Posts from March, 2007

The Frey? No, thanks.

Folded:

• The Apprentice returns… again (feels a bit less kooky fun now it’s on BBC1, but it’s still unmissable viewing

• Nintendo Gameboy (the old one with the yellow screen. It’s only about a fiver now and nobody will want to steal it out your front room, unlike that Sony play-wotsit everyone is going on about)

• Edie Sedgwick (whether you rate Factory Girl or not, you should seek out this sad, but wonderfully enlightening sixties kitten)

• More Jools (despite Four’s best attempt to manufacture their own brand of cool, Later still remains the best music programme on TV. Three series’ a year is a good thing)

• Peep Show series four (we predict this will be better than morning sex, and we know more than God)

Creased:

• Live from Abbey Road on More4 (bet they read poetry in the ad breaks too. Wankers)

• Staff at Vue cinemas (this is probably most peoples local, so we’re sure you can relate to one-sided conversations with Benny-out-of-Crossroads and his lobotomised buddies)

• Playstation 3 (sure, you can find one, but can you afford it? Doubtful, despite how shiny, black, matt and sexy it looks)

• Used to be marvellous TV girl Debbie King (things are not looking good for this chipper lass since the close of ITV Play. That’s a bloody shame, as we still like her.

• Get Your Act Together on Channel 4 (the same old thing trumped out with the same old style. Come on, when are these programmes ever going to tell us something we don’t know?)

Signs were not good for the second Maximo Park album. Following on from the success of debut A Certain Trigger, members started ringing alarm bells by saying things like "people will see more of what we’re capable of as musicians" when discussing their new songs.

Then Maximo Park hired Gil Norton as a producer; a risky move since he's overseen records by both The Pixies (a good thing) and Feeder (very obviously not a good thing). And then there was the title of the new Maximo Park album - Our Earthly Pleasures. Other bands have spent their entire careers trying and failing to come up with an album title as overbearingly pretentious as that, let alone coupled it with a sleeve that looks like it was stolen from a Gap photoshoot that was binned for being too miserable. Seriously, Maximo Park may as well have just called Our Earthly Pleasures WE ARE A SERIOUS BAND and have done with it. But is Our Earthly Pleasures by Maximo Park any good? Let's find out…

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This is a mark of how famous Michael Jackson is: the announcement that Michael Jackson doesn't have pneumonia has made the news all over the world, but we've never even come close to getting pneumonia and where are our bloody headlines, eh?

Still, maybe if Fox News had mistakenly announced that we were seriously ill in hospital with pneumonia too, we'd be getting the sort of attention that Michael Jackson is. Handily, though, Michael Jackson has trundled out one of his slaves to say that - rather than being struck down with full-blown pneumonia like Fox said - Michael Jackson is just feeling a little bit poorly with a mystery bug. Everyone's fully expecting Michael Jackson to be up and at 'em again in the near future, though, since Jackson knows more than anyone that nothing kicks illness in the head like a litre of Jesus Juice and a quick wank.

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Break-ups are hard enough for most people to deal with at the best of times, so full credit to Britney Spears for sorting out her divorce with Kevin Federline just a few short weeks after having a loopy-doo cuckoo berserkoid meltdown and going to rehab.

It's been reported that Britney Spears has officially signed a divorce settlement with Kevin Federline that was thrashed out in a five-hour meeting at the offices of Britney's lawyers. The terms of the Britney Spears divorce settlement were not revealed - and a judge still has to formally agree to it - but we imagine that the meeting between Britney Spears and Kevin Federline was intense. Among the possessions to be divided up were the two children Britney Spears and Kevin Federline had together, the property they owned, money earnt during the course of the marriage, all the copies of Playing With Fire that Kevin Federline couldn't even manage to give away, Britney's collection of cheap wigs, stuff like that.

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Halle Berry's inevitable biopic just got a good part. In about 40 years when Jamie Foxx finally gets to play her, he won't have to act the part of a fashion model that was sad because she was shorter than all the other fashion models. No longer will that film need to revolve around a woman playing a boring superhero perplexed because she was getting so much less screen time than Frasier Crane.

Because the crux of that movie can now be about the time Halle Berry literally tried to kill herself in a car full of toxic farts. Yeah, read that last line again. Is it setting in? Now 'toxic farts,' for those confused, is how rich people say 'pooping stank air.' It's likely a very liberal interpretation of Berry's exact quote, but when she's dropping lines like 'I knew the gas was coming', you tell us - how's an immature website supposed to interpret that sort of thing? In the future when Berry details her all-too-real suicide attempt she should choose her words more carefully. That's all we're saying.

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So let's get you up to speed. Simon Cowell recently sacked Kate Thornton as the host of X Factor - possibly because she was rubbish at it, possibly to spook out Ryan Seacrest and possibly because all the dresses she wore made her arms look a bit fat.

But Simon Cowell promised us that the new host of X Factor was going to be someone really special. A big name. A showstopper. Sadly all the big name showstoppers must have pulled out because the new host of X Factor is Dermot O'Leary, AKA The Male Kate Thornton. The Times reports:

Dermot O'Leary is the new host of The X Factor, it was announced today. The Big Brother's Little Brother presenter will front the hit show for the next two series, after Kate Thornton and judge Louis Walsh were axed. O'Leary, 33, said: "I was very flattered to be offered the job to host such a hugely successful show." The presenter, reported to have landed a £1 million X Factor contract, said: "I'm really looking forward to working with Simon and the team on the kind of Saturday night entertainment show I grew up watching."

However, as well as presenting the new series of X Factor Dermot O'Leary will still remain the presenter of Big Brother's Little Brother - which has no doubt eased the minds of the four people who actually watch it for more than five seconds at a time without loudly exhaling and switching channels. But Dermot O'Leary's X Factor appointment raises three main questions: 1) will Dermot be as tactile as Kate Thornton during the X Factor auditions? 2) Who'll present that lousy Saturday night Lottery quiz show now Dermot is hosting X Factor? and 3) How pissed off must Davina McCall be that both Russell Brand and Dermot O'Leary have now gone on to do better things after Big Brother while all she has is a failed chatshow to her name?

But, hey, congratulations on the X Factor job Dermot (look, we're just pleased it wasn't Vernon Kay, alright?). Be sure to use your powers wisely by convincing Simon Cowell to not employ Chris Moyles too and we'll see you when X Factor starts in the summer. You'll recognise us - we'll be the ones taking the piss because the dresses you wear make your arms look a bit fat.

Read more:

O'Leary Replaces X Factor Presenter Thornton - Times

Call us paranoid, but we can't help suspecting that giving a knighthood to Bono from U2 - even an honorary one - means that Bono is going to start riding a white horse around in a suit of armour while trying to chop his servants' heads off with a sword.

But it's too late to worry about any of that, because yesterday Bono was given an honorary knighthood by British Ambassador David Reddaway in Dublin. Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to bleating around all the time in an unbearably self-important way. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to being in a band that has made a successful career out of only really having two songs. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to going "doo doo doo" on adverts for iPods. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to wearing sunglasses indoors on overcast days like a bell-end. Just kidding - Bono received his knighthood in recognition of his services to probably something to do with charity or something.

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Good mother of Moses, England are crap at football at the moment aren't they? The only thing even vaguely comparable to watching an England match these days is shitting drawing pins - and we're all out of drawing pins.

So we say this - screw the England football team. Actually, screw football altogether. From now on, we're all about soccer. Sensational soccer. And the best way to grab hold of some sensational soccer is by playing today's Slackerjack, handily titled Sensational Soccer. You've seen the screengrab of Sensational Soccer, so you probably don't need telling that Sensational Soccer is basically Sensible Soccer in everything but name. But, hey, Sensible Soccer was one of the best football games in the history of videogames, so something tell us you're going to like Sensational Soccer too.

A word of advice, though - if you lose at Sensational Soccer, try not to storm out of the post-match press conference after just two questions. It sort of makes you look a bit like a twat.

Order Sensational Soccer Now

Download Sensational Soccer

This is all we know about Loney, Dear. 1) Loney, Dear is the pseudonym of Emil Svanängen. 2) Emil Svanängen makes music. 3) On the basis of new single I Am John, Loney, Dear makes some of the most heart-bursting affirmative music we've heard in an age.

I Am John by Loney, Dear is a hard song to peg. For a start, giving yourself a name with the word 'Loney' in it is a bit off-putting, and I Am John's black and white cartoon video - though gorgeous - doesn't even begin to hint at the cosy freewheeling twinkling warmth of Loney, Dear's music. Think a slightly subdued Flaming Lips. Think The Concretes. Think Tobias Froberg. I Am John by Loney, Dear is all of this and more - it's the perfect soundtrack for these longer summer evenings, and we're going to spend the next hour of our lives pestering Loney, Dear's record label for a copy of his new album.

Watch The Loney, Dear I Am John video now 

Paris Hilton's big list of things she isn't very good at contains entries like 'acting,' 'singing,' and 'having two symmetrical eyes' - but it looks like Paris Hilton might have to now add 'driving a car well enough to avoid jail' to the foot of the list too.

After Paris Hilton was found driving her car down Sunset Boulevard last month - despite having her license revoked as part of a previous drink-driving punishment - police were keen to throw the book at her. And now it looks like that'll happen, since the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office announced yesterday that Paris Hilton violated the terms of her probation and faces up to 90 days in jail. Not that it'll bother Paris Hilton, obviously, as she's already got a criminal record - it's called Stars Are Blind. Ha! Stars Are Blind! Criminal record! Are you with us? Are you with us? Right? Anybody?

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Adverts are usually rubbish.

You know the sort - Jamie Oliver gurning away about how Sainsburys is the best thing in the world, or brundlefly-with-tits Jordan urging you to buy this week's News Of The World as you can read all about how she's shat out another mewling halfwit baby or something.

They're cack, make no mistake about it. Yet sometimes an advert comes along that is so sensationally bad it literally redefines the very concept of awfulness, possibly doing a full 360 degrees and coming out the other side as 'legendary.' Until now hecklerspray had considered shouty cleaning-fluid seller Barry Scott as the king of that particular castle - until we saw this commercial for the 'Montgomery Flea Market.'

And couldn't believe our fucking eyes.

Or ears. 

It's a fact that British sportsmen deliberately lose any event where they have to represent their country because the British national anthem is so rubbish that they'd rather live the rest of their life as abject failures than hear God Save The Queen one more effing time.

Everything is wrong with our national anthem - it's embarrassingly slow, it's bloated and pompous, the sixth verse is all about beating up Scottish people and it's about God and the Queen instead of a country. God Save The Queen is a rubbish national anthem. Gold by Spandau Ballet, on the other hand, would be a brilliant national anthem; it's perky, anthemic and inspiring - and we'd win more football matches if Leslie Garrett belted out "you're indestructaboooahwoooah" before kick-off. That's a fact.

Gold by Spandau Ballet isn't the only song we'd like instated as the British national anthem - there's also The Alphabet Business Concern (Home Of Fadeless Splendour) by The Cardiacs, the theme-tune to Rolf's Animal Hospital and Straight Outta Compton - but it is the only one with an actual petition on the Prime Minister's website.

So far almost 6,000 people - including hecklerspray - have signed the online petition to replace the national anthem with Gold by Spandau Ballet. A few more signatures and the national anthem would have to be changed forever. Or Tony Blair would have to email everyone like he did with the road charge petition last month. Or - at the very least - someone from Downing Street will have to delete the petition while muttering something about "bloody students." And wouldn't that be a result.

Sign the Gold National Anthem now