The Hell of it All Read online

  – Despite my kind words here, the dumb-but-fun Heroes went all to shit in its second season. That’s life.

  Charley Hoarse [28 July 2007]

  And on the 55th day, God sent a flood to destroy all of Britainkind. And Oxfordshire sank. And Gloucestershire sank. And the Vale of Evesham became a stagnant puddle with a few bits of roof poking out of it. And Sky News did sadly gaze upon the scene, running a Breaking News caption each time a lilypad floateth past, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, for even though this was the most boring natural disaster of all time, there was much ruining of carpet and wine cellar, and the people were greatly upset. And eventually God appearethed at a hastily-arranged press conferenceth and said, ‘lo, I missed.’ And God wenteth on to admitteth he’d been aiming for Borehamwood in a desperate bid to silence Charley off Big Brother 8 who, God explaineth, gets right on God’s tits with her constant bloody jawing, like.

  Deities aside, it’s hard to imagine anything that could shut Charley up. She’s the most boring housemate in the programme’s history – far more boring than the ones who spend their time moping silently in the background, like Thingytits from year two and Whatsisarse from year four, because she’s pro-actively boring. Unstoppably so. She’d cross a lake of fire to babble into your ear about herself for 17 solid hours.

  Charley’s name is fitting, because listening to her ceaseless self-centred rambling is PRECISELY like listening to a dreary cokehead chewing your ear off at 3 a.m. with a punishing soliloquy about what they’re like and what they think and what the really great thing about them is. Frighteningly, Charley’s not on coke. Can you IMAGINE what she’d be like if she was?

  Actually, there’s no point imagining. She’d never get hooked in the first place. Pass her a mirror with a white line on it, and she’d automatically blow it out of the way to get a better look at herself. She can’t strut past any vaguely reflective surface without compulsively pouting and checking her hair. Stand Charley in front of a weeping widow at a funeral, and she’d command her to keep still while she checked her reflection in the teardrops.

  Maybe she’ll be out by the time you read this; it’s possible, although I’ve given up assuming. She’s been stuck in there so long, and against so many odds, she feels like a ghost that’s been haunting the building for centuries. Chances are she’ll steadily eat herself alive – courtesy of that weird hand-chewing thing she constantly does – rather than be evicted.

  With weeks still to go, rumours abound that yet another twist is in the offing. After the All-Girl Opening twist, the Prize Money twist, the Fake Eviction twist and the Unconvincing Australian twist, loyal viewers suffering repetitive twist fatigue must be praying for a Not a Twist at All twist in which precisely nothing unusual happens. Although if there MUST be a twist, I’d welcome one in which the twins have to run out of the nearest fire exit and keep going until they’re 10,000 miles from the nearest camera or microphone.

  Incidentally, is it me, or are they not ‘identical’ any more? One’s getting thinner, and the other one’s swelling like an ankle. It’d be interesting to see if she’s put on precisely the same amount of weight as the other one’s lost. In fact it might even make the show seem like a valid ‘experiment’ after all. Hey, what’ll happen if we feed one of them nothing but baking soda for a week? Let’s find out! Cool!

  Speaking of experiments, Brian is now my favourite to win. Under-educated rather than stupid, and with a voice so low and slow it sounds like the electronically disguised intonations of a silhouetted whistleblower in a hard-hitting documentary, Brian’s so inherently sweet-natured he’s impossible to fully dislike, even if you strain your hate cells.

  You know how you can always cheer up an upset toddler by hiding your face behind your hands, then parting them quickly and saying ‘peek-a-boo’? And you know that dopey gurgling smile that spreads across its face when you do that? Well, that’s Brian basically. And that’s why he should win.

  The endearing Jamie Oliver [4 August 2007]

  Jamie Oliver. Now there’s a man who provokes a reaction. On the one hand, he’s a cheeky, knockabout TV chef. And on the other, there’s Jamie Oliver’s Cookin’: Music to Cook By.

  In case you’d repressed this particular abuse memory, Jamie Oliver’s Cookin’ was a compilation CD released (and heavily advertised) in the year 2000. ‘A good blast of these tunes, a nice bit of tukka and some good company is the recipe for a nice time. Happy days!’ said Jamie in the accompanying blurb. Yet track one is ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ by Toploader: the sort of song that comes on the car radio while you’re gassing yourself with a hose, and merely serves to reinforce your decision.

  The TV ad featured Jamie on drums, bashing out a pukka rhythm and wearing a gummy open-mouthed grin, like a drunk who’s just kicked his own teeth out and thinks it’s hilarious. It caused many to regard Mr Oliver with a level of contempt normally reserved for war criminals.

  I didn’t make up my mind until I caught wind of the outpouring of middle-class smug-o-wank surrounding his School Dinners series, which gave despicable 4x4-driving parents something to feel all superior about: they could tut at the McNugget-wolfing pauper kids while simultaneously shovelling chargrilled asparagus and parmesan shavings down their own spoilt shitbag children’s throats.

  It was then I decided Jamie Oliver was worse than Satan – which wasn’t really fair, since all he’d done was spruce up a school menu or two. He didn’t hypnotise the audience into nodding along in unison. Now he’s back with a pared-down series called Jamie At Home, in which he simply enthuses about food each week for half an hour. It’s endearing. It is. Shut up. It is.

  This week: tomatoes. Jamie walks around his massive garden showing us some tomatoes he’s grown. Try not to notice how massive and posh his garden is, because you’ll want to hit him, and instead focus on the tomatoes. Look! He’s slicing them up into a salad! And it looks bloody delicious. A plateful of juicy homegrown tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and herbs and tiny shards of chilli, with a few blobs of mozzarella beside it, glistening in the sun and …

  Hang on. The credits list no fewer than four ‘food stylists’. One ‘senior food stylist’, three regular ‘food stylists’, and one ‘assistant food stylist’. Which presumably explains why those tomatoes looked so nice. Four people stood around doing that salad’s hair. Somehow, I feel cheated. But mainly bewildered. And a bit scared. I mean ‘food stylist’? What kind of modern hell are we living in here? How do you get into it? Where do you train? Can you get a food styling degree? Do food stylists have their own trade magazine? ‘Strawberry Hat – the Food Stylist’s bible’. As ridiculous career choices go, it’s up there with ‘bee dentist’. This world is doomed.

  Straight after Jamie At Home comes Cook Yourself Thin. Each week ‘four cool cooks’ take a flabby prole and teach her to cook slimline versions of her favourite recipes. That’s the idea. It’s flawed. For one thing, the moment the voiceover calls them ‘cool cooks’, you want everyone involved to pack up and go home. What’s more, they’re plainly too plump to be hosting a show called Cook Yourself Thin. One’s got arms like a fat scout’s thighs, for Christ’s sake.

  Worst of all, the cookery’s a swizz. This week, a woman who likes roast beef dinners is told to drop Yorkshire pudding, use chicken not beef, and swap the big, golden, crispy roast spuds for weasly new potatoes in their skins. That’s shit! It’s not the same.

  At the end, having eaten their recipes for six weeks, she’s dropped two dress sizes! Amazing! Unless you pay attention to the large onscreen caption which explains she’s also been ‘encouraged to exercise’, that is. Perhaps, in the new TV spirit of truth and honesty, it should be renamed ‘Cook Completely Different Things and Jog Yourself Thin’ instead. Or maybe just ‘Bullshit’.

  Pfff. This country.

  A weatherbeaten Richard Hammond [18 August 2007]

  Hey kids! And by ‘kids’ I mean you, even though you don’t look like a kid any more. Jesus, the age
ing process has kicked your arse worse than ebola, hasn’t it? Those jowls are practically down to your elbows. Ergh.

  Anyway, hey kids! Here’s a fun new game for you! Tune in to Bruce Parry’s amazing adventures in Tribe and try to guess precisely how long you’d last in the same environment before suffering a breakdown, clawing at the lens and begging to be taken home to your coffee table and your pillows and your central heating and TV. This week, I managed about 38 seconds, which is an improvement of 20 seconds over the last series. I must be toughening up, like a great big grimacing hard man.

  In case you’re not familiar with the series, here’s how it works: each week, former Royal Marine Bruce Parry – who vaguely resembles a rugged, more weatherbeaten Richard Hammond – visits a remote tribe in order to experience their way of life. Which might sound a bit worthy and dull until you see exactly what ‘experiencing their way of life’ entails.

  Parry doesn’t stand around aloofly watching the natives and making wry asides to camera: he rolls his sleeves up and joins in. If the tribe goes hunting, he goes hunting. If the tribe get dirty, he gets dirty. And if the tribe indulge in a bewildering array of sadomasochistic rituals from flagellation to deliberate self-poisoning, he … well, you get the idea.

  Those sado-masochistic rituals form the centrepiece of this week’s instalment, in which Parry immerses himself in the life and culture of the Matis, a tribe of hunters from the Brazilian rainforest. The Matis were only ‘discovered’ by the outside world in the 1970s: within a few years we’d introduced them to T-shirts and rifles and – oops – hundreds of diseases they’d built up no immunity against. Lots of them died, so they’re understandably wary about letting outsiders back into their midst, and even warier about outsiders with cameras. Interestingly, they complain that previous film crews had ordered them around; told them to strip off and pretend they didn’t wear clothes to make for a racier documentary. Seems the ongoing TV fakery scandal has now reached as far as the Amazon.

  Parry wins their trust by undergoing four excruciating trials that wouldn’t look out of place in one of the Jackass movies. First, they squeeze some incredibly bitter fruit juice directly into his eye. Then they whip him. The fourth and final trial (being stung all over with some vicious form of nettle) looks unpleasant, but it’s not a patch on the third, which involves having a powerful frog poison smeared directly into a fresh wound on his arm. Before long Parry’s on all fours, spewing stomach contents with the force of a broken pump. (Thankfully, the camera doesn’t capture the next bit, where he runs behind a bush and virtually blasts his own pelvis through his arse during a spectacular anal evacuation.)

  Occasionally you suspect the Matis might simply be fucking with our Bruce, having a laugh at his expense – at one point they teach him some local phrases and stand around howling as he repeats them, parrot-style (naturally, they’ve taught him a load of obscenities). Suddenly I imagined a show in which a foreign reporter befriends a ‘tribe’ of ‘authentic’ Glaswegian teenagers, and enthusiastically participates in a series of ‘rituals’ they insist are genuine – drinking a pint of phlegm and sewing a ribbon on his bollocks.

  It’s a testament to Parry’s skill as a gung-ho, immersive presenter that even as a viewer, you quickly acclimatise to the tribe’s way of life, truly seeing them as people rather than exotic aliens. And there’s plenty we could learn from them. The Matis have a regular ceremony in which men disguised as ‘spirits of the forest’ dance into the camp and mercilessly thrash all the children with canes – for no particular reason, it seems, other than to shut them up. If that’s not the work of a truly utopian society, I don’t know what is.

  A moody shot of an inanimate object [25 August 2007]

  As the overlong, overcomplex, ratings-challenged Big Brother 8 enters its final week, it’s time to roll out the red carpet and introduce the annual Screen Burn Housemate Awards – coming to you live from a laptop in London’s glittering south end. Fanfares, golden envelopes, and a host of stars from stage and screen – none of these will be featuring. It’s just me, typing with an achy elbow. Whoopie doo.

  Anyway, let’s kick off by doling out the Biggest Waste of Space Ever to Enter That Godforsaken Building Award – which goes to Billi, the insignificant monotone gonk who drifted across your screen for about 10 minutes, mumbling about hair straighteners like the world’s most tedious ghost. You know how every so often the Big Brother editors like to open a section with a moody shot of an inanimate object – an outdoor chair with dew glistening on it, or a spoon on the sideboard – as though they’re constructing an arthouse masterpiece? Well each time Billi appeared on screen, I hoped it would cut to one of those. Just to liven things up.

  The Cheesiest Git award goes to Ziggy, the lipless human shrug. Obsessed with preserving his nice-guy image, he spent decades tirelessly explaining what a reasonable and tolerant human being he was, accompanying each monologue with a series of open-palmed, eyebrow-raising ‘honesty’ tics that made him look absolutely mental on fast forward. As a result of these incessant hey-I’m-one-of-the-good-guys routines, Ziggy wrinkled his forehead so often it developed an alarmingly deep set of lines, like isobars on a weather map drawn in charcoal. In fact by the end of the series, his forehead was so weird and furrowed I kept mistaking him for one of those rubbish aliens that used to turn up on shows like Deep Space Nine, indistinguishable from a human apart from some kind of zany prosthetic brow.

  As narcissistic as Ziggy appeared, he wasn’t a patch on the Most Psychotically Self-Obsessed Housemate In History – Charley. Or Hurricane Charley, to use her full name. Apparently suffering from some kind of OCD compulsion to repetitively flick her hair and pout at the nearest mirror, Charley wasn’t content to be the centre of her own universe, and tried to impinge on everyone else’s. The mildest perceived slight would cause her to launch into a feverishly gabbled diatribe, often so absurdly one-sided and abusive it scarcely made sense. Arguing seemed to give her purpose in life; locked alone in a shed for six days, Charley would pick fights with her own thumb for entertainment.

  The Best Lookalike Award is always a hotly contested category, and this year was provided a bumper crop. Almost everybody looked like somebody famous. We’ll overlook some of the glaring doppelgängers (Ziggy = Christian Bale, Chanelle = Posh Spice), and subtler similarities (Charley = Charlie Williams, David = Ray Liotta), and present the award to Jonty, for his startling quasi-resemblance to Mark Lawson – not the closest lookalike ever, but close enough to make it vaguely possible that some day soon Lawson will be walking down the street only to find himself suddenly surrounded by squealing teenage Big Brother fans jumping up and down and taking his photo, while a van driver zooms past parping his horn and bellowing ‘Jontyyyyyy you fuckahhhh!’ out the window and then we zoom in on Lawson’s face and he’s absolutely fuming and IT’S FUNNY TO THINK ABOUT THAT. Which is why Jonty wins.

  Finally, the Let Brian Win award goes to Brian, on the grounds that Brian should win. He’s possibly the most thoroughly good-natured housemate in the programme’s history, and deserves the prize money simply for being so nice. At the time of writing, the creepy twins are his closest competition, but they’d only waste the cash on nonsense. So will Brian, of course, but at least he’ll guffaw like a baritone cartoon bear as he does so. BRI 2 WIN!!!!!!

  – Brian did, indeed, win.

  ‘What you see is what happened …’ [1 September 2007]

  If the ratings are to be believed, almost everyone in the country has been watching The X Factor. Last week, 500 million people tuned in: a whopping 654% audience share. It almost won its slot, but was narrowly pipped to the post by a repeat showing of Rockliffe’s Babies on UKTV Gold 2 +1 (a brilliant episode, to be fair – it was the one where they caught a man doing a thing and then some stuff happened and then it was the end).

  We’re clearly still not sick of Cowell and co just yet. In fact it seems we’re content to watch what is essentially the same series year in, year out; the broadcast
equivalent of a recurring dream. Rather than forming an angry mob and storming the ITV building armed with cudgels and staves, we sit and dribble and clap our hands, gurgling ‘again! again!’ like toddlers enjoying the repetition on Teletubbies. Well, I do anyway.

  These bumper ratings have come in the middle of an interesting time for TV, as the industry suffers a collective nervous breakdown, gazing up its own arse and wondering whether the turds lodged within are real or fake. At last week’s Edinburgh TV festival, there was much agonised discussion about a ‘crisis of trust’, and a fault line developing in the ‘relationship with the viewer’. Since The X Factor got swept up into the ongoing fakery argument too, it seems audience figures are largely unaffected by the ‘crisis’, provided you serve up enough desperate losers for them to point and laugh at.

  But since ITV are, hilariously, promising ‘zero tolerance’ for any and all forms of telly fakery, it’s worth asking just how real the show is. Early press reports, for instance, suggested the first episode included footage in which Cowell pulled an executive producer aside to discuss the return of Louis Walsh, which turned out to be a ‘pick-up shot’ rather than an actual record of events. Unless I blinked for an unusually long time, it had been removed from the broadcast version. But why? Walsh’s return seemed so thumpingly false anyway, the whole thing might as well have been an animated sequence. And no one gives a shit, because this is only wrestling, and not a real sport.