Whitney Houston and Alexander McQueen
13 Feb 2012 2 Comments
Although I have no interest whatsoever in Whitney Houston’s music there is still something quite shocking about her death at the tender age of 48. I know it’s foolish to get wrapped up in the lives of celebs but it is still affecting when someone whose songs have been in the background of your life, however vaguely, passes away. It was inevitable I suppose, as even someone as uninterested in the derring-do of celebrities as me knew that she had drug problems and had been married to a man who was clearly bad news for her.
The periodic pictures of her looking emaciated were shocking and bore the hallmarks of someone whose life was out of control. Indeed, the scale of the drug abuse seems to have been epic.
For a woman who had it all she threw it away in spectacular fashion. God knows the money she must have wasted on coke over the years, It ruined her voice, her body and seems to have finally finished her off completely. She clearly wasn’t a happy woman, and I’ve been reading rumours about her sexuality that could explain some of the problems she had. Coming out wouldn’t have been possible for someone in her position, considering the genre of music she was in.
Like I say, her music leaves me completely cold, but boy could she sing. A truly shocking waste of human life.
There have been a number of anniversaries that that have come and gone in the last few days but one that has passed without any comment has been the second anniversary of the death of designer Alexander McQueen. Once again, his work left me completely cold, and he was by no means the daring anti-establishment radical that some have painted him as, but he was an incredibly important man in the recent history of fashion and an enormously accomplished designer. Feted as a genius by the fashion media, his knowledge of British tailoring was supposed to have been quite incredible and he made Gok Wan (who I quite like actually) look like an amateur. He took a commendable stand in defence of Kate Moss when a hypocritical media witchhunt threatened to derail her career.
McQueen, who seemed to have the world at his feet, hung himself a few days after his mother died, an event that seemed to push him over the edge. He had a history of depression and drug abuse, and by all accounts despite having many friends and an enormous social circle was quite an isolated, lonely man. I suppose that’s the superficial world of fashion for you (Karl Lagerfeld’s nauseating recent comments about the positively yummy Adele being a case in point.)
Losing a parent is, I’m guessing, unimaginable pain but it says something about the people he must have surrounded himself with that he felt unable to carry on after his mum had gone. I can imagine someone as sensitive and human as McQueen clearly was not being that impressed with many of the people he was forced to surround himself with.
It’s quite sad to think that people with so much talent, achievement, wealth and adoration both met such horrible ends. Neither, despite having prolonged periods at the very top of their chosen fields, managed to achieve real happiness. A salutary tale of the modern world and a dysfunctional entertainment ‘industry’.
Oi! ‘olmes! You facking mappit!
29 Jan 2012 1 Comment
The plot of the previous Sherlock Holmes film centred around Holmes’ attempt to debunk the myth of the supposedly supernatural powers of his nemesis, Lord Blackwood. The man appeared to be capable of miraculously coming back from the dead.
Of course the greatest miracle of all was never solved by the great detective.
The miracle of Guy Ritchie making a film that wasn’t a complete pile of shite.
When I heard that the leading practitioner of ’Geezer Films’ was involved last time, I have to be honest I was horrified. His career hitherto has been that of unrelenting and spectacular failure. A seemingly endless succession of dreadful, hackneyed films with Cockney gangsters shouting “cahnt!” “facking mahpit” and “where’s the jellied eels, guv’nor?” over and over again. It didn’t look promising, and everyone knows Guy Ritchie himself is a pompous tosser. He is about as much of an authentic member of Club Geezer as I am. A public-school educated fraud (Ritchie, not me), his movies are cliched nonsense and sum up everything the rest of us hate about the South East of England.
The whole Cockney Cinema thing is a total mystery to me, you’ll be unsurprised to hear. Leading practitioners of the genre like Danny Dyer, Ray Winstone, Vinnie Jones, Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins are just playing themselves. They aren’t actors in any sense of the word. If they were from Hull they would never get any work.
Anyway, I digress. The point I’m trying to make is that the first Holmes film was actually very good. Witty, a good, if ever so slightly preposterous script, good casting (Mark Strong is suitably menacing) and most importantly, in Robert Downey Junior an excellent Holmes. Of course the London he inhabits is ever so slightly contrived for that essential American audience and seems like a London of someone who likes the idea of London but has never actually been there. There is a fair amount of “alright, guv’nor” type dialogue but that is obligatory in Holmes adaptations so I’ll forgive that.
Of course when it comes to Holmes the bar has been set very high. The Jeremy Brett version is nothing short of magnificent and watching it now one just wishes that ITV could make TV like that again rather than the talent show bollocks that they now insist on filling their schedules with.
My personal favourite though is the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce versions. Completely unfaithful to the original stories, but acted so well that it just doesn’t matter, and I’m sure that Conan Doyle wouldn’t have been too pleased to see his Dr Watson transformed into a bumbling, incompetent buffoon, but it works perfectly. To me, Rathbone is and always will be the master.
That Downey Jr didn’t embarrass himself by comparison to the aforementioned titans was some achievement in and of itself. So my expectations were reasonably high for the follow up, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows.
Despite being over two hours long and having a fairly convoluted plot (suffice it say Moriarty is trying to take over the world in a way not wholly dissimilar to the plot of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman screen adaptation and Holmes and a gang of anarchist gypsies are trying to stop him) it does crack along at a reasonable pace. Plenty of fighting and shooting, although not with a whole lot of the typical Holmesian brainpower on display. Holmes and Watson (Jude Law) essentially blast their way to success over Professor Moriarty rather than outsmart him. Incidentally Moriarty is played superbly by Jared Harris, and his evil megalomania is probably the most plausible bit of the film………..
The homo-erotic dynamic between Holmes and Watson, underplayed elsewhere in the original stories and other adaptations, is ramped up here to the point where at several points you expect them to start smooching. The admiration is mutual, for once, and Holmes seems to be desperately sad that his long-term partner is about to settle down to married life. Holmes needs Watson, rather than just enjoying having him along for the ride. The jealousy that Holmes feels toward Watson’s wife, Mary Morston (played by Kelly Reilly) is palpable. The women, with one notable exception, are firmly in the background and even Irene Adler is dead within a few minutes of the start. The boys are playing with their large missile-shaped toys. Hmmm….
Downey Jr seems intensely relaxed in the lead, unlike other actors who have played Holmes, where it often took over their whole lives and defined their careers (the sad tale of Brett being a case in point. He was dead within a few months of his last TV appearance as The Great Detective).
For all the very modern action sequences and at times frenetic pacing, if one looks hard enough and knows the original stories one can find plenty of references to them. Off the top of my head I noticed The Final Problem, The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, The Empty House and The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans. Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft, makes an appearance, the Reichenbach Falls naturally are present and correct for the final confrontation and the dates in the film all tie in with the chronology of Conan Doyle’s work. Liberties have been taken but the team behind the film obviously know the canon.
Overall then disposable, enjoyable entertainment, a few laughs and further proof that if given the right project Guy Ritchie doesn’t necessarily always disgrace himself.
Eastenders is shit. Guv’nor.
27 Dec 2011 1 Comment
Cockneys
I had a pretty scary experience just this afternoon. I was letting my dinner go down (fishfinger sandwiches and crinkly crisps if you must know) and just mentally preparing myself for my post-christmas return to the blogosphere and was channel hopping. I happened upon an omnibus edition of popular, multiple award-winning BBC soap Eastenders. For several minutes I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was transfixed.
Apparently it was the most watched programme on the TV on christmas day. And who would want to miss it. It’s amazing.
I honestly don’t know how the show has managed to become so popular. It’s genuinely dreadful. Cliched, hackneyed scripts. Cheap sets. Awful acting. The characters are a collection of tedious caricatures who all appear to be trying rather too hard to be ‘authentic’. Every line seems to be about “keeping it in the family” and the pub. I confess that my connection with the masses is fairly tenuous, but is this really some sort of gripping portrayal of London working class life. Is every cockney a fucking Danny Dyeresque stereotype or Guy Ritchie style gangster-movie caricature? Apparently so.
It is truly grim. There was a fire. A lot of screaming. A lot of geezers sharing their homespun pearls of wisdom. “It’s…..Christmas…..we’re having a family christmas” one of them may have said. Another fire. Shane Ritchie telling everyone to go to the pub (what a great actor by the way. Who knew you could get paid for playing yourself? Well Ray “MONSTAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Winston for a start. But I digress…..) A token Asian family being suitably repressed and mysoginistic (not a stereotype at all……)
And then another fire. Someone may have died. By this point my attention had wandered somewhat. One can only tolerate so much over-wrought, painfully shouty over-acting.
It was a slightly other-worldly experience. It felt like it was meant to be real. And exciting. But it seemed like TV that middle class people think working class people would like. Maybe they have “communities” like that down in the Cockney Massive. I’d be surprised though.
Christmas TV is always the pits. But to think that this was the positive choice of millions of people (and not just the cast of TOWIE, and yes I know what that is) is pretty worrying.
Clarkson gets Mamboed, finally
04 Dec 2011 3 Comments
in Individuals worthy of contempt, Opinions, Politics, popular culture
Clarkson facing the Mambo's rhetorical hurricane
Oh how we have waited for this moment. You have no idea how cathartic it’s been to finally put pen to paper and stick the boot into that execrable dog, Jeremy Clarkson. Since we started this blog we have been waiting. Impatiently. We at the Mambo knew something would happen, and there have been plenty of low-level “send disabled children to the gas chambers” type comments we could have used as a pretext, but nothing really major. Until now. So thank you Jeremy. You fat, disgusting, loathsome, witless, plug-ugly, sickening abomination of a man.
A screed condemning the man as the scabrous, inadequate cliché he is was going to appear shortly in any case, with the focus being on the superinjunction he had taken out preventing his ex-wife spilling the beans about his sexual shenanigans (yes, there appear to be women falling over themselves to bed him, who can only be motivated by their own deep-rooted self-loathing), but obviously events have rendered that particular line of attack somewhat passé.
Clarkson has become a huge national story with his ‘shoot the strikers’ comments which I’m sure you are now familiar with. He has been forced into a public apology and the BBC has, at the time of writing, received over 20,000 complaints about his pre-planned performance on the One Show (the fact that it was pre-planned is hugely significant, as I will discuss later)
The response from Clarkson’s army of fans, running dogs and lickspittle apologists to the controversy has been entirely predictable:
“It’s just a joke”
“It’s just banter”
“He didn’t mean it”
“Lighten up”
“Grow up”
“It’s all part of his routine”
“He’s so daring and edgy”
“He’s sticking it to the man. Keeping it real. Standing up for the little man against the left-wing establishment”
“The people objecting are boring/humourless/take themselves too seriously”
“His obsession with sports cars compensates for his sexual inadequacy”
“He looks like a troll, don’t you think?”
“If there was any justice in the world Richard Hammond would have died in that crash”
“James May is a smug cunt. What he has to be smug about is anyone’s guess as even his co=preseenters clearly despise him”
“My name is Dave England and Richard Hammond is my hero”
“Top Gear gives me something to watch when I’ m bored of slapping my wife about”
The phrase ‘flies around shit’ has never been more accurately deployed than when it was used to describe Clarkson’s retinue of semi retarded arse licking hangers-on in the Top Gear studio during filming”
You knew they were going to say all that. They have reacted entirely as I thought they would. Their guru was under attack, and like kamikaze pilots throwing themselves and their planes at the American battleships at the end of World War II, they have rushed to his defence. You have to admire their almost dog-like loyalty to their master. It is especially touching as he not-so-secretly despises them all.
He is a voice of sanity amidst the daily barrage of PC garbage that all of the white-alpha males have to endure on a daily basis. You can understand where they are coming from. Everything about the world points to the fact that the worldview they hold to is repugnant and just plain wrong, but ‘our Jeremy’ is fighting the good fight. A selfless, spartacus-like hero fighting and sticking it to the communist paedos at the BBC and Labour Party for the white/homophobic/casually racist good people of Britain England. Clearly the £1milion+ he earns for sucking off his reactionary corporate paymasters doesn’t enter into his thinking when he does these things. He is authentic. Real. Straight-talking. Off the cuff. He’d be just as strident even if there wasn’t a huge salary dangling in front of him. Wouldn’t he. He speaks to and for white man van and all those Tory-voting southerners who hate the public sector and believe in rugged individualism. The BBC is a communist conspiracy…..oh no..wait a second…. he works for them doesn’t he……
His definition of ‘the establishment’ seems to be anyone who reads The Guardian, the disabled, ethnic minorities, cyclists, trade unionists, women, gays, the Welsh and any other minority. That is to say the opposite of the establishment. He picks on people too polite or marginalised to fight back. His boorish stupidity and carefully selected choice of victims (i.e no one with the the ruthlessness to make him pay for it) is little better than that of a second-rate school bully.
He speaks to a particular set of English people. Usually southern (even though he is from Doncaster, the sort of town normally on the receiving end of one of his hugely amusing barbs), white, fixated with other people’s cars, earning a decent salary but probably not with a very high IQ, hateful towards women, possibly semi-aware of their own pitiful inadequacy and very angry at the world, although they probably aren’t sure why. It’s probably something to do with fuel prices and the Nazis not finishing off all of the Jews.
The Top Gear males who like speed for its own sake and mastrurbate over pictures of sports cars. Boring fucks with jeans, sensible but expensive shoes, shirts with button down collars and leather coats that are probably the wrong size. The kind of people who listen to Yes, ELO and think Supertramp are the height of good musical taste. They think Two and a Half Men is funny and are entertained by rugby. Meat and two veg, ‘mine’s a pint of Carling’ Sunday Times reading tossers.
Naturally it would great to hear Clarkson dying or being paralysed from the neck down in a horrible car accident but there is also something slightly tragic about the man. He stands there with his pot belly, excessively tight faded light blue jeans and increasingly grey, thinning afro and one just thinks; who could see him as a charismatic, heroic figure? Who really believes that what he says is the height of good sense? How lobotomised would one have to be? He is a walking, talking mid-life crisis.
The truth is of course, the whole quasi-fascist shtick is an elaborate and lucrative routine that has sadly proved so popular with our less intellectually capable brothers and sisters who loyally buy his books and DVDs. Everything he says is calculated to advance his career and make him money. He was on The One Show to promote his latest DVD, and the publicity the row has generated should lead to increased sales. Or that was the plan anyway. He may have gone too far this time though, and his latest remarks in his Sun column about suicides seemed to border on the suicidal themselves.
Interestingly, Clarkson as managed to blow away some of the mystique (if you can call it that) around him by stating that the producers of The One Show knew in advance he was going to say that. We thought Jezza shoots from the hip! I presume he thought he was trying to cover his arse with the admission, though if anything he has discredited himself further. It was pre-medidated. His act is just that, a pre-planned routine designed to generate controversy and DVD sales. It also illustrates how hopelessly unfunny he is. That was the best he could come up with despite having time to think of something witty to say. And who were the people laughing in the background? Shills?
One of the more credible crticisms levelled at those of us foaming at the mouth about his latest outburst is that we are taking it too seriously, playing his game and allowing the hugely important strike action to descend to a row about Clarkson’s views on trade unionists.
There may be some truth in this, but I still think the story was significant. It may be a media storm in a teacup, and not the most important thing going on in the world right now, but there are aspects of the story that are worthy of comment, and go beyond Clarkson. I also think it is high time that all good men and women came to the aid of the party and devoted some effort to getting him sacked by the BBC and organising a truly poisonous hate campaign against him. And maybe even throw him in front of a train. Preferably a re-nationalised one as that would really piss him off.
Doesn’t it say something about the debased state of our public discourse that Clarkson felt within his rights to go on national TV and condemn in the most vindictive terms millions of hardworking, ordinary working class people taking action to protect their futures? We could ignore him, but wouldn’t we then leave him free to spout his poison without anyone to challenge it? The only reason he has issued a (half-hearted) apology is because of the outcry his remarks caused. Ditto his admission that it was pre-planned. If it hadn’t been challenged, some of the millions who watch The One Show might not have reflected on the sheer barbarity of what he was saying. Maybe some of of the people watching weren’t sure of their views on the strikes, and seeing him on there may have tipped them into not joining future actions if they were considering it, or thinking that he represented mainstream, sensible opinion. The idea that clearly articulated political views aired on national TV have no effect on the population is ludicrous. If it were true, then why are the political class so obsessed with how they are represented in the media? Why would The Sun pay Clarkson to write a column every week if they thought everyone ignored it?
When it suits him he likes to suggest that no one takes him seriously, but the thousands of supportive messages on comment pages and votes in online polls would suggest to me that lots of people hang on his every word. If his words had no impact on what people thought then why bother utter them? I’m sure we all know people who subscribe to his idiotic, selfish worldview and take what he says literally, and vote at election time accordingly.
The BBC are not my favourite public body at the best of times but they have really not covered themelves in glory over this. They are nauseatingly indulgent towards one of their most popular presenters. Firstly, he was given the green light to say it on national TV. Second, they have leapt to his defence, as they always do when he says something offensive, saying there will be no huge inquest when he gets back from filming the latest series of Top Gear in China
“There will be no formal inquisitions,” a BBC insider said. “There’s only so much you can do on live TV. There is a feeling he went further [than advised]. He knew where the line was and overegged it.”
Leaving aside the rather depressing mixing of metaphors, what sort of an argument is that? Because it was on live TV there isn’t much you can do about it? So presumably if he’d pulled out a Kalashnikov and mown down everyone in the studio, because it was “on live TV” they’d just leave it at that?
The BBC, in the interests of impartiality, obviously, are always very quick to defend a man who ironically enough does slag them off quite a lot. It’s the usual bollocks about his remarks being flippant, wonderfully and satirically controversial, great for ratings, a huge money-spinner, saying what a lot of the wankers who run the BBC actually think, especially about the organised working class, a welcome antidote to the mainstream consensus, etc etc. Funny how their impartiality doesn’t stretch to allowing someone on that they know would say that the bankers should be fed alive into a sausage making machine. In front of their families.
The sorry tale of Clarkson’s doormat ex-wife and the superinjunction
The story that we were originally going to base our unbiased assesment of Clarkson around points up the fact that I’m sure that you know already, that Clarkson is a piece of dogshit. In this case, the Mambo is happy to kick a man when he is down. I’d happily kick him to death in fact. Which is just banter.
Clarkson, that great believer in plain speaking and straight talking, didn’t want the details of the affair with his ex-wife getting into the public domain. So he used that favourite weapon of the rich and powerful, the super-injunction, to stop her.
However the truth will out, as I’m sure he has been wont to remark on numerous occasions, and when the details of his hypocrisy started spreading over the internet he gave up, and now his ex-wife/current mistress is going to publish a book detailing the years with Jeremy. Which I’m sure will be on everyone’s christmas reading list. The Daily Star, a paper determined to focus on the major issues of the day, had a prominent story a few weeks ago which featured Clarkson’s ex-wife spilling the beans on their continued sexual relations after their divorce nearly 20 years ago.
It’s quite an amusing little tale actually, especially considering Clarkson apparently has allegedly been very forthright in sticking the boot into celebrities who cheat on their spouses. How deliciously ironic. Sadly I haven’t been able to find any proof of this anywhere online, and so in the Clarksonian spirit I’ll just have to assume it’s true.
Clarkson comes across as an unpleasant, spiteful, bullying, vindictive, misogynistic, hypocritical scoundrel (shock horror), and as this appears to be a view shared by his ex-wife one has to wonder why she married him in the first place, and continued to allow him to pork her after they had got divorced. Maybe I’m not a great reader of people but he doesn’t strike me as someone who would be a sensitive or thorough lover.
The Chipping Norton Set
Clarkson is of course a leading member of the now-infamous Chipping Norton Set, a group of media powerbrokers and political heavyweights living in close proximity to each other in and around, you guessed it, Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire (David Cameron is Clarkson’s MP). The set, incorporating amongst others Clarkson, Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, Matthew Freud (PR guru and husband of Elizabeth Murdoch) are described by Peter Oborne as “an incestuous collection of louche, affluent, power-hungry and amoral Londoners, located in and around the Prime Minister’s Oxfordshire constituency.” Clarkson is big pals with Cameron, who was clearly loath to join in the near-universal condemnation of Clarkson after his pre-planned One Show outburst as apparently they spend a lot of quality time together.
There is plenty of decadent socialising, parties and high-jinks at each others houses, christmases around the fire together, days out at wanky ex-members of Blur’s cheese festivals and hugely ironic, satirical conversations about how much they’d like to bring in public flogging for people who sell the Big Issue. There is something about all of these media and political big-wigs and their symbiotic relationship that tells us something is profoundly rotten at the heart of our democracy. Politicians and the fourth estate should not be in each others pockets in such a way. It was this hopelessly overlapping, mutually reinforcing relationship that gave us the years of Murdoch omnipotency and phone-hacking.
Our political and media classes are rotten to the core. Clarkson is a living, breathing emblem of that. If there are so many people too stupid to see that is why people are angry about what has transpired this week, then more fool them. As a story it crystallizes everything wrong with Britain, it’s ruling class, it’s poisoned values, it’s shitty, corrupt media and perverted political discourse. A well-paid beneficiary of the public purse felt able to take a dump on millions of ordinary people from a great height. It wasn’t a joke. He was expressing what the elite in this country really think of the people they rule, but dare not say.
jc
Paul McMullan: ‘Privacy is for paedos’
01 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in Current Affairs, Individuals worthy of contempt, Opinions, Philosophical Meanderings, Politics, popular culture
As a horny-handed son of toil I have been far too preoccupied with the strikes to pay much attention to the Leveson inquiry. But the sheer, breathtaking audacity of Paul McMullan’s evidence this week has made me stand up and take notice. It was quite something to behold. (He looked fucking terrible as well)
The guy has achieved some notoriety for being the ‘victim’ of Hugh Grant’s bugger, bugged, sting earlier in the year and also the subject of Steve Coogan’s ire on that amusing Newsnight debate a few months ago.
There is something about his cold, amoral ruthlessness that makes him utterly compelling to watch and read. He seems to be blessed with no self-doubt, and totally believes what he did when at News International was ok. He really thinks that the News of the World hacking of the phones of celebrities and missing schoolgirls was ok and morally justifiable. He comes across a sociopath, to be honest.
His railing against ‘privacy’ was amusing. ‘Privacy is for paedos’ he thinks. I simply cannot understand how someone can think we have no right to a private life free from intrusion. Obviously he doesn’t really think that, and he was just being glib.
His agenda is poisonous, misanthropic and as a servant of the Murdoch empire clearly he had no real interest in exposing how the world really works, but at times I think he does have a slight point.
I think if celebrities play the fame game they have to accept that people will(sadly) be interested in what they do behind closed doors. If politicians wish to lecture people about personal morality and family values we have a right to know if they are practising what they preach. I think it does matter if a Conservative MP is going on about the christian values but in his private life he is snorting coke and consorting with prostitutes. My favourite footballer, John Terry, liked to present himself as a ‘family man’ when in fact he was shagging his mates ex. It was right that we knew what a wanker he was. Ditto ‘family man’ Ryan Giggs.
John Major had ‘back to basics.’ We had a right to know if the Tory cabinet was squeaky clean. Cameron, to his credit, doesn’t lecture us about those things. Ergo, I have no interest in whether Liam Fox is gay or not.
In the video I have linked to, McMullan does land a few blows. If Coogan had refused to have a relationship with the Murdoch media from the word go, then his argument would be unassailable. He knew what they were like before they took an interest in his sex life. As it was, he is slightly compromised if I’m honest, and his anger does ring a tiny bit hollow. He has accepted their money and coverage when it has suited him.
It was never the place of News International to arbitrate what constituted the public interest. The fact that they considered themselves entitled to do so demonstrates the failure of our political class to ever stand up to them.
jc
Daybreak
21 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Current Affairs, popular culture
Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley have been rather unceremoniously given the boot from Daybreak after failing to reverse the show’s dismal viewing figures. I won’t lose too much sleep for them but the sackings, and the rather crass way they have been handled appears to miss the point slightly of why the show has failed so miserably.
The reason no one watches it is that it is bloody terrible. Lowest common denominator celebrity-obsessed shit. I fail to believe that in the times we live in that there aren’t millions of people looking for something slightly more insightful and relevant. Seeing Ross King with his ludicrous dyed hair telling us about Eddie Murphy’s latest fitness DVD or the vaguely creepy TV commentators getting hot and bothered about the latest episode of Downton Abbey is not really serious journalism.
Chiles isn’t very good at masking his disdain for the constant discussions of the X-Factor and he really should just stick to the football. I’ve always felt a bit sorry for the guy as it would hurt anyone’s professional pride to be told that you were being replaced one day a week by the unspeakably obnoxious Chris Evans. Bleakley, although singularly toothsome, is a vapid airhead and apparently her relationship with old chubby chops Frank Lampard has alienated female viewers. God knows why, but anyway.
Speaking of vapid airheads, Natasha Kaplinsky is being mooted as a possible replacement. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some serious female journalists rather than the factory-produced drones wearing far too much make-up we have to endure at present?
How about giving Laurie Penny the job?
jc
Children in Need: Terry Wogan can Fuck Off.
19 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Individuals worthy of contempt, popular culture
Go on Pudsey. Kill him.
The Children in Need telethon last night raised £8 million more than last year. Isn’t that lovely.
All those celebrities selflessly giving up their time for free, with no consideration of the career benefits that might accrue from a charity appearance. I’m sure that doesn’t even cross their minds. And the lovely Gary Barlow, fresh from his career-enhancing exploits on the X-Factor, doing his bit for the kids. And who wouldn’t want to spend their friday night watch the cast of Hollyoaks singing a song? Entertainment at its most thrilling, I’m sure you’ll agree.
But Wogan is the best part. Good old Terry. The hilarious anecdotes on his Radio 2 show. His love of golf. Terry Wogan the national institution. The housewives favourite (or is that Alan Titchmarsh, I can never remember). The thousands of fans. His preposterous wig and effortless charm. He is Children in Need. Where would it be without him? Who could do what he does?
Well anyone could actually, regardless of what some twat at the BBC says. But not everyone would have the unmitigated gall to get paid for doing it.
Because of course Wogan isn’t the nice, cheeky Irish chappie of legend. He is an unpleasant, egotistical mercenary that has managed to create a public persona that is a million miles from the truth.
He earnt £800,000 a year at Radio 2, the highest paid presenter on BBC radio, earning even more than the foul loudmouth Chris Moyles. And this represented excellent value for money apparently:
”The amount (£800,000-jc) they said was true and I don’t give a monkey’s about people knowing it. Nor do I feel guilty. If you do the maths, factoring in my eight million listeners, I cost the BBC about 2p a fortnight. I think I’m cheap at the price”.
Brilliant logic of course. The maths is undeniable to even the most stupid. Why shouldn’t someone whose ony discernible talent is vaguely amusing patter that appeals to upper middle class pensioners be paid so much? Does a nice line in smooth talk constitute actual talent? Most amusingly this is a man who thinks the BBC is paying it’s stars too much………
Despite this astronomical salary and plenty of other well-paid TV work he has taken a fee every year since 1980 for his night presenting Children in Need. At the last count it was nearly £10,000. Never once has he paid it back or donated it to the charity. And I thought the central concept of these celebrity charity things was that they were giving up their time for free one night a year? Apparently not, as
“We are not ashamed to pay him and see no reason why it should not continue. If It wasn’t for Sir Terry, Children In Need would not be what it is today,”
according to a BBC spokeswoman. I think we have summed up here in one sentence the colossal conceit of our venerable British Broadcasting Corporation. It isn’t the millions of people up and down the country, many of whom probably can’t afford to, dipping into their pockets to give to the charity that make it what it is. Oh no. It’s Sir Terry Fucking Wogan. Who is also paid to do it.
It’s ok though. Because he’s an institution. A cheeky Irish chappie. All those uncomfortable questions about his personal ethics make too many people uncomfortable. So we won’t ask them too loudly. You know how touchy people get when national institutions get questioned.
Terry Wogan is worse than Ian Huntley. Fact.
jc
This weekend, Morrissey, you are the quarry
12 Nov 2011 3 Comments
in Current Affairs, Music, Opinions, Politics, popular culture
Morrissey the patriot. How very edgy and controversial.
I read with horror this morning that Morrissey has authorised a cover of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want in a John Lewis christmas commercial. I’m shocked, scandalised and thoroughly outraged. Right now my emotions are similar to the moment when I found out Father Christmas wasn’t real. I had always suspected, but the final confirmation still crushed me.
I don’t imagine he needs the money. So why is he defiling his reputation in the eyes of the people who matter over something so trivial? He has a fantastic musical legacy and the Smiths are a seminal, essential band. Meat is Murder is one of my favourite albums of all time.
It has become conveniently de rigeur, and financially lucrative for supposedly leftist or right-on members of the cognoscenti to become the paid hirelings of the big companies. All those principles and personal integrity are so passe. Sometimes they even try and justify it with some postmodernist bullshit about the world being beyond ideology and Left and Right not meaning anything anymore. So we are faced with the spectacle of fucking wankers like Ben Elton doing anything for money and brown-nosing with George W Bush, Dawn French doing tesco adverts, Lenny Henry advertising grotty motels or former man-hating hellraiser Jo Brand prostituting herself to get on the latest middle-of-the-road panel show or celebrity boat race around the Isle of Wight. It seems that being a troublemaker in your youth is no barrier to becoming part of the cultural establishment later in life.
Johnny Rotten is now selling butter (and his soul) and Iggy Pop is doing adverts for car insurance with a puppet. If they were doing adverts for crystal meth or something I would actually be less horrified. But butter and car insurance?
Morrissey’s status as a radical pin-up has always been questionable in any case. Leaving aside the periodic race rows concocted by the NME (and incidentally he is right about most hip-hop being shit. It isn’t a race thing. Professor Green is a talentless wanker) he seems to have a rather warped sense of priorities. For instance, not longer after the massacre of 97 mostly kids in Norway earlier this year by the far-right Anders Behring Breivik he had this to say at a concert in Poland:
“We all live in a murderous world, as the events in Norway have shown, with 97 dead. Though that is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried’s—- every day”
Can’t say I’m with you on that Steven. And he when he was booked to appear on the Andrew Marr show one sunday with David Cameron also amongst the guests he wrote:
“However much I worship the words of Andrew Marr, I could not go through with the invitation. This was because I knew then that David wanted to repeal the Hunting Act, which would mean the brutal killing of foxes, hares, deer, badgers, otters – just about anything that moves.
“I beg you to notice the unbearable dimension of sorrow that David Cameron is attempting to inflict upon British wildlife.”
David Cameron is leading a government selling off the NHS, privatizing secondary education, making higher education so expensive that in a few years it will be the preserve of the well-off and pursuing a vindictive cuts policy that is the hammering the most marginalised. Cameron’s lack of concern for animal rights isn’t particularly edifying, but it is it really the biggest issue that Morrissey has with the government?
Leaving aside his eccentric political views, the fact that he has chosen to license his iconic music to John Lewis, probably the most sanitized, safe, middle class and would-be bourgeois of stores is hugely distressing. People shop there for the status points as much as the food. Hardly the alienated working-class youth of Smithsdom. If you are going to sell out at least sell out to Home Bargains or Lidl!
I’m sure my belief in personal integrity and principles over cash is somewhat quaint and anachronistic. It is still a huge disappointment that Morrissey has sold out though. You can’t take any money with you to the grave but you can take your dignity. I really expected better.
jc
Internet Misogyny
05 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in Current Affairs, Politics, popular culture
Laurie Penny. Brilliant left-wing blogger and favourite target of the trolls.
There have been a couple of articles appear (here and here) on the internet in the last few days discussing the abuse that female bloggers have to endure for posting anything remotely political or feminist. I have to confess it isn’t a subject I’d given a lot of thought to until I read them.
We are all blokes here at the Mambo so we haven’t had to endure anything like that, and to be honest I rather wish we had a few more people abusing us as we get lots of hits but not much in the way of feedback.
But reading through the articles and seeing what men had been saying to them was really most disturbing. The obsession with violent sex, rape and the bloggers appearance is all extremely worrying.
Assertive, opinionated women seem to scare some men shitless. I have no idea why, I have always found it a very attractive trait. But a lot of men seem to like their women to be demure, silly, frivolous and without opinions.
And left-wing, feminist women apparently are simply beyond the pale. The abuse they generate really is just unacceptable I suppose the fact that they don’t accept their place as the property of men is just too much for the average internet troll to deal with. It appears that history since the Suffragette movement has entirely passed them by. Apart from the internet, and all of its attendant pleasures.
Maybe I have had a rather cloistered upbringing but that kind of violent woman-hatred is completely alien to me. The people who indulge in it need to be beaten with a piece of lead piping, but they also need to be pitied. I know a few men at work I can perfectly well imagine indulging in internet trolling, and they are all ugly, usually fat, disgusting, painfully inadequate in every respect imaginable, bitter with their lot in life and the fact that the women they want don’t give them a second look.
The violent reaction is linked to something I have mentioned before I think. We live in tumultuous times and the world people thought existed has been exposed as a sham. The cosy, complacent, celebrity-obsessed, reactionary and materialistic edifice that people have for so long thought inevitable and everlasting is crumbling.
This is coinciding with a time when the grip of religion is loosening (well here in the UK at least) and the old mores and order are crumbling. Families take multiple forms. Women just aren’t prepared to put up with the shit they endured stoically in previous generations. Divorce rates have never been higher. Single parent families are increasing.
This uncertainty and constant change has left a lot of people bewildered and desperately scrambling around. Many men in particular are struggling to deal with it. So they hide behind their PCs at home, abusing anyone who dares question the Daily Mail view of the world. Ironically it is they who probably would denounce the oppression of women most violently in Muslim countries, decrying their backwardness and barbarism.
Lone women bloggers are an easy target. They can be abused and degraded without fear of consequence of retribution (normally). And the people doing the trolling often feel powerless in every other respect of their lives. Knowing they are making someone feel small and demeaned gives them a perverse pleasure. And something to wank over.
I can only say to those who receive the abuse; don’t give up. If you are generating that sort of reaction then it means you are right. For every misogynistic knuckle-dragging, gurning cave-dweller there will be one or two people who will read it and it may prompt them to re-think their view of the world.
And the trolls. Send us a few of your thoughts. We probably won’t publish them, unless they are self-parodying and we fancy a laugh. But if you hear a knock on your door in the middle of the night you might need to pick your trousers up from around your ankles. As we might be paying you a visit.
JC
Should suspended Wayne Rooney be selected for Euro 2012?
15 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
Such a silly boy: Rooney vs Montenegro.
In a sane world, this article would not exist. However, with grim inevitability given the insanity that engulfs the English national football team, discussion as to whether its finest player should be selected for the squad to travel to Poland and Ukraine despite his suspension has abounded. Therefore, this should instead be the shortest article in existence: Should Wayne Rooney be part of England’s Euro 2012 campaign? Yes, of course. Next. Nonetheless, the very presence of such an argument highlights the endemic short-sightedness afflicting the game on these shores and alludes to many of the woes confronting the national team.
In truth, Rooney’s senseless red card in Podgorica fully warrants the subsequent 3-game ban afforded him irrespective of British cries against the Draconian nature of such a disciplinary measure, especially as violent conduct, such as the Liverpudlian’s moronic kick at Montenegro’s Miodrag Dzudovic, inherently carries that very punishment. The glib, baseless retort that such an incendiary nature forges the edge which allows Rooney’s genius to flourish is a further wayward distraction; it was a daft thing to do. He shouldn’t have done it. Making flimsy excuses in the wake of England’s progression being pointedly prejudiced is unhelpful and his actions were duly condemned by UEFA. Native distrust of that organisation, particularly given their president Michel Platini’s pleasing disdain for the Premier League’s insidious influence has consequently been heightened following naive appeals for leniency but ultimately Europe’s governing body are merely exercising the existing regulations. Regrettably, on this occasion it denies the continent’s international showpiece one of its leading lights throughout the group stage though navigating the tournament’s preliminary round should be the very least of England’s ambitions. Indeed, given the baffling tub-thumping, flag-waving and general insular delusions of their status as a sporting superpower, it is the implicit suggestion of diffidence that makes the Rooney debate so curious.
Hype is everywhere in the modern game, though where Rooney is concerned it is wholly justifed. One of the biggest talents of his generation, the Manchester United forward offers the expected English virtues of aggression, power and stamina yet marries them with a rare technical exellence, ingenuinity and a raised appreciation of space and time; atypical British attributes which perhaps prompted Benfica boss Jorge Jesus recently to observe his similarities to South American greats. Understandably, such qualities shall be sorely missed during next summer’s competition, especially when considering the dearth England’s forward alternatives. Unconvincing, overpiced and uncouth thug Andy Carroll, finisher-and-finisher-alone Darren Bent, witless-athlete-labouring-to-learn-the-game Gabriel Agbonlahor, ageing donkey Kevin Davies, the rangy and raw Danny Welbeck, late-blooming last-resort Bobby Zamora and the admittedly promising Daniel Sturridge will all vie for what is superficially Rooney’s starting berth yet ultimately none will offer anything like the guile, vision and finesse his presence promises.
Indeed, given the usual lamentable poverty of creative options at England’s disposal, Fabio Capello must invest huge faith in the recoveries of long-term injury victims Jack Wilshere and Steven Gerrard, though in truth the Italian’s pronounced pragmatism will console him that even in the absence of his one genuine world-class performer, his resources should run just deep enough to ensure safe passage to the knock-out stage. Given that England will be seeded in pot 2 ( thus they cannot face a progressive Germany or a revived Italy) they face a 50% chance of drawing either Poland or Ukraine, prosaic sides who despite home support shouldn’t offer great resistance, from pot 1 and in all likelihood one from Greece, Sweden, Denmark or Russia in the third pot, solid sides yet none of whom will offer the most daunting of examinations. The Italian may be keen to avoid the victors from Turkey and Croatia’s match-up, although the remaining sides contesting play-offs should hold trepidation but no great fear. With this in mind, Rooney’s squad place should be unchallenged; in spite of holding their customary technical disadvantage against most opponents, the eligible members of England’s team will in all likelihood graduate to the quarter finals from where their talisman will appear to help combat the sterner tests expected at such a juncture.
That nevertheless, is not to say that a returning Rooney will turn-up, effortlessly glide into a Paolo Rossi-esque run of form and propel his country to a glorious victory. On the contrary, here at Representing the Mambo our distaste for the England team is no secret and its inprobable success is not a narrative whose fruition we seek to be realised but even countenancing the voluntarily expulsion of the man who is, by some distance, its most gifted player is deeply disturbing and once again, reflects damningly on the preplexing footballing culture of this land.
DC
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