Formula Half

I'm quite excited about the new Formula 1 season, which begins next weekend in Melbourne. Sebastian Vettel is a god amongst drivers and I look forward to seeing what he achieves this year. He may be the finest Formula 1 driver ever.

I'm not hugely loyal though, I'll also be keeping a close eye on Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button. We can pretend that I'm being patriotically British just for a while, even if we have to concede that I really tend to be a bit German about sport.

I'm a little apprehensive about the coverage however. The BBC are how showing half, and Sky are showing half. As a Virgin subscriber, it would cost us £22.50 a month to have Sky Sports, which then gives free F1 coverage. Their website states that what you can do if you don't have Sky Sports and you want to watch F1 is: get Sky Sports.

I am told by a trusted source that this is due to Sky setting prices and further told by another that this is true.

Reason to detest Sky #6,345,311.

In a previous incarnation of my life, I had Sky Sports and watched football on it. Then Sky stopped showing any match you'd want to see and instead made them pay-per-view and that was that. As the bundle with Sky Movies 1-236 is generally negligibly more expensive, we had movies and sport galore. Woo. Not so any more. Sports is mostly boring football featuring diddy team B team vs weeny team B team from 1976. Woo. Movies show the same blockbusters over and over and over and over and...

Mostly actually due to having children and little time to stare at the tellybox, we don't have the full Sky works any more and so £22.50 to watch half the grand prix doesn't seem good value at all.

I don't follow how it works anyway, mostly because I haven't found out. I'll buy the Radio Times this week and find out.

"It" being the split coverage incidentally, I follow how the Grand Prix works. Obviously.

As far as I've gleaned, the live races will be split; half will be broadcast live on the BBC. What happens to the other half - being shown live on Sky - for terrestrial and non-Sky viewers I don't know. They should get a non-live version of the race as I understand it. Non-live is fine when they're on at crazy hours, but knowing Sky, they'll have all the European races live, and the BBC will be left with all the races run at silly o'clock to broadcast live. Maybe just highlights, which isn't worthy of the licence fee, but which is better than nothing. Just.

I also have no idea what will be broadcast, or where, of the qualifying et al. I don't know much really. Hopefully when the first race begins in fractionally (7 hours) over a week's time, I'll be better informed.

We'll see.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Over the Rainbow, wk 2

Never done one of these before, bear with me.

Reality TV. Meh. Stupid people, being stupid and edited to look stupider. Entertainment void. X Factor is extraordinarily cruel. Auditions are purely an excuse to openly laugh at people who are deluded about their own talent. Oh ha ha ha. And to shatter dreams with a cruel comment? What joy! But, yeah, addictive. You watch, you care, you want to know what happens... So, best avoided.

Unless it's on the BBC. They do a special line in Nice. (as in Very Nice, not Southern France). People encourage talent and editing shows the best of people, not the worst.

The latest BBC Very Nice Reality Big Brother Rip Off Talent Show is 'Over the Rainbow', following the format of 'How do you Solve a Problem like Maria?', 'Any Dream Will Do', and 'I'd Do Anything'. All seeking the star of a West End show, auditioning 1000s of nobodies and ending with 10/11/12 people in the studio, voted off weekly by audience phone ins, with one of the bottom two saved each week by Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Oh, and we don't forget he's a Lord. Oh no.

Anyhoo. Here we are, down to the 10 girls picked by the panel, and one wild card selected by the public vote.

---whoever this is, I can't quite figure who actually votes on these things---

A new panel:

Sheila Hancock, who is quite marvellous and appears to believe that talent entirely depends on understanding lyrics. Who cares who can sing, it's all about the understanding. Pah. Next she'll be suggesting it's all about acting.

Charlotte Church. Who is so very nice and knows how to sing so can comment on singing, nicely:

And John Barrowman. No, sorry, another John (Partridge) that is charmingly gay, an ac-tor (Eastenders this time) and star of the West End. Less easy on the eye than the first John Barrowman but an awful lot easier on the tolerance. Also very nice, thoroughly encouraging comments with huge apologies for hints of negativity.

Graham Norton presents, with his usual simmering double entendres desperate to escape. Quite perfect presenter, incidentally, doesn't take it too seriously, or seriously at all in fact. Marvellous.

The girls...
(in order of performance this week)

Stephanie - looks the part. Stood out as an obvious Dorothy from first (edited of course) audition. Aged 17, which seems to be a requisite, the panel loved her. Slightly perturbed as to why her head held on by scarf at the *hilarious* task of looking after pigs on a farm. Peculiar things, teenagers.

Lauren - meh, nothing special. Bit past it at 22, one of the "older" ones. Not bad.

Dani - is basically Dorothy. Awestruck and 16, which is even better for this show than 17, she also, according to the Good Lord (which Graham Norton DID say), looks like a Dorothy.

Steph - another ancient contender at the ripe old age of 21. Sheila likes her, but Lordie said she didn't look anything LIKE Judy Garland so she was wasting her time. Or something like that.

Amy - the "glamorous" Dorothy. Yup. Glamour. Stated she has a very successful modelling career, oh really? Supposedly 22, looks older, No Chance! And blonde? Does Dorothy have blonde hair? Lordie said she would good for Legally Blonde, in other words not good for Wizard of Oz. She said she would take on board comments, sadly not in time to not wear hot pants for the second show.

Danielle - looks kinda Dorothyish and - whoop - is 17. Not hugely tuneful, but not necessarily awful. Lordie said she would paint the road ruby one day, so the dark hair/being a teenager thing is working. Bizarrely wearing two belts, which is just odd,

Emilie - the one the panel didn't think was good enough but that the public liked. Annoyingly gappy teeth, which Dorothy definitely didn't have. Main drawback however is a seriously ouchy voice. Almost out of the running at 19, has mentioned a few too many times to stomach that she's "back!!!!!" yup. Enjoy it while it lasts, you didn't make the grade. No chance.

Bronte - clearly all wrong on account of being blonde, and performed in her nightie, but has a really nice voice. At 18, she's doing ok. She's my favourite.

Jessica - trying quite hard: is 18, darkened her hair. Good at the acting bit, but doesn't have a fantastic voice. Or so the panel say. Someone on Twitter said they didn't like her, which in my mind means all the public.

Sophie - 17 and wholesome, so quite Dorothyesque. She sang with a strong welsh accent, then went all squeaky. Not great last week either. If you keep the singing-doesn't-matter going, she's great.

Jenny - looks like Barbara Windsor. Not a good look, but she is 18 so can -maybe- be forgiven. Crap song, and not too good at throwing off her imagined RockChick look. Ha. Lordie actually shuddered when she was singing, then the panel said she was great. Which was a lie.

The panel were asked who was "not Dorothy" for them:

Sheila: not Amy
John: not Sophie
Charlotte: not Dani. Charlotte clearly hasn't read the brief.

And to the results:

Bronte, Dani & Stephanie all announced as safe. Jenny, Danielle and Jessica all through. As well as, after a pause... Lauren. Amy in sing off (hurrah), Emilie is through. Steph is also in the sing off, so Sophie is safe.

Public voted least votes for Amy. Shocker.

The sing off begins. Amy turns out to have a lovely voice, she might have shown that before. Steph not so good, and Amy's confidence grows and she reverts to type, then Lordie saves Steph as she is slightly younger and less blonde. I think that's the reason he gave?

Camera cuts to Dani crying, thus ensuring she's staying in a couple of weeks. And a sniff from Sophie, proving that she's lovely too and deserves some
votes.

Amy comments that she's been judged for being a model. Nuh uh. Judged on being completely up her own posterior, and going on ever ao about the being a model, and for failing whatsoever to try to fit the part she was auditioning for.

Song of goodbye is Somewhere Over the Rainbow, predictably, instead of the more fitting Goodbye Yellow Brick Road I hoped for. Amy gets carted off on a giant moon, getting her true princess moment. Byeeee! Do hope you become massively famous some other way. May I suggest bagging a footballer?

Chosen Dorothys by the expert panel of me: Stephanie, Bronte, Jessica and Dani. Everyone else is Just Wrong and Dani should win.

6 music is salad cream

You remember? Heinz announced that they were discontinuing salad cream. Outrage!!! Ho and lebold: salad cream makes a massive resurgence and becomes available in all new styles.

I have my suspicions about 6 Music. Much loved, and look, it's being "cancelled" so all the popular people that everyone listens to are campaigning to save it. Everyone is talking about 6 Music. Everyone loves 6 Music.

I never listen to 6 Music because I listen to music in the car. I would, if I got it in the car. So I feel a bit grumpy that I don't get to listen to it, and I listen to radio 2 instead. So if they moved the good stuff onto Radio 2, I'd be happy. Sorry.

But, the BBC have a duty to provide new technologies, so to have a desirable station on digital only should drive forward the interest in getting digital radio. Which most people have. At home. Not on the move. If only people cared enough to perfect mobile digital radio. A campaign to reiterate our love for digital stations. Aha!

Mark my words, there'll be squeezable 6 music out any day. Cancelled, my arse.

Autumn watch

It's that time of year for BBC's new season, the series that will finish at Christmas time. Sod the summer, bring on the autumn dark evenings and watchable telly.

First off, and this I am looking forward to, is Merlin, starting on BBC1 on Saturday at 7.30 pm. I saw the trailer for this while waiting for The Dark Knight at the cinema and was immensely pleased it was to be on TV not a film release. The guy who plays Merlin, Colin Morgan, is mesmerising from what I've seen, he has incredible eyes. I'm not overly familiar with the whole Arthurian legend, I know some parts of some stories, but it's not a world I've ever explored in detail. I feel it may now be easy to do so, which is always an added bonus. There are to be five series of this, the first one of which is in 13 parts, so lots of watching there.



Spooks series 7 is imminent. I adore Spooks. It is necessary to suspend all disbelief, but the action is fast paced and I like the cast. One of the things that is good about this is the suspense, this is one of the few dramas that will quite happily kill off a lead character, removing the assurance that all will be well in the end - it usually isn't. Rumour is that the very gorgeous Rupert Penry Jones is to be leaving this series (presumably by getting a new identity as he appears to be immortal), but whether this is true or not, the broodingly sexy Richard Armitage is to join the cast, which is quite splendid news. Not sure of exact broadcast date, Autumn 2008 is the closest I can find. Check the Radio Times.


And finally...
It's back. Series 3. October 1st, BBC2 9pm. Some of the cast can act, some of the stories work, but overall... I love it.

Rick Wright

Rick Wright, who of course everyone will recognise as being one of the founder members of Pink Floyd, died yesterday at the age of 65.

I'll leave it to the BBC to provide an obituary, saying as how it's rather well written.

Sad news indeed.