Entertainment For Lively Minds
Entertainment Hell
Posted by Simon Ford on 11 May 2009 - 6:49am.
Last night I was reading Andrew Collins' website and his review of Al Murray Pub Landlord at O2 and it did occur to me that this would be pretty close to my idea of hell. I then went to bed and had a nightmare that I was actually there, and hauled up on stage by the hilarious Murray.
I can only really think of one thing worse than Al Murray at O2 and that would be Al Murray at O2 with Joanna Newsom busking at the tube, musical warm-up by The Manic Street Preachers and compering by Michael Macintyre.
What's your vision of entertainment hell?
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Shudders...
Catherine Tate at Wembley Stadium supported by Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey and Lady Gaga. Compères are Vernon Kay (who brings up members of the audience to play Family Fortunes between the acts) and Jamie Oliver (who invites children to sample his "wicked" mung bean and rhubarb burgers onstage).
Entertainment Hell
Bob Dylan mucking up his songs again. I'd rather see Roger Whitaker and Val Doonican. Or the Bachelors. At least they can carry a tune.
French & Saunders, Lenny
French & Saunders, Lenny Henry, Catherine Tate, Walliams and the other one, Little Miss Jocelyn, all hosted by the inimitable Graham Norton. Musical interludes by Scouting For Girls.
This actually reminds me of the old story of a comedy double act, many years ago playing one of the Glasgow theatres. I'm not sure who it was but Mike & Bernie Winters rings a bell. This was in the days when any english comedy act was met with stoney silence, if not outright hostility. Anyway, apparently the act began with one of the duo on stage, "warming up" the audience. After a few minutes of total silence from the audience the other one enters, stage left, and a voice form the audience groans "Aw christ, there's two of them"
George Lamb hosting a musical and comedy extravaganza...
with Razorlight, the cast of Little Britain, Pete Doherty, and Corden and Horne headlined by U2 with a surprise duet with a selection of X-factor/Britain's Got Talent Muppets...
Alan
Carr.
Chris Moyles presents (bad enough already)
comedy with Jim Davidson, music from Mick Hucknall, James Blunt and The Kooks.
I've been to Entertainment Hell, and lived!
Barry Manilow at the O2 last December, supported by... Bobby Davro. In mitigation, the gig was a present for Mrs. Mickey, and Manilow was actually excellent in that old-school no-one-does-this-anymore Vegas fashion.
However, there was no excuse for the sheer hell of Bobby Davro - wherever this end-of-the-pier rubbish had been hiding for 30 years, it needed to get back there... even the blue-rinsers in the crowd didn't find him funny.
Tribute Night
Radiohead tribute night featuring Coldplay, Snow Patrol & Keane playing Radiohead songs with special guest appearances from members of Radiohead.
Hosted by Bono
But what about the second night?
Coincidentally I actually contemplated adding that but I think he would be better saved for the U2 tribute night featuring, of course, U2 with a special introductory 60 minute lecture from Bono as to why it was felt that nobody else could do the required amount of justice to the songs.
"Barry Manilow supported by... Bobby Davro"
Bl**dy hell, Mickey - posting such horrors at this time of the morning?! Please tell me Rowland Rivron wasn't compering... I hope Mrs Mickey was suitably impressed - or was she sitting there thinking, 'What HAS he brought me to? WHY am I here?' Could it all have been a terrible misunderstanding - Mrs M merely telling you, mid-mumble, she was off to see a man about a mobile telephone: 'I'm hoping to see Barry, a man I know, about the 02...'?
Yes, I did score some points for that...
... and sorry for any psychological scars I may have inflicted there, Colin. I should say that Mrs. Mickey is an absolutely dedicated non-ironic "Fanilow" and loved every minute, aside from the aforementioned B***y D***o, whom she would cheerfully have fed to rabid dogs...
what is this evil that I must have done?
I had a terrible dream that Slade the Leveller from New Model Army openly "teabagged" me in front of all of my relatives - and I barked like a seal in enjoyment. Then, to make matters worse, Ronan Keating then appeared on TV plugging a covers record of songs devoted to his mother - including "I Believe I Can Fly" and "Time After Time". I must stop eating cheese before my bedtime bottle of whisky.
How much time do you have ?
I could list hundreds but this "Gem" could be the worst ever.
A musical written by Ex- Flintlock drummer and Tomorrow Person Mike Holoway aka The worst actor ever to appear on UK TV.
http://www.myspace.com/mhthegame
imagine if Davidson;Lennie Bennett,Bernie Winter and Joe Longthorne were in it.
Special guests Status Quo and any UK Jazz-Funk band from the 80's.
"Teabagged"?
What horror does this euphemism hide?
Mine, BTW, is Eastenders, with or without aforesaid Davro.
Funnily enough....
...someone told me about this the other day. Enjoy your ignorance - you really don't want to know.
C/f "the biscuit game", another gem I wish I didn't know.
The Biscuit Game
a staple of boys boarding skool dorms in the 1960s...
But I went to a boys boarding skool 65 onward.
Teabags? Biscuits? I can only hazard a guess as to chocolate fingers, and I can assure you, sir etc etc
I thought I had had a relatively broad education. (Or at least a broad free education)
STOP PRESS, via google: you dirty bastards, I would certainly pour hot water on any ideas like that. And I ain't gonna touch a custard cream ever again.
It was cream crackers in my day
:-(
chocolate fingers, you say ?
hmmm
Arrrrrrrrrrgh
...no first hand (ahem) experience but what a hideous idea...
You really need to get out more
Or maybe watch Sex In The City where I learned what it meant. I'd explain it, but this is a family website.
Billy Bob Thornton presents
"The Wind Cries Anjelina" at Grand Ole Opry. He joins Garth Brooks (as Chris Gaines) for second act closer "Take this vial of your blood and shove it". They return with Winona Judd and Big & Rich for the finale "It's not the Pitt-light"
Compered by Ryan Seacrest
Following from Retropath2
You have all watched Christmas day BBC1 tv? My only personal twist would the appearance of Keane as Xmas TOTP number one slot and doing a fire side rendition from the west wing of Keane Towers as they throw another peasant on the fire.
But surely the worst moments of hell are those of embarrasement
you know painful karoake, tedious loud drunks at comedy gigs that just go on and on, the support act I saw once who just started crying, a former young soul rebels wearing a basque and tights.
I went to the X Factor
And it was sheer hell. Anything where they make you do Mexican waves during the warm up then insist you get up and DANCE during the show is my idea of absolute hell. If you refuse, they single you out for public humilation. It happend to me.
Actually, being in the studio audience of any TV show is hell, especially if it's being recorded, as you spend hours going back over the bits they've fluffed being asked to laugh again. It's excruciating.
I hate warm-up men too. They're all pigs.
Hell yeah
I know just how you feel.
I was part of the audience for the first ever episode of god-awful sitcom, 'Gimme Gimme Gimme'.
If I'd known then what I know about it now...
Yep, first off we were 'warmed up' by Jo Caulfield. One of those comics who insists on involving the audience. Don't. Just be funny. Numerous audience members were picked out to speak up and get involved with the banter. And if you didn't or couldn't then you were gently mocked. F**k off! I hate that at comedy gigs. (No, I wasn't singled out so it's not sour grapes). Also we broke the ice with each other (why?) by playing a game. This involved pretending to fondle the breasts or testicles of the person on your left. Charming.
Anyway, it all started. Well, if you've seen it you'll know. Puerile, cheap nonsense of the first water. The only pleasure I found in the whole thing was the down-time between scenes. At these points Kathy Burke and James Dreyfuss would simply stand and ad-lib taking the micky out of each other. They were delightfully funny. Then they'd start acting again...
At the end the simpering ninny who had written this shite was trooped out for our thanks and applause.
He got f**k all from me.
Lenny Kravitz
covers the songs of Abba.
And plays a 30-minute encore of Fly Away.
My idea of hell
Festival, pissing rain
Coldplay
Dido
Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Razorlight
Snow Patrol
The Kooks
David Gray
Foo Fighters
Compared by June Sarpong, Steve Jones, Miquita Oliver, Vernon Kaye, Fern Britten, Holly Willoughby, Dermot O'Leary
I would sooner be in the audience for every live X-factor show than endure this pure evil.
Isn't that
every V Festival line up for the last decade? Or does it just seem like that.
Adam Sandler
lecture on charisma in comedy and screening of all his movies.
An outdoor Festival with Keane, Elbow, Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Kooks, Manic Street Preachers, solo set from that ponce singer out of Razorlight and hilarious ironic guest peformance from old washed up naff has-been who the kids are just going to dig...e.g. Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Neil Diamond, Robbie Williams, Rolf Harris...
Being in the audience of Britain's Got Talent.
Celebrity Big Jungle Factor Can't Cook...
...filmed in my house for six weeks. With Ainsley Harriot hiding behind my sofa.
I wouldn't want his cartoon face hiding...
behind my sofa, or my armchair for that matter.
It was a couple of weeks ago...
Bob Dylan at the O2 with the tube down.
Failing that, it would be Jimmy Carr and Alan Carr in a double act, followed by watching an episode of Pop Idol on ice has got talent (on similar) being filmed.
You could have come up
with a new hit ITV comedy.
Z Carrs featuring Alan and Jimmy Carr. Two "odd couple" cops find themselves thrown together as patrol car sleuths, solving crimes in a camply arched eyebrow style. Hilarity ensues.
Please God never let it happen.
so, basically...
you would just make them the two plods in the police car as part of the jolly japes on "please put it out of its misery"-com Last of the Summer Wine
ha ha ha ha
Z-Carrs!! grate!!
It did.....
The Detectives, featuring Robert "Jesus" Powell and Jasper "Wept" Carrott.
Shockingly unamusing.
Easy to forget
It's very easy to think of the likes of Westlife in questions like this but I'd like to nominate The Script supported by The Stereophonics and the Boney M of Hip Hip... The Black Eyed Peas who included the line " I rap one, two, three, four ...Several times" on their cover of Sergio Mendes.
AAARRRGGGHHH!
A Great Scottish Homecoming! For Charity!
with a veritable "Who's That?" of Scottish Light Entertainment:
Jock & Roll - In George Square!
Your comperes - Sheena Easton and Christian, with Lorraine Kelly and Jackie Bird presenting their tribute to Fran & Anna
Acts to include :
BA Robertson ("He's 'Knocked It Off'!!")
Hue & Cry ("If Niles & Frasier had a wine bar jazz-funk band..")
Jonathan Watson ("BBC Scotland funnyman")
Texas ("We all supported her solo album, honest")
Lulu ("back home, again")
and an all-star tribute to Nazareth, including members of Deacon Blue and Wet Wet Wet.
Where are the Krankees
Also compering, sitting next to you in the audience or one on each knee?
they are the surprise guests
The Krankies will be appearing in the surprise panto section, mugging beyond the realms even of Gerard Kelly in pantomime
Jonathan Watson IS funny
In Only An Excuse, at least.
slightly funny, sometimes
but he's been scraping the bottom of the barrel for several years and come out the far side. there were maybe 2 funny sketches in the Hogmanay show, and the rest could have been from any of his shows in the last 20 years - Souness / Denis Law / Macca, etc
he
That's Entertainment?
Antony and the Johnsons. Full stop.
On the tube this morning, I saw...
...a poster advertising a musician where the press quote that was supposed to entice us into buying his music was:
"A one-man Coldplay"
My actual nightmare is being used as a sales pitch.
An Evening With...
Russell Brand. any more than 15 seconds listening to that preening bell-end popinjay makes me want to commit mass murder, or justifiable homicide at the very least.
Audience participation
in anything. Either hauling up poor saps on stage, or a motley crew of them, picking on audience members by comedians (it has happened to me and it was excruciating), or just cajoling an audience to 'enjoy themselves' or 'get up and dance' etc. Sorry, but I will decide whether I feel like doing that, and on being demanded to do so feel a particular reluctance to indulge your need to feel validated by an audience dancing gruesomely to endless jamming. I have a strange nostalgia for that old fogey notion of being entertained by the performers and not dragooned into 'participation' and a false sense of being 'down' with the act. It is an act after all, let's not forget. Curmudgeonly yours.
The many circles of hell..
these could be worked in reverse for interesting results
Nana Mouskouri sings the songs of Joy Division
Jim Reeves sings the songs of Sigur Ros
Engelbert Humperdinck sings the songs of the Cocteau Twins
the Priests sing the songs of Frankie goes to hollywood
Garth Brooks sings the songs of Crass
Joe Dolce sings the songs of U2
Adrian Gurvitz (gonnawriteaclassic etc) sings the songs of AMC
Benny Hill Sings the songs of talking heads
oh and..
Andrew Lloyd webber sings the songs of Andrew Lloyd webber
Hell has many circles it seems.
A staple
of many bands' between-song patter in the 70s :-
"Here's another song from the 'Vera Lynn Sings Black Sabbath' album.... or was it Black Sabbath sings Vera Lynn"
Engelbert Humperdinck sings the songs of the Cocteau Twins
...the rest, the human brain is capable of imagining; but Engle-B and the Cocteaus?! I think you've just come up with a truly mind-bending concept there Uli.... Now you've got me mumbling the 'lyric' to 'Pearly Dewdrops Drops' to the tune of 'Please Release Me'! Aaaaaaaaarrrrghhhhhhh!!!!!
And now, on 4AD, we bring you '25 Cabaret Favourites In A Shallow Bay' - featuring those sensational hits 'Lonely Is A Sideburn', 'Blue-Bell-Bottomed Knoll' and 'Iced-Drink Luck'...
Yes, Heaven is indeed Las Vegas with the Crooner & The Melodies -Englebert Humperdink, exclusively on 4AD and live in person at Batley Variety Club with the Robin Guthrie Light Orchestra, the Liz Fraser Lovelies and Harold Budd and his organ. Please - release me! Please!!!! Please!!!!!!
Jonathan Ross
interviews Simon Cowell, followed by Paul Ross with some 'Funny Outtakes'. Terry Christian interviewing..... anyone. Music provided by David Gilmour. Then a special 'Kerry Katona - My Life in Music'.
Over on the other channel Garth Brooks - 'Sneering and lip-curling for beginners' followed by Kiera Knightly 'Simpering and Pouting 101'.
Oh and a 'Chuckle Brothers' special, followed by (another) audience with Freddy Starr (Scary!) and Bernard Manning - The Caring Side of The Man
The Eurovision Song Contest.
Nothing could be worse, surely? And it's something like 3 hrs long. Imagine having to sit through it in its entirety?
Gravel voiced Bonnie Tyler soundalikes
Nickleback supported by gravel voiced Rod Stewart soundalikes Stereophonics supported by gravel voiced Gladys Pugh soundalikes Catatonia...
ITV Light Entertainment ...
...on ice, or indeed any other solid weight bearing surface. And if Gok Wan isn't regularly on ITV then he could compere it just to make it even more hateful - anyone notice his name is an interesting anagram?
addendum
in fact any reality show on stage would be truly hateful
A night out...
... I'm with some of the people I used to work with when I was employed by Hackney Council (there are a couple of people from there that I'm still good friends with, and they aren't there); it's a restaurant with a live cabaret; it features a reunited Cannon and Ball and after an hour of excruciatingly bad comedy the show climaxes with them breaking into song; it's a medley of Queen's greatest hits featuring an extended Bohemian Rhapsody with extra larking around.
Death, where is thy sting?