Television Can Blow Me Read online

  Television Can Blow Me

  By JAMES DONAGHY

  As television descends ever further into a bacchanalian orgy of industry gladhanding, ass kissing and nut guzzling, Aerial Telly is the one website you can rely upon to call it exactly how it is.

  More hopelessly corrupt TV critics were spotted lunching with worthless TV talent Chernobyls than ever before in 2011 and the shamelessly compromised hacks who return half-cut to their soulless showhomes to write their fluff pieces before hour-long self-harm sessions under the ivory spooge of fluorescent strip lighting cut a sorry ass sight.

  Television Can Blow Me is the antidote - the best of Aerial Telly. A man of jungle intensity and anthracite integrity fearlessly bringing it however, wherever, to whoever he likes.

  About James Donaghy

  James has been writing professionally about TV since 2006. He has written for the Guardian, Project, Front, House, Arena and Vanity Fair Italia. He lives and works in Birmingham.

  Acknowledgements

  A massive thank you to Mhairi McFarlane, Andy Conway and Justin Quirk and for reading through the text. Suggestions such as “hyphenate fuck face” were invaluable and have been implemented in full.

  Cover by Peter Bradbury at Digit64.

  Introduction

  When I started Aerial Telly in 2003 television review websites were a big pile of poop. Of course you had Television Without Pity with its snarky recaps and teeming forums but beyond that pickings among the one-man band blogs were decidedly turdly. There didn't seem to be anybody reacting to TV as if they had just watched it, still brain-fried by the brilliance or stupidity of what they had just seen.

  For reasons I still can't fathom, every internet douche wanted to give a balanced report, take everything into account, stroke their chins and say “well that was a somewhat disappointing programme which nonetheless had some promising elements”.

  They sounded like they were auditioning for a feature writing gig on their local paper. The writing was turgid, the views soporific and a decidedly pussy claat air of wanting to be everyone's mate prevailed. Wasn't the whole point of self-publishing to say what you like, not become a pale repetition of the party line?

  I'd seen something similar with football fanzines. There was a time when they were a joy - subversive, profane, written on a shitty typewriter with half the keys missing, photocopied onto pink paper, packed with humour and they resembled something that you might find in a football fan's brain. Then When Saturday Comes came along and all a sudden everybody wanted to discuss formations, tactics and the Premier League’s finances. The sound of air slowly hissing out of a balloon could be heard. The squares had won.

  So I wanted to do something that actually reflected how I felt about TV as a fan. Never knowingly reasonable or balanced - it would be a broadside, a polemic, a from-the-gut expression of how you feel in the immediate aftermath of a TV show. If you love it, it's the best thing in history; hate it, and everyone in the cast needs decapitating. Thus began Aerial Telly.

  After an enjoyable few years dispensing bear hugs and bitch slaps, Arena magazine got in touch and offered me work. Soon afterwards The Guardian followed suit and I somehow found myself writing about TV for a living. Aerial Telly continued, twice-weekly as usual, talking the same smack it always had. It was a place I could say the things I couldn't say at grown-up publications like The Guardian where they have to worry about things like house style, relationships with TV networks and common decency. Aerial Telly, needless to say, never worries about any of that.

  And now you hold in your digital hands the definitive digest of the eight inglorious years of Aerial Telly. Read it, cherish it and be aware that nothing you read is necessarily how it is but rather speaks a deeper truth of how I felt at the time.

  In the end isn't that all any of us can do?

  James Donaghy, July 2011

  CONTENTS

  Celebriteed squares: piss gargling fuckmonkeys who poison TV, society and life itself

  The Delicious Miss Dahl

  Celebrity Big Brother 2010 - Vinnie Jones can drink mares’ piss

  I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009

  Jordan and Peter: Marriage and Mayhem

  Love skunk Vernon Kay sprays his rat jism in the general direction of Skank Central. Misses.

  Mary Archer - My Life with Jeffrey

  Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks

  Sport on TV: pundits, commentaturds and their filthy lies

  The World Cup has been kidnapped and molested by blowhard shitsacks who don’t care about football, tradition or noise pollution

  World Cup Final 2010

  The Contender

  Euro 2008 TV coverage

  Listen up, douchebags: Larry Merchant KO1 murdering rapist hype merchant scum that constitute boxing’s deal-making fight-avoiding turd elite

  606 with Danny Baker

  Gong intermission:

  Aerial Telly Awards 2006

  Documentary tards: deviants, wackjobs and Peaches Geldof

  My Penis and I

  Fix My Fat Head

  Guys And Dolls

  Cutting Edge: My Kid’s Psychic

  Inside Waco

  Old Enough To Be His Mother

  Seduction School

  My Friend Michael Jackson

  Take That... for the Record

  When Fearne Met Peaches

  British drama: can you handle the Loof?

  Worried About the Boy

  This Is England '86

  Luther

  Luther finale

  Sherlock

  Sherlock finale: The Great Game

  EastEnders

  Skins Series 2

  Gong intermission:

  Aerial Telly Awards 2007

  Reality isn’t real: reality TV and the scum sucking rat bastards who participate

  Britain’s Got Talent 2010

  Britain’s Got Talent Final 2009

  The Apprentice Series 2

  Big Brother 2008

  Big Brother 2008: Stuart tapped the compassion vending machine and it toppled over on top of him

  X-Factor 2005

  X Factor 2008 - sob stories bring misery to millions

  Gong intermission:

  Aerial Telly Awards 2008

  British comedy: the highs and lows and why it blows

  My Family: Reloaded

  The Persuasionists

  Extras Christmas special

  PhoneShop

  No Heroics

  The Thick of It Series 3

  Saxondale

  Gong intermission:

  Aerial Telly Awards 2009

  American drama: torturers, serial killers and other good guys

  24 Season 4

  24 series finale

  Dexter Season 4 finale

  Harper's Island

  Lost Season 3 finale

  Lost series finale

  Mad Men

  Mad Men Season 2

  Prison Break Season 2 Premiere

  Spartacus: Blood and Sand Season 1 finale “Kill Them All”

  True Blood Season 2 finale

  Gong intermission:

  Aerial Telly Awards 2010

  Sci-fi: how the Cylons reinvented television

  Battlestar Galactica Season 3

  Castrating Galactica - why Faceman needs to can it

  FlashForward midseason report

  Paradox

  Doctor Who Series 5 premiere

  Doctor Who - Vincent and The Doctor

  ...and finally

  “Ah fuck it - the cunt bit me” - a Steve Irwin tribute

  Celebriteed squares: piss gargling fuckmonkeys who poison TV, society and life itself

 
It's apparent to everyone that celebrities are worthless piece of shit who don't deserve to live but to say this is to miss the point. It's the very process of celebrity that degrades us all. It turns normals into craven idiots desperate for validation and turns celebrities into entitled shits, convinced that everything they do, say and think matters.

  And we should pity them. Nobody treats them like a human being anymore. Otherwise decent withhold common courtesies, their private lives are picked over like a carcass by cruel buzzards and everyone thinks it's fine to laugh at their failings, misfortunes and stupid, stupid TV shows.

  So this is me, pitying them - until they are ash.

  The Delicious Miss Dahl

  Nigella Lawson was the worst columnist you ever read but stick her in a red top and blowsy skirt talking about her gravy and all of a sudden she's Madam Sex: Queen of Cock and Kitchen. Previously best known for having a famous granddad and marrying a foetus, Sophie Dahl now has her own cookery show The Delicious Miss Dahl which owes rather a lot to Lawson's sexy-posh-girl-in-the-kitchen trailblazing. Who knew the granddaughter of a best-selling author and daughter of a Chancellor of the Exchequer could succeed in the media?

  Sophie puts it on the line early on. “I like honest, straightforward food” as opposed to all that dishonest slick talking food we've been eating all this time. It's a cute way of making a virtue out of necessity. She cooks simple because she's not that good at it. She's essentially saying “I can't cook but I am sexually attractive”. It's good that we get this out of the way so quickly.

  The shows are mood based and the first is Shellfish, sorry, Selfish. “The perfect selfish day would have to begin with breakfast because it's my favourite meal” she says. Yes, and also because it's the first meal of the day, Sophs. The perfect “fucking your dwarf husband with a strap-on” day would also have to begin with breakfast. It's kind of a thing.

  She goes to a cheese shop to get the perfect indulgent cheese for lunch. She finds buffalo mozzarella. “I actually fantasise about this cheese” she coyly confides. You may fantasise about it, doll, but you don't eat it. And in the remainder of your fantasies I imagine pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers play a central role.

  Like all models she is a laughable narcissist. “In my time I have been as round as a Reubens and also a little slip shadow of a creature” Yeah, like anyone gives a fuck you've gone through a couple of dress sizes. She makes a peanut butter fudge so loaded with calories that if you set it alight it would burn for months like a Californian forest fire. Yet a look at her pinched face and skinny wrists confirms that Sophs last saw a carbohydrate around the time of the Incas.

  She drops in little anecdotes like the one about the eight-year-old boy called Bertram eating sushi at one of her book signings. She wanted to be his friend but he disappeared off into the ether. Track the smug little bastard down - he'll probably get its own show, Bertram on Sushi.

  I spent some time watching this trying to place who Sophie Dahl reminds me of and it's Rita from Arrested Development. Played by Charlize Theron, she was Michael's beautiful but special needsy English girlfriend. Blinded by her beauty and English accent, Michael only realises she's a 'tard when he's played a video of her eating some plastic fruit. Don't be surprised if there's similar footage of Sophie on a cutting room floor somewhere.

  Sophie comes out with some bizarre stuff. She is quite possibly crackers. She seems a nice enough lass. The food, for what it's worth, is fine. Edie Brickell, Emiliana Torrini and Nouvelle Vague soundtrack this bizarre little magical mystery tour around her mind. She's away with the fairies, this one. On a starvation diet in real life yet living an alternate reality in front of the cameras where she hogs out on expensive dairy product, kettle chips and chocolate.

  I didn't mind this, actually.

  The verdict on The Delicious Miss Dahl: You've seen worse.

  Marks out of 10: 7

  Celebrity Big Brother 2010 - Vinnie Jones can drink mares' piss

  Bullyboy thug, man-of-the-people shitbird fraud, nose biting suicide contemplating one trick pit pony Vinnie Jones spent the first two weeks of Celebrity Big Brother being the surly, menacing, unpleasant twunt you always knew he would be - picking on poor old Alex Reid's insecurities, giving it the wise man of Hollywood bit and using the kitchen as his own personal fiefdom. This, combined with his homespun charm and winning grin1, eased him into favourite in the betting. So far so blehh. But this week the lovable rogue mask slipped and revealed an exposed arse, leaving him looking rather like the Vibrating Bum-Faced Goats from Viz.

  It started when Vinnie heard the drunk as a skunk cornball Sisqo CHATTING SHIT about him. By which we mean expressing the valid opinion that their residence had become “Vinnie's playhouse” and that Jones might not be the greatest man who ever lived. Incensed by this savage attack, Jones burst into the diary room, rulebook in hand and demanded Big Brother take action. Sisqo was offending him and worst of all, his faaaaaamily. Say what?

  The moment anybody mentions their family in these situations you know they are a piece of shit. It's the classic calling card of any thug before an act of violence to say he's doing it not frimself but por familia. In a hilarious diary room meltdown he told Big Brother that he would be hearing from his solicitor. Come again, Vinnie? I thought hard men didn't snitch?

  When speaking to other housemates he said, “If the cameras weren’t on that'd have been sorted out last night” implying that he could beat up the 3 foot tall Thong Song man. He felt like throwing him “through a window” he told them. Wow, you're hard Vinnie. Sisqo isn't the toughest guy in the world. He isn't even the toughest guy in Dru Hill (that honour going naturally to Nokio the N-Tity)

  It was a turning point for the turd who has been drifting in the betting ever since and even sweeter is that his favourite fish-in-a-barrel target practice Alex Reid, who Jones is plainly convinced cannot win, is the new favourite. It would be a fine way for the final Celebrity Big Brother series to end if Jones could watch himself beaten by somebody hated just three weeks previous, someone clearly pussywhipped to within an inch of his life by salmon pink freakshow Katie Price but someone essentially decent and quite good fun.

  So Aerial Telly is backing the Reidernator. He feels it is the choice of the righteous.

  1 Winning in the sense of winning a prize in a raffle and discovering it's a broken travel iron with a handle smeared with shit.

  I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009

  Say what you like about Big Brother at least it provides different varieties of tedium. They vary the tasks, switch things up, have fun with them. And every now and again it produces something brilliant. The Box task, the Electrocution task, the Wedding task - all inspired in their own ways providing moments of slapstick, pathos and emotional sadism for our entertainment. But as I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here enters its 9000th year it still relies primarily on our primal fear of creepy crawlies. Spiders, locusts, maggots, dung beetles, Christopher Biggins - they’re all here and you’d better get used to it. Because if you don’t like watching a minor celebrity pulling cockroaches out of her shorts then you’re fucked.

  I’m calling this now: I’m A Celebrity is done. I’m as over it as it’s possible for a boy to be. Over it, under it, through it - the very mention of it depresses me. I cannot watch Katie Price get covered in wasp mucus again; I don’t want to see another Hollyoaks actress crying into her sleeping bag; I don’t want to see the 1984 Superstars Champion being thrown out of a helicopter; I don’t want to see kangaroo spunk drool from the mouth of Paul Burrell as he noshes on Skippy’s balls; I don’t want to see Darren Day’s Frank Spencer; I don’t want to see Dean Gaffney ever; I don’t want to see a fake pair of tits smeared with fish guts, tits that come complete with the implicit notion that I should enjoy the schadenfreude while I can because, you know, glamour models and fish guts - it doesn’t happen every day.

  Do they ever imagine that there might be reason it doesn’t happen every d
ay? Unlikely. I’m A Celebrity producers are not a complicated bunch. Getting celebrities to sign up for the show is their biggest challenge and this is a particularly brutal year. If you’ve appeared in the paper in the past three years then you’re probably too famous. There’s her who used to be in Eastenders, him from Hollyoaks, that gay design couple, someone who was in a band and Jimmy White. He was last famous when snooker was fashionable, before your Internets and your mobile phones. It’s pitiful.

  Ant and Dec present in the exact same tone they always have and that’s fine as far as it goes but it can’t save this dog of a show from the knacker’s yard. Totally bereft of ideas, irredeemably dull and hopelessly fixated on animal’s cocks, it is as broken as the careers of its participants. In the name of all that is holy, end this nonsense now.

  The verdict on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here 2009: Enough.

  Marks out of 10: 3

  Jordan and Peter: Marriage and Mayhem

  Around the time Jordan was confirmed to be entering the jungle for I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here you couldn’t move in the quality press for people lauding her arrival like it was the chance to show our finest unacknowledged business genius to the world. “A consummate businesswoman” said The Guardian; “a natural beauty, imbued with empathy, humour, maturity, brains and charisma” wrote The Independent on Sunday, “a 21st-century goddess” said lovely Victoria Coren.

  “Ooh, you’ll see” the received wisdom went, “She’ll surprise a lot of people. She’s going to show what a classy, sassy business laydeh she is. She’s NOBODY’S fool and HIGHLY intelligent.”