Guardian 1 Times 0

I don’t know why it took me so long to get into Charlie Brooker. I’ve long read his Guardian column Screen Burn, loads of my friends are big fans and I’ve been on constant look-out for another journalist to “hero worship” (as Tom so churlishly puts it).

Well now, unlike Maggie, I have turned. Times columnist India Knight no longer resides in my handy firefox bookmark bar, she has been replaced. By Brooker.

See, India used to be pretty amusing. She wrote a brilliant book – My Life on a Plate – 8 years ago, and since then I’ve read her column, first in Ma and Pa’s Sunday Times and latterly online, but she seems to be getting quite unpleasant in her old age. It has been a gradual decline but now her articles are unnaccepting and cynical. They’re about schools, or the demise of the family, or her scorn about Hilary Clinton crying. And worst of all they aren’t funny.

It’s not just because I got a free mug with it today, but I really bloody love the Guardian. It doesn’t deride, it’s not vitriolic and it’s the polar opposite of The Mail, which is my main requirement in a paper.

So India is out, and Brooker’s self-depricating, bad-tempered satire is in. I can’t see myself ever losing faith in Caitlin Moran, but I live in hope that she will defect to the good ol’ Guardian.

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UPDATE 13/02

Comments below made me realise I should probably mention Nathan Barley, Brooker’s hilarious TV series about the rise of the idiots starring Julian Barratt of Mighty Boosh fame also featuring Noel Fielding and that guy out of the IT Crowd whose name no-one can pronounce. Also BBC4’s Screen Wipe which Brooker presented. Both are available on youtube in their entirities.

Nathan Barley really deserves a post of its own. Cos it’s bloody brilliant.

The Daily Mail: one step too far

I do my best not to read the Daily Mail for one very good reason: I like to pretend to myself the world is a nice place, and its terrifying outpourings of bigotry make that quite tricky.

Last week the lower-case-c conservatives turned their malignant attentions to Russell Brand. Now, vitriolic racism and being the embodiment of all that is wrong with society I can handle, but attacking a comedian I like? That I will not stand for…

On his BBC Radio 2 podcast (which anyone with the faintest whiff of a sense of humour should listen to every week) Russell mentioned a Mail article about his autobiography. It carpet bombed bile and criticism over the left, Russell, his fans, the Guardian, the BBC, the other tabloids, cat lovers and lonely people. Good going, even for the Mail.

Article author Alison Boshoff apparently thinks someone who had a Thai prostitute bought for him by his father should keep schtum about it. She also took exception to Russ having watched his father’s porn when he was at primary school. So a boy had a premature sexual awakening thanks to a negligent parent. How it’s conceivable, even in the most closed and hateful of minds, that it could be the child’s fault I don’t know. As for keeping quiet, it’s a mystery to me what that would achieve.

Boshoff writes disapprovingly: “Auntie is keeping faith with him, no matter how distasteful the skeletons in his closet are.” I don’t know why I’m surprised at this attitude. It won’t come as a shock to anyone that the Daily Mail is of the ‘lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key’ school of rehabilitation, but naively, I didn’t think it would apply to ex-addict, promiscuous TV presenters who’ve never claimed to be anything but.

More worrying than The Mail’s lack of compassion is its attempt to set itself apart from the other tabloids. In this article it calls The Sun “a downmarket red-top newspaper”. Thus it allows its readers to think themselves ‘upmarket’ and tells them they’re different to the ‘yobs’ who read The Sun or The Mirror. They probably are different: they’re probably wearing suits and they probably have more abhorrent views.

No-one would ever think “I’m a Sun reader. I know about the world.” The Sun is not for people who take politics seriously. The Mail, in styling itself as a paper that does just that is far more dangerous.

One is the loneliest number…

Like many people I don’t like being left alone with my own thoughts. Unlike everyone else with this trait my thoughts are usually quite fleeting and rarely serious. It’s not that I wish to avoid dark, reflective moments, I can’t remember the last time I had one of those. No, the issue is that I am a social creature desperate to share moments of excitement and exasperation (usually brought on by some brush with popular culture) with a fellow human being.

Due to a distinct lack of funding tonight was one of those frustrating times when my need for interaction threatened to make me burst at the seams. Here is for why:

Pro-life mentalist Anne Widdicombe presented Have I Got News For You ruining it for everyone. Because I was by myself I turned it off, knowing that in the company of that dreadful woman with no suitable bitching outlet I was likely to explode

Secondly James-rhyming-slang-Blunt was on Jules Holland. I like to tell people about how I worked with someone who was at Harrow and Sandhurst with him. There’s no real point to the story: it’s not interesting, it doesn’t show me in a good light, or Blunt in a bad one. But it pops into my head whenever his name comes up and I want to get it out.

Thirdly Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion was shown on E4. My two best school friends and I probably watched this film about 30 times between the ages of 13 and 15. We taught ourselves the routine to Staying Alive and danced like synchronised fools any time the N Trance version came on at a school disco. One of my friends pretended to be in love with Clarence the cowboy to cover up the lesbian crush she had on Heather Mooney (probably not something she’ll thank me for recalling in a public forum… well, a forum available to the public).

And finally I found the Black Cab Sessions on the interweb. They are brilliant and deserve a post all to themselves (note to self), but I discovered them tonight, all by myself with no-one to tell about them. It was torture. In the end I sent my poor, long suffering friend Helen a Facebook message pleading with her to get onto Gmail chat so I could show her my new find. She liked it. I was sated.

*UPDATE – 24/11/07 02:16*
Twenty minutes after publishing this post, after having a wee read through the blogs I subscribe to, I find myself doing EXACTLY what I’ve been talking about AGAIN. What’s worse is that I didn’t realise it until afterwards. I even sent Helen (aforementioned long suffering friend) an email to tell her I wish she hadn’t gone to bed so I could show her the exciting thing. The ‘thing’ this time was Caitlin Moran’s blog Alpha Mummy on The Times website. I know I’m not a mummy, alpha or otherwise, but I do LOVE Caitlin Moran so I read it (she rarely mentions her children, anyway). She has just put up a jolly funny post about female defuzzing. Sample quote:

“Here’s where I’m coming from, viz hair: I thread my eyebrows whilst waving a picture of Elizabeth Taylor at my threader. I thread my upper lip whilst waving a picture of Hitler, with “NO” written across it, at my threader.” – Caitlin Moran

Times twat strikes back

Oh fantastic, after the backlash (that was from the Guardian, here’s more from The Times, Telegraph and Sun) resulting from this chauvenist’s last article, he’s done it again.

In the mood for some unfettered misogyny?

…then read this lovely article from The Times Online.