Louis Sells Sex

Louis Theroux knows what sells. He is never too far away from a religious cult, a condemned prisoner or a sex worker. One might have thought that the novelty had worn off by now but, credit where it’s due, Louis manages to revisit every topic with the same wide-eyed gaze of wonder he has always done. He’s like someone watching the sun rise every day, smiling at everyone and pointing at it saying, ‘Wo-ow, here it is again, look.’ Then watching it set and forlornly declaring, ‘D’you think we’ll ever see it again?’

Hi talent is that he chooses his subjects carefully. The fellow sunrise watchers all jump up and down whooping and clapping going ’Look everybody, it came back!’ Similarly, the sunset crowd all weep and quiver saying, ‘Where is it going? Come baaaack!’

It usually helps if those involved are American.

This week, Louis was in pursuit of sex. Not him, personally, obviously. He lives a wholesome, monogamous and conventional life with his wife Louise and their children, Lou and Lulu. (I have no idea if this is correct and concede that it probably isn’’t)

No, Louis was on the trail of the sex workers and, here’s the twist, they were all UK based. This represents a break from tradition because, usually, his subjects are American, African or African American. A Louis program on sex workers would normally be set in Beverly Hills and feature copious silicone and tooth veneer. This sex work was happening right outside our front door.

As usual, Louis managed to be both shameless and puritanical in the same moment. Interviewing the sassy Victoria in her see-through one piece and silently withdrawing just moments before her client arrived for his weekly seeing to. He looked away bashfully as Caroline changed into her working gear but quizzed her relentlessly throughout the ensuing striptease that was her promotional photo shoot.

Louis, you can tell, makes friends easily. Sharing the bedtime routine with Victoria’s children – that’s the conventional ‘bath & story’ bedtime – talking to her 14 year old daughter about Mummy’s work and sharing intimate details with Caroline’s husband who takes the role of silent partner as his wife ply’s her trade in the marital home. He is at his best when anlaysing the moral dilemmas faced by the sex workers, their clientele and society at large.

His conclusion was that civilisation has probably become poorer for the continued devaluation of intimacy. Young adults were seen to endorse the use of sex as a commodity and the older subjects ventured that their youth would have been better had they lived in a less sexually suppressed era.

All in all, the program showed a consensual and liberated version of the industry. Everybody involved appeared to accept their role, there were few complaints. Nobody appeared to be forced or coerced into doing anything they didn’t want to and, generally, the female (it was always a female) seemed to become empowered by the situation. We may have benefited from a glimpse of the more tragic side of the story. However, as with all of Louis’ programs, you have an inherent sense of trust that, if he doesn’t dwell on something it’s because he doesn’t think it will add anything. He’s been doing this long enough now to know when to stop.        

The Masked Singer - an in depth study of its implications for mankind

FOR......FUCK'S......SAKE

It's Murder in Glasgow

Powerful courtroom dramas are meat and drink to peak time TV viewers. We are all so familiar with court procedure that we often assume that the judicial system can be viewed 24/7 on The Justice Channel or some other service way down the Freeview list. Surely there's a program on in the afternoon called Live From Her Magistrates or What's My Old Bailey? There's probably an outtakes reel on You Tube showing various QC's stumbling over their sentences - remember when Lord Justice Dillnutt handed out 300 years instead of 30? Everyone fell about!

Anyway, the fact is, The Disappearance of Margaret Fleming (BBC2 9pm 8th & 9th Jan 2020) represented the first time cameras had been allowed to film a real-life murder trial. It was rather jarring to realise that every other serious crime trial I had ever witnessed was some kind of dramatisation or reconstruction. This was the real thing. I braced myself for some reality.

The prosecution and defence lawyers were an uneven balance of 2 against 1. This was due to each defendant having their own barrister. Edward Cairney and Avril Jones stood jointly accused of murder (pronounced the Scottish way of course - Muld-del) and sat apart in the dock, rarely looking at each other. Their advocates, on the other hand, often glanced at each other. Whether to exchange knowing looks regarding the mounting evidence against them or simply to check the straightness of their ill fitting wigs, there was more eye contact between lawyers than accused.

Cairney cut a particularly tragic figure. Wheelchair-bound now, unkempt and dishevelled he contrasted dramatically from his former self. Shown as confident, stocky and gregarious, photographs of him portrayed, if not a flamboyant figure, then certainly a popular one, holding get-together's in his riverside house with his partner, Avril Jones and their charge at the time, the young Margaret Fleming. The intimacy of the relationship between Eddie and Avril was unclear to all, however, their role as carer to Margaret was as obvious as it was necessary. Here was a child with learning difficulties and limited mental ability who, although loving, trusting and kind, was vulnerable due to her capacity. Eddie and Avril had been entrusted with her care by her late father who passed away in the 1990's due to cancer.

The prosecution, the deliciously named Iain McSporran QC, cross examined Cairney in the climax to the trial at the end of episode 2. The court looked on helplessly as the exchange proceeded along the same lines as a father questioning a lying 6-year old about his involvement with a broken window and a football. Eddie had nothing to offer except insults. At one stage it looked as if his defence was going to be that the Judge had murdered Margaret Fleming. His suggestion that McSporran should go and 'boil his head' was not acted upon.

Avril Jones, as had been her modus operandi for the previous 17 years, said nothing. You were left wondering who was the most evil. The lying, conniving Cairney with all his bluster and assertions that he was being fitted-up by the law; or the silent Jones, obviously aware of the truth but in denial about all except the benefit cheques that kept coming her way throughout the 17 years Margaret was missing.

Maybe the real guilt lay at the door of the welfare services who lost all contact with this sad and vulnerable child when she needed them most of all.

The Smile of Reeves & Mortimer

Somebody once told me, ‘Never be a pioneer.’ That somebody went on to have exactly zero number one records, fail to write a best-selling novel and certainly never watched a single episode of Vic and Bob’s Big Night Out (BBC 4, 10pm Wednesday)

It was December 1991 when I found myself in a crowded pub in Teddington with Jonathan Ross, Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson and Simon Day, waiting to be shepherded into a Chanel 4 studio to watch the recording of the Christmas edition of Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out. They were totally unaware of my existence and remain so to this day but, briefly, I was in the presence of comedy royalty (except Ross, who looked as awestruck as I was).

As I and Vic Reeve’s Big Night Out (as it was then called) audience self-consciously giggled our way through the recording, successive characters, such as Les, Graham Lister, the Man with the Stick, Judge Nutmeg and several visitors to Novelty Island, including Higson and Day (above) entered and exited the stage. Vic variously gurned and slurred his way through a number of facial and vocal contortions whilst acting as ring-master to his surreal flea circus and paraded and pouted like a comedic version of Mick Jagger crossed with Reginald Bosanquet.

Two things were certain. 1) We had never seen anything like it before and, 2) it would sink without trace into the Chanel 4 archives until one of those talking head documentaries called something like ‘We Remember the 90’s’ was broadcast with Jonathan Ross going, ‘I’m the only human being alive that still remembers this programme!’

The reason it couldn’t succeed was that the format would inevitably be replicated and made more mainstream by a group of more disciplined, more easily dominated artists who would be directed to iron out the rough edges, sanitise the end-of-the-pier production values and dub some canned laughter over the bits where the audience sat in silent anticipation waiting for a punch-line to emerge from the chaos. The reason it did succeed was that that didn’t happen. Reeves & Mortimer remained nimble enough to diversify and their style and content was simply impossible to replicate. They made just two series of Big Night Out for Chanel 4 before ‘mainstreaming’ themselves onto the BBC as Reeves & Mortimer so not only had we not seen anything like it before, we would not see anything like it again.

Until now.

It’s taken Bob 30 years to get his name alongside Vic’s on the Big Night Out but now, as a cult hero in his own right, he not only deserves equal billing but an equal share of the credit. The beauty of Big Night Out 2018 is how they have managed to simply pick up right where they left off, creating the feeling that a nerve somewhere inside was being stimulated again for the first time in almost 30 years. Big Night Out remains an acquired taste so, if you want to know what Tom Cruise was doing on the show or what happens when Vic eats fruit, it’s probably best you watch the show yourself. If Vic and Bob are as appealing to you as a jellied-eels in Marmite, turn over to UK Gold and watch the Two Ronnies or something.

As Graham Lister’s performing owl urinated on command into a milk bottle on Novelty Island, I felt I was back in that Teddington pub with me old mates Wossy and Whitehouse who, I would like to bet, sat nodding in approval that the boys had recaptured some of their lost youth as well as mine.

The Silk Road Adventure

In order that nobody in Britain ever asks the question, ‘Why don’t we have more celebrity travelogues on the telly?’ ITV have made ‘Joanna Lumley’s Silk Road Adventure’ (Wednesday, 9.00pm).

Putting the celebrity’s name above the title is one way of implying that the audience would have no interest in the subject matter unless it was presented by someone they would happily watch leafing through samples of anaglypta wallpaper for an hour, and coaxing someone, surely destined to become the UK’s next ‘National Treasure’, out of Belgravia and off on an all expenses paid trip around Asia is something of a masterstroke in ratings awareness.

In episode one, Joanna whispers her way around Venice in a variety of stylish outfits, all utterly suitable for whatever activity she happens to be filming. An outfit for travelling on a Gondola, another for learning how silk is woven, another for walking past a chip shop and yet another for pointing at some stones and saying, ’gosh’.

During the ad-break, Ms. Lumley had changed outfits and had been transported some 600 miles from the start of the Roman road in Albania to Istanbul. Here she travelled by ferry down the mighty Bosphorus in a completely different outfit, one which was suitable for meeting an insanely rich woman and shown around her £100 million waterfront abode. Joanna apologised for not changing out of her ‘ferry’ outfit and proceeded to gasp at the riches contained in the house, built by the fortune accumulated from generations of private banking with a little oil, cement and textile production thrown in. She expressed amazement at the fact that house had an underground swimming pool and said ‘gosh’ again when she found out that the dinner service was made of gold. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been shocked if the woman revealed that her hobby was smashing Ming vases and had Krug champagne flushing her toilet.

It was around now that I started to wonder what I was supposed to be learning from all this exposure to unattainable riches. Apparently, being served drinks on a silver tray by an absurdly rich woman’s butler teaches one all about the benefits of trade between nations.

We were then treated to a tour around Joanna’s hotel room set in the caves of the region of Cappadocia. The stunning vistas were breathlessly described as ‘fairy-tale’ and we wondered what the rooms used to be before they were ensuite bathrooms and dressing rooms. Caves, I think, Joanna.

There was no time to visit the hotel bar as Jo had to put on her ‘visiting a monastery’ outfit and go and visit a monastery. And so, we rumbled on, breathlessly whispering along the Silk Road on Joanna Lumley’s adventure.

The thing is, she’s not really forging a solitary path through unfamiliar terrain, chancing upon diverse characters along the way and bartering for souvenirs, is she? She’s being accompanied by a huge production crew plotting her every move and a wardrobe unit requiring the support of a long line of military supply vehicles. You can almost hear the director barking instructions at the locals; ‘Can you clear this area please, Joanna needs to walk along here looking lost.’    

She’s always wanted to do this, she informed us. I’ll bet you have.

Redcar At Night

For anyone who gets snobby about watching reality soap operas, think of ‘The Mighty Redcar’ (BBC2 Thursday, 9pm) as a study in social mobility and it works fine, apart from the slightly uncomfortable feeling that you are admiring human achievement in the face of social adversity whilst, at the same time, peeking through the curtains into your dysfunctional neighbour’s garden.

Redcar is one of those bleak northern towns, made more anonymous by not even having a professional football team permanently anchored to the bottom of the football league. Described by one of its 35,000 residents as; a typical seaside town except with a massive disused steelworks on the beach, it maybe drab, but it’s far from featureless.

The same can be said of the residents, at least those featured in the first episode. We chiefly met, Caitlin, James and Dylan, each of whom had a bucket-load of ambition and a teaspoon full of opportunity. Caitlin was determined to go to RADA at nine grand-a-year while her Mum was putting away a tenner a week working at a food bank, Dylan was trying to secure a record deal armed with a home recording studio and second-hand guitar and, James just wanted to graft 5-days-a-week rather than end up in prison like his Dad.

It was, Dylan who proved the most resilient. Adopted by his foster-mother after a harrowing childhood, Dylan was in all respects larger-than-life. Sporting an afro the size of a reasonably mature oak tree and a body that continued to ripple long after he had become motionless, he strode conspicuously around the town like the King of Tonga, serving in the local Weatherspoons by day and, at night, performing his home-grown rap music to an appreciative audience. We witnessed him visiting his autistic brother, still in care somewhere in Stoke, and assuring him that, should his music allow, he would set them both up in a flat together. Watching this enormous black teenager hugging his slightly-built, white, half-brother at the end of their afternoon together would have been enough to make you weep were it not for the sheer volume of positive energy that radiated from them.

James, on the other hand, projected a slightly less optimistic account of life in the town since the steelworks closed and deprived most young men of the chance of an apprenticeship. He seemed willing and able to hammer fence posts into the ground and was fairly proficient at shovelling stones into a wheelbarrow and moving them elsewhere but, for reasons that weren’t explained, he failed to be retained as a £20-a-day labourer for more than one week. This, after being denied an apprenticeship as one of 1300 applicants for 220 local jobs, seemed to conspire to push him toward a more familiar role as one of the local youths in whom the police were increasingly interested.

The Mighty Redcar managed to provoke a genuine interest in the town and its residents, be it Dylan’s infectious optimism or James’ inevitable decline, and you get the feeling that for every hard luck story there will be a more uplifting tale to follow.

It seemed as if the void left by the security of a career making steel had been filled with an insatiable ability to aspire to heights that their parents had never imagined. As Caitlin posed, self-consciously, in the 600 quid prom-frock bought by her Mum out of earnings from her three jobs, you couldn’t help feeling that, although mankind’s base instinct is ‘survival’, ‘aspiration’ runs it a close second.      

Now on-line at  http://tellybinge.co.uk/reviews/mighty-redcar-review/

  

A Hard DAY5 Night

How long it would take you to discover that the entire contact list of your phone had died in their sleep during the night? I’d probably fear the worst for one particular friend if they had not posted anything on Facebook during the last 10 minutes, but it would probably be around Christmas before I first realised that I hadn’t seen close relatives all year.

In Day 5 (Pick TV, 9pm Tuesday), it takes Jake (Jesse C. Boyd), about 24 hours for it to dawn on him that he is one of the few living humans in town and just a little longer to discover that whatever is killing the population consumes you just moments after going to sleep. Basically, if you weren’t already snoring when the ‘sleep bomb’ dropped at around 3am, you will survive until you eventually nod off through the sheer fatigue, not to mention boredom, of trying to find a chemist that hasn’t been looted of its stock of caffeine-rich drugs.

Personally, after witnessing the decaying remains of my immediate family in their beds and several rotting corpses in the deserted local park, I’d be inclined to snuggle up with a cup of Horlicks, a copy of Hello and let nature take its course. Jake, on the other hand, has a more robust survival instinct and manages to find some other survivors to join him in his task of enforced wakefulness. They achieve this, not by commandeering an empty branch of Starbucks on behalf of the Republic of Insomnia and consuming endless free Espresso, but by periodically shooting a cocktail of weapons-grade adrenalin directly into their hearts.

The plot is full of gloriously expansive holes and the genre wobbles uncomfortably between apocalyptic drama and comedy but by the end of episode one a small posse of relatively sympathetic characters has been assembled to go out in search of the origin of the epidemic. 

As somebody who gets ‘grouchy’ without a full 8 hours kip every night, I can’t imagine the consequences of working in close proximity to a half-a-dozen complete strangers who haven’t slept for three days. The mounting tension over the remaining 5 episodes should primarily be created by the ever-shortening fuses of the cast as they try not to become obsessed with each other’s irritating shortcomings. By episode 4 the entire team will be avoiding any sort of verbal communication whatsoever as the mere sound of each other’s breathing stirs up latent psychopathic tendencies. Jake’s precocious 13-year-old companion, Sam, would be high on the list for a good slap if he started effing and jeffing at me after a sleepless night.

With ‘Day 5’ running for at least another season, and given that they can’t stay awake forever, subsequent episodes will either have to extend to represent ‘real time’, or be crafted in such a way that each 45 minutes of television will represent one minute of real life until, finally, a whole episode will feature Jake taking a single blink with the cliff-hanger ending being, will he actually open his eyes next week.

I’m not sure I will.