Dawn of the Dumb (28 page)

I still can’t believe I just typed that. I’ll type it again: Gillian McKeith singing. Gillian McKeith singing. Gillian. McKeith. Sing. Ing.

I won’t get over that in a hurry: my least favourite atrophied Hazel McWitch lookalike in the world, singing ‘I just want to make love to you’, right there on primetime telly. She has to be the only person on Earth who can take a lyric like that and make it seem like a blood-curdling threat without changing any of the words. It was so horrible, I felt my brain straining to repress all memories of the event before they’d had a chance to form. I almost blacked out.

At the time of writing, there’s only been one edition of this ‘celebrity’ song contest—an unending howlfest culminating in Paul Daniels getting the heave-ho—but if the inaugural broadcast was anything to go by, I fully expect rioting in the streets by the time tonight’s final rolls round. It’s cacophonous to the point of avant-garde—beyond the point of avant-garde, in fact, all the way into ‘sonic weapon’ territory. You can’t submit an entire population to this kind of punishment. It just isn’t right.

Speaking of horrendous affronts to humanity, perhaps it’s a bit early in our collective timeline to make rash statements like this, but I strongly suspect future scholars may judge Sezer from
Big Brother
(C4) to be the single most objectionable man in the history of civilisation.

At least, that’s how it feels to me right now. I know it’s a passing illusion. Ten minutes after he leaves, my pulse will slow and I’ll feel nothing. But while he’s in there…Jesus. It’s not healthy, hating someone that much. My heart’s turned to carbon. Whenever he appears onscreen, I twist in my seat, agonised. And I’ve started hallucinating rat ears, poking out the top of his tosser’s hairdo. He’s not even human any more.

The
BB
house works as a kind of twat amplifier, you see. Once harnessed within, someone who in normal life would merely strike me as a bit of a git quickly swells in negative stature, eventually coming to symbolise everything I hate about our cruel and godless universe.

Last year it took Maxwell three weeks to reach the pitch required for optimum hatred. Sezer managed it in nine days.

And you know who’s close behind? Grace. Bug-eyed bloody Grace: the sanctimonious, hoity-toity, stick-thin, Michelle Fowler-faced, I-Know-Everything, plummy, bummy, passive-aggressive Sloane whose blithe faith in her own even-handed worthiness is an absolute gut-churning bollock to behold. Ugh. Hate her too.

Actually, they’re all leaving a sour taste all the way from the throat to the backside this year (apart from, say, Glyn, who doesn’t count—he’s merely a hair in the lens). Once again, I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, so who knows—maybe the new housemates will turn out to be lovely. But so far? It’s a big bunch of tossers without exception. Apart from Glyn.

And Pete, obviously. Pete doesn’t really count as a housemate either. He’s far too agreeable, like someone who’s accidentally wandered in from another show. It’s the
BB
twat-magnifier working in reverse, I think; making him seem almost saintly. In the real world, he’s the sort of person who’d suddenly spring from nowhere to completely do your head in at a gig—offering you a go on his whistle and asking disjointed questions at breakneck speed.

But his main drawback is…well, he’s just a bit too nice. Come on, Pete. You’re a decent guy. Hoof Sezer in the nuts. For us. Just once. You can do it. Please. You can.

Added tit shots

[10 June 2006]

S
ome things in life are permanent. Others are fleeting. And a precious few are ostensibly fleeting, but feel permanent anyway. The DPS half-price sale is perhaps the clearest example of this. The gap between individual DPS sales seems shorter than the average sneeze; all but imperceptible. Still, that’s nothing compared to the microscopic delay between individual Channel 4 documentary seasons examining the world of sex and bums and people with nothing on. Right now, the theme is ‘Sex in the Bos’, which must’ve been an exceptionally hard sell round Channel 4 towers. Mullets! Tits! Duran Duran! More tits! Bigger mullets! Ha ha ha! All you need is a few seconds of voice-over babble about ‘changing attitudes’ and ‘social upheaval’ laid over the top and hey presto: you’ve justified everything. It’s not just a load of tit shots—it’s a sociological investigation. With tit shots.

Anyway, the randy nostalgia reaches an end this week with
The Story of Club 18-30 (C4)—
a nudge-wink documentary essentially consisting of hee-larious archive footage intercut with soundbites from people who once got their end away on holiday. There’s also a thuddingly pointless thread in which two former Club 18-30 reps return to the Portugal resort they once ruled in their prime…and walk around a bit. The contrast between their 19803 snapshots (gangly youths drooling over sunburned knockers) and the present-day reality (waddling middle age) is a disturbing testament to the ravages of the ageing process. One now resembles Ben Dover, while the other’s blobbed out and looks like a cross between a tortoise and a mayor.

By the end of the show you’ve been mildly entertained, but learned nothing. A bit like an actual Club 18-30 holiday really, but with fewer unwanted pregnancies. Next week on Channel 4: a season of documentaries examining the complex shift in sexual attitudes during the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis. With tit shots.

In many ways,
Big Brother (C4
) is the present day equivalent of a 19805 Club 18-30 Holiday—flirting, sunbathing, silly little organised games, and lots of people you’d like to remove from the gene pool with a cricket bat.

Over the past fortnight, I’ve managed to establish a pattern whereby whichever housemate I’ve ranted about most has been magically evicted by the time the article makes it into print, leaving me feeling even more pointless and impotent than usual; an idiot shrieking at a shadow. Still, I won’t let that stop me having another pop at Grace, the poisoned twiglet—even though I secretly hope she survives the jinx because I rather enjoy hating her. She single-handedly redefines the word ‘snob’ for the twenty-first century: a new, self-deluding breed of snob that considers itself not just superior but inherently cooler, more compassionate, and more down-to-earth than everyone else.

Last week I said she looked like Michelle Fowler, but that’s not quite accurate enough. She actually looks more like Howdy Doody, the popular American kiddy show mascot—do a Google image search (go on) and you’ll see what I mean. Then pass it on.

Howdy Doody was a puppet, so it’s fitting that Grace’s current squeeze is the spectacularly wooden Mikey- a man so profoundly thick he can scarcely form sounds, let alone words.

He’s hardly even sentient. Lord knows what he’s using in place of a brain. Presumably there’s some low-wattage internal organ wired up to his nervous system, providing just enough kick to make his eyes blink twice an hour and push shit through his arse when required. A kidney perhaps. Or a liver. But not a brain. Push him into a burning building and he’d simply wander into the flames with a cow-like expression on his face. And when his clothes caught fire he’d spend his final moments trying to swat out the embers with his tail, never quite realising he doesn’t have one.

The spectacle of Grace repeatedly binding her spindly frame to this semi-mute humanoid log, breaking off occasionally to bitch about anyone within mindshot, is making this year’s
Big Brother
a grinding, masochistic, darkening trial. With tit shots.

Goodbye, England’s Rose

[ is July 2006]

G
oodbye, England’s Rose. Yes, tonight’s the night Billie Piper exits
Doctor Who
(BBC1) following her two-year tenure. When it was first announced that the revived Doctor’s travelling companion was to be played by Piper, a former kiddywink popstar, I rolled my eyes so violently I found myself staring backward into my own skull. It’s Bonnie Langford all over again, I figured.

How pitifully wrong I was. Anyone who thinks she’s been anything other than excellent is a brick-hearted stump of a being.

Effortlessly balancing feistiness and charm, vulnerability and goofiness, Billie Piper out-acted almost everyone else on television.

Out-sassed them too. She’s extremely good-looking in a most peculiar way: her eyes, mouth and nostrils all seem to be competing to see which can look biggest on her face. At times she resembles a
Spitting Image
caricature of herself. It shouldn’t work, but it does. You’ll miss her when she’s gone.

As for how she’s gone, I’ve no idea—at the time of writing, no preview tapes of tonight’s finale were available. I like that. Makes for more of an event. Not enough of them these days. As for series two as a whole…well, it’s been bumpy. My series three wish-list runs as follows:

1. Curb the zaniness. David Tennant’s Doctor alternates between ‘boggle-eyed schoolroom wacko’ and ‘concerned intergalactic statesman’ almost without warning. There’s too much of the former, not nearly enough of the latter, and precious little in between. A bit of mucking about is fine; too much and it all starts to resemble
   The Adventures of Timmy Mallett in Space
   .
   
2. Enough de’j& vu, already. Too often, the Doctor seemed scripted as a seen-it-all-before smartarse hell-bent on greeting every creature, artefact, space station and gizmo with a loudly over-familiar ‘Oh, it’s
   you
   ’ bordering on camp. At its worst, this is a bit like going on holiday with someone who’s visited your destination before, and behaves like a squawking tourist guide the whole time you’re there, pointing out the best cafds and choosing from the menu on your behalf until you feel like ramming their digital camera up their arse, just so they’ll be able to take home a picture of something they haven’t seen before. I know the Doctor’s been exploring the universe for aeons, but a touch more humility would be nice.
   
3. More two-parters, please. Several three- and four-parters wouldn’t go amiss either. Partly because it’d be nice to give some of the stories more space to breathe, and partly because I’m presuming the economies of scale involved might make it possible to do away with the occasional ‘cost-cutting’ talky episodes altogether.
   
4. More episodes directed by Euros Lyn. Not only were his episodes the most visually interesting, but his name sounds like a space station and therefore looks really cool in the credits.
   
5. My suggestions for next companion: Bez; Wayne Rooney; the entire cast of Channel 4’s
   Coach Trip;
   a purple CGI blob with a retractable anteater’s proboscis, voiced by Tim Westwood; Lisa Simpson; Chloe from
   24;
   Charles Kennedy; Pink.
   
6. More scary monsters. OK, so tonight we’re being treated to an all-out bundle between Daleks and Cybermen. That’s great. But some new regular nasties would be nice. Not the Slitheen; they’re just silly. I want to see an all-new race of humourless, fascistic bastards worthy of ranking alongside the old favourites. Oh, and they should be armed with drills. Not lasers. Drills.
   
7. Stop the continuity announcers talking over the end credits so we can hear the theme tune properly.
   

Anyway, that’s my two pennyworth. Said gripes and suggestions are, of course, born out of love. Although I found myself in the uncomfortable position of utterly hating one episode this series (the Love and Monsters wack-a-thon starring Peter Kay), and although it’s a series aimed primarily at an audience yet to experience puberty, it’s still the most consistently inventive, lovingly-crafted British drama on TV. Fact!

Punishing the viewer at home

[15 July 2006]

T
he world is full of unexpected comebacks. Lazarus. Elvis. Noel Edmonds. Whooping cough. And
now Love Island
(ITV1), which has returned to our screens despite being the butt of every single topical joke cracked during 2005. Back then, of course, it was known as
Celebrity Love Island—
ITV have since dropped the C-word from its title, partly because the word ‘celebrity’ had become a talisman of failure, and partly because this year’s cast are so shockingly un-famous they make last year’s bunch look like the line-up for a new Ocean’s Eleven movie.

Here in London, there’s a man who hangs around Oxford Circus preaching with a loudhailer. He’s popularly known as the ‘Be a Winner Not a Sinner’ guy, because that’s what he tends to shout at the thousands of tourists and shoppers who scurry past each week. With the possible exception of Sophie Anderton, I can comfortably state said Sinner/Winner guy is 10 million times more famous than anyone on
Love Island
. And I for one would love to see what he’d make of it. Let’s have a whip-round: we could have him choppered out there by this time next week.

Two of the
Love Island
inmates—namely Gazza’s stepdaughter and Pierce Brosnan’s son—have been included simply because they’re related to famous people. This generous widening of the fame net is an exciting development for all of us. Soon you won’t need to share genetic information with a star to be considered a celebrity yourself- sharing a postcode should suffice. I’m pretty sure the woman who presents
Ten Years Younger lives
round the corner from me, therefore I automatically qualify for
Love Island
2007, during which I intend to enjoy a steamy romp with a woman who thinks she once sat a few seats down from Adam Woodyatt on a train.

Still, famous or not—and they’re not—at the time of writing, it’s too early to say whether the show itself will turn into a car crash or just a debacle. It’s designed, of course, to become an entertaining version of the former—and let’s face it, since no one there’s got much status to lose, they might as well throw caution to the wind and really get the nation talking. Here’s hoping by the time you read this they’ve decided to simply gather on the beach and rut like dogs in full view of the cameras, pausing occasionally to dig holes and crap in the sand. Fearne Cotton’s face should be a picture.