Whatever happened to CELEBDAQ?

Back in the days when you had to plug your computer into your telephone line in order to download pornography, sorry, in order to go online, the BBC had a website called CELEBDAQ.  It was fabulous, but it’s probably a good thing that this site no longer exists, for the reasons explained below.

CELEBDAQ was, as the name implies, a trading game.  It was sort of a combination of Fantasy Football and Hello! magazine.  So it was a fantasy trading game, but unlike a game of trading footballers so that you could demonstrate that you were just as fucking clueless as any other manager in the Premiership about squad selection, or fantasy share dealing where you could pretend to be the sort of person who in their day job in the City meddled with the economies of developing countries and fucked them up, then at the weekend continued to spread social ill by supporting the drugs trade and so, generally, being the sort of person Dickens tried to warn us about, you traded in how famous a particular celebrity was that week.

Celebrity fame fluctuated, so if somebody had a film premier coming out, they would get more time in the media and their profile would rise and they would become more valuable as a celebrity.  However, as their fame rose, so their share price did, so if you knew that a blue chip famous person like Tom Hanks was going to be in London promoting his new film, he’s a sound investment for that week but you could only buy a few shares.

Much, much better to go to the ‘B’ listers or, as they were also known, those who appeared on television.

As far as I am aware, ‘personalities’ were not listed.

It was tremendous fun.  You had to register, all the cash was virtual and every week there was a star trader award.

Obviously, it had to end.

The trouble with celebrities is that they have, in recent years, traded fame for infamy.  Jimmy Saville got a lot of press coverage after he died, because it turned out that more than just looking like a nonce, he was a nonce.  Who knew?  Apparently, everyone knew.  People in the industry new and, in front rooms up and down the country when the news broke people who had seen him on telly years ago knew, or at least said ‘I fucking knew it’ under their breath.  Then Operation Yewtree got underway, and might as well have been titled Operation Yewboat because it sank the careers of quite a few telly personalities without trace.

That, as we now know, was just the tip of the shitberg.  Who would have imagined that greasy fucktards would have used their positions of power and influence to take advantage of vulnerable young people.  I mean, really, who knew?

We all know that nonces look like nonces.  We all now also know that any bloke with a fat BMI who is pictured with his arm around a young woman who looks like she is wishing that teleportation were a thing is what the newspapers term a ‘predator’.  And not something sleek that lives on the veldt, or even something with a cool shoulder mounted laser canon that hunts Arnie in the jungle, no, the sort of predator that disguises its distinctive scent of sweat and fat with money and lawyers.

Bluntly, it is no fun trading celebrities when they might make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Celebrities are, by and large, individuals who have used their talent in a way that has resulted in public notoriety in a good way.

The democratisation of the media has meant that anyone with the means to do so can upload a media clip of themselves to a media platform, and other folk can watch it and leave snarky comments.  What this has proved is that although the number of people who think they have a talent is apparently limitless, the pool of really talented people remains finite.

So maybe CELEBDAQ deserves a comeback after all, because of the listing, a bona fide list of who is, and who is not, a celebrity.  Youtubers need not apply.

Showing results for 'Racist Arsehole'

Permanent petulant Li’ll Donnie has been sheeting* again.

This time, the subject of his ill-considered emission is Google, specifically how, when you search for news, a lot of the results are critical of the ‘policies’ of the subject doing the Googling.

If that is indeed the case, and it may well be for reasons so obvious they can be understood by moss then it is, at least on one level, surprising.

Surprising because over years the internet has moved from being the place where you could go for almost limitless knowledge, and limitless opinion, to the place that you go to for almost limitless knowledge, almost limitless ignorance, and a hell of a lot of opinions that align with your own.

No doubt it is the inevitable result of more and more stuff being put on the internet, so the chances of coming across a comforting endorsement of your own views, however niche those views might be and even if the allied opinion is expressed in the comments section of a teen’s instagrammed selfie, is moderately certain.  Alternatively, you could just go the media outlet or nutcase conspiracy website of your choice to have your vile (Daily Mail) or smug (Guardian) views endorsed.

Ah, for the days when the internet was the home of chatrooms and bulletin boards that were wee digital salons where great matters were discussed.  Yes, I am talking about the debate about who the greatest Star trek captain was+.  Again.

Apparently, when li’ll Donnie Googles presumably himself, he is confronted with negative news stories.

This is probably because it is difficult to be objective, and positive, about Li’ll Donnie.

It should come as no surprise to anyone but a tan-addled buffoon that the internet tends to be negative about authority figures.  And it does not matter who they are or what they have done (obvious honourable exception is Nelson Mandala).  Look at Aung San Suu Kyi, somebody who is not enjoying a whole lot of positive press at the moment, and she’s got a Nobel peace prize (details correct at time of publishing).  Even if you fade from politics and try and rehabilitate yourself, you are still fair game.  In 1997 Michael Portillo exited politics in a ‘where were you when Portillo went?’ teevee moment that was as shocking as it was hysterical.  Everyone viewing reached for their dictionary to look up if ‘hubris’ meant what they thought it meant.  Since then, he has made a series of steam-porn documentaries for the BBC where he affably wanders round Britain, guided by a guide book decades out of date.  Now he is mocked merely for his choice of attire, rather than repulsive views and making life difficult for millions when in power.

Former PM David Cameron is very much not rehabilitated.  Never mind gurning selfies from festivals, the bloke could post pictures of a UK wide tour of him in an ice-cream van dolling out free lollies to the kiddies, and the reaction would probably be that he is either a peado or, worse, is actively contributing to childhood obesity levels.

It’s doubtful, of course, that Li’ll Donnie even knows what an algorithm is or how one might be applied to sifting and sorting results for news searches.  It’s doubtful that he has an understanding that his action of putting children in cages, like the fucking Child Catcher, is likely to inspire at least mild criticism.  It’s doubtful that he understands anything that can’t be expressed on the front of a baseball hat.  He probably doesn’t know how to click past page one of Google results.

He certainly has yet to learn that you never, ever, Google your own name.  the best result is that you will find that there is somebody with your name who is more famous than you, obviously, and will probably be younger, richer and less tubby than you.  Worst case is that you, your actual self, are somewhere at the top of that first page, because that means that you have done something to attract the attention of a third party on the internet and, unless you are Nelson Mandela or James T. Kirk, the results are not going to be favourable.

* ‘Sheeting’ is a hybrid term that I’ve invented that I’m hoping will be, if not word of the year 2019, then at least accepted by some sort of urban dictionary with really, really low standards.  It’s a mash-up of ‘Shit’ and ‘Tweeting’ and describes the process of making an ignorant statement on Twitter.  In short, the digital equivalent of talking out of your arse.  For instance ‘I see Linaker’s been sheeting about a top four finish for Man U this season’.

+ Kirk.  Obvs.

#‎R.I.P.

Rik Mayall is dead, and I can’t quite believe it.  How could somebody with that amount of energy, somewhere between a dynamo and a typhoon, expire at so young an age.  If he had lived out his life and wound down naturally, he would probably have lived to be 472, but to go so young is wrong.  Of course, there was the whole quad bike accident, but still.

He was, I think it’s fair to say, formative.  It’s normal playground behaviour to discuss last nights telly the morning after, I think the episode of ‘The Young Ones’ where they go on University Challenge is actually still being discussed among those who saw it when broadcast.  Certainly, whenever I happen to turn on the telly and UC is on, my first thought is ‘Achtung!’.  More than that though…Lord Flasheart, in Blackadder II and Blackadder goes Forth.  ‘Always treat your kite, like you treat your woman’.  In my experience, if you heed that advice you won’t go far wrong.

Reaction to Mayall’s death has proved something of a litmus test for reaction to celebrity mortality.  In short, Twitter.

There are various expressions of public grief

The most affecting are those public memorials, garage fourcourt bouquets of flowers gaffa taped to a lamppost at the site of another roadside tragedy.  If you want to spare yourself some grief you can pretend that they are actually a traffic calming measure put at busy junctions by the council.  If you like.  In America, they’ve even got a word for them, ‘descanso’.

Away from the roadside, there’s the equally affecting doorstep memorial.  Usually set against a backdrop of fluttering scene of crime ‘Police stop’ tape and a single bobby standing watch.  Simple messages and stuffed animals tell you all you need to know about that.  Want to know more?  Read the novel ‘Fullalove’.

Moving into social media, Facebook has proved a popular site to post messages and share photographs of the departed.  It’s fitting that Facebook should serve some purpose in mourning the dead, as it’s often the source of images for the news media breaking tragic news of the passing of somebody who isn’t a celebrity and so is not the subject of thousands of stock photographs.  That’s why a newsreader with a serious face and a low voice occasionally breaks the news of the unfortunate death of an individual in front of a background showing the only picture available to the news media of that individual, usually grinning like a loon and giving a cheery thumbs up or, quite possibly, a pixillated hand gesture.

Then there’s Twitter.

If a news item starts ‘Tributes have today been paid to…’ get ready for some quotes that are no longer than 140 characters and which may read how much somebody will be missed, or how important they were, but really mean that the person sending the tweet couldn’t even be arsed to send an e mail.

Always looks for lengthy, sincere and long statement.  That is the celebrity with the good agent who has taken the time and trouble to craft something genuine for their client and it is a lot, lot better than tweeting a tribute which can say anything you like, but only ever means ‘Read of the tragic passing of X while on the loo reading Twitter.  Immediately tweeted in response, as am feckless media whore’.

It’s a measure of Mr Mayall’s standing that his tributes were substantial.  Mind you, comedians all do like to bloody talk, don’t they.

A matter of scale

Do you want your name to still be known centuries hence?  In a good way?  That’s not used to frighten children?  Do you want to be an answer to a question asked in school?  A question that is not ‘who do we avoid if he’s hanging round the gates?’  Do you want to leave a lasting legacy of your time on the planet? 

If you do, then the solution is not, as you might think, to squeeze into a two-sizes-too-small sequinned costume made by your nan, polish up your sad story and humiliate yourself on a prime-time talent show, but to get yourself into the shed and start inventing a unit of measurement.

And here’s the really great part, it doesn’t even matter if there is already a unit of measurement for the thing you are trying to measure.  Distance and temperature for instance both have two different units of measurement, so surely there’s no bar to preventing you assigning a new unit of measurement for something that already has one.

For example, the heat of chillies is measured using the Scoville scale, which goes from ‘no significant heat’ (supermarket chilli con carne) to 2,000,000 (police pepper spray, any spicy food consumed on a first date).  So an alternative and possibly a more useful scale would be to go Beaufort and assign behaviours to the heat, all the way from ‘adding pepper to the dish to make it more exciting’, through ‘blowing out of cheeks’, ‘sweating’, ‘comically reaching for your neighbour’s beer and downing it in one’ to ‘shitting fire’.

A word of warning however.  Do not be tempted to go down the ‘more is better’ route and assign a third unit of measurement to something that already has two.  Nobody in the pub is going to be impressed that you ran twenty-eight Jamteks in half an Astard the other day, or helped by an instruction that for best results, cook at fifteen Quolons for eighty Parps.  Doing this will either leave people baffled, or thinking you are a twat rather than a guy so clever he looks like he’s smoking a pipe…even when he’s not.

So, basic rule of thumb*, try and avoid anything that sounds like it’s lifted from a crap science fiction novel.

For best results then, you need to quantify something that has yet to be attributed a scale.  By measuring the reaction of a cross section of the public to stimulus – let’s say, a BBC news broadcast - then monitoring the flush reaction to the ears, blood pressure, heart rate, frequency of composing furious letters to the editor and so on, it must be possible to clinically measure levels of indignation.

I propose that indignation be measured in units of Clarkson.  The maximum amount of indignation any one person is capable of is One Clarkson and the great thing about the Clarkson Scale is that it can not only measure specific points of indignity (Daily Mail reader learning that his tax money is spent subsidising opera – one eighth of a Clarkson) but is an effective measure of background indignation (Daily Mail reader alone with their crazy thoughts, one seventieth of a Clarkson).

Naturally, The Clarkson is an imperial measurement.  The metric equivalent is The Farage.  

There is a demand for this.  Society is increasingly demanding that, increasingly, things are increasingly quantified in an increasingly simple way for presentation in the media and, increasingly, on social networking sites.  How increasingly I have no idea, but somebody is, I hope, toiling in their shed right now to quantify that.

*You can, if you so wish, seek to quantify the rule of thumb or anything else that has so far gone unquantified.  For instance, while I would not be at all surprised if the perfume industry has a measurement of pungency of aroma (parts per million or something), this may work well for traditional scents like citrus or whatever but has yet, as far as I am aware, to be applied to celebrity scents.  What exactly is the amount of Beyonce in each bottle of ‘bouncy’ or whatever her celeb fragrance is called?  Lasting fame awaits the person who can nail that one.

Edinburgh Reviews - Denise Van Outen

Another surprise. Great singer and very funny. Also an interesting take on confessional theatre, talking about her feelings in a way that, as a bloke, made my arse pucker in self-conscious embarrassment with a sound like a toddler rubbing a balloon.

The sweet smell of success

In a masterwork of procrastination, I spent the morning watching the video blog ‘RocketBoom’. This 3 minute daily short video discusses techhie issues with a wry, dry and oh-so-amusing spin. The presenter is super-hot, which doesn’t hurt.

Several of the pre-Christmas postings were about ‘memes’ – postings of images or, more recently, short videos - that have attracted gazillions of views and then gigazillions of parodies on video hosting sites – think some freak blubbing over Britney and you’re there.

That so many people could watch the image of somebody blubbing is the last word in the democratisation of celebrity in the internet age. Forget fame, you can now be infamous and you don’t even have to kill anyone to do it.

If you have a video camera and a PC you can have your own television show. If nobody watches it you can just pretend that it’s worthy like they do with ‘real’ telly. If everyone hates it you can feel misunderstood and plaster on the black mascara. So everyone can be sorta, kinda, famous, even if it means that the world doesn’t know your name, but rather calls you ‘blubbing guy’.

This diluting of being in, on or around the media seems to have a pretty profound effect on ‘grown-ups’, so I wonder what it’s like for adolescents? I wonder if the most popular girl in school has her own page or blog or youtube channel that acknowledges she is the most popular girl in school – or is that shot to buggery because ordinary girl has more pokes on facebook because she knows a hell of a lot about Star Trek.

Ordinary people are acting like celebrities by recording their own teevee programmes. Celebrities are acting like ordinary people by getting out of cars without any pants on – this means that here is only one real test of whether or not you are a real live celebrity – do you have your own fragrance?

Because it’s easy to lip-synch to ‘nothing compares to you’ while shaving your own head and so be that day’s hit on youtube, but it’s less easy to market the smell of you.

Which is why the most popular girl in school will always be the most popular girl in school – because if the most popular girl at my school when I was a teen had turned up and started flogging bottles of her own scent, there would be a queue of sweaty adolescents round the block ready to pay good money for a sniff of Jane.

KM and VB

There must soon be a tipping point where Kate McCann will have been on the front page of more newspapers than Princess Diana. At least she has good reason be look grim in all of her photographs, unlike Victoria Beckham who I saw a photograph of smiling and didn’t recognise. For years I thought that VB had bad teeth, now it appears that she’s just miserable. Still, if I had a wardrobe that denied me the occasional therapeutic beer and pork scratching binge, I’d be pretty glum too. Victoria's bitter? Very possibly.

"Your Issue Here"

Sometimes it seems as though modern life contrives to irritate the hell out of one. Irritations, I think, are governed by the same sort of immutable laws that govern physics, but without smart arses like Einstein or heroes like Scotty around to challenge them.

One of the laws is that irritations become more irritating at a rate somewhere between cumulatively and exponentially - at a rate that could be dubbed the catastrophe curve. For instance, an annoying ring tone may be a minor irritation, but coming on top of a stubbed toe, a fatuous remark by a deejay, playing ‘hunt the housekeys’ and a sprint for the train, the theme tune to ‘sex and the city’ ringing out loudly could well see the owner of the mobile being pitched out the train window - no mean feat as they don’t actually open.

The second law of irritation is that things become irritating if you put them in inverted commas.

(Not, you understand, that anything in inverted commas can ever be as irritating as those people who actually PUT things in inverted commas when they are talking to you. Anyone mining punctuation near me is in great danger of my miming my own particular band of kung-fu grammar I call punchuation, not least because they are usually saying things like ‘and just because I put up a poster of Hitler in the office, apparently I’m some sort of [mime] racist [unmime]’.)

For instance, at the moment, it’s Summer. More precisely, it’s “Summer.” Summer is fishing the parasol out of the shed and using the barbeque for cooking for three weeks in a row. “Summer” is the sort of weather we are currently experiencing and is heralded by the ritual of chanting ‘are you f**king kidding!’ every time the weather forecast comes on.

The only thing more irritating than the use of inverted commas where they are not required is not using them when they should be - case in point, the front cover of glossy magazine promising celebrity photographs. This should actually read “celebrity*” “photographs**” where * is ‘some woman off a soap’ and ** means ‘fuzzy long-lens grainy images of a woman, yes, yes we’re pretty sure it’s a woman, in a bikini, well, half of a bikini - at least we’re pretty sure she’s topless, could just be the way the shadow is falling.’ Indeed, one could say that these “magazines” are shite - no inverted commas required.

The exception that proves this rule. Occasionally I enjoy leaving the office and meeting a colleague for “lunch”. Lunch means a sandwich, snack or soup. “Lunch” involves a relaxed examination of the brewers art. Oddly, I now refer to such excursions as lunch, the dropping of the inverted commas lending the impromptu trip to the pub a much needed respectability I feel.

Bring on Puss in Boots for God’s sake!

The widening of the media funnel, to allow more effluent than ever to wash up in our front rooms, like King Augeas' stables or, you know, a Sheffield sitting-room, has had the effect of democratizing celebrity to the extent that anyone can be a celebrity. Now, we need classification of celebrity, A list, B list and, er, the rest.

It probably didn’t used to be like that. Either you were famous, or you weren’t. If your fame went beyond your village, then your fame was probably deserved. Famous in your own village = a reputation for lifting cows or buggering ducks. Famous beyond your own village = sank an enemy fleet, with your breath.

Now, you have people who are famous, people who are ‘famous’, people who are stars, superstars, megastars and so on. I guess what it boils down to is this – if your name is above the title, or bigger on the book jacket than the title of the book – you’re famous. Anything else, you’re a celebrity, whether it means you act in a soap or did something amusing with marmite on a reality tee vee programme.

There’s nothing odd with people wanting to be famous – what is odd is that people appear to set their sights low these days and see real currency in being a celebrity. It’s shocking – people have realized that there is no way they can be Jack Nicholson (and let’s face it, it must be pretty hard being the sort of ageing, fat actor who’s finest moment was gurning like a drooling fool through a doorframe) so they want to be the sort of celebrity pictured dismounting from a limo with no knickers on – and that’s just the blokes.

The currency of celebrity of being spent at present by Boris ‘tosser’ Johnson, the shambling idiot that occasionally breaks cover as an MP long enough to make tactless remarks about grief while bending lithesome colleagues across his desk at the rag he ‘edits’. Many a journo has worried about being ‘spiked’ by Boris. Apparently he thinks that bumbling loonery and the occasional appearance on telly is enough for him to be considered a candidate as mayor of London.

Mayor…of London. So, Boris, what would your reaction be to a terrorist outrage in the capital? Getting a f**king haircut would be a start.

Boris is an excellent example of the media saying something so often: in this case – ‘he’s really clever’, that the addled twat must believe it himself. The problem is that we will now be subject to his deranged rantings during the election.

Still, I bet the media are loving it. Shame for Londoners – Ken will be re-elected no doubt, but it would be good to see the opposition parties put up a decent candidate, Dick Wittington’s cat, for instance?

In praise of...Cat Deeley

It was only what a couple of surveyors from the Ordinance Survey turned up and started debating whether my pile of clothes awaiting ironing was properly a hill or a mountain, that I realised I had been neglecting sartorial chores. (The correct term is, of course, a ‘mound’ of ironing, not just because in shape the piled-up clothes resemble a barrow or grave-site of a warrior-king, but because, like ancient burial-sites, such mounds often contain treasure, such as that excellent party shirt you’ve been looking for for weeks.)

There was no snow on the peak, a sure sign that things had got beyond the point of recovery and where the only sane option is to start flogging lift passes and hope that ‘crumpled’ becomes the look for the season, but action was required.

I wrestled the ironing board into position, set the iron to ‘steam like the Flying Scotsman on the Edinburgh - London run!’ and turned on the telly.

Watching a recorded programme about the history of the Victoria Cross passed the first hour very agreeably (tee shirts, boxers and assorted casual wear). This came to an end just as I finished shirts, so I flicked channels, alighting on foul-mouthed cook Gordon ‘fucking’ Ramsey presenting a programme about how to cook things - the self-confidence of anyone in his kitchen being roasted for instance.

He appeared to reserve most of the spice in the kitchen for his language, with more effs than a kid with a stammer doing a reading of a Famous Five book. The odd thing was that, talented armature as he was, he occasionally missed the opportunity to slip in an eff where a professional might of done so. Ideally, when swearing, I like to slip in an eff between every syllable of every word, a practice that makes the ordering of ‘haricourt beans’ in a restaurant something of a chore.

The format was GR in the kitchen, GR dropping in on people who think that a dinner part is five pot noodles and a kettle in the middle of the table and saving them from ready meals and so on. They also have a restaurant with celeb guests - tonight’s was Cat Deeley.

I remember Cat when she used to present SMTV with Ant and Dec and, after initially thinking ‘what the hell?’ and ‘ah, something for the dads’, realised that anyone who could present live telly for two hours on a Saturday morning with every sign of obvious enjoyment was pure tee vee gold.

What it boiled down to is here’s somebody who appears to be very beautiful, Brummie and proud, poised and elegant and STILL manages not to be up herself. For instance, on the show last night, she did a champagne challenge where, for instance, she picked the best champagne in a blind tasting, then picked the vintage champagne and then picked the champagne that was a supermarket brand that was considered superior to a ‘name’ brand. Pure. Class.

The corker was though when she removed the top from a champagne bottle using a sabre! What a girl! She was then invested into the order of people who can decapitate magnums!

Okay, not the hardest job in the world, but I can’t think of any other celebs who would be quite so unpretentious - or could swing a sword like that. Every fantasy geek watching must have been hitting the ‘video capture’ button on their remotes.

I, of course, was too busy ironing.

Hugh Meanz Biznezz

A rather belated post here - I should have posted this a few weeks ago, when I had the idea for my Hero of the Week or Villain of the Week.

The Hero of the Week was Hugh Grant. The floppy haired ponce may have previously only barely cut it as the lead in a rom-com or two, but when he hurled those baked beans at that pap, he elevated his status to action hero.

There is something about gutter photographers that make you want to shove their cameras up their arses and hit the ‘zoom’ button. It used to be like organised crime, with a few paps sleazing their way around London, paying off bellboys and doormen to know who was staying where, eating where and sleeping where and with whom or what.

This was because you had one page in the paper that was to do with ‘showbiz’ and two magazines obsessed with celebrity, ‘Hello’ and ‘OK’.

Not any more. The papers are full of pages of photographs (well, maybe photograph is stretching it, grainy images is closer to the mark, I think we’re actually one step away from simply using Google Earth images of Madonna’s back garden and putting a red circle round the collection of shadows that might be her mowing the grass) of celebs.

Now it’s more like crimes of opportunity - photographic muggings. The photograph of choice a few months ago was the low level shot of women getting out of cabs. And the reaction…criticism that they were not wearing knickers. Have I missed something? Is not the reaction ‘hold on, who’s the pervert taking upskirt photographs. I’d like to see him try that on a crowded train.

That’s why the pictures are always grainy - because the celebs have stopped playing ball and are now playing ‘catch the tin can…in your teeth’.

Not that I read any of these papers or mags myself - it’s just that everyone on my train does and you occasionally can’t help but notice a shoddy picture of somebody you don’t recognise from some soap you don’t watch doing their shopping or something - that’s right, they have pictures of people shopping. The new low though is a mag I noticed that has, on the front cover, a promise to pay you for any celeb snaps you send in!

On the one hand I’m tempted to just go to Madam Tausaurds and make a fortune by putting a carrier bag in the hand of each waxwork (Madonna shops at Spar, Queen with a hold-all from Ann Summers). But I’m just as tempted to find out where the offices of the mag are and burn it down.

What I don’t like is this perversion of the role of the Citizen Journalist. It’s good that we all have mobiles with cameras, it’s bad that they can be used to photograph assaults on people in bus-stops or take pictures of shopping celebs.

If I’m ever shopping and see Hugh Grant lurking in the aisles, pondering what to have for tea, he may rest assured that I will not be pestering him for a photograph. Nor will I ask him to pass me the beans.