Brian Blessed Alarm Clock now on Android

What seems like an age ago my mate Rich came up with the notion that he'd rather like Brian Blessed to be the voice of his sat nav. For those who don't know, Brian is a somewhat larger-than-life English thesp. He's known for his sonorous voice and hearty, 'king-sized'. delivery, plus he's something of a national institution. Rich turned up at my front door one day, having spoken to TomTom and the bearded legend himself, with the goal for getting 50,000 people to sign up to a Facebook Page under the promise that if he did then TomTom would make it happen.

So began the push that saw me (2 days later) lying in the foot well of a moving Smart car, filming Brian (who was in the boot), and giving Rich any moral support he needed to make it happen. Sure enough, 3 months later the Facebook group hit it's target and TomTom did the rest.

Rich, however, is 'a bit special'. It didn't stop there. Brian's become something of a friend since all of this, and it made sense to keep the fun rolling and to do our bit for charity (Walking With the Wounded) at the same time. So began the next phase, which saw me standing in a shed, drinking a mug of tea, directing Brian Blessed in Shakespeare - arguable THE MOST ENGLISH THING one can possibly do - and saw Rich working with designers (including my good mate The Lightfoot - who did the design for this blog) and coders to make the 'Brian Blessed Alarm' clock happen.

It did. It's now available for the iPhone (which Steven Fry tweeted out as "The reason the App store was invented...", bless him, and the app stayed at number 1 for months) and (as of last week) it's now out on Android. Please, give it a go. Seriously, NOTHING is more effective at getting you out of bed than the words of Brian Blessed. For the pittance this thing costs you owe it to yourself, to Harry, England, and Saint George.

Some of Rich's other ideas are coming to fruition soon - keep your eyes on 'Blessed Originals' for further bearded nonsense and off-the-wall projects with other famous folks. Occasionally I still find myself in a projection booth somewhere, live tweeting along with Brian and 1000's of his fans to the movie 'Flash' or some such. You can also follow Rich on Twitter at @IdiotSvengali. It's rarely dull.