Yes Ma'am, No Ma'am

Whatever you say, Ma'am

You know, it's the deference that I can't frigging stand. The publicly dripping deference. Problem is that the nation has been oozing the stuff over the Jubilee weekend and chief forelock-tugger of all has been the vile Nicholas Witchell. 
I'm sure the boy Witchell is a fine journalist - fuck knows he's been doing it for long enough - but what makes me want to plant a bomb in my own brain is his giddying level of obsequiousness. Christ, watching him file a report on the royal doings is like watching a text book-perfect definition of arse-licking. It's a miracle that his nose isn't smeared with Queenly outpourings.
And, OK, the Queen and her dysfunctional family need to be reported on - otherwise how will we keep an eye on how they're spending our money? - but does it really have to be in Witchell's hushed and revered tones? Whenever I see him I'm reminded of Dickens' Bob Cratchit, rubbing his hands over and again as he begs for money or mercy. Witchell looks like the 21st Century version, except I can only assume he's crawling furiously to secure either a gong or his next story. I mean, heaven forfend that the royals should be offended by Witchell's lack of breathless adjectives. What in the fuck would he do the next time he has to report upon such globe-shaking events as the Queen taking a dump?
I've only known one other person to be so deeply crawly and I used to work with him in a magazines department. He was equally as sickening. In fact he was even worse than Witchell, actively rubbing his hands obsequiously whenever the new editor walked into the room. Jesus, I recall one afternoon when the old and new bosses were together and this grease bucket actually hopped from one foot to another and rubbed his hands as if he was trying to make fire with his fingers. Put him and Witchell in the same room and fuck knows what could happen. They'd out-fawn each other and create a black hole into which personal dignity would be forever lost.
So it can only be a good thing that the Jubilee celebrations are at an end. Witchell must be exhausted after a long weekend of gabbling royal superlatives and cow-towing on the banks of the Thames. Fuck knows, I'm exhausted from watching him. And there's only so much more tugging that his hairline can stand.

Home Guard

We're doomed, alright

Someone at the BBC needs to be tied to a horse and dragged, at a gallop, across the praries of modern popular culture. Why? Because said creature saw fit to broadcast, at 6.50pm on BBC2 on Bank Holiday Saturday, Dad's Army.
Dad's fucking Army. On prime time television. On the biggest bank holiday of the year. What in the frig is anyone thinking when they consider this to be popular entertainment? It was first aired in 1968, for Christ's sake, which makes it almost 45 years old. Apart from which it has been repeated so often there must be a rut snaking from the BBC's Television Centre through which said series gets piped to the unwatching masses again and again and again and...
Look, I know that there sit-coms that are as funny as having electrodes applied to your nether flaps but, Jesus, does that mean we have to resort to Dad's Army to fill the listings yet again? Is there really nothing else the BBC can come up with? Seriously, I'd rather see the test cards being reinstated than have to witness that bumbling sea of khaki trying to rustle up chuckles for the 36th time in a row.
It's no wonder the rest of the world sees Britain has a limping scrap of an empire. It's as if we've broken the flux capacitor and are stuck in 1945. Worse, we seem happy to pay our licence fee only to get Dad's Army in return. Perhaps the BBC will finally mothball the show when the last WWII veteran goes to the great howitzer in the sky. But, fuckadoodledo, if I have to wait that long I'll start a war of my bloody own. 
So can we deploy the same sort of gung-ho spirit that we employed during the war years, storm the BBC, hunt down every copy of Dad's Army and burn them Wicker Man stylee? Oh for God's sake, help me will you? Otherwise I'm afraid "We're dooooomed!"

Blowing Bubbles

Dopes in soaps

Will someone explain to me why people watch soap operas? I've tried to understand, really I have, but have failed miserably, like a Jack Russell trying to shag a Great Dane. Few things boggle me more than the collective national collapse onto the sofa at certain times of the week to witness fictitious northerners and cockneys screwing/ punching/ gossiping their way through their drab lives.  
It's not that I'm averse to telly. I watch bags of the stuff: Seinfeld, Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, The Apprentice, The Killing, Homeland, The Bridge and even the screeching insanity of America's Next Top Model. But soaps? Jesus, I want drama, glamour, idiocy and intrigue from my viewing pleasures, not fishwives caterwauling at each other over pints of stout.
Point is that if I wanted to see the grim lives that soaps portray I'd take a walk around the frigging block. Cheaply dressed, badly tanned, tattooed loons (and that's just the wimmin) are ten-a-penny in these here parts. I don't need a fistful of scriptwriters to show me what they get up to, ta very much. A Saturday night suicide run through town'll do it.
And what the fuck is it with these magazines about soap operas? Excuse me? Features about non-existent people and non-existent lives? You have got to be kidding me. Even as someone who adores reading fiction it is utterly beyond me that any sentient human being would buy one of these excuses for hacking down another tree. 
Perhaps I'm missing something big here. Perhaps I need to put aside the part of my brain that thinks and tune in for half an hour one evening. You never know, I might discover that my life is in serious need of a dose of wet cobbles or some light criminal Eastend activity. It could solve everything that makes me rage on here every 48 hours. 
Then again, if Ken fucking Barlow is the solution to my problems I'm even frigging madder than I thought I was. In fact, I'm probably beyond saving. Like that Jack Russell assaulting the Great Dane I may as well give up. Betty, love? Make mine a pint.

Not-so-Great Pretenders

No, I can't believe your success either

Could you tell me what there is to like about impressionists? No, not the French painting variety, for Christ's sake, I mean the people who put on the voices and twitches of slebs. No really, could you tell me what there is to like? Because I am at a complete and utter bloody loss about why they enjoy national popularity.
I'd rather watch my ovaries being removed via my nostrils than be exposed to un-funny men like John Culshaw and Alistair McGowan. Problem is that their impersonations are nothing less than shite. 
Their voices and actions leave me either bewildered or cold and, worse, they try to make up for it by injecting dull yet explanatory jokes into their acts. You know the sort of thing. The obligatory Bruce Forsythe turn will include references to Strictly Come Dancing and "NIce to see you!" catchphrases because the impression itself is so fucking poor that you'd otherwise have no clue about who it's supposed to be. They'd be better off broadcasting a blank screen and letting viewers use their fevered imaginations. 
In one alleged comedy show - Punt and Dennis, I recall through my frustrated tears - the few attempted impressions were so horrifyingly inaccurate that they actually introduced each sketch with screen captions. What in the fuck were they thinking? Didn't it cross their fame-hungry minds that if their offerings were that poor they should be scrapped? 
This goes for every impressionist, though, doesn't it? They're all laughably bad yet someone, somewhere keeps commissioning the bastards. I suspect that in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. There's such a dearth of decent impressionists that any old twat with a passing resemblance to Anne Robinson gets a gig.
Tell you what these guys should do and that's do an impression of being good at something. I dunno, emptying bins or architecture will do. Anything except assaulting the nation with their deluded witterings. Or they could try the French painting. As long as they piss off to France, that is.

Dazed and Confused

Just fucking spare me

D’know, there are some things that leave me so deeply bewildered by their popularity that I suspect I’ve unknowingly had a run in with a flux capacitor. Whereas all around me are foaming with excitement at the vagaries of popular culture, I’m this close to being smothered by bafflement. Course, you will be dying to know what these vagaries are so here you bloody well are:

Women’s magazines: Who in the fuck wants to read about Rihanna’s latest nip-slip, baking muffins, dying infants and blow-job techniques? This shit has all the relevance of bloody ra-ra skirts.

Astrology: What the fuck? No, really, what the fuck? Deriving from the position of Jupiter that you’re going to lose your job is so close to insanity that you have to winder why Russell Grant hasn’t been lobotomised yet.

ITV1: You know that quote about religion being the opium of the masses? Well modern Britain has swapping Catholicism for Scott and fucking Bailey. ITV1 produces the sort of telly that you sit stunned bomb victims in front of.

Kate Middleton: Jesus, like we need a new definition of the word ‘bland’. She’s an icon for the hard of thinking and those so fearful of change that they develop raging diarrhoea every time the milkman’s late.

The X-Factor: No, I don’t want to see people being pilloried, out-warbled, offered laughable platitudes, stripped of their individuality or sold to Heat magazine. And I certainly don’t want to see it every Saturday night between August and Christmas.

Marks & Spencer: What an utterly hateable fucking shop. If the seething unoriginality of the clothes doesn’t make me drip with bile, the blank-eyed, thin-lipped, wandering post-menopausal women do. I swear, I’d buy used knickers from a car boot sale before I ever handed my cash over in such a spirit-sapping lair.

Michael Macintyre: No, you toffed-up wanker, musing about toasters and the shapes of clouds does not comedy make. It does, though, make for an arena full of people who have such a deeply underdeveloped sense of humour that they still snigger at their own bowel production.

Sigh. My bafflement continues...

Domestic Blis(ster)

Boo!

Spare me, you desperado advertising execs. I've just witnessed a telly ad for Harpic Plus, something that you shove in your toilet to keep it clean, by all accounts. And you know what the ridiculous fucking blurb said? That your toilet may not be as clean as you'd like it to be and what about the germs lurking, God forbid, in the U-bend?
The U-bend? Really, the U-bend? What the fuck does it matter if there are germs in the U-bend? It's not as if you're drinking from the bloody thing. No one's attempting to rinse their dentures in the sodding bog water. As far as I'm concerned my U-bend could be home to new strains of deep-sea plankton and I wouldn't give a shit, pardon the po-loving pun.
The only time I've had a brush with my U-bend was when I got my right foot wedged in it. I'd attempted to stand on the toilet but, alas, the lid was up and before I realised I was knee deep in the porcelain. Anyhoo, when I pulled out my foot, replete with what looked like five burst and blackened sausages parading as toes, the hygienic state of the U-bend was the last fucking thing on my mind. The severe bruising was an issue, yes, as was the fact that the triage nurse at my local A & E could barely speak for snorting. But the germs harbouring in the arse-end of my toilet? No, I can't much say that I gave even the most remote of flying fucks.
So, Harpic Plus, if you want to flog me your latest brew you'll have to think of something snappier than the state of my remote plumbing. I dunno, make my wee glow in the dark or turn my poo into gold. Otherwise, would you be so kind as to just put a lid on it.

Natterjacks

Wrong ones

What the frig is it with these talking heads that seem to litter every show about popular culture? Like it's not bad enough that Channel Four thinks that great telly is strung together with 100 'best of' clips, it then has to intersperse these individual segments of weepy films/ 70s adverts/ decommissioned sitcoms with the likes of Lucy fucking Porter babbling about shit all.
Just who is Lucy Porter anyway? And does she actually exist outside of her role as a professional talking head? Jesus, she could form an opinion on the spawning of a tag nut if some production company or other promised her a spot on prime time TV.
And that's the thing with these talking heads isn't it? Either you've never frigging heard of them or they're wallowing in their z-list status as the opening acts at supermarket launches. Worse, someone, somewhere thinks that it's OK for these creatures to spew their underwhelming opinions at the public over and over and over again in the name of entertainment. Entertainment! Like I give a shit about Kevin Bridges' feelings towards the Spice Girls, Nicki Chapman's adoration of the Smash adverts or Jeff Brazier's take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards Dad's Army.
Problem is that these shows need lots of talking heads and, if your idea of good quality TV involves the budget-free dredging of telly archives, then you've not got the money to pay 'em. So what are you lumped with? No, not George Clooney leading a discourse on modern cinema or an Archbish hosting a debate on the role of religion in society. Instead you've got some one hit wonder from the 80s fawning over a fucking Cointreau advert.
So spare me, will you? Unless you have a decent opinion to offer or a fresh insight into some moral dilemma keep it shut. And that includes you Lucy Porter. Leave the inane opinion-making to people like me, OK?

Wheely?

Trucking hell

Whoa there! What in the frig is with this show that I've seen on the telly, Eddie Stobart: Trucks & Trailers? I've only seen a few minutes of it, thank fuck, but I feel as if I've witnessed some atrocity or other. What a complete and utter pile of festering shite. Who, exactly, watches this stuff? As far as I can gather it's a reality show about people driving vans and lorries. So far, so blood-clottingly dull. 
Even worse than the stultifying subject matter, though, is the way in which it is treated. In a vain and hysterical effort to inject some sort of excitement into the show, footage of men driving vans is accompanied by dramatic voiceovers about fuck all, pseudo-scientific displays of maps and delivery routes and molehill-sized cliffhangers about whether Dave the White Van Man will be able to reverse around some tricky corner or other. It's like trying to glamorise the drying of non-drip gloss or suck wonder from emptying a bin. The only affinity it gives me to the drivers and truckers of this nation is to want to lay under 30 tonnes of metal as it thunders down the motorway.
Will Bill deliver his load of widgets from the Eddie Stobart depot to Orpington in time? Like I give a shit. Will Mike be able to negotiate the narrow lanes in notorious Aberdeenshire? Er, wake me when it's time to give a fuck. Or will Steve be able to fit all the cardboard boxes in the back of his van? Oh, sorry, I slipped into a coma then. What did you say?
Mind you, this is nothing compared to the distress I experience at the thought of people actually sitting down to watch this foaming bottle of toss. Can you imagine checking out the TV listings only to see this clogging up the arteries of entertainment before making a point of watching it? Just how entirely fucking dull would your life have to be if this is what gives you enjoyment or makes your heart race. It's unimaginable, and I speak as a woman who had a breakdown and spent a year in bed staring at the wall.
So may I suggest some true excitement to the producers of this hideous show? How about a finale, where all the vans and trucks race to a particular point in the British Isles? And I think I've found the perfect one too. It's about 20 feet to the west of the cliffs of Dover. Dunno about you lot but I'd watch it.

Talk Talk

Connolly's not here yet?

Oh Jesus. By all accounts Michael Parkinson – professional Yorkshire-born gruffbag  – is coming out of retirement to host his own talk show again. Just what telly needs, yet another outlet for celebs to have themselves tickled under the chin.

Now, Parkinson would quibble at that description, I have no doubt. It’s clear from his quotes about his latest televisual skirmish that he thinks he offers viewers something new. He grumbles: “If you look at Graham (Norton), Jonathan (Ross) and that chatty person (Alan Carr), the host is as important as the guest. That’s fine but there isn’t the kind of show that I used to do...We’re kind of stuck in this area where it’s all about humour. It’s certainly not about interviewing.”

Well, fuck me. Call Billy Connolly. And David Beckham. Oh, and Billy Connolly again, because every time they’ve appeared on his show in the past (they’re on some 3-week rota or other) they sure as shit don’t get the business end of Jeremy Paxman, do they? No, they get to breeze their way though a few carefully chosen anecdotes at the growly nudging of best mate Parky who would rather renounce flat caps than offend them. It’s celeb chin-tickling at its fawning best so it beats me why Parkinson has the bulging hump over the likes of Norton and Ross.

And, yeah, Parkinson may be remembered for his must-watch interviews but they are now dust-bunnies under the futon of modern telly. Muhammad Ali? His last interview with Parkinson was in 1981, thirty one years ago. And Rod Hull and Emu? That was in 1976, thirty six years ago.

Problem is, the world, telly and the juggernaut of celebrity has changed since then. If Parky thinks he can take his pick of A-listers and grill them until they sweat spinal fluid then I fear he is deluded. Their PRs would be all over him like syphilis and the show producers would live in fear of pissing off the screen meat. His no-nonsense recipe for a show would soon be diluted and before you know it he’d be interviewing Billy fucking Connolly for the fifteenth time.

All of which means that Parkinson needs to wake the frig up. Unless he really is going to make a new interviewing mark and to fuck with the modern etiquette of celeb-loving, that is. Otherwise we’d better gird ourselves for yet another foray into Connolly’s well trodden past. Oh, and another and another...