The Smallerpictures Video Dump (2021, Part Two)

‘Allo. Been a while, but nice to see you. More videos you’d be wanting, is it? Righto then, let’s see what we’ve got in stock.

1. Doomsday: Alternate Ending (March 2021)

The more a scene is revered, the more likely it is that I’ll end up mocking it. And they don’t get much more revered than the tearful, overwrought beach farewell that wrapped up series 2; watching Rose puff out her cheeks is still enough to get me giggling. Not enough with adding a laugh track a while ago, I decided – purely for the sake of producing something for the first time this year – to spice it up with another of the Doctor’s famous lines. It’s not one of my better ones, but it gets a laugh.

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2. Stay Outside (April 2021)

Now, this one. This one I am proud of. You will remember, last spring, that the first lockdown saw a spate of government advice telling us all to stay in our homes and only leave when absolutely necessary, and don’t forget your physical jerks and we have always been at war with Eurasia. I dealt with some of the cabin fever by accompanying one of the radio announcements with scenes from ‘Heaven Sent’, which worked quite well.

This time around, we’re out of lockdown but we’re still supposed to be cautious – and thus here’s Dr. Hilary Jones (yes, he of This Morning) to tell us all about the things we should and shouldn’t be doing. And here’s Matt Smith, trying to social distance from a group of murderous pensioners in Ledworth. Ain’t life grand?

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3. The Masked Singer: Rhino’s Got A Bad Throat (April 2021)

Rhino? Rhino, you say? Well, that’ll be a Judoon reference, then. I had the misfortune of catching a solitary episode of The Masked Singer not long before Covid first hit, and thought it a good idea, poorly executed (a couple of structural changes and you’d have yourself a far more entertaining experience, but what do I know?). Still, it’s going strong in the UK and America – Kermit the Frog, of all people, making a recent appearance when he was eliminated early on – but it was this particular chap (in reality baseball star Barry Zito) who caught my attention, to the extent that I wound up redubbing some of his performances to a throaty rendition of ‘Rapper’s Delight’. I don’t know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ko Ro So.

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4. The Geoffrey and Bungle Videos (April – June 2021)

Lurking somewhere on Facebook there’s a series called The Same Video of The Same Guys Dancing To A Different Song. If you’ve seen it, you’ll know it (and the varying success to which it works): if you’ve not, you get the idea. Suffice it to say that they’re pushing on towards five hundred of these and whether or not an embedded song fits the two fellas strutting their stuff is dependent on two factors: how well the rhythm fits, and the impact of whatever happens at the thirty second mark when the second guy joins in. The one they did to Cher’s ‘Believe’ was particularly good.

Anyway: I’m not about to try and replicate that particular stunt, but having decided to hook up Geoffrey and Bungle with Peter Howells’ arrangement of the Doctor Who theme a couple of years back, I opted to revisit familiar territory and see how many of these I could make using different songs. It wasn’t difficult – it’s just a question of working out the tempo and Googling to see songs that fit. Some worked better than others, but the ones that didn’t work (‘Livin’ on a Prayer’; ‘Pinball Wizard’) I elected not to upload. The one you can see below enjoyed brief popularity on Twitter, for reasons I have yet to fully discern, but I also recommend you check out Stealer’s Wheel, and probably Hammer. U can’t touch this…

Have I Got Whos For You (Euro 2020 edition)

You’ll have to have these largely without comment, I’m afraid. I mean we lost. We lost and the fans are thugs. We lost and the fans are thugs and Rashford and Saka got a shedload of abuse, empowered by our corrupt, inept government. The sort of government who goes to Harrods for sofa covering and Poundland for flags.

I mean it started quite well. We made it to the semi-final without conceding a goal. Early on – the day of the first group match, when the leaked lineup caused consternation (too defensive, and WHERE’S GREALISH???) – I’d tweeted suggesting that it was possible, just possible, that Gareth Southgate knew more than we gave him credit for, and that perhaps the #Southgateout abuse was premature. I received a flurry of replies, some of which were supportive, others less so, but I made a point of muting anyone who disagreed, simply because I didn’t feel qualified to argue back. Weeks later all the naysayers were suspiciously quiet, although I stopped short of turning it into a pinned tweet, simply because the final was as far as the team got, and you’d still have a bunch of people telling you that they could have done a better job than Southgate did.

So, you know. Don’t give them the inch they crave. Thank heavens we don’t get this in Doctor Who.

It was those early games that were perhaps the most hotly contested, given that we were doing…well, reasonably, against less than stellar opposition. It was more about the spectacle than the quality of football, given that the much-hyped second group match – the British derby against Scotland – was touted as the epic confrontation between two rivals, with hundreds of years of history behind it. I mean I get that the Scots hate the English, but I don’t think it works the other way round. Not really. We know that Braveheart is made up and we don’t judge you for it. And who doesn’t love a good haggis? In the end, of course, it was a goalless draw, and not a terribly interesting one to boot, with all the bloodlust and hatred north of the border conveniently shelved until the angry tweets after the semi-final, and let’s face it – we all know that’s really just a preamble for the Six Nations.

“Three Ryans on a shirt…”

The semi-final, of course, was where the controversy kicked in – with England thanks to a soft penalty, Kane bouncing in the rebound after Kaspar Schmeichel deflected the ball but failed to catch it. It was a crummy way to win and you did feel sorry for the Danes, who’d nearly reached the end under some very trying circumstances, but to be fair to them England were denied an obvious penalty earlier in the match, so it’s swings and roundabouts. “Sometimes it goes in your favour,” quoth a wise man, “and sometimes it doesn’t. And if you add them all up over the season, they balance out.” Said wise man was Alex Ferguson, who knows a thing or two about football, as well as being Scottish.

Really, the controversy in that semi-final was caused by a laser torch that appeared to be pointed at Schmeichel during the penalty in question, although it supposedly didn’t affect his performance and it was in any case impossible to tell where it was coming from.

It ended in tears, with violence and thuggery following a game played by sportsmen who’d conducted themselves with dignity: the team deserved a win, even if the fans didn’t. Could we say Italy played dirty? Perhaps.

But even if they hadn’t, there were mistakes made and some questionable tactics that I don’t really understand because my area of expertise is dramatic structure, not sport. I do know that I felt a sense of pride – not in my country, as such, but simply in the team, and the manager who’s become the best sort of role model for the young men on the pitch and the children watching at home; eloquent and considered and rational and graced with more dignity and compassion than a hundred political buffoons. I’m mindful of the fact that children my sons’ age look up to sportsmen, and for the first time in a long while that doesn’t worry me. You can lose graciously, which is kind of like winning, even if you don’t get to lift the trophy.

Still, at least we’ve got the Olympics, right? Something else they had to postpone until after lockdown.