Secondly, I have stumbled across something of a horrific nature. Horrific in the sense that it is created by some of the guys from The Horrors. Spider and The Flies is something for synth & sequencer heads. PS. If you think that Dizzie’s latest track is pushing new boundaries in synth, you really don’t get it.

Thanks to Moosleybay.com for the image, heroes.

Having watched a couple of documentaries on the Horrors recently (recommendation – Counting in Fives doc), it’s apparent that this music lark isn’t just a flash in the pan to some of these guys, not just a way of earning some coin and getting some ladies. So yeah, obviously check out the new Horrors album and check out Spider and the Flies whilst you’re there. You can catch the Horrors at Offset Festival and Field Day this year whilst the gig on the 17th June at the Troxy in Whitechapel will be mad.

Finally and probably most appropriately in view of the title, the guys who brought us the best video shop of our lives (Today is Boring – which unfortunately shut down but has been reincarnated (in a way) further up Kingsland Road in Dalston) are pulling together a flesh eating flash mob as they did in 2007 to maraud the streets of London this very Sunday. So what else are you going to do – if you’re hungover from Saturday night’s antics you’re half way to being dead anyway!? Check out their site for details and some shots of their last deadbeat debacle.

Anyway, back to the good news. The Students Loan Company have decided, so very charitably, that due to the falling interest rates that they should make immediate reductions to the paid interest rates on student loans in the UK. The rate is normally linked for the year to RPI (retail price index) but due to the aggressive (and necessary) monetary policy employed over the last 3 months, they have enacted a clause which stipulates that the rate can be no higher than 1% above base rate. So the rate has come down from 3.8% to 2.5% on student loans with effect from 9th Jan so we should see some benefit sneaking in soon (check the official page here if you’re in doubt). The other good thing is that if inflation continues to slide back from the 5% high and the economy continues to look pretty sick, there’s a good bet that Base Rate will be due another cut or two this year. Using Student Loan Company’s logic that the paid rate can’t be more than 1% above Base Rate, we should see paid interest rates on student loans fall further. Stranger things have happened than Base Rate sliding down to 0.5% by the end of 2009 thus meaning a paid interest rate of 1.5% on student loans, a whopping 2.3% less than the originally set level.

On that note, who’s up for another Jaeger Bomb?

So reading got this guy to some gig in Alabama in a room with 200 other dudes listening to “roomy poetry” did it? Well if that’s where reading gets you, throw me that copy of Heat over here right now.

On the topic of advertisement. I am normally against gigantic advertising on corner properties such as that at the Foundry but alas, there is always an exception to the rule. This exception comes in the giant format of the poster for the new Skins series (starts tonight) featuring the scantily-clad Michelle from the show. FTW!

For those of you that missed it, here’s the trailer from series 1. It reminds me of two things: a) our last houseparty and b) seeing the Gossip at the Forum in Kentish Town and walking out of their feeling like I’d been beaten up by Mike Tyson through junglist massive-esque moshpit madness.

Something is awry here. Can you spot it? Select the text below for a clue…

CLAW!!!!one!!!

Anyway, the above is making me a little sick.

Yesterday Jeff was told that his contract wasn’t being renewed and that the role he had played for nearly as long as I’ve been alive, was no more. Jeff (ever the artist) allegedly then slit his wrists on-set in an attempt to kill himself. Rumours that he was quoted as saying “it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees” remain unfounded….

Image courtesy of The Bill website

In other, normal careers, you may see 23 years service commended and a dodgy pen/tie/tankard/beer bought as a memento to mark the occasion. What does PC Reg Hollis get after 23 years and over 300 episodes of playing the bumbling yet lovable plod? He gets the fucking shove doesn’t he? The Big Elbowski – “au revoir Reg, thanks for the memories…and by the way don’t forget to hand in your badge and notebook on the way out”.

For those of you fortunate enough not to know about the Bill, it is based in good old Sun Hill, a fictional London borough. The Bill has literally been running since Shakespeare plagiarised all of his plays (read: a long old time). It has been, and remains to be, a hotbed of crime-based drama and a favourite source of work for dodgy-looking extras/minor actors.

However, behind all the awards, glitz and glamour there are real people, real people who seem to have a habit of getting a little fucked up. DC Carver (Mark Wingett) had a bit of a taste for the hard stuff, Detective Tosh Lines (Kevin Lloyd) drank himself to death and amusingly Detective Proctor (Greg Donaldson) and Detective Skase were arrested by police for stealing alcohol on Frith Street! Jeff Stewart allegedly had his problems also…

Jeff has played PC Reg Hollis for nearly as long as I’ve been on Earth. He has played Reg for the majority of his adult life and frankly despite roles in Crossroads, Doctor Who and Hi-De-Hi, The Bill was and is the pinnacle of his acting career. In fact, PC Reg Hollis is currently the only remaining character from the original cast.

The thing that’s so interesting about this is that the character he plays is so stupid and ‘harmless’ and stumbles to arrests in an Inspector Gadget manner – however the more you dig around on the internet about Jeff Stewart – you find tales of death defying car crashes, Joan Collins claiming that he led her daughter astray into a World of sado-masochistic sex (!!) and he threw a tantrum on-set just before Christmas and spent some time in the Priory last year.

So anyway, Jeff – all the best from us in your recovery and best wishes for the future. If worst comes to worst, you could always go down this route…

Image courtesy of Destructoid.com