Day 2356: Muppet Show

Thursday:


As Mr Frown's search for some idiot to be his Apprentice draws to a close, the six remaining candidates appeared on Questionable Time to try and explain why anyone should care which of them wins.

Since Mr Balloon has described them as MUPPETS (and to be fair, Lord Blairimort was RIGHT when he said that's a BIT RICH coming from Mr Balloon!) I thought I would try and identify WHICH Muppet was WHICH!


Mr Benny Hill: people have said that he is like Sam the All-American Eagle – austere, aloof, obsessional. This is nonsense; he is none of those things. I watched him bobble backwards and forwards and from side to side, flapping his head and his hands and doing a poor-man's impression of his DAD. Clearly his main characteristics are (a) he does not realise everyone thinks he's a joke (b) he does not realise that he is an ALIEN. Muppet rating: GONZO THE GREAT.

Ms Hazel Bleary: wide-eyed and as insanely chirpy as you can get without having a CUCKOO actually pop out of your forehead, sitting next to GONZO only reinforced the OBVIOUS stereotype. Quite how anyone can believe that what the public want after ten years of the Labour is the same but MORE SO completely eludes me, but she certainly looks keen to put Mr Benny in a spangley leotard and launch him from a cannon pointed at the audience. Muppet rating: ESMERALDA the CHICKEN.

Mr I'm Sorry I've Forgotten Who You Are [R: John Cruddas] No, it's gone again: probably ought to be one of those two in the Electric Mayhem Orchestra that no one remembers, not Dr Teeth, Sax-man Zoot or Animal, the other two. Having said that, neither lead-guitar Janice nor bassist Floyd really has that air of self-satisfied spiv about them. Seems to be trying to sell under-the-counter Old Labour policies. Muppet rating: RIZO the RAT.

Mr Alan Johnson: indulgent smile, affable nature, gives the impression that he knows that the unions will stitch it up for him and can afford to look generous. Muppet rating: Frank Sinatra looky-likey JOHNNY FIAMA (NOT an anagram of Mafia, hoooo no).

Mr Peter Vain: self-styled prima-donna, making a living off the achievements of others, who no one quite dares to tell just how ridiculous they really are. Too much make-up. Muppet rating: obviously MISS PIGGY.

Ms Harriet Harpic: clean round the bend. She places all her emphasis on being best chums with Mr Frown. But not his patsy. And a woman. But not his patsy. And she comes from the South which will compliment the fact that he comes from the north.[*] Seems too much to concentrate on qualifications based on who she IS, rather than what she can DO. Muppet rating: incompetent gopher but uncle owns the theatre, SCOOTER.

[*] actually, Ms Harpic seems to be saying that Mr Frown's best Apprentice would be EVIL KATIE from "The Apprentice". Which is handy, because she happens to be AVAILABLE.


Having said all that though, actually watching the show I began to realise that for all of their differences they actually all sound the same:

• No return to Old Labour

• Time to move on from Iraq

• We must be a listening government (shut up, WE're talking!)

• Ooh, I can't think of ANY of our legislation that we should repeal

• Haven't we done WELL.

By the end of the show, I realised that in fact none of them HAVE as much individual personality as ANY of the Muppets above. So in fact they are all THE AMAZING MUSICAL MUPPAPHONES, identical coloured gonks who squeak when clubbed.

Which kind of makes Mr Frown MARVIN SUGGS, the man with the mallet. And that fits.

PS:

Mr Balloon is a bit of a MUPPET himself of course. Let me see – talks with funny accent, flaps hands about, flails around losing control of his kitchen/cabinet, known to holiday in Norway, never produces an actual result… Muppet rating: clearly he's the SWEDISH CHEF!

Day 2266: Power Crazed Alien Lizards, the Comedy Years

Friday:


Do you remember fluffy Mr Sir Alan Sugar and his POWER CRAZED ALIEN LIZARD Apprentices, from last year?

Well, they're back! And this time the space lizards are disguised as CELEBRITIES.

It was all for COMIC RELIEF, and they raised loads of money for Charity, which was good.

But one of the LIZARD CELEBRITIES had ESCAPED over to BBC2: it was my old friend MR FRANK LUNTZ, doing his own COMIC TURN for the Newsnight Show.

Hoping backwards and forwards between channels it was difficult to tell where the comedy began and where the charity telethon ended.

As I am sure you know, Mr Frank's usual shtick is like a magic show – he offers the audience a deck of knaves and then proves that Mr Balloon is the Queen of Hearts.

[R: king, surely?]

It did not quite work out so well for him this time – some people have suggested that this is because the Newsnight Show insisted on picking the clips that he used, some because it was a smaller group and therefore harder to find either the right sound bites or the right group think.

These are VERY MEAN things to say about poor Mr Frank. It is hardly HIS FAULT that Mr Balloon has not been as shiny as billed in, er, that piece that Mr Frank did back at the Conservatory leadership election.

Anyway, he did his best for his favourite toffee nose chum, and he gives it an EVEN BETTER spin here for the Grauniad.

The huge POP ART posters of the leaders were as HILARIOUSLY SUBTLE as ever: Lord Blairimort in the background all in BLUE (old, cold, Conservatory); Mr Balloon on a nice Liberal orange (fresh, new, Liberal); Sir Mr the Merciless on washed out red (old again, blood, pale and lifeless, and linked to the Labour); and Mr Frown foregrounded in poison green (not the GOOD green of life and vibrancy, the NASTY green of jealousy, envy, bitterness and monsters).

I am sure that Mr Frank must have seen them and GROANED that the designer had got all the colours the WRONG WAY AROUND! After all, if you are going to use colours for the Party Leaders, you surely must mean to use the right party colours. Otherwise people might get MIXED MESSAGES and you could be INFLUENCING your sample.

It is interesting too what a difference the editing can make.

On the telly, Sir Mr the Merciless actually got some rather GOOD scores on Mr Frank's funny dial-o-matic machines. (Watching the people using them, it did not seem to take much of a twist to turn up to 100. Do you think that some NUANCE might be lost if you're only really measuring people in states of good bad or indifferent?)

Anyway, Sir Mr the Merciless seemed to be popping up into the eighties from the clip that appeared. Mr Frank cannot have noticed that because he did not comment on it – and he got very excited when Mr Balloon's scores hit a high of a bit above fifty.

In the paper, Mr Frank reduces the remarks about Sir M to '…"yawn", "bland" and "old fart"…'

The comments which the Newsnight Show chose to pick up were those too, but also the youngest member of the panel saying both "I can't believe how ageist you all are" and "Ming is the only one who is trying to do something for young people, fighting tuition fees".

The Newsnight Show showed that Sir Mr the Merciless DOES get caricatured… but also that he can still reach out to people; the newspaper piece does not see beyond the caricature.

Mr Frank picks up on the negative reaction people had to Mr Balloon's webcameron and his photo-ops and stunts. Too much Blair, says the panel, and Mr Frank has to agree. Actually, the panel went into rather more detail about Mr Balloon's shortcomings. "All Spin and NO Substance." Do not say that we haven’t been warning you about this, Mr Balloon. Even YOU would have to admit you are in QUITE A LOT of trouble when Mr Frank is saying it's time to wheel out some policies, I think!

Mind you, when he asserts that "Balloon's policy pronouncements continue to prove that he is not a return to the "old Tories" of the 1980s" I am afraid that Mr Frank is kidding himself.

Sorry Mr Frank but (a) WHAT policy pronouncements? Vague aspirations to cut flying or help families – these are not policies. They are barely even directions of travel!

And (b) flying tax reminded people of stealth taxes; families reminded people of "back to basics". Oops, looks like a return not to the heyday 1980s but to the sleazy, incompetent 1990s.

The last time Mr Frank was on the telly, he was saying how much BETTER the Labour were going to do once Mr Dr Reid was installed in number ten.

"We thankses you, Mr Frank my precious," as the Home Secretary would put it.

Unfortunately, the panel tonight seemed not to have got the memo and were, on the whole, rather warmer towards Mr Frown than Mr Frank would have liked. I think that there was a certain amount of willingness to give him the benefit of the doubt after all his not messing the economy up for the last ten years.

The biggest laugh of the night was, of course, the hilarious drop in all the dials at the moment the Mr Frown clip cut away to Lord Blairimort feigning applause from the sidelines.

So, no winners but one big fat loser. No, not Mr Frank – Lord Blairimort, obviously!


Meanwhile back in the TORCHWOOD TOWER, Mr Sir Alan had hired a CIRCUS for his CLOWNS to perform in. All right, it was a fairground.

He divided his celebrity lizards into two sides. There was a team of GIRLS lead by Trinnie who was a scary robot lady in Doctor Who and Maureen Lipman who was a scary television lady in Doctor Who. And a team of BOYS led by Alistair Henchman and Piers Moron who are scary enough in REAL LIFE.

Trinnie decided that the way to win was to call up all of her INSANELY RICH friends and sting them for thousands (one ticket sold for a hundred and fifty GRAND!). Mr Moron decided that the way to win was to CHEAT.

The incident of the kidnapped chef was NOT a case that needed Sherlock Holmes to solve. In fact Trinnie solved it herself by going downstairs to the boys room and saying "oi, that's my chef!"

In fact, Trinnie lost points with Daddy Alex by threatening the poor chef's job – it was hardly his fault that Mr Moron had locked him in the lavatory, and threatening him that way was just WRONG!

Even so, Mr Moron and Mr Henchman should not have been manhandling her like that, and she was very upset afterwards. They were just like BULLIES in a playground… and based on this I worry that "The Thick of It" may actually be a DOCUMENTARY and not a COMEDY after all!

While Mr Moron was MESSING ABOUT though – promising the Earth and delivering a few grains of dust from the asteroid field – Mr Henchman got down to some serious work.

An early example of Mr Henchman's terrifying power came with the negotiations for who would have which rides and stalls. When the girls revealed that they wanted the dodgems (which the boys wanted too) Mr Henchman said that they could only have the dodgems if the boys got the next THREE picks, and steadfastly refused to reveal any hint of what they would pick.

This gives a rather scary insight into the inner workings of the government where even knowing what you are talking about is a card to be kept secret until you are ready to play it!

Of course, the girls were foolish enough to agree – so the boys gave up one of the things they wanted and came away with all of the other three.

The problem for the boys, though, was that their leaders were just too used to commanding that a thing be done and expecting it be done. They had lost the knack of actually DOING. The key example was Mr Henchman's inability to refill a stapler. So he gave it to Mr Moron to do. Who BROKE the stapler.

And IRONICALLY for men who call themselves movers and shakers – the man behind Lord Blairimort and the man in the Mirror – they just did not think big enough, did not see the big picture.

They got caught up in putting on the best stalls at the fairground, whereas the girls had twigged that the winners would be the ones who brought in the most money. So the girls just shamelessly asked for WHOPPING GREAT DONATIONS. It did not matter that the boys' stalls were all packed out on the night while the girls rides lay empty, nor that the boys sold out of food before the girls – the girls had got tens of thousands of pounds for their tickets and where the boys sold food at a decent mark up, the girls sold it at a totally INDECENT one!

The boys brought in a little under £300,000; the girls rather a lot over £700,000!

Though as Trinnie put it – and won some points back with Daddy Alex for doing so – between them they raised over a million! And then that was doubled on Comic Relief night too!

So kudos to the girls, but who would get fired? They kept us on tenterhooks as log as they could – which was a good thing because we could watch Mr Frank's close up magic on BBC2 while we waited!

It came down to three: Daddy Baker had been responsible for not charging rip-off prices for the food, Mr Henchman had been the team leader, and Mr Moron just because.

I am sorry to say, that Daddy cheered when it was Mr Moron who got it.

"You're fired!" said Mr Sir Alan.

"Again," said Mr Henchman quietly. He'd been waiting for that moment. You could tell.

Sadly, Mr Moron learned nothing from his experience, still blaming spin as he was driven away to the car crusher in Mr Goldfinger's spare car…

Day 1954: The Apprentice: You're Hired!

Wednesday

Here is a terrible thing to confess: my Daddies are becoming addicted to REALITY TV!

It is all the fault of DOCTOR WHO.

On Saturday nights they turn on the telly EARLY so that they do not miss the beginning of the new show, so the evening starts at 6pm and that means it starts with Graham Norton's DANCE FEVER. Daddy Richard watches this and comments on the ESPECIALLY HORRID dresses and on the EXCITING moves and on which of the JUDGES fancies which of the CONTESTANTS.

Hmm, I wonder if this says something about Daddy Richard?

Anyway, after Graham Norton is Doctor Who (so long as Graham remembers to shut up!) and after that is Doctor Who Confidential on BBC3.

BUT after that is THE APPRENTICE – yes, it's the show with the Power Crazed Alien Lizards trying to win the trust, confidence, and most importantly money of fluffy Mr Sir Alan Sugar.


Actually, by this week, Mr Sir Alan seemed to have EATEN all but two of the Power Crazed Alien Lizards for breakfast, so maybe he is not QUITE as fluffy as I had taken him for.

Sad to say, however, my Daddies have started to find the desperate antics of this sorry bunch of big business wannabes to be DISTURBINGLY COMPELLING. I suspect that this is down to an IGNOBLE desire to see ARCH-LIZARD Syed get his much deserved comeuppance.

As the show has gone on and Syed has managed to kybosh each and every task in turn, we have seen Mr Sir Alan look at him almost fondly, even as he bawls him out and tries to shut him up. I suspect that Mr Sir Alan was seeing RATHER TOO MUCH of HIMSELF in Syed's brand of cheeky I'm-going-to-win-by-hook-or-by-crook ATTITUDE. Plus the fact that the OTHER Power Crazed Alien Lizards were actually SOMEHOW more incompetent than Syed was!

Still, in the end Syed's decision to try and run the entire WINTER OLYMPICS on the deck of a boat was what did him in. Also, getting caught on camera thinking about cheating on the RAFFLE… and then FIBBING about it to Mr Sir Alan's face! That was when Ruth "the" Badger DROPPED HIM IN IT good and proper.

The FUNNY thing was that as the end got nearer, I started to feel SORRY for the poor Power Crazed Alien Lizards as one by one they were gobbled up by Mr Sir Alan. Who could have been more annoying that total BLUFF-MEISTER Paul Tulip, and yet when Mr Sir Alan's masters of the inquisition were tearing his CV to pieces and making him eat it, I didn't half feel sad for the silly sausage. He had done very well at all of the tasks, even if he would have promised you the sun would rise in the West.

However, I do not think that Mr Sir Alan was at all impressed with Paul's made up CV and he was quickly dispatched. Ansel got a much nicer treatment by Mr Sir Alan, probably because he was actually a bit NICE in spite of the appearance of his strangely bling glasses.

That left RUTH, who Mr Charlie Brooker of the GUIDE in the GRAUNIAD described as a CAREER MINDED-MINOTAUR. In a good way. Even though she was the SCARIEST THING I have EVER SEEN – even scarier than Lord Blairimort's stormtroopers – I also started to feel that someone who put so very much effort into coming first in every single aspect of life deserves to win SOMETHING. Even if it is only a day off!

And Michelle, who has spent most of the Apprentice saying RUDE things and looking very much like she would rather be Apprentice to the Battle Queen of the S'rax

but, ACTUALLY, under her Alien Lizard exterior it was starting to turn out that she MIGHT in fact be SOFT AND CUDDLY underneath, having WORKED very hard for all of her life in order to look after the rest of her family because her older sister had died. Also, sometime she remembered to SMILE and this made her look MUCH MORE HUMAN!

This week though it was the FINAL! And it turned out that Mr Sir Alan had not been eating the Power Crazed Alien Lizards after all. Or at least not all of them – he had saved some of the least appetising ones for later and so they were able to come back and try to totally mess up Ruth and Michelle's chances of WINNING.

Mr Sir Alan wanted the girls to organise him TWO parties. Now, I may like Mr Sir Alan's CAR very much indeed, but wanting TWO parties at once is a BIT GREEDY!

Michelle made the very BRAVE choice ("brave" meaning "suicidally insane") to pick Syed and Paul and Sharon even though all of them HATED each other and all of them ESPECIALLY HATED Michelle.

On the other hand Ruth "the" Badger had made the BRAVE choice ("brave" meaning "suicidally insane") to organise a party that Mr Sir Alan thought stank like last weeks pants!

So they were about even on that score!

Once again, Syed was the VERY BEST at totally messing up, by managing to sell almost NO tickets for Michelle's party and having a BIG ARGUMENT with everyone else, out in the STREET. He said he was [holds fluffy paws very close together] this close to being REALLY HORRID! I am glad that they turned off the cameras at that point. Or maybe Michelle just DISINTEGRATED him with her LASER BEAM EYES.

Ruth meanwhile ADAPTED her Murder Mystery evening idea to be more like ANYTHING Mr Sir Alan had mentioned by making it a Murder Mystery in COLOURFUL and/or VICTORIAN costume. With CAN-CAN dancers.

I wonder whodunit?

Anyway, just like in the GENERATION GAME, Mr Sir Alan comes back at the end to hand out the scores.

Ruth had sold more tickets because she had thought to call up all of the people from the rest of the series and had not had Syed to spoil it for her. But Michelle had had a better party because she had done what Mr Sir Alan had asked and also because she had picked Sharon who organises parties as her job so was GOOD at it. And – to be fair – because when she had seen how Syed was MESSING her THINGS UP she had disintegrated him!

So Mr Sir Alan gave Ruth 9 out of 10 for being a jolly good Power Crazed Alien Lizard, but gave Michelle 11 out of 10 because he's a roughty tufty businessman and what good did MATHS ever do anyone anyway?

I think Mr Sir Alan chose Michelle because he thought that she had worked her way up from the bottom just like he had. And because in the end he admired her PLUCK in picking Syed and then he admired the POPPING sound Syed made when she disintegrated him!

And so Michelle won!

I wonder what my Daddies will find to do between Doctor Who confidential and the who-got-voted-off-Strictly-Graham-Norton bit now?

Day 1951: Booms and BAFTAs

Sunday

Tonight on the telly we watched KRAKATOA on the BBC.

This was the story of the famous EXPLOSION of the island volcano and how some lucky people SURVIVED to write about it.

It was a VERY SAD story though as lots and lots more people didn't survive but were KILLED, either by being DROWNED by the tidal waves or by being SOUTHERN FRIED by great galloping clouds of super-hot ash and pumice. Ew!

The story was based on the actual account written by a Dutch scientist, Rogier Verbeek, whose book about it is the basis of what we know about volcanoes nowadays. Because it is his personal account, it seemed to me that it concentrated a BIT MUCH on the Dutch people and did not mention very many of the INDONESIAN people, of whom rather more got exploded!

Also, there were no signs of Dr Who who is supposed to be there at least twice: Christopher Eccythump poses for a local to sketch him and one of the early ones (Mr Billy or Mr Pat) was there as Mr Jon Twerpee remembers the sound it makes when he is at the "Inferno".

Mind you, on Sunday they said it was loud enough to be heard in AUSTRALIA so maybe Mr Billy was catching some surf!



Perhaps Dr Who was not there because he was at the BAFTAs instead. These are an award ceremony where they give prizes for the best shows on television, a bit like the Oscars but with a nice gold face on a stick instead of a silly little man.

They gave prizes to lots of people, including friendly fluffy person Mr Sir Alan Sugar for putting up with POWER CRAZED ALIEN LIZARDS – more about them after Wednesday! – and Miss Anna Maxwell Martin for being FABULOUS as the lady hero in BLEAK HOUSE even if my Daddies thought that Miss Gillian Anderson was EVEN MORE FABULOUS!

But the BIGGEST winner was DOCTOR WHO with THREE prizes: it was given BEST DRAMA and the public also voted it BEST PROGRAMME and then Dr Who HIMSELF gave a very special DENNIS POTTER prize for LOVELY WRITING to Mr Russell T Davies for all of the wonderful things he has written and we saw him give his boyfriend, Mrs T Davies, a BIG KISS.

Hooray!

Day 1886: The Apprentice

Thursday:


Speaking of Daleks, last night Daddy Richard wanted to watch THE APPRENTICE on the BBC.

This is a game show where POWER CRAZED ALIEN LIZARDS try to convince a fluffy person called Sir Alan Sugar to give them a job.

"It's like Big Brother with live ammo," says Daddy Richard.

Actually, Mr Sir Alan is a bit too CRABBY to be fluffy really – like Daddy Richard when he hears Mr Balloon on the Radio but ALL THE TIME! On the other hand, he DOES get to drive around in a big Rolls Royce (even if Daddy Richard says that that looks like a Dalek too!) It has the registration number "AMS", which clearly stands for Mr Sir Alan, but they got the letters in the wrong order. I do that sometimes, so it is very understandable, and number plates probably do not have spell checker to help them either.

Last night, Mr Sir Alan asked the ALIEN LIZARDS to try and make a calendar to sell that would raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The boys' team decided to take pictures of cute babies (YUCK!) but the girls' team decided to take pictures of kittens (DOUBLE YUCK WITH KETCHUP!).

"What have Kittens got to do with Great Ormond Street?" demands Daddy Alex.

Twenty minutes later: "What have Kittens got to do with Great Ormond Street?" says Mr Television Calendar Man. HAH! My Daddy got there first!

"Shut up and obey my superior alien lizard commands!" says the girls' leader.

Later, Mr Sir Alan says that Mr Calendar Man bought the Kitten calendar out of sympathy. I think Mr Sir Alan is WRONG. I think the girls used their alien lizard MIND PROBE on the calendar man.

Meanwhile the boys have forgotten to decide what price they want to sell their calendar for. No wonder the alien lizards have not taken over the world, they don't seem very bright AT ALL.

In the end, Mr Sir Alan fired the girl leader… but then he let her go and she escaped to her spaceship behind the moon!

Daddy Alex recons that he could do LOADS better at this, but I do NOT agree. Daddy Alex is not nearly EVIL enough to be a power crazed alien lizard. In fact, Daddy Alex is not evil AT ALL. So he would be no good at THE APPRENTICE.

I think it was better when Mickey Mouse made all the brooms. Maybe Mr Sir Alan does not want an apprentice like that, but in that case he needs to find some new ALIEN LIZARDS, I think.