Adele and Ed Sheeran both took away two awards, with Coldplay, One Direction, Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Lana Del Rey also among the winners

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/brit-awards-2012-winners-and-nominees-on-stage-in-pictures.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/in-praise-of-the-tv-bossyboots.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/in-praise-of-the-tv-bossyboots.html#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:14:33 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/in-praise-of-the-tv-bossyboots.html [unable to retrieve full-text content]

Television loves a bossy expert – from Mary Portas to Kirstie Allsopp and Ruth Watson. But The Fixer’s Alex Polizzi is surely queen of them all

I love Alex Polizzi. She’s like the heroine of an Angela Brazil school story, all bouncy curls and fair-minded tickings-off about school spirit (“Look, darling, this simply won’t do”). She’s also one TV’s most likeable bossyboots. Her current BBC2 show, The Fixer, allows her to barge into failing family businesses, and, with her winning combination of pluck and honesty, show them exactly where they’re going wrong. This week, she was in Manchester, attempting to rescue a car-repair garage that made Chitty Bang Bang look like an Aston Martin dealership. She packed the family off to Manchester City FC to witness seamless hospitality in action, and sent the excessively lazy son to her uncle’s five-star Lowry hotel to learn customer service.

But while Alex’s brand of bossiness is a watchable delight, other TV termagants rule their charges like Nurse Matilda with toothache. Ever since the days of Fanny Craddock, whose home life with Johnny could only be shudderingly imagined (I suspect he spent a lot of time arranging jam jars in his shed), TV has championed its bossy experts – gimlet-eyed headteachers, overseeing a nation of fourth-form smokers.

A few years ago TV tried its luck with Americans such as House Doctor’s Anne Maurice, who would swoop into a perfectly normal home and demand that all personal effects be removed; a Dickensian lawyer in DKNY. Then there was Life Laundry’s Dawna Walter, whose mantra was “If it means something to you, put it on the wall!” But the US contingent never quite got it: they lacked the lovable fusion of nannying and bullying that typifies the traditional British bossyboots.

A true bossyboots must be the voice of age and experience, which is why, in a rare reversal of usual TV principles, few are under 40. And the best are those experts who, like the best head teachers, have seen it all before, grown weary, and are now determined to impart their hard-won knowledge. Like the formidable Ruth Watson of Country House Rescue, apparently happy to sit patiently at the table of the baronial hall for three hours, while some octogenarian aristo explains why the knot garden must never be touched, then announce: “It should be the car park, dear.”

Firmly in the Watson mood are Kim and Aggie, who took the “dose of salts” approach in How Clean Is Your House: Aggie would plunge about behind filthy pipes, emerge with seven new strains of e coli on her gloves, and roar, “Disgusting!” as the nation’s homeowners suddenly wondered about buying a sink-trap.

And of course, there’s Kirstie, who now goes under one name, like Madonna. A steel trap in a tea-dress in a tea-dress, she stamps through Location, Location, upbraiding Phil for being pleasant, and shrilling with annoyance when house-hunters don’t immediately adore the first house she shows them (“I can see she’s going to be a tricky one,” she hisses, when some mild mother-to-be remarks on the lack of a room for the baby). But Kirstie gets the job done. And she remains ever-watchable – unlike male TV bossyboots, who all too often come across as petulant, rather than helpful; mean instead of motivational.

Where Kirstie, Ruth and Alex are firm but fair, Gordon Ramsay is a raging tower of disappointment and frustration. It’s like watching Tony Soprano teach kindergarten. On the fashion design show Project Catwalk, judge Julien McDonald, supposedly there to encourage new talent, came across as a cat that had swallowed a wasp with lemon dressing. Gok Wan, meanwhile, mistakes embarrassment for gratitude, as he grabs sagging boobs and rips at knickers to “show off curves”.

The truly great TV bossyboots, by contrast, must showcase a faultless combination of empathy and backbone. Mary Portas nearly got there, with her shop makeovers – but too often, she let her own expertise and skill get in the way of teasing ability from the less confident. You could almost see the thought bubble reading, “Oh, just let me do it,” hovering above her Plantaganet haircut. And while Dragon’s Den’s growling Hillary Devey makes wonderful TV, she’s too driven to truly grasp the complex psychology that stops most of us from achieving our ambitions.

So for now, for me, Alex is the queen of the TV bossyboots. Because quite apart from her business skills, and her charm, no one else manages to imbue the word “darling” with quite such steel.

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/in-praise-of-the-tv-bossyboots.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/brit-awards-on-tv-did-they-hit-the-right-note.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/brit-awards-on-tv-did-they-hit-the-right-note.html#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 22:14:10 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/brit-awards-on-tv-did-they-hit-the-right-note.html [unable to retrieve full-text content]

When the most memorable moment is Adele being cut off mid-speech, it makes you wonder if awards are really good TV

This morning, everyone’s talking about Adele’s acceptance speech at the Brit awards. Thanks to a rambling Damon Albarn and the imminent arrival of the News at Ten, she barely started to thank anyone before an apologetic James Corden cut her off mid-sentence. This tells us two things: 1) awards ceremonies tailored to accommodate adverts always fall foul of time constraints; and 2) the most exciting thing to happen at the Brits was someone not finishing what they were saying.

We are up to our necks in awards ceremonies at this time of year, but do any of them actually make good television? From the red carpet arrivals show spin-offs to the lengthy live coverage of bored-looking wealthy folk craning their necks for the wine waiter, they seem to get an awful lot of screen time. But are they any more than animated versions of celebrity magazine pages? A parade of lovely dresses and then hours of clock-watching with a disappointing finish?

I rarely miss one on TV during awards season. As soon as the first Bafta shortlist is announced, I’m there on the sofa with snacks and a blanket. And yet once the action is sucked out of the glitzy hotel ballroom and poured back out onto our TV screens it is usually devoid of all atmosphere and plods like a tranquilised elephant. The initial excitement about dresses and celebrity-spotting soon gives way to a waiting game, fuelled by the vain hope that someone will do or say something interesting. And even on the rare occasion that they do, it’s usually a toe-curling moment of awfulness so great that you want to reach into the television and shush them.

Gwynneth Paltrow’s Oscar speech, Vanessa Redgrave’s Bafta fellowship speech, Kristin Stewart’s leaden oration at the same ceremony… many have fallen at the hurdle of public speaking. And who could blame them? All that raw, untempered emotion does funny things to the language centres of the brain. Not to mention the tear ducts.

Last night’s Brits were a slick, if rather forgettable affair save for the Adele botch-up (and Blur’s performance of Tender over on ITV2). If organisers had simply removed Olly Murs from the lineup we could all have enjoyed her speech unhindered. I wanted to see flawless Adele’s uvula reverberating with talent, Florence Welch swinging from the sun on a rope ladder in exploding trousers, Kate Bush riding through a fiery curtain on an elephant. Not chirpy Olly Murs singing sharper than a cut-throat razor.

Awards shows need huge set-pieces – unusual duets or pyrotechnics that dwarf the fourth of July. More often they seem to reply on comic slip-ups and drunken stage invasions. See Brandon Block at the Brits in 2000 or Kanye West storming the stage during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speach at the VMAs in 2009. The most successful of these was of course Jarvis Cocker at the Brits in 1996, displaying his contempt for Michael Jackson’s performance of Earth Song.

But even some of these moments of limp anarchy leave the TV audience at home feeling uneasy and embarrassed. At least we could all enjoy the good, clean fun of Judy Finnigan’s chemise malfunction at the 2006 NTAs. Rather than cringe-inducing, it was more a moment of cohesive joy in the Carry On tradition. But tell me anything else that happened at that ceremony and I’ll give you a biscuit.

And we don’t just watch these awards shows, slack-jawed, any more. We tweet our way through them, remarking on every gaff and bum note. This is of course massively complicated by the fact that many celebrities we follow are tweeting from inside the “as live” awards ceremonies which we are often watching on a delay. Or even as an edited highlights show later the same evening. This year’s Baftas were all over by the time we were settling down to watch them. Quelle frustration when the winner isn’t even a surprise because your favourite actor/singer has already tweeted the results.

So do awards ceremonies make good television? Would you prefer they stayed in a locked room – or would an edited highlights package be more suitable? Or do you relish sitting through every arse-numbing second?

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/brit-awards-on-tv-did-they-hit-the-right-note.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/western-journalists-die-in-homs.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/western-journalists-die-in-homs.html#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:20:00 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/western-journalists-die-in-homs.html 22 February 2012 Last updated at 14:27 ET

Two prominent Western journalists have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs in the latest violence which left 60 people dead across Syria on Wednesday.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, an American, and award-winning French photographer Remi Ochlik died when a shell hit a makeshift media centre in the Baba Amr district.

Troops are shelling opposition-held areas of Homs, besieged for weeks.

Thousands have died in unrest against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

On Tuesday Rami al-Sayed, a man who broadcast a live video stream from Homs used by world media, was killed in Baba Amr.

The Red Cross has called on the government and rebels to agree to a daily ceasefire, to allow medical supplies to reach the worst affected areas and get civilians out, but there is no sign yet of this being agreed.

‘Dreadful events’

Ms Colvin and Mr Ochlik were reportedly staying in a house in Baba Amr that was being used by activists as a media centre when it was hit by a shell on Wednesday morning.

Rockets were also said to have hit the building’s garden when people tried to flee afterwards.

At least two other foreign journalists were wounded, activists said.

One was named as British freelance photographer Paul Conroy, who was working with Ms Colvin, and Edith Bouvier of the French newspaper, Le Figaro. Ms Bouvier was said to be in a serious condition. The dead and the injured journalists are said to have been taken to a field clinic in Baba Amr.

Activists have expressed fears that Ms Bouvier risks bleeding to death without urgent medical attention and they were trying to get her out.

Syrian state television said the information ministry had asked officials in Homs to determine the location of foreign journalists because it had learned that some may have been injured.

In Paris, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said his country held the Syrian government accountable for the deaths. “Damascus owes us an answer,” Mr Juppe said.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament: “This is a desperately sad reminder of the risks that journalists take to inform the world of what is happening, and the dreadful events in Syria.”

Later, the Syrian ambassador to London was summoned to be told that the UK expected Damascus to arrange for the immediate repatriation of the journalists’ bodies and to provide medical treatment for the injured British journalist.

The US state department referred to “another example of the shameless brutality” of the Syrian regime.

The editor of the Sunday Times, John Witherow, said it was doing what it could to recover Ms Colvin’s body and get Mr Conroy to safety.

Continue reading the main story

“Marie was an extraordinary figure in the life of the Sunday Times, driven by a passion to cover wars in the belief that what she did mattered,” he added. “She believed profoundly that reporting could curtail the excesses of brutal regimes and make the international community take notice.”

Her mother told journalists Ms Colvin’s legacy was: “Be passionate and be involved in what you believe in. And do it as thoroughly and honestly and fearlessly as you can.”

Mr Ochlik, 28, had reported from Haiti and covered many of the recent uprisings in the Arab world.

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Sunday Times Editor John Witherow: “She may have been targeted”

Ms Colvin, in her 50s, had been a foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times for two decades, and had reported from several war zones. She lost the sight in one eye in Sri Lanka in 2001 after being hit by shrapnel.

On Tuesday, she told the BBC the bombardment of Baba Amr by Syrian government artillery and tanks had been “unrelenting”.

“I watched a little baby die today, absolutely horrific, a two year old – found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said: ‘I can’t do anything,’ and his little tummy just kept heaving until he died. That is happening over and over and over.

“There are 28,000 people in Baba Amr,” she added. “The Syrians will not let them out and are shelling all the civilian areas.

The Sunday Times on Wednesday made available Ms Corvin’s last article in which she said, “We live in fear of a massacre“.

Western journalists have mostly been barred from Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began last March.

But increasingly, they have risked entering the country undercover, helped by networks of activists, to report from flashpoints.

Last month, the French television journalist, Gilles Jacquier, was killed in Homs while visiting the city on a government-organised trip.

Anthony Shadid, of the New York Times, died of an apparent asthma attack in Syria last week.

As many as 50 people are feared to have been killed on Tuesday in the northern province of Idlib.

New videos posted online by activists in Idlib suggest opponents of President Assad were the victims of summary executions.

Cherie Blair has started legal proceedings over phone hacking, her solicitor has confirmed.

The wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, herself a prominent barrister, launched a claim on Tuesday.

Mrs Blair’s solicitor Graham Atkins confirmed a claim had been made “in relation to the unlawful interception of her voicemails”.

She is thought to be suing News Group Newspapers, but a News International spokeswoman declined to comment.

The now-defunct News of the World (NoW) was published by News Group, part of News International, which is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Various public figures have settled legal claims over hacking with News Group.

Mrs Blair left Downing Street when Mr Blair resigned as prime minister in 2007.

She still works as a barrister, is a campaigner for prison reform and makes high-profile appearances – most recently at the first meeting of the International Council on Women’s Business Leadership in Washington in January, alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In November, Mr Blair’s former press secretary Alastair Campbell told the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics he had suspected Mrs Blair’s friend Carole Caplin of tipping off newspapers about her.

He told the inquiry: “During various periods of the time that we were in government, we were very, very concerned about how many stories about Cherie and Carole Caplin were getting out to different parts of the media.

“I had no idea how they were getting out. In relation to not just Carole, and not just Cherie, but all of us who were involved in the government at that time, all sorts of stuff got out.

“Some of it may have got out because people who were within the government were putting it out there. Perhaps. That does happen.

“But equally there were all sorts of stories where you would just sit there scratching your head thinking, ‘How the hell did that get out?’”

Since the phone-hacking allegations had emerged, Mr Campbell said he had changed his mind.

“I did at times directly accuse Carole Caplin of tipping off newspapers about what she was up to. I’ve since apologised to her for that because I now realise I was completely wrong,” he said.

BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said the legal move by Mrs Blair may have been influenced by Mr Campbell’s comments.

Our correspondent said Mr Campbell’s evidence provided an insight into concerns that newspapers always seemed to know what her engagements were and that he said he had never been able to ascertain how news of Mrs Blair’s pregnancy in 1999 was obtained by the press.

Also in November, Ms Caplin said she had been told by police that her mobile phone messages were hacked by a private investigator working for the News of the World in 2002.

Both the Metropolitan Police and News International, which published the News of the World, declined to comment on Ms Caplin’s statement.

Whitney Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina, is just one of many children struggling with the death of an addicted parent

When I heard about Whitney Houston’s death, my thoughts turned to her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, 18, and the struggle she must be facing in dealing with the loss of her mother.

I have seen children lose a parent to addiction. Accompanying the grief of bereavement are tormenting feelings of anger and a lack of self-worth. I have heard children say their parent chose alcohol or drugs over them, or that as a son or daughter they “weren’t worth sticking around for”. According to the charity Addaction, it is estimated that one in five people in the UK have a family member with a drug or alcohol problem. While addiction tends to hit the headlines when a celebrity such as Houston dies, thousands of other children are watching their parents abuse substances on a daily basis, and much of this is behind closed doors. The hidden nature of addiction is unsurprising given the stereotypes that addicts are either homeless or celebrities. But there are plenty of adults abusing alcohol or drugs while holding down full-time jobs and raising children, and the impact on their children is rarely discussed, if at all.

Addiction and substance misuse is complicated. How an addiction manifests itself depends on the individual, and the same goes for its impact on children. But when a celebrity dies, this complexity is lost. Addiction, in these cases, is simply a “lifestyle choice” or highlights the fact that fame and money “means you can get what you want”. Illustrated as either glamorous or sordid, the lives of celebrities who are addicted to substances are much talked about but rarely understood. Conceptualising addiction in this way misinforms and distorts public opinion. Do we stop to think about how it must feel to the bereaved child on hearing that addiction is a lifestyle choice?

Substance misuse is not based on a single choice – to be, or not to be, addicted to alcohol or drugs. A person may choose to try a drink or drug for the first time. But this initial choice can be affected by depression, peer pressure, societal influences, or an inability to cope with life. So, from the outset, the choices that each person makes are different. The picture for each individual then becomes increasingly complicated and confused as mental, emotional or physical dependence on drugs or alcohol also influences choices.

And if someone is told that their misuse of drugs or alcohol will kill them if they continue, but will do the same if they attempt to stop without support, how do we understand their choices then? If they continue to take drugs or drink alcohol after this warning, or try to stop using them without the treatment to help their bodies cope, have they chosen to die? As we focus on choice, we ignore these questions and forget the children who are tormented by them.

While the public debate about Houston’s death will end, the impact of her death on her daughter and wider family will continue. As will the daily experiences of children who live with addiction, and the pain experienced by those who have lost a parent to addiction. When policymakers seek to address substance misuse because of its effect on crime rates, antisocial behaviour, health services, or the public purse, they need also to consider the effect it has on families, because for a child of an addict, you can’t put a price on that loss.

• Carlene Firmin is a principal policy adviser at the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England. She is writing in a personal capacity

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/children-of-addicts-have-a-lot-to-lose.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/mardi-gras-in-new-orleans.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/mardi-gras-in-new-orleans.html#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:04:23 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/mardi-gras-in-new-orleans.html [unable to retrieve full-text content]

Hollywood stars Will Ferrell, Andy García and Hillary Swank joined the annual parades in Louisiana

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/mardi-gras-in-new-orleans.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/have-you-been-watching-%e2%80%a6-whitechapel.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/have-you-been-watching-%e2%80%a6-whitechapel.html#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:01:48 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/have-you-been-watching-%e2%80%a6-whitechapel.html [unable to retrieve full-text content]

Can you leave your brain on standby for the third series of ITV1′s stupidly enjoyable neo-Victorian crime fest or are you appalled by the gaping plot holes?

“What if we could use the past as a map to guide us through difficult investigations?” mused DI Chandler over a quiet pint with DS Miles in The Dog and Exposition. “I’m not talking about copycats. I’m talking about knowing the history of crime – pause, close-up of raised eyebrows – and using it to our advantage!”

It was a fitting opening for the third series of Whitechapel – the primetime penny dreadful that views London as a sort of neo-Victorian dismemberment theme park in which stupefied dibbles stagger through a succession of investigational peasoupers with the grace of pantomime cows.

The first series of Whitechapel was about a man in a cape re-enacting the murders of Jack the Ripper. The second featured a plot that hinged on Ronnie Kray’s sperm. The current series is divided into three separate stories, the first of which involved a hammer-wielding “man spider” with an artificial leg, and the second – which concluded last night – a part-time vampire, a mad chocolatier and a mummified ex-fashion photographer with worms. In plot terms, Whitechapel has popped its cork and let the mad flow.

As with its predecessors, the latest series is stuffed to the cravat with ludicrous stylistic quirks. There are frequent shots of suppurating prosthetic torsos interspersed with yellowing, jump-cutty illustrations of men with handlebar moustaches. There is more honk-inducing hokum in the form of lines such as “I saw the devil walking in Whitechapel” and “I didn’t even know I was naked until the police found me.” More vexing fastidiousness from DI Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones), the asexual milquetoast brought to us by the letters O, C and D.

And there is more Edward Buchan (Steve Pemberton), the eccentric archive-mole who Penfolds around in his subterranean lever-arch lair, methodically A-to-Z-ing his “dismemberment shelf” and crashing into Chandler’s office every 19 seconds to make an announcement of the “1772. Two prostitutes were given aniseed balls laced with Spanish fly…by THE MARQUIS DE SADE!” variety in a manner that suggests he should be halfway up a polystyrene beanstalk in Bexley Civic Centre, not wearing a jumper in an ITV1 drama about cockneys.

What there isn’t more of, mercifully, is a sense of reality. Or cohesion. Or logic. Whitechapel cackles maniacally in the face of such pedestrian concerns. It is wholly uninterested in the trappings of conventional crime drama. Instead, it’s all about “the mood”, melodrama, hammerblow red herrings, the sense that murder is merely a fantastical hangover from Ye Olden Days, and woozy shots of Rupert Penry-Jones rubbing Tiger Balm into his temples as someone bangs pipes with a frying pan on the soundtrack. It has more in common with Scooby Doo than it does CSI: Wherever.

Not that this willful far-fetchedness comes without its grumbles. Why, for instance, are the plods unable to solve a crime without assuming it’s a copycat case with a historical precedent? Why are Chandler, Miles and co unaware of the existence of nuclear grade nutters and alarming sex shops within mere feet of their workplace? Best not to ask. Better by far to sit back, leave your cerebrum by the remote control and savour what is, by some distance, the most stupidly enjoyable series on TV.

So. Over to you. Enjoying the moronic brilliance of it all or appalled by the flapping plot holes and dunderskull dialogue? Your comments below, if you’d be so kind.

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/have-you-been-watching-%e2%80%a6-whitechapel.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/tv-review-timothy-spall-%e2%80%93-all-at-sea.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/tv-review-timothy-spall-%e2%80%93-all-at-sea.html#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:01:35 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/tv-review-timothy-spall-%e2%80%93-all-at-sea.html [unable to retrieve full-text content]

It’s six years since Timothy Spall started sailing around Britain. That’s a lot of faffing

What? He, and it – Timothy Spall: All at Sea (BBC4) – are still going? Still all at sea? It’s six years since he set off from the Thames in his beloved barge Princess Matilda, with his beloved wife Shane, to circumnavigate Britain. I know there have been big gaps, and winters off, and Harry Potter films to film, but even so, SIX YEARS! And he’s still got a way to go by the looks of things.

The other day a sailing boat, powered only by the wind, sailed round the world – not Britain, THE WORLD! – in 45 days. Not that that’s really relevant but it does underline just how gently Timothy’s taking it.

To be fair though, that’s exactly how it should be. Because that’s the charm of it, the fact that he’s pottering, faffing, waiting in ports for fair weather, making preparations, doing a radio interview, going for an Indian, getting Shane’s – sorry, Matilda’s – bottom scrubbed, giving her a respray (again, Matilda, we’re not talking Scottish tanning salon), reinforcing the windows in preparations for the anger of the North Sea. And then, poking his nose out, and if the sea is glassy calm, making a dash for the next port along the coast.

So where have they got to? Ah, Banff in Aberdeenshire. That’s right, because they took a short cut through from the west coast along the Caledonian Canal, missing out the north of Scotland, Cape Wrath and the Pentland Firth altogether. Cheats, but probably very wise.

Banff is a charming place with a feeling of Scandinavia about it, and in the dialect. Timothy does an excellent impression. Eventually they have to leave, because the weather looks good for a rounding of the infamous Rattery Head. Rat Trap head, Timothy calls it, gripping the wheel with a mixture of determination and terror. Suddenly it’s not so calm, perhaps not the “biblical storm” he describes it as, but it’s certainly a bit choppy.

“Shane, I’m going to turn the boat,” he cries, peering out into the grimness ahead.

“I know,” shouts Shane from down below.

“So brace yourself!”

Shane already has – she’s wedged herself in the corner, gripping on with both hands, for dear life. Timothy turns the boat … Oh, nothing bad happens, nothing at all happens, it’s completely fine. Shane can unwedge and unbrace herself, a bit sheepishly, and they pootle into Peterhead, where they contemplate the beauty of the breakwaters, the gasworks and the prison up on the hill. And Timothy can think about what just happened, before psyching himself up for the next leg, down to Stonehaven.

I’m not a big fan of the celebrity travelogue. I’m bored of Coast, and all the Britain-is-brilliant Coast copies. But this – which is a kind of cross between the two – is somehow lovely, and that’s all down to Timothy and Shane. They don’t pretend to know stuff, or lecture, they’re finding out too. They’re so enthusiastic – not just about the obvious things such as Slains Castle, where Bram Stoker may have been inspired to create Dracula, but also the gasworks and the prison. Spall is dead funny, he does impressions, he’s self-aware, and self-deprecating. In short, they are excellent company.

But there’s also plenty of drama and tension as well, and that’s all down to … is there a nice way of saying this? No, I don’t think so … Spall’s total ineptitude as a seafarer. He really isn’t cut out for it. I think half of the time he has no idea where is he. Well, he manages to lose Stonehaven, a town that has been there since the iron age, completely and seems unsure of which way is east and which way west. He peers at his chart, and out of the window, apparently wondering how the two can possibly be related. He’s fumbling round Britain, that’s what he’s doing.

There are no more disasters this time. Just some disagreement about what those things in the sky are – guillemots, kittiwakes, gannets, spitfires even, who knows, something else to be baffled by anyway. But I’ve got a good feeling there may be more excitement to come further down the coast and later in the series. Well, it’s no secret, it was in the news. They were rescued by the Sheerness lifeboat. Timothy was confused, totally lost, unsurprisingly. It turns out they were actually on the River Medway, off the Thames estuary. Home, and he didn’t even know it.

]]> http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/tv-review-timothy-spall-%e2%80%93-all-at-sea.html/feed 0 http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/greece-averts-nightmare-outcome.html http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/greece-averts-nightmare-outcome.html#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:00:34 +0000 banez http://queerspeak.com/2012/02/greece-averts-nightmare-outcome.html 21 February 2012 Last updated at 15:58 ET

Greece has avoided a nightmare scenario by agreeing to a 130bn euros (£110bn; $170bn) bailout deal, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos has said.

He said the deal was probably the most important in Greece’s post-war history.

The cabinet was meeting to discuss how to pass the reforms stipulated by international lenders, which include huge spending cuts and beefed-up monitoring by eurozone officials.

Trade unions have called strikes and protests for Wednesday.

Greece has already been through a massive austerity programme in return for an earlier bailout, and many are angry at the prospect of years more hardship.

Opinion polls suggest that the two parties in the coalition, which currently dominate parliament, are facing huge losses at the next election, scheduled for April.

Parties on the far left and far right, which are set to make big gains, are opposed to the bailout deal.

Under the agreement hammered out in Brussels

• Greece will undertake to reduce its debt from 160% of GDP to 120.5% by 2020
• private holders of Greek debt will take losses of 53.5% on the value of their bonds, with the real loss as much as 70%
• eurozone experts will permanently monitor Greece’s economic management
• a constitutional change will give priority to debt repayments over the funding of government services

The country has just over a week to approve a round of spending cuts of more than 3bn euros tied to the bailout.

Mr Venizelos said the deal had given Greece a new opportunity, and had “avoided the nightmare scenario”.

“What we have is the clear, explicit commitment of our peers that they will support us even after the end of the programme, until Greece returns to the markets,” he said.

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George Papandreou speaking on BBC Hardtalk: ”We will not default and we will not exit the euro”

“The Brussels agreement this morning is the result of great, painful and complicated negotiations… that are perhaps the most important of the post-war era, given the economic volume and impact on politics and society.”

Tuesday’s cabinet meeting is expected to formalise the austerity measures and spending cuts, which then have to be approved by MPs.

But conservative leader Antonis Samaras, a member of the coalition and contender to become the next prime minister, warned that the rescue package’s targets could only be met with economic growth.

“Without the rebound and growth of the economy… not even the immediate fiscal targets can be met, nor can the debt become sustainable in the long-term,” he said.

Trade unions have called for new street protests on Wednesday and the head of the opposition Communist party has vowed to oppose new cuts.

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“We insist on daily struggle to thwart the measures and this struggle cannot be a defensive one,” said Aleka Papariga.

The prospect of permanent eurozone monitoring is also seen by many Greeks as a blow to national pride, and many question whether the austerity will actually improve the economy.

“The measures are just going to make us sink further into recession. We’ll be worse off this year than last,” Agelos Sotirchos told the BBC as he walked through Athens’ main meat market.

Another shopper, Vasilis Bouzianis, said the bailout appeared to be the only option for Greece.

“There are a lot of difficulties for all the people; we lose more money, we pay more taxes, but if we went ahead with bankruptcy, the problem would be much bigger,” he said.

The agreement was thrashed out over 13 hours of talks involving the international “troika” of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

Eurozone leaders hailed the deal as a triumph, and said it had saved Greece from going bankrupt.

Former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou told the BBC’s Hardtalk programme that Greece had made major sacrifices and deserved more respect from international analysts and financial markets.

“We will not default and we will not exit the euro – I think this deal has clinched this prospect,” he said.

“Of course it means hard work but I also would demand more respect. We have made major sacrifices in Greece.”