The BBC breaking news alert thingy just popped up. Either something is going on that is beyond comprehension, or there’s a BBC employee banging his/her head into the desk right now

A while back I drove past a BBC drama shoot, and here’s what I said at the time:

I saw a very cold looking actress standing outside the house

The programme in question, Mayo, was broadcast this evening. The scene began, and the only actress on screen was dressed up warmly. I couldn’t figure it out, until the camera panned over to a short-skirted, bikini wearing…mannequin. It was being used in a crime scene reconstruction.

Look, it was night, and I was trying to drive, ok?

Article: Live sporting events could be screened in 3D in US cinemas by 2007 in a bid boost flagging mid-week ticket sales.
I like the journalism here. 3D how? With polarising glasses? As far as I know, I’m one of about six people on the planet who think that’s fun. I like how the rest of the article skips the 3D aspect, preferring to concentrate on sport in cinemas. It’s a bit like producing an article saying “soldiers on the battlefield will be given invisibility cloaks in a boost to stop them getting shot.” and then discussing how many soldiers get shot. I used to have an invisibility cloak, but I lost it¹.

Headline: X Factor losers top album chart
Enough said.

Headline: Sea rise could be ‘catastrophic’.
Not catastrophic. No. ‘catastrophic’. Similarly, sea rise could be ‘belgian’.

Headline: Hundreds turn out for the World Pooh-sticks Championship.
Laughing in happiness, this time. This is just great. I also like that ‘Japan are defending their title’.

Must go to bed. These won’t seem half as funny when I’m awake, I’m sure. Apologies.

1. not my joke. Stolen from digg. [↩]

John Profumo died today. The first time I learnt of the 1960’s scandal was during my photography A-Level. Our teacher told us of this photograph of Christine Keeler, the showgirl Profumo had an affair with:

The teacher explained how he had to be very careful when talking about this particular photo. The year before a british photography teacher had shown it to his class, explaining how it was a iconic, evocative image, and set them homework to try to create something similarly interesting. Somebody complained that he was telling them to create pornographic images, and he was sacked. I don’t know the details, but this seemed pretty stupid at the time, and still does.

From the BBC article:

Within days of his political departure, Mr Profumo turned up at the refuge centre Toynbee Hall and asked to help with the washing up.

He stayed for nearly 40 years, using his political skills to raise huge funds, and expanding the charity’s activities to include social programmes and youth training.

The prevailing opinion seems to be that he atoned for his mistake, which is nice to hear. And he had cool hair:

Gideon’s Daughter
Let’s face it - I watched this (and ‘Friends and Crocodiles’ earlier in the year) because the adverts said it was written by somebody called ‘Stephen Poliakoff‘, who is apparently some kind of giant in the television drama who I really should have heard of but hadn’t. Somebody with a name like that must be good, right? As it turned out I enjoyed both dramas. I found them to be interesting little stories, well told. Whether they had any deeper meaning I have no idea - too many years of English Lit. have made me nervous about reading too much into things - but I have a feeling that you take out as much as you want to.

Davina
Davina McCall’s chat show recently started on BBC1, and it’s quite odd. I find her very appealing as a presenter, and have been known to keep watching an otherwise uninteresting programme because she, unlike countless other automatons, seems to have quite a bit about her. She’s comfortable on-camera, constantly ad-libbing and always copes very well with the unexpected. A chat show seems a strange choice, though, and last Wednesday’s show was a little disappointing. Firstly, because she is so likeable I found myself more interested in her than the guest. For her to retreat and give them take centre stage is almost a waste. Still, this could work quite well if she uses her charm to ask interesting and probing questions. Sadly, she never gets the chance - on Wednesday’s show there were so many guests on the hour-long programme that they were allotted ten minutes each, which was barely enough to plug their latest single/film/book. Maybe a different format, with longer interviews, would work better. I flipped over to Kirstie and Phil before the show even ended. Shame.

Casualty / Holby City
I was going to use the words ‘guilty pleasures’ in this paragraph, but I don’t think I will. I actually find myself looking forward to these two, which is a major turnaround from a few years back when I avoided them completely. I think it’s because they’ve gone back to concentrating on staff members over 21 years old, with the result that they’re not entirely based around love triangles any more. The acting’s good, the characters likeable and the scripts are usually nicely written (albeit with the odd dodgy episode - I keep meaning to check whether they’re all by the same writer.) I find them decent, easy entertainment, and I’m not ashamed to say so
Deal or No Deal
I heard from various people how good Channel 4’s new afternoon show was, so caught an episode last week¹. I figured it was some kind of quiz show, which I can normally enjoy as I like trying to answer the questions. Turns out, not so much. If you don’t know the format of Deal or No Deal, here’s how it works: A contestant randomly chooses one of twenty-two boxes, each of which contain a different sum of money varying from 1p up to £200,000. The contestant then opens the remaining boxes, one by one, revealing how much money he hasn’t won. Every few boxes a ‘banker’ will call and offer the contestant £x if he’ll walk away immediately. If he doesn’t ‘deal’ in this way, the contestant is eventually left with two boxes, his own and one remaining, and has to decide which one to open.

It’s mental. To be fair, I may have seen a slightly dodgy episode. The one I watched had the contestant demanding that everybody ’send him their positivity.’ Every time a box was opened to reveal an amount less than £1000 the audience exploded into applause. The presenter, Noel Edmonds, kept wittering on about how much he believed in this system, and wasn’t something really amazing happening. For ages I figured I must be missing something - it seemed to be all random chance. And, yes, it was. The only skill involved, as far as I can tell, is to add up the amounts remaining in the boxes, divide by the number of boxes left, and see whether your answer is lower than whatever the banker is offering you - if it is, ‘deal’!² This particular show resulted in the man turning down £40,000 and ending up with £10,000. My initial comments were slightly more scathing - I think “complete bag of toss” was the phrase that I used when describing it to Mum - but I think that’s just because I like to see people tested for rewards instead of it being blind chance. That’s just me, though - plenty seem to disagree and your mileage may vary.

Eastenders
I don’t know how I’ve ended up watching Eastenders. I’m sure I wasn’t a regular viewer last summer, so it must have happened some time over the autumn. I know my sister started watching, which drew in Mum, and then we’d sometimes watch it while eating. I guess I must have been sucked into some storyline, and by then it was too late - it’s impossible to stop without missing the end of one story, by which time another has started…I have no willpower. However it happened, I am currently wondering when it was that the scriptwriters realised that during January and February:

• they would have very few interesting characters remaining
• they would have no storylines that didn’t border on the farcicial
• that the entire show would be carried by a seventeen-year old (playing a fifteen-year-old) out-acting everybody else on the screen.

I’m guessing the latter was a revelation, since she’s been inserted into every storyline since the beginning of the year.

1. it was a calm-before-the-storm day while I waited for replacement hardware to arrive, so I wasn’t entirely skiving off [↩]
2. It seems like a variation of The Monty Hall Problem, but Wikipedia says it isn’t at all [↩]

Jerry Springer: The Opera is notorious in the UK. There were some complaints when it opened in the West End, but the main media coverage occured when it was broadcast by the BBC. Christian groups (’Christian Voice’, mainly) complained in their thousands, some about the swearing, but most regarding the religious content. Ofcom subsequently rejected the ruling¹. High street stores, including Sainsbury’s and Woolworths, bowed to pressure from Christian Voice and pulled the DVD from sale, drawing fire from Equity, amongst many others. A cancer charity refused to accept a £3,000 donation after Christian Voice contacted them. The subsequent UK tour was lobbied against and looked for a while like it would be cancelled, but was saved when regional theatres stepped in. The fuss was fascinating to me.

I always found the Jerry Springer show crass and unpleasant. I didn’t want to see people fighing, swearing and upsetting loved ones on television². The idea of a musical based around it was entirely unappealing. But all of the protests intrigued me. Was this actually a show entirely based around bad language and exploitation, and designed just to annoy Christians? From the publicity it seemed like the show was intended to shock, and that was its sole hook. As I became more interested in religion and its effect upon the world, I took more notice of news articles relating to the play. I then discovered that Stewart Lee³, its writer and director, is a humanist. Humanism is all about treating people well, and it seemed unlikely that a humanist would write something just to offend Christians⁴. What was actually going on, here? When I discovered that this Saturday’s performance would be the last in Birmingham, I snapped up tickets.

Quick warning: my review contains extremely bad language.

Continue reading ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera - Review’

1. I take issue with some of their defence - “Ofcom did not believe that the characters represented were, in the context of this piece, conveyed as faithful or accurate representations of religious figures, but were characterisations of the show’s participants” seems like a cop-out to me, but the freedom of speech issue was well-put [↩]
2. there was a West Wing moment where a bed-bound President Bartlet saw the show, commenting ‘do these people vote?’ [↩]
3. of the comedy duo Lee and Herring, incidentally [↩]
4. arguably naive, I admit [↩]

Quote from BBC News this morning:

Meet the most romantic couple in the midlands. They met 77 years ago, age 13…and still make each other go weak at the knees

Cuts back to reporter.

Of course, it could just be arthritis

Made me laugh

Nice to get that last post off my chest - it’s been bouncing around my head all evening. And a fun evening it was.

We encountered a BBC Drama shoot on the way to dancing, and while waiting I snapped a picture. Not much visible, mind. I don’t know what the show was, but traffic was stopped sporadically while they were filming, and I saw a very cold looking actress standing outside the house. It was very close to freezing out there - I felt sorry for her.

Dancing itself was entertaining. Young Nod came along in preparation for a ball on Saturday, and did an excellent job of picking up the basic steps.

Nothing exciting happened on the way back home tonight, sadly, other than a suicidal rabbit snacking on something in the middle of the road. Managed to avoid it, but it was close.

Just watching a BBC2 documentary on acupuncture. The primary exhibit is a girl undergoing heart surgery without a general anaesthetic. Certainly sounds interesting, yet…

Although sedated by drugs, and her chest numbed, [the girl] will go through the operation conscious.

Ummm…sedated by drugs, and her chest numbed (presumably by drugs), but it’s all done by acupuncture. Oooook.

I’ll reserve judgement on this show until the end

Fun thing I found out today that won’t mean a thing to non-UK readers: this year’s leap-second will be added to the end of tomorrow, which means that the pips on BBC radio will be extended by a whole extra pip! There are already people who complain about the pips being delayed on digital radio due to the second or two needed for compression. This’ll really spoil their new year.

I was feeling kinda down this evening, but a shot of Scrubs cheered me right up.

I just saw Anna Ford say the f-word. Anna Ford! What’s she doing, knowing words like that…

Turns out that ear syringing isn’t as bad as it sounds. A reasonably strong jet of warm water is fired into the ear, and whatever comes out is caught in a cup. I was expecting some kind of syringe to be involved, and a popping suctiony type sound. I’m happy to say that it worked very well, and I can now hear again! Only problem now is that the other ear feels blocked in comparison…The nurse said it was quite full, but you need to apply drops for three days prior to syringing so couldn’t do anything about it. There’s apparently some soreness in both ears, which isn’t very normal, so I’ll have to make a doctor’s appointment to get it all checked out at some point.

After learning it in my guitar lesson this morning I’ve just purchased my first ever song by Green Day, a band which didn’t appeal in the slightest before now. Wake Me Up When September Ends is the track, and I quite like it. Last week it was Smash It Up (Parts 1 & 2) by The Damned, so I’m really expanding my musical horizons at the moment Currently trying to get to grips with pentatonic scales - I’ve never had any real understanding of music theory and it’s not so scary as I thought. I seem to have been born without the ability to tune or identify chords in the same key, however.

This morning I had a half-hour chat with a very pleasant BBC researcher about my experiences at Live 8. I hadn’t had any breakfast so probably wasn’t on my best form, but hopefully I gave him the kind of information he was after. He said they’ll talk to as many people as they can and then decide who to film for the BBC2 show - that would be exciting!

Finished writing this twenty minutes ago, then got distracted by first time housemoving tips over at Ask Metafilter. It’s such a useful website!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream always was something of a bizarre play, but had a certain charm. I was quite impressed when this evening’s re-imagining managed to squash that charm completely. I gave it one more chance after:

Queen of the Fairies: My name’s Titania
Bottom: [looks down] I’m not surprised

but then Oberon said:

Is Puck short for Puck-up by any chance? Get anything else wrong and I’ll stick this midsummer night’s dream up where the moon don’t shine

and that was enough for me. Not my style of humour Such a shame, when Much Ado About Nothing was so good a few weeks back.

Do the BBC’s digital tv adverts with the floating heads disturb you? The BBC has received over 400 complaints! I don’t get it - do people think they’re real heads?

Edit: Dashed this off too quickly and should have re-read it. I didn’t really mean that people are too stupid to understand that it’s computer-generated. Of course that’s obvious! I can see that it’s a little unnerving - somebody in the room with me last week said they thought it was gross. I just don’t understand what would cause people to actually complain about it…But then I’m very used to CGI, so maybe I’m not the best person to judge Sorry if I came over a little harsh!

Apologies for the downtime; Textdrive had a couple of problems.

If you’re in the UK, I urge you to head on over to the Children in Need website and donate whatever you can afford. I’ve been too busy with NaNoWriMo to participate as I normally would - sorry about that. The whole of the BBC, as well as thousands of people across the country, will be working for free this evening to raise money for children that desperately need the help. £1 is enough to make a difference, and if you Gift Aid it it’s even more (providing you’re a taxpayer.) So please go give £1, pretty please?