Princess Diana Memorial Concert

 

Halfway into Re-Animator, the 80s gorefest about a Victor Frankenstein type who injects a dead cat, then perished humans with his life-giving serum, the fucking DVD froze as all borrowed DVDs seem to do these days. Kicking my DVD player into oblivion with my karate feet, I decided to watch TV instead, as hyper-violent reanimated corpses were now officially off the menu.

CURSES.

I made my way over to good old BBC1 for an evening of quiet, pre-return to work programming, or so I hoped. Songs of Praise, Last of the Summer Wine, Antiques Roadshow – the perfect antidote to a weekend’s boozing and a pair of lungs that were inside out after Friday’s last ditch attempt to cram in as many carcinogens as possible before the smoking ban kicked in.

But the whole of the BBC’s schedule had been riddled with the kind of sentimental old shit that makes any right-thinking person want to kill. The Princess Diana Memorial Concert was in full swing. Shit.

When I switched over, Nelly Furtado was whining along to her tit-hits, all of which seemed to be in horrible minor keys and involved her bleating like a lamb caught in a snare. Her drummer’s kit was ridiculously massive and my shock at the stickman’s arrogance at least took my mind off the winsome crap the popular artist was banging on about. To make matters worse, William and Harry were bopping along with no real sense of timing, frugging away like the posh morons they are.

After dry-retching myself into a catatonic state, I was privy to Jamie ‘Coke-Fiend’ Theakston and Fearne ‘Argh’ Cotton attempting to provide filler in what was the worst constructed live extravaganza I think I’ve ever seen. Fashion-photographers and ex-toilet roll caddies lined up to say how nice Diana was to the black kids in far flung places who’d had their lips blown off by an angry landmine. They talked for an eternity about that ‘winning smile’, which to me seemed more like a sort of guilty-looking squint.

All this did was serve to show how cunning Lady Die was in her role as an insane self-PR machine. Sick of the sight of her after 10 minutes, it was like 1997 all over again. Harry, who recently outed himself as the kind of mong who finds Nazi regalia a fitting costume for a night out, mucked about with some African children whilst mugging for the cameras. Nice to see Mum’s self-celebration (and hypocrisy) has rubbed off on the little shit.

Later we had Jason Donovan and some curly goon what won Joseph singing ‘Any Dream Will Do’, joined by Donny the Osmond for a rousing chorus to the bewilderment of everyone watching. The relevance was lost on me.

Through streams of hateful tears I changed channel whilst swearing profusely out of an open window. Plucking up the courage to give it one last shot, I switched back later on. Sarah Brightman and a berk were twittering along to Phantom of the Opera as I broke every item of glassware in the house with my bare teeth. For me, this was the end, for if I subjected myself to John Elton and his old Joanna grinding out Candle in the Wind for the bazillionth time I might well have crushed next door’s cat in a fury and set fire to the entire terrace with maniacal abandon. Thankfully, I found the on/standby button and simmered for a bit.

On the news this morning, Harry was quoted as saying that the concert was a fitting tribute to his mother. The sprawling mess of an event was contradictory, cloying, confused, irritating and had had way too much money thrown at it. So for once, His Royal Highness was right. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.

Big Brother’s Big Mouth

 Russell Brand made his name through Big Brother’s Big Mouth, a show which seemed destined for failure from the off. Unknown presenter, no-budget set, limited material… it all seem somewhat empty. Given the fact that the only issues the audience would be able to discuss would be Big Brother related, it seemed like even the 20 odd minutes of time the show ran for would be light on content. But nobody (aside from Endemol) banked on Brand’s personality clicking with the national mood. His flights of fancy were often ludicrous, but he’s an erudite man with a very large vocabulary and an extraordinary gift for crafting sentences, so we forgave him all the talk of ball-bags and swines. The fact of the matter is, Brand was like an accommodating schoolteacher in his manic John Stapleton role, lurching around the seating areas, sitting on laps, poking his microphone into peoples faces. One second he would declare love for audience members, the next he would squeal at them in a Kenneth Williams voice, berating them for being ‘orrible pigs’. The format worked and in many ways was far more watchable than the main BB show itself.Sadly, whether it’s due to the Shilpa Shetty race war business or the turnaround in his career trajectory, Brand has opted not to take part any longer. A shrewd move, some would say, rather like a rodent hurtling itself from a sinking ship. I heard Brand wouldn’t be working on the show around March, though I don’t remember any press release being issued, just rumour and word of mouth. Clearly Endemol felt that if the news got out, Big Brother would be cursed. Let us not forget that Brand was their success story, where Davina and Dermott have institutionalised themselves by working on their own strands of the BB wig. I can’t see either of them successfully fronting their own shows in the future. Remember Davina’s talk show outing? I’m trying to forget it.

In the interim, a few rumours circulated about how this void would be filled. The strongest of these was that Peaches Geldof, offspring of a sanctimonious old anachronism and herself a vapid waste of molecules would be fronting BBBM. I, and I hope the rest of the show’s audience, was astonished and bemused. But then even worse news arrived. The Peaches rumours were unfounded. Chris Moyles would be fronting Big Mouth.

Chris Moyles.

Chris fucking Moyles.

Oh Christ. Thankfully it would only be for a week, and the role would be rotated among other celebrities – at least this is what we can interpret from the garbled mess of crap emenating from Moyles’ anus-mouth last night.

Moyles, for the uninitiated, is a sexist, occasionally clumsily racist, sweating micro-penis who fronts Radio 1′s breakfast output alongside his mate, ‘Comedy Dave’, the living misnomer. Every morning they bleat on about Leeds United (relegation’s what you need), birds and beers, garnering decent ratings because they appeal to the vast majority of the populace – i.e. other idiots. How Endemol thought it would be a great idea to replace a handsome, witty and manic presenter with a pot-bellied hog with the grace and language skills of a backwards walrus is beyond me.

Last night, his second attempt at fronting the programme, Moyles didn’t exactly impress. He waddled around the arena where Brand used to bounce round it, Tigger-like. He repeatedly called any male guest ‘fella’, probably the most annoying salutation since Maxwell called all and sundry ‘geezer’. He mocked one of the contestant’s weight, when that contestant probably weighs a stone or two less than him. In the past, he has been picked up by Haile Berry for having a ‘racist moment’, yet he decided a member of the audience ‘looked like Beyonce’, despite the fact there was no resemblance whatsoever besides skin colour. In addition to this, he insulted several other members of the audience without any semblance of humour, as bales of tumbleweed flew by.

The man is an arse. I hope this rumour of a week-long tenancy are proved to be true, otherwise Endemol, if it’s possible, have dumbed themselves even further into the dust.

Big Brother 8

10 Week Wankathon

And that’s just Carol, the bearded Aunt Flo who hates cock.

Davina was looking nice until she started doing that crouching, gurning Davina thing, and there we were, it’s BB as we all know and pretend to despise.

With regard to my blog on yesterday’s piqued (clang) the house made more than a passing reference to surrealism, or rather Dali. Yellow Mae West lips sofa and fish rather than lobster telephone. Ironically and tellingly such forced ‘weirdness’ is negated by an otherworldly collision of style, impracticality and cruelty. I’ll even accept the chickens in resin a la Damien Hirst’s Away from the Flock was a nice touch. This is the nastiest house yet, bath in the living room, fridge in the garden, cooker in the bedroom and Catholic in the kitchen or something.

In they came, a pair of vacuous blonde twins in minis chewing on lollies, Lolita x 2, Nabokov would pissed out his testis. They’re both as sweet as pie, cute, vacuous and wholly evil.

“Let’s put the next one in!” bellows Davina as if hysterically announcing the second solid shit she’s passed in 6 months.

Lesley, bloke-faced member of the Women’s Institute, I reckon she spends a lot of time in meetings showing the ladies of Charwood how to take out the vas deferens just by hearing. She’ll get on well with the hairy whale, if she doesn’t roundhouse her face off first.

Charley, instant bonk on, fucking fabulous body but with a face that isn’t quite as pretty or lascivious as it thinks it is. Imagine the body of a younger Tyra Banks with the head of Snoop Doggy Dogg winking at you. Quids in, gold digger. She seems like trouble but will probably keep her horns in until dick walks in…

Next Tracey, fucking awful multicoloured anachronism from the awful, hideous days of early rave. Looks like Johnny Rotten – she’s definitely been abused. Thick as Mr. T with a boner. Awful.

I’m looking forward to seeing Chanelle cry. She’s the visual equivalent of downward convergence. Really fucking thick this one, dead posh, but weirdly thinks she’s a certain footballer’s wife. I’m not even lowering myself to say which one as the cunt would appreciate the recognition and she doesn’t deserve any. Fucking fantastic arse though. Freshly dead, I would.

Shalamanom, didn’t catch her name, oddly I quite liked this one, first possible contender. She’s going to be annoying, yes, but so long as she doesn’t turn into a berk, then she’s fine by me. Full of beans, I’d like to see just one of them.

By now the women are grouping. In the red corner, screeching totty, in the blue Tragic Tracey and Livid Lesley. She’s well unhappy, yeah?

In comes Emily, David Cameron with a fresh young vagina. If that chilled you as much as me, I will say no more. Apart from the fact that if she saw so much as a fibre of a quark of tissue on your lad, she’d disinfect the tyres on her range rover.

Laura I really liked, big fat Welsh girl. Sweet, likeable, funny, eating disorder, one of those fat trendy Beth Ditto types, sort of the perfect media ‘anti zero’ size. In my opinion she’s the clear winner so far, she’s marketable out the house and I can predict the rumblings of a media drive to keep her profile sweet. Despite being the size of a chest freezer she’s pretty. After 10 pints and a microdot I’d think about it.

Nicky, straight, boring, sad, has ‘issues’. She’s adopted by the way, little too much information from the producers there, are we meant to be sympathising because she has the personality of public toilet? It’s okay though because, according to Davina as she walked into the house, ‘If Nicky was an animal she’s be a cat so she can lie in the sun all day’. So that’s cleared that up then.

Lastly, Carole, the old one. She’s been on Greenham Common apparently, I think that may well have been as recently as an hour before she appeared on camera. She’s hairier than Oliver Reed and Alan Bates fighting in front of an open fire. Not sure what to make of her, she maternal but aggressive. Outside chance.

So, there you have it, all women so far, 11 of them, that’s 22 tits! One moan, the bloke that makes the ‘crowd’ signs, especially the one for the tool holding the pointy finger sign bearing the slogan ‘you ain’t seen me, right?’. Pass on your address and I’ll send someone round without a conscience.

Panorama – Scientology And Me

 

This half hour episode on Scientology relates itself to the story that Scientologists want their crazy little cult to be recognized as a proper religion in Britain, however, a court ruling had been passed a few years ago in which it was deemed unfit to fall into the category of a real religion, on account of it being corrupt and sinister. So not at all like other religions then.

Anyway, this normally sobering staple of BBC discharge begins as usual with that walking face Jeremy Vine standing all huddled up in his scarf and mack looking every inch the concerned journalist. (Why does it feel like winter whenever he appears on screen?) Normally Vine himself dominates proceedings, but thankfully this time the reigns are handed over to John Sweeney, but not before Vine sardonically bellows – “Whatever you do, don’t call Scientology a cult.”

For the first half of the show Sweeney attempts to meet and interview some of those disilliusioned by Scientology, who, for whatever reason, have little good to say about life in the cult. It seemed though, that wherever Sweeney went, sinister man-in-black Tommy Davis lurked somewhere close behind. Davis is a spokesman of the church of scientology and frequently appears out of nowhere to besmirch someone’s name. That is his job.

If you saw the programme, you’ll have seen Sweeney at one point interviewing a man who was quite reasonably criticizing Scientology, only to be interrupted by the menacing Davis, who got out of a nearby car with a list in his hand comprising of minor crimes the man had committed, which he proceeded to read to Sweeney. Obviously he was trying to discredit the man in order to render his testimony untrustworthy. These crimes included smoking a bit of pot. This is what they do. Criticize the weirdos at your own risk.

Even taking into account the BBC’s traditionally sneaky methods of editing, Davis comes across like a nasty little fascist who never shuts up. Not only is he a brainwashed numpty but he appears incapable of having a conversation. Several times he would make a point but when Sweeney tried to comment he was drowned out by an agressive Davis yelling – “Now you listen to me for a second!”, before embarking on rants that sounded like Hitler’s might’ve after a botched lobotomy or two.

Given this, it’s not surprising that Sweeney finally cracked and screamed at Davis like a broken torture victim. Although this sequence didn’t make it into the show in full, you can see the clip on YouTube (posted there by some of Scientology’s own documentary makers as part of a smear campaign against Panorama). Even though Sweeney goes demented, Davis continues to ramble inanely all the way through it, regardless. It’s quite surreal.

This episode was advertised on the promise of interviews with some of Scientology’s celebrity disciples, including Juliette Lewis (whom I had thought better of) and Kirstie Alley, (whom I hadn’t) but the most we were allowed was a real dopey quote from the massive-faced John Travolta, who claimed that Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe could have been saved by the cult. If this means that Travolta isn’t going to die any time soon then I may really start hating Scientology. The other interviews apparently went a bit skew-whiff due to Sweeney’s unsympathetic line of questioning. By this I mean that he asked them for their thoughts on L. Ron Hubbard’s flannel-juice fairy tale about the warlord Xenu, who was, according to Hubbsy, an intergalactic dictator back in the day. 75 million years ago to be precise. The story goes that Xenu brought billions of aliens to earth, stuffed them into volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs (he didn’t fuck around). Their souls then merged and stuck to the bodies of the living (?), and they continue to wreak havoc today (something reeks, but it ain’t havoc). Disappointingly we don’t get to hear Lewis or Alley’s reactions to Sweeney’s questions, but their bewildered expressions said it all. Unsurprisingly, Tommy Davis was present, barking at Sweeney that he sounded ridiculous for asking.

Quite where Hubbard gleaned this information from is beyond me, but to procure the name of a 75 million year old spaceman constitutes some impressive research.

Scientologists are clearly embarrassed about this little stain on their belief structure and are now backpeddling in an attempt to edit their core beliefs, Although i don’t know why, because to me it’s no more unbelievable than most religious ideologies anyway.

So now I’ve said my piece about Scientology I have to change my identity and flee the country. They don’t like being criticized y’know…

Filth And Fury – Last Night’s TV

 

It was dictators and dirty jokes last night on Channel 4. First up was Saddam’s Tribe, a docu-drama dealing with the last few years of Saddam Hussein’s reign in Iraq as seen through the eyes of his daughter Raghad. Much moustache twirling ensued as Saddam (played with gusto by Stanley Townsend) and his revoting son Uday (Daniel Mays) murdered their way through the years, occasionally coming to blows over Uday’s compulsion to kill everyone around him. Saddam was suitably evil, even cackling like a pantomime villain at one stage, and the portrayal of his family as either layabouts, maniacs or naiive saints added to the whole ‘he’s behind you’ cartoon feel of the piece. At one stage a poor unfortunate had his tongue cut from his mouth, which was vile, and at another Saddam shoots a load of Rottweillers to teach his son a valuable lesson (the lesson being: if you shoot my brother and all his friends with an AK47 because he’s taken the piss out of your speech impediment, my boy, I’m going to damn-well shoot all your dogs in the face … you dig?). Saddam was also very forgiving of his runaway daughters … though he did have their husbands murdered – give with one hand, take away with the other. As is customary with biopics about dictators, we also learned that Saddam (or ‘Grandad’) was really nice to kids … even murderous lunatics have a soft underbelly, bless.

Speaking of evil dictators with a soft-spot for children, Hitler: The Comedy Years explored the ‘comedy career’ of Adolf Hitler over the past sixty years. This was one of those clip show/talking heads programmes with a smug voiceover, exploring how comedians have used Hitler and the Nazis in their acts since the war to the present day. We were told that Hitler, thanks to Allied propaganda, was derided during the war and turned into a figure of fun. The laughter died down a bit when the Russians walked into Auschwitz-Birkenau and didn’t really get going until Mel Brooks took the piss out of Mein Furher in 1968’s The Producers, arguing that ‘the Nazis had plenty of mileage out of the Jews – it’s about time the Jews had some mileage out of the Nazis’.

After Brooks broke the taboo the floodgates opened and we were presented with the various comedy incarnations of Herr Hitler from Python’s Minehead election sketch, to a porno Hitler, to Basil Fawlty’s reaction to his German guests, to Father Ted and the Chinese, to Big Train’s Hitler party sketch. I’m not entirely sure what the point of all this was, but I suppose it was entertaining in it’s way and was interesting in as much as it showed what Herr Flick looks like in real life – which is about twenty years younger than you’d expect and a damn sight camper if you can believe it.

Following on from all this Hitler-related hilarity was another pointless exercise. The Aristocrats is a film that explores the many many variations of what is universally acknowleged to be the dirtiest joke in the world. For those unfamilar with the joke it goes a little something like this:

A family walk into a talent agency, a father, mother, son, daughter and their dog. The father says to the talent agent,

“We’ve got a brand new act we think you should see.”

“Sorry,” says the talent agent, “I don’t represent family acts.”

“If you just let us show you our act,” replies the father, “I think you’ll represent us.”

“Oh alright,” the agent sighs, “What is it you do?”

There then follows a description of the filthiest family act ever devised. Paedophilia, bestiality, coprophillia, incest – whatever the comedian can throw in to make it as dirty and depraved as humanly possible. The joke ends with the family sweating, exhausted, covered in spunk, shit, piss and God-knows what else and the agent asking,

“What do you call yourselves?”

“THE ARISTOCRATS!”

And that’s the fucking punchline. I’ve heard a version of this joke from a stand-up comedian acquaintance of mine that went on for forty-odd minutes and couldn’t believe how shit the punchline was when it finally reared it’s ugly head, so I wasn’t particulary enamoured with hearing it over and over again from various comedians – because that’s all The Aristocrats is. Comedian after comedian, from Billy Connolly to Richard Lewis, Eddie Izzard to Robin Williams, telling their own version of this crappy joke over and over again. It’s a joke hardly any of them tell on stage, using it instead to prove their wits at the art of improvisation amongst other stand-ups. Because of this, The Aristocrats feels like a party you’ve not been invited to. Its’s also interminably boring … unless you like watching famous people saying the same thing over and over again for two hours, that is.

Sweet Baby James

 

Aren’t there enough celebrity TV chefs in the world? Ainsley Harriot, Delia smith, Gordon Ramsey, Gary Rhodes, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Jean-Christophe Novelli, Anthony Worrall-Thompson, the list goes excruciatingly on.

Among the population of TV cooking arses, there stirs James Martin, of ‘Sweet Baby James’ on BBC 2.

As much as I don’t like Ainsley Harriot, at least he’s passionate. At least Ramsey swears. At least Worrall-Thompson is untrustworthy. At least Oliver has a speech impediment. Martin has no outstanding features whatsoever other than that he could be described as a fairly tall man.

This episode sees Martin return to his old secondary school to perform a food-based facelift on the canteen menu. A highly original idea other than the fact that Jamie Oliver did it yonks ago. Besides which, Oliver clearly already has his grubby mitts all over the whole school dinners issue.

In fact, Martin is like a no-frills charisma-less Jamie Oliver in more ways than one, which is saying something as Oliver himself is as bland as post-modern architecture.

While working out the point of Martin, it is difficult to avoid drawing certain comparisons. I couldn’t help thinking of him as the kind of cooking equivalent of Steve Leonard (The boring nature-twat). Leonard’s programmes frustrate me because he seems to think that his blank face is as interesting to the viewers as the wildlife he is meant to be exploring. Martin is guilty of the same. If I tuned in merely to learn some cooking tips I would be disappointed as ¾ of the programme is just Martin poncing about like the self indulgent bore-monger he patently is.

He also seems to be the masculine interpretation of Nigella Lawson (at least she has colossal thighs) in TV’s bid to present food as ‘sexy’.

I say this because Martin clearly fancies himself as quite the ladies choice. The start of the show sees him roll up to his old headmaster’s house in a sports car. I couldn’t tell you which type - cars bore me - but the point is that he seems to be eagerly putting himself forward as some type of TV lothario. The style of the shows production also betrays the programme-maker’s intentions to drum home the ‘food is sexy, honest!’ concept. The editing is sleek and vigorous and furnished with a funk/soul soundtrack giving the impression that food preparation qualifies as sexy action, with Martin being clumsily misplaced within as some sort of culinary action-man.

Let’s get this straight now – food is not sexy, and food is not art. I plan to eat it and shit it, not fuck it or frame it.

James Martin has been around for a while, but what is all this ‘Sweet baby James’ bullshit out of the clear blue sky? I can only think that it is a sickly and transparent attempt to endear an audience to a man who is the pinnacle of TV dreariness. He has no wit whatsoever and is merely a drone who can cook a bit.

The thoroughly tedious nature of the show is reinforced by a sequence late on in which he teaches a bunch of yuppie-types how to cook a crumble. How quaint. How extremely mind-numbing.

“It’s all in the marshmallows mate!” seemed to be his wittiest quip in the whole show. Laughing yet? Me neither. I do understand that he’s not a comedian, but where is the justification in his existence as yet another TV chef? Entertain me dammit!

He is simply a non-entity. He brings nothing new to the table, other than his claims to be a sweet baby who drives around in a sports car.

So why doesn’t he find his own niche? Perhaps cooking with drugs, or how to introduce untraceable poisons into a dish in order to get away with a murder?

That, I would watch enthusiastically…

The Apprentice, Series 3, Ep. 2

 

That was a weird one.  The teams were now unbalanced, with one female among the boys going up against an all girl squad. So Jadine, the feisty lady (or mouthy cow, depending on your point of view) who project managed the boys coffee task stayed with the chaps whilst the ladies soldiered on without Andy’s wobbly leadership. Wobbly in every sense, was poor Andy, wobbling when asked to decide on what to do next, wobbly in the boardroom and wobbling around town trying to give lollipops to little girls to get them to buy coffee in a sinister manner. But as we know, he’s gone now.So who was for the chop this week? Early on, Rory volunteered to lead Eclipse, the boys’ team with the one female appendage. Let’s cut to the chase early on and admit that Rory never stood a chance. He’s been bankrupted twice (how the fuck do you manage THAT? He’s 27 for fuck’s sake!) and he’s also an ex public schoolboy, or ought to be from the sound of his plummy tones. And we all know how Sugary Alan feels about the posh boys, don’t we? In addition, he also looks like Beaker from The Muppets.The girls were also led by a toffee-nosed type, but she at least has the temerity to avoid talking like Prince William. Her name is Katie,  and she is a woman who looks perfectly normal from the upper eyelid down, but above that appears to have nicked Fido Dido‘s elongated brow.

The task was to create a dog accessory, to be manufactured overnight and then sold to buyers from three major retailers the next day. The clients to be sold to were Harrods, some up-their-own-arse boutique and a company wide pet-store with branches throughout the UK. I’ll admit I hadn’t immediately seized on the idea that the nationwide pet store was a clue that the bigger sales would happen with that one presentation, but then I was half pissed, on a couch in some dirty tracksuit bottoms having a smoke. If I’d have been suited up and slick, early in the morning I reckon it might have crossed my mind. Rory, ignoring the fact he had three members of his team who worked in the area of design in some way, opted to include the witless, clearly schizophrenic Tre at the ideas stage, giving him a shot at brainstorming.

Tre is a horrifying quagmire of teenage adolescent resentment. He is presented with any form of authority and his mouth suddenly starts spitting and teeth-clenching. I bet he got expelled from school a good few times. I bet he’s beaten up a lollipop lady at some point. He can’t be asked to do anything without suddenly exclaiming his greatness and cursing the very ground anyone else might walk on. He’s like Syed but with a barbed whale-cock rammed up his arse, making him relentlessly uncomfortable and effortlessly uptight. At least Syed had a gramme of charisma. Tre’s probably considered ‘good TV’ by the BBC executives, but I consider him to be BAD TV. I don’t like watching twitchy twats being horrible on my screen, so I hope he fucks up in a big way, very, very soon and gets booted out on his bottom.

Rory opted to ignore everything that had been thrown up in the brainstorm session as well as everything that had been researched by Jadine and her branch of Eclipse. The blanket idea was a 50/50er – it could have been a brilliant success (the focus group loved it) or it could have been shot down in flames for being too simple. We’ll never know, for Rory opted for his idea, without the support of his team. It slowly starts to sink in where this bankruptcy problem he has originates from. Perhaps its his entire worldview, which boils down to shutting out everything beyond his own mind and thoughts.

The girls’ invention isn’t worth me even wasting typing-energy on. It was, as one buyer commented, a flat-pack, Formica box. With bones on the front. Great work girls. But I suppose at least they sold a few of them.

So it came to the boardroom and two of the three boys went after it was revealed their sales were hopeless. It was between the hapless Rory, Tre the braying mental and poor Ifti, the iffy Company Director of a design firm who didn’t once pitch in with a single idea, despite design being his trade. In the event, he got fired first, on account of his missing his son and presenting that as the reason he couldn’t engage with the tasks. If it was an excuse to get out, then fair enough, it worked and who can blame him for wanting to get away from the other contestants. If it was genuine, then I think only a man with a cancerous bollock for a heart could think he was soft for being a family-man. Of course, Tre found it hilarious and got told off for giggling. What a nasty little shit he is. Ifti left as possibly the only Apprentice contestant ever to depart with the good will of the nation on his side. I wasn’t expecting that.

Sugar sacked Rory. In terms of business, that makes sense. For the sake of humanity, it was the wrong decision, as we now have to bear at least another week of the stuttering, non-stop shit that comes out of Tre’s mechanised bullshit-machine of a mouth.

You Have Been Watching …

 

I like to pretend to myself that I am a cultured individual. I’ve read books that don’t feature Nazis fighting dinosaurs on the front cover, I’ve listened to music where orchestras play tunes that haven’t been used to advertise paint, I’ve watched films where everyone’s French and speak in French and I’ve watched them in their original French because I can speak French too (if extraordinarily badly) … shit, I’ve even watched BBC Four once or twice and last year I read The Guardian (though to be fair that last one didn’t work out terribly well). I like to think I have risen above the cultural gutter inhabited by the likes of Walker, Texas Ranger, Barry Manilow and John Grisham … I like to think this but in fact I’m talking shit.

Y’see, I have harboured a filthy secret for years and it is this: I, a man who has attended not one, not two, but three Mozart festivals, have loved just about everything Jimmy Perry and David Croft have ever done.

Unfamiliar with the names? Then let me enlighten you so you can understand the full horror of the previous statement. Either together or on their own, Croft and Perry are the creators of Dad’s Army (well that aint so bad, you’re thinking … but wait!), It Aint Half Hot Mum (bloody hell!), Are You Being Served? (fuck a duck!), Hi-De-Hi (CHRIST ALMIGHTY!), ‘Allo ‘Allo (PHONE THE POLICE!), You Rang M’Lord? (SHOOT HIM! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD SHOOT HIM!), and Oh, Doctor Beeching! (THOU ART A SERVANT OF BAAL! HIGH THEE TO THE VERY LOWEST CIRCLE OF DAMNATION, SERPENT!).

That’s right ladies ‘n’ gentleman! Set it in the old days, stick Paul Shane in it, shove ‘You Have Been Watching’ at the end and I’m happier than a pig in shit. I only have to hear the phrase ‘The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies’ and I’m transported back to those gay, carefree days of the brutal Nazi occupation of northern France. Sing me the opening bars to The Holiday Rock and I’m relaxing in my chalet after winning the knobbly-knees competition, looking forward to tonight’s cabaret and Ted’s risque jokes. Come up behind me and bellow ‘YOU LUVVERRLY BOY!!’ into my ear ‘ole and I’m looking around for the Japs.

I always loved these shows even after becoming drenched in the blood of ‘proper’ comedy such as Monty Python and The Day Today. Dad’s Army is, of course, a bona-fide comedy classic and even the most Ben Elton-minded, 80s-centric, Young Ones-fixated miserabilist will harrumph and grudgingly agree. But to openly admit you love rubbish like He-De-Hi and ‘Allo ‘Allo is to invite ridicule from almost every corner … you might as well say you enjoy Birds Of A Feather (though I understand this is stretching it a bit) or that arch-enemy of cutting-edge comedy, The Last Of The Summer Wine.

I can offer no excuses and no concrete explanation for this adoration. Perhaps it’s the evocation of a gentler age that leaves me incapable of criticism? Perhaps it’s  familiarity breeding content (they do tend to have the same cast in them)? Or perhaps it’s just that I can’t help enjoying myself everytime Rene’s hopes for a quiet war are dashed by that bastard Herr Flick (I am not ‘appy about zeeeeeees!)? Or maybe it’s the fact that a lot of the younger women featured in the shows wore stockings and suspenders and were randy little vixens and I happened to be twelve when I watched them the first time around?

Whatever the reasons, I am happy to confess this deep-held affection for low-grade comedy. Give me Ted Bovis pushing Spike in the swimming pool (AGAIN!), Officer Crabtree’s ‘Goooood Moaneeeeng’, or Sergeant Major Williams bellowing ‘SHAAAAAAAAAT AAAAAAAAAAAAP!” and I’m transported back to a time when all I had to worry about was homework and trying to get into Abi Titmuss’s knickers. Maybe that’s what it is? These shows make me feel young again … which is a hell of a tribute considering the jokes were about at the time of the dinosaurs.