Making New Cheese Out Of Old Cheese

I don’t believe it.

They’re bringing back Knight Rider.

Re-made, re-cast and possibly retro-fitted, Michael Knight and his camp Kit car are already gearing up to turbo-boost back onto our TV screens sometime this Autumn.

And I feel nothing but dismay.

Some things are just best left alone.

Most of the TV shows from the eighties being a case in point.

Although I have fond memories of Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf et al, they are time-locked into a small, blessedly sealed, period of my teenage years and that is where I’d prefer them to remain.

My teenage years weren’t great. I was shy, geeky and nerdy and not particularly a success with the ladies. I lived most of the time in my head, my imagination fuelled by the shows above, my morals and political outlook to a degree informed by the heroes who machine gunned their way to justice and democracy for all. In my innocence I bought unthinkingly into the American way.

Yes folks. I wanted to be Michael Knight. I wanted to be David Hasselhoff.

Oh the shame. And I’d rather not have to relive it.

Well, to be honest, I never wanted to actually be Michael / David. But I did covet the car. I coveted the car in a big way. Yes, I wanted a car that looked butch but was, at heart, gay... Though that gayness is only apparent in retrospect. At the time it wasn’t so obvious. Kit was, well, just Kit. Just as C3PO was just C3PO (and not a metallic version of Charles Hawtrey – which he plainly is).

Looking back on it it’s plain to see why I was such a messed up teen.

But that aside, I’m just sick of this regurgitation of the eighties. It’s lazy. Nostalgia is nice when it is infrequent but not as a permanent mindset. And nostalgia certainly isn’t an art form worth spending money on.

But plainly I’m wrong.

Some TV money man somewhere obviously feels Knight Rider is good for a few bucks more. So they’re wheeling it back out of the scrap yard only this time without the Hoff.

Which surely is a bit like having The A-Team without Mr T?

Or Star Trek without Shatner?

Er...

OK.

That last point wasn’t argued so well but even so...

It’s just not going to be the same. It’s like – having mentioned Hawtrey above – trying to remake the Carry On films. It cannot be done. Sure you can emulate all the physical / visible ingredients. But what you can’t recreate is the original time frame. Nostalgia just cannot be contemporized.

Now, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe they will inject a whole new ethos into it. New blood into old wine skins, etc, or whatever the saying is. But why bother when you can buy the originals of every bloody series from the eighties on Amazon?

I mean, can people not write anything new anymore?

What are they going to remake next?

Street Hawk (remember that anyone)?

Whizz Kids (anybody)?

CHiPs?

Geez. CHiPs. Please, please don’t get me started on Eric Estrada...

Birds, Bees And Tee-Hees

The funniest comedians are physically unattractive. Discuss.

We were talking about comedians at work this week and being a shallow lot the discussion quickly moved on from merely which ones we thought were funny to those we thought were attractive. And it quickly became apparent – certainly from the males – that if they found a female comedienne attractive they tended not to find her very funny. But this was OK. This lack of comedy skill was forgiven totally provided there was the redeeming presence of a nice face, or nice tits, or a nice arse. Eye candy made up for all the comedy shortcomings.

And yet those comedians we (the men) deemed to be masters of laughter were all unanimously declared – by male and female alike – to be Hound Headed Troglodytes From Planet Ugly.

Or at the very least Plain Janes and Joe Averages.

Such a judgment seemed rather sweeping.

And it got me to thinking. Is it true across the board?

On the face of it, it seems to be. A quick example: I think Frankie Boyle and David Mitchell are the funniest things on the comedy circuit period. Witty, sharp, intelligent and frequently thought provoking. Everything I could desire in a comedian. But attractive? To anybody?

Surely not (though some of you may prove me wrong). Frankie Boyle by his own admission looks like one of The Proclaimers (which isn’t a good look even for a corpse) and David Mitchell is, well, er, very funny.

As for comediennes I find attractive, Lucy Porter would be top of my list. Petite, brunette, curvy, vaguely elfin in an early Kate Bush kind of way... she’s hot hot hot. I like watching her.

But she doesn’t make me laugh. Much. She raises the occasional smile and something else but that’s about all.

Jo Brand, however, I think is much funnier and well, there you go. Argument proved.

Or is it?

I think the possible explanation for this rather sexist dissection of who is good and who is not good at comedy is centered around gender politics in a different way. Being heterosexual I don’t, by and large, find other blokes attractive. Sorry, I just don’t. Instead I seek out other admirable traits in men. Intelligence, wit, a certain coolness, etc. As for women, well, I know what I like and I gravitate towards it.

But women’s humour is just different from men’s. Stand-up comedy isn’t as broad as people think. It’s the old French & Saunders thing. Women (mostly) found them very funny while us men (mostly) just didn’t get the joke. Because it was from a strong female perspective. It just wasn’t meant or pitched for us.

Is the converse true though? Do women not get bloke jokes?

Plainly they do. So are male comedians pitching their gags to a more universal audience while female comediennes pitch theirs to a stronger female demographic?

I’m confused. Maybe there is no clearly defined right or wrong answer.

It was interesting to note, however, that some of my female colleagues found Frankie Boyle and co. not only “not funny” but also not very attractive as well. They lost out on both counts.

How funny.

I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

But as long as everybody is happy and getting their laughter injections somewhere, does any of it really matter?

The Death Of Magic

When I was an impressionable teen I got into magic. Or rather the idea of magic. In fact this occult interest lasted well into my impressionable twenties.

At the time the occult section of Waterstones (now, I believe, respectably entitled “Health, Body and Spirit” or some such) was bursting at its magical seams with middle class grimoires from the likes of Laurie Cabot and other darker tomes from the late, great and dangerous-to-know Aleister Crowley, who is in fact a fellow Leamingtonian.

I have to say I was swept along more by the theory than the practice though I do recall once going into an “alternative” shop in York and buying a wand that looked like a Native American phallus. All dangly feathers and a ruddy great bulbous crystal sprouting from the end of it. It languished under my bed for years until I offloaded it onto a kooky ex back in 2003. I don’t miss it at all.

As for Crowley... well I was never tempted to try out any of his Magick™, beleaguered as it was with demons, drugs and downright moral depravity but I did purchase a lot of his books. I got about 2 thirds through his immense autohagiography (for those of you who don’t know an autohagiography is supposedly the biography of a saint) before getting bogged down in lengthy "he said / she said" transcripts of various conversations Aleister had enjoyed in various privileged gentleman’s clubs across Europe. It all got a bit stuffy. I just wanted the salacious bedroom exploits and the otherworldly descriptions of the Abyss not the scripts from an Open University staff meeting.

I still own the books and have a few rarities too including a copy of his very dirty poem “Leah Sublime” (which in the modern age is no worse than a 6th form Rugby song).

I keep them now not out or any respect for magical lore but as interesting historical documents. As a figure Aleister Crowley has, I think, stood the test of time. The magical theories, I’m afraid, I now view as complete bunkum. It’s plainly obvious that Crowley was doped to his eyeballs most of the time on heroin and cocaine and various other Victorian opiates and spent a great deal of his time reading esoteric texts and then hallucinating as a direct consequence.

One story from the autohag is a case in point:

Aleister recounts an occasion when he saved a man servant’s life by wrestling a demon to the ground. It’s one of the signature notes of his autohag and makes a great read. However, that same man servant later independently recounts Aleister taking various drugs and then suddenly attacking him. The man servant was lucky to get away with his life, his dignity and his virtue intact. Enough said.

But there was more to Aleister than the dodgy magic. There was philosophy, literature, appalling poetry and a rock and roll lifestyle a good 60 years before rock and roll was even invented. He’s a genuinely interesting character and I may write more about him in the future but don’t have the room or the time now.

Laurie Cabot – an American white witch – is another case entirely. Stephen Fry met her earlier this year during one of his televised road trips across the States and she came across as an aging nutter who spent her time living in a yurt for the tourists and touting feather-based love charms for the sad, lonely and financially incontinent.

I can’t believe I ever fell for any of that crap. It all seems utterly ridiculous now.

Me and magic have, alas, parted company. I’m no longer a believer.

Which isn’t to say I don’t keep an open mind on ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal oddities.

But magic... magic I’d like to believe in but sadly just don’t anymore. I’ve grown out of it. It’s a young man’s dream, borne out of ignorance and wishful thinking; a desire to control the uncontrollable.

Nowadays I’m more accepting of the uncontrollable. In fact part of me is rather glad that there are some things beyond my control – I can take neither responsibility nor blame for them. It’s an immense relief.

And yet...

...and yet there is a tiny part of me that is sad that I have lost this wide eyed belief in magic. The world seems a little smaller, a little greyer as a consequence. It’s like figuring out the true identity of Father Christmas. You still get the presents. Nothing physically changes in the world.

But the magic has gone.

Highs And Lows And Somewhere Stuck In-Between

Apologies for the ragbag nature of this post but (to well and truly mix my metaphors) that’s the way the cookie is crumbling today.

First up on the blog podium is the news that I have at last been awarded my degree. I finally got my results yesterday and have come through over 10 years of part time study to be granted a good 2:1 honours class English degree from Warwick University. And many, many thanks to French Fancy who was kind enough to ask after my results yesterday when the rest of you had clearly forgotten all about them *sniff sniff* I mean it’s not like you have lives or anything...

Second up – and just because you’d have to be dead or in a coma to have missed the news this morning – it seems that reports of Michael Jackson’s death have not been exaggerated... though part of me, the cynical part, is wondering if it’s all a scam and he’s faked his own death.

Isn’t that awful?

I must admit, although it’s sad to hear of his death – he was after all hugely talented (though even a hugely talentless person’s death is sad news) – the news reportage and media accolades are cheesing me off something rotten. This is the same media that only weeks ago was joyously slagging him off for his financial problems and his dodgy history of alleged misconduct with children whose parents were keen to have their kiddie-winks associated with the self proclaimed mega-rich King of Pop.

I mean at one point you couldn’t move on the telly without every celeb going taking a pot-shot at MJ’s rumoured paedophilia. The air waves were full of jokes along the lines of: does Michael like The Backstreet Boys or does he prefer Boyz To Men? And comedians even now still wheel out an obligatory Michael Jackson joke during their many and varied routines. Because let’s face it, it’s easy enough to do.

Suddenly though, today, the media world is full of po-faced accolades and high-falutin’ laurels from all and sundry announcing with fine gravitas that The King Of Pop – the Legend – is dead. Sob. Sob.

Spare me.

*sigh*

Oh I don’t know. If I’ve nothing good to say, maybe I ought to just play it safe and not say anything at all?

Lastly, it’s been a weird old week. I managed to get myself stuck in a lift at work yesterday. First time in my life it’s ever happened. There I am at Council HQ (which thankfully is only 4 storey’s high) and the lift cuts out between floors 3 and 4. From out of a tinny wall speaker I could hear Stephen Hawking announcing that the lift was “out of service”. It was good to have that pointed out.

I followed the instruction printed on the wall. I pressed the button for the operator. I didn’t panic. I kept calm. I spoke clearly. And most important of all I didn’t speak while the operator spoke. The instructions were very clear about that. It seems that in an emergency – although I am the one trapped – what she has to say takes precedence. Well fine. I know my place.

Stuck in a metal box no wider than 6ft and suspended tens of metres above bone shattering concrete.

It wasn’t the best 5 minutes of my life, I must admit, but my work colleagues had me out in a jiffy before I could entertain too many thoughts of making Hollywood style elevator escapes. I was thinking Speed. I was thinking The Matrix. Both of which oddly star Keanu Reeves.

So.

How to wrap this post up?

It’s obvious really.

The only way is up!

P.S. There is no spoon. ;-)

The Happy Moon Days

So. The moon landings. Did they really happen or are they one of the biggest hoaxes of the 20th Century?

This isn’t a random thought that has just popped into my head (honestly, my random thoughts would make scary reading most days) but has been shoehorned there by watching “James May On The Moon” on the BBC last night.

Alas Mr May was neither flying to the moon nor exposing his shabbily trousered butt-cheeks to the good people of NASA but was instead delivering a documentary about the moon landings. And a rather good one at that.

I have no memory of the original moon landing given that it happened 2 months before I was born but I do take great pleasure in the fact that I was born into an age where men had finally set foot onto another planet. The very idea of it – people walking around on the surface of a world other than Earth – even today astounds me.

And yet, in other respects, we are so blasé about the idea of interplanetary space travel these days (with the sheer volume of sci-fi entertainment available to us) that for most teens and twenty somethings the idea of visiting planet Zog to buy a lightsaber elicits nothing more than a shrug. The idea of it has become somehow just an inevitable progression of modern technology. It’s accepted that it might not happen in this day and age but one day it most certainly will.

It’s just going to happen, OK? It’s no big deal. It’s just a matter of when not if.

But it is a big deal.

May was fortunate to be taken up 13 miles – to the very edge of space – by the United States Air Force in one of their impressively humungous U2 spy planes. A plane that resembles a pencil with the wings of an albatross.

May was visibly moved. It wasn’t difficult to see why. Looking down on a jumbo jet that is as far below you as it normally is above you when you’re standing on the planet must have been a jaw dropping experience. And then to realize that the only people higher than you are the people in the International Space Station... well, let’s hope the toilet pump in the space suit May was wearing was working properly.

It must be incredibly humbling. To be that far up and see the curvature of the earth... Imagine then to be 384403 kilometres away on the surface of the moon and to be able to blot out the entire Earth with the palm of your hand – as indeed one of the astronauts actually did.

How fragile we all are. How small.

Which brings me back to my original question. Was it all just a hoax?

I don’t think it was.

I know the conspiracy theorists out there will always argue that the whole thing was faked but yah-boo-sucks-phooey to them.

It was real. You could see it in the faces of the astronauts that May spoke to – the wonder, the mind altering awe of having actually stood on another planet. It was as real as this ergonomically unsound chair beneath my iron-hard buttocks. I’d stake my very virtue on it.

Why then have we never been back? the conspiracists argue. The fact that we haven’t must prove it. We can’t go back because to get there in the first place is impossible.

Rubbish.

What is there to go back to? Until technology has advanced far enough that we can export a whole construction site up there and build Moon World there is very little point spending billions of dollars and risking lives just to send men up there to leap about and collect another handful of moon rocks to prove a point that the conspiracy theorists still won’t believe anyway.

Sod them.

Let them mope about in their miserable “we’re stuck on this planet forever and can’t get off it” headspace.

My imagination is bigger, brighter, richer and infinitely further reaching for a having a suitcase packed ready for my imminent trip to planet Zog...

From up here the Earth looks wonderful. And the rest of the universe looks... well, excitingly inviting.

Houston. I’m ready when you are.

Robotic Bin Men

According to a News24 news item this morning boffins in Italy have developed a robotic rubbish collector.

Customers can send a text message to the robot when they leave out their bin bags and then he/she/it will happily trundle along, scoop up their bin bags and take them to the appropriate trash sorting centre. It sounds great. Bin men on demand. No more rubbish lying around rotting for days on end while we wait for the bin men to finally get round to performing their weekly pick up. One text and you get instant service.

Presumably as many times a day as you need it.

Of course for it to work in the UK there are certain modifications that would have to be made and certain social problems that would have to be overcome.

You just know that the poor little robot would end up mercilessly tagged with graffiti as it went about its business or, worst case scenario, hoofed into the nearest river or dropped off a railway bridge to be neatly (trash) compacted by the 9.25 to Birmingham Moor Street.

So security for the Brit version would have to be beefed up. Armour of some kind. Anti tamper mechanisms. Anti graffiti paint. Smoke canisters and rubber bullets fired out of its electronic anus. A direct line to the ASBO department of the local constabulary. Possibly a random selection of Gene Hunt quotes broadcast through an on-board amplifier to deter potential attackers.

“You’re making as much progress as a spastic in a magnet factory...”

"You look as nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot...”

"You so much as belch out of line and I'll have your scrotum on a barbed wire plate..."

That sort of thing.

As for modifying its behaviour to fit in with British bin man culture, this should be easy enough to do.

It would need to be reprogrammed to be as untidy as possible – to spill litter everywhere and not bother to return your bin properly. Instead it could dump your bin in another street entirely so you can play “hunt the bin” for a couple of hours to get it back.

It would have to sing as loudly as possible in a voice so atonal it makes Piers Morgan sound like Frank Sinatra. Something by Brittany Spears. Only with alternative lyrics – rhymes that would make a rugby player blush. And all songs must be sung between 8.30 and 9.00 in the morning so every school kid in the land can receive a true education in uncouthness and vulgarity.

Finally of course the bin bot must be programmed to sift through your rubbish in search of old porno mags and rogue copies of The Sunday Sport that it can wave about in the street and call to its robotic colleagues about.

“Blimey, look at the trash compactor on ‘er...”

“Cor, I wouldn’t mind land-filling that one...”

Etc. Etc.

Yeah. Then it would fit right in. Perfect integration. Nobody would even notice any difference.

See, I should have been a scientist, me.

Au Naturale

Whilst looking for some nice pics of Jasmine Harman for my previous post (a very pleasant way to spend ten minutes) I came across this on-line "news" item – forgive the inverted commas but it is the News Of The World Magazine after all.

It seems Jasmine was given the opportunity to have a Photoshop makeover.

She gave a body beautiful wish-list to some computer graphics geek and - hey presto - he airbrushed and pixel-tweaked a picture of Jasmine to her own vision of perfection. The result can be seen above.

What is interesting about this "experiment" (‘cos it’s not just an excuse to publish a picture of a pretty woman in a bikini, no sirree, absolutely not) is that Jasmine didn’t like the results. She didn't like the perfect version of herself at all but preferred herself as she really is.

How refreshing, because I have to say that so do I. And for the same reasons that Jasmine cites. The perfect version looks unreal. Unnatural.

Now maybe this is just because the graphic artist was piss-poor at his job and his eye for (so called) perfection was as canted as most teenagers who only get to see a woman’s naked body when it has a couple of staples running through the navel or when it’s badly pixellated on porntube.

Or maybe some of us more enlightened folk just prefer the real deal?

There is after all something adolescent and immature about what constitutes (in men’s eyes at least) the “perfect” female body. Pneumatic breasts with nipples that forever point upwards no matter where gravity is pulling them. Washboard stomach as taut as a drum-skin. Thighs as smooth as fleshly applied plaster (by a professional obviously).

Women with those attributes only exist in top shelf magazines and the fashion glossies.

Literally. We all know they’ve been as airbrushed as Jasmine’s picture above (just more insidiously).

They don’t actually exist in the real world.

Such injudicious tweaking gives people – men and women – false expectations of themselves and each other. Well, this is hardly news.

But sadly we now live in a world where even the most outlandish expectation can be met if you have enough wonga to pay for it.

Which got me thinking. How many people who have plastic surgery to marry themselves up to some flawed idea of perfection end up secretly hating the result once the surgery and the healing process is over? Or wishing they could revert back to how they were before?

It’s a very expensive mistake to make. I bet Jasmine is pleased she merely went under a virtual knife than a real one.

As am I. I moved away from the airbrushed woman (homo-airbrushus) in my late teens early twenties. A real woman is always far more attractive and far sexier in my opinion – and yes that includes cellulite and boob-droop and a wobbly belly.

I just hope that all the women that sigh over chesty pin-ups like Daniel Craig and George Clooney secretly feel the same way about us men. Because believe you me, none of us are physically perfect either.

The airbrush doesn’t give a damn about gender… it just wants to sell a little more copy.

The Mormon Invasion

So we'd made it to Friday evening. The kids were in bed. The washing up had been done. All the chores were out of the way.

It was Quality Time at last. Curled up on the sofa. Big bar of choc. Jasmine Harman on TV shaking her impressive decolletage over various locations in the South of France.

And naturally the doorbell rings.

Cold callers.

Pains in the effing A.

I did the net curtain twitch and took a quick deco.

Two young guys. White shirts. One in a blazer. Both with neat little back-packs hung from their broad shoulders like turtle shells. Even before I'd heard the American accent I knew they were Mormons.

Here to spread to Word of God and save me from myself.

Well sorry. I was too tired to be saved so I ignored the doorbell.

It went again. A second time.

OK. OK. They were being persisent. But in my house that doesn't always pay. I was more determined than ever to ignore them.

Doorbell chimed for a third time.

Jesus!

(Though I kept my voice down when I said that.)

When are these guys going to get the message? Tom was asleep in bed and I really didn't want him woken up by two well-meaning God-botherers. I resolved that if they tried a fourth time I was going to march out there and give them a piece of my mind.

Then we heard a strange jangling sound. The sound of keys being pushed through our letterbox. The Mormons then headed over to next-door's house.

I went into the hall to investigate.

Sure enough, there was a bunch of keys lying on the mat. Not the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven I might add but our own house keys. Seems Karen had accidentally left them in the front door keyhole when she'd arrived home an hour or two earlier.

Boy did I feel guilty.

I'd been mentally slagging off these pure-hearts in my head and then they go and save me and my family from burglary and God knows what else.

Shame on me.

Thank God I hadn't answered the door though. I'd have felt even worse if, mid slag-off, they'd handed me the keys personally with a cheery, "There you go, sir." Their halos would have blinded me. I would have had to listen to them then. My guilt would have had me honour-bound to repay their kindness by listening to a sermon or two and maybe even admitting to the fact that I do own at least one Osmond record (admittedly it's "Crazy Horses", the one they released when they were desperately trying to raunch themselves up to increase falling record sales). I know how guilt makes me behave. I may even have invited them inside and offered them a cup of tea and a biscuit whilst chastely switching Jasmine off in favour of the The Chelsea Flower Show.

But thinking about it some more... maybe the way it happened was the right way?

I mean, I suffer a little post-irritation guilt and learn a lesson or two about the kindness of strangers... and they continue on their rounds taking pride in the fact that they've perfomed a Godly act of kindness in the face of total heathen ignorance.

Everybody's happy.

Isn't that how religion is supposed to work...?

Trouser Arouser?

I must admit to being a little nonplussed by the new Subway advert that has hit UK television recently.

It features a young man walking down the High Street, minding his own business when, passing by a Subway “restaurant”, something rather bulbous and bulging erupts upwards out of his trousers and drags him closer to the Subway establishment like a magnet attracting a poker.

I confess I had to do a double take.

Turns out this animated trouser monster wasn’t his Geronimo at all but in fact his trouser pocket turned inside out and exposed to the air in its eagerness to drag the trouser wearer into the Subway premises.

See, such is the excellent value of their wares your own pockets will apparently beg, push and cajole you into spending some of your hard earnt moolah on one of their Meatball Marinara Subs.

Yeah right.

Surely the ad producers must have clocked that the poor guy merely looks like he is getting a great stonking erection at the thought of wrapping his tongue around a Subway Chicken & Bacon batch?

Well of course they did. Sex sells after all.

But I can’t think of anything less sexy than a Subway “restaurant”. It just doesn’t appeal. And mixing their corporate image with bulging erections just turns me off even more.

Urgh!

Hold the mayo?

You’re damned right.

I think I’ll just stick with my usual fish supper...

(Sorry...!)

;-)

Fun To Funky

The BBC managed to divide my loyalties last night.

Was it to be Heroes – now already half way through the much improved fourth series? Or was it to be the first episode of the brand new series of Ashes To Ashes?

In the end it was no contest. The twin allure of Keeley Hawes and “Gene Hunt” (possibly the finest fictional cop creation of the last 20 years) managed to knock Hayden Patisserie (or whatever her name is) and Silage into a cocked hat.

The Quattro beats the Petrellis as sure as rock beats scissors.

Apologies for those of you who don’t get this show but your loss enables the rest of us to feel smug. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Yes. My life is complete. The Gene Genie is back not only with a vengeance but also with a cracking soundtrack that featured The Human League, Duran Duran and The Thompson Twins (I used to love The Thompson Twins – it was so nice to hear them again).

Hawes’ “Alex Drake” character has been given something of a makeover – the New Wave makeup has been toned down, the perm has disappeared in favour of a flicky bob and her hot pants are now tighter than Hunt’s shoulder holster. In fact whereas a bullet from Hunt stands only a 99% chance of flooring you the arsenal Keeley is packing in those hot pants is guaranteed to a put a red blooded male on his back without fail 100% of the time and without leaving an unsightly exit wound. A definite plus for those of you who can’t afford dry cleaning bills. She can fire a few rounds in my direction any time.

Last night’s episode tipped us straight into the heart of Soho and endemic police corruption and featured a script that could cut diamonds. In turns both funny and moving it was virtually impossible to keep tabs on all the references that peppered the dialogue. But why bother even trying? Just sit back and enjoy the ride in the knowledge that the cops aren’t going to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt and won’t bang you up for sporting a mullet. Folks, good times are here again.

It’s time to roll those jacket sleeves up, loosen that leather pencil tie and whack some Dire Straits onto the tape deck.

Welcome back to the Eighties.

Home at last!

Psychic Jam

Sauntering along to the local shops the other day I was struck by the sheer number of satellite dishes that adorn the houses – my own included though we are not connected (it came with the house and we haven’t as yet motivated ourselves sufficiently to have it removed).

And not for the first time – after all this is hardly an earth shatteringly original thought – I found myself musing on the terrifyingly large volume of radio waves that we must all spend our lives totally immersed within. TV, radio, satellite, citizen’s band, police radios, MI5 ops (they’re always hanging around outside my house) not to mention various pirate radio stations and various terrorist groups constructing vast microwave machines to fry our pituitary glands while we’re sleeping.

It can’t be good for us, surely, all that static and electronic caterwauling constantly beaming its way through our genetic building blocks? I’m not sure I want my DNA modified by Chris Moyles though Jo Whiley is very welcome to run her fingers through my scintillating chromosomes.

It’s only a transient worry, I admit. I hold it only for a few seconds and then it’s gone (possibly fried out of my brain cells by Jihadi microwaves) but it does keep recurring.

How do we know that all these radio waves aren’t having an adverse effect on our emotional make-up? That we’re not being psychologically damaged?

I’d love to be able to breathe some clean, unadulterated air one day just to be able to find out. To do this I need to find somewhere that’s in a technological blind spot – literally off the radar.

Anyone got any suggestions?

(Royston Vasey doesn’t count.)

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!

Spokesperson For A Generation

Good old Parky.

Now in his 70’s he’s reached that glorious age where you think, “oh bugger it, I’ll just say whatever the hell I like and the consequences and fall out be-damned”.

I’d almost be envious except that – at just over half his age – I appear to have reached that wonderful state already.

Up until now I’ve steered clear of commenting on Jade Goody’s death because I figured my opinions wouldn’t be particularly helpful or palatable for all they’ve been passionately held. I bit my lip when the news channels gave up the whole of Mothering Sunday to eulogize Jade’s passing. I bit my lip at the comparisons with Princess Diana (WTF?)! And I ripped my tongue out by its root when live footage of Jade’s funeral cortege actually made it live onto CNN.

I mean fer Chrissake!

Her death was sad because she was so young but did she really warrant the ridiculous media circus that fogged / dogged the whole event like a miasmic melodrama?

Parky’s recent outburst encapsulates my sentiments exactly. To quote him:

"Jade Goody has her own place in the history of television and, while it's significant, it's nothing to be proud of. Her death is as sad as the death of any young person, but it's not the passing of a martyr or a saint or, God help us, Princess Di. When we clear the media smoke screen from around her death, what we're left with is a woman who came to represent all that's paltry and wretched about Britain today. She was brought up on a sink estate, as a child came to know drugs and crime, was barely educated, ignorant and puerile. Then she was projected to celebrity by Big Brother and became a media chattel to be exploited until the day she died."

Spot on, Parky. I couldn’t have put it better myself.

I never liked Jade’s media persona and though I would never have wished death upon her I do frown at her status of celebrity. It was not deserved. It was not earnt.

There are many who will no doubt see Jade Goody as a source of inspiration. Proof that even with the worst start in life you can still “make it big”.

Unfortunately I fear the lesson our young people will take from the Jade phenomenon is that you don’t need any kind of talent or hard work to become a celebrity, that somehow being a celebrity wipes the slate clean, forgives every ugly misdemeanor and glosses over every personality defect.

Essentially you can hit the big time without lifting a ruddy finger.

Well that ain’t a lesson I want my kids to learn.

I realize I’m elitist (and proud of it) but I do sincerely believe that celebrity – like any kind of status – should be earnt and earnt by hard work, dedication and a sincere and enduring sense of vocation. I want my celebrities to be famous and lauded for things that I could not possibly do. I want them to be special and amazing.

Not famous for being gobby, uncouth and adhering to the worst of all stereotypes. Or for displaying their “kebab” on live television. Or, worst of all, showcasing their voluminous and depressing ignorance like it was something to be proud of.

I feel heart sorry for Jade’s sons. Heart sorry. That Jade, in the end, mercilessly used the media to extract every last drop of money from the ridiculous furore for the future well-being of those poor little boys is something I can completely understand and even approve of.

But the mawkish deifying of Jade Goody that the press is currently indulging in is unforgivable, shallow, insincere and just plain bad journalism.

It serves nobody. Nobody at all.

Least of all Jade’s children.

Jules Theft

This is probably a minority interest post so I apologize in advance but will carry on regardless.

Julia Bradbury.

Not a megastar. Not an A list UK celeb. But kind of always there. Grafting away. And in my opinion delivering some of the Beeb’s higher quality programmes. Lakeland Walks and the more recent Railway Walks spring to mind. If you’re an avid hillwalker – always out and about with your waterproofs and your mountain boots – these programmes are an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. And if you’re a hillwalker who’s strapped for cash these shows offer the opportunity to enjoy the pastime vicariously from the comfort of your own armchair.

Julia also co-presented the Beeb’s Watchdog, a show that tracks down and grills wrong doers – particularly of the corporate kind – and gives a voice to the little man when he has been wronged.

Alas Julia disappeared from Watchdog a few weeks ago amid reports that a friend of hers in the air industry had been bunging extra air miles onto Julia’s account (either with or without her consent) as a way of doing “an old pal a favour”.

Or so rumour has it.

I don’t know the ins and outs of it and don’t rightly care. Julia immediately withdrew from Watchdog and is staying off the show until she has cleared her name.

Personally I reckon she’s innocent. Anybody who champions Wainwright has got to be a decent honest person in my opinion. Us hillwalkers have got to stick together (unless we’re actually hillwalking in which case a bit of solitude is the unstated prerequisite). She’s also a brunette. A fact sure to win my unswerving loyalty. And she has a great voice. Sort of smoky and chocolaty at the same time. That proves her innocence. No further evidence is needed.

More importantly though she’s a darn sight better looking than her Watchdog co-presenter, Nicky Campbell – a man who has no right to look so damned smug and constantly superior after presenting the God awful Wheel Of Fortune on TV in the previous century.

*Shudders*

But I’m digressing.

My point is this: do we expect our TV presenters to be totally squeaky clean all of the time? Absolutely 100% above board and bangs to rights?

Simple logic dictates that we should but – even though I don’t doubt Julia’s innocence in this case – wouldn’t we all have accepted a few extra air miles from a friend if we had one in the commercial flight industry? Wouldn’t we accept a favour from a friend whatever industry they work in? A discount on a pine dining table? Some hardback books at cost? A few pennies off a burger (hold the mayo)?

I mean a few air miles are hardly on the same par as Angus Deayton’s much publicized coke fuelled liaisons with some of London’s finest scarlet women a decade or so ago. Or Richard Bacon’s scarlet-women-less coke fuelled adventures a year or two before that.

And it’s not like Julia is a politician, wielding power enough to change the lives of every man, woman and child in the country. Does her character need to be as pure as a saint, impervious to all attempts of bribery and corruption?

Like our actual politician’s are that anyway...

It seems to be a lot of fuss over nothing. Or am I just being biased simply because I like Julia? I admit if it was Campbell accepting a “free gratuity” from the Bell’s Whisky company I’d be calling for his head on a pole. But who wouldn’t want to see that period?

Hmm.

So apologies for the nature of this post once again. This post has no point other than to register my demand with the BBC that Julia Bradbury be reinstated immediately to augment my television viewing pleasure.

And to demand that Nicky Campbell’s skull be surmounted on a brass topped spike and displayed over the gatehouse of Warwick Castle (I can’t afford the train fare to see it at the Tower Of London).

To be honest, part of me thinks that this air miles baloney is just a smokescreen created by Campbell and his other Watchdog cronies anyway and Julia is currently being held hostage in the boot of Campbell’s car, her smoky, chocolaty voice brutally muffled by Campbell’s sweat stained sporran.

Scotland Yard should be informed immediately. Interpol should be alerted. A cell should be swept clean (or unclean) at Guantanamo Bay ready for Campbell’s imminent arrival.

I pay my TV license fee for emergencies of this kind and I expect to be obeyed!

Aye, Me Hearties, 'Tis The Pox...

Blogging this week is going to be done in installments I'm afraid, segmented around various babysitting duties as our youngest has fallen foul of the pox.

Thankfully only chickenpox but his condition does require him to be in quarantine for a week to ten days. So no nursery attendance for Tom this week... he's going to be a home bird for the next five days.

I've elected to do the first watch, so to speak, and am home looking after the little chap until Thursday when Karen will take over. Apart from being spotty Tom doesn't seem to be too bothered by his condition - but then we haven't reached the itchy and irritable stage yet...

As usual the timing of this is awful - I'm out of holiday at work (though ironically will get awarded my next batch in April) so will have to take this time off unpaid just at a time when we can ill afford it. Karen too. But what else are we to do?

Needs must as the devil drives.

So for the next three days I am giving myself over to kid's telly and games of tractors and trucks and tickle tummies (spots permitting).

See, every cloud has a silver lining.

Comic Relief In Unintentionally Funny Shock

The Comic Relief version of The Apprentice was always going to a sure-fire laugh-a-minute for the sole reason it had Alan Carr mincing his way into SirAl’s boardroom like he was about to impersonate Shirley Bassey on a cruise ship.

But the best laughs of all came – unintentionally – from the mouth of Gerald Ratner, the ex Ratner’s jewellery retail chain director who has made a media career (almost) from verbal gaffs and interview based faux pas.

For those of you who don’t know, Mr Ratner once caused the shares of the Ratner’s jewellery company to plummet after telling a journalist that they were able to sell their products so cheaply because they were “total crap”.

One can’t find fault in his honesty or his accuracy but, really, he’s not the type of man you want on your marketing team if you’re trying to scrape together a living in the retail industry.

Mr Ratner first raised a titter when, discussing the reality of working with the insanely ebullient Jonathan Ross and Alan Carr, he turned deadpan to the camera and announced in a voice like a coffin lid being prised open with a jemmy that “he liked laughing; he liked to laugh”.

The best moment however came at the end of the show when the boys' team were trying to sell their new toy idea to a room full of high powered toy trade execs.

After a slick speech by Mr Ross and a less than slick but very funny advert voiced-over by the chocolaty tones of Mr Carr (I’m talking Fruit & Nut) it seemed the boys' team had the contest totally in the bag. The girls' team surely couldn’t compete.

Step forward Mr Ratner to give a business professional’s spin on the boy’s product...

He had to be honest, he said, their product (a utility belt to which kids could attach various collectable toys – I can still hear Alan Carr screeching “Swap-belt” on the commercial) would only succeed if a company went for broke in terms of marketing.

The selling concept had to be – and I quote – “shit or bust”.

Cue baffled silence from the audience as this sank in and Mr Ratner realised he’d possibly garbled what he’d originally meant to say.

Or had he?

Hmm.

Maybe this was the clear choice Mr Ratner faced back in the early 90’s when the Ratner jewellery designers were laying out ideas for the latest Ratner jewellery range?

Shit or bust?

The answer is obvious, isn’t it?

They were in it to make money. They were hardly going to vote for bust.

Like I said. Not a man you’d want on your marketing team. The girl’s won.

Google Gail

More earth shattering news this week from these greenly septred isles...

Oxford's Corpus Christi College, who stormed to victory a few weeks ago on the BBC’s University Challenge, have had their memorable victory wiped from the annals of the immortal, their victor’s trophy rudely snatched back from it’s silk pedestal (leaving a hole like a wound in the college’s trophy cabinet) and their academic street-cred irreversibly soiled.

It seems they fielded a ringer.

One of their team members, Sam Kay (no relation to Peter), was no longer a member of the college when the final was recorded and thus was illegible to take part.

Thus the sacrosanct rules of University Challenge were broken rather like the stone slab in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and now all the magic has been overturned.

Manchester University, who put up a good fight but were ultimately trounced have now been awarded a rather specious victory which, I’m sure, tastes just as much like ash in the mouth as their actual defeat.

I think it’s a great shame: (a) because Mr Kay pretty much did bugger all to secure Oxford the victory and (b) the real star and unbeatable information engine on the team was the legendary Gail Trimble whose intellectual superiority cannot be denied.

Her depth of knowledge was so all-encompassing she has now been nicknamed “Google Gail” and her hair flicks so enticing she has been approached by sundry lad’s mags to do “tasteful photo shoots” (which she has sadly – but probably wisely – declined).

A lot of people found Gail pompous and aloof. But I kind of liked her. She was intelligent. She was articulate. She was confident. Role model stuff. And she’d undoubtedly worked hard to get where she was and her team worked damned hard to win.

I actually think it’s wrong to strip them of their title.

I know, I know. Rules have to be adhered to... but really nobody is a winner in this situation. I bet Manchester are just as gutted by the circumstances as Oxford.

Why not just have a rematch? You can’t get fairer than that, surely?

I know it will cost money – film crews, studio time, Paxman to read out a few more brain-bashing questions, etc – but if the BBC can afford to pay Jonathan Ross £6 million they can afford one more episode of University Challenge.

Come on! Let’s give Trimble a chance!

And with more time in the limelight Nuts may yet make her an offer that she can’t refuse...

Gis A Job, Garn, Gis It...

I’ve finally found the job for me.

A job that I not only want to do but am pretty sure that I could do.

The only fly in the ointment is that the post is already taken. By Oz Clarke and James May.

I’ve greatly enjoyed watching the last two series of their “Big Wine Adventure”. Series one saw them clodhopping their way across Europe, supping wine from every vineyard north of the Equator – and even dipping an inebriated toe into the wines of California. Series two they concentrated more on Great Britain and beer. Plainly more of the budget went on intoxicants than on air miles in series two but you can hardly knock the lads for wanting to reduce their carbon footprint.

They are an oddball pairing but one which seems to work. Oz yearns to educate the palate and mind of all around him while James' sole purpose in life is to pull the rug out from every wine-tasting oik that he encounters. The friction between the two is in the nature of friendly fire and is bizarrely entertaining.

Man banter I believe it’s called. And it works because the mentally adroit Oz Clarke is a secret lad at heart and the charmingly boorish James May is a secret Brainiac. They kind of fulfil both the best and the worst of each other in a boozy bezzy-mate man-on-man type marriage thing – only thankfully without any of the hanky-panky and sweaty-hairy stuff. Phew. I really don’t think their beer guts would allow such shenanigans anyway.

Basically the show is like a lad’s night out compressed into a half hour slot, with the bad language sanitized, the peeing over your own shoes glossed over and the embarrassing chat-up lines deleted... with the extra advantage that our heroes sup the poisonous brews on our behalf and suffer our hangovers by proxy.

Quite frankly it’s the best night out I’ve had in a long while and it didn’t cost me a penny. They even threw in a curry one week and you can’t say fairer than that.

Best of all each week I was home on time and wasn’t sick over the carpet / wife / cat / lava lamp.

But I digress.

Mr Clarke and Mr May were no doubt paid vast sums of licence payer’s money to “live the dream” for a couple of months while a temperate and Methodist film crew doggedly filmed their every move and ne’er touched a drop between them for the duration.

And let’s face it, the crew didn’t need to. May and Clarke must have consumed enough quaffables to completely submerge a south sea archipelago or three.

And I bet the BBC paid for all that booze. And the curry. And the petrol and the caravan they supposedly lived in. I bet May and Clarke didn’t have to dip into their own pockets for anything. Not even to spend a penny.

I mean bloody hell, how the hell do you get a gig like that? What qualifications do you need (aside from being already famous)?

I mean, I can drink beer. I can drink wine. And as for eating curry, well, I can do that with my eyes closed and my mouth open. Easy peasy lemon Brinjal.

And I bet I could sleep in a caravan with either James May or Oz Clarke without compromising my lad-hood to boot. I’m as qualified as the next man.

But I bet I’m a darn sight cheaper.

Come on, BBC. Give me a chance! I’ll even wear a ridiculously flowery shirt if you pay me nicely.

All That We See Or Seem Is But A Dream Within A Dream

I love dreams and I love dreaming.

Aside from a period during my childhood when I suffered a recurring nightmare for 7 years (which I now realise was caused by carrying the measles bug around with me until such time as it manifested properly – but that’s another story) I don’t as a rule have bad dreams. Ambivalent and ambiguous, yes, but rarely bad.

Which apparently is unusual.

Last night’s episode of Horizon probed the nature of dreams – why we dream, how we dream, the meaning of dreams. It was fascinating stuff. According to research 75% of people’s dreams are negative. The theory is that while we sleep our survival instinct kicks in and attempts to mentor us in the art of coping with bad shit. Hence we have bad dreams as a sort of trial run for real life – a virtual reality shit sandwich if you like that puts us through our paces while we catch some Z’s.

It’s an interesting theory and plainly I’m either already fully prepared or my mind has just decided to give up trying to prepare me for anything.

My dreams are just weird rather than overtly negative, the symbols as yet too obscure even for me to analyse usefully.

I do know that I dream of flying quite regularly – something Karen is quite jealous of as it is something she never dreams of (a fact I find deeply unusual). In my dreams I have flown across oceans – usually to America for some reason – and several times I have even left the gravitational pull of the earth and visited other planets. I’m not sure what this means.

Alien invasion is also a recurring theme but is never shocking or threatening. The skies are usually full of alien ships and I’m swept along with the spectacle but never feel particularly scared.

Most of the time I dream of my childhood home – the place I lived in for a good 30 years (and more) of my life. It was sold a few years ago and plainly I’ve had trouble letting go of it. Usually when i dream of it I know I shouldn’t be there and am nervous of the new rightful owners returning... and yet I can’t stay away from it.

Bizarrely (or perhaps normally) I find that there is a definite, fixed geography about my dream world. Various locations in Leamington Spa are contained within my head and seem to hold their shape and detail in between my somnambulistic visitations. Occasionally I’m even aware of having visited them in dreams before and even more occasionally reach that wonderful state where I know that I’m dreaming. The much sought after “lucid state”.

I’m afraid I don’t use it to solve real world problems, write novels or do anything at all useful with it... I just tend to fly around and enjoy myself. I’m evidently something of a hedonist in my sleep.

What I do find strange is that I rarely dream about people that I see regularly. Karen, the kids... I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of them while people that I hardly see at all feature quite a lot. I also often dream of dead people (“mom, I see dead people!”) – though usually relatives. Most of the time I seem to have forgotten that they’re dead but very occasionally I am aware of the truth of things in my dream and know that they shouldn’t really be there.

Anyway, there was no real conclusion about any of this dream research for all it got the scientists very excited. Basically we all dream (apart from stroke sufferers who suffer damage to the part of the brain that controls dreaming) but nobody really knows why. And we dream not just in R.E.M. sleep but also in non R.E.M. sleep too. To quote one bod the only difference between the activity of our brain during awake time and sleep time is that during awake time we interact with the reality around us. Other than that there is little difference between the two in terms of brain activity.

Curiously, while our brains remain active during the moments we dream our bodies become effectively paralysed. Our muscles completely relax and we are unable to move. Plainly this is a safety feature provided by dear old Mother Nature herself to stop us acting out our dreams and breaking our necks whilst we sleep. The most memorable part of the programme for me was footage of a cat whose brain had been operated on to prevent this sleep paralysis. The result was a cat, fast asleep, stalking an invisible dream mouse across a work surface...

Remove that part of my brain and, who knows, you may see me flying past your bedroom window one night.

I promise not to peek.

Much.

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...

Hart For Art’s Sake

I’ve only got to think of Tony Hart and I hear the tones of a lovingly polished xylophone reverberating smokily within my mind. Similarly I’m also presented with the mental image of a rather debonair, slightly effeminate uncle type figure smiling above a well turned cravat, waving a chisel shaped marker pen around nonchalantly in the air. That same marker pen would then be directed, both carelessly and lovingly, around a humongous sheet of coloured paper, conjuring out of nowhere the fabulous outline of a ballet dancing elephant in swimming trunks.

Forget Paul Daniels and The Great Soprendo – this was magic for me as a kid.

Tony Hart had a quality that few kid’s presenters these days even know exists. Johnny Ball had it. Even, dare I say it, Keith Chegwin had it. A genuine enthusiasm for the TV task in hand – for having fun – for engaging with children and extracting as much positivity from them as possible. There was never anything patronizing about Tony Hart. His “Gallery” was just as likely to feature a finger-painting by a kid with ADHD as a work of genuine art by a child genius.

There was never any pressure with Tony, either. Art was fun, to be enjoyed. Just give it a go. It doesn’t matter if you mess it up. Each week he’d roll out ideas for creating art work out of the most basic of household detritus. Yogurt pots, newspaper, plastic bottles – all the things that any kid could lay their hands on without much effort. Art wasn’t an elitist activity. It was for everybody.

I can recall my A level art teacher being rather scathing of Tony’s credentials one lesson – his contempt no doubt had it roots in the way Tony had attempted to popularize art and make it accessible for the masses. This wouldn’t do at all. Art was for the brave, for the special, for the tortured and for the worthy.

Not for kids with bottle top glasses and snotty noses.

Sod that.

Tony died over the weekend. 83 years old. Not a bad innings as it goes. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it today has responded with genuine sadness. It really is like losing a favourite uncle. When I think of Tony Hart I think of Morph (in the pic above), that defiantly hackneyed cravat, glorious summer holidays and that all too brief very childish belief that I could do absolutely anything at all – provided, of course, it required the use of a sheet of a A4 paper and a Stabilo Boss marker pen.

Thank you, Tony. You were a true gent.

The Staycation

Staycation.

I've been hearing this word a lot in the media recently and I suspect it's an occurrence that will only increase in volume as the chipperly named "Credit Crunch" continues to bite.

Basically people can no longer afford holidays abroad anymore. Even more basically people can no longer afford holidays in their own country anymore.

Bognor... Blackpool... Lyme Regis... Centre Parcs... Butlins...

All too damned pricey in this current climate, mate, and that's even before you've counted the cost of getting there, meals, ice creams every day for the kids, the odd spot of bungee jumping, the "penny" arcade, watching Roy Chubby Brown harrumphing his dead horse of an act across an unwashed, ply wood stage...

Much cheaper to stay at home. And more convenient. The kids can have the PlayStation: they're happy. Mum and dad can have a lie-in without the fear of having to mug up on the artefacts in the Museum / London Dungeon / Art Gallery that inevitably constitutes the compulsory "cultural" part of the holiday: they're happy. And the car doesn't break down on the hard shoulderless stretch of the M40: the AA are happy.

Nobody is really missing out on anything.

I must admit, Karen and I abandoned plans for a week away last August and instead pottered around the house, visited friends and tried to spend as little money as possible whilst extracting the most amount of fun from our time off together. I have to say I really enjoyed it.

Not that I've hated my holiday times in Wales, or Italy, or... er, the hundreds of other places that I've been to. But sometimes - let's be honest - holidays can be exhausting. How many of us have come back from a holiday so tired that strictly speaking we could do with another week off just to rest and recover?

So why not just have the week's rest? Why not have a week at home doing something that you rarely get a chance to do in life: enjoy being at home (without being "off sick")?

You could save more than just a few pennies. You could save your energy, cut down on stress and improve your health.

Now I realize I'm probably not doing my bit for the economy by discouraging people to spend their money and I'll be the first to admit I'm flicking my V's at the current batch of gormless Thomson's adverts that are doing the rounds on TV ("...go on, book a holiday with us, you're money is safe, honestly, we're not going to go bust...") but, much as I enjoy foreign travel (and I do), a staycation is just right up my street.

Quite literally.

Go To Hell

ITV do bad sci-fi.

This wasn't always the case. I have very fond memories of Sapphire & Steel as a kid but I'll be the first to admit that my powers of discernment were a little erratic when I was 10 years old (I also rated Chorlton & The Wheelies among my favourite shows).

But in later years ITV has consistently failed to produce / buy-in a decent sci-fi show. God knows they've tried. For example, in recent years we've had the God-awful Primeval. That show tried so hard to attain the level of "sci-fi cool" it was too painful to watch.

And now - broadcasting for the first time last night - we have Demons.

I'm sad to say that it suffers from the same malaise as Primeval. Stilted, amateurish scripts, transparent plotlines, sketchy characterization and a too heavy reliance on CGI effects and rubber latex (as in face make-up rather than anything kinky in the bedroom - alas).

It's a pity. It has some winning ingredients: Philip Glenister; that sexy doc girlie from Survivors (Zoe Tapper). And, er, that's about it.

But really that should be enough. Glenister is just cool per se. He holds the screen like a Hadron Collider magnet. And Tapper just oozes a rampant snoggability that promises to set the screen alight.

So why doesn't it work?

It doesn't work because the writer's at ITV are plainly clueless in the art of using an asset to its full potential. They lumber Glenister with a "rilly stoopid" American accent. Glenister is a fine actor but he ain't no Chicago street punk. And for some reason they've decided that Tapper's character should be blind - which means most of her dark, smouldering looks are directed at various inanimate objects such as vases, pillars and Ikea bookcases. What an effing waste!

But worse still is the sad, creatively bankrupt adherence to a sci-fi formula that ITV have yet to realize doesn't work: young pretty boy in the male lead and young pretty girl as his counterpart (and "will-they-won't-they" love interest). The trouble with pretty young-things (especially when they're virtually unknown) is that it is damned hard to care a gold-plated fart about them. I spent much of the show hoping they'd both get dragged down to Hell and demoned up like Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Alas it was not to be.

The entire episode felt like it was a first draft (or an idea from one of those annoyingly funny Orange cinema adverts)... It was clumsy. It was cynical. It just doesn't work.

The BBC are far more subtle in their approach to sci-fi drama. Whatever misgivings one may have about Doctor Who or Torchwood I have to admit that they're casting has been consistently good and they're not afraid to cast against type and allow actors to surprise us with their range. ITV, however, consistently play it safe and what we get is a wishy-washy, story-by-numbers, spooky horror story that is kid friendly but hopelessly mediocre if you're an adult.

And as for the demons... geez, they're not scary at all. They're grotesque, yes, but in a comical Carnivalesque sense. There's no sense of unholiness or otherworldliness about them. I like my demons to be genuinely unsettling - think Clive Barker or Aleister Crowley. Not people daubed in weird latex and plastic that appears to have been transported through time from the 1970's.

Which brings me back to Sapphire & Steel.

Was it really any good? Or have ITV always sucked at sci-fi?

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!

When Heroes Grow Old

Heroes Unmasked was of double interest to me last night as not only did it preview the season finale of Heroes (due for UK broadcast next week) but also focused on Wendy and Lisa, the delicious duo who long ago were musical compadres of Prince and now score all of the incidental and theme music for Heroes.

I’ve long been a fan – from the early Revolution days, through Purple Rain and Prince’s purple patches and finally during their last incarnation as independent pop duo “Wendy & Lisa”. If I’m honest I still play their solo (duo?) albums on my MP3 player but then I’ve always been an eighties head at heart anyway.

But enough about my confused biology...

As the narrator introduced the theme for the night’s analysis they kindly cut to a clip of Wendy and Lisa grooving their funk-thang on TOTP – early nineties by my reckoning – all gorgeously teased hair, cheekbones, curvy hips and tight bouncing tops... how they enticed the eye even as they pleasured the ear... my excitement was mounting.

And then we were presented with the lovely ladies as they are today.

I feel down-right mean for saying this but they looked old.

I mean they looked “old” – not just older. Maybe it was the appalling light in their studio but they didn’t appear to have aged well.

I apologise. I don’t know why. I just feel the need to. For making such an uncharitable observation. I feel I’m being somehow mean spirited and disloyal. And I’m being grossly unfair. Their heyday was 20 years ago for God’s sake – what did I expect? I ought to be proud that they’ve spurned the cosmetic surgery route and have decided to stay au naturale. To stay real. They always were “real women” – it was part of the attraction.

And – let’s be honest – I’m no spring chicken myself. More like a leathery turkey. Old age is already digging its gnarled claws into my once plump and youthful flesh. I’m getting white hair all over the place these days (but enough about my bizarre biology)... Minor cuts are taking longer to heal... I’m grinding my teeth when I sleep... I go all sentimental when I hear Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”...

It’s surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

And despite the wrinkles, despite the jowls, Wendy and Lisa have still got it for me. The old (no pun intended) spark is still there. So we wouldn’t go out partying anymore – what does it matter? So Wendy wouldn’t tease my bod with her quirky guitar licks – so what? There’s nothing wrong with a nice frappuccino in a quiet, downtown coffee house. And bowls, so I’ve been led to believe, is a fabulous sport. Hell, I may even enjoy a bus tour to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical...!

Sigh. So it’s come to this: Wendy and Lisa have mutated in my mind from teen-hood fantasy girlfriends into imaginary aunties...

*Shrugs*

But if that’s how the cookies crumble, I guess I’ve just got to embrace it and move with the times... (now where did I put my pension book?)

TV In A Coma (I Know, I Know It’s Serious)

As any cable subscriber will tell you television reception can be, at times, akin to a half shaken Etch A Sketch – a frozen mosaic of tiny squares with accompanying aural effects that sound remarkably close to Colonel Bogey being played under water by an asthmatic tuba lover.

Not so much oompah oompah as plain old bah.

This doesn’t happen often (t’otherwise nobody would pay for a cable service, would they?) but round where I live one sudden shock of cold weather is enough to make Virgin Media’s cable technology huddle up in a foetal position and refuse to play technological ball.

I’m sure Mr Branson would blame other adverse catalysts such as high tech mismatches of information packets and misdirected routings of fibre optic data but between you and me: it’s the cold. A bit of frost and News 24 resembles a kid’s finger painting. I’m so glad I invested in a widescreen TV.

Such a denial of service occurred on Sunday. No kid’s telly. No Dave. No UKLiving. No Catchup TV. Nothing.

Things looked glum for all of ten minutes.

And then we rediscovered the various and multifarious delights of (a) silence (b) music and (c) books.

It was amazing. Without the TV cracking its whip the day opened up into vast pastures of possibility. Suddenly time itself seemed to expand and cast off the shackles of enforced half hour slots of no-brainer entertainment. The day was pregnant with opportunity.

It made me realize how television – for all it can be a marvellous educational aid – also prevents you from thinking ‘outside the box’ (if you’ll pardon the pun). As soon as it is switched on the day seems to be mapped out and segmented according to what the various TV channels are broadcasting. You totally forget the many other home comforts that are available to enhance your living experience.

For most of Sunday we enjoyed a little quiet island of TV-less bliss.

Thanks to the efforts of the Virgin Media engineers the TV returned to life at the end of the day all mended and functioning normally... but, I have to say, looking a little bit nervous. A little bit insecure around the edges.

You see, we hadn’t missed it. We’d coped. We’d realized we could survive without it.

There was a New World Order.

The seeds of a comfortable rebellion have been sown...

Mer Maid

I’m not quite sure why I like the BBC’s “Merlin”.

It’s just as anachronistic as the Beeb’s “Robin Hood” ever was but somehow it has managed to annoy me far less. It just doesn’t jar or set my teeth on edge the way that RH did. Admittedly the “Merlin” costume dept. hasn’t seen fit to deck the Knights of Camelot out in Clint Eastwood style duster coats (as worn by the Merry Men in one famous RH episode) or dragged the invention of gunpowder across a few continents and up a few centuries.

I also suspect that there is something “looser” about the King Arthur legend. It’s not as tightly pinned down historically as Robin Hood. It is rife with magic and magic gives a writer carte blanche to take a few liberties and bend the facts a little… It’s to be expected and acceptable. And at the end of the day the “facts” around King Arthur have all been bent out of true anyway. Our present day take on the legend is a hundred miles away from that of the original (?) Welsh legend. Sir Thomas Mallory, lawd bless ‘im, was the Barbara Cartland of his day.

“Merlin” is also perfect Saturday night teatime family viewing. It knows its place and is happy to settle in there like a Phoenix plumping its nest. It’s got legs aplenty and I’m sure it will run and run whereas I feel that the “Robin Hood” production team rather shot their bolt prematurely with the last series of RH and have left themselves nowhere worthwhile to go.

The effects in “Merlin” are a little on the dodgy / cheap side but acceptable – i.e. they’re good BBC standard but would be laughed off the big screen. The castle is suitably grand and whimsical – far too European to be British, of course – and occasionally borders on the Walt Disney but I can overlook that. I’m also prepared to overlook the chain-mail armour which I’m sure wasn’t around for a hundred years or so after Arthur’s existence and the fact that even the poorest of peasants seem to live in substantial stone walled dwellings that would fetch a fair price on the modern day property market.

This largesse from one so normally picky and pedantic is due in some small part to the actors. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no performance here that is going to win someone a Bafta or an OBE – the script just doesn’t have that kind of range – but it’s all very well done and the actors are obviously committed. The tongue-in-cheek-ness that so ruined RH and made it a virtual pantomime is gratifyingly absent and instead we have full-on “BBC costume drama earnestness”.

And that is not a complaint.

I suspect “Merlin” is going to be a jumping board for a new batch of British TV stars who will go on to bigger and better things. Colin Morgan and Bradley James give good value as Merlin and Arthur respectively – they’re kind of an Arthurian version of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte only without the man hugs and Aloysius the teddy bear. Anthony Head is pretty good as Uther though I can’t take his moments of gravitas seriously at all. I don’t know what it is – God knows I was never a Buffy fan – but whenever Mr Head talks I just feel like I’m listening to him present a voice-over to Heroes Unmasked or a Channel 5 documentary about the pervy religious rites of the Mayans.

And then there’s Richard Wilson as Gaius. What can I say? He’s so damned good I’d actually stopped making “I don’t believe it” jokes by the end of the second episode. Nuff said.

For me though the biggest pull (as if you haven’t guessed) is Katie McGrath as the poised and lofty Morgana. Hey, she’s a brunette, OK? And she steps neatly into the Saturday night TV totty void created when Lucy Griffiths’ Marion was insanely killed off in the last series of RH. Karen gave me a raised eyebrow when I purred my approval of Morgana and suggested that Gwen (Guinevere), played by Angel Coulby, seemed a far more fiery and passionate a prospect for a young man’s desire than Morgana who was plainly much too much of a “lady”. “Lady” said with a haughty, hoity-toity down-the-nose sneer.

And I have to agree. Gwen is far more of a wench than a lady and, yes, she’s comely enough (sire) but, in my (sadly) limited experience, wenches tend to be mere ladies in bed while ladies are definitely, most definitely wenches…

Costumes

Because it’s Children In Need day today we’ve had to send our two boys off into the world dressed for the stage.

The youngest, Tom, has had to go to nursery dressed as a pirate. This has meant attiring him in a stripy top, a sword belt, a little waistcoat and some trousers that have been theatrically shredded at the bottom to give him that “Mutiny On The Bounty” look.

He looks frighteningly like Mr Smee from Walt Disney’s Peter Pan.

The costume has been finished off with a little foam hook that he can wave around. It’s very blunt and soft and I suspect the only danger to life and limb will be a transference of snot from Tom’s extremely runny nose to the face of whoever gets too close to him.

I wish I was clever enough to make a joke about Mutiny On The Bogey but I’m not so I won’t.

Our eldest, Ben, has in his own opinion been rather short changed in the dressing up stakes. His school, for some possibly pacific reason, has demanded that the children attend today dressed as “dancers”.

Hmm. It’s not an idea to inspire a rough-and-tumble 7 year old.

Ben spent the entire journey to school this morning eyeing up Tom’s hook with unmasked envy and I must admit I feel a little sympathy towards him (although I expressed this by making sundry jokes about ballet tutus and suggesting that he tell his mates that he’s come to school today dressed as Wayne Sleep). While it’s laudable that the school are promoting the idea of non aggressive interaction and trans-gender activities I can’t help feeling that most of the kids – boy and girl – would have been far happier with a “Kings and Queens” theme, say, or a monsters theme or, yes, even pirates. And if some of the girls wanted to dress as a King rather than a Queen and some of the boys wanted to be a princess for the day I’m sure it would have been fine.

But at the end of the day you can’t stop boys being boys and girls being girls.

Ben owns a fine collection of toy swords but even if Karen and I hadn’t tooled him up with the best that Toys R Us had to offer I guarantee he would have gone out on a walk and found himself a stick or a branch and fashioned his own. My motto is: better a cheaply manufactured foam sword than a piece of lead pipe lifted off a building site. Especially when you’re on the receiving end.

But back to the “dancers” theme. I can only assume that someone at Ben’s school is a fan of Strictly Come Dancing and I now feel that we’ve regrettably missed a great trick:

With the addition of a grey wig, some wobbly jowls and a paunch made of several sofa cushions Ben could have gone dressed as John Sergeant.

I’m sure that would have made him feel a lot better.

The Fawke Off List

No.1) Dizzy whatever his name is talking to Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight yesterday evening attributing Obama’s recent Presidential success solely to the far reaching, world harmonizing effects of “hip-hop music”.

Yeah right, cos like it was his fly rappin’ what won the election for ‘im, innit?

Now, I don’t doubt that having a young, black role model has encouraged young Americans (black and white) to get off their backsides and vote – contributing to one of the best voting turn outs America has seen for a long time – but I don’t recall hip-hop having much of a role in this.

Personally I put it down to worthy policies, intelligent strategies, uplifting rhetoric and the promise of much needed change from the top down after the long stagnation of the Bush (mis)administration. Not a predilection for a lickle bit of drum and bass.

Besides which Obama looks more like a Nat King Cole man than Dr. Dre.

Paxman just looked bemused by Dizzy’s stuttering schoolyard outpourings and I couldn’t help thinking that the show’s producers had merely asked Dizzy to take part simply because he was black and had street cred and not because he had anything intelligent to say.

Sorry to dis you, old chap, but that’s just how it is.

No.2) Fireworks. I hate them.

Call me a killjoy. Accuse me of not being down with the kids (what’s wrong with a lickle bit of Nat King Cole, eh bruv?) but if ever I got into a position of power I would ensure the nationwide ban of all firework sales to individuals.

Now I’m not saying they should be banned altogether. Properly organized displays are fine. They’re safer. Less damaging to the environment. And less damaging to the social well-being of local citizens.

But in the hands of individuals they are lethal.

I’m sick to death of being woken by idiots detonating atomic explosions at 1, 2 and 3 in the morning. I’m sick to death of seeing teen Neanderthals launching fireworks down roads towards occupied vehicles coming the other way.

Most of all I’m sick to death of hearing every year of some poor kid or animal that has been badly burnt by (a) rogue fireworks that have detonated by mistake (b) mindless individuals who use fireworks as novelty weapons or (c) hospitalized by makeshift bonfires that haven’t been properly tended or constructed or have been tampered with by local yobs.

One injury is one injury too many. End of.

Selling fireworks is selling gunpowder without a license to people who, with the best will in the world, don’t always have a brain.

OK. The soapbox is now put away.

Just A Laugh

Having been on the nasty end of a stupid prank recently the news that Jonathan Ross and the bandy-legged Russell Brand are currently immersed up to their designer hips in hot water has struck a chord with me far more than perhaps it normally would.

Apparently, on Brand’s Radio 2 show, the pair left “sexually offensive” phone messages to old thesp, Andrew Sachs, claiming that Brand had slept with the actor’s granddaughter, Georgina Baillie (23), and that Sachs might kill himself upon hearing the news.

Hmm. As pranks go it’s pretty pathetic and the kind of thing that any half-baked sixth former could come up with in their wet-dreamed sleep.

Now I’ve done my own fair share of ringing up pubs and asking for “Mike Hunt” in my time but public humiliation on a national scale is something that – even in my selfish “the world owes me” teens – I would have steered well clear of. Forget the swing of a moral compass, surely your own common sense would tell you that this was a bad idea?

Sachs has taken it badly. His granddaughter has taken it worse and who can blame her? Personally I’d rather people think I’d shagged Jonathan Ross than Russell Brand but the poor girl has had little say in the matter.

What is interesting is that the prank was pre-recorded and approved by the show’s producers. The BBC initially defended it… but now that the media tsunami is hitting their sun loungers they are grovelling apologies in every shade of yellow imaginable.

There are calls for Ross and Brand to be removed from air.

I feel surprisingly ambivalent about it.

Should the pair be sacked? I don’t think so. As much as I dislike Brand (and have waxed vile about his shenanigans before) both of them have been very quick to publicly and vociferously apologize to the public and to Sachs and to his granddaughter for the joke.

Personal accountability goes a long way towards forgiveness in my book.

The gag was ill thought out and the producers – or somebody – should have had the brains to say no. “Sorry lads, this one is (a) just not funny and (b) is just going to result in a lot of adverse feedback – lets just stick to making adolescent innuendoes about the birds we fancy from the telly…”

The producers are just as – if not more – culpable. Maybe they are the ones who should be sacked?

A slap on the wrist, though ineffective and hardly a deterrent to Ross and Brand and not likely to satisfy Sach’s sense of justice is at the end of the day the only sensible course of action. Sacking them will solve nothing. Some other channel will only snap them up and make gold with the furore that they bring along with them.

The deed is done. They’ve owned up and apologized. Time to forget it and move on. It is the only wise way forward.

Hidden messages?

Who? Me?

Meme-ories Are Made Of This

I haven’t responded to a meme for a long time but today I’m making an exception by answering one sent to me by lovely Lucy Fishwife.

Basically I have to list 6 random things about myself – preferably things that you don’t already know – and then pass the meme on to 6 other lucky-lucky bloggers. While I think about who to infect with the meme disease here are 6 interesting (I hope) but little known facts about yours truly.

1) I’m a “published” poet. Kind of. I’ve had about 30 poems published over the years in various poetry journals and anthologies. Sadly I’ve never had a collection published or won any major poetry competitions which would have blasted my name before the addled sight of the UK literati. Out of the 30 published I was only ever properly paid for one: £10 for a poem called “Love” that was published in top-notch poetry mag The Rialto. I briefly considered framing the cheque but the law of economics took over and I cashed it.

2) I was at school for much of my younger life with fellow blogger Tris and we still maintain regular contact. He is quite simply and quite honestly my oldest friend. An initial acquaintance and then a friendship which dates back approximately 30 years. I’m very proud of this.

3) I had a childhood crush on Charlie’s Angels. All of them. But primarily it was Cheryl Ladd who floated my boyhood prepubescent boat. This is odd as she is blonde and with very few exceptions I go for brunettes. I have a wonderful wife (brunette) who thankfully feels unthreatened by this early blonde obsession and bought me the boxed set of Charlie’s Angels for my birthday last year. It’s crass, it’s dated, it’s so unbelievably 1970’s (even though it was filmed in the 80’s) but Cheryl Ladd has still got “it”. Though she has now been usurped in my affections by Keeley Hawes. Gotta move with the times, right? (Yes my search to find something previously unknown and interesting to say about myself is becoming desperate.)

4) One of my most vivid school memories is of the school playing field being covered in daddy-long-legs at the end of September / beginning of October (back when the seasons worked properly). One kid in a year below me made the mistake of charging towards the seething mass screaming out loud. One disoriented daddy-long-legs – evidently its bearings lost or fancying a kamikaze-style last act – promptly flew into the boy’s open mouth. Folks, it really is possible for a human being to turn bright green.

5) I have never in my entire life eaten steak. I don’t know why. I don’t have anything against red meat (though I’d hate to see my own going underneath Gordon Ramsay’s knife). I’ve just never ordered or desired a steak. Does this mean I am not a real man?

6) I used to write stories as a young boy where I was a superhero called Donny Osmond (look, I saw an Osmond cartoon once and it made an impression, OK?) and I had a gang of superhero friends who ranged (unsurprisingly) from the lovely ladies of Charlie’s Angels, the good guys from Star Wars, Logan and Jessica from Logan’s Run and for some weird reason Abba. I still have the stories – all hand written in little exercise books – beneath the bed. One memorable scene features my grandparents flying X-Wing fighters to blow up a humungous enemy star ship piloted by the evil Witchy Woo Hoo. It is my life’s ambition to make it available in all good books shops.


OK. Now for the tagging part. With apologies I’m tagging Tris, Inchy, Kaz, Brother Tobias, Kate and Amanda though please don’t feel you have to.

And lastly – the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Good luck and God speed.

To Cap It All

The discussion turned to hat wear in the office today. I’m not sure why but it sure beat the usual chatter of who’s nobbing who and sundry plots to bring down the management (P.S. thanks for reading, dear work colleagues).

I don’t wear a hat but like most non-hat-wearers I’d secretly like to.

Or rather I’d like to have the style and panache to get away with wearing a hat without looking like a complete dick.

Over the years I’ve tried several in my vain attempts to find some skull-wear that actually suits me: panamas, trilbies, the ubiquitous baseball cap, even at one time a Goth cowboy hat courtesy of a brief dalliance with The Field Of The Nephilim.

And I’ve looked an idiot in all of them.

Of course it may be that I look an idiot out of them too but nevertheless I have persevered faithfully in my search.

Until finally, last year, during a wet week in Wales, I came at last across my bonnet paramour in a tacky climbing / souvenir shop in Betws-y-Coed.

The good old fashioned Great British cloth-cap.

I think Karen was as stunned as I was. My God. Here it is. A hat that actually suits me.

I didn’t buy it.

Why?

I have a penchant for wearing proper waterproof hill-walking jackets having given up on the efficacy of umbrellas years ago (they’re just mini money pits). Couple such a jacket with such a hat and you have...

...Foggy from Last Of The Summer Wine.

Need I say more? I may not have much choice when it comes to fashionable head gear but credit me with some sartorial sense.

Butter Wouldn’t Melt

I can’t profess to ever having been a huge fan of punk, preferring myself the hippy undertones of Kate Bush or the soft pop synth sound of New Wave but I knew who John Lydon was and held a grudging respect – even amusement – for the man and his outrageous anarchist antics.

I still have fond memories of him flicking his V’s at the camera nearly a decade later on Saturday Superstore or Going Live or whatever woolly-jumpered guff the BBC was putting out on a Saturday morning back then. Cue pouts of outrage from Mike Read and Sarah Greene – how dare he besmirch our jolly kid’s show with his dirty punk fingers!

Meanwhile my sister and I were laughing ourselves silly like a couple of drains. It was almost as good as the legendary Five Star phone-in where an enterprising little potty mouth managed to slip through the BBC’s “real teen” censors and introduced kid’s telly to some rather choice four letter words. It was a remarkably succinct music review that has never ever been bettered in my opinion.

But I digress. John Lydon / Johnny Rotten was a somebody. He stood for something. He was spiky, dangerous and uncompromising. Values held in high esteem by any burgeoning teen / young adult.

So it’s depressing to note then that dear ol’ John has sold his anti-establishment ethos down the river in order to endorse / sell / promote Country Life Butter on our televisions. John loves Country Life Butter, you see, because “it’s British”. Cue clips of red buses, Morris Dancers and John himself in a nice tweed jacket sinking a large brandy in an old fart’s gentleman’s club. For a minute I thought I was watching the trailer for the next Austin Powers movie (John Lydon as Austin Powers: now there’s an interesting concept).

I realize Country Life are hoping to get themselves a bit of an edge by employing our John to hawk their wares in the Corrie ad breaks but to my mind it doesn’t really work. It doesn’t make me want to go out and buy a slab of Country Life Butter. It makes me want to hurl abuse at the TV screen. It makes me want to flick my V’s right into John Lydon’s pasty lily-white face.

John what the hell are you doing? Surely your mortgage is paid by now? Why?

It’s one thing to be a national character...

Quite another thing entirely to be a national caricature.

Blokes

Whilst sitting pleasantly comatosed in front of the TV last night one of those shiny happy femininely positive fashion shows came on and neither Karen nor I had the gumption or the energy to reach for the remote. This particular one was called Twiggy’s Frock Swap and was basically just a televised version of that newest of trends to hit the UK’s Bingo halls and beauty parlours... the clothes swap party.

Premise: get a group of glamorous ladies of assorted ages and sizes together in a warehouse with cartloads of their old clothes and cast-offs and let them swap their clothes in a vaguely entertaining fashion conscious eco-friendly way. The clarion calls runs along the lines of: ladies of Britain recycle your clothes don’t bin them (or send them to starving children in Africa) – it’ll save you money if not wardrobe space!

It was slightly more interesting than the cushion whose soft woolly surface my face was half submerged into.

But while I listened to the glorious voice of Lauren Laverne wash over me like a warm Geordie breeze I had the thought: why don’t they make programmes like this for men?

And the answer hit me almost straight away.

Picture the scene: Gok Wan cakewalks around a group of Weatherspoon’s throw-outs in his high heeled diamante winkle pickers.

“C’mon guys let’s get swapping those g-strings and string vests! Woohoo!”

One shambolic hoody steps forward offering up a pair of torn and faded baggy-arsed Levi’s. “Er. Yeah. I got these to swap.”

Some nerdy looking sci-fi junkie steps hesitantly forward. “Yeah. Cool. Er... I’ll give you a couple of Playstation games for them if you want... Grand Theft Auto and Halo...” He shrugs noncommittally.

Hoody, nodding Noel Gallagher style: “Yeah nice one. Done mate.”

Goods are exchanged. Silence reigns. The men nod mutely among themselves and fidget uncomfortably before the camera.

In the background Gok tears out his hair in long thin oily strips and collapses sobbing to the floor – obviously overcome with the intensely broiling testosterone. The producers meanwhile tear up the series' contract and head out to the pub.

Blokes, you see, we’d just be too damned sensible to be entertaining.

Heroes And Villains

Taking the view that trivia often offers a modicum of light relief during a rough patch I present the following:

I caught the first episode of “Volume 3” of Heroes last night...

It’s never bothered me before but for some reason the whole “Volume” thing suddenly irritated me. I know it’s a reference to comics and books blah blah blah but it just felt a bit smug and pretentious when, Tim Kring, the writer / director bod was discussing his creation during the behind the scenes documentary. “In this volume yadda yadda yadda...” “Yeah in this volume we up the pace to breakneck speeds...” “In this volume it’s all sex and drugs and rock and roll...” etc.

Maybe I was just in a belligerent mood but I just kept shouting in my mind “Series! It’s a series – not a volume! It’s a series!”

Hmm. Maybe I need to get out more? Maybe I’m just transferring my current frustrations onto a safe non threatening target? Who knows?

By the way, sadly that last quote above was made up by me and isn’t at all real.

But as for the episode itself...

Totally back on form in my opinion. Straight in and no messing. The storyline engaged with several fast moving strands from the off and didn’t slow down, no, not once. And it worked. Gone is the stodgy, soap opera dialogue. Gone are the lengthy scene set-ups. Gone are the slow interminable journeys. Instead we move straight to the explosive arrivals. Instead the viewer is credited with some intelligence and some previous knowledge of the show and the plot simply drop-kicks you off a cliff and expects you to make your own way down to the bottom without complaining.

And I’m not. Well apart from the “volume” thing.

The good news is that Sylar is back and twice as nasty.

The other good news is that the affecting double act of Hiro and Ando is re-established and thus supplies the show with both its humour and its soul.

The best news of all is that Nikki is back although she’s now called Tracey and made her debut in this volume (grrr!) dressed in a white basque and suspenders (grrrowl!).

Er... I have no idea why that should stick in my mind more than the much improved post production effects that littered this episode like torn up Bradford & Bingley employment contracts but it just did, ok?

And something bigger is at stake in the Heroes' world now. Something bigger than a nancy global plague. Something bigger and nastier than a petty little nuclear explosion in NY.

We’re talking the destruction of the entire globe itself.

Or at least that’s what the hints dropped in last night’s episode have led me to believe.

There’s a darker feel to the show in this series. The intriguing darkness that was there initially at the show’s inception and then somehow got lost between the end of the first series and the start of this third has made a spectacular return. It’s back and it’s in a killer mood.

And I for one am glad that it’s back. The darkness really works for me. Save the cheerleader? Nah! Corrupt her. Twist her. Entertain us!

Heroes as villains...

Tim Kring, my man, you just may have got me hooked once more.

Anger Management

Anger is a funny thing. Or at least Griff Rhys Jones had always assumed it was until he discovered differently during “Losing It” last night, a BBC documentary and personal exploration into his own and the world’s anger.

Jones has always struck me as “a decent bloke to work with”. I don’t know why I formed that opinion because I’ve never ever met the man, I guess, like everybody else you get pulled in and gulled by the TV persona. Now, after watching this astonishingly honest programme I’d have to say that, while I still think he’s an eminently decent bloke, he’d be absolute hell to work with. And worse to live with.

By his own admission he is a grumpy old git. And at first he staunchly defended his right to be so. Everybody gets angry, he said. Everybody feels anger. Even a psychologist friend confirmed that if he ever met someone who was calm and serene all the time he would be deeply suspicious of them. It is not natural to not get angry. Anger is a natural response to stress and let’s face it the modern world goes out of its way to create stress for all of us.

But as Jones interviewed friends, family and work associates a picture soon formed that he was something beyond the modest proportions of just “a grumpy old git”.

One of his agents recalled the first time she met Griff. He’d burst into the office in a foul mood about something and promptly kicked a hole in the office door in his rage.

“I did what?” Griff’s iron-heavy jaw dropped. “I don’t remember doing that!”

This became a pattern. People recalling some of Griff’s more flamboyant expressions of anger and Griff having no recollection of them whatsoever. For Griff, you see, once the anger was out it was dealt with and forgotten about. For Griff, looking back, circumstances weren’t as bad as maybe his anger portrayed it. For Griff there was even a chance to giggle at his mad antics whilst mad once he was calm again.

Unfortunately nobody else had this luxury. As his agent pointed out, having to constantly mop up these spillages of anger was a “heavy burden for anyone”.

Griff looked pole-axed. For the first time taking on board that maybe his tantrums weren’t as lightweight and inconsequential and natural as he’d at first thought. They affected people. They hurt people. They were not nice to deal with. As he said of his agent: “I kept waiting for her to add that ‘despite all this we had a great laugh and a good time’ but... she never said it. Not even when I fished for it.”

Sober barely covered it.

Next week Griff will be looking at various ways in which he can deal with and manage his anger and I shall certainly be tuning in because – admission time, folks – I have noticed that over the past couple of years I too have been experiencing anger. More than is usual for me.

During my teens I just didn’t have the confidence to be angry. I was small, weedy, under developed, shy and awkward socially. Expressing anger – no matter how justified – was just not permissible for me. I wanted people to like me. I was desperate for it. So I suppressed my anger. I was too small and weak to be angry. Showing anger when you’re a teen – and perhaps also when you’re an adult – seems to be tied into physical strength. You need to be able to back up and defend your anger. I mean what would I have done if someone had got angry back? Run away very quickly I suspect and then apologise profusely.

In time I forgot how to be angry.

But weirdly, with a 7 year old in the house who is showing classic signs of having an angry personality rather like Griff (i.e. gets furious whenever things happen that are outside of his control) I am finding that I am rediscovering my own anger. For the first time since I myself was a child I shout. I bang about. I swear under my breath. I walk around with my teeth clenched (ah – Dr Hassan, I think I’ve discovered the cause of my worn down teeth). I seethe below the surface.

Is this good? Is this bad? Do I have a right to express this anger? I guess it all depends on how I go about it. Certainly I have a right to own it. Certainly it proves to be useful occasionally when it stops me being pushed around at work or in the street. But do I want to be angry with my family? Is that right? Griff’s (I’m not going to say long suffering because I don’t think she is) wife admitted that when Griff is “off on one” she tends to walk away and let him get it out of his system. Do I really want Karen to react like that with me? Not, I hasten to add, that I’m in anywhere near Griff’s league... but the worrying this is, Griff didn’t think he was in that league either until he scratched below the surface...

Now that I’m holding my hands up and owning my anger... is it time for me to start managing it?

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.

The Bedtime Hour

CBeebies has suddenly established a toe-hold in our house.

Tom – just a month a way from his first birthday – has developed an attention span which now makes it worthwhile to allow him a little bit of kid’s telly each day. Hence 6pm to 7pm is now officially The Bedtime Hour.

At this time we all gather round the telly and whilst simultaneously feeding Tom his tea we watch Chris Jarvis and Pui Fan Lee talk joyously about big pink milkshakes, throbbing moon rockets and furry teddy bears without a single trace of irony or even the smallest of smirks. Kid’s telly is a very serious business indeed.

Of course it is a well known fact that grown-ups have children solely to be able to watch kid’s telly without feeling embarrassed about it. Kid’s telly is feel-good safe telly and it puts everyone in a good mood regardless of their age. If I was being charitable I’d say that this effect was achieved simply by the fact that the stories and jolly cartoons carry us back to an age of unsullied innocence where worries about rising mortgages, soaring food prices and the police finding that body under the patio were things totally inconceivable to our young unformed minds... but the reality is that we enjoy watching kid’s telly just so we can take the P out of the hapless presenters as they caper about pretending to ride invisible mopeds or have fairy cake tea parties with an assortment of plastic charity shop toys. Oh how their mates must rip the hell out of them in the pub later...

Of course the fact these people are on about 35K a year means that they have the last laugh but as they are endlessly chuckling and laughing anyway who’s ever going to tell the difference?

One of the best things about kid’s telly though is the occasional celeb they draft in to read the stories or narrate the animations. I’m currently marvelling at the theatrical gravitas that Derek Jacobi manages to bring to his voice-over work on In The Night Garden... phrases like “Here comes the nankynonk” and “Oh no, Iggle-piggle has spilt his nonky-juice” (I kid you not) are delivered with such earnest aplomb they could have been written by Shakespeare. Or “Shacker-nacker” as he would undoubtedly be called in the show.

Best of all though is that this week Keeley Hawes is reading the bedtime story.

Ah. Keeley. Keeley. Keeley.

I feel a shiver of excitement run up my... er... back every time she turns her liquid eyes to the camera and croons “And now it’s time to go to bed...”

My jim-jams positively jump with delight.

Hairy Cakes

Apart from Gary Rhodes TV chefs don’t as a rule annoy me.

Mainly because I find there’s something pleasantly soporific about watching someone cook. I guess it harkens back to the days when, as a boy, I’d watch my gran makes cakes and pies in her 1970’s deluxe kitchen. Even now, watching a Victoria sponge being lightly dusted with icing sugar just puts me in a good mood for the entire day and relaxes me into a state of goodwill to all men.

So a TV chef has to go a long way then to fully upset my apple cart.

Cue Simon King and David Myers, the two halves of which don’t quite comprise a whole in the shape of the BBC’s Hairy Bikers.

I’m gritting my teeth at the mere thought of them.

Their shtick seems to be that they’re hairy. They ride bikes. They’re Geordies. And they cook.

In that order.

Inscrutably, Karen likes them (hence this is how they find their way onto my HD-unready telly). And on the face of it they’re inoffensive enough. But for some unspecifiable reason they irritate the colon out of me.

They are essentially The Chuckle Brothers with beards and bikes. A male version of the Two Fat Ladies (and let’s face it, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson were practically bearded anyway).

They’re cooking isn’t particularly stunning in my opinion. It’s all a bit... pedestrian (which is very ironic given that they spend most of their time with their be-leathered thighs wrapped around the throbbing engines of their gleaming hogs).

It’s all a bit “blokey” and “roadie” and not expertly enough “chefy”.

But maybe that’s the point? Maybe they’re trying to get more blokey blokes to cook? An admirable campaign if ever there was one but there’s something ineffably flat and wishy-washy about the pair of them. And yes that is a deliberate pantomime reference. The pair of them could don dresses and it wouldn’t look at all weird. Unattractive. But not weird.

Hmm. I don’t know about you but I’ve never seen the Hairy Bikers and the Two Fat Ladies in the same room together at the same time... though of course Jennifer Paterson’s death in 1998 shoots a rather large hairy hole in that theory.

I guess my biggest complaint about the hairy bikers is quite simply... the hair. Their jaw-lines and top lips are just too hirsute to make their food at all palatable. And this is from someone who is himself bearded. It’s very off-putting to watch them sinking their molars into a double crust yak and leek pastie and then try and sing it’s praises to the camera as flakes and shards of pastry and meat hang loosely in their beards and moustaches like miniature trapeze artists trying to escape from a Russian circus.

The inside of their helmets must look and taste like a Subway deli counter.

Oh please, people. A double entendre was not intended...

TV Eye

Maybe it was because we didn’t go away anywhere for any length of time but returning to work this morning after a week’s holiday was surprisingly easy. Though easy is perhaps the wrong word. I mean it wasn’t enjoyable by any means. But it was normal. It felt normal. It felt natural. The old just like I’ve never been away...

Which is odd really because while I was on holiday I didn’t give the place or any of my friends here a second thought. It’s like they all just dropped off my “give a shit” radar and ceased to impinge on my emotional awareness. Not that I wished them badly (well, maybe one of two of them). On the contrary. If I’d managed to think about them at all I would have wished them well. But I just didn’t think. Not at all. In fact I’m pretty sure that while I was away they all ceased to exist.

They all just winked out of reality.

The natural effects of solipsism to place it in a more philosophical framework.

And yet now look at me. Here I am being matey, swapping holiday anecdotes, exchanging TV based gossip and partaking in minor office buffoonery just to pass the time and get me to 5pm with my brain and my temperament on an even keel.

I’m just using them.

Chewing them up and spitting them out. Playing with them like a cat with a piece of string. Creating them purely for my own selfish entertainment.

God but this channel is shit. Where’s the sodding remote?

Let’s Play Global Thermal Nuclear War

You can’t turn on the TV these days without seeing some C list celeb adding their twopenneth-worth to the National anti-knife campaign or some appropriately austere politician promising tougher sentencing for those caught carrying knives or other catering based weaponry on our streets.

And on the whole I’m not complaining. Something does need to be done. And yes tougher sentencing is the answer. For those caught carrying as well as those caught using knives. Cos it’s all the same in my book.

What worries me most though is the justification that these knife wielders frequently put forward in defence of their need to carry knives. Twice this week I’ve heard the phrases “self defence” and “deterrent” used by some hoodie when asked why he has to carry a knife.

Kind of reminds me of the justification that our politicians used years ago (and still use) whenever they were questioned about the massive stockpile of nuclear weapons that they were building up. Why do we need such weapons?

- Because they maintain the peace; they deter outbreaks of war, blah blah blah.

But did anyone ever believe that?

Isn’t it a case that possessing any kind of weapon is actually an unspoken threat of war not a deterrent to ensure everlasting peace? There’s a big difference.

Tooling yourself up as an act of self defence is a complete fallacy. Wearing body armour – that’s self defence. Carrying a can of mace or a personal alarm – that’s self defence.

Shoving a 12 inch carving knife down the front of your baggies is an act of war.

And there is no justification.

School’s Out For Summer

I had grand plans this week for a whole host of scintillating posts and internet based ribaldry but alas illness has laid me low. What started off as a nasty head-cold for me and Tom developed yesterday into an alarmingly debilitating fever which, I hasten to add, we have both now begun to recover from – Tom’s 9 month’s old immune system kicking in a lot harder than mine. He’s crawling around the floor this morning insinuating himself into as much mischief as possible.

I however am still moping around like a wet rag.

But there’s something quite nice about it today. I’m feeling better than I was – enough to actually enjoy being ill. I’m watching trashy TV and making my way through all 7 Harry Potter books. I haven’t got to return to work until Monday. I feel somehow like I’m skiving off from school.

It’s a great feeling.

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?

Steakhouse Gryll

Quite by chance this month I’ve caught a couple of episodes of “Born Survivor” presented by Mr Nice Tough Guy, Bear Grylls. Yes. That’s his real name.

I’m hoping he has a kid brother called Radiator.

The premise is very simple. Bear Grylls, all round daredevil, adventurer, survivalist and, let’s not forget it, nice guy, is catapulted each week into some of the world worst hellholes there to survive on nothing but his wits and the Winnebago full of food that the film crew have brought along with them.

He’s yomped across desert, jungle and rough council estates; he’s captured and eaten raw lizards, scorpions, beetle larvae and KFC bargain buckets; he’s been up to his hips in quick sand, white water rapids and peat bogs... and last night saw him roughing it in the mountainous ice fields of Patagonia.

It was sterling stuff and no mistake. He dug an ice cave with his “bear” hands, urinated into his drink flask and used it as a hot water bottle, rapelled down a 150ft waterfall... all the while telling us what we should and shouldn’t do in these circumstances; leaving us in no doubt as to the amount of danger and peril that he was constantly in on our behalf.

And through it all I couldn’t help thinking: Ray Mears wouldn’t have done that; Ray Mears would have found a better way; Ray wouldn’t have taken such stupid risks in the first place...

Ray Mears you see is untouchable in the art of bush craft survival. Many try to encroach upon his domain but few can ever match him. I’m sure Mr Grylls’ survivalist credentials are absolutely impeccable but, unlike Ray’s programmes, there’s something just too unreal and contrived about Bear Grylls’ gritty offerings.

Suspended half way down a narrow glacial crevasse he shuddered at how far down he was, how terrifying it was to be stuck this far down a sheer ice wall... but my first thought was that the camera man was actually filming him from below and didn’t appear to be suffering from camera-shake at all. A little later he tried to build a raft out of drift wood to cross an ice cold lake... a few feet out it began to disintegrate and Bear had to bare his torso and swim back to shore before he lost all circulation in his feet and legs...

Gasp shock horror. Would he make it? Sadly, yes.

Now if that had been Ray he’d have chopped down a tree, hollowed out a canoe with his bush knife and woven a fully functional outboard motor out of nettle stems and crossed to the other side of the lake within the space of three hours with enough daylight left to shoot a moose with his homemade bow and arrow and have its kidney frying on a hot rock ready for the after filming party.

And Ray would have spent the entire night in his homemade camp with only his homemade campfire and his hand whittled camp equipment for company and nobody would have doubted it in the slightest. I can’t say the same for Bear. There are loads of reports that he frequently “roughed” it in hotels and glamorous Jacuzzis once the day’s filming was done.

Fair enough you might think. But to me it’s cheating. Don’t attempt to seize the mantle of hard-man wilderness survivor if you’re not prepared to sleep with the leeches and the tarantulas!

Bear, Ray would eat you for bloody breakfast.

Girl Done Good

She’s suffered some stick our Catherine has.

In the lead up to the current series of Doctor Who poor Ms Tate’s name was dragged through the mud, trampled on and urinated over worse than one of East End Gran’s hand crocheted blankets.

And I have to raise a beautifully manicured hand and say that I too was guilty of unwarranted and heinous crimes against the red headed one.

To be fair though most of us were basing our opinions on the Doctor Who Christmas Special where Catherine’s character, Donna Noble, first made her televisual appearance. It was horrific. Donna Noble was brash, screechy, snotty and LOUD. Very loud.

But you know what? None of that was her fault. I blame the script writers. It was their fault. Shoot ‘em, I say.

Because suddenly with decent scripts, decent character development and an all round softening of her character traits, Donna Noble has transformed into the saviour of the show. I honestly feel that she’s the best thing to have happened to Doctor Who (“the new generation”) since Billie Piper started wearing lower cut tops in series 2 – or did I fantasize that?

And for that I credit the script writers. Allow them to regenerate, I say (with the possible exception of Russell T Davis).

Donna Noble is a mature, self confident woman as opposed to a flighty, easily impressed twenty-something and that fact alone has injected the show with something more solid and weightily resonant than a mere lovelorn travelling companion. As pleasant as Rose Tyler and Martha Jones were their moo-cow eyes began to grate on my nerves very quickly.

Donna Noble might be in awe of the Doctor but she doesn’t think he’s perfect. Not at all. She’s aware that he’s fallible. That he needs someone to rein him in, to hold him back. To question his motives. This creates a much more equally balanced relationship. The balance of power is as close to 50 / 50 as it’s ever been. There’s 2 way respect on the Tardis and that is always going to be far healthier than the alternative: a companion constantly falling into an admiring swoon while the Doctor looks on patronizingly... aah, good human, you’re so cute!

Donna ain’t cute and I like her all the more for it. She’s intelligent and doesn’t have to be led. She can jump to her own conclusions and work things out for herself. She can contribute intellectually and meaningfully. She can challenge. And my God does Tennant’s Doctor need that. He’s a great bloke and a great Doctor but he’s needed someone strong to restrain him for a long time. Tate is at last providing that strength.

And as TimeWarden has already pointed out, Tate also provides a vulnerability that is based on a sensitive assessment of any given situation rather than a mawkish, girlish response. She’s morally sussed. Intelligence and worldly experience are definitely the keys to her character’s success.

The other bonus of course is that without the soap opera storyline of unrequited love constantly getting in the way the show can concentrate on what we, the viewers, really want to see: decent, well thought out sci-fi.

Hoo-bloody-ray I say. Saturday night’s are halfway decent again.

All they need to do now is get the costume department to lower her tops...

Joke.

Buttered Too Thin

The second series of Heroes is like a fine whisky that’s been castrated by too much soda water. The first series had a kick and a potency to it that took your breath away but made you thirst for more. By the time the showdown with Silar was approaching I was a Heroes alcky, I was getting the DTs in between episodes...

But series 2 feels like going cold turkey.

Which isn’t to say I’m not enjoying it – I am; and God knows there’s eff all else on TV on a Thursday night and I’d be happy to watch Hayden Panettiere chop off her pinkies with a pair of scissors any time of the day but as a whole the show just ain’t grabbing me around the gonads like series 1.

The complaints and accusations of slowness from fans in the states have been well documented. That and the fact that the ratings plummeted like a damp squid at a cliff diving competition. I do wonder if my approach to the show has been somehow jaundiced by this knowledge; that I’m not giving it as fair a go as I normally would...

But no. It is slow. Heroes is missing its bite. And the plot twists are far, far too predictable – Peter Petrelli being alive; Takeshi Kenzo being a gaijin... I saw all these coming from a mile off. Mr Horn Rimmed Glasses also seems a weak incarnation of his former self. He’s gone from sinister, morally ambivalent secret agent to the dad from The Wonder Years. That’s not a good move.

The show lacks direction, it lacks dynamism. It’s like the plot denouement last series was so big it left a void that the writer’s just don’t know how to fill.

But, as I said, it isn’t all bad. Hayden Panettiere’s character and storyline are flourishing. I took me a while to take to her in the first series but she won me over in the end. She holds the screen effortlessly and the frequent displays of her often gruesome super powers are a highlight of the show. Masi Oka is also still a joy to watch but his return to feudal Japan, for all it might be essential to whatever plot twist is currently unfolding, is just tiresome. It feels like an unnecessary aside.

The worst thing about series 2 though is the God awful Irish accents exhibited by the clods that have taken possession of Peter Petrelli. He might have amnesia, he might even have brain damage but surely even he can twig that he’s about as far away from Cork, Ireland as it’s possible to get?

It seems to me that the recent writer’s strike in America may eventually prove to be the saviour of the show’s bacon. Allegedly the hiatus bought the show’s producers and writers time to reassess their goals and to take on board some of the criticisms. I hear tell that the second half of series 2 has been completely scrapped and they’re going to kick off afresh with series 3 in an attempt to return to form.

I do hope so. Heroes has a lot of potential. It would be a shame to see it squandered.

Mature it in a well seasoned oak barrel and I’ll order a double next time around. Promise.

Oh Lurcio!

I feel somewhat ambivalent about last night's episode of Doctor Who.

The Pyrovile rock monsters looked like rejects from the Transformers movie (maybe they thought the Tardis was the Allspark cube?) and sounded like a dodgy haemarroid cream. I also felt that Phil Davis - a terrific actor - was rather wasted as Lucius Petrus Dextrus (what, he can carry Chihuahuas in both hands?).

The 'limbs turning to stone' thing was rather ridiculous too. Phil Davis spent much of the episode running around like a vandalized one armed bandit. I was constantly waiting for the Doctor to score three cherries (but alas the Syballine Oracles weren't at all interested in his sonic screwdriver).

And yet the story overall did pack quite a bit of emotional punch. The history of Pompeii is well documented but still manages to move (unless you're as hard hearted as the Pyrovile of course) and the writers capitalized on this resonance by wisely focusing our attention on a select few of the town's inhabitants - making the sense of tragedy personal rather than general. The scene where Donna tries to rescue a small child from the panic before it is snatched away by its mother was superb. Very simple but it hit the target big time and Catherine Tate proved beyond all doubt that she is a superb actress in the harrowing scenes that followed.

I also liked the fact that Donna is acting as a "moral earth" to Tennant's Doctor - grounding him a little in the minutiae of existence rather than merely seeing the universe as a massive binary tapestry of what is and what is not meant to be. Their relationship is set to be far more rewarding for us viewers than the Doctor's previous travels with the lovelorn Martha Jones.

If only Donna could lose some of her Essex girl attitude when under life threatening stress... it is a little off putting to have her shout things like, "'Ere babe, no, leave it aht, wot you fink you're doin'?" etc when the proverbial is about to hit the fan. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit but I was half expecting her to whip out a white hand bag and pointy stilettos from beneath her amply bosomed toga.

The rine in Spine falls menly on the pline, anyone?

Brown Sugar

For the life of me I cannot work out why I find The Apprentice such compelling viewing. It’s not like I’m a fan of Sir Al. I don’t like the guy at all. He looks like a grumpy, grey gooseberry in an unfashionable suit. And it’s not like I’m fond of the job applicants / contestants either. To a man /woman they are the rummest bunch of self-selling underachievers I have ever encountered in my entire life. And I work for the local council, for God’s sake.

But maybe that is actually the appeal?

Despite my altruistic humanitarian demeanour I can still appreciate the pleasure that can be gleaned from watching two despised enemies thrashing it out to the death in a pit lined with spikes and flaming torches. I guess this explains the sadistic décor of Sir Alan’s much-feared boardroom...

Of course this gladiatorial imagery isn’t strictly accurate. There’s not much of a contest at the end of the day. Sir Al is the chief lion and the Sir Al lackey wannabe’s are the quivering, snivelling, unarmed Christians thrown into the bone and gore strewn sanctum of Sir Alan’s den to be chewed upon by his East End barrow-boy teeth. By the time they’ve had their boardroom roasting they’re practically sweating barbecue sauce anyway.

And they’re not exactly unarmed. They have very nice suits and haircuts and an unshakeable tragic-comic belief in their own (dis/in)abilities. And Heaven help them, they actually ASK for a good smiting. They literally set themselves up to be smashed into smithereens by Sir Al’s sharp as nails business acumen. The gimp who found himself “fired” in last night’s instalment was notable because the word “lose” didn’t apparently exist in his vocabulary.

No. Because I suspect very strongly it was forever on the lips of those around him. To say he couldn’t referee a football match between two peas is an understatement.

But none of them are particularly any better or any brighter. If these are the best business brains that this country has to offer it’s no wonder the UK is going to the dogs. And Sir Al is going to recruit one of these blundering business hippos to come and work for him?

If you’ve got shares in Amstrad I’d sell them now if I were you...

Belly's Gonna Get Yer

The fourth series of RTD's Doctor Who hit our TV screens last night with something of a greasy splat... little blobby creatures made from the excess body fat of the clinically obese were running amuck in London. Well. Not running exactly. More like waddling very slowly and occasionally hyperventilating when they passed a chip shop.

The evil Miss Foster - deliciously played by Sarah Lancashire - had come up with the ultimate diet pill that literally made your fat "just walk away". So what's the problem, I hear you ask? Well. To maximise productivity of these little creatures - Adipose, as they were called (such a stupid name, they sound like a brand of trainers) - the unfortunate dieters were being reduced to nothing but a pile of oversized clothes. Britain's burgeoning obesity problems solved in one fell swoop you might think but no... by a marvellous script coincidence both the good Doctor and Donna Noble were attempting to put a stop to it.

Ta da! Welcome to the wacky world of the BBC's Doctor Who.

Actually, it was fairly entertaining stuff and although it didn't say anything intelligent about the UK's obesity problems and the worldwide obsession with quick-fix dieting I suppose the story could be seen as mildly satirical. It just didn't go anywhere with it. The Adipose themselves were a bit of a disappointment too. Way too cutesy by half. Little blocks of lard with arms and legs and, rather bizarrely, a single solitary tooth in their little Mr Men mouths. If the Pillsbury Dough-boy and the Michelin Man ever spent a night together in unholy bodily union, the Adipose would be the end result.

But at the end of the day the Adipose were a sideshow. The real focus of last night's episode was Donna Noble's promotion to Doctor Who's travelling companion number twenty-whatever...

So, how did she do? Was she a harridan? Was she a travesty?

I'm possibly going to break ranks with a great number of people when I say that no, I don't think she was. The girl did good. Sure there was the occasional nod to the "Catherine Tate comedy persona" - mouthing "Oh my God" through the window at the Doctor for example - but other than that she was reigned in by the script and her character was given more character and less caricature. And it worked. All at once she was less annoying than her Christmas special debut and became more of a sympathetic, well rounded, likeable character. And a strong character too.

It'll actually be nice to have a foil for the doctor who isn't mooning over him and sighing over his every twitch with the sonic screwdriver. Martha's moo-cow eyes last series were seriously starting to grate on my nellies. In fact as was said on Doctor Who Confidential afterwards: Donna Noble is a "grown up" whereas Rose and Martha were lovelorn teens / twenty-somethings. The Doctor has at last got an older woman on board the Tardis and it might just do him some good.

So dare I say it? A promising start to the fourth series! And Bernard Cribbins as Donna's grandfather played a blinder too.

Well phat.

Explosive

I'm glad to say the title of this post isn't a reference to my current bout of close nappy encounters but to the season finale of Ashes To Ashes which was televised last night.

It was simply brilliant. The writer's kept us on tenterhooks all the way through and threw in an ample selection of red herrings. The final twist was heart rending. I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it yet but I didn't see it coming until a few seconds before the actual denouement.

Keeley Hawes is a terrific actress and I've really loved her bubbly DI Drake character - somehow both girlie and professorial at the same time - but I do think she hasn't been stretched nearly enough in her acting abilities. Last night however changed all that. Her screams of despair as she sat in the middle of the road were gut wrenching (and I should know, my guts have been wrenched quite a bit this week). No dialogue was needed. They just faded to black. Perfect. Gene Hunt stepping in at the last moment to take the child's hand was also masterful. It subtlely confounded all our expectations and yet also re-affirmed his inherently paternal role.

In short it was a sad, sad, very tragic story and yet we were left feeling somehow uplifted at the end - mostly I suspect because Drake's relationship with her mother had finally reached a plateau of emotional fulfilment. There was an emotional closure of sorts that mirrored Sam Tyler's at the end of series 1 of Life On Mars. This mirroring is the right way to go I feel (we must bring balance to the Force!) and so I was not at all surprised to learn that the BBC have a second series of Ashes To Ashes already lined up for next year. My feeling is that it'll be the final one and after that we'll have to reconcile ourselves to a life without Gene Hunt.

Can you imagine such a thing? Scary.

Funniest moment for me last night (aside from DI Drake driving a huge pink tank over a car) was DC Chris Skelton finally pointing out the obvious to DS Ray Carling: that he bore an uncanny resemblance to most of the gay rights protestors they were currently holding in the cells.

I'm sure the gay rights people were all absolutely horrified...

Police brutality indeed.

Curses

Shock horror no Torchwood review today as I didn’t watch it. Karen and I elected to watch the Curse Of Steptoe instead leaving the dubious joys of Torchwood for Catch Up TV later tonight.

My memories of Steptoe And Son are hazy and incomplete. I wasn’t old enough at the time to fully appreciate its grand humour and its even grander sense of tragedy but some of the classic moments nevertheless impinged on my childhood memory and remain with me still. The scene with Albert sitting in the sink washing himself, his knees up around his ears, trying to find the soap is particularly vivid for some reason.

And I certainly wasn’t old enough to appreciate the impressive acting abilities of Harry H Corbett and it’s only now, looking back at the show, that I can’t help but wonder if it was all a waste of his talents – as fine a sitcom as Steptoe And Son undoubtedly is.

This was certainly the central premise to the BBC’s Curse Of Steptoe. If you missed it, well, you missed out big time. Two of the UK’s finest actors – Jason Isaacs and Phil Davis – made Harry Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell live again. Phil Davis is one of Karen’s favourite actors and Jason Isaacs is one of mine – mostly it has to be said because of his portrayal as Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. Isaacs is something of a chameleon. One of those actors who does little to change his physical appearance in a role and yet manages to look totally unlike himself every single time.

Last night all trace of the cold and haughty, carefully pronounced eloquence of Lucius Malfoy was gone... and was instead replaced by the broad, nasally tones of Harry H Corbett. It was a remarkable transformation.

The story of life behind the Steptoe scenes was a sad one – success tinged with failure or at least the haunting notion of unfulfilled potential; Corbett and Brambell both finding themselves hopelessly typecast and unable to shake off the dour gloom of Steptoe’s yard. All of Corbett’s much vaunted acting prowess thrown away on series after series of what was at the end of the day merely broad comedy for the masses. Gritty social commentary yes but as one of Harry’s theatre chummies intimated, hardly Shakespeare, hardly the pinnacle of what he was truly capable of.

Suddenly the scene with Harold sobbing at the futility of his situation – knowing he’ll never get out of the rag & bone trade and escape the depressing pall of his dad’s yard – takes on an immensely poignant overtone.

As I said, all this passed me by as a kid but now the tropes and the tragic irony all have extra resonance and significance now that I am a man with more than a few shattered and abandoned dreams behind me.

Not that my life is anything like Steptoe’s yard I hasten to add. I still have my goals and a few dreams that I’m climbing towards and I’m lucky that, unlike Harry Corbett / Harold Steptoe, life has thrown more than a few wonderful opportunities my way to enable me to move on and get a leg up every now and then.

And I never ever bathe in the sink.

Honest.

Passionate

I’m greatly impressed with the BBC’s new rendition of The Passion. It looks good – sumptuous, I guess, would be the right word – and the dialogue and acting is really superb. They’ve got the feel of it just right. No surprise to learn then that the production team involved are the same highly skilled souls who brought Rome to our TV screens last year.

The Passion is both a difficult and an easy story for a director to interpret. Easy because the story is so well known and emotive of itself that it already connects with a huge audience (even the irreligious among us must surely appreciate the beauty of the story’s message) and difficult exactly because of the same. The story is so well known it’s almost been done to death. It’s too familiar.

And yet to quote an old saying, the BBC and HBO have managed to inject new wine into an old wine skin and, as a consequence, have come up with a deeply satisfying beverage.

A top class cast, beautiful locations, fantastic costumes (the costume department of the BBC’s Robin Hood please take note) and a skilled writer have all produced what is one of the best adaptations of the Easter story that I’ve seen for a long time.

All the old traditional motifs are there. I’m happily ticking off each event as it occurs – the Easter story is so ingrained since my school days it’s like re-visiting an old friend – but the writers have bulked out these Biblical checkpoints with elements of easily understandable human frailty and manoeuvrings. There is an inevitability about it all – but it is the inevitability of real human weakness rather than the work of two-dimensional cartoon automatons lifted straight out of the sparse text of the Bible.

There’s talk of controversy afoot too – apparently the director has filmed Jesus being crucified in the foetal position stating that there is strong evidence that this is how the Roman’s did it. Personally I think such details are irrelevant but it’ll be interesting to see how it is handled.

It’s a shame that the director didn’t take a few more risks elsewhere though. As good as Joseph Mawle is in the role of Jesus he does nevertheless conform to that deeply trad and probably deeply inaccurate view of Christ as being white with western features and blue eyes. Even I can see that such a notion is (a) unlikely (b) possibly imperialistic and (c) offensive. But then maybe the same argument should be applied here as to the arrangement of the crucifixion? Nobody really knows what Christ looked like so does it matter? Doesn’t the significance of the message outweigh the minutiae of its details?

My only gripe is a small one. James Nesbitt. He’s a brilliant actor and I really like him... but I just can’t cope with his Irish accent coming out of the mouth of Pontius Pilate. It really jars. I’m just waiting for him to splutter, “Bejasus are you Jesus? Would yer be after coming down to the pub fer a pint?”

Not so much Pontius Pilate as Padraig Pilate... and as we all know, Guinness does not travel well.

Ecstasy

Ashes To Ashes made my night in a number of ways last night.

1) It featured XTC’s “Sergeant Rock”. A track that took me straight back to my school days and swapping football stickers in the playground.

2) It featured Killing Joke’s “Turn To Red” – a track from their little known first ever EP, released before they’d even been signed up by Malicious Damage records. You’d have to be a diehard fan to spot it. I am that fan.

3) DS Ray Carling, a man even more homophobic and chauvinistic than Gene Hunt himself, had to infiltrate a gay night club posing as a homosexual to get close to a target. He looks like a Village People reject at the best of times anyway and blended in remarkably well. He even looked to be enjoying himself until sweet nothings were whispered in his ear. His smile dropped faster than a nympho’s knickers at a swinger’s convention and the fists flew wild and hard. He looked like a rabbit caught between the headlights of a fast moving car. Hilarious.

4) Gene Hunt. Ploughing mercilessly through every single euphemism for anal sex and homosexuality known to man with a straight face (well, what else would he have) and his team laughing along with him... until an after footie match celebration of hugging and male bonding at their local boozer was cut abruptly short by DI Drake wondering if they were all closet homosexuals themselves. You sunk my battleship indeed. Anything that blasts homophobia and football clean out of the water is absolutely fine by me...

5) Keeley Hawes just because. But mostly because of the red, off-the-shoulder top that was so flimsy it accentuated every movement and jiggle underneath it. Officer I’ve been a naughty boy and need to be taken into police custody immediately. I may have to be restrained and frisked. Please, please don’t go easy on me...

Sheer ecstasy.

Danse Macabre

A double apology:

Firstly, apologies to those of you whose blogs I have yet to pay a visit to. I’m now halfway through my university essay and once that is out of the way normal service will resume once more. Until then my time for doing pleasurable things seems to be mightily restricted so sorry if I seem to be ignoring people.

And secondly apologies to those of you who view Torchwood as an ugly pimple on the otherwise unblemished face of modern sci-fi... because here’s yet another episode review...

Last night’s story was intriguing. Very intriguing. And not just because the writers had for once inverted their usual modus operandi. Instead of characterization playing second fiddle to gimmicky BBC effects, last night we had the effects relegated to a small sideshow while the emotional development of some of the characters took centre stage.

Maybe some sci-fi puritans will see this as a bad move: yet another sci-fi show degenerating into soft soap and sentimentality but personally I think this is a step in the right direction for Torchwood. It’s hard to care about a team of people who are so ineffably cold and wooden – it’s nice to see some warmth and human emotion being injected into them.

Ironically of course the character who is being humanized the most is Owen – and he’s about as cold and wooden as you’re likely to get on account of the fact that, both technically and medically, he’s dead. Dead as a doornail in fact. Nevertheless he’s walking around and doing his job regardless (I know how he feels). He’s the original dead man walking.

For once though the writers are doing a decent job of investigating the ramification of this “living death”. Owen’s painful attempts to come to terms with the fact that he’s unable to eat, drink, make love, heal, feel pain or indeed feel anything at all is being sensitively handled. The shot of him screaming underwater – unable to drown himself – was suitably discomforting and said far more than any stream of platitudinous dialogue.

Of course the science bit is rather ropey. Owen was unable to give mouth to mouth to Richard Briers (mind you, why would you want to?*) because he didn’t actually breathe air himself. Fine. But then how is it that Owen can talk? Surely you require breath for that? And if Owen has no blood why isn’t he desiccating or at least rustling a bit when he moves?

But I’m picking hairs.

Burn Gorman is playing a blinder. His death has given his character depth and a new dimension. It has undercut his arrogance and aloofness and left a raw, sympathetic human being in his place. If only they can do the same for Captain Jack who’s “keep everybody at arms length” approach (even when he’s bedding them) is fast getting on my tits.

However, it’s difficult to see where they’ll now go with Owen’s character. He has a measure of indestructibility as he cannot feel pain but this is tempered by the fact that he cannot heal. Any breaks or injuries will be permanent. One strike and he’s out. A broken doll with a mind (hey, back into Stephen Hawking territory).

Maybe Owen ought to jump ship and join another Captain Jack who has had experience of dealing with the living dead? Head off to sunnier climes where he can ogle Kiera Knightly struggling to fill a corset and not worry that his death-bed BO is putting off his work colleagues as they nibble upon their M&S sandwiches...?

I can just see Owen weighing anchor on the Black Pearl...


*OK. OK. Maybe he's worth saving because of Roobarb & Custard... but that's all.

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?

The Great Hunt

Don’t get me wrong, the previous episodes of Ashes To Ashes have all been brilliant but something about last night’s felt like they’d upped the ante to a new level. The dialogue was cracking and included some fantastic jokes (Gene Hunt: how many birds does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: two. One to run around screaming “What do I do? What do I do?” and the other one to shag the electrician.) The storyline was dark, dense and dynamically directed. The acting, as ever I have to say, was superb.

Definitely the best episode so far.

The relationship between Hunt and Drake is developing nicely and I like the fact the writer’s are not merely confining it to a simple will-they-won’t-they sexual stand off. Certainly the work based spats and the confrontational dialogue all hint at underlying sexual tension – and Hunt was certainly put to the test last night when, trapped in a sealed room, DI Drake stripped down to her red basque as the internal temperature soared. Standard police issue I assure you (the basque that is, not Hunt’s reaction). But in terms of physical expression Hunt’s feelings towards Drake appear to have an undeniably paternal edge. This is also backed up by Drake’s responses – teasing, simpering, pouting but ultimately deferential and seeking comfort. The naughty girl playing on her father’s affections. Knowledge that her parents are about to be killed by a car bomb – hence she grew up without a mother and a father – could also be feeding into Drake’s emotional responses towards Hunt of course but, whatever the reason, Hunt is unwittingly assuming a parental role in their stead.

The parent issue is, of course, one we’ve seen in the show’s previous incarnation – Life On Mars. There Sam Tyler returned to the 1970’s, a few weeks before his father mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again. Naturally the loss of a parent would impinge upon a child’s psyche hugely and maybe this provides the answer to why Tyler and Drake end up in their respective time periods. Who knows? But it does lend the psychology of the show a pleasing symmetry and consistency.

What is different about the two shows however is the ethos that drives the respective heroes. Unlike Sam Tyler DI Drake is very much “sexed up”. She’s flirty, knows how to use her looks and her physicality and is more than happy to do so – she’s already bedded a “Thatcherite wanker” in a previous episode – and seems unable to stop herself playing the breathy, slightly giggly Marilyn Monroe character around the boys in the office. Tyler on the other hand spent the whole two series’ of Life On Mars not getting into WPC Cartright’s knickers when it was clearly plain that he dearly wanted to. The poor boy lived like a monk. Drake on the other hand is living like a party girl and is up for absolutely everything.

And why the hell not? Drake after all represents the freedom and liberation of the modern woman which, while not being all that it should be in 2008, is still a lot better than it was in the 1980s. She’s intelligent, impulsive, intuitive, professional and sexual all at the same time. The same as her male colleagues in fact – so equality as near as damn it – though given the escapades of DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton we could possibly scrub intelligence from the male version of the list. Though to be fair, Carling and Skelton are in the show essentially to provide light relief.

The sexism of the boys aside it was interesting to see Drake’s 2008 behaviour juxtaposed with the women’s libbers of the 1980s. In comparison to Drake they were almost in denial of their own sexuality yet at the same time prepared to use it as a clumsy weapon to get what they wanted from men – one of them used sex to get someone to spy for them. Of course it ended badly – the guy wanted more and became aggressive; he attempted rape and was killed in the ensuing struggle. The question is though: is Drake’s behaviour actually any more sophisticated or worthy of celebration?

The easy answer is yes. She’s not using sex as a bartering device but as pleasure for herself in its own right. But the issue is nevertheless complicated. The lines are blurred. Is Drake fighting the cause for all women or is she merely colluding with the male dominated world she now finds herself immersed in to get what she wants – to survive, to get back home to her daughter? Is she merely fighting for herself rather than for any cause at all? Ultimately though all of this is meant to be inside Drake’s head and merely reflects her own internal conflicts. But as we all know, microcosms can often be useful mirrors to the bigger and badder macrocosms that contain them...

The easy answer therefore is that there is no easy answer. And that’s fine by me.

I look forward to seeing the next stage of Drake’s journey unfold next week.

Lily The Pink

Thanks to the televisual smorgasbord that is Catch-Up TV, Karen and I happened to watch Lily Allen & Friends yesterday. We had a spare half hour to fill and just thought what the hell (we live right on the edge, we do).

I was pleasantly surprised which was a shock given that my first point of reference for this type of programme was the God-awful Charlotte Church Show. But whereas the latter was genuinely sloppy, haphazard and anarchic in a totally uncool and crap way, LA & Friends was contrived to be anarchic and shoddy in a very polished, carefully timed and sharply edited way... the result was a show that was far tighter than Charlotte Church’s g-string could ever hope to be.

Now there’s a turn up for the books. The Beeb down and cool with the kids while Channel 4 dances in the background like an embarrassing, piss stained uncle at a family wedding.

But this is by the by. LA & Friends works only because Lily Allen is engaging, socially adept, un-phased by fame and happy to just be herself. I always got the impression that the Charlotte Church “perceived persona” was constantly in the way of the real Charlotte Church to the point where it rugby tackled her to the ground every time she got a clear shot at a touchdown. Charlotte was awkward, slow to respond to cues from her guests and seemed unable to engage with anyone. The result was a flat, uncomfortable show with a huge identity crisis. Charlotte just didn’t know what she wanted to be and her show only amplified her confusion – Singer? Interviewer? Comedienne? Porn star? Welsh stereotype? She didn’t know and neither did we.

Lily Allen on the other hand is refreshingly just Lily Allen. And her show does exactly what it says on the tin.

My boy, Ben, fancies Lily something chronic and Karen and I both approve. As Karen says, Lily is nice... but not too nice; she’s a bit naughty too. Ideal girlfriend material... though thankfully her admission that she was caught giving head to a boy at school when she was 14 seemed to completely pass our 6 year old by as he busily played with his Lego Bionicles on the floor...

Phew.

The only thing I didn’t like was the premise behind the “& Friends”. This wasn’t a Bruce Forsythe-esque reference to Lily’s showbiz pals but to the audience members themselves. They were all people who’d signed up to Lily’s web page on the BBC site and become her “friend” in the same way that everyone under 15 these days has 547 friends they’ve never actually met / shared an exchange with on their Facebook account. Really the show should be called Lily Allen & Stalkers.

Basically these Lily fans earned their place in the show’s audience pit by submitting embarrassing (probably apocryphal) anecdotes about themselves. You know the type of thing: “please tell us something really zany / rude about yourself for a chance to appear on the show...”

Hence Lily was able to spotlight one lady who’d given her BF a BJ to settle a £500 debt and a man who’d broken his thumb in a rushed masturbatory session that was interrupted by his GF coming home from work too early.

Hardly people you’d like to have as friends – let along want to shake hands with... I mean, can you imagine? Urgh.

There is something ineffably unhealthy about people who are so desperate to get on TV that they’ll happily admit to things on camera that would normally get them lampooned out of their local boozer back home in Nowhereville.

I wouldn’t want them anywhere near my Facebook page... (or my face for that matter).

My advice to Lily is simple: drop the “friends” – you don’t need them.

It’s better to be Lily No-Mates than Lily Nob-Mates.

Snooker Loopy Nuts

I’m loving Ashes To Ashes.

I’m loving the music – Visage, OMD, Vangelis – though I’m a little perturbed by how many of these quintessential eighties tracks I still play regularly on my MP3 player. Stuck in a time warp? Who me? (Have I gone back in time? Am I in a coma? Am I insane? Etc, etc...)

I’m loving Gene Hunt’s interrogation techniques – pin your chosen scrote down across a snooker table, spread his legs, line up your cue and slam the pink into the top corner pocket.

Pot black indeed.

I’m loving the clothes and the make-up – white jackets, red and black colour combos, hair swept back on one side, Siouxsie Sioux eyeliner.

But most of all I’m loving Keeley Hawes as DI Drake.

The woman seems to be constantly drunk. Not that she’s a hard ligging boozer or anything; she’s just totally intoxicated by her circumstances...

Unlike Sam Tyler who experienced his time in the 1970’s as a bad trip – all paranoia, angst and the fear – Drake is living her time in the 1980’s as a lucid dream. Her ethos seems to be, as this is all happening inside my head I can do whatever the hell I like.

The result is interesting. It gives her character a tragic-positive spin as she flirts not just with those around her but also with the entire eighties construct that her mind has created whilst retaining an awareness of how badly some of the events she is now reliving actually turn out.

It gives the show a far lighter touch while at the same time allowing it to probe deeply into the blacknesses that lurk on the edges of Drake’s psyche – the death of her cold, calculating, career minded mother for one thing. Drake’s childhood was obviously very dark and I think a few more ghosts are going to come out of the woodwork before the series ends to challenge her glib responses to her predicament.

Yes, in relation to Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, is undoubtedly formulaic but to my mind it’s a formula that works. Ashes To Ashes is essentially a mirror to Life On Mars – its missing, long lost twin – with Gene Hunt acting as the bridge between the two. DI Drake is the yang to Sam Tyler’s Yin. The light to his dark. The female aspect to his male.

Quite where Gene Hunt fits into this faux Eastern philosophy I don’t know.

I’m just hoping that DI Drake has the good sense not to challenge him to a game of bar billiards after work...

A Streetlamp Sputters

It’s probably naught but delusion and arrogance on my part but I am convinced that the writers of Torchwood are paying attention to me.

Can it only be last week that I called for a nice, sensitive soul mate for Toshiko – somebody who would revitalize and titillate her feng shui, respond to her dazzling intellect and persuade her to wear lower cut tops and mini skirts?

Ok. So Adam ‘the memory fiend’ was hardly nice or sensitive (though convincing Ianto that he was a serial rapist and murderer possibly makes him a comedian) but he did deliver on the lower cut tops and the shorter skirts. For this alone he has my undying thanks.

The Radio Times blurb for this episode promised that Toshiko would be transformed into a “sexually voracious” vamp.

Oh good-oh!

But what did we get? A tiny bit of spooning on the bed and a bit of moist lipped pouting. Oh and Toshiko’s oft hidden bosom thrust provocatively into Owen’s face. That’s hardly what I call “sexually voracious”.

But I suppose this is the BBC. So what did I expect?

Hence I was a bit disappointed on that score. Sigh... two paces forward and one pace back, etc... but a plunging neckline is still better than a smack in the kisser with a dead alien blowfish.

As for the story. At last! Some decent sci-fi! I was gobsmacked. The script was good, the acting top notch and the plot was actually really well handled and emotive. And they packed an awful lot into one hour.

Most of all though, I felt actual sympathy for all the characters. This is a Torchwood first. A character driven storyline rather than one reliant on BBC standard special effects and second rate Americanisms! Wow! Torchwood in top-notch British drama shock!

Karen and I watched the entire episode in silence and when it was over just turned to each other and said, “That was good.”

Stuff the Baftas, that’s an accolade worth having.

A Nice Drop Of Bolly

Ashes To Ashes didn’t disappoint. Not at all.

If anything it hit the ground running with its shoulder pads glistening in the eighties sunshine. Not unlike Keeley Hawes’ character, DI Drake, in fact. She was sussed, analytical, self aware and responded with breathtaking intelligence to her predicament.

She was also as foxy as hell. As one of Gene Hunt’s sidekicks, Ray Carling, so eloquently put it: she’s got an amazing pair of puppies.

To be fair this comment was provoked somewhat by the fact she’d made her grand entrance into 1981 dressed as a high class hooker. A sure-fire way to grab everyone’s attention. I must admit I found myself wondering if this guise was a cheeky play on Keeley’s name – Keeley Hawes.

Geddit?

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Anyway, I admit I had reservations regarding Ashes To Ashes. Life On Mars was such an amazing show that I couldn’t help but feel that any spin-off would be at best second rate and a cheap, easy-write tie-in to boot. So it was really great to discern that Ashes To Ashes has enough strength and power of its own to stand on its own two feet and give Life On Mars a bloody good run for its money. There’s a different feel and look to the show – not just because of the eighties mis-en-scene – but also embedded in the writing itself. The style is lighter and more humorous though without any loss of depth. The dialogue is sharp and slick. The action has substituted a little of the stodgy 70’s grit with an injection of eighties gloss and glitter. And the music... ah the music is wonderful. This was my era. It feels like coming home.

Just hearing The Passions’ I’m In Love With A German Film Star sent shivers down my spine. Dedicated readers of this blog will know how much I adore this track...

Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt is brilliant. Brooding, uncool yet cool, flippant, sexist, bullish and the most quotable cop on TV since, well, since John Thaw in The Sweeney. But there’s a softer side to him now too. He’s more aware of himself. Aware of the constraints that his police force now operate under. There’s a caring side to balance out the tit-grabbing misogynist – the scene where he puts a blanket over the sleeping Drake was a nice touch.

The references to Sam Tyler from Life On Mars are intriguing too and up the mystique. Apparently after 7 years with Hunt’s team he died... but no body was ever found. This leaves us to speculate pleasurably on his whereabouts – has he died, passed over, moved on to somewhere else? Who knows? It’s just nice to wonder.

Mostly though Ashes To Ashes works so well and so boldly because of Keeley Hawes’ canny portrayal of DI Drake. She’s not as confused or as lost as Sam. She’s sussed. She’s quick and intelligent. Razor sharp in fact. She knows exactly where she is and has some idea of what she needs to do to get herself out of it. Her continual wry analysis of her predicament, far from lumbering us with a tedious, unnecessary narrative, actually lends the show a witty, incisive underpinning. It also adds a fabulous fire and panache to her interactions with the dour Gene Hunt (who is self aware and wry in a different way).

In fact the relationship between Drake and Hunt is the real star of the show. Mutual attraction and revulsion is equal measure. Sparks and spit flying with every word and look. Marvellous. Full of potential and great to watch. I’m not sure who is going to hit who first.

Bliss.

I’ve a feeling that the further adventure of Gene Hunt and “Bollinger Knickers” are going to become essential viewing over the next few weeks. I’m breaking out the shoulder pads already...

Meat Feast

I wasn’t going to write about Torchwood today, saving myself instead for the Gene Hunt-esque glories of Ashes To Ashes tonight but last night’s episode just sparked off far too many thoughts for me to leave it alone.

Firstly, the plot revolved around a huge alien that some nasty men were carving up alive as a source of cheap meat. No matter how much they sliced off, the thing just kept regenerating and growing bigger and bigger.

Now that’s what I call a real cash cow.

Anyway the alien looked like a cross between a huge meatloaf with eyes and a giant sock puppet from Playschool circa 1975. I half expected it to have coat button eyes. Even more curious, Captain Jack seemed to empathise with it in a closed-eyes, hands held out, hippy kind of way.

I’m not sure what the writer’s were trying to suggest with Jack’s latent ability to identify with a humungous piece of meat but hey...

Also the entire Torchwood team ended up in the back of a meat van (curiously un-refrigerated) at one point. Again, I found myself wondering if this was at all significant or symbolic...

And Gwen.

Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. Bless her freckly gap-toothed cutie-pie face. She did a lot of impassioned reasoning with her boyfriend, Rhys, last night. Lots of fists clenched tightly and slapped rhythmically against her admittedly impressive bosom.

It reminded me of someone and it took me until the end of the episode before I finally twigged who it was.

Bonnie Tyler.

I’m not joking. Acquire a clip of Gwen with her little fists hammering against her own chest furniture and stick “It’s A Heartache” behind it and I swear to God you will not be able to discern the difference between the pair of them. Gwen and Bonnie that is.

And finally... Ianto is doing his best to turn into Patrick Macnee and Tosh is chasing Owen. No no no to the latter. Owen is patently wrong for Tosh. She needs a sensitive soul who can revitalize and titillate her feng shui, respond to her dazzling intellect and persuade her to wear lower cut tops and mini skirts.

Oh and possibly thigh-length boots (stiletto heels optional).

Owen is too rough and, dare I say it, too tiresomely chauvinistic. And he has a mouth like Morph from Take Hart. Hardly suitable boyfriend material for a delicate Asian wallflower.

Other than that did I enjoy it, I hear you ask...

Curiously yes. Oddly emotive and decently weighty.

One big annoyance though: Gwen’s boyfriend, Rhys. What is she doing with him? The guy is a buffoon. A plonker of the first order. He sees an alien himself but then refuses to believe Gwen when she reveals that she sees them on a daily basis. Gah! The man is a huge, lumbering, brain-stem free, meat-head.

The nasty men should have been carving him up instead...

Another slice, anyone?

Ketchup

This is going to be a very messy post I’m afraid.

I seem to have been all over the place of late, constantly trying to catch up on my life and not at all succeeding. I owe far too many people emails. I have little projects around the house which I’m no nearer to completing than I was over the Christmas break. My novel, although not at all falling by the wayside, is languishing slightly under the cold shoulder of relative neglect... I’m still plugging away at it but my progress has been slow over the last few weeks. I just haven’t been able to spend enough time getting back into it after the New Year hiatus. Not that it’s doing too badly: 102,100 words and counting... just counting extremely slowly.

I can’t deny it; my energy and inspiration levels have dropped significantly since the New Year.

I’m sure it’s just a seasonal thing but I do find under achievement very frustrating... even though the old plate is actually pretty full at the moment. Karen’s mum is still in hospital though Karen hasn’t visited her for a week or two due to illness – she and Tom and myself have all been afflicted with the post-Christmas lurgy that’s been doing the rounds. Plus Tom is having periodic bouts of teething and is currently recovering from the mother of all nappy rashes. None of which is conducive to sticking a baby into a car seat for 4 hours to drive up and down the country to visit someone who doesn’t even appreciate it.

Sorry. I was going to give the anger thing a rest.

University continues well though, even there, I can tell that I’m slowly reaching the end of my tether. Another 12 months and it’ll all be over and I’ll be indescribably glad. The constant outlay of money and energy is wearing me thin. Doing a part-time degree has been great in many respects – I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it otherwise – but 10 years slogging back and forth is way, way too much. I’m happy to commit to long-hauls but even I have a limit.

The web site business also continues apace. A constant background hum of extra work and toil sloshed onto my plate. It’s time consuming, tiring and frequently tedious but it does bring in much needed extra money. And God knows I need it – I’ve got Karen’s birthday fast approaching this month plus Valentine’s Day on top. My budget is as shot as a suicide bomber in Dimona. Sorry. Bad taste. But topical. And really I’m finding that difficult at the moment.

And TV at the moment – usually my hardy standby in terms of blog-worthy material – is ineffably flat. Sure there’s Torchwood and there’s Lark Rise To Cranford. And Ashes To Ashes starts this week... but it’s not impinging on me like it used to. I have no real enthusiasm for new stuff at the moment and it’s frightening. About the only thing that’s excited Karen and me with regards the telly is working out how to use the Catch Up TV feature on our Virgin box. But this just means we’re watching “old” stuff out of sync with the rest of the country. Lost in our own private TV schedule.

All in all I feel like some kind of weird psychological hibernation process is occurring in my brain. Like I’m not fully engaging with the world around me. Like I’m a record being played at the wrong speed. Mind you as long as it’s not Whitesnake I really shouldn’t complain too much.

Mainly though I’m just annoyed with myself. Annoyed because on the whole I have very little to complain about so why am I so full of moans? Other people are having a much rougher time. I’m just feeling a bit blurgh. And that hardly makes for a decent blog post.

A Load Of Tosh

Actually, despite the title, this is going to be a favourable review of last night’s episode of Torchwood...

At last we were presented with a story that had depth, emotional content and decent social commentary. It also made far better use of Toshiko than her usual sidelined role of pretty-but-not-pretty-enough-Asian-geek-girl-in-the-background.

I have to confess that Toshiko has grown on me. Out of the all Torchwoodies she’s my favourite by far. Gwen I’m still ambivalent about: nice hair, nice eyes, but annoying trailer park attitude. Toshiko is quietly intelligent and the most morally upright member of the team.

And yes, she’s another brunette but that has no bearing on my opinion at all. Honestly.

Anyway yesterday’s episode revolved around a shell-shocked soldier removed from 1918 and cryogenically frozen by Torchwood in order for him to be reinserted back into his own time and so close up an immense rift in time that was forecast to destroy the world in 2008.

But let’s not get bogged down with the science.

This poor guy had been awoken / thawed out once a year since 1918 (and then refrozen) to give him a breath of fresh air, a walk in the park and to make sure that “everything still worked”.

I have to say that Toshiko was very thorough in checking that all his parts were still in working order. Having been his guardian on his previous “awake days” she’d fallen head over heels in love with him...

Geez, but Tosh needs to get out more! 4 dates in 4 years and she’s smitten?!? I’m not saying she’s easy but...

Sorry, ignore my ingrained and in-growing cynicism. It was actually a very touching relationship between the two of them, aided somewhat by Toshiko’s inherent shyness and social ineptitude and the young soldier, Tommy’s, fragile and wonder-filled state at being removed from the conflict of WWI and being allowed glimpses of the world that slowly formed in its aftermath.

And the fact he called Tosh a “daft lass”.

Hey, you may scoff but it got Tosh into bed and young Tommy showed what he was made of by going over the top with his bayonet fixed. Or something like that.

The clash between 1918 and the present also allowed the writer’s to critique the modern world – nothing too astounding or earth shattering here and nothing that hasn’t been done before but it was all expressed rather nicely and personably. As Tommy says: they fought the war to end all wars and then 3 weeks later (from his perspective) there was another one. What was the point of it all?

Cue sad and weary bout of naval gazing.

Of course it had to end. Badly for Tommy and Tosh but well for the rest of us. Tommy had to go back to 1918 when the time rift threatened to pull reality and the whole dang future down into the pan... unfortunately, according to the records from 1918 it was plain that Tommy’s condition, like so many struck down with shell-shock at the time, was hardly met with kindness and understanding by the army top brass. A few weeks after his discharge from hospital he was sent back to the front, suffered a relapse and was summarily executed for cowardice.

Thank you for saving the world and any last requests?

Bang bang.

Hey but at least he’d got a chance to smoke a last cigarette post coitus with Tosh.

That’s not too bad a way to go and in terms of the “big push”... at least the earth moved for them both.

The Sunday Bodice

Sunday evenings have become bodice and bonnet night in our house.

The Beeb’s recent costume dramas – Cranford and Lark Rise To Candleford – have gently melded into one quietly glorious bosomy soap that appears to be set in some hazy non-specific Victorian period where smallpox, rickets and plaguey prostitution are virtually unheard of.

At least they don’t appear to have touched the lives of the cloth-capped and lace-collared villagers who play out their small, Hardy-esque existences in the wonderfully constructed BBC sets purely for our televisual entertainment... and never for our ill humour.

If the villagers had television sets I guarantee they’d all be tuned into Songs Of Praise.

And yet, for all there is a distinct lack of engorged bodices being pantingly ripped open Andrew Davies style, the writers have still managed to craft dramas that are both engaging and absorbing.

And feature Julia Sawalha.

As I’ve mentioned before, Julia – much favoured British actress of this ‘ere blog – seems to have cornered the market for chaste, wryly laced up dramas where the bodice’s are not so much ripped open as securely fastened for most of the time with the slightly pouty suggestion that they might be loosened a little bit later but only when the cameras are switched off or you’ve switched to another TV channel...

Cue raised eyebrow, a quirky smile and a slight flash of wrist and that’s about as risqué as Julia gets...

And I’m loving it.

In Lark Rise To Candleford the sexuality is repressed and understated. Its mouth has been washed out with lye soap and stuffed into clothes so starchy the collars could support the Severn Bridge without buckling. Looks and smiles are exchanged in substitution for bodily fluids. A blush and a stammer are acts of wanton desire and impropriety. The sex lies in what isn’t being said between the parties.

Not everybody’s cup of tea I grant you but much as I’d like to see Julia jiggling herself out of the enviable confines of her corset I also recognize that I’d be disappointed in her if she did. Does this make me a hypocrite of some kind? Am I impaled on the horn of a dilemma so old, boring and completely trad that feminists themselves no longer acknowledge it with anything more than a slight sigh and flinty eyes rolled skyward?

The old angel / whore dichotomy?

Who knows?

All I know is that Julia looks damned fine in a corset and damned fine out of one.

As dichotomies go, it’s one (two?) I can quite happily live with for a few Sunday’s more.

Lark rise indeed.

Jacking Off

The new series of Torchwood lit the blue touch-paper last night and flared up for another run on the BBC.

Straight away we were presented with a rather well mannered, well spoken, red blowfish driving a snazzy sports car around the windy streets of Cardiff. He didn’t exceed the speed limit, used the brake in plenty of time and seemed intent on following the Highway Code. He was even urbane enough to let an old lady cross the road in front of him. All this before he shot some poor innocent home owner in the gut and taunted the Torchwood crew members for their namby-pamby prevarication. The Torchwood team admittedly looked at a loss as to how to react without their AWOL leader, Captain Jack Sparrow, sorry, Captain Jack Harkness around to tell them what to do... But all was not lost. Suddenly Jack reappeared and shot the blowfish in the head in a scene reminiscent of The Fifth Element. “So, does anybody else want to negotiate?”

Welcome to series 2 of Torchwood.

A rather uncomplicated plot then unfolded involving Captain John, one of Jack’s old flames, played by whatsisface who played Spike from Buffy looking for some radio-active canisters inexplicably secreted around various Cardiff locations... a plot that was rather silly and shallow but was nonetheless rather entertaining. It served no other purpose than to re-introduce or, perhaps, try to reinvent the Torchwood regulars... attempts are being made I believe to render them “more likeable”. It’s early days yet to say if that is working or not but the major players are all interestingly interconnected in a bubbling web of sexual tension, lust, sarcasm and camaraderie that is certainly full of potential and could bode well for future episodes.

Basically Torchwood is Doctor Who with lashings of sex and attitude. The only members of the team who seem to buck this trend are Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato... the former is far too wet and limp to be a believable love interest for Captain Jack H and Toshiko is well, Velma from Scooby-Doo.

However, I like Toshiko and am hoping the writers will develop her character further in this second outing of the show and give it a bit more of an edge. The potential is certainly there given her brief lesbian liaison in Series 1...

And then there’s Gwen. It’s taken me a long time to make my mind up about Gwen. It’s the annoying voice and the gap-tooth. Is she a fox or isn’t she? She’s got va-va-voom in spades but there’s something of the fishwife about her too. Or should I say “tidy wife”? The will-they-won’t-they tension between her and Jack is more annoying than an entertaining tease. I wish they’d just get on with it and move on. It’s hardly of the same calibre as Mulder and Scully. It doesn’t warrant this long, contrived abstemious delay. Get ‘em out, whop ‘em about and then show us some more aliens.

That would be a show.

But much as I enjoy this tour of sexed up sci-fi, shouldn’t there be more to Torchwood than just adult content? Shouldn’t there be more to it than all this inter-species spooning and inter-office bed-hopping? Doesn’t there need to be?

Good sci-fi needs to press a few intellectual buttons among the hi-tech barrage of flashy effects and glistening cleavage. Otherwise it runs the risk of being all gimmick and no content. And that is bad.

Torchwood has potential. It has legs. But it needs to think about the direction it’s walking towards. Sex and violence – shallow hooks as they are – are admittedly nearly always behind a great story. But there needs to be depth too. There needs to be philosophy and a message. There needs to be content.

After all, isn’t great sex supposed to originate in the mind?

Clink

I like Louis Theroux. I like the way he masks determined confrontationalism and gritty balls of steel beneath a calm, genteel, ultra polite, very British veneer. I suspect it’s this mask of nervous warmth and humanity (though I have no doubt that it’s more than skin deep) that allows Louis to attain a proximity to the kind of people and situation that normally most of us would run a mile from.

Last night’s documentary saw Louis spending time within the formidable walls of San Quentin jail and getting to know some of the many in-mates. Although Louis’ approach with people seems to conjure up its own all inclusive comfort zone his interviews with the prisoners were nevertheless frequently on-the-edge-of-the-seat viewing. Both the living conditions of the in-mates and their candidness about their reasons for being incarcerated were sharply discomforting to say the least. But more than that: their very humanity – their very normalcy – was unsettling. Their honesty and good humoured acceptance of their fate (at least to the cameras) was even more so. It felt incongruous. I guess deep down we want them to be monsters. We want them to be visibly marked and set apart from the rest of us. To show evidence of a corrupted gene pool, some sign that they are, against the odds, a slightly different species.

We certainly don’t want to recognize certain of our own traits in a person who is serving 551 years for house robbery and torture... This particular lifer termed his crimes as “home invasion”. A far gentler epithet yet with far more disturbing and unsettling connotations... Louis questioned him closely about his criminal activities. It was interesting to watch Louis’ urbanity and almost effeminate politeness peeling away the steely body armour of machismo and de-sensitivity. I guess it worked because there was an uneasy respect maintained by and between both parties. And more importantly Louis didn’t let any of his reactions betray any kind of judgment about what he was hearing. No mean feat when the lifer casually described torturing his victims to reveal the whereabouts of their valuables, half drowning people in their own hot-tubs and using a pistol to abuse his victims sexually... this from a man who then calmly accepted he would spend the rest of his natural life in prison without a trace of anger or frustration twitching at the edge of his benign smile.

Eerie.

But I guess at the heart of the documentary was the simple fact that no matter what circumstance you throw people into they will “make do”. They will seek out and pursue some sort of life. They will make the best of it. They will take their comforts where they find them. Hence, married ex-Nazis forming intimate relationships with Jewish homosexuals, long haired rock star wannabes becoming the lovers of pre-op transsexuals... Although Louis could see the ironies his gentle illuminations were blanked by all the prisoners involved. It was weird to see such an optimistic openness and also such a fearful, self-denying closedness operating in tandem in their minds.

It would be too easy to dismiss life in prison as merely an alternate reality to life outside it. Certainly life in prison is extreme and people in extremis react in extreme ways... but I don’t think life in prison is that far removed from ours own. In a lot of respects it’s almost the same – just with less baggage; with more stripped down, more rarefied choices. In terms of the need for intimacy and relationships, the need of hierarchies, rules and rites of passage life remains the same. Yes it’s harsh. But isn’t life in the outside world too? A lot of the comforts are obviously filtered out. But a lot of the heavy responsibilities and burdens are gone too.

As Mr Home Invasion pointed out: he doesn’t have to worry about getting a job. He doesn’t have to worry about keeping a roof over his head. He’s going to be “taken care of” until the day he dies.

Hell, what are we all waiting for? Let’s sign up to the Hotel California!

Until you see the cells where these men spend every day, every week barring 2 hours in the recreation yard. They can’t have been no more than 4 feet across. You could almost smell the constant pall of sweat and testosterone. The noise was constant – shouts, catcalls, whoops, nasty laughter. It sounded like a madhouse. The food was basic and could hardly be described as a comfort. There is the constant threat of being beaten, stabbed, or raped. To avoid these scenarios there is the constant “invitation” to join any number of gangs who’ll offer to protect you against such ends provided you do a little work for them in return... beating, stabbing or raping people who have happened to find themselves on their hit-lists... Dog eat dog and dog returning to its vomit ad infinitum.

If prison isn’t an alternate reality but merely mirrors the society that has a need for the prison what does that say about our world? Do we measure the progress of our civilization by the best it produces or the worst?

Louis didn’t have the answers. At the end of the day that isn’t his shtick. He asked his personal questions, remained affable in the face of constant, potential danger and then walked out of San Quentin jail when his stint was done with a considerably lighter tread than when he went in. And I for one was glad to be leaving with him.

Suddenly I was glad that I have a job to be worried about. That I have to constantly fight to keep a roof over my head. That there isn’t an institution taking care of me until the day I die – just me, myself and mine.

True freedom comes by accepting the weightiest responsibilities that life throws at you... not by shirking them and taking the easy or the fast way out...

Darlin' you give love a bad name...

** Spoiler warning!! **

Shock ending to the BBC's Robin Hood last night.

Dirty Git of Gisbourne killed Maidenly Marian! And after I'd spent hours on-line accumulating loads of pictures of the gorgeous Lucy Griffiths purely to illustrate my throbbing reviews of the show!

The dirty rotter!

Mind you, he'd been pushed to the limit poor lad. Marian, I must admit, had become something of a prick-tease over the recent weeks:

First she promised to marry Robin. Then she pretended to give Gisbourne the green light, abusing his leathery northern affections to wheedle out various advantages for Robin and his mucky men. Then she regularly snuck out from the castle to feed the poor, right the occasional wrong and spoon Robin like a good 'un. Then Gisbourne caught her, covered up her illicit activities to save her from the wrath of the Sheriff and out of the goodness of his own heart revealed that he was embroiled in a plot (with the Sheriff) to kill good King Richard. Marian naturally begged Guy to to do the decent thing - i.e. not kill good King Richard - and promised that if he thus came good she would reward him by doing the indecent thing and... er... let him come good in another way...

And then the naughty girl marries Robin Hood on the spur of the moment whilst tied to a wooden stake out in the middle of the Arabian desert. Make up your bloody mind girl!

And then she makes the mistake of rubbing it into Gisbourne's face in the last few minutes of the episode. Doh! That's just asking for trouble, that is.

The inevitable happened. The poor man snapped. You could see it in his black leather trench coat. It flapped slightly more stiffly than usual and then he shoved his dirty great sword right up and through Marian's rather saucily curved belly.

I'm sure I don't have to belabour the link between swords and the male reproductive organ...

Anyway, that's twice Gisbourne has stabbed Marian now. Feeling a mite frustrated are we, Guy?

As for Marian, she must be wondering what the hell she did wrong. I mean she does everything to get laid and instead gets laid low with a ruddy steel blade. Forever. One last snog with Robin and she pops her Laura Ashley clogs to flit up to the great Sherwood Forest in the sky.

Gone forever.

The best thing in the entire show written out.

My motivation to watch the show has lessened considerably. And to make it even worse they even married Djaq off to Will Scarlett and the pair decided to settle down to a life of domestic bliss (?) in the Holy Land.

All the eye candy for the boys wiped out in one fell swoop.

Are the writer's insane?

Ho hum. I guess Lucy Griffiths wanted to move onto bigger, more serious, more historically accurate things... and I for one don't blame her. I wish her well and would like to add that she can wear any of her incongruous, anachronistic costumes round my way any time...

I promise to be very careful where I stash my sword.

Unwrapped

The bin men have literally just hauled off the six huge bag loads of rubbish produced by myself and my family this Christmas. As their filthy dustcart revved off into the distance I felt a pang or two of regret... regret that Christmas is over again for another year and regret at having produced so much waste. The amount of extraneous packaging was frightening, most of it from the kid's toys - huge folded up and moulded pieces of industrial sized cardboard which defied any attempt to flatpack them into as small a shape as possible for easy disposal.

I also have to say that, despite my initial smugness at avoiding the High Street crowds this year by shopping entirely on-line, the negative of this has been loads and loads of extra cardboard packaging, polystyrene and padding hanging about the house which has only added to our Christmas carbon footprint.

Put it this way: I nearly entitled this post "Return Of The Sasquatch".

Refuse gripes aside I must admit Christmas was highly enjoyable - it being Tom's first only added to the specialness of it all. Not that Tom was particularly impressed - or even interested - in any of the presents we'd bought for him, preferring instead the occasional bottle of milk...

However, for the rest of us, there were some cool presents flying around this year that put smiles on all our faces. Among the pile of goodies I lavished on Karen was the Bladerunner 5 disc boxed set, a copy of Newman & Baddiel's History Today, an ocean of DVDS and books and some richly gorgeous jewellery. Ben had a Transformer voice mask (oh how we regret buying that...), a Lego remote control car and his own MP3 player.

Myself? I found myself presented with an ION USB turntable so that I can transfer my immense vinyl record collection to MP3 format, a Lego AT-AT Walker (Star Wars fans will understand the coolness of this) that actually walks (!) and some fab DVDS - Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix, Rome Season 2 and 300 to name but a few. In fact coupled with the stash of DVDs I bought Karen we've now got so many movies to watch we could actually cancel our subscription to cable TV and still have stuff to watch right up to mid April.

Hmm. You know, that's not a bad idea... especially given how dire Christmas telly was this year. Doctor Who was a major disappointment. So much so I can't motivate myself to even write about it. Ballet Shoes was enjoyable and nice to see Emma Watson on TV spreading her acting wings. And Extras last night was very enjoyable. I actually found myself getting quite teary eyed towards the end. I guess I've still got too much Christmas sentimentality flowing around my blood stream.

Talking of which... I got some whisky for Christmas too and it's now baying for my company. Cheers one and all!

Christmas Tag

Per.pri has tagged me for Christmas and so it is with festive joy that I respond and also tag a few of my other blog buddies in return to keep the tag going. Tris, Ally, Amanda, Laura and OC – consider yourselves tagged for Christmas; I look forward to reading your answers.

"When people say 'Christmas' you immediately think..."

Nativity and the school Christmas play. For some reason I have very strong memories of being at school and enjoying the anticipation of Christmas… the hours spent in the playground looking up at the cold grey skies and hoping that I’ll be getting the present that I’ve most set my heart upon (which tended to be Lego when I was a boy and still is Lego now if I’m honest). It also makes me remember the excitement of spending Christmas Day and Boxing Day with all the family at my grandparent’s house and the constant buzz of visitors and neighbours popping in. It also, rather annoyingly, makes me think of Slade. And Noel Edmunds. Urgh.

"Favourite Christmas memory..."

My favourite Christmas memory is wanting a Lego spaceship one year. It was way too much money for my parents to afford so we did a deal whereby they’d give me twenty pounds for it as my Christmas present and then I could put whatever other Christmas money I received towards buying it afterwards. I have to say that the thought of just getting money for Christmas was hard to get excited about and I recall writing off Christmas that year with a sad shrug. When it came time to receive the money I was told to close my eyes and hold out my hand. Sure enough I felt the feather touch of paper being placed on my palm but when I looked it was a fake £20 note as drawn by my sister. Ha ha – good joke. I was told to close my eyes again. This time the Lego set itself was placed in my hands. My face must have been a picture. Suddenly Christmas was back on again. Absolute result. Best Christmas ever.

"Favourite Christmas song/carol..."

This is easy: In The Bleak Mid Winter in honour of my gran who always cried when she heard this. And oddly Silent Night which always made my granddad cry. I never knew why it made my gran so tearful but I did learn why Silent Night upset my granddad so much. During WWII he took part in the North Atlantic convoys. One night one of the ships was hit by a U Boat and a lot of men were thrown into the water. Unfortunately due to the U Boats there was a black-out so all the sailors knew that there could be no lights on and no stopping to rescue anyone… the sailors in the water knew they were going to die and all sang Silent Night as their comrades sailed by.

"Favourite Christmas movie..."

Hmm. Quite a few. Traditionally Mary Poppins or Half A Sixpence come onto the TV at some point and I’m quite a sucker for them. Since the three Lord Of The Rings films were released during this time of year though they now have a Christmas feel to them and indeed Karen and I have just spent the last few weekends watching the extended version of each to get ourselves into the festive mood. Harry Potter is also a Christmas favourite.

"Favourite Christmas character..."

Difficult. I never went overboard on the Elves or the reindeers. However, I’m quite partial to the Christmas Carol story so I suppose Scrooge would be a good one. I have a soft spot for redemption stories.

"Favourite Christmas ornament/object..."

I quite like Crhistmas snow globes and have a musical one that features a long limbed Santa – he looks like a character from a Tim Burton animation.

"Plans for this Christmas..."

Shut the door, turn up the heat, and just enjoy being with Karen, Ben and Tom. We’ll get up when we’re ready. Spend the entire morning opening presents and then eat a luxurious dinner. The whole day will be one of chilled excitement – if that’s not too contradictory.

"Is Christmas your favourite holiday?"

I’d be lying if I said no. Especially now that Karen and I can enjoy it through our kid’s eyes. But I’m also partial to the summer holidays because I love the sun and love travelling to new places.

Morning Wood

Ok. I’ll admit that finally I’m getting in the mood for Christmas.

The spare room is over flowing with yet to be wrapped goodies for my loved ones. Karen and I are already compiling our Christmas food shopping list. Suddenly I’m able to stomach every cheesy film that the TV throws at me (I’m even enjoying the Christmas idents on all the TV channels).

And my budget is as blown as Hugh Grant on an L.A. side street.

I’m sure I’ll be annoyed with my spendthriftery come the New Year but for now I’m well pleased with what I’ve bought. There’s nothing worse than being lavished with gifts yourself on Christmas morning and then grimacing as you hand over a meagre pile of newspaper wrapped gift-ettes in return. Sure the January bills will be depressing but I can take consolation in the fact that Karen and the boys will be over the moon with what I’ve got them.

I’m sure such inner warmth will also help insulate me from the cold chill winds of February as I bed down for the night in front of Woolworth’s shop window...

And as for Roy Wood’s desire that it be Christmas every day... well. Nice idea Roy but, really, no. I honestly couldn’t afford it.

I’m already considering approaching Richard Branson for financial help as it is...

I wonder if it would help if I changed my name to Northern Rock?

True Romance

Robin finally girded his Lincoln green loins in last night’s episode of Robin Hood and asked Marian to marry ‘im.

His carefully prepared speech whooshed and veritably twanged with romance.

He basically compared Marian to his Saracen bow. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that when I popped the question to my wife three years ago?

Apparently when Robin first held his bow he just knew, right, that it felt RIGHT. And Marian was exactly the same.

Yes. I can appreciate the analogy. She has curves in all the right places. It takes patience and strength to pull her properly – and if you do it incorrectly you’re in danger of losing one of your most essential digits. She must be brought to the right level of heightened tension before she can achieve the ultimate release. And I dare say she’ll hum rather tunefully when Robin fires off his heavy tipped long range arrows.

Unfortunately Robin will have to wait a while to consummate the partnership as, though Marian has said yes, it’s under the proviso that he foils a plot to kill the King, defeats the Sheriff and brings good King Richard back home safely to give her away.

Typical toff bird. Can’t be satisfied with a nice encrusted ring hoiked off the end of a Bishop’s finger, oh no. She has to set the bar so high Robin may as well shoot at the moon. The poor boy’s forest green togs must be turning blue with frustration.

No wonder he keeps fingering his quiver.

Jewel

Interestingly, despite my last post being about “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” the comments to it digressed into a discussion about the BBC’s new period drama, Cranford and, more specifically, about England’s finest actress (in my opinion), Julia Sawalha... which just goes to show that when faced with a mountain of crap most people determinedly turn their backs on it and reach for something excellent instead.

Good on you, people.

Ever eager to capitalize on whatever topic of interest floats my reader’s boats I thought I might compose a small paean to Julia as I’ve been a huge fan of hers since her Press Gang days.

Press Gang, for those of you who don’t know, was mislabelled a kid’s programme back in the late eighties / nineties and was broadcast on ITV during their after school tea-time slot and was probably the finest scripted programme on television at the time. It was where Doctor Who / Jekyll writer Steven Moffat first cut his television writer’s teeth and certainly the scripts abound with enthusiasm, energy and movement. Which is not to say they ever descend into cheap candyfloss frippery and “zany” kid-world fantasy.

The scripts were cutting, sharp, breath-takingly funny and sometimes surprisingly harrowing in the choice of subjects covered. It was the one kid’s programme that refused to patronize its viewers and as a consequence is still head and shoulders above much of the TV guff that is thrown at children even today.

Julia played the formidable Lynda Day and for her first big TV role put in a performance so confident and self-assured it had Jennifer Saunders and Andrew Davies, to name but two, knocking her door down to offer her parts in projects they themselves were working on. I’m glossing over a huge swathe of biographical detail here but you get the picture. I believe the expression is: a star was born.

Since then Julia has appeared in dozens of period dramas – a period drama is now no longer believable unless Julia appears in it – Jonathan Creek, Faith In The Future and provided voice overs for plasticine chickens in Nick Park’s Chicken Run... and loads more besides.

You’ll notice I am staunchly refusing to make jokes about stuffing birds, or asking if anyone would care for a leg or a breast. I am above such things.

Anyway, despite a career spanning a good 20 years Julia has always retained a freshness and vitality that positively shines out of her whenever she appears on TV. She’s a class actress and it’s a real delight to see her in Cranford (and back being a brunette – I never cared for the blonde look she adopted in Jonathan Creek) though as TimeWarden pointed out in his comments to the previous post, she is now alas “looking older”... but is that necessarily a bad thing? She looks good, she looks natural and she is (according to the Radio Times) no longer living in the smoke and druggery of London but is immersing herself in the wilds of Somerset – immersing herself in a greener and healthier lifestyle, growing veggies and taking an English degree.

Exactly like me in fact. Except I’m not growing veggies, or living in Somerset, am not female and am not a class actress. And I can’t fill out a corset half as well as she can.

But I am a brunette. Totally natural, you know.

Enough! God bless you Julia! You’re great, you are.

Right. Gushing over. What can I moan and snipe miserably about now...?

Sleb

I watched “I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” for the first time last night. I wasn’t impressed.

But I did howl with laughter as ex Eastender’s chump Marc Bannerman was escorted off camp after his ignoble eviction from the show (for flirting embarrassingly with Cerys Matthews despite already having a girlfriend in tow – tut tut – the public really do not like that).

“I’m in love with two people,” he simpered.

What? Himself and his own reflection?

Twat.

Toenails

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece that lamented the fact that Josie Lawrence and Tony Slattery were no longer to be seen on our television screens. And then a mere week later Josie Lawrence popped up in the BBC’s Robin Hood. A direct hit and no mistake.

Well, folks, call it luck, call it a fluke, call it psychically synchronized schedule programming but I’ve scored a double.

Last night saw Tony Slattery also attempting a TV comeback in the BBC’s Robin Hood.

Tres bizarre.

Have I got the televisual Midas touch? Have I got the power of the Mysterons over the casting department at the BBC?

Well, hey, let’s put it to the test shall we? If there’s anybody you’d like to see on TV – or to be precise in Robin Hood – then leave a comment and let me know and I’ll see what I can do…

Personally I’m still working on having Lucy Griffiths appear in nothing but a Cornish fishing net but I’ll be happy to make room for other requests too.

As for Tony… well it was both a pleasure and a tragedy to see him back on TV. The poor man looked dreadful. Disturbingly over-weight – though he was never a svelte ballet dancer – and eyes sunk further than the Titanic. Karen assures me it was just heavy eye make-up but personally I don’t think the Robin Hood make-up department are that good.

It’s plain he’s been ill and that’s sad to see but let’s hope that this outing is the start of a major health and career recovery. Though being shot in the man-boob by Robin Hood can’t have been good for his cholesterol.

Yes, there was death and carnage a-plenty in last night’s episode. Tony’s Canon of Birkley was punctured by Robin but only after he’d skewered Marian’s father, Edward, on the end of his jewelled dagger. Ooh the cad.

Personally I think this was a good move on the part of the writers (and it’s not often I agree with their plot decisions) as it frees Marian up to join Robin in the forest and pushes their burgeoning romance a little further down the road to soft pornography. Did I say soft pornography? I meant to say family centred fulfilment. Ahem.

For the Robin Hood nerds among you, you’ll no doubt have noticed that last night’s episode doffed it’s cap to not one but two episodes of it’s forerunner Robin Of Sherwood. The story of a young man coming to rescue his love from the evil clutches of the Sheriff was redolent of the "Alan-A-Dale" story in the first series of Robin Of Sherwood and the scene where Edward sneaks into the Sheriff’s bed chamber to steal the keys to ye olde safe was a salute to "Seven Poor Knights From Acre". It’s good to see the writer’s acknowledging Richard Carpenter’s far superior series…

Lastly folks, my favourite anachronisms from last night’s episode:

1) John of York’s protestations that he only had 10 shillings to his name. Shillings? Shillings? Surely the coin of choice in the 1100’s was the mark?

2) Robin and his merry men all wearing cowboy hats and duster coats as their latest disguise. “I say Gisborne, have you seen Robin Hood creeping about the castle?” “No Sheriff, but I thought I saw Clint Eastwood and Clyde the Monkey poking about your oubliette…”

Yes…

Much really needs to get rid of those ginger sideburns…

Only ‘Cos It’s Josie

I honestly was going to give my reviews of Robin Hood a break because I recognize that most of you who read this blog don’t (if you were honest) give a rat’s ass about the show and have merely read my Hoody guff out of kindness and saint-like tolerance. So I was determined that I’d ease off on the Robin Hood obsession and only let it impinge upon my blog when a real episode of true note came along.

See, I do try to be considerate.

But, you see, Josie Lawrence happened to be in last night’s episode and I’m a big Josie fan. As you know, just last week I’d been lamenting upon her disappearance from our TV screens and then lo and behold she pops up bold as brass in Robin Hood… it was simply too good an opportunity to miss so, dear long suffering reader, I do apologize... but I will try and keep it short.

Josie played a foul-mouthed wise woman / witch who wore a headscarf thing that made her look like a cross between a clichéd gypsy fortuneteller and Captain Jack Sparrow. She also played her part with a northern accent – my accent spotting skills aren’t so good that I can pinpoint it exactly but it was definitely from oop North, by ‘eck – which is fine but just looked and sounded completely incongruous because I’m so aware that Josie is a West Midland’s girl in real life. But, to be fair to the show, I dare say a Brummie accent would have stuck out like a sore thumb… and that just wouldn’t have done for a show that takes such painstaking efforts to achieve unimpeachable period accuracy.

Cough cough.

Despite the cossie Josie was fine and gave a solid, earthy performance and had all the best lines. Calling Keith Allen’s sheriff a “snot ‘ead” was particularly memorable. I really must read the Magna Carta more closely if such robust terminology was in common usage at the time.

She also got to sit on the wrong end of a ducking stool. Unfortunately any side-thoughts that I may have entertained about ye olde wet T-shirt contests were thoroughly smothered by a drab grey smock which looked like it had been made from sackcloth and doused in concrete. Ah well. I always knew that Josie wasn’t that type of girl… but she did get to suck upon Robin’s lengthy hose so it wasn’t all doom and gloom.

Yes – wilely Robin kept Josie alive by the use of a length of meaty hose and a magnificent pair of billows. What a thoroughly resourceful chap he is.

Meanwhile Marian was wandering around Nottingham in a rather fetching off the shoulder number and not batting an eyelid when the Sheriff referred to a physician as “a quack”. A term that I believe did not come into common usage until the period of the black death and came from the weird face masks that doctor’s wore in the hope of avoiding infection.

But who cares about such things? Marian looked wunderbar. Josie sounded like she’d stepped out of The Phoenix Club and Robin finally discovered that he had a nasty spy in his gang.

Alas poor Alan-a-Dale.

He’d been singing like a canary to the wrong side. Ye olde stool pigeon. What a turkey. Tut tut.

But the big question is this:

Could this discovery lead to an occurrence of that rare thing in this show… genuine bloody drama?

Clue: no.

But here's a gratuitous picture of Lucy Griffiths as Maid Marian to take your mind off it...

Forsooth

Amazingly, the anachronism count in last night’s Robin Hood episode reached an all time record low – which is good, people, very good indeed. Because it meant that the realism score actually went up a notch or two. And that’s a veritable first. For a few seconds I even wondered if I was watching the right show.

For once we didn’t have ye olde Mediaeval Ninja Surfing Turtles or ye olde wooden iPod’s blighting the mis en scene (see, I even know the lingo) instead we had a story about poison and revenge… or even the poison of revenge… with the result that Harry Lloyd who plays Will Scarlett actually had the opportunity to act his little Gap socks off.

A nice tight script, a fast moving story and lots of shots of Marian positively bouncing around the corridors of Nottingham Castle made for a pretty decent episode. Yes, Marian’s newfound bounce was most distracting. Methinks she’s discovered the wondrous delights of ye olde underwire bra. I have already submitted my request to the BBC that in a future episode she be dressed in a Madonna-esque pointy basque onto which various Norman miscreants can be impaled in a multitude of unlikely but erotic fights to the death.

Somehow I don’t think they’re going to go for it though.

For one thing the death count in Robin Hood is always unfeasibly low. Perhaps ridiculously so. Hence the panto feel of the show. And for another I doubt the Robin Hood costume department would be able to confine themselves to the materials of the period and we’d have Marian grinding around in PVC, black leather and cut away trousers with chaps.

Hmm. Maybe I ought to write another letter to the BBC?

Anyway the only thing that grated about last night’s episode was the unpalatably large dollop of cheese that descended on proceedings right at the end. To commemorate their murdered dad the Scarlett boys came up with some awful looking tree carving with holes in the middle of it. Very Henry Moore I must say. And when ye olde evening sun did cast its life giving rays through the holes – lo! A face of light did appear upon yonder forest cliff face that looked more like Richard Whiteley than Will’s dad – but who am I to question the boy’s parentage?

Ah phooey.

But now for the most amazing bit of all... The trailer for next week’s episode!

It stars Josie Lawrence!

Josie bleeding Lawrence!

I’m 99.9% sure it’s her and from what I can surmise she appears to be playing the part of a witch and gets to experience the ducking stool at some point. Hmm. Now there’s a fantasy that I never thought of indulging… Anyway, given my previous post where I waxed lyrical about Josie’s televisual fate and bemoaned the fact that she’s not on our tellies nearly enough these days I can only assume that the gods of television were benevolently tuning in and in their infinite wisdom decided to answer my prayers…

I wonder if I’m on a roll?

Hmm.

"Dear BBC,

About Marian and this pointy PVC basque…"

Josie Lawrence

As I’ve been kicking about the house so much over the past fortnight I’ve made good use of my time (ahem) by catching up on some luxury telly – i.e. allowing myself the time and elasticity to just wander aimlessly through the channels and see what’s out there.

A lot of crap. As expected.

But I have found something of a gem on Channel Dave.

Yes. That’s what I thought. What a thoroughly dismal name for a TV station: Dave. Is there a secret joke that I’m patently not getting? It evokes a TV channel that dunks itself in cold tea, doesn’t shave for days and likes documentaries about road signage and steeplejacks and likes to pick the winnets out of its arse with a pair of nail clippers on a Friday night.

Not somebody I’d normally choose to knock about with.

However, Channel Dave is showing re-runs of Whose Line Is It Anyway? – the ones with Josie Lawrence and Tony Slattery in.

God I used to love this show in the eighties/nineties. It was the kind of show that, for a while, was worth the effort of coming home early from the pub. It had a freshness and badinage to it that was edgy and yet warm at the same time. It was also my first introduction to improv comedy and it was hugely entertaining to see so many comedy minds tested to the full in front of a live studio audience. Performing on their wits. Sometimes failing (but never completely) and sometimes scoring amazing hits.

My favourites were always Tony Slattery and Josie Lawrence. Tony ‘cos he was just dirty and extremely juvenile – the personification of my sense of humour in fact – and Josie was warm, sardonic and an amazing improvisational singer. Oh yeah and amazingly gorgeous and I fancied the pants of her.

A brunette with a sense of humour, see? Just makes me want to roll over and play fetch all day long. At least that’s what I hope the big stick that Karen is waving at me is for…

Anyway it’s gratifying to admit that the re-runs are still making me laugh and Ben seems to be greatly intrigued by them too. The twin ingredients of madcap and slapstick, I suspect, are what are wining him over as opposed to the sultry charms of Josie or the adult wit of Mr Slattery.

It’s a shame these two aren’t on our tellies so much anymore – sure, I know they both pop up here and there and they’re still treading the boards so to speak… and it’s heartening to know that Tony has recovered somewhat from the breakdown that laid him so low in the nineties… but they’re both (in my opinion) overlooked national treasures that the limelight of success has yet to define brightly enough…

They’re amazingly talented and I have to say I’d rather see them on BBC 2 on a Thursday night than the bloody awful Vivienne Vyle. I mean really. Did somebody forget to flush?

Come back Josie – you’re a star!

Robin Hood? Corset Is!

Welcome back to Robin Hood watch. Well, Marian watch really…

Yes, while South Africa were trouncing England 15 – 6 in Paris (well really, what did you expect?) I was watching Robin Hood trounce Guy Of Gisbourne in Loxley. Not a Loxley that the people of the time would have recognized of course – not with the manor house done up like Henry VIII’s pantry – but an approximation of Loxley nonetheless. At least that what the show’s annoying titles tell us anyway…

God they're irritating!

A change of location and the name whooshes across the bottom of the screen accompanied by the sound of a launched arrow. Twang, whoosh, thud. I’m just waiting for someone to have their eye taken out by “Loxley” or eviscerated by “Nottingham Castle”. Now that would be a show.

Talking of having your eye taken out… in this week’s show Marian was daringly sporting a rather uplifting pea-green corset which she quite brazenly wore around Nottingham Market while she tried to draw as little attention to herself as possible in order that she could enjoy a secret tryst with Robin Hood. I suppose it’s like the old joke of the naked female bank robber – no one got a good look at her face…

Hilarity of the night (aside from the Rugby score) was Gisbourne staggering about in an impenetrable suit of armour that looked like it had been made on Blue Peter out of some old cereal boxes and a Tesco blue stripe roll of tin foil. Apparently it was supposed to be Damascus Steel – an early example of, well, steel actually, and having Googled it, it does appear that for once the show’s writers managed to put down their mochaccinos long enough to do a bit of genuine research. If only the costume department had been up to the job of actually making it look like real steel. I mean how difficult could that be?

Anyway amid much gurning from Keith Allen’s Sheriff, Robin dealt with the armour-clad Gisbourne easily enough: a liberal application of pitch and a flaming arrow somewhere in the groin area. Sadly it bounced off Gisbourne’s Sheffield Steel (well, he is Northern…) but not before the flames had ignited the pitch and turned Gisbourne into the Wicker Man.

Cue a quick dive into a handy watering trough which the good villagers of Loxley happened to have standing by. It was well steamy.

Ye olde sauna newly invented!

Here’s hoping that Marian will take a lengthy and unapparelled dip in next week’s episode…

Gott In Himmel

Some absolute howlers in Robin Hood last night:

1) A Las Vegas style gaming table in Nottingham Castle complete with ye olde bunny girls displaying more cleavage than Pamela of Anderson giving an adult mummer performance at ye olde village moot.

2) Marian kitted out in a rather fetching scarlet riding outfit topped off with a "Robin Hood" feathered cap motif - Errol Flynn stylee - and make-up immaculately applied by Gok Wan.

3) Dexter Fletcher playing the totally unbelievable Prince Frederick of Hanheim, exasperatingly be-costumed in a modern looking DJ while playing at the gaming tables and with a German accent so bad it would have been perfect for Allo Allo.

The writer's are just out-and-out taking the Michael. It's the only explanation for such blatant anachronisms. I get the feeling they've just thought "sod it - let's do what the hell we like and get people writing and talking about the show!"

Smart-arsed little buggers.

Anyway, Marian, I have to say, looked distinctly ravagable and although it's a terribly shallow premise to watch a show it's better than doing so because I think the show is historically informative... I mean, please!

The writer's seem to be making good their promise to sex Marian up a bit and had plunged her neckline so low in last night's episode that we nearly saw her Nightwatchman's quiver. Nice to know that Robin has somewhere to hide his bow in emergencies...

The costume department also outdid themselves with Djaq, the female Saracen warrior who has conveniently joined the Merry Men purely for modern political expediency and correctness. Stuffed into a ballgown straight off the shelves of Laura Ashley she scrubbed up rather well and the Merry Men's arrows flew a darn sight straighter as a consequence...

Merry Men? Not quite but undoubtedly getting there...

Twang!

I have a theory that the BBC’s Robin Hood series exists solely for me to have an outlet onto which I can vent my thrashing spleen on a Sunday morning.

Now I know in the bigger scheme of things the portrayal of the Robin Hood legend on our TV screens is really quite small, pimply and inconsequential. But for me it is the Holy Grail. I feel about Robin Hood the same way some of my discerning readers feel about Doctor Who – and I don’t just mean that I want to see Billy Piper running around Sherwood Forest in a skintight t-shirt and g-string… Although given the horrendously anachronistic nature of the show such an event would not surprise me in the least.

My trouble – and I fully recognize and accept it – is that I am coming from a place where Richard Carpenter’s Robin Of Sherwood has been crowned king, festooned with laurel leaves and placed in the pantheon of the gods. In fact I've written about my devotion to this show previously on this 'ere very blog.

Robin Of Sherwood was gritty, brought a new realism to the legend (leaving aside the frequent references to magic and psychic abilities of course – ahem) and had a warmth and on screen camaraderie that helped cushion me through my rather bleak, nerdy teenage years. It’s a hard act to follow. And I recognize and accept this also.

But you’d think that the BBC would at least TRY!

I mean come on chaps! In last night’s opener Robin and “his gang” (Robin’s new catchphrase apparently – who the hell is he modelling himself on? Gary Glitter?) had a bit of rough and tumble with a “military unit” – Robin’s words (how very post modern) – who were all wearing army berets and looked like they’d all stepped straight out of Sandhurst.

Berets! In Sherwood Forest? In the 1100’s? I was waiting for Frank Spencer to leap out from behind one of the trees… ooh Robin, I’m ‘aving a little bit of trouble with me quiver…

But there was more. This gang was led by the suddenly arrived Sheriff’s sister who had obviously modelled herself on Honour Blackman from The Avengers. All heaving bosom, black leather cat-suit and blonde hair flung suggestively over her shoulder like a cat-o-nine-tails… and she possessed the ability to disguise herself with latex based make-up (which didn’t smudge her carefully applied eyeliner or lip gloss one iota).

Latex! In Sherwood Forest? In the 1100’s?

Sadly she was killed off right at the end. Death by large python. And I’m not referring here to Robin’s impressive pork swordsmanship. Of which we happened to see very little…

Which is a shame because the sparks between Robin and Marian are one of the few things the show’s writers have actually got right.

According to the Radio Times’ write up this new series will see a raunchier, sexy Marian – tighter outfits and lower cut tops… thigh length boots and safety-pin dresses… lots of frolicking in moist haylofts with large vats of ice cream on standby. Yes, alas, I am making that last bit up – but I must admit I find the costume based inaccuracies centred around Lucy Griffiths far more palatable than the Gap bought hoodies that mantle the merry men or the Duran Duran biker jacket that turns Sir Guy of Gisbourne into an eighties throwback. Call it hypocrisy if you must but I prefer to see it as an attempt by me to cast a more charitable eye over the show. To give it a chance. To give it a fair go…

Ok. Ok. I’m just a sucker for a brunette than can high-kick a guy in the knackers and hang upside down from a roof beam.

Anyway, despite all the above – or maybe because of it – I keep on watching the show. So I must acknowledge that there must be something about it that I like. And if I was being tortured with hot knives and root vegetables I would I suppose admit that I sort of, kind of, find it all somehow enjoyable. Annoying. Inaccurate. Historically comic. Frequently ridiculous. But nevertheless enjoyable.

There’s a massive romp element to the show and that, at least, is true to the nature of the Robin Hood legend. There. One box ticked. Happy now BBC?

For those of you that care my very hissy reviews of the first series can be accessed here and I will be reviewing the episodes of this second series with a regularity that can only be described as obsessively perverse…

Bang! And The Dirt Is Gone...

Greatly enjoyed The Peter Serafinowicz Show last night, especially the Barry Scott pisstakes.

Trouble with lime scale? Just use Toilet Grenade! Pull out the pin, throw it into the bowl and BANG the dirt is gone!

His Chris Tarrant impression was likewise very impressive, capturing both Tarrant’s infuriating smugness as well as his many vocal idiosyncrasies. Though given the nature of his voice maybe that should be nasal idiosyncrasies?

The most disturbing sketch of all though was Sherlock Holmes spooning Dr. Watson in bed due to a bout of post-case-solving lust. I know Holmes liked the occasional fiddle but even so... the clash of pipe against waxed moustache was shudderingly sacrilegious. I bet Conan Doyle was turning in his urn. Or wherever it is he’s been laid to rest.

In terms of the show’s format, there are a lot of similarities with The Fast Show – lightening delivery, a mammoth turnover of ideas and sketches – though Serafinowicz tends more to the madcap than social commentary – and more characters than you can shake a jester’s stick at, with the whole thing brought (bang) up to date with constant reference to the host of Americanized cable TV channels that infect our lives, ridiculously flashy news items and badly directed television advertising...

In many ways it’s an ideal format for Serafinowicz’s many talents and one that can only work in his favour. Sketch misses the mark? No matter. Here’s another one to try. BANG and the dirt is gone!

And onto the next one...

Here’s hoping he can keep it up.

I Fought The Law...

Karen and I are greatly enjoying Murphy’s Law at the moment. The script is dense, fast paced, full of twists and has James Nesbitt’s immaculately groomed moustache bristling all over it.

I must admit to liking James Nesbitt hugely. Not in that way you understand but in a “hey respect, dude” kind of way. Over the years he’s proved to be one of the UK’s most versatile actors. In every role I’ve seen him in he’s been believable... which, I’m sure you’ll agree, is rather an essential quality in an actor. The James Nesbitt persona doesn’t ever get in the way of whatever part he happens to be playing at the time.

This is no mean feat especially when, over the years, his playing of so many cheeky-chappie, quip-a-minute characters has written the James Nesbitt persona large all over the nation’s psyche.

Recently though he’s been developing a much harder edge – and I’m not just referring to the brutally chopped precipice of his lip brush. Jekyll saw him delving into Jack Nicholson territory with gusto – staring eyes, sharp teeth and “daddy’s home” vocalizations. His current outing as Murphy though sees him exploring something a lot darker and far more real... Jekyll’s appetites were too fantastic and too over-stretched to be truly scary. But Murphy is up against very commonplace desires that are no less damaging or less repulsive for all their regrettable regularity in our society. People smuggling, prostitution, rape, drugs... it’s a world we see portrayed quite often on our TV screens either through police dramas or documentaries... but Murphy’s Law has managed to reclaim the shock element of such activities. That’s pretty good going in an age of desensitizing video games and shlock-horror flicks for the under 12’s.

Murphy is a dour, insular, dangerously frenetic character with a tache like a Mexican bandido and Nesbitt walks a tightrope over the chasm of caricature with true grace and true grit. He hijacks the screen and carries the whole drama forward with a presence that commands our undivided attention. Nesbitt is at full stretch for the entire duration and doesn’t even break a sweat. It’s impressive to watch. I’m totally hooked.

Here’s hoping that Murphy’s tache scimitar will make a quick return to our tellies very soon.... and not just because I happen to possess one of my own...

Hamble Is Evil

I got onto this subject by a rather weird route. Catching an episode of 10 Years Younger last night Karen and I commented on the weirdness of the weird presenter’s name – Nicky Hambleton-Jones. Not Hamilton as you’d expect but Hambleton. Odd. Well. Maybe not that odd when there’s a kid at my boy’s school called Denim (I kid you not) but I was sufficiently bored with the show to drift off in my head and from Hambleton I inexplicably ended up at Hamble and, by association, Playschool.

One of my earliest TV memories is of watching Playschool and being rather puzzled as to why a grown up presenter was playing with the soft toys and dolls. Even at that early age it struck me as incongruous and “not really quite right”.

But that is beside the point. The important thing to acknowledge is this: the Playschool toys were scary. Damn scary.

I never felt any warmth or friendliness toward or more importantly from them. They exuded mute evil and maliciousness in tones that reflected their outward appearances. They’d just sit there in the background while Brian Cant mimed eating a bowl of porridge and hurl the evil-eye at the TV screen. They never moved but you just knew their thoughts were full of death and the desire for human destruction.

The Teds looked like a furry version of the Krays – or worse, the Krankies. They’d rob you at knife point and stab you just to see the pretty strawberry pattern it made on your bib. Humpty looked like a fat, sweating pimp with horrible bacon rind lips and a lascivious smile that never ever disappeared. He personified unwholesome appetites and unnatural desires taken to bad extremes. Jemima... now Jemima you just knew was a snooty cow. A real little madam. On her own she had no real malice or ability to instil fear in anyone – not with those bandy legs. I mean she couldn’t even stand up on her own let alone run after you with a flick-knife. Somehow I suspect she was only allowed to join the Playschool toy gang because she was loaded. She had a mega rich daddy, sugar or otherwise. The rich bitch of the Playschool toys. But I bet she was viciously cruel. She’d be the one egging the others on with snide whispers.... “Go on, Big Ted, cut ‘im, cut his ear off... do it nice and slowly so’s I can see the blood... hey, do you know what they call a Big Mac in France?” A real nasty piece of work. A real bullet-maker.

But worst of all though was Hamble. The doll that looked like Elizabeth Taylor on crack cocaine. Just look at her face in the photo above. Evil. Pure unadulterated evil. Forget the polka dot print dress. She’s wearing a studded leather body-boot underneath with 9 inch heels. She’s got a bag of oranges in her satchel. She’s the ring leader. She’s the boss. And she hates children. Especially little boys. God, you can see it in her eyes. She wants to kill. She wants to maim. She wants to have endless children’s tea parties with imaginary Darjeeling and invisible cake, the sick torturing dirty bitch!

And this show was on 5 days a week for God’s sake!

Is it any wonder I was such a disturbed child?

The Galloping Gormless

The Wild Gourmets is obviously an attempt by Channel 4 to carve a small right-on niche for itself in the wild food corner that has for the last decade – and for good reason – been ruled solely by the King of Nettle Leaf Tea himself, Ray Mears.

Unfortunately, The Wild Gourmets, Tommi Miers and Guy Grieve, fail to establish a half decent base camp let alone set themselves up in our hearts as great survivalist leaders of the future. Ray Mears they certainly ain’t.

For one thing they patently lack the respect and reverence with which Ray Mears treats every environment he happens to find himself in and despite Guy Grieve’s constant macho flexing of his hunter-gatherer muscles the couple lack the gentle gravitas with which Ray Mears is able to entertain, instruct, befriend and, most important of all, convince all who watch his programmes.

Guy Grieve and Tommi Miers are two guffawing posh school 6th formers, too fond of Eton Mess and too fond of gasping in awe at their own mediocre achievements to really bring viewers onside. When I caught their last show I found myself subconsciously willing them to fail, anything to wipe those smug, rich-city-type-in-the-country smiles off their faces.

Guy caught a pike; cue screams of adoration from Tommi: “Oh Guy, you’re a genius!”

“Think nothing of it bitch. Now cook my meal.” Cue Guy stripping off to his short and curlies and dousing himself in fresh, ice cold river water while his smarmy voice-over informs us that he swims every day in a river near his home – come snow, rain or shine – and so sub zero temperatures mean nothing at all to him. Ha! A mite bracing is all! Tis good for the circulation don’t you know. And it makes my nips stand on end like a couple of magnificently sexy wing-nuts! Ok. He didn’t actually say any of that but he did strip off naked and give himself a “camp shower” in full view of the camera crew. Camp shower? Yeah right. That’s what I thought too. It seems to be something of a motif for Guy and I suspect he’ll be flashing his bum crack in every single programme of the current series until a lady’s top shelf magazine asks him to do a photo centrespread for them armed only with his wing-nuts and his shining, freshly polished wood axe.

What really annoys me about Tommi and Guy though is their take-take-take approach to living off the land. Twice now they’ve availed themselves of the vegetable and fruit gardens of huge houses that have just happened to be nearby (how is that “wild” food?) – given permission to take one of two items of produce they have proceeded to descend like a couple of starving locusts and help themselves to whatever they could get their finely manicured hands on. In the first episode Tommi even made light of the fact that she was essentially stealing.

Where is the respect in that?

Their attitude disgusts me. They galumph about the countryside with nothing but self-puffing arrogance and greed pouring from their mouths. Ray Mears always stresses how important it is to put something back into the environment – whether it be breaking camp in such a way that you leave no trace of yourself behind, or utilizing natural resources in such a way that the environment actually benefits from your having been there – there is very much a give-and-take ethos to Ray. He’s aware of the fine balance of both human life and the environment and the need to maintain them.

Guy and Tommi are only aware of their bank balances and the desire to acquire a quick hit of kudos from white collar business directors who like to take their management teams paint balling at the weekends to create the illusion of camaraderie. They respect nothing but their own temporary self aggrandizement. They see the environment as just something to be manipulated and played with in order to garner a free meal. They’re about as far removed from true hunter-gatherers as it’s possible to be. There’s no spirituality in what they’re doing at all and it shows.

Kit them out in khakis and a couple of pith helmets and they’ll have found their true calling.

“I say, Tommi – fancy bagging a tiger?”

Geez. The things you see in the countryside when you haven’t got a gun...


P.S. Bloggertropolis is now one year old! Hurrah! Soon be on solid food...!

Eh?

Funniest advert on TV at the moment is the one for Garnier's UltraLift Deep Wrinkle A Zone. Apparently it does exactly what it says on the tin and "targets deep wrinkles in your A Zone".

I know I'm being juvenile but the thought of approaching a cosmetics counter and asking for a cream that targets the deep wrinkle in my A Zone has me hooting with laughter.

How could the director of this advert have been so blind to the obvious double entendre?

What next? Are Garnier and Preparation H going to merge?

Isn't that going to be a bit messy?

Think Of A Number

Quite why Johnny Ball is leaping about my subconscious this morning I don’t know – but he is and he’s waving his arms about manically and spouting lots of amazing stuff about numbers, equations and surface areas and doing his damnedest to make it all sound jolly and fun.

And it works.

I hated Maths at school. Absolutely loathed it. And I hated Physics even more. Our Physics teacher, Mr Prior, resembled a leather jumpsuit wearing troglodyte with a beard bushy enough to lose Ray Mears in and who demonstrably had a pathological hatred of all secondary school pupils. Especially wimpy secondary school pupils who had utterly no grasp of the manly science of Physics. What can I say? Mr Prior rode a huge eff-off motorbike to school everyday and regularly flirted with the svelte, cool-eyed French teacher (whose name escapes me but who looked like a female version of the keyboard player from Duran Duran) while I was a weedy bespectacled nerd who found numbers and pulleys and electrons all rather boring.

And yet I was totally addicted to Johnny Ball’s Maths/Physics based educational programmes.

The man was mesmeric. A little bit insane yes but he managed to make Maths exciting and even appealing. His enthusiasm was infectious. Even a numberphobe like me found himself swept along by Johnny’s unbounded zeal for number patterns and intricate gear systems. I think Johnny’s trick was not his intelligence in his chosen subject – formidable though it was – but his ability to communicate and transfer his own passion for the subject into the hearts and minds of his viewers.

If Johnny Ball had been my teacher at school I’d be an award winning physicist by now or even better I’d have had my cherry taken by the unnamed French teacher above. Instead I’m a disgruntled civil servant who writes novels and poetry in his spare time and whose cherry wasn’t offloaded until he was nearly 30.

I kid you not.

Hmm. But maybe that’s sharing a little bit too much information?

I’m sure Johnny Ball would be able to plot an entertaining graph mapping out my divergence from manly science stuff and my headlong dive into the world of literature and not pulling anything but a cracker for three whole decades... but as he isn’t here you’ll have to make do with this 'ere blog.

In the meantime my unanswered question is this: whatever happened to Johnny Ball?

Ranking Frank

Thursday evening telly has received something of a boost lately with the return of Mock The Week. Produced by the same guys that gave the UK Whose Line Is It Anyway? it builds on a similar format to pit various comedians against each other in rounds designed to test their improv skills, stand-up abilities and ad-libbed responses to topical news stories.

It’s effing hilarious and I have yet to watch a single episode where I wasn’t howling out loud with unstoppable belly laughter. That’s no mean feat on a Thursday night; the fag end of the working week.

For me the stand alone star of the show is the formidable Frankie Boyle (though I love Hugh Dennis’s unassumingly dry wit too). With a Glaswegian accent as brutal as a head-butt in your kisser Frankie Boyle is beyond sharp. The man is viciously serrated at an atomic level (but in a good way).

Quite honestly, Frankie Boyle could split a surgical laser beam lengthways with a single quip. One wrong word and Frankie’s tongue could slice off the top of your head like Sylar from Heroes performing an ad hoc lobotomy.

The man is blisteringly funny. But even better he’s blisteringly intelligent. Week after week I watch in awe as he pulls topical news stories out of the air and reconnects them in ways that seem so damned obvious once he’s done it. After I’ve finished laughing my guts up the same thought constantly reoccurs in my head: why the hell didn’t I think of that?

The man is quick. 0 to 187mph in under 2 seconds. I actually feel sorry for the other guys he’s pitted against. They look clumsy and amateurish by comparison. It’s like racing a Bugatti against a Skoda. No contest.

Best of all the man is real. There’s utterly no bullshit with Frankie. He tells it like it is; he’d rather kick you in the teeth with the truth than sprinkle a load of Canderel lies over your tongue.

The man is absolute comedy royalty.

In fact forget Forest Whittaker as Idi Amin: Frankie Boyle is the last king of Scotland!


P.S. This is my 200th post. Huzzah!

Nigella Revisited

I received something of a shock phone call yesterday afternoon. It seems a hack from the London Standard had found my Nigella Espresso post and wanted me to comment on a recent article in the newspaper that voiced the opinion that Nigella has become so verbose in her descriptions of recipes that her cook books were actually alienating the small percentage of the UK population who have a below average reading ability.

I was glad to oblige and managed to rustle up something quick during the afternoon, Steve Express style. I don’t know yet if it’s going to be used (I’ll keep you posted on that, naturally) but thought I’d post it here for your perusal.

First: a few excerpts from the original article:

“Nigella's recipes are a bit of a mouthful, say literacy experts: ‘Too many adjectives make her instructions difficult to follow’”

“A survey has found that the chef’s verbose style makes it harder for adults with poor literacy skills to follow the instructions.”

“According to the study, [Nigella] uses long sentences, too many adjectives, extra commentary and personal observations.”

“The survey, carried out by the Government's Get On campaign, looked at a variety of recipes from Smith, Lawson, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay.“

“It found that Slater was the easiest chef to follow, with all his recipes reaching the entry level three standard, or that expected of an 11-year-old.”

“Ramsay said: 'I'd hate to think there might be people who aren't giving cooking and new recipes a go because they are worried about the reading, writing or maths side of things. Brushing up on their literacy could make them a better chef, as well as improving their life.'”

And my pro-Nigella response:

Re: "Nigella's recipes are a bit of a mouthful, say literacy experts"

It's rather amusing to read that a survey has flagged up Nigella Lawson as being too literate for a small percentage of the UK working population and that "too many adjectives" apparently make her recipes difficult to follow.

Too many adjectives? What kind of a criticism is that? Isn't that like saying that Mozart's “The Magic Flute” contains too many notes? Will the removal of all adjectives suddenly render Nigella's cookery books readable by absolutely everybody regardless of their literary skills?

I think not. Poor literacy is as much to do with not understanding syntax, grammar, nouns, participles and verbs as teasing out the meaning of a hundred assorted adjectives though, I'll admit, if you find reading difficult, a wall of purple prose is hardly going to fill you with much enthusiasm.

The real criticism that