STEPHEN FRY

Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls,

I’m acutely aware that I owe you a podgram and a new blessay. It’s been weeks and possibly months since I last offered you anything.

The thing is, I’ve just returned from America, having finished an epic documentary series on every single state. Having arrived back in Britain, I have hit the ground running and have spent the past eight weeks writing a book on the series plus I’ve been filming a new series of QI here in London.

In the meantime I gave a speech about the BBC and the future of broadcasting recently and for the moment, what I spoke about is all I can offer you. Please stay tuned for in the coming weeks I will have a new podgram plus news on exciting developments for the next version of Stephenfry.com.

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Stephen Fry is filming a series for the BBC in the United States of American and its beauty and wonder continues to inspire him.

In this third episode, he discusses the merits of Oscar Wilde’s view on American violence and good wallpaper.

Download the latest podgram “WALLPAPER”. Available in both .m4a (audio visual) and .mp3 (audio only) formats.

Producer note, Andrew here: Grateful thanks to the guys over in the Stephenfry.com/forum. They’ve transcribed Podgram 3 for you to read. As ever, please be patient as I manually approve comments from new users.

Note on “comments”, Andrew here. On Monday we upgraded the security of this blog and disabled some commentary sections of around 40% of Stephen’s blogs. We’re sorry that you have been unable to comment for three days. We are now working through the blogs and enabling the commentary sections. However, some of the older blogs will close off comments. We’ll start with September and October 07.

Thanks to Susan P alerting me to this.

Hello there. Firstly may I thank all of you who have downloaded and listened to my first podgram. Since it was little more than an incoherent stream of reminiscence poured into a microphone by a man with no functioning right arm with which to type, the piece was not available to be read as a text blog. From now on, however, always assuming I am careful enough not to incapacitate other useful parts of my body, podgrams will also be accessible in classic text-blessay form at www.stephenfry/blog. The choice is yours – eyes or ears. Or both. Or indeed all four. You may have noticed too that the podgram was delivered through a heavy cold and a fog of sleeping pills and analgesic opiates: apologies for the concomitant croaky dopiness.

Download the latest podgram “BORED OF THE DANCE”. Available in both .m4a (audio visual) and .mp3 (audio only) formats.

The PODGRAM is free via the iTunes Store or RSS feed subscribe link on the podcast page.

You may wonder why the podgrams can’t, like the blessays, be downloaded directly from stephenfry.com. Why must one go through the leviathan that is the iTunes store? I am afraid that no host that we can find is capable of dealing with the 1 terabyte plus of traffic engendered without crashing. And so we turned to the might of Apple to help us out. The problem we always return to is bandwidth. Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. Who would not prefer to pootle along the country lanes in a flowered gypsy caravan, rather than blast down the motorway in a colossal juggernaut? Trouble is, when you’ve a certain number of deliveries to make a van just isn’t big enough. Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. I sound like a 30s schoolgirl with a lisp. Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth. What is she saying? Something to do with sandwiches perhaps? Or bandits. Bandits eating sandwiches and wearing bandages? We’ll never know.

Americans are no more irony illiterate than Britons or anyone else

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Dear All, forgive long period of silence. I’m sorry that all I have posted recently have been Guardian columns. They will stop for three months or so I fear as I finish documentary filming with one arm for much of the time. For the grisly amongst you here is a picture of the break (a spiral fracture of the right humerus for those who know about these things) and one of the operation which secured a plate and ten screws along the bone. Quite a smash as you can see and it has taken me some time to recover both tissues and spirits.

Over the next month or so I continue the American documentary, filming my way up from New Orleans to the Great Lakes for Leg 3 which begins on the 3rd February.

I will be posting new blogs, both in audio podcast form and in traditional text blessay mode.

Meanwhile thank you for the tremendous quality and spirit of your own postings and comments, for pointing out my manifold omissions and ignorances, for contributing gracefully and knowledgeably to the various debates and for overlooking my own spasmodic presence.

Sxxx