Welcome to your new pad



Ladies and gentlemen . . . I give you . . . Paddy! I am aware that I have now become one of those people who post pictures of kittens on their websites, but really, what a wonderful world.



You'll note that his water bowl stands on yesterday's Guardian, with its predictions for the council elections, thus marking Paddy's arrival in history. I'll try and enlarge these pics on a PC tomorrow. (I'm a bit limited on this Mac.)

Deckchairs

So, the Tories took 317 council seats from Labour. Is that a meltdown yet? It's certainly the worst local election result in Labour history. Quick! Three seconds runaround, n-n-now! The reshuffle - about which Margaret Beckett must have known last night on QT (hence the smug chops) - goes like this: Beckett to Foreign Secretary (Rest Of The World), Hoon also to Foreign Secretary (Europe only), Straw to the ejector seat, otherwise known as Commons Leader (which, in magazine publishing, is called Special Projects), the oily David Milliband to the Environment, Charles Clarke sacked (he declined another cabinet job apparently - a man of character after all - and went to the back benches), the bullet-headed John Reid (sorry, Doctor John Reid!) becomes Home Secretary, a post to which he will no doubt bring a shade more belligerence than Clarke, someone called Des Browne (another Scot) gets to take over defence at what is, for the world, a pretty uneventful time, someone called Alan Johnson (a former union man who thinks Clause IV should be reinstated, the crazy man) takes over Education from the boy Kelly, Hazel Blears (onomatopaeic name) gets the Chairmanship while Ian McCartney spends more time with his heart, and Prescott loses his job but not his position. (Hmm, even saying the words Prescott and "position" in the same sentence now conjures unsavoury images - sorry about that. I wonder if he approves or disapproves of the 63-year-old woman who's having a baby?) The cover of the new New Statesman asks the following question: Is this the end?

And, in other news . . .
We have got a kitten. He's called Paddy and he's a grey tabby, just under eight weeks old. Because he's being introduced into a house with an adult cat already in it, we're keeping them apart until the time is right. Paddy is in the spare room, all mod cons (food, litter tray, scratching post, bed), and he's already squeezed inside the sofa-bed, where he's been all day. He's a bit shy and freaked out but has been playing with some string. It's too early to freak him out further by flashing a camera at him, but as soon as I do, it'll go up here.

Not the meltdown some were predicting

At the time of writing, just after breakfast, Labour have only lost 255 council seats. Could have been worse, they're saying. This is true. It could have been 256. But having lost most of these to the Tories, that's pretty bad isn't it? Ah, no, you see, it's not the meltdown some were predicting. This "meltdown" was 300 seats, as I understand it. And no, technically, it's not that. But the result still puts the Tories at a projected 40% of the national vote, with the Lib Dems at 27% and Labour - hmmmmm - third with 26%. The paradigm shift in voter intention that happened in 1997 does seem to be reversing, with those who switched their allegiance from an embattled Major cabinet to a revitalised, de-claused, de-Kinnocked Labour oppostion (greatly influenced by Murdoch's crossing of the floor), switching back. As scary-faced Margaret Beckett insisted on Question Time last night, before a practically baying audience, this government has a mandate, as does Tony Blair, as the electorate voted them back in last year, but it seems clear that this very mandate, slimmer than Lindsey Lohan side-on, has been greatly harmed by the Prime Minister's refusal to set a date for his departure. So keen is he to see through his legacy (a ruined education system, and a ruined NHS), he will not budge, and this is putting his allies into a flap. They're being barracked and mocked and undermined, and it seems clear that he's lost the confidence of the country. Whether you're one of Polly Toynbee's "clothes peg" brigade or not, he really needs to put himself into the rapid-reaction reshuffle. There is talk that Prescott will be stripped of his bloated portfolio (he's busy enough as it is in the office), and that Ruth Kelly will finally be removed from education because people keep mistaking her for a schoolboy, and that can only mean one thing: further Apprentice style hot-shots moved up the ladder. Good news for the Greens, albeit - in true Greens style - modest. They have gained 14 seats so far. Good news also for the BNP (they're not racist), who took 11 seats in Barking and Dagenham, despite Billy Bragg's vocal efforts, and whose London spokesman Richard Barnbrook (he's not racist), thanked Labour's Margaret Hodge for the free publicity.


More news as we get it. For full details, where better?

You're possibly fired

A momentous day. The first time I have worn shorts and sandals and sunglasses in 2006. Also, there were council elections across England. There are 4,361 council seats up for grabs (nearly a quarter of those in England), in 176 authorities, but what it really means is a litmus test of the country's feelings about Labour. If they only lose 200 councillors, that will be a result. Even 300 would be considered a lucky break after the rumpo-and-foreign-criminal-linked trouble they're currently in. Anyway, my council is Reigate & Banstead, Tory-controlled probably since time began. I walked, in the pleasant late-afternoon sun, in my shorts and sandals and sunglasses, to St Mark's Church, and put my cross in the box. Even though this is an independent blog, I think, as a BBC presenter, I am unable to express a preference. What I will say is that it doesn't really matter who you vote for in Reigate. Unlike a General Election, I don't feel compelled to stay up all night watching Dimbleby and that fabulously unsmiling Canadian bloke from Essex University who does the statistics. We'll see in the morning. We're getting our new kitten tomorrow - that's far more important.

Incidentally, does it strike anyone else as unfair that these foreign criminals that are causing Charles Clarke so much grief should apparently be deported after they've done their time in prison? I don't mind taking it on a case by case basis, but they're not all rapists and murderers - why should they be automatically shipped off on release from chokey? Did I mention we're picking up our kitten?

The Apprentice: Week Eleven

[SPOILER ALERT! . . .]

Possibly my favourite episode, as indeed it was when they roadtested it on the last series: the interviews. The final quartet were really put through their paces by three of Sir Alan's trusted bullshit-detectors, one of whom, the Jack The Lad one, I recall vividly from last year. Not sure about the other two, the bullet-headed middle-aged guy who responded to Paul's "I can get on with anyone," with the withering put-down, "You're not getting on with me," and the beardy one who had something to do with Viglen and was the only one who liked Paul. Cake metaphors abounded.

There wasn't much to it structurally - four interviewees, each one equally ill-informed about what Amstrad does (why? you idiots!) and what they had written in their own CVs; three interviewers - but the editing was supreme, mixing it up with skill and melodrama, and saving some choice clips up for when the four got into the boardroom. Having identified Ruth as my favourite for most of the series, it was interesting to see Michelle shine strongest, despite the observation that she lacks personality and earns too much to really want the job at Sir Alan's. At least she smiles. Also, her tough upbringing made a timely appearance (some bad stuff) - unlike Syed, she's never felt the need to flog this, and it added to her character and determination. Ruth's aggression was a bad tactic over the desk. She enters rooms without knocking and sits before being offered a seat. Ansell, tarred with the "nice guy" brush and the "just a salesman" brush (that's two brushes), struggled to rise beyond this branding. Luckily for him, Paul Tulip, 26 ("I've never met anyone like me") achieved new levels of nauseating bullishness, which backfired on him like a motherfucker. Damned as a door-to-door insurance salesman in a bad suit ("the jacket's going, the hair is gelled", remember?), he fell down on the accuracy of his CV and his motivation (lifestyle? money?). Plus - and this was brilliantly held back by the production team as a pre-denouement own-goal - he took a rather too 1980s swipe at Big Issue sellers. Meanwhile, Ruth baffled all with her refusal to take a sabbatical from her company, a move that was described by Bullet Head as "rash and diabolical." (Steady!) I feared, as I always fear, that Sir Alan's sexism would rear its ugly mush, but no, he saw sense and fired Paul first (quite right - hope he's homeless one day, with his magazines, shouting out, "I think I'm brilliant, I think I'm great!"), and Ansell second, who couldn't believe he'd come this far, leaving an all-female final. Nice grouping - to use Ruth's Tourette's-like catchphrase, without a doubt.

Quite why none of them had used their loaf and looked Amstrad up on the Internet in a bit of downtime over the last 11 weeks, I shall never know. It shows how arrogant they all are. And is it taught on some management training course to ask yourself questions and answer them? ("Do I want this job? Yes I do. Am I a tit? Yes I am.") However, that said, the best ladies won, and it could go either way. The musical chairs is almost over, and we know who sits down without being asked . . .



Previous reviews:
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four
Week Five
Week Six
Week Seven
Week Eight
Week Nine
Week Ten

The numbers, dude

OK, Lost returns, and as much as I would like to resist the hype, I can't. It's obvious why I like it so much - it's the longest disaster movie ever made: a plane crash, a bunch of survivors thrown together and forced to adopt primal instincts in order to live. Archetypes abound, in true disaster-movie style - the fat one, the boy, the old man, the doctor, the pregnant woman, the rock star etc. - and with the added ingredient of something supernatural and all those flashbacks, it all adds up to my kind of US drama. Not, clearly, in the same league as The West Wing, but what is? It still draws me in.

Picking up where the first series left off - the opening of the hatch (or The Hatch); Walt kidnapped by pirates - series two had plenty to clear up, and proceeded to clear up very little of it. [SPOILER ALERT - read no further if, for some reason, you haven't seen eps one and two yet, but hurry up!] We now know that there's a Scottish man living down The Hatch with a lava lamp, an old computer and the Mamas and the Papas on tape. We also know that he thinks there's disease out there, which there isn't. He now has John, Kate and Jack hostage. In a wig flashback, we saw Jack bring the bottom half of a woman back to life (the "making love" half, note), as if he were Jesus (episode title: Man Of Science, Man Of Faith), and then run into a Scottish man at a sports stadium, who called him "brother". This man turned out to be . . . exactly. None the wiser, obviously, but that's never been the point of Lost. You must remain, at least partially, lost.

In episode two, Adrift, which C4 showed directly afterwards, we saw much of episode one again (chiz!), with added exposition, but not much. The meat was the raft story, in which Michael and Sawyer bickered like old men in a dimwitted Beckett play ("Oh, I'll just stop bleeding!", "What are you gonna do? Splash me?") while sharks circled beneath. Just regular sharks, by the looks of it. Taken together, these were two of the darkest episodes of any TV series I've ever seen. And I mean pitch black. They were darker than The X-Files, and Michael and Sawyer didn't even have torches. Michael got the flashbacks in two: we saw him bid farewell to a toddler version of Walt and give him a cuddly polar bear (significant? or a red herring? why am I even entertaining this debate?). Was this the first time that we learned that Michael was an artist "with real talent"? I can't remember. Either way, we're left with Estragon and Vladimir back on the island, with pirates moving in, and Jack very confused about the Scottish man. The Scottish man is called Desmond.

Good to have it back, mainly so that I can enjoy my ritual of saying the word "Lost" really slowely, as the title moves langourously and diagonally towards the screen. Stupid, I know, This programme is not as clever as it makes out. It's not as clever as ER or the Wing or The X-Files, but it seems clever, and that's its trick. It's dumb entertainment dressed as something fancy.

Oh, and was anybody else made slightly nauseous by the sight of JJ Abrams popping up in the ad breaks to say, "Hi, I'm JJ Abrams, co-creator of Lost, here's my ass - it's for sale." (or words to that effect), before showing an advert for Mission: Impossible III, which he's directed. We don't need that. He's the co-creator! Who wants to see the co-creator in the middle of the thing he co-created, for which we're attempting to suspend our disbelief? (As if the constant ad-breaks - including one right after the opening credits, American-style - don't make that hard enough!)

It was Charlie who said it's all bollocks. Good fansite here.

Let us celebrate the world of the Mighty Boosh (the Mighty Boo-oosh!)

I have no problems admitting being late. I'm late. Last on the block. I watched the first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm when it premiered on British TV and I didn't like it. Never mind that I was a fan of Seinfeld, from whence it came. I never watched another episode of that first series. I read the rave reviews. I ignored them. Not for me. It was only when my friend Rob forced me to borrow four episodes from his box set that the pieces fell into place, and within weeks I had purchased all of the three seasons then available, watching them whenever I had a spare half-hour. I now realise it is one of the greatest comedy programmes of my lifetime. The DVD box set is the saviour of the unfashionable latecomer. I didn't like Spooks on first viewing; thought Matthew McFadyen was unconvincing as a spy. Now I have all three series on DVD and accept that it is a compelling and unmissable TV drama. I didn't even watch the first three episodes of The Apprentice first time out, and only joined in because Leona urged me to. I think you know what I think about that programme now.

So it was with The Mighty Boosh. I've always been aware of the Boosh as a double act, and have admired Julian Barratt as an actor, knowing precisely who he was, and where he came from. I also have a track called Midfielding by the Midfield General, on which Noel Fielding basically seems to improvise a tale about gathering up a posse of the animals that never get on nature programmes. It's fantastic. I saw the Boosh TV programme billed and advertised and trailed on BBC3 and just kind of didn't watch it. It transferred to BBC2. Kind of didn't watch it. At Christmas, I met Noel Fielding in HMV on Oxford Street with Lee Mack. He seemed like possibly the nicest, most laid-back man in comedy, and told me he'd really liked my book. It was at that moment that I knew I should get with the programme, literally. Then their tour dates, including a run at Brixton Academy, confirmed that the Boosh were going overground in a big way. They had the NME Reader Factor. Thank God Julie took it upon herself to order the DVD box set of both series on spec. I think we both just kind of knew it was time, to go with them on a journey through time and space to the world of . . .

The Mighty Boo-oosh! We're now almost through series two, and feeling the tug of melancholy that in a couple of days, there will be no more unseen Boosh. This - as I'm kind of guessing you all know - is a comedy half-hour like no other. In the chemistry between Howard and Vince (Barratt and Fielding), TV has stumbled upon something money cannot buy, but years on the circuit can. In their off-the-cuff badinage, redolent of a lot of "naturalistic" comedy of today, they manage to be offbeat and low-key and minor-chord without ever appearing self-indulgent or smug. Theirs is the comedy of joy and silliness and costumes and song and dance. As Lee and I are currently slaving over a hot sitcom where story arcs must be paid off and act-three obstacles placed and overcome, I am filled with pointless jealousy that the Boosh can end an episode by having Mod wolves turn up. There is, as with all the best surreal comedy, a point and a pay-off, but these are secondary to the journey itself - often a literal journey, their stock in trade. Some of the jokes, written down, might even seem easy, but on the screen, they add to a parrallel universe that lives and breathes.

The first series, set in the zoo, was inspired, but so was the desire to break out of that zooniverse for series two and move to a flat, reducing the supporting cast to just Naboo (Fielding's brother, Michael) and Bollo the gorilla. Of course, I miss the spoken red-curtain intros of the first series, and Bob Fossil (although Rich Fulcher turns up in most episodes, in heavy disguise), but the move has freed their minds.


"I hate jazz."
"You fear jazz."

Burrow underneath the deliberate wierdness (that fucking shaving-cream moon for one!), and the twin obsessions with jazz and hair, and you'll find a fairly traditional British sitcom set-up: two losers with high aspirations. It's Hancock, or Steptoe, or Mainwaring, and yet, it's not. It's drugs television that works if you're not on drugs. It's young-person's television that works if you're not young (although I do find myself arguing with myself about who's the best out of Julian and Noel). It's gone-wrong television that works if you've gone right. It's stupid television that works if you're clever (because of course it's not stupid at all). It is my favourite comedy programme. Imagine that!

The randy old sod


The thing that bothers me most about John Prescott's affair with his diary secretary Tracey Temple, is the cliche factor. (I don't know how to do accents on this blog, so I'm afraid cliche will have to be read like quiche). He's a fat, late-middle-aged man in a suit, in a positon of power sufficient to have a diary secretary, and she's 24 years his junior, thus far younger than his devoted wife Pauline, and blonder, and - according to Tracey's diary (she is, after all, his diary secretary) - he started flirting with her round the office, then moved into the arena of what might be called sexual harrassment at a tribunal: lifting her skirt to look at her suspenders when she was dressed for an office party, rubbing her back in the office, telling her what he's like to "do to her" while dancing at said party. Of course, this is all repellent to conjure up in the mind, but compulsive nonetheless and I obviously give thanks to the Mail On Sunday for shelling out a reported two hundred and fifty thousand quid of the money they've made from giving away DVDs and boosting circulation in stupid spurts in order than we, the public who vote the likes of Mr Prescott into office, might read of his misadventures, the "randy old sod", as she describes him. But at the end of the day, did it not once go through Prescott's mind, as he carried his secretary into the bedroom of his apartment, that he was about to become a big, fat cliche? The age difference? The power play? The suspenders? The morning after pill? (Oh, and that he might just one day be found out and made a national laughing stock?)

As we speak, randy old sods of a similar vintage, with similar wives, in similar offices (albeit not ones paid for by the public), are lifting the skirts of similarly risk-hungry secretaries to look at similar suspenders. They are all, to a man and a lady, quiches.