Monday, September 30, 2013

For crying out loud, let's make it the Ex-Factor

Didn't X Factor plunge to new depths at the weekend?

In a bid to harden up a somewhat tired format, producers introduced yet another level of degradation.

With the laughing stock acts behind us, and to be honest, they’re what make the show, not the half-decent sound-alike kids who blur into one by week five, we now have new ways of jangling the nerves of the young wannabes.

And how do we do that? By knowing they're not good enough but letting them think they are for a moment before jumping out with a “surprise”, you’re going home after all!

And worse, we make them sit on the stage in front of everyone while they watch the other acts do them out of a spot right in front of their teary eyes.

And this after the judges with their “will-we, won’t we” clichés have kept them dangling with lines such as “I’m really not sure about you,” followed by (even worse) “I’m sorry, but I'm afraid (pause, solemn shake of the head) “you're (beaming smile) . . . in my top six!”

Tears of joy on stage, usually the kind that precede severe palpitations and the need for oxygen, are matched by scenes of sheer despair from the chairs as the realisation dawns that the fat boy who’s just shown himself to be much, much better than you may just be taking your place.

One that was told to her face was the hapless young thing who was urged at the audition to drop her pals and go solo, only to have then shun her before the judges finally didnjust that. She staggered off the stage telling host Dermot O'Leary: "I've lost everything."

It’s been compared to the Suzanne Collins novel The Hunger Games in which children are forced to battle each other to the death. I’m not sure that’s entirely fair, it’s more the Crying Game, or a snuffle movie, perhaps.

We’ve built a society that holds celebrity far higher than anything else to which most of these very ordinary shelf-stackers and rubbish sweepers can aspire.

Either way, reality TV will never wise up to reality. How long before we read tabloid stories of breakdown and serious self harm? There are column inches a plenty to come in this. Just not sure they're the ones we want.

Enough. It’s become a turn off. I suggest we do just that.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Go on, name that judge

Brighton Argus reporter Tim Ridgeway had to leave the press bench and turn detective recently just to find out the full name of a county court judge.

Ushers, usually the ones who know everything, couldn’t help and the clerk’s office simply declined to give Judge (Barbara) Wright’s name as they were not authorised to give personal details, according to Hold The Front Page. A hapless phone call later was followed by an email, and only when the Royal Courts of Justice PRs got involved did he get the answer he wanted.

Anyone who has spent any time in the courts, or dealing with officialdom generally, will sympathise. When I was based at St Albans Crown Court as part of an agency crew in the 70s, we collaborated on an A-Z of every judge, magistrate, solicitor and barrister that came our way, so we never came unstuck.

On those frantic days of five guilty pleas before lunch (five trips to the payphone and five hasty off—the-cuff reports) there wasn’t time to blink between recesses, let alone pass notes along the benches (would m’learned friend be good enough to provide his Christian name?) or nudge coppers and clipboard-holders in the waiting room.

Once, in a magistrates’ court in the Westcountry, I made a similar inquiry of a member of the bench I hadn’t seen before. I needed to profile the three JPs who would be deliberating on a matter that had got the little market town of Launceston all abuzz.

It was not forthcoming. The country reporters alongside me had never thought to ask and the somewhat deferential solicitors simply thought it bad form. After all, she was the wife of a local clergyman.

This was a place, you have to understand, where titles and forms of address were a matter of social heriarchy. My elderly neighbour, on discovering I worked for the local paper, handed me a notelet (her word) on how she should be referred to in print: Alderman Ms K. Wotnot (retd).

Anyway, the three of us on the press bench made a pact that, whoever found out first would ring the others. It wasn’t me, but I was, nevertheless, grateful that the call came quickly.

The reason for her reluctance was never known. But it could have had something to do with the subject of the bench’s deliberations. Police had swooped on a local newsagent and taken away half a dozen top-shelf mags.

Before they could rule on whether or not they were pornographic, they had to read every one of them.

Must’ve choked on her cucumber sandwiches. Poor Edith.