Category Archives: Television, reality

A Good Sport

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2010′s got off to a pretty awful start all things considered- Britain’s been paralysed by some frozen water, those bankers who sent us to the brink of financial oblivion last year are getting gut-fuckingly huge bonuses for doing it, the Carribean has been ripped in two by an earthquake and Teddy Pendergrass has died.

So, I’m glad to report that I’ve got something pleasant and uplifting to tell you all. Finally, this year has something good going for it other than the fact than everyone ignoring Celebrity Big Brother.

The Doomsday Clock has gone back by a minute.

A quick sidebar for those who need it: The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by a bunch of atomic scientists to both demonstrate how close they felt humanity was to smearing itself out of existence via auto-inflicted armageddon and to provide a neat narrative framing device for Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’. It was originally set at 7 minutes to midnight and has got as close as two minutes to when Russia and the US were indulging in one of their periodic Cold War atomic dick-swinging contests. By 1991 it had fallen back to 17 minutes to midnight but slowly crept up as close as 5 minutes to in 2007 thanks to the antics of North Korea’s enjoyably unhinged Kim Jong Il.

However, owing to “leaders of nuclear weapons states cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making material and for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries alike pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render our planet nearly uninhabitable” it’s been decided by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago- the chaps and ladies who run the clock- that we can all sleep a little easier, breathe deeper and get back to the noble pursuit of drinking till the screaming in our head stops- rather than because the planet outside the window is going to hell in a hovercraft. Accordingly the Doomsday Clock now reads 11:54.

With the threat of fiery nuclear destruction on the wane the World has needed something else to get all serious about and it seems that sport has decided to take up the mantle.

When you think about it, sport is very, very silly and we really shouldn’t get all that bothered about it. Sport is of no real consequence. Sport should be a distraction. Sport shouldn’t matter.

So why did the Togo football team find themselves staring down the barrel of a gun? Why do we care what Tiger Woods and John Terry do with their privates? Why is a 21 year old Georgian dead for misjudging a corner? Why have Canada, previously everyone’s 2nd favourite nation, become so vilified for a few organisational issues at the Winter Olympics? Why am I sat up at 1am watching some women fling themselves face-first down an ice chute?

Clearly, sport is of some real consequence. Clearly, sport is more than a distraction. Clearly, sport matters.

Even curling- a activity which lies somewhere between bowls, shuffle-board, ice-skating and spring-cleaning. A game takes anything up to 2 and a half hours and, thanks to the BBC’s brilliant compendium of delights on the Red Button, has filled most of my afternoons this week with more drama and tension than ‘Diagnosis: Murder’ and ‘Doctors’ could ever dream of. Quite an achievement for a sport which is, uniquely as far as I can figure out, mostly played with brushes.

Maybe, it’s the fact that humans like a story and a competition; after all reality television works on the exact same principles and mechanisms as television sport coverage- only without the necessity for people who are actually good at something. In both we get to know competitors, we see them develop, we employ experts to analyse their performances and we dismantle them ourselves with forensic intensity. We shamelessly take sides and hope our favourites achieve the glory of a gold medal or winning the public vote.

And, for those sports or reality TV stars who survive in our conscience, we wait with relish for them to make the cock-up that proves their falability- such as being caught in a tawdry episode of adultery that threatens to detonate their career; or, even worse, recording and releasing ’3 Words’ featuring Will.I.Am.

Mind you, at least something which is genuinely serious such as causing the Doomsday Clock to move hasn’t become the subject of a sport or a reality TV show.

Yet, that is. Yet.

So Here It Is…

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The Germans have a word: weltschmerz.  Actually, the Germans have lots and lots of words but anyway, for now we’re just focusing on weltschmerz.  It means the feeling of realising that the real world will never live up to to the ideal of it that a person has in their head.  There’s also a word in English that means exactly the same thing.

Christmas.
Here’s the image of Xmas that’s sold to us every December:  snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.
Here’s the numbing reality:  frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A My Family Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteloe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.
It is, in a word, cack.  You’re only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males).  If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as me (Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible.  Thanks).
However, in the Christmas spirit I present to you the follwoing cut-out-and-keep (if you’re monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:
Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal.  This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators.  Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet TM (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion.  Includes 2 AA batteries.  Only £29.99.
iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different of vibrate settings.  All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.
Suicide Adventure Day-  by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year.  Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?!  You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion.  From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget.  Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.
Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU! to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!.  Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension!  But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producer for Britain’s Got Talent int he hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it fair!  But wait!  Mum’s GOT a gun!  She says she can’t take it anymore!  That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with!  She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card!  Hang on!  That gun didn’t even come with the game!  Where’d she get that!  Put it down dear!  Put it down!  Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!
Merry Christmas everyone.  And a Happy New Year.

Christmas.

Here’s the image of Xmas that’s sold to us every December:  snow, carols, food, presents, friends, family, love, peace, Morecambe and Wise, enconsed by the fire in the snug of a beautiful old pub, Slade at number 1, Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, James Bond, Chocolate, Boxing Day football, The Queen.

Here’s the numbing reality:  frost, ice, rain, indigestion, scrums in shops, crowded trains, A ‘My Family’ Christmas Special, drunken works parties stumbling around town centres, The X-Factor, people thinking they’re annoying Simon Cowell by sending Rage Against The Machine to number 1 when he’s actually just getting more publicity, Misteltoe and Wine, nuts, Boxing Day defeat, The Queen.

It is, in a word, cack.  Your only hope for any joy is in the giving and recieving of presents (or drinking mulled wine till your tongue falls out). This, however, is invariably a minefield of desperately trying to second guess what various realtives want until you just give up and buy them something from Lush (for females) or a Mock the Week DVD (males).  If only everyone was as easy to buy presents for as, say,  me (size 11 Adidas trainers or single malt scotch whisky- Islay if possible.  Thanks).

However, in the Christmas spirit and to help you along, I present to you the following cut-out-and-keep (if your monitor’s made of paper) guide to 2009′s ultimate Chrimble gift ideas:

Bulimia Barbie- for the teenage girl in your life who’s fragile and still-developing sense of self has been battered to death by a constant stream of air-brushed images featuring unattainable perfection and stick thin celebrities who’s diets probably make their breath smell like it should be rolling down the streets of Bophal.  This new Barbie comes with a hearty selection of realistic lovely food to stick down her plastic gullet and her hand already moulded into the ‘two-finger’ shape familiar to seasoned regurgitators.  Watch in wonder as Barbie eats every last morsel before spewing litres of authentic warm vomit down the Barbie Toilet (TM) (sold seperately) and, after every 25 pukes, a tooth falls out due to chronic bile erosion.  Includes 2 AA batteries.  Only £29.99.

iBreville- ultimate proof that bolting the letter ‘i’ onto the front of any product allows you to clog it up with pointless extras, this next generation sandwich toaster comes equipped with a spirit-level, dipstick, medieval witch dunker, alligator repellant kit, .pdf manual on jousting, hoover bag, DVD burner, rubber duck catapult and 3 different vibrate settings.  All this technology has left it unable to make toasted sandwiches to any greater degree than any other sandwich toaster but the cool, crisp white design is guaranteed to make you not feel any shame in essentially paying £350 for a lump of gizmos that might as well be a neon sign saying “I Am A Shallow Tossrag”.

Suicide Adventure Day- by the third day of Christmas you’re probably happily contemplating a blissful, self-enforced end to your life but still clinging to the meagre hope that things might get a bit better next year.  Why not, then, experience all the fun of suicide with none of the consequences with this exciting and informative adventure day?!  You’ll get to experience a number of different terminal scenarios with the guarantee that all injuries are none-life-threatening and that you’ll be brought back round to consciousness within 20 minutes ready to try your next method of welcoming oblivion.  From the sudden adrenaline thrill of the ‘High-Rise Plunge’ (simulated using a virtual reality machine and a mallet) to the tender and emotional final farewell of the ‘Dignitas Experience’ (simulated using sleeping pills and a room in a Travelodge) this is a day you’ll never forget.  Book early to avoid disappointment and to make sure you’ve got something to look forward to before you finally decide to end it all and take a train-carriage full of commuters with you.

Fuckwits- the brand new board game for all the family that allows YOU to stuff up the planet for everyone else in a variety of EXCITING WAYS!.  Dads, why not play as the MERCHANT BANKERS who nearly sent Western civilisation to the wall and who cost you your job last year by forcing us all into a RECESSION that was none of our faults and for which they appear to have got off scot free while you’re flung on the scrap heap 7 years shy of retirement but now with no employment prospects and a woefully underfunded pension!  But look out! LITTLE Freddie’s playing as the arbiters of a celebrity obsessed culture that makes him feel less and less worthwhile every day until he finally decides to DEBASE himself before a stern-faced group of producers for Britain’s Got Talent in the hope that he can repeat the exact same ‘Ventriloquism but with his own gaping anus’ routine in FRONT of Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and millions of viewers at home who’ll make him feel justified only through their sheer naked hatred of him that masks the fact that they all wish they’d though of it first!  But wait!  Mum’s GOT a gun!  She says she can’t take it anymore!  That she can’t live in world like this knowing what we’re capable of and seeing what we ACTUALLY have to put up with!  She’s got the special ‘weltschmerz’ card!  Hang on!  That gun didn’t even come with the game!  Where’d she get that?!  Put it down dear!  Put it down!  Oh, Dear God… No… NO….!

Merry Christmas everyone.  And a Happy New 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!

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?

There Is A Light, It’s Going Out…

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Imagine careering through a portal and ending up a few centuries in the future. Go on, imagine it. I’m not going to sit here and describe in searing detail the mind-boggling sensation of hurtling through time. Sod that. You’ll just have to imagine it for yourselves instead- it’s about time you lot started doing some of the work round here. Go on.

Done it? Good. Just so we’re all singing off the same hymn sheet- when you arrive in the future you’d feel something like Charlton Heston does in Planet of the Apes. Only without the apes.

Now imagine wandering down the future streets in your future shoes past a future Starbucks as future teens play future music on their tinny, nasty future mobile phones (some things, alas, never change). As you walk along you happen upon a big imposing building cheerily proclaiming itself to be a ‘Museum of the Past’. It could be doing this via the medium of a great big sign or the building itself could be proclaiming it by talking directly to you through some big masonry mouth. This is the future after all.

Intrigued, you wander through the entrance, past the gift shop, and take a look around. What would you expect to see when you happened upon the area dedicated to the early 21st century? What would they be commemorating from the Noughties? While you ponder this, bear in mind that museums often adopt a faintly patronising tone towards the obsolete practices and artefacts of the past- almost chuckling with incredulity at, for instance, medieval doctors trying to cure the plague with a bunch of posies and a big stick and wondering why they didn’t just google the answer instead.

This is what I think you’d see: a waxwork figurine of Jeremy Clarkson playing tapes of him doing lots of those pregnant pauses he does….. at the end of sentences; an X-Box 360 with Guitar Hero III on a constant loop of Leona Lewis songs; a mock Hygena kitchen featuring male and female figurines crying over a mortgage statement to the strains of Dizee Rascal’s ‘Dance Wit Me’ and, in a sealed, alarmed vial protected by lasers and guns, there’ll be a tiny amount of genuine, precious water as a testament to the time before it was all used up and people had to start using a system whereby rain and nourishment are downloaded off i-Tunes.

And in amongst all this there’ll be a large display dedicated to a strange human phenomenon that will have been finally killed off around the year 2010. It’ll amuse and baffle the residents of the future who will never have experienced the particular sensation described within and will merely be able to read the accompanying notes- all the while gazing upon a vista that contains details not only on how this thing felt but also how it was battered out of existence around the turn of the Millennium.

And the title of the exhibit will be ‘Romance’.

Let’s be perfectly honest with each other here- romance is very nearly dead. It’s as outdated and outmoded as steam engines, smallpox and bands with ugly but talented drummers. This state of affairs is a particular tragedy in this country as, despite what the French or Italians would have you believe, the Brits were once the most romantic nation on Earth. Just look at our movies if you don’t believe me. I dare you to watch ‘Brief Encounter’ or ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ or ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ or ‘Gregory’s Girl’ or ‘Room At The Top’ or ‘The Go-Between’ and tell me that the understatement so traditionally inherent in the people of this island- our charming brand of emotional retardation- didn’t make for romance to be, quietly, a central pillar of our very national existence. I say quietly because romance doesn’t scream from the rooftops. Instead romance creeps up on you from nowhere, romance whispers sweet nothings, romance is- in the nicest possible way- just a voice in your head. Romance, most of all, is mystery.

And mystery just can’t be tolerated any more.

Take, for example, The Jeremy Kyle Show- a daily chavapalooza of screeching involving couples comprised of alcoholics and the eletcronically-tagged arguing over the parenthood of their children. I know a number of people who say they love the show and if you’re one of those people and, whether you’re being ironic or not, I want to address this next bit directly to you:

You are a pillock. We may be friends, we may have spoken warmly in the past and shared good times but, and I really, really mean this, you’re everything that’s wrong with the world and you should be uttery ashamed. Seriously. If this is what you call entertainment then you are single-handedly reversing 2 million years of human evolution. You are that dumb. You are that pathetic. You are everything that is wrong with everything. And you owe me a tenner.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show (I’m talking to everyone again now. Welcome back. How’ve you been? You didn’t miss much), it often features a couple from a council estate going through a DNA test to prove how much bovine sex the man (and I use that term loosely) or woman (and I’m barely adhering to that term at all) of the pair has been having. I don’t know about you, but a DNA test really takes the romance out of a relationship. In terms of loving gestures it’s on a par with spending three solid weeks bellowing into your partner’s ear that they smell of eggs. But Kyle’s Bear-pit Theatre is merely the most denegrating part of a recent movement which has lead me to picture romance being nothing more in the future than a museum exhibit referenced in an overlong introduction by a man who loves the sound of his own keyboard.

There is, quite simply, too much stuff in the world that needs to be filled. It used to be a couple of television channels, a few newspapers and the occasional book that needed creative input but now everything’s gone digital and, alongside all the stations on your Sky+ box, there’s also a great big internet out there which constantly expands to accomodate an ever growing torrent of irrelevant, pointless cack. This used to just mean a dishonourable band of ham-fisted blogs but now sites like MySpace and in particular the one you’re reading this on have lead the tiniest minutiae of everybody’s life to be broadcast through the ether as though anyone else honestly gives a flying one.

Don’t get me wrong- Facebook is a good thing in so many ways. It’s allowed me to find out which of my schoolfriends grew up to be hot or work in I.T. and the opportunity to see photos of my nearest and dearest having much more fun that I ever seem to do is always likely to warm the cockles. But should I ever need to find romance again this website would kill it off with all the dead-eyed efficiency of Predator on performance-related pay.

Let me put it this way- I’m old fashioned. Without going into too much detail, my relationship with the missus began with a genuine courtship; much like they tend to do in Jane Austen novels and contrived American sit-coms. It’s a period of my life I look back on with intense joy as a time when two people slowly got to know each other and realised that something, somewhere, somehow seemed to make a connection. And that, my friends, is what happens when you embrace a bit of mystery in your life.

If we were to meet now, however, only the first couple of days would be the same as we started chatting over a bar in Sunderland. Then, in 2008, we’d simply add each other as friends on Facebook and, within mere moments, be able to see each others’ political views, religious beliefs, favourite books, status as of 5 seconds ago and previous performances on copyright-infringing Scrabble games. Years worth of discovery would be packed into a quick browse around a webpage and then, if this was you, where could you go from there?

I’ll tell you where. You’d miss that period of finding out about your beloved and then start inventing things to find out about them that didn’t even exist. You’d ponder if they’re actually a convicted sex offender, or an abscodned member of the Thrid Reich with a talented plastic surgeon, or one of those lizard people David icke keeps banging on about. Then you’d be just a small step away from claiming your significant other has banged everyone you share a postcode with and before you know it you’d be sat in front of Jeremy Kyle’s cackling bovine audience as he lorded it over you with the results of a DNA test.

This is the future. I hope you’ll be happy.