2011 - I remember when you were cool, man

There are two reasons for a new end of year awards blog from me. First is that apparently I had not "covered it all" with the 2010 blog. Second is that my 2010 award blog was the most viewed of my blogs. So it seems silly not to give the people what they want, "Let them eat cake!" [not sure that is the right context].

So here are the Greville Tomb's blog 4 moments of 2011!

Weirdest moment of 2011

There were, in truth, a few candidates for this award this year. It was a year when some celebrities went a bit more mental than usual. The bi-winning Charlie Sheen was a very strange development that few could have predicted. His interviews and soundbytes veered between contrivance and outright oddness. He could have picked up the award [note: there is no actual physical award] for the fact the Guardian invented this quiz alone: Charlie Sheen v Muammar Gaddafi.

There was also the Haribo advert which was so weird that Charlie Sheen could have written it when doing the drug, Charlie Sheen.

Also this blog is lucky to be getting written at all when 2011 was to end early as the Rapture was due 21st May. Harold Camping was taken very seriously by many (I believe the term is) mid-Americans when he declared this to be the date gleaned from his mathematical study of the Bible. They sold their houses and belongings and gave away their savings. They stood in fields, arms aloft to the blue sky waiting to be taken by God. A short while later they potentially lowered their arms and looked about feeling rather sheepish. Harold Camping was taken less seroiusly when he announced on 22nd May the Rapture was next due on 21st October 2011. Camping's math was not holy, just full of holes.

But it was a relative late runner that wins the award this year. Children's entertainers and married couple, The Krankies, revealed in December they lived a debauched lifestyle in their 1980's pomp. A lifestyle that, considering their fanbase, thankfully didn't involve drugs. Just swinging sexual exploits with other vaudeville acts. I know what you are thinking - but Greville, in the 80's Jimmy Krankie would have just been a very young bo-. Let me stop you there.

The Krankies, on stage, were a cheeky, young schoolboy and his father (constantly trying to keep him in check) double act. Off stage, mercifully dropping their personas, they were a middle-aged husband and wife who have now admitted to partaking in a very active 'ding-dong' [the small ones phrase, not mine] social scene with magicians, animal trainers and dancers.

I still remember when my own childhood died a little when my parents tried to explain to me Wee Jimmy Krankie was a older woman married to her Dad - and now this?

Ian [the tall one] we learned would often have glitter from a dancer on his body and Wee Jimmy would return from a liason "smelling of Leopard". Wee Jimmy explained their rabid attitude to sex in this rather touching vignette of martial romance: "We went out for Sunday lunch one day [on a boat] and we thought we’d get a bit romantic. We nearly ended up in France. Ian said he couldn’t make it last that long now."

[Read more, if you dare]

Even so, I think it gets more wrong when I reveal that Wee Jimmy is releasing a CD titled: Dirty Wee Boy. Early contender for next years award?


The sports personality of 2011

Sport this year has been well served with the Rugby Union World Cup and so on. I think cricket was also involved, maybe.

It was football though that had the monopoly on talking points. Racism and sexism were the bywords for a game that arguably is more a poor reflection if it is still claimed to be for the masses.

There was Richard Keys and Grey who reduced Super Saturday Soccer on Sky into a scene from a feature length On The Busses episode. There was racism even from the people trying to stamp out racism: the danger of  asking a footballer from the 70's and 80's turned dour pundit to discuss the issue that he would become so self aware of his words that he would offend by simply trying not to offend was enevitable. Sepp Blatter, of course, the rudder on the good ship Soccer has form already in the sexism department - suggesting tighter shorts for women footballers - but truely upped the ante in a bravado performance this year suggesting that footballers subjected to what they percieve is racist abuse by fellow players should realise that it is just words and shake hands with the perpretators after the match to make everyone feel better.

However, the award this year goes to Columbian Footballer, Luis Moreno. Luis showed the world how to combat mind games of opponent teams such as the New Zealand Haka and clever stadium announcers. He chose to kick his opponent's team mascot and real live owl to death during the game. That sends out some message to your opponents. Kicking their animal mascot to death.

He may have been accused of "murder" by a stadium full of people who likely wanted to kick him to death and he recieved a football ban for doing it, but Hoopy the Huddle Hound might think twice about a gentle taunting of Luis' team when he returns.


TV moment of 2011

TV in 2011 was rather good. There was many sensible and worthy things on the box. There was the Frozen Planet, The Killing II, Masterchef. I watched none of these. There was some cracking comedies too. I thought that Perfect Couples (C4) was great (although, since it was cancelled after 1 series, I may well have been then only person) and the comedic-drama, Fresh Meat (C4) was brilliant.

Fresh Meat - despite it's clear message if it were in a butcher's market - had a difficult time in promoting itself. From the makers of Peep Show! Starring one of the Inbetweeners! It was not really what either of those facts threw up when it aird. It was touching, progessional and at times hilarious. It helped, too, that the cutest thing to come out Wales since... er... slate, Kimberley Nixon was in it too. Mainly though it was the strength of the ensamble cast to make you interested in them that was the winning element.

There was also event TV in the shape of The Royal Wedding. I did watch that. Even blogged about it. The Royal Wedding of course launched the Bum of Pippa so we should all be grateful for that alone.

Daybreak continued to exist like how stalagmites exist. You know they are there, where no one is looking, doing things. In the later half of the year that Hoggle Chiles and The Great Big Bleakley were sacked by mutual aggreement. It has now, on brief inspection, returned to more like GMTV than when it was GMTV.

The Scheme came back to our screens for the final 2 episodes this year too. In 2010 it was compulsive and tremendous viewing. It was an experience. Whether a year blunted the senses (we also had Big Fat Gypsy Weddings for our senses to contend with) or, what I suspect, a vigerous re-edit of the footage that had softened the edges, it was not the same. There was less of the dark humour and more depressing tales of failed hope - less Marvin and more Garden competition.

So to my TV moment of 2011. It has to go to the Matthew Wright. A man so crass and unaware that he has surely been created by Chris Morris. He made a joke about a murdered boy in a Scottish Isle. Laughing at his own wit of announcing: "Thurrs bin ah Murrdr" at the news of the deth covered in the paper review. But for me, this is my TV moment of 2011, words can do no justice so here it is in a picture:

What a reprehensible gimp. Oh, it turns out that words can do this some justice after all. 

 Most significant moment of 2011

I can point to so many defining moments of the year. The weather went off it's nut (possibly on the drug Charlie Sheen), and the natural Earth wreaked a horrible toll on life. The world ecomony, the only thing fully created by modern humanity, has also had more downs than ups. It was not a good year for dictators either [The blog's Saddam Award belately going to Gaddafi].

There were so many significant events for everyone once again this year that I would be uncomfortable, humble though this blog is, to consider one above any other. So here is a personal one. For the second year for me, here, there is the continued use and updating of this site that is most significant in the Greville Tombs' Blog awards. Not least because it proves that I am still alive.

The blog has more followers this year (which I am eternally grateful for) and has found a new trick or two up sleeve to keep everyone entertained, thanks to improvements with Blogger and my own understanding of certain clicky boxes. There is the mobile friendly version and a feed to my Twitter account. I can also now add captions to the pictures I upload in order to more fully illustrate points.

Sexual deviants.

See?

All in all I think the blog has slowly but steadily improved over the last 12 months. And I have continued to enjoy the blogging process because of all these things. So once again, many thanks, I hope you enjoyed any time this year spent on this blog and all the very best as we go as one into the future of Twenty-Twelve!

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells

Christmas comes but once a year. And with it, comes the annual office calendar debate:

And the slues of Christmas compilation CD adverts onto the TV.

I have to confess - these adverts really irritate me quite a bit.

Here is the advert for Now That's What I Call XMAS! from 2010:


Here is Now That's What I Call XMAS! from 2005:


This is the advert from 2011 for Now That's What I Call XMAS!


Oh - your Christmas album - does it have, you know, the Wham song one? It does! What about John Lennon? And it has the New York one where they verbally abuse each other in a sort Christmassy way half way through? And Wizzard? Does it have, you know, Slade? Does it? Does your Christmas song album feature Slade? Really? Does it?? Slade!! Slade!!!

Yes, every pop Christmas compilation worth its salt I am sure has these on it. By rights they have to be. It goes without saying. Or it should. But apparently it doesn't. Not according to the advertisers, at least. Apparently we need told. The makers of the Now! compilation feel we need told that these stalwart, classics of the genre, songs are on these albums, thereby making them the best to purchase. And they have been telling us every year for the past 15 years. Who in Britain doesn't know that these songs are on this album? I mean it is exactly the same album, every year! They don't even pretend by changing the order of the songs cut into the exact same advert, every year!

Who buys these Christmas compilation CD's anymore? Despite it being named XMAS [but still infuriatingly called "Christmas" on the advert] in order to, I can only imagine, appeal to the youth who don't want to buy a "Christmas" album, I just can't fathom why young people would need to buy it at all, in these modern times. Their parents must have it, for a start. Surely there can only be so many a single household will have. I would love to know the unit sales of Now That's What I Call XMAS!. I would love to see it as a graph over time.
Even your precious Slade sings on the song that is on every compilation of Christmas songs... ever! this:

Does your granny always tell yer/
that the old ones are the best?
And she's up and rock and rollin'/
with the rest!

Slade - you have become the thing you have always hated.

It drives me slightly crazy that Christmas albums are not updated regularly. Wouldn't it be better if an advert included some of the songs which set that particular festive album apart from the others? If we could all agree that the usual favourites being on it was a given and don't need mentioning?

To counter these perennial Christmas songs that not only are on every CD ever made for this holiday, but that are also played on every Radio and depressingly shown on things like VH1 on flickering loop from the 1st December, I have been inspired to post some alternative Christmas songs below which the Now! gang could look to add into next year's compilation album and advert:











Of course, not even this collection can escape having a Crimbo classic in it. Here is Joe Pesci (yes, genuinely) singing in his inimitable (read: foul and offensive) style about his take on the practicalities of Santa getting from A to B. Pesci seems to have forgotton that Santa has flying reindeer for his sleigh but since he wrote a song about this n' all, and seems to be rather a disturbed individual, it is perhaps churlish to bring it up.



Merry Christmas, one and all!

v.1.2

Greville Tombs is now on Twitter. I am not sure what I am going to do with this mini-blog functionality. So far I have posted my first Tweet stating that it is the first Tweet I have posted and then made a scything comment about a seasonal advert. So the potential is there for all to see.

You can follow me on Twitter as well as my Blog.

But that is not the only tweak made. This blog isn't entitled v.1.1 after all. For those who like their dose of Tombs' lore on the move or when passing a few moments at a medical waiting room you can now enjoy a mobile specific format of the blog.

Further, the blog has also added to the "bril-links" box down the side-bar. These are well worth a read.

Wait... this might just work...

BBC Children In Need was once again broadcast this month for its annual telethon. I am not about to review the 2011 version here. That's a blog fraught with danger. I don't have the dexterity to negotiate that traverse successfully. Besides, it goes on for about 6 hours and that is a lot to take mental notes on to review later. If you had to push me how I would do it, then it would be through a "live blog" format. On Twitter. But then, what would that be like?


Terry Wogan has hosted this for 30 years yet hair doesn't look like it has aged one bit. What's his secret?

Oh - cut to a piece about helping unfortunate children. Best stop commenting for this bit.

Tess Daly looks like a glam grandmother in that dress.

Right - now there is a story about children living in poverty. Best stop commenting for this bit.

The newsreaders are doing something later in the show? Fingers crossed for a dance routine! #thatwasmebeingironicbecauseitisalwaysadance

Hang on - discussion about child illness. Best stop commenting for this bit.

Great! Regional round-up! Teachers wearing shoes on their hands all day to raise money. They are mental. Talking of mental, a mother is now on talking about... [well you get the idea]

No one wants to read that. That would be dreadful.

Watching the marginally antiquated variety/vaudeville format with cheapskate trailers of BBC Christmas episodes and slightly less entertaining than usual CIN themed "specials" of in-house shows whilst also discovering exactly why Londoners think they are the centre of Britain because all the regional shows are filmed in town halls regardless that they are on location in huge cities including Cardiff, Birmingham and Glasgow when the London studio, with it's celebrity guests, acts and pyrotechnics make it look like something from Bladerunner, let alone 200 miles away, [I mean, when the cameras are not tuned to the folk in Glasgow, do they sit and watch the London show on a TV wheeled in from the Fire Exit? Do they have to put up with Leon Jackson singing to pass their time? Is that why they are such a maniacal mob grabbing at the screen toward me by the third time we see them in the night - they are trying to escape through the transmission waves to my home where Leon Jackson can no longer harm them?] while it rattled up the donations into millions of pounds, I had an idea.

Could the Government not do this? You know, to raise some cash for all the services they say they can't afford? Now hear me out - if the UK will donate £26,000,000 to Children In Need, imagine what they would give to things that are more than kids?

The UK Government could come out on TV and explain that the British people could pledge money and it would result in extra policing, improved hospital care and school equipment and a dignified life for the elderly. Heck, they could even put some of the money raised towards proper services for children, too, into the bargain. "For just £27, 000 you could ensure the UK continues to have minor operations on the NHS for 2 more hours".

The Prime Minister could host the evening telethon and the British public could be entertained with the Cabinet doing a Grease medley. During the day, all the MP's could get involved by going back to their constituents, setting up UK Government In Need fetes with games and home baking and have people throw wet sponges at them for £1.50 a throw and then wave giant cheques from bank tellers who wore novelty MP bow-ties for the day at the camera when the telethon sweeps round the regions.

The more I thought about this, the more coherently good the idea of a Government charity became. Actually, it could be such a good idea, we could dispense with the inferior annual live TV telethon production all together and people could just donate throughout the year. The Government could even set up some sort of charitable omni-permeable direct debit procedure for everyone to be able to passively donate. No one would not want to, after all.

I was definitely onto something. But it would further require some form of memorable tag to remain in the public conscience if there was no annual Wogan hosted show to look forward to. It needs a cool nomenclature of an abbreviation.

Then I had it! How about: The Awesome Charity System. Or, TACS?

Ok... don't panic but I appear to have unwittingly taken us into [rather poor] political satire territory with this here... there is only one way to get out and end this blog with any kind of dignity for either one of us. Here is a picture of Tess Daly.

"Hello Sonny, want a Werther's Original?"

Who follows the followers?

I was surprisingly cheered when I noticed that I had... what's the right word I am after... "ensnared" a new follower to this blog recently. How marvellous. Not least because I have no idea how anyone actually becomes a follower to this blog. I guess that it has something to do with the "join" button in the box to the right. I have often considered it and hovered a mouse pointer over it and dared myself to click it to see what happens. Of course, I never have.

There is something instinctive, primal, at the back of my mind suggesting that following my own blog would not be good. Like the feeling we get when we know following the clown with razor teeth into the sewerage tunnels for the promise of a balloon, would not be good. Or little, jumpy spiders.

I know what you are thinking, I should get in touch with Stephen Hawking about this:
"Professor Hawking, Hi. Now, I was going to start following my own blog"
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT?
"Eh? Anyway, will that create some form of bad spacial vortex?"
WHAT DO YOU THINK IF IT WILL FORM A BAD SPACIAL VORTEX?
"What? Are you drunk?"
INTERESTING TELL ME MORE
[Is it wrong that all fantasy conversations I have with Stephen Hawking, I basically reduce to the conversations I had with ELIZA in computing class?]

But the important thing to remember is that I have not followed my own blog - but you have and that is truly great. Hello and welcome, I hope you enjoy it here!

Indeed, it is about time that I said hello and welcome to all my Readers! I really appreciate you all.

Please, if you are a frequent visitor to this little leaf of cyberspace feel free to join my official readership. It would make my day.

It is worth summarising with this well made and reassuringly contemporary, hip point that if Beyonce was mad for blogging she would undoubtedly sing: "If you read it then you should have put an RSS feed on it!" Naturally she would just be singing it through in the spare room to her husband, Jazzy Zee, as she wouldn't be an international singing mega-star, true bloggers never are. And he'd be all: READ IT ME? TELL ME MORE

Music fan

I was out this week at a work function. As most work functions go mine was no different, I knew the other people there but not well. The conversation was staid and often missing all together. It was this backdrop of shuffling and using wine glasses at metaphorical and actual defences against saying anything, which led to one of the work group asking me: “So… do you like music?”

I thought that people only asked this to highlight awkward moments when eating out with a Ben Stiller character in one of his chronic rom-coms.

Do I like music? Come to think of it – do I like food? Am I an appreciator of colour? Is the human notion of what we express as time passing, my bag?

Naturally, I like music. I am almost certain everybody likes some form of rhythmic noise. And those that don’t I would imagine look a lot like this:

Believe it or not, I would often hear some music and then a few days later go into a music store and buy a music cassette tape of it, back in the day. That was proper devotion to liking music – not simply downloading it from any mobile device that is in reach like the youth of today. And my music taste has changed from pre-teen bedroom playing of the latest Jean Michelle Jarre opus through teenage angst Elliott Smith and Radiohead and then into the broad musical church of high-energy techno.

In fairness it did lead on to an ice-breaker of conversation:
If you could choose any musician to give you a personal serenade – just the two of you, on a veranda overlooking a private, white Pacific beach under the pomegranate reddening late sunset of a warm summer’s night – who would it be?

For me it was easy, pop rocket of the moment: Lana Del Rey
Someone else said: Robbie Williams
A third went for: Christina Aguilera, singing Dirrty. Twice
Further round the group a vote went for: David Gray

I am sure, dear reader, you get the idea.

So when the question came steadily round to settle at one of the women and, after a further 15 seconds giving it serious thought, still went for: Whitesnake, it was not surprising that we all quickly resumed to nursing our drinks in silent contemplation of having perhaps revealed too much and trying once more not to catch one anothers’ eye.

Screwing the news

[Disclaimer – I never, ever read the News of the World and most of this blog is simply made up from an impression I have of what was in it from other news sources and The Daily Star].

The news of the screws, so called because of its high level of readership in the prison demographic, may have shut down but that is not the end of the story.

Sordid

Amid the investigations of the phone-hacking scandal sanctioned by the sensationalist and morally askewed tabloid paper, where as many as hundreds of mobile phone voice mail systems were illegally listened to by Screws journalists who would then quote any sordid, life ruining, details heard in a few forgettable column inches attributing them to “a source close to the reality TV star” – revelations recently emerged that former policeman and now private eye, Deek Webb was employed by the paper to tail upwards of 90 people from Princess Catherine of The Sister With The Nice Bottomshire and Wills, to Harry Potter’s Mum and Dad.

Saucy

Following these people as they went about their personal lives, Deek and so the Screws, hoped to unearth some saucy bit of detail or two to keep the paper shifting in-between the prison bars. Watching an interview on the BBC with the private eye, I heard him explain that he would sit in his car, tailing and filming all sorts of MPs, actors, other journalists and Richard Madeley. When Richard, during the same interview, was shown footage filmed of him in 2006 standing outside his London home he was disgusted. Richard dim-wittingly nailed it when he verbalised: “What is the phrase where what is happening is not illegal but that everyone knows is wrong? ‘It’s creepy’ – that’s it” [also simultaneously rather adeptly describing his marriage to his elderly, frail aunt]

Costume

When the cockney accented Webb elaborated on his techniques I began to realise just how far these Private Investigators go to film members of celebrity. “I normally followed behind at a distance in my car” he said, reasonably, “Boris Johnson thought that cycling would prevent the Screws following him, but when I turned up to the press offices I was handed over a bicycle and I would cycle behind him”, he went on, slightly more oddly. By the time he brought up the name of MP Blunkett I was over half convinced Deek was going to explain: “I turned up to the Screws offices and was handed a hired dog fancy-dress outfit and a hi-vis vest. Blunkett was unique in that regard as I had him following on my tail. It meant I could go where I wanted to go and get me messages and stuff while keeping an eye on him. And I could sh*t anywhere. Once, the hire shop didn’t have the dog costume, so I was just given a gorilla one instead. Blunkett didn’t have a fu**ing clue.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t say any of that. But the damage had already been done and it has heaped even more trouble onto Screws International.

Tongues

It was always going to end like this for the Screws. Over the years, their methods of reporting and journalism to keep convicts’ tongues hanging out their filthy criminal mouths were plumbing new depths. From publishing solitary photos of young, beautiful people with other young beautiful people on holidays using massive camera lenses, through to the ridiculous sub-editor means of grabbing attention to a story by pull quoting slightly ambiguously titillating words or phrases out of context from the subsequent paragraph of a story, the Screws of course went the extra distance in the name of the “public interest".

Two women… at the same time

Many of these “public interest” stories were not really, to my mind, all that interesting to the public. Grotty little video-phone images do not need to be printed for the public at large to inform us that people with money and a lot of time on their hands who have obscene egos can get into a vice or three when they think no one is looking. Two women on a bus may make a brief comment about the news that a former children’s TV presenter might like to do more adult activities when not talking to a glove puppet about a homemade birthday card, but the news will hardly cause other passengers to partake in mob-handed condemnation along with them. At the same time, the Screws were deciding developing “public interest” stories of their own would take out the middle man.

Once again whether these stories actually told us public anything is debatable. In the early days of this, the reporter would basically go to an actual brothel in all but name and report with surprise that women there offered private services for payment. The reporter would always decline with the get out sub-line “made my excuses and left”. It was not long before reporters made the step to dressing as wealthy sheiks and Russian mafia to offer someone an awful lot of money to do something either never before thought of or seemingly too good to be true – selling an audience with your ex-husband, missing the 5th red in a frame of snooker or throwing a no-ball. Perhaps no one should be surprised to find some people mistakenly accepted.

Besides entrapment, the Screws specialised in “public interest” security stories. A reporter would work as an attendant maid in Buckingham Palace for 4 months before revealing the awful truth that he was able to lie on the Queen’s bed during a shift. Perhaps this is of interest to people – but I can only think of the Milk Tray Ad Man who would find any bedroom security lapse worth noting.

The best example I can think of in the debate about if they really were reporting for the sake of “public interest”, was the occasion when a reporter, dressed as an airline pilot, infiltrated a long haul passenger aircraft cockpit shortly before take-off. Should the authorities have spotted him and shot his face clean off (which they would have been well within their rights to do) would the Screws have run the headline: AIRPORT SECURITY: SOUND AS A POUND or INNOCENT UNDERCOVER REPORTER GUNNED DOWN TRYING TO PROTECT UK PUBLIC INTEREST.

And I think we all know the answer to that.

Ultimately it appears that the screwspaper staff lost their perspective on reality. They began believing themselves to be movie secret agents for the forces of good when in fact they were working for Elliot Carver all along.

22 March, if you are wondering

Birthday parties when I was young were strange affairs. Too young to have a social circle of people with shared interests, you always had your school classmates at them instead and maybe a cousin or two who you didn’t really know. Some parties were held in fast food places or at a tailored children’s adventure centre. Most, however, were held at the parent’s house of the little school chum whose birthday it was.

The house parties always followed minor variations on the same format: Handing over presents and chatting/squealing/jumping on the way in/playing a couple of inclusive group games/party finger food of mini-sausage rolls and chocolate dipped marshmallows with smarties on top/a video of the latest rental film (not altogether age appropriate)/kicking a balloon about the sitting room/party bag given of a piece of cake wrapped in birthday paper napkin that the icing stuck to, 1 un-inflated balloon and pencil-topper figurine of a masters of the universe on the way out.

I must confess that I neither hosted nor attended many birthday parties in my extreme youth. Most of the games played at my birthdays were just me sitting with one of those plastic containers with little metal ball bearings games. In my new, birthday, jumper.

I was never one for going to parties either. So you will appreciate that I remember vividly Christine’s one that I attended. It was for her 7th birthday. I was shown to the sitting room, where many of my little classmates had already arrived. I remember thinking that her family must be rich with their white furniture and French windows.

I handed over the card and present, which were placed in the corner of the room with the others for the ceremonial unwrapping later. A Disney film was playing on the TV in the background. There was time to converse with my peers (about what, I cannot remember, maybe something about coloured pencils) and avoid the class bullies [who always seemed to get invited to parties by parents, totally ignoring the frightened pleas of their son or daughter]. Soon it was time for an enforced game – musical statutes to the song “superman” by Black Lace and then the meal, followed by the video, Beverly Hills Cop. And then hitting a balloon up in the air for a bit.

It was also at this same party where I told my first proper dinner table joke.

We were at the dinner table, some of us glad that the inclusive, enforced fun activities were over. Paper bowls of crisps and paper plates of cakes and mini-sausage rolls were being spilled and grabbed at, a cacophony of crumbs of pastry being tossed-up like shrapnel. I caught the group’s attention and said:
“I am boldly going where no man has gone before!” wait for it… “The ladies toilet!”
I possibly heard it on an episode of Russ Abbott. I know what you are thinking – this genre of comedy was a stretch to pull off at a birthday party of 7 year olds, Greville.

And, looking back, I am not sure, really, how many of my school chums watched repeats of 60’s Star Trek so suspect that the impression I gave of William Shatner while saying it was lost on most of them sitting that afternoon round the table with a She-Ra tablecloth. Jerking my body about in time to the phrasing: “I am… bodlygoing…. Where!!… noman… has…. Gonebefore… the!LADIEStoliet!”

And, analysing things forensically, being situated, as we were, at the girl’s house I would be astonished if it had both a gents and ladies separate WC’s available. Despite the inference with the French windows. In fact, I am almost certain it didn’t. I am certain, too, that I didn’t go to the bathroom after but rather, sat back down again after the punch line.

But I did say “Toilet” and did funny, stuttering movements like an electrified frog so the joke went down a storm. I would like to think that those 12 or so kids, most of whom I can no longer recall the names of or be able to pick out from a line-up, will remember that moment as fondly as I do.

All this recollecting has made me wonder: Did I not get invited to parties back when I was under 10 years old because I would turn up in a knitted jumper and reference Star Trek and Columbo for no appreciable reason or did I wear knitted jumpers and watch Star Trek and Columbo because I did not go to parties. It is the whole Nature Versus Nurture debate all over again.

The element of What doctors are for

They say you learn something everyday. They say a lot of things. But in this instance, they are right. Today I learnt that potentially in my lifetime there will be no more Helium on Earth. The human race will have wiped out an entire element. We have allowed it dissipate almost entirely unchecked in balloons that say "Happy 50th!" and what reserves we have are being sold off by the Americans (the primary source for the world's helium) who privatised Helium in the 1990's and are selling off their strategic reserves of the inert gas massively cheaply outside the Free Market.

A professor called Richardson has looked around and stated that Helium will no longer exist in 20-30 years time.

Children will never know it was ever on the periodic table. And they will grow up to be scientists - who also will not know that Helium was on the periodic table! What sort of madness is that? That I will know about Helium but scientists won't?

What about that bloke who could sing all the periodically ordered elements really fast? That's his party piece busted. It'll be more like a Proclaimers song in the future: "Bathgate No More, Helium No More, Lochaber No More".

That an element can simply disappear is mind positively blowing. It ranks, in my opinion, between finally laying waste to the rain forests and the impossibility to make gold. You know, it's like when the Panda goes extinct we might get lucky, find one preserved in amber and bring them back for them to take furious vengeance on us at the Rain Forest end of the scale and, although I realise that Helium is an element, it just feels like we should be able to make some more Helium easier than making gold, so it is just not quite at the, other, Gold Making end of the scale.

The thing is, Helium is hugely important in lots of things. It is a coolant for superconductors, medical equipment and solar telescopes. It could be the clean energy source that would revolutionise the planet's environmental issues. Frankly, we could be doing with loads of it.

Next time you go past a Clinton's you are perfectly within your rights as a Planeteer to rush in, spit at the teenage shop assistant, punch one of their inflated foil helium wasters and shout: "You solar telescope murderers!", I would have thought. No one would judge you for it.

Happily it appears these greeting card dwelling shops may yet be hoisted by their own petard. As Helium becomes more rare, the price is going to increase. Soon only the very rich will want their precious floating gold.

If you are clever, like me, you should buy your own underground helium containment lab and place one of the Helium canisters you can get for 30 balloons from ASDA in it. That baby will start paying for itself, and your pension, in 50 years. You could even have a foil balloon inflated to commemorate the anniversary.

All is not over, however. Scientists have been working on a solution. Masses of Helium has been discovered on the moon. We can mine the Helium there and bring it back in canisters or pods or whatever the space word for jars is.

Of course! The moon! Like most of science, it is all so simple when the answer is found. The moon is obviously full of Helium - that's how it stays up in the sky.

I am more Atari

The other day I walked past someone. Someone who, without any sense of hyperbole, is a true icon of modern civilisation. A cultural demi-god who challenged an entire generation. Challenged them to collect rings and coins in a limited amount of time. Yes, I walked past host of Gamesmaster, Dominik Diamond.

Lord - I loved Gamesmaster on TV.

When it first aired on Channel 4, the bawdy terrace rock of Oasis which made boys think they were somehow displaying emotion by caterwauling "WaunderWa-ee-aulll" in packs at thin girls drinking vodka's and coke at all parties was still 3 years away. The female TV show equivalent of Gamesmaster - Ally McBeal - was still even farther off on the horizon [history would tell eventually that TV producers would streamline all sense of the women having some sort of equal intellectual footing with men and do away with the structure of female career empowerment and independent sufficiency on Ally McBeal and call it Sex and the City instead].

Now grown fat on a diet of his own self-satisfaction, his red t-shirt emblazoned with the ATARI logo stretched round his mid-life gut, Dominik Diamond was once a fresh faced, 90's floppy hair styled, leader of men. And those men were boys. Boys who enjoyed sitting alone in bedrooms throughout the country, wildly jiggling their computer joystick and pressing seemingly random button configurations just to make a little blocky man animate a jump onto a mushroom with a face on.

Gamesmaster was the perfect programme for this group of marginalised computer gamers in playground's everywhere. It made gaming cool, exciting and a conversation topic. Suddenly all these bedroom bound loners found that maybe they could be loners, somehow, together. For a short time Dominik Diamond made the geeks believe they were inheriting the earth. Or at least let them feel less ashamed of their asthma and talk of computer diskettes.

Set on, if I can recall, a Gothic oil rig [already - brilliant] Dominik Diamond invited total non-entities of posh young teenage boys who were completely unremarkable to a fault to take up challenges on computer games in order to win the respect of their peers and lay claim to a "Golden Joystick" for completing the challenge successfully. And I was a comparable non-entity of a young teenage boy who may well have the same game that I could then also configure up for a similar challenge in my bedroom - and in this way validate myself to my peers.

The show also also featured geek-chic computer journalist blokes who would either be found wearing bandannas co-commentating on the challenge action with Dominik Diamond and getting excited about a collection of polygons gaining the invincibility token in a hidden chamber, or, reviewing the latest 5 tone graphic, slow frame-rate, poorly coded and executed game that these days you would probably struggle to find free in a cereal box, using a rating system that meant nothing and saying nonsense about like how it's "Smart. With a capital S."

Gamesmaster also had celebrity challenges where perhaps a sportsman would get to see that their lifetime of honing skills would soon be made redundant in this neo-world by playing as all the team on a computer monitor. Of course, the celebrity section also made it possible that a woman might be invited along. Women like Jet from Gladiators. [Wow - corking women playing video games. In a studio that must have been dripping off the ceiling in teenage male hormones. Jet must have been really wanting to win a Golden Joystick to put up with the smell alone, I would think]

What gave it the killer concept was that of Gamesmaster himself. Played by a seemingly perpetually bemused Patrick Moore and looking like a proto Borg, Gamesmaster would not only dish out the challenges but also condescendingly help out viewers who were "beamed in" to the virtual reality stage asking for hints and cheat modes on various platformers and shoot-'em ups.

"Gamesmaster" frail little jumper wearing, sickle-cell problem looking boys would say, "How do I defeat the boss character on level 4 of Jimmy Pockets 2?"
Gamesmaster would harrumph, "You can't get passed level 4? Oh well, if you must know, the boss character repeats his super flame punch 3 times and then rests for 2 seconds on his executive chair. Wait until he sits down and attack him. You won't have trouble after that. Until level 5. Now, be off with you!"

And I would think - like everyone else watching - on how I have that game, Jimmy Pockets 2, and that if I ever got to level 4 then that boss is toast.

All too soon, I got over my feelings for Gamesmaster. I think it was when Dominik Diamond was replaced by that overtly aggressive American bloke from Press Gang - who confusingly turned out to be a cockney. But that just was a push to an already falling man. In truth, I had already grown out of it and found the comfort of deep and meaningfulTM chats with girls... and the X-Files over on BBC2.

Of course, there is always the thought that someone of a certain vintage may revive the Gamesmaster show. They should not do this.  Dominik Diamond should be preserved as the cheeky youthful presenter giving false hope to teenage boys that being good at arcade games can get you hot women models. Times have changed. Loner gamers in bedrooms have networked games these days and are connected to 100's of other gamers simultaneously. No one knows what a joystick is. Essentially, though, Gamesmaster should never be brought back because the games themselves have changed. It is one thing asking a child to free the frogs held by General Toad without losing a life and quite another thing having Sir Patrick Moore saying to a child: "Now for this challenge I am thinking we will see how you get on in Dead Beat 3. You must a kill a pimp by any means to hand and, after, have rough sex with his hooker all within the 2 minute time limit - extra points will be awarded if you drag her to a church first and pay her from the collection plate. Oh, and you might want to keep your car running - if the police catch you the challenge is over. Good luck!"

For Dominik Diamond and all those who thought we would rule the world with Atari and Amiga home computers and a copy of The New Zealand Story game as our weapons, I dedicate this to you all.

Next time you hear the beep...

Round where I live there is a local, well organised and commendably mobile campaign group against a recently proposed un-named large supermarket operative building one of their large supermarket operations on some wasteground nearby.

I, too, am against a supermarket being installed. Not that I am for having a large wasteground either. Each summer, travelling amusements come and set up there, not looking out of place on an episode of Scooby-Do. I went to it a few summer's ago and, having fully wandered around the site, got on the ride that looked the most health and safety certified [that basically boiled down to not one being controlled by a man wearing a lumberjack shirt]. The very next day the local press reported that someone had died on it. They were thrown from the cup and saucer into the central pivot shaped like a teapot. Such was the velocity, they were killed instantly. What a way to go. That is a true story.

Although a supermarket would turn the wasteground into something that does not attract funfairs, I am against one being put on it. Because the less reasons to have old people in supermarkets the better.

I was in a supermarket this week. I only had a couple of items in the basket: processed ham, 4 rolls and that. Enough to keep me going for a day but really - looking down at the basket - it was giving me a feeling that, having gone to all the effort of going to the Supermarket in the first place, I should have got more, you know? Having that idea, waiting in the queue, that I should have made a list - and that idea was tinged with the feeling of regret. Anyway, that was the point where I was at - waiting in the queue at the checkout.

"Please put the item in the bag"

As I say, I only had a few items. Up to this point, I had scouted a few checkout queues. Many had trolley-fulls to get through and the "10 items or less" kiosk was way off at the far end with a queue for it well up the refrigerated aisle. As luck would have it, I settled on standing behind a little old lady, who had just unloaded her basket of tinned fruit, half-pint of milk, a couple of long vegetables and a half-loaf of bread on the conveyor belt. I stood behind her as she watched the checkout girl put through her shopping. And I stood behind her as she started to tell the checkout girl about how she bought a scarf for the winter the other day. Oh, what a lovely scarf it is too. Really thick and warm. It is sort of blue and green. The only problem with it is it is made of that hairy type of wool and it caught on a necklace and broke the chain. Anyway it was really lucky because someone saw it fall off, they were sitting behind at another table, otherwise the necklace would have...

Sorry, excuse me, apologies for interrupting. I am not one for using foul and abusive language. Especially so when talking to an older person but JEEZUS F**K! If you want to talk about "things" then go to your local grocer! Some of us just want to have the briefest of faceless transactions of money for goods - that's why we are here, now, in the Supermarket - all this, all this around you is the future and the future doesn't want to hear a meandering tale about buying a winter garment and if you can't cope then it's time for you to shop at various "mongers".

I know, I know. If I wanted a truly inhuman supermarket experience then I could have gone to one of those "self-checkouts". But I don't trust them. I am pretty certain that is how the cylons started on Caprica.

And then we got to the crux. I saw her give a wrinkly grin to the girl at the checkout when she said, "That is £4.45, please" and we both knew just what was coming next. "I"ll see if I have the exact money for you, love". 3 minutes later, having rummaged through the penny purse (twice) - "I don't have the 5p. I'll have to give you a fiver".

Three words: Chip and Pin! You are not at Sandra's Fish Van anymore! The supermarket, literally, has bags of change.

Having got through the adventure story of the hairy scarf, the Orwellian drama of the change purse the little old person then started to pack her carrier bag. Taking another age to open it as her fingers were so old that her fingerprints had completely smoothed out. She was totally frictionless. "I am sorry for holding you up, son" she offered up while the plastic bag slipped out between her palms.

"It's absolutely fine, I'm in no hurry. And I hope you won't need that scarf too much this winter!" I waspishly retorted through a warm smile of frustrated incredulity.

Of course, not all old people should be tarred by the same brush. Other old souls distrust the supermarket even while in it [which makes you think they got lost, you know, because they are so terribly old], complaining about the problem they are simultaneously compounding. They talk of the supermarket killing the old fashioned, small and friendly shops on the main street, while pushing a trolley full of multi-pack Seabrook Sea-salt crisps and frozen pies.

I have heard a china cabinet of old people [for that is the collective noun] in the cleaning and detergents aisle, as I have gone by, stating their disgusted at there being too many cleaning products on the shelf. I have heard one of them, as I mosey on through, insist on getting bread from the storeroom because he knows "for a fact, the fresh stuff is kept off the shelves so customers can't buy it". Yes, because that is basically what supermarket economics is, keeping a whole load of fresh produce out of sight until it goes a bit stale and then put it out onto the shelf. And then they laugh at you buying it. Oh how the supermarket laughs. You lunatic.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying, particularly, a ban on old folk from supermarket shopping is the direction to take. I am just suggesting that supermarkets are established up a mild gradient. As a deterent. So, I believe, the case made is clear. No to more supermarkets. Yes to the local market. That way, the older generation can be happy getting soap measured out on scales and meat from jars sealed in petroleum jelly [or however these local shops work] and chatting about the time of day to a lady who doesn't have a name badge - while I am able to purchase my processed ham, 4 rolls and that, relatively hassle free.

One may argue that I could simply adopt an online supermarket delivery shopping habit. This would mean I would have needed no vested opinion about old people in supermarkets in first place. And that would be a valid comment. But I know for a fact that supermarkets regularly substitute the bottle of fizzy juice you clicked on with a bottle of carbonated juice that is going flat, then leave the crate, ring your doorbell and run away.

The one where no one notices we've gone

It is the 3 week anniversary. Did you notice? I bet you didn’t.

It has been 3 weeks and 1 day that situation comedy Friends has been removed from Free-to-View television in the UK. And you haven’t even given it a second thought. Not even a glance in at the reduced single season Friends' DVD from the petrol station mesh bin on your way home tonight. And you expect dinner on the table? You unthinking cretin.

Now I don’t want to give my age away, but I was younger when Friends first was aired on Channel 4, in 1994. It would end up becoming a piece of television that helped to define the zeitgeist of the 90’s. This, when you think about it, is quite a feat for a strangely safe, genial and quaintly set situation comedy. And, warming to my theme here, looking back on it from the lofty position of our post-Friends revisionist citadel - How on earth did this happen?

It didn't usher in the era of high concept situation comedies. With it's situation revolving around 6 friends interacting with each other almost exclusively so either in one of their 3 apartments or at the local coffee house, it was far from being boundary pushing. It was no My Two Dad's. Now that was high concept. I will leave it to the show's intro to sumarise:

Yes, that's right - 1 daughter, two guys who could be the father and a judge who orders them to live together. In the Judge's sub-let.

It wasn't even as conceptual as the situation comedy where a short, hairy space alien came to live with a human family and the jokes were based all on his childlike understanding of humanity and surprisingly witty barbs. Yes, of course, I am referring to ALF. What else?


The highest concept that they asked the viewers to accept was that such a dystopian group would be friends in the first place. If they are all such good guys to be around - where were the others? Answer me that Chandler Bing, how come you could all spend all your time together in the coffee house or at home? 2 of you are blood relatives, another is a friend from school then 2 more are friends from college - apparently one was picked up by accident and the other one (the least pretty girl) is a proto-violent eccentric who must know something about one of you because she doesn't seem to fit in your social sphere frankly at all - and you couldn't get just one more friend between you? To be fair, I don't know anyone who would want to spend that much time with any of you quite honestly.

Friends may have had an ensemble cast, each sharing the screen and laughs, but then so did Seinfeld. And Seinfeld remains almost cultish in the UK, despite it being seen as inordinately better than Friends.

Friends made an issue of the fact it was filmed in front of a "live studio audience" and should a joke or one-liner not hit the mark and get the big reaction expected, the writers were on hand to redraft and try a different one. But Happy Days not only did this, but also made a specific feature of it with a member of cast making a voice-over announcement at the beginning that "Happy Days is filmed before a live studio audience" and that show was made in... assessing the fashion... my guess is anywhere between 1953 and 1962.

Friends didn't even leave a great legacy with a decent spin-off. Cheers served us the superior Frasier. Friends dolloped up Joey. And the cast went on to be in some films I forget the names of but were generally awful. Apart from Lost in Space - that was alright. I'll give them that one.

So Friends was not groundbreaking, the cast was not individually comically talented, it didn't feature a space alien at any point and the characters were so unlikeable that no one could write a fictional character to like them for more than half a season - not even that monkey hung about for long. Which brings me back to my question - how did it become arguably one of the defining aspects of the 1990's.

It did something that I don't think any other comedy managed. It became a lifestyle choice for most of the young, hip, generation.

Girls asked for the "Rachel cut" at salons and would sit on their beds filling in magazine questionnaires about who their secret crush was most alike out of Joey, Ross and Chandler and squealing. Boys started saying "How you doin'" to everyone with no irony and would admit to watching a sit-com on a Friday night instead of being threatening at a bus stop. Relationships would stand and fall on the "On a Break" theory - and people would know exactly what this meant. Groups of friends would demand coffee houses be established with plush furniture. Coffee drinking from oversized cups became the height of youthful sophistication. It was simply hardwired into daily life.

The most important hair in the last 17 years

I even bought the damned Rembrandts' LP under the illusion that it was the favourite band of the characters so must be good. Not just bought it, but taped it [don't tape music, kids, it is killing the music industry] to play in the Volvo. As if that would make me a cool, young professional coffee drinker who had female friends with outstanding hair. I didn't even have a job.

So the anniversary is important. Because for all that, for all the relentless syndication of it's 236 episodes, that it got me to listen to tepid middle of the road rock at a time when Nirvana were happening, for all the arguments on public transport about who we would rather go on a date with: Rachel "Scientifically proven best legs of all time " Green or Monica "Because she's boarderline OCD at least you'll have a well structured evening ahead" - Geller as if it actually mattered - for all that, just like you, I don't miss it.

I have Big Bang Theory now. I'll put the kettle on.

Totally covers "Act Of God". T&C's apply.

For semi-regular readers of this occassional blog it will come as little surprise that I was up early recently unable to sleep and began pressing the UP button on the remote control to the television. I am amazed at the output of broadcasting during unsociable hours - amazed at how cheep, generic and repetative it mostly is. Sometimes, though, you get lucky. You get a gem of a viewing experience.

A new station had appeared on my television menu - DAYSTAR. Until now it described itself as "closed". Until now it was simply a blank, dark screen. Until now there was nothing. But now - now there was something. And it was bright.

DAYSTAR, it turns out, is an American based religious broadcasting channel. It is not to be confused with still going on [if you can beleive it!] UK pretend breakfast morning show, Daybreak. Despite the angelic Bleakley. DAYSTAR is in the almost parody/stereotype mould of US religious programming. It is fancy - the production values look expensive, outlandish even - the hosts are homely sorts, not too glamorous, but air-brush pretty, who you suspect would welcome you with an apple pie as soon as look at you. They speak with cotton candy intonation and are as sincere with their condescending and bewildering preaching as any Texan judge sentencing people to the death penalty. And yet, it is immediately - for want of any other word - cheesy. Again - do not confuse this with Daybreak.

Religion when trying to appeal to the masses simply cannot get away from that shudder induced at realising you are at a religious rock band concert and those folks in their knitted jumpers pogo-ing about the place might not be super-cool or even distantly likely to let you cop a feel during the mid-set ballad. Because the ballad's all about Saint Desiderius of Fontenelle. And they all want to have a Pure fun time. [If only I could have convinced them I was Jesus]

However, DAYSTAR anchor, Reverend Marcus was now speaking of something I was not expecting from an evangelistic show. God wanted him to go forth and sell insurance. Marcus explained that he had been given a message from God.

"Now I have been a preacher of The Word for 37 years and I have never receieved a message that is as clear as this before, from God. I checked it with Reverend Jack and we checked the Scriptures together and he agrees that this is the most clear message either of us have heard. God is offering you insurance."

Hold on just a minute! What was the message exactly? What form did it take? Did He come in shape of a marginally dated red analogue telephone?

"Do you have problems in your life today? Does the Devil prey on you? Are you struggling with debt? Do you or your loved ones suffer ill health today? God can take those things away. I am so excited about this news! God has said that for 700 viewers, right now, He will protect you from all evil. I am so happy! He will take the Devil from your door! For 700 people for 12 months!"

This seems to be a rather conditional heavy God action here...

"Do you fear your cancer? Do you fear the bills coming through your door? Do you fear the Devil Himself? How great, then, if you are one of the 700 who can gain saftey from these things for 12 months - 6 months for cancer -"

Eh? Wait the what now?

"For 700 of you right now, God is offering you His total protection package for up to 12 months for only $53.17 a month! Just call in on this number: 555 XXXX"

Ah. [the amount, by the way, is explained as being the number of a passage of one of the books of the Apostles which talks about God thinking about getting into the insurance market sector]

"But how will you know if you are one of the those chosen 700 to receive God's ultimate protection?"[results may vary]

Good point. The first 700 to phone in and set up a direct payment to you, Marcus?

"I will pass you across to my friend, to Reverend Jack, who confirmed my message direct from God, to explain."

OK.

Queue another energic man looking directly at the screen and gesturing out into the room.

"It is a good question! How do you know that you have been chosen for this wonderful gift? Ask yourself: Am I one of the 700? Do I need protection from the Devil? Look deep inside you. And do you feel something? Do you feel something in your soul? Do you feel a compulsion to pick up the phone and begin making the payments right now? Give yourself a little time to think about it as you enjoy The Word in the voices of our choir."

At this point, a musical chorus called the DAYSTAR singers are in full Whoopi Goldberg mode singing about love, God's protection and that in a sequence of grand, sweeping camera shots.

Right - so you call up, one of [apparently] millions who are tuning in and potentially doing likewise, believing you are one of the 700 and if nothing happens, the cancer worsens, the bank takes your home because you tell them you have decided to ensure your house with God, the Devil is in bed with your wife, well, you were simply wrong? You takes your chances at the Fair? This doesn't sound like a legitimate insurance company policy. This doesn't really sound like something God should be getting involved with at all. In fact, it sounds a little like the Devil is in the detail here.

"The question is, have you felt anything, anything at all? Because if you feel even the slightest connection right now to what is happening on your screen, it is God trying to call out to you - He is saying you should dial this number and pledge this small monthly price for the protection of the Almighty for 12 months!"

As I say, never confuse this with Daybreak - although with the stupid competition phone-in question mainly designed to make bucket loads of money out of the very tired, housekeepers and the unemployed increasingly it appears that only a mother could tell them apart - DAYSTAR is much less wholesome. Even accounting for the Chiles.

Caiptean Planaid? Caiptean purraghlas more like.

Over the past half decade or so superhero films have been coming at us faster than a speeding bullet. There have been new films, sequels, prequels, origin stories, those darker "reboots of the franchise" [a terrible, loveless term] and with Spiderman there is now a reimaginging origin story of the reboot.

It appears that the bottom of the super-barrel is becoming more translucent. Recently the superhero genre has began throwing up more left of centre characters onto celluloid. Thor, Captain America and the one whose power appeared to be the ability to hold up a minor's lamp have all came to the fore. And now the inevitability has finally happened. Captain Planet is being made into a film. Captain Planet. The worst superhero ever.

A superhero cartoon with all the appearance of having been commissioned by the UN, the premise was Captain Planet, with the help of children known as Planeteers, fought those who preferred profit margins and corner-cutting over well managed environmentalism. Captain Planet came with a very unsubtle (and in trying to make it cool) uncool agenda of encouraging "the kids" to be environmentally friendly.

Perhaps it was that I first encountered Captain Planet as a Gaelic re-dubbing of the show and perhaps it was that I was not the target audience but I think it was more to do with the simple fact Captain Planet was inherently rubbish.

Every superhero has a weakness and his was notably troubling to me. His weakness wasn't some sort of magical space rock, getting his hair cut, magnets or even a thing for gin. Nope, Captain Planet was struck useless with pollution. That's right - the very thing that he is trying to tackle. How pointless is that? I would think that the a typical scene from the upcoming film will be something like this:

[children]: We are in over our heads here. Best summon Captain Planet. Ok - let's touch our rings [steady now]
Swoosh! Captain Planet (played by Mel Gibson from Lethal Weapon 1) bursts through the earth and flies about. Eventually he lands beside the Planeteers.
[children]: Hi Captain Planet! Please help us.
[Mel Gibson]: What seems to be the problem?
[children]: It's over there, Captain Planet. Just in those containers.
[Mel Gibson]: Something over there? In the?.. dear sweet mother of... they've (cough) Jeezus... mixed clear with... green bottles in the recycling bank. What monsters would do... I am not feeling too good, Planeteers...
[children] What? Where are you going, Captain Planet?
[Mel Gibson]: I need to go, have a wash, try to get the image out of my head, you know?
Later, the Planeteers are hiding beside a rusting truck next to a river in the Rain Forest. It is night and the children talk in whispers.
[Children]: We have to stop these Global Incorporate goons from dumping the toxic waste into this river. The river leads through the rare frog habitat and right to the village. If this fragile ecosystem is disturbed at all it will lead to the end of any hope to cure Mother Earth. Let's call Captain Planet.
[The children use their telepathic link to contact Captain Planet]: Captain Planet - we have uncovered the evil plan of Global Incorporate, they are pouring toxic waste into the...
[Mel Gibson]: Toxic waste? Ok kids, let me stop you there. I am taking a Duvet Day.

Would you go see that? Of course you wouldn't. But that's what they will make. And if they don't, it will be a farce of the original.

The film Kick-Ass showed the flip-side to the genre. Ordinary people taking on the roles of the superheroes with no discernible extraordinary power. I have riffed before in this blog that life is imitating fiction in this light: Americans taking it upon themselves to be superheroes/vigilantes around their own small, white picket fence communities.

Well, as life imitates fiction so Britain does with the USA as last night the television programme Superheroes of Suburbia (Channel 4) revealed. The phenominon of ordinary folk taking to the streets in capes was told through following 3 of those who had taken up the venture.

We saw man who wears a costume crossed between Batman, police riot gear and an Ancient Greek warrior. The Dark Spartan (his secret identity name, name on passport: William) patrols the mean streets to help drunk citizens get home by night and by day is a husband and father of two, late 20 something year old who works in finance. His wife sits between shaking her head in "what can you do?" disbelief at his nocturnal hobby and taking a number of drugs for the stress she has developed at his nocturnal hobby.

To ease his wife's worries, The Dark Spartan interviews for a side-kick. A man dressed in an all-in-one spandex body suit and calling himself "The Void" comes round to their house. He displays his skills with a walking cane - twirling it (slowly) and occasionally thrusting it out in the back garden. The wife asks if the cane was legal. The Void replies, "Yes. I need it because I have IBS" (only by day, I would assume).

Kieran, 17, also wants to be a superhero. Noir ("because it means black") was just starting out. He wants to start out quite ambitiously for someone who has panic attacks in public spaces, continually takes off his mask thereby revealing his identity and says that his martial arts training (he is getting lessons from his friend, Barry - in my opinion a far more likely candidate to be a superhero) is not going too well: "I find co-ordination difficult". Noir is out to catch and punch a mugger he read about in the local paper. The mugger broke the arm of a 16 year old girl and has not been brought to justice. Things are about to change.

Noir gets down to the detective work. Wandering the streets dressed all in black, save for a red eye-mask (that's not Noir, what kind of two-bit thinking is that? Batman doesn't have a Cat-mobile) asking at the local butchers and hairdressers if they know anything about the mugging. They don't. They can't even help him trace the girl.

I can't help thinking if he went to the local press offices they might have been able to help - but he doesn't go. [Why am I even getting myself involved here? He is a grown boy walking about with what looks like a cereal box torn into a tiny eye mask on his face. Should he actually track down the mugger it will either go one of two ways - he'll get mugged or Noir will go beserk and smash the mugger's head into a pulp with a telephone. Both outcomes are pretty bad, really.]

When he does eventually get in touch with the girl, (almost certainly with the help of a TV crew following him) it is all a little sad. She has been too traumatised to leave the house since and doesn't want to talk, even to a superhero. Noir retires to his lair (bedroom) and resolves to write her a letter saying things will get better and keep hope in the goodness of people. Noir has the hand writing of a serial killer and would be best to invest in a Noir-typewriter. He delivers his letter with a box of Malteasers - leaving them at her door.

This, to me, seems an all round superior heroic act.

Of course, not all home-spun superheroes are failures. There lurks Ken, The Shadow. An ex-army man, Ken roams the streets looking to stop anti-social behaviour. With a full ninja outfit, fully stocked out armoury in his shed (replete with ninja stars, actual proper gun rifles, swords and even a Bond-esque breathing straw shaped like water bamboo for underwater surprise attacks) Ken stalks out his victims... er I mean wrongdoers... with military precision. He uses a GI Joe action figure as himself, chalk drawn streets on the back garden paving slabs and matchbox cars to explain how he will stop a group of boy racers. When he finally decides to confront the youths after following their movements for 5 weeks, he sits in a bush for a while, waiting - admitting to urinating on himself, not wanting to break cover - but they fail to show. So he demonstrates what he would have done (it is terrifying to be fair and in no way, surely, legal) and goes home.

All these would-be superheroes have a commonality. They all should seek mental health help. The Dark Spartan's wife says that she feels he is not happy with who he is. Noir has a few diagnosed mental health issues already. Ken in his White Transit Van of Patient Death is psychotic.

The thing is - none of them need to to do all this nonsense to be better than a legitimate movie superhero. If they only recycled their plastic cartons regularly and put up a solar panel or two then they would be way more effective than a certain Caiptean Planaid. And maybe that was the point of that cartoon all along.

Judging a Book by It's Cover - no. 4

Ok, ok - welcome to another of the popular irregular feature: Judging a Book by it's Cover!

It appears that this book is fairly straightforward. It is a handbook, guide and companion for those who wish the elevation from cool to awesome. But which of the people featured on the cover is Awesome?

Now, you might immediately go for the blond man. And why wouldn't you? The photograph is composed in a manner that he is the focal point. He is holding the conversation and the others in the picture seem to be enjoying his tales. But that's just what they want you to think, and that is just exactly why you are wrong! He is practicing - he is you! And you are buying this book because you are NOT awesome. Sure, he is cool... but awesome has not been attained by this man.

In actual fact the person who is awesome is the one in the foreground. I mean, look at the jumper. Who would wear that? Someone who is awesome, that's who. He also has awesome hair: Wholesome and approachable for the mothers but tinged with a little grunge danger styling for the daughters. And he listens to that new band: Hootie and the Blowfish. He watched the first 4 episodes of Friends and does a hilarious impression of Ross [he accentuates the word "be" in rhetorical sentences about situations]. He can play the incidental music from Due South on a guitar. He knows a few soccer ball tricks but doesn't take part in the school sports' teams. He admits to being a bit of a computer nerd but thinks that home computing may just be taking off so shrugs off the taunts from the skate-boarding crowd. In any case, they know he likes a half-pipe as much as anyone.

Yip - he is totally awesome.

And what is the point of being awesome - what is in it for you? Loads of friendship bracelets.

I assuming this book was published in 1994.

The Scheme II: Choose - Me or the Blues

This year, last year’s BBC (as the kids are prone to say) “rating’s winner”, The Scheme, the real-life docu-soap opera about neighbors in a Scottish scheme returned to the telly box to complete its curtailed run because the police got involved last time. Last year I blogged about it and so it seems fitting that I do so again, even if I am not saying anything all that new about it.

As with the best soaps about neighbors, here is a short reminder of how we left the residents last year: As a bunch of scumbos.

Or, slightly more expansively: In a drug laced, violent, sucking tar pool of a place dripping with neglect that held no chance of redemption to anyone resembling a contributory life, we saw Marvin battle and lose his addiction to heroin, and despite stating he was “happy as Larry” at her return, subsequently beat up his just out of jail, pregnant, addict girlfriend. We witnessed a holiday go bad when the mum and dad in trying to overcome their own alcoholism left their reprehensible 20 year old behind (locking him out the house) returned to find he got his 16 year old girlfriend pregnant and was now more determined than ever to start a heroin addiction of his own. We saw Bullet the Dog escape the show by cleverly throwing himself under a passing car.

This programme was depravity on a scale that should have had Ant and Dec standing with a running number caption underneath as they beg for our pledges.

The Scheme had been criticised equally as a form of “social racism” and elicited a university online debate asking if it was “Poverty Porn for the middle-classes".

Although, admittedly, there are now people taking tours of the scheme to the extent that residents have been forced to make homemade warning signs from the (possibly stolen)sides of sheds, the show was not filmed gratuitously.
Of course there will have been some playing up to the cameras and their image but generally it was pretty clear how people live and operate was accurate. Seldom will somebody shoot up just to play up to a stereotype. Rooms in lieu of any paint or wallpaper were covered in the family and friends' graffiti tags nibbed in thick, black marker - sometimes the doors too - were not stage backdrops to faked feelings.

These were people when confronted with the accusation "You wouldn't do that in your own house" could all respond: "That's where I learnt to do this".

The BBC defended the decision to bring the series back because, it said, the show didn’t have the chance to reveal the hope and lightness in the latter episodes. I think that this is also shirking the real point.

The BBC by little design, created a must watch TV programme. The plays on i-player of an episode regualrly topped a full week's of Eastenders. And not just in my house. The BBC was always going to schedule the remaining episodes in spite, and even because, of the controversy and cult aspects.

In truth all I wondered was if it could give the same death rattle laughs of the damned over the bleak landscape of the reality it depicted in episodes 1 and 2? There was no doubt – the fun had drained away somewhat in episodes 3 and 4. The hope and lightness the BBC promised only served to make the darkness darker and those without hope appear more hopeless by contrast.

If the house proud husband and wife introduced in episode 3, (who, perhaps significantly, had managed to buy their council home) where they entered in the Lovely Garden competition (coming 2nd) were the supposed regeneration in the cells of The Scheme then the new family also introduced was as tactless as cancer.

This family, the brilliantly Scots mafia named McMurray’s, composed of a single mother at the end of her tether, eldest son (tackling the obligatory heroin addiction), middle daughter (a persistent offender with a foul quick-fire lexicon and “FUCK ME” written in day-glo pink on sunglasses) and youngest son (trying to get an education if he could only stop doing the “daft things” like – allegedly – holding up the local Post Office round the corner – which he almost certainly did do).

We further managed to catch up with the pro-active group formed to restore a community centre to the scheme. This was perhaps the BBC’s defense of the programme made extant: Hope and stoic heroism to admire. The group had identified the dilapidated old centre as potential premises and had been working hard (with the words of inspiration and then, when she died, spirit of the matriarch of the group behind them) to obtain the lease from the council. They had raised £4000 – which was exceptional given their circumstances – but their plans were dashed when a quote of £30,000 was handed to them by the council in order to allow them to use the building safely. Although, I would have given it 3 months before the center was raised to the ground by youths if they even had the funds to open it in any case, the fact that these people had little understanding of costs due to their own living conditions was starkly sad.

This was now onto Emperor Strikes Back layers of misery.

With the characters not doing anything particularly amusing – filming someone self-administering hard drugs through a dirty, bent needle, in his mum’s kitchen and listening to a 6 months' pregnant 16 year old muse between puffs of a cigarette of a faith that the 20 year old father-to-be will “get aff the heroin, like” in time for the birth while in fact we have just seen footage spliced in of him making no such attempt are both scenes which are mainly mirth free – so it is up to the narrator to add the laughs.

Breezily the voiceover states:
“It’s the next day in the scheme and James is off to get his morning bag of smack”. If not for the plucked out notes of a particularly depressing Radiohead guitar solo tribute in the background and the “smack” bit he might as well have been contextualizing a scene from Portland Bill for kids. Utterly surreal.

The series ends with a narrative roundup of the characters:

“James is trying once more to quit his heroin addiction” (earlier James explains how hard it is – with nothing to do everyday a £100 a week benefit is not enough to kick the habit, but just handily enough to buy lots of heroin), the youngest son from the McMurray family had been given a 2nd chance at gaining a college place (after spoiling his first with what his tutor described as: “intensive homophobic bullying”) and the voiceover perkily informs us: “Steven decided not to go to college in the end but committed grievous bodily harm and is now serving a 1 year prison sentence” in the same BBC tone that suggests he might continue with: “Meanwhile Bouncer the dog has got stuck in a picnic hamper trying to get to eat the cakes in it and no one knows he is on the way to the Bungle-Bungles in Helen Robinson’s car as she travels in hope of painting another masterpiece in tertiary.”

The 16 year old girl by now has given birth. She sits lackadaisically wishing to the camera that her baby will have a normal family life, remaining convinced that the father will give up his drug habit soon. But young, jobless, having a drug addled (with penchant for photographing himself with swords on social networking sites) father of her child, sat in a house provided through a charity for the homeless and living off state benefit is where she is and thoughts have to move to the chances for the baby daughter getting anywhere close to a normal family life and in turn being able to provide one to her own family when the time comes. Probably in 15 years.

It is the ever depreciating circle of life of The Scheme. Animate that one with lions, Disney, if you dare.