PRALINES & DICK

Steve McQueen's Shame: a not-so-festive treat

2011-12-23T17:25:00.009Z

To say the talent on display in Shame are flavour of the month is an understatement. They’re flavour in the way Heston Blumenthal means flavour, which means gutting a pig seven ways, bending it into a balloon giraffe and making it taste like trout. It’s helmed by artist and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, and scripted by multiple BAFTA winner Abi Morgan who, with Meryl Streep-showcasing Maggie Thatcher biopic THE IRON LADY out next year, seems to be singlehandedly flying the flag for female British screenwriters. Oh, and it stars Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan, last seen in superhero reboot X-MEN: FIRST CLASS and surprise pulp hit DRIVE respectively. Phew.

Let’s get the important stuff out the way first. Shame is the film my Mum calls ‘the one with Michael Fassbender’s willy’, which sounds like an episode of Friends. If it was, Shame would be the one in which Joey, Phoebe and Monica have a threesome, Ross gets arrested for S&M and Chandler lays off the aspirin in favour of Viagra, ditching witty gags for latex ones. Yes, there’s a lot of sex in this film. But it’s not very sexy sex, and no I’m not going to go back and phrase that more eloquently. Michael Fassbender has sex with everyone, Carey Mulligan has sex with Michael Fassbender’s boss, and Michael Fassbender looks like he wants to have sex with Carey Mulligan except he can’t because she’s his sister.

Fassbender plays city hotshot Brandon, a bachelor with the kind of rugged good looks women can’t resist, and the kind of income which means he can order bottles of champagne and martinis with olives and cocktail sticks. Is it just me or do they look wrong without Sarah Jessica Parker on the other end? But Fassbender has cornered the market in playing charismatic fuck-ups, and sex addict Brandon is exactly that. He’s the kind of guy Chat Roulette was made for, spending his out-of-work hours jerking off over his stack of porn magazines and talking dirty to prostitutes via his webcam, but, as the title suggests, Brandon isn’t happy. He keeps his distance from colleagues and co-workers, and when he isn’t alone in the type of starkly modern flat Patrick Bateman would be proud of, scours the bars and clubs of Manhattan for increasingly squalid encounters which lift his spirits only fleetingly, leaving him sadder, lonelier and more disgusted with himself than ever.

Brandon’s colleague Marianne (Nicole Beharie) naïvely thinks she can change him. She can’t. Brandon may need the love of a good woman but what he wants right now is a prostitute or three, preferably from behind, up against the wall, and dirtier than Alan Titchmarsh’s knees after a morning spent rolling Charlie Dimmock in the *ahem* flower beds. He’s a man conflicted, and never more so than after the unexpected arrival of younger sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan), a pouty wannabe singer with a neat line in Oxfam coats and an inability to recognise when she’s not wanted. Carey does stroppy teenager well, but her real moment in the sun comes during a slowed-down, melancholy version of Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York. Can Carey sing? No better than the rest of us, but as Brandon treads an empty Manhattan awash with watery blues and greys, the lyrics take on a timbre which leaves him in tears. He isn’t king of the hill. He isn’t top of the heap. He can’t commit to a functioning relationship and he’s about to spend the next three hours wide awake and listening to his married boss bang his little sister’s brains out.

Outwardly Brandon is furious with Sissy for damaging his career prospects, but Steve McQueen’s direction leaves you with the sense that a deeper personal tension is at play, a feeling amplified when a spot of rough and tumble on the couch turns into a potent, vicious struggle. The atmosphere between the siblings is uncomfortably charged; a further shame is hinted at in their shared past, but this isn’t Hollywood, so nothing is resolved and nothing confirmed. ‘We’re not bad people,’ says Sissy. ‘We just come from a bad place’. The backstory remains as ambiguous as the final image, which leaves Fassbender on his knees in the rain and the audience wondering if the film’s climax - a neat little piece of misdirection where a violent premonition comes unexpectedly to pass – will have any effect on his personal life, or whether he’ll continue down the solitary road he has embarked on, littered with used condoms and HIV tests.

With an unexpectedly theatrical structure, a dialogue-heavy climax and the fact that Brandon is never forced to confront his behaviour directly, McQueen’s exploration of Brandon’s internal conflict can at times feel a little slow-paced. Yet, like Madonna’s stringy upper arms, Shame improves with distance. Despite holding the current top spot for most misleading name in the industry, Steve McQueen puts his Turner Prize-winning visual eye to excellent use; the narrative unfolds in moments and glimpses, and the wordless opening sequence - where Brandon and a pretty women on the subway exchange lingering glances - is mined by McQueen for all the tension and uncertainty he can muster. As the object of Brandon’s attention uncrosses and re-crosses her legs, we can’t help but wonder whether the effect she’s having on him is intentional - and when he follows her off the train, it’s near-impossible to tell whether this is in response to a silent invitation or simply the natural progression of a life spent thinking of, dreaming about and desperately trying not to want sex. Her startled expression suggests the latter, and Brandon is left desperately searching for her on the platform. Shame is nihilistic, sad and frustrating, but it’s also beautifully shot and thought-provoking, with a modulated, tightly-wound lead performance from Fassbender and his supporting penis. I mean cast. Ahem.

For good ol' Don't Panic magazine. Who's panicking? Not me.

Wake Me Up Before You Ghost-Ghost

2011-10-21T16:16:00.023+01:00

A review of The Awakening for Don't Panic, although I expect this little baby's going straight in the shredder once they see the title. No I'm not going to apologise. Wham (and puns) 4eva!

Refusing to acknowledge the British film industry is short on cash is as pointless as denying newly bronzed and pec-tastic Jodie Marsh’s gradual metamorphosis into Peter Andre circa 1995 - but that’s no excuse for borrowing outtakes.

Approximately fourteen minutes into The Awakening, as the train from Platform 9 3/4 huffs and puffs across an aqueduct into the impossibly green and luscious British countryside, we’re settling in for another jolly term at Hogwarts when - hang on a minute! What’s Dolores “not another pastel twinset” Umbridge doing here? Didn’t she die at the end of the Order of the Phoenix? Oh I see. Despite the misleading presence of Potter stalwart Imelda Staunton, a boarding school larger than most of the Home Counties, and a carrot-haired boy with no friends and a vacuous expression, it turns out we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, but rather some way into the debut feature by British TV director Nick Murphy, and a valiant attempt at putting a spin on the ol’ **SPOILER ALERT** I-See-Dead-People sub-genre. Although if that ginger kid isn’t a Weasley I’ll eat my Sorting hat.

Set shortly after the end of the First World War, The Awakening continues the current trend for filmmakers to make absolutely sure no holidaymakers come within a ten-mile radius of the British Isles by conjuring up an overcast, moody England with a similarly austere visual palette to that of Cary Fukanaga’s Jane Eyre or Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur. A two-pronged attack by the war and influenza has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of British citizens, and the film opens with the not-implausible assertion that ‘this is a time for ghosts’; a quote lifted from the pages of a fictional book by ghost hunter Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall, master of the raised eyebrow, as commanding a presence as expected).

It’s a premise which promises a world seething with unfulfilled desires and lives half-lived, ably illustrated by each of the central characters. Here’s the skinny. Self-flagellating headmaster Mallory (Dominic West) runs haunted Rookwood School alongside bereaved housekeeper Maud (Imelda Staunton) and hires ultra-modern lady scientist Florence to debunk stories of a ghost before the parents make a break for the nearest catchment areas, or alternatively knuckle down in the back yard and teach them to count with rocks, Big Society style. Now that’s a scary thought.

Florence makes a living debunking ghosts in a masochistic attempt to alleviate the guilt she feels over breaking up with her soldier fiancée shortly before his death. She refuses to allow herself or others to believe in the return of the dead, and hope is a key theme of the film, perhaps explored most powerfully in an early scene where the mother of a dead girl, tricked into attending a séance, slaps Florence rather than thanking her for setting the record straight. This opening curveball bodes well for the progression of the narrative, yet the forthcoming drama is unpredictable in a manner which owes less to clever story engineering than a screenplay co-written by Murphy and horror writer Stephen Volk which turns out to be even more complicated than one of Jamie Oliver's 30 Minute Meals.

You may THINK you’re getting a new and tasty spin on a British classic, but four hours later it's still in the oven, half your guests have given up and gone home and the other half are eyeing up the hamster and wondering what it'll taste like on the barbecue. Fuck you Jamie. I haven’t forgotten that bastard chocolate pudding I was forced to serve at 1.30am. And while I'm not saying I spent any (much) of the film wondering which character would be tastiest slapped between two floury buns and smothered in Reggae Reggae sauce, if we're going to go there then the correct answer is clearly Dominic West, whose meaty naked thighs get some serious close-ups in a stomach-churning subplot concerning guilt-stricken Mallory’s need to punish himself for having survived.

Ahem. Where was I? Ah yes. Thighs. I mean the plot. Murphy and Volk’s attempt to create something more than simply a run-of-the-mill ghost story is to be applauded, and on one level they achieve this, using secondary characters and subplots to delve into an England imploding with grief and loss. It’s a pity these larger themes never feel fully integrated into the central premise. Florence’s guilt about her dead fiancée colours her professional decision-making but has little impact on her relationship with Mallory, whilst the ghost turns out to be neither flu victim nor soldier, but Maud’s son Tom: a childhood friend murdered by Florence’s deranged father. The curious happenings at Rookwood stem from a repressed memory of this tragic childhood trauma, which Maud has lured Florence back to the school to confront - and given that Volk gives us little reason to disbelieve Florence’s cover story about her parents dying from a lion attack, The Awakening’s twist ending comes swinging out of leftfield with less warning than one of Louis Walsh’s turd-for-brains decisions on the X Factor. Will somebody PLEASE take one for the team and deport him back to Dublin. And make Gary Barlow Prime Minister while you’re at it. V-neck t-shirts for all!

The real threat in Murphy’s story comes not from the dead but from the living. Florence narrowly avoids being brutally murdered at the hands of fairly irrelevant rapist Judd (now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day) but isn’t quite so lucky when Maud spikes her tea with poison in a last-ditch attempt to reunite lonely Tom with his childhood friend. Indeed, given the weight of audience expectation Tom carries on his shoulders as The Awakening’s sole supernatural presence, one might be forgiven for wanting more from him than excellent manners, a facial disfigurement which comes and goes at will and a knack for ping pong.

In retrospect, and somewhat curiously given Volk’s credits (Afterlife, Ghostwatch) perhaps what The Awakening lacks most is those supernatural elements of fright and suspense so crucial to a successful ghost story. Murphy is undeniably adept at building tension. The camera doesn’t linger on glimpses of children in dark corners, trusting us to spot the ghosts for ourselves, and there’s a nail-biting sequence in which Florence finds herself drawn repeatedly to a dollhouse in an abandoned attic room, opening it to find an exact replica of Rookwood and a tiny mannequin of herself peering at that same match-box sized dollhouse. There’s also a lingering close-up of Florence masturbating in the bath (MASTURBATION! A TROUSER SUIT!! My GOD this woman is MODERN!) underpinned by an unpleasant sense that her seemingly disembodied hands will, in fact, turn out to belong to someone else. Yet as the story unfolds we realise there’s little malevolence at play, and consequently The Awakening – an ambitious and classy debut which overall Murphy can be proud of - lacks the sheer visceral flourish and nastiness of, say, Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage, which makes a not-dissimilar attempt to reinvent the ghost story without forgetting that the audience needs scares.

Oh and one last thing. It occurs to me that none of the pictures in this article have anything to do with The Awakening whatsoever. So, like a builder with three inches of hairy bum-crack on display moving your spider plant to cover up the fact he’s done no work on that corner of the bathroom whatsoever, I leave you with... Rebecca Hall, looking reasonably foxy. Happy?

Golden Showers

2011-04-15T14:55:00.006+01:00

First Draft Theatre’s annual short play festival APRIL SHOWERS is on from 18-28 April upstairs at The Horse in Waterloo.

The Horse is a pub. The theatre is above the pub. There’s a picture of Queen Victoria on the wall covered in punk rock tattoos, which is the second best thing I have ever seen on a staircase.

Not the best thing, because that honour goes to the octopus mural next to it, and anyone who visited my flat circa 2004 will know that deep sea montages - particularly when painted on the ceiling late at night after putting together an Ikea bed with a fish knife and subsequently getting threatened with court proceedings from the woman downstairs - are a thing very dear to my heart.

The plays are on in the theatre rather than the pub, and whether this is a good or a bad thing probably depends on the quality of the plays, which of course are ALL very good, so let’s hope mine doesn’t let the side down.

BA BAAAAA BA BA BAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes. That’s me, blowing my own trumpet. I am also wearing a straw hat, which is the only hat to be seen in when blowing a trumpet.

BIGGER THAN THE UNIVERSE (no prizes for guessing what was on my iPod) will be performed on April 19, 26 and 28.

Six other plays by other and much better playwrights will also be on in case the thought of spending an entire evening watching something I wrote makes you want to stab yourself in the eyes with a biro.

Check out the First Draft website or join them on Facebook.

Come and keep my Mum company, who is insisting on driving all the way down from the Midlands EVEN IF THIS MEANS MISSING MASTERCHEF.

Jake's on a train

2011-04-07T18:33:00.008+01:00

It has come to my attention that this blog is fairly judgmental.

Not quite as judgmental as the Phelps family I saw on Louis Theroux: America’s Most Hated Family In Crisis last night who spend their downtime picketing military funerals and screaming GOD HATES YOU!! FAGS!! BURN IN HELL!!! at same sex couples in the street wishing they’d taken an alternative route to Wal-Mart, but fairly judgmental nonetheless.

So I thought that today I’d write about a film I liked. Yes you heard that correctly. A FILM THAT I LIKED. Because believe it or not there are actually quite a lot of films out there which fall into this category.

Lately I’ve been feeling like a lot of films have let me down. Maybe my expectations were too high (that’s you Inception). Maybe they weren’t worth the hype (oh hi The King’s Speech). OR MAYBE I JUST WANTED TO WATCH A REALLY GOOD MOVIE. Well whatever.

Even Submarine was kind of a disappointment. I really wanted to like it, mainly because writer Joe Dunthorne has an MA in Creative Writing AND SO DO I!! Which gives me a tiny glimmer of hope for the future. But it was just a bit… small. A bit TOO British, kind of like how Liam Gallagher looks when he wears a fisherman’s hat on the beach in Mallorca.

With the kiss of death planted by Paddy Considine as a mystic ninja with a mullet and an inexplicably attractive girlfriend, which of course is totally in keeping with the realist tone of the rest of the film, because mystic ninjas are two a penny in Wales and it’s almost a surprise if you DON’T have one living next door.

Oops. I seem to have slipped back into default bitch mode. Paddy Considine aside, there were lots of good things about Submarine and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing what Richard Ayoade does next.

So there.

But it seems like whenever I go into the cinema expecting something to be a total letdown (hello Never Let Me Go) I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s OK.

So I really REALLY tried not to get excited about Source Code. Even though it’s sci-fi (which I love) and the follow up to Moon (which I love) and the premise was kinda Hitchcockian which I ALSO love i.e. the whole concept was so up my street it’s paying rent on my back garden.

Luckily because the marketing on this film was so piss-poor it wasn’t difficult.

Look at this poster.

That is a TERRIBLE poster. It looks like the sequel to The Day After Tomorrow. And MAN I do not want to see that movie.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Source Code is about a man who has eight minutes to find out who planted a bomb on the commuter train to Chicago. Luckily – or not – some clever dick, sorry, scientific genius (Jeffrey Wright, hammier than Miss Piggy being porked by Babe the Sheep-Pig with a giant chorizo) has worked out a way to repeat these eight minutes multiple times until Jake Gyllenhaal finally gets it on with Heath Ledger. Wait no. Until he identifies the bomber in order to stop a second, bigger explosion in downtown Chicago. Anyway, these eight minutes are the Source Code, and Jake’s an amputee pilot who’s been kept alive and somehow transferred into the body of schoolteacher Sean Fentress to sort it the fuck out.

It feels like a thematic sequel to Moon. Jake Gyllenhaal (who actually looks a bit like Sam Rockwell if you squint) discovers he’s being used by the government. He can’t do much about it but he is DAMN WELL GOING TO TRY. Although the four endings on display here make it pretty much impossible to work out if he manages to do anything about it or not. Which is sort of in line with ALL THE MASSIVE PLOT HOLES, which I won’t go into now, mainly because my fingers will probably drop off from all the typing because there are SO MANY.

This is the kind of thing I HATE. This is the kind of thing EVERYONE hates. But they’re not obvious enough at the time to stop you enjoying it. Go with the flow and almost all of it makes sense. Yeah, he said the bomber definitely had to be on the train. Oh look, there’s the bomber. Hang on. Who? Oh the bloke who just got off the train. Oh well never mind.

Another thing I pretty much ALWAYS hate is whizzkid bombers in films. Their reasons for wanting to blow other people up are almost always stupid, plus how the hell does a 20-something Ivy League graduate know how to make a bomb? And not just an ordinary bomb either. This bomb has been PIMPED. Not only is there enough explosive in this kid’s van to blow Chicago sky-high BUT the entire van is wired up to some weird Rubix cube shit in a Stars ‘n’ Stripes box. I mean, come on. Do bombers really put that much effort into the décor? I guess in movies they do.

This would usually annoy me but it didn’t.

It didn’t annoy me because I realised it didn’t actually matter who the bomber was. Finding the bomber isn’t the point. If Source Code was just a sci-fi thriller then Jake would find the bomber, save the world, game over, and we’d all go home disappointed.

But the main reason Source Code works is because it ISN’T just a thriller. Great! Jake’s found the bad guy!! NOW WHAT THE HELL HAPPENS?? Because Jake isn’t Jake at all, but a very small amount of the brain function of a just-about-still-alive pilot on life support, stuck in the body of a schoolteacher who's fallen in love with the girl he's sitting next to on the train. And Jeffrey Wright's about to pull the plug.

I won't ruin the ending(s).

But Jake dies, Heath keeps Jake's shirt and is left to live out the rest of his miserable life alone because he was too much of a pussy to own up to being a gay cowboy.

Gotcha!

April COMPLETE MORON

2011-04-01T14:14:00.004+01:00

I would like to start today’s post by admitting that I am officially devoid of functioning brain cells.

*waits quietly until everyone stops shouting NO SHIIIIIIT*

This morning I read an article in the Metro claiming that from now on all copies would be edible to save on recycling.

Here’s how my thought process went between Liverpool Street and Oxford Circus.

NO WAY!! EDIBLE NEWSPAPERS!!! Best idea EVER!! What do they taste like? The girl in the photo looks like she’s enjoying it. How come she’s tried one already? Did they do a trial run? How did I miss that?? Hang on, do I HAVE to eat it? What if I’m not hungry? What if I’ve just had breakfast?? What if I don’t like it? Can I spit it out? That’s WAY more gross than chewing gum. Bleurgh. What about calories? Does paper have calories?? Actually I don’t think this is a very good idea.

I believed it.

I GENUINELY BELIEVED IT.

You bastards.

DAMN YOU WOODY ALLEN

2011-03-25T16:17:00.012Z

Woody?

It’s over.

You PROMISED Cassandra’s Dream was the last of your London trilogy, yet here I am in the cinema having been tricked out of YET ANOTHER £6.50 to watch a substandard version of Love Actually which, like Mickey Rourke’s face post-surgery, has had all the good bits removed.

If I didn’t know otherwise I would presume that you have never even BEEN to London. Or Europe. Or out of your BEDROOM, because your idea of our capital city seems to have been based solely on repeat viewings of Notting Hill without the jokes or social commentary. Yes I said social commentary. And yes, I am referring to the film in which Hugh Grant falls over a fence and says Whoopsie-Daisy.

I’ve got nothing against Richard Curtis. It’s just that I’m not convinced aping his back catalogue is the way forward for a man who wrote my all-time favourite opening line of, well, pretty much anything.

It's from Annie Hall.

Woody/Alvy says: "There's an old joke. Uh, two elderly women are at a Catskills mountain resort, and one of 'em says: boy, the food at this place is really terrible. The other one says, yeah I know, and such ... small portions. Well, that's essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly."

THAT is what I want to pay £6.50 for.

So between 8.50pm and 10.30pm last night I came to terms with some unpleasant truths.

Naomi Watts can’t act.

Some people are physically incapable of separating themselves from their Facebook newsfeed, even in the cinema.

Woody Allen must NOT be allowed to make another film set anywhere except New York.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger just about passes the time. It’s a multi-stranded story about a privileged family falling apart - well, I say falling apart. What I actually mean is going through a not-very-traumatic divorce followed by a second, even less traumatic divorce which has minimal impact on any of the characters and happens off-screen presumably in order to make sure we really don't care about their situation at all.

So Viagra-popping Anthony Hopkins ditches watery-eyed wife Helena for Amazonian gold-digger Charmaine, who’s more interested in her handsome fitness instructor. Helena turns to fraud psychic Crystal for help, while daughter Sally’s marriage to failed novelist Roy crumbles. Newly single Naomi Watts makes an unsuccessful play for Antonio Banderas, while barely-out-of-her-teens Frieda Pinto falls for charmless middleaged Patrick Swayze-lookalike Josh Brolin in perhaps the least likely coupling since that septuagenarian director ditched Mia Farrow for his 20-something adopted daughter… oh wait.

But Neurotic Woody has become Complacent Woody, papering over the cracks in a lazy screenplay with an A-list ensemble cast who don’t quite manage to distract us OH LOOK ITS ANNA FRIEL!!! from realising that despite quite a good premise WAIT ISN’T THAT SIR IAN MCKELLEN? all the characters are vapid or unpleasant and only one storyline comes to a NO WAIT I REALLY THINK IT MIGHT BE THAT BLOKE WHO PLAYED GANDALF satisfying conclusion.

And by the way, I checked and it’s not Sir Ian McKellen. Just a good lookalike.

The story gets juicy approximately two minutes before the end, when Roy realises that the friend whose debut novel he has stolen and published to wild acclaim is not, as Roy thought, dead, but in a coma and maybe even about to wake u- ROLL END CREDITS!

This is about as satisfying as feeding a plastic sandwich to a starving man, and deserves a similar response.

ANGER.

Possibly followed by eating said plastic sandwich in order to make a point, and hopefully choking to death on it in order to avoid the possibility of watching any Woody Allen films made after the turn of the century. Even by mistake.

Woody?

You’re fired.

Norwegian Wouldn’t

2011-03-15T17:01:00.003Z

Am I the only person on the planet not counting down the days until *hyperventilate* OH MY GOD that TOTALLY AWESOME adaptation of that TOTALLY RAD novel by that TOTALLY HIP Japanese dude comes out?

Norwegian Wood is Murakami’s most straightforward and least imaginative novel. No sheep. No incest. No Super-Frogs. No unexplained paranormal phenomena. It’s just a love story about a student who falls for two different women.

Don’t get me wrong. I like the book. I do. But I don’t think there’s anything in the story that justifies turning it into a film. Oh except it’s a bestseller. Ch-ching!

Scripts have rules. Books don’t. That’s how it works. Novels can have fourteen subplots, seventy characters, span six generations and win the Booker. A screenplay with fourteen subplots and seventy characters won’t make it off the paper. It shouldn’t make it off your laptop. It probably shouldn’t make it out of your BRAIN.

Great screen stories have a single protagonist and a clear goal. Olive wants to win Little Miss Sunshine. Indiana Jones wants to find the Holy Grail. Elliott wants to help E.T. go home.

But Toru doesn’t want to escape from prison. He doesn’t want to get the hell off an island overrun with dinosaurs. He doesn’t even want to book Aerosmith for Waynestock.

He falls in love with Naoko. Then he falls in love with Midori. He sort of falls in love with Reiko too. The End.

The problem with this is that falling for one woman after another isn’t a goal unless you’re Russell Brand. It’s a sequence of emotions which play out in Toru’s head i.e. a thought process rather than a plot. You know what this says to me?

Voiceover. Long silences. Too much time to appreciate the soundtrack by *hyperventilate* OH MY GOD that TOTALLY AWESOME dude from that TOTALLY RAD band Radiohead!

Unless Tran Anh Hung has restructured the story to give Toru an active dramatic goal, I’ve got a feeling I know exactly what kind of film we’re going to be left with.

Two words.

Marie Antoinette. Otherwise known as 142 minutes which could more productively be spent eating toilet roll.

I’d like to be proved wrong but I don’t think I will be, particularly after reading an article by Philip French on the Guardian blog, which ends with the backhanded compliment that Tran Anh Hung is ‘not afraid to risk boring his audience’.

This is a bit like saying that Gordon Ramsay is not afraid to give his customers food poisoning, and about as inviting.

It suggests that, as predicted, Tran is going to go all Sofia Coppola on my ass, and therefore that Norwegian Wood is a film I am not going to enjoy.

It also suggests that there are going to be a large number of vegans in the audience who cycled to the movie and won’t be needing their glasses to watch it.

Tran may not be afraid to risk boring us, but I am afraid to risk emptying my wallet for two hours of my life I’m not going to get back.

And for the record, no, I probably won’t be watching Howl either.

Well looky here

2011-03-11T12:14:00.006Z

The BBC have kindly uploaded a picture of a small sample of the spec scripts their readers are working their way through.

The more eagle-eyed among you may spot that there are quite a few scripts on that table.

One, in fact three, or four, are probably mine.

So here I am, sitting at my desk and midway through writing a snarky blog about how reassuring it is to know the BBC have the time to build forts out of the destruction of approximately 20% of Epping Forest, when something nice drops through my online letter box and lands on my virtual doormat.

Dear Writer,

Congratulations! We're delighted to tell you that your script has been selected by our team of readers to go through to the next stage of the Laughing Stock competition.

Your script will now be read by members of the BBC Writersroom team and BBC comedy team and we will be in touch in the next couple of weeks with a decision about your submission.

Just a reminder that successful writers will be invited to a masterclass on either the 4th or 5th of April which takes place in either London or Manchester.

Only 10% of all the submissions have reached this next stage of the competition so we do hope that, whatever the final outcome is, you are encouraged by making it this far.

Well, that'll teach me. Judgemental blog retracted.

How to spend £40 on casual racism

2011-03-07T17:49:00.009Z

I’ve got mixed feelings about Dominic Cooke.

For every middle-class dysfunctional family drama he stages at the Royal Court (That Face, Tribes, The Heretic) he pulls something out the bag that’s just so goddamn fucking GOOD you wonder why you balked at the £40 ticket price for the West End transfer.

Yes. FORTY POUNDS. Which is equivalent to approximately 3.5 days rent or a Ryanair return flight to Barcelona, and for some strange reason you’ve spent it on a seat so far above the stage you get vertigo every time you look anywhere except the ceiling. Please note that ‘restricted view’ is usually code for ‘behind the fire door’.

BUT I DIGRESS.

Every so often the Royal Court comes up with a play so good it makes you want to rush out in the interval with a cattle prod to round up everyone on the street and drive them inside for the second half.

I wasn’t sold on Enron. My mum fell asleep but then again she won’t read anything unless it comes in a plastic library jacket and has a gruesome murder in the first three pages. But I liked the lightsabres and the raptors and all the other things I wasn’t expecting from a play set in the bank, and I would be more than happy if Boris installed them in NatWest to get rid of the lunchtime queues.

I loved loved LOVED Jerusalem. I loved it the way I love Sky Atlantic, Christmas trips to TGI Fridays, and all versions of Hush. Yesterday Deep Purple, today Kula Shaker. In fact why don’t we take a moment to look at a picture of Crispian Mills.

Watching Jerusalem is like eating your way through a Kellogg’s variety pack until you get to the Frosties (great) only to find there’s something else in the Frosties box (even better) HEY IT’S A CHEQUE FOR A MILLION POUNDS AND A LOVE LETTER FROM JAMES FRANCO!!!!!

Lets take another moment to look at a picture of James Franco.

Seriously. It's that good.

And as from Saturday I’m adding… erm.. racist comedy Clybourne Park to my list. It’s the latest **MASSIVE SMASH HIT!!!** to transfer from the Royal Court to the West End, and comes without a public school anorexic or prescription painkiller in sight.

The first act is set in 1950s America where perfect housewife Bev packs boxes around a grumpy husband who won’t change out of his pyjamas. It’s a farce about casual racism and uneducated Middle America which starts with nobody knowing the capital of Mongolia and does a U-turn into nastier territory when neighbour Karl turns up with the bombshell that the house’s new owners are black. Or coloured. Or Negros. Who cares? Not Karl - he’s just worried they’ll lower the tone of the area.

The second act skips ahead a couple of decades. Clybourne Park is now an all-black neighbourhood, and the granddaughter of Bev’s maid isn’t too pleased about a young white couple moving back in. An innocent meeting about planning permission turns into a minefield of escalating political incorrectness which manages to offend black people, white people, deaf people, women and at least six other social groups in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Eastenders.

A lesser playwright might have thought this concept enough, but writer Bruce Norris is two steps ahead and weaves in a story about the grieving family of a young Korean War veteran whose suicide is inextricably linked to the fate of the house. OH NO HE DIDN’T! Oh yes he did.

Is it funny? Very.

Is it offensive? Definitely.

Is it a masterclass in structure that makes me want to give up writing because I will never EVER be as clever as Bruce Norris? YES!!! Watch it and weep.

If your idea of an enjoyable evening is watching an entire theatre squirm in unison as a black mother asks her pregnant white counterpart what the difference is between a white woman and a tampon (answer: they’re both stuck up c*nts) then I thoroughly recommend you spend those 3.5 days of rent on a ticket.

Shall we have one last look at James Franco? Go on then.

Daddy? says Mara Wilson

2011-02-02T18:10:00.006Z

'Daddy?’ says Mara Wilson, cutely and irritatingly. ‘Do you think you could buy me a book?’

"A book?’ says Danny DeVito a.k.a. The Penguin a.k.a Mr Wormwood. ‘What do you want a flaming book for?’

Now at this point Matilda could justifiably inform her father that she didn’t ask for a FLAMING book, she just wants a normal book, but she chooses not to. That’s right kids. Rise above it.

‘To read, Daddy,’ says Matilda, even more cutely. So cutely, in fact, that she might even pronounce it ‘weed’.

‘What's wrong with the telly, for heaven's sake?’ says DDV, who seems to be getting shorter and fatter with every scene. ‘We've got a lovely telly with a twelve-inch screen and now you come asking for a book! You're getting spoiled, my girl!’

But even Mr Wormwood might have bought his daughter a Kindle.

Here’s what I think about Kindles.

Kindles are for morons who can’t read books unless they’re disguised as computer games, which is a bit like being an old man who can’t get an erection unless he’s wearing a nappy, and almost as disturbing.

I already spend 8.5 hours a day on the internet. I don’t want to spend my commute looking at ANOTHER FUCKING COMPUTER SCREEN.

Not. Interested.

So hate me.

They’re green. I get it. But I like books. Especially free books. I stole the True History of the Kelly Gang from the floor of the Odeon in Sheffield. I also stole the True History of the Elephant Man from the bookshelf at a house party while my friends were throwing up over the balcony.

I thought the London Book Project was a FUCKING BRILLIANT IDEA, because it meant strangers were going to be leaving FREE BOOKS on the tube and we’d all discover our new favourite authors and hopefully it wouldn’t just be thousands and thousands of discarded copies of the Girl with the Studded Neckbrace or whatever.

But I’m hardly going to leave my Kindle on the Northern Line now am I? Or maybe I am. Maybe I could go and empty my bank account and spend my money paying a quack surgeon a gigantic amount of money to remove Cheryl Cole’s teeth and replace them with gravel. Because that would be about as sensible and a whole lot more fun.

URGENT

2011-01-21T13:05:00.003Z

Like a bad Scout Leader I have lost a follower.

Believe it or not, somewhere between 2010 and 2011 one of you wandered off into the virtual forest and has yet to return.

Please come back. You were my favourite.

Are you punishing me? Did you leave because I haven’t blogged for… a while? OK. A long while. Almost as long I’ve been waiting for Simon Amstell to rejoin the heterosexual community, or Robbie to rejoin Take That.

Wait. What?

That three-minute clip on the state of English sport where five porky men in inappropriate shorts pretended to row boats and sat as far away from each other as possible in a changing room was a music video? An ACTUAL MUSIC VIDEO?!

Excuse me whilst I sit under my desk a moment and weep.

Anyway. I’m blogging again. I have rejoined the blogosphere (cue sell-out tour and hastily cobbled-together range of mugs and key rings at a very reasonable RRP £6) which makes ME Robbie and you, my disloyal friend, the gradual crumbling of any hope Gary Barlow had of becoming a credible lead singer.

Oh PLEASE come back.

Does it matter that I can’t remember who you were?

I solemnly swear that in future you WILL be my favourite and I’ll update this blog so regularly you’ll be forced to sell your iPhone, smash your iPad and mastermind an overly complex and unengaging Die Hard 4.0-esque plan to destroy the internet because you just CAN’T STOP READING IT.

Unless of course you left because you were so unimpressed with what I was posting. In which case you may remain in the virtual forest. Hungry? Why not sample these tasty looking mushrooms? No not those ones. The red ones with the big white spots. They may LOOK poisonous but hey, we thought that about Peter Andre.

HOORAY

2010-09-07T14:47:00.005+01:00

Good news in my inbox this morning - turns out it's only going to cost £45 to get my penis enlarged.

And just in case that wasn't exciting enough, it also turns out my TV script made it through to the second round of the Kudos / Red Planet Pictures screenwriting competition...

... which means...

... they want to see the rest of the show by Monday.

fuck.

a short story about hearing aids

2010-05-18T17:33:00.002+01:00

For Ed, because she thinks I'm going deaf.

‘Oh shit,’ said the barber. ‘Oh Jesus Christ. Oh God.’
The girl paid to sweep up hair clippings screamed and dropped the broom, which knocked over a bottle of tropical shampoo and made the salon smell even more like synthetic coconuts than it did already.
Mitchell hummed along to the Match Of The Day theme tune, briefly wondered what it was doing on his iPod, and glanced up, catching sight of the barber’s expression in the mirror.
A resourceful woman threw a towel over Mitchell’s head.
‘It’ll keep him calm,’ she said.
‘I am calm,’ said Mitchell, from underneath the towel. He removed his right earphone, felt for the other, and realised it was already dangling loose around his neck. ‘Why is there a towel on my head?’
The barber looked down at Mitchell’s ear, and prayed. He wasn’t religious, but given the circumstances it seemed like the right thing to do. Dear God, he thought, if you reattach this man’s ear I will never masturbate in the cleaning cupboard ever again.
‘I’m not enjoying this,’ said Mitchell. It was dark, and the towel smelt of old vegetable water. ‘Could somebody please tell me what’s going on?’
‘Tell him,’ hissed the resourceful woman. ‘It was your fault. You chopped it off.’
‘Chopped what off?’ said Mitchell, catching the whisper. Everything suddenly sounded very sharp and clear, like toothache or a piercing whistle. ‘I don’t mind if it’s wonky. Just do the same to the other side.’
The barber shook his head frantically.
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ said the woman.
‘I’m sure it’s fine,’ said Mitchell. ‘I said I wanted a-’
He took off the towel. The screaming girl stopped screaming, and Mitchell looked at himself in the mirror as if he were somewhere very far away. His hair was clean, for once, and shiny, and cut neatly across his forehead and in two tidy arcs above his…
‘Where the FUCK is my fucking EAR?’ he said, raising trembling fingers to the left side of his head.
‘Now don’t panic,’ said the resourceful woman, with a glance at the barber, who hid the incriminating scissors behind his back.
Mitchell turned his head to the right, and gazed at the ear-shaped patch of creamy pink skin surrounding a hole the size and shape of a cigarette butt. Behind him, reflected in the mirror, the barber held up Mitchell’s ear.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This doesn’t usually happen.’
Then the floor-sweeper started screaming again.
‘Where’s the BLOOD?’ she shrieked. ‘Why isn’t he BLEEDING?’ The barber scratched his head.
‘Hey, that’s a point,‘ he said. ‘Does it hurt? How does it feel?’
Mitchell tried to make up his mind.
‘Lighter,’ he said.
‘That’s because I took an inch off at the back and feathered the ends,’ said the barber, drawing two strands of Mitchell’s hair down between his finger and thumb, and squinting over his head in the mirror. ‘It does look…’
The barber faded into silence.
‘A lot better. Um.’ Mitchell let the barber lead him to the front desk, where the pretty receptionist stared at him in horror.
‘Don’t look at the poor man like that,’ said the barber, elbowing her out of the way. The receptionist sidled out from behind the desk and opened her mouth.
‘No, it doesn’t hurt,’ interrupted the barber. ‘It doesn’t hurt, he’s got another one, and I don’t want any more fuss. Haircut’s on the house by the way.’
Mitchell looked down at his ear.
‘Have you got something I can take it home in?’ he asked. The receptionist emptied a box of hair grips, and slid it wordlessly across the desk.
‘Let me do that for you, Sir,’ said the barber, intercepting the box and placing the ear inside. He put on the lid, looked around for a piece of string and tied up the box with a bow, handing it to Mitchell with a weak smile.
‘Thanks,’ Mitchell said.
He thought about asking the receptionist for her number. Instead he put the box carefully into his pocket, tucked the right iPod earphone into his surviving ear, plugged the left into the hole, and exited the salon to the tune of a Pink Floyd track he really hated.

Maybe it didn’t look that bad.
Mitchell curled his toes into the bathmat and tried not to cry as he removed the emergency baseball cap he’d bought on the way to A&E.
He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, where, staring back at him, a one-eared man holding a baseball cap peered a little closer and said: ‘Fucking fuck. Fucking fucking fuckface no-ear fuck.’
Mitchell opened the box, and tipped the ear into the palm of his hand. It was flat and grimy round the edges, the colour of milk on the turn, and the texture of car tyre. There was nothing to show that the ear had ever been attached to a head, nor any clear way to put it back on.
He dropped the ear into the sink, where it bounced down the side of the basin before coming to a halt in the plughole.
Everything went silent.
Then Mitchell took a shuddering, gulping breath, and sound rushed back in. Pipes gurgled like a stethoscope to a punctured lung. Sheets of toilet paper sank like sodden mattresses from the beds of the Titanic. A defrosting goldfish thumped in the U-bend. Someone in an upstairs flat stuck their fingers down their throat and splattered vomit through the bathroom pipes which reverberated round his skull, magnified several thousands of times, like an bag of footballs exploding in a metal drum.
It was strange and deafening and frightening, and Mitchell clapped his hands to his head in an effort to block out the noise. Eyes screwed shut, he groped for the ear and scooped it out of the sink.
Instant silence.
Mitchell sank to his knees on the bathmat. His head was ringing. The ear was cool and damp in his hands. He held it up to the overhead strip lighting and gazed at it, panting. He held it to his right ear. Nothing. To the hole. Nothing.
Mitchell held the ear to his lips.
‘Hello?’ he whispered. No answer. Of course not. Mitchell blushed, and even the severed ear seemed to take on a tinge of pink.
Then it started to crackle.
‘Hello?’ said a female voice from inside the ear. ‘HELLO? Is anyone there?’
Mitchell stared at the ear in astonishment.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ said the woman. She pronounced her vowels and consonants ultra-carefully, as if she hadn’t had much practise. ‘Not again. I hate it when this happens.’
‘Don’t hang up!’ said Mitchell.
‘Who is this?’ said the woman, after a short pause.
‘It’s Mitchell,’ he said.
‘How did you get this number?’
‘Look, it’s a long story but somebody cut my ear off and I seem to be using it as a telephone.’
‘Oh,’ said the woman. ‘I thought you might be ringing up about the broadband.’ A pause. ‘You’re not selling anything?’ Suddenly suspicious. ‘Are you religious? You're not going to try and convert me?’
‘Listen, lady,’ said Mitchell. ‘You’re the one talking out of my ear.’ This was followed by a longer pause.
‘What are you wearing?’ she asked. ‘No, forget that. I’m wearing a tangerine dressing gown. Upstairs in 5A. First door on the left past the fire extinguisher.’
‘Um. OK,’ said Mitchell.
The line went dead.

Mitchell climbed the narrow stairs to 5A, wondering if he’d hit his head on anything sharp recently. He met an elderly woman between the second and third floors, who was clearly wondering something similar.
‘Did you know your cap’s on sideways?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Mitchell said, pulling the visor lower as he tried to squeeze past.
‘What’s that you’re carrying?’ said the elderly woman, her moustache twitching questioningly.
‘It’s an ear,’ said Mitchell. ‘My ear, actually. Now please let me pass. I have a date with a woman in tangerine sleepwear.’
The elderly woman moved her breasts and stomach out of the way to let him through, and craned her neck to watch Mitchell’s hand leap up the banister as he took the third and fourth flights of stairs three at a time.
Mitchell knocked on the door of 5A.
No response.
He knocked again, louder. Still nothing.
‘She won’t be able to hear that,’ shouted the elderly woman, from lower down the stairwell. Mitchell leaned over the banister. ‘I said, 5A won’t be able to hear that. And put your cap on properly.’
The elderly woman shuffled off down the stairs. Mitchell turned back to the door. He cupped his hands around the keyhole and shouted ‘TANGERINE DRESSING GOWN!! ARE YOU THERE?’
He waited. He counted to ten. He uncurled his fingers and looked at the ear in the palm of his hand. Mitchell raised the ear to his lips.
‘Tangerine dressing gown?’ he whispered, glancing around to check no-one was watching.
‘Yes?’ crackled an impatient voice. ‘Are you coming or what?’
‘I’m outside!’ Mitchell said. ‘I’m standing on the doormat!’
‘Oh,’ said the voice from the ear. ‘Hold on a tick.’ After a short pause, a young woman in bare feet and a tangerine dressing gown opened the door.
‘Hi,’ said Mitchell. ‘This is going to sound ridiculous.’ He held up the ear. ‘This used to be attached to my head.’ Mitchell took off his cap. ‘But now it isn’t, and for some reason I can talk to you through it.’
The woman looked at him without saying anything.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Have I – have I got the wrong flat?’
The woman pointed at the ear.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right. We spoke on the phone. Um. On the ear. A couple of minutes ago.'’
The woman pointed at his mouth.
‘I know,’ Mitchell said. ‘It sounds stupid but I swear that really is what happened.’ He trailed off. The woman stuck out her tongue, crossed her eyes and let a small trail of drool hang from her lower lip.
‘OOO!’ said the woman, snatching the ear. ‘OOO arr ooo id!’
‘Hey, careful!’ cried Mitchell, trying and failing to grab it back. The woman in the tangerine dressing gown waved the ear in front of his face. ‘Stop it!’
She backed into the flat, holding the dressing gown closed and the ear high above her head, and Mitchell followed her warily all the way into a small bathroom full of pot plants.
The woman in the tangerine dressing gown picked up a lipstick and scrawled in big red capital letters on the white rim of the sink: YOU ARE STUPID.
‘Ooo arr ooo id!’ she said, jabbing a finger at the words.
‘I’m stupid,’ said Mitchell.
‘Ess!’ said the woman. TALK INTO THE EAR, DUMMY, she wrote, and handed it back to Mitchell.
‘I’m stupid,’ said Mitchell, into the ear.
‘No shit,’ said a female voice. The woman in the tangerine dressing gown folded her arms and rolled her eyes. ‘Jeez. Finally.’
‘Wait,’ said Mitchell. ‘This is weird.’
‘THIS is weird?’ said the voice. ‘I’ll tell you what’s weird. Spending twenty-seven years of my life learning sign language when some bozo downstairs could hear me all along.’
Mitchell stared at the woman in the tangerine dressing gown.
‘OK, no,’ said the voice. ‘This actually is quite weird.’ The woman in the tangerine dressing gown shifted from foot to foot, and tried to change the subject. ‘So you, um, live downstairs?’
Mitchell opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘Fair enough,’ said the voice. ‘I probably wouldn’t want to make small talk with an ear either. Nice meeting you.’
The woman in the tangerine dressing gown turned her back, and started rubbing at the lipstick letters with her sleeve.
Mitchell took a step towards the door.
‘Wait!’ said the voice. ‘Sorry. Just one last thing.’ The woman stopped wiping the sink. ‘What do I sound like?’
Mitchell paused.
‘Who do you want to sound like?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He thought for a moment. The woman in the dressing gown turned around. Mitchell noticed that she had very nice ears.

friends with benefits

2010-05-05T18:49:00.003+01:00

Not those kinds of benefits.

See, my last post (Click here. Or scroll down. Go on fat fingers, give ‘em a workout) got me thinking.

Not about that. God. You’re obsessed!

I’m talking about REAL benefits, people, not that kind of Marie Claire shtick some guy made up because (a) it was a cool name for the new Jennifer Aniston movie and (b) he had the hots for that girl with the ‘tache because he’d always had a thing for body hair so he wanted to bone her and maybe go to the cinema, maybe catch that new Jennifer Aniston movie, but not in public because, duh, she had a moustache and double duh, it was, like, the new Jennifer Aniston movie.

I don’t know where I’m going with this.

Anyway.

All this unasked for relationship advice proved as useless as Ben Clarke’s not-quite-a-scholarship to Sandhurst on the last season of the Apprentice, which got me wondering, erm, when it was going to be on again. Oh, and whether I should make new friends.

Joke.

JOKE!!

But if I was in the market for a new gang to spend my leisure time with, these guys would be top of the list. Yes I made a list. And yes I know that having actually made said list basically counts me out of having any more friends, EVER, but bear with me. It's just a list.

1. Cher

OK, so she might make me wear white knee-high socks and a kilt, but she lives in a super fly California mansion and she's a virgin who can't drive, which would make me feel good about myself. I mean, look what she did for Ty. Hmm. Wait a second. What DID she do for Ty? Looking back it seems like Ty was on a pretty slippery slope since that time Cher got her to make out with Travis. She moved to Sin City, became a meth head in Spun and.. oh yeah. Died. Shit.

2. The entire cast of Empire Records

See, the thing about these guys is, no matter how many Mariah Carey CDs I shoplifted, or how much of Joe’s money I lost at the casino, or how bad I looked with a shaved head/in a kilt and Doc Martens (wait, another kilt? what’s going on here?) they’d love me for who I was, goddammit! I'd get to sing a duet with Burko on top of a building. I'd even be friends with Rex Manning, although sex would probably get in the way.

3. Pootie Tang

Simply by association with the spawn of Daddy Tang and Momma Dee, I, like musician/actor/folk hero Pootie, would be too cool for words. We’d hang out with Biggie Shorty on street corners (she ain’t hookin’) or with our other friends, Missy Elliot and Chris Rock, dressed as a corn-on-the-cob. And if anyone tried to mess with us, even if my Pootie didn’t have his magic belt, I’d be safe in the knowledge that he’d tie the haters up in verbal knots:

“See, my damie, Pootie Tang don't wa-da-tah to the shama cow... 'cause thats a cama cama leepa-chaiii, dig?”

That’s right Pootie.

Right on.

You said it.

What a guy.

share the love

2010-03-31T12:15:00.010+01:00

Advice is free, right? Let’s hope so, because my buddies/chums/galpals are dishing out dating tips all over the shop... yes I said dating. For the purpose of this post ich bin ein Americaner.

Bear with me.

First off, my flatmate told me I had to be more wholesome. Now, to be fair, she was in the Marathon Bar at the time, and flying high thanks to free JD cocktails down the road, but I think I got the general gist:

a) I should go to church more often.
b) I should only date men I want to marry.

Why she wants to turn me into a shorter and more homosexual version of Cliff Richard I don’t know, but thankfully I’m as wholesome as full-fat milk with a side order of superfoods on a Blue Peter commemorative plate, and haven't yet felt the need to revisit my last trip to church (Harvest Festival ’92, where I wasn’t allowed to give my shoebox in because the beans were out of date. THANKS MUM) or to set foot anywhere holier than the Glastonbury Chapel of Love. Hmm. Maybe that’s what she meant. Roll on Glasto ’10 - hang on a second. We’ve been through this already, here.

Shortly after, said flatmate’s boyfriend informed me that I was too 'matey' and should stop challenging men to do things ‘like pull their eyelids back’. That’s a direct quote by the way. Now let me be quite clear on this. I don’t know where he got this from. Table football, yes. Painful manipulation of fragile body parts, no. Yeowch.

Last but not least, my third self-made Jerry Springer - who’s going to remain nameless but never goes on the internet anyway – dished out a selection of dating tips more shameless than Frank Gallagher on a Tarts ‘n’ Vicars stag do in Ibiza:

1. Give them 'the look'. Sigh. If only I’d had a video camera to record ‘the look’ in all its glory.

2. Button and unbutton their cardigans. What are you meant to do if they’re not wearing a cardigan? Take off their watch?

And my personal favourite:

3. ‘When you're in Pret looking at sandwiches, put the money back in your purse, because that £3.50 could buy a hot guy a drink'.

Smacks of desperation if you ask me but it seems to work. For the record I’m not buying anyone drinks. And if I am, it's time for someone to take my credit card away and send me home.

anyone got a spare £400-700?

2010-03-15T14:12:00.017Z

Good for you. Seriously. I mean it.

Clearly you know that there are better places to spend your lunchbreak than Topshop. You bring your leftovers to work and eat them. I bring my leftovers to work and go to Pret.

You win, OK? You're the Tupperware Queen and I need a Pret loyalty card. Now will you just stop going on about it and buy me either/both of these Charlotte Olympia heels.

So Beetlejuice...

... so marching band...

... so lovely and clunky AND with a gold spider stamp on the sole. So tall-making. So Tim Burton in drag. Je voudrais. SIGH.

What's not to like? Nothing. ZERO.

But you know what? Right now it's lunch time and I'd settle for a sandwich (in the same price range, mind). I eat pretty much anything. No mayo. Thanks.

dear Michael Eavis

2010-03-11T10:58:00.021Z

What the hell have you got to look so happy about? Yes, your arms are disproportionately long, and you are showing too much leg for a senior citizen, but you have also put a dent in my wallet to the tune of £185 for the privilege of camping out in your back garden. You have basically stolen my purse and replaced two weeks rent with a small crumpled picture of Bono.

How do I feel about this? No, wait, how do YOU feel about this?

I see. It's like that, is it? You've had your fun now Eavis. Those shorts make me think you're the kind of guy who's up for a laugh. This U2 and Muse thing is a joke, right? RIGHT? A bad joke, which, as bad jokes go, is up there with the one about the nun and the cucumber.

You better be getting your iPhone out of your khaki shorts and tweeting @EmilyEavis YESdavidbowiemickjagzconfirmedgonnabdashityoCANTWAITluvdad right about now, because if you don't, Eavis, you're going to be in trouble.

You better confirm someone better than Bodger and Badger in the next 24 hours or, in the immortal words of Sue Sylvester, 'I will go to the animal shelter and get you a kitty cat. I will let you fall in love with that kitty cat, and then on some dark cold night, I will steal away into your home and punch you in the face.'

Yours sincerely,

Annabel Wigoder

eardrums

2010-03-03T12:48:00.005Z

For GLASSWERK, right here

Veronica Falls - Found Love In A Graveyard

As songs about graveyards go, this latest single from London-based four piece Veronica Falls ain’t a patch on 60s novelty grave-robbing hit I Want My Baby Back (sample lyric: ‘ohh baby, I diii-iig you so much‘) but hey, perhaps that’s because it landed on my radar too late for Valentine’s Day. Less a paean to necrophilia than the kind of minor-key ditty they’d like you to think they bashed out in ten minutes in cardigans beneath a ripped Pastels poster, singer Roxanne bemoans a Wuthering Heights-esque doomed romance (with a ghost, and you don‘t need to be Oprah to tell her that one wasn‘t gonna work out) over this season’s Crystal-Vivian-Girls-on-Stilts fuzzy lo-fi and the kind of off-key harmonies that would have AutoTune addict Simon Cowell turning in his, erm, bed. So what’s the skinny? Catchy boy-girl goth-pop but a tuning fork in the post might not go amiss.

So So Modern - Dendrons

Calling your band So So Modern is really just asking for trouble, especially when your latest single slots neatly into place between a Test Icicles 7” and a Rapture CD from the mid-Noughties. Either New Zealand hasn’t caught up with us Brits yet, or they’re so up to the minute that three-minute post-rock-punk-funk-rockaaAARRRRGGH tracks are the future of music and I might as well just go and flush my head down the toilet. Dendrons sounds like the Young Knives unwillingly getting their teeth drilled, and will no doubt appeal to anyone who spends their Friday nights snorting Haribo, wearing baseball caps at a jaunty angle, or having MySpace parties. Here’s a fact, fact fans: the band wear white hoods on stage, which is, like, so modern.

I’m not 100% sure how to feel about this

2010-02-22T12:00:00.010Z

It’s Robbie Williams. In a romper suit. On a plane. Why? Good question. In an age where all celebs worth their salt need to ‘give something back’ (or put it away) to avoid looking like, erm, billionaire Macca, who built his kids a hamster cage for Christmas, or guitar-slinger Sheryl Crow, who limits toilet paper consumption to ‘one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where two to three could be required’, good old Robbie spent a recent flight from London to LA dressed in a Primark romper to ‘thank his fans’.

Look at his expression. Is that the face of an international popstar larking about at 3000 feet above sea level? Nope. It’s the face of an old man with a bad back who’s been zipped into a giant sock against his will. And look at the woman in the background. She isn’t bothered. NO-ONE on this plane is bothered. Look at them. They see this shit ALL THE TIME. His romper could be bumless and they still wouldn’t care.

‘What better way to celebrate a lifetime achievement award than in an £8 Primark all-in-one?’ he Tweeted. ‘Come on!’

Despite this worrying lack of imagination, it’s the maths I’ve got a problem with. With the Robster’s post-Take That output weighing in at an frightening thirty-six singles, eight studio albums, eight stadium tours, two compilations and probably a keyring or two, his average fan will have spent approximately £400 on Robbie-related tat over the last two decades. Now, given that each of his albums sell, oh, a couple of million copies a go, that’s quite a few fans he’s thanking with that polyester piece of crap.

‘Hey guys! See this microscopic speck of dust on the smallest piece of thread somewhere around the crotch area? This one’s for YOU!’

prison: a non-prophet organisation

2010-02-12T10:33:00.018Z

Despite the fact that newcomer Tahar Rahim looks suspiciously like ex-England goalie David Seaman in a dodgy tracksuit, this trilingual lock-‘em-up offering from French director Jacques Audiard came up trumps at Cannes thanks to a killer soundtrack, Oscar-worthy central performances, and a convoluted plot more macho than Mr. T doing bicep curls in a bath of raw steak.

Beardy Corsican mobster César (Niels Arestrup) takes volatile Arab kid Malik El Djebena under his wing, only to **SPOILER ALERT** teach him the dubious lesson that accepting a blowjob in jail is a surefire way to check out early. Though Malik ain’t the sharpest tool in the book – note to self: ten kilos of hash should be left OUTSIDE the supermarket – his gift for languages enables him to absorb Cesar’s underworld savvy, set up a competing drug cartel from Prison HQ, and… oh, you can guess the rest.

The old David vs. Goliath setup is a formula more tried and tested than Cow & Gate baby milk, and though it’s more a question of ‘how’ rather than ‘when’, Malik’s eventual revenge on bullying César is a masterclass in restraint – and all the more effective for it. Factor in a festival-friendly dose of freakiness in the form of a Arab ghost with a penchant for setting his fingers on fire, an educational flick through the '100 most inventive ways to top your cellmates' manual, and it’s one in the eye for a recent spate of disappointing gangster movies that included Vincent Cassel’s Mesrine failing to live up to its promise, and Michael Mann snorefest Public Enemies failing to do anything whatsoever.

Right, I’m off to wedge a razor into my gums.

adam's hands

2009-12-23T18:03:00.006Z

So it turns out I owe Tony Cook @ ABC Tales one for picking ADAM'S HANDS as his (almost) story of 2009.

It's a story I wrote last spring about a kid called Adam, white gloves, stigmata and a mermaid tattoo.

click here to read it

must... stop... writing... celebrity...blogs...

2009-11-30T18:10:00.003Z

Poor old Calvin Harris. Not only is he three times the height of a normal human being (and a Scot to boot - joke. JOKE!) but his misguided attempt at staging a protest during the X Factor finals fell flatter than a flat pancake being flattened by a block of flats in Salar de Uyuni on the Altiplano of southwestern Bolivia, which - according to my Google toolbar - is the flattest place on Earth.

Let me explain. Before last Saturday’s shock Jedward exit *SOB* Calvin was forcibly ejected from Simon Cowell’s primetime cash cow for jumping onstage during the duo’s performance with – der der DERRRR!! - a pineapple on his head. Yes, a pineapple. On his head.

CaHa later apologised on Twitter for what the Telegraph called his ‘pineapple stunt’. Now I beg your pudding but putting a pineapple on one’s head does not qualify as a ‘stunt’. It barely qualifies as a fruit salad. Let’s see what the stuntmeister himself had to say about it: “I was thrown off x factor for jumping onstage with a pineapple on my head. At the end of the day, I had a pineapple on my head. Sorry if I caused anyone embarrassment. P.S I love Jedward.”

As celebrity apologies go, it’s not up there with Kanye’s ‘Taylor!!!! Boooyaawww!!!! You are very talented!!!!! I’m not crazy y’all, I’m just real!!!!! Sorry for that!!! Much Respect!!!!’ but perhaps either Jed or Ward can console themselves with the fact they were warned in advance. Calvin’s one-man pineapple campaign began in the early hours of the morning, when he posted a photo of the offending item on the X Factor site and tagged it with the word ‘important’. One can only speculate the effect this cryptic posting had on his fans, but I think it’s fair to assume that global sales of pineapple stayed exactly the same.

Next month: Calvin gatecrashes the Oscars with a kiwi in his ear. P.S. I love Jedward.

POP P.i.X

2009-10-20T18:29:00.004+01:00

Article no. 1: the Sugababes. How I hate seeing that word in print. Who the hell spells ‘sugar’ like that anyway? Does one partake of suga in one’s tea? NO! One does not. But the production line that brought us multi-talente… only joking, multi-pierced Mutya Buena (most recently spotted touching a shepherd’s pie through the wall on Shooting Stars) and the one who had her ginger-in-a-girl-band crown well and truly nicked by Nicola from Girls Aloud, has now given the line-up’s only original member the boot. A jam tart to anyone who knows which one that is.

Now for a sentence you won’t read every day. With the aid of a Maths GCSE and an online calculator, I think I’ve unearthed some kind of Faustian pact. The average lifespan of a Sugababe *shudder* is now a truly pathetic 6.66 years and, da da DAAAAA!!!! 666 is the number of the devil! woooOOOOOooo! Perhaps this goes some way to explain the reason that a girl band (insert Kanye) wid da the most moronic moniker of ALL TIME are still going strong after ELEVEN – read it and weep – years. That’s eleven, in case you hadn’t heard me the first time. Eleven years, or - to link two entirely unrelated news snippets in a style the News of the World would be proud of - one-third of Stephen Gately’s life.

I don’t need to tell you that this month’s pop column was brought to you through mounds of Kleenex - and no, not that sort of Kleenex. I’m mourning not only the end of the original Sugababes line-up, but the untimely demise of my favourite member of Boyzone. I cried when he came out - and looking back I’m mildly embarrassed, not by the tears but by the total malfunction of my 13-year-old gaydar. Somebody really needs to get that fixed. Anyway I’m into Take That now, soz.

And talking of men with dubious sexual orientation, I’ll bring this column to an end with the results of this month’s MikaWatch. I haven’t seen him yet. God knows I’ve tried. Mika? Je t'adore. Call me.

celebrate my lady garden, bitch

2009-09-16T16:29:00.016+01:00

You may already be aware that the video for new Madonna single Celebration features the old bag gyrating at an unpleasantly personal angle to the camera in a Balmain dress and thigh-high boots. Does this worry anyone else? After all, if you caught any other 50-year-old masturbating in a big white cube while her daughter watches from the sidelines you'd be on the phone to Childline quicker then Guy Ritchie can say ‘I didn’t only make Snatch, OK?’

But hold on a second! Perhaps the amount of milky Ciccone inner thigh (toned and how!) on display is NOT to prove that Madge's quads are testament to the 300,000 agonising times she benchpresses Mercy and David Banda before breakfast, but as some kind of fiendishly intelligent riposte to ex-hubby Ritchie's career-defining gangster flick, exploiting one of the best-known and comparatively tasteful synonyms for her lady parts of modern times. Yes, as any fule kno, 'snatch' is listed on Urban Dictionary alongside old favourites like 'beaver', 'cooch' and 'bearded clam' as an alternative name for 'that bit wot's in front of the bum'.

POW! Comin' atcha, Ritchie! Who'd've thunk it, eh? And isn't that her barely-out-of-the-womb boyfriend Jesus she's sucking face with in the background? Yes. Yes, it is.

Theory: PROVED, and for my next trick I'll be interpreting the new Sugababes single (sample lyric: 'Hey! Yeah! Whoo! I'm too sexy in this club!') as a satire on the inexorable rise of modern technology.

The Bluffer's Guide To A Femimist Wedding

2009-09-07T10:02:00.007+01:00

for DON'T PANIC magazine's feminism issue.

Tradition be damned, here are some tips to help the truly modern feminist navigate the shark-infested waters of a Feminist Wedding. All (equal) rights reserved.

1. The Dress Conundrum. No feminist would be seen dead hobbling down the aisle in a cripplingly impractical floor-length white dress. While the groom gets to play 009 for the day in a top hat ‘n’ tux, poor old Muggins in the knock-off Wang meringue might as well be wearing a sign that says: FOR SOME REASON, I AM PRETENDING THAT I HAVE NEVER SEEN A PENIS. And don’t get me started on the garters. Why not take a leaf out of Tracey Emin’s book and appliqué your wedding dress with names of former conquests? This will test your husband-to-be’s feminist sympathies (study his face when Everyone I Have Ever Slept With (insert dates) comes tripping down the aisle) and serve as a handy reminder of just how far your needlework skills have come since the pre-lib days when your ancestors spent 95 hours a week in front of a loom.

2. ‘Giving away the bride?’ No feminist worth their salt is going to fall for that old chestnut. Instead of allowing your father to walk you up the aisle towards your husband – an age-old transaction which, as all good feminists know, pre-dates Ebay and doubles as a jolly good way for Pops to settle his outstanding debts - the bride and groom should walk towards each other at a pre-determined pace, meeting at the halfway point. If, however, you have bought your husband over the internet or are a mail-order bride, different rules apply. Under these circumstances the seller should hand over the goods, enjoy the reception and post appropriate feedback next morning.

3. The Surname. I see no reason why the liberated woman should be expected to take her husband’s surname, particularly if it’s something like Snot or Rimmer. Experiment with the hyphen, or come up with an entirely new surname that both of you will approve of. Something like ‘Pankhurst’, perhaps.

4. ‘If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it.’ Thus spake Beyonce: staunch supporter of the Single Lady and, erm, recently married. Forgo the Wedding March in place of a rendition of feminist anthem ‘Independent Woman,’ which includes lyrics guaranteed to put a lift in the modern man’s step: ‘Only ring your cell-y when I'm feelin lonely / When it's all over please get up and leave’. To avoid confusion, members of the choir may wish to skip the opening couplet - ‘Lucy Liu...with my girl, Drew... Cameron D. and Destiny... Charlie's Angels, come on, uh uh uh’.

4. Pre/post-ceremony celebrations. Hen parties are notorious for two things: naff headgear and a stonking hangover in the morning – but don’t complain if your bridesmaids strip you naked and tie you to a lamppost in Prague. And don’t neglect those biceps, because the only truly feminist way to kick off the wedding night is to carry the groom over the threshold. Equal rights work both ways, y’know.

mick jagger's arse: a tribute

2009-07-31T16:35:00.018+01:00

Sadly not mine.

OK, so I'm meant to be re-writing the end of a short film. It's called Tales From Moving Vehicles, and it's about a taxi driver listening to his wife have sex in the back of his cab. But it isn't porn. It probably should be porn, because now I've started thinking about it there's probably loads of cash in writing pornos. If pornos even have scripts.

MAN

Ooh!

The WOMAN is astonished by something enormous out of shot.

WOMAN

(hushed)

Is that... alive?

Etc. I digress. Back to the film. So I just gave the ending away, but I'm re-doing it so some video-camera-y types in Canada can make it into a film and I can show the finished product to my Mum.

But my wisdom teeth are coming through, and I've got all these shiny new CDs to review for Glasswerk so I think I'll do that instead.

This one's my favourite:

HOT GOSSIP "YOU LOOK FASTER WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG"

There's something about rock 'n' roll with a European accent that really pushes my buttons. Yeah, it's the same three chords, and possibly even the same three songs, but where lines like "when you got a car I'm ready to steal it" sound all sexily impoverished and Iggy Pop-like from the mouths of Hot Gossip (who hail, incidentally, from Milan), they're frankly all too believable when sung by Dave from Wigan.

You Look Faster When You Are Young is not a meditation on the deteriorating mobility of the older generation, but the debut album from hotly-tipped Italian rock ’n’ rollers Hot Gossip. It aims to do absolutely nothing new whatsoever, concentrating instead upon channelling the energies of the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis into twelve tracks that sound quite a lot like the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis. In fact, You Look Faster When You Are Young sounds so much like the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis that I’m almost 100% certain at least two members of the band think they are the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis. And the third, no doubt, has Mick Jagger’s face tattooed on his arse.

Cops With Telephones kicks off with the feebly-disguised riff from Waterloo Sunset, while Call The Rangers.. oh I give up. You Look Faster When You Are Young should be subtitled World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Hits Ever! and decorated with a picture of an Italian wedding band - but hey, what’s not to like? Erm, the truly godawful Klaxons-aping track And Again, that’s what. Hot Gossip, what were you thinking?! The only possible explanation for the presence of such a TUMOUR on the surface of an otherwise enjoyable debut album is some kind of rift in the time-space continuum in which Mick Jagger was temporarily replaced with the fat one from the Klaxons and confused little Guilio to such an extent that he recorded this track UNDER FALSE PRETENCES and plans to remove it from the album as soon as possible. Either that, or Hot Gossip actually quite like the Klaxons. Which is not a possibility I’m willing to consider.

Aside from And Again (is it still there?) being totally, like, young and dumb, dude, is what You Look Faster When You Are Young is all about - and lines like “You just got here, how do you do/You can find me easy down at the zoo” sound so much dumber in a foreign accent. Believe me, with this kind of snotty rock 'n' roll that's a good thing. Look what it did for Howlin' Pelle.

My buttons? Consider them pushed.

THIS BLOG IS NOT CONTAGIOUS

2009-07-29T19:36:00.011+01:00

a.k.a. SWINE FLU versus EVERYTHING.

Yes. I'm sneezing. An invisible person is punching the back of my neck. I can't understand what's happening in Project Runway. I DON'T WANT TO EAT. Swine flu has finally hit the Midlands but hey, that's OK because everyone else has got it and I don't like feeling left out.

It would be slightly more OK, however, if I didn't have an interview at 11am tomorrow morning. And no, it's not for night shifts at Tesco but an internship I actually want. An internship that may actually pay me REAL money as opposed to Monopoly money or the "£2 a day expenses" I was offered by TimeOut, who presumably expect me to camp outside their offices in a box, eat the box, and dress in different bits of the box for work. Thanks, guys!

And to add insult to injury, or nits to swine flu, I've just been asked to shampoo the hair of an eight-year-old with headlice.

NIT FACT! Bob Marley's dreads housed nine different types of louse, each enjoying a fixed-rate mortgage and unlimited shelter beneath his hat.

ANNABEL WIGODER FACT! Nine different kinds of headlice are unlikely to get me a job, unless I can train them to sing an acapella version of the Cockroach Song by the time I reach St Pancras. Watch this space.

patrick's big toe itched like crazy

2009-07-29T19:25:00.006+01:00

Patrick lay awake and wondered when the itching would stop. He lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, and tried to think of other things. He thought about the eggs he'd had for breakfast. He concentrated very hard on the eggs, and remembered exactly how they looked on his plate. Amelia did not cook eggs well. He thought about Amelia. He thought about her skin, and her socks, and the skidmarks in her underwear, until the combination of eggs and skin and socks and skidmarks in little white panties made him feel sick.

Patrick's big toe itched like crazy. He screwed up his eyes and tried to ignore it. He clenched and unclenched his toes to the tune of a song he knew from a Halifax advert. He rotated his ankles in different directions, but the itch was under his toenail, and no amount of clenching and unclenching would do anything about it. Patrick wondered what the itch was. Perhaps a spider had crawled underneath his toenail and laid eggs - perhaps the itch wasn't an itch at all, but hundreds of baby spiders twitching their way to the surface.

Patrick shivered and sat up. He peered at his big toe in the dark. The itch was almost unbearable. He wanted to rip off his toes and scratch at the flesh underneath. He scratched and scratched from ankle to heel, between his toes. He wished he had a fork to itch his foot more thoroughly.

Slowly and carefully, Patrick peeled a layer of skin away from the sole of his foot. It felt more rubbery than he'd expected, but came away easily. If anything it was a relief. Patrick began on his little toe, and removed the skin from the rest of his foot without trouble. When he reached the bones of his ankle, there really seemed no other option than to continue peeling; Patrick unsheathed his leg from ankle to knee in less than 15 seconds.

Patrick paused for a moment, and considered his other foot. Seemingly just by thinking about it, his other foot had started to itch. Patrick had only to grasp his foot in both hands for the skin to loosen, and he eased it away from his toes and up his calf like a football sock.

The skin of Patrick's lower legs crumpled around his knees. He took a deep breath and eased it up and over his thighs, imagining that the sensation was not altogether unlike that of putting on a pair of Amelia's stockings. Patrick began to feel horny: a logistical nightmare when the layer of skin he was stripping reached his crotch. He took extra care around his testicles, bracing himself for pain, and peeled his cock with only the very tips of his fingers.

Having stripped his genitals bare, Patrick lay down, raised his hips, and peeled himself like a banana. His chest hair caused a minor problem, as did the insides of his ears, but he found that if he gave the problem area a moment to re-adjust, the skin around it would slacken and come away with ease. He took extra care around his eyes and removed as little of his eyebrows as possible.

Removing the skin from the top of his head felt strange, like squeezing garlic through a press. It was warmer than the rest, and greasy. When he ran his fingers over it he was surprised to find millions of tiny perforations, one for each and every individual hair.

Patrick took a deep breath and patted himself gingerly, fearing baby spiders. His body felt cool to the touch, soft and dry as if he'd been covered with a layer of talcum powder. His testicles, curiously, were very hot. He held the layer of his discarded skin gently between both hands, and wondered what to do with it. It was man-sized, of course, but he discovered that by compressing it between his palms he could make it much smaller.

Patrick held the outer layer of his skin in a ball about the same size and shape as a coconut. It was very light, and he tossed it in the air a couple of times, passing it from hand to hand. Patrick held it to his chest, lay in the dark and listened to his heartbeat. He felt extraordinarily relaxed.

After a moment, Patrick raised the ball to his face and sniffed. It smelt like old books, and ever so slightly like raw meat. He tasted a piece on the end of his tongue: it tasted exactly as he thought it would. Patrick began to chew, taking his time, moistening each piece with saliva. He did not stop to think about what he was doing, and when he had finished he burped once, quietly.

The itching had stopped. The room was still dark. Patrick guessed that there were still several hours until dawn, and started to feel very tired. He yawned, stretching, and rolled onto his side, wrapping an arm around the sleeping Amelia. Tucking himself into a Z-shape behind her, Patrick buried his face in her hair.

He was glad not to have woken her up.