alanconnor.com/log

A Young Doctor’s Notebook: Here’s a Guardian piece on how we adapted Mikhail Bulgakov’s stories for a comedy-drama with Daniel Radcliffe and Jon Hamm, now available on DVD.

Crosswords: Over at the Guardian is my twice-weekly column on crosswords.

Slideshows: Or you may have come here for the slides of the talks I gave to the Entertainment Masterclass: Who’s Pitching To Whom And Why (…And Also How)? – The Future For Pitching Comedy In The UK: Brighter, Faster, More Confusing and/or “Not That I’m Saying It’s Traditional” – The Stigma Against The ‘Traditional’ In British Sitcoms.

Music: If you’re looking for music writing, here are some pieces: Torture chamber music; Secrets of writing a ‘wallpaper’ hit; Britain’s favourite funeral music; What is a ‘guilty pleasure’?; The Unswinging Sixties.

Some features about individual songs: What a Wonderful World; London Calling; What is a Bohmeian Rhapsody?; 4’33; Who was My Sharona?; Everybody Hurts; Killing in the Name; Down Under; Whose Hallelujah is it?; Two Little Boys; Fairytale of New York; Anarchy in the UK ; Flowers in the Rain; (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais; A Whiter Shade of Pale; Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West).

Comedy stuff I’ve been responsible for includes Respectable, Crawford Park, The Pooters and the play The RehEARsal: A One-Act Play In Three Acts (Transparent Theater, Berkeley, 2003). I’ve also written for programmes like Screenwipe, 10 O’Clock Live, 8 Out of 10 Cats, The Jonathan Ross Show and Sue Perkins’ Dilemma.

Journalism: I’ve worked at BBC News as a reporter from the Westminster studio and a senior broadcast journalist in Television Centre for The Daily Politics, the BBC News Magazine and world features, BBC News blogs, This Week, BBC Parliament, the BBC News Channel, See Hear! and the Today programme. I’ve also worked for BBC Future Media & Technology and the BBC Archive.

I like cribbage, quizzes, ducks, crosswords, sheep and asparagus.

Sundry bits: Can pub quizzes survive in the smartphone era?; The poem that ends careers; Fascist spam; Beyond product placement; The Christmas jumbo crossword; Mail-order baronetcies; How to get ‘thinking time’; The Great Firewall of China; Is Eton stigma over?; Nudge and Blink books; Are you Google’s gopher?; Jerry Springer The Opera ban; Shedding tears for Sark; The BBC1 clock and my 2005 election column. More comprehensive coverage at Journalisted.

And for the avoidance of doubt, I am the same Alan Connor as presented the multi-media short-film cabaret Cinergy and the live gameshow The Name of the Game, who did the ACME music blog and features for The London News Review and who played the Appalachian dulcimer and mandolin in The Abstainers. I am not Alan Connor the songwriter or Alan Connor the troll or Alan Connor the man who concealed counterfeit notes in his underpants. Hello.

• Author: Alan Connor on Google Plus