Newsletter Number One
It's my first ever newsletter. A big moment in anyone's life. Big milestone. Thank you for being here for it.
Benjamin Partridge
1986 Born
1989 First successful forward roll
1995 Grade 1 violin
2007 Graduates from university
2019 Sends out first newsletter
2031 Final successful forward roll
2045 Final attempt at a forward roll and death
Setting the scene: I’m sitting on the sofa in my girlfriend’s flat in Cardiff. She and I have just replaced 20 halogen light bulbs with LED light bulbs in a bid to lower the electricity bill. According to my girlfriend LED lightbulbs are absolutely the future of home lighting. But they once thought that about candles or having a huge central fire in the middle of the great hall. Not sure what point I’m making here to be honest.
One of the major decisions when you're starting a newsletter is how much effort you're going to put into writing it.
I write things for a living and I often work with people who are able to bash stuff out very quickly, because they are either:
A) brilliant
Or
B) lazy
I usually take a long time to write anything, but with this newsletter I'm going to try to embrace the spirit of bashing/dashing something out/off, and as a result it is likely to be:
A) bad
And
B) of a low quality
Luckily I actually have some news for this first newsletter. This week, the fourth series of Small Scenes, the radio sketch show I write with Mike Wozniak and Henry Paker (starring Mike and Henry, Daniel Rigby, Cariad Lloyd and Freya Parker) is back on BBC Radio 4.
The first series was made way back in 2013. It's commonly thought that back in those pre-2016 days, before all the celebrities died and fascism came back, the world was a lot better than it is now. But in many ways it really wasn't all that. My debit card wasn't contactless, Netflix used to POST you DVDs and this flat was entirely lit by halogen lightbulbs. It was the dark ages. It was a small wonder we made a radio series at all.
Making the series is always a highlight of my year as we record it at BBC Maida Vale studios, which was built in 1909 as the Maida Vale Roller Skating Palace and Club, before being repurposed by the BBC in the 1930s. If you’re really quiet, you can hear the ghosts of Edwardians tripping over their roller skates and breaking their pelvis.* The BBC Radiophonic Workshop (of Dr Who themetune fame) were based there, the Beatles performed there, and it’s still the home of the BBC Symphonic Orchestra. It all feels very old fashioned, steeped in history and generally great.
Like all good things, it is scheduled to be pulled down soon, so it’s nice to get in there and record some stupid sketches about Tim Rice.
So, long story short, despite Britain’s longest-serving television newsreader Alistair Stewart describing a previous episode on Twitter as "utter defecation", we have been allowed to make a another series. The first episode is on tomorrow (Tuesday) evening on BBC Radio 4 at 6.30pm, after which it’ll be online here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002gr9
Bye then! BP x
*this is not true
