If you didn't see last night's Newsnight discussion on the Gordon Brown bullying uproar, watch it on iPlayer immediately. It was brilliant TV. Paxman mediated, and stoked vigorously, a rumble between Andrew Rawnsley (the Observer journo who broke the story), Roy Hattersley (indignantly spraying like a tomcat), David Steel and a Times hack while John Prescott's disembodied blubbery head floated above them all, bellowing incoherently via videolink.
It was a strange discussion - a group of political and media professionals attacking a journalist for not being willing to reveal his confidential sources. You would have thought the "off the record" concept would be one with which they would be intimately familiar, but apparently not. Prescott worked himself up into a particuarly petulant tizzy, howling like a wounded bison at one point when he though Rawnsley was being given too much airtime.
There was also a very odd example of the BBC's namby-pamby terror of causing any offence to anyone. Paxman read out an extract of our poor doomed PM's alleged ravings that included a Bad Word. I didn't really notice at the time, because I'm an adult who interacts with other adults in the year 2010. Like literally 100% of the Newsnight audience. But a few minutes later, under orders from an earpiece minion, Paxo apologised for his dreadful lapse, his big horse face clearly registering his disgust at having to do so.
It was a full 2 hours after the watershed and the Bad Word was important context as part of the discussion. Any youngsters inexplicably watching would have been more traumatised by the scary melty-faced man on the video screen and his terrible grammar than sweary old Paxman. A brainless concession that patronised rather than respected the audience. Harrumph!
Yours,
Disgusted of Oval
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Famous wankers
I've been enjoying this Word website discussion on famous people who are abject tools in real life:
Being a generally good natured forum it also includes plenty on very nice celebs (for example: "Michael Caine was nice as pie when my son (then 3) wee'd on his shoes in Harrods. MC said "never mind son" in his very best Alfie voice and wiped his expensive loafers down with some toilet roll").
Worth a read if you're bored - given that you're reading this blog you must almost be at the sewing-name-tags-into-your-socks stage already. A few choice samples:
- I witnessed Jeremy Clarkson reduce a pretty young sales girl to tears when she could not supply him with what he was asking for immediately. It was awful. It wasn't so much what he said, but the way he said it. His face contorted in that horrid, condescending, smug little snarl he has.
- My colleague Jane was responsible for two Morrissey album campaigns - marketing, promo etc. She was a lifelong fan, but remained professional and scrupulous about every aspect of the campaign, accompanying him to interviews, attending to his every need - of which there were very many.
Moz appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, his first TV interview for years and years. This was A Big Deal. Ross interviews each guest for a good 45 minutes or so, which is then cut down to bitesize for broadcast. For 35 of his alloted 45, Morrissey, bizarrely, laid in to David Bowie, denouncing him as a fake, a sell-out, a has-been, a charlatan. This saw to discomfit Ross, he being a lifelong Bowie obsessive. Indeed, it appeared to be a tactic or strategy on Morrissey's part, for God knows why. The remaining 10 minutes were full of nothing very much but uncomfortable pauses, ums and ahs. The resulting broadcast interview, culled solely from those 10 minutes, was an embarrassing disaster.
Returning to the green room, Jane sought to reassure the clearly disturbed Morrissey, offering Don't worries and It'll be fines, etc.
Next morning at the office, Jane received a fax from Morrissey (he communicated mostly via fax) 'Jane, I bombed last night and you weren't man enough to tell me. I think it would be best if we don't see each other again.' To say Jane was upset would be something of an understatement. Nice bloke. - At a cricket match in Weston Supermare a young boy spots John Cleese sitting in a deck chair enjoying the day's sport apparently unrecognised by those around him. The boy approaches and asks for an autograph. JC leans in close and whispers "What happens next is not your fault". JC then stands up and gives the boy two minutes of the full Basil Fawlty righteous indignation and furious anger. Arm waving, who do you think you are, I only came to watch the cricket in peace, the full package. Those around watch in stunned silence at this appalling behaviour. When he had finished JC leant in close to the boy again and whispered "Thanks, no-one will bother me for the rest of the match now", signed the autograph and returned to his seat.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Literary corner
I tend to apply a famine or feast approach to authors, so I haven't read much Kingsley in recent years following a period of a major obsession. This madness peaked with the purchase of his collected letters, all 1212 pages of them. They sit on my bookcase as the literary equivalent of ordering an enormous cake when you're not even hungry. Selected randomly, I give you the following indispensible classic from 27 May 1964:
Dear Miss Barber
I hereby resign from the Society of Authors. I was just about prepared to go on paying £2-12-6 a year to an organisation that does nothing for me, but when the price goes up to £5-5-0 I jib.
Yours sincerely etc
I would put it in the bog but I'm not sure how much the missus wants to sprain her wrists wrestling with a gigantic brick just to read racist letters to Philip Larkin.
The recent publicity around Martin son-of-Kingsley's latest pile of pretentious wank-fodder has also made me nostalgic. One of the happiest days of my life was when I realised that no one was making me read London Fields and its endless turgid sentences, and that I could just stop and read something else instead. The only Martin Amis worth reading is his autobiography Experience, and that's because it's mainly about Kingsley and Fred West (one of whose victims was Martin's cousin). Just skip any reference to his teeth or Saul Bellow.
That's also where I got my favourite Fred West fact - that he used to munch onions like anyone else would eat an apple.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
Buxton's back
The Adam & Joe 6 Music radio show went on sabbatical at the start of the year and life has been noticeably gloomier since. My spirits lifted a couple of weeks ago when I saw that half of the genius duo, Adam Buxton, was starring a new BBC2 comedy called The Persuasionists. My spirits then simultaneously crashed face-first into the floor when it turned out to be one of the lamest TV shows I have ever seen. A poverty-stricken man's IT Crowd, which isn't that good in the first place.
Being an empathetic sort I wondered how Adam would take the universal raspberries blowing out from every review of the show. I don't need to now as he's posted the brilliant video below on his site. It's career-tainting failure dealt with head-on.
Being an empathetic sort I wondered how Adam would take the universal raspberries blowing out from every review of the show. I don't need to now as he's posted the brilliant video below on his site. It's career-tainting failure dealt with head-on.
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Busy doing nothing
Feeling a bit gruesome. Yesterday a couple of chums and I took advantage of mass missus migration to drink too much beer in the afternoon, having told ourselves we'd earned it with a constitutional around Hampstead Heath. I was a bit concerned about the homosexual 80's pop stars who usually lurk in the bushes, occasionally bursting from the foliage and dragging handsome young men to their doom. Like great white sharks in leather trousers and dog skin caps. Luckily, they were scared off by a meeting of the Southern Counties Running Championship. I almost was too. Hundreds of fit young men and women in alarmingly tight lycra pounding all around me, mud-streaked thighs pumping away like pistons. Meanwhile, having dressed with the customary lack of forethought, I was picking my way through the mud in a pair of brown leather loafers with my jeans tucked into my socks. I was one slip away from a nose dive into the mud and an impromptu black and white minstrel impersonation.
Following these exertions we found a nice pub or two and drank a zillion beers. I came home and covered my kitchen in brown sauce, some of which I presume must have hit a bacon sandwich, fell asleep wearing earphones and almost garotted myself. Fine song though it is, I don't intend to die listening to Big Julie by Jarvis Cocker.
It's now getting on for 5 on Sunday. Time for a nap and then I will eat some cheese. Great weekend.
Following these exertions we found a nice pub or two and drank a zillion beers. I came home and covered my kitchen in brown sauce, some of which I presume must have hit a bacon sandwich, fell asleep wearing earphones and almost garotted myself. Fine song though it is, I don't intend to die listening to Big Julie by Jarvis Cocker.
It's now getting on for 5 on Sunday. Time for a nap and then I will eat some cheese. Great weekend.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Cross-species love
Things have been quiet around here recently. I've been working quite hard in the week and drinking too much at the weekends, rendering me even more useless and lazy than usual. But I've been roused from my lethergy by the latest in one of the oddest advert series ever conceived - the bed company ones where a man hippo and a yellow woman duck share a bed and appear to be in a stable relationship.
There are so many problems with the basic concept. Mr Hippo wears pyjamas but Mrs Duck doesn't, the tart. It is never explained why they choose to sleep in a low-quality human bed - perhaps they had the old "I'd be far happier in a nest, darling"/"Shut it you slagbag, I'm sleeping in a big pile of mud and that's that" argument and this was the compromise. The logistics of what goes on after the light goes out (I imagine by the duck pulling the cord with her beak) are too alarming to analyse in detail but would surely be considered to be a bit strong by even the most open minded.
But something has changed in the latest installment. He's always been a lot larger than her, as you'd expect. Now, presumably after extensive market research into how much reality-bending the public can cope with in an onscreen cross-species bunk up, the size difference has been reduced - she seems to have grown in size to about goose proportions. Which is closer to the size of a hippo, but not that close.
So why make the change? One attack of flailing hippo night terrors will still obliterate her. It's still an unacceptably weird set up. But there will have been meetings, conference calls, pie and flip charts, advertising briefings and hundreds of man hours devoted to enlarging the duck. I guarantee that not one extra crappy bed has been sold as a result.
There are so many problems with the basic concept. Mr Hippo wears pyjamas but Mrs Duck doesn't, the tart. It is never explained why they choose to sleep in a low-quality human bed - perhaps they had the old "I'd be far happier in a nest, darling"/"Shut it you slagbag, I'm sleeping in a big pile of mud and that's that" argument and this was the compromise. The logistics of what goes on after the light goes out (I imagine by the duck pulling the cord with her beak) are too alarming to analyse in detail but would surely be considered to be a bit strong by even the most open minded.
But something has changed in the latest installment. He's always been a lot larger than her, as you'd expect. Now, presumably after extensive market research into how much reality-bending the public can cope with in an onscreen cross-species bunk up, the size difference has been reduced - she seems to have grown in size to about goose proportions. Which is closer to the size of a hippo, but not that close.
So why make the change? One attack of flailing hippo night terrors will still obliterate her. It's still an unacceptably weird set up. But there will have been meetings, conference calls, pie and flip charts, advertising briefings and hundreds of man hours devoted to enlarging the duck. I guarantee that not one extra crappy bed has been sold as a result.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
The early morning workings of the lady brain
The missus started a new job this week. I was broadly in favour until she dropped the bombshell that, for no apparent reason, her working day now begins at 8.30am. This means she is furthering her career at the expense of my quality of life.
In her old job she started at 9am, which as a long-standing and indulged member of staff she treated as a nominal estimate of the time she might, under exceptional circumstances, aim to be not too much later than. But now she's new and keen and the new regime is costing me about thirty minutes of sleep every morning. That's about 10 hours a month - this is serious stuff.
So the alarm now goes off at 6.30am. Once she is coaxed or, more often, driven out of bed by a sturdy shove to the lower back, she puts the kettle on and gets in the shower. If I haven't had to pull her out of bed by her feet I may fall back into a light sleep. This lasts until the kettle starts whistling. I stomp downstairs and take the kettle off the heat, bang on the bathroom door and issue her with a 4,879th final warning about sorting her bloody tea out without waking me up.
She breezes past to make the tea, perhaps with a derisive "Alright, Dad", and plonks herself in front of the TV. There she will sit, with a hairbrush in her hair as she clasps her mug of tea, and she will absorb herself in absolutely anything that is on BBC Breakfast. She will give the same attention to an update on the Manchester United defensive injury crisis as she will a feature on the decline of the Norfolk duck population. If the TV shows her an image of a child or any form of cute animal she will grin. If the TV shows her an image of either of these in any kind of sad context she may have a little cry. If an irate boyfriend pokes his head around the door she will feign, feebly, a hair-brushing motion or a peer into a make-up mirror.
Somehow, many hours later, she will have done her hair, make-up and got dressed. Then she will begin drifting from room to room in a listless hunt for the items she has scattered around the flat the night before. She will emerge from the spare room holding a sock, and trudge upstairs to get her glasses from the bedroom. Then into the bathroom for hairclips, the kitchen for shoes and living room for her phone. Then spare room for different shoes, back up to the bedroom for a second sock, the top of the stairs for a coat and the living room for a handbag. After a few more laps she'll reach the door and start rummaging through her handbag. She's got her purse, keys, phone, she's walking out of the d...."Oh shit! Where's my Oyster card?" Then back in the flat for a hunt through every pocket of everything she wore the day before, as the Oyster card sits ignored on the kitchen table.
This all adds up to why an early start time is such a disaster. I accept that boys, who only have to decide which of five pre-ironed shirts to wear, have it a little easier. I also accept that things like long hair and face paint are a factor. But the fundamental disorder of the lady brain is laid bare at times like this. Perhaps there's a morning routine efficiency class I could send her to?
In her old job she started at 9am, which as a long-standing and indulged member of staff she treated as a nominal estimate of the time she might, under exceptional circumstances, aim to be not too much later than. But now she's new and keen and the new regime is costing me about thirty minutes of sleep every morning. That's about 10 hours a month - this is serious stuff.
So the alarm now goes off at 6.30am. Once she is coaxed or, more often, driven out of bed by a sturdy shove to the lower back, she puts the kettle on and gets in the shower. If I haven't had to pull her out of bed by her feet I may fall back into a light sleep. This lasts until the kettle starts whistling. I stomp downstairs and take the kettle off the heat, bang on the bathroom door and issue her with a 4,879th final warning about sorting her bloody tea out without waking me up.
She breezes past to make the tea, perhaps with a derisive "Alright, Dad", and plonks herself in front of the TV. There she will sit, with a hairbrush in her hair as she clasps her mug of tea, and she will absorb herself in absolutely anything that is on BBC Breakfast. She will give the same attention to an update on the Manchester United defensive injury crisis as she will a feature on the decline of the Norfolk duck population. If the TV shows her an image of a child or any form of cute animal she will grin. If the TV shows her an image of either of these in any kind of sad context she may have a little cry. If an irate boyfriend pokes his head around the door she will feign, feebly, a hair-brushing motion or a peer into a make-up mirror.
Somehow, many hours later, she will have done her hair, make-up and got dressed. Then she will begin drifting from room to room in a listless hunt for the items she has scattered around the flat the night before. She will emerge from the spare room holding a sock, and trudge upstairs to get her glasses from the bedroom. Then into the bathroom for hairclips, the kitchen for shoes and living room for her phone. Then spare room for different shoes, back up to the bedroom for a second sock, the top of the stairs for a coat and the living room for a handbag. After a few more laps she'll reach the door and start rummaging through her handbag. She's got her purse, keys, phone, she's walking out of the d...."Oh shit! Where's my Oyster card?" Then back in the flat for a hunt through every pocket of everything she wore the day before, as the Oyster card sits ignored on the kitchen table.
This all adds up to why an early start time is such a disaster. I accept that boys, who only have to decide which of five pre-ironed shirts to wear, have it a little easier. I also accept that things like long hair and face paint are a factor. But the fundamental disorder of the lady brain is laid bare at times like this. Perhaps there's a morning routine efficiency class I could send her to?
Friday, 1 January 2010
Aftermath
We had a couple of friends around for dinner last night to see in the new year. They're married and everything. I cooked a lasagne. It couldn't have been a more civilised, mature set-up.
Woke up feeling like I've been kicked in the head. Empty wine bottles all over the flat. Shards of glass all over the kitchen table. Curtains ripped from the wall and now lying on the floor in a pool of wine.
An enormous sausage sandwich later and I've hidden the wine bottles and dealt with the glass but the curtains will need some sort of professional intervention. All I'm fit for now is The Wizard of Oz.
It's 2010. Bloody hell.
Woke up feeling like I've been kicked in the head. Empty wine bottles all over the flat. Shards of glass all over the kitchen table. Curtains ripped from the wall and now lying on the floor in a pool of wine.
An enormous sausage sandwich later and I've hidden the wine bottles and dealt with the glass but the curtains will need some sort of professional intervention. All I'm fit for now is The Wizard of Oz.
It's 2010. Bloody hell.
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Akira the Don - I Am Not Dead (Yeah!)
Why wasn't this number one? It's a ruddy great video and a ruddy great song. I meant to go along and be a zombie for the video but I forgot. More fool me. Sod Coco Sumner and her pointless crowd - 2010 will be the year of Akira the Don.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
The limpest of protests
Operating within a few doors of each other, they have very different styles. Gandhi's is an old-school curry house whereas the KT is more inclined to put your food on an oddly-shaped plate, drizzle unidentifiable red and green sauces around the corners and charge you 25% more for the privilege. The two compete fiercely for the custom of the local politicians and omega-list celebrities. Gandhi's scored a knock-out blow by being chosen by Alistair Darling to feed the late-night deliberations over the October 08 banking bail-out, but the KT seems to have the edge on the random celebs ("the best naan in London" - The Kaiser Chiefs).
In fact, Hot Stuff in Vauxhall is the best local bet by a mile but only has a tiny amount of seats, so my Plan B of choice is a vegetable thali at Gandhi's. I've generally found the service more friendly, the food equivalent in quality and the bill less cheeky. But the KT has been boarded up for weeks undergoing major internal surgery, and as I'd be remiss in my duties as a prominent local fatty if I didn't give the new incarnation a chance the missus and I popped along at the weekend.
The immediate impression is that they've increased the size of the restaurant by 20% and the number of seats by 40%. As before tables hug each side of the narrow space, but now a wobbly line of two-person islands form a thin spine down the middle, leaving two incredibly narrow tracks on either side for customers and waiters to walk down sideways like crabs. Sit as we did in the middle and you'll get a constant parade of crotches passing extremely close to your face as people squeeze past, sucking in their stomachs and apologising.
The food is exactly as competent and overpriced as ever, with the clip joint practice of charging £3 for two papadoms still especially vile. The service is exactly as piss poor as ever. My starter lagged ten minutes behind the missus's, and my desperate attempts to make eye contact with the waiter to hurry things along were complicated by the good old natter he was having on his Blackberry. It took four requests to get some tap water, although a paid-for lager arrived within seconds. The bill was full of fictional beers and after I paid a corrected version the guy wandered off with my credit card still hanging out of the chip and pin.
I paid the tip, of course. I'm English. Rather than take any kind of action at the time and risk causing a fuss I'd rather brood for a couple of days, then set out my complaints in tedious detail on a website the waiter will never read. I'll quietly boycott them in a way that they couldn't possibly notice until some social circumstance lands me back in the middle row, nose to groin with the same waiter as he calculates how to spend the tip he knows I'll give him whatever he does to me or my food because I'm such a completely craven pussy. Yeah, I'll show them good and proper.
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