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So, that reunion of TFI Friday last night was a reminder of why I never watched it first time round: it's a programme that looks like everyone involved is having tremendous fun, rather than a programme which is tremendous fun.
Also: the Gallagher/Who 'supergroup' felt more like the deputy head joining the school band for the last song of the evening.
Sad to hear that Chris Hardman, who became known for a while as Lil' Chris, has died.
Chris was the breakout star of Channel 4's Rock School reality series. The format saw Gene Simmons attempting to turn a group of Lowestoft schoolkids into pop stars; he nearly pulled it off with Chris.
He managed to make the most of his time in the spotlight - hosting a strand of celebrity features as part of the now-defunct T4 programming on Channel 4; releasing a couple of albums, and a few singles.
But a first album, pointed at the 2006 Christmas market, only scraped through to 54; a follow-up took two years, and stalled at 94.
As Chris got older, the work started to dry up; he had a spell in musicals and then had a crack at Christmas Number One in 2013 with Christmas Number One (#FeedEmYellowSnow). As you might expect from a single with a hashtag in the title, it didn't worry the charts.
Lil' Chris was 24; Police in Suffolk say his death was not suspicious.
Channel 4 still broadcasts an alternative Queen's Speech every Christmas Day, a hangover of the time before it was all Hollyoaks and upcycling. This year, they invited Morrissey to do the talk - presumably on the grounds that his last semblance of genuine radicalism vanished at about the same time Channel 4 lost theirs.
Still, Mozzer must be relishing the chance to finally go eye-to-eye with Her Maj, right? Look, he's just opened the invite and he's sitting right down to start his speech... hang on, no, this isn't a speech... it's a... no thanks letter:
My view that the monarchy should be quietly dismantled for the good of England is reasonably well-known, but I don't think Christmas Day is quite the time to be trading slaps. The Queen should be allowed the impassioned trance of her annual address to the British people, if only to once again prove that, in her frozen posture, she has nothing to offer and nothing to say, and she has no place in modern Britain except as a figure of repression; no independent thought required. The Queen very well might be the most powerful woman in England, but she lacks the power to make herself loved, and the phony inflation of her family attacks all rational intellect.So let's just get this straight, Morrissey: you reckon that The Queen is the manifestation of an abhorrent institution, but don't want to call her out because you don't want to spoil Christmas.
All over the world highly civilized peoples exist without the automatic condescension of a 'royal' family. England can do the same, and will find more respect for doing so.
Channel 4 did an 80s night on Friday, and like most 80s nights, it was unrecognisable to anyone who lived through it.
A 15 to 1 remade as a jokey celeb gameshow in a studio which looked like Thomas Edison's torture chamber missed the point of a programme where the only thing that mattered was the questions; 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown's sole concession to the theme appeared to be Jimmy Carr wearing a mullet wig for two seconds; Alan Carr - Chatty Man featured those 80 icons Jessie J and Matthew Fox, but probably had a Rubiks Cube on set.
That just left Rewind The Tube, yet another official history of the programme which, supposedly, put an end to this sort of hagiographic genuflection to the past. At some point, there will be a programme that really explores the series, but instead this was the standard 'it was unlike anything before or since and mostly was about sex and shocks'.
The trouble is, even on its own terms this official history made no sense.
Paula Yates was supposedly a complete outsider - and yet she got the job off the back of getting rock stars to pose in their knickers. Which is hardly something an outsider would be able to do.
The guests were the sort of people you'd never see on staid old Top Of The Pops - except here's Glenn Gregory, talking about having done Pops before The Tube.
Before The Tube, there was no programming which allowed young people to address the horrors of Thatcherism - but this claim is illustrated with clips of young people on a different programme talking more directly about unemployment.
The Tube gave a platform to striking miners to kick over the traces. Hang about, though, this footage shows that it was The Redskins, not the producers, who brought a miner on to the set; and when he attempted to make a statement, his microphone was meekly cut by the gallery.
In order to work in an anecdote about an exploding car stunt, Rewind The Tube had to hope you didn't stop to think how 'Jools Holland driving around America meeting the people from his childhood record collections for what felt like months' looked a bit like the sort of self-indulgent travelwank middle-aged TV executives have been enthusiastically green-lighting since Logie-Baird got back from the patent office.
Oddest of all was the bid to try and claim Band Aid as a Tube thing - "nearly all the artists were Tube-related" ran Tim Healy's voiceover. Which is true; but given you've been trying to frame the series as the home of cultural outsiders, how could what was the original Rock Royalty Potluck fit into that narrative in any sensible way?
The clips from the final Tube really nailed the story that wasn't being told - Duran Duran, U2, Tina Turner bidding the show farewell. The legacy of the Tube was as much Q Magazine as Network 7.
The suggestion that The Tube came from nowhere and was like nothing else on TV is also vexing. It must rankle with the people who made Tiswas - which had ripped up the idea of well-organised, linear television while Jools was still working out how to play four-bar blues on a school recorder - but also ignores Malcolm Gerrie's ITV kids pop show Razzmatazz. Out the blocks over a year before The Tube, Razzmatazz was pretty much The Tube fuelled by tartrazine and midget gems rather than booze n coke.
Curiously, for a programme celebrating a show about live performance, there was very little live footage - indeed, whenever a musical discursion was called for, they went more often for a clip of a pop video. Did we hear anything about how The Tube was running against the MTV-fuelled promo tide of the times? No; but then if we had, it might have thrown too much light on how the ballyhooed "launching" of U2 relied mostly on shoving Live At Red Rocks into a tapemachine and pressing play.
There was a load of good stuff on The Tube; but there were also a lot of editions where it was blessed relief when Peter Sissons turned up with Channel 4 News. For every Frankie Goes To Hollywood doing the sex, you'd have to sit through an overlong giggly-but-awed interview with Paula Yates helping George Michael launch his solo career, Go West playing the same song forever, and Paul Young sweating into the camera.
The upshot? Rewind The Tube conceded that the most famous moment on The Tube wasn't on The Tube, and wasn't even on Channel 4. But it never really pursued the question of why a show that could call on a-list musicians and had access to the hottest upcoming comedians is mostly remembered for a trailer and something said by a presenter.
There's a great story to be told about The Tube. I fear, though, we'll just get another half-dozen of these every five years or so. The Tube would never have treated The Tube like this.
There's a lumbering headline from the Daily Mail which, though gauche, pretty much sums it up:
Electronic quartet Alt-J are handed the prestigious 2012 Mercury Music Prize after being named the favourites to scoop the titleOkay, to be accurate nobody went "they're the favourites, so we better hand them the prize", but you can see what the Mail is getting at. It wasn't much of a surprise, and we're probably a good year or two away from a well-meaning presentation of the cheque to an outsider from whom we shall never hear again.
Channel 4 have suddenly noticed that T4's main raison d'etre - doing short introductions to reruns of Friends - has vanished now that Friends is on Comedy Central, and are axing the weekend morning show.
The money it saves from this new approach of "letting the bloody Hollyoaks omnibus take care of itself" is going to be poured into - oh, of course - a Friday night music show. Because Channel 4 has a spiffing recent record of agenda-setting music shows on which to build, like that one that did the album charts, and... the other ones. You know the ones.
Maybe they should try calling up The Chart Show people.
Tonight, Channel 4 shows a Dispatches investigation into prices charged by "official" secondary ticket agencies - you know, the ones which save us from having to pay rip-off prices to touts by, erm, charging rip-off prices.
The programme nearly didn't get to air, though, as Viagogo went to court to get an injunction.
And what were the grounds for trying to stop the programme?
Erm...
Viagogo tried to prevent the programme being broadcast "to prevent customer information being made public", according to its UK director, Edward Parkinson.Ah, that would be it. It wasn't worried about being portrayed as a mark-up shark-site; it was just worried about its customers being outed.
You'll remember a couple of days ago we were talking about Gordon's scoop announcing Dappy as Channel 4's alternative queen.
It seemed a rotten idea for Channel 4, and so it's reassuring to discover that Gordon was just talking bollocks as usual. MediaGuardian has the actual details of the Alternative Message:
A member of the medical staff from a Southampton maternity hospital will deliver this year's alternative Christmas message on Channel 4.Unless Dappy's picked up a bit of extra work over Christmas, it's another story from The Sun that turns out to be totally wrong.
The Princess Anne hospital will form a large part of Channel 4's Christmas Day schedule, with the alternative message and a marathon of One Born Every Minute Christmas specials called One Born At Christmas.
The rumours that Jordan is being lined up as one of the Today Christmas guest editors was rotten enough, but it now turns out that Channel Four have given their Alternative Queen's Speech slot to Dappy.
Yes, that Dappy.
Gordon, naturally, can't see anything wrong with this:
The viewing choice is bound to divide families across the the UK, with older relatives sure to stick by Her Maj.Really? Why? Because they'll assume there's been some sort of coup?
Grans will choke on their mince pies if they flick on to Camden scamp Dappy's ramblings by mistake.
Dappy and Her Majesty have further competition on Christmas Day from camp dancer LOUIE SPENCE - who I call Louise - as he'll be giving a motivational chat to Sky 1 viewers in a Pineapple Dance Studios special.Gordon: simply repeating the homophobic 'gag' that a gay man is actually a woman doesn't make it any better.
The court of appeal have upheld a judge's decision to do without a jury in the libel case being fought between Channel 4 and Matthew Fiddes, former bodyguard to Michael Jackson.
The likely costs was one reason, but:
The judge also based his ruling on the fact that the case would involve viewing sections of television footage and detailed examination of documents.
It also raised important issues about what was or was not acceptable editorial practice in a TV broadcast presented as factual which, he said, would best be dealt with in a reasoned judgment which could be made public and appealed.
More4 is showing a documentary on Monday which includes a segment that takes a hard look at celebrity anti-poverty campaigns:
The film that appears to have angered Geldof is Starsuckers, a polemic against media and celebrity that will be broadcast on More 4 on Tuesday. A section of the documentary makes a string of allegations about singer-turned-campaigner.
They include the suggestion money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts to tackle famine in Ethiopia was mis-spent, leading to deaths, and criticism that the successor concerts two decades later, Live 8, overshadowed a mass movement of campaigners in the Make Poverty History coalition.
In the letter, seen by the Guardian, Geldof claimed to have had significant influence over world leaders, including Tony Blair, in the run-up to the 2005 G8 summit, and contrasted the achievements of his Live 8 campaign with the global coalition of anti-poverty campaigners, which he characterised as "a bit lame" and almost entirely ineffectual.
Claiming that "all that the combined lobbying might of the total NGO community" failed to ignite public opinion over global poverty, Geldof drew attention to the powerful impact of the Live 8 concerts, which were televised simultaneously to audiences around the world. "They are the vast billions watching," he said. "Brought together around the electric hearth of the TV or computer screen by the Pied Pipers of Rock 'n Roll."
Fearing that Make Poverty History, a global coalition of development agencies, was failing to galvanise public opinion, he said he embarked on a publicity drive. It included "pretending" that millions of activists were headed to Edinburgh from the continent to "re-enact a sort of Dunkirk", he said.
Speaking at a boatyard, Geldof appealed for English boat owners and even rowers to sail across the Channel for "Sail 8" and pick up thousands of European protesters trying to get to Edinburgh for the demonstration on the opening day of the summit on July 6.
Geldof alluded to events during World War II in 1940 when hundreds of thousands of troops were rescued from the German advance in France by a fleet of privately owned craft sailing across the Channel.
"What we are asking people to do is not re-create D-Day but re-create Dunkirk, which is one of the great national legends of our country where normal people got in their boats to rescue our soldiers, 380,000 of them, who were surrounded and came back to fight another day," Geldof said.
It would be the biggest collection of little boats seen since Dunkirk, he said. "This time we are asking that people take to their boats in their thousands and pick up the people of France for a friendlier invasion. It will be beautiful and amazing . . . I think if you have a little rowing boat that would get across, then jump in it and get as far as you can."
He contrasted the success of the Live 8 initiative with the efforts of anti-poverty demonstrators who "were never mentioned" at the summit, where they wielded "not a single shred of influence".
"The G8 has become a pointless ritual where the marchers and the wankers dressed as clowns (wow! Radical) get to throw stones at cops miles from the decision makers, who can't even hear them, and the cops get to crack some heads," he said, adding that he suspected other campaigners knew that his methods were simply more effective. "I can do rock n roll, they can do marching."
Jamie Oliver's amusing promo for his American Road Trip series has upset The Village People. The trail featured Oliver dressed up in the same fancy dress used by the band, and this, they reckon, is a copyright infringement:
Anyone who thinks the Village People are little more than a fun-at-the-time 1970s disco band with hits including YMCA and In The Navy needs to think again. According to John Giacobbi, the British lawyer pursuing Channel 4 on their behalf, "the Village People are still a huge, multimillion-dollar global business."
The name and costumes are trademarked in the US, and hundreds of commercial requests are dealt with every year, said Giacobbi. There was, he said, no such request from Channel 4.
The cost of inviting O'Meara et al on two years back: This year, not only is Celebrity Big Brother sharing a sponsor with "prime time on ITV3", but they're even using the same break bumpers. Oh, the shame.
So, Davina - dressed in an ostrich with Freak-from-Cell-Block-H gloves - is here to detail which C-Listers are prepared to risk everything for a chance to get invited back onto the B-List. Brought to you by Dreams, who must also be quivering alongside the collapse of MFI and the difficulties of their sofa-pushing brethren. Who do you have, Davina?
First: Latoya Jackson. Or possible a marionette Michael Jackson. Endemol could have been cruel, and given her the task of pretending she was her brother for the first couple of days, but they don't.
She claims the luxury bedroom, without even a second thought. Her intro tape is actually quite poignant: "I don't really know the world." She's hoping that Celeb Big Brother will teach her about it. Clearly not been sent tapes of previous years' programmes, then.
"I used to be in a girl group" - yes, it's Mutya, who tries to stress that there's more to her than "ex-Sugababe", but really knows there isn't. "There were a lot of rumours that we didn't get on" she observes, before effectively confirming them.
Her diamond tooth has the unfortunate effect of making her look a little Bugs Bunny when shot half-smiling. Still, at least UK contestants know they're expected to keep up a monologue as they go down the stairs and into the living room. LaToya was like a mime.
Vern Toyer was in Austin Powers, you know. Not that he goes on about it very much. (To be fair, he doesn't really want to drag up Shasta McNasty, does he?). He's got a plan. It's an evil plan. Like, you know, Doctor Evil out the film Austin Powers. Which he was in.
As he goes in - the back way, with a woman who tried to pretend she wasn't there even while he was asking her questions - Davina gushes: "how cute!" Not, of course, that she's be condescending in any way. Oh no.
Is "friend of George Galloway" a new political euphemism? It's used of Tommy Sheridan, who seems convinced that he's famous for his Poll Tax work rather than the nasty business with the News Of The World. Davina is called upon to add a bit of voiceover work to try and keep the legal team happy when he gets to that.
Sheridan seems convinced that he's entering the series "on my terms"; actually, he enters on a sea of boos.
Cut to the house, which is currently attempting to earn its entertainment corn by streaming live pictures of semi-famous people reading off laminated sheets.
Goodness, a woman who is famous for showing her breasts in tired magazines insisting that, hey, she's not like the stereotyped blonde airhead. Lucy Pinder proudly describes herself as "a bit Tory", which must be why she's adopted the free market in looking down her blouse.
"Don't put me in with a bleeding heart liberal" she pleads. Well, nobody has ever accused Sheridan of liberalism, I suppose.
Aaah! Ben from A1! Puppy eyes and... what's this? He's dissing his floppy curtain hair? Thinks it now looked awful? Bah, Ben. So, what have you been up to since you adjusted your hairstyle to fit the thinning at the back, exactly?
"I'm now known as a songwriter and a producer", he claims, bravely.
Adams tells us that he doesn't like going to celebrity hang outs - the people are arrogant, apparently. And, of course, it gets annoying being told that your name isn't on the clipboard.
Time is getting short for the programme - Ben is virtually manhandled through the doors.
Tina Malone lists her cv - "fat, Scouse, funny, bipolar, OCD". Oh, and ex-Brookside. It's cruel to put someone suffering from having been in Brookside into such an environment, surely?
"She's lost four stone seven pounds so far this year" trills Dav excitedly - which is really sticking to a new year's resolution with a vengeance. It turns out Malone has had a gastric band fitted, which sits awkwardly with her proud "I'm fat and healthy" claims on her intro tape.
Don't call it a comeback. Okay, Coolio - how about "a last brief grab for the spotlights before obscurity rolls in to reclaim its own?"
While lisiting his desires to be fanned by a naked young girl - "over eighteen" - he also details his wonderful career. I'm not sure, though, but if you're feeling the need to mention a World Music Award, you could look a little like you're desperate to pad.
He goes in wearing a mask on the back of his head - so it looks like he's walking backwards, if you ignore the mask being a bit crappy. It does have a tattooed tear, though - do you get tattoo tears for being in Big Brother?
At one point, Coolio compares himself to God, in a "I'm not really saying I'm like God, but - hey - you could see how people might get confused, right" tongue-in-cheek way.
Bloody hell, did Liberty X really drag on for six godless years? Michelle 'ooh, I were right fat back then' Heaton is next up. "I was married to Andy Scott-Lee for..." (insert your own 'contractual reasons' punchline here). It turns out that marriage was difficult because of the press interest - presumably in that once the press interest dried up, the marriage ceased to exist, like a light going off as a fridge door slams shut.
She took advice from Jordan and Peter about being on reality TV. It's not recorded if Jordan pointed out that her entire bloody working life has been being on reality TV, but since Lucy Pinder has previously implied Jordan is as thick as a kitten with glue on its paws, probably not.
As Heaton enters, Coolio immediately slides a glass of champagne into her hand. He really is slick.
So, all that vitriol Terry Christian got when he was presenting The Word? That was because all the media commentators wanted his job - which he suggests was "interviewing Sharon Stone and introducing Nirvana", rather than stumbling over the autocue, throwing to Hufty's OB from a nightclub in Goole and inviting people to eat maggots. He does, however, suggest the Word was a "septic T4", which only really underlines that he's not been on television for an age and most teenagers couldn't be blinking in "who's he" bafflement any harder than if Alvar Liddell had been clambering up the scaffolding steps.
He bounds over to Coolio and says "a long time ago, you were on a show of mine". Like he was Lew Grade.
"I guess most people will remember me from Ulrika, the pilot comedy show that somehow the BBC were persuaded to make for me," explains Ulrika, "although I'm also well known for my part in the John Leslie business a few years back." No, alright, she doesn't. Actually, she says that "people still shout 'ka-ka-ka' in the street" - and, sometimes, "look out, there's a bicycle behind you". Ulrika's main job in the house will be to be taller than everyone else, thereby providing a reference point in turmoil.
A quick trip back outside for Davina to run through the names again. Crowd reaction suggests BEN TO WINNN1111!!!; however, when the cameras return to the house, he's stood watching Coolio reading out the rules looking for all the world like an unmarried uncle at a children's party: desperate to be having fun, but with the creeping suspicion that he's made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Still, early days. There's 22 days of this to go.
Lest we forget
Ofcom verdict on CBB 2007
The celebrities enter the 2006 house
A vague couple of words speculating that LaToya Jackson might be this year's Jackson in the Big Brother house unleashed an enormous monster of a Jackson fan in the comments:
You would only have to bother Googling La Toya Jackson to know that she too is representing the pop world, with 10 albums released since 1980, a Grammy nomination for her songwriting. A few people out there may also know her recent US club chart hits Just Wanna Dance and Free The World under her alias 'Toy'. She was also part of USA for Africa - We Are The World too. Her last UK releases were 1988's You're Gonna Get Rocked single with hip-hop superproducers Full Force and the accompanying LP with tracks by Stock Aitken Waterman amongst others. She's a best-selling author, actress, and her Playboy issues are still the biggest sellers of all time. It'll be great to see her back. Last time she was over here was in 2005 on Frank Skinner, supporting Michael and talking about her life. It should be a great 3 weeks of top telly with Toy on board.
Even the most generous of observers had started to doubt that all of Channel 4's wide-ranging radio plans would ever get much off the drawing board, but it's still something of a shock that they've pulled the entire project.
Yes, even the E4 Radio which had, up until now, still been forging ahead to go on air in Spring next year.
The Channel 4 chief executive, Andy Duncan, who was previously a big champion of Channel 4's radio ambitions, said: "We've taken this decision very reluctantly.
"We've pursued our radio plans in good faith and continue to believe DAB has a strong future and that we could make a return from radio in the medium term.
"Frustratingly, our plans have been overtaken by a drastic recent downturn in our revenues and we will have to forgo this future profit stream.
"We can no longer afford the short-term investment necessary given that we are having to cut so deeply across all parts of the organisation."
The number of times Sleeper appeared on TFI Friday, you might almost suspect that Chris Evans had a small part of his heart that would, forever, be at Lou Wener's beck and call. This is from Christmas 1996 - we're guessing, based on Evans' gear, although it could also be from the period when he started to believe he was Lord Of Entertainment.
[Part of Sleeper Weekend]
Continuing our rewind through Curve's career, here's a performance of Coast Is Clear from Channel 4's short-lived, ill-conceived Friday At The Dome in 1991:
Part of Curve weekend]
According to "executive sources" quoted in MediaGuardian, Channel 4's management is getting slightly cold feet about the expense being lavished on the yet-to-launch radio wing:
You might have to wonder at the wisdom of T4 dedicating an hour of Channel 4 screentime to the NME awards when they're not even able to show the award - acres of coverage of people holding up a pixelated prize. Good work, everyone.
Ofcom stepped in to stop Channel 4 showing Kylie's new video on Wednesday. Why? Could it be the regulator was objecting to a video which was so hot it constituted a Kylie Mingoue sex tape? Was the television watchdog outraged by the possibility of a video showing Kylie naked except for two chocolate hobnobs, sitting astride a giant phallus, screeching about her desire to be done, now, by everyone?
Or could it be that they were just a bit worried the strobing lights in the video might cause people suffering from photo sensitive epilepsy to have an attack?
Yes. The last one.
