Author Archives: Ian Watson

Reality Tv? Look no further.

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Well, I’ve been away from these wild pages for a short while… I know, I know… it’s been hard for you. Those long winter nights must have been like long winter nights but fear not- stout fellows, for I am reborn in the guise of Reality TV reviewer and blogger, both here on the beautifully popular Frost Magazine and for a brand new website dedicated to everything theatrical: www.stagestatus.co.uk.
As many of you will already know, I’m extremely opinionated so I guarantee I shall be saying stuff that many of you will disagree with, and I’m NOT a performer- of any kind. As I wrote that I could almost hear the luvvies amongst you hissing like vampires in a tanning salon.

Don’t get me wrong, I have ‘connections’ and I am qualified- well enough to write this anyway. I’m not just some fat , northern, gobby bloke who resents the fact that for every Billy Elliot there are thousands of bog-standard plebs still shoveling shit every day and he’s one of them. Neither am I someone who has tried to make it vocally- queued up for X Factor only to be told by some teenager with a clipboard and a lanyard, ‘you’re not even talented enough to be ridiculed’.

I just don’t have the talent to perform… but I can write.

Wherever you get your fix of TV you’ll have about as much chance of avoiding the reality gushing from it as I have of avoiding the reality of man boobs- in other words, it’s way too late so just go with the flow and find someone you can trust to measure your cup size.

That would be me.

I shall be starting in earnest with ‘The Voice’. Currently the biggest TV show in America and already a huge hit in 29 other countries. The BBC have spent 22 million pounds of our money getting it over here so I intend to make sure I get my money’s worth.

Following that I shall be sinking my teeth into the latest ALW search for Jesus in the vain hope that the real thing will turn up and get rejected for not being ‘jesusy enough’ by someone so uptight they have their farts auto-tuned to stop them accidentally attracting sheep dogs.

Until these delicious freak shows- or amazing opportunities to unearth undiscovered gems, depending on your viewpoint, are with us, here’s my view of two of the current crop- just to give you an idea of how I think.

Dancing on Ice: Love it! Want to lose myself in Katarina Witt beyond the reach of even the coast guard and genuinely respect the amount of time and effort the celebrities have had to put into it. Plus, anything with Philip Schofield in is TV gold for me as I like to pretend he’s my actual friend so I’m clocking up TV minutes in his ‘company’ like air miles in the hope it will eventually become official. I’m glad Louie Spence took over from Jason because it was just turning, like so many other Judge-based panel shows, into a showcase for the judges and not the talent. I love Chico as much as any straight man can and I think Jorgie will win because she’s clearly the most talented at the job in hand from every angle. My only bugbear about the little fire cracker is the way she pretends to be a six year old at Alton Towers every time she speaks. “Oh my golly, it was so, so, so, hard and everything! Ooh, I’ve got sparkly on my nosey. Time for bo bo’s. Will you read me a story unky Phil?” And then she goes out and performs with the kind of steely determination that could force the Terminator to re-word his catch phrase to, “I’ll only be back if the public decide to keep me in.” If you can perform like that and are happy to occupy the wank-banks of every lads mag reader in the country then you could at least talk like someone who eats without a bib.

Take me out: With pleasure- I’m just waiting for the bullets I bought on Ebay to arrive and the I’ll be right on it, till then I’m afraid it’s, ‘No ammo- no blammo!’

So there you are.

One thing I will add is that in this age of media submersion- a phrase I just made up so bear with me, reading things like this used to be a one-way street. I wrote stuff then you read it, flushed the bog and went back to work. Nowadays it’s more conversational. We have the ability to respond to the idiotic and clearly misguided views of gits like me and that’s precisely what I want you to do. If you are a performer, or a ‘creative’ or you’re a member of the public (the most important people of all), and you have a view then educate me- tell me that you once worked with the no-mark I’ve just torn to pieces and he/she is actually bloody good and deserves a break.

I’ll be there. I won’t be getting into any slagging matches and I may not have time to respond to every comment but I’ll be about, writing and reading and, most importantly of all, maybe, just maybe (but doubtfully if I’m honest- and I usually am) changing my mind. It can happen and that’s the beauty of a blog on a website over a newspaper column or a TV show.

So please feel free to comment either via the main website forums or on my twitter account @elywhitley because, at the end of the day, your opinion is just as valid as mine and as long as what I write gets people talking, either in agreement or disagreement, then I’ve done my job.

To paraphrase the famous saying: Opinions are like arse holes- everyone’s got one… and even Simon Cowell’s stinks now and again. Also, I tend to communicate through mine so don’t worry if it leaves a nasty taste in your mouth… ever get the feeling you’ve taken an analogy too far?

The voice begins on 24th March so I shall be spewing my thoughts from then onwards- may God have mercy on my soul.

I am NOT Jeremy Clarkson

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I’m not Jeremy Clarkson. Let me make that absolutely clear. In fact I care not one bit for pretty much everything he says and does and his attitude, which can be summed up as, “Shut the fuck up, hippie, I’m talking,” makes me wish I was a short, black lesbian working-class aristocratic motorphobe, just to be as unlike him as possible.
I have gone to great pains to make the above distinction because I’m about to write some things that might, on the surface, look like they were written by the planet-murdering controversy whore himself- or Jeremy Kyle. And, just to keep an unexpected ‘Jeremy’ theme running a little longer, I suspect I shall become as popular as Beadle in his wilderness years and look as big a dick as Ron’s by the end of this blog, but I just have to do it.
I don’t have a job. Up until now it has been by choice because I’ve been trying to make it as a writer, but my dear wife will no longer be able to pay the bills in a few weeks when her contract ends so it falls to me to take the reins and get off my frigging backside. I am job hunting.
I’ve only signed on once in my life. It was in my late teens when I left film school and was trying to find funding. Apart from that, I’ve always worked when I had to find money and even though I don’t want to wear my pride like superman’s cape, I’m proud that I have a work ethic that stops me from signing on now.
I’m working class. Not because my family have always been skint or because I’m from the grim north, but because I am from a class of people who believe in work. In paying their way. In doing the right thing so that those who, through no fault of their own, can’t, get whatever help they need until they can.
It’s not just that though. I genuinely believe that benefits are essential for people unable to provide for themselves and their families and that’s not me. It’s single parents, people caught out by redundancy or disability, or anyone who just can’t get work in spite of their best efforts and has bills to pay and a life to live. These are the people who should be looked after by those of us able to work- that’s the principle behind the welfare system and I think it’s a marvelous thing.
That’s why I get so upset when people abuse it.
When I see some twat on Jeremy Kyle (him again) with a face tattoo that will almost certainly stop him getting his first ever job outside a cave or the London Dungeon, it riles me. When I then work out that, if he’s never had a job, the several hundred pounds that his ‘personal statement’ cost has come from tax payers money I start to froth at the mouth.
“WE!” shouts the man who hasn’t had any paid work for over a year, “have been handing you money to help you get by until you find a job and start chipping in to help others, and you spend it on something that guarantees you never will!”
That’s theft. Isn’t it? Surely if someone takes money that is given in good faith and pisses it up the wall on tattoos, facial piercings or anything else that makes him, or her, unemployable in real terms, it’s theft. the only other explanation is that he paid for it from some other source of income- which he shouldn’t be earning if he’s claiming benefits.
And before anyone says it. Fuck his freedom of expression, fuck his personal liberties, and fuck his right to do whatever he likes to his own body. If he was funding himself he could have more ink than Squidopollis and pierce himself with a Renault Clio for all I care but he’s not. He’s essentially asking for money from society to fund his life until he funds it himself, and now he’s got a head like a Stilton bowling ball, he never will.
I’ve spent the last two weeks sending my CV off to every minimum wage job I can find from shelf stacking to laboring on building sites and, eventually, I’m sure I’ll get something. When I go to the interviews and sit before a prospective employer, I’m going to try and look as employable as I can. It’s boring, in fact it’s demoralizing having to put your best suit on and get your hair cut in the hope that someone will pay you next to nothing to shovel shit but it’s the least I can do. It’s the least EVERY job seeker should be doing.
Imagine you met an out of work juggler and gave him a few grand to keep him going till he got a job, then, next time you met him, he’d spent it having his arms chopped off for a laugh, you’d close your wallet before he could say, “hold this mate, I need to pee.”
At what point do we stop benefits? When does someone finally get sat down by a lady in a cardigan to be told, “You know breathing isn’t a job don’t you?” I want to see the government ad campaign where a cleaner, a mechanic and a lollipop lady stare down the camera lens and say, “If we all lived like you, you’d be dead. Start making an effort dick head!” It doesn’t have to rhyme but it’s nice of a party slogan does- makes it easier to remember.
While I’m in the stocks, how hard is it NOT to have kids? I’ve been doing it for all my adult life with no training or special skills. My wife and I want to be parents but it’s expensive so we’re waiting for a time when we have some sustainable income. Why aren’t people who can’t afford their own lives being bollocked when they start making new ones?
Again, before anyone says it. Fuck their human right to have kids- there’s no such thing. Nobody has the right to have kids, you either can or you can’t and if you can’t, whether it be for physical or financial reasons, you just don’t. It doesn’t get much simpler.
Here’s a radical idea that’s going to make Clarkson look like Shami Chakrabarti and me look like the love child of King Herod and Karl Pilkington.
What if every male child born in this country, along with various inoculations and blood tests, had, at birth, small plastic plugs injected into his Vasa Deferentia (sperm pipes to you and me) so that every male is incapable of reproduction until they’re ready to be a parent? No? There must be a safe and cheap way to do something of this nature though- surely? Anyone?
If you’re going to throw fruit please make sure it’s fair trade.. and out of it’s tin.
Call me Hitler if you want but if people are physically incapable of stopping themselves reproducing then it needs to be taken out of their hands and trousers until such a time that they’re responsible enough to take on the weight of parenthood.
You need a license for a dog and if you want to adopt you have to pass more tests, checks and selection panels than an astronaut and yet bored skint merchants can happily populate their surroundings with gay abandon and the sure knowledge that it won’t cost them a bean and nobody so much as raises an inquiring cough.
My scheme, which I admit needs a little smoothing out in the technical details, would leave everyone free to shag to their hearts content. It would be like the sexual revolution in the twitter age- the sixties with hash tags, and we’d then only have STDs, AIDS and moral decimation to worry about.
Once someone can demonstrate their ability to support a child, their plugs are removed on the NHS- naturally, because it would be loaded by then and every hospital would be made of gold and every nurse would be on the kind of wage they deserve. I’m sure the procedure could be done in an afternoon.
Selective social engineering? ‘Big Brother’ control? Favoring the fortunate? Maybe, but right now, as I stand on the brink of doing shit work for very little money and then still having to give some of it to twats with face tattoos, I really don’t care.
All those with a greater understanding of social decay, economic forces and the causes of deprivation please form an orderly queue, or educate me via the comments section. Cheers.

 

 

Money Games

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In these times of penny-pinching, belt-tightening and hatch batten-downing we’re all suddenly obsessed with the price of things. Moreover, we’re turning into a population of individual price comparison services and I fear the day when we’re all Pseudo-Russian rodents may soon be upon us. My wife will automatically quote, and compare, the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by like she’s got oil-based Tourette’s.

Eventually we all end up drawing the same conclusion- it’s too much. We state, categorically, that everything is too much like we’re some kind of global procurement guru. It’s not worth that much! We say as we roll everything from a chocolate orange to a mobile phone around in our searching little grasp.

My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury. He’s had to establish the actual worth of everything from office-sized mining machines to tiny electrical components so that when he signed off on a couple of million quids worth, he knew he was getting value for money.

His view on ‘value’ is the same as mine, which was forged from a lifetime of selling shit to anyone that will stand still for ten seconds: Something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it.
That iPad you just bought. Do you care that it cost a few pence to manufacture? No. It’s cost you several hundred pounds because somebody else was willing to pay that much for it. If they weren’t… it wouldn’t.

Our professional footballers are always in for a world of grief because they get paid more in a week than I get paid in… my own dreams. The loudest and most agreed-upon chant from the terraces is always, “he’s not worth twenty million!”, or, “He’s not worth two hundred grand a week!” Well he is, because that’s what somebody is paying him. If he wasn’t… they wouldn’t.

Here’s the biggie: Damien Hirst spent fifty grand putting a shark in a tank and sold it for eight million dollars. His diamond-encrusted platinum skull had fifteen million pounds worth of diamonds on it and went on the market for fifty million. It was titled, “for the love of God” and it is, to my mind, the most aptly named piece of art since “bowl of fruit with wine glass.”

Hopefully, by now, you’re not shouting, “How can a shark in a tank be worth eight million?” because you’ve got my point. If there’s someone out there willing to pay that much for it, then that’s how much it’s worth.

People with a lot of money aren’t in the business of throwing it away and those paying footballers’ wages, organizing parking spaces for dead sharks and even, dare I say it, buying iPads are doing it because, for them, it’s worth the money. It’s their money and they will almost always get more out than they spend, either in direct profits or the benefits of use.

The problem comes when it’s not their money they’re spending. It gets even worse when it’s your money- our money.

For me it becomes about as painful as space-hopper hemorrhoids when the decisions to spend the money you were about to fork out on that iPad or, say, a new school, is thrown at two weeks of spot-light sports partying and it costs seven and a quarter BILLION pounds.

This isn’t the folly of some mega-rich Oligarch and it’s certainly not good business sense. Anybody spending their own money or that of the company they worked for wouldn’t entertain such a suggestion longer than the time it would take to guffaw loudly and call security.

The public money being spent on the Olympics will NOT make a profit in any real sense even though the money being spent on it is as real as it gets, regardless of projections of associated benefits to business and local economy. In 2006 Ken Livingstone predicted that the games would make a profit, after ten years, and that they would cost less than five billion and that the resale of the land would generate seven hundred million back. Well the games has come in at fifty percent more than that, the price of land has plummeted, and we don’t have ten prosperous years to frolic in, waiting for pay day.
As for the sheer benefits of use? How many speed cyclists do you think will be paying to hurtle round that Velodrome once the dust has settled? Enough to cover the cost of building it? There’s one in Manchester they built for the Commonwealth games and it’s just a big, empty, curvy-topped warehouse most of the time.

Like I said, something is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it and, in spite of the inevitable feel-good factor that 17 days of international attention will give us, the Olympics will never be worth seven and a quarter billion pounds to me. Simples!

Too Short and not Very Funny Either, That's Life

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I really don’t want to do this. It feels like telling your kids you just don’t love them any more, or stabbing a Labrador in the nose with a cocktail stick… yeah, well maybe not, that but it’s pretty gut-wrenching in any case.

There’s a sketch in ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’ called ‘Rex Kramer- Danger Seeker! We see Rex, a weedy white guy, put a crash helmet on and, after a brave ‘I’m going in’ wave to the camera he stands amongst a gang of big black guys, gambling on a disused railway track. He screams ‘NIGGERS!’ at the top of his voice and then legs it as they chase after him.

I feel like Rex right now. I know that what I’m about to write will not only alienate me from right-minded folk everywhere but will probably get me chased by a righteous lynch mob. Unlike Rex the racist, I’m doing it to someone I love and respect too so the pain is all the sharper. I’m going to do the old ‘plaster removal’ technique and just get the pain over with in one go:
‘Life’s Too Short’ isn’t funny, to me.

Last night I watched the episode that Ricky Gervais had tweeted was the best of the series and included the ‘best thing ever said on TV’ and I thought that I would finally laugh after sitting silently through every episode so far.

I felt like a drunk trying to make himself sick so he can get a decent nights sleep. Head in a toilet bowl, fingers tickling tonsils, desperately trying to get my body to do something it clearly doesn’t want to do and dreading the process but knowing I’ll feel much better after it’s done.

When the episode was over and I still wasn’t purged I wanted to cry.

Here was some brand new comedy from my idol. I’d been waiting for it for ages. I’d clicked on all the tweeted links from the great man himself. I’d laughed heartily at the scene with Liam Neeson trying to break into stand-up (seen in isolation) and ran out to tell all my friends that the new series was going to be superb.

I’m a huge RG fan. I’ve listened to every podcast so many times I can almost recite them from memory. I followed and adored the birth of KP, like Ed Harris in The Truman Show, with love and empathy and huge tears of laughter. I loved Ricky in all his stand-up DVDs and even ‘The 11 O’clock show’ (I always thought Ricky Grover’s ‘Bulla’ was going to be a big hit too) and remember the awkwardness and bravery of his interview technique in the hardly seen Meet Ricky Gervais.

I’ve watched with utter admiration and loyalty everything he’s done, but ‘Life’s Too Short’ makes me feel like an Elvis fan leaving a concert in the early 70’s, knowing he’s just seen his god as a mere mortal- fallible, human and, sadly, just no longer able to do that which he used to shake the world doing with every breath.

Before you remind me of the ratings and, more importantly, the huge success, incredible reviews and general appreciation from genuine fans, I know I’m wrong.

I know it really is funny because everyone tells me it is. My own friends tweet the man himself, knowing full well the odds on a reply, just to tell him how much they’re enjoying it and can’t wait for more. (As do I but on every other subject I can think of) Meanwhile, I’m sitting there every week like a kid who lives next door to a vampire, pressing his bare neck against the castle window and shouting, “Bite me! I’m O-Negative, never eat garlic and I’m a virgin! Why won’t you bite me?”

Warwick Davies is a cracking actor. The opening scene in the last Harry Potter film, where he plays a captured Griphook, is mesmerizing. His pacing is sublime and the menace and regret he builds into the scene is fantastic.

What he’s not so good at is David Brent impressions and that’s mainly what’s asked of him in LTS- well, that and the need to look like he’s genuinely enjoying being ridiculed.
This is where it gets tricky. If RG were ever to read this, or Stephen Merchant of course because he doesn’t get anywhere near enough exposure and all the podcasts allow him to do is subtly reveal his sexual frustration, I’m sure he’d tell me what I’ve been telling his ‘haters’ for years.

He’s NOT a bully, he’s NOT racist, he’s NOT homophobic (bit harder to back up if you listen to the podcasts but I like to ignore patterns and give him the benefit of the doubt) and, most of all, he’s definitely NOT using Warwick Davis as some kind of toy for his amusement and mockery. It’s ironic, It’s satire- it’s bloody fiction!

Is it? I notice Brent wasn’t called Gervais and yet the name chosen for Warwick’s character is…

He posted a clip of him and Warwick (dressed as a frog) sitting on some stairs. It was meant to be a promotional clip for LTS but it was just him making Warwick do stuff and laughing his nuts off at it. He has the manner of a young Louis XIV, presented with a new toy. Walk here, stand there, can you jump up and down little man? If I throw you at a wall will you stick to it? Every time Warwick does as he’s bid, Ricky just points and laughs and looks at us through the lens, and I can’t see, “This is me and my mate having a laugh together,” or even, “we’re in character, as ourselves but definitely still in character.” I can just see, “Look at how ridiculous he looks in this frog suit because he’s a dwarf. What shall I make him do next?” It’s funny to him because Warwick is a dwarf, not because his mate is acting like a fool for laughs. It could be any dwarf. It doesn’t fit with their fictional relationship in LTS (this dwarf is really not our friend and keeps popping in, uninvited) so it comes across as a reflection of their real relationship.

My problem is that where I should see a great pair of mates playing the characters of bully and victim, lord and jester, organ grinder and monkey, to highlight amongst other things the struggles of life as a dwarf- and I must say that LTS has done that for me if nothing else. I just see Warwick going along with it because… well It’s Ricky Gervais and it’s a massive career boost and it will make him globally famous in his own right, and if he were to protest he’d be cutting his nose off to spite his face and seem like an ungrateful killjoy that isn’t brave enough to make himself look a fool for comedy- like Ricky does all the time. See my ugly photos on Twitter? And it’s not exploitation, ask Karl, he’s a grown man, he can always say no.
I get all that but I don’t see it. What I also don’t see is anything original in LTS. The awkwardness in the scenes that made the office so engrossing and that was bolstered by being reflected off the polished surface of A-List Hollywood in ‘Extras’ now looks genuinely awkward- the wrong way. Last night’s appearance by Cat Deeley was pointless, unrealistic and just not very funny. It’s not even saved by Warwick doing his best Brent and looking embarrassed at the camera every three seconds as if to say, ‘Wow! Did you see that boys and girls? That was embarrassing wasn’t it? Did you get the madness of what my assistant just said? Did you? Coz that was it, just then, that was the funny bit and I’m caught up in it and… well, just checking you saw that funny bit just then.” Nor by anybody else’s Brent either. The Clairvoyant was some guy doing a Brent, the accountant is some guy doing a Brent. It’s like the auditions for an am-dram production of ‘The Office’.

As for plot- something so beautifully drawn in the past projects, the whole ‘throwing away the new washing machine’ scene that was telegraphed from the moment we saw that there were two machines but still managed to eat up several minutes of screen time, wouldn’t have made it into ‘Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em’ in the 70s. It was just lazy and predictable and utterly unbelievable. Then there’s Warwick’s supposed insensitivity, which appears out of nowhere and out of character, with his new girlfriend and everyone around him. It’s so utterly stretched beyond panto that it’s no more awkward than seeing Tom hit Jerry in the face with a frying pan.
We still have our Big names of course. There’s Ricky himself, painting himself the bad guy so… you know. ‘Come on Warwick, if I can do it’. The episode with Johnny Depp, which I just didn’t find- well you get the idea, was plastered all over the internet and TV. It felt exactly like Warwick introducing Cat Deeley or Right Said Fred, “look everyone! It’s Johnny Depp! Pretty amazing eh? Johnny Depp everyone! Look!” It looked like an afternoon of poor improv that we all just had to marvel at because it was… Johnny Depp, Yeah, I get it, he’s proper famous and all that.

Where’s Warwick’s payback? When do we get on his side? Where’s that subtlety of The Office? Those silences and that realism? Where’s all the believability gone?

Life’s Too Short is like Gervais and Merchant said, “Right, we’ve done the fake documentary- brilliant. We’ve done real life celebrities playing themselves- check. We’ve also done the old, he’s not really an idiot, he’s a great natural resource and we’re not bullying him because we’re really great mates- loving all that. Let’s just do them all and make the lead a dwarf- they’re funny.”

There’s just no substance and nothing new happening. It’s just like the bits that never made the previous shows have been squashed into a dwarf who has then been told- “the only thing you can bring to this character is your height. Do your best Brent and take it on the chin and we’ll make you a star.”

I’m in a no-win situation here because it’s going great guns and is loved by all and I’m sure I’d get some ‘idiots like this just show me I’m doing it right’ tweet from Ricky if he ever did read this but I have to say as I find, even if it kills me to do so.

Every joke in ‘The Office’ was unexpected. I cringed, I could hardly look, I cried with laughter. As for LTS? Two out of three aint bad- it’s heartbreaking.

A Very Grim Fairy tale

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“Is it a good song? Well of course it is- don’t be stupid!”

That was me and me having our annual Christmas argument about a song that is both rousing and poetically written, and that takes a different look at a holiday that’s normally so delicious, wobbly and sugar-coated it could pass for an M&S crème brulee.

I realize that the story of the less fortunate is one we all love at this time of year and it’s been wrung dry by every Christmas movie from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ to ‘Groundhog Day’ but I don’t want it in my Christmas playlist and I certainly don’t want it voted the best festive song of all time.

Firstly, I’m English. It’s no big deal and I’m not going to shave my head about it but I really don’t want a song by an Irish group about two dossers living in New York to dominate my cozy little English Crimbletime.

Why should I care what the hell the boys in the NYPD Choir are singing about? The fact is that most ‘Irish-Americans’, in spite of dropping the word ‘Irish’ into half of all sentences, couldn’t find Europe on an atlas, let alone Ireland. They probably couldn’t find Galway Bay on a map of fucking Galway but they carry on, Peter Griffins to a man, and the Pogues expect me, thousands of miles away in England, to give a shit.

“Well at least the Pogues are genuinely Irish!” I hear me say… Yeah, great. I’ve only seen Shane Mcgowan perform twice- both on TV, and both times he was wasted, but that’s punk for you. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of punk in the right place but I don’t want to have the ‘Vs’ flicked at me by a man with a henge for a mouth when I’m tucking into my third kilo of dinner and preparing for Morecombe and Wise. Besides which, I didn’t ask for anything ‘Irish’ in the first place. If I want an Irish Christmas I’ll just go there- same applies to New Bloody York.

My Christmas is here, in England, with Cliff singing ‘follow the Mazda’ and Slade doing what they do best.

And let’s not forget the carols. The only time I even entertain the tiniest element of religion is for Christmas carols. Admittedly I have to blur the religious references when I catch myself singing them, but I’d still rather sit around the table singing, ‘Oh come grab a face full’ and ‘Born is the kid from Dingly Dell’ than turning to my wife’s gran and calling her ‘an old slut on junk’.

It’s bad enough being conned into singing an anti-war message by John Lennon when you think you’re just wishing everyone a merry Christmas. You lean over to plant a hopeful wet one on the cheek of Andrea from accounts as she passes below the mistletoe and find yourself whispering, ‘the war is over’ in her ear like an extra from ‘Allo Allo’!

The whole song just depresses me. I know it’s romantic and I get the sentiment- I really do, but I don’t want to marvel at how the spirit of Christmas can flicker even in the harshest of lives- not now, not at Christmas.

I appreciate that this makes me a soulless, shallow buffoon but hey, I’m on holiday so bah humbug and pass me the iPod. I’ve a hankering for Bing and just enough room left for a little crème brulee.

Merry Christmas.

Susan Boyle- The Emperor's got Talent.

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I was right about The Darkness. Sorry, but while you were all hailing them as the new ‘Queen’ I was shaking my head and thinking, ‘That lad’s a ‘top C’ and a bag of chips away from disaster.’
I still feel I’m right about button flies. I stand there by the exit of public toilets, fiddling with myself and thinking, ‘This is how they came up with ‘The Cube’!’

I was wrong about Uggs- fair enough. I was wrong about Mark Wright- seems like a decent lad, he can live. I’m happy to be corrected.

So can somebody, please, tell me why Susan Boyle is worth millions?

I saw her this morning on the day-before-yesterdays ’This morning’, which I’m sure qualifies me for my own Tardis, and all I could think was what I always think when I hear her sing: “It’s just a woman, singing!”

As I write, my wife is treading the boards in a West-End musical. Many of our friends are from the same industry. Trained, talented people. My wife can sing. She’s a very good singer- a professional, as it were. She’s not worth millions.

Susan Boyle can sing, of course she can. She’s got quite a nice voice, but take the echo off her microphone and she’s just a woman who can sing, and there are thousands of those.

Everyone, even now, goes back to that moment on BGT when she came out onto the stage looking, it has to be said, slightly bovine and did what has, in my opinion, made her fortune. She sang ‘better than expected’. In other words, she sings better then she looks like she can sing. If she’d looked like Celine Dion she’d have got a raised eyebrow from Simon and a, ‘yes, but would the Queen like it?’ from Piers.

She waddled out before the judges, all flock wall paper and facial hair, and started gyrating her hips and speaking in tongues. Everyone thought she was going to be guided gently back off by someone in a smock and marigolds muttering, “Honestly Susan, I turn my back for five minutes…” But instead she nodded to the magic hand on the sound system that, thankfully for her, could still play C90 cassette tapes, and let rip.

It was impressive. Anton- the taller half of the conjoined presentation unit ‘Anton Dec’, turned to the camera, “You didn’t expect that, Didga!” I shook my head- I hadn’t. But then, I didn’t expect Diversity to be as good as they were. I didn’t expect that guy who swallows snooker balls and goldfish to be able to regurgitate Amanda Holden’s ring after unlocking it with his over-worked duodenum, but he did, and he’s not worth millions either.

Nine days later she’s an internet sensation and tipped to win the whole thing. She’s mentioned on Oprah and has been credited with reinventing music altogether and fathering/mothering Jesus, so I thought I ought to Google her performances since that moment on BGT and see what all the fuss is about.

Well, apart from that two minutes and twenty seconds of audition, and a CD version of ‘cry me a River’ from TEN YEARS previously. There was nothing… that would be ‘nothing at all’, the kind of thing that you’re left with if you take something from something- that nothing.

That CD of ‘Cry Me A River’ by the way, was dug up after her appearance on BGT. ‘Hello’ claimed it “cemented her status” as a singing star and no less a journal than the New York Times saw it as proof that she wasn’t just a ‘one trick pony.’ But, surely, even a pony with two tricks is no ‘Mr. Ed’.

Years pass and I’m left fiddling with my flies while I queue outside the Ugg shop for a £200 pair of lazily-crafted slippers, expecting the moment of revelation to come. Waiting for that enlightenment where I suddenly hear what everyone else can hear, but I can’t. All I can hear is a woman singing. All I can see is a woman who can sing better than her appearance would have you expect.

Susan, like Cher and Madonna, is now known by only one name but, unlike them and more like Jedward, it’s not her actual name but an abbreviated amalgamation: ‘SUBO’. Thankfully her second name isn’t Bale or it would be ‘SUBA’ which is ‘A BUS’ backwards and her PR people will want her as far from associations with the back of a bus as possible.

The worry is that, as her image is cultivated and her appearance improves, that ‘juxtaposition’ [wikipedia’s word- not mine] is lessened. As her fame and income increase she will, inevitably, end up looking more like Beyoncé Knowles and less like Nick Knowles and somebody, somewhere will finally look at her and think, ‘Hang on, it’s just a woman, singing.’

From what I’ve seen of her, Susan Boyle is a lovely lady. She seems to have a good sense of humour, a degree of humility and a half decent singing voice. I have nothing against her at all and wish her all the best. I just don’t understand, now the surprise has worn off, what all the fuss is about.

Maybe I’m wrong- maybe, thankfully, she’s not ‘in the altogether’ after all and her voice really is millions of pounds better than all the other women who can sing but, like the emperor’s new outfit, I just can’t see it.

No offence- I swear!

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There’s been a lot of talk lately, mainly by comics, about the right to be offended. Think about that, it’s important: The right to be offended. What it means is that just because you think swinging cats by their tails is so ‘ hil-freakin-arious!’ You’re sure to be shortlisted for the Academy awards presenter’s job once Billy Crystal’s face has gone into spasm and he’s been rushed to hospital whispering in his own ears, I don’t have to. In fact I can be genuinely offended by your actions to the point where I want to gaffer tape your still-empty ball bag to an anvil and make you drag it around until it’s long enough to be tucked in your sock and you develop the first recorded case of ‘athlete’s scrotum.’

Pretty obvious premise, right? Those of us who didn’t look upon that mindless halfwit with utter hatred, as he spiraled his way into infamy, need to massively reevaluate their moral code or get back to wheel clamping.

But what if it’s not so straight forward? Swinging cats may be the most evil way to assess how big a room is but it’s illegal, so the offense in question is taken by society as a whole. The right to be offended is an individual thing so it’s an area greyer than Manchester.

I love swearing- one of my favorite words is ‘bastard’. I have a northern accent and do a lot of D.I.Y so, when I hit myself for the eighth time on the thumb with a hammer, there’s no other word that will do.

I got a lump of plaster in my eye the other week. A big, wet dollop of the stuff worked its way under my lid and round the back of my eyeball before it started to go off and turn into hard, sharp flakes. It was so painful I even tried scraping it out with a metal dental hook- the agony of which was like morphine compared to what was happening every time I blinked. You can imagine the kind of mood it put me in. Start at ‘angry’, then work out roughly where ‘happy’ is and get a long haul flight in the opposite direction. When you land, you’ll still have to hire a car with a sat-nav to get to where my mood had bedded down for the day.

The next day, as I picked the crust off my eyeball and squeezed some more of the anti-bacterial glue the hospital had dispensed to me under my swollen lid, I suddenly thought of my neighbors. The lovely, retired, gentle couple next door and wondered how much of ‘Hurricane Ian’ had rattled their porch.

I ventured round there with a bottle of wine, shamed by all the nasty, guttural swearing into mirrors I had carried out the day before, like a kitten with a hangover.

“Oh, hello dear,” Barbara opened the door with a smile, “are you alright now?”

It was obvious she’d heard everything. I smiled apologetically and pointed to my eye as her husband, Derek, came to her side.

“Oh it was your eye then was it?” He said, as Barbara turned to him with a concerned nod. “Sounded like you were getting fucked up the arse with a porcupine!”

I’ve never been so happy to hear filth from a pensioner before. I instantly knew that whatever I had said yesterday would be no big deal.

But it was pure luck.

They could have been god-fearing puritans who sleep in separate rooms and fart in jars and flagellate themselves for washing their own genitals- I could have had the Stondon WI at my gate with flaming torches and pitchforks or, worse still, the police.

In the house of Lords the other day Baroness Trumpington flicked the ‘V’s at Lord King. She’s 89 and, therefore, about as arrestable as Jack the Ripper. It should also be said that if your name’s Baroness Trumpington you’re bound to feel comically obliged to flick the ‘V’s, pick your nose and hand out whoopee cushions on a daily basis. Even so, she was advised to issue a humble apology and a, clearly made up, explanation along the lines of, “my hand jolted a bit,” or, “I nodded off and dreamt I was smoking a cigar.”

Who complained? What was the problem, really? Why does an 89 year old woman have to apologize for doing something that’s not only utterly inoffensive but quintessentially British?

It gets worse. Len Goodman, the ‘’ judge has had over 600 complaints via the BBC because he said ‘sod’. That’s right- there are 600 people with phones in this country that are so offended by the word ‘sod’ that they feel the need to use them in anger. Len Goodman judges ballroom dancing on the BBC! It doesn’t get more cultured than that and yet it was described as ‘appalling’, ‘over the line’ and ‘unsuitable for family viewing’ by people whose right to be offended gets so much exercise it could teach Zumba classes- although ‘zumba’ is probably a rude word to them too.

This isn’t the Sex Pistols getting childish kicks from swearing on TV and it’s not racist, sexist, ageist… Marxist… or any kind of ‘cist’ that needs 600 ‘harrumphers’ lining up ready to lance with their pins of righteousness.

Here’s my point. Everyone has the right to be offended, but that doesn’t mean that what offends them is actually offensive. Moreover, everyone has the right to offend, from Ricky Gervais to Frankie Boyle and even Len Goodman and Baroness Trumpton [Pooh, Pooh, Barmy McSpew, C**tbag, Dribble and Grope anyone?] But unless what they do becomes illegal, like hurting helpless animals, then they should be allowed to carry on without the fear that a call from, ‘Outraged of Ottershott’ could end their careers.

“Thank you for calling the BBC complaints department. If something genuinely offensive has happened please press one. For all other complaints please hold until a member of staff can tell you to fuck off in person.”

It's Christmas time- there's no need to be afraid.

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I’ve just seen an ad for Littlewoods, or copses as they should be known. It’s your usual fare. Loads of cute kids on stage at a school and the proud parents beaming from the fold-up chairs below. It’s not a nativity of course, god forbid, it’s a singing tribute to how wonderful mums are. Nice? Well not really no, because the song- and there’s even a rap in there to keep it ‘street’, is all about how mum is wonderful for buying just about every consumer electrical gizmo you could imagine that doesn’t begin with an ‘i’.

There’s a laptop and an HTC Android phone. The first kid proudly holds up his X-Box Kinect unit like it’s the ‘fragrances that are also useful in scrabble’ shop’s entire stock of Myrrh.

It ends with a little girl, her ruby cheeks poking out from between the just-closed curtains, reminding us that the mark of a wonderful mum is the quality, measured in expenditure, of her gifts. And that we should, therefore, measure our own maternal love by that scale alone.
The add stops short of having Santa flying overhead trailing a banner from his sleigh that reads, “MONEY = LOVE, don’t forget kids!” But that mantra is sewn, inextricably, into the underpants of every precious, seasonal second.

I’m not against Christmas, contrary to the view of the parent of a child that approached me once and asked if I was Santa’s sister because his mum has said I was ‘Aunty Christmas.’ I love Christmas. I come over all Jimmy Stewart as soon as Summer’s over and I can’t hear the opening bars of ‘Silent Night’ without bursting into tears and wanting to join the Sally Army. I just hate this unnecessary and inexplicable extortion every year.

I don’t have kids, and I’m sure some of you are thinking, “If your wife’s as tight as you are, you never will!” But my sister does. My sister is a single mum with two sons. The eldest is 22 now so his festive focus has fully relocated from under the tree to under the table but his kid brother is 14. Old enough to want everything but too young to care what it costs.

When his mates are all tweeting photos of their new PS3 on their new ipads and running round to his house in their new trainers to make sure he got it because he hasn’t ‘RT’d’ yet, he’s going to hide his market versions- the ‘iPhone’ and the ‘Games Centre Play Console- with 7 game cartridges included!’ And look at my poor sister like she’s picking the last of Santa’s gonads from between her teeth just because she couldn’t get herself into deep enough debt to avoid the emotional scarring a shit present can have on a teenager.

He won’t really because he’s a good kid. He’ll do what I used to do and pretend it’s just as good as the thing you really wanted then find a way to hide it long enough to casually mention you played with it so much it broke, and suffering the inevitable comeback, “That doesn’t just apply to toys you know!”

I still remember desperately faking happiness when the ‘Evil Knievel action figure with interchangeable costumes and multi-trick stunt bike’ I’d asked for turned out to be a small plastic moulded ‘figure-on-bike’ with a big glued seam running down the middle that you revved up and watched career in a short curve into the nearest skirting board. Not to mention picking the stitching from the fourth stripe on my ‘same as Adidas’ trainers before I got to school only to be told by my jeering fellow students, as I knelt down for assembly, that they had different coloured soles- not from genuine Adidas trainers but from each other.

That was nearly 30 years ago. The pressure’s ten times worse now.

Why? Where did this law that you have to spend a couple of hundred quid on gifts come from?
Not the Nativity, that’s for sure. Its been sacked by Littlewoods in favour of ‘Grange Hill does the Ludovico Technique.’ (Google anyone?) And I’m sure Jesus would be spinning in his shroud, if he was still dead, at the thought of his birthday being hijacked by everyone else. Imagine if everyone got presents on your birthday. It’d certainly take the sheen off it I’ll bet, and that’s my point really. Birthdays are personal and they only involve one person.
Mark Twain said, “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” I agree with the first part, although the day I heard my mum say, “by the time I realized it wasn’t wind it was too late,” doesn’t even make my top 100, but you get my point. Presents on birthdays make sense! Let’s just do that shall we?

Here’s what I think we should do: Everyone, at the same time, stand up and say, “There won’t be any presents this Christmas.” Then enjoy a huge sigh of relief and start, for the first time in a long time, to really look forward to the holidays.

It’s important that everyone does it at the same time and sticks to it, which will be hard to organize and even harder to check, and there will be mass disappointment for every child in England but it will pass when they all realize they’re in the same boat and they’re not missing out.

Now imagine the Christmases that will follow. Everyone can just work until the holidays start and then enjoy time with their friends and families. Boyfriends and husbands won’t have to reduce themselves to asking the teenage assistant behind the perfume counter for suggestions because they’ve forgotten what their wife’s favorite is called and EVERYTHING just smells of perfume!

It can feel like a real holiday for a change and, once it’s all over, there won’t be a national depression as everyone spends January skint, cold and about as festive as Scrooge’s warts. Better still, single parents or families that have little or no income won’t have to worry that their kids will hate them and/or get bullied at school. Loan sharks, feeding on the poor and vulnerable in in the less affluent areas of the country, will have to find other ways to ‘help people out till pay day’.

A weight of unnecessary obligation would be lifted from everyone and we would all be no less festive for it.

As for Christmas morning? Imagine getting up (whenever you like- you’re on holiday remember) and strolling downstairs to greet your family with a hearty breakfast and a mulled wine and hugs all round. Elders can talk to youngsters while the crisp winter morning air draws the first flame from the Yule log. Christians can take a moment for silent reflection while the rest of us slap a bit of Slade on and work up an appetite for the largest and best meal of the year. Happy in the knowledge that it’s cost you no more than all the good will and genuine Christmas cheer you can muster.

Sounds great to me.