Charlie Brooker’s Screen Burn (43 page)

Shakespeare once said: ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’
Pornography: The Musical
isn’t what he had in mind. As you might expect, it’s a treasure trove of dreadful lyrics (‘bring in the horse/then order a hearse’ being just one mind-boggling example) and yet more dreadful vocals (particularly from professional phallus manipulator Rebekah Jordan, who really ought to contact her GP and check her larynx hasn’t been permanently clogged by all those coagulated body fluids).

D. H. Lawrence once said pornography represented ‘the attempt to insult sex, to do dirt on it’ and, having witnessed the frankly jaw- dropping ‘musical bukkake’ sequence in this programme, it’s hard to disagree. Or move. Or speak.

In case you don’t know, ‘bukkake’ is … um … well … it’s a term of Japanese origin that refers to the mass deposit of male reproductive fluids into and onto a solitary female recipient courtesy of a mammoth assembly of solemn-looking gentlemen. It’s the sort of thing that’s rarely discussed in
Razzle
, let alone the
Guardian
, so it’s fair to say that by setting it to music and then televising it, C4 have a notable first. You might call it a ‘Singing in the Rain’ for the twenty-first century. If you’re a prick.

Ultimately,
Pornography: The Musical
’s main flaw lies in its own novelty value. The songs aren’t as interesting as the straight interview segments they’re intended to embellish.

One talking-head sequence in particular, in which a male porn artiste gleefully recounts a cautionary tale about the perils of overzealous rectal douching prior to intercourse, is worth the price of admission alone – even though a) C4 don’t charge an admission fee and b) there’s a very real chance it’ll make you vomit.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Tonight Channel 4 showcases the
100
Greatest Scary Moments
, which promises to be a decent evening’s entertainment provided Paul Ross doesn’t turn up and spoil it all with his big booming gob.

No word yet on which particular example of blood-curdling Channel 4 viewers have crowned the King of Brown Trousers but for a bit of fun, and because I’m an egomaniac with his own bloody column, I’ve decided to compile my own list of spooky moments, which favours TV instead of movies, and has the added advantage of being 14.26 times shorter than its Channel 4 equivalent.

Ready, steady … boo!

7 Diana eats a guinea pig (
V
, 1983)
Not the late Princess of Hearts – although that
would
be scary. I’m
talking about Diana the alien dominatrix from the mini-series
V
,
whose subhuman nature is first disclosed when Marc Singer hides
in an air vent and spots her swallowing a giant rodent in true reptile fashion (i.e. by dislocating her lower jaw to fit it all in). I saw
this scene again recently, and like most on this list, it now looks
downright ridiculous, but at the time I was so scared I practically
pooed a new substance consisting of raw, solid fear. 

6 James Harries on
Wogan
(1988)
You know: the eerie antiques-expert kid who looked like a cross
between Christopher Atkins from
The Blue Lagoon
and a squinting
rat foetus. The creepiest boy since Damien from
The Omen
, with
the added spook-value of being entirely non-fictional. 

5 Doctor Who is virtually dismembered (1980)
Everyone has a favourite
Who
freak-out moment: mine came at the
end of episode one of ‘The Leisure Hive’, when Tom Baker appears
in some kind of primitive VR machine, gets his arms and legs torn
off, and screams – the camera zoomed in on his bellowing mouth,
the scream blended with the already-terrifying closing title music,
and my spine scuttled out my backside and ran for the nearest exit.
Couldn’t walk for six months. Cheers, Doctor. 

4 Charley the cat almost drowns (1970s–1980s)
Yes, Charley the cat from the Public Information films (as sampled
by the Prodigy in the days when they made harmless rave tunes
instead of violent commercials for spousal abuse and Rohypnol).
In a short cartoon intended to alert kids to the dangers of playing
near canals, he plunges beneath the waves to flail about in a terrifying
subterranean hell, mewling bubbles as he does so. Result: I
spend the rest of my childhood convinced that canals are portals to
hell. Cheers, Charley.

3 Anything with a mushroom cloud in it (1980s)
That covers
Threads
,
The Day After, When the Wind Blows
and in
particular
A Guide to Armageddon
, a 1982 episode of pop-science
show
QED
which soberly explained the effects of a single nuclear
bomb blast by intercutting close-ups of burning pork with pictures
of human faces. Child psychiatrists experienced a five-year boom
immediately afterwards. Cheers, BBC. 

2
Crimewatch UK
(any year)
What’s so scary about that, you ask? Well, I reply, have you ever
watched
Crimewatch UK
while spending an evening alone, in an
isolated cottage, in the middle of winter, surrounded by dark skies,
silence and the occasional ambiguous shadow on the horizon? No?
Then shut up. Trust me, by the time the end credits roll, you
are
Tony Martin. 

1 Any newsflash since 11 September
Newsflashes always used to put the wind up me – I assumed they
heralded imminent nuclear apocalypse – but since 9/11 they’ve
taken on an even more nerve-jangling significance. At least you
knew where you were with nukes – flash, bang, frazzle and it’s
over.

These days, you see a newsflash and your mind starts racing – what’ll it be? Dirty bomb? Smallpox? Plague of locusts? Al-Qaeda death-ray? Don’t know about you, but when the Queen Mum died I breathed such a huge sigh of relief I knocked out the back wall of my living room.

Take a good look around and ask yourself how much of the world you truly comprehend – and I’m talking about a true scientific
understanding here. At a rough guess, I’d say you probably understand about 0.0002 per cent of everything. Thicko.

Even so, you’re twice as clever as me. Earlier today I used a microwave oven to heat a saddo’s instant meal-for-one, and shortly afterwards, as I spooned said molten slop into my downturned mouth betwixt guttural sobs of despair, it occurred to me that I have no idea how a microwave oven works. As far as I know, it warms the food by beaming it to Jupiter, where a herd of magic space goats breathes fire into the molecules, before knocking them back to Earth with a quantum tennis racquet.

Then I looked down at my plate and noticed the meal contained rice. And I realised I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT RICE IS. Not precisely. What is it? A type of vegetable? A tiny egg? What?

Well, I looked it up, and guess what? Technically, rice is a bloody
fruit
. Well, sort of. Apparently all grains are. So it says here. Look, I’m no expert. Besides, that’s not important right now. The point is that to a bumwit like me, life is one big mystery, which is why
The
Theory of Everything
(C4) has a seductive ring to it.

It’s a pop-science series tracking the quest to arrive at a ‘grand unification theory’ – a hypothesis governing absolutely everything in the universe. Such a theory wouldn’t just explain how microwaves work
and
what rice is, but also
why
they came to exist in the first place. It could explain the relationship between gravity and time and quantum physics and you and me and the bloke next door with the wonky eye. It could explain what would happen if you switched a time machine on at the precise moment British Summer Time ends and the clocks go back. It could explain the plot of
Mulholland Drive
, even if it had nipped out for a wee during the ‘Club Silencio’ scene. It could do anything.

Trouble is, you could go nuts trying to grasp the basics, which thus far run roughly as follows: everything in existence, including the space-time fabric itself, is assembled from an infinite number of minuscule, oscillating ‘strings’ which swirl around in ten dimensions. Yep, ten dimensions, six of which are apparently themselves curled into loops. Suddenly my ‘space goats on Jupiter’ theory of microwaved food doesn’t sound quite so stupid.

Anyway, until string theory arrives in earnest, we’ll have to rely on documentaries like this to explain things to us. Fortunately, despite a few mildly irritating ‘zany’ graphical touches, it manages to entertain as it does so, feeling for the most part like a cross between the animated sections of
Hitchhiker’s Guide
and an old James Burke think-u-mentary.

Of course, if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, it stands to reason that a grand unification theory could destroy us all. Ten minutes after its discovery, you can bet your sweet bippy the US military will write it down, glue it to the front of a missile, test-fire it in the desert and inadvertently turn the whole world into a massive tangerine or something.

Blame Einstein. He thought of it first. In his latter years, while the rest of the scientific world was playing with the newly discovered principles of quantum physics, Einstein was obsessed with rustling up his very own ‘grand theory of everything’. Other scientists pitied him, partly because he seemed behind the times, and partly because he had silly hair. Only now can we see just how far ahead of his time Einstein was. Not only has ‘string theory’ become cutting-edge enough to form the basis for a Channel 4 pop-doc, but far more significantly, Albert’s crazy out-of-bed haircut now makes him look like an eccentric uncle to one of the Strokes.

Sod string theory. That’s
way
cool.

OK, I admit it: I’m a fully paid-up member of the sneering class – that curious section of modern society that spends its time smugly guffawing at the foibles of all the other classes. The sneering class laughs at the plebs taking part in
Pop Idol
one minute, then snorts at the preposterous brayings of public-school gentry the next – pausing to pour scorn over
Daily Mail
-reading Middle-Englanders on the way. You see, no one’s quite good enough for us – we hate everyone with equal vigour.

Joining the sneering class is simple: you’re given a membership card the minute you start working in the media, log on to ‘Pop-
bitch’, or find yourself enjoying sneering-class telly formats such as
Celebrity Wife Swap
(C4), which manages to be hilarious and brilliant yet essentially reprehensible, all at the same time.

In the red corner we have
Big Brother
’s Jade Goody and her boyfriend Jeff Brazier, two unapologetically scrubby diamonds from Essex; in the blue corner it’s the ex-Major Charles Ingram and his wife Diana – the lying, cheating scum who had the audacity to pull a harmless con on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
?, whose makers, Celador, were so upset they cancelled his cheque and proceeded to wring their quaking, appalled hands at the effect a high-profile court case might have on the programme’s dwindling ratings.

Chris Tarrant called it ‘a very cynical plan, motivated by sheer greed’, which sounds like a description of
Millionaire
’s premium-rate phone-line method of gathering contestants, but isn’t. Mr Ingram was found guilty and forced to resign from the army; Celador limped from the courtroom with nothing more than a prime-time special and blanket press coverage to support them.

So, the Ingrams, then: a pair of cheating bastards who deserve everything we can throw at them. Which in this case is Jeff and Jade. Jade is a remarkable creature and almost impossible to describe, although throughout
Big Brother
3 some of Fleet Street’s finest did their best, light-heartedly describing her as an ‘oinker’ (the Sun), a ‘vile fishwife’ (
Daily Mirror
) and a ‘foulmouthed ex-shoplifter’ (
Daily Mail
), until the public joined in the japes by standing outside the house waving ‘Kill the Pig’ placards, thereby turning the whole delightful episode into a clever pastiche of
Lord
of the Flies
.

They were wrong incidentally. Jade isn’t a pig. From some angles she looks a bit like Martin Clunes, aged five, peering through a porthole. But not a pig.

Anyway, the gods of
Wife Swap
decree that Jade must move in with Charles for a week in the Ingrams’ Wiltshire home (floral prints, Le Creuset cookware, faint air of jovial fascism), while Diana takes up residence alongside Jeff in an Essex flat (widescreen telly, laundry draped over radiators, meals eaten from the lap).

Of course, what happens next is genuinely very funny indeed, and while it may lack the demented bellowing matches of recent
Wife Swaps
, there’s plenty of painful moments to wallow in.

Wince! As Jade walks into the Ingrams’ home yelping, ‘It’s the cheat’s house!’ Gasp! As Jeff repeatedly refers to Diana’s age (‘Firty nine – that’s me mum’s age’) and takes her for a night out in Romford. Vomit! As Charles Ingram says he’ll miss having sex with his wife and confesses to having enjoyed ‘a top-up’ the night before the swap. Wonder! Why anyone involved agreed to take part in the first place. Feel! Vaguely! Superior! To absolutely everyone on screen!

Or alternatively, give your sneering muscles a rest, with something classily classless:
Walking with Sea Monsters
(BBC1), in which wildlife expert Nigel Marven travels to the Jurassic era to swim alongside great big wobbly seabeasts. The whole thing’s so spectacular and convincing, any children watching will come away permanently confused as to what’s real and what isn’t – which added to my enjoyment no end.