Weakest Link Highlights Video
March 4th, 2008 at 19:48

Here’s a video of all of the bits of me from The Weakest Link. I’ll expand on this with commentary and stuff later.

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Weakest Link on iPlayer
March 3rd, 2008 at 19:45

Well that was exciting. I’ll post more as soon as I’ve put something decent together. If you’re in the UK and you missed it you can watch it on the BBC iPlayer for the next week:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009fwx2.shtml

I kept pulling funny facial expressions.

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Final Reminder! Weakest Link Tonight!
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:57

Just in case you haven’t spotted all of the not-so-subtle hints, or the post below, or are genuinely stupid, here’s one last reminder that I’m on the Weakest Link Tonight (that’s Monday 3rd).

That’s on BBC One, at 5.15pm. Just after Newsround. I’ll probably post more about it after the event. Unless I come across badly.

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How to win at quiz shows
February 26th, 2008 at 01:24

Being a cold-hearted rationalist, I’m unable to appreciate the abstract concepts of “luck”, “faith”, “hope”, and useless words that essentially mean “spurious assertion based on nothing” – this means that I have a habit of approaching everything rationally, with a sort of “risk assessment” and mentally judging the probabilities of things happening.

I could apply these skills that I assume I have to a career as say, a health and safety executive – or a spoilsport as they’re colloquially known. As it happens though, I instead devote this part of my brain to something far less useful: figuring out which television game shows it would be best to appear on to win some money.

I reckon if you can win pretty big on maybe three or four game shows a year, you may never need to get a proper job, and can sit at home with a self-satisfied grin on your face, like CJ and Daphne from Eggheads.

This may sound pretty silly – and twenty years ago, it might have done. Back in the olden days, before Chris [Tarrant] (BC), quiz shows never really gave away much money, and it was all about the prizes. It would have been all well and good appearing on The Price is Right or Bullseye or whatever it was people watched prior to my birth, but having watched years of repeats on Challenge TV on Sky of all sorts of crappy quiz shows, unless you can live in a speedboat, and eat chequebooks and pens for lunch, then living entirely off of the proceeds from quiz show winnings would have been impossible.

Thankfully now though, TV seems to chuck money at whoever can bark the answers to a handful of stupid questions, and thanks to satellite TV, there’s now enough channels with enough time-filling cheapo quizzes on to make this possible.

So what quiz show is it easiest to win big money on? There’s a couple of factors involved, I rationally think – the amount of prize money and the contestant turnover. Its all well and good going on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, but they only have more or less one contestant a week (or at least did back in 1999 when people actually watched it) – but chances are, even if you make it on to the programme, you’re going to end up sat in the audience watching someone else walk away with £32,000. Similarly, going on Mastermind is great if you can handle the questions, and they have four people a week on… but is it really worth all of that effort for a trophy and bragging rights?

If you’re after some cold, hard, cash, then I think the game show that is best to go on is The Weakest Link. Sure, you only know how it works because you used to watch the last round after switching over from Neighbours, waiting for The Simpsons, but its almost the easiest quiz to get on: they have nine contestants every episode, and its on practically all year round, so they must need a lot of contestants – which increases your chances of being on. The prize money is good too – its nearly always over a thousand pounds – which really isn’t bad for a day’s work. And the best thing? You don’t even have to be clever or intelligent. The trick to winning is being the second cleverest, or good at pretending to be clever – as they’ll always vote out the strongest link in the penultimate round.

So that’s my advice – if you want to win money on the telly, go on the Weakest Link.

Incidentally, you might want to watch the Weakest Link on Monday…

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Important: Date for your diary!
February 22nd, 2008 at 23:55

You might have spotted all of the subtle hints I’ve been placing over the past few months. I mean, if you’re an obsessive compulsive who’s obsession is me. But now I can finally tell you: I’m going to be on the Weakest Link. Yes, the TV game show.

Its going to be broadcast on Monday March 3rd at 5.15pm on BBC One. Tune in and watch me make a fool of myself! (It’ll presumably also be on the iPlayer for the week following.)
I’ll hopefully put some of the “best bits” (assuming there are some) on YouTube afterwards, complete with directors commentary.

So don’t miss it!

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Religious TV is irritating.
January 8th, 2008 at 20:00

I made the mistake of venturing into the part of the Sky EPG I never usually touch the other day, and discovered the 50-odd religious channels. It turns out that, shock horror, they’re shamelessly using religion to extort money from viewers! Here’s a little compilation video I made…

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Christmas Films
December 24th, 2007 at 02:41

At risk of stating the obvious, I think its pretty clear that we’re getting close to Christmas. There’s explicably decorations up all over the place, I honestly couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is in absolute terms (only in terms of the number of days until Christmas. You could say that we’re current at tree-minus 1 day until Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.), and perhaps the most obvious indicator: my propensity towards watching terrible films has increased.

Its almost become a festive tradition of mine to watch Small Soldiers again, as it is invariably shown at some point during week 51 or 52 (in TV industry terms). After scanning the Radio Times website though, it looks as though I won’t be enjoying Kenan & Kel’s seminal classic Good Burger this year, as it doesn’t appear to be scheduled anywhere.

Earlier this evening I watched a film which is more or less the antithesis of a cinematic classic: Tommy Lee Jones starring in Volcano. I’ve seen it a couple of times before (much like nearly everything else you watch at Christmas) and repeat viewings don’t unravel more layers of a cinematic onion – there’s no subtle allegory about humanity’s fragile place in the universe – you know what happens just by reading the title.

One particularly dire bit was towards the end when (spoiler!) they’d stopped the volcano and a rescue bloke asks a kid what his mum looks like. The kid looks up to see everyone covered in volcanic ash and remarks “Look at everybody… they all look the same” – which seemed a bit unnecessary as the film wasn’t about race relations. And it was undermined immediately afterwards when it rained, the ash was washed off and the apparent apartheid returned.

Are there any films on in the next week that I should watch, readers? Let me know, as we can make this blog interactive, and I could, like, comment on your recommendations, and you could make me endure watching crap for your own sick amusement, or something?

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Weekend in Review #1
November 19th, 2007 at 00:04

I’ve had an idea for a new regular feature. I say “regularl – I can’t guarantee that at this stage. This could fall flat quicker than the Trumpet Blog. The idea is that I’ll review things I’ve been doing, like a critic would, and you can read it and value my opinion when judging whether or not to participate in an activity similar in nature to what I’ve been doing.

Robin Hood

About a year ago, I wrote a rather unkind review of the BBC’s attempt at doing Robin Hood, and then a few weeks ago admitted to giving it another chance. Inexplicably, the series has continued to grow on me, and its got to a point where I’m recognising and even appreciating the series-long sub-plot. It’s surprisingly watchable. I think this is because this series they seem to have ditched any attempt at historical accuracy, and have basically turned it into a middle-ages version of the Flintstones. In one episode, the Sheriff of Nottingham sets up a Vegas-style casino – and I’m pretty sure they didn’t have those in the olden days.

In a nutshell: “A weapon-carrying criminal who constantly evades the law is the perfect mascot for Nottingham”. 8/10

Top Gear

I watched Top Gear earlier. And it was a bit shit. They’ve gone back to talking about cars, rather than going on road-trips and having totally unscripted and unplanned banter. One thing that bothered me more this week than it has before was Jeremy Clarkson was more noticeably twatty than usual. I mean, obviously he’s always been a twat, but his tired old attacks on environmentalists have got boring when not done in a clever way, and he seems to get more xenophobic as time goes on. By the time he retires and the genes that make old people racist kick in, he’ll presumably be the most racist person in the country. Richard Hammond and James May are nearly as bad, but they still retain their position as the “slightly likeable ones” because Clarkson keeps being even more of a twat.

In a nutshell: “Objectively speaking, cars are still boring”. 4/10

Training Pokémon

I’ve spent a sizeable proportion of this weekend playing Pokémon again. I really want to beat the Elite 4, and thus complete the game, as I’m so horrendously close it’d be silly not to. To this end, I’ve been levelling up a Snover in Victory Road using an Experience Share. Its nicely relaxing, as you can train whilst watching telly (see above), and is slightly more productive than playing Solitaire.

In a nutshell: “That’s right, I play Pokémon”. 8/10

Finally writing something on the blog

You might have noticed, but blogging has been a bit slow as of late. I’ve had a massive bout of writer’s block. Sure, I’ve done the odd thing, but I’ve literally been devoid of inspiration, which has been irritating. I think I’d have written more with both arms broken and a recent bereavement than with writer’s block.

Thankfully though, I appear to be slowly overcoming this. Look! This is the third thing I’ve written today!

In a nutshell: “More obscure CD reviews and blogs about gigs you didn’t go to coming soon!” 9/10

Super Mario Galaxy

On Friday, the new Wii Mario game came out, and so far, it has been bloody marvellous. The hopeless Princess has been kidnapped again (it is Mario), so you’ve got to faff about in an implausible universe collecting stars that will somehow get her back.

The most amazing thing about the game though is the level design. It is spectacular. I thought some of the Zelda dungeons were pretty complex, but Mario takes this to a whole new, er, level. Most of the levels take place over several tiny “planets”, which are entirely spherical and you can walk entirely around – once you solve the planet’s “puzzle”, you’ll be able to get to the next one, and so on. It is amazing though – you’ll traverse one area, only to end up with the gravity flipping and you’ll find yourself having to cross the same area but in an entirely new way. Spectacular.

In a nutshell: “Lets-a-go… and buy it”. 9/10

Focus 800w Halogen Heater

Bloody hell, its been freezing lately. Its why I got a new heater for my room. Its pretty excellent. I mean, I’m not heating expert, and don’t spend my time on heater message boards or anything, but it seems to do the job. It puts out so much heat that it makes the air go wobbly directly in front of it, and will grill your legs. Take that, shit weather!

In a nutshell: “Bit warm in here, eh?”. 10/10

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Are you smarter than a ten year old? Well, yes, obviously.
October 15th, 2007 at 00:15

As you might have guessed, being the 251st political blogger, I lead a life of thrills and spills. Not a day goes by without me having an exciting adventure or an amusing scrape. Apart from today, when I’ve mostly been watching television whilst playing the new Zelda game. Watch out, society! Who knows what crazy things I might do next?!

Here are some “reviews” of TV shows that have already been on TV. So you’ve already missed them, so my opinion on something you’ll never see is essentially worthless. And if you did see them, then my opinion is also worthless because you’ve probably made up your own mind, and decided that you like or dislike them based on your own criteria.

Are you smarter than a ten year old?

I’ve been watching a bit of the new game show that Sky are hoping will prove that Noel ‘Someone died on my old TV show‘ Edmonds isn’t a one trick pony. Helpfully, the programme’s title doubles up as test of whether you’re disqualified from viewing on intellectual demographic grounds or not.

My excuse for watching was that I was waiting for The Simpsons to start.

Despite Sky One desperately trying to make it seem like the next big thing, flashing up the logo on every break bumper, trailing the programme with an annoying bit of text under the Sky One logo, and having spent the last few months pleading for people to appear in the audience, I still can’t see what the appeal is all about. After all, I thought that hype was never inaccurate.

From what I’ve seen, it’s a slow burning quiz (like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, for example) – Noel walks about, trying to build up the tension, bantering a bit with the contestants. Presumably to provide Noel with a more challenging role than his other game show.

Its a shame really that all of the dramatic music in the world, even if it were played over images of the Battle of Kursk, can’t compensate for the fact that the questions are so easy any tension falls flat. It is called “Are you smarter than a ten year old?”. For some reason the audience are expected to sit on the edges of their seats as they watch a cretinous pensioner agonise over what the adverb in a simple sentence is. At least with “proper” quiz shows you can play along at home, perhaps discuss the answers, and generally have a desire to learn the answer if you don’t already know it.

I don’t know why I watched this, as I knew that I’d dislike it. So its like a two-hour creationist lecture I found once on Google Video, in that sense.

Singing With The Enemy

I feel a bit guilty having watched this, as its BBC Three reality TV fodder that follows the simple reality TV formula of “find two things that probably hate each other, find the results and film them” (see also: Wife Swap, Big Brother, Prime Ministers Questions). There was probably an obscure arts documentary on BBC Four or the 50th repeat this week of some high-budget high-brow Channel 4 production on More 4 that I could have been watching.

Anyway, the premise is that they get two completely different musical acts to write a song together whilst living together in the old Big Breakfast house (really) – and of the two episodes I’ve seen so far, they’ve followed the predictable reality show formula.

This week there was a “grime” rap trio from the poor end of South London and some camp cabaret types from Brighton. About half way through they have a big fall out and things don’t look like they’re going well – cut to the overseeing record producer saying melodramatic things like “bringing down to Berlin Wall would be easier” – before finally the two bands cooperating and learning something in the process.

Last week was the same – only with some punks and Christians.

Michael Palin’s New Europe

I like Michael Palin. He looks like he’s probably the friendliest man alive, as he looks genuinely good natured. In another episode of his new series “Palin By Numbers”, he took a charming trip around a part of the world that only geography students have heard of, he watched some ethnic types do their traditional ceremony, before heading to a pleasant, rustic, town to have a chat with a local chef, with whom he softly tackled some vaguely political issues. The chef replied with something like “the war was bad, but was long ago now” in quaint fractured English. After this, Michael shared a joke with the foreigners whilst trying the local delicacy. Michael ended his journey this week by making faintly amusing remarks on the cultural differences in the narration.

Top Gear

Top Gear is another programme I hate to like.

I don’t like cars – I don’t know what they’re talking about a lot of the time, the presenters, especially Clarkson, are still wankers, I still dislike the anti-environment and xenophobic agenda, but Top Gear remains strangely watchable – even when you consider that the banter is scripted and pick-up shots are filmed on all of the reports after the actual races/challenges/etc have actually happened.

One thing I did notice this week, which probably occurs in every previous edition of Top Gear before, is the amount of xenophobic slurs and reinforcement of stereotypes that goes on. Every car is prefixed as a “German” car or a “Japanese” car, or whatever, with its features described as an embodiment of its country of origin’s stereotypes.

Another thing that happened this week, or more accurately, will happen in the fourthcoming week, is that we can look forward to the Top Gear team receiving some free publicity when they’re undoubtedly fined £50 for smoking in an enclosed space.

The Simpsons (the new ones)

Despite everyone having said for years that The Simpsons is getting worse, I’ve always defended it, claiming that there isn’t really a noticeable dip in quality. But I’m starting to wonder now – as half of the new episodes always seem to be “specials” where the characters are transplanted into other scenarios. One of the new ones this evening had Marge and Bart playing a parody of World of Warcraft – which wasn’t even very funny. The B-plot was terribly executed, with Lisa getting annoyed with Homer before they resolve their differences – a plot that’s been done a hundred times before and much, much better.

Robin Hood

I dissected Robin Hood at length after the first episode of the first series just over a year ago, and today decided to give it a second chance. In a thrilling turn of events, my opinion is still the same… it’s “alright”.

Robin Hoodie (get it? I should write for the tabloids) is still doing morally questionable things, and I’m still finding it hard to sympathise with him. This might, though, be because it turns out that Keith Allen, who plays the Sheriff of Nottingham, is excellent – he earned a great deal of my respect after I found a video on YouTube of him having a go at the Westboro Baptist Church. But yeah, it was “alright”, even if the plot didn’t seem very 12th Century.

Fame TV

Oh, and I’ve been texting in to Sky Channel “Fame TV” again, asking them more interesting questions than the usual dirge of asinine drivel…

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London Open House: TV Centre and the FCO
September 16th, 2007 at 23:50

This weekend was London Open House – for some reason loads of places in London decided to let in members of the public for free. So Katy and I did the most obvious thing and pursued my favourite hobby: being an awful tourist in London.

There was a lot to choose from – we could have gone to the top of the Gherkin, or to the Bank of England, or even to the Argentinian Ambassador’s official residence. Presumably if we’d gone to the latter, we would have seen tourists taking photos of a man lying on his sofa watching Last of the Summer Wine and the Antiques Roadshow.

So we decided to go to BBC Television Centre, and the Foreign (and Commonwealth) Office.

BBC Television Centre

Before the tour began, we walked over to the BBC Broadcast Centre (where transmission actually happens) and the Media Centre. It was here when I visited TVC a few years ago that I saw Director General Mark Thompson striding across the plaza like he was crushing the lives (and jobs) of tiny people. Unfortunately, rather than celebrities this time, we bumped into a woman who looked a bit… stoned. “Can either of you two do me a favour? If you do it, I’ll give you my phone”, she said, waving her phone at us. “…”, we replied. “Do either of you have a bus pass?”. We didn’t, as we’re not proper Londoners, so she had to keep her stolen phone and go and pester some more people.

TVC though, is an incredible building, because there’s so much famous stuff in it, and best of all, there’s a metal detector and security guards who keep the nutters out. Being the massive BBC nerd that I am, I’m already pretty well versed on the history of the building, the BBC and what goes on inside, but its still pretty spectacular to actually be there. The tour took us first to the central doughnut area where Roy Castle famously broke the world record for… tap dancing or something.

“The ground is covered in glitter as last night we hosted The National Lottery Awards Ceremony… which you might have seen on BBC One”, the tour guide told us, shortly before losing eye contact with everyone in the group.

Next, we were led into studio 2, the smallest studio in the complex. It wasn’t being used so there were no sets erected in there, but it was still interesting to see. Apparently it had been used for filming Red Dwarf, and they didn’t have the money to actually build a set, so they just ran around the gantry as it looked quite space age anyway.

Next stop was the former main reception and current “star entrance” that lead to the dressing rooms and so on. We all managed to crowd in one of the poshest dressing rooms, which was a bit like a rather upmarket hotel room with no windows. The tour guide explained that a lot of celebrities who come to TVC make demands on what is in their dressing room – Paul McCartney apparently demanding a bowl of fruit when he visits. He told a story, and I’ve no idea how much of this is verifiable fact, about Madonna when she came to appear on Top of the Pops once, demanded a life-size cardboard cut-out of Pope John Paul II. Apparently the BBC had to borrow a waxwork from Madame Tussauds.

Next up, we went to the Blue Peter garden. Its pretty weird seeing something you’ve seen on TV hundreds of times in the, er, flesh. It turns out that the vast majority of the stuff in the garden is bunched into one corner, as that’s where the camera tower points. I wanted a photo of me doing a thumbs up next to the pets graves, but, alas, there wasn’t really time, and I guess the BBC wouldn’t have been too pleased with me.

Interestingly, just outside the garden was a mural on the wall of Studio 9 (the former CBBC studio) of all of the Blue Peter presenters (and pets) past and present – including Richard “Sacked for Cocaine” Bacon.

The final stop on the tour was the news centre. We got to sit in the conference room whilst they told us about the news. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any actual news studios, but then, I guess its pretty difficult to present a rolling news channel if you’ve got some tourists turning up to look around.

The tour was excellent though – the icing on the cake was the TARDIS in the BBC reception. Apparently it isn’t just a replica, and was used as the, er, actual, TARDIS for quite a while on the old series of Doctor Who. I dare-say that it was a little bit disappointing that there’s nothing inside, but I guess I’ve just been deceived by TV, again. First faking Bargain Hunt, now this!

The Foreign Office

We also went and had a look around the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, which was formerly the India Office. This was especially cool as its usually closed to the public, because its quite difficult to manipulate weaker states for your own evil ends if the general public are watching – they might blow the gaffe.

A couple of things surprised me about the building. First of all, it wasn’t just a load of offices with out of date computers covered in post-it notes like other branches of government. It was one of the most ridiculously ornate buildings this side of Paris. There were statues of famous generals everywhere, opulently decorated domes and the walls were practically caked in historical tat and nicknacks.

There was one particularly fancy room that had apparently been used to sign a treaty to ease European tensions in 1925. Needless to say it couldn’t have been a particularly effective treaty.

The second thing that surprised me was the massive courtyard in the middle of the FCO – which seems to be the same for most massive governmental/palace buildings in London (and indeed Paris). They look like huge structures from the outside – yet get inside and there’s just a big empty space. One advantage of being allowed into this courtyard was that there’s an archway that links both it and the front door of 10 Downing Street. So you can get a front-on view of Number 10, rather than an obscured sideways view like you get from standing on Whitehall. It was like watching telly, only from slightly further away, on an arch-shaped screen, without Nick Robinson jabbering on in front of the door.

The third surprising, and perhaps most worrying thing was that at the FCO I didn’t actually see anyone working. I mean, obviously there were security people and guides, but there didn’t seem to be anyone doing any actual foreign policy. Because it was Open House weekend, did they just send all of the staff home? Do foreign affairs not happen on a Sunday? Do they tell Iran to call back on Monday? What if North Korea were to ring up and threaten a nuclear war… will they just get an answer phone message? “Thank you for calling Britain. Our opening hours are weekdays from 9am until 5pm. Please leave a message after the tone or call back later. BEEP.”

Either way, the FCO was pretty good.

London is excellent.

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