So I was back in the UK last week, for the most part to record the last couple of bass parts with Andy (Lewis). He came in to London from Bath or thereabouts, for a couple of days, to do some rehearsing and then to play the ‘Al Murray-Pub Landlord’ TV show, with Mel C, which you might have seen last Friday (If not you can view it on YouTube). He stayed with me in West London, and we finished the bass parts when he was free.

Some of you have spotted Greg (Hatwell) playing guitar and singing with Mel C over the last couple of years, which is largely why he’s been absent at the last few gigs. Greg, Andy and I went out for a drink after they had finished rehearsing last Sunday and I realised I hadn’t seen Greg for over a year.

In response to my recent postings, I have been asked which TV shows I’ve written music for since Honeycrack folded. It would take me a long time to list them all and I still squirm when remembering some of the less imaginative drivel I’ve laboured through. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to refer you to my website (www.williedowling.co.uk) which lists most of the stuff I’ve done. It hasn’t been updated in a little while but you’ll get the idea. Then, if there are any specific questions about particular shows, I guess I could answer one or two.

I have done a lot of TV work with Pete Baikie over the last six or seven years. You might recognise his name from the sketch comedy show ‘Absolutely’. Aside from his various, acting/writing/directing/producing duties, he’s also king of the TV theme tune and I jumped at the chance to work with him in 1999, when he asked me to write music with him for the ITV topical animation show ‘2DTV’. Very quickly he became a good friend, and we subsequently worked together on a number of shows.

Pete and I also co-wrote ‘Violent Streak’, the extra track after ‘Happy? (Dumka)’ on ‘Gramophone Logic’, and it fell to Pete to sequence the running order of that album. We met up last week and I played him rough mixes of the new songs since in all likelihood I will ask him to select the running order of the imminent album, which I can now reveal will be called ‘Bipolar Diversions’. Clinical and yet catchy at the same time, don’t you agree? And about as broad and obvious a clue as I can offer, as to the fourth reason I moved to France (see Episode 4), which should take some of the sting out of it for me when I go in to this in more detail at a later stage.

Incidentally, the video for ‘Me & My Machine’ should be up on ‘YouTube’ by this weekend. You might remember the song from the SugarPlumFairies album, ‘Fruit Karma’. And if you’re wondering why it’s taken so long for us to bring it to you, I refer you to the ludicrous reasons I offered you on the first blog of five weeks ago.

Willie