You make it to the office and find that a bad day is getting worse- your meeting has been brought forward, and you go straight in to make a non-existant pitch. With the confident facade beginning to crack, you attempt to marshall your thoughts and hope for the best as you arrange your papers. You can detect at least 3 different bodily fluids on the page, but are more concerned by the fact you’ve either gone blind, or you’ve got a sheet of illegible scrawl. All you can make out are the lines:

“Most Haunted, but so men will watch too”
and
“Daphne, you little tease”

Hazy memories begin to seep into your mind- the taste of a worm at the bottom of a now-empty bottle of Mezcal, performing headstands while watching Cartoon Network… and it hits you like an electric shock. With new found confidence, shoulders back and chest out, you begin your pitch (secretly believing you’re invincible)

“Imagine an episode of Scooby Doo, but without the scruffy hippy, his dog, or that smug blonde prat. Combine it with Most Haunted, and we have greatness in the making!”

At least that’s the only way I can imagine someone coming up with the idea for “Hot Girls in Scary Places”. The title says it all really… or rather it outlines what the plan was. The reality is that the contestants may have the IQ of a squirrel, but that’s where the comparison with glamour models ends. As for the “Scary Places”, well they are just big buildings that are no longer in use so it’s like being the last one in work after your colleagues are in the pub.

So in this week’s thrilling and terrifying episode (thrilling as it gave me something to write about, terrifying because I’m one hour closer to death), 3 cheerleaders armed with torches, blankets, and teddy bears, are taken to an abandoned mental asylum. How do we know it’s a mental asylum? Well the big neon sign outside says so. Their mission: survive 3 deadly and terrifying encounters with the supernatural in order to receive 3 numbers, which form the combination for a safe that contains $10,000 cash.

These tasks by the way are given by some bloke on a TV monitor, who has a face like a melted pig. No make-up or anything, the guy just looks like crap. Anyway, he is the only genuinely creepy aspect of the show because he’s like a weird uncle who REALLY has been looking forward to spending time with kids. There’s something quite unsavoury about a television screen asking 3 college students to do a cheer for him… like Max Headroom at a lapdancing club.

Anyway, task one requires Wannabe Number 1 to go to “the examination room” (Cue Uncle Furtive to drool a little), while the second and third little pigs stay in their slumber-party mode and talk about how scary it all is. Apparently, 70 years ago cruel and unusual experiments were performed on the mentals in the asylum. Now the ghosts of these patients are able to communicate through a “Connector”. Now I’m not going to embarass you ignorant fools who don’t know what a “Connector” is. You know who you are, and frankly I expect some background reading from you so step it up Mr or you’ll be out of here faster than shit from a goose.

A “Connector” converts EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena), so we can hear the voices of the retarded-departed. Let’s ignore the fact that if this thing worked as it’s supposed to, we’d probably have heard about first it on the news, or any channel that isn’t E! The words of wisdom from this device (which definitely is communicating with the dead, and not just a walkie-talkie) are limited to “Danger”, before we cut to the other 2 discussing the colour of paint in the “safe room”. Unfortunately, the effect is as if the robot from Lost in Space has just seen a stray dog running down the street and wants everyone to be scared! In any event, the task actually turns out to have nothing to do with the robotic voice, but actually requires the bimbo to pull different levers until a scrap of paper drops out with the numbers on it. Spooky!

So back to sanctuary, for something to add credibility to this farce. That’s right, time for a medium to come in and explain what the spirits are revealing about the 3 muskahounds. I won’t bore you with the details, especially as I could predict them from seeing the short clips of them just chatting amongst themselves. Perhaps I’m psychic… perhaps the medium is talking toss. You decide.

The third task was to experience the presence of a spectral doctor (I swear I’m not making this up), by wearing some sort of helmet. One of the other bints was there taking notes to chronocle the experience. There was nothing at all more than general suggestions of feeling cold and scared, before Dr Evil appeared on a TV and gave them a task of finding a scrap of paper with another digit on it, that was hidden in some cold porridge.

It would be cruel of me to spoil the suspense of whether or not the trio did survive the night, and whether they got their money-shot. What I will say is that it was like watching an episode of Pat Sharpe’s Funhouse, with poorer production values, and Derek Acorah’s less convincing auntie. Whoever thought of it must have had a fetish for Daphne from Scooby Doo buried in their subconscious.

Could have been worse though. It could have been Velma.

So where should you go to experience such an item? Try Gems TV

Gems TV is one of several channels on Sky TV that claims to sell incredibly valuable jewellery, for low low prices. Now I make it very clear that while I am the world’s foremost expert in many things, jewellery and precious stones are not my specialisms. On the one occasion that TechnoScouse tasked me with selecting a pair of earings (which she had pointed out to me less than 7 days previously), I still managed to pick out the wrong bloody ones.

However, notwithstanding my lack of expertise, I still have eyes and can identify overpriced crap when I see it.

The key word to look for is “Gems”, not “Jewels”. Jewels are precious stones like diamonds, rubies, sapphires… the kind of things you expect to find in a pirate’s treasure chest. Gems are the bits of gaudy coloured blobs of crap you see in an 8 year old girl’s dressing up box.

For example, Have any of you dear readers heard of the following “gems”? And for a truly impartial test, it doesn’t count if you heard of these on a dedicated TV shopping channel. Understand the rules? Good:

Alexandrite, Amblygonite, Andalusite, Aragonite (I’m sure he was in Lord of the Rings), Flourite (isn’t this in toothpaste?), Howlite (got to be a made up name), Iolite, Kunzite, Malachite, Marcasite, Morganite, Sodalite (isn’t that what Americans call diet soft drinks?), Tanzanite, and Tsavorite.

Now by and large, I’m suspicious of anything that rhymes with the word “shite.” Coincidence, or something more significant?

If you want something that contains a gem you’ve actually heard of, why not shell out £58 for a pearl… mounted on a chunk of silver shaped like an Octopus. That’s right, you could have a 2 inch metal invertibrate hanging from your neck. And why wouldn’t you want that? It only looks marginally worse than the Beastie Boys with VW car badges in the ’80s.

How about a Fire Opal and diamond ring? Sounds promising until you see that the diamonds make up less than 0.05% of the gem weight (0.066 Carats diamond compared to a 12.28 Carat Opal). So what does a huge Fire Opal look like? Best description I’d make is a golf ball sized gobbet of frozen urine stuck to your finger. Sophisticated, no?

The next cause for concern comes from the pricing structure. When these items are offered, they start out with astronomical valuations, usually in excess of £1000. However, these prices (for materials never heard of outside a Tolkein story), seem to plummet like a stone to around £100-£150.

I’ve just seen a bracelet containing 66 sapphires (real jewel, but only 2mm in diameter each) set in 9 karat white gold (so not exactly pure gold there then?) go from £1976 to £200.

Now call me old fashioned, but if something can reduce in price by 90% in the space of 2 seconds, I suspect it could have been a tad overpriced. Now I am not accusing Gems TV of such a ploy, so don’t misinterpret me. But if, hypothetically, a company were to boost its prices by 10 times the real RRP, then how can you trust the “discount” price to reflect the value of the item?

Put it this way. I have a box, and you don’t know what’s in it. I say it contains something worth 50 quid, but I will sell it you for £5. You still don’t know what’s in the box, though you can smell something that reminds you of squirrel crap. You see that I’m dressed in very expensive clothes, and you know that my only source of income is my sales work. How sure are you that the thing in the box is worth anything at all?

Well fortunately the good people at Gems TV know what a scaptical bastard you are. I would therefore direct you to their Appraisals page. This raises some very interesting notions that I would like to expand upon:

“An appraisal valuation is what someone is prepared to pay for something. For example, what is the value of the Mona Lisa? Is the value the same as the cost of the canvas and the paint or is it determined by the amount that someone will pay for it? We believe that jewellery appraisals should reflect the average cost you would have to pay to replace the item if lost or stolen.”

So yes, a good question is “what does value actually mean”, and their example of the Mona Lisa shows that while something is physically worth diddly squat, it can be priceless. Alternatively it can mean that if you’re stupid enough to pay a certain price, you have defined it as being worth that amount. The really nice touch is saying that appraisal value should reflect the replacement cost. Of course, the minerals referred to above are only available on these TV channels, and so again the “value” is defined by the seller who could be making a massive profit (after the overheads of running 3 TV channels, which are surely not that much!!!)

And as for the next bit, it’s probably easier to add my comments to the actual text:

On these pages are just some of the thousands of comments (I can’t find any) we have received from delighted customers whose appraisals have exceeded their expectations (What if they have ridiculously low expectations?). Unfortunately, we have also heard that some customers have had a negative experience when obtaining appraisals from local jewellers (again, these aren’t posted on the site). As GemsTV is an integrated manufacturer and television home shopping retailer of coloured gemstone jewellery, we cut out numerous middlemen. This keeps our prices extremely competitive (Competetive with who? you’re the only ones selling this toss). Whilst most jewellers thank us for increasing the awareness of coloured gems (possibly because the profit margins on colourful horse-shit are massive), a few may feel threatened and try to discredit our jewellery (or perhaps they are the honest ones, and think that your shiny baubles are worth bugger all).

Like I say, I’m no expert on jewels, gems, or valuations thereof. I just have a few doubts about anything sold only on tv, that gets sold at a mere fraction of it’s starting price, and that has a website spinning what can only be described as bullshit!

“Oi, you… yes, the bloke trying to dress like the Joker and in dire need of a shave. Yes, you… put those pissing pop-tarts down and listen. The Hills is on tonight. Seriously, if you like self-inflicted pain, you have to watch it. Sober.”

The scales fell from my eyes, and I felt envigorated by the revelation before me. Partly it was the confirmation that improbable-God speaks with a subtle Mancunian accent, combined with the fact that during this time, the afore-mentioned pop-tart had cooled down and I had been saved from third-degree tongue burns. Then the realisation dawned on me what lay before me.

And so, I am prepared. I have coffee, and have put the remote on the other side of the room so I can’t succumb to temptation and change the channel.

It begins:

Oh come on… there’s an hour of this??? A double bill? My God, why have you forsaken me?

Right, a nice little summary of the story so far… not that it is a story. These are real people you know. They just don’t have real personalities, jobs, or breasts.

So, excellent production values and it looks like someone’s used an Imax camera to film their mates sitting around talking about their weekends. This stuff is tedious on a bleeding camcorder, so why does a clear picture make a difference?

Heidi has been tasked to do something… organise a party I think. Now we cut to 2 girls discussing one of their friends moving into her own place. And then a bit of music, footage of skylines and landscapes.

[What the fuck is going on??? How is this entertainment?]

Now Audrina is in a bar/restaurant/film set talking to some herbert in a baseball cap. She’s just asked him to move in with her, and then we cut to commercial.

7 minutes. 420 seconds. and now we’re watching adverts. Can someone please explain to me how this is different to sitting in a pub and listening in to other punters’ conversations? At least there you’d hear more than 4 sentences before you are forced to eavesdrop on some other blabbering trollop.There is more character shown by Pablo the drugs mule dog than by any one of these “people”!

AAAANNND we’re back. Audrina’s showing her sister (face of a man, tattoos of 17 men) round her house. She must be a frigging drug dealer or very high-class prostitute to afford this! Oh goodo, more meaningful pauses in conversation before another music/landscape interlude.

Time for a re-structure of my approach for this blog. With such a disjointed programme, there’s nothing to analyse or critique in any meaningful way. I mean I’m watching 2 dolled up bints packing ornaments into boxes… all with full makeup, jewellery, and studio-quality lighting. The level of dialogue is like something out of a badly written porn film, but instead of getting it on they have pauses in conversation and try to remember their own names.

In that whole episode, the only thing that actually happened was Heidi getting fired for being pissed at a party she was professionally organising, and for having her boyfriend there. So how did she react when summarily dismissed from employment… you guessed it, she fell silent walked out and got her bag.

The only option left is to take the people (I can’t describe them as either characters or personalities, without some evidence of either) individually, and try and sum them up to remove the need for you to sit through this turgid goldfish bowl of arse.

Ok so first let’s deal with Audrina. Brunette, seems to be seeing some rugged looking bloke (i.e. he wears a vest and baseball cap in restaurants, and doesn’t shave) for about 5 minutes before asking him to move into her new place with her. No idea about what job she does, so I’m sticking with the dealer/hooker guess from above.

2 girls with dark blonde hair. No idea what their names are. They work in the fashion industry, and seem to be mates with Audrina. Maybe they pimp her out. Probably not. That’s it… can’t work out anything more about them.

Heidi… now unemployed, and not overly emotional about losing her supposed dream job of 3 years. who’d have thought that getting trolleyed and inviting your boyfriend (Spencer… see below) to a party your boss had been paid presumably thousands of dollars to organise could have a negative effect on your job security. Live and learn chuckles!

Last and by every means least, we have Spencer Pratt. That’s right… that really is his name. Seems to be the only regular (by which I mean he’s on screen often, not that he’s normal) man (I think) in the cast. He seems to be under the impression that he has significance or influence. He has the personality of a belch, approximately half the charisma of a Ken doll.

Sorry… that should have been this photo. What a mistake to make.

Words just escape me. I am genuinely struggling to understand how this has lasted so long on TV, particularly without some crazed stalker gutting one of these bimbos and wearing them as a hat, a la Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. It’s as if some unforseen hand is flicking between high-definition CCTV cameras, cutting between random bystanders having coffee and sampling conversations. The only rule is that the channel must change just before any of these dialogues reaches it’s conclusion, or justifies the carbon dioxide spewed out during it.

Will I be tuning in again? I don’t even believe I have ever tuned IN yet!

There are many shows that enable members of the public to share their deep personal and relationship problems with the baying lynch mobs who form talk show audiences, and who wouldn’t want to be told that their boyfriend/girlfriend was having an affair in front of potentially millions of people sat at home? Only Springer manages to avoid taking itself too seriously, and manages this by a LONG way!

I don’t think I need to outline the basic format of the story, but I will anyway. Guest comes on, says what problem is (usually having an affair, or maybe they are secretly gay/were born a man/ cross dress), their partner then comes on and is told the news, they try to beat the snot out of each other while being held apart by security, mistress/other person involved in the affair or fetish then comes on and stirs things up for more attempted violence, and then Springer shares an obvious moral message that makes us all think about why these people were so stupid to come on the show.

The real entertainment kicks in with the way the guests are virtually controlled by the audience and the producer. For example, a technician plays various sound effects to add to the humiliation. Without exception, if there’s a lull in the attempted violence, the technician will play the sound of a boxing bell and in a Pavlovian reaction they give that extra effort to try and ram each other’s fists down their (ex) partner’s throat.

Audience participation also keeps things lively, often by the crowd chanting that they want the competing women to lift their tops and flash their baps. If this happened in real life (i.e. asking a woman who’s just found out her boyfriend is boning some trailer park pig-face to put her emotional pain on hold and show her tits), you’d be lucky to keep your teeth! However, on Springer you are treated to a pixelated glance of breasts as they try to show their superiority to their rivals like stags comparing antlers!

It’s not just the women though- in a real treat of freakshow tv, one show featured 2 midgets (or little people) who were seeing the same woman. Soon enough, the cry of “Naked Midget Fight” errupted, and Grumpy and Sleazy happily agreed to strip to their boxer shorts before trying to beat the sh*t out of each other. Classic Springer!

Compare this to Jeremy Kyle, the most popular British talk show at the moment that often features teens who aren’t sure whether they should still be going out with the bloke they had a drunken one-nighter with and who is the father of their repulsive spawn. The audience in this must just go along because it’s the one chance they have to feel superior to another human being, and seem to revel in the disgust they display towards the scum on stage. At the centre of this is Kyle himself, who spews sanctimonious tosh and glares at his guests as if they have just farted and followed through at a family funeral!

Jeremy Kyle was discussed last year by a Manchester District Judge, who was hearing the case of a man who assaulted another man while on the show. Unsurprisingly, the defendant had been somewhat angered to find out that his wife was having an affair, and when confronted by the love-rat simply headbutted him in the face before security could step in. Kyle responded by pouring superior scorn on the kind of man who has to resort to violence in these situation, without ever acknowledging that his circus of misery had orchestrating the whole thing. The Judge described the whole show as a form of bear-baiting, which sums it up beautifully. There was also the disclosure that producers have been known to give cans of extra strength lager to alcoholic guests, just before they appear on the show. remember folks, Jeremy Kyle is just there to try and help people face up to their problems (providing they also provide entertainment and decent ratings in the process). The guy’s a hyena posing as a therapist, picking over the carcass of working-class relationships while claiming to help.

The only solution is to move away from moralistic self-improvements, and admit that you want to run a freakshow. instead of lie-detector testing, put a pole in the corner and make competing dole-scroungers dance round it to discover who the cheating boyfriend really fancies. Have extra footage of the waiting room before the guests go on stage, where they have access to Scarface-like mountains of cocaine, opium pipes, and pints of Absinthe to make sure they are really flying by the time they appear on screen. Even better… make the women compete in a round of Bap Conkers to determine who is the true champion!

What’s Bap Conkers, I hear you ask? be patient ladies and gentlemen, and soon all will be revealed!

… I was impressed by the originality of an idea in the new Celebrity Big Brother series.

It’s like admitting addiction to heroin… having to publicly state something that flies in the face of everything that society expects!

Rather than risk yet another catastrophe involving small minded, e-list celebrity flotsom acting like ignorant pieces of rat-shit, this year the housemates aren’t really celebrities. Some (including me) would say this isn’t much of a change, as most contestants over the last few years have been vacuous non-entities that are unheard of before they drop their arses live on Channel 4. At least this year C4 has pre-empted this criticism by deliberately picking “up and coming” people from the world of sport, politics, music, and… erm… the circus.

The real fun comes through the “hijacking” of the show by actual celebrities (or at least people that I have heard of). This works by the day’s celebrity taking the role of Big Brother, and essentially playing the role of puppet master in this televised dolls’ house. I am genuinely looking forward to Brian Sewell taking the reigns, which he will do according to something I read somewhere (there’s a reliable source for you people!). Sewell, by way of explanation, is an English art critic who has the most ridiculous accent you’ll ever hear. It manages to go beyond that of Loyd Grossman, and I can only describe it as an upper class interpretation of Dick Van Dyke’s cockney codswallop in Mary Poppins- it is that exaggerated!

We’re still in the early stages, as it only began last night. If it all turns to shite before your very eyes, don’t come crying to me. Yesterday’s Hijacker was Matt Lucas- the round/bald/gay comedian from Shooting Stars and Little Britain fame. In a masterstroke of television, he gave the first housemate to enter the house a challenge. John, the big ginger happy Scottish political activist, had to wear a stereotypical tartan hat to hide an earpiece. Through this earpiece, Lucas gave John instructions on how to act in front of each new housemate as they entered the place in turn.

TS and I only caught this half way through, but it was great to see the faces of men being approached by this big, smiling ginger loon, who would give them an unsolicited back rubs. The confusion that gradually spread as John had to go up to each of them in turn and say the word “cake”, before just nodding and walking away. All of a sudden, it was like having an out of body experience… that is the sort of random behaviour that I have grown used to from TS, but there it was happening to other people in an intentionally bizarre scenario. I actually checked TS’ ears last night to try and see if she’s been controlled by some unseen camp celebrity. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any receivers, so any voices must just be inside her pretty little head. Oh well.

Anyway, what was I on about? Oh yes, John had to satisfy his invisible manipulator in order to win a party for the rest of the house, and a free pass to the grand final for himself. Without wanting to ruin the surprise (not that there is any) for you dear readers, he passed the test thanks to successfully collapsing to the floor as if shot, and holding his leg while complaining of spontaneous cramp. Well done to him!

So there we have it. Hell has frozen over, and I have written positive things about an episode of Big Brother. However, normal service will be restored.

Smoking Monkey will return in: A Review of Celebrity Fitness Videos (working title)

ps… it has been pointed out that apparently we know Liam. By this, I mean that TS knows him from back in the ghetto of Widnes. He’s not a web designer/entrepreneur as he claims… though I got lost in TS’ ramblings and so can’t give any more information. If I remember, I’ll let you all know