Gruesome twosome

Loath as I am – and it’s very, very loath – to defend Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross, my inner liberal forces me to consider all sides of the argument. To wit:

  • the offending broadcast went out on a late night show when 2.5 people were listening. Those 2.5, being presumably regular Brand listeners, knew exactly the kind of thing they were likely to be hearing and so their protests can be taken about as seriously as those who watched the sex on Teen Big Brother frame-by-frame before firing off letters of outrage to Channel 4.
  • the aggrieved granddaughter belongs to a group called Satanic Sluts, which rather ups the stakes in trying to prove despoiled innocence.
  • the show was pre-recorded, so while Ross and Brand were doing exactly what everyone expected of them – going for the lowest common humour denominator rather than use their genuine talent to do something clever and original – somewhere there is a producer or editor whose good judgement failed quite catastrophically.
On the other hand, two overpaid twonks are off the air. Result.
And now the politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. Oh dear. Don’t they have better things to do, like restore trust in the banking system that underpins the fabric of our existence? Of course, if the offending twosome are to be truly and utterly screwed it just needs Gordon and/or David to express complete faith in them and promise their full support. That’s always the kiss of death to any political career.
I’m also delighted that the granddaughter is called Georgina Baillie as it gives me the chance to play this. Seventies cheesefest or francophobe paean to adolescent incestuous longings? You decide.

Is there coursework?

I try not to channel surf. As far as I’m concerned, you decide what you want to watch, you watch it, and you turn it off.

Should you occasionally lapse, you apparently run the risk of accidentally catching a few minutes of Channel 4’s Sex Education Show, Tuesday night, 8pm, and if that doesn’t cure you of the habit then nothing will. In this one, a class of kids were being shown pictures of Kelly Osborne, Chris Martin and Daniel Radcliffe, and being invited to guess at what age they lost their virginities. The correct answer was then revealed to a breathless world.

Wow. Is it actually written into their contract, do you think, that having Done the Deed our modern day teen idols are then obliged to make a public disclosure? Or if not public, then at least to Channel 4’s researchers? Is there a register somewhere? Maybe a web page?

And no, I’m not revealing the answers.

I believe the point was to show young people that, look, you don’t need to rip your pants off the moment you hit puberty and it is acceptable to wait a couple of days. It might have failed in that regard. Still, cudos to Chris Martin for (a) at least managing to last until he was out of his teens and (b) for not being famous at the time (based on the fact that “Trouble” came out in 2000 – oh dear lord, I can’t believe I’m making this mental calculation. Stop it stop it stop it) and therefore possibly succeeding on the grounds of, I dunno, personality or even, who knows, a bit of affection and respect and mutual liking.

I can safely say Mr Martin’s school didn’t have classes like that – at least, it didn’t 12 years earlier when I was there.

Set the controls for the heart of the sun

Is this the best job, in (or off) the world, ever?

About midday today a space ship will crash / has crashed into the Pacific.

Six months ago the Jules Verne space truck ferried a load of cargo up to the International Space Station. It has been docked there ever since, slowly filling up with the ISS’s rubbish. Now it will take its final plunge, overseen by the European Space Agency’s freighter control centre in Toulouse.

This means there is someone in France, right now, whose job is to crash spaceships.

Who is this person, and why isn’t it me?