5 things I watched/read/heard this week

(1) The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan (BBC One, 15 Sep 2008)

With VHS, a film finishes and you can get a nice surprise (“End-of-Tape Bingo” often produces accidentally-taped next programmes or long-forgotten adverts). With Sky+ there’s no such joy – you’re returned to your previous channel and risk hitting premium sewage like The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan, in which the unintentional irony of the concept (surely the dark side of fame is ending up on TV with Piers Morgan) bypasses a procession of self-obsessed ex-celebs (who, to lapse into tabloid-TV-critic hackery, are so washed up that their lifeguard is Robinson Crusoe). This week, the nation’s favourite wife-beating alcoholic Jim Davidson explained how nothing was his fault. A marriage and his children were lost not because he shagged other women but because the media told his wife (who, he stressed, would never have found out); ex-reality non-entity Brian Dowling was to blame for being offended by Jim’s jovial homophobia (indeed, Brian and the media coveted it). I liked Jim in Big Break, but his stand-up lacked the technical brilliance of other comics who I could almost defend (Bernard Manning and that potential ‘alternative’ comic Chubby Brown) had they not abused their talent to trade lucratively on moronic hatred, horrific and inexcusable racism, homophobia and misogyny. And I expect self-delusion from Davidson, who dressed up his bankruptcy-enforced tax exile as an offensive Sun-conspiracy-theory (‘I may as well go to Dubai and be an ethnic minority there than wait five years till I become one here’ – http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article431598.ece). But this was so grubby I switched off after five minutes. Maybe it got better. But I’m left instead with my recurring nightmare (To give you the "Nightmare-Trailer-Voiceover": Two Men. One Room. Only One Bullet). TV that makes you scrub yourself clean afterwards.

(2) Three Men In A Boat (novel, 1889)

Loved this. Loosely based on Jerome’s own journey, three slackers and a dog skiff up the Thames, observing stuff (Jerome started a travelogue with comic bits which took over) and getting into scrapes. Though it’s historically interesting it’s comedy gold, with random digressions, one-liners (my current favourite: ‘I take a great deal of pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do’), riffs (marriage, hypochondria, weather reports, fishermen setting a fixed exaggeration quota), and also modern in its self-awareness, even proto-Python. Sequel, Three Men On The Bummel takes them on a cycling tour (Python?) of Germany and at times is even funnier. Jerome (grew up in poverty, wrote on socialism) is a fascinating writer.

(3) Three Men In A Boat (BBC Two, 2006; repeat 15 & 16 Sep 2008) [to say nothing of Three Men In A Boat (BBC, 1975)]

Griff Rhys-Jones, Rory McGrath and Dara O’ Briain took on the trip from Jerome’s novel but, saying it’s what ‘Jerome would’ve wanted’, take their own comic digressions. The reality format hampers them (some obvious confrontation-ploys), and it lacks invention (the century-old book has newer jokes) but enjoyed it overall, with some lovely interplay and knowledge of the book, even if O’ Briain later wrongly dismissed ‘previous telly versions’ as ‘Tim Rice (or was it Tim Curry?) and the like, poncing about in boaters… the sort of telly that makes me want to drink river water’ – www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/12/28/bvboat28.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/12/28/ixartleft.html. He must mean the 1975 TV version adapted by Tom Stoppard and directed by Stephen Frears, with Curry (not Rice), Stephen Moore and Michael Palin (Python, eh?). Watched that again recently: quality, a gorgeously-shot slice of pure Ripping Yarns. Maybe O’ Briain means the 1950s movie.

(4) The Collings and Herrin Podcast (iTunes)

My favourite comedy podcast – funny and free. The soundtrack to my… well, washing up, usually, or ironing (note to self: replace this with a lie that makes my life sound more exciting). Balances a crazy work ethic of constant weekly episodes with ramshackle amateurism, and the personalities of the one who’s organised enough to have news stories handy and something to record on (Andrew Collins) with an excellent comedian suited to the try-it-see-if-it-works rambling form. Sometimes, just to confuse you, they’re both funny.

(5) The Searchers (1954; remastered cinema reissue Aug 2008)

John Ford, you see, made Westerns. I loved it already and knew it backwards, but seeing it remastered on a big screen, I fell in love with it again: the Death Valley photography, and John Wayne staggering in a role that promises heroic battling against Injuns who kidnapped his niece but veers towards demented race-hate with underlying messages about America (which Wayne is unlikely to have wanted). In the urinals afterwards, I overheard two blokes say it was rubbish ‘on every level’. I was mid-piss. Impressing upon myself the value of the phrase ‘there’s a time and a place’, I kept quiet, seethed to the end of my piss and got out without incident. ‘They know nothing about film,’ I told myself in the lift, ‘and you can only show so much interest in two young men in a urinal, unless there’s some imminent lifestyle change you’ve been keeping from me.’