Embarrassing Bodies

Believe it or not the photo above has not been Photoshopped by me; it is a genuine publicity shot for Channel 4’s new series of Embarrassing Bodies.

Karen and I caught it by accident on Wednesday night and promptly wish we hadn’t.

Now, I’m not a prude. I’ve seen my fair share of questionable acts and physical performances that would make a professional voyeur gag on his binoculars but let’s not discuss my surfing history here.

This show had Karen and I heaving.

It was grotesque. It was macabre. It was unforgivingly gynaecological. So much so I felt I ought to be wearing a pair of rubber gloves and squeezing a speculum.

The basic premise of the show is simple. Members of the public with a varying assortment of embarrassing conditions (everything from verrucas, lax sphincter muscles and prolapses of every shape, form and orifice) visit one of the show’s three doctors – on camera – to display their poorly dangly bits to all and sundry in an attempt to help the rest of us overcome any embarrassment we may feel about our own spots and blemishes. The fundamental ethos of the programme is good: don’t put up with it – grasp the nettle by the horns (or the scabs) and get it sorted out by your friendly neighbourhood doctor. Don’t let embarrassment ruin your life!

Fine.

But do we really need to see a prolapsed cervix up close and personal in grindingly red HD ready Technicolor?

And the poor man having a catheter inserted down his jap-eye... was the macro lens really essential?

We just didn’t need to see it. It added nothing to the show. It enhanced my viewing pleasure not a jot except to provoke in me the same feeling of revulsion I sometimes get when I pass a butcher’s shop window early in the morning.

It was simply too much.

The programme was more like a training documentary for would-be surgeons than an inoffensive and informative programme that everyone from little Tommy to his granny could happily watch of an evening without retching up their freshly masticated oven ready meal.

Have we become so self-obsessed as a species that we now need to commission reality TV shows about our bottom malfunctions and our toe fungi in our overriding desire to probe every single avenue and biological cul-de-sac of our scatological existence?

And this was on a full hour before the 9 o’clock watershed!

No warning. No cautionary voiceover. Just wham bam here’s my spam.

Geez...

To finish, my final thought is this: surely you can’t be that embarrassed if you’re prepared to let a Channel 4 technician plunge his camera mount so deeply inside you that your pelvic floor effectively doubles as a lens cap?

Embarrassing bodies my arse!

400

What a momentous day this is. Ripe with glory and grandeur!

Forget Barrack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Forget the news that this is the first Official day of the UK recession.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my 400th blog post.

Yes. That’s right. 400!

Since this blog’s inception in late 2006 I have continuously and without mercy produced 400 blog posts of varying length and dubious quality, luxuriously peppered them with photographs slyly half-inched from the World Wide Web, and thrown them to you, the blog reading masses, as if they were high class crumbs from my overflowing banqueting table.

Such food for though has passed before your poor fatigued eyes! Subjects such as Nigella Lawson, politics, television, celebrity culture, music, Keeley Hawes, parenthood, Lego, work and even how to wash up a tea mug have all been righteously laid before you like the tenets of a new religion.

And how you have gorged yourselves, you lucky people!

No, no, please don’t bow or scrape, there really is no need.

But it has not all been bouquets and banners! Oh no! There were some – you know who you are – who thought this blog would never amount to anything. Thought it would die, bawling and howling in its infancy, a shrivelled negatively potentialled hybrid of overweening ambition and undergrasping ability. You thought I’d get bored within the first 6 months. You thought I’d get sidetracked by the flash-bang-wallop of hardcore internet porn and the gaudy lure of online Poker. You thought I’d be discovered by the Head of Writing at the BBC who would snap me up like the last green triangle in a tin of Quality Street and beg me, dry-humping my leg as the tears roll down his face, to co-write the next series of Doctor Who and officiate over the next batch of period dramas primed to emerge from the pen of Andrew Davies.... no, no, Steve, you must give up this blog writing malarkey immediately, Hollywood beckons for one such as you, don’t cast your pearls before swine, your seed onto barren ground (you must leave the internet porn alone)... you must step up to the plate, dear boy, scripts must be written, book deals signed, an e-book autobiography with Flash and interactive content must be penned (keyboarded)...

But I said “nay!” And lo I sayeth “nay!” again.

I am going nowhere. This blog shall not be moved. This blog shall stayeth forever. Yay e’en unto perpetuity and the electronic eternity (server functionality excepted). Have no fear that I shall desert you, dear reader. I shall turn my back on all offers of wealth, stardom, critical acclaim and cheap easy sex with breast heavy celebrities who present property shows on Channel 4. I shall keep the Bloggertropolis standard held aloft and rippling in the breeze and my mind purely on the blogging tasks at hand for now and for ever more.

No need to thank me. This is simply what I do. Be confident and assured. Rest easy, dear reader.

I am going nowhere.

Absolutely. Effing. Nowhere.

Whiner Diner

Apologies to my international readers (oh what a thrill to be able to say that) who won’t have seen the relevant programme but I’m greatly enjoying “Big Chef Takes On Little Chef” at the moment.

I don’t usually go overboard on cooking / food TV shows (unless they feature Nigella Lawson’s oscillating bosom as she hand whisks a soufflé) but this particular outing has reeled me in hook, line and sinker.

For those of you that don’t know, celebrity chef of international renown, Heston Blumenthal, has been engaged by the big boss of Little Chef to revitalize the company’s ailing fortunes by souping up (ahem) the old hackneyed menu and injecting a bit of dynamism into their geriatric “business model”.

Hmm.

Apparently, in its heyday, Little Chef was a motorway restaurant of world class reputation.

??!

Yes. I was surprised by this revelation too as, even in my childhood, Little Chef was only ever viewed as a toilet stop of the very last resort on long motorway journeys rather than as a place in which the human body could be effectively nourished – and, to be honest, you had to be faced with some pretty scummy hedgerows and embankments to prefer the dubious environs of the Little Chef latrine to spraying the contents of your bladder over the passing wildlife.

But I digress. The Little Chef boss – a man both improbably vacant and impossibly conniving whose name I have deliberately forgotten (let’s just call him David Brent) – has drafted in Heston to “blue sky think” his company back onto the fast track to fame, fortune and Michelin starred glory. Mr Brent – let’s not think of him as a company director, more of a chilled food entertainer – wants pizzazz; he wants culinary extravaganza, he wants the wild, the wacky and the wonderful. He wants some of the “out there” experimentation that has put Heston’s own restaurant – The Fat Duck – onto the global map. And he wants it all for under £10 a head in a greasy motorway restaurant who’s kitchen equipment doesn’t extend beyond a griddle and a microwave and staff who have no idea how to operate a saucepan (“where’s the effing button to turn it on?”).

Mr Brent’s utopian vision of culinary excellence ran into one or two fundamental obstacles right from the start.

1) The “out there” experimentation at The Fat Duck costs punters approximately £250 a head (to quote an unabashed Heston) which is a little out of the price range of the average Little Chef punter...

2) Heston did what Mr Brent should have done, i.e. some real actual market research which quickly confirmed what was bleeding obvious to everybody from day one: Little Chef customers don’t want to be chowing down on snail porridge or beef hotpot with oysters floating around in it. They want the legendary Olympic Breakfast. They want ice cream that’s cheap and cheerful. They want fish fingers and chips that look like fish fingers and chips. And they want baked beans with everything.

Heston, to his credit, realized immediately that his normal fare would never be acceptable in the kind of establishment that Little Chef epitomizes and reined in his humungously large creative flare to come up with stuff that was far more suitable and appropriate, i.e. ideas that stood a chance of actually being implemented by the socially lobotomized staff on the front line.

Good ingredients, fresh and nutritious, cooked well and served fast. Shazam!

The basics of any successful restaurant business surely?

Mr Brent didn’t seem to get it though. He was disappointed with Heston’s ideas. In fact he rather insultingly told him that “any celebrity chef could have come up with such a menu”. Cheeky get.

I won’t go on. Suffice to say that it is surprisingly addictive viewing: Heston trying to maintain his integrity in the face of political manoeuvring behind closed doors (and frequently off-camera) and soldiering on in the slow-dawning knowledge that the Little Chef upper echelons are merely using him as a marketing ploy without any real commitment to re-branding their product. And Mr Brent’s constant media speak and blue sky malapropisms.

The show highlights where the problem lies with most ailing businesses these days. Forget the Credit Crunch, the fault lies in the fact that they are invariably run by sad little egotists who are accountable to nobody but their own shareholders and who are obstinately out of touch with what their customers really want.

It’s no wonder that so many of them are going to the dogs.

And I have to say, the hedgerows of the M40 are looking better by the minute...

Roominations

Completely off topic this (in that this post is going to make scanty reference to it being the first day of 2009 and all that "New Year Resolution" kind of jazz)...

Whilst sitting monged in front of the telly during this festive holiday I recall hearing some news that both filled me with despair and inspiration. Well, inspiration of sorts.

Apparently Davina McCall has been quoted as saying that she believes that Big Brother can "run and run and run". I.e. Forever. For perpetuity. Until the End Of Time.

Naturally, being the presenter of the UK version of the show this is more than likely Davina's most fervent wish but my first reaction was "Oh God, is this nation never going to grow up and move away from reality TV smut and tawdriness? Are we forever going to be obsessed with the psychological ingrowing toenails of dysfunctional people who plainly do not know any better?"

Reality TV is the dark stain on the modern psyche. Some people are honest and just admit that they love it. Other people - people like me - profess to hate, loathe and despise it and yet eventually get sucked in. Even if only for a little bit.

It's impossible to ignore. The media goes wild for it. It's on the news, in the papers and, most insidious of all, in the workplace.

With a new series of Celebrity Big Brother about to hit the small screen I just know that the sole topic of conversation at work for the next month or so will be the luridly ridiculous shenanigans of the new series of CBB.

And although I'll resist at first eventually I will succumb and plunge into the whole tawdry circus because I will want to have an opinion.

And that, folks, is how it gets the likes of you and me.

Because suddenly we care. We care even though in three month's time we know that we won't care at all.

So I've come to the startling conclusion that Davina (God bless her) is right. Big Brother will run and run. We'll never be free of it. It's become as essential a component of modern living as the mobile phone. It's the norm. Like Christmas in fact. They'll soon start publishing the broadcast dates of future BB series on retail calendars that we can buy in the shops. There'll be Bank Holidays planned around it.

So if we're going to be stuck with it I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and offer some BB themed suggestions to any programme producers out there who might be reading this post this morning and are willing to take a punt or two in terms of hard ready cash to see them "realized" on TV.

1) I'd like to see a politician special. Just politicians. From all parties. But rather than having them cut off from the outside world I'd like them to be hardwired / bluetoothed to the outside world. I'd like them to continue working. I'd like them to continue working in an environment so transparent that not only can their opposing party counterparts see what they get up to but so can we. Now that would be a social experiment worth conducting surely?

Too dry? Too heavy? Try this...

2) How about all the presenters of CBeebies doing a CBB (CBeebiesCBB?) special? Chris Jarvis, Pui Fan Lee, Andy Day, Sidney Sloane all locked into the house with Mr Tumble for 3 agonizing months... Think of it. They're so pure and seemingly innocent when they're singing songs on Kid's Telly and putting their teddies to bed in the CBeebies studio every evening... but what and who will get put to bed after they've been holed up in the CBB house together for months on end? Will Pui wear her Tellytubbies costume and drive Mr Tumble wild with desire? (Eh oh?!) Will Chris Jarvis wear her cast-offs and fess up about his exact location on the nation's communal gaydar? Can they all really be that cheerful and chipper all of the time? We need to know!

Hmm. Too sleazy, perhaps? Too sick?

OK. A final punt then:

3) We dig up all of the long dead comedians and great entertainers of yesteryear - Eric Morecambe, Leonard Rossiter, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard, et al - and place their corrupting cadavers (or little urns - geddit?) in front of the cameras for 3 months and watch a show that will undoubtedly prove to be far more entertaining and edifying than the sad batch of Z list celeb wannabes that Channel 4 has currently got lined up for the new series of CBB this year.

I'm done.

I rest my case.

Oh and did I mention...? Happy New Year to you all!

Dave Prowse Isn’t Dead

Over the weekend, after plotting various bank heists and the ultimate downfall of the Government, Karen and I decided to relax by watching “Bring Back...” hosted by fat, friendly, fun Bristolian Justin Lee Collins.

The premise of the show is simple. Mr Lee Collins picks a programme or film from yesteryear and attempts to get the original cast members back together for a brief televised reunion. It’s sort of like Friends Reunited for rich has-been celebs who all hate each other... Not particularly edifying I must admit but Justin’s targets this time were the original cast of Star Wars and naturally, being a fully paid up member of the Star Wars generation (original motion picture trilogy) it was an absolute must-see.

Now the show only works because Justin is so charming. Which is quite inexplicable given that he looks like an overweight foreign exchange student from Sweden. Too much hair. Too much beard. Too much gut. And yet Justin has undoubtedly got “it” – whatever “it” is. You can’t help but like the guy.

So. Justin draws up his hit list – Princess Leia, Luke, Han, Chewie, Darth Vadar, the droids – even Boba Fett. The air is momentarily heavy with anticipation... if he could actually do this it would be truly amazing. But despite Justin’s initial success charming his way into not only Carrie’s Fisher’s house but also her bathroom, reality, out of the blue, suddenly bites.

And it bites hard and on the arse.

Mark Hamill refuses to do it. Or rather his agent refuses on his behalf to do it unless Justin can come up with $50,000. Hmm. Methinks Luke to the dark side has turned... so Skywalker bites the dust. Harrison Ford you just know from the outset is unattainable. There’s no point even trying and Justin knows it. Han gets scrapped. Justin manages to collar Leia, Lando and Chewie – they all agree to interviews but not to the reunion. Close but no cigar. It’s all looking a bit ropey.

Typically – in the end – it’s only the Brits who are up for it.

Jeremy Bulloch (Boba Fett), Kenny Baker (R2D2) and most amazing of all, Dave Prowse (Darth Vadar) all appear for the considerably downsized reunion.

Now I must confess when Justin first drew up his hit list my first comment to Karen was “well snugglebun, he can forget Dave Prowse – he’s dead.”

And I genuinely thought he was.

I’m sure I remember reading a news report about Dave Prowse popping his enormous clogs years and years ago. Did I dream it? Did I just imagine it? I must have ‘cos there he was larger than life on the small screen. Or rather smaller than life. Poor bloke. The years have not been kind... but at least he bothered to turn up (unlike the big walking carpet and Leia in her metal bikini). Other than that though it was a case of Star Wars without the actual stars... Oh well, nice try Justin.

The only other highlight of the show for me was witnessing what a complete and utter arsehole Anthony Daniels (C3PO) is. Pretentious. Arrogant. Haughty. And, aside from his “golden rod” role, a complete failure as an actor. The man was totally irredeemable. Civil but politely sneery and awfully condescending. I didn’t like him at all. And to make matters worse he was, by all accounts, really nasty to Kenny Baker throughout the filming of all three films, refusing to talk to him most of the time and obviously seeing dear old Ken as being well beneath him.

No dwarf jokes please. You just don’t do that to Artoo.

Funniest moment of all was Justin showing old Tone a very rare Top Trumps card featuring an enhanced image of Threepee-o. It seems that a malicious graphic artist had endowed the golden one with an appendage of humungous eye-watering length. Any normal person would have laughed nay chortled at such ribald naughtiness. But not our Tony. He articulated at length how unfunny he found it as he considered C3PO to be a very dear friend to whom he felt a good deal of unswerving loyalty towards. Tosser. He finished by pointing out (in case we hadn’t yet sussed it) that “Of course, I don’t have a wonderful sense of humour...” Really? You don’t say.

What could Justin do but wave the offending card beneath Tony’s nose one more time and make the inevitable comment “Anthony, I’ve looked at this long and hard...”

Needless to say Anthony Daniels chose not to attend the reunion. Who needs a protocol droid that doesn’t understand common courtesy anyway?

Big Brother Aside

I can't say that Big Brother has at all gripped me this year but with Karen wanting to watch the occasional episode it's been near impossible not to get a little bit sucked in...

This season had been remarkably unnoteworthy apart from the following:

The Good Points:

1) Rachel Rice is the winner. I'm genuinely pleased that for once an ordinary, decent, pleasant, nice, unaffected kid without any bizarre idiosyncrasies has won the show. Let's hear it for normalcy!

The Bad Points:

1) Rex: the man is a nasty, bullying, smug, control freak. When he came out he looked like Bryan Adams dressed as Freddie Mercury. The only good line he ever came out with was "I'd swap you for Scrabble." However as it was directed at the lovely Rachel he loses any kudos points that he might have accrued.

2) Mikey's voice: he sounded like an dying elephant trying to fart a speculum sideways out of its prolapsed anus. Sorry for the grossness but I just couldnae tek nae more!

3) Mo: just what was the point of Mo? Anyone?

The Worst Point Of All:

1) Mario's tea-based sexual innuendo directed toward his partner, Lisa. "I'm just dipping this custard cream into this cup of hot... juicy tea..." Oh please! Somebody should have pointed out to him that his custard cream didn't even touch the sides...

Sigh. I'm going back to bed.

Location Location Brunette

I am not in a position to buy a new house. I don’t even want to. I have no aspiration at all to own a 5 bedroom 15th century barn conversion with contemporized granny annex situated somewhere in the heart of a downy sun-kissed valley in the Wirral.

And yet I find myself inexplicably glued to the telly whenever Location Location Location is on.

Well. Actually no. It’s not that inexplicable.

It’s the lure of Kirstie Allsopp.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Phil Spencer, her co-presenter and male counterpart is a great bloke. Sort of a lumbering, genial, Bungle without the bear suit. For an estate agent – or the equivalent thereof – he’s an amazingly decent bloke. Patient, kind, a quip for every occasion up his Stretch-Armstrong sleeves and a knack for finding amazing properties that match his client’s often absurd briefs (I want a 7 bedroom bijou apartment in the middle of London surrounded by 96 acres of unspoiled forest with a salmon lake at the bottom of the garden).

But it’s Kirstie who sells the show to me. She’s feisty. She’s smart. She doesn’t pull her punches for all she may cushion them a little with the kid gloves of televisual diplomacy. She’s not afraid to lock horns with her clients and tell them how ridiculously unrealistic they are being (You want a 1.5 million pound mansion house with stables and a riding school but only have £450K in the pot – it ain’t gonna happen).

But I’ll be the first to admit her attraction is something of an enigma. She’s mumsy. Her voice is kind of plummy and whiny all at the same time – like someone who has graduated with honours from Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers (which for some strange reason I read as a child). Her mouth is slightly duck-like. Her nostrils flare noticeably when a particularly annoying client has cheesed her off.

And yet she has correctly been voted one of the hottest chicks on TV. An accolade she most certainly deserves. As Dr Evil would say: “Kirstie Allsopp is on fire”.

She’s curvy, voluptuous and lush. She’s not afraid to plunge her cleavage down to the shiny buckles on her shoes. She’s bold and brave and not afraid to speak her mind. One suspects she’s rather dirty in the humour department. And most of all, she’s a fabulous brunette (which always ticks a huge box for me).

And did I mention the cleavage? (Is there an echo in here? Exultantly, yes!)

I’d happily buy a house off Kirstie – any house at all in fact – provided she gave me a full tour of any extensive grounds and a good going over in the wine cellar. Phil could hang around outside and deliver a few quips to camera if he wanted to but other than that he’s free to get the drinks in at the local pub. Get me a Guinness please, Phil, I may be some time in my deliberations...

So it’s really annoying when week after week we’re presented with pensive-faced, mealy-mouthed couples with £500,000+ budgets who constantly turn down the amazing houses that they are presented with for the most spurious of reasons. “Ooh no, Kirstie, I know the indoor swimming pool is precisely what we wanted but the plastic windows... oooh no, I just couldn’t live with them....” “Ooooh no, Kirstie, the house is perfect in every way but it’s facing 2 points due East when really, ideally, we’d like North by North-West...”

Speaking as someone who’s clinging onto the bottom rung of the property ladder with his teeth I find this kind of rich-man’s fickleness deeply irritating. And I think I like Kirstie most of all because she patently shares that irritation. Her clients have more money than taste, they’re getting an hour’s worth of free televisual fame and they get to spend a week of their lives getting Kirstie spread-eagled and oiled-up in numerous bedrooms across the English county of their choice.

Just what is their problem?!

Er. “Spread-eagled and oiled up”? How on earth did that get in there...? Phil, just what did you put in this Guinness?

Master Of The Universe

I was tickled to read that Stephen Hawking has a new TV series kicking off on Channel 4 tonight called "Stephen Hawking: Master Of The Universe".

Call me adolescent if you must but it had me imagining Stephen Hawking riding his mobility scooter out to Castle Greyskull one day, holding aloft his magic sword and shouting “I HAVE THE POWER” via his electronic voice synthesiser...

“...and my mobility scooter became a mighty battle tank!”

Cue much gaudy and slightly homo-erotic thunder and lightning against a backdrop of flame and cheesily anthemic Euro-rock music.

Ah the return of He-Man at last! But this time as a man of science as well as brawn. Stephen Hawking genetically spliced with Sylvester Stallone.

It could be a truly classy series. I’m mentally composing a letter to Russell T Davies even as I type.

But any idea who could play Skeletor?