Panel shows of various stripes.

[slemslempike]

I am pretending to write my (now six days overdue) conference paper, while watching Where's Elvis This Week on youtube. It is weird. It's a sort of panel show hosted by Jon Stewart, filmed in the US but as far as I can tell only aired in the UK. It only lasted for five episodes. This is probably because there is no desk, no clearly delineated rounds and worst of all no points. What were they thinking?

It's from the autumn of 1996, and Diana is alive, Fergie is on the front of newspapers, Tony Blair seems like a hopeful young chap, and there is derision at the idea that John Major could possibly have an affair. The whole point of the show is to talk about British/American cultural differences, and it's okay, but a bit dull and obvious. The guests are odd. Each episode had one woman (out of four guests), but for four of the five episodes the female guest was on the American side, so it was peculiar. The episode with the British woman was also the worst episode. But then the woman was Lowri Turner, who I'm sure is capable of bringing down any television show you care to name with an appearance. (I love the way the wikipedia article points out that it was surprising that Daily Mail readers picked up on her racism.)

The majority of the male guests were comedians, (Arthur Smith, Armando Iannucci, David Baddiel etc), while none of the women were. This really irks me. It happens a lot on The Panel as well. I do mostly like the women who are on that, but it's just really obvious that there's this weird split between women and comedians.

Last week's News Quiz, though, had Sandi in the chair of course, and then Sue Perkins and Carrie Quinlan! I think that's the first time I've ever heard that. Even before, when Simon Hoggart hosted, it was rare to get two women at the same time (I remember Sandi remarking on it when she was finally allowed to be on a team with Linda Smith), and three is very nice indeed. And it was good, as though it were a perfectly normal occurence and not a hideous feminism-gone-mad, what about the menz tragedy.

Comments

[medland.livejournal.com]

That Lowri Turner article about homosexuality is one of the most offensive things I've ever read.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

There's a very similar Lynda Lee Potter one we use on the first year course - same thing as gay = fun!, but also paedophile! and nice families shouldn't have to ever expose their children to such HORRORS, and the gay people who object are all mean bullies.

[nerdcakes.livejournal.com]

OH GOD, I'd forgotten about Lowri Turner. That was a TERRIBLE article.

I haven't heard the latest news quiz yet! I should go and do that. I do like Sue Perkins.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

No! She was so reasonable! She said RIGHT THERE that she didn't dislike gay people, and saw them as a net win in her life.

She's great. I dled some Light Lunch, and I am looking forward to watching it.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I have such a crush on Sue Perkins. I put up with two whole episodes of Sky Arts' What The Dickens because it had her and Sandi Toksvig in, but in the end I couldn't cope with the infuriating and inconsistent way it showed the answers for the audience in some rounds but not others (why at all?) or the way that several of the rounds made no sense.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

She's so lovely! I did rather enjoy What the Dickens as well. I liked the utter stupidity of "what famous fictional name do I have", when the participants often had no idea about the person whose name they shared.

[serriadh.livejournal.com]

She should probably get a medal for that level of kindness, considering this is the woman who wrote an article (which her kid can grow up and read, probably) about how she feels like a slag because her baby's not white and she thinks she loves it a bit less.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Do you think that if I work as hard at pretending Lowri Turner doesn't exist as she does at pretending bisexuals don't exist, she'll suddenly vanish?

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I can't answer that, I'm too busy having an existential crisis.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

And how can she argue 'Plenty of closeted gay men have wives and children' in one paragraph and 'The Prime Minister should have children, so no gay person can be Prime Minister' in the next? BRAIN GO SPLODEY.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I simply can't get over how recently it was written.

And the fact that she thinks it's the gayness of her media "friends" that make them divorced from so-called reality, rather than, say, WORKING IN THE FUCKING MEDIA.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

It's just so offensive and smug and horrible.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

And she can't even do homophobia right. The Lib-Dem candidates have been revealed 'bat for their own side'??

What a miserable mess of poor writing, blather and false logic. Meanwhile, I'm trying to think of recent Prime Ministers who would have been disqualified by her 'not sufficiently typical' test. Ted Heath (bachelor) would be right out, of course, as would anyone who was privately educated, married to a millionaire, the child of a septuagenarian circus performer, Scottish, etc, etc. Come to think of it, none of them has been much like Lowri Turner - luckily.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I mean, Margaret Thatcher was a mother, which clearly means that she absolutely had the best interests of Britain's children at the forefront of her mind.

Oh.