Not U2?

Bono’s remarks about making poverty history will no doubt return to haunt him now that news of his band’s tax avoidance strategy has hit the music press. Following the lead of the famously tight-fisted Mick Jagger, the boys of U2 have transferred part of their multi-million business empire from Ireland to the Netherlands, where royalties are virtually tax-free. This follows the Dublin government’s decision to impose a 250,000 euro cap on tax-free incomes and the legislation set in place by last December’s budget that removed the tax exemption on royalties previously in place, from which U2 and many other artists have financially benefited. Of course, there’s no logical reason why the U2 lads saving themselves a few cents should really put a dent in Bono’s charitable crusade, but no doubt more than a few cynical journalists will recall St. Augustine’s famous quote, “Lord, make me chaste…but not yet”.

Dad Rock

When I was in high school and the Boomtown Rats were frequently at the top of the charts it wasn’t easy to imagine Bob Geldof in the role of responsible father but by some miracle the middle-aged Sir Bob has achieved a type of respectability without completely abandoning the edgy persona of his youth. These days his ire is directed towards the press and its treatment of 17 year-old Peaches. To put it mildly, he’s as mad as hell and he’s not gonna take it anymore! “She's at school. She does her homework. She has weekend and holiday jobs. She does great in her exams. She likes to be with her friends and boys and bands. Just like any kid of her age,” he said. "The difference is that the press take photographs of her doing the stuff that other kids do too. Because she's my kid she gets to go to things other kids don't, and because of her surname they take her picture. I loathe that and I wish they would stop but they won't, and that's not her fault. She's a fantastic girl and I'm very proud of her.”

You’re Baaa-eautiful!

It’s good news for sheep everywhere! James Blunt has bought a house halfway up a hill in Spain and will move in to write material for his next album. After being linked with at least two Pussycat Dolls, Blunt has announced that he now longs for a life of solitude and plans to live the rural dream with only sheep, goats, donkeys, chickens and pigs for company. Like many clueless émigrés before him, James dreams of being a gentleman farmer and plans to produce his own wine and olive oil while working on his music. Doubtless once harvest time arrives he will realise the folly of his ambitions and employ a few locals to do the donkey work for him!

Musical Interludes

For a period of about one year I was responsible for providing the music news for Views 4U. The following extracts now have no relevance whatsoever and have been posted here solely to display both my interest in music writing and my inability to be nice for more than about thirty seconds at a time. I suppose that that's the reason that I'm so universally loved and admired...

You can take the girl out of Cardiff...

I’ve always been of the opinion that if you can’t manage to do something so brilliantly that any potential critics are silenced and the assembled masses are knocked dead (or at least mute) by your sensational performance, it’s much better to be appalling. Mediocrity, whichever way you slice it, is a no-no.

Take the genius director, during my drama school days, who decided that King Lear, Shakespeare’s matchless masterpiece about betrayal, filial duty and the potential of power to corrupt, should feature actors in full punk regalia. The resulting production (our Cordelia cheekily had her nipples pierced and tried to claim it back on production expenses) was so horrendous and the reviews in the Haringey & Hornsey Express so vicious, that every performance was a full house.

It was on that “so bad it’s good” philosophy that I drew for comfort while watching Charlotte Church’s new Channel 4 show. Truly, this was a masterclass in how to produce a toe-curlingly bad show. It wasn’t just a televisual car accident; it was a 250-mile pile-up on the M4, complete with buckled barriers and decapitated drivers.

And I had wanted so much for it to be a roaring success. There are few people who have done more for Wales while still living in the country than La Church: Tom Jones moved to L.A. about 40 years ago, Shirley Bassey hangs out in Monaco, Cerys Matthews is based, however temporarily, in Nashville and even James Dean Bradfield has abandoned ship and moved to London, yet the entire Church clan can still be observed going about their business in Cardiff.

But how can it be that anything so utterly without any kind of merit on either the artistic or the entertainment front made it as far as the production stage? I know that the omnipresence of reality TV has caused us to lower our standards somewhat, but even the sight of Big Brother’s Pete in full-blown Tourette’s-fuelled outburst failed to prepare me for the full horror of The Charlotte Church Show. It had absolutely everything: celebrity guests (Z-listers who were barely permitted to get a word in edgeways), comedy sketches (which weren’t remotely funny, even if you and your mates had just rolled in from the pub with twelve pints of Felinfoel Double Dragon on board), nods to Welsh culture (all presented in a way that shamelessly sucked up to English viewers’ idea of the Welsh as inbred sheep-fornicators) and, the piece de resistance, a band so obscure that not even Jools Holland has heard of them. It was as if the producer, unsure of his star’s ability to carry the show on her own, decided to spread his potential losses as wide as possible. She’s no good as a chat show host? Never mind; we’ll give her a couple of sketches to do. She hasn’t got any idea of comedy timing? No worries mate, we’ll get her to sing with the band at the end of the show; at least we know she can do that.

The result was very much like biting into an iffy burger: you just know that the taste is going to stay with you for days, however hard you try to forget it.

The only time that the sorry affair took flight was when Charlotte was given enough rein to display her bitchy street fighter persona. The comment about Paris Hilton (“Paris says that she looks on going out to nightclubs as work. Well, I suppose it is…if you’re a whore”) was such a delight that one wished that more time had been devoted to allowing Charlotte to be herself, rather than a sort of foul-mouthed, satanic version of Bonnie Langford.

The critics were mostly condemnatory but the few who found something to praise, such as the Sunday Mirror’s Kevin O’Sullivan, suggested that perhaps ITV bosses might consider signing the Taffy diva as a replacement for Sharon Osbourne in the teatime slot. Well, it’s true that even with Charlotte on board the resultant show could hardly deteriorate beyond the murky depths to which it’s sunk under the captaincy of Ozzy’s missus.

Cleverly O’Sullivan also pointed out that the core audience of The Charlotte Church Show is young and gay and it’s true that while the pink pound has caused holiday companies and retailers to rethink their policies, it’s not made much of a dent in the thought processes of the TV schedulers.

Probably it’s coincidence that most of the primetime slot on Saturday evenings has been made over to the cavalcade of camp that is How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? It’s got the lot: Graham Norton, show tunes, gals in dirndl skirts and a singing coach that could have given Bette Davis lessons in effective bitchery.

What should give the programme’s makers cause for concern, however, is not that homosexual culture is dominating weekend TV but that, judging from the performances of the Marias, there isn’t much in the way of all-round upcoming talent. The fact that one contestant’s dominance has characterised the competition has clearly exposed the exploitative and manipulative aspect of the phone-in talent show. Whatever the outcome, it was so obvious from the first episode that Connie was far and away the best singer, dancer and actress that the producers included the loony handicap of an assault course in a pitiful effort to lend some feeling of danger to the proceedings. Connie finished last and was told that her physical fitness was in question. Come on, fellas! I’ve been to drama school, the same one as Connie in fact and, while there’s no doubt that you have to be in good health to work in the theatre (anyone remember Martine McCutcheon and her My Fair Lady absences?), being able to tackle an army assault course is a completely different barrel of mackerel.

Nonetheless the idea that playing the role of Maria requires extraordinary skill and stamina should give Lord Lloyd-Webber some cause for concern: if it were true. In fact The Sound of Music is no more demanding of its female lead than many other musicals. All you need is a good, solid all-rounder with a strong voice, a decent range and an unfailing ability to nail a note.

Now there’s a job for Charlotte Church.

This article first appeared in the October 2006 edition of Views 4U magazine

Class still matters - on TV, at least

It’s a sad fact of life that by the time you’re the age I am now (roughly halfway between hip-hop and hip-op) the things that struck you as important in your youth have lost their significance.

For instance, I know that my accent as a teenager was a terrible disappointment to my grandmother. She had fondly imagined that, after thousands had been spent on my education I would, like two sisters from my hometown who had been educated in the same school, speak in the plummy tones of the ruling class. What she fervently hoped for was a granddaughter who spoke like one of the royal family: unfortunately for dear old gran, the Windsor I most brought to mind was Barbara. I’m afraid that, surrounded by posh gals, the only thing I could do was to rebel.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the last time that I thought about the subject of social class and my place in its hierarchy, so how fortunate we are to be able to rely on our terrestrial TV channels to rub out noses in it on a daily basis. Apart from the odd discussion in the posh papers, an occasional remark by a politician looking for brownie points and the (now increasingly rare) public figure with a zeppelin-sized chip on his shoulder, the public discussion of what separates dead posh from dead common has lost much of its bite. The last event that seriously brought the old British shibboleth of class definition to the fore was Thatcher’s decimation of the miners.

However a powerful coterie of writers is determined to keep the home fires burning: Jimmy McGovern, Kay Mellor, Paul Abbott and even Doctor Who’s Russell T. Davies have all lent their very considerable talents to the subject of working class life.

Until relatively recently the lives of so-called ordinary people were considered unfit for or unworthy of dramatic treatment. In the plays of Shakespeare the action revolves around the triumphs and tragedies of kings and noblemen, working people making an appearance only to reinforce the elevated status of the main characters or as comic relief, when they would be referred to as “rude mechanicals” or some other equally insulting term. It took a few hundred years even for the middle-classes to appear in roles of any importance.

How things have changed! Now it seems that most of the dramatic moments on British TV are created by writers who are determined to prove that being working-class is a badge of honour; not that there’s anything remotely wrong with that, just that in doing so they can’t seem to resist going way over the top and turning anyone who isn’t, into a cartoon cut-out along the lines of Lord Snooty.

It’s not often that I find myself nodding in agreement with Julian Fellowes, in fact one sight of his smug, porcine face usually tips me right over the edge, but I had to acknowledge that in boycotting Casualty and Holby City he has a point. When was the last time that you saw a middle-class character on these two programmes that wasn’t lying, dissembling, strutting around looking like they’d just had the entire contents of the sluice room re-routed up their nostrils or barging up to the nurse’s station, banging it with their fists and saying something along the lines of, “Do you know who I am?!”? Fellowes and his even more patrician missus both acknowledge that they find it impossible to watch BBC’s flagship programmes because of their outrageous bias and, much as it pains me to admit it, they do have a point.

Not that the working-class characters in a drama series like Jimmy McGovern’s The Street, Paul Abbott’s Clocking Off or Danny Brocklehurst’s Sorted always behave impeccably, but their drunken rages, domestic abuse, infidelity and fist fights are generally passed off as understandable under the circumstances or the inevitable outcome of being patronised by someone with a slightly posher accent.

Kay Mellor’s dramas are particularly cringe-worthy on the class front, her veterinary soap, The Chase being a recent example. Writing about middle-class life in a sympathetic way must have piled a huge amount of pressure on Mellor, some of which she deflected by setting it in Yorkshire, thereby allowing the central characters to avoid having to speak with an accent that might be deemed traditionally middle-class. At the centre of the plot is the marriage of elderly vet, George Williams, to the sluttish Claudie, whose thoughtless behaviour constantly irritates George’s daughters, Anna and Sarah. When the family discovers that Claudie has used her job in the post office to commit fraud they are understandably outraged, yet most of Claudie’s defence revolves around the fact that their antipathy is bourgeois in origin. Mellor allows the Williams family little chance to fight back: “I had to fend for myself at boarding school” is Sarah’s feeble response (these posh gals have no idea!) Oh, and it was no surprise to discover that Claudie’s fraud had a noble aim from which she didn’t directly benefit.

It was the cumulative effect of similar storylines that made Paul Abbott’s otherwise excellent Clocking Off an occasional ordeal to watch. When one of the workers at the textile factory obtained a girlfriend with a cut-glass accent the audience immediately knew that it was destined to end in tears. In a Paul Abbott drama, intermarriage between the classes is still as big a taboo as miscegenation was amongst the Victorians. Yet a simple acknowledgement that it is possible for the working and middle classes to connect emotionally, socially or sexually isn’t enough: Mellor, Abbott et al won’t be truly happy until the bourgeoisie have unconditionally surrendered, fallen on their knees and acknowledged the error of their ways. “Gosh, we’ve been jolly rotten to all of you working people, haven’t we? From now on I’ll change my life, take little Imogen out of Roedean and enrol her in the local comprehensive, knock the conservatory down, start to breed budgies and keep ferrets in the bath”.

In a recent interview actress Diane Parish, better known as Denise Fox in EastEnders, revealed that her RADA training had emphasised the importance of received pronunciation. “My tutors told me that I’d need it if I ever had to do Shakespeare”, she explained. Considering the direction that the TV drama has taken in the last few years I’m hoping that Parish gets a few Shakespearean roles: unless she fancies playing one-dimensional sub-Hyacinth Bucket snobs, she’ll be hard-pressed to find any other use for her posh accent.

This article first appeared in the August 2006 edition of Views 4U magazine

Señor Bean versus El Cordobés

I don't know what you thought the first time you saw the smiling face of our current Prime Minister, dear reader, but my true blue Tory mother was unequivocal in her verdict: "He looks soft", she said, a word which, in my Mama's vocabulary could mean either " fundamental absence of cojones" or "several patatas short of a full tortilla española". Well, eat my shorts mother dear, because it looks as though Señor José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (or Señor Bean as he's known chez Elsdon due to his physical resemblance to Rowan Atkinson's monstrous creation) intends to kick more backsides than Arnie Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. In fact, he's already set out his stall by legalising gay marriages, an action that's sure to raise the hackles of Benedict XVI even as he dons his papal rig-out for the first time.

The tabloids tend to raise their eyebrows at this particularly controversial issue but having met several elderly gay British men who have been made homeless by their partners' siblings having a prior legal claim to property, whatever was carefully set out in the will. I can see the desperate need for this very basic human right. It would be a foolish person who dismissed the power of the pink pound, but not all gay couples are as financially well upholstered as Sir Elton and David Furnish.

Now, having passed this milestone on the road to a truly civilized modern Spain (and when will the British government decide to follow suit, I wonder?) Señor Bean has another target in his sights. Yes, folks - this man that my mother thought was 'soft' is going to take on that most obdurate of institutions, the Spanish macho male. I know! It's difficult to think about it without smiling, isn't it? And talking about grinning from ear to ear, now I know why Señora Zapatero always looks so chirpy; her hubby helps out round the house and, what's more, he expects the blokes of Spain to do the same.

Having been born in Wales at the beginning of the 1960s, a time when its men would sooner play hunt the thimble with Quentin Crisp than consider doing anything as shockingly effeminate as (and I whisper this in deference to my father) a household chore, or even take their offspring out for a walk in their pram, I can appreciate just how revolutionary this philosophy is. To be fair, most of the young Spanish males I encounter seem to be as proficient with a diaper as their partners, but this cooperation doesn't always extend to the kitchen...or the bathroom...or the loo.

Of course, as in his rubber-stamping of gay marriages, there is a far more serious side to Don José's quest to stamp out Spanish machismo; the national tally of serious domestic violence in 2005 is already well into the teens. If that's on our Prime Minister's mind then we can only be grateful that he's taking prompt action to prevent even more women from becoming punch bags.

A comparatively short time ago it was exceedingly difficult for couples to divorce in this staunchly Catholic country, yet now the PM is throwing his support behind the fast-track option, which will mean that within three months dissatisfied husbands and wives can legally sever their marital bonds. However, there is a catch; aggrieved wives will have the right to haul their domestically deficient spouses over the coals, raising issues such as their unwillingness to participate in housework, childcare and taking care of their ageing in-laws. Far from being a 'quickie' divorce, this devil in the detail will almost certainly turn the most civilized parting into a tortuous he said-she said battle that will take years to unravel.

In fact, it's the type of mayhem that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of Mr. Bean.

This article was first published in Spanish Life, May-June 2005 issue