Television Can Blow Me (8 page)

The next freakshow was mother of ten Ruth, 49, and Simon, 21. Ruth is ten years older than Simon’s mother and six of her children are older than him. Which makes family gatherings interesting, I’m sure. It’s not all laffs though as Ruth suffers from “multiple orgasm syndrome”, which means she comes around 30 times a day. I’m not making this up.

Doing a very good impersonation of the “ooh I’m sorry, I’ve just come” man from The Fast Show, Ruth collapses by some swings under the megaton force of one of her orgasms.

Simon shows great fortitude in dealing with a mature woman with a power steering clit - apparently just walking into the room sends her into ecstasy. That’s many men’s fantasy though I’d settle for Montserrat Lombard, Billie Piper and a hot tub but I’m strange like that.

No such worries for Norma, a few months short of collecting her buspass at 59, who is boffing Chris, 27. Another apparently happy couple, tensions only rise when Norma raises the delicate issue of what happens when she is so decrepit they can no longer have sex.

He’d rather not think about it. I’d rather not think about it. I’d rather not think of them having sex at all, so I guess we’re all shit out of luck.

I suppose we should thank Channel 5 for Hidden Lives - the televisual equivalent of a policeman’s torch, shining a light into society’s dark alleys and revealing the horrors within.

But aren’t some things better left unseen? Because if Anthony Perkins skewering Janet Leigh in Psycho is the most horrifying shower scene you’ve encountered then get ready to think again.

The verdict on Old Enough To Be His Mother:
There’s no perv like an old perv.

Marks out of 10:
7.5

* Aerial Telly, motherfucker that’s who

Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter

There is no braver warrior on the planet than the unattractive nice guy approaching a pretty girl in the hope of “getting to know her better”. Men will walk to their certain deaths secure in the knowledge that it can never be worse than the symbolic annihilation thousands of men put themselves through every weekend in the sick ritual of chatting up the honies. To men like Aerial Telly it holds no fear of course because from the moment I walk in the club your girl be clocking me and I gots to tell her to back up off a brother. We all know that I’m going to be macking that dame before the night is out.

Your reality is one shared by many men. Something addressed in Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter, the first instalment of Shape of the Nation series, a three-parter dealing with our obsession with appearance. The show featured seduction gurus Wayne Elise and Jonny Saviour (proponents of the Juggler Method) trying to drill some mack tactics into three hopelessly insecure men. Neil is a 22-stone virgin who has never even kissed a girl; Dave is a grotesque 6ft 6 GIANT who wimps out of approaching women and Adrian is 5 ft tall and therefore The Smallest Man That Ever Lived. He can’t get girls to see him as more than just a friend. In fact, they can’t see him at all without crouching.

The gurus put the boys through a boot camp of approaching strange women in the street and starting conversations with them. Dave the Giant puts in an abysmal effort, taking 20 minutes to even sit down at a table adjacent to some females. Tiny Adrian walks up to a girl seated on some steps but his squeaky Jiminy Cricket vocal merely causes her to collapse in gales of laughter and swat him aside. Walking lard mountain Neil strikes up the first meaningful conversation by claiming to be a panda bear. The only thing giving him away is that a panda bear moves quicker.

So the seduction gurus are faced with a reasonably tall man who believes he is Goliath, a man in a four-year-old child’s body and a smiling tub of guts who believes himself to be a panda bear. You can see that they have their work cut out.

And they quickly get cracking teaching the losers the importance of kino (light touching), assertive body-language and statements of intent (letting the target know you think she’s sexy). And on they go with the usual self-improvement makeover horseshit that we can recite in our sleep by now. The Juggler Method is a bit shit to be honest. Heavily derivative of the Mystery Method, it’s a mixture of the bleeding obvious and highly tenuous. The most effective thing any man can do to improve his strike rate with the dames is simply to get out there, get chatting and try his luck. The seduction gurus force them into these situations relentlessly so it’s not surprising that some progress is made. Tiny Adrian is having difficulty telling a female friend that he wants her in the Bad Way. At some point, he plucks up the courage to tell her and she tells him to fuck himself which he seems to take as some kind of victory. If that’s a positive outcome, what’s your version of a failure?

The seduction gurus seemed to claim success on the final night because Jabba and the dwarf got a phone number each and Dave the Giant had a snog with a flagcracker. And if you see the fucking prices they charge you realise that since Neil Strauss blew the lid on the underground seduction community in The Game, this is one helluva racket these guys have got going on.

And it’s not slowing down any time soon. Every fucker’s an expert on women now and they’re all taking MasterCard. Men are always going to want to get laid and where alcohol and flattery haven’t worked, paying a stranger $1,600 to shout at you in public probably seems fair enough.

The verdict on Seduction School: Size Doesn’t Matter:
I think of you more as a friend.

Marks out of 10:
6

My Friend Michael Jackson

Most of us wouldn't be in a rush to tell the world of our friendship with an anti-Semite paedophile but most of us aren't Uri Geller and most kiddy fiddling Jew bashers aren't Michael Jackson. It clearly didn't take much persuasion for Geller to share his deeply personal and deeply private intimate footage of his friendship with the King of Pop for the documentary My Friend Michael Jackson. Geller is a huckster to his core and this taints everything that comes out of his mouth. At the end of the day he's just another cunt with a story to tell - he just has some pretty neat footage. Take the renewal of his wedding vows ceremony where Michael was his best man. Uri doesn't like talking about it but he'll do it for you. And Michael. His friend.

The wedding ceremony footage is indeed bizarre (it's Michael Jackson - of 
course
 it's bizarre). Jackson looking exactly as strange as you expect a racially self-mutilated pederast to, he seems to have little idea what's going on or who anyone (including Geller) is. Industrial strength painkillers clearly have him in thrall and rather like when Mr Burns inhales Ether and hallucinates Homer Simpson is Poppin' Fresh, Jackson seems to think Uri Geller is Jesus Christ or some other failed Hebrew Messiah. The strangeness multiplies.

But once the drugs have worn off, Geller needs to keep Michael's interest so he starts spinning him a yarn about GOING TO THE MOON. See, Uri knows this guy yeah? He works for Boeing, the plane people, but he has “ties to NASA” and he tells Uri that “no matter how science fiction it sounds” it is possible to send Michael Jacksons TO THE MOON.

Pardon me but how exactly is going to the moon science fiction? Not exactly Brave New World is it? This is the equivalent of a talk with a bloke in a pub who knows someone who went out with Madonna. Michael Jackson is a mess of squeaking ecstasy on an answerphone message he leaves for Geller. Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk ON THE MOON.

So yes, just like the rest of his career, Uri Geller was selling snake oil. And boy did Michael Jackson lap it up? It was in his nature to believe the manifestly untrue. Like Geller tells us “Michael Jackson believed in the impossible”. Inserting his forearm into a 9-year-olds cancer victim's anus for example.

But he believed in the totally plausible too - like the ability of a hugely famous man to get a tour of the Houses of Parliament. Accompanied by that other shameless schmuck David Blaine and that blowhard gladhander Greville Janner, Geller and Jackson twat about for a while in Whitehall and Jackson gets it into his head that he deserves a knighthood from the Queen. If he only knew the power of a discreet donation to the Labour Party.

The freakshow continues. There's footage of the pair at Paddington station on the way to a function at Exeter City Football Club where Geller is joint chairman. As a well-behaved but curious crowd gather round Geller squeals “You're crushing him! Honour Michael!” and here we have an excellent demonstration of what a bullshitter he is. He says he feared for Jackson's life and that the weight of bodies simply could not be contained yet you're there watching the footage and there are just a few dozen people milling around, significant fewer than any given morning rush-hour. Believe Geller, though, and it's just a heartbeat away from the Hillsborough disaster.

But like all great friendships based on convenience, delusion and fame, it was to come to an end. The breaking point was Geller introducing Jackson to Martin Bashir with an eye to a career changing interview. It made perfect sense. After all, Bashir was the man who had rehabilitated Princess Diana.

The problem was that Diana was a pretty posh girl and fundraiser, wronged in relationships and life, with a 10th Dan in media manipulation. Michael Jackson was an emaciated puncture wound riddled baby rapist, wrong in relationships and life, with a 10th Dan in looking like a cunt. It's a much tougher sell, see?

When the documentary revealed a balcony baby dangling fucknut unfit to be anywhere near children Jackson blamed the first entourage groupie dipshit standing close enough. Sorry Uri! But you still have the tapes. That'll be worth something one day.

As with most documentaries about Michael Jackson, this held your interest - documentaries about endlessly fascinating fuck ups will do that. But Geller is such an unbelievable turd that you found yourself gagging on his pious self-serving commentary.

Realistically, we shouldn't be surprised. The Michael Jackson industry is peopled by liars lying - peddling a version of a story they know to be false. When you put it like that you realise that Geller is maybe the best person on the face of the earth to front such a circus.

The verdict on My Friend Michael Jackson: 
Much what you expected.

Marks out of 10:
 7

Take That... for the Record

The 5th most popular member of Take That laughed like Brian Blessed as he tried to remember if he had sexual intercourse with Lulu. “If I did I don’t remember - I’m a gentleman!” - it’s more likely you were stupendously pissed, Jason. “If Lulu says I’ve give her one and she says I was great that’s fine by me”. Oh I bet it is you dirty fecker.

Success is relative. Jason is the least popular member of the most successful British band since The Beatles. He’s endured sex with Lulu but he also gets more ass in a month than most guys get in their life.

Such paradoxes littered Take That... for the Record - part reflection, part reunion for the five Northern lads who shook the world with their sussed pop and dead fit arses. Marking the tenth anniversary of their split, it seemed fitting.

It took them from early years of boot camp choreography, whipping the tubby Gary Barlow (third most popular member of Take That) into shape, through playing the gay clubs and the first TV appearances all the way through to world domination and the inevitable bust-ups that followed.