Sunday, December 28, 2008
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET
I'd say that my "favourite" (in other words, least bad) posts of 2008 were the Billy Joel post and the Bill Cotton post. Perhaps I should just write about blokes called Bill in future?
I wasn't aware of a Billy Joel documentary being shown over Christmas, but BBC2 gave over an evening to acknowledge the passing of Sir Bill Cotton.
We watched the documentary The Man Who Made Eric & Ernie.
As is usually the case nowadays, talking heads were drifted in to spout platitudes about Sir Bill.
In fact, there weren't any words from Bill Cotton himself. No old footage of him talking about his contribution to what's regarded as a golden age of TV, or indeed, his run ins with egotistical celebs (as mentioned in my post, hem hem).
Holy pause button, Batman! I should apologise to any Windsor Davies fans for obscuring the great man's face.
I wasn't aware of a Billy Joel documentary being shown over Christmas, but BBC2 gave over an evening to acknowledge the passing of Sir Bill Cotton.
We watched the documentary The Man Who Made Eric & Ernie.
As is usually the case nowadays, talking heads were drifted in to spout platitudes about Sir Bill.
In fact, there weren't any words from Bill Cotton himself. No old footage of him talking about his contribution to what's regarded as a golden age of TV, or indeed, his run ins with egotistical celebs (as mentioned in my post, hem hem).
Lining up to lavish praise on him were the likes of Michael Parkinson, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, Michael Grade, Eddie Braben and Ronnie Corbett (wearing a jacket with the sort of gilt buttons that only someone with Variety Club Of Great Britain and Water Rat connections could get away with).
Eddie Braben described Bill's "... wonderful smile ... his face was built for a smile. He'd got lovely chubby cheeks". I'm sure that all of the viewers shed a tear.
Bill's non-appearance gave him the aura of a friendly, avuncular ghost, presumably looking down from Heaven, remaining within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails ...
... or smiling with those lovely chubby cheeks.
We saw some TV clips that we'd seen a million times before. They were the right clips, but they weren't necessarily in the right order.
At least I was able to see Bob Swipe's point, made in a recent podcast, about the uncanny resemblance between Melvyn Hayes and Iggy Pop, which your correspondent has demonstrated here by the medium of crap photography and Sky Plus.
Holy pause button, Batman! I should apologise to any Windsor Davies fans for obscuring the great man's face.
Jimmy Perry and David Croft are starting to look very old indeed.
Ronnie Corbett's voice is getting deeper and deeper ...
... but not as deep as that of narrator Frances De La Tour, whose voice is now as woody, resonant and dark as an empty port barrel.
Michael Grade wasn't wearing any braces.
Soon, there will be nobody left from the Golden Age Of Television, and Simon Cowell will control all of our lives, whether we like it or not.
Blankety Blank.
Labels: Andre Previn, Billy Joel, Bob Swipe, Iggy Pop, James Joyce, Melvyn Hayes, Morecambe And Wise, Ronnie Corbett, Sir Bill Cotton
Thursday, October 30, 2008
"QUE?"
Confusion, chaos and agony is raging through Britain at the news that the BBC hasn't sacked anybody over the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross business for a whole FORTY FIVE MINUTES.
The outrage has further been compelled by the fact that Jonathan Ross has been suspended without pay from the BBC for only TWELVE WEEKS.
Hah! The corrupt, vile Ross won't feel any loss from that will he - twelve weeks' pay??? That would only be enough to buy the vile Ross one of his infamous suits! One less suit in the Ross wardrobe - think about it! Hardly going to cause him any sort of pain or suffering, is it?
The outrage has been described as the most controversial incident involving a British media figure since John Lennon suggested that The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, or the time that Lance Percival implied that John Profumo had "a wandering willy" during a topical calypso on the outrageous 1960's satire show That Was The Week That Was.
Rabid Daily Mail readers have announced that they have organised a protest march which will take place in London and will end in a demonstration outside the BBC Television Centre. An estimated crowd of half a million Mail readers will wail and beat their chests like elderly peasant women at a funeral. They will rub hot ashes all over themselves. A pair of twenty foot papier mache effigies of Ross and Brand will be burned as people chant "skin the bastards".
There has been criticism from a rival group of Sun reading Ross/Brand haters, who say that the demo could cause confusion, what with the effigy burning. Some passers by may think that this is a part of Bonfire Night or Hallowe'en celebrations, and the power of the message will be lost, in the Sun readers' opinion.
An emergency BBC online questionnaire has been set up to determine exactly who should be sacked or suspended from shows next so that the BBC can be seen to "be doing the right thing" and to be answerable to its "customers". So far, the most popular choices to be given the boot are Jo Brand (because she has the same surname as Russell Brand), Sir Bill Cotton (deceased), newsreader Huw Edwards, disc jockeys Edith Bowman, Rob "Da" Bank and Sir Terry Wogan, and weatherman Daniel Corbett.
Labels: BBC, Jonathan Ross, Lance Percival, Russell Brand, Sir Bill Cotton
