Penguins & Pessimism

Has Mock The Week Gone Off The Boyle? No Chance!

Last year, Frankie Boyle announced that he had left Mock The Week. He had been a regular on the show since it started in 2005 and his brand of dark humour was the reason that many people found the show so entertaining. Almost inarguably, he was the driving force behind placing Mock The Week at the top of the panel show pile. Many people (including me) were super pissed at the fact that he had gone and I think we all had images of them picking a shit panellist to replace him and the show then going downhill faster than a fat skier.

However, this has not been the case at all. In fact, the BBC made the choice not to choose a regular member for Hugh’s team, instead making it another slot for a guest. This was possibly the best decision the BBC have ever made. Any new panellist would automatically have been compared to Frankie and it would be likely that the comparison would not exactly be favourable. The fact that this panellist changed every week meant that none of the guests outstayed their welcome and seemed like a replacement for Frankie.

I think the reason that Frankie seemed like the beating heart of Mock The Week was because he never stopped talking for the whole half an hour. The entire show has always been a case of “he who shouts loudest wins” with every single panellist being forced to make as much noise as possible in order to get their jokes in. Usually, Frankie was the one who came out best in this situation. It is this that I think is the reason why Andy Parsons is so underrated (see my review of his DVD here) by those who have not seen him outside of the show.

But without Frankie, it seems that a lot of that atmosphere has died down. It now seems like the show is more of a level playing field, with every person able to make themselves heard, meaning that everyone comes out well and it doesn’t seem like the show is entirely centred around one of the panellists. This is a much better way for the show to work and it means that some of the newer comedians just starting to appear on TV are actually getting airtime. A prime example of this is Chris Addison who, in his several appearances this series, has managed to get quite a lot of exposure on the show. This means that people who had never heard of him before are now familiar with his work.

It is great to see some of the new comedians on the circuit be given the chance to air their material on television and they are actually getting a chance to do so now in Frankie’s absence. Scenes We’d Like To See is a much more interesting round now that it isn’t just a game of tennis between Frankie and Hugh and the other rounds have a much nicer atmosphere without so much black humour.

So as much as Frankie Boyle is hilariously funny and a great entertainer, I would probably go as far as to say that Mock The Week is better off without him.

The Magical World Of The Scariest Man Alive

As I write this, Derren Brown has just disappointed legions of people. On Wednesday, he shocked the entire country by successfully predicting all six main lottery balls on live TV. However, tonight he managed to hype up the whole nation and then bring us fucking crashing down by feeding us what appeared to be absolute bullshit about writing numbers whilst in a semi-conscious state and then utilising the “wisdom of crowds” theory to predict what the final lottery results would be. He then proceeded to explain how you could fix a lottery machine to show the numbers you wanted, leaving us all wondering if he had actually done it the way he had previously explained. For someone who was looking forward to some of his trademark genius, I thought this was a huge cop out. If you haven’t seen it, here it is.

Brown is one of the few people on the planet that truly scare me to death. The thought that he can manipulate your thoughts and decided what you are going to do before you do it leaves me wondering just how in control of our life choices we actually are if a very clever but otherwise unremarkable man knows what we are planning to do.  His knowledge of human psychology is just unbelievable and some of the tricks he pulls off leave me utterly speechless as I am unable to think of any possible way to understand how it works. Fucking epic.

For example, after his lottery programme the other night, they showed one of his live performances and I was completely blown away by some of the things he did, combining his genius “magic” (I use the term loosely) with showmanship putting him lightyears ahead of the potential paedophile with the shiny blazer who used to perform at my friend’s birthday parties years ago. Click here for that programme and you too can be amazed.

Even during the disappointing lottery explanation, he managed to stun me. One segment consisted of him offering a man a cheque for £500,000 if he stomped down on some polystyrene cups when there was a sharp knife hiding under one of them. The six that were left at the end turned out to have their ID numbers pre-written on the back of the cheque (how the fuck?) and the guy then proceeded to eliminate them all until only the knife one remained. It turned out not to be a knife, but instead a mouse. It was the jeopardy that was required (apparently) to influence the decisions.

After such a disappointment, Derren will have to work hard to redeem himself. However, he has made a big claim for next week, saying he has developed a clip that through subliminal messaging will literally stick you to your seat. If he manages this, he will once again scare the living shit out of me.

With Results Like These, I’ll Earn “Spondulicks”

Along with a whole host of other nervous kids, I received my GCSE results last week. It turns out that the months of super hard work and hours of revision time did indeed pay off as I came out with the following grades.

English – A*
English Literature – A
Maths – A
Statistics – A*
Core Science – A*
Additional Science – A
French – A
ICT – A
Media Studies – A
Religious Studies – A
Applied Business (Double Award) – AA
PE – B

I am so so so happy with these results, it’s incredible. The feeling of not having these exams looming in the future is such a nice one and the seven weeks of Summer this year have been even sweeter because of it. My only niggle with the results is French. Despite scoring an A* in all three of the exams (including full marks on the Reading paper), I only managed an A. This would appear to be due to my coursework, which apparently only merited a B, even though it was given an A* by my class teacher. Another A* would have made me even happier, but no worries. I’ll take what I got anyhow.

Now onto the second and most annoying aspect of this post. Recently, my TV has been dominated by a certain advert. The title of this post gives it away somewhat. I am of course referring to the irrefutably terrible advert for Go Compare, the comparison site. I object to embedding something so blood useless into my blog, so I have instead linked to it below for your *cough* viewing pleasure. However, I would be shocked if you hadn’t seen it at least a million times already.

Go Compare Ad

Words cannot describe how irate I become when this disgrace comes on the TV (which seems to be at least once during every single fucking ad break) as it is absolutely soul-destroyingly bad. I’m not even exaggerating. Basically, they have hired a fake Italian whose moustache has an erection to pretend to sing, whilst a real Italian does an opera-style voiceover and rams the name “Go Compare” down our throat for about thirty seconds. Midway through the ad, the schizophrenic Pavarotti wannabe utters the word “spondulicks” which apparently is slang for money. Before this advert began appearing, no-one in the whole of the country had heard the word. It is now on the lips of every single person under the age of 15 and quite a few on and above that age as well. I suppose the very fact I’m writing about it tells me that it has served its purpose, but surely they could have found a better way to communicate their point than by pissing me off. I’ll take Compare The Meerkat any day!

I Have A Prejudice…

The following post would have been uploaded yesterday had it not been for my blog having a spazz attack and refusing to work.

I pride myself on being a very tolerant person. I am incredibly accepting of other sexualities and races. But there is one creature on this Earth that I have a massive vendetta against. That creature is the moth; the most fucking stupid animal ever to grace the planet, more specifically my house.

Moths really seem to be the least purposeful animals around. I can’t see any reason why they need to be around and why they need to fly around me constantly even though they are fully aware that I will kill them just as I have killed their friends and family over the last few months. We recently had quite a large moth problem in my house with there easily being twenty in the room at any one time, which was bloody annoying when trying to make a cup of tea. If I’m honest, they scare me slightly, particularly when they fly into a position where I can’t see what they’re doing. We thought we had eradicated the problem, but they appear to have returned over the last few days with one especially large one flitting around the other night and scaring the living shit out of me.

As some of you may know, I watch a lot of comedy on TV. Recently, every comedy programme on Channel 4 has had sponsorship adverts at the beginning of its commercial breaks featuring what is supposed to be a small snippet of stand-up comedy. The character they have chosen for this character is possibly the most annoying person ever. The subject matter of the majority of his little skits are actually very good, but the way the guy delivers the humour is terrible and often renders what he is saying completely unfunny. I know that these things are only on for about ten seconds, but they really get on my tits that it is the best a very good TV channel can come up with. This is bad; I really could do with getting some better topics to rant about. Perhaps stuff that actually matters would be a good start.

Spent most of today having an awesome amount of fun in Birmingham during the Midlands’ rather shit attempt to upstage the London meet for CF’s fifth birthday. The four of us that went absolutely loved it and had a brilliant day. A full account will be up on here as soon as Liz pulls her finger out and bothers to upload the few hastily taken pictures.

See you all then!