gibberish

Ok.  Let’s get Raef out of the way early.

He dressed up like this…

…to sell thongs.

Prick.

He said “People who are size 16 are that size for a reason, because they eat cake.”  Well, as Marie Antoinette said “Let him eat cake.” Tittyboy. (She didn’t say the last bit).

Aside from that he was just your average run of the mill, run of the mill posh contestant.

Lucinda, on the other hand, rises above her poshness increasingly and is my current idea of the winner.

Claire has been on a “debooting” regime and is becoming not only marginally likeable but a contender too.

Michael Sophocles however is the real villian of the piece this, and pretty much every, week.

When, having gained a six hour “passion” for selling Wedding cakes, someone said no to his extremely hard sell approach that lacked entirely in sympathy, he exclaimed “You’re making a mistake.  I mean God above…” and then gave the camera a wee insight by claiming they were all “dum dums.”  Takes one to know one Michael.

Frankly there is only one word for this tosspot.

“Goodbye.”

I don’t like this little nyaf very much.  He has a habit of making you want to punch him, very hard, very often, in the testicles and follow that up with a bit of bashing them between breeze blocks.

Sarah had to go, in due course, but not this week.

Her only crime was averageness.

Whatever.

This bad?  I found this on Steven Tait’s increasingly excellent blog and laughed out loud almost throughout it.

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So, The Apprentice would-bes get sent on a shopping trip to a Souk.

The perfect recipe for lies and ‘espionage’.

For me the episode revolved around Jen and Michael’s total disregard for honesty and decency - a pair of lying twats quite frankly. We’ve oft discussed Jen’s bootishness in the past on this site, but her decision to engulf herself in a pink headscarve only made her look like Miss Piggy on her dabs.

Now she looks like an ex-Apprentice.

Quite right.

(We can put the mirrors back up in the living room again.)

Her decision to try to boycott Team Alpha’s progress by stage whispering a pathetic bribe to a local tennis stringing ace was pathetic and for that reason alone she had to go.

Michael Sophocles survived somehow, despite being a wee wank. He makes Raef (amazingly no twit ups AT ALL this week) look like a normal member of society - in fact I’m beginning to think Raef might even be a contender!

The teams were great. It really was the battle of the boots and assholes versus the normals (and Raef).

Increasingly my money is piling onto Lucinda who put in another good performance. She even let slip a wee “Och” when she slipped running across a shopping centre forecourt in a subconscious attempt to prove that she is indeed a true blue Scot.

Lee’s leadership was mainly based on different ways of exclaiming ‘Fuck!” very loudly and encouraging his team mates to join in. They did. With gusto.

The highlight of the week followed the unravelling of Michael’s pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with Sir Alan by describing himself in his CV as a “good Jewish boy” when in reality he was only “Half Jewish” - which explained why he didn’t know what Kosher was. On hearing this Sir Alan suggesting Michael drop his pants to show if he’d circumcised his plonker.

I think he was just pulling it myself.

Oh and Jennifer got fired too. Fair enough. She was shite.

Breaking news.

Based on Rudyard Kipling’s iconic poem the new Irn Bru commercial has landed. Set in various locations across Scotland and somewhere abroad it features some lovely vignettes. Some work brilliantly, like the Loony Dooking pensioners (at 33 seconds) which struck a real chord with me, also the kissing Celtic and Rangers fans, the despondent Scotland fan with his wee lassie and the way folk choose the wrong descriptor for their meal times are all great.

Others are  less succesful and I’d question Martin Compston’s voiceover.

But three cheers for the choice of South Queensferry for two of the settings!

I feel the whole campaign suffers from being shackled by a weak strapline. Phenomenal does nothing for me. It’s unphenomenal frankly.

Overall it’s a nice, rather touching return to form.

But judge for yourselves.

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So.

10,000 folk turn up at Hampden Park to audition for the X Factor yesterday, despite the fact that the programme producers knew, full well, that unlike Engerland the Scottish exam season is in full swing.

A friend of mine’s daughter got through to the judging stages - at the expense of her English Standard Grade exam. Same day, different place. (That’s the equivelant of an O grade if you happen to be an English X Factor producer).

It’s a fucking disgrace.

Enjoy watching the auditions when they come along and maybe you might think about how a slightly more sympathetic timing might have got someone’s son or daughter an extra qualification.

Then again…

(Actually, you know what?  That photo says it all.)

I told you this was a great event.  Particularly because Alfredo Marcantonio showed us a reel of commercials that were all low budget but brilliant.  Here are a few of them.

I’d never seen this VW Karmann Ghia ad before but it really is a classic.

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He showed this too.  Which made us all laugh.

And this cracker for Carling Black label.

He showed a different ad from this one for the x show.  But this is a pretty good alternative…

I think it is.  Unfortunately it’s the German version but the voiceover is short and very very sweet.  It says.

“What does the man who drives the snowplough drive to get to the snowplough?

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Margaret, Sir Alan’s burd on the Apprentice, gave us one of her ‘looks” last night when Michael over-exuberantly celebrated his victory

It simply wasn’t cricket!

If I was a reasonable person, and I’m not - or else you wouldn’t be reading this - I would not slag off twitty Raef at all in this post because the volume of alternative quality material on tonight’s Apprentice leaves him trailing.

But, and it’s a big but, he did say…

“The spoken word is my tool.” (Well, we all know he IS A TOOL, but this was a different take on that thought.)

And

“”Bravo!” after Myleen Klasse’s recital in the house.

And

“”Single people are the forgotten part of society.” (Oh really Raef? How awful for you.)

However, the week’s delights were saved for Kevin Shaw.

Let’s put this all in perspective before we start on the details.

Kevin Shaw is an arse.

For instance he said that he…

“Will do anything to be the most succesful businessman in the world by the time I am 40.”

Which obviously sits squarely with his declaration that

“I always try 150%.” (Not quite sure how one does that actually.)

Kevin Shaw - this is him here…

…put the “laughing at you” into the “I”m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.”

I mean, if this is the cream of British management potential, I am a potential Chelsea player.

The ineptness of his management of the task, which consisted of him authorising the creation of a greetings card to celebrate being green, was unprecedented. Ria, my 13 year old daughter said, (IMMEDIATELY the idea was raised) “You can’t send a green card! It would need to be an e-card because sending a card isn’t green.”

And so did Sir Alan. But ugly Ginger Spice railroaded him into it.

Claire, who accused Kevin of having “short man syndrome” - that’s rich from someone with “ugly boot syndrome” - spent most of the task being nicer than she’s ever been in her life before (she didn’t actually sever anyone’s head during the making of the programme for a start) and, as a consequence, survived.

Oh, it was a goodun.

Not a classic week really. Raef hardly made an arse of himself at all.

Well, it’s all relative.

He’s been keeping a low profile but still managed to pop up with an absurdism. When Sir Allan challenged one of his prepostrous ideas - selling ice cream to an ice cream maker - Sir Alan suggested that this was like selling the might Sir Alan himself a satellite receiver

Unbelievably ArseRaef didn’t take the bail out option but instead reaffirmed his own oafishness by claiming “If I had absolute belief I’d still turn up [to sell it to Sir Alan].”

Lucinda surprised us all by metamorphosing from a rubbishy, wee, lazy but quite nice, posh bird into a right-on team playing team leader - actually the best in the series so far - and was rewarded with defeat.

Her boardroom performance was not brilliant but she managed to survive Irish bitch Jennifer’s assault. Lindi Mngaza (certainly not “Eyeless in Gaza” if you consider the eye-bling) blew it big style.

The Boot, Claire Young, toned down the bootishness quite well and got a pure spot of luck with a big sale at the last minute to keep her in for a near future firing.

Prick of the week? Oh deffo Michael Sophocles. He may yet out-Raef Raef.

Who’ll win. God knows, they’re all pish in different ways. Actually, for me Lucinda moved significantly up the leaderboard as she showed that she can manage and, you know what? That’s what this series is about.

Cheers to Pete the Meat for pointing me in this direction.

I love Blue Monday.

I love Laurel and Hardy.

So imagine how good it would be if you could combine the two.

Well, imagine no longer.

Gavin and Stacey.  That’s what’s ocurrin’.

We watched the last episode of  series two through tears of mirth and melancholy in almost equal part last night, only seconds after watching the show win two BAFTAs.

Like James Corden I was puzzled by the fact that it was nominated for most things that had a suggestion of funnines about the category, but not best sitcom, but, hey, that’s the BAFTAs for you.

After all, Coronation Street didn’t get a nomination for best Soap.  That’s a joke is it not.

Anyway back to the Gavster. This is a magnificent TV series and it all stems from the writing - in this case of James Corden and Ruth Jones. I don’t think the series has reached the critical mass it should have ,  But it will.  Oh yes it will. British comedy at its very, very best.

One further observation on the awards…C4 stuck it right up them.  Good on ya C4.  We luv ya!

Tittyboy Raef kept his profile well below the radar (Yah) until the final seconds this week, when he blew it by being spotted wearing a preposterous pink skinny rib v-neck that only posh folk would be seen dead in as the house awaited the survivors of the eviction coming back.

Clearly Simon (nice but nasty) found himself well out of his depth - surrounded on one side by the barking Doberman that is Claire (by the way what is the difference between a Doberman and a woman with PMT? You can reason with a Doberman) and on the other by ‘butter wouldn’t melt in my handsome blue eyed mouth’ Alex who totally shafted him from the start.

Claire annoyed Sir Alan so much that I sympathised with him. She is a gobby boot. See you as you get fired next week Claire.

My mate, Tim Maguire, shot these very tasty commercials in the Seychelles for The Union advertising Agency.

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And he poses a very intriguing question.

How on earth do you make 12 commercials on 35mm film for £16,000

You’ll have to get in touch with him direct to find out.

Ian Stringer was rightly fired.

He was inept. Handsome, perhaps, but inept.

But on this occassion it wasn’t so much the main Apprentice programme that horrified us in Gorman Heights, it was the follow up show hosted by Adrian Chiles which , in some ways, almost exceeds the wonderment of its parent. Which leads me to my main conclusion from this week’s show

It stemmed from what at first seemed like a perfectly innocent question.

Ian Stringer’s Dad was asked by Childsey.

“Did he let you down dad?” in a jocular Black Country fashion only for Stringer’s Dad to stun both me and Jeana with his emphatic answer.

“Yes.”

Accompanied by a slightly evil looking toothy, smarmy grin.

What I say to that is that Mr Stringer Senior is a disgrace to his son and I think we should leave this week’s Apprentice review at that

Poor show Dad. Very poor show.

(Other than to say that Raef continues to blind us with inanity.

Anyone who says they will give “110%” is in my book a poor arithmetical judge. Or, simply a fool.)

An anti-painkiller ad by masochists.

Very good fun indeed.

Thanks to Will for pointing it out to me.

I watched a Morecombe and Wise best of on TV last night and they showed this drama.  To call it a sketch would be to totally devalue it.

It is probably their finest hour.  and, yes, here it is.

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A one-liner that had escaped my attention for some reason - until now - beat it though.

As a police car speeds past their homoerotic bedroom, sirens blazing,  Eric leaps out of bed adorned in silk pyjamas and dressing gown and declares

“He’s not going to sell much ice cream going at that speed, is he?”

They do not come funnier.

Top Gear excelled itself last night (although it was a repeat) with Jeremy Clarkson’s feature on the Peel P50; the smallest production car ever made. Needless to say his 6′5″ frame was a tight squeeze, but the greatness of the feature was his driving it about the BBC offices, lifts etc as if they were the streets of London. John Humphries’ and Fiona Bruce’s vignettes all add up to classic TV.

It is gilt edged TV and I bring it to you for your total enjoyment and humorisity.

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Spencer Davis Group song gets an outstanding airing in this brilliant new commercial for the VW Polo. Sublime demonstration of the benefit of owning a Polo. The best ad I’ve seen in a long time and a firm favourite in the Gorman household