Work! Consume! Die!

by Frankie Boyle

  This year Cowell gave us a whole finals week of Britain’s Got Talent. I cannot be sure. I suspect possibly I just experienced a week of hallucinogens being pumped into my living room at around 8.30pm. Cowell … Holden … McIntyre … An amazing line-up. I didn’t think it was possible for David Hasselhoff take part in a show and not be the biggest arsehole on it.

  Hasselhoff claims that he has mystical healing powers and has brought someone out of a coma – by leaving the room. During an interview he said, ‘The upside of being in showbiz is being able to hold the hand of a kid who is dying.’ Indeed. Unfortunately, the downside of having childhood leukaemia is having to hold the hand of some tactless, delusional spastic.

  Simon Cowell gets a bit of stick, but he is patron of several major charities and has committed to donating £100 million in trust to children and animal welfare charities upon his death. So, if you like animals and you like children and you like killing, you know what you have to do.

  The Sun interviewed Simon Cowell’s mother. Well, if you can call throwing a burning axe at the heads of a howling sea monster an ‘interview’. She’s worried about his health and wants him to slow down. What the hell is going to happen to him? All he does is sit in a chair, pulling faces. All he has to fear is the wind changing. You’ve really got to look at yourself when the fact that your mother loves you is headline news. Simon’s mother has worried about him ever since she dreamt of the next-door neighbour wearing a bull’s head on the night of his conception. His mum is begging Simon to listen to her – unfortunately her back story isn’t interesting enough for his assistants to let her calls through. I’d hate to see Simon have a heart attack. Paramedics rushing into the studio having to unzip his flies so they can defibrillate his chest.

  It must really be a strain having to think up a new way to have four low-rent celebrities watch people singing. Cowell has five new shows. Well, actually, it’s one show with slightly different titles. He deserves his place at the top of the entertainment ladder with that amazing talent for sometimes putting the word ‘America’ into those titles. Slow down? How can a man who sits still, smirking, slow down? The only option would be for him to leave a longer pause between ‘You know what?’ and ‘I like you.’

  Who’s Cowell to say who’d look right on a TV show? This is a man who allows himself to appear in front of millions with his shirt open to the waist exposing his man-breasts like a pair of sagging, toad-skin saddlebags. Let’s hope that soon Simon will have enough money to stop having his hair cut by a topiary expert into a rhomboid.

  I’m staggered that the judges kept criticising the singer’s images. After all, Cheryl had the horrific gaze of a woman being held hostage by her hair; Louis, like he’d won his suit in a colouring-in competition; and Simon looked like he was wearing the tightened carcass of a Colombian road sweeper who went missing in 2002.

  Dannii was voted the most popular judge last year. I didn’t realise necrophiliacs were such a core demographic. I suppose Simon gets all of his mates to watch. But that didn’t save her, as Dannii was axed! ‘Anger’, ‘surprise’ and ‘sadness’ were just some of the words she managed to blink out in Morse code. The X Factor replaced her with Kelly Rowland, who I must say scrubs up nice compared with his ‘Come On Eileen’ days.

  Dannii’s departure is a blow to the West Midlands, as Amalgamated Plastics were banking on getting her refurbishment contract for the new series. Dannii was understandably frustrated at losing the job, telling friends it means she’ll have to spend more time with that shouty little thing that came out of her vagina last year. Fans of the show are furious, with many resorting to angrily breaking wind into their sofa cushions as they lean over to shout, ‘Juss fold it in half and push it froo the letterbox, push it froo the fuckin letterbox!’ to bemused pizza-delivery boys outside their front doors. At least Dannii’s too high profile to go the way of previous contestants, encased in silk spun from a gland by Simon’s cloaca so that he may feast on their still-warm organs at his leisure.

  Simon says he wanted fresh blood, a sinister insight into his true motives. I’m saying nothing more, but I went to a bash round his and I have to say the hearth rug bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Brookstein. But he couldn’t replace Louis. Who could ever replace Louis? Except for a baby concentrating on doing a poo while someone waves a teddy at him.

  So, the new line-up on The X Factor is Tulisa, Kelly, Gary and Louis. When the Bible mentioned the coming of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse I didn’t envisage them being named by a teenage mother on a council estate. Tulisa Contostavlos, from hip-hop group N-Dubz, was the one on Buzzcocks who didn’t know what a kestrel was. If I were Cheryl Cole I’d send Tulisa a welcoming gift of a hat made of dead mice and suggest that we meet up in a cornfield to discuss the handover. Poor Tulisa wouldn’t know what hit her. As Cheryl Cole’s army of hungry kestrels viciously pecked out Tulisa’s kidneys she’d be thinking, ‘What is this. Literally, what is this?’ N-Dubz. That’s the sound Americans hear when Cheryl says, ‘Any jobs?’

  The X Factor is now allowed to show product placements. That’s powerful advertising. Last series I realised that looking at the judges alone had made me subconsciously buy a gnome, a scrag end of mutton, a vacuous mannequin and a suspected gay. Product placements, downloads, text and phone votes, pre-Christmas launch, mimed live shows. The only way Cowell could be extracting more from us is by breaking into our houses at night and clamping milking machines to our tits and tadgers.

  I, for one, will be joining the campaign to remove unwanted technology from The X Factor. Let’s start with the cameras and the microphones. It’s amazing how Auto-Tune changes a vocal performance. We hear pitch-perfect songs on a Saturday evening when what the contestants really produce are the desperate screams of a dying civilisation. In fact, if we are going to ban Auto-Tune we need to ban other things that make the singers sound better – singing lessons, emotions, facial bones, lungs, evolution … I’m sure the baying public would be much happier watching a programme where Dermot O’Leary brought on endless buckets of fleshy slop and told us which one of their relatives had recently died.

  There’ve been calls to make sure dancing by guests on this year’s X Factor isn’t as sexy as on the last series. I’m all for sexy dancing. At least it gives me a fighting chance of covering the screen if I can’t reach the remote. Rihanna, whose wholesome performance last year kicked things off, clearly has sad events in her past that she’s battling. Hopefully, enough to keep the self-loathing, semi-naked writhing going for another six or seven years. I’m hoping Rihanna isn’t into dominance, ’cos, as a female pop singer, about the only choice she’ll have in her life is whether to chew off her own tongue. I once had a sexual fantasy about Rihanna but my girlfriend ruined it for me, by cuming.

  Rihanna has said she doesn’t want to appeal to kids. She should produce songs with a more complex chord structure than ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’, then. Rihanna says she wants people to stop expecting her to be a parent. Don’t worry, baby, I don’t expect you to be a parent. Not a decent one who gets custody of her kids, anyway. Rihanna’s latest video shows her being assaulted – well, opening that umbrella indoors in her first video was always going to bring bad luck.

  Parents are told to censor the TV themselves, but it’s tricky when you are expecting a show to be family-friendly. Watching Britain’s Got Talent with your children was like trying to watch a dancing dog while someone throws a bucketful of tits at you. There’s a relentless sexuality across our whole culture now; I saw a photo of Iggy Pop and I’m ashamed to say that I was flushing the hanky down the toilet before I realised it wasn’t Madonna.

  South Africa is hosting an X Factor-style competition for porn stars. It’ll be unusual for South Africans to see people having sex who haven’t been dragged from a car. There are lots of parallels with The X Factor, like when they ask contestants if they’ve had any professional training and they reply they’ve just been practising in front of the mirror with a hair
brush. Given the massive AIDS epidemic, the elimination rounds will be slightly more literal than usual. To be honest, if I wanted to see someone fuck reality TV stars in a sad pathetic quest for fame I’d watch Katie on Sky Living.

  Apparently, more people have now voted on The X Factor than did in the last election. Luckily, I’ve thought of something we can do about that … we can all kill ourselves. 12.6 million of us watched The X Factor last year. That makes me despair. Whatever happened to the traditional British Saturday night? Necking 2 for 1 blue drinks on an empty stomach, then trying to finger a partially conscious bride-to-be behind a giant, reeking bin.

  How did all this happen? Bring back the innocent days of Stars in Their Eyes, when we’d have laugh at a bin man from Stoke pretending to be Louis Armstrong, then just get on with our lives. And they’d just be happy to shake Matthew’s hand and muck up the role of Buttons at a local theatre before slipping back into obscurity with a new tedious anecdote.

  You know, if you really want a better culture, just stop watching this fucking thing. Do as the expression says and ‘vote with your feet’. Christ knows, most of you can drink a cup of tea with them. Try a walk, or a drive in the country. If that feels a bit poofy, just combine it with some fly-tipping. My X Factor tip: Not only don’t bother watching it on Saturday night. Record it, then delete it without watching it too. It’s great.

  Again, this critique feels kind of futile. The X Factor was created and commissioned by individuals who think that most people are morons with fairly bland tastes. It’s very difficult to lay into The X Factor, or even just describe it and its popularity, without broadly suggesting that people are indeed morons and don’t like complex ideas. It’s important to remember that this is the result of a bland general culture that’s been forced on us for decades now. If you grew up without serious TV drama, with largely anodyne TV comedy, with the Top 40 as your idea of what music was, The X Factor is a natural end point.

  I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsome. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn’t have either record because they were ‘too alternative’ and could I just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think Radio 2’s listeners would dig both Joanna Newsome and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don’t get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I’d been to see Joanna Newsome in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be ‘too alternative’? I asked if Desert Island Discs was chosen from a playlist, and they told me it was, but maybe they were fucking with me.

  ‘Alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ aren’t strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called ‘mainstream’ and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsome can sell out the Albert Hall, why can’t she get played on Radio 2? I would argue that it’s because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life.

  The last rung above hell are these new fictional documentaries. First was the Gary Glitter execution, and now Prince Harry’s been captured by the Taliban. I’d like to see lots more of these shows made. Who wouldn’t watch the heart-warming story of when Rolf Harris discovered the cure for AIDS? How about one showing what would happen if Konnie Huq went on a gun rampage on the planet of Pandora? These fictional documentaries are so good, I bet if they put enough time and effort into the script, casting and performances they could even make a convincing one that successfully depicts John Leslie as a rapist.

  The producer of Midsomer Murders was suspended after saying he’d banned non-white actors from the show. The show’s production company denied they had a ban on minorities, adding they’d only just finished an episode where John Nettles defeats a gypsy army with a helicopter gunship. The producer says he’s only avoided using ethnic actors in order to create a more timeless version of the British village, one of cricket on the green, warm beer, and sinister swingers and sacrifices to appease the horned god of the apple harvest. There are plenty of ethnic minorities in Midsomer, they just don’t bother investigating their deaths.

  People who watch Midsomer don’t want to see realism. What they desperately want is to see their grandchildren. We can’t have the core audience of Midsomer Murders being scared that ethnic minorities will kill them – it will make it difficult for them to bond with their care worker in the hospice. Anyway, there are plenty of shows where you can see black people being murdered. News programmes.

  I had my tea in front of the apprentice on Tuesday. He just sat there saying, ‘Meester Boyle, whenaa you gonna letta mee drive ze tractor?’ Then I noticed there was a show of the same name on TV where a dozen power-dressed fools get told by the lion from The Wizard of Oz ‘they’re fired’, even though he’s not yet employed them.

  For those of you who haven’t watched The Apprentice. Basically, 16 arseholes attempt to impress one massive arsehole while a couple of other arseholes with clipboards tut. The biggest arseholes never win but nor do people who don’t act like enough of an arsehole. Instead of a search for ‘an Apprentice’, the show is a search for a medium-sized arsehole. Apparently, next series they’re introducing a few things to keep the format fresh. Celebrity mentors, higher-risk tasks and, in the final, Lord Sugar will fight to the death with his nemesis, the evil Professor Insulin.

  We’ve had so many series of this show now, but one question still remains unanswered – does Nick Hewer actually have eyes? If you were working with Nick you’d constantly be saying, ‘Sorry, is this lamp too bright?’

  Alan Sugar admits using his name to jump the queue for a plastic surgeon. If he’d used his face he’d have got in even quicker. Sugar went to the school of ‘hard knocks’ – and it looks like he’s taken most of them to the face. He looks like someone has sexually assaulted Yoda’s corpse.

  Gordon Ramsay is also rumoured to have had plastic surgery. He looks horrendous, so there’s certainly been an improvement. Ramsay says he’s had a hair transplant. How can you see a face looking like a side of pork that a Peckham teenager uses for stabbing practice, and think it’s the hair that’s the problem? Ramsay’s face looks like a photo of a middle-aged man that a ballpoint-wielding toddler has discovered on your desk. If you had a face like that, would you worry about your hair? That would be almost as ridiculous as a news team speculating over who ate a murder victim’s pizza.

  He’s had a year of plastic surgery now but, let’s be honest, he still looks like he should be on a poster for a seatbelt campaign. If you had Gordon Ramsay’s face, where would you even start when talking to a plastic surgeon? His entire face looks like the treads on a pair of kid’s trainers.

  Gordon’s rival, Jamie Oliver – a Moomin-faced circus freak who by rights belongs in an Aphex Twin video – made £106 million last year. Perhaps next time he goes to ‘save’ an impoverished town he should ‘pass on’ a bit more than a meatball recipe. In these days of digital technology it’s good to see a man making money from good old-fashioned exploitation of the poor. People have named Oliver as their ideal neighbour. Of course, one chat over the garden fence a week and you wouldn’t have to buy a garden sprinkler. He’d be my ideal neighbour too, if he lived in Palestine and I owned a bulldozer.

  It’s the same story every year. How much should the licence fee be? They need a logical formula that pleases everyone. I suggest it’s based on how many 2p pieces can be inserted into James Corden’s back passage before his sphincter gives out like a fruit machine. Granted, that may mean a rise from the current £145.50.

  Countryfile’s Miriam O’Reilly has won her BBC ageism claim. The BBC say they are now interested in working with her again. She’s al
ready been offered Grumpy Old Women, Walking with Dinosaurs and Ready, Steady, Die.

  Cutbacks will be affecting all programming. Huw Edwards will tell you the news personally in a restaurant round the corner from his house, and a relaunched Tomorrow’s World will be showing us how to make fire by using our dead skin.

  The plans to close 6 Music would have been a blow to a lot of 30-something males. What would we have had to talk to student girls about? I know – the morning-after pill. 6 Music has been criticised for its lack of female presenters; much like the Jo Whiley show on Radio 1.

  There’ll be no cutbacks at BBC Scotland. Scottish TV programmes often cost less than the television sets they are shown on. Not every programme will have its own website. For instance, if you go online seeking more information on The One Show, you will be redirected to the Samaritans helpline. The Dr Who website will simply redirect you to a video of your family begging you to communicate with them. The Holby City website will just redirect fans to a picture of a cake with a submissive man’s face drawn on it. That should keep the core fan base distracted until school pick-up time.

  They are also getting rid of chat rooms that aren’t directly related to a BBC programme. I am taking this as a personal challenge to see whether I can instigate an internet sex session simply through references to Cash in the Attic.

  ‘I would pay far more than the £30 offered to clear out your back passage, and I’d love a stab at your antique cherry workspace.’

  BBC websites will no longer be local. That means my hate-mail to the River City cast will have to be posted. Which is a problem, as Glasgow has dozens of homeless shelters.

  The last episode of Last of the Summer Wine was broadcast 37 years after it was first shown. It was basically the same storyline repeated over and over again. Luckily, all the actors had Alzheimer’s and it kept the performances fresh. And the audience’s Alzheimer’s made them feel as if they were watching it for the first time. It’s a shame that the show couldn’t have had a more realistic portrayal of ageing, where they just died of neglect and malnutrition in an NHS hospital.