The Wagatha Christie Case Parts 1 and 2 : Guardian Today In Focus Podcast

Today in Focus has long been one of my favourite podcasts for its in depth coverage of the news of the day. Usually it’s deadly serious and very informative without a strong political agenda.

The last two days however, in the face of the global negativity we are endlessly enduring, has been a lightweight, delightful revelation as it has explored the motivations behind the so called ‘Wagatha Christie’ case in which Coleen Rooney (Wagatha) has accused Rebecca Vardy (Grass) of selling her private Instagram stories to the Sun newspaper after creating an elaborate means by which to trap her.

Vardy claims Rooney’s accusation is libellous and has taken Rooney all the way to the top civil court in the UK at the cost, to each, of over £1m.

It’s actually a hilarious story about ego and greed with, in my view, Rooney the wronged one but Vardy the potential victor.

The Guardian use this as a deep dive in to WAG (Wives and Girlfriends of English footballers) culture, privacy and the UK’s antiquated libel laws.

So there’s something for everyone and, if on Friday you want more serious stuff, we’ll no doubt be back to a diet of Johnson and Putin.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

My word of the day: Bowdlerisation.

n.bowdlerisation – the act of deleting or modifying all passages considered to be indecent.

I have written about this before but I had no idea it had a term.  So thanks to Terena Bell in today’s Guardian for this almost life changing insight..

Bowdlerisation is when f*ck*ng w**** newspapers, for example, use *’s to bleep our letters from words like c*nt so that they are apparently less offensive.

But we all know what a c*nt is.

A c*nt is Don*ld Tr*mp and apparently there’s a trend for people to bowdlerise his name in exactly the way I just did.

I fucking love that.

No I REALLY l*ve that.

The Guardian never bowdlerises.  But hilariously The S*n and The M**l do it constantly.

That’s because both newspapers are c*nts.

So I’m a happy boy.

Fuck you Don*ld Tr*mp.

 

 

Banksy. Polemicist or profiteer?

This video appeared in the Guardian this morning and inadvertently made Banksy the butt of extreme liberal criticism for, at best, profiteering from Syrian unrest and, at worst, showing tacit support for Islamic extremism in a country in the midst of turmoil.

On Youtube it has had a different reaction.  Mostly silly political rhetoric or outright praise.

There can be no doubt the end is very reminiscent of Four Lions and I didn’t see that getting a “right on” kicking.

Me, I just thought it was hilarious and I hope you do too.

Swearing. Just how bad is it?

I suppose this is a pet subject of mine.

So, I was delighted to stumble upon the Guardian’s POV.

The Guardian style guide offers the following advice:

We are more liberal than any other newspapers, using language that our competitors would not. But even some readers who agree with Lenny Bruce that “take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government” might feel that we sometimes use such words unnecessarily.
The editor’s guidelines are as follows:

• First, remember the reader, and respect demands that we should not casually use words that are likely to offend.
• Second, use such words only when absolutely necessary to the facts of a piece, or to portray a character in an article; there is almost never a case in which we need to use a swearword outside direct quotes.
• Third, the stronger the swearword, the harder we ought to think about using it.
• Finally, never use asterisks, which are just a cop-out.

Now that last point is absolutely on the money and should be standard practice in the Western world.

Edinbugh during the Festival and Fringe. Surely the best place on the planet. (Maybe even compared to Glastonbury, dare I say it.)

So far 22 people have stopped me in the street to admire my T shirt. That’s The Festival for ya.

Yesterday Jeana and I had the perfect festival day.

We started at 12 with Avenue Q by The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s MA students.  So, not a professional production, but as near as damn it because these guys are the cream of the student crop in Scotland, and beyond, and they’re in their final year.

It was devastatingly funny, extremely well sung and technically appeared flawless.  I had no previous benchmark to compare the show unlike many of the audience (the guy sitting next to me had seen it seven times in the West End and on Broadway – he loved it).  If you don’t know the show try to see it this week.  In a nutshell it’s Sesame Street gone bad.  Featuring a cast of human operated puppets it’s set at the seedy end of NYC (on avenue Q) where a melting pot of nationalities, sexual orientations and monsters live in a run down street.  We hear in musical form how everyone is a little bit racist, what to do if you find out you’re gay, How it ‘sucks’ be me, what to do with a BA in English and the pleasure of schadenfreude.

The numbers are universally good, the script cracking, the puppetry mostly really good but what makes the show sparkle is the interaction between the actors and their puppets.  You can’t decide which to focus on as the performance behind the brightly coloured characters by an all black dressed ensemble is electrifying.

An absolutely stand out show in a terrific venue (Assembly on the mound).  The future of Scotland’s (musical) theatre is assured on the basis of this.

After a light lunch and a pint of the highly superior Caesar Augustus (by Williams Brothers of Alloa) we returned to Assembly for the much lauded, multi-award winning Nirbhaya.  (The Indian word for fearless).

This was a stark contrast to our earlier entertainment.  If indeed it could be branded “entertainment”.

It was inspired by the brutal rape and murder on a Delhi bus of Jyoti Singh Pandey in December 2012 and brings us six cameo stories of Indian sexual abuse survivors.  These women all went through the stories they tell, for real, and one in particular by Sneha Jawale tells us how she was attacked by her husband with acid.  The result is there as plain as day to be seen,; her face and body mutilated and scarred, her story told through a flood of tears.

The show is book-ended by Pandey’s story and is dimly lit throughout with snatches of Indian and Western music that add atmosphere.

The stories are harrowing and half of the audience were openly sobbing their eyes out.  A young man we met in the Queue on the way in told us this was a life changing event.

I’m sad to say that for me (and Jeana) it was far from that.

You can’t take away the honesty and integrity of the piece or the clever staging, or the excellent performances but something failed to grip us.

Both of us.

Perhaps it’s too voyeuristic.  There was no programme and no notes about it so we weren’t aware if we were listening to stories of others or biographies.

For me I think the flaw lay in the direction which made it feel too staged, almost contrived in a strange sort of way, which is a shame because it is anything but.  As Lyn Gardner says in the Guardian “it veers dangerously close to well-meaning theatrical misery memoir”, and I agree.

Despite my reservations I have to recommend it though because you cannot ignore the importance of the message or the response (including a standing ovation) of many of the audience.

Afterwards the cast stood waiting to talk to anybody who felt the need.  That, for me, was the most moving moment.

After the show we had a beer with my Pals Mark and Fiona and my pal Vince’s daughter Louise which was great

Last stop of the day was a few relaxed drinks at Summerhall (the Dick Vet Bar) with David Reid and his lady Nicola Dunn.  I love Summerhall, it somehow recalls a bygone age of Fringe scuzziness.  It feels real, fresh and amateur despite its arms length awards list.  And they sell Barney’s Beer.

I also met the star of HeLa, Adura Onashile, a new one woman show who had been the case worker in Cora Bissett’s much lauded Roadkill.  And lovely she was too.

 

Charlie Brooker. The new Chris Morris?

Black Mirror.  Part 1.

Fantastic.

A David Cameron lookylikey Prime Minister is put to the sword to defend the Royal Family as a nation’s favourite Princess, despite being Ginger and therefore reminiscent of Fergie, is kidnapped

The ransom?  He has to make love to a pig at 4pm on every national TV station.

Utter genius.

Screamingly hilarious.

Brilliantly scripted, acted and directed.

TV was never better.

And all in the spirit of art.

Everything was funny about it.   I laughed so loud that the pig next door woke up.

Charlie Brooker is now not only the nation’s best columnist, he is a contender for the nation’s best satirist and screenwriter.

This week’s Guardian In pictures entry – Theme is memories.

I entered this shot (not entered for a few weeks and never win anyway).

But it was obvious choice.

I took a bunch of photos of my Dad the weekend after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

He knew, and I did too, because our eyes caught each other (nothing had to be said), that these shots were his valedictory photoshoot; and so it proved to be.

This week’s Guardian In Pictures entry. Theme is “elements”

I put in this shot of fireworks at the Bank of Scotland Festival Fireworks last year because it looks so elemental”.

I was gonna put in this shot but reckon there will be a lot of that stuff going in that features the weather.

This week’s Guardian in pictures entry. Theme is Flash.

One of these days I might get a mention.

This week I had two options.

This one is “Flash” Ken who I met on a beach in Weston Super Mare and is the one I entered…

…and this is one which I spotted in South Queensferry at the fair a fair few years ago; or rather the camera spotted it in a flash.

Swearing

I am indebted to my friend Phil Adams for making me think about this subject, of which my regular readers will know I am very fond.  This morning he wrote a brilliant and highly amusing post on his excellent blog, Sawdust.  It’s about an issue that makes my blood boil.  The lame-assed censorship of swearing, in the media.

Take this example from last month’s Times (One of the worst offenders as it happens)…

“Student rioters were incensed as they charged on Whitehall.  Said one, ‘the f***ing coalition are a bunch of c***s.’ ”

OK, I actually made that up but it’s a typical sentence you might read any day in any quality newspaper; except the Guardian who would have literally reported the quote.

Do they think we are complete idiots, that we can’t work out what letters the asterisks replace.

In his post Adams beautifully argues that this is in fact a form of reverse psychology, it’s a stopper, because it actually brings MORE attention to the swearword.  You re-read it, maybe even saying “fucking” out loud and if you’re a reader of the Daily Mail or Express you might even write in outrage to the editor.

Why not paraphrase the quote or leave it out altogether if swearing is such a challenge to your sensitivities?

And while I’m on it why does the Sun think it’s OK to show a picture of a topless girl next to a paragraph (headline even)  that reads “It’s all a load of b*ll*cks.”?  Which is most offensive to the greater number of people?   I mean, Jesus Christ, Rodney and Dell Boy said bollocks repeatedly on prime time TV for years, so I’m pretty sure it’s not even a swear word.  OK it’s a step up from my Grandmother’s old favourite: Ruddy.   But I have seen Bollocks b*ll*cked up  many times in the red tops.

This is one of my all time favourite poems which elucidates my point to perfection.

This was the moment that changed the history of swearing on TV.  I mean it’s hilarious.  The juxtaposition of posh old Bill Grundy and the trying oh so hard Sex Pistols…

It’s all captured beautifully in this book I received for Christmas.  I read it whenever I sit on the sh*tter.

For those of you with a nervous disposition the title of the book isn

Let’s return to the Guardian; where others write *rse (I kid you not) or trail Tarantino’s movie as Inglorious B******’s the Guardian will happily go for the full  Bhuna.  No one is afraid of the swearie police at the  Guardian and that’s one of the reasons I love it so.  Don’t like it?  Don’t buy it.  Just like you are, or aren’t, reading this post this far.

So, that’s that off my chest.  I can go and make the f****g breakfast now.