Mark Juddery

Earlier this year, as you might recall from the news, a 59-year-old actor named Colin Tarrant took his own life. He had been struggling with bankruptcy, despite being a famous face on television not so long ago. You might remember him as the straight-laced Inspector Monroe on The Bill, back when it was still being [...]

Recently, I had perhaps my most embarrassing moment as a journalist. The Tribeca Film Festival in New York was premiering a film called The Fourth Dimension, made by three different writer-directors: a Pole, a Russian and an American. Yes, I’m sure that would be the beginnings of a terrific joke, but it’s actually three short [...]

As I write this, the Tribeca Film Festival in New York is winding down for another year. I’ve spent much of the past 10 days at this festival (which helps explain why I didn’t blog last week). A couple of weeks before each festival, I go through the list of films to work out which [...]

In a few days, the Tribeca Film Festival begins in New York. A decade after it was first held, this is already considered one of the world’s most important film festivals. But how much help is Tribeca for an up-and-coming filmmaker – especially if you make short films, or documentaries… or even short documentaries? I’ve [...]

Having visited to London on several occasions, I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to visit one of the most famous, most accessible, and cheapest (i.e. free) tourist attractions, even though it’s exactly the kind of place that you’d expect to be of interest to me. I’ve never visited the Tower of London [...]

You might recall that, a few months ago, I mentioned a BBC Radio program called Sounds of the Century that I’d been listening to online, which gradually plays music, news reports, and excerpts from movies and TV shows, year by year, from the last 50 years of the last century. The last year it covered [...]

A common claim about French people is that they behave rudely and arrogantly to anyone who doesn’t speak French. Happily, this isn’t true of all French waiters and patisserie assistants; just most of them. Actually, not even most. They will smile and be polite to most English-speakers. As their English isn’t always superb, however, they [...]

It was high time I returned to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s home town. The last time I visited was in 1997, and we’ve all changed a lot since then (apart from Shakespeare himself, who was already dead). At the time, it was part of one of those bus trips that are so handy when you don’t have [...]

Forget sex, politics and religion. The most heated discussion topic, I’m almost certain, is rock music. Liberal voters can mix pleasantly with the ALP faithful, Christians can talk to atheists, but rock music fans are not so forgiving of each other. Odd, because they’re supposed to be fans of the same thing. Their interrogation might [...]

Somehow, despite all the infamous Canberra winters, I never learned to ski as a child. This isn’t really so surprising, as I tried to avoid any physical activity back then. I already did the required fitness training at school, and that was where I learned that I could really make people laugh. Unfortunately, that was [...]