Category: TV & Radio

Golden Girls

My two favourite TV Blanches died within a few months of each other. The first was Maggie Jones from Corrie (Coronation Street – Blighty’s longest running soap) who died in 2009. I thought she was magnificent. She had all the best lines, one of the finest being (when she suspected her son-in-law Ken Barlow was having an affair with an old male school friend):

‘I have nothing against the gays, Kenneth. It’s just I don’t want my daughter married to one. I’m old fashioned that way.’ Priceless.

My second Blanche was Rue Mclanahan, my favourite character from the Golden Girls. Now only the fragrant Betty White remains from the cast. ‘And then there was one,’ Liam sighed at the time. We spent a commemorative evening reliving a few of Rue’s golden moments from the golden years of the Golden Girls, especially poignant now that we have reached our own golden age.

Alice’s Bucket List

It takes a lot to make this cynical old queen cry. Okay, I confess. It doesn’t. I cry at sentimental films cleverly contrived to elicit an instant emotional response. I cry when Karen (Emma Thompson) realises that her husband Harry (Alan Rickman) is having an affair in Love Actually. I weep when Mary (Joan Plowright) and Arabella (Judi Dench) wave farewell to Luca (Baird Wallace) in Tea with Mussolini. I am inconsolable when Ste (Scott Neal) and Jamie (Glen Berry) run through the forest to the soundtrack of Make Your Own Kind of Music by the Mamas and Papas in Beautiful Thing. It’s an acting thing and it gets me every time.

Alice Pyne is not acting. Alice has cancer and she has a blog. She writes:

‘Hi, I’m 15 years old and live with my parents and sister in Ulverston. I’ve been fighting cancer for almost 4 years and now I know that the cancer is gaining on me and it doesn’t look like I’m going to win this one 😦 I’m hoping to write in here as much as I can and I’m also going to show my bucket list which I’m trying to get done before I have to go. Hopefully, I’ll update as I tick each one off the list :)’ Alice’s Bucket List

I began to read Alice’s wish list out loud to Liam. I had to stop half way through. It was all too much. Her courage astounds and humbles me. It should humble us all. Alice has restored my faith in humanity. Thank you Alice.

Clunk, Click Every Trip

The Turkish Government is blitzing the airwaves with a road safety campaign. A combination of light-hearted and deadly serious adverts are being broadcast to warn of the dangers and consequences of jumping lights without a seatbelt while yelling down a mobile phone. It will take divine intervention to break the Turkish love affair with suicidal driving but ten out of ten to the Government for trying.

Liam does all the driving in our family but will only drive in Turkey when absolutely necessary. He’d rather negotiate the North Circular during the morning rush hour than the Torba Road at any time. Our near-fatal crash earlier in the year killed his confidence. He’s had his fill of lunatic Turks and inebriated emigreys. I never learned to drive. I never saw much point in London where jumping on the Tube is by far the most efficient way of crossing the city. Liam’s lot in life is to chauffeur me around. He calls it driving Miss Daisy.

Eurovision, The Verdict

The greatest music show on Earth

As class act Pet Clark famously warbled:

The Show is over now

My song is dying

This is the end, my friend

There isn’t anymore

The greatest music show on earth has drawn to a close. The super trouper has been dimmed, the glitter ball has been packed away and the legions of obscure half-baked camp crooners have boarded the buses bound for their Carpathian villages. Their five minutes of fame is up. The Eurovision Song Contest rebuilt war-torn Europe sequin by sequin and our continent is a more colourful place because of it.

Blue are blue but they shouldn’t be. We Brits are used to vengeful Eurovision voting by our neighbours. We’re destined never to win but to always pick up the tab. It’s the cross that we bear. We could offer up a singing goat for all the difference it would make. We should be consoled by the utter dominance of our once obscure and marginal Germanic tongue. It’s a shame though, that the ethnic tint has been squeezed out of the competition by insipid Euro-pop sung in la la la Ingelish.

Predictably the Balkan conspirators, Baltic cartel and ex-Soviet mafia played their aces. So there we have have it. The travelling circus is off to Baku in Azerbaijan in 2012. At least with all their oil money they can afford to pay for it.

Watch the winning entry on You Tube. It’s a sweet song and a little bit Glee.

Eurovision – Vote Now!

Vote for your least worst Eurovision song.

Eurovision – Nil Point

Join us as we tweet our way through the dirgy ballads, second rate Euro-trash ditties and sycophantic compering of the Eurovision Song Contest. Let us  unite for the nail biting, edge of seat parochial madness that will be the result of the European jury.

Eurovision Song-Fest Fever

Euro Camp-Fest

Forget the crisis in Syria, the civil war in Libya, Bin Liner’s death or the impending draconian clampdown on internet freedom in Turkey. It’s Eurovision Song Contest night and Europe’s having a party. Various angst-ridden bleached blond divas, euro pretty-boys in tight pants mincing around the stage and ruritanians in pantomime drag have been bussed in to Düsseldorf for the annual kitsch camp-fest. What started as a genuine attempt to heal the wounds of a war-torn Europe has degenerated into a financially crippling travelling circus of political intrigue and regional love-ins that now requires an ECB bailout to stage.

Turkey was knocked out in the semis. Who are the Azeri Turks going to vote for now? Will it be the usual Balkan back-slapping bonhomie from people who only a few years ago were at each other’s throats? Who’ll pick up the Greek vote now Cyprus is out? Was Dana International’s unceremonious ejection because the Israelis are beastly to the Palestinians or due to the fact that she’s gone rather broad at the beam and sang a crap song? Will anyone vote for the UK? I doubt it even with Duncan James’ newly acquired disco tits out on display. These are questions of profound global significance.

There will be Eurovision parties the length and breadth of Blighty, staged by queens for queens. Soho will be a ghost town and we will be glued to the set doing our bit for the boys.

Blue did a nude photo-shoot for Attitude magazine in Blighty. Stripping off for the folks back home won’t bring in the votes but might get their so so song into the charts. Watch the video below. It’s a bit naughty so if you are of a nervous disposition or easily offended I suggest you give it a miss!

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.

Silent but Deadly

A Handbag?

The drains in our new lodgings are a bit of problem. We took a well-deserved break from home making to watch back to back episodes of Downton Abbey. Midway through a deliciously haughty Maggie Smith monologue we turned to each other thinking the other had broken wind, the silent but deadly variety. Obviously, something very unpleasant had drifted across the room. I entered the bathroom to investigate and nearly fainted at the stench. Just as well Liam was on hand with the brandy to revive me. Mercifully, a few gallons of water liberally dosed with bleach soon cured the offending aroma.

Regrettably, rancid drains are the price we pay for living in paradise. During the hot, dry summers there’s just not enough pressure to push the shite through the pipe and back waft is all too common. That it has happened so early in the year is a tad worrying.

Ground Hog Day

What Day Is It?

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.