n.Cutting
Edge: Gazza's Coming Home (C4, Monday); n.Two Fat Ladies (BBC2, Wednesday);
n.EastEnders (BBC1, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday); n.The Ghost of Ivy Tilsley
(C4, Saturday); Crossing The Floor (BBC2, Saturday)
STRANGE what passes for
small talk on the football circuit. ``Sheryl's expecting,''
remarked the public relations executive to Rangers' newly-arrived star
player. ``Where did she conceive that?'' Paul Gascoigne was lost for words,
a condition that seemed to afflict him so often in Cutting Edge: Gazza's
Coming Home (C4, Monday) but, for once, he had our sympathies.
To be
honest, I'm not a great fan of villians-turned-Boys Own heroes, but even
discounting that little peccadillo, Gazza proved a pretty unimpressive
specimen of humanity. With his mates in Gateshead he was a spear-carrier,
laughing hysterically at the sallies of the bigger, funnier boys. The
closest he came to personal wit was after that meeting with Sean Connery.
``I shook his hand,'' he murmured, awestruck. ``Imagine: that hand's been
on so many pairs of boobs......''
The problem with ``man behind the mask''
documentaries, is that they presuppose there is more to the man than the
mask. After an hour in Gazza's company it was hard to avoid the impression
that he was a gap site, a collection of inadequacies held together by
Versace threads, peroxide hairstyles and tabloid headlines. Those brief
moments of introspection he shared with us revealed the terrors of a
toddler denied the nightlight, desperate not to be left alone. ``I think
when you're on your own a lot you think a lot, and I don't like to think a
lot,'' he confided to no-one's great surprise. It may or may not be true
that he played that invisible flute before a crowd of Bluenoses without any
idea of the significance of his actions. The point is, he seemed dumb
enough for it to be a possibility.
Two Fat Ladies (BBC2, Wednesday) roared
on to our screens in motorcycle and sidecar to the accompaniment of their
rasping jazz vocals. That shuffling you heard was the sound of Barbara
Woodhouse and Jilly Goolden making room for the new girls in the Telly
Eccentrics' Hall of Fame. Two fat ladies are actually one fat lady and one
fairly average example of middle-aged spread, but the name of the game is
self-parody and one fat lady and one speccy four-eyes doesn't have quite
the same ring, much less one fat lady and one who talks like a Tunes
commercial.
As is traditional with the Anglo upper classes, they speak in
telegraphese, shunning the indefinite article, and booming at each other as
if standing on opposite sides of the M25. For their debut show they
travelled to Cornwall where they took over a restaurant for a night,
patronised a variety of yellow-clad fisherman (``splendid fellow'') and
gathered mussels on a beach. Jennifer (four eyes and funny voice) put the
crustaceans in her motorcycle helmet, cheerfully predicting that ``it'll
stink''. Later, when Clarissa cooked them al fresco, she offered the same
headgear as a saucepan lid. In television code such strenuous
convention-flouting suggests close friends of the Well of Loneliness
persuasion, but it's equally possible that their only unnatural practice is
appearing on TV.
For all the oddball backchat and gimmicky charisma, the
real star of the show is the cooking. Jennifer and Clarissa favour the
hands-on approach and never use a wooden spoon when their fingers will do.
Cue close-up after close-up of plump digits plunging into unspeakably
disgusting messes which the camera crew have wired for sound. Recipe
instructions are delivered over a disconcerting soundtrack of squishings
and squelchings and the scrape of nail enamel on china. Anyone seeking the
motivation to diet should make this a fixture of their viewing week. I
haven't felt so little appetite for years.
Meawhile the most hyped-up
story since Brookside's Bad Business with the Patio was unfolding on
EastEnders (BBC1, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday). Cin-dy, Walford's resident
praying mantis, took out a contract on poor put-upon hubby Ian (the mousy
one with the pink eyes). Then she had second thoughts. Tormented by guilt,
she suggested they take a reconciliatory walk, which proved very convenient
for the man in the moving car poking his 12-bore out of the window. But the
hitman botched the job and Pinky is still looking perky, which leaves
Cindy's fate hanging in the balance; our suspense being somewhat
qualified by the recent announcement that act-ress Michelle Collins will be
quitting the series.
She'll come to a sticky end, you mark my words. But
not, one hopes as downright tacky as Lynne Perrie, profiled in all her
faded glory in The Ghost of Ivy Tilsley (C4, Saturday). Ivy was, of course,
a denizen of Coronation Street. Some days she seemed more real than Lynne.
``I lost myself,'' she said for about the 14th time, in the slurred,
faltering voice of the hasbeen boozer. ``I was always looking for something
- do you know what I mean?''
Unfortunately, we did. It was all horribly
familiar. We'd been cornered by the bar-room bore. She gave us the works:
her loneliness, how she might have made it bigtime in America, the
HIV-positive son she neglected in childhood but now ``loves to death''. At
65 she's still shoehorning herself into those low-cut spangly frocks,
she'll do anything for an audience, even celebrity-calling at the bingo
hall, slipping in a bit of chat between the numbers. ``Get on with it,''
the punters heckled.
Crossing The Floor (BBC2, Saturday) had a Tory Prime
Minister referred to as ``Mr Personality-Bypass'', a squeaky-clean leader
of the opposition ``walking round with a rictus-like grin on his face as if
he's got a pineapple stuck up his arse'', a disgruntled proletarian Old
Labour deputy, and a Machiavellian spin doctor who said things like ``Good
news on that air crash: all the dead are Belgian so we'll be the lead item
on the One o'clock''.
As with the best satires, it was not entirely clear
where documentary realism ended and surrealist spoof began. There was the
pre-election powwow by Tory and Labour fixers (``We won't expose your poofs
if you don't expose our paedophile''); the personality cult party political
broadcast with Labour's telegenic leader grinning like a pixie in every
shot; the ``Line to Take'' book giving the party's position on such crucial
questions as a single European currency and ``is Kate Moss too thin?''
The
gags were plentiful and well-researched. Clive Russell, one of that rare
breed of actors who manage to be different in every part, played the
Prescott-figure; Neil Pearson switched off the sex appeal and supplied
Labour leader Tom Peel with just the right cocktail of Martian sincerity
and nauseating charm; and Tom Wilkinson took the part of the floor-crossing
Tory Home Secretary who reassured his outraged wife that ``their policies
are exactly the same as ours''. Yes, it was an obvious line and, yes, we
laughed. What else is there to do?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article