Alan Coleman

The news is on, BBC. I haven’t seen it in ages and now I know why.

A completely unrelated story focuses on a man with an England tattoo on his forearm. He’s done nothing wrong other than to offer some first hand evidence. Yet that evidence has already been doubted by the production crew, the BBC, the self importance of Television.

The crime of ink stained skin being a point of focus before he’s even opened his mouth.

It doesn’t matter what you have to say, what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what battle you’ve served in or what college you’ve been to. If you’ve dared to decorate yourself then you’re a potential point of interest for the revolting chattering classes.

I don’t know what upsets me most about the pointing with knowledge, and the sneering smiles of contempt. It could be the blatant snobbery of it all, but it’s probably that all important knowing of middle class smug.

One things for sure, news has never been more blatant with its condescension towards anyone that dares anything other than to aspire to the tedium of Graduate normality.

On the contrary, you people with cameras and clip boards make me fucking sick.

The BBC’s latest Sunday night offering is a ridiculously camp adaptation of Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford. As to be expected, all the usual suspects have been wheeled out for a predictable bout of over acting and stereotypical one liners.
It’s awful, but it got me thinking.
Years ago The Albion Band released a musical version called Lark Rise to Candleford: a Country Tapestry. Dad got into it because folk music was his thing, he’d listen to it over and over in his Vauxhall Cavalier on the way to work– metallic blue, spotlights.
One day, he turned up with the book, not just any book mind, it was the heavy weight hard back version bound in a green spotted fabric. What TV adverts for newspaper commemorative editions would describe as “lavishly illustrated”. He’d sit in bed at the weekends running his hands gently form side to side over the cover before carefully opening it and saying things like, “Look at the lovely pictures” or “It’s beautifully laid out, look at the typography and the weight of the paper”.
He loved that book, and would waste no opportunity to pick it up and admire it happily at arms length.
One day, he came home from work and the dog had chewed it up.

I hate Comic Relief

There was a time when Comic Relief was constrained to a single Friday, with the evenings TV event being easily avoided by staying down the pub, which is where you would have been anyway. You’d probably get some arse head in a bunny outfit begging from people he thinks are his friends, ‘I’ve walked all the way from Walton on the Naze like this! All for Comic Relief! I know, crazy aren’t I?’

That was it, you chuck a quid in his bucket and he takes his wacky little attention stunt to the next person. By the end of the night the country has raised a few million, most of which Oxfam will spend on employing a load more graduates to harass people in the street. The rest gets sent to Africa so we can happily forget about the hundreds of years of rape, pillage and exploitation. Until next year anyway.

Now of course it’s all changed for the worst, and the whole debacle starts after Christmas and lasts until well after the FA Cup Final. And more than ever, Comic Relief is about airtime for inane TV presenters and 80s comedians. I nearly choked on my Spag Bol the other night when, would you believe it, Billy fucking Connelly appears at a school in Africa wearing a white suit with stars on it! You could see all the kids thinking, ‘Who the hell is this cock? Just how the hell did this bunch of Muppets fuck us over for so long?’

The next time I switch the box on, Dame bloody Judy will be hanging out the top of a Land Rover in The Gambia with a white muslin scarf flowing in the wind. You can see her now, waving as hundreds of barefooted kids fight each other to get closer to some old bag that as far as they’re concerned could run the local Post Office. Surrounded by BBC types with clip boards, cargo pants and sandals, the whole little excursion is the stuff of Volvo wet dreams.

You couldn’t write it any better.

‘You can get involved!’

Yes by handing over your cash, that’s if you’re luckily enough to have any left after being mugged by greedy Gordon had his sweaty little mitts. Meanwhile Lenny and the team of wealthy graduates can get involved by taking a comfortable little working holiday in one of the safer parts of Mauritius. ‘I wish you at home, the general public, could be here and experience the joy and hope of these little children’. Comic Relief is of course Lenny Henry’s full time job, he must spend the rest of the year on a retainer waiting for his jolly to Mozambique like Christmas. ‘Cheers Lenny, same time next year?’

Back at the studio, Wossy and Davina will be piling on the laughs as the BBC newsreaders do a tap routine in the car park, again. Ricky Gervais will be giggling stupidly in the corner like a ten your old whose found a wank mag up the allotments, and as a special treat Dermott O’Leary will be taking us behind the scenes at Broadcasting House. So patronising.

After that McFly, the mums favourite, will be surprising a spotty teenage girl in Rotheram by turning up at her school, unannounced. Then back to Bill sodding Nighy cracking everyone up by mumbling and trying to dance at a Young Offenders Institution in Soweto.

Aren’t we the lucky ones.

Again, just like award ceremonies, it’s the same old TV faces turning out for a bit of self promotion in the name of charity. People without proper jobs thinking that their self important hobby is somehow an example to viewing public. And this year there’s another way for us mortals to get involved. With the joys of reality TV. Please, don’t get me started on that one.

What I object to most, is the trivialisation of charity. The idea that the benevolence and decency has to be piggybacked onto an inane TV event for the general public to realise how important it is. When in reality this whole situation should have been sorted out decades ago by men in suits in shiny buildings. Not by the BBC and its self appointed saviours of culture as an exercise in entertainment.

That’s all for now.

I can’t stand award ceremonies. Not only that, I simply can’t understand why anyone would want to watch something like the BAFTA awards on television. I was flicking around for Match of The Day 2 last night and that image that is the award ceremony flashed onto the screen, after overcoming the momentary paralysis my thumb thankfully found the 5 button. What I saw for a fraction of a second is what has been shoved down people throats for decades, little more than a congratulatory exercise in shameless self promotion.

The scene starts with a TV personality in a tuxedo, probably the loveable but twatish Jonathon Ross, making a couple of lame jokes about George Bush or Pwince Charles. He will of course openly prompt the audience for a laugh by indulging in a cringworthy self deprecation, probably involving an inane grin. As cheeky side kick, Davina McCall will be stood on the other side of the lectern laughing hysterically with the audience, that is before ‘Wossy’ cracks another hilarious belter about being stuck in the BB house with her.

Davina will then tear open the envelope, stopping momentarily to grin ironically at the camera, before shouting “DAME JUDY DENCH!!” far too loudly into the microphone. This being a cue for the audience to leap to their feet and begin a frenzied chorus of whooping, crying, insane cheering and fist shaking.

“It’s Dame Judy! Oh, it’s Dame Judy!!”

The camera pans round as soap stars and BBC types gaze lovingly at the stage, as just like every other year, the old girl is wheeled out for whatever award BAFTA have invented for Dame Judy. That’s probably what happened but as I didn’t watch it you have to imagine the same scenario existed with Ricky Gervais giggling childishly into the mic before handing out yet another gong to that dribbling git, Bill Fucking Nighy. Or Billy Connelly and his stupid red beard wittering on about the Dame before handing over to someone like Katie Melua or Jamie Cullum. The proceedings have that oily gloss about them, as if making the inanity shiny is recompense for its dreary and mind numbing content.

And that’s pretty much the scene for the rest of the night, hour after hour of sycophantic arse licking and shots of people like Sonia Jackson going all dewy eyed as Pauline collects a well deserved accolade on behalf of the cast and crew. Then the next morning the papers will be lovingly adorned with pictures of the Dame, or whatever Middle Class folk hero has made a, ‘Touching and provocative piece’ about growing up in Rotherham Children’s home with no mouth.

The worst thing about this whole debacle is the presumption that the viewing public actually doesn’t mind paying for to watch actors and TV personalities congratulate each other on their achievements. This kind of patronisation is so engrained into the entertainment industry, to a point that they don’t even question the whole idea of making TV programs about how great people are that make TV programs.

The BBC has never been short on self congratulation, but it is the insulting and moronic nature of the award ceremony that really takes the piss out of the paying customer.

Even if I don’t watch it, this is the kind of television that will turn me into Micheal Ryan.

About a year ago I posted a blog about Celebrity Big Brother. I remember quite enjoying it at the time, but this time around there’s something missing, it’s losing the appeal that made it so popular, and the format has started to tire. It’s not the people involved who are at fault, it’s just that you can only milk something for so long before it starts to become tedious. The incessant screaming and shouting, all of which were a revelation to television a few years ago, has ended up making Big Brother a parody of itself.

And new we’ve ended up with the scenario that has been lurking round the corner for a long time, racism. It had to happen sooner or later, it was only a matter of time before a clique of white people ganged up on someone else from a different culture. And now we have the PC police in offices throughout the country, fuming with indignation and knowing nods over the simple idea of the R word.

I haven’t watched much of the show, but I can tell from the screaming reaction in the press that this is the sensational story of the week. The little filler that arrived just in time to plug the news gap after Ruth Kelly, and before we move back to the safety of hating immigrants and Tony Blair.

So are the Jade Goody gang a bunch of racists? That tempts a discussion that is well beyond this blog, but no, I don’t think they are. They’re not stupid either, or half witted, or thick. Just a bit ignorant, which of course doesn’t condone anything that might have been said, or justify racism in any shape or form. The word ignorant just gives us an idea of what’s going on here.

Consider also that Jade Goody has spent years being humiliated in the press, and just as long being the easy joke on irreverent Channel 4 late night quiz shows. The knowing conversations of criticism, ranging from her contribution to society, to her weight and accent, waft around coffee shops on a daily basis. Somewhat ironic then, that it is those very same people who berated her for being thick, who are now quite happily getting their knickers in a twist about the inevitable? It’s all okay when the figure of fun is providing the scruffy classes with their fix of self congratulatory humiliation. But when the behaviour starts to offend their self righteousness, all of a sudden the line that they assume is theirs for the drawing, has been crossed.

What did they expect? Honestly.

So now we have Tony Blair, The Metro and The Daily Express lecturing us about racism, something that they themselves use to flog their own dubious agenda on a daily basis. The bare faced cheek of it all is actually quite amusing.

This is all bollocks, don’t spill your latte over The Guardian Guide, just turn the television off.