The Apprentice 2008 – Ep. 8

When that Alan Sugar character lets rip in his opening spiel, he tells the assembled morons ‘this is the job interview from HELL’. Clearly this is untrue. He’s indulging in hyperbole in order to talk up the gruelling series of tasks and the humiliation that approaches. Interestingly, he follows up with ‘your prize will be working with me’. Logically then, Alan Sugar is Satan.

Raef, answers the phone with his clockwork orange eyelashes and immaculate in his bedroom attire, only a few stray cockerel hairs on the back of his sweep betraying his shut-eye. St Barts church is the destination for the debrief, and they’re to pack an overnight bag.

In a between-scene vox-pop, Claire states that she’s building momentum, whilst Helene spits that, not only would she never mix with the housemates in real life, if she was working with them, she’d fire them. Therein she makes the assumption that she would be their boss rather than the other way round. It’s what makes Helene the most annoying of the flotsam that’s left. A superiority complex the size of Cornwall, all mixed up with a pathological lack of patience and a withering gaze that comes at you from three angles.

‘This church was used in Four Weddings and a Funeral’ says Beelzebub, as the remaining soldiers look about them, cooing and wondering why His Evil Highness hasn’t burnt up on contact with holy ground. The audience shrugs at the Four Weddings revelation. That film’s about 20 years old. Alex looks nervously at Claire, the memory of their boyfriend / girlfriend role play still firmly wedged in his brain and any thought of churches, weddings and marriage causing visible discomfort.

The teams were split again, with Helene as team leader taking Sara, Alex and Michael under her vulture-wing whilst Lucinda took the reins again, despite winning the ice cream task recently. She got LEE, Claire and Raef. A winning set up if ever there was one. It was clear from the off which team was headed for an almighty fall.

Michael’s vox pop followed and he noted his own effortless charm. If you’re aware you’re doing it, Sophocles, then it’s not fucking effortless, is it? Let’s dive in and look at Michael’s efforts this week. This week’s was the Sophocles show, so it’s only fair we focus on the hairy little twat.

When looking at prize-winning dresses by Ian Stewart, he brown-nosed the designer until he barely had a tongue left, then decried his work as ‘ghastly’. When describing it on the phone to Helene he had an ‘I can take it or leave it’ attitude to it, even though, when it was revealed that these high end dresses would win the task, Michael lied that he’d pushed for them. The squirming squirt. All he’d actually done was described them as ‘dresses like the ones in Beauty and the Beast’ and used the grammatical clanger ‘very unique’. Either it is, or it isn’t unique. Piss off with your very unique and effortless charm.

In the event, they let those dresses get away from them and Lucinda’s team secured the winning items. At a few thousand per dress, it always looked like Raef’s ‘high-risk’ strategy would work.

Helene’s team settled on some unbelievably tacky frocks, in every garish colour of the Essex wedding rainbow – as worn, according to the salesgirl, by your Katie Prices and your Jodie Marshes… a great sell, if half your brain has degenerated.

As every bad decision was made, including choosing to sell cakes that looked like shrubs, Alex silently sat and twiddled his pen with increasing frenzy. When he sold, he did very well, but it’s becoming clear that selling is all he can do. He’ll have to lead a team in the next couple of weeks, so if he gets beyond the lip-pursing whining, he may show some initiative beyond winking at girls in order to hoodwink them out of their pocket money.

Raef’s attitude to selling cake to girls was the only real stand-out laugh in the show. Discussing dresses for the larger, BBW side of the market, he declared that if they were going to sell big dresses, they’d be able to flog the cake too – as the larger-dress consumers are just that – big consumers.

Beyond that, this wasn’t the greatest Apprentice ever but there were a few cringe-moments that rescued it. All of these were supplied by Sophocles and Sara. Poor old Sara… the one-trick-pony beneath her lovely frock was exposed and the poor little mite got booted out. I’ll miss her. For a day or two. And then she’ll be gone from my brain.

Michael’s selling technique, branded ‘telesales’ by Alex, was actually quite terrifying and involved recrimination, accusation, holding his head in his hands with outright impatience and even, at one point, a cry of ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE’ when a lady quite rightly stalled on a purchase of his crap confections. He was absolutely terrible. With the expression of his doppelganger all over his face, this Costanzaesque idiot even resorted to calling the general public ‘dumb-dumbs’. Dumb-dumbs who just ‘don’t want to make decisions’. A laughable attitude, really, and just the sort of thing Jerry Seinfeld’s little mate might say to a laughter track.

Sara was similarly bad, but where Michael was passionately engaged to the point of almost openly weeping at his punters, Sara had her cold thousand-yard-stare focused on the great, empty, nothingness of existence behind the heads of her potential clients. She literally didn’t listen to what her punters said and that caused her ejection. But Michael should’ve gone. Because he’s 810% uglier than her.

Over on the winning team, Lee and Lucinda apparently fell in love as they cruised about looking at sale items. The princess and the pauper, as Raef might put it, the bit of rough has definitely wooed the beret girl and a posh nosh-off is on the cards. Especially considering that Lee is now an expert on selling thongs, as he proudly boasted to Satan himself in the boardroom. The fact he was selling £6.99 trinkets to Brummie slags compared to Claire’s thousand quid dresses was lost on the poor brute. But at least he sold something.

So Lucinda won and Claire did her PR machine a power of good with a recommendation from Maggie Mountford, who herself, it was insinuated, had a lovely honeymoon thong encased within her buttcrack, purchased from Lee McAnn McSummers McQueen.

For no reason whatsoever, Raef put on a teddy bear outfit at some point, apparently to drum up interest but mainly because this was a drab episode and it needed someone to be a berk for three minutes to lighten the tedium.

Before they faced Belial’s wrath in Brentwood, Michael stated that he’d be interested to find out how Helene was going to spin her way out of trouble. Which was interesting, as he’d already started the process of spinning her into trouble… 

In the boardroom Sara went with little ceremony, and Alex got the piss taken out of him. Like Syed before him, the favoured Michael will probably get to the final as Lucifer likes him and he makes good TV. But no way will he win.

Incidentally – why do the winners get so excited about the substandard treats they receive? It’s like Big Brother… OOH! We’ve got a task!

They should scrap that. It stops it being the interview from hell and turns it into the interview from a not particularly exciting corporate promotions company. But we did get to see Lee indulging in primal scream mantra therapy, like a bellowing Chelsea headhunter in a yoga retreat.

It’s the make-a-TV-ad episode next week. Be afraid.

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7

The Restaurant

 

I’ve seen a few of these; it’s fucking shit and getting worse.

The sort of Apprentice-lite format doesn’t work – Raymond Blanc is far too decent a chap to go down the Alan ‘you’re fire you are’ Sugar route. Besides, he sounds like Pepé the Pew doing an impression of Serge Gainsbourg.

The format of the show is simple: open nine restaurants and then get nine couples to run them from scratch. Each week, two of the shittest couples have a play-off task that sees one of their restaurants getting shut down.

The only interest comes from the jaw-dropping horror and stupidity of the contestants. One caused a restaurant Supervisor, working for Ray of course, to make herself physically sick after eating raw chicken breast. Staggeringly, this particular contestant is still in the show.

But by far and away the most dreadful coupling of humans I’ve seen in recent years on television were the thoroughly abhorrent Sam and Jacqui.

Sam is a ‘jazz drummer’ and Sam an ‘actress’. A pimp and a hooker, then. She’s a loud-mouthed oxygen thief and Sam a little toad of a creature with as much charm as The Marquis de Sade in the Bastille dildoing himself until he bleeds lumps.

In the first episode when they were trying to hire a chef. Sam was in the process of interviewing a fairly elderly chap who’d been working in kitchens most of his adult life. Unfortunately, the nearest he’d got to being a chef was chopping veg in a hospital kitchen, but instead of politely informing the elderly gentleman of his lack of suitability, Toad-boy, with the old guy a couple of feet away, called the recruitment agency and bollocked them at volume and length about sending him ‘useless people’. You could actually see the life draining from the poor old git. It was toe-curling stuff and from that moment I wanted see Sam dressed in life-threatening hives.

His recently-acquired wife took the role as front of house Manager, which meant she attempted to ingratiate herself with unsuspecting members of the public with an upside down smile that resembled a gorilla picking fleas off its winkle and a drawl that could melt glass at 100 yards.

In the meantime, instead of managing his fledgling and unenthusiastic staff, Sam threw strops and busied himself by staring at the prepared food as if a copraphiliac standing in a festival latrine looking up at defecating arses.

Needless to say they were booted off last week much to Sam’s arrogant objection and howls from his dreadful wife.

The remaining cast of nobodies are so fucking boring and lacking in any sort of creative intelligence or business acumen that I, for one, can’t even be arsed to finish th

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps

 

Too pointless for laughter and a sackful of shit

In the absence of Tycoon, I realised that I would have to turn my attention elsewhere this week, and as I was drifting aimlessly through the channels late last night, I came upon an easy target. Not just an easy target mind, but an insipid, zombified beast wearily waiting to be put to sleep forever. And while, unfortunately, it is not yet within my power to do so, I was nevertheless struck with the irresistable urge to clobber such a pathetically inept and flailing subject on it’s sickbed. No, I am not referring to Make Your Play or indeed Glitterball, though you would be forgiven for thinking so. No, I’m talking about Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.

Canned laughter aside, there are no indications whatsoever that this is indeed intended for the purposes of humourous relief. In fact, any claims at all that this is funny are just out and out lies and anyone who even so much as smirks at the situation-based japes therein should be punched in the face for days, mercilessly relieved of their scalp, tossed into a volcano and shot at on their way down. Especially since those who enjoy its witless attributes are clearly chavvy types anyway. This is not intended as a purely throwaway remark either. It’s bland, shallow and utterly void of redemption, as well as being as much a reprehensible enemy of intelligence as anything else, anywhere on this knackered planet. As such, it is not just a programme for chavs, it is a fucking chav.

Taking into consideration that I have yet to encounter another human being who speaks well of this awful show, I am somewhat bamboozled as to the reasoning behind BBC 3’s incessant airing of it. As soon as it strikes midnight, it’s there. Multiple episodes, back to back, five nights a week. Lord above, how many series of this cascade of rancid camel shit have been commissioned? Someone, somewhere, needs a rare old twatting.

Ralf Little has long since bypassed his own sell-by date and must no longer be allowed to surf his own faded projection of success. Granted, he was quite funny in The Royle Family, but time has passed and now he’s just an offensive stain. I don’t even know the names of the rest of the cast but quite frankly I pity the joyless wankbags. I find comfort in assuming they’re all two strokes short of a climax.

I realise that this is not the only British sitcom guilty of bringing comical emptiness to the masses, (My family, My Hero, anything with Nicholas Lyndhurst post Only Fools And Horses) but Two Pints of Lager should voluntarily die for the sins of all the others as far as I’m concerned, minus any kind of resurrection.

Already, I have devoted a near-regrettable amount of my own precious life-span to this unworthy subject, and if I dedicate any more then I’m in danger of becoming a fool to myself.

Big Brother 8 – 18.6.07

 

Thank fuck Shabs has gone. She was actually starting to cause me medical complications; so unremittingly illogical and affected was she that I was finding myself mentally rewinding back through pyschobabble comments in conversations just to assure myself that, yes, this is really a genuine psychopath I am watching. MIND (the charity for mental health) have openly criticised Channel 4 for allowing a Looney Tune onto their show. The psychologists on ‘On the Couch’ have clearly been briefed on damage limitation here, I mean Shabs could have genuinely lost it live on air, we’re not talking about the odd burst of random giggling here, we’re talking about a woman on all fours with someone’s bollock hanging out of her mouth.

If you care to go on Youtube and do a bit of research you’ll already know that a few weeks ago Shabs appeared on ‘Britain’s got Talent’ in a scene so mortifyingly toe-curling, my shoes nearly burst open. If this isn’t bad enough (it really is, watch with restraints) she also appeared on Channel 4’s embarrassing illnesses. Her ‘embarrassing illness’ was a bit of an itchy head, yet she pitched this medical irrelevance as if she had eyes for fucking nipples (or vice versa if you like).

This twat knows no bounds, you’ll see her again, probably on the news but I’m bracing myself for the gutter press to leak the story that she’s starring in an adult version of Happy Feet.

So, the new contestants. Frankly I don’t mind any of them, though how on earth how Billi has the balls to call himself a male model is beyond me. You could open a manhole with that nose. In addition he has the figure of Britney Speares, cameltoe included. Liam seems a nice straightforward sort, Jonathan could become a handful I think but at this stage, fine. Brian too seems okay, despite his Christopher Lee playing Dracula haircut and unashamed intention of doing something so disgusting to those twins I should imagine their father is muttering at a kitchen knife.

The rest of the housemates haven’t really done anything to cause a radical rethink of my recent blog on this topic. Laura, Nicky and Carole are odds on to win, I still don’t mind the Greek bloke despite his musical accent, Tracey is still barking like a rutting stag all the while gurning like Jim Bowen with cataplexy, Seany remains a prize blue-eyed berk and Chanelle is still a worrying combination of both the Barbies, the doll and Klaus Marie.

Fucking Charley is now the most awful housemate of all time. She seems unable to leave those melted plastic armpit implants alone, she fiddles with them perpetually. Sometimes one will poke out of her shirt like a dead otter’s head, always accompanied by an intense frown she’ll half heartedly try to drop it back into the position intended by nature. She always fails of course, hickory is more flexible. She’ll have someone’s eye out you mark my words.

Speaking of words, or to be more accurate, belt-fed mortar bursts of aggression being fired out of the mouth of the Gorgon, who is incandescent with rage because someone failed to respect her bogies, how does she manage to find time to inhale mid-oration? I’m convinced all that hair is some sort of crude third lung; it’s the only possible solution.

(She still has a cracking little botty though.)

The one housemate who has let themselves down most this week has to be Ziggy. He really doesn’t like any male competition at all, which is a fucking weird. He strutted about like Bernard Matthew’s pride cock for the first few days, his gander was goosed when the two new male housemates arrived but was visibly relieved when he found out that they (claimed) to be fairies.

He was just settling back into his alpha male role when four new male housemates arrive. This was too much, he looked physically sick as each one walked in and proverbially smacked the end of his engorged member sharply with the back of a cold spoon. The way he reacted to this threat was fascinating, and, dear reader, you must try and catch him at it, it’s so much fun in a despatching an injured fox way.

Ziggy gave me and I’m sure you, the impression that he was quite, well, poshish. Well spoken suburban type, clearly with an ego that spies on his self-consciousness with military precision but, nonetheless, more coherent than is necessary.

Now watch him talking to the new ‘lads’, he went from Lord and Lady Hamilton’s Lawn Tennis clubhouse in Royal Tunbridge Wells to selling pornographic postcards on the Ol’ Kent Road. This wasn’t a case of downward convergence; this was a 35 stone wide boy plummeting to his death from the top of Bow Church.

I’ve lost whatever respect I had for him; frankly, he may as well have just scrawled a schematised drawing of Che Guevara on his chest with one of his stools.

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.

Fat Man’s Warning

 

I’m glad I’m not fat. If I was, I would be even sicker than I already am of all of the health based scare-mongering going on.

This time it’s a fat American who thought he’d drag his unwanted, sagging mass into the
UK to warn us that we’re heading for a plague of pigshit if we keep munching burgers and cakes, etcetera, in Fat Man’s Warning, last Sunday.

His name is Steve Daly. Apparently he’s a comedian but I wouldn’t be surprised if his act just consisted of him poking fun at himself for being fat in the hope that others might not.

It’s hardly worth mentioning that his feet are too fat for normal shoes or that he can barely do anything other than eat. Nor is it worth saying that he’s on the verge of death, they always are in these programmes about massively obese food botherers. Anyway, there’s no way his heart can keep pumping blood around that mess for much longer.

I read an article about his quest in a local rag prior to it’s airing, and I recall a quote by Daly in which he claimed that “Britain is about four years behind
America, and soon you’re all gonna be as fat as me”.

Later in the show he again reiterated that Britain is about four years behind America.

Two things here, This unsightly shit is an arrogant arse, who clearly thinks we are so stupid and ignorant about the weight debate, that we need some stinking pile of shit to come over here and ‘save us’ with his one man crusade. Well I happen to think he should sort himself out before he mouths off outside KFC or McDonalds with his banner aloft, trying to spread fear among the public.

Next, I would beg to differ that we are indeed four years behind America. It sounds to me like something Americans tell each other to feel good about themselves.

So anyway, you get the picture, he visits
Britain’s towns and cities pestering those foolish enough to engage with him. He waddles around with a placard saying ‘I love KFC, look at me’, trying to strike up preachy conversations about food with locals.

In one scene, Daly prowls the streets protesting about himself again, and starts a conversation with some teenage lame-brain who commented that the government should ban McDonalds and the like, since they know it’s unhealthy. At this point Daly praised the boy for his intelligence in saying this.

Good idea, why not ruin it for everyone just because some fat hoovers have no self control?

Those who can’t regulate their eating habits deserve to suffer. Some may say they should be lead them down to the bottom of the garden like worn out dogs and shot for being the broken creatures they are, but obviously, I would never say such a thing.

Anyway, the show was shit. In fact, this programme was so one dimensional it felt like a conversation with Jade Goody.

Daly is a useless toilet with no people skills, who isn’t even particularly clever or articulate. As for being a comedian, he must have left his joke book at home because he didn’t crack one gag, and if he did, then I didn’t hear it.

I felt that the scene where he coaxed a bunch of young kids to climb inside his trousers was bumbling into the arena of the perverted, but somehow he got away with it. Ok, he wasn’t wearing them at the time, but still…

In one of his sermons he cries “A child, when it’s obese won’t make it past fifty three years old”. That really makes sense, I thought. That must be why I never see any fat 54 year old children anywhere.

Here is what I couldn’t understand – one minute he’s drawing crowds as he delivers his grim message of doom, the next he’s wandered off somewhere else and is scoffing chips, kebabs and the whole caboodle with fat locals. There is a scene later on where he goes into Mills store with a load of kids – yep, hanging around kids again (seemingly the only people who’ll listen to him) – and buys a carrier bag full of chocolate bars. I’m guessing he thinks he’s doing research when actually he’s sending out confused messages. He’s telling people not to eat the very stuff he’s stuffing his fat face with. I think it’s an elaborate ploy in which he plans to consume all the junk food in the world for himself.

Another pearl from the Steve Daly book of wisdom? Ok: “Blackpool is a giant toy in the happy meal of
England”.

Shit stuff.

Get Your Act Together With Harvey Goldsmith

 

I am fan of what may be termed as ‘metal’. The term ‘metal’ is a little bit embarrassing. It has a stigma, more of a smegma, attached to it, whilst Iron Maiden must take some responsibility for this state of affairs, the overall blame lies squarely at the feet of Saxon, an 80’s incarnation of so called ‘metal’ but really, you’ll find more metal in pack of cup-a-soup.

In Tuesday night’s ‘Get Your Act Together With Harvey Goldsmith’, the latter attempted to revive the career of the former. I’m a big fan of HG but I really wished he’d left this lot alone. Whilst the programme was entertaining enough I don’t need to be reminded of them. I would rather listen to Matt Bianco and Five-Star copulating in an echo chamber.

Saxon arrived on the metal scene at about the same time as I became a teenager, to my credit they were spurned quite early on by yours truly, but the stigma (smeg) of their hoarse screeching, heavy fairylight sound and ‘style’ (spandex, long mullets, all-round cuntiness) without doubt lasted right up until grunge hit the UK in the 90’s.

Saxon consist of a bunch of extras cast as tramps, charisma retarded sex offenders led by the dreadful Biff Byford, a sort of Lidl-lite Lemmy crossed with Ecce Thump. The man is an utter prick, stuck in an 80’s time warp with a wholly misguided and inappropriate ‘rock-star’ opinion of himself. Poor Harvey, firm but fair, simply wanted to bring them up to date, he ejaculated ideas like a little fat winkie which were met with derision, insults and misplaced attitude, all from Byford as the rest of the band were too thick to actually speak.

In the middle of all the mouth from Byford, Harvey managed to get Saxon a gig which resulted in a bunch of teenagers enthusiastically moshing out in a modest club in Lincoln, a minor achievement, yes, but it indicated that Harvey’s task wasn’t quite as impossible as I’d supposed. This brief moment of positivity was deliciously negated at half time during a football match in Sheffield when Saxon attempted to break the Guinness (Book of) Record for the most air guitarists in one place. They got booed off. Actually, they got chanted off – accompanied by lots of synchronised pointing.

Harvey got Saxon a gig at some big town-venue in Sheffield. It held 18,000 and work needed to be done to promote the band, as this was supposed to be Saxon’s homecoming tour and ticket sales were predictably slow.

After being called a ‘fucking wanker’ by Byford, Harvey convinced them to record a new single that moved away from their usual fayre of metal brotherhood and ‘oooh, I have sex with a lady’. Byford came up with a socially aware number, some tosh about ‘guns and knives’ on the street because, apparently, Byford had been a ‘bit of a criminal’ back in the day. I bet that shop keeper in Yorkshire had to re-mortgage his shop after Byford nicked a tube of Spangles in the fucking 40’s.

Following a style makeover which Byford really enjoyed but pretended he didn’t, the band’s completed single, new graphics, band photo etc., were presented in front of the rock press. Down to some nifty production the single didn’t go down too badly with the journos (though I’ve heard it and I thought it was cack). It did have the desired effect on the gig in Sheffield though, but it wasn’t quite as packed out as Harvey said it was. The cameras don’t lie and the audience were predominantly male and looked like aged Eastern European refugees.

Harvey also managed to get them to some Rock Awards thing at some posh hotel in London (I was flagging by this point) in which the band were encouraged to mingle with the rock glitterati. Byford and Harvey made the effort to work the room, the tramps scuttled off nowhere to be seen and it is at this stage that I need to mention the Saxon manager.

From the outset of the programme a large man who wasn’t appearing on stage or in band photos always seemed to be just there. He didn’t speak a word – just lurked. He was a bizarre looking thing, like a new super breed of Welsh lesbian with a serious drink problem. Harvey ordered him to mingle but he looked confused. Actually I have to admit I felt a bit sorry for him, he wandered into the middle of the room where he was greeted with a sea of turned backs and posed like a five year old trying to not do a wee wee.

The only time I heard him speak was the follow-up show on E4 when they were reviewing the half-time football incident. I can only presume he’d had a couple of bottles in the green room. Harvey was berating the band for, essentially, being pussies and not giving the crowd some ROCK when Pat Butcher suddenly lost it and stepped in. ‘VEN FOOTBALL CROWDS LOSING ZER IZ NUZZINK ZAT CAN BRING ZEN BACK, NUZZINK!’ He looked livid, his face was redder than a stoplight, I laughed heartily…

…My laughter was cut short. Harvey had done a better job than I could comprehend; the fucking cunts are appearing at the Download festival. They will be on the same bill as Slayer for fucks sake. So thanks Harvey, I will sit back and watch what kudos was clawed back by these masters of metal dribble down the drain as I face another round of social isolation and mockery.

I hate Harvey.

Celebrity Wife Swap

 

I have always hated the fat-arsed bones of Vanessa Feltz, and watching this celebrity edition of Wife Swap has only cemented my opinion of her. What a rancid wank-stain she absolutely is.

For those who missed it, Feltz and her fiancé; Ben something from Phats and Small (who looks like a missing Fashanu – Awooga!), traded places with Paul Daniels and the allegedly ‘lovely’ (where’s the evidence?) Debbie McGee.

Whenever I watch Wife Swap, celebrity or otherwise, by halfway through I have decided which couple I prefer. Sometimes it’s a tough call, because the couples are usually so extreme in their belief systems that it’s hard to relate to either of them.

After having watched the trailer for this show though, I had already made my mind up about whose side I would be on, if things should snowball into a to squabble to the death.

In this case, I would happily be the one to beat the Feltz creature about the face, neck and head with a chainsaw.

Within ten minutes of the show Ben Fashanot is giving the viewers a much needed reminder of exactly who he is (although I’m still not sure) by singing his song ‘Turn Around’. This appears to be the only song he’s ever done and is the only reference to his ‘success’ in the whole programme. As I recall, Turn Around was on an album called ‘Now Phats what I Small music’ which is frankly, a laughable title, but not as amusing as the fact that a couple of years back, I saw the album wallowing pathetically in the bowels of bargain basket of a music shop for 99p. Ha.

Meanwhile the mild mannered Daniels, (a warped and aged Louis Walsh) seemed fair enough. I really expected him and Debbie McGee (an anorexic swan) to irritate me more than they did, but to be honest, they didn’t. Ok they’re a bit sad and pointless, but thoroughly inoffensive, which is more than can be said for the hateful Feltz and her wretched disciples.

Despite being disturbed by the very sight of Feltz alone, the most blood-curdling moments came when we were subjected to the utterly evil image of the Fashanot and the vulgar Feltz passionately kissing. I use the term ‘kissing’ loosely, because what I was seeing was a scene devoid of anything resembling romance and would have looked more at home in a Wes Craven effort. They were chewing each others fucking mouths off. At this point I was this close to sticking safety pins in my eyes. That or changing the channel.

Feltz, who looks like the bastard love-child of Rodney Dangerfield and tub of margarine, is a woman so monstrously repulsive, that if I was trapped on a desert island with her as my only company, I would immediately despatch her, subsequently opting to starve to death rather than use her as a source of food, not only because I would feel unclean for the rest of my days, but also through the fear that I may inadvertently absorb some of her soul. Mind you, I could use her bloated carcase as a kind of boat. But would I want to? Even if I were trapped in a lift with the grotesque ape and was somehow assured that we would be rescued within twenty minutes, I would still have to eradicate her for the sake of my own sanity.

To be serious for a second, I’m no psychologist, but it’s clear that this woman is mentally unstable and not at all comfortable with her own inner self. When she went to the Daniels’ residence and was faced with the opportunity of two weeks of quiet contemplation and relaxation in the country, she went up the wall.

She clearly needs to keep herself busy all the time in order to escape her own thoughts. (Remember when she went nuts on Celebrity Big Brother?)

You could tell her that her dog had just died but she would still have the same awkward grin etched across her ugly chops

All I can say is that I wish Daniels had sawn her in half a couple of times and then made her contemptuous body parts magically disappear.