SAM BRADY of the ORACLE

Gay footballers – love that dare not speak its name

2012-01-31T04:56:00.000-08:00

It's hard to make anything stand out media-wise these days – so diverse are all the publishing platforms and digital variations ...

So banal are most people’s takes on popular culture ...

We're all awash with information, and flooded with images too. Constantly we are being invited to download, follow or share things.

Quite frankly, half the time I can’t be arsed.

But there are still some nuggets of quality on TV which deserve praise, and which are profoundly counter-cultural and commanding of our attention.

Last night I watched one such example - Britain’s Gay Footballers on BBC3 (which, incidentally, is by far the best of the digital channels).

The programme tried to get to the truth of why no professional footballer in Britain is ‘out’ publicly as a homosexual. Some are ‘out’ in a restricted way, in that they’ll bring their same sex partners to social functions attended by team-mates, but don't feel they can tell fans or the wider world that they are gay. Or so this programme intimated ...

This quandary is an interesting one. After all, homosexuality is quite rightly nowadays considered not a problem by most decent-minded people. I have some gay friends, and to be honest their sexual orientation is irrelevant to me. I like them because they are good, kind, funny people, as indeed are most of my straight friends.

What really matters in this world, and what's always deserving of respect, regardless of any other factors, is human life in all its glorious diversity.

I appreciated this documentary, which was carried out with graceful determination by Amal Fashanu, niece of footballer Justin Fashanu, who came out publicly in 1990, leading to all sorts of criticism and rifts within the Fashanu family. Tragically Justin hanged himself in 1998.

There was and still is a great deal of evasion about gay sexuality in football, and the programme tackled it in a dignified manner. For that matter, the family rifts about Justin Fashanu were also handled well.

And most impressive perhaps were the comments by the game’s former bad boy, now turned Twitter philosopher, Joey Barton. He told Amal about his own gay uncle, and said: “For a lot of years he was in turmoil and was resenting himself for the fact that he had these feelings.

"I was like, ‘I love you for you – not for the fact that you are straight or bisexual or all different manner of things. I love you because you’re you.’” Quite so.

Barton also slammed “archaic” bosses in the game who are frightened of homosexuality.

Well said, Joey. Hope your comments prick some consciences and do some good. I won’t be holding my breath though.

Well done to Amal Fashanu and all connected with Britain's Gay Footballers. You tackled this subject superbly.

A show trial of Phillip Schofield – now!

2011-10-31T03:38:00.000-07:00

If there was any real justice in the world, the people who pollute our living rooms with mainstream TV crap would face a court of law.

Their crimes are grave indeed – having through their relentless output desensitised and made stupid millions of people.

And that’s before we even start to consider the huge and sinful waste of creative resources and energy that is the television industry.

I would personally like to see presenters and producers of moronic offerings such as The Cube and X Factor (ITV1) put on trial for their blatant mass destruction of human brainpower.

Hopefully we could begin with a show trial of Phillip Schofield, the Prince of Blandness. How anyone can bear to watch such rubbish as The Cube is beyond me. I caught some of it last night. Adults in a big perspex cube trying to catch balls – and other such infantile japes. What’s the bloody point?

My viewing last night was restricted to a snatch of the dismal Cube and then most of Harry Hill’s TV Burp, which may have been a repeat. Generally, the Burp has been refreshingly counter-cultural – it’s main point being that 99 per cent of TV output is unbelievably stupid.

Last night’s show has some witty pokes at EastEnders’ Fat Pat and her coming on sexually to some hapless character whose face I vaguely remember from shite sitcoms in the ‘70s. Fat Pat on heat – now that’s what I call frightening.

But Hill’s show was never quite satirical enough about TV – perhaps it was never allowed to be …

Because the TV industry is so heavily committed to self-promotion, and to maintaining the myth that telly is an important, positive cultural force.

Why it's so hard to LIKE the BBC. NB Fergal Keane!

2011-10-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

I try very hard to like the BBC – but the people who work for the corporation make that very difficult.

Take the newsreaders and presenters, for example…

From those stiffs on ‘Breakfast’ – Bill Turnbull and Sian Williams – to the dorks who front main BBC1 bulletins such as Kate Silverton; they all seem to have strawberries stuck up their arses.

And don't even get me started on Fergal Keane and his bleeding heart, liberal compassion industery reportage. Aaarrrggh!

I much prefer the more down-to-earth presentation style of Sky News, where the likes of Anna Botting and Stephen Dixon do a great job.

And I still occasionally watch ITV’s News at Ten - though it isn’t what it was in the good old days of Trevor McDonald and Reginald Bosanquet .

Elsewhere on the BBC, the output makes me want to rush to my en-suite vomitarium. I am certainly sick of the smug face of Sue Perkins crapping on about the baking of cakes – as if that was in any way important.

And tonight (5 October 2011) Perkins is to appear on some dull twaddle on BBC2 about “celebrities” walking in the “wild” … in Cornwall. I shan’t be watching.

What else? Well, I think all those tarts (gender neutral usage!) who front cookery shows on all channels should be bludgeoned in their beds.

But, like I say, I do try to like the BBC. I don’t want to be thought of as one of those mad, conservative types who are always spluttering about the BBC’s undoubted obsessions with gay sexuality and multiculturalism.

For the record, I have no problem with gay culture or ethnic minority cultures. I think our national culture is all the richer and more humorous for those elements. I just don’t like being preached at in middlebrow dramas such as Casualty and EastEnders.

I think the BBC is very good indeed at sitcoms. It has always knocked ITV into a cocked hat with those. ITV has only ever made ONE good sitcom –Shelley. The BBC has made loads – from old classics such as Till Death Us Do Part, to recent offerings such as the brilliant Outnumbered.

However, the best comedy show – as opposed to traditional 30-minute sitcom – is Harry Hill’s TV Burp, an ITV offering.

And the two best comedy dramas of contemporary times are also both ITV products – Benidorm and Doc Martin.

At heart, in terms of cultural identity, I'm still an ITV man - tinged perhaps with a Sky News sort of attitude.

Despite my best efforts, I simply can't bring myself to like the BBC. I think there is always an agenda with its people. They are, in the main, Guardian readers.

Sue Perkins, Catholicism, feminism and Glasgow

2011-08-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

After watching the moronic Jedward messing up a kitchen floor in Celeb Big Brother, then a stale repeat called the Great British Bake Off with Sue Bloody Perkins (smugness and irritation personified – and consequently hugely in demand at BBC), I started to think that television really has NOTHING to offer any more. Nothing at all.

Then I remembered Family Guy on BBC3, but that’s too often repeated and is a US import anyway …

Next, along comes The Field of Blood – a crime drama set in Glasgow in 1982. OK, this was not a purely televisual creation. It's an adaptation of a novel, and the novel is, of course, an art form far superior to TV.

Now I like drama, and since reading the three Stieg Larsson novels earlier this year, I do also quite like crime fiction, particularly if there is a lot of psychology, moral philosophy and poetic language in it.

As for The Field of Blood (BBC1 Monday Aug 29), well I liked enough to want to watch the second part.

There is much that I like personally in this drama – not least the sweary, cynical humour of a traditional newspaper newsroom. I worked for many years as a reporter and a feature writer in such places, with their smoking, cussing, piss-taking humour etc. Frankly, I wish those days were back. Instead, news writing (and most other forms of writing) are dumbing down because writing is being de-professionalised as the internet era develops. Also culture generally has become horrible politically correct as the forces of Liberal Fascism have grown in confidence.

I also like The Field of Blood because it has Catholicism as a cultural backdrop. Catholicism is so often scoffed at by the liberal wasters who make 99 per cent of TV drama. But as someone who grew up in a Catholic culture I know how strong it is - and I predict the faith and its dolorous spirituality will make a comeback as times become progressively more testing for Western societies such as our own.

Another reason for this two-parter’s appeal – for me at least – is it’s setting in Glasgow. I like Glasgow. I lived there for a while when I was working as a reporter for a Scottish morning newspaper (the Press & Journal).

The Field of Blood has a feminist agenda. Drama cannot really get commissioned at the BBC these days unless it has a feminist theme, or a homosexual one, or a racial justice one, or an anti-Christian shtick. I’m OK about the feminist subtext of The Field of Blood, as it goes. I’m a supporter of men’s liberation, you see, so I am, of course, also a feminist.

Because if you are serious about making people free, you have to be serious about achieving freedom for both men and women equally.

At the heart of this story is a young woman from a Catholic family, Paddy (Patricia)Meehan. She is working in a newspaper office as a lowly ‘copy boy’ when she notices in a story about the grisly murder of a child a connection to her wider family.

There is a conflict between her passionate and correct belief that sometimes it is only journalists who can expose injustice – and the need of her kith and kin to protect themselves.

Procedurally, there were some weaknesses in The Field of Blood's portrayal of an old-style newsroom, and the casting was wrong, having far too many old and middle aged men in the newsroom. But the culture of such a newsroom was only slightly exaggerated. Overall, it was a fair enough stab, I thought.

This is a drama, after all – not real life.

TV – random irritations and rampant egos of limited intelligence

2011-08-23T03:52:00.000-07:00

Although there hasn’t really been a silly season news-wise this summer, there sure has been a load of rubbish in the popular media.

Television has become – as I predicted in the 1990s – the medium of preference for thick people. ‘The X Factor’ is back and so is ‘Celebrity Big Brother’, and, of course, the tabloid newspapers are all over them like a rash. Stupidity feeds on stupidity.

But the tabloid newspapers are also becoming, well, unfocused and unappealing as they seek to reposition themselves slightly upmarket following the phone-tapping scandal.

I can't imagine The Sun's readers giving a toss about all its VERY BORING articles about food by middle class former pop star Alex James. ‘Cheddar behaves very well in microwaves, particularly if you cut it into cubes first,’ he wrote for today’s paper. Really!

I'm a newspaper hack by trade, so the phrase SFW! instantly pops into my head whenever I see the former Blur bass player musing on matters culinary. SWF? So F*cking What?!

On the rare occasions when contemporary British TV tries to be clever, it can only manage smarmy and smart alecy. And in Edinburgh for the BBC recently, Sue Perkins interviewed two US comedians who, AMAZINGLY, were even more irritating than herself!

Does anyone at the BBC actually understand the people watching at home? Or are they all just trying to annoy everybody?

Regarding the 'revival' of Big Brother on C5, as is so often the case with celebrity shows, I recognise very few of the people as 'celebrities'. Sally Bercow, I do know about, and she is just about the only person in the house with any real eloquence or brain power. Her rampant ego, however, means any credit she earns for having reasonably sound mental faculties is negated.

As for Jedward, it seems that special provision has been made for the Irish lads, but on hearing them converse with other housemates, I can’t help wondering whether either of them is the full shilling.

When you consider what humanity has achieved, in the fields of art, philosophy, poetry, religion and the natural sciences, it is shameful to see the principal medium of our age, television, being so crammed with stupidity.

Increasingly, newspapers are like that too...

Rough justice – the British State at its least attractive

2011-08-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

It bitterly disappoints me that the response to the riots by the law enforcement and justice arms of England has been one of posturing, simplistic overreaction.

The jailing of two young men from Cheshire for four years for inciting disorder through Facebook is excessive and profoundly unjust.

I don't pretend to know anything substantial about the backgrounds of the men concerned, who are aged 21 and 22, but let's be clear they've been jailed for inciting a riot that never actually took place.

Could it be that they were simply silly young men, caught up in the dark excitement of the riots and in thrall to the unthinking, facile nature of digital communications networks? I think that probably is the case. I think that's the case for thousands, probably millions, of young people these days. It doesn't mean that two young men should be sentenced to jail with such unseemly haste.

We've seen courts sitting round the clock since the unrest started the weekend before last.

We've seen the cops involved in PR circuses, battering down the doors of suspected troublemakers in early morning raids - with TV news crews in attendance. There are dangers in this sort of operation. What if the cops get the address wrong and batter down the door of an elderly or infirm person, causing a fatal heart attack? It could happen.

Now, I do not condone violence at all. I have witnessed it over the years, of course, in street fights and pub brawls. Increasingly, I've noticed too that increasingly it is women as much as men who cause and are actively involved in pub brawls.

I have never been caught up in a riot. I have never experienced having my business or home or workplace wrecked by rampaging mobs. I'm sure that such scenes are, for most good people (i.e. the majority of people), frightening and profoundly depressing.

But justice should never be rushed, any more than it should be delayed. Rushing and delaying justice simply distorts and strains justice. Rushing for justice can sometimes destroy justice.

And in any case, I'm convinced what we are witnessing in the ramped up response to the riots by cops and the courts, isn't the pursuit of justice at all.

It is the pursuit of vengeance - something quite different, something very unattractive.

And there are disturbing signs that cops and courts are being goaded into going for vengeance by prattling politicians, including the Prime Minister.

Paradoxically, I think there was some 'justice' done recently - when David Cameron had to cut short his classic Posh Person from Central Casting's vacation in Tuscany because the streets of London were burning. Well, that made me laugh and it made me think ... both of which responses are good and better than rioting or looting.

That a modern state and a modern state's leader should be tough on transgressors and opportunistic thieves at a time of civil unrest is understandable; commendable even. We do need to teach people a lesson.

But that lesson must be one that makes offenders think about what they've done, and reflect on why what they have done is wrong. We must show them how people have suffered because of their selfish and violent actions.

What the state should not do is make people who have done something stupid at a time of collective madness feel like scapegoats; feel like people who can't turn their lives around; feel hated.

The tracking down of offenders needs to be done without heat and without the seeking of public relations advantage. It should be unflagging, certainly, but the punishments should not be excessive; not a knee-jerk response which will inevitably cause more resentment.

Don't sentence two young men to prison for four years for writing something stupid and opportunistic on Facebook. Save that sort of sentence for people convicted of mugging with a weapon or grievous bodily harm where the injury was not serious - as is normally the case when justice hasn't been distorted by political hysteria.

Uncomfortable truths about the ‘riots’

2011-08-10T04:10:00.000-07:00

Quite a lot of teenage lads (and some girls) are genetically wired to kick off and to rob – for excitement and to acquire the “brands” they want for nowt.

That, simply put, is why there’s been so much copycat trouble in urban England in the last few nights since the Tottenham riots. Easy digital communications technology has also help spread the nasty behaviour.

What happened in Manchester, Liverpool, some parts of the Midlands, and in Birkenhead (near me!) in recent nights, isn’t really rioting at all. It is gleeful trouble-making, arson, thuggery, thieving and burglary, carried out by young people, many of whom are staggeringly thick, and some of whom are actually EVIL.

It has been both interesting and saddening to watch coverage of the trouble on Sky News. I’m afraid I simply can’t bear to watch the smug and the politically correct opining on the BBC News Channel.

I was particularly impressed by the contribution about the mayhem made on Sky News (Tuesday0 by crisis management expert Peter Power. The so-called riots, he said, were not politically motivated, and not a response to injustice. Rather he said they were forms of “very aggressive, late-night shopping”. Spot on.

And Mr Power rightly castigated another TV "expert" who wrongly evoked the name of American civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King in an attempt to explain (or excuse) the recent kick-offs in England.

Now, I’d argue that teenagers down through the centuries, have been gleefully disposed to join in all sorts of rebellion again authority.

But what’s changed now is that many more teenagers are inarticulate and poorly educated. You can hear it in the way they speak – and it’s not restricted to young people either, as there has been a systemic failure in education across several generations in the UK, and a coarsening of culture.

That some teenagers today are thicker than their counterparts in previous generations seems to me to be a self-evident truth. I feel sorry for these kids, really I do; being stupid isn’t a pleasant experience.

Even more worrying is that so many of today’s youngsters lack a moral compass. They have had very little moral training - the sort of instruction absolutely necessary for the formation of decent human society.

Moral training in our country traditionally comes from the Judaeo-Christian tradition – yes, the Ten Commandments and all that! For most people in England such instruction has traditionally been the responsibility of churches and of Christian parents – the passing on of immutable moral values. Now that function appears to be failing on a much larger scale than it has within my own lifetime (and I am aged 54).

Often now you hear the phrase “you don’t have to be religious to be a good person”. Perhaps, in some cases, that is true. But most people need rules and a firm teaching of the good options in life if they are to develop successfully as human beings capable of living socially.

Also, it is often parroted that a person can make their own choices about moral, religious and spiritual values – as if these were simply a matter of consumer choice! What a spectacularly erroneous view! Yet it gains a false credence in a society where worship of the self, consumer addiction, and a terrible and utterly wrong belief in human autonomy, are all encouraged.

This is serious stuff. I am talking about the proper transmission of human identity.

There is more at stakee for all of us than damaged property and stolen goods – bad and frightening though those transgressions are for those who suffer from them.

In-between the cruel laughs something is missing

2011-08-05T04:37:00.000-07:00

Collapsing money markets, global strife and Corrie ruined ...

But never mind, because the British economy and our culture might yet be saved by the mighty export of the movie version of The Inbetweeners.

Then again, perhaps not…

I caught an episode of the larky, smutty schoolboy sitcom on C4 on Wednesday night, and, yes, I found myself tittering over it. But I was also slightly alarmed by the sexual content.

I’m no prude, but I was disturbed to see one of the characters, I think it was Simon (played by Joe Thomas), being given a hand job by a younger girl at a youth disco – while his mates watched! Simon then got beat up by a much younger boy. It was all a bit nasty, frankly.

I know the actors are actually older than the characters they play, but all the same, I felt very uncomfortable watching this.

What makes The Inbetweeners entertaining (for the most part) is that it is resolutely non-PC and it taps into the indolence and casual, piss-taking cruelty of your typical British teenage lad really rather well.

Also, the narrator, Will (played by Simon Bird) is a nerdy type and somewhat pretentious, and we all remember boys like him from our own schooldays. Will’s role really is very funny, particularly the running joke of his mum being thought of as “fit” by the other lads.

But where The Inbetweeners falls down is in its lack of humanity or any redeeming morality.

I’m serious. The very best of sitcoms always show their characters’ good sides, or let them do occasional acts of virtue or kindness, amid all the humour. You needs that because humour is essentially about hurt. We laugh because someone is hurting in a situation or they are embarrassed.

But a really great sitcom will leaven the relentless hurt and cruelty of comedy – and I’m glad to report that another show on Wednesday night did just that.

I refer to the consistently brilliant Not Going Out, and a repeat I saw on BBC1 where a confused old lady wanders into Lucy’s flat, causing all sorts of problems for Lee. But when he has a chance to, Lee does the right thing by the old lady, and invites here to a firework display.

The fact that the fireworks were awful was irrelevant. What mattered at that point – as we were laughing at dementia for God’s sake! – was that the main character did an act of kindness to a confused old person.

The show didn’t dwell on that kindness. It didn’t have to. But it was important to include it.

The Inbetweeners needs such leavening. It needs to be something more than merely nastily funny. As for the coming movie version leading Britain to an export-led recovery, well that was just my own cruel little joke.

Britcoms rarely make good films, and I think that will be the case this time. Sorry lads.

An antidote to vapid modern culture

2011-06-08T02:54:00.000-07:00

An antidote to rushed modern culture

I needed cheering up last night, so I watched half an old episode of Not Going Out on Dave then the whole of Lead Balloon on BBC2.

Amazingly, this worked! I tittered out loud at the antics of Lee Mack and co in NGO – as I usually do. A studio-based sitcom, it is packed with razor sharp gags, and Mack’s timing is spot on. The strength of the writing team (there are 12 scribblers credited) makes this the best show of its kind on TV. I’m glad it’s been re-commissioned.

I was entertained in a different, more sardonic manner by Lead Balloon, starring Jack Dee as struggling writer and comedian, Rick, who managed to stumble into a job as a holiday relief presenter on a TV shopping channel.

The lampooning of shopping channels, as the bland, worthless, soulless entities they are, was very slyly done – then hammered home in those stumbling conversations Rick regularly has with his surly East European maid and the supercilious restaurant owner – not to mention the scorn of Rick’s writing partner, Marty.

And as ever there was a neat reflection on the vapidity of contemporary youth as Rick chatted to his daughter and her jobless boyfriend.

I like the lack of energy and the slightly mournful tone of Lead Balloon. It stands as a sign of contradiction to all the mad rushing and flapping and over-communication of our era.

Wallies, fluffheads and Cheryl Cole

2011-05-14T05:35:00.000-07:00

Some blonde fluffhead of a showbiz “reporter” on Sky News the other night told the viewers (all 30 of them!) that the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film was the “fourth in the trilogy” . Doh!

I’ve never really understood why female telly “journalists” think it appropriate to act all gooey and thick when they meet film actors. Though maybe the Sky bird last night wasn’t merely pretending...

All those red carpet premiere events really ought to be treated by journalists with sneering disdain for what they are – cynical marketing ploys which the actors find a bore to do.

That never seems to happen though. The media pack genuflect in the presence of actors. Why? An actor is just grown-ups without a proper job. They make money by dressing up and pretending – that’s hardly worthy of admiration.

Johnny Depp was struggling to stay awake the other night as he glad-handed the fans at the London premiere, though it was kind of him to make a fuss of a certain south London schoolgirl.

In my working life as a journalist (mainly spent in the senior and most effective branch of the profession – newspapers, of course!) I don’t recall ever covering a film premiere.

However, when I worked for ORACLE from 1987 to 1992 I had to attend many media launches of TV programme schedules.

At these bland events, journalists were expected to conduct reverential little interviews with various wallies from the world of light entertainment and TV dramas. Frankly, half the time I couldn’t be arsed, they bored the s**t out of me.

I was once harried by some press office harpy to interview Mike Smith about his new show. I forget what it was called. I remember her telling me for the third time that “Mike Smith is ready to be interviewed by you now.”

But I was far too busy fat-necking the free booze and buffet to interview him. I told the PR bird: “I have no intention of interviewing Mike Smith. I would rather stick needles in my eyes, frankly. Now would you kindly PISS OFF?!”

At those launches I did not care much for the sort of soft journalists from TV listings mags and women's periodicals sent to cover showbiz and light entertainment – the hagiography brigade. When each reel of trailers for the new season’s shows had finished playing, that lot used to clap and cheer – pathetic!

I preferred to yawn and sneer at the new shows, and write them up in my ORACLE pages for what they were – garbage, TV for thick people.

I was what the late Pope might call “a sign of contradiction” to all the yes-men and women and showbiz bumsuckers that surrounded me.

And I had some very high up admirers in the TV industry – not least Greg Dyke (a big cheese at ITV at the time) and the beautiful, intelligent and genuine presenter Lorraine Kelly.

P.S.Cheryl Cole’s got herself big hair like a 1970s US Prom Queen. All she’s done is prove what I’ve always suspected - that she’s a fluffhead.

Something profound in the age of digital dizziness

2011-05-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

I’m thoroughly jaded by all the dizzy, ditzy digital communication flashing around the world – then along comes an event that's unchanging, dignified and profound …

Yes, voting in elections in this country is so VERY LOW TECH – and all the better for it. Just you, a booth, a bit of paper and a pen. Seemples! I indicated with an X who I want elected to the Death Star that is the Wirral Council (well, everything it touches crumbles and dies).

And then I put an X on the other question, some nonsense about changing the voting system which I, like most people, chose to interpret as this question: Do you approve / not approve of the irritating berk Nick Clegg? Now that’s what I call a no-brainer!

But I really ought to get with the beat, digitally speaking, because I need to set up my own personal website. Why? Well read on …

You see, I’m on this programme with the Brit Writers Awards to publish one of my novels. It’s called ‘The Wearons’ and it’s about extraterrestrials living in Liverpool. When a human being falls in love with one of the shape-shifting aliens all hell breaks out – and the history of the world takes an extraordinary turn. Along the way, lots of laughs and some out-of-the-world philosophy.

I’ve also got a novel nearly completed about office politics, sex, love and magic – called ‘Bad News for Butterflies’.

Then there are the drama scripts I’m working on, one for the Everyman in Liverpool. Well, a man’s got to have a creative outlet; otherwise one might spend all one’s spare time drinking red wine in Hell’s Waiting Room and other saloon bars in New Brighton.

In fact, I am deadly serious about the books and the plays (though I’m concentrating on the books just now).

And of course these days writers MUST have their own website, to promote themselves and their publications. A blog alone won't do.

So that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve taken the first step, I’ve bought a domain. Now I need to set up my website, but I’m not sure I’m bright enough to do that by myself. I need to blag some help from tech-head friends. So far this help has not exactly landed on my doorstep and I feel confused and daunted by it all.

The fact is, I feel there is WAY too much information flashing around the world digitally – 99 per cent of it rubbish with very little editorial control.

Nonetheless (a very website unfriendly word) I do need to get myself a website.

And no, I won’t be calling it www.mustdestroy.com

Forget TV and Royal Weddings, here's a slice of real life

2011-05-01T06:33:00.001-07:00

I was asked to choose a public place or space, observe it and write about it – find the drama in it.

A Wetherspoon’s pub, I thought – refuge of the common man and woman.

I chose the one in Liscard, Wallasey – a place that’s literally at the end of a road to nowhere, on the northern tip of the Wirral Peninsula.

In theory, Spoons pubs should be good everywhere, selling decent ale and wine cheap and with food available from morning to 10pm-ish. In theory …

There is no juke box or piped or live music. Good. No darts board. Good. (Look this is only my opinion …)

And the Wallasey Spoons has attractive ochre and brown carpeting and lots of cosy booths and wood panelling.

But there's something unpleasantly industrialised about this chain of pubs. They’re too big – cavernous barns. The bar staff are usually young, and lacking in character.

And splattered across the walls and all the tables are big, garish menus and drinks posters. This promotional garbage ruins the atmosphere.

Then there are the customers ... I shamelessly listened in to people’s conversations and observed their movements and behaviour (because I’d been asked to, see * at the end) when I called in for a late lunch recently.

I ordered food and a glass wine of and gave the charmless barkeep my table number, as demanded, resisting the impulse to tell her: “I’m a free man not a number!”

I sat down. To my left four men in their fifties and sixties are being lairy. Roars of laughter, coarse cackles – quite cheering at first but it soon starts to grate.

Immediately in front of me, in a beige windcheater and wearing trainers, is an elderly guy sat on his own reading the Liverpool Echo. Reading it like an old person; methodically, page by page, not just flicking through.

In front of me, a couple in their early thirties, out with their baby. An air of sadness hangs over them. They seem to have had an argument. Their baby is placed right on the top of their table in its carrier thingie, surrounded by pint pots and empty crisp packets. Doesn’t seem quite right somehow,

To my right, a trio of local girls (judging by their Scouse-ish accents) yammering away non-stop. “She wouldn’t shurrup about it,” one of them says. “Why didn’t yer come to our party? Why, she kept sayin’. Was it because Jamie was there? F**king hell, I don’t even know who Jamie is. She’s mad, her.”

Behind them three youngish local people, two women and a bloke. With them is an older guy with a southern English estuary accent. He’s loud too. It’s an unattractive accent, in my view, jarring on me, winding me up. Suddenly he’s bellowing into his mobile: “Where are yer, babes? ‘Old up, I’ll cam ovah and see yer. Give us a capple of minutes, I’ll be there. Don’t move.” He makes his excuses and leaves.

My meal arrives – a very industrial curry. The nan bread is floppy, like it’s been microwaved, and the poppadoms, instead of being fried, have been grilled – nasty. The meal comes without the promised mango chutney. “Oh yeah," says the hurried and disinterested waitress. "I’ll get you some. I’ll be back in a minute."

Now a man, possibly mentally ill, has sat down on the table right next to me. He is staring at me and smiling, maybe leering. I don’t like this. I feel uncomfortable.

Then he starts sneezing. Really loud. He’s having a total sneezing jag. Now, I HATE sneezing! Sneezes are right at the top of my list of things that can't be tolerated, alongside wire coathangers and Phillip Schofield.

It’s getting ridiculous. I’m counting his sneezes. Twenty-four so far … twenty-five. Some of his snot must surely have gone onto my curry and into my drink. He’s sitting very close to me.

I can’t bear this any longer. I get up to go, leaving half of my meal and quite a bit of wine. Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one! Is he ever gonna stop?

The young women across from me are also leaving the pub, seemingly for the same reason. One of the girls says, “F**king hell, that guy’s sneezing for England.”

* I was asked to go to a public place, observe, and write it up – part of a play writing course I’m on at the Everyman in Liverpool.

Corrie’s 'tribute’ to my crazy place of abode

2011-04-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

I wish Coronation Street would get back to what it does best – great character-driven philosophical comedy-drama, rather than the mad storylines of recent months.

The tension between Sally and Kevin is probably the only bit of action anchored in any sort of reality just now.

And Sally, in dissing Kevin so acidly recently, paid a sort of tribute to the marvellous town where I live, New Brighton – once the leading seaside resort in Northern England.

Sally suggested that Kevin move far, far away from her: “Australia, New Zealand - New Brighton would be good!”

If you come from North-West England, as I do, you do get a kick whenever your place of abode is mentioned in Corrie. I have often heard my home town of Wigan mentioned - usually witheringly as a place someone in trouble might run away to. Fair enough.

But until last night’s (Thu 14 Apr) episode, I don’t recall any character ever mentioning New Brighton, which in recent times has been a faded seaside resort perched on the northern tip of the Wirral peninsula. Most definitely on the road to nowhere – except perhaps perdition.

Well, for the past seven years I’ve lived in New Brighton, and I’m glad I chose to do so. The local people are fantastic characters, if a little unhinged.

And the place has a surreal, magic realism feel to it – ideal for me.

Years ago, New Brighton had a pier, a tower taller than Blackpool’s, regular services from the Mersey ferries, and an open air swimming pool that was the biggest in Europe.

Sadly, the features mentioned in the above paragraph are long gone, but there is still a theatre in New Brighton and it was recently rebuilt in spectacular style.

There’s also a Napoleonic fort on the beach. The sands are now very clean indeed. There’s still a funfair and other seaside attractions. And donkey rides have come back, thanks to my friend Tallulah Swells.

But - and this is truly remarkable – there is now underway a simply HUGE redevelopment of the seafront.

In one of the last major civic renewal programmes to be signed off in Britain before the recession struck home, New Brighton is getting – a new swimming pool and leisure complex, a cinema, a hotel, sailing centre for the marine lake, plus new bars and restaurant.

Best of all – and causing rapture in a Natural Born Pie-Eater such as me – we are also getting a new Morrison’s supermarket! (Morrison’s understand pies).

All things considered, New Brighton is way too good a place to banish a cheating little sh*t such as Kevin Webster to. Dump him in Australia, Sally!

But I digress. I hope Corrie returns to doing what it does best. What gives me some cause for hope is the arrival of that fine actress Stephanie Cole, playing the ogress mum of oddball Roy Cropper.

Will her character live up to the very high battleaxe standards Coronation Street has set over the years?

Ena, Blanche, Phyllis, and the one in the wheelchair whose name I have forgotten …

Brian Cox and science for thickies

2011-03-07T07:39:00.000-08:00

“Nothing happens, and it goes on not happening forever.” A description of multi-channel television in the digital age?

No. Just one of the many bland phrases trotted out buy Professor Brian Cox in his new vehicle Wonders of the Universe (BBC2 Sunday).

Here’s another of his glib phrases … “We are the cosmos made conscious.” We being humanity, apparently.

This is a most clichéd documentary from the pop musician turned academic. I expected clichés, of course, as this is television, and television does nothing very well, and it uses words atrociously because it is obsessed with moving images.

I also expected clichés because the title of the series is itself a Big Fat Boring Cliché.

And while I’m on one, this is supposedly a programme about the ”wonders of the universe” so come on, show us those wonders!Hmmm.

Can’t do that, can you, telly wallies? Coz you haven’ really been out to explore the universe yet, let alone film it.

So what did they offer us instead? Loads of shots of Cox smiling winsomely and modelling anoraks etc in deserts, snowy wastelands and mountainsides as he tries to make sense of the vastness of … everything out of his reach.

Doesn’t really work, guys, I’m afraid …

Cox did try to explore the important issues, such as the arrow of time and entropy, but did he really have to build sandcastles in the desert to illustrate that? Of course not! This is science for dummies. It’s television.

Almost everything television touches it makes moronic. TV is no good at news, at drama, at art, at science.

And Cox’s idea of explaining the vastness of the universe is simply to keep repeating “billion, billion, billion, billion” etc. Or, on occasions, “trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion”. All right Brian, WE GET IT! No need to crap on so.

Ultimately, Cox explained, “the entire cosmos will die.” Indeed, he told us that is written into the laws of physics. It might sound a bit depressing, he suggested.

You’re not wrong there, Brian.

'One of these nights ...'

2011-02-17T04:32:00.000-08:00

Long drive home after arduous day at work. Arrival at my unspeakably messy flat in New Brighton. I needed a drink. Badly.

So I went across the road to Tallulah's bar, nice and quiet. Good. Large red wine, please. I was in a reflective mood.

But my meditations were drifting into sadness so I decided to do the crossword in my newspaper as a distraction. Tallulah's has very subdued lighting which changes colour slowly so reading the clues was difficult.

One clue particularly I was stuck on ... 12 down, "tilted window". Whatever could that be? I thought of "skylight", "louvered", even "Velux" but none of them fitted. So I pressed on with the rest of the clues.

My next glass of wine was in Hell's Waiting Room, which has better lighting. Still I couldn't find a solution to the clue "tilted window".

I stared and stared at it. Then I realised, my eyesight not being as good as it was, I had misread the clue ... 12 down "titled widow" is what it actually said. Straightaway I got the right word - "Dowager" and then went on to complete the whole puzzle.

The pub was quiet, but I didn't really want company at that point, so it was OK.

I started to mull over my so-called life - bit of a mistake that was.

I am solvent, just about; I am employed and not by a branch of the State (quite rare for a Merseyside resident); and I have known the love of three good women in my life so far ... one of those women being exceptional, extraordinary.

That's more than many men can claim. To know love is one of the things that makes a person truly human; to have lost love also does that, but not in a happy way. Sometimes we lose love and then find it again, which gives cause for hope.

Such thoughts were playing in my head as I drank red wine by myself on an empty stomach in Hell's Waiting Room last night - instead of going home for my supper like a sensible northern Englishman.

I left the pub briefly and went for a walk around the streets of central New Brighton. That didn't improve my mood. These are classic boulevards of broken dreams - for me, and for countless others.

Back to the pub, a third glass of red wine. I chatted briefly to Geoff, the nice ex-Army southerner, who invited me and to join him and his chum on a visit to nearby Peggy Gadfly's pub. I politely declined. I was not in the right frame of mind for a proper drinking session.

So I stayed in Hell's Waiting Room, calm but subdued, and wondered if I should join my pal Harry O'Potter at a pub up the road, just for a swift nightcap after the match. He'd gone there to watch the Gunners beat Barca. But I didn't really fancy the walk up the hill to where he was.

Then I started to text various friends in New Brighton to get them to come and join me at Hell's Waiting Room. The trouble is the pub is in a cool spot for mobile reception, so despite several attempts I just couldn't get the text messages sent.

No matter, I went home about 10.30pm, I think. It was too late for a proper supper so I just had tea and toast and watched an old episode of the sitcom "Not Going Out" on Dave. That cheered me up a bit. I stayed up for "Family Guy" but BBC3 were showing episodes they had shown only a few nights previously. I wish they wouldn't do that; it is unforgivably lazy scheduling.

Feeling not too bad, I went to bed at 11.50pm, said three Hail Mary's for causes dear to my heart, asked God and my Guardian Angel to look after me in any difficult times ahead, then I slept the sleep of the just...

... because I know, to use the words of Tupac Shakur, "God ain't finished with me yet."

A rare find - something that's not bad on C4

2010-12-02T03:54:00.000-08:00

The main British TV channels used to have their own distinct personalities: BBC1, good at comedy, but stuffy and middle class in every other way; ITV, warm, cheeky, working class, occasionally crass; BBC2, posh, boring.

Then along came C4, which for many years was exotic, catering for minorities, daring, not timid about offending the establishment (all good characteristics, actually).

C5 …Hmmmm. Always been bland and crap, as far as I’m concerned. And now most of its shows are American. Hey guys! The population you are supposed to serve – guess what? – they’re NOT Americans.

But back to C4. It has lost its way and its identity in recent years, but at least it is producing some ‘original’ home-grown drama – the screen adaptation of ‘Any Human Heart’, William Boyd’s classic literary novel, for instance.
I haven’t seen this drama yet, so can’t comment, but I have read the novel which is very impressive.

The other night I did catch a new comedy sketch offering from C4, entitled The Morgana Show. Morgana Robinson is an accomplished comedian with strong character acting skills – a bit like Catherine Tate.

The new show is funny though not terribly subtle, and some of the sketches could do with reigning in a bit length-wise.

I liked Morgana’s send up of a certain type of fermale yoof and music presenter. In this case it was Fearne Cotton, I think, but such presenters all seem the same to me in their blonde vapidity, so I can’t be certain.

I also liked the over-the-top Hollywood harlot character, but, as I say, some of the sketches were too long, including the one about the daggy schoolboy who may or may not have had Tourette syndrome.

Overall though, Morgana is a good find, holding much promise.

The X Factor shames us all

2010-11-30T08:31:00.000-08:00

Excuse me being the gorilla in the room, but how can anyone feel comfortable watching manufactured pop lightweights Dannii Minogue and Cheryl Cole dishing out advice on singing to anyone?

Let alone to the moron fodder contestants of the X Factor!

According to press reports Cheryl is to get megabucks to appear as a judge on the American version of the show.

I doubt if the Yanks will be able to understand her. We Brits struggle, but then again Chezza never says anything profound so what does it matter?

The X Factor makes me wish I’d had an en-suite vomitarium fitted into my house when I had the place refurbished a while ago.

Everything about this overblown karaoke contest is disgusting … the way it exploits the sad dreams of pop stardom in young people; the way it showcases mental and emotional disorders for the sake of chasing poxy TV ratings; the way the real story of the X Factor – as revealed in mean-spirited back-stage shenanigans – is kept out of the show itself and left to the popular press to expose.

Come to think, the symbiotic relationship between the show and the popular press works to cream money off all the dim people watching at home and buying rubbish papers.

And don’t even get me started on all the overproduction, technologically enhanced vocals and the silly dancing that goes on to distract from the paucity of talent on the show.

X Factor. It shames our country. Let the Americans have it.

When Scouse humour falls flat …

2010-08-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

Getting his own comedy show on BBC1 is quite an achievement for Liverpudlian comedian John Bishop. Shame it ain’t funny. At all.

I’ve watched two of ‘John Bishop’s Britain’ so far, and I’m not impressed.

The format doesn’t help. The comic (who in live performance can be funny) strains as he gives a sort of lecture on various aspects of human life – sport and work, for instance.

He gives the impression of reading from an autocue, and the sketches of himself as a younger man – being interviewed for a job in an ill-fitting suit, for example – don’t work at all. All too often they resemble a southern middle class stereotyped view of what working class Scouse life is like.

Predictably, many of Bishop’s observations slide into the gutter language-wise. His attempt to draw humour from observational comedy from the traditional office Christmas party featured “quiet Michael” who “got pissed” and “put his d*** in the boss’ soup”. Ha bloody ha.

This is what mainstream comedy shows are like on the BBC these days. Bit of smut, and everyone, including the studio audience, is giggling insanely.

As for sitcoms and comedy drama, the Beeb’s totally lost the plot. The latest pale offering is Grandma’s House (BBC2). It is part written by the highly irritating comedian and TV presenter Simon Amstell, and is intended as a “star” vehicle for him.

Amstell – the smug, bitchy host of Never Mind the Buzzcocks – now plays a young man who is part of an extended and vaguely Jewish family, where his mum has a new fellow in her life.

The characters are mainly Jewish momma types from central casting, and the actors struggle heroically with the clunky script. Amstell’s character is meant to be in turns bemused, made weary and amused by members of his family.

On watching the first episode, the bemusement and the weariness worked well enough for me – but the amusement factor never really kicked in.

The digital world of multi-platform stupidity

2010-03-24T08:19:00.000-07:00

Call me old-fashioned, but I feel the so-called digital communications revolution we’re living through isn’t worth the paper it’s, erm, not printed on.

I think the explosion in web and mobile phone based communications, alongside ever-expanding TV “services”, well, it all causes human relationships to fragment and weaken.

The result is our World of Far Too Much Communication, which is making many people feel jaded.

I think what we’ve lost in the published word (something resembling truth and beauty, achieved through proper, professional fact-checking and editing) is more valuable than what we’ve gained (instant publishing / broadcasting open to virtually all – even the barely literate and the staggeringly stupid).

In terms of images and sound (music, film, TV and spoken word) the digital revolution has most certainly led to a dumbing down and coarsening.

And that’s before I even get started on the evil of internet-based pornography and the vile shoot-‘em-up adventures so beloved of geeks who play on gaming consoles.

We are indeed all caught up in a tangled multi-platform web of superficiality and irrelevance – from the zillions of out-of-date web-pages just hanging there, to moronic TV, to the the zillions of spam emails.

Even genuine emails are so often simply heralds of false imperatives. Just because someone sends you an email, you don’t have to respond to it. Only a tiny proportion of emails are any way important or useful. Anyone who works in an office knows that.

Meanwhile, social network sites such as Facebook are actually designed for the sharing of banal and infantile content, and users daily deliver just that.

I’m sick of being “invited” on Facebook to terrible “cultural” events I would never dream of attending.

For my money, a good paid-for newspaper is better than anything that any website or TV station can offer. The newspaper is fact-checked, elegantly designed, in many cases wittily written, portable, and professionally prepared compared to other media. What’s not to prefer?!

And an old-fashioned printed novel is still, for me, an immensely pleasurable, intelligent, human achievement – much more impressive that all the frantic half-baked toiling and spinning that goes on in cyberspace.

Two novels I have read recently I would heartily recommend as capable of restoring faith in the beauty of the written word in those who are turned off by what gets published in cyberspace.

(Urgh! All those myriad hyperlinks leading you up the arsehole of the information superhighway. All those sad couch potatoes watching reruns of Friends.)

The two novels I would recommend are: ‘Engelby’ by Sebastian Faulkes, and ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ by Muriel Barbary.

Davina dear - your skirt's too short you're too screechy!

2010-01-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

If anyone deserved my old mantle as Britain's sneeriest TV critic it is Ally Ross in The Sun.

Creatively, of course, he’s compromised by working for the Murdoch press. It’s shame, but it means that while he's free to gleefully batter the old dinosaur channels (BBC, ITV and C4, especially) he doesn’t really dare get stuck into BskyB.

Having said that, Ally does make me titter. This gem from his column today....
GMTV, Thursday, John Stapleton: Today’s text question. Have you been troubled by rubbish recently?
EVRY MRNG 4 LAST 10 YRS, FFS :-(

It's the sheer delight Ali takes in being nasty that does it for me. I think we can all guess what 'FFS' stands for – and most of us like to laugh up our sleeves at blandies such as Stapleton, whose dreary careers just plod on and on and on.

Talking of which, I have some advice for the professionally excitable Phillip Schofield, who’s so fond of exclaiming “amazing!” and “fantastic” on shows as naff as 'Celebrity Mr & Mrs' and 'Dancing on Ice'.

I suggest he should instead say “that’s crap!” or “what a bore!”. Such phrases would accurately describe his shows and might actually endear him to his long-suffering viewers.

* * *
I predicted many years ago – when my column was on ORACLE and then on its colourless successor, Teletext (good riddance to the latter!) – that the TV industry was deluded in anticipating a new golden age of choice.

That was not, I’m afraid, ever going to be the case.

The expansion of TV, as I predicted from my perch at ORACLE, demonstrates just one thing – the paradox that More means Less.

Oh, there are, technically, more programmes for the viewer now, even for those limited to Freeview, but as a whole TV is a much diminished force.

And the public are utterly jaded by the samey old crap on offer. Again, as I predicted.

Also, the TV industry has help make the people of our country (Britain, in this case, though I suspect this applies elsewhere), ever more stupid.

With very few exceptions contemporary British TV is awful. It’s riddled with repeats, culturally irrelevant American kack, mind-sapping trailers, cop shows, gormless talent shows and karaoke kontests, cookery and lifestyle dross, spurious “celebrity” challenges, limp chat full of commercial puffs, and now stupid dance programmes.

It's 99 per cent pure moron fodder. So we shouldn’t be surprised at the results.

Take the current Celebrity Big Brother on C4.Celebrities?! Who the feck are these no-marks? Apart from the broad who was Ken Barlow’s bit on the side in Coronation Street, I haven’t a clue. Looks like they were dragged onto the show from Primark in Nuneaton.

And for six minutes the other night I forced myself to watch some barely comprehensible garbage called Celebrity Big Brother’s Big Mouth – anchored by the overrated Davina McCall, wearing a skirt too short for a bird of her age, and shouting and grimacing like a maniac.

Just watch this show. By the studio audience alone, you'll agree with me that Brits have become so THICK! If the cretins here are anything to judge by, adults now speak, shriek and act like truculent kids.

Next posting, I will point out the rare gems in the wasteland that is British television.

Liverpool's win ... and the down side of football

2009-10-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

I know I shouldn't have been, but I was absolutely amazed at the sheer exuberance of Reds fans' celebrations after Liverpool beat Man U (Sun 25 Oct 09).

I saw whooping and cheering and wild dancing and beer spilled everywhere - and that was just people watching on a TV screen in a pub. What must the home crowd at at Anfield have been like?

Professional football, eh? Why does it evoke such passions? The physical reality of the game is this...

A bunch of grown men are paid millions of quid each season to chase a ball around a field and try to kick it through a rectangle formed by three posts while another, usually very tall man, tries to stop the ball.

The sport allows men who would otherwise be undistinguished - being in the main poorly educated and (in quite a few cases) downright thick - to display great athleticism and highly developed balls skill with the head and feet and chest.

And yet those physical skills are, bizarrely, the least significant aspects, culturally, politically and psychologically, of the global phenomenon that is football.

Competitive football is, and always has been, about tribalism, about beating "the other lot".

That, of course, means you usually have to "hate" the other lot.

I'm quite sure that all the tribalism, the passion, the hatred (for example, the widespread and deeply felt hatred of Manchester United) that is in football, is bad for humankind.

And remember, the sensationalised TV coverage of top flight games powerfully feeds and hypes up all that hatred and misplaced passion.

Also, the fact that so much money is now involved in the pro game - with obscenely large wages paid to Merseyside heroes such as Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres - is a highly negative force.

It means that fans are ripped off for their season tickets, and for the catering facilities within the stadia, and for all the naff merchandising that is so relentlessly marketed.

I wonder, when Premier League players gather socially together in their mansions are they laughing down their designer sleeves at the poor sods who put so much hope, so much anxiety and so much hard-earned cash into the game.

The political show trial the BBC just couldn’t resist

2009-10-23T04:58:00.000-07:00

Shame on the BBC for giving a platform to people who would deny the dignity and worth of a fellow human being - and trample over free speech.

Yes, the hectoring approach adopted by the Justice Secretary Jack Straw, Tory Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, Liberal-Democrat MP Chris Huhne and American writer Bonnie Greer on last night’s Question Time was an affront to decency.

And the BBC top brass should not have allowed the show’s usual format to be hijacked and used as a nasty and counter-productive show trial of BNP chairman Nick Griffin.

I don’t much like Nick Griffin, frankly, and I don’t at all care for his politics, but if he is to be invited on Question Time (and I think it right that he was, as a democratically elected politician) then at least he should have been allowed to properly answer the questions put to him.

It was clear from the start that the BBC intended this show to give Nick Griffin a tough time. That’s fine by me. Everyone who sets themselves up as a politician or a public commentator deserves a tough time.

But the BBC should not have abandoned Question Time’s usual format (of taking questions on various current affairs) and turn it into a bear pit in which Griffin was set up to have his credibility destroyed by a relentless series of sneering comments from both the other panellists and the largely hostile metropolitan audience.

Yes, Nick Griffin has a most murky past. We should not be surprised by that. Almost everyone involved in the queasy politics of British nationalism is tainted by association let alone direct involvement.

But if you refuse to allow such views to be even discussed, or if you shout them down, then you are trampling on freedom far more effectively than any fascist can manage.

Paradoxically, of all the panellists in last night show, Griffin was the only one who showed a semblance of humility.

And when attacked with vitriol and – seemingly at times, hatred – by members of the studio audience, he reacted with humour and tolerance, even though such personal abuse usually attracts censure when directed at mainstream politicians.

An Asian man in the audience proclaimed passionately that he loved Britain, was born and educated here. It was a genuinely moving part of the programme. So, the man asked Griffin: “Where to you want me to go?”

The Asian man suggested that Griffin and his supporters should go to the South Pole, adding: “It’s a colourless landscape, it will suit you.”

The BNP leader didn’t let the insult rile him. He told the Asian guy calmly: “I’m very happy for you to stay here.”

Elsewhere in the programme Griffin was told he was disgusting, and even that he had “slimy arms”.

There was a lot of such childish name-calling, but Griffin didn’t let it get to him. He stayed calm under fire. He kept smiling. Given the scale of the hostility shown him, his calmness was remarkable.

That is not to say I agree with Griffin. He did appear shifty and evasive when asked about the Holocaust, about his association with the Klu Klux Klan, and was curiously old-fashioned about homosexuality.

But other things he said – counter-cultural things about the left-wing bias of the BBC, for instance – will have stuck chords with many viewers.

All the questions on the show (apart from the last one) were used as a hammer to batter Griffin – and that made me every bit as uncomfortable as hearing the man’s views on race, racial identity and religion, which I certainly don’t agree with.

The final question concerned the columnist Jan Moir’s critical comments about the death of the gay Boyzone singer, Stephen Gately. The other panellists came out with the usual “freedom of the press” line, but Griffin chose to add that if you must speak / write about the dead then you should “say nothing but good”. It would be hard for anyone to find fault with that.

I don’t agree with those who say Griffin came out of the broadcast badly. I do think Jack Straw came across poorly though, particularly with his lame attempts to defend the mess the Government has made of immigration and border control.

Frankly, Griffin came across as someone who refused to buckle when under ferocious attack by the nasty, proscriptive liberal establishment.

And that, unfortunately perhaps, will garner him and the BNP considerable sympathy as the bullied underdogs of British politics.

European monsters ...

2009-10-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

What a shame the Irish voted for the Lisbon Treaty, thereby allowing “Dave” Cameron – the British Tory leader and probably next Prime Minister – to backslide on allowing Brits a vote on their destiny as an independent nation.

Now we wait for legal challenges to this rotten treaty in the Czech Republic.

And once that “obstacle” is overcome, the undemocratic and corporatist monster that is the EU will be one step to turning itself into a lumbering nation state.

We mustn’t be too critical of the Tories because, after all, it was the New Labour Government that betrayed our country (the UK) by breaking its manifesto promise to allow a referendum on the European Constitution; the forerunner of the Lisbon Treaty (and, in reality, a sinister, back-door version of it).

The British, I feel sure, if consulted in a referendum, would vote ‘no’ to the treaty, and thereby stick two fingers up at the whole despicable European project.

But many people are losing sight of the basics of the argument about Europe. Britain is a nation. And it is only within legitimate nations that freedom under the law can be ensured for the people. That is the crux of the present problem.

‘Freedom under the law’ is very important if we are to live good and civilised lives; if we are not to destroy each other as people by ruthlessly following our selfish desires.

Europe, manifestly, is not a nation. I don’t believe it ever will be or can be.

In recent years the growth in international law has weakened freedom under the law; so has the meddling activities of over-weaning inter-governmental organisations such as the EU.

It is time to roll back those restrictions and reclaim our freedom.

The people who want the EU to be a superstate are, mainly, politicians from individual nations within Europe who want a bigger stage, a grander platform, on which to pose and prattle. That is why the European political class have been so keen to form a “United States of Europe”, even though there is very little appetite for that among citizens.

And in preparing the ground for a new European state, the EU bureaucracy have refused to formally recognise and record the enormous role Christianity played in building our European nations, our great culture and art, our morality, and our justice systems.

So here we are today, poised uneasily before the attempted forced birth of a new secularist empire.

If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified (and it won’t be if the British are allowed a vote) then a President of the European Union will be chosen, in a typically undemocratic way, by EU heads of states and governments.

The front-runner for such a post currently is none other than that grinning ninny Tony Blair. He would love nothing better than to bestride the world as President of Europe.

That must not be allowed to happen.

We Brits have already had a bellyful of Tony Blair.

What we want … is to be a nation once again.

Politicians prattle and pose – but they’re all such nerds!

2009-09-29T08:18:00.000-07:00

SOMEWHERE between the purity of the angels and the savagery of beasts – a wise man once remarked – there exists politics.

Meaning … angels can get by without governance and civil regulations and so can wild beasts. But humans cannot.

The philosopher Aristotle put it this way … man is a political animal. He meant that if we were all allowed to act as unfettered individuals, following selfish impulses, the result would be chaos and carnage.

The trouble is so many of us now despise politics and politicians ... and with very good cause.

In the UK, the summer’s scandal of greed surrounding MPs expenses has merely deepened public disillusionment.

And watching first the Liberal-Democrats’ and then Labour’s party conferences on TV, I could see a huge disconnection between life as perceived by ordinary citizens and as perceived by politicians.

Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and David Cameron all display a huge deficiency of charisma. They are, all three of ‘em, nerds. They dress and speak like third-rate travelling salesmen.

And how I laughed when I heard the conference speech by Peter Mandelson described as “masterful”.

Bollocks! It was rubbish, full of camp posturing, and calls to patriotism which cannot be taken seriously, coming from a man who until quite recently had a top job in the undemocratic and anti-British EU.

Mandelson came across as a bonkers egomaniac in his speech on Monday in Brighton – like a man who shouts at strangers in the street.

And his ranting at the Tories at the end was so predictable. BORING!!

On Tuesday came Gordon Brown’s plodding effort. All that guff about “fighting to win for Britain”. What?! He’s sold Britain down the river time and time again.

And that ghastly warm-up act from his missus, Sarah, describing the dour loser as “my husband, my hero". Urgh!! Nurse, I need my private vomitarium!

Look Gordon, you’re a loser, and as Prime Minister you are unelected anyway. When the election comes you’ll be out on your sorry arse. I’d put money on it.

And anyway, on a very serious level, away from the madness of party conferences, the political system we use (representative liberal democracy involving competing political parties) is hopelessly outdated.

Oh, the men-in-suits, the platitudes, the narrow ideological parameters of moderate consensual politics. It’s all so yesterday.

International capitalism is where much of the real political power resides now – and national governments are virtually powerless to tackle big business.

Also, in recent years, nation states have encouraged their own irrelevance by: allowing international law (mainly run by militant liberal-fascists and backed by vile NGOs) to grow; and letting inter- governmental organisations such as the European Union to boss them about.

Meanwhile, all though its history, the United Nations has been riddled with corruption, and to this day remains a laughing stock.

It doesn’t make me happy to write any of the above.

Humankind needs poltics to fashion a good society, there can be no doubt about that.

Paradoxically perhaps, it is political society, with all its rules and institutions, which enables we mere mortals to live bigger and better lives.

So even if we feel mightily cheesed off with our politicians, for the moment it’s important we stay connected and involved in the democratic process … not least to ensure that some of our basic freedoms will endure.

And in Britain’s case, that we can dump this rotten Labour Government down the toilet of history.

The world is transforming rapidly, and the future is hard to predict, but we all have a duty to keep politics and political debate alive in the interim, not least at the national level, where what’s left of our freedom resides.

And hopefully, before too long, the rotten system of politics we have now will give way to something more relevant and more capable of advancing the achievements of human kind.

Hopefully, we’ll get real leaders again, the heroes who are needed, and not the likes of Brown, Clegg and Cameron.

My radical solution to work and dole misery

2009-08-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

MOST intelligent people have known for a long time that the official UK jobless figure (currently standing at 2,435,000) is big fat lie.

The fact is there are now SIX MILLION people living on benefits of one sort or another, while a good TEN million others (by my estimate) earn a living by toiling for the health service, edukashun, councils, social landlords, and the terrible, sloganising, logo-launching, spy camera-obsessed police “services”.

Then I guess you should count as “employed” have those who earn a pittance slaving away in all the ghastly shopping malls, chain stores and chain “restaurants” that so scar our country.

Plus, there are still a few million left working in old-fashioned manufacturing, agriculture and the liberal professions.

Taken as a whole, the UK’s economic and social system – a terrible mix of capitalism, unthinking consumerism and Liberal-Fascist Statism – is making almost everyone sadder than Mr Sad’s saddest collection of sadness. In his sad cupboard. On a sad day.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. People do need work, yes, but not as much of it as we persist in thinking they do.

The notion of working five-days-a-week is as untenable as it is undesirable - ecologically, politically, economically and culturally. So what’s to be done about things?

Well, in the short term, we might as well accept that we are living in an era of the Big State once again and make its power work for our collective good for once – by bringing about the one very simple, very big change we need. Namely, the following…

The Government should step in and making the FOUR-DAY-WORKING-WEEK the norm – by force of law. Of course, to do so would probably necessitate the UK withdrawing from the European Union and various international treaties but we need to do all of that anyway … and, besides, anything is possible in the strained and uncertain times just ahead of us.

The creation of the four-day-week would bring relief for the employed, many of whom are currently stressed to beyond endurance by their jobs. The measure would also create employment and training opportunities for those currently sat at home all day stuffing their faces with pizza and watching moronic daytime telly.

After a couple of years, the maximum working week, should be reduced further to three days, leading to a further reduction in stress, and more time for family, cultural and sporting life, that so many of us need. Plus there would be much more quality time philosophical musing and the writing of poetry – for those so inclined – and also more jobs for the long-term unemployed.

Taking an overall view of just where Westerns societies are at (technologically, ecomomically and ecologically) such a model of chilled out employment makes a lot of sense.

My plan to save UK edukashun from disaster

2009-08-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

NEARLY half a million young people leave school each summer in the UK without being able to speak properly or think at all seriously about anything.

As well as being staggeringly thick, so many of today's teenagers lack any internal moral compass.

Dysfunctional State schools fail to impart the difference between right and wrong, and so do feckless parents (themselves the victims of pisspoor British schooling). It’s a frightening situation.

Meanwhile, the Government lunges from one crap educational initiative to the next, while teachers remain demoralised and powerless to deal with violent pupils.

The failure in State education is deep and systemic.

So many teachers are off with stress, the situation is a national joke; so many pupils are suspended from schools every year that the authorities simply can't cope.

And the British public is becoming thicker with every succeeding generation.

Because of the situation is so dire, I propose an emergency remedy; a drastic five-point plan of action.

To put the following programme into operation would, of course, involve giving me political control of the UK, but would that be a bad thing?

After all in recent weeks, while that sad sack Gordon Brown has been on holiday, the country has been run first by an unhinged fundamentalist feminist, Harriet Harperson, and, then by an unelected Machiavalian manipulator who wears lilac loafers, Peter Mandelson.

Listen, my country needs me, and the first thing I will put right is the education system. Here's how ...

FIRST: Sack at least half of the teachers currently employed. For sure! They have, after all, proved themselves quite useless.

SECOND: Hire teachers from abroad to make up the shortfall (from the US, Australia and Canada, where teachers aren’t as utterly demoralised and beaten as they are here).

THIRD: Make it legal for schools to reintroduce the cane. Unless kids experience fear of physical chastisement they will never know respect – or wisdom (more of that later). Fear (of God) is, afterall, the beginning of all wisdom.

In order to bring back corporal punishment in schools our country will, of course, have to de-link itself from certain covenants of “international law” we have foolishly signed up to, but so be it. “International law” isn’t really law at all – it is organised liberal repression of national freedoms.

FOURTH: Introduce the new Sir Sam Brady National Curriculum, including compulsory training in…

- Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (absolutely essential, as must be obvious, even to a moron in a hurry)

- Personal Hygiene (because, yes, things have got so bad at home under millions of slobby parents)

- Cooking and Household Chores for Boys AND Girls (obviously)

- Personal Finance for Boys and Girls (because they will have to live in the real world and, at the very least have to understand how the benefits system works or how to wangle a job doing not very much with the local council when they leave school

- British and World History (with 80 per cent of the lessons focused on British history and not the false, sinister, wishy-washy re-written history so beloved of the Liberal-Left Fascists in the teaching unions

- Religious Instruction, with an 80 per cent focus on Christianity, because that’s the faith that very largely built our nation, though we must also include some teaching about the basics of all world faiths, with special emphasis on their moral teaching (because British youngsters are in dire need of moral training, which brings me to…)

FIFTH. Philosophy! I regard this as such a vitally important subject to be taught in schools that I have devoted a whole section of this posting to it. Because, as Epicurus remarked: “Philosophy is an activity which, though discourse and reasoning, procures for us a happy life.”

* The main branch of philosophy that ought to be taught is ethics, because in a world where religious faith is diminished as a backdrop to most people’s lives, we need something else (a back-up, if you like) to help us make choices about what to do and how to behave in a way that is good for us - and good for the survival and dignity of society as a whole.

* I would also teach what the philosophical masters said about politics. We owe it to ourselves to understand what politics is, and how, ultimately, it is the opposite of war and barbarism. We have a duty to be involved in it or at least informed about it.

* Pupils must learn what the greats said about love. It isn’t just about snogging, funsex and condoms. Young people need to know about the different forms of love – eros, philia, and agape.

* And we all need to be taught to think as deeply as we can, philosophically, about death, freedom, knowledge, art, humanity and wisdom.

* It is only by reading and considering in depth what greater minds than ours said about these subjects (starting with Plato and Aristotle) that we can put ourselves on the path to wisdom and happiness.

* The very word philosophy is based on the Greek word philosophia – meaning the love of, or the search for, wisdom.

* And the fact that human life can be so brutal, fragile, precious and dangerous is all the more reason to begin to steep our people in the basics of, and ignite their (hopefully lifelong) interest in, philosophy, as early as possible.

The rubbishy cult of Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

WHEN the story of Jackson’s death broke on Thursday evening (UK time), the response of the mainstream media was depressingly predictable … being mainly hype.

“The King of Pop is dead! Quick, somebody get Paul Gambaccini to crap on and on about it. Yeah, and what about that eccentric fork-bender, Uri Geller, wasn’t he a mate of Wacko? Let’s have him gushing incoherently.”

Then there’s Madonna; she can’t stop crying. Oh, Purrr-lease!!

Even those rent-a-quote political pygmies, Gordon Brown and 'Dave' Cameron, felt the need to lob in their twopenn'orth.

And so it went on. The once reliable BBC Radio 4 Today programme provided sickeningly reverential coverage. Jacko's 'genius' was compared to that of Mozart and Beethoven. How stupid!

Sky News' superficial 'Click' website-oriented news show was desperate to whip up reaction during an interview with a singularly inarticulate paparazzi picture agency boss.

But at least the pap guy touched on reality by indicating that Jacko wasn't really a hot a figure any more, not even by the crude standards of celebrity reportage.

Oh dear, that wasn't at all what the excitable Sky News wanted to hear.

The satellite channel was still endlessly recycling stale speculatation about the pop star by Sunday morning. It sent a tired and washed-out looking Kay Burley to LA do the usual reading of floral tributes and interviews with showbiz nonentities. Zzzzzzzzz.

And the fluffy news bunnies presenting BBC News 24 didn’t fare any better. They seemed to be in a mild panic about the death, having to roll with a showbiz story; how very vulgar!

The BBC News 24 autocue-readers are clearly uncomfortable when they can’t do their usual stuff of introducing safe package reports about Westminster village politics, poverty overseas, how horrid war is, feminism, racial harmony projects etc., plus all those toffee-nosed discussions about the real news gathered by genuine journalists who, of course, work for newspapers!

Let me tell the media wallies a basic truth. Not everybody on the planet was a Michael Jackson fan. Most people, including myself, didn’t care much at all for his music.

Apart from one very good early solo album, ‘Off the Wall’, produced by Quincy Jones and including the brilliant song ‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’, much of Jackson’s musical output was mediocre or worse.

Now, I don’t want to speak ill of the man so soon after his death. Indeed, I will be saying some prayers that his soul will now find the repose that eluded him during his troubled life.

But Jackson’s music was aimed at his not-terribly-intelligent and rather naïve fans, so it was understandably ropey; lyrically at any rate.

And I remember being appalled by his performance at the 1996 Brit Awards of his overblown dirge, ‘Earth Song’.

Dressed in Christ-like robes and surrounded by worshippers, Jacko warbled thus:

“What about nature’s worth (Ooo,ooo) / It’s our planet’s womb (What about us) / What about animals (What about it) /We’ve turned kingdoms to dust (What about us) /What about elephants (What about us) /Have we lost their trust (What about us)”…etc etc.

The song is total b***ocks!

But the one immensely pleasing thing to come out of that appearance was a successful protest at Jackson’s pretentiousness by Jarvis Cocker, frontman of the British indie band Pulp, who climbed on stage and, literally, showed his arse!

There are lots of criticisms to be levelled against Jackson, as a man and as a parent, but I don’t want to go into those just now.

The singer clearly wasn't comfortable with himself or his appearance; and maybe not even with his racial identity. All of that must have been hard for him to bear.

Was it self-loathing that made him try to turn himself into a white man, or perhaps, more accurately, a disturbing parody of a white woman?

He certainly looked a lot like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? during his final years.

Jackson had a talent for showmanship, without a doubt, though it was at the coarser end of the performance art spectrum.

All that crotch-grabbing during the dance routines, urgh!

Wacko wasn’t the first and won’t be the last person to be ruined by the grotesque pressures of show business.

And towards the end of his life, he was a sort of zombie, such as those portrayed in his ‘Thriller’ video.

May he rest in the peace that he never found in life.

This cruel show's popularity shames us all

2009-05-27T02:14:00.000-07:00

IT is a hugely popular programme but it is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I refer, of course, to Britain’s Got Talent – the shameful cackfest that is pulling in the punters back to the (once great) ITV1, now re-branded especially for this column as The Moron Channel.

I think most reasonably intelligent people (errr, that’s probably no more than a third of Britain’s Got Talent’s viewers) will feel a little queasy about watching this freak-show-come-karaoke kontest.

Let me spell out why that queasiness, that stirring of moral consciousness (at last!) in bubble-headed modern Britain, comes from.

It comes from a residual – and correct – feeling that to showcase people as they are publicly humiliated, for the sake of making vast amounts of money for Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell and other ITV ghouls, is absolutely cowardly - and it stinks!

Take the case of Susan Boyle – the winner of the viewers’ phone vote last Sunday night. She’s a good singer, no doubt about it. But she is being encouraged to distort herself and cavort in a most unseemly manner by the ugly limelight this show has cast upon her.

It is not right to put a woman such as Susan Boyle through that process. I would say it is not good for her mental health. It is not good for the viewers either.

And on the same night Susan won, a 10-year-old girl, Natalie Okri, was rejected by a vote of the ghastly panel of Cowell, Morgan and Amanda Holden.

You could see the torture in poor Natalie’s face as she shuffled off in tears, shamed, and with a feeling of profound rejection rattling round her head, at the end.

No-one was there, in the few seconds when it mattered, to put their arm around her and comfort her.

And no-one was there, when it mattered, to stop her entering this dreadful series in the first place. The show's popularity shames us all.

Reasons not to be cheerful ... (1) Phillip Schofield ...

2009-05-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

I SWITCHED on the box, hoping to cheer myself up, but – urrrgh! – the inane cheeriness of Phillip Schofield has the opposite effect on me.

The Moron Channel - ITV1 - now has a "celebrity" version of Mr & Mrs, the cheesy seventies couples’ quiz formerly hosted by Derek Batey, who’s now 103 and living in Lytham St Annes.

These days the show is called “All Star” Mr & Mrs – so of course it is packed with C-through-to-Z-listers from the worlds of acting, modelling, pop music and sport.

The hosts, fittingly perhaps for such mind-rotting awfulness, are now Philip Schofield (otherwise known as the Prince of Blandness) and the increasingly hysterical-sounding Fern Britton (all those diets and gastric bands have send her gaga … and she’s STILL a fat lass).

The contestants on the show included the goalie, Peter Shilton – who I’m glad to see has stopped perming his hair – and his normal-seeming missus Sue.

Apparently … wait for it! … Shilts once bought Sue a fur coat even though she’s an animal lover.

That little nugget of couple-iness had Phillip Schofield gagging for air in shock … then virtually wetting his pants from laughing so much.

Don’t ask me why mainstream TV presenters find everything that’s said on a show staggeringly amazing and funny. Maybe it is something they slip in the tea before filming.

Shilton did describe his wife as “my best friend as well as my wife”, which was (a) an isolated snippet of genuine emotion that somehow got through the editing stage, and (b) sweet, though not necessarily entertaining.

I don’t think there was a prize for ghastliest couple from the contestants – and let’s face it they’d all look quite appealing alongside Phil and Fern!

Also taking part in this nonsensical quiz were: an oaf out of Boyzone; and the giantess and actress of several dodgy films, Brigitte Nielsen , and her “model” husband, a dwarf called Mattia.

I was depressed when I sat down to watch this junk. I was virtually suicidal by the end of it.

Apparently Mattia’s “great in bed”, according to Brigitte. Oh Please! She’d never have been allowed to say that if Derek Batey was still in charge. Maybe they should bring him back. I see from his website he’s still available for after-dinner speaking and the opening of supermarkets – and those sorts of things take much more mental energy that fronting a prime-time cackfest on The Moron Channel.

What gets me is how intelligent people such as Phillip Schofield can bring themselves to take part in such condescending, demeaning rubbish.

Then again, he’s always been up for the gig.

Telly today – treating us all as thickos

2009-04-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

YOU used to be able to rely on telly for a bit of light relief and entertainment – but nowadays it offers nothing but wall-to-wall tedium and has become a powerful aid to British society’s increasing stupidity and depression.

On Sunday night I looked in on Hell’s Kitchen (ITV1), expecting it to be crap – and it was.

Some young geezer with a dodgy barnet was complaining about his woman’s meat course being undercooked and that resulted in a bit of a tetchy situation with the highly strung waiter.

The chef Marco Pierre White, who has a reputation for a quick temper (yawn-yawn, how very predictable) had to deal with the young complainant and allowed him to remain in the restaurant.

Marco spoke to the guy in such a cold and arrogant way – playing up for the cameras, no doubt (more yawns, please chef!).

If I’d been the young guy I’d have lamped this imperious cook – who has a penchant for wearing preposterous tea-towels on his head.

This programme is, like all the other telly shows involving chefs, offers the most bland and unappetising of fare.

However, it wasn’t quite as congealed and rancid as a so-called comedy offering on BBC3, Horne & Corden. I think it was a repeat but it is so hard to tell these days – when everything has become contemptibly familiar through damnable reiteration.

One sketch, towards the end of the show, was bizarre, but not in a funny way. Horne & Corden – both over-exposed and overrated – played at being psychic magicians trying to summon horses onto their stage show. Err, that was it.

They got down on all fours and started whinnying like horses. Pathetic. Doesn’t the Beeb have anyone vaguely normal to check these shows for basic quality and comprehension before they are transmitted?

And I see that ITV1 has brought back the moron-fodder known as Beat The Star. This is another example of telly for adults being so stupid and banal in its content that you would think it was aimed at children.

I saw about five minutes of some sub-Gladiators nonsense about an ordinary punter from a sugar beet factory shimmying up a long plastic tube in competition with the rugby player turned telly dancing tart, Austin Healey.

Then I turned off because “after the break” they were clearly going to mess about in mud in funny little karts… like big kids.

The show was puerile nonsense that treated its studio audience like idiots, which to be fair, they probably were … judging by all the silly shrieking they were doing.

I would honestly say to anyone, if you want to improve your life 100 per cent instantly then simply turn your telly off and go out … for a walk … to visit your auntie … to go to the pub – anything but watch the shameful bilge that is modern television.

And if the weather is too inclement for going out, then go to your bathroom and clean the grouting and / or the lavatory bowl – because that will be more entertaining and better for your mind, heart and soul that watching TV.

I am thinking of devoting fewer of these postings to TV-related matter, which I regard as beneath contempt and hardly worthy of the attention of someone with a brain as big as mine.

Besides which, the vapid "personalities" on TV are simply not cool enough to be in my gang.

A twisted anthem to the topsy-turvy values of the BBC

2009-04-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

EVEN as a one-off, sugar-coated musical morality play All the Small Things (BBC1 Tue) would have been a waste of time and money.

But it's been stretched into a six-parter. Incredible!

Saucy woman singer with cone-to-bed eyes and the badly dubbed voice of an angel (Sarah Alexander) walks into a happy-clappy local church choir and immediately the weak-willed choirmaster (Neil Pearson) falls in lust with her.

You can tell this is a BBC drama because the main male character (Pearson) is a vain, home-wrecking bastard, while his missus (Sarah Lancashire) is a saintly, loveable mumsy.

In the Nasty Liberal Thought Control Section of BBC Drama: Man = Bad, and Woman = Good. There can be no deviation from that formula. Off-message writers who try to portray social reality will be exterminated. Repeat. Exterminated!

And if that wasn’t enough to have you weeping into your Guardian, this crock of politically correct cack from Debbie Horsfield also had … a black guy with learning difficulties, a dwarf (female), a son with some form of autism, and two Comedy Fatties from Central Casting.

Now look… there is nothing wrong with having people in the cast of all shapes and sizes and social and cultural backgrounds, skin colour etc. But why does the BBC have to be so bloody formulaic about it? Everyone’s intelligence is being insulted.

As for storyline… er, let me see... The saintly Sarah Lancashire encourages her autistic son (Richard Fleeshman, formerly of Corrie) to be lead singer in a rock band – but only after he’s been rescued from nasty male bullies (who, obviously, in the twisted context of the BBC's La La Land, are too thick and insensitive to recognise autism).

Then, of course, in a scene of cheesy optimism, Sarah’s lad and his rock band enter a choral music competition (huh?!) – which they win.

Yes, that’s right. They beat Pearson’s choir to the top prize, after inexplicably getting the middle aged audience and judges literally dancing in the aisles! As if… Must be drugs.

Then there is the sex thang… all done Richard Curtis rom-com style. Flashing eyes, knowing smirks, the meeting in a trendy wine bar, tut-tutting by assorted old biddies on the periphery … you know the drill. BORING!

Early Doors sticks two fingers up to Britain's Smoking Ban Nazis

2009-02-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

It’s something to cheer, I suppose, that one of the precious few good shows commissioned by the BBC in recent years is back for a series of reruns.
Early Doors was always a brilliant, poetic, philosophical, character-driven sitcom.
I came home from work the other night, feeling knackered, and slightly down-hearted because, as everyone knows, there is never anything worth watching on telly on Tuesdays.
(EastEnders? I'd rather stick needles in my eyes. It is condescending twaddle about the working classes - clunkingly written in politically correct jargon beloved of middle class luvvies at the BBC.)
But Early Doors is quality. It's a gentle and slow-paced show set in a back street Northern English pub. It doesn't strain for laughs; it often makes you think profoundly about the absurdity of modern life and the lazy and corrupt characters you come across (such as greedy, bent police officers).
Old Tommy, who sits on his own, is my favourite character. His grimace perfectly sums up what I feel about contemporary British society ... utter weariness at the sheer stupidity of it all, occasional disgust, and a sure knowledge that life used to be better. Much better.
Meanwhile, Winnie the cleaner shows a sly wit, and Ken the landlord has much human warmth, masked by a gruff exterior. Though many of the characters are defective in many ways, collectively, you can't help but love 'em.
It is a show that benefits from perfect casting and writing .. .and you can't say that about many.
And watching it again as a repeat on BBC4 I was also seduced by the lovely smoky character of the Grapes pub.
Wreaths of curling ciggie smoke are part of the elegant beauty and the comforting atmosphere of the traditional British pub. When these programmes were made, the hated smoking ban in workplaces had not been introduced.
It made think again how very unfair that blanket ban was – and how much pleasure it has taken away from people.
The ban has also contributed in a big way to the huge wave of pub closures now under way in our country. That’s not good at all.
When a pub closes, you are not just losing a business but a focal point for the community.
Pubs are sacred to our memories. In each backstreet pub so many tender scenes have taken place down the decades: jokes have been told; tears shed; words of love spoken; baptisms, birthdays and weddings celebrated; and precious last cigarettes have been tenderly handed over to mates and loved ones.
To destroy all that with a total smoking ban on dubious health grounds was a hateful and sinister act by our tyrannical Labour Government.
To my mind, the smoking ban isn't even about health.
It's about freedom – which, actually, is much more important.
Because there is little point being healthy if you aren't allowed to be free.
Before the current "Ban It" madness infected our mainstream political culture, the only powerful people to be rabidly anti-smoking were the Nazis under Adolf Hitler.
They are the spiritual inspiration for the proscriptive anti-smoking martinets now infesting the UK Government and National Health Service.
It is strange that such a lovely and quintessentially British programme such as Early Doors should be such a powerful and eloquent reminder of just how beautiful and enjoyable smoking in pubs used to be.
Nearly all the show’s characters smoke. If a new series is to be made, then I suppose the Grapes will have to feature a wretched Smoke Hole in its yard, where the regulars will have to go and freeze their knackers off and get wet if they choose to spark up ... just like we have to do in real life.
A final thought ... three cheers to Coronation Street for not giving in the pressure from Britain's thin-lipped Smoke Ban Nazis to run "positive" stories showing the benefits of giving up the habit.

Are YOU working class and beautiful like old ITV … or Liberal-Fascist like the modern BBC?

2009-02-17T04:48:00.000-08:00

IT’S rather a shame that ITV is crumbling to dust and can’t even come up with good new ideas any more. Demons?! How derivative is it possible to be?
In the glory days of British television (the mid 1960s to the mid 1980s) ITV was more than a telly channel … it was a badge of national cultural identity.
In those days, you were either an ITV person (lively, quick-witted, working class, and rather beautiful) or you were a BBC person (stuffy, bourgeois, Pooterish and humourless).
Nowadays, of course, television is much expanded and yet, paradoxically, it’s not nearly such a potent force culturally.
But suppose for a minute we Brits still identified ourselves by our choice of TV network; then I guess an ITV Person would now be nervous, short of money, insecure, bereft of ideas.
And a BBC Person would be a Liberal-Fascist, hideously corporatist and obsessed with racial issues and feminism.
So I guess ITV still represents the majority of British people … just about!
Meanwhile, one gem of quality writing and character-driven humour survives on ITV, thrives even … and that is Coronation Street.
Last night’s episode saw Becky within five minutes end her engagement to thick-as-a-plank Jason Grimshaw, get engaged and move in with Steve McDonald, and have a blazing row with Steve’s ex, Michelle.
We also saw Steve have a bust-up with both his mam and Eileen.
It was entertaining stuff and as ever there was a neat philosophical contrast between all the passion going on … and Roy and Hayley Cropper, just a few feet away in the Rovers, together the epitome of buttoned up propriety and pained humanity.
And that’s before you consider that Roy is a pathological misfit – and Hayley a transsexual.
The actor who plays Ken Barlow, original cast member William Roache, is now on leave as he grieves for the death of his wife.
I hope the weeks ahead go as well as can be expected for William, and that soon he is back at work to continue Ken’s exquisite illicit romance with the narrowboat-dwelling siren played by Stephanie Beacham.

Friendship at first sight

2009-02-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

WELL, I hope you and yours had a good Valentine’s Day and evening.
And if you are single, then I hope all the slushiness, sentimentality and the cheesy concentration on couples shown by restaurants and shops didn’t annoy you too much.
It is good to talk of love, and to write about it too. The subject has, after all, enthralled poets and philosophers since the earliest days of humanity.
I wrote a poem for my beloved 'Posh Boots' for Valentine’s Day and placed it in a beautiful Art Deco repro frame as a present for her.
She loved it, of course. Who wouldn’t be delighted to have a poem written especially for you?
And she deserves to have such verses written for her. We love each other; it’s as simple and as complicated as that.
But don’t worry, I am not going to replicate my poem for Posh Boots here; it’s too personal.
Today, in any case, I don’t intend to linger on the subject of love because, for many people in these days of record numbers of single people, love is absent … or painful.
Hardly any of us finds an ideal partner we truly love for the full run of a life-long relationship.
Some of us go for years without a partner, without love, and then find it quite late in life.
Others find love, enjoy it for a few years, and then lose it.
Welcome to life in our fallen world; it was never meant to be easy.
But today, I want to focus on friendship rather more than what we normally understand as love.
Love of the emotional, sexual variety is intense and, at times, all-consuming. Friendship is cooler yet every bit as important and is, actually, itself a form of love.
Who amongst us hasn’t told our friends that we love them?
Never mind that we might be p***ed as farts at the time. In Vino Veritas – in wine there is truth.
There is a fascinating poem by Robert Graves called Friendship at First Sight. That title raises the possibility of friendships that are formed magically at the first meeting or sight of someone.
Here’s what Graves wrote ...
'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.
But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.
Now, I think it is great, absolutely thrilling, to think that love at first sight happens, as many people who have experienced it will attest.
But I think it equally stunning that friendship at first sight can occur.
I’ve not known the privilege of experiencing love at first sight. Love needs a chance to grow … in my heart anyway.
But I think I have, on several occasions throughout my life, experienced friendship at first sight.
And when I think of each of those instances, though they be many years apart from each other, I know bonds were made that will last a lifetime.
How comforting it is to know, when the world is undergoing massive change and considerable distress that something as brilliant and valuable as friendship at first sight can happen. It makes you feel good about being human.
And for all the singletons around in this post-Valentine’s Day period, don’t forget that love, while it rarely comes at first sight, is still in plentiful supply. It may well be just around the corner for you. I hope it is.

Paris Hilton's cackfest / pouting on Sky News

2009-02-11T07:09:00.000-08:00

I’M not remotely interested in anything Paris Hilton says or does. Not many people I know are.
And inane, televised chatter from young British people competing to be her best friend is my idea of utter hideousness and pointlessness combined.
Now, I know only too well just how shallow and thick young Britons can be – they have a demented addiction to trashy celebrity and they’ve suffered from p***poor education in our awful state schools.
So perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that some young folk actually volunteered to take part in Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend (ITV2).
This takes reality TV to moronic new lows. Paris sets sad little tests for her wannabe buddies and they, being daft and therefore prone to manipulation and exploitation, are only too ready to jump through hoops.
The cynical TV executives who commissioned this pathetic cackfest of a show should hang their heads in shame.
One by one Paris’ putative pals are eliminated – or walk out, feeling weary and convinced they have made a Big Mistake (which they have, all of them).
I forced myself to watch a slice of it last night (Tuesday 10 February). Hilton – the blonde bubblehead of an heiress who recently had the brass neck to ask Paul McCartney if she could duet with him – sits on a sort of throne while the contestants emote incoherently and bitch about one another … “you’re not genuine!” seems to be the most common charge they put to each other.
Talking of blonde vacuity, I am amazed at the lip-glossed, excitable glamour that the female presenters on Sky News try, and usually fail, to project.
They’re all at it, pouting away like billy-ho, but Anna Botting is the worse offender – with her silly Kathy Kirby-style glittery lipgloss.
It's as if they've all attended the same puckering up classes as queen pouter Kay Burley.
And last night (Tuesday 10 February) there was a new (to me) face up there, a bird who looked like a blonde version of that pneumatic little strumpet Rosie Webster on Coronation Street. All this glamour seems inappropriate on a news channel with serious pretensions. Sky News would be better advised recruiting hefty, plain lasses to read the news, as the BBC News channel does in the main.
It doesn’t matter if the presenters don’t have much in the way of personality, eloquence or brains. We’ve come to accept that.
But as long as they can read the autocue without seeming to peer through fog, and they can ask some half-decent questions of weary politicians / confused foreigners etc, that’ll do us.

Welcome to the Cretin Land that is British TV

2009-02-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

MAYBE I’m just a jaded old fart, but I find almost everything I see on telly in this supposedly fabulous, digital age, not just boring but profoundly, worryingly depressing.
The general output across the UK freeview channels (the only ones I can be arsed to receive) convinces me that both the content providers of TV, and the viewers, are just so very thick, and their behaviour juvenile and repetitive.
The only programmes I actually look forward to watching these days are Coronation Street, Scrubs, and Harry Hill’s TV Burp. Perhaps I should add that I thought the Rab C Nesbit Crimbo special was also a blast - as indeed was an old repeat of the subversively philosophical Scottish sitcom which I saw just the other night.
Everything else is… shite, frankly.
Let’s examine the evidence … endless cops and docs pap (YES, including Whitechapel) … hysterical karaoke contests such as the Eurovision confection currently under way … the campfest Dancing on Ice … a ridiculous Pimp My Ride show featuring that idiot maracas merchant, Bez, from the Happy Mondays … and the absolute moron-fodder that is Hollyoaks.
Then there was something I watched about a Scrapheap Challenge which featured middle-aged men behaving like excitable schoolboy nerds ... and the return of Jonathan Ross' chat show with him greasing up shamlelessly to Tom Cruise (wot, no questions about Scientology?!) before asking the actor whether he farted in bed with his wife.
Modern telly, eh? Garbage piled upon garbage.
I was going to say that at least through January we’ve had a rest from seeing those lip-glossed bimbos Girls Aloud prancing around like sex industry workers as they did all over the Christmas period, but then again I’m sure while channel-hopping the other day up they popped again … or maybe it was just a bad dream.
Can anyone remember a single Girls Aloud song? The Women’s Liberation Movement struggled in vain and punk rock was futile if these cheap, tacky, groin-thrusting airheads are considered good.
Contemporary TV lacks the following qualities: good writing; and a different take on life other than that defined by our ailing pop music industry, tired old sex jokes, and the dead hand of a reality TV that's packed with celebrity-lite no-marks.
In future postings I will, of course, continue to have my say on the monstrous mess that is the TV industry, but I shall also be focusing on other weak spots in the culture of our country (Britain) and that of the wider, crumbling, degenerate West.
Keep the faith,
Sam.

All those mediocrities gathered in one place…

2008-10-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

THE foul-mouthed gorillas missing from the National TV Awards (ITV1, 29 October) were, of course, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand.
But with or without those two smirking, overgrown, overpaid schoolboys, the event was always going to be a dismal letdown.
The programme’s slogan was “all the glamour, all the stars, all the action”.
“All the faces you’re bored rigid with” more like, as cameras panned over no-marks from The Bill, Hollyoaks (officially, the world’s worst soap opera), Strictly Spandex, and Britain’s Got Crap Singers.
David Tennant won a gong again, but he decided not to turn-up to this annual tack-fest…which shows impeccable taste on his part.
Instead, he was busy doing real work (well, “real work” in actors’ terms) at a theatre.
But he was interviewed live, during a break from treading the boards as Hamlet, to announce he’d be stepping down as Doctor Who after next year’s shows were in the can.
A frisson on indifference ran through the audience…
Elsewhere in the show, a succession of American “stars” I’d never heard of sashayed on to announce the winners, including some ditzy bird from Desperate Housewives.
As for Paris Hilton? Why, why, why?!
EastEnders won an award again – presumably for putting middle class syntax into the gobs of Working Claarse Cockerney Characters from Central Casting.
Then Simon Cowell got a prize for force-feeding our country and other unfortunate nations his dreadful “talent” shows that involve public humiliation of people who are too stupid to know they are being exploited.
Thanks heavens, now that I’m reviewing television again, that I have an en-suite vomitorium in my living room.

I HAVE, of course, enjoyed seeing BBC executives squirm over the puerile and offensive broadcast by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.
Having read a transcript of the broadcast I was disgusted by the nastiness of it – and the arrogance of BBC “entertainers” who think there is no limit to how cruel, tasteless and cynical they can be.
At least Brand had the decency to resign.
It remains to be seen what happens to Ross. For the moment he’s suspended. So there will be no chat show from him on BBC television this weekend – which is no great loss.
But if I was a BBC boss I’d sack Ross – even though it might cost me millions of pounds in licence-payers’ cash to rip up his contract.
If a high price has to be paid for a return to decency – so be it.
And if the bloated, arrogant fools who run the BBC get a lesson in humility as part of this process then that will have come not a moment too soon.

Television – a terrible waste of creative energy

2008-10-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

I’m planning to be mightily bored on Wednesday night … as I watch the National TV Awards on ITV1.
Most years I watch this drivel – and it reminds me how right I’ve been over the years to express the view that TV is a shallow medium which favours mediocrity and insincere sentiment.
In the days when I worked as TV critic for the old Oracle Teletext service, I used to go to the season launches of the various networks and just sneer at everything.
Occasionally, I’d ask debunking questions…such as one I remember puttig to Selina Scott at the ill-starred launch of British Satellite Broadcasting in the late 1980s.
After her “triumph” on BBC1’s breakfast show, simpering Selina had been chosen to front a new BSB channel devoted to “people who enjoy living”.
When the time came for questions from the media I chipped in with this: “Surely, if people really are interested in living, then the last thing they should be doing is sitting on their arses watching television.”
Bloody hell, you’d think I’d just farted in the room. How dare anyone question the validity of a TV programme!
But when it comes to covering telly, print journalists (apart from a few heroes) tend to be extra-fawning, especially the hagiographers of the women’s magazines.
I’m afraid I earned quite a reputation as the man who always asked awkward questions – and the man who wasn’t impressed by showbiz fluffheads.
So shocking was my reputation for asking hostile questions that I remember one soppy bird – who these days writes crap about soap operas for the Daily Mail – opining in an article that the “man from the Oracle asked his predictable question”. Well, at least she was being quite funny for once.
Since my days as Oracle’s TV critic, television has expanded enormously, which means we now have endlessly repeated US moron-fodder such as Friends and various other imports on Freeview and the Sky channels.
And on the main channels, awful cookery shows and karaoke cack such as the X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Britannia High – plus all those preposterous shows with hopeless hoofers, ice-skaters and Andrew Lloyd-Webber.
If anything, the “talent”-base of TV presenters and comedians is now rock bottom. Alan Carr, Russell Brand?! Laugh? I thought I’d never start…
Don’t even get me started on Dale Winton and his Hole in the Wall.
Apart from the excellent and poetic sitcom Early Doors, Harry Hill’s TV Burp, and a few of the Catherine Tate shows (though even some of them are patchy), British TV has produced precious little to be proud about over the past 20 years.
Virtually the whole industry is a sinful waste of creative energy – so I’m very happy to see it failing so badly, with ratings plummeting.
Why on earth British TV thinks it is worthy of receiving awards is a mystery to me.

IN MY new incarnation in this blog, I shall be turning my gaze on lots of aspects of life – not just the crock of excrement that is contemporary telly.
Newspapers are also going down the pan.
I picked up The Independent the other day. It is supposed to be an intelligent and serious newspaper, but hasn’t been that for quite a while.
On page 27, masquerading as world news, was an article about Smurfs, those blue-faced Belgian comic book characters that some of you might just about remember. Apparently, Smurfs were created 50 years ago. That was the “peg” for a “news” story. Pathetic.
With each page I turned the paper got worse. In the “Independent Life” section was an illustrated guide to “the ten best egg cups”, complete with information about where you can buy them …if you’ve got up to £15.99 to waste on buying one egg cup, such as the “SuckUK” one (sic!) … and if your boring enough to worry if your egg cups are quite cutting edge enough.
So often when I read today’s newspapers the SFW (so f***ing what!) factor clicks in almost instantly.
Till next time, folks… keep it real and keep the faith!
And remember, all those years when I was away, I never forgot about you.
XXX Sam.

Sex education for everybody – even Scouts

2008-10-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

OVER the past 30 years or so there has been an unparalleled growth in sex education of the young.
These days even the Scouts are getting in on the gig.
And now our mad Government is planning sex lessons in schools in England for kids as young as five.
Already, generations have grown into “maturity” having had lessons in the horribly distorted version of the birds and the bees doled out by hard-faced, ideological liberals.
Hundreds of thousands of people are already making a living out of sex and sexuality advice and services, one way or another.
Abortion clinics are just about our country’s only growth sector, for instance.
But is the average Wayne and Waynetta any better off after all these years of State-sponsored values-free sex education?
Our own observation and experience would suggest not – because every day we see families break up.
Every day adults take a very selfish attitude about sex; it’s all about them and their pleasure.
And every day people feel they are on their own as inadequate players in a big sexual game where the old rules are off and they are bombarded by images of the sexually attractive.
Plus, because of modern sex education, the prevailing view of sex is a confused conflation of “rights”, freedom to choose, and protection against contagion.
That’s all wrong. For humans, sex must always be about more than the “freedom” to act upon instincts and achieve gratification. That might be all right for animals, but we humans are supposed to be superior beings with moral consciences.
The fact is that we would have all been better off if we had stuck to what was the traditional teaching about sex in these islands – namely that the only morally proper sexual intercourse that can take place is between a man and a woman within wedlock.
That sort of traditional relationship is pro-creational in a very good way, because it offers the possibility of children who can grow up with the care of a family around them.
The above is the ideal obviously. Most of us will from time to time, even most of the time, fall short of the standard.
That is to be expected, but at least we ought to know what the standard is and aim for it: otherwise we are floundering.
And there will be those who are gay and will want to form same sex relationships, for companionship or something more passionate. For some, of course, that’s always going to be tricky area, despite what the liberal sexuality preachers and popular soap operas might have us believe.
We can be clear on two things: every human being (male, female, gay and straight) is of equal worth and dignity and should be accorded respect.
What each of us does with our sexuality is a matter for our conscience. Some of us may not be able to keep to the ideal standard expected.
In that respect, we may want to “offer up” such a difficulty, or carry the cross of it on through life like any other difficulty.
We all seem to want choices but many of us seem to flunk the really important ones.