The Welch Squelch

First thing first: naturally, this blogger cannot contain his glee at Fiorentina’s marvellous 2-0 win over Liverpoo-el in their home Champions League encounter last week; witnessing the precocious talent of young Montenegro forward Stevan Jovetic come alive in front of Europe has put many, myself included, in mind of that young Viola star of two decades ago, Roberto Baggio.  Long may Jovetic blossom in Firenze - and for crying out loud, do not sell him to J******s at any cost.

Anyway, we might have had incredible young footballing talent 20 years ago, but thank Christ we didn’t have the eye-gouging, ear-bleeding awfulness that is TV3’s football coverage.  I won’t have a pop at the meedja’s Mr Versatile, Matt Cooper, whose presentation skills are not in doubt – even if his position as the channel’s Champions League frontman does somewhat put me in mind of the early days of Channel 5 in the UK, when they allowed horse racing’s Brough Scott to present their first live England football match, an occasion which, in turn, reminded me of one of those “In At The Deep End”-type programmes, where a bricklayer suddenly trains to be a stripper.

New Doctor, New Set Of Moaning Geeks…

Well, the excitement in Doctor Who-land didn’t last long, did it? The first pictures of the 11th Doctor Matt Smith and his new assistant Amy Pond (played by ‘wee’ Scots actress Karen Gillan) were published all over the British press this week as filming of the next series began in Cardiff.  But there’s already a chorus of whinges about his costume emanating from the grubby, hidden quarters of sci-fi-geek Inter-Nerd forums – the weird dimension where greasy-haired hordes of smelly, overweight, plastic bag-carrying, fully-grown adult males create a virtual “life” for themselves by railing against anything that resembles progress, and that almost entirely in the field of their favourite TV programme.

Doctor Who’s new executive producer Steven Moffat, a lifelong fan himself, has created what appears to me to be the perfect image for the new Doctor.  Matt Smith may, at 26, be the youngest actor to take on the role but the costume reflects that he’s still playing a Time Lord who’s almost 1000 years old.  Expressions like ‘geography teacher’ have been bandied around everywhere, but really, Smith’s look is part of a series of Moffat’s small nods to the Doctor’s own past which will put his stamp on the new era – those little nods are illustrated at the bottom of this post.

Terrorvision

All that’s missing from this picture is a little table with tea and HobNobs. 

A Mammoth Load Of Rubbish

The Elephant Princess.  Seriously, just how unrealistic can a children’s television programme get?  I’ve no problem with the basic premise: that this young, suburban Australian lass, Alexandra Wilson, who’s in a band and dreams of rock stardom, suddenly discovers that she’s Princess of this mystical kingdom called Manjipoor when she’s visited by this lad called Kuru and his magical elephant called Anala, both of whom then have to help her to master these new magical powers she’s acquired, as well as time-manage her with all her band goings on and the sheer unadulterated hell of being an Australian teenager.  No problem with all that at all.

Who Says The 1980s Weren’t Stylish?

The second series of Ashes To Ashes began last Monday night on BBC1.  It’s by no means as great as its predecessor, Life On Mars, but it’s a lot of fun nonetheless;  Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) is still the finest current comic creation on TV.   Anyway, this isn’t a TV review, it’s about the clothes.

The 1980s is generally the most unfairly maligned decade of the 20th Century.  Yes, people in the UK were living under the Thatcherite junta for the entirety of it, which was horrific, but, pop music-wise, it kicks the 1990s’ arse up and down the street and back again.  Yet, what gets the most vicious criticism is ’80s fashion.  (Or at least, that used to be the case – now, Top Shop looks like it had an accident and woke up in 1982.)

It was an extraordinarily colourful time, as any viewing of Top Of The Pops from that era will show you. Like any era’s fashion, the clothes had to be worn properly and with conviction in order to be carried off, the gentleman’s suit being no exception.  And no one, but no one, in popular music can wear a suit like Bryan Ferry.

Ham Acting Is The Least Of It…

Just how much humiliation can one band inflict upon itself?

Pat Kenny, Again

Another example of why the Late Late continues to be essential viewing.

Masterchef – It’s Final Week

“Pointing out the obvious in clichéd soundbites DOESN’T  get hammier than this..!”

An army marches on its stomach (and apparently plays hide-and-seek behind the heather too), especially a Scots one, but that’s no excuse for putting the three finalists in charge of their dinner in the open air of the Scottish Highlands, on Masterchef (BBC2) last night.  As 30 armed-and-starved men from The Black Watch menacingly approached the chefs’ woodland base from the purple-hued hills, our three heroes battled it out with huge trays of belly-filling stodge, being cooked over a fiery hole in the ground or in an oven made out of an oil drum.  They were under pressure as it was (the programme’s director seemed to be heavily implying, for the sake of drama, that they’d all be shot if dinner wasn’t ready by the time the soldiers had trudged to their tents), but there can’t be much in life more distracting than having Gregg Wallace and John Torode prodding them with irritatingly obvious questions, much sucking through their teeth and then making prematurely dire forecasts about their punctuality straight to camera within earshot. 

Much as I admire self-styled ‘vegetable guru’ Wallace, I hoped the contestants would end up stuffing an apple in his mouth and sticking him in the oil drum; to make it more pleasant for him, maybe they’d smother him in his beloved toffee first.  And while they were at it, lift the grill off the open hob and stick his Australian colleague into the fiery barbie-pit.  Actually, there’s a series-winning meal in itself:  Roasted Sticky Toffee-Apple Wallace, served with Celeriac Mash (naturally), with a side order of Torode-In-The-Hole.  It’s going to be a fun week….

American… Wonder Pests

“The phone/ The phone is ring-ing.” What the hell has happened to Wonder Pets?  Or, more specifically, the UK version?  Any parent who spends their mornings, afternoons and evenings being blasted by the unremitting fire cannon of kaleidoscopic, hyperactive, cacophonous, epileptic programming on Nick Jr knows what an oasis of calm and cuteness Wonder Pets was.  The everyday tale of a hamster (Linny), a turtle (Tuck) and a duckling (Ming-Ming) who reside in a school classroom by day and become heroic, bungling, inquisitive, resourceful and impossibly adorable rescuers by mid-afternoon, the series is, as you’d expect, an American import, which is revoiced for the UK audience by a team of beautifully well-spoken youngsters.  Until recently, anyway.  The most recent series have, either by terrible accident or less-than-intelligent design, done away with much of its adopted Englishness and allowed hideous psuedo-Americanism to creep into its dialogue.  Same accents, just a woeful slackening of standards, diction and jaws.

The Wonder Pets‘ signature tune previously featured the refrain, “What’s going to work? Teamwork!”  This has been replaced, without notice or parental advisory warning, by the awful, “What’s gunna work?”  In what way will this advance children?  Why introduce the fundamentals of text-speak to toddlers unless there’s a new Nick Jr Uk charter to wilfully dumb-down their audience?  Frankly, I was Outraged of Chiswick and shook my rolled-up copy of The Daily Express at the telly.  It was my absolute parental duty to risk life, limb and eardrum to switch this monstrosity off and change over to the relative safety of CBeebies – which would be my natural choice, anyway.  Mind you, I had an agenda.  What, you mean you haven’t seen Space Pirates?  You’re crumbling before me…

Thatchers’ Sitcom Just Gets Sillier

It had to happen, really; her mother is one of the most despised politicians in British history, her father was a much-lampooned, anti-socialist businessman  and her brother is a former rally driver, senza sense of direction, who was involved in an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea.  It was only a matter of time before Carol was making controversial headlines for something other than her former exploits in Ant & Dec’s publicity jungle.

In true Duke Of Edinburgh or Mary O’Rourke fashion, she showed just how easily un-PC remarks can slip on to the tip of her tongue when she described a tennis player as ‘a golliwog’ during what her agent, Ali Gunn, described as ”a private conversation” in the BBC green room following an edition of The One Show.  The BBC has removed Ms Thatcher from the show after she failed to make an unconditional apology for using the term, even though her comment was made off-air and was reported to the Corporation by an unnamed source.  The Daily Telegraph  yesterday reported that her remark referred to French player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  Ali Gunn said the BBC should apologise to her client for ‘condoning’ the leak of the private “joke”; she also said she would consider legal action against “anyone” who called Carol Thatcher a racist.

Well, obviously, IHGN is not calling her any such thing; however, there is certainly a long-standing and common opinion that words and terms such as “golliwog”, as well as Mary O’Rourke’s “worked like blacks” are unacceptable and outdated due to their racial connotations.  It makes no difference how many times (C)conservative or reactionary commentators describe their removal from common usage as “PC gone mad”, these are abusive terms which are likely to cause offence and as such, in any form of regular employment, could, and ordinarily would, lead to disciplinary action or dismissal. 

Carol Thatcher needs to ask herself, and answer honestly, why on earth a term like that should come so quickly to mind, particularly when she was employed by the BBC, an institution her parents both felt was left-wing and biased against the Thatcher government.  However, for the rest of us, it all adds to the ongoing sitcom of the Thatcher family; like a more serious version of Blackadder, it’s just a new generation’s turn to make people either reel back in horror or chortle up their sleeves.