TANYA HEADON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (OF POST PUB MUSIC TELEVISION)
From the off let’s get one thing straight. Post pub means but one thing to me. A dystopian future when all these lovely gin palaces have been destroyed and all the beautiful juniper nectar that is gin has run dry. In this post-apocalyptic future everyone will be wretched, miserable individuals with no joy in their lives. So in this respect at least, much like the poor, ravaged individuals that make up the audience of Born Sloppy.
Now don’t get me wrong – I like Sara Cox. After all she talks a fifty miles to the gallon and never plays songs all the way through on her breakfast show. Indeed if it wasn’t for the fact that she says things about liking them on the show I could quite imagine she was a kindred spirit – trying to destroy music by only playing snippets between her oh so important stories about her dog. Colin Murray I have a lot less time for, being a man who proved it was possible to be more annoying than Steve Lamacq (now selling spoons in Brick Lane market I note).
Born Sloppy is just the latest in a long line of programmes searching for the holy grail of post pub music television. It is a successor to the horribly self indulgent TFI Friday, the just plain dull White Room, the garishly piss-poor The Word, all somewhere along the line trying to be the Tube. People over-estimate the success of The Tube, which was fundamentally a nymphomaniac and a sweary pianist presenting the most godawful music in the world – Mid-Eighties indie. When the high point of a programme is someone saying fuck then you know it was shit. And Born Sloppy aspires to this height?
Question: When did the song Born Slippy come out?
Answer: 1996.
Question: So how relevant or funny is it to base a TV programme on a pun on this record.
Answer: Sheepish lacksadaisical shrug as if to say this is post pub television – being relevant or funny isn’t the point.
Being funny certainly isn’t the point. Rehashing the format of celeb interview, crap band, celeb interview, crap band, stunt, competition, crap band in a ramshacle way is not the future of television. Its not even a past we are particularly proud of. Instead why can’t Channel Four produce my programme I pitched to them a couple of years ago. A twenty part incisive documentary about the impact of bouze on the world called Walking WIth Alcohol. With state of the art computer graphics.
In the end Born Sloppy obviously works in my favour. Presenting bad music badly may win people over to my cause. But do they have no respect for themselves. Just because it was born sloppy, doesn’t mean it has to grow up sloppy (though DIE SLOPPY is a rallying cry for all of us to follow). Its King Arthur I feel sorry for. Having travelled all those years in heathen lands to finally reach their goal and find that instead of the cup Jesus supped from, they found a format to keep idiots happy after they have come home from getting beered up. At least he didn’t have television.