TV Killing Kid

Don’t Get Me Started. Five: 7.15 pm. Tuesday 12 September.

I know this might sound strange, but I feel a tad sorry for Ann Widdecombe, MP. Like many backbench Tory MPs, Widdecombe is clearly out of place in modern society, which makes her (and their) influence on the laws of the land an uncomfortable notion.

On Five’s Don’t Get Me Started, Widdecombe squeezed into the pulpit and delivered her modern life is rubbish sermon: people today are far too obsessed with worshipping the false god that is the physical (or the “outer crust” in Ann’s winning phrase), infatuated with celebs, diets and image in a society where “stick thin twiglets reign supreme”.

Course they do. Only the other day Kate Moss was introducing legislation to tackle social exclusion while sentencing a couple of paparazzi to death by stoning.

In case we think it hypocritical of the recently blond dyed Ms Celebrity Fatclub to lecture on the dangers of physical vanity, Widdecombe preempts this by informing us her participation in the show was “all for health” reasons, although it’s somewhat more difficult to defend dying your hair blond on that basis.

Widdecombe trod the increasingly familiar path of current health and lifestyle issues, leading to a superficial examination of the £2 billion diet industry, the negative perceptions people have of fat people (their perceived laziness and slovenliness), “health establishment” scaremongering over clinical obesity (or being “mildly overweight” as Ann prefers), alleged collaboration between the “health establishment” and the slimming industry, cosmetic surgery and spa treatments, plus the obligatory facile observations from media commentators and clueless Joe Publics.

Personally, I would have preferred to hear a cardiologist detail the detrimental effects of a build up of fatty deposits on the heart rather than hear a vacuous psychotherapist publicise his half-baked theory (the “Adonis syndrome”) about the significance of body-image in Western society. There was also a total absence of a discussion of the implications of a population developing increasing rates of diabetes and other ailments as a consequence of obesity levels, but Ann would no doubt accuse me of being too fixated on the physical.

Widdecombe waddled around completely unable to grasp why some people might be so fixated on body-image, as might be expected from someone who’s never had to try and get laid in life. This made for uncomfortable viewing when seeing her interview an unfortunate woman whose plastic surgery had gone wrong, Widdecombe barely able to contain her ‘I told you so!’ expression. Her later confrontation with a cosmetic surgeon (“you trade in vanity!) was almost as memorable as her incredulity at “designer vaginas!” (Me too. It’s hard to believe that some women are going for the Kidman nose and the Widdecombe snatch.)

Granted, the continued pursuit of an unobtainable physical ideal is not the most rational course for people to pursue but, being a fully paid-up member of the God squad, Widdecombe should be more aware than most of how the irrational can inform people’s beliefs.

But getting underneath the ‘outer crust’ of the program, Widdecombe’s real concern is not there’s too much fat in your diet or too many glossy magazines on your coffee table but that there's not enough God. “As a Roman Catholic” (well she was Church of England until they ordained women) Ann turns “to the church for the meaning of life”, with “this life not the be all and end all”.

Well she’s rather fucked (for once) if it actually is.

So bring on Father Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Wirth, for a smug and conceited chat over whether life is “pointless” for the great unwashed trapped in a consumerist lifestyle and whether they’ve “lost direction”.

Well based on falling church congregations they’ve certainly lost the directions to certain places.

Apparently, “modern life does not provide the moral framework – it’s all about me, me, me”.

This from a member of the Conservative party?

Both Father Jamison and Ann concur that there’s a “big hole in too many people’s lives” (yes Ann: it’s called their mouths and is the reason they’re getting so fat), as if re-introducing the influence of the church into people’s lives would resolve everything.

Widdecombe probably would have been happier being born around several hundred years ago when religious clerics and their superstitious dogmas influenced the decisions of the day, and in the absence of modern sewerage systems would stick their corpulent backsides out of the privy window and defecate onto the street.

The fluidity of modern life and the bewildering array of lifestyle choices filling the void since the collapse of religious institutions have perplexed many, as displayed by Ann in her challenge to a spa therapist as to “how a hand massage raises your spiritual awareness?” The therapist’s answer of “we’re all different and that’s the beauty of life” was more worthy of an Amen than Ann’s intolerant approach to views she doesn’t share (i.e. the majority of the population’s).

But, to humour Ann for a moment, I thought I’d post a couple of before and after photos to emphasise the dangers in concentrating too much on the ‘outer crust’:

Before makeover

After makeover

So people today aren't focussing enough on inner beauty? Methinks the lady protests too much.

Peaches Geldof's Beginner's Guide to Islam.
C4. 11.00 pm. Tuesday 5 September.

If anyone needs their beauty sleep then it’s TKK. But if C4 thought they’d escape a TV Tanning for Peaches Geldof’s Beginners Guide to Islam by sticking her on at 11pm they were much mistaken. So face-pack applied and Horlicks at the ready I parked myself in front of the box to watch her address the defining spiritual question of our age: shopping or praying – which is best?

Before I start whipping Peaches (minus the cream), I have to mention something I didn’t think possible: a likeable Geldof. The real star of the program was Pixie, sadly only featured very briefly at the start. Despite looking (and sounding) like a young Ann Widdecombe, in those brief on-screen moments she managed to convey a charm that suggests having the surname of Geldof doesn’t automatically mean you empty a room just by booking a concert in it walking into it.

Unfortunately, it seems the next generation Geldof we’re going to be throwing shoes at the telly whenever they’re on is Peaches, as this is now the third show she’s fronted, which means she’ll be doing Newsnight before we know it.

Peaches, at least momentarily, showed herself to be in touch with the viewer by noting “I’m probably the last person in the world you’d expect to be presenting something like this”. Well apart from the Pope, or Nick Griffin, she’s correct in that respect: having a wannabe Sloane ranger to present a guide to Islam is not the most obvious choice. What next? Abu Hamza’s guide to nightclubbing?

Rather than Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, Peaches takes the Marrakech express, which she informs us is “just like Camden market”. Well not really, at least not if you’re trying to score opium in a hurry. The first twenty minutes of the program were spent getting right to the heart of the Islamic experience with devout eighteen-year old Nadira, which boiled down to Nadira trying to find a jilbāb in the market that Peaches will actually wear. It was somewhat rich for her to be sneering at what was on offer considering this is someone who’ll wear green leggings to a party and allow herself to be photographed in them.

Eventually she finds something to wear, but not without complaining how oppressed she feels wearing something so unfashionable, and how baggy and shapeless the program jilbāb is making her look. Sorry, Peaches, but it appears there’s a dresscode for paradise as well as for parties. However, this doesn’t stop the Marrakech men from shouting “Fatima” (or was it “fatous”?) as she walked by. Despite being informed by Nadira that Fatima was a wife of Mohammed, Peaches is unable to take the cultural compliment adding it was all “nice, but just a tiny bit pervy”. Maybe she’d have felt more at home if they’d wolf-whistled and bellowed “tits out” instead?

After junking the jilbāb (with an aside to the camera of “do I have to wear this for long” – yes, if you don’t want a bloody good stoning), Peaches is off to check out an arranged marriage, where the Muslim women are dressed more to her taste and “shaking their booty”. Hilariously, Peaches’ critique of arranged marriages leads to her being ejected from the party, much to her chagrin. Sadly they didn’t show the bit where she must have bawled “do you know who I am?! My dad organised Live fuckin’ Aid!" TKK’s advice: get used to it luv: I can see this experience being the first of many.

Peaches is clearly ignorant of the custom that, at any wedding, even if the bride looks like a bag of spanners and the bridegroom is trying to bed a bridesmaid, you err on the side of tact and shut up about contentious conjugal issues. I don’t blame the 38-year old bridegroom from ejecting Geldof considering she was trying to put ideas into his bride’s head (about twenty years his junior) about the feasibility of arranged marriages. Considering the divorce rate in the Western world maybe we’re not the best society to lecture on what makes a stable marriage, and considering her parents’ activities she certainly isn’t.

The remainder of the program sees Peaches failing to appreciate the more ascetic side of the spiritually devout, whinging about having get up at six o’clock and observing that “to be a good Muslim it helps if you’re a morning person”. Yes, it also helps if you have to work for a living as well. We get a dose of her singing Elvis with a taxi driver, proving she’s inherited her father’s singing talent (i.e. she’s shit). She also proves a more appropriate presenter than, say, Jeremy Paxman (or “Jezza” as Peaches calls him) by asking a trainee Imam if there were any “sexy Fatimas” about the place he fancied. That really was the question we all wanted her to ask. Not that Peaches seemed to be convinced by his lifestyle, judging “four years learning the Koran (to be) a waste of your life”, especially when you can just read Islam For Dummies, which she does later on.

A trip for some mountain meditation is Peaches’ “worst nightmare” as she’s “scared of heights but we’re on a fuckin’ mountain”. When asked what she meditated about she was at least honest enough to confirm what we’d already guessed: shopping. Later on she finds the ceremonial slaughter of a ram contrary to her ethics as a vegetarian, although if it was being killed to make a nice handbag she’d probably not whine as much. Her deep concern for animals is later shown as she asks whether their “donkeys had sex with horses”.

And, as in all these culture-clash programmes, there has to be a lesson learnt at the end. Peaches has discovered that “not all Muslims are psychotic fundamentalists” (er, does this mean before filming she’d assumed they all were?) and “it was nice to get somewhere spiritual and think about my life. (pause) That was deep.” Well at least for you it. It’s quite ironic that the daughter of Bob “gimme your money so I can save my career the Third World” Geldof is such a spiritually vacuous consumerist bore. And being a teenager doesn’t excuse her either.

Having an egotistical sulky seventeen-year old present a program inevitably leads to a superficial slant on any topic, not that C4 were exactly taking it seriously seeing as they had an advert from Nuts in the middle of it. Who it was aimed at I’m not certain, apart from smart-ass reviewers in the mood for harpooning a whale stuck in a swimming pool. If this was aimed at other ignorant teenagers then surely it should have been on earlier in the evening, and it was hardly the most comprehensive introduction to the subject, bordering on the stereotypical at times. The only thing that scares me more than another Peaches presented programme is one being made by an Islamic TV company who film her going about her daily London life, leading their viewers to the conclusion that the average Western citizen is this spiritually bankrupt and shallow.

Or maybe they could just show horses fucking donkeys instead.

Looks like the space-hopping creative types at C4 and ITV have been going into air slamdunking overdrive based on their upcoming autumn schedules. ITV are promising to revive their ad revenues fortunes by rolling out the ‘stars’, namely Ant & Dec, Simon Cowell and Helen Mirren. Now I can’t think where they might have plucked those names from. C4 is promising such highlights as Ian Wright’s Supersize Kids, where he attempts to get fat kids to stop stuffing and start huffing and puffing themselves into shape (un-supersize me, anyone?); they also have the mouth-watering Star Stories, which promises to take the piss out of such stars as Jude Law, Boy George and George Michael. Completely unnecessary programming, seeing as just by continuing to exist these three are already taking the piss out of themselves on a second by second basis.

Granted, this could possibly be BBC bias in revealing their rivals’ schedules to be bereft of ideas and, frankly, complete dog shit, but based on the evident idea re-tread you can’t blame the Beeb for bias.

ITV has been the televisual equivalent of the frontal lobotomy for as long as I can remember, but what the fuck has happened to C4? I don’t know if it’s just me, but C4 seems to have lost its edge ever since Mary Whitehouse snuffed it in 2001 and watched her last ever Polish arthouse documentary about existential meanderings and societal contradictions, which managed to pack in a surprisingly large amount of female nipples considering its philosophical premise.

It’s bad enough that the channel is ever more like the UK arm of HBO due to its dependence on American imports for peaktime programming, without thinking how long the next Big Brother series will run for next year. If the next one is as drawn out as BB7 then it risks there being more people who’ve been in the BB household than actually watch it on TV.

Reading through some of the planned programs for this autumn it’s hard to believe that C4’s original remit was to provide an alternative to mainstream viewing. The market for obscure Polish arthouse documentaries may well have bottomed out now teenage boys can readily access the Internet and get their knuckle-shuffle material elsewhere, but ever more celebrity programming masquerading as irreverence or lifestyle/health TV is about as welcome as bringing back TFI Friday, having Jim Davidson as co-host and making it four hours long.

I never thought I’d say this, but I find myself agreeing with Mary Whitehouse about C4’s offensive content, although if she was still alive I think we’d disagree over which programmes could be more accurately labelled a ‘wankfest’…

The National Lottery Show - BBC1

A reliable indicator that something is rotten in the House of TKK is when I start buying lottery tickets. That I’ve signed up online for a standing order for the rest of the year says a lot about my current overdraft mood.

Now there’s no shortage of killjoys warning of the inevitable socioeconomic dislocation that results from the sudden influx of millions of pounds into the bank account. Fuck ‘em. I can appreciate the social alienation if you’re in your mid 50s and have been working the factory line all your life, but being a lottery winner at 30 seems the perfect time to hit the jackpot.

The opportunity while young to disown your family, go out with Kate Moss for a week, hang out on Roman Abramovich’s yacht and turn up to the school reunion in a suit made of gold is too much of a dream to pass on. Not to mention that with my newly acquired millions I’d be able to fulfil my ambition of being a backbench MP in a safe Tory seat, and being a thoroughly disreputable old cad to boot.

A far more compelling argument against the Lottery is the undeserving causes some of the money goes to, and after watching BBC 1’s Saturday night lottery show I have to agree. I’m totally supportive when I hear about a group of 30something women being funded by the Lottery so they can exhibit their placenta artwork, but I draw the line at the National Lottery benefiting the likes of Dale Winton.

The show itself is a complete wasted opportunity and hardly the Dionysian spectacle it deserves to be. After all, we are marking the moment when some lucky bastard becomes a multi-millionaire. The show could be lines of dancing girls, Ant & Dec juggling swords, pyrotechnics galore. Instead we get a piss-poor quiz show presented by Dale Winton. Which drags on and on. I’m all for a bit of foreplay, but this is nothing less than gratuitous prick-teasing. Just get to the goddamn money shot! If I want to see a lameass quiz show with a camp host I’d watch the Camp Quiz Network on Sky Channel 7494442.

Finally, the main draw started, and fuck me if the first two numbers didn’t happen to be from my own sextet. At this point my heart pounded as I visualised myself as the tweed wearing Member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire-on-the-Foxhunt, whipping animal rights campaigners at the weekends and siring a whole horde of bastard children with the downstairs cooks.

Unfortunately for my future constituents, the next five numbers were not ones I’d chosen. If I’d had a ticket I would have ripped it up at this point, but as I’d purchased it online I had to make do with ripping up my degree certificate.

And when you’ve just missed out on your ultimate fantasy, the last thing you want to see is Dale Winton’s fat face grinning at you from your TV. I must make a point of releasing the hounds should I ever see him at one of my future country parties…

Television these days seems to be the next stage in the war against the terrors. Police, Parliament, the press and now TV have united in the campaign to install RESPECT! into the feckless bastards. If the underclass thought having a kosher TV license meant they could watch the box in peace then think again.

Years of watching Rikki, Jeremy, Jerry, Montel et al have led to my becoming desensitised with the plight of the underclass, although occasionally I wipe away the odd biscuit crumb tear when watching from the comfort of my bed. Continually railed against for representing all that’s fucked in society, it’s worth remembering that the underclass are not responsible for Enron, the Poll Tax, the Iraq war, al-Queda, the congestion charge, arms to Israel, arms to Hezbollah, or the Beatles splitting up.

Eerily in step with the present Government’s surveillance culture, Trisha excels in the mish-mash of the scientific and the psychobabble these shows love: polygraphs (lie ‘detectors’) DNA tests and a body language ‘expert’ are now as prominently featured on the show as the bad teeth and trackie bottoms.

Apart from the DNA test, (always worth checking to see if the DNA in question is of human origin), why such dubious methods as the polygraph are employed is beyond me. When you have an episode called "Loverat partner shagged my sister and she fuckin’ loved it!", then you don’t need a polygraph to tell you that the bloke on stage might well be a two-timing wanker.

Most of the real life dilemmas on Trisha are depressingly similar, although one I recently saw had me reaching for the antidepressants.

Sister B wanted a drop a sprog, but didn’t appear to have a regular partner(s) to help her out. Sister A generously suggested a sperm donation from her partner to help Sister B get pregnant, which seemed like the sisterly thing to do. There was just one problem with the arrangement:

The delivery method employed to transfer the sperm from Sister A’s partner to Sister B.

Rather than a five knuckle shuffle, a petri dish and a turkey baster, Sister A’s partner had decided on the conventional route to impregnating Sister B. And who could blame him: ejaculating onto a petri dish is just so degrading for a man.

Now Sister A must have been either incredibly confident of her partner’s virility, or a bit thick, because she didn’t have a problem with this as she assumed Sister B would be up the duff after just one session in their caravan.

Surprisingly enough, 20+ times later Sister B still didn’t seem to be any closer to getting pregnant. But practice does make perfect.

Now the men on Trisha always merit a description, if only for further evidence of the sheer injustice in the world today. Here I am going through a sexual drought which I can only attribute to global warming, and some bastard is leaving his lawn sprinkler on overnight on not just one but two sisters. They really should impose a hose-pipe ban on these people.

To totally rub it in, the Romeo in question looked like Hulk Hogan, minus the steroids and the suntan. Now if there was a part of the Hulkster I was going to emulate, it probably wouldn’t be the haircut. Yes to the cocaine habit, the tan and the yellow wrestling pants, but a definite no to the haircut.

Just as I thought I had enough diazepam to get me through the show, on came the Hulkster’s daughter (did I mention he was twice as old as the sisters he was screwing?). If Sister A wanted another good reason why her partner was not the best person as the sperm donor, besides the fact it might complicate her relationships with her partner and sister, Daughter of Hulk was it.

Amazingly, Daughter of Hulk (or DOH for short) defended her feckless dad. I know he gave her life, but that was twenty years ago.

As ever, Trish thought a healthy dose of psychobabble would save the day and started talking about the Hulkster needing to respect ‘boundaries’ between the two sisters. Frankly, it wasn’t boundaries they needed between them all but borders.

As I cracked open another Tenants Super, in a moment of clarity, I remembered that this was someone’s real life and that after the credits rolled, for these people, if not for me, the five inch roots, poor dentition, hurt, secrets and lies would continue.

But as the producers of these shows say, they will be counselled after the show. Well, they’ll get their taxi fare home.

You don’t need to be a psychology graduate to see these people need more than that. They need Prozac, Valium, FSH, CBT, ECT, DLA, an NHS dentist and their roots done. Possibly a more equal society would help a bit as well.

And not to mention a little bit more ‘respect’ from the rest of us.

My Hero. BBC 1. Friday August 4. 8.30 pm.

Anyone who’s read my blog on a regular, or even infrequent, basis would be of the opinion that being cynical and disliking stuff comes natural to me. Which it does. But, occasionally, there are some people who I find it hard to whip up much enmity for, even though they probably merit it. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are good examples of this, ‘comedians’ who’d I’d normally want to despatch with rapier-like putdowns or even a rapier, if I hadn’t handed mine in at the last knives amnesty.

But the truth is, until now, I just haven’t had the heart to do it. Whenever I see them it’s like they metamorphasize into puppies in a pet shop window, and I’m compelled to give them a doggy biscuit and pat them on the head.

However, after watching the latest episode of My Hero, not only do I feel more than ready to put them down, but I could probably ‘put down’ a few pups while I’m at it.

For this series Ardal O’Hanlon has been replaced by James Dreyfus, a casting choice that Father Dougal would acknowledge could only have been made by a feckin’ eejit. I appreciate that Dreyfus might not want to get typecast in roles playing an incredibly camp gay man but, let’s be honest, it’s the kind of performance that does seem to come quite naturally to him. I don’t think Dreyfus could do straight even after he snuffs it and rigor mortis set in. But taking this casting decision a little further, does this mean that Robson Green and Gary Kemp are going to feel they are being typecast as always playing white men in TV and start auditioning for Jamaican Yardies in The Bill? If they did decide to shake up their typical script choices they’d manage this ethnicity transition more convincingly than Dreyfus does playing it straight. Rock Hudson he ain’t.

But the choice of casting wouldn’t be such a problem for the episode if it’s central theme didn’t revolve around Dreyfus’s character’s attempts to pick up a woman. Having no success with the woman (a case of art imitating life), he notices that his object of desire likes cats and is a big pussy lover (unlike Dreyfus) and decides that if you can’t beat ‘em, then join then, and drinks a serum another character has devised which allows him to develop cat-like tendencies.

Therefore, the entire episode revolved around setups where a human does stereotypical cat behaviours, which, of course, are automatically funnee, like coughing up furballs, bringing in dead birds in his mouth and licking his posterior. Actually, the latter didn’t happen as it was pre-watershed, but you get the picture. It’s a pretty lazy plot device for getting laughs, much like the assumption that watching a celebrity do mundane things (like riding a horse) makes it automatically entertaining because a celebrity is doing it. Maybe if the woman had been a dog lover then the premise might have had more legs (so to speak), what with dogs being natural entertainers (unlike cats), but cats are just not funny. Unless they’re in microwaves.

Anyhow, the episode was predictable stuff: Dreyfus gets initial success with his pussy-esque nature until he goes too far with the dose of cat serum and ends up living in the house of an old spinster. Actually, I made the last bit up, but when you do chase after women who like cats then that’s the type of woman you end up with (real straight men know this to be the case).

But what does all this have to do with Punt & Dennis? Well, just as I thought the lame cat concept couldn’t get worse, for some inexplicable reason Hugh Dennis made an appearance in the episode dressed up in drag, because when a man dresses up in drag its automatically funnee. Unless Hugh Dennis does it, at which point no man again can ever do a drag act again and be funny as it’ll only give me flashbacks of Hugh Dennis dressed up in tights and makeup. *Shudders*

So, essentially, the entire episode had a floridly camp gay man playing a straight character pretending to be a cat to get a woman and is treated for his pussy-addiction by a man dressed in drag. Only Dreyfus and Dennis could take this material and render it so bland and unfunnee. The Beeb really does need to put My Hero out of its misery, because right now the only thing they’re succeeding in doing with this show is putting its Friday night audience to sleep.

Celeb fetishism: how low can we go? Pretty far down, it would seem.

Being 30, I might not be totally down with the kids, but who the fuck are these people? And I’m talking about the presenters as well as the contestants.

Initially, I thought Les Dennis had had a stroke due to his funny accent and not so funny quips, until I checked my TV Times and found out it wasn’t Les but someone called Patrick Kielty.

Like I said, who the fuck are these people?

As for Fearne Cotton, I thought nobody could be more of an inane fuckwit than Jo Whiley.

Ms Whiley, I owe you an apology.

I realise Ant and Dec can’t present every show on ITV, but if there ever was an argument for human cloning it’s watching Kielty and Cotton in full effect. I assume that one is supposed to be funny and the other a looker, but which one? I’ve tried all possible combinations without getting a match. Is Fearne related to Dot Cotton? Based on her skin the answer would appear to be yes. If she ever needs a skin graft, Madonna's hands should provide a perfect match.

ITV may think they’re saving a format from ridicule by dropping the word ‘celebrity’ from the show’s title, but they shouldn’t have stopped there. Based on the contestants’ lecherous activities, ITV could have safely dropped the word 'love' as well as 'celebrity' from the title. Love may be an infectious disease, but so is chlamydia, and that’s more likely to be going round the contestants than anything Cupid would approve of.

But getting a fitting sobriquet for the show would also require the letters ‘sland’ being dropped from 'island', leaving a much more fitting title based on the egomania of the contestants: I (as in me, myself and).

The idle rich used to be classy. Now they’re just emotionally and intellectually-arrested buffoons. And we can’t have poor people being deprived of their role in society. Maybe the idle rich need the threat of higher taxes/estate death duties hanging over their heads (or a guillotine) to make them behave in a more entertaining fashion. Watching adults bicker like kids is as irritating as watching kids bicker like, er, kids. At least children can be smacked and sent to bed made to sit on the naughty step and not have any tea, which got me thinking as to how the Love Island concept could redeem itself.

Taking advantage of the fact that no one seems to know who these people are (therefore they won’t be noticed when they go missing) and they’re on an island, I would suggest livening things up by gradually fading out their food rations until they’re forced to turn on each other in a cannibalistic frenzy worthy of 1930s Soviet Russia, until there is just one contestant left to supervise the barby.

That way, if celebrity is going to eat itself, it really will be in a literal way.