MGCTv - A PODCAST WITH A HEART OF GOLD AND A MIND FOR TOMFOOLERY

Couldn't you just imagine what the jovial Jack Black would be like if he played a doctor in a movie? Wow! What a crazy notion, huh? He'd be all 'Budda-Budda-Buddo! Come dis way my sick friend, and let's rock till we die!'. But then again not all doctors are mad you know. Oh no. Some of them are podcasters. Like my Jack Black looking friend, 'The Beast', for instance. Here, check out a conversation we had only the other day, whilst rocking in a recliner.





1) What are your own origins, 'The Beast'? Plus what path did you take in life to get to where you are today?   I grew up around Wimbledon, and despite moving to the heart of London during my formative years, for about 15 years now I've returned back to the south west once more.

I went to a London Medical School (which has since merged with another medical school to become Imperial College School of Medicine). I was very lucky at Med School, as I had the "Animal House" experience. It still amazes me to think of the things we got up to; the crazy sport tours, the mad pub crawls, and the bonkers drinking games. Also, the countless sleepless nights revising all the muscles in the hand, the management of a heart attack etc.

We're all grown up now with families and are responsible consultants, GPs, and senior specialist doctors.

In my day to day life, I'm a doctor in one of London's largest teaching hospitals and specialize in the gastrointestinal tract and trauma

Over the last 15 years I have developed an unhealthy interest in cinema, TV, and comics. So bad is my addiction for film, that my wife and I would see a film at the cinema every Friday night (this sadly resulted in me having to endure the Twilight movies and countless other dreadful films).

Now as one of the founders of MGCTv, and the developer / host of the 'Bad Ass News Group' show (BANG), my days are manic between my medical career, staying up to date with media news, reading comics, watching movies, and spending time with my baby daughter.

2) What inspired you to create the ‘MGCTv’ podcast / website?   After watching a movie 'Arcturus 101', Billy Quick and myself would find ourselves standing in the foyer of the cinema dissecting the movie. This -- alas -- resulted in us occasionally boring our other halves to death (to be fair to them, they enjoy movies but don't looooooove them). 

Therefore, to remedy this situation, we would talk on the phone about films which led to Tv shows and more. To make matters worst, we could talk for hours a week...Again much to the annoyance of our tolerant other halves. My God it sounds like we've been torturing our wives! Damn you Big and Little screen!!!! 

Now there are a few great movie podcasts, but for every 1 good one there, there are 100 rubbish podcasts -- where a guy / guys talk for two hours in the same monotonous, dry style. Life is to short too waste listening to those sort of shows. However, there was one US based podcast that was fun and fresh. The guys on it sounded like they were having a good time. When we talked about movies we would laugh a lot and we noticed when we would be out with friends and we talked about movies they would laugh with us, so we thought, maybe, this could translate well as a fun, fresh UK based podcast.

Personally, for me, the key reason why I wanted to start MGCTv is because despite what film academics say -- yes -- the quality of a film can be objectively assessed but ultimately film is subjective. I would often disagree with critics you would praise a film which I would then find myself walking out after 30 minutes because I dare not lose another 60 minutes of my life to the most beautifully shot piece of boredom. I just didn't feel the common man had a voice. 

As most of my MGCTv listeners will know, I'm not an art-house movie fan, but critics would give you the impression that only a neanderthal would not like these movies; so I'm here to say 'Ugh'. Moreover, as I wrote earlier, film is subjective, so at MGCTv we have the Beast Pack (hosted by myself) to watch movies like 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and then the 'Art House Edition' (Hosted by Arcturus 101) who review films such as 'Searching for Sugarman' and 'Untouchable' (2012). So we like to think amongst our crew, there is someone who you can relate to and thus trust their opinion.

We started a podcast that would be informative, entertaining, and long enough for your daily commute, and for the past 2 years and 290 and counting shows we have been evolving our style and format to cater for our wide, diverse audience (Not just the US and UK, but throughout South America, in particular Brazil, India, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, Russia, Australia and even the Phillipines).

3) How did you meet up with your collaborators?   Arcturus (my Bad Ass News Group B.A.N.G. show wingman) and I trained at the same London Medical School. We then ended up working, briefly at the same hospital, and it was, where we discovered our unhealthy love for film.

I met Billy Quick, the other co-founder of MGCTv, also at Medical School as his girlfriend was a medic mate of mine. As time went on we ended up becoming drinking / movie partners as well as my Best Man at my wedding 

As we expanded, we realized we needed a female perspective, but few ladies were brave enough to express their views until we met up with Princess Claire, our resident animation and Twilight movie fan, and Kate, a friend of Billy Quick who was a professional film critic, but now one of the coolest secondary school teachers I have met.

Prof Marvel and I work in the same department and his passion for all things Marvel was contagious and after a few recordings, we noticed that a number of our non-UK listeners had grown fond of Prof thanks to his thick East London accent. 

Token 85 used to work in my hospital. He actually came to me to ask my medical opinion and at the time Prof Marvel was discussing a case with me. Token then froze and asked if we both were into movies as our voices sounded very familiar. After further questioning we confirmed that we were critics for MGCTv. Token told us that he was a massive fan and had always wanted to be a film critic so the rest is history.

Mark Hobin (our US correspondent) was one of our earliest followers. After a year of his kind words, and the fact he is an excellent film blogger, we thought it would be great to bring him into the fold, resulting in the birth of the monthly (schedules permitting) UK/US BANG Show. We have also recently started the monthly MGCTv / Flickering Myth BANG show with Oli Davis.

We've also had guests on our movie review podcasts, including the lovely @shemoviegeek. And as part of our constant evolution, we're always looking for new people to help us attract more listeners and make listening to MGCTv an enjoyable experience. Looking forward to hearing you one day Jay.

4) Your YouTube animated reviews were f*cking brilliant! How the hell did you do it?   The YouTube videos are done by Arcturus and myself using GoAnimate. This is a real labor of love, with 5 minutes taking up to 14 hours to put together. Not completely strange when you think 1 second of Paranorman took up to 1 week to produce. Alas, due to time constraints we have had to put these on the burners, but hope to entice fans interested in this avenue to our fold to relaunch this format.

5) If ‘MGCTV’ was a a piece of music or an object, what would it be and why?    Oh! This is a really tough question. MGCTv aims to be multifaceted allowing a fairer review to be made, but at the heart of each show we want our listeners to have good time and have a smile on their faces. I'm therefore going to go with Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', with all it's different components merging harmoniously together. 

6) If a movie was made about your podcast, what actor would play who, and again, why?   I'm probably going to get shot for this, but:
Arcturus -- Wesley Snipes; both have a passion for action and martial arts and Arcturus and I miss the guy from our big screens, or Idris Elba
Billy Quick -- Dan Haggerty for his facial hair, or Daniel Day Lewis
Princess Claire -- Amy Adams in Enchanted
Kate -- Emily Blunt
Prof Marvel -- Dexter Fletcher
Token -- Kal Pen
Me -- Our listeners think I'm a cross between Jeff Cohen (Chunk from the Goonies), or John Belushi. But I sadly feel it needs to be Jack Black.

7) What smell would you say best represent your podcast, and why would this be the case?   KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). It's bad for you in large doses, but you can't resist it and crave it fortnightly.

8) In your own opinion, what’s the biggest difference between an English podcast and an American podcast? Apart from the accent of course.    The main differences is the humor and style of the podcast. UK podcast's are often more reserved whilst US podcast's tend to be more brash and dynamic. We try to embrace the positives from both styles, but our listeners find us, compared to US podcast's, "very polite", but the accent has had listeners refer to us as "exotic", "sexy" and "intelligent".

9) If you had to kill any member of ‘MGCTV’, knowing before hand you’d get away with it, who would choose, and what would your method of killing be?   I wouldn't want to kill any member. We're a happy ever growing family that is ever expanding (Mark Hobin and Shemoviegeek our new US correspondents and Oli Davis from Flickering Myth). Each member plays a key role allowing us to continually evolve to cater for our ever growing audience.

Hey Jay, when you join us, it doesn't matter what the outcome is, I still wouldn't kill you. My grip is when due to clash in our schedules we can't get a show out in time and then there is the wave of moaning tweets and comments. Can I kill those?

Yeah. Why not. Kill those tweet's, 'Beast'. Kill them and then cure them of gastroenteritis afterwards. In the meantime though, I'd encourage my dear readers to have a click on www.mgctv.co.uk. Plus do that tweet-tweet / face-face thing too. Go on. It would be good for you.