Darwin Award TV

Television talent shows entered a whole new era this week in Germany, when emergency help was needed for three separate incidents on their equivalent of 'Britain's Got Talent'.

First 16-year-old singer Laura Pinski almost choked to death on glitter confetti as it showered down on her just as she was breathing in to hit the high note for her big finish.

You may detect just the merest whiff of journalistic hyperbole here (the source being the Daily Mail), but you have to admit that it would have been a demise with Zeitgeist written all over it; I wonder whether the 'Casualty' scriptwriters have thought of it yet.

Then opera soprano Simone Ciccarese lost his voice because stunt technicians on the Supertalent show had flooded the stage with too much dry ice.

Stop sniggering at the back there! Though if the Mail is actually correct about Herr Ciccarese's vocal range, I'd have thought that a bit of dry ice was the least of his problems - he was a tenor last week. Perhaps he had an unfortunate encounter with these chaps:

Finally, firefighters had to rescue contestants Leo and Christian from a blaze when their act - smashing up a car on stage - sparked a blaze as the petrol tank went up in flames.

I have to admit I'm struggling to equate this one with the word 'talent'; I'm assuming that it's something to do with angle-grinders, which have unaccountably become a fashionable source of entertainment, at least if you add enough loud music and scantily-clad women.

It is, of course, thanks to this last 'act' that the phrase Darwin Award springs to mind, although anyone who is prepared to risk the slings and arrows of a televised talent show is likely to have a rather higher Darwin Quotient than the general population.

And, to be honest, an audience ready to applaud two men applying power tools to scrap metal suggests that, somewhere out there, a thousand villages are lacking their idiots; had the theatre gone up in flames, some kind of collective Darwin Award nomination would surely have been called for.

Although the presenter of 'Das Supertalent' sounded afterwards like someone trying to make lemonade out of life's lemons - 'Well at least it proves the show is 100 per cent live' - the producers may be viewing things very differently.

This was the first in a new series of a programme that had 'come under criticism of late due to dwindling viewer numbers'; I can't see that being much of a problem next week, as millions tune in expectantly awaiting the next themed mishap to befall an unfortunate contestant.

It's bound to be a sure-fire success.

Where's a stick with an 'orse's 'ead 'andle when you need one?

Hot on the heels of the Clacton Lion (big and far away) which turned out to be Teddy Bear the Maine Coon cat (small and close up), comes news (via the Telegraph: check out the deadpan picture caption) of a lion prowling round a Bedford housing estate.

The first eyewitness said she came face-to-face with the lion in Thor Drive this week as she walked her Yorkshire Terriers.

Or cocktail snacks, if you happen to be a passing lion. Our intrepid heroine was seemingly undaunted by this unexpected encounter:

“I was stood about four feet away from it and I’ve seen enough National Geographic programmes to know it was on the prowl,” said the woman, who declined to be named “for fear of being mocked”.

Or, frankly, disbelieved - I mean, four feet is pretty close when you're talking about a top predator measuring 7-9 feet nose to tail. It would be unkind, though, to doubt someone so sure of her level of expertise, however vicariously acquired.

Her account prompted another woman to come forward and announce that she, too, had had a close encounter of the leonine kind in nearby Asgard Drive (sadly, I'm sure the occupants of these locations aren't half as exciting as they sound).

Our second Valkyrie also appears to have watched enough National Geographic to volunteer her opinion of animal behaviour:

“It looked like it was in stalk mode and was in a position which looked like it was going to pounce."

Both women are adamant that it was too big to be a domestic cat, which is where things start to look fishy; I mean, if you are suddenly confronted by a large carnivore, fangs and all, at a distance of a few feet, it's not the first comparison that springs to mind, is it?

And if you're asked later whether there's any chance it could have been a domestic cat, the answer would surely be "Hell, no!", rather than pointing out it didn't look like a dog either. Come to think of it, "I stood about four feet away from it" and "I felt a bit strange afterwards" sound like startlingly low-key reactions, under the circumstances.

Sadly for the intellectual future of Britain's couch potatoes, other residents of the estate don't seem to have much faith in the educational powers of National Geographic either:

The animal was last seen heading off in the direction of a neighbouring pig farm.

Locals speculated that it could have been a pig.

Frightening the horses*

Hold the front page! Research commissioned by the BBC has revealed that ‘two-thirds of the people surveyed said they would be uncomfortable watching a sex scene between two men before the 9pm watershed ‘.

I’m surprised it’s only two thirds. It’s not that I’m homophobic; it’s just that I’m not actually that comfortable watching a sex scene between anyone that early in the evening – even the sight of a randy wildebeest enthusiastically humping away is liable to put me off my gin and tonic.

You used to be sure of your ground with the 9pm watershed. Not only did it mean fewer awkward questions from the children; you could invite your visiting great-aunt to sit down and watch a costume drama knowing that bosoms might heave with emotion but would remain decently clad throughout.

As with the mobile phone that rings at an inappropriate time, the rules of etiquette have yet to catch up with modern technology. We have no established code for dealing with the sudden appearance of unexpected body parts in our sitting-rooms mid-evening.

Sod’s Law, of course, dictates that the more graphic the scene, the more embarrassing the company in which you will be watching it; consequently the startled viewer is obliged to feign a sudden interest in the Radio Times or leap up and offer to fetch the mother-in-law another drink.

Just because sex has been creeping back towards the six-o’clock-news doesn’t mean we should have more of it just to even up the score. Quite apart from the fact that it’s facile and demeaning to define characters exclusively by their sexuality, it’s usually dramatically superfluous to demonstrate in graphic detail.

After all, we assume the characters in a drama eat breakfast and go to the lavatory, but that doesn’t mean we have to spend five minutes watching them chewing their eggs and bacon or excreting the residue. As a rule of thumb, it would be good if pre-watershed drama should restrict itself to what would be acceptable in a public place - say, a railway platform - at that time of day.

Regardless of orientation, there are levels of intimacy most people would consider unacceptable in public and which should have no place on early-evening television. Perhaps it’s because the shared cigarette is no longer available as convenient broadcasting shorthand – lacking the imagination to think of a replacement, broadcasters simply decided to show the lot.

I am quite content for drama to feature characters who happen to be lesbian, gay or bisexual, or using the preferred terminology, LGBTQQIA** (to which I always want to add ‘Cuthbert! Dibble! Grubb!’), but I – and I’m sure many other viewers - prefer them and everyone else (including the wildebeest) to avoid the steamier displays of affection in my sitting room before 9pm.


*Mrs Patrick Campbell on demonstrations of affection between two actors: ‘Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!’

**lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and allies (straight and actively supportive) – a Google minefield if ever there was one! (I am fortunate to have an information source active in gender politics.)

Sink or Swim - Darwin in the Big Brother House

Fans of modern Britain's very own Bedlam show were disappointed last night to tune in and find the inmates had escaped.

They hadn't gone far, though - only to a nearby hotel after the house flooded in torrential rain. Four hours later they were back, but half the house is still out of bounds; the good folk at Channel 4 have to make sure it's completely safe before allowing their pets back into the cage.

Here's how the Daily Mail describes the 'Amazing moments as housemates are caught in a freak flood downpour INSIDE the house'.

Josie told John James: 'Do you think that's the sound of the rain or the air conditioning?' When Australian John James, who was lying next to her in the same bed, told her it was the rain, she said: 'Oh my God, that's amazing isn't it? It's nice to be snuggled up when it's like that out there.'

But a second later, as the rain poured in, she shouted: 'Oh my God, John, John." Jumping out of her wet bed, she turned to Mario, who shouted: 'The house is leaking.'

Now can anyone give me one good reason why these characters should not be left to sink or swim (or electrocute themselves) in a perfect manifestation of natural selection? Here's a clue; if you're tempted to answer in the affirmative, I'd advise you to read the rest of the Mail article before committing yourself.

"You're a load of useless bloody loonies!"

The Urchin has come up with an interesting idea: with the imminent demise of Big Brother, there will, he reasons, be plenty of useless narcissists cluttering up society.

Why not, then, build a Big Brother house – or even a whole group of them – on and under a brownfield site somewhere in an industrial city? Or, in fact, a chain of them throughout the country.

You fill the houses with cameras and employ a skeleton staff to monitor the inmates and set them tasks, including growing and processing their own food* and exercising on an electricity-generating treadmill. You advertise for volunteers and select those whose indefinite absence would most benefit society.

And then you shut the door. Permanently.

To keep the inmates motivated, you could have occasional mock eviction polls – then give the losers ‘another chance’ and send them to a neighbouring house. With a bit of luck, you could keep it going for years as they act up for the cameras, blissfully unaware that no one is watching.

Of course, admirers of the late Douglas Adams will have spotted that the Urchin is merely re-creating the solution devised by an over-populated planet to get rid of a useless third of its population. With a simulated Mars mission already underway, we have the technology (or at least the Russians do) to build a self-contained static vessel.

Think about it; soon we, too, could have our very own B Ark.

*The Urchin had actually devised a way to make them entirely self sufficient which I won’t go into here – I knew we shouldn’t have let him watch Soylent Green. Incidentally – trivia alert! - the title of yesterday’s post is borrowed from Harry Harrison’s story on which the film is based.

A Space Oddity

Tomorrow morning, 3rd June 2010, six aspiring cosmonauts will say goodbye to their loved ones and the sunshine of Earth and embark on a 520-day mission to Mars.

Or rather, 520 days in a sealed spaceship in a warehouse on the edge of Moscow's metropolis - seems we're not ready as a species to risk fragile personnel in the alien vastness of interplanetary space. In an experiment to explore the psychological deep impact of a journey to Mars, the crew will experience conditions as close to a real trip as possible.

Communications between the crew and mission control will be subject to 20-minute delay to simulate the time it would take for signals to reach Earth and air and water will be recycled. Meanwhile, cameras will monitor them 24 hours a day with staff ready to intervene should an inmate reach his own event horizon.

Sound familiar? 2005 saw the genesis of what Channel 4 described as 'the most elaborate hoax perpetrated in television history' when they convinced would-be reality show contestants that they were training for and completing a mission to an orbiting space station.

With the help of three fake contestants and two pilots - all actors - the deception was kept up for the duration, helped, perhaps, by the fact that the contestants had been subject to minute psychological profiling; according to Wikipedia, 'The intention was to obtain a group who were highly gullible, conformist, and ignorant about the show's subject matter.'

In an interesting twist, it was suggested by cynics that the whole thing had been an elaborate double bluff practised on the viewers and that the contestants were all actors - a theory based, in part, on the fact that they failed to spot the hoax despite several telling details, including the the presence of full Earth gravity throughout.

Of course, the selection process weeded out any who expressed an interest in science fiction. One imagines our intrepid cosmonauts are rather better informed; even so, it would be interesting to know how many of the classic sci-fi films* have made it into their video library - and whether, for example, they will be allowed a ship's cat.

*Some of which may have found their way into this post...

In a Tory Urban Garden - Dave's PEB

Looks like the backroom boys at Tory HQ have been busy with a spot of Freudian analysis. Taking advantage of going last of three, they've looked at the competition and come up with a sharp riposte.



Gone is the blasted heath of Labour's offering*, or the litter-strewn cityscape conjured up by the Lib Dems; Dave sits in a modest back garden in the evening sun surrounded by blossoming fruit trees and a climbing frame - and isn't that just a hint of birdsong in the background? Welcome to 'Hector's House'.

Clever. Very clever. The lone figure striding through desolation is replaced by a relaxed paterfamilias in a secure and comforting environment. Instead of the hurrying passers-by who brush past Nick Clegg (one of them twice - check him out at 1.15 and 1.20 in their video), the supporting cast are attentive audiences hanging on Dave's every word.

And if Labour were tapping into the latent fear of Dr Who's monsters, the Tories have produced an evocation of something quintessentially English - Gardeners' World**. Dave's Spring Garden is channeling Geoff Hamilton and Percy Thrower (with a touch of Parsley the Lion thrown in).

Incidentally, the audio transcription which so mangled the Lib Dem offering strikes again; 'That's why we need a new Conservative government' becomes, inexplicably, 'That's why we need the name Saudi Government'. Plenty of fuel for conspiracy theorists there.

*A propos of Labour's PEB, it has since occurred to me that Sean Pertwee - their proxy Gordon - was a memorable Macbeth in a 1998 Ch4 schools production; not a felicitous image to conjure up for a generation of younger voters.

**Viewers in Scotland have their own programme.

Nick Clegg's Adventures In Poetry - the PEB

In the interests of political balance (see 'Gordon Brown versus the Daleks: AD 2010), we bring you the Lib Dems PEB, reviewed here by Brian Wheeler.





Following a suggestion in the comments, I turned on the audio transcription captions (not available here - sorry), which a pop-up box describes as 'experimental'. Well, they're certainly that. In fact, the entire transcription could probably hide undetected in a collection of modern free verse.

Here is a sample - imagine it being read in a mournful voice to a roomful of earnestly nodding, slightly scruffy intellectuals in the arts faculty of a university near you.

Say Goodbye to Broken Promises
Broken promise
They've been too many in the last year
To many of the lost that
Elections be lifted
But right

Broken promise
You remember them
There are taxes
But from a stroke
But as schools everyone police broke
Clean up polls
Performers broke

I believe is trying to do things differently
I believe it's time for a premise input
Well I believe it's fine
Promises

I expect to see it on the GCSE syllabus about three years from now, or possibly released as a chart-topping rap single along with the soundtrack music by Clegg's official 'Youth Advisor', the ever-so-slightly middle aged Brian Eno (61).

Other treats include the unexpectedly relevant, 'The week kind of painful for air attacks' ('But we can pay for fairer taxes'), an exhortation to 'Break up the Bronx' - so that's who's to blame for the financial crisis - and my particular favourite, the gnomic closing statement 'Jeanne moos little bit', which surprisingly turns out to be 'And choose the Liberal Democrats'*.


*Which did make me wonder whether there was a saboteur at work - on the other hand, isn't it just so Liberal Democrat to agree to participate in an experimental process? Like when they ask you in hospital whether you mind if a student medic has a go. Sadly, Labour's PEB does not include this entertaining facility.

Update: Latest on the nephew stranded in Sicily; he and his fellow students are now returning to the UK by coach - at least 27 hours on the road. 
If his generation needed a lesson on our dependence on air travel, this is surely it.

Gordon Brown versus the Daleks: AD 2010 - the PEB

Labour's party election broadcast:



Spot anything familiar about this man? That's right; Labour’s Everyman figure, the stand-in for Gordon Brown, is Sean Pertwee, son of Jon. And for those of us in our forties, that means only one thing.

When he says, "My father always said 'don't give up’. ‘Show resolve’, he said. He was so right", he’s talking about Dr Who.

The bleak rain-washed landscape has much in common with the sort of place the Time Lord used to end up in on a regular basis – give or take the odd alien life-form - even down to the implausible blue roadblock. You expect the Brigadier to put in an appearance at any moment. ‘Is it deliberate?’ we ask ourselves, ‘What are they trying to say?’

When Brown said of Cameron, “I don’t know him as a human”, was there more to the statement than we thought? Why else enlist an actor who is such a chip off the old block that the opening shots had forty-somethings diving behind the sofa as the conditioned reflex kicked in?

There’s a clue too in the use of speeded-up clocks – time, see? And if that were not proof enough, listen out for the final voice-over. Yes, that is David Tennant, Dr Who in person. The subliminal message is clear.

'Vote Labour or the Daleks will get you.'


Update: Many thanks to Demetrius for this - try playing both at the same time (start the Harry Lauder first). Was it the soundtrack they originally intended, I wonder, or is it purely coincidental?

History is so last year, innit

Optimism is a wonderful thing. Oh to share the sunny outlook of David Dimbleby, who claimed this week that 'History programmes on television are filling in the gaps in children's knowledge of the subject'!

I'm sure they are, in homes where enlightened parents discuss homework with their children and frequent the local library to research projects. But in an age where, according to much-promulgated statistics, most children have televisions in their bedrooms, David Starkey is wrestling with Christina Aguilera and coming off worse.

We are, after all, talking about generation X-box, the spawn of the electronic age. Last month? That was, like, so ages ago; last year? Practically the stone age, dude. All that matters is the here and now: as far as they are concerned, 'history programmes' means the first series of 'Skins'.

They might pick up a bit of historical knowledge from 'Lark Rise to Candleford' - rural soap with bonnets - or 'The Tudors' and 'Rome' - raunch and ananchronism in equal measures - but, when it comes to the crunch, the lure of 'Strictly X-factor Find Me A Talented Nancy Boy On Ice' is apparently irresistible.

Sorry , Mr Dimbleby, but I think you're preaching to the converted. The huge surge in demand for history books and television programmes is actually fuelled by those of us who remember first-hand the primitive, far-off times before the internet and mobile phones; the young have far more important things on their minds.