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TV looks to new era of interactive game shows to lure the Facebook generation

Gillan — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:05 +0000

The Million Pound Drop and The Bank Job are proving a bit hit with world wide web audiences, but it is the data collected from on-line players which is making advertisers take notice

Live interactive game shows, where viewers compete with on-screen contestants, are the key to persuading the Facebook generation to watch television, according to industry experts.

British production companies are at the forefront of using new technology to create interactive shows that can compete with the myriad distractions of social networking sites, computer games and even food and drink.

Matt Millar, chief executive of Tellybug, a technology service which developed the “tap-to-clap” mobile app for Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor (allowing you to score acts by tapping the screen), told a meeting of the Westminster Media Forum last week: “We have learned people select to watch TV, not play an on-line game. Think of the state they are in. Keep it simple. If people have a smartphone and a bottle of beer on the table, you are competing with the bottle of beer.”

Mark Cullen, of the ETV Media Group, added that mainstream tv habitually charged viewers for voting in The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Dancing on Ice, when via Facebook it can be free. “They have to shift their habits. The real value lies in the data they collect, building a database, affinity clubs,” stated Cullen.

David Flynn, who created The Million Pound Drop, a 10-question, multiple-choice quiz played by couples, which has sold to 34 countries, said: “We remain, in Britain, at the forefront of technology. It is important we stay there. We lead the world in the creation of TV formats.”

The Million Pound Drop, fronted by Davina McCall, kick-started the interactive phenomenon for Channel 4 in 2010 and has generated 11m plays. Now Channel 4 is bringing back its sister show, The Bank Job– a new gameshow set in a City of London vault – for an extended run from 17 February. Its trial run in early January proved a large hit with on-line audiences and key groups of TV viewers, including men under 40. A begin panel of four contestants compete to answer questions which open safe-deposit boxes stuffed with money. The first question of the first show last month, presented by George Lamb, set the tone: “Which singer crashed his automobile into Snappy Snaps while high on cannabis?”

But what makes the show such a hot property is that it has notched up 5.64m on-line plays. Flynn, who as joint-managing director of Remarkable Television, part of Big Brother producers Endemol, is also the creative team leader behind The Bank Job, said: “What we do is take real human impulses and make them possible.” He stated there were clear lessons in incorporating live interactivity into programmes, which all broadcasters were trying to do, but warned: “It has got to feel natural, not an add-on.”

People have always enjoyed shouting answers at the TV, but they are now armed with smartphones, laptops and tablets. “We do not always watch TV with someone, but we can play along with strangers on Facebook or with friends,” stated Flynn. Some 12.4% of The Million Pound Drop’s 2.5 million viewers are playing along on their laptops. Others are Googling to find the correct answers.

The Bank Job was launched first as an on-line game rather than a TV show, last December, and it is the only way a contestant can apply for the live TV version: you have to play to unlock the application form and score as a grand master before qualifying as a potential contestant.

Immediately, about 4,000 games were played daily. When C4 announced the new series two weeks ago, that figure jumped to 8,000. Some people are playing 10 games, while up to 160,000 play on-line during the show.

Since contestants are asked to give their name, sex and address, C4 is also reaping important commercial information in order to target them with adverts. Chief executive David Abraham calls such data ” the new oil”.

Flynn stated that when viewers tweeted that the first episode of The Million Pound Drop in May 2010 was too slow, they speeded it up. The Bank Job, which netted relatively modest TV audiences of around 1.2 million, will also respond to criticism by incorporating changes in the next series.

In another development impressing the advertising world, the commercial breaks in The Bank Job have added a live ticker strip across the bottom of the screen, where information about who is playing and the names of top on-line players are given. Until now this was regarded as an unacceptable distraction. “We took a large risk,” stated Flynn.

But C4′s advertising sales team found the themed advert breaks increase viewer engagement by 80%, so people are less likely to be distracted – and they cannot fast-forward live adverts.

Remarkable is now moving on to apply the game show lessons to a fresh factual format, combining live audience participation with a “really large social issue”.

However, in the cut-throat world of television, Flynn cannot state any more.

Ben Gazzara dies aged 81

madison — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:00:08 +0000

Emmy-winning stage, film and tv actor was known for intense countenance that won him tough-guy roles

The actor Ben Gazzara, known for his brooding tough-guy presence in dozens of films, tv shows and stage productions over his long career, died of pancreatic cancer on Friday at a Manhattan hospital, his lawyer said. He was 81.

The New York-born performer died at Bellevue hospital centre with members of his family at his side, according to his attorney, Jay Julien.

Born Biagio Anthony Gazzara to Italian immigrant parents, he began his career in live theatre, most notably with the role of Brick in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan. The role was played by Paul Newman in the 1958 film version.

A three-time Tony award nominee for his stage work, Gazzara made his film debut as a sociopathic military academy cadet in the 1957 drama The Strange One, followed by his breakout role as an accused killer in Otto Preminger’s 1959 hit courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.

The actor, ideal known for playing emotionally complex men and villains, went on to work with numerous high-profile Hollywood directors, including John Cassavetes, with whom he collaborated on several films, including the 1976 gangster drama The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

His credits also included a role as porn-film producer Jackie Treehorn in the Coen Brothers’ 1998 cult comedy classic The Big Lebowski and a supporting role in the 1999 remake of the art heist drama The Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.

On tv Gazzara starred from 1965 to 1968 on the NBC prime-time drama Run for Your Life. He played wealthy, successful lawyer Paul Bryan, who quits his practice after learning he has a terminal illness and embarks on a globetrotting quest for adventure before he dies.

The role earned him two Emmy nominations as ideal actor in a lead dramatic role. He picked up a third Emmy nomination for his 1985 role in the made-for-TV motion picture An Early Frost, and won an Emmy for his supporting work in the 2002 HBO tv film Hysterical Blindness.

He earned Tony nominations for his appearances in three Broadway productions of the 1970s, a revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and his dual roles in a double bill of the plays Hughie and Duet.

Gazzara was married three times, with his first two ending in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Elke, and daughter, Elizabeth.

Review: Inside Men; The Very Hungry Frenchman

samantha — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:00:16 +0000

Come on, everybody’s nicked something from work … have not they?

I used to work for a massive American investment bank. No, seriously. Not on the trading floor though, or in mergers and acquisitions. I was in maintenance, a gofer. I wore a white boiler suit, I had a tool kit and an orange trolley. I moved things, I fixed things, I crawled around under the desks of the masters of the universe.

And I nicked things. Not on a grand scale. I was not snaffling euro bonds or transferring millions to my off-shore account (though I would have if I’d known how). No, I took stuff from the store cupboards. Coffee mainly – catering-size tins of Nescafé, which I gave to my friends (more wealth distribution than theft). And cleaning products. Loo paper, obviously, and stationery. Ink cartridges were probably the most valuable thing I took.

I’m not proud; it was stealing. But nor am I very ashamed. Given the scale of it, the enormous wealth of the company, the salaries of those people (literally) above me, my poverty at the time … well, was it really so bad?

These are the kind of issues that are explored in Tony Basgallop’s Inside Men (BBC1). We’re not in a bank here, but a security deposit, a huge warehouse full of cash that people are employed to count (do these places exist?). A couple of the guys who work there – a security guard and a warehouse man, both of whom have financial problems (plus these are difficult economic times, we are constantly reminded) – are siphoning a bit off. Fifty grand actually, but that is tiny compared with the millions there. Still much larger than my level, but again victimless …

Except it’s not. There is a victim: poor, uptight, number-crunching gamma-male depot manager John (so excellently played by Steven Mackintosh). Very insecure, to be managing a security depot. Up until now, he is covered any losses out of his own pocket (as well as winning manager of the month competition every month). But 50 grand? That’s out of the question, especially now with a new adopted daughter. Anyway, he tells the two culprits after catching them, what is the point of putting your hand in the till if you are only going to pull out 50 grand? Why not take the lot?

Whoa, is timid, stuttering John suggesting a heist, on his own depot? In fact, that is where the whole thing starts off – a proper robbery, with men in scary masks, pump-action shotguns, a blown-off knee-cap, screaming staff. John looks like the victim here: they are holding his wife and new daughter hostage at home, he has to help the masked men help themselves, to millions. Then we jump back a few months, and start to work forwards, through the two employees’ thieving, and John’s discovery of them. So do they then team up, are they behind the huge one? Is this mild-mannered John’s master plan?

It looks that way. It also looks as if we have nearly caught up with ourselves, the past with the future. Can there really be three more episodes?

Oh, come on, everyone’s done stationery, have not they? No? OK, the coffee and ink cartridges were wrong. And if any of my current bosses are reading, that is obviously all in the past. Just my gym stuff in the bag …

So how does Raymond Blanc: The Very Hungry Frenchman (BBC2) go? The famous French chef is pottering around France – his own home region of Franche-Comté in this first one – in his 2CV. He tastes, he eats, he cooks, he chuckles and states “Ooh la la”. He drops in on his mum, and some old pals, he eats some more, states “Ooh la la” some more. He visits a Comté factory, looks up at all the cheeses. “Look at this,” he says. “It’s a cathedral of cheese.” Then he visits a sausage factory, looks up. “That is a cathedral of sausages …”

It’s lovely – for Raymond. I’m a tiny bored, to be honest. And do we really need another, self-indulgent, celebrity chef food programme? Sometimes, it feels like gavage – we are the French geese, and we are being force-fed.

Capital FM: Johnny Vaughan exits on a high

samantha — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 08:00:27 +0000

Global-owned station attracts biggest audience for almost eight years, regaining London top spot from Bauer’s Magic

His exit was as sudden as it was unexpected, but Johnny Vaughan left Capital FM on a high with its biggest audience for almost eight years.

Capital FM had 2.25 million average weekly listeners in the final quarter of 2011, up 14.9% year on year, according to the latest official Rajar figures published on Thursday. Vaughan quit the station’s breakfast show abruptly in November after almost eight years.

The station regained the top spot among the London commercial stations from Bauer Radio’s Magic.

Capital also had its biggest weekly reach since the first three months of 2004 – coincidentally the last quarter before Vaughan took over the breakfast show – when it had an audience of 2.34 million.

But Global Radio-owned Capital still has some way to go before it matches the 7.9% share of the London audience it had back then.

Capital’s latest share was 5.9%, just ahead of Magic, which had 2.17 million weekly listeners and a 5.7% share.

Capital’s sister station Heart took third place in London in terms of weekly reach with 1.93 million, ahead of Bauer-owned Kiss 100′s 1.87 million.

But Kiss had the edge in terms of audience share, with 5.4% against Heart’s 4.6%.

Vaughan left his near-£1m-a-year job at Capital on 18 November so the latest Rajar figures also include the audience for his interim replacement Greg Burns, who co-hosted the show with Lisa Snowdon before Dave Berry was given the job full time.

The Capital breakfast show remained by some distance the most popular commercial offering in London with an average of 1.32 million listeners between 6am and 10am.

It was 16% up on the previous three months and almost 22% up year on year.

Heart London’s breakfast pairing of Jamie Theakston and Harriet Scott slipped from second to fourth in the capital with 814,000 listeners, overtaken by Magic 105.4′s Neil Fox, with 848,000, and Kiss 100′s Rickie, Melvin and Charlie, who were listened to by 838,000 people.

The biggest faller in the Capital was another Global station, Xfm, which was down 6.7% on the previous three months and 23.3% year on year to 406,000.

Elsewhere in the capital, BBC London 94.9 had a weekly reach of 485,000 – up 2.3% on the previous quarter but down 3.4% year on year.

Smooth Radio, owned by GMG Radio – part of Guardian Media Group, which also publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk – was down 2.4% year on year and fell 25.5% on the quarter to 456,000.

Nationwide, Global’s Capital network of stations was up 4.7% year on year to 7.08 million but sister network Heart – which has also been rolled out across the country – fell back 3.6% on 2010, down to 7.46 million.

Smooth’s national network had a weekly audience of 3.31 million, down 0.4% on the quarter but up 7.5% year on year.

Double-digit year-on-year winners among the digital-only commercial stations included Jazz FM, up 14.3% to 512,000, Bauer’s Heat, up 16.3% to 648,000, and the Absolute pairing of Absolute 80s, up 24.5% (but down 18.7% on the quarter) to 828,000 and Absolute Radio 90s, up 18% to 348,000.

Year on year fallers included NME Radio, down 20% to 188,000, and Bauer’s The Hits, which despite losing 12.4% of its audience REMAINED ONE OF THE biggest commercial digital-only network with 984,000 listeners a week.

Overall, digital radio accounted for 29.1% of all radio listening, up from 25% in the last quarter of 2010.

Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio accounted for 19.4% of all radio listening, up from 15.8% a year earlier. Listening via digital TV and on the world wide web dropped back on the previous quarter, albeit marginally, to 4.5% and 3.4% respectively.

The BBC remains the dominant radio player with 55.5% of all listening, against the commercial sector’s 42.4%.

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RajarsBauerGlobal RadioRadio industryRadioJohn Plunkett
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TV review: Terror at Sea – the Sinking of the Concordia; Prisoners’ Wives

robert — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:08 +0000

A terrifying, tilted night of confusion and panic – but this was no second Titanic

How long, in Terror at Sea: The Sinking of the Concordia (Channel 4), before the T word is mentioned, I wonder? Whoa, there it is already, the 11th word of Rupert Graves’s narration. “Almost exactly 100 years on from the sinking of the Titanic …” he begins.

Come on, you cannot really legitimately compare them. Yes, I know it was a terrible tragedy off the Tuscany coast – 17 dead, a further 16 still missing. But that is still less than 1% of the people on board. More than 1,500 people died on the Titanic, almost 70% of the total. You could even argue that the Costa Concordia did not sink.

It’s understandable that the people who were there do make the connection though. People such as Joe, a dancer, and one of the Brits on board. “Literally it felt exactly like the Titanic,” he says. “What you see on the film Titanic, that is what I was relating it to.” Poor Joe, he was … well, a wreck I guess … from the first bump, immediately blubbing down the phone to his mum.

You always wonder how you’d be in something like this, do not you? Whether you’d be a Joe, or like fellow dancer Kirsty. Beautiful, calm Kirsty. Almost too calm. Her first reaction, after they hit the rocks, was to settle down and watch a film with some friends. Then, when her stairwell began to fill with water, all she could think was how blue it looked. “I was just watching it fill up thinking, wow, that is pretty.” And what was Kirsty’s main concern after she finally jumped in and swam for shore? That she’d lose her mobile phone. Kirsty’s brilliant. She should have taken control after the captain skedaddled.

Ah yes, il capitano, he doesn’t come out of this well, does he? Taxi for Schettino! But I’m not sure the coastguard chap on the other end of that radio conversation does either. He seems to be more concerned about blaming Schettino and collecting evidence against him than actually making the situation better. “Listen, there are people coming down the rope ladder of the bow,” he screams. “You go up that rope ladder, get on that ship.” Well, I’m no expert, but I’d state that if you were trying to climb down a rope ladder off a sinking ship then the last thing you want is to meet a terrified Captain Calamity coming up the other way. Fortunately Schettino disobeys, goes ashore, calls his minicab and checks into a hotel. The infrared footage taken from helicopters of the people coming down those ladders is extraordinary.

It’s all extraordinary – that something like this could have happened in seas as calm as Kirsty, that the passengers were not told what was going on, that so many bad decisions were made, that this clown was ever granted to command a ship carrying more than 4,000 people.

And apart from tying to turn it into some kind of Titanic centenary story, they have done an excellent job of putting this film together so quickly. With interviews, expert testimony, recordings, those astonishing infrared shots. And – crucially – with survivors’ own mobile phone footage. It’s this that really gets you wondering how you would have behaved, because it turns it from a news story into a story about people, and drops you right into that terrifying, tilting world of confusion and panic. Just imagine if there had been mobiles around 100 years ago, off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. I’m doing it now …

Prisoners’ Wives (BBC1) is a bit Footballers’ Wives and a tiny bit Bad Girls. Except it’s not really the girls who are bad, it’s their fellas. So Bad Boys’ Girls then. Doe-eyed Gemma (Emma Rigby off Hollyoaks) is not at all bad, she is a right tiny goodie goodie, with her snug (smug?) tiny house, her neat tiny six-month bump, and puppy-handsome Jonas Armstrong (Robin Hood) to take care of her. But then it all goes a bit wrong when the police come and arrest him, for murder. Ha, not so snug – or smug – now, is it?

Poor Gemma, she doesn’t cope well without her man around. It’s bad enough having to visit him inside, but then a burst water pipe at home is the final straw and she goes to pieces. That’s not very emancipated, is it? Thank Christ then for fellow prisoner’s wife Francesca (Polly Walker), who at least has a set of lady cojones on her. Not only does save the day by knowing where to find a stopcock and what to do with one, but she might also save the whole drama by having the swagger to lift it above the mundane.

TelevisionCosta ConcordiaItalyWater transportSam Wollaston
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TV review: Whitechapel; Protecting Our Children; Spartacus: Vengeance

Gillan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:06 +0000

Whitechapel is not quite bad enough to switch off – but best not watch too closely

About 45 minutes into Whitechapel (ITV1), the first and so far only suspect appeared, screaming that he was photophobic. It was sod’s law, I suppose, that he turned up in the only scene shot in something approaching normal daylight. Someone on the set was taking noir rather too literally. The darkness was probably intended to be gothic, but it was annoying, as for long periods I struggled to work out what was going on. Even the police station seemed to be lit by a single five-watt bulb. Great for energy saving, but not for the viewer.

After a rocky second series in which the Kray twins were cloned, Whitechapel has gone back to its 19th-century roots with a recreation of the Ratcliff Highway mUurders. (No, me neither, but apparently a draper and his family were murdered in the East End in 1811 after a servant girl was sent out to purchase oysters.) This time round a trendy tailor and his team were offed, while the stroppy assistant, Georgie, nipped out to get some bagels and it was once again thanks to the insight of Ripperologist Edward Buchan (Steve Pemberton) that the connection between past and present was made.

Whitechapel falls into the hinterland of tv that is not quite bad enough to switch off, nor good enough to feel you have had an hour well spent. It’s best watched with only half the mind engaged; that way you will not have to wonder what kind of police force would make space for an amateur historian on the off-chance there would be a few copycat killings from the previous century. Nor will you have to take seriously the possibility that local residents are telling the police: “There’s an evil spirit about” when questioned. But watched on auto-pilot, Whitechapel is serviceable enough; Rupert Penry-Jones as the OCD DI Chandler and Phil Davis as the downbeat DS Miles make a decent double-act, and the episode ended with a top-rate locked-cell cliffhanger. If someone bothers to switch the lights on, I’ll be back for more next week.

There was more compelling drama in Protecting Our Children (BBC2), a documentary that should be compulsory viewing for those who throw stones at social workers when a Baby P case hits the headlines and moan about the nanny say in the interim. If it was brave of Bristol social services to give access to its caseload, it was braver still of Tiffany and Mike to grant the resulting footage to be shown.

Tiffany and Mike were two of the more hopeless parents you are ever likely to meet. Their two-bedroomed flat was frequently covered in dog excrement and they had not even got round to buying a toothbrush or a bed for Toby, their three-year-old son who had not yet learned to talk and had behavioural problems. It was left to Suzanne, a social worker on her first case, to try to sort out a mess that seemed to get messier the more social services got involved, as Tiffany and Mike thought everyone was determined to take Toby away from them. It seemed to me as if social services were falling over themselves to find a way for Toby to stay with his parents.

It would be nice to report that after several long chats everyone saw sense, but the resolution was as messy as the flat. Tiffany got pregnant and went into hospital, so social services had to get an interim care order for Toby. When Tiffany went home Mike hit her, so she kicked him out. Months later, she decided to have Toby and her baby adopted. It felt like the right choice for the kids, but God knows what will happen to Tiffany and Mike. Their tragedy looks set to be repeated elsewhere.

If you needed some light relief after that, then Spartacus: Vengeance (Sky1) was ideal, provided your idea of escapism is lashings of video-game sex and violence. Liam McIntyre comes in as the new Spartacus – Andy Whitfield having died of cancer after making the first series – but otherwise it’s business as usual with amputations, slow-motion arterial sprays, men with glistening pecs and back, sack and crack waxes, and women with breast surgery sporting Brazilians and accents that vary from American and Australian to cut-glass English. As to what happened, Spartacus was hanging out in an underground chamber near Capua, in between popping out to a brothel to hack a few Romans to death to take vengeance on Glaber. Or something like that. Who really cares? Let’s face it, if you are watching for the story then you are missing the point.

Adrian Chiles’s chumminess strikes right tone as ITV treads carefully | Barney Ronay

Gillan — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:00:24 +0000

This was the weekend when football’s on-going engagement with issues of race and racial offence went mainstream, pegging itself out – uneasily and, in the end, inconclusively – around an inflammatory Saturday afternoon of FA Cup action on ITV.

Only two things are really certain about English football’s current self-policing furore: first that it is unavoidably – and no doubt on some level incorrectly – heartening for those who sat through the monkey-chanting, banana-hurling terraces of the 1980s to hear an entire stand chanting “Racist! Racist!” at an opposition footballer, a 360‑degree rotation in insult‑content that, buried somewhere within its many contradictions, contains some fetid breath of hope for human progress. And second that the whole thing is riven with confusions, both tribal and interpretative. Hopefully these are being worked through a little. If so, ITV’s broadcast on Saturday of Manchester United’s trip to Liverpool – an incision into the curdled heart of the Suárez‑Evra affair – might be the stuff of deep analysis for future students of football’s role in cultural relations.

The match presented ITV with an obvious problem. How do you broadcast around this topic both honestly (because it is so clearly there) and also palatably (because this is, after all football’s new world of commercial TV, with its ruling gallery of advertisers and casual viewers)? The uneasiness inherent in bringing such horribly nuanced theater to the mainstream screen came as early as Adrian Chiles’s introductory monologue. “Even more attention on this game this day because Patrice Evra is here!” Chiles announced chummily – Chumminess? Really? – over photos of Evra marching into the ground, the awkward tone capturing exactly the problem of how to linger, but not linger, on these important issues; to make light, but in no way make light, of something nobody feels particularly happy speaking about.

Chiles did this well in the end, as you might anticipate from a man whose default setting of “inoffensive” suddenly seemed pricelessly apt. These huge moments should sit a tiny easier with a man whose career has passed through the broader church of the daytime chat sofa, and who retains even through his current glossed, cufflinked, Chiles 2.0 persona a likeable underdoggish quality reminiscent of a popular local butcher or a junior policeman in a Sunday night detective drama.

ITV had labeled the afternoon A Rivalry Unrivalled, which is, if not the worst title that could be bestowed on an FA Cup fourth‑round tie, then certainly the worst yet. And it was, understandably, an uneven production, coddled in Sky Sports-style doom-laden graphics, given weight by the restrained but nicely persistent questioning of Gabriel Clarke in the stadium, and siphoned rather jarringly through the expert but gurglingly partisan commentary of Clive Tyldesley (“Ji-sung Park SWEEPS in the equaliser!”).

Chiles has been working on this and increasingly he seems to bring out glimpses of the real Roy, a burgeoning double act apparently geared along the lines of Eric Morecambe interviewing Hannibal Lecter. “A lot of the players at Liverpool now aren’t able to deal with the pressure of playing for Liverpool,” Keane intoned mercilessly in response to some prodding by Chiles. “You’ve got to make your presence felt and go and nail somebody,” he suggested later of David de Gea, a goalkeeper who looks more inclined to make his presence felt by writing a poem that he never shows anybody or playing the guitar sulkily in his bedroom; and who in this game was confronted by Liverpool players forming a kind of human conga-wall in front of him, over which he could only peer wistfully like a small boy eyeing next door’s apple tree.

Ince, England’s first black captain, might have been good given a chance on the main side-issue of the day, but in the end both co-pundits were entirely secondary to the Chiles-Keane chemistry. At least everybody could concur that the game was a success for Andy Carroll, who here was employed by Liverpool as a kind of human missile, in much the same way the carcass of a dead ox might be catapulted beyond the castle walls during a medieval siege.

Keane deserved the last word, though, his ruthless dissection of Evra’s culpability for Dirk Kuyt’s winning goal bringing a refreshing sense of pure-football honesty to the closing moments. After the fug of conflicting analysis it was strangely refreshing to hear one man quietly butchering another man’s capabilities and character (“I’ve seen it from him before in huge games, he goes missing”) on pure, 100%‑proof footballing grounds. The egalitarianism of a violent but universal meritocracy: this has always been football’s most eloquent comment on any of this. Perhaps it will soon be granted to get back to it.

FA Cup 2011-12Adrian ChilesRoy KeanePaul InceManchester UnitedLiverpoolFA CupTelevision industryITVSport TVTelevisionRace issuesBarney Ronay
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This much I know: David Hasselhoff

ethan — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:00:08 +0000

The actor, 59, on scaring his girlfriend, laughing at himself, and how The Hoff has been a good money earner

I have fun with Twitter. When I see something in the press I think, “Now I can respond to that garbage.” But the press is not really that bad. My children say: “Dad, forget about it, it’s bird paper. It doesn’t mean anything.” And they are right. The time to worry is when there is no paparazzi.

I really only proposed to Hayley, my girlfriend, to scare her. I knew she was not that interested in marriage so we had a pretty good laugh about it. If I heard an affirmative answer I would probably choke!

Princess Diana had a profound impact on me. I got to sing at her memorial. Her brother called me up and said: “She’s a fan of yours” and I said: “That’s impossible!”

Nothing will ever top singing at the fall of the Berlin Wall. I went back to the city recently for New Year and sang about freedom and there were a million people singing along. I just felt that it was where I was supposed to be.

It seems like my whole life has been “Let’s make fun of David Hasselhoff”, but The Hoff has made me a lot of money. I’m honoured that it’s known all over the world. There are people in Abu Dhabi calling me The Hoff. In a mosque!

I do not have anything to apologise for. I just happen to have had an incident publicised on the world wide web millions of times [footage of Hasselhoff when drunk became a YouTube hit], but it was maybe a one-off or two-off like everybody else has. If I do something that is scary to my children I’ll apologise to them.

It makes me laugh when people speak about drink and drugs being a problem in Hollywood. Most people there are in rehab, while other people think it’s OK to be sick in the street and not address it.

Being me is nonstop. Last year I went to my girlfriend’s sister’s annual Christmas party for Greggs the bakers. I was not anticipating the attention to be so traumatic.

I just hope reality TV will go away. It ain’t real! It’s conjured-up bullshit. There is a lack of opportunities for actors right now and that is very annoying.

I have never had an ER– you know, a show that has given me critical acclaim. But it’s OK. I would love to do Hamlet, but I think there is a path and I’m just kind of wandering the Yellow Brick Road.

I knew I’d be successful; I’ve believed it since I was eight. If you are small and you can play soccer, or you can hit a baseball or you can write then do it, do it, do it. The only person who can stand in your way is yourself.

You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself. It’s like you have a bucket full of your problems – if you cannot empty that bucket by laughing at yourself then you are in trouble.

Julio Iglesias once stated to me: “I want to meet the man, the only man on earth, who has more women than me.” As if I did! Yeah right.

An Evening with David Hasselhoff is at Indig02 on 2 March. For tickets, call 0844 871 8803 or go to kililive.com

The Real Hustle – review

Alina — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 08:00:08 +0000

Not even an ex-member of Boyzone makes Sam Wollaston fall for a ridiculous conman show

Ah, excellent, The Real Hustle (BBC3), surely one of the most ridiculous programmes ever. We seem to be in Paisley, Scotland, and the Real Hustlers are joined by Shane Lynch, dressed as a tramp (not much disguise needed) as their celebrity helper. The mark is a lad coming out of a agency de change. With almost £500! Maybe that is normal in Paisley. Actually, it turns out he is got over a grand on him, in cash.

Anyway, he is got a lot more money than sense, because he grants himself to be led off to a special van, where two of the team pretend to inspect his money using a special machine. And then he lets himself get led off by Shane and someone else, into a building, where other members of a team are pretending to be involved in a covert surveillance operation. They persuade him to help them in a sting to catch the original scammers, when actually they are all scammers working together. Oh, and he has to use his own cash as bait.

And at no point does this idiot ask these people who they are, or ask for identification. He just hands over his money. Given his foolishness, I think he deserves to lose it. But the whole thing is ludicrous. I do not believe a scam like this has ever happened, simply because it would not be worth it. So they get £1,000 out of it, but it’s taken five people, plus one celebrity, and a special van, and a couple of UV machines, and a rented flat with lots of fake equipment. It’s got to have cost several times that to carry out. And it’s on a busy high street, so they are all going to be on CCTV and now have to disappear, to Paraguay. Pah!

I love the way they also pretend it’s some kind of public service, too – that they are showing us this stuff so we can avoid it happening to us. Yeah, but it is not going to. Even if we were as foolish as the poor chap in Paisley. Oh, but I did learn one useful thing. If you go into a pub and a guy you have never seen before asks if he can try the Find the Lady card trick on you, for all the money in your pocket, you should probably state no. No shit, Sherlock.

Florida GOP debate: Mitt Romney restores control | Gary Younge

jessica — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:00:06 +0000

In front of a Floridian audience, Romney found his form again. Gingrich, sounding shrill, may finally be past his zenith

Debates, particularly by this stage, are a performance. There are few substantive questions the candidates have not been already been asked. There are few answers we have not already heard.

If you watched the CNN Jacksonville debate with the sound down, you could have grasped the central dynamics of the race. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the two frontrunners, dominating the evening, often sparring angrily with each other. Gingrich jabbing the air, clutching the lectern and waiting for applause; Romney, taut and tense, forcing a smile and waiting for the next blow. To the right, Rick Santorum, animated and frustrated, waiting to get a word in edgewise. And Ron Paul, calm and unscripted, enjoying every minute in a world of his own.

Turn the sound up and you’d see that Gingrich, whose post Carolina surge seems to have plateaued, did not get the game-changer he needed. In contrast to South Carolina, the crowd were more discerning. He kept trying to throw them red meat; it turned out the Floridians preferred a more balanced diet.

His opponents were also wise to his weaknesses. Every time he went for Romney, Romney hit back – sometimes twice as hard. By the end, Gingrich came off not as resolute but whiney and mean-spirited. When he stood by his accusation that Romney was “the most anti-immigrant candidate on the stage”, Romney called the charge “repulsive” and called on Gingrich, to the crowd’s approval, to “apologize for … highly charged epithets”.

When Gingrich got the crowd to boo the CNN moderator, Wolf Blitzer, it looked as though he had pulled off the same trick that worked for him in South Carolina. Not so much running for the presidency, as against the media. Blitzer did not back down.

“But Mr Speaker, you made an issue of this, this week, when you stated that, ‘He lives in a world of Swiss bank and Cayman Island bank accounts.’

“[Gingrich:] ‘I did not state that.’

“[Blitzer:] ‘You did … if you a make a serious accusation against Governor Romney like that, you need to explain that.’”

When Gingrich tried to turn the crowd on Blitzer a second time, Romney stepped in to save him and thwart Gingrich.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if people did not make accusations somewhere else that they were not willing to defend here,” he said, forcing Gingrich on to the back foot again. When he stated he wanted to see six or seven flights to the moon a day – more than the number of flights between Jacksonville and Washington DC – where the private sector might build a colony, Gingrich sounded like a crazy person.

Romney, whose performances have been underwhelming, had hired a new debate coach. It was money well spent. Predictable attacks about his wealth were parried; predictable attacks about the health-care plan he introduced in Massachusetts, which provided a model for Obama’s health-care plan, were parsed.

When asked about his investments, he stated they were in a blind trust. When asked about a campaign ad, he stated he had never seen it. By all accounts, including his own, Romney is a very wealthy man. But in this debate, the buck never seemed to stop with him. Whether any of these defences would pass muster in the real world was not the issue. Reality has rarely made an appearance in this Republican race so far. No reason for it to intrude now.

The ideal performance of the night, on balance, went to Santorum. He, alone, remained focussed and tried to rise above the pettiness to deliver his theocratic message with vigour. Unfortunately for him, he has no money, no organisation and, at the present rate, will be lucky to scrape a voting percentage in the double digits.

Ron Paul was by far the most entertaining. Challenging all the candidates to a 25-mile bike ride in the Texas sun, and never more than 100 words from saying something arcane about the economy, he engaged the audience by the easy virtue of refusing to engage seriously with the discussion that was taking place on stage.

The polls suggest a tight race in which Romney has the edge. Precious tiny happened Thursday night to change that.