Quintin Jardine's blog

Another TV puzzler. Where do Holby City patients acquire their amazing recuperative powers?

No matter how complicated the surgery, they are always back on the ward within an hour or two, sitting up in bed and chatting as if nothing  had happened. The concept of Intensive Care does not seem to exist.

Initially I was going to give BBC1’s ‘The Missing’ a miss, because I reckoned it would be McCann-based, and too exploitative for my taste, but I’m hooked now. It’s spread over eight episodes so there’s a long way to go, but already I know that there’s something very wrong about the guy Mark, the UK police liaison at the start of the story, who’s with Tony’s ex at the present time. At the moment we’re being led towards Ken Stott as the bad guy, but I want to know more about the guy that Tony put in hospital, I want to know how the French cop wound up in jail, and I want to know how Baptiste got that limp and what’s the back story of his English wife.

Stacey Kent could sell out the Usher Hall, but instead she plays the intimate Queen’s Hall, because she enjoys it. So did her audience last night. Too bad she was only in Edinburgh for one night; I’d have gone again, and again and again

I’ve been a Doctor Who fan for fifty-one years, and I still am. But what is all this stuff about the doctor suddenly having become Scottish? Through the last half century he has never been referred to as English, even though David Tennant eschewed his natural accent to play him? So why the sudden policy switch, and why did Missy’s accent head north of  the border during the final confrontation?

Are they taking the piss, or is there an underlying message? I reckon there is. While the Doctor’s Scottishness was highlighted repeatedly through the series, we were reminded just as often that he is an alien. A very Freudian slip.  That’s how they see us, folks. We are not of their world.

But Peter Capaldi’s great.

Off to the Queen’s Hall soon for the Stacey Kent gig. Last time I was there was for Harry Reid’s wedding reception, and that wasn’t yesterday.

An evening with – Brad Paisley. Not a CD, but a playback version of last night’s live gig on Radio 2.

Thanks to the miracle of Catch-up TV I am now Catching-up with the HBO series, Newsroom. So far I’m pretty impressed. I have never seen Dumb and Dumber, but I will avoid it, for after this I could not imagine Jeff Daniels trying to play an idiot. It’s a classic piece of Aaron Sorkin, with all the virtues and vices of West Wing, the rapid fire dialogue, the politics and the will-they/won’t they sexual chemistry, with a triangle thrown in. If the fictional ACN’s News Night was a real programme, I’d watch it, for sure, ahead of the BBC version.

Arrogance ignorance and Greed –  Show of Hands. Thanks to my friend Mike for the tip.

Am I wrong or is Bryan Ferry looking more and more like Rikki Fulton, the older he gets?

I have just driven to Haddington and back, and arrived home wearing my Mr Grumpy hat. Isn’t it time that farmers were obliged to clear up, on pain of a financial penalty, the crap, mud, etc that their vehicles leave on the public highway?

In Time – REM. To get me in the mood for going to the dentist, and also because it contains a wonderful version of ‘Star Me Kitten’, with vocals by W S Burroughs.

Lowlight of my day: I’m going to the dentist in an hour.

And so farewell Mr Acker Bilk. I go back to the Trad Jazz days of the Sixties, when all the top bands played the old St Andrews Halls in Glasgow. Acker was the only one I didn’t see live, but there were plenty of tales of him in the surrounding pubs. As a young man I once tried to match the scrumpy record that he set in a pub called the Avalon. Big, big mistake.

Stacey Kent – Close your Eyes. In preparation for hearing her sing live, next Sunday in the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh.

To everyone I met on my signing tour yesterday, thank you for being there. And many thanks also to GM for arranging everything, for the constant tweeting and doing the driving.

PS Good luck to Robert Topping, a true bookseller, and to his family. I look forward to meeting up again, next time I’m in St Andrews.

Two Men with the Blues – Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis . . . . . and it’s Live!

Is that the end of Scott and Bailey, after only four seasons of the ITV flagship cop show? It looked that way last night, with one of the three lead characters retiring, another applying for a new job, the third seemingly bound for stardom in the force, and Rachel’s sket of a mother killed off.

If that is how it plays out, the producers have probably timed it right, for a concept that is overtly sexist, and an affront to health education, cannot go on for ever, however entertaining it might be.

The worst thing its makers could do would be to bow to the critics and continue the show with a male actor as the third lead player. It was what it was, and it was brilliant, but its time is up.

After looking up Loretta Lynn, I checked out Jimmy Scott, to discover that he died last June aged 88, unremarked upon by the British media, most of whom had never heard of him, I’ll wager. Their loss, for he was a true great. If you don’t believe me, check out the catalogue he left behind him, from his younger days with Lionel Hampton right up to the recordings he made in his seventies. There will never be another.

To all the girls: WIllie Nelson.(It was a gift, okay.) The old guy duetting with 18 very high class ladies, including his daughter Paula, and Loretta Lynn, who’s even older than him. In her dotage, she sounds remarkably like Jimmy Scott.