Category: cynic

Princess Diana tribute single – why, oh why?

Tomorrow is, as the entire UK media and beyond have not been shy at reminding us, the 10th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana.

Although I personally can’t see it, I understand why people want to celebrate/mourn/commemorate the passing of her, but it has, to my mind, gone too far.

Yes, she had a profound effect on many people and did a lot of good work to raise the awareness of things like Aids and landmines, but essentially she was just someone from well-born blood who ‘mismarried’ into the Royal family.

That aside, what I can’t understand this year is the need for a tribute single that’s currently available to buy on iTunes. Tribute singles are meant to be recorded in response to a disaster of some sort, such as Band Aid, Ferry Aid, USA for Africa, not because someone died 10 years ago.

What adds to the direness is that the single is pretty shoddy and, while written for laudable reasons, is a pointless and futile exercise.

Hopefully, after this year, the Diana ‘train’ will disappear into the distance for a while and only get brought out on less frequent anniversaries – for all our sakes.

No more Celeb Big Brother

Well, perhaps it will reappear in 2009, but C4 has taken the sensible decision to ‘rest’ Celeb Big Brother after this year’s race row, so no show next January.

There can’t be anyone in the modern world who didn’t hear about the rumpus in which Bollywood ‘star’ Shilpa Shetty (who, to my mind was almost as culpable with her sneering, aloof attitude) was abused and slurred by, among others, Jade Goody.

However, even though, CBB has produced some of the most memorable TV over the past 5 years, including George “Robotics” Galloway’s cat impersonation, Vanessa Feltz’s meltdown and Les Dennis crying, I doubt people will be that upset. The boredom and inanities of the show far outweigh the good bits.

Personally, I’ll be far more happy if they decide to “rest” the regular Big Brother – of course, Channel 4 rely on its viewing figures to keep up their share of the audience in the ratings battle with the other terrestrial channels, so they couldn’t possibly countenance such a popular move – it’s a show that past its sell-by date about five years ago.

The fact that it seems to be longer than the football season tells you much about the place it occupies in British society, but while approximately 20m people in the UK are interested in football, no more than 4m have any glimmer of interest in Big Brother.

Sadly, there haven’t been any similar rows or scandals during this year’s Big Brother, which probably goes some way to explain why it’s off most people’s radar – but then Channel 4 almost inevitably engineered it thus – so we can expect to see it back again next May, with the usual clutch of no-marks, who seriously think it will improve their life to spend a couple of months incarcerated with a similar group of eejits. Haven’t they learned yet?

Britain’s gone potty

Am I alone in finding Paul Potts-mania completely baffling?

For those of you who have been living in a vacuum for the past couple of months, the aforementioned appeared on and won Britain’s Got Talent on ITV, as a mobile phone-selling opera singer.

Since winning, he has released an album which has, predictably, shot to the top of the chart, outselling everything else comprehensively.

What I don’t understand is who buys this stuff? And, more pertinently, why? If people truly want to listen to opera, why not go for the real thing and buy some Enrico Caruso?

At least Enrico was never forced to sing an operatic version of REM’s Everybody Hurts!