Hair in Avocado

Tramadol Nights, Channel 4, Tuesday

Russell Howard’s Good News, BBC3, Thursday

Come Dine With Me, Channel 4, Saturday

Well. What a week it’s been in Goggleboxing land. We’ve had Charlie Brooks as Eastenders’ Janine finally being allowed to act again instead of gurning and mincing as she’s been doing for the past few months, as she finds out about hubby Ryan’s affair with babymum Stacey (Ah’ll kill im, Pat, Janine vowed on Thursday, a threat that is usually known as idle when made by normal people but which is quite quite literal when Janine makes it). We’ve had Katie Price making a formal complaint about Frankie Boyle on the surprisingly awful Tramadol Nights and his quip about her disabled son Harvey. And we’ve had Russell Howard in Good News Extra showing us an ad for the ‘Pink Stinger’ – a handbag-sized Taser disguised as a tampon (Santa?).

But all this fades into mehness when compared to today’s Come Dine With Me, Channel 4’s show where masochistic contestants take turns to invite a group of strangers into their homes to make them dinner and entertain them for the evening, before being marked out of ten by all their guests with the eventual winner taking home a £1000 prize. Not for £10,000 would I invite TV cameras into my home as I attempted to cook for guests, since that normally involves cursing, banging of oven doors, too much wine, and the admitting of eventual defeat and takeaway pizza. This wouldn’t matter with mates, but with strangers who are sitting round my table, judging my house and drinking my wine, my temper might fray somewhat as I screeched that they were all a bunch of attention-seeking snobs who wouldn’t know a good night out if it Glasgow kissed them on the street. If I were ever in Big Brother I’d be the Most Hated Person in Britain within two days.

And so to today’s Come Dine With Me. My holy maiden aunt was that a car crash. I LOL’d, I GOL’d, I updated on Facebook throughout. Perhaps I should get out more. But then I would have missed this glorious gem of misfits, mayhem and mayonnaise with ketchup.

I missed the first instalment where the lovely Nigel hosted his four other contestants in what was apparently a good night – Nigel went on to win. Next up was Valerie, and, is usual with Come Dine With Me and most other TV before about 730pm (Eastenders time),  I had half an eye on it while surfing the net and musing about actually doing some work. But Bernard, a piggy-eyed Craig Charles on meth lookalike who doesn’t seem to know he’s gay, finally made me give the programme my full attention.

Bernard had a problem the night before about Nigel and another contestant, Dawn, getting on so well (translation: no-one’s listening to me), and tonight he excelled himself by yawning loudly when Dawn was talking and finally interrupting her to tell her how rude she was. Cue lots of beeps, Bernard storming out to the garden in a huff, and Valerie’s night ruined.

Personally I would have stabbed him in the eye with a toasting fork, which is why I am never tempted to go on reality TV, and Valerie, in that strange half posh, always slipping accent, was understandably miffed about her night being ruined by a short fat carpet salesman with table manners similar to Attila the Hun. But then Dawn came into her own. The next night was at Bernard’s house, and Dawn, after spending the entire evening moaning about how ‘shattered’ she was (shattered and emotional, more like), sneaked off home without telling anyone. Now, I’ve done this several times myself, when I’m tired and emotional myself and the prospect of slurring to people that I’ve had enough just can’t be faced, but I’d like to think that with a camera crew there I might manage to be not such a drunken tramp.

But then Dawn was a rather special type of lady. She was allegedly 33, a factoid that almost had me tipping my wine down the sink, and also hero-worshipped Pamela Anderson, a factoid that made me wonder about forced euthanasia. She had taken pole dancing lessons in the past – surprise – and she was so false-tanned Tangoed that she makes Kat Moon look normal (and ladylike) in comparison.

And so my jaw dropped. But that was nothing compared to the next night, when Dawn hosted. Her starter of ‘avocado surprise’ – the surprise being that it wasn’t puke when it so clearly looked like it – went down like the proverbial lead balloon, possibly because of her adding full fat mayonnaise and tomato ketchup to the blended avocado. Before that she blended raspberries to add to champagne, and her expression as she wondered why her hand blender with its, em, steel blades mashed straight through her plastic sieve was almost enough to send me scuttling to the Betty Ford clinic.

Her main course was packet-based chicken fajitas with refried beans. Now, nothing wrong with that as a meal, and by coincidence what I was having for dinner later that evening (although without the refried beans, because I’m not a sick bastard), but on a programme like Come Dine With Me, where the whole point is to outdo your fellow cooks with how sophisticated and cheflike you are? Nah.

But this still might been OK had Dawn actually cooked it herself. Nah again. After presenting the avocado in vomit, sorry, I mean ‘avocado surprise’, she put her head down and fell asleep. Yes, at the table. Yes, with guests. However, this did lead to one of the best admonish-the-drunk lines I’ve ever heard, and one which I’m immediately nicking – Bernard in his broad Preston accent saying in a voice like a mournful horse: ‘Dawn! Your ’air’s in your avocaaaaaaaaado!’ Classic.

Dawn then went to bed. Yes, while she had guests over, leaving the hapless and gentlemanly Nigel to take over with the fajitas, even if he did shudder at the packet seasoning and tin of refried beans. Meanwhile, Dawn snored happily upstairs while her guests sat hungrily downstairs. Not a successful hosting experience by any means.

She was conspicuously absent from the end of show interviews after Nigel got the money (and she slammed the table and swore on learning she came last), obviously being shattered again after a night socialising. Around the same time as the programme was aired she was done for drink driving after crashing her car into two others, clearly being shattered again. All in all a fascinating and quite literal car crash of a lady.

And I haven’t even started on the wonderful Peep Show and its introduction of Kenneth, Mark’s sinister looking sex toy. But really, Come Dine With Me in Preston was a pure classic. 4OD, now.

Carry me to the bonnet, captain

When did Eastenders get so risqué? wondered a friend (new to Eastenders, it has to be said) on Facebook this week, referring to, I presume, last Friday's episode when Ryan chased Stacey/Danielle to the hotel she was staying in with Baby Lily before their flee to Abroad, dumped her into Dot's car, practically kidnapped her by driving her to a deserted parking lot and telling her you ain’t going nowhere, then tenderly lifted her onto the bonnet of said car and undressed her all the way down to her fake Ugg boots, before the camera panned upwards in what I imagine is the televisual equivalent of that old journalist line 'Our man made his excuses and left'.

Setting aside the fact that yes, sex on an OAP's car bonnet is always chavtastic (but this is RYAN did you see him with his top off last week ahem?), of course Eastenders is always risqué. I refer not to the hotel biscuit-dunking of Jane and Massoud on Monday (oh how I wish that was just a euphemism), but well, to pretty much everything on Eastenders since the year dot (dot. Huhuhuhuhuhuh.)

Ian and Janine, for example. When Janine lost her job, then became a coke addict in literally two episodes and then started shagging Albert Square guys for money in order to pay her rent then feed her Evil Addiction. No mention of the dole or housing benefit, of course. Now each to their own and I’ve never been there so I’d never judge etc, but IAN BEALE? 

Ian Beale again (oh god help me). When he tried to seduce wife Jane, standing in front of her proudly in his baggy black knickers, only for Jane to gulp bravely and say Maybe we could have a cuddle. It’s Ian’s seductive face that still haunts my dreams. And this was three years ago.

Conor and Carol. I’m trying to find something witty to say about 50 year old Carol shagging the 20 something friend of her son Billie, but when I try to type it my keys just go ‘Waheyeyey’. There must be a bug.

Paaaaat and Fraaaaank. Oh dear god. Not only was there the fleeting suspicion that these two hoary old dinosaurs were actually some sort of soulmates, thus making me wonder if someone had dug my heart up from the rusty tin it’s buried in somewhere on Rathlin, but there was the Revolving Dicky Bow Incident. Twice. If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. Where’s my brain bleach?

Sharon and Dennis. Ah now, this was just cruel. Damaged Sharon finally found love, albeit with her adopted brother, only for him to be stabbed on their getaway from evil Johnny Allen. Not fair.

Arfur and Mrs Hewitt: What you smiling about? wife Pauline snarled suspiciously when husband Arfur came into the house after yet another clandestine meting with Mrs Hewitt on the allotment. I just want a kiss, poor Arfur replied. Wot’s wrong wif you? Pauline screeched, thus paving the way for her to cark it on her own in the snow without anyone caring.

Christian and Syed: It’s not natural! You’re going to go to hell! Ah, how nice to see that over 20 years since the first ‘gay kiss’ (read: chaste peck) on Eastenders sees two gay men in the throes of passion snogging like every other character in Eastenders in an illicit affair (desperate, Hoover-like). And now they’re living together happily, although knowing Eastenders, this will not last long. 

We look forward to lots more risqué on Easties, like ginger baldy Max trying to snog Stacey in her wedding dress, or Kat and Alfie getting it together in their caravan, or even Big Mo trying to seduce Fat Elvis. If nothing else, it makes our own desperate fumblings seem less pathetic.

Sometimes I gurn.

 The Accused, BBC1, Monday

Good TV should make you laugh, that’s pretty much a given. But the real benchmark is – with apologies to Peep Show, Getting On, Extras, I’m Alan Partridge, Roseanne, The Thick Of It, Spaced and everything else I’ve tittered at in awe over the past few years – whether it makes you cry. Especially when you get drawn into it and don’t even realise you care so much until you start to gurn and embarrass yourself in front of your scundered pets. Often it’s a blessing to live alone.

Which brings me to The Accused, the latest offering from the exceptional writer Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, Priest), a six part series in stand alone episodes, each focusing on an ‘ordinary person’ and how they end up in the dock. The first, with Christopher Eccleston in the main role, focused on a man getting into debt and therefore into the downwards spiral that is to be expected in a McGovern drama. The second, starring The Office’s Mackenzie Crook in a first class performance, was about bullying in the army. Both were powerful dramas, both roused strong feelings on watching about whether the accused should be found guilty or not – and both were good programmes that were strong and thought-provoking but didn’t induce either laughter or tears.

And then came the third The Accused. Starring Juliet Stevenson, this one was about Helen, a middle-aged primary school teacher whose 20 year old son is killed in a factory accident. Despite a coroner verdict of accidental death, she is convinced her son’s death was due to negligence, and so she battles on, remortgaging her house, against her husband’s wishes, to challenge the CPS decision not to prosecute, and finally setting fire to the factory in question  (yay!) after the boss (cast to the nines as a fat grasping capitalist; he may as well have had a top hat) refuses to make any acknowledgement that he regretted his employee’s death.

Peter Capaldi, mostly known from his role as The Thick Of It’s sweary spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, plays a blinder as her frustrated, bewildered, angry and helpless husband, who nevertheless comes through for her at the end in a lovely scene that nearly had me thinking marriage might work for some people sometimes. His wife represents herself in court, since her solicitor says she'll resign if Helen stands up and tells the jury ‘I did it’ –  but this is what Helen does, and the whole story is told in flashback as she tries to convince the jury that what she had done was not right, but is still justice.

I’m not a parent, but (despite popular opinion), I do have a heart, and I just can’t imagine not only losing a child but knowing that someone was at fault for it – and that it’s being covered up. As Helen says, every time she gets knocked back by the law yet again – by the coroner, by the CPS, by the appeal, it's like her son dying all over again. By this point, despite seeing where her husband was coming from and thinking it would maybe be healthier for her to let the whole thing go, I was rooting for her to the stage where I was talking to the TV and freaking my house rabbit out by being a bit sweary.

When the verdict came in – if you don’t want to know the result, look away now – and she was found not guilty, that’s when I got a bit teary. Is that the verdict of you all, sighed the pissed off m’lud, only for the foreman to say happily ‘Yes, it was unanimous’ and the courtroom to erupt into cheers. That’s when I got very teary, actually gurned a wee bit, went up to bed with a big smile on my face, and reflected that despite the plethora of absolute shite filling 75% of our screens, there is still some very good telly out there. More please.

Life with a Latte

 Life on the Streets, BBC4, Monday

The very first day I started my postgrad journalism course I realised just how huge a gulf there was between the average journalist and the world at large.

I do not represent normal, by any means, but over the course of the next week or two I realised that out of 36 aspiring postgraduate men and women, only 2 of us were self funding/from a working class background. The rest, when I incredulously asked how on earth they were able to afford one of the two best/most expensive courses in the UK (at 30, I was by far the oldest in my class, as the idea of needing £12,000 for a year just to study was way beyond my means for years; even now my credit rating is mud because I defaulted on the loan after redundancy), said without embarrassment that mummy and daddy were funding it.

That was the first point I thought a) everyone here is posh and hasn’t a clue and b) that’s journalism, because anyone who isn’t posh doesn’t have mummy and daddy paying for them. My fellow classmates were mostly nice enough, but they were so sheltered.

Which brings me to BBC4’s On the Streets (Mon, 10pm). I worked with homeless people for five years before becoming a journalist, so tuned into this genuinely wanting to see a programme about London’s homeless. Firstly I was annoyed at the doe-eyed portrayal of some quite frankly assholish people, as the equally doe-eyed reporter let them ramble on with nothing more than a polite ‘Mmm-hmm’ every few seconds.

Again, I’ve worked with homeless people, and like any group there are plenty of dicks among them, but also plenty of tragic gems that still make me want to cry when I think of them. This reporter was clearly going for the tragic gems angle – as Ness in Gavin and Stacey would say, Fair play – but for the love of god be able to differentiate between the two if that’s what you’re going for. Cooing how disadvantaged all homeless people are and letting them spout whatever they want no matter what just showed how hopelessly out of touch the reporter was. Just because someone’s homeless doesn’t mean they can’t be an asshole – but then if you’re a clean young middle class journalist and they’re all scary unwashed types how can you tell?

Then she spoke to a young man about self harm. 'And *why* did you do that? *Why* did you cut yourself? Your mum died? Oh yah, my mum is dead also.' Hmm.

This, together with her nervous giggles when someone said they were looking for dog ends or found their aftershave in a skip, made me finally switch off. The reporter was the exact personification of a student on my course – posh, too sheltered, didn’t have a clue and had never actually met (god forbid) anyone poor, never mind homeless.

Earlier, she actually had the gall to say, bright eyed and puzzled to two homeless men in a park: Why are you *drinking*? What does that *do* for you? And of course the same giggle when they made an answer – which of course she wasn’t listening to. This was frankly offensive TV, made by Sloanes, for Sloanes. I can just see her cracking open the champagne with her friends in Islington afterwards. ‘Yah! Great show, Francesca! And OMG you were so brave!’

My postgrad journalism course – regarded as one of the best in  the country and so one to do if you want to even think about breaking into this highly competitive profession – cost almost £6000 for nine months. This was in London. This was before rent, food, books, living expenses, transport, dictaphones, work clothes for work experience or anything else. As I say, I was one of only two working class/self-funding students – and I can’t pay back my loan. I’ll never be able to get a mortgage, or a loan, or anything I might want to borrow to get. I don't really care, but that's not really the point.

The reporter of Life on the Streets, and all potential journalism students, should be forced to have at least a year’s work experience in any sector, but particularly the public one. Perhaps meeting and working with the great unwashed might enable the journalists of the future to know what to ask, how to treat people properly, and, more importantly, to not treat documentaries like this as some sort of personal anthropology programme. ‘See you back on the street, then,’ she trilled at the end to one of her subjects. Yeah, right.

If journalism, TV, the BBC or whoever, seriously thinks they want to research and report on proper stories, properly, perhaps journalism should stop being a middle class preserve or a soft option for Sloanes. Here's an idea - why not set up strings-free bursaries for at least half or three-quarters of students on any journalism course, undergaduate or postgraduate, to get in on merit rather than daddy’s salary? This isn’t a matter of ‘everyone who wants to study 19^th century French poetry had a god given right to do so’, but to ensure that what we’re given on TV is representative of everyone in the country. And that those reporting it are representative too.Not rocket science, dahling.

Those Damn Lesbian Libruls

Eastenders, BBC1, Friday

Lip Service, BBC3, Tuesday

‘Well,’ said the BBC continuity announcer after the Eastenders drum roll on Friday, ‘we didn’t see that coming did we?’

He was referring of course to the ‘Oh dearie me we’ve just stopped on a level crossing and now a train is coming and now the CAR WON’T START!’ tedium that finished the week off as mad Janine, dishy Ryan and em, baby Lily all sat there, still in the car, and goggled stupidly at each other.

Honestly. If I wrote something like that in a ‘Please hire me, I can actually write’ tester script for the Eastenders moguls, I’d be laughed out of Albert Square before I could holler Go on Ryan, show us your biceps. This was a ‘cliffhanger’ worthy of Neighbours. I’ve been more surprised when Bouncer did a shit.

What I particularly liked about the scene above was when Ryan was out of the car, about to swing his handbag and strop off back to Albert Square, and the sirens went, the gates came down, and he got back into the car. Now, I know parenthood presumably means you put your sprogs ahead of you in all cases of approaching train – this is why I will never have any – but for og’s sake even a crusty old child-catcher like myself would have the cop-on to lean in the window, grab the baby, and hottail it over the gate just in time to watch the train smash into the car in a squeal of torn metal, screams and flames. With Janine inside. That would wipe the smug self-satisfied smile off her bake all right. Although I would miss the madness that is Mrs Molloy. 

So disappointing fare from Easties, and all the more so when taking into account the excellent episode last week when Billy was discovered cold and face down in Pat’s living room in a puddle of his own puke and with one of his socks hanging off. Soldiers, eh? Brilliant, goosebumpy, acting from Lindsay Coulson as Carol and Patsy Palmer as Bianca, showing once again how good Eastenders can be when it doesn’t decide to patronise viewers, and how annoying it is when it does. (Fatboy and his ‘crew’, for example. Oh Jesus spare me.)

Elsewhere, I’ve been watching BBC 3’s new lesbianum drama Lip Service (geddit?), following the fortunes and tongues of a gaggle of glamorous Glasgow lesbians as they attempt to negotiate their way through work, ex and general life drama. This mainly revolves around a character called Frankie, who stomps about moodily with her hands jammed in her pockets picking up various Glasgow girlies whom she then roughly fingers up against a wall. Which is a bit of an achievement with your hands jammed in your pockets, I’d guess.

I’d guess too that a lot of straight men saw the listing as ‘lesbian drama’ and tuned in eagerly, pants around ankles and tissues to hand, to see the Hawt Girls Kissing, but when watching the first episode of Lip Service I was in fact struck by how disconcerted I’d feel as a guy watching it. This is women in their own world, getting from other women everything they need and not having to put up with shit from some useless lump for years simply because he has a dick. These women were smart, successful, confident, gorgeous and liked other women. It was like seeing some sort of Tea Party dystopia where those damned libruls and feminists had taken over at last, and as such was very interesting to watch. Although maybe I’m reading too much into watching Lip Service as a straight male. There were Hawt Girls Kissing, after all.

Lots to look ahead to for the coming week, according to the trailers – Coppers on Channel 4 (‘What the police really think’) looks promising, even if it will bring on my usual wondering if this means I’m old/middle class now as I silently cheer on the cops kicking seven shades of shit out of some spide. Elsewhere, Downton Abbey will no doubt continue to be a disappointment, and that long-haired medallion dude on The X Factor will doubtless continue to sexually assault the female dancers as his right and due. ‘He’s such a flirt!’ giggled one of the floor managers last week, going on to say how Medallion Man is always ‘touching the girls’ boobies’. Em, in most books that makes him not a 'flirt', but a pervy old criminal. I suspect we won’t see him getting seven shades of shit kicked out of him by the local fuzz for it though, or indeed even kicked off the show. That wouldn’t improve ratings. Heavens forbid.

Eye on the Box Round II - This Time It's (More) Personal

I’m back! Since my last Eye on the Box columns I’ve been marvelling at the crapness of Australian TV, been forced to watch Two and a Half Men, saw Julian reach unimagined levels of fawning and campness when he met the Queen, and traded my Big Brother hatred for X Factor loathing. (I hate both with an equal unhealthy passion, but at least we’ve seen an end to Big Brother. Now if only they would say the same for the bloody X Factor.)

And Eastenders. Oh dear Og where to start. My mind tries to explode when I think about more than just the past few months on Eastenders, when we had wild-haired Denise being kept captive RIGHT NEXT DOOR to her house, the departure of Chelsea (yay), the return of Kat (yay again), and the descent into hell of poor old Stacey. Honestly, scriptwriters, give the poor girl a break. In the past year you’ve had her raped by Archie, murder Archie (yay the third), be diagnosed as bipolar, still have to put up with her mad and maddening mum, and lose her husband of only a few hours when he fell off the roof  in a ginger and horrible jumpered flash trying to escape from the fuzz.  (And on that note, you can judge me with your eyes if you want, but when that happened and the daft Trekkie plummeted to the ground I actually GOL’d [gasped out loud]. And that, I think, should be the benchmark for Good TV.)

But this is mostly about bad TV, which is much more fun to write about even if it does frequently induce in me a level of rage similar to the average Lib Dem voter when Nick Clegg sold them all out. And just after I typed that I flicked through the channels to find some godawful trash on ITV2 called The Only Way is Essex, in which dim English millbags in leopard skin bras encasing football shaped tits are fluttering their eyelashes at preppy horse-faced businessmen. I’m hoping it’s a satire. Back soon.