Colour Blind…

Had a couple of chums visit at the weekend in the sunny climes of North-West London and we went to the pub.

Local pubs in our neck of the woods used to be spit-and-sawdust affairs but now you can’t move for Belgian beer this and gourmet food that. These pubs now also boast sofas and copies of The Guardian and The Independent at every table. They also have a high population of media twats with mobiles glued to their ears, Hoxton fin haircuts and the sort of glasses that I have just bought.

Christ! Am I slowly becoming one of them?

Anyway myself and the missus and my mate and his other half were having a chat about glasses as my mate had laser eye surgery some time ago and was singing it’s praises.

His missus, of West Indian descent, also told us the story of when he had it done and she came to visit him in hospital the day after. As the bandages were removed he started to open his eyes and look around the room to refocus his new eyesight. His eyes then rested on his missus and he was silent. She asked if he was OK to which he replied.

‘Christ. I’ve married a black woman!’

Now that’s comedy!

Tosca’s Kiss

The missus and myself went to the Orange Tree in Richmond to see Tosca’s Kiss at the weekend.

Written by Kenneth Jupp, the play is set in 1946 and follows reporter Rebecca West as she covers the Nuremburg Trials and, in particular, the case of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's economics minister whose fiscal skill ensured Nazi Germany had the financial clout to become a fearsome war machine.

It’s a four-hander with the characters West and Schacht joined by Tom Morton, Schacht's American prosecutor, and Francis Biddle, the American judge in charge of the case. Between these four is played out a personal drama as the reporter and the judge have an affair and a morality play as Morton and Schacht fight it out in court.

The first half needs a bit of script work as some of the dialogue is a bit clunky and a bit 1940s B&W movie melodrama. It’s light though not sharp. But the second half picks up pace when the moral meat of the play gets picked over. Can a banker and economist be blamed for the horrors that his system helped create?

The Nuremburg judges thought not and Schacht got off – then went to work in the US helping build their economy in the wake of World War Two.

It’s an engaging play – and with Bush handing out contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq before the invasion proper had started – it’s a timely play. Balancing the cost of human lives and public opinion against realpolitik and the clout of money men and industrialists is an all-too current dilemma. Just ask Mr Blair…

Movie Magic!

Took the boy to see X-Men III: The Last Stand yesterday evening.

Comics are our thing and the missus has long since decided that she has no wish to waste three hours of her time accompanying us to see CGI-laden fight-fests while the two of us consume more popcorn than most people see in a year.

But this is good as it means the two of us get to see all sorts of boys-action rubbish and gorge ourselves stupid on nachos and sweets and fizzy drinks, etc, without unhelpful comments such as ‘Do you have to eat that loud?!’ or ‘Can you keep still please? Just for once!’

The movie itself was OK and the shock bit at the end of the credits suggests there’ll be more of this franchise to come. The funniest bit for me, though, was when me and the boy were walking to the bus stop and he picked several continuity and plot device holes in the film.

The missus, naturally, is an arch pedant and she can’t walk down a high street without pointing out where the apostrophe should be in any shop sign offending basic laws of grammar. And the genes have obviously won through on this one as the boy now does this and by also utilizing his analytical skills to also critique movies he’s clearly following in his mother’s footsteps.

This, of course doesn’t augur well for me. There will clearly be no respite from the tide of criticism in our house. And guess where it will be directed…

Specs Appeal…

It’s been well-documented through large sections of this blog that the missus and the boy think I’m a super-sized idiot.

And it’s an idiocy that can take many forms… Fashion faux pas (‘You actually bought that?!’), conversational misunderstandings (‘Cunning stunts is what I actually said…’), DIY disasters (‘You never thought to check for power cables first then?’) and a propensity to make things up as I go along and then pass them off as fact (‘So when you said farting was acceptable in an Indian restaurant that was a lie, wasn’t it?') are just a few of my claims to fame.

But my latest piece of inspiration may top all this. I went to a very flash optician recently and I ordered a new pair of spectacles. I also paid a small fortune for them and was very full of myself – until I told the missus…

‘So you went and bought glasses - without me?’
‘Might have done…’
‘Did you or didn’t you?’
‘Yes…’
‘And do they look nice?’
‘Yes…’
‘Would I think they look nice?’
‘What’s for tea?’
‘Would I think they look nice?’
‘Maybe…’

I’m still waiting for my specs to arrive but I now have a horrible feeling that I bought something that will make me look like a cross between Sue Pollard, Mike Harding and Timmy Mallett.

Maybe I just shouldn’t be allowed out on my own…

Fair Cop?

Feel The Force is a sitcom about two WPCs in Edinburgh. It stars Rosie Cavaliero and Michelle Gomez as comedy coppers Frank and Bobbins and I was hoping it would be good. And I had good reason to hope too. Gomez is one of the most watchable things on TV as Green Wing’s raving administrator Sue White and the writer, Georgia Pritchett, is one of the folk behind Smack The Pony.

Sadly it was woeful. The sort of woe that gives you a tummy-ache and makes you feel slightly overcome with melancholia and other such Victorian-sounding ailments.

In sitcom-land there’s been a distinct shift away from purely plot-based comedy in recent years and the laughs more often than not come from the oddball behaviour of the protagonists rather than the plots themselves. In other words the plot is almost an incidental part as all this now does is give viewers the opportunity to see the characters expose more of their failings. Think Ricky Gervais or Larry David rather than My Family and you get the idea.

Last night’s episode of Feel The Force, though, couldn’t tell which way it wanted to go. Was it a plot-based comedy, was it a character-based comedy, was it a quirky foibles-based comedy?

Its TV listing in my head went something like this: ‘The wacky policewomen (For so they are. Honest!), who sometimes behave in a really bizarre way for no apparent reason, babysit the inspector’s daughter and go after a wanted man – with hilarious consequences…’

Essentially it was a bad idea poorly executed and that’s a shame because it has the seeds of something really funny and it certainly has the pedigree to be so much better. But this is a lame horse and if you possessed a horse this lame you would shoot it in a tender moment of equine euthanasia. Or force-feed it port so it would suffer from gout or die of ennui…

Ride ‘em Cowboy!

Now I’m liberal sort of guy. OK, I may crack jokes about the French not fighting in wars and I may snigger when watching Brokeback Mountain, but apart from these slight traces of racism and homophobia I’m generally a stand-up sort of guy, a live-and-let-live good fella (and I don’t mean the sort of good fella who goes around killing gangsters).

But even I am sometimes perplexed by 'difference' and yesterday I witnessed something I’d never seen before.

On the way home from work myself and the missus stopped off at Piccadilly Circus to buy a present from HMV and we crossed the Trocadero to reach our goal. At the bottom of this tourist hell hole is a picture shack where people pay money to dress in all manner of period garb to have their pictures taken so they can show them to the folks back home what a right larf they had in the Smoke.

Anyway, myself and the missus walked past this and getting dressed up in Wild West cowboy garb was a chap of Middle Eastern extraction while his missus (in full burka) was donning the guise of a saloon prostitute so she could pose by her man. Needless to say, she was still wearing the full burka…

Now I admit I stared. I stared a lot. I then pointed this out to the missus and she stared too. We briefly looked at each other in a confused sort of struggling-for-meaning way then walked on to HMV.

Bus Stop!

Love is the glue that binds myself and my good lady wife together – although she also claims the prescription drugs she uses to stop herself from repeatedly stabbing me through the throat whenever I annoy her are a major help.

But our marriage is also founded on other common interests...

We both reckon the only good Tory is a dead one, we both support Amnesty International and their work campaigning against torture (although we have an Amnesty amnesty on torture if it means either of us get to inflict pain on anyone in Coldplay) and we both despise both Dan Brown and anyone who reads any book he has ever written (or just walked by).

Sadly, though, there will be a parting of the ways over the next few weeks as the best reality show on Channel 4 is back and I will be watching it alone while my good lady wife is elsewhere, petulantly refusing to partake in the televisual fun.

Coach Trip, for those who have not had the pleasure, is either the ultimate postmodern satire on reality TV – or it’s quite simply the worst show to grace TV screens. Ever. In the whole history of telly. And that includes ITV dramas with Ross Kemp.

The basic premise is that seven couples (husband and wife, mother and daughter, brother and sister, etc,) go on a coach journey around Europe and stop off somewhere each episode to do fun things, like lace-making in Belguim, making pottery in Limoges or harpooning dolphins in Spain (I made the last one up).

The 14 folk are guided by an elderly tour guide called Brendon, who’s like a bitchy Norris Cole from Corrie, and people who upset or annoy the other travellers are voted off the bus to be replaced by other couples. The travellers themselves are brilliant and the voiceovers introducing them go something like this:

‘Ted is an unemployed spot welder from Sheffield and his wife Liz is a suppository inserter in a care home in Bradford. They collect bar towels in their spare time. Today Ted is trying his hand at laying a mosaic in Budapest while Liz looks on…’

Ted: ‘It’s fiddly, this. Give us an hand.’
Liz: ‘Fuck off Ted, I’m doing The Sun bingo.’
Ted: ‘But you could help me with this here more zake, Liz.’
Liz: ‘Fuck off Ted – or I’ll sleep with your brother again…’
Ted: ‘You slept with my brother as well as my father!’

And this is just the rucks between the couples themselves. It gets even better when factions of the 14 start having a pop at each other.

Every conflict is cynically engineered and all the squabbles involve the sort of people who are not classy enough to spend a week in Playa Las Americas. But bizarrely it remains compulsive viewing. Honest.

Legless...

Had a debate about Heather Mills McCartney in the office today and the general consensus is that she's out to dig more gold than the mineral mining communities of Africa.

I suggested she was also an Argos version of Princess Di and that to eradicate her from our collective consciousnesses we should come up with a list of five more famous amputees.

So for the record here are our five amputees who are more deserving of newspaper coverage than the former Mrs Macker – even though they've all been dead for many years...

1) Cole Porter (song-writing mono-pedded genius at the end of his life)
2) Sarah Bernhard (acting mono-pedded genius at the end of her life)
3) Josiah Wedgwood (porcelain and pottery maverick with one good pin)
4) Arthur Askey (comedy demi-god who lost both his legs at the end)
5) Douglas Bader (Air Force ace and PoW extraordinaire with no legs)

God bless them all...

Humour...

OLD JOKE
Q. What has three legs and lives on a farm?
A. The McCartneys.

NEW JOKE
Q. What had three legs and lived on a farm?
A. The McCartneys.

History Of Violence…

Myself and the missus are laid in bed on Saturday morning. I’d been watching a DVD of a martial arts series called Mind, Body And Kick-ass Moves the night before and she was quite taken with a Dim Mak expert who attacked people using pressure points.

‘I think I should learn martial arts.’ She suddenly announces.
‘You always reject the idea when I suggest it.’
‘Well not so much martial arts. Just the Dim Mak bit of it. I like the idea of just being able to touch someone and cause them pain.’
‘You just live with me and you cause me pain.’
‘Yes but you’re an idiot and you deserve it.’
‘I know some pressure points. Let me show you…’
‘Ouch! That bloody hurt!’
‘And there’s this one too…’
‘That’s not a pressure point. That’s just a bloody nip!’
‘But it was nipping a pressure point.’
‘You do that again and I’ll knock your head part off.’
‘But I’ll look like a Pez dispenser?’
‘It’ll be an improvement on an idiot…’ Pause. ‘Idiot!’

Picture This...

Am trying to work out how to post pictures on my blog. I think I may just have figured it out...

The Changeling

Went to the Barbican at the weekend with the missus to see the Cheek By Jowl production of The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley.

It’s a Jacobean tragedy about a desperate heiress who uses a disfigured servant to ‘dispose’ of her unwanted bridegroom – but the servant decides he wants her rather than any form of cash payment after he’s committed the murder.

It’s pretty grim and gory stuff but the production switched between dark tragedy and black comedy really effectively and, as there was little in the way of set or props, the stripped-down style helped emphasise the brooding language. Will Keen was also fabulous as the Machiavellian manservant De Flores, a character who was both scary and sympathetic.

It’s one of my favourite plays from that period and it was the first time I’d seen it performed and it was a really strong production. Well worth a look…

The Apprentice: The Final…

Michelle won. Ruth lost. Sugar went on a 'gut feeling' after he criticised another candidate for also going on a 'gut feeling' earlier in the series.

It’s the worst recruitment decision since Graham Taylor said Geoff Thomas and Carlton Palmer were international footballers.

And she's from Hull for God's sake. The only good thing to come out of Hull is the M65.

Crack Monkeys...

I complimented the rest of the subs desk today by telling them they were performing like monkeys on crack after they’d shifted their way through a very large pile of proofs in impressive time. I then mused that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to put monkeys on crack when a colleague suggested that it had probably already been done.

‘When?’ I asked.
“Well they had to test it somehow.’
‘But why on monkeys?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well it’s not like it’s a drug for medical use is it? I imagine they’d test it on humans.’
‘Trust me. It’s always monkeys who are first in line…’ he said. Knowingly.

I thought about this and it made me feel quite sorry for the monkeys as they obviously don’t know which way they’re going. At one point they’re puffing away on new types of cigarette, the next thing they know they’re testing out devices to stop people smoking, then they're on crack. No wonder they always look glum in those cages.

I may start a campaign…

Things You'll Never Hear Again…

An England football manager saying: ‘We played as a team and we won the World Cup as a team.’

The Other Woman...

Went out with my 'other woman' a few nights ago.

The missus knows all about her and she and the boy openly refer to her as my 'other woman'. But her boyfriend also refers to me as her 'other man' so at least everybody knows where they stand.

Me and my 'other woman' met doing martial arts and we're both professional word butchers and we both also play pool so in many ways it's a friendship made in heaven. She also told me two of the funniest things I'd heard in a long time.

The first concerns her boyfriend, who recently went on a 'flirting course' paid for by his work. The object of this course was to give marketing and sales people the sort of subtle skills they made need in the markertplace to woo potential advertisers or other clients to part with their hard-earned cash via subtle flattery and other non-verbal seduction techniques.

The second concerned her dad, who since retirement has embarked on an impulse-buying spree which has so far included a pool table and a computer. We reckoned it wouldn't be long before he sold the house and bought a travelling circus - or blew his pension on a unicorn to tether and keep in the back garden.

I just hope the two don't meet and reveal their new skills or it could be financial carnage all round...

If The Cap Fits…

The boy is now convinced I am a major-league nutcase.

He walked into the kitchen this week to find me labeling several huge sweet tins that have hung around the house since we glutted ourselves on confectionery at Xmas. He gave a puzzled look to the missus who responded with her ‘I know, I know…’ smile, inspected the already labeled tins then approached me with a question.

‘What are haribot beans?’
‘Haricot beans. It says haricot beans.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right…’
‘And I have no idea what they are but we’ve had them in the larder for months so I’m putting them away somewhere safe.’
‘In a tin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? Will they explode otherwise?’
‘No. But we’ve had these tins in the kitchen for months and so by using them to store all the loose stuff in the larder we are recycling the tins and also tidying up the loose rubbish in the larder.’
‘You’re a bit OCD.’
‘I’m making the kitchen more efficient.’
‘What’s pain flour?’
‘Plain flour. It says plain flour.’
‘Are you going to put it next to the haribot beans?’
‘Get out!’

He exited the kitchen sniggering…

The Apprentice. Nearly...

The best show on prime-time TV (well the best show on prime-time BBC2 featuring Alan Sugar, as he does get about a bit) reaches its penultimate episode tonight with the four remaining contenders facing ‘gruelling interviews’ with some of the former Spurs’ head honcho’s business buddies to determine which two go through to the final next week.

Fans of the show will realise no-nonsense Ruth and dignified go-getter Ansell should be the successful duo as they’ve been the best performers on all the previous tasks so far. The two who should be booted higher than the still unsafe arch on Wembley Stadium should be smug Yorkshireman Paul, the sort of going-to-seed podgy thirtysomething you see chatting up teenagers in Leeds nightclubs, and professional whinger Michelle, who whines a lot but does wear designer spectacles surprisingly well.

The beauty of this show, however, is that Sugar decides who he wants – and, as this is the fella who thinks the Amstrad videophone is the future, then anything can happen.

Utterly Lost...

Come on. Admit it… Lost is a pile of old cock. It’s Fantasy Island as run by the Marquis de Sade with pretensions towards a morality tale thrown in for good measure.

It’s also bloody annoying as rather than solve any of its puzzles it merely adds more layers of puzzlement every episode. It’s like peeling back a layer of some mutant onion only to find another two layers have grown in its place – and this time one of the layers has fur. And spots.

The things it does have going for it are that it’s filmed somewhere pretty and that that cast are tremendous eye candy. Even the token fat bloke’s probably worth a go.

Oh and it takes itself very seriously because it has groups and objects named with initial caps in the press blurb: there’s The Others, The Tailies, The Hatch, etc, etc.

Anyway it’s back. Watch it if you like that sort of thing and there are no books in your house…