Jump Off

“You must be gutted.” Said Davina to Bradley – sorry – SIR Bradley Wiggins as he explained that a non-weight bearing bone in one of his legs had suffered a minor stable fracture.

“Well, it’s only The Jump.” Said Sir Brad, keeping it very much in mind that he was currently enjoying the sort of complimentary all-inclusive winter break that most of us would have to sell a kidney to experience.

Davina’s earpiece exploded with the sound of voices from the control room shouting various instructions and directions. This coupled with the oompah band and the yodelling must have made her feel as if she had just put her head inside a spin drier full of cutlery and, for a split second, she simply stood with one eye half closed and looked as if she needed a Nurofen. Consummate professional that she is, Davina just laughed that Davina laugh, you know, the one that’s too loud and goes on too long and she puts her face right up against the camera and looks as if blood’s going to start coming out of her eyes. “Ha-ha-haaaa! Whaddaya mean, ‘it’s only The Jump’?” Silence fell.

Bradley clarified, possibly at gunpoint, that whilst he had had the best time of his life, life, let’s face it, goes on and he would wish the other contenders well in the rest of the show and he would love the chance to do it again. Someone, somewhere put the safety catch back on the Walther PPK and the oompah band started up again. Trouble is, the bloody yodelling recommenced and the cow bells started ringing and everybody put their false smiles back on and pretended to be having a right-old apres-skiing good laugh. The only  thing that was missing was Stacey Solomon. Ah, there she is.

Honestly, what is the point of this programme? Unlike the BBC, ITV can cover the cost of anything by selling advertising during their shows so, largely, they can do whatever they like and pay whomsoever they wish to go anywhere they fancy. But, as I tried to explain to my Alsatian the other evening for reasons far too unpalatable to go into here, just because you CAN do something, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to. I mean, I’d like to bet that if, for instance, you paid them enough hard cash, you could get any of the stars of Gogglebox to stand in a bucket full of scrambled egg while Chris Akabusi sang ‘Wondering Star’ whilst dressed as Lobster. I could make this happen. And if I couldn’t Richard Osman probably could and he’d sell it to Endemol Television. But, come on, WHY?

The Jump is typical of the sort of show that programme makers THINK we want to see. It’s a format that, they imagine, simply cannot fail. If it doesn’t remind you of your recent skiing holiday then it fills you with anticipation about your impending skiing holiday and if you’re not having a skiing holiday it will comfort you as you aspire to a skiing holiday and, if you don’t ‘do’ skiing holidays then you can look at celebrities from Made in Chelsea eating and drinking with Olympians, and ex rugby internationals throwing snowballs at glamour models, and soap stars and former footballers having some ‘bantz’, and Davina ‘bantzing’ away with everyone in earshot, which actually means everyone in the north western hemisphere, and if this doesn’t appeal there’s always Stacey Sodding Solomon, what more do you want? Eh?!

I can’t work out if The Jump was actually pitched to ITV executives by several graduates as a new concept in entertainment, in which case they were simply shown the door at which point one of them blurted out ‘Davina’s agreed to do it’ and contracts were signed. Or weather Davina’s agent just turned up one day and told the production company that his client had a 6 week skiing holiday every year and needed something to do on the Sundays so they’d better adapt some old celebrity talent show format. Either way it’s clear that the assumption is that, as long as Ms McCall is involved you can pretty much televise a celebrity knitting competition and viewers will tune-in in their droves. In fact, give it a fortnight and there they’ll be; Binky Felsted, Gemma Collins, Alan Shearer and Geoff Boycott all going clickety-clack with their knitting needles as Stacey Solomon uncorks vintage Krug and chucks Faberge eggs into the sea.

It’ll be called The Jumper.

Probably.      

Marigold Gits

When the BBC sends out its yearly e-mail to all households asking ‘What would you prefer to see us blow your licence fee on this year?’ it’s surprising how many people answer, ‘Put it toward a free holiday for a minor celebrity.’

The BBC, eager to please, say ‘OK’ and immediately book an all expenses trip to India for six has-been celebs for whom work has all but dried up due to their advancing years. While they’re at it, they might as well film the whole experience in the hope of recouping some of the outlay by selling the show to the Indian tourist board as ‘The Real Marigold Hotel’. The result is a strange voyeuristic experience in which we find out that getting old is everything we imagined and feared it would be, and so, to an extent is India. The question is; is the aging process made more bearable if your surroundings resemble a particularly pleasant summer’s day near the Norfolk Broads in 1954, with a cost of living to match? The answer, initially at least, appeared to be ‘yes’ as long as you could put up with 1950’s technology and the prospect of shitting your entire body weight out of yourself within a fortnight.

The first culture shock the viewer had to cope with was how old Paul Nicholas had become. It wasn’t until he flashed his cheeky smile that you realised that this was, in fact, 1970’s Jesus Christ Superstar who was, somewhat bizarrely, reincarnated as 1980’s Vince from Just Good Friends. He still had the chirpy cockney-ness of Vince but had lost some of the superstar-ness of Jesus and, as he shuffled from shop to shop asking the various vendors if they sold underpants, you couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Had he soiled himself? Was he being followed around by that familiar ‘grandad’ smell? None of these in fact, he was simply doing the thing that all blokes who travel without their wives do, blaming her for ‘not packing enough underwear’. The text message that followed soon after confirmed there were some half-dozen pairs in his suitcase but he chose to disregard this and continue to barter for another 8 pairs of ‘Playboy’ briefs for 8 quid the lot.

 Meanwhile, the TV crew were busy trying to decide which of the OAP’s they were going to make the most annoying.

Sheila Ferguson was prime suspect as she strode from room to room to see who she would be able to evict in order to get a veranda. Being American gave her a head start in the viewer irritation league and, by the time she had found Bill Oddie and convinced him to swap, she was way ahead in the ‘old woman I’d like to punch’ stakes. Bill himself ambled about in his sandals, habitually whispering for fear of scaring a nearby mistle thrush (or whatever) and with his head permanently angled toward the upper branches of a tree. He didn’t mind giving Sheila his balcony, as long as he didn’t have to speak to her at any point.

The Indian experience was not exactly set up in such a way that tested the resolve of the senior celebs. The series is, ostensibly, to test whether people who lived through 1960’s and 70’s Britain could feasibly exist in the sub-continent without suddenly going, ‘Eurrrgh’ and running away. Paul Nicholas stopped the taxi and made an heroic excursion to a public lavatory within minutes of disembarking the flight and emerged unscathed and mettle fully tested. Other than that, Group Yoga seemed the most dangerous of pursuits so far as Amada Barrie was overcome with vertigo by the third day and had to be taken to hospital where a doctor simply put her head between her knees and told her to swallow. You’d think Miriam Stoppard could have done this but I suppose she has retired and should no more be expected to be a doctor than Rusty Lee would be expected to cook dinner.

But, hang on, Rusty Lee then put an apron on and went into the kitchen to cook dinner.

The actual hotel cook looked a little non-plussed as he was instructed to chop vegetables for Ms Lee but dutifully peeled potato’s and sliced ginger. He had held the post of head chef for the last 40 years and didn’t want to be sacked now.

Poor old Lionel Blair was the least at ease of all as he condemned the place as a shanty town and professed to be missing his wife before he had even unpacked. He was just acclimatising to the whole experience when a local football coach and fellow octogenarian, ambushed by the film crew to provide some comic relief pointed out that Lionel ‘had a fat tummy!’ You know that moment at a dinner party where you say something disparaging about the McCann’s, only to find out that most of the rest of the guests have had children abducted by strangers whilst on holiday? No? Well the 80 year-old Indian football coach does. By the time the evening meal was being served Lionel was explaining that his stomach is distended following treatment for prostate cancer, and revealing that it is causing him much mental and physical distress. “It’s not funny!” he told Dennis Taylor, who wasn’t laughing, simply trying to change the subject. By the next day, Lionel had sought the services of a local homeopathic Doctor who assured him that rubbing Marmite (that’s what it looked like) on his pot belly would lead to a significant reduction in size over the next few weeks. Lionel exclaimed that this miracle worker was going to do something that English doctors had said was impossible – everyone knew that this quack was simply telling him what he wanted to hear but, that evening, by the time Lionel was performing a tap routine for the neighbours, you were sort of praying that the marmite was doing its job.          

The Man from UNCLE

Cult TV is a loaded term that is often used to excuse sub-standard entertainment or programmes that have limited appeal. Since it moved to an on-line only channel, BBC3 has pretty much specialised in cult TV programmes. However, most of its product is watchable, innovative and intelligent with a few of the programmes crossing over into the mainstream terrestrial channels provided by the BBC.

One such programme is ‘Uncle’ which began its life as a BBC 3 series some 3 years ago when its star, Nick Helm, was just emerging as a major comedy performer. It followed a dysfunctional family’s brother and sister as they tried to pick their way through the various rubble left by failed relationships and the sort of questionable lifestyle choices that we all make when we reach our 30’s and realise that we are simultaneously, a) free to do whatever we want to and, b) expected to behave as a conventional role model for our juniors. Andy and Sam, played by Helm and Daisy Haggard, bounce perfectly off each other by combining that perfect combination of love and irritation that most siblings have for each other. It was Eric Sykes who spotted in his 60’s & 70’s sitcom with Hattie Jaques that the chemistry underlying a brother and sister relationship was a far richer one than that of a husband and wife. The writers, Oliver Refson and Lilah Vandenburgh, then added a child, the precocious Errol, to act as Andy’s conscience. Errol, Jiminy Crickets through Andy’s life providing, often untimely, reminders that, whilst Andy has no personal responsibilities such as children, a home or a job, he has a duty to himself to follow his instincts as a musician, but not over the edge of every cliff.

Early episodes focussed on Andy’s quest for love and saw him destined to always end up as the central figure in another tragic love song, but this final series has been more of an examination of his relationship with his family, featuring his Mum and Dad, his ex and future brother-in-law and, of course, his now adolescent nephew Errol.  This shift of emphasis worked perfectly because we sort of always knew that Andy would get his fair share of women, younger, older, crazy, neurotic and erotic, they have all featured somewhere along the line. His character, perfectly in tune with Helm’s alter ego seen in many guises on stage and screen over the years, is extreme in the extreme. If we recognise the expression ‘a butterfly mind’, Helm’s mind is more of a beehive, with a million individual moving parts that work together to produce a personality that can exude musical honey or attack with deadly force. He is an enigma, not so much a split personality as a fragmented one with each piece capable of utter genius or outstanding stupidity. Women will come and go and sexual relationships will succeed and fail but it is the relationships that he is stuck with that are the most fascinating.

The last episode saw Andy finally successful to a degree as a musician and as a rounded individual. Able to buy a car and a flat and feeling valued as a brother and an uncle we felt glad that his life seemed to have taken a more satisfying turn without necessarily seeing him sailing into the sunset on a luxury yacht. It was a sweet ending rather than a happy ending and left us feeling uplifted and a little teary. Hopefully, this really is to be the last we see of Uncle Andy and Errol because, though it is a sad day for TV comedy, it will release the writers to create something even more wonderful for the cast they have assembled.  

Elliot Speller-Gillott, as Errol, will feature in our lives for many years to come, he is a talent worthy of respect, turning his nerdy and somewhat tortured character into one of the coolest teenage creations since Marty McFly. His well-written lines were delivered with an effortless assurance and proved that the secret of making a character believable is to appear to be listening and reacting to other people, rather than just standing waiting to speak.

Nick Helm is a class act and a very classy actor. The dialogue in “Uncle” was often a little ‘wordy’ and some of the characters struggled with this. Helm always maintained the demeanour of someone diffusing a bomb for the first time, never knowing if this was the sentence that was going to blow him to kingdom-come. The songs from the series which, I assume, were self-penned were mini masterpieces in themselves, rich in parody, both lyrically and musically, and perfectly in context. The remarkable thing about his songs is that, although Helm’s voice sounds like someone dragging a rusty lawnmower up a gravel drive, they can at once make you laugh, weep and wonder why you didn’t write them some years ago when you felt exactly the same about life.        

Rotten Apple Tree

Apple Tree Yard came to a conclusion on Monday 7^th Feb with the obligatory climactic court room scene. Dr. Carmichael sat just a few yards from her co-accused who stared into his lap as details of the murder were described to the court.

There are several rules in Court room drama.

Rule one; The jury shall comprise of a dozen jobbing extras who are reasonably adept at showing emotion without actually speaking. This is a talent that is scouted for by casting directors by sitting you down and asking you to convey ‘sorrow’ or ‘relief’ or ‘like you have just opened a birthday present but found it contained some dogshit’. If you pass this you are told to sit facing the director who will hold up a series of idiot boards for you to all react appropriately at the same time. After a morning of doing this you are given your 20 quid and told to sod off. The only sound that you are allowed to utter is an audible sharp intake of breath when the ‘revelation’ occurs. If you don’t know how to do this, simply stand on an upturned plug in the middle of the night when you have a particularly light-sleeping baby in the room.

Rule two: The barrister that has been given the role as ‘baddie’ shall be a particularly spiky individual that no-one particularly likes.

Rule Three: The hero’s barrister shall be a sympathetic character who refuses to become agitated, even when things are going against them.

Either of these characters can be prosecution or defence. When the baddie is prosecuting, the hero is innocent, when defending, the hero is the victim.

Rule four:  The ‘baddie’ shall win but it will be a hollow victory.

I was hoping that the concluding episode would provide answers to the many questions that Apple Tree Yard threw up, and was also hoping that this would make it one of the best dramas ever screened on British Television because the answers would have had to be sooo good. That this classy, well-adjusted and attractive authority on the Human Genome would simply fuck a complete stranger in a cupboard because she found him exciting pushed plausibility to the very limits. As no other explanation was ever offered, we had to accept, not only this, but that also, the same woman would submit to an horrific rape ordeal and refuse to report it because of the spectre of this sordid affair. The whole thing may have more believable if the rape had been more of a ‘date rape’ scenario. She may have felt more responsible for the unsolicited advances and eventual assault by her colleague, George, if it had been in a ‘shoulder-to-cry-on’ encounter. One look at the bruises that followed the attack would have swayed the most dubious of investigators and led to a swift prosecution without any of the sordid revelations that followed the vengeful murder some months later.

In the event, the details Yvonne and Mark’s affair came out anyway, followed by the upturned plug gasp of the jobbing extras. Now, I have never been accused of murder, nor ever stood trial for anything, nor had to enlist the assistance of barristers to represent me, but…

Surely, when the prosecution is given some undeniable piece of evidence that is quite obviously a fact that is going to be new to their opposite number on the bench, the two barristers meet up in some over-priced restaurant in the Temple and have a little chat. The new evidence is laid before the adversary, who has to suck it up and pay for the meal before he goes back and tells his client what a mess of things she has made. I mean, that’s how it should work. Instead of this gentlemanly outcome, Mrs Baddie the prosecution barrister contrived to guide the witness, our good Doctor, up a pathway that eventually led to Apple Tree Yard. Yes, Mark had done the dirty on her and their story fell like a game of Garden Jenga on a particularly gusty heath. Gasps were heard from everyone in court and the usually unruffled defending barrister virtually banged his bewigged head on the desk in front of him. You could almost hear him let out a pained cry and screw up his 1500 page summing up as Yvonne stood with tears in her eyes admitting she had made a cock-up by not mentioning the cock up.

You may want to watch Apple tree Yard. I won’t give away the ending. I can’t really be bothered to go over the whole banality of it all. See rule four, that should help.

Last of the Fat Cows

Sugar Free Farm finished it’s run with the minor celebrities returning to the ‘real’ world of temptation and free booze and leaving behind the cossetted existence of getting up at 6 am to either clean pig sty’s or prepare beans on toast from raw natural ingredients. It’s a close call as to which of these tasks is the easiest or least preferable. Sugar-free and natural baked beans takes about three-and-a-half hours and involves the about 700 different ingredients meticulously combined together to taste nothing like the Heinz variety. Cleaning the pig-pen takes Stavros and Stavros Jnr about half an hour with a pressure washer. Anne, the lovely Anne, cut through the sycophantic drooling over the baked beans and simply declared that she found the ’57 variety’ much nicer. This after big Stav had just informed us that there are about 5 teaspoons of sugar in every can. Like the rest of us, Ms Widdecombe fails to see the downside of this statistic.

Anne is the real reason to watch this nonsense. She stands, with her posture like a dead tree, squinting into the sunshine and declares most of the helpful advice ‘mumbo-jumbo’ whilst pledging to get straight back on to the chocolate biscuits and refined sugar the moment she leaves the farm. I’m surprised the producers don’t ask her to return her fee, which was, I suspect, not inconsiderable but, actually, without her, the program would have been extremely dull. She sat giggling and steadfastly refused to participate as an ‘awareness expert’ (how do these people exist?) sat cross-legged and  instructed the group on how to appreciate a tomato before eating it. Whilst Alison and Gemma stood before a combined 2-and-a-bit stones of lard, representing their weight loss over the past fortnight, Anne appeared proudly before a plinth displaying exactly zero fat. She had neither lost nor gained, she felt neither better nor worse, she is coming up to 70 years old and doesn’t feel the need to prolong her life any further than it is likely to run. My guess is that this will be quite long enough, thank you, when the great redeemer calls her and she will go on to where ever we go with exactly the same uncompromising attitude that has carried her through this place and, presumably, there will be sugar for all of us. In a catch-up style epilogue to the program she revealed that her first act was to go on a cruise and smacked her jowly lips to indicate that sugar free was the last thing she had been.

The rest of the guys, however, had taken a modicum of wisdom from their journey. Yes, it has to be called a journey otherwise there is no program. You could truly believe that Alison had found a new way of life as she declared herself as sugar-free as it is possible to become in our culture. She seemed to be the only one who had the time to boil her beans for a day and a half or spend forever preparing a healthy substitute for KFC. The real achievement, for me, was to have lost a stone in weight in two weeks, profess to have continued the regime three months later and still appear to cast a shadow over the sun by simply getting out of bed.

Stavros snr, had been given the life-changing news that the size of his trade mark belly was caused, not by a sort of harmless internal bubble-wrap but by real, human fat caused by eating too much crap. ‘Don’t tell me that.’ he gasped, tearfully staring at the MRI scan he had just been gifted by the FFF team, hoping somehow that the Doctor may have revealed that 3 stone of clogging lard around your vital organs was exactly the sort of thing you needed to protect your delicate heart and lungs from disease. Big Stav had gone through his epiphany and was, also, a changed man. He was seen preparing some healthy snacks for a long car journey with his co-star son which would, hopefully, keep them out of The Little Chef for a few miles. It’s a shame that he bases his act on being overweight, the sight of a reasonably trim-looking 50 year-old doing strange dance steps is not really worth paying money for when you can simply attend a couple of wedding a year and stand by the dance floor just before last orders.

Someone else who makes a living from being obese is Gemma Collins. She would never admit this, of course, as she is under the impression that her role in whatever reality show she is appearing on is the one of ‘Young beauty who is having some diet issues’. No it’s not, Gemma, it’s ‘Weak willed twentysomething, with too much time and money on her hands’, and she plays it well. The noticeable thing about the program was its reluctance to reveal exactly how much alcohol was being consumed by the celebs. Gemma looked suspiciously chubby in the catch-up, yet she sat dutifully grilling herself a salmon and broccoli dinner whilst extolling the virtues of a healthy breakfast and plenny of froot. A glance at her ‘empties’ may have told us more but we were left to believe that the girl who had revealed to us last week that she would now embrace veganism as a way of life, but who this week devoured rabbit stew, had changed her eating, and drinking, habits forever. Only Peter, who stood self-consciously in front of his fridge, dared hint that sugar-free was a little more difficult than simply eating plenty of salted porridge. And over there is…mainly water *slams door shut*