Entertainment For Lively Minds
Stuff we really never saw coming
Posted by Brookster on 14 January 2012 - 1:28pm.
* Hugh Laurie as the highest paid actor on US TV and a major sex symbol
* Ice Cube appearing in family-friendly film comedies
You are welcome to extend the list.
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How about
The Kings of Leon becoming one of the biggest bands in the world
Kid A going to number one in America
Vanilla Ice
Appearing in pantomime.
Bruce Springsteen
stil fooling most of the people all of the time.
Dross
like 'Strictly Come Dancing' becoming prime-time viewing.
The dumbing down of BBC and Channel 4.
Prime-time viewing dross?
In the old days we had really good stuff like, er, The Black and White Minstrels.
oh please
Because Strictly proves that the BBC has dumbed down since the 1970s when Saturday night's featured The Generation Game presented by Joesph Bronowski. Oh, hang on. It was Bruce Forsyth. And for the record I don't watch SCD, but it is light entertainment rather than the end of civilisation.
And if you think SCD is dross you clearly do not remember Sea Side Special. Or the Black and White Minstral Show.
...and before that was
Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
That was compered by someone called Bruce Forsyth.
SCD
is dross. It used to be 'Come Dancing' and was shown late at night on a weekday back in the '60s which is where I believe it should still reside.
My point about dumbing-down applies to both C4 and BBC2, in particular. I'm not specifically referring to Saturday night output.
Come Dancing
What's white, slimy and slides across the dance floor?
Sorry... As you were.
Lionel
Blair?
And did you hear the one about Lionel Blair and Alan Carr on Blackpool Pier? They helped out a man who was attempting to toss himself off. You couldn't make it up, folks.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/5368936.stm
Gratuitous I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue reference
"The expert's expert was, of course, Lionel Blair. Who could ever forget opposing team captain, Una Stubbs, sitting open-mouthed as he tried to pull off Twelve Angry Men in under two minutes?"
Gratuitous Max Miller reference
The Cheeky Chappie had a similar joke about a man confronting a beautiful naked girl on a narrow mountain pass.
The punchline ran: “he didn’t know whether to block her passage or toss himself off.”
Point taken - Channel 4
I agree is the steepest and most shocking decline of anything this side of Stevie Wonder in the early 80s. For it's first ten years it was a radical, challenging, often brilliant broadcaster: it is now, and has been for at least 15 years, a byword for exploitative, moronic tripe.
Typical programme this week: "My Daughter The Teenage Nudist". It is both literally and figuratively made by and for wankers.
{apart from Charlie Brooker}
When's that on ?
....
Strictly dross
Im afraid I will have to disagree. It is in no way flawless or indeed original and yes Sir Bruce is creaky. However the skill of the professional dancers lifts it and by the end of the series the "celebrities" are also generally worth watching. There are certainly worse things on tv to complain about. And my daughter loves it so if you fast forward over the talking it's our family viewing. Oh and the original was still on in the early 90's because I used fast forward through the end of it when I taped Miami Vice
I never saw the day coming
I would defend a dancing programme
I'm no fan of Strictly
but it's not really the same show is it? The original show was a weekly competition between teams rather than newsreaders, soap actors etc learning to dance from scratch over a few weeks.
You should try Dancing on Ice
It has Louie Spence. And Christine Bleakley. Every week.
Makes SCD look like Sir Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation.
Aaaargh! Seaside bloody Special
The last gasp of seaside variety. I played in the pit band on a few of those in the 80s and it was unremittingly grim.
You responsible for this then,Stimpy ?
and Please tell me you didn't perform on Michael Barrymore's "Do The Crab "?
anne widdecombe becoming a
anne widdecombe becoming a national treasure - though not in my house
michael portillo turning into quite a reasonable guy
a con-lib coalition
arab spring - obviously - though i think it needs a re-brand
Same applies to
Edwina Currie - used to loath her, now I think she is okay. Did she change or did I?
Also:
Death of Princess Diana
Cadbury's in foreign hands
The failure to build a supersonic airliner to take on the job started by Concorde
That there would never be another moon landing
That there would never be another moon landing
There never was one was there? :-)
Oh there will be another moon landing
But it'll be a Chinese one.
We won't be watching, because it'll clash with 'X Factor'.
Thing I'd really like to know
Is will the Chinese be watching ... In 2025 or whenever ...
Those most British institutions
Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Jaguar/Land Rover falling into foreign ownership.
To which add ...
ICI, Pilkingons, GEC Marconi, EMI, much of our railway system, our water utilties, power generation, steel (TATA industries are the biggest industrial concern in the UK now and by some way), British Airports Authority. Most of them taken over in hostile deals using 'financial engineering' and now struggling to pay back the debts for their own takeover.
I might have mentioned in passing once or twice how the City has been asset stripping this country with the complicity of weak and greedy politicians.
We're about to reap the consequences
ICI
my former employers, and I should point out that it was incompetence that killed that company not financial engineering. The pharma bit is Zeneca, and doing quite well. Dulux and some other bits are owned by Akzo. Large chucks are now Ineos and doing quite well. I know a number of bits that got spun off and are now doing brilliantly now that they are away from the dead hand of the senior management. Poor management has killed at least as many UK companies as financial engineering.
(End rant mode - apologies to the people here who want to discuss music).
Amen
To that - and apologies for the terminological inexactitude (i.e. the talking of bollocks!). I must admit that from my post within an alleged blue chip British company it seems greedy/inept management and the rapacity of the City are indistinguishable - you know you're in trouble if the CFO is the new CEO
oh you can add
Tetley Tea to that too. The tea men shouldn't have that Oop North accent - it's owned by TATA too.
ABBA
Quite a few unforseeable developments in the lives of the flared four.
Benny Andersson going from being the Antichrist to the political progrock movement in the 70's, to these days donating huge sums to a feminist political party and protesting unpopular building projects by threatening to remove his picture from the arrival hall at Stockholm airport Arlanda (no, not a very scary threat...)
And going from disco to folk music (though the beard might have given us a clue about that).
Björn Ulvaeus becoming an aggressive spokesperson against religion, donating money to ad campaigns and writing newspaper articles on the subject.
That Anni-Frid would marry a prince is not that surprising, but Agneta shacking up with a stalker for a while was rather odd...
And everybody has conveniently forgotten
how totally uncool it was to like them before the 1990s. Before "Gold" came out, specifically ('92, I think).
ABBA Revisited
I believe it was Andy Bell's love of ABBA'S track "Take a chance on me" that prompted them to release a four track EP thus creating interest again to a new generation ( the rest is...)
That the nation...
... would be more interested in ex-footballers, ex-cricketers and ex-rugby players dancing than they were when they were playing sport.
A Gilmour / Waters
rapprochement.
(Actually, that sounds like a great name for a band: The Gilmour Waters Rapprochement.)
Sounds more like
A Mornington Crescent opening.
Getting sick of
Steven Fry.
I'm not sick of him.
I actually find it quite refreshing that a major intellect immerses himself in the world of consumerism and popular culture. No doubt, like McCartney, his 'legacy' will be somewhat tarnished but I feel sure he'll manage to live with that. I suspect he knows, like his late friend Christopher Hitchens, that this ain't no rehearsal.
If that means (the horror!) insurance adverts - why not? He's got a great voice.
My old flat mate 'wing nut'
Becoming editor of the Daily Telegraph.
(clang!)
And one from my dear old dad (circa 1975)
That Canary Wharf would be the sort of place where I would end up living if I didn't work harder at school.
Michael Portillo
Very often the voice of reason on Thursday nights.
And to think I cheered myself hoarse when he lost his seat in '97.
Oh, has the world changed, or have I changed?
I welll remember that.
I welll remember that.
didnt he lose to a little skinny new labour nobody called stephen twigg?
that event was only beaten here in scotland by michael forsyth losing his seat -marvelous moment and I literally cheered out loud in an empty room.
Same when margaret thatcher was driven from downing street after being shafted by her party - it was broadcast live in channel 4 in the middle of a very early episode of vic reeves big night out. strangely apt though I dont know quite how. comedy and tragedy etc ...
Twiggy
"A little skinny new labour nobody called stephen twigg", who has been MP for Liverpool West Derby since 2010 and was previously Enfield Southgate's MP from his defeat of Portillo in 1997 until 2005.
I only know this because he's a friend of a friend.
http://stephentwiggmp.co.uk/home/
That programme where he pootles around the UK on trains
is a small joy. And the landscape looks beautiful in HD.
That everyone would be carrying a
a version of a Star Trek communicator in their pocket that is more technologically sophisticated than Jim Kirk's model.
Jim didn't need an app to
find available women though, did he ?
Seriously though, how do we know that everyone back home doesn't have a communicator as well as the Enterprise's crew ? Back in the day we all *assumed* it was high tech space technology. Actually the crew might be moaning that as government employees they never get the latest model ...
He's dead (jealous) Jim
how many Star Trek episodes would have lasted 5 minutes if Captain Kirk had had an iphone instead of a communicator? No video on those.
And now iphones talk to you in less stilted tones than the Enterprise (sorry Majel).
Spaceboy's point about an app to find available women
Is a good one. Fry went on Top Gear (yes I know) and whipped out his Grindr (?) app to find men looking for sex within a specified distance of the studio.
I wondered at the time what would have happened if - say - Jude Law had done the same with an app looking for women looking for a shag in the same context.
It just felt like a National Treasure taking the piss out of a swooningly sycophantic environment to me.
Mind you that he did it at all and moreover plainly got away with it is One Of Those Things In Line With The Original Post
A footballer earning more than
Well, just about anyone really.
Yes...
... and Carlos Tevez who, it is rumoured, "earns" £268,000 per week - and hasn't played since September, whilst Darlington (who require a cash injection of £80K a month) nearly go to the wall.
Well
Football clubs having money troubles are not a new thing - and neither is it necessarily the end of the world for the club or the fans. Remember that Newton Heath F.C was broke in 1902, but have done pretty well the last few years.
Vintage
The huge popularity of "Vintage" amongst the young (knitting, cup cakes, steam punks, etc). Ironically the first youth scene to make me feel really old.
Funny old world ...
I don't think I ever expected to see a scrapped Russin space shuttle being barged past the Kremlin
Or cold war bunker as adventure Playground
http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/events.html
Sorry for double post
Never expected to see something as handy as the iPad but with such a twitchy keyboard ;-)
The baffling popularity of buns
... with fancy icing on them. They've even got them in the pubs now.
Lou Reed songs being used by the BBC
to promote itself. Pale Blue Eyes is now in an ad for Digital Radio, and Perfect Day was used for the BBC in general a couple of years ago.
Boris Johnson having a serious political job
This is when I realised that London is in a different world to the rest of the country
The 21st century is a weird place
Ian Paisley joshing with Martin McGuinness
Johnny Rotten advertising butter
Roy Kinnear's son fucks a pig on Channel 4
and
"Killing in the Name" at Christmas Number 1.
"Roy Kinnear's son fucks a pig on Channel 4"
WHAT???
The pig was in a recent TV satire
for which
http://www.newstatesman.com/television/2011/12/joke-free-satire-brooker
is an example of a not too keen review, though opinions vary, and I plan to catch the 2nd and third. I think her observation here:
actually rather reinforces the point of Kubrick's film, if maybe not Brooker's.
Well, I'm pretty sure he was pretending.
Don't have nightmares.
charlie brooker making shit
charlie brooker making shit tv shows rather than writing about them
He who f**ks nuns
Will later join the church.
80's music
Depeche Mode and Red Hot Chili Peppers can/will play stadiums in 2012.
John Lydon and Iggy Pop
Doing dreadful TV ads.
Tony Benn
Once the reviled 'most dangerous man in Britain', now a national treasure.
Hugh Grant as a serious social commentator.
The News of the World imploding.
Streaming proper movies on demand
Onto our telly and a handheld, touch screen computer with no wires attached. This handheld thing can also do video calling too! Now, about my hovercar.............
The one time I feel 'The future has arrived' is when
I see the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner trundling around without any input from me. That's the future I was promised by Tomorrow's World.
Agreed, re the Roomba
It's the cat's meow ...
We feel a similar enthusiasm for a Panasonic bread maker. Possibly easier to anticipate, and thus less Tomorrow's World, but the fact that it *actually works* is the novelty ...
Blokes
*BLOKES* showing videos of their favourite hoovers to their mates.
You can probably
Blame Dyson for that, as well as the MIT people behind the Roomba ...though in our household the fpo still programmes the Roomba ...
Bollocks!
It's not my fault.
Myself, I see my ability
to openly declare my nerd/metrosexual love for a robot hoover as a sign that society really has progressed in the last few decades ... ;-)
responding to strangers called SpaceBoy...
...via a device that's like a coming together of the typewriter, television and telephone line, and being able to understand his phrase, "in our household the fpo still programmes the Roomba" ... something i never really saw coming when i was a teenager/in my 20s
Indeed
I haven't quite come to terms with the curious blend of Arthur C Clarke and Philip K Dick that reality has become---somehow I thought it would be one or the other ;-)
For example, seeing the first Sony Walkmen
In 1980 or so, I'd have found it hard to anticipate the me of 30 years later ... or the world I live in ...
where I just wandered across the local park at sunset to stretch my legs, using my most used "hi fi" as we'd have called it then, actually a pocket computer costing about 50 quid with some noise cancelling headphones costing about 5 times that, with thousands of tracks available, of which one I chose was "So what", with Paul Chambers' bass sounding as vivid as I've ever heard it, sheer delight ...
... but this morning was sobered by this excellent analysis of what my "bargain" phone really means for those of use who buy them, and those who make them
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-...
[a piece I was, naturally drawn to via Flipboard ...]
Talking of Hugh Laurie ...
Given that he earns a mind bloggling $700K per epsiode for House, what possessed him to take the L'Oreal shilling? He obviously doesn't need the money, and the ads are objects of ridicule.
Why would he do that?
Because
He's worth it?
(sorry)
Bonio
Advertising luxury luggage
Hugh knows?
Perhaps he donated his fee to charidee?
AND
Ozzie Osbourne being a National Treasure, and alive!
Glasgow Rangers trying to sign a guy who failed in a trial at Brighton.
American TV being the best there is.
80% of The Rolling Stones being alive whilst 50% of The Beatles are not.
I am never quite sure how
much of Keith Richards *is* alive at any given moment ... but I am sure he's as surprised as the rest of us ;-)
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Governor of California!
good stuff so far
That Rock festivals would become so "Middle Class".
Man City would top the League
England becoming number 1 Test nation
Gary Oldman playing An Old Man. (TTSS)
That anyone is interested in sub standard pub singers (X.factor) and morons (TOWIE).
Jim Tavare (Top bloke) would appear with the RZA in Californication.
Becoming very familiar with the minutiae...
of Danish law enforcement and politics, through the wonderful prime time Saturday night subtitled dramas The Killing and Borgen.
Also, on a rather less surprising front, discovering that Scandinavian women are really rather attractive
yes
indeed...
The teenage children of a colleague of mine
demanding a box set of a twenty-hour Danish TV show with subtitles.
Last name of "Law"
Last name of "Law" perchance?
clever little linky thing you did there
I liked that
The Krankies, '70s kids tv faves
and their recent 'revelations'...
The success of 'Classic Rock Prog' magazine
Lulu flogging lotions and potions on QVC
Matt Goss - out of Bros - getting his own show at...
... Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
That the fpo and I
Would drive from LA to Vegas to see the Beatles music, recorded and remixed by George Martin and Son, as part of a circus show. And that we'd, er, love it ...
Having a portable telephone
that is also a message pager, a torch, a calculator, a gaming device, a video player, a record player, a radio, a camera, a sat nav, a notepad, a diary, a compass, a diary, a newspaper, a television, etc, etc.
I can also speak to my friend instantly without any time delay. In Japan.
Wow! Lucky you.
My phone's only got the one diary.
I meant to say dairy
But thought I would be milking it.
A couple more
- kids being a lot less fussed about music than we were at their age (attention/interest/cash etc flowing increasingly toward what we used to charmingly refer to as "video games")
- extreme politics being gradually elbowed towards the margins. I know there's plenty of counter-examples, but in the 70s the NF were a real threat (physically if not always politically) and communism in its various forms was often held in romantic esteem as it had not yet been thoroughly trashed.
Gyles Brandreth
...turning from a perky posh ponce to a likeable, avuncular polymath with sharp anecdotes coming from every pore.
Gyles Brandreth likeable?
Less hateful, maybe. But Likeable? Not in the Umpire household.
forum posts arriving from
a weird parallel universe.
I definitely wouldnt agree
I definitely wouldnt agree with this one. hes just as annoying, smug and passive aggressive as ever in my view.
Gyles Brandreth, passive-aggressive?
Are you SURE? DSM-IV defines the symptoms of passive-aggressive behaviour as:
None of which seem to match Gyles' public persona.
i think their definition
i think their definition needs updating.
I'd say the most commonly displayed version most of us will have seen is the version used in 'jokes' as thinly-disguised threats, manipulations or attempts to dominate a situation.
maybe thats not passive-aggressive behaviour, if not my apologies.
hes a twat though, thats the main thing.
I'll admit, he seems marginallly less annoying than he used to be.
Welcome to The Word blog, Gyles
PMSL
LMFAO ROFL
Also see - using acronyms on a regular basis when actually talking to people without necessarily working in IT and without getting your heid smacked in
I'd never expected
Danny baker to pose as Giles brand retch for a windup ...(curse that iPad spell check, I really did mean to type Brandreth, honest guv, as I actually like him)
Jimmy Saville
The late Mr Saville as a style icon; his tracksuit and bling jewellery combination was almost 30 years ahead of the times.
Sprout faced Leonardo De Caprio
playing J Edgar Hoover
The Specials reforming.
A theme park ride for all the family based on the torture porn Saw franchise,
An action figure of Simon Pegg.
A Monty Python Flying Circus West End hit musical called Spamalot.
I don't think I ever expected
to see Schrodinger's cat feature in an Emmy-winning comedy
with a massive audience. Or counterfactual history ...
But then I am a Frasier fan, so I should have had faith
thats a whole other subject ...
as a fellow fan of both frasier and big bang theory I would offer the proposition that, as all great comedy is about failure, the moment niles gets daphne and the BBT guys get girlfriends ( particularly leonard dating indian supermodels) the shows stop being sitcoms and become soap operas - albeit very funny soap operas. herafter known as the Friends Hypothesis.
Indeed
and it was a whole other thread recently:
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/big-bang-theory-new-season-starts-...
but for what it's worth, I think you are right. The fact that Larry Sanders never succeeded, at least in his own eyes, may be part of what made that even greater TV in a way---though harder to watch.
Or pantomimes featuring quantum theory
Puss in box - he's behind you and simultaneously in front of you
Panto has always been based on quantum superposition
"Oh no it isn't!"
"Oh yes it is!"
Shane MacGowan...
outliving Kirsty MacColl...
My first home
My first flat selling for £325k (*) when I swore blind that it would never, ever break through the £100k point.
(*) Not sold by me at that price I should add.
Bowie...
...going 10 years without releasing a new album.
Something I Never Saw Coming.....
That Number 9 bus.....Aaaagh
Music
That high end music glossy magazines would only sell if they kept their cover rotation strictly to Beatles-Stones-Dylan-Springsteen carousel.
Last of the Magnificent Seven and Man from Uncle
Robert Vaughan is going to be in Coronation Street.
Man from UNCLE...
Ultra Northern Cobbles Lure Ex-stars?
in cartoon news
Alan Moore on The Simpsons- Didn't see that coming!
Bing Hitler
Having just chuckled my way round the M25 in the company of of Bing Hitler live at the Tron (and I was there). I never saw Craig Ferguson coming.