If I Ran Television (2)

Vicious: series one, programme six. 

Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Sir Frances De La Tour sit on an ornate sofa. They each hold this episode's script.

De La Tour: I'm going to ACT the fuck out of this.

Jacobi: I'm going to act the fuck out of THIS. 

McKellen: I'M going to ACT the FUCK out of THIS!

The audience applauds wildly. 

Iwan Rheon enters, clutching a heavy claw hammer. In a frenzy, he uses it to smash in the heads of the three main actors. 

He opens a bottle of Nembutal, swallows them all, and lays down in front of the corpses. 

"If you read their diary, all will be explained", he murmurs. "PS Especially the latter part." 

He dies. 

If I Ran Television (1)

The Apprentice: series nine, programme one. 

A cold morning, Tilbury docks. Ten idiots are divided into two equal teams. Each team stands in front of a large shipping container. 

Lord Sugar strides towards them. 

"Your first task", he barks, "is inside these." 

The doors of the containers open. The contestants, eager to impress Lord Sugar, fight to get inside. Just as they realise the containers are empty, the doors swing closed, trapping them. 

A crane picks up each of the containers. The camera pulls back as the containers are swung out over the river, then dropped into the waters below. 

Lord Sugar looks into the camera. 

"They're all fired", he says. "Now here's some cartoons."

He walks away, brushing dirt from his hands. 

You Understand This Is Not About You, Don't You?

Anybody who works in retail – at least, anybody who works at the sharp end, the ‘client facing’ bit, the ‘dealing with actual people’ part – and they’ll tell you that one of the more fascinating parts of the job is The Regular Punter. I dare say that’s true enough for the average supermarket checkout worker, or the nice young lady who makes your latte in Starbucks when you pop in on the way to the office, but it’s especially true for those of us who toil in the more specialist arena.

Our regulars have a more intense relationship with us, as we are essentially their enablers. There’s a strange mix of condescension, respect and yes, possibly a little awe passing from them to us – regardless of the nature of our shop and regardless of their need for us to provide their weekly fix, we are, after all, just shop workers – and in all honesty it’s a two-way thing. We’ll smile and have a little chat and by all means we’ll get on fine with you, maybe even be glad to see you, but when it comes down to bare basics the driving force behind us is that we’re after your money.

Harsh? Maybe. True, though.

Having said that, we have Regular Punters who we adore. One of them phones us every time they’re on their way to the shop and asks us what we’d like from the Costa he passes on the way. Another  - who works in the film industry, as quite a few of our RPs do – always turns up like Rik Mayall’s Flashheart character, swinging his battered old Merc into the parking space outside, pushing his ever-present shades up into his wild mane as he strides through the door, barking “HI!” and at the same time shaking hands with anybody in reach, just like the old-time actor-manager that he isn’t. Then he’ll march around the shop demanding “HAVE I BOUGHT THIS? DID I BUY THIS LAST TIME?” while he picks up a huge pile of things. He’s a genuinely funny bloke. It doesn’t hurt that he’ll drop at least a hundred on every visit, but that’s almost a bonus given the fun I have when he’s in.

Other side of the coin? Well, there are the quiet ones, the bookish ones – and there’s nothing wrong with them, believe me – and the ones who know everything about this industry better than you do and quicker than you do and by jingo they’re going to make sure you know that they do.

And then there’s the weirdoes. There’s Stinky Steve. There’s Mad Rasta Jim (“I’m from Jamaica, mon! Mmmm, Irie!” he says from beneath his big rasta hat and from within his Jamaica trackies, despite being even whiter than I am and having a Surrey accent and no dreadlocks) (Actually, I tell a lie. He did have dreads, a big old mass of ‘em, but for one week only).  There’s Alfred, who has the biggest, most spectacular mutton-chop sideburns you’ve ever seen outside of The Victorian Illustrated Weekly Gentleman. There’s Jombo – yes, Jombo – who is a huge, shaking, sweating mass of a man, who spends his week collecting stray shopping trolleys for a large local supermarket and his Saturdays turning up at the shop fifteen minutes before closing and who suffers from… being odd. Jombo loves one character in particular and talks and talks and talks about him all the time. Jombo’s Dad came in with him once, and it turns out that Jombo’s Dad is equally enthusiastic about a fictional character, but in Dad’s case it’s Jesus. That was when we found out that Jombo actually is brain-damaged, which gives him an excuse none of our other customers have.

But as is always the case, there’s a downside. There are the ones who have to be… watched. There are the cocky kids who think it’d be an idea to try steaming the place (Hey kids! That’s why we have an entryphone system! If we don’t want you to, you can’t get in – and you can’t get out!) And then there’s the ones with – and let’s be as polite as we can here – somewhat lower personal standards than most.

No, sod it, let’s not be polite here. There are the ones who shamble about in shattered tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt that saw better days before they were even born. There are those like Mikey, who carries around his own Linus-like cloud of fuggy, musty stink that fills the whole shop, getting into your clothes, getting under your skin, getting into your very flesh. Who stays for at least a hour, rooting through the cheap bins which are on the far side of the shop and so afford a little distance, but who then comes to the till to have a bit of a chat and then – and only then – reveals his secret weapon of chemical weapons-grade halitosis.

And the star of our show? There’s this one man; stinks – positively reeks – of stale pee despite outwardly looking clean to the point of shininess. Always wears a thick coat no matter what the weather. Wears it because that’s what he tries to tuck things under when you’re not looking. That’s your double threat, right there. A stinky bloke who’s also a shoplifter. But that’s not enough! If he was just a rancid-smelling tealeaf we’d simply kick him out with directions to the nearest soap and water. But the bastard actually spends money. Every time he comes in he drops a good sixty quid, which is lovely, but you’ve got no idea how much he’s sneaking under the macintosh. So you not only have to put up with the smell, you’ve also got to keep a sharp eye on him and that means staying within a couple of feet of the bugger without, y’know, making it too obvious what it is that you’re doing. Last time I drew the short straw and had to stand on guard duty, I had to go for a walk afterwards to get the pungency out of my lungs, and I speak as a man who used to have a deep love of Marlboro Red ciggies.

He came in today; we saw him coming down the road so we put the advance plan into operation. If we had to let him in, we could at least ameliorate the problem by taking pre-emptive action. Out came the air-freshener, both of us walking around the shop with our fingers clamped to the spray nozzle, clouds of chemically fragrant loveliness filling the workspace and our lungs.

I opened the door to let Mr Smelly in and had a pang of conscience. We couldn’t, surely, make it that obvious? So I said the first thing that came into my head: ‘Blimey! That was a lot of spray to kill one bloomin’ fly, eh?’ Then, as soon as he was gone, we got the sprays out and danced our chemical pas de deux again, because believe me, that bastard absolutely hummed. 

Snares

Buddy Rich died in April 1987, a marvellous drummer but allegedly a demanding, short-tempered, bullying man. There’s a story that goes round musician circles – I’m almost certain I heard it on Parkinson – that just after Rich died, his widow took a phone call at home.

“May I speak to Buddy Rich?” the caller asked.

“I’m sorry,” she replied. “Buddy Rich is dead.”

“Oh, I see.’

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again.

“May I speak to Buddy Rich?” the caller asked.

“I’m sorry,” his widow replied. “Buddy Rich is dead.”

“Oh, I see.’

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again.

“May I speak to Buddy Rich?” the caller asked.

“I’m sorry,” his widow replied. “Buddy Rich is dead.”

“Oh, I see.’

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again.

“May I speak to Buddy Rich?”

“I don’t know who you are but I’ve told you three times already: Buddy Rich is dead!”

“I know” said the caller. “It's just so good to hear it!”

And that’s the story that’s been stuck in my head all day today. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going off to watch the news again. 

OVER 18s ONLY, MATE

There’s been a little bit of a fuss round here recently about pubs, or rather a pub. I say ‘round here’, it’s actually been in the next borough along. As Robert Elms once said, ‘There’s no decent pubs in Tottenham”. It was true back when he and Sade lived in a squat on the High Road and used a bucket as a lavatory, and it’s truer still today when there are not only no decent pubs in Tottenham, there are hardly any pubs full stop.

One borough along, a pub’s got into a bit of a ruckus because a couple took their young child along one afternoon, and then complained that other patrons were using a certain level of bad language within earshot. The pub manager’s response was immediate and direct; he banned children from the premises.

There have been objections raised that banning children prevents parents from enjoying a social afternoon with their friends. It doesn’t. It just prevents them from doing so in that particular pub. There are other pubs, child-friendly pubs that smile benevolently on small children, pubs may have a menu that offers kiddie meals, pubs with tables covered in paper tablecloths that can be drawn on using crayons that the pub happily hands out. But even these do not disguise the fact that if you take your children to the pub, you are a lousy parent. Yes you are. This is why.

Pubs – I’ll say this slowly (though you can read at whichever speed you wish) – are adult places. They are places where adults meet. This is made obvious by the facts that generally, only adults are allowed to enter them unaccompanied by another adult, and that their primary purpose is to sell a product whose sale is proscribed to those who are not adults. That product’s primary effect is to lower inhibitions; put the two together and you get adult people, who have adult vocabularies, becoming relaxed enough among other adult people that they begin to use adult language (and we may argue here about what constitutes ‘adult’ language but you know very well I mean swearing rather than obscurant polysyllabics). If you take a child to a pub it will hear swearing. If you leave a child in the middle of a busy road it will be hit by a car. If you dip a child in golden syrup it will be licked by passing dogs. Cause and effect. Simple as that.

As a sidebar here, let me just mention that a while ago I ran into, and arranged to have lunch with, somebody I’d not seen in twenty-five years. When we initially sat down, we were both consciously trying to behave like the grown-up, cultured, civilised people we wished to be seen as by the other, and as such we spoke in polite, grown-up terms. You know what these things are like, though; somebody drops a ‘blummin’, that’s followed by a ‘blimey’, and within about half an hour there’s f-words flying around like no tomorrow. If that happens at lunchtime in a coffee-house-stroke-bakery in Crouch End on nothing stronger than decaf and Eggs Benedict in the company of someone with whom you intend to be urbane, what on earth do you think it’s going to be like halfway through a session on the Krony with the loud, sweary mates you last saw four days ago?

Besides, what the hell are you doing in a pub with a child? What’s the nature of your activity there? Are you yourself having a drink? If you are – even if you’re only having one measly little glass of red, not even a proper sized one, just one of the little thimble-y glasses - then your children should be confiscated, because you are not a fit parent. Fit parents do not drink when they are in charge of their children, and they rarely drink even when they’re not in charge of their children, and do you know why that is? It’s because children cannot look after themselves, and after even the smallest amount of alcohol, neither can you. They need you to do it for them, and they need to you to do this every hour of every day for at least ten to twelve years. Probably longer. Children are fragile. They break easily. They need you, their parent, to look after them as though you were Mary Poppins and Superman and one of those plate-spinning fellas you used to get on Saturday evening variety shows all rolled into one, and if you don’t remember plate-spinners what the hell are you doing having children at your age anyway and you can’t be all those things, things that you really need to be, if you’re even the tiniest bit below your best.

Even if you’re not drinking alcohol yourself, everybody else in the pub is, unless it’s full of people as effortlessly joyless as you seem to be. You’re in a place full of people who are quite probably losing control of themselves, even if it’s happening slowly, even if they don’t mean to. They might not have the reaction time that they should. They might stumble. They may be holding bottles and glasses and maybe knives and forks which, innocently or otherwise, could cause a great deal of damage in an accident, an accident which is far more likely to happen when there’s alcohol involved than not. You want to bring your children into that environment so that you can have a nice social afternoon? Frankly, you’re a dick.

Another thing: I’m all in favour of teaching children to be aware of alcohol. I think there’s a great deal to be said for the French way of slowly introducing children to dilute wine with meals; it’s better than having them discover Strongbow in the park with their mates (one of Sondheim’s lesser-known works). But we don’t do that here. Not in public houses. Do it at home by all means. But, as mentioned earlier, we only allow public sale of alcohol to minors under certain conditions. Only with meals, only of certain products, only with adults. The reason for that is simple; we don’t want to see twelve-year-olds off their face on Stella. Drunk adults are ugly enough, but there’s absolutely nothing good about a drunken child. Alright, there’s quite a lot that’s funny about them, I’ll give you that, but after you’ve had that initial bellylaugh and start to think about the adverse consequences on the child’s mental and physical well-being, let alone the social conditions that led it to drinking high-alcohol lager, well, things get pretty serious pretty quickly.

Most importantly, if you complain about swearing in front of your child in a pub, I have to ask: who the hell do you think you are? What gives you the right to demand that I behave in a certain way in a space that is by its nature intended for adults? You don’t want little Florence to hear bad words? Cover her ears. If it’s warm out, take her out into the beer garden where she can run about and play and where she’s less likely to hear this terrible terrible corruption that spews like bile from the filthy men’s mouths.

Better still, take her out of the pub altogether. Take her to a café. Take her to a soft play area. Take her anywhere you like but take her somewhere entirely different from where I am, because I am in an adult space paying adult money for adult pleasures and my enjoyment of those pleasures should not be reduced because you don’t want your child to hear a selection of syllables that you find offensive on their behalf.

Here’s what it boils down to: You had the child, you take the responsibility for it. It’s not up to me to do that, because I am not its parent. I’m not a monster and I won’t knowingly allow your child to come to any harm; in fact if I see any possibility of that I’ll do my best to prevent it, but I’m not going to do your job for you.  It’s your kid, and if it’s in a situation you disapprove of it’s your responsibility to remove the child from that situation. In return, I promise to keep to my end of the social compact and will not sit in a nursery school classroom holding a pint of Adnams and calling the Chancellor a cunt.

Ah, now look. You made me do a swear.

Hullo Clouds, Hullo Sky

We went to see that Cloud Atlas film last weekend, because we were both at a loose end and we’d both read the book so it seemed like a good idea.

I got a dirty, dirty mouth.
And a twenty-dollar wig.

When the BBFC certificate came up at the beginning, it warned that there was to be some ‘strong language (one very strong)’ so we decided to keep a watch out for that and point it out when we spotted it (it turned out to be Tom Hanks saying ‘cunt’ which doesn’t strike me as being particularly strong in a film made for grown-ups, but I have been informed that ladies tend to see it as the Swear Of Last Resort so I shall bow to their sensibilities while also pondering why it is that gentlemen have no equal antipathy to, I don’t know, ‘cock’ or ‘prick’ or ‘spamdagger’[1]).

The film does what films often do, which is to change the narrative structure of its source material in order to make it more suitable for the visual medium. In this case, the Russian Doll-like structure of the book has had the back of an axe taken to it, smashing it into tiny shards of narrative and strewing them all over. Which actually works, as this new structure means the viewer has to pay attention to which story strand is being focussed on at any given moment, rather than having the luxury of a fifteen to twenty minute section to get bored with. Events are moved around – one event in particular moves from the end of its original section in the book to the beginning of the film’s, and in doing so changes the entire texture of the sequences.

It is, in essence, a portmanteau film of the sort that were made back in the sixties and seventies, the kind of film where rather posh people on a train journey told each other rather interesting stories then found out they were all rather dead. If it is, it’s a portmanteau film as made by William Burroughs – cut up and slapped down again almost at random, but still retaining some form of shape.

There are a number of other liberties taken with the story tone; in the book, the Orison of Sonmi-451 sections read in a quiet, almost stately manner, whereas in the film they’re treated as Great Big Loud Science Fiction, with chases through the air and bright colours and you almost expect Kate Beckinsale to pop up. Jim Broadbent’s main section, The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, by contrast, plays and looks very much like a 1970s Britcom movie, out of keeping with the book’s more restrained, genteel comedy.

And of course there’s the make-up. This has been mentioned in other places and it’s being mentioned here because it’s the weakest aspect of the film. The concept of having the same main players taking different roles is a good one; it underlines the theme of the book and puts it right up there on screen for even the dumbest viewer to see.

Love actually is all around

It’s further spotlit by the lingering close-ups of the comet-shaped birthmark that recurs throughout the different time periods shown, but the actors are the main vehicle for the idea. Unfortunately, the make-up doesn’t always work. The aging makeup in particular is awful – you wonder why Hugh Grant is hiding under a late period Jimmy Savile mask – but in general you spend just a little too long noticing the make-up rather than the actor, and a little too long noticing the actor under the make-up in an “oh, it’s him again!’ way, that you’re jolted out of the film. Sometimes, though, the disguise works – when Halle Berry turns up disguised as a middle-class white woman, I actually thought it was Madonna up there on screen, and that was as big a jolt as seeing Hugo Weaving in drag.

What? This isn't W.E.?

Now you may have got the idea that I didn’t like this film. And you’d be wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not in a so-bad-it’s-good way, as I find bad films to be simply that: bad films, with no redemption to be had. Cloud Atlas is not a bad film. It’s really a pretty good film of a near-unfilmable novel. I’d read reviews that said it had an unnecessary third hour, and I sat there wondering when that third hour would appear, expecting the weight-shifting and bladder-straining that goes with an overlong film. They didn’t come. The film held me, never less than interested if not always entranced, for its full length, and I couldn’t say that about most films I see.

I suspect that time will be good to Cloud Atlas, that it will get good word-of-mouth (I’ve yet to meet anyone who’s seen it and didn’t enthuse about it, and that includes an acquaintance in the film industry who can usually be relied on to badmouth anything. And anybody. I like the fella.) and be watched repeatedly, either at the cinema or on DVD. I’m going to see it again in two days, something I haven’t done since I accidentally agreed to see Snakes On A Plane with two different people on consecutive days and couldn’t in all conscience let either party down.

Go and see it. Read the book, either prior to or after the film. Agree or disagree, love or hate, Cloud Atlas is at least an attempt by a big studio to make something other than bangy shouty blowy-up films, laboured scatological comedy films or pale wan teenage monster films, and for that at least it deserves your time.

Coming Soon: The Marxist Dialectic in Wreck-It Ralph

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[1] I know why. I. Know. Why. Please don’t gang up on me. 

Rasp

Well, I did something yesterday that I hadn’t done for a while, and that’s go to the pub on a Sunday afternoon to watch a football match that I had any interest in.

Pretty often I’ll while away a Sunday in some boozer or other, usually to have lunch because it’s easier to go out and buy a roast dinner, which is what you want on most Sundays but not every Sunday, than it is to buy meat and vegetables and get them all prepared up and cooked and then there’s the whole Yorkshire pudding thing because by god they’re a bastard to get right but buying them in just isn’t on.

But pretty often, when there’s football showing in wherever we’re having that roast dinner – and sometimes there is and sometimes there’s not, generally depending on how gastropubbish the place thinks it is. For instance the Queens in Crouch End is very very GPish, to the extent it calls half of itself itself a Dining Room and insists you eat in this Dining Room and not in the bar, which means you have to get up and walk from one part to the other to get more drinks in, which kind of negates the whole thing if you ask me – it’s a game I’m not really investing anything in. It’s neutral. No biggie.

Of course yesterday was different, as the game was the North London Derby and I’d said I’d go to a certain pub to watch it with an old mate I’d run into a few days beforehand, so that’s where I went, to this pub that I wouldn’t usually go to because as far as I’m concerned you go to a pub to either meet people before moving on somewhere else, or to eat because see paragraph 2 (above), or – and this is rare these days as I hardly drink at all except the odd glass of red with a meal that calls for it – to enjoy a good glass of beer. Proper beer, to be drunk in proper surroundings, to wit an atmosphere generated by not too large a number of people, having a nice time with their friends. No drunks, no shouting, nobody under thirty (possible reduction to twentyfive in the case of less excitable womenfolk) and no music (possible exemption for quiet jazz/country, preferably something already part of my own collection which, when played in said pub, comes as a pleasant surprise (also applies to supermarkets)).

Proper beer was not on sale, not even in bottles; mass-produced fizzy lager and nitro-kegged bitter was the choice, so I had a pint of Carlsberg which, by seven o’clock, had given me a nasty head and a distinct feel of being chemically attacked.

The right team won, as is only proper, and the universe is finally adjusting itself to its correct alignment, having been out of bonk for about fifty years.

However, upon returning home and having woken from a Probably The Worst Lager In The World-induced doze I found that, despite having no distinct memory of having done so, I had shouted very loudly and sung very lustily during the game, as had my old friend, the people near us, and everybody else on the left side of the pub (the right side being that side traditionally occupied by the Opposition).

And that is why, since last night, I have been unable to produce anything more than a rough deep growl with paintstripper overtones. 

No reflection upon the rest of the public

Fella came into the shop last week; one of the semi-regulars, someone we’ll see maybe every two or three months. Small, bad skin, ill-fitting leather jacket. You know the sort.

“Hello Steve,” I said. “How have you been?”

I should point out that Steve buys only a particular type of publication from us; he’s very into pictures of large-breasted women in very skimpy outfits. Who isn’t, though?

“Rotten,” he says. “Bastard Mayans said the world was gonna end, so I took out a bank loan and blew it all on a week with a dominatrix. Thought I wouldn’t have to pay it back ‘cause the world was gonna end. World didn’t end, I’m up to me arse in debt. Fucking Mayans.”

And Now, Some Music

Thanks to this fella, who is Canadian and who did one of those 'Best of last year' lists, I discovered these, who are Canadian also.

I rather like it, despite there being several reasons - the Tom Waits soundalikee air to it, the fey female vocal that sounds destined for a mobile phone advert - not to.

But, y'know, that's me.

(I'd also recommend the live version, in which Leah Fay is covered in... something.)

Unchained from an Idiot

Sitting round at my brother's, catching up on television that we'd both missed over the holiday period.

We were watching an overview of the pop music of 1978, something the BBC has done for the last couple of years as a kind of taster for its weekly re-runs of that year's Top Of The Pops (something they may not be able to continue for much longer, given that a good proportion of both hosts and performers have turned out to be rapists and/or child molestors).

On comes footage of Blondie performing 'Picture This': Debbie Harry at the height of her powers, staring at the camera, chewing non-existent gum, genuinely looking like she'd happily carve your heart out and hand it to you on a plate and not give a damn about it. She's wearing a bright yellow mini-dress and tights, with the pencil-thin strap of her handbag crossing over her chest just to make absolutely sure that you pay enough attention to her figure.

We both sit there, entranced, for the full length of the footage. When it ends, I turn to look at him with a 'I can't believe how good that was' look on my face, and say:

"The production on that song was fucking amazing!"

Next week: an appreciation of the lighting and production design of 'Danish Lesbian Nurses IV: Drilling and Filling'

Lebensraum

Been meaning to do this for a while, so...

Meanwhile, over here, I shall talk about comics, thus leaving the lush green pastures of Tottenhamista unsullied by such low pastimes. 

And I hope you're happy about that.

Me And Him And Them And Me

Enjoying a wintry trudge through the dirty sludge that had turned the walkways of Alexandra Park into a freezing quagmire, and while speculating on exactly what manner of damage each snowboarder, tobogganist and sledger had done to themself as they hurtled down the steep slopes on their expensive snowboard or their improvised-out-of-an-estage-agent’s-signboard toboggan and made unexpected yet high-speed contact with one of the park’s many trees - some of which had been especially planted, years ago, expressly for the purpose of causing hurt to winter sports enthusiasts - my thoughts turned to Michael Gove. 

Had he ever, I pondered, after a long day of selling off playing fields or selecting new frames for his ‘Joe 90 all growed up’ spectacles or just generally being chinless, considered what was going on that very day in the Great Hall of Alexandra Palace?  Probably not, for I cannot see Mr Gove ever sitting down, be it in person at the event or simply at home in front of the telly, to enjoy the many depths of a game of snooker. 

The classroom of the future

This is a shame, as a great deal of the average school’s curriculum could easily be replaced by the careful study of a frame or two. Geometry, given the need to calculate the angle of strike between cue and object balls (plus the delicious spanner thrown in by the smaller size of the white, necessitating all manner of extra formulae). Physics, required to determine the amount of force to be imparted from the player, through the cue, through the white, to the colour, so impelling these joyous spheres to their destination in the table’s pockets. More thrillingly, the combination of both these disciplines needed to not only pot a colour but also leave the cue ball with just the right amount of momentum to cease its motion in exactly the right position to set up the next stroke. 

And the simpler lessons to be learned, no less important; basic mathematics, so a player may keep score, and project their future points tally, and estimate the number of snookers needed. Most importantly, the glorious sense of good old-fashioned British fair play, as so joyously exemplified by the player who, at the crucial moment of a crucial game, brushed a ball from its position with his waistcoat; he then called a foul on himself, and by doing so lost the frame and the match. This wonderful embodiment of the sporting ethic thus expelled himself from the tournament. Would this happen among the over-paid jessies of the soccer field? I doubt there is need to even ask. 

Admittedly, some teachers needed something of a makeover.

So: think on, Michael Gove. Consider the cost savings to be made. One second-hand table (or, for inner-city comprehensives, a trip to Rowan’s in Finsbury Park in the company of a roll-up smoking, weasel-faced herbert who could surely be sourced from the swollen ranks of those seeking work) could easily replace three teachers. And, should a pupil take to the game, imagine the tax they’ll pay on their winnings. As for those dinky little waistcoat-and-bowtie combos they’d wear, a smart suit shows a smart mind. You should know that, given the calibre of the Cabinet’s schmutter, eh?

It’s a win-win situation, Michael. In fact, I’ll tell you what, if you need a little more persuading, how about you come along to the next tournament at Ally Pally and I’ll guide you through a few frames. Obviously it would be a terrible faux pas to speak loudly during a game and so distract the players, so it’d be best if we met outside, possibly in the car park. No, the one at the bottom of the hill, the one without much by way of lighting. Oh, and, my schedule means I can really only make it in the evenings, after dark. 

But please, do come. How will you recognise me? I’ll be the one in the ski-mask. Well, it’s cold at this time of year. Just to be sure, I’ll be holding a snooker ball. In a sock. 

Dear John...

I like to read. An important part of my word intake is a daily newspaper; my newspaper of choice is The Independent. A frequent contributor to the paper is John Walsh; he writes a regular column and a number of restaurant reviews, and these are always entertaining, informative, well-written. 

So this isn’t going to be a hatchet job. It’s a response. Nothing more.

Mr. Walsh, in his column of 22nd November (though in its online form it’s listed as being published on the 21st), said this:

Extraordinary to see graphic books turn up in two categories in the Costa Prize, among the novels and biographies. I wish I admired comic-strip fiction as the French do, but it always seems to me a bastard version of the real thing. As one shortlistee, Joff Winterhart, says, “My book isn’t a novel in the conventional sense, it’s a comic with pictures and speech boards.” Quite.

Good novels are made of words, without drawings that helpfully show the expressions on characters’ faces. It’s cruel but true: illustrations in novels are for children, or those who have trouble keeping up.

Well, first of all, it’s not just the French, it’s also the Belgians and the Japanese and the Brazilians and the Americans and, to an increasing extent, it’s the British and the rest of the world. 

What I have to take issue with is the idea that a novel which “isn’t a novel in the conventional sense” is somehow lesser than a “good” novel, “made of words”. A good graphic novel stands up quite easily against a good prose novel, and can be better than a great deal of merely adequate prose novels. Also, if we define a “good” novel as Mr. Walsh does, then where do we begin to exclude works that stray from that definition? 

A quick look across my own bookshelves reveals works by Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Harvey Pekar, David Mazzuchelli and many others: graphic novels which, using Mr. Walsh’s definition, are not “good” books. But I also have “good” books such as Alisdair Gray’s Unlikely Stories, Mostly which relies to a large extent on typographical tricks and  illustrations to convey certain meanings and events. I have a copy of B S Johnson’s Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry, some of which is told in the form of entries in a book-keeping ledger. I have three copies of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (one of which is an adaptation in graphic form by Martin Rowson, who also works for The Independent) which relies on typographical tricks just as Gray does, but also features such things as the infamous ‘black page’, which allows the reader to imagine for themselves what happens in that sequence. Tom Wolfe’s new book, Back To Blood, uses all manner of :::::!!!!&%@ strange \\\((())¢#ª≠ typography. And! Punc-tu^ation as a narrative device. The Independent’s reviewer said 

it seems remarkable that at 81 he should still be writing with such verve. Back to Blood is energising, fascinating – and utterly exhausting.

To be fair, that reviewer wasn’t Mr. Walsh, and we shouldn’t expect all writers for a particular publication to hold or express the same opinions.

All of the above, and many more besides, are novels “made of words” which, just as a graphic novel does, use story-telling devices other than words to convey their narrative and their subtext. Are these no longer “good” books? 

Moving on to Mr. Walsh’s second point: 

It’s cruel but true: illustrations in novels are for children, or those who have trouble keeping up.

I’m afraid, Mr. Walsh, I have to take this as something of a personal insult. As I’ve said, I read all manner of books. Some of those books are highbrow literary fiction, some of them are pot-boilers, some are biography, some history, some science texts. Some of them are graphic novels. Some, like the different versions of Tristram Shandy, are both, and the different media reveal different sides of the work. But it seems that because I enjoy novels that have illustrations, I’m either a child (and why should age be a barrier to literature? Surely a child can enjoy ‘grown-up’ books as much as an adult can get pleasure from Alice In Wonderland or even You’re A Bad Man, Mr. Gum) or a bit of a thicko. 

So it looks like I'm not good enough. Obviously I have “trouble keeping up” and I’m going to have to adjust my bookshelves accordingly and get rid of everything for which I’m too slow. Goodbye to Thomas Pynchon, Julian Barnes, Evelyn Waugh, Amis pere et fils, both David Mitchells, Jim Thompson, Don deLillo, Alan Coren, Albert Camus…

Oh, and I suppose The Independent’s out as well. Which is a pity, as I happen to know that  one of Mr. Walsh’s senior colleagues on the paper is a big fan of comics. Let’s hope that, at the next big editorial meeting, he doesn’t have trouble keeping up. 

Now That I Own the BBC

In a few weeks time the present hoo-hah about the BBC – a hoo-hah mostly manufactured by others in the print media who are desperately trying to head Lord Leveson off at the pass – will, with any luck, be reduced to an item on the end-of-year news round-ups that fill a few hours at the end of December.

A couple of suggestions, then, as to what should happen next:

Firstly, abolish the post of Director General. It’s simply too big a job for any one man to be able adequately to fill. Replace it with two positions;  Director General (Operations) and Director General (Production). The first takes care of the business and political end of the corporation, deals with shitstorms like the one going on right now, and decides where the money’s to be spent. He also simplifies the management structure that has beknighted the BBC since John Birt was in charge. The other handles the creative side of the BBC, allocates the budget given by DG (Ops), and makes sure the corporation’s output is what it should be - the best television and radio it’s possible to be. This post should be filled by someone from the creative industries, someone along the lines of Michael Grade. In fact, it should be held by Michael Grade, full stop,

Secondly, change the way the BBC is funded. No, calm down over there in Daily Mail Land, not abolish the licence fee (although maybe the new DG (Ops) should make ‘we will abolish the licence fee’ his first public statement, just to give Rupert Murdoch that final fatal heart attack. Then he can say “Just kidding!” and get on with his job unbothered by the ancient bastard). I advocate we abolish the system by which the licence fee goes to the Government who then decide how much of it goes to the BBC. 

Instead, we just give it to the BBC. Free the corporation from having to kowtow to some arse who’d really rather see it sold off or crippled. Let it know that the licence fee is there wholly as funding for a media giant that is free of outside influence and commercial necessity, but also let it know that the fee is reliant on those who pay it, and whose consideration must absolutely be at the forefront of everything the BBC does.

Because, quite simply, the BBC is glorious. It must stay that way. Yes, it makes mistakes, and it has done recently in a shockingly bad way, but those mistakes must be reconciled, and apologised for, and those adversely affected must be compensated. And when that’s done the BBC should be allowed to get on with the job of being glorious, of making astounding television programmes, and unmissable radio, and of having the only news organisation that is completely vital, and it must be allowed to do this without some high-pitched nincompoop trying to sell the user some type of appalling rubbish every ten minutes, without having to worry whether a new series is bland enough to pull in enough advertisers, without the need – a need which is absolutely a part of any commercial medium – to consider anything other that the satisfaction of its users.

That is all.

Fireworks!

Bonfire Weekend is over, and once again the air is filled with the smell of cordite and disappointment and the streets are littered with the empty shells of brightly coloured fripperies that promised a dazzling array of light and wonder but ultimately delivered only a few brief seconds of something resembling excitement before sputtering into a sad parody of its own potential. 

So let’s talk about comics. 

This was the month where I finally gave up on all but a few of the New 52 DC books; I’d struggled manfully on through the first year of those that I’d originally felt had potential, but a lot of them fell by the wayside as disillusionment set in, and then the silly sods went and shot themselves in the foot with their Zero Month promotion. Ideal jumping-on points are, more and more these days, more like ideal jumping-off points, and it was time to alight. 

I’ll tell you exactly what did it: Nicky Necro. I’d doggedly stuck with Justice League Dark despite realising very early on that it wasn’t very good, hoping that it’d turn round and do something astonishing with the potential-laden characters who manned it. It had bloody Constantine in it for Christ’s sake, and even the worst of Hellblazers had something going for it. But month after month JLD gave me lousy plots and dialogue you could carve a small figurine out of. And then came the Zero issue, redolent with promise, oozingly open to giving me a story that would expose the hidden exotica of John and Zatanna’s doomed love. Instead it gave me the secret origin of John’s coat. More to the point, it gave us John’s mentor, his teacher, the man who lit the fuse that would blaze into the darkness. And it gave this man the insultingly stupid name of Nicky Necro. Why stop there? Why not call him Bertie Blackmagic, or Dennis Darkness? What did this teach me? It taught me that somebody just wasn't trying. And if you're not going to try, I'm buggered if I'll give you my cash. 

Book thrown to one side, order cancelled. 

So, what with OMAC and Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE cancelled, that’s left me with Flash. One title out of 52. And I’m only sticking with that for as long as it looks pretty. 

Don’t talk to me about Marvel, either. OK, Hawkeye’s a thing of beauty but I can see it lasting about as long as Fraction’s Defenders did. Ditto the FF relaunch. And I for one can’t be doing with the company’s policy of restarting titles every eighteen months. It confuses the punters, who are dropping the books as though they were smallpox-infected blankets. It confuses the retailer, who has no bloody clue how many to order of yet another Captain America or Iron Man #1. It plays merry hell with the shop’s database. 

All of this leads to the main point, for which I shall put on my retailer hat: new titles from the Big Two aren’t worth taking a flyer on. The shop will sell slightly more of the first Marvel Now (! optional) issues than it does at present. Then it will sell slightly fewer of the subsequent issues than it does at present. There may be one title that breaks out and becomes not only a success, but a continuing success. A success with legs. 

But the signs aren’t good. Captain Marvel, the first Now! book, sits on the shelves, alone, unloved, unsold. In two, three, five years from now, I’d bet my left leg that most of these new titles are doing the same as CM will be: sitting in the back issue bins, in numbers too large to convey rarity, at prices no higher than at launch. Outlier here: Hawkeye again. First issue sells like nobody’s business at eight quid a pop. But for every Hawkeye there’s a Son Of Hulk. 

In fact, these days it makes more sense for the shop to take a flyer on new series from Image. Five years ago you’d look at Previews and only order enough copies of a new Image book to fill pre-orders. But these days: Saga #1’s on its fifth printing and we sell two or three a week. Six quid a time, plus postage if you’re overseas, which the majority of orders for it are (another time, we shall discuss the geographical cycle of comics retail). Or Happy, which we took a chance on and sold out of in days. 

There was a time when you could see that Marvel or DC were launching a new title and be confident of shifting a hundred or so copies off the shelf. These days (disregarding the one-offs like the initial New 52 launch month, where everybody wanted everything), you’re lucky to move ten. Variant covers help at publisher/distributor level, but if you’re a retailer staring at twentyfive unsold Superman #13 and nobody’s going for the sketch variant, it does you no good at all. 

Talking of Superman #13: that shows pretty well how media attention means nothing now. There were newspaper and TV reports about that issue; it was the top story on the BBC’s news site. How many extra copies did we sell? One. To a journalist. Who’s a regular customer anyway. 

Let’s see if there’s any good news. Well yes, there is, but even that’s got a down side darker than a closed mineshaft. The Vertigo one-shots that come out every few months, the ones that are essentially trademark renewals; the most recent one, Ghosts, wasn’t a bad book. In fact I’d go so far as to say it was a rather good book. If you’re a big comics geek you’d want to pick it up because it features the last work by the late Joe Kubert (literally: it’s rough pencils only, but even rough pencils from a Kubert are worth more than fully-painted from most people). It’s complete and of itself, it has no real ties to convoluted continuity unless you really need the backstory of the Dead Boy Detectives. It’s got a good number of stories in it. It’s the ideal book to show to new readers, or to the bored partners of old readers who don’t quite understand their other half’s obsession with costumes, or to casual drop-ins who wonder what you sell in this strange, out-of-the-way shop with the funny S-sign in the window. 

But it costs $8. That’s about six quid. For a comic. You could get a book for that, a proper book with covers and everything. You could get lunch, a good lunch, with coffee. And we have a cafe not ten steps away. To give DC/Vertigo their due, they overshipped this, so we got a bundle of copies for nothing, but it’s rare that this happens. I’d love to have more books like Ghosts, but I’d love to have them either at an affordable price, or on SOR, or as overships. 

But I can’t see that happening in an industry where the people who can afford to do it - and who need that kind of readership - prefer to shovel out yet another relaunch of X-Men. 

Just a word

A quick question: when did ‘the unemployed’ become ‘the workless’?

It seems unimportant a change, but consider it for a moment: ‘unemployed’ is far more active, implying as it does that there are a number of factors behind the unemployment. If I work for somebody, they employ me, I am employed. It’s a two-way street. 

If I don’t work for somebody (and assuming I’m not working for myself), I’m unemployed because nobody employs me. There’s a chance they’re not employing me because I’m a feckless bastard, but it’s far more likely they’re not employing me because they have no job to employ me in. 

It’s a no-fault form of language. The blame for the absence of employment is laid on no specific person. 

‘Workless’ carries different weight. ‘Workless’ implies a choice, suggests that the person referred to has made a decision not to work. It places the blame firmly, squarely, on the person without work. It absolves the employer and, more importantly, it absolves the causes of unemployment, be they political, geographical or economic. 

It’s a small and subtle change to the language of work, but it signifies a larger shift towards the stigmatisation of those without work, as does the gentle pressure to see the unemployed as a different social group to those who work - different even to that growing number who work only part-time as a result of the shortage of available full-time jobs. 

So do me a favour, would you? Next time you see or hear ‘workless’ used, in a newspaper or on a news report, but especially, particularly, if it’s used by a politician, change it. Edit their words inside your head. There are too many people screwed by unemployment and there are probably going to be a hell of a lot more. 

Don’t let anybody make it their fault. 

Don’t make the victims think they committed the crime. 

Important!

Two things to remember now the political season has resumed; 

When Question Time begins on Thursday night, hide all objects large/heavy/throwable enough to damage your television.

When Question Time ends on Thursday night, you have approximately thirty-five seconds to get up, leap across the room and turn off the television before Andrew Neil opens his mouth.

Today's Question

What's forty pounds to you? 

“You cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor” is a phrase I heard used by Steven Norris a while ago, though it’s been around for a good while, and it’s been popping up more and more in the rightist magazines and blogs. It’s a favourite phrase of Conservatives as it conjures up images of the complete rejection of the present system, of forcibly taking every penny the rich have and showering it on those dreadful poor people (some of whom are from overseas!). It’s best illustrated by the old story of one of the Rothschilds being bearded by a mob of angry tenants demanding he redistribute his fortune amongst them. Rothschild threw a handful of coins at them and said something along the lines of “Here’s your two bob each - now bugger off”. Put that way, the absolute of ‘making the rich poor’ is ridiculous, and putting it that way is the classic reductio ad absurdum ploy to negate an argument by, in this case, making its supporters look like ardent Spartists. 

But if you add an aspect of relativity to the statement - if you make it state something realistic - everything changes. ‘You cannot make the poor richer by making the rich poorer’ is entirely different, and entirely false. Making the rich very slightly poorer is very much the way to make the poor richer. 

If you increase a rich man’s taxes by a small percentage, it will make little or no difference to him. Take three thousand pounds off of Roman Abramovitch and frankly he won’t notice it. However, that three thousand, re-distributed among one hundred poor people, will make those poor people relatively far better off. The extra thirty pounds that each poor person receives is, to them, the possibility of proper heating in the bitter winters we have these days, or of a far better diet - one of the next scandals this country should address is the spiralling cost of fresh vegetables compared with the plummeting cost of ready meals and junk food - which in turn leads to a fitter populace and lower health service costs. It makes them richer. Richer. Very much richer. It’s a no-brainer, unless you’re a stupid selfish bastard who thinks ‘making the rich poor’ means descending into Marxist-anarcho-syndicalist chaos, or taking away your Jag (which in most  rightist minds is pretty much the same thing). 

There are those who will say that increasing a tax rate will inevitably lead to a fall in tax take and so to a smaller amount of income from that tax being available for redistribution. Their evidence for this is something called the Laffer Curve, a graph which illustrates exactly this and as such has been used as a justification for tax cuts since 1984. One problem with the Laffer Curve is that it was thought up in a bar and scribbled on the back of a napkin, and while that may well have worked for Picasso when it came to  settling the absinthe bill, it doesn’t show the rigour of thought required for economic theory. Another problem is that it doesn’t work: there’s no way of knowing where on the Laffer Curve any particular economy should be placed, and without that knowledge there’s no way of knowing what the optimum tax rate/tax take is. 

How do I know this? I read an article about it in a magazine. Not Marxism Today, not Kill The Rich Monthly. I read it in The Economist.

The next question is: how rich is rich? I’d say that if your household income is around £70,000 or over, you can afford another 1 or 2% tax. That’s between about £13.50 and £27.00 a week, and that's only if you levy that tax on the entire income rather than just the proportion that would be liable for the higher rate (and I'll continue using that formula firstly because, as Roger T points out, I'm not an accountant and secondly because the higher figure bolsters my argument). £116 a month, tops. That works out at about four quid a day for the upper rate of increase. What’s the opportunity cost of that? A cup of coffee from Starbucks? A pint of beer? Would you really miss that? What would you rather have, a child from a low-income family getting a proper meal, or you getting a sugar buzz from the syrup in your gingerbread latte? 

The beauty of a small tax increase is that the more you earn, the less likely you are to suffer as a result of it. If you’re on £100,000 a year - an amount that most people would say qualifies you as ‘rich’ - you’re currently taking home around £1,250 a week. Would you really miss the forty quid that a 2% tax increase would cost you? Would you run screaming from this Bolshevik tax hell, the way the rightists swear you would? 

Or would you, as a humane person with an ounce of compassion for your fellow man, say “That’s pretty fair. I might not have that second bottle of Hermitage La Chapelle, but what of it?”

Here’s my final thought on this: there are people who think an extra forty pounds in tax is too much to pay. They’ll kick against it like a toddler faced with a plate of broccoli. To them, forty pounds is a small fortune. And yet, if you offer those people the same forty pounds in the form of, say, a pay rise or the fee for an hour’s work or even as a prize for a small lottery win, they’ll reject it as being too small, an insult, a disgrace. 

I’d like to say to those people: it’s one or the other. Make up your bloody minds. 

Turrrrrn to the left!

I am not a man of fashion, and I don’t care. Got a couple of good suits, a couple of work suits, a few pairs of 501s in different states of wear (worn no other jeans but 501s since before Nick Kamen, and have slowly gone from 28 inch waist to 34 but do I worry? I do not), bundle of shirts and t-shirts and that, the odd straight-leg flat-front chino and a small selection of shoes and boots. Couple of coats. And that does me. 

This morning I stopped to top up the Oyster and somebody thrust a magazine into my hand. A men’s fashion magazine. I don’t think he singled me out as someone in need of advice. If he had, what kind of fashion tips would you take from a bloke in an orange plastic tabard? 

A cheeky little vintage;
 you may be amused by its impudence

Anyway, I had a look through it. It was called ‘MODE’ (in caps) but it may as well have been called ’84 Pages Of Cunts’. I mean, straight away there’s a photo of some fella called Luke. Luke’s a shirtelier. I'll say it again; a shirtelier. No you’re not mate, you’re a bloke who sells shirts. You’re one step up from the dodgy cockney in the sheepskin down Romford Market. Get over yourself. 

Moving on, there’s a £300 cricket jumper, and here’s a £250 denim shirt - all so very very this season though - before we get to Megatwat #1; The Trend: Blousons Over Tailoring. Apparently that’s what we should all be doing this winter; putting on a suit and then sticking one of those short puffy coats over it so a foot of jacket’s showing. If my old man was alive he’d have a fit. No gentleman worth his salt lets even a mere glimpse of jacket show beneath his topcoat, nor more than an inch and a half of shirt cuff protrude from his jacket sleeve. Only a bounder, a cad or a double-glazing salesman would. 

Pagoda Shoulderline:
never got the recognition
she deserved

Other things we should keep an eye out for: the Pagoda Shoulderline (a wonderful character actress who starred alongside Michelin Twick in so many pre-war British comedies); Vetiver over Neroli (Tom Ford says so. Don’t argue with Tom Ford); big chunky five-grand watches that’ll stay on your wrist exactly as long as it takes your average mugger to find a machete. Oh, and monk-strap shoes. Very big this season (not ‘very big’ as in clown shoes, just y’know, in). 

This is why we beat the Hun in '18
- dashed good tailoring

And just in case you’re feeling a bit short of bling, here comes, recommended by the Merchandise Manager of Harrods - and we all know what a watchword for class that place is - the Dolce & Gabbana gold bullion hand-embroidered jacket. A jacket with a load of scrolling down the front, like spilled spaghetti but in gold. Gold, ladies and gentlemen. Yours for £6,548. Probably dry-clean only though, and who wants that kind of bother? 

Highpoint of all this, though, is the eight-page spread featuring WERNER. All in caps! WERNER! Look at him!  

Look at his fur coat that could well be made out of old ladies' dead acts but is really a just-over thirteen grand fox fur (Tom Ford again, since you ask. Don't all rush).

Don't laugh.
He could kill you.

Look at his lovely boots! Look at his neatly-tied jumpsuit! Just LOOK at his vertical hair!

Christ, no wonder Dave Sim went mad if he looked at tosh like this all bloody day. 

Sod it. Where can I find an orange plastic tabard?

VIVAT!

So there’s this family: the father’s in his seventies, his wife - his second - is in her forties, they have eight children, live in a big house. Their house is, frankly, a disgrace; their pet dogs eat scraps of food out of discarded fast food wrappers left on a coffee table, and the floors and the back garden are strewn with the dogs' activity's end result. The kids are out of control. The father sits in his pants, surrounded with piles of rubbish, eating pizza off a tray in front of a giant television.

Are they typical welfare dependents? Bound for Jeremy Kyle? No, because these people are multi-millionaires. They live like this because the father’s business is in trouble and they’ve had to lay off all the staff except for one nanny who lives in a wendy house in the back garden. They’ve also laid off all the staff in the business the father ran. 

This family is the subject of the film The Queen of Versailles; it shows a macro version of what’s happened to a lot of people since the sub-prime mortgage meltdown of a few years ago, and that’s reflected in the micro by a small subplot that follows a old friend of the wife who suffers a greater loss in the same financial disaster. 

One of the things that sticks most after seeing the film is how quickly the family spiral down into squalor; without staff, they have no idea and no capability for looking after themselves, and within weeks they’re up to their neck in old McDonald’s wrappers. Not that this stops them from spending atrocious amounts of money; there’s a scene involving a shopping trip that should, if you have any sense of social outrage, send you into a flat fury. 

What really stays with you is the sense of entitlement they have: despite having lost most of his considerable fortune, the father refuses to take the advice of everybody else and determinedly keeps hold of the fifty-two story timeshare complex that’s causing the majority of his problems, and his wife still makes plan for their new house - the largest in the USA, half-built, costing fifty million dollars so far with another fifty needed to finish it. 

If they were the typical Jeremy Kyle welfare-claiming family, they’d be the centre of all kinds of Daily Mail-style anger. But they’re not - they’re still an incredibly wealthy family for whom ‘poverty’ is a more relative concept than it is for the unemployed salesman let go in their company’s cost-cutting. 

But it shows that the divide between rich and poor is a lot more narrow than we’d care to think; no matter how much money you may have, you’re never that far from the people with nothing. It’s all a matter of self-respect. I know people who literally haven’t a penny but would rather die than let their houses - houses they’ll probably lose in the benefit changes coming next year - fall into the disrepair that we’re supposed to accept as some form of well-financed eccentricity from the family in the film. The simpering ‘well, I know I shouldn’t let this happen but it’s out of my hands’ attitude of the mother would see her demonised if she was claiming benefits. 

There are undeserving poor, according to politicians of a certain stripe - politicians that the father in the film boasts of having helped into office (and if you don’t see that scene, early in the film, and wonder why he hasn’t faced criminal charges, we can’t be friends). But it seems to me that there are a lot more undeserving rich. 

The Queen of Versailles is showing at selected cinemas, but as it’s a BBC Storyville production it may well be shown on television soon. You really ought to watch it.