"I’m in the mood to waste a tremendous amount of money this week. Therefore I want you to bring me the most expensive item on the menu. The Sturgeon? Ah yes, now is it over 70? Good, that’ll do nicely then. Hmm. Still not that expensive though. You don’t happen to have any of those Dodo eggs knocking about do you? Right well I’ll have a Dodo egg omelette as well please.
I think my current attitude towards the folding green stuff has been greatly influenced by the BBC’s rather devil-may-care approach to what it does with the license fee. It emerged this week that having spent £7 million to acquire the broadcasting rights to the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks mini series ‘Band of Brothers’ the corporation has now decided to show it on BBC 2 where it was previously supposed to be their big new drama signing for the more populist BBC 1. Apparently the controller of BBC 1, Lorraine Hegessey has deemed the series to be "not mainstream enough". Of course before Lorraine got her power suit and became a network executive she used to be a producer. What is the most impressive entry on her CV? Er,‘Animal Hospital with Rolf Harris’ actually. She’s obviously obsessed with removing quality drama from our screens and replacing it with wall-to-wall brain melting rubbish. I mean have you seen ‘Macready and Daughter’?! I’d rather have my colon irrigated with bleach then sit through that again. I despair.
Talking of ‘Band of Brothers,’ I notice that the end credits thank the Ministry of Defence and the Government for their help during the making of the series. It seems that Tony Blair made sure that all the steps were pulled out to aid the production. I also couldn’t help noticing that a certain young Euan Blair got a work placement on the series. Hmmm. Wasn’t he always accusing the Conservatives of cronyism?
The newspapers have been going to town over the remake of Planet of the Apes. Frankly they shouldn’t have bothered as by all accounts the film just isn’t that good. But nothing gets a headline writer going more then a good pun and good lord did they get going. "Ape-tastic", "Burton’s gone bananas" were just two of the more restrained examples. It’s no wonder that the suicide rate of headline writers is amongst the highest in the media industry, I’d want to kill myself if I was responsible for some of those.
Did you hear about the film fan who got chased by the police whilst he cycled down the wrong side of a motorway? It seems he was out trying to find some of the locations used in ‘Where Eagles Dare’. I just pray to God that nobody ever shows him ‘The Italian Job’ or he’ll be in real trouble."
