Freeview: the denouement.

The TV aerial man patiently reattaches the cable where I have kicked it out, probably in frustration and not being able to find one of the straight-edged pieces of my Doctor Who puzzle. He changes the fastening so that I can't kick it apart ever again, and cuts away all of the excess cables underneath my desk that do nothing whatsoever. My Freeview reawakens with channels galore.

"I seem to remember," he muses, "that last time you called me it was something very simple as well."
"Well, yes," I say. "This is not my field. I mean, if I lived with someone else they could probably just point out where I have detached a cable... Like that time when I called my brother because I couldn't connect my computer to the internet, and it was because I hadn't plugged in my phone line. But you know, there are other things I do well."

TV aerial man maintains a polite silence.

"I am a very good cook," I say, ignoring the evidence of the mangled omelette I have just made for my lunch. "You know. The feminine things. Those I am good at."
"That will be £55 please."

£55, I am thinking, is cheap compared to the life-long cost of my utter hopelessness with all matters practical. And in paying £55, I am also thinking, I am keeping this very nice and tactful man in employment, and that is a good thing. And additionally, I am thinking, why don't I move all those copies of my novel downstairs where people who come round to fix stuff that isn't really broken can see them, so that they know that there is at least one thing that I can do properly?

"Next time," I promise, "I'll try to make sure that the aerial has blown off the roof. Something good for you to do."
"Goodbye," says TV aerial man.

Freeview

Bit of a housekeeping post I'm afraid. Do bear with me.

I live in North London. I have a Freeview box that I've used with no problems at this address for several months. Suddenly, as of yesterday, I can only get the following channels: BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, Ceebeebies, BBC News 24, and BBCi. Rescanning for channels does not help. Switching off at the mains and switching back on again does not help. The manufacturer of my Freeview box seems to have disappeared, as e-mails bounce back and their help desk has a recorded message saying they are away "until January 2nd 2007". Help! Is anybody else in the same boat? Anyone got any advice? I need to get this sorted before this week's episode of ER!

Me on TV!

Me on French TV - in English or in French (about five minutes in, after the Peace Orchestra feature). Spot the difference - we recorded the interview twice, once in each language. The scariest part wasn't the interview at all but forcing myself to watch the French version, it's bad enough hearing myself speak a language that I know how to pronounce. Watching myself speak French is like watching a slightly more stupid version of myself. Slightly more stupid, and, due to the joys of the lens, also slightly fatter. That's how I like to be. Also, if you want to play a drinking game in the French version, try taking a chug every time I say the word "donc". Actually it's not too bad - I appear to have weaned myself off the habit of looking at the ceiling every time I'm trying to think of what to say (cf YouTube - or, please, don't), so at least it looks as if I'm talking to the presenter this time. Maybe next time I'll learn how to stop grinning and nodding like a dog in a car...

Lark Rise to Candleford

Ballykissangel in crinolines.

The Rovers Return: a mystery solved!

The Rover's Return (with an apostrophe) was opened in 1902, on the newly built Coronation St (1902 being Coronation year for Edward VII, hence its name). It was originally to be called The Coronation, but the brewery was forced to change its name when the go-ahead had already been given for the street to be named Coronation Street. When Lieutenant Philip Ridley returned from active service in the Boer War, the pub was named in his honour. In 1918, to celebrate the return of the soldiers from World War I, the apostrophe was removed, thus making it The Rovers Return (plural+verb). When Coronation Street began in 1960, the signage of the pub read "The Rovers Return" but at some point was changed to read "Rovers Return Inn", without a "The".

Well, well, well. I love Wikipedia.

Coronation Street

I have only just this second realised that "Rovers Return" actually means something and isn't just two random words put together. I'm a writer, you know. I blame the lack of apostrophe.

There Will Be Blood (or will there?)

The world says: it's the most incredible film ever made. Miss it at your peril.

I say: It's about men and oil and it's written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson so it's probably about 300 hours long. Oh god, do I have to?

No Certificate For Old Men

Went to see No Country For Old Men on Monday night. It is magnificent. Though as Cormac MacCarthy is one of my favourite authors, the Coen Brothers two of my favourite filmmakers, and I adore Tommy Lee Jones to a level which stays this side of healthy only because he is a bit old, it would have to have worked very hard to put a foot wrong with me. It's very nasty and very bleak but beautifully done. You do have to have a reasonably high tolerance of people getting blown to pieces by a psycho with bad hair and a very unpleasant kind of gun.

Which does make it rather surprising that the film has a 15 certificate. The tone is so distressing and the gore so graphic and unrelenting, and the themes very dark, complex and adult. I'm not sure where I stand on certification of films in general, but if it is going to be done, it should at least have some logic and consistency. My cousin, who works in cinema, explained it to me. In this country, apparently, the method of setting a certificate for a film is done with the aid of a checklist. You tick every time something happens which might give a film a higher certificate and then count the ticks at the end. There is only one tick per type of infraction and no subjective judgement about the overall feel of the film. So No Country For Old Men gets one tick - *one* - for gun violence, and another for blood. But there's no sex, no swearing, no punching, no stabbing, and so it's a 15. This also explains why The Bourne Ultimatum, with that charming sequence where a man gets bludgeoned to death in a shower cubicle, is a 12A. Show some tits and say motherfucker, though, and it suddenly becomes unsuitable for kids.

Still, that has to be better than the closed system they have in the US, which was exposed to brilliant effect by one of my favourite documentary makers, Kirby Dick, in his movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated. There, it's a panel of "concerned parents" who are in charge of deciding who can see what. And nobody knows who they are. Feel confident?

To return to No Country For Old Men, I had a glance at the BBFC guidelines for certification and apparently, for violence in a 15-rated film, "Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury." Have you seen this film? More to the point, have they?

Quantum of Solace

I may only know what 1 + 3/4 + 1/4 of those words mean (very confident on "of") but it's an excellent excuse to put up a picture of Daniel Craig in his (very) smalls.

I had to read a book called The Natufian in the Levant once, perhaps they should name the next Bond film after that?

American Idol

Just when you thought there was no point ever switching on the television again... along comes American Idol.

I love American Idol. The population of the United States, calculated in July 2007, was 301,139,947. For the same month, the population of the UK was estimated to be 60,776,238. So even with my maths I can see that the US has five times as many people. Five times as many talented singers, five times as many lunatics. But then, you have to multiply that by the American Dream. Ah yes, the American Dream, that anybody from anywhere can grow up to do anything, to be the President, to be the head of a multinational corporation, to be the next American Idol. Yeah man! Come on! You can do it! NO YOU CAN'T. Because to be the next American Idol you need to be able to sing. This is not a fact that has trickled down, even after seven seasons. Nobody seems to have realised that you can't always get what you want just by wanting it a whole lot and being a good person. There's always that moment after the terrible audition where the tearful auditionee says "but my mother always told me that I have a good heart" (that's a direct quote - I have never forgotten), "everywhere I go people smile", "God loves me". Thing is, God loves everybody. It doesn't make you special and it doesn't make you talented. America seems to be full of people with a lot of hair and a lot of teeth making a lot of noise with very little reason. No, that's probably not fair. But American Idol is full of those people, praise be.

What American Idol also has is Simon Cowell, and to my delight, what Simon Cowell seems to be hell bent on this year is filling up the programme with bonkers people. It's as if, having watched the likes of Sanjaya last year go from strength to strength, that he has decided that if the programme must be stuffed with the mad, it will damn be stuffed with *his* mad. Why else put through the one-eyed tone-deaf Janis Joplin impersonator whose brightly coloured outfit has, by her own gleeful admission, "been making people laugh all day"? It's as if he has decided to find out just how far exactly he can push his luck, given that if he says yes, the others tend to agree, no matter who is doing the singing. (If Randy says yes, the auditionee always goes through too, because Paula always says yes if somebody else says yes first. In fact, if Paula ever had to give her opinion first I think it would actually kill her.)

My other favourite thing about the show (OK, there are quite a few more favourite things, which we can discuss week by week) is when someone comes on looking like the top Google Image search result for 'bizarre', and you are bracing yourself for HORROR and they open their mouth and out comes something which is actually halfway decent. Witness the Dallas show's singing future congressman, complete with nerd specs, geeky hairdo, clip-on tie, and fulsome political ambitions. OK, so he might not actually be good enough to win it, but he's easily the match of, say, John Barrowman, which means he'd get to the final if he was in the UK. This not being the UK, he is likely to fall by the wayside a fair while before then, because one of my other favourite things about American Idol is that the people who are good are so very very good, so by the end you are actually just enjoying the singing. Witness: Dreamgirls's magnificent Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson came SEVENTH. I'd like to see her in a singing contest against Same Difference and that short kid who won X Factor this year.

There are a few weeks left of audition shows before the fun of the knockouts start (here's hoping that Cat Deeley will not be providing those pointless interstitions that proved the lowlight of last year's run). To join in the fun, simply switch on ITV2 at any time of the day or night and it is almost guaranteed to be being repeated.