The Hell of It All (24 page)

Well pardon me. Not to single out Sass or the Kuna or anything, but why does every other programme about exotic tribes have to spend the entire duration of its running time making out that every single one of them is massively, inherently wise? Statistically, half of them are going to be idiots, for Christ’s sake. Those simple chuckles and gap-toothed smiles you’re so enamoured with? That unvarnished, basically worded advice? What if they are just signs of stupidity? What if you’ve travelled halfway round the world and sought spiritual insight from a bunch of cretins? After all, a berk is still a berk, whether they’re eating chips in Rhyl or dancing round a fire in the rainforest.

Once, just once, can’t we have a travel show in which the presenter lives with a remote tribe for a week and comes away shrugging and calling them a bunch of boring, backward arseholes? Even if it isn’t true. In fact, especially if it isn’t. Can’t we? Please?

Ping! An email arrives. From a reader. Called simply Matthew. And he writes: ‘Please, please, please write something publicly in your Screen Burn column about
Class of 2008
. I feel so terribly sad after watching it. I feel your evaluation of it would somehow help me
live with myself for a bit longer. Sorry if you think I am asking for a request or anything. It’s just that they are all such complete cunts.’

Plaintive. But I don’t do requests. Although luckily for Matthew, I’d resolved to write about
Class of 2008
anyway. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s an aspirational youth-oriented docu-soap that follows a group of sickeningly privileged, jumped-up little pissdrips as they embark on various glittering careers in music, modelling, and clubland. It’s like watching a roomful of monocled adolescent toffs loudly applauding their own farts. Only worse. Because farts can sometimes be funny.

It’s introduced by a look-at-me turdhole who calls himself ‘Flash Louis’. Louis lives with his parents in Hampstead. Louis lives with his parents in Hampstead. I said that twice because it’s worth repeating.

He’s also a DJ and aspiring promoter and possibly the most emptily self-satisfied person ever to grace a television screen. Across the series he’s shown attempting to arrange a glittering club night, and for some mad reason we’re expected to give a toss without ever being told why.

Anyway, Louis is merely our narrator, our anchor, our foothold in a dizzying whirlpool of bottomless shittery starring his privileged chums. Chief among his pals are a gangly ginger posho called Will, who plays in a band (the bass player’s called Rory, which is all you need to know), and apparently famous international supermodel Daisy Lowe. Last week much of the action centred on Will and Daisy flying off to swank around at Milan Fashion Week as guests of Dolce & Gabbana. Cue footage of them receiving free clothes and slap-up meals, swaggering round their luxurious hotel suite, blithely wiping their bums on the world’s face. At no point are we given any indication of what they’ve done to deserve all of this, other than being in the right place at the right time, surrounded by the right constellation of absolute twats.

Throughout the programme, my body reacted in unusual ways. First, the lyrics to ‘Common People’ by Pulp began swirling in my mind. Then I became dimly aware of a low grinding noise on the soundtrack, which turned out to be my teeth. This was followed by a strange blurring effect in the visuals, which turned out to be me
gouging one of my own eyes out with my thumb just so I’d see 50 per cent less of their awful grinning gobs.

And the worst thing about it? Like I said, it’s a youth show. That really isn’t on. Listen here, BBC, if you MUST broadcast an almighty, air-kissing celebration of upper middle-class dilettantes, for God’s sake don’t do it in front of the children. Faced with this level of posing, pretension and self-congratulation – effortlessly funded by God knows who – 99 per cent of the (young, impressionable) audience are going to come away feeling inadequate or disadvantaged or angry or miserable. What was it Matthew said? ‘I feel so terribly sad after watching it.’

Is that what you want, BBC? To make us feel terribly sad? Well, is it? And if so, why? Do you hate us? Is that it?

Still, there is one up side. Sometimes I get depressed about the way the world’s heading. I’m scared by the prospect of widespread food or oil or water riots. Late at night I lie awake and I wonder: what if civilisation collapses completely? If the seas rise and the oil runs dry and we all end up fighting each other with spiked cudgels on a tiny circle of gore-sodden wasteland? I visualise it happening, and I despair.

But now I have an escape hatch. I think about
Class of 2008
and cheer up again. Because if we’re all going to suffer come the apocalypse, they will too. Only their faces’ll be an absolute picture.

– After this article appeared, one of the Class of 2008 – the one going
out with Daisy Lowe, I think — emailed me to say that while he
could understand why him and his friends probably came across as
over-privileged twats on TV, they (a) weren’t actually very rich and
(b) were all nice people really. His email was reasonable and pleasant
and modest, and rather left me feeling like I’d been a bit of a bastard
I’m afraid
.

Must be frustrating being a scientist. There you are, incrementally discovering how the universe works via a series of complex tests
and experiments, for the benefit of all mankind – and what thanks do you get? People call you ‘egghead’ or ‘boffin’ or ‘heretic’, and they cave your face in with a rock and bury you out in the wilderness.

Not literally – not in this day and age – but you get the idea. Scientists are mistrusted by huge swathes of the general public, who see them as emotionless lab-coated meddlers-with-nature rather than, say, fellow human beings who’ve actually bothered getting off their arses to work this shit out. The wariness stems from three popular misconceptions:

(1) Scientists want to fill our world with chemicals and killer robots; (2) They don’t appreciate the raw beauty of nature, maaan; and (3) They’re always spoiling our fun, pointing out homeopathy doesn’t work or ghosts don’t exist EVEN THOUGH they KNOW we REALLY, REALLY want to believe in them. That last delusion is the most insidious. Science is like a good friend: sometimes it tells you things you don’t want to hear. It tells you the truth. And we all know how much that can hurt, don’t we, fatso?

Many people find bald, unvarnished truths so disturbing, they prefer to ram their heads in the sand and start dreaming at the first sign of scientific reality. The more contrary evidence mounts up, the harder they’ll ignore it. And even the greatest, most widelyadmired scientists can provoke this reaction. Take Darwin. Or rather, take
The Genius of Darwin
, the latest documentary from professional God-hatin’ Professor Yaffle impersonator Richard Dawkins, which sets out to calmly and lucidly explain (a) why Darwin was so ace, and (b) just how much evidence there is to support his findings.

Darwin’s theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it’s been under attack since day one. That’s just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we’d still be debating Newton with idiots too.

Since Darwin’s death, Dawkins points out, the evidence confirming his discovery has piled up and up and up, many thousand feet above the point of dispute. And yet heroically, many still dispute it. They’re like couch potatoes watching
Finding Nemo
on DVD who’ve suffered some kind of brain haemorrhage which has led them to believe the story they’re watching is real, that their screen is filled with water and talking fish, and that that’s all there is to reality – just them and that screen and Nemo – and when you run into the room and point out the DVD player and the cables connecting it to the screen, and you open the windows and point outside and describe how overwhelming the real world is – when you do all that, it only spooks them. So they go on believing in Nemo, with gritted teeth if necessary.

What was it that spooked them so? Probably natural selection’s lack of reassuring narrative. It lays the ruthless, godless world pretty bloody bare. As Dawkins says: ‘The total amount of suffering in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to say these words, thousands of animals are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, feeling teeth sink into their throats. Thousands are dying from starvation or disease or feeling a parasite rasping away from within. There is no central authority; no safety net. For most animals the reality of life is struggling, suffering and death.’

Woo-hoo! Compare and contrast with the plot of
Finding Nemo
and it’s easy to understand why people would rather believe in the purdy singing clown fish. But this is our reality, people. Like the man says, there’s no safety net – so since we’re all in this together, we’ll have to make our own. And we can’t do that with our eyes and minds wide shut.

You know what organised religion needs? More power and influence. Thank God, then, that Channel 4 are on hand to give it the helping hand it so desperately requires in the form of
Make Me a
Christian
, a spiritual makeover show in which four hardcore Goddites
attempt to convert a rag-tag band of sinners into full-blown Jesus freaks in just three weeks.

In true oversimplified TV-conflict tradition, it’s a clash of absurd extremities. The Christians, for instance, consist of an evangelical preacher, a lady vicar, a Catholic priest and – very much heading up the pack – the Reverend George Hargreaves, founder of Operation Christian Vote, and the Christian Party, and the Scottish Christian Party, and the Welsh Christian Party. If it’s Christian and a Party, chances are George is its figurehead. He scatters Christian joy like a muckspreader flings shit: indiscriminately and everywhere.

Said Christians are pitted against a group of volunteers containing the following widely representative social types: a lesbian schoolteacher, a tattooed militant atheist biker, a white Muslim convert, a boozing fannyhound who claims to have slept with over 150 women, and a lapdancing witch. Nice work, C4. I’m sure we can all learn from this. Let battle commence.

Following a trip to York Minster, George hands each of the volunteers a Bible. The word ‘Bible’, he tells them, stands for ‘Basic Instruction Before Leaving Earth’. He instructs them to read it every day. This makes the atheist biker kick off, so George graciously talks over him until he walks out.

The group seems pleased to see biker boy go. After all, what’s the point of participating if you’re not prepared to learn? As William (the Muslim convert) says, ‘Step one to learning is silence, and step two is listening.’ Step three, presumably, is absolute cocksucking obedience – or it would be if cocksucking wasn’t a sin.

Almost any form of sex is a sin. Take Fay, the occult lapdancer. George takes one look at her lifestyle (spangly bras and tarot cards) and announces she’s ‘on a trajectory to hell’. Sobbing, Fay slinks away to her boyfriend’s house for a few days of comforting. When she emerges later, George bollocks her for having sex outside marriage. ‘While the world might call it “making love”,’ he says, ‘the Bible calls it fornication.’

Fay’s clearly unhappy and wracked with issues about her appearance, but you can’t help wondering if introducing her to Gok Wan might’ve been a tad kinder.

Not that George and co would approve of Gok. After all, we get to see what they make of exuberant gayness when Pastor Wally (the evangelical preacher) commands Laura (the lesbian teacher) to remove all evidence of same-sex activity from her home. Her saucy party snaps, her books of Sapphic erotica – they have to go.

George agrees. His Christian Party takes a notably dim view on homosexuality. He says things like, ‘The ancient city of Sodom could have been saved, if only righteous people could be found,’ in its election broadcasts. And in 2006 he personally pledged £50,000 to assist the nine Scottish firefighters disciplined for refusing to hand out fire-safety leaflets at a gay parade.

Given that George also wrote and co-produced Sinitta’s 1986 gay disco anthem ‘So Macho’ (sample lyric: ‘I’m after a hunk of a guy, an experienced man of the world … He’s got to be so macho/ He’s got to be big and strong, enough to turn me on’), this is surprising. Still, he’s a surprising guy. In 2007 he campaigned to have the iconic red dragon removed from the Welsh flag as it was ‘nothing less than the sign of Satan’.

With his polarising views and divisive political campaigning, George is just the man to be fronting a makeover show, and the broadcast will doubtless be accompanied by the percussive sound of thousands of Christians enthusiastically smashing their foreheads against the wall with delight at the way they’re represented. Still, let’s not blame Channel 4. Let’s forgive them. Just like Jesus n’ shit, yeah?

The human brain is a wonderful thing, but you wouldn’t want to kiss it. It’s an ugly, quivering, corrugated blancmange. If it wasn’t permanently shrouded from view by that opaque bone helmet you call a skull, you’d never get laid.

Just as well, because if the top of your skull was missing, and you accidentally banged your naked brain against the headboard during a one-night-stand, you’d probably start jerking around and going ‘buhhhhh’ and pulling a face like Robert Mitchum having a
stroke. And that’s completely different to what you normally do during sex, right?

Anyway, if you don’t fancy gazing into a bucketful of peeled minds, avoid
Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery
, which explores the evolution of brain surgery in unflinching detail. I say ‘unflinching’: the show didn’t flinch once. I, however, flinched like a man with his glans in a sandwich toaster.