I had a very interesting day out on Wednesday visiting Rebellion over in Oxford. I was there to chat about doing some work and some interesting ideas were floated. Hopefully further discussion will nail down a few things over the coming weeks, so I'll have some actual news for this column rather than my usual ramblings.

More to come.

We went to see Mitch Benn on Sunday, which has become something of a bi-annual event. I can't recall the first time we saw him, but the first time I reviewed one of his gigs here on Bear Alley was back in 2007, and I don't think that was the first time. The shows have evolved over the years, from the days of Mitch Benn and the Distractions, through solo shows that were chiefly built around albums of random songs, to shows that have a definite theme, e.g. 2014's Mitch Benn is the 37th Beatle, and this year's Ten Songs to Save the World.

Something always seems to happen. We were there for the gig where black balloons drifted down from the roof during the set – a Goth band had been playing the night before and a few helium-filled balloons had gathered in the roof, slowly leaking; we were there for "Fenton", the instant song created the night that the deer-chasing dog went viral (2013), and, arriving early, stood outside in the hammering rain of Storm Clodagh (2015). This year's gig went off like a charm in comparison, even tho' Mitch was running late and we, again, standing in the queue outside as he pulled up and yelled his apologies.

Most of Monday morning was dedicated to chasing up Talk Talk regarding our compensation for the mess they made of transferring us to fibre optic broadband last July (see columns passim). We were out of action for a month and, despite Talk Talk having signed up to an automatic compensation scheme which is laid out on their website, we still haven't been reimbursed for the bills paid, nor the inconvenience suffered. We had already agreed on a sum that covered the latter half of July way back in August, but this was an all-new eighty minute struggle to agree a sum for the two weeks of August which they, at first, refused to cover. I started reading out what was written on their own website and it proved to be a persuasive argument as they suddenly discovered that, yes, it did need to be covered, came up with an offer that I accepted, and they have subsequently confirmed the arrangement in writing.

In between, in my efforts to sort through a lifetime's worth of collecting, I've dragged out some old boxes that have been living under the stairs for a decade, so I'll be posting a few books I've picked up for reference over the years. Some are like new, so keep your eye on my Ebay sales. There are still some nice Biggles paperbacks that I'm selling cheap.

There are Pennyworth spoilers in the review below, so skip to the end if you hate that kind of thing.

I was one of those people who thought Pennyworth was squeezing a franchise too far. The Gotham spin-off nobody asked for and nobody would want.

How wrong I was. I take it all back.

Set in an alternative England, we meet Alfred Pennyworth, a former SAS soldier now working as a bouncer at a London night club. Alfred (Jack Bannon) has hopes of setting up his own private security firm with SAS pals Bazza (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett) and Dave Boy (Ryan Fletcher) and of dating one of the dancers, Esme Winikus (Emma Corrin). He meets Thomas Wayne (Ben Aldridge), a billionaire operative of the CIA, and Martha Kane (Emma Paetz), an agent of the No Name League, both avowed enemies of The Raven Society. (That Thomas and Martha are the future parents of Bruce Wayne doesn't actually add anything to the show, and, in fact, hinders the "will they, won't they" of their relationship. They will. I rather wish we didn't know.)

The Raven Society is headed by Lord James Harwood (Jason Flemyng), who has his sights on taking over the country, deposing the government and, if necessary, replacing the Queen (Jessica Ellerby) with the "pretender" King, who was forced to leave the country when he married an American divorcee. The parallels to Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson and their sympathies towards the Nazis, and with the rise of a Fascist political party similar to Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, are plain, but Pennyworth is not simply the 1930s pushed three decades forward. Indeed, things are very different in 1960s London – there are public executions (the last public hanging was in 1868, the last hanging in 1964), armed constables patrol the streets and Jack the Ripper became an East End kingpin whose influence now rests in the hands of John Ripper (Danny Webb).

The battle between The Ravens and the No Name League escalates until Alfred and Dave Boy are independently hired to kill the leaders of the two groups, in what turns into one of the goriest moments in the whole series. It's a bloody show, although thankfully it doesn't dwell too much on the gore bar that one incident.

At the same time the show doesn't pull its punches and is not for kids. Esme is killed in an early episode, driving Alfred's actions for some while in directions you would not expect of a heroic lead character. There are situations that force him to make hard choices between saving his family and saving the nation.

Jack Bannon, a TV regular (Ripper Street, The Loch, Endeavour, Medici, etc.) was clearly asked to put on a Michael Caine accent – more Get Carter than Italian Job – and once you settle in, having Michael Caine in Sixties London again is something to be happy about. The action is dark but there's a certain levity to it, often around the actions of evil Bet Sykes, played with extraordinary relish by Paloma Faith, and her sister Peggy (Polly Walker).

The cast is simply extraordinary, with Anna Chancellor and Sarah Alexander becoming leaders of the two warring factions, Simon Day as a pub landlord, Coronation Street's Ian Puleston-Davies as Alfred's dad, and Felicity Kendall as a jailed mystic.

Although this is an American production, the creator and chief writer, Bruno Heller, is English, as is producer and director Danny Cannon, so there's more than a hint of The Avengers about the show – who else would you accompany to a quiet English village only to find it full of killers if not Steed and Mrs Peel? – and it will be interesting to see where it heads in season two.

Went to see Mitch Benn on Sunday. Storm Clodagh had caused the heavens to open and rain was hammering down as we drove to the venue. We arrived to find our friend John, who always turns up early, at the front of a small queue huddling in the doorway of the Colchester Arts Centre. "Doors open" time came and went, the queue grew longer and wetter. Someone ran out to say "He's only just turned up, so we'll let you in as soon as he's done his sound check."

Much muttering about the fact that we'd be happy to hear the sound check as long as it meant we could get out of the rain. The photo above doesn't do the saturation levels any justice.

We went from streaming to gently steaming by the time Mitch came on. This is his Don't Believe A Word tour where he's discussing his personal beliefs and what he finds frustrating in the beliefs of others. So he dips into astrology, homeopathy and religion and tries to disentangle some of the facts from the often fact-free zone that often surrounds these topics. It isn't just a swipe at them: it's well thought out and well argued and handled with a lot more politeness than these kinds of topic usually engender. The songs are sharp, satirical, technically excellent (he's a good musician), catchy and musically varied from Rock to Rumba.

I think the show would make an excellent DVD. Go Faster Stripe have recently released stand up shows by Susan Calman and Miles Jupp as downloads so we know it can be done... why not Mitch Benn? Somebody make this happen!

Continuing the saga of my incredibly dull life, we seem to be in the process of technological revolution here at chez Holland. Following the purchase of a new razor (exciting stuff!) we've lashed out on a hand-held water vac in the hope that we can make some impact on the condensation problem this house has. The porch has suffered from mold ever since we moved in despite attempts to curb the problem—although I now believe I know what the problem is. The bathroom and bedrooms have suffered from condensation on the windows and that has led to a minor but annoying mold problem in the bathroom. Hopefully removing some of the wet from the environment will reduce the mold problem... and give us an excuse to clean the windows more often.

I'm also about to enter the 20th century and become the possessor of a mobile telephone. It's for work. I can't say I'm too happy with the idea—I like the fact that I can be incommunicado for a couple of hours if I want—but I also know it will be useful for work and handy for Mel. As work is paying for it, it's not a top of the range smartphone; in fact, it's just about the cheapest model on the market. The one slightly annoying aspect is that it won't replace my camera, so I'll have to carry both around with me. (Update: In fact, it's an even older, cheaper version of the one I asked for!)

Unfortunately, I spent too much time researching the quality of the camera and then sidelined myself into looking at the quality of my camera and found it wanting. So I bought myself a new camera. I'm still waiting for it to arrive, but if the weather's nice over the weekend I'll give it a test run and post some results next week. Mind you, by the time I've shrunk the picture down so that it's a reasonable size to post in a blog, you're probably not going to notice the difference!

Commando releases fall foul of Facebook security

For those of you who get their notification of new posts to Bear Alley from Facebook, you'll have noticed that I had some problems earlier in the week. I used a service called Networkedblogs to notify Facebook every time a new post was added. Unfortunately, they seem to have switched to a new system called Symphony and from Tuesday my updates were blocked by Facebook. When I tried to send the notifications manually, I received the following: "This message contains content that has been blocked by our security systems".

At first I thought it was something Facebook had done, so I only resolved the problem this morning (Thursday); I managed to post a notification that was previously blocked, so hopefully that's the problem fixed. I'll know more tomorrow morning, although that will be after this blog is posted. (Update: Yes, it works.)

I only have three people following the feed on Networkedblogs, but I thought I should mention the problem. I'll leave the feed up for now, but I might eventually close it down.

Random scans this week are a small selection from the career of Carl Wilton, who was one of Pan's most prolific cover artists for a while. Energetic and versatile, Wilton produced covers for every genre, although nowadays is probably best known among collectors for his covers for Agatha Christie and Leslie Charteris.

Next week, we'll be continuing with the adventures of Ace O'Hara. Plus whatever else I can find the time for. I'm very tempted to see what I can find out about Carl Wilton!

Catching up on last week's gigging...

Mitch Benn was Thursday night's entertainment at the Colchester Arts Centre. Always a pleasure to see him here - I think this was the fourth time. The audience seemed a bit listless tonight but that might just be in comparison to last time when we had one of those nights that goes down in history. Not only were balloons dropping out of the roof every few minutes but it was the day that the "Fenton" video went viral (25 November 2011) and Mitch wrote one of his finest instant songs to celebrate the event.

Tonight the audience seemed more interested in traffic (the A12, the High Street) and a third suggestion was the disaster in Bangladesh, which should give you an idea of where everyone's mind was at.

Although we didn't show much imagination, the evening was a good one. Lots of weight-loss jokes snuck in, some nice material about his kids, a plug or two for his upcoming book, Terra, a lot of good belly laughs between songs and as many for the songs themselves. He's added a bit of beatbox and live looping (run off an app) since he was last in town, let down a little by the sound quality (I'm a fan of when it's done right - search YouTube for Dub FX to see what you can do with a loop station). That aside, if he turned up again tomorrow (solo or with his Distractions), we'd book tickets in a heartbeat.

Our third visit to Colchester Arts Centre in four days was for Mark Steel on his Mark Steel's in Town tour. I've lived here for twenty years and was nudging Mel to quietly question some of the facts: "Uh?" (*translation: Is that right? I've lived here twenty years and I've never heard that before). And Mel replies "Mmmm!" (*translation: Yes, of course its true, idiot!).

For instance: above and beyond all the Roman stuff, our connections to Boudicca, Cromwell and the Magic Roundabout (http://tinyurl.com/352wce9), there are three famous nursery rhymes associated with Colchester - Humpty Dumpty, Old King Cole and Twinkle Twinkle. I didn't know that, but apparently Mmmm!

So, Mark Steel: educational as well as funny. And bloody good value for money with a show that ran for about two hours forty minutes excluding the break. A sell-out show means being packed in like sardines and Steel's comments about being over fifty really hit home (he's only a year older than I am!). I have to say I was aching by the end. But in a good way.

If you've heard Mark Steel's in Town on the radio you'll have a rough notion of what the show is about: Steel has visited hundreds of places and plundered their history and culture for facts, amusing anecdotes and usually a few tales of inter-village rivalry. Colchester couldn't even come up with a decent rival. A few people suggested Ipswich, one person suggested Norwich. We clearly think we're better than everyone. After all, we had a zedonk and we know how to pronounce zestritch.

Should I mention the guy going to the toilet? It would be making a mountain out of a molehill, but a guy (albeit trying to be funny) slightly derailed the show at the beginning when he stumbled out of one of the front rows and announced he had "places to be". The atmosphere was quite chilly for a few seconds but recovered. Most people were still giggling over comments about the one-way system (a great subject for a Mark Steel rant, not a great subject to write a song about - see Mitch Benn above).

So that's the end of our gigging for the while. My life now reverts back to sitting around in front of the TV.

Today's random scans. Andy Offut died on 30 April. He started writing SF back in the 1950s but spent some time writing pornography under pseudonyms in the 1960s and 1970s – John Cleve was his most regular byline – before turning to science fiction and fantasy novels in the Seventies. He was best known for his sword & sorcery tales featuring Robert E. Howard's Cormac Mac Art and Conan.

The last pic is a later cover for The Exile Waiting by Vonda N. McIntyre from the 2nd Pan edition, undated but 1987. The artwork is by Michael Embden who later went on to paint landscapes according to his website. Sadly, the website doesn't note that Embden died 21 August 2012. An obituary by Ian Beck notes that he produced covers for over 100 books (Poul Anderson, Gordon R. Dickson, Vonda N. McIntyre, Philip Mann, Geoff Ryman, Robert Silverberg, Sidney J Van Scyoc, Roger Zelazny, etc.). I've included a second one here, for Poul Anderson's The Merman's Children (1981).

Our Lesley Shane serial is building towards its climax and continues throughout next week. I'm plugging away at the work I've agreed to do for Look & Learn but I'll try to post at least one extra item over the weekend. I need a break every now and then just to keep me sane.

If there's any pattern emerging from the gig reviews I put up it's that I listen to a lot of comedy on Radio 4. I'm not sure when this started. As far back as I can remember I've always found music relaxing to have on in the background; I like a real mixture depending on my mood and that can mean classical music or a movie soundtrack (anything by Jerry Goldsmith is great to work to) one day and anything from The Enid to Nine Inch Nails the next. It's aural wallpaper. I work alone in my little office for the better part of 6 days a week, 51 weeks a year (Saturday is shopping day and Christmas is for the family) -- believe me when I say I've heard my collection of CD's so often I can listen to them without actually realising they're on.

I'll listen to the radio when I'm digging around the internet. I try to keep up with the news and Mel keeps me informed of some of the more ridiculous things happening in the world by e-mail (stories like that of Sgt Podge, the cat, or the guy who was recently prosecuted for simulating sex with a bike). I think I like listening to shows that satirise the news because I get the jokes.

All of this preamble is to let you know I have broad tastes in music and I'm reasonably up to speed on what's going on. It's also my way of figuring out why I like Mitch Benn so much.

The thing is, he really knows music. When he writes a song about Jim Morrison he's got the sound of The Doors down pat... Coldplay... well, you've all heard 'Everyone Sounds Like Coldplay Now' surely? (If you've not, here it is at YouTube)... The Smiths... Duran Duran... Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals... boy bands... he's deconstructed the music, written a set of lyrics and put together an actual proper song "in the style of..." that could well be one of their songs. The musical number, "West End Musical", is like a maths papers where you're asked to show your workings -- the lyrics show you precisely how the songs are constructed.

Since he writes topical songs each week for various shows -- The Now Show, It's Been A Bad Week, Bremner, Bird & Fortune -- you would expect them to have a time limit, after which the humour wears out like some kind of radioactive decay. Not so. The news stories they were based on may have been wrapped around your fish and chips six months ago but the songs are still as fresh as the day they were headlines and that, my friends, is because they are properly constructed songs rather than gags. Funny as all hell but, first and foremost, songs. Musical comedy where as much care has gone into the music as the comedy.

He's also as sharp as a tack when it comes to lyrics and they're not necessarily all parodies of bands or musical styles. I remember thinking that "Let's Have A Minute's Noise For John" was the most poignant and sincere tribute anyone managed to produce at the time of John Peel's demise. And he's quick, knocking out a song about, yes, Sgt Podge during the interval.

Mitch was backed by The Distractions -- this time Kirsty Newton (above) on bass & keyboards and Milo McCabe on drums. Although everything above makes it sound like Mitch is playing a solo hand in the show's success, that's not the case: the band are a vital component to the show and deserve plenty of praise for their part in making this one of the best night's entertainment we've had in some time.

I am shamelessly a fan.

Further info: Mitch Benn website.
Albums: Radio Face (2002), Too Late to Cancel (2004), Crimes Against Music (2005), Official Bootleg (2007, on sale at gigs only).