Simon Cowell and his cynical hit machine
Here’s a little tidbit of information for you: today, Alexandra Burke, winner of last year’s X-Factor, signed a £3.5million deal with Epic, an imprint of Sony. I know that the majority of Britain will probably toast the achievement – it’s well known that breaking the US is one of the most difficult things for any act to pull off, a fact demonstrated by Oasis’s failure to make any real impact – but to me it is a terrible indictment of our own gullibility, and its infectious nature. How on earth do we allow ourselves to be convinced by the hyped up, turgid dross that Simon Cowell feeds us? How are we not left feeling like foie gras geese – overfed, bored and vaguely frightened?
It seems sad to me that as a whole we repeatedly fall for Simon Cowell’s hit-making cynicism. He has a formula worked out that is slowly chipping away at the core of the music industry – quality music – and turning it into a commercial and corporate farce. The charts have become a circus, and Cowell is cracking the whip. By running his TV shows, Cowell obviously gains publicity, but he also makes it possible for viewers to empathise with artists in a way they’ve never been able to before, regardless of talent. In the past, before Cowell and his Syco label became so prevalent, talent came first – musicians were known primarily for their work, often without even being recognisable names – but now personality is at the forefront and the target audience feels like it knows the artist before they ever even sing their own songs, a situation which would have been laughable even ten years ago. Read more, my therapist said it was important.
Tragi-comedy
I can barely contain my rage. I have a tingling at the base of my neck, a cold shiver down my spine. My eyes water and my ears pop…David Mitchell and Robert Webb are writing a sitcom, of all things.
Sitcoms p*ss me off. The occasional gem can undoubtedly be dug up from amongst the dross, but when a comedian of the quality of Jack Dee, or actors like Robert Lindsay and Zoe Wanamaker can’t save the primetime sitcom then I have little hope for Mitchell and Webb, much as I loved Peep Show. The majority of sitcoms are just crap. You sit down to watch the first episode eager for a laugh, but more than that, in the hope that there’ll be a decent story, but halfway through you’re on the balcony having a cigarette whilst the TV plays to an empty room.
The problem is that all that is funniest about human relationships, that bedrock upon which a sitcom is built, isn’t suitable for a mainstream primetime audience. So we end up with these boring pieces of dross like My Family, Beautiful People and Hyperdrive. It takes a writer of remarkable sensitivity, combined with exactly the right cast, to produce a decent sitcom, and it makes me both angry and sad that I can be so certain that Mitchell and Webb’s sitcom will just add to the canon of horse sh*t we’ve become accustomed to.
That Mitchell and Webb look showed that they haven’t the nuance or understanding of any particular eccentricity to write anything riotously funny, unlike Graham Linehan’s wonderful skewed stereotypes in Black Books and Father Ted or Simon Pegg’s sharp portrayal of wasted youth. They’re great actors, but they just don’t have the requisite way with words to put together a decent sitcom.
There’s already too much perfectly good talent being wasted on idiotic, unoriginal shows. Please, Mitchell and Webb, don’t add to that list.
By Chris Harding
First Class Fib
Could someone explain how adverts in this country still get away with just blatantly lying? Halifax are running ads where entire regions of staff appear to be dancing around the street singing joyfully about how good everything is. Has anyone told them that there’s a pretty serious recession going on and if they returned to their desks and got back to work they’d probably find a P45 resting on top of their ‘to do’ pile? Likewise has anyone mentioned to advertisers who insist on basing ads around happy go lucky call centre staff that in reality, most spend the day either trying desperately to pass the ‘Chapter 1 – greetings’ section in their English language workbook or by flicking through the department code list trying to find some other chump to deal with the problem?
However, there is only one winner when it comes to most deluded advert of all time. Thankfully no longer in existence (ironically, now providing a better service than when they were), Virgin Trains seemed to pride themselves on taking a white lie and making it whiter. Anyone that can remember the variety of TV outings Virgin Trains mustered up whilst delivering the cross country train service will recognize the tag line ‘Love every second’ and recollect images of happy passengers blissfully speeding through picturesque countryside. With this is in mind let’s look at some of the stages of a Virgin adventure that made it all so special:
-Ticket doesn’t arrive in post- Call helpline who say it was sent, but turns out they were delivering it by rail so it’ll be a couple of days… Ominous.
- Arrive at the station to discover your train has been held up just outside Birmingham (interesting to note at this point, in one of the adverts, the Virgin train effortlessly survives an attack by Red Indians but here, seemingly can’t get the better of a bored teenager trespassing on the lines in Crewe)
- Finally get on the train an hour and a half late to discover the electrics are down so your reserved seat now belongs to a guy who is chewing on a bone and has ‘death to all’ tattooed across his forehead. You decide against raising the issue.
- Fortunately you are able to sit on your bag in the train corridor as there is no space to put it anywhere else. Despite this being a ‘cross country’ service it is shrewdly assumed by some higher powers that no one will bring any luggage. The only nuisance with the corridor is constantly maneuvering awkwardly so that other passengers can get to the toilets… The toilet wall could definitely afford to be a bit thicker. You buy some overpriced ear plugs.
- As it’s a long trip you risk leaving your stuff and head for the buffet to discover that a Bacon sandwich, looking as though it’s fallen off several lorries before being sold second hand twice on Ebay during it’s journey to the shelf costs a mere low interest mortgage (which can be purchased through Virgin’s new onboard banking service). Some people decide to pay in jewelry and family members instead.
- Arrive four hours late to discover you have missed the local connecting train and a night in the station beckons. Before you can complain to Virgin staff they have hopped back on board and ironically left 5 minutes early to get back down the country.
Love Every Second? How are taglines like this still legal?
I say lets start a name and shame campaign! What are the adverts that have p*ssed you off? Now is your time to tell us…
By Craig Woods
Rant: Sort it out Setanta!
Setanta’s purchase of the exclusive rights to broadcast England’s away qualifying games for The World Cup 2010 is yet another example of their aggressive attempts to muscle in on the Sky’s domination of non-terrestrial coverage of top-class football.
OK, so everything is fair in love and the televised sport war, but while Sky have always played by gentleman’s rules, allowing free-to-air channels to show highlights of games at a later time in the same day for a reasonable price, Setanta whacked a whopping £5 million price-tag on their highlight package. Thus, the BBC and ITV were locked in a bidding war with Setanta in which neither side caved in, and so terrestrial viewers could not watch any footage of an England game for the first time in over fifty years. Rubbish.
Setanta previously angered football fans by making it necessary to subscribe to both Sky and Setanta if they wanted to watch their team play in the Premiership. The Croatia game though, was the final straw, resulting in downright justified anti-Setanta chants during that and subsequent England internationals.
This is not the only example of big business’s blatant disregard for football fans. This season Channel 5 have bought the rights to the UEFA cup, the poor mans European Champion’s League. They have chosen to screen the matches in a consecutive format, which means changing the kick-off times. A round of fixtures on October 2nd demonstrated the madness of this format: Tottenham Hotspur were asked to kick of at 2.40pm in Krakow on a Thursday. Prime time! Then the football was put on hold for Neighbours and Home and Away before Everton kicked off against Standard Liege at 6.40 and Portsmouth played Portugal at 9.35pm.
Portsmouth followers complained about their kick-off time of 6pm in the first leg, which had forced them to leave work early. Although 9.35am sounds more reasonable, the problem was that the game was tied meaning that extra time ran ‘til well past midnight. Add to that the weary trip home and an early start for work the next morning and you’ve got some grumpy-arse fans. Staff weren’t all that happy either. The team got back to the hotel at 2.30am on Friday and had to fly back for a game against Stoke on Saturday.
Greedy TV stations should rub some of the pound signs out of their eyes and bloody well wake up to the reason why football is such a lucrative business in the first place: the fans. Ok, make money from covering games but this should not be at the expense of the millions of people who are, after all, your customers!
By Charlie Coffey
Rant: Bloggers Who Should Know Better
A few days ago there was a blog on the Guardian website titled ’sick to death of sex and violence’ which called for HBO to ‘excercise restraint’ on its dramas.
Diane Shipley goes to town on such shows as Big Love, The Wire, Californication, Dexter and Weeds.
I have seen all of these shows, and mostly I have seen every episode of all of these shows. They involve a fair amount of sex and violence. They are also by far some of the most superbly written, acted and at times profound dramas to grace the U.S. telly network. And yeah, they are sometimes not easy to watch.
However I find it disturbing that anyone could compare Desperate Housewives and Weeds as Shipley does ‘I’d much rather watch ABC’s Desperate Housewives than weeds…both attempt to subvert the suburban experience but, lacking the constraints imposed by a network, Weeds always takes things too far…’
Yep, they do certainly subvert the suburban experience except that one of these shows is a well written, ethically challenging, thought provoking drama and the other is a soap opera. Guess which is which? It’s like saying Shameless should be more like Hollyoaks and I find it weird.
Sure, if you prefer DH there’s no problem with that. It’s a fun, trivial easy to watch show. But don’t call for HBO to stop challenging its audiences, stop pushing the envelope of social query that they do so well. The Wire is often described as one of the best, most realistic cop shows, if not TV shows, ever made. I would rather watch The Wire than Holby City any day. And I will take Weeds over DH a thousand days over.
“Although they all have great production values and occasionally feature a likeable character, they are for the most part low on charm and lacking in subtlety.” She says, referring to The Wire, Californication and Dexter. She then goes on to describe how she watched one episode of Weeds in which the main character “abruptly engaged in energetic sex on a kitchen counter. For no reason.” Actually, if she’d seen more than one episode then she would know this is not for no reason- Nancy Botwin is a character that is sexually reckless and often uses this sexuality to manipulate her way out of difficult situations. It is one of her key flaws.
If you prefer easy watching TV then that’s fine, but don’t try to pretend it is a flaw in the shows that is the problem. If you personally don’t like the violence or sexuality in them then don’t watch them, but please acknowledge that the difference between these shows and a soap is that these dramas actually examine society in all its messiness; its dark corners and hidden stories. What sex and violence is in them is used to this end.
Also, perhaps, watch more than an episode before dismissing them.
Is She or Isn’t She? Who cares!?
Among the (many) hypes spinning around in the crazy stratosphere of celebrity, the Pregnancy Speculation has to be the most annoying. Is she or isn’t she? the headlines scream, above photos of some unfortunate female star who’s probably had a plate of pasta for lunch instead of her customary coffee and a cig.
Why are people so fixated with it? Who cares if a celeb is pregnant or not? And why the hounding? Lately Jennifer Garner was finally ‘outed’ as being up the duff after months of gossip on the internet about the exact status of her uterus. The latest victim is poor little Eva Longoria who dared to display a hint (a mere hint!) of a pot belly. And Posh only has to step out in baggy jeans instead of her customary elasticated Cavalli bodysocks and the papers have consigned her to the maternity ward.
As well as being annoying for the celebrity concerned, it’s actually quite insidious as well. The early stages of pregnancy are already fraught with tension and most women don’t want to announce their pregnancy before that critical first scan. Likewise, if the celeb in question isn’t actually pregnant, they’ll go through all sorts of paranoia about whether they’ve put on weight.
So can’t we leave these girls alone and let them gestate in peace, at least until they’re ready to tell the world? Let’s have some proper news.
by Susie Gordon
Rant: Keira, you look lovely in period costume and…..Cut! Get yourself doing some proper acting for a change!
Yawn…and for her next movie feat, Keira Knightley will perform in a…….period piece…again. Yep, this time, century of choice to waltz about in period costume in, is the eighteenth, for a new role as the Duchess of Devonshire. Seriously, I don’t know if I could be less excited. Will this girl never realise that acting is about the range of emotions you can realistically portray not eras your movies cover?
Let’s just have a think about what she’s been in. There was The Edge of Love, that semi-lesbian tussle with Sienna Miller for the love of poet, Dylan Thomas set in the early 1900s and before it, Atonement. Again, this was the same sort of era- this time a wartime romance. Before these, she pouted her way through the mind-numbingly overdone Pride and Prejudice and King Arthur, not to mention all of the never-ending Pirates of the Caribbean films she’s waddled around in.
Not only is it getting increasingly wearisome realising that all character variation is going to be disclosed in the first few seconds of the movie (once we have seen what she is wearing), but also (and I realise this is a low blow as I don’t normally condone physical degradation) but those boob-enhancing bustiers- well, they’re about as futile as handing the Pope a whore-house voucher.
More than all this, I’m getting sick of listening to her cut-glass English accent. You remember when you had to read Shakespeare out loud in school and everyone weirdly started putting on their poshest accent because they all spoke like that in Shakespeare’s time, didn’t they? Keira is actually just that especially pretty girl who, not having feign a posh voice, found her effortless niche and clung to it for dear life. You can’t hide behind your period attire forever. Sooner or later, the public are going to want to hear your finest American / Irish / French / whatever accent and what will you do then?
Rant – Girl Fight!
If the media is anything to go by, behind the scenes of every drama, reality show and soap, female stars are bickering, bitching and backbiting. Most recently the papers have been bursting with rumours of a feud between Danniiiii Minogue and new host Cheryl Cole on the X Factor. Earlier in the year the Sex and the City monster reared its Philip Treacy-clad head once again, stirring up talk of vicious verbal wars between Kim Cattrall and SJP. The pop scene is full of it too. Apparently the Spice Girls were at each others’ throats left right and centre. Likewise All Saints, who reportedly broke up following an argument over who wore a certain coat onstage.
Whether the stories are true or not it makes you wonder why the press are so fixated with it. It’s never the same for male stars. Not in a month of Sundays would you ever see an article about how Westlife broke up over who got to wear which waistcoat.
So why do the press feel the need to fabricate or exaggerate these girl fights? Are they appealing to that particular male fetish – a clean version of the messy all-girl mud wrestle? Or are they kow-towing to that age-old stereotype that women are nothing but malevolent harridans obsessed with petty quarreling?
The whole debacle is such a shame because it persuades women that they have to crawl all over one another (in a non-mud wrestling way…) to be noticed or get ahead. The effects are easy to see in Big Brother – that scratched and slightly distorted mirror that we hold up to society. “I’m well bitchy, innit.” is the favourite tag-line of many a wannabe celeb as she twirls her ratty hair extensions.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the media paints women as modern-day fishwives. What happened to the sisterhood? Is it not fashionable for women to like each other anymore? It’s boring and so bl**dy predictable.
by Susie Gordon
Rant: What the Hell is With Peaches?
What the hell is going on with Peaches Geldof? Haha i accidentally typed Geldog just then and actually I think I like it.
From now on she will be known as P.dog. I know I shouldn’t care about the antics of this talentless, self absorbed, celebrity-by-default teenager but is there anyone else really so lacking in substance and yet taking up so many column inches, including these?
The irritating thing about her is that she fascinates us, she’s like a poor man’s Paris Hilton except she makes Paris look like a classy, witty society girl with manners. Following the age old trajectory of fandom, P.dog gets her name in the papers for all the right reasons- stupid statements, drug overdoses, partying and now, best of all, a quickie wedding to some random music dude that she met a month ago- hurrah! Another teen divorcee in the making.
She’s obviously smart, as well as a bit of a smart arse, and that makes all this worse. Because she’s buying into the bollocks that she’s somehow a worthwhile human being because people know her name.
Then, last week we read in the Daily Mail that while her little sister Pixie was invited into the VIP area of the V festival, Peaches wasn’t. Her status as C grade celebrity had dropped off a few points. Two days later and she’s had a quickie wedding in Vegas.
There is no way, no way in the world, that P.dog can actually believe she is going to have a lasting marriage. Like I said, she’s no Britney, she’s actually got some brains. So I for one refuse to believe that she is entering into a marriage with some romantic idea that she’s find ‘the one’. And that actually makes it worse. There is a calculated carelessness in the act. Calculated because she knows it gives her publicity and careless because it has no meaning to her. And while marriage may not have meaning to her, it actually does to the rest of us and it makes me angry to see it cr*pped on for the purpose of getting more media attention.
And here I am adding to it. Bah, the whole thing drives me bonkers. P.dog grow up, get a divorce and get a life and please, god please, get off the news.
Rant: Why The Paparazzi Should Quit Complaining
In the last few weeks, not unlike the rest of the time really, we have seen reports of poor victimised paparazzi being abused by celebrities from Rhys Ifans to Wayne Rooney. Today, according to the Daily Mail, Rooney is being ‘grilled’ over an incident in which he spat at paparazzi.
But here’s the thing, I personally don’t blame Rooney. I’m not condoning something as gross as spitting on people, but the truth is these photographers are aggressive, obnoxious and totally invasive. It’s their job, and fair enough because we are all buying the magazines that show these pictures. But at the same time, I think it’s a risk of the job. It’s kind of like being a fire fighter- sometimes you get burnt.
The truth is these guys love it when celebs go mad at them, because they get great sellable picks of an angry Tom Cruise or a screaming Britney Spears. How much more of a commodity is that than a picture of Posh shopping with her mates on Rodeo Drive? How can you possibly be annoyed when one time out of a hundred a celeb goes mad at you? When you call insults and block a person from moving, that tends to be how anyone would react.
In LA there are new laws being considered to curtail the paparazzi invasion of celebrities lives, but they are vehemently (a bit weirdly perhaps) opposed by LA’s Chief of Police William Bratton. His view is that celebrities should not do things that court attention, naming Britney Spears as an example.
He has a point and there’s obviously a symbiotic relationship between celebrity and photographers. This is why really, the celebs can’t complain. Most people would agree with that- because hey if you have bizillions of dollars, a few Porsches and a Chihuahua named Fifi, then tough luck, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with you whining about being photographed.
But the same goes for photographers. If you get paid $50,000 for a picture of Britney throwing up on a night out, you got to accepts that some of it might end up on your shoes mate. So quit complaining, the pair of you!
