Category Archives: Television, unreality

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.

High Five

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You may not have heard of Eugene O’Neill but you’ll probably know his most famous quote- “There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again”. It seems I’ve reached the age where I can appreciate that statement in the context of my own life- as well as the probable reason why the guy who wrote it spent much of his life in an alcoholic stupor. For example, I went to the cinema for the first time in ages this past weekend to see ‘Frost/Nixon’ and it occurred to me that I only seem to intensively trot to the kino these days in the first few months of the year- when the cinemas are stuffed with moral-heavy, well-acted award snafflers which no mouthy teen-spawn go to see and then talk through and when there’s no chance of inadvertantly seeing anything directed by Tony Scott. In the next few days and weeks I’m looking forward to seeing ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ (SPOILER ALERT: Brad Pitt is born as an elderly man with a face made entirely out of special effects, ages backwards, learns valuable life lessons, loses Oscar to the bloke out of ’9 1/2 Weeks’) and ‘The Damned United’ (since I’ve not seen a film featuring Michael Sheen as a famous British figure since, well last weekend actually) among others before I head to the I-MAX to see ‘Watchmen’ and begin my self-imposed exile till 2010 and another blissful few weeks of twat-free cinema audiences.

It seems logical to assume that mankind will never be able to muck about with O’Neill’s succinct little phrase by cracking the ability to travel through time. If we were to manage it at any point in the dim and distant future surely some intrepid explorer from then would have arrived in the present by now to let us know that we’ll get there in the end and to keep on trying. They’d probably have seen the credit crunch coming too and warned us about that as well. And it would have been nice of them to also let us know just how bad the third series of Skins would turn out to be. This is all assuming, of course, that they aren’t all familiar with the Back to the Future trilogy- especially it’s extraordinarily dark second chapter- and have decided it’s best to leave us to our own devices and not go fiddling round with the past (although it’s hard to think of an apocalyptic time-bent future which is any worse that a world that has the third series of Skins in it).

On the subject of Back to the Future- how the hell did they get away with all that?! The first one’s essentially a tale of era-hopping incest while the second installment ups the ante by covering domestic abuse and alcoholism and then wrapping it all up in a cautionary tale of dreams which have been cruelly shattered to death by fate and consequence. At least they had the good grace to make the final film a knockabout Western romp- though while filming one stunt for it Michael J. Fox was almost accidentally killed by hanging. The more I think about it, the more I think that if Robert Zemeckis considers this to be family entertainment he needs to be put on some sort of register.

I certainly hope I never find myself with the ability to travel through time as I’m pretty sure I’d be hopeless at it. The basic problem would be that I’d find myself faced with far too much choice to deal with- where should I go? When should I go? Who should I meet? What should I witness? And those questions don’t come anywhere near getting into the real issues time travel throws up either. For example I have a ‘freebie’ list of 5 celebrities I’m allowed guilt-free sex with and it took me months to complete when I only had contemporary women to choose from; I know I’d be paralized by indecision for millenia if I could visit the past and suddenly had to figure out who to jettison from the list in order to secure a berth for ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’-era Susanna Hoffs.

My inability to deal with choice is mostly brought into sharp relief when I’m faced with the treasure trove of a Sky+ box. I’m currently writing this at my girlfriend’s parents’ house and, as is so often the case, I’m the last person awake in the house and will probably be sat here into the wee small hours cycling endlessly through 4 quadrillion channels looking for something to watch. However, whereas the famous old cliche is that there’s all these channels and there’s never anything on the grim reality is much, much worse- there’s far too much on and every time I find something I fancy sitting through I get overwhelmed with a fear that there’s something on another channel that I’m prefer to see instead, and so I set off trawling through the channels again until I’ve gone through them all, half an hour has passed and I have to flick through everything again as most of the channels are now showing something different. Intriguingly, if I do land on a particular program for more than a few seconds I’ll find it utterly impossible to sit patiently through a commercial break and start looking through every station again; only to find that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE THOUSANDS OF CHANNELS IS SHOWING COMMERCIALS AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME! It’s a staggering piece of synchronisation from all concerned- whoever it is that makes it happen really ought to commit their talents to running the railways instead.

Anyway…

Perhaps this inability to cope with a plethora of choice is why men like myself love making ‘Top 5′ lists. In ‘High Fidelity’ Nick Hornby seems to suggest that obsession with list-making is what men do when they should be busy considering important things like being all responsible and, if the book’s to be taken literally, getting pussy-whipped by a haughty solicitor. I reckon, however, he’s doing his gender a great disservice here as the Top 5 list is actually a useful way of dealing with the modern world and prioritising what really matters and what you really care about (although, as I’ve proved earlier with my ‘freebie’ list, it’s a media that tends to suffer from information overload if time travelling is brought into the equation).

In fact, speaking as someone who’s filled in more than his fair share of job application forms in the past few months, I reckon asking people a bunch of Top 5 questions is a much better way to shape a workforce than looking at C.V.s and cliched personal statements that state the applicant is ‘a driven, goal-oriented individual’ with ‘excellent team-making skills’ when, if we’re honest, no-ones ever going to write anything truthful like ‘I’m applying for this job because I stole all the stationery in my previous office and sold the bosses Beamer on e-bay when he disciplined me for goosing his wife at the Christmas party’.

If I was inviting applications to work for me, I wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about someone’s experience- anyone can be trained to do any job given time- but I would like to know exactly what sort of person I’m inviting to share my workplace for 40 hours a week. If we’re going to be spending that much time together it’s much more important that I find out what they’re top 5 biscuits are and if Prince makes an appearance in their ‘Top 5 Recording Artists of the 1980s’ list.

Everyone’s worked as part of a team where at least 50% of their fellow members are people with whom they don’t share even the tiniest interest or belief and this can’t be bad for employee morale and the performance of any company- especially in ‘these trying times’ ((tm) Practically Every Report on BBC News For The Last 6 Months). People would work much better together if their colleagues and themselves had at least some crossover when in their lists of such things as Top 5 singles, brands of crisp, American teen movie nude scenes, cartoon animals or supervillains.

And, best of all, you can ask people what their Top 5 films are- and if ‘Back To The Future 2′ is on the list you’ll know they’re probably seriously disturbed.

To Hell In A Handcart, By Any Means…

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If I’m honest, I wasn’t really taking the global financial crisis seriously. I’ve been far more interested in my new job- which, for those who are interested, remained a novelty for about 4 days before my superiority complex kicked in and ruined everything- and the U.S. Elections which have now essentially boiled down to a scrap between Denzel Washington and a man who seems more and more to be a facsimile of George W. Bush. Although actually this is unfair on Bush- he was a much better pilot than McCain.

The financial crisis seemed to revolve mainly around various rich people who were interviewed coming out of offices in the City of London looking terribly flustered before slinking off to their mansions while the stock market lost more points than Newcastle United. And to be fair, it’s hard to take a monetary panic seriously when it revolves around stocks losing ‘points’ rather than tangible pounds and pence. If they equated the loss of the stock market in a day to a real value, like ‘The FTSE lost 4 million pints of Stella today’ or ‘Panic in Tokyo today as the Nikkei dropped by a thousand Nissan Micras and Andrei Shevchenko’ then everyone would start taking things seriously and dutifully cacking themselves.

Luckily though this step will not be necessary as something has happened to bring to the world’s attention just how much the bankers have pushed us to the brink. Iceland’s gone bankrupt. Not the supermarket. The country.

A. Whole. Chuffing. Country.

Now I’m no economist but I’m pretty sure that’s not meant to happen. The forces of capitalism and the free markets are desinged to cause various weak businesses and organisations to fall by the wayside as time rolls merrily forward but when it’s a nation going down the swanny it’s hard not to think it’s time to start mainlining smack directly into our eyeballs and find out just what bumming sheep is actually like. Truly, these are the end of days. Once Iceland have sold Bjork they’ll be out of assets and then the finance devils will come looking for the rest of us.

But before an apocalyptic global meltdown comes and snaffles us all it’s probably a good idea to have a sit down. (Personally, as much as I admire how much Shakespeare contributed to the English language, I doubt the Bard ever summed up the English better than the first man to turn ‘sit down’ into a noun). When having the aforementioned sit down we’ll probably end up watching the telly and, if you time it right, you’ll catch a show that’ll make the oncoming economic catastrophe seem like blessed relief. If you’ve watched Charlie Boorman’s ‘Dublin to Sydney… By Any Means’ you’ll invade Wall Street and start short-selling like a madman just so you can send the planet back to the Stone Age before the next episode is broadcast. It might just be the worst programme in television history and, considering it’s transmitted just a day after BBC 1′s extraordinary ‘Hole In The Wall’, that’s quite some achievement.

The premise of the show is that professional hanger-on Charlie Boorman, shorn of the star charm of ‘Long Way Round/Down’ co-star Ewan MacGregor, travels from Dublin to Sydney by any means of transport he can find FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON WHATSOEVER. He isn’t following a historical trade route, or retracing the adventures from a book, or sticking to any particular geographical feature- he’s merely taking your licence fee and taking his preposterous little beard across four continents for no better reason than the fact that he just can. And not only does he drag a film crew along with him, he then dedicates half the show to detailling how hard it is to make the kind of show he’s currently dedicating half of to pointing out how hard it is to make this kind of show. It’s tough not to think that if he dumped the camera crew and made the trek by himself it’s be a whole lot easier for everyone involved but then we’d never catch a glimpse of just how difficult it is for a bunch of jumped up media fuckwits to get a stack of expensive digital video equipment up the Khyber Pass on a 70 year old bus. And there’d also be no-one there to watch Boorman take patronising local residents to stratospheric heights.

Boorman clearly comes from the school of gap-year twatism that believes that anything being done by a peasant in Indian bandit country is worthy of gasps of delight and breathless tales of how “simple the life is there” even though the peasant in question is weighing up whether or not to infect the Europeans with cholera or sell them to the local bandit leader and pinch their i-Pods. He schleps from country to country and village to village eating terrifying meats in everyone’s front rooms and taking part in rituals that the locals clearly made up on the spot just so they could get on the telly. Then it’s time to move on though, instead of a travelogue, we’re greeted to another 20 minutes of some work-experience girl in the London office struggling to get Charlie and his crew visas to get over the next border. They genuinely believe we give a flying fuck about any of them and their preciously challenging documentary shoot when, in fact, we’re sitting on our sofas watching Boorman piss out licence fees up the walls with gay abandon. If the show’s premise was changed to an eight part series of Charlie and his team brutally chronicaling the difficulties of getting a film crew up to a Scottish island to burn our collective licence money in cash a la the KLF it would be no worse. In fact, the locals in this case would be Scottish rather than backwater peasants which would be infinitely more entertaining- especially when Boorman desperately tried to condescend his way through a visit to a local chippie for a deep-fried Twix and a fight.

Luckily, once Charlie’s finished filming his latest intercontinental mid-life crisis, James May potters onto our screens with his show ‘Big Ideas’ to remind us that, imminent global financial catastrophe aside, the future might be a good place to be after all. Like Boorman he travels around the globe but, instead of wasting time with people who haven’t even bothered to get out of their hovels and buy a widescreen TV, he meets scientists and inventors who are at the bleeding edge of everything. Encouragingly, this has so far involved bespectapled chaps in white coats who spend their time perfecting either a) robots or b) jetpacks. While this may seem like simple Boys Own fun he is actually, in the current climate, giving us all a glimpse of a world worth fighting for. One that we will all enjoy if all the bankers of the world stop trading in money that doesn’t exist and whisking us promptly back to the Great Depression. He is giving us something to aim at, a world to aspire to. Forget Barack Obama- maybe Top Gear’s shaggy-haired third-wheel may actually turn out to be the 21st century’s Franklin Roosevelt. As a side-note, he also manages to shoe-horn the fact that he’s actually a pretty nifty pianist into proceedings which at least demonstrates he has a talent beyond being mates with Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Maybe I’m being harsh on Charlie Boorman. He might be squandering the licence fee on his self-indulgent trek but at least his folly hasn’t managed to bankrupt an entire island. Mind you, much like the Masters of the Universe on their trading floors, he’s failed to think of things in the long term and that’s to his eternal discredit and demonstrates what makes James May a much more worthy TV presenter. After all, imagine ‘Dublin to Sydney… With a Robot on a Jetpack’.

Who wouldn’t want to watch that?

The Universal Medium

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Just under three weeks from now, give or take an hour, there’s a good chance I’ll be outdoors, naked and unconscious. I’ll be in Tunisia on holiday and, since the daytime temperature will have nudged above 20 degrees and the sun will have spent it’s day lazily traversing the sky and burning down on my Viking skin, I’ll most probably have sunburn. I won’t, however, have the all-over, salmon-pink flesh, flakes of skin all-over the bedroom floor, Skinless-Julia-from-Hellraiser-III form of sunburn- I’m too old and experienced with the factor 50 for that to happen.

No, I’ll have protected myself throughly by covering whatever flesh I’ve exposed (which won’t be much- I only recently purchased my first ever pair of non-swimming shorts) when sat by the pool listening to Rodrigo y Gabriella with a Simon Schama and some bizarre North African cocktail. I will be covered in so much sunblock that I’ll look as white as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man man getting some R+R but somewhere on my body there’ll be a couple of tiny slivers of flesh that will have escaped my attention. Usually it’s just next to my watch, or just behind the ears or, worst of all, a fold behind the knees which slips through the net and lets the sun’s rays set about crisping up for hours and which I don’t notice till I attempt to sleep that night. The only way to get any relief when this happens will be to sleep outside on the blacony, where it’ll hopefully be cool, and naked as a newborn so that no clothing touches the affected areas. In short, it won’t be pretty, it’ll be borderline illegal, and I’ll be paying a few hundred quid for the privilige.

Before I even get to this dignity-stripping kip though I’ll have had to deal with Manchester Airport on an Easter Sunday. At half five in the morning. Whilst this will mean it’ll be quieter it also means I’ll have had about 45 minutes sleep and be somewhere between hungover and still inebriated from the Easter festivities. Standing in the check-in queue, barely able to stand, focus or blink-in-unison, I’m pretty sure Amy will be thoroughly cheesed off and eyeing me up for how many camels she can sell me for when we get to our destination.

Assuming she decides against it and we make it to the resort on speaking terms (unlikely seeing as the only way I can deal with the boredom of an aircraft involves travel-sickness pills and whiskey) we’ll have arrived just in time for lunch where I fully intend to continue on my quest to eat one of every animal on Earth. The target for Tunisia is goat, a local delicacy apparently and usually served in a curry with cous-cous. I assume, this being Africa and all, that the curry will contain enough spice to power Denmark and I’ll spend the rest of the first day of the holiday running back and forth to the toilet in-between getting localised sun-burn and then sleeping off a day’s beer, burning and bowel-evacuation in the au-naturel, al-fresco way detailled above.

With a bit of luck, by day two, I won’t have been arrested for public nudity, the sun-burn will have died down and I’ll be three stone lighter from the previous day’s curry aftermath. This will be good news as I can then get down to the serious business of enjoying myself. Mostly, as with any holiday, this will comprise relaxing, wandering round wherever’s local, trying out a variety of regional delicacies and drinks and trying on lots of hats. It’ll be fantastic. Whenever I get the business of the airport and the first day’s acclimatising out of the way, I am seriously good at holidays.

There is, however, a danger that I may spend all my time lying on the bed in the room doing absolutely nothing. If you’ve ever been abroad, you’ll recognise the danger I’m talking about. It’ll have tried to draw you in before. You’ll have been struck dumb by it’s gaudiness. Mesmerised by it’s baffling output. Terrified by it’s colours and shapes. If you’ve ever visited foreign climes you will, at some point, have been transfixed by foreign television.

It. Is. Insane.

Sometimes, as in the Czech Republic, it’s made up of indecipherable variety shows and ancient football re-runs and isn’t too diverting after a couple of days. On other occasions, as in France, it’s got all the gloss and production values of British television but something’s not quite right. It might be the fact that the female newscasters are the most beautiful people on Earth or it might be the that in all the drama or comedy nothing ever seems to happen- no matter how mad-cap the premise. I swear I saw a sit-com once over there that was as if Harold Pinter had written ‘Ratatouille’.

However, if you’re really unlucky, the TV will be like Poland and you’ll never want to leave the hotel bedroom ever again. Obviously, in this part of the world, they’re sick of their historical national cycle of popping in and out of existence, interpsperced by being invaded by everybody else, and have instead decided to subdue the masses and any potential insurgents with hour after hour of cheap, mental television. There’s the indecipherable variety shows of the nearby Czechs except the Poles fill them with transvestites singing bizarre swing/thrash-metal hybrids and circus acts featuring both clowns and eagles. The news that follows is filmed from a broom cupboard, the weathermaps are drawn by a six-year-old and the station idents have clearly been knocked up on a Commodore 64- it is quite simply impossible to look away from. At some point, a hidden camera show will turn up which inevitably features young women having their clothes fall off near unsuspecting commuters/restaurant diners/priests and very little else. The variety of premises under which they can make this happen suggest Benny Hill simply wasn’t trying hard enough.

Then, without warning, at about midnight, all normal programming is replaced by hard-core pornography which is about as erotic as sandpaper and so graphic it’s more reminiscent of a More4 documentary than onanistic entertainment. Each vignette (actually, they’re more ‘tone pieces’) lasts only 10 minutes so it’s still addictive in the way that The Box or MTV Hits- although rather than waiting through whatever’s on in the hope that a good tune will be next, you’re waiting for some good-old fashioned three-way girl-on-girl-on-girl naked pillow-fighting in a shower. Instead, you’ll get something about as sexy as ‘Triumph of the Will’ featuring a man with back-hair and a woman with the muscle tone of Geoff Capes.

Since Tunisia’s an Islamic nation, it’s unlikely to feature much programming of the Polish ilk so I might actually get out and about and see some of what is, I’m reliably informed, a beautiful country. They are, however, not big on public nudity so I just have to hope that I can keep the sunburn at bay or no-one spots me taking some nocturnal relief on the balcony. Mind you, whilst I may be arrested for being ‘conkers-out’ I can at least tell my captors that I wasn’t doing it for any sort of sexual thrill. If they’ve been on holiday to Poland, they’ll understand.