Category Archives: Britain, vaguries of;

It Takes Two…

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So, what’s been happening? I’ve not been on here for a while but, luckily, the world at large has been billowing tonne after tonne of grade-A terror and misery for us all to enjoy as civilisation slides happily into terminal oblivion. First of all, Iceland started spewing most of itself into the air over Europe meaning everyone had to suffer the indignity of an extended Easter holiday abroad. It’s worth bearing in mind that Iceland is still trying to recover from almost going bankrupt last year and so has enough problems without slowly turning itself into an ash cloud. I can only speculate that, much as the monarchy is said to fall should the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, these are the sort of disasters legendarily forewarned to hit Iceland should Bjork go 5 years without making a decent album.

At least they can content themselves by now being world trend-setters in terms of catastrophe. Already BP have joined on to the end of the eruption conga and had one of their oil pipelines burst all over the southern United States. The good news here is that the US government for years has been talking about the country needing to find more oil and now everyone can get some of their own just by popping down to the beach with a bucket.

Over in Greece, meanwhile, Iceland’s mantle of bankrupt nationhood has been taken up in spectaular fashion. Unlike those polite Icelanders thought, they’ve been rioting on the streets, setting fire to banks and asking the whole of Europe to look down the back of the sofa for a spare hundred billion Euros in unmarked bills. Now they’re threatening to drag the rest of the continent down with them which means it’s good for us in Blighty that this country has finally sorted out the tricky conundrum of whose running it.

We’ve ended up, due to the fact that in 2 millenia no-one even thought about writing our constitution down on so much as a fag packet, with a country being run by a diverse combination of a 43 year old posh bloke and a 43 year old posh bloke. For those of you struggling to tell the difference between them, Nick Clegg is the one who’s disarmingly like Richard Madeley. The people of Britain seem to be strangely unsure what to make of this newly founded political double act at the controls of the country which is odd really because we’ve got a long history of embracing famous duos on this island.

Morecambe and Wise, Mainwaring and Wilson, Burke and Hare, Ant and Dec, Lennon and McCartney, Mick and Keef, Sooty and Sweep- we can’t get enough of the unique relationship between two men indulged in a common pursuit- whether it be entertaining (Morecambe and Wise, Ant and Dec), songwriting (Lennon and McCartney, Mick and Keef) or grave robbing (Burke and Hare, Sooty and Sweep). Now we’ve got Cameron and Clegg to enjoy; though the uncertainty about how they’ll pan out in practice may well be due to it not being clear yet which of the men will fill which role in the twosome.

Put simply, the roles in a great British duo are clearly defined and are thus:

- The pretentious, loveable buffoon (Mainwaring, Wise, Jagger, McCartney, Ant or Dec, Sweep)
- The knowing, sarcastic wit (Wilson, Morecambe, Richards, Lennon, Ant or Dec, Sooty)

The obvious answer would appear to be that Cameron is the former and Clegg is the latter though it really isn’t that clear. Maybe this is why there is so much disquiet and worry about their prospects in the country at the moment. Well, this and the potentially incendiary consequences for our still unwritten constitution and the fact that we’re sailing an untried political vessel into an apocalyptic financial storm, but ill-defined roles within the nation-helming two-hander can’t help.

So I’m proposing this- when everything inevitably goes tits up they need to take one of the following leads from a great British double act:

1. Morecambe and Wise- they need to do that old Eric and Ernie skip up to a lectern in Downing Street to the strains of ‘Bring Me Sunshine’. Then Cameron needs to say “What do you think of it so far?” before Clegg yells “RUBBISH!”. Then they skip off into the distance. Everyone laughs and cheers up.

2. Sooty and Sweep- Clegg devlops a really squeaky voice, Cameron says nothing and they spend their time spraying William Hague in the face with a water pistol. Everyone laughs and cheers up.

3. Burke and Hare- They decide to take up grave robbing. We’ll probably be so poor as a country soon we’ll need to burn corpses for heat anyway.

or finally;

4. Lennon and McCartney- They are forced to decide between them who has to get shot dead and who has to marry Heather Mills. And we all thought the coalition negotiations were tough…

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow…

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It’s something of a cliche to suggest that we Brits spend all our time talking about the weather, at least when we aren’t dealing with our other favourite topics i.e. health & safety, snooker or sentences that begin “I don’t mean to sound racist but…”. The irony of this is that, while we may be conversant in weather, we’re head-bogglingly rubbish at dealing with it when it turns in any way slightly beyond what would be considered ‘mild’- if you believe the news anyway.

In other parts of the world, people live in places such as Tornado Alley in the US where a good day in August is one where you come home from work to find your house in the same street you left it, or there’s the monsoon lashed regions of Asia which can experience as much rain in an afternoon as Somerset would in the average lifetime.

Meanwhile we live in possibly the most temperate country on the face of the Earth.   Thus we’re depicted as being prone to either all dying of sunstroke if the mercury climbs over 80 in July or, as the last few days have demonstrated, getting hopelessly befuddled and often caught completely unawares when water freezes into snow and starts lazily billowing out of the sky. I’ve allegedly been practically housebound for the last 48 hours because, despite us now being in a year with a funky futuristic name, we can’t manage to put salt- one of the most abundant substances anywhere- onto our roads and pavements to prevent us having to deal with the minor inconvenience of driving or walking on snow that has been compacted down into unending sheets of ice which lie in wait ready to make us skid or tumble and snap our necks with no warning.

How the would-be Brittanic members of the human race managed to get through ice ages that lasted for millenia is anyone’s guess when all we get now is news bulletins booming that the cold snap is due to last “a few more days” with so much portent they might as well be saying it’ll last “till the absolute end of all time”. Reporters have been stationed up and down the country to tell us that everywhere has become ‘snow-bound’ and ‘inaccessible’, despite the fact that they’ve managed to get several hundred kilos of broadcast equipment there in the first place  to tell us this.

I don’t know about you though but, for all the tooth-gnashing horrorbastardism of the news reports on the snow, all I’ve seen is people collectively taking time off work and school to joyously, for want of a better phrase, dick about. Everyone’s found their Christmas/New Year break unexpectedly lengthened by a couple of days and, in the case of my neighbourhood, set about building ever increasingly massive snowmen (there’s a 9 footer round the corner), have snowball fights, drag each other round on sledges and, in a couple of magnificent cases, build igloos and have a picnic in them. The 9ft snowman has even had a huge snow living room built for him. And a trumpet put in his mouth.

Clearly, far from being bewildered by snow, we’re better at dealing with it than any other nation. In a few weeks the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver and, no matter what events you may end up watching through the Games, I guarantee you won’t see one snowman, one snowball fight and certainly no snow living rooms constructed by either spectators or competitors. If the Winter Olympics were held on these isles there’d be a packed Wembley Stadium watching nations throw snowballs against nations, the whole of Dartmoor stripped of snow during a snowman building contest that’ll end up with an army of massive 50ft high creations straddling the South Downs, and all the skiing events replaced by the infinitely more tense British pastime of crowding round the radio first thing in the morning and waiting to see if your school’s been closed.

And, for another guaranteed British medal, the newsreader biathlon- where they have to travel to a snowy village, then file a report about how it’s impossible to travel to the same snowy village.

Obviously, over the next few days the snow will freeze into ice and then it’ll turn slushy and things might be a bit unpleasant for a bit but, for a while, let’s just enjoy the snow. The world’s all pretty and white and fluffy, every footstep makes that crunchy snow noise, many of us have an extended holiday and- this is a fact, by the way- sitting in a pub is for some reason infinitely more satisfying when there’s snow on the ground outside.

All of these are good things because, at a time like this, there’s really no reason to stay indoors. For one thing, there’s bugger all on the telly. Unless you like panicking reporters.

Or Labour simply handing the election to the fucking Tories 5 months early. This snow might be the best news we get all year.

That Was The Year That Will Be

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It’s that time of the year again where every newspaper, website, magazine, pamphlet, TV show and idiot-with-a-keyboard in whatever field produce their end of year awards or lists.  You know the sort of thing- ’50 Best Albums of the Year’, ’25 Best Movie Scenes of 2009′, ‘The Top 10 Shows Which Are A Bit Like Flash-Forward, But Aren’t Flash-Forward’ and, being a decent sort, I’ll sum them all up for you right now and save you the time of actually reading them.
The Resistance by Muse, Jade Goody R.I.P., Roger Federer’s French Open Final, That Scene From ‘Bruno’ On The Talk Show, Roy Cropper in a Canal, Michael Jackson, Thierry Henry’s hand, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, The 4th Series of 30 Rock, House is in a Mental Asylum!, A Creeping Sense of Existentialist Dread, Michael McIntyre, Jedward, Jedward, Does Anyone Else Feeling This Gnawing Emptiness?, Fucking Bono.
There you go.  Done.  That was 2009 which, if it had a unifying theme, was essentially 2008 with more resonant celebrity deaths.  And now that it’s out of the way and I’ve summed it all up for you we can get on to job of dishing out next year’s awards- a process rendered infinitely more fun that for 2009 as it’s based on a combination of idle speculation, crackpot brainstorming and desperately chased hunches.  And so, ladies and gentleman, 13 months early, I present The ItSaysHere 2010 Awards…
Album of the Year- ‘Susan Boyle’s Second Album By Susan Boyle’- Susan Boyle:  Boyle won 14 Grammys, 8 Brit Awards and sold 47 million copies of this, her 2nd album, on which she presents a stirring collection of touching but powerful cover versions of her favourite touching but powerful Leona Lewis cover versions.  Bonus Track:  Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle cover Will Young and Gareth Gates’ cover of ‘The Long And Winding Road’.
Film of the Year- ‘Paedophil’- Sascha Baron Cohen trawls across America’s deep south in the guise of a convicted child sex offender called Philip.  Spends all his time making incredibly insensitive comments about any children in his vicinity and offering to buy an hour of delirious sexual pleasure with any passing kids by negotiating with thier parents in a thick Belgian accent and outrageous hat thereby making a point about the reactionary nature of many Americans but actually just proving that Baron Cohen can do funny voices and is happy to risk getting his head kicked in.
TV Show of the Year- ‘The X Factor Election Special 2010′- Hosted by Dermot O’Leary and David Dimbleby, the nation goes to the polls to decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street next year with a mandate to ease Britain through difficult economic times and increasing European intergration as well as a 1 year record deal with Simon Cowell.  The public vote and Peter Snow’s ‘Swing-o-meter’ will decide the final two before they go before the judges panel (Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Diane Abbott MP, Ian Hislop) for a vote-off.  They both get to make one final impassioned speech to the nation, highlight 3 manifesto policies of their choice and perform their favourite Rod Stewart song before the winner is announced and the Queen joins them onstage to plug her latest single and ask them to form a government.
Sportsman of the Year-  Thierry Henry- Redeems himself for his handball against the Irish by not only guiding the French to World Cup glody but also winning Strictly Come Dancing- beating Greg Wallace from Masterchef in the final foxtrot round- and also starring in the greatest Gillette advert ever with Tiger Woods who everyone’s been looking at a bit funny since that car crash.  Not that anything happened in that car crash, you understand.  I’m just saying.  I mean, they don’t crash themselves do they?  And what was he doing out at that time of the night anyway?  Two words- Geroge Michael.  That’s all I’m saying.  Just that.
Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Flags and Giraffes’ by Eileen O’Murray- Utterly pretentious load of shit which features no discernable plot whatsoever, has hardly any interesting or likeable characters, is sprinkled with swear words and descriptions of drug taking to try to seem edgy, and is mostly told from the perspective of a narrator who is needlessly cryptic and moany.  Is easily battered in terms of originality, ideas, interest and sheer story-telling ability by every single comic produced this year but everyone on Newsnight Review is terrified that they’ll be struck of the list of pretentious clever-clogs for even admitting they’ve heard of Superman.  Throughout 2010 comics will remain so hopelessly uncool that not even Will Self will pretend to like them ironically to annoy The Guardian.
Non-Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Battered in the Pants’ by Jim Hell- A publishing milestone as, after years of misery memoirs clogging up the nations’ bookshelves and being bought by an apparently multi-million strong population of unsettling voyeurs, this represents the first book to be written by someone who actively set out to get abused as a child knowing the lucrative career that would follow as a writer in later years.  This particularly harrowing tale of constantly going to the vicars house in a tight shorts and a vest top to take showers while asking for help in finding the soap will move even the most hardened psychopath to tears.
Celebrity of the Year- Robbie Williams- Scores a major hit in all the celebrity magazines and websites by finally reuniting on stage with Take That.  His decision to patch things up with Gary Barlow was, he says, a really special moment for him and not in any way to do with the fact that they now sell more records than him and is entirely unconnected to the reality that he’ll suddenly get a bit of an attention spike in a career that was rapidly plummeting downhill while his former bandmates about whom he’d not shown the slightest interest in the last near-decade were suddenly the biggest act in Britain again.
News Event of the Year- The End of the World As Gabriel’s Trumpet Sounds, The Rivers Run With Blood and War, Famine, Pestilence and Death Stalk The Land.  All in HD on Sky News!

It’s that time of the year again where every newspaper, website, magazine, pamphlet, TV show and idiot-with-a-keyboard in whatever field produce their end of year awards and lists.  You know the sort of thing- ’50 Best Albums of the Year’, ’25 Best Movie Scenes of 2009′, ‘The Top 10 Shows Which Are A Bit Like Flash-Forward, But Aren’t Flash-Forward’ and, being a decent sort, I’ll sum them all up for you right now and save you the time of actually reading any of them.

The Resistance by Muse, Jade Goody R.I.P., Roger Federer’s French Open Final, That Scene From ‘Bruno’ On The Talk Show, Roy Cropper in a Canal, Michael Jackson, Thierry Henry’s Hand, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Michael Jackson, The 4th Series of 30 Rock, House is in a Mental Asylum!, A Creeping Sense of Existentialist Dread, Michael McIntyre, Jedward, Jedward, Does Anyone Else Feeling This Gnawing Emptiness?, Fucking Bono.

There you go.  Done.  That was 2009 which, if it had a unifying theme, was essentially 2008 with more resonant celebrity deaths.  And now that it’s out of the way and I’ve summed it all up for you we can get on to job of dishing out next year’s awards.  Yes, just for you, I’m going to get the jump on absoultely everybody else on the planet and give you the highlights of 2010 before they even have a chance to happen.  Doing this is a process rendered infinitely more fun than doing it for 2009 as it’s based on a combination of idle speculation, crackpot brainstorming and desperately chased hunches.  And so, ladies and gentleman, 13 months early, I present The ItSaysHere 2010 Awards…

Album of the Year- ‘Susan Boyle’s Second Album By Susan Boyle’- Susan Boyle:  Boyle won 14 Grammys, 8 Brit Awards and sold 47 million copies of this, her 2nd album, on which she presents a stirring collection of touching but powerful cover versions of her favourite touching but powerful Leona Lewis cover versions.  Bonus Track:  Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle cover Will Young and Gareth Gates’ cover of ‘The Long And Winding Road’.

Film of the Year- ‘Paedophil’- Sascha Baron Cohen trawls across America’s deep south in the guise of a convicted child sex offender called Philip.  Spends all his time making incredibly insensitive comments about any children in his vicinity and offering to buy an hour of delirious sexual pleasure with any passing kids by negotiating with their parents in a thick Belgian accent and outrageous hat, thereby making a point about the reactionary nature of many Americans but actually just proving that Baron Cohen can do funny voices and is happy to risk getting his head kicked in.

TV Show of the Year- ‘The X Factor Election Special 2010‘- Hosted by Dermot O’Leary and David Dimbleby, the nation goes to the polls to decide who will occupy 10 Downing Street next year with a mandate to ease Britain through difficult economic times and increasing European intergration as well as a 1 year record deal with Simon Cowell.  The public vote and Peter Snow’s ‘Swing-o-meter’ will decide the final two before they go before the judges panel (Cowell, Louis Walsh, Cheryl Cole, Diane Abbott MP, Ian Hislop) for a vote-off.  They both get to make one final impassioned speech to the nation, highlight 3 manifesto policies of their choice and perform their favourite Rod Stewart song before the winner is announced and the Queen joins them onstage to plug her latest single and ask them to form a government.

Sportsman of the Year-  Thierry Henry- Redeems himself for his handball against the Irish by not only guiding the French to World Cup glory but also winning Strictly Come Dancing- beating Greg Wallace from Masterchef in the final foxtrot round- and also starring in the greatest Gillette advert ever with Tiger Woods who everyone’s been looking at a bit funny since that car crash.  Not that anything happened in that car crash, you understand.  I’m just saying;  I mean, they don’t crash themselves do they?  And what was he doing out at that time of the night anyway?  Two words- Geroge Michael.  That’s all I’m saying.  Just that.

Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Flags and Giraffes’ by Eileen O’Murray- Utterly pretentious load of shit which features no discernable plot whatsoever, has hardly any interesting or likeable characters, is sprinkled with swear words and descriptions of drug taking to try to seem edgy, and is mostly told from the perspective of a narrator who is needlessly cryptic and moany and who you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.  Is easily battered in terms of originality, ideas, interest and sheer story-telling ability by every single comic produced this year but everyone on Newsnight Review is terrified that they’ll be struck of the list of pretentious clever-clogs for even admitting they’ve heard of Superman.  Throughout 2010 comics will remain so hopelessly uncool that not even Will Self will pretend to like them ironically to annoy The Guardian.

Non-Fiction Book of the Year- ‘Battered in the Pants’ by Jim Hell- A publishing milestone as, after years of misery memoirs clogging up the nations’ bookshelves and being bought by an apparently multi-million strong population of unsettling voyeurs, this represents the first book to be written by someone who actively set out to get abused as a child knowing the lucrative career that would follow as a writer in later years.  This particularly harrowing tale of constantly going to the vicar’s house in tight shorts and a vest top to take showers while asking for help in finding the soap will move even the most hardened page-twitching psychopath to tears.

Celebrity of the Year- Robbie Williams- Scores a major hit in all the celebrity magazines and websites by finally reuniting on stage with Take That.  His decision to patch things up with Gary Barlow was, he says, a really special moment and not in any way to do with the fact that they now sell more records than him and is entirely unconnected to the reality that he’ll suddenly get a bit of an attention spike in a career that was rapidly plummeting downhill while his former bandmates about whom he’d not shown the slightest interest in the last near-decade were suddenly the biggest act in Britain again.

News Event of the Year- The End of the World As Gabriel’s Trumpet Sounds, The Rivers Run With Blood and War, Famine, Pestilence and Death Stalk The Land. All in HD on Sky News!

Children In Need 2009

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3 years ago I wrote a blow-by-low account of a night watching Children in Need but, since none of you read it, I’m doing it again this evening because I’m light on ideas at the best of times and it’s an effort to bring some much needed verisimilitude (look it up) to this site.  I also failed to make it all the way to 2am last time out and on this occasion- I promise you- that will not happen again.  I’m going to stare 7 solid hours of light entertainment in the face and it will blink before I do.  Here goes…
7.05-  Five minutes gone and Terry Wogan’s already been introduced twice either side of a performance from ‘thinking-man’s Cheryl Cole’ Alesha Dixon- whose head appears to be far too small for her body.  It turns out she’ll also be co-hosting the show tonight with Wogan and Tess Daly.  It all seems a long way from the days when the lady hosting duties were undertaken by stern crimestopper Sue Cook accepting massive cheques for a few thousand pounds from the staff at Littlewoods.  In other news the crowd is strangely subdued, though that might only be an illusion due to my exposure to the X-Factor which seemingly gives it’s audience an order to impersonate a holocaust in a screaming factory at every opportunity.  We also get our first trip to see members of the Eastenders cast taking telephone donations at the top of BT Tower while being interviewed by Peter Andre.  In turn we get our first thigh-slapping moment of the evening when Andre attempts to hijack a call from a generous donor who promptly hangs up the moment he speaks.  Even if the former Mr Jordan is hosting for free he’s actually lost the charity money just by being there which must be about as low as a career gets in British television- and lest we forget this is a man who married a woman he met while on a gameshow based around eating kangaroo arses in some shrubbery.
7.30-  We’ve had our first ‘Why we’re here’ clip which was hosted by the three principal actors from Harry Potter who are about as far from the idea of being Children in Need as it’s possible to get.  This is followed by Peter Kay’s contribution- a video of literally hundreds of classic animated characters singing a medley that builds to a combination of ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘One Day Like This’.  Already seems destined to be the highlight which, with 6 and a half hours to go, is a little depressing.  This is thrown into sharp relief with the subsequent ‘special’ episode of Merlin- merely the first of what I don’t doubt will be countless TV shows sullying themselves in the name of charity by shoe-horning Pudsey Bear into a five minute scene that was written by whoever lost a bet.  There’s also been a band on called JLS who achieve the impossible by being Boyz II Men with less charisma.
7.50-  First regional bit- in the North West it’s being beamed, inexplicably, from an aquarium which seems slightly tasteless with half of Cumbria currently submerged by a ‘once-in-a-thousand-year’ flood.  Back in London, John Barrowman turns up and recreates Tom Cruise’s famous dance number in Risky Business wearing a pair of boxers which he subsequently promises to autograph and auction without offering to wash them first.  Doesn’t he know there’s a flu pandemic on?
8.10-  Four members of the Hollyoaks cast do a Queen medley, notable only for the microphone of one of them malfunctioning which creates more tension, drama and emotional resonance than any episode of their show ever.  This could be a way forward for Hollyoaks where, let’s be honest, the actors are picked more on looks and willingness to do everything in their underwear than acting ability.  If they populate the studio with malfunctioning equipment such as lights which intermittently explode it’d at least add a nervy, jumpy, Giovanni Ribisi (look him up) quality to their performances.
8.30-  Now it’s Casualty’s turn for a C.I.N. special- featuring Pudsey being treated on a secret teddy-bear ward in Holby General which is easily the most disturbing sight of the evening so far.  I reckon that these downright bizarre charity versions shouldn’t be shown on the nightof Children In Need itself but should just be slotted into the show’s normal run elsewhere in the year without telling anyone.  It’d get everyone talking.  Plus I reckon it’d have more impact if the Pudsey storyline in Casualty had to intertwine with that of a man who drove a lorry full of fireworks into a warehouse storing matches and tar.
9.30-  In the last hour we’ve had the people from The One Show recreating ‘Fame’ in the BBC Television Centre car park, Dragons Den doing an episode of Challenge Anneka, Westlife (who I thought had just, sort of, vanished), and four blokes from The Bill singing ‘Mack the Knife’.  Read that sentence back and consider the production meeting that led to each of those ideas getting the green-light.  I can only think it took place at gunpoint and involved a tombola and several industrial strength hallucinogens
9.55-  Eastenders’ annual karaoke car crash this year took the music of Motown and stamped on its neck with terrifying efficiency while the latest trip to the North West’s broadcast featured a bunch of kids dressed as zombies shuffling through a tunnel at the aquarium FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.  3 hours in and this is all starting to feel like an experiment in how far the goodwill of the British people can be pushed.  I know it’s all for a good cause but just how in need are these children?  I’ll be honest, it’s going to take some pretty spectacular hardship to justify me having to watch Minty and Daniella Westbrook bum-raping some of the finest pop music ever made.  Never mind- here come the newsreaders…
10.00-  The newsreaders’ performance is one of the highlights of ever year and they don’t disappoint on this outing.  First the ladies give it some Beyonce, which opens up the tantilising possibility of George Aligaiyah turning up to perfrom Jay-Z’s rap from ‘Crazy in Love’.  In the end, he doesn’t and we have to make do with Bill Turnbull and Nick Owen breakdancing to Run DMC’s ‘It’s Like That’.  It really is like the office Christmas party at the end of the world.  A special mention must go to Sophie Raworth whose exploits in this number lead to a highly-charged text exchange between me and a friend about newsreader fantasies that finishes with a description of Raworth, Emily Mathis and Natasha Kaplinsky getting flooded out of a neglige testing factory and taking shelter in a paddling pool warehouse until thousands of packets of jelly burst all over them due to high humidity.  Still, it’s all for charity…
10.30-  The traditional switch over to BBC2 during the news features a comedians’ version of Mastermind and the frankly bizarre spectacle of John Humphrys discussing Five Star with Steven K. Amos and quoting ‘My Humps’ by the Black Eyed Peas while asking a question.  This is staring to feel less like a telethon and more like a psychotic episode by the minute.
12.00-  Since we’ve returned to BBC1 there’s been a ‘special’ episode of Poirot which marks an even deeper career nadir for David Suchet than ‘Executive Decision’, a performance from Harry Connick Jr who hasn’t been seen since he got killed to death by an alien in ‘Independence Day’ and songs by Spandau Ballet and Madness when the whole show suddenly seems to arrive in 1983 without any warning.  In fact, there’s been more and more stuff repeated from earlier in the show which gives a worrying sense of deja vu and of time slipping it’s moorings and floating off into the distance leaving us trapped in a loop of the last 5 hours.  I’ve just found out that CERN is back online as of 3 hours ago.  This can’t be a coincidence.
12.30-  The latest ‘special’ is billed as ‘Rebus meets Taggart’ even though 50% of those people are dead.  Still, it’s probably the funniest thing on all night so far though whether this is due to quality on the show’s behalf or creeping insanity on mine is, at this late hour, hard to judge.  It does portray Pudsey as a potential murderer for the second time tonight after Poirot did it earlier.  This is a bizarre trend which does at least open the way for a ‘The Wire’ Children in Need special next year.
12.45-  The Nolans are on.  In terms of tests of stamina, this is now the telly-watching equivalent of doing a triathlon while suffering from M.E.  75 minutes to go.  Fading fast.  No-one’s even trying anymore.  Least of all me.
2.00-  Made it.  Barely.  The last hour was a punishing mixture of musical performances (Ronan Keating, Stereophonics, The New Original Sugababe Experience) and more ‘Why We’re Here’ films for which the only personal highlight came during Paloma Faith’s song and was basically centred around remembering that I know someone who knows her drummer.  That’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me since I was hypnotised by Fiona Bruce’s jiggling bottom over 4 hours ago.
This is how I spent my Friday night.
And I didn’t even think of a punchline.

3 years ago I wrote a blow-by-low account of a night watching Children in Need but, since none of you read it, I’m doing it again this evening because I’m light on ideas at the best of times and it’s an effort to bring some much needed verisimilitude (look it up) to this site.  I also failed to make it all the way to 2am last time out and on this occasion- I promise you- that will not happen again.  I’m going to stare 7 solid hours of light entertainment in the face and it will blink before I do.  Here goes…

7.05-  Five minutes gone and Terry Wogan’s already been introduced twice either side of a performance from ‘thinking-man’s Cheryl Cole’ Alesha Dixon- whose head appears to be far too small for her body.  It turns out she’ll also be co-hosting the show tonight with Wogan and Tess Daly.  It all seems a long way from the days when the lady hosting duties were undertaken by stern crimestopper Sue Cook accepting massive cheques for a few thousand pounds from the staff at Littlewoods.  In other news the crowd is strangely subdued, though that might only be an illusion due to my exposure to the X-Factor which seemingly gives it’s audience an order to impersonate a holocaust in a screaming factory at every opportunity.  We also get our first trip to see members of the Eastenders cast taking telephone donations at the top of BT Tower while being interviewed by Peter Andre.  In turn we get our first thigh-slapping moment of the evening when Andre attempts to hijack a call from a generous donor who promptly hangs up the moment he speaks.  Even if the former Mr Jordan is hosting for free he’s actually lost the charity money just by being there which must be about as low as a career gets in British television- and lest we forget this is a man who married a woman he met while on a gameshow based around eating kangaroo arses in some shrubbery.

7.30-  We’ve had our first ‘Why we’re here’ clip which was hosted by the three principal actors from Harry Potter who are about as far from the idea of being Children in Need as it’s possible to get.  This is followed by Peter Kay’s contribution- a video of literally hundreds of classic animated characters singing a medley that builds to a combination of ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘One Day Like This’.  Already seems destined to be the highlight of the night which, with 6 and a half hours to go, is a little depressing.  This is thrown into sharp relief with the subsequent ‘special’ episode of Merlin- merely the first of what I don’t doubt will be countless TV shows sullying themselves in the name of charity by shoe-horning Pudsey Bear into a five minute scene that was written by whoever lost a bet.  There’s also been a band on called JLS who achieve the impossible by being Boyz II Men with less charisma.

7.50-  First regional bit- in the North West it’s being beamed, inexplicably, from an aquarium which seems slightly tasteless with half of Cumbria currently submerged by a ‘once-in-a-thousand-year’ flood.  Back in London, John Barrowman turns up and recreates Tom Cruise’s famous dance number in Risky Business wearing a pair of boxers which he subsequently promises to autograph and auction without offering to wash them first.  Doesn’t he know there’s a flu pandemic on?

8.10-  Four members of the Hollyoaks cast do a Queen medley, notable only for the microphone of one of them malfunctioning which creates more tension, drama and emotional resonance than any episode of their show ever.  This could be a way forward for Hollyoaks where, let’s be honest, the actors are picked more on looks and willingness to do everything in their underwear than acting ability.  If they populate the studio with malfunctioning equipment such as lights which intermittently explode it’d at least add a nervy, jumpy, Giovanni Ribisi (look him up) quality to their performances.

8.30-  Now it’s Casualty’s turn for a C.I.N. special- featuring Pudsey being treated on a secret teddy-bear ward in Holby General which is easily the most disturbing sight of the evening so far.  I reckon that these downright bizarre charity versions shouldn’t be shown on the night of Children In Need itself but should just be slotted into the show’s normal run elsewhere in the year without telling anyone.  It’d get everyone talking.  Plus I reckon it’d have more impact if the Pudsey storyline in Casualty had to intertwine with that of a man who drove a lorry full of fireworks into a warehouse storing matches and tar.

9.30-  In the last hour we’ve had the people from The One Show recreating ‘Fame’ in the BBC Television Centre car park, Dragons Den doing an episode of Challenge Anneka, Westlife (who I thought had just, sort of, vanished), and four blokes from The Bill singing ‘Mack the Knife’.  Read that sentence back and consider the production meeting that led to each of those ideas getting the green-light.  I can only think it took place at gunpoint and involved a tombola and several industrial strength hallucinogens

9.55-  Eastenders’ annual karaoke car crash this year took the music of Motown and stamped on its neck with terrifying efficiency while the latest trip to the North West’s broadcast featured a bunch of kids dressed as zombies shuffling through a tunnel at the aquarium FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.  3 hours in and this is all starting to feel like an experiment in how far the goodwill of the British people can be pushed.  I know it’s all for a good cause but just how in need are these children?  I’ll be honest, it’s going to take some pretty spectacular hardship to justify me having to watch Minty and Daniella Westbrook bum-raping some of the finest pop music ever made.  Never mind- here come the newsreaders…

10.00-  The newsreaders’ performance is one of the highlights of ever year and they don’t disappoint on this outing.  First the ladies give it some Beyonce, which opens up the tantilising possibility of George Aligaiyah turning up to perfrom Jay-Z’s rap from ‘Crazy in Love’.  In the end, he doesn’t and we have to make do with Bill Turnbull and Nick Owen breakdancing to Run DMC’s ‘It’s Like That’.  The bit with the ladies looks like this:

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And, more importantly, like this…

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It really is like the office Christmas party at the end of the world.  A special mention must go to Sophie Raworth whose exploits in this number lead to a highly-charged text exchange between me and a friend about newsreader fantasies that finishes with a description of Raworth, Emily Mathis and Natasha Kaplinsky getting flooded out of a neglige testing factory and taking shelter in a paddling pool warehouse until thousands of packets of jelly burst all over them due to high humidity.  Still, it’s all for charity…

10.30-  The traditional switch over to BBC2 during the news features a comedians’ version of Mastermind and the frankly bizarre spectacle of John Humphrys discussing Five Star with Steven K. Amos and quoting ‘My Humps’ by the Black Eyed Peas while asking a question.  This is staring to feel less like a telethon and more like a psychotic episode by the minute.

12.00-  Since we’ve returned to BBC1 there’s been a ‘special’ episode of Poirot which marks an even deeper career nadir for David Suchet than ‘Executive Decision’, a performance from Harry Connick Jr who hasn’t been seen since he got killed to death by an alien in ‘Independence Day’ and songs by Spandau Ballet and Madness when the whole show suddenly seems to arrive in 1983 without any warning.  In fact, there’s been more and more stuff repeated from earlier in the show which gives a worrying sense of deja vu and of time slipping it’s moorings and floating off into the distance leaving us trapped in a loop of the last 5 hours.  I’ve just found out that CERN is back online as of 3 hours ago.  This can’t be a coincidence.

12.30-  The latest ‘special’ is billed as ‘Rebus meets Taggart’ even though 50% of those people are dead.  Still, it’s probably the funniest thing on all night so far though whether this is due to quality on the show’s behalf or creeping insanity on mine is, at this late hour, hard to judge.  It does portray Pudsey as a potential murderer for the second time tonight after Poirot did it earlier.  This is a bizarre trend which does at least open the way for a ‘The Wire’ Children in Need special next year.

12.45-  The Nolans are on.  In terms of tests of stamina, this is now the telly-watching equivalent of doing a triathlon while suffering from M.E.  75 minutes to go.  Fading fast.  No-one’s even trying anymore.  Least of all me.

2.00-  Made it.  Barely.  The last hour was a punishing mixture of musical performances (Ronan Keating, Stereophonics, The New Original Sugababe Experience) and more ‘Why We’re Here’ films.  The only personal highlight came during Paloma Faith’s song and was basically centred around remembering that I know someone who knows her drummer.  That’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to me since I was hypnotised by Fiona Bruce’s jiggling bottom over 4 hours ago.

This is how I spent my Friday night.

And I didn’t even think of a punchline.

The Beautiful People, The Beautiful People…

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Gratulationerna för varelse mycket söt än jag och all min bog trotting Engelsk vännerna. That’s Swedish for ‘Congratulations for being much prettier than me and all my bog trotting British friends’, though I suspect the translator I used didn’t understand ‘bog trotting’ and kept it in English rather than bothering to find a Swedish interpretation. If I put the two words in by themselves the apparent translation is ‘bow pavement’ which I think means that my web browser is having a nervous breakdown. Or the original programmer of the site was too busy being gorgeous to put in the requisite information to discover the Swedish translation for ‘bog trotter’. Though he did program in ‘swamp donkey’ (‘svimmat åsna’).
The chances are there is no direct Swedish translation of ‘bog trotter’ because, and this is official, the Swedish are the most beautiful race on Earth. For men that is. The hottest women, on the other hand, are from Norway. Though it seems pretty much everyone in that part of the world is a drop-dead eye-festival of prettiness. No wonder all Scandinavians are smug.
Meanwhile, the Brits, like me, are among the ugliest folk on the face of the Earth. If Earth actually does have a face, we’re the exzema.
This Earth-shattering research comes from a website called Beautifulpeople.com which I’m going to tell you about, but not before you’ve taken some deep breaths and thought some happy thoughts. You’re going to need them. And make sure there’s nothing sharp, breakable or precious in arm’s reach. Ready? Good.
Beautifulpeople.com is a dating site that asks “Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?”, wonders aloud if “you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?” and promises to offer you “No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites”. It only lets you onboard if other people on the site decide you’re good looking enough to get in by rating you as being in one of four categories- ‘Yes definitely’, ‘Hmmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmmm no, not really’ and ‘NO definitely NOT’. It guarantees that the ugly, the average and the plain won’t even get a look in to spoil your culpted magnificence as it searches for a love as knee-tremblingly adonis-like as your own. It guarantees that personality, soul, warmth, humour, sweetness and humanity are sucked clean out of the messy business of finding love.
It’s the Black American Express Cards of last-ditch cyber-seducation. Essentially, it’s matchmaking for people who find speed dating too in-depth. It’s a plotline rejected from Sex and the City for being both ludicrous and awful made tragically real. It feels chillingly like one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.
Beautifulpeople.com was set up in Denmark (I told you all Scandinavians were smug) and went global last month. Since then about 2 million people have applied and only one-in-every-six applicants have got through. They’re the beautiful ones. Well done. Good for them.
I’m determined not to hate the website for three reasons:
1) Hatred is clearly what they want. It couldn’t be a more naked attempt at stirring up some attention-grabbing controversy from newspapers if it was a musical about paedolphilia called ‘Massive Sweaty Cocks’.
2) It might be a self-aggrandising cult for beautiful people but at least they aren’t as bad as ugly people. Beautiful people are often intolerable but at least they don’t make the world a worse place to look at just by exisiting.
3) It’s really, really hard not to feel sorry for the beautiful people who not only sign up to the website but get through the selection process. Think about it- most people in the world are OK looking. They’re fine. Pretty good. And the chances are, owing to the vaguries and varieties of human taste, there’s always likely to be at least a few people in the world who find someone attractive. It’s a matter of odds. This means that, chances are, if you want to find someone you fancy to have a relationship with you can and you will. If you’re beautiful, all it means is that you’ll have a few more people to pick from. You’ll still have to have a personality, be engaging and form a loving bond with someone but at least if God gave you a nice face and great figure you get there’s more chance you’re partner will be that millionaire, romantic/nymphomaniac, artistic/fun-loving, yoga/ski instructor with the classical dancer’s body/great tits you always wanted. Unless, that is, you’ve somehow ended up in the murky world of online dating and “filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites” before finally seeing the light and being accepted into the hallowed pantheon on beautifulpeople.com.
The maths here are pretty simple. People want to have realtionships with someone they find attractive. Therefore: beautiful people are more attractive and will therefore have more potential suitors to choose from. Therefore: any beautiful person who cannot find a relationship by conventional means and has to resort to their own online cross between a dating website and advanced eugenics is clearly a gold-standard mental whose aesthetic charms are clearly not enough to keep a partner round long enough in the face of some atomic-powered personality defects.
And that’s why I feel sorry for them all on beautifulpeople.com. Not only do they have to trudge through life peering with horror through their (still gorgeous) squinted eyes at the rest of us normal people, but they then have to resort to finding love on a website that, basic logic tells us, should really be called hot-nutters.com. They’ll end up in relationships with fellow gorgeous lunatics which will inevitably lead in many cases to either petty, vindictive squabbling (if you’re lucky) or horrible, bloody axe murders (if you’re not).
So, by all means get join this site if you want to and have the chance meet a Scandinavian who is as stunning as you. Apparently they’re all lovely over there (a frankly staggering 76% of Norwegian women who apply to beatuifulpeople.com get in) but just don’t expect them to be too together on the sanity front. The whole region’s teeming with gorgeous looney-tunes.
No wonder Scandinavians are all smug. No wonder Scandinavians all commit suicide.

Gratulationerna för varelse mycket söt än jag och all min bog trotting Engelsk vännerna. That’s Swedish for ‘Congratulations for being much prettier than me and all my bog trotting British friends’, though I suspect the translator I used didn’t understand ‘bog trotting’ and kept it in English rather than bothering to find a Swedish interpretation. If I put the two words in by themselves the apparent translation is ‘bow pavement’ which I think means that my web browser is having a nervous breakdown. Or the original programmer of the site was too busy being gorgeous to put in the requisite information to discover the Swedish translation for ‘bog trotter’. Though he did program in ‘swamp donkey’ (‘svimmat åsna’).

The chances are there is no direct Swedish translation of ‘bog trotter’ because, and this is official, the Swedish are the most beautiful race on Earth. For men that is. The hottest women, on the other hand, are from Norway. Though it seems pretty much everyone in that part of the world is a drop-dead eye-festival of prettiness. No wonder all Scandinavians are smug.

Meanwhile, the Brits, like me, are among the ugliest folk on the face of the Earth. If Earth actually does have a face, we’re the exzema.

This paradigm-shattering research comes from a website called Beautifulpeople.com which I’m going to tell you about, but not before you’ve taken some deep breaths and thought some happy thoughts. You’re going to need them. And make sure there’s nothing sharp, breakable or precious in arm’s reach. Ready? Good.

Beautifulpeople.com is a dating site that asks “Do looks matter to you, when it comes to selecting a partner?”, wonders aloud if “you want to guarantee your dates will always be beautiful?” and promises to offer you “No more filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites”. It only lets you onboard if other people on the site decide you’re good looking enough to get in by rating you as being in one of four categories- ‘Yes definitely’, ‘Hmmm yes, OK’, ‘Hmmm no, not really’ and ‘NO definitely NOT’. It guarantees that the ugly, the average and the plain won’t even get a look in to spoil your sculpted magnificence as it searches for a love as knee-tremblingly adonis-like as your own. It guarantees that personality, soul, warmth, humour, sweetness and humanity are sucked clean out of the messy business of finding love.

It’s the Black American Express card of last-ditch cyber-seduction. Essentially, it’s matchmaking for people who find speed dating too in-depth. It’s a plotline rejected from Sex and the City for being both ludicrous and awful made tragically real. It feels chillingly like one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.

Beautifulpeople.com was set up in Denmark (I told you all Scandinavians were smug) and went global last month. Since then about 2 million people have applied and only one-in-every-six applicants have got through. They’re the beautiful ones. Well done. Good for them.

I’m determined not to hate the website for three reasons:

1) Hatred is clearly what they want. It couldn’t be a more naked attempt at stirring up some attention-grabbing controversy from newspapers if it was a musical about paedolphilia called ‘Massive Sweaty Cocks’.

2) It might be a self-aggrandising cult for beautiful people but at least they aren’t as bad as ugly people. Beautiful people are often intolerable but at least they don’t make the world a worse place to look at just by exisiting.

3) It’s really, really hard not to feel sorry for the beautiful people who not only sign up to the website but get through the selection process. Think about it- most people in the world are OK looking. They’re fine. Pretty good. And the chances are, owing to the vaguries and varieties of human taste, there’s always likely to be at least a few people in the world who find someone attractive. It’s a matter of odds. This means that, chances are, if you want to find someone you fancy to have a relationship with you can and you will. If you’re beautiful, all it means is that you’ll have a few more people to pick from. You’ll still have to have a personality, be engaging and form a loving bond with someone but at least if God gave you a nice face and great figure there’s more chance you’re partner will be that multi-millionaire, romantic/nymphomaniac, artistic/fun-loving, yoga/ski instructor with the classical dancer’s body/great tits you always wanted. Unless, that is, you’ve somehow ended up in the murky world of online dating and “filtering through unattractive people on mainstream sites” before finally seeing the light and being accepted into the hallowed pantheon on beautifulpeople.com.

The maths here are pretty simple. People want to have realtionships with someone they find attractive. Therefore: beautiful people are more attractive and will therefore have more potential suitors to choose from. Therefore: any beautiful person who cannot find a relationship by conventional means and has to resort to their own online cross between a dating website and advanced eugenics is clearly a gold-standard mental whose aesthetic charms are clearly not enough to keep a partner round long enough in the face of some atomic-powered personality defects.

And that’s why I feel sorry for them all on beautifulpeople.com. Not only do they have to trudge through life peering with horror through their (still gorgeous) squinted eyes at the rest of us normal people, but they then have to resort to finding love on a website that, basic logic tells us, should really be called hot-nutters.com. They’ll end up in relationships with fellow gorgeous lunatics which will inevitably lead in many cases to either petty, vindictive squabbling (if you’re lucky) or horrible, bloody axe murders (if you’re not).

So, by all means get join this site if you want to and, who knows, maybe you’ll have the chance to meet a Scandinavian who is as stunning as you. Apparently they’re all lovely over there (a frankly staggering 76% of Norwegian women who apply to beatuifulpeople.com get in) but just don’t expect them to be too together on the sanity front. The whole region’s teeming with gorgeous looney-tunes.

No wonder Scandinavians are all smug. No wonder Scandinavians all commit suicide.

Tales of the Unexpected

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The Grand Tier of Manchester’s Palace Theatre is apparently named, if the seating room is anything to go by, due to the fact that Grand people in Victorian times didn’t have legs. I was settling down there for the Saturday matinee performance of Chicago this past weekend, trying to find a place for my lower limbs to squeeze into which wasn’t the back of an unfortunate Japanese woman’s head when it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single bloody clue what I was about to watch unfold on stage. Now I’m well aware that the film version won loads of Oscars a few years ago and I know that the story is held as tightly to the souls of many women as the first two Alien films are for men but I’ve managed to go my entire life without ever learning the slightest thing about the plot, characters or setting and this suddenly hit me a moment before curtain up.

As an example of how strange this sensation was let’s compare it with when I sat in the cinema to watch Die Hard 4.0. Before the trailers even started rolling for that one I knew that John McLane fought against cyber-terrorists, had a nerdy sidekick, was involved in a long running dispute with his daughter, ran into Kevin Smith, fought an F-39 jet and, or course, killed a helicopter with a car (actually, I was sure I’d seen Kevin Smith in the trailer but was utterly convinced I’d imagined the whole thing. I mean, come on- Kevin Smith in a Die Hard film? Playing a bloke called ‘Warlock’? Was Harry Knowles busy?). All I was really waiting for was to see how these things were all strung together before he said ‘yippee kay-aye motherfucker’ and the credits rolled.

Flash forward to last Saturday and to be aware that I had no idea what I was about to see was an oddly terrifying moment. I was suddenly flying without the safety net of an explosive trailer, a carefully read synopsis, a familiar cast-list (apart from Gary Wilmot from the 1980′s) and a review in Empire to guide me to my chair. All I had to cling to was the assumption that the action took place in Chicago which would rule out a spectacular morris dancing number but not much else.

As it turns out what transpired in the following couple of hours was centred around a woman desperate for stardom, a jealous affair, acts of violence and a downtrodden husband. Coupled with all the singing it had the feel of a special episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show filmed for Children in Need. And thoroughly enjoyable it was too but I can’t help thinking that it was helped by catching me completely unwares.

If you think about it (or rather, if I think about it for you), this hints at why reality television has been so popular over the last decade or so. With every TV show and film trailed and previewed to death these days reality shows, in particular those where a bunch of people who want to perform a specific task for a living (singing, cooking, being shouted at by Alan Sugar) get whittled down over a series of weeks, offer the genuine hope of some surprises and shocks and the chance to have a good old shout at the goggle box over the judges’/public’s decision making and the screaming injustice of it all. It’s sport, for people who don’t like sport (a bit like golf).

In shows like The Apprentice, The Restaurant or Masterchef the job of firing is handled by either experts in their field or someone who is in some way invested in the outcome of the show. These protagonists come in all shapes and sizes from cockney bellowers (Masterchef) to successful entrepeneurs (The Restaurant) to a successful bellowing cockney entrepeneur (The Apprentice) and by having the ejection process exclusively presided over by respected figures these shows present the acceptable end of reality television. They are thus eulogised in The Guardian and are even, to stretch the sport metaphor to breaking point, given, in the shape of The Apprentice You’re Fired! a Match of the Day-style analysis show hosted by Adrian ‘Absolutely Fucking Everywhere on the Telly, Honestly He’s Like John Barrowman About 7 Months Ago’ Chiles.

At the other end of the scale is the gaudy, public-voted stuff like Tv-phenomenon-de-jour The X Factor and, on the other side, Strictly Come Dancing- the BBC’s laudable attempt at bolting some culture onto a standard phone vote money-trawling exercise. These are the shows that seem to genuinely grab hold of the public’s attention in a manic sense and can easily dominate the front pages for days on end with the casual flick of a judges barb or a backstage racist comment. Since these shows revolve around decisions made by the viewing millions the sort of indignation witnessed when Sir Alan fires a nice bloke and leaves a pack of sniggering conniving bastards in the running is magnified a trillion-fold when the voting masses feel they’re opinion has been staunchly ignored and a perceived injustice has just flashed all over their screens.

This has been seen most obviously this week when a curious, avant-garde bi-entity by the name of Jedward was kept in The X-Factor by Simon Cowell at the expense of a pretty girl with a nice voice and all the personality of half a hoover bag’s contents.

Quickly- an aside. This is not about to turn into some massive anti X-Factor rant. The show seems to divide the nation in a way that Marmite or peak-season Big Brother could only dream of; half the country talks about and watches nothing else for 3 months while the other half try to out-do each other in demonstrating their utter indignation towards everything the programme does, everyone who appears on it and everyone it employs (apart from recently Teflon-coated Geordie national treasure Cheryl Cole). I end up feeling rather out on a limb as I don’t really watch the show to any great extent beyond Youtubing whatever everyones talking about that week and I’ve got no problem with it either. Anyone who thinks it’s destroying music is wildly over-reacting; all Cowell’s doing is what Larry Parnes and other impresarios did in the 50′s and 60′s and British music came out of that period rather well. Mind you, those that follow the show slavishly are the ones I worry about most- especially in the light of the ongoing Jedward scandal.

For years now Simon Cowell has been expertly manipulating the stories, scandals and gossip on his shows to keep them on the front pages, keep the viewing figures on the ceiling and keep the phone vote money rolling in. An expertly placed ‘feud’ with a fellow judge here, a voting scandal there, a convenient throat infection threatening a performance to spice things up when necessary- all designed and perfectly placed to hook in the public and fill column inches. He is, and this is a massive complement, the natural heir to P.T. Barnum. However, keeping Jedward in is either Cowell’s first massive cock-up or proof that he’s drunk on power and convinced he can manipulate the British public into doing whatever the hell he damn well pleases.

The decision to keep them in goes against every scree of his supposed position of ‘judge’ and his carefully managed opinion of recent weeks in which he basically equated the twins to the ebola virus with shitter hair. Letting them remain in the competition was so utterly, utterly obviously the wrong thing to do as a judge but blatantly the wisest move for a man with an interest in the show’s viewing figures and attention that any last vestiges of the idea that The X-Factor is a talent contest were washed away in a stroke. I honestly thought that the show’s public would wake from their frenzy and stride blinking into a future in which Emperor Cowell is finally revealed naked and clueless before them and they all have to watch Strictly Come Dancing instead. But no- somehow, and this must take balls of steel, Cowell got away with it. No-one spotted the ruse and the show’s all over the papers again. It’ll get a 4000% share of the viewing public next Saturday and he’ll have another Xmas number one on his hands. Well done, sir- you’re clearly a genius. And I mean that.

Plus, of course, when people tune into the X-Factor they’ll know they genuinely have no idea what’s going to happen. Not with Colonel Cowell’s finger on the button. This is a man who presides over a circus of such lunacy he can even warp seasoned showbiz pros into demented performances- witness Robbie Williams mad-eyed charging about and Cheryl Cole’s terrifyingly erotic impersonation of M. Bison in StreetFighter II from earlier in the series- and things have only got madder and more unpredictable from there. Now everyone’s been complicit in letting him keep Jedward in things are only going to escalate further- it’ll be Finnish Death Metal Week soon, or he’ll have one of the blokes performing “I’m A Pink Toothbrush, You’re A Blue Toothbrush” while dressed as Clement Atlee. And then keep them in till next week. When they’ll do exactly the same performance again but replacing every 7th word with ‘coelocanth’. And that’ll be the Xmas no. 1.

There’s no stopping him now. But at least it’ll be unexpected which is a rare thing these days. There’s only Cowell and me left to provide it. What can I do that’s unexpected you ask?

Finish this blathering by telling you I’m a Belgian rhinocerous.

OK, it’s bollocks but you didn’t see it coming did you?

This Is It

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Let me tell you about the man who boiled himself to death in a pair of waders. Essentially, he was a chap who got his rocks off by filling a massive pair of waders with water and then standing in them with his nipples wired up to the mains. This in turn, and don’t ask me how he figured all this out, allowed him to use a dimmer switch to electorcute himself in a way he found arousing. Or at least it did until the day he suffered a minor seizure during one shock and was unable to move his arm and flick the switch off which in turn lead to him slowly simmering his way to oblivion over the next hour or so. A bit like a broth. But with a hard-on.

Pretty humiliating eh? And that’s still nowhere near how undignified the death of Michael Jackson’s been; with still no sign of the poor dead man’s torment abating. As if it wasn’t bad enough having helicopters hovering over his final ambulance ride, as if it wasn’t bad enough having reports of his death inter-sperced with clips from the Thriller video where he dances around as a corpse, as if it wasn’t bad enough having details of his mammoth prescription drugs shopping list plastered all over the papers, as if it wasn’t bad enough having that jaw-dropping memorial service beamed around the world- especially when Usher looked like he was going to hysterically rip the coffin lid open, desperately grab Jackson’s body by the lapels and try to sing him back to life- as if all that wasn’t bad enough we reach the coup de grace this week with the release of a video documenting his final weeks called ‘This Is It’.

This seems to have been lost on everyone- after all ‘This Is It’ was the title of the comeback show he was rehearsing for- but what sort of name is that for a film of a man’s final acts upon this Earth? A film which everyone will be watching in the hope of seeing the Grim Reaper hiding behind the drum riser ready to pounce. ‘This Is It’. ‘This Is It’. Honestly. ‘This Is It’. For a sense of perspective, here’s a few titles for a film of Michael Jackson hurtling towards his end which would have been in no way in worse taste than ‘This Is It’:

‘Dead Man Dancing’. ‘Prescription For Death’. ‘Doomwalker’. ‘Blame It On The Druggie’. ‘Lets All Watch A Man Uniwttingly Rehearsing Himself Into The Grave’. ‘Beat It’.

It’ll probably make a fortune for everyone involved (apart from the star, obviously) including the director Kenny Ortega, a man who is also responsible for High School Musical and therefore already on course for being one of the most sinister men on the planet even without his part in ‘Wacko Jacko’s Terminal Journal’ (another potential title). Obviously, what ‘This Is It’ serves to do is allow Jackson’s fans to see a little more of him, especially as there’ll be no more new performances to savour in the future. After all, we can’t turn back time.

Except, of course, we can. In fact, we did it just this last Sunday when we all turned the clocks back an hour and gave ourselves a luxurious extra hour in bed. Or at least, that was the plan. What actually happens when the clocks go back is:

1. Everyone tries to decide whether to turn the clocks back before bed- which’ll mean waking up at about 7am which is an ungodly hour for anyone to be conscious on a Sunday; or turn them back in the morning which’ll mean forgetting to turn them back in the morning and being an hour behind everything till at least mid-afternoon, like a time-traveller who’s fallen 60 minutes out of sync with the rest of existence and is therefore excluded from everything as he or she slowly loses their grip on sanity and finally flips out when they realise they’ve missed the first hour of the ‘Come Dine With Me’ omnibus in which the hilariously stuck-up estate agent has burnt her souffles and spilled a bloody mary on Ryan the overly critical baggage handler from Dewsbury.

2. People who use their phones as their alarm clocks all forget whether their phones automatically adjust when the clocks go back and can’t decide if they should go ahead and alter it or not. They all decide not to then wake up in the morning, check to see what time their phone is showing, realise that they don’t know if the time it is showing has actually been corrected or not, struggle with unending futility to find another clock in the house but realise they now use their new 3000 gigabyte, 27 terra-pixel handset/MP3 player/whisk to do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING IN THEIR LIVES. They then switch on the Andrew Marr show to find out what the time is, are faced with the creeping dread of discovering they don’t actually know what time the Andrew Marr Show starts and finishes and therefore give up and go back to bed, their planned luxurious lie-in now lying tattered, sweaty and ruined beneath the duvet.

3. No-one really benefits at all on Sunday, then they go to their jobs on Monday and suddenly realise they won’t be leaving work during daylight for the next 6 months and seriously consider flinging themselves under the nearest TransPennine Express.

4. Something important happens with farmers but no-one is sure what it is.

Bearing all this in mind, it’s little surprise that there’s been a rumbling in recent days of discontent with the whole idea of pushing and pulling the hour hand backwards and forwards twice a year. After all, Daylight Saving Time was originally brought in to help agriculture during the First World War and since farmers these days are restricted to simply growing cows with which to trample hikers to death there isn’t much point to it anymore. People who think this are missing the point by a mile.

If we can all decide twice a year to bend time to our will so that it’s suddenly an hour earlier or later than the clocks say it is then why can’t we expand this to suit our every whim? After all, the wonders of Sky+ now mean that TV schedules are basically meaningless beside the striding magnificence of our personal timelines so let’s just extend that to life itself.

Don’t want to get up for work in the morning? Fair enough- it’s now 3 hours earlier. Don’t want to turn 30 next year? Not a problem, lets just say you’re 18 again. Don’t Like Mondays? No problem, it’s Tuesday already. You’re favourite musician’s dead? No sweat, just go to the pictures and we can all pretend he’s still alive.

Actually, we’ve already sorted that last one.

Rotate to Victory

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I bet you don’t like politicians. I don’t. They’re so false, aren’t they? Lying, cheating, swindeling, corrupt bastards the lot of them. Scum, wrapped in tosser, coated in idiot and wearing a suit. That’s what you think of them isn’t it? Well shame on you. Shame. Because that description of politicians I’ve just given- that’s you that is.

Not all of the time, obviously. That’s the difference between them and you. But, like every good politician, you at some point have popped on a nice suit and lied, cheated and swindled your arse off- like you’re a raging diabetic and fibs are insulin. Or at least you have if you’ve ever had a job interview.

Job interviews are ridiculous things. Think about it, none of the important jobs ever have them do they? Optumus Prime never sat down in front of a committee of three Autobots in suits and interviewed for the top job did he? He never had to answer endless questions such as “Optumus, could you give us an example of when Unicron eating someone’s planet has caused conflict with members of your team?” and he never had to do a role-play based on using the Autobot Matrix of Leadership to improve productivity in the fourth quarter.

However, if you want to do something trivial and unimportant, like working in a call centre, in a shop or as the England football manager, then you’ll be familiar with the hell that is the interview process. In the latter case, the footballers you’ll be in charge of will never have had an interview in their life- other than those conducted in front of a board of sponsors logos by a commentator armed with a microphone and platitudes- which probably explains why they’re the way they are.

Think about it- most people nowadays find footballers to be about as trustworthy and wholesome as a Russian nuclear reactor, and with good reason, but they can’t all be like that just because they have the ability to propel a sphere around some grass with a degree of accuracy. Maybe it’s because they never have to look over their shoulder and worry about the next time that they’re after a transfer and they have to tell their prospective employers a steaming pile of horse-poo about working in a team and having never had a sick-day since primary school.

That’s my main bone of contention with modern footballers really- sure I envy the job and the money but what I’m really jealous of is the fact that they don’t have to give a monkeys about anyone or anything beyond whatever they wish. And if you think that’s a disgraceful attitude for them to have then I absolutely guarantee that if anyone reading this was to swap places with a Premiership footballer they’d be just as pampered, whiny, self-absorbed and mollycoddled as them within a fortnight. Admittedly, a large part of the population would hate you but who cares? I wouldn’t. I only like people because it’s easier and more practical than not liking people- if I had to count the number of people I unequivocally like in this world I’d struggle to reach double figures- but as a footballer I’d have far too much money and ego to bother with any of that.

By the way, everything I’ve just said about Premiership footballers can also be applied to Morrissey. And I bet he didn’t have to have an interview to be a pop star either. That said, if things were to turn sour for Moz and he had to get a proper job and have an interview, wouldn’t you love to be a fly on that wall?

Personally, I believe interviews and recruitment should be scrapped and replaced by a part-rotation, part-lottery system. The simple fact is that most people could probably do most jobs if they were given a chance. Some jobs which require a specific talent and which don’t usually have an interview process, like pop star or poet laureate should still be filled in the current way but everything else should be assigned completely at random to everybody else. Then we could all do them for a year and have another lottery and another big swap around.

Imagine spending a year as a forensic detective then suddenly getting the call to spend 12 months feeding the chimps at Longleat. Then after than you could have a year on the bins before going on to be a tanker captain for Shell or a television bowls commentator- all assigned at random. Life would be so much more fun and exciting and I reckon anyone could pick up any new job in about three weeks if thrown in at the deep end. Plus no-one would ever know what they’d be earning in the next year so no-one could have a mortgage or invest in anything so financial crises like the one the world currently finds itself in would be impossible! We’d just have to live for today and make life up as we went along.

This system would certainly help me out as I currently find myself in an employment doom loop- basically, I need experience to get a lecturing job and I need a lecturing job to get experience. This, clearly, is a situation that could only exist in a world that doesn’t work properly and makes a mockery of me spending a year getting my teaching qualification. If my system was imposed, I’d just have to take my chances and see what came up- which I wouldn’t have a problem with as that would be the way of things- and if any of you out there became a lecturer then, trust me, you wouldn’t need the qualification I wasted time and money getting. If you were good within two weeks, you’d be good for the rest of the year and love every minute of it- so much that you’d be the best educator your students ever have. And if you were rubbish after 2 weeks then, trust me, you’ll always be rubbish but at least you’ll know you’ve got less than a year left in the job.

And just think what it would do to politics! And sports! Football would definitely have to be brought into this system as then there’d be no more closed shop at the top of the Premiership as the players are randomly expelled and introduced to teams every 12 months. No two seasons would ever be alike as Chelsea, for instance, could go from a strong team one year to a squad entirely comprised of elderly, blind women the next- and who wouldn’t want to see that?

Plus, with a bit of luck, I’d get the call to be a Premiership footballer myself. Then I could just stop caring.

For Britain…

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You’ll no doubt now be aware that Team GB’s perfromance (when did we get that Americanised name all of a sudden?) at last year’s Olympics was the best in a century. Pretty impressive but it looks like, in terms of historical context, we may have plateaued. While we ended up knocking on the door of 20 gold medals in Beijing, 1908 saw Great Britain collect a whopping 56 golds. By the end of those games, our entire team must have been blinged up like Snoop Dog in a particularly auspicious mood.

However, there’s no reason to think that we couldn’t match this staggering success next time- becuase the 1908 Olympics thook place, like those of 2012 will do, in London. And, looking back at the old records, it appears the hosts took more than a few liberties with the events that were included in order to tip the balance in Blighty’s favour. For instance, that old village fete favourite the tug of war made an appearance, as did rugby union though, intriguingly, the USA took the title and remain current Olympic champions in the sport- remember that for the pub quiz. The shooting events involved killing live deer like a typical country gent and, best of all, we also included two ancient racket sports; one actually called ‘rackets’ and the other called ‘real tennis’, both of which were about as old as Henry VIII and had been for their entire histories played almost exclusively on these isles. We claimed gold, silver and bronze in both events which is hardly surpising as no-one from any other countries even bothered entering.

Clearly, the organisers of 1908 could show Seb Coe and friends how to go about throwing together an Olympics in four years time where Britannia can truly rule the waves. And the pool, the track, the velodrome and, just for the hell of it, the real tennis court (surely it’s due a revival- there’s still somewhere to play it at Hampton Court apparently). All we need to do is come up with a few events where the odds are stacked in favour of the British, though if we just start making queueing and binge drinking into Olympic sports the rest of the world might twig that we’re up to something. Therefore, being a considerate chap, I’ve put together a few ways in which some existing sports could be tweaked to help out Team GB a little bit:

Swimming: All competitors have to start each race with a pint of Stella in a plastic glass which they must carry with them. While the race will still be timed, penalties will be incurred for the amount of beverage spilt (let’s say- one second per 5ml) with the best overall time deciding the standings. Anyone who’s seen a British man relaxing with a pint in a pool in a foreign hotel notice some teenage French girls playing volleyball in the deep end will surely have marvelled at his ability to front crawl over to them with his plastic glass between his teeth and not lose a single drop. Surely it’s about time this discipline was given the opportunity to take to a bigger stage.

Athletics: For all running races, a newly constructed Primark will be placed at the finish line. When the starting gun goes, the store will open and begin advertising a sale. All British women will instantly be able to charge down the track at Mach 3 just to be first through the doors, though we may need to change the rules so that barging, punching and some stabbing is allowed.

Gymnastics: All falls and bad landings to be accomapnied by hilarious soundtrack of ‘BOING!’ noises and such like, in order to make everything more audience friendly. British competitors to be drawn entirely from winners of the Pride of Britain award- thereby creating invincible combination of slapstick and heart wrenching sob-stories with the winner of the event not to be decided by professional gymnastics judges but by a phone vote on Saturday night ITV hosted by Joe Pasquale and Fern Britten (note to organsiers- make sure Pasquale handles the funny noises and Britten does the sob-stories or it could all go a bit tits up)

Cycling: British team to just turn up as this is something we can actually give the whole world a good twatting in. That said, deciding that the event should be contested entirely by 16 year old chavs on BMX bikes designed for 9 year olds couldn’t hurt.

Boxing: Venue switched to just outside the Adelphi Public House on Blackburn Boulevard. Glassing allowed.

Additional Note: All sports to be accompanied by a looping soundtrack of ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol and McFly songs played a three times normal speed.

There you go- just a few simple changes and suddenly we’re cleaning up every gold medal in sight. However, there is one more thing we need to take care of- we need to stop the athletes shagging. At the Sydney and Athens Olympics, organisers supplied over 30,000 condoms to the visiting competitors and ran out by about a week into proceedings, whereas in Beijing not even a third of the total supply of sheaths has been used and we’ve nearly hit the fortnight mark. The only reason I can find to explain what happened is that in 2000 and 2004, all the Brits were busy banging their brains out rather than dealing with the sporting matters at hand. They were acting like typical Brits abroad really and I dare say that at those games the phrase ‘silver medal’ referred to a messy sexual aftermath rather than coming second (though it could have meant both if you think about it). This needs to be prevented from happening in London four years from now

The only way to achieve this spell of celebacy for Team GB would be, as far as I can tell, to get Sir David Beckham (as he probably will be by 2012) to tell the entire nation not to have sex for the total duration of the games. We’ll all dutifully bow our heads at his Royal Right-Footedeness and go about our days with our fluids slowly building to dangerous levels. Then, when its all over and Britain has won 40,000 gold medals, we can all celebrate with a great big national shag.

On Saturday night ITV. Hosted by Joe Pasquale (for the funny noises) and Fern Britten (for the sob stories). Accompanied by a looping soundtrack of ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol and McFly songs played a three times normal speed.

COME ON BRITAIN!

Collision Course

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You know that special person? You’ve got one- everyone does. They might not necessarily be the person you share your bed with at night, your nearest and dearest. They might be a friend for whom your love is unrequited. They might be the one that got away all those years ago. They might be the mythically beautiful person you see on the bus every morning. You might never have even met them. But there’s someone, somewhere who gets your heart pounding and your mind racing. Someone who does for you the best thing anyone can do for another person- they make you feel, for want of a better word, funny.

Think of that person. Now, tell them how you feel. Go on. Do it. Find the way to track them down and let them know, right now, that there’s someone in the world for them and that someone is you. Tell them now, I’ll wait here for you. And be quick about it.

Because you’re about to die.

The harbinger of your impending doom, like so little else in human history, comes from Switzerland and goes by the rather bland name of ‘The Large Hadron Collider’. Essentially, it’s a 17 mile circular tunnel 100 metres below the Franco-Swiss border which is currently in the process of being cooled to -271.25 degrees centigrade. When this is done, the scientists who run it will then start firing beams of protons in opposite directions round the tunnel and make them crash into each other, thereby replicating conditions that prevailed within a few millionths-of-a-second of the Big Bang. And the reason they’re doing all this is to test their current model of particle physics which, as they put it themselves, “is known to break down at a certain energy level”.

Let’s go through that again. A bunch of men in white coats realise that a very important theory of how absolutely everything fits together at the most minute level breaks in certain extreme conditions. ‘Extreme conditions’ being, in this case, an alternative way of saying ‘The Big Bang’. They therefore have decided to recreate those exact same conditions or ‘Big Bang’ in a great big underground tunnel and just see what happens. Oh, and it’ll all happen at light-speed.

Little wonder then that more than a few people are a tad worried that, since no-one knows what’s going to actually take place, it’s entirely possible that the experiment will do something like creating a black hole that will subsequently swallow the Earth into itself.

The scientists at the colider themselves state that this is ludicrous as “there is no basis for any concerns about the consequences of new particles or forms of matter that could possibly be produced by the Large Hadron Collider”, which is frankly a bit rich from a bunch of chaps who are basically trying to demonstrate that one of their main theories doesn’t work properly.

It’s worth getting worried about what might happen when the collider goes online as boffins (a name used by The Sun to describe all those of the ilk of scientists and inventors- a deliberately light-hearted term the newspaper uses to take the sting out of sullying itself with stories of human excellence and achievement) don’t have a partcularly impressive track record with health and safety when they’re on the cusp of great discoveries. John Logie Baird, for example, managed during one of his early experiments in creating television to blow the entire power grid of Glasgow. In a similar vein a chap called Antonio Meucci- who the United States House of Representatives recently passed a motion honouring as the true inventor of the telephone- only came up with his idea after electrocuting his wife and hearing the sound travel down the wire. If this is what happened with two blokes who were only working on transmitting electronic signals across tiny distances, heaven only knows what’ll transpire when those Swiss scientists attempt to recreate the birth of the Universe.

Which is why this is probably a good time to do everything (and, indeed, everyone) that you ever wanted to. Some scientists have postulated that if the hadron collider does create a little black hole of it’s own it won’t engulf the planet instantly, but rather take it’s own sweet time going about it- which means that the whole of humanity will have a clock over it counting down unerringly towards annihilation.

Now if you’re a fan of the movies, particularly the glut of disaster films from the late-90s that featured Earth teetering on the brink of destruction from aliens or an asteroid or something, then you’ll know the drill. We all desperately try to flee the cities and get stuck in traffic or huddle up with our families by the TV and radio awaiting news of whether Will Smith or Bruce Willis has miraculously saved us all with seconds to spare. Then we all cheer, embrace tearfully and listen to a speech by President Morgan Freeman.

I’ve got a feeling that, in real life, this won’t actually happen. Ask yourselves, is that really how you want to spend your final few hours and days on this planet, knowing that the end of everything is just around the corner? For a start off- and let’s not be coy about this- who, knowing that impending armageddon will expunge all awkward consequences, wouldn’t want to give mass, unadulterated fucking-on-the-streets a bash? Just imagine a great big, winner-takes-all, grab-the-nearest-stranger, thronging mass of limbs and fluids rolling merrily up the high street and into oblivion. Like Newcastle on a Friday night. That’s a fitting way to give life a send-off.

Mind you, I did start this piece by stating that everyone should go out and find their special someone before time runs out, and it would take an extraordinary stroke of luck to dive head first (figuratively speaking) into a mass Book of Revelations orgy and happen to catch hold of your one true soulmate. But then again, a bookmaker once set the odds of Earth getting swallowed by a black hole in the next 50 years at 100 million-to-one. So things going horribly wrong in that reactor under the soil of Switzerland could turn out to be the luckiest thing that ever happened to us all and the chances of inadvertantly porking your spiritual muse seem tiny and easily surmountable by comparison. Or, alternatively, you could just play similar odds by buying a lottery ticket.

Either way you’d be getting screwed.