BBC Six Music Podcasts.
Six Music.
This is a free download from the BBC.
Find out more at bbc.co.uk slash six music.
And now, Adam and Joe.
Sorry about that, listeners.
I was having a little yawn.
I've been to Los Angeles.
You can't stop talking about your trip to Los Angeles.
Yeah, I've got jet lag.
What's that?
It's like when you're a person with very loose morals and you fly.
Really?
It doesn't describe somebody who is so arrogant about their recent holidays that they become a total bore.
Yeah, partly it does describe that.
That was too much, man.
It's not true.
I love hearing your anecdotes.
Thanks.
You're listening to the Adam and Jo podcast of our six music show, a specially filleted chunk of our talking covered in breadcrumbs, lightly fried with some peas
and crisps.
satirical.
Is that what we were going to be?
The point we were making is about the magazines themselves and the way they reflect a possibly inaccurate and slightly insane version of what a lady's mind isn't.
So if you detect any misogynistic undertones in the show
actually, that's different, is it?
If it's the undertones, then we can't, you know, we're not, oh, I'm getting confused.
I was thinking Fergal Sharkey now, going around being misogynistic.
Well, I'll tell you one thing.
I bet you never listened to your father.
Enjoy these highlights.
This is a big British castle podcast with some talking from the Adam and Jojo radiogram.
You can listen to it while you're on your way to work.
And when you get there, you can listen on the loop.
How do you do?
Well, what is your problem?
My problem is that I've had an hour and a half sleep.
Yeah, what were you doing?
I was just excited.
Really over-excited about doing the show?
Yeah.
So excited that you just couldn't sleep?
Yeah.
That's amazing.
What's your problem?
My problem is Keira Knightley's face.
It's like a kind of annual problem now, isn't it?
That comes around every few months when she has a new film out.
Sometimes it's even more often than a year.
and then every single magazine in the world that you see in every newspaper has her face on it and it's nice obviously it's a lovely beautiful face but it's just the face that she pulls that face as if she's um you know got her uh got some kind of lozenge jimba jaw
Yeah.
Yeah.
That she's sticking out there.
Yeah, I like it.
Do you?
Yeah.
Do you actually snog the mags?
No, I don't.
It's a good idea, though.
I bet you do.
I don't.
Because that's what she's, that's basically what she's asking you to do.
She's saying, why don't you give this magazine a snog?
Do you know what the thing is?
Some women have a practiced way to pose for a camera.
Yes.
They're given a particular face.
Didn't the wonderful Princess Di have a thing where she looked down and then looked up?
Right.
And you see that with certain famous women, they always hold the same pose in photos.
A studied look, something they know is going to work.
I mean, you'd think they'd have more than one though, especially if you're nightly and you're going to be on almost every single mag in the area.
You know what I mean?
We should get her in to chat about it.
I'm sure she listens to the show and she almost certainly would like to come in and talk about all that.
It's time for Song Wars, the war of
The theme this week was to take a piece of text from Grazia magazine, which is one of the many magazines for sort of slightly slow women available.
That's not true, man.
Isn't it?
Grazia is the choice of the sharper woman, I would say.
Would you say?
In its favour, yeah.
I mean, if you have to read a magazine that rots your lady brain, then Grazia is at the upper end of the scale.
That's what I was guessing at.
We're agreeing, really.
Well, we are, but I wouldn't say.
There's certainly scummier titles out there than that.
Oh no, absolutely.
It's a sophisticated title.
You can tell by the font.
Absolutely, yes.
And the quality of the paper.
The quality of the paper is extraordinary.
It's printed on silk.
It really is.
You know, you'd be able to legitimately eat your food off it.
You could, if you were a hobo, which in a way you are, and you wanted to sleep on the streets in luxury.
That's right.
Grazie would be the equivalent of silk sheets.
I thought you said you would be just able to eat the paper.
You could probably do that.
You could make, because what you could do is you could drool on it.
It's soaked in skin cream.
Yeah.
You rub it against your face and it makes you younger.
That's true, isn't it?
But you could, don't you think you could chew up the pages, you could spit them out and then you could make like a little cake or a patty.
You could pop that under the grill if you wanted for a toasty.
Patty.
or a patty and you could pop it between two buns.
What are we talking about now?
Two man's buns and you could have a delicious kind of hamburger.
So many uses for it but we shouldn't give the magazine undue prominence because at the big British castle we can't, you know, do anything commercial or be seen to be promoting the magazine Grazia.
No.
So we're going to constantly remind you that there are other lady mags available.
Tittles, Spritzer, Nips, Wifter, and Totties.
And balloons.
Yeah.
Are the other competitors in the market.
Exactly.
But sorry, we went off on a bit of a tangent there.
The idea was to set a piece of text from Grazia to music.
And so that's what I've certainly done.
Is that what you've done?
Yeah, did you still, we did discuss the fact that we would have to stick verbatim.
You can't like edit the text.
Right.
Have you been editing text?
No.
Yes, you have.
I haven't.
I haven't.
And you have to stick to the text.
You can't embellish.
So you've just got to use what's actually there, right?
Right.
You can't just invent stuff.
Right.
I didn't invent anything.
The other problem with Grantz here, of course, and other lady mags, is the collision of very serious topics with very frivolous topics.
So you have to be careful which one you go for, obviously.
Yeah.
So I wasn't.
You failed to be careful.
I failed to be careful.
I went for one of the more serious things because there's some really quite upsetting stuff that you get in those.
Well that's true and any lack of taste in this morning's Song Wars songs is not our fault.
No.
Complaints should be addressed to the editor of Grazia magazine.
That's right.
We're merely performing a musical service.
We chose the peaches Geldof issues.
It's a sort of pink themed one.
This week's is green and features Jennifer Aniston.
Last week's however is pink and features the peaches.
And also Jennifer Aniston as well.
Last week she was reeling because she'd been dumped again by me.
So what did you go for in the end, can I ask you?
Well, yeah, I went for the contents page.
The contents page?
Yeah, I went for the contents page.
Good idea, right at the top there.
Yeah, so mine is an overview.
So this is my song, Joe's song, it's called This Week in Grazia, it's based on the contents page.
If you've got a copy, you can sing along a songworse by having a look at the contents page there.
And imagine you are a lady,
Even if you are a lady, imagine that you're even more of a lady than you already are.
And you're in, say, a dentist's waiting room, and you pick up a copy of Grazia.
And this is what might happen in your head.
Let's see what's in this week's Grazia.
This week in Grazia, fashion charts.
It's peaches, what do you expect by James Brown?
Oh, peaches!
Hot news, including the grade A list, baby weight race, and the return!
Anne Hathaway says I'm just trying to live my life.
Me too.
I fell in love.
Four months later I discovered I was dying.
God, that's really worrying.
They're here.
It's the back hot list.
Laura Craker, fashion spot on.
Who is wearing what this week and why?
Who is wearing what this week and why?
Winter's Palace.
I'm panicking!
The Atkins diet is back!
Oh God!
I feel sick.
I'll pick up this week's TV film and culture.
Be quiet!
Letters, horoscopes and goodie bag and that's your mag, you silly woman!
Oh God!
That was just the contents page.
Wow.
So that's song number one.
That's this week in Grazia.
That was good, man.
You've got like a really nice little synth package there in your garage band locker, haven't you?
Yeah.
Very nice.
I think that's standard.
I don't think that's a jam pack thing.
Really?
I think so.
I've got to investigate.
Nice noises.
Very nice noises.
Well, I went a different route in every conceivable way.
I had a bit of a Latin tune because I thought, you know, grazia, that's a, is grazia a real word from a language?
Yes.
Doesn't it mean thank you?
Well, it does, but is that actually the word in Italian, I suppose it would be?
I think so.
A lot of these magazines originate in Europe, don't they?
Hello, that started the whole thing off, which is Spanish, yeah, of course.
But grazie, isn't it grazie, they say, or did they say grazia in Italy?
Anyway, there you go, it's a sort of word.
But I went for an actual Latin type.
That's a good idea.
Because Latin things are sexy there.
They're very now strictly come dancing women love that.
I'm glad they're now Yeah, no women love Latin things.
They like to you know, do their maracas and So you covered there in your in your contents page the fact that there are as we said, you know some very sad articles in amongst the jolly stuff about leather trousers and stuff and
And there's a regular column that they have in there as well by a lady who lost her husband.
He died a few years ago.
And she writes a column now about life after the death of her husband and all the things she's getting up to and the fact that she's becoming a less shallow person, she says.
I read it quite regularly.
I started reading it about three weeks ago.
And I was inspired to do a song about it.
And I was worried about the taste issue.
But then I thought, well, if she's happy writing a column about it, then I'm happy doing a song about the column.
You know, so this is my song and it's called after him.
That's her regular column and She is talking about the fact that she's met someone new.
So there's a lot of Difficult issues after you're getting over losing someone and is this a good idea.
Do you think you've made a good choice?
Well, I don't know.
That's a good question.
I was I was gonna this is set to a Latin rhythm.
Yeah Yeah Wow now that's gonna be interesting now that I'm saying the words I
Yeah, and these are real people.
Yeah.
But I mean, the whole magazine's full of real people, so what do you do about that?
It's very real.
And we did say that we were going to do songs about it.
Yeah, no, it's good.
I don't think we should prejudge it.
I think we should play it.
What's it called?
It's called Too Beautiful for a Cranky Old Bag Like Me.
Let's hear it.
This is one of the bits from the article.
And so this is about the fact that she's met someone new.
Here it is.
Nearly three years after Sam lost her husband in a climbing accident, she's falling in love again.
But can she dare to let go of the past?
We'd started seeing each other nearly every day, but never talked of the future or uttered the L word.
That would have been crazy.
In fact, she was right.
Rob O was only 27.
I had more baggage than Terminal 5.
Better to let it go now.
So I ignored Rob-O's texts when they came Was cold to him on the phone, better to hurt now than later I was too old, too damaged He was so full of life, always excited Always wanting to do so much, see so many things
eventually after a week of the cold shoulder he came looking for me what's going on he asked his pale blue eyes looking hurt it all spilled out rob's death the age difference my fear for the future if we had a future i like you a bit too much i said i'm scared do you think i'm going to let you go
Out of the fairytale I'd once lived And tried to give this crazy thing a proper go I was too old, too damaged He was so full of life, always excited Always wanting to do so much, see so many things He was too beautiful for a cranky old bag
I think they should dance to that on the final of Strictly Come Dancing.
Yeah, you reckon?
Yes.
It's a sexy song, isn't it?
And I would like to stress, obviously, that my intention is not to make light of the bereavement.
We were in a tough corner.
Yeah, so much as the fact that it exists within the magazine Grazia, you know?
Yes, and we should also remind you that many other equally good ladies' magazines are available.
Mind the Gap.
Those big checks that they had in the 80s.
I know what you mean.
Well, the sort of Howard Jones thing that happened, wasn't it?
Big black and white checks.
It's like that, but a bit more colour.
But it's very much sort of Dexy's Bananarama.
Bananarama used to wear those shirts.
Accessories were slightly different.
You know, the bananas would maybe have rolled up sleeves.
The occasional knotted tail.
Backcombed hair.
Well, the backcombed hair is in, obviously, but in a more gothic way.
You're listening to two men who've read Grazia very thoroughly.
Ruffs are in.
But yeah, it's weird.
If you walk in the streets, it's as if a government edict has come down about Chequy Wild West shirts.
Right.
I've seen more clothes clashes in the high street this week than, not that I've ever looked for them before, or that I'm actually telling the truth.
Joe Clothes Clash Cornish.
I'm Grazia's fashion spy.
The thing that I've obviously not noticed, because it's been around for a while, but it's now like getting out of control, is the weird sort of drainpipe-y trousers, the low drainpipe-y trousers that men wear, which make them look as if their arse is incredibly low and their legs are incredibly short, as if they're little pony men.
Well, it's strange, isn't it?
Because baggy jeans were very in, hip-hoppy sort of skate jeans.
And then suddenly drain pipes came in, but they forgot to adjust the saggy bum.
Yeah.
So you've got this weird combination of a saggy jeans bum and the pipes.
That's right.
And then the winkle pickers.
Yeah.
So you've got winkles and bums.
Everything's on display.
It's weird because it makes a lot of good-looking men who are clearly well-proportioned look totally out of proportion.
Do you think so?
Makes them look like Noel Fielding.
Right.
Fielding and Brand are the standard bearers for this fashion, aren't they?
The tapering legs, the saggy bum, it's sort of like a sexy chimney sweep.
I suppose, but both of those people... Can you imagine that?
Sorry.
What, a sexy chimney sweep?
Yeah, you're watching the telly, there's a puff of soot, and you think, what, Santa?
It's not Christmas.
Down the chimney comes... A soot puff.
Russell Brand.
Yeah.
Covered in soot.
Yeah.
Proceeds to leave smutty fingerprints all over your body.
I can imagine that.
I am imagining it.
That's delighting me.
But it's time for the sooty chimney sweep look to go.
You reckon?
Brand will be the first one to sense it.
He's got such a distinctive look.
He hasn't sensed it so far for the last three years.
No, because it's still here.
He's got to change that look at some point.
He is due for a re-brand, to quote his TV show.
Otherwise, the world's going to move on and he's going to be left behind, looking like some relic from the Victorian times.
That's going to be exciting, isn't it, when he comes out with the new look.
And if he gets it wrong... He'll go completely the other way.
It'll be enormously wide legs.
I mean, absurdly wide.
A couple of metres.
I mean if he's got any sense it's going to be a similar look but a few steps to the left so that it's obviously he's changed it but not so much that he's going to lose his whole band base you know what I mean he's got to handle it the same way that a band might but you know like a band I mean even you too Bano
He didn't stick with the sort of sincere mullet phase of his career for as long as Brand has stuck with his look, you know?
He made the transition to being Johnny Ironical a little bit more smoothly than I think Brand's gonna have to make his transition.
There's gonna be a screech of chimney-sweep gears, you know?
When it finally happens.
Text the nation.
Text, text, text.
Text the nation.
What if I don't want to?
Text the nation.
But I'm using email.
Is that a problem?
It doesn't matter.
Text!
It's Text the Nation time, the nation's favourite feature.
It's a feature where we ask you something and you answer via text and then we read them out.
And this week we are asking you to suggest new ideas for mags.
A lot of money to be made in mags.
Is there really?
Yeah, no one reads books anymore.
Everyone loves a mag.
I can't believe there's a lot of money to be made in that.
I'm just trying to make it sound exciting.
Yeah, that is exciting though.
I'm excited about it.
The use of just lies and ill-informed exaggeration.
Yeah.
Is it working?
It works on me.
Good.
I want to set one up now.
Here's my idea for a mag.
Yeah.
Teats.
I like it.
Keep talking.
It's about tea towels.
Well, that's disappointing.
Well, it is, but I'm suckering people in with the title.
Suckering?
Suckling?
Yeah, I'm suckling people in with the title.
That's more like it.
Teats.
And then they fly.
It's about tea towels.
There would be scantily clad ladies, and they would be dressed only in tea towels on the front, and they'd be draped over.
You see, a tea towel is a very good thing to give away free.
Exactly.
Low cost.
You can make a lot of them.
A free tea towel every week.
Free towel.
A free tea towel.
A free tea towel.
A free tea towel.
You could even have the cover of the magazine, Teats, would be made, it could be torn off and used as a tea towel.
Well, it would be printed on fabric.
Yeah.
It would be 20 tea towels a week.
It's about everyone's favourite item of, would you call them linen?
No, they're not really.
I would.
Everyone's favorite item of household linen.
Linen would be the name of the editor of Teads.
There'd be articles like the best places to dry your tea towels.
You know, do you favor the dryer or are you going to hang them on your cooker?
That kind of thing.
Maybe not that many articles on that.
new designs of tea towels, famous tea towels, you know.
Give me an example of a famous tea towel.
Oh, the tea towel that Meryl Streep uses in the hours when she's in the kitchen there.
Very good answer.
She's a little bit depressed.
You're on it today.
I'm totally on top of it.
So teats, that's my idea.
Let's have an idea from the listeners.
I've got other ideas.
I've got an idea.
What have you got?
Stars.
Stars.
S-T-A-R-S-E.
Stars.
Just pictures of the bottoms of the stars.
Celebrity bottoms.
That's all you need.
Let's pair it down.
That's genius.
Paired.
Yes.
You know, that would be on the front.
We've paired it down.
Yeah.
We've paired it down for you.
I've got another one.
That's very clever.
Flunt.
What's flunt?
I don't know.
It's a good title though.
Thanks.
What's wrong with that word?
It's just a blank.
I think the front cover's just blank.
It's one of those fashion mags, you know?
You're not quite sure what's going on.
Right, like nylon or paper.
Yeah, you buy it just for the pictures.
Flux or whatever it's called.
What did you just say?
Wasn't there a magazine called Flux?
Yeah, there probably still is.
That's another one.
I had another one.
Snooze Mag.
It's a mag for while you're asleep.
And it's padded and scented and it has a couple of dirty pictures.
How good is that to you while you're asleep?
That's for before you go to sleep.
Oh, I see.
To send you off.
It's washable.
The other magazine I thought, surely it's only a matter of time before we get Kira magazine.
Right, Kira's own magazine.
Yeah, like Oprah's magazine.
You know, if Oprah gets a magazine... Oh, magazine.
Oh, then this should be K. I'd rather read all about Kira than Oprah.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, so funny, I forgot to laugh.
Yes, Text the Nation, this week, listeners, is all about your ideas for new adverts, and here are some... Adverts?
Oh, God.
Magazines.
Plus, you said the G word.
You're not supposed to take the Lord's name in vain, or even the, you know, the head of the council, whatever he's called.
You've really let the air out of my balloon today.
I'll start again.
Yes, listeners, it's time for Text the Nation.
This week, we're asking for your ideas for magazines, new magazines.
Yeah?
There you go.
There, did it.
And here are some that have come in.
This is from Jamie Pembroke.
Alright, it's a new beginning.
Yay, now we're motoring.
It's going to go well now.
This show is taking off now.
Okay, I feel tired again now.
I think we just peaked.
Okay, here's Jamie's ideas.
Idea number one.
It's just called ADD!
And it's 174 pages of adverts.
That's a good idea, is it?
No, that's a terrible idea.
No, it's a good idea.
Magazines are almost there anyway.
Yeah.
Like, looking at the magazine whose name we can't mention because we've mentioned it too much, it's amazing how much of that is just a catalogue.
Yeah.
And it's interesting to look through magazines and see how much is just basically like a shopping catalogue.
Some of the thicker men's magazines, some of the bigger titles have ads.
I mean, there's almost nothing there.
You have to really get flicking if you want to find an actual ad.
What I'm saying, Adam, is that even the articles are adverts.
You know what I mean?
No.
There's something about a new range of products or reviewing products or, you know, there's little sponsorship things and everything.
He's also got an idea for a magazine called Blank.
174 pages of nothing.
Here are some more from Douglas Courtney.
Are you launching any of those magazines?
Any of those going to BBC Worldwide?
I like Blank.
You like Blank.
It's a bit like Flunt.
Right, that's what you could call it.
You could call it a flunt and there's absolutely nothing inside and you can just fill it with doodles.
That's true, it's more of a pad than a mag.
In fact, it should just be called pad.
Why stock pads in the stationary section when they could be in the mag section?
There was a magazine once that was just a piece of wood.
Yeah.
Did you see that?
Oh, I remember that one.
It was just a bit of wood.
Are you sure about that?
Yeah, yeah.
It was a fashion magazine.
It was just a bit of a wood.
It was an art statement.
That's right.
And who could edit Pad?
We wouldn't really need editing.
Paddy someone.
Paddy Ashdown.
Paddy Ashdown.
There you go.
Here's some more ideas from Douglas Courtney, who is somewhere abroad, because he says it's 4.30am, so they're probably only funny to me.
Seat!
The magazine for chair enthusiasts contains pictures and articles about chairs owned by celebrities.
Oh, that's a good idea.
It is a good idea.
Well, because celebrities have all the best seats anyway.
They always get the best seats.
The most comfortable ones.
That's a good idea, because you'd love to see where celebrities sit, and they could do a special issue with your mag as well about the bottoms.
They could do it.
Well, when they both started to fail, they'd merge like Wizard and Chips and Crazy.
They could merge, and you could just see them, what kind of chairs the celebrity bottoms were sat on.
What was your one called?
Stars.
That's right.
So it would be Stars and Seat.
Stars Seat.
Starseed.
Yeah.
Dean Jane Mitchell, who sounds like some kind of actor from a 70s TV movie, but I'm sure he's not.
I'm sure he's a very great, great guy.
Suggests, sorry, Soldier of Misfortune.
Based on the Live With My Mother, gun-obsessed, freaky magazine, Soldier of Fortune, a magazine dedicated to the actual lives of the reader of this and other gun-obsessed magazines.
Right, so that's so the truth behind that macho image.
That's a good idea and on in a similar vein What about jugs magazine that exists?
Yeah, but this one would be about actual jugs, right?
But again would have a topless woman on the front That's your gambit
for seizing the market.
Holding some jugs.
Very sexually exciting photo and then inside just Tupperware.
Yeah, that's right.
That's an age-old technique actually.
This week, using jugs as vases.
You should try watching the film Calendar Girls, you'd enjoy that.
It's about a similar sort of idea.
And here's one from Steph.
healed in red car.
I'm not going to read out the beginning of your text, Steph, because it's obscene.
But the second part is good.
Quip magazine, full of interesting facts, witty remarks, one-liners, all you need to disguise social inadequacies.
I imagine articles being no longer than five words.
That's a good idea.
I was thinking of something very similar.
I was thinking of a compendium of comebacks and put-downs.
Right.
That's more like a mini book by the Till.
It could be a book, but then you could have... Hey, what's the difference between a book and a mag anyway?
What is it?
Not a lot these days.
Well, I'm asking you what.
It's just the size and that's it really.
Oh, the staples.
Yeah, it's just the design differences.
The content actually doesn't have to vary.
You can't get as many ads into books.
Got you, got you.
I was thinking of another mag, OC Daily.
Right, is that about the show, the OC?
No, it's about, it's for people who suffer from OCD.
Right, obsessive compulsive disorder.
Yeah, exactly.
Even mild forms thereof, because let's face it, increasingly in the modern world, everyone is afflicted with some form of mild obsessive compulsive behavior.
page layout would be critical, wouldn't it?
Yes.
Very organized.
And you might repeat pages, maybe, just to make it more exciting.
Plus, I think you'd sell a lot of copies, because people, once they started buying it, they wouldn't be able to stop.
I think it wouldn't be a normal magazine that was bound on one side.
It would be on a stick, and the pages would just revolve around the stick.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
So you could just read it interminably.
Right, right, right.
You could just flick it round and round and round.
Wouldn't have a cover.
It's just an idea.
Here are some more texts from readers.
An anonymous texter says, men's unhealthy.
A mag with ideas on how to stay fat and not get the ladies and ways to make sure you don't have a successful life.
I've got that mag.
You edit that one, don't you?
There you go.
That was our podcast.
Ladies and gentlemen, some filleted nuggets from the show this week.
But I do encourage you to take advantage of the listen again facility and listen to the whole three hours in its entirety.
Here's a few bits that you will hear there that you won't have heard in this podcast.
A whole entertaining riff based around the fact that we misunderstood the band White Lies was making a song called Death and not the other way around.
I thought there was a band called Death and we spoke about it at great length before being told by a listener that we are stupid and it's the other way around.
The band is called White Lies, the song is called Death.
So that won't be in the podcast but you can hear it on the listen again function.
Also, entertaining introduction to Neil Young's Tell Me Why.
I wonder why we played that song?
Okay, you won't find out from this podcast, but you will if you do listen again.
Also, a great moment where the computer went wrong and instead of the introduction for the news, like the news sting, like a random trail started playing and then sort of cut off halfway through and went into the news and then there was... That was good because, yeah, the bed, what they call the bed, the pulse track.
kept going under the news.
Our producer contacted them and said, I'm very sorry about the bed.
She was met with a stony silence.
They'd run off to gossip about her.
That's what it's like here at the big British castle.
That's all in store for you if you listen to the show on Listen Again.
But until next week, we hope you have a wonderful week and everything goes your way.
Thank you very much indeed for listening and downloading this podcast.
Yeah, and keep watching the skies.
I love you, bye!