Television Can Blow Me (9 page)

Robbie Williams, the second most popular member of Take That, had a tortured relationship with manager Nigel Martin Smith. “He’s definitely in the top three most disturbed individuals I’ve worked with.” And Rob’s worked with crazy bastards like Kylie Minogue so you know he was wild. Smith seemed bemused by Williams’ antipathy but Robbie insisted “I only ever wanted him to love me. That’s the really sad thing. And he never did.”

Robbie also had a tortured relationship with Gary Barlow. It seemed there was only room for one songwriter in the band and that had to be the more experienced Barlow. Jealousies and post-split rivalries abounded. You want to dislike Barlow, hoping he’s careerist industry scum but he comes across as a nice enough lad like the rest of them. Robbie takes things awfully personally, you suspect.

The shocking (i.e. not shocking at all) drug use was also covered. Robbie, shivering in bed because he’d been up all night with a certain international model drinking champagne and taking cocaine. In a totally unconnected story, it was revealed recently that Robbie was secretly dating Naomi Campbell for a year. Que vida.

“There was a time when I became too powerful. ‘I can’t be sacked now - let’s do drugs’” he deadpans.

Williams is the most interesting, most successful and least happy of the group. Even by celebrity standards, he seems desperately in need of approval. His engagingly open manner set the tone for the boy band confessional.

And it was his departure which really spelled the end for the group - a crippling body blow after which they staggered on for a year but, as Mark willingly acknowledged, it never felt the same without Robbie.

When the split came it came as a relief for the boys. All except for Howard Donald, fourth most popular member of Take That, who left his hotel room to jump into the Thames. “I wanted to kill myself but I’m just too much of a shitbag to do it”. If only Richey Edwards had such insight.

It was fascinating to see how the boys had spent their time since the split. Howard hasn’t pursued the suicide route, preferring to record his own album “which is, in my eyes, a great album” - yep, and in Helen Keller’s eyes also. “We just didn’t end up releasing it” which, on the face of it, seems a curious oversight.

He showed us clips of the unreleased single “Speak Without Words” (“it was an amazing single. It really was an amazing single”). Yeah alright Howard, we get the message - you’re great but nobody loves you.

Gary the Gunt has been raising a family with his wife Dawn, a former Take That dancer. He seems happy in his gigantic mansion surrounded by gold discs, oil paintings and smiling kids.

Dim-witted pretty boy Mark, most popular member of Take That, has moved to The Lakes to walk through streams and ponder how he spends all his cash. After a brief spell back in the spotlight winning Celebrity Big Brother, he’s currently writing music for a film.

Jason Orange, has been back to college to “do some courses” which I think is a capital idea. He’s also done some backpacking and been pondering stuff. He didn’t mention his brief appearance as a DJ in Lynda La Plante’s criminally underrated Killer Net which is a shame as I really liked that (everyone else thinks it’s shite).

The reunion itself felt slightly awkward with Robbie not turning up. He sent a video apologising to all the members individually - telling Howard, Mark and Jason what nice guys they are. And while he didn’t go so far as to call Barlow a nice guy he apologised for calling him a crap songwriter.

Williams explained the insult by saying he had his head up his own arse at the time and wanted to be in Oasis which, as excuses go, beats the crap out of ‘‘the dog ate my homework”.

Would Robbie swap all he had for The Life of Barlow? “14 Brits?” he howled “Fuck off!” before conceding “No, in all seriousness I would swap everything I have for that.”

It goes to show that you can have the girls, the drugs and the acclaim but it’s simple old domesticity that the lonely pop-star wants. Expect a double disc concept album on that very theme sometime soon.

The verdict on Take That... for the Record:
“Lulu was the best piece of ass I’ve ever had and I’ve had ‘em all over the world. SHAZZAM!”

Marks out of 10:
7.5

When Fearne Met Peaches

Four years ago, Aerial Telly wrote a sympathetic piece about Peaches Geldof and her attempt to get under the skin of teenage America. He’s the kind of guy who tries to see the good in everyone and wished nothing but the best for this young pup who had been through her share of trauma. Yet Aerial Telly is not a clairvoyant - he just seems like one because of his phenomenal success with betting. It was not for him to foresee the shell of a woman Peaches Geldof would become. When Fearne Met Peaches is the second in a series of shows where a vacuous nobody meets another vacuous nobody, does nothing, then films it. It’s what television was invented for.

Fearne Cotton, following Geldof around like a deranged ment, sets the scene. “She’s grabbed headlines for her whirlwind marriage, her many tattoos and rumours about her spirituality” Eh? If you say so. Fearne wants to get to know the real Peaches. Problem is, the real Peaches is something of a shithead. She is desperate to get across that she’s really intelligent, reads books and thinks about stuff but the horrible little madam who believes she is entitled to the world and everything in it surfaces at every opportunity.

It starts early on. She greets Fearne dressed like a prostitute and neither of them seem to know what to do. “Hello everyone” she says to the crew who do not respond in keeping with the conventions of documentary making. OMFG! Peaches is pissed. “Can I not introduce myself or are you going to just stick a camera in my face right now?” You agreed to this you fucking moron. You can’t get enough of the cameras in your face. You actively court it with everything you do, say and are. Shut the fuck up.

Fearne asks tough questions like “What do you think about the haters out there who don’t know who you are and don’t know anything about you?” When following Peaches round during her “work” for Nylon magazine she trails behind her like an Arab’s wife. Peaches does vox pops in the streets for the magazine, asking questions like “Do you like them to hang low up your ass?” in a ludicrous American accent. “I like awkwardness” she tells Cotton “I find awkward silences really interesting”. Must be a fucking interesting life then as there's no shortage of those here.

It probably should be said that Fearne Cotton is not very bright. “I must admit I’m really impressed with Peaches’ presenting style”. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it doesn’t take much to impress Fearne. “It’s not true that Peaches doesn’t work and that she hasn’t got talent - she was great on the streets just now”. Well, she certainly dressed for the part.

Fearne has seen the 2-hours-a-week journalist but wants to see Peaches the Party Girl (i.e. what she is famous for) so she brings an expensive bottle of champagne round to her apartment. “That’s kind of intense” says Peaches, dispensing with such pleasantries as “thank you” and then pisses off to her friends with Cotton tagging along dragging her unopened bottle behind her. “I don’t party in New York” Peaches tells her.

But of course she’s lying. Peaches goes out on the razz without Fearne which is horribly rude, petulant and cunty. The following morning, as Fearne tries to sympathise over the pressures of fame, Peaches interrupts and says “you know what I’m intrigued by? Space... wormholes, Stephen Hawking’s theories and Richard Dawkins’ theories”. Oh, she’s deep this one. There is nothing more depressing in this world than the stupid person who believes they are intelligent.

And she’s a Scientologist now. Well of course she is. Scientology - that lying bullying haven for the spiritually barren, emotionally crippled, control freak bastard offspring of the famous was practically invented for Peaches Geldof.

“I’m beginning to feel that Peaches doesn’t really want me here” says Fearne as Geldof disappears on her for the 45th time in two days which, again, is kind of rude given that she’s only doing her job and, it bears repeating, Geldof agreed to do this bollocks.

So who is the real Peaches Geldof? Spoilt little rich girl, pampered twat, deluded fucknut, no-talent shitheel, coke snorting goon, world’s worst groupie and history’s least attractive underwear model.

She really doesn’t come out of this very well

The verdict on When Fearne Met Peaches:
Vacant to a frightening degree.

Marks out of 10:
4

British drama: Can you handle the Loof?

Powered by history's greatest broadcast network, the BBC, British drama could once legitimately claim world pwnage but it is now very much the boss-eyed stepchild of marauding American dramas with their 22 episode seasons, swear-if-we-want-to subscription ethic and (as if to rub it all in) British acting talent. And yet every now and again Britain remembers how to do drama as if some genetic memory exists from her colonial past when Britannia ruled the airwaves, kitchen sink realism called the tune and The Singing Detective was the pound-for-pound king.

Sherlock shows how it should be done while This Is England '86 shows how it really shouldn't (although some dummies will give anything a good review if there's some northern halfwits and period detail in it).

The talent is still there. America need not rule forever. One day Britain will rise again and all will quake before her.

Worried About the Boy

About halfway through Worried About the Boy, the Boy George story, George (Douglas Booth) asks Jon Moss (Mathew Horne) to repeat after him: “I'm a talentless dwarf Jew and I've made a pile of money riding on your coat tails.” In similar vein I'd like every New Romantic to repeat after me: “I'm a turd. Nothing I say or do means a thing. I ruined music for everyone. The cultural holocaust of the 80s was my fault. Kill me. It's all I deserve.”

Yeah, you Blitz Kids really changed everything didn't you? In your own minds at least. New Romantics - so proud of their legacy. Presiding over the most hateful, barren, poisonous period in our recent cultural history they rarely need much persuading to talk at length about how important they were and generally affect an air more closely associated with D-Day veterans. Never in the field of human cuntflict have so many owed so little to so few. I could give a tuppenny fuck about their desperate music, laughable fashion, nimrod posturing and care even less about who they were screwing. Not that nobody caring ever stopped them.

There's some appropriate casting, though, as the role of Steve Strange, a musician no-one of consequence cares about, goes to Marc Warren, an actor no-one of consequence cares about. He still sounds exactly like Danny from Hustle or that schlub he played in Mutual Friends. He may look like Malcolm McDowell but, trust, whoever he plays he's always Marc Warren.

The parade of early 80s shitbirds goes on: Marilyn (who, incidentally, these days looks like Shaun Ryder after losing an argument with a bottle of Domestos), no account “associate” of Gavin Rossdale was played by Freddie Fox and for one brief glorious moment I thought it was Freddie “Bumpy Knuckles” Foxxx. I'd sell tickets to that all day.