St-st-stutter

This will I think be my last post of 2011. An eventful year,  but I'm already sick of this "was it the biggest news year ever?" crap and the way in which these things are packaged nowadays. Normally (along with the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, which are now - of course - on BBC4, and although I think iPlayer is a great idea, I never use it as much as I think I'm going to, so I probably won't watch them) I really like the news review programmes at this time of year, but the ITV News one scheduled for this evening is a big turn-off for me - based solely on the write-up I saw in the Sun this morning, which made me want to spit my cornflakes out. Something along the lines of: '...an amazing news year featuring the death of Colonel Gaddafi and the marriage of Kate and Wills...' Need I say more? And the thought of Mark Austin's bovine, yet strangely sinister face spouting bullshit at me makes me want to smash the TV set, so I think I'll give it a miss.

My own review of the year just gone would centre around desperation. A sense of the death of hope and a demonstration of the total, abject failure of our so-called democracies to bring about any real change. The Libyan adventure was utterly shameful, from its conception to its dreadful conclusion, and the fact that it is being held up as some kind of standard for the great Coalition project actually turns the stomach. Obama has been no sort of beacon, though it was certainly foolish to expect anything else, with the only real joy associated with his becoming President being that he was not George W Bush. Yet his capitulation to those frankly certifiable Tea Partiers and the soul-destroying compromises of the Finance Bill stand-offs, have been little short of horrific to watch.

Graft, corruption and glad handing have been the hallmarks of our own great institutions, from Cameron and Coulson, through the Met Police and the Ministry of Defence, Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs... You name it. The abyssal hole in the public's respect mystifyingly unfilled by any genuine Opposition parties, and so left to a bunch of tent dwellers outside St. Paul's Cathedral to try and make some 'sense' of it all. Thousands upon thousands of jobs lost, companies going bust, the impending collapse of the Euro... It all adds up to a pretty grim picture - especially for those unfortunate enough to be starting out in life, or for those who might find themselves on the wrong side of the employment line, or worse with a disability or illness to deal with.

FWIW, I think that the Euro will collapse; that there will be some fundamental changes to the global financial models (though I don't believe these will mean a more equitable arrangement) which will not be without pain. I would have said that the Coalition will fail, but have become even less convinced that anyone in the Westminster village has anything even approaching principles, so will not be holding my breath. I believe that military action will start against Iran. How else will yet more job losses be avoided in the arms industry? I think environmental pressures will continue to mount, and that water will become an ever more precious commodity, leading once again to vast migrations of starving people in Africa, and some terrible catastrophes in the natural world.

After our performance at the Hawthorns the other day, do I think City have a chance of winning the league? Well, yes I do. I don't think it will be easy, because the fucking Rags are somehow persuading otherwise resilient teams to roll over and show their bellies. Spurs are looking good at the moment, though whether that will continue while Harry's doing a bit of porridge in the Scrubs (I hope his cell mate isn't a Gooner or a Southampton fan) remains to be seen. Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool all look decidedly inadequate, so I think the league is a two (or maybe three, if Spurs can keep up their form) horse race in reality.

See you in 2012.

Vox Pop

Whether as a result of the ludicrous impartiality requirements of our broadcast organisations, or just a reflection of the general levels of stupidity inherent in the human race, the vox pop makes my blood boil.

I should make it plain from the start that I have nothing against the odd drink. However, I was watching a report on the proposal to allow Diageo to sponsor midwifery training in regard to responsible drinking for expectant mothers. Nobody in their right mind (and I most definitely exclude all members of the bloody Coalition from that category) could possibly think that such a proposal would be a good idea. Could they?

I mean, think about this for a minute. Diageo is a multi-national corporation which specialises in selling alcoholic beverages, and the idea is that they provide advice to medical professionals about the consumption of alcohol. This is not a sock puppet posting deliberately contrary statements to CiF, or some spurious medical research used to bolster the industry's PR ratings; it is direct payment from a drinks company to enable their message to be put across by people in whom we place a great deal of trust. It could not be any clearer as far as I'm concerned, and am stunned - if perhaps not surprised - that it is even being suggested with any seriousness. Am I wrong?

Well, back to the news report, finished off with the customary vox pop of selected females in some London street not too far from White City. For every woman who said that the Guinness sponsored training was wrong, another popped up to support it.

"Well," said one, "If there's money there to pay for the training, then it's a good thing, isn't it?"

"NO IT FUCKING ISN'T!" I yelled at the screen. "Can't you see that? Don't you think that a) it's wrong for us to even be thinking about sponsorship or corporate tie-ins for this kind of essential service and b) don't you realise that there is the potential for a serious conflict of interest here?"

It is a fait accompli, of course, another step along the road on which Cameron and his buddies want to drive us down, and it makes me very angry indeed that people are dumb enough to just wave it through.

Zen and the art of making TV programmes

With some interest, I was looking forward to the Zen series on BBC1 on Sunday nights. I have been a fan of the Michael Dibdin (dead these four years. How time flies...) books for quite a number of years, starting with either Cabal or Ratking (I can't remember which, but I think it might have been Ratking). In any case, and as a devotee of crime fiction, I thought the books were very fresh - readable yet cerebral enough; striking the right balance between the mundane and the suddenly terrifying; laced with a nicely understated dark humour, and usually formed around a well plotted and exciting crime story. Admittedly, not every Zen book held up quite as well, and Cosi Fan Tutti in particular was a bit of a stinker. I enjoyed though, most of Dibdin's non Aurelio Zen work as well, and was kind of looking forward (with that ever-present feeling of dread which bodes disappointment, about a book being made into a film or TV show) to the new series starting.

And then Rufus Sewell turned up on one of those Radio 4 shows that seems to meander along (Loose Ends, maybe? Or Broadcasting House) as a blatant bit of puff for Zen. What he was saying sounded fairly promising. At least, it seemed that he had read some of the source material, and he was keen not to overdo the Italian aspect - with the hand gestures and over the top accents. There was, it has to be said, a certain smugness about Rufus, but then he is an actor after all. So, my anticipation of the new series was slightly enhanced.

And the show was... OK I suppose. There were a few disappointments for me and a few irritations. Sewell was perhaps chief among these, as he hummed and mumbled his way through his lines and held overlong portnetous silences on the telephone. He comes across as being nervous of speaking, rather than just knowing when to hold his tongue. His griflriend is sexy enough, a pleasing bit of eye candy and clearly a hook for the gullible male viewer, but I became very annoyed with her accent. Judging by the boards on IMDb, I wasn't the only one. If everyone else (apart from Zen's mother - who is another major source of irritation for me) is speaking in an English accent, why does she say things like:

"Are we guing to ev an efferr?"

Finally, there was that bloke who turns up in so many bloody BBC dramas, usually as some senior Intelligence Officer or something. He has a voice like melting butter, does a lot of adverts, and can't act for toffee. Whatever his name is, he appeared as the villain of the piece, and from the moment I saw his face, I'd begun to lose faith in Zen. The second in the series was unfortunately worse than the first, and I found myself drifting away from the story before it ended.

I was somewhat pleased to read the Facebook status of a Jandrell acquaintance the day after which supported my critique.

Cart or basket

That's the choice. Hellbound we undoubtedly are. By the way, is this the only time we append the word 'hand' to 'cart' and 'basket'? I can't think of any other example, and is 'hand basket' an American term? No doubt I could Google and find out the answer, but sometimes it's better to leave things hanging. Just like the next Parliament. Never before can we have faced such a cluster fuck of a future, never before have we been presented so clearly with a demonstration of how unutterably false, self-serving, bland and vile our elected politicians are. And that's without even thinking about the unelected ones (the most notable of whom walked past me today, as it happens. Surely, Mandy's ascendancy has to be equivalent to Kissinger's Nobel Peace Prize, and at least should be enough to persuade anyone to do a Tom Lehrer?)
I don't blame the televised debates for futher lowering the tone (hardly credible that this should even be possible, I know) but they are without doubt the audio-visual-tastic high definition manifestation of what a fucking waste of time it all is. Clegg, Clegg, Clegg Clegg Clegg; looking directly into the camera; using the first name of the questioner, and the first name of each other when answering; the instant poll results; Charlie Whelan on Twitter. It's all too much for me to take, it really is.



So, not wishing to demean ladies under horses or the struggle for the vote in any form throughout history, I'm afraid you can count on me not to put an X in the box next week. Even if City do manage to pull something off against the Spuds.

Good at maths

I was never very good at maths. Apart from geography (which I now really like, btw) maths was my least favourite subject. My first ever detention (we in fact called it Late Room, which still carries a more sinister connotation when I think about it) was served as a result of the following excuse for not handing in my homework:

"Miss, we've been decorating at home and my Mum must have glued my homework book to the wall."

I have no idea whether this is or was an original excuse, but it seemed a stroke of genius to my 12 year old self. I think I may also have attempted to forge a letter from my mother backing up the story. Needless to say, Mrs Jones the maths teacher was not terribly impressed, did not believe that my mother had written the letter (the injustice of it!) and threw me in the slammer without a backward glance. I can't actually remember what it was I had to do in the 'after school club' so it can't have been too traumatic, but I do remember the sheer sense of hopelessness I felt when confronted with Venn diagrams. Long division still brings me out in a cold sweat.

So it was with a small shiver of pleasure that I watched the train wreck that was Carol Vorderman on Question Time the other night. As Richard Herring has attested, she may be good at maths, but she is nonetheless a total fuckwit. It was excruciating to watch her trying to come across as some sort of Carole Malone figure, outraged by the 'world gone mad' in which she lives. If you didn't watch it, I urge you to do so. Will Self and Dame Shirley Williams (to be fair) were excellent.

Ann the Pan

So much blather in the world, don't you agree? I've seen it on Twitter, on the news, and at the last on Facebook, but the original telly viewing was where it counted. And I'm not talking 4OD or iPlayer or ITV Player or Demand Five or any of that shit. No, this was viewed as God intended, when it was scheduled to be broadcast, and I was sitting in a chair with toast when I watched it. I felt positively vintage.

What I watched was part of a strand, as I believe the TV pros call it, on the history of the Bible. Perfect Sunday evening viewing, because it fits in with those Natural World type docs and Lost Kingdoms of Africa - you know the shit I'm talking about - and I had certain expectations of such a programme. Howard Jacobson has been heavily trailed as part of it, and I have always liked his style - erudite and impassioned - with a sense of humour to boot. I had not really seen any, planning as I was to catch up at some point, and was rather disappointed to find that the Right Honourable Ann Widdecombe MP was fronting (and that, dear readers, is very much the cromulent word here) the episode I was due to watch, which was to be on the theme of the Ten Commandments.

After a minute or two, I realised that I have met people like Ms Widdecombe in my life. Presented with an argument she doesn't like and/or cannot respond to, she chooses to ignore it and carry on regardless, and such was the case in this hardly exhaustive and utterly pointless quest to discover the origins and lasting appeal of the Mosaic Law. Seeking to find out more about this Moses character, she pushed her enormous (presumably) un-sucked knockers up the steps of a university somewhere so that she could pick the large brain of a rather foxy professor and find out a little more. Oh, and find out more she did; to the effect that most Biblical scholars these days do not think that the great man ever existed, largely because there is no archaeological evidence whatsoever to substantiate any of the stuff probably written several hundred years after the event by a number of chiselers in order to make capital on it. The numbers in the Bible, we were told by the foxy (Mediterranean looking, as it happens) prof, would certainly have left some mark on the land, as we would expect several million people to have been involved. There was no proof of Moses' existence. Ann was having none of this. She became very frosty very quickly, and her tone grew brusque - almost peremptory.

"But you cannot prove he didn't exist!" she said at last, with a tone of empty triumph in her voice, before heaving her vast (never milked) mammaries towards an unsuspecting Rabbi, who (with his wife present, of course) showed Ann the two of everything (sink, cooker, fridge - you name it) he had in his kitchen. He had only one wife, but he followed some 613 religious laws.

She then went on to canvas various other interested parties, all the while extolling the virtues of some kind of puritanical golden age, exemplified by a pastor in the South West of England in the 17th Century who saved the sinners with his strict adherence to the Ten Commandments, postulating that somehow by following these edicts today, we would be able to eliminate the hoody threat and turn around the awful broken families/rampant alcoholism/nihilism which blights our great country today. None of this - needless to say - took into account any historical considerations around poverty, disease, abuse and inequality which were even worse back then, although you could get a bottle of gin for a ha'penny, so it can't have been all bad.

Her humongous diddies at last came up against Christopher Hitchens, looking splendidly dissolute, and a slightly rabid Stephen Fry (and this is where the blather comes in. Twitter was almost as excited as it was about the Paperchase scandal) who flecked her with his spittle at an Intelligence Squared debate on the virtues or otherwise of Catholicism. Vociferous was, I think, the correct term to describe Stephen, and I was (and am) wholeheartedly behind him - oo-er Missus. Ann's response, in the best Parliamentary tradition, was (effectively) to tell him to stop shouting.

Silly cow.

Housewerk

I have been vacillating about this one, because somewhere in my mind (nothing new under the sun and all that...) has been a nagging suspicion that it's all been done before. But, buoyed by your (thank you, dear reader) unstinting support, I have decided to press on.



Deep breath... Wouldn't it be amusing if the band members of Kraftwerk shared an apartment - in Dusseldorf if you like - and argued endlessly (a la The Upper Hand) about whose turn it was to do the washing up? Something has been in the back of my mind that there was a skit along these lines some 20+ years ag0, hosted by the great Paul Hogan. Or something.



In any case, I'm sure you can just imagine the (admittedly fleeting) hilarity as the boys fret about their plastique hair and John Smedley polo necks whilst running a hoover round. There would be a cat. And possibly a wacky neighbour, though I'm not sure if this would be a Kramer-esque creation, or altogether more Rosemary's Baby type freaky old lady. I may prepare a treatment.

Casual Viewing

Television makes whores of us all. A cursory reading of Marshall McLuhan leads me to that aphorism, as does watching the first 3 episodes of Stephen Fry's Last Chance To See. I saw a copy of the book the other day, sitting alongside Jamie In America, and although I wouldn't dream of conflating the two, it did remind me that I had planned to review Mr Fry's latest televisual offering.

I have heard that there has been some beastliness towards the programme (although it has not been easy to find too many dissenting voices. In fact, it's hard to find anything which is not either by Stephen Fry, or on the BBC, or on Amazon. But there you go) but I do not wish to be accused of bandwagoning. I am - as you may be aware - quite a fan of Stephen, and had been looking forward to the series coming out since I began seeing the tweets and twitpics coming in from exotic climes during filming for the series.

God knows, there are occasions when my mobile hardly seems to stop buzzing with his 140 character or less updates. I am also a long-time worshipper of Douglas Adams, and am sympathetically inclined towards the idea of highlighting the damage we are causing to our beautiful planet. But, after watching the first episode of LCTS I myself tweeted about a certain uneasiness with the thing. I thought I would give it a bit more of a go, though, and have watched the next three. I will continue to watch, but thought I owed myself a duty to elucidate the problems I have with it. So here goes.

The main thing, I suppose, is the chemistry - or lack of it - between the two main protagonists. Mark Carwardine is - IMHO - a not very likeable man, and there is an air of desperation about trying to establish some sort of characterisation for him, as an intensely knowledgeable, and just plain intense, individual. Driven by his love of wildlife and his unquestionable commitment to environmental concerns, he nonetheless comes across as a largely humourless git, and not a little supercilious. His practical jokes - most notably the rope around the dick routine in the second or third programme - are excruciatingly unfunny.

Along with that, and probably even more annoying to me, is Stephen putting himself across as some sort of air-headed schoolgirl, laughing at the lame gags, and being ridiculously impressed by the not very obscure facts that Carwardine insists on telling us. I understand that TV tends to pander to the lowest common denominator, and cannot assume that everyone is an expert, but I find it hard to swallow that Fry is unaware (for example) that rhino horn is used in traditional Chinese medicine, in direct opposition to his well-known schtick of being the cleverest man alive. This is the kind of thing he does regularly in the programme, and I do find that it grates more than a little.

Finally, while I understand of course that it is important to highlight these terrible things to the ordinary citizen, so that we may maximise the opportunities to do something about it, I am a little peeved (possibly - I admit it - also a little jealous. That beach in Madagascar did look rather enticing) that a programme about the environment again features TV personalities and their enormous retinues flying around the world to take pictures of the shrinking natural world, beating their chests and tearing their hair whilst contributing to the destruction of the planet. This is a minor point, as far as my appreciation of the programme goes, but it does contribute.

I don't know. A la Dorothy Parker, the best reviews are often pithy in the extreme. To summarise the review in one of the links above:

"How could it fail?... So why is this show leaving me so uninterested?"

MOTD2 LOFB

Now I'll freely admit that the news of Ramos' sacking and the midnight installation of Uncle Arry was big news. Even in the context of the current lunacy of the game, and the ongoing drama at the Lane, this was pretty hectic. Reading the match reports today, and watching the oleaginous David Bentley being interviewed by Gabby Logan, I'm convinced that the whole Spurs being totally Efan Ekuku thing was down to a player revolt in protest at Juande's dietary restrictions on them. They can be sure now that they'll be allowed back on the jellied eels and rubies, so they'll start twinkling their multi-million pound toes again. Plus, the dead cat bounce that gave Spurs their first league win of the season was also I suppose relatively interesting.

I'll even admit that Liverpool (bastards!) ending Chelsea's 'magnificent' record (I'm so sick of hearing the tributes to that already) of home wins probably merited their inclusion at the head of the running order on MOTD2. I fail to understand why the City highlights were on last, however. What with the clocks going back, I was fairly tired and was forcing myself to stay awake and catch Robinho's fantastic hat trick, only to find that we had been relegated to the end of the programme, just before the lame '2 Good, 2 Bad' bit. Sodding West Ham/Arsenal, bloody Wigan/Villa and even fucking Portsmouth/Fulham made it on before we did. There's no justice, I tells ya. Then again, it was only Stoke. Sorry Charlie.

In any case, a good win at home, and a small bit of breathing space between us and the bottom of the table. I'm not convinced though, and don't think I will be until Hughes goes.

Just a goddam number

Another year ended. And a new one just begun.

Lennon should have called his song Happy New Year (War Is Over) shouldn't he? It doesn't really make sense to include those lines in a Xmas song, does it? But maybe I'm splitting hairs.

Anyway, New Year. Sucks. I was watching Jools Holland's Hootenanny - Hootenanny! - for want of anything better to do, but switched over to watch the BBC show from the Embankment. And what the fuck was that all about? Over 1 trillion tonnes of gunpowder every second or some shite, with two blokes dressed as walking light shows chugging down the Thames in a motor boat. Leaving aside the infantile commentary (if it can be graced with such a name) by the BBC twot on the night, the whole thing was a total waste of time and money.

I'm not against celebrating and reflecting on the passing of a year, and I suppose it makes sense that it's a communal experience, but it doesn't have to be on 31st December, does it? There is the pagan link to Xmas, with the solstice and all, but New Year is an entirely numerical and modern construct. Let's say that we have it on 1st August in the Northern Hemisphere and 1st January in the Southern. At least it would be nice and warm, and we would get two! Just like the Queen and her birthdays.

Scouse, champ or bubble?

Nearly through it now. Quite a slog, with too many toys, far too much Eastenders and Corrie and nowhere near enough alcohol.

TV highlight of the year: The Likely Lads movie, which seemed to strike the right festive (i.e., bleak) note. These days, there are so many movies available all the time that we have lost that magical sense we used to have of real event TV (I know it's a hackneyed concept, but it really strikes me more and more each year) which would send a shiver of anticipation up your spine. Casino Royale, for example, has been on Sky Movies Premiere (pshaw) several times a day for the last week - with the old David Niven version on today. I have seen it all (I mean the new one) but never in one sitting. Yesterday was a Star Trek marathon on Sky Movies Sci-Fi, and I caught some of the first one for nostalgia's sake, a bit of the third one for Christopher Lloyd, but missed The Voyage Home, which was the one I really wanted to see. Ah well.

The major saving grace of all this festive stress is of course the inordinate amount of football available. It's even more wall-to-wall - thanks to our old friend Rupe - and a few years ago it would have been an impossibility to have City v Liverpool on a Sunday afternoon. My prediction: Liverpool win 2-0, sad to say.

The First Noël

Well, we all know who the last one is, don't we?

Yesterday I received the festive boxed set of DVDs which Channel 4 hands out to all its staff at Christmas (today is my last day at the home of controversy, BTW) and couldn't believe my good fortune when I saw that the Deal or No Deal Family Challenge DVD was included in the pack.

I have never seen the programme, and don't have the faintest idea how it works, but I am astonished that anyone - even those who are habitual daytime TV watchers - could be stupid enough to pay good money to be involved with it. But then again, as Arnold would no doubt remind us, it takes diff'rent strokes to move the world. Yes it does. My main objection to the show is obviously that it is fronted by Noel Edmonds, who is as loathsome as it is possible to be without wearing a Nazi uniform or fiddling about with little kiddies, or perhaps even both at the same time. I must admit to quite enjoying Swap Shop for a while (and before anyone yells Tiswas, it was possible to watch both if one was a creative viewer) and I even liked Telly Addicts in its original incarnation. Noel's House Party was where it all started to turn sour, and the appearance of Mr Blobby was the straw that broke the camel's back. Crinkley Bottom. Ha ha ha.

It's a terrible tragedy that it took a man's death to get the twat off our TV screens, but at least he was off our TV screens. Around that time, I started work in a place in Kensington, and we shared the site with Edmonds' TV production company, the name of which escapes me. I never saw him while I worked there, but I did speak to some of the staff who confirmed that he was a complete and utter bastard. With a helicopter.

Then, something terrible happened. Interviews with the coiffured little shit started appearing in Media Guardian and elsewhere, and it became clear that he was back. How had this happened? Why hadn't somebody done something to prevent it? My boss at the time was in something of a meltdown and used to sit in her office with the door closed watching DOND on the little TV she had in there, whilst pretending to write spreadsheets. I knew then that the Power of Noel was once more on the rise. Last night, we had a go at the Family Challenge DVD and not only was it almost entirely incomprehensible, it was also unutterably tedious, and pandered to the worst aspects of human nature. We won £3,000 and my kids rather touchingly asked if I was going to ring in and claim the money! Santa isn't real either, I said.

Moving up the Noels, there was another in the news lately - the monobrowed Gallagher of course. He is the second Noel - neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but a little bit of both. He is a (sort of) City fan after all, and has penned some foot-tapping, if derivative, ditties. He annoys me sometimes with his overt slebbyness, but most of the time he's fine. He also speaks very highly of me.

"She's got a cousin,
'Fact she's got 'bout a dozen
She's got one in the oven,
But it's nothing to do with me..."

Before moving on to the First Noël - the only one on the list to actually use the umlaut above the 'e') there is a more minor Noel, at least in terms of the modern celebrity profile, which the denizens of the DOND online community (Noel Barber doesn't count, 'mK?) seem unable to identify. He played alongside Mr. Mitch Mitchell and Mr. Jimi Hendrix in the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He is (or was, may he rest in whatever is the rock god equivalent of peace) Mr. Noel Redding.

The First Noël then (at long last! you cry) has to be Mr. Coward.



Virginia Woolf (no less) described Coward as: 'clever as a bag of ferrets and trivial as a perch of canaries', which is a splendid epitaph, I think. Winston Churchill vetoed a knighthood for him, despite the fact that he had been a spy for the British government during the war. His plays are sublimely funny, almost Wildean, and his epigrams delicious:

"I'm not a heavy drinker. Sometimes I can go for hours without touching a drop."

He coined the word 'cuntette', and he played Mr. Bridger in The Italian Job. Nuff said.

Don't let Lawro get you down

I wonder why Mark Lawrenson needs to 'talk to' someone in order to predict the scores of upcoming games? I'm familiar with the concept of ghost writers, of course, especially in the sports world, but isn't this going a bit far? When Lawro makes his predictions for the weekend's games, he is 'talking to Mike Burnett'

Here's an example:

"I couldn't believe Newcastle's performance against Liverpool last week - they just didn't play at all - so I'm going for a home victory."

Now, is that really an example of fine journalistic editing? What did Lawro actually say that required Mike Burnett to parse into the statement above? Something like:

"Mutter mumble... Newcastle were crap.. er, I fink the Rovers'll do 'em..."

I'm not a great fan of Mark's punditry, and agree with the TV satirists that his partnership with Motty for the Beeb is usually disastrous. I prefer (if possible) to hit the red button and get a smattering of Greeno and Butcher. However (apart from the fact that I am now a fan of his Facebook profile) I think he is fairly eloquent and quite capable of putting his point across on his own. So I can't really figure out why a cash-strapped BBC, already paying (I'll wager) Mr Lawrenson a more than decent fee, should shell out for the services of a hack to interpret these gnomic predictions every time the Premier League circus comes to town. It could be of course, that ML is illiterate, having failed to banish those gremlins during his time at Anfield. Maybe his Facebook profile (in case you missed it above, there's another chance to check it out) is also ghost-written?

This week, ML (or perhaps Mike Burnett) is going for a shock at the JJB, and predicting a 2-1 win to the Latics. I fear he may have a point, with Elano out with a hamstring. On top of that, last week, out of 10 predictions, he got 7 right, and three of those were with perfect scores. He knows his onions, even if can't write about them.

As a side note, I am also following BBC Footy on Twitter, so every time I log in, I see Mark Lawrenson's face down the page about 20 times. It's (almost) enough to make you want to stop. But not quite.

Coppella

Don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of everyone talking about Steve Coppell as if he's some kind of intellectual giant. As ever, Clive Tyldesley turns the stomach more than anyone else, but there's loads of pundits jabbering on about the man's 'insight' and 'intelligence' just because he speaks really... slowly... and... quietly, and says things which are a little off-beam.



There is of course some history involved in my feelings towards this wannabe Wenger, and so yesterday's stunning late goal from Daddy Dick (again) to lead to an 8/8 100% home record was that little bit more delicious.

I watched Coppell on MOTD this morning, and he struck me as not much more than a slightly eccentric bloke from the Wirral, who couldn't quite figure out what he was doing at the football match. Sounds perfect for the job at the FA to me.

Once again, naturally, the City match was way down the running order on MOTD. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind showing the Portsmouth/Birmingham game before ours, but there you have it.

Now, as Sven said, the real test of the festive fixtures approaches. Only 16 players in the squad, he said. How can that be?

city

football

schadenfreude

tv

Big rip-off

So Tuesday was the unveiling. I've spent most of the time since then attempting (futilely. Again) to upload an AVI file to the blog. Neither Windows nor Macintosh have worked. Even viewing the damned thing has proved almost impossible. In the Windows environment, I hear sound, but get no video; in the Mac environment, the opposite is true (but only when I drop the file into VLC) I swear I will swing for it!

A sizeable crowd stood in the rain for half an hour waiting for proceedings to start.

A man in a Tavern Snacks van drove along and scraped the entire length of one car, also dragging along the back of an expensive looking pickup just in front of it. The people around me ooh-ed and aah-ed as the driver of the van ploughed on, at last emerging form the rear of the van with his own cameraphone to take pictures of the damage and apply a note to the cars.

Once, a couple of years ago, I was skiving in Soho - just wandering around, drinking coffee, playing pinball, looking in shop windows. I was not far from Seven Dials. A van roared past me then, narrowly missing hitting some people across from me. I gasped, tutted and walked on, when, around a corner, I suddenly heard loud raised voices. The van was stopped, at an angle to the pavement with its driver's door wide open. Next to it the driver was approaching a pedestrian angrily.

"You're a maniac," the pedestrian said, "You could have killed me!" Without warning, the driver lunged forward and made to stab the other guy in the eye with a pen he was holding. He landed a glancing blow, and the pedestrian backed off hurriedly. One of his companions half-heartedly said something to the van driver, who was like a raging bull, and tried to stab the other man again. I remember that the van driver was wearing glasses, because they flew off during his first frenzied attack, and they lay on the ground unheeded after that. I was still walking towards the fight, and I could see the crazed look in the van driver's eyes. It looked as if things were going to turn very nasty. Then another passer-by leapt into action. He barged into the van driver and grabbed him around both arms, pushing him to one side.

"If you're going to stop a fight," he said, "Fucking stop it! No point fannying around!" That seemed to do the trick. The driver picked up his glasses and stalked back to his van. The guy who had been attacked, bleeding from one of the pen wounds, was consoled by his ineffectual mate and I carried on walking.

As the crowd began to grow, a police van rolled up and a male and a female PC got out and told everyone to move back off the road. And then, finally, Andy Duncan and Margaret Hodge appeared. Almost soundlessly and very slowly the shroud was removed. There was a very slight ripping sound and the shroud billowed as if floated slowly down, momentarily snagging on an upper section and then lingering for quite some time nearer the bottom.

The crowd cheered and clapped as the artwork beneath was slowly revealed - the pieces of the sculpture covered with photographs from Nick Knight. I later discovered that the installation also features a heartbeat sound, clearly audible from the bridge over the Channel 4 Drum.

channel 4

BIG 4

Today's the day that the Big 4 is unveiled here at Channel 4.

It's caused me a few headaches, but on the whole, it's been good to have been involved (albeit in a relatively small way) in the construction process. The work will be unveiled at 11.15 this morning, and I'm going along with my camera. Shots will be sure to follow, on here as well as my Flickr stream.

In the meantime, here are a couple I made earlier:






channel 4

Death of a Princess

Picture from The Guardian (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/theatre/2007/02/dead_overrated.html)



A lot of people seem to think that the inquest into the death of Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul in Paris over 10 years ago is a waste of time and money.


There appears to be a very strong prevailing view amongst Grauniadists and Istas that even discussing the incident is a low-brow Daily Express style indulgence and that, clearly, the crash was nothing more than a tragic accident. They say that Henri Paul was 'high on a cocktail of alcohol (twice the legal limit, which is 2 pints, isn't it?) and prescription drugs' - which is an excellent tabloidese cliche. Diana was not wearing a seat belt and the Merc, pursued by the baying hounds of pap rats (the stenographer's interpretations are being beamed on to a big screen, and occasionally, he or she must mis-hear the words) slammed into a concrete pillar in a Parisian underpass. End of. Anyone who suggests any form of conspiracy theory should don their tin foil hats and join the ranks of the feeble-minded, the UFOlogists and the like.


Many of these sentiments are couched in anti-royalist terms, along the lines of: "I didn't care then, and I don't care now. Why should this woman take up so much of our time and so much of the public purse when she is dead? She took up more than her fair share when she was alive."





I disagree. I am not (as many of my friends will attest) by any stretch of the imagination a royalist. My feelings towards the blue bloods are similar to my feelings towards the Church (I make the distinction between Catholics and Protestants in my views mainly on the grounds of attitudes towards birth control. Protestants are simply slightly less evil in my opinion) and its bloated oligarchy. Namely, that there should be no place for either institution in an enlightened society (not that we live in anything approaching an enlightened society) and, though I would probably stop short of advocating public physical violence against those in the upper echelons of either, I do occasionally daydream about it.



My feelings specifically on the British Royal Family are as follows. They are anachronistic leeches. They are responsible for maintaining the status quo; for helping to widen the gap between rich and poor in this country; for the disproportionate representation of a minority pursuit within the political system; and for fostering the hateful concept that some babies are born better than others (from Wikipedia: "The king or queen of the United Kingdom is one of the last monarchs still to be crowned in the traditional Christian ceremonial, which in most other countries has been replaced by an inauguration or other declaration.") They are shown extraordinary deference by seemingly intelligent people, and they are just so personally objectionable. Who could imagine sharing a pint with Prince Charles, or trying to have a conversation with the Queen? The whole thing is little short of ludicrous.

When I heard about the death of Diana, I was in bed, woken by a phone call from a friend to tell me it had happened. Though initially disbelieving, and then mildly shocked, I became quickly bored by the wall-to-wall coverage and very soon resentful that TV programmes I wanted to watch were being cancelled to make way for more live shots and 'analysis' of the event. The day of the funeral was the nadir for me (not that it was probably a high point for Diana, though many people in this country seemed to wallow in it) in terms of what it did to TV programming. I felt as if I was going insane. Around this time (by accident) I also found myself at Kensington Gardens, and was stunned to see the sheer quantity of flowers, and the outpouring of emotion, on display there. I had seen the kind of mawkish patriotism so prevalent in this country before, with the Queen's Silver Jubilee and the Royal Wedding - you know, people from the Wirral who wave Union Jacks and camp out overnight in the rain just to get a glimpse of the Queen Mum ("Ooh, she's a marvel!") but this was something else. It had been taken to another level.

Since then, events have become more interesting. Watching Liz and the others squirm around in their efforts to come across as normal people in their grief for Di was great fun, but was as nothing compared to the fantastic circus of Paul Burrell. The fencing of baubles, the 'dark forces at work in this country' quote and the allegations of Prince Charles raping a manservant contain elements of farce and high drama of which Joe Orton himself would have been proud.

Mohammed al Fayed has been a supreme irritant to the Royals, his rant to Keith Allen on Channel 4 rating amongst the best TV you could ever hope to see.

And that is the reason why I think the inquest should go ahead. With every question, noses are pried a little further into the rat's nest that is Balmoral, Buck House, KP, Sandringham, Windsor and all the others. Another chink in the armour is slowly inched open.

Even better, if there really was a conspiracy, what an excellent story it would be. I have been mildly castigated for finding allegations that Prince Philip ordered the murder of his daughter-in-law amusing, but I'm afraid that I do. The idea of brake fluid traces being found on the livery of one of the royal footmen, of equerries slipping out of sight in the Parisian night, is simply too delicious. I am watching the inquest with interest.

channel 4

Anniversaries all round

Update: 28/09/07: Set your TiVo, DVD-R or (hurr-hurr) VCR for 10pm Sunday - More4.

I must declare an interest, but Channel 4 is going to be 25 years old on November 2nd. The uniquely British flavour of the channel warms the heart, I feel. There can be few, if any, countries in the world which can boast such an institution (I hesitate only when thinking of the National Film Board of Canada, though I don't think it really compares) and it is an institution of which I think we should be justly proud.

The remit of the Channel says it all, although the rapidly changing media world is presenting some serious challenges to that way of thinking. My interest means that I am able to distill the remit in a way which is (by and large) taken seriously by the much maligned staff. This is how it is told to those who start work there:

Do it first. Make trouble. Always innovate.

Like a lot of people these days I watch less and less TV, preferring to generate my own content, but I still feel that C4 has the most interesting (looking) programmes, and when I catch them I feel I was right. Over 25 years, there have been some crackers. I know that this has been done before, but I have been thinking about some highlights. I would like to share them with you and ask for any opinions you may have.

So, here's my ten of the best:


Murun Buchstansangur.

The Tube.

After Dark.

Brass Eye.

Brookside.

Phoenix Nights.

A Very British Coup. (I confess - I have never seen it all the way through, though I have read the book. There is a reason, but I will save it for a later post)

The Comic Strip Presents...

Father Ted.

Countdown. (No. Really!)


And ten hmmms:

Deal Or No Deal. (If you share my estimation of Noel Edmonds, this is 25 seconds well spent, I can assure you)


Richard & Judy.


100 Greatest Whatevers.


Cook Yourself Thin.


Scheduling (Especially of The Sopranos.) (All over the shop, to make way for BB)


The Great Global Warming Swindle. (An example [imho] of shock for the sake of it, which caused far too much blowback on such an important issue)


The Charlotte Church Show.


Let's Talk Sex. (Because Davina is insufferable)


A Place in The Sun (or Greece, or France...)

You Are What You Eat.

This is a little early I know, but I'm experimenting for a post on MeFi.

channel 4

Weekly irritations

Picture via Wikipedia - Andrew Ward (glafRo4s) from Biddeford, United States

Random irritations day has been delayed. Glad to see that I am now listed on the Best Ian Hyland Posts aggregator, as my opinion of him as a fifth rate hack is now being registered automatically.

Anyway, to press on. Random irritations last week:

Naomi Klein in the Guardian. Now, I happen to agree with many of NK's views, and it is perhaps a good thing that debate is being raised on some of the issues on which she speaks so eloquently, but... To echo some of the points made on CiF this week, she is somehow glossy. And the way the Guardian is running this whole Shock Doctrine thing seems to be self-contradictory. It comes across as an extended book plug. Also, a poster on MeFi said that reading NK's work felt like listening to Alanis Morisette. Heh.

Next up - High School Musical. Need I say more?

Pottery time

Crafts have never really been my strong point. Anyone who's known me long enough to remember woodwork and metalwork classes at OBHS will testify to that.

However, I did once throw a pot, guided by someone who actually knows enough about it to make a living from it. I still have the pot, full of paper clips and SIM cards and stuff.

You can purchase some of his stuff here.

Damn' fine pots!