The Backroom Boys of the BBC

I guess it had to happen eventually. I've finally shagged someone I have something in common with. Unfortunately, it's the wrong thing.

Bad Things always happen when I try and give up smoking - my vodka monkey really comes alive. In this case, it was a mini pub crawl, which ended up, much to my surprise in Central Station. I spent some of the time chatting to a charming young barrister called Lee ("it seemed local, and sounded fun, and - oh god, what *is* the stripper doing?"), and then, when he left...

Well, there was this bloke, and he was handsome, and we were obviously both feeling a bit shy - so the obvious thing to do was bang each other senseless in the back room (please don't let this be my new bad habit). We were all over each other, laughing, fiddling, and swatting away the hands of fat strangers.

After a while we paused. To be exact, he turned round from the wall mid-shunt, and said, "Hmm, you're still there aren't you?"

"Yup."

"Thought so. In that case, someone's giving me a blow job, and it's not you."

"Well, that's ruined the magic of the evening."

"True. Fancy a drink?"

So we got talking. Found out each other's names, had a bit of a laugh, you know. Until the dreadful moment when we started talking about jobs.

Him: "I'm a kind of interactive strategist."

Me: "I edit websites."

Him: "Really? How funny. That's some of my job. Who do you work for?"

Me: "The BBC."

Him: "So do I."

And that's where it all went wrong. Suddenly work collided with harmless grubby fun, and we both stopped smiling. At work, I'd only come across him through an appointment with my boss's boss's boss and a stern warning to not put a foot wrong. Here, it just took a winning smile and a filthy mind. Isn't the real world funny?

It suddenly got sad. We went from "I want to take you home and bang your brains out" to "We really should meet up for coffee sometime. It would be nice."

Sherlock Holmes and the Silk Purse

The problem with national treasure Rupert Everett is that we’re running out of things for him to be bad in. The pampered prince of petulance needs a home, and he’s sulked through enough films, so now, alas, we must try and fit him into television.

Rupert Everett is a character (one shouldn’t say actor) of such pronounced distaste for the world that, when one sees him slouching though London’s gay soho, one doesn’t think “Is that Rupert Everett?” but, instead, “Who is that pissed-off man?”

It’s natural to see him as an ideal TV Sherlock Holmes – isolated, miserable, and as certain of his own brilliance as he is convinced of everyone else’s inadequacy. When I say “it’s natural”, I mean, it’s natural if you’re one of those TV casting types. It’s actually A Very Bad Idea.

The whole of Sherlock Holmes And The Silk Stocking was actually A Very Bad Idea. It is aptly summarised by Nancy Banks-Smith: “it was - just give me a minute to straighten my face – about a footman who has a foot fetish”.

But let’s talk about Rupert Everett – he was the most noticeable thing about it. An acquaintance claims to have sucked him off in Hyde Park: “He looked bored throughout, and came with a sigh.” Whether or not the story’s true, it perfectly describes him.

The art of television is capturing performances in a nicely-shaped bottle. Here, the bottle looked lovely (rolling fog, grand buildings and, as my mum said “lovely staircases”), but it was empty of any acting, bar a residue at the bottom from a couple of child actors who didn’t know better.

This was a prime example of good-looking bad television. No one ever sets out to make a bad programme, but it’s so easy to make a decision, a compromise, or a suggestion that tips it from being Something Good into A Thing Of Hopeful Desperation.

Here, so much effort had gone into nice staircases, plush gowns and lots and lots of smoke that one frequently forgot that there was something wrong with the script. There was music, lighting and atmosphere – proving that, if a script is flawed, everyone can turn up to work except for the poor people charged with delivering the lines.

This was wild, improbable Sexton Blake rather than rational Sherlock Holmes. The great detective should assemble available clues into a solution that startles a satisfied audience, able to tell itself “That makes wonderful sense!” The Silk Stocking did not make sense. Nor was it wonderful - its clues made revealed only as Sherlock Holmes solved them, like ducks in a fog-bound shooting gallery. Rupert would enter a room, Steadycam would wobble, fog would roll and then he’d leap off, eureka through a window.

The myriad historical inaccuracies didn’t help, being little details there for us to scratch irritably at. If we weren’t so bored we wouldn’t question an almost-possible world with phones, but no cars, 1910 clothes for Holmes but Victorian for everyone else. There were servantless houses, a practising female psychologist, widespread fingerprinting, men in lady’s bedrooms without social ruin, and exultant smoking of cigarettes without an ashtray in sight. Yeah – all possible, but not probable.

The biggest anachronism was the plot. Holmes vs a Motiveless Serial Killer just doesn’t work. That’s why Holmes meets Jack the Ripper is such a laughable cliché. The great brain can only solve great problems of logic – not the mystery of a cracked mind. Especially when, in this case, it turned out the villains were identical twins. Neither had a motive, other than that one of them got some form of gratification from touching lady’s tights. Don’t worry - you could tell from the look on Rupert’s face that he hated it too.

Darian's Party

It’s weird meeting people you feel you know but have never met. Last night I went to Darian’s birthday party in a friendly corner of Ghetto. I only know him through his blog, but he was marvellous, and excelled at having a circle of bright young things around him. His boyfriend is also very tall.

I liked Ghetto – it’s over six months since I last went. Ben and I stood in a corner, drips of sweat falling on us from the ceiling, trying to discuss the film we’d just seen. We stared at the sea of elbows around us, and realised that neither of us dared see the other dance. But now I’m falling in love with it again – it wasn’t too crowded, the men were pretty and flirty, and vodka was £2.

Chavtastic Croydon

Nothing much was going to happen today, so Lee suggested we travel to Croydon, and it was agreed that we should both go as chavs. We met at London Bridge – me top to toe in sports wear, with a cap. Lee was dressed, as usual in smart brown things. He shrugged. “I didn’t own anything hideous enough. I’m appalled that you do.”

Croydon was blissful – we went to TK Maxx, watched shoplifters, ate at Pizza Hut, bought bargain books, and fought to get into sports shops. Most amusingly, people there really were dressed like me, only with less layers. I was keeping warm thanks to a layer of ski thermals. What the hell was keeping these people alive?

Come Dancing Party

The Strictly Come Dancing party was a joy. When else can you say that you did the Timewarp with Esther, chatted with the lady who did the radio mikes (“hiding it in a strapless back gown is the worst”), and eyed up all the wrong people?

I encountered a whole new look last night. It’s the look that you get given after you’ve eyed up a pretty man. You look at him. He looks at you. And then his minor celebrity boyfriend glances at you with a look that says “Yes, yes, he is mine. Now bugger off.”

Top Tip on Dating

If you’re trying to impress a second date, it’s probably not a good idea to suck them off in the bogs at Barcode. I’ve a hunch it could be tacky.

Talent

A blaze of half-hearted Christmas shopping and leftover trifle. Met the adorable Gary in town for tea, then later caught up with him in a pub for a drink. He was surrounded by lovely, clever people – which made up for the pub. I hate the Fitzroy Tavern. It’s not that central – so why does it sometimes feel like “The only fucking pub in old London town”? If it was less popular, it would be lovely – there’d be space to sit and muse over peanuts and old scores.

There was a lovely young man there called Scott. It was his first time in London, and he’d taken instant exception to two things – the tube and my cheery demeanour. He kept ruffling my hair, damn him. I fear I like him.

Party

Had Christmas Drinks, which narrowly avoided turning into a wake. I love my friends – they’re so supportive, reassuring, and downright sexy. Along with the normal group of people I’d like around my deathbed, of all things, lovely Mark turned up, randomly on the way back from Christmas shopping with his new boyfriend.

Mark had been deeply in love with his old one, but Paul won him with admirable romantic cunning. For Mark’s birthday, Paul gave him a pair of Eurostar tickets and said “take who you want”. It obviously worked.

Sports Night

Aaron Sorkin is a genius of television, and I’ve been rewatching The Show He Did Before The West Wing: Sports Night.

It’s such an interesting dry run – shot on video, impossibly short episodes, and the first few episodes even have a laughter track. Of course, you’ve never heard a laughter track like it – it’s nervous, mild laughter from an audience frankly baffled by the sheer pace, intelligence and style of the show. It’s like asking people to guffaw at an ice sculpture in a microwave.

Only Sorkin could make me love a programme about sport. Of course, it’s as much about sport as the West Wing is about politics – his genius is clever people in crisis, and this show is a strangely comforting, melancholy tale of an under-funded, over-worked team of people making a brilliant show that the network just don’t understand.

Google it, and you’ll find out how closely the show parallels the struggle Sorkin had keeping it on air – a network that kept hoping it would dumb-down or die off, a constant battle for ratings, and a behind-the-scenes battle to keep an actor after they’d had a stroke (not only do they write it into the show, they keep nagging away at it).

Amazingly, the show lasted two fantastic seasons. And is so obviously a dry run for The West Wing, with a similar repertory company in front of and behind the scenes. There are sour bhuddas, recovering alcoholics, brilliant-but-needy women, and charmingly vulnerable men. Poignantly, it seems to have been set in the World Trade Centre.

The Day After

As far as I can remember went: Bugger, Bugger, Bugger. Hell, Damn, Why Me? Bugger, Bugger, Homebase, Christmas Tree, Fairy Lights, Bugger, Bugger, Bugger.