Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn Read online

  Now wash your hands.

  Live and Dangerous [20 July 2000]

  Heard of screen burn? It used to affect computer monitors. If you used a particular program a lot, some of its prevailing visual features – the menu bar, for instance – would, over time, become permanently etched onto the screen, remaining faintly visible for evermore. Screensavers were invented to prevent this kind of damage, hence their name.

  Fascinating stuff. The point is this: if a similar phenomenon afflicted regular TV screens, you could be forgiven for expecting to find your set indelibly stained with Carol Vorderman. Not that you’d notice the change: it feels like she’s permanently onscreen anyway. But she isn’t the worst offender. In fact, in a list of the most-seen presenters on television in the latest edition of industry magazine Broadcast, Vorderman finishes fourth. You’re far more likely to wind up with Richard Madeley’s face burnt across your Trinitron, like some nightmarish twenty-first-century Turin Shroud: he and wife Judy Finnegan squat proudly at the top of the league. The charts were calculated according to ‘exposure factor’: the time in minutes they are seen by an ‘average’ viewer in one week. Richard and Judy win with 14.06 minutes for This Morning.

  The rest of the list contains several surprises, such as the news that the Antiques Roadshow’s Hugh Scully (number 19 on the overall list) enjoys more exposure than Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Tarbuck (languishing at number 24, thanks largely to the state of The Big Breakfast’s ratings, currently at art-house cinema levels). There’s also the non-appearance of Jamie Theakston or Dale Winton in the top 25, and the shocking revelation that Gloria Hunniford is still working – although only on Channel Five, which means she might as well be reading Ladybird books to a bunch of worms in a skip. Oh, and one truly terrifying fact: the average viewer watches Jim Davidson for a full 6.49 minutes every week. Coincidentally, this is also the precise amount of time it takes to grind your own teeth to powder in an impotent rage.

  But the list also shatters several key TV presentation myths – such as the assumption that to enjoy success you have to be young and attractive. This simply isn’t true.

  Take the ‘attractive’ bit. Consider Michael Parkinson (number 25), a man with a face like a corpse’s shoe – or the downright Tolkeinesque Alan Titchmarsh, who could wander through a forest scaring knotholes from the trees simply by smiling at them. Think: did you really splash out on that top-of-the-range brushed-aluminium Panasonic set just so you could experience Titchmarsh’s inadvertent gurning in digital widescreen? So you could hear your kids screaming about the scary man with his face pressed against the glass? Well? Maybe it’s just me, but whenever Titchmarsh turns to camera I always imagine he’s about to lean out of the screen and try to lick my neck. It’s frightening. But there he is regardless, sitting unpretty at number 9. Then there’s Davidson, Whiteley, Scully … all of them about as easy on the eye as a handful of shattered monkey-nut husks unexpectedly flung in your face by a passing drunk.

  Still, it’s unfair to judge people on appearance. There’s age to consider as well. And the nation’s top telly faces are old, man. The average age of the top five BBC1 presenters is 47.8, while their ITV equivalents are even older, at an average of 50.8 years of age. Even the painfully hip Channel 4, which arrives at work riding a pavement scooter and clutching a punnet of takeaway sushi, can only manage 45.6. The unseen, ghostlike Channel Five has by far the perkiest presenters – their top five come in at around 38.3 years old, despite the handicap of a sixty-year-old Hunniford dragging their average age coffinward.

  So if duff looks and senility aren’t handicaps, what will hold you back? The answer, it would appear, is a personality, since the majority of names on the list are about as inspiring as a scratch on a Formica desktop. Lineker (2), Lynam (3), Aspel (20), Kilroy (23) … they may be professional, but they sure as heck ain’t interesting. Perhaps the blandest of the lot is Steve Rider, described as ‘TV’s Mister Charisma’ for the first and only time in his life in this very sentence, straight in at number 14, thanks to his Grandstand appearances (doing a regular sports gig is a good way of gatecrashing the list, which explains the appearance of David Vine, six places ahead of Carol Smillie at number 10).

  There are bright spots. Ant and Dec (6) are chirpy and likeable, and even if you can’t bear Barrymore (18), or Tarrant (5), they’re at least vaguely anarchic in spirit. Otherwise, it seems we like our TV presenters to encompass everything we wouldn’t look for in a potential sexual partner: aged, ugly, and utterly personality-free. And considering the amount of time we’re going to end up spending with them, that’s downright sick.

  No Pain, No Gain [22 November 2000]

  Last week, Coronation Street was accused of sadism. Not because of that aggravating theme tune (the aural equivalent of having half-chewed, week-old Battenberg cake dribbled into your ear canal by a senile grandparent), but because of the bothersome antics of Weatherfield’s number one bad guy, Jez Quigley – a seriously unpleasant cross between John ‘Cold Feet’ Thomson and the head Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine. The majority of complaints were provoked by a scene in which Quigley attempted to smother Street wideboy Steve McDonald as he lay injured in hospital. Having been confronted with some genuine menace for once, as opposed to the Street’s usual pantomime whimsy, a bunch of easily rattled simpletons phoned the ITC in protest. The regulator agreed that, yes, it was all a bit unpleasant, wasn’t it? Foul Mr Quigley had appeared to ‘enjoy’ inflicting pain, and that simply wouldn’t do. Well, look, he was hurting Steve McDonald for God’s sake – an oily, opportunistic skunk so astoundingly unsympathetic that an arthritic priest would can-can for joy at the news of his violent death. The main thrust of the ITC’s condemnation was that Quigley’s lurid display of sadistic nastiness might have upset the show’s younger viewers – presumably they’ll go on to declare that in future, all fictional drug-dealing villains should be played by one of the Chuckle Brothers, in order to lessen any potential trauma.

  Still, out of many millions of viewers, only four actually complained, while the rest gawped on in pleasure, drowsily spooning mouthfuls of congealing Bolognese into their glistening chops while Quigley eventually sputtered his last, courtesy of a broken rib poking through his lung. With any luck the success of this unusually bleak Street story line will encourage Granada to crank up the show’s violence quota considerably, turning it into something akin to an Alan Bennett adaptation of Fight Club.

  Even the sponsorship stings could join in the fray: whose heart could fail to be lightened by a sequence in which one of those cheery Cadbury’s chocolate proles unexpectedly plunges a shortbread screwdriver into a co-worker’s forehead, then jigs with delight as the caramel brains ooze out and slap messily against the marshmallow cobblestones? Well?

  If the Street fails to capitalise on its gore-spattered lead, the remaining soaps should seize the initiative and usher back in a golden age of needless violence. Remember Dynasty’s machine-gun massacre? Brookside’s Jordache stabbing? We deserve to see their like again.

  EastEnders should try harder. For starters, they can forget about supposed arch-baddie Nick Cotton. The man simply isn’t menacing; he’s half as terrifying as an Argos catalogue. Whereas Jez Quigley looked as though he’d enjoy riding an onyx stallion through a field full of groaning, recently impaled victims before galloping home to bathe in the blood of the fallen, Nick Cotton merely looks like he might, at a push, dispute the price of a dented tin of custard with a supermarket checkout girl while you wait behind him, wondering when he last washed his hair.

  Here’s what they should do: with a nod to the recent box-office success of Gladiator, they should dig up that drab little garden in the centre of Albert Square and replace it with an immense coliseum in which Walford residents settle their differences. Phil Mitchell is no Russell Crowe, but what a thrill it would be to watch him mercilessly pursuing Sonia around a sand-filled arena, frantically twirling a mace. They could take bets on the BBC website, and donate the proce
eds to Children In Need: I’ll have a tenner on Barry Evans (trident, net) versus Beppe (twin daggers, shield). And Roy could make an excellent thumbs-up/thumbs-down Caesar figure, although you’d have to shield your eyes if he turned round suddenly and his toga rode up.

  Speaking of togas, our soaps could do with more naked flesh too.

  Sex-crazed Hollyoaks (aka ‘S Club 7 Street’) is currently the market leader – it’s like watching a group of aroused, anatomically correct Chapman Brothers dummies jostling in a tube carriage. It recently featured an entirely implausible naturist swimming club, and now both Brookside and EastEnders are to follow, showcasing special ‘nudity’ subplots. Albert Square is set to be rocked by plans for a nude calendar shoot of Queen Vic regulars. If you’re reading this while eating, you’ll be delighted to learn the April page features a blistering close-up of a full-frontal Ian Beale sprawling open-legged on a leather sofa.

  Not really. Still, thank your lucky stars Ethel’s dead, or they might have crowned her Miss July. Then again, they still might.

  PART ONE 2000

  In which Casualty is slated, Sadowitz is praised, and a man called Craig wins the first Big Brother.

  The Very Worst Careers Imaginable [12 August]

  Hate your job? Weep yourself awake each Monday morning? Spend the working day toying with your desktop icons while nonchalantly contemplating suicide? Ever considered doing something – anything – else? Then whatever you do, don’t look to the coming week’s television for inspiration. Tucked away in the schedules are four glaring examples of the very worst careers imaginable this side of ‘oil-rig bitch’.

  First up servile pandering, or ‘being a butler’, as it’s commonly known. Country House (BBC2) charts life at Woburn Abbey. We watch as newbie butler Grant, a fresh-faced cross between Tintin and Rick Astley, is inaugurated into the laugh-a-decade world of the stately-home servant.

  He receives a lesson in pointlessly polishing silverware from a man who’s spent 30 years pointlessly polishing silverware himself, and doesn’t care who knows it. Grant learns it takes over half an hour to ‘do’ a single tiny lid, scrubbing away while the great smell of ammonia slowly chews his face off. Later, he has to polish the entire contents of an immense cabinet full of ornate heirlooms. Presumably his predecessor bashed his own brains out with a pewter kettle during some kind of despair-fuelled epiphany.

  Crap job number two: the drudge-a-rific life of the secretary. Not that The Lipstick Years: Sec’s Appeal (BBC2) could give two hoots about anything as mundane as that. Instead Lowri Turner, adopting the presentational style of an actor in a DFS commercial, takes a scattergun look at wildly unrepresentative examples of the ‘personal assistant’. We’re treated to soundbites from current and former aides of Mohamed Al Fayed, Max Clifford, Ian Fleming and Andy Peters, coupled with worthless observations from Samantha Bond (Miss Moneypenny) and Anneka Rice (on the grounds that she used to be a secretary), punctuated by clips from old films and comedy shows. The few interesting revelations are so hopelessly lost behind the mass of knuckleheaded showbiz static that by the end you’ll have formed absolutely no opinions at all, except one: Lowri Turner is extremely annoying.

  Job number three is easily the worst: sitting in a laboratory with a hood over your head while a scientist pumps the stench of rotten meat and shit up your nose until your stomach starts convulsing.

  This takes place in the wonderful Anatomy of Disgust (C4), a new series pondering the ‘forgotten emotion’. Even when offered financial incentives, we’re told no one can withstand the hooded nasal ordeal for more than five minutes. The idea is to come up with a ‘stink bomb’ alternative to tear gas that can aid crowd dispersal. ‘We prefer to end the experiment before the subjects actually vomit into the hood,’ chuckles the maniac responsible.

  The programme is packed with interesting theories (apparently we find excrement disgusting because it’s an ‘ambiguous substance’ – not because it stinks, then) and several truly arresting sights. Professor Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania attempts to cajole children into taking bites from a dog turd sculpted from chocolate (toddlers will, eight-year-olds won’t). Later, in a truly bizarre demonstration of our capacity for disgust, he taps a nasty-looking Ritz cracker on a Nazi officer’s cap, and then offers it to a woman, who suddenly decides she’d rather not eat it, thanks. (Attention, Brit Art wannabes: tape the show, isolate and slow down this sequence, loop it, dub ‘You Win Again’ by Hot Chocolate over the top, and bingo: a video art installation.)

  Job number four is similarly strange: quantifying the beliefs of the woefully mistaken.

  In Jackpot (BBC2) William Hill employee Graham Sharpe calculates the odds for unusual bets, a task which involves dealing with countless UFO / Loch Ness Monster buffs, and people like Peter Boniface.

  In 1994 Boniface put £25 on each of his three children having a number one hit single by the age of 21, even though they sound like a dog getting its scrotum caught between the spokes of a passing motorcycle.

  ‘I don’t believe people are born with talent … a passion for what you’re doing, that’s what makes a champion,’ he announces cheerfully, sitting in front of a bookshelf closely resembling the self-improvement section of Waterstones (you know: titles like ‘Conquering Reality: Enjoy Imaginary Success Through the Miracle of Delusion’).

  Charitably, Sharpe gave odds of 250 to 1. Boniface gets £27,500 if his children succeed; enough to keep him in upbeat go-getter manuals until the apocalypse. Magic.

  I Wuv Monkey-Wunkies [19 August]

  Is Dr Charlotte Uhlenbroek real? A faultless cross between David Attenborough and a Stepford wife, she makes it through the whole of Cousins – The Monkeys (BBC1) without once losing her saccharine poise, even when clambering up a tree or wading knee-deep through a murky river in search of a camera-friendly primate to fawn over. She seems to have been programmed to address the camera with a non-threatening smile every 15 seconds, and to be honest, it’s a little bit frightening.

  Maybe she isn’t actually there at all. Maybe she’s some kind of sinister virtual avatar, digitally inserted into every scene by a fat Californian in an air-conditioned Santa Monican FX lab, silently licking Dorito salt from his lips as he subtly adjusts the camber of her left eyebrow. This pixel-perfect grace, combined with her movie-star looks and jolly-hockey-sticks-up-the-jungle attire, makes her practically identical to ‘Tomb Raider’ heroine Lara Croft – although, unlike Croft, whenever Uhlenbroek encounters a wild animal she doesn’t blast it repeatedly in the face with a shotgun while performing random somersaults through the air.

  Pity – a spot of acrobatic violence would improve things immensely. The overall tone is so unrelentingly, chokingly benign they may as well have ditched the title Cousins and called it ‘I Wuv Monkey-Wunkies’ instead. We see almost as much of Smiling Uhlenbroek as we do of the simians themselves, and in each shot she’s beaming like a Persil mum, gooning and cooing over the wretched things until you feel like snatching one from her hands and kicking it into the sky. Kids will love it, but kids are fundamentally stupid, really, aren’t they?

  Fundamental stupidity of a different kind abounds in I Dare You (C5), a gaudy look at the world of daredevils. This week, a Roberto Benigni lookalike calling himself ‘Super Joe Reed’ performs a bungee jump from a helicopter hovering 200 feet above the whirling blades of a second helicopter situated on the ground.

  If helicopter number one dips too low, or the elastic rope snaps, Super Joe will be instantly carved into a thousand gruesome slices – so it’s nice to know his wife and two young children are on the ground, recording Dad’s potential death plunge on the family camcorder.

  ‘I do get concerned sometimes, but Joe is very safety-conscious,’ says wife Jennifer, as her husband prepares to yo-yo above a twirling razor-sharp rotor for the sake of low-brow entertainment.

  ‘I’m going to come what they call “dangerously close” to those blades,’ announces the man himself, authoritatively.


  Before the leap, we’re treated to a soft-focus flip through Joe’s biography. A Fed Ex deliveryman during the week, his obsessive drive to indulge in derring-do grew from a need to impress his Vietnam vet father. ‘I was trying to get Dad’s attention every time I jumped off a ramp on a motorcycle,’ he confesses, over moving slomo footage of himself sustaining a serious injury. He seems genuinely unfazed by the potential dangers of the helicopter-bungee stunt. ‘If I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out in a blaze of glory,’ he says – although ‘in a hideous accident’ would surely be more accurate.

  Disappointingly, come the jump itself, he doesn’t lose so much as a fingertip – and despite the presence of cameras on the ground, we’re only shown the crucial moments from an overhead angle, making it impossible to judge how close Super Joe actually came to the blades.

  Still, watching him dangle above the churning rotor prompts an intriguing question: if the stunt went wrong, what kind of exotic, disjointed thoughts would pulse through Super Joe’s fevered consciousness at the precise moment the top of his head was lopped off and his brain got sliced into a tumbling flock of slippery grey mind-steaks?

  I have absolutely no idea, but the accompanying visions probably wouldn’t be a million miles away from the luridly hallucinogenic look of The Powerpuff Girls (Cartoon Network), a demented Hanna-Barbera cartoon series that plays like a cross between Japanese anime, Roger Ramjet, and the sort of thing you might see while suffering an unexpected blow to the back of the head.