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Saturday 18 April 2009

I'm going to rant a teensy bit now


Seen Susan Boyle yet? Have you? Have you? Well of course you have, because she's been rammed down our throats like we're cats being fed worming tablets.

But it's amazing! Amazing! She shut up Simon Cowell! She's got the most unlikely amazing voice!

Ok, shut up and listen. It's an advert. It's a not-very-sophisticated marketing campaign. She's all over the place because it's a brilliant story on which the massive puclicity department can sell the fictional "Anything can happen" angle of Britain's Got Talent, but it's as real as pro-wrestling, and nowhere near as entertaining.

The "Suprise", it seems to me, is that an unattractive, late midle aged woman can sing well. What ugly things does it say about our lovely little society when that's a shock? Have we really been told enough times that only young, sexy people can sing? And are we dumb enough to believe it now? Were there really people istting open-mouthed on their DFS sofas gawping is disbelief at this anomaly before turning to their partner and whispering through stuttering lips "H-h-how can she sing competently? She has a double chin and an old fashioned hairstyle! THIS GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING I HAVE BEEN LED TO BELIEVE"

She's a church lady. The world is full of middle aged women with old fasioned hairstyles who go to church and sing every week. Some of them get good at it. It's not rocket surgery.

Good luck to her. I mean it.

But here's how her life will go now: She'll probably win the stupid show. Christmas Album with cover that will feature the best photo of her ever taken. Jonathan Ross chat show appearance, wherein our host will ask an off-colour question about her double chin, she will akwardly deliver a scripted put down and the audience will react as if she's Oscar Wilde. Tour, during which she will play to the depressing venn diagram overlap that includes both fans of Britains Got Talent, and Christians. At this point I'm hoping she'll start meeting the other people in the music and media business. From then on it's just a blur of sleeping with Russell Brand, scoring smack from Pete Docherty and throwing her phone at B.A. cabin crew.

Either that or she'll at some point realise that if she was ok looking and 29, then that voice wouldn't have been enough to make her special in the eyes of Cowell, Morgan and the one who slept with Lea Dennis, and we would already have forgotten about her.

Wednesday 8 April 2009

Bad Bad Oeynhausen.

I have just returned from my days off to my apartment in Germany. Before I left we were told that the cleaner would be coming in to, well, clean. I return to find my apartment swept, the sheets changed, and a note on my table. "Clean your kitchen", the note says.

What a charming and slightly confusing way to welcome me back.

It's worth pointing out that although I work in glittering showbiddness, my current digs are not what you would term opulent. I have a poky little apartment with a bed and tv in one room and a tiny fridge and combined sink and two little electric hobs in the other. No sofa, a lamp in the corner that doesnt work and heating that is either sweaty or chilly. Every other night there is a random alarm that beeps from the corridor outside, and the lightbulb keeps breaking in the bathroom, meaning I have taken far more showers in the dark than I would like. It's functional, at best. I don't even have a kitchen work surface, so I prepare most of my food on the draining board of the sink. It's the wonderful business we call show.

It's also worth pointing out, I think, that I'm not a messy person. I tidy as I go, which is fairly easy when it's just me living here. So my dishes are always done, things are put away and spills are wiped up. I'm a modern man. Housetrained.

So my questions are threefold.

One: What mess was the cleaner referring to, that so incensed her that she went and got paper and a pen to leave me a note? I left no mess. Honestly.

Two: It's my apartment for the next month, so if I want it messy (which it isn't), I'm allowed.

Three: (And this is the key point) What kind of fucking cleaner leaves notes telling the person she's being paid to clean for, to clean up?

In what kind of place is that how things are done? I'll tell you. Small town Germany.

Only four more weeks. Ack.

Thursday 2 April 2009

Homemade ringflash test shots







Not bad for a flash made out of a couple of tupperware bowls and kitchen foil, and held together by gaffer tape, huh?