27^th November 1998

Hello.

I must confess, I am cannot keep away from Fort Boyard, Channel Five's Crystal Maze for people who aren't so clever as to get on the latter. Which, of course, itself was for people not clever or tough enough to appear on ITV's The Krypton Factor. I have tried to keep away, but I can't. It's compulsive and repulsive in the same way traffic accidents and rap music videos are.

On the strangely compulsive side is Melinda Messenger, who is a little bundle of energy egging on the teams, and really proving herself to be the first (that I can think of) topless model to ever make it convincingly into hosting shows. (She should really have done this before trying her hand at taking over from Jack Docherty, at which she was dire.) With that huge supply of energy and that whacking, great chest, she must be every schoolboy's fantasy made flesh, if not, entirely, real.

Definitely repulsive is Lesley Grantham. A man so unconvincing as an actor, it makes your teeth shiver to just watch him. But I've already had this rant.

But Thought Blowhard is not about acting. Nor is it really about the size of Melinda Messenger's chest. That's what Melinda Messenger is about, the show is deeper than that. The show is about putting people who fancy themselves as clever yet fit, into rooms and telling them to do simple tasks with one huge obstacle or hindrance in their way. For example: Pouring water into a bucket whilst running on a treadmill; finding a key in a maze of ropes; undoing a small, locked door whilst things keep coming over and twatting you on the head. I soon realised that the show is basically solo It's A Knockout, and without all of the things that made It's A Knockout so great: The fact it was countries in Europe fighting against each other; the games had no point other than to get the contestants wet or hurt; and, of course, Stuart Hall's hysterical laughter. It's A Knockout was like World War II was being re-fought, this time no side forming any allegiances with the other. Bullets were replaced with coloured water; the battle fields replaced by large pools or bouncy castles; and this time, Lord Haw-Haw-Hawww-Haw-Ha-Hawwwww-Oh-The-German-Team-Has-Fallen-In-Ahhh-Hawww-Hawww-Haw was on our side.

But we all know, that if World War II was to be re-fought, we would not be using untrained soldiers dressed as giant eggs or chubby crocodiles. It would be fought by robots. And the BBC has already been training its top entertainers to be ready to report on just such an event. The training ground is Robot Wars, where amateur and professional boffins create vastly varied designs of robots and compete them against the BBC's own robots. The BBC has not shirked on the design of its robots. The are big, powerful and well armed. They probably wouldn't come off too badly if pitted against a Panzer tank. But they are not against German mechanical might. They are pitted against the plucky Brit and his ingenuity.

It is so much fun to watch these small, often bizarre designs race around attacking each other, and avoiding the huge jaws/chainsaws/flamethrowers of the BBC robots. It's a kind of cyber-cock fighting, but where you know that no living things are being hurt, so it doesn't make you feel sick. In fact it makes you feel warm, as it puts thoughts in your head of going into work and pitting the PC on your desk against that of your neighbour in a duel to the death. Ahh, yes.

The robots in Robot Wars aren't actually robots. They are remote control cars made from reinforced steel and pieces of scrap warship. All incorporate at least one nasty weapon of some description. A hammer, a spike, even a metal flail. Occasional a robot will also incorporate bizarre bits of junk. For example, one was cleverly built around Victorian pram wheels, whilst another had some pointy bit from a fighter aircraft. All look like the sort of thing you would not want to meet on a cold, quiet Death Star corridor.

The current host of Robot Wars is Mr Craig Charles. Who has tried comedy and acting, and has now donned the compulsory black leather jacket of a Robot Wars presenter. It's difficult to know which career option for him to choose from these three. Perhaps a fourth could be suggested.

Before Mr Charles, was Mr Jeremy Clarkson. Jeremy rose to fame as the often caustic reviewer of cars in Top Gear. In that he excelled, as he is generally very entertaining to listen to, as long as you don't overdo the doses. Unfortunately, the world of TV never understands this concept. "If someone is popular," states the portly BBC executive over a nice vintage sherry, "surely the people will want to see him," "Or her," interjects his PA. "More and more often."

Jeremy Clarkson now has his own chat show where a great deal is made of some of the controversial things he says. Big wow. Any pope-fucking, son of a child-kidnapping the-queen-is-a-whore can say something that is controversial, for god-is-a-lesbian's sake.

Part two of my topical report of this year's Edinburgh festival concerns, erm... Oh, I know! The return to favour of the double act. It isn't in full swing, yet. But double acts are slowly making a return to the comedy scene after years of being detested thanks to the efforts of Messers Little, Cannon, Large, and Ball.

Modern comedy double acts are not called Bod and Chap, or anything like that. They have a slick name as if they were a whole group instead of two people. But then a group is just four or five people, really isn't it? Isn't it?

Modern double acts are called things like Hitchcock's Half Hour, Hoopal or The Happy Twins. Pretty much anything beginning with an H. They are anything from surreal punsters, to crazy clowns, to down-right, we're so happy you just have to love us fools.

My own double act, Huge Helenic Homosexual Horse Humpers Hold Hands Having Had Hooch, which is currently seeking a second performer, is due to hit the comedy circuit in June 2000, three months after double acts once again become unpopular thanks to the antics of Carlton's top-paid comedy duo, Hinge and Hancock. (Nick Hancock that is, in case you’re wondering.)

Pop survivor Cher's latest single, 'Can You Believe I'm Still Going', is doing very well. It's a remarkably hip record for someone whose first hit single was in the sixties. This hipness, alas, is due entirely to the fact that the producer of the record and the director of the video are hip. Cher almost was probably once hip, but now she is surely due to have hers replaced. Cher, does however, look bloody good for a woman who must be in or near her fifties. She hasn't got a single wrinkle in sight. (Even the twenty-something-going-on-twelves of Irish plop sensation B*witched have wrinkles! And they're only twenty-something-going-on-twelve years old.) This lack of wrinkles is somehow very eerie. In the video Cher looks like a china doll, or more accurately, like a prop from a dire 1960's low-budget horror film about haunted figurines. Pleasant it isn't.

I have a nightmare vision that undressing this scary doll would reveal a back that was a mass of hideously wrinkled flesh pulled together and held fast with industrial-strength surgeon's thread. One tug at the wrong part and the whole thing will come apart and send the flesh dropping down so that it hangs off of her body like a loose sheet draped over a small child on Halloween. The thought of sexual contact with Ms Cher is not one I can readily conceive of.

It has often been said that if Cher has one more face-lift, she will need to start shaving. But joking aside, in the short term, it has worked for her. She may be the butt of many jokes, mostly pointing out that her butt is now somewhere about her armpits, but she has had a pop career that has spanned decades. Normally this is only achievable if you have talent or doggedly churn out song after song in exactly the same three chords.

So, by staying young and beautiful, Cher has been rediscovered by a whole new generation of teenyboppers. She is up there, high in the charts, with the likes of Steps (good looking and vacuous), B-fucking-witched (cloyingly cute and bland) and The Spice Girls, who after two years at the top, are veritable dinosaurs in the fickle world of teenypoptripe.

So, what does the future hold for Cher? Well, more security to make sure nobody sees that picture she had painted at the start of her career, the one in which she now looks like Barbara Cartland. Probably more surgery to stop her ageing like us mortals. Maybe even more hit singles produced and filmed by the up and coming young things of the day. I think it's that vampiric element - keeping her career alive by feeding off fresh talent - that perturbs me the most. She can keep herself looking younger than she did when she started her career, looking like a terracotta pop statuette, if she wants, that is her business. I'm sure she'll pay the price of all this surgery later. And if there is no price to be paid, bonus to her. The price right now, is that she won't win my respect, and I won't sleep with her. God, how that must keep her up at nights.

A bit of late news has come in that does require some commenting on...

Earlier this year, the Eurovision Song Contest was won by Israel. It was won by country not even in Europe, (and not officially recognised by other countries in their own continent), and by a girl who wasn't really a girl. Well, last night, the Miss World 1998 competition was won by... Miss Israel. Naturally, on being told this I had but one question to ask: "Was she a woman?"

But as my friend pointed out, she's officially the most beautiful woman in the world, what does her gender matter. After all nobody seems to care that Kate Moss is a man, do they?

Bye bye, lovers.

(c) November 1998 Peter R. More.