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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.

Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious: David Frost Is Dead And Peter Cook Won’t Save Leigh Francis From Drowning

Through the Keyhole 1

“PETER never had any regrets in his life…the only regret he regularly voiced was that, at the house we all shared in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1963, he’d saved David Frost from drowning…”

– Alan Bennett in Some Interesting Facts About Peter Cook.

Peter Cook did David Frost no favours. Their rivalry was as bitter as vinegar but the potency mostly came from Cook’s side. He despised Sir David for his buddying up to the establishment and for what he perceived as Frost’s piggybacking on the talents of he and his Beyond The Fringe colleague’s work. Beyond The… made satire bite again but it was Frost who sold the concept to the commercial side of television, steering That Was The Week That Was to the centre of the nation’s heart. His story was at the heart of the best documentary on television last week, Sir David Frost: That Was The Life That Was.

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Posted: 23rd, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment (1)


What Did Mike Myers Say To His Newborn Child? Local News Knows (Video)

WHAT did Mike Myers say when he discovered his wife Kelly Tisdale was pregnant with their second child? He said… We’ll let them tell you:

Quoting film lijns is never a good idea – unless you’re in a film:

Posted: 22nd, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comment


1981: Heather O’Rourke Gets Her First Barbie Doll

FLASHBACK to 1981, and Heather O’Rourke is enjoying her first ever Barbie doll. Thanks to this doll, Heather was able to channel the full demonic experience in the guise of Carol Ann in Poltegeist. She also featured in 12 episodes of Happy Days.

barbie

 

“Act out every fantasy you can dream up” with Barbie, such as killing your loved ones, possessing your cat; eating the sofa…

 

It’s all in thsoe eeys:

 

Posted: 18th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Film, Flashback, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment


Church Erects Father Ted Tribute Mural

ON Twitter Carl Tidy spots this Church mural that suggests Father Ted’s Father Jack has been in the building. ARISE:

ARISE church

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


Gumby Creator Art Clokey Describes His Experience On LSD

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ART Clokey creator of Gumby describes his experience on LSD, as prescribed by his psychiatrist. The medics said his therapy would go better if he took LSD and mescaline. He had visions. The world fade out to black. He saw a new world. He told the psychiatrist: “You’ve got the put his on television. This is fabulous.”

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Posted: 17th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, Flashback, TV & Radio | Comment


Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious: The Five Gay Men On British TV And (Golly!) A Dancing Black Man In Julian’s Country Church

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Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious.

THERE’S only about five gay men in television. Or rather five gay men allowed to present things. Graham Norton and Alan Carr get to do jokes. Doctor Christian deals with people’s weird balls and pustulant pudendas. Gok Wan can throw misogyny around like glitter because he’s all about empowering girls, yeah? And the king of them is Stephen Fry. Stephen Fry can do smart on QI, emotional on documentaries about depression and smart arse about language on the radio with Fry’s English Delight. Stephen Fry is brilliant but he’s also ubiquitous. He is a living, breathing representation of how crushingly lazy TV commissioners are.

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Posted: 17th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comments (4)


Dog and squeaky toy perform duet

THIS video should have Simon Cowell licking his eyeballs. Ardek the labrador sings along with his squeaky toy. Eat yer heat out Joe Cocker (Spaniel) and Jennifer Warnes:

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


10 people who can replace Gary Barlow on the X Factor

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SO, Gary Barlow is quitting The X Factor is he? Naturally, that’s the most exciting thing that’s actually happened during this year’s oddly tedious talent show.

After three years as a judge, he’s decided that he’s going to go back to being a singer and poking at the ivories and hopefully never, ever covering Smells Like Teen Spirit again.

He’s not been too amazing on the show itself. After all, he’s the arsehole that thrust Frankie Cocozza and Christopher Maloney in our faces.

It begs the question – who can replace Gary Barlow?

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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, TV & Radio | Comments (2)


Drugs cop on Irish TV show exposed as an undercover drugs cop in real life

kieran o'reilly cop

VIEWERS tuning into Irish TV’s crime drama Love/Hate got to watch Garda Kieran Madden in action. And so did the country’s villains. You see, Madden is played by Kieran O’Reilly – a copper who works undercover on the drugs squad for six years.

O’Reilly, 35, is attached to the Garda National Drug Unit in Dublin Castle.

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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, TV & Radio | Comment


Cameraman fails compilation

AN amusing collection of cameramen falling over. Because other people falling over is funny:

Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Watch a weatherman eat cat vomit, live on air

Scot HaneyAN American news report took a turn for the worse when a weatherman ate cat puke live on air. Weatherman Scot Haney made viewers recoil in horror when he ignored the five-second rule after noticing something on the floor which he fancied eating.

He thought they were grape nuts.

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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: Strange But True, TV & Radio | Comment


The Green Dragon cult: Environmentalism is seducing your kids and killing Christianity

green dragon

THE Green Dragon is feeding the minds of your kids. It is a “spiritual deception”.  It is “deadly“. It is killing Jesus.

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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comments (2)


Someone buys Breaking Bad underpants for nearly $10k (NOT FOR CHARITY)

breaking bad guns

BREAKING BAD is a show that divides everyone straight down the middle. You’ve got people who haven’t seen it and you’ve got people who love it, constantly tweet about it and make everyone else hate it even more. There is no middle ground.

On the Mental And I Love It side of things, one fan spent $9,900 on the underpants worn by Walter White from Breaking Bad. One can assume that Walter White had more than one pair of undercrackers, but there you go.

The show collaborated with Sony Pictures and Screenbid to hold a 10-day auction, where fans could bid for all manner of things.

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Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment


BBC hires swivel-eyed loon to front children’s TV show (video)

GET a load of that “swivel-eyed loon” on the BBC’s Newsnight show last Monday. This star of children’s TV in the 1970s and 1980s has been encouraging kids to eat fatty foods. And now he’s on the BBC. Send for the police:

Spotter: MediaBlog

Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Great video: Security guard closes in on fleeing bank robber

THE man who has robbed the K&H bank in the Angyalföldm district of Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday morning, is making his getaway.

No car.

This felon’s opted to make a run for it. Can the security guard catch him?

Let’s see…

Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Miley Cyrus needs to take this daggering masterclass

EAT yer heart out Miley Cyrus. Twerking is your Fisher Priced training dance. It is daggering with stabilisers on. We profiled it here.

Doctors from local hospitals in Kingston, Jamaica, report that they’ve been seeing a record number of broken dicks in the past few months. They attribute this to the increased popularity of daggering. Dr Alverston Bailey advised men to seek medical help if they suspect their penises have been broken. Signs of a fractured penis include a loud popping noise, followed by excruciating pain, swelling, and sometimes blood.

But if you get it right, Dolly Parton sings and all the cool kids go wild:

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


Drunk Jack Kerouac debates ‘hippie” and its meaning with a pompous William F. Buckley – Fernanda Pivano just gets it

jack kerouac buckley

JACK Kerouac, author of the classic, On the Road liked a drink or three.

In this video, Kerouac talks with writer Fernanda Pivano. He is three sheets to the wind:

In 1965, Kerouac was on the magic box again. William F. Buckley was in the chair, whose pomposity and self-regard is hilarious.

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Posted: 9th, October 2013 | In: Books, Flashback, TV & Radio | Comment


CNN says Hong Kong is in Brazil (photo)

THE average American is smarter than CNN’s killer hornet map expert, who managed to local Hong Kong in Brazil.

As Brazil’s giant hornet community says: “Visit China before China visits you.”

CNN fail

Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Agents of S.H.I.E.LD is terrific – watch it while Simon Cowell licks his eyeballs

agents of shield

Mic Wright’s Remotely Furious.

NO one calls themselves a telly addict any more. Time was, that was a thing. In the ‘80s being yoked to the idiot box was a bad thing. But today? We covet screens endlessly. We carry them around with us all the time. Right now I have two monitors in front of me, a MacBook Air demanding my attention, a Google Nexus 7 chirping away to itself and a smartphone gone the way of a black mirror, its battery worn down by incessant fiddling. The screens are everywhere now. We don’t notice them because they surround us.

And I love it. My name is Mic Wright and I am an addict. I am unrepentant. I was born to be a telly critic but sadly telly isn’t what it used to be. When Clive James – the greatest TV reviewer of all time – was stalking the Palaeolithic expanses of the small screen, a world where Channel 4 was just a glimmer in some priapic executives hungry eye, television meant something. It had Play For Today and hard hitting documentaries. World In Action, Death on the Rock, truly panoramic Panorama. It had drunks and eccentrics. It had George Best, Muhammad Ali, Greta Garbo and Helen Mirren on Parkinson. It had The Tube and TOTP. It had surprises.

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Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment (1)


Only in Scotland: Scotland’s loudest tap (featuring Lulu and Mel Gibson’s Brave Heart)

ONLY In Scotland presents: Scotland’s loudest tap. With impressions of Glasgow’s Lulu, Edinburgh’s mating pandas and Mel Gibson’s Brave Heart being eviscerated by the Sassenachs. More here.

Posted: 8th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Conlangs: looking at the language of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Avatar and Star Trek

HOW invented are the languages you heard in Lord of the Rings, Avatar, Game of Throne and Star Trek?

In this TED Ed lessonJohn McWhorter talks of  “conlangs” (constructed languages), the languages of the including Klingon, Dothraki, Na’vi and the Elvish spoken in The Lord of the Rings’ Middle Earth:

“Tolkien charted out ancient and newer versions of Elvish. When the first Elves awoke at Cuiviénen, in their new language the word for people was kwendi, but in the language of one of the groups that moved away, Teleri, over time kwendi became pendi. Just like real languages, conlangs like Elvish split off into many. When the Romans transplanted Latin across Europe, French, Spanish, and Italian were born.”

There’s more on this sort of thing at the Language Creation Society.

 Conlanging is the creation of constructed languages or conlangs, such as Esperanto, Lojban, or Klingon. A conlanger is someone who creates or constructs languages or conlangs. 

Tirme to meet David Peterson, who developed Dothraki for Game of Thrones:

Posted: 7th, October 2013 | In: TV & Radio | Comment


Nominative determinism: Calum Wrist is a TV onanist

DID you catch Porn on the Brain, Channel’s 4’s insight into the effect smut has on the human head? Did you see the teenager who said he was addicted to online porn? You know… Calum Wrist.

More nominative determinism when we find it:

callum wrist

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