I can make you hate

by Charlie Brooker

  Referendumb

  24/04/2011

  This article was written in the run-up to a national referendum on AV (the ‘Alternative Voting’ system). Chances are you’ve forgotten that even happened, especially if you’re reading this in 2,000 years time, in which case why are you wasting your time reading this? Other books are available.

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  With not long to go until the AV referendum, the waters are muddier than ever. It’s confusing. One minute the anti-camp claims a vote for AV would benefit the BNP. Then the pro-camp counters by pointing out the BNP are against AV. Therefore, no matter what the outcome, Nick Griffin will both win and lose simultaneously. He’ll exist in an uncertain quantum state, like Schrödinger’s cat. I say ‘cat’. I originally used another word starting with c and ending with t, but the Guardian asked me to change it. Suffice to say, Griffin is a massive cat.

  It’s depressing to see the campaigns on both sides treating the public with such outright contempt. Political ads have rarely been subtle in the past, but this current slew could insult the intelligence of a silverfish. It’s not so much that they think we’re stupid, but that their attempts to appeal to that perceived stupidity are so stupid in themselves; they’ve created a sort of self-perpetuating stupidity whirlpool capable of engulfing any loose molecules of logic within a six-mile radius. They might as well replace every billboard with the words VOTE LIKE THIS, DUMMY in four-foot high Helvetica.

  The ‘No’ campaigners are the worst offenders. It started with the adverts that pitched the purported cost of a new voting system against the needs of imperilled newborns. A photo of a delicate, salmon-pink baby was accompanied by the words ‘She needs a new cardiac facility – not an alternative vote system. Say NO to spending £250 million on AV. Our country can’t afford it.’ Apart from the dodgy arithmetic involved in coming up with that figure (the sort of magic maths which involves closing your eyes and repeatedly banging the calculator against your forehead), the idea that we can only have one thing or the other – AV or healthy babies – is such a preposterous argument, even the baby could see through it. And its eyes were covered with placenta. That poster made me resolve, early on, that I would definitely vote Yes to AV, if only as a protest vote against the evil dunderheads who dreamt up the baby campaign.

  Having made my mind up, I figured I could then ignore the rest of the campaigning – although in practice it got so noisily stupid, I couldn’t. Recently, they’ve hit on the wheeze of using sport as a metaphor for elections, the idea presumably being that sport has clear winners and losers, and is simple enough for Andy Gray to understand. Different forms of sport show up in most of their recent efforts. There was a TV ad depicting a Grand National-style event in which, thanks to AV, the horse in third place magically finished first. This was unrealistic on two counts: partly because the example they used was impossible, but mainly because all the horses survived.

  This was followed by a billboard showing two boxers. One is lying battered and unconscious on the floor – and yet the ref is inexplicably declaring this comatose man the winner. Why? Because, according to the slogan, ‘Under AV the loser can win’. Since boxing matches only involve two people, this doesn’t even work as a wildly strained metaphor. It’s just a lie.

  Then some well-known former cricketers popped up on YouTube to moan that AV just isn’t cricket. David Gower said, ‘I’m used to a system in sport – in cricket specifically – where if you win, you win, and it’s as simple as that.’ Cricket? Simple? Any sport in which the commentator routinely says things like, ‘England are currently 120 for 3 and chasing 257 – so with 7 wickets in hand and 17 overs remaining, they need to hit a run rate of 8.1 an over’ is far from bloody simple. Sometimes matches are called off prematurely thanks to rain, at which point the outcome is decided by the Duckworth–Lewis method – which means the teams’ performance thus far is run through an equation which looks like this:

  Z(u,0,λ) = ZoF(w) λnF(w)+1 {1 – exp(-bu/[λnF(w)F(w)])}

  If Gower thinks that’s simpler than AV, he’s a genius. Certainly smarter than, say, Professor Brian Cox. (To see Cox attempting to grasp the Duckworth–Lewis method, visit this URL: bit.ly/gowerisagenius – I’m not joking.)

  Interestingly, if you imagine the political parties are cricket teams and run polling data from the last election through the Duckworth–Lewis equation, Nick Griffin wins the Ashes.

  Anyway, just when you thought the No camp had a monopoly on absurd campaigning, the Yes campaign go and upload a video on an absurdly emotive par with the No camp’s baby billboard. In it, a kindly-looking Second World War naval veteran, slathered with hard-earned medals, explains, in a heartbreakingly fragile voice, that he fought the Nazis in the name of democracy – yet, thanks to our current electoral system, despite voting in every general election for the past sixty-six years, his vote has always been ‘confiscated by the system’.

  As the camera pans over his medals and heart-rending personal memorabilia, backed with a moody piano soundtrack, he explains that ‘for all the say I’ve had, I might as well have died in the Russian convoys, or on the D-Day beaches, or in the Pacific after that’.

  Might as well have died? Thankfully he didn’t, despite having his sense of perspective shot off at Dunkirk. No one’s doubting his sacrifice, or his right to speak his mind, but the Yes campaign should realise that kind of OTT hyperbole is probably best saved for more cartoonish concerns. Like, say, the No campaign. Or newspaper columns by arseholes such as Richard Littlejohn. Or me.

  Royal wedding TV Go Home

  27/04/2011

  This was a set of mock TV listings written to commemorate the marriage of William and Kate. Just in case you hadn’t guessed. Hey, I don’t know how clever you are. You could be an absolute bloody idiot for all I know.

  8.00 Extreme Dress Conjecture

  Top scientists take turns speculating about Kate Middleton’s dress, bypassing trite discussion of its potential colour and style in favour of determining its approximate atomic weight, by feeding a schoolgirl’s crayon sketch of what it might look like into an onyx supercomputer studded with flashing lights.

  9.00 Elephant in the Room Street Party

  Live televised royal wedding street party at which, for no particular reason, any discussion of the royal wedding, no matter how tangential, is strictly prohibited, a policy enforced by an emotionless computer-controlled crossbow that automatically executes anyone so much as mentioning it. Survivors win £2,500 for a charity of their choosing.

  9.30 The Only Way is Essex Royal Wedding Special

  Precisely what you’d expect, but somehow worse.

  10.00 Brief Flurry of Excitement as Ben Fogle Arrives at Ceremony

  10.15 Fifteen-Minute Pause for Everyone on Twitter to Make Snarky Comment Re Prince William’s Hairloss

  10.30 I Couldn’t Care Less About the Royal Wedding and I Don’t Care Who Knows It

  Pundits declare their ambivalence towards today’s event while standing on brightly coloured plinths clutching armfuls of live chicks in order to make them look slightly silly for bothering.

  11.00 Fifteen-Minute Pause for Everyone on Twitter to Make Joke Re Kate Being Taken Up the Aisle

  11.15 At the Altar

  Live footage of the couple at the altar, accompanied by impromptu ironic commentary ostensibly emanating from within Prince William’s head, performed by Peter Dickson, voice of The X Factor.

  11.20 The Royal Wedding in Solid 3D

  Breathtaking coverage of the ceremony utilising a groundbreaking new broadcast system that converts images of the happy couple into devastatingly accurate three-dimensional carved wooden effigies, spilling from your screen in real-time at a rate of twenty-five figurines per second. Samsung Accu-Carve Solid 3D TV required. Caution: may fill house with miniature royals and assorted detritus.

  12.00 Fifteen-Minute Pause for Everyone on Twitter to Go a Bit Gooey

  12.15 The Bit with the Carriage

  During which vie
wers may choose to speculate about how many hospitals you could buy for the cost of that bejewelled chariot, but alas to no avail, for ye shall be drowned out by the cheering and the merry-making and the joyous hubbub.

  1.25pm Balcony Kiss

  Your chance to witness the one image certain to dominate every newspaper’s front page tomorrow. Unless Prince Harry goes mad and has a shit on the steps of the cathedral and then does a backflip and kicks a girl in the face.

  2.00 Endless Endless Loops of Everything You’ve Just Seen, But Cut Into Slightly Smaller Chunks, Spooling Over and Over and Over With a Newsreader Burbling Over the Top, Repeating and Repeating and Repeating Until You Feel Like Time Itself is a Scratched CD Doomed to Echo the Last Few Notes For Ever and Ever

  11.00 The People’s Royal Consummation

  Eye-popping live interactive special as viewers send in tweets and explicit Photoshopped images outlining precisely what might be happening in the happy couple’s bedroom at that precise moment. Pictures too graphic to be broadcast will be described by Eric Cantona and re-enacted by members of the Jim Henson Creature Shop.

  Fuck footballers

  29/05/2011

  The worst thing about the ongoing kerfuffle over superinjunctions is that it keeps forcing me to contemplate the extracurricular activity of men who kick balls around lawns for a living. Since I’m not into sport, I simply don’t ‘get’ the deification of footballers. I can see they’ve got a demanding physical task to do, and I can appreciate that some do it better than others – but that’s the extent of my understanding. When they’re not at work, what’s so interesting about them? Seriously, what?

  It’s like living in a world in which half the population has. inexplicably decided to worship Shire horses. But, as if that wasn’t strange enough, they’re not content to simply admire the animals’ ability to pull brewery wagons: they also want to know what the horses get up to back at the stables. And when Dobbin goes on a hay-eating binge, or tries to mount a donkey, not only will they voraciously read all about it, they’ll judge him for it. They’ll phone HoofTalk FM to pontificate on air about what a bad horse he is. In behaving like a simple horse, Dobbin, who is richly rewarded with nosebags and thoroughbred fillies, has committed the ultimate crime: he’s set a bad example to their children.

  I don’t have kids, but I know enough about parenting to state the following with confidence: any parent who is genuinely concerned that their child’s worldview might be hopelessly altered by the unruly behaviour of a footballer has failed as a parent.

  Footballers, we’re told, should be role models. A few months ago, Wayne Rooney swore into the camera during a live televised football match, and the world briefly reacted as though he’d burst into a toddler’s birthday party and brutally molested a duckling.

  The general consensus was that he was being a bad role model to the nation’s kiddywinks. Rubbish. He was being a brilliant role model. He’d just scored a hat-trick – thereby excelling in his chosen field – when a cameraman (who, by all accounts, wasn’t supposed to be standing that close to the players) poked a lens in his fizzog. At which point Rooney demonstrated an entirely healthy instinctive disdain for the cameras, for the media, and ultimately for all the hoopla surrounding his primary task, which is kicking balls into nets. He’d just scored a goal and everything else could, quite literally, ‘fuck off’. Good for him.

  Conversely, anyone who took to the airwaves to huff and whine about Rooney being a poor ‘ambassador for the game’ was an abysmal role model for children. Remember, kids – it’s not how you play the game that matters, but how prosaically servile you are in front of the cameras.

  The ‘role model’ argument is often tied to another popular bone of contention about prominent sportsfolk: their bank balances. During last week’s Question Time, one member of the audience expressed her disappointment with Ryan Giggs, explaining that his off-pitch behaviour was of particular concern because ‘we pay his wages’. Presumably she works in the human resources department of Manchester United.

  Athletes earn astronomical sums because that’s how society has chosen to reward them. It’s wonky and demented, and I don’t understand it, but that’s the way it is. Corporations, the media and the public have somehow conspired to create that environment. They designed, dug and filled the ornamental fishpond: now they complain when the goldfish shit in the water.

  Ah, yes, right, yes, right, but … footballers aren’t content to rake in obscene amounts of money just by kicking balls around. They sign lucrative sponsorship deals and advertise soft drinks and razorblades. And in those commercials they’re depicted as nice guys. But now we know they’re not nice guys! They traded off their image! It’s a lie! They owe us! They owe us!

  No they don’t. They owe the sponsors, maybe, if they signed a contract promising to behave like Saint Agnes of Rome. If you, the consumer, are suggestible enough to buy a particular brand of aftershave just because a footballer sploshed it round his cheeks on a billboard, you should take a long hard look at your own malleability. And if you now feel wounded and deceived because he was smiling on the poster, not shagging or snarling, then you’re far too fragile for this world. Newsflash: adverts are set in a parallel fantasy realm. That Go Compare tenor? Not only is he miming, that moustache isn’t real. Oh, and meerkats aren’t Russian. Please stop quaking and remain calm.

  Given all the above, what is the indignation about footballers’ private lives really all about? Either an outlet for envy and resentment – they’re paid too much and celebrated too keenly – or perhaps just a subconsciously adopted psychological position used to excuse our own basic prurience. Let’s be honest: we’re judgemental and nosy. We want to hear all the juicy details so we can experience the cathartic rush of being enraged by them, like a cuckolded boyfriend demanding a second-by-second account of his girlfriend’s infidelity.

  Given the alternating streams of adulation and rage flung in their direction, I’m amazed footballers retain their sanity. They exist in a bizarre dimension of banknotes and blowjobs and furious mobs. And all they’re supposed to do is kick balls into nets. It’s impossible to pity them – but to actively resent them? That’s madness. Like shaking your fist at a Shire horse.

  If the internet gave free backrubs, people would complain when it stopped because its thumbs were sore

  05/06/2011

  It’s incredible how quickly we humans can develop a languid sense of entitlement over even the simplest of things. For instance, I’ve spent hours of my waking life in TV comedy writing rooms, which usually consist of about four or five people seated around a table coming up with gags. That’s the idea, anyway. The reality often resembles a bizarre group therapy session in which a small cluster of faintly dysfunctional individuals have been encouraged to exorcise their collective anxiety by discussing appalling notions in the most flippant manner imaginable.

  You’re supposed to remain locked in said chamber until the script is complete – all of you sitting there, breathing in and out and perspiring, with the windows permanently closed, which is why writers’ rooms quickly develop the fetid aroma of a becalmed submarine. But it’s not quite a hermetically sealed environment. Human beings have to be kept fed and watered, which is why, at periodic intervals, a runner will enter the room to ask if anyone wants a coffee or a can of Coke, to take lunch orders (I have no idea what comedy writers ate before the advent of Nando’s), or, if things are really dragging on, to take dinner orders too.

  All very cosy. But here’s the funny thing: after a few weeks of this, you become hopelessly infantilised. Cans of Coke, for instance, are often stored in a fridge about fifteen seconds’ walk from the writers’ room. Yet rather than leaving the room to fetch one yourself the moment you’re thirsty, it quickly becomes second nature to wait until the runner appears and order it from them. Not because you think they’re a waiter, nor even out of sheer laziness, but because you’ve genuinely on some level ‘forgotten’ you’re capable of locating and
opening the fridge yourself. In other words, you’re spoiled.

  I bring this up because the other day I went online to post a Spotify playlist for people to listen to (if you’re visiting from 1903, Spotify is a service that streams music to your computer – think of it as an infinitely huge jukebox. Although being from 1903, you won’t know what a jukebox is either. Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to fend for yourself).

  Anyway, some people listened to it, some people didn’t – but some objected to the mere mention and use of Spotify. Spotify, they said, was like Nick Clegg: it had promised one thing, only to turn round and do another. It offered free music for all (supported by ad breaks, like commercial radio), only to recently scale this back to ten hours of free music per month. The reason for the scaleback? Presumably an attempt to make the whole thing financially viable – by encouraging more people to subscribe. Subscribers pay about £5 per month and can listen to as much music as they want, without any ad breaks. If they go up to £10 they can also listen to music on their phones, even while offline.

  In 1986, when I was fifteen, a twelve-inch single cost roughly £2.99 – the equivalent of just over £6 today. And unless you were loaded, you didn’t just buy records willy-nilly. You chose carefully and coveted what you had. (You also taped loads of them off the radio for nothing, but that often required the will and patience to sit through Bruno Brookes.)