Aha! Comedy Review, Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life/Veep

Aha! Etc...

So last night saw some of Sky's first self-made British comedy, Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life.  Not exactly within Sky Atlantic's remit (it was  a channel set up with the intention of showing US series in the UK), it was an incredibly welcome return to this character who it seems will never leave Steve Coogan's career alone.

Alan Partridge dates from the very early 90s, but has not dated.  His character doesn't really need an introduction to anyone who's lived in Britain and owned a TV set (or in recent years, computer) in the last 20 years.  He's one of those fictional characters that works in any genre.  He began life in sketches, moved into full-length spoofs with the chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You and was dropped into traditional farce-based sitcom in I'm Alan Partridge.  Coogan's also used him in webisodes in probably the most popular of that mini-genre so far; and now he's in the travelogue documentary format.

Welcome To The Places Of My Life was essentially a remake of a similar concept from a Christmas episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You; Partridge takes us around his home town and lets his character do the comedy.  (And yes, I am sad enough to be able to reference a 15 year old sketch without having to look it up or cry into my pillow.)  There was no plot here; the only thing remotely close to a plot takes up less than 5 minutes of the programme and you could blink and miss it.  In one scene you glimpse Alan reading a letter with an NHS heading; later you see him in a pessimistic mood before going into a hospital, and a very relieved mood coming out of the hospital.  Everything else revolves as ever, around Partridge displaying a severe lack of self-awareness and delusions of importance.  The prgramme was full of instantly quotable lines from the start - "I like to think of Norfolk as the Wales of the East" for instance.  That's a relatively gentle example, but the description of the Black Death as being "the HIV of its day", and its being passed through the air making it "flying AIDS" shows the darker, twisted side of his personality.  We can only laugh at the dark side of Partridge (which is essentially his views on everything to do with sex, disability, race yadda yadda yadda) because there is also so much pathos.  This was brought not just through the hospital 'plot' but also seeing his current workplace.  A local digital station (with presumably no listeners), with Partridge making impressions of food blenders.  His career his basically been in a downward spiral since the end of Knowing Me, Knowing You and because his self-worth is entirely based on his career he comes across as a character deserving pity, despite the horrendous outlook he has on life.

A particularly good scene was one where Partridge is treading water in a swimming pool chatting to a hydro-therapist.  As the conversation goes on, it is more and more obvious that he is finding it difficult to stay afloat.  However, the interview has been edited so that when the camera is on him he is relaxed and calm, whereas when the camera cuts back to the hydro-therapist he is heard splashing and struggling for air.  The character's vanity and ridiculousness is displayed without even being on screen.  His selling of Norwich Town Hall as being the place Hitler would have made his victory speech from had he won WWII was another highlight - "the more I find out about Hitler, the less I like the sound of him."

The programme saw Coogan ressurrecting a classic comedy character then, but it should be remembered that this is a one-programme idea.  It will be interesting to see what else is done with the character in the next year or so with a film due just around the corner...

Veep - The anti-West Wing?

The other comedy on Sky Atlantic was Armando Iannucci's Veep.  Armando Iannucci (ex-Alan Partridge writer/producer) is now best known as the creator of The Thick Of It and In The Loop and for having an honour from the Queen and everything, and it is unavoidable for British viewers to watch Veep without comparing it to the previous series and film.  Structually, In The Loop was The Thick Of It with some of the characters having American accents.  Veep is something different entirely.  The focus is skewed; The Thick Of It generally uses the format of drab politician being manipulated by the spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, who is undoubtedly the star of the show.  In Veep, however, the main focus is on the drab politician.  This makes sense.  American politics has never made a celebrity culture out of its spin doctors as much as British politics has in the last 15-20 years or so.  Just remaking The Thick Of It with an American setting would be completely irrelevant.  It is probably more useful to compare Veep to the West Wing than The Thick Of It, as it reacts against the liberal idealism of that show.  Let's face it, everyone loved The West Wing for a time but it eventually became unbearbly cloying and sentimental.

The thing about Veep is that I suspect it will be more of a slow-burner than The Thick Of It.  There are a lot more characters and it will take a lot longer to get to know them.  The plot of the first episode was very much the type of thing that happens in The Thick Of It (politicians trying to avoid the unwelcome media attention while trying to boost their reputations), with the Veep (that's the Vice President, btw) indirectly upsetting the oil industry and calling someone a retard.  It was all very well acted, and there were some good understated one-liners, but it wasn't as immediately laugh-out-loud funny as I expected.  It does look as if a story arc is being set up with a ruthlessly ambitious aide however, and I wonder whether we are going to see the birth of a Malcolm Tucker style figure.  Tucker arrived fully-formed in The Thick Of It, and perhaps Veep is going to show how such figures come about.

Both shows were very enjoyable, but if Sky is hoping to improve its reputation for home-grown comedy in Britain it had better have been an opening salvo.  As I said earlier, the Partridge programme was defined as a one-off by its format, and although Veep is funny it is too rooted in American politics for it to connect with a mainstream British audience (The Thick Of It is rooted in British politics and doesn't connect with a massive British audience).  A good start maybe, but Sky can't rest on its laurels if it's hoping to be a big contender as a comedy focused channel.

Celebration Time, Come On!

Isn't it interesting how different people celebrate different things?  For instance - I've never really celebrated birthdays that much.  Normally I'll get a few cards and so on, presents from the folks and so on.  Sometimes, I'll get some cash and a few close friends and go to the pub, but more often than not I just stay at home and watch TV.  It's just another day really for me, just one that's made a bit more fun in the morning with the cards and presents.  I certainly can't remember the last time I had a birthday party, as opposed to a few drinks, but it was certainly when I was still at Junior School.  And even then, probably not many people turned up because my birthday is usually in August, and everyone's abroad in the sun.  I'm not averse to celebrating birthdays if other people are celebrating theirs, but when it comes to my own, I can rarely be arsed - I save up my celebrating for Christmas.  Which is Jesus' birthday, and I don't even believe in him [no offence to any Christians, but I see Jesus as a historically real equivalent to Santa].

It's how I was brought up really; you make a thing of birthdays when you're children obviously, but at a certain age you just grow out of them.  And the same seems to be true with my friends.  Mine either don't really do much, or have a low-key little gathering, but we save our big get-togethers for stag nights and weddings at the moment.  Perhaps the fact that my friends are in several different cities throughout the UK makes arranging birthday parties more trouble then they're actually worth.  Who cares?

1: Right

Turns out that the answer to that question is 'My Girlfriend'.  My girlfriend and her family are very different.  They have, for instance, a birthday hat, that the birthday boy/girl wears when 'Happy Birthday' is sung, and tend to go out for meals and play games and everything...  For her birthday party last year, over 50 people went.  I don't even know 50 people.  Basically, there's a sense of tradition and celebratory rituals there that I've never really come into contact with before.  Last year I got her birthday completely wrong by not getting a card and buying a pretty rubbish present, which showed a birthday competency equalled only by the most puritan of corpses.  This year, I fared a little bit better, by getting a nice card (although it didn't have a poem inside, which I think lost me points) and nice presents; but I fell down on the evening arrangements, which was going to meet a friend of mine in a pub and then moving on to catch up with some friends who had just had a baby.  I don't think she had this in mind as being a big birthday blow-out, which is fair enough - in retrospect, I can see how watching someone clean piccalilli out of a newborn's nappy might not be the way some people imagine spending their birthday.  My mistake was to think that because I would be happy to spend my birthday that way, she would be too. 

2: Wrong

It has made me think how interesting it is the way different families celebrate different things, and of course how friends celebrate it too.  As I said earlier, my sister and I stopped having birthday parties from teenhood.  And the first time I went out drinking for New Year's Eve was 2 years ago - until then it was Jools Holland and some fizzy wine, call from the impenetrable Scottish relatives and then tucked up in bed before 12.30.  But we've always made a massive deal out of Christmas, with more food than you could eat in a week, booze aplenty and present opening sessions that take forever.  I guess you could say that my family binge celebrate, saving everything up for one day of the year, whereas my girlfriend's family celebrate things on a semi-regular basis throughout the year.  Neither way is righter or wronger than the other, but what it does show is that there is no standard way of celebrating anything.  Each family in the world has a different way of showing love and affection and at different times of year.

As I got older, most people I know including myself tended to go out and having a hedonistic night whenever they could afford it, with any old excuse to wake up feeling rough the next day.  And so if there were birthday celebrations, they would just be the same as 'New Job' celebrations, or 'Passed Driving Test' celebrations or 'It's The End Of The Week' celebrations; no better or worse.  Now that most people I know (including myself) are almost permanently broke, and sometimes full of baby, hedonistic benders are on the whole 'out' and quiet catch-ups over cups of tea are 'in'.  But everyone still has a great time, which I find heartening, because it means that it's always been about the personalities, not the social context. Once again though, my girlfriend's circle of friends make a bigger deal out of birthdays, and there is more sense of occasion, than just going out and getting pissed again.

The point is that I think it's a great thing that families celebrate things in different ways as long as everyone's happy, but I'm learning that it's fairly important to learn how different people celebrate things when you start sharing your life with them, especially when you've spent a large-ish part of your life being a feckless bachelor happy enough with an 1/8th and a Doctor Who box set.  It can be a bit of a culture shock, and just as when in Rome you should do as the Romans do, you have to accept that people are different, and on birthdays you're expected to give them the celebration they're used to, not the one you'd be happy with, because it's their birthday and therefore for one day at least, rule!

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that  I expect my girlfriend will get at least a bottle of sparkling wine next year...

Can Honoured satirists Draw Blood?

 There's been an interesting spat on Twitter recently between Alistair Campbell and Armando Iannucci. It started because Iannucci has an accepted an OBE from the Queen's honours list, and Campbell thinks he should have refused it. The exchange went as follows:

Now, I don't think Campbell really cares about the honours and whether Iannucci should have accepted it or not; I think he's seen an opportunity to attack someone who he feels has made a career out of attacking him. Campbell's very public and disastrous attack on the BBC around the time of the Iraq war still probably obsesses him slightly. He was a man who was used to winning the media battles up to that point, and losing that one cost him not so much his job, but definitely his reputation as an expert manipulator. The BBC won out, and Iannucci is very BBC, who started out as a producer there and has worked for them in one way or another throughout most of his career (apart from his very underrated sketch shows for Channel 4).

Some people have claimed that Campbell hates Iannucci for satirising him in the form of Malcolm Tucker in his brilliant sitcom The Thick Of It. For those not familiar with this sitcom (and if you're not, shame on you), it is a comedy set in a relatively minor department of the government (an un-named but unmistakeably New Labour government), using the Yes Minister format of a bumbling politician and his scheming aides. The chief difference between Yes Minister and The Thick Of It is that in Yes Minister those really in charge are the Civil Servants, whereas in The Thick Of It it is the Spin Doctors, mainly the foul-mouthed and generally quite scary Malcolm Tucker.

Many people (probably including Campbell) assumed that Malcolm Tucker was plain and simple a caricature of Campbell, but on closer inspection this is simplistic. It is a natural assumption because Campbell was at the height of his powers when the programme first came out, but it's not an out-and-out portrayal of Campbell himself, more an attack on the culture of the New Labour government of the time, which was starting to let itself determine policy by reacting to the media. It was this culture that has led to Leveson, with Prime Ministers courting Editors, rather than the other way round. Tucker is an metaphor rather than a character in the show, a force rather than a person, who enters a room like a tornado. But as well as the agression of Campbell there is a lot of Charlie Whelan in there (most of the creative swearing is probably inspired more by Whelan's colourful way with words than Campbell, as evidenced by the use of one of Whelan's favourite expressions, "a package of bollocks"). And when Campbell turns on the charm, there's definately some of Peter Mandelson's sociopathic felinity.

Campbell though (perhaps understandably) took the character as a personal attack, and went on record as saying there was "nothing funny about the show whatsoever" - an attempt at indifference that was as good as an admission that it had hit a nerve. (Amusingly, at one award ceremony, Campbell was sat next to the actor who plays Tucker, Peter Capaldi.)

Taking all the personalities aside though, the question Campbell is asking is "is it possible for a satirist to retain his credibility after being decorated so highly by the Establishment with a big E?" And it is a valid question, though one that I think can be answered with a 'yes'.

I think the answer really lies in what you define satire as. A lot of people understand satire to basically mean 'political comedy', which it does incorporate but is too narrow a description. Because satire has a much broader brief than that; a satirist concentrates on puncturing the worst elements of human character which can involve politics because a lot of the worst characteristics of human beings tend to be illustrated in the political world. Ben Jonson, the first English satirist relevant to how we perceive satire today, wrote plays such as The Alchemist and Volpone, where a succession of characters are 'gulled' into parting money by con-artists. Both of these plays have characters that are broad caricatures of vices rather than believable characters. The names in Volpone all correspond unflatteringly with animals for instance (Volpone means 'Sly Fox', and his servant Mosca's name comes from 'Mosquito' (ie, a blood-sucker).

But Jonson spent a great deal of his career (the majority, in fact) constructing elaborate 'Masques' for the King, frothy court romances for the Aristocrats to enjoy. That does not somehow render his satires invalid; and it certainly makes Iannucci accepting a medal from the Queen look small. Similarly, Swift and Pope were perfectly happy to chill with the Aristos. And zipping forward to the 20th Century and the so-called 'Satire Boom' of the 1960s, one could hardly describe people like Peter Cook as being outside the Establishment; easily the most important comedian of his generation he was destined for the Foreign Office before Beyond The Fringe. This was never relevant to his comedy, which relied more on making fun of peoples' foibles regardless of class or background. His impressions of Harold MacMillian (how he confessed to having an affection for) sat next to the Pete and Dud caricatures of seedy men in pubs who think they know everything. He performed in front of the Queen more than once, at the same time as being the owner of Private Eye. This is not somehow a contradiction in terms.

Iannucci has never stated any objection to the honours system as far as I can find out, and so I can't see why his accepting one is somehow hypocritical. His work up to and including The Thick Of It his criticised the corruption and vanity within politics, but he has never claimed to want to start a revolution. I don't think Armando Iannucci OBE will make significantly different programmes to Armando Iannucci, and he will undoubtedly continue to make a more important and more constructive influence on British culture than Alistair Campbell ever will.

-

Smoke and Mirrors

They always say 'once an addict, always an addict', and it's true.  I've given up smoking more times than I can remember, and though I've managed for about a year now, you can't ever be sure you won't crack.  If I didn't have one of those e-cigarette things - my iFag - I would probably be chaining away in a corner, coughing and loving every minute.

I did love smoking.  I don't miss it, but I really did love it.  I would count out my days in fags.  Although I wouldn't count the cigarettes themselves or I'd have proof that I was smoking too much.  A lot of the fun went out of it with the public smoking ban, it's true, and there are less things I miss about it than things I'm glad to be shot of.   I have the aforementioned iFag, which is a great thing to fall back on if you're an ex-smoker with a crap track record of staying off the things.  But it's still giving you nicotine; it's a safer alternative but it's not the same as actually giving up (which, if you hadn't heard, is actually quite hard.)  Especially when I'm with people I like who are smoking, I do sometimes feel... jealous.

Which is ridiculous.  The stupidest thing I ever did was taking up smoking; it only takes your body a few days to realise how absolutely ruinous smoking is to your health.  And when you get your taste-buds in working order again, and discover that cigarette smoke does smell a little bit, it's like a revelation.  And God - how much you dupe yourself psychologically.  I would sometimes feel acute pains in my chest if I had been smoking, drinking coffee and eating greasy food (which was quite often); but I'd always manage to find some reason for these pains where smoking half a pack of baccy a day didn't come into the equation. 

Non-smokers can see how stupid the smokers are in this respect, but because they lack the crucial element of empathy they tend to sound preachy and annoying and way too smug when pointing out the bleeding obvious.  The empathy is necessary because if you don't know how hard giving up is your advice won't be taken seriously.  It's like telling someone to give up eating, because you become so dependent on them smoking feels like a bodily function.  And ex-smokers, well - ex-smokers can either turn out to be worse in a 'Born Again' way, or end up writing self-indulgent blog posts like this one.

So, speaking of this blog post - where is it going?

Two things have attracted my attention over the last week; the first is the gradual institution of the new regulations which makes it illegal for shops to display the packages of tobacco products.  The second was finding out about the 'Plain Packaging' campaign, which presumably inspired the new regulations (check out their exciting site )

The gist of the Plain Packaging campaign is that they believe cigarette packaging is too attractive ("particularly to young people"), and that if cigarettes/tobacco packaging is plain, the health warnings will stand out more.  The reasoning behind it is that less people will start smoking at an early age if the packaging is less attractive.

I think this argument is flawed.  Not completely without logic, and its heart is in the right place, but I simply don't think that the reason most people start smoking is because of the packaging.  I didn't take up smoking because I was dazzled by the hypnotic allure of the packages.  I don't think that's the reason why many smokers start smoking.  I think most people start smoking because of other people - peer pressure, yes, but also the urge to impress or just doing what everyone around them is doing plays its part.  Smoking is still a cultural issue primarily, and the key to stopping people from starting is education.   You can change the designs in the corner shop, but it's no good concentrating on the way it's marketed.  Instead we should concentrate on peoples' perceptions of smoking.  It is a slow process, but smoking is so ingrained in our culture, there is no fast-track option.  The key to change the amount of smokers out there lies in making smoking socially unacceptable.  If it's a shameful thing to do, and something people are embarrassed about, they won't take it up.  While people are still happy to walk down the street with one on the go, other people, if they're so inclined will be happy to start.

Gizza kiss.

This dummy box the Australian government are planning to introduce at the end of the year is pretty gruesome, it's true.  It's a shock tactic - it's a graphic image that gives you a jolt the first time you see it.

But a shock tactic by definition can only work once.  People will become used to it each time they see it, and if people are smokers, or work in shops that sell tobacco, or know people who smoke, its effect will last less than a month.  If you want to put people off smoking I actually think it's less effective to do this in the long run than to put them in an actual plain white box that says 'FAGS'.

Because when you smoke, you don't really care about the outside of the box/pouch, but what's inside them.  I remember when they made the warnings much bigger, and then later when graphic pictures of tumours and blackened lungs were emblazoned across the packs.  Not once did it stop me, because that self-deluding part of my mind simply blanked it out.  Being an addict makes you very good at being wilfully blind.  If  I still smoked, and they started selling fags in boxes shaped like a coffin or something, I would in all probability still buy them.  If the warnings said 'You Are An Idiot - You Are Stinking And Dying In A Hell Of Your Own Making', I would have shrugged and sparked up.  Because you know all that stuff already, if you've made it as far as buying the pack which has the warning on it you've probably already made up your mind. 

And if someone doesn't smoke but is about to start, it's because they like the idea of cigarettes, or the look of cigarette smoking, not because how the box looks of how it's sold.  The Plain Packaging campaign says "Support Plain Packaging and Save Our Children," and I still can't decide whether I think that's a wildly optimistic line or just a slightly patronising.

I'm not arguing that the packaging should remain - in fact I agree that the packaging should be changed.  I think people should be allowed to smoke if they want to while it's still legally available, but if you want to make it marginally more irritating for smokers and shopkeepers to buy and sell it, whatever - have a blast. 

But I think rather too much emphasis has been put on this being a way of reducing the amount of people who smoke.  (Are they even that enticing anyway?  I think most cigarette packaging is pretty dull.)  It's a purely cosmetic change, something that tweaks what already exists rather than changing the way things are.  Change the packaging, hide it behind cupboards in shops - by all means,  but also recognise that this is just a way of brushing something under the carpet.  At the end of the day, that tobacco is still going to be sold in significant amounts.  I think to really do something that makes a difference, a much bolder move has to be made, and I don't see that happening for at least another generation. 

How Original! How Late! A Post About The Jubilee!

A crown. Made out of cake.

So yes, this is the first entry of a blog, and how much more unoriginal can you get for a subject for a blog entry at the moment. More Jubilee stuff? Really? Even now, when it's, you know, over and everything?

Well, quite. As a Republican, I've not done much for the Jubilee. I certainly didn't protest against it, because at the end of the day, it wasn't my party. There's a time and a place for debating the pros and cons of a monarchy and frankly in the middle of a celebration of it isn't it. It would be a different story if it was a wildly unpopular event that was being shoved down the public's throats; but over 80% of the country wanted the Jubilee celebrations, and so it would have been if nothing else undemocratic to try and boycott it. Live and let live and all that; I'm not going to spoil anyone's fun for the sake of making a futile gesture. I spent my Jubilee Sunday volunteering at a garden party organised by Mencap; though it pissed it down with rain, everyone had a marvellous time putting up Union Jacks, balloons and so on, and money was raised for charity. The fact was, Monarchy didn't play a massive part, but patriotism did - the good kind of patriotism, the love of your country and what it means to be British, not the bad kind where you go hitting differences. The best illustration of how modern Britain was celebrated was when an Indian Youth Orchestra being followed by an old-school old lady British Choir.  Both were really good, and the juxtaposition was as good an example of

When I saw the pictures in the evening of the Republican protesters at the flotilla event I felt like cringing. These were not people who were going to attract anyone to any cause. They looked, frankly, like miserable buggers. They weren't dressed in interesting costumes, they were dressed like third-rate gangsters, and looked foolish. It wasn't an occasion for a debate, it was an occasion for a fun day out with the family on a long Bank Holiday. Coming across as party-poopers was a massive own goal. If you turned up to someones birthday party with the express intention of ruining it, you would (rightly) get a frosty reaction to say the least. It's bad manners, for a start, in being bad mannered is a massive turn-off for all British people. And if you're stupid enough to look bad mannered in front of your enemies who happen to be the epitome of manners (the Queen is actually what a manner looks like), you render yourself politically irrelevant there and then.

Anyway, I was looking forward to getting on with the rest of my life and looking forward to the next big occasion I couldn't give a shit about (that's the Olympics, that is), until on the news on the way home from work today I heard someone from the Government admit in a very blase way that it had cost an enormous amount at £4bn, but everyone agreed that it had been absolutely worth it.

Perhaps rather naively I hadn't really thought about the cost of the event, which is why my 'live and let live' stance was so easy to maintain. I hadn't realised quite how much money had been pumped into the event. The thing is, that's quite a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. The European countries that are floundering at the moment are crippled in debt by less amounts; that is the kind of money that can bring a country to its knees. That is the kind of money that could improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in this country, Republicans and Monarchists. The obvious examples of how it could be used are things like hospitals and schools and things that generally improve the state of peoples' lives on a daily basis, as opposed to one long weekend in June. People say that there is no point in pouring money into the NHS because it gets eaten up by bureaucracy, and that might be true to an extent; but out of £4bn surely some of that money would find its way into the lives of patients? Certainly more than if the money was poured into the Thames to make it look all pretty for a day. And how about education? What about all those university departments closing under managerial pressure to attract more foreign students, or disenfranchised kids being bored by unmotivated educators? Again, just throwing money at a problem doesn't make it go away; but it would certainly help, at least a little bit.

Even if it was spent on less 'life and death' causes than hospitals, schools and transport, surely you could make a case for using that money to try to revitalise the British film industry? Or investing in better technology? This would still be a patriotic act, and one that could make money in the future as well. Or libraries, the heart of several communities that have been either threatened with closure or flat-out closed.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that my idea of how to spend £4bn is better than most peoples'; I don't know the ins and outs of it all, and there could be valid reasons for not putting too much money into the NHS. Maybe it messes something up economically - I am economically dense. But I do think the money could have been invested, and whatever we agree or disagree about £4bn being spent on the Jubilee it is an actual, real, bona fide fact that that money has been spent. It's gone now - bye bye. Hope you enjoyed it. The government minister I heard on the radio though it was worth it, but I'm not sure he speaks for everyone.

And ultimately, even after everything else I've written so far, if you think that £4bn is a sensible amount of money for an economically struggling country to be spending on a knees-up, there is something wrong with you. If you say to me that you can't think of anything better to spend £4bn on in this country I will assume that you are lying; because the idea that you might be telling the truth scares me so much more.

I am not arguing that it was a mistake to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee, and I'm not entirely convinced that it was a cynical 'bread-and-circuses' attempt on the Establishment's behalf to distract people from the appalling way things have been going for the Coalition at the moment. But there are ways of doing things; to be more precise there are sensible ways of doing things and extravagant ways of doing things, and unfortunately extravagance is a luxury we cannot afford at the moment.

Spending money extravagantly on things we couldn't afford is what got this country into its current financial situation. It seems we have refused to learn from this. Next time the Government refuses to do something because it can't afford it, I will think of the Jubilee celebrations and ask myself which I would rather have had.