This is just a brief open note to the producers of the BBC's flagship satire show Have I Got News For You. Please stop inviting absolute idiots onto the show.
The most recent edition had Stephen Mangan as host: fine, though I'm not familiar with his work, and Kevin Bridges as Ian's guest (again, fine - he is a comedian, and responsible for the genuinely hilarious "accidentally bought a horse" segment of Would I Lie To You). But then you had to go and spoil the comedy potential by hiring former Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth to suck every last scrap of humour from the room and the show like some kind of vacuum cleaner of joy.
The result, obviously, was a catastrophic 45 minutes of humourless blather in which all the jokes had to work twice as hard to escape the event horizon of the Ainsworth-shaped black hole. He didn't get the jokes, he said nothing funny (unless he was absolutely hysterical in the outtakes and the BBC spitefully edited out all his good gags to make him look rubbish, which is unlikely).
Why him? I know you can occasionally get lucky with a political figure and a Boris will suddenly manifest itself, and HIGNFY can ascend to genuine heights of delirium. But Bob Ainsworth is not Boris. Regardless of the politics and regardless of how much of Boris' on-screen persona is an act, Ainsworth was a complete nothing: profoundly dull and with the comic presence of a spoon. He wasn't a Boris, he wasn't even a Lembit. Why hire him? Was Josef Fritzl busy?
HIGNFY is supposed to be funny. The studio audience isn't there because they're all waiting for a bus. It's supposed to be fun. Hire comedians. Hire people with a sense of humour and a personality. Don't hire former cabinet ministers. Ainsworth was a terrible, terrible, terrible choice.
Monday, 18 April 2011
Friday, 8 April 2011
JOHN PRESCOTT!!!!!
It was probably one of those moments that herald the Apocalypse, the Beginning of the End, the last page of the last chapter of humanity. Not a particularly momentous event in itself, but one of stunning significance: an item on last night's Ten O'Clock Live in which John Prescott emerged as the voice of morality. John Prescott, love rat, pie fan and people puncher: a man who is to the rules of English sentence construction what David Beckham is to string theory - not just storming but ransacking the moral high ground.
Admittedly, he was snatching the moral high ground from a News Of The World reporter, which frankly isn't difficult; it's like winning a debate on medical ethics with Josef Mengele. But it was shocking, not just because it was John Prescott, but because the NOTW representative was utterly hopeless at putting a hopeless case. He wasn't even trying - hell, the man was barely even speaking - and what he was coming out with was both pathetic and indefensible. And today, it turns out that News International, after years of saying they knew nothing about the phone-hacking and it was all done by one rogue reporter, have suddenly said yes they knew about it and they were all at it like rats and they're very sorry and it won't happen again, no, really, honest, we promise, and here's some money to prove we're sincere.
Paul McMullan - the mumbling excuse for a journo - was claiming that public figures' private lives are fair game because.... well, because of some pretty feeble suppositions. First, because it's the journalist's job to expose corruption, deceit and hypocrisy in high places. Really? Well, even if it is, does that entitle them to tap phones and act like the Stasi? Is it really in the public interest to know what Sienna Miller's up to? Even McMullan acknowledged there was no public interest defence for "celebrities" like Miller - what on Earth did they think they were they hoping to learn from her beyond bedroom gossip and descriptions of her GI Joe costumes? With some of those "celebrities" they've admitted hacking, they're frankly stretching the definition of the word "celebrity" to mean "anyone with opposable thumbs". Who, in all seriousness, is Kelly Hoppen to the wider world? And by "the wider world", I mean "a News Of The World reader".
Secondly, surely the assumption that famous people should automatically be tapped goes against basic natural justice. Guilty until presumed innocent: we're going to listen in on all your calls anyway because you might be corrupt or deceitful. And if you're not - well, we're going to keep listening until we find otherwise because it's "in the public interest" to know everything about you, no matter how banal. You might say something rude or a bit politically incorrect - maybe even something about foreigners - and that would never do.
Equally the argument that some of these people live their lives in the public eye doesn't hold. They don't live every minute there. Just because the Daily Star hasn't run a Jordan-free issue since 1997 doesn't mean to say we're entitled to watch her having a dump, and then go through it with a pair of tweezers live on ITV2. And some things are best not broadcast, not because they're disgusting, not because they're personal, not because they're dull - but simply out of basic human decency. But The News Of The World doesn't give a damn about human decency. It's not interested in human decency, it's only concerned with human indecency and shovelling it across the first five pages, ignoring the fundamental principle that what they've done to bring you this outrageous scandal is far more repugnant than the scandal itself.
I really hope this brings the shameful News Of The World to its knees and hurts the insidious and repulsiveBlofeld Murdoch empire where it hurts: the chequebook. Sadly, the British public's avarice for soap operas, faked outrage, racist bullshit and photographs of tits means that it won't hurt anything like enough.
Admittedly, he was snatching the moral high ground from a News Of The World reporter, which frankly isn't difficult; it's like winning a debate on medical ethics with Josef Mengele. But it was shocking, not just because it was John Prescott, but because the NOTW representative was utterly hopeless at putting a hopeless case. He wasn't even trying - hell, the man was barely even speaking - and what he was coming out with was both pathetic and indefensible. And today, it turns out that News International, after years of saying they knew nothing about the phone-hacking and it was all done by one rogue reporter, have suddenly said yes they knew about it and they were all at it like rats and they're very sorry and it won't happen again, no, really, honest, we promise, and here's some money to prove we're sincere.
Paul McMullan - the mumbling excuse for a journo - was claiming that public figures' private lives are fair game because.... well, because of some pretty feeble suppositions. First, because it's the journalist's job to expose corruption, deceit and hypocrisy in high places. Really? Well, even if it is, does that entitle them to tap phones and act like the Stasi? Is it really in the public interest to know what Sienna Miller's up to? Even McMullan acknowledged there was no public interest defence for "celebrities" like Miller - what on Earth did they think they were they hoping to learn from her beyond bedroom gossip and descriptions of her GI Joe costumes? With some of those "celebrities" they've admitted hacking, they're frankly stretching the definition of the word "celebrity" to mean "anyone with opposable thumbs". Who, in all seriousness, is Kelly Hoppen to the wider world? And by "the wider world", I mean "a News Of The World reader".
Secondly, surely the assumption that famous people should automatically be tapped goes against basic natural justice. Guilty until presumed innocent: we're going to listen in on all your calls anyway because you might be corrupt or deceitful. And if you're not - well, we're going to keep listening until we find otherwise because it's "in the public interest" to know everything about you, no matter how banal. You might say something rude or a bit politically incorrect - maybe even something about foreigners - and that would never do.
Equally the argument that some of these people live their lives in the public eye doesn't hold. They don't live every minute there. Just because the Daily Star hasn't run a Jordan-free issue since 1997 doesn't mean to say we're entitled to watch her having a dump, and then go through it with a pair of tweezers live on ITV2. And some things are best not broadcast, not because they're disgusting, not because they're personal, not because they're dull - but simply out of basic human decency. But The News Of The World doesn't give a damn about human decency. It's not interested in human decency, it's only concerned with human indecency and shovelling it across the first five pages, ignoring the fundamental principle that what they've done to bring you this outrageous scandal is far more repugnant than the scandal itself.
I really hope this brings the shameful News Of The World to its knees and hurts the insidious and repulsive
Thursday, 20 January 2011
QUARTER PAST ELEVEN LIVE
You would think that having Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell and Charlie Brooker on a live TV news satire show would be gold. (I haven't seen Lauren Laverne on much else beyond the occasional episode of Mock The Week, so excluding her from the list is no reflection on her, merely my expectations.)
So why isn't Channel 4's Ten O'Clock Live gold?
[1] There seem to be a number of items in which the participants are facing away from the audience. I know tickets for being in the audience are free, but even so I'd be annoyed if I'd trekked all the way up to the London studio and spent the evening looking at Charlie Brooker's back. Turn them round.
[2] The interviews are too short. In the four-hander about bankers' bonuses, the lady from the High Pay Commission only got to speak once, and David Mitchell spoke too much. If you're going to interview people, give them the opportunity to actually say something. And just as the envornmentalism article got going, it had to stop.
[3] WNN. Sorry, WNN!. This was, to my untutored mind, the weakest of the "sketches" - it's a parody of vapid TV news (if you've seen those cretinous Red Carpet things at local cinemas, you know how empty this kind of thing can be) and didn't seem to fit. If I was the producer, I'd drop it (assuming it's scheduled to be a regular item).
[4] Jeremy Hunt The Culture Secretary - yes, officially 2011's laziest excuse for saying the C-word continues. It's never been funny and it still isn't. And I expect better from obviously smart people. But it sounds like Channel 4 is being all grown-up and cutting-edge.
[5] They had two Tories on, no LibDems and no Labour. (And I'm guessing the bloke from Goldman Sachs isn't exactly putting his cross against Socialist Worker.) I'd like to see some Shadow members questioned and mocked as well - just for balance.
I didn't watch the Alternative Election show, from which this is derived, at the time - but it was recorded and I watched it later. Again, it was partially successful but didn't work in its entirety. In that instance the big problem was firstly that it was interrupted by other TV shows as part of the evening's schedule, and secondly that its time slot was finished with only a couple of results in - it shouldn't have started until midnight when the results were flowing constantly.
I'm not suggesting that TOCL is awful. It isn't. But it seems to be a show that doesn't know what it's trying to be. Most of the David Willetts interview could be straight off Question Time, but you wouldn't drop a serious interview with a Government Minister into a satire show any more than you'd put knob jokes into Newsnight. In that sense it's a frustrating show and a slightly disappointing one. But there's good stuff here as well. Any opportunity for Mitchell to rant (particularly against something as patently wrong as an increase in local news broadcasts, the most tedious programmes on the schedules) and for Brooker to fulminate is welcomed. Sadly, the show as a whole is a mish-mash: good bits, bad bits, and bits that seem to be from another show entirely. It needs tightening, it needs editing, and the items that don't work after, say, three editions should be dropped. But I'm not the producer. I'm just the audience - what do I know?
(Oh - I called this Quarter Past Eleven Live because that's when I started typing it.)
So why isn't Channel 4's Ten O'Clock Live gold?
[1] There seem to be a number of items in which the participants are facing away from the audience. I know tickets for being in the audience are free, but even so I'd be annoyed if I'd trekked all the way up to the London studio and spent the evening looking at Charlie Brooker's back. Turn them round.
[2] The interviews are too short. In the four-hander about bankers' bonuses, the lady from the High Pay Commission only got to speak once, and David Mitchell spoke too much. If you're going to interview people, give them the opportunity to actually say something. And just as the envornmentalism article got going, it had to stop.
[3] WNN. Sorry, WNN!. This was, to my untutored mind, the weakest of the "sketches" - it's a parody of vapid TV news (if you've seen those cretinous Red Carpet things at local cinemas, you know how empty this kind of thing can be) and didn't seem to fit. If I was the producer, I'd drop it (assuming it's scheduled to be a regular item).
[4] Jeremy Hunt The Culture Secretary - yes, officially 2011's laziest excuse for saying the C-word continues. It's never been funny and it still isn't. And I expect better from obviously smart people. But it sounds like Channel 4 is being all grown-up and cutting-edge.
[5] They had two Tories on, no LibDems and no Labour. (And I'm guessing the bloke from Goldman Sachs isn't exactly putting his cross against Socialist Worker.) I'd like to see some Shadow members questioned and mocked as well - just for balance.
I didn't watch the Alternative Election show, from which this is derived, at the time - but it was recorded and I watched it later. Again, it was partially successful but didn't work in its entirety. In that instance the big problem was firstly that it was interrupted by other TV shows as part of the evening's schedule, and secondly that its time slot was finished with only a couple of results in - it shouldn't have started until midnight when the results were flowing constantly.
I'm not suggesting that TOCL is awful. It isn't. But it seems to be a show that doesn't know what it's trying to be. Most of the David Willetts interview could be straight off Question Time, but you wouldn't drop a serious interview with a Government Minister into a satire show any more than you'd put knob jokes into Newsnight. In that sense it's a frustrating show and a slightly disappointing one. But there's good stuff here as well. Any opportunity for Mitchell to rant (particularly against something as patently wrong as an increase in local news broadcasts, the most tedious programmes on the schedules) and for Brooker to fulminate is welcomed. Sadly, the show as a whole is a mish-mash: good bits, bad bits, and bits that seem to be from another show entirely. It needs tightening, it needs editing, and the items that don't work after, say, three editions should be dropped. But I'm not the producer. I'm just the audience - what do I know?
(Oh - I called this Quarter Past Eleven Live because that's when I started typing it.)
Friday, 12 November 2010
WHY STEPHEN FRY IS WRONG
Dost thou twitter? Most of what's on there is amiable banter and trivia: instant commentaries on what's on the TV this very moment, shameless blog pimping (yes, guilty), "live" chat between friends, dribbling over some bloke called Bieber, people pretending to be HM The Queen and fictional characters, and actual real genuine celebrities and comedians and people you've heard of. In this last category, of course, there is none more notable than National Treasure Lord Sir Stephen Fry, with 1.9 million followers. Yet despite his avowed love of Twitter he remains absolutely silent when an absolute idiot starts issuing threats of violence on the site.
Since yesterday, when the news broke, I've been monitoring Mr Fry's Twitter feed on and off, like some kind of wannabe MI5 operative on work experience. Nada. He, and the rest of the twitterverse (as I believe it's called) has said not one word defending the aforementioned absolute idiot and his desire for death, injury or just plain incovenience against people he hadn't even met. But there's time. I look forward to Mr Fry speaking up for the right to demand via Twitter that a Muslim woman be stoned to death for comments she made on the radio. After all, it was just a joke, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
No, it isn't. What Councillor Compton did was to put out a contract on Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and even specified the weapons to be used. The trouble comes when someone does actually rid him of this turbulent journalist. When someone does actually get a bag of rocks and a few like-mindless pals and actually does start lobbing them at her: is it still a joke? He's been arrested and been suspended from the Party. The Party in question is the Conservative Party, which balances nicely the case of Labour's own Stuart MacLennan, removed as a candidate at the last election for saying old people were "coffin dodgers" (incidentally a phrase that Terry Wogan used to trot out a lot on Radio 2) and describing Diane Abbott as "a f***ing idiot" (well, who hasn't? And without the asterisks). Unfairly? After all, it was just a joke, wasn't it?
In reality, Mr MacLennan's tweet that he was sitting opposite "the ugliest old boot I've ever seen" is the meat and potatoes of Twitter. Describing someone as an ugly old boot - a stranger - is merely an observation. It may not be a devastatingly clever and witty one, but he was the prospective Labour candidate for Moray, not the Poet Laureate or a gag writer on Have I Got News For You. This isn't the Perrier Award and we're not awarding points for a zippy punchline here. It's just a passing thought, it's not the same as inviting people to throw rocks at a Muslim woman, or announcing you're going to blow up an airport as Paul Chambers did.
Everybody has been jumping up and down at the judgement that rejected Chambers' appeal, on the grounds that it was just a joke. Was it? We're constantly told to be on our guard, the Home Office themselves inform us that the current threat level from international terrorism is severe (meaning an attack is highly likely - on the Home Office scale it's the fourth level out of five), but when someone actually says they're going to blow up an airport we should actually laugh and not take it seriously - even when it's from someone booked to fly to Northern Ireland? It may well have been a moment of frustration at the airport's closure due to snow, but what if it hadn't been? Just what if it had been real? We don't know - and we certainly didn't know then - how much fertiliser Chambers had stacked away, we didn't know if he had any radical political or religious beliefs, what How-To books he might have downloaded off the evil internet.
Some are arguing that it was so obviously a joke and we suddenly can't make jokes now. Really? Well, Dara O'Briain tweeted that "So that's the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN-UPS." Subtleties? Subtext? On Twitter? Twitter gives you 140 characters and a choice of upper or lower case. That's it. You can't even bold, underline or change the colour. There's no nuance of expression there, no tone of voice, no facial or body language to flesh out the joke. It's the difference between the 1812 Overture and the sheet music for the 1812 overture. It's why Stephen Hawking never made it in the world of standup comedy.
Chambers essentially made a hoax call, the equivalent of calling out the fire brigade to a non-existent blaze. Is that something to be applauded? Is that something to be proud of? Would Stephen Fry pay my fines and costs if I did something similar? What Chambers should be punished for, really, is being a massive dumbass - something which is not a criminal offence and I suspect never will be. Idiocy, stupidity and vacuous dumbassness are practically lifestyle choices these days: witness our daily more worthless television schedules designed to be watched with the mouth open. If the Chambers judgement crowbars some kind of lesson into the skulls of utter slackjaw dumbasses then frankly it's a move well made.
As I never tire or saying, I don't have much of a sense of humour: I don't think I'm particularly amusing and I sometimes have trouble telling what's funny. On the other hand I don't think I have any problem seeing what's not funny. When so many smart, intelligent, well-adjusted people line up in support of a dumbass bomb hoaxer I can't tell whether it's not a joke, or it's a joke I don't get. Because it is a joke, isn't it? Isn't it?
Since yesterday, when the news broke, I've been monitoring Mr Fry's Twitter feed on and off, like some kind of wannabe MI5 operative on work experience. Nada. He, and the rest of the twitterverse (as I believe it's called) has said not one word defending the aforementioned absolute idiot and his desire for death, injury or just plain incovenience against people he hadn't even met. But there's time. I look forward to Mr Fry speaking up for the right to demand via Twitter that a Muslim woman be stoned to death for comments she made on the radio. After all, it was just a joke, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
No, it isn't. What Councillor Compton did was to put out a contract on Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and even specified the weapons to be used. The trouble comes when someone does actually rid him of this turbulent journalist. When someone does actually get a bag of rocks and a few like-mindless pals and actually does start lobbing them at her: is it still a joke? He's been arrested and been suspended from the Party. The Party in question is the Conservative Party, which balances nicely the case of Labour's own Stuart MacLennan, removed as a candidate at the last election for saying old people were "coffin dodgers" (incidentally a phrase that Terry Wogan used to trot out a lot on Radio 2) and describing Diane Abbott as "a f***ing idiot" (well, who hasn't? And without the asterisks). Unfairly? After all, it was just a joke, wasn't it?
In reality, Mr MacLennan's tweet that he was sitting opposite "the ugliest old boot I've ever seen" is the meat and potatoes of Twitter. Describing someone as an ugly old boot - a stranger - is merely an observation. It may not be a devastatingly clever and witty one, but he was the prospective Labour candidate for Moray, not the Poet Laureate or a gag writer on Have I Got News For You. This isn't the Perrier Award and we're not awarding points for a zippy punchline here. It's just a passing thought, it's not the same as inviting people to throw rocks at a Muslim woman, or announcing you're going to blow up an airport as Paul Chambers did.
Everybody has been jumping up and down at the judgement that rejected Chambers' appeal, on the grounds that it was just a joke. Was it? We're constantly told to be on our guard, the Home Office themselves inform us that the current threat level from international terrorism is severe (meaning an attack is highly likely - on the Home Office scale it's the fourth level out of five), but when someone actually says they're going to blow up an airport we should actually laugh and not take it seriously - even when it's from someone booked to fly to Northern Ireland? It may well have been a moment of frustration at the airport's closure due to snow, but what if it hadn't been? Just what if it had been real? We don't know - and we certainly didn't know then - how much fertiliser Chambers had stacked away, we didn't know if he had any radical political or religious beliefs, what How-To books he might have downloaded off the evil internet.
Some are arguing that it was so obviously a joke and we suddenly can't make jokes now. Really? Well, Dara O'Briain tweeted that "So that's the banning of sarcasm, irony, sub-text and any of the other subtleties of language that we use AS GROWN-UPS." Subtleties? Subtext? On Twitter? Twitter gives you 140 characters and a choice of upper or lower case. That's it. You can't even bold, underline or change the colour. There's no nuance of expression there, no tone of voice, no facial or body language to flesh out the joke. It's the difference between the 1812 Overture and the sheet music for the 1812 overture. It's why Stephen Hawking never made it in the world of standup comedy.
Chambers essentially made a hoax call, the equivalent of calling out the fire brigade to a non-existent blaze. Is that something to be applauded? Is that something to be proud of? Would Stephen Fry pay my fines and costs if I did something similar? What Chambers should be punished for, really, is being a massive dumbass - something which is not a criminal offence and I suspect never will be. Idiocy, stupidity and vacuous dumbassness are practically lifestyle choices these days: witness our daily more worthless television schedules designed to be watched with the mouth open. If the Chambers judgement crowbars some kind of lesson into the skulls of utter slackjaw dumbasses then frankly it's a move well made.
As I never tire or saying, I don't have much of a sense of humour: I don't think I'm particularly amusing and I sometimes have trouble telling what's funny. On the other hand I don't think I have any problem seeing what's not funny. When so many smart, intelligent, well-adjusted people line up in support of a dumbass bomb hoaxer I can't tell whether it's not a joke, or it's a joke I don't get. Because it is a joke, isn't it? Isn't it?
Saturday, 23 October 2010
IT'S SATURDAY NIGHT!
Can we please stop describing TV shows as "unmissable"? No they're not. You can describe, say, The Apprentice in a hundred different ways, but it's not unmissable. On the contrary, it's entirely missable. I manage to miss it every week without even trying. In fact I've never not missed a single episode. So thoroughly inappropriate is the word "unmissable" that, looking at the Pick Of The Week pages in this week's Radio Times, I can guarantee I'll be missing each and every single one of them.
Particularly eye-watering are the Radio Times' "unmissable" selections for Saturday 23rd - today. If proof were needed that the British public will watch absolutely anything, here it is: an episode of Merlin (the midpoint of the third series, so if you're not already watching it this you're probably not going to start now, especially with an episode that even the RT itself describes as "enjoyable but unspectacular"), a meeting between Cheryl Cole and Piers Morgan, and the double atrocity of Strictly Come Dancing and The Sodding X-Factor.
Admittedly there's a certain amount of personal disgruntlement at their suggested lineup. I genuinely don't give a toss about Cheryl Cole and I don't want to see the foul Morgan in anything except a minefield. And the lethal combination of celebrity mincing and Butlin's Amateur Night literally makes me despair. Is this what we've come to? Is this really the best we can do? Is this what I'm paying a licence fee for? It's Saturday night: here's a former member of the Shadow Cabinet doing the charleston! They should be ashamed of themselves.
Oh, there are some cracking films on - Where Eagles Dare, No Country For Old Men and Sin City. (And, if you're in the mood for very late-night cyborg action, explosions and stupidity, Albert Pyun's incomprehensible yet strangely engaging Nemesis is also on on BBC2). But the idea that the best things on are hysterical talent shows and famous people pirouetting is frankly depressing. Even if a documentary on the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch is swinging the intellectual pendulum too far the other way, a new extended QI doesn't even warrant a passing mention.
Is all mainstream TV simply in the business of pacifying the plebs? Are they doing nothing more than providing loud noise, bright lights and pretty colours for the great unwashed to gawp at? Is this really what we've come to?
Particularly eye-watering are the Radio Times' "unmissable" selections for Saturday 23rd - today. If proof were needed that the British public will watch absolutely anything, here it is: an episode of Merlin (the midpoint of the third series, so if you're not already watching it this you're probably not going to start now, especially with an episode that even the RT itself describes as "enjoyable but unspectacular"), a meeting between Cheryl Cole and Piers Morgan, and the double atrocity of Strictly Come Dancing and The Sodding X-Factor.
Admittedly there's a certain amount of personal disgruntlement at their suggested lineup. I genuinely don't give a toss about Cheryl Cole and I don't want to see the foul Morgan in anything except a minefield. And the lethal combination of celebrity mincing and Butlin's Amateur Night literally makes me despair. Is this what we've come to? Is this really the best we can do? Is this what I'm paying a licence fee for? It's Saturday night: here's a former member of the Shadow Cabinet doing the charleston! They should be ashamed of themselves.
Oh, there are some cracking films on - Where Eagles Dare, No Country For Old Men and Sin City. (And, if you're in the mood for very late-night cyborg action, explosions and stupidity, Albert Pyun's incomprehensible yet strangely engaging Nemesis is also on on BBC2). But the idea that the best things on are hysterical talent shows and famous people pirouetting is frankly depressing. Even if a documentary on the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch is swinging the intellectual pendulum too far the other way, a new extended QI doesn't even warrant a passing mention.
Is all mainstream TV simply in the business of pacifying the plebs? Are they doing nothing more than providing loud noise, bright lights and pretty colours for the great unwashed to gawp at? Is this really what we've come to?
Monday, 14 June 2010
OH, DO GROW UP, JEREMY
I usually make the effort to catch The News Quiz on Radio 4, as there's nothing wrong with a bit of irreverent mockery of the Powers That Be, whatever their political or ideological stripe. And putting five intelligent and witty people in a room in some kind of (frankly irrelevant) topical quiz show format must be the easiest pitch ever made to the BBC's commissioning people. But sometimes I do get so annoyed at Jeremy Hardy.
It's only sometimes: much of the time he is one of the better panellists. But there are occasions, such as last Friday, where he's pitched a question about public spending cuts and the resultant spew of bile and spittle-flecked ranting stops being amusing - and I'm a big fan of ranting - and becomes uncomfortably hateful. And while I don't know that much about comedy, I do know that there's hardly an easier hate-figure target than the Conservatives, or, given that they are now in power (ish), a more worthy one. But all I ask is that it's kept in some kind of perspective.
"The Tories are going to do what they always wanted, which is to destroy public services!" yells Mr Hardy. Really? Why? Seriously: why on Earth would the Conservatives want to destroy public services? What's in it for them? Answer: nothing, because they don't want to. They're having to make cuts because there's no money to pay for them but there's no reason to believe that they want to do this.
Look: this country now owes £70,000,000,000 a year in interest alone - not the loans, but the interest on the loans - thanks to the previous administration spending more than it could afford. I don't understand how it's managed to do this since I'd get a snotty letter from the bank if went £7.50 into the red. The present administration has no choice - cuts have to be made. The money's just isn't there. There's no more cake, Jeremy, and stamping your foot and whining that you want more cake isn't going to achieve anything.
However, the reality of the current economic situation isn't particularly funny, and it's easier in a comedic context to paint the Conservatives as any combination of millionaires (most aren't), landed gentry (most aren't), racists (most aren't), imbeciles (most aren't), old Etonians (most aren't), inbred (most aren't) and/or sexual perverts (most aren't). Margaret Thatcher is probably the only public figure about whom comedians can get rounds of applause for saying they hope she'd die - moreso than real bogeyman figues like Kim Jong-Il, Ahmedinejad, Osama and Des Lynam. And as for Old Etonians - it's surely as wrong to hate David Cameron because he went to Eton as it is to hate Victoria Wood because she went to a grammar school. These are, by the way, parents' choices, not their own.
My problem with Hardy's rantings and ramblings the other day were purely the unfairness of them - it's not as if the BBC had adopted some kind of objective balance by having a Tory stand-up on the panel. If anything they went further by having another long-standing leftie, Mark Steel, on the show as well.
I guess there just aren't any overtly Tory comedians, so in their absence the left pretty well have the floor. But suggesting the Conservatives are enjoying making cuts isn't fair. You might as well claim the Tories will sacrifice your firstborn to Priapus, the Roman fertility god and protector of livestock (hurrah for Wikipedia), and drink their still warm blood from their skulls. Exaggeration for comic effect is one thing. Misrepresentation is something else entirely and that's when it stops being funny. Still, if the only way he can get his message across is by lying.....
It's only sometimes: much of the time he is one of the better panellists. But there are occasions, such as last Friday, where he's pitched a question about public spending cuts and the resultant spew of bile and spittle-flecked ranting stops being amusing - and I'm a big fan of ranting - and becomes uncomfortably hateful. And while I don't know that much about comedy, I do know that there's hardly an easier hate-figure target than the Conservatives, or, given that they are now in power (ish), a more worthy one. But all I ask is that it's kept in some kind of perspective.
"The Tories are going to do what they always wanted, which is to destroy public services!" yells Mr Hardy. Really? Why? Seriously: why on Earth would the Conservatives want to destroy public services? What's in it for them? Answer: nothing, because they don't want to. They're having to make cuts because there's no money to pay for them but there's no reason to believe that they want to do this.
Look: this country now owes £70,000,000,000 a year in interest alone - not the loans, but the interest on the loans - thanks to the previous administration spending more than it could afford. I don't understand how it's managed to do this since I'd get a snotty letter from the bank if went £7.50 into the red. The present administration has no choice - cuts have to be made. The money's just isn't there. There's no more cake, Jeremy, and stamping your foot and whining that you want more cake isn't going to achieve anything.
However, the reality of the current economic situation isn't particularly funny, and it's easier in a comedic context to paint the Conservatives as any combination of millionaires (most aren't), landed gentry (most aren't), racists (most aren't), imbeciles (most aren't), old Etonians (most aren't), inbred (most aren't) and/or sexual perverts (most aren't). Margaret Thatcher is probably the only public figure about whom comedians can get rounds of applause for saying they hope she'd die - moreso than real bogeyman figues like Kim Jong-Il, Ahmedinejad, Osama and Des Lynam. And as for Old Etonians - it's surely as wrong to hate David Cameron because he went to Eton as it is to hate Victoria Wood because she went to a grammar school. These are, by the way, parents' choices, not their own.
My problem with Hardy's rantings and ramblings the other day were purely the unfairness of them - it's not as if the BBC had adopted some kind of objective balance by having a Tory stand-up on the panel. If anything they went further by having another long-standing leftie, Mark Steel, on the show as well.
I guess there just aren't any overtly Tory comedians, so in their absence the left pretty well have the floor. But suggesting the Conservatives are enjoying making cuts isn't fair. You might as well claim the Tories will sacrifice your firstborn to Priapus, the Roman fertility god and protector of livestock (hurrah for Wikipedia), and drink their still warm blood from their skulls. Exaggeration for comic effect is one thing. Misrepresentation is something else entirely and that's when it stops being funny. Still, if the only way he can get his message across is by lying.....
Thursday, 10 June 2010
WHAT IF ENGLAND LOSE?
It's a trick question, obviously. The answer to what happens if England don't win the World Cup is.... NOTHING. Nothing happens. The sun still rises, the rain still falls, Mozart's still dead and Chris Moyles is still an arse. Life goes on 99.999999% as before. Okay, some people will briefly be a tiny bit sadder, some clueless louts will chuck bricks through a window in drunken fury, some sports journos will churn out lots of vitriolic copy, and some players will have to justify their £20,000 a week pay packets. But nothing lasting, nothing vital, nothing is going to change.
Now I don't care much about football, either national or global. I follow no particular team although I have slight hopes that a couple of teams do well because their success will please some friends and family members; if their team wins they're happy and I'm happy for them. But when it comes to the frenzy of the World Cup I'm not even ambivalent about it: it's not like the cycling or the showjumping where it's possible to remain oblivious to it all. There's a tiny part of me that actively wants England to be booted out of the whole damned fiasco at the earliest opportunity: going down 7-0 to Slovenia (including three penalties, two own goals) after two sendings-off for an unseemly bout of fisticuffs. Then maybe we'd all stop treating it as the fantastically important event it actually isn't.
Unpatriotic? Not really. To cheer for England for no reason save that I'm English is rather like hoping Danny Dyer wins the Best Actor Oscar next year because it's time a Brit won it. The World Cup is (nominally) about the best team, and if that's France or Brazil or North Korea, then why shouldn't they win?
I say "nominally", because in practise it isn't. At its heart there is the game, but it's encased in a shell of obscene amounts of money that frankly could be better spent on making the planet at least 3% less crap for everyone. All the football-themed rebranding of products, regardless of whether they're anything to do with the World Cup: everything from Jaffa Cake bars to a DVD reissue of The Great Escape. What, did they think no-one was going to buy Jaffa Cake bars if they didn't have a football symbol on the front? I dare say if I had a wander round Sainsburys this afternoon I'd find special soccer-themed toothpaste, corned beef and USB sticks (the Official Data Storage Device Of The World Cup).
If they'd just shut up about the World Cup, I could just get on with happily ignoring it, the way I do with the yachting and the Pipesmoker Of The Year awards. Instead, because it's absolutely everywhere at high volume, I have to physically work at blotting it out, not unlike the Singing Dorothys we've had for the last eleven Saturday nights (and which now appears, mercifully, to be over). I have to fight the underlying yet overwhelming assumption that the entire population of the country gives a damn about the lads going on safari or whether X's ankle is going to be healed, what Y had for breakfast this morning or whether Z is wearing his lucky yellow jockstrap. A white male between the ages of two and ninety and you're not interested in the World Cup: inconceivable!
Not really. Come on Slovenia.
Now I don't care much about football, either national or global. I follow no particular team although I have slight hopes that a couple of teams do well because their success will please some friends and family members; if their team wins they're happy and I'm happy for them. But when it comes to the frenzy of the World Cup I'm not even ambivalent about it: it's not like the cycling or the showjumping where it's possible to remain oblivious to it all. There's a tiny part of me that actively wants England to be booted out of the whole damned fiasco at the earliest opportunity: going down 7-0 to Slovenia (including three penalties, two own goals) after two sendings-off for an unseemly bout of fisticuffs. Then maybe we'd all stop treating it as the fantastically important event it actually isn't.
Unpatriotic? Not really. To cheer for England for no reason save that I'm English is rather like hoping Danny Dyer wins the Best Actor Oscar next year because it's time a Brit won it. The World Cup is (nominally) about the best team, and if that's France or Brazil or North Korea, then why shouldn't they win?
I say "nominally", because in practise it isn't. At its heart there is the game, but it's encased in a shell of obscene amounts of money that frankly could be better spent on making the planet at least 3% less crap for everyone. All the football-themed rebranding of products, regardless of whether they're anything to do with the World Cup: everything from Jaffa Cake bars to a DVD reissue of The Great Escape. What, did they think no-one was going to buy Jaffa Cake bars if they didn't have a football symbol on the front? I dare say if I had a wander round Sainsburys this afternoon I'd find special soccer-themed toothpaste, corned beef and USB sticks (the Official Data Storage Device Of The World Cup).
If they'd just shut up about the World Cup, I could just get on with happily ignoring it, the way I do with the yachting and the Pipesmoker Of The Year awards. Instead, because it's absolutely everywhere at high volume, I have to physically work at blotting it out, not unlike the Singing Dorothys we've had for the last eleven Saturday nights (and which now appears, mercifully, to be over). I have to fight the underlying yet overwhelming assumption that the entire population of the country gives a damn about the lads going on safari or whether X's ankle is going to be healed, what Y had for breakfast this morning or whether Z is wearing his lucky yellow jockstrap. A white male between the ages of two and ninety and you're not interested in the World Cup: inconceivable!
Not really. Come on Slovenia.
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