I was pleasantly surprised to see that tonights airing of the Delia Derbyshire documentary “Sculptress of Sound: The Lost Works of Delia Derbyshire” on BBC Radio 4 was listened to by enough people to make her name a trending topic on Twitter in the UK for most of the evening – and not just because it means I wasn’t the only person listening to Radio 4 at 8pm on a Saturday night!

Most people will have been exposed to Delia Derbyshire’s work even if they aren’t aware of her name as she created the original 1963 arrangement of the Doctor Who theme tune. Her interpretation of the original score by composer Ron Grainer left him so stunned that on hearing the finished version he asked “Did I really write this?” to which Delia replied “most of it”. Grainer was so impressed with the result that he even tried to get her credited as co-composer but BBC bureaucracy prevented it.

The documentary explains how creating such other worldly sounds in those days was a laborious process involving recording individual notes on magnetic tape which were then spliced together to make up the final tune. The show also includes various interviews and recordings with Delia and other examples of her music that demonstrate how far ahead of her time she was. In particular the 1968 White Noise album “An Electric Storm” made with David Vorhaus and fellow Radiophonic Workshop member Brian Hodgson is one of my favourites and is now considered an important and influential album in the development of electronic music.

Sadly Delia died in 2001 at the age of 64 as a result of complications from breast cancer treatment. After her death her private collection of the material she recorded was bequeathed to Mark Ayres, archivist for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop who has worked with Manchester University to create a digitised archive of her work.

If you missed the documentary you can hear it on iPlayer here or it is repeated on Monday at 3pm on Radio 4.

Starting on Monday 16th November Channel 4 will be showing a series of programmes in 3D. They will be using the Danish ColorCode 3-D method which uses blue/amber lenses and is supposed to offer improved color and depth over the older red/cyan or red/green Anaglyphic 3D system. This probably means that any old 3D glasses you have stashed away are incompatible but don’t worry, you can pick up a free pair of glasses from most branches of Sainsbury’s.

The shows included in 3D Week are “The Greatest Ever 3D Moments“, a compilation showing some of the best 3D clips from over the years, some of the world’s greatest magic tricks in “Derren Brown Presents The 3D Magic Spectacular“, Paul Morrissey’s wacky 70s take on Frankenstein, “Flesh for Frankenstein“, horror film “Friday the 13th Part III“ plus “The Queen in 3D“, a showreel of the Queen filmed in her coronation year and “Best of Both Worlds“, a Hannah Montana concert. Something for almost everyone.

There is some more information about the programmes here and some tips on how to get the best 3D effect. If you can’t wait for Monday you can view some 3D video clips and images on the ColorCode 3-D website or on YouTube. The snake video is excellent.

I recently found some old photographs that I took of parts of the Wisteria Lodge episode of the TV series The Return of Sherlock Holmes being filmed in Grappenhall Village in Warrington where I lived at the time. Starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Watson it featured the cobbled streets of Grappenhall village as well as “The Large Room” made up as a Police station and the Rams Head Inn as The Bull Hotel. The episode aired in April 1988 and as far as I can ascertain the filming was in 1987, at the time a few of us skived off school for the day to watch and take pictures, purely for educational reasons of course!

You can view the rest of the pictures on Flickr here and the full Wisteria Lodge episode can be watched on YouTube in 6 parts starting here or you can jump straight to the parts filmed in Grappenhall here and here.

Taking the piss with this on screen logo or what! All the way through a 2.5 hour film

Here is  a good site with detailed instructions for building your own TARDIS.

A here is a guy who has built his own TARDIS, console, console room, Daleks and K9, with loads of pics of them in progress

The new radio episodes of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy I mentioned in November will air on Radio 4 on Tuesday 21 September 2004 at 6.30pm. Previews and more information here. Also, the long awaited DVD release of Series 2 of “Terry Nation’s Survivors” has been given a provisional release date of 4th October.

Good news on the “Terry Nation’s Survivors” front, it has been confirmed that the second series of Survivors will DEFINITELY be released on DVD and Video later this year.