The Charlatans Some Friendly weekend: Polar Bear

I'm sure I've seen more than one Granada TV special where this appears as one of the songs the Charlatans do, but nothing which yet seems to have leaped from VHS to the internet. In the meantime, we'll continue in sound only:



[Part of the Some Friendly weekend]

The Crane Mutiny

When KACL had adopted its salsa-only format, Frasier paniced to discover his fanclub - a motley crew of cranks and the painfully lonely - had staged the world's smallest demo outside city hall. 'What if they threw a protest, and nobody came?' sneered the Seattle media.

Why this episode keeps coming to mind watching the ragbag-sadsack lobby outside the High Court for Michael Jackson versus Granada TV, I can't quite place. It is kind of funny, though, that Jacko's auto-hagiography was titled 'the footage they wouldn't let you see', and yet he's the only person who's stopped footage being used.

Hell hath no fury like a media organiastion scorned

We're not sure why, exactly, Granada are talking to lawyers about the cancellation of the Girls Aloud/One Ticket Sold tour.

Surely if anyone has a beef, it'd be the poor promoter who signed up thinking he'd be having a cash-cow of a UK tour to run, only to be lumbered with the Saccaharinebabes and a paler shade of Blue. What are Granada going to base a claim on? The fact that the promoter has pointed out that their show promised "Popstars" and delivered only poppets?

Fighting fire with ire

At this rate, we might have to spin off a separate Michael Jackson Mad service. So, today's Jacko news is that he's supposedly about to release video of Martin Bashir praising him on how he looked after his kids. We want to see this, if only to find what words Bashir uses - "well done for not dropping him"; "actually, they're so ugly you're doing well to keep their faces covered up"; "I see you've not chopped the children into small pieces and dropped their remains, chunk by chunk, into the lion cage at the local zoo - well done"? But the trouble is Jackson is badly missing the point - Bashir could appear in the middle of the Superbowl presenting Jacko with one of those 'World's Greatest Dad' mugs you can buy in Hallmark, and it wouldn't matter.

There's a split between people who think Jackson might be fiddly-kid man and those who don't, certainly, but everyone No Rock has come across has expressed a lack of conviction in his parenting skills. And that's not because of anything Bashir said or did; if Michael wants to blame the person whose words condemned him, he should buy a mirror. Although we can think of reasons why he wouldn't want to.

Oh, actually, to be fair, didn't the surrogate mother of Blanket say that she thought that jackson was a wonderful dad? So at least we know the cheque cleared.

Exploitation of children continued?

The mother of the kid in the Jackson documentary may be relatively relaxed about her son sharing a bedroom with a fortysomething man, but she gets all protective when Martin Bashir interviews him without permission.

Mind you, if it's true that Granada didn't get approval for the boy to appear they could be in trouble.
Maybe this'll stay ITV's hand in squeezing the milky teat any more - they've worn their exclusive rather thin, with almost a solid block of last Monday night's programming across ITV1 and ITV News followed by seemingly endless repetitions across ITV2; now next Friday they've penciled in a Highlights Programme.

Considering that on first outing it was the highest-rated documentary for years, can there be anyone left interested who hasn't seen it?

I have to tell you no such message has been recieved

We know the Daily Mail has always been a bit loose in the way it uses language, but, according to the nifty MediaGuardian mailout this morning, it's got this report today:

Michael Jackson has declared war on Martin Bashir. P20

They'll be going shopping like Jacko

Spending some time with Michael Jackson is turning into a good business decision for Granada, isn't it? Besides being the most-watched documentary since 1999 (no, we don't know what the 1999 one would have been, please email us if you do), the programme is reckoned to have sold some three million quids worth of commercials and has been flogged to ABC for USD4m.

In our review yesterday, we forgot to mention we were quite taken with jacko's way of attracting attention in the shop - "yoo hoo", he trilled, for all the world like Vera Duckworth's bastard love child.

Never say Neverland again

You can imagine ITV being a bit miffed that their Mad Musician Monday got slightly trumped by Phil Spector being even madder than Michael Jackson, but they still had a good feast off the exclusive interview - a warm-up chat with Martin Bashir on Tonight, then the ninety minute Tonight Special; then a large chunk of the News at Ten; and then a Special on the ITV News Channel (an ITV News Channel show being defined officially as special when the audience rises above the number of people who sit on the production floor of the channel). In fact, apart from getting Jacko to appear in Coronation Street - probably impossible, since he'd find the bubbling hormones in Weatherfield too scary - they made the most of their exclusive.

Set up by Uri Gellar, who must by now have "Friend of Michael Jackson" on his passport under 'Occupation', it looked like the original plan had been for Martin Bashir and the Tonight team to report back that Michael's certainly odd, but not creepy. The earlier footage seemed to point in this direction. However, the accumulation of disturbing imagery and behaviour must have got too much for even Bashir to smooth away by the end, and so the original storyboard was ripped up and the "what is it with you, you freakin' freak?" ending got tacked on.

A curious man, who keeps odd company and seems at times to have genuine difficulty understanding what's going on around him. But enough about Martin 'I've seen all the reruns of the Louis Theroux Shows on UK Horizons, you know" Bashir; nobody could really hope to get to the bottom of Jackson without a lot more time and a lot more willingness to be probed on his part. What did come through was a badly fucked-up bloke; but one who seemed to rely on his perceived childishness to avoid answering tricky questions (as he has in court, of course). Certainly, the scenes in Neverland, where Jackson behaved like one of the kids, didn't come across as totally natural.
Asked if he'd had plastic surgery, he said yes, twice, but only his nose. Then he stammered "cosmetic surgery wasn't invented for michael jackson."

Apparently, the changing faces of Jackson have been down to him getting older. Which is curious, because for a forty-four year old man, he doesn't look a day over badly drawn cartoon.

And the children stuff? Maybe he doesn't realise how it looks - though someone who wrote a cheque for millions after earlier -um - allegations must have a shrewd idea; but then, someone who can skeeter through a store buying twenty million odd dollars worth of ugly tat without even pausing wouldn't blanch at the concept of paying a few million to buy off a kid's family, either. You'd have to question the behaviour of any parent who lets their kid sleep in jackson's bed, though; the answer may have something to do with those millions of dollars.

With his own kids, he came across more like a slightly befuddled grandparent who wasn't even sure who they were or what they were doing there - as Bashir tried to ask about the two year old being caught in the crush at Berlin zoo, Michael thought he was being asked if he'd enjoyed his trip.
But it was the shop scene that said most - Michael enjoys shopping, we were told, before being shown the footage of him tramping round a store going "I'll have that... that... that..." - not shopping, just acquiring. Empty acts. When you can have anything, the act of possession becomes meaningless.

In The City hits back. Possibly

In The City - Tony Wilson's increasingly vanity-conference - is going to return this year, despite a dwindling number of attendendees over the last couple of years as record company budgets tightened.

Announcing plans for the next twenty four months, Wilson took the opportunity to moan about the state of the British Music Industry. At least he's not blaming computers; Wilson thinks

“Retaking the World is not a reference to ITC but rather the state of the UK industry which has lost so much of its world market share. ITC believes the media has much responsibility and it is the UK media that will be the focus of ITC 2003. We’re not blaming the provincial futility of Pop Stars or the overarching monopoly of the UK’s only national FM radio station, but fingers can be pointed and they will be pointed.”

Hmmm. Wonder how far Wilson's prepared to go pointing the finger at Popstars which - as a product of Granada Media Group ultimately is underwriting his day-job wage packet when he reads the local news on Granada TV.

More curious is quite what he means by "the UK's only national FM radio station."

Leaving aside the fact that there's more than one anyway; and even more than one pop station, now that Radio 2 is attaching itself to more ears than Radio 1, you could argue that the Capital Stations and the EMAP stations form blocs just as powerful as Radio 1 in breaking new bands anyway - a glance at the ILR playlist, the Radio 1 playlist and the Top 40 will usually show more of the big sellers getting support from the commercial lobby than the licence-supported network. Of course, the main problem with the British Music Industry is that the Industry is run by an increasingly elderly, out-of-touch bunch of twits who rely on their glories from the days of punk (or, god help us, prog.) But even the plain talking Mr W knows that he won't rescue In The City by slagging off the very people he needs to attend.