The Hell of it All

by Charlie Brooker

  I’m useless at every single aspect of holidays. Timing them for one thing. I tend to exist in a permanent work-bubble, fighting off deadlines with my bare fists. Then, when there’s an eventual lull, I think, ‘Wow, I really need a holiday’, but by then it’s too late. What’s more, I’m single. How, as a tragic singleton, are you meant to go on holiday anyway? I know from experience what couples do on holiday: they argue. But I’m not a couple. Who am I supposed to slowly fall out of love with? I can’t slowly poison my relationship with myself. Or can I?

  I know several people who regularly go on holiday alone, including one whose idea of a rejuvenating break was a week on the Trans-Siberian railway, where he read books and stared out of the window into a landscape of unending nothingness, until he wound up drinking vodka just to get it over with quicker. He considered this a life-enriching experience. Another friend urged me to simply jet off somewhere alone because it gives you an unparalleled sense of freedom. ‘Just stick a pin in a map of the world and fly somewhere,’ was her advice, and it was such a stirring notion I was about to fire up Google Earth and do just that (I’m modern, see), when she added a small caveat. ‘Just don’t go for more than a week, because you end up talking to yourself.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Well, it’s the evenings, you see. It’s fine during the day, because you can just lie on the beach or walk round museums with an iPod on, but in the evenings there’s not much you can do except eat alone in restaurants or sit alone in bars. If you’re a woman it’s not so bad, because you get chatted up now and then, which can be amusing, but you’re not a woman so you’ll probably have to sit there reading a book or something. And eventually you’ll get so lonely you’ll start talking to yourself. I went for a week and started talking to myself on the last day. Go for a fortnight and you’ll totally lose your mind somewhere around day 10.’

  There are other options, of course. Activity holidays for one, although the idea fills me with revulsion. I don’t want to go trekking with a bunch of disgusting strangers. What if a really annoying jabbering, bearded bloke latches on to me on the first day and decides I’m his best mate and won’t leave me alone, and I’m stuck with him in some Arizonian wilderness and the sun’s beating down and he’s talking and talking and farting for comic effect and eating sandwiches and walking around with egg mayonnaise round his mouth until I want to grab the nearest rock and stove his skull in, and carry on smashing and smashing and roaring at the sky until the others dash over to pull me off him, but by then I’ve gone totally feral and start coming at them with the rock, which by now is all matted with gore and brain and beard hair, and I manage to clock one of them hard in the temple and they’re flat on the ground, limbs jerking like an electrocuted dog, but as I swing for the next one some self-appointed hero rugby-tackles me, but I’m still putting up a fight so in desperation they all stamp on my neck until they’re certain I’m dead, then throw my body in the river and make a lifelong pact to tell no one the truth of what happened that day? What sort of holiday is that?

  The final option is to go somewhere with a group of friends, but that requires a degree of planning and forethought which is, frankly, beyond me. So I’m doing what I always do: arranging a week off and spending it at home. The closest I’ve got to visiting a far-off land is playing Half-Life 2 on my Xbox 360, and that’s set in a dystopian future filled with nightmarish monsters that shriek in your face as they tear you to shreds with their claws. It does at least have a level set on a beach, which makes me feel approximately 0.1% as though I’m on holiday, except rather than relaxing on a sun lounger, I’m machine-gunning commandos and splattering insectoid beasts with my jeep. And this is my way of unwinding? I’m an idiot.

  I’m going to go on holiday somewhere, somehow, before the end of the year. I just don’t have a clue where or how. Answers on a postcard please. But preferably not a picture postcard from somewhere sunny. That’ll only enhance my crushing sense of failure.

  Rough in the jungle [12 November 2007]

  I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! – ITV’s star-studded ‘re-imagining’ of Cannibal Holocaust – starts again tonight, and I can’t wait. Actually, that’s a lie – I can wait. For ages. In fact I’ll Sky Plus it so I can skip all the ad breaks and boring bits. With judicious fast-forwarding you can pack an hour of the show into less than 15 minutes.

  If you enjoy this sort of thing, it’s best to watch it on your own, like pornography. There’s no point tuning in if you live with a genteel aesthete or snooty John Humphrys type: their appalled, disgruntled huffing tends to drown out all the screaming and eyeball-munching. But viewed alone, it’s ideal background wallpaper; something pointless to glance at while checking your emails.

  I just wish the technology would hurry up so I could watch it in a little inset box in the corner of the screen while simultaneously playing a videogame. That kind of demented convergence isn’t far off – a few months ago I was playing a 3D murderthon called Prey or Bludgeon or Sociopath or something, and was startled to discover that the levels were peppered with TV sets spooling old movies such as To Kill a Mockingbird in their entirety, which meant if you fancied a break from the relentless slaughter you could sit down and watch Gregory Peck gently plead for tolerance for a few minutes, then turn round and blast someone’s jaw off with a shotgun. That’s the future of entertainment, right there.

  Weirdly, for a programme based around the relentless humiliation of desperate K-listers, I’m a Celebrity has a fairly solid track record of relaunching careers (far better than, say, the now defunct Celebrity Big Brother, which, in the fame stakes, surely ranks 10 steps below releasing an internet sex tape starring yourself and a microwaveable ready meal for one). Joe Pasquale did OK out of I’m a Celeb. So did Tara Palmer-Tomkinson. And Peter Andre. And Jordan. Modern deities, one and all. When Myleene Klass entered, she was a washed-up former pop singer. By the time she left, she was the most desirable woman in Britain. M&S put her on massive billboards, just so the grey, trudging populace below could glance heavenwards, between guttural sobs of despair, and gaze upon a bikini-clad example of all they should aspire to be. Not bad for a show that forces its contestants to eat boiled kangaroo anuses.

  Tonight’s line-up is headed by profoundly irritating self-declared ‘inventor of punk’ Malcolm McLaren, who’s presumably taking part in the hope that it will further his reputation as a shocking iconoclast, although since that reputation exists only in the minds of two or three idiots, one of whom is McLaren himself, this seems unlikely. Besides, Johnny Rotten did it a few years back and almost certainly won’t be beaten. If he hadn’t walked out, he’d have won.

  Also present are Rodney Marsh, ‘legendary PR guru’ Lynne Franks and Michelin-starred chef John Burton Race (who perpetually resembles a cross between Victor Meldrew and Droopy). There’s also former EastEnder Marc Bannerman, aka Gianni, the dopey-looking Di Marco, who somehow always looked as though he was on the verge of gurgling for birthday cake like a four-year-old. He decided to take part after pal Dean Gaffney (tortured to the brink of madness on the show last year) advised him to ‘go for it’. ‘I trust his judgment – he’s a shrewd fella,’ says Marc, exhibiting a tear-jerking degree of gormless blind faith in the wisdom of friends.

  Then there’s someone from Five. There’s always someone from Five in these things. There’s no way there’s only five of them. They just keep reappearing, like ceaseless waves of enemies emerging from a spawn point in an old-school videogame. This one’s called J, which implies that instead of giving them proper names, the central processing unit is merely assigning them a random letter the moment they materialise, presumably in order to conserve processing power for the gigantic end-of-level boss, who’s scheduled to arrive some time midway through 2014, once we’ve blasted our way through 26 of his minions.

  The most surprising inclusion is erstwhile Catatonia front-woman Cerys Matthews. The news that she was taking part was accompanied by gasps of pity and mild despair from
almost everyone I know. ‘Why?’ they all said. ‘Why? What a shame.’ It’s a bit like when Kirsty MacColl died.

  Completing the pack are former Changing Rooms decorator Anna Ryder Richardson, 200-year-old supermodel Janice Dickinson (played by Steve Tyler from Aerosmith) and ex-Hollyoaks star Gemma Atkinson (a major figure in the Nuts/Zoo Axis of Wanking). Disappointingly, there’s as yet no sign of ruddy-cheeked Apprentice psychopath Katie Hopkins, who was rumoured to be appearing, but since they always lob a few more contestants in the moment things start getting boring (i.e. somewhere around day three), there’s still plenty of time for her to show up and gnaw the eyes out of a wombat’s face or something as part of a Bushtucker Trial. If past series are anything to go by, one or more of these people can expect to be hosting their own gameshow this time next year. And whoever it is, good luck to them. Unless it’s Malcolm McLaren.

  – In the event Malcolm McLaren pulled out before the first episode had even aired, the pussy.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Cerys Matthews romances a baby, Peter Andre and Jordan cause bafflement, and total sensory deprivation is attempted.

  Pineapple Prawn Dippers [24 November 2007]

  As you read this, I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! should be just past the halfway stage. Not that you can tell, because it’s the most repetitive reality show in history. Each series looks the same. The same jungle backdrop. The same bodywarmers with numbers on the back. The celebrities’ names change year-on-year, but their personality types remain more or less consistent. There’s always a Quiet Pretty One, a Bitchy One, a Dopey Bloke and a pair of Will-They-Won’t-Theys.

  The chief innovation this year is the inclusion of not one, but three Gnarled Grumpy Ones – Rodney Marsh, Lynne Franks and John Burton Race. Out of everyone, the latter is my favourite. While others gurn or whoop or cross their eyes, Burton Race remains steadfastly deadpan. In fact at times his face literally resembles a dead pan. With the remains of Tutankhamun floating in it. What I’m saying is he looks like a recently reanimated corpse.

  When he smiles, which isn’t often, it resembles a pained grimace, as though someone’s just plunged another electrode into his balls to keep his heart ticking over. If that face appeared unexpectedly at your bedroom window, you’d scream for six months straight, until your brain couldn’t hear itself think any more and all sense of reason evaporated like escaping steam. Eventually, they’d have to lock you in an isolated cell and stuff towels down your throat to stop your relentless howling upsetting the other patients. He deserves to win, if only so next year Iceland feel obliged to include him in their sponsorship stings, where he can glide between platters of Pineapple Prawn Dippers and Chicken Lasagne Squircles looking like the ghost of frozen ready meals past.

  The rest are a pretty average bunch. Janice Dickinson (played by an undernourished waxwork of Sandra Bullock carved by inmates in a hurry) simply squawks her way round camp like Ruby Wax with a stubbed toe. Lynne Franks (who I’m assuming has been voted out by the time you read this) seems like a menopausal owl. Rodney Marsh talks to everyone as though they’re sitting in the back of his cab. Katie Hopkins has thus far disappointed millions by failing to act like the mumsy viper we came to know and fear from The Apprentice, and instead adopted a sort of cheerfully-game jolly-hockey-sticks persona, which isn’t half as much fun.

  Christopher Biggins, the ultimate jolly old uncle, doesn’t appear to be capable of experiencing negative emotions, and would probably guffaw at a bus crash. Anna Ryder-Richardson has said and done nothing, and Gemma Atkinson has somehow managed to do even less, as though she’s so painfully aware she’s been chosen to participate simply on account of her tits and bum, there’s no point even trying to display even the most rudimentary semblance of a persona.

  The most depressing spectacle is the sight of Marc Bannerman repeatedly dribbling over Cerys from Catatonia, who seems to be playing along out of confusion. This is disappointing because Cerys is quite sweet, while Bannerman looks and sounds monumentally gormless. It’s like watching a well-intentioned student nurse letting a brain-damaged adult baby get too close for comfort. Lord knows what Bannerman’s ‘oh-face’ looks like, although I fear we’re about to find out. My guess is that at the point of climax he merely looks confused, gawping at the hot yop spurting from the tip of his funpole in cowed amazement, like a dog trying to follow a card trick.

  If the contestants feel familiar, the Bushtucker Trials feel like outright repeats. There’s only so many testicle-chewings you can watch before all sense of novelty vanishes. Time for a revamp. Instead of humiliating the stars by showering them with fish gunk and maggots, they should simply command them to strip naked and perform increasingly grotesque sexual acts. Preferably on themselves. It might sound extreme, but we’re currently subjected to live cockroach-eating, and the thrill is starting to pall. So come on, ITV. It’s Bannerman’s ‘oh-face’ or bust.

  Specialist, arcane idiocy [1 December 2007]

  Hooray for us humans. We’ve made the modern world so frightening and twisted, merely contemplating it leaves you profoundly depressed. Global warming, terrorism, bird flu, peak oil, gun crime, David Cameron. Horrifying developments all. And it’s too much to take.

  But rather than standing up and fixing things, we’ve created something to take our minds off it: a celebrity culture complex that requires your full concentration just to keep up. Unless you put the time in, sorting your Jodie Marshes from your Alicia Douvalls, staying on top of the Ziggy/Chanelle split, and memorising the names of everyone from Girls Aloud, the whole thing slips from your grasp, and before you know it, you don’t know who or what anyone on TV is talking about.

  Katie & Peter Unleashed is a specialist programme for hardcore nerds. Presumably designed with populism in mind, it’s actually only of interest or use to the 0.2% of the population who could pass a trash culture exam with honours. A documentary about German tractors would cost less and have equal demographic appeal, but shhh: don’t tell anyone in telly. They’ll have a breakdown.

  It’s hosted by Peter Andre and Jordan. The pair met a few years ago on I’m a Celebrity, and subsequently married. This is entry-level knowledge which the programme assumes you’re equipped with in advance. If you’re not, it might as well be broadcast in Gaelic.

  Just to complicate matters further, it’s part chatshow, and part behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of a chat-show, which means your brain’s constantly struggling to work out which element is the most boring. The behind-the-scenes bits generally consist of Peter and Jordan moaning and bickering about the content of the show while various members of the production team look on, trying not to openly snigger while mentally congratulating themselves for being part of such a brilliant human endeavour.

  The star couple don’t seem especially happy. Jordan, for instance, spends most of her time putting Peter down in a flat monotone voice. There’s something supernaturally loud and inhuman about her intonation. She sounds like a cardboard box that’s learned to bark, even while whispering. Peter regularly gets dragged into the whirlpool of joyless sniping, but otherwise remains scarily upbeat, like a barman cheerfully ignoring a death in the corner of his pub.

  Just as you’ve got the hang of the behind-the-scenes stuff (‘ah, I see: we’re supposed to laugh at how stupid and banal they are – ho ho ho’), the chatshow proper kicks in, and it’s difficult to know how to react. Is it supposed to be awful, or is the awfulness entirely incidental? What’s my irony level here? Throw me a fact sheet, you fuckers.

  Last week, their guests were Jermaine Jackson (from Celebrity Big Brother), Jacqueline Gold (from Fortune), and Vanessa Feltz and her partner Thingybobs (from Celebrity Wife Swap). Since they were all drawn from other reality programmes, most of the discussion revolved around things they’d said and done on their respective shows, which left the whole thing feeling like a conversation between people who’d been trapped together at the same cocktail party for the past 58 years. Disappoi
ntingly, they failed to hatch an escape plan.

  Then there’s a silly ‘format point’, such as a ‘topical’ staged mud-fight between two vague celeb lookalikes. Last week, it was Prince Harry and Chelsy, because they’ve just split up, see? Again, anyone who doesn’t read Heat magazine like a divine screed sent from God would come away baffled.

  Then there’s more behind-the-scenes stuff, and more chatty bits, and more format points, and it goes on and on and on until it’s over. By the time the credits roll, you’ve ignored the outside world for an hour, yet experienced nothing. You haven’t even been entertained. Just vaguely distracted, like a cow gazing idly at a washing machine. Hooray for us humans. Hooray for what we do.

  To Do List [29 December 2007]

  It’s the time of year when, looking back over 12 months of disappointment and failure, people make new year’s resolutions in a desperate attempt at self-improvement. Stop drinking, stop smoking, stop shovelling butter down your gullet till your gut presses against your belt like a balloon full of mud … you name it, we’ll swear to forgo it. And we’ll succeed until January 3, then flip the autopilot back on and continue to make pigs of ourselves. Not that that’s going to stop me drawing up a list of resolutions for our dear friend television, however …

  1. No more talent shows: 2007 largely consisted of one big talent show broken up by depressing news bulletins and the occasional shot of Fearne Cotton. Dancing, singing, circus tricks, novelty acts … it’s hard to think of a single endeavour that wasn’t tested by the hoary combo of a live performance and a row of pantomime judges. What next? Strictly Come Woodwork? Belching on Ice? Britain’s Got Dentists? We could do with a break, and judging by the overall quality of this year’s X Factor contestants, we’re wringing the nation dry as it is. Let’s have a six-month moratorium, minimum.