Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Right To Reply

I’m getting pretty hacked off with halfwit advertisers adding comments on my blog about visiting their websites where they’ll sort out my penile/erection/debt problems.

But this, of course, is nothing new. I once had a similar problem at work where I used to get constant emails offering me cut-price Jacuzzis and doses of herbal Viagra.

I objected to the Jacuzzi because I thought it implied I was something of a soap-dodger but I appreciated the herbal element of the Viagra offer as it showed the person concerned had done some market research and realised I was probably a man of hippy-enough sensibilities to go down that route should I ever feel the need.

I was somewhat put off Viagra, however, when I went to a weekend pool tournament with a few of my friends and, in preparation for their usual night of pulling at the local nightclub, they dropped a few tablets of the stiffy drug. Sadly they got the dosage wrong and had to play pool at quite a formal event with whacking erections the following morning. Very funny…

Anyway I am now inviting readers of this blog to openly abuse anyone who posts adverts in the comments section. I’ve added a few replies of my own to get people started so please feel free to fire away! Nothing libelous though!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Return Of The Living Dead!

EastEnders used to be a place where even half-decent actors could make their reputations then move on to other things. Michelle Collins (Sinful Cindy), Nick Berry (Wicked Wicksy), David French (Even More Wicked Wicksy), Tamzin Outhwaite (Man-Hungry Mel), Martin Kemp (Slick Steve Owen) and Paul Nicholls (Nutty Joe) have all left the Square and done at least some decent stuff since leaving Walford.

But that trend is in danger of becoming reversed and it’s now a place where actors go to die. Leslie Grantham started the ball rolling when he returned as Dirty Den and his one-off-the-wrist shenanigans with a webcam virtually ended his career.

And I reckon it’s a plague waiting to happen. Consequently I fear for the pretty good and pretty saucy Tracy-Ann Oberman, soon departing as Chrissie, and the ever-beautiful David Essex, who is on his way to Walford next year. And the fact that Ray Brooks has decided to rip up the legacy of Big Deal and Mr Benn and be remembered as Pauline Fowler’s sex bitch reduces me to tears (although Fowler the Growler in a basque and suspenders bossing somebody around in a gimp mask is not without its merits).

Bizarrely, though, the actor who has probably done best of all post-Enders is Ross Kemp, who made his week-long return to the Square as Grant Mitchell last night and who will be back for a longer stint at the start of next year.

Kemp is an actor of breath-takingly limited ability and his dramatic range stretches from shouting and moving quickly, to shouting slightly less loudly and moving slightly less quickly, to whispering quietly and hardly moving at all... And that’s it.

As Grant Mitchell his previous tenure in the Square saw him walk around as if someone has stuck a pole up his arse that went right to the top of his skull and glued his butt cheeks together so that any form of complex body articulation was too problematic. Consequently on-screen he was a sort of supermarionation thug, whose best attempts at looking menacing were counter-acted by the fact that he minced along like a lifeguard from a gay Baywatch.

EastEnders is utter rubbish at the moment and, like a professional footballer who now owns a bar, the only thing it has to look forward to are memories of its glorious past. So not only have viewers had to put up with Dirty Den coming and going and Barbara Windsor tottering around the Square squawking variations of ‘I’m still a Mitchell!’ every five minutes but now the show has dragged back Ross Kemp as Grant Mitchell and Steve McFadden as Phil Mitchell.

McFadden is actually not a bad actor but Kemp is dreadful and all he had to do last night was get out of a car and say ‘Hello mum!’ He did and you already know it’s going to be spectacularly bad...

If the BBC had any shame it would write to every licence payer and apologise for pissing money away on this cock-rot. Even ITV would hang its head in shame…

Friday, October 21, 2005

Killing Time…

I often contemplate murder and it’s been a pretty annoying sort of week so the thought of releasing tension by butchering a few people is high on the agenda at present. But fear not! I obviously won’t just kill any Tom, Dick or Harry. No…

My A List would comprise obvious candidates like Robert Mugabe (brutal dictator), Margaret Thatcher (brutal dictator), George Bush (dangerous and ignorant idiot) and Ross Kemp (no-talent idiot who could be a win-double as I may also get his hate-mongering Sun editor wife too).

But once we’re through this list any other potential victims would have to undergo a thorough interview process and be carefully selected. And current candidates include:

Phil Collins
(plus points for Genesis but open noose for Another Day In Paradise)

Ben Elton
(plus points for The Young Ones but welcoming electric chair for novels and musicals)

Chris de Burgh
(plus points for a few good songs but major minus points for banging his nanny and penning and releasing Lady in Red)

Ross Kemp
(just because we may not kill him the first time)

And any half-witted businessman with a website who posts comments in my blog page to the effect of ‘Gee you have a great website here. But if you’re worried about impotence/penile growth/loans (delete as appropriate) click on my site to solve your problems.

You have been warned…

Monday, October 17, 2005

Hymn And Her...

The missus refused to go into the Christian book shop with me on Saturday. I think part of her probably feared she would be struck down by lightning or a bolt of thunder would smite her from above as she crossed the threshold, so she went to some chick clothes shop and I ventured in on my own…

The missus had expressed concern earlier in the week when I mentioned that I’d been looking at Christian websites and I think she’d have been a little happier if I used the internet for good old fashioned pornography like everybody else. But I explained it was for a new play I was writing about a disgraced evangelist and an atheist girl who has the power to heal so I needed to read up on stuff.

The soundtrack from The Omen started on my internal soundtrack as soon as I entered the place and it was a bit of an education. There were Catholic Bibles, Good News Bibles and even a Bible in cockney. There were books by Anglicans, Protestants, Catholics, Pentecostals… Religion is a confusing thing and this is only the Christian bit of it!

Anyway I got in and out in one piece and I purchased a New Testament (sadly not in cockney as I was looking forward to reading the parable about the loaves and the jellied eels) which I intend to start reading very shortly.

Working on a new play is always very exciting as a blank page is just so pregnant with possibilities. It’s even more exciting because I got positive responses from four theatres I really like to a play I sent out at the end of last year and I have another play nearly ready to send out and this one about to start. It’s good to be writing again.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Money Talks!

I very nearly didn’t become the aspiring playwright and disillusioned and cynical journalist and all-round word butcher that I am today. No sir-ree!

At one point in my life I was planning to be an accountant and after successfully negotiating my ‘O’ Level Accounts with a minimum of instruction I even had a job interview at a local firm of book-keepers. Sadly they rejected me in favour of someone who I later found out had a huge gambling addiction, which seemed to me at the time not a very good trait for somebody who needed to be good with money. So I concluded the only reason he got the job over me was that he had better hair and a better suit.

He was quite smug about this at the time but he got run over by a bus three years ago and I imagine that somewhat ruined his plush threads and also wiped the smile from his gloating face. It does however mean there’s something of an opening in the firm so I could try again… But why retread old ground? Unless the pay’s better…

I mention this because even before my potential life in debit and credit ledgers I understood a pretty basic rule of money and that was this: Don’t spend more than you have (or more than you can pay back!) because that way you end up in really serious debt. And it’s such a good lesson that Spendaholics got a second series out of it on BBC 3.

Sadly hairdresser Colin, the subject of last night’s show, had not only ignored this basic rule but pissed all over the stone tablet it was written on, smeared it with his own excrement, doused it in petrol, set it on fire and lobbed it through the window of Sensible Accounting Is Us.

Spendaholics is a great programme. It’s MVFS (Makes Viewers Feel Superior) TV and its basic premise is that the producers find somebody who treats money like confetti and films them blowing vast amounts of cash – then its presenters Jay Hunt and Benjamin Fry ride to the rescue to help them stave off the bailiffs and debtors prison.

Colin was last night’s subject and he was a hairdresser and he was gay and he was bullied as a child and our experts concluded that his flagrant use of money was an attempt to bolster his damaged sense of self-worth… That may well be the case but even to my now unfocused financial eye any idiot who routinely spends £45 on a pair of boxer shorts, doesn’t bother opening bills when they arrive and blows other vast amounts of moollah on luxury breaks and wild weekends is simply asking for trouble.

I like Spendaholics. It’s a smart BBC 3 show and the first series was pretty watchable but last night there were signs it’s starting to gimmick up. Colin couldn’t face his bills so our experts locked him in a cage with his bills stuck to the wall to make him face his bills (geddit?) and to show him where he could end up if he carried on his current road to fiscal suicide.

This is a shame because the show and its subjects are usually pretty engaging and the series doesn’t need it. You’d also have thought that a show that preaches frugality would itself be keen to keep its production budget to a minimum. But that’s a small criticism really. It all seemed to work for Colin as last night he went on a journey and managed to deal with his demons and also cut down on his ludicrous spending. So we should all feel loads better as there was a happy conclusion.

Well, for everyone but his underwear shop which may be closing down next week. Fortunately Colin will know just the people to help out if they run into financial trouble…

Thursday, October 06, 2005

And The Winner Is...

A personality vacuum resembling a plank of wood in an expensive suit won series two of The Apprentice last night. The plank called Kelly beat a Barbie doll lookalike named Jennifer after both had completed an event organising task and the victorious former military man celebrated with a display of whooping that had all the grace of a cage-bound baboon lobbing its own shit at one of its neighbours.

But the real highlight of the finale of The Apprentice last night was the way the usual intimate boardroom end-of-show format turned into an episode of The Jerry Springer Show as screens were pulled back and the boardroom suddenly appeared on the stage of a huge theatre filled with several hundred people.

The astoundingly haired Donald Trump sat in the middle of a big desk on this stage and he was flanked by his colleague George, one of the few genuinely entertaining and smart men on the programme, and his colleague Carolyn, the no-nonsense ice queen who’s become a prominent feature of some of my darkest sexual fantasies. Even better she’d had her hair done specially in sort of flicked bouffant affair. She obviously has her eyes on the Trump role come the next series.

The unsuccessful candidates who’d previously been fired came out and said their pieces about the two remaining wannabe squillionaires and took seats on stage like in This Is Your Life, then advice from various business dignitaries (all white and all male) in the audience was sought. We then had a few audience soundbites and some footage from more colleagues (Yawn!) then Don invited the two remaining candidates out for a grilling.

Jennifer was razor-sharp and intelligent throughout this but the man who could ‘give and follow orders’ won the day. And there’s an important lesson to be learnt here... the dim American white man always wins. But with a Texan Forrest Gump as US President I guess that comes as no surprise.

God bless America!