ITV's Stewie is my Family Guy

Four years ago, on the eve of my 50^th birthday, I was crying in a London restaurant, watching a TV and seeing America’s first black American President head for the White House.

    

It felt good to be a part of history. Not just good. I was brimming with overwhelming joy. To see changes in our society that just a few decades ago would have been unthinkable was something that could not help but move you.

    

I thought back to my primary school days, when a boy called Raymond, who obviously had learning difficulties, was (even to my young and inexperienced mind) racially abused. He went on to do time for murder and, while I recognise mental disorder, I wonder how much of his disturbed adult life might have been averted had his learning disability been recognised and treated and, even more significantly, if he had not been black.

    

High on Obama fever, I went to live in Los Angeles, where I stayed for two and a half years. The venom I heard poured on Obama horrified me and disgusted me. “Whadderyer think o’ the urban?” I was asked, through barely disguised contempt. Most of the comments I heard are unprintable.

    

The ignorance of so many Americans, who blindly go where evangelical religion leads them, to the extinction of all rational thought and humanity, stunned me. While ignorance is just as capable of breeding and being fostered on this side of the Atlantic, I believe that it is our history and the lessons we learn (or are forced to re-evaluate) from it that enables us to examine ourselves very differently from our neighbours across the pond.

    

It is that ability, coupled with extraordinary broadcasting abilities that, for me, made ITV’s coverage of the US election one of the greatest pieces of television, let alone news, I have ever witnessed.

    

I have been a TV critic for over 25 years and regularly watch between 80 and 100 hours a week. In over two decades, nowhere has there been as great a change as in news. When Sky launched its 24 hour news channel in 1989, it was revolutionary. I was addicted. I watched the entire OJ Simpson and Louise Woodward trials, gasping when the verdicts were announced as loudly as I might when watching a drama killing off a key character.

    

Now, 24 hours news is everywhere, and we have Twitter, which delivers news even faster than even TV can. I learn about celebrities’ deaths through Twitter, I Tweet throughout all TV programmes (via Zeebox), sharing thoughts and ideas with others. The irony is that in an age when we are able to record and catch up on just about anything and everything on TV, it is still the shared experience that we most enjoy. For all the joys of the boxed set era, there is still nothing quite like our relationship with the immediacy of the literal boxed set in our living rooms.

    

What ITV did spectacularly last night and throughout this morning was take news coverage to a whole new level. The studio-based discussions and interviews, led by a breathtakingly energetic Alastair Stewart, made complex political analysis accessible to all, without resorting to dumbing down. Alastair made personalities and mini-dramas of every single situation and interviewee – even the dullest. No, it’s not often that you hear the word “parsimonious” at 2.30am, and the banter about such matters, through Alastair’s linguistic fencing, while still keeping a tight rein on the matter in hand, was awesome (as the Americans would say) to behold.

   

Quite what the BBC was up to is anybody’s guess. At no point, apart from post 4.30am did they even have the right numbers of total seats won on the screen. While ITV cut to the US each time a key result was announced, the BBC panel, hosted by David Dimbleby, was engaged in yet another sleepy, repetitive discussion.

    

Meanwhile, on ITV, direct from the US, pieces of carpet were being laid on ice to show which states were going to which party; there were towers keeping us up to date with the numbers of states falling to red or blue; there were people. Yes, people! ITV recognised that this was an election about people, and we heard from them. Women. Hispanics. Blacks. Gays. Voters!

    

Alastair Stewart was the brilliant ringmaster throughout, and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. I was at home watching from my bed but ITV made me feel as if I was a guest at the biggest party on Earth.

    

As I did four years ago, I cried again, because today, the world is a better place for the decision that America made. And British television continues to be a better place for the sublime talent we witnessed on ITV last night.

    

The US has its own Stewie in Family Guy. 

For me, there’s only one Stewie, and gosh, has he earned his sleep.

  

  

  

  

Happy Birthday to Me!

This is the first birthday ever that I am spending by myself. 

It’s weird, but just a fact of age, I suppose – and having no money to be able to throw a party.

    

So, I had a long lie-in and was feeling quite content until I woke to my reflection and the longest hair growing out of my chin I have ever found.

    

I began to wish I had bought the NoNo online - the (allegedly) miracle device that removes facial hair with “virtually no pain”. It’s that word “virtually” that worries me, in addition to the potential damage I could cause if I decided to use the NoNo after a couple of drinks. I have visions of waking up on the sofa with a Mohican and one eyebrow, not to mention a sliced ear. So, I just took the tweezers to it.

    

In the shower, I thought that my body wasn’t too bad for 54. True, I have not “returned to me original weight”, which is what women always boast about when they shed a couple of stone (that would be silly – my original weight was 7 lbs). My age showed more clearly when I dried my hair, as there appears to be a great deal less of it with each passing year. I felt like Paul Daniels as I tried to manoeuvre strands across the patches of white scalp and wondering why nature could not make what was happening on my chin happen on my head.

    

As a child, I used to have parties but, being born on November 5^th, all the kids brought fireworks to let off. Then, as now, I hate fireworks and used to spend the outdoors part of the evening hiding indoors, terrified behind the sofa, while my guests waved their sparklers in the garden.

    

They, on the other hand, were probably glad to escape my clutches. When they arrived at the party, I would organise them in order of height and arrange their presents on a chair with similar precision, so they were doubtless only too happy to be de-mobbed to the garden. To be honest, I was always glad to be rid of them at the end of the night, and thrust their parting gift of a “goody bag” into their hands as speedily as I might an unpinned grenade.

    

I’ve also been thinking back to my significant birthdays. In the photographs of my 18^th, I am in a gorgeous turquoise two piece (oh, why did I throw it away?) and boasting a hairdo that looks as if it has eaten my body weight twice over. I look at least 55. 

On my 21^st, I am in brown crimplene. 

I spent my 30^th in Camden Town, in Chalk and Cheese, a restaurant then owned by my friend Liz, to whom I remain close to this day. 

My 40^th - possibly the happiest day of my life – was in Soho House in London. 

I had three 50^th birthday parties and, at the main dinner in London, felt blessed that the friends there were the ones who had been prominent in my life for over 25 years. At the party I organised in my Paris apartment, the last guest was taken away unconscious by the pompiers. They were not happy and shouted at me in French that this was not their job. Ha! I wanted to respond. You want to be in Cardiff on a Saturday night, when this would be your only job. Luckily, my French was not sufficiently up to scratch to be able to convey this.

    

I am not feeling sad at spending a birthday alone; it’s only one day. We all live busy lives; friends have partners, children, jobs. Last week, I was in London, enjoying a wonderful dinner with very close friends; does it matter that it was not on one particular date as opposed to any other? Not a jot.

    

Tomorrow, I hope to see my mother, who lives an hour away. Does our love diminish because we have not seen each other on THE day? Again, no.

    

It is the poignancy with which we recognise the nature of time passing that changes how we view birthdays. For me, today, it does not have to be different from any other, but a day to reflect on how lucky I am to love and be loved by so many wonderful friends and my ever-supportive family.

    

Facebook, too, has overwhelmed me with friends, acquaintances and complete strangers sending their good wishes. For all its faults, social networking is a phenomenal medium for reaching out to people and letting them know they are in your thoughts.

    

Every day of my life, my family, friends, and even these people I have never met, give me a goody bag, and I am 24/7 grateful for it. 

My birthday is happy because every one of them is in my life.  

  

  

      

Creative Aloneness - and Why I Won't Be Going to the Theatre Again

Two rare things happened last night. 

One, I went to the theatre. 

Two, I walked out of the theatre before the end of the play.

    

The first happened because I met the delightful and very talented Gary Pillai, who was appearing as Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, alongside Meera Syal, playing Beatrice. I love Meera – as a writer, actor, presenter, person – but had never seen her on stage. The production, set in India, also sounded interesting. It was the last night, and I am so rarely in London I wanted to take advantage of one of the city’s obvious main attractions.

    

My theatre going experience in general has not been good. The brilliant critic Jack Tinker was a good friend and I was always amazed that his passion for the genre never wavered. I used to go with him to shows not to see them, but to watch his enjoyment and his eagerness to file his copy. So great was his enthusiasm, he once failed to notice that I had fallen down a manhole on our way to Joe Allen after a play.

    

I also used to go to the theatre with Keith Waterhouse when we both lived in Bath. It’s a strange city in which to watch a production. The theatre’s front row is invariably packed with old ladies, who express their disappointment vociferously if what they see on stage does not match up to the picture on the front of the programme. At the start of a very trendy production of A Country Wife (programme: green fields, white people in nice frocks), their response to the black actor coming on stage and delivering a monologue not in the script was: “Oh, no.” Together. Like a geriatric Jedward.

Blood Brothers was ruined for me by a coach load of people from Wales, who collectively screamed: "Ooh, 'e's gonna shoot 'im!" at a key moment (Apologies to those who have yet to see it - is there anyone who hasn't?)

  

It’s not just my theatre history that made me doubt whether I should venture into this dangerous territory once more; I had endured an awful few days. Filthy hotel, underwhelming conference at very grubby college, screaming child in pub . . . Oh, I could go on. And will. Ugg boots. Cup cakes. People who wear woollen hats – any hats, come to that – indoors. I was having such a bad anger management day, I tried to get #whatsthatallabout trending on Twitter. 

No one joined in (Mean buggers - #whatsthatallabout?) . . . Celebrities whose new fashion accessory is a cardboard coffee cup (why don’t they just drink the sodding thing in the café?) . . . Chinese restaurant staff who say to single people: “We only do tables for two or more” (yes, that really happened). So, I thought I would treat myself.

 

More problems - not least, when I tried to book online and predictive texting kept changing “Ado” to FBI (#whatsthatallabout?). Much FBI About Nothing. Really?

    

So. The queue for tickets was huge, with two minutes to go before Curtain Up. But after a nifty bit of manoeuvring, I managed to make it to the front. “Senior citizen discount?” asked the cashier.

    

What? I have a birthday next week. I will be 54. The last time I was asked my age was when a supermarket was reluctant to serve me alcohol. I was 28. When did I get to look so old? 

    

Having procured a ticket, I took my seat. So far, so good. The woman next to me was also a late buyer and clearly a theatre enthusiast.

    

Then, more problems started. The sweet wrappings, the crunchy chocolate, people arriving late, finding aliens in their seats, and debating the issue with the usher. And, worst of all, the seven year old behind me whose mother had to keep explaining who bloody Benedick was and why he was dressing up pretending not to be Benedick.

    

The last time I got so angry with a child in the theatre, I had to be moved. The production was Scrooge, in Bristol, and responding to every damned person who came on stage, the child next to me asked her mother: “Is that a ghost?” After about two hundred non-ghosts, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “There are only three ghosts, okay? THREE! And I will tell you every time they come on!”

    

The mother said that I clearly didn’t have any children, at which point I lied and said I had three and, were they to come to the theatre, they would not be obsessive irritants who think they are seeing dead people. The management thought it best to move me. To a box. Alone.

    

A Bollywood version of Shakespeare takes concentration – I loved it, but it required silence from the people around me. So when, in addition to the sweets, chocolates and child, the theatre’s air conditioning came on right above me, I made a decision. Go. Now. And did.

    

I was sorry to miss the end of the play (yes, I know the ending, but that’s not the point) and was very honest with the cast when we met up later on. I was thrilled to have seen some new people making their RSC debut (Anjana Vasan as the maid – Wow! Brilliant!). And, as always, I left with enormous respect for actors who strut their stuff for peanuts in order to bring pleasure to the rest of us.

    

But why can’t people go to the theatre and just STFU?! Social networking has made interactive viewers of us all. We Tweet, we Facebook, we Zeebox – there is an audience not only for the shows, but for our own opinions, on a 24/7 basis. We have lost the art of sitting in a dark place, enjoying the company of others in our imaginations. Creative aloneness.

    

Maybe that’s why I love TV so much. Give me a 50 inch screen, people I have never met, pretending to be people who have never, in reality, existed, and I am so, so happy. 

Especially if there is not some brat behind me asking why there's a man dressed in a frock.

  

Can a Grope Ever Be Just a Grope?

When does a hug become a grope? 

Is a grope ever acceptable? 

Is it more acceptable for a woman to grope a man? 

Does groping a person in a more powerful position than yourself let you off the hook in terms of unacceptable behaviour? 

Can you be a gropee and a groper?

   

These, and any questions like them, have been occupying me in recent weeks as the furore (quite rightly) over the late Jimmy Savile’s abuse of young people has hit the headlines. Suddenly, however, it is not just a sexual abuser who is under the microscope, but media men in general, the latest being the historian Adam Hart-Davis, who, it is reported, was admonished by the BBC for “inappropriately” hugging a woman, who complained about his behaviour. He said his actions were misinterpreted.

   

In my younger days, I confess to having groped men in what, by today’s standards, would be considered inappropriate places. Some of those men worked for the BBC, many did not; interestingly (and this is only an observation), every man I ever groped received promotion shortly afterwards, a sign not, I believe, of my ability to influence, but my good taste in my choice of gropees (you know who you are).

   

I groped one prominent politician at a very senior BBC executive’s Christmas party. The man had that week been named as one of the sexiest politicians in Britain, so, in a bit of fun and in full view of everyone, including his wife, I grabbed him and made light of the survey. The following year, he arrived at the party and, out of view of other guests, put his hand up my skirt and groped me with some vigour. The executive wrote me a letter of apology, explaining that much as he tried to control his guests, he was not having much luck (a senior BBC female presenter had also tipped a glass of wine over someone’s head).

  

I confess to having been surprised at the nature of the grope, although I fully accept responsibility for it – what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and all that. But whereas my groping was always done in full view of everyone (it became a sort of fringe to the fringe at the annual Edinburgh TV festival), the politician had targeted me away from the crowd and, yes, it felt more invasive.

   

I cannot remember when I conducted my first unsolicited grope. I was not a promiscuous teenager – in fact, when my first boyfriend took me to Porthcawl fairground, my screams when his hand ventured near my top could be heard far above those of the people on the Roller Coaster; it was, perhaps, the strictness with which I was brought up about sex that led to a curiosity for and fascination with, exactly what it was that lurked so sinisterly in men’s trousers.

   

My first grope – definitely unsolicited – was with a schoolteacher, and that, maybe, is where it all began. I had no idea what my hand was being led towards, much less what I should do once it reached its destination, but the thrill of the unknown was perhaps what stayed with me.

   

Did I, the victim of a groper, become the gropee in the way that the abused often turn abusers in later life? Was I just having a laugh and, for the most part, not receiving a negative reaction to my behaviour (well, for the most part – Kevin Whately was a very unwilling victim), carry on because it was just a good way of breaking the ice with men?

   

Who knows. But the world has changed. My groping days – at least, in public places – are over; I am too old for such displays of affection, and also, today, I would probably be behind bars.

   

I am glad to have lived in the era of the innocent groper, though; and while I would not in any way condone anyone who abuses their position to gain any sexual favours, we have to remember that there was a time when sinister motives did not lie behind every overt (or covert) sexual expression.

   

Sometimes, a grope is just a grope.

  

  

  

   

Salmanella Poisoning - and My Recovery

The BBC bills them as “Austerity protests”. 

What on Earth are they when they are at home? 

I am sitting in a bar where the TV is turned down and I am watching thousands of people with banners talking to anyone with a microphone who will stand still long enough to listen. All of them are grossly overweight, so whatever cuts they are protesting against, rest assured it’s not one to their food budget.

   

I confess to never having taken part in any kind of demonstration in my life. I once stood outside News International during the printers’ strike at Wapping, but that was only in the hope of bumping into a journalist with whom I was in love at the time. When I was at university, I also bought a Save the Miners badge, but that was only because I was in love with a philosophy lecturer, whom I knew to be a Marxist and thought my showing willing might prove an aphrodisiac (it didn’t – well, not until 15 years later, but that’s another story).

  

I’m not against marching per se; I admire people who will take to the streets on a wet weekend morning to shout about something they stand barely any chance of being able to influence. I like their passion and enthusiasm and marvel at their bad taste in clothes and footwear – it’s like Fraggle Rock taking to the streets.

It’s just not for me. I don’t like getting my hair wet (most demos take place in the rain), I don’t like being flat-footed because it draws attention to my five foot height (when Jimmy Choo brings out a Built for Demo sandal, I might change my mind), and I don’t like people shouting. I suffer very badly from misophonia – literally, a hatred of sound – and being engulfed by marauding complainers really is my idea of hell.

   

It’s not that I don’t have beliefs – but my excuse for not taking to the streets in my Wellingtons is that I’m a writer, and anything I have to say I put on paper and, hopefully, get into the marketplace through the printed word. But then many writers have been and still are far more pro-active than I could ever be.

   

Take Salman Rushdie. It was speaking out in print that got him into trouble in the first place, and it didn’t stop him. Me? I’d have keeled over without so much as a “Yes, yes, I renounce the evil ways of the West and where can I buy a burkha?”

  

I met Salman quite a few times when I first came to London in the early Eighties. At one point, we had the same agent, and I met him at a party, where he accused me of “rambling”. “Hah! That’s rich,” I responded. “Coming from a man whose books you can’t even read further than page 3.” I could smell his contempt.

   

When he was under cover following the “fatwa” declared upon him, you couldn’t go to any literary event without bumping into him. I knew his bodyguards better than I did my own family, and their appearance ahead of the “star” always alerted everyone to Salman’s arrival in ample time to muster up a battalion and prepare for attack.

   

One such occasion was a Jonathan Cape Christmas party. I am an ex-ballroom dancing champion and, seeing Salman standing morosely at the side of the dance floor, whisked him away for a jive. He must be dying for a dance, I reasoned. How he would love having a slice of normal life. Reader, he walked off the floor. Walked off the floor! From me! A champion dancer! He said I was not doing the jive to his liking.  

   

He was bloody lucky he had any sodding legs to do the jive, let alone any sodding jive according to his liking, I tried to argue, but it was to no avail.

   

So maybe it was my early Salmanella poisoning that bred in me an abhorrence of anything smacking of dissidence.

   

Or maybe it has more to do with my having been brought up with a terror of authority. Doctors, vicars, teachers, the police – I was brought up to believe that these people, my elders and people in a position of authority, were right about everything, and to cross them would cast me into the outer reaches of hell, never to return.

   

We now live in an age in which we know that many people in authority power abuse that power and that blind trust is . . . well, not to be trusted. I like to think I had good instincts when, on a youth course when I was just 13, I was not one of the youngsters who crowded around a creepy Jimmy Savile as he tried to ingratiate himself amongst us on our church youth club annual holiday.

   

So maybe I’ve just never liked being part of the crowd. Although, growing up, it was something I thought I craved, it is always something I have avoided, consciously or unconsciously. I am suspicious of mob mentality, banners and flat shoes marching in unison.   

   

Just give me my pen, my desk and the telly showing me fat, wet people, whose Wellington boots I am not fit to lick.

    

Give Me Happywood!

When I was growing up, the little I knew about the movies was gleaned from the first books my parents passed down to me: several copies of F Maurice Speed’s Film Review. The red ones had gold lettering on their covers; the royal blue had pale blue.

I labeled the well-thumbed chronicles 9/- (for some strange reason, I priced everything I ever owned) and, in the one book that had no page numbers, I added those, too.

  

The cinema did not feature strongly in our lives, but these picture books brought alive worlds that seemed breathtakingly glamorous.

Deanna Durbin, Universal star, with Tarantula eyelashes, and lips matching the red roses pinned to her lace dress.

Six year old Margaret O’Brien, star of MGM’s Lost Angel, and who was a role model to those of us the same age who could only dream of stardom.

Bette Davis, posing gracefully, yet still sinister in her white fur, the caption billing her as a Warner star, whose 1947 releases included A Stolen Life and Deception.

Dozens of handsome men, who to me looked 70 but were probably no more than 25.

I feared for Ingrid Bergman, poisoned by Nazi spies and hoping that Cary Grant, leaning over her in the black and white photo, would rescue her.

And, most terrifying of all, Betty Hutton as Pearl White, tied to the railway track with the train inches away in Paramount’s The Perils of Pauline.

The book pointed out, “for the nervous reader”, that the train stopped “in the nick of time”. I remember the feeling of relief. And excitement.

This was another world, far away from Cardiff, the capital of Wales, where I was born.

A world fraught with danger, tears and laughter, the promise of a kiss.

And always, always, the happy ending.

A man who would rescue you, protect you and keep you safe from all the evils of the world that lurked beyond the hills of Hollywood. Those nine letters, high in the hills, that I felt I could touch in the red and blue, scuffed edged books and glossy pictures; the single word that told me no matter what, everything would be all right in the end.

  

And it was - at least, until I started to go to the movies for real.

My parents had always protected from the idea of death, especially when it came to animals. My mother protected me from the death of George the budgerigar by telling me that “He flew away to a hot country” and it took me months to get over the death of Horace the goldfish, who drowned (it’s a long, complicated story). So Ring of Bright Water was never going to be a walk in the park.

I had recently had my tenth birthday when the film opened in the Odeon in Newport, and it was my first cinema visit since Dad had taken me to see the Beatles in Help! when I was six. Five months before that, we had gone as a family to see The Sound of Music in Bournemouth. Then, we were staying in a Bed and Breakfast, where my brother had managed to open a bottle of junior aspirin and devour the sweet, orange tablets. He was rushed to hospital and, as a reward for his swift recovery, we were taken to the cinema.

I was not a naughty child and had too great a terror of authority to deviate, but two days later, back at home, I cut my bedroom curtains, just like Julie Andrews had done to make clothes for the von Trapp children (well, not “just like”; I did a two inch snip and felt like a child of the devil). I then got into trouble for playing the LP of the film eight times when left alone in the house one Saturday. By the time my parents returned, Auntie Muriel next door was at screaming point. My mother still reels with shock at the naughtiness of a child who hardly dared breathe without asking permission.

It says something about our times that (1) a child of ten could be left alone for the length of time it takes to listen to a musical eight times; and (2) that so innocent a film could induce such acts of rebelliousness in a child. After all, Pulp Fiction it was not.

  

Mum took me to see Ring of Bright Water on a wet Saturday afternoon, and it was a jolly enough tale until Mij very foolishly got himself in the way of some workmen who chopped him in two with an axe. I cried. I sobbed. So distressed was I, that Mum decided I was still not ready for the realities of rigor mortis.

So she comforted me by saying that it wasn’t Mij who died in the movie, but another otter: a cousin of Mij. A very, very distant cousin who had not even appeared in the movie. I stopped crying, smiled and ate my sherbet lemons.

In school the next day, Carol Lane said: “No, it was Mij who died.”

   

"Mum," I said, returning home from school, sobbing once more. "Did Mij really die?"

   

Mum thought it was time to come clean. "Yes, I'm afraid he did."

  

"So it wasn't Mij's cousin?"

  

"No, it was Mij."

Mij was dead. It came as a terrible shock.

I grieved not only for Mij but otters everywhere. With careless workmen like that around, the same plight probably awaited every poor creature who ventured out of the Ring of Bright Water for longer than ten seconds a day.

But how could it happen? This was the cinema, the place where everything turned out all right – wasn’t it?

I decided that I preferred a world in which Mij lived on and budgies had a knack of slipping locks. I didn’t want mysteriously vanishing birds and Carol Lane’s world, in which axes had a strange habit of chopping otters in half.

Now, as then, I want the perils of Pauline – but I need the assurance at the end of the movie that the train will stop, the axe will not fall.

I want the happy ending.

In movies, as in life.