A Little Bit of Festive Cribbins

A delight to have the mighty Bernard Cribbins on television on Christmas Day. Until then, here’s something that, while not elaborately festooned in tinsel, has something of the season about it.

Nostradamus is taking a shower

I’ve just stumbled on something I wrote almost exactly two years ago, during the first series of Britain’s Got Talent.

Britain’s Got Talent: you could be forgiven for hiding in anticipation of strangled renditions of Mariah Carey songs and people banging tea trays over their heads, and to be fair there have been instances of both of those kind of thing. On the whole, however, it’s been a refreshing take on the Pop Idol-format, with an interesting diversity of acts, providing some genuine entertainment. There’s been the good, the mawkish (de rigueur on this kind of show, of course, especially on ITV), and the woefully-deluded, but the mix has been good; held together by Ant’n'Dec, who excel in this role, celebrating the talented, sharing our incredulity and hilarity at the bad. The three judges, Piers Morgan, Amanda Holden, and Simon Cowell, have been less irritating than they might, also.

That all changed last night. Last night’s episode was the first of the semi-finals, moving into the studio from the theatres in which the heats had been held. Everything was bubbling along happily until Caroline Boyes entered. For those that haven’t been watching, Caroline presented herself as a hip-hop dancer in the heats. She wasn’t very good, but she certainly wasn’t the worst thing the judges had to endure; she was just having a go, chancing her arm in an open audition, and that’s hardly a crime. Anyway, the judges put her through to the next round.

Last night she presented a pastiche of Madonna’s ‘Vogue’. It was, yes, rubbish, but no one had cause to assume it would be anything else, following her initial audition. Anyone with eyes and ears could see that she wasn’t going to go through to the final, and that she was by far the least talented person on stage that night.

None of that excused the reaction she got. From her first appearance, the audience, who were disconcertingly rowdy throughout the show, started booing, and this became the soundtrack throughout her performance, and beyond. When it came to the judges’ comments, Amanda Holden seemed unnecessarily brittle and dismissive, while Simon Cowell was just cruel, in a way that went far beyond his ‘Mr Nasty’ persona. What had been a fun show suddenly turned sour. Ant’n'Dec encouraged Caroline to respond, but the poor woman was incapable of finding the words, cast, as she suddenly was, as the studio fool and pariah. The reaction to her was simply out of all proportion to what she had presented.

What ITV broadcast last night was the distasteful spectacle of a woman in her 50s, and of above average weight, being abused for her presumption in getting up on stage. Her talent, or lack of, should have been the sole criteria for judging her, but instead became a fig-leaf for a display of cruelty and misogyny that demeaned everyone involved, including the viewer at home. The producers should force the judges to watch again the performance and their responses, making it clear that they stepped over a line, and the audience should be reigned in, their contribution made more proportionate; even during those acts that they enjoyed, such as Paul Potts, one of the finalists, they screamed and wailed throughout, as though Jesus Christ himself had appeared with a promise for each of eternal bliss. They’re encouraged, of course, to respond in this way; it’s a cheap way of adding some sensation to the show, but it yields diminishing returns. If everything is met with riotous ecstasy, what response to give the truly brilliant? What response the untalented get has, sadly, been answered.

I hope the remaining episodes will display a different character. I hope the production team feel as I do; everyone involved should feel ashamed at their involvement. There is no credit in selecting a winner of a competition in which we all, by displays like last night, have made ourselves losers.

I don’t really need to draw the parallel. We’ve seen it played out again in extremis. Reading that again, it’s strange to think that I watched and, on the whole, enjoyed the first series, before it turned to wholesale bear-baiting. But watching that clip again was depressing – mainly for the calculated way that woman was elevated, purely in order to knock her down, but also for Amanda Holden’s astonishing, oblivious presumption in telling someone else that their fifteen minutes of fame were up. Physician, heal thyself!

In lieu of a conclusion, I’m going to point you towards this summation of the vile harvest Susan Boyle reaped recently, because it pulls it all together far better than I would, and remember that Clive James once wrote that people are not to be despised just because their dreams are cheap.

More Knots Landing than in any other blog post ever

Having prodded Boz into updating his blog, I felt a moral obligation to do the same. Yes, I know it should have been the thousands of emails from concerned readers of banality the world over that propelled me to this rash act, but they’re fictional, and only existed, if that’s not too strong a word, for the moment that it took to type out the phrase, and now they’re gone, and I don’t know if that makes me better or worse off than before.

Ahem.

I got up at 5.30 this morning. This is a silly time to get up, but I was awake and, more to the point, hungry, so sleep stopped being an option. I wasn’t happy about it, but my stomach had sensed that breakfast was a possibility and so the argument was lost. I booted up the computer while I was pottering round the kitchen, and then sat, dazed, a little resentful, but with a full bowl of porridge, in front of the screen. What was I going to do at this ungodly hour?

Watch eight different versions of the title sequence to Knots Landing, of course.

I’d forgotten how the theme went, though I remembered that I liked it, as I used to have a cassette of BBC TV Themes, and remembered playing it more than once. Oh, I was a very hip teenager.

It’s a great theme tune, and, though it gets bastardised around the ninth series, it rallies for a push towards the end.

(Why do theme tunes always get mucked about? This is simply unspeakable.)

Anyway, I didn’t know half of that before this morning, and I’m willing to bet that you didn’t either.

IN SUMMARY: That’s what you call a blog post.

This dream of life

I saw this monstrosity recently:

It’s irritating enough having to listen to someone who sounds as though they’re pleading for their life, in song, while someone presses a foot with increasing force onto their windpipe. But, then I saw this:

It’s impossible to watch that and not hate yourself a little bit. You hate the people talking such preposterous nonsense, of course. That’s a given. They’re self-satisfied, irritating, and hateful. But, by having allowed yourself to listen to them, you die a little bit yourself. A ‘female zeitgeist’, indeed. ‘Encouraging women to take control and say no’, indeed.

It’s a terrible, awful, demeaning notion that Diet Coke, in the person of Duffy, represents some form of spiritual calm in a chaotic world, and that, by merely glimpsing the squeaky-voiced smug pixie as she cycles past, we plebs gain a momentary awareness of nirvana that would otherwise lie tantalisingly out of sight.

But, if Duffy is so concerned about empowering women, she should take a moment to think about the poor stage manager who passes her the Diet Coke as she comes offstage. Duffy’s got “about two minutes” before she’s due back onstage. But she needs to take some time out for herself so, although clearly in doubt about the propriety of this, as her furtive glance shows, she takes a bike and rides off into the night, with no consideration of the possible repercussions. What if someone had been surprised to find themselves walking alongside a cyclist squawking platitudes and had pushed her under a truck? What if the manager of the supermarket had called the police, because there was someone mindlessly riding around the aisles, with scant regard for the safety of ordinary shoppers? Once outside the concert venue, there are any number of ways that Duffy could be detained, not all of them, sadly, featuring horrific violence, which would prevent her from getting back within the two minutes. And then the stage manager would be frantically searching for her, and people would be shouting at the stage manager, and blaming her for losing the ‘artist’, and she might well lose her job, which doesn’t sound like a very relaxing, empowering experience to me. Not to mention the auditorium full of people who have paid to, god help us, listen to Duffy sing. How would they feel about being treated in such a casual manner? But, evidently, none of these people count. Duffy thinks they’re scum.

Well, I’d like to see how Duffy got on if her concerts had no technical support and no audience; she might feel a bit less blasé if she found herself alone on a draughty, empty stage, squealing plaintively into the darkness. What she and Diet Coke are saying is, you have no responsibility to anyone other than yourself. Do what you like and fuck everyone else. And they’re trying to present it as an ideology; just listen again to those witless morons in the second clip. No, actually, please don’t. “I’ve got to be free, I’ve just got to be free,” she squeals, just inside the frequency range of human hearing. But the worldview that this advert portrays isn’t one of freedom: it’s of an idiot throwing a can of brown pop at a human face, forever.

IN SUMMARY: someone, anyone, push her off.

Reading things out loud

I spent last night in Derby at an open-mic poetry event. Now, it’s funny, but, even as someone who loves poetry, I can feel the weight of the pejorative misconception that that conjures up. But, I’m delighted to say, it was really good! There was very little in the way of tortured metaphor and esoteric, unintelligible introspection, and instead some good poems – funny, tender, concise – from a wide and surprising range of people.
I’ve been writing for years, but never read any out loud to anyone before, and I thought it was about time I did. I chose three I thought would go down well and, well, they did, with some lovely comments from some of the other participants.
There were about 25 of us in total, but it was relaxed and informal and good fun, apart from the end when the last chap to read misunderstood that if you’re using a mic then there’s no need to shout as well. My ears are still ringing. I’ll be going again next month – it’s held at déda (Derby Dance Centre, as was). You should come too (if you live near to Derby, I suppose. You might not find it worth the effort if you’re in Inverness).

Today’s Strictly Come Dancing spotee was Len Goodman, in the changing rooms at the gym.

IN SUMMARY: I’m going to be reading more things out loud in future. I really must recharge the batteries on the Gethin Detector.

“Would you mind awfully if I – ” THUD.

My arms are shaking. Not wildly and madly, like I’m on children’s television. Just continually, like I’m coming off heroin. I had a ‘personal trainer taster session’ at the gym today. Thankfully, that description wasn’t taken too literally.

I’ve recently joined the gym and the chap who inducted me, John, was keen for me to take advantage of this free session, despite me making it clear that personal finances (lack of) made it highly unlikely that there’d be subsequent bookings.

So, today I’ve been holding weights at angles above my head that I could barely sustain, pulling things that didn’t want to be pulled, pushing things that didn’t want to be pushed, and getting myself into odd positions on large bouncy balls. At one point, he was talking to me, after having made me walk in a line with a kettle ball – kettle weight? kettle drum? kettle? – in each hand that I was holding above my shoulders, alternating with – oh, this is too difficult to describe. Look, I’d been carrying some weights, and then he wanted to explain something to me, and I seriously thought I was going to faint. And I had that lovely English feeling, of not wanting him to notice that I was going slightly cross-eyed, of not wanting to cause a fuss, as his voice faded out while his lips kept moving, and I started to wonder how unseemly it would be for a man in his thirties to be carried out of there by paramedics. I did recover, a minute or two later, at which point he was asking whether I wanted to do another set of the indescribable weight-walking thing, and I had to admit defeat. The memory of PE lessons of yore flooded back at that moment, and my adult self coalesced in a puddle round my trainers.

Oh, and at one point, I was performing core-stability exercises next to Bruno Tonioli from Strictly Come Dancing, which was a first for both of us.

IN SUMMARY: I’m knackered, but I saw a man off the telly.