I'm not a Strictly Come Dancing fan - I prefer reality shows that incarcerate the contestants and reduce them to a state of ratlike desperation - but my heart bled a little for Arlene Phillips today when I saw that she'd been sacked from the jury. No, I didn't love Hot Gossip - on the contrary. And I didn't much enjoy her tritely alliterative, overworked comments on the odd occasions I did see the programme. But surely even she didn't deserve the comments made by the woman who gave her the boot. BBC1 controller (brr...) Jay Hunt defended the decision by saying the show needed a 'different flavour', presumably newspeak for 'younger woman', and then went on to say, in some appallingly misplaced attempt at reparation: "Of course Arlene is disappointed. But critically she is incredibly excited about moving to The One Show. She knows at some point she is going to need to do something different with her career and this gives her the opportunity to become a face of factual on the channel and to be absolutely at the heart of what BBC1 does". "Critically"? "Incredibly excited" to be moved from the most popular Saturday evening show to a programme I surely can't be the only person never to have heard of - where, "critically", she will be expected to comment on the show she's just been dumped by? But even these horrors pale beside "the face of factual". Can anything be done to help this woman? No, not Arlene Phillips (66). Jay Hunt.
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bbc. Show all posts
Friday, 10 July 2009
The face of factual
I'm not a Strictly Come Dancing fan - I prefer reality shows that incarcerate the contestants and reduce them to a state of ratlike desperation - but my heart bled a little for Arlene Phillips today when I saw that she'd been sacked from the jury. No, I didn't love Hot Gossip - on the contrary. And I didn't much enjoy her tritely alliterative, overworked comments on the odd occasions I did see the programme. But surely even she didn't deserve the comments made by the woman who gave her the boot. BBC1 controller (brr...) Jay Hunt defended the decision by saying the show needed a 'different flavour', presumably newspeak for 'younger woman', and then went on to say, in some appallingly misplaced attempt at reparation: "Of course Arlene is disappointed. But critically she is incredibly excited about moving to The One Show. She knows at some point she is going to need to do something different with her career and this gives her the opportunity to become a face of factual on the channel and to be absolutely at the heart of what BBC1 does". "Critically"? "Incredibly excited" to be moved from the most popular Saturday evening show to a programme I surely can't be the only person never to have heard of - where, "critically", she will be expected to comment on the show she's just been dumped by? But even these horrors pale beside "the face of factual". Can anything be done to help this woman? No, not Arlene Phillips (66). Jay Hunt.
Saturday, 5 July 2008
(Anti-) conspiracy theorists swarm at harmless blog
The numbers of visitors to this blog increased exponentially yesterday. A wave of sudden interest in my new collection of stories, to be published by Salt in October? (Pre-ordering facilities available here.) Well, no. Nothing so flattering, or wise.
The posts that get most attention generally have something more prurient to recommend them (although my story Nipples might be just what some of them are looking for. It's in my new collection of stories, to be published...). On David Isaak's advice I entitled one post Hot Sex in San Francisco, and a lot of people looking for naughtiness must have been disappointed by the image of a rather elegant Art Deco façade. I'm also used to the post showing Berlusconi as nature intended (apart from the hair transplant, face lift and liposuction) getting an inordinate amount of attention, and yesterday was no exception.
But what really pulled the punters in is a post I wrote ages ago about the third tower at the WTC site and the mystery surrounding its collapse. It was my only foray into conspiracy theory territory and I was soundly told off by someone who led me into a world in which Robert Fisk is regarded as a dangerous god-hating commie sodomitic lunatic, so clearly a man to be trusted (how transparent does irony need to be? I love Robert Fisk!).
What I'd like to know - because I'm really not that obsessed by 9/11 - is what happened yesterday to make so many people google third tower and end up on my blog. Any ideas?
Update: OK, now I know why. BBC2 is showing a documentary about the third tower tomorrow night, and my post comes up on the first page of Google searches. Living abroad, I can't download BBC stuff (and if anyone knows how this might be circumvented I'd be very interested to hear), so I won't be watching it.
The posts that get most attention generally have something more prurient to recommend them (although my story Nipples might be just what some of them are looking for. It's in my new collection of stories, to be published...). On David Isaak's advice I entitled one post Hot Sex in San Francisco, and a lot of people looking for naughtiness must have been disappointed by the image of a rather elegant Art Deco façade. I'm also used to the post showing Berlusconi as nature intended (apart from the hair transplant, face lift and liposuction) getting an inordinate amount of attention, and yesterday was no exception.
But what really pulled the punters in is a post I wrote ages ago about the third tower at the WTC site and the mystery surrounding its collapse. It was my only foray into conspiracy theory territory and I was soundly told off by someone who led me into a world in which Robert Fisk is regarded as a dangerous god-hating commie sodomitic lunatic, so clearly a man to be trusted (how transparent does irony need to be? I love Robert Fisk!).
What I'd like to know - because I'm really not that obsessed by 9/11 - is what happened yesterday to make so many people google third tower and end up on my blog. Any ideas?
Update: OK, now I know why. BBC2 is showing a documentary about the third tower tomorrow night, and my post comes up on the first page of Google searches. Living abroad, I can't download BBC stuff (and if anyone knows how this might be circumvented I'd be very interested to hear), so I won't be watching it.
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