I am livid

I recently took advantage of a sale at HMV and purchased some DVDs for my collection. These included the box sets for BBC’s Planet Earth and Blue Planet series, as I like watching a bit of nature on my big television with Dolby surround sound. It makes me feel like I am one with the world, from the comfort of my own sofa.

I recently wrote about vegetarians, and their so-called love of animals, but I find this same ‘love’ from the makers of nature documentaries to be extremely hypocritical. How can someone who claims to love animals sit idly by whilst they watch a poor defenceless creature having it’s ass handed to it, or a polar bear swimming out to sea and to its certain death?

It is sickening. If I did such a thing in the local park I would be reported to the RSPCA again. Apparently they are OK though, as it is deemed bad form to interrupt or influence anything which is behaving as per its natural instincts.

I am pretty sure that the police would take a very different view if you stood by and filmed a violent sexual predator in action. My applications for such a permit have been refused so far, anyway.

But what’s the difference? After all, it’s just me filming an animal responding to his natural urges, right?

Yes, one of the hits of Saturday night television in the early nineties is coming back after being revived by Sky television. A huge plus in the new shows favour is that it will be presented by the very definition of MILF, Kirsty Gallagher.

When it comes to Gladiators, I have a small confession to make. I once went to watch Gladiators being filmed in Birmingham.  In my defence, I was taking my younger brother who was about eight at the time, so I have perfectly legitimate excuse. Sort of. All those telephoto lens shots I took of Jet were for my brother’s collage. On her part, I think the restraining order was a bit over the top to be honest.

However, society has moved on since those halcyon days. Today’s streets are full of knife fights, ASBO wielding teenagers and filthy paedophiles, so I hope the producers will be taking this societal shift on board.

I always felt that Gladiators was just a small step from becoming Arnie’s film, The Running Man. This Gladiator revival could be an excellent opportunity to make that final leap.

Who wants to watch a body-conscious pretty-boy stock broker trying to run up a slightly quick escalator against the clock? Wouldn’t you rather watch a skinny chav, who has been caught carrying a knife, have a fight to the death with Rhino? I know I would.

What about teenage cat burglar playing Hang Tough above a pit of poisonous snakes?

Wouldn’t that just be an enormous ratings winner?

What other events would you like to see brought into the new series?

An advert has been running on Sky television for the last few days for a new magazine called, “Build a model solar system”. Not the most catchy title I have ever heard, granted, but I suppose it is pretty unlikely you will buy it in error.

“I’d like to return this magazine, as upon closer inspection it appears it has absolutely no bikini-clad models in it. None whatsoever. Not even that racist scouser from Celebrity Big Brother and she’s got a contract to be in every magazine produced in the next five years.”

Magazines about making models of the solar system are not my cup of tea, what with me not being a nerd, but I paid attention after seeing the advert highlight the cover price of £1.99 over half of the screen.  This is quite cheap for a magazine nowadays. Even more so when you consider that you get some free model parts with each magazine.

Then I noticed the on screen small print.

“Normal price £5.99″

Hmm.

It seems to me that what they are doing is luring you with cheap tasters in order to get you hooked on making models of the solar system. Just like the crack dealers.

I am not suggesting that making models of the solar system is as addictive as the delicious heroin, but surely using the same tactics is at the very least, morally questionable?

What next? Cut price Hubba Bubba for sale at the school gates? Buy one get one free from Threshers for all Alcoholics Anonymous members? Or maybe even the promise of a lower tax burden in order to secure your vote at a general election?

Oh.

…Is Greg Rusedski a mental?

I mean a proper window-licking mental, not just a bit ‘wacky’. I only ask after recently watching Dancing on Ice, or whatever it is called, whilst visiting my folks.

As he stumbled across the ice in his lycra one-piece, he looked about as comfortable as Abu Hamza during a piano lesson.

All the while grinning like a complete and utter spaz.

Apparently the contestants were asked to do a ‘jump’ this week, and our Greg delivered by leaping across the rink with all the grace of a man in a chicken suit. Then he fell on his arse, on live TV, and got up grinning like an idiot.

Now, I understand it is difficult not to grin when you have a set of teeth and lower jaw like he does, but come on man, have some fucking shame.

Any normal person would be racked with embarrassment, but not our Greg. He positively revelled in his dismal failure. Clearly being an adoptive Brit, our celebration of glorious losers has rubbed off on him a bit more than perhaps he had hoped it would. Perhaps he should spend some time back in Canada to remember what it should feel like when you lose.

Oh, and he should learn to skate while he is there.

I heard on the radio yesterday that the BBC has been inundated with complaints about its new drama series, Ashes to Ashes. The show, for the uninitiated, is a follow up to the hugely successful series Life on Mars, about a policeman hit by a car an who then appears to have traveled back in time to the 1970s.

On this occasion however, it is about a policewoman, and she has traveled back to 1981. With me so far?

Many of the characters remain the same, but a few years older (if not wiser), and a central character is that of DCI Gene Hunt. It is about him that the BBC have received all the complaints.

Well, not so much him, as much as his car. You see, the model of Audi sports car that he is seen driving in 1981, was not actually available until 1984, and this appears to have infuriated the masses.

The wrong model of car. Which could not possibly have been in existence in 1981, except perhaps on a drawing board in West Germany.

Please note that they are perfectly happy with the premise of a woman being shot in the face and traveling back in time 27 years and finding herself attending a boat party dressed as a prostitute. That is absolutely fine. No problems there whatsoever. It is just the car they take issue with.

What type of person complains about something like this? We should be grateful that the current series of Points of View has finished, or Terry Wogan would spend his brief television appearance discussing the relative merits of early eighties German automotive engineering.

Complaining about this is akin to complaining to the BBC that the angle of the sunrise on the Teletubbies is completely inaccurate for a planet inhabiting the earth’s solar orbit. The silly fucking car-loving twats.

Why do people make them?

I know why people watch them, obviously, I would probably have started watching Big Brother if the celebrity versions did not exist, but why would you want to make one? Performance anxiety before the event puts you under enough pressure as it is. The last thing you need is the added pressure of potentially appearing camera shy.

Have you noticed that you never see a sex tape where the bloke suffers from a touch of the Peles? Or ‘arrives’ a little early. I would like to watch one, just once, for the inevitable ego boost it would provide. Surely they must be out there?

How about Brad and Angelina starring in “Sorry. It’s not you Ange, I’ve had a bit too much to drink and it’s been a really long week.”

However, if you did have a sex tape of you and your partner, when would you actually watch it? It’s not like you don’t know what’s going to happen, so there is no suspense. There is no element of surprise to be had. It’s not as if you can tuck a home-made sex tape away with recordings of the wedding or family birthday parties.

“Shall we watch our wedding video again?”

“Nah, I’d rather watch that slightly disappointing shag we had two years ago, you know the one where you do that thing with that wotsit.”

Let us be honest here, no-one likes the way they look on camera, so instead of watching the frantic rutting, you would be making notes on how to improve the lighting in the bedroom. So it is sort of pointless to watch it with your partner.

Of course, you certainly can not watch it with another partner. Imagine going round to your new girlfriends for dinner. She has cooked for you, there is some wine, the atmosphere is pretty fucking romantic. Then she suggests putting on a film.

“What are you thinking? Love Actually? Another romantic comedy perhaps?”

“No, I was thinking we could watch a tape of me having sex with my last boyfriend, there’s a really good bit an hour and twenty minutes in…”

The last thing you would want to see is your new girlfriend getting nailed to the bed by her last boyfriend (this is why I will never date Paris Hilton). Except perhaps her getting nailed by her next boyfriend, but that is a whole other post right there.

I have recently been watching the repeated BBC Four documentary series The Atom.

I am not a geek by the way.

When I was at school I was always interested in science, but there was no money or chicks in it, so I gave it up at GCSE level. This was almost immediately after my Biology teacher showed me a pickled baby in a jar. This was during a lesson and in front of the other children, not part of some sort of one-on-one after-class punishment, it was not that sort of school.

It was a real baby though, I kid you not. She claimed the baby would have been older than us had it lived, but someone (another blogger of some repute) who was taught by the same teacher a few years earlier, does not remember the pickled baby. This is not something you forget, so he must have been off the day they brought the preserved foetus out to play.

Anyway, the presenter of The Atom was describing the world of Physics in the 1920’s and 30’s, and how one physicist in particular, whose name escapes me, had become known as something of a party boy and a womaniser.

This is does not strike me as correct. A nerd? With women? The life and soul of parties?

I can sort of understand why he said it. I mean, he is presenting a programme about his vocation, so it makes sense that he is sexing it up a bit. So, making it seem like it was lab coats by day and labia by night might result in him getting a bit of reflected glory. Or an invite to at least one party.

I do wonder though if I made a massive career error in not following the sciences into University? Would a thorough knowledge of protons neutrons and atomic weights have guaranteed me more poontang?

* Yes, I drafted this entire post in an effort to incorporate the word ‘poontang’.

As I sat there, I could hear her sniffling like a flu-ridden coke addict. I knew what was happening at the other end of the sofa, even before I looked across.

I finally glanced over as she wiped away a tear and tried to hide her face. I looked back at the TV.

“It’s emotional!” she explained.

“I am not crying, am I?” I retorted.

“That’s because you are dead inside.”

So, apparently I am dead inside, emotionally speaking. Physically speaking, my heart rate is a little fast and I have slightly high blood pressure, but apart from that, I am fine. But I am dead inside because I did not cry.

At Saturday’s episode of the X Factor.

I am in touch with my feelings. Anyone who reads the drivel on this website would know that, but I fail to see why anyone, ever, would cry at a reality television show. Especially one where inept singers embarrass themselves in front of the nation.

Can someone enlighten me?

ITV have been told off again, this time for leading people to believe they were seeing the final throes of a dying man’s life. This man, Malcolm Pointon, was 66 years old and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Apparently he did not die for a few more days, which is nice, you know, for him and his family.

However, there has been outrage in the the television world as a result. I must admit at this point to not watching much ITV programming these days, so it has come as a bit of a shock to learn that snuff movies have become so popular on mainstream television.

I remember a time when you would have to search the Internet for hours and hours for this kind of thing. Now they put them on in between The Bill and News Knight with Sir Trev. At least they wait till after the watershed.

It is a good job that this deceit has come to light now, as I can only imagine the letters of complaint they would have received had they not been found out before it was shown. It would have been a bumper week for Points of View (which is still going isn’t it? I don’t watch much BBC either.)

He was not dead!! I could see his chest moving!! Perhaps you should stick a knife in just to make sure next time?

If I wanted to watch old people fall asleep I would go to a Test Match. When people die it involves copious amounts of blood and lots of screaming, everybody knows this. What is this country coming to?

This is just typical of this Labour Government. Bring back Thatcher, that’s what I say. She would have made sure he was dead, and happily have finished him off herself if he was determined to cling on. Not like these lefty namby-pamby ‘medical professionals’.

They do say there is no such thing as bad publicity, though I am sure Chris Langham’s agent would disagree. With that in mind, will you be watching next Wednesday?

I have never written a TV show, but if I had, I guarantee that you and everyone else I have ever met would be well aware of the fact.

Apparently Americans, one of the most self-congratulatory societies on the planet, do not feel the same way. I say this after watching some television on the Paramount Comedy channel over the weekend. Have you ever tried to read the credits at the end of an American show? They fall down the screen faster than Chris Langham’s trousers in PC World (allegedly).

What is the point of having your name in the credits if you are not able to take a screen shot of it and email it to all of the eligible women that you know? If it was me, I would be furious.

Can you imagine having a party at your house, just as the first episode of a show you have been involved in was being screened, and then, just as your moment of glory arrives, you call for silence and the credits begin to roll. And then they whip past, and everyone suddenly casts accusatory glances in your direction, and none of the women will sleep with you. A true nightmare scenario if ever there was one.

I think this is why people like Jay Leno, David Letterman and Michael Parkinson insist in having their names in the title of their shows. There can be no absolutely no doubting the fact that they are in it.

If they were trying to impress ladies in a bar with lines like, “I have interviewed Billy Connolly forty-eight times”, they would not even need to watch an episode of the show to prove it. A copy of the Radio Times and a highlighter pen would be more than sufficient. You would save an absolute fortune in Rohypnol.

“Today’s weather, brought to you by Powergen.”

Also known as “Today’s torrential rain and washed out garden party, brought to you by Powergen”

This is worst piece of promotional sponsorship I have ever heard of. British weather is, in the main, fucking abysmal. There are good days, yes, but largely we wish our island was located a couple of dozen degrees latitude further south. Just off the coast of Portugal would be nice.

When you consider the levels of displeasure that our weather brings to us, it is baffling to consider which bright spark in Powergen’s creative team thought it would be a good idea to align themselves with the weather. It disappoints people, because it is shit. Invariably a weather forecast ends with people saying things like, “Shit, that’s the BBQ fucked then” or “I guess we’ll have to have the sex indoors again then”.

If they were advertising electricity in the Dominican Republic, I could see the potential benefit. “Fuck me, sunny again, I tell you what, those folks at Powergen are fucking ace! Quick, boil the kettle, I want to buy more electricity!”

UK based weather sponsorship does not make me want to buy my electricity from Powergen. Quite the opposite. It makes me hate them. Why can’t they fuck off and take the fucking ceaseless drizzle with them? If they are going to insist on sponsoring something that upsets so many people I do not know why they don’t go the whole hog and sponsor ‘rape’ and ‘child abduction’.

Big Brother is rubbish for many reasons. It has a house full of inebriated sex-hungry social inadequates, games designed to let the house mates make fools of themselves, and literally millions of cerebrally-challenged morons glued to screens watching them do it.

Of course, these are all excellent reasons why Big Blogger is also a great idea. Plus the fact that I am in it.

Yes, yes. I was a fall-back in case some people dropped out, which they did. But I have very little pride, and so I hungrily accepted the invitation to move into the house this week.

I do not really know what to expect, what with missing the orientation meeting and everything, but it appears that there will be ‘tasks’ and ‘games’ and people will get to vote off the people they don’t like (for clarification, this means people who are not me).

Pop over and have a look. There are some genuinely funny people in there, some I was aware of before taking part, some I wasn’t. So if nothing else it has added another few minutes to my mid-morning checking-Bloglines-with-a-coffee routine.

At some point in the coming days and weeks I will no doubt make a plea for you to go over there and vote for me, because I do not want to be the first person out of the house. No-one remembers them. I do not want to be the Danny Tourrettes of the Internet. If I can get into the top half that will be enough to secure me a place on satellite television presenting a late night show about people who ride buses. Or something.

Go and have a look over there, now.

Last year I wrote about an episode in the late 90’s where Denis Leary stole my joke. I was obviously angry at the time, but I felt confident that after outing him on the Internet, to literally dozens of computer literate nerds, he would have been shamed into learning his lesson. For good.

Oh how wrong I was!

I sat in front of my television the yesterday evening, working my way through a week of Sky+ recorded programs, one of which is Rescue Me. For those that do not know, it is a drama on Sky One about a New York fire department and their post 9/11 traumas. I am not sure what happened on the 9th November, but apparently it was very traumatic. The premise might not sound funny, but it is.

As I sat there watching, a scene began in which Denis Leary was berating and questioning a Muslim taxi driver about his religion, and all the virgins he was supposed to get in heaven.

“Wouldn’t that be, y’know, a bit useless?” he said to the cab driver, as I sat bolt upright thinking, “Don’t you dare mention having some prostitutes in there!”

“I’d prefer to have a few whores” he continued, before explaining how you would have much more fun than just having virgins up there for all of eternity.

I will concede that once could be an incredible coincidence, I will grant him that, but twice? He is clearly getting his material from here! Honestly, this is just one more way in which Bill Hicks and I are exactly the same, apart from the smoking and the being dead bit.

I fully expect to see an episode later in the series where he accidentally drops a condom on the counter at a supermarket in front of a pretty checkout girl.

The name of today’s event may make you think of Lenny Henry having a quick tug in a BBC broom cupboard (with or without Gordon the Gopher - it is up to you), but today is a very important day. Very important.

It is my penultimate day of snowboarding!! (edit: or would have been if I hadn’t dislocated my shoulder on Wednesday)

Also, some do-gooders are doing some charity thing on TV, but I am in France so will not be able to see it. It think it is a good idea, as it combines two of my favourite things, laughing, and people less fortunate than me. If you can’t have a good laugh at the expense of people less fortunate than yourself, then what else is there?

I will be getting in the spirit of things by, err, snowboarding drinking and that, whilst the rest of your are laughing heartily at all poor people on the TV. I will be there, laughing with you in spirit, I promise.

Talking of getting into the spirit of it, Mike over at Troubled Diva had an excellent idea about a week ago, and has put together a book of funny things from off of the Blogonetosphere. All in the space of just one week! All profits are going to Comic relief, so I urge you to all go over there and buy a copy. It is for a good cause.

I might have something in the book, unless it has been cut during the editing process (highly likely), so I suggest you go and buy it. After all, if you don’t buy it, less money will be raised, and in two years time they might not think it is worth doing another one. Then where will we be? Watching re-runs of My Family is nowhere near as good as giggling at the under-privileged.

So go and buy the book, and make sure that we can all feel better about ourselves for at least one night in two years time!

Go.

Now!!

UPDATE: The book is available here: Shaggy Blog Stories - a collection of amusing tales from the UK Blogosphere.

I am entry number 66, which essentially means I have been given 65 warm acts, and 34 warm-down acts for those who don’t have to catch the last bus home and have nothing better to do.