MEDIA REVIEW/NOT BORN YESTERDAY

Mediocrity

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1st January 2009

HATE IT!

I've been meaning to have a go at the porno-confession magazine sector for a while, but had been waiting - until now - for the right combination of disgusting and unintentionally hilarious content. There is, after all, little more tedious than a humourless and censorious review. So thank God then for Love it!

It's impossible to tell without the use of a microscope from this publication which arid mind is responsible for it, but a quick journey into Google soon reveals that the Dirty Digger is behind the best example of ocean-going shit for some considerable time. Rather than carry on in this vein, it would probably be best if let the articles in Love it! drivel for themselves.

My Baby survived an abortion

My daughter killed my lover and wanted to eat him

My celeb lovers were more bore than phwoar

I'm a naked cleaner looking for love

My Dad gets wanked off in Soho

I had my saddlebags sucked off

(One of these is false: the choice is yours)

If you fancy a bit of cod pyschology, then I'm sure it won't have escaped your attention that every one of these features begins with a first-person pronoun. Meeeeeeeemememeemememememeemeeeeeeee.

The editor's contribution (apart from bearing the quite ridiculous name of Karen Pasquali-Jones) was to point out that since giving birth to her child she was no longer able to drink non-stop and is thus 'not made for binge drinking any more'. Well dearie, you sure as Hell weren't made for journalism as we know it.

Do you know who Hannah Tointon is? Lindsay Lohan? Stuart Pilkington? Have you been abused by your sister-in-law? Had to choose between that 'sick' sister and your husband? Had affairs to make your marriage stronger? Read sixty-five pages of uneasily mixed voyeurism, vapid prattle and syrupy sentimentalism about moving past imprisonment in that basement and endless dead womb-babies? Nope, me neither - and making allowance for the fact that I'm a bloke, a quick check among female mates produced the same result.

The astrology from Fiona Graham led the pack. Pisces: 'A relative shows you genuine regard'. Cancer: 'Someone makes you feel great'. Leo: 'A steamy Christmas exchange reveals a lot'. Capricorn: 'Intriguing secrets are revealed'. Taurus: 'Unexpected seasonal celebrations'. Virgo: 'Someone's ready for romance'. Aquarius: 'Someone's moody side will be a revelation'. I mean, how does she do it? Uncanny.

Saving the best for last, it seems Coleen Rooney is missing Wayne. This has to be the outright winner of nby's vomit-making Sickly Molasses of the Year award. Apparently, the outstandingly attractive Wayne Potato has been telling Coll that 'her bum looks big in tracksuits', while her two million quid contract with Asda has come to an end. Bless.

Allegedly, this sort of CJD writing has earned the soubriquet of being our 'real life' magazine genre. It's real in the sense of the Democratic Republic of the Congo being democratic. It's real in the sense of real ersatz. But mainly, it's real sad.

REMAKES ARE US

Offered up on New Years Day afternoon by BBC2 was a remake of The Alamo.

There are umpteen reasons for remakes of classic movies (although the two most common are lazy money and lack of ideas) but perhaps there should also be a list of must-haves for producing them:

1. Have something new to say

2. Find something false and/or incompetent about the original

3. Have bigger stars and a better director.

The remake of The Alamo (2004) broke all of these rules. It was no less wooden and uninformative than the original, the writing was as bad - and the direction somehow managed to underperform that of John Wayne in the 1960 original. Worst of all, it lacked the star quality of Wayne himself, the incomparable Richard Widmark and the engimatic Laurence Harvey.

Perhaps the most ecentric casting decision in the history of film was made in awarding the role of Sam Houston to Dennis Quaid. Houston had previously been played by almost everyone from Edward G. Robinson to James Mason and Sam Elliot. Even Sam Houston himself played himself. In this Alamo version, Quaid plays Houston like Madonna doing Joe Domaggio.

3rd December 2008

QUEASY VIRUS

Kristin Scott-Thomas (centre) as Head Witch

The largely English brat-pack which took the world by storm in the early 1990s holds some sentimental value for me, chiefly because their biggest and best production Four Weddings & A Funeral has always been 'our film' for Mrs Ward and me. We got together when it was first released, went to see it on an early date, and have spent more than one wedding anniversary watching it. But unlike our marriage, their early promise has not been fulfilled: as the years went on, more and more of the pack's output has made me think 'Doing this one for the money then' - or even worse, 'Are they taking the piss or what?' Nothing evoked this last response more than the execrable Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason, or indeed the not much better Love Actually. By 2005, it seemed to me that our most lauded young film actors were in the employ of the English Tourist Board, their job being to depict the UK as a cute place either topped with Christmas snow or soaked in Summer honeysuckle.

Kristin Scott-Thomas has been a minor part in all this, and remains one of my favourite actresses: her role as the unknown admirer of Hugh Grant (and if I admired him, I'd keep quiet about it too) in Four Weddings was so beautifully played, I wanted to sweep her off somewhere. Indeed, only a brand-new bride of my own stopped me from doing so.

So it's a double-sadness for your correspondent to admit that Easy Virtue is a stinker, and Ms Scott-Thomas's performance as a dried-up menopausal witch is a cliche wrapped in a fortune-cookie truism lost somewhere in a Stately Home of Ye Olde Englande. This movie is so bad, a credible appearance as the label on a thick-cut marmalade jar would be beyond it.

The film's other star is Colin Firth, an actor whose legendary thighs have brought him about as far as he's ever likely to go - if, that is, he keeps on playing tediously understated and inhibited Brit blokes. If I see Mr Firth in one more film with him as the dark horse uttering clipped aphorisms through thinly stretched lips, I shall simply have to back the bugger at Chepstow.

That's the sort of line Coward might have drawled, and it would be too easy to blame poor old Noel's original script: but his 1924 stage play was so much more relevant to the Great War's 'lost generation' than this film is to ours. The classic Cowardesque theme - that upper class genes and new money rarely make for a happy liaison - took on a delicious subtlety with the then quite novel idea of rich aristocrats down on their luck. To make it interesting in 2008 would require the sort of direction and script of which few are capable.

Director and screenplay writer Stephan Elliott is one of the many who are incapable. Before reading the credits, I wondered why visually tricksy scene-openers, a plodding script, and engaging elements like the word 'plonker' (in 1928?) were of a piece. But then I saw Elliott's name and all became clear. His direction and script are an abject lesson in how to turn the timeless into the tiresome. Open on disdainful butler played by BT adstar, jump-cut via wine glass reflection and telescope lens image to sound of pheasant-gun blast as BMW door shuts. At times, the movie feels like a wannabe commercials director putting together a reel of his best continuity moments.

The other main attraction in Easy Virtue (apart from Lord Firthfully's tight thighs and upper lips) is Larita, the rumoured-to-be appalling multiply-married colonial harpie played with some skill and much more forebearance by Jessica Biel. Ms Biel is a former model and soap star, one of her more dubious credits being that she starred in the remake of The Texas Chain-Saw Massacre. Much as I would love to go along with the script and most of the cast in depicting Jessica/Larita as a talentless gold-digger, the truth is that she struggles with the leaden remake of Easy Virtue better than most. Also she has great cheekbones and an exquisite nose.

Our most promising Nineties actor-bulge needs very badly to start doing something brave and worthwhile. Grant, Laurie, Scott-Thomas, Firth and Partners may be rolling in it these days, but actors do not live on by bread alone: the Class of '92 has arrived at the Beatles Get Back moment, and - like Sinatra in 1952 - they are a From Here to Eternity short of immortality. Let us hope that, like Fabulous Frank, they find it.

23rd November 2008

INDEPENDENT'S DAY

When I read in the papers last week that The Independent was firing half its staff, my immediate reaction was 'Not before time - let's hope it's the right half'. But before filing such a view, I thought I'd sample another copy.

I have a soft spot for the Indie, if for no other reason than at the start of my second career, they were the first outfit to commission a piece from me. It was about the importance of forgetting, and got into the Mag section. Within a month they'd fired the commissioner. While this perhaps says as much about me as it does about them, ever afterwards I harboured doubts about their judgement. Each visit to the paper since has been a bigger and bigger disappointment.

Last Sunday's edition was awful. Not a scoop in sight, dreadful art direction, devoid of humour and lower on interest than LloydsTSB. I can only hope that this is a scorched earth policy by the departing staff, but somehow I doubt it. Employing somebody with special needs to edit and sub the news pages is a laudable idea, but the person concerned should be given the Letters page to think about instead. Or perhaps the Property section.

What puts the IoS on the way back towards curate's egg status is - as ever - the quality of the Opinion columnists. Alan Watkins remains a delight to read and worthy of the soubriquet 'correspondent'. Nine times out of ten, he is right - but devoid of hubris. This is the tricky titfer political sages must wear, and Watkins sports his like a timelessly dapper professional tipster.

But the edition was saved by a remote contributor - Sarah Sands, the Ed-in-chief of that continuing make-over process, The Reader's Digest. Reader's Digest is one of those brands ineluctably associated with junk mail and low-brow thinking - a bit like Butlins and Woolworths in that one wonders what on earth to do with it. Having been to its site, I'd say Ms Sands is making a good fist of it, but should her job ever disappear she will get employment immediately once sanity returns to the business of social engineering.

Her piece last Sunday was a model of restraint, insight, wisdom, common sense and excellent writing. But when the IoS needs a 'foreigner' to lift its edition, then times are very bad indeed.

20th November 2008

CASH CROPPERS

Wally....heavyweight lightweight

One of the recurring horrors of having worked in the media is seeing folks onscreen who - despite being billed as gurus - you just know are unmitigated plonkers. Before Gregg Wallace gets on the blower, I must make clear that this observation doesn't apply to him: I've never met the bloke. He shows every sign of being a complete plonker, but I couldn't possibly comment. Oh alright then, I'll comment to the extent of saying he knows about as much about supermarket marketing strategy as my standard lamp.

A famous and flamboyant adman called Peter Marsh used to say "I assume indiferrence on the part of the public". For myself, I assume incompetence on the part of everyone involved in making TV programmes about the economy. This is especially true of those presented by the likes of Gregg Wallace, an upmarket restaurateur and pompous Masterchef presenter whose finger may well be on a partridge each and every day, but is quite clearly nowhere near the pulse.

If you wanted to know just how far The Money Programme has gone all Redtop since the far-off days of James Bellini (who I did know, and he was very sharp indeed) then you could've done a lot worse than tune into last week's edition (Food Fight, BBC2 7.30pm Thursday). There's very little I can say beyond the obvious conclusion that Dick and Jane Try Walking left this episode at the starting gate.

Actually, the plonker insult was aimed at a branding twit - a chap I've met too many times, and whose treatment by the programme was beyond reverential. I suppose you'd call it grovelling (the Beeb gives very good grovel these days) but it truly rankled with me because he said nothing at all beyond the obvious which any tabloid-reading shopper could work out for herself. "In the downturn.....majors in trouble...Aldi has cheaper prices....when times are hard, many shoppers trade down". Well knock me down with a shelf-wobbler.

It is when one sees media content on the subject of something about which one knows a lot that the real, calf-jellying fear sets in. I mean, here's this programme going out at peak time.....and had it been talking about cold fusion, I'd have lapped it all up like blotting paper left too long in the desert. Whereas - because I knew it was utter twaddle from start to finish - I found myself thinking 'I wonder if the same applies to Robert Peston's views on the credit crunch ?' Full-scale panic attacks start from much less than this.

Inevitably, the programme turned into a makeshift focus group, with Wallace acting out the role of Worst Group Moderator in the History of Qualitative Research ("So would you say that the premium prices weren't worth it then?") The ladies and gents sat down to sausages and turkey and other Christmas bits, and finally offered their arm-dislocated view that from now on, they'd be taking Aldi and Lidl seriously. This 'conclusion' ignored the telling behavioural fact that the one woman forced to change down to the Netto sector went back to Tesco after three shops.

The programme is right in a way: that unfortunate consumer segment trapped between desperate and making do in the lifestyle studies will cut out Tesco as a treat. Thus, the discounters will gain quite a lot of share. As to how many Waitrose shoppers will be converted to buying Albanian baked beans, the jury is out - but may not be too long in its deliberations. While M&S sales are badly down, I suspect their normally loyal shoppers have been slumming it in Tesco. I know a Waitrose devotee who would call 999 on the mobile if she woke up to find herself in Aldi. I should do - I sleep with her every night.

18th November 2008

TABLOID TRIPE

Once the cowardly slob Kelvin Mackenzie started making important subjects silly, the tabloid press had only one place left to go - distraction for the hard of reading. Sadly, after the genius Piers Morgan was hired to drag the Mirror down to the Sun's level (and succeeded admirably) no subject of a serious nature was able to get much of a look-in.

Last Monday the Mirror led with 'Sargey-Bargey', a story about Strictly Come Dancing judges getting their sequins in a twist because the unprepossessing celeb dancer John Sargeant keeps on winning. "It's supposed to be about the dancing" said one idiot. So don't hire celebs who can't dance then.

Vying for top-spot on page one that day was Wag Carly Zucker's dislike of bugs and worms. So don't go on I'm a Celebrity then. This forced the newspaper that used to go Forward with the People to casually ignore its treatment of the very same Carly in the very same issue as a hero - in it's feature 'Try outback star Carly's Body Plan, P's 30-31'.

And the front-page bottom lead (calm down, Peter) told us that 'Beans Means Hikes'. It was a daft piece about Supermarket profiteering despite falling prices. The story inside ('We've bean had') showed some meaningless price averages and then harped on about the wickedness of it all. So don't sit melding with the sofa and do nothing while supermarkets put the independents out of business then. (On page five we found 'PM goes from strength to strength as Osborne blunders', but no reference to the fact that New Labour has been the softest Supermarket planning permission touch in history. So don't vote for the buggers again, then.)

In a space two inches by one inch on what remained of the front page, were the words 'Baby P - Crisis Summit'. The follow-up on page five was the usual my-quiz-hell-under-fire-fury cliches that have made our gutter press a bewildering exhibition of vulgarity around the world. Ed Balls was quoted as saying he was 'angry that interventions to save this boy were not made'. Well stop being Children's Minister then.

This edition of the original Redtop was as clear an example of Weapons of Mass Distraction as it's possible to find: while a child was beaten to death by three very ill folk who should have been removed from his presence a few minutes after birth, a nasty and bigoted borough council tried a sleazy cover-up, while the Prime Minister used child victims (again) to accuse the Leader of the Opposition in a most base manner of electioneering - and was allowed to get away with it by a corrupt former Labour MP from Scotland dubiously titled Mr Speaker.

A tabloid newspaper would have filled forty pages three decades ago on the nature of that slithering trail of gross hypocrisy - and its readers would have studied it. But not today: today our education is debased, our television braindead and the small papers solely for those with atrophied brains.

It's a shame to see what the Mirror's become. The tragedy goes deeper than merely its former, entirely justified position as an important campaigning newspaper from the Edwardian era onwards: it's as much the insult to its readership, which is still easily the most intelligent of all the tabloids - including Mad Dacre's ghastly Daily Mail. (If you doubt this, go to the Mirror's forums).

More than anything else, the paper seems to me confused about what it's role is. Reasnable, thinking working-man's read was deserted long ago, as another piece of Xerox copier marketing decided to make it 'the Left's Sun'. This is an oxymoron.

Anyway, Murdoch has achieved his beastly revenge. Oxford berks laughed at him all those years ago, and now the world laughs at our press. I hope the nationality-hopping old flea is happy; but somehow, I doubt it.

12th November 2008

IS PAUL DACRE MAD?

Mailbiter....trolley problem?

I used to know Paul Dacre's brother reasonably well. He always seemed to feel in Paul's shadow, which is odd because the younger Dacre was able and extremely well-balanced. He was also a successful businessman.

I have been advancing the not entirely serious view that the Mail's bombastic editor is bonkers for some years now. This is not because I know him, but because his newspaper seems so interminably angry about everything (and incapable of ever answering its own questions) editorial insanity sounds like the only logical explanation to me.

There is of course another problem with PD, in that he is, well - not to put too fine a point on it - a shit journalist. He's made many a gaffe over the years, and only a Group as rabid as the Mail would put up with his tedious wide-of-the-mark headlines about everyone from Poles to single mothers. Now the owners have had to cough up for the Max Mosley 'story', which was wrong in the most important aspect: that the son of an infamous neo-Nazi had engaged in S&M sex based on Nazi themes. While Mosley Jr's predeliction for the Satanic-sluts-in-a-bed romp is well known, he doesn't do the Eva Braun fantasies, and his political views are about as far from those of his Dad as it's possible to get.

Not surprisingly, Justice Trousers awarded Mosley sixty thousand smackers (sorry) and so Potty Paul gave a risible speech in Bristol saying how it was all a nasty plot to cork his clarion of freedom.

I'm glad to say I don't know anyone who likes the political slant of the Mail. I know lots of reasonable folk (including my wife) who like both Femail and Money Mail because they are both very good....er, and the only bits of the paper Dotty Dacre doesn't go near.

9th November 2008

STERILE DEBATES CAN BE INFECTIOUS

Throughout the Western world (but especially in the UK) the interviewing technique of TV journalists when faced with a politician has gone from sick-making reverence to undisguised disrespect over the last four decades.

But all that has happened is the wising up of politicians via media training, and the dumbing down of TV interviewers. Well-briefed and devious Ministers now sit in television studios knowing they have the upper hand.....and (on the BBC) a DG who has no spine.

The presentation of these encounters is entirely sterile: young keen hack blurts out "But isn't that only going to make things worse?" to which the politico says "On the contrary" and then blathers on for three minutes of dissembling piffle. Experience and guile might just teach the youthful interviewer that MPs fear only two things: ridicule, and unprepared revelation in the media. While it would be nice if that ginger airhead on Sky News were to begin an interview with, say, Hazel Blears by saying "God but you're stupid aren't you?" this would only produce a sympathy vote among the audience.

No: the job of an interviewer when faced with a dishonest leader on air is to catch the mendacious one out in the act of dishonesty. As Hislop proved on Question Time last month, this requires only good research and a brass neck.

In the last eight weeks alone, Lord Manglesum, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Harriet Harman and David Miliband have been allowed to lie with impunity. Yet if just one hack had said after the statement of a spurious 'fact' "I'm sorry but that simply isn't true", so arrogant are the Westminster shower these days, an informed rebuttal would catch them on the back foot every time.

But the novice opposite them is usually far too busy thinking of his or her next question - being (as they mostly are these days) convinced that the interviewer is far more important then the interviewee.

Like respect, importance has to be earned. It's time these soi-disant 'aggressive' interviewers did their homework more thoroughly.

19th October 2008

TRANSPORT ON THE ROAD TO HELL

Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen....would you like a handcart, a bucket or a fire engine? So far these are the three choices on offer, now everyone's decided we are going there at all. I say everyone, but the Beeb's still a beat or seven behind the music. Whether this represents a form of patriotic reponsibility or just rank bad journalism I don't know: but the BBCNews Channel coverage of global pauperisation events this week gone was risible. It's probably the result of another executive decision by Mark Timeserve at the top - firing all the good hacks and ring-fencing Paxo to ensure he doesn't offend too many Westminster rodents. Either way, the 'analysis' and narrative of many-headed financial lunacy in action was awful.

As always, important events were slow to reach the anchor desks; when they did, the exchanges between superbrains on air sounded like The Archers in a slow episode. "So what does this mean, Rupert?" "Frankly Anne, your guess is as good as mine". Well then, stop guessing you nitwit - you're being paid for this.

At times, the so-called economics correspondents simply got it wrong. "Why do you think the oil price is falling then, Ted?" "Oh I think we're just seeing people calming down." The backdrop to this was millions of investors frantically searching for anywhere with smaller waves. The safe haven having disappeared (See Gold on the site) they ran, screamed and clawed any which way onto the bigger floating docks available.

Because of this, on Friday the gilts sector advanced 6%. BBCNews didn't think this warranted so much as a mention. The market-driven focus group dummies who inhabit Beebworld these days would (naturally) say "Look dear, our audience don't understand gilts". To which I have a twofold response: one, then it's time for you to explain it to them Tarquin; and two, the first thing required here is for you to get up the curve Tarquin.

People were in gilts for reasons still impossible to divine beyond 'the precious metals sector was looking rocky as well'. For me, this was the big story of the week - who's sitting on the gold volcano? - but the Beeb's news channel offered neither explanation nor coverage. (Neither did anyone else for that matter)

As to the Hell transport forms, at least some of the media are looking for new ways to express things. The 'going to Hell in a fire engine' thing was a nice idea, but the core of the gag - nobody can put out the fires of Hell - wasn't really picked up. Otherwise the tedium of 'meltdown' went onandonandonandon. New words required, fellas: vapourisation? annihilation? self-immolation?

MADONNA AND CHILD

Guy...insisting on custody of the laundry

Ritchie Bitchy seven-year Itchy Snitchy Witchy Ditchy sensation. The Sun's cringe-making currant buns were exceeded only by its creepy hypocrisy in wishing for 'some dignity, if only for the children' - and then printing everything nasty these two parent-children could dredge up as damnation of the other one.

He lazy beer-swilling thick yob down the pub with his mates. She loopy-loo religion-hag with more facelifts and contradictions than Joan Collins. What chance did these two fame-junkies ever have as long as the Merdeschlock hacks had the scent of cultural excrement in their porcine nostrils? Well, small as the chance may have been, the ill-starred lovers declared their intention of taking it.

Not that it matters much, but abbreviation of the two players' names in this latest divorce-voyeur fest produces 'mad guy'. Sort of says it all, really. But not to India Knight at the Sunday Times, who remained true to form by wrapping her view of the Ritchie's marriage in a blind admiration of any woman who 'knows what she wants'.

I've been reading Ms Knight's stuff for over a decade now, and she remains an important marker for all common-sense thinkers, in that everything she writes is muddled Highgate feminism. Thus grounded readers can check her columns and feel comfortable about doing the precise opposite of what India recommends. If Madonna knows what she wants then not only does the lady hide it very well, what she wants is what normal people would undergo extreme pain to avoid. 'If a modern marriage like this can't survive' the Knight wrote this weekend, 'then what hope is there for the rest of us?' None for you I'm afraid, dear. And there never was any hope for the Ritchie marriage.

Despite this reality, the BBCNews website decided to depict the unhappy couple as Anglo-American international treasures. Under the peculiar headline of 'Madonna and Guy: the Good Times', the progeny of Lord Reith's loins led us through lachrymose highlights of a lowlife liaison as if it might have been that of the Queen Mother and George VI. This struck me as beyond emotional incontinence: it was in another place entirely - irrational diarrhoea perhaps.

But of course, the Mail on Sunday topped everyone by doing what any self-respecting nutcase would: show exclusive pictures of Guy and Madge's wedding day. This is a terrific strategy and could easily catch on in every area of news. Now that we're all completely borassic, for example, the Beeb could show never-before-noticed reruns of Sir Freddie Goodwin telling everyone how buying ABNAmro at top dollar was "the deal of a lifetime", or put New Hero Brown into perspective by running 24/7 repeats of his 2007 pledge that the UK economy had "a golden future".

Dacre really is mad, I think. But far more important is the stream of irrefutable evidence suggesting he has unfunny sub-eds, a desire to appeal only to Empire Loyalists over eighty, and an intensely irritating habit of asking the readers questions. This isn't how it's supposed to work, Paulo: the idea is that your guys do some digging and then show the results of it to that dwindling part of the public who care any more.

10th October 2008

LITTLE CHANCE

It's hard to know where to start when it comes to the reasons for this Walliams/Lucas vehicle disappearing without trace in America. (Little Britain USA, BBC1, Fridays 9.30pm)

For those of us who have been trying to break into telly for many a long year now, there is no bitterness in this observation - only bewilderment. Even accounting for the tender age of those responsible for commissioning stuff these days, the following would seem to be self-evident:

1. Americans do not get (and can't be bothered to learn) UK slang

2. Obscenities and bodily references are dismissed as childish by everyone from Ralph Nader to Sarah Palin

3. Americans have little or no sense of humour about unfunny jokes aimed exclusively at them

4. Unlike us, they haven't been around for the continuing gags about gay senior civil servants and gobby Underclass tarts. (The misunderstanding of Indian pronunciation in the fatties sketch must be impenetrable to everyone but the most anglophile American)

5. Pc is on the retreat there, but it's still alive enough to make folks in the media reject the whole Little Britain thing as dangerous bigotry.

6. The United States is the culture which found Benny Hill funny. Take heed all those who enter here. (They loved Monty Python, but not much outside Manhatten)

And sadly - from a British standpoint - these sketches are now whatever comes after flogged to death. Proof, perhaps, that there is no life after death.

'Always leave them wanting more' is an adage these two very talented blokes would do well to learn.

4th October 2008

THE WHY? FACTOR

Diamond Scowl

After the slags, scabs, broken cars and silly cars doing the Walford Wank each week on BBC, The X-Factor (ITV Peak, Saturdays) is probably the most culturally dangerous show on television. For years, mates have been telling me it's just a bit of harmless fun and lighten up, but every time I walk into a room where it's on (I have never switched it on in my life) the Ward jaw tightens in expectation of more deluded young people being alternately insulted and indulged by the show's leading lightweight, Simon Cowell, and his various chums on the panel.

Cowella De Vil is very seriously rich now, a fact that tells you more than a million learned essays could about what's wrong with Western culture. There isn't a genuine gene anywhere in his carefully preened body, and like most people with naught but a tangential talent to offer, his casually arrogant judgements are always tedious and often wrong. Both he and the show, however, will have a lasting significance: because on Media Studies courses thirty years hence, they will be presented as the quintessence of early 21st Century television. The X-Factor will - without any shadow of doubt - go down in visual media history as the epitome of what went wrong when the world plunged into the brief but pitch-black Age of Bollocks.

The 'special talent' of some contestants, the tears and all-I've-ever-wanted pleas, the constant euphemisms for 'my God but you're awful' and the new dimension of 'I have to do this for my two-headed dog/dead wife/crippled lawnmower' - it's all bollocks. The idea that in an already overcrowded showbusiness these derivative and dyfunctional kids have more than a chance in a million of enduring success is bollocks. The concept of creating stars from a formalised, hyped talent contest is and always was bollocks. The belief in Cheryl Cole's judgement of such matters is such unutterable, elephantine bollocks as to be outside any known laws of sanity: this is the woman who married Ashley Cole, the devious, dick-happy drongo footballer for crying out loud.

On last week's show was a girl with an already-displayed serious attitude problem. She is twenty-six years old, and has a full house of kids: we weren't told by how many partners, so I'd imagine it's five. Three of the kids are in care. With just two more progeny beyond the reach of wedlock, this lady could star in her own musical Seven Babes by Seven Fathers. Except she never will, because she can't sing.

"All my life" she told a disbelieving camera, "All I've ever wanted is to use my singing talent". Contraceptive? Ever thought of using one of those? "Singing is all that matters to me" she added. Not the five kids, then? "Singing is all I like to do" she concluded, blubbing. And shagging, love. You quite like to shag, too. Probably.

Bollocks, all of it. The X- Factor glorifies self-indulgence, indulges in gratuitous cruelty, deals in false dreams, and applauds emotions with all the plausible currency of a nine bob note.

2nd October 2008

RADIO BLAH-BLAH

Mark Rubbishcliffe

Steve Wright of Radio Two (Steve Wright in the Afternoons, 2-5pm) was on holiday last week. It sometimes occurs to me that Mr Wright has a clause in his contract insisting he gets to choose the temps who DJ the show in his absence. In my view, he's the best mid-brow mature radio broadcaster on air (Wossy is funnier, but you'd hardly call him mature) but nevertheless, it could well be that Steve covers his back well by choosing complete dorks to cover his time off.

This time around it's Mark Radcliffe and Emma Forbes. Ms Forbes is familiar to me, but I've never heard of Radcliffe before. Anyway, for three hours a day last week M & A bored the nation stupid with a deadly mixture of asinine conversation and news so old it was practically history.

"JK Rowling makes £5 a second" said Mark.

"Wow, that's a lot" said Emma.

"Certainly is" agreed Mark, "Do you think she sits there all day going five...ten---fifteen (breaks up into helpless laughter) twenty...twenty five and so on?"

"I bet she does" Emma concurred, "Hahahahaha. I bet she does".

Cue track.

"JK Rowling made £285 while that track was playing" said Mark afterwards.

"Wow!" exclaimed Emma, "Hahahahahaha."

When I tell you this was the highpoint of last Friday's show, you might get some feel for the depth of dross we're dealing with here. Also, 5s into 285 goes just 57. There is no track anywhere in sound media today that lasts under 90 seconds - thus, Mark can't do division either, and is therefore probably unaware of his current position struggling against relegation in the Isthmian League Division VI.

20th September 2008

A LOAD OF OLD BULL

World's oldest 48-year old

Hot on the heels of LloydsTSB's Eric Daniels, Simon Heffer promotes what will (I'm sure) become the Stab in the Back Theory of how and why neo-liberalist economics has ended in abject failure. For younger readers with only an A* in History to guide them, I should explain that after the Germans were roundly beaten by the Allies in the First World War, the Nazis and their fellow-travelling Jew baiters cooked up some complete hokum about anti-war agitators on the Home Front stabbing the armed forces in the back. So it is with those who support laissez-faire capitalism: someone must be to blame, because We are Not Responsible.

If I may quote the chubby ageing juvenile Toryboy:

'...the markets will correct themselves...risk is an essential component of capitalism....Greenspan lost his head and expanded America's money supply in a ridiculous fashion'.

Hmm. Not really what happened, Sime. First of all, the markets have not corrected themselves and will not correct themselves, because the markets decided to do something spectacularly dumb. The markets have been corrected by taxpayers' money: $1.6 trillion of it to date, and counting.

Second, if risk is an essential component of capitalism, how about those Masters of the Universe who just fucked up in spades losing all their houses, savings, jobs and clothes - along with their right to practice banking ever again? If £1.2 million for Applegarth the Robust Model and £2 million for Hornby The Runaway Train are what Heffer thinks of as risk, then yes - rock on fellas, let's have lots of risk. See John stand here at the head of the line marked Risk. See John smile as he is given a seven-figure sum for being a twat.

Finally, the money-printing thing may have created the opportunity for silliness, but an unregulated system peopled by braindead goforits took the opportunity. The insane target culture bent it so far out of shape, such lending was a write-off in the making before Mrs & Mrs Cocaine of East Glasgow had signed the agreement. And the dithering of Governments and uncertain toothless quangos ensured that once the train was off and running, there was nobody around to ask where the brakes were.

Simon Heffer is (as well as being quite the fattest, ugliest 48 year old on the planet) a member of those Diplodocus Thatcherites still fighting a Left which no longer exists. He is one of the band who cannot admit that there is indeed ground between Yuppie and Swampy, and it is called the common-sense majority.

Why does the Telegraph entertain this vulgar idiot when they have truly moral men of the stature of Charles Moore on the staff?

2nd September 2008

WHY IS THE BEEB SO CRAP? IS IT...

1. Because Mark Thompson is the DG?

While occasional attacks of arm-biting are felt by the Disciplinary Wing to encourage les autres, on the whole it could well be that having a mad person at the helm is not entirely good for morale

2. Because Mark Thompson is the DG?

A safe pair of hands in much the same way as Tony Blair liked to be, Mark has been known to prefer safety first to the safety of his colleagues. Not always at ease with creative people, the DG is seen here offering to give Alan Yentob away free in exchange for the newsroom hostages held by Zanu-Labour since 2003

3. Because Mark Thompson is DG?

A keen student of the Eastern mystical approach to management, Mark demonstrates how, in the Way of Zen, the DG can catch a curved ball, have all the balls in the air, and yet have no visible balls at all

OR

4. Because Mark Thompson is DG?

Plans are now well-advanced for Mark's multiple cloning, such that by end of fiscal 2010, he will be running all game shows, reading the weather, doing Paxo impressions, approving and anchoring the news.......and presenting his own talent-show idea Britain's Got Mark - in which he will present, be, and vote for all the acts. Above, the DG rehearses the song I am my Everything for the pilot. By 2011 (he has vowed) the Corporation will cost the taxpayer £0.0p, and pay him a miserly £40million.

29th August 2008

QUITE GOOD

BBC2's new series The Cup (Thursdays, 9.30 pm) is quite good. Well, so far it is. It gets the faint praise for a number of reasons, but one above all others: the main duo (husband pretentious twat bordering on anorak, wife long-suffering recipient of patronising comments) has been done many times before. It was at it's best in the briefly seen and enjoyed Outside Edge a decade ago, and it could well be this series about soccer widows was inspired by that classic cricket widows production.

The script is mildly amusing and the acting ranges from competent to excellent, and Jennifer Hennessy is the best thing in it. It's far better than most of the stuff on these days, but we have to remember that the other stuff includes the X Factor and Big Brother. I wouldn't say it's worth missing a supper party for, but I'm happy to ogle Ms Hennessy for thirty minutes or so.

Also fairly good is the much-acclaimed Channel Four effort The Kevin Bishop Show. It isn't very good because it's the one after Whitehouse which was the one after Harry Enfield. Bishop only seems to have two ideas (puns, and celebrities being miscast) while too many of the gags are crude and therefore unfunny. Only Ali G can do crude, because he's laughing at crudity. Kevin would've been on to nudity and crudites by now, so I think you can see what this show is all about. He's only 28 years old and so has lots of time to become original.

Bish Bash Bosh

7th August 2008

MY NAME IS BOTTOM, AND I AM FULL OF SHIT

Undressing the Nation (ITV, 21.00,Weds)

Trinny and Susannah were doing their sow's ear/silk purse thing again last Wednesday, their focus in this episode being the endlessly debated female bum. "Your bum" Trinny told one client "has lost its identity".

I cannot hear tosh like this and keep a straight face. And there's no great point in the use of implied present tense there - I've always had the problem. At JWT in 1972, the Golden Wonder client became so intense about his crisp's brand personality, I got the giggles and had to leave the room. This was a major problem as I was the one doing the focus group debrief, so matters couldn't really continue until I'd recovered some semblance of gravity. After the meeting, John Lindsay-Bethune took me aside and told me I wasn't "a JWT person" and to his credit, he was right.

Bums don't have brains: ergo sum they cannot have an id, an ego, cerebral hemispheres or indeed any of the essential equipment required for an identity - which (let's face it) comes a long, long way before one gets into the business of losing one. Bums have two cheeks and a hole. The majority are spotty. Very few bottoms look nice after the age of forty. 'Active' gay men (under 3% of the total adult population) get excited about doing things with bottoms. Most of the rest of us don't.

"You have a wonderful bum" Susannah said to an unfortunate girl with an arse of McGill cartoon proportions. It was a sixteen-pint arse. It was an arse you could call many things - informally arranged, a danger to other pedestrians, Kilimanjaro, a continental shelf, fucking massive - but not an object that could ever in a million makeovers be termed wonderful. Not even sixteen pints was going to make this botty wonderful: you'd be dead from hops poisoning before the bloody thing was even likeable. As Peter Cook would've said, it was a Malibu-de-bum-bum

"That's the key to a sexy bum" Susannah concluded, "It's all about how you move it". There's an element of truth in that, but not if your bum has (like the rest of you) been the guinea pig in a ten-year pie-eating research study.

There are a number of things about T & S which always irritate me. The first is the affected way in which they use vulgar girlie-words like arse, tits, shit and so forth when - speaking as a man whose language is often riper than a jet-black avocado - it's perfectly obvious that such syntax is not part of their true make-up at all. The second is the assumption that all women want to be clothes-horses for themselves and sisters for each other, when the script in every show screams 'We're going to show you how to get a bloke to shag you stupid'. And finally, the equally offensive 'given' is that blokes never fall for girls with anxieties about big bums, saggy tits - and/or what my mum used to call an 'unfortunate' face. In my experience, after the first adrenaline-rush of fluids, both genders wind up - if they're lucky - with partners they find interesting, sensitive and funny.

There's nothing wrong with putting your best foot forward. But there's more to life than walking.

However, my main objection to this series (and all the other Xerox copies flapping tediously across five hundred digital channels) is its reliance on illusion by the presenters, and delusion on the part of the audience. Referring above to the presenters, it occured to me that the phrase 'true make-up' is an oxymoron. Television documentary and current interest programming in 2008 has fallen for the glamour of 'let's pretend'. Dramas, sitcoms, movies, plays, ads and novels are for let's pretend: news and documentary is for empirical report and insightful analysis. Well, it should be for that, but of course it hasn't been for years.

During an era like ours when abject failure is a good effort, cowardice a form of heroism, lazy eating regimes a disorder and hopelessly derelict naivety a safe pair of hands, dross like Trinny and Susannah's Undress the Nation easily passes muster as at worst harmless entertainment and at best an encouragement of higher self-esteem in women. In my book, it is lowest common denominator sleight of hand with no possible result for women beyond leaving them where they still are - living for the approbation of others, especially men.

Women with brains and ethics (like men) exist for their children, their community, their partner, their fulfilment and themselves. They do not exist for corporations, media archetypes or definitions of self-esteem so shallow as to be almost entirely arid.

The importance of all this goes beyond bums, however obtrusive and unavoidable they might be in Trinny and Susannah's programmes. We live in a four-dimensional universe which we observe using stereoscopic light-based vision, and this regrettable combination means that many things are not open for debate. Bums are big or not, sums are right or wrong, and heads are bald or hirsute.

More broadly, prices are higher or lower, beaches clean or dirty, IQs at 80 or 130, banks solvent or bankrupt, and weapons of mass destruction there or not. Those who set standards in commmerce, ecology, social fairness, finance and geopolitics continue to hope that our more emotional cortex will deny the evidence of reason, eyes, ears, taste and even smell to their advantage. This is never going to happen, but while they're busy at the task both the world and human decency could very easily end forever.

Good God, that reads dreadfully po-faced and presbyterian. But by God, we need to sanctify the real and burn the counterfeit in so many ways now, only raising the bar higher than it needs to be is going to get us beyond the increasingly limbo-dance level of our cultural aspirations.

6th August 2008

MI SONO DIVERTITO ZERO

There are some movies just not made for me, and Mamma Mia is one of them. Don't get me wrong: I am a very big fan of Abba the songwriting machine, and have been through all the thin years of snotty wanabee intellectuals telling me how crap they are. But it is strangely ironic that now their music has been hailed at last and strung together in a film, I seem to be the noisy minority yet again who thinks it's just, well....not very good.

When I say strung together, I really mean flung together. But you can't call a film like this 'crap': it's neither appropriate nor accurate. It's feelgood, pure and simple. And it's well-made in the sense of being beautifully photographed. It's just not goodfeelgood, if you take my point.

The one huge surprise for me is that Meryl Streep really can sing. Pierce Brosnan can't, but that's another story. As for the story, unless you're unconscious it's perfectly obvious down to the last legless, arse-leaden shuffle of the plot what's going to happen.

And finally, I will now alienate the trickle of humanity still with me by saying that until I saw the credits I had no idea Mamma Mia was directed, cast and written by women. But having spotted this, everything falls into place. You see, some blokes can make some movies for some women part of the time. But women can't make films for men at any time. Usually.

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