Now then! Now then?

It’s Podcast time again, WWMers! We abandoned the notion of a conceptual ‘cast revolving around the topic of violence in favour of something more traditional. That’s right! An entire podcast devoted to the King of light entertainment – Mr Jimmy Saville!

Whilst discussing the great man’s early life, radio career and decades of appearing on the box, we also manage to call him, at different points in the recording:

• A king
• The inventor of disc jockeying
• A minor war hero
• A coward
• A dinosaur
• A bastard

Not only that – there’s also time for a song, with musical accompaniment from the multi-instrumental Nick Tann!

With such a varied approach to the life of a living legend – it’s no wonder we’re currently in the iTunes top 90 comedy podcasts. At number 90. Until tomorrow, when we’ll probably slip back out again. Have a listen if you enjoy grown men discussing:

• Wasps! (again)
• The most important electrical appliances
• Nye Bevan
• The pros and cons of every Radio 1 DJ ever
• Linda Lusardi
• The thickness of Englebert Humperdink’s sideburns

As usual:

Subscribe here and join us on Facebook here… or you can listen below!

Direct link for the difficult sods is here.

How’s about that then?

From the fiery pits of torment to the peaceful fields of Elysium, the dead are crying out for something decent to watch on a Wednesday night.

Fed up with playing harps, rending the flesh from the bones of the damned or sitting on an enormous right hand for all eternity, the saintly inhabitants of Heaven and the screaming wretches of Hell need YOUR help, WWMers!

What TV shows can you – the living – come up with to entertain the residents of the afterlife?

• Perhaps you want the Devil to settle down to The Bad Life, where Tom and Barbara grow cock- and arse-shaped vegetables in their back garden, and Tom does Margot up the shitter in the Christmas special?
• Or maybe you’d like to entertain the Almighty with Queer As Married Folk – a show where three plucky Mancunians meet the girls of their dreams, get married … and where rimming, amyl nitrate and underage sodomy are strictly OUT OF BOUNDS?
• Some Mothers Do ‘Ave Nice Boys?
• Hi-De-Heil-Hitler?
• Life On Earth Started 6000 Years Ago?

Holy thinking caps and evil anti-thinking bonnets at the ready, WWMers! Let’s have some real TV Hell and TV Heaven!

And may God bless, or have mercy, on your souls …

Friday Night TV wouldn’t be the same without Jonathan Ross.

It might go mercifully faster.

Have you been watching the current series of Nevermind The Buzzcocks, which is halfway through its run on BBC2? Have you noticed how, in the manner of Have I Got News For You, they’ve managed to spice the gags and tweak the dynamic so that the presenter is close to arbitrary?

Following Simon Amstell quitting the show, there was clearly a massive void to be filled, but the Prodcution crew clearly took a Plan B route on the solution rather than sticking to the script and placing another big name, dominating presence in the hot seat. As with HIGNFY, the role of the team captain has become even more pivotal to the show than that of the host. Noel Fielding now pretty much rules the roost, while Phil Jupitus remains the man who can pick up any slack when the guests are flagging.

So far, the two hosts of the six so far featured who’ve looked like they might be able to take the position full time are Rhod Gilbert who was brilliantly ramshackle in his approach or, almost unbelievably, Alex James, who stepped up to the plate more than you’d ever have expected. Aside from that, the presenters have all been sidelined and seemingly unwilling to break free of the shackles of the script.

The end result is, even with James Corden attempting to spoil things with that insanely irritating, sycophantic wind-up toy laugh he’s got, the show’s still watchable as the presenter is almost an observer – and far from the provacateur Amstell was. Last night credit had to go to Claudia Winkleman for allowing things to get almost completely out of hand when Jamelia went off on one, twice. Her rambling anecdote (if you can call it an anecdote) about being pushed toward a chicken-sausage and cola-guzzling bear by Vinnie Jones was perfect fodder for Fielding, and any interjection might have snapped the moment in half, killing it instantly.

Which would be as bad as my analysing a lightweight comedy panel show and inadvertently killing the comedy within stone dead.

Sorry about that.

You can see the list of who’s coming up over here.

Fittingly – what with them being identical from the soles of their feet to the tops of their enormous quiffs – there appear to be two separate schools of thought regarding talentless X Factor chancers, John and Edward Grimes.

School 1:

They are a ridiculously stupid joke and had no place in the final 12 in the first place. Simon hates them, so I want them to win, as this will piss him right off.

Then there’s School 2 – probably a more realistic take on the silliness:

They a ridiculously stupid joke and had no place in the final 12 in the first place. Simon says he hates them, but we can’t actually believe he hates them, because he would only allow a comedy act like Jedward into the finals -  given his complete control of the entire enterprise – if he thought he could eventually brand them, package them and then rigorously and determinedly monetise them.

Then there are those of us who are too cool for either school, who simply find John and Edward the only watchable thing on the whole show. That’s ‘watchable’ in the way that watching milk poured into orange juice is always a watchable spectacle. Or ‘watchable’ like the guilty compulsion of sitting through plastic surgery footage on the TV, or allowing youself to become absorbed by the grisly scenes within an abattoir expose.

‘Watchable’ like those things.

Jedward’s appearance is the highlight of each and every show because it is the simple sight of two buffoons, buffooning about like buffons before being lightly mocked by older and wiser judges. Their complete lack of reaction in the face of criticism (you get no tears from Jedward) only seems to compound the notion that they actually couldn’t care less about the whole contest, and are just attention-seeking exhibitionists who’ll jump about like idiots so long as it’s being broadcast to millions.

I hate to say it, but I hope they win. Not only because they would hopefully be packaged for marketing and sale to kids under the age of 10, thus saving us another Cowell-generated Christmas number one, but also because, despite myself, I quite like the tall-headed little bozos.

Alex Riley is a funny man with a mission. And his mission in this first episode of Britain’s Really Disgusting Food – following a pilot in which he made revolting pork pies – was to produce chicken kievs and burgers that sit just within UK minimum guidelines, in order to highlight just how low the quality can go.

His creations last night included a chicken kiev with a 10% chicken content bulked up to 19% through the inclusion of chicken skin and chicken fat and he also made an ‘Economy’ Burger – semantically allowed less than 50% beef because of the ‘E’ word there in the title. He bulked that bad boy up with around 25% beef heart. And that’s not even mentioning the hot dog that was actually, technically speaking, meat-free. Thank Christ for modern technology.

This was an amusing offering from BBC Three, which managed to entertain and shock whilst also, possibly, persuading people to check the labels at their local supermarket with a little more concentration. Having said that, nothing will ever dissuade me from tucking into the golden breadcrumbed deliciousness of a Bernard Matthews, garlic butter and chicken breast kiev. Nothing.

By far my favourite aspect of the show was the inclusion of a section on good ol’ Gordon Ramsay, in which a moment of hypocrisy from several years ago came back to haunt the washboard-faced swear-factory. For your delectation, it appears below.

And in timely fashion, Ramsay’s The F Word reappears on our screens with a new series tonight. So there’s one to avoid.

‘Time to rock’ said the ITV continuity presenter – and with good reason! Tonight was ROCK NIGHT on The X Factor – a first for the show – and there was no way any viewer could prepare for the slurry of watered down, MOR bilge they were about to be presented with.

Think ‘rock’ robbed of all spunk, drained of personality and filtered through the mind of money-man and you’ve just visualised Saturday’s live performances. This is rock for people who don’t really understand rock. It was rock to the power of minus one, so completely infused with pop-tack that it no longer rocked in the slightest,  instead just sitting there covered in sequins, making an occasional popping sound.

You might’ve thought, given the theme, that Simon might’ve attended with Gene Simmons style face make-up, with Louis alongside him in a Bruce Dickinson fringe wig, Dannii in a leather bodice and Cheryl all tarted up like Siouxie Sioux. But, no joy – they all dressed completely vanilla – apart from Cheryl, who showed up wearing a David Koma frock that made her look like she had a French revolution era face-fan covering each tit.

Joe

Little Joe is so inoffensive it becomes offensive, as though the amount of effort he expends on being harmless is a major waste of the world’s resources. Singing Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing, this was such a blank of a performance from Joe that dancers were hired from Strictly over on the Beeb to dance about on the side of the stage to distract from the tedium coming from the mouth of the boychild.

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Simon: ‘A little bit limp and stage-schooly’

Lucie

Time for some Top Shop rock, as Lucie (FROM WALES) had a go at some G n’ f-in’ R – namely Sweet Child Of Mine by pop numbers. This wasn’t too bad, with Lucie growling in the right places to try and imbue some menace into the tune, dressed in heavy eyeshadow and a tartan mini-skirt to try and out-Avril the Lavigne. The performance most certainly didn’t rock, but at least it rolled along quickly.

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Cheryl: ‘You’re like a little Avril Lavigne’

Danyl

Singing Aerosmith’s Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing completely out of tune – alternately flat and drab then dangerously sharp – is positively de rigeur at weddings and hen nights, but live on national television when attempting to win a singing competition is a bit silly. Danyl, in tears as he left the stage, explained that he couldn’t hear the backing track when he started. This may well be true, but it’s hard not to suspect that all this rubbish is only there to pad out his enormous recap come the final. A cynically tactical standing ovation from Simon couldn’t cover the fact that this, if we were playing fair and Cowell didn’t man the phones, was a performance that would usually see a contestant leave the show.

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Dannii: ‘You look like you lost your mojo’

Lloyd

Let’s get this straight… Little Lloyd was given an ode to sapphic, lesbian tongue-kissing which was sung by a pop starlet in America to confront audiences unused to such raunchy, same-sex proclamations. The fact that a girl was singing about this stuff to a teen audience made the tune enjoyably provocative, even though the content was essentially harmless, it at least caused a mild stir in the manner a good hit single should. The boneheaded decision to give this pop song (on rock night) to a straight male singer completely distorts any logic. A good-looking straight boy kissed a girl? So what?! He liked it? Big deal! Add to this the fact that Lloyd sounds like there’s a tube connecting his farting gut to his larynx, and this was always destined to be a car-crash. The lipstick marks on his little face looked like symptoms of the onset of syphilis. Louis and Simon argued amongst themselves, distracting from a truly woeful performance.

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Cheryl: ‘Shut up you two’

Stacey The Sexy Horse

It’s a scientific fact that the pop band Keane do not ‘rock’ in any sense of the word. Rather, they wiggle about on the crest of a jaunty, if occasionally melancholic piano line, accompanied by the fart-breathed bellowing of a twat. So Stacey was landed with Somewhere Only We Know and did her best, like a real Essex trooper, warbling along in that sweet if non-descript way she’s accustomed to. Bizarrely, more was made of her walking rather than standing stock still than was made of the actual song.

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Simon: ‘ I was more impressed by the walking than the singing’

Jamie

Jamie sang Rocks by Primal Scream, and the afroed one managed to sound like Denise, the backing singer, rather than vocalist Bobby G. Now, Denise is a great singer with a rich and soulful voice, but the song relies on Robert Gillespie’s reedy, junkie vocal playing off the thickness of her backing – so for Jamie to belt the tune out like he was part of the London Gospel Choir was something of a misfire. He also kept fluffing the lines – presumably thinking that the X Factor audience wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Well, Jamie, I COULD TELL THE DIFFERENCE. So more effort next time, please.

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Louis: ‘There’s nothing original about you’

Rachel

A decent effort, vocally, from Rachel who sang One by Bono off of U2. She imbued the song with a little bit of soul, made it her own to an extent, but ruined things a little by over-emoting and winking at the camera. Still, I wrote ‘it’s not bad’ in my notes, which essentially means I’ve got nothing more to say/whine about.

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Cheryl: ‘A very clever song choice’

JEDWARD

I suffered some weird, Jedward-based paranoia at the beginning of last week, hearing the name repeatedly used on TV and the radio. Lost in a Jedward haze, I became convinced I was the one that first coined the name-conglomeration, then subsequently realised it’s a completely obvious nickname and was probably already spun by popjustice or popbitch or some such popsite. Still, my evidence is there from the 16th October – and if I’m wrong about the birth of this ugly word, I’m sorry and never mind.
Getting back to the show, Jedward looked like two singed pandas, rolling around in pain as they crackled their way through the 5ive version of We Will Rock You.

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Simon: ‘Night of the living dead’

Ollie

Ollie took a Beatles song, unzipped it, pulled out its balls, took a scalpel to the scrotum, chucked them balls away then zipped it back up after shoving a load of cheese through the fly-hole. His attempt at Come Together was clearly intended to be a more sexy version of the tune, but sung by the man with the Essex toupé, it sounded like a terrible, terrible nightmare. Ripping his shirt open at the end was a big mistake.

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Dannii: ‘I absolutely adore you’

*     *     *

Bon Jovi on the Sunday show looked completely knackered, with Jon Bon wearing a stretched face-mask of his younger self and the rest of the lads gasping for life as they whacked and strummed their instruments. Later on they were upstaged by two-dimensional X Factor-product JLS, which must have been quite upsetting for the grizzled old sods. What really shocked about JLS’s performance is that they can actually dance – something those of us who’d only ever seen them on this show might find hard to believe.

Sunday’s show began with the remaining contestants forced to sing and rap Walk This Way, the rap/rock crossover from the olden days. It was a startling song choice as it involved Essex rapping, Irish rapping and Welsh rapping, which was always going to sound a little bit weird.

The final three were made up of Jedward, Lloyd and Rachel – one of whom didn’t belong in the final trio. When it was knocked down to the final two, Jedward naturally got away with murder again, meaning Lloyd sang against Rachel in the last quarter. ‘How’re you feeling?’ Dermot asked each contestant, each of them replying ‘urrrrgh’ whilst wearing their best speechless face.

Rachel sang ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ competently enough and Lloyd battled an alleged sore throat – Cheryl’s poor-performance disclaimer – as he sang ‘You Are So Beautiful’ with an occasionally rancid high note.

Dannii opted to keep Rachel, as did Louis. Cheryl was bound to keep Lloyd in with a chance and so Simon, the bloody fool, threw it to deadlock, which meant he actually threw it to the hordes of little girls who would doubtless have voted for Lloyd. Poor Rachel, by far Lloyd’s superior, was voted out, and the show lost its brightest hope. I am annoyed about this.

SO MUCH FOR DEMOCRACY.

To the heart, tick tock, you don’t stop! The 23rd Watch With Mothers podcast is here – and it wants to sex you up!

That’s right! This week we’re talking sexy times! We’ve been busy rounding up all the sexiest TV shows Britain ever offered its onanistic youth in the days before the internet offered them a pathway out of the VHS, pause-button nightmare, back in the 80s and 90s. We talk in a huge amount of depth about shows you may remember, specifically if you’re male and were a teenager around the same time as us, enjoying post-watershed television actively, shall we say, way back when.

I’m not selling this very well, am I?

Whilst talking hardcore telly-sex, we also glide around the parameters of the topic, and take on board:

• SAS survival skills
• Testicle removal
• Hedge-porn
• Sex Education and…
• The best route to Scotland

We do hope you enjoy it! Feel free to leave us a nice comment on the iTunes link…

Special thanks to Nick Tann for brilliant musical stylings – expect more involvement from the Hampshire based, bearded minstrel.

Subscribe HERE!
Join the facebook page HERE!
Direct link HERE!

Or listen below. It’s really your shout.

“Nothing can go wrong, they said. Get vanity liver spots, they said. One of ‘em won’t turn into your former Through The Keyhole colleague, Lloyd Grossman, they said …

Hello, good evening and welcome! I’m your host, David Frost (see above), and today we’d like YOU to go through the keyhole and imagine the homes of your favourite TV celebrities.

What sort of house would Bobby Davro, for example, live in? It’s time to go over to Lloyd. Watch closely and remember, the clues are there as we go through … the keyhole.

Except we’re not going through any keyholes. We’re going to Lloyd up there in my face.”

“Thaaanks, Daaaavid. Just look at this place. The air of despair that hangs over the place; the empty scawtch bottles littering the floor; the discaaaaarded jaaazzz maaags under the bed and the pile of bounced cheques and final demands stuffed behind the sofa. Who’d live in a house like this? David, it’s over to you …”

“Is it Bobby Davro?”

“Yes.”

That’s right, WWMers! This morning we’d like your thoughts on the shitholes of the stars!

I hadn’t even heard about the latest BBC Trust complaint until around 11pm last night. Newsnight devoted a section of the show to a discussion on comedy and the barriers of taste, with the centre of the chat focusing on criticism of Boyle’s assertion on Mock The Week that Rebecca Adlington looks like ’someone who’s looking at themselves in the back of a spoon’.

As with the ‘Sachsgate’ affair that finally petered out (leaving symptoms that are still apparent today) it’s just a shame that the target is so undeserving and that the craft of the content is so base. Had it been some idiot politician or even a self-righteous, irritating sports figure, and had the content of the joke been particularly well-structured rather than a simple, unkind comparison, Boyle might have given us something to get behind and support.

Jokes about personal appearance will always be around, so there’s nothing here to get all furious about. We all know comedy relies on cariacature and the absurd – and Frankie Boyle is probably well aware that he himself resembles a ridiculous, flame-headed rodent and has an outrageous, almost impenetrable brogue – and the idea of comedians being robbed of the right to sum up how others sound or appear to them seems a little extreme.

Maybe the real problem rests with production at the BBC. Boyle himself says:

“Our top story was the British team returning home from the Olympics. We’d talked about them for five weeks and yet still had to joke about them getting off a plane.”

He makes the point that, given the material they’re asked to work with, the boundaries have to be pushed further and further because the topic has already been exhausted on a show that is already itself exhausted. If you put a comedian like Boyle – who is probably great live, but in the context of live TV is certain to offend at least a slice of the audience – in a corner with a lack of material, he won’t hesitate to break a taboo or shock simply to provoke laughter. As Boyle says, if they’d been asked to talk about something more central to current affairs, then it wouldn’t have happened.

Similarly, as has been roundly agreed, production is to blame for the Sachsgate affair, but the blame publically lay with the front of house, recognisable faces of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

That’s not to excuse a particularly unfunny joke by Boyle and an endlessly dull routine from JR and RB, but context is key, and the decision to go to air – thus humiliating the subject of any mickey-taking routine to an infinitely greater degree than they would have been otherwise – is the one that should be criticised. Isn’t it?

So Heather ‘Honey Monster’ Trott’s baby George made his appearance on the square last week. Already he’s thrown a spanner in the works of happy-go-lucky Darren Miller’s plans to marry Squiggle by turning out to be his boy.

That’s right! He’s been around for barely a week, yet already he’s entered into the spirit of the show by making others’ lives a misery. So what else can we expect from ‘Ender’s new arrival? Watch With Mothers looks into its TV crystal ball to find out …

At two months old, George is admitted into rehab after his addiction to baby formula is exposed by Ian’s son, Bobby. “I had to do it for George’s sake,” explains Bobby. “He was spiraling out of control: soiling himself on a daily basis, incapable of speech, unable to perform even the most basic of human functions. Without intervention, George’s addiction to baby formula would have been the death of him.”

Barely over his addiction and the four month old George is at it again. After wrecking Darren’s chances with Squiggle, he’s now threatening to destroy Max’s happiness by starting a steamy affair with Tania. “I can’t help myself,” Tania gushes as she falls into George’s tiny little arms. “I can’t get enough of little bald men who burst into tears whenever things don’t go their way.”

Has Phil made a new enemy? It would seem so as, a mere six months after leaving his mother’s womb, baby George has made a pact with Archie. “I promised him a small blue cat from the Early Learning Centre,” Archie explains to his henchwoman, Janine, “and now he’s on our side.” There’s only going to be one winner in a face off between two bright pink-faced bald fellas … but will it be Phil, or will it be George?

“Yeah, man!” Patrick triumphantly roars, shortly after drunkenly bedding Libby’s grandmother Liz in Dot’s bed after an all-you-can-take NHS free flu injection jamboree. But who orchestrated this latest bout of slightly unsettling EastEnders old love? Step – or, more appropriately, crawl – forward little baby George!

“I’ll get that little bastard!” bellows Phil, shortly after discovering his mother’s been tricked into selling George the Queen Vic. Meanwhile, Bianca’s daughter Tiffany announces she’s pregnant. Rumours fly around the square as to the who the father could be … is that a twinkle in the eye of the pub’s latest landlord?

It’s all over for George! A scant nine months after arriving on the scene, his car’s engulfed in an horrific fireball after he fails to make loan repayments to a shadowy East End crime syndicate. “I’ll never see ‘is like again, Shirl!” wails Heather, shortly before her waters break, signaling the arrival of baby Georgina.

Little baby George, Watch With Mothers salutes your short, chaotic and not in the least bit far-fetched future life!

Regular readers will have realised I’m a little bit obsessed with ‘brand recall’.

That is to say, I find it fascinating which of the slices of advertising that grace our screens best stick in the memory of the viewing public. Luckily, Marketing Magazine – the bible for spods who love stats on this sort of rubbish – publishes the facts weekly. And it often makes for uncomfortable reading.

This week, Peter Jones shoving a shopping trolley around a virtual world for moneysupermarket.com hit the top spot with 62% brand recall.

Assuming Marketing Mag means ‘unaided recall’ in which no prompt is given to those surveyed, this means 62% of those asked thought of this tedious, almost concept-free campaign when asked to name an advert – remembering who it was for, what happened in it and what the service is.

It’s strange, because the service for sale is so completely and utterly boring – essentially an online agency for finding financial packages. So the mind begins to immediately evaluate what it is about the ad slot that sticks in people’s minds.

• Is it the fact that the futuristic vision of the cleanest, quietest, most boring fiscal hypermarket in an imagined future is so brilliantly rendered?
• Is it Jones performance – the clarity of his acting and the sweetness of his enunciation?
• Is it the brilliance and usefulness of the service offered?
• Or is it the fact that Peter Jones is a highly, highly irritating, smug, grinning bugger and every time this ad comes onscreen, people shout at it, willing it to never, ever come on again?

Before you try to answer that – it’s the last one.

Time for another lamb to visit the slaughterhouse as The X Factor sharpened it’s glimmering, showbiz throat-knife for week three of the live show.

This week was BiiiiiiiiIIIIIG BAND WEEK! In other words, two hours flat of rat-pack and big-band classics being throttled to death by the bony fingers of commerce. Sounds like a treat, right? Of course it does! This is The X Factor! Your guarantee of overstatement on a Saturday night, with the judges arrival being a case in point. The bombastic music and voiceover that accompanies their entrance promises so much, as though several Greek gods will appear behind the enormous cardboard doors, only for a couple of knackered looking supply teachers and two crones to appear, caked in make-up and sporting shit-eating grins. It’s what the weekend’s all about.

This week’s guest was Michael Buble. Yes – MICHAEL FUCKING BUBLE! That American cheese merchant your mum’s embarrassed she likes. Despite releasing atrocious records, he seems a decent chap and on Saturday he took the now familiar slot given to guests – offering advice on how to be a bland, inoffensive success, with all the acts behaving silly around him, as though they’re in the presence of super-powered royalty.

Olly

In braces and a bowtie, Olly’s still wearing that haircut – shaved up the sides and fluffy on top – that the cool kids are calling ‘The Essex Toupée’. Singing ‘Bewitched’, flanked by a couple of hot, sexy witches, he punctuated each verse with a ‘YEAH!’ here and an evil cackle there. All very Halloween, all very slick, but all as exciting as a weak glass of squash.

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Simon: ‘I know what it’s like working with two witches’

Lloyd

The man with the farting wind-pipe returned, and the question on everyone’s lips? Which falsetto ditty, based around the singer’s ability to hit a particular high-note, would Cheryl embarrassingly select for the 16 year old with the honking face? Some Bee Gees, perhaps? Maybe a little Mika? Or would she go the whole hog and lay down a yodelling challenge for the little Welshman. As it turned out, she had him sing Fly Me To The Moon, but crucially, rob it of all charm – substituting personality with a completely unnecessary backflip. Way to go Chezza!

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Simon: ‘Doing a backflip during Fly Me To The Moon is like eating a sandwich while you’re swimming’

Miss Frank

‘Will they recapture the magic of last week?’, the recap asked. It was hard to recall what they did last week… until you were reminded they sang a Whitney Houston number and riddled it with bum notes. In an attempt to recapture that sorcery, they sang ‘That’s Life’ as though they’d not only just met, but as though they’d just collided painfully in a corridor.

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Cheryl: ‘You updated a classic’

Rachel

New hair for Rachel, now sporting a bob where she once had a pillar atop her bonce. Dannii also heeded advice and prevented the wardrobe department from sticking a nasty pullover on the girl, and instead she sported proper popstar clothes. An impressive performance was sadly followed by Rachel acting as though she’d just received a Brit when the song was over, wanting to thank the judges, wanting to thank the other contestants and wanting to thank her Mum and Dad. She loves you, Mum and Dad.

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Dermot: ‘You’ve not won yet’

Jamie

Some phoney drama to get us excited as Simon apparently (yeah, right) dropped Jamie’s original song with 24 hours to go, asking him to sing that famous Big Band classic – Angel of Harlem by U2. Apparently having a brass section in a song makes it Big Band. Louis took issue with this but was shouted down by Simon who pointed out that the Irishman had given Jedward a Britney song the previous week, so didn’t really have a leg to stand on.

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Louis: ‘I’m a bit confused’

The Sexy Horse

‘Sing the song as though you’re singing it to your kid’ was the advice from Michael Buble, so Stacey Sang it with an indulgent grin plastered across her equine face, but neglected to mime peekaboo hand-curtains between verses. Stacey singing involves five or six bum notes in a line being hit on the way to a perfectly rendered final syllable, which makes her seem, by the time the end of the line comes along, as though she’s a great singer. When actually she’s not so hot. Her version of When You Wish Upon a Star made me fill a bucket with all sick.

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Simon: ‘You look better than you sounded’

Danyl

Danyl has an enormous lower mandible, his bottom jaw being so big it’s almost an unfair advantage. He flapped it around a flat version of the Nina Simone classic, Feeling Good and gave his worst performance yet with a song that was far, far too big for the man they call Danyl Johnson.

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Cheryl: ‘Another great song from Danyl Johnson’
Simon: ‘More enthusiasm?’
Cheryl: ‘Do you expect me to jump up and down?’
Simon: ‘Yes, I do expect you to jump up and down’

Joe

Time for the two blandest acts to line up and put you into a coma in preparation for Jedward’s latest atrocity, with awful little Joe taking to the spotlight like a smiling gnat, a shaved chimp and a sexless, greased gnome.They gave a mambo number to the little lad and he looked entirely lost at sea, but this being Joe he got blanket positive feedback despite it being obvious it was an awful appearance.

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Louis: ‘You’re so nice’

Lucie

Some Valentine-based song from Lucie, even though it’s Halloween, blander than unbranded white bread made soggy with tap water.

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Louis: ‘A very, very amazing performance’

JEDWARD

Hooray! Time for Jedward! The moment the public were waiting for – even though, were you to ask them why, they wouldn’t be able to tell you. A truly abominable version of She Bangs by Ricky Martin which was improved by a bizarre stage-show involving the twins miming standing-double-penetration with a sexy dancer, then being straddled by another couple of attractive ladies who proceeded to ride them like dirty dogs. All the while, inflatable John and Edwards billowed stage left and stage right, only adding to the grotesque carry-on they bordered.

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Louis: ‘Wooooo!’

* * *
And so, round my house, we waited for Sunday’s show. Not sleeping, refusing to move from the sofa, sitting in yesterday’s clothes and barely noticing the clocks went back.

Actually, that’s not true. I missed most of it, thankfully avoiding Michael Buble’s live performance and managing to hold back the tears over missing out on Westlife. I saw the final vote, which is the only real reaosn for the show’s existence, witnessing Lloyd somehow making it through, leaving Danyl and Miss Frank in the final two. The forced girl group sang an ugly version of Love Don’t Live Here Any More which really suffered under the weight of a rap-break, and Danyl recycling his original audition song, Get By With A Little Help From My Friends, surely breaking some kind of rule along the way.

Cheryl put it to deadlock, being too chicken to kick anyone out herself, and Miss Frank left on the phone vote.

A shame – but probably best for everyone.

A new podcast and the last in our series of three focusing on light entertainment legends! This time, we analyse the career of Paul Daniels, taking in his early life in Bradford, his career in television, his semi-retirement and his work on reality TV.

Along the way we sing some songs and have a rum ol’ time – which is surprising, considering my having barely slept and Napoleon’s rampant cold. Perhaps it was the combination of these two afflictions that caused us to ramble off topic into the realms of:

• Penile weight suspension
• Life in the army
• How cool wheelchairs are
• Two or three ill-advised role-play sessions.

Have a listen below – and don’t forget to subscribe! And join us on facebook, or me on Twitter, if you know what’s good for you.

It’s a corker – you’re going to like this one!

Not very much. But you will like it.

Just not very much.

TV and music. It’s a marriage made in heaven, isn’t it? From Ronnie Hazlehurst and his rotten orchestra to Sheridan Tongue and his wistful tinkling, TV just wouldn’t be the same without a few banging notes and thundering scales.

To watch Dr. Who without its ‘woooo-eeee-ooo!’ is unthinkable, and where the hell would we be if denied the ‘look out!’ theme of Casualty? I’ll tell you where: We’d be in hell! Actual purgatory, with demons and fire and Janet Street Porter – FOR ETERNITY.

And it’s not just the theme that matters; TV shows treat the viewer to a veritable feast of tunes employed to instill a sense of atmosphere into proceedings. Indeed, we’re so used to having music accompany our shows, we don’t always notice it on a conscious level. We leave that to our old pal The Subconscious. He’d soon let us know if the music was lacking.

Why? Because it would tell the conscious ‘the music is lacking’. Resulting in a killing spree with a high-body count.

Take Monday’s Panorama – depressing viewing by anyone’s standards. But did you notice it had a soundtrack? Did you arse. You just sat there, soaking up the horror without thinking twice about it. But there was music, virtually throughout. From the LOOK.AT.THIS.IT’S.IMPORTANT theme we were treated to a musical feast that played along with the misery and, in places, drama that unfurled before our eyes like a blanket smeared in all poo. Without the music, I’ve no doubt we’d have been in gales of laughter – every last man jack of us.

When the music’s overt, it no longer plays to the mind’s eye but enters the face and enrages the viewer to a state of heightened hatred. Take any drama on ITV. Almost without fail, their soundtracks are liable to wind up punching you in the side of the head as they fruitlessly attempt to compensate for the lack of talent taking place on screen.

Don’t believe me? Then watch Midsomer Murders, for the love of all that is sacred.

Love it or hate it, music is an essential ingredient of telly. So what if, gentle reader, the soundtrack was to fly in the opposite direction of the essence of what’s onscreen?

• What sort of a tool would use Slayer’s South of Heaven during the opening titles of Fawlty Towers?
• What if the incidental music of BBC3’s Real Hustle was Angels by Robbie Williams?
• Countryfile kicking off with I Like To Move It by Reel-2-Reel?
• Gary Glitter’s Touch Me as Childrens Ward booted up?

This Friday Question is perfectly simple. Imagine a theme or soundtrack that completely negates, undermines or fucks-up the gist of the viewing on offer!

Over to you..