2007 - Dawn of the Dumb

by Charlie Brooker

  Below the article, in the comments section, a passer-by remarked, ‘I have two pieces of advice for anyone reading this: (1) Keep an overdose-sized supply of sleeping pills stashed away that is sufficient for yourself, your family and anyone else you care about. (2) When things start getting bad, use them.’ And this was one of the cheerier entries.

  Still, the news isn’t always violently upsetting. No. Sometimes the bad headlines turn out to be a false alarm—like the other day, when early reports of a second 9/11 happening right now turned out to be a comparatively minor accident involving a light aircraft. Can’t be much fun being one of the victims, of course—for one thing, you’ve just been killed, and for another, your death was announced by an anchorman mopping his brow, and drowned out by a worldwide sigh of relief- but for the rest of us, it was the closest we’ve come to hearing good news in ages.

  With this in mind, perhaps news journalists everywhere would like to make our lives a little more bearable by running several deliberately petrifying and utterly fabricated stories a week, just so the genuine terrifying stuff feels a bit less terrifying by comparison. And at the end of the week, simply reveal which stories were true, and which were fake. That way, we’ll spend our last few years on Earth feeling like we’ve lived through a string of lucky escapes, rather than a protracted, dispiriting meltdown.

  Start with the pterodactyl example. A week later, invent a health scare—some new hyper-contagious disease that makes your eyes boil and burst and run down your cheeks. The gorier the better. Then invent some bogus knuckle-whitening bullshit about a maniac on the Korean peninsula who’s got hold of a nuclear bomb and…Oh. Oh bugger.

  One night in paradise

  [20 October 2006]

  You’re whisked to a top London restaurant for an expensive bloody meal. Before eating, you slurp drinks at the bar: a three-dimensional diagram populated by the cast of Star Trek. The ceiling is high, the lighting is low, and everything looks supernaturally rich, as though a high-definition ‘cinematic’ visual effect is being applied in post-production. All the laughter and hubbub sounds posh or strangely accented. Surely you’re in a commercial.

  One of your party orders a vodka and cranberry. ‘That’s a Belvedere,’ says die barman with a smile. So from now on, a Belvedere it is. Shortly afterwards, a woman from the future arrives to tell you your table is ready. She practically curtsies as she does so. The Belvedere is gently taken from you, placed on a silver platter and spirited away to your table, to greet you on arrival, thus sparing you the bicep-snapping ordeal of lugging it all the way there yourself.

  Orders are taken and a meal is served; each dish is whispered into position under your nose and unveiled like a precious gem being offered to a sultan. At the table beside you sits a preposterous man sporting a cravat and moustache, each straining to out-ridiculous the other. He’s of indeterminate age—anywhere between twenty-five and forty-five—yet no matter how old he is, his companion is clearly twenty years younger.

  In between silky mouthfuls, you scan the room, playing the ‘escort/daughter’ guessing game as you alight on various couples. A bullish man with a fat thigh for a neck is dining with an underfed beauty in a backless spun-gold drape. She’s a supermodel; he’s a burly Greek fisherman crossed with Tony Soprano.

  The bill arrives; it’s large but it’s worth it. Your laid-on taxi is late. As you stand outside, a bodyguard built like a gigantic iron bell ushers a group of Russian businessmen into a people carrier. Then Tony the Fisherman and his superwaif date emerge and clamber into a tarmac-hugging supercar, so shiny on the eyes it’s like being stabbed in the iris with a pin. The seats are low; as she dips to get in, her entire compact bum pops out the back of her backless drape. Tony roars away with a hand up her skirt.

  Eventually your car arrives. The driver apologises with so much forelock-tugging deference, he might as well invite you to beat him. ‘Would you like some music?’ he asks as you pull away. You say that’d be nice, and suddenly the air’s filled with some bullshit bounce-wid-me R&B, all glossy beats and, genuinely, a lyric about ‘feelin’ ready to squirt’. The car is the size and shape of a riverside apartment. You could comfortably stage a threesome in here without awkwardly banging your elbows.

  Outside on the street, pavement scum queue for night buses. Suddenly, part of you feels like winding down the window and giving them the finger. Because compared to you, they’re just clueless, staggering crudsacks. You’ve spent the night in an expensive Bond movie, pampered at every step, ferried home like a prince. Those laughable bozos wind up howling incoherently like cows in the rain.

  Eventually you’re dropped home. This special cab cost three times the usual. You’ve spent a fortune. You get what you pay for. You pay to feel superior. It works. The rich do this nightly. They must be insane.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In which millions come to bury Sezer, Billie Piper is praised to the skies, and Gillian McKeith attempts to murder music.

  Berks the size of hills

  [27 May 2006]

  Christ almighty. Hellzapoppin’. Where on God’s Earth do you start? Big Brother (64) has shovelled some berks our way in the past, but this time—for round seven—they’re using nuclear-powered shovels and berks the size of hills. It shouldn’t be possible, but clearly it somehow is.

  By now, everyone in Europe will be aware that one housemate has stood out for all the wrong reasons: I speak, obviously, of Shah-baz. Shahbaz—a children’s party entertainer created in a madman’s laboratory, set loose on the world minus an ‘off’ switch. Shahbaz—an episode of Cmckerjack with an erection down its shorts, running, sobbing and shrieking, right in your direction. Shahbaz the All-frighty. Fear him. Pity him. Just for God’s sake don’t encourage him.

  Shahbaz spent his first few days in the hellhouse bouncing round the linoleum shrieking, blubbing, squealing and bear-hugging anyone within grasping distance. That was disturbing enough. But when, for some mad reason, this failed to win anyone over, he really went into meltdown—deliberately provoking arguments then playing the victim: behaviour that’s not so much attention-seeking as attention-kidnapping. By the time you read this he’ll be conducting a dirty protest in tears—and all because he just wants to be loved. Unsettling in a none-too-entertaining way, he should’ve been pulled out days ago, and unless he’s an actor, I fear for his stability following the inevitable eviction. Here’s hoping for a soft landing and a happier tomorrow.

  Of course, there’s one bit of knowledge Shahbaz can comfort himself with: whatever his faults, at least he isn’t Sezer. Sezer: yuk. Just what we need on our screens: a pint-sized, pixel-eyed, monotone, priapic, hair-gelled rodent, so in love with himself he probably masturbates to videos of himself masturbating. And it’s misplaced adoration, because sculpted torso aside, he’s got precisely nothing going for him. He’ll never say anything you haven’t heard expressed by someone less objectionable before. There are a million identical dullards in the capital alone—hurl a bag of shit into any bar in central London and the chances are it’ll burst over four or five of them. (Footnote: infuriatingly, at the time of writing, Tuesday morning, Sezer has behaved entirely reasonably for a full 24 hours. If he doesn’t start pissing me off again, I’ll have to revise my kneejerk opinion of him. And that would never do.)

  Most of the remainder are relatively dull. There’s Mikey (sexist Vernon Kay/Owen Wilson cross-splice whose punchably dumb face probably adorns the banknotes in Thickland); George (near-silent posho with the head of an Easter Island statue and a severe case of Portillo lips); Nikki (spoiled chimpette who throws tantrums like Geoff Capes throws fence-posts) and Grace (skinny dance instructor apparently played by Peaches Geldof).

  Who else? Think hard now. You can do it. Ah yes: Lea (planet-boobed sometime pornstar who’s surgically enhanced her way out of the human race altogether—she now resembles Samantha Janus as described by a lunatic); Dawn (an ‘exercise scientist’ who believes in chakras—so not a scientist at all then); Imog
en (cute but flavourless; a passable human vacuum in a thong); and Richard (catty Right Said Fred diplomat clearly doomed to spend the rest of his natural life lifting heavy objects on daytime DIY makeover shows). Apparently, there are two others, called Bonnie and Glyn. But I don’t think they’ve been on camera yet. Still it’s not all bad news. Lisa (Lucy Liu channelling the spirit of Bez), for instance, is vaguely tolerable.

  But the clear victor, by ten country miles, is Pete—the Tourette’s sufferer whose frequent uncontrollable spasms turn him into a cross between Rik from the Young Ones, Keyop from Battle of the Planets, a Tex Avery cartoon wolf, and Klunk, the chirruping inventor from Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines. Funny, charming, intelligent, talented, modest and utterly even-handed, he’s by far the most likeable contestant in the programme’s lengthening history. And if he doesn’t win, I’ll eat Shahbaz.

  The twat amplifier

  [3 June 2006]

  I used to quite like my ears. Not visually, I mean, but notionally. I admired the way they were content to hang around on the side of my head ferrying noises into my brain. Selfless. Reliable. Steadfast.

  This week, however, our relationship changed forever. They turned on me. They forced me to listen to X Factor: Battle of the Stars (ITV); specifically, they forced me to listen to Gillian McKeith singing.

  I still can’t believe I just typed that. I’ll type it again: Gillian McKeith singing. Gillian McKeith singing. Gillian. McKeith. Sing. Ing.

  I won’t get over that in a hurry: my least favourite atrophied Hazel McWitch lookalike in the world, singing ‘I just want to make love to you’, right there on primetime telly. She has to be the only person on Earth who can take a lyric like that and make it seem like a blood-curdling threat without changing any of the words. It was so horrible, I felt my brain straining to repress all memories of the event before they’d had a chance to form. I almost blacked out.

  At the time of writing, there’s only been one edition of this ‘celebrity’ song contest—an unending howlfest culminating in Paul Daniels getting the heave-ho—but if the inaugural broadcast was anything to go by, I fully expect rioting in the streets by the time tonight’s final rolls round. It’s cacophonous to the point of avant-garde—beyond the point of avant-garde, in fact, all the way into ‘sonic weapon’ territory. You can’t submit an entire population to this kind of punishment. It just isn’t right.

  Speaking of horrendous affronts to humanity, perhaps it’s a bit early in our collective timeline to make rash statements like this, but I strongly suspect future scholars may judge Sezer from Big Brother (C4) to be the single most objectionable man in the history of civilisation.

  At least, that’s how it feels to me right now. I know it’s a passing illusion. Ten minutes after he leaves, my pulse will slow and I’ll feel nothing. But while he’s in there…Jesus. It’s not healthy, hating someone that much. My heart’s turned to carbon. Whenever he appears onscreen, I twist in my seat, agonised. And I’ve started hallucinating rat ears, poking out the top of his tosser’s hairdo. He’s not even human any more.

  The BB house works as a kind of twat amplifier, you see. Once harnessed within, someone who in normal life would merely strike me as a bit of a git quickly swells in negative stature, eventually coming to symbolise everything I hate about our cruel and godless universe.

  Last year it took Maxwell three weeks to reach the pitch required for optimum hatred. Sezer managed it in nine days.

  And you know who’s close behind? Grace. Bug-eyed bloody Grace: the sanctimonious, hoity-toity, stick-thin, Michelle Fowler-faced, I-Know-Everything, plummy, bummy, passive-aggressive Sloane whose blithe faith in her own even-handed worthiness is an absolute gut-churning bollock to behold. Ugh. Hate her too.

  Actually, they’re all leaving a sour taste all the way from the throat to the backside this year (apart from, say, Glyn, who doesn’t count—he’s merely a hair in the lens). Once again, I’m writing this on Tuesday morning, so who knows—maybe the new housemates will turn out to be lovely. But so far? It’s a big bunch of tossers without exception. Apart from Glyn.

  And Pete, obviously. Pete doesn’t really count as a housemate either. He’s far too agreeable, like someone who’s accidentally wandered in from another show. It’s the BB twat-magnifier working in reverse, I think; making him seem almost saintly. In the real world, he’s the sort of person who’d suddenly spring from nowhere to completely do your head in at a gig—offering you a go on his whistle and asking disjointed questions at breakneck speed.

  But his main drawback is…well, he’s just a bit too nice. Come on, Pete. You’re a decent guy. Hoof Sezer in the nuts. For us. Just once. You can do it. Please. You can.

  Added tit shots

  [10 June 2006]

  Some things in life are permanent. Others are fleeting. And a precious few are ostensibly fleeting, but feel permanent anyway. The DPS half-price sale is perhaps the clearest example of this. The gap between individual DPS sales seems shorter than the average sneeze; all but imperceptible. Still, that’s nothing compared to the microscopic delay between individual Channel 4 documentary seasons examining the world of sex and bums and people with nothing on. Right now, the theme is ‘Sex in the Bos’, which must’ve been an exceptionally hard sell round Channel 4 towers. Mullets! Tits! Duran Duran! More tits! Bigger mullets! Ha ha ha! All you need is a few seconds of voice-over babble about ‘changing attitudes’ and ‘social upheaval’ laid over the top and hey presto: you’ve justified everything. It’s not just a load of tit shots—it’s a sociological investigation. With tit shots.

  Anyway, the randy nostalgia reaches an end this week with The Story of Club 18-30 (C4)— a nudge-wink documentary essentially consisting of hee-larious archive footage intercut with soundbites from people who once got their end away on holiday. There’s also a thuddingly pointless thread in which two former Club 18-30 reps return to the Portugal resort they once ruled in their prime…and walk around a bit. The contrast between their 19803 snapshots (gangly youths drooling over sunburned knockers) and the present-day reality (waddling middle age) is a disturbing testament to the ravages of the ageing process. One now resembles Ben Dover, while the other’s blobbed out and looks like a cross between a tortoise and a mayor.

  By the end of the show you’ve been mildly entertained, but learned nothing. A bit like an actual Club 18-30 holiday really, but with fewer unwanted pregnancies. Next week on Channel 4: a season of documentaries examining the complex shift in sexual attitudes during the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis. With tit shots.

  In many ways, Big Brother (C4 ) is the present day equivalent of a 19805 Club 18-30 Holiday—flirting, sunbathing, silly little organised games, and lots of people you’d like to remove from the gene pool with a cricket bat.

  Over the past fortnight, I’ve managed to establish a pattern whereby whichever housemate I’ve ranted about most has been magically evicted by the time the article makes it into print, leaving me feeling even more pointless and impotent than usual; an idiot shrieking at a shadow. Still, I won’t let that stop me having another pop at Grace, the poisoned twiglet—even though I secretly hope she survives the jinx because I rather enjoy hating her. She single-handedly redefines the word ‘snob’ for the twenty-first century: a new, self-deluding breed of snob that considers itself not just superior but inherently cooler, more compassionate, and more down-to-earth than everyone else.

  Last week I said she looked like Michelle Fowler, but that’s not quite accurate enough. She actually looks more like Howdy Doody, the popular American kiddy show mascot—do a Google image search (go on) and you’ll see what I mean. Then pass it on.

  Howdy Doody was a puppet, so it’s fitting that Grace’s current squeeze is the spectacularly wooden Mikey- a man so profoundly thick he can scarcely form sounds, let alone words.

  He’s hardly even sentient. Lord knows what he’s using in place of a brain. Presumably there’s some low-wattage internal organ wired up to his nervous system,
providing just enough kick to make his eyes blink twice an hour and push shit through his arse when required. A kidney perhaps. Or a liver. But not a brain. Push him into a burning building and he’d simply wander into the flames with a cow-like expression on his face. And when his clothes caught fire he’d spend his final moments trying to swat out the embers with his tail, never quite realising he doesn’t have one.

  The spectacle of Grace repeatedly binding her spindly frame to this semi-mute humanoid log, breaking off occasionally to bitch about anyone within mindshot, is making this year’s Big Brother a grinding, masochistic, darkening trial. With tit shots.

  Goodbye, England’s Rose

  [ is July 2006]

  Goodbye, England’s Rose. Yes, tonight’s the night Billie Piper exits Doctor Who (BBC1) following her two-year tenure. When it was first announced that the revived Doctor’s travelling companion was to be played by Piper, a former kiddywink popstar, I rolled my eyes so violently I found myself staring backward into my own skull. It’s Bonnie Langford all over again, I figured.

  How pitifully wrong I was. Anyone who thinks she’s been anything other than excellent is a brick-hearted stump of a being.

  Effortlessly balancing feistiness and charm, vulnerability and goofiness, Billie Piper out-acted almost everyone else on television.

  Out-sassed them too. She’s extremely good-looking in a most peculiar way: her eyes, mouth and nostrils all seem to be competing to see which can look biggest on her face. At times she resembles a Spitting Image caricature of herself. It shouldn’t work, but it does. You’ll miss her when she’s gone.