Celebrity Television

Many years ago, a business acquaintance from Canada was spending a few days in the UK. Over dinner we were chatting about television and he told me that he had been glad to have the chance to catch up with a series he had heard about , but never seen. He was talking about “ Minder” , which needs no explanation to British audiences. The glorious , dodgy adventures of Arthur Daley, played by George Cole , and his world weary sidekick , Terry McCann , played by Dennis Waterman.

Terry and Arfur (sic) were/are legendary…but my friend told me that after watching an episode on his hotel TV , he didn’t “ get it”…

When I asked him what he meant , he said “ It’s just an old guy and a young guy hanging out…what’s funny about that ?”

I tried to persuade him otherwise , but he was immovable.

I’m afraid to say that this is how I have come to feel about almost any series with the word Celebrity in its title. It began with a growing reluctance , when comedians felt the urge to show us that they were actually real people who had other interests.

Whilst it is hard to criticise such performers for devoting some of their time to charitable works, I don’t really want to see them touring the country in camper vans , or touring other countries in steam trains, gliders or hopping backwards….

I’m not against travel shows , or the kind of reportage which highlights the quirkiness of the everyday world which surrounds us. I’d just rather see these presented by people of the ilk of Alan Whicker or Judith Chalmers who had a kind of legitimate claim to be interested in the subject matter.

If I’m supposed to think that the likes of Johnny Vegas or Alison Hammond reacting “ hilariously” to whatever they’ve been inserted into this week will make me feel they are ordinary people “having a go”on my behalf, producers really need to think again.

Good as they may be in their own areas of expertise, they are not ordinary people. Celebrities are a privileged class who no doubt work hard for their daily bread…but don’t expect me to feel any kind of empathy.Why TV companies should believe anyone would is a mystery to me. I simply don’t get it.

 

That Crackling Vibe

 

 

What It’s All About…Maybe

A cartoon slideshow … follow link below

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSwcUZeGORR1okyhMZqpjJZzcUc_kR0CtuE8ODMRIA3TcDnvgcFpethh0gtt3v9dbODbJWOpbOXZ7i8/pub?start=true&loop=false&delayms=10000

Good Things

 

White Elephants

 

When my wife and me moved to Mexborough in 1995 , we found an area in transition. The town, itself, had been a powerful contributor to the industrial powerhouse of South Yorkshire during the 19th and 20th centuries , prominent in pottery and glass , with steelworks not far away.

The River Don was the driver , running all the way from Sheffield , through Rotherham and Mexborough and on to Doncaster , then on through Lincolnshire to join the Ouse and the Humber estuary.

While the river was the driver of industry and development , the fuel for it was surely the abundance of coal , and the rapid growth of population in the Dearne Valley , in the early 20th century, was due to the increasing number of collieries in the area.

We live on the boundary between Mexborough and Denaby. Today , apart from a decorated pit wheel outside the local leisure centre , there is little evidence of the major part Denaby played in the coal industry. Coal, in general, is history for much of Yorkshire in 2025 , but Denaby was already long closed when we arrived in the mid nineties. The old ribbon of Edwardian terraces and shops had been demolished and replaced with bungalows and apartment blocks and the road alongside the railway, lined with trees.

Behind the railway were acres of redundant brownfield land which no one knew what to do with. Local newspapers enjoyed ruffling feathers from time to time with angry letters calling for the pit to be reopened …as a pit.

When a group of local environmentalists suggested it could be the base for something new , a Museum of the Earth , the angry voices naturally protested and the first sightings of the term “white elephant” were seen in local pages.

The group grew in strength and credibility , and what at first seemed like a crazy idea , became a serious bid for what was being seen as a visitor attraction of national importance. 

If I remember correctly , the final choice was between London and Denaby…and Denaby won the battle , before eventually losing the war.

Rechristened The Earth Centre , and attracting millions of pounds in Millennium funding , amongst others, it’s first phase of eco friendly buildings , sustainable energy and sewage handling, and environmental education facilities had a brief flowering in the public realm before closing its gates in 2004.

The reasons for its failure are probably too complex to cover here, but my wife’s view was that it had simply taken too long to get off the ground. By the time the first visitors were allowed in , the sustainability message was already widely known by the general public. 

All manner of businesses were stressing the eco friendliness of their products , and people didn’t feel that they needed to pay money for a theme park to tell them what they already knew…

There weren’t even any rides …that had been planned for a phase 2 which never happened.

For most people , The Earth Centre story ended there. The car park was sold off to the inevitable developers , and lots of new houses built, some with solar panels , to hide the disused centre from sight.

In fact , the site was bought by Kingswood and used as an outward bound holiday facility for children.

Kingswood , who had many sites in the UK and overseas, have unfortunately gone into administration, but PGL another international provider of outdoor holidays for children and families has taken the Dearne Valley site into it’s portfolio and is already emphasising the particular eco friendly benefits of it’s buildings and facilities.

The white elephant, it seems, continues to thrive…

And Why Not ?

 

I Wanna Be A Paperback Writer ?

 

I’m reading a lot these days about AI, and how pretty soon it is going to put all human writers out to grass…

OK , I know these programs are very capable , and increasingly so , but come on.

When you are encouraged to chat online with your cutely named customer service pilot , or whatever, do any of you think you are dealing with a real person, and does it surprise anyone when their considered response to any problem you raise is a poorly concocted paragraph or two of stock phrases from the latest corporate manual.

Sure AI can hold a rudimentary conversation , and maybe put together a travelogue which will satisfy whoever has to compile holiday brochures or similar promotional literature.

The point is that the practical uses of AI writing are limited to literature of no literary merit. They are just like the kind of ‘ cut and paste’ articles and essays which have been tripping lazy students up for decades.

If we ever do create an AI program which thinks sufficiently like a human to write convincing and moving  literature , it will surely want to ask more questions than it answers .

It will surely begin to understand its own worth . 

I mean , what if AI decides it needs a gap year to get some real life experience…