... to complain bitterly and without rest about the quality of TV and particularly the wickedness of phone-in shows. And so to Strictly Come Dancing. A Big Row is in train (so say) because Tom Chambers won, in spite of the fact that he wasn't the best dancer. And we say, SO WHAT?
This series of Strictly was particularly galling. In the early days, it was pleasingly naff, and the dial-up dosh used to go to Sport Aid. Now it's all got glitteringly commercial, the dancing is taken with deadly - and for a tv show, fatal - seriousness, and it has lost its Blue Peter charm.
This year there was SO MUCH NONSENSE about the dancing pig, as John Sergeant was called. He could not dance. The list of contestants who couldn't dance has been mighty, and frequently distinguished; Julian Clary couldn't, all of Holby City couldn't, all of ITV Breakfast TV couldn't. And we chortled and hooted and voted. That's how it works. This year the Fear Of The Public got so bad that the press and judges hounded somebody out, and I think this was very sad. The crapness of some of the dancers is as much part of the show as the goodness of others. Do you suppose Shakespeare spent his writing days bemoaning how he had to write slapstick dialogue for base, crude woodworkers, when all he wanted to pen was the poetry of the sublime? How one hopes not. Getting your knickers knotted over the dancing in Strictly is ignoring its pull as drama. Give us the low comedy and give it to us in sequins.
More to the point, Strictly is a fine opportunity for the public to award its favours to those it, well, favours. Did Tom Chambers win because he was more popular than the other finalists? No, he won because in the event, he had the best show dance, which actually has been the desideratum in every series so far. He got into the last two because of his popularity. And why? Because the judges had systematically kept in Lisa Snowdon week after week while the public tried desperately to kick her out. Why? Because Lisa lacks the same degree of mass appeal. She is plainly popular enough to be a model and a radio presenter - or in other words, to have successfully dodged a real hard day's work for a crap day's pay at any point in her life - but is she as popular as him? No, she's not, and why should she be? When did it get so wrong for the public to like somebody better than somebody else? Lisa Snowdon lacks Chambers' warmth, and in competition, personality is as important as dancing.
To boot, Lisa Snowdon's preservation put out two other people I enjoyed watching; Austin Healy and Cherie Lunghi. And Rachel looks lovely and dances divinely - but that's all. And who cares how well somebody does the waltz? I watch for the tangos and the American Smooths. And the Really Crap Dancing, and the sweet, patient, and funny. Stick this in your dancing preciousness pipe and smoke it.
Showing posts with label Strictly Come Dancing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strictly Come Dancing. Show all posts
Monday, 22 December 2008
Monday, 19 November 2007
The Humbling of Revel Horwood
FREE AT LAST!
It is done. The trap sprung, the goose cooked, and Kate Garraway finally voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Hurrah! For her sad little rictus frozen claw-fingered paws as she fell back into a catatonic pose supported only by the superhuman strength of her long-suffering partner were too much for human sympathy to bear. Here, gentle viewer, was a woman unable to walk unaided about the dance floor in a sparkly dress. Her hand gestures - horrid dead-meerkat paws aside - were often assertive and even elegant, but she was unable to - well, stand up and walk about. The judges suggested she had no sense of rhythm, and it seems certain that this contributed to her magnificent inability to see what was coming next, even after six days of unbroken rehearsal. Nine out of ten steps came as a complete surprise to her, this must surely have contributed to her repeated injuries. It is easy to hurt oneself if one is moving about without the smallest notion of where one's body is going or what it may do next, let alone if there is another person in one's space moving with a similar degree of mystery.
But Kate Garraway has brought one prodigious moment to television; she brought Craig Revel-Horwood to button his lip.
Mr Revel-Horwood has always liked to be quite stinging in his remarks, and not always constructively critical, either. But Miss Garraway was the Elizabeth Bennet to his Mr Darcy, and by her, he has been properly humbled. By connecting the continuing public vote to keep her in with the pity generated by the judges' cruelty, he has finally seen the light and renounced rudeness. Though it must have pained him, he spoke highly of her "courage" in coming out to dance on Saturday night; and with justification, for someone of her clumsiness must be pretty brave just to get out of bed. Even after he had got his wish, and she had made the bottom two, he was gracious and spoke only of his obligation as a judge, rather than metaphorically trampling all over her with the hobnailed boots of accurate comment.
This goes to show what I have always felt about Craig; he is a big soft lass at heart, and upset and distressed when people don't like him, and I find I rather do.
It is done. The trap sprung, the goose cooked, and Kate Garraway finally voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Hurrah! For her sad little rictus frozen claw-fingered paws as she fell back into a catatonic pose supported only by the superhuman strength of her long-suffering partner were too much for human sympathy to bear. Here, gentle viewer, was a woman unable to walk unaided about the dance floor in a sparkly dress. Her hand gestures - horrid dead-meerkat paws aside - were often assertive and even elegant, but she was unable to - well, stand up and walk about. The judges suggested she had no sense of rhythm, and it seems certain that this contributed to her magnificent inability to see what was coming next, even after six days of unbroken rehearsal. Nine out of ten steps came as a complete surprise to her, this must surely have contributed to her repeated injuries. It is easy to hurt oneself if one is moving about without the smallest notion of where one's body is going or what it may do next, let alone if there is another person in one's space moving with a similar degree of mystery.
But Kate Garraway has brought one prodigious moment to television; she brought Craig Revel-Horwood to button his lip.
Mr Revel-Horwood has always liked to be quite stinging in his remarks, and not always constructively critical, either. But Miss Garraway was the Elizabeth Bennet to his Mr Darcy, and by her, he has been properly humbled. By connecting the continuing public vote to keep her in with the pity generated by the judges' cruelty, he has finally seen the light and renounced rudeness. Though it must have pained him, he spoke highly of her "courage" in coming out to dance on Saturday night; and with justification, for someone of her clumsiness must be pretty brave just to get out of bed. Even after he had got his wish, and she had made the bottom two, he was gracious and spoke only of his obligation as a judge, rather than metaphorically trampling all over her with the hobnailed boots of accurate comment.
This goes to show what I have always felt about Craig; he is a big soft lass at heart, and upset and distressed when people don't like him, and I find I rather do.
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Today I am a Lifer ...
I have low expectations.
It is part of who I am; much of the limitation of my achievement can be directly traced to my limitation of expectation - mine and other people's, mainly mine.
However, today even these modest expectations are Not Being Met, and I am warning the universe, because today, Matthew, I am a Lifer. "Lifers", as you will know, are people - men, largely - who have committed crimes sufficiently nasty to be banged up forever - at least in theory and on the paperwork. When I worked in Probation, the point about Lifers was they were HARD. They were dealt with by specialist officers, a Crack Troop trained to recommend refusal of parole and groupwork to serial rapists and murderers. The Dangerous Offenders POs were so determined and rational they did not give chocolate biscuits to their crims - the polar opposite of Groupwork, where these were a vital part of the befriending and rehabilitation process. I digress. The thing about Lifers is that for the first few years of their sentences, with no hope of parole, they enjoy a reputation for uncontrollability that would be the envy of Britney Spears. They infest prisons, fighting, wounding and generally making a nuisance of themselves to all who cross their paths, because they have nothing whatsoever to lose (much the same is true of the more unpleasant among schoolchildren. As soon as it is legal to restrain 13 year old children in orange fright wigs and encourage others to throw custard soaked sponges at them there will be a lot less conviction among the junior Tontos that they have nothing to lose, and the world will improve very quickly.)
HOWEVER, custard sponging would probably not work for Lifers - certainly it would not have any effect on my stony determination - and today, I am a Lifer. I ask little of the world, but I expect my modest needs to be met. And so, I set out my demands:
1. Kelly and Brendan must be voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Preferably with immediate effect. Perhaps like Emily of Ex X Factor infamy, they might be caught "happy-slapping" some innocent party - Kate Garraway, maybe - on a mobile Device, resulting in their prompt dismissal from the show. Without the public having to look any more at Kelly's ridiculous sequin scarf waving Wonder Woman antics. Why is she running round in her knickers? Even sparkly knickers look a bit silly in public, and combined with Brendan and his corset fetish, it is all too annoying. People who dress like that belong in 1950s Western motion pictures or Eastern European Eurovision Entries.
2. Sootycat must stop pooping on the bathroom floor. Once the poop has been delivered, it is pointless to hope she will not attempt to cover it with a towel or bathmat, because she is pretty cretinous, and obviously doesn't realise I can instantly see if she has clawed down a towel and crumpled it up in the middle of the floor, and even if I were Stone Blind, I would be able to identify the whiff of catshit and make some deductions so astute as to astonish Sherlock Holmes himself. Neither am I overly impressed by her vomiting over my shoes, but one step at a time.
3. I must be delivered a Sinecure. My needs are modest, but I no longer wish to have to do unpleasant things to obtain the money to meet them. If I were prepared to do disagreeable stuff for money I could have Come Upon The Town, so I don't want to do any more. If no sinecure is forthcoming, I shall have to become a Webcam performance artist, and I bet you would all much rather I didn't do that.
You have been warned. Don't mess with me. I am a Lifer.
It is part of who I am; much of the limitation of my achievement can be directly traced to my limitation of expectation - mine and other people's, mainly mine.
However, today even these modest expectations are Not Being Met, and I am warning the universe, because today, Matthew, I am a Lifer. "Lifers", as you will know, are people - men, largely - who have committed crimes sufficiently nasty to be banged up forever - at least in theory and on the paperwork. When I worked in Probation, the point about Lifers was they were HARD. They were dealt with by specialist officers, a Crack Troop trained to recommend refusal of parole and groupwork to serial rapists and murderers. The Dangerous Offenders POs were so determined and rational they did not give chocolate biscuits to their crims - the polar opposite of Groupwork, where these were a vital part of the befriending and rehabilitation process. I digress. The thing about Lifers is that for the first few years of their sentences, with no hope of parole, they enjoy a reputation for uncontrollability that would be the envy of Britney Spears. They infest prisons, fighting, wounding and generally making a nuisance of themselves to all who cross their paths, because they have nothing whatsoever to lose (much the same is true of the more unpleasant among schoolchildren. As soon as it is legal to restrain 13 year old children in orange fright wigs and encourage others to throw custard soaked sponges at them there will be a lot less conviction among the junior Tontos that they have nothing to lose, and the world will improve very quickly.)
HOWEVER, custard sponging would probably not work for Lifers - certainly it would not have any effect on my stony determination - and today, I am a Lifer. I ask little of the world, but I expect my modest needs to be met. And so, I set out my demands:
1. Kelly and Brendan must be voted off Strictly Come Dancing. Preferably with immediate effect. Perhaps like Emily of Ex X Factor infamy, they might be caught "happy-slapping" some innocent party - Kate Garraway, maybe - on a mobile Device, resulting in their prompt dismissal from the show. Without the public having to look any more at Kelly's ridiculous sequin scarf waving Wonder Woman antics. Why is she running round in her knickers? Even sparkly knickers look a bit silly in public, and combined with Brendan and his corset fetish, it is all too annoying. People who dress like that belong in 1950s Western motion pictures or Eastern European Eurovision Entries.
2. Sootycat must stop pooping on the bathroom floor. Once the poop has been delivered, it is pointless to hope she will not attempt to cover it with a towel or bathmat, because she is pretty cretinous, and obviously doesn't realise I can instantly see if she has clawed down a towel and crumpled it up in the middle of the floor, and even if I were Stone Blind, I would be able to identify the whiff of catshit and make some deductions so astute as to astonish Sherlock Holmes himself. Neither am I overly impressed by her vomiting over my shoes, but one step at a time.
3. I must be delivered a Sinecure. My needs are modest, but I no longer wish to have to do unpleasant things to obtain the money to meet them. If I were prepared to do disagreeable stuff for money I could have Come Upon The Town, so I don't want to do any more. If no sinecure is forthcoming, I shall have to become a Webcam performance artist, and I bet you would all much rather I didn't do that.
You have been warned. Don't mess with me. I am a Lifer.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Strictly Go Homing
I am really not sure about democracy. Leaving aside the huge problems it creates in government, which fiddles the system and then throws its weight about because it has "a mandate", the weaknesses in it are very plainly demonstrated by Strictly Come Dancing.
How come Gabby Logan - lovely, rhythmic gymnast Gabby, with her amazing figure (after TWINS, people!) and her staggering work ethic - is off, while Kute but Krappy Kate and Kenny live to dance another day? It is Democracy At Work. Or, to be more precise, another skewed and controlled system.
The Judges have always had first say, and distributed the first votes, and now, under a new, improved Gordon Brown regime, they have the final say, as well, cherry picking the "best" of the bottom two in a sadistic Sunday dance-off.
So this year the voters are really under the cosh, because now they have to keep those they hope to see again out of the bottom two. And it seems not to have occurred to the producers, or whichever fruit loop changed the system, that there is NOTHING people loathe more than knowing that Their Input Doesn't Count. The point used to be that the public had the final say. Okay, often this reflected painful truths about our society, or our taste in dancing, but nobody could claim it wasn't a straighforward system.
The reason Christopher Parker was kept in for eleventy seven episodes more than he should have been was partly the fact that - like God - we love a trier, but mainly because the Judges were utterly cruel to him. The nuttiness that keeps us great rose up in rebellion against the Voices of Sequinned Authority, and as a nation we voted for the Hopeless One to be given new challenges and represent our own uselessness. When Julian Clary proved nearly as poor, we cheerfully voted for him. Did we care that he moves like Andy Pandy might with a carrot up his little wooden bot, that he wore the clothes better than he wore the moves, that he had as much rhythm as a single vegetable rolling unfettered around the back of a transit van? Did we hell. He went on "It Takes Two" with Miss Erin Whiplash and Valerie the dog, and we remembered how well we like a little bit of camp, and voted, voted, voted.
This ends up with the Great Sadness of Gabby. In my book, she too was a trier. She had the misfortune, however, of being a succeeder. The tactical voters - voting to keep in the couples they hope will improve, or who they feel have had a raw deal (whose heart doesn't ache for Anton du Beke, who has Yet Another Celeb who can't cut it, while Brendan Cole has another glamour puss, this time clearly with ballet training?) fight it out at the bottom of the pile.
So perhaps the problem is not democracy, but the mistrust those in authority have over our voting habits. The more our powers are constricted, the more we weave, dodge and manipulate the system. And poor Gabby Logan, whom I admire for her determination and drive, fails to attract the vote by reason of her competence.
How come Gabby Logan - lovely, rhythmic gymnast Gabby, with her amazing figure (after TWINS, people!) and her staggering work ethic - is off, while Kute but Krappy Kate and Kenny live to dance another day? It is Democracy At Work. Or, to be more precise, another skewed and controlled system.
The Judges have always had first say, and distributed the first votes, and now, under a new, improved Gordon Brown regime, they have the final say, as well, cherry picking the "best" of the bottom two in a sadistic Sunday dance-off.
So this year the voters are really under the cosh, because now they have to keep those they hope to see again out of the bottom two. And it seems not to have occurred to the producers, or whichever fruit loop changed the system, that there is NOTHING people loathe more than knowing that Their Input Doesn't Count. The point used to be that the public had the final say. Okay, often this reflected painful truths about our society, or our taste in dancing, but nobody could claim it wasn't a straighforward system.
The reason Christopher Parker was kept in for eleventy seven episodes more than he should have been was partly the fact that - like God - we love a trier, but mainly because the Judges were utterly cruel to him. The nuttiness that keeps us great rose up in rebellion against the Voices of Sequinned Authority, and as a nation we voted for the Hopeless One to be given new challenges and represent our own uselessness. When Julian Clary proved nearly as poor, we cheerfully voted for him. Did we care that he moves like Andy Pandy might with a carrot up his little wooden bot, that he wore the clothes better than he wore the moves, that he had as much rhythm as a single vegetable rolling unfettered around the back of a transit van? Did we hell. He went on "It Takes Two" with Miss Erin Whiplash and Valerie the dog, and we remembered how well we like a little bit of camp, and voted, voted, voted.
This ends up with the Great Sadness of Gabby. In my book, she too was a trier. She had the misfortune, however, of being a succeeder. The tactical voters - voting to keep in the couples they hope will improve, or who they feel have had a raw deal (whose heart doesn't ache for Anton du Beke, who has Yet Another Celeb who can't cut it, while Brendan Cole has another glamour puss, this time clearly with ballet training?) fight it out at the bottom of the pile.
So perhaps the problem is not democracy, but the mistrust those in authority have over our voting habits. The more our powers are constricted, the more we weave, dodge and manipulate the system. And poor Gabby Logan, whom I admire for her determination and drive, fails to attract the vote by reason of her competence.
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