Panel Beaters

So the BBC is determinedly flying the flag for women’s rights. It is going to outlaw all-male comedy panel shows.

Instead of a boorish line-up of testosterone heavy, self-opinionated satirists we’re going to have some women thrown into the mix. Proper women. Not Lilly Savage or Dame Edna. But real bona fide women. Comediennes.

I’m sure this new stance has nothing at all to do with the recent slash and burn effect of Operation Yewtree on the BBC’s standing as a noble bastion for equality and fairness. This is something that has bugged the BBC for a long time; it’s something they have always wanted to address and by golly they are finally going to do it.

Move over David Mitchell and Dara O’Briain – here come the girls.

And I think this is fine. This is a good move.

Except a few writers / journalists / commentators have asked the question: are women going to be asked to appear on these shows because they are funny or because they are women? If it’s the latter then is gender equality really being served?

But, the thing is, how does one judge “funniness”? How is it determined and measured? Because, to be honest, a lot of the male contestants on these unspecified panel shows don’t strike me as being particularly funny at all. Ross Noble, Johnny Vegas, et al leave me cold. So were they invited to be contestants because they were funny or just because they were men and “big TV names”?

Because aren’t there possibly more male big TV names than female big TV names in the first place simply because showbusiness, like every other industry, is traditionally weighted in favour of unthinkingly promoting male talent over female talent every chance it gets?

My point is, if nobody is asking “are they funny” of the male contestants before inviting them onto a panel show then should it be seen as a deal breaker for a comedienne? Why is the question even being asked? If they are professional comediennes, making money and a career out of performing their own comedy routines, surely that is the only prerequisite answered?

Humour is subjective. There is no way to benchmark it. At the end of the day these shows are simply star vehicles; there are a means of exposure for up-and-coming and established artists. And if women are being under-represented then that is wrong and it needs addressing.

Are they funny?

We viewers at home should have the right and the opportunity to judge for ourselves. All-male panel shows deny everybody that opportunity.

Case rests.

The Jackson 5

Amid all the news stories of rain battered Britain and Scottish and English politicians squabbling over the Queen’s head it was nice to come across something so completely ridiculous it could only have happened in France.

It seems that the French courts, that eternal bastion of sanity and commonsense, have decided to award 5 Michael Jackson fans (is this all of them?) a symbolic payment of 1 Euro each to recompense them for the “emotional damage” caused when Michael Jackson’s pet quack, Conrad Murray, caused his master’s death by blowpiping one too many anaesthetic pills down Mr Jackson’s falsetto oesophagus. Apparently a total of 34 Michael Jackson fans (OK, that must surely be all of them?) had actually sued Murray but the Orleans Court ruled that only 5 of them had sufficiently evidenced proven emotional suffering to deserve a pay-out. Presumably the other 29 were considered legally insensate to their own irrelevant sense of grief or were – shock horror – considered to be merely cashing in on the fact that they happened to own an original beaten up copy of Off The Wall.

Apparently the 5 successful claimants had proven their case “with the help of witness statements and medical certificates." Basically their friends and GPs had signed an affidavit to the effect that these people were “deeply sad”.

Their lawyer, Emmanuel Ludot, said: "As far as I know this is the first time in the world that the notion of emotional damage in connection with a pop star has been recognised."

It is clear to me that this is going to set a dangerous precedent - one that I mean to take every advantage of.

Personally I would like to sue Michael Jackson (or rather his estate) for having to watch him leg-snap his way through an utterly cringe-making performance of Earth Song during some UK award ceremony a few years back. The fact I can’t even remember the name of the ceremony is testament to how upset I am about it all. This is what happens when you suffer true emotional trauma. Your mind buries things and tries to forget. But I am haunted by waking dreams of Michael "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" Jackson hugging lots of children whose dress code appears to be “impoverished chic” and only the Messianic appearance of Jarvis Cocker ever brings the nightmare to an end.

I’d also like to sue Michael Jackson for the entire Bad album because, well, it was very very bad but I daresay they’ll use the old “does what it says on the tin” argument against me and, yeah, I’d have to admit I probably should have seen it coming. Caveat emptor and all that.

But I’m now wondering if I could perhaps throw this compensation thing even wider. I mean, why stop at pop stars? I’d like to sue Dave Lee Travis for describing himself as “cuddly not predatory” in his recent Operation Yewtree court case because, regardless of the fact that they’ve cleared his name, I just found that statement bone-squirmingly creepy. It emotionally damaged me for at least half an hour. That’s got to be worth 50 pence of anybody’s money. Not to mention the cost of bringing the whole thing to court.

I’d also like to sue Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer because I have never found them funny and as a consequence I feel inadequate when around those who evidently do. I’d like to sue Hugh Fearnley-Whttingstall for putting me off my dinner whenever he’s on the telly; Louie Spence for making me wish I had immediate access to a firearm and a clear line of sight; Katie Price for making me feel that actually, against all the odds and my every testosterone fuelled instinct, breasts can be too big; Eamonn Holmes for filling me with so much murderous bile I could actually conceive that one day it might be justifiable to commit global genocide if it guaranteed his individual demise and, finally, the guy who works in the newsagents around the corner from where I work who sits with his paunch pushed up so close to the till drawer he has to scoop my change out of his duodenum whenever I buy a Mars bar, I’m telling you it just doesn’t taste the same after pocketing those too-warm coins.

All I need is Emmanuel Ludot’s email address. Unless, of course, he reads this post first and then pre-emptively sues me for the future emotional damage I’m about to cause him.

*sigh*

I’ll just bung a pound into the kitty now, shall I, and have done with it?

Jamie Oliver Child Abuse

In a move guaranteed to ensure his twatdom for evermore, “cheeky chappy” TV “chef” Jamie Oliver has claimed that an unhealthy packed lunch is on a par with child abuse and the providers of the packed lunch – the hapless parents – are the abusers.

I kid you not.

Being a regular internet surfer my sensibilities have long been bludgeoned to insensate dullness by the proclamations of idiots and emotional amoebas the world over but even I, desensitized oaf that I am, found myself reeling in shock at the sheer magnificent idiocy of Jamie’s latest outburst. It is idiocy on an Olympian scale. Stupidity big enough to gag a black hole.

Jamie needs to take the same care over what comes out of his mouth as to what he puts into it – and wants to put into ours.

A packed lunch, no matter how comprised of donuts, lard sandwiches, liquefied sugar and cholesterol shakes, cannot in any way compare with child abuse.

Does Jamie need to attend a corporate training course on what child abuse actually is? You’d think with Operation Yewtree currently decimating the BBC’s summer programming schedule, Jamie would be a bit more clued up. Maybe the BBC could spend some of our license money sending Jamie off to make a programme about child abuse and how learning about it affects him and, of course, he can throw in a few recipes for conciliatory vegetable and nettle smoothies while he’s at it to make the kids feel better about themselves? Except the last thing those kids need is king dickhead Jamie Oliver criticizing them over their choice of comfort food.

Most bad packed lunches are not formulated by parents setting out to wilfully harm their kids or even by parents who take evil, predatory pleasure from stuffing their kid’s Power Rangers lunch box with enough fat to make a McDonald’s burger feel positively anorexic. Most of the time a bad packed lunch occurs due to ignorance, poverty and, let’s not overlook the biggy, the fact that the child in question refuses to eat anything else to the point where the family’s own doctor advises them to just let him / her eat whatever the hell they like just as long as they are eating something and ingesting enough regular calories.

And what about those ordinary families who occasionally slip a treat into their kid’s lunch boxes? The occasional Mars bar or Twix? The infrequent chocolate mousse? Is that child abuse too? Or are we just the equivalent of chat room “lurkers” grooming our kids for worse things to come? Sucking them into an underground world where their dependency on chocolate and sugary drinks will make them easy prey for Machiavellian techniques to make them more biddable in years to come? “Do the hovering and there’s a Milky Way in it for you, son…” Christ. I’ll hand myself over to the Yewtree investigation squad right now, shall I?

Dear Jamie, do you know what one of the most soul destroying aspects of child abuse is?

Guilt. Being made to feel guilty about something that wasn’t your fault and something that you could in no way have any responsibility for. Abusers love guilt. It really does make those in their power more biddable.

Guilt is a nasty, insidious thing when it is not deserved (but nevertheless keenly felt).

Spreading it about and using it as a leverage tool to sell your own branded personal ethos to the country and bolster your flagging celebrity status is abusive in the extreme.

Isn’t it about time you turned yourself in to the cops, Jamie? (I hope one of them fucks you over with a Curly-wurly.)