3 DECEMBER 2025

Hello.

After, last week’s illness pity party, I feel much better.

Nay, inspired even.

It’s like I’d been walking around with the world on my shoulders and now I’ve let it all fall away.

I can run. I can jump. I can breathe the chill winter air.

I can dance.

I can 🎵siiiiiiiing🎵.

(I still can’t sing).

Rule of three

[Movies] Nordic Action Cinema
This week, I have seen two extremely violent movies set in Nordic countries. One I recommend wholeheartedly, it’s called Sisu, and it’s about a lone gold prospector and his dog, facing off against a tank load of Nazis. SPOILER: The dog survives and the Nazis don’t. The perfect result. Also, my Letterboxd review is really good (it is set in Finland, that is why what I say is funny). The second film is called The Trip (or I onde dager in its native Norwegian). It’s about a husband and wife who take a break in their family cabin, ostensibly to reconnect (but really they’re both planning to kill each other). I really want to recommend it but it’s so unrelentingly grim at times that by the third act, where it gets incredibly silly and fun, you feel kinda compromised in enjoying it. So a mixed bag really. Aksel Hennie is in both films. You’ll hate his character in both too.

[Music] A Very Sheeps Christmas
This advert for a silly fake Christmas album really made me laugh. Katy Wix is a national treasure (and one of the Sheeps is the new head writer at Saturday Night Live UK, which bodes well). But THEN it turned out that it wasn’t a fake album and they’d actually recorded all the stupid tracks. I’ve listened to the whole thing through multiple times now. May I recommend the following:

Christmas Karate
Similar to Santa
Christmas Sex

Definitely something there to mix in with the old favourites this Yuletide season.

[Musical Theatre] Andrew Lloyd Website
This site purports to be Andrew Lloyd Webber’s real neocities website from the late 90s/ early 2000s. It isn’t (probably) but it’s a painfully accurate recreation of the kind of shit we had to put up with in those heady early days of the internet. Do you remember MIDI? If you keep your sound on, you’ll have all the MIDI you could ever dream of.

Spotlight

I’ve been working with a hugely talented cast of improvisers on a new version of Dead End - my improvised afterlife show, taking more than a few artistic flourishes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. They’re performing two 30 minute versions (with two very different ideas of limbo) on Friday 12th December at 6pm at Theatre Deli. It’s only £5 and we’ll have you out by 7pm so that you can go on to shows at Hoopla or the FA should you wish. If you have time, I really recommend it, the cast is on fire (not a Hell joke) and it’s a good indication of the model Pretend might pursue next year - putting up-and-coming improvisers together with a particular director’s vision and watching the sparks fly.

Longform thoughts

There is no contract with the audience that says you have to deliver on a story moment. I like to look at plot as action: go there, do this, fight him, open that box. Story isn’t action, it’s potential energy.

This week, I have a cheeky answer to the question What do I do next?

Radio contact

The view from our sofa.