Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
ashley cole should black up for his next game
Pointless But It Does My Head In
mistersloane
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I don't think Rio actually typed the tweet though, did he? He was just forwarding it, which kinda means something different, as in "Haha Ash check out what this guy just wrote about you" rather than "This is what I think of you".
mistersloane
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I don't think that's news to anyone. What brought that on?
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
he has a show called 'Alan Carr: Chatty Man' and I refuse to believe it's not an intentional pun.
and he's pointless but does my head in (figuratively)
I don't hate him because he's gay but I do hate the fact he's gay, in the same way a lot of republicans probably wish Sarah Palin was a marxist.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
I think Rio Ferdinand probably just thought choc ice was an amusing, almost endearing (and probably northern) variant on Bounty, Uncle Tom, Oreo etc.
mistersloane
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Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I think I've complained about this before, but people with car-radio-ADD.
If you're doing a long motorway journey on a friday evening, the only radio options available to you are Radio 1 playing big room dance, Radio 2 playing really old stuff, Radio 3 playing classical, talky stuff on Radio 4 and 5 and then about 300 local / commercial stations, all of which will be playing Top 40 pop or "club classics" (ie disco) or both, with lots of irrelevant chat and/or adverts. THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW OF NATURE.
If you keep listening to things for about two and a half minutes before getting annoyed with them and then scanning along to something else, you won't suddenly hit some amazing seam of radiophonic gold (for whatever your definition of that is) - you'll just hit one of the above listed options again, listen to that for (at most) two and a half minutes and then get annoyed again, and keep doing this for several hours until your unfortunate passengers (who can't actually complain owing to the sacred law of Your Car Your Rules) start wondering if they could climb out of the window into the path of an oncoming lorry to get away from the guatanamo style psychological disorientation of repeatedly hearing twenty second bursts of Young Hearts Run Free alternating with Question Time and adverts for carpet warehouses in Bedford.
If you're doing a long motorway journey on a friday evening, the only radio options available to you are Radio 1 playing big room dance, Radio 2 playing really old stuff, Radio 3 playing classical, talky stuff on Radio 4 and 5 and then about 300 local / commercial stations, all of which will be playing Top 40 pop or "club classics" (ie disco) or both, with lots of irrelevant chat and/or adverts. THIS IS AN IMMUTABLE LAW OF NATURE.
If you keep listening to things for about two and a half minutes before getting annoyed with them and then scanning along to something else, you won't suddenly hit some amazing seam of radiophonic gold (for whatever your definition of that is) - you'll just hit one of the above listed options again, listen to that for (at most) two and a half minutes and then get annoyed again, and keep doing this for several hours until your unfortunate passengers (who can't actually complain owing to the sacred law of Your Car Your Rules) start wondering if they could climb out of the window into the path of an oncoming lorry to get away from the guatanamo style psychological disorientation of repeatedly hearing twenty second bursts of Young Hearts Run Free alternating with Question Time and adverts for carpet warehouses in Bedford.
mistersloane
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I've said it before about Alan Carr, but I'll defend him again. He just is what he is. I know people like that. It's not like he's pretending. I would take him any day over the cooning of Graham Norton - who's profoundly dumbed himself down - or any of the other gay stereotypes on telly.
I just don't think Alan Carr is the best target. It's not his fault that the Cambridge misanthropes who run television chose to have him. He'd be like that anywhere he is. At least he's real.
I just don't think Alan Carr is the best target. It's not his fault that the Cambridge misanthropes who run television chose to have him. He'd be like that anywhere he is. At least he's real.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Stayed in an awesome b&b in Norfolk last year run by one of the campest men I've ever met (he answered the door in his studded diamante t-shirt and introduced us to his small dog called Butch) and one of the books on the shelf in our room was an autobiography of this Alan Carr guy (he's not the one with the big face right? That's Jimmy Carr I think) and I read almost all of it over the course of the weekend. Never seen him on telly but the book obviously had something that kept me turning the pages.
The b&b is highly recommended anyway - if you ever go for a weekend in Cromer pm me and I'll give you the details. Everything about it was great and he had some amazing stories to go with breakfast.
mistersloane
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He sounds fab. You know what I mean though? That's Alan Carr right there.
Right, so this is verbatim (me and the Doc just sat here talking now with me typing it in )
Hating Alan Carr is a class issue. There's a preparatory point and then a main point to be made here.
If your stated objection to Alan Carr is the portrayal of homosexuality on TV, since when was Alan Carr in charge of determining the portayal of homosexuals on television. If that's your supposed and stated objection then you're absolutely picking the wrong target.
If I suspect, that hatred of Alan Carr is hatred of a camp white lower middle class man, then I think its coded hatred and its easier to hate a white camp Northern lower middle class man than it is to hate for example black people or whoever else it is you really hate.
It's bullying.
He's a magnet for hatred. And people who he draws out are people with hatred issues. What we have to question here is why television controllers still seek to put these very narrow archetypes of homosexuality on TV. It's because they're expressing their hatred of humanity and of homosexuality and are drawing out hatred of humanity and homosexuality in the public. It's misanthropy as entertainment.
This is a direct throwdown for critical self reflection to anybody who has a problem with Alan Carr as a human being. Cos I'd like to think that he's the guy in your class that you defended from bullying rather than taking your place in the circle of bullies.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't like adverts on TV any more than the next person but what does piss me off is people (yes dad, YOU) who are apparently fatally allergic to them the way some people are to peanuts and HAVE to change channel when there's an ad break in a programme or film they're watching. It's just stupid because you have to keep flicking back to the original channel to make sure you're not missing any of the thing you want to watch.
Granted, it's a pain that adverts are always much louder than programmes but that's what the mute button is for. Get a grip.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
if he were merely camp then I wouldn't really give a shit, although I still wouldn't watch his show. it's the fact that he attempts to channel the personality of a middle aged female coronation street character, badly, that upsets me. and he does it in such a thoroughly unfunny way.
if he didn't attempt to embody a stereotype then he wouldn't be able to be exploited by the sinister television controllers and used as a tool in their plot to misrepresent homosexuality.
you're probably right about me using him as a convenient facade for the true objects of my hatred though; his audience of thirty something, female, overweight, under educated, office administrators. the kind of people who would describe w. h. smith as a bookshop.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
While people may find Alan Carr irritating in his amped up/overboard role on TV (but that's the game, as is also true of someone like Russell Brand, who's fucking irritatingly overbearing on TV but who I think has some decent things to say aside from that), I don't think there's anything hateful about him. Contrast him to namesake Jimmy, for example.
Patrick Swayze
I'm trying to shut up
out of principle I refuse to listen to anyone who dresses like a children's entertainer and addresses the audience like they're hearing each word for the first time so Russell Brand isn't someone I'm fond of. politically he's about as infantile as George Galloway too.
basically anyone whose tv manner can be described as anything even approaching 'saucy' is a cunt in my eyes.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I think Mr. Swayze has hit on more or less what I was gonna say - it's more what Alan Carr represents, a very safe, stale, old-fashioned sort of comedy, which can't help but be a bit retrogressive as it seems to hark back to the day when there was something inherently hilarious about the idea of gayness ("I'M FREE!!!"). Of course it's not his job to represent gaykind on TV any more than it's Russel Brand's job to represent straight people. And he's another thing altogether, I mean is he in some sense co-opting camp? Or just using the mainstream acceptance of camp to be even more extroverted and overbearing than he would be otherwise?
I'd have put Carr's audience at a bit older than '30s though, it strikes me more as the kind of comedy middle-aged mums think is 'nice', with just enough oo-er innuendo to give them the thrill of watching something a bit risque, a bit 'naughty'.
Also, mistersloane, when you say this:
how serious are you being? Sounds a bit conspiratorial. TV programmers select shows on the basis of what's popular, don't they? I expect they just respond to what people want to watch much more than they try and push any active agenda of their own. Just comes down to $$$ at the bottom line.
I'd have put Carr's audience at a bit older than '30s though, it strikes me more as the kind of comedy middle-aged mums think is 'nice', with just enough oo-er innuendo to give them the thrill of watching something a bit risque, a bit 'naughty'.
Also, mistersloane, when you say this:
how serious are you being? Sounds a bit conspiratorial. TV programmers select shows on the basis of what's popular, don't they? I expect they just respond to what people want to watch much more than they try and push any active agenda of their own. Just comes down to $$$ at the bottom line.
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mistersloane
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Bearing in mind I was typing in a conversation me and the Doc were having...
Pretty serious, to be honest. While I'll defend the Carrs and the Inmans of the world - products of their environment, always defend the weak - it's well documented what I think of people who work in television, and what I think of TV in general. The argument that programmers / curators / DJs just "give the public what they want" is just...not right. In my experience of the - many - misanthropes I've met working in TV production, it's precisely this idea of "giving the people what they want" that's the problem, whilst drinking in wine bars and laughing at the working class.
The homosexual stereotype - the "channelling of a middle aged female coronation street character, badly, that upsets me" - comes from oppression that still isn't borne into equal rights. It comes from the power of the male homosexual as societal threat and it's much better/nicer/tame these rabid queers or they'll FUCK MY ARSE/"fun" to have them as passive characters with handbags who are your girlfriend's BFF.
That doesn't mean that Alan Carr's to be hated. I'm just sick of him being brought up as the target for all that's wrong with light entertainment. Please.