A song / video produced for JibJab by me and Dave. This is the second version (they hated the first version), and I thought up the rough idea for the video in Old Street tube station 1hr before the first Sickipedia night. I was waving my fingers around going, “it could be like this!”. For the actual production Dave drew some lovely kittens, we stuck them to his hands and I tried to keep the camera still so I’d be able to edit it together. BTW: My favourite line in this is “Happy Birthday, it’s catty purrday!” which comes from a joke I have with my 4 year old son about giving our cat Rocky a birthday.

Watch ‘Birthday Cats’

Alien at the Bottom of the Garden

To support a Channel 4 TV program Generation XXL – about overweight children – C4 asked me to produce a tamagotchi style game on didn’t mock the subject matter. A pretty difficult brief for me so I dragged in Matt Round and it was his brilliant insight that making the main character an alien would solve many of the problems. Well done Matt!

Play ‘Alien at the Bottom of the Garden’

Ego press – not sure why but there was a tiny flurry of mentions of B3ta and myself in the press at the end of 2009.

• B3ta listed in The Guardian’s 100 essential websites. They’re pretty accurate in their write-up too: “B3TA Beyond classification; its forum has spawned many memes … and more than its fair share of trolls.”
• 5 British web celebs more important than Stephen Fry – according to The Mirror, this includes me. My wife took the piss out of this so long, and so hard that she actually made me some mockery crockery to deflate a potentially engorged ego.
• Revolution Magazine’s Future 50 – thanks to the inspirational Rory Sutherland I get a mention in this list of “marketers, authors, entrepreneurs, and thinkers who will shape the digital industry of tomorrow.” Ego overload! BTW: Rory – best known as the Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy – did a great talk at TED called Life Lessons from an Adman, you should watch it.

Poor old Floyd died an hour before transmission, which alarmed me as I briefly wondered if he’d got into such a rage over my slightly piss-takey titles that he’d keeled over and it was all my fault. But no, the producer assures me that Floyd watched a preview DVD a week before and had given it the thumbs up.

For background research I read David Pritchard’s Shooting the Cook – which in a happy bit of luck was laying on my desk after a visit to an old school friend who works for the publisher “I think you’ll enjoy this Rob.” I did.

I Spot Credit Crunch

Another I Spot book produced by me and Dave Stevenson for E4. We enjoyed writing the jokes for this – hope you like it.

Read it on the E4 site.

I’ve produced a lot of games for E4 this year, the following seven links are for them, developed with different and dreadfully clever people I’ve found from running B3ta.

Janey Thomson’s Marathon – A joke about those waggle games from the 80s – developed by the brilliant Matt Round.

Captcha Invaders – As above, developed by Matt Round.

Rather Difficult Game, another developed by Matt Round.

Name That Copyright Free Tune – developed by NTC INC. Who is actually a bloke who doesn’t like using his name online.

Do Yo Knowz Yo Showz – as above.

Ready Meals Quiz – developed by Monkeon.

Taglinr – devleoped by ME and Mike Trinder. Woo hoo

And finally…

What I missed about meat – written for The Guardian. Was the 3rd most read item for 7 days for the foody section. It’s lonely at the top.

Recently did a video for a charity and amongst the footage we shot (we meaning and my wife) there was me pretending to pee on a neighbours car. Simple enough to do – just a water bottle and holding the camera at the right angle.

Today I’m meant to be working on something else, but procrastination is a dreadful thing and I found myself making a donk about weeing on cars. Sorry, it won’t happen again.

EDIT: Ooh, there’s been requests for MP3s. Firstly someone wants it as a ringtone, and secondly someone else asked for an acapella for remixing. How exciting.

UPDATE: Spam Master Dave writes, “I made a remix. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as i enjoyed producing it”. And here it is.

Huzzah – we’ve produced another book for E4. This one on the bestest ever computer game characters. I personally love Manic Miner so this is the cover I proposed, Jody the chappy who commissioned the work prefers Street Fighter so that’s the version on the E4 site.

I hope you like the little jokes we wrote at the bottom of each page.

http://www.e4.com/wtf/iconic-game-characters/

http://www.e4.com/wtf/school/index.html

People I went to school with might possibly recognise a few references. Sorry!

This one has got a MUCH better cover as it features Sean Connery in thigh-boots AND makes clearer the range of content within the pages.

Of course you’ll completely disagree with the films we’ve chosen, but that’s the point of lists isn’t it? Or at least my wife, a TV list show producer says so. She also made us stick in Peter’s Friends.

http://www.e4.com/wtf/bad-films/

Taking the idea and running with it, we (me and Dave of course) turned to the I Spy books of the 70s and combined it with our 50 favourite web memes.

Really hope you enjoy this, as to create this project was a joy.

Stupid Clients

Not the easiest thing to pitch – “Dear client, please buy this song and animatiod. It’s called ’stupid clients’. It’s not about you.”

The smashing phone thing, I’ve done that too many times.

Background? A pile of CDs.

Play Stupid Clients.

Snowman

Song written muttering under by breath waiting for a meeting. I probably looked utterly mad – tapping out the rhythm with a pencil on my forehead.

Background? Twigs and tissue paper for snow.

Play Snowman.

Rotten Christmas

Pleased with the melody on this one – partly written in a waiting room at Wittington Hosptial.

Background? More twigs from the garden.

Play Rotten Christmas.

This little thing likes you

The most throwaway one – maybe the simplicity is charming? Or maybe it’s just RUBBISH.

Background? Out of focus wall.

Play This Little Thing.

Happy Birthday Groovy Chick

Has a walking a bassline. Never tried one of those before, ended up so pleased with it I reused it as a cheesy organ part.

Background? Postit notes.

Play Groovy Chick.

Matackma Gandhi by Rob

John Lennon – Get Tack by Dave

Osama Blu Tacken by Rob

Dame Edna Edhesive by Dave

Arthur Scarglue by Rob

Charles Darwin – Origin of the Adhesives by Dave

Windsor Clayvies by Rob

Albert Einstick by Dave

Erstick Cartman by Rob

Adolf Stickler by Dave

Ronald Reagum by Dave

George Washingtack by Dave