Is the world crazy or am I?

T Mobile have been playing catch up to the highly successful Orange Wednesday two for one cinema promotion by teaming up with flagging video rental chain Blockbuster. The result has been a TV ad campaign where idiots from the public get to make their own (cheap budget) ad, advertising the sort of theme night they would host for their film night. Now T-Mobile has a long and proud history of making some really grating adverts; the flash-mob dance in Liverpool Street being a shining example of this whimsical communal bullshit. So in that way these ads are a continuation of the brand’s tradition. The people in the clips are eye-poppingly annoying, especially as they don’t look like the types that would have friends, and would sit at home alone acting out scenes from their favourite films with puppets made of their own faeces. Don’t believe me? Then watch this 101 lesson in psychotic behaviour . The woman is having a conversation with a home-made mannequin with a balloon head – and whic...

Good News! Top Gear is back! Everyone’s favourite car magazine show, hosted by three bickering children in the guise of middle aged men. This time we are faced with a new dawn as Top Gear becomes ‘more serious.’ A fact that the presenters repeated – probably to remind themselves, let alone us – that they have toned down the excessive sillyness that’s been seen in the recent series. Now don’t get me wrong as there is a lot to love about the OTT antics of Hammond, May and Clarkson, such as: · A chance to see men live out their craziest fantasies involving cars – like for instance car darts, racing a car against a train, build-your-own- stretch limos and, of course, the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle. · It’s like what Heston Blumenthal’s trying to do to food, but a lot more fun! · The director get’s to indulge in videographic opulence, as he throws about every artistic visual trick in presenting the actual car reviews, resulting in stylish and atmospheric li...

It’s not often I stick my oar into football related matters. But today I’m going to ponder on the upcoming England verses Germany match this coming Sunday. Now the England V Germany rivalry is something written into national football folklore in this country, and it’s a subject many English fans love to bathe in nostalgia about. Like there was the time we beat West Germany and won the world cup in 1966, and of course when we beat the Germans 5 -1 in 2001, and err… that’s about it – although we still try to brag for some reason, despite nearly always losing to Germany. Sadly the rest of the dewey-eyed nostalgia is made up of xenophobia, which tends to link into to old World War Two jingoism such as: the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ and ‘the Blitz,’ like everyone has suddenly forgotten 1945 was sixty-five years ago and not last week. Well, that is when we aren’t resorting to sillier stereotypes like referring to the Germans in terms of sausages, lederhosen, and sauerkraut; something I can actua...

Being an unemployed drain on the state as I am at the moment; I have found myself watching more and more daytime TV. It’s not a fact I’m proud of, but they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Anyway, the sudden re-exposure to midday television has made me aware that there are rather a lot of online bingo adverts on during this time. Bingo in general is a game that confuses and infuriates me. Firstly the name conjures up unpleasant illusions of ‘bingo wings’ (the fatty rolls you get under your upper arms due to age or, more likely, being too fat) or annoying songs about illiterate dog owners . As for the game itself that just makes me think of a group of cackling, demented elderly women, sitting in a tacky dilapidated hall, staring blankly at their game cards whilst a fat bald man in a sparkly suit jacket reads off numbers in an annoying rhyming slang. As you can tell I’m not a big fan of the game. But now the old images of shabby old halls and overweight...

I guess it’s indicative of the fact that I am a bitter, twisted little man with a blackened soul, but I don’t like Glee. Yes true, it is the latest big thing on TV and is sweeping across the public consciousness like a cancer, but it’s something I just don’t get. I just see it as another sign that I’m a cynical bastard unable to appreciate things which are happy and joyous, but then that’s what working in media will do for you. Glee from what I can tell is an all singing, all dancing version of High School Musical, but is in episodic format. It’s the epitome of comfort food television, as it indulges people who watch it with sickly sweet kids, simple villains, and pop songs galore to bludgeon them into twee oblivion. The only thing worse would be if Taylor Swift and N*sync formed an alliance. I have never made it through an entire episode, mainly because the precocious bastards keep singing all the time. “You’ve missed the point!” you may cry, but that is the biggest flaw in the...

In recognition of the opening of the world cup this week the TV planners have been doing their utmost to schedule shows that would build anticipation. The zenith of which was a special Come Dine with Me, everyone’s favourite voyeur and fine dining miss-match which this week put on a footballer’s special where four ex-England players cooked for each other. The players chosen for this fusion of football and food were Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock (who was stretching the criteria somewhat considering he had only two international caps), John ‘Awooga’ Fashanu, Frank Worthington and Carlton Palmer. It was an eclectic bunch: considering we had the disgusting in Ruddock (who answered the door for some reason wearing nothing but an apron), the old in Worthington, the condescending in Fash (who seemed to think of himself as a street philosopher) and the stupid in Carlton Palmer (who masterfully deduced that a banoffee pie was a kind of pie). The concept at first did could conjur up some weird ideas:...

I found myself wondering recently why there has been such a fad for real life adaptations of cartoon series. The Flintstones, Dragonball, Garfield and the Chipmunks - they’ve all been done before; not to mention there are real-life remakes of The Smurfs and Avatar: The Last Airbender also in the pipeline. The one thing most of these remakes hold in common is that they are disappointing, if not mind bendingly awful. They only seem to exist as an answer to a vague “what if this cartoon character was real” thought occasionally pondered upon by people, and picked up by a film exec sensing a profit making answer. Unfortunately that never ever translates to a film with substance although It’s a fair question to ask though. We all wonder what it would be like if the Simpson or Family guy were real, hence the increasing number of adverts I see on YouTube offering just that possibility – although most of these look like they were created from the nightmare case files of patients in the psychi...

Now I love a good food show. More often than not it’s just a case of me staring longingly at a recipe being made, before getting realistic and realising I can’t be bothered to go out and buy the normally very extravagant ingredients. It’s true to say that most of the time these shows just tempt us with what we can’t have, but that doesn’t stop us from getting hooked. So today I’m going to have a look at few recent foodie outings. Heston Blumenthal: The foodie’s equivalent of a mad scientist, Heston is more of a chemist than a chef. This is the reason I’ve found him gradually start to grate on my nerves as his food; whilst being wonderfully creative, is ultimately a complete pipe dream for anyone not possessing a laboratory. I for example, make use of a relatively cramped kitchen, with an electric oven that has a broken hob panel. Where do you think I’m going to fit in a centrifuge machine Heston? Also, what’s up with the idea of snail porridge? I think I’ll stick to pasta. ...

I’m not sure what the logic is? Whether it’s an attempt at shameless money-spinning behind the shield of charity, or a deluded belief that it will actually be good; despite how shocking it looks on paper? Whichever is the case, the fact remains that I have learned today that James Cordon and Dizzee Rascal are teaming up to record a World Cup song. Now I am more into the World Cup than any other football tournament, mainly as I actually feel I can get behind the England team - because I’m, you know, English. However, there is one thing that persistently bugs me when every tournament rears its head, and that is that the vendors are willing to flog us tacky crap featuring the three lions on it. Whether it’s official or unofficial, people lap it up with gusto, so long as it purports to serve our beloved ‘Ingerland.’ It is unsurprising that celebrity world cup songs come as part and parcel with this trend, and over the years we have seen many pitiful attempts, which share in common: the...