I’m off on holiday all next week, so there’ll be nobody holding the reins here at HQ.
I might, if you’re lucky, schedule two or three posts so that you don’t all bugger off and leave. It’s not nice getting back to an empty house.
In the meantime, why not read the blogs of Piqued, Napoleon, Louche, Chipz, and Mingles?
Sorry if I’ve left anyone out.
See you soon. I’ll bring you back a straw donkey.
Presumably to fill the Two Pints-shaped hole in the schedules (currently being filled with thousands of episodes of Family Guy), BBC3 have commissioned Massive.
Massive is a new comedy series on BBC Three starring Ralf Little (Two Pints Of Lager, The Royle Family), Carl Rice (Scallywagga) and Johnny Vegas (Ideal, Benidorm).
Danny (Ralf Little) and Seamus (Carl Rice) bonded over Oasis in ’94 and have been best mates ever since. Both Manchester born-and-bred, both mid-twenties and both temping in dead-end jobs, they’re united by one all-consuming passion: music.
Inspired by the city’s local heroes – Tony Wilson, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays – the lads wile away the dreary office hours dreaming of their own record label.
But while they put in the footwork when it comes to gigs (three a week) and beer (considerably more than that) time is ticking by and they’re on the road to nowhere.That is until Danny’s gran pops her clogs. The mad old bat leaves him £10,000 and Danny doesn’t hesitate – he and Shay are going to have their label.
The lads jack in their jobs and find an office by the canal. Now all they’ve got to do is unearth the next Oasis and have a hit record…
Ralf ‘Two Pints’ Little, for my money, has forever blotted his tattered copybook with that pile of shit he kept starring in. Apart from Ideal, Johnny Vegas hasn’t really found a TV vehicle that suits him. So can we hold out much hope for this?
According to some guff on the GMTV website, Jodie Marsh – glamour model and ‘TV Personality’ – suffered bullying at school because of her nose.
Jodie Marsh revealed on GMTV this morning she was cruelly called ‘plastic face’ at school after having a nose-job.
Talking on the breakfast TV show about the increase in teenagers having plastic surgery as a result of bullying, the glamour model admitted that after she underwent cosmetic surgery at the age of 15 – she was bullied at school even more.
“I did have a nose job because of the bullying – because they made me feel so embarrassed and ashamed and ugly and hideous about it” said Jodie.
“I don’t think surgery is an answer to bullying, certainly not. Because my bullying then got worse after I had my nose done because then they started calling me ‘plastic face’, or ‘don’t stand in the sun – you’ll melt.’But I felt better, I felt absolutely amazing afterwards.”
What she doesn’t say is that she originally fucked up that very nose by playing Hockey at Brentford School, where she was privately educated.
Anyhoo, she claims to have had plastic surgery on said hooter at 15 after being bullied about and it was following the surgery that the bullying got worse. She was called ‘plastic nose’, heaven forefend! Sounds like her tormenters were as imaginative as the tormented.
In fairness to Marsh she’s always moaned about being bullied, Celebrity Big Brother viewers were privy to a disgraceful and completely unwarranted attack on her by cunts Barrymore and Burns precisely because she was ‘Jodie Marsh’ and the result is the nightmare we witness shoving its bum into the photographer’s lens every time someone releases so much as an eggy guff.
Anyone can see that under that nose and make-up and wotnot is a deeply insecure person who feels the need to put it about a bit in order to be adored. In addition to the growing collection of dreadful tattoos, she’s had her tits done now – something she vowed never to do – and just about any other bit of cosmetic reconstruction on the menu. Why? Because she’s insecure and fame hungry in a way that takes precedence over money.
She can offer the world nothing, yet like Jordan (who seems to have succeeded in achieving vast sums of wealth by manipulating the press and public alike) desperately keeps trying to force herself into the public eye by wearing as little as possible.
Unlike Jordan, though, she’s despised way out of context for what she’s actually done. She’s not invaded Poland has she? Or, more pertinently, she’s not leaked a sex video. She doesn’t wave her clout about in public, she doesn’t pretend to write fucking books about Donkeys, she chooses instead to dress like a trollop and involve herself at the lowest possible echelon of tabloid TV. In this respect she shares that gem-paste tiara with Jordan, except Marsh only exploits herself. She leaves her family, disabled children et al out of it.
In a way we can see Jodie as a feminist, unlike Jordan who seems to have become a fucking role model for little girls -and in my opinion poses much more of a danger to the psyche of the younger generation of females by muddling up sex, pink ponies and wealth. Men and women seem to despise Marsh without prejudice and while the likes of Callum Best stalk the paparazzi, I’m not entirely sure why.
Thanks to brain-melting industry publication, Marketing Magazine, you can easily obtain figures detailing how companies compare when it comes to a thing called ‘brand recall’ – which essentially means ‘remembering adverts’. After all – it’s no good making a brain-rotting telenudge unless it’s guaranteed to burn itself into the collective synapse of the proletariat consumer, eh?
Here’re the top 10 performers – and my attempt at total recall.
Sainsburys (69%)
Easy – this is Jamie Oliver patronising people and then cooking them a third rate dinner in some suburban vision of hell on earthly terrain.
Asda (61%)
No idea. Three crates of booze for a tenner? Some arsehole in a green hat patting his arse? Ian Wright pretending to be enthusiastic about baking a loaf? Or is that Somerfield?
Dolmio (60%)
Fucking annoying puppets blabbering incomprehensibly about sauce.
Littlewoods Direct (53%)
No idea. Scrabbling for a memory, I can picture some tall girl mucking about in slow motion on a beach in a peach-coloured dress – but I think that’s just a generic mental image I’ve invented when I think of the catalogues middle aged women get through the post. I also recall many happy moments spent with the lingerie section of the Kays catalogue. Thanks again, catalogue-model girls.
L’Oreal Elvive Re-Nutrition (51%)
Is this Andie MacDowell? Or Eva Longoria? Either way, it’s a shit actress talking crap. Or it may just be a model with the speech dubbed over. In any case, hair doesn’t need nutrition. It just needs an occasional wash.
Marks & Spencer (49%)
Undoubtedly this’ll be Myleene and Claude Makelele’s wife playing silly buggers in swimsuits, in a lighthouse while an old woman and a giantess look on. Getting a bit tiresome, this campaign (if looking at this sort of thing could ever be considered tiresome).
Burger King (49%)
The Dark Knight burger. When I can’t decide what brand of coloured, flavoured offal and dung pattie I want to stick into my gut, I let a fictional character – usually a superhero – decide for me.
Morrisons (48%)
More reasons to shop at more-reasons? Is that still going? Or is it Alan ‘Arsehole’ Hansen clutching a trolley like a zimmer-frame? I’m guessing rather than trying to remember these ads now, if you hadn’t noticed.
Vauxhall Corsa (47%)
I can’t remember car ads, ever. Has it got a car in it?
Going very fast?
It has?
Then I won’t remember it.
Flora pro.activ (46%)
I don’t even know what this is. It’s got ‘Flora’ attached so I assume it’s margarine – but the weirdly punctuated and abbreviated bit at the end leads me to assume it’s a futuristic margarine that makes your bones robotic or something. This sort of branding makes me hit spread-autopilot and reach for the Utterly Butterly out of brain-freeze confusion.
The end
Scientific Conclusion:
We only remember adverts if they’re hugely patronising, if they feature women in bikinis or if they’ve got puppets talking with very strong, affected italian accents in them.
I think we’ve all learned something today.
Seeing this show in the listings, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stomach it. I mean … Sue Perkins was doing the voice-over. Still, I’m nothing if not dedicated to my craft.
This is the latest offering in Virgin 1’s ‘… And Proud’ season and is obviously an attempt to cash in on the success of Channel Four’s recent run of highly-succesfull freakshow documentaries. My Husband is a 1987 Transit Van, and so on.
The title is self-explanatory. We met various couples, all with a wide age-difference between them, and found out what they thought and what society thought of their relationship. It’s encouraging to see that women these days have now achieved full equality-of-embarassment – there were just as many randy old women with their glasses steamed-up over young boys’ pecs as there were middle-aged men drooling over schoolgirls.
Ken is 44 and a children’s entertainer. His girlfriend, shy, timid Hannah is 17. They first met when she was best-friends with his daughter Nina and came to stay with them while she was moving schools. According to Ken, Hannah made the first move. Whether that move was made when she rolled a six and landed on Ken’s Park Lane hotel during a particularly important game of Monopoly was never mentioned. But once word got round that they were dating, his career as a children’s entertainer started to suffer and Ken and Hannah eventually had to move out of the area. I suppose it’s inevitable. Noone likes to think that their children’s entertainer is offering ‘extras’ and I dread to think what sort of material he was making his balloon animals out of.
In the past 40 years there has apparently been around a 20% increase in older women dating younger men. So, it was interesting to meet 62-year-old blonde MILF Wendy. Before bringing up your breakfast, you really should see her. Wendy is still a very attractive and sophisticated women who could easily pass for a highly-eligible 45-year-old. In fact, she was getting so much attention from young men that she wrote a book about it called, ‘The Toyboy Diaries’. From what we saw of Wendy’s lifestyle, the combination of notoriety and good looks means that she’s knee-deep in glistening pecs and baby oil every night of the week.
A gaggle of drunk, cackling 40-something women who set up the toyboywarehouse.com dating website told us ad nauseum how great it was to shag young men. Inevitably, the idea of 40 and 50-something men getting together and setting up a website of the same sort for young girls, without having molotov cocktails hurled through their windows, was never mentioned.
Chris was on holiday at Butlins with his parents aged just 18 when he fell for 50-year-old karaoke queen, Norma. Despite the enormous age difference, the two of them began a passionate affair immediately. Chris proposed to Norma three weeks later and they’ve been together for 12 years. Regardless of the age difference, they seemed like a fairly well-matched and happy couple. And Chris doesn’t really think of his wife as old. As he told us, ‘Norma doesn’t need oiling.’ All the best Chris. But no more details please, if you don’t mind.
This is all fair enough, I suppose. It’s hard enough to find someone to spend your life with without ruling someone out on the basis that they’re the wrong age. And so long as it’s all legal, I don’t see anything to worry about with any of this. But some of the stories were …well, best viewed on an empty stomach.
From MILFs we move to GILFs. Awkward chubby spectoid Simon (34) met game old bird Edna (73) a few years ago and they are now happily shacked up together. They first met when Simon was playing his organ in the local cinema [readers are invited to fill-in their own jokes here] and immediately fell in love.
Simon was still living with his parents at this point and they initially kept their relationship secret – but would speak for five to six hours on the phone every night, each conversation ending with Simon playing Edna ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ on his organ. They both live in Weston-Super-Mare and the first time Simon kissed Edna was under the pier. Thankfully for all concerned this is merely a statement of fact and not a euphemism.
As a further tribute to his undying love, Simon is now installing an antique pipe organ the size of a swimming pool into an enormous pit in their back garden. On the bright side, what with Simon’s obsession with old organs and Edna’s irrepressible joi de vivre, if they do ever breed, the child will be assured of a long career playing the lead in touring productions of The Phantom of the Opera – probably from a very young age and without the need for make-up.
Great news for morons from Channel 4, home of morons. As part of the Autumn schedule we’ll have even more cookery on the box as Gordon Ramsay swears very impressively (and live, dangerously enough) whilst Oliver will try and fail to change the world. Again.
Jamie Oliver travels to Rotherham to launch his latest campaign and face some of his fiercest critics in four-part documentary, Jamie’s Ministry of Food. The Channel 4 chef wants to recruit the locals to his drive to encourage home cooking at the expense of unhealthy ready meals and has taken the wartime ministry as his inspiration.
Gordon Ramsay will also be back aiming to extend the nation’s culinary repertoire, this time with a full seven-part series of Live Cookalong.
So, if you love watching arseholes cook stuff while you eat cereal, you’ll be well catered for.
An update on that Charlie Brooker thing can be found below…
Personally, I’d say an appearance from Davina McCall and former Big Brother contestants automatically devalues it, but time will tell. No doubt Aisleyne will get plenty of airtime in Brooker’s bewildering, ongoing campaign to get her work…
Watch With Mothers 
