Cat's foot iron claw pt.2

A couple of things I forgot from the earlier post:

Re decent Christmas telly, I forgot about BBC4s Crooked House. Three half hour ghost stories written by The League of Gentlemen's Mark Gatiss, all based in the same house down the ages. Shows that you can use your imagination without resorting to flares-wearing robots or Mackenzie Crook wearing a false nose made from an old Corn Flakes box.

And regarding Prog Rock Britannia, has anyone at BBC4 got the gumption to commision Heavy Metal Britannia? Go on BBC4, you proved you can do a good documentary about music that constantly gets derided over the weekend. It's long overdue.

Cat's foot iron claw

Hello, happy new year and all that bollocks. I suppose I'd better start easing my way back into this blogging thing.
I'm back working shifts at work for the next few months and I'm trying not to get back addicted to the internet. Over Christmas I went for five days without switching on the PC, which was quite a liberating experience. I only switched it on after five days to check email and download some music. Mind you, having said all that I'll probably end up posting three times a day, or something ridiculous.

Anyway, telly over Christmas was largely crap. I happened to see the Christmas Day Doctor Who. Oh dear, that's an hour of my life I won't get back. I'm tried with Doctor Who, I really have, but that'll probably be the last time I intentionally watch it. And those Wallace and Gromit Christmas idents on BBC1 started way too early and went on for way too long.
Some highlights:
The Peter Serafinowicz Show - I recall blogging about his 2007 series being slightly disappointing. The special over Christmas was a joy though, every sketch a winner. Especially the David Attenborough spoof that had a spider that made it's web from tinsel and had a bumble bee on its way to a Christmas party trapped in it. Oh, and a stoned Terry Wogan doing Points of View.
The Generation Game 1973 Christmas Special - very funny, but not just in a 'ooh look at the haircuts!' kind of way. Forsyth at the top of his game. And you can't argue with a show that features Frankie Howerd pulling his pants out of his arse crack and saying 'Let me get myself comfy', that horrid old witch Fanny Craddock and a fella who does the old tablecloth trick. Top prizes too - weighing scales for a lady, a drill for a man, an electric toothbrush for a winning finalist and a Trinitron portable telly it took two blokes to carry out (the screen was a bout 14" but the cabinet was a cumbersome mahogany affair).

And I have to say that I've enjoyed BBC4's short Prog Rock this last weekend. What a refreshing change it made to see a serious non-sneary or tongue-in-cheek documentary on the subject. I know it's not the easiest music in the world to love and I also know it sometimes took itself way too seriously, but it deserves recognition. Three minor quibbles with it: 1) I think they should have got Peter Gabriel and Robert Fripp to be talking heads. Isn't it funny how Fripp allowed himself to be interviewed by GMTV when his missus was on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! but not when someone wants to ask him about music? 2) Too much about ELP. A dreadful band, even though Lake and Emerson's previous bands were shit hot. Old roadies' adage: "There are three things you don't need on tour - earache, toothache and Greg Lake" 3) All the previous Music Britannia docos have bought come right up to date. Watching that you'd be forgiven for thinking it ended in 1976 - wither Radiohead, Muse, Porcupine Tree, Pure Reason Revolution, Diagonal etc?

Genuinely scary:

2008 and all that

That's 2008 then. The Bright Ambassador highlights:

• Guitar Hero 3 - how to kill weekend afternoons during a crap summer


• Dexter


• Nottingham Forest's promotion


• Mad Men


• Metallica back on form


• Charlie Brooker's print and TV tribute to Oliver Postgate


• Fleet Foxes


• The sitcom Pulling - deliciously filthy


• Word magazine's Prog edition


• Danny Baker back on 606


• Rebecca Romero


• Son of Rambow


• The rise of Christine Bleakley


• Dead Set


• Jez using a £20 note as a masturbatory visual aid on Peep Show


• The Ting Tings


• Seeing Peep Show's Isy Suttie in the flesh (pictured)


• Elbow finally getting the recognition they deserve


• Kristen Schaal in The Flight of the Conchords


• Armstrong and Miller's Timeghost podcast


• Terry Wogan leaving Eurovision - how about him leaving Radio 2?


• Watson and Oliver at Edinburgh
  

What didn't float my boat:

• Sam Allardyce not coming to Nottingham Forest


• Graham Norton joining Eurovision


• The way newspapers, especially The Sun and Daily Mail, use the slightest thing as a stick with which to beat the BBC. I'm surprised I haven't seen a headline along the lines of 'Man's disgust at getting papercut from the 1985 edition of Radio 1's Which Way Now? pack. Fat cat Beeb bosses laugh themselves unconscious at the news during the Christmas party WE paid for'.


• The film PS I Love You


• The Ting Tings


• Nottingham Forest playing like a steaming pile of poo from August onwards


• Ashes to Ashes (the telly show, not the Bowie song)


• Dirty Sexy Money - the biggest waste of talent since ELP


• The upward curve of Frankie Boyle's career


• Hole in the Wall

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Guitar Hero: Metallica Edition


• Seeing Metallica in February for the first time in sixteen years


• Anything else Metallica-related

That's me done for this year. Happy Christmas - whether you like it or not. As Geddy Lee says, with alarming regularity immediately pre-interval, I'm 'going to take a break for some brain surgery.' Things are out of my control a little work-wise in the new year, so whether I'll be back sooner rather than later is yet to be seen.

To quote Derek Batey, be good to each other. Ta-ra.

Fallen Madonna with the big bank account

There was a thing on the radio today about the Madonna and Guy Ritchie divorce settlement. Ritchie is reportedly getting £50m for his trouble.Which set me to thinking that that's not a bad return for eight years of marriage. I'm such a shallow turd that I think I could put up with a monumental pain in the arse like Madonna for eight years if I knew I was going to come out of it with £50m in the bank. Yeah, I know it's a kind of prostitution, but £50m's £50m after all. You'd be the most expensive prostitute in history - you could even get Norris McWhirter and Roy Castle involved (Yeah, I know they're dead, but can you imagine? "He's a spunk-donating celebrity-shagging bank-account-emptying record breaker!").
You'd have to get used to her of course. I mean all that Kabbalah; being friends with Sting and his missus; adopting children; impregnating her; having to leave the pub because she's bored; having to see her naked (though this leaves very little to the imagination); being enthusiastic about her latest album/tour/film/kiddies' book must get wearing after a time. I could enthuse for England if I knew that there was a cheque for £50m at the end of it. Just think what you could buy: a whole Aston Martin, a season ticket for Forest (Hung Up is used as part of Forest's pre-match build-up music, they'd have to change that), a riverside apartment in Newark, the Genesis 1970-1975 box set, a ticket to see Madonna in concert - oh, hang on...
And with £50m, that's right £50m, in the bank coupled with my sparkling personality, I'd be beating off the tastier chicks with a shitty stick.

So, Madonna, if you're reading this and you find that you're looking for another fair-haired English chap with no discernible talent to speak of to add to your ex-husband collection, drop us a line.

Beyond wizard's sleeve

I went out on the works do mentioned here on Saturday night. What a wash out, only four of us turned up, and one of those wasn't drinking. I've never been so depressed in all my life, well, not since Score with Ray Stubbs earlier in the evening.

I don't know whether I'm out of practise or what, but I can't seem to drink with the same amount of gusto which I once did. Must be my age I suppose, coupled with the fact that if I go out these days it tends to be to a restaurant, cinema or to see a band. Drinking pints of lager doesn't appeal to me in the same way it once did. Besides, drinking lots of beer these days tends to give me a wicked hangover; which is why I never moved off the settee until midday yesterday. I woke up with what Billy Connolly describes as 'feeling like you're wearing an internal balaclava'. I think I saw the whole of Something For the Weekend with that cock Tim Lovejoy.

The reason for the various no-shows were that a few of them thought the X Factor final was more inviting than coming out with me on a wet Saturday night. What's wrong with these people? I'd rather have a lobotomy than watch the X Factor, and I'm great company in da pub. I hate that show and I hate Simon Cowell - it's not about music it's about filling Cowell's bank account. I know I shouldn't be bothered about the Christmas no.1 but I am, and I'm getting sick of his merry band of mediocre knobsacks laying siege to the charts every Christmas. It almost makes me want Terry Wogan or Peter Kay to beat that song to no.1.

And have you heard Hallelujah? It's rotten, of course. There's a line near the start 'You don't care for music, do yer?' No, Simon Cowell doesn't, does he? They've put fucking drums and a bastard gospel choir on it. And why do people think that all those vocal histrionics add something to the song? It's all technique and no soul (A bit like a pathetic prog metal band I know called Dream Theater. "Whoah, dude, look how fast I can shred my axe!"). Did I mention that I hate Simon Cowell? I'm not a violent man, but I'd love to punch him in his Botoxed, smirking face. Repeatedly.

I. Hate. Simon. Cowell.

By the way, glad to see someone agrees with me about Deacon Blue, even if he is pleading for comments.

Church of the poisoned mind

Found this rather enjoyable website via the Word magazine site via the ever excellent Danny Baker. What larks!

Don't Cry For Me: One Boy's Dream of Not Getting a Daily Thrashing

I'm looking for something new to read. If I don't finish Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain by Christmas then I'm going to shoot myself. While perusing Amazon, I came across the list for the best-selling 'tragic true life stories'. I know I'm not the first person to comment on this, but who buys these things in such huge numbers? And look at the titles - some probably have more words than the actual book itself contains. Here's my favourite: Cry Silent Tears: The Heartbreaking Survival Story of a Small Mute Boy Who Overcame Unbearable Suffering and Found His Voice Again. Jesus, you'd need to take a deep breath when ordering that at WH Smith. And I just bet someone has that on their Christmas list.

So I've come up with a title for my own, entirely fictional, tragic childhood story: Little Dickie: The Boy Who Was Locked in a Wardrobe For the First Ten Years of His Life Before Being Encouraged to Run Along the Central Reservation of the A1(M) With Scissors In Just His Nylon Y-Fronts.

Anyway, I've been thinking of getting this, but apparently it's very thick and I'll get arm ache reading such a big book in bed.

I know I'm a bit late here, but the fellow who made this contributed to my relatively happy childhood, unlike the mute boy who found his voice. A great storyteller, and who doesn't love a great storyteller?