January

After rather unbelievably reading a Tweet from someone within my social media sphere who stated that he believed in the Mayan Prophecy (you know, the whole 2012-the-world’s-going-to-end-nonsense). I felt compelled to write a post about my take on the whole end of the world scenario.

It’s now the most popular post on my blog with an average of around 2000 visits to that page alone per week. At times it’s been as high as 15,000 per week. It’s also been the reason for some disturbed individuals sending me nasty messages because I don’t believe in their crazy fantasy world. Hey ho.

Some outtakes from Brian’s Horizon on Gravity were put up on YouTube.

I also found out that I was going to be working on the new X-Files movie. Some of my Tweets from that time (1, 2, 3, 4) are pretty obvious about that fact, but only really in retrospect…

February

February was really all about our trip to San Francisco and the TED conference where Brian spoke.

I was also working on the very fabulous film Water Lilies.

March

Brian was made Professor while we were still in San Francisco, just after his 40th birthday at the beginning of March. That was pretty cool!

My mum came to visit for a bit and during that time we went beachcombing on the Thames and found some cool stuff.

April

This was the coolest month! Right after visiting CERN with both Phil Plait and Chris Morris, I was delivered the super top secret X-Files script. I had a terrible cold and, I learned later in the year, had asthma which was making me very ill. That is my excuse for looking so utterly terrible in this video. :)

May

OK, wait, THIS was the coolest month. Apart from Brian going off to film his Horizon on Time, it included getting my hair cut and dyed like Dana Scully, then flying off to Cannes to ‘interview’ Harrison Ford and having a chat with X-Files’ producer Frank Spotnitz.

June

June was X-Files-tastic!

Excitement was definitely building for the X-Files film and I was caught up in it all. Towards the end of the month, I went to LA for the LA Film Festival to attend a special screening of a couple clips from the film, along with a Q&A with David Duchovny, Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

July

X-Files! X-Files! X-Files!

The film premiered at the end of the month and Chris, Frank, David and Gillian attended the London premiere. The day after the premiere Chris and Frank did a signing at Forbidden Planet.

August

Brian and I went to SciFoo in Silicon Valley and had a fabulous holiday in LA being touristy.

September

This is where things start getting a bit weird for me as I found out I was pregnant so had a bit of a awful time over the rest of the autumn dealing with morning sickness and anxiety over scans and blood tests and the like, all the while being unable to talk about it with anyone.

September was also when CERN swtiched on. Along with all the excitement of the whole build up to it came all the nasty emails from the idiots who thought it was going to destroy the Universe and who thought that Brian was somehow the Sith Lord in charge of the destruction of the human race. All that wasn’t too entertaining. Honestly, it’s just not fun at all to be newly pregnant and then receiving emails calling the father of your unborn child the ‘Black Hand of Death’.

Brian on Newsnight the night of CERN’s switch on reminded me exactly why I love him so much.

October

The main things I was thinking of in October were morning sickness. Obama and Jonathan Ross.

I started keeping a pregnancy diary in October as I wasn’t blogging about it, but after a few entries it was pretty much just, “Nauseated. Constipated. Tired. Fat.’ so I decided to give it up. I realised that even in retrospect it would be boring.

My obsession with Obama, of course, was not unique to me. I mainly kept out of the whole election thing on my blog this time around as the Rightwing Christian Republican Dumbshit Bush-lovers (yes, for long-time readers, I mean Amy Proctor, Bull-headed Donna and the other one) caused me such grief before, during and after the last election (did you know that one of them tried to get me fired from my job on Sunshine?!), I wasn’t up for a second round. I was just hoping that they’d get their reward in November when Obama won. And they did. The twunts.

Now, Jonathan Ross.

The whole Daily Mail-fuelled madness just confirmed to me that most people are absolute illogical fucktards and that includes MANY people in positions of ‘power’ in the media. This whole episode has given me LESS hope for the human race than ever before… Thank Christ Obama changed that in November.

November

OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

This month I was up for a new job on telly. I’ve not done any telly for a few years now, mainly because all the web producing I’ve been doing has been keeping me busy. Also because I was enjoying using my brain, being creative, being able to make decisions *myself* which is pretty much unheard of for most TV presenters.

This job, however, seemed different. Not only was it a ‘tech’ programme, but it was a retro tech programme AND it wasn’t a presenter’s role, but an on-camera expert role. So I did the meetings and the screentest and crossed my fingers that I’d get it cos it sounded like it’d be a lot of fun. I had to wait until December for a decision.

This month was also the most stressful pregnancy-wise. Along with waiting for scans and blood tests looking for chromosomal abnormalities in the baby, I also had to have blood tests for various diseases. Having an HIV test- no matter how sure you are- has this funny way of making one become highly illogical. ‘I wonder what the chances are of it turning up a decade later? Two decades later?!! Maybe it DOES and they’ve just not figured that out yet!!! Oh. God. What will I do when they tell me I’ve got HIV?! Oh. God. I’m feeling a bit ill. It’s HIV, I know it.’

Not fun.

Everyone I’ve told about my HIV test worries who has had an HIV test themselves said they went through EXACTLY the same thing. Every. Single. One. So glad to know I’m not the only lunatic… (For the record, I don’t have HIV, nor do I have Hep C or Syphilis. w00t!)

Also, this month Jonathan Ross surprised me by asking me to be his Neu Meeja advisor (or whatever). First thing I did? Got him on Twitter. He’s been Tweeting up a storm!

December

I found out I got the TV job. It’s called Electric Dreams and will be on in April on BBC4. Right before the Christmas break I did the first bit of filming and it’s been good fun.

Brian and I also found out that we’d got a book deal to write a kids’ book on Physics. So that’s going to keep us busy…

This month, generally, has been good mainly because I was finally able to announce my pregnancy. It was getting increasingly difficult for me to hide it as I was getting pretty big fairly early on. This is me a couple days ago.

The other day Brian and I went off to Llandudno in Wales to visit our friend. I got a lovely snap of Brian and Peter talking politics whilst walking along the beach…

And today, the last day of December and 2008, I’m looking forward to an exciting year ahead. I hope you all have a good year!!

**UPDATE** 02/11/08 I just emailed Jonathan with the messages and told him about the Facebook Group which now has over 34,000 members. He replied immediately and admitted that he’s being worn down by all of this and the messages of support and the active support of everyone is a really big help. Please, keep doing everything you can. We want Wossy!

OK. I have to stop my self-imposed exile from blogging for this. I just went out into Brixton and was confronted with the real world for the first time since yesterday morning.

All the headlines are about the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand hoo-haa. Last one I saw, as I was leaving Sainsbury’s, was something about Gordon Fucking Brown ‘demanding action’ or something. I hope Gordon is actually spending a bit more time and energy on working out what can be done about the Congo, which is on the verge of all-out war, rather than stoking the fire being used to light the torches in the tabloid-led witchunt… but I fear that mightn’t be the case.

Now, as regular readers will know, I have a bit of a history with Jonathan Ross here. Very briefly: 18 months ago I was working on a film, one of the stars of said film was on Jonathan Ross’ show, I recorded it, edited out all references and clips from other shows/films and only left stuff about the film I was working on, put it on YouTube (where I also had trailers and short videos from said film)… and Jonathan Ross’ production company had it taken down. So I got a ‘mark’ against my YouTube account.

I wasn’t happy.

I blogged about it and Jonathan got in touch, came on here, talked to people in the comments, was generally a decent guy and, long story short, changed his company’s YouTube policy because everyone here convinced him it was the right thing to do. So now dorks all over the world can see their favourite stars being interviewed on his show. Fab.

We’ve emailed each other a bit since then, about the X-Files, about CERN, and recently, he did something about my husband on his show that ended up not making the final cut. He had got in touch beforehand to invite us both to the recording…

He’s a lovely guy. I’ve been a fan of his since the 80s and genuinely think he’s hilarious.

To counter the tabloid hysteria, I’d like to collect some messages of support for Jonathan Ross here in the comments and I’ll email him later to let him know about them. I ONLY want messages of support. If you are Outraged from Ipswich, then why not go vent your spleen at the Daily Mail’s site instead? K? I will delete negative messages.

So, please, leave comments and let others know they can leave messages for him here, too.

**UPDATE 30/10/08**
I was just sent these photos from Dave at Karmarama of their protest in ‘solidawity’ for Jonathan today at the BBC.

*UPDATE 2 30/10/08 **
Join the Facebook Group supporting Jonathan and Russell
Lodge your complaints against Jonathan’s 12 week ban here.

*update* 29/10/08: To leave messages of support which will be sent directly to Jonathan, please click here

Johnathan Stephen Ross, your Facebook friend and mine, has left Facebook. Yesterday his status said something like ‘I am thinking of leaving Facebook because everyone seems to be bugging my wife with friend requests’. Hmmmm.

If you search for Jane Goldman on Facebook -she’s part way down the page with the red hair, for you non-Brits **EDIT** WAIT! I got to the end of writing this post and now she’s gone from Facebook, too. Well up until 2 minutes ago you could view her friend list, add her as a friend AND send her a message. Though her profile wasn’t viewable by anyone, she was leaving herself wide open to “pestering”… If getting friend requests from strangers was such a problem, why didn’t she limit the options available in the search ie not allow people to submit friend requests, not allow people to see her friends, not allow people to message her etc? Problem solved. But she decided not to take that option.

Whatever, it was enough of an annoyance to Jonathan for him to decide to leave. Facebook will be more rubbish without him.

*update* 29/10/08: To leave messages of support which will be sent directly to Jonathan, please click here

**EDIT** 16 January: Jonathan Ross has now left Facebook.

There’s been a lot of Jonathan Ross here recently. It went from me criticising his company’s YouTube policy, to him emailing me to explain their position, to me saying that position sucks, to him, personally, changing their policy, to everyone thinking that he rules and is a lovely geek.

He’s now joined Facebook. Think Wossy can outdo Fry’s Facebook-friendship madness? Go on, let’s try… befriend him.