Diversify or Die?

Folded

• Become a Spy! – Seriously…
• The Killing – Having a hard time working it out? Well, no longer with this handy guide which will help you through the colloquialisms and references. Perhaps you might want to move to Denmark by the end of it as you’ll be such an aficionado of the culture.
• Hasselhoff Is Off - No more Hoff Hassling on Britain’s Got Talent. The unfortunate trade-off of which being that Simon Cowell is coming back. Lock up Sinitta!
• Could Clarkson Get Sacked? – Regardless of your opinion about his comments on The One Show (shame on you for watching it, by the way), the idea that he could get sacked will come as good news to anyone who wants to see him presenting his own version of The Wright Stuff on Channel 5. What would it be called? Answers on a postcard…
• Abraham Lincoln – No, we’re not just really behind the times with this but those in the UK should have a look at this reappraisal of the man. It makes you question the very fabric of everything we know about America. Or does it? Seriously, watch it and find out for yourself you lazy sod.

Creased

• Star Wars Prequels – They could have been so much better.
• Tory Council – WE WILL NOT ASSOCIATE WITH EUROPE!
• RBS - Hang on, they owned a pub chain?!
• A Green Day Musical – Sure, we didn’t mind it existing but now it’s coming to the UK? This must not be allowed.
• The Passing of Gary Speed – Much as it isn’t our place to comment, the passing of a bona fide footballing legend is always something that will completely and utterly creased.

Fashion designers are a funny breed aren’t they? No other profession is full of characters that are religiously followed and praised for their movements. Do you monitor the work your local builder does? Course you don’t you arrogant tool. Do you keep up to date with what a professional footbal- oh.

All you have to do is say the name Marc Jacobs and people who know their stuff will tell you that you won’t be able to fill a wardrobe full of his creations for less than £30. That’s more for the fashion ‘working class’ like us, who’ll have to stick to Primark onesies and tear-stained sweatshirts.

A jumper from Marc Jacobs is likely to set you back £400+. All because people are morons and pay the price for organic, free range camel pubes. You know, as opposed to those ones you get from battery camels.

Designers also like to try new ideas. Perfumes are an easy market to break into as all you have to do give the product a snazzy name, create a fancy bottle and shoot a sexy advert. Two of the three steps were followed by Marc Jacobs, but there was a small issue with the use of model Dakota Fanning.

Star of movies such as Man On Fire, Dakota Fanning still hasn’t reached her twenties yet but has seemingly been in “the business” (not that business) for around thirty years. Is she the Peter Pan of actresses? We say this because everytime she appears in a big screen flick, Fanning always seems to play a timid child or emotionally stunted young women.

Due to the child like appearance of Fanning, it clearly struck a chord with the casting agency who were looking for someone to promote the badly named fragrance “Oh, Lola!” Take a look why don’t you?

That image is from The Daily Mail. They were so outraged that they felt the need to show the offending picture so that their readers could be truly outraged. Why have we done it?

We’re sick.

According to the ASA who govern British advertising, they believe that any bloke looking at that advert will start dribbling manically and roam the streets so they can find female prey to sexually molest. Well, that’s the message we got anyway. That was just us reading between the lines. The ASA released a statement saying:

“We noted that the model was holding up the perfume bottle which rested in her lap between her legs and we considered that its position was sexually provocative.”

Looking a little closer, the bottle was nestled precariously close to her lady garden and because Dakota’s surname sounds extremely like the word ‘fanny’, we can only assume that the prudes out there in advertising land nearly collapsed into a coma with so much filth flying around at the one time. Brilliantly, it seems that people behind the Marc Jacobs admit to creating a paedophilic look for their brand. Someone from the ASA said, in a very stern tone:

“We understood the model was 17 years old but we considered she looked under the age of 16. We considered that the length of her dress, her leg and position of the perfume bottle drew attention to her sexuality. Because of that, along with her appearance, we considered the ad could be seen to sexualise a child. We therefore concluded that the ad was irresponsible and was likely to cause serious offence.”

Imagine if Michael Jackson was alive and releasing dodgy merchandise? The poor children sleeping over at Neverland would just be thinking they were taking part in an innocent photoshoot; all before being used as part of sexy labelling for soup, crayons and carpet cleaner.

Chilling.

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Just when you thought X Factor was over, it reappears like that case of genital herpes you’ve been struggling with since you came back from that long weekend in Bognor. You disgust us.

Coincidentally ‘you disgust us’ was the reaction had by more than 1000 viewers of Saturday’s X Factor Final. But ‘Angry from Guildford’ isn’t calling up OFCOM to complain about the binning of Tesco Value Mary, or to ask just how the hell Katie Weasel was every allowed out of the womb, let alone onto TV.

Nor were they complaining about Matt ‘everyman blokey bloke better-decorator-than-singer’ Cardle winning the whole damn thing and promptly becoming wildly uninteresting.

No, they say there was too much RAUNCHINESS.  Too many SCANTILY clad women.  Too many gyrating PELVISES. Too much of EVERYTHING! This is 7pm on a Saturday, not one of those late night pornographically German skin movies or what ever they are.

Considering the final scored a massive 17.2 million viewers we can only assume that the complaints are from people who were, until Saturday unaware of Christina Aguilera and Rihanna.  They aren’t exactly known for singing ‘Kumbaya’ while dressed tastefully in gingham dresses.  Heck, Rihanna made an umbrella look alluring enough to curdle the loins.

A fella from OFCOM said

“we are assessing the complaints but are not currently investigating the show.”

He may have well have said ‘we’ve taken the phone of the hook so no more mentalists can call up and say the words ‘it wasn’t like this in my day”

We’re pretty conflicted here.  We love being outraged, it gets you reading us.  But we just can’t get upset about this.  We can’t stand on or internet orange box and shout “cover up those ankle you brazen hussy!” Nor can we deliver a good slagging to an impossibly small percentage of those who watched the show.

We tried to figure out the percentage, something like 0.0058% of people who watched the damn show were upset by it.  That’s probably a similar percentage of how many people watching were likely to have lizard tongues that they can catch flies with.

The real story on this is, why the hell are we writing about it?

We disgust us.

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As everyone knows, catching a puffin with a net, pulling its still-warm heart of of its body and eating it is one of the most erotic things a person can do.

Just look at Gordon Ramsay. Not so long ago Gordon Ramsay ate a puffin’s heart on his TV show The F Word just to show what a triumphant lord of sex he really is. But, would you believe it, 42 people found the sight of Gordon Ramsay chewing on the just-dead heart of a beloved seabird offensive enough to complain about.

Fortunately, though, Ofcom has decided that Gordon Ramsay didn’t break any rules and is free to film himself gorging on raw blood-splattered puffin organs as much as he likes. That’s lucky for Gordon Ramsay, because it’s easy food for him – every year millions of migrating puffins have found welcome shelter from bad weather within the deep crevices of his angry face.

If the wooly-minded liberals in charge of this country had their way, we’d never be allowed to chase after animals with a net and then eat out their hearts as soon as we’ve caught them. Imagine a Britain where you couldn’t catch a rat and eat its heart. Or a dog. Or a monkey. Or a lollipop lady. It’s political correctness gone mad.

But one person who doesn’t give a hoot about political correctness is Gordon Ramsay. He doesn’t care who he offends - Paul McCartney, people who don’t like the idea of eating horses, anyone not completely into the sight of a furious cook constantly going “Uh? Yes? Uh? Yes? Uh?” like a tramp trying to bum his own reflection – because he’s Gordon bloody Ramsay. Yes?

Why doesn’t Gordon Ramsay care who he offends? Because he’s overcompensating wildly for having a traditionally female job? Well, yes, but also… no, actually that’s it. That’s the only reason.

But thank God for that, otherwise Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t have gone on The F-Word a few weeks ago and eaten the heart right out of a puffin he’d just caught in a net.

If you missed it, it was a brilliant piece of television. So long as your definition of ‘brilliant’ is ‘slightly gruesome and deliberately, tediously controversial’, that is. In the end, 42 people complained about Gordon’s heart-eating antics, but more fool them because Ofcom has told Gordon Ramsay that he didn’t do anything wrong. BBC News reports:

The regulator said the sequence was not in breach as it occurred in Iceland, where the puffin forms a popular part of the national diet. It also noted the birds were killed in a humane way with minimal suffering. Viewers had complained that the practice of killing puffins was cruel, the local tradition of eating their fresh hearts was offensive, and that, whilst not protected, puffins were a species under threat.

Yeah, under threat because they’re so bloody delicious.

Look, to be honest we can see everyone’s side of the argument. The viewers complained because Gordon Ramsay ate the heart out of an animal that’s under threat, and Gordon Ramsay ate a puffin’s heart because he’s an attention-seeking bellend who’d eat his own mother’s tits off if it got him a couple of decent headlines. So we’ve come to the only logical conclusion.

Battery-reared puffins. It’s obvious. Get 500,000 puffins, squish them into a shed the size of a bedside cabinet, pull their beaks off, never let them see daylight and there isn’t a problem any more. The puffins are no longer under threat, Gordon Ramsay gets to eat as many puffin hearts as he likes and Jamie Oliver has something new to bitch about on the telly. Everyone’s happy.

It’s been said that some people in this world are stupid.

This is, of course, absolute nonsense. The majority of people in this world are stupid – hapless, witless mouth-breathers who drift gormlessly through their lives with all the intellectual vigour of a bag of Oven Chips. Bearing this in mind, however, it still boggles the mind as to the boundless depths of idiocy to which the truly moronic are capable of plunging.

Like dialling the number of a TV character. And complaining when there’s no answer.

Oh yes – approximately 2,500 Doctor Who viewers were left disappointed after they tried calling a number that had flashed on screen several times during a recent episode. Quite what they were hoping to hear remains a mystery – possibly a voicemail from the Timelord himself announcing “sorry I can’t get to the phone, but I’m busy speaking to a member of the opposite sex, something which the vast majority of you who are actually taking the time to dial this will unfortunately never do.”

Of course, the number wasn’t real. Just as the prefix 555 is used in American movies – an area code that isn’t in existence – the BBC understandably decided to use a fictional number, rather than running the risk of legions of geeks dialling up an unsuspecting plumber in Walthamstow and bombarding him with questions like “how did you cope with the atmosphere on planet Klaartu B-7?” or “what’s it like going outside?.”

Unfortunately, a lot of people are now a little miffed that they rang a dead line and that the funny man they done seen on the glowing box don’t not be real. Anger which a BBC spokesman has gently tried to dismiss:

“It wouldn’t have cost anything to call these numbers because they are not real. If someone did call it they would hear either a dead dial tone or number unavailable. There are a series of phone numbers we assign to producers for TV series.”

Or to put it another way:

“Jesus fucking Christ, what is wrong with you people? I mean, seriously. Is this a joke? What’s the deal? I just don’t know why I bother anymore. I really don’t.”

British teatime is a sacred institution where everyone around the country stops what they're doing and eats a crumpet with their mother.

Teatime is a tradition to be protected. Specifically, it is a tradition to be protected from fuzzy-chopped ginger pensioners inviting men to grope at their breasts on TV like they're starring in some sort of horrendous paraphilic infantilism porno movie.

Readers, you aren't the only ones to be physically repulsed by the idea of that. Anne Robinson let some wine-tasting bloke grab her boobies on an episode of The Weakest Link recently, and 16 intrepid viewers phoned the BBC to complain. 16 doesn't sound like a lot, but it's thought that only 16 people got through the incident without going blind or mad or throwing themselves through the nearest window.

We have to admit that we were a little surprised to hear that The Weakest Link was still on TV, considering that the joke stopped being funny about five or six years ago. We get it – some people don't answer some easy questions, Anne Robinson is rude to them and then she screeches the word "goodbye" intermittently like a faulty smoke alarm until everyone goes home.

The Weakest Link has been going for years, surviving even Anne Robinson's own marriage, so it must be hard to keep it fresh. Even the idea of a Celebrity Weakest Link is getting stale now, so it's lucky that Anne Robinson has come up with a fresh new gimmick to reel the viewers back in.

And that gimmick is that people get to fondle Anne Robinson's 63-year-old boobs. And you have to watch. If you look away or vomit, you lose. It's a bit like a phone-in competition, except that you don't have to phone in and everybody loses.

Anne Robinson tried out this new booby-grab technique on a recent edition of The Weakest Link with wine expert Olly Smith, and 16 of you good people were repulsed enough to complain, as The Sun reports:

Olly… said: "If Anne was a wine, she'd be a smooth, full-bodied, expensive red." But TV’s mock-dominatrix responded: "I don't like being called full-bodied. I have spent a long time getting this figure. Are you saying I have huge breasts? She then, rather embarrassingly, added: "You need to feel them?" while gesturing towards her bosom. Olly said: "I would love to," placing his hands on the presenter's 63-year-old boobs before declaring, "They are absolutely fantastic, honestly! Touch my hands. These are amazing! I have touched Anne's boobs."

Incidentally, in the interests of transparency, Olly Smith is the man who – were we handed a baseball bat and a written promise that the police would turn a blind eye – would be first on our list of targets. We thought that before he described the act of cupping a ginger pensioner's tits as 'fantastic' but it goes double now.

Why, though? Why would Anne Robinson even do a thing like that? It's literally repulsive. The only logical explanation is that recovering alcoholic Anne Robinson figured out that Olly Smith's breath would be a bit boozy, and inviting him to squeeze her boobs was the only way to get him close enough to breathe in all his delicious booze-stink vapours to remind her of the good old days. We could be wrong, but we don't think we are.

Anyway, all the complaints seem to have fallen of deaf ears because the BBC has batted them away, describing the grope as "playful and lighthearted." So, now that it's clear this sort of thing is OK to show on gameshows, it means that Chris Tarrant can finally get around to introducing the long-awaited fourth Who Wants To Be A Millionaire lifeline – the I'll Tell You Answer If You Masturbate Me To Ejaculation In Front Of All These People Right Now lifeline.

Read more: 

Anne Boobs With Flirty Feel – The Sun

Singing? In film? Disgusting.

Warning: Sweeney Todd is a musical. That’s not breaking news we know, but there are some people out there that are picking themselves up off the floor following that revelation.  

The Guardian reports that there were inadequate warnings that singing took place in Tim Burton’s latest edition. “It resembles a vintage Tim Burton movie, but nowhere does the trailer mention the fact that Sweeney Todd is a musical. In fact, it goes out of its way to conceal the fact that the movie is entirely sung, save for a few snippets of dialogue.”

Despite the 30 year history of the musical Sweeney Todd (first opened on Broadway in 1979) numerous re-makes, magazine and newspaper articles, not to mention the full-length trailer where Johnny Depp breaks into song, people have been walking out of cinemas in their droves. The film now faces potential investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority following numerous complaints.

So maybe the original promo trailer failed to mention that it was a musical, so what? Clearly the advertising agency responsible is cleverer than your average Joe and Joanne. They knew that there would be sceptics out there who didn’t want to re-live the likes of Dr Doolittle, so they initially kept it quiet. Unfortunately there now appears to be hoards of people seeking revenge and something tells us they aren’t singing “I must have vengeance!”

The fact that people walked out of this film because they were unaware is disturbing for 27 reasons, three of which shall be listed here. One, this isn’t High School Musical, this is Tim Burton. Two, it’s a two-hour film, not a surprise week at Butlins. Three, this is Johnny Depp singing, it’s essentially Edward Scissorhands breaking into song. Do people have no taste?

There are bigger things in Sweeney Todd to be concerned about than the fact it’s a musical.

For example, maybe the Advertising Standards Authority should investigate how it makes you want to eat one of the meat pies, let’s face it – cannibalism never looked so good. Or maybe the fact that Burton is giving Tarantino a run for his money on the blood stakes by showing innocent punters having their Adam’s Apples sliced open.   

Sweeney Todd shouldn’t be shaved down to just a musical because it is also a great film with a strong script and a stellar cast. You certainly don’t have to be a “oh, well-oh, well-oh, well-oh, uh!” kind of person to enjoy it. Clearly it is the supposed deception that is upsetting the masses. To be fair the public have been deceived a lot of over years, first Weapons of Mass Destruction and now Sweeney Todd.   

For those of you that left the cinema disgruntled, at least now you know that the film is in fact a musical. So ‘drove’ back to the cinema, get a hot toddy and settle down, the music is about to start.

Read more:

What the Sweeney Todd Trailer failed to tell us about the film - Guardian 

[story by Gemma Addy]