Menage et Trois

A clutch of reviews!

Skins USA

S01E01

First off, this is a slightly fraudulent review. Unlike the following two reviews, this is not complete. The first copy I downloaded was corrupted in some way and by the time I got to the 15 minute mark it was virtually impossible to watch. However, saying that, there is little to differentiate this and its UK counterpart (a description you will grow tired of by the time we get to the end of this blog entry). There is very little about the opening moments of this US version that is different from the one in the UK. Tony's quilt cover has spiders on it rather than a headless naked woman, Eura (was Effy) returns home from a debauched night out in the middle of winter rather than the height of summer and needs to sneak back in without the parents knowing. Eura like a number of the other characters have had their names changed. Their father, played so brilliantly by Harry Enfield in the UK version, is more of a twat in this and essentially it is just a re-shoot of the original in a different setting.

MTV claims that after using the UK version as a template, this series will deviate into its own path and destiny. On 15 minutes evidence, it needs to. It should be noted that the woman who lives across the road from Tony has a far better pair of tits than the one in the UK version. The biggest disappointment is Stanley (Sid), but I'm sort of judging the book by its cover and the prologue. More when I've seen a few episodes.

Being Human USA

S01E01

There is little to differentiate this and its UK counterpart... I had serious hopes about this; figuring that the total Britishness of the UK version would, maybe could, not translate well, therefore giving the writers the need to develop a different strategy; forcing them to think out of the box. I had visions of penthouse flats, doctor or lawyer vampire, a chef werewolf and a ghost that didn't whine. What we get is not just a complete rehash of the first UK episode, but a mishmash rehash of the first series, with aspects of all 6 original episodes thrust into the pilot, in a setting that's eerily exact. I am of the opinion that SyFy could take a silk purse and turn it into a sow's arse; forget the ears, they'd go straight for the shitty end.

I seem to be continually disappointed by SyFy's current output and this Canadian tripe is just another in a long line of Canadian tripe. The acting is poor; what special FX we saw were poorer, the script is woeful and even actors we've grown to recognise from other series fail to make this anything more than cringeworthy. It is an abomination and fails in every aspect where the original wins. I hope Toby Whithouse got loads of money and left the American continent as fast as he could.

The names have changed but the plot remains roughly the same. Now John Mitchell is a character called Aiden (remember that John is played by Aiden Turner in the UK); George has become Josh and Annie has become Sally. Aiden and Josh work at the local hospital where Aiden is a nurse and Josh is a porter. Sally is dead and her ex-boyfriend rents their former home to the undead twins. Josh is considerably more whiny and annoying than George could ever be and Aiden isn't anywhere near as cool or likeable and torn as John. Sally is a fucking nightmare, although the special effects for her are better than what BBC3 could afford. Like I said, much of the first UK season is shoehorned into the opening 45 minutes and done considerably badly.

I wouldn't waste your time; but I'm sure a lot of my anally retentive nerd friends will insist they watch it and probably will try to find the good points. What's worse is they won't do what I'm going to do and stop watching it.

Shameless USA

S01E01

There is little to differentiate this and its UK counterpart. Now, having given up on the UK series around series 6, I wasn't really looking forward to this, especially as I knew that it was an almost carbon copy of Paul Abbott's UK version. However, it transposes extremely well and even feels a touch edgier. This is the USA after all and there is the feeling that it is a great deal more threatening. The US version uncannily close to the UK original, they have even used 95% of the dialogue and sets, there is one exception though - Frank Gallagher's 2nd ex-wife Sheila and her daughter are introduced in this, therefore much earlier than they were in the UK - about 3 seasons earlier.

William H Macy is excellent as Frank, but it's Emmy Rossum as Fiona (Ann-Marie Duff's character) who steals the acting plaudits and has a quite remarkable pair of tits - you have to see them to believe them. The rest of the characters all have peripheral roles to play, as they did in the first two series of the UK version and we'll no doubt get to know them better as this version continues. The US writers claim they are only using the UK version as a starting point and intend to drift away from Abbott's premise as the series progresses; this is where it might work. The other thing is that while it stays faithful with script and scenarios, it isn't actually as rude as the UK version. It feels slightly sexually inhibited and this might be because it is dealing with a family environment where the majority of the characters are all under the age of 21.

It did make me laugh out loud a number of times, but that might be because it reminded me of a time when Shameless was about the Gallagher family and not people from a Manchester housing estate who had been forced into the series because all of the actors playing Gallaghers decided to leave. An extremely entertaining remake; not keen on the US versions of Kev and Veronica, but Maxine Peake and Dean Lennox Kelly take a lot of beating.

The most enjoyable of the three US remakes.

***

Not brilliant reviews, but I knew what I was going on about. I also watched Off The Map which was a mixture of entertaining and a wee bit mawkish. I might give it a couple more episodes to see if it gets any better. The weird thing about it is that its using the old Lost sets, which is weird.

I also watched that programme about teen sex this evening on C4... Oh. My. Word. I never knew they were allowed to be that, um... explicit nowadays. Vajazzling and all manner of other things on display - literally. Good lord.

Blancmange Steak

Despite not knowing whether I will keep my job, I've been proactive and applied for another job. The details of it are neither here nor there at the moment, but I figured if there was something I could do being advertised, I might as well beat the rush. Work knows and are being very supportive; I was even praised for my sanguine attitude - but I figure that's mainly because everyone else is running around predicting the end of the world.

My feeling is that if it's going to happen then get on with life, don't sit around waiting for the next shitty thing to happen. It's an unusual stance for someone so historically a glass half empty person, but this is the new "Now I've stopped smoking I expect to live till I'm 80 at least" kind of attitude, I should have had all along.

Of course, living till I'm 80 could be one long pain in the arse. I've been avoiding talking about my health for almost a month (yes, I've been keeping tabs) but that's been mainly because I got bored writing about it, so my loyal and growing band of readers must have been getting to the chopping their ears off with any available sharp vegetable stage. Don't get me wrong, there's something cathartic about exposing your soul (or in my case, my spine) to the world, but you can only say ooh and aah so many times before people are actually wishing you would die.

The amitriptyline appears to be working, albeit slowly and with its own bizarre set of side effects. It is essentially a muscle relaxation drug, so I take them at night before bed and wake up the next morning feeling human; if I don't take them, I wake up feeling like someone has dropped me from a moving airplane, one flying at 40,000 feet. Whether or not they are helping me get the feeling back in my midriff and my left leg is debatable. It seems whenever I do get some feeling back in these places, it's accompanied by pain, which is both... um... painful and reassuring. The reassuring part is because I realise that I still have feeling there, it's just on an extended holiday. As I said have said quite often, it is a pain in the arse, literally.

The upshot is that at times I'm needing to use my stick; this is down to the fact that my left ankle is shot to shit. I have about 20% of the expected use and that is frustrating. It's weird as well because I can tell it to do something and it just sits there and looks at me. I can stand on my toes, it even thinks it's doing it, but I look down at my feet and my right foot is arching like a porn actress in full flight, while my left foot is doing the limpet... It is a mixture of crazy and annoying; I'm sure it must be like amputee's who get itches on phantom limbs, only slightly different.

If, like me, you think that my ankle being buggered is a weird thing considering I had a prolapsed disc and am suffering from sciatica, then you wouldn't be wrong. It seems strange that something so far away from the source should be the thing to suffer the most; but the entire left hand side of my body is seemingly on some kind of protest; even my shoulder is getting in on the act and that's had corrective surgery on it. I feel like that character Frank Gorshin played in the original Star Trek, who was exactly half white and half black, or was it the other way around?

I don't have a long term prognosis on it; I am waiting to see if the surgeon thinks I'm worth an appointment and the biggest fear I have is that I won't regain enough fitness to be able to do a full time job. I'm a long way from retiring and therefore a long way from having to be poor by circumstance rather than choice. Something like DLA does not, as first believed, pay you enough money to do anything but survive; so it isn't like I could work part time and get my money topped up by a benefit. I am, however, beginning to comes to terms with the fact that I am now disabled and therefore I'm beginning to see how being disabled is unfair and almost a burden to society.

I did get my special chair finally set up the way it should be today; for nearly two years I've had it set up how I thought it should be set up and I'm not surprised it was more of a chore sitting in it than an aid. It's remarkable what an expert can do! Laura was lovely, very helpful, very affable and very pregnant!

***

My mate Wilky gave me 15 CDs of Tangerine Dream stuff the other day. The first 5 were Tangents, which is/are a selection of old songs remixed and remastered and the other 10 a kind of conceptual mega album of stuff recorded in the last few years.

I know why he gave them to me now. He must really dislike me...

***

Downloaded Being Human USA and Skins USA last night. I was looking forward to seeing what they did to them, but Being Human USA is by the same people who brought us Haven (see http://farkynell2.blogspot.com/2010/08/rainbow.html for a reminder of what a fantastic series I thought that was). The amazing thing is that Haven has been renewed for a second season, while Stargate Universe hasn't been renewed for a 3rd. Sometimes you have to wonder about Americans, then you see and hear Sarah Palin and it all fits back into place.

The good news is that the real Being Human is back on Sunday, 9pm on BBC3.

I haven't watched Shameless USA yet and I'm thinking it might end up being like a number of other US TV shows. I download it and then lose the will to watch it.

I'm half expecting a Misfits USA, a Holby City USA and Only Way is Essex USA in the next batch of press releases, maybe even an Episodes USA, where a husband and wife writing team from Hollywood come to England and are forced to work with June Whitfield...

Strange Towels

I had a dangerous childhood. My dad tried to kill me twice. I mean, I was a horrible child, but that's a bit extreme. The first time was when I was about 9. I wanted to go conkering and he reluctantly agreed. Taking his sons out for 'quality' time wasn't really on dad's agenda. I'm not suggesting he was a bad father, he just came from an era where dads were so busy they had little time for frivolity; so taking me down Wilton to throw sticks up a tree was really something unusual.

Now my dad was a hulking great man. Somewhere between 6' 4" and 5" and built like a brick shit house rat. He was a gentle giant, but as strong as an ox. When average dads would be searching out handy sized stick to throw up conker trees, my dad was looking for half branches. He figured if he could throw something big up into the boughs then he'd save us some time - saving time and shortcuts were two of his 'things' and sadly I've inherited them; both badly. Anyhow, he finds this log that would keep a large family warm in an open fire for a month and launches it into the branches of this massive horse chestnut; unaware that his youngest son was now wandering into its direct path. it would hit the tree and then fall, probably crushing my skull and breaking my neck, back and legs...

"PHILLIP! DON'T MOVE!!" He bellowed at me. When my dad screamed something at you, you took notice, if you didn't you were apt to feel his wrath. So, as if playing statues, I stood dead still and watched as this monstrous branch came crashing down inches from where I was standing. It was so close I could feel it's back draft tickling my nose. Now my dad wasn't the world's most affectionate fella, but he rushed over, grabbed me in his arms and asked me if I was all right. I was totally oblivious. I didn't realise how close I came to being human porridge. We stopped conkering immediately. I had a bag full of them anyhow. I was a little confused as to why my dad had gone as white as a sheet, but I was also totally drawn into the world of horse chestnut nuts. It wasn't for a few years that I realised how close I came to being dead.

So, you can say once is just an accident, but how about the second time? Suggesting my dad was responsible for me almost drowning is stretching the point a bit, but for the second time in less than a year, he felt helpless as I danced around with the Grim Reaper. We were on holiday in Westward Ho, Devon and I was using my new inflatable dinghy; the one he'd bought me especially for the holiday. While mum and dad were sunning themselves on the beach, I took the dinghy down to sea, where the tide was going out. I was having a whale of a time until I realised that I'd got a little too far out. I could no longer touch the bottom with my feet. I didn't really panic, I thought it was quite funny and began waving at my folks up on the beach. They saw me and waved back - remember I have 20/10 vision, so I could see them as clear as day. I started to paddle back and realised that instead of heading for the beach I was actually heading out into the Atlantic ocean. Still not too perturbed by this, after all my dad - my superhero - would save me. So I started making SOS signs in the air with my arms. I know, with hindsight, that my mum and dad had no idea what I was signalling, but they both felt I was getting too far out; by virtue of the fact I was the furthest out of all the people playing in the sea. So, in what was not his proudest moment, my dad, resplendent in shorts and sandals, wandered down to the sea edge and soon realised that I was heading out rather than in. So he started towards me, got as far as the legs of his shorts and realised I was much further out than he feared; he also realised that he had his fags and lighter in his pocket, so he fished them out of his pocket and kept them dry. he got up to his chest in the sea and realised I was far too far out to be able to get to me and what was worse was that my dad wasn't a very good swimmer. he could float on his back for hours, but lifesaving? Forget it; he'd more than likely drown himself.

So there he was, the incredible hulk, with his fags and lighter held above his head looking around for someone to help rescue his son - who incidentally had just got a certificate in June for being able to swim a width of the local pool. It wasn't like I could swim well and this was the sea, an entirely different proposition. Two swimmers saw the situation I was in and asked my dad if they could help and he was dead keen for them to rescue me. I can still remember the looks of disdain and disgust on their faces and immediately I didn't like these people who would ultimately be rescuing me. They both swam out to me, told me to hang on and began to push me back towards the shore. this was the most frightening part of the entire adventure, because I actually realised a) I was in danger and b) I was struggling to hold onto the dinghy and was now scared of falling into the sea. But the point was, I got rescued and my dad felt really bad; but, hey, I still loved him.

It wasn't like this was an isolated incident either. Several years later, my brother Steve almost drowned in the old swimming lake at Castle Ashby. The 'waving not drowning' adage came into play here too as Steve, obviously in trouble, was waving frantically at us and dad thought he was just doing that - waving, so he waved back. If it hadn't been for a fit young woman, who Steve ended up dating for a couple of weeks, diving in and saving him, we would have lost Steve. The young woman gave my dad the same look he received from the people who had saved me in 1972.

Grow Your Own Marmalade

Nails.

Not only is it a good word and an excellent name for a comedy hard man, it's also something (like a beard) I've never really possessed. I have been biting my nails since I was in the womb - I'm sure of it. Currently, I have 5 long nails, which is a 50% improvement on the past. I had 6 until about an hour ago and then, for some reason known only to my subconscious, I chewed off the one on my left forefinger. In pauses between writing sentences I'm gnawing at it as I type, or not as the case may be.

***

Type the word 'Flange' into Google Images, turn the safe search off. Do you know after 77 pages there's not one single rude picture? I'm disappointed; but it might be that the word flange is only considered by a few of my friends and I as a mildly excellent description for a clunge.

***

Spring in January! It's 14 degrees outside. I might take the dogs out for a walk in shorts!

Of course the problem with that is it is really difficult to get shorts that fit dogs, especially as we have 4 of different shapes and sizes. I'm pretty convinced that Lexy would look good in a pair of lurid boxers. But obviously that brings up all manner of other dog images and I've just had my lunch...

***

Bizarre question of the week: Does giving up smoking really make your sense of smell better or does it just make your shit stink worse than ever before?

***

Miriam O'Reilly is only 51. Jesus, working on Countryfile must be really hard work and extremely stressful. Apparently, John Craven is only 35...

***

The old boy across the road, who is friends with the fucktards next door on the left, appears to be oiling his brakes. Is it me or do I live in Moron Avenue?

***

Today, I was stuck in a room with two people who both were talking like they were comics experts. it was a strange mixture of hilarious and annoying. I wanted to stop them and explain in as rude a possible way that neither of them have a fucking clue what they're talking about. However, it became clear that both of them were infants when I stopped working for Comics International and were oblivious to the pleasures of Borderline. However, one of them has a massive comics collection with over 400 in it...

I suppose with most bottom of the range comics costing as much as £3.00 each now that 400 is probably a sizeable investment.

The other one, an odd girl, has a crush on Melinda Gebbie. If you've ever wondered what I'm like when I'm speechless you should have been in that room at that moment! Even I was amazed...

***

Having given up on Shameless about season 200, around the time that every single member of Frank Gallagher's family had left the series and it consisted of David Threlfall and a cast of moronic unknowns, I was quite surprised to learn that the series has been transposed to the slum area of Chicago and been made for cable TV in the States. William H. Macy is apparently very good, as is the girl playing his daughter. However, critics are divided as to whether it's a joke or just a pile of shit.

We'll see what mess the US really make of taking our excellent drama series' and redoing them the Yankee way when Being Human USA débuts next Monday night. As for Episodes, I was tempted, especially with the Green Wing link, but once I discovered that it was co-written by one of the Friends creators and starred Matt Le Blanc, it put me off it forever. Still haven't forgiven him for... No, I'm not going to make a very poor joke at Matt Bianco's expense.

***

That'll do for now...

My Strange Beard & Another Story

About 31 years ago, I said to my dad, who always had a moustache (or at least for most of his life), "Why don't you grow a beard?" He laughed and said that he'd never been able to grow one. He'd had various attempts when he was much younger and he had all kinds of bald spots and straggly failures. By the time I asked him, he was 50 and he added that over the preceding few years he'd noticed that he actually needed to shave less often; or to be more precise, he realised that the bald spots had grown and whenever he went a few days without a shave (which wasn't that often), he noticed that it was sparser than usual. He put it down to getting older and my grandfather confirmed this when he said he shaved less and less the older he got.

My brother Ron Junior, if memory serves me correctly, grew his first beard at 15. it took him about 4 hours. Considering we all come from a particularly unhairy family, Ronnie was (and probably still is) a hirsute freak. When I say he could grow a beard in 4 hours, I'm only half joking. He was the kind of guy, when he was younger, that would have a shave in the morning and would need another by the time he got home from work. I really used to envy this ability (no, I don't know why, either). Both Steve (my middle brother) and I were both very smooth and blond, whereas Ronnie was dark, so this probably explained why both of us had the words 'bum' and 'fluff' used to describe what little hair we ever had. Dad could grow a great Zapata moustache, Ronnie could evoke Larry Talbot, Steve and I did a good Gillette G2 advert.

Because of the ridicule I received about my lack of hair growing ability, I steered clear of trying until I was 16, when, during a rugby match, I got kicked in the mouth and walked away with a lovely split top lip. For a while I looked like the victim of a cleft pallet operation gone bad and as I'd just discovered girls, the only way to solve this massive crisis was to try and grow a 'tache. I did and naturally all of the bum fluff jokes came out with its appearance. But, it covered up this Y shaped scar enough for me to live with the mocking taunts and this was 1978 and moustaches were actually VERY common and weren't the sole property of either gay men or Ann Widdicombe.

I managed to keep mine for many years; in fact, I didn't lose my facial hair until 1993. In those 15 years it went from actual bum fluff to proper hair, but because of my light coloured hair barely anyone noticed when I finally shaved it off. I have not had a solitary moustache for 18 years; I've had beard attempts and the occasional goatee/'tache combo that were popular during the 90s and early 21st century, but the scar is now so faded and even though I'm not vain enough any longer, I would never consider having one ever again (but I did say that about flared jeans and I think I own a pair of them again).

I've attempted to grow a beard on several occasions and there's plenty of documented evidence to suggest that I can't. If you're a friend of mine on Facebook there are a number of photos that show that my beard attempts are more laughable than a Morecombe & Wise Christmas Special. Plus, I find wet shaving quite relaxing, so when I got into the habit of shaving, I sort of never got out of it. A few times in the last ten years, I've considered making another attempt, but I just figure it gets to a point and then it starts looking pathetic, with lots of straggly hair and I end up looking like the bass player out of Thin Lizzy circa 1974 and shave it off.

Then about five years ago, I noticed something very peculiar; so peculiar that just talking about it makes me feel a bit silly. Now, I've had my face for 48½ years; I've been shaving regularly for 32 of them, so I'm pretty much used to my face and its quirks; some point around 2005 or 6, I noticed that I shaved more at certain points in the month. Now, I've never really been like Ronnie, I've needed, on average, three shaves a week all my life. But towards the waxing of the moon I realised that I was shaving four times a week, but once it started to wane it dropped down to twice, sometimes three times. See, you can understand why I'm reluctant to admit this; not only does it sound ludicrous, it also paints some kind of lycanthropic subtext that I would like to avoid...

The problem was, the two or three people I mentioned this to had the same reaction to the one all of you are having, so I just shut up and got on with my odd shaving schedule. But then something really odd happened last autumn, something even weirder than having to shave more when the moon is getting full.

Now, as you know at the beginning of October I stopped smoking and a week later I had a prolapsed disc. I then went on a series of ever increasing in strength painkillers, while managing to avoid smoking. Then at the end of October, because I'd grown so bored and had become acutely aware of strange changes in my physiology - mainly because of the morphine. The weirdest thing was that I seemed to grow more stubble much faster. The wife noticed this, asking me several times when I last had a shave and looking at me slightly puzzled when I'd tell her. She was used to going a couple or three days without noticing my stubble when she kissed me; now it was happening 24 hours later and what was more unusual, I started to think it felt like I was getting stubble in many of the places that had never had it before.

I carried on shaving and carried on noticing that I was now having to shave five times a week and if I wanted to be honest with myself, I could quite easily have shaved every day and that made no sense at all. Then on New Year's Day, a few days before I was due back at work I decided to grow a beard. I could have done it at any point during the 3 months I was off work, but I didn't. It has now been 10 days and I have the fullest beard I have ever had; yes, it is absolutely rammed with white hairs, but it's also not straggly, looks like the kind of beard that Ronnie can grow in minutes and apart from itching like a bastard, is looking remarkably spiffing. I like it. it looks wrong because my face has never had this kind of beard before; but I'm growing accustomed to it.

I'm aware that the above sounds totally crazy, but if you look at the three pictures I've posted with this you will see (other than I had some really bad hair days) that all four attempts at growing a beard, on show, were done while I was an adult. The last one being taken a couple of years ago. I haven't got a picture of me at the moment, but I shall endeavour to get one taken in the next few days, so that you can see what I mean. But I can assure you, I'm not mad and I have grown hairier!

*******

Four years ago today, my boy died. His name was Gifford and while he was just a few short weeks away from his 16th birthday and therefore had a really good and long life (considering the fact he had an auto immune disease), his passing devastated me more than losing my parents. I know that sounds almost callous, but I spent 16 years with the boy; he was at my side for every day bar one, the first time and only night he spent the night in vet hospital. That night, during December 2006, was one of the hardest nights of my life and on January 10, at 10.45pm, when we ended his life, I don't think I've cried as much. All I remember saying was 'what am I going to do?' over and over again. Six months later, I lost his sister Megan (in the 2nd picture above) and that was nearly as bad. 2007 was probably the worst year of my life...

I now have four dogs and they are slowly becoming the most important things in my life apart from my wife. However, as much as I hate to say it, I doubt these four dogs will ever get into my heart the way Giff did.

I miss my boy...

Son of Lardzilla

Now, I have nothing against people being overweight. In many cases, it's glandular - honest. Being overweight is now really common. Being morbidly obese is becoming very common in this country. I always thought the word 'morbid' pertained to an unhealthy fascination with the grim or someone who likes looking at unwholesome pictures of death or misery and, if you check dictionaries, it still is. But it also means affected with or inducing disease; therefore morbid obesity becomes a disease. It would appear that being morbidly obese now means you are a sufferer of some strange affliction or disease rather than being addicted to all the pies and every other bugger's.

This is a picture of Paul Mason; who, unfortunately for anyone living in the Look East television region, lives in Ipswich. He is Britain's fattest man. This man cannot walk now because he is so large; he also probably can't find his penis and by extension probably can't find his anus. However, with that many layers of fat he could take a shit and it would probably take a month to surface. Apparently, the large area in the middle is not just a massive bald scrotum, it's part of his leg and this is not a pornographic picture, he is wearing underpants. Unfortunately they were lost at some point during the summer of 2005.

To believe just how wrong this is, look at this: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2011/01/obese-man-sues-government-for-failing-to-help-him.html. If you don't want to read it, in a nutshell (something he probably wouldn't eat as it doesn't have enough calories), Mason is attempting to sue the NHS for failing to take heed of his cries for help as far back as 1996. Presumably, his cries for help included, "Help me, I'm eating too much" and "Help me, I'm stuffing my face with shit 24/7"?

As a newly ex-smoker with the lungs of a much older man, I really feel I should be screaming at the NHS and threatening them with legal action because all the times they tried to help me stop smoking wasn't good enough. Just because I didn't have any fucking willpower was obviously not my excuse and my local GP and NHS trust should have been threatening me with, oh, I dunno, death by removal of lungs or kidnapping my rabbits and forcing them to smoke unless I exhibited more self-control?

There seems to be a point missed by all the recent press coverage which I'd like to highlight if you haven't already worked it out for yourself. Mason, apparently, can't walk. He's so fucking fat that he has to stay in his specially constructed bed with reinforced everything. Therefore, he cannot possibly make his own food. this means that there's some half retarded fuckwit making his food for him; or, if his testimony is true, a fucking army of half retarded fuckwits helping him shovel the contents of a Sainsburys Local into his gob 24/7, 365 days a year and double helpings on National Holidays, his birthday and the day someone finds his arse hole.

What flabbergasts me more than his near 1,000lb frame is the fact that there are people out there feeding his food habit. Why the fuck don't they just stand in front of him and say, "Paul, if you want to eat, you're going to have to go to fridge yourself. You're going to have to cook your own food. You're going to have to peel the 200 weight of spuds to make enough chips to get you through an episode of Eastenders, on your fucking own, you unhealthy bucket of cellulite!" And then they should just walk out and leave him with the knowledge that he could live for seven years on his body fat alone.

The day he manages to drag himself off of his bed and into the kitchen to eat a small Walker's factory's worth of crisps and nuts; the contents of his kitchen should be moved, down the road, at least 100 yards away from him, so that he has to lose even more weight to manage the distance.

I find it brutally offensive that people have been feeding this... thing. Can't they see that there is a food shortage in some countries and that he could probably keep a small town in the Sudan going for a couple of months in steaks and cheap candles?

This is from The Sun, so it might be largely a load of bollocks, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2692469/70-stone-Brits-tragic-ambition.html but it's worth reading to give you an idea of just how totally offensive this man is and why any government worth their salt will not allow people like this to, ahem, sponge off the State. And don't give me any crap about it being an illness or it's like a form of reverse anorexia; it's just plain and simply wrong and must be costing us more money to feed him in a month than it does to feed us in a year.

If this man sues the NHS and wins, I'm going to sue someone for me being a miserable bastard, because it's obviously someone else's fault!

Pre-Post Rock

Talk Talk: Live at Montreux 1986

25 years ago, during what would become their last ever live tour, Talk Talk played Montreux and to a packed crowd of mainly hysterical European fans. They didn't get this kind of reception in the UK; in fact, a few years earlier I was in the audience that watched them get booed off the stage at Milton Keynes Bowl when supporting Peter Gabriel and Genesis - not the most prudent of support bands, to be playing before a reunion of renowned prog rockers, but at least I got to see the band who would become my favourite band of all time, even if I did boo too!

The DVD of the show was released in October 2008 and was greeted with mixed reviews. Some excellent ones in the UK, where the band struggled to fulfil their European popularity until they'd just about disappeared and poor reviews in Europe, where the band were their most famous before they invented post-rock. In Germany especially, it seems that reviewers were not aware of singer Mark Hollis's penchant for introversion and shyness. One German reviewer complained about the band's 1980s appearance, which makes you wonder if said reviewer was aware the DVD was from a performance 23 years prior to its release.

The most obvious and striking thing about the film is indeed Mark Hollis. This was probably a couple of years before he reinvented Talk Talk and was shortly after him and Tim Friese-Greene had begun taking the band away from their Europop roots and into the realms of dark free-form rock. Hollis has never really been anything but an introvert; he rarely gave interviews, shied away from cameras and only Tim Pope, the man responsible for most of the band's videos, was able to get Hollis to 'be himself'. I often wonder if Hollis was surprised at the popularity he had, especially in Europe, when in reality he just wanted to produce music that was appreciated in his own country. Having said that, if it hadn't have been for the success of songs such as It's My Life and Such a Shame in Spain, France, Holland and Germany, then EMI would never have let them go off kilter with The Colour of Spring and then have an eppi when they delivered Spirit of Eden. Success enabled Hollis and Friese-Greene to experiment and produce music that appealed to them and in so doing that they dispensed with the standard band format and just got a bunch of musicians into a studio to jam until something good came out of it. But all of that happened after this Montreux appearance.

Hollis seems pretty timeless, standing on stage like a shy Damon Albarn, wearing a shirt and jeans and sockless sandals - he looks almost timeless, even if his hair and Lennon sunglasses point to time when fashion forgot itself. He sticks out like a sore thumb amongst his fellow stage musicians, who all look like rejects from 80s workout videos or Vivian Westwood fashion parades. And there was the fact that Hollis didn't say much; he thanked the audience and looked embarrassed and then he mentioned if a song was off the new album and just went into it; there was no witty banter or anecdotes, he was not a public speaker; which makes you wonder why he ever wanted to be the frontman in a rock band.

The set

1. Talk Talk
2. Dum Dum Girl
3. Call In The Night Boy
4. Tomorrow Started
5. My Foolish Friend
6. Life's What You Make It
7. Does Caroline Know
8. It's You
9. Living In Another World
10. Give It Up
11. It's My Life
12. I Don't Believe In You
13. Such A Shame
14. Renée

was a mixture of pure pop with a smattering of the post-rock band they would become. Tracks might not have had badinage between them, but Hollis occasionally would give the audience a hint of himself with solo snippets of Chameleon Day and the opening lines from Mirror Man; plus he was happy to just sit in front of the drums while the other musicians got on with their solos. I wondered whether or not he was really that happy with the jazzed up versions of the singles, with hints of flamenco, poodle rock and 80s disco beats, which seemed to be included for the European audience rather than for any artistic merit. John Turnbull, a much travelled session man, was the guitarist on this leg of their tour and I got the impression that was why he didn't appear on any of the Talk Talk albums that followed this show. His style and incredible mullet didn't seem to suit the band and the image they were, even then, trying to convey.

The only consistent thing about the entire show was Hollis's voice. Rarely does a singer have the ability to sound as good as he does after a producer and an engineer have been hold of it, but this man could and did. To the casual viewer there is even the bizarre look and feel that he might even be miming, because he is very accentuated in his enunciation and mouth movements. It's only when he forgets the mic is in front of him that you realise that he is human. The rest of the band, some of whom would just become session musicians for a band they once were full members of tried hard, but no one on that stage had the presence or the ability of Mark Hollis; which, in a strange way, makes the man even more of an enigma.

My one criticism of Talk Talk was that they always ended up doing the singles, because either the record company insisted on it or the band felt they would get a better reception. Playing the few new songs from The Colour of Spring they did, I wanted to see Time, It's Time performed or Happiness is Easy, not Living in Another World or Give it Up, regardless of how much better live they seemed. I Don't Believe in You could have been a highlight, but Hollis either forgot the bulk of the words or he felt it needed stripping down and remarkably two of the weakest tracks are the two greatest Talk Talk songs of all-time, even though they were written before the ascendency into art rock. Both It's My Life and Such a Shame lacked oomph because of what Friese-Greene managed to flesh the songs out with in the studio; these two classic songs lost a lot musically and were only salvaged from true mediocrity by Hollis's superb vocals and theatrical voice.

It is a fantastic document of 1986 Talk Talk and as there was never another concert filmed and never another tour, despite two more albums and a solo, it's the only real testament to one of the best bands that ever existed. I still see people expressing the wish to see Hollis perform or record again; there have been articles about the man's genius and very little about the fact he was extremely shy and grew to hate the music industry with a passion. His older brother Ed Hollis, formerly of Eddie and the Hotrods complained once about always being asked questions about his little brother and never about him or what he was doing and Hollis's withdrawal from public life has continued to cause discussion and speculation amongst rock and pop journalists. His last public appearance was to receive an award for writing It's My Life; he uttered the same four words that he was most commonly heard saying on stage during Talk Talk's career, "Thank you very much."

Hollis is now 55 and I think we are unlikely to see him produce music for anyone but himself ever again. Apparently the closest thing you can get to Talk Talk is Tim Friese-Greene's Heligoland project, which a lot of it is like a public appearance by Mark Hollis - as rare as rocking horse shit.