whatmakesalexangry

2008-11-11T14:32:00.001-08:00

Later with Jools Holland

In response to Solange Knowles: "Has gone far too record company corporate with things that don't even SOUND LIVE."

Also, having once attended filming of it, I'd like everyone to know you get told off by the floor manager if you don't dance to the Stereophonics and don't get a sniff of a beer or a seat if you're not an A lister like Dom Joly. *Cough*

2008-11-11T14:28:00.000-08:00

New Star Trek

"You can tell new Kirk will be a cock. Totally bumtarded."

2008-08-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

I Make Him Angriest Of All

On a long car journey where I spent too long on my mobile, Alex started rolling his eyes and sighing, culminating in pointed finger jabbing at the stereo when the Radiohead lyric "When I am king you will be first against the wall" came on.

I asked him if he was really theoretically going to kill me first when made Ruler of Everything.

"It would send a message no-one was safe."

So there you have it.

2008-08-03T05:54:00.000-07:00

Stop Wallowing In All This Lady Bibble

If I don't finish my book, Alex has threatened to "hack in and finish it for me." First of all he was going to introduce a goblin army, then he decided it would involve a picture of him Lord Kitchener style commanding the readership to cease caring about relationship kerfuffle and go to a history seminar instead.

That would be a proper pisser of a last chapter, so I better finish it.

2008-08-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Phooking rubbish

Some sort of rant about how Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl was a rip off of various things and if you like Tank Girl you don't "get it."

In conclusion:

"Exactly the kind of overrated pseud you expect Damon Albarn to join forces with."

2008-08-03T05:45:00.000-07:00

Insufficient road signage in and around Bristol

"YOKELS"

2008-07-13T03:56:00.000-07:00

Translation service for Observer interview with Jaime Winstone

"She is fast becoming the urban It-girl for the Noughties, with a string of gritty roles in film and TV. She may be the daughter of famed hard man Ray Winstone - and girlfriend of Lily Allen's brother Alfie - but, as Barbara Ellen finds out, she sees herself more as a hard-working actor than a celebrity darling"

"She is a famous young woman who can afford designer clothes who lives in London in 2008, with a string of small roles in film and TV. She may be the daughter of famed hard man Ray Winstone - and girlfriend of that other undertalented-daughter-of-a-celeb we hyped, Lily Allen's brother Alfie - but, as Barbara Ellen will uncritically pass on, she does not want everyone to think she has got this far on being a wealthy, well-connected young woman with a dad in the same industry, but on raw talent and drive."

2008-07-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Boneheaders

2008-07-12T07:53:00.001-07:00

Hat-trick

2008-07-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

And another

2008-07-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

To save time, here are some pictures that provoke Alex's anger and don't require explanation

2008-05-03T06:16:00.000-07:00

Matthew Norman, scourge of provincial dining establishments, is back on form.
In today's offering in The Guardian he trashes all of Liverpool as a culinary black hole and throws in some Scouser stereotype gags.
He reports: (the waiter concluded) '...amateur hour with the request that the tip be left in cash because the company that owns both restaurant and tower snaffles any gratuities that are tacked on to credit card payments.'

Should waiting staff make this request? Probably not. Do most people want to tip their waiting staff and not the faceless company they just paid plenty anyway, but aren't aware this is how it works? Very likely. Will the waiter get a bollocking and possibly a sacking as a result of this review? Almost certainly. Will the restaurant tighten up the tips system to make even more certain that less money makes its way into the hands of the staff? You betcha. And does Mr Norman care? Who knows.

He's full of himself before he gets started on any food, that's for sure.

2008-04-21T15:30:00.000-07:00

Relationship Kerfuffle

Apologies for lack of updates. The reason being, Miss V has been crafting chick lit, and logging her partner's strops has sadly had to take a back seat. Alex has been so kind as to christen the as-yet-to-be-published-book as above, though.

2008-04-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

Buzzy Buzzy Bee Keeley

After an evening of lambasting modern TV output (dumbed down BBC news, Pushing Daisies, I dunno, I tuned out) Alex could only offer one original programming idea - a show where Keeley Hawes is covered in jam, and Alex, dressed as a bee, licks it off. Title as above.

2008-01-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

A mighty heart or a mighty wind

Angelina Jolie's brother on why she's so thin:

"It's hard for her to sit in an expensive restaurant and order freely. She feels guilty about what she eats compared with so many starving people whom she wants to help."

Riiiiiight. But OK by the third world to live in the Waldorf Astoria towers for months, send her kids to the Lycee, wear Hermes gowns and travel by private jet.
So it's not film star vanity about having a tiny figure, its her huge conscience.

*Bum fluff*

2008-01-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

'He is such a disagreeable man that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him'

Nathan Barley-esque writer Paul Flynn has this week devoted a whole page in Grazia to his passion for David Morrissey in Sense & Sensibility, and goes on about his period drama 'valve' extensively.
(Paul, don't take our word for it - from Wikipedia: 'A valve is a device that regulates the flow of substances (either gases, fluidized solids, slurries, or liquids) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways.' Is this what you mean to say?)

Luckily Austen's uncanny ability to provide a quote for every occasion has not let us down.

2008-01-08T14:11:00.000-08:00

Mistresses, or Alex's preferred title, I've Got Something To Put In You

'Edgy' and less edgy dramatic cliches to avoid:

*Hassled mums or similar doing that puffed-cheeks 'Ooh, those kids, I love 'em but they aren't half hectic work' exhalation as if they're in a spaghetti hoops advert

*Guilt-ridden people shutting doors fast and then leaning against them with a 'Ooh, that was close, what HAVE I got myself into' expression. It's the new version of staring at the phone receiver after a surprising or distressing phonecall

*Throwing words like 'fanny' into the mix to show it's not conventional, but raunchy, and right up to date, even though there's nothing very emotionally adult about it at all. This is a Torchwood trick, and Torchwood tricks should be left to the unqualified non-professionals in the safety of their own series

*Women sitting round with huge glasses of wine engaging in risque banter which is heavy on the exposition, light on plausibility. People might rip into Sex and the City, but if you're going to rip it off, write some jokes

*One dimensional coffee advert wonk men who turn up in supermarkets/parks/offices to embody Sexy Single Dad Hiding A Secret Pain or Predatory Colleague Who Might Break Up Your Marriage or Feckless Boss Who's Never Going To Leave His Wife or Understanding Husband Who's Going To Be Mistreated Because Relationships are Messy and Modern Women Are So Dang Confused. Why is it that women in dramas never actually suffer the decent bloke drought they crap on about over the Cab Sav (though there's often a plausible character drought)? They should be faced with a biker with baked bean juice in his beard, a necrophiliac, a mute who keeps terrapins and a Tory MP with his face on back to front after a terrible surgical error. Then they'd have some quandaries about who to boff next

Other things to dislike about the latest show that's supposed to be the bleeding edge of now -

*All of them cackling 'We've been waiting six years for this!' when Sharon Small's 9/11 widow announced she had a date. What, her closest friends had been wondering when she was next going to get her leg over as the rescue workers were combing the smoking rubble of Ground Zero for her spouse's corpse? And then Sarah Parish's character shouting 'It's been six years - ' (always worth bearing in mind the year of transmission, not as if it's a famous date in history or anything) - 'get over it!' at a moment of stress, and Sharon Small going 'Of course, sorry for crapping on about myself' or words to that effect. Because that's what you'd do when your best mate was telling you your dead husband was like, so defunct as a topic.

*Plot twists that you can see many miles off on the horizon, and if it weren't for the curvature of the earth, further than that. Sarah Parish snogging the son, Indian girl getting jiggy with the lezbot, Orla Brady doing her colleague, that colleague seeing her naughty underwear. Sharon Small getting a weirdo call straight after Patrick Baladi's answerphone message. (Who incidentally, should still be doing his Dodi impression from that Diana programme. That was awesome.)

*People behaving in STUPID ways to push the plot forward. No-one gives a fuck about your characters because they've only got themselves to blame, all this achieves is to raise the blood pressure of anyone watching who accidentally left their brain in gear. Sarah Parish ditching as patient the son of the bloke she was shagging/assisted death of as soon as he got suspicious was one example. Yep, 24 year old lads at college, never out of GPs surgeries. Hoping he went away not an option, better off making a sudden move that screams raging guilt. Ditto the panic shredding of the medical notes of the dead bloke when the only witness to her helping him die is..oh, hang on... DEAD. Making a pouty 'you've rumbled me' face every time ranty mad son had a go about dead dad's infidelity. Why can nobody in a drama be a remotely competent liar? It's the new version of the 'never going to the police' rule.

Still, Alex was angry, but he liked Orla Brady in a basque. So this cloud had a fuschia satin lining.

2007-12-18T14:38:00.000-08:00

Back To Twat

Paul Flynn in Grazia this week: "The woman I'd really like to see make the Queen's Speech is dear Amy Winehouse. For 2007 has been her year, a world she has presided over while containing every single one of her issues in her beehive. I would like Her Speech to begin and end on an expletive and to contain such gut-wrenching sentiment about having your boy locked up for Christmas that even the hardest of viewers will feel for her."

'while containing every single one of her issues in her beehive'? I've wrestled with this, I have no idea. Suggestions welcome. Obviously Pentonville Prison did the right thing in making her turn out her wig, though.

'gut wrenching sentiment about having your boy locked up'? That would be her junkie husband who was denied bail on charges of violent assault that left a man with metal plates in his face, and witness tampering? The case she's been arrested and questioned about, presumably on the suspicion as the accused's wealthy wife, she might've known something about the £200K-and-plane-tickets bribe the victim was offered?

I dunno, being beaten to a bloody pulp and then intimidated about testifying about it sounds more gut wrenching from where we're sitting, but hang on.......*travels to Hoxton, disengages brain, engages Celeb-O-Vision, gets typing fingers on iBook*....you're right, Paul. Poor Amy. We can only pray to god that if charges are brought, she can afford the best lawyers money can buy. Unlike old tin-cheeks who's going to be attracting attention from airport security for the rest of his life.

2007-12-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

I'm a doctor and I want my cappuccino

In popular but overpriced sandwich outlet, Pret A Manger, you have to choose between 'chocolate sprinkles' and 'naked.' Yes, 'naked'. 'Without chocolate' or 'No sprinkles' will see the staff say 'Naked? Sure' and then 'One naked cappuccino to go!' 'Here's your naked cappuccino'. What is wrong with these people? Why the conspiracy to cute-up the language? They won't be happy until we're ordering sandwichy wandwichys, and we won't have them 'to go', we'll be 'adopting' the mayonnaisey little creatures, to take them to live in our belly houses. I think I'll take the good fight to them, point at the baked berry doughnuts and say 'two jammy sods as well please.'

As ever, I suspect Russell Brand's behind it. With his skinny jeans round his ankles.

NEW Lily Allen Alfie

2007-12-06T04:30:00.001-08:00

2007-12-06T04:00:00.000-08:00

The posh kids win, they always do

Lily Allen's brother, Alfie, is an actor enjoying a meteoric rise, going from bit parts in films his mum worked on as a producer (Elizabeth, The Other Boleyn Girl) and Atonement to taking over as lead from Daniel Radcliffe in Equus.
Lily's song Alfie - about him sitting around stoned all day - is annoying enough in a musically moribund, squelching sub-Puppet On A String, knocked-it-off-in-an-hour novelty sort of way. When you dwell on the fact that naughty Alfie's wealth and connections have allowed him to overcome this misspent pot-addled youth to leapfrog the vast majority of out of work actors to some plum roles, the whole thing gets less cutie-pie by the second. Oh, and Alfie's rumoured to be dating promising young actress Jaime Winstone. Ray Winstone's daughter.

See if you can get to the bit where the puppet's flashing its little latex butt cheeks and and Lily's doing a 'you scamp' smile before realising that 'music criticism is dead and pop culture's calcified', or whatever Alex said.
He was angry, anyway.

2007-12-05T10:25:00.000-08:00

Lex Luther and Otis

At a very very early hour the other morning, Ferris (pictured) got up, scratched at the bedroom door to be let out, and when I got up to let him out, ran off and hid. His aim was to wake me up and get his breakfast, and in his catty brain, he knew being let out wouldn't do it alone.
What a little swine.
'He's a criminal genius' I said.
'He's not a genius' Alex said.
'Well it wouldn't have occurred to me to do it' I said
'The qualification for genius is not being cleverer than you' he said.
He can get up next time.

2007-11-20T10:40:00.000-08:00

Jabbercocky

Here's one for Alex's Christmas stocking wocking.

2007-10-25T02:32:00.000-07:00

Totally pants

Just a quick post to say the truly awful Grazia columnist Paul Flynn has been promoted to a full page. He uses his expanded space to say that while Radiohead would have to pay him to download In Rainbows, he'd give Britney a few quid for hers to spend on wigs. *Tumbleweeds* And he likes David Duchovny in Californication because he fancies him, and reckons he's gone from The X Files to The Sex Files. *Boom tish*
He should have a picture of Joe Beasley's Cheeky Monkey at the side of the page.
"Come on, I'll make sure you get a round of applause, just go."
In a previous week's column, PF said Leona Lewis's Bleeding Love meant something personal to all his friends and to him, and went on to imply it was due to anal tearing during a bully ramming. (If he didn't mean this, he still should've realised that's how it sounded.)

Well done, Grazia. Once again proving the cream rises to the top.

2007-10-19T02:47:00.000-07:00

Sign him up for the feline Olympics, that body's steel

This isn't anger but I thought I'd share it anyway because it's given me the best laugh of the week, almost better than Charlie Brooker's review of The Tudors.
Please see pictured our cat Mr Miffy. He resembles the Gengar Pokemon and can open packets of Mini Cheddars with his teeth, steal croissants from guest's mouths, runs off with poppadoms and pulls bins over if they contain bacon fat. Or the smell of bacon fat. Or you know, just rubbish. He's been known to consume the spilt contents of a Fairy dishwasher tablet.
Alex was stroking him this morning, and said: "God he's got a really big belly. I *presume* it's muscle..?"

If only he had the same charming naivete when it comes to his girlfriend.

2007-10-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

Is that a M&S foldaway umbrella in your pocket?

Writing chick lit the other day, Alex walked in while I was mid-typing and I did a quick screen minimise before he started taking the piss.
"Urgh, it wasn't a sex scene, was it?"
I said it wasn't. He then outlined what a sex scene in one of his books would say.

"I did it to her, and she loved it, and then I had a sausage."

It has a certain, er...economy of language.

2007-10-03T14:45:00.000-07:00

"What was that, Darling?"

I noticed a military gentleman being interviewed on Channel Four news last night was quite dashing and said so, distracting Alex from the debate in hand.

Alex: "Argh....stop your brain quacking at me!"

2007-09-30T06:27:00.000-07:00

Putting the hag in hagiography

Old brown tongue Chrissy Iley is back again, with an interview with Jennifer Lopez in The Observer which probes new dark rectal depths.

A few excerpts:

"Thirty-eight now, her skin is still caramel gorgeous, flawless. On her right hand a giant diamond flashes. She holds it up for my inspection. 'Marc gave me this on our first anniversary.' Marc being Marc Anthony, her husband of three years, as well as the mega-selling Latin singer and actor. But I thought he gave you a big blue diamond? 'Yes, a blue one and this one. I'd seen the blue one and I'd loved it and he'd led me to believe he was going to get it for me. It was way too much money and I was like, "I know, it's a lot." So he gave me this one and I was very happy and he was, "You don't even like it." I said, "I love it." And then he gave me the blue one anyway. He's very, very generous,' she beams with a smile so wide you get caught up in it."

You're certainly caught up in something, Ms Iley. Think it's called fawning-for-access.

"In 2001, after her split from Judd, Jennifer was still looking for cuddles in all the wrong places. She became one half of the soap opera that was Bennifer, a romance with Ben Affleck that ended up with a wedding cancelled hours before it was meant to happen in September 2003. I'd met her around that time with Affleck in an apartment they'd rented in New York. Her eyes would light up every time he came into the room. But there was a nervousness to their chemistry."

A nervousness which came from the furious shagging of other people. *Allegedly.*

"when Marc Anthony walks into a room, he looks at her to check she's OK - it's a supportive balm"

Bleeee....

"Nor was it the critical acclaim she won for making even Richard Gere seem sexy in Shall We Dance.."

That's well known grotesque and world's least fancied man, Richard Gere. Even him? That's some acting chops.

"'Do you know what I mean?' Lopez asks this question a lot: 'Do you know what I mean?', not because it's slang speech, but because she genuinely wants to know the answer, wants to be understood. She's had a decade of fame, of being judged and misunderstood, and has been written off as a vacuous diva. That was when she was J-Lo who worshipped at the temple of bling. But inside there was always another person who wanted more than to be wearing the wrong man's diamonds. That Jennifer Lopez didn't even want to go out; she wanted to stay at home and play house, cook chicken with rice and beans."

Pl-fucking-ease.

"Her last album, Rebirth, came out soon after her marriage to Anthony gave voice to this part of her. Brave seems more about being an adolescent who wants to feel everything for the first time, fearlessly. The album cover shows her eyes burning, a strong stare, with cheeks highlighted with a shimmer that looks like war paint."

Was that the album that was generally acknowledged to be... shit?

"Those were the days when the rumours abounded about her diva-like behaviour - that she'd only accept sheets in Egyptian cotton over a certain thread count, that she ordered private planes to be redecorated and reperfumed... None of it was true, she says, but she didn't take the trouble to deny it."

Damn all those lies by the press. And The Dorchester hotel, that leaked her requirements for humidifiers and champagne for the stay during which this interview was conducted, which made Shirley Bassey look like a dossing crustie youth hosteller.

"That night I see her again at the album's launch party. She poses sweetly for pictures with people she doesn't know. She does it convincingly in a rather fantastic off-the-shoulder leopard-print number. For me, the most interesting touch of the evening was that the ladies' loos were heaving with complimentary bottles of Glow. You could drown yourself in it if you wanted to. By the end of the night the whole party smelled of Glow. Everyone smelled the same as Jennifer Lopez. I think she would have liked that."

Yes, she would Chrissy. Because she's a businesswoman and it's called promotion.

Now, anyone smelling bullshit?

2007-09-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

Well fit

Sorry, forgot this one. Allison 'new Lynda Lee Potter' Pearson wrote a piece in the Mail about how Prince Charles's mishandling of Camilla's attendance at Di's commemorative service proved he "wasn't fit to be King."

Alex - "If you accept the principle of some German toff backbirth as an unelected head of state, you get what you're given, it's not about being fit for it, is it."

2007-09-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

The hubris tour

Warning - tickets for the Babyshambles arena gigs are 'limited' to ten person. So if you want 11, you're fucked. Jam the switchboard to complain with all the other poor sods.

2007-09-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Burgundy Cinq!

Was reminiscing last night about when a friend was foolish enough to admit to Alex that she had a Maroon 5 album. He demanded to know how it was possible if she'd "heard them with her physical ears" and spluttered that they were "like Critical Cat Funk."
Further discussion revealed he'd meant Curiosity Killed The Cat but he'd been too furious to marshal the correct words.

2007-08-30T02:32:00.000-07:00

Debt-O-Saurus At Large

Alex has christened Miss V's chick lit attempt with the above working title.

When I was at the computer coalface the other day, he popped his head round the door and said in a high, reedy voice: "And then a man married me and made everything marvellous and all I had to do was spend his money and be pretty and silly and happy forever. The end."

With a few small modifications, I'm thinking of using it.

2007-08-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

Amy Housewine: Alex to rescue

Her in-laws' plea to save her by not buying any of her records is reminiscent of exchange between Dwight and Jim in the American Office, when Dwight is bouncing on the exercise ball.

Dwight: "Forget everything you thought you knew about abdominal training."
Jim: "Done."

2007-08-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming has a toiletries range which includes a body wash called Cumming All Over. I revealed this to Alex to upset him further when he was watching him on The Edinburgh Show, with clips of his production of Bacchus where Mr Cumming was tooling about in make-up and a dress.
Mr Cumming has now married his male partner, but once enjoyed a relationship with actress Saffron Burrows. Alex likes Saffron Burrows. I asked him if it put him off at all that Cumming had, er, been there before.
"He's not been there," Alex said, shaking his head.
"I think he has.."
"No, I'm telling you. He's not been there."
"They did go out for two years, I think.."
"He has NOT been there."
A denial of bisexual love, blinded by jealousy... or an inability to accept a fine lady would do Alan Cumming?

I'm not sure.

2007-08-05T03:54:00.000-07:00

Babyshambles - arena tour

It is pretty much impossible to put into words just how hard this sucks arse.

2007-07-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

I blame the manufacturers of that hoodie

Fashion designer Jill Stuart has rode to Lindsay Lohan's defence, saying she's in the grip of addiction and blaming bars and restaurants for serving her. (What, even food?) God yeah, and if only the world's distilleries and booze-peddlers would stop making and selling alcoholic drinks, Lindsay would be safe. Looks like til that day comes, to use some vernacular, bitch is just gonna have to get her shit together. It's as if she's just another human being or something.

Corporate blame outsourcing - only the rich can afford it.
Maybe Nokia and Agent Provocateur were responsible for David Beckham's affairs?
Or Bentley should've never handed over owner's keys to Paris Hilton, the reckless c**ts?
Who'd be a sponsor, eh.

2007-07-29T15:40:00.000-07:00

I'm so hot right now

The Guardian's Q&A thing in the Saturday magazine should be called Pseud Detector.
Former Gucci designer Tom Ford says his most treasured possession is "my integrity."
And there we were thinking it was a quality, not a possession.
Get on the waiting list for expensive reproductions of Tom Ford's original My Integrity at an upmarket department store near you. With the aroma of real moral substance.

2007-07-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

Magnolia: there was one c**t they couldn't tame

Sorry for the blast from the past, but I mentioned Magnolia to Alex the other day, and he shouted "Pretentious useless Paul Thomas Anderson toss" or similar. It's true, Tom Cruise's sex guidance counsellor was the only good thing about it.
Mind you, I get the same manic twitch about Lost In Translation.
Coming soon: fulminations over the totally miscast Keira Knightley in Joe Wright's adaptation of Ian McEwan's Atonement. Fresh from totally misunderstanding Austen with his version of Pride and Prejudice, Joe Wright sets his somewhat impaired sights on modern classics.

2007-07-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

To paraphrase Harrison Ford, you can type this shit but you can't explain it

Paul Flynn on Live Earth in Grazia.

"How many places can Fearne Cotton be at once with her polished line of journalistic enquiry?...I suspect that beneath her tireless devotion to emulating every single post Ray Of Light Madonna hairdo ever, Fearne Cotton may have intimacy issues. But that's another story, for another time."

"Talking of Madonna, it is within her that the kernel of Live Earth comes a-crumbling. Look, some people were put on this earth to do good. Al Gore is undoubtedly one of them. But some people were put on this earth simply to look good. Madonna, I would posit, falls fairly distinctly into this latter category. Even the most devoted Madonnaphile I know..has confessed that her Live Earth opus Hey You is a '20 listen song', ie, after 20 listens you come to appreciate its core value. Could he have damned the blessed tune with any fainter praise? I, on quite the other hand, would say it is a '20 second listen' in that after 20 seconds the whole conundrum of Madonna's poker-faced piety begins to unravel and you start to have a panic attack on her behalf."

"I...possess that gay valve that means I can't and never will be able to drive. But the further, more immediately pressing, post Live Earth question is this one. Do I want or need Madonna to put the Mad back into her name to help me care more? It's rhetorical, babes."

We'll try to help you Paul, starting with some of the non rhetorical questions. 'Babes.'

*'How many places can Fearne Cotton be at once?' On two different occasions on two different days, we're going to say - two.

*'Intimacy issues'. This makes no sense whatsofkinever.

*'It is within her that the kernel of Live Earth comes a-crumbling.' Do you understand what a mixed metaphor is? Do you know what a metaphor is?

*'Al Gore is undoubtedly one of them' Shame he didn't channel that predestination while he was the second most powerful man in the world. But hey, that's another column, for another time, by another person who's a few IQ points clear of you.

*'I would posit falls fairly distinctly into the latter category' Ah, it's superfluous word soup again! What was wrong with 'Madonna isn't?, exactly? Can you imagine what his book How Hoxton Happened is like? Bet it didn't take as long to happen as it does to wade through his weed-ridden prose.

*'Poker-face piety begins to unravel' - See metaphors, mixed, above

*'Gay valve' - What, a faulty heart valve? Or are you saying homosexuality = learning disabilities?

*'It's rhetorical, babes'

I think to be magnificently condescending, you have to not also be a demonstrable fuckwit.

2007-07-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

'IMO'

A generation of wingdings and dingbats use 'IMO' as petulant prefix to any post on a messageboard, despite the fact we know it's in your opinion, because you're expressing it, and didn't think it was carved on an ageless tablet of stone somewhere that Skins was 'GR8.'
This is typical of the kind of people who, when losing an argument, say 'I'm entitled to my opinion!'
Yes, that'd be why we're in a debate. The grown-ups had gone on to explain why the opinion you're entitled to hold is wrong. Do keep up.

2007-07-07T07:53:00.000-07:00

Undertakers

Alex hates people who undertake him.

2007-07-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

People who privacy protect their list of Facebook friends

It's called a networking site. It's not called a 'get self important and secretive and arsey about my perceived importance' site.
Who do you think you are, Dorothy Parker at The Algonquin, but with an OK! style magazine deal, so everyone has to arrive under umbrellas?

2007-07-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Please Hammer don't hurt 'em

There once was a shit book by an American called Dave Pelzer called A Child Called It. It spawned the now seemingly unstoppable misery memoir market, so everyone who ever got the tyre iron or touched and told it was their special secret now has to tell the world.

Taking the 'I've suffered for my art and now it's your turn' maxim too far.

2007-07-06T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is the only acceptable Skeggy poster - check the Viz shop for details

An expensive interiors shop full of yak hair lounge chairs and rugby ball shaped coffee tables in our city has an expensively mounted 'Skegness - it's so bracing!' poster, the size of a big cigarette card. What kind of cock-knocker
buys that? Someone who fits both these criteria: firstly, would never have realised that Chris Morris's spoof suicidal Observer columnist Richard Geefe who wrote 'Time To Go' wasn't real, even when he was namechecking a Paul Smith Berubian condom holder. (See Nirpal Dhaliwal below). Second, someone who has never been to the place, the post post ironic twat.

2007-07-05T06:14:00.000-07:00

"This is shark jumpage"

So Catherine Tate is the new Doctor Who companion. Watching the finale of the third series, Alex said he thought Russell T Davies' script was trying to bring on a sacking in the most flamboyant, Hi-NRG disco utilising manner, and this casting choice did nothing to convince him otherwise.
Only the announcement that Keeley Hawes is to be Philip Glenister's sidekick in the Life On Mars spin off Ashes To Ashes has given him hope, and a little happiness.

2007-07-05T04:35:00.000-07:00

Is It Just Me Or....does Paul Flynn write in English as a second language?

This week's topic: Chelsy Davy vs Kate Middleton.

"Whichever way you slice apart the Middleton enigma, she fails to catch fire."

"Do you see the word that I'm cleverly and politely skirmishing around using here? DULL. And dull people have no claims to the celebrity canon."

"Chelsy is a fitful royal girlfriend if ever there was one."

"Chelsy Davy is the Ugg boot of royal girlfriends, so wrong she cannot help be perfectly right. Kate Middleton is the ballet pump. The only righteous resolve to salvage William's wavering credibility in affairs of the heart is to hang her up in the changing rooms."

Can you slice apart an enigma and then expect it to ignite?
Skirmish: to engage in minor battle or dispute. It does not mean beating around the bush.
Setting aside claims to a canon, when you say dull people shouldn't become celebrities, do you mean boring RADA trained actors and scientists of achievement, out, and rah rah for ex Big Brother contestants who insert bottles into their orifices? Or do you perhaps mean 'anyone who happened to cross my mind in the 20 seconds when I was typing this lazy shit out'? Just pop your explanation in the comments for this post.
Fitful does not mean the same thing as fitting.
Ugg boots/ballet pump simile - the work of an 'actual moron.' (c Peep Show)

2007-07-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

At least they're not spoiling two homes

Sorry to mention their names again, it's like a journalistic car crash you can't help but stare at. Yes, Liz Jones and Nirpal Dhaliwal are back together! Despite her writing Liz 'Bridget' Jones's diary in the Mail, where she called him a 'fat Osama Bin Laden lookalike' in a deathlessly unfunny rip off of a ten year old prose style, and him writing a column for Grazia called Metrosexist about how many women out there fancied him.
Their touching reunion has been described in his now final instalment of the column he'd only just begun. And bet the Mail were delighted about being scooped by a women's mag, as given the timelines it rather reveals old Liz Bridget Jones's singleton pain was made up.
Anyway, back to that romantic clinch. Liz answers the door: "She'd coloured her hair in a soft shade of brown with exotic, sexy highlights...she looked slinky and amazing in her Paper Denim Cloth trousers and fitted Ann Demeulemeester waistcoat."
He obviously picked up some writing tips from the brand name festival of his wife's Wedding Planner column, then.
And after they'd fallen into each other's arms: "She held me close afterwards and whispered 'I love you, Nirpy."

Nirpy?

Not a dry trouser in the house.

2007-07-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

Chantelle and Preston: why they *REALLY* split

What other than meeting on reality TV with Davina McCall as Cupid and Max Clifford as subsequent string-puller, marrying six months later in a magazine deal and being totally mismatched?

We're on tenterhooks here - did she always scrape leftover marge from her toast back into the tub?

2007-07-04T10:35:00.000-07:00

A Concert for Diana

So much could be said, best summed up a friend of the blog who said it was "like something off Daily Mail island."

We will also use the words of Kelly Kapoor in The American Office.

"Princess Diana's funeral was the saddest day of my life. That, and when my sister died."

2007-07-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

How to keep it real by Winnebago-ing rich bastards

Second only to the irritation of seeing Edith Bowman and Zane Lowe sporting with our intelligence by announcing Amy Winehouse was "killin' it" - straight from the Jo Whiley school of cheerleading - is the familiar habit of bands to shout: "Hey, who cares about the mud! Yeah!" or similar to their shit-caked audience.
The people wallowing in it as opposed to the dry, clean people onstage who will soon be approaching the helipad for the trip to Babington House with an ice-cold beer in their hand.
One would imagine.

2007-06-17T07:40:00.001-07:00

Smokers who whinge about the smoking ban

Suck it up. It's what you've asked non-smokers to do for long enough.

2007-06-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

"The posh kids win, they always do."

Observer Music Monthly has done 'The Teen Issue' where little urswicks (see Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams) called things like Jacob and Wolfie and - surprise - an assortment of indulged charges of journalists and media personalities spout off about nothing much in particular and ask a handful of bland questions to people like Bono and Sinead O'Connor about how they coped growing up without MySpace. Meanwhile, the adverts are for the Travelling Wilburys, Nick Lowe and Richard Thompson, showing the advertising dept have a slightly firmer grip on the readership demographic than the editorial team.
The OMM might want to concentrate on producing a decent regular issue before they bother with thinly conceived and realised themes. And Garry Mulholland should get himself off to The Word so his writing doesn't share page space with Caspar Llewellyn Smith and Paul Flynn, as it does in the OMM. 'Wolfie'? OMG. As the kids have it.

2007-06-12T13:11:00.000-07:00

Grazia's language mangler Standing In The Way of Control (from sub-editors)

Paul Flynn's at it again. This time with poor Beth Ditto. His column describes an interview thus:

"I was instantly spellbound by her sheer charisma. It all came spilling out. The transgendered 'boy'friend called Freddie. The crystal meth eating away her home province of Arkansas. Her whole beautiful escape from trailer park, god-bothering Deep South Americana to live the lesbian dream up in Portland, Oregon. Being big."
"It was one of those moments when you stop thinking of your job as a job and start thinking of it as an educational enterprise in tasting a bit of the richness of human experience. I distinctly remember at the time thinking how fabulous it would be if Beth Ditto could be allowed to blossom and grow within celebrity culture. The probability of it looked so unlikely at the time, when pitted against the then current temperature of the Paris/Nicole axis of it all. Yet she did it. Ditto is now tabloid, glamour, fashion and music royalty, in spite of some ferocious odds stacked against her. She is now a new watermark for outsider role modelling. That we gave her that chance is a modern British miracle, and for this we should all pat ourselves on the back."

*Uncaps red pen*

'god-bothering Americana' - Americana refers to cultural artefacts. Don't you mean people?

'your job as an educational experience' - Yeah, it's fair to say you're learning on the job. If you were a roofer you'd be dead in someone's shrubbery right now.

Given the number of superfluous words in this sentence - 'I distinctly remember at the time thinking how fabulous it would be if Beth Ditto could be allowed to blossom and grow within celebrity culture' - do you get paid by the word? If so, can you choose some better ones so it's not so easy to spot? 'The then current' ''That we gave her that' 'She is now a new' 'I distinctly remember at the time thinking.'
Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb *checks word count* Are we nearly there yet?
Or to use Flynn phraseology: 'Are we, in a very real and disparate sense, anywhere approaching the current requirement of the word count I need to beautifully fill yet?"

Can you take 'the then current' temperature of an axis?

Can you be a watermark for outsider role modelling? Don't you mean a benchmark? And don't you mean outsize models?

How exactly is a large singer who's had press coverage suddenly glamour and fashion royalty? That's either slapdash lazy hyperbole..or a very quick coronation.

In Paul Flynn world, Lily Allen's the Queen Mum of style then, and Paolo Nutini's Prince Charles.

2007-06-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

Those motherless fucks

The Guardian arts blog has run a piece called 'Who spoiled The Sopranos?" with a picture from the finale with the identity of the face blocked out with 'spoiler' over it. But the rest of the picture is kind of a spoiler in itself. Apparently the piece is a rumination on the impossibility of avoiding spoilers in the modern media age.
You don't fucking say.

2007-06-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

Mind forg'd manacles

Paris Hilton has explained her shocking breakdown behind bars in a collect call to US interviewer Barbara Walters.
"I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage," she said.
What the fuck did she understand by the word 'prison'?
A suite at the Ritz minus room service?
Paris on release: "This is a scandal, I have to make the world aware: no-one's enjoying themselves in there!"
All this from someone who was fine with handcuffs and intimate video surveillance when it was classed as recreation.

2007-06-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

That Kaplinsky woman again

Alex got angry this morning about her "West London hair."

2007-06-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

The ego landeth

In the writing credits for Kenneth Branagh's new version of As You Like it, imdb.com lists the authors as 'Kenneth Branagh, William Shakespeare.'
Well, when you're dealing with two geniuses, only fair to decide it alphabetically.

Do you think he realised just how good casting he was for Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter?

2007-06-07T01:43:00.000-07:00

I need the schematics for the chip that can trigger the nuclear warhead, and a Cox's Pippin. NOW!

Last night Miss V and a friend were enjoying Spooks series four, when the Rupert Penry Jones character (famous acting dwarf Alex has met, see earlier post) strode in to Thames House during a terrorist crisis and barked at MI5 and assembled US intelligence personnel: "You're no use to me if your blood sugar's crashing and you're dehydrated. There will be sandwiches and fresh fruit available.."
WTF?! In the middle of the worst day of Jack Bauer's life, or any of the ones since which haven't been so great either, did he ever growl to CTU staff: "And keep this nutritious, goddamit."
Guest star Martine McClutchbag was looking far too Hollywood groomed for a coffee shop waitress and doing her usual pound shop Eliza Doolittle: "I'm right browned off with these murderous splinter factions, I am."
Lazy ass bloody British TV drama writers take note - the 24 real time format doesn't mean including all the boring bits where people go for a slash or have a snack.
'Fresh fruit available'? He sounded like a Midland Mainline buffet car. Who ticked that?

2007-06-06T05:57:00.000-07:00

How to divorce with dignity by Liz Jones and Nirpal Dhaliwal

In the latest instalment of the 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' shit-flinging by the media's most ubiquitous bickering couple after Richard and Judy, Nirpal hit back at Liz Jones's predictable 'He cheated on me and spent my money - *SNIFF* - the bastard' pieces for housewives to tut at in the Mail with an article where he claimed that a major reason he resented her and did all that bad stuff was because the indiscreet cow had been writing columns about him. That salvo fired, he's begun a column in Grazia called Metro-Sexist, where he details how glad he is to be out of the marriage, how sex had become a "soulless chore", refers to her "anorexic tendencies" and how he paid £1,000 to leave a holiday just so he could get away from her.

If you take sides here, you've missed something.

2007-06-06T04:58:00.000-07:00

More dictionary corner with Paul Flynn

This week's Grazia column asks 'Is John Barrowman for real?' and swiftly uses 'bare' when meaning 'bear,' but Mr Flynn hasn't even got started. He explains of his Torchwood hero:
"It's as if he has been beamed directly in from another showbiz time and place, a more innocent world where the sheen on your teeth was the window to your soul (basically, the 70s.) He is absolutely bloody brilliant. I can't believe that he is allowed. Now, of course we know that Joseph is the best thing on TV bar none. We equally know that it is the Lord Lloyd Webber show, in all but name..."
He adds: "The only man on TV with the same surfeit of cogent, pre-ejaculatory zeal is Gordon Ramsay, and at least he has the decency to do half of his shows in a state of titillating semi-undress."
And concludes: "..all of the full-blown, preposterous, unique, borderline-lunatic characters are gay. John Barrowman is an affront to my sense of everything. It's definitely a skill."

Just a few points of order.

1. Sheen on teeth/window to soul.
Windows aren't opaque. That's why the phrase associates them with eyes, not teeth. Oh, never mind.

2. 'I can't believe that he is allowed.'
Fancy. An openly homosexual camp man on prime-time Saturday night telly. Someone ought to tell Graham Norton he can come out now, Paul Flynn's spotted a new revolution. Tell you what other people can't believe is allowed - Lloyd Webber promoting his West End musicals on the BBC in the guise of a hyper naff reality contest to entertain idiots.

3. 'Joseph is the best thing on TV bar none.'
Ah, right.

4. 'the same surfeit of cogent, pre-ejaculatory zeal is Gordon Ramsay'
John Barrowman and Ramsay, two peas in a pod. Cogent: appealing to sense or reason. And pre-ejaculatory? Word jizz!

5. 'the decency to do half of his shows in a state of titillating semi-undress'
Does he think Ramsay's trouserless whenever the oven's obscuring his view?

6. 'all of the full-blown, preposterous, unique, borderline-lunatic characters are gay.'
Keep bashing those stereotypes as hard as the dictionary!

7. 'John Barrowman is an affront to my sense of everything.'
There's not much of it to affront.

2007-06-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

Spaceballs 2: The Quest for More Money

The fictional sequel to the Star Wars spoof which comes to mind when noting over-hyped middling B movie with wooden romantic leads Pirates of the Caribbean is making a third outing, or that Innocent Smoothies are now doing Smoothies for Kids. Because standard issue crushed fruity shake drinks are far too grown up for them. Of course.

2007-05-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

Spice Bard

Paul Flynn, as mentioned before here, is a Nathan Barley of titanic proportions. His column in Grazia is titled 'Is It Just Me Or..?' which is a dangerous question when you're Paul Flynn.

This week's offering is titled 'Is the Spice Girls reunion very, very exciting?'.

It goes: "I'm serious. In the fantasy Desert Island Discs interview I play out in my head on a fortnightly basis, Kirsty Young turns to me over a giant microphone and says 'So, Paul, your first record is..' and I respond, casually, 'Spice Up Your Life' by the Spice Girls. Kirsty looks over in that impervious Scottish manner of hers, lets out a slightly tarnished titter, and utters 'How so?'. I then get to expound my theory that Geri Halliwell, at her unforgettable best, was a sort of pre-millenial pop Shakespeare and quote, with all the earnestness it deserves, the couplet 'Flamenco, Lambada/But hip hop is harder.' The best lyric ever used in a pop song. As the individual Spice Girls have turned a bit musically rubbish over the last few years - the less said about Melanie C and that fringe the better, frankly - it's easy to forget what a tour de force they were in their prime."

It continues: "..Some things in life are beyond cynicism and these five women working together again, with conviction, is one of them. The Spice Girls were the only pop group in musical history, apart from Wham and Abba, whose ballads were as good as their knees-ups. Their first stadium tour made me cry adult tears of joy.."

Just a few points of order.

1. 'impervious Scottish manner'
Don't you mean imperious? Impervious would mean she didn't care and then you wouldn't have a hilarious conceit for the opening of your column. Of course, some would say you still don't.

2. 'slightly tarnished titter'
What the fuck does that mean? Sounds like something Bill Oddie would spy with binoculars. 'And there in the branches you can just see the rare tarnished titter..'

3. No-one is shocked and challenged by shit music choices on Desert Island Discs. Everyone just has less respect for you afterwards. Ask Nigella Lawson.

4. '..Geri Halliwell was a sort of pre-millenial pop Shakespeare.'
She didn't write the songs, you hyperbolic clueless cnut. Unless you want to make a point about her vocal phrasing and the iambic pentameter, and I'm fairly sure you don't.

5. 'turned out a bit musically rubbish - the less said about Melanie C and that fringe'
Or perhaps nothing said about the fringe, in a sentence about their respective solo outputs, unless you want to look like you don't know the difference between music and hair dos? Hey Paul, you love Lily Allen and she has a fringe! You're a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

6. 'Some things are beyond cynicism'
Five multi-millionairesses from a manufactured band getting back together to raise their profiles and serious revenue with the oily puppet master of Simon Fuller choosing the timing and running the media assault is certainly one of them. Anyone who displays cynicism over that is one jaded, twisted fruit, who'd probably think Gandhi went about his work for peace with one eye on the biopic.

7. 'The Spice Girls were the only pop group in musical history, apart from Wham and Abba, whose ballads were as good as their knees-ups'
HANG THE DJ

8. 'made me cry adult tears of joy'
You are doing gay men with both decent taste in music and a sense of proportion a huge stereotypical disservice.

Plus, the best Spice Girls song was Say You'll Be There. As any fule kno.

2007-05-27T03:35:00.000-07:00

Mail readers again

Underneath an ill-supported story that Kylie 'upstaged' a 'love' 'rival', the gay (?) Michelle Rodriguez at Cannes, a reader says 'Kylie should stop comparing herself to younger women. That's a game with only one ending.'

Je-sus.

PS Not sure about Kylie's hair from the back. Looks like a pasty.

2007-05-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

Video bollocks

We saw a video by a singer called Kate Nash earlier. She sings in ultra-mannered I've-got-the-arse'ole-on mockney, much like Lily Allen.

When, in the video's storyline, she came to leave her no good boyfriend in their stripped-floorboards flat, she got a tatty battered vintage boxy brown suitcase out. Because in video world, it's never a boring two-wheeled Samsonite trolley case with luggage tag and last holiday's flight stickers on, is it?

Probably because that wouldn't plausibly bust open halfway down the stairs/street, spilling the contents and thus the owner's metaphorical heart/guts, and underlining the fact all break-ups are messy? Or is new stuff just less poignant?

2007-05-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

"The two banes of my life"

To celebrate the blog being one year old, two personal things which make Alex angry: Miss V and Mr Miffy. Both highly impractical and expensive to keep.

2007-05-24T02:24:00.000-07:00

The kindness of Daily Mail reading strangers

Here's another blinder from the comments below stories in the online Mail, harsh by the standards of those who are sick of the 'one minute silence' e-mail spamming, money grasping hysteria surrounding Madeleine McCann's disappearance.
Beneath a picture of her parents visiting a shrine to light a candle -
"Another day, and yet again this couple are pictured without their other two children."

Some cold shit right there.

2007-05-16T03:58:00.000-07:00

Men reading fashion maagaaazzziiiiiines

Alex can only take a few tracks of my copy of Want One, before announcing he's a working man and a private individual who shouldn't be forced to suffer Rufus Wainwright's bellicose yodel.

2007-05-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

Suck it up, love

Paris Hilton is devastated and traumatised at her 45 day prison sentence for driving like a twat, encouraging fans to sign a petition for Governor Schwarzenegger, while her mother screamed at the prosecutors they were "pathetic."

Paris has found her inner piety and went to church in a white dress, presumably to pray for a non-custodial penalty and for the holy trinity of wealth, celebrity and blondeness to win out.

If you were the celestial beardy omnipotent one, how much would it piss you off that the likes of the Californian sex-tape scandal heiress only get in touch when they want something?

Paris's inability to locate the speedometer or the headlights on her Bentley actually creates a situation of great theological import.

Should God answer her prayers it will prove He doesn't exist.

2007-05-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just picture it in black

I was playing a game with our cat Mr Miffy (we were told he was a girl when we adopted him, then added the Mr in a vain attempt to butch the name up when we found he was packing plums) which involved me tapping his tail and pulling my hand away when he went for it. Sooner or later I got a big scratch and prodded him in revenge.

"That's not fair, he won the game!" Alex said.

I didn't realise psychotic Pokemon-like furbags played by Queensberry rules.

It would certainly be news to my friend Tara, who has seen him rip open her packet of Mini Cheddars without a 'do you mind'. She has since suggested the likeness to Gengar (pictured) - two things which are not unrelated, I suspect.

2007-05-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

This news...it's a bit 'sad face'

Further proof that the BBC news operation is going to hell in a speed-boat - on the item about Chris Tarrant being arrested for an assault in a curry-house, the report concluded 'He's due to present Have I Got News For You this week, and he says he'll still be doing it.'
Cut to the studio, and Kaplinsky sugar-tits and stooge Alagiah are laughing together about it. LAUGHING. A cheating divorced gameshow host throwing cutlery about over prawn dhansak may not be Darfur, but since when did the presenters get to decide a celebrity being charged with a criminal act is funny? Just go the whole hog and put the Desperative Housewives incidental music over the top, while getting a lookalike in a cheese-coloured wig to re-enact the stunt, lobbing a fork while yelling "Do you want to use a lifeline?" What do they think it is, The 6'o'clock Show?

As Alex says, we never got this shit from Moira Stuart - Kaplinsky acts like she's on Good Morning America.
He concluded: "They're the kind of presenters who look like they're looking forward to the nice news item at the end."

2007-05-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

My texting

Alex is not a fan of my enthusiasm for texting. He might have a point. I accidentally left my phone at home yesterday and during a short walk through town found I had three separate urges to send a text, repeatedly remembering I lacked the equipment.

The texts were, in summary:

(passing shop) 'Lily Allen for New Look is freaking hideous, by the way'

(seeing bus) 'Shane Richie in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest!! Some mishtake shurely?'

(passing celebrity) 'I've just seen that ginger actor from Primeval. He had a coffee.'

The sum of the world's happiness was not decreased by their loss.

2007-05-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

Holby 'Hot Fuzz' Blue

HolbyBlue was utter bollocks, but even if it was Wyvern's answer to The Wire - why the fuck did Charlie Casualty have to turn up for no reason in the first five minutes?
BBC '360 degree' spin-off cross-promotion brand extension focus group thinking, that's why. They spend all their time working on the website and having jizz-dreams about the Radio Times cover, but let the over confident, under talented ex-public school boys clogging the arteries of creativity at the corporation spend all of 15 minutes on the script.

And you can't move for TV critics - lately cheerleaders who suspend their mental faculties for any British drama if it comes with buzzwords attached like 'Life' 'Mars' or 'Russell' 'T' and 'Davies' - saying what a cheeky little triumph it is.

Yet a friend knows someone in the cast who reports an upcoming episode was so bad they all rebelled and demanded a rewrite before filming. This is surely no surprise to the viewing public who sat through lines like: "I want that report on my desk by the end of the day!" or noted a character's outline in the publicity was "He's a maverick who'll stop at nothing to get his man."

And the bit with the paedophile in the park waggling the sweets was pure Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

This is Torch 'Ed' Wood all over again.

2007-05-10T04:39:00.001-07:00

Jaime Murray out of Hustle

Alex reckons she's not a stranger to non-medically necessary scalpel work and it causes him deep unease.

2007-05-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

The 'F Off' Plan Diet: Part Two

A friend relates their revulsion at a Polly Vernon (lifestyle journalism's premier camera botherer who thinks she's London's answer to Carrie Bradshaw) article where she gives the 'staying fashion thin' tip of ordering food you don't like in restaurants, making you less likely to eat it.

Much like avoiding smiling minimises crow's feet, or sitting in a beekeeper's hat in your cellar on sunny days helps stave off wrinkles?

She is one hedonistic party chick.

2007-05-08T05:24:00.000-07:00

In a sense, aren't we all struggling to carry the aubergine bake of life, without the oven gloves of wisdom?

Brown nose-i-trix Chrissy Iley's at it again - marvel at the Keira Knightley horror in The Observer at the weekend.

When KK comes out with bland cheerleading about the wonderful cast for the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Chrissy explains she's "displaying her strong sense of loyalty and gratitude." Oh right. And there was those of us who haven't met A listers thinking it was by-the-book PR platitudes.

Ms Isley's knee-touching pop psychology is always a treat, though, and with Keira she outdoes herself.

"She's always saying she's not very good at things, even when she is. This might be very 22, but cooking full dinner parties isn't very 22 at all. Last year she was a big fan of Nigella. She dropped her aubergine bake on the floor and cried. Was that symbolic that her life was too hot to handle?"

Thank goodness these doubt-wracked celebrities have Chrissy on hand to point up their talents, and analyse every mundane incident in the context of their huge glittering journey of magnificence.
Don't think that it isn't cnuts who ask for her as interviewer. She's practically a fluffer.

2007-05-03T01:51:00.000-07:00

Is that Worcester porcelain, sir?

Tom Chaplin's out of rehab, and he's been to shitty hell and back.

"My bandmate Tim would come to my house and I'd refuse to answer the door. I was spending a lot of time at home crying in front of Cash in the Attic. I felt really depressed. I was taking a lot of drugs and drinking."

Rock'n'roll demons...or an average day for the unemployed?

2007-05-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Noel Fielding, 33, dates Pixie Geldof, 16. Groo.

It's one thing to be a dieted man-boy Goth in red skinny jeans and your sister's accessories trying to look 24. It's another to use your disguise as an eternal student to do a near-R Kelly.

But as the saying goes: "Sooner or later a man who wears two faces.... will use one of them to snare him some GCSE-age poontang."

2007-05-01T13:27:00.000-07:00

"I'm just going to cut your G-string off"

Alex just called up to complain, having been appalled at some larger ladies on How To Look Good Naked who were scandalised a cellulite cream didn't do anything.
"It might make your skin a bit better but it's not going to make you NOT FAT, is it?" he thundered, conveniently tipping me off the programme had started.
Having watched it, here's what I don't get. At the esteem-building summit of the experience, presenter Gok Wan (would you trust a chest-flasher in those specs whose name is an anagram of Go Wank?) turns to his nervous guinea pig and says: "You've had a makeover and you're feeling fabulous, but there's one more thing I want you to do for me" - drum roll - "I want you to do this photoshoot naked."
Cue much shock, lip-biting and eye-rolling.

Was the name of the series not warning enough?

2007-04-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

The Kooks: An Apology

A while back I posted Alex's view that 'The Kooks is the kind of name you reject at the first band practice.' Reminded of that the other day, Alex said 'No - that's the kind of name you reject at the first band practice, but then you THROW OUT whoever suggested it from the band. It's that bad.'

Ahhhh.

Sorry.

2007-04-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

No message could've been any clearer

So as Borrell's music is an abomination, so are his clothes. It's a simple mirroring technique.
Kirsten wants to take a long hard look at herself in the mirror, and not from the vantage point of above, with a straw up her snout.
The sort of metaphorical mirror Michael Jackson consulted in Man In The Mirror, where he said if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself (hot) and then look at the creature next to you in the deep vee tee, leggings and cowboy boots, and make a change.
At the very least make him change.

2007-04-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

Alex in not Mr Brightside surprise (or 'Jenny was a friend of mine')

My friend Jenny came to stay at the weekend, when she was told that The Killers are not good but 'horribly derivative' and the singer is not fit but a 'Mormon dwarf queer.'
Luckily she doesn't just come for the conversations about music.

2007-04-25T06:16:00.000-07:00

Camping

Why take a holiday which is worse than normal life?

2007-04-18T09:14:00.000-07:00

Seriously, him?

Natasha Bedingfield's horrifying track I Want To Have Your Babies features a doubly horrifying middle eight where a kid hums a harmony. In the video he looks just like junior antiques twizzler and plum-voiced gender bender James Harries. Is she trying to burrow into our brains and lay bad eggs?

2007-04-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

We're all fine here now...situation normal...how are you?

Let's keep this short, given it's been pointed out before - but how come the modern version of rehab is a fortnight-long miracle? And why does the media collude in the myth?

Britney Spears is now out and about, and because she's dropped 10lbs and is putting a wig over her manically shaved pate, the magazines are all trumpeting how she's her badass self again.

So never mind if you have post-natal depression, are going through a messy divorce, may or may not be fit to care for your children and are collapsing in a puddle of crystal meth/career burn-out/crotch-flashing lunacy.

Two weeks in a spartan accomodation with a daily programme of grim activities - so Malibu Butlins, basically - and you're cleaned up and tickety-boo to get back in the dating game and the gossip columns.

Mental health appears to be equated with whether or not you look hot. If Britney Spears had decided on sober reflection, given the traumatic events of recent months, she didn't want the fame, and returned to a quiet life in Kentucky with a head like an egg and gained 20lbs, the stories would run: 'What a loony! Man has she LOST it. *Phew*"

2007-04-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

"It's not your job to be as confused as Nigel."

Not to sound sexist, but you never get a bigger cock-up than when the property expert says to a beleagured couple in the midst of a tumbledown ruin - or if in Grand Designs, some place with staircases which run into ceilings, like an Escher print - 'Who's your project manager?' and the wife says 'Me'. Qualifications: a stack of well-thumbed copies of Homes and Gardens, and a love of bossing people about.

Cut to a scene of her haranguing a builder with her hands on her hips, and his team again showing her the pictures she drew.

Probably using the same clarity, detail and scale as employed by Nigel Tufnel on the napkin for the Stonehenge model in Spinal Tap.

2007-04-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Sleep easy: the distinction of rank has been preserved

The Mail's gone into baloney overdrive with the break-up of Prince William and Kate Middleton, asking whether she was 'a victim of appalling snobbery' and demanding 'Which side are you on?'.

Because apparently: 'Everybody has a theory about who is to blame for their split.'

Ooh, in the apparently untraumatic relationship cessation of a pair of posh young 20-somethings in London we don't know?

Alex isn't short of opinions, and his is: "Who gives a bollocks."

But one of the paper's pundits, Kishanda Fulford, blames Kate for being common, saying: "To be honest, though, I am a firm believer in people marrying into the same class. There is no confusion over what time 'dinner' is and what to call the 'loo', or vice versa."

Love has bridged race, culture, continents, war, religion, warring families and separation that lasts decades. But woe betide the effect on star-crossed lovers if one them makes tea before Hollyoaks and refers to the 'lavvy.'

It's simply insurmountable, even for the truest hearts. It's hard to comprehend the kind of trouble one could run into with such fundamental misunderstandings.

But hang on, isn't Kishanda married to Francis 'fucking' Fulford?

In which case it's a bit rum baba that she's lecturing the great unwashed on linguistic niceties.

See if you're a commoner - which is correct etiquette:

a) "Excuse me, where's the toilet?"

b) "Excuse me, where is the FUCK TWATTY lavatory. You bitch."

2007-04-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

MySpace fules

This week I had the misfortune to follow a link in a feature and find myself at Fearne Cotton's MySpace page.

It bears the phrase: "El vino did flow."

'Cotton' signs off her blogs with 'peace.'

One of the comments says 'hope things are going wonderfully in Cotton world! LOL!'

Why are you 'laughing out loud' at that? Are you high or mentally backward?

And stop using '!!!!!!!!!!!!' and emoticons everywhere, you semi-literate dicks.

MySpace - chimp's tea party, more like. With your genial host pouring the Tetley's being.....good old Uncle Rupert Murdoch.

2007-04-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

"Tennis playing tits"

Alex's catch-all term for the type of blokes he claims his lady has the poor taste to like.

Actor Rupert Penry Jones epitomises this sort, he says, who "go to the pub on Sundays with their jumpers tied round their shoulders."

Alex was fortunate enough to see RPJ up close and informally dressed when they were both thrown out of a hotel during a fire drill in the early hours recently.

Strangely though, with each subsequent recounting of this tale to interested female parties, RPJ got slightly shorter and more full of himself.

If women continue to ask Alex about it, no doubt RPJ will end up as a Time Bandits midget who dumped in a car-park at dawn and shouted 'Don't you know who I am!' when other patrons objected.

2007-04-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

Dubai

Alex was appalled at a somewhat materialistic article in my copy of Grazia this week which expounded the lifestyle joys for upwardly mobile ladies in relocating to Dubai - 5 star hotels, no tax, designer shoes.

Just the small issues of a soulless lack of culture, exploited immigrant workforce leading miserable lives, repressive regime toward women and lurking menace of Jim Davidson to spoil the view.

But who cares when you can shop, girls?!

Alex: "If you think Dubai's good, there's something wrong with your head."

2007-04-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

I'll go out on a limb and say the rest of this person probably didn't give two shits about the crocodile's wellbeing at this moment

Among the pictures of this crocodile dribbling on a vet's arm was the reassurance 'the crocodile was shot at but unharmed.'

Oh for fuck's sake.

If you look at this picture and worry at the retribution which may be unleashed on the sinister predator-reptile, you've got your priorities fatally muddled. And look at Mr Croc - no such woolly thinking from him. Mmmm, manflesh.

Do you think the vet, as he lay screaming in agony on the ground, blood gushing out like a geyser from the ragged stump and the chances of saving the limb receding all the time - and over in a second if someone remembers to chew - was impressed at some tit aiming shots three feet over Mr Croc's scaly head?

Next up: round-table mediation sessions to resolve ownership, where Mr Croc can be invited to explain what the arm means to him, and the vet asked not to use any 'judging' language.

2007-04-04T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sadly it's hard to condemn this Photoshop guerrilla artist

We've just endured Ben Elton's new ITV show Get A Grip, which we were riveted to with rictus horror faces not dissimilar to Munch's Scream. Elton sits next to Alexa Chung, 20-something sometime Popworld co-host, in an odd, awkward behind-a-desk/pretending to have a vibrant back-and-forth style. Think those shite Times adverts which imagined that Gordon Ramsay debated the ethics of plastic surgery over breakfast croissants with Jodie Kidd, and you're not far off, only subtract the croissants. Ben Elton's just performing all his usual sort of scripted stuff, including jokes about Live 8 and Mohammed al Fayed wanting a passport. Which he obviously doodled down ages ago and thinks he can dust off and use without anyone noticing it seems a bit whiskery on a 'TOPICAL' 'news' 'satire.' This is interspersed with creaking three second illustrative 'sketches.' Worst of all though, the beard for his out of date format and material, and 'hey kids, this is something groovy called editorial balance' device of putting ex-model Alexa Chung next to him is actually glaringly sexist - given her role is purely to prettily spout the Generation Y moronisms off the autocue that set up his grumpy old man diatribes. She didn't get one funny line or intelligent observation, just parroted witless statements like 'Why would you cook if there are ready meals?' and 'Sat nav is great.' Yet she regularly cracked up at his jokes as if she was as obliged as a hostess on the Generation Game. Right fucking on.

And oh the irony, laughing at the one amusing bit about Diana's friends not being much like the anoraked mourners outside Buckingham Palace (in like a bullet with a ten year old story there) kind of stuck in the throat when delivered by the host of the Queen's Jubilee parties.

Alex: "He can't get away with this stuff now he's a sycophantic establishment chump, forest-destroying novelist, New Labourite West End shit pimper."

Alexa Chung said: "It’s a hilarious version of Lost In Translation."

Lost In Translation's success was down to the power of Bill Murray's ad-libbing. Alexa might want to start, soon-ish, because looks like she'll get as many good lines out of Ben Elton as it takes Sofia Coppola to bag a screenwriting Oscar.

One word review. Creepy.

2007-04-04T13:42:00.000-07:00

Table service in bars. If it was like this it would be halfway to OK.

Went out to a bar last night which has suddenly got pretensions. Approaching the bar, we were shooed away by a disgusted manageress. "It's table service, sit down."

"Erm...we already know what we want. Two G&Ts and a V&T, please?"

"Yes, yes - sit down."

Ten minutes later, no drinks, a waitress/bar person/roaming booze pimp passes and says: "Can I get you anything?"

To which I say, I don't know, because we left an order with someone else. Luckily she guesses we're in for a wait and serves us anyway. But the 'round' concept is screwed because now they bring one big bill at the end and everyone fumbles around for change.

What is with table service in bars? If we wanted a sedentary alcohol-ordering experience, we'd go to a restaurant. And also, if you're going to refuse us access to the bar ourselves and insist on an intermediary - snap bloody to it. See also: bar-cafe-bistro whatevers which shoo you away from ordering food at the bar, and then don't come and take your order for 20 minutes.

Presumably the vision of a typical customer is an unemployed Old Father Time with two crooked legs and a negligible thirst.

2007-04-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Earth father

A while back I mused to Alex that it might be nice to adopt kids even when you can have your own.

"No," Alex said.

"Why?"

"Because we might get a weird one."

So natural children are like farm-assured chickens.

2007-03-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

Maybe he should change his name to Jonotton Yeah?

Unadorned, here's journalist Paul Flynn's profile from The Guardian website.

"Paul Flynn is a contributing editor at the fashion magazines iD, Pop and the gay monthly, Attitude. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Sunday Times, Sunday Express and the Observer Music Monthly.

"Other key interests include gay culture, reality TV, slick politicians, pop music, the new working classes, soap opera, Manchester and street fashion. Last year he wrote the Big Brother book for Transworld and is currently writing a book about how Hoxton happened. He lives in the east end of London with his partner, also Paul, who runs the trends consultancy agency Vandal Insights."

Totally Mexico.

2007-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

Assaulting employees is so hot right now

Celebrated clothes-hanger and servant thrasher Naomi Campbell took her bog-cleaning community service in New York so seriously, she arrived every day dressed in outfits worth thousands of dollars, topping it off on the last day by leaving for Elton John's 60th party in this low-key number.

To the untrained eye, it looks like an arrogant pisstake by a spoilt arse who thinks contrition is a fragrance by Calvin Klein.

But let's defer to the professionals - and when it came to analysing every ensemble and congratulating Naomi on her catwalk cool, the fashion magazines were falling over themselves.

Much like her maids.

2007-03-31T07:49:00.000-07:00

News burp

In a piece on BBC breakfast telly about children riding bikes, the presenter got to the end of the item, and then said: 'Ready - go!' and all the slightly shiftily embarrassed kids lined up on their bikes started ringing their bells. The presenter turned to camera with a 'Doh! Will you listen to that din?!' expression before it cut back to the studio.

They must think we're all divvys.

2007-03-31T07:27:00.000-07:00

NO.

Danny Wallace. We get it. You were trying to start your own cult/country/say yes to anything anyone asked you. For those of us who grasped the entirety of the comic potential in these wacky concepts in the first three seconds we heard about them, there weren't more laughs to be had while you hawked them round every bloody media outlet in pursuit of a book deal and killing time til the next bob-a-job from the BBC. And you've got a quote on the cover of one of your books from Davina McCall stating you are 'a genius.'

Forgive us for having precisely dick-all faith in her frame of reference. 'Socrates, Shakespeare, Einstein....bespectacled bloke aiming to parlay attention-seeking stunts into the weekend light entertainment gigs Jamie Theakston's lost since the whores-in-the-dungeon scandal.'

For some people, Fresher's Week never really ends.

2007-03-31T07:16:00.000-07:00

James Delingpole

If you ever wondered what would happen to Nathan Barley in his late 30s when he decided to be true to his privately-schooled roots, settle down in a huge London pied a terre and get angry about the nanny state, author James Delingpole goes some way to providing an answer. How To Be Right is not only an ill-informed, mean-spirited little Tory whinge, trying desperately to curry easy favour with Mail readers, it's also incredibly dull-witted and unfunny. Thrill to him damn Coldplay as 'coffee table'! Frown with confusion as to how Dr Delingpole can claim passive smoking isn't harmful, without a shred of irony or attempt at entertainment! Watch him fumble topic after topic, as his fundamentally objectionable manner radiates off every page! Squint with confusion at his claim that comic Bill Bailey is an example of a trenchant leftie! Wonder how the fuck it could get published, then remember he is a 'Camford' cnut with connections! It reads like a Conservative backbencher with a schoolboy crush on Jeremy Clarkson and a peculiarly pedestrian writing style using cultural references six years out of date to rip off Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit? and leaving a gap at the end of every entry where a junior researcher is supposed to add a pay-off joke to make the bigotry more palatable. But it gets better - a Google of Delingpole throws up (in apt terminology) an interview with him where he sends himself up better than any miserable little blogger ever could.

Such as:

"I think there are two sorts of writer. There's the Jeffrey Archer type, who can't write for toffee, but is quite good at thinking up plots, and then there's the sort like me, the sort who uses style as a way of hiding the fact that they haven't got many great thriller plot-lines.'' He ponders for a minute, and says, "And in a way, I think it becomes a virtue. I don't think my books at all suffer from lack of Archer-type-incident.''

So, let this be rightly understood: in the rest of his ouevre, his flair for prose is the strength he's relying on to carry us through thin plots? '...in a way, I think it becomes a virtue.' The motto of his old school, translated from the Latin, is 'Posh Thickies Still Prosper'.

"Writing,'' he says, "is a horrible business. It's an absolute nightmare job. The worst in the world. And the only way of making it bearable is to write about things that interest you and you care about. In a way, it's an exercise in stopping yourself getting bored.''

Perhaps he should give himself a break and go get a better, less agonising job. Somerfield near us has a few vacancies, and I hear there's a bare minimum of existential angst to be had on the deli counter.

But wait, the guy's got demons, as he outlines in his book, Thinly Disguised Autobiography:

"It's an attempt to exorcise the bad shit that's happened to me in my past," he tells me. "The sex that one didn't have. The success that one didn't enjoy. The disappointments. The incidents in your life which have had a far bigger impact on you than they should have done."

It's the fruitfully reproductive sex he did have which concerns me.

He's fearless, however:

"I was having a conversation with my brother about what a damn shame it was that we weren't in 'Nam,'' says Delingpole.

God, yeah. As long as they were part of a platoon trialling exceptionally tall hats.

A warm round of applause needs to go to a pundit on a radio show's recent discussion panel, who, when Delingpole squeaked: 'My book should be in the humour section, not the politics section!' remarked 'It wouldn't sell there either.'

2007-03-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

The People's Pea

Fergie's song Glamorous outlines how she's flyin' first class/up in the sky/poppin' champagne, apart from when the muppet-faced diva has been poppin' champagne before she gets to a Virgin Atlantic check-in desk, in which case she gets banned from boarding and all passengers are grounded on the tarmac for an hour while they retrieve her Louis Vuitton from the luggage hold and fetch multiple espressos.

However, Fergie's not all about the dollar, as she she goes on to explain:

'I still go to Taco Bell/Drive through, raw as hell/I don't care, I'm still real/No matter how many records I sell'

You still mumble down Mexican fast food? Shiiiiiiiiit. The regime is gonna shut you DOWN, man.

2007-02-04T02:11:00.000-08:00

"Modern life is rubbish"

Maybe Bloc Party were the victims of unimaginative sub-editors, but their current NME cover and interview bears the strapline: 'modern life is rubbish.'

Oh shut up.

Makes you wish you could cram the ennui-filled 20-something wearisome whingers in a Tardis, whisk them back to the fifteenth century and give them peasant-fungus. Then ask if they a) had the energy to form a band and b) the time to complain about it.

Also, can anyone else shift the suspicion that - in the grand tradition of David Bowie and his tribute act, Brett Anderson - singer Kele Okereke isn't really bisexual, he just wants to have it both ways?

...Oh.