Do you know what I've really enjoyed on telly just lately? Citizen Khan. I know it's fashionable to knock it but it's a sitcom that ticks the biggest box that all sitcoms should tick: it's got jokes in it. Proper gags. If you like your 'comedy' unfunny then maybe I suggest you stick to your Thick Of Its and your Russell Howard's Good News.
When the first episode was shown there was an outcry that it was anti-Islam. You often wonder if the people doing the complaining were actually watching the programme. Instead of being anti-Islam, Citizen Khan pokes fun at a certain section of the Muslim community. And I was always taught that you can't laugh at anyone until you can laugh at yourself.
Take the character of Mr Khan, the self-styled 'community leader' (the creation of Adil Ray), he's in the great tradition of sitcom characters like Captain Mainwaring or Basil Fawlty in that his pomposity is pricked at any given opportunity by those surrounding him whom he looks down on. I'm not a Muslim, from Birmingham or Asian but I just know that people like Mr Khan really do exist, or that girls in make-up, tight clothing and the hijab exist, or that Anglo Saxons who convert to Islam exist.
I get the feeling that the people who initially complained about Citizen Khan are the kind of people who only think of Muslims in a negative way. Perhaps by sticking with Citizen Khan they would have had their opinion changed. Hopefully.
Anyway, the series has ended now, with an average 3m viewers for the first run. A second series has been commissioned, so perhaps the people who just like a laugh have won.
For some reason this documentary popped into my head today. I can vaguely remember watching some of it on its original broadcast (shot in summer 1984, screened in February 1985. I was 14 in Feb 1985) but I would imagine that either bedtime encroached (I had a paper round to get up for) or one of my parents perhaps thought it was a bit racy and I was ordered to bed. What really got my appetite flowing for it though was when Johnny Vaughan talked about on a TV show about TV a few years ago. And now some complete and utter genius has put the whole thing on You Tube.
The Outcasts tells the story of a group of bikers (like Hell's Angels but not allowed to call themselves Hell's Angels) in Great Yarmouth. They're led by a guy called Tramp, or Bobby to his mum (pictured below). Tramp likes his bikers to be rough and ready, but not too rough and ready. He doesn't allow anyone to claim the dole if they're capable of working. And if you are capable of working then he'll find you employment at The Outcasts' burger van. The burger van is there to raise money for the club and help pay fines and for solicitors. Indeed, fines and court appearances seem to be an occupational hazard for the gang. Apart from the burger van, the other un-rough-and-ready aspect to The Outcasts is that they have their own cheque book held at Lloyds Bank.
Not just anybody can join The Outcasts though, no sir! First you go through a period of 'hanging about' as your introduction to the gang. Then you have to go through different ceremonies and initiations before you're fully accepted and receive your 'Top Rocker', 'Bottom Rocker' and are allowed the club tattoo.
Tramp even goes so far as to inform the local police inspector when they're having a party. "Watch what yer doin" the inspector tells Tramp down the phone. "Oh, we will" Tramp replies, before adding "There'll be no messin' around wi' wood". This refers to a previous party when gang member Wulf was killed in a freak non-motorcycling accident. One of the gang is a qualified embalmer so did the honours for the funeral. The embalming process presented difficulties as half of Wulf's head was missing. Oh dear.
What I love about this is that it's a snapshot in time (check out the Squezy washing-up liquid bottle and old Heineken tins). I mean, you don't see proper grebos anymore. And I mean proper grebos, with chromed German helmets and a general air of muckiness. The last time I saw any Hell's Angels was a few years ago when me and my sister went to see Hayseed Dixie at a local festival. The St. Ledger chapter of Doncaster Hell's Angels were out in force there but everything was just a bit too clean. They had haircuts. Not right. Take it from me, there are men who attend heavy metal festivals these days wearing make-up. Bloody make-up! Can you imagine wearing a man wearing make-up in front of Tramp? No, it doesn't bear thinking about.
Anyway, keep watching because this edition of 40 Minutes will be discussed on Did You See..? (remember that? Ludovic Kennedy? Ben Elton: "Did You See..? Yes, I bloody well did see, thank you") and there's footage of a youthful Dougie Donnelly presenting the World Indoor Bowls Championships for afters. Terry Sullivan of Wales won in 1985, if you're interested. Before he went on to be in Brookside.
So, please watch 40 Minutes: The Outcasts, you won't regret it. But I'll warn you, watching this will make you want to join The Outcasts, they're that likeable.
And you have to love any TV show that puts this over the opening titles, don't you?
I've never been what you'd call a devotee of The Great British Bake Off; I've dipped in and out. I think that might have something to do with the show's title - if it's a 'bake off' then surely that means two people going head-to-head to create one dish and the one which is the best will be determined the winner. I suppose The Great British Baking Tournament wouldn't really work. And what's 'great' about it? Anyway, looking for something to watch on the iPlayer yesterday I thought I'd give this week's episode a go (I have seen previous episodes in this series but shift work means I've not seen them all).
Let's look at the remaining contestants:
Brendan - looks like he could play a quiet priest in Father Ted. Good at baking.
Cathryn - good-looking, and she knows it.
Danny - a woman with a man's name. Looks like someone whose face you can't quite place. Would probably think nothing of spending £50 on a Cath Kidston tea caddy.
James - Ugh. Has a line in jumpers which make it look like he still wishes it was the austerity fifties.
John - clearly failed the audition for The Feeling.
Ryan - ALWAYS looks stressed. Doesn't appear to be enjoying himself much.
The judges are Mary Berry (my mum had a book of hers in the 1970s. She looked ancient then so how old is she now?) and this git called Paul Hollywood. He has perfectly tufted hair covered in gunk and looks like he buys his jeans from Lidl.
The general consensus seems to be that it's 'nice television'. It isn't. Have you seen the way they look at Paul Hollywood when he disses something they've made? My mum used to do competition baking and let me tell you, those women would stab each other in the back if it meant that they turned out a better coffee and walnut cake than their competitors. For example, take Cathryn, plays the ditsy card but if looks could kill then Paul Hollywood would have been lying comatose on the floor of that marquee when he slagged off her opening gambit of sponge puddings this week. And she clearly wasn't amused when Sarah-Jane showed her how to knead her strudel pastry which then landed on the floor. Cathryn laughed it off but she wasn't fooling anyone - she wanted to kill.
One of the dishes they had to make this was queen of puddings. According to Mary Berry "it's a favourite in British families". Really? Because I've never heard of it. It's custard (with breadcrumbs in it. Ergh!) with jam on top and meringue on top of that. Sounds revolting. Now, get this, they had to make their own jam. In two hours. When my mum used to make jam it was like a military operation involving a huge pan, bags and bags of sugar and a lot of dicking around with a saucer. These fools want people to knock out not only jam but also a pudding in two hours. I'm not surprised Ryan always looks like he wants to go home. Anyway, Brendan won that. As you'd expect. He'll win.
Next up was a strudel. Now this show is called The Great British Bake Off. Strudel's German, isn't it? so that gave the cue to Mel and Sue to start speaking in German which I didn't understand (I left school before I was 18). Pretty annoying. To me strudel contains apple, and, at a push, mixed berries. These idiots were putting cheese in their strudels. I wouldn't want to eat that. Why do they mess around with things? Cheese is savoury, strudel is sweet. Fact. Anyway, John tried to slice his finger off, which meant he was sent to hospital. Because of that no star baker was announced this week as it was decided it was unfair to judge everyone's strudels when they weren't all present (spoiler alert! Oops, too late. Sorry). What an anti-climax.
What amazes me though is the way the viewer judges it as serious. They're all on Twitter on a Tuesday night, sofalizing, laughing at someone's latest mishap. Just remember this: it's a baking competition.
Right, I'll be looking at Gareth Malone's choir thing next. That's supposed to be 'nice television' as well, isn't it? I won't hold out much hope as Malone gives me the creeps. And why the obsession with choirs. If he decided to set up a heavy metal band then perhaps he'd go up in my estimation. I just bet I don't like it.
Look at those two. Just look. Do you know who they are? If you live in the UK and have a television licence then you bloody well should because they're never off the telly. Every time I switch on do I have to put up with those two buffoons leering out of the screen. I have to get out of bed every other week at 4am to go to work. Yesterday I flicked on the telly at 4:10am to check the news headlines on Ceefax (yeah, get me, I'm not what you'd call an 'early adopter') and these two berks were bloody on. At 4:10am! Groo.To make matters worse the whole thing was being signed. Now, I love the fact that programmes get signed for the deaf to enjoy stuff too, but if I was deaf and I knew the BBC were signing the Hairy Bikers' own particular brand of garbage I think I'd be writing a stiff letter to Points of View. Or the Daily Mail at least.
They're not even proper hairy bikers. Hairy bikers I've encountered in the past would eat raw dog and drink petrol.
I mean, what are they for? Does anyone actually make the stuff they churn out? No, they don't. Well, I don't. I can make a meal out of a bag of pilau rice, some sausages, a tin of Sainsbury's mushy peas and a three day-old Warburton's You think I'm joking don't you? If Si and Dave (I hate myself for knowing their names. And I hate them for the incredibly matey way they've shortened their names) show me how to make tasty meals out of some out-of-date bacon, a tin of ravioli, a jar of red cabbage and some lasagne sheets then I'm all eyes and ears.
Talking of cookery shows it gave me great pleasure to see that Something for the Weekend's coming to an end. Well, sort of pleasure; it's a show I love to hate (as those who follow me on Twitter will know, no Sunday morning is complete without me spraffing off on #SFTW). That oaf Tim Lovejoy really grates with me. He's always quacking on about the 'manly' pursuits he's been up to that week. These pursuits usually involve snowboarding or drinking cocktails. He should have been with me at work yesterday morning -we'll see what sort of man he is if he had to pull a tonne of frozen julienne (!) carrots off the back of a trailer with an incredibly slippery floor at 5:15am. And don't even get me started on his co-prezzener, Louise Redknapp. She is to TV-presenting (or "presentin'" as she would say) what Joseph Stalin was to human rights.
Anyway, what I did enjoy on telly over the last week was the Depeche Mode documentary, or, if you will, 'rockumentary' (ho ho!), 101. What a great snapshot of the late 80s that was - lawyers with ponytails, brick mobile phones, demi waves, Dave Gahan before he found out how incredibly moreish The H is and snow washed denim. It begs the questions a) was Andy Fletcher the Bez of DM and b) whatever happened to Alan Wilder?
Oh, have this, it's Friday (I have a cousin who is a dead ringer for Martin Gore, yes, really and there's a lovely shot near the end of this of a middle-aged woman blowing up a beach ball. Bizarrely):
Hey, guess what? I'm still alive! Hurrah! Sorry I've not done much on here but I've been busy. You know, like really busy. You would not believe how busy I've been. I've been so busy I'm off the Busyometer scale. Yeah, you know really, really busy. I've been busy doing all sorts of stuff. Busy hating Harry Redknapp takes up a lot of my time at the moment. But I've taken time out of hating Harry Redknapp to do this. You lucky bastards.
Anyway, where were we? Oh yeah, David Essex. I'm young enough to remember a time when David Essex wasn't famous. He's always been there. Whether winking at the camera on Top of the Pops or hosting his own TV show or having a sitcom written for him. I quite like him. I like him so much I went to see him in his musical All the Fun of the Fair last week with members of the family. It's not the best musical you'll ever see but it's a diverting couple of hours and live entertainment's always better than staying in watching the telly, isn't it?
Looking at the programme I was reminded what a great talent his is. Essex gets the sole writing credit on all but one of the songs in the show - and it's one of those jukebox musicals where the songs are already known to you. It has to be said there were quite a few hits in there so he's clearly not just a pretty face. Take Rock On for instance; that is a great record. It still sounds fresh nearly forty years later, in fact the opening bass chords are quite scary (it has to be said that some of the songs are shoehorned in to the musical: "Do you know what, Jonny? We're gonna make you a star!" Cue the song).
But what I admire most about Essex is his film Stardust. I love that film. The thing is that he can actually act as well as write and sing all of the songs. I first saw Stardust when I recorded on to video a late night showing when I must have been about 14. The thing that struck me most at the time was the scene where he goes to bed with a pair of buxom twins. For a 14 year-old that was just the most mind-blowing thing I'd ever seen (although having read Hammer of the Gods and Motley Crue's books, bedding a pair of twins sounds like tea at Grandma's). It's still a film I love though, as I love a lot of films of that era like Slade in Flame. It's the age-old story of boy wants to be rock star, becomes rock star, gets into the 'H', gets his head together in the country, overdoses live on TV. If you've never seen it please do, especially as Paul Nicholas gets kicked out the band, Peter Duncan's in it, Dave Edmunds tries to act and Keith Moon plays himself. And the title song played over the closing credits is just magnificent. Look at this; Stardust with That'll Be the Day is less than seven of your English pounds on Amazon.
Anyway, I like David Essex (as do an awful lot of ladies of a pretty wide age range) and can do an impression of him. Yeah.
No, not a blog post about Jimmy Savile, look elsewhere for that. This posts about impressions, impersonations, call them what you will. Now, I'm quite a good mimic, I reckon and as such I have a range of celebrity (and non-celebrity) voices ready to go at the drop of as hat. I think most people do. For instance, on the Jeremy Vine show today there was a discussion about Savile. One bloke phoned in to say that he was an 8 year-old on Jim'll Fix It in 1985 with Les Dennis and Dustin Gee. Jeremy asked him what impressions he did and got most excited when he said he did Coronation Street's Mavis Riley. Jeremy got incredibly excited by this and asked if he could hear his Mavis Riley. Now, this is the point of this post, most amateur impressionists have one stock line for each person they're doing. Can you guess what it is Mavis's case? Of course you do, you're intelligent and WAY ahead of the game here. The line is, if you were born after 1990, "I dooonnn't reeaally knooww" Yeah? Now you're pissing yourself aren't you. No? oh, okay. The thing that bugs me about these amateur impressionists is the laziness of that. I'd prefer to have a string of phrases to use for each person I do. I mean, who wants to hear "Mmm, Betty, that cat's done a whoopsy on the floor" again? I don't. My Frank Spencer also includes "Now then, Jessica, who's going to see the Queen on Christmas Day then?" or "RAF socks...RAF braces". Yeah, the second one's a little more for the hardcore Spencerite to enjoy, but hey, I like an obscurity. Or take my Jimmy Savile. I always prefer my own line - once uttered on an episode of Jim'll, fact fans - which goes "Turn a Shetland pony into a Shirehorse? Wow" See, how much more refreshing is that than the stock "Er-er-er-er, now then now then, guys and gals, over there, you see, we have the Alan Price Set, like that."
To compound this fact about amateur one line merchants, when our Jim'll Fix It chum had reeled off his own impressions for Jeremy Vine, then Vine himself then thought he treat us to his Larry Grayson. I'm telling you, it was dire. It sounded like my mum saying "Look at the muck in here" I did manage a bit of a laugh at this hardnosed ex- Newsnight man being a bit camp for the benefit of his listeners though.
So here's a guide of what you'll expect to hear from life's less fortunate mimics:
Denis Healey - "What a silly billy"
Harold Wilson (one for the teenagers) - "The pound in your pocket"
Prince Charles - "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" or something
Norman Wisdom - "Mr Grimsdale!"
Bruce Forsyth - "Didn't he do well?!" Although a more advanced amateur might throw in a "Let's have a quick look at the scoreboard" or "Nice to see, to see you, NICE"
Jimmy Tarbuck - "Wo-ho!"
Dot Cotton -"Ooh, I saaay"
Sid James - "A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha"
Su Pollard - "Miss Cathcart!"
Michael Caine - "Notalotapeopleknowthat"
Del Boy - "Shat it, you tart"
Brian Clough - "Young man"
Fred Trueman - "I'll si thee"
Barbara Woodhouse - "Walkies!"
Those people are still popular, aren't they? I mean my pop cultural knowledge clearly ended in 1988.
If anyone is looking to hire me as an impressionist then I'm available for birthdays, weddings, christenings, bah mitzvahs and funerals. My John Gordon Sinclair in Gregory's Girl and Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy have to be heard to be believed. You'd think you were at a showbiz party with my thousand voices. "I'm walkin' here! I'M WALKIN' HERE!"
Here's the best Jimmy Savile impression there is. And hang around for the David Attenborough gag at the end, I really did, ugh, LOL when I heard it.
I was in the town of Ludlow* just this past weekend. You know, having a mooch around, looking in shop windows, all that stuff. Anyway I came across the Cats Protection League (although these days they're just called Cats Protection) charity shop. I don't know how many of you are familliar with that series in which that dreadful Mary Portas woman shouted at a load of OAPs who'd volunteered to help out in a branch of Save the Children, but I reckon this branch of Cats Protection could have done with a nicer version of Portas to go in and give them some pointers. I have in my head the sort of person who'd either donate or bequeeth item to a cats charity. I'm sure you have the same picture in your head: elderly woman, likes a comfy cardy, doesn't get out much, stinks of cat piss. Is that the same mental picture as yours? I thought so. And obviously the same goes for the kind of person who would volunteer to work in the Cats Protection shop. To be honest, I was shocked at the items put on display in the window. That's right, in the window. You know, in the window where you're supposed to put all the decent, eye-catching gear.
Exhibit 1:
A nice floral teapot. But look closer. It has dried tea drips on it. What's happened there, do you think? Have the staff in the shop been using it to brew their breaktime cuppa? And why is tea running down it from the top? The tea's supposed to be either inside the pot or coming out of the spout, isn't it? Or am I being very old-fashioned and this is some new kind of avant garde tea-making? Or, and I suspect this to be the case, did the staff not wash the teapot before putting it on display. In the window?
Exhibit 2:
I like a nice salad as much as the next man but what you can't really see on that photo is the amount of muck that looked as though it had collected around the plastic on the top. Would you put an iceberg lettuce, spring onions, radishes and a few tomatoes in there? Would you? You would? You're insane. I value my health. Would you put that item in the window or in the skip? Total scut.
Exhibit 3:
On the left is a teaspoon rest. Now I find the teaspoon rest to be a handy item for any home (in fact, I covet one for myself). Not only can you rest teaspoons on there but also teabags freshly plucked from a mug or pot so that you can get them dry before they drip on the kitchen floor in transit to the bin (we've all been there, right?). That one was incredibly mucky. So mucky that I wouldn't even use it after it had had a good going over with a bit Domestos diluted in hot water. Again, this item was in the window, with what is supposed to be the best gear. And look at that football mug! Who'd pay money for that? It's the sort of thing that comes with a really cheap Easter egg. I bet if you turned it round in really really cheap-looking, non-trademark lettering it says 'Ipswich' or 'Queen of the South'. Scut, scut, scut!
This next item though is my favourite:
This piece of A4 fascinates me. It's clearly intended as an ad to find a stray cat a home. Why then has someone stuck not onkly Blu Tack but also Cats Protection price stickers over the text? Has someone in Cats Protection took a shine to old Demon here? Or is something more sinister afoot? Look to the right and you'll see written, and then scribbled out, 'found dead'. What's happened to Demon? Was he alive at the vets, escaped and then his was corpse found later? I've hardly slept a wink since worrying about him. Pity the shop was shut or I'd have gone in and asked.
*Nice place. It's crowning glory has to be the public toilets though. I mean, how can you not like a place whose bogs pipes in Donna Summer's State of Independence whilst you're straining your greens?
