Celebrity lookalikes no.4

Ex-X Factor presenter, ex-Smash Hits editor and all round bland-as-magnolia-paint TV prezzener Kate Thornton.

Former Lara Croft model and current face of bloatedness-busting yoghurt Activia, Nell McAndrew.

Now that's what I call mint condition

I notice that today EMI are re-releasing the original Now! That's What I Call Music on CD to mark its 25th anniversary, which was, er, last year. That's my copy in the photo, in all its 1983 Phil Collins and spiky hair glory, and, according to this article, original Now albums are collector's items. Which leads me to the Mark and Lard question "Is it worth owt? It's mint".

They say that this Mr Abram can't be influenced. So how does he explain that Kajagoogoo appear twice on Now! 1? Big Apple anyone? Thought not.

I was bought that by my parents for Christmas after they sent my sister out to get it for me. I seem to remember asking for the Saturday Superstore compilation album because it had The Icicle Works' Love is a Wonderful Colour on it, but she bought Now! "Cos it's better". I wonder how much those Saturday Superstore albums are fetching now? Are they worth owt? Hmm, I wonder...

A journey through time and space

So The Mighty Boosh then. It kind of worked in an arena because they're sort of rock 'n' roll. I must say that this new live show wasn't as good as the first one. As TMB has took off then obviously their audience has expanded massively and, to keep the rock thing going, it was more of a greatest hits set.

People go on about how they're the new Monty Python, what with the mix of the surreal, songs and animation, but after Saturday night comparisons to Morecambe and Wise struck me. Let me explain: they're obviously a traditional double act - one's 'with it' and plays to the crowd while the other gets exasperated by his shenanigans; there's a reliance on the comedic effect of a big pair of comedy curtains; part two featured the straight man desperate to stage a serious play. See? It all adds up.

What I love the most about TMB is the homemade aesthetic of the whole thing. Some of it bordering on being a bit rubbish and we're in on the joke.

I also loved the dressing up by audience members, one woman going as a naan bread. Genius.

An animation at the end was pretty groovy too, it was a stop/go job made from Smarties and Licorice Allsorts.

What I didn't love about Saturday was there was far too much Rich 'look at me!' Fulcher, and nowhere near enough Naboo and Bollo.

What I also learned is that going to comedy on your own is useless. Thing is, I don't know anyone else who 'gets' TMB. Philistines.

And there was a guy sitting behind me who, during the pre-concert build-up and interval let the biggest stream of bullshit loose from his gob. He never paused for breath. Why is it that the people with the least to say have the loudest voices?

eg "Yeah, I think I'm just gonna go to university and get some really random degree...my mate's wife's gonna get us tickets for ManU/Inter, she knows I'm a real hardcore ManU fan if she can't get those she's gonna get ManU/Portsmouth she's also trying to get tickets for Derby/Forest in the FA Cup there'll be fighting...yeah, that woman down there could do with losing some weight off her fat arse"

Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP! I don't know if he realised this, but he was saying all that out loud. Wanker. I hope he doesn't get tickets for those football matches because he sounds like the worst kind of nu-fan. And if he does get tickets for Derby/Forest in the FA Cup, and, in the very unlikely event that there is fighting, I hope a Derby fan kicks his fucking head in.

Peace.

Sugar-flavoured snot

I've just been eating my dinner while watching telly just now (yeah, get me the posh bastard), and I saw an advert for this. Who in their right minds sits there and thinks "Hmm, do you know what, I could really do with every episode of The Little House on the Prairie just in case of emergencies. Then my life would be complete. And the thing is it'd be even lovelier if they could build up week by week as an amazing partwork complete with behind-the-scenes magazine."
I think G E Fabbri need to have a word with their marketing department though. The ad was shown during a break in last night's Dexter, not exactly a shared audience I would have thought. Unless, of course, there's an episode of TLHOTP I didn't see that featured a mad serial killer kidnapping Melissa Gilbert and Michael Landon before killing them, dismembering their bodies and throwing the bits, in binliners, into the river in Walnut Creek as part of some retribution killings for crimes against wholesome entertainment.
I await The Waltons DVD Collection with baited breath. Hopefully issue 1 will come with complimentary John Boy mole to stick on your face.

Random stuff

One of my favourite sayings at the minute is 'don't let light in on the magic'. I wish I'd remembered that before I asked for Frank Skinner's latest book for Christmas. I've read it and realised that I don't particularly like him anymore. The book is a journal of his thoughts over a period of about three months. In essence it's a blog in book form. He might as well have called it I *heart* Catholicism, He bangs on about it an awful lot, but neatly tends to sidestep any issues like The Vatican's attitude to homosexuality or the Pope not sanctioning the use of condoms in Africa to help combat HIV.
Skinner also appears not to be a very nice person, which is a huge disappointment to me. I know he's not the most ground-breaking of comedians, but I've always thought he was 'one of us' ie someone who'd had a proper job before finding comedic success. In the book you find out that he's not very tolerant of people and takes to despising his tour manager, a man just trying to make the best of them being in close proximity with each other for weeks on end. Oh, and his girlfriend would do my swede in too.
Anyroad, if you like Skinner don't buy it, and if you don't like Skinner it'll only reinforce your opinion.

Why is this news? Much as the the papers like to keep telling us about so-called 'Broken Britain', the vast majority of people are hard-working, kind, good-natured and helpful. I don't know about where you live but it's not very often I leave my front door without sharing a small joke or swapping a 'mornin'/af'noon/ay-up' with at least one complete stranger or passing acquaintance. Just yesterday I had a laugh with a woman in WH Smith who came to me to ask if I could reach a copy of US Vogue for her. If you believe the papers you'd be forgiven for thinking that she'd be too frightened to approach me for fear of being stabbed-up while I urinated on her and filmed the whole thing on my mobile phone.
Besides, how often do you drive around the country and see honesty boxes at the end of farm tracks or outside someone's gate selling eggs, windblown apples, bags of horseshit etc?

I'm going to see The Mighty Boosh Live tomorrow night. I'm not sure about comedy in arenas. Truth be told I only got the tickets because they were on special offer. I think they're having trouble shifting them because the Nottingham Trent Hef Hem Arena phoned me over Christmas to tell me I was being moved closer to the stage, and I got an email yesterday to say they were offering 50 pairs of tickets in a free competition. I suppose they'd already played three sold-out shows there two months ago, no one wants to go again. No doubt I'll be the only one there in jeans and a big coat.

I really don't like cricket, but I find this whole Kevin Pietersen thing fascinating. Not least because it makes cricket look stupid and all those superior duffers at the MCC who look down their noses at football are in agony. Tee and indeed hee. My favourite quote comes from one of the BBC's cricket men, Jonathan Agnew: "Pietersen's the sort of man who'd join the navy so the world could see him." Brilliant, I'll have to remember that.

Walking around Sainsbury's this morning, Marillion's Garden Party wouldn't leave my head. Dunno why. I can never remember in which order the 'I'm beagling, I'm punting, I'm wining reclining' bit comes. I've had a soft spot for it ever since Wham, who were guest reviewers of the singles, mercilessly slagged it off in Smash Hits in 1983. Your enemy's enemy is your best friend, and I've got a long memory. You can have a look at the video if you like while I desperately try and get myself off the prog tip I'm on at the minute, mind you, watching this video isn't going to help. One for the teenagers. Not.

Show me the man and I'll show you the boy

I don't know what's wrong with me but I appear to be regressing into childhood (yeah, like I'd ever progressed into adulthood). I say this because two things that I previously thought were only for children, I've suddenly gained an interest in.

The first is in comics. Now I've never hid my light under a bushel as regard anything by the great DC Thompson or IPC, I'm talking about stuff like Marvel or DC. Not that I'm particularly into superhero stuff, but I watched the film version of Alan Mooore's V for Vendetta over Christmas and really enjoyed it. I love anything that portrays Britain as a totalitarian state. Especially one that has John Hurt as its leader. So I'm thinking that I may actually buy some of Alan Moore's comics. Or graphic novels as I believe we must now call them. In fact we must because I bought Ghost World from an Edinburgh branch of Borders in the summer and when walking out I set the alarms off. The guy who served me came rushing from behind the counter and said, in a loud voice, "It must be your comic, they don't always scan properly!" Great, cheers, mate, now everyone thinks I'm a) a man with the mental capacity of an eight year-old or b) some kind of comics anorak.

I've had a soft spot for Ghost World for some time now, ever since I saw the film of it a few years ago. I never realised until recently it was based on a comic, ahem, sorry, graphic novel. In case you haven't seen it it's about two intelligent late teenage girls being bored in a small town that can't contain them and the cast of weirdos they meet. I've always found the kind of people who fancy cartoon characters slightly worrying (especially my sister who fancies a character from King of the Hill called Boomhauer. A man who speaks in an indecipherable Texan drawl). But I think I fancy the two girls from Ghost World (or do I just fancy Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch who starred in the film?), and should I be worried that I fancy two 17 year-old American girls, as a 37 year-old man, that is? Never mind, I could always email Lily Allen's new squeeze and ask him I suppose...

The other thing I've got myself interested in is electronic gaming. Never appealed before until Guitar Hero, so this Christmas I treated myself to an Xbox 360. But it didn't stop at the latest incarnation of GH, no, I've gone and got something called Grand Theft Auto IV. I've started playing it and I haven't got a clue what's going on. I know you're supposed to nick cars. I've got that far, I know how to steal the cars, you just walk up to one and press the 'Y' button. But I don't know what happens once inside the car. I tend to just drive it around and avoid the 'cops'. Someone at work told me you have to follow a radar or summat. I dunno...

There's also a lot of effing 'n' jeffing on it too. You only have to walk past someone on the street and you get called a 'motherfucker' or somesuch. Apparently there's a strip club to visit somewhere in the game. No doubt, on my current fancying-cartoon-characters form, I'll end up crying myself to sleep over one of the sodding CGI strippers.

I'll keep you posted on how I get on with it. I'm hoping to get Call of Duty: World at War for my birthday. In which you can bayonet stormtroopers of the Third Reich and throw flames at soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Pacific campaign. Top.

To cut a reformation short, I lost my mind

Of course one of the things I love about working late shift is that I can listen to Radcliffe & Maconie on Radio2 of an evening. I tuned in last night for the first time in ages and it really is a show full of delight. What a musical selection: The Yardbirds, Split Enz, David Bowie, Rush (yay!), The Divine Comedy, Nick Lowe, Marvine Gaye, Radiohead, Fleet Foxes, Lily Allen and Iggy Pop, amongst others, all got an airing last night. As well as a three song set by Adrian Edmondson's band, The Bad Shepherds. They play folk covers of punk and new wave songs; last night's set featured songs by The Clash (even an anti-Clash fan like me got a load of enjoyment from hearing I Fought the Law on the uilleann pipes and bodhran), Kraftwerk and Wreckless Eric.
I know I bang on about the R&M show sometimes but they really are worth listening to if you're disenchanted with the telly of an evening.

The R&M show last night mentioned this story about Spandau Ballet getting back together. I keep banging on about 80s reformations too, but why do this? Everybody knows that Hadley and Gary Kemp hate each other so it's so nakedly about earning loadsa cash it makes me sick. Here's the most telling quote from that small article: "It would be a great, fun comeback and very lucrative for the band." Just take out the words 'great' and 'fun' and you're getting there. No doubt the fortysomething fans'll be queueing up for tickets. Don't go, you're only encouraging them.
I'll give Hadley the same advice I gave Midge Ure a month or so ago: don't do it Tony - you can be crap on your own without four other kilted and tartan-tea-towelled-bedecked mongs as well.