Standing beside a swimming pool overlooking the Los Angeles skyline, the British TV mogul Simon Fuller congratulated the latest American Idol at a private party on Wednesday night — but the real winner was undoubtedly Mr Fuller who, for seven years, has dominated America's TV ratings and made himself a dollar billionaire.
At the end of a celebrity-filled two-hour show, this year's winner was revealed to be David Cook, a soulful Missouri rocker who built up a fanbase by performing grunge versions of Lionel Richie's Hello and Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. Mr Cook, 26, prevailed in spite of what many regarded as a superior finals night performance by his more wholesome rival David Archuleta, 17. The numbers spoke for themselves: a record 97.5 million votes were cast by viewers of the singing contest — with Mr Cook getting approximately the same number of votes that President Bush received in the 2004 general election.
“We're still a goliath,” Mr Fuller told The Times, referring to the status of the show — a spin-off from Britain's Pop Idol — as the most-watched show in the US. “We're still bigger than anything else, and now David Cook is going to sell millions of records for us.”
With ratings declining and criticism of American Idol mounting — including accusations of vote rigging — many are asking how Mr Fuller and his British executives can continue to make such spectacular amounts of money out of an ageing franchise. The genius of the show is that Mr Fuller makes money out of the talent-scouting process and cashes in again if the stars of the show sell millions of records — as has happened with Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson (who also won an Oscar) and others.
The show — which is broadcast on the Fox network, part of News Corporation, parent company of The Times — is thought to earn at least $500 million (£253 million) a year from advertising and sponsorship deals, with 30-second slots during the final selling for $780,0000 each. The show also makes money from the text message and telephone voting, a post-season tour, CDs, merchandise and — as of this year — live, on-the-night performances sold via the Apple iTunes store. The magazine Advertising Age valued the entire franchise recently at $2.5 billion.
Although the show has made a celebrity out of Simon Cowell, thanks largely to his willingness to put unflinching criticism ahead of the feelings of contestants, few Americans are aware that the production is an entirely British creation. Apart from Mr Fuller and Mr Cowell, the co-executive producers are Ken Warwick and Nigel Lythgoe, also Britons. Even the director, Bruce Gower, is British.
But the expats have a difficult job ahead of them for next season. For most of the show's run this year ratings were off by about 10 per cent. This was blamed on the aftermath of the writers' strike, which drove viewers away from television, and results from the Democratic Party's primary race, which came in on Tuesday nights at the same time that American Idol was on the air.
Critics complained of being bored with the format and Paula Abdul, one of the judges, made a gaffe when she gave her verdict on a contestant before he sang, revealing that her notes had been scripted in advance. The show staged a recovery for the finals. On Tuesday, when the contestants gave their last performances, ratings were up 7 per cent on 2007, to 27 million. The following night, when the results were revealed, the ratings were up 4.5 per cent, to 26.5 million, according to preliminary data. But executives were clearly rattled.
At the party on Wednesday Mr Fuller promised radical changes for next season, with rumours suggesting that a fourth judge would be hired to join Mr Cowell, Ms Abdul and Randy Jackson. “There's going to be a big shake-up,” confirmed Mr Cowell, who spent most of Wednesday evening with the $12.5 million-a-year host of Idol, Ryan Seacrest. “You'll see.”
Showing posts with label Reality TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reality TV. Show all posts
Friday, 23 May 2008
Monday, 19 May 2008
BBC to reschedule The Apprentice
The BBC risks angering fans of The Apprentice by switching the hit business reality show next week from its regular Wednesday 9pm berth to Tuesday because of a clash with an England friendly international football match.
Next week's scheduling move will see Sir Alan Sugar go head to head with Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4's The F Word, as well as ITV1's Britain's Got Talent, which is airing every night next week, at 9pm on Tuesday. BBC2's The Apprentice: You're Fired! will also switch days to Tuesday at 10pm. BBC1's commitment to screen the England v USA friendly means the network will devote two hours between 8pm and 10pm to the game on Wednesday next week.
The Apprentice, which regularly pulls in up to 7 million viewers, is one of BBC1's most popular shows and a must-see on Wednesday nights for many fans. A BBC spokesman confirmed The Apprentice's move to Tuesday next week. "The show has been moved to make way for this match. It is quite usual for us to move programmes to accommodate big sporting occasions. That is the reason for this schedule change," he said.
Elsewhere, Anushka Asthana has labelled The Apprentice as the most moral show on television. Writing in the Guardian, she states...
He started his journey as a silly posh-boy, notable only for his thick eyebrows, floppy hair and absurd manner. Then a single act of kindness propelled Raef Bjayou, a disliked contender on the hit television show The Apprentice, into a realms of chivalry. It was a wonderful moment: the 27-year-old 'entrepreneur', dressed in a smart pink shirt, leant forward, raised his hand and demanded an end to the savage attack being carried out on his fellow contestant, Sara Dhada.
'A decision has been made,' he boomed, to the delight of millions of viewers appalled by the behaviour of the other Apprentice hopefuls who were acting like a swarming gang of playground bullies. 'Sir Alan has made it.' Soon the clip had made its way to YouTube, Raef fan clubs had started to appear on the internet and The Apprentice faithful, of which I am one, had a new hero. All it had taken was a simple moment of compassion; a moment that convinced me that The Apprentice, which sees contestants battle it out for a six-figure job in Sir Alan Sugar's empire, is a show with the stiffest of moral backbones.
People who sneer at reality television, who argue it brings out the worst in its voyeuristic viewers, who insist it provides little more than a gladiatorial stage on which people have little choice but to humiliate, disgrace and hang themselves, are missing the point. What actually happens is that over time the veneers created by the contestants in preparation for the show start to slip away and one by one their true characters emerge. Yes, we watch with glee when some of them are cruelly dispatched, but only those who have lied, twisted and manipulated their way through. The people who have played fair, meanwhile, who have been kind, decent and honest are lauded and cheered in front rooms across the country. That is why Bjayou, a man who was dismissed as comical at the start - following a 'I get on with prince or pauper' gaffe - is now a firm favourite to win.
So what does this tell us? Well, conversations about the programme have begun to take on the tone of an ethical debate. 'The Apprentice generates a moral reaction in the audience,' says one female friend, an economist in her late twenties, as we gather around the television set for our weekly fix. 'We side with the ones who we believe act in a moral way. We turn against those who are bitchy, lie or seem unpleasant.' It is true that each week we find ourselves howling at the television from around 9.45pm, urging Sugar to eliminate the least-loved character - normally the one who we decide has been a little too mean or sly.
If that is the case for us, then surely it is true for many more of the show's wide base of fans, those 7.4 million viewers who tune in. The demographic covers teenagers and the retired, men and women, rich and poor. It is even sparking encouraging discussions among school pupils. One colleague says her children, aged 11 and 13, regularly discuss whether or not the contestants have behaved morally: 'They say "he's lying", "he's bullying" or "he's cheating". They are starting to think you do not have to be nasty and pushy to get ahead. It has definitely made them think in a moral way.'
And it is not just the viewers. Even Sugar, famed for his ruthless nature, seems to be rewarding hard work and honesty this time round. His message in the boardroom is clear: lie, cheat or manipulate and you 'will get fired'. Take the example of Jenny Celerier, who has earned herself a reputation as this series's nasty. When she bribed a Moroccan shopkeeper in an attempt to hamper the other team's chances, Sugar was furious and soon sent her packing. He was equally unimpressed when she appeared to lie in order to make her fellow contestant look bad. But for me and my friends, there is one thing Sugar needs to do - and soon - finally to prove the show's morality.
The self-made millionaire must dispatch the contestant who has been most sneaky and aggressive to date: Michael Sophocles. He is the 24-year-old telesales executive who claimed on his CV that he was a 'good Jewish boy' in order to impress Sugar, before admitting he had no idea what kosher was (he thought it was a Muslim tradition) and crossing himself outside the boardroom. It seems unlikely that such morals were formed in a church, mosque or synagogue, but if Sophocles - Sophocles! - a name once better known as the author of the Oedipus cycle, gets the chop, then there will be many children picking up a sense of right and wrong from, God forbid, a reality television show.
Next week's scheduling move will see Sir Alan Sugar go head to head with Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4's The F Word, as well as ITV1's Britain's Got Talent, which is airing every night next week, at 9pm on Tuesday. BBC2's The Apprentice: You're Fired! will also switch days to Tuesday at 10pm. BBC1's commitment to screen the England v USA friendly means the network will devote two hours between 8pm and 10pm to the game on Wednesday next week.
The Apprentice, which regularly pulls in up to 7 million viewers, is one of BBC1's most popular shows and a must-see on Wednesday nights for many fans. A BBC spokesman confirmed The Apprentice's move to Tuesday next week. "The show has been moved to make way for this match. It is quite usual for us to move programmes to accommodate big sporting occasions. That is the reason for this schedule change," he said.
Elsewhere, Anushka Asthana has labelled The Apprentice as the most moral show on television. Writing in the Guardian, she states...
He started his journey as a silly posh-boy, notable only for his thick eyebrows, floppy hair and absurd manner. Then a single act of kindness propelled Raef Bjayou, a disliked contender on the hit television show The Apprentice, into a realms of chivalry. It was a wonderful moment: the 27-year-old 'entrepreneur', dressed in a smart pink shirt, leant forward, raised his hand and demanded an end to the savage attack being carried out on his fellow contestant, Sara Dhada.
'A decision has been made,' he boomed, to the delight of millions of viewers appalled by the behaviour of the other Apprentice hopefuls who were acting like a swarming gang of playground bullies. 'Sir Alan has made it.' Soon the clip had made its way to YouTube, Raef fan clubs had started to appear on the internet and The Apprentice faithful, of which I am one, had a new hero. All it had taken was a simple moment of compassion; a moment that convinced me that The Apprentice, which sees contestants battle it out for a six-figure job in Sir Alan Sugar's empire, is a show with the stiffest of moral backbones.
People who sneer at reality television, who argue it brings out the worst in its voyeuristic viewers, who insist it provides little more than a gladiatorial stage on which people have little choice but to humiliate, disgrace and hang themselves, are missing the point. What actually happens is that over time the veneers created by the contestants in preparation for the show start to slip away and one by one their true characters emerge. Yes, we watch with glee when some of them are cruelly dispatched, but only those who have lied, twisted and manipulated their way through. The people who have played fair, meanwhile, who have been kind, decent and honest are lauded and cheered in front rooms across the country. That is why Bjayou, a man who was dismissed as comical at the start - following a 'I get on with prince or pauper' gaffe - is now a firm favourite to win.
So what does this tell us? Well, conversations about the programme have begun to take on the tone of an ethical debate. 'The Apprentice generates a moral reaction in the audience,' says one female friend, an economist in her late twenties, as we gather around the television set for our weekly fix. 'We side with the ones who we believe act in a moral way. We turn against those who are bitchy, lie or seem unpleasant.' It is true that each week we find ourselves howling at the television from around 9.45pm, urging Sugar to eliminate the least-loved character - normally the one who we decide has been a little too mean or sly.
If that is the case for us, then surely it is true for many more of the show's wide base of fans, those 7.4 million viewers who tune in. The demographic covers teenagers and the retired, men and women, rich and poor. It is even sparking encouraging discussions among school pupils. One colleague says her children, aged 11 and 13, regularly discuss whether or not the contestants have behaved morally: 'They say "he's lying", "he's bullying" or "he's cheating". They are starting to think you do not have to be nasty and pushy to get ahead. It has definitely made them think in a moral way.'
And it is not just the viewers. Even Sugar, famed for his ruthless nature, seems to be rewarding hard work and honesty this time round. His message in the boardroom is clear: lie, cheat or manipulate and you 'will get fired'. Take the example of Jenny Celerier, who has earned herself a reputation as this series's nasty. When she bribed a Moroccan shopkeeper in an attempt to hamper the other team's chances, Sugar was furious and soon sent her packing. He was equally unimpressed when she appeared to lie in order to make her fellow contestant look bad. But for me and my friends, there is one thing Sugar needs to do - and soon - finally to prove the show's morality.
The self-made millionaire must dispatch the contestant who has been most sneaky and aggressive to date: Michael Sophocles. He is the 24-year-old telesales executive who claimed on his CV that he was a 'good Jewish boy' in order to impress Sugar, before admitting he had no idea what kosher was (he thought it was a Muslim tradition) and crossing himself outside the boardroom. It seems unlikely that such morals were formed in a church, mosque or synagogue, but if Sophocles - Sophocles! - a name once better known as the author of the Oedipus cycle, gets the chop, then there will be many children picking up a sense of right and wrong from, God forbid, a reality television show.
Saturday, 17 May 2008
The X Factor vision spells disaster for Brown
In Hollywood, producers let you know their intentions for a movie script by calling for certain "types". It's pretty euphemistic. Scripts looking for "a Nicole Kidman type" might persuade Naomi Watts to become attached to them. A Renee Zellweger type? You might get that one in Grey's Anatomy. A Lindsay Lohan type? Honey, these days Lindsay Lohan's taking scripts meant for a Lindsay Lohan type. The past year has not been kind.
The practice of managing expectations in this way came to mind this week, says Marina Hyde, when it emerged that Gordon Brown has been approached by the BBC to judge a young talent show called Junior PM, aimed at what its producers describe as "an Apprentice meets Maria/Strictly Come Dancing audience". You couldn't help thinking they were looking for "an Alan Sugar type", and after being rejected by several cheap imitations, eventually sighed: "Well, I suppose we could settle for the prime minister."
And weren't they in luck? Whereas Sir Alan would never have lowered himself to even read the proposal, Junior PM's producers only had to raise it with Hazel Blears for her to take it all the way to a bleeding cabinet meeting. Her special adviser confirmed that the communities secretary intended to raise it "in the margins of cabinet". I suppose we should be grateful it wasn't item one on the agenda at the table around which political titans of yesteryear once sat. But you are formally dared to imagine Barbara Castle turning to Harold Wilson and saying: "Ooh, now, the Beeb has come up with a great idea in which you judge a telly talent contest. Hughie Green's turned it down, so unless Monkhouse fancies it, you should start looking grateful." In fact, it's difficult to decide which is more hilarious: that the running of Britain has now been relegated to the status of a telly prize, or that the BBC thinks the prime minister might actually say yes.
Put delicately, the idea of spending licence payers' money on a Gordon Brown vehicle is up there with Alan Partridge's legendary Monkey Tennis. The entire country knows Gordon is not what you'd call a TV natural. For the past couple of months he has only worn one expression: that of a man watching his legacy being torn down in slow motion. His telly outings already make us squirm in vicarious discomfort; it would be positively excruciating to see him dispensing a Simon Cowell-style verdict on some precocious little horror: "That was the worse post-neoclassical endogenous growth theorising I've seen in the Birmingham auditions ..."
This isn't the Beeb's vision, apparently. "It is a golden opportunity for the PM to gather a youth manifesto and become more popular than Alan Sugar," ran its pitch, and at some level you have to admire the misplaced confidence that Brown can afford to be worrying about the nine-year-old demographic, when his need to appeal to the already enfranchised would seem rather more pressing. "It is a very worthy programme idea," a Blears spokesman insisted, as though the entertainment potential were not sufficiently moribund without a government press officer describing it as "worthy". "The idea is to get more young people interested in politics."
But of course it is, because it is one of the orthodoxies of the age that more young people vote in reality TV elections than in general elections. Complete cobblers, as it goes, though I won't trouble you with the statistics. That said, you'd think our mathlete of a prime minister might be aware of them, because he is absurdly, uncomfortably obsessed with reality TV. Last month he appeared on American Idol, but two years ago he was already outlining his vision of "an X Factor Britain", a comment that managed to combine fatuity, neediness, and a total failure to understand what these kind of talent shows are really about. They don't make dreams come true; they sell you disappointment, which is why every series includes more and more of the episodes focusing on deluded clods auditioning.
And increasingly, doesn't Mr Brown's torment remind you of one of these tone-deaf unfortunates, whose painful progress makes you shriek "How on earth did he think he could do this?", and whom you can hardly bear to watch for the transferred embarrassment? Watching PMQs can feel like intruding on private grief, while the prime minister cannot seem to reverse the perception that he is faintly ridiculous. There is a sort of momentum to it now, where every one of these mooted stunts plays atrociously for him. It's just so easy to turn his gimmicks against him, a fact not lost on the Tories, who not only spent this week's PMQs making jokes about the electorate telling Mr Brown "You're fired!", but gave Strictly Come Dancing host Bruce Forsyth a special ticket to watch proceedings from the gallery. They do like to sledgehammer home a point in Westminster.
Need they even have bothered? The episode barely needed glossing. Everything about Junior PM feels hackneyed, knackered and devoid of ideas - the format, the thinking behind it, but most of all its intended star. As Sir Alan would say: he hasn't got a bladdy clue.
The practice of managing expectations in this way came to mind this week, says Marina Hyde, when it emerged that Gordon Brown has been approached by the BBC to judge a young talent show called Junior PM, aimed at what its producers describe as "an Apprentice meets Maria/Strictly Come Dancing audience". You couldn't help thinking they were looking for "an Alan Sugar type", and after being rejected by several cheap imitations, eventually sighed: "Well, I suppose we could settle for the prime minister."
And weren't they in luck? Whereas Sir Alan would never have lowered himself to even read the proposal, Junior PM's producers only had to raise it with Hazel Blears for her to take it all the way to a bleeding cabinet meeting. Her special adviser confirmed that the communities secretary intended to raise it "in the margins of cabinet". I suppose we should be grateful it wasn't item one on the agenda at the table around which political titans of yesteryear once sat. But you are formally dared to imagine Barbara Castle turning to Harold Wilson and saying: "Ooh, now, the Beeb has come up with a great idea in which you judge a telly talent contest. Hughie Green's turned it down, so unless Monkhouse fancies it, you should start looking grateful." In fact, it's difficult to decide which is more hilarious: that the running of Britain has now been relegated to the status of a telly prize, or that the BBC thinks the prime minister might actually say yes.
Put delicately, the idea of spending licence payers' money on a Gordon Brown vehicle is up there with Alan Partridge's legendary Monkey Tennis. The entire country knows Gordon is not what you'd call a TV natural. For the past couple of months he has only worn one expression: that of a man watching his legacy being torn down in slow motion. His telly outings already make us squirm in vicarious discomfort; it would be positively excruciating to see him dispensing a Simon Cowell-style verdict on some precocious little horror: "That was the worse post-neoclassical endogenous growth theorising I've seen in the Birmingham auditions ..."
This isn't the Beeb's vision, apparently. "It is a golden opportunity for the PM to gather a youth manifesto and become more popular than Alan Sugar," ran its pitch, and at some level you have to admire the misplaced confidence that Brown can afford to be worrying about the nine-year-old demographic, when his need to appeal to the already enfranchised would seem rather more pressing. "It is a very worthy programme idea," a Blears spokesman insisted, as though the entertainment potential were not sufficiently moribund without a government press officer describing it as "worthy". "The idea is to get more young people interested in politics."
But of course it is, because it is one of the orthodoxies of the age that more young people vote in reality TV elections than in general elections. Complete cobblers, as it goes, though I won't trouble you with the statistics. That said, you'd think our mathlete of a prime minister might be aware of them, because he is absurdly, uncomfortably obsessed with reality TV. Last month he appeared on American Idol, but two years ago he was already outlining his vision of "an X Factor Britain", a comment that managed to combine fatuity, neediness, and a total failure to understand what these kind of talent shows are really about. They don't make dreams come true; they sell you disappointment, which is why every series includes more and more of the episodes focusing on deluded clods auditioning.
And increasingly, doesn't Mr Brown's torment remind you of one of these tone-deaf unfortunates, whose painful progress makes you shriek "How on earth did he think he could do this?", and whom you can hardly bear to watch for the transferred embarrassment? Watching PMQs can feel like intruding on private grief, while the prime minister cannot seem to reverse the perception that he is faintly ridiculous. There is a sort of momentum to it now, where every one of these mooted stunts plays atrociously for him. It's just so easy to turn his gimmicks against him, a fact not lost on the Tories, who not only spent this week's PMQs making jokes about the electorate telling Mr Brown "You're fired!", but gave Strictly Come Dancing host Bruce Forsyth a special ticket to watch proceedings from the gallery. They do like to sledgehammer home a point in Westminster.
Need they even have bothered? The episode barely needed glossing. Everything about Junior PM feels hackneyed, knackered and devoid of ideas - the format, the thinking behind it, but most of all its intended star. As Sir Alan would say: he hasn't got a bladdy clue.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Brook to dish out justice as Dirty Dancing judge
Former Big Breakfast presenter Kelly Brook has been signed up by digital channel Living to become a judge on its Dirty Dancing inspired reality series. Brook will help find the next Johnnie and Baby from the hit 1980s movie in the second run of Dirty Dancing: The Time of Your Life, replacing Jennifer Ellison, who was a judge on last year's series. Living's Dirty Dancing show was filmed at the original location of the film in Virginia, with the winners securing a year-long contract with dance agency Bloc. The show, made by Granada Entertainment, is one of Living's key series for the summer season.Living's summer lineup will also include the six-part Pop Goes the Band, made by ITV Productions, which will see music acts reunited and given plastic surgery to restore them to their "former glory". The bands, who have not yet been named, will then play a reunion gig for their friends, family and fans. Pop Goes the Band is to be executive produced by Natalka Znak and Richard Cowles, whose previous credits included ITV hit I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. A range of D-list celebrities including the Cheeky Girls and Yvette Fielding will star in their own reality shows in the six-part Living With ..., which will see them followed by cameras in their homes and private lives.
Living, which is owned by Virgin Media TV and run by former ITV controller of entertainment Claudia Rosencrantz, will also attempt to recreate the buzz that surrounded Sky One's Ibiza Uncovered with a new take on life on the Balearic island in observational documentary series Ibiza, made by Original Productions. Diet on the Dancefloor, made by independent producer Mentorn, will see overweight people attempt to lose weight by taking part in a Strictly Come Dancing-style contest.
Former pop star Lisa Scott Lee will return to the realms of reality TV following her MTV series in Extreme: Skinny Celebrity Mums 2, made by Target, in which she bemoans the pressure put on celebrity mums to lose weight. She will be seen illustrating the fact by posing for a photoshoot in a skimpy bikini with her new baby. The channel has also secured the rights to US drama Lipstick Jungle, starring Brooke Shields, and hit Grey's Anatomy spin-off Private Practice.
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Schtumbleword Verboten!
Sometimes I think the whole of humankind can be separated into two types: those who pay attention to song lyrics, and those who don't. And those who don't should be rounded up and throttled to death. By robots. With merciless strangling hands says Charlie Brooker.
I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. I love lyrics. If you don't listen to the words, you're no friend of mine. The words are where 50 per cent of a song's meaning resides, and it's shocking how many people just don't seem to hear them, even when they're startlingly clear. I once had to explain to someone what 'Common People' by Pulp was about, even though they'd listened to it a billion times. How wilfully dumb can you get?
Perhaps I find it frustrating because I've been cursed with an almost autistic ability to memorise song lyrics after one or two listens. But rather than recall them accurately, I tinker about and replace them with new words for my own amusement; and it's these re-written versions which ultimately remain lodged in my mind. I can't hear 'Thinking Of You' by Sister Sledge, for instance, without assuming the chorus goes: "I'm thinking of you/And the things you do to me/That make me love you/Now I'm livin' in Exeter".
My current favourite internalised mental replacement lyric is a disarmingly basic one in which I simply substitute the name Eleanor Rigby with "Robert Mugabe", because it scans. Every time I watch the news and something about Zimbabwe comes on, I hear Paul McCartney lament that Robert Mugabe died in the church and was buried along with his name. Nobody came. This is why I'd be hopeless on Don't Forget The Lyrics! (Sun, 7pm, Sky One), a new Shane Richie gameshow whose primary game mechanic is explained in its title.
And it's quite bossy, that title. It sounds like the sort of thing an insane Nazi commandant forcing a yard full of PoWs to perform a musical at gunpoint might bark at the top of his voice just before shooting someone for fumbling the chorus of Frosty The Snowman. They should've called it "Nicht Forgetten Das Lyrics!", or "Schtumbleword Verboten!". Or "Don't Forget the Lyrics, Mofo!", which isn't very German, but accurately conveys the urgency of the situation.
Anyway, the show is just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire only with karaoke instead of questions. Each week, an annoying member of the public comes on and jumps up and down and says how excited they are until you want to punch them all the way to Barbados and back. Then Shane asks them to pick a category of song: pop, say, or glam rock, or TV theme tunes; we're talking crowd-pleasers, OK, so there's no Joy Division or anything. Then the in-house band starts playing, the lyrics come up on a big screen, and the contestant wails the song as cacophonously as possible while maintaining the beatific grin of the thuddingly stupid.
And then! Suddenly! The on-screen lyrics are whisked away! And the singer has to finish the next line FROM MEMORY! If they get every single word right, the pot increases and they proceed to the next round, eventually hitting a jackpot of £250,000. If a contstant gets it wrong, Shane leads them to a desolate, snowblown corner of the stage, commands them to get down on their knees and unloads a single bullet into the back of their head. The body is left in plain sight for the remainder of the programme as a warning to others of its kind: DON'T FORGET THE LYRICS!
Yet another superb episode of The Apprentice (Wed, 9pm, BBC1) last Wednesday, although for some reason no matter how many people Sir Alan ejects, it feels as though their overall number fails to dwindle. Two got the chop last week, and there's still eight of the bastards in there. Still, at least this means you can pick more than one favourite: for me, it's got to be Raef, Sara or Lucinda.
Them to win. Go them. Go them.
I'm exaggerating, but only slightly. I love lyrics. If you don't listen to the words, you're no friend of mine. The words are where 50 per cent of a song's meaning resides, and it's shocking how many people just don't seem to hear them, even when they're startlingly clear. I once had to explain to someone what 'Common People' by Pulp was about, even though they'd listened to it a billion times. How wilfully dumb can you get?
Perhaps I find it frustrating because I've been cursed with an almost autistic ability to memorise song lyrics after one or two listens. But rather than recall them accurately, I tinker about and replace them with new words for my own amusement; and it's these re-written versions which ultimately remain lodged in my mind. I can't hear 'Thinking Of You' by Sister Sledge, for instance, without assuming the chorus goes: "I'm thinking of you/And the things you do to me/That make me love you/Now I'm livin' in Exeter".
My current favourite internalised mental replacement lyric is a disarmingly basic one in which I simply substitute the name Eleanor Rigby with "Robert Mugabe", because it scans. Every time I watch the news and something about Zimbabwe comes on, I hear Paul McCartney lament that Robert Mugabe died in the church and was buried along with his name. Nobody came. This is why I'd be hopeless on Don't Forget The Lyrics! (Sun, 7pm, Sky One), a new Shane Richie gameshow whose primary game mechanic is explained in its title.
And it's quite bossy, that title. It sounds like the sort of thing an insane Nazi commandant forcing a yard full of PoWs to perform a musical at gunpoint might bark at the top of his voice just before shooting someone for fumbling the chorus of Frosty The Snowman. They should've called it "Nicht Forgetten Das Lyrics!", or "Schtumbleword Verboten!". Or "Don't Forget the Lyrics, Mofo!", which isn't very German, but accurately conveys the urgency of the situation.
Anyway, the show is just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire only with karaoke instead of questions. Each week, an annoying member of the public comes on and jumps up and down and says how excited they are until you want to punch them all the way to Barbados and back. Then Shane asks them to pick a category of song: pop, say, or glam rock, or TV theme tunes; we're talking crowd-pleasers, OK, so there's no Joy Division or anything. Then the in-house band starts playing, the lyrics come up on a big screen, and the contestant wails the song as cacophonously as possible while maintaining the beatific grin of the thuddingly stupid.
And then! Suddenly! The on-screen lyrics are whisked away! And the singer has to finish the next line FROM MEMORY! If they get every single word right, the pot increases and they proceed to the next round, eventually hitting a jackpot of £250,000. If a contstant gets it wrong, Shane leads them to a desolate, snowblown corner of the stage, commands them to get down on their knees and unloads a single bullet into the back of their head. The body is left in plain sight for the remainder of the programme as a warning to others of its kind: DON'T FORGET THE LYRICS!
Yet another superb episode of The Apprentice (Wed, 9pm, BBC1) last Wednesday, although for some reason no matter how many people Sir Alan ejects, it feels as though their overall number fails to dwindle. Two got the chop last week, and there's still eight of the bastards in there. Still, at least this means you can pick more than one favourite: for me, it's got to be Raef, Sara or Lucinda.
Them to win. Go them. Go them.
Friday, 9 May 2008
Headmistress to the nation
Alan Sugar may be the boss, but Margaret Mountford, his quick-witted aide with the sharp tongue, is proving to be the real star of The Apprentice, says Anna Pickard...
In the quietened boardroom, three great minds are in hushed conversation, their greying heads tipped together. Sir Alan Sugar and his two sidekicks are puzzled by the Jewish candidate who didn't know what a kosher chicken was. "But he's clever, isn't he? Didn't he go to Edinburgh?" says one, Nick Hewer. "Well," weighs in the only woman in the room, and with a slight sneer. "I think Edinburgh isn't what it used to be." And with eight words, a city fell. Well, not quite fell, but certainly wondered what it had done to incur the wrath of Margaret Mountford.
The eminent Mountford is, to the outside eye, a bit-part player in the tremendously successful series The Apprentice. A formidable force in British business, she was born in Northern Ireland and read law at Girton College, Cambridge. Late in her career, she has found a fame she never expected as the UK's favourite disapproving headmistress. As one of the two aides to Sir Alan, she shadows the teams on their tasks, delivers the results to the boss and helps to decide who should stay and who be fired.
Clearly, then, a powerful, public figure. Will Edinburgh University be burning the library down, hanging up its mortar boards and calling it a day? "The University of Edinburgh is one of the UK's most successful and popular universities," replies a spokesman, by email. "It is regularly ranked among the top 50 universities in the world and is currently going through a period of unprecedented growth."
He would not be drawn further into a discussion on the devastating effect Mountford might have on future university statistics. But her withering putdown shows how integral she has become in a show watched by millions every week. As each series develops, the interplay between Sir Alan and his aides - who have both been working with the Amstrad overlord on normal, non-televised business projects for more than 20 years - has a kind of magic that no television producer could have been expecting.
The interplay between Hewer, Mountford and the contestants, meanwhile, often feels like a couple of university professors asked to teach a nursery-school class - or a pair of curious children given free rein to examine the scuttling of some tiny insects with a magnifying glass on a sunny day. While the candidates themselves beetle about performing their ludicrous tasks, the camera cuts to Mountford or Hewer providing a perfect reflection of whatever the audience happens to be thinking - whether it's an approving nod or a stare so fearsome you wonder that the victim doesn't burst into flames.
Mountford's signature look is the rolling of her eyes to heaven. Indeed, most of her loudest comments about the candidates are almost entirely nonverbal. The eye-rolling is frequently accompanied by a heartfelt sigh; in extremis, a sickened pursing of the lips. Her reaction to any act of stupidity is to drop her jaw in shock and amazement. Complete idiocy causes an additional flaring of the nostrils. As contestant Michael Sophocles celebrated his team's Singles' Day greetings cards having won the task - by dint of being the "least worst" product on offer - with whoops, shouts and air-punching, Mountford could not have looked more disgusted had he marched an army of water buffalo into the boardroom and asked them all to fart on cue.
But it's also Mountford's quick-witted plain-speaking nature that we love. Outside a pub, avoiding Sophocles' appalling Frank Sinatra impressions at his team's Italian-themed evening, she commented: "I'm not sure what has more cheese in it, the pizza or that racket." When high-cheek-boned but responsibility-shy Alex tried to avoid claims of having stepped back when asked to be deputy leader, scared of being blamed later, Margaret told the boss, and the world, with a snort: "You stepped so far back from it you were practically out the room."
You wonder how long her patience can last. As she heaves yet another sigh and drops her shoulders another weary inch, it seems unlikely that she would want to sign up for another series where her beloved world of high business is turned into a circus of shiny suits. However, the loss of Mountford would be a terrible blow to the series. She is our voice on screen, our bridge between the unbearable back-stabbing candidates and the real world. Without her, would we still make the leap?
Firm, fierce, witty and wise; aspirational, sensational and eminently sensible. Margaret Mountford, we salute you.
In the quietened boardroom, three great minds are in hushed conversation, their greying heads tipped together. Sir Alan Sugar and his two sidekicks are puzzled by the Jewish candidate who didn't know what a kosher chicken was. "But he's clever, isn't he? Didn't he go to Edinburgh?" says one, Nick Hewer. "Well," weighs in the only woman in the room, and with a slight sneer. "I think Edinburgh isn't what it used to be." And with eight words, a city fell. Well, not quite fell, but certainly wondered what it had done to incur the wrath of Margaret Mountford.
The eminent Mountford is, to the outside eye, a bit-part player in the tremendously successful series The Apprentice. A formidable force in British business, she was born in Northern Ireland and read law at Girton College, Cambridge. Late in her career, she has found a fame she never expected as the UK's favourite disapproving headmistress. As one of the two aides to Sir Alan, she shadows the teams on their tasks, delivers the results to the boss and helps to decide who should stay and who be fired.
Clearly, then, a powerful, public figure. Will Edinburgh University be burning the library down, hanging up its mortar boards and calling it a day? "The University of Edinburgh is one of the UK's most successful and popular universities," replies a spokesman, by email. "It is regularly ranked among the top 50 universities in the world and is currently going through a period of unprecedented growth."
He would not be drawn further into a discussion on the devastating effect Mountford might have on future university statistics. But her withering putdown shows how integral she has become in a show watched by millions every week. As each series develops, the interplay between Sir Alan and his aides - who have both been working with the Amstrad overlord on normal, non-televised business projects for more than 20 years - has a kind of magic that no television producer could have been expecting.
The interplay between Hewer, Mountford and the contestants, meanwhile, often feels like a couple of university professors asked to teach a nursery-school class - or a pair of curious children given free rein to examine the scuttling of some tiny insects with a magnifying glass on a sunny day. While the candidates themselves beetle about performing their ludicrous tasks, the camera cuts to Mountford or Hewer providing a perfect reflection of whatever the audience happens to be thinking - whether it's an approving nod or a stare so fearsome you wonder that the victim doesn't burst into flames.
Mountford's signature look is the rolling of her eyes to heaven. Indeed, most of her loudest comments about the candidates are almost entirely nonverbal. The eye-rolling is frequently accompanied by a heartfelt sigh; in extremis, a sickened pursing of the lips. Her reaction to any act of stupidity is to drop her jaw in shock and amazement. Complete idiocy causes an additional flaring of the nostrils. As contestant Michael Sophocles celebrated his team's Singles' Day greetings cards having won the task - by dint of being the "least worst" product on offer - with whoops, shouts and air-punching, Mountford could not have looked more disgusted had he marched an army of water buffalo into the boardroom and asked them all to fart on cue.
But it's also Mountford's quick-witted plain-speaking nature that we love. Outside a pub, avoiding Sophocles' appalling Frank Sinatra impressions at his team's Italian-themed evening, she commented: "I'm not sure what has more cheese in it, the pizza or that racket." When high-cheek-boned but responsibility-shy Alex tried to avoid claims of having stepped back when asked to be deputy leader, scared of being blamed later, Margaret told the boss, and the world, with a snort: "You stepped so far back from it you were practically out the room."
You wonder how long her patience can last. As she heaves yet another sigh and drops her shoulders another weary inch, it seems unlikely that she would want to sign up for another series where her beloved world of high business is turned into a circus of shiny suits. However, the loss of Mountford would be a terrible blow to the series. She is our voice on screen, our bridge between the unbearable back-stabbing candidates and the real world. Without her, would we still make the leap?
Firm, fierce, witty and wise; aspirational, sensational and eminently sensible. Margaret Mountford, we salute you.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Don't call us: the cult of the actress rock stars
Scarlett Johansson's decision to record an album, when she's barely started as a movie star, seems at first glance capricious. Making it a record of Tom Waits songs, with help from David Bowie, adds a thin veneer of credibility, though the "vanity project" stink remains strong. But the news that Minnie Driver, too, is releasing a second album, this time with alt.country's tarnished king Ryan Adams, and his band the Cardinals, helping out, along with Juliette Lewis's continuing, and very successful career-switch from actress to provoking punk-rock star, suggests a more substantial trend, writes Nick Hasted.Johansson's album, Anywhere I Lay My Head, has been bolstered by production from TV On the Radio's David Sitek, fresh from working with critically adored bands such as Foals and Liars. Her presence at last year's Coachella, singing "Just Like Honey" with the reformed Jesus and Mary Chain before greedily soaking up the atmosphere backstage, and her cameo in a Dylan video, adds to her hipness by association.
In part this reflects how glamorous rock and movie stars' worlds seem to each other. The chance of any of these ageing male rock icons refusing the attentions of a young, blond, Hollywood actress must also be counted as slim. Johansson, though, sees a deeper connection, suggesting the roles of singing and acting can be interchangeable. "Some of my favourite vocalists are acting in themselves," she notes. "Music is often about bringing characters to life."
"The only problem," Uncut magazine points out reviewing Anywhere I Lay My Head, "is that Johansson, no matter how much double-tracking Sitek uses, can't really sing." In this, though, she echoes perhaps the most famous singing blond actress of them all, Marilyn Monroe. Monroe is the most complete example of how minor details such as vocal limitation can be transcended.
Of course, she existed in a different time, when actresses were regularly called upon to star in musicals, as she did with Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Her breathy sexiness nevertheless reached a sort of apogee when singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" or, infamously, "Happy Birthday, Mr President", to her reputed lover JFK at a celebration of his 45th birthday. Bonnie Greer used her this year, in the Theatre Royal Stratford East's production of her play Marilyn and Ella, to explore the enmeshed longings of singers and actresses. In it, Monroe aches to be taken seriously as a jazz singer, and Ella Fitzgerald wants to break out of her black jazz-club ghetto, into the mainstream of the movies. Each perceives opportunities for credibility and seriousness in the other's existence, forging a lasting friendship.
Johansson and Lewis, growing up at a time when rock'n'roll is an omnipresent attraction no matter how focused one may be on acting classes, are exploring an updated version of the same desires. Johansson's lurking backstage among bands, and even singing with them to rock crowds, gives her a whiff of something more dangerous-seeming, earthy and direct than her long, isolated months on-set, even as musicians see her as a cinema-screen-sized, superhuman beauty, walking among them.
Lewis has taken things still further. Though she broke through in a notoriously uncomfortable scene in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991), as Nick Nolte's schoolgirl daughter, subtly molested by Robert De Niro's killer on a dolls-house stage-set, and followed it with punishing roles in the likes of Natural Born Killers (1994), Hollywood has finally left her unsatisfied. Playing a futuristic, PJ Harvey-singing grunge star in Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) showed her an exit. She has now all but abandoned acting to become lead singer in Juliette and the Licks.
Though this was initially assumed to be a sideshow, like the dreadful vanity bands of Keanu Reeves and others, early UK audiences soon found an actual catsuited movie star crowd-surfing over their outstretched hands at tiny club venues. Once they had gotten over the somewhat perverse thrill, it was obvious that Lewis was going all-out. Her second album, Four on the Floor (2006), saw Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl on drums, while Lewis's immersion in the proto-punk of the MC5 and the Stooges seemed viscerally real.
Driver sits somewhere between Johansson and Lewis. Part of the utterly obscure Milo Ross Band early in her career, as her life as a minor movie star has faltered, she has settled back into music. At 38, Hollywood's unforgiving sexism almost certainly dooms her to scrabbling for roles in future. But in winning over audiences at Texas's South by Southwest festival, or working seriously on tracks late at night in a New York City studio with Adams, such indignities can be ignored. She can think like an artist again, not a mannequin deemed past its prime.
It can work the other way, of course. Kylie Minogue's game, if not very good, turn as Charlene Mitchell in Neighbours was the highlight of an early acting career in Australia that included several feature films. But when she parlayed the soap's UK popularity into a career as a 60-million-selling pop star, her permanent, depthless grin as she modelled skimpy clothes through a succession of modestly risqué videos was entirely mannequin-like (albeit one who co-wrote a few songs). Returns to acting were either dismal (1994's Street Fighter saw her deemed "the worst actress in the English-speaking world" in the Washington Post) or dependent on her pop stardom, as with Moulin Rouge! (2001).
The traditional showbiz world of Marilyn and Ella, meanwhile, has re-emerged in the wake of American Idol and its ilk. The patina of rebellion and social challenge that attracted Lewis to rock'n'roll has been swamped by a revived idea of the pop star as all-round entertainer. This can be seen most clearly in R&B, where the likes of Rihanna stumble through off-Broadway musical set-pieces. Like their male hip-hop counterparts, these singers now also feel ready to meet Johansson and co halfway, by breaking into films.
Beyoncé Knowles is the best, and worst, example of why this can be an awful idea. Early roles, such as Mike Myers' blaxploitation-style sidekick in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), required little more than flashing a smile and some skin, which her videos made her well-versed in. The excruciating faux-Motown musical Dreamgirls (2007), however, in which she played a Diana Ross figure, starkly showed the limitations her singing always suggested.
The contrast between Madonna and Courtney Love, on this side of the actress-singer divide, is marked. Madonna bluffed her way through one film success (Desperately Seeking Susan [1985], in fact carried by Rosanna Arquette), and was a passable, Monroe-styled, femme fatale in her then-lover Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy (1990). Everything else has been a cumulative, career-long embarrassment of unerotic nudity and unexpressed humanity. Love, meanwhile, though a haphazard mess of an artist these days, gave everything she could find inside herself to her fine early albums with her band Hole, Pretty On the Inside (1991) and Live Through This (1994). This ability, the one Madonna and Knowles lack, let her roar through Milos Forman's Man on the Moon (1999).
The authenticity Love couldn't help expressing at her best is what actresses and singers seek in each other's worlds. It is what we can hear in Monroe's warm, breathy sex-singing. It is the reason Lewis tore down the cinema screen between herself and her audience and leapt into their arms, and Johansson stepped onto the stage at Coachella, and sang with two old Scottish punks. Other actors might do a stage-play. But the fumble towards talent they don't quite have, and another's art that seems more real, keeps the two-way traffic alive.
So the next question is: How does a girl born into a real-life of rock'n'roll soap opera (Sex! Drugs! Paternity tests!) make the reverse journey her into film and television? By becoming this year's hottest model and the star of her own reality TV show, that's how...
Daisy Lowe belongs to a very modern breed of London It-girl. It's a role you have to be born into suggests Alison Jane Reid. While their predecessors were the daughters of aristocrats – the Tara Palmer-Tompkinsons and Lady Victoria Herveys, whose pedigree was determined by how many acres their family owned in Gloucestershire and how closely related they were to the Queen – these days, it's more a question of rock'n'roll royalty than blue-blooded veins.
A quick inspection of the surnames of the current crop of girls-about-town is telling. From Peaches Geldof to Lizzie Jagger, Leah Wood to Kelly Osbourne, the latest generation to grace the gossip pages are more likely to have spent their early years on a tour bus with their rock-star parents than competing at pony-club gymkhanas.
Although Lowe's name may lack the instant wow factor of her starry peers, the 19-year-old model's genetic make-up has secured her place in the rock firmament. The eldest daughter of Pearl Lowe, the fashion designer and former singer with Britpop band Powder, and step-daughter of Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, her indie Primrose Hill upbringing alone would have been enough to ensure vicarious celebrity status later in life.
In 2004, however, a DNA test which revealed that her biological father was not her mother's first husband, as she had previously believed, but Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, placed Daisy at the centre of a real-life rock'n'roll soap opera. Old friends, Lowe and Rossdale had enjoyed a fling so brief in the late-1980s that neither suspected Daisy might be his child. A doting godfather to Daisy for 15 years, his reaction to the news, according to Pearl, was to sever all contact with the Lowes, seemingly ploughing his energies into saving his marriage to the American singer Gwen Stefani.
Although the subject remains strictly off-limits, it is hard not to interpret Lowe's fierce loyalty to step-dad Goffey as an indirect condemnation of Rossdale. "Danny is a brilliant dad," she says. "He is father to my brothers and sisters, who I never for a second think of as anything less than whole; I just think of them as my brothers and sisters. He will be there for me when no one else will. Plus, of course, he's a creative genius. I'm proud to call him my father."
It would be easy for Daisy, a supporting player in the media drama, to have remained exactly that, forever known as little more than Gavin Rossdale's love child. But like many It-girls before her, Lowe has greater aspirations than just being a socialite. "If I'm going to be famous, I want to be famous for doing something good – having talent," she declares. What sets her apart is that she actually looks likely to make good on that desire.
At the beginning of this year Lowe, a model in Britain from the age of 15, was signed by the powerful New York agency IMG, which looks after supermodels Giselle and Naomi Campbell – a reliable indication that international stardom is on the cards, since it is in the US that the major campaigns that will put her on billboards around the world are booked.
The producers of the upcoming BBC2 fly-on-the-wall documentary Class of 2008, which charts the early push for fame and fortune of a group of trendy young things, are similarly confident she has what it takes to become a huge star, which is why they have made Lowe the focus for the series.
While her fellow subjects look set to achieve considerable success, including Lowe's on-off boyfriend Will Cameron, lead singer of The Blondelles, it is clear who is the star of the show. (Her relationship with Cameron, incidentally, is very much on right now – despite recent tabloid stories suggesting Mark Ronson is more than just the good friend she claims.)
Lowe has already graced the catwalk for Chanel – hand-picked by Karl Lagerfeld, no less – and stepped into Kate Moss's stockings in a campaign for luxury lingerie brand Agent Provocateur. With her doll-like face, mussed-up hair and slender but curvy body, she strikes a unique balance ' between an edgy, catwalk-friendly look and a more commercial appeal that could see her do very well indeed.
Were it anyone but Lowe, the prospect of such fame and fortune at such a young age might be worrying, but it's hard to imagine anyone better equipped to deal with the inevitable circus that will surround her. Her own childhood provided ample preparation for dealing with the excesses of celebrity; after all, not many people can say they grew up in a house where Pete Doherty was once a lodger.
Regulars on the 1990s Britpop party scene, Pearl and Danny were part of the Primrose Hill set that included Kate Moss, Sadie Frost and Jude Law. At one stage they were dubbed "the Posh and Becks of the indie world", although it would be fair to say that they lived a little more dangerously than Mr and Mrs Beckham. In her recent autobiography, All That Glitters, Pearl describes her descent into cocaine and heroin addiction with incredible candour, recounting the day-to-day struggle of trying to hold things together and care for her three children.
During a particularly difficult period of depression following the birth of her third child, Frankie, Pearl describes Daisy as her "saviour" and recalls how, at 10 years old, Daisy would change the nappies of her younger siblings and warm bottles while her mother lay paralysed in bed.
While some children might have cracked under the strain and developed their own wild-child ways, Lowe's instinct took her in exactly the opposite direction as she assumed responsibility for keeping the family functioning as Pearl slowly fell apart. "The only way to rebel against my mother was to be totally normal," she explains. "There's a huge element of Saffy from Ab Fab in me – just because I always tried to be my mother's mother. Obviously, she takes huge care of me, but I always felt it was my duty to help her too, being the oldest, especially as she was doing drugs. She was always really depressed and I'd want to be there and help her."
Going against the grain of the chaotic, bohemian household, Lowe became ultra-practical and mature beyond her years. At seven she insisted on looking after the family passports on holiday, and at 13 she was more interested in being a forensic scientist than following either of her parents into show business. Even now she confesses that caring for others has become something of a reflex for her: "I've spent my whole life looking after my little brothers, I've got a really strong maternal instinct."
If it was a tough childhood, Lowe does not portray it that way. "I never took it as a burden," she says cheerily. Meanwhile, her devotion to her mother – who has now been clean for several years – is absolute: "She is an amazing ' mother. We steal each other's clothes and talk on the phone every day – she is my best friend. It's all about Danny and my mum; we are a very close family."
The close physical resemblance between mother and daughter is striking too, although Lowe is candid about why her mother never pursued a similar career in modelling: "She got too pudgy because she was always stoned!" she giggles.
When Pearl decamped to Hampshire to escape the temptations of the London party circuit, Daisy initially stayed with her grandparents to continue her studies at her old school. Bright and articulate, she excelled in chemistry and art and was predicted to get good A-levels, but the separation from Pearl proved too difficult, and she abandoned her education in favour of modelling. "I couldn't handle being away from her," she says. "I just felt lost, so lost. So, it was my ticket out of school. Of course I could go back any time. Modelling's not forever, is it?"
While it may not be forever, for the moment at least it seems that Lowe is enjoying the new world it is opening up for her. She describes the decision to leave boyfriend Will in London while she spends much of her time working in New York as "really hard". Nevertheless, there is a sense that Lowe is relishing the new-found freedom that has come with her own pad in the Big Apple's East Village, and that she is at last getting the chance to shed the adult concerns she has dealt with for so long and indulge herself like any other 19-year-old. "I love being able to eat what I want, go where I want and walk around naked and sing to myself without anyone telling me to shut up," she confesses.
There have already been some notable career highlights, too. A shoot with in-demand American photographer Steven Klein was particularly memorable. "He's so quiet – a tortured genius," she says admiringly. He returned the compliment by dying her blue for a shoot – giving her a life-threatening allergic reaction in the process – hanging her off a giant crane and making her jump into a tub of green slime, naked, in the dead of winter. Lowe doesn't seem to have minded: "I am up for anything with Steven – he makes me feel like a beautiful piece of art when I work with him; he sees things no one else sees."
But it was modelling for the grande dame of British fashion, Vivienne Westwood, that she enjoyed most of all. "She is a huge muse of mine," admits Lowe. "I've never seen a designer get so involved in a show before. She was running around with a make-up palette saying, 'You all look too similar' and putting random eyeshadow here and there. Then she ran around with the eyeliner going, 'Who wants a moustache?' She was just so full-on and creative."
Despite the glamour of it all, Lowe still seems to have her heart set on a quiet life. It is safe to say that she has no interest in living the itinerant rock-chick lifestyle that her mother once enjoyed; her one experience of touring with her boyfriend's band failed to ignite any passion for life on the road: "I've never been so ill in my entire life," she groans. "We were travelling around Germany and all there was to eat was schnitzels; I need vegetables and sleep."
Perhaps it's the effect of seeing her mother so happily settled in the countryside with her vegetable patch and ethical clothing range, or perhaps it's just that maternal instinct kicking in once again, but Lowe's ultimate ambitions are a world away from her current career path. At the top of the agenda seems to be marrying her boyfriend and having children. Lowe says that she fell for Cameron when he confessed that "he just wanted to be a really good dad".
So what, then, is this would-be homemaker doing stalking the catwalks of Paris and New York? "I want to have money so I can spend it having children," she says simply. "I want to have three or four and be a really good mother and make sure they have a really brilliant life with parents who are not struggling." It may not be very rock'n'roll, but it sounds like a nice plan.
Class of 2008, an eight-part series, begins on 17 May at 12.45pm on the BBC Switch zone on BBC2
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
Australians do give a XXXX over Ramsay's kitchen expletives
As the country that taught the cricketing world how to sledge, Australia has not been known for its sensitivity to bad language. Swearing, at least among friends or colleagues, is part of the everyday vernacular. But the country seems to be losing its sense of humour over the expletive-filled outbursts of Gordon Ramsay on his reality television shows which are being shown on prime time TV. Yesterday Australia's Catholic church became the latest to complain, saying that the chef's shows should be taken off air or moved to a later time slot.
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen are broadcast three nights a week in Australia at 8.30pm and 9.30pm, when many children have yet to go to bed. One episode recently featured the Michelin-starred chef using the F word more than 80 times and the C word twice. The bad language has already prompted calls for the country's broadcasting code of conduct to be reviewed. "There can be no excuse for vilification of this sort. We conclude that this episode should never have been aired on Australian television," the church in the southern city of Adelaide said in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry which is investigating standards in television.
Schools and parents groups have also lodged complaints, with the principal of one Melbourne school advising parents to ban their young children from watching them. Lesley McCarthy of Flemington Primary School said bad language in the playground had increased since the British chef's shows have been showing on TV. "It's a really big concern," she said. "If the children see one of their heroes in the media swearing, then they think it's OK. It's the same with our football stars."
Australia's Channel Nine is broadcasting the programmes and says it has no plans to move them to a later time slot. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has become the station's number one hit. A bi-partisan parliamentary inquiry is hearing evidence on the frequency and use of swearing on Australian television and whether tighter regulation is needed. Currently, swearing is permitted on Australian TV if it is deemed important to a storyline.
Ramsay, who is due to open a restaurant in Melbourne at the end of the year, has already declared that he is scaling back his use of swearing in the kitchen and encouraging his staff to do so too. He also has his supporters in Australia. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties said any attempts to interfere with the programmes would be a restriction of free speech. "Not everyone is offended by coarse language," the council said in its submission to the inquiry.
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Hell's Kitchen are broadcast three nights a week in Australia at 8.30pm and 9.30pm, when many children have yet to go to bed. One episode recently featured the Michelin-starred chef using the F word more than 80 times and the C word twice. The bad language has already prompted calls for the country's broadcasting code of conduct to be reviewed. "There can be no excuse for vilification of this sort. We conclude that this episode should never have been aired on Australian television," the church in the southern city of Adelaide said in a submission to a parliamentary inquiry which is investigating standards in television.
Schools and parents groups have also lodged complaints, with the principal of one Melbourne school advising parents to ban their young children from watching them. Lesley McCarthy of Flemington Primary School said bad language in the playground had increased since the British chef's shows have been showing on TV. "It's a really big concern," she said. "If the children see one of their heroes in the media swearing, then they think it's OK. It's the same with our football stars."
Australia's Channel Nine is broadcasting the programmes and says it has no plans to move them to a later time slot. Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares has become the station's number one hit. A bi-partisan parliamentary inquiry is hearing evidence on the frequency and use of swearing on Australian television and whether tighter regulation is needed. Currently, swearing is permitted on Australian TV if it is deemed important to a storyline.
Ramsay, who is due to open a restaurant in Melbourne at the end of the year, has already declared that he is scaling back his use of swearing in the kitchen and encouraging his staff to do so too. He also has his supporters in Australia. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties said any attempts to interfere with the programmes would be a restriction of free speech. "Not everyone is offended by coarse language," the council said in its submission to the inquiry.
Monday, 28 April 2008
Reality show may be cancelled after 'drugs death'
A documentary in which the Duchess of York acts as a lifestyle coach to an overweight family on a run-down estate may be dropped after one of its most prominent characters was arrested over a suspected drugs death.
Terri Eccles, 24, who put her family forward for the ITV programme The Duchess in Hull, was questioned by police after an 18-year-old man was found dead at her home on Saturday morning.
Ms Eccles features heavily in the two-part documentary, in which the duchess tries to persuade her, her mother Tonia Sargerson and their extended family, to eat more fruit and vegetables and lead a healthier life. Cameras followed the duchess shopping in the budget supermarket Netto and staying at a bed-and-breakfast close to the Preston Road estate where the family live. The estate, known to some locals as “Beirut”, has high levels of deprivation, teenage pregnancy, crime and unemployment.
Promoting the documentary last month, the duchess said she hoped that she would be able to draw on her own experience of “eating disorders, low self-esteem, family conflict, financial crisis, divorce and bereavement” to help the family. The programme makers drafted in Jean-Christophe Novelli, the award-winning chef, to cook for the family and teach them some healthy recipes.
The duchess, 48, who says that she became friends with Ms Eccles and Mrs Sargerson during the making of the programme, was told of the death yesterday. Her spokesman told The Times: “She has been alerted to this terrible situation and has asked to be kept informed.” ITV executives will discuss the future of the programme this week. It is scheduled for screening in mid-May but a spokesman for the broadcaster said: “We’re aware of the situation and awaiting further developments.”
The young man who died is believed to have been a friend of Ms Eccles and her partner and is understood to have returned to their home in Hull after a night out on Friday. He was found dead in bed on Saturday morning. The ambulance service informed the police that a crew had been called to deal with a suspected heart attack. A spokesman for Humberside police said: “A man and woman were arrested and later released on police bail pending further inquiries.” It is understood that the suspected cause of death was drug abuse and that the body of the dead man showed no sign of injury. A post-mortem examination will be carried out today.
In a recent television interview, the duchess remembered her visit to the estate warmly and said she had had “a really nice time”. She added: “Tonia and Terri — they are all my friends now.” ITV had promoted the programme with the slogan: “Can the Duchess of York tackle obesity in Britain?”
The duchess, an ambassador for WeightWatchers, has spent most of the past decade living in Manhattan, where she has an apartment overlooking Central Park, and has carved out a successful television career. ITV hoped that her involvement in the programme would have made it attractive to international broadcasters.
The network disclosed details of the documentary last month as it disclosed a 35 per cent drop in annual profits and a fall in audience share.
Terri Eccles, 24, who put her family forward for the ITV programme The Duchess in Hull, was questioned by police after an 18-year-old man was found dead at her home on Saturday morning.
Ms Eccles features heavily in the two-part documentary, in which the duchess tries to persuade her, her mother Tonia Sargerson and their extended family, to eat more fruit and vegetables and lead a healthier life. Cameras followed the duchess shopping in the budget supermarket Netto and staying at a bed-and-breakfast close to the Preston Road estate where the family live. The estate, known to some locals as “Beirut”, has high levels of deprivation, teenage pregnancy, crime and unemployment.
Promoting the documentary last month, the duchess said she hoped that she would be able to draw on her own experience of “eating disorders, low self-esteem, family conflict, financial crisis, divorce and bereavement” to help the family. The programme makers drafted in Jean-Christophe Novelli, the award-winning chef, to cook for the family and teach them some healthy recipes.
The duchess, 48, who says that she became friends with Ms Eccles and Mrs Sargerson during the making of the programme, was told of the death yesterday. Her spokesman told The Times: “She has been alerted to this terrible situation and has asked to be kept informed.” ITV executives will discuss the future of the programme this week. It is scheduled for screening in mid-May but a spokesman for the broadcaster said: “We’re aware of the situation and awaiting further developments.”
The young man who died is believed to have been a friend of Ms Eccles and her partner and is understood to have returned to their home in Hull after a night out on Friday. He was found dead in bed on Saturday morning. The ambulance service informed the police that a crew had been called to deal with a suspected heart attack. A spokesman for Humberside police said: “A man and woman were arrested and later released on police bail pending further inquiries.” It is understood that the suspected cause of death was drug abuse and that the body of the dead man showed no sign of injury. A post-mortem examination will be carried out today.
In a recent television interview, the duchess remembered her visit to the estate warmly and said she had had “a really nice time”. She added: “Tonia and Terri — they are all my friends now.” ITV had promoted the programme with the slogan: “Can the Duchess of York tackle obesity in Britain?”
The duchess, an ambassador for WeightWatchers, has spent most of the past decade living in Manhattan, where she has an apartment overlooking Central Park, and has carved out a successful television career. ITV hoped that her involvement in the programme would have made it attractive to international broadcasters.
The network disclosed details of the documentary last month as it disclosed a 35 per cent drop in annual profits and a fall in audience share.
TV reality show to give short, sharp shock to youths tempted by crime
Ever since the "short, sharp shock" was suggested in the 1970s by the former home secretary Willie Whitelaw as the best deterrent to a life of crime, there has been a debate about whether subjecting young men to harsh incarceration has the desired effect and whether judges should make greater use of custody at an early stage. Now the theory is to be tested in the form of a reality television series, to be screened this summer, featuring a former home secretary, reformed criminals and a former prison officer with strong views on the failings of the current system.
The series, Banged Up, comes after the suggestion on Thursday by Glyn Travis, the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, that "prison is no longer a deterrent - it is merely an occupational hazard". The aim of Banged Up, which was commissioned by Channel Five, is to take young men "on the cusp of a life of crime" and subject them to the criminal justice system in all its forms. The former home secretary David Blunkett heads the "parole board" of a "prison" - a former jail in Scarborough - where the young inmates find themselves alongside old lags who give them an impression of what life is really like behind bars.
"The prime task of any criminal justice system is to prevent people from committing a crime in the first place, and then to avoid reoffending," said Blunkett of the aim of the programme. "Getting across a clear message, forewarning young people what prison is like, and encouraging them to take an alternative path in life has to make sense. Therefore, linking preventive work in warning young people with a clear method of getting across to both potential criminals and the public as a whole the reality of prison will make a significant contribution to both education and greater understanding."
Also taking part will be Jim Dawkins, an ex-soldier with the Royal Green Jackets, who worked as a prison officer for seven years at Belmarsh, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs before leaving the service. He wrote graphically about his experiences in his book 'The Loose Screw', in which he lifted the lid on some of the practices of his fellow officers. The book carried a complimentary foreword by Charles Bronson, who has the reputation of being Britain's most violent criminal, but with whom Dawkins established a rapport in prison.
"The problem, as I see it, is that it is quite the opposite to short and sharp these days," is how Dawkins describes the issue of punishment in prison. "The shock is, in fact, meted out as a constant battering of an individual's emotions over many months."
Of Banged Up, he said: "By the end of filming, I was emotionally and physically exhausted but had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was amazed at how well everyone came together to give the kids as real an experience as possible." Ex-prisoners who work with young people to deter them from crime also participate.
A call for systematic innovation within the criminal justice system is made today by the Young Foundation thinktank, which argues that the number of young people sent to prison could be dramatically reduced. A new strategy would "involve the community in taking responsibility for crime and dealing with offenders". The foundation suggests that a body similar to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence but dealing with crime and punishment be set up.
"Building ever more prisons is neither sustainable nor affordable," said Geoff Mulgan, the foundation's director. "Nor is an endless stream of new national legislation. What we need now is much more systematic innovation in alternatives which address the causes of crime - from poor skills to mental health - and bring down the reconviction rates."
He added: "We need to mobilise local communities and families to become a much larger part of the solution."
The series, Banged Up, comes after the suggestion on Thursday by Glyn Travis, the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association, that "prison is no longer a deterrent - it is merely an occupational hazard". The aim of Banged Up, which was commissioned by Channel Five, is to take young men "on the cusp of a life of crime" and subject them to the criminal justice system in all its forms. The former home secretary David Blunkett heads the "parole board" of a "prison" - a former jail in Scarborough - where the young inmates find themselves alongside old lags who give them an impression of what life is really like behind bars.
"The prime task of any criminal justice system is to prevent people from committing a crime in the first place, and then to avoid reoffending," said Blunkett of the aim of the programme. "Getting across a clear message, forewarning young people what prison is like, and encouraging them to take an alternative path in life has to make sense. Therefore, linking preventive work in warning young people with a clear method of getting across to both potential criminals and the public as a whole the reality of prison will make a significant contribution to both education and greater understanding."
Also taking part will be Jim Dawkins, an ex-soldier with the Royal Green Jackets, who worked as a prison officer for seven years at Belmarsh, Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs before leaving the service. He wrote graphically about his experiences in his book 'The Loose Screw', in which he lifted the lid on some of the practices of his fellow officers. The book carried a complimentary foreword by Charles Bronson, who has the reputation of being Britain's most violent criminal, but with whom Dawkins established a rapport in prison.
"The problem, as I see it, is that it is quite the opposite to short and sharp these days," is how Dawkins describes the issue of punishment in prison. "The shock is, in fact, meted out as a constant battering of an individual's emotions over many months."
Of Banged Up, he said: "By the end of filming, I was emotionally and physically exhausted but had thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was amazed at how well everyone came together to give the kids as real an experience as possible." Ex-prisoners who work with young people to deter them from crime also participate.
A call for systematic innovation within the criminal justice system is made today by the Young Foundation thinktank, which argues that the number of young people sent to prison could be dramatically reduced. A new strategy would "involve the community in taking responsibility for crime and dealing with offenders". The foundation suggests that a body similar to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence but dealing with crime and punishment be set up.
"Building ever more prisons is neither sustainable nor affordable," said Geoff Mulgan, the foundation's director. "Nor is an endless stream of new national legislation. What we need now is much more systematic innovation in alternatives which address the causes of crime - from poor skills to mental health - and bring down the reconviction rates."
He added: "We need to mobilise local communities and families to become a much larger part of the solution."
Sunday, 20 April 2008
Aerial view of America
Another month of US TV, another set of wannabe stars as Rock The Cradle and I Know My Child's A Star hog the screens. Luckily each show has a saving grace - and it's nothing to do with singing, reports Jonathan Bernstein
The current jewel in MTV's crown is Rock The Cradle. This co-production with the actual Idol producers, searches for a superstar among the ranks of rock offspring. Brilliant idea. The only thing that could go wrong with such a stellar concept would be if there weren't enough sons and daughters of musicians who wanted to follow in the family footsteps. We know this to not be the case. Even those few of us with minds uncorrupted by celebrity piffle could probably cobble together a list of suitable candidates. Sting's son. Billy Joel's daughter. Courtney Love's kid. Ice-T's lad. Pat Benatar's brat. That's just off the top of my head. Rock The Cradle has none of them.
What it has is people who said "yes". The son of the singer from Twisted Sister. The daughter of a Doobie Brother. Lil B Sure!, the pride and joy of New Jack Swing-era R&B sensation, Al B Sure! MC Hammer's girl. A child who Bobby Brown admits to having fathered. Oh yes and Lucy Walsh, whose old man is Joe Walsh from the Eagles and whose clear and unaffected performances have so far won over the judges and the audience. Which might be because Lucy makes a living as a backing singer, she's been signed to a major label and has released an album. Whereas Lil B Sure!, by his own admission, likes to sleep a lot, the Doobie daughter enjoys a warble in the shower and the only time Bobby Brown's boy gets to spend any time with his old man is if they're both together on a TV show. So, even though every judge - Belinda Carlisle fits perfectly into Paula Abdul's straitjacket - is forced to flatter the competitors with an enthusiastic, "Talent's in your DNA," Rock The Cradle is an unfair comparison between a singer and some people who like to sing.
Luckily, the series has a wild card. Or, to be more accurate, it's got a formerly bulimic, cosmetically mangled card, in the shape of young Chloe Lattanzi, the daughter of Olivia Newton-John and - at first glance, one might assume - Pete Burns. Lucy Walsh may remain in key and possess a serviceable sense of rhythm but Chloe is probably going to emerge from this mess with, if not a record deal, certainly her own reality off-shoot. No matter what song she's called upon to perform, in her own head she's playing the lead in the long-running musical Björk Possessed By Satan. Making the possibility of a Chloe show even more likely is the presence in the audience of the lovely, delusional Olivia Newton-John. Asked to comment on her daughter's latest honking, screechy performance, Olivia whispered, "When she hit that note, I got goosebumps..." Only a mother could say so much with so few words...
Where Rock The Cradle celebrates the non-judgmental love between parent and child, sister station VH1's I Know My Kid's A Star is a stirring advocation of matricide. Granted, there was some reality TV jiggery-pokery at work. When the gaggle of insane, pushy stage moms signed up for the show, they thought they were taking part in something called America's Next Child Star. They assumed it was going to be a competition between their talented tots. They didn't think it was going to be an intervention. They especially didn't think it was going to be an intervention presided by Danny Bonaduce. There's not a moment the red-headed, red-faced, 'roided-out ex-Partridge Family scandal magnet spends on screen when he's not screaming into the mad, stretched faces of the ambitious moms. "Look at me!" he howls, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, "Look at what I've become. You are going to do this to your children." He takes them on a tour of Hollywood disaster spots: "This is where Lindsay Lohan passed out! This is where Britney wigged out! Does that make you think twice about the world you're dragging your kids into?"
Of course, none of them listen to him. They can't hear him because they're too busy screaming at each other and, sadly, their kids. "You're screwing this up for both of us. You're not working hard enough. Focus!" barks more than one mother into the trembling face of her stressed-out child. And just as Rock The Cradle is saved by the peculiar magic of Chloe Lattanzi, so I Know My Kid's A Star has its own special train wreck. When lovely little Hayley Lourdes freezes up during her big song, a stick-thin apparition in leopardskin and Botox staggers into view. It's her mom, Rocky. "What?" bellows Rocky. "Is my tampon hanging out?" Even though the show is supposed to be a talent contest and little Hayley has nothing to offer beyond being decorative, Bonaduce has sent several far more gifted kids (and their idiot parents) packing simply because, without Rocky, there is no series. She's a mood-swinging, mascara-stained embodiment of thwarted dreams who doesn't shrink from picking fights with even the most mild-mannered of the other moms or their kids. But the unexpected and endearing thing about Rocky is that she never takes her insanity out on Hayley. She's only ever encouraging. When all the other pushy moms are guilting their kids with monologues about how much they've sacrificed, the maddest woman in the house turns out to be the best mother.
It's been a banner month for actresses ill-served by movies. Parker Posey, the perennial queen of indie quirk and Judy Greer, every leading lady's sardonic best friend, both turned up in their own vehicles. Posey starred in The Return Of Jezebel James, which unfortunately was on Fox, a network that likes its sitcoms to have laughter tracks. The result was that Posey had to rein in her quirk. Judy Greer, by comparison, shone in the lovely but little-seen Miss Guided, a sweet-natured comedy of embarrassment about a former high school dork who returns to her old seat of learning as a guidance teacher. Her hopes that the popularity and coolness that evaded her as a teen will finally materialise are continually but not maliciously dashed. The appetite of American networks for UK sitcom formats seems almost bottomless. Maybe this is the rare show that could make the reverse journey.
The current jewel in MTV's crown is Rock The Cradle. This co-production with the actual Idol producers, searches for a superstar among the ranks of rock offspring. Brilliant idea. The only thing that could go wrong with such a stellar concept would be if there weren't enough sons and daughters of musicians who wanted to follow in the family footsteps. We know this to not be the case. Even those few of us with minds uncorrupted by celebrity piffle could probably cobble together a list of suitable candidates. Sting's son. Billy Joel's daughter. Courtney Love's kid. Ice-T's lad. Pat Benatar's brat. That's just off the top of my head. Rock The Cradle has none of them.
What it has is people who said "yes". The son of the singer from Twisted Sister. The daughter of a Doobie Brother. Lil B Sure!, the pride and joy of New Jack Swing-era R&B sensation, Al B Sure! MC Hammer's girl. A child who Bobby Brown admits to having fathered. Oh yes and Lucy Walsh, whose old man is Joe Walsh from the Eagles and whose clear and unaffected performances have so far won over the judges and the audience. Which might be because Lucy makes a living as a backing singer, she's been signed to a major label and has released an album. Whereas Lil B Sure!, by his own admission, likes to sleep a lot, the Doobie daughter enjoys a warble in the shower and the only time Bobby Brown's boy gets to spend any time with his old man is if they're both together on a TV show. So, even though every judge - Belinda Carlisle fits perfectly into Paula Abdul's straitjacket - is forced to flatter the competitors with an enthusiastic, "Talent's in your DNA," Rock The Cradle is an unfair comparison between a singer and some people who like to sing.
Luckily, the series has a wild card. Or, to be more accurate, it's got a formerly bulimic, cosmetically mangled card, in the shape of young Chloe Lattanzi, the daughter of Olivia Newton-John and - at first glance, one might assume - Pete Burns. Lucy Walsh may remain in key and possess a serviceable sense of rhythm but Chloe is probably going to emerge from this mess with, if not a record deal, certainly her own reality off-shoot. No matter what song she's called upon to perform, in her own head she's playing the lead in the long-running musical Björk Possessed By Satan. Making the possibility of a Chloe show even more likely is the presence in the audience of the lovely, delusional Olivia Newton-John. Asked to comment on her daughter's latest honking, screechy performance, Olivia whispered, "When she hit that note, I got goosebumps..." Only a mother could say so much with so few words...
Where Rock The Cradle celebrates the non-judgmental love between parent and child, sister station VH1's I Know My Kid's A Star is a stirring advocation of matricide. Granted, there was some reality TV jiggery-pokery at work. When the gaggle of insane, pushy stage moms signed up for the show, they thought they were taking part in something called America's Next Child Star. They assumed it was going to be a competition between their talented tots. They didn't think it was going to be an intervention. They especially didn't think it was going to be an intervention presided by Danny Bonaduce. There's not a moment the red-headed, red-faced, 'roided-out ex-Partridge Family scandal magnet spends on screen when he's not screaming into the mad, stretched faces of the ambitious moms. "Look at me!" he howls, sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally, "Look at what I've become. You are going to do this to your children." He takes them on a tour of Hollywood disaster spots: "This is where Lindsay Lohan passed out! This is where Britney wigged out! Does that make you think twice about the world you're dragging your kids into?"
Of course, none of them listen to him. They can't hear him because they're too busy screaming at each other and, sadly, their kids. "You're screwing this up for both of us. You're not working hard enough. Focus!" barks more than one mother into the trembling face of her stressed-out child. And just as Rock The Cradle is saved by the peculiar magic of Chloe Lattanzi, so I Know My Kid's A Star has its own special train wreck. When lovely little Hayley Lourdes freezes up during her big song, a stick-thin apparition in leopardskin and Botox staggers into view. It's her mom, Rocky. "What?" bellows Rocky. "Is my tampon hanging out?" Even though the show is supposed to be a talent contest and little Hayley has nothing to offer beyond being decorative, Bonaduce has sent several far more gifted kids (and their idiot parents) packing simply because, without Rocky, there is no series. She's a mood-swinging, mascara-stained embodiment of thwarted dreams who doesn't shrink from picking fights with even the most mild-mannered of the other moms or their kids. But the unexpected and endearing thing about Rocky is that she never takes her insanity out on Hayley. She's only ever encouraging. When all the other pushy moms are guilting their kids with monologues about how much they've sacrificed, the maddest woman in the house turns out to be the best mother.
It's been a banner month for actresses ill-served by movies. Parker Posey, the perennial queen of indie quirk and Judy Greer, every leading lady's sardonic best friend, both turned up in their own vehicles. Posey starred in The Return Of Jezebel James, which unfortunately was on Fox, a network that likes its sitcoms to have laughter tracks. The result was that Posey had to rein in her quirk. Judy Greer, by comparison, shone in the lovely but little-seen Miss Guided, a sweet-natured comedy of embarrassment about a former high school dork who returns to her old seat of learning as a guidance teacher. Her hopes that the popularity and coolness that evaded her as a teen will finally materialise are continually but not maliciously dashed. The appetite of American networks for UK sitcom formats seems almost bottomless. Maybe this is the rare show that could make the reverse journey.
Friday, 18 April 2008
The Spanish pop judge who's ruder than Cowell
He has modelled himself on Simon Cowell, becoming a hate figure for fans of the aspiring pop stars on Spain’s version of Fame Academy. But Risto Mejide managed to make even viewers accustomed to his withering comments gasp with his latest tirade against the fresh-faced youngsters who appear on the popular show Operación Triunfo.
Patty, a 26-year-old nurse with a promising voice, was made to choose between attending her grandmother’s funeral and remaining at the talent academy. She chose the former, explaining: “I think it’s the right thing to do.” Mejide did not agree, challenging the remaining contestants to leave if they would not commit themselves to remain at the academy no matter what the circumstances.
“I wonder if there is anyone else who wants to leave the academy, whether anyone has any errands to run?” he said, to boos from the audience, who had seen the contestant break down in tears upon learning of her grandmother’s death. “Perhaps someone has left their car parked outside illegally, or their budgie has died, a dog, their grandparent or whatever?”
The comments caused a great deal of consternation in Spain, where the idea of missing a grandmother’s funeral was seen as particularly shocking. “The management of Telecinco and the contest are under an obligation to fire Risto,” said Periodista Digital, an online magazine, which described the scene as a “macabre humiliation”.
Telecinco sought to distance itself from Mejide’s comments. “We never apply censorship,” it said. “However, that does not mean that we are always in agreement with what is said, and in this case the opinions were Risto’s.”
Risto, as the 34-year-old Mejide is universally known, has refused to speak to the Spanish media about his comments, with his agent saying that he is unreachable on a long trip. But on his personal blog, he refused to retract his comments or apologise. He wrote: “With regards to the girl who quit the show (I’m sorry if I’ve already forgotten her name), I’ll respect her decision but it seems to me that a real artist, someone who wants to dedicate themselves professionally to the music industry, should come on to stage smiling even if her child, father or entire family has died.”
It was not Risto’s only outrage during the show. He told the audience’s favourite that he looked like an inflatable doll on stage, and said to another aspiring starlet: “There is no sound capable of describing your performance tonight. If there is, I assure you it is not a sound that comes out of the mouth.”
Patty, a 26-year-old nurse with a promising voice, was made to choose between attending her grandmother’s funeral and remaining at the talent academy. She chose the former, explaining: “I think it’s the right thing to do.” Mejide did not agree, challenging the remaining contestants to leave if they would not commit themselves to remain at the academy no matter what the circumstances.
“I wonder if there is anyone else who wants to leave the academy, whether anyone has any errands to run?” he said, to boos from the audience, who had seen the contestant break down in tears upon learning of her grandmother’s death. “Perhaps someone has left their car parked outside illegally, or their budgie has died, a dog, their grandparent or whatever?”
The comments caused a great deal of consternation in Spain, where the idea of missing a grandmother’s funeral was seen as particularly shocking. “The management of Telecinco and the contest are under an obligation to fire Risto,” said Periodista Digital, an online magazine, which described the scene as a “macabre humiliation”.
Telecinco sought to distance itself from Mejide’s comments. “We never apply censorship,” it said. “However, that does not mean that we are always in agreement with what is said, and in this case the opinions were Risto’s.”
Risto, as the 34-year-old Mejide is universally known, has refused to speak to the Spanish media about his comments, with his agent saying that he is unreachable on a long trip. But on his personal blog, he refused to retract his comments or apologise. He wrote: “With regards to the girl who quit the show (I’m sorry if I’ve already forgotten her name), I’ll respect her decision but it seems to me that a real artist, someone who wants to dedicate themselves professionally to the music industry, should come on to stage smiling even if her child, father or entire family has died.”
It was not Risto’s only outrage during the show. He told the audience’s favourite that he looked like an inflatable doll on stage, and said to another aspiring starlet: “There is no sound capable of describing your performance tonight. If there is, I assure you it is not a sound that comes out of the mouth.”
Tuesday, 15 April 2008
What else is there for Deion Sanders to do?
What Else Is There for Deion Sanders to Do? Reality TV, of course. The former football and baseball player Deion Sanders is blessed with a charm that leaks through the armour of his arrogance, observes Ginia Bellafante. Back in the early 1990s, when he was proving himself one of the greatest athletes in living memory, playing cornerback for the Atlanta Falcons and outfield for the Braves, Mr. Sanders responded to the critical comments of the baseball announcer Tim McCarver by dousing him with ice water. Still, the athlete’s status as a dazzler, a fun lover, a guy with whom you’d love to share a Coors Light or six, suffered no lasting fracture.
When the cameras show up, Mr. Sanders knows how to beguile. Seeing him on his new reality series, Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love, (which begins Tuesday on the Oxygen channel), travelling through his mansion on a motorized scooter, like an 82-year-old navigating O’Hare, seems only to confirm his particularly entitled brand of genius.
Prime Time Love is the latest in a long list of reality shows that tries to tap into the wifely grievances of women across the class spectrum who can’t stop shaking their heads in disbelief at their husbands’ domestic inadequacies. It is a short distance from an Erma Bombeck column to something like Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood, which showcases the rapper’s suburban lollygagging and spousal disobedience.
Living on a hundred plus acres in the suitably named Prosper, Tex., Mr. Sanders and his wife, Pilar, a former model-actress, argue about chores and child rearing. In him you are meant to see your own lovable lug, but the conceit is a total canard. While your husband may not be able to tell the difference between a box of Cascade and a box of cake flour, he also hasn’t put you up in a 40,000-square-foot house with a video arcade and a marital bed that looks like a large pie.
What makes Prime Time Love such a hoot isn’t merely the image of a grown man too lazy to walk to the kitchen, but also the even more preposterous idea that someone married to the one person ever to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series would expect an equitable division of household labour.
Mr. Sanders has five children — Deion Jr., Deiondra, Shilo, Shedeur and Shelomi — and the series puts his parental ineptitude on full display. When the younger ones require a primer on reproduction, for instance, Mr. Sanders plops them in front of the TV to watch geezer sex educator Sue Johanson (who has her own show on Oxygen) on the grounds that if he were teaching them about basketball he’d call Michael Jordan, and if he’s going to talk about sex he is going to go to the best. This turns out to be not half as funny as watching Mr. Sanders read to his children from “Getting Smart About Your Private Parts” or hearing him explain that Jack and Jill did not go up a hill to fetch a pail of water. You almost forget that he is leveraging his sons’ future sexual sanity in order to forge his persona as a hero whose intuitive gifts should excuse his buffoonery.
To be on board with Prime Time Love, you’ve got to excuse a lot, as the show rests on the highly implausible premise that the Sanderses don’t employ help. If true, this would be more impressive than Mr. Sanders’s N.F.L. record for touchdown returns. Some years ago, when he was sued by a car repair shop for failing to pay a bill in full, housekeepers who blocked his car from being towed were cited in the news coverage. Presumably these loyal housekeepers haven’t been expunged.
Absent in the Sanders house, though, is a certain kind of common sense. No one has ever seemed to let Mrs. Sanders know that the price of marriage to a rich and successful man is a recalibration of the hope that the person you’re living with will ever make his own sandwich. Every time she is on her husband about something, you think Mr. Sanders is going to respond by lining up his pay stubs. That he can turn his princely indifference to the mundane into something like an endearing eccentricity proves that he is in possession of certain talents no sports statistician could quantify.
Prime Time Love is on Oxygen, Tuesday night at 10:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.
When the cameras show up, Mr. Sanders knows how to beguile. Seeing him on his new reality series, Deion & Pilar: Prime Time Love, (which begins Tuesday on the Oxygen channel), travelling through his mansion on a motorized scooter, like an 82-year-old navigating O’Hare, seems only to confirm his particularly entitled brand of genius.
Prime Time Love is the latest in a long list of reality shows that tries to tap into the wifely grievances of women across the class spectrum who can’t stop shaking their heads in disbelief at their husbands’ domestic inadequacies. It is a short distance from an Erma Bombeck column to something like Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood, which showcases the rapper’s suburban lollygagging and spousal disobedience.
Living on a hundred plus acres in the suitably named Prosper, Tex., Mr. Sanders and his wife, Pilar, a former model-actress, argue about chores and child rearing. In him you are meant to see your own lovable lug, but the conceit is a total canard. While your husband may not be able to tell the difference between a box of Cascade and a box of cake flour, he also hasn’t put you up in a 40,000-square-foot house with a video arcade and a marital bed that looks like a large pie.
What makes Prime Time Love such a hoot isn’t merely the image of a grown man too lazy to walk to the kitchen, but also the even more preposterous idea that someone married to the one person ever to play in both the Super Bowl and the World Series would expect an equitable division of household labour.
Mr. Sanders has five children — Deion Jr., Deiondra, Shilo, Shedeur and Shelomi — and the series puts his parental ineptitude on full display. When the younger ones require a primer on reproduction, for instance, Mr. Sanders plops them in front of the TV to watch geezer sex educator Sue Johanson (who has her own show on Oxygen) on the grounds that if he were teaching them about basketball he’d call Michael Jordan, and if he’s going to talk about sex he is going to go to the best. This turns out to be not half as funny as watching Mr. Sanders read to his children from “Getting Smart About Your Private Parts” or hearing him explain that Jack and Jill did not go up a hill to fetch a pail of water. You almost forget that he is leveraging his sons’ future sexual sanity in order to forge his persona as a hero whose intuitive gifts should excuse his buffoonery.
To be on board with Prime Time Love, you’ve got to excuse a lot, as the show rests on the highly implausible premise that the Sanderses don’t employ help. If true, this would be more impressive than Mr. Sanders’s N.F.L. record for touchdown returns. Some years ago, when he was sued by a car repair shop for failing to pay a bill in full, housekeepers who blocked his car from being towed were cited in the news coverage. Presumably these loyal housekeepers haven’t been expunged.
Absent in the Sanders house, though, is a certain kind of common sense. No one has ever seemed to let Mrs. Sanders know that the price of marriage to a rich and successful man is a recalibration of the hope that the person you’re living with will ever make his own sandwich. Every time she is on her husband about something, you think Mr. Sanders is going to respond by lining up his pay stubs. That he can turn his princely indifference to the mundane into something like an endearing eccentricity proves that he is in possession of certain talents no sports statistician could quantify.
Prime Time Love is on Oxygen, Tuesday night at 10:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 9:30, Central time.
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