http://media.guardian.co.uk/bigbroth...696168,00.html

"Supposing ...

Galloway really tried to balls up his career

Charlie Brooker
Friday January 27, 2006
The Guardian


I was at the Big Brother house on Wednesday night. Not to hurl bags of crap at George Galloway, you understand - I was there researching something I'm writing. And besides, security confiscated my bags of crap at the gate.

Anyway, once in, I was given the full tour. I got to go in the camera runs and everything. I peered through a window while Chantelle fixed her makeup. I witnessed Barrymore making a cup of tea in blistering close-up detail. I saw Maggot adjusting his balls. This was history in the making.

And it was also incredibly spooky: occasionally they shoot glances your way and you think they can see you - but all they're looking at is their own reflection, which, being celebrities, they never tire of.

Seeing Pete Burns' face-shaped surgeon's folly at close quarters sent a chill down my spine, but the most haunting sight was Galloway, pacing up and down in the kitchen, awaiting his inevitable eviction. It was like watching a polar bear losing its mind in the zoo, shuffling endlessly to-and-fro in a bid to silence the unhappy bellowing in its head.

He looked like a man on death row: a brightly coloured, Scooby Doo kind of death row, but one with real doom lurking at the end of it. Or maybe that was just me, projecting what I knew of his utter public humiliation on to him. Maybe he was simply concentrating: picturing the mountainous stack of adoring fan mail from young voters he assumed he'd receive.

"Dear George - you is the best politician I has ever seen! I love the way you is so political with all your politics and that. Please can I have a signed photo because you is so sexy! Yours sincerely, a Nubile Fan Who Lives Within Driving Distance."

But alas. About an hour later, he was out the door, to be greeted by what sounded like an explosion in a boo factory. Some crowd members shouted so hard their lungs exploded. Bits of splintered ribcage flew through the air. If Galloway wanted to make an impression, he succeeded. And if he wanted the impression to be that of a seething, swaggering, self-important bully, he succeeded spectacularly.

Because he could've ridden out all the cat stuff, all the dressing-up games. That's easily defused: just chuckle about it in your eviction interview, and hey, it's just a bit of fun. The humiliation would've been real, yet fleeting. What'll stick in people's minds, however, is his jaw-droppingly unpleasant behaviour in the days leading up to his eviction. Rounding on the nice-but-dim youngsters, taunting a recovering alcoholic, spluttering paranoid bile at every opportunity - I mean really. WHAT a tosser.

In PR terms, it's hard to think of anything worse he could've done during his stay in the house. But I'll have a go. He could have 1) masturbated repeatedly on camera, staring the viewer straight in the eye; 2) pooed into a big bowl of flour in the middle of the kitchen; and 3) killed at least nine of his fellow housemates. But those are the only worse things I can think of. He's screwed.

Even so, you've got to hand it to him: when he shoots himself in the foot, he uses a cannon so big it takes his whole leg off."

what a post

I second that motion. That article was worthy of Sue Townsend.

Excellent post

Cheered me up.

MM

I'd read this about ten minutes before I saw this post. It's very good but Charlie Brooker is generally (IMHO, natch) a bit of a 'smart-arse' though(?) - isn't he the 'tv-go-home'/Nathan Barley guy? Funny, but a bit 'piss-take-by-numbers' - though I guess if you present so large a target, pot-shots are going to hit the mark. I read somewhere that Galloway's mistake was to think (like Greer) that he could rise above the 'format' - and such 'pride' has lead to a spectacular 'fall' in this instance. I think Galloway is completely blind to his own faults and this always makes for great reality tv (it gives a whole new level to the viewing experience).

I loved the Charlie Brooker article about the current trend for programmes that look at how awful you and your life is and then try to change it such as What Not to Wear, Look 10 Years Younger, Life Laundry etc. He said it won't be long before you notice a cameraman just behind you filming for the latest episode of "How Shit Is The Back of Your Head?"

At least Ms Greer has the self awareness and common sense to get out when she realised she was in something that was much bigger than she had ever expected.

Didn't he also have a hand in the Chris Morris 'suicide journalist' thing? A good 'concept'

Oh sure, Greer handled it better when she had the nous to realise the format is a tighter straightjacket than she assumed. The article I mentioned though, pointed out that we remember not so much her 'revolution' against the 'fascist' BB but the fact that she was dressed as a medieval milkmaid when she instigated it (I bet this article was another Brooker piece - don't get me wrong, he's one of the best commentators 'out there' - just not to be taken too 'seriously', natch)
Last edited by waving not drow : 28-01-2006 at 11:06

Clever-clogs Brooker digs at Galloway !!

Yet more Gruaniad Galloway bashing.

So what else is new?

hehehe excellent.

...damn those pesky security guards *shakes fist*

You have a point, of course. Add political motivation to the 'reality-mix' and be assured that GG is in for a torrid time

I guess it's one of those occasions when 'balance' has to be purely 'self-imposed' by the individual 'BB/meedja-junkie' (even if it feels like 'swimming against a tsunami').

he sells 34 tickets for his tour in Feb...


http://uk.tv.yahoo.com/27012006/344/...-34-seats.html

Big Brother evictee George Galloway may be watching his celebrity status wane after selling just a few dozen tickets for his one-man show next month, it has emerged.

More than 800 tickets are thought to remain unsold for the event at the 925-seat Deco theatre in Northampton on February 25.

Now the controversial Respect Party MP is facing a far from full house for the question-and-answer evening which promises "the true story of his life".

The nine-date tour, covering Cambridge, Southampton and Halifax, promises the chance to "meet the real MP and not the fictional media version".

But local reports claim just 34 of the £12 tickets had been sold in Northampton, with a further 80 on reserve. A Deco spokeswoman refused to confirm the actual ticket sales for the show but said numbers were disappointing.

This is a sort of mass sickness when the media identify a person that it is ok to hate - and ok to revel in the hatred and collectively bay for his blood! Oh yes, lets all hate him! Lets stone him! ("Crucify! Crucify!!")

It is nothing but mass hysteria. The simple truth is, George would not hurt a fly - while everyone conveniently passes over other housemates' threats of violence, such as the shameful display by Maggot threatening to "do (George's) head in"..

Of course, most of the bias and hatred in the media is to do with George's support for Muslims. But I liked listening to Boris Johnson on the radio yesterday when he was goaded by the interviewer to lay in to George - and he refused! He refused!! He was the perfect gentleman. Great. How many other people in the media have the strength of character not to go with the crowd?

Had Johnson heard of BB? (LOL) He's probably got his eye on a spot . I haven't read the Spectator for years but I'm sure Johnson will commission a piece smugly castigating GG for his foray into 'popular culture'.

You're right about the 'open-wound-pecking-frenzy', though - 'chav-bashing' serves the same sort of function ('I look down on him because he is working-class' goes the '60s sketch - roughly speaking : ah, well - 'plus ca change, plus ca meme chose' as they always say round my way ).

BJ had heard of Big Brother because he discussed it with Richard & Judy last week - remember? He flatly refuses to even consider going on it. He spoke about George and generously praised him, which made very pleasant listening on Radio 5 Live when discussing his new book (about, guess what, the Roman Empire which I thinks he sees as THE great event in all history, slaves, emperor gods and all).

BTW, he no longer edits the Spectator (but he does still write for it). No doubt the magazine will deliver its (fairly predictable) verdict on GG next week.

Oh okay, I stand corrected (as I say, it's been a number of years since I dirtied my hands with Taki et al). He does, himself, ride pretty high in the 'buffoon' stakes, though, doesn't he? Either that or (like the guy who played 'Benny' in Crossroads) he must otherwise be a damn fine actor (and as a comedian once said, 'what would a damn fine actor be doing in 'Crossroads''?)

EDIT : I was reading an essay by George Orwell the other week where he posed the question of how many Roman slaves can one name? - all those millions of people whose labour went into 'making' the Roman Empire all totally without name in the historical record (except 'Spartacus' - and 'which one is he?' LOL - and maybe one or two others)
Last edited by waving not drow : 28-01-2006 at 13:30

I don't know. What's on the front page of The Independent today?

Fairly predictable because it's The Spectator or fairly predictable because there's really no other conclusion to come to than the same one as Charlie Brooker?

I don't know about these television critics. A lot of them seem to move around a lot. One moment they're music critics, the next they're film critics, then they're writing columns about reality television which they claim to hate, but watch. Every now and then they'll celebrate an American import, and maybe even give kudos to one of the soaps, but only as an alternative way of kicking one of the others.

They just all seem too smug, and full of shit to me. I'm not sure who the worst is. Kevin O'Sullivan is the most slimey looking, but Ian Hyland is perhaps the smuggest.

Good heavens. That's only 4 weeks away!

He went down like a lead balloon in America as well.

Clive James (actually a pretty good tv critic for The Observer in his day) discussed this twenty or so years ago and little has changed. Popular culture critics, in the 'broadsheets'/whatever-that-'new-Guardian-size'-is-called (I forget) in particular, tend, through 'looking down' on the various popular media, to fail to 'understand' them (and the 'knowing' ones are often worse). For most it's an 'apprenticeship' for 'better things' - at them, not you of course.

waving not drowning - I am pleased to hear you don't read the Spectator - I have a look at it in WH Smith's but would never, ever actually buy it. (You can read it in 5 mins flat.) But that Orwell essay sounds brilliant! I must look it out, especially as he invented the tv series after all...

On the question of critics, Anna, I was blown over earlier this year when Harold Pinter asked "what is the point of critics?" The question reverberates loudly now - whenever I attempt to turn over to things like that ghastly Fridaynight Newsnight Review - uuuggggh! Especially when they all gabble at once, including Marks Lawson and Kermode who remind me of a couple of food processors about to take off and collide producing nothing more than a load of scummy, messed up codswallap. I ask (like Harold) what. is. the. point???

Hi

It may look like wilful 'resource-hoarding' if I don't just add that I can't remember what the essay was called (it was a pretty en passant-type remark stumbled across during 'bathtime-reading' of a book that just 'fell-open' : a very old and tattered "Orwell's Collected Essays" (actually, the front cover finally came off in my hand during the process) .

BRILLIANT ARTICLE. Said everything I want to say but haven't the skill.

Hi waving not drowning, I can just picture your copy because I've got one just like it. Dog-eared cover once fallen off never to be re-installed but strangely stays with the rest of the yellowy, much-turned pages - all the classics I chance to own seem to have come from second-hand/charity shops... but they are still enjoyed just as much if from anywhere else.

Anyway, old paperbacks are easier to read in bed or in the bath I find - the pages don't spring back and muck up the line of thought one is so tenuously following.