Country matters!

Whilst the leader of the Labour Party has been pontificating on society’s lack of moral fibre at his Party conference in Liverpool this week, a very different kind of party has been taking place in a muddy barley field near Bangor in Co Down! Pop singer Rihanna has been peeling off her clothes, while filming a music video on a farmer’s land, and he has told her to cover up! Good for him. Someone not afraid to speak his mind, whether rightly or wrongly. Put your tits away, love, ’cos we don’t want to see them in these here parts! It seems to me like a case of Rihanna Ft The Wurzels but is apparently a collaboration between her and DJ Calvin Harris. Who he? The shoot was being staged close to a busy dual carriageway when the ‘star’ stripped to a red bikini after removing a long checked dress. Some reports suggest that the bikini top came off too, not that I’ve read all of them! Imagine how many red-blooded, heterosexual, male drivers are going to be distracted by the sight of a young woman’s knockers, famous or not. Bloody motoring hazard if you ask me!

Alan Graham, the 61-year-old farmer in question, pulled up in his tractor and told floozy Rihanna he found her behaviour inappropriate. Let’s be honest, it takes a pretty self-confidant young woman to cavort, half naked, down amongst the cowpats! She is clearly a bit of an exhibitionist. Her lack of inhibitions is just the latest example of an attitude that has existed, amongst a certain type of person, since time immemorial. The girl is really a prostitute and the ‘music’ merely coincidental. It’s not hardcore sex but the record industry has been chipping away at standards as long as I can remember. No political party is going to do anything about it as long as the revenues keep pouring in. Jessie J has told us, “It’s not about the money” and yet that is precisely all it is about. Pop has far more to do with what is fashionable, of the moment, than having a true desire to contribute to genuine musical culture. The performers claim they are ‘artists’, an expression more pretentious than anything you will find in the world of what is unfortunately named ‘classical’ music.

The sight of Rihanna’s bare breasts became too much for Graham’s Christian beliefs so he politely asked filming to stop. Blimey! First politics, now religion, what is my fluffy Journal coming to?! Anyway, credit where credit is due, the scarlet woman understood where the farmer was coming from and the production ground to a halt. I don’t suppose she gives a toss? The crew will simply relocate and shoot the cleavage - sorry footage - elsewhere. These people have so much money coming out their collective ear holes, it doesn’t matter to them. Alan claimed he’d never heard of Rihanna despite having four children of his own. She’s as big as it gets as far as pop stars are concerned… only Beyonce has a fatter arse! Clearly, he wasn’t interested in dancing under her umbrella! But the incident ended well. The farmer and the cowhand should be friends. He didn’t put her over bended knee and spank her bare bottom. They parted company on good terms. I have a back garden which, while undoubtedly not as big as Mr Graham’s acres, I’m only too happy to rent out!

Holly’s humongous hooters!

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am of course referring in my post title to the inordinate amount of maternity leave taken recently by Holly Willoughby from ITV1’s flagship weekday magazine programme This Morning. I mean, what a hoot! You’ve got to hand it to her… the sheer audacity of the woman. She managed to conceive the child so that her time off ‘work’, post childbirth, would run straight into her summer break. Talk about having it made. And, presumably, all the time she would be on a retainer. How else can you account for the fact that, every show, she looks as though she’s stepped straight from a clothing catalogue? Every edition, a different outfit - each designed to show off her assets! If only all mothers had the luxury of being paid to bring up a family on money that’s ostensibly for presenting a television series. I’m sure there isn’t a person in the world who wouldn’t love a similar, all-expenses-paid, protracted holiday!

Holly Willoughby isn’t the first television ‘personality’ to hustle herself some extended paid leave. Natasha Kaplinsky pulled the same trick on Channel 5. No sooner had she acquired the plum position of presenting the early evening news than she, too, took maternity leave. Following her return to work, she ‘fell’ pregnant again and needed more time away. After delivering her second child, she quit her post as the station’s news anchor having presented hardly anything while on the job, so to speak! And, now, Jenni Falconer’s at it! This onetime GMTV presenter filled in on This Morning for Willobooby, as idiot Keith Lemon refers to her (I wonder what’s the key to Holly’s success?!), during her time out. I imagine Falconer will also return, in her case to the BBC’s lottery-presenting game - once the services of a nanny have been acquired. I recommend Alan Sugar, or at least someone with similar inclinations, head one or other of these broadcasting corporations in order to stamp out the abuse of such privileges! Ask these women, before they’re offered a prestigious post in live media, if they intend having a family.

And what are Holly’s qualifications to front This Morning anyway, pregnant or otherwise? Like her co-presenter, Phillip Schofield, she started out in children’s television. Nothing wrong with that except it doesn’t necessarily make you a serious journalist! Some of the subjects that arise on the programme make her unsuitable for the job. She can deal with the fluff alright. She’s in her element discussing all the latest soap updates or X Factor shite. But when it comes to dealing with serious stories like serial killer Fred West or interviewing nurse Rebecca Leighton in connection with saline poisoning, Holly hardly says boo to a goose. Schofield isn’t much better, to be honest, desperately attempting a grim expression while Booby checks to see if her tits are still there! There’s almost a sense of relief when the programme repeats the competition for the umpteenth boring time. Treating the viewer with a considerable degree of respect, to help ‘steal’ the cash required to pay the presenters’ inflated salaries, a question is patronisingly posed for which you might win the princely sum of £25,000 (for the price of a premium rate phone call!)… Who has the biggest breasts on daytime television - is it A) Jeremy Kyle, B) Matthew Wright, or C) Holly Willoughby?

Release Roderick!

You don’t have to have a speech impediment to work at the BBC but it sure-as-hell helps! Replacing the letter r with a w is not necessarily a bad thing though. It’s definitely an attention grabber when done with alliteration. And, if the presenter with the problem delivers the script with boundless enthusiasm, they’ve almost certainly got it made. One such, at the present time, is Dr Lucy Worsley. She’s a diminutive historian who has just completed a three-part BBC Four series entitled Elegance And Decadence: The Age Of The Regency, detailing how British culture was transformed in the early 19th century. We’ve learnt about Britain’s construction boom, following the defeat of Napoleon, and heard the gossip which led to a backlash against the Prince Regent’s excesses… and all to a soundtrack including The Stranglers’ Nice ‘N’ Sleazy in the second instalment!

But it was the trailer for Elegance And Decadence: The Age Of The Regency which initially caught the attention. It’s not just that said trailer has been played to death but whoever wrote it categorically set out to exploit poor little Lucy’s lisp! Why else would they ask her to say, “Britannia really did rule the waves” knowing it would air again, and again, and again! She’s cute but I suspect she’s a no-nonsense lady who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. A big fan of Jane Austen, Lucy soon put one interviewee in his place, pointing out the camera was still rolling when he started to flirt with her. Then there was the Royal Mail coachman who called her “love” as if she’d just boarded a number sixty-nine bus!

To complement Dr Lucy’s show, BBC Four elected to repeat The Romantics, another three-parter, presented by Peter Ackroyd and detailing the effects of literature on historical movements. Each episode was illustrated liberally with the lyricism of Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley played by the likes of David Threlfall, a million miles away from Frank Gallagher, and TARDIS incumbent-in-waiting David Tennant. Peter, like Dr Worsley, ‘suffers’ from a speech defect, though, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying, I don’t find him as alluring as the lovely Lucy. But he delivers with a great deal of panache, worthy of one of the great romantic poets himself, repeatedly gazing off into the middle distance - not unlike Derek Thompson’s Charlie in numerous episodes of Casualty!

One right, royal, pain in the arse I’m glad to see the back of from the BBC is Jonathan Ross. He’s defected to ITV, claiming he was at the peak of his game when earning six million at the Beeb. What game was that, Wossy? Duping the license payer into watching non-interviews in order to fund a telephone habit? Every time I read anything about him, the article always mentions Andrew Sachs. And, I’ve just mentioned him too! JR’s first show on ITV1 gained ‘respectable’ ratings, though, back in the day, Doctor Who was cancelled for achieving its lowest-ever viewing figures with approximately the same figure, a little over four million. Ross’s numbers can only decline hereon in, especially after the deadly-dull interview in which Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton revealed his girlfriend, ex-MoggyDoll front woman Nicole ScarySinger, squeals especially for him! Whoopee!!

Doll parts

He’s shagged Susan Lynch, stolen a bus (causing pensioners to miss their regular game of bingo!), blown up a house (using its central heating system!!) at precisely 6pm and much, much worse in Cracker… attempted to blow up a London railway terminus, as a terrorist in Spooks… mutinied, then had his back flayed for his trouble, in Hornblower… and, if all that wasn’t enough, he wasn’t a particularly pleasant character in Survivors either… but Andrew Tiernan never short changes the viewer. Andy, as he was credited in this week’s episode of Doctor Who, always turns in a bloody good performance. He played the landlord of a rundown block of flats in Bristol, demanding rent money with the menacing aid of his bruiser-of-a-dog, Bernard! Andy had many of the story’s best lines and moments, bemoaning there was nothing to watch on television except thirty-year-old repeats of Bergerac. Lord knows why he was tuned into Yesterday if he was after the boxing! He brilliantly got sucked into his mangy old carpet much to the total disinterest of his pet but, best of all, was his transformation into one of the demon dolls! Possibly the finest use of special effects since Richard Wilson grew a gasmask in the first series.

Then there was Daniel Mays, whose career continues to be in the ascendancy. ITV3 have been running the 2007 movie Atonement, in which he co-stars with James McAvoy, a romantic drama where a man is accused of a rape he didn’t commit. More recently, Daniel attempted to sort out Gene Hunt’s nick, not the easiest task you can imagine, in the third-and-final series of Ashes To Ashes before being banished to the outer reaches of the solar system in Survivors-style drama Outcasts. In Doctor Who he played Alex, father to a little boy, George, unsure how to connect with his son’s phobia of the dark - when all the scary things come out to play. Boy George turned out not only to be adopted but also alien, living his life in fear of rejection. The coming together of father and child, at the story’s climax, was a pure Railway Children moment, and all the more moving for that! If you’re going to “borrow” then do it from the best!!

And the man who wrote Night Terrors, which may well turn out to be this year’s finest episode of Doctor Who… well, all his previous scripts have been set in the past whereas his latest is set in the present day. He tackled Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, when the novelist was in the last year of his life and about to embark on The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, while Christopher Eccleston was The Doctor… bullying in The Idiot’s Lantern, set during the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, was his next choice of subject after David Tennant had taken over the role… and, after a few years away from writing for Doctor Who, he returned to the fold, last year, to pen Victory Of The Daleks, in which the pepper pots from Skaro were outgunned by Matt Smith, with a great deal of help from the forces and spitfires assembled by a certain PM Winston Churchill. I’m talking about Mark Gatiss, author of all three, whose latest (fourth) instalment of everyone’s favourite science fiction series also included the death of a dear, little old lady by multiple black bin bags! Maybe it was because she looked like Patricia Hayes whilst sounding like Frank Spencer?! When Steven Moffat relinquishes his post as show runner, and assuming he wants the responsibility of the top job, surely Mark is his natural successor.

Fox on the box

Actress Emilia Fox comes from a famous theatrical dynasty, but just how far back do her family’s acting roots go, and what was the scandal involving one of her ancestors in the 19th century? You can find out in tonight’s fifth episode of Who Do You Think You Are? beginning at 9pm on BBC One. She also discovers her great-great-grandfather Samson came up with an important invention in the 19th century. Born into an impoverished family, he began work at a Leeds textile mill at the age of eight, and went on to become one of the richest men of his time.

Meanwhile, there’s no getting away from Emilia’s relatives on the telly! Not that you’d want to as they’re all very well accomplished. Her dad, Edward, is probably best known for his role in Edward And Mrs Simpson and for attempting to assassinate French President de Gaulle in The Day Of The Jackal. Edward’s brother James made a terrific start to his acting career, appearing opposite Rolling Stone Mick Jagger in Nic Roeg’s seminal gangster flick Performance. I also remember James in a 1983 Film On Four written by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Charles Sturridge, co-starring Bill Oddie’s daughter Kate Hardie, entitled Runners.

Emilia’s mum is Joanna David and you may have seen her helping the war effort in Yesterday’s repeats of Colditz or as a suspect in A Touch Of Frost opposite David Jason. Joanna was John Thaw’s long-lost love in my favourite Inspector Morse episode Dead On Time. Both mother and daughter were in Andrew Davies’ adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emilia playing Colin Firth’s fragile and wronged sister. Near the beginning of her career, Emilia won the title role in ITV’s version of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, gaining experience from Charles Dance, Diana Rigg and Faye Dunaway. More recently, she appeared in a Christmas version of Dickens’ David Copperfield with Bob Hoskins leading a galaxy of stars, again for the BBC, but her name is now synonymous with the forensic-pathology detective-drama series Silent Witness.

As Edward’s daughter has reached the pinnacle of the acting profession, so has James’ son Laurence. While Laurence’s aunt has guest-starred in Morse, he is a regular in spin-off series Lewis, playing the sergeant-turned-inspector’s intellectual sidekick Hathaway. And, of course, Billie Piper has married into the family becoming Laurence’s wife after meeting whilst touring a play together. I’m sure we all know the name of the series for which she’s most famous! Secret Diary Of A… no, not that one!! Anyway, they have a young son together, Winston, and the chances of him becoming an actor, I’d say, are pretty high.

Let’s Stick Together

When it comes to relationships, television - and the BBC in particular - is obsessed with two diametrically opposite aspects. One was laboriously regurgitated, for the umpteenth time, in last week’s seventh episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day. Russell T Davies has his agenda, which he will doggedly pursue to the end of days, that isn’t helping his cause, either as writer or in terms of sexual orientation, in any way whatsoever. Eighties’ Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner was homosexual but didn’t insist on forcing it down our throats, if you’ll pardon the expression, at every available opportunity! All RTD is doing is, metaphorically, boring the pants off everyone by carping on about it and, yes, I know the episode in question wasn’t actually written by him! And, yes, I’m fully aware the instalment was authored by a woman! Similarly, the BBC’s other preoccupation, concerning affairs of the human heart, is about to be foisted upon us, yet again, in a dramatisation of the recent Royal Wedding. Ex-Spooks actor, and one of the many stars of the superlative BBC adaptation of Dickens’ Little Dorrit, Matthew Macfadyen will play heir to the throne HRH Prince William. Ex-EastEnder, though still a Bionic Woman in my eyes, Michelle Ryan will slip into the shoes, if not the smaller brassiere, of Kate Middleton while Rowan Atkinson, assuming he has made a full recovery from his recent motoring accident, will once again attend the Royal Court… this time as best man Prince Harry!!

Alright! It’s a tissue of lies. I made it all up! The BBC aren’t spending any more of the licence payers’ hard-earned reminding us how certain wealthy sectors of the population choose to overindulge. The Royal Wedding reputedly cost fifty-three million pounds which makes the five million smackers that Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone spent on his daughter Petra’s nuptials seem like chicken feed. I do think spending £4,000 per bottle of wine is obscene though. Apparently, both Fergies were there! The ex-Royal, who wasn’t invited to the Royal Wedding, and the female member of Vengaboys sound-alike pop combo The Black Eyed Peas. Stacey and the boys were paid a whopping one-and-a-half million to perform whereas Sarah was the one who could’ve probably done with the cash. Instead, she had to make do with emulating her eldest daughter’s performance at the earlier bash by turning up in another silly hat… presumably! Even the rather feisty Mels, in this week’s opening episode of Doctor Who, lied (or did she?) claiming not to “do” weddings when we all know the series, and its two spin-offs, is obsessed with them. I won’t bore you all to buggery by recounting every single occasion we’ve seen a white meringue in the last seven years. If, in the series finale, the Daleks unexpectedly trundle through the vestry door, and gatecrash The Wedding Of River Song crying ex-ter-mi-nate, then it’ll all have been worth the wait!

Holy Catatonic Catastrophe!

“There are only two things in life you can rely on,” said Commissioner Gordon, earnestly to his Chief, in yesterday morning’s rerun adventure of Batman.

Up against feline adversary Catwoman, and clearly afraid of a bit of pussy, O’Hara half-rhetorically - but completely cynically - asks, “Death and taxes?”

Steely-eyed, Gordon looks straight down the lens of the camera and unequivocally answers, “Batman and Robin.”

If only it were true!

ITV4 have taken Batman off, albeit temporarily, to make way for live cycling from Spain. So much for same Cat-time, same Cat-channel! But, it’s given me the purrfect excuse to post a purrfumed picture of Catwoman Julie Newmar, to complement the one of Batgirl Yvonne Craig in my earlier piece on this most excellent of television series.

Who says Americans can’t do irony?!

Breaking the silence

I haven’t written about Doctor Who in this Journal for three months. I’ve not even mentioned the programme in passing! Give the man a medal!! With the second half of Series Six fast approaching, it’s perhaps time to take a little look at the present state of affairs. I wasn’t happy with the cliff-hangers of the last two episodes. Why? After a terrific and traditional two-part story in which The Doctor advocated living in harmony alongside our Doppelgänger cousins, just as he’d done in Doctor Who And The Silurians in 1970, he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and reduced Amy to sludge. The Time Lord had suspected that, for the last half-dozen episodes, his long-standing companion was a double, constantly checking to see whether or not the TARDIS registered her as pregnant. But, why couldn’t he practice what he’d been preaching… tolerance. Why couldn’t Doppelgänger Amy exist together with her flesh and blood counterpart? The audience was fobbed off with some lame excuse about transmitting signals. Confine her where this couldn’t happen would’ve been a more sensible solution but nowhere near as melodramatic as the shock value of seeing The Doctor seemingly bumping off his friend. Writer Matthew Graham, co-creator of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes, was asked to add this ending by show runner Steven Moffat to lead into the mid-season finale but, for me, only succeeded in spoiling The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People.

And so to the cliff-hanger of Episode Seven, A Good Man Goes To War, in which we learn the real identity of River Song. She’s none other than Amy’s long-lost daughter, Melody Pond. Doctor Who had been building up to this revelation for some time. Ever since River was introduced in 2008, in Steven Moffat’s two-part story Silence In The Library and Forest Of The Dead, the writer has been teasing us as to her true persona. The resolution is a bit of a cheat, in all honesty, as Amy had yet to be introduced to Doctor Who at the time of her offspring’s inception in the series. Karen’s character was still two years away. It needed to be something that was already in the many and varied worlds of Doctor Who for an audience to be truly taken by surprise. Something connected to The Doctor himself would’ve been best, where it doesn’t matter that Matt’s Doctor was also two years away when River was inaugurated because, central to the concept, the Eleventh Doctor is the same character as the Tenth. Maybe the familial connection, now established as mother and daughter, is a red herring to throw the audience off the scent of a much greater surprise, yet to come over the next six episodes. I hope so because, as it stands, the big mid-season denouement was nothing short of pure soap opera, which wouldn’t have been out of place as the climax to an episode of EastEnders! I wonder when I’ll write about modern day Doctor Who again? Soon, all being well!

Up on the Ruth

No sooner had I posted my previous piece, on the demise of Spooks, when I chanced upon the first publicity still for the new-but-last series. Always the way of things! So, a brief additional post showing Nicola Walker and Peter Firth, in character as Ruth and Harry, on the verge of an embrace… five years on from the Series Five promo used last time! In between, Peter has appeared as a corrupt local councillor, in the three-part Sunday evening serial South Riding, while Nicola has been a guest star - married to a murderous taxi driver played by Eddie the barman from Hustle! - in the first and best series of Luther. Quite a revelation she was, too. Now the two actors are reunited in perhaps their best known roles for one final time.

Don’t bring Harry

BBC spy drama Spooks will come to an end this autumn on BBC One with a final six-episode tenth series.

Jane Featherstone, chief executive of Kudos Film & Television, the company who created Spooks, calls it “a fitting end to a much-loved show”.

The final series of Spooks will focus on Section D’s Head of Counter-Terrorism Sir Harry Pearce KBE (Peter Firth) and a guilty secret that could destroy his relationship with Senior Intelligence Analyst Ruth Evershed (Nicola Walker). Joining the established cast, Robin Hood’s Lara Pulver plays an ambitious and hungry new spook determined to make her mark! She replaces Beth Bailey, portrayed by Sophia Myles in the last season. Also on board, for its final outing, are (Borg Queen) Alice Krige and the excellent Jonathan Hyde, of Titanic fame, whom I best remember in BBC Two’s period courtroom saga Shadow Of The Noose.

Spooks is responsible for making household names of numerous actors including Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes, Shauna Macdonald, who went on to star in the superb British horror flick The Descent, Rupert Penry-Jones and Miranda Raison, recently seen in Sugartown, to mention but five!

“We’ve followed the arc of Harry and Ruth’s personal story,” said Featherstone. “I think the team have brought Spooks to a natural end,” she concluded.