Category: BBC

Beautiful People

I took a much-needed break from promoting Perking the Pansies. I switched on the TV, put my feet up and settled down to  watch Beautiful People on BBC Entertainment. The series is from the magical pen of Jonathan Harvey, the creative comic genius behind Beautiful Thing (one of my favourite films) and Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, the deliciously wicked, surreal TV comedy starring James Dreyfus and the inimitable Kathy Burke. There’s a reason I’m wittering on about this: something interesting cropped up in one of the episodes, How I Got My Water Feature, inspired by the British national obsession in the late Nineties with Ground Force (a gardening makeover programme featuring the bouncing, bra-less breasts of Charlie Dimmock). One of the characters came out with the immortal line ‘We’re just planting perky pansies.’ I recoiled in horror. I’d never seen this episode before I started the blog. Honest, Your Honour. Will Jonathan sue me for breach of copyright? I hope not. Maybe a case of great minds think alike? Even if Mr Harvey’s mind is a significantly greater than mine.

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Ground Hog Day

Auntie’s Bloomers

Will the Real Jack Scott Please Stand Up?

Google sits astride the internet like a leviathan. Forget Yahoo or Bing or a host of smaller search engines, only Google counts. Their search algorithms can make or break an online presence. If you don’t show up in the first few pages of Google, you may as well not be on the internet at all. It’s all about search engine optimisation (SEO) and ways to make it better. There’s an entire industry dedicated to improving it (or trying to cheat the clever geeks at Google). How’s a humble little jobbing blogger in a faraway country most people couldn’t place on a map ever going to make his mark? Well, Perking the Pansies does well. Google favours fresh, frequently renewed content and my content is frequently renewed, if not fresh. Sorted.

Little Jack Scott, though, struggles. The name is a curse. It’s eclipsed by other more illustrious Jacks plastered all over the web. Who are these pretenders to my rightful throne? Well, there’s Jack Scott, (AKA Giovanni Dominico Scafone Jr) the Canadian singer ‘undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time,’ apparently. I’d never heard of him. Sorry. Then there’s the late Jack Scott, buck-teethed weather man who died in 2008. He was everyone’s favourite weather guru and brought magnetic weather symbols to live broadcasts on the BBC. Unfortunately, they often slipped down the board or dropped off altogether. My final Jack is the now infamous Mayor of the little town of Cordova in Alabama which was flattened by killer tornadoes earlier this year. Mayor Scott refused to allow trailers into the town to house the newly homeless because he didn’t want to encourage trailer trash. Sounds like a fine and upstanding pillar of the community.

So, what’s a diminutive, washed-up ex pretty boy with his best years behind him to do? Change his name to Dick Stillhard (no wait, that’s already taken).

Thanks to Spainstruck for the inspiration for this one.

Strictly Come Dancing

We logged on to the VPN, plugged the laptop in to the widescreen and relaxed with tucker on trays for an unadulterated pleasure night of British TV. We’re making the most of it before the dull hand of the Turkish censor bans our innocent fun. Top of our bill was the class act that is Strictly Come Dancing live on Auntie.  A gay boy needs his fix of spectacle, salsa and sequins on a cool autumn evening. For us, Russell Grant, the frockless fat drag queen, was the astrological star of the show. Mystic Meg never predicted that.

Liam and I were fascinated by Lulu’s fabulous facelift, so much better than the trout pout sported by Felicity Kendall last year (to who, by the way, I used to sell light bulbs to in Habitat circa 1979). You really do get what you pay for.

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Strictly No Dancing

Wild About the Oscars

No Frills Thrills

Today’s the day we bid au revoir to our friends in Bordeaux and board the no frills flight to Gatwick, stay overnight in a no frills Sussex hotel and board another no frills flight home to thrilling Bodrum. This is a no frills post. Normal broadcasts will be resumed shortly.

This is most famous test card of all, Test Card F, still in use today by the BBC and used in 30 other countries. Designed by George Hersee and featuring his daughter Carole Hersee, it made its first appearance on BBC2 in 1967. I remember this so well, growing up before 24 hour multi-channel TV took over our lives. I wonder where she is now?

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A Star is Born

The Homecoming

We’re All Asians Really

Geographically, Anatolian Turkey is in Asia and Thracian Turkey is in Europe. A simple glance at a map confirms it. Istanbul is not called the city that straddles two continents for nothing. For commercial convenience, the whole of Turkey is often classified as Europe for such things as travel insurance and flights. Lonely Planet lists Turkey under Eastern Europe and the Caucasus when it is part of neither (apart from Thrace). Is Turkey also part of the Middle East? This is less clear. The Middle East is an ill-defined term that always includes Arabic countries, but may or may not include the nations of North Africa (who speak Arabic) and may or may not include non-Arabic Iran. Where does Cyprus fit in? It’s closer to Asia than to Europe and the Greek side is part of the European Union (nominally on behalf of the whole Island but that’s another story).

Does any of it matter? Certainly not to long gone conquerors who marched across Asia Minor from all points of the compass at the drop of a helmet.

It only matters to me when trying to catch the weather forecast on BBC World. The Beeb doesn’t seem to know where Turkey is either and generally ignores us altogether. Consider this. Geologically, Europe isn’t a continent at all. It’s an appendage to Asia with an arbitrary border drawn along the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. Those in the know describe the entire landmass as Eurasia. You see we’re all Asians really.

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Birds without Wings

Two Nations

Mobiles and Megaphones

A short and narrow lane runs along the side of our new house leading to a modest block of flats rented out to itinerant workers. Judging by the constant throng of virile young men who pass to and fro, the building is either the TARDIS in disguise or these poor boys are topping and tailing in sardine shifts. Understandably, such enforced intimacy presents privacy problems. My enjoyment of the latest edge of seat clinical dilemma in Casualty (or Doctors or Holby City)  is regularly and loudly interrupted by a Kurd bellowing down his mobile phone outside our window. Anatolians use their mobiles like megaphones. When our new neighbour, bubbly Beril, talks to her friends she doesn’t really need to use her phone as they can hear her in Ankara without it.

The Wedding

We watched the royal nuptials with friends surrounded by homespun bunting, Union flags lovingly coloured in felt tip pens and attached to straws, and photocopied mini-flags on cocktail sticks. We feasted on a celebratory spread of British fare with a Turkish twist – spicy Cornish pasties for the fellas, scones for the ladies, fairy cakes for the pansies. Intellectually I’m a republican but emotionally I’m a true blue royalist. It’s a contradiction I manage to fudge with typically British pragmatism.

We had a joyous time stuffing our faces, sipping Pimms, waving our patriotic pennants and whooping at the hotchpotch of heavenly and hideous frocks. Princess Bea’s head dress could pick up intelligent life on other planets and Anne wrapped herself in her granny’s tablecloth that she’d run up on a Singer. Her Maj, of course, is above fashion. Harry looked dapper in his uniform. He’s the best of the bunch even though he’s a ginger. I’ve forgiven his faux pas with Nazi party attire some years ago. I put it down to youthful exuberance and stupidity. The Windsor-Mountbattens aren’t blessed with much up top. The Abbey looked magnificent and the majestic pageant was delivered to perfection in a way only the British know how. It gladdened my heart to see Elton John and his Civil Partner, David Furnish, in attendance. The final nail in the coffin of bigotry? Well, perhaps.

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I’ve heard it said that the whole jamboree was a waste of time and money in these days of austerity and the terrible events occurring around the globe. What’s wrong with forgetting the woes of the world just for one day and enjoying the fairytale moment? I hope the dysfunctional Firm have learned the Diana lesson and gorgeous Kate will be allowed to flourish in a thoroughly modern way.

Ground Hog Day

Work is a four letter word round here. It reminds me of the bitter daily grind and sends a shudder down my spine. I have to admit, though, that gainful employment did provide a structure to my day and a timetable on autopilot  – 6.30am, Heart FM; 7am douche, press, brew, fag, no breakfast; 8am, Tube no seat; 8.55am, Café Nero Americano; 9am PC on. Ready steady go. Now all that is in the past and I can do as I please I sometimes don’t know what day it is. I don’t know where the months have gone since I gave all that up and I often don’t know what I did yesterday. Liam is no better. It’s not a complaint just an observation. Perhaps it’s early onset dementia. Besides it’s easy to imagine I’m Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day when watching the same episode of The Weakest Link on a continuous loop. Tis the fate of all emigreys.

Feel the Love

I’ve long believed that everyone hated us. The British strut the world stage hanging onto the coat tails of our mighty American cousins and I can understand why this gets up the noses of many. Ridicule in Iraq, deadly bombs on the Tube, World Cup humiliation and nil point at Eurovision all point to a depressing impression of widespread antipathy. It’s little consolation that the pushy Yanks are despised more. It’s come as a refreshing surprise to discover than dear old Blighty is the second most popular nation in the World according to a BBC World Service Country Rating Poll. It’s a welcome antidote to the legions of emigrey Brit-bashers and doom and gloom soothsayers on the top of the Clapham omnibus. Alas, we were beaten into second place by the Germans but I suppose we’re getting used to that. Apparently, though, Turks don’t think much of us at all, presumably because they are taught that the English (Britain doesn’t seem to exist in Turkish parlance) were responsible for the final destruction of the Ottoman Empire. That’s what happens when you back the wrong horse.

The Word on the Street

Thank you to those who voted in my playful poll about proxy servers. Here are the results of the Perking the Pansies jury:

31% – Yes I use a proxy server in Turkey

28% – No I don’t use a proxy server

10% – I’ve no idea what you’re taking about!

31% – I don’t live in Turkey

For anyone interested, the way to access a proxy server is to sign up to a ‘Virtual Private Network’ (VPN). This handy service provides a gateway to British terrestrial TV and also circumvents internet restrictions by the Turkish authorities. We use my-private-network.co.uk. The service was easy to set up and costs about a fiver a month. This allows us to stream live TV and watch catch up services on our laptop. We also installed the BBC iPlayer to download BBC programmes to watch at our leisure. For an altogether better viewing experience, we connect the laptop to our TV and sound system.

The Downside

The process can be frustrating and unsatisfying. Live streaming and catch up needs a good internet speed. Ours is up and down like whore’s drawers. A variable picture quality, broadcasts that freeze then jump forward and endless buffering can irritatingly interrupt our  enjoyment. Downloading programmes using the iPlayer works really well as it saves a temporary copy on our computer but, of course, only applies to BBC broadcasts.