Ads, infinitum…

A confession: instead of flesh and blood, arterial doo-dahs and pumpy-bits, I have a cold dead heart made of steel and carbon, redundant phone chargers and scart leads. And the reason I know this (other than that full-body MRI scan, obviously) is because I am entirely unmoved by the John Lewis ad.

Sorry about that.

I know it’s making full-grown proper people (presumably constructed of appropriately bleedy bits and squidgy emotions) break down in snivelling heaps. And of course I ‘get it’; I love that little boy, the ad is beautifully shot and brilliantly edited and I know it’s for Christmas and therefore one must suspend one’s disbelief from the apex of Canary Wharf, but… I can’t suspend my disbelief. I no more believe in a child who wakes up on Christmas morning and whose first thought is his mum and dad than I believe in Father Christmas. (No, strike that — I sort of do believe a little bit in Santa because I sat on his actual knee in Hamleys in 1969 and he was real). Is there a single real British child (of what—seven?) who has ever done anything other than wake up at some ungodly pre-dawn hour on Christmas Day and within slightly less than a heartbeat started ripping open their presents? If there is, I would love to meet that child. I’d like to interview that child — and its parents. Hell, I’d like to adopt that child.

But almost worse than all of this desperate sentimentality (and I don’t have a problem with desperate sentimentality — ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ gets me every single time) is that final (give-us-your) money-shot. Perhaps I could be persuaded that out there, somewhere, there really is a small British child of infinite unselfishness and generosity (with a John Lewis Partnership card?), however I remain to be convinced that at 5.30-ish am on December 25th it is ever as bright as midday. Go on, see for yourself: as that darling little boy hovers in the doorway clutching his implausible gift, mum and dad wake up, blinking and bleary— and no wonder, given there is a fat load of full-blown daylight going on outside their bedroom window. Oh, hang on a mo (and thank you to a reader for pointing this out), according to the clock it’s actually 8am. In which case, I can only assume the John Lewis family lives on 34th St.

And while I’m at it… you know those ads for Iceland in which the divine Stacey Soloman (I do properly love her) is excitedly heading home to Dagenham for Christmas? Well, that’s just a heart-warming bit of structured ad-reality, isn’t it? Let’s face it, Stacey is far more likely to be excitedly heading home to Dagenham for Chanukah.

Actually, I’m feeling deep and profound humbuggery about all the current crop of Christmas ads. It’s mid-November, we’ve just done half-term, Hallowe’en and fireworks and I am not even remotely ready to embrace the season of dementoid consumerism, which (to my mind) should only really kick-off when advent calendars have started being deployed. Also, there is something a little bit desperate about the scale of these ads, which, in the face of a proper recession, strike me as being even more insanely lavish than usual. Those by Waitrose and Sainsburys make me feel particularly nauseous: the monumental scale of the almost audibly-groaning tables covered in obscene amounts of roasted/glazed/sugar-dusted ‘festive’ whatever feels so categorically wrong right now that it genuinely leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This is a similar theme to the one explored by India Knight in her excellent column in yesterday’s Sunday Times. But it’s worth reiterating: if I had just been made redundant and faced a belt-tightening Christmas, far from being guilt-tripped into attempting to create a Christmas that only truly exists in the minds-eyes of the men and women of Charlotte St (and OK, maybe the Ecclestone family), I’d want to be made to feel OK about the fact that I just bloody well couldn’t. Look, I’m not an idiot —it goes without saying this isn’t traditionally the job of the advertising industry… but it could be. Instead of ads that metaphorically ram unattainable amounts of more-bloody-stuff down our sore throats, perhaps the cleverest brains in Charlotte St could think of ways to fulfil their remit without actually making us gag.

Which observation brings me full circle. Maybe I’m even starting to warm to the idea of a Christmas advertisement that is predominantly about feeling things rather than buying stuff. Perhaps I am in fact less heart-of-a-Bakugan than solar-plexus-of-a-toasted-marshmallow? Whatever. Of course John Lewis wants to flog us lots and lots of Christmas presents but given they’ve chosen to do so in a different (even if entirely implausible) way to the Waitroses and Sainsburys, I probably won’t love them any less than I already do (and having been a store card holder for 1000 years, I have a lot of John Lewis love).

And don’t get me started on M&S. Oh, OK… quite aside from the fact that hitching itself to the X-Factor sleigh proved to be A Bad Move, Cocaine-coza-wise, I fail to see how having Micha B singing about her ‘dreams coming true’ in a tight close-up in the final shot of the ad is anything other than a not-very-subliminal message to ‘vote Micha to win’. Next year, I suggest that, having obviously decided who he wants/needs to win in about September, Cowell hands the whole tackily gift-wrapped package over to Derren Brown, who, deploying his spooky Suggestability Factor, is guaranteed to Make It So.

Beeny counting…

I watched the third ‘episode’ of ‘Sarah Beeny’s Restoration Nightmare’ (C4, Thu) in a state of medium-to-high anxiety, exacerbated by keeping half an eye on my Twitter timeline. While my anxiety levels hovered at around six on the internal Richter scale, the power of Twitter’s was in full CGI disaster movie-effect and in danger of setting off a tsunami big enough to take out the East Riding of Yorkshire (where Beeny’s ‘Nightmare’ is set), if not actually the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.

Here’s the premise: given that the ‘Property Ladder’ has been replaced by snakes, the likeable—and seemingly level-headed—developer/presenter has been sharing the trials of turning a vast and crumbling stately home she and her husband, Graham, picked up for a relative song (450 grand) a decade ago, into a grand family home-cum-wedding venue.

So far, so Reality-TV-check. You can see why C4 would like this—it’s got Beeny and it’s proper porno: ‘Property Ladder’ meets ‘Grand Designs’ with a sprinkling of ‘Location Location’, some ‘Country House Rescue’-style will-they-won’t-they-get-their-planning-app-from-the-council jeopardy and it feeds nicely into our collective Downtonism: how LOVELY it must be to have all that indoor space and outdoor acreage, even without a downstairs workforce, or a Bates… And how GHASTLY it must be to be strangled by red-tape while you fight your corner against the local councillors who inexplicably don’t ‘get it’ that you’re not only trying to save a beautiful building from ruin, but trying to earn a few bob into the bargain…

But the times they are a-changing — and not in a ‘Changing Rooms’ kind of way. While once we may have enjoyed the escapism of watching the telegenic Beeny family and various personable in-and-outlaws pursuing what amounts to a lifestyle rather than any sort of actual life most of us can relate to… then I’m fairly sure (if the amount of re-Tweets of a comment by Alexis Petridis —’I'm really struggling to give a flying fuck about the difficulties Sarah Beeny faces as an owner of a stately home’ — are anything to go by *) that time has passed.

I like Beeny. I’m not a particularly jealous sort of person, merely subject to occasional, fleeting moments of mild envy… but last night as I watched Beeny and Co build themselves a tree-house, decorate their ‘family room’ and host a weekend ‘jamboree’ with friends and family (including actual sack races… in sacks… and some winsome-looking kiddie am-dram performed under the portico, all of which  looked like the Kennedy family’s downtime at Hyannis, re-imagined by the Mitfords) I felt a tiny bit miserable. And I didn’t like that feeling. Eventually I thought ‘I kind of like you, Sarah Beeny, but it really would be seemly of you to go away and stop sharing this with us right now’.

And I don’t just mean the house showing-off — personally I can never get enough of looking at other people’s absurdly lovely houses, even from the vantage point of my modestly-proportioned semi in Random-on-Sea. No, I mean the rest of it; the we’re-all-in-it-happily-together-ness of big, warm cosy (and few families are cosier than Sarah Beeny’s: her brother is married to Graham Beeny’s sister…) dogs-and-kittens-and-ponies families hell-bent on living out a rose-tinted, Boden-art-directed, entirely retro (but for the BlackBerrys and AirMacs) middle-class dream.

Look, I’m sure they’re very nice people and they clearly work hard. I don’t hate them… I hate it: the ‘lifestyle’ obsession which is still selling everybody down the consumerist river. And in the same week that Tamara Ecclestone’s (and there’s a woman who may need to employ extra security to ensure the safety of her Choo collection) ‘my life as a Daddy’s girl’ fly-on-the-wall series begins broadcasting, elsewhere in our ‘real’ wonky western world it feels as though the barricades are — softly-softly and veeeery quietly — beginning to be manned. Whatever, best of luck, Sarah. But do keep your head down.

* The first time I read AP’s Tweet I started singing Owner of a Stately Home to the tune of ‘Owner of A Lonely Heart’ by Yes. And you probably won’t be able to get that out of your head either now. Sorry.

X Factor

Am finding X-Factor a struggle this year. I love a well-thumbed format but this one feels dog-eared, increasingly crumpled and grubby round the edges. The sense that, this time around, nobody will get even the sniff of a career out of it (or even a Christmas No1) is overwhelming.

Last night, I found myself concentrating on my X-Factor Twitter feed far more than on the show: the *passion* and *commitment* of the contestants (and the judges) is nothing compared to the passionate and committed cynicism of the audience (or maybe that’s just my timeline?…).  For once I didn’t even bother joining in, simply because other people’s responses were faster, more furious and much funnier than mine would have been. This frenetic collective criticism adds a dimension to the viewing experience that makes me wonder how I ever endured it, pre-Twitter. And the speed of the match analysis is astounding. So, Katy Perry looks a bit tired/has dodgy roots/isn’t wearing her wedding ring? Within 20 seconds three comprehensively hash-tagged debates are underway. Gary Barlow recommends a dodgy Liverpool club for Perry to visit on the next date of her tour? Pictures of the venue are on Twitter in moments. Nu-Vibe are renamed No-Vibe and re-assigned new jobs working alongside Terry, the singing scaffolder, within a heartbeat.

This means that the balance of power has tipped. It’s no longer the show itself—its producers and on-screen talent—that dictate the terms of engagement (though of course they try very hard to control the contestants in order to better manipulate the viewer), it’s the punters who are in charge of the storyline — and not simply because ‘we’ get to vote. We all now understand that these contestants are here mostly because they box-tick: fat boy, black diva, woman next door, old bloke, sad kid, tricky woman, fragile girl… a bunch of back-stories queuing up in the wings, waiting to implode on-stage. The ‘bands’ always find it tougher to make an impact… too many faces=too little emotional impact. We want to see the whites of everybody’s eyes while they’re waiting to see if they’ll go through to the next round.

Well, I used to. Now, not so much. It’s partly down to the fact there’s there’s no Leona here, a lot down to the fact that Louis is an idiot. I also winced to see how much Tulisa genuinely cared (and cried) about those talentless boys who went out last night, while I’m slightly saddened by Gary Barlow embracing the format with such gusto. For the other judges, playing the game is a career-move—but, really, what’s in it for Gary? Just another Christmas No1.

So, will I stop watching? Don’t be daft. While I couldn’t give a toss about the show’s story-arc, I’m still glued to my spot beside the water-cooler, where the X-Factor’s alt-reality story unfolds.

Tinker Tailor Downton Spy…

Exhausting evening last night, ricocheting from Tinker Tailor at the local cinema to Downton Abbey on the box… which wasn’t, with the benefit of hindsight, necessarily the right way round. While Downton probably makes a better dessert than it does a starter, Tinker Tailor deserved an evening to itself, the better to mull over why, despite performances and cinematography that couldn’t be improved upon, I appreciated it more than I loved it.

Maybe it’s simply that it’s hard to love a spy… unless they’re the Spy Who Loved Me. I can admire a spy, however — and I hugely admired Gary Oldman’s (un)Smiley, a master-class in utterly compelling, un-showy acting. (I’m not sure — sadly — that anybody has ever won a Best Actor Academy Award for stillness, despite the fact that nothing better demonstrates the screen-acting craft, but please correct me if you can think of an example).

Ultimately, I suppose, I was in awe of a film that allowed its audience the time to think, that made every pause and pursed lip and exhaled puff of smoke — never mind the (few, but entirely unsparing) gunshots — count. And of course it looked perfect, and I was exceptionally grateful that this wasn’t edited by a Tourettes sufferer, a la Bourne or recent Bonds. But admiration isn’t the same as love. For love you need intimacy and by its very nature ‘Tinker Tailor’ keeps us at arms length. The result is intellectually satisfying (I can’t recall the last time I went to the cinema and felt quite so un-dumbed and grown-up) but it is also as emotionally chilly as its Cold War setting. Mind you, last night I had a brief discussion about the film with a Twitter friend who also saw it yesterday and apparently she cried at the end. I very rarely cry at drama (I save it for documentaries instead), but I do recognise that getting an audience to cry at the end of a film is, for many filmmakers, probably a box-ticked, though frankly I doubt it was very high on Tinker Tailor’s director Tomas Alfredson’s To Do list.

On the other hand, if Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes can get us reaching for the Kleenex he’d probably consider it a job well-done. But before I go there… had Tinker Tailor needed an even bigger cast of Alpha acting talent, I’m sure room could have been found around the table for Downton’s ruling triumvirate of Bonneville, Carter and Coyle, all of whom would’ve deployed the requisite combinations of tweed, RP, stiff upper lips and small firearms as apparently effortlessly as did Tinker’s Toby Jones, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, et al.

But in the event I love the fact that it’s not a man who is the link between Tinker and Downton — it’s a woman; specifically Laura Carmichael, better known to prime-timers as Lady Edith. Ms Carmichael doesn’t have a huge amount to do in Tinker — she’s a gel, after all —  but she does it beautifully, making yearning, Moneypenny-ish eyes at Benedict Cumberbatch. Despite being a hottie in real life, Carmichael appears to be cornering the market in young, quivering-quietly-and-intensely-with-unrequited-whatever maiden-aunts-in-waiting. She’s already having a great career but by never having to rely on a Lady Mary/Sybil pout will, I predict, have a lengthy and glittering one.

Anyway, Downton returned last night with a 90-minute, post X-Factor Orgy of Exposition (well, it has been a year) and hooray for that. I have no truck with the inverted snobbery of the ‘oh-god-it’s-Upstairs-Downstairs-re-imagined-for-the-recession’ critical dismissals. In my opinion this is as good an unashamedly escapist popular/ist drama as we’re ever going to see on a Sunday night. It may — hell, it does — have a sentimental streak as wide as the WW1 trenches, it may pander shamelessly to our collective ‘we-know-our-places… you-lay-them-and-I’ll-sit’ class system — but it does it warmly, wittily and knowingly, and you can’t say fairer than that.

OK, I felt a little bit sorry for Spooks last night, trounced as it was in the ratings (4.6 million to Downton’s 9.3, for the record) — but not that sorry. Given the choice between a ‘Tinker Tailor Terrorist’ for the Tourette’s Generation v Titanic-Set-In-A-Castle, then My Heart Will Go (On) To Downton.

She…RIP

I had a monthly column in SHE magazine, the closure of which was announced today. Natmags, which published it, is a UK subsidiary of Hearst, which has just acquired Hachette (do keep up!), which in turn publishes Elle and Red, among others. I can understand the corporate logic (though it never comes easy; corporate logic being very often the definition of illogical…) but that doesn’t stop me feeling very sad for the talented and committed team that really made the magazine sing during my 18 month tenure. And then, on a selfish level, SHE was not just my only contract but a column I loved writing, too.

As it happens I filed a column yesterday, to the magazine’s excellent editor Claire Irvin. As it will not now make it into print I’ll post a version of it here in the near future. Meanwhile, SHE… RIP.

Out Of The Loop…

For the past three weeks I’ve been a broadband-free zone. Turns out that going cold turkey only lasts about three days and after that it’s easy to stop obsessively twitching over your Twitter feed and embrace the ‘hello-trees, hello sky’ holiday philosophy (and during the Cornwall sojourn ‘hello quite extraordinarily relentless twunting rain…’. Or words to that effect).

Anyway, I was out of the loop and now I’m allegedly back in it. But when you live in Random-on-Sea ‘out of the loop’ is necessarily your default setting, and anyway part of me is still in Northern France, where I’ve been hanging for the past five days, child-free, living on moules and frites in Montreuil.

And I haven’t watched telly, either. Or read a ‘silly season’ paper. Instead I’ve seen a son-et-lumiere version of Les Miserables (not the musical…) and peered in estate agent’s windows while fantasising about leaving behind any loop I may still conceivably be in. But that’s what summer is for, surely?…

End of term…

Last day of term and the 8 year-old had to face a big potential trauma… the girl for whom he has carried an Olympic-sized torch with a Vesuvian flame is leaving Random-on-Sea and moving to Suffolk. All week it’s been bubbling under the radar. We bought her a present but my offer of an accompanying card was declined… he’s too cool for school, the 8 year-old. And yet not…

I received a text from the girl’s mother last night, warning me there might be tears… ‘and I’m talking about us, not the kids!’. Today the girl gave my son a card and a present; nobody else in the class, just him.

It wasn’t technically my day to pick up the children — they’re at their dad’s tonight —but I went to school to say good bye and thanks to both my sons’ teachers and to the girl and her family. The eight year-old showed me the card and the very cool t-shirt she’d bought him (well, that her mum had) and then took off his school shirt and put it on, right there in the playground while trying to look nonchalant (and failing).

‘Luckily it’s only Suffolk’, I said, ‘not Australia. You’ll see each other again. And you can email and talk on the phone…’. He nodded and tilted his chin upward. Proper little man-child. I cried a bit on the drive home in my empty car. I still carry a torch for my first love, too…

Monday morning…

Went to see Prince play his first ever UK festival gig at the Hop Farm last night. Haven’t seen him play live for 15 years or so, but he hasn’t lost it. Was an additional thrill to take my nearly-nine-year old son to his first proper gig… and watch him be suitably blown away by the sunset rendition of Purple Rain. I figured a very late night and a bit of a lie-in before first day of the last week of the school term was a small price to pay for what, to my mind, was an essential extra-curricular *educational* experience. And a lot of other parents seemed to feel the same way… hadn’t expected to see so many kids on a *school night*.

Also, I did my usual trick of watching most of the show on the screens, despite having a pretty good view of the stage. Old habits, etc… I could blame this on the ten years I spent in front of the telly as the Observer’s TV critic, but in fact it goes back much further. When I was at Live Aid in 1985, I managed to enjoy the whole of U2′s set by watching the screens at Wembley. A remarkably long time passed before I realised they were actually playing there, live, right in front of me in NW London and not beamed in by satellite from Philadelphia. In retrospect, I recall that some beers may have been consumed…

So anyway it should — would — have been a good Monday morning if I hadn’t also been involved in a car crash on the way back (praise be for that…) from the school run. A car ran into my car’s arse, wrote itself off and the other driver was taken to hospital with a very wrongly-shaped arm. I, meanwhile, am technically unhurt but definitely in shock, though it was not my fault. All three emergency services were on hand during the aftermath. I would ordinarily enjoy being given a restorative bottle of water by an insanely good-looking fireman a great deal more than I did. I would also normally have a one-liner on hand to express my pleasure. Instead… a total sense of humour failure, understandable under the circs.

So, bit wobbly today but normal business will be resumed shortly. In the meantime, many thanks to all the crash witnesses and interested parties who were extraordinarily good and kind and generous with their time. And I very much hope Liz’s arm gets well soon. Finally, I forget the name of the WPC who spotted my Hop Farm wristband and said ‘I was there last night too —wasn’t it awesome? Now you do realise we’ll have to breathalyze you, don’t you?’. I passed, btw…

Andy Murray…

It is 1pm on Friday July 1 and so, in just a handful and a-half of hours, Andy Murray will have lost to Rafa Nadal in the Wimbledon semi-finals. This outcome is absolutely, completely-and-utterly, wholly unequivocally 150 percent guaranteed….

Katie Price…

Watched that Katie Price (Jordan was very much mothballed for this one…) doc on Sky Living last night, about her son Harvey. It was made by her own production company, Pricey Media, so any directorial objectivity was a non-starter but hey, it was well made, taught me a few things (the interviewees were well-chosen and Katie was, rather miraculously, able to make it not all about her) and, perhaps best of all, it ensured Frankie Boyle looked like even more of a **** than we already know him to be. Whatever we think of Ms P (and I’d prob need about 100,000 words to articulate what I think), her love for her disabled son was touchingly palpable. So, job done… but can we have a third marriage soon, Katie, purlease?…