Nooooooooo! RIP Shaun The Sheep??

Distraught Shaun The Sheep fans fearing the demise of their woolly hero can rest easy. Despite the hashtag #RIPShaunTheSheep trending globally on Twitter today (6th November 2011), Shaun is alive and well and not cancelled or dead or shuffled-off in any way

In fact, Muslims are today celebrating Eid-al-Adha, a religious holiday commemorating the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son, to be spared by God from doing so at the last minute and being given a ram to sacrifice in his place.

During the celebrations, slaughtered animals (they can be cows, goats, sheep or camels), also known as ‘qurbani’ are distributed amongst family, relatives and the poor and needy.

The TV Series Shaun The Sheep has a huge following in the the Muslim world, in the Middle East and in Indonesia in particular, so the RIP hashtag is actually an Indonesian joke to say that Shaun The Sheep has been made into a ‘qurban’.

Thanks to @itsKaeBee for the explanation. Apparently this joke is a belter in Indonesia! We’re just happy that they love Shaun ...

Shaun The Sheep - Number 20

So - Shaun The Sheep's 'Life's A Treat' straight in at Number 20 in the Official UK Chart.

This is OK news - the few shops that do stock physical singles tend only to display the top 20 so we have just scraped onto the Woolworths 'free standing display unit' of the chart. We might even sell some more copies this week. As a kids novelty single the download market is negligible - it's the stocking filler market that we need to hit.

Still, number 20 eh? The number 1 slot looks a very long way away especially as almost no-one has heard the track on the radio or seen it on TV. Compare that to whatever wins the X-Factor - it can (and probably will) be total shite and will still sell.

But I'm not bitter.

Shaun The Sheep - The Offical Chart

A funny old week where I have learned something about the music business….

There is a thing called the midweek chart which is a chart available only to the music biz and which tells record companies on a daily basis how their records are doing . The information is embargoed which means it's not for release to the general public. It tells record companies what position they command in the singles chart on a given day and how many singles they need to sell move up a place or 10.

See here for more info: http://www.theofficialcharts.com/faq-general.php

What I can tell you about Shaun The Sheep is that we have a lot of work to do to get to that Christmas Number 1. But I can also tell you that if you phone up everyone you know and ask them to buy the single we would probably shoot up the chart by 10 places or more.

That’s YOU, even if you are a hermit with very small phone book. Geddit?

The singles business is about profile and promotion, it ain’t about volume. Unless you are the Crazy Frog.

So, I went onto BBC Points West on Tuesday and on to BBC Radio Bristol to promote the single. One of my ‘no-more-rent-a-gob resolutions’ was never to go onto TV again as I hate seeing myself on it. But BBC Points West isn’t so bad - I’d be playing to the home crowd in Bristol and my clever clogs London mates would never see it. I’ll try and put the interview up on YouTube once the guys at work have finished laughing at it.

I don’t mind public speaking because however much of a tit you make of yourself there is no public record. The memory of the performance in question will fades in the memory - mine and the audiences.

Not so TV. I remember my first TV appearance as if it was yesterday. I was Head Boy at Rugby School. About 5 years after the event the press and local TV caught on to the fact that ‘fagging’ had been abandoned at the school. I was summonsed to Pebble Mill to sit in the studio and talk of the demise of this most peculiar tradition.

I was hopeless. This was 1976. I was 17 and as self conscious as you could possibly be. It was before VCR’s were in any way part of the household gadget menagerie. So my girlfriend’s dad (I know - having a girlfriend in 1976 when you are at public school is worthy of a blog itself) recorded the interview by pointing his Super-8 camera at the TV screen. He recorded the sound on a separate audio cassette.

Despite the crudity of the recording it still caused me acute embarrassment. People were kind and said I was fine but they were lying.

After the BBC Points West/Shaun The Sheep ordeal I walked back into the office to find that my colleagues had freeze-framed me on the office TV (a Sky + Thing) looking fat and effete and hopeless and I laughed and so did they.

Back home I watched the interview with my wife and daughter and they told me that I was fine. They are both the types who would tell me if I was crap or not so I think I got away with it.

I can’t tell you what I think of the interview as I was hiding behind the sofa when it was on.

The next day the Shaun The Sheep single rose 10 places in the midweek chart. I emailed the record company and told them to book me on the 10 O’clock news.

I write this as my wife and daughter watch the X-Factor final on Saturday night. Rydian has just blown the roof off the studio. The official chart is announced tomorrow. If we aren’t in the top 20 we are dead.

Our prayer is that this weekend, kids flocked in their … hundreds into Woolworths and made their parents buy the Shaun single.

Watch this space.

Musical Musings ...

Now that I am, ahem, a recording artist (see http://www.shaunthesheep.com/single) I feel the need to pontificate about music.

I have a couple of unfulfilled ambitions in my professional life. One is to have a hit show on US Television. I have come close twice; once with ‘Stressed Eric’ on NBC and then with ‘Creature Comforts’ on CBS. I say close … both were yanked off the air after three episodes but that’s still closer than most people in our business. Third time lucky I say … watch this space.

The other ambition is to have a UK hit single. A number 1 would be great but not essential. Top 5 at Christmas? That would do me.

I realise that when I say ‘have a UK hit single’ it makes it sound like I am a recording artist. I am not. I am an executive producer of television programmes. So my version of ‘having a hit single’ is getting a song into the charts from one of the shows that I have exec-ed.

The Shaun The Sheep single might just make it. GUT Records, to whom we have licensed the rights via their TUG lable, are doing an amazing job promoting it. They did ‘The Crazy Frog’ - which is why we chose them. Not because I liked the Crazy Frog - I just liked the success it enjoyed.

Anyway. Back to now. I’m ‘listening again’ to Pete Tong’s radio 1 show because I’m a bit of a dance music nut - nothing unusual about that but for the fact that I’m 50 next year and too old to go clubbing. I got into the music driving up the M4 on a Friday night when I started at Aardman but still lived in London.

My musical tastes are a bit wild; free-jazz (or stomach-ache music as it is called by my loved ones), techno, electro, trance, house (in all its manifestations), Beethoven, Ornette Coleman, Radiohead, Polar Bear, Trentmoller and so on.


Recently I have been downloading some of the classic albums from my first youth. LA Woman, Transformer and last week, Dark Side Of The Moon. I haven’t listened to it on the headphones from beginning to end for 30 odd years. The instant the heartbeat throb of ‘Speak To Me’ crept back into my head I was transported back to the Saturday afternoon in 1973 when Alan Freeman played the whole album on his Radio 1 show and I recorded it onto audio cassette. The memory of that afternoon is so clear; the head fuck of hearing one of the great albums of all time for the first time - the thrill of getting it for free.

I was 15, at boarding school, in my study skipping ‘games’ to listen to the show. I can see it so clearly - the FM Stereo Radio, the tape deck and amp that I had, much envied by my peers (my dad worked in the Hi-Fi business). Music was everything then, a salvation from the cruelty and mind-numbing awfulness of public school. I guess music is everything now. When I listened again to ‘DSotM’ I realised that I knew every note by heart and that the music had penetrated every fibre of my being.

Right now, as I write this, I am listening to Bodyrox ‘What Planet You On’. it’s a bit of a head fuck too. I wonder if in 30 years time when I am coming up to 80, I will listen to it again and be transported back to this moment with the same clarity. I guess Bodyrox will have to sell 40 million albums for that to happen. But if I’m listening to it when I’m 80 then my life will have meant something after all.

Much as I want it to go the whole way, I don’t think the Shaun The Sheep single is going to have the same effect.