Dawn of the Dumb (41 page)

The terrorist plot, which is so incomprehensible as to be meaningless, has already involved Islamic terrorists, Russian generals, an Australian, an autistic hacker, and Jack’s own brother and father. People have been tortured with injections, carrier bags, cigar clippers and drills. Last week a terrorist chopped his own arm off with an axe. The vice president is nuts, and the president, who’s been in and out of a coma, is about to launch a nuclear strike against an innocent country just because someone called him a pussy.

To cap it all, the blond boy from cloying 19805 sitcom
Silver Spoons
has turned up, playing an ultra-tough CTU agent. All they need now is a robot, and the transformation from must-see thriller to flailing joke is complete.

Then again, I’ve said that before, and I’m still hooked on the poxy thing. It’s worse than bloody smoking.

In no way similar to
The Apprentice

[28 April 2007]

E
veryone likes to think they do a difficult job. After all, if anyone could do what you do, what’s the point in turning up? You might as well be replaced by an empty cereal box with a face drawn on it. Makes sense from your boss’s point of view: he doesn’t have to pay a box anything, and he can kick it or shag it as often as he wants, without fear of a tribunal. In many ways it’s the perfect employee.

All of which explains why people feel the need to exaggerate how tough their day’s been, even though listening to someone bang on about what a nightmare they’ve had at work is twenty times as boring as hearing them describe their dreams, i.e. so boring it almost qualifies as physical assault.

‘Oh God right first I spend all morning on this report and then the email goes down so I can’t send it and then this cow from HR turns up and…’ FOR CHRIST’S SAKE SHUT YOUR THICKHOLE.

Yes, most jobs are tedious beyond measure. Which is why it’s far more entertaining to see an ostensibly reasonable occupation rendered impossible for the sake of entertainment, as
Deadline
(ITV2) proves. The setup: a bunch of glittering stars try their hand at producing a weekly celebrity magazine under the aegis of Janet Street-Porter, the Fleet Street legend famous for sounding like she’s rolling five broken dice in her mouth whenever she speaks.

Each week, there’s a tense showdown in the boardroom (sorry, ‘meeting room’) during which she fires someone (although she doesn’t actually say ‘you’re fired’, she says ‘clear your desk’, thereby convincing the viewer what they’re watching is in no way similar to
The Apprentice
).

Janet’s assisted by two deputies: Darryn Lyons and Joe Mott. Mott (played by a young Kenny Everett) spends most of his time quietly moping at the edge of frame in a stupid flat cap, a bit like Jack Tweedy in this year’s
Celebrity Big Brother
. He seems almost depressed, which is possibly something to do with having to share an office with paparazzi supremo Darryn Lyons, a monumental bell-end who looks precisely (and I mean precisely) like Mel Smith playing a King’s Road comedy punk, circa 1981.

This being a fabricated telly job, the bosses will have been instructed to behave like rude, uncompromising, dick-swinging bastards throughout—an opportunity Lyons gleefully seizes with both hands. He struts, he barks, he bollocks, and he bangs on and on about how important it all is, in the dullest and most macho manner possible, as though he’s single-handedly leading an SAS task force into Syria. It can’t be much fun being bellowed at by a man who looks like a forty-six-year-old Woody Woodpecker impersonator undergoing a messy divorce, especially when he’s shouting at you just because you failed to get a decent photograph of Pete Doherty—something the world needs like increased carbon emissions.

Yes, because unlike a real editorial team, the celebrity trainees are expected to take their own photos as well as writing copy, which makes it about as accurate a depiction of the magazine production process as an episode of
Ugly Betty
. Of the trainees, only Dom Joly, who seems to have turned the whole thing into some surreal personal adventure, shows any promise whatsoever. The rest just mill around bumping into each other like blind chickens. Considering this, and the fact that 50 per cent of the job (i.e. typing) isn’t very televisual, the end result is far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Still, there can’t be many more careers left for TV to ‘re-imagine’. We’ve had farming, hairdressing, teaching, catering, and now journalism. A different job each week. It’s like Mr Benn. What next?
Celebrity Balloon Factory?

Actually, how about an all-star branch of Ryman’s? Yeah! It’d have to be needlessly tough for telly purposes, obviously. The boss kicks you in the nuts each time a stapler goes missing. Instead of customers, it’s drunken giraffes. And every Friday, the shop bursts into flames for no reason. And one of you WILL get fired.

A terribly serious drama

[5 May 2007]

I
n life, certain things are designated ‘funny’ and others are designated ‘not funny’. You’re supposed to laugh at the former and nod sagely at the latter. And while what officially constitutes ‘funny’ has altered throughout the years—at one point it was custard pies and fart noises; now it’s awkward pauses and catchphrases so simple a dog could recite them—the contents of the box marked ‘not funny’ have remained largely unchanged throughout history. War crimes, terminal disease, children’s funerals…they’re the polar opposite of a laugh riot, and to react with anything other than pained reverence would be inhuman.

Unless you can’t help it. Even funerals can be funny in the right circumstances. Say one of the pallbearers blows off, and they drop the coffin, and a dead kiddy spills out and everyone flails about trying to pop it back in his box, but they keep trapping its head in the lid, and its arms are all poking out, and it’s all so inappropriate that before long you’re doubled over, slapping your thighs and hooting your lungs dry in front of his horrified parents. Any reasonable person would forgive you for tiiat.

Likewise, I expect to be forgiven for guffawing my way through
Saddam’s Tribe
(C4), a terribly serious drama about Saddam Hussein’s family based on interviews with his daughter Raghad, which inadvertendy straddles the funny/not funny divide. On the one hand, it’s the inside story of an insane, brutal, real-world regime in which torture and murder were commonplace. On the other, it’s a bit like
Dynasty
. And once you’ve decided it’s a bit like
Dynasty
, it’s impossible not to laugh, even when Saddam walks around shooting dogs in the head and things like that.

Speaking of Saddam, he comes across as a less subde version of lan McShane’s Al Swearengen character from
Deadwood
(minus the swearing). Plus he’s got an oaky, baritone voice which makes him sound like Joss Ackland doing the voice-over for a gravy commercial. And for some reason I can’t put my finger on, he reminded me visually of Captain Pugwash. I doubt this is the effect they were aiming for.

Stealing the show, however, is his son Uday- an outright psychopath highly reminiscent of Al Pacino in
Scarf ace
. In reality, Uday was apparendy an unspeakable bastard who raped and tortured people for breakfast. The fictional Uday, however, lights up the screen like you wouldn’t believe. He’s played with absolute conviction by the naturally charismatic Daniel Mays, who had me in fits, not because he gives a bad performance (he doesn’t—quite the reverse, in fact), but because by the time he’s shown gleefully machine-gunning a crowded cocktail bar, my brain had already decided none of this was real and was actively willing him to commit even greater atrocities.

At one point I actually shouted ‘Go on Uday, have him!’ at the screen, which is pretty weird behaviour however you look at it.

On this evidence, they should turn the whole thing into a sitcom (the theme tune’s already been written: ‘They’re creepy and they’re kooky/ Mysterious and spooky/ They’re altogether ‘ooky/ They’re Saddam’s family’). I’d Sky Plus the lot.

The problem is that the current trend for fictionalised accounts of real events is inherently camp.
The Queen
, for instance, was bloody ridiculous. And there can’t be many stories left to cover. Saddam this week, Robert Maxwell last week, Blunkett, Blair and co. already in the bag…Who’s next?

My money’s on Sir Clive Sinclair. A ninety-minute TV drama spanning the period from the introduction of the ZX8i, taking in the triumph of the ZX Spectrum and the failure of the Sinclair QL, culminating in the ill-fated launch of the Sinclair Cs. Starring David Thewlis as Sir Clive, and John Thomson as a young Alan Sugar waiting in the wings. And with Uday Hussein thrown in for no good reason. You’d have him torture Rod Hull with a hammer or something, just to sex things up. Ratings dynamite—and audience chuckles—guaranteed.

Obsessed with Katie Hopkins

[19 May 2007]

A
ccording to the popular imaginary superhero Jesus Christ, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. In either case, it’s not impossible. To solve the camel/eye-of-needle puzzler you need a liquidiser, an extremely tiny spout, a steady hand, and a shit-load of patience. To get a rich man into heaven, get him to take part in a televised public atonement exercise, such as Channel 4’s
Secret Millionaire
, or
Filthy Rich and Homeless
(BBC2)

The set-up: five loaded members of the public give up their cosseted existence to live like homeless people for ten days—sleeping on the streets, begging for scraps of food, arguing with drunks—accompanied only by a cameraman who leans in for a good hard watch each time they snap and start beating the pavement with their fists, shrieking and wailing and begging to be taken home.

Among the volunteers is Clementine Stewart, twenty-one-year-old-daughter of pint-sized ITVnews-bellower Alistair Stewart. In ‘normal life’ she spends most of her time riding horses and chortling. Here, she’s dumped, late at night and in sub-zero temperatures, in the ‘crack triangle’ of Soho, and commanded to find somewhere to kip. It’s hard not to feel sorry for her as she tearfully wanders the streets with her mangy sleeping bag, desperately seeking a dry shop doorway to lie down in. Hard, but not impossible. Bastards will laugh themselves blue. (Clem spoils things the next day, spectacularly breaking the rules by hanging around outside the
This Morning
studios until spotted by family friend Fern Brit-ton—who immediately whisks her into a dressing room for a wash, a drink, a bite to eat and an illicit £20 note.)

No one finds it easy. The toughest-looking contender—an imposing, skin-headed booze magnate named Darren, who looks like he could punch a battleship unconscious—breaks down after one night on the streets and resorts to phoning his mum in tears. Multi-millionaire Ravi, meanwhile, mistakes the whole thing for an
Apprentice-style
task, and sets about trying to make money by flogging things on the street. (This being a BBC show, he has to settle for selling flowers—Channel 4 would have let him sell bootleg fags and crack, thereby giving him a sporting chance).

Anyway, the show ultimately is reminiscent of
The Apprentice
, but only as a startling contrast. It’s even edited in similar fashion, although instead of sweeping aerial shots of the London skyline, you get footage of dustbins and pigeons being sick.

The whole thing is clearly a life-changing eye-opener for the contestants; whether viewers will feel fresh sympathy for the homeless, or simply enjoy a cheap holiday in other people’s misery before flipping channels is open to question. Two final thoughts: (1) cute tide, but they should’ve called it
Moneybags Masochists
instead; and (2) the weird over-zealous duo overseeing the whole thing scared me silly- especially former US probation officer Rebecca Pettit, who’s all finger-pointing, wake-up-call attitude and mad googly eyes. I wouldn’t want to bump into her in a dark alley.

Speaking of mad googly eyes, I’m now obsessed with Katie Hopkins from
The Apprentice
(BBC1)—the bitchiest, most venomous contestant in the show’s history. Apparently played by the old
Spitting Image
puppet of the Queen, wearing a blond wig and glowing pale-blue contact lenses, Katie enjoys sticking the knife into her fellow contestants so much, she can’t help smiling as she slags them off to camera. I can’t help imagining if one of the others accidentally fell down the stairs, and lay at the bottom in a broken-necked comatose heap, she’d stand at the top grinning like a carnival mask and frantically rubbing her mimsy till the ambulance arrived. There’s something unholy about her, like a possessed Ermintrude. Lord help Sir Alan if he finally decides to fire her. Her head’ll start revolving and spewing green vomit. Here’s hoping Nick Hewer carries a crucifix in his pocket.

Sir Alan, Margaret Mountford, and Gandalf

[26 May 2007]

T
his series of
The Apprentice
(BBC1) is cursed. As far as I’m concerned, I mean. In week one, I had trouble getting preview DVDs. Since then, the PR company couldn’t be more helpful. Today they bent over backwards to secure me a last-minute, hot-off-the-press, edit-suite-fresh copy of the next episode. They said it would be ready this evening, and sure enough, it was—just in time for my deadline. Excited, I arranged for a courier to pick it up. Being a twat, he decided to post it through the letterbox of the interior design showroom next door, then ride away without telling me. I discovered the error around 10.30
PM
, and subsequently spent fifteen minutes on my knees in the street, trying to retrieve the Jiffy bag from their welcome mat by reaching through their letterbox with a pair of kitchen tongs, like some kind of
Crystal Maze
cunt. A jogger glared at me. Then two smartarse teenagers asked if I was a burglar. And then I gave up. It’d make a better anecdote if a neighbour’s dog had unexpectedly turned up and screwed my arse inside out with its hot red doggy little dick, but nothing that exciting happened, which in itself makes the whole thing more annoying. Here’s hoping that courier prick hits a speed bump at the wrong angle and accidentally drives his entire bike up his own arse some time soon.