The Hell of It All (20 page)

OK, perhaps ‘better-looking’ is a stretch. ‘Less weird-looking’ is closer. But admit it. You fancy him. You fancy Sir Alan Sugar. Just a bit. Don’t deny it. Yeah you do.

Sometimes I think the whole of humankind can be separated into two types: those who pay attention to song lyrics, and those who don’t. And those who don’t should be rounded up and throttled to death. By robots. With merciless strangling hands.

I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. I love lyrics. If you don’t listen to the words, you’re no friend of mine. The words are where 50 per cent of a song’s meaning resides, and it’s shocking how many people just don’t seem to hear them, even when they’re startlingly clear. I once had to explain to someone what ‘Common People’ by Pulp was about, even though they’d listened to it a billion times. How wilfully dumb can you get?

Perhaps I find it frustrating because I’ve been cursed with an almost autistic ability to memorise song lyrics after one or two listens. But rather than recall them accurately, I tinker about and replace them with new words for my own amusement; and it’s these re-written versions which ultimately remain lodged in my mind.

I can’t hear ‘Thinking of You’ by Sister Sledge, for instance, without assuming the chorus goes: ‘I’m thinking of you/ And the things you do to me/ That make me love you/ Now I’m livin’ in Exeter’.

My current favourite internalised mental replacement lyric is a
disarmingly basic one in which I simply substitute the name Eleanor Rigby with ‘Robert Mugabe’, because it scans. Every time I watch the news and something about Zimbabwe comes on, I hear Paul McCartney lament that Robert Mugabe died in the church and was buried along with his name. Nobody came. This is why I’d be hopeless on
Don’t Forget The Lyrics!
, a new Shane Richie gameshow whose primary game mechanic is explained in its title.

And it’s quite bossy, that title. It sounds like the sort of thing an insane Nazi commandant forcing a yard full of PoWs to perform a musical at gunpoint might bark at the top of his voice just before shooting someone for fumbling the chorus of ‘Frosty the Snowman’. They should’ve called it ‘Nicht Forgetten Das Lyrics!’, or ‘Schtumbleword Verboten!’.

Or ‘Don’t Forget the Lyrics, Mofo!’, which isn’t very German, but accurately conveys the urgency of the situation.

Anyway, the show is just like
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
only with karaoke instead of questions. Each week, an annoying member of the public comes on and jumps up and down and says how excited they are until you want to punch them all the way to Barbados and back.

Then Shane asks them to pick a category of song: pop, say, or glam rock, or TV theme tunes; we’re talking crowd-pleasers, OK, so there’s no Joy Division or anything. Then the in-house band starts playing, the lyrics come up on a big screen, and the contestant wails the song as cacophonously as possible while maintaining the beatific grin of the thuddingly stupid.

And then! Suddenly! The on-screen lyrics are whisked away! And the singer has to finish the next line FROM MEMORY! If they get every single word right, the pot increases and they proceed to the next round, eventually hitting a jackpot of £250,000.

If a contstant gets it wrong, Shane leads them to a desolate, snowblown corner of the stage, commands them to get down on their knees and unloads a single bullet into the back of their head. The body is left in plain sight for the remainder of the programme as a warning to others of its kind: DON’T FORGET THE LYRICS!

Yet another superb episode of
The Apprentice
last Wednesday,
although for some reason no matter how many people Sir Alan ejects, it feels as though their overall number fails to dwindle. Two got the chop last week, and there’s still eight of the bastards in there. Still, at least this means you can pick more than one favourite: for me, it’s got to be Raef, Sara or Lucinda.

Them to win. Go them. Go them.

An end to war? Environmentally friendly alternatives to oil? The second coming? No. What the world has been crying out for, apparently, is the return of
Gladiators
, which vanished from our screens eight years ago.

I don’t recall much protest at the time. No one established an emergency helpline or threw themselves under the controller of ITV’s car. Not a single leading newspaper ran a wounded editorial lamenting its demise and pleading with God for a revival. There were no dazed crowds of jonesing
Gladiators
fans wandering the street in a sorrowful funk, dumbly bumping into shop windows without even noticing, quivering in a puddle of tears in the cold and distant grief dimension. Its passing went largely unnoticed. A gentle nationwide shrug rolled across the country like an underfed Mexican wave.
Gladiators
had passed away, and we, as a nation, moved on.

But, like the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. A year after
Gladiators
disappeared, 9/11 shook Planet Earth’s axis to its core, creating a new landmark paradigm in watershed epochs. The world was left stunned, reeling. ‘Where are our
Gladiators
now?’ it wailed with its mouth, ‘Because we need something to take our minds off this shit.’ And in the years following, with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, widespread economic meltdown, and the growing awareness of impending environmental disaster, the clamour for the return of the soothing balm of
Gladiators
grew ever more cacophonous.

Now the dark ages are at an end:
Gladiators
is back, and it’s better than ever. And by ‘better’, I mean ‘the same’: an hour of people
in leotards running, tumbling, wrestling, jumping, and hitting each other over the head with padded sticks, inside a cavernous crashmat-and-searchlight repository.

Gladiators
has never felt very British. The audience shriek and hoot throughout, and they’re all waving outsized foam hands with pointy fingers, which must make it nigh-on impossible to see. Perhaps they’re not baying for blood at all, but just shouting at the person in front to get that stupid foam hand out of the way.

Everything in the arena is either red or blue or a 20,000-watt lightbulb – apart from the
Gladiators
, whose costumes are monochrome and more individually ‘pimped’ than before. Spartan, for instance, has some vaguely Ancient Roman-style strappy bits hanging down round his balls, leaving him looking like a cross between a promotional poster for the film
300
and a collector’s edition of
Boyz
magazine.

Incredibly, he’s not the gayest-looking male
Gladiator
. That honour goes to Atlas, who has a body made of raw, bulging muscle, but the head and face of a woman. In his introductory ident, he appears to shake his flowing locks and wink coquettishly at the viewer. They should’ve called him Dorothy and had done with it.

Keeping with the homoerotic theme, you may have noticed that all the male Gladiators have names that sound like gay nightclubs. Oblivion, for instance, sounds like a steaming 4 a.m. sinbox filled with strobe lights and shaved heads. But it isn’t. It’s a 6ft 3in bell-end in black trunks. The producers have given Oblivion a complex personality: he’s angry and he complains a lot. This makes him different to Predator, who brags and looks hard. The level of characterisation pisses all over
The Wire
.

The lady Gladiators are slightly less absurd, apart from Inferno, who looks like a pornographic Manga sketch of Geri Halliwell circa 1998, and Battleaxe – a champion hammer-thrower, and the least ladylike of the bunch. She may look beefy and stern, but calling her Battleaxe seems a tad harsh. Perhaps next year they’ll bring in one called Dog. Or Moose. Or Boiler.

Actually, in this interactive age, they should throw the naming of the Gladiators open to the public. How about one called Bastard?
Or Perineum? Any other suggestions? Send them to charlie. brooker @guardian. co.uk and we’ll make it a contest.

Good on you, reader. Last week, while musing on the preposterous monikers chosen for the
Gladiators
, I invited you to send in suggestions of your own. I expected nine or 10 entries. I got hundreds – many of which I’m reproducing here.

Just to recap: the following are all proposed names for new Gladiators, should Sky One’s pointless revival of the long-unmissed ITV series bother returning for a second series. To draw full value from each name, you have to imagine an excitable commentator bandying it about during an intense Gladiator-vs-pleb battle. In your mind’s ear, hear him saying something like ‘Roy’s running for the finish … but oh! [GLADIATOR NAME] is determined to shut him down! A nasty blow from [GLADIATOR NAME] there! And so on.

Without further ado, here are your suggestions. Contestant ready? Gladiator ready? Good. Here we go.

First, the men. You suggest: Paxman, Pigeon, Badger, Schlong, Asbo, Baghead (who ‘carries a syringe’), Pornographer, Blunderbuss, Columbine, Blister, Hessian, Menthol, Tractor, Fist, Embryo (a ‘lad with the brain of an amoeba and the reflexes of a pot of Colman’s mustard’), Burden (‘obese bloke that can’t move too fast’), Kraken, Pollution, Opprobrium, Battlebus, Boswelox, Guff, Sodom, Wetwipe, Surcharge, Meatpole, Thrutch, Breezeblock, Pasquale, Kemp, Climax, Radion, Thermostat, Dalek, Infidel, Prolapse, Vas Deferens, Void, Spasm, Jaw, Enema, Pussyole, Prepuce, Alan, Mongol, Travesty, Hibernator, Mustang, Fellatio, Bickle, Bareback, Pummel, Hurtyman, Sheath, Bananaman, Dunce, BluRay, Guantánamo, Pedalo, Caramac, The Hesitator, Astroglide (‘it’s a sexual lubricant’), Pamphlet, Bukkake, Loner, Simpleton, Shitclown, Santorum, ZX-H8-U, Narcissus, Nibbles (an ‘Uncle Monty-shaped gastronaut who rolls after people’), Girth, Spork, Mondeo, Thrombosis, Tepid, Fighty, Shipman, Kilimanjaro, Stryker (‘a nod to Jeff’), Skytrot, Phrenum (who ‘could have a creepy helmet
bowlcut like Javier Bardem’), Fuhrer, or – my favourite – Fritzl.

In between the male and female categories, we have Mirrorball (‘the first transgender Gladiator’).

Now the ladies. Fewer entries here, but a spirited showing nonetheless (if somewhat anatomically-obsessed). You propose: Gash, Cameltoe, Butch, Labia, Frown, Growler, Rub-n-Tug, Dworkin, Estrogen, Thyroid, Ringtone, Meringue, Windolene, Aneurysm, Angina, Chlamydia, Mrs Hitler, Mudguard, Testosterod, Plankton, Femsil, Slattern, Armourdildo, Grindstone, Turpentine, Pumice, Killwhore, Binlids, Chemical Sally, Botox, Spinster, Tampon, Fallopian, Lactator, Seapig, Yeastro, Tearjerker, Gomorrah, Dingleberry, Glans, Harridan, Crevice, Menstrualator, Jizzelle, Widdecombe, Handshank (‘blue-collar everywoman who belts herself in the face with a spanner to show how good she is’), Schadenfreude, Hernia, Clitorisk or – my lady favourite – Mauve.

Special mention to ‘Mark C’ who came up with some of the more elaborate entries above. The winner, though, is ‘Sophocles’ – suggested by Alex Maple – because it’s a timely reference to Michael Sophocles from
The Apprentice
, the most furious man on TV (although not, perhaps, quite as angry as the average viewer following Sir Alan’s current record of unfair dismissals). Despite the boyish face and drippy wet eyes, ol’ pressure-cooker Sophocles appears driven by barely suppressed rage. He resembles a small boy, tired out during a shopping trip, simmering on the verge of a tantrum. Each time I see him in the boardroom I think he’s about to seethe ‘s’not fair, s’not fair’ in a peevish mantra, then wig out and start huffing and kicking the table. Or one of his fellow contestants. Preferably Alex. Or Claire. Or Helene. I can’t stand any of them. Lee’s okay – albeit dumb as a cupboard – but really, with Raef gone, Lucinda’s the only deserving victor. Even though she’s a bit too ‘aromatherapy’ for my liking.

When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child rapists, you know it’s doing something wrong.
To Catch a Predator
is that
show. It hails from America, where it’s not some wacky bit of far-out cable madness but a mainstream network broadcast; a staple feature of Dateline NBC (a sort of
Tonight with Sir Trevor
McDonald
minus Sir Trevor).

Here’s the set-up for this week’s episode: fearless, crusading adult volunteers for an anti-paedo watchdog group called Perverted Justice go on the internet and pretend to be 13-year-old girls. They wait until contacted by grown men, play along with the conversation when the subject turns to sex, then invite them over for an illegal fumble. When the men turn up, they’re greeted by an attractive young actress (who could just about pass for 13) who leads them into the garden and asks them to wait by the hot tub while she changes into something sexier.

The men pace excitedly, awaiting Lolita’s return. But oh! Out pops Dateline’s Chris Hansen instead! He’s male, pushing 50, and doesn’t look like he wants to play. Their faces fall like the Twin Towers. They mistake him for a cop. ‘Did you come to have sex with a 13-year-old?’ he asks. ‘Oh no, sir,’ they splutter, ‘nothing could be further from my mind.’

Then he brings out a transcript of their original web chat and asks them a bunch of questions about it – not to titillate, no God no – but in order that we viewers might forge a better understanding of the twisted mindset of the child sex predator. And because it’ll make us guffaw like cartoon donkeys when they desperately try to explain away all the references to blowjobs and penis size in their chatroom chinwag. It’s the back-pedalling Olympics.

After making them sweat for several minutes, Chris reveals his camera crew and tells them they’re on national television. Ta da! You’re on Paedle’s About! At this point their faces tend to fall still further. They start crying and begging. Some of them probably poo themselves, although they don’t show that. But the worst is yet to come: at this point, Chris unexpectedly waves them goodbye, and they walk out, sighing with relief … only to walk face-first into a bunch of armed police who hurl them to the ground and arrest them. Then we get to see them being interviewed AGAIN, this time by the police, who aren’t quite as debonair and charming as Chris
(and are markedly less keen on poring over all the online sex talk than him).