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TV & Radio

TV & Radio Category

Television and radio programme reviews, trailers, highlights, twilights and cinema news. Also the neglected gems from years past.

The Hidden Messages In Brighton’s Christmas Lights

MEANWHILE…in Brighton:

Posted: 17th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Watch The Most Complained About Thing On TV In 2013

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IF you want complaints, who should you go after? The working classes? No. They can take a joke and besides, they know corporations don’t listen to them at all.

Maybe the middle classes? That’d be stupid. They invented satire so they’d laugh it off, even if jokes at their expense made them cry inside for the rest of their comfortable days. How about posh people? Posh people are clueless and don’t waste their time watching television. They’ve got cellars to maintain and animals to shoot.

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Posted: 17th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Watch Bob Dylan’s TV Singing Debut In The Madhouse on Castle Street

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IN January 1963, an unknown young Bob Dylan got some work in a (now lost) BBC play The Madhouse on Castle Street. He sings The Ballad of the Gliding Swan. The Sunday night play also features Dylan’s first televised performance of Blowin’ in the Wind.

He was paid a fee of 500 guineas to play the role of Bobby.

 

* While in London, Dylan stayed with Martin Carthy, who helped introduce him to the burgeoning folk club circuit and who remembers chopping up a piano for firewood to counter the effects of that long cold winter. Dylan became a regular figure on the folk scene and even found the time to cut an LP in a record shop on Charing Cross Road, under the pseudonym of Blind Boy Grunt.

Dylan’s stay also resulted in a burst of original songs (Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright, Bob Dylan’s Dream) which were heavily influenced by his exposure to traditional English folk music.

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Posted: 16th, December 2013 | In: Flashback, Music, TV & Radio | Comment


In Which Jimmy The Frog Gets Eaten

DOGS v FROGS:

Posted: 16th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Tennessee’s Stella And Ella Brown Perform Their Pantomime As Perry Como Croons Silent Night

STELLA and Ella (she’s on the left) are the Brown Twin Sisters. They are the stars of the Mull Singing Convention, with their ‘pantomime’ to to the Christmas classic Silent Night, sung by PerryComo.

Every Christmas, co-hosts Charlotte ‘Lady ‘ Mull – widow of evangelical preacher Jacob Bazzel Mull – and Gail Shelby introduced the Browns’ show to the folks in Tennessee.

Posted: 14th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Top 5 Sign Language Moments That Don’t Involve Nelson Mandela

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AFTER a man, stood onstage at Nelson Mandela’s memorial waving his arms around wildly, making up sign language as he went along, leaving deaf South Africans wondering if they were watching someone being attacked by invisible wasps, it got us appreciating what those who do sign-language can do.

They appear on TV, at press conferences and as groups of children during emotional renditions of songs at opening ceremonies. They even have sign language at some festivals now.

And, with absolute and maximum respect for what they do, they can be very amusing sometimes. With that, let us look at the Top 5 signing moments.

No. The massive charlatan at Nelson Mandela’s gig doesn’t count this time round.

 

Sign Language Meets Donk

Donk took over small towns for a summer and, due to the nature of such a heavy beat, it could actually be perfect for deaf people. However, they shouldn’t be denied the hilarious lyrics of ‘Put A Donk On It’. One signer on TV impressively kept up with the rapid fire lyrics. A lesser human would’ve been doubled up with body cramps one verse in. This is probably the best video on the internet.

 

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Posted: 14th, December 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment


I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas (Without The Asians, Blacks, Or Jews)

JOSH Cake is dreaming of a White Christmas:

Posted: 12th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment (1)


‘Brad Pitt’ Headbutts ‘No Relation’ At All

IN this segment from Snatch The Director’s Cut, Brad Pitt recounts life in the bare knuckle fighting game:

Posted: 12th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


How TV Works: Anna Jardine Jones’ Vending Machine

YOU might know Anna Jardine Jones from her presenting job on Super Casino, one of the UK’s premier late-night TV casino shows. But how did she get the job? What’s her motivation? Is it all glamour? And what’s the truth about that vending machine?

Posted: 10th, December 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment


28 Up South Africa: A More Fitting Tribute To Nelson Mandela Than the Usual Guff

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28 UP is the greatest TV franchise ever created. It’s not the one that has made the most money or the most famous but it is the greatest, a true document of human experience that has stretched across decades and charted its beautiful, broken, bruised and buoyant quality. The children of the original Up series are now adults, some have stuck with the show throughout, others have come and gone from the frame. Their lives have opened up to us every 7 years and for many those ‘characters’ have been anchor points in their own lives.

28 Up South Africa accidentally arrived this week at a striking time. Nelson Mandela’s death fresh in my mind I watched the reality of modern South Africa for the children of apartheid, the generation that has been stalked by and brutalised by the dread hand of HIV and AIDS. Mandela changed South Africa forever but he was not and could not be a saint or a superhero. In his final moments, he will have been justified in smiling at what he helped usher in with sheer force of will and determination but also carrying a heaviness in his heart that inequality and pain still dog his people, both black and white, so relentlessly.

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Posted: 10th, December 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment


BBC Defends Mandela Coverage Against 1,000 Loons Who Complained About It

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IT is only when important figures die that you start to reflect and realise what you had before your eyes all this time. In Nelson Mandela, we had a Martin Luther King Jr. We had a Gandhi. We had a Malcolm X. Of course, these people were divisive, but everyone should applaud what they aimed to do – stop unfair, inhumane treatment of people who aren’t white.

To some Mandela was a terrorist. To most, he was a man who defied a racist regime, went to prison and stayed strong in his belief to do the right thing and, inexplicably, he managed it. Apartheid, initially a ghettoisation of people, dressed up all cuddly by White Supremacists as ‘helping us all to be better neighbours’ rather than ‘Hey! Black guy! Whitey will have where you’re stood, ’til the horizon, thanks! And we’ll kill you if you complain!’, was lead by Mandela and the whole world rejoiced because he never gave up in his quest to end segregation.

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Posted: 9th, December 2013 | In: Politicians, Reviews, TV & Radio | Comments (4)


As Seen On Super Casino: The Babestation Mix Up

DO you ever watch Super Casino on Sky channel 862? It’s just like being in a real casino, albeit without the sticky floors, Stag dos and that woman in the lavender-tinted glasses who hovers. It’s just a great to spend money on a ball going around and around and around a table. But take care. One sofa punter seem sto have gotten his late-night Sky viewing mixed up. It’s not Babestation. Anna Jardine Jones does not do that sort of thing:

 

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Posted: 9th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Star Trek Sing Let It Snow

THE Star Trek crew will now sing Let it Snow:

Posted: 8th, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Freddy Is The World’s Greatest Grape Tosser Into A Belgian’s Open Mouth

ANORAK loves a world record, the more specious the better. So, we like Joris (George) Goens, 53, the town-crier of Furnes, breaking the world record for ‘grape catching with the mouth in three minutes’. He caught 223 grapes. That he chose to make his record attempt on Belgium’s Got Talent is all the better.

 

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Posted: 8th, December 2013 | In: Strange But True, TV & Radio | Comment


Sam Wollaston Is The Witless Antidote To Clive James’ TVGuardian

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Mic Right’s Remotely Furious: Sam Wollaston and Charlie Brooker

SAM Wollaston is my favourite TV critic of the modern age. While Clive James continued in his dotage to be pure genius, Wollaston is a performance artist, the Andy Kaufmann of sitting around gawping at other people’s work then witlessly hammering out some half-thought out bibble for The Guardian. Nice work if you can get it.

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Posted: 5th, December 2013 | In: Technology, TV & Radio | Comment


Newsnight Balls: Mr Memory Jonas Von Essen Namechecks The BBC Team

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WORLD Memory Champion Jonas Von Essen rises to the challenge of reciting the Newsnight credits from memory. You see, on BBC TV’s Newsnight everyone’s famous. It’s not news unless it’s about the news bringers. Well, unbess it’s about Jimmy Savile and everyone from the 1970s telly being dug up and arrested, in which case, here’s Jonassssss….

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Posted: 3rd, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Meet The Real Walter White, Alabama’s True Meth King

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MEET Walter White, Alabama’s leading  methamphetamine cook. The real Walter White is not on the Breaking Bad TV show. He’s on Vice’s Fringes. He says:

My name is Walter White and I’m a meth cook and for 10 years I had the best meth in Alabama. And if you wanted the best meth, you had to come this way, you had to come to me.

Waler got in to the meth business for the conversation and dental plan. No, not really. It was for the cash. He’s trail begins in April 2014:

If I have to go to prison, I won’t be hurting anybody but myself this time. It’s just me answering up to the things I’ve done. My family, they’ve got jobs and lives. I won’t be hurting them this time.

Posted: 1st, December 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Cheryl Cole Wins Money For Doing No X Factor work

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CELEBRITIES live in a wonderfully weird world. Look at Cheryl Cole for example, who just got a load of money for not doing any work. She’s won a payout from producers of X factor USA, after she got dropped from the show after just one episode because she’s got an accent.

It was widely rumoured and reported that she got the chop because producers thought that Americans wouldn’t be able to understand her when she spoke with her Geordie accent.

She sued production company Blue Orbit for for £1.4m for loss of earnings and now the case has now been settled out of court, with the Girls Aloud member accepting a lovely undisclosed sum.

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Posted: 29th, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Only TV’s Working Class Can Afford To Live In Fortress London: What If Shows Were Real?

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AH, Eastenders the only London garden square non-oligarchs and trust-funded sados (sons and daughters of stars) can afford to live in. London is now so very expensive that it’s a fortress. If you’re not already in, forget about settling there. Best to accept the fact that you  can never live in the city.  Make your home town at the end of the long commute the epicentre of culture.

The only working class people who can afford London property prices are fictional. It’s true.

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Posted: 28th, November 2013 | In: Money, TV & Radio | Comment


Unfortunate Timing: BBC Broadcasts ‘The First Time With Roy Harper’ Days Before His Court Date

WHEN singer Roy Harper, 72,  has been charged with sexually abusing a girl from the age of 12, we thought it unfortunate that just five days earlier BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast a show about him. It’s title? The First Time With Roy Harper:

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Note: Mr Harper was not required to enter a plea to any of the charges.

Posted: 28th, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment


Doctor Who And Toast of London

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Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious: Dr Who.

YOU spotted a plot hole did you? And you think Stephen Moffatt can’t write women? Yeah. Alright. Take it to your Twitter account. Maybe write a blaaaaag post about how it annoyed you and how the (virtually) free entertainment has offended you. Throw in some of that half-arsed cultural theory you learned at university in there too, that’ll really make it sing.

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Posted: 27th, November 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Meanwhile…Outside Harrods, London: The Bagpipes Steel Drum Busker Mash-Up

Posted: 27th, November 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Can The X Factor And The Sun Create A Race Storm Out Of Morose Hannah Barrett?

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CAN the Sun create a RACE STORM from nothing? It can try. In “Fans were so racist Hannah shocked by X Factor abuse”, X Factor wannabe Hannah Barrett is pictured looking a tad morose.

Hannah told TV Biz: “I’ve had a lot of hate — people have been racist to me. They say they hate my music, they tell me that because I am black I can’t ever be a singer.

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Posted: 26th, November 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment


Oh No! Major Character From Family Guy Gets Killed Off!

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SPOILERS. Sorry, the first word of this article was so blunt, but there’s people out there who are so feeble, so jumpy, so gawpingly pathetic that they need to be told about the contents of an internet article, or indeed, absolutely everyone’s social media feeds, in case someone spoils a TV show or film for them.

Some people rant about spoilers for films that are decades old. You’ve have your chance buddy. Shit, or get off the pot.

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Posted: 25th, November 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment