The downward trajectory of Soccer AM

I don’t think I’m saying anything fresh here, but, Soccer AM is turning into shit.  Strike that – it is a big pile of shit.  The main reason is Helen Chamberlain.  She’s shit, rubbish, awful, and many other words with similar meanings.  Tim Lovejoy’s departure 2 years ago left a big space and a couple of the better team members have gone as well.  The unfortunate bi-product of this is that she’s become the powerful force at the centre of the show.  She’s like some brat-ish unfunny child with her shit jokes but people laugh – its Hell’s Bells she was one of the two presenters when it was good, she must be ok.  No she isn’t.  She’s on a par with Chris Moyles in as far as having a sycophantic team around them laughing at what they say and do without being funny or interesting. She’s one of those people who explains the joke, we know that saying something negative in a sarcastic tone means your dislike is disingenuous – you don’t have to say it you backwards fuck.

Max Rushden has stepped into the co-host’s chair, taking over from the departed Andy Goldstein.  His main weakness is..well….he’s a bit of a posh-o.  It just doesn’t sound right being a bit posh and doing this job, he should be doing Rugby Union AM.  Other than being well-spoken his mean weakness is what held Goldstein back and it’s Chamberlain’s status as top dog on the show.  Subordinating to someone who isn’t very funny just puts you in a bad position.  And he’s a bit wooden, especially when talking to the soccerette.  As much as i’ve pinned the blame on Helen the main failing of Rushden, and Goldstein before him, is not being Tim Lovejoy – who was born to front this show.  The genius of the show was how it felt like a load of people having a laugh and not really making a tv show. Now it is like watching people try to make a tv show.  The interviews are disjointed and there is no rapport between guests and hosts, who sound like they are reading a list of inane, badly worded questions which is of course is what is happening.

Soccer AM probably wont be cancelled anytime soon.  There are enough people out there who will watch despite the decline.  Much like listening to Talksport its a case of rather having a piece of a sports broadcast pie than a pie about trying to become a cast member of a musical or a cookery pie (should have thought this pie metaphor through really, it doesn’t work too well); I’d rather watch Soccer AM than anything else Saturday morning has to offer me and it will always include the goals and have features either side of the flailing studio-based content.  That said if it ever wants a return to its heyday they need to admit Helen Chamberlain is shit.  Being of a level of attractiveness that is basically ‘yeah i would but only because she’s a not grotesquely ugly woman’ isn’t a good enough criterion for being the face of a show like this.

Lets just get Lovejoy back eh?

Much of a muchness

I have decided to type up all the things I wrote when I was younger, and used to write things all the time rather than write things occasionally about not being able to write things.  Ostensibly its just another way to seem productive and postponing the realisation that I had my last original thought about 10 years ago.  I am being harsh on my post 20-ouput here, or generous on my pre-20 output here as none of the stuff that I shall be typing up is particularly original.  I was obsessed by The Day Today at the time so it was mainly fake news pieces, in written form.  It’s an obvious genre to take on I suppose seeing as you can be brief and not have to go into too much detail. 

 

We shall see how it holds up when I start typing it up, if I indeed don’t procrastinate all over it.  I shall have to find a suitable place to put them as this seems not quite the place to put them.  They are mainly written by a 17/18 year old me who has nothing in common with the wizened 30 year-old man who writes this on an almost monthly basis.  He was obsessed with sport and idolised comedians and filmmakers so much he wanted to be one but didn’t have the cajones to try. NOTHING in common.

 

It will be interesting to see if it has any effect on anything I try and write now. I wouldn’t like to think I would regress to that mindset.  I also wouldn’t like to realise that I have not progressed at all and that its all the same kind of gibberish my mind thinks of now.

 

One thing I have been unable to lose from my ‘negatives’ in the last 12 years is my discomfort (it’s a dislike stop trying to sound less evil) of blind people.  Seeing Mikey every night on Big Brother slowly stoking the flame of this discomfort (pure hate).  Is it because he is blind?  Some would argue its because he’s a fucking annoying cunt.  But is this the majority?  He seems to have been first or second favourite for a while with the bookies and rarely gets nominated.  Since he shaved his head he looks like a giant walking penis, which is entirely appropriate.  I can safely say with his stupid mouth, annoying voice and rocking head he is definitely the housemate I have despised the most this year.  What about that other cunt?  And that other one?  Yeah the mouthy black girl and the gay Scottish man – I remember them. But the blind walking cock is worse.  I think its because only Rex will say anything confrontational to him and that no-one dislikes him because he’s blind.  They all hate a girl for being nice for fuck’s sake but a sanctimonious scotch fuck is ok because he has no vision.  People can be so politically correct, well they think they are but surely not despising someone because they are disabled is more offensive and condescending to say the least.

 

For the record I really like Stevie Wonder.

 

 

 

 

Having a shit

I want to make something very clear initially:  I have issues with public toilets.  Not urinals, not the actual concept…well yes, it’s the actual concept I have a problem with.  Or at least that’s part of the problem for me.  It’s not being in public you see.  Part of it is the fact that people have been in there before me.  People who have not, in any way, disguised their presence.  I am talking about piss on seats and unflushed shit here.  Worst of all a pissy seat on a toilet with unflushed shit that doesn’t look like anyone has done the wiping stage of the defecating process (I mean like that’s the behaviour of an animal right?)

 

Until I was about 20 I didn’t go in public.  Thankfully I was fairly good at keeping it in and it never really caused a problem.  Then, from nowhere, I started needing to go while I was out.  I dealt with it.  Dealt with it like a man.  So the sharing a toilet with the general (male) public thing isn’t really the issue.  It’s not really the filthy, disgusting toilets of pubs, bars and the many other places that I have had to use. It’s not that.

 

It’s shitting when there are other people in the room.  I don’t want people hearing me shit.  It lacks dignity (unlike writing on a blog about shitting which is actually the definition of dignity in some dictionaries).  Pure and simple.  And even this you get used to.  There’s still something at the centre of this, something that I’ve not got used to.  The thing which riles me so much that I can’t get over it.  It’s more than hearing other people in the toilet area while I’m in a cubicle trying to relax and go about my work.

 

It’s hearing another man shit while I’m trying to shit.  This is mainly a problem at work.  I still don’t have to go that often while I’m out – and I’m not a frequenter of places that are THAT bad.  But I have to go at work. At least once a day.  It used to be like clockwork now I’m more laissez fare about the whole thing.  There is still a regime to a degree – I must have several pages of interesting articles printed out (generally football/music/film articles from the guardian website). MUST.  And then I must be in a cubicle where the cubicle next to it is empty.  Most of the toilets at HQ have 2 cubicles so it’s only an issue of two.  Both must be empty to commence, especially if they are those newer type of cubicles that have the gap at the bottom (and what is that all about?  Talk about reminding you that the privacy is very much an illusion.).  If there is urgency then an empty cubicle next to an occupied one that is separated by a solid WALL, not thin piece of wood, then it is just acceptable.  If it is a row of toilets then one at either end with an empty one next to it is the option.  There is one toilet with just a single cubicle – almost ideal.  Ideal if the door went to the floor and it was limited to just me.  But its not and I know whose offices are near it and I don’t want to share it with them.

 

Back to the issue.  So I’ve found ideally the former most option, cubicle with empty cubicle next door.  Business is occurring relaxing reading a nice interview with Seth Rogen, or any other flavour of the month, and someone enters the room.  I hold my breath.  They walk past the toilet and go for a piss.  We’re ok.  Breathe.  Carry on.  But sometimes, 1in 3 say, they don’t carry on to the urinal.  ‘They’ go in the cubicle next to me and start…..having a shit.  You have to hear noises.  Plops. Wipes.  And worst of all.  BREATHING.  Why do they always breathe so loudly?  Are they so out of shape that the walk to a toilet has caused them to verge on a hear-attack?  Heavy, but normally paced breathing.  That’s how they breathe.  And they don’t think about me, but the moment I hear their door shut that’s me done. As quick as I can I’m out of their and for a few minutes I hate the faceless, nameless heavy breathing shitting bastard a yard away from me.  Honestly?  At the moment they shut that door I want them to die, the selfish fucking cunts.  All I want is ten minutes.  I don’t want to know there’s a fat man sat within touching distance, whose feet i can see, who is breathing so loudly that I can’t hear the church clock toning on the hour. Knowing that out of his horrible man’s arse he if using the muscles of his alimentary canal to force shit.  Horrible shit.Plop-pl-plop-plop-plop.

 

It’s, well, shit.

Badly Drawn Boy, Dulcimer 31 July

A straight forward little thing like this should be easy – was the artist good or not?  Well I can affirm that he was the former.  Very good, in fact.  The audience however were more befitting of an on-stage shitting session by a paedophile.  Initially stood quite near the back I had to move as the two nobs stood next to me were talking so loudly.  They actually raised their voices when he started as if to say ‘we were talking Mr Boy and we’re damned if you’re going to get in the way’.  Only it wasn’t as if that’s what they were doing – it is what they were actually doing with their vulgar mouthpieces.  They weren’t even talking about anything interesting – not that that would excuse it but there are shades of grey (urgent news, a long term secret suddenly revealed etc would be slightly more acceptable) but two fucking plebs discussing quasi-bullshit that I would expect off two strangers who didn’t know each other that well and didn’t particularly want to talk to each other but were held at gun-point and made to have a boring conversation while some perverted, psychotic billionaire beat himself off.  But duller.

The move was a little bit better as the loud conversation was gone.  But there were chats everywhere.  It was inexpensive at £6 and it seemed like a predominantly local clientele and maybe they had all seen him before but FUCKING HELL these people displayed a lack of manners I’ve seen since Frank Rijkaard spat at Rudi Voller in Italia 90.   There were people very close to the front with their back to the stage for Christ’s tits.  So they could talk to people they blatantly spend most of their time talking to.  Now I’m all for friendship – I think it’s great when people can ‘never have too much to say to each other’ [well I think they are dull, and lack concision because sometimes there is like nothing to say.  Admittedly I’m not displaying much concision here – and even less so by pointing this out].  So audience from last night at the Dulcimer – fuck off and, well, just that really.

Despite all that I really wouldn’t want to finish talking about the twats who nearly ruined it and pay thanks to the man who made it.  BDB played a great set spanning his career from his very first EP to his last album, Born in the UK.  I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little bit disappointed at the way his career has gone – but listening to 45 minute set I realised he’s done enough in the last 10 years to justify a place in my musical heart.  The man himself admitted, before he commenced, that he felt at a bit of a crossroads in career that seems to have stopped moving.  Well self-awareness is a good thing and a bit of refection could be just what he needs to kick start a creative flame that seems to have been dimming since the release of the About A Boy Soundtrack.  Certainly, judging from this performance, he still has a lot to offer and I hope there is much more to come from the boy.