Monday, August 22, 2005

Baby Blues...

I am a little stunned after this weekend. In fact scrub that. I am downright bloody annoyed. There I was clutching my copy of The Independent On Saturday as me and the missus returned from our big shop at the supermarket and I opened up the page where the Prize Super Soduko was located and was my name among the winners? Was it buggery.

I fully appreciated that the Saturday Indy has a readership that is comprised of more than just me but I could not believe that more than ten of them would be as sad as me and actually complete the bloody thing and then go to the trouble of sending it in to win one of the ten prizes on offer. But there’s an important lesson to be learnt there. Never underestimate the amount of sad buggers like yourself who do these things as the world’s obviously full of ‘em!

The boy returned from three weeks at his dad’s on Sunday and he has grown yet again so he is practically the same size as me. He’s nearly 15 and he’s now 6ft. This may be a useful tactic, though, as we now have a week together while we’re both on holiday and one of the films he wants to see has an 18 rating. Dare I risk the potential embarrassment of us going to the pictures and hoodied-up him getting in and baby-faced and clean-shaven me getting thrown out? Could happen…

Me and the missus did actually venture to the cinema a few times while the not-to-little fella was away. We saw Crash last week which was a pretty good. It’s basically several inter-connected stories about race in the US and Don Cheadle is rather excellent as a cop with a wise-cracking robber brother and a crack addict mum. It’s a bit self-righteous but that’s no bad thing and its heart and intentions are certainly in the right place.

The real highlight for me, though, was Me And You And Everyone We Know. This is an uplifting indie film about a shoe salesman and an artist finding love. It’s a perfect date movie so get a date before you go and see it. Or start an affair. Or have a row with your partner and then let it melt you back into lurve... It is that funny quirky and sweet.

Which is more than can be said for the BBC’s new Saturday night flagship show He’s Having A Baby. The premise here is that the cameras follow several dads-to-be and their expectant partners. The ubiquitous Davina MacCall hosts and it sounded quite sweet and promising – but then there came Danny Wallace, a man I’ve previously liked as Dave Gorman’s speccy mate, and it all started to fall to bits...

You see Wallace’s job was to provide the dads-to-be with ‘challenges’ to make the show more entertaining. And, oh, how we laughed as some of them held babies for the first time and swore. Then one went off to learn how to be a stand-up comic for toddlers. Hilarious…

It’s quite sad that the Beeb obviously felt what could have been an interesting and fascinating show about real people and real emotions (as opposed to the manufactured rucks and rows on Big Brother and its ilk) needed gimmicking up. It didn’t but now it has expect all the babies to get mixed up at the end of the show and laugh as the parents scream when they fail to recognise their own kids and head off home with somebody else’s child.

Unless they’re 6ft it’s a mistake I won’t be making…

No comments: