Right, well that’s me sufficiently wired on nicotine and caffeine to start to trying to make a bit of sense of last night’s proceedings, and the first place to start is with the BBC’s election coverage.
Fuck me, it was shite.
Actually it was more than shite, it was mind-numbingly, brain-cell crushingly shite. You might well think that putting up Polly Pot vs Richard Littlecock, the poor man’s Kelvin McKenzie, as the warm-up act on Question Time was shite but that’s pre-digestion monkey shite (peanuts), compared to what followed.
Where do we start to unpick how bad the Beeb’s coverage was last night?
How about with dear old Dimbers whose heart really didn’t seem to be in it at all – and who could blame him when all he’s got to commentate on for several hours is the local election support act to today’s main event, Boris vs Ken. Poor bastard. you got to think he must have felt like the kind of junior hack who gets dispatched to cover the Glastonbury Festival only to discover that they’ve been assigned to report on the ‘action’ in the Green Field while the headliners are on stage.
And I know that its often said that politics is showbusiness for ugly people, but did the Beeb really have to take it quite so literally.
What can you say about their opening triple-header?
Okay, so Chatshow Charlie’s personable enough as long you keep him out the Green Room before he goes on – do you think he demands a freshly painted orange dressing room and a case of Antabuse as a rider when he does these gigs – and he is well practised in the art of Election Night Libdemology, which, so far as I can tell, consists of finding 101 ways of claiming that you’re doing better than anyone expected when your overall share of the vote is down from last time and your shiny new leader is actually doing worse than the old codger your party forcibly retired six months ago for being too doddery in the Commons to cut it.
The Tories opened with George Osborne in the chair, which is always a bad idea as no matter what they try to do with him he still looks for all the world like he’s only just finished a work experience placement at Eton, where he served dutifully as a mobile toast-rack for the Upper Sixth until his Mom complained about him constantly coming home with the back of his Calvins covered in breadcrumbs.
And what can you say about Tessa Jowell, other than that at least she’s not Hazel Blears.
That said, the assembled politicos did provide the only two genuine highlights of the evening.
Geoff ‘Buff’ Hoon put in a performance reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman in Rainman when staring vacantly at the camera for all of ten seconds after Dimber’s asked him a question for which he hadn’t been adequately prepared…
And we’re joined from the count by Geoff Hoon… Hello…?
…before seguing seemlessly into DeNiro in Taxi Driver by giving the perfect ‘Are you talking to me?’ look in response to a completely unnoticeable off-screen prompt reminding him that he needed to move his mouth with a second or two of Dimber’s speaking to him so as not to leave Dimber’s looking like he was trying to interview fucking Pinnochio.
The other zinger of the night came from Vince Cable, who was, as ever, Mr Perceptive in noticing that graphics for Jez Vine’s game of Tin Can Alley made it look like a 23% share of the vote a couple of years back was more than a 25% share of the vote this year.
Still, that’s you get when you hire your graphic designers on the back of a glowing recommendation from the Lib Dems based on their sterling past efforts…
…knocking out ‘winning here’ graphs for Lib Dem election leaflets.
Congratulations Vince, you’ve got the gig as graph-checker-in-chief come the next election, even if Dimbers did manage to miss the obvious comeback.
“Vince? This can is small… that one is far away.”
I suppose I should also try to find something to say about Jez Vine’s audition for a leading role in this year’s BBC Newsroom production of ‘Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ for Children In Need…
…and that ‘something’ is…
Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please… bring back Peter Snow.
Go on, you know you want to. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. Go on. GO ON!!!!
(Sorry, I seem to have morphed into Nadine Dorries Mrs Doyle for a moment there)
FFS, you just know when the Beeb has got it badly wrong when Iain Dale complained during rehearsals that the Beeb’s ‘Stalin to Bean’ shtick was perilously close to ‘editorialising’ – or should that be ‘idiotorialising’ – their election broadcast.
Vine is by no means a complete washout, either when pursuing his day job as a political journalist or even when contributing, as he has in the past, to Radio 4′s ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue’ but what he lacks is the kind of manic energy and obvious eccentricity that Peter Snow brought to the Beeb’s election broadcasts as the man who made swing-o-meter an essential feature of its coverage, and it was that energy that would often carry Snow through even if the material he had to work with wasn’t quite up to scratch.
More than that, however, the Snow era had a sense of genuine surreality in the selection of election graphics – who could forget the classic ‘Prime Minister under a cliff’ animation from a few years ago – and it was often the case that the idea that made final cut were so bizarre and came completely from left-field that it was impossible to accuse the Beeb of editorialising their coverage simply because the graphics were so far out there that it one simply couldn’t ascribe any political meaning to them at all.
Peter Snow was the Monty Python of election broadcasting, part of the grand tradition of surrealist British comedy that spawned everything from the Goon Show to the Goodies – what Vine was lumbered with last night was the stuff of the graveyard slot on BBC3, the kind of ‘sketch show material that’s easily slotted into a typical BBC 3 Schedule under a faintly suggestive title like ‘Shitty-Fuck-Witz’
19:00 Doctor Who
19:45 Doctor Who Confidential
20:00 Sixty Second News – giving you a whole minute to hunt down the remote and find something else to watch.
20:01 Anthea’s ‘Is this really what my career has come to?’
20:30 Anthea’s ‘Who the fuck watches programmes about housework, anyway?’
21:00 Anthea’s ‘I used to be on Blue Peter, y’know’
22:00 Anthea’s ‘Look I know this is shit, but its better than working for fucking QVC’
22:30 Anthea’s ‘You know, my agent absolutely fucking promised me a gig on Channel 5′s freak show documentary season and I’m still stuck on BBC fucking 3. I really am going to have to sack the cunt’
23:00 ‘Dawn does… Copraphilia’
23:30 Shitty-Fuck-Witz: A BBC 3 Election Night Special with Jeremy Vine
03:00 Anthea’s ‘Why the fuck do I bother? The only people up at this hour are the one’s glopping away at the porn channels and its been years since anyone tossed off over a picture of me. It’s soooooooo not fair!!!!’
04:00 Anthea’s ‘Closedown: Why my career is so completely fucked that I’m off to find a piece of rope and a taxi to Paddington station… and I’m not hanging the fucking bear!”
And after all that, it was downhill all the way as we discovered that:
Luke Akehurst might look like Chris Evans, but he talks like E L Wisty.
Jon Culshaw got the obligatory celebrity impressionist gig – I think it must be in Dimber’s contract that he absolutely must have a impressionist to cover for him while he nips out for a toke or two to help get him through the evening, even if the Beeb can no longer afford Rory Bremner on Jonathan Ross’s wages.
And Iain Dale is just about watchable, if you can manage to visualise him as Blakey from On The Buses – and to help you along, here’s one Tim made earlier:
Seriously, fuck the politics and all the stuff about how to turn around Labour’s electoral fortunes. The most pressing question of the day has to be just what we can do to turn around the fortunes of the Beeb’s Election Night Special…
…and, of course, I’ve got a few ideas in mind.
First, and with much regret, I think its time that Dimber’s was quietly packed off to the glue factory… or ITV as its called in the BBC canteen.
As a replacement, I’m thinking Wogan in full Eurovision Song Contest mode – should set the tone of the evening just nicely…
Next, its time to get rid of all this business of hiring acadamics for the show from university politics departments. Let ‘em find their own fucking research grants for a change, what we want in truly incisive commentary on the evenings events and that can only mean the Two Johns, Bird and Fortune.
As for the future of the swing-o-meter, I understand this is already being addressed by the BBC, that Lord Laidlaw has expressed an interest in taking over from Jez Vine and that his expected salary – a curry for five at that Tandoori that Guido reckons has a picture of Prezza on the wall and a tab at Madame Michelle’s Sauna, Massage and Fitness Boutique in Kings Cross – is pretty reasonable all things considered.
He’s cheaper than Jonathan Ross, anyway…
And to cap it all, the Beeb should bring back the Golden Shot, presented by Richard Littlecock…
Right a bit… Right a bit… Right a bit… Up a bit… Down a bit… Right a bit… Right a bit… Right a bit…
What, do mean I’m ‘off target?’
What? You mean I can’t shoot the cunt? Fucking spoilsport BBC, you’re so fucking biased…
And finally, we need to make the show much more interactive… I mean, inviting bloggers onto the show is just sooooo 2007, you know.
Look, tell you what. I’ve got just the idea for livening up the show and making it completely unmissable.
All you do is wire the chairs given to the politicos to an electrical supply – 50,000 volts or so should be enough – and give each chair a switch that’s linked in to the Beeb’s interactive service.
After that its a piece of piss – people vote for the favourite by pressing the red button and every ten minute or so the loser gets voted off the panel… or fried to a cinder, to put it a tad more bluntly.
Seriously, I tell you its an absolute ratings winner and you don’t even need to hire Graham Norton…
Well, if you must because of his contract, but only if we can vote him off as well.
Unity mate this is hilarious and hits the nail on the head EXACTLY
I haven’t watched any of this rubbish since the 1997 general election , when Andrew Neil said that Sunderland was in Scotland, and nobody corrected him for more than half an hour. (And Neil is supposedly Scottish)
Ifthey cannot get basic facts right, what is the point?
A superb article, you got everything right save your description of Cowboy Vine, which failed to fully articulate the absurdity of the out-fit and entire concept. But that’s only because it is beyond both human expression and comprehension. Just recalling it will cause my brain to malfunction under the strain of the raw stupidity that the memory forces it to deal with…
Second everything said above – this is bloody hilarious! I had a coffee-through-the-nose moment at the glue-factoy/ITV gag.
Why oh why can’t election programmes get on, yer know, people who know stuff about elections? It’s only politics geeks who are going to be sad enough to stay up all night watching their coverage and surely would be more interested in what someone like Phil Cowley thinks of what’s afoot than the self-centred musings of the blonde one with the chin like Bruce Forsyth who used to be in “Party Animals”?
Or am I just not down wiv da yoof enough, innit?
Excellent thanks. Not that I ever watch the BBC. I just pay the bloody BBC tax to make sure that these goons don’t enter politics. They would quickly become the Cabinet and we would be even worse off (if that is possible).
>…knocking out ‘winning here’ graphs for Lib Dem election leaflets.
They’ve already started…
Charming language. If you despise all this so much – why not get up off your big fat complacent arses, stand for parliament and change things? Not enough testicular fortitude? Perleeeze….
Since when would standing for parliament change anything? let alone the Beeb’s election coverage? As for the language… If you are so easily offended, don’t read it. No one is forcing you.
What will change anything then? Bombs? Killing? Military dictatorship? You live in a democracy – USE IT. As for the language – it’s not necessary – but I can do it if it helps…..
ARSOLE – any good?
Standing for parliament – and I have no desire to do so – will not, under any circumstances, change the BBC’s election coverage. At least, I should bloody well hope that it doesn’t. If it does, then any pretence that we are living in a liberal democracy will vanish. It is not up to parliamentarians to change the way that broadcasters deliver their programmes.
I vote. I take part in political discussion. Unity is still (so far as I am aware) a member of the Labour party, so takes part in politcal life. So no lectures please on partaking in the democratic process, thankyou.