The Hell of It All (7 page)

Still, I’d rather be ruled by Emperor GX4000 and his army of USB-compatible stormtroopers than, say, David Cameron. So it’s not all bad.

There’s a famous showbiz maxim, coined by William Goldman: ‘nobody knows anything.’

Nobody knows what’s going to be a hit; nobody even knows whether what they’re working on is any good. Books, movies, TV shows … they all exist in a quantum state of undefined quality until an audience actually receives them, at which point an opinion is formed. But sometimes it’s more complicated still. This week, for instance, I’ve watched two completely different programmes from beginning to end, yet I still can’t tell you if they’re great or awful. That’s because I’m not a proper critic. Proper critics are aloof and high-minded, whereas I’m a buffoon who peppers his copy with unnecessary bum jokes.

Anyway, programme number one is Stephen Poliakoff’s
Capturing
Mary
, a sumptuous drama about nostalgia and regret with a vaguely supernatural hue, which stars Maggie Smith and, bizarrely, David Walliams. Everything about it screams SNIVEL BEFORE ME, MERE HUMANS, FOR I AM TELEVISION OF QUALITY – which means if you get bored, you assume it’s your fault and not the programme’s. Because it’s a genius and you’re a pleb.

I can’t work out whether it’s actually any good. For every plus, there’s a negative – so while it looks a million dollars, and Maggie Smith is great, and the story holds your attention, it’s also stagy and pretentious and uses an irritating framing device whereby Maggie Smith’s character wanders around an empty posh old house recounting all the events from her past to a simple working-class black guy called Joe, who has to chip in every so often to ask things like ‘so wot ’appened next – dincha tell him to fuck off or nuffin?’ like a faintly implausible character from
EastEnders
.

Presumably Joe represents some kind of metaphor for something (as does every other character, and the house itself, and probably even the cutlery) but I’m far too dim to tell you what it might be. This is precisely the sort of thing that makes me hurl poncy contemporary fiction across the room with annoyance, feeling vaguely guilty and stupid as I do so, wondering if I’m essentially
behaving like a monkey pissed-off by Sudoku, or merely enraged by pretension.

Still, I watched to the end, then rolled it all around in my head for several hours afterwards, and even went to sleep still mentally chewing it over, as though
The Late Review
were taking place in my head, so ultimately it won. (Although I mainly kept marvelling that they’d somehow made Maggie Smith look a bit like Rod Hull, which was a comfortingly cruel and stupid thing to think, and precisely the kind of thought that keeps me sane.)

Immediately after
Capturing Mary
, I watched a DVD of the bizarre
Food Poker
. It’s all poles apart round my house.
Food Poker
skilfully combines the public’s ceaseless appetite for TV cookery with the poker craze that peaked two years ago. It’s a bit like
Ready
Steady Cook
, but better, because it’s even more contrived.

In each edition, four celebrity chefs draw cards with random ingredients on them, then try to whip up meals using said items against the clock, in order to impress a jury of food-loving members of the public. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with poker, obviously, but you’ve got to admire them for insisting it does despite crushing evidence to the contrary.

But why stop at poker? How about Food Cluedo, in which four celebrity chefs have to create edible murder weapons, try to bludgeon someone to death with them, then eat the evidence before the police arrive? ITV should look into it immediately.

The
Food Poker
format is so stupid, it sort of works. On one level it’s annoying, and on the other it’s quite good. It’s the
Capturing
Mary
of daytime cookery shows. Now there’s a quote for their next press release.

Do you want to die alone? Of course not. But you will. Ha! In your face!

Yes, no matter how happily married you are or how huge your harem is, ultimately, at the precise moment of shutdown, no one else is shooting through that tunnel of light beside you. You’re on
your lonesome, into infinity. Unless perchance you’re a Siamese twin. I’m not sure what happens to you then, but chances are there’s no relief from your conjoined torment, even in death. There you’ll be, sipping cocktails with Einstein and Monroe in the afterlife, still joined at the waist and chest to Blinky Bo-Bo, your drooling, underdeveloped sidekick. Nightmare.

But I digress. Back to dying alone, which scares people so much they resort to desperate means to avoid it, like getting married. They actually look at someone and think ‘Yeah, out of all the people in all the world, I’ll spend the rest of my life with you. Each morning for the next 50-odd years I’ll see your face, and your arse, and that weird bumpy little mole on your lower back. That’ll greet my eyes every single day. And I’ll hear your voice; hear it talking about what you’d like for lunch, or who’s annoying you at work, or arguing with me about towels. I’ll go to the supermarket with you, week in, week out, staring at the side of your head as item after item goes through the scanner. Beep, beep, beep, beep. What did you get that for? We’ve got loads of those in the cupboard. Never mind. You’re my life partner. From here to eternity. And we’re stuffing these carrier bags together. Woo-hoo. Yee-hah. Beep. Beep. Beep.’

It’s not easy, selecting a cellmate. Generally speaking, the ones you want don’t stick around, and the ones you don’t want – well, when you finally quit trying, that’s your future spouse, right there. I’m sure you’ll be very happy together. At the checkout.

But assuming you haven’t simply thrown your hands up with despair and married the nearest bit of background filler, there are countless ways to meet Mr or Mrs Right. Fix-ups from friends, internet dating sites, and now
Arrange Me a Marriage
, in which ‘matchmaker’ Aneela Rahman attempts to pair off on-the-shelf Brits in a traditional Indian styl-ee. For the purposes of the show, this boils down to (a) getting someone’s friends and family to choose a partner for them, (b) concentrating on suitors of ‘appropriate’ class and family background, and (c) not letting your intended couple meet until you’ve organised a big daytime house party where they’ll clap eyes on each other for the first time, while
you all stand around grinning at them, presumably in the hope they’ll start shagging out of sheer discomfort.

Aneela’s first ‘mark’ is a high-flying London company director called Lexi, who’s 33, unmarried, and starting to feel the bite from her under-deployed ovaries. Like every single woman in the world, Lexi insists on meeting a tall man. I feel sorry for shortarsed men. Women are unbelievably shallow on this issue. I’ve never heard a man insist his wife must have big tits, but I’ve heard countless women complain about a man’s height. What do you want, you whining harridans? A ladder in a hat?

Anyway, at the risk of being a big Mr Blabbermouth McSpoiler, it’s fair to say that despite feeling as clinical and controlled as a scientific investigation into renewable energy sources, Aneela’s matchmaking appears to succeed (although that might be down to the fact that if you can find two people prepared to consider hooking up on a TV show, chances are they’ll be pretty compatible).

But it’s all so slow, and meticulous, and devoid of emotion, it feels like selecting cattle for breeding. Call me old-fashioned, but some smothered, cornered speck in my being still believes in the random joy of romance, and I just can’t see that flourishing in a system that runs like software. Which is worse: dying alone, or having the alternative defined by committee? Answers on a Valentine’s card to the usual address.

Has David Cameron lost weight? I’ve only caught glimpses of him out of the corner of my eye over the past week, and either the TV’s set to the wrong aspect ratio or he’s shed a bit of face flab. Presumably this means that whenever he puts his top hat on (i.e. the second the cameras stop rolling), he looks less like a chortling chubby-cheeked toff and more like an angular, dashing Fred Astaire type.

Cunning move. I smell a focus group. Research has probably shown he’s become 15% more electable thanks to his leaner face alone. No one wants a prime minister who looks like he’d steal chips off your plate when your back’s turned. He’s doubtless had advisers following him round for months, slapping sausage rolls out of his hands every 10 minutes. Maybe he’ll go the whole hog and strip off for a calendar, like Putin. Yeah. That’ll work.

Of course, it’s possible he’s simply done it for his own sense of wellbeing. Although I doubt it. He probably consults an image analyst each time he wipes his arse, just to check he’s using the brand of bog roll with the highest voter approval rating. And instead of leaving the bathroom and theatrically wafting a hand under his nose and saying, ‘Pherrrrrgghh, I’d give it 10 minutes if I were you,’ he blames Gordon Brown for using it before him, then promises to reduce future emissions by a factor of 10 within six months.

That’ll be difficult if he’s been taking the slimming pill Alli, which I read about the other week in this very newspaper. Alli, currently available in the US, is a weight-loss wonder drug that works by ‘limiting fat absorption’ in the body. And apparently it works pretty well, if you’re prepared to overlook some of the side effects, which include producing bassoon-like farts and walking around with hot slicks of oily excrement leaking out of your backside.

The manufacturers actually advise people taking the pill to ‘wear dark pants and bring a change of clothes with you to work’. That or get used to leaving a damp brown trail behind you, like an incontinent slug. It’s not ideal, really. Presumably many of the people buying Alli do so in order to make themselves more attractive to
potential sexual partners. Which is fine until you’re in the bedroom, and they’re ripping your clothes off in a lust-crazed frenzy, only to discover molten shit running down your thighs. As passion-killers go, that’s worse than overhearing a police press conference about a missing child on the radio during intercourse.

Pity, because like many people I find the notion of an instant slimming pill pretty tempting. My physique’s wired up all wrong. Even if I sit indoors eating deep-fried cake for a month, my arms and legs stay skinny, while my neck and face bloat like wet dough. And my head’s too big for my body anyway. In fact, I’m built like a novelty Pez dispenser. A disappointing one. The last one left in the shop, after all the Donald Ducks and Popeyes and even Geoff Hoons have gone.

Thankfully, women are able to overlook such physical defects and see the person within. Or at least they can if it’s a potential partner they’re looking at. When they stand in front of a mirror, all that pent-up criticism comes rushing back and their brain reinterprets the image until all they can see is a flabby, unlovable sea cow staring back at them.

(Not all women, OK? I’m not generalising. Just describing what 99% of women think, and doing so in crushingly authoritative terms.)

It’s demented, because even though men are shallow and fussy, we’re also desperate. And this blinds us to much of this perceived blubber. Besides, extreme skinniness is horrendous. Ever had sex with an incredibly skinny person? It’s like fighting a deckchair. They could have your eye out with one of those elbows. That’s not sexy. That’s terrifying. If the lights are off, you have to keep kissing them just so you can tell where their head is. Actually, if they’ve been taking Alli, that’s probably dangerous in itself. One minute you think they’ve got saliva running down their chin, and the next you suddenly realise it’s not their chin at all. And it’s definitely not saliva. Best to keep the lights on and remain certain. And the next day, hide the pills and buy them a cake. Heck, you can share a few slices together. Now that’s romantic.

Earlier this year I was watching
The Seven Ages of Rock
, and during the episode on indie music they showed a clip from a home video (by a Libertines fan) in which Pete Doherty and Carl Barat were holding an impromptu late-night gig in their own home. Swooning followers were sardined into the living room as the celebrated duo entertained them with their distinctive blend of clunking pub rock and self-regarding pretension.

Suddenly, the concert of the decade was interrupted by a distraught middle-aged neighbour pleading with them to shut up because she had to go to work in the morning. The crowd jeeringly dismissed her, and eventually the police arrived, at which point Barat and Doherty heroically launched into a rendition of ‘Guns of Brixton’, thereby well and truly sticking it to the man.

As I watched, I found myself wishing we lived in a ruthless police state. I wanted that party broken up by stormtroopers. I wanted them to beat Barat unconscious with his stupid guitar and ram a sparking 250,000-volt Taser into Doherty’s gormless Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man face. Because it reminded me of the first time I lost it with a neighbour.

Now, this may surprise regular readers, but in ‘real life’ I’m actually pretty tolerant. Or maybe just cowardly. I don’t like open confrontation, so if my neighbours hold a party, it needs to be very loud, and very late, and very unrelenting, to make me complain about the noise. But even I have my limits. A few years ago, I lived in a flat beneath a large group of rowdy Australians. Now, it doesn’t matter that they were Australian … except it absolutely does. At night, the Australian accent becomes uniquely intrusive. It’s bony and piercing. It sounds like a violin complaining to an angle grinder. It’s not conducive to a sound night’s sleep.

Anyway, the Aussies regularly drank and jabbered and stomped around into the wee small hours. They drove my girlfriend at the time insane, but since she didn’t actually live or pay rent in my flat, she felt I should complain on her behalf. But my fear of being the boring, petty, fusty guy from downstairs who moaned about the
noise was so acute, I’d brush off her demands, saying things like, ‘They’re not bothering me,’ and ‘Let them have their fun,’ and so on and so on, like a sap.