CBB5*: PUBLIC IMAGE LTD:
i. treble turner prizes all round
ii. i spose to be on top of the FACTS i shd actually read everything written by and abt GG’s involvement and exit: from a semi-distance (ie i only watched the tv bits) i deduce that (cash aside) she entered to defeat BB at his own game; realised it wz a tougher nut to crack (for reasons she shd have known if she’d watched it properly previously); started a revolt but cracked herself (dr vick – not a fan or a watcher – pointed out that when GG said “squalid” she didn’t mean “morally squalid” she meant actually not hygenically clean = very extremely demoralising to the super-fastidious); left, and took the game to worlds she better understands and has more control of in (ie WRITING for the PAPERS): i do admire GG’s revolt, and her admission of weakness and error, and (as ever) her refusal to firewall the personal off from the political (plus also these were all “good TV”), but flight into territories she knows better is retreat-by-any-other-name, and victories she may seem to win there will not count as defeats for BB *unless* she also takes on the ACTUAL REAL BIG BROTHERS to tirelessly and capriciously operate – much less “visibly”, and rarely publicly challenged – in the grown-up media. (This will continue to apply if she takes it even further onto her own ground viz ACADEMIA.)
iii. I reread Ben Thompson’s book on 90s TV comedy, Sunshine on Putty, last week also: of course it’s perceptive all round, but particuarly good on the ambiguities and potential of CBB (= thx BT for givin my book a nice review at xmas) (=old pals network alert) (some highlights from email updates re CBB5: “I completely agree with you about Mr M’s punkdom (…) it’s very much of the Sid Vicious variety isn’t it, in the way that his self-esteem seems to be so intimately bound up with his capacity to make people loathe him. When he’d prompted someone to say something really vile back there was always a look of such intense delight on his face” and “I did think Jackie’s assault on the ever more morally reprehensible Davina (who the tv guy in the saturday telegraph in a rare moment of acuity called ‘tyranny’s figleaf’) when the latter was trying to present BB’s putting La Stallone into the house as a benevolent act (“You didn’t want to bring me and Brigitte back together, you wanted us to rip each other’s heads off, and because that didn’t happen now you’re looking for another story”) was one of the most astute pieces of criticism to which the endemolians (copyright G Greer) have ever been subject.”)
iii. “the bez” (ie the concept not the person) turns out to be the bez!! kenzie = the xander (which by BB iron law = whoever comes second): his anguished howl, dressed as an egg in the diary room, that he will never be able to perform with Screwface again, is a kind of fast-forward reverse panto effect: whereas the cliche dynamic = “difficult art” (= i guess grime in this case) is in the end “recuperated” into light enterainment, here one of its young stars is given anguished presentiment of same and all the time in his life to respond
iv.
Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello.
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.
You never listen to a word that I said
You only seen me
For the clothes that I wear
Or did the interest go so much deeper?
It must have been
The colour of my hair
What you wanted was never made clear
Behind the image was ignorance and fear
You hide behind his public machine
Still follow the same old scheme
Two sides to every story
Somebody had to stop me
I’m not the same as when I began
I will not be treated as property
Public Image you got what you wanted
The Public Image belongs to me
It’s my entrance
My own creation
My grand finale
My goodbye
Goodbye
*strange growling noise*
*(it may not be the fifth, i lost count)