The final taboo?

Well hello to you all and welcome to another instalment of this fine blog, well I don’t have a right to call it fine I suppose but I enjoy it so I shall declare it as fine. Hope you are all well and superb and enjoying this unseasonably nice weather of late, a rather welcome change from the deluge of wind of rain we have been enduring.

Anywho to important matters, the subject of this weeks blog I have been thinking very hard about what exactly should be my next subject, do I continue my diatribe against the train companies or manners in general being in decline, do I rant vitriolically about the fact that Max Clifford was shown on my tv screen at 10am yesterday morning without any prior warning? Or perhaps an article about everything that’s wrong with the phrase “Britain’s got talent” alas all of these were shoved into insignificance by an article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about one of my comedic blogging idols the wonderful Sandi Toksvig.

Now those who are regulars visitors to my bloggy-space (Which sounds a good deal cruder than I intended it to!) will know a few months back I wrote a piece about why the BBC should not be giving in to small-minded middle England bigots who, from what I can tell, sit around watching TV desperate to find something to complain about. In this particular instance the MOS front page (Need I remind you that at the moment people are catching E-Coli across Central Europe from diseased beansprouts and a volcano is going off in South America) carried a banner headline referring to a joke Ms Toksvig made on The News Quiz in October 2010 about “It’s the Tories who put the N in cuts”. Now I am not opposed to salacious tittle-tattle, far from it whenever I have been away from the office almost my first request on getting back is not “How are you?” but “Give me the gossip!”, I often think my life would be meaningless without gossip and bitchiness but it just staggers me that such a non-story that is comprised almost entirely of a tissue of lies was deemed worthy to go on the front page of Britain’s best selling Sunday newspaper.

The joke itself received the grand total of 1 complaint but it transpires that this complaint was from a Daily Mail reader who felt compelled to share this with the paper who genuinely felt this story had legs. So much so that not only was its front page devoted to the unfortunate Ms Toksvig but also a total of 7 pages within the newspaper all aimed at the BBC for rejecting (quite correctly) this complaint. What I find most interesting, however, is their grounds for rejection, the complaint was not turned away on the grounds, as I would have, of the complainant clearly being a mad Middle-Englander who’d eaten too much tweed, but because the word (Which let us not forget was not mentioned, Ms Toksvig could have just as simply meant “Nuts” by her joke) is deemed to no longer cause as much offense as once it did. Now this to me is a very interesting idea, after all the majority of the swearers lexicon now seems positively commonplace, I was at the football a few weeks back and one gentleman on the terraces I’m fairly certain failed to use any adjective other than f***, f***** & f****** all match and at no point was he chastised. For some reason the “c word” seems to have special status as being the final taboo, the word that must never be uttered, and quite right it’s a horrible word but honestly I don’t think I’m offended by it, and genuinely I don’t see what there is to be offended in by a word.

If we bear in mind one of the biggest TV hits of this year has been Danish serial “The Killing” on BBC4 which has done the world of good for Danish TV and jumpers from The Faroe Islands. Now this show is all based around the brutal rape and murder of a 19 year old Scandinavian girl and the subsequent investigation, it’s undoubtedly brilliant but if you’re telling me people will sit and watch and enjoy this but be offended by coarse language in this day and age I’m afraid I don’t understand it. There are plenty of words I dislike like “fistula” or “scabies” but they aren’t offensive I just avoid them in my lexicon because I hate the way they sound. The English language is a beautiful thing and we are so lucky to have it, so lets stand up against these Daily Mail reading luddites and accept that words cannot offend, context can offend and little rocks thrown at you can offend but words should not, after all they’re just a collection of letters. And should any MOS journalist stumble across my words here, go away and work on a proper piece of reporting, make a change from the ridiculous lies and half-truths you usually publish!

This week Matt:

· Started making final preparations for his holiday, packed the straw donkey and the sombrero!

· Went for an “Interesting” meal for Mark’s birthday with sex-mad Japanese chefs.

· Spent Friday teaching Tim to play Cluedo……. and failing.

It is better to travel well than to arrive - Buddha

Well good day all and welcome once again to the land that is my blog, I can tell you’ve all been missing it terribly, I’ve just been very busy for the past few weeks and to drain my spleen for your delectation is a trying process and it’s very difficult to be in the right mind to do this.

Now I have been asked if I will return to my safer raging ground of Britain’s train services and indeed given the last week’s debacle in my train journeying this would be a very tempting prospect. For those unaware I was visiting my Alma Mater the lovely Aberystwyth over the weekend and it was a very much last minute decision which meant that not only would I have to travel on a Saturday (which I genuinely try and avoid because of all the screaming infants) but also that it cost more because I had the temerity to choose to buy my ticket and to travel on the same day, what other division of society would this be allowed in? Would you get a letter demanding an increase in your road tax because you’d used your car without first alerting the highways agency which roads you planned to use? No you would not so how can these leeching train operators get away with charging you more simply for buying a ticket on the day you’re travelling?

Also if you’re going to get a reserved seat for gods sake use the thing! Okay I appreciate it doesn’t take much for someone to get on a train and look at the ticket in the back of the headrest and realise that the person who is supposed to be using it either has some terrible wasting disease and is now invisible to the human eye or they haven’t taken their seat but that’s not the point, you reserved that seat so you can damn well sit in it, the types that reserve are often the first to demand you give up their seat when they want it even though there are ample numbers of other perfectly usable seats available so why should they then have the right to chose not to sit there? If I had my way we’d shackle them into said seats and just say “if you wanted that particular seat so badly you can enjoy it all journey whiles imprisoned in it!”. Now as you may have guessed I am not the kind of person who usually books a seat but if I get on a train and see that my reserved seat is being used as long as I can find another seat I would usually just say live and let live. It is all rather like my beloved local arthouse cinema, now those who know me well will know that the kinds of films I enjoy seeing are very rarely mainstream blockbuster types, they are generally arty, emotional and usually subtitled so there is usually ample space in the auditorium for every person who has chosen to see the film to probably have an aisle to themselves if they chose so can someone explain to me why people feel the need to sit in the exact seat their ticket says? I normally just go in and find the first seat that’s in the area I like and sit there but you can guarantee I will have sat in a seat that will be given to somebody else who will then either come in, see me in “their”: seat and sigh loudly before sitting elsewhere or ask me to move, now this never ceases to really anger me, for gods sake we’re here to see a French film about Algerian monks, you and I are probably going to be the only ones here why do you feel the need to sit in the seat the cinema has allocated you, there are hundreds of other seats what is about this one that I have chosen that means you have to sit here and disturb me?

Anyway back to the train debacle, having made it from Merseyside to sunny Shropshire we were informed that all services to Aber were off until Tuesday and a replacement bus service would be provided instead, from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth. That would be 3 hours by coach, no honestly I’m not sure what it is about coaches that is so different to trains but it just is. For all my complaints I do love to travel by train, there’s some kind of inherent romance in it, you look at all the great love stories that have happened in the confines of the station and the train; Trevor Johnson and Celia Howard in Brief Encounter, Eva-Marie Saint and Cary Grant in North By Northwest there is a true sense of romance within. To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever set a romantic liaison within the setting of a rail replacement coach, it just doesn’t carry the same clout. There’s something about getting down from the guardplate of a train onto a platform and imagining the hot girl from the train waiting for me to finally declare she’s been feeling the same way as me for months, okay it never happens and generally I just shuffle away to a hotel for a weekend of sexual frustration but nevertheless the romantic overtones are there. With the coach it will pull into the station and everyone will just suddenly charge lie demented cattle at the exit, some old lady will drag a suitcase from an overhead rack and thwack you round the head with it and generally when you get off you just feel in massive need of a large gin and tonic to make you feel human again.

I suppose ultimately for all my complaints about them I do love the trains and generally my complaints are limited to the selfish people who just have no care for their fellow passengers, the kind of person who, on a rail replacement coach, will recline their seat and crush your patella simply because they wish to maximise their own comfort and genuinely never think that might in some way impact on yours. No as Cary Grant says in North By Northwest “it sure beats flying doesn’t it” and for all its faults, rail travel truly is the best and most romantic way to get around.

This week Matt:

• Had a week off which he spent reading about Henry II and Eleanor Of Aquitaine - quite the bitch it must be said!
• Went to watch Submarine at the pictures, seriously so funny I almost herniated laughing!

• Won tickets to a meet & greet with Clare Balding, absolutely can't wait!

The complaining classes

Well good evening all and welcome to another year of bitching and general grumpiness that pervades my life like a relentless dementor. I hope we all had a suitably refreshing New Year (well except anyone who spent New Years where I did of course, anything but peaceful!) but to the rest of youhere’s hoping it was a good one.

I suppose logically though there is only one thing I can really talk of that has truly got me foaming around the chops this past week and that is the furore over the cynical Eastenders plot twist for new year that saw the blonde one who used to be Samantha Janus and looks like her face has been chiselled out of someone much more attractive switching her stillborn baby with that of Kat Slater the modern day Bet Lynch. Now at last count there were, as far as I can recall over 8,000 complaints lodged with the BBC aout this incident, why????? Do these people not comprehend the idea of fiction? This has not actually happened people there’s a handy hint at the end of an episode when a list of people scrolls along the screen not one of whom shares their name with the character they’re playing! Seems to me that if the storyline has engrossed you enough that you actally believe all this is real then you should be commending the BBC for hiring such good quality actors as to make you suspend your disbelief enough to genuinely think all this has happened.

Okay maybe it could be seen as a cynical and exploitative storyline but is that not what these writers are paid for? Would these people prefer Eastenders was more like Lark Rise To Candleford or something “Oh Peggy what’s Phil up to?” “I don’t know Pat but he’s doing it wearing riding breeches, but his stovepipe hat is all askew!” “Oh my we must inform the church elders immediately!” OH COME ON!!!! The only reason any of us watch dramas is pure escapism we know it’s not true you don’t get people watching Spooks going “Hmmm well I’m not certain blowing up London for the 14^th time this series is all that appropriate” because that’s what you have come to expect from that show and the same should be true of Eastenders. If you want to watch it all power to you but we all know that soaps and reality shows are the big ticket numbers in terms of viewers hence the writers have to come up with more and more outlandish plot lines, after all this Christmas must be the first one in years without a death in Albert Square and even then it ended up with Janine knifing herself in the gut then limping to the pub and out again (Then again if I got to the pub and found Pat doing karaoke I might be inclined to crawl back onto the street to die as well!).

Perhaps though what is even more cringeing in the BBC response to he pathetic whiners, if we do some (admittedly very unscientific) maths the Eastenders Christmas special was watched by just over 11,000,000 people this year and 8,000 have complained over this storyline, that means that less than 1 in every thousand people who watched Eastenders saw fit to complain and yet the BBC feels the need to pander to these over-zealous middle-Englanders, why? So they won’t watch next year and you’ll have to make to with 10,992,000 viewers instead (Will still beat ITV’s rubbish by a country mile) or, as is more likely, these trogladytes will be busy complaining but still be sure to join in for the conclusion of the storyline, why does the beeb bend over backwards to these psychopaths who have nothing better to do that sit around the breakfast table reading the Daily Mail with their faces turning various shades of puce as they spout bigotry towards their tweed-coated wives and children.

Lets look at some of the other examples of “complaints” the BBC has seen fit to apoloise for. Songs Of Praise being pre-recorded for Easter and Christmas, why? Did it make a difference? Okay if the Easter Sunday service got broadcast on the final Sunday of Advent then I can judge grounds for mild complaint but just because the producers chose to get the big services right we feel this divine need to launch a vitriolic campaign of complaint?

Another complaint (which I loved) was when an emotional episode of Dr Who (I know it’s an oxymoron) came to a close ad BBC ran a trail for the next programme underneath and people felt the need to complain about this? By all means tsk to the person next to about how awful it is but what kind of person reacts to this mildest piece of provocation by writing to the BBC to complain? It’s not like the beeb was broadcasting hardcore pornography across the bottom of the screen it was just a reminder of what was on next, get a grip people!

I suppose what I am ultimately getting at is that if you, as a consumer, feel that a programme has deeply offended you then by all means use the legitimate means of protest but if your complaint is that something you knew full well would be happening (after all this storyline had been in all the papers beforehand) then the only person you can blame is yourself. Look at the most infamous example of all the “Brandgate” affair. After that show was broadcast there were 2 complaints and even of those 2 only 1 actually referred to the now infamous answerphone messages. By the time the hoo-haa had finally abated there were over 30,000 registered complaints now seriously I ask you should we apologise to these people? These are evidently people who became offended after the event as such they either failed to listen to the broadcast and were just somehow “offended by proxy” or, as is more likely, chose to listen again to be offended. If you do this we should not be pandering to you. If I was to walk into your house and beat myself about the head with you rolling pin there would be no justification in me complaining to you that you had left the rolling pin in so easy-to-reach a place, no you placed the offending object there but I went into the event knowing full well what I was doing, if I get hurt then it’s my own damn fault and it’s the same with these moaners.

Ridiculously now the BBC is planning to “end the storyline early” how’s that going to work put the (fictional) baby into a shoebox, hurl it into the canal and move on? People should realise the danger of what complaining does, it stifles the creativity of scriptwriters and maybe Lark Rise To Walford won’t be so very far away and Christmas “explosive” storylines involving Dot going to church without a bonnet and Ian Beale’s exciting new ironmongery business will be the norm!

This week Matt:

• Returned to his desk after the Xmas break to find nothing had changed..... as ever.

• Began planning his 2011 social calendar - so many cultural highlights to look forward to.

• Began to make sense of New Years Eve - Eastenders has nothing on us!