I'm So Excited

TV executives are, without exception, intelligent, erudite, and genuinely enthusiastic people; that’s so true it's very nearly a fact. But you wouldn’t think that from reading the press releases. You’d think they were either insincere corporate noddies or suffering from a Sunny Delight overdose. Because they’re so bloody excited all the time.

You name it, any new show, and the executive responsible will say they are ‘excited’ about it. One wonders quite how excited they are by the process of commissioning, say, a programme in which Adrian Chiles visits the UK’s top fifteen cheese museums. Is there a quickening of the pulse? The breaking of a sweat? Are they aroused sexually? Are they enduring sleepless nights, such is the fervour of their anticipation? Is theirs an excitement which they are unable to contain? Do they find themselves dancing on their desks, a-whooping and high-fiving with glee?

No, of course not. That would be sectionable. I realise I’m reitering David Mitchell’s rant on passion and that he’s funnier than me, but I don’t care - I was genuinely excited to write this blog.

Of course, these press releases are written by a press-release monkey (one of those chimps that’ll eventually knock up Hamlet) - the executive merely signs off on it. Claiming that the executive is ‘excited’ is merely part of the formula along with summing up a show with three adjectives which are either mutually exclusive or mean precisely the same thing.

This formula is irritating, partly because it insults the intelligence of the reader and does a disserve to the sincerity and eloquence of the TV executive, and partly because, like the boy who cried wolf, you’ve left wondering what they would be left to say if they actually were excited by something – and whether anyone would still believe them.

There's No Business Like Show Business

I’ve described my hate-hate relationship with pantomimes in the past, but I do have something of a fascination with the posters They have a strange alluring quality - a state of timelessness, as fashions wax and wane with the seasons, pantomime posters still look exactly as they did thirty years ago. If Keeley Hawes woke up after a road accident, and she saw a poster for Stu ‘Crush A Grape’ Francis in Mother Goose at the Theatre Royal, she’d have absolutely no idea which decade she was in.


The rules are simple. The title of the panto in swirly lettering, as close to the Disney font as you can manage. Around it, head-shots of the cast floating in vague order of recognisability. Ideally they’ll be depicted in costume, but half the time they’re just whatever 8 x 10 their agent had to hand. And any remaining space on the poster should be filled with stars and galaxies.


What’s fascinating is the way actors are billed. If you’re properly famous to be recognisable by face and name alone, it’ll just be your face and name; ‘John Barrowman’


If you’re not quite properly famous, your face and name will be preceded or followed by the TV show you were in; ‘’Hi-De-Hi’’s Su Pollard’.


If that’s still not enough for Joe Public to have the faintest clue who you are, your face and name will be accompanied with the name of the character you played in the TV show, or, if you’re a comedian, your catchphrase; ‘Chrissie’ from ‘Hollyoaks’ or ‘Duncan ‘Chase Me’ Norvelle’.


And if you’re a complete non-entity, they’ll just give the name of the character you play.


And then there’ll be something insanely inappropriate in the corner. ‘Featuring SOOTY’. ‘Featuring THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE and FRIENDS’. ‘Featuring CARTESIAN GEOMETRY.’

Take The Money And Run

My frustration with this whole interminable MP’s caught-fiddling-their-expenses business is that it could have – should have – been the best thing that could have ever happened to the Labour Party. A year before the election, “Conservative MPs are discovered to have basically stolen tax-payers’ money to spend on their own moats, duck-palaces and so forth.” That’s the ideal story. It would remind voters that the Conservative party are a bunch of opportunistic shysters, greedy and corrupt in the way that only those born into over-privilege can achieve. It would show up David Cameron for the ineffectual leader that he is – sanctimonious and glib, with policies about as robust and tangible as a hologram of a cloud.

But – and this is what makes me livid – a small but not small enough bunch of Labour MPs were also caught red-handed with their fingers in the House of Commons communal money bucket. Now, clearly their money-grubbing lacks the sheer audacity and imagination of the Conservatives’, and it’s always for niggling borderline things like declaring the VAT on the fees of accountants giving advice on deferring interest payments on mortgages – but it creates the impression that they’re all as bad as each other. With Labour coming off worse, because while you expect this sort of licentious behaviour from the Toffies, you expect better of Socialists.

The reason why this happened is because of this small but not small enough bunch of Labour MPs who are, basically, ideological opportunists. Labour should be about representing and empowering the underprivileged and wiping all social inequality from the face of the Earth. That’s what should get them up in the morning. But instead you have a generation of career politicians – people who go into politics just because they want the power, the prestige and the money.