Funny isn't it - you wait ages to see fellow Staffordshire University alumni on TV, and then two appear in one week.

As I said ealier this week, I barely watch TV anymore at all - the only time is when I sit down to eat my tea (haddock fishcakes last night, yum) and flick between BBC2 and Channel4 looking for a property programme to watch. I can't be doing with watching serials or series - I hate the idea of having an anonymous scheduler organise your life - I'm pretty good at doing a crap job of that myself without getting someone else involved.

So, last night, tucking into my haddock fishcakes I switch on Relocation, Relocation. Instant scrabble of neurons trying to work out where I knew the face from - and realised it was an old mate of mine from Uni, Emma O'Neill.

Seems Emma has done alright for herself, making a packet from her first home with her boyfriend, and now has enough to buy a country home complete with field and stables, and a city pad.

Must be nice for your plans and dreams to work out so well.

So what's next? I'm predicting that I'm going to go for the hat-trick and someone I know will be one of the housemates in this year's Big Brother.

posted at 10:04 AM •

Dispatches, Channel4, Monday night - the topic: Inside New Labour.

Call me naive, but I'm surprised that there hasn't been more of an outrage about what was revealed in the undercover investigation into New Labour's media strategy. The documentary showed every one of New Labour's (and yes, I know you could replace 'New Labour' with any other political party) dirty, disengenuous, smug tactics in ramming their message home to the electorate while at the same time rubbishing the opposition.

Letter writing campaigns by Labour staffers posing as ordinary members of the public; supposedly 'spontaneous' demos attacking opposition policy and members - organised from within Labour Press HQ; question-and-answer sessions that had been stage-managed down to the very last detail - everything was filmed and exposed.

Yeah, of course I'm sure that it's not just New Labour that's doing the dirty tricks, and there's an argument that the reason no-one seems to give a damn is because they've seen and heard it all before, and they gave up caring a long time ago.

But this was an election that supposedly hinged around a certain person's honesty, and behind the scenes, everything is being done to manipulate the very people he claimed to have 'got back in touch with'.

The main reason I got so pissed off by the dirty tricks shown in Monday's programme was that the first person I saw on the secretly filmed footage was a lad I went to university with, now head of Labour's London regional press office it seems.

He was such a nice lad at university, and there he was gleefully encouraging the undercover reporter girl to con the electorate. It reaffirmed a feeling I already had that most people involved in politics are smug, manipulative twats that see themselves as above the rank and file of the general public.

And they wonder why people are disillusioned with politics.

Here's a tip: if your policies and ideas for governance were half as good as you claim them to be, you shouldn't have to lie to win.

posted at 2:48 PM •

I've not been watching much tv lately. The only thing I tend to catch (apart from Channel 4 idents of course) are property programmes - which I really shouldn't watch, as I end up hankering for a 2 bedroom seafront property in Margate, or wanting to become a property developer.

Move over Natasha, Property Ladders' Sarah Beeny is my new homo-idol.

I love Property Ladder, but what I can't understand about the programme is how the first time property developers involved constantly argue and disagree with her. The woman started her own property development company at the age of 24, she's giving free advice to the clueless nutjobs, and what do they do? They ignore her, and crack on with their plans to convert the entire upper floor into an indoor gymkhana, complete with under-floor heating and wireless-enabled stables - because it's that unique feature that first-time buyers are looking for.

Get a clue, you egomaniacal freaks - listen to the woman with the huge boobs, she knows what she's talking about.

Of course, they're probably vetted by the producers to ignore her so they get good tv. When their plans go tits-up (no pun intended, sorry Sarah) and they go massively over-budget with their idiotic plans - one guy actually converted the living room in his property into a drive-through garage and barbecue nook - Sarah's always on had to offer them a sage "I told you so".

Anyway, all of this is a massive digression from the fact that last night I did watch telly, on account of my PC falling over and crashing again (must... resist... urge... to... whinge...) - and I happened to watch Dispatches on Channel 4 - and more of that later.

posted at 10:11 AM •

Regrets - I've had a few...

I love those Channel 4 ident spots - you know the ones - they gather together a load of B-list US and A-list British TV 'personalities' and actors (and Judy Finnegan) and film their responses to 'revealing' questions into their personal foibles, likes and dislikes. Veh tasteful shots. Arty camera angles. Nice lighting. That sort of thing.

The spots only show the celebrities' answers, and leave it to the viewer to determine the question. The first few answers are always 'amusingly' obscure until you work out what the question was in the first place. By the time you work it out, they've usually got onto the cast of some US TV show or Peter Sissons. You can always rely on the angry one from Scrubs to give an amusingly off-the-wall but impeccably rehearsed answer, and most of the British celebs to look embarrassed and disarmed.

And Judy Finnegan to twitch a bit, wobble her gizzard and painfully grimace in the direction of Richard, probably wondering for the zillionth time why she married him in the first place. You could probably make an entire documentary out of the poor woman's responses in last night's clip, "what would you change if you could do it all again?"

The ident clips work on a few levels - once you work out what question the celebs are answering, admire the tasteful shots and see who they've managed to shove in front of a camera to embarass this time (Oo look, it's Kim and Aggie - the thinking slob's Trinny and Suzanna) - you then start to think about the implied question. Well, you do if you're me.

What would you change if you could do it all again?

Now, I'm well aware that, well, I'm a bit of a whiny bitch. (At least, I've been aware of this since my scottish colleague pointed it out to me a month or so ago). Yes, I whinge about stuff - I'm a world-class moaner. Coupled with that, I'm also painfully introspective at times, and not in a good way.

Lately, since finally getting the mortgage sorted out I've ended up in a downward spiral of navel-gazing and wallowing in self-pity. That's one of the reasons why I stopped blogging.

But, despite all my self-indulgent wallowing, I realised one thing last night. If I could go back and do it all again, I wouldn't change a thing. Although I've been pretty preoccupied with feeling sorry for myself, the key to getting out of it is that realising what happens, happens. Que sera sera. Je ne regret rien. And so on.

Just don't expect me to stop whining - just maybe not so much.

posted at 10:46 AM •

Just popping my head out of blog hibernation to do a quick write up of Star Wars Episode 3.

I'll try not to give any spoilers away, and I won't have to try too hard - there really isn't anything to reveal in this bland "join-the-dots and appease the barking seal fanboys" abortion of a film.

If you've taken the time to read the few pre-reviews, you'll find they all seem to say the same thing - flawed, but great. Rubbish - Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith is atrocious - saying it's flawed is generous in the extreme.

Let's start with the acting. Pity the poor cast who have found themselves attached to the truly pointless project that has been the Star Wars prequels. They took a chance on being part of cinematic history and ended up in this crap. Every frame of this film you feel like each of the 'real-live' actors is begging for an early screen-death.

Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor and Samuel L Jackson in particular look as though they are hating every minute of their jobs. Even Ian McDiarmid, who seemed to enjoy the first two films here is reduced to stock cackling and half-arsed grinning through some of the most trite dialogue in the galaxy.

Oh, the dialogue. It's the one thing the films have always suffered with, but in Episode 3 the dialogue sinks to new depths of inanity and nonsense. Portman and Christensen visibly cringe in each of their scenes together - stilted, vague conversations about good and bad, trying in vain to find something to hold the plot together.

Mercifully there isn't much screentime for this mismatched pair, and most of the time Portman appears on screen she is bawling her eyes out - the only time her character becomes convincing. Yes Natalie, we understand your pain.

And if you thought Yoda's dialogue used to be bad, just wait till you hear the lunacy they have coming out of the little green thing's cgi-foam mouth this time out.

The plot is just utter crap.

All Lucas had to do was get us from point A to point B believably - and he fails in the most grand style possible. No believable attempt is made to explain why Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader - it's all hidden behind a smokescreen of cgi and nonsense about trying to stop Padme from dying. Instead, Lucas fills the every second of the film with trivial unrelated action and sub-plots, introducing the amazingly crap wheezing 'villain' General Grevious for precisely no reason than to have a "wow-cool" lightsaber battle where he wields four of the things at once. Wow, cool.

There is no magic in this film - none at all - it's just one long cgi shot with no depth or passion. I actually enjoyed Episodes 1 and 2, with some reservations - but everything for me hinged on the final installment, and although the prevalent opinion so far seems to be that Lucas has managed to redeem himself, I think he has finally managed to utterly divorce the prequels from the originals.

Enjoy the film when it comes out - I seem to be in the minority at the moment, and the people I saw the film with gave it a big thumbs up. I just felt I owed it to the young lad that I used to be who grew up enthralled by the original films to join the voices rubbishing this piece of crap.

posted at 1:48 PM •