With the issuing of their remastered back-catalogue and the release of Beatles: Rock Band, the Fab Four have become once again The Most Famous People in Britain. (Beatles: Rock Band? It’s some arcade game shenanigans. For the young folk. Apparently you pretend to be Ringo by waving a mouse. ) So as we enter this Third Age of Beatles (first 1963-69 obviously; second that year that Noel Gallagher kept banging on about them), CW thought that this would be a good time to quickly run through a couple of key Beatles points that we might not have had time as a country to address previously:
1. It’s actually, factually, scientifically incorrect for anyone to say that they don’t love the Beatles. OF COURSE you love the Beatles. DON’T BE STUPID. As the rock critic Dorian Lynskey once pointed out, saying that you don’t like the Beatles just sounds as if you’re trying too hard: “It’s probably an Oedipal thing.” With a back-catalogue that runs the stylistic gamut from Everyone’s Got Something To Hide Except Me and My Monkey to Mr Moonlight, what you’re really saying when you say, “I don’t like the Beatles” is “I don’t like music”. Just admit it. Don’t drag the Beatles into it. That’s passive-aggressive. And it will upset Paul.
2. There is no “best Beatle”. Well there is, obviously — it’s Paul. But then again, NO. They’re the Beatles. They’re all the best Beatle. Even the one who’s obviously not — George.
3. Amazingly there is no Beatles pornography in existence. None. Type “Beatles porn” into Google and every return is audiophiles nerding on about mono-mixes. In all the depths of depravity that mankind has plumbed, enslaved to its idiot libido — in the dispiriting lists of niche sites devoted to chickens, amputees, Jesus and the dead — it seems that the sole, sacred subject upon this Earth is the Fabs. We have never had a porn-John in bed with a porn-Paul in a skin-flick called Meat the Beatles. And that, let’s face it, is quite touching.
UP. Chris Evans
News of Terry Wogan’s retirement from the Radio 2 breakfast show was received in much the same way as Dumbledore’s death at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. ie, beforehand the presumption was that everyone would be devastated; but in the event there was a general sense of “meh, yeah — that seems about right. He’s had his innings, etc. Off you go, old friend”. Controversy, however, has followed the announcement of his successor — the man that the Daily Mirror describes as the “live wire Chris Evans”. Personally, CW can’t see the problem. Wogan gave every impression of broadcasting through space and time from a cricket pavilion during the pleasant summer of 1978. Evans, meanwhile, appears to be sending out his signal from a bar in the “crazy” Britpop summer of 1995. What CW is saying is that this is, in some manner of speaking, progress.
UP. Christine Bleakley
he One Show presenter has announced her latest charity venture: water-skiing across the English Channel for Sport Relief. Uh-huh. CW is actually going to have to say this again: Christine Bleakley is going to water-ski to France. This is, perhaps, the moment where one might quite candidly ask just what the hell is going on with the 21st century. CW remembers that when it was a child, it presumed that the future would be run by a wise, intergalactic senate, issuing edicts about time-warp trousers and crème brûlée in pill form. In the event, however, the 21st century appears to be run by people with celebrities’ names in one pocket and a series of bizarre, random stunts in the other — which they are then authorised to randomly combine and make actual. So who is doing this? CW has never really understood what the Bilderberg Group is supposed to do, but it’s rapidly drawing some big conclusions.
UP. Sylvester Stallone
Good new for everyone who avers, like the White Queen in Through The Looking Glass, that they need to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Sylvester Stallone is bringing back the one-man war-machine John Rambo, in the soon-to-shoot Rambo 5! According to early rumours, the plot is that John Rambo (63) is trying to track down an escaped monster, which has been genetically engineered by the American Government, before it lays waste to major US cities. Anyone with a sneaking suspicion that this might look a bit like a pensioner effortfully pursuing his runaway labrador, Timmy, across the park before it digs up a bed of autumn chrysanthemums, is clearly too cynical for their own good.
UP. Peter Andre
Andre — a man whose title is, as of Wednesday’s court-hearing, “the officially divorced ex-husband of Katie Price” — is gaining vital celebrity allies, in the love-split that has gripped the nation. In an interview this week, Andre revealed: “Emma Bunton sent a lovely message to me . . . Johnny Rotten said some nice things, too. And the director Tim Burton.” CW cannot help but reflect on what an undeniably odd support team this would be in a time of emotional cataclysm. You open the door in your sweaty pyjamas, red-eyed and surrounded by empty ice-cream tubs, and there on the doorstep are Team Sympathy: Baby Spice, a man who covered his face in margarine to promote acne and pronounced that he is an anti-Christ, and the director of the haemoglobin-and-cannibal-pies musical, Sweeney Todd.
DOWN. Sir Richard Branson
CW understands that Sir Richard has a vast and sprawling empire, he’s a very busy man and can’t possibly hope to micro-manage every paperclip, telephone answering machine message and pen that bears his brand. Nonetheless, it couldn’t help but become distressed about the reply it received from Virgin this week, after an inquiry about the installation of broadband. After the usual, “we’ll be contacting you within the next few weeks” rigmarole, the e-mail concluded: “The whole adventure is just beginning — so stay tuned!” CW wants to make it clear to Virgin that it was inquiring about running a simple comms cable into its house — not proposing that WE BREAK INTO JURASSIC PARK AND STEAL A T-REX.
DOWN. Cheryl Cole
You find CW a little down this week — still reeling at how awful is Fight For This Love, the debut solo single of Cheryl Cole. Given that Cole is a member of the greatest British band — Girls Aloud — not to have John, Paul, George and Ringo in it, CW was expecting much, much better. Amazingly, given that it sounds like it was composed on, sung into and possibly inspired by looking at a Nokia N97, the lyrics are even worse than the music. At first, CW thought they were: Is it better is it worse/Are we sitting in a hearse? — quite a question, if one considers just how out of your mind you would have to be to not be totally sure if you were sitting in a black, custom-designed vehicle, with a coffin in the back — but diligent research (0.17 seconds on Google) reveals that the full lyric is, in fact Is it better is it worse/Are we sitting in reverse?
Sitting in reverse. It’s not a phrase that CW has come across before. Is Cheryl referencing the trainline.com booking process, whereby one has a seat-choice between “backwards” and “facing direction of travel”? CW scarcely thinks this kind of matter is the concern of pop. And, besides, if Cheryl isn’t talking about booking a cheap-day return on a young person’s railcard, the only other explanation CW can make of the phrase is that Cole is trying to find a “posh way” of saying “standing up”. It’s baffling.
DOWN. OK!
CW’s regular service — providing updates on OK!’s moral breakdown — continues. This week, however, even CW is shocked by what it has to report. For OK! has put together a four-page spread on CELEBRITY SEX TRAUMAS — inspired by Katie Price’s revelation in last week’s issue that she had been raped. We have Ulrika Jonsson (“I felt pain, physical pain”), Oprah Winfrey (“I trembled and cried”) and Teri Hatcher (“I didn’t want to touch it”). This all seems to presume that being sexually assaulted is just the latest A-list fad; like Botox or buying a Bichon Frisé puppy. If OK! magazine were a person, it would be on the verge of being sectioned.
UP. Kate Moss
Ah, here’s another picture of Kate Moss, somewhere sunny, smoking a fag. Is CW alone in finding these pictures oddly comforting? Old maids cycling to church, the thwack of willow on leather, a pint of warm beer in the evening, honey still for tea, Kate Moss ’avin a fag; as happy as a dog with its head out of the window of a moving car. It makes CW believe that, contrary to everything it has ever believed — maybe it is quite satisfying being an intern- ational supermodel worth £121 million. Knackers.
DOWN. Chloe Madeley
Chloe — the daughter of Richard and Judy who is becoming a tabloid stalwart when it comes to exposés on her “troubled” Winehouse-lite lifestyle — has been reflecting on her recent mishaps. To wit, being photographed chang-ing marijuana out of a huge bong and then, a few months later, drink-driving at 2am and overturning her Mini. Explaining that she was abroad at that hour to buy tampons — presumably in an attempt to have all women sigh “Totalling a classic car, off your face on Long Island Iced Teas, on a Lil-lets mission: we’ve all been there, love” — Madeley concluded that, should these scandals ruin her fledgleing career as a TV presenter, she’ll “go and work in Disneyland, instead”.
Hmmmm. Celebrity Watch suspects that Disney may conclude that she’s not the most shining avatar of their core brand-values.
0 comments:
Post a Comment