Boss Radio

A couple of months ago I saw one of those mindless 'Find the incompetent house seeker somewhere to live' TV programmes. The catch in this one was that the wife wanted to live in Florida USA where some of her family had moved and where she felt that her son would get a better education, while her husband would rather stay in Birmingham, England, where his business was situated.

It was all really silly, it was obvious from the start that the wife was simply finding fault with everything she was showed in Birmingham no matter what the pros and cons of it, whilst the husband thought they were all really rather suitable, then the wife loved everything she was shown in Florida no matter what the drawbacks and the husband kept coming back to how in the hall was he going to manage his business from over here?

In the end the husband realised he was onto a loser and agreed to choose between two of the Florida properties, at which point, light and fluffy or not, the presenter explained that there were some things that they were going to have to tell the couple before they moved to the states. We didn't hear what they were, but by the end of the liability disclaimer or whatever it was, it became obvious that the move was off.

The couple had had the cost of healthcare and education in the US explained to them and all of a sudden they'd realised that they couldn't afford to live there.

Comparisons are difficult to make when you're comparing things like healthcare, which is why it's difficult to comment on the current US healthcare debate which our health system has been drawn into. The US spends roughly twice as much on healthcare as the UK, yet the UK system covers everyone and the US system only covers those who have sufficient insurance, can afford it, or qualify for charitable healthcare. But why are the Americans comparing our system to theirs? The US is the only 'first world' nation that doesn't have some kind of all-encompasing healthcare, why pick on us? Because we both speak English?

At the start of the century the World Health Organization tried to draw up a chart of the healthcare systems of the world. Neither the US or the UK won it. To our disgust, France won. I hate to suggest it, but could this be the reason that the opponents to universal healthcare proposals in the US are using us as an example?

For the record, to any USians reading this, there's an Englishwoman appearing in one of your anti national health commercials who says she was misled into believing that she was taking part in a broadcast debate on the subject of healthcare, and that her appearances in the ads contain remarks taken completely out of context. She disowns any statement attributed to her in those ads. And the Brit MEP who went on TV making inflamatory comments about the NHS has been hauled over the coals by his boss for talking (Expletive deleted). Now I've not seen his appearance, they only showed highlights on our news, but from the bits I have seen... For the first time in my life I find myself agreeing with David Cameron.

Ouch. That hurt.

So Australia's on fire and the UK's under water. The fires have destroyed 700 homes and the UK government has authorized the destruction of 700 homes to build an airport extension. The fires have caused almost 200 deaths... OK, we had to get involved in two wars to match that.

Has anyone (UK based) noticed how all the news has to be related to us? I've just been watching a harrowing feature on the Victoria State fires and the probability that half of them were started deliberately, and at the end of it the newsreader came on to reassure us that to date, as far as they knew, no Britons were amongst the casualties.

I realise that some people may be concerned about friends or family over there, but the news isn't the place to reassure them, it sounds for all the world as though as long as we're all right Jack, nothing else really matters.

On the other hand I've just watched a CBS half hour news summary that didn't even mention the fires in Australia. Surely they're not galled because Australia's got bigger fires than they had? Then you get Sky and Fox News broadcasting all the news that won't anger Rupert Murdoch and Five News broadcasting news for women at 5pm and news for men at 7pm...

Thank goodness for the World Service on steam radio.

It seems it's time for us to go go go down to Lazytown where it's the start of a brand new day. One of the attractions of this place is that things are upside down and adverture's just a moment away. Unfortunately the song doesn't stop there, we also learn that along the way we'll meet Robbie with his rotton plan, and Sporticus saving the day. Suddenly there seems no point in going on. I now know what's going to happen. Lazytown will be threatened by rotton Robbie and the guy with the dangerous moustache and Icelandic accent will spring into action and thwart him as no rotton Robbie has ever been thwarted before since yesterday. I mean, I now know this just from listening to the signature tune, why would I want to watch the programme when I already know what's going to happen? What's my motivation?

Well apparently there are other motivations for watching Lazytown. To whit, Stephanie.

Isn't Youtube great? You can find almost anything on there. Even old songs that you can only vaguely remember. You just put in what you do remember and ultimately if you search through enough results you'll find that someone somwhere has published a video of her/himself singing it, or even video of a slab of vinyl going round, and round, and round (And round) while the record plays.

I had reason to do this recently, and found what I was looking for quite quickly. Strangely, one of the entries gave the correct title of the song preceeded by the word 'Lazytown'. The song I seeked (I feel as though that should be 'The song I soke'...) was not a tune that I would have associated with any 'beebies TV', let alone that particular show, although I confess that at that point I had only seen about 5 minutes of it, in total. I have now seen a whole lot more.

The Youtube entry turned out to be another version of the song I was looking for, with video clips from the programme carefully synchronised to it to give the impression that Stephanie and friends are performing it. In the blurb about the clip the poster had written "And if any of you paedos out there feel the urge to post and say you love Stephanie and you'd like to 'fuk' her, please go away. She's really getting rather tired of it." My attention was piqued.

The guy was right. Almost half of the Lazytown entries I viewed contained a message to the effect that Stephanie was great and the poster would dearly like to fuk her.

I suppose to an extent I can understand the attraction. The programme is splendidly innocent. Stephanie has cute pink hair, and little pink shoes, and a very litte pink dress that obligingly moves out of the way every time she jumps up and down, which she does quite a lot. All the strange people who watch children's TV for some kind of gratification must feel like it's Christmas every day. For some reason the realisation that these people exist doesn't bother me as much as it might have say ten years ago. We now know that they're everywhere, some of them are probably reading this blog because they Googled 'Lazytown', hi there guys! No need to read any further, there's nothing for you here, back to Youtube with you.

The reason I'm not as concerned as I once might have been is quite simple, as long as they're watching that little oblong screen they're not out prowling the streets. Thoughts are harmless as long as they stay that way, if thoughtcrime ever became a reality I'd be arrested for the number of ways I've assassinated Margaret Thatcher, and come to think of it, all those times when as a kid reading Cine-goer magazine I fantasized about kissing Marilyn Monroe in her swimsuit... Aaugh, I'm damned for eternity.

What does concern me is why all these weird individuals consistently mis-spell the old Anglo-Saxon word 'fuck'.

I think we should be told.

Actually you don't decide because it's obvious that they are and I'm in no mood to argue.

Currently on Saturday peak-time TV we have a competition between tribute acts. How you're supposed to choose between Kylie Minotour and Frank Sinhatra, to name but two of them, I don't know. The thing is that the first prize, in fact the only prize, is a season with the All-star tribute show at Las Vegas.

So why are Robbie and Kylie competing? Neither are big enough in the US for anyone in that audience to have any idea who they are.

Similarly, getting all the competitors to sing the same song is ridiculous. Frank Sinatra would never have sung 'Dancing in the street' and if he did he wouldn't have used the Tamla-Motown arrangement so that puts his impersonator at an immediate disadvantage. Actually the only singer to sound like their artist on 'Dancing' was Cher. 'Tom Jones' made a fairly good stab at it but - hint - boyo. Jones-the-voice would have gone up and belted it!

Long time customers of this blog will have already realised what my real beef with this program is however.

No one asked me to 'do' Anthony Newley.

I don't care. I can take the rejection. Bas (That's enough of that! - The Man in the Big Hat)

...3 years ago.

It was on one of those 'phone in quiz shows.

For years she's been bothered by the thought of a 'phone call she received just as this programme was about to announce the winner. She'd picked up the 'phone, and all she got was silence. Had she missed her chance of winning vast sums of money? And for years I've been telling her that those programs were a con, she was giving them money and the odds on her getting picked were somewhat less than that of winning the National Lottery, eventually I persuaded her to stop entering the things.

Today the 'phone rang and a polite guy on the other end identified himself as being a representative of Channel 5 and could he speak to my mum please? I handed over the telephone, and mum started to become more and more confused. It seemed she didn't remember something and didn't want to hand over her bank details.

That alarmed me so I gave her a "Hand over the 'phone" look, and she passed it over. The guy explained that he didn't want any bank details, he wanted to send a cheque. All those years ago mum had won that competition and because of a telephone glitch the prize hadn't been awarded. They were now trawling through their records and awarding the unallocated prizes. Could he have our address please?

Given that the odds on him knowing that my mother entered that competion 3 years ago if he wasn't genuine I gave him the details and told mum the good news.

Of course what he hadn't said but almost undoubtably meant was that they were trawling though their records as a result of the recent investigation into phone-in scams on these programmes. I'd been watching that particular show, and the prize was supposedly awarded to someone. Obviously, at least to me, they'd awarded it to a dummy winner when the 'phone glitch prevented them from contacting my mum. Now they were clearing the books before the investigators got stuck in.

I guess I'm being a little judgemental here. It could be that the station are genuinely horrified at what's been going on and all they want to do is make good on the evils commited in their name. Alas, if only I wasn't such a cynic.


Strangely enough, if the car hadn't just let us down we wouldn't have been there to receive the call, and if I hadn't been waiting for a call from the AA I might not have answered the 'phone. The car was undiagnosable, so the AA towed it to a local garage. I don't know how much it will eventually cost to repair but hey, we've got the prize money!

And if I hadn't persuaded my mother to stop entering those competitions, there might have been more...

The street giveth and the street taketh away.
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I've just pointed out to my mother that when I won some money I gave her half of it. She asked me how much I gave her. I said "125 quid". She said, "Oh. OK. I'll give you £125".

Did I mention she won a thousand quid?