Quite Random

You can’t watch TV any more

I have to get a TV recorder thing. It dawned on me last night without the benefit of a TV recorder thing that TV really is shite. Whole hours pass with nothing good to watch, making watching without a TV recorder thing unfeasible now. I have Freeview, because I like the idea that you don’t have to pay to get more channels of rubbish. Paying for extra TV is such a phenomenally bad idea because the vast, vast majority of what’s on Sky or cable is utter, utter tripe. When I have had cable, I got to like Mythbusters on Discovery, and a lot of the National Geographic stuff, but that isn’t enough to justify shelling out a lot more money every month. Pay TV is a cavalcade of mediocrity and brainless tosh that makes ITV look like quality broadcasting.

It’s fair to say that not only is a lot of it rubbish, but a lot of it is evil, nasty, and should be purged from the Earth. Like Fox News, shopping channels, Christian channels, endless repeats of Star Trek, fat bored-looking slappers shaking their back-ends at the camera while on the phone to fat curry-stained masturbaters, and Jeremy Bloody Clarkson smugging it up left right and centre. People really will watch any old dross, but paying for it just seems like the equivalent of actually asking someone to stand on top of your television and defecate on your carpet, and then handing them a wad of notes by way of thanks.

Watching TV with a TV recorder thing is brilliant for several reasons - entire series of programs build up and let you binge for hours on whatever your favourite is, you can skip through commercial breaks in 3 seconds flat (which in itself is a beautiful middle finger up to all of the effort and expense spent by advertising people to patronise you and sell you shit you don’t need), you can pause TV while you go make a cup of tea, and you can watch exactly what you want when you want rather than just watching the last ten minutes of Vernon Kay’s gormless mug on Celebrity Family Fortunes because there’s actually something you want to watch next. You can actually enjoy TV again. I can’t watch TV the old way any more.

Just ‘The Doctor’…

How much sleep do you need for everything not to appear a bit surreal the next day? I got about five hours last night, what with a late finish last night, an early start today, and a senile cat yowling for no particular reason in between. I know it’s possible to survive on a lot less sleep, but I feel a bit as if my head is wrapped in bubble wrap, and I kept staring at people on the Tube just now and considered standing up and singing “Let’s Face The Music and Dance” just to see what reaction I’d get. I didn’t.

I’m going to write a Doctor Who script. I’ve been studying the episodes I have seen so far and have highlighted the essential components of a Doctor Who episode:

• Running. Lots of running about the place.
• Upon leaving the Tardis, the Doctor should say “Ahhhhh! 24th-century Jantrabantian 4!” / wherever else, as if he’s spent at least three holidays there and knows all of the local restaurateurs.
• David Tennant must grimace. A lot.
• The supporting actors should prompt the question “Wasn’t he / she in Eastenders / Casualty / Holby City?”
• There should be several completely inexplicable things that don’t get explained, but when the Doctor gets something, he should shout “Ah! Yes! Of course!” and still not actually explain it.

Call me Nathan T Davies.

To digress, I have also had an idea about fusing two of the more popular entertainment formats currently on TV to produce a new genre of entertainment. A timelord with a Tardis arrives in various locations and times and examines people’s stools to establish their nutrition intake, before suggesting ways to eat sensibly and lose weight. He is called Doctor Poo.

There may be trouble ahead…

Songs of Praise

Thank you, Adam Buxton. I just laughed until my ear popped.

Star Trek - the White Rabbit Years

The BBC ‘cabbie’ interview

You may well have heard about this. It’s a joy to behold. BBC News interviews a man who is reportedly a London cabbie under the mistaken impression he is a prominent media expert – he’s turned out to be a graduate who was at the Beeb for a job interview. Guy Goma gamely answers all the questions put to him, even though his answers are the utter cobblers of a startled man. Talk about a high pressure job interview – I hope he gets the gig.

See the interview here – the priceless moment being when Guy realises he’s the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Quality Indian TV ad

At last… I’m chuffed, I managed to get hold of an advert that made me chuckle all the way round India. Indian TV advertising is better than the dross we get here…

File Attachment: Indica V2 ad (Windows Media 3388 KB)

The C word

It makes me cringe. I find it offensive. It’s cheap, tacky, overused, and I’d hate to be called one.

Celebrity.

Celebrity Wrestling, Celebrity Boxing, Celebrity Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Celebrity Come Dancing, Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes, Celebrity Fit Club, 100 best this that and the others. A barrage of bollocks all in order to secure a talentless slapper from Essex or an alcoholic ex-soap star another three years worth of nightclub PAs before they slip back into obscurity, and fill the TV schedules with cheap, recycled filler, the televisual equivalent of bubble and squeak.

Tonight on TV, Tom Parker-Bowles is cooking something. Why anyone gives a dingo’s kidney what Tom Parker Bowles likes to eat is beyond me, but apparently not beyond the person who commissioned the program. People in TV land seem to live in another world from most, one where Davina McCall makes a good chat show host, what Tom Parker-Bowles likes to eat matters to anyone other than Tom Parker-Bowles, and Chantelle Houghton holds any more entertainment value than picking your nose.

Programmes I’d like to see:

Celebrity Battle Royale – a group of celebrities get put on a small Japanese Island, and have three days to kill each other off. They all wear collars which explode if they break any rules, and everyone’s collars explode if there is more than one survivor. Presented by Davina McCall, who explodes on the third day.

Celebrity Moonshot – a group of celebrities are shot into the moon. That’s it.

Celebrity Restrained Awards Ceremony – a group of celebrities have to go to an awards ceremony without getting shitfaced on free champagne, stumbling into each other in the foyer, and getting into a fight with a photographer outside a nightclub.

Celebrity Modern Art – Kerry Katona, Jodie Marsh, Jade Goody, Adam Rickitt, Tom Cruise, Westlife, Jordan, Peter Andre, Donatella Versace, Mick Hucknall, and anyone who has ever been on Big Brother are pickled in perspex cases by Damien Hirst. And then shot into the moon.