Don't read this in conjunction with my piece on the Turner Prize and expanding my mind, but...

...does anybody know why you can't get the original version of Dick in a Box on Youtube any more?

Strictlywatch 2008: Brucie Bonus

On tonight's It Takes Two, Ian on Jodie: "I really hope she produces her breast on Saturday." I think he meant "best"...

The Turner Prize 2008

We're not going to talk about the computer, OK? Not until after I take it to be examined by geniuses at Apple. I just... can't... *sob*

On to scarcely brighter matters. On Sunday I went to see the Turner Prize exhibition. You remember the Turner Prize, right? Britain's premier contemporary art prize that goes to the best show of the year yadda yadda thingy bla. Now I like art - I even like conceptual art - and I get very irritable when I'm walking around galleries listening to people say that their six year old could paint something that their six year old could under no circumstances paint. But the Turner prize this year is AWFUL. AWFUL. AWFUL. And surprisingly interesting. Which, in case you are wondering, is a breakdown by artist.

Here's my advice if visiting the Turner exhibition. Hotfoot it through Goshka Mauga (derivative collages, soulless sculpture), Cathy Wilkes (ideas-lite installation), and Runa Islam (unimaginative films) and do not pass Go, do not collect £200, until you reach Mark Leckey's Cinema In The Round. The work he displays is entertaining enough to look at (and quite the relief after, say, Wilkes' shop dummy with tampon and birdcage on head) but better even than that is the video he presents of himself delivering a lecture on aspects of art. I have no idea how I rate this as an artwork in itself but it is actually a fascinating lecture, in which Leckey discusses different works of art, from Philip Guston to The Simpsons, in which two dimensional pieces seem to take on three dimensional weight and presence. The sections on cats and the shoeness of shoes are particular joys. It's a long time since I have heard a lecture on - well - anything, and Leckey is pleasingly unpretentious and clear, while thoughtful and complex enough to be genuinely thought-provoking. And did I mention he uses clips from The Simpsons? I enjoyed it so much that I started to panic halfway through, realising how rarely I actually feel like I am learning anything, how rarely I enter a realm of ideas that hasn't been chewed up and spat out for me like a worm for a baby bird, how much time I waste on crappy TV and regurgitated commentary and how little on original thought, and how I must must must do more than that. Then I went home and spent the evening watching DVDs (Northern Exposure, since you ask) and the Strictly results. So it didn't really last.

But then today I saw a news piece that Oxford and Cambridge are putting their lectures on iTunes. So perhaps there is hope for me yet.

And then

died again before I could do anything. Arse.

(Techie update: got the firewire, connected the computers, opened up my other computer on my laptop, but couldn't figure out how to actually get at all the stuff that I needed, especially because most are on e-mail but when I opened Thunderbird remotely it only had emails on it up to June, and then as I was figuring that out my desktop disappeared bafflingly off my laptop, I can't get it back, so I will probably have to buy a new monitor, which I don't want and will be a total waste of money, because the only reason I'm going to use it is to get everything I need off my desktop and onto a memory stick so I can put it on the laptop and then never use the desktop again so that everything is in one place, because one thing I have learned is that even with a manual and a firewire I don't know how to fileshare, unless anyone has any better ideas, but I have to do it this week because I am in big trouble with all the stuff I haven't got, and I am a bit annoyed by the whole kerfuffle and can't realy afford to go buying monitors I don't want, also while we're on the subject how do you sync two versions of iTunes so I can get all my music onto the laptop as well, and gaaaaaah.)

Strictlywatch 2008: Week 3 Results

So farewell then Gary Rhodes. You were really very bad. This is mysterious and new: a series of Strictly where the public are actually voting off the worst dancers. It's messing with all my predictions.

Also: ten minutes knocked off the running time of the results show was a very good move, BBC. Keep Bruce under control and you could knock off another ten no problem.

Also: did anyone else think that some of the moves in Vincent and Flavia's rhumba were really, really weird? I'm talking about that row-row-row your boat moment, people.

Also - oh my god my monitor screen just came alive! Gotta go!

Strictlywatch 2008: Week 3

The headbanging. Oh god. The headbanging. We can approach it any way we like but this week's Strictly was all about Andrew Castle headbanging. It was the last thing I thought about when I went to sleep last night and the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning. It will scar me for life. Andrew Castle. Tennis player and GMTV presenter. Headbanging. In a TANGO. I hope Ola Jordan is thoroughly ashamed of herself.

It happened quite late on in the programme. I will attempt to get through the rest of proceedings in an orderly fashion.

First the presenters. Bruce's jokes are getting out of control. Not only are they getting less and less funny, he now insists on having an additional period of what seems like several minutes afterwards to comment on the joke, whether it was cruel, whether it was funny, whether it was satire, whether he is doddery (bad catchphrase, and he is. The audience should just leave him in pointed silence after, "I am not doddery, doddery I am...") The only light relief is to watch Tess's "listening face" on the occasions when she is standing next to him. It is a work of unintentional comedy genius.

To the dances. First up, Erin and Austin's jive. I have trouble recognising Erin even after three weeks because of her awful new hair colour and tooth veneers. In the training video, we are introduced to Austin's jiving dad, who appears to be Chris Evans in a white wig. The dance itself is very skillful but I fail to enjoy it, perhaps because I am distracted by Auston's sleeveless top and huge great gallumphing elephant arms. They have muscles like treetrunks which is a bit disconcerting when Austin has the face of a ten year old boy.

Next up, Mark and Hayley. A tango. I had to look it up because I couldn't remember. Mark does nothing. Hayley is dull. Please go home.

Then Gary and Karen dancing a jive. I was very mean to Gary in last week's post, and I also voted for him, which indicates some confusion. This week I felt hideously guilty about both, because Gary is a truly awful, awful dancer, and he probably can't help it, and I should never have forced him to do another week, and I am filled with immense sorrow on his behalf if he stays in and has to do more dances, and yet I do kind of want him to stay in because he is so entertaining. Needless to say this jive is terrible.

John and Kristina follow this up with a tango. I am in love with them. I can't help it. Kristina has only been in it for three weeks and already she is one of my favourite professional dancers. It's the way she wears skin-tight leopard print and fawns over John like a mail-order bride. (I mean this as the sincerest possible compliment. We are in a ballroom dancing context after all.) Their tango is as sweet as their waltz, but tangoes are not supposed to be sweet, so they lose marks. My friend immediately pledges to vote for them because they MUST stay in.

Next is Andrew and Ola and OH GOD IT IS ALL FLOODING BACK. Actually it wasn't a bad tango at first even though Andrew was dancing with his bum out. But he was actually dancing, which is more than you can say for Mark, and his tango face was priceless. (For non-watchers, the tango face is very important. You can practise at home. Look as constipated as you possibly can. You've got it!) And then - NO NO NO NO NO - the HEADBANGING! Like a sort of angry turkey trying to get through a door. WHY? Ola is noted for her dancing gimmicks (remember the under-the-kilt move with Kenny) but this was just WRONG. NO.

Moving swiftly on to Tom and Camilla's jive. I fancy Tom, because he reminds me of a sexy ex boyfriend, and he is a bit camp, which I totally love. He also seems to be a bit arrogant which I pretend I don't love but probably do. His jive is great. I would like it even more if he was partnered with anyone other than Camilla. Why does she get the sexy men every year? Why? Is it to distract us from her teeth? Notably, she is my brother's favourite, so maybe it's one of those things where women don't get it but men do.

Lastly, Don and Lilia. Don was in the dance-off last week and only saved by Len's casting vote, and was really pretty rubbish. This week he was fab. His tango face is truly terrifying (what have you been eating, Don?) and he was properly in time with the music and dancing and everything. Lilia is some kind of genius teacher. Affeared that he doesn't have a fanbase, and bowled over by his improvement, Don gets my vote.

So, for the dance off? I think Gary could be saved by the public a la Kate Garraway, so I am going to be optimistic and go for the dance off I'd like to see: Mark versus Andrew, Mark to go.

All dances can be watched here. BE WARNED about Andrew's, BE WARNED.

Public Information Announcement

My computer monitor has just made a pitiful fizzing noise and died. Right now I am writing on my laptop. Which actually works very nicely as a desktop especially now I've plugged the keyboard and mouse from my desktop into it and propped the laptop up so it's on a reasonable level with my eyes... and it's faster than my desktop... so everything would be hunkydory, *if* I had synched my laptop and desktop say, ever. So I have no access to my e-mails, by which I mean the stored ones and the ones I'd downloaded but not read yet, my diary, all the info about the trips I am going on to Germany in two weeks and Uganda in three weeks and, oh yeah, Warwick tomorrow, and so on, and indeed so forth. The clever thing to do will be to plug my desktop into something else, say my TV (??? with what lead??????) and then get everything over onto my laptop and forget my desktop ever existed. But in the meantime, if you have tried to contact me today, or we are supposed to be meeting up but I never turn up, etc, please bear with me. I am nothing without my electronic devices...

Beyond A Joke

Last night I went to a comedy gig at a pub near where I live, a charity fundraiser for a local community garden. There were three comedians on the bill. I have forgotten the name of the first one, which is a mercy for him and for me, because it means I can slag him off with impunity. Very patchy, very smug, and lost all my goodwill with a "joke" about rape which almost exactly described the circumstances of my friend's rape, my friend who happened to also be in the audience. I think the punchline "what on earth were you wearing?" could best be described as ill-advised. Next up was Josie Long, who was lovely: very funny, completely charming, slightly bonkers, all of which is to the good.

And then came the headliner: Simon Amstell For the Canadians (and other foreigners, I know I get other foreigners, make my book number one in your country and I might mention you by name too), Simon Amstell is a very famous, very successful comedian in Britain, who presents a prime time BBC2 comedy show and has won awards for his stand up. He doesn't need to go to a pub and do the whole of his Edinburgh set for no money. It was clearly a big favour to the organisers, and judging by size of pub / number of punters, he'll have made thousands for them. And he was hilarious: I absolutely love him on TV, but this was better - intelligent, self-deprecating, sharp, and managed to make jokes about rape that were actually jokes and didn't offfend my friend at all. (The quality of rape jokes is not how I judge a comedian I promise, but it was an interesting point of comparison and does show what a skilled comedian Amstell is.)

And the audience were vile. It was baffling. Not the whole audience to be fair - most of us were laughing and clapping and having a great time - but the front row seemed to be entirely taken up of drunk hecklers who wouldn't stop interrupting the show, over and over again. Possibly the fact that the gig was in a tiny pub with a foot-high stage made it too intimate and people felt they could say what they liked; I was standing by the bar, about three feet from Amstell on eye level, which isn't how I usually experience comedy (except, you know, in real life conversation) and at times it did feel like we were just chattting. Chatting without me speaking though, because HE was performing and I was NOT. But it wasn't just the size of the place, because the same people didn't heckle the first two acts, not even the first one, who kind of deserved it. But they were unbelievably aggressive with Amstell. At a charity gig. Which he was doing for free. And in which he was brilliant. Why?

The comedy and heckling thing is weird. I was talking to another professional comedian recently who told me that he thinks the hecklers reckon they are helping the comedian: they heckle, he coems up with a brilliant put-down which gets the biggest laugh of the night. But comedians don't want to get their laughs from putting down hecklers, they just want to do their show. And people don't really heckle anywhere else. If you're watching a play and you come up with a witty riposte to what's going on on-stage, you don't shout it out. (Actually I went to the cinema in New York once and the audience were heckling the action, which was astonishing to me, not least because the actors on screen can't answer back.) I absolutely loathe heckling, it always spoils my night and I just wish people wouldn't do it. I have paid to see the comic, not some drunk loser in the audience. After the show Simon Amstell walked past my table and I nearly apologised to him for the audience but I didn't, because it would have been idiotic, and also because he was so good I didn't want him to think it had spoilt the night, even though, to a certain extent, it had.

The only equivalent I can think of to heckling at comedy is this bizarre notion that it is perfectly OK to talk all the way through music gigs. A while ago I went to see Jill Scott and all I can remember of the night was the long, loud conversation the two girls next to me were having about allergies. Surely if someone is performing for you it is polite to listen? And even if you are not interested in politeness, if you have paid to be there, wouldn't you want to listen? If not, you could just stay at home and listen to the CD: way cheaper.

I may officially be the Woman Who Talked Too Much but I do know when to shut up. And if any of you are coming to my reading tomorrow (Warwick, Northgate Methodist Church, 2pm, £8.50 including afternoon tea, plug fans!) and you start to heckle, watch out: I will be very cross and not in the least bit funny about it.

The New Statesman on Strictly Come Dancing!

Seriously, I went on the New Statesman site and there it was. It was the first piece I clicked on, which tells you something about my aspirations to seriousness. And it is a pretty serious piece as it happens, or at least compared with my coverage anyway...

Hmm. (a) Send my cv to New Statesman in hope that they might like a more playful TV writer? (b) Crawl back under my rock of frivolity?

Thoughts from the Sidelines

The other day, waiting for a train, I was browsing in WHSmiths for a magazine. I'm not a big fan of women's glossies as I take little or no interest in skincare, make-up, how to improve my sex life, fashions I can't afford, celebrities I've either never heard of or wish I'd never heard of, or real life stories about women whose lives are nothing like my real life, so I was looking around to see if there were any other titles that light take my fancy; but it turns out that I'm not interested in cars, golf, mortgages, HiFis, breasts, computers, pregnancy, gadgets, weddings, heavy metal or cats either, or at least not enough to buy an entire magazine devoted to any one of them. There's no such thing as an intelligent general arts magazine, which is what I'd really like to read (Time Out comes close, but I already subscribe), so as usual I found myself looking at the current affairs mags.

Trying to get over the fact that Prince Charles was the cover star of The Economist's Intelligent Life quarterly, and David Milliband was on the front of Prospect, I did delve inside and scan the contents page of several of them, only to make the somewhat unsettling discovery that each of these magazines could essentially have been subtitled "what men think about the world". They have almost no female contributors at all. A review here and there, the odd piece, an admittedly stronger showing in short stories, but that's it. Otherwise it's male editors and male writers all the way.

I am loathe to cry sexism here, because I can't believe that intelligent male editors don't want women writing for their publications, and it's miserable to contemplate that they might be offering articles to their mates or thinking male writers bring more gravitas and ending up with a token female or two. I'm more inclined to wonder whether we women writers are sidelining ourselves. I can think of many female journalists who I admire, but when I take away the ones who are writing about lifestyle, or humourous columns about their own lives, or serious articles but that are largely about women's / gender / family issues (important as these issues are), I'm left with hardly anyone. Are women pitching stories outside these parameters and getting turned down, or are we staying within our comfort zones and leaving the "hard stuff" to the men? Or perhaps are editors of current affairs magazines comissioning articles that ony really appeal to men so they aren't getting female writers or readers? I draw your attention to the aforementioned Milliband / Prince Charles covers (though hard to believe those appeal to anybody.)

I'm guilty of this self-sidelining myself, in large part because I prefer to write humourously whether fiction or non-fiction - it's not that I can't write seriously, but when I do, I feel like I'm pretending to be someone I'm not. So I don't anticipate being given 5,000 words on the economy for Prospect any time soon. And I'm not going to stop writing about Strictly Come Dancing - quite aside from anything, that would be letting the New York Times win. And somebody needs to chronicle David Tennant's every move. But I do feel uncomfortably like I have been coccooning myself in my little world and thinking my frivolous thoughts, leaving the business of commenting on the real world to the men.

And I didn't buy any of those current affairs magazines. They just seemed like chat overheard in a gentlemen's club. So the self-sidelining continues. (I didn't buy anything and read Riddley Walker on the train instead.) I feel like I could and should do better, though whether on this blog, or by pitching my serious thoughts elsewhere, remains to be seen. (I'm sure that I have serious thoughts sometimes.)

PS can't help but notice on that IL cover the only piece by a woman is AS Byatt on... fashion.