When series two of The Apprentice first started I was convinced it would be a case of the WASPs (white anglo-saxon protestants) who would inherit the earth. Or at least the large part of it that came from working for Donald Trump.
And so it came to pass as Kevin, an impressively educated black guy who was by far the smartest and the most centred would-be business guru of those who made it through to the TV stages, got the bullet last night, leaving two blonde Barbie doll lookalikes and former military man Kelly as the final three.
I’m not saying that Donald Trump is a racist (libel lawyers take note) because nobody with that hair could EVER realistically criticise anyone else on the grounds of appearance. And he is particularly fond of helping Eastern Europeans, especially if they’re young, female models with long legs all the way up to their arses. But it was interesting that a white man and four of his white business chums all picked two pretty white women and a half-witted white guy with a military background over someone who had consistently proven himself on task after task over the series.
After the eviction of Kevin one of the dim blondes went and now my only interest in the series is seeing if Trump realises that his business empire is named after a noun that in England means foul-smelling gas escaping from the bottom.
I am also hoping that they reshow the section of Donald Trump carrying an Olympic torch and jogging along the street as part of the New York bid that featured on last night’s show. ‘To be a winner you have to think like a winner!’ boasted the amusingly coiffured one’s voice-over while he jogged along, a vision in shell suit and mad hair.
News flash on this one Donald. You bloody well lost! From little victories...
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The Sound Of Music...
Generally I hate musicals. Just the opening strains of most trite West End vehicles can give me a sudden urge to find and skull-fuck the creative teams responsible. And don’t even get me started on any musical penned by Ben Elton... The best case scenario here is that he’s a snuff movie waiting to happen.
Sometimes, though, an odd musical will get under the wire. Cabaret remains fabulous because of its mix of political comment and sleazy decadence and West Wide Story is very classy and makes me halt all my critical faculties. But the rest of them. No thanks...
So seeing two musicals in just over a week to celebrate the birthday of the missus could have been a bit of a test but it was not a wholly horrible experience.
Sadly Guys And Dolls was pretty rubbish. It’s currently playing in the Piccadilly Theatre after a transfer from the Donmar Warehouse. It stars Ewan McGregor and he’s sort of OK in very little charisma sort of way. The two lead girls (Jane Krakowski and Jenna Russell) are excellent and a few of the musical numbers (Luck Be A Lady Tonight and Rockin’ The Boat) are pretty good but that’s sort of it.
You can pretty much see how a show which had been ripped out of an intimate stage at the Donmar and probably worked really well there just hadn’t been significantly changed enough when it was slung into a huge aircraft hangar of a West End theatre. It just didn’t fill the space. It was a bit pedestrian pace-wise, too, and not the most energetic show I’ve ever seen. It was also bloody expensive and I frankly expect a bit more for my cash. But I guess hiring Jedis doesn't come cheap.
The Big Life, however, was utterly fabulous. This new ska musical was real high energy and featured a cast who actually seemed really pleased to be there. The show is a love story about four couples from the first wave of West Indian immigrants who came over on the Windrush and it happily mixes slapstick, rollicking musical numbers and a bit of social commentary. This was transfered from the Theatre Royal Stratford and it’s a great example of a community show that was created for the area’s largely black population and has a life outside its original genesis.
If Guys And Dolls had half of the energy of The Big Life then it may well have been a very different experience. Sadly it didn’t and it was pretty poor because of it.
Stratford East 1 Big Name West End Tourist Tat 0...
Sometimes, though, an odd musical will get under the wire. Cabaret remains fabulous because of its mix of political comment and sleazy decadence and West Wide Story is very classy and makes me halt all my critical faculties. But the rest of them. No thanks...
So seeing two musicals in just over a week to celebrate the birthday of the missus could have been a bit of a test but it was not a wholly horrible experience.
Sadly Guys And Dolls was pretty rubbish. It’s currently playing in the Piccadilly Theatre after a transfer from the Donmar Warehouse. It stars Ewan McGregor and he’s sort of OK in very little charisma sort of way. The two lead girls (Jane Krakowski and Jenna Russell) are excellent and a few of the musical numbers (Luck Be A Lady Tonight and Rockin’ The Boat) are pretty good but that’s sort of it.
You can pretty much see how a show which had been ripped out of an intimate stage at the Donmar and probably worked really well there just hadn’t been significantly changed enough when it was slung into a huge aircraft hangar of a West End theatre. It just didn’t fill the space. It was a bit pedestrian pace-wise, too, and not the most energetic show I’ve ever seen. It was also bloody expensive and I frankly expect a bit more for my cash. But I guess hiring Jedis doesn't come cheap.
The Big Life, however, was utterly fabulous. This new ska musical was real high energy and featured a cast who actually seemed really pleased to be there. The show is a love story about four couples from the first wave of West Indian immigrants who came over on the Windrush and it happily mixes slapstick, rollicking musical numbers and a bit of social commentary. This was transfered from the Theatre Royal Stratford and it’s a great example of a community show that was created for the area’s largely black population and has a life outside its original genesis.
If Guys And Dolls had half of the energy of The Big Life then it may well have been a very different experience. Sadly it didn’t and it was pretty poor because of it.
Stratford East 1 Big Name West End Tourist Tat 0...
Monday, September 26, 2005
Swear On It!
Apparently I have a foul mouth. All I have to do is open my lips to say something simple like ‘Good Morning!’ and a string of expletives that would shame a gin-sodden dockside whore spews forth.
I am currently putting this down to working long hours on a special project but maybe I just have a foul mouth – or even some mild form of Tourette’s. Maybe things will get so bad that I’ll have to have my mouth sewn shut by surgeons (or sturgeons even) and have to relate to people through the medium of mime. After all I’ve recently discovered I quite like Marilyn Manson and, as all those gun-toting and God-loving Americans tell us, it’s only a short step from Mechanical Animals to self-mutilation and behaving like a social deviant!
Fortunately I have a garden and, as I was sans boy and sans wife, I spent the best part of Saturday sorting this out. Down came all the starting-to-go tomato and French bean plants and in went the bulbs for next year. I also discovered a great smelling herb called lemon verbena at the local garden centre. It was good Tourette’s therapy (although I was tempted to spell out the word ‘cock’ in daffodils at one point) and coupled with an hour kicking and hitting my punchbag I felt very chilled.
I feared a run of expletives would return when myself and the missus sat down to watch the latest ITV drama on Saturday night, though. This was called Afterlife and starred Lesley Sharp as a reluctant spiritualist who sees and chats to dead folk, with Andrew Lincoln as the cynical college professor who’s out to investigate and expose her.
Sharp is always good value and her acting credits include From Hell, Vera Drake and Clocking Off. Andrew Lincoln, though, did a decent job as the cynical bloke in Teachers and was quite good in the stage play Blue/Orange at the National but I’ve yet to be totally convinced by him. And as for the whole genre of ITV drama... Cue profanity attack!
Rather amazingly, though, this mish-mash of talents produced something that was eminently watchable and I may even make a point of catching part two of the six-episode run next Saturday.
An ITV drama that’s actually pretty good. Now that is bastarding amazing!
I am currently putting this down to working long hours on a special project but maybe I just have a foul mouth – or even some mild form of Tourette’s. Maybe things will get so bad that I’ll have to have my mouth sewn shut by surgeons (or sturgeons even) and have to relate to people through the medium of mime. After all I’ve recently discovered I quite like Marilyn Manson and, as all those gun-toting and God-loving Americans tell us, it’s only a short step from Mechanical Animals to self-mutilation and behaving like a social deviant!
Fortunately I have a garden and, as I was sans boy and sans wife, I spent the best part of Saturday sorting this out. Down came all the starting-to-go tomato and French bean plants and in went the bulbs for next year. I also discovered a great smelling herb called lemon verbena at the local garden centre. It was good Tourette’s therapy (although I was tempted to spell out the word ‘cock’ in daffodils at one point) and coupled with an hour kicking and hitting my punchbag I felt very chilled.
I feared a run of expletives would return when myself and the missus sat down to watch the latest ITV drama on Saturday night, though. This was called Afterlife and starred Lesley Sharp as a reluctant spiritualist who sees and chats to dead folk, with Andrew Lincoln as the cynical college professor who’s out to investigate and expose her.
Sharp is always good value and her acting credits include From Hell, Vera Drake and Clocking Off. Andrew Lincoln, though, did a decent job as the cynical bloke in Teachers and was quite good in the stage play Blue/Orange at the National but I’ve yet to be totally convinced by him. And as for the whole genre of ITV drama... Cue profanity attack!
Rather amazingly, though, this mish-mash of talents produced something that was eminently watchable and I may even make a point of catching part two of the six-episode run next Saturday.
An ITV drama that’s actually pretty good. Now that is bastarding amazing!
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
In Da Club!
ITV recently screened a programme counting down it’s top 50 TV shows to celebrate 50 years of broadcasting and the good people who voted for this quite rightly put Coronation Street, 45 this year and still going strong, at the top of the pile. Sadly they also put Ant And Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway at number two and Footballers’ Wives at number five. This means that two sometimes funny Geordies and a soul-less glam-fest masquerading as drama are considered ‘better’ than such ground-breaking shows as World In Action, Rising Damp, First Tuesday, Whicker’s World and The Sweeney. God help us...
But even the dullards who decided to rate schlock over quality on ITV would find Five’s latest offering, Trust Me – I’m A Holiday Rep, too much to bear.
The basic premise of Trust Me – I’m A Holiday Rep is that six celebs get jobs as holiday reps in Cypriot party capital Ayia Napa. Then they go about their jobs as they struggle to toe the holiday company line and entertain the punters – with hilarious results!
Sadly Quentin Tarantino (‘Drink that sambuca or I’ll pop a cap in your ass!’) and Michael Jackson (who would have been great running the kids’ club) were unavailable so Five plumped for another six members of the great and good to take part. And what a six...
Step forward glamour model and breast exhibitionist Jodie Marsh, former New Kids On The Block singer Jordan Knight, Make Me A Supermodel reality show ‘star’ Jasmine Lennard, comedian Syd Little, broadcaster Nina Myskow and Coronation Street actor (well, for about six months three years ago) Scott Wright. And if that wasn’t enough quality the presenting duo is Nancy Sorrell (Mrs Vic Reeves) and Toby Anstis (the memorable host of TV Scrabble).
Words nearly fail me here and nothing you imagine can prepare you for the utter banality of this show. Its undoubted star is Jasmine Lennard, who bizarrely ‘shot to fame’ on another reality show about trying to find a supermodel. She’s worth a look if only to witness a woman whose sense-of-humour bypass operation was so successful that it also removed any sense of irony too. She’s a micro-celeb who IS stupid enough to think that she’s a real TV player and she can’t understand why nobody thinks she’s as important as she clearly does.
With this sort of celebrity competition cheery Syd Little is the show’s only saving grace – and those are words I never thought would pass my lips. Ever... It’s so bad it even makes an ITV drama starring Ross Kemp a preferable choice for an hour’s viewing!
Don’t say you weren’t warned...
But even the dullards who decided to rate schlock over quality on ITV would find Five’s latest offering, Trust Me – I’m A Holiday Rep, too much to bear.
The basic premise of Trust Me – I’m A Holiday Rep is that six celebs get jobs as holiday reps in Cypriot party capital Ayia Napa. Then they go about their jobs as they struggle to toe the holiday company line and entertain the punters – with hilarious results!
Sadly Quentin Tarantino (‘Drink that sambuca or I’ll pop a cap in your ass!’) and Michael Jackson (who would have been great running the kids’ club) were unavailable so Five plumped for another six members of the great and good to take part. And what a six...
Step forward glamour model and breast exhibitionist Jodie Marsh, former New Kids On The Block singer Jordan Knight, Make Me A Supermodel reality show ‘star’ Jasmine Lennard, comedian Syd Little, broadcaster Nina Myskow and Coronation Street actor (well, for about six months three years ago) Scott Wright. And if that wasn’t enough quality the presenting duo is Nancy Sorrell (Mrs Vic Reeves) and Toby Anstis (the memorable host of TV Scrabble).
Words nearly fail me here and nothing you imagine can prepare you for the utter banality of this show. Its undoubted star is Jasmine Lennard, who bizarrely ‘shot to fame’ on another reality show about trying to find a supermodel. She’s worth a look if only to witness a woman whose sense-of-humour bypass operation was so successful that it also removed any sense of irony too. She’s a micro-celeb who IS stupid enough to think that she’s a real TV player and she can’t understand why nobody thinks she’s as important as she clearly does.
With this sort of celebrity competition cheery Syd Little is the show’s only saving grace – and those are words I never thought would pass my lips. Ever... It’s so bad it even makes an ITV drama starring Ross Kemp a preferable choice for an hour’s viewing!
Don’t say you weren’t warned...
Monday, September 19, 2005
Out Of The Closet...
Myself and the boy went comic shopping on Saturday and came home to find the missus sorting out her wardrobes (note the plural). Tops, trousers, T-shirts and shoes filled three recycling bags and she’d even systematically sorted out her cupboards with those hanging down linen shelve things.
I considered this a moral victory because one of my major influences in our home has been my need for organisation and cleanliness. The boy affectionately refers to this as my obsessive compulsive disorder (unless I’m buying him comics when he says it’s an important influence on the smooth running of the household) but he has unwittingly followed my lead and keeps his comics and DVDs in order. Of course it’s not the alphabetical system I use for such things but I do smile and nod approvingly when I see him label magazine boxes and ensure his DVDs are neatly stacked. For some parents it’s sport but I feel great pride when I see a nicely labelled filing system and possessions in a familiar and easy-to-understand order.
The wife, of course, had previously resisted my civilising influence and continued to ignore basic suggestions to aid domestic organisation. Her bag tree (a hat stand brimming with bags of every shape and colour) remains an utter shambles and the less said about her CD collection before I got my hands on it the better!
So I gave myself a slap on the back when I arrived home to her newly organised wardrobes and the full recycling bags. Then the following day she went out and started buying more clothes. She’s got room in her wardrobes now you see...
I considered this a moral victory because one of my major influences in our home has been my need for organisation and cleanliness. The boy affectionately refers to this as my obsessive compulsive disorder (unless I’m buying him comics when he says it’s an important influence on the smooth running of the household) but he has unwittingly followed my lead and keeps his comics and DVDs in order. Of course it’s not the alphabetical system I use for such things but I do smile and nod approvingly when I see him label magazine boxes and ensure his DVDs are neatly stacked. For some parents it’s sport but I feel great pride when I see a nicely labelled filing system and possessions in a familiar and easy-to-understand order.
The wife, of course, had previously resisted my civilising influence and continued to ignore basic suggestions to aid domestic organisation. Her bag tree (a hat stand brimming with bags of every shape and colour) remains an utter shambles and the less said about her CD collection before I got my hands on it the better!
So I gave myself a slap on the back when I arrived home to her newly organised wardrobes and the full recycling bags. Then the following day she went out and started buying more clothes. She’s got room in her wardrobes now you see...
Thursday, September 15, 2005
A Reader Writes...
Dear sir
I am just writing to express my admiration for the fine example set by the England Cricket Team after their recent triumph in the Ashes.
For more years than I care to remember our cricket chaps have played second fiddle (and indeed even third trombone) to pots and pans countries such as Australia.
But now our brave boys have shown that they too can get as shit-faced and behave as disgracefully as both the chaps from Down Under (who coming from criminal stock have a head start in the bad behaviour stakes) and even the intellectually challenged gentlemen of the Association Football game.
Good on them I say! Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the bar!
Colonel Dwight Michelwight
The Pall Mall Club
London
I am just writing to express my admiration for the fine example set by the England Cricket Team after their recent triumph in the Ashes.
For more years than I care to remember our cricket chaps have played second fiddle (and indeed even third trombone) to pots and pans countries such as Australia.
But now our brave boys have shown that they too can get as shit-faced and behave as disgracefully as both the chaps from Down Under (who coming from criminal stock have a head start in the bad behaviour stakes) and even the intellectually challenged gentlemen of the Association Football game.
Good on them I say! Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the bar!
Colonel Dwight Michelwight
The Pall Mall Club
London
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
What’s Up Doc?
I went to see the doctor to have my injured arm double-checked today. After waiting for what seemed like an eternity I finally got in and saw it was a locum doctor rather than my usual thorough-as-a-bloodhound-on-a-scent medic. The meeting went like this.
Doctor: What seems to be the problem?
Me: As my notes show I seriously injured my arm a few weeks ago and it’s still quite swollen and pretty painful so I just wanted to know if it’s still OK.
Doctor: (The doctor prods around for five seconds) It’s fine. Goodbye.
NHS! Best health service in the world... Unless my arm suddenly falls off and I go on to discover the so-called locum doctor was actually the cleaner who found a white coat and fancied living out some medical fantasy. Thank god I didn’t have a prostrate problem...
Doctor: What seems to be the problem?
Me: As my notes show I seriously injured my arm a few weeks ago and it’s still quite swollen and pretty painful so I just wanted to know if it’s still OK.
Doctor: (The doctor prods around for five seconds) It’s fine. Goodbye.
NHS! Best health service in the world... Unless my arm suddenly falls off and I go on to discover the so-called locum doctor was actually the cleaner who found a white coat and fancied living out some medical fantasy. Thank god I didn’t have a prostrate problem...
Thursday, September 08, 2005
House Of Pain...
This week I have been off work following an elbow injury at hapkido and typing left-handed is a real pain in the arse. Hence the up-until-now non-updated blog as left-handed keyboard work is a very, very, very slow process.
Normally any time off work would be a cause of major celebration and banners and bunting would be dripping from the house and filled champagne flutes and croissants made from unicorn tears would be given to guests. But with no right hand any major writing, playing pool and martial arts classes in my unexpected free time are total non-starters so it’s been radio, TV and DVDs to while away my recovery time. And this has been a real mixed bag…
On the plus side BBC radio is consistently good. The Bearded Ladies’ sketch show on Radio 4 is a quite smart affair and The Flight Of The Conchords, a sitcom on Radio 2 about a New Zealand folk outfit, is both kooky and funny. New sitcom Weak At The Top on Radio 4 is pretty funny too. On the DVD front I have also indulged myself with all three and a bit hours of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Bliss…
But this attempt at filling my healing time with quality entertainment has also had its bleaker and less worthy moments…
Car Booty at dinner-time on BBC 1 remains relatively painless and is clearly a cheap schedule filler. The show involves members of the public trying to earn a few quid from flogging their unwanted tat on the premise of needing to raise cash for some noble cause or other – visiting long-lost relatives overseas, taking a carer out to a health spa, spending a weekend in a Thai brothel snorting cocaine… OK. I made the last one up but if you can ignore the inanely scripted banter such as ‘Can I have a rummage around in your downstairs? F’nar, f’nar…’ the show is relatively painless and an improvement on the Test Card. If only just…
But some shows are not so innocuous and the lowlight of my TV week remains The Jerry Springer Show on ITV. I thought Springer had gone from our schedules but this was the UK version of his US show and it was brilliant. Well I say brilliant but excruciatingly desperate would probably be nearer the mark and I was quite close to taking my entire week’s prescription of pain-killers when the remote control went missing half-way through.
The episode I saw was subtitled ‘Who’s lying? My husband or his pregnant mistress?’ and it featured a former married couple from Dorset named Melvin and Shirley and the with-child other woman called Catherine. Was Melvin a love rat? Would Shirley leave him? Was Catherine’s child his?
These questions could have been answered in two minutes but that wouldn’t make it very interesting telly so we had a procession of rows, name-calling, stopped-in-the-nick-of-time fights, people walking off stage… Imagine a colony of squabbling penguins squawking at each other in West Country accents at 4am in the morning when you’ve just got in from a heavy night out and you need sleep. This was worse and it was just relentlessly painful.
As was series two of Nighty Night which returned to the ever-excellent BBC 3 with Julia Davis as West Country beautician-cum-serial-killer Jill. It’s bleak stuff and the show continues to take black comedy into previously unchartered waters. The opening episode had an OAP having her pubic hair shaved, attempted bestiality and oral sex with a glass partition in-between. There was a murder too. It may sound sick but it was pretty funny. Relentlessly so in fact. Think Last Of The Summer Wine scripted by the Marquis De Sade and you're there.
If only Melvin and Shirley and Catherine came with jokes too…
Normally any time off work would be a cause of major celebration and banners and bunting would be dripping from the house and filled champagne flutes and croissants made from unicorn tears would be given to guests. But with no right hand any major writing, playing pool and martial arts classes in my unexpected free time are total non-starters so it’s been radio, TV and DVDs to while away my recovery time. And this has been a real mixed bag…
On the plus side BBC radio is consistently good. The Bearded Ladies’ sketch show on Radio 4 is a quite smart affair and The Flight Of The Conchords, a sitcom on Radio 2 about a New Zealand folk outfit, is both kooky and funny. New sitcom Weak At The Top on Radio 4 is pretty funny too. On the DVD front I have also indulged myself with all three and a bit hours of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. Bliss…
But this attempt at filling my healing time with quality entertainment has also had its bleaker and less worthy moments…
Car Booty at dinner-time on BBC 1 remains relatively painless and is clearly a cheap schedule filler. The show involves members of the public trying to earn a few quid from flogging their unwanted tat on the premise of needing to raise cash for some noble cause or other – visiting long-lost relatives overseas, taking a carer out to a health spa, spending a weekend in a Thai brothel snorting cocaine… OK. I made the last one up but if you can ignore the inanely scripted banter such as ‘Can I have a rummage around in your downstairs? F’nar, f’nar…’ the show is relatively painless and an improvement on the Test Card. If only just…
But some shows are not so innocuous and the lowlight of my TV week remains The Jerry Springer Show on ITV. I thought Springer had gone from our schedules but this was the UK version of his US show and it was brilliant. Well I say brilliant but excruciatingly desperate would probably be nearer the mark and I was quite close to taking my entire week’s prescription of pain-killers when the remote control went missing half-way through.
The episode I saw was subtitled ‘Who’s lying? My husband or his pregnant mistress?’ and it featured a former married couple from Dorset named Melvin and Shirley and the with-child other woman called Catherine. Was Melvin a love rat? Would Shirley leave him? Was Catherine’s child his?
These questions could have been answered in two minutes but that wouldn’t make it very interesting telly so we had a procession of rows, name-calling, stopped-in-the-nick-of-time fights, people walking off stage… Imagine a colony of squabbling penguins squawking at each other in West Country accents at 4am in the morning when you’ve just got in from a heavy night out and you need sleep. This was worse and it was just relentlessly painful.
As was series two of Nighty Night which returned to the ever-excellent BBC 3 with Julia Davis as West Country beautician-cum-serial-killer Jill. It’s bleak stuff and the show continues to take black comedy into previously unchartered waters. The opening episode had an OAP having her pubic hair shaved, attempted bestiality and oral sex with a glass partition in-between. There was a murder too. It may sound sick but it was pretty funny. Relentlessly so in fact. Think Last Of The Summer Wine scripted by the Marquis De Sade and you're there.
If only Melvin and Shirley and Catherine came with jokes too…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)