Dan Smith's Blog, page 22

Over the Hill

I'm gonna double-blog today. Just a quick one to say Happy Birthday to my daughter. Nine years old today. Wow, they grow up quickly. My son had his fifth birthday just a few weeks ago, and not long before that it was my 40th. Everyone's getting older (I won't say how old my wife's going to be in a few days' time).

Actually, my son was very excited about my 40th – it's one of those landmark birthdays I suppose, and people were aksing what I was going to do to celebrate, so he picked up on all that. One afternoon he was helping me with something and he looked at me with a very serious expression -

'I'm going to miss you when you're older, Daddy.'

'Oh? Why's that?'

'Because you'll be dead.'

Never mind Ferraris, he's already got me picking out boxes.

Looking to the harpies for comfortability

I feel cheated. I feel teased. I feel . . . let down. I settled in to watch The Apprentice last night, expecting to see Stuart 'The Brand' Baggs, only to be faced with a bunch of bickering girls. *sigh*. After setting him up to be the clown in last week's episode, the 'Baggster' was nowhere to be seen. I reckon he must be keeping his head down. Mind you, I can always console myself with the audition video again – "Now, I'm alive. And there are so many people who aren't alive, or who have died . . . unfortunately . . ."

Anyway; those girls, eh? It was like watching harpies turn on each other in the board-room. I don't think anyone took much notice of the girls in the first week because they seemed so organised and 'together', but that didn't last long. Now they're into their stride and the claws are out but, unbelievably, Joanna (the moustache twirling baddie from this week) and Laura (the teary, meek one) were holding hands and smiling at each other like lovers when they skipped up the stairs in the final moments – despite having looked as if they wanted to scoop out each other's brains with a warm spoon just a few moments earlier. Two-faced much?

Ah, it's always good for a laugh, though, isn't it? The hairy surgeon's big hand cream applicator; the rolled-up towel with the built-in cooler for water or baby food; the crappy book stand/windbreak thing that earned a record breaking 'nul points'; the way the boys press-ganged their team leader into a tassel-less bikini (anyone else feel uncomfortable with that?); and – my personal favourite – Gok Wan's Melisa's use of the word 'comfortability'.

Now THAT'S entertainment.

Separated at birth?

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The Apprentice 2010, Apprentice Watch, BBC One, episode two preview (telegraph.co.uk)
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Not your avergage writer

Well done to Howard Jacobson for winning the Man Booker Prize. I'm going to confess my ignorance and admit I've never read any of his books, but . . . well, there it is. So he wins a big pot of cash as a prize and now there's going to be a print run of 150000 copies of the book in anticipation of the renewed interest in the The Finkler Question, which is fantastic for Jacobson. Oh yeah, winning the Man Booker is more than just winning a prize – it's a ticket to more sales and thousands of people reading your book.

Nice.

On a less optimistic note, last night's BBC News article about the prize gave us a few factoids including the information that the average writer in the UK earns just £4000 a year.

So, I won't be picking out colours for the Ferrari just yet.

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Business and Buffoons: The Apprentice is back

Ah, The Apprentice is back again. But where do they find these people? Are they real? It's hard to believe that anybody can be so confident, so vain, so sure of themselves, so . . . so arsey. Of course, there's a degree of set up – there has to be, it's a TV show intended to entertain – but for people to refer to themselves as a 'brand' or to suggest that their first word was 'money not mummy'? Oh, please. And then comes the fall. With careful editing, we see our budding Napoleons stripped down to their most basic unpleasantness of shouting and back-stabbing.

It's priceless stuff, watching the collected motley crew running about like headless chickens trying to fulfill the latest nonsense task which Alan Sugar's team has dreamed up. And the sales tasks inevitably end up with a last

'You look good on paper - but then, so does fish 'n' chips.'

minute rush around the streets of London trying to sell the last dregs to anyone who will have it – door-to-door sausages anyone? And that's why we watch it, right? We don't want to watch genuine business stuff, do we? Naa, that would be boring as hell. It would be endless meetings and people crunching numbers and sitting at desks looking at computer screens while drinking coffee. What we want to see is young men in pinstriped suits, sporting braces and spiky hair, young women in smart business suits (except for the obligatory one who dresses like a clown), trying desperately to claw their way above the others. We want them to argue and fight and swear at each other when they think they're losing, then congratulate each other when they win, hugging like old friends. We want them to drag out the old cliches – 'I'm a grafter', 'I really want this', 'I can offer so much more', 'I won't let you down', 'I'll be a team leader next time, let me show what I can do' – and we'd like them to invent a few more of their own – 'I'm Stuart Baggs, The Brand' perhaps. And if possible, we'd like them to talk in barely understandable business-speak. We want them to 'touch-base' , to 'incentivise', to aim for 'low hanging fruit', to 'go forward from the get-go' and to 'drill down'.

But most of all, we want them to make complete arses of themselves. We can't help it. It's how we're wired and it's how the programme is presented. And the contestants know it.

Great.

I'll be watching next week.

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X-Factor – just pantomime?

Apparently, you can see those teeth from space

It's that time of year again, isn't it? The evenings are drawing in so the schedulers try to glam up our Saturday nights with X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing.

The dancing . . . oh, I just can't watch it. All those spangly costumes and all that twirling. I mean, come on. That's too much glitz for me. It's just garish isn't it? And the idea of seeing Paul Daniels doing anything on my TV again just fills me with dread. Nasty.

As for the X-Factor, well, usually I stop watching when we get past the initial auditions. I like to have a few laughs, see. I love seeing the people who, quite clearly, do not have what it takes to be the next cloned, polished, made over, manufactured X-Factor winner. Remember the Michael Jackson wannabe rolling his eyes in a deranged manner and saying 'There's a lot of nagativity in this room'? Or the one dressed as a tiger. They're just there for the laughs aren't they? It's entertainment, not music. That's why they are allowed to stand up on that stage. Surely.

And I love the rehearsed set-up passed off as spontaneous, when Simon Cowell turns and raises a hand, bringing the proceedings to a stop so he can give the auditionee the old 'No, you've got this all wrong, this isn't what we're looking for, can you sing something else?' Because Simon knows best – notice how two of the groups he selected to go thorugh to the live finals were the two he put together? Of course you did – Then, the interruption is followed by a brilliant rendition of something more 'suitable' (see, Simon did know better) aaaaaand cue the uplifting music, the teary parents/family/children standing backstage and the sad story about how they're doing it for their Nana. But really they're chasing the money and the fame and the fortune, just like everyone else.

Some of those finalists are very talented, though. Actually, they all seem talented to me – someone who can't hold a tune or dance a step. But there's this idea that they're somehow entitled to fame and fortune. 16 year olds are crying that their life is over because they haven't been selected for a talent show. They don't know how to take rejection, maybe because they've only ever ben told they're fantastic. We live in an age when people think they deserve something they haven't earned.  It's the old 'if you believe in your dream it will come true' concept. How many times do we hear people say that? 'If you believe it, it will come true.' Films, books, TV programmes. They all say it.

But it is, of course, absolute bollocks.

If you have a good dollop of talent, a pinch of nous, you work hard and you have a lot of luck – THEN your dream might come true. But even then . . . (imagine a sharp intake of breath through clenched teeth)

Mind you, if Cheryl (lovely Cheryl) is your judge, then apparently it doesn't matter if you forget your words, break down mid song or walk away without finishing. You can still be picked.

It's all just pantomime really, isn't it? Mind you, having said all that, I'm still watching.

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