So how’s this for a plan? We start eating them. I believe that if enough people demanded blue whale for supper, garnished with the ears of a panda and the left wing of a juicy great bustard, it wouldn’t take very long for big business to move in.
When there’s a quid to be made, pandas will be having babies with the regularity of hens and you won’t be able to go to the shops for all the leopards you’ll meet on the way.
It’s either this or, I’m afraid, we are going to have to start eating each other.
If that happens, bagsy I get John Prescott.
Sunday 21 October 2007
It’s lies that make TV interesting
There has been a great deal of brouhaha in the newspapers recently about what is real on television and what is not. The Daily Mail in particular is very keen that the BBC is above board, honest and fair. And doesn’t spend its days making up hysterical stories that happened only in the imagination of the reporter…
Of course, some of the criticism is fair. You cannot ask people to vote in a telephone poll if you know full well the lines are closed. And you cannot show film of the Queen exploding when she has done no such thing.
Although, amazingly, it turns out you can make a global-warming film that contains nine proven factual inaccuracies. And they’ll give you a Nobel peace prize.
Still, we’ve now reached a point of such hysteria that people are poking their noses into every little corner of the television world and finding out that when Gordon Ramsay emerged from the sea with some fish on the end of his spear gun he hadn’t actually caught them himself. Oh Jesus, no.
And worse, it now transpires that Alan Yentob may not have been in the room when some dreary old Czech playwright was being interviewed. Seriously. Never mind the bush fires and the Iranian sanctions. Yentob’s ‘noddies’ may have been filmed afterwards.
The problem is that the people who get arsey about this kind of thing don’t have a clue how television works.
Do you really think Gordon’s production company has the money to stand around while he flounders about in the oggin, shooting bits of seabed near to where a fish had been swimming moments earlier? No. Exactly. So why not just pretend?
Then there’s Alan. Let’s say the dreary old Czech rambled on about the meaning of Ibsen for two hours. That needs to be cut down because the programme is only an hour long. And how do you cover the edit points? Simple. At some later stage, you film the interviewer pretending to be interested in what the man is saying, even though he’s gone home. And then you use these shots to plaster over the joins.
There is no one in television who has not done this. Although what I like to do instead of nodding and looking earnest is yawn. It drives the director mad.
There’s more. On Top Gear I whiz about for the camera until I have a feel for the car. Then I disappear into a hut for an hour or so to corral my thoughts into a workable script. And how do we occupy the expensive film crew while I’m doing that? Stand them down? Or put a researcher in the car and have him slither about until I’m ready to come back?
Yes, in the film you watch, some of the shots feature a car not being driven by me. But ask yourself a question: does it matter?
This is the most important question. In Japan recently, TV producers changed the subtitles to make foreign interviewees say something they were not saying. And because this was a programme about what gives Tojo cancer, plainly that does matter. But most of the scandals you’ve read about recently do not.
However, because of the furore over Gordon’s fish and Ant’s telephone and Alan’s noddies, we have a serious problem. No one believes anything they ever see on television any more. No one believes we were attacked by a gang of crazies in an Alabama petrol station. No one believes we really did go across the Channel in a pick-up truck. No one believes we went to the North Pole. They spend their whole time looking for the smoke and mirrors.
And now there’s an even bigger consequence. Television producers have become so paranoid about making sure that every little thing is real that it’s beginning to have an effect on what we watch.
Last week there was a programme on BBC2 called The Truth About Property. And at one point the presenter, a keen young chap in a short-sleeved shirt, explained that he was on his way to look at the house where he grew up.
In a piece to camera, he said that he had lived there from the age of five and that he hadn’t been back since he was 18. It would, he said, be a trip down memory lane.
Fine. In the olden days, a researcher would have called at the house several weeks earlier. Arrangements would have been made with the owners to let the crew in and show the presenter his old bedroom. He would then get all teary-eyed and everything would be lovely.
Not any more. He arrived at the house, rang the bell, waited a while and then said to the camera: ‘No one is in.’
Is that what you want? Lots of foreplay and a withered ending? Because if you want total transparency from every single show, that’s what you’re going to get.
You’re going to have midgets sticking their heads out of their Dalek suits saying: ‘Hey, kids. It’s not a ray gun. It’s a sink plunger.’ You’re going to have the people on Blue Peter saying: ‘Here’s one a researcher made earlier.’ And David Attenborough explaining that meerkats don’t really make that cute little snuffling noise. The film was shot mute and all the effects were added on in a lab in Bristol by a man in a jumper.
And imagine if this sort of thing were to spread to the Daily Mail. You’d have a paper full of stories saying that Princess Diana died in an accident, that you won’t get breast cancer if you eat cornflakes, and that immigrants will not cause your house to be valueless.
Sunday 28 October 2007
A Met Office severe bossiness warning
We’re told that a recession is coming. Apparently, it’s got something to do with the Chinese, who have, in a complex way, affected America’s sub-prime. Inflation here will spiral out of control, millions will find themselves on the dole and thousands of immigrants will be eaten by rats.
Good. Because this will give the government something to do. And maybe it will then stop sitting around all day finding new ways to boss us around.
Already, in the period of Great Boredom, they’ve stopped us smoking, killing foxes, reversing without a banksman, playing conkers, enjoying bonfire night and taking toothpaste on an aeroplane.
And now they are thinking of banning patio heaters, doing 30, and wearing hooded tops. Soon, it will be illegal to not be George Monbiot.
The latest wheeze comes from the Highways Agency, which is ‘concerned’ that over half of those interviewed in a recent survey would carry on with a journey, regardless of a severe-weather warning.
Well, of course we would, you non-conker-playing, health-and-safety-obsessed, hard-hatted, high-visibility clowns. Because, and I want to make this absolutely clear, your idea of severe weather is very far removed from anyone who’s got an IQ in double figures.
You may have noticed these days that every single weather forecast tells us the Met Office has issued a severe-weather warning.
Two weeks ago they said the whole of East Anglia was to be engulfed by a flood so massive and so destructive that billions would die in screaming agony. Last week they were banging on about fog so dense and impenetrable that we’d all be eaten by werewolves we never saw coming.
I see what’s going on here. The weather people are cross because they have to follow the news, which is full of interesting stuff like murder and war, and all they’ve got to talk about is drizzle and clouds in the west by mid-morning. So they try to spice things up a bit, to make their job look a bit more interesting.
We can all see it’s a sham. British severe weather is like British severe poverty, a fairly limp-wristed affair when placed in a global context. Northern Norway has severe weather. Oklahoma, in the tornado season, has severe weather. And a Cuban has every right to say ‘Wow, that was severe’ after a category-five hurricane has
just blown his house into the middle of Houston. But in Barnsley? No.
When you’ve seen the flooding in Bangladesh during the monsoon, you’ll realise how idiotic Gordon Brown looked in Tewkesbury earlier this year, comforting those whose DFS sofas had been ruined. And when you’ve experienced an Icelandic white-out, you will cry with laughter when some hapless reporter in wellies comes on the rolling news channel to say Britain is locked in ice chaos. It’s all complete claptrap.
I am 47 years old and I do not ever remember weather so severe that I could not go out. The so-called hurricane of 1987 was so pathetic it passed right over my house and I never even woke up. And the snowstorms of my youth were never so bad that we couldn’t drive 20 miles to find a tobogganing hill.
Undeterred by the bothersome notion of facts, however, the Highways Agency has enlisted the help of the Met Office which, spurred on by the chance for a bit of bossiness, agrees that we should stay at home whenever it’s windy, and possibly move to the cellar with some soup until the all-clear is sounded.
Only then they get themselves in a bit of a pickle because arguing that we’re in for a cold winter doesn’t sit well with their directive to big up climate change.
So they say we mustn’t be lulled into a false sense of security by global warming because cold snaps are still possible.
How cold exactly? Minus 4? Minus 8? The coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain was minus 27.2°C and I’ll admit this is far too nippy for, say, swimming. But when I went to the North Pole earlier this year, it went to minus 58°C, and even though I was in a tent, I didn’t even slightly die.
As humans we can cope. We have central heating, and patio heaters that will keep us warm when we go outside for a cigarette. And at the other end of the scale, last year I worked in Death Valley for 10 days where it rarely dropped below no°F (43°C). And that was fine too. I even got a suntan, which, amazingly, failed to give me cancer.
The trouble is, of course, that the Highways Agency nitwits don’t really care about reality. What they care about is that motorists are ignoring weather warnings from the Met Office. And that, in bossy Britain, won’t do.
So they’ve come up with a new system of red and amber alerts that will be broadcast over the radio and flashed up on motorway gantries warning drivers of severe weather ahead.
And, of course, we will ignore these too because we know that unless we’ve accidentally driven to Archangel the severe weather in question will be as frightening as an ageing Labrador.
Which means a law will be necessary that forces us to stay at home when the Met Office has decided it will be windy.
I promise you this. It is a cast-iron guarantee. Unless we get a recession to occupy the minds of those in charge, they will impose legislation. And when they do, the profitability of your business, the wealth of the nation and the education of your children will depend entirely on the whim of Michael Fish.
Sunday 18 November 2007
Make my day, sir, shoot a hoodie
Almost every day a politician comes onto the news and tells us all that Britain’s town centres are being overrun by teenage gangs who drink vast quantities of cider and then run about all night stabbing passers-by. While the event is videoed on mobile phones for the edification of YouTube viewers.
It all sounds frightful, but frankly they could be talking about events on the moons of Jupiter because, happily, I live in Chipping Norton, where a lost kitten is front-page news. Of course, there are teenagers here, and some of them have hoodies, but mostly they are called Araminta and Harry, and I’ve never once got the feeling they want to plunge a kitchen knife into my heart.
It’s the same story in Notting Hill, where I spend the working week. While dining in restaurants such as E&O, I have no real sense that outside the window gangs of 14-year-olds are lurking in the shadows, eager to punch me in the face for a moment’s glory on the internet.
Last week, however, I had to go to Milton Keynes. It was my youngest daughter’s birthday and she wanted to spend the afternoon at the town’s snow dome. Directions were sent, and then more, with even greater detail about how this indoor Alp might be found. But none of this was really necessary, because you just head for the largest building ever created by man.
It’s a brilliant place, all full of snow and vending machines offering energy drinks. But sadly, because of Mr Blair’s smoking ban, you have to go outside for a cigarette, which puts you slap-bang in one of the happy-slapping town centres the politicians keep talking about.
I wasn’t even remotely bothered when the swarm of children first approached. I figured they were fans of Top Gear and wanted to know about Richard Hammond’s head. But no. What they wanted to know most of all was if I had any security.
I asked them politely to leave me alone. I walked away. I even walked away a bit more. But they kept coming. And so, figuring that attack was probably the best form of defence, I grabbed the ringleader by his hoodie, lifted him off the ground and explained, firmly, that it’d be best if he went back to his tenement.
He declined. They all did. In fact, they all reached for their mobile phones and began to take pictures of the altercation. And that put me in a tricky spot…
I have reached the age where I am no longer able to tell how old a child is. The boy I was holding could have been 18. Or he could have been eight. And if he did turn out to be eight, I figured the photographs could look a bit like bullying.
So, weirdly, I was standing there holding this boy by the scruff of his neck, and instead of worrying about being stabbed I was actually thinking: ‘Jesus, I’m going to get done for assault if I’m not careful.’
I therefore put him down, and in a flurry of swearing and hand gestures involving various fingers he was gone. Leaving the entire nation with a very serious problem.
It’s this. Plainly, this boy’s parents are useless, allowing him to be out and about on the streets, harassing passers-by at will. Think about it. Every single time one of these children is found stabbed or shot, his mum and stepdad always tell the papers he was a ‘good lad’. And that he ‘didn’t deserve to die’.
And nobody ever says: ‘Well, if he was such a frigging angel, what was he doing on a derelict building site at four in the morning, you halfwits?’ He didn’t deserve to die, for sure, but you do, for having the parenting skills of a Welsh dresser.
There’s an equally big problem at school. Children, as far as I can see, are at liberty to do just about anything to one another at school because there is absolutely nothing the teacher can do. Not without being hauled out of the classroom by some frizzy-haired human-rights lawyer, sacked and sent to prison.
The police? Oh come on. They are far too busy filling in health and safety forms and processing speeding tickets to be bothered with every single gang of teenage ruffians. Which means that every single gang of teenage ruffians is completely free to go out and do whatever it pleases.
And we – the normal people who see town centres as somewhere to go to buy takeaway food or organise a loan for a new house – can’t do anything either because a) the politicians keep telling us all these kids are tooled up like special-forces hitmen, and b) if we stand up for ourselves we will spend the next 40 years in the Scrubs fighting off the unwelcome advances of Pinkski, the Albanian nonce.
Happily, I think I have a solution. Nothing can be done about the parents because they are too thick. It’d be like trying to train a hedgehog to smoke a pipe. We can’t rely on the police either – not without unpicking every single thing done by new Labour in the past 10 years.
And, I’m sorry, but even if the law is changed so that adults are allowed to defend themselves, you’d think twice about poking a boy in the eye or slamming his head in a car door if you thought his friends had machetes down their trouser legs.
The only place where this issue can be tackled, then, is at school. So you fit airport-style metal detectors at the doors to ensure no pupil is packing heat, you put all the troublemakers in one cla
ss and you give the teacher in charge immunity from criminal charges. And a sub-machine gun.
Sunday 2 December 2007
Enough, I’m gonna torch my antiques
According to the Daily Express, falling house prices have now caused house prices to fall. But if I were you, I’d stop worrying about the value of your bricks and mortar and start addressing the value of your furniture.
I do not know why Britain developed a fondness for buying antiques. Perhaps it was the day, at some point in 1952, when people began to think of the past as a better place than the present. Or maybe it’s because we think a Georgian dining table will hold its value well whereas something that came flat-packed in cellophane from Sweden will be worthless from the moment you take it out of the box.
Especially if you choose to make it yourself. Because it will be all covered in arterial splashback.
Giving your children an elegant Victorian hatstand means something. Giving them a red leather button-backed sofa that you bought from DFS in the sales 30 years earlier will just make them angry.
Certainly, I’ve always felt this way, which is why my house is full of ancient pieces I’ve picked up at antiques markets and little hidden-away shops over the years. However, the other day a man came round to value my collection for insurance purposes and it seems that a large, all-consuming fire would leave me out of pocket to the tune of £4.50.
He mooched from room to room, examining the various writing desks, grandfather clocks and oak linen chests, and not a single thing aroused even the slightest bit of interest. I live, it seems, in nothing more than a woodworm’s larder.
Here’s the problem. When you go into an antiques shop, the charming man with the wild white hair, the waistcoat and the eccentric spectacles looks like he knows his onions.
For crying out loud!: the world according to Clarkson, volume three Page 23