| Product: |
Room 101 |
| Date: |
16.04.08 (153 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Bye Bye Nigel!
Disadvantages: My list was longer
With young students having to pay their way through college (with the help of the bank of mum and dad, of course) these days they are no longer peppering people's top ten most annoying lists. They can no longer sit in pubs talking crap all day or dodge lectures to protest about nonsense causes, now they have to pay for that once lavish apathy through student's fees and lodging. Celebrities, too, have drifted off the radar as there are so many ghastly ones out there. It's also rather mean to include old people and their habits in the 'noughties'- utility bills, the council tax and 'no smoking' at bingo, quite rightfully made them even grumpier.
For my list I'm going to do my best to avoid cliché and pick some things and people that have annoyed me of late, rather than eternal gripes. I'm sure you don't want to hear about speed cameras, call-centers and traffic wardens....
-Volvos-
Why won't the drivers turn the bloody headlights off! Until recently I didn't realize their lamps were welded to the on position by the Swedes because of petty European Union rules. But surely there must be some way of turning them off in broad daylight? I would be signaling like a mug to drivers there lights were on in, they looking blankly at me or gesturing exactly how many lights they have on with the same amount of fingers. I know there's another brand of car that does it and in this energy conscious era it's very annoying to see.
Volvos were the sturdy middle-class people mover of choice in the 70s and 80s, but now the symbols of how petty and silly European Union rules are that are interfering with British life and common sense. There's way too many bureaucrats and lawyers employed by the white elephant that is Brussels, and having your headlamps on at lunchtime in July is the type on nonsense they come up with when they have to justify their existence, greedy salaries and fraudulent expenses claims, before they become surplus to requirements, which rarely seems to happen. The only pair of Swedish headlamps I want to look at in the summer are Katarina Klufts!
-Lewis Hamilton's dad-
Ok, you have produced a fantastic son and worked hard to get him where he is, but I'm fed up with seeing your head on camera every time the producer cuts to the pits or trackside. Just for once can you go to the back of the pit lane with the trophy girlfriends and let us concentrate on the race. From what I'm hearing, dad wants to be the boy's agent and mix business with pleasure, and as we have seen with so many parental contributions in tennis, that can only end in disaster. It worked much better with Jensen's dad John Button, he in the same boat, but because his son has no talent he doesn't get on camera anymore..
-Radio One 'hip' DJs-
There's nothing more tedious than nice middle-class boys pretending to be 'cvhavvy' south London streetwise rapsters on the airwaves. Tim Westwood set the standard to be the biggest pratt on 'yuff radio', of course, but of late Chris Moyle's and that really tall George Lamb guy, who hangs in his hood' in his commercial, is coming up fast on the rails to annoy me. 80% of rap music is bought by white boys pretending to be black boys and hardly any of that music is purchased by middle aged Jewish guys from North London, Radio Ones idea of who has their finger on the pulse. Apart from Colin Murray, they are all about in touch with the kids as Jimmy Saville. Actually, I don't think we should go there.
-People that don't move out of the way in pubs-
We all know how tedious an affair it is to squeeze your way to the bar, queuing for drinks, and then nudging back to your mates with the ale, bumping people in the process. What bugs me is everyone in the pub knows that hassle but there's always a small group of trendies that refuses to budge. They have positioned themselves in a crucial aisle or near their friend's tables and they aint moving for no one. It's as if they may crease their designer Ben Sherman shirts or affect their body posture they have perfected whilst talking sh*t for two hours if they do move. To me that's the same crime as parking up in the middle of the motorway at rush hour. But their attitude is like, who are you to try and squeeze through here? Can't you see this route has been blocked off by our "group"? A nice Claymore mine dropped in the middle would be appropriate.
-Tiger Woods -
Great golfer, that there's no doubt, but he has the charisma of a Sumo Wrestlers jockstrap! As the lone black guy in what is an elitist white middle class sport, it's almost cringing to see the media, his PR people and the golfing authorities trying their hardest not to upset him, blowing smoke up his ass at every opportunity, almost apologizing for the slave trade there and then.
There's a reason why all 12 of his majors have been won by him leading after 54 holes - because he and his PR people spend all his time cultivating this air of invincibility that isn't real. But when he has people in front of him on the final day of a major he has to take risks and he doesn't win and gets in a strop, no entourage on tee to put the leader off. It's not so much him that's intimidating but the corporate yes man machine around him that have turned the guy and his sport into one long boring fart. And why dont you ever smile!
-The London Marathon on TV-
As a London marathon veteran I have every respect for those who race and finish, the task far more grueling than it looks, especially after 19 miles with the inclines of the Isle of Dogs still to come. But it's not something meant to be on TV. There's hours of it, some local radio DJ dressed up as an Ostrich bottlenecking the chasing pack is a nightmare if you are actually running it. Its worse sports viewing than the boat race! And that's saying something.
There's no such thing as fun running. It's bloody painful, and if you're a serious runner the last thing you want in front of you when your shot is some knob dressed as an Oxo cube waving at Hazel Irvine. The marathon it's not about fat businessmen who have done little training wanting to get on telly but an actual physical achievement, the loneliness of along distance runner never truer. The marathon should be run and not seen. And I bet you didn't know that one-in-three of those sponsored fun runners you're cheering on actually trouser the sponsorship money, according to some mindless trivia I read.
-Glastonbury-
I've always cringed at Glastonbury over the years because the people who go are mostly there for the 'experience' over actually liking the music, or at least that's my impression. It's like a middle-class right-of passage, the same lot who buy the same cool Indy tunes at "uni" trying to fit in, seem to head off to "Glasto" as some sort of initiation ceremony into this particular social class. Not everyone that gets a redbrick educated can be mad about Radiohead. How does that work? Slogging around in mud all week pretending to be down with the great unwashed is hardly original.
This year, of course, tickets have not sold out, in fact there's rebellion in Middle-England, headline rap act Jay-Zee turning the cotton wearing classes away in their thousands. So much for meeting 'all kinds of different people'. The thought of bullets fizzing over their tents and 4-wheel drives as half of East London goes to war in rural Somerset is not quite the same as watching 'Athlete' and the Lemonheads wearing a Hessian sack!
The picture ID ticket also seems to have put off the more colorful Glastonbury punter, let alone the touts, and as its stands there are 35,000 tickets still unsold. The professional white-collar classes who were blooded in their youth at the festival have also neglected the chance to be working-class for the weekend in the mud and rain because of that urban line up. Perhaps the thought of having to rave with the increasing number of Souse 'chavs' there is the real reason the website has been cold. The crime wave that will surely wash over the festival this year like the rain has every other year could signal the end for Mr. Eavis cash cow, a farmer who knows a cash crop when he sees it. It could well be biofuel time for his fields. And please don't tell me there's an Indy band called biofuel!
-Nigel Kennedy-
You're 51 mate! Why do you still talk like Jason Statham and dress like Vivian Westwood!! You were educated at one of the countries finest public schools and you certainly don't have enough hair for a Mohican anymore. What puzzles me about his guy is why he needs to put on the 'mockney' ascent to try and sell music that was only ever going to be bought by people from his same social class? He is a great violinist, make no mistake, and acclaimed by his piers, yet he still puts on this bizarre working-class front? What a complete tool.
-Naturists-
Your perverts, simple as, hoping to get a glimpse of much younger and sexier bodies, only to realize all the bodies on show are just like yours.Yuk! There's really something rather uncomfortable about grown men being naked in front of kids who have been dragged along because their parents make them. I say all naturists should have surprise inspections of their hard-drives before they are allowed in these nudey clubs! Its wrong and those saucy seaside postcards could never be further from the truth. Stop it now! It's vulgar.
-TV show audiences-
Now I can understand people going to the X factor or Britain's Got Idiots to see their friend's and family up on stage and cheer them along. I can also see the merits of seeing prime ticket shows with big names in if you are a family-but who exactly applies to watch Ready, Steady, Cook! I would cross oceans not to be near Ainslie Harriet in that stupid hat. If I was in those 100 seats I would bring a firehouse to hand to put out his soufflé, he annoys me that much.
I'm sure the younger ones on here who have been to college have all seen the ads up on the community message board to jump in a free minibus to go and watch Jeremy Kyle etc, which sounds kinda fun, and with a buffet and no entrance fee you can hardly blame them. Who doesn't want to throw rotten fruit at the underclass up on stage? Beats general studies lectures any day! But to actually plan a day out at Pebble Mill to see Lesley Joseph toss a salad with Jade Goody just beggars belief. I wonder if Ainslie's eye balls would pop out if I stuck spatula up his bum! Ohh misses!
-Organic and Fair Trade food-
Eating trendy food has become the latest green fad to distance the middle-classes from the working classes. Spending 40p extra on your organic pasta is the new 'brand buying', the 'proles' look on as you pick all the expensive stuff from the top shelf and 'place' it in your cart like a royal crown on its ceremonial cushion, letting the great unwashed know who is trying to save the planet and so are now guilt free. You can even raise a slight superior sneer as you load your food shopping into the gas guzzling 4 wheel drive.
Recent studies have shown that organic foods are no better for you than normal foods and in some cases a big waste of money. New government rules in agriculture have actually allowed farmers to spray organic crops with pesticides, which defeats the object of the exercise there and then. But because they have been so popular with the ethical middle-class of late they need to plant a lot of them to meet demand and so that means pesticides to kill the bugs and diseases that can wipe out entire crops, one of the points of chemical sprays. Admittedly that occurred when the supermarkets realized the mark up they could make on these fad foods and I'm sure smaller farmers do stick to the organic code in retaliation to that. But as we all know, what the supermarkets want they get, and with the credit crunch biting, the more costly organic and fair trade food may be a thing of the past, Middle-England's supermarket of choice in Waitrose seeing a big fall in profits for the first quarter.
-TV Child Geniuses-
The trouble with these guys is they always have parents who have bought their kids up to be a child genius, thrusting a violin in the kids lap before he or she is even off the potty. The parents are nearly always rustic and irritatingly bookish types (the sort you just can't imagine having sex) and the kid's, obnoxious brats. Why don't we ever see working class super kids on the telly?
Being bought up to act like a 17-year-old when you are eight doesn't make for good company and I'm sure these kids that get on TV aren't really that clever, but just talk grown up. What we do know is these TV brain boxes rarely have normal lives in their twenties because of this forced expectation to invent cold-fusion in their late teens. Who will ever forget that prat who was on Wogan who ran all these family businesses when he was 10 and acted like he was 56 in a tweed suit. It was obvious the parents were running a scam and put the weirdo son up as the front to make a few quid from the media. When you try to bring up a kid as a child genius and it goes wrong then this monstrosity is what happens. He has last seen as a 'she' (now you know him!), changing sex to escape his freaky upbringing.
We had a female version in Northampton, a child math's prodigy who hit the headlines twice in the mid nineties. She was the youngest ever girl to go to Oxbridge to study advanced theoretical math at 12 years young and made the headlines again when she ran away from home, it later transpiring her teacher father was a child molester, who would be convicted of said offences (not with her), she so messed up by the experience that she is now works as a prostitute on the internet! Leave kids alone. Let them grow up normally!
-The 50/50 on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'-
We all know that if you blurt out the two answers you think it is you will get the same two answers flashed up on the screen. There's nothing random about it. If you're good looking the people up in the booth will want to keep you in the hot seat longer and give you one that's obviously not the right answer, so you get the right answer. Now that the questions are really hard in the new series and no one is phoning the hotline to get on the show, that paradox meaning the money will fall and so they have to give away less, the 50/50 is now the only way to help keep certain contestants playing. Still, at least the show is still not as bad the 'Vault'.
-Jools Holland-
How on earth has this guy made a career from playing the piano? Music is pretentious at the best of times and just trying to write a music on here makes me cringe. Watching him shouting into the microphone last night in a studio full of cool cats from some casting agency had me reaching for the remote quicker than Vanessa Feltz goes for the cake tin. Music shows should be like Top of the Pops, no pretensions or posing, just the tunes. Sorry Jools but you are tedious and just as the Room 101 trap-door opens for the last time I'm going to have to kick you in pal, and take all those irritating Indy bands that are apparently not going to 'Glasto' with you!
Summary: Room 102?
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