Crying Into Their Beer

Premier League: Manchester United v Liverpool, Sky Sports, Easter Sunday
Lee Evans XL Tour 2005, Channel 4, Saturday

"happy easter mct r u going to watch the scum," read my dad’s text to me on Easter Sunday morning. At 57, he has finally mastered text messaging, if not punctuation, and I was quite chuffed by this Easterly greeting. Plus, it reminded me in the nick of time to get out of my jammies, trowel some slap on and get mineself down to the pub for the footie.

"I forgot you were a Man U fan," said the disgruntled sports journalist to me this morning, when I happily asked him if he’d seen the footie at the weekend. Yes indeedy. I’m not as bad as Da Canning though, who is not only a rabid Man U fan but a rabid anti-Liverpool fan, actually booting the sofa after Liverpool’s victory over AC Milan in the 2005 Champion’s League final (myself, Ma Canning and the dog had fled for cover when the third goal went in).

But this is not why I’m writing about the footie on the TV page this week. Really. (Hee.) After years of doing it, it struck me on Sunday that I hadn’t yet written about one of my favourite goggleboxing experiences – watching footie in the pub.

It’s great gas, so t’is. Even if you’re not supporting any particular team, it’s still loads of craic watching grown men ooh, aah, and cry into their beer. It’s even more fun when you’re a girlie, as guys cast sideways glances at you, wondering if you’ve been dragged there by a boyfriend or if you’re actually a "real" fan. (I like to play on this stereotype of people with wombs not being able to be proper football fans by telling anyone who tries to chat me up that I support Man U because I like the colour of their strip.)

Watching the match on Sunday was one of the best footie pub experiences I’ve had, and no, not just because of the result. We ended up standing beside a bunch of stalwarts, all Liverpool fans bar one, and there was great banter for the first while, at least until I came back from having a smoke to find the bar in uproar and Mascerano having a hissy fit on the screen after being sent off. (Quite right too. Don’t argue with the ref, primadonna football players. And Ashley Cole should have been sent off against Spurs as well.)

The rest of the match saw several grown men crying into their beer, with my favourite moments eavesdropping the extreme spin, justification, and ref-blaming among the Liverpool fans, and the guy in the Liverpool top who shamefacedly put his hoodie on over it at full time. It was so good I decided to ignore my usual afternoon drinking rule and stay on for the Chelsea/Arsenal match, the best bit of which was the guy in the corner sprint towards the screen with his pint every time Chelsea got close to scoring. Great stuff.

More great stuff with Lee Evans on Saturday night (Channel 4) , a comedian I always found quite annoying but revised my opinion of after seeing his latest tour show. (Yes, I can occasionally change my mind. Didn’t I even say last month that Deano from Eastenders can act after all?) It’s still on 4OD for anyone who wants to see the show, and, one of the bits I liked best, his singing the Welsh national anthem at the end.

Sadly I can’t share the best of his, em, adult jokes in a family newspaper but suffice to say that if you do watch it, look out for the "men and women sharing a bath" sketch, especially the bit about men lowering themselves into the scalding water with a certain piece of their anatomy stretched up behind their ears. It’s funny cos it’s true…

Pramface Babies, Channel 4, Thursday
Wonderland: The Curious World of Frinton-On-Sea, BBC2, Wednesday

It has been quite an odd week. There has been some great stuff on the telly, such as a couple of excellent documentaries and several programmes on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion. (Just in case that sounds like I’ve gone all highbrow, I’m looking forward more to Max apparently getting buried alive in Enders this week.) Delia opened more jars and packets in the kitchen, happily enraging food critics up and down the land and even leading to one of our news journalists to sadly opine that she’s lost it. Delia that is, not our news journalist, although it could probably accurately be said that the jury is still out on that one.

But, as I have found since starting this column, my view of the goggleboxing can be coloured a tad by what is happening in my life at the time. The best week in TV ever, which was close enough this week, means nothing if I am watching it through a scowl and wishing violent death on all concerned. Yes, even Bargain Hunt. It has not been a good week.

But it would have put anyone in a bad mood, watching Channel 4’s offensively titled Pramface Babies last Thursday, following four young mothers from Liverpool as they gave birth to their bairns. It opened with 19 year old Laura, sprawled on a hospital bed about to go into labour, with her mobile clamped to one ear as she tried to track down the errant father. She ended up giving birth without him and months later was still forlornly saying to the camera that she hoped they had a future together. "Sorry to disturb you," she said to errant dad’s mum  "but I’m giving birth to your grandchild here."

Linzi was in hospital having her second child to her boyfriend, in genuinely disturbing scenes as her mum and idiotic spidey other half told her during labour to "stop moaning and just get on with it." I knew as soon as Linzi hit twelve that she’d be coming home pregnant, her vile mum said, clearly not caring about labelling theories and self-fulfilling prophecies.

It was good, strong TV, and very interesting if sad to watch, but through it all there was a sneaking sense of a "let’s laugh at the poor people" approach from the director. Quotes from the four young women, about things like finding someone to love and to love them, were put up on the screen to frame segments of the programme, and may as well have had "Laugh here" on them. Worst of all was the title Pramface, a term given to the Vicky Pollard style of parenting with WKD swigging mums swapping their babies for Westlife CDs, but not applicable here. Someone isn’t automatically an ASBO candidate just because they’re poor, something that shouldn’t even need said. Still, best contraceptive I’ve seen on TV for a while.

More exploitative yet fascinating stuff with The Curious World of Frinton-On-Sea, (BBC2, Wednesday), looking at the longer-term residents of the seaside town, many of whom had been there for decades. It was a very well made film, but again, had an even clearer sense that the director was inviting us to make fun of people who had done nothing wrong except be born as the people they were. There has been some fallout from the show, with most of the criticism focused on the fact that director Mark Isaac seemed to hone in on the more vulnerable residents, without telling them exactly what the Wonderland series – a look at eccentrics – was about. Margaret, the curio shop owner who confessed to having a long standing crush on fellow resident Geoffrey, clearly had some mental issues and was only in the programme to laugh at. Nothing wrong with a portrait of lonely residents in a small town, but there are better ways to do it. So there.

But anyhoo. Tanya flips in Eastenders this week and tries to bury Max alive. Not that I’m saying my less than great week had anything to do with men, but, well, hell hath no fury…You go, girl.

F**king Frozen Potatoes

Phone Rage, Channel 4, Thursday
Delia, BBC2, Monday
White Girl, BBC2, Monday
10 Days to War, BBC1, Monday

It has been claimed by many in recent years that call centres are the "modern mills". The situation of workers chained to their desks by their headsets, with their loo breaks timed and having to be back at their desks literally on the second after a break, may not sound as bad as sooty-faced Dickensian orphans spluttering their way up chimneys while being pitchforked on the bum by evil Fagan types, but that’s only because you’ve never worked in a call centre.

Phone Rage (Channel 4, Thursday), brought back all those deep-repressed memories of my year in a call centre in 1999, quite literally the worst, most demoralising and most depressing job I have ever had. Doubtless my lily-livered editor will not allow me to mention the phone company I worked for during this year of hell, but suffice to say it was one of the major ones, with one of the first mobile phone networks, and one where you could ring up and find out the numbers of companies anywhere in the UK.

"Anywhere in the UK" was the problem. The contract for this had been "outsourced" to Belfast - in other words, we work cheaper over here so our wages were unlikely to cut too much into the few billion quids’ worth of profit made by Ma Bell. This meant we were not only very busy – 90 calls an hour was the average – but that every fourth or fifth call was an enraged person from Birmingham or Oxford furious that me in Belfast did not know the name of the shop next to Boots on the High Street, and so could not give them the number.

(I was called a "thick Irish bitch" quite a few times, but this just made me chortle and remember the time I asked some chavette in London whether she meant "N for November" and was told, No, n for knife, innit?. Or the time I was asked for a number in Canning Town, and then asked if I was spelling it correctly. Yes, I said, it’s my surname, so I do know how to spell it. Wot? said the amazed Cockney on the other end of the line. Your surname’s Canning Town?)

So, and very probably not what the programme makers intended the reaction to be, my rage was directed at the customers and not the call centre staff. Yes, I know it is infuriating, and I have been enraged on hold myself, but, people, it is not the fault of the poor minimum waged or studenty types on the other end of the phone. Be nice to the mill workers, everyone.

My ire was quenched somewhat by Delia Smith’s new programme on BBC2 on Monday night, quite self-confidently just called "Delia", and giving tips on how to cheat at cooking. Now, as someone whose cooking is what can most kindly be called a bit hit and miss – most of the stuff I make is passable, sometimes it’s stinking and very occasionally I manage a delicious fluke (usually when I add half a bottle of wine to whatever I have in the cauldron) – I was very interested in this, and now Deila, using tinned mince and frozen spuds for her shepherd’s pie, is my new hero.

It’s all the more amusing as it gives me even more ammunition in my "chefs are pretentious gits" rants, as I imagine the likes of Gordon Ramsay going apopoleptically purple and screaming about "f**king frozen potatoes!!" As Delia said, it’s eating. It’s fun, and important, but not that much so.

And how nice to see a cooking programme where the recipes don’t call for you to walk miles in green wellies to pay twenty quid for a sprig of herbs at an organic farm. As one of my favourite quotes goes, life’s too damn short to stuff bloody mushrooms (OK, I might have added the sweary bits).

Lots of swearing after Delia in White Girl (BBC2, Monday), part of the Beeb’s tedious White season, a 90 minute drama about a family fleeing to Bradford to escape the mum’s abusive partner. They are the only white family in the area, the three children are the only white pupils at the local school, and, after mum Debbie takes loser husband Steve back, 11 year old daughter Leah soon finds solace in Islam.

Debbie and Steve react with predictable rage; Debbie then goes to the local mosque and by the end of the drama, mother and daughter are reunited after Debbie finds the strength and inner peace to kick Steve out.

"In a way, this is a love story between a mother and a daughter: they’re both trying to reach each other," says actor Anna Maxwell Martin, who played Debbie. This is the main reason I felt uncomfortable about what could have been a good stand-alone drama – everyone comes to art with their own agenda, and watching White Girl, the main thing I saw was a victim of domestic violence finding the strength to be on her own. The film would have been fine, and better, if it had just stuck to this.

The religious element was unnecssary and, especially in the scene where Leah "repels" stepdad Steve by chanting an Islamic prayer at him, patronising. Religion, whether Islam or anything else, was seen as a wonderful answer to this messed up situation and messed up kid, and the scene where Debbie says "I divorce you" to Steve three times, as in Islamic law, was also patronising, in its suggestion that it is only when Debbie started thinking about her life in Islamic terms that she was able to articulate what she needed to say to break free from Steve. A reasonable enough film that, like pretty much everything in the world, would have been much better by leaving the religion out.

Next up was 10 Days to War (BBC2, Tuesday), the start of ten ten-minute shorts portraying the lead up to the invasion of Iraq five years ago. It wasn’t very good, and, as Jeremy Paxman said on Newsnight afterwards, does it matter now? Figures on the death toll in Iraq over the past five years vary from 600,000 to just over a million, so questions on legality five years on are mostly academic.

But still, they need to be asked, and asked again, even if the BBC has chosen a pretty crap way of doing it (and given it the validation of calling it a war instead of what it was, which was an invasion).

The five year anniversary of the invasion is the focus of this Saturday’s demonstration starting at the Arts College, as is the probable upcoming invasion of Iran. It won’t bring back the million in Iraq, but it might stop a million more. Demo starts at 2pm.

Chop 'Em Off

Eastenders, BBC1, Thursday
Eunuchs, Channel 4, Tuesday

I have had fun this past week. It was my birthday on Friday, with resulting party, presents of birthday cake and bottles of wine, and so many empties in the flat on the Saturday morning that I am embarrassed to put them in the communal bin (yes, they’re still there on Monday). I have moved house again and am now closer to Lavery’s, and Spud’s. And I have been happily torturing all and sundry with the idea of Ian Beale’s sex face, based on my usual reasoning that if I have to suffer so does everyone else too, so there.

I was and am still mightily traumatised by last Tuesday’s promiscuous serial killer leer from Mr Beale, but there was really no excuse for Eastenders to then on Thursday show the man padding about his living room clad only in his keks. They looked like plain black knickers from the half second I saw them before snapping my eyes tight tight shut, but of course this was not how I described them to a roomful to people on Friday night.

Posing pouch, is the phrase I used. There were screeches, yells, and even threats of violence against my person for introducing such a concept to people who don’t even watch the show. I didn’t care though, because I was on the floor laughing like a loon at this point. It was the way wife Jane screamed when she saw him and said nervously that maybe they "could just have a cuddle" that night that really got me. But now, having been forced to think about Ian Beale in the nip for two weeks straight, I’ll shut up.

In a similar vein, I’ve just related to our photographer in great detail the contents of Channel 4’s documentary Eunuchs last week. It’s quite interesting, and most amusing, to see men’s faces when informed of this topic. It was certainly the quietest I’ve ever seen the male friend I watched it with.

The documentary followed four men, three in the US and one in Britain, who had all decided to have themselves voluntarily castrated. (I’ll pause at this point for any male readers to wince, cross their legs and check to make sure everything’s still there.)

Two of the men had already had the procedure done, one was about to have the procedure, and the fourth, which was the most amusing part of the documentary simply by virtue of my friend’s face when watching it, was trying to do it himself with a burdizzo, an instrument of torture looking pretty much like a huge pair of pliers.

This man came across like an attention-seeking idiot, choosing to tell his sister the news by brandishing a burdizzo at her, making her guess what it was for, and having the cameras present throughout. She played it like a trooper though, trying to hide her obvious shock and act supportive.

This was the same for the mum of 20 year old Zachary, who travelled with him to have the operation done and who was clearly completely confused and bewildered by the whole thing. It’s difficult to say whether it might in fact have been more effective for her to smack him across the head and tell him to wise the feck up, but, having presumably decided that it wasn’t, watching her struggle to deal with her son choosing to have his nads chopped off was actually kind of heartbreaking.

It was the same for his old-fashioned type dad, who, when he heard the news, was clearly struggling with trying to be supportive of whatever mad scheme his son had come up with now, versus screaming at him something along the lines of what the hell he thought he was doing. Once again I’m glad I’m not a parent.

I have had immense fun this Monday morning "discussing" (read: "relentlessly describing") this programme to the mostly male staff in the newsroom, who have all turned interesting shades of green while declaring it sounds like a mad programme and they’re glad they didn’t see it. Mr Editor, who appears to have been forced to watch it by the females in his household, somewhat wimpily says he left the living room halfway through, although he claims this was more to do with what he thought was a poor documentary than any pressing concern for his nads.

Doubtless me saying I enjoyed the documentary will invite unkind comments about the range of my feminism, but I enjoyed it simply because it’s always fascinating seeing just what we crazy humans can get up to. The one flaw in it though was that it just profiled the four men, without any sciencey bits or attempts by a shrink to explain why someone would want to do this to themselves. This made it feel more like car crash type TV, so nicely satirised in That Mitchell and Webb look by a fake programme called "The Boy With An Arse For a Face".

Still. A good show, made all the much better by watching it with a bloke, and particularly enjoyable to imagine applying it to one Mr Keith Macdonald, from Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, who is about to become a dad for the seventh time. At 21. By seven different women. While unemployed and not supporting any of the seven financially. Does this eunuch-ism have to be voluntary?