GUILTY

Katie Waissel stands accused.

She is accused of being egotistical and self-promoting. Yes, yes, she is guilty, cries the chorus of self-righteousness from the Mail.

She is accused of lying about sleeping with Matt Cardle. She has not been quoted, but she is undoubtedly guilty because she has been accused by no less an authority than the News of the World, commonly known on Fleet Street of the Scourge of the Evil-Breasted-Womankind. (All women are evil, and the fact that they have STOLEN THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF BREASTS can only confirm this in the mind of any right-minded person) and the Flame of Righteousness. When the News of the World says something, you can be sure in your own mind it is Incontrovertibly True.

She has been accused of being a drama queen, of having pictures of herself naked on her phone, of being "unpopular in the X Factor House" and is probably the Untidy One there, too.

Well, this is ALL TRUE. And here is the proof: she has worn feathery eyelashes. She has shown frequently that she idolises Etta James. And most damning of all, she did not sit on her bumcakes at a till, or in a callcentre, or at home, waiting for Simon Cowell to elevate her to stardom. She has worked her bony arse off trying to be a popstar. She has auditioned, and sung, and learnt the piano and the guitar, and written songs and sung them. She has gone to America to make a dodgy online series. She has written and recorded an anti-bullying "anthem". She has worked at making her dotty drama queen dream come true. For this, she is guilty, Guilty, GUILTY. And may never be forgiven.

Who Knew?

A week of revelation on the gogglebox.

Lady Mary, whom I hugely enjoy hating, has finally got some comeuppance. This youngest and prettiest of all the Evil Cows on Downton Abbey permitted a Foreigner first into her bedroom and then into her back bottom, and was hideously punished for this crime against her class - and her arse - by his prompt and irreversible death.

On the one hand, this is most pleasing. Lady Mary was thoroughly taken down a peg or two. On the other, it points to buttocks of amazing, not to say supernatural, power. Who may attempt to make Lady Mary next his sex toy and yet " a virgin for her husband" and what will become of them? Does her fatal bottom employ its mighty power only against foreigners, as her family's perky xenophobia might lead one to suspect? Or is it against all comers? And is it only her back bottom, or must Lady Mary's husband take on a virginity which must surely end his bridal night in Death? It is all a very jolly speculation. Matthew, the drippy heir apparent, looks like the likely next suitor, but he is too wringing a wet blanket to attempt either extra marital or anal activities with anybody, and may thus bury them all...

And then, in the Apprentice, somebody with a proper London accent survived the Boardroom. Lord Sugar picked on somebody a bit quiet for the boot, and over on "You're Fired" the delightful Dara O'Brain more than made up for Adrian Chiles, and Jack Whitehall restrained himself from being a complete nobdollop and was really quite amusing. A week of wonders, indeed.

Excluded

... was the title of the BBC's drama offering for the "Education" season last night. It was called this because, obviously, it was not what it was about. Why, you gasp, what was it about? Having sat through the whole everlasting hour, I can proudly report that I know the answer. It was about NOTHING.

It was a confused and confused piece of failed agit-prop where a group of cardboard cut-outs mouthed unlikely dialogue to communicate dated, ideologically charged, ill-thought out claptrap. It was about the BBC having no earthly idea what might be going on in their chosen "topic", and refusing to use its considerable clout to find out. It was about throwing together a ragbag of ridiculous, outmoded cliches equally lacking in drama and information. It was a grimly tedious hour of shit tv.

There are obvious and immediate conflicts in a piece like this: on the one hand it is intended as a state-of-education piece; its aim to communicate a recognisable portrait of secondary school is a challenging one in itself, and it's also in conflict with the basic demands of drama, which require focus on characters, rather than types, and change, in both situation and character. A portrait must be very skilfully drawn to incorporate dynamism.

But it seemed to me - and as a teacher for seven years and a screenwriting graduate of the NFTS before that, I feel qualified to judge - that it failed on both counts.

I found it a hideously inaccurate portrayal of school. It's inconceivable that a newly trained teacher would set up his very first lesson as badly as did the lead character. Lesson planning over the last ten years has become fiercely structured; few teachers set up a first lesson without a planned starter activity, a seating plan, greeting the kids, taking a register or sorting out books. If you want an accurate picture, the devil is in the details. If you don't want to deal with all that palaver - don't set your scene at the start of a lesson.

Nearly all teaching nowadays involves a storm of photocopies that kids can cut up or colour in or stick together; it is vastly unlikely that an NQT - who would have spent a term and a half teaching by then - would go in to a GCSE class so unprepared that he would still be muttering "I have a background in electronic engineering", unless he were absolutely hopeless.

I have experienced plenty of unprofessional behaviour in schools, but it's stopped short at making faces behind a colleague's back - apart from anything else, it would destroy that member of staff with the kids, because he'd be behaving like one of them, which they consistently despise.

To address the question of drama; drama requires conflict, characters, a story. What was the story here? Everybody was a bit annoyed. That was about it. It was supposed to focus on exclusion, from the naive point of view that exclusion is a hideous experience which is rare and terrifying, traumatising for the child and onerous for the school, a product of poor teaching and school indifference or active persecution of the poor misunderstood child.

It takes a lot more than refusing to leave a classroom to get excluded. Throwing a chair? One of my Year Tens greeted me by throwing a chair in my first week; recorded, reproached, apologised, over. Throwing a brick at my class through a window? No consequence at all. Admittedly the time one of my year sevens went mentaltastic and danced over the desks hurling flour at his classmates and resisting deportation to the point of lying on the floor and holding onto the doorjamb, he did get excluded. For a Whole Day. But it was not the heinous behaviour heretofore described that did it; it was swearing at the deputy head who was finally called to take him out. A combination of vandalism, uncontrollably dangerous behaviour, and extensive disruption to other pupils is required to get a child put onto the "Stages" of exclusion, let alone actually sent home. If the child has a good excuse - being ADHD and refusing medication counts - you can try a lunchtime detention.

So poor misunderstood children are not really the ones who are excluded. This would be pointless in an era when a lot of kids carry weapons. This programme's worldview would appear anachronistic to a jaw-slackening degree.

I struggled to find a story. If it had been a story about a child terrorising other kids and not being excluded, it would have resonated with me. If it had been about a child who was excluded for being a victim of bullying, that, too would have resonated with me. If it had been a child who self-excluded as a consequence of bullying, I would have bought it. But excluded for throwing a chair? Grow up.

The Truth About Twilight

Sylvia Plath wrote that every woman loves a fascist. Maybe an exaggeration, but there's a lot of evidence that every teenage girl fantasises about a stalker. Sorry, romantic lover. There is no difference. Look at Edward Collin. Indeed, look at him for some time, for he is quite beautiful, having the look of a young Brando at times, and the most sympathetic of Gothick lighting - at least in Twiglet sorry Twilight - all the time. Feast your mincers. Then worry about the character he is playing.

Judging by the teen scream queen team reaction, Edward Collin is every girl's dream. As beautiful as he is repellent, he wanders about, chalky complexioned and designer clad, sporting reddened lips and so much hairspray his scalp must snow flakes of fixative. He pouts and sulks and is stupefyingly rude for the first part of their acquaintance. When I was a teenage girl I found it is hard to like somebody who is apparently going to upchuck on me, but I am out of date. Perhaps this is why so many girls fare so much better in the pursuit of boys than I did. It doesn't seem a recommendation.

Things really don't improve when he declares his Undying Love for her as of course he must. He comes out to her as a vampire, and she skips after him hooting "I'm not afraid". Well of course not, he is a voluntary vegetarian vampire. He doesn't drink human blood. How crap is this? If blood-sucking is a metaphor for sex, this makes the Collins a celibate community. How disappointing to find yourself involved with the only undead anti-necrophilia society possibly ever to exist. Edward is so right; liking disappointment for this heroine is key. Worse is yet to come. Because it would also seem that, if bloodsucking stands for sex, the monkish Collins clan are no better than fawn fuckers. Surely there are places no girl wants to go - possibly where Bambi has been before her. Whether being eaten by the Collins was a let-down for Bambi history does not record.

It isn't just the milk-and-water vampires who don't drink human blood (who are therefore NOT VAMPIRES, but just weirdos), though. Edward - even while being stunningly rude to her - follows her about in his car and lurks about in her room when she is asleep, watching her. The word for this in modern times is stalking. Or being Father Christmas, but since he is an employee of the Coca Cola Corporation one hardly expects a high standard of behaviour from him. Edward Cullen has no such excuse. He is an idle slackademic, retaking his High School Cert for the umpteenth time, so without any need to be the puppet of a evil corporation. Particularly after he has passed up the chance to be a handmaidenboy of the Ultimate Evil.

Edward is unable to control his fascination with Our Heroine, partly because he cannot read her mind, thus reducing him to the horrors of conversation. He proves a bit of a blunderer at this, soon running out of things to say and falling back on telling her of his mind-reading abilities. Which she buys, in spite of the fact that his line is "I can read every mind in this room except yours." Does she respond like a normal person, "How suspiciously convenient"? No, she swallows it whole - even when he gives a brilliant demo of his Mind-Reading Talent, by telling her that everyone in the restaurant is thinking about sex and money. Not only unable to read minds, a normal sentient life-form would conclude, but REALLY UNIMAGINATIVE. Does she think this? No, for she is too besotted. Or, indeed, stupid, which suggests an alternative reason for his inability to read her - there is nothing in her cranium to read. He wouldn't be the first man to fall for the illusion of depth created by mental vacuity.

It is a great puzzle. Clearly they are both hopelessly daft, but in terms of Uselessness the Vegetarian Vampire or the Wannabe Undead? Go figure. It's what every girl longs to be.

INTOLERABLE

Amy Winehouse's husband has been granted a divorce on the grounds that she is intolerable to live with.

This points to lots of stuff rotten in the state of Everything. In the first place, I take strong exception to the implication that anybody is less of a picnic to live with than a drug-soupified psycho-thugster such as his imprisonments indicate Mr Fielder-Civil to be. And anyway, how does he even know? Can he even remember that far back, given that he has spent the last year banged up? And even if he can, is it possible that she is more intolerable to live with than the kind of people he must have had to share a cell with in Wormwood Scrubs? People he didn't even choose. The idea that you choose somebody less congenial than cellmates for a soulmate indicates that you are probably too much of an idiot to make a big decision like getting married. Perhaps you need to be stuck in an Institution for your own safety. I doubt anyone would miss ex-Mr-Winehouse.

Another thing that is rather ridiculous is that you can get a divorce just because somebody is intolerable to live with. All people are intolerable to live with in smaller or larger doses, and married people just learn to carve out a niche of insanity so repellent that it serves to throw a cordon sanitaire around their own sanity by keeping out their Significant Other for Significant Tranches of Time. If you can get divorced just because your partner is intolerable a) what is the point in marriage even existing? and b) you shouldn't have done it to yourself or them; clearly you don't understand the rules.

Older married people are saved the necessity of divorce by increasing deafness and absence of mind alone. Until that happy day, surely you are just supposed to put up with the intolerability for the sake of the society?

Now I have to return to "The Woman in White". Laura has been horribly done away with and her former lover has found her ghost at the graveyard. My curiosity must be satisfied. Wilkie Collins would say this is because I am a woman. Because he is a sexist. XXX

Tracy Update Stardate Sunday 14th June 2009

There are many, many times when waving one's legs in the air is a jolly good idea. But none of these situations are when you are standing up. Until Tracy learns this - or I unlearn it - I fear our relationship will not be one of Mutual Respect.

Teeny Weeny Tracy and the Pins of Pain

Since Ben Ben's birthday (nearly 4 weeks ago), the Good Auntie of Windmill Hill has been in the thrall of Madonna-and -Gwynnie's personal trainer. She is an American who is obsessed with the idea that anybody can have a "teeny weeny New York City Ball-ay type body", which is obviously what Tracy herself has. Tracy is five foot nothing and works out several hours a day, it should be noted, and probably has no idea what a normal run-of-the-mill chubster like me looks like - partly because I think people who look like me and venture into Kensington are probably Removed by the Police. The other feature of Tracy is that if you freeze the DVD at any point she is in mid air, making me suspect that she can fly; an unfair advantage any way you look at it.

I have had many DVDs before - some featuring skinny people acting, and some featuring Rosemary Conley and her incredible Real People Chorus. Rosemary Conley's Chorus consists of women all slightly taller and chubbier than her sylph-likeness, each one GUARANTEED to have lost TWO AND A HALF STONE. I don't know why this is the amount, but it invariably is , apart from Shimay on the "Ultimate Workout" "who has lost four and a half stone and can't believe how much energy she has". Shimay is like Tracy, in that she always seems to be in danger of taking off and floating away, whereas the dominant ethos of Rosemary's DVDs is always that of sturdy determination, like plugging up the Brecon Beacons with a map in a plastic filing wallet on a neck-string. Shimay is too enthusiastic to exactly fit in. She might do better with Tracy - whose DVD is not at all like the Brecon Beacons.

Tracy's DVD is like being on Bootcamp with Tinkerbell. She has a dulcet American accent - crooning her "ow"s into "oh"s like a proper porn princess - and looks like - well, you know how men look at women they want to shag, as if the woman at issue is a Belgian bun? She looks like a Belgian bun. But when it comes to the Workout, she is professional in every inch of her teeny weeny body right the way down to her tippy toes (yes, both those phrases are True Tracy.) She hurls proper ballet moves at you until you feel like the target in a beanbag throw. I can do none of them, and fall over my feet shrieking with hysterical laughter (for after 20 mins with Tracy, the endorphins kick in and I giggle until I stop.) Tracy skips and springs through them like a teeny tiny elf with wings full of caffeine.

Even the warm-up is brutal. It takes four and a half minutes and at the end of it your thighs hum with pain - well, okay, what really happened was I did it twice by accident, and then couldn't walk properly for 3 days. Seriously - I was Too Hurt to Tracy for Three Days following the re-moulding of my thighs. I looked it up on the internet, and found out that the pain was because I was improving my muscle tone. Hm. When shown my knees and asked what she thought of them, my sister said "Same as usual," - a bit of a let-down considering I'd been hoping for the Gwynnie encomium about "the results you never believed possible". Still better than Ben-Ben's contribution, shrieked from round the playroom corner - "Rubbish!" Little toad.