Untitled Document

Laughing at the present/Thinking about the future

DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH ARCHIVE

'To interview' as a reflexive verb

With more heads tumbling into the basket after Auntie Beeb's rather silly dalliance with Republicanism, it was painfully amusing to watch the BBC interviewing itself at the weekend.

It's not a good career move to call the Monarch a drama Queen, and afterwards pretend it was really all an unfortunate mistake. Liz's view is much simpler: no mistake on my part, squire - over to you.

The Beeb's supplier - RDF - lost its chief creative officer Stephen Lambert, while BBC1's controller Peter Fincham tendered his resignation to the next man in line Mark Thompson.

Onto Newsnight came Jana Bennett the BBC's Head of Vision, who hadn't shown a great deal of it to date. Newsnight's anchorlady was at her throat within seconds: "Well, why not?" and "But surely you must have known....". After a brief struggle, Bennett went glub-glub and then sank without trace. It will be difficult for her to get away from Fincham's charge that she knew about the false editing pretty much from the off.

Meanwhile, the attempts of both her and Mark Thompson to position themselves high above all this along with the other Greek Gods is the stuff of which Don't Make me Laugh is made. Expect further casualties after the next Board Meeting.

'We're doing this for your own good'

Having restricted my outgoing newsletter to ten recipients per time 'to combat spam', The Orange Axis of Evil now has another stunt. They've decided (it seems) to give Hotmail a hard time, so of late I've started to get this as a returned mail 'reason' note from hotmail chums:

'A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints
concerning mail coming from that IP address. We recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP)'

For the record, my ISP is oneandone.com, a highly reputable outfit that has been taking European market share off Wanadon't. Wanadoo know I'm using oneandone, because they insist on staying in control of all the virtual switch-gear. And they've gone out of their way to make my life a misery ever since.

But of course, it's all in a good cause: obliterating spam that Wanadoo allow to stream through their own systems day in, day out.

In the picture

Culture Secretary James Purnell's run-in with the media seems a long, long time ago now. While a bit of a non-event, it was both disturbing and funny. Disturbing because you just know that Purnell and his fixers wanted it to look like he'd arrived on time (he wasn't just a bit late, by the way - most folks had pushed off when he eventually turned up) and highly amusing on account of the yes-and-no-we're-not-sure Clinton-style wriggling that went on.

In the old days, of course, the game involved air-brushing people out of photos; but one of the boons of pc editing is that one can now change the past more positively - unless you're crap at retouching, in which case you wind up with a grinning blur and everyone laughs.

Just for the record, if Purnell's chaps didn't want to fake it, why did they digitally insert the little chap? If he didn't agree to this happening, why did the hospital say the Minister had agreed to being 'merged'? How many ways are there to merge oneself with a shot without, as it were, being in it? And if there was never any doubt as to the game plan, why did Jimmy's spinner lady and the hospital disagree so radically as to what had been agreed -as in, 'yes he did/no he didn't'? Last but not least, why did it take media discovery to persuade JP that it had all been a terrible mistake - as, on his own admission, he'd already seen the shot that appeared in the press?

It would be fun, I think, to get a barrister and a couple of judges to front up a Channel Fourish series called Porkies or something similar, and see if the 'defendants' in this sort of fiasco would ever stand a chance of acquittal. I only mention this idea because (as we all know only too well) Mr Purnell has been the scion of telly fakery in recent weeks.

'I've got nothing against your leg...'

When a plane crashes and wipes out 89 people, one shouldn't laugh. But when the airlines get into 'media-handling' the whole thing afterwards, laughing is obligatory.

The Bangkok Post reports that the pilot in the Phuket air disaster, Arief Mulyadi, 'appeared to attempt a landing, only to change his mind when the plane was about 100 metres from the runway. According to witnesses, the 25-year-old McDonnell Douglas MD-82 jet owned by no-frills airline One-Two-Go appeared to rise slightly before crashing into the ground, skidding, breaking in half and bursting into flames.'

Just to log the key points here, Arief the Aviateur was flying a McDonell Douglas made a quarter century ago and changed his mind a hundred fucking metres from the runway surface. The Post went on to record:

'The dead pilot worked for two defunct Indonesian airlines before joining the budget carrier, according to reports from Jakarta.'

Call me old-fashioned an' all, but if you work for defunct airlines when you're dead, it doesn't exactly put you up there on the shortlist for the next shuttle captain. However, One-Two-Bang Chairman Kajit Hapanont put minds at rest when he told a news conference that

"He was not hot-headed by character and had plenty of aviation experience under his belt ... the pilot who flew the doomed aircraft was one of our best. He was very experienced, patient and very decisive".

Crikey, he was one of their top leather-necks. Remind me not to board a flight with one of their trainees at the controls. Still, Mr Haponont makes a fair point in his description of the ex-pilot: he had a vast experience of working for airlines that went bust, and his decisive patience led him to try and pull out of the landing a split second before rubber hit tarmac. Some patience - some decision. This guy had real cojones.

As Arief came in to land, by the way, it cannot have escaped his attention that outside the cockpit, a monsoon was washing his craft horizontally, on account of there being a 30 mph wind directly across its path. Mr Haponont thus felt it necessary to dismiss passenger claims of foolhardiness as 'unreasonable'. Could be, Kajit - could be. Could also be that your no-frills airline also didn't want to use valuable gas diverting. But either way, here's how the Post ended the piece:

'The air traffic controller on duty at Phuket airport at the time of the crash, who talked the pilot down, has been sent to Bhumibol Aeronautical Hospital to be tested to see if he is mentally fit to continue duty, said Kamthorn Sirikorn, deputy director of the Thailand's Aeronautical Department. There was no suggestion the controller did anything wrong, it was merely routine, he added.'

If any reader is not by this point laughing, you have my undying admiration. Less amusing is The Times' exclusive report showing that Air traffic controllers said Arief Mulyadi, had ignored air traffic control warnings of a wind shear, and decided to land the plane anyway.

(10.10.07)

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Gee, Ollie....

Longest question in political memory goes to BBC24 roving bloke at the recent Conservative conference, who asked Oliver Letwin:

"I mean, surely, aren't, you know....the other parties simply going to say - as you'd expect, and I'm sure they will....sort of at least...that is, suggest as it were that you have now been pushed into inventing policies on the hoof...that you've, you know, got to rush them all out this week and voters will be confused and you - that is the Conservative Party I mean, not you personally - will be stuck with policies that are not really thought-through and your MPs aren't really behind them - I mean, that's a real problem for you isn't it?"

"No" answered Letwin.

I like Oliver Letwin - bit smug, but very funny when he feels like it. I am bound to observe, however, that no more people in Britain believed him than swallowed the Brownshirt's 'I did the difficult thing' spin on his decision not to take a decision and thus not have an election that he never took the decision that he had never wanted anyway.

'We're doing this for your own good'

'A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints
concerning mail coming from that IP address. We recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP)'

But of course, it's all in a good cause: obliterating spam that Wanadoo allow to stream through their own systems day in, day out. (14.10.07)

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'Oh Cecilia, you're breaking my heart...'

On being Sarkostic

Wonderful piece of inept spin from an Elysee Palace drone last week: "Well, yes, Nicolas had known for over a year that Cecilia wanted a divorce....but he was just too heartbroken to tell anyone about it".

And of course, also wanted to be President of France, the pursuit of which office is not entirely helped by being a public cuckold.

I mean, forget born yesterday - do they think we've all had frontal lobotomies?

Surprise, surprise - the leftie Daily Liberation broke the story, overflowing with predictable humbug, while until today Government loudhailer Le Figaro dismissed the whole thing as 'rumours'.

Biggest rumour of all is that Mme Sarkozy's adman former lover works for Publicis, top Government agency based a mere spit and throw from the Elysee Palace, by the Arc de Triomphe. I think Bertrand Siguier has the answer to this riddle, but he remains tight-lipped.

Trouser-snake bites back

Already diagnosed as suffering from Poets Syndrome (Permanent One-Eyed Trouser Snakiness) Prime Minister Gordon Brown attempted to fill the Commons with poison at a recnt PM's Question Time.

Resorting to PMQ cliche Number 1(a), the Monocular One said he would 'take no advice from' etc etc about etc etc. Then, grasping the opportunity to be nice with both feet, the Brownshirt paid a pretty unpleasantly ironic tribute to Ming-a-ling (in order to make Vince Cable feel uncomfortable) followed by a 'joke' about Libdem leadership contests which was both predictable in content, and fluffed in its delivery.

For the last week, 'spin-free' New Labour had been trailing this session as Gordon on top form. If this is Brown at his best, then God help us all. He looked uncomfortable throughout - especially on the issuesof MRSA and the 'new' EU constitutional treaty.

A Rock and a Hard Place

Back among the business models, Northern Rockers went before a Parliamentary Enquiry earlier this week and once more put forward the argument (and I quote) "The model was a very good model...but nobody could've foreseen the special circumstances that culminated in us having a problem...."

What followed was a public disembowellmemt. Clearly, one enquiry member pointed out, it was a pretty awful model: do you call lending to bad risks a good model? If nobody could've foreseen it, asked another, how come several Parliamentary committees have been discussing the possibility for the last eight months? How can you call the first run on a bank for 200 years 'a problem'? enquired a third.

The Board members have all tendered their resignations. Don't be surprised if Flash Branson accepts them gleefully.

Hutton Run

In all my many years of watching politicos on the telly, I cannot think of another occasion quite like the Andrew Marr interview with Industry Secretary John Hutton recently. It was the most perfectly-honed performance by Huttontot, in that he got through the whole thing without answering a single question and without saying anything about the substance of the Vision he had been brought before Superbrain to talk about. There was an ironically weary 'Thank you Minister' at the end of the session, at which Hutton beamed and replied 'Not at all'. Bird and Fortune eat your hearts out.

One sensed that Hutton had been briefed along the lines of avoiding anything that involved the 'Hand on Heart' enquiry, as this has become a red flag during press conferences and telly chats: it's the questioner's way of observing 'Are you 'avin' a larf or wot?' As soon as the question is aimed now, the audience thinks 'He's lying'. But short of Marr asking 'Minister, can you honestly say, hand on heart, that that tie suits you?', Hutton gave him zero opportunities.

The Darling Nerd at Bay

The spin has already begun in an attempt to persuade an increasingly wary public that although Alistair Darling might be the most boring man on the planet, he does know his financial onions - really though, you'd be surprised etc etc.

So it was with an enormous sense of relief that I went to bed last Thursday carrying the knowledge that our Chancellor has a mortgage with Northern Rock. To be fair, you can either see that as shrewd (they go bust, bye-bye mortgage) or - how can I put it? - a bit provincial, boring and not that clever - given the Rocky's high interest rates are partially funded by mugs who take out heavy-fleece mortgages with them.

So what's it to be then, Darling watchers: shrewd or dumb? To help you a bit, a little inside goss you might find amusing. Allegedly, Ali Dur Dur went into a bit of a spin when informed of Northern Rock's little predicament. This was (to be precise) about twenty four hours before lots of poor folks began queuing up outside the Skegness Rock branches. The one-eyed trouser snake had been tipped off by his mole on the BoE committee - viz, that The Bank That Likes To Say Yes Please had not included the eventually of trade lenders asking for their money back....and that there might be requests made of the Old Lady involving caps, hands and so forth. But forgetting that he was no longer our Greatest Ever Chancellor, the Brownshirt omitted to pass on the tip.

Anyway, on being brought into the loop, Alistair was overheard to ask a Treasury apparatchik, "And what do you normally do when this happens?"

Substantial equivalence

Most polite Parliamentary question of recent weeks goes to the Tory MP who asked Dave Millipede why he was arguing in favour of a proposed EU constitution that was (and I quote) "of substantial equivalance to the one rejected by two founder members of the Union eighteen months ago".

'Substantial equivalance' is a terrific phrase which I shall be using a lot from now on. In some form of context, it means 'pretty much the same as'. The only difference this time around is that we will not, as such, be able to vote on it, chiefly because the substantially equivalent proposal is so substantially better than the last one, I mean - what would be the point?

Exactly.

(20 - 30.10.07)

There's Osbourne every minute

As a kid I used to watch wrestling on Saturday afternoons when United weren't at home. It was commentated with great seriousness and analytical insight by a Canadian bloke called Kent Walton, and the whole thing was fixed from start to finish. Last week Sharon Osbourne did the X-Factor equivalent of that bit where the wrestlers used to bounce off all four ropes one after the other, shake their heads to affect a dazed state, and then collapse in the manner of James Cagney. The only difference in the contemporary version is that compared to Sharon, Giant Haystacks was running Laurence Olivier close for all major drama awards.

I don't think Mrs Osbourne is a very nice person, but in this talent-show-cum-sit-com she plays good mummy person to Simon Cowell's unadulterated arsehole. While Cowell's role merely involves being himself, Sharon struggles with anything beyond a smile; so her 'right that's it I'm outta here' flounce had all the authority of a Shi-ite copper in Baghdad.

Like Louis last year, she will of course be back. Then Simon will fire himself, and the other two will beg him to return, then all the contestants will admit they're crap, and refuse to appear. At which point, long overdue, this silly show will have run out of gas and be relegated to Thursday mornings at 10.30.

(31.10.07)