Strictly Come Dancing, and why it can't/won't last.

The following is a boring rant with lots of unsubstantiated reactionary guesswork and pathetic self-indulgent opinions on culture.

I hate Strictly Come Dancing. But I don't hate the people who watch it.
It's entertainment. It's made to be entertainment. I'm sad to say that for a long time, I was a bit delusional about hating it.

I think I'm just so used to liking things that, in general, most people don't like that I begin to associate things that I don't like with stupidity.
And that's not to say I think I'm more intelligent than people who watch Strictly, I'm not saying that at all. (I'll do a blog about intelligence later). But in general, I tend to find that counter-culture tends to attract a more intelligent level of person than the mainstream.
But my new thinking points me in the direction that perhaps there is just a lot more people counting as "mainstream" and so it has a wider range of intelligence.

As an example, I can use comedians.
My favourite comedian is Stewart Lee.
My favourite comedian is not Lee Evans.
Using a basic straw poll of my life I can tell you that I know more people who like Lee Evans than I know who like Stewart Lee.
I can also tell you that everyone I know who likes Stewart Lee, I would count as intelligent. And of all the people who like Lee Evans, I know some who are very intelligent, and some who are very stupid, and most variations in the middle.

Now, these days, Stewart Lee might be becoming a bit more mainstream. But he definitely has limited appeal. Lee Evans definitely counts as mainstream. I'm not having a go at him. I don't mind Lee Evans.

But anyway, so the point is, lots of people like Strictly Come Dancing and X-Factor and all that other stuff that I think is rubbish. Lots of people who are much more intelligent than I am.
But I realised I am factoring intelligence far too much into the debate. It is just entertainment, that's all. It doesn't have to have intellectual properties. It doesn't need to make you think.

That's the first point I wanted to make: an acceptance that I was wrong, as usual.

The second point, however, is that Strictly Come Dancing has a limited life span.
Now, I suppose this is obvious. Nothing last forever, especially in fickle TV land.
But it hits home this series with the success of Ann Widdecombe, who is clearly the least skilled dancer, and the least attractive person on the show. And that is the reason she has been successful.

It is a glorified freak-show.
"What shall we do tonight for entertainment?"
"Let's laugh at the fat ugly woman making a fool of herself on TV again"

If you want proof, the exact same thing happened in the last series with John Sargeant. He quit the show for exactly the reason that he had a real chance of winning. Winning on the basis that he was the least talented and people just wanted to laugh at him a bit more.

So the problem arises as what's next for Strictly?

How do you top the entertainment factor of Ann Widdecombe?
We've had a fat, ugly man. Now a fat, ugly woman. What's next?
The American version has already used Heather Mills... she was the next logical step (forgive the pun).
Stephen Hawking perhaps? And then what? The rotting corpse of Michael Jackson? Hitler's skeleton?

It can't last. And it won't.

Groups, and how I can't talk in them.

I'm not very good at meeting people for the first time.
I'm not so bad one on one. If everytime I met someone new we were immediately forced to sit together in a room for perhaps half an hour, I'm sure I could do a good job of making them like me.

Over the years I've built up a strong repetoire of comic observations, mainly about myself, that do very nicely for first meeting someone.
I have standard phrases I always use. They usually make people laugh. Not properly, just mildly.

I can't tell you them. I mean, you could rent them from me for a reasonable fee, but I can't give away good material on a free-to-access blog (perhaps I could implement a Rupert Murdoch-esque pay wall...)

Those phrases don't really work in a group environment.
For a start the chances are that some of the people have heard them before. And if there is one thing I know about comedy, it's that hearing it again is merely an awkward experience. You are forced to politely laugh at something that you are not finding remotely funny, but are aware you found it funny before.

I don't know what to do in groups. I stay quiet. And the problem with staying quiet is that you have then type-cast yourself as "the quiet one". And you can't really escape it. I can't really say to the group:
"If you all individually give me a chance to talk to you one-to-one I firmly believe we'll become close friends, or perhaps lovers *winking to the ladies*"

I have neither the confidence, nor the wish to be labeled a wierdo.

See, even simple phrases can become funny with a little hard work.

I went into Subway on Monday and was quite shocked by the words I used to answer the question of what I wanted.
"A six-inch Italian"

That's just the first of a number of cock-based humour I will be implementing into this blog.

On a funnier note, I saw Stewart Lee at the Brighton Dome.
He was great. But I suppose I was expecting him to be.
His Russell Howard material was epic.

Psychics, and their multiple skills.

Sorry, lots of blogs today. Inspiration strikes and all that.

If you watch as much Dave as I do then you'll have seen this clip a few times. And seriously whichever researcher who found this for Would I Lie To You is a genuis. Just thought I'd post it up because I remembered it and it made me laugh.

I'm in a minority.

Tom and I did a trade.

He watched some Stewart Lee, and in return I watched The Inbetweeners, comedies that we respectively like.

I had never seen a full episode of Inbetweeners before, but I understood the premise of the show, and had seen the occasional part.

So I watched "The Fashion Show". It was okay. But I mean, it's a comedy, and it never made me laugh. I really don't want to make it sound like I believe I am too mature to laugh at a man with a testical hanging out of his speedos, or a character whose jokes all appear to be the fact that he says swear words. I just did not find them funny.

I felt like the smart guy could be funny. But he never said anything that I laughed at.

I'm sorry Tom, I'll concede that I enjoy How I Met Your Mother, but Inbetweeners, no.

Lying, the secret to being funny.

When you hear about what a woman is looking for in a man an almost universal appetite is that of a "sense of humour".

I don't quite know how you could define "sense of humour". I think you'd be pretty hard pressed to find someone who doesn't laugh. I don't know, maybe I am blessed to hang around with an unnaturally high percentage of people who find things funny, but in general, even the least amusing of my friends enjoy comedy. We aren't German.

So why is it then that "sense of humour" is such a highly valued personality trait?

I was asked in a recent job interview, which the more mean-spirited amongst you will be pleased to know I was rejected for, "what is your sense of humour like?"
Now, I don't think there is a sensible way to answer that question without sounding like you don't have a sense of humour.

"What is your sense of humour like?"
A) "I have a sense of humour" No.
B) "I have a mastery of the comedic wit" No.
C) "HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAAH" No.
D) "Excellent." No.
E) "What do you get if you put a baby in a blender? A erection" No.
F) "My friends say I should do stand-up, but I just say what I think" NO. No you pretencions dick.

I tried an equally unfunny way of proving that I had a sense of humour but, in a case of impressive irony, it's not really funny or interesting enough for me to bother to write it here.

Clearly, then, proving you have a sense of humour is difficult.

However, if stand-up comedians have taught us anything, it's that it doesn't matter if you're not actually funny naturally, you just have to be a decent liar.

Real life, you see, is rarely funny. And certainly not in the sense that re-telling it might be funny. That's why we have the phrase "you had to be there", to save us from when it turns out that the funny thing that happened to us, actually was blank-face-ingly dull.

There are so many obviously made up stories that comedians tell, it gets actually pretty uncomfortable and embarrassing to listen to.

I recall Russell Howard thrilling a Mock The Week audience with a tale of how "his mate Dave" once said to him, without any humour, that "those vuvuzelas are so loud they could kill a monkey".
It got a laugh, annoyingly.

Now, either three things are possible here:

1) Russell has just made up that story, because it's mildly funny to imagine someone being so STUPID they would believe that the loudness of a vuvuzela would kill a monkey.

2) In reality, Dave had made this comment, perhaps as one of those ridiculous moments you have with your friends, and said it to make them laugh. The quote therefore was out of context, and was pretty much a lie.

3) Russell Howard hangs around with genuine idiots.

I would say that one or two is definitely the most likely.

So we can see that Russell Howard was paid good money by the BBC to lie.

Because as the old adage goes: it's funny because it's true.
Except it almost certainly is not.