been really good.

Rose: Having pairs is a good thing, isn't it? It's enough people so you can keep getting ideas and get things moving. Getting together to write as a six-strong group is impossible! Everyone has a different idea of where a sketch can go or what lines you can use.

Eleanor:  The first sketch we ever put on as Lady Garden was an improvised one and that really did work, but then that wasn't a proper script. We were just saying words.

I think it's much harder to riff off a six person group, because you can't get the timing right. One person might be able to follow it through, but you're gonna need signals to do it properly. There's definitely room for that much more in the material we have now. It's less rigid, less character-based and more about us.

Rose: When we're writing, that's something we place a massive amount of importance on. We leave spaces where we can experiment with language

Being an all female group, do you think that comes into what you do? Are you careful to avoid all the usual clichés of being women comics?

Beattie: We don't say specifically when writing every single sketch, "I'm not gonna write anything about women's troubles." We do naturally tend to write stuff that we just think is funny, rather than gender based.

Rose: It is frustrating that everything we do is automatically looked at from that point of view, and we're not trying to do that.

How do you all work in your material? Is there a democratic voting process?

Camille: If we all like an idea, then we've got confidence in numbers and think we should definitely give it a go. When you do stand-up on your own, you don't really know if it's going to work until you try it. Because there's six of us, we all have five different people we can run our ideas by first. We have quite a few voting systems and often have a top ten out of the big batch we've got.

It is democratic. You have to be, really. You can't just have one person overriding everyone else.

Hannah: We're good, if something isn't working, at not putting it to one side, but re-drafting it. There was one sketch that took about 19 re-drafts!

This is your second year at Edinburgh., What kind of things can we expect to see?

Hannah: We've got a new set! And new costumes!

Camille: We've got a massive surprise at the start of our show, which is absolutely top secret and we're not allowed to talk about it, really.

A lot of our material this year is ensemble. It's all six of us. Last year was a lot of character things where it's just one or two of us, so this year we tried to make it so it's all of us. It's basically the six of us in a variety of different situations.

Beattie: I would say that there are some beautiful moments in it!

Rose: Maeve Binchy, Russia. Boom, that's a show.

Everyone else: Fire! Don't forget the fire!

Eleanor: Fire, Russia, Maeve Binchy. Come down!

What I've seen of your work, it's a mix of traditional with some Mighty Boosh-style surrealism. Are you informed by the past or do you keep up with current trends?

Beattie: I think a mixture, really.

Rose: Yeah, you can't help but be informed by the past, can you? You don't say, "RIGHT! In light of Fawlty Towers, I'm going to write a sketch now!" But, obviously, the stuff you watched when you were younger formed your sense of humour.

So, wrapping it up now, who should come and see your show?

Everyone at once: Anyone! Everyone!

Eleanor: As long as you're over 14!

Rose: I think it's wrong to write comedy for a specific audience.

Camille: Because you can laugh at anybody, can't you?

Eleanor: Some 100-year-old woman could come and watch the show and fucking love it.

Rose: We don't aim for a young audience or a female audience. We just write what's funny.

Camille: We've a lot of male followers, but not for the most obvious reason. It's nice that everyone, men and women, can see past the fact we're six girls on stage.

Thank you very much, ladies.

Lady Garden will be playing in Edinburgh throughout the month and will return to their residency in London in September. For more info, check their website at LadyGardenComedy.com.

Popcorn Comedy has been running regular nights around the country for a while now. With its mixture of short comedy films and live guests, it's become a massive success with regular monthly nights in London as well as special events all over the country.

We had a chat with acclaimed comic, TNT Show host and occasional CBBC presenter, Holly Walsh, one of the founders of Popcorn Comedy, about the night and their plans for The Fringe.

Hello, Holly! How are you?

Good, thank you!

So, could you tell me more about Popcorn Comedy?

I set it up with a guy called Jon Petrie who works for a production company. We both really wanted to find a place where people can make funny stuff. There are so many really funny people who don't do stand up but make brilliant films on the Internet.

So, we wanted to make a night where we could showcase the best funny films on the Internet, where people making funny films could come to see how their films work in front of a live audience.

If you've got something on the Internet, you don't know what the audience reaction is, you don't know what people laugh at, what gets the big belly laughs, things like that.

We really wanted to have a night where filmmakers could show their films, come along and see how people react to them.

Yeah, having been to a Popcorn Comedy night before, it felt like I was watching YouTube videos with friends.

Yeah, everyone does that. They sit there and they go, "Oh, have you seen this one?" We didn't want to show films that are like a kitten falling off the back of a chair. Just people who have made comedy. We tried to make the live nights really exciting, so it doesn't just feel like another night at the cinema. We want the audience to have a really active part in their enjoyment of it. That's why we have a live act as well. To break it up a bit.

We also say at the beginning, "Treat every film like it's someone on stage." I think it's important that people read it that way, otherwise they may as well just check YouTube.

We're really across the board. I think if somebody said to us, "Can you do a perfectly clean show?", we'd have more than enough films that are clean, edifying comedy. We've also got more than enough to do X-rated stuff. It's such a mixture.

We did Latitude recently and that was really good fun. It was certificate 15, so you couldn't do anything too rude. There's so much brilliant stuff out there that's not about shocking people.

Having done your own videos and TV work as well, can doing your own work be more ‘freeing'?

Yeah, I think that the Iinternet is perfect for that. Gone are the days when you send in a pitch to a TV company and then hope they go, "We like this."

One of the best ways to showcase your ideas is just to do a really shonky version of it. Nobody's gonna look at that and say, "Oh the grading is appalling!" They're gonna notice something really good about that and then TV can pick it up.

I also don't think that you should see the Internet as a stepping stone for TV. A lot of stuff that's made for the Internet only really works on the Internet, but that doesn't devalue it or make it lesser. The Internet is going to become its own forum and the hierarchy breaks down a bit.

No one's going to tell you not to do something. If you make it and put it up, you might get 50,000 people telling you they hate it. But, if you can deal with that, then that's a good start.

A large part of what Popcorn Comedy is all about is people sending you their own clips. Is there any advice you'd give to people thinking about doing so?

We don't show anything over three minutes. I would actually say two minutes is a good enough length of time, really. The shorter, the better. Only because a lot of people make long films and you can stop and start that on your own, but this is a live night. The audience's concentration is probably a lot shorter, they're drunk and they're not wasting time at work. So, I'd say make around two and a half minutes.

Also, make the thing you want to make. Don't try and second guess people, because you'll never know what they'll laugh at. Make what you find funny and trust your instincts.

Are there any challenges bringing Popcorn Comedy up to Edinburgh?

We're doing every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We've got four different shows, one each week with brilliant live acts! Sarah Millican, Josie Long, Josh Howie, Simon Munnery, Frisky and Mannish. It's quite a late night show at 11:30pm. I think that could be in our favour

So, who should come to Popcorn Comedy?

Anyone and everyone! Some of it will be a bit rude, some of it will be delightful. But I think there'll be something in for everyone!

If nothing else, you'll see live acts doing something a bit different. It won't be them doing their usual stand-up. They're going to be doing something interactive or showing films.

We did a night at the Tabernacle in London and had brilliant people doing odd stuff. Josie went through her favourite food blog, some guy for a year kept a blog of all his breakfasts. Graham Linehan did a lecture about the Internet. David Cross showed a pilot he did, so acts tend to use it to do something a little unusual. It's stand-ups you know doing something different, as well as all the films you may or may not have seen.

Holly Walsh, thanks a bunch !

For more info on when there's a Popcorn Comedy night happening near you, check out their website at www.popcorncomedy.com, follow their twitter feed at @popcorncomedy and check out their YouTube channel at youtube.com/popcorncomedy.

Tiffany Stevenson is one of the hardest working women on the comedy circuit today. Already a comedy veteran, with parts in Ricky Gervais The Office and Stephen Fry's Absolute Power, she took to the mic in 2005 and hasn't looked back.

As well as touring up and down the length and breadth of the country, she also runs weekly new material night, Old Rope, in London every week which has seen acts such as Ed Byrne, Reginald D Hunter and Jack Dee perform in a pub basement. With one Edinburgh show, Along Came A Spider, under her belt, she's about to hit The Fringe again with her show, Dictators.

We caught up with Tiffany to find out a little more.

So, Tiffany, how are you doing?

I'm good, I'm good. Hello! You're saying that like we've never seen each other all evening. I like that. I've been looking at your face in the gig!

I've been looking at your wonderful pajama top.

Ah, yeah. I'm wearing pajamas. They're banned in China (where I've just come back from). You're banned from wearing pajamas in public, so this is a protest I'm making.

That goes against every kung-fu flick I've seen. Getting serious for a second now, how did you start off acting?

When I was about 15, 16, I was with a kids' agent. Like a theatre school, but not like in a posh way, but for street kids. Basically, to stop us getting in trouble and nicking car stereos. Like "HEY! HERE! Do some drama classes and we'll put you in Eastenders or The Bill!" So, that's how I started doing it, really.

Then it carried on from there when I realised that is the job that, as fantastic as it is, and I still do it, is a very reactive industry. So, you have to do something creative or pro-active if you don't wanna lose your mind.

How did you eventually get to stand-up?

I started writing, and a lot of the acting parts I was getting were for comedy anyway. Then I started writing a pilot for a sitcom called Gaby And The Girls. We got £30,000 and we made it. That was probably six or seven years ago now.

It was the first thing I'd ever written. People liked it and it didn't get commissioned, but it gave me a taste for writing.

From there I decided I was going to write some stand-up, but I started out doing characters. I did a character called Savannah Dior - Media Whore, who was like a WAG.  That was before we knew just far the WAG thing would go.

Your current show is called Dictators. What's it all about, then?

It's called Dictators in the belief that we all have them in our lives, like right now, you're mine? You're dictating me, literally, on a dicta-phone! The question is who is yours, and I'm going to be looking at my top five. I've got some bad boys in there, like I've got Hitler, I've got Mugabe. I've got Mussolini, OK magazine and my mum. They're the top five that I'm gonna be looking at.

I have a little bit of an obsession with dark themes. I think we all do, actually, as much as whether we want to admit it or not. Also a lot of dictators went out with actresses. There's quite a link there.

What was the thing that drove those two together? Obviously. the power, no matter how corrupt, was attractive to these women. And what did they want to get out of the actresses? So, that's where it first started off.

Then I expanded it to make more of a universal thing about dictators. And I just spent a month in China, so I've got a lot to say about that.

This is your second full-length show. Were there any lessons you took from your first?

Yeah, don't expect people to be intelligent enough to get it. Because they don't always and you will get some clown who's about 16 with a bumper pad and crayon who will come and review your show and sit in the front row and be incredibly unsubtle about it. And not get irony, y'know it's amazing how people take things so literally.

Mentioning no names...

[Laughs] They take things so literally. I had one where someone accused me of name-dropping when I mentioned Atomic Kitten, Calum Best and someone else. All these excruciatingly bad attempts at name-dropping when I was being deeply sarcastic about it.

So, you can't expect people to get things. All you can hope is that the people you like, who like you, will come and see the show.

How is it performing at the festival in comparison to the circuit?

An hour is a different beast compared to a club show. You go to a club and you do 20 minutes, you sort of bash it out and make it very gag, gag, gag. You do an hour, it's boring, nothing more boring than just doing jokes for an hour unless there's some kind of story arc or narrative or even a theme.

No matter what it is, something that has tone, that has peaks and troughs.

Even just the pitch and tone of your voice over an hour, if it's the same, it can become incredibly boring. So, you have to put other things in there to spice it up, which is where the acting comes in, to give it more of a rounded storytelling. Personally, that's what I like to see in Edinburgh shows.

Finally, who should come and check you out?

Fun loving, good sense of humour, single with a nice car! No, someone who has slightly dark sensibilities, but not even necessarily. I did a preview quite recently for ninety percent partisan Iranian audience, which is weird because they really like Gadaffi. Local rivals, I guess. They really liked that and the personal stuff.

Sometimes you're surprised by the people who come and really get it. So, I would say anyone who is interested in history, is interested in the weird, is interested in the slightly dark and is interested in me! Cos there's some shit that's going on in my life that's pretty fucking amazing that's made it into the show!

Thanks for talking, Tiffany!

Tiffany will be performing her show, Dictators, throughout August at the Stand Club in Edinburgh. The Old Rope is on every Monday at The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square near Oxford Circus in London. For more info, search for The Old Rope group on Facebook.

Two Episodes Of Mash has been confounding audiences for a few years, mostly because they expect an hour long excursion into the adventures of Hawkeye and company. The brainchild of deadpan stand-ups Joe Wilkinson, winner of Hackney Empire Best New Act 2006 and soon to be seen in upcoming Him & Her (also starring Russell Tovey) and Diane Morgan, runner-up for Hackey Empire Best New Act 2006 who's has also appeared on Phoenix Nights and Mock The Week.

Their sketches take the fantastic and transform it into grey monotone of the mundane. With a Radio 2 pilot under their belts and their second full Edinburgh show coming up, we caught up with them to talk about what exactly would Willy Wonka's chocolate factory be like...

Hello Joe, Diane! How are you both?

Joe: Alright!

Diane: Quite tired.

J: You tired?

D: Yeah.

J: I'm fine actually.

You've been preparing for Edinburgh. How have the previews gone?

D: Good, I think. We've come on in leaps and bounds.

J: Yeah, they actually have gone well, haven't they? Which means we're nervous for a different reason. We assume that, because it's gone well here, it won't go well in Edinburgh. But we're positive for once.

D: It's a whole different ballgame once you get up there.

J: Last year we had a lot of stuff that worked really well down here in London, and then when we got up to Edinburgh, they hated it. So, we had to change stuff. So, however tight it's feeling down here, you have to go, "I wonder what bit they'll hate in Edinburgh?"

D: Yeah, you can never go, "Previews are going well. It's all sorted. It works."

J: There's ten days to go and there's still lots to do, but we feel in the best shape for a show than ever before. And we've got a director who's fantastic, so that's been the biggest change. Stefan Golaszewski.

He sounds magical!

J: If you Google him, you'll be impressed. He's one of [sketch group] The Cowards.

D: He's very modest. He wrote the sitcom that Joe's gonna be in. That'll be on after the festival.

J: That won't get any crowds in. [laughs] Everyone Google him, he's amazing. He's the reason we're in better shape than we've ever been.

So, for someone who's never seen your act, how would you describe your style?

D: We always describe it now as 'low key mundane glamour', we don't really know what that means. [laughs]

J: We're not exactly high energy. I think we're, and I've just thought of this so Diane will go "stop being a twat", conceptual. Just ideas-led. We like really smart ideas that we wring out and try to make it as funny as possible.

D: [To Joe] A good example is the Willy Wonka sketch, isn't it?

J: Yeah, it's odd.

D: The whole thing is that it's just an ordinary factory. This girl's won the golden ticket and she gets a tour of the factory, but it's just ordinary. There's the staff room over there, some flatpack boxes over there, glue gun.

J: It's just things like that, really, which doesn't sound as funny now [laughs] but we bring a sprinkle of the magic to it.

D: And my eyes!

J: Diane has got massive eyes. If in doubt, she just pulls them out and you get this. [mimes eyes expanding] That's how we end sixty precent of our gigs. "OPEN YOUR EYES GIRL!"

D: That's probably a bad example.

J: I think it's a good example, really, because it's a really tiny idea we thought was funny. And so we play out this idea of someone getting agitated because they were expecting a giant chocolate fountain. You can't eat the chocolate, it's just shit, really. [laughs]

Being stand-ups originally, did you both feel like doing something different when you started working together?

D: Well, we both wanted to do sketches. For years we talked about it.

J: We're friends from doing stand-up, so we didn't meet from wanting to do something else.

D: We've both got a similar sense of humour and find like, similar words funny.

J: Tusk.

D: Yeah, that's one of them.

Mellifluous is one of my favourite words.

J: Superb! That's a good one. Well, we weren't gonna say that.

D: Tusk is about our level!

J: When we were thinking about what to be called, we were walking past a hairdresser called Tusk and we both started laughing. So, we were going to call it Tusk.

D: I wish we had done!

J: We're mates and when we were talking about this...

D: "Wouldn't it be nice to do sketches instead of this awful stand up!" [laughs]

J: The lonely life of stand-up. Then, I gotta be honest, it was fun. It was more fun because you're doing the shows with a mate. And you're not hung out to dry on your own. [laughs]

D: Yeah ,it's always nice to have someone there when it dies.

J: You can laugh about it. The best example of enjoying a horrible moment was when we were doing a sketch about bodybuilders that absolutely tanked. If it was a bit of stand-up and you died that badly, you wouldn't sleep for a week. But we just laughed our heads off! To the point where, in the second half of the show, we were going to do it again to torture the audience. So, it's fun.

You can see why a lot of people stop because you have to spend a lot of time with someone, and you've got to have a very similar sense of humour for it to work. We hardly ever clash about something do we?

D: No, that's true, actually. I hadn't thought of that, it's always, "Yep, that's fine!"

J: If one of us shows a sketch to the other, 99 times out of a 100 we're in agreement, which is quite weird.

D: Yeah, I think that's quite rare, really.

J: And then it turns out we're the only two people that find it funny! [laughs] In the entire world! So, it helps we've got a similar sense of humour and a love of the word 'tusk'!

Being a sketch act, does having someone to bounce off on stage affect the show?

J: Yeah, definitely, especially if one of us has given up!

D: It's nice after you've done stand-up to actually have someone you can work with. We do work together well, really. We sort of react off each other. We've known each other quite a while now.

J: Six years.

D: And you do find yourself knowing what the other is gonna do, so I can kind of pre-empt it.

J: That's the kind of thing that we've never struggled with. The trust thing. We never hang each other out to dry. [turns to Diane] We've built up our own caricatures on stage a bit. haven't we? You talk shit and you tell me to shut up or you look annoyed.

You did a pilot for Radio 2 that was broadcast recently.  How did that compare to a live show?

J: We loved it.

D: It was so much fun. I hadn't laughed so much in years. You don't think anyone's gonna hear it. You're in a little booth and we just mucked about.

J: We dicked around and we had the most fun. If they let us do a series, oh my god, what a year. We just laughed our arses off. In the radio show we do sketches, but we improvise a lot of stuff between us. Which is us just taking the piss out of each other, really.

D: I think it really worked.

J: The room where Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand got told off for swearing on the phone. That's where we recorded it.

D: I think there's something in that room.

J: We mimicked the picture of Ross and Brand doing that prank phone call and the BBC were like "DON'T send that out! DON'T put that on Facebook and DON'T tell anyone!" So, we were in that room, so once we got over that and the fact we were at the BBC, we had a whale of a time.

D: It's funny, actually, because we didn't know how the sketches would translate to just audio. But surprisingly, quite a few of them did.

J:We didn't think they would, did we? We recorded it quite a long time ago, so we hadn't listened to it for about a year.

D:Yeah, it took them a year to put it out.

J: It's annoying because we really wanna do it. So, we listened to it and we enjoyed it! We're natural pessimists, aren't we?

D:Yes.

J:We thought it was funny and a lot of the sketches we did on the radio, we've never done live.

Was it a bit weird working without an audience?

D: I thought it would be at first. I thought we'd need an audience, because otherwise we're just gonna sound flat.

J: We had this sound guy who was amazing.

D: What was his name again?

J: Gary Newman.

D: Gary NEWman!

J: He was fantastic and made these weird worlds for us. I wouldn't do it differently.

We had this freedom where we had a lot of hours to muck around and warm up and you didn't have the pressure of that moment. We could tweak it and make it better in the studio, rather than one or two takes if the audience get bored.

We've both done bits of radio in front of live audiences and stuff and it is completely different. It's like you have to nail it in one take and it's just not as fun.

Do you ever get asked "Who's Hawkeye?"

D: All the time! Someone did that to me the other day actually. They said, "Oh, Two Episodes Of Mash, are you going to re-enact two episodes of M*A*S*H?" NO!

J: There was a couple we had last year, a sort of older couple and they said, "Oh we only came in because my wife really loves M*A*S*H, but we really enjoyed it!"

We like our name because it's relevant to what we did and how we got here, but it's been a bit of a bane of our lives.

D:Yeah, people always ask us why we're called Two Episodes Of Mash and it's such a boring story, so we've got a lie instead.

J: Do you wanna hear the lie?

Oh, go on, then!

J: The reason we're called Two Episodes Of Mash is because my real name is Ron Episode.

D: And my name's Diane Mash. People seem to buy that!

J: And we're sticking with that, so you can have that exclusive!

So, who do you think should come and see your show?

D: Anyone with arms and legs.

J: People who are open minded to stuff that is slightly weird. It's not straight forward our stuff, is it?

D: No, and people need a few sketches before they realise what the hell is going on.

To warm them up?

J: Yeah, before we take them down the avenue of potty. We're not dark, we're bleak and odd. It's strange stuff. We don't want people who have never seen comedy, but anyone who'd wanna come and see us, thank you!

If you're looking for straightforward stuff, it's probably not your show, but if you want to see something different, that's the person we're going for.

D: I'm trying to think of who our opposites would be, but it would probably be best not to mention them, really.

J: No, we know who they are. [laughs]

Two Episodes Of Mash will be performing in the Pleasance Dome in Edinburgh all throughout August. Him & Her is expected to be broadcast on BBC Three in September.

The Five Pound Fringe started at the Edinburgh Festival last year, giving people the chance to see established comedy names as well as music and theatre acts for, as its name implies, a measly five pounds. We spoke to its organiser, the delightful Lisa Keddie, to find out more about what they do...

Hi Lisa, could you tell us in as long and detailed a way as possible who you are and what you do?

I'm Lisa Keddie, hello! I run a thing at the Edinburgh Festival called Five Pound Fringe, which pretty much does what it says on the tin. It's a collective of lots of shows, mainly comedy, who have decided to do the Edinburgh Fringe show for £5.

In case you don't know, the price of the average festival show in Edinburgh has been going up and up and up. It got to the point where you were paying £9 or £10 to see people that are really good and putting on great work, but you don't know who they are. They've not got any TV presence. They're not a household name.

When most people in the public are faced with the option of seeing Jimmy Carr or Russell Brand for £12 or £13, versus someone you've never heard of for £10, then obviously they're gonna go for the name they know and trust.

So, it's about encouraging people to take a bit of a risk and taking it back to what a fringe should be, seeing five or six shows in a day. People you've got no idea who they are, maybe seeing a couple of duff shows. But, basically, discovering new talent, you're new favourites, really.

What kind of acts can we expect to see?

It's completely open to all kinds of things. We've got a lot of comedy. Me and John, who I work with, come from a comedy background. [We] used to produce a lot of comedy shows, which is where the idea came from. And people know us and trust us from comedy, hence why we've got a lot of [shows]. There's stand-up shows and sketch shows, but then we do have some theatre and music things this year as well, which is nice.

A lot of it is people doing their first ever hour show, it's a good platform to go and write. When people go and do a show that's a bit more expensive, they end up selling two-for-one tickets essentially selling the show for a fiver.

Any particular acts you're eager to show off?

A lot of it is about getting new up-and-coming, exciting people who, within five years, you'll be saying, "Oh my god I can't believe I saw them for a fiver!" People really like the idea. They like the ethos of it.

This year we've got Richard Herring and Andrew Collins, who are doing their podcast with us. We've got Robin Ince too, while last year Mark Watson came and did a show. We had Nicholas Parsons who dropped in to do a few bits and pieces. If people like an idea they'll support it. It's lovely.

I think the exciting thing about The Fringe is seeing all the newbies, going in to see them and not having any idea who or what it's going to be like, then coming out and thinking that was the funniest hour! People are going in then coming out and saying, "What's next?", just getting in to the whole Fringe spirit.

You mentioned there's also musical and theatre acts. What kind of productions do you put on?

We've got a show from last year, Bane, which is actually one of the guys from a sketch group called Test Tube. It's a one-man comedy play about a murder mystery. He's doing the sequel this year and, because he sold out last time, he's gonna do the original as well.

There's also a big Irish theatre collective who're doing different things each week. A Shakespeare theatre performance and some new writing that they've done.

And there's another one-man show about a real life story when he was an architect. He built this palace for this completely corrupt gangster! He did it at uni for his end of year project. He met this guy and he said, "I've got this project" which never ended up getting made. "I've got this palace for you." and this gangster says. "Of course, that's fine," so he did it and passed his degree then the gangster went, "Well, build it for me now."

That was his first professional commission! I've seen the process and I'm really excited to see it finished! It's this crazy story about this mental man who keeps getting stalked and all these little things happen. It's a true-life tale and it's got this hook that he can get killed for telling this story! It's exciting, probably not true, but exciting!

This is your second year running this. What lessons did you learn from the first?

Don't get robbed! Last year, two days before the venue opened, we had a break-in and they took all the computers and phones. Other than that, there were no major disasters.

This year, we're a lot better organised and everybody's ready to go. It's just things like realising that a room without any windows is going to get really hot, so we've put air-conditioning in it. We've got more furniture too.

It was really busy last year. We sold 17,000 tickets. Hopefully, it'll run a lot more smoothly this year and people will come. Fingers crossed, that would be nice.

How does it feel to be involved in giving new acts and groups this platform?

I love it. One of my favourite things is seeking out what's happening. One of the things we run is the Lunchtime Club, which is five brand new-ish acts and they do 15 minutes each. That's our first show of the day. Last year, there was a guy called Joe Lycett who went on to win Chortle's Newcomer of the Year in their student competition. And we had Ivo Graham who won So You Think You're Funny.

It's really nice to have that group. It's such a good thing to do getting yourself a gig every single day for a month. It's good practice to get into the industry.

We've got a lot of people doing their first ever hour show, too, like Elis James last year. He's a Welsh guy who's just brilliant. When he started, there was just a few people coming in, but by the end of the month he was selling out. It's word of mouth. People were going, "This is a brilliant show." It's lovely to see that progression. It's such an important month for comedy.

To wrap it up, why do you think should people go to see your shows?

It's a bloody good programme! One of the things I'm most proud of doing it is, everything I put on, I would pay to watch. You've got to keep that in mind. I'd feel terrible if I put on something I didn't believe in and someone came up to me and said, "I didn't enjoy that."

At least this way, if people don't like something, it's a fiver. You can come and discover your new favourite comedian, have a proper Fringe experience and still have enough money for a pint after!

Lisa Keddie, thank you very much!

The Five Pound Fringe will be running at various venues in Edinburgh throughout August. For more information, check out their website at www.fivepoundfringe.com, and follow them on Twitter @Fivepoundfringe.

One of the finest musical artists to come out of Britain, David Bowie has had a long, successful and critically acclaimed career, managing to tackle a number of different genres whilst retaining an unmistakable sound at the heart of all he does.

In addition to his music career, Bowie has also tried his hand at many other areas of the arts. Below I will take a look at his adventures in cinema...

Labyrinth

This is, without doubt, Bowie's most iconic role as an actor. The Henson/Lucas co-production provided a perfect showcase for his talents, and he excels in the part of the Goblin King Jareth, stealing the show with his performance that jumps between comedic and sinister, and a styling that's a throwback to his glam rock days.

His costume was identified as nightmare-inducing in an article on this very site, as it exposed a little more of the trouser department than is acceptable in a movie primarily aimed at children.

His contribution to the film's soundtrack is strong, even though the Magic Dance sequence in the film seems a little out of place, and many of the entries are firmly of their time and don't stand up as well more than 20 years after the film's release.

Bowie reported that the baby noises heard in Magic Dance were by him, as the baby that was in the studio didn't perform as required. Amateur!

Despite my reservations about Magic Dance, that song and Underground are two of the more upbeat Bowie numbers, and the pieces that many fans of the film favour.

For me, the stand-out track is the creepy Within You, which is sung by Bowie as he's following the movements of Jennifer Connelly's Sarah through the Goblin Kingdom. Almost as impressive is As The World Falls Down. Both numbers showcase a darker side to the Goblin King while still making him a sympathetic character. There's a longing in his voice that treads a line between creepy and tragic.

Acting Career

Given his reputation for changing his image to suit his creative output, it's little surprise that he eventually made the transition to acting, and his screen career is one of the most respectable of any of the many musicians who have made the transition.

Bowie's cinematic debut was in 1969 with a small part in the film The Virgin Soldiers, and in the same year he would appear in a little-seen experimental film entitled The Image. These roles were before Bowie broke through into the mainstream, and it wasn't until he released The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, his concept album that captured the zeitgeist as glam rock reached the height of its popularity, that he would enjoy the level of fame and success he enjoys to this day.

The album made Bowie a worldwide superstar and the accompanying documentary, capturing the final date of Bowie's final tour date in 1973, shot by D.A. Pennebaker, is essential viewing for all Bowie fans.

A few years after Pennebaker's documentary, Nicholas Roeg cast Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth. Bowie's first leading role really played to his talents and was a perfect fit for his persona. He plays an alien that falls to Earth and becomes a wealthy businessman and pop star who is disillusioned with his life and looking to find a way home. Bowie is nothing short of excellent. There's a nice import edition available that pairs this with the incredible Moon, directed by Bowie's son. Duncan Jones.

For much of the late 70s early 80s, Bowie's cinematic endeavours were limited due to his touring schedule. He appeared in the final film of Marlene Dietrich with Just A Gigolo. Other roles included Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and The Hunger.

Following the success of Labyrinth, Bowie had a small role in the British musical Absolute Beginners, and two years later played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ.

Since the 90s, Bowie's touring schedule has reduced significantly and he has appeared in a number of interesting projects through that period. The Linguini Incident, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and a role playing Andy Warhol in Basquiat marked that decade's output, and in the 2000s he had an amusing cameo in Zoolander and the role of Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, among numerous other projects.

Additionally, Bowie was rumoured to have turned down the opportunity to play the villain in A View To A Kill and was reportedly considered for the role of the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman.

As is evident from the above, Bowie's cinematic accomplishments are varied, and nothing less than interesting. Seemingly never playing the same role twice and rarely falling into the usual rock star roles, his output is very impressive.

Composing and Soundtrack inclusions

In addition to his work on Labyrinth, Bowie has provided music for a number of other movies. His work on Cat People has gained a new appreciation recently, with Quentin Tarantino using it to stunning effect in a key scene from his latest opus, Inglourious Basterds.

Christiane F isn't a film that features a score by Bowie, but features a considerable amount of concert his footage throughout, certainly enough to say his work is integral to the film.

Notable scores include his work for Hero (1983), The Falcon And The Snowman starring Sean Penn, and Boy Meets Girl, which also boasts musical contributions from Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Pinault.

For British-based projects, Bowie was a songwriter for the Julien Temple-directed musical Absolute Beginners, and composed the score for the BBC production The Buddha Of Suburbia.

• See all the Music in the Movies

With this year marking the 60th anniversary of the formation of The Beatles, I thought I would take a look at their cinematic debut, A Hard Day's Night.

The Film

Directed by Richard Lester, A Hard Day's Night is the first of five Beatles movies. Of all the features they appeared in, this is undoubtedly the band's high point. This and Yellow Submarine aside, the rest are fairly forgettable affairs that only appeal to obsessive fans of the band (of which there are many).

Although this is undoubtedly a Beatles film, the name of the band isn't, interestingly enough, mentioned once during its runtime.

Lester and writer Alun Owen took cues from slapstick comedies and films of the French new wave to provide an exaggerated look at a day-and-a-half of life in The Beatles, with the goal being for them to get ready for a big TV appearance. There are numerous comedy vignettes throughout and, as you would expect, lots of musical numbers.

The production was somewhat rushed and the budget relatively small (especially by modern standards), but that doesn't show in the final product, which still holds up well today.

The film would change pop music, but also had a huge impact on cinema. Many of the scenes that feature in the film have been mimicked since, particularly the opening sequence where the band is being chased by fans.

Slick editing sees the comedic set pieces seamlessly intercut with numerous musical performances. The style Lester adopted for A Hard Day's Night would prove influential on how music videos were made after its release.

One thing that's particularly impressive is the quality of performances from the members of band, especially given the fact that this is their debut feature. Sure, they had plenty of years performing under their belt and frequently gave entertaining interviews, but acting is a very different type of performance altogether, and many musicians have failed to make convincing transitions to the big screen.

It, no doubt, helped that the band were playing themselves in an exaggerated version of their life, but there were signs of quality from all of the cast members.

Of the four, it's Ringo that comes across the best. Ringo's performance includes great comedic timing and slapstick elements that are part Chaplin, part Marx Brothers. His delivery is dry and understated, so a lot of what he does throughout the film can go unnoticed on first viewing, but upon re-watching the film, it's his performance that proves to be the most rewarding, with subtle comedic gems being uncovered on each viewing. He may not have been the best musician in the band, but on the evidence of this, he was certainly the best actor.

Another fine performance is from Wilfred 'Uncle Steptoe' Brambell who plays Paul's grandfather. He provides a lot of the film's moments of bad behaviour. The constant use of the phrase "He's very clean" provides a nice counter to the phrase "You dirty old man" directed at him in Steptoe And Son.

Ringo is also credited as being the inspiration for the film's title, following him using the phrase in an interview. He didn't put the idea forward for it to be used as the title, however, and there's some dispute over how it came to be the title. Lennon and Lester's version is that the director heard the phrase in the interview and decided that it would be the title, whereas McCartney would later claim that it was the band that came up with the idea of using it.

To add further confusion, the film's producer, Walter Shenson, claimed that he decided upon the title after Lennon had run through some of Ringo's many classic quotes.

There's not a wasted minute in A Hard Day's Night. It's a relentlessly entertaining film that is not only the best film to feature The Beatles, but one of the finest British comedies of all time.

The Music

The cultural significance of this production is incredible. The success of both the film and the accompanying soundtrack proved influential to a number of musical artists and opened doors for many of The Beatles' contemporaries to achieve international as well as domestic success.

In terms of sheer quality of musical material contained in a movie, there aren't many films that can rival A Hard Day's Night. Capturing the band at the peak of Beatlemania, when they were effortlessly churning out pop hit after pop hit, few film soundtracks can boast the success of its accompanying record. The official soundtrack sold in excess of a million copies within a week of release, and the single from the film, Can't Buy Me Love, sold similar amounts the day it hit stores.

The accompanying album was the band's only album written exclusively by Lennon and McCartney, and was released through United Artists, who exploited a loophole in the contract the band held with Capitol that didn't cover the release of film scores. The deal still allowed Capitol to release singles from the album, so this goes some way to explain why Capitol released as many as it did. That, plus the fact that Beatles singles were guaranteed to be big sellers.

Capitol would also later release a singles collection entitled Something New, which collected some of the material they released from the film's soundtrack.

Not only was it the first Beatles record written entirely by Lennon and McCartney, A Hard Day's Night was also the first album the band released that contained all original material, and marks a high point of the band's output from that period of their career.

• See all the Music in the Movies

For my latest look back at a director's work via music, I thought I would take a look at John Carpenter, whose Halloween theme narrowly missed out on a place on the iconic theme tunes article.

From his directorial debut, the excellent Dark Star, Carpenter has composed the scores for the vast majority of his films. His scores are usually uncomplicated but highly effective pieces of work that heavily feature synthesisers.

Here are my Carpenter favourites...

Assault On Precinct 13

Recorded in the space of just three days, Carpenter's score for his second feature film showcases his minimalist approach and his fondness for synthesisers. The role of composer was forced upon the filmmaker due to budgetary constraints, not that you would necessarily know given the quality of the piece.

The score borrows from a number of sources, notably Led Zeppelin for the main theme and composer Lalo Schifrin's Dirty Harry score for the film's finale. Only three main themes are heard throughout, so it is quite repetitive, but this doesn't detract from the quality of the work here.

It's staggering to think that Carpenter came up with a score this good in such a short space of time. In many ways it provided a foundation for many of his future compositions.

Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch

For his 1978 horror masterpiece, Halloween, John Carpenter created one of the most iconic pieces of music in horror cinema. He used cheap synthesisers, which is appropriate given the low budget of the project overall.

Carpenter worked magnificently with his limitations, not only in creating the instantly recognisable theme, but also a score that is incredibly effective at evoking the required moods. The score plays such a huge part in why Halloween is so effective at eliciting scares from audiences.

At the time of writing the music, Carpenter said his piano playing ability was somewhat limited and he received some level of assistance from Dan Wyman, but the composing credit rests with Carpenter. Well, The Bowling Green Philharmonic Orchestra, which is what Carpenter chose to bill himself as. Carpenter's band, The Coup de Villes, can also be heard in the background of a scene.

For the sequel, Carpenter reused many of the themes included on the soundtrack for the original, with only slight differences, such as a different use of a pop song. The original used The Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear The Reaper, whereas the sequel features The Chordettes' Mr. Sandman.

Overall, the score for the sequel is a much more polished affair, but somehow lacks the quality of the first. There's something about the original soundtrack, which, despite its limitations, achieved what was required, whereas the sequel feels like more of the same with less of the charm.

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch marks a low point in the franchise, both in terms of what's on screen and the soundtrack. The choice to deviate from the successful themes of the previous two films proved to be a mistake, as it lacks any sense of being part of the franchise, despite billing itself as a sequel.

The 5/4 tempo synthesiser theme was replaced with a melody that is nowhere near as effective and the constant repetition of the theme of London Bridge Is Falling Down is enough to turn any viewer into a Michael Myers-esque killing machine by the end of the film.

The Fog

Carpenter's hit-and-miss 1980 horror movie had a problematic shoot that experienced a number of reshoots, and is a film that the director doesn't hold in high regard. It's not a terrible film, but it does suffer from being a bit all over the place at times.

It's a shame that the film didn't turn out better, not only because the premise and some of the execution is excellent, but also because it may prevent people discovering one of Carpenter's finest scores.

Not an oppressive score by any means, Carpenter instead provided an eerie backing lead by a piano line. The result is incredibly effective and is the film's strong point.

Escape From New York

Escape From New York saw Carpenter use a similar approach to that of Halloween, in that he relied on the use of synthesisers as the main instrument to drive the score, and the musical themes that drive the film are simple, but very effective.

In terms of mood, many of the pieces included here wouldn't seem out of place in Halloween.

There's a strong sense of tension that runs throughout, with interesting changes of pace that complement what's on screen perfectly and, again, there's the simple but effective main theme.

It may sound dated and very much of its time, but it's undeniably an effective score, and in many ways it remains one of Carpenter's finest to date.

Christine

For this adaptation of Stephen King's killer car novel, Carpenter was short on time and, as such, the production was a little rushed. This goes some way to explain why the score is an amalgamation of themes heard in Halloween and Escape From New York, with the accompaniment of some of the quieter moments attributed to the former and the intense chase sequences attributed to the latter.

The rushed nature shows both in terms of the music used and the quality of the recording, with the quality often being less than satisfactory. Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury) is, without question, the highlight of the film, and with its relentless tempo it proves to be a perfect fit.

Big Trouble In Little China

The obvious choice for the score for Big Trouble In Little China would have been for Carpenter to try his hand at music from the orient, but instead he opted to stick to what he knew and created a score that mixed his favoured synthesisers and rock 'n' roll.

Like the film itself, the score has a largely playful tone, and while it's not the best work Carpenter has done, it sure is entertaining. Carpenter's band, The Coup de Villes provide the film's excellent theme.

• See all the Music in the Movies

There are moments in the clip below that are arguably as terrifying as anything Christopher Nolan brought to the screen in The Dark Knight. For here is what happens when a small child gets to play Batman, and then gets to put it on the Internet.

The Batman film after next might just have found its creative force...