Thicky Ticky
He's right though.
The other night I saw Lee Nelson's Well Good Show (I know, I know, serves me right for watching that channel.) and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I cannot believe for a second that this Brodkin bloke and his tired, tacky, tasteless 'chav' act was ever the cream of the Edinburgh Festival. If he was it must have been a fucking bad year. And honestly? I'm getting a bit sick of middle class white boys taking the piss out of chavs. It's tacky, bordering on offensive, especially when they use a chav persona to spout racist, misogynist crap that would get them Ofcommed into oblivion if they didn't have some dreadful Westbourne Grove definition of 'irony' to hide behind. It's not only offensive, it's lazy. I'm not saying offensive can't be funny, because sometimes it can be utterly fucking hilarious, but give me Alf Garnett over this charmless talent-vaccuum, seriously. What the fuck?
But then that's BBC3 for you. It's become the channel for people who have difficulty with their shoelaces. You have things like Dog Borstal, Snog, Marry Avoid - in which tanorexic make-up junkies are made to look...well...more middle class and less like slappers, in order that more men might want to marry them rather than give 'em one up against a wheelie bin. Which makes it all totally acceptable, then.
Obviously this is all done in the interests of the ladies themselves and they're looking nice for themselves, except for the part where they get men to tell them they look like whores and the bit afterwards when they're all Gapped and Nexted and tasteful and the men announce how much they'd like to take them to dinner or take them to meet the parents. Aw. (Pass the fucking bucket.)
If that wasn't mind-boggling enough I think there was a quiz show called Stupid V. Clever, or else I just ate too much cheese too late in the evening. From what I recall it pitted teams of physicists and scientists and librarians (Naturally they selected the spodliest specimens possible, because nerd stereotypes are hilarious) against teams of hairdressers, glamour models and body builders to...to...I don't know. To do something. It was a weird dream, right? Couldn't be real.
What was real was the perfectly headsplodey nonsense that was I Believe In Ghosts, With Joe Swash. I had no idea who Joe Swash was (Turns out he's an Eastenders actor who did a stint on Junglefest Roachmunch Lol-U-et-a-bug-n-done-a-sick-from-it.) but it turns out he has the intellect of a fishfinger. So basically it was an hour long programme in which they might have well have stuck a village idiot in a dark room and said 'boo' to it every few minutes. There's no need for this, especially when you've got the moronic Most Haunted still squealing, twitching and Blair-witching on LivingTV. I think they're on series twelve or thirteen by now and they still haven't found a single actual fucking ghost. Funny that.
It's not all mouthbreather stuff, though. On the flip side there was the excellent although lamentably short series Derren Brown Investigates, which I would love to see more of because Derren Brown is so perfect for the role of sceptical enquirer into the paranormal. For a start he's a professional magician and savvy to the tricks of the trade and more helpfully, he's incredibly nice. Rather than going on a bullheaded tirade he has a knack of asking the right questions and letting the answers speak for themselves. The show in which he upstaged appalling 'psychic medium' Joe Power was marvellous and showed Derren Brown to be a reasonable, intelligent man and made Joe Power look like a deluded, ranting moron at best and at worst a cynical and nasty little con man preying on the vulnerable.
Another thing I've recently enjoyed was BBC2's History Cold Case, in which a team of forensic scientists (All of which but one are female - hurrah. Now let's put them on Snog, Marry, Avoid and sort their hair and make-up out, shall we?) investigate burials using forensic techniques. Even better, the programme doesn't spent hours telling us about carbon dating and isotope analysis in a repetitive and annoying way like every single other science or history programme ever made. The apotheosis of this nonsense was some American programme about Ancient Egypt in which the scientist jabbered on and on and on and on about "D-N-A - that stands for deoxyribonucleic acid! We can use it to find stuff out!"
This went on for NINETY MINUTES. Ninety minutes of watching a cross between an episode of Sesame Street (Brought to you by the letters D, N and A!) and that silly little cartoon from Jurassic Park. Great. Super. How does it relate to the Mummies? What have you found? Who's related to who? Do you know?
We never found out. BUT HAY YOU GUYS WE LEARNED THAT DNA IS DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID AND IT'S LIKE TWISTY AND WE'VE ALL GOT IT AND IT'S IN LIKE, OUR CELLS AND SHIT.
Whatever. What do you pricks do for an encore? Introduce frog DNA to mummy DNA and clone an amphibious version of the Eighteenth fucking Dynasty?
It's a problem. There aren't enough really good science programmes on TV lately (Although Jim Al Khallili's Chemistry - A Volatile History was superb. Ditto Michio Kaku's Time series.) and half the problem is a tendency to wallow in these techniques which anyone who likes watching science or history programmes already knows all about. I suggest just skipping that bit and running a ticker across the bottom of the screen.
HELLO. YOU ARE WATCHING A SCIENCE PROGRAMME. SCIENCE IS INTERESTING, ISN'T IT? WE WOULD TELL YOU ALL ABOUT DNA ANALYSIS/CARBON-DATING/NITROGEN ISOTOPE ANALYSIS, BUT SEEING AS IT'S TWO THOUSAND AND TEN AND THESE TECHNIQUES HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR A WHILE WE WOULD LIKE TO REFER YOU TO SOMETHING ELSE THAT HAS ALSO BEEN AROUND FOR A LITTLE WHILE NOW. IT'S CALLED GOOGLE. PLEASE TRY IT BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE IS SICK OF STANDING AROUND TWIDDLING THEIR FINGERS WHILE YOU HANG AROUND WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO SPOONFEED YOU INFORMATION. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION.
The other night I saw Lee Nelson's Well Good Show (I know, I know, serves me right for watching that channel.) and couldn't believe what I was seeing. I cannot believe for a second that this Brodkin bloke and his tired, tacky, tasteless 'chav' act was ever the cream of the Edinburgh Festival. If he was it must have been a fucking bad year. And honestly? I'm getting a bit sick of middle class white boys taking the piss out of chavs. It's tacky, bordering on offensive, especially when they use a chav persona to spout racist, misogynist crap that would get them Ofcommed into oblivion if they didn't have some dreadful Westbourne Grove definition of 'irony' to hide behind. It's not only offensive, it's lazy. I'm not saying offensive can't be funny, because sometimes it can be utterly fucking hilarious, but give me Alf Garnett over this charmless talent-vaccuum, seriously. What the fuck?
But then that's BBC3 for you. It's become the channel for people who have difficulty with their shoelaces. You have things like Dog Borstal, Snog, Marry Avoid - in which tanorexic make-up junkies are made to look...well...more middle class and less like slappers, in order that more men might want to marry them rather than give 'em one up against a wheelie bin. Which makes it all totally acceptable, then.
Obviously this is all done in the interests of the ladies themselves and they're looking nice for themselves, except for the part where they get men to tell them they look like whores and the bit afterwards when they're all Gapped and Nexted and tasteful and the men announce how much they'd like to take them to dinner or take them to meet the parents. Aw. (Pass the fucking bucket.)
If that wasn't mind-boggling enough I think there was a quiz show called Stupid V. Clever, or else I just ate too much cheese too late in the evening. From what I recall it pitted teams of physicists and scientists and librarians (Naturally they selected the spodliest specimens possible, because nerd stereotypes are hilarious) against teams of hairdressers, glamour models and body builders to...to...I don't know. To do something. It was a weird dream, right? Couldn't be real.
What was real was the perfectly headsplodey nonsense that was I Believe In Ghosts, With Joe Swash. I had no idea who Joe Swash was (Turns out he's an Eastenders actor who did a stint on Junglefest Roachmunch Lol-U-et-a-bug-n-done-a-sick-from-it.) but it turns out he has the intellect of a fishfinger. So basically it was an hour long programme in which they might have well have stuck a village idiot in a dark room and said 'boo' to it every few minutes. There's no need for this, especially when you've got the moronic Most Haunted still squealing, twitching and Blair-witching on LivingTV. I think they're on series twelve or thirteen by now and they still haven't found a single actual fucking ghost. Funny that.
It's not all mouthbreather stuff, though. On the flip side there was the excellent although lamentably short series Derren Brown Investigates, which I would love to see more of because Derren Brown is so perfect for the role of sceptical enquirer into the paranormal. For a start he's a professional magician and savvy to the tricks of the trade and more helpfully, he's incredibly nice. Rather than going on a bullheaded tirade he has a knack of asking the right questions and letting the answers speak for themselves. The show in which he upstaged appalling 'psychic medium' Joe Power was marvellous and showed Derren Brown to be a reasonable, intelligent man and made Joe Power look like a deluded, ranting moron at best and at worst a cynical and nasty little con man preying on the vulnerable.
Another thing I've recently enjoyed was BBC2's History Cold Case, in which a team of forensic scientists (All of which but one are female - hurrah. Now let's put them on Snog, Marry, Avoid and sort their hair and make-up out, shall we?) investigate burials using forensic techniques. Even better, the programme doesn't spent hours telling us about carbon dating and isotope analysis in a repetitive and annoying way like every single other science or history programme ever made. The apotheosis of this nonsense was some American programme about Ancient Egypt in which the scientist jabbered on and on and on and on about "D-N-A - that stands for deoxyribonucleic acid! We can use it to find stuff out!"
This went on for NINETY MINUTES. Ninety minutes of watching a cross between an episode of Sesame Street (Brought to you by the letters D, N and A!) and that silly little cartoon from Jurassic Park. Great. Super. How does it relate to the Mummies? What have you found? Who's related to who? Do you know?
We never found out. BUT HAY YOU GUYS WE LEARNED THAT DNA IS DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID AND IT'S LIKE TWISTY AND WE'VE ALL GOT IT AND IT'S IN LIKE, OUR CELLS AND SHIT.
Whatever. What do you pricks do for an encore? Introduce frog DNA to mummy DNA and clone an amphibious version of the Eighteenth fucking Dynasty?
It's a problem. There aren't enough really good science programmes on TV lately (Although Jim Al Khallili's Chemistry - A Volatile History was superb. Ditto Michio Kaku's Time series.) and half the problem is a tendency to wallow in these techniques which anyone who likes watching science or history programmes already knows all about. I suggest just skipping that bit and running a ticker across the bottom of the screen.
HELLO. YOU ARE WATCHING A SCIENCE PROGRAMME. SCIENCE IS INTERESTING, ISN'T IT? WE WOULD TELL YOU ALL ABOUT DNA ANALYSIS/CARBON-DATING/NITROGEN ISOTOPE ANALYSIS, BUT SEEING AS IT'S TWO THOUSAND AND TEN AND THESE TECHNIQUES HAVE BEEN AROUND FOR A WHILE WE WOULD LIKE TO REFER YOU TO SOMETHING ELSE THAT HAS ALSO BEEN AROUND FOR A LITTLE WHILE NOW. IT'S CALLED GOOGLE. PLEASE TRY IT BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE IS SICK OF STANDING AROUND TWIDDLING THEIR FINGERS WHILE YOU HANG AROUND WAITING FOR PEOPLE TO SPOONFEED YOU INFORMATION. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ATTENTION.