Saturday, November 29, 2008
'FORE!
In recent years, the Christmas number one has been a foregone conclusion - it has to be whoever has just won the X-Factor.
Jimmy Tarbuck: off to a tee
Iggy Pop: the world's forgotten boy
Ronnie Corbett: straight down the middle
Bing Crosby: what a dude! Don't you wish golfers dressed like this ...
... rather than like this (Kenny Lynch)
However, this year there is going to be stiff competition from a charity record that's being recorded with an amazing array of talent.
A number of celebrity - sorry - CELEBRIDEE golfers are getting together to record a cover of a song. All of the profits will go to a charidee: to be specific, the Help A Snub Nosed Freckled Cockney Urchin charidee.
Everybody loves snub nosed cockney urchins, who are definitely cuter than old people or starving people in the developing world or wretchedly poor people whose homes have been lost due to floods or storms. After all, we've all wanted to pinch the cheek of a cockney urchin at some time or other, haven't we?
Anyway, the combined celebs will leave you dazzled with their starry ways. They are:
Jimmy Tarbuck: off to a tee
Iggy Pop: the world's forgotten boy
Ronnie Corbett: straight down the middle
Bing Crosby: what a dude! Don't you wish golfers dressed like this ...
... rather than like this (Kenny Lynch)
Alice Cooper: he wants to be elected
Bruce Forsyth: wood on the fairway
... as I said, what an array of talent! Bing, as you may have worked out for yourself, is going to croon from beyond the grave. This hasn't been attempted since Nat King Cole recorded that duet with his daughter, but you can always rely on Bing, can't you?
Anyway, the collabo is going to be a new version of the Arctic Monkeys hit I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.
It'll be called I Bet You Look Good On The Golf Course.
So open your purses and buy or download this when it's released next week and all your money will go towards putting a smile on the face of a cockney urchin. That has to be worth shelling out for, doesn't it?
ALEX AND ALEXA - GET A ROOM! (Chosen headline on the London Lite gossip page approx. once every three weeks)
Labels: Arctic Monkeys, Bing Crosby, Bruce Forsyth, celebridees, charidee, cockney urchins, Judith O'Reilly, Tarby
Friday, August 29, 2008
SONG FOR RUTH ELLIS
Sir Bill with Croft and Perry (left - bow tie by Moschino, monkey suit model's own)
In my absence there doesn't seem to have been much fuss made on the internet about the death of one of the behemoths of light entertainment - Sir Bill Cotton. So here is a rather late obituary.
Sir Bill used to be known as Billy Cotton Junior well into his fifties, which must have been a source of frustration, especially as he was the son of Billy Cotton who basically WAS the bits of the BBC that weren't Richard Dimbleby.
Billy Jr. MADE HIS OWN WAY THROUGH SHEER HARD GRAFT AND TALENT despite his famous dad (of "Wakey Wakey!" fame), rather like Peaches Geldorrrrrf, who has landed a job at a New York magazine because she has MADE HER OWN WAY THROUGH SHEER HARD GRAFT AND TALENT despite her famous dad Sir Lord King Emperor Pete Briquette (the short one) out of the Boomtown Rats. I hope the two met before he died: they would have had so much in common and Sir Bill could have imparted some valuable words of wisdom to Peaches before she left to conquer America.
Bill, born in 1928, was a BBC light entertainment producer in the 1950's and worked his way up to become Head Of Light Entertainment during what has turned out to be a golden era at the BBC. He presided over such shows as Bruce Forsyth Presents: The Boy Bruce And The Mighty Atom, Do Not Adjust Your Set, The Tim Brooke Taylor Experiment, That Sketch With John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett and Ronnie Barker, Do You Want Me To Repeat That Again?, Bruce Forsyth Presents: War Of The Worlds and I Think Marty Feldman Is A Bit Overrated, Actually, Although That Thing Where He's Playing Golf On Top Of A Train Is Fairly Funny I Suppose.
Due to SHEER HARD GRAFT AND TALENT he eventually got The Big Job - as BBC Fat Controller.
He wasn't a man to mince his words, and had many a run in with top BBC celebrities. Of Terry Wogan he once said "don't be taken in by the easy Irish charm. That cunt insists that his wigs get ferried about in limos at the licence payer's expense. I mean, fuck me! The man's a freak of nature!" He claimed that Clive Dunn "went through the girls who danced with the Young Generation like a dose of salts, the cheeky bugger. He was always up the clap clinic."
The last comment seems a little hypocritical in light of the fact that Sir Bill once had an on/off fling with that voluptuous ginger piece from variety dance troupe the Television Toppers. She eventually left him after *finding happiness* with the creepy George Mitchell, uberlord of the Black And White Minstrels.
Sir Bill leaves a longstanding wife - Kate - and is actually vaguely related to dynamic and charismatic TV presenter Fearne Cotton, so I can't make a feeble joke about her having made her way in the cut throat entertainment industry through SHEER HARD GRAFT AND TALENT and not because her granddad is Sir Bill Cotton.
Tributes were paid by Bruce Forsyth, who claimed that Sir Bill was "the consumate professional, a great golfer, and a warm, passionate man. They broke the mould the day they made him, believe me." Ronnie Corbett described him as "a great golfer who was great fun on the golf course" and Danny La Rue said "I'm distraught ... a light has gone out in all our lives. Not since Arthur Askey died have I felt so bereft. Look up to the sky tonight and you'll be able to see Bill's star twinkling back at you. Not 'arf, mate!! Wotcha!!!"
Rest in pieces, big man.
Labels: BBC, Billy Cotton Band Show, Bruce Forsyth, money goes to money, nepotism, obituaries, Peaches Geldorrrrrf, Ronnie Corbett, sheer hard graft and talent, wakey wakey
