I can make you hate (9 page)

He doesn’t show up in films so much these days, either. It’s been fifteen years since the last remake of
Miracle on 34th Street
, and almost a quarter of a century since
Santa Claus: The Movie
. Part of the problem is that you can’t really do much with Santa himself. He’s not a cop on the edge trying to outrun his own demons. He’s a chuckling fat man. In character terms, Santa is bollocks.

If you really want to see Santa on screen in the run-up to 25 December, your best bet is to tune in to
Santavision
(Sky Channel 200), where he’s preparing for the yuletide season by sitting in an unconvincing living room mercilessly wringing money from as many people as possible with an interactive text-to-TV dedication scheme. Merry Christmas!

The idea is simple: you text him the name of your kiddywink, accompanied by the words ‘
NAUGHTY
’ or ‘
NICE
’, and Santa duly enters them on to his ‘Naughty’ or ‘Nice’ list, scrolling up the right-hand side of the screen. He’ll also say their name aloud, usually as part of a sparkling ad-lib such as, ‘Ho, ho, ho! I see
GREGORY
has been a naughty boy! Naughty
GREGORY
.’ This bespoke improvisation costs £1.50 a pop and, as the website is keen to point out, you’re not allowed to include the names of more than one child per text, which seems a tad unsporting, since the largest families are often the ones most financially stretched at
Christmas. It’s almost as if, contrary to everything we’ve been led to believe, Santa doesn’t give a shit about kids after all.

Perhaps that’s why he’s lost weight. Apparently these days Santa looks like a skinny bloke in his twenties in a cheap beard, sweating his way through what amounts to a televised prison sentence. Sometimes he switches his microphone off and holds lengthy mysterious conversations with someone on the end of a phone, live on air. Possibly his lawyer.

At least you can keep his spirits up by sending in inappropriate names. I fearlessly borrowed someone’s phone and used it to trick Santa into admonishing the serial murderer Dennis Nilsen for being a naughty boy. He also read out a follow-up name – the rather puerile ‘Carmen Mite-Hitz’ – but sadly blew it by
mispronouncing
the forename as ‘Cameron’. A subsequent attempt to get him to read out the name ‘Ivana Fahkz-Humbaddi’ failed completely; they wouldn’t even add it to the list, the cowards. If you fancy a laugh and don’t mind pissing money up the wall like a champagne socialist, you could do worse than spend this afternoon texting in innocent-looking but obscene-sounding names for Santa to babble at his audience of oblivious children.

Currently,
Santavision
only runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. In an ideal world it’d come back on air at closing time, with an ‘Adult Santavision’ service modelled on
Babestation
and the like, in which nihilistic drunks text in increasingly demeaning physical commands for him to obey, such as stuffing his balls into a stocking or coming down the chimney. Or let’s dispense with the wordplay entirely and just make him roll around on the floor, clapping and farting until Christmas at £1.50 per emission. The perfect metaphor for the entire season.

At the time of writing, it’s not clear whether the 2009 Christmas No. 1 will be ‘The Climb’ by Joe McElderry, or ‘Killing in the Name’ by Rage Against the Machine. I’ve just done my bit to inch the latter closer to the top spot by downloading it – something I’d resisted doing until now because I initially thought there was something a bit embarrassing about the campaign. After all, as every other internet smartarse pointed out, both tracks are owned by Sony BMG – so no matter which one sells the most, Simon Cowell wins. In other words, even by raging against the machine, you’re somehow raging within it.

But profit isn’t the point – or at least it’s not the reason I
downloaded
it. For one thing, I happen to think ‘Killing in the Name’ is an excellent song, so I’ve already got something out of it. Most importantly, it contains genuine emotion. Even if the climactic repeated howls of ‘Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!’ put you in mind of a teenager loudly refusing to tidy his bedroom – as opposed to a masked anarchist hurling petrol bombs at the riot squad – there is at least an authentic human sentiment being expressed. Zack de la Rocha is audibly pissed off.

Compare this to the pissweak vocal doodle that is Joe McElderry’s
X Factor
single. For a song whose lyrics ostensibly document an attempt to gather the spiritual strength to overcome adversity and thereby attain enlightenment, ‘The Climb’ is about as inspiring as a Lion bar. It’s a listless announcement on a service station tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet. Listening to it from beginning to end is like watching a bored cleaner methodically wiping a smudge from a Formica worksurface.

But then nobody’s buying ‘The Climb’ in order to actually listen to it. They’re buying it out of sedated confusion, pushing a button they’ve been told will make them feel better. It’s the sound
of the assisted suicide clinic, and it doesn’t deserve to be No. 1 this Christmas.

This isn’t mere pop snobbery, by the way. I’d rather see Girls Aloud at No. 1 than Editors. But ‘The Climb’ is a lame cover version of a lame Miley Cyrus song. If
X Factor
can’t be arsed to do better than that, its grip on the yuletide charts deserves to be broken.

Anyway, while I’m happy for Rage Against the Machine to be enjoying the sales and publicity, I can’t help thinking we could’ve organised a slightly better protest ourselves. Chances are the
X Factor
will try to kick back extra hard next year – perhaps by actually releasing a song with a melody in it – so it’s best to start planning the resistance now.

The temptation might be to pour a lot of time and effort into creating a catchy anti
-X Factor
anthem, but the smartest
counter-move
would be to release something short, cheap and throwaway that isn’t even a proper song at all. I propose a track called ‘Simon Cowell: Shit for Ears’, which consists of a couple of eight-
year-olds
droning the phrase ‘Simon Cowell, shit for ears’ four times in a row in the most deliberately tuneless manner possible. It should last only about fifteen seconds or so. Quick enough to register; brief enough not to outstay its welcome.

Then we release it online at the lowest price possible. What’s the bare minimum you can charge and still be eligible for a chart position? It could be as little as 2p. Because the track is just recorded on to a cheap mic, and released without the assistance of any record label, 100 per cent of the profits go to charity.

Dot-eyed CGI judge and omnipresent hair product
spokeswoman
Cheryl Cole recently complained that the campaign against McElderry’s single was ‘mean’, adding ‘If that song – or should I say campaign – by an American group is our Christmas No. 1, I’ll be gutted for him and our charts.’

She’s missing the point. It’s not mean: it’s funny. If the Christmas No. 1 turns out to be an angry, confrontational rock track that
concludes with an explosion of f-words, it’ll be precisely the shot in the arm the charts have been sorely lacking the last few years: something that puts a genuine smile on the face of millions of people; sensitive people, thoughtful people; people alienated by the stifling cloud of grinning mechanical pap farted into their faces on a weekly basis by cocky, clattering, calculating talent shows like
X Factor
. It would give these people hope. Maybe only in a very small and silly way, but still: a tiny spoonful of hope. And what could be more Christmassy than that?

In retrospect, reading this back now, I seem to be taking everything in the world terribly seriously indeed. Like, about twice as seriously as necessary. I mean really: ‘a tiny spoonful of hope’? What a dick I am.

The final
Celebrity Big Brother
is here. Yes, the final one. As you watch Sisqo hooking his pants out of his bumcrack, or Vinnie Jones boiling an egg, remind yourself that this is your last
opportunity
to do so, and attempt to defy the tears prickling the rim of your eyeballs. Where do we go from here, as a people? I cannot tell you. All I have to offer is sneering descriptions of the contestants. My existence is pointless. I’m banging on the glass here. Release me or kill me, someone.

This year’s launch night included a telling format-change. Normally we’re introduced to each celebrity via a short VT in which they themselves explain what a must-watch character they’ll be (‘I’m not afraid to speak me mind … if anyone in there winds me up the wrong way, there’ll be fireworks’ etc., etc.). But this year, these talking-head character sketches were absent, replaced by short packages in which Davina patiently explained why each inmate qualified as a ‘celebrity’. Often the
evidence consisted of photographs of them standing near other, indisputably more famous, people on a red carpet. Two of the contestants appear to have been invited to participate on the basis that they’ve been inside a famous person, and one because a famous person has been inside them. That’s not celebrity, that’s proximity. ‘Proximity Big Brother’ actually has a nice ring to it.

The trouble with introducing each player via their CV is that the viewer ends up with zero idea of their actual character.
Basshunter
’s arrival was a low point. His VT package might as well have been a short educational film outlining the properties of
magnesium
. In fact, sending in a small mound of powdered magnesium in his place wouldn’t have been an entirely bad idea. What happens when you introduce a small quantity of magnesium to a room full of quasi-famous people? Nothing. But at least that’s a genuine ‘TV experiment’.

So who’s in? Well, you’ve got Vinnie Jones (yawn), Alex Reid (a videogame version of Daniel Craig), Dane Bowers (nice but yawn), Lady Sovereign (a Sporty Spice keychain figurine), the aforementioned Basshunter (a stretched Swedish Hasselhoff), Rolling-Stone-seductress Katia (effectively a student-age Alice who’s wandered through the looking glass and into her TV), and Nicola T of ‘having tits’ fame.

Nicola T already seems likely to establish herself as TV’s dimmest comic character since the heyday of Trigger in
Only Fools And Horses
. She communicates exclusively by asking stunningly stupid questions, and always seems surprised and confused by the answer. It’s an endearing trait, albeit one which would swiftly become grating during a day trip to the Science Museum.

Grand dame Stephanie Beacham should probably win, on account of her habit of sitting in the corner making laconic
observations
, like a louche unseen narrator. Just for an experiment, they should scrap Marcus Bentley for an episode and get her to do the voiceover. Or permanently station her in an adjoining
antechamber and let her communicate with the other contestants via an animatronic stag’s head mounted on the wall.

Finally, there are the Americans. Sisqo, a poor man’s
Skee-Lo
.
Usual Suspects
actor-turned-born-again-rightwing-talk-
radio-scary
-man Stephen Baldwin, who looks and sounds like an escaped serial killer who, having cut off Alec Baldwin’s face with a jagged spear of glass, is currently wearing it as a mask and speaking very softly in a bid to evade the authorities. He’s the contestant most likely to perform a live, spontaneous exorcism in the house. In fact, I thought he might do precisely that when Heidi Fleiss walked in. Fleiss is spooky. She vaguely resembles Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler morphing into Jack Skellington from
The Nightmare Before Christmas
.

And that’s the lot.
Celeb BB
can probably safely shuffle off into history with a mild snort, leaving we viewers to blink away the tears and try to put our lives back together. If we possibly, possibly can.

As you may be aware, this was not the final
Celebrity Big Brother,
because Channel Five revived it shortly afterwards. It will never, ever end. Never. Ever.

So then. Following a half-hearted coup attempt, which turned out to be the equivalent of Hoon and Hewitt trying to assassinate their target by firing a rubber band at his head as he walked past the tuckshop, bookmakers say there is currently 25 per cent less chance of Labour winning the general election than there is of Kevin Keegan giving birth to a horse on St Swithin’s Day.

The Conservatives don’t have to do much except wait patiently, gliding towards 6 May like a baleen whale with its mouth flapping open, lazily preparing to inhale an acre of krill. Unless
David Cameron holds a live televised press conference at which he pulls his fleshy mask off to reveal he’s been Darren Day all along, they’ve got it in the bag.

Even a preposterous advertising campaign can’t dent the Tories. All over London, billboards depict Cameron looking you in the eye with an expression of genteel concern, accompanied by the slogan ‘We can’t go on like this’. To the observer, the overall effect is that of a man trying to wriggle out of an unfulfilling sexual relationship without hurting your feelings. Would you vote for that? Not normally, no. But when the opposition is a flock of startled, shrieking hens, your range of options shrinks drastically.

But perhaps there’s still a glimmer of hope for Labour. I recently watched several episodes of a high-quality US
comedy-drama
serial called
Breaking Bad
. The storyline revolves around an underachieving, debt-ridden fifty-year-old chemistry teacher who discovers he’s got terminal cancer. But wait, it gets funnier. Realising he has absolutely nothing to lose, he decides to become a crystal meth dealer in an insane last-ditch attempt to provide financial support for his family when he’s gone. Cue plenty of pitch-black hi-jinks.