Sweet Nothings

I really need to be more proactive in my blogging. I always try to watch University Challenge and was transfixed by Gail Trimble (above) from the first show she appeared on. Now of course she has at least temporarily been elevated to the position of celebrity, especially after her almost hustler-like performance in Monday’s final in which she only managed one (incorrect) answer in 20 minutes, but then proceeded to correctly buzz in on what seemed like 20 starter questions in a row to steer her Corpus Christi, Oxford team to victory. If I’d have written about her back when I first saw her (and if this blog had a readership, obviously), I might have actually been at the forefront of the debate rather than flailing around in its wake. Hey ho. The reactions to Ms Trimble have been decidedly mixed. For all the deserved praise she’s received in some quarters for her quite incredible knowledge and powers of recall, there has also been some pretty vicious sniping at her perceived aloofness and...

Back in the last millennium, there were comparitively few celebrities. A clear dividing line existed between famous people who did proper jobs that happened to put them in the public eye - be they sportsmen, actors, TV and radio presenters, whatever - and the general public. People who made a living out of being famous were either born rich or had accomplished something to earn their place in the spotlight. Now fast forward to Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, which seems to have become an exercise in seeing how many micro-“celebrities” can be pointlessly shoehorned into one hour of programming. In the midst of this maelstrom, Jade Goody is dying. In her own ordinary way, Jade has led an extraordinary life. After being thrust into the limelight as a naive teenager during her time in the Big Brother house, it seems like her entire existence has been documented on our screens and on the magazine racks ever since. Indeed, her return to the BB house, this time on the Celebrity edition...

They're currently repeating Early Doors on BBC4, Tuesday nights at 9:30pm, just before Mad Men, in fact. You'd be forgiven for not knowing the first thing about Early Doors , because unlike Mad Men it's a series that existed almost completely without hype. Originally, 'Doors (as nobody calls it) was set to be Craig Cash and Caroline Aherne's follow-up to the multi-award-winning, insanely popular Royle Family , with the writing duo playing the landlord and landlady of a northern watering hole. That idea was scuppered when Aherne's well-documented "issues" got the better of her, and she buggered off to Australia and wrote a near-identical Aussie version of the Royles while she was there. Undeterred, Cash drafted in Phil Mealey as his new partner and carried on writing the new show, which can fairly be described as the Royle Family in a pub. Perhaps BBC bigwigs perceived the show to be too derivative and lacking in star power after Aherne's departure,...

I know I use the Daily Mail as a touchstone for a lot of my rage and anger, but the fact remains that it's a nasty, bitter and reactionary rag that pines for an imagined lost golden age in which everybody was nice to each other, and had white faces, and nothing bad ever happened. As I went for a walk through the park and up to Alexandra Palace today the thought struck me that Mail readers must fucking love snow. Just think about it: hundreds of people out walking and playing in the deep white powdery stuff, experiencing a kind of shared cameraderie that was otherwise lost the day National Service ended. All those kids who would normally be out menacing right-thinking folk and being up to no good, now channelling their energies into building whacking great snowmen, trading in their guns for snowballs and hotwired cars for sledges. And those who don't have sledges improvise, making do with plastic bags and bits of cardboard - brilliantly, I even saw someone tackling the imprompt...