January 27, 2007
TV NEWS
NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS, COMEDY SHUFFLE & NO NEWS
Last Wednesday night I went along to BBC TV Centre and recorded my appearance on the current series of Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I wrote in a previous post about my unhappy experience of doing this show once before and I was feeling a bit daft about having agreed to appear again but this time it couldn’t have been more different. Apart from the fact that I’m a few years older and not so anxious about how I handle my ‘TV career’ or lack of it these days, the fact that Simon Amstell is now hosting made all the difference. From a guests point of view he’s kind of the opposite of Mark Lamarr in that he immediately gives you the impression that he’s pleased to see you and makes every effort to put you at ease and include you in the show. I personally find his shtick a lot fresher and funnier too.
Once again I was on Phil Jupitus’s team and as usual Phil was friendly as can be. Our other team-mate was Mel C of Spice Girl fame. I’d met her once before at Matt Lucas’s birthday party years ago when she’d introduced herself and said The Spice Girls used to watch The Adam & Joe Show. She said she liked BaaadDad’s review of Wannabe (“this song seems to me a very good reflection of the group: slim, fun and rather sillyâ€). She’s my favourite Spice Girl! On Bill Bailey’s team were Bonnie Tyler who was sort of sweetly addled and funny and Channel 4 news guy Krishnan Guru-Murphy who was straightforwardly nice and friendly too!
It turned out that Simon had actually read my previous blog entry quoted some of it back to me during the taping. I don’t know if they’ll use it but I ended up re-telling my Buzzcocks Nightmare story, as well as rambling on about one time when I took too many mushrooms at college and the alarming shrinking effect it had on my nutties. Apart from that I didn’t say that much and managed to get every single question wrong, apart from the line-up round in which I helped to correctly identify the guitarist from Terrorvision. Mainly I just laughed at Bill Bailey who continued to be highly amusing whether the cameras were rolling or not. If you’ve never seen him live, you should make the effort, he’s very good. Here’s a couple of pics of me grinning my stupid big faced grin with my showbiz chums!
Even the two hours spent with the writers trying to come up with jokes about a Babyshambles video was kind of fun. I still found it hard to contribute, mainly because my brain always shuts down in the presence of people who are able to conjure actual proper jokes at the drop of a hat, but partly because I actually like Pete Docherty. I was quite shocked by the level of antipathy toward him in the room, albeit comedic vitriol. Mel C even made a comment on the show about wishing he’d blow his brains out! A bit much from Sporty I think, but an indication of how much Potty Pete can wind people up. I mean clearly he’s a ridiculous drug ravaged ponce who may not be quite as good as his notoriety might suggest, but Jesus, he’s hardly Jade Goody. Neither is Jade Goody though come to think of it. I thought the interview Docherty did with Kirsty Wark on BBC4 a while back was occasionally charming and his rendition of Music When The Lights Go Out was a peach. In fact Jimmy Bignutz has uploaded it for you to check out here! Clock those dirty fingernails! Ooh! Stinky Pete!
Speaking of that Kirsty Wark interview, I used a chunk of it for one of six pieces I contributed to BBC3’s Comedy Shuffle, a new show hosted by Rob Rouse that features sketches and studio guests (of which I am one in show 4). The first episode aired last week and I didn’t catch it but as far as I know they’re using at least 5 of the video bits I did for them, which are more of the kind of things I did for the CADs pop video awards last year. I did a Pete Docherty bit, three Michael Moore bits and a couple of Madonna things. When I was on the show they played in one of the Madonna pieces and it was a laugh free zone. Oh well. The Pete Docherty one is funny though I think. I’ll post all of them (including a Michael Moore one that they weren’t able to use) in a while. There’s a similar show on ITV2 called Comedy Cuts, which I saw last week and it had a lot of good stuff on it. Great people like Dan Antopolski, Jo Neary, Rob Deering, Katy Brand and Jim Jeffries to name but a few. Check it out.
For the time being here’s a compilation of a few bits along the theme of ‘No News’ that I did for Time Trumpet last year. People tend to think that it’s all footage I’ve got from the BBC of newsreaders before they go on air (which I did have access to), but I made these from transmitted footage, which I tinkered with to make it look as if they weren’t saying anything. It’s not funny as such but it’s pleasingly odd I think. Enjoy! And by the way, should you be interested, my episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks airs on Wednesday 7th March at 10pm. I wrote it all out there as if someone might want to pop it in the diary. Can you imagine how much someone would have to love me for them to do that? It doesn’t bear thinking about.