John Cooper-Clarke is a prophet as well as a poet

One of the reasons why our society is doomed is that it has no moral compass.

Facebook said breastfeeding photos have never been against the firm's Community Standards, but nipples had to be covered or concealed.

[From Facebook removes mother's breastfeeding photo - Telegraph]

So. Pretending to rape women on MTV is OK for Facebook, and I'm sure you can find a zillion Robin Thicke or Miley Cyrus videos (I didn't look, because I didn't want my interest in them to be misinterpreted on some GCHQ computer somewhere), but a picture of a nipple is beyond the pale. Never mind Facebook, this is Modern Britain in a nutshell. Our greatest living poet, John Cooper-Clarke, saw all of this coming a generation ago. In one of his greatest works, a heartfelt rage against the truly bizarre public morality abroad in a United Kingdom, he wrote:

“This paper’s boring mindless mean
Full of pornography the kind that’s clean
Where William Hickey meets Michael Caine
Again and again and again and again
I’ve seen millionaires on the DHSS
But I’ve never seen a nipple in the Daily Express.”

You’ll Never See A Nipple in The Daily Express (John Cooper-Clarke).

The Bard of Salford says it all.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

Time for slow TV

The recent success of Scandinavian television in the UK has been quite surprising. "The Killing", "Borgen" and "The Bridge" were stalwarts on my iPad for many months. But I think the next wave of Scandi-TV might be even bigger. We need to look beyond Denmark and beyond Sweden: Norway is the next big thing.

Since then, “slow TV” has become a staple of Norwegian public broadcasting. In 2011, more than half the country watched a cruise ship’s 134-hour journey up Norway’s west coast.

[From Big in Norway: Slow TV - Olga Khazan - The Atlantic]

I think I will add a slow TV element to my campaign to become the next Director General of the BBC. I have in mind a camera mounted on the 18.15 to Portsmouth Harbour via Woking as a regular feature. I'm also thinking about a channel that is nothing but someone reading (in full) all new legislation coming from Parliament for people who find the train too stimulating.

Of course, I'll need a famous face to get it underway. The most talentless, uncharismatic and boring television presenter I can think of is Claudia Winkelman, so I think I should get in touch with her agent right away.

[Addendum] When I wrote this post, I assumed that Claudia Winkelman was married to someone famous and that was how come she was on TV but according to the wikipedia link she is actually a hereditary celebrity and is on the BBC because she has famous parents.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.

Live!

I was flicking round the movie channels the other day and I started watching Live! with Eva Mendes. It was quite fun: it's a mockumentary about new network TV show in America where people play Russian Roulette live on TV. It was all horribly plausible. What I thought was particularly funny is that at the start of the movie people are pitching terrible TV show ideas to network executives and at least one of them -- a makeover show with women having boob jobs that are filmed -- I have already seen on TV here. In modern Britain, nothing is beyond satire.

But I don't think the probabilities were worked out right. Each of the five winners got a million dollars while the loser got dead, obviously. But surely it takes more guts (or insanity) to pull the trigger as the game goes on. The first person to get picked has a 5 in 6 chance of surviving, whereas if you are the fifth player, it's 50-50. So the players should get more as the game goes on. Also, I don't quite see how it could really work as show: after all, if the first person to go shoots themselves in the head then the rest of the hour slot is going to be as boring as Big Brother. I do think Davina McCall "the cackling high priestess of shit television" would be a good choice for it though.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Brand values

Now, although I don't care about Russell Brand in the slightest, I do know who he is. I've never listened to his radio show, but I've seen him on things on TV from time to time (although I can't think of any specifically). Like most people in Britain, I only associate his name with one thing, which was being rude to Andrew Sachs, a national treasure. I know that he is in films as well, but haven't seen them. Judging by the reviews of his new film, I doubt I'll even watch it for free on TV.

Flicking round the channels bored after the World Cup, I accidentally turned on Channel 4, which had him doing a sort of stand up act. It wasn't funny, but that's fair enough. What was odd about it was that it was boring. That, I hadn't expected.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Bleakley house

According to the newspapers, Christine Bleakley is being tempted to move from BBC to ITV by an offer of a million pound salary. For those of you unfamiliar with dreary early-evening television, Christine Bleakley is one of the hosts of The One Show, a dull BBC1 "magazine" programme. Ms. Bleakley is better known as the girlfriend of the noted association footballer Mr. Frank Lampard (otherwise known as the "Where's Wally" of the England World Cup team).

Now, when I read about this proposed transfer, I thought it was a good news story. The BBC would save her salary -- I couldn't care less if ITV want to pay her ten million pounds per year -- and could go out an find another young woman from the regions to take her place (there cannot possibly be a shortage). I was a little disappointed at the end of the story to discover it was mere speculation -- presumably put about by her agents or negotiators -- and that her salary continues to be paid by hard-pressed licence fee payers such as me. Surely it is time to introduce a salary cap at the BBC: if presenters were capped at, let's say, the same salary as the Prime Minister (they'd not starve, as they can make plenty of money writing books, being in Hello magazine, running production companies and that sort of thing) then everyone would know where they stood and there would be a splendid stability to the TV world. Young and cheap presenters would compete to work for the BBC and then once they've become established but want more cash then they can sod off to ITV, thus keeping the BBC fresh and (importantly) performing a socially useful function. Everyone's happy.

[UPDATE] I went back to check something and it turns out the story is true! Well done BBC. The search is now for an attractive young woman with -- I would guess -- a Scottish or Welsh accent and the ability to read an autocue for £100K per annum.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Catty

Here's a heartwarming story. Noted television presenter Cat Deeley, who earns $5 million per annum working Fridays and Saturdays in the UK and the rest of the week in Hollywood (ths burning up the carbon allowance of about a million Brazilians) was pestering hapless travellers to give cash to the BA "change for good" on a flight from Sao Paolo.

Charming the Club World cabin (‘Come on, guys, the flat beds can wait’) before making her way to the back of the plane where one man has found a £50 note (‘Oh we love you, sir’). By the time Cat has finished her walkabout, flight 246 has coughed up £404, which Cat pledges to match. Mission accomplished.

[From Cat Deeley in Brazil: the TV presenter swaps the Hollywood Hills for the slums of Sao Paulo | Mail Online]

If I was sitting at the back of that plane, I wouldn't have been charmed but I would have told her to thank her tax accountant for the donation 0.0005% of her after-tax salary and that I would be happy to match that percentage. That's how generous I am (actually, I'm being ungenerous: I have actually given foreign coins to the Change for Good programme). But what was she doing in Sao Paolo? She was there as an ambassador for UNICEF, which says on its web site that

Urgent action now to reduce carbon emissions and invest in climate change solutions will move the world to be cleaner, healthier and more equitable.

[From UNICEF UK Blog ]

Perhaps they could take immediate action and stop Cat Deeley from flying across the Atlantic twice every week? No, of course not. When celebs call for action, they mean from peasants like us who annoy them by clogging up the the airports and heating our homes: Emma Thompson, to choose one example, probably goes to Hollywood by some form of yacht or other wind-powered transport. Anyway, back to Cat.

Aside from her TV work, Cat admits that her biggest passion is fashion

[From Showbiz - News - Ten Things You Never Knew About Cat Deeley - Digital Spy]

I don't share her passion and I certainly don't have an important job like looking good in front of a TV camera, but I agree with her diagnosis of the nation's ills.

“In Britain, it’s almost as if we’re ashamed of having ambition and drive.”

[From Television star Cat Deeley hits out at unambitious Britons - Telegraph]

How ungrateful. In what other country could you become one of the super-rich and ensure that neither you nor any of your dependents will ever have to work again simply by being attractive enough to be a model on Kilroy?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Deserve got nuttin' to do wiv it

Having replaced the merciless dance marathons of the great depression with the merciless karaoke-to-the-death X-Factor of this one, Simon Cowell is well on course to be the richest person in TV (if I heard the Today programme correctly). This is surely the final incontrovertible piece of evidence for atheism that Richard Dawkins has been lokking for. In a universe designed by an intelligent creator, this could not possibly happen. My hatred for the X-Factor may be the only opinion I have about anything that is shared with Elton John, but who are we against so many. Anyway, envy aside, good luck to Cowell and the money he wrings from a credulous public. He deserves it, doesn't he?

As Felicia "Snoop" Pearson notes in the greatest-ever television drama, The Wire, the universe is an uncaring arbiter. People don't get what they deserve. But what do they deserve?

Take me, for example. I’m smart and hard-working. I don’t know if it’s because of my genes, or because my parents brought me up right. But whatever the cause, I didn’t do anything to become smart or hard-working.

[From Do Smart, Hard-Working People Deserve to Make More Money? « The Baseline Scenario]

That's a really good point. This why when people on radio phone-ins talk about nurses "deserving" more than bankers or policemen "deserving" more than TV presenters, they are barking up the wrong tree. By starting off with a category error, then you find yourself in a system that cannot resolve even the most basic questions. Why should David Beckham get paid more than me just because of his parents (they were the ones who gave him the genes for being good at football)? Why should Zac Goldsmith have more capital than me because of this parents (who were very rich)? Why should Marcus Brigstocke get on Question Time just because of his parents (who sent him to a 25 grand per year public school) when I am right about most political and economic issues and he is wrong?

Perhaps no-one gets what they deserve, and Simon Cowell is no different. By the way, Simon Cowell got his break because of his parents. His father, who was an EMI executive, got him a job in the A&R department there. Snoop was right.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]