The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘television’ Category

Where’d the last year go?

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was pre­view­ing the sev­enth series of Big Brother, and now here I am writ­ing about BB 8, which launches on Chan­nel 4 this evening.

Can you feel the excitement?

Nei­ther can I.

Usu­ally, there is more of a build-up to the start of a BB series, but it seems to me that there’s far less of a buzz. It seems that the whole thing is dis­tinctly low key.

That’s prob­a­bly inten­tional fol­low­ing the inter­na­tional con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Celebrity BB, a few months ago. Remem­ber? Shilpa Shetty vs Jade Goody? How could you forget!

The pro­duc­ers of BB, Ende­mol, don’t want any trou­ble, yet they know that the pro­gramme is really only suc­cess­ful when there is con­flict. Chan­nel 4, on the other hand, view BB as the cash cow that it is; it’s respon­si­ble for gen­er­at­ing the lion’s share of C4’s annual income, so they want to be as cau­tious as possible.

C4’s desire to avoid any prob­lems have led to var­i­ous rumours: about a crack police squad mon­i­tor­ing the live feed, with pow­ers to arrest house­mates or shut the entire thing down; news­pa­per reports that C4 has vetoed sev­eral poten­tial house­mates for being a bit too “wacky”, instead insist­ing on safer choices. And most of all, they have stated that the theme of this year’s series is “fun and love”.

Oh dear. I really hope most of that is bull­shit. Per­son­ally, I’d rather see the police out on the streets, arrest­ing vio­lent crim­i­nals, not watch­ing TV for three months!

The house design is meant to reflect this sense of fun. They’ve put the cooker in the bed­room! Crazy, man! They might even deny them a toaster and ket­tle! Good, golly, gosh, what will they do?

Am I sound­ing a bit jaded this time around? Damn straight, I am. BB is sup­posed get big­ger, meaner, wilder, and nas­tier, every year and it feels like we’ve taken sev­eral giant steps backwards.

I don’t want a kinder, gen­tler, Big Brother. That would suck in so many ways and on so many lev­els. I want twists, I want con­flict, and I want peo­ple to hate each other! That’s not too much to ask for, is it?

There’s one wild­card in all of this, that will com­pen­sate for what­ever steps the pow­ers that be take, to keep things level and that’s the 12 new house­mates. Even with all the screen­ing and psy­chi­atric test­ing, they are still just peo­ple and that makes them unpre­dictable. It’s down to them to do things that keep us all hooked.

And we will be hooked, we always are; the pro­gramme is addic­tive. I don’t know about you, but I have an addic­tive per­son­al­ity and just can’t help myself. Once I start watch­ing, I know I’ll stay with it till the bit­ter end. You will too.

As I’ve said count­less times, I am a sucker for the for­mat. What does that say about me? What does it say about every­one who watches?

It says that deep down, we’re all voyeurs and given the chance, we’d sneak a peak at anything.

Do your ears perk up when you hear some­one whis­per­ing? When you see a mar­ried cou­ple bick­er­ing in a shop, do you try to secretly glance their way, to see what you can pick up? And when your neigh­bours argue, do you turn down the TV, to try to hear what they are saying?

Big Brother is almost the same, though you need not hide your shame when you stare at it, full-on, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Big Brother appeals to the secret Peep­ing Tom in all of us.

Con­tro­versy will always find a way, where BB is con­cerned. I’m sure no mat­ter what they do to keep things calm, it will still make the front pages of the news­pa­pers before the sum­mer is out. “Big Brother in SOMETHING shock” the head­lines will scream.

At the very end of the series, so says another rumour, they are going to blow the house up, as they are mov­ing to a new loca­tion next year. That would imply that the explo­sives would need to be set before the finale, in and around the remain­ing house­mates. Is that safe? Does it mat­ter? At least it insures one way or another, that we will see some sparks fly inside that house!

So there you go, that’s my lit­tle look ahead to the next three months of BB. Expect spo­radic hippy cov­er­age of Big Brother 8, right here, when­ever I feel like it.

Hey ho my friends, fans and fel­low trav­ellers. I want to ask you a question.

My last cou­ple of posts, while immensely enter­tain­ing, weren’t exactly focused on any­thing in par­tic­u­lar. I would like to change that…and I would like your help!

What would you like to see me write about?

Is there some topic or sub­ject that inter­ests you that you would like to see me tackle with my patented “hippyspin”?

I’m seri­ous; this week, I’m tak­ing requests!

Go on, send me an email – I’m really easy to reach, my address is:

thehippy@northlondonhippy.com

I can’t promise that I will def­i­nitely write about what you sug­gest, but I will con­sider all sub­mis­sions. And if I use your sug­ges­tion, I’ll big you up, old school stylie like, here on my hap­pen­ing web­site thingy. You will be the envy of all your friends and the sub­ject of deep sex­ual desire from com­plete strangers if I do!

Oh, and while I’m seek­ing your thoughts and opin­ions, here’s some­thing else? Do you want me to do the whole Big Brother thing again this year?

I’m torn on that one myself and what made me think of it is I dis­cov­ered that the next series, the eighth, begins at the end of this month.

I know I’ll end up watch­ing it, I’m a com­plete sucker for the format…but what I want to know is, would you like me to write about it regularly.

I have to say that my vis­i­tor num­bers do go up dur­ing BB sea­son, so maybe I know the answer this ques­tion already, but I still would like to hear what some of you out there in inter­net­land have to say.

So, go on, get in touch. I’d love to hear from as many of you as pos­si­ble. My inbox is ready and recep­tive, so what are you wait­ing for!

My blog is not a spot you would nor­mally visit when look­ing for major net­work tele­vi­sion spoil­ers, so if you’re wor­ried I’m about to reveal some­thing HUGE about one of my favourite pro­grammes and pos­si­bly yours, please look away NOW!

Still here? Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The TV show in ques­tion is ABC’s “Lost”, which airs here in the UK on SKY One, or on your PC cour­tesy of BitTorrent!

The route of this bit of spoilage is rather cir­cuitous, but it comes from a myth­i­cal friend of a friend of a friend and it ties in with a cast­ing notice I read on a proper spoiler site.

Yes, I read spoil­ers. For me, it’s part of the fun!

Any­way, the char­ac­ters I’m talk­ing about are in an upcom­ing episode; a hippy cou­ple, and their char­ac­ter names have been pur­pose­fully left off the cast­ing notice.

I can con­firm, accord­ing to my source, that the hippy cou­ple, are the Deg­roots. They were part of the group that founded the Dharma Ini­tia­tive, accord­ing to Lost-lore.

But that’s not my big, juicy, bit of spoilage. Oh no, this is even big­ger than that!

No, what I found out is the iden­tity of their off­spring. It’s a reg­u­lar char­ac­ter and I’ll give you a lit­tle hint. This char­ac­ter has men­tioned on sev­eral occa­sions that HE was BORN on the island.

That’s right Lost-fans, Ben is none other than the son of the Degroots!

Expect this shocker to drop dur­ing the sea­son finale!

If this turns out to be wrong, please don’t shoot the mes­sen­ger. I think the orig­i­nal source is reli­able and it fits in with other known info.

Apolo­gies to non-Lost fans as well, but this is a big deal. Nor­mal hippy ser­vice will resume in my next post.

It seems I’m not the only one writ­ing about Celebrity Big Brother.

Since my last entry, it appears that the entire world, from here to Mum­bai and back again, is talk­ing about one thing: Celebrity Big Brother!

Who would have thought that a hum­ble lit­tle tele­vi­sion show could cause such inter­na­tional chaos?

Not me, that’s for sure, but in the last day even Tony Blair and Gor­don Brown have weighed in on the sub­ject. Yes, Big Brother is the big story!

All of this con­tro­versy has turned what I would describe as an oth­er­wise fairly sub-standard series into his­tory mak­ing tele­vi­sion. It is now offi­cially the most com­plained about pro­gramme ever!

It’s also improved the view­ing fig­ures with a mil­lion or more peo­ple tun­ing into the high­lights show on Chan­nel 4 over the last cou­ple of nights.

As always, Ende­mol win, but they’re not the only ones.

As hor­ri­bly as Shilpa Shetty is being treated, when she emerges from the house, she will be more pop­u­lar and more well known then ever before. As an entertainment-business com­mod­ity, she will be demand here in the UK as well as in India.

And if she wasn’t a Bol­ly­wood super­star before, she cer­tainly is now! Accord­ing to the media, her fel­low coun­try­men and women are very upset at how she is being treated by her CBB co-stars. There have been protests, gov­ern­ment state­ments; even her mother did the rounds on TV here in the UK to defend Shilpa.

But Shilpa requires no defence; for she has done noth­ing wrong, except to agree to come to the UK and appear on CBB. If she asked me, I would have told her to give it a miss.

Shipa’s sup­port is not just com­ing from India, as there are many peo­ple in the UK from var­ied back­grounds, who are behind her as well. We’re not all racist louts!

The biggest loser of this series has got to be Jade Goody and it will take a lot of work and skil­ful PR for her to regain her sta­tus in the indus­try. She’ll play the race card her­self and remind us that she is one-quarter black, but that’s no excuse. There is no excuse.

I don’t actu­ally believe racism is at the heart of all of this, though it cer­tainly has played a part. At the root of the col­lec­tive hatred of Shipa by the evil three in the house is even more basic. She’s different.

If Shilpa were a posh, rich, white chick from Chelsea, they would all still hate her; they would just choose dif­fer­ent ways of insult­ing her. If any­thing, dif­fer­ences in class and deco­rum are the more obvi­ous rea­sons; the fact that Shilpa is from India, just gives them an aspect of her being to ver­bally attack.

Jade, Jo and Danielle are not very bright; they do not know much about the wider world around them and are woe­fully igno­rant of other cul­tures. If Shilpa were some class­less, rude, skank, they would be friends with her, regard­less of her skin colour.

The rumour is that Shilpa will be up against Jade for evic­tion on Fri­day night. I sin­cerely hope this is true, as I think Jade deserves the most shock­ingly bad recep­tion ever as she comes out of the house and Shilpa deserves to stay. Dialling fin­gers to the ready, my beloved hippyfans!

Actu­ally, Shilpa deserves to win! Let’s make it happen!

I’m find­ing the cur­rent series of Celebrity Big Brother quite painful to watch.

That’s why my eyes ache!

It’s also why there’s been such a long gap between my pre­vi­ous entry and this one; but not for lack of try­ing. I’ve started my follow-up on CBB three times already, which makes this ver­sion the fourth.

I just haven’t felt inspired.

This series has a lot of prob­lems and I am quite sur­prised that I’m say­ing this. Usu­ally, Ende­mol have their act together, but this time around, that is not the case.

From their choice of par­tic­i­pants, to the pace of the pro­gramme„ Ende­mol have mis­cal­cu­lated badly and this is the first time I’ve felt like it’s a com­plete mess.

Remem­ber, I’m a big fan of BB and nor­mally I dig it; you can’t imag­ine my disappointment!

I won’t dis­pute that last year’s CBB series was a hard act to fol­low and one that I didn’t expect them to eas­ily top. They could have at least tried.

Per­haps all the good celebri­ties have worked out just how tough it is being in the BB house and they had trou­ble find­ing will­ing par­tic­i­pants. Maybe, no amount of dosh is enough to secure the ones they really wanted, so instead they had to set­tle for this sad group of B-listers.

I wanted to like them all, I hoped they would be enter­tain­ing, but all of my BB hopes and dreams were very quickly dashed.

First, Donny Douchebag walked. On launch night, his drunken antics showed some promise and I expected more out­ra­geous­ness to fol­low. No such luck, as he stayed sober and quiet right up until he legged it over the wall.

The krazy Ken Rus­sell skedaddled.

There’s a word you don’t see every­day; “skedaddled”.

Ken is one of the coolest film­mak­ers in this coun­try and if you don’t believe, pick up a copy of “Tommy”. Have a spliff, put your feet up and pre­pared to be daz­zled. And the music is from The Who, so you just can’t lose!

He came off as an old eccen­tric and at nearly eighty years old, he was the most elderly con­test ever in Britain. We didn’t get enough of him, before he calmly asked to leave, with only his slip­pers in his place. I wish he stayed longer.

And then there’s “Every­one loves Leo” Sayer. Who knew how screwed up he was? I mean besides his Mrs, who appar­ently shagged Donny Douchebag once, in Leo’s bed. Classy!

But I mean, Jesus wept! I would never have imag­ined that Leo was that bark­ing mad! In Leo-land, he’s as big as the Bea­t­les. In Leo-land, every­one loves him. In Leo-land, I bet his songs are still in the charts!

His depar­ture, I must say, was highly amus­ing and I did laugh out loud at his obvi­ous men­tal short­com­ings. Cruel? Yes, but I’m honest.

Here’s the thing, an amus­ing depar­ture makes good view­ing for a few min­utes, but it doesn’t make a series!

The house could have done with keep­ing all three, but they couldn’t hack it. Leo, because they wouldn’t give him some clean undies and the other two because of the dreaded Goodys!

I’ll say this right now; I like Jade. She is always funny, but the laughs do come from her igno­rance. Just ask her about Eskimos!

Jade also can be quite cruel, as demon­strated by her treat­ment of poor Shipa. Jade is the leader of a cruel cabal­ist coven of bitchy witches that includes Jo and the dim, pretty one. Ok, Danielle if I must. Together, the three of them are meaner than the mean girls in the film, “Mean Girls”.

Shilpa Shetty is a guest in this coun­try, who has not put a sin­gle foot wrong in that house. She has pos­sesses a level of poise and class that should com­mand more respect. She is a sweet, sen­si­tive woman who does not deserve the grief heaped upon her by those three “guttersnipes”.

Danielle, on the other hand, is extremely beau­ti­ful, but hasn’t got some much of a drop of either poise or class. I guess when you’re that hot look­ing, you rely on your beauty much more than your per­son­al­ity and damn it shows! Her per­son­al­ity makes her far less attrac­tive, but it’s not keep­ing her off the front pages of the tabloids almost every day.

Shilpa has more tal­ent in her lit­tle fin­ger than Danielle could ever pos­sess in ten life­times. Shilpa acts, she dances and she deserves the celebrity she has. Danielle is pretty; lots of girls are pretty, it’s just most of them don’t base their entire lives around their looks.

The next time you’re at your local high street or in a pub or night­club, look around you. I promise you’ll see women just as hot as Dani. They’re just not blow­ing foot­ballers in the twi­light years of their careers in exchange for a lit­tle noto­ri­ety. It’s not that they couldn’t eas­ily go to China White’s and pull a foot­baller, they just choose not to!

But back to the Goodys. I don’t think Ende­mol had an inkling of the ruc­tions Jade and her plus-two were going to cause in the house. They could have han­dled it much better

I think Jack­iey can be amus­ing too, but only in small doses. She took over the house the sec­ond she arrived, or rather or mouth did. She start­ing talk­ing when she walked through the front door and just didn’t stop. She’s prob­a­bly still some­where, still talking!

Jack, Jade’s toy-boy, gold-digging dun­der­head of a fiancé by con­trast is prac­ti­cally mute. He hardly every says any­thing and when he does, it only serves to show just how stu­pid he is.

And he spaffed all over Jade’s leg! That was just nasty!

As for the rest of them, Jer­maine is just plain weird, but seems decent enough. And yes, I know com­pared to some of the other mem­bers of his fam­ily, he’s actu­ally quite nor­mal, but that’s not really say­ing much.

The Face-Man, Dirk Bene­dict also seems like a decent enough guy, but there is an air of des­per­a­tion about him that you can almost smell com­ing through your television.

I think Cleo might be a proper, full-on manic-depressive, though to be fair I’m not actu­ally a clin­i­cal psy­chi­a­trist, so my opin­ion doesn’t really count.

Jo from S Club is actu­ally noth­ing like I expected from my first impres­sion of her. I’m quite dis­ap­pointed in her behav­iour and atti­tude. At least I admit when I’m wrong.

And H from Steps, or rather Ian, seems like quite a sen­si­tive guy, though he is try­ing way too hard to be everyone’s best friend. No won­der he was sob­bing in the loo!

Who do I think is going to win?

Who cares! None of them are win­ners in my book!

I’d like to see Shilpa win, just to piss off the bul­lies and to let her know that the UK isn’t chock full of racist louts. Of course we have are share, as does any coun­try, but most of us are noth­ing like that. Thank fuck!

When­ever Shilpa leaves the house, she is deserv­ing of a warm and cour­te­ous recep­tion and any­one boo­ing her should be shot on sight.

I’m issu­ing writ­ten instruc­tions to my per­sonal secu­rity staff right now. They are all ex-SAS, which means they cost a for­tune, but man oh man, they always get the job done!

Just when you thought it was safe to switch your TV set back on, along comes the 5th series of Celebrity Big Brother!

I’m the last per­son to com­plain, I’m a big fan of the for­mat, as count­less pre­vi­ous posts will confirm.

This year’s series looks like it’s going to be a fun one, with pos­si­bly the odd­est mix of par­tic­i­pants in the his­tory of the programme.

OK, we’re lack­ing the shocks pro­vided by the inclu­sion of George Gal­loway and Ger­maine Greer, but come on, Ken Russell’s pres­ence is pure genius!

I realise that is prob­a­bly lost of most view­ers of CBB. I’m not being snob­bish about this; he’s not as well known as Steven Spiel­berg, is he? He’s prob­a­bly not even as well known as Guy Ritchie! And that’s a pity, but I expect peo­ple will be redis­cov­er­ing his films all over the place now!

Ken Rus­sell is the sort of direc­tor that film crit­ics sali­vate over and media watch­ers every­where will be going into melt­down. Big Ken gives a new respectabil­ity to CBB, and adds a level of intel­lec­tual mas­tur­ba­tion never seen before on the show. Well done, Endemol.

The fact that he’s push­ing 80 and the mere act of enter­ing the house seemed to sap him of what lit­tle energy he had, should be some cause of con­cern, as I think if he died in the house, they might choose to pre­ma­turely end the run. That would suck; I want to see it go to its full 25 ago­nis­ing days!

Ken’s already flashed his cock and balls at the dumb pretty girl who was Miss Pretty UK or some­thing and now sleeps with a foot­baller. I’m not over­sim­pli­fy­ing, am I?

She’ll prob­a­bly turn les­bian after that see­ing his “meat and two veg”, but let’s just hope she does so in the house with that other pretty girl, the one from India. I’ve never heard of her, but then I don’t know any­thing about Bol­ly­wood except that there’s a lot of singing and dancing.

Ok, so they are a bunch of nobod­ies. So what? In their minds, they are extremely impor­tant and very well known. Just look at Michael Jackson’s brother, Jer­maine. He thinks every­one knows who he is and judg­ing by the reac­tions of the other celebri­ties upon meet­ing him; that might not be 100% true.

Or Leo Sayer, who had hit records when this old hippy was a teenager twist­ing the night away at a school disco. Have his songs moved up the iTunes charts yet? They will.

The theme this year does appear to be singers, with the 2 for­mer 90s pop stars, Jer­maine, Leo and that young guy with the blonde hair doing the Spinal Tap impres­sion! If that’s his audi­tion, well done and I’m sure they’ll find a slot for him around 1am at the Com­edy Store!

I know he calls him­self Donny Douchebag or some­thing, but come on! He’s a cliché of a par­ody of a CHEAP ANGRY SPINAL TAP IMPRESSION!

Did you see? He pissed in the shower before he dis­cov­ered there was a sep­a­rate toi­let. Doh! You could splice that scene seam­lessly into the “Spinal Tap”. If you like Donny, get the DVD and pre­pare to piss your pants! Or your shower!

The hot middle-aged lady from the Kenny Everett video show seems lik­able enough, if a bit mad. Noth­ing wrong with that! I bet she inspired some furtive wank­ing in her day, and prob­a­bly still does today.

Oh and for the record, I’m the same age as Cleo, so that makes me mid­dle aged too.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and ven­ture that the out­side favourite at this point is the only girl from S-Club that could actu­ally sing. The book­ies like Leo Sayer too, but I’m giv­ing her the edge. Wait till she belts out a few tunes!

And I know her name, it’s Jo O’Meara and she had some spinal prob­lems that got in the way of her pop career. She’s seems fine now and good luck too her.
I read the tabloids, so I know this stuff. I can’t help it. We all have our use­less areas of expertise.

Jo seems down to earth, at least in the lit­tle bit I’ve seen.

And what’s the deal with the A-Team guy?

How des­per­ate and/or broke is he? I think we all know the answer to that one! He comes off sharp and witty and I get the feel­ing it’s going to take a lot to get him to snap.

Is it going to be entertaining?

Isn’t it always!

I pre­dict we’ll like some of them and hate some of them and every one of us will have dif­fer­ent list for both cat­e­gories. That’s just how it goes.

Bring on the next 3 and half weeks! Let them all go men­tal! Arm them with rusty knives and fill their heads with high-quality blot­ter acid. Starve them of food so they have to resort to can­ni­bal­ism and that lit­tle blond guy from Steps gets spit-roasted, but not in the way he’s dreamt of all his life. Send three gen­er­a­tions of Jade’s fam­ily into the house next door…

You know, some things are just too hideous to imag­ine. I’m sure glad there’s no chance that’s going to hap­pen tonight!

PS
This really is your last chance to enter the “win the hippy for a week­end” con­test! Go on, you know you want me!
Click here for the orig­i­nal post with all the details!

The win­ner will be announced soon!

Greet­ings and Happy New Year to all of my beloved hip­py­fans! May this year be bet­ter than the last one!

Yes, 2006 sucked the big one, but now it’s rel­e­gated to his­tory, which is exactly where that shitty year belongs.

You don’t need me to tell you how crappy 2006 was; every other form of media has done the entire ‘year in review’ thing to death. I won’t go there.

For me, 2006 had a cou­ple of minor high­lights, but over­all it wasn’t any­thing spe­cial. Mostly, it was just another year.

It was another year full of death, destruc­tion and despair. The weather turned angry, the death toll in Iraq con­tin­ued to climb and our per­sonal lib­er­ties con­tinue to be method­i­cally stripped away. I’m sure none of that will hap­pen in 2007!

2006 ended with three famous peo­ple kick­ing the bucket. Celebrity deaths tend to come in threes any­way, which is a real night­mare for the PR peo­ple that coor­di­nate these things, but some­how they manage.

Ger­ald R. Ford, for­mer pres­i­dent and VP, not elected to either office, granter of a par­don for Richard M. Nixon (who despite his own protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, was a crook), popped his clogs at the age of 93. The papers keep call­ing him “the acci­dent pres­i­dent”, but let’s face it, he’s a foot­note to a foot­note and he’ll get his big state funeral and that will be that. His wife, Betty is more sig­nif­i­cant, with her Betty Ford Cen­tre and good work high­light­ing the prob­lems of sub­stance abuse. I thought she was dead too, but I saw her on TV the other day. Sorry, Betty.

The next death was the god­fa­ther of soul, Mr. James Brown. Brown was about as influ­en­tial as you can be in music. If you have ever heard a hip-hop or rap record made in the last 20 years, then chances are you, you’ve heard sam­ples from James Brown’s music in the back­ing tracks. Try Googling “Funky Drum­mer”, the most sam­pled drum beat in the his­tory of sam­pling comes from this track.

I was work­ing the night before Brown died and I caught a news wire that said he had been admit­ted to hos­pi­tal with pneu­mo­nia, but was expected to be released in time to per­form the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day. That was enough for me not to think he was going to die. By the time I got home, it was break­ing news that he was dead. Ooooops, I guess I shouldn’t believe every­thing I read.

Except of course on the northlon­don­hippy website!

James Brown was a one of kind, wild man and damn he liked to party! He was a true orig­i­nal and will be missed very much.

The third celebrity death is the one I find the most trou­bling and I’m not really sure why. Some­thing was decid­edly unset­tling about the exe­cu­tion of for­mer Iraqi pres­i­dent Sad­dam Hus­sein and I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way.

I’m not going to debate whether or not he deserved to be exe­cuted. He was an evil dic­ta­tor, respon­si­ble for the deaths of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil. He was a crim­i­nal and a thug.

I’m more inter­ested in how it was done, in such a piti­ful and pathetic man­ner. I’m more inter­ested in the speed in which the death sen­tence was car­ried out, as if it needed to be done as soon as possible.

Now that we’ve all seen both videos, the offi­cial exe­cu­tion film shot by the Iraqi gov­ern­ment and the camera-phone video, shot by a wit­ness, we know exactly just how half-assed the entire thing was and how it lacked in dignity.

You can argue that Sad­dam didn’t show any mercy or dig­nity to any of his vic­tims. I’d agree with that. But we’re sup­posed to be bet­ter than that. We’re sup­posed to rise above the behav­iour of our enemies.

We’re sup­posed to do a lot of things.

Sad­dam Hus­sein was an evil man, a dic­ta­tor, and a morally rep­re­hen­si­ble piece of shit that got his just rewards. Sad­dam Hus­sein was also a human being, a father, a son, a for­mer pres­i­dent and leader of a sov­er­eign coun­try, who at a min­i­mum deserved to be treated some minor level of respect and dignity.

A soci­ety can be judged how it treats it ene­mies and in this exe­cu­tion, we weren’t any bet­ter than the man we put to death. He may have deserved to die, but he didn’t deserve to be taunted and ridiculed in the last moments of his life. No one does.

Let’s look at it another way: If you feel that a pres­i­dent deserves to be put to death for being respon­si­ble for the ille­gal, unsanc­tioned killings of thou­sands of peo­ple on Iraqi soil, then Sad­dam shouldn’t be the only one swing­ing by the neck, should he?

I’m not jok­ing. Isn’t it time George W. (for war­mon­ger) Bush should be sent to The Hague and be put on trial for crimes against human­ity? He won’t face the death penalty there, which is far more mercy than he showed his sworn enemy, who tried to kill his daddy.

No, I don’t want to bring Sad­dam back; the world is bet­ter off with­out him. But then, that would be true if he remained in prison until his nat­ural death as well. Killing Sad­dam was blood lust and victor’s priv­i­lege. It righted no wrongs.

Two wrongs only make another wrong.

Will 2007 be any bet­ter? As a con­stantly dis­ap­pointed opti­mist, I can hope.

Dig it, fuckers!

The hippy’s here to let you all in on a lit­tle secret about my favourite dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion plat­form, the satel­lite sys­tem, SKY television.

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I’ve been a SKY sub­scriber for years and I’ve had a SKY+ box (a hard drive-based PVR) for over 3 years. I adore SKY+ and it’s a fan­tas­tic piece of kit that I would rec­om­mend to any­one who enjoys watch­ing TV.

SKY is part of News­Corp, which is owned by the “bil­lion­aire tyrant”, Rupert Mur­doch. He’s a media baron; he owns lots of stuff, from The Sun news­pa­per here in the UK, to Fox News in the states and a whole lot in-between.

SKY pro­vide some chan­nels of their own as well as the plat­form for other com­pa­nies to run chan­nels via their satel­lite sys­tem, so they don’t pro­duce all of the con­tent that streams into my home. I want to make that clear; any­one with enough dosh can rent a spot in the elec­tronic pro­gramme guide (EPG) on SKY and broad­cast a chan­nel, though I would expect SKY ulti­mately have the right to decline for what­ever rea­son they see fit.

If you have SKY, you may have dis­cov­ered that there are lots of adult chan­nels on the EPG, num­bered from chan­nel 900 upwards. Many of these chan­nels are sub­scrip­tion based or pay-per-view, but a grow­ing num­ber of them are broad­cast “in the clear”, with no encryp­tion or sub­scrip­tion required.

What I’m talk­ing about are a spe­cific type of adult-oriented chan­nel, I’ve dubbed “babe channels.”

“Babe chan­nels” are quite a sim­ple con­cept; so sim­ple in fact that I wish I’d come up with it myself. They started a few years ago, late at night, for a few hours on chan­nels which showed other pro­gram­ming dur­ing the day, but since then they have exploded in popularity.

Here’s the basic premise; a scant­ily clad woman (or women as you will dis­cover), writhes around on-screen, with a tele­phone in her hand. You’re invited to ring an expen­sive pre­mium rate num­ber for a chance to speak to this scant­ily clad young lady and mas­tur­bate furi­ously while watch­ing and chatting.

I’m spec­u­lat­ing about the mas­tur­ba­tion; but I think it’s a pretty damn good guess; every­thing else is as you see it on TV.

What they don’t tell you is that for your £1.50 a minute, you most likely won’t get to speak to the babe on-screen, but one of the hun­dreds of off-screen tele­phon­ists, ready to lis­ten to your sick, twisted desires.

As the pop­u­lar­ity (and prof­itabil­ity) of these chan­nels grew, so did their num­bers and soon there were many of them dot­ted around the SKY EPG. When SKY re-organised the EPG and put all the naughty chan­nels in the 900s, many of these sta­tions re-branded them­selves as full time “babe chan­nels”. There’s “Babecast” and “Babe­World”; “Babesta­tion” and a host of others.

As you might expect, com­pe­ti­tion for your £1.50 a minute has become intense and in the face of that, these chan­nels have had to adapt. By adapt, of course I mean become more explicit and after 11pm, the fun really starts!

You don’t get just one woman on-screen, but groups of them now and instead of scant­ily clad, you get top­less or fully nude. And some­times you don’t just get fully nude, but shaven too.

The women snog each other as well as sim­u­lat­ing acts of a sex­ual nature; there’s nip­ple suck­ing, crotch lick­ing and dil­dos are pop­u­lar props as well, espe­cially as sub­sti­tutes for lol­ly­pops. To illus­trate; “Babe­World” becomes “Babe­World Extreme” after 11pm; in name and action!

As you can tell, I’ve done a bit of research into the sub­ject, though I haven’t gone as far as ring any of the chan­nels. This hippy doesn’t have a research bud­get for any­thing other than drugs! Sex should be free!

These chan­nels are so lucra­tive that sev­eral of them broad­cast all day and one of them has even started broad­cast­ing 24-hours a day! Ka-fucking-ching!

The day­time ver­sions are rel­a­tively tame, with lots of flashes of cleav­age, stock­ings and knick­ers and are actu­ally quite amus­ing. One chan­nel called “Turn On TV” alter­na­tives between 2 themes, each one for a week.

This week, it’s “Call the Office”, which con­sists of 8 hours of con­tin­u­ous live cov­er­age of two women sit­ting in front of office desks. They dress like sexy sec­re­taries; short skirts, low-cut blouses, while giv­ing the cam­era coy, come-hither looks, implor­ing view­ers to ring them.

There’s actu­ally a cer­tain air of des­per­a­tion on these chan­nels dur­ing the day, as the phone calls don’t come in as fre­quently and the women occa­sion­ally beg for callers.

The other theme is slightly more fetishist, as the set is dressed like a doctor’s surgery and the two women dress as sexy nurses. This one is called the “Naughty Nurse”. Imag­i­na­tive, eh?

I’m not try­ing to come over all moral­is­tic about this, as I’ve said, I wish I thought of it. Lots of peo­ple are get­ting very rich off the back of these chan­nels and I wish I were one of them.

And I’m not hav­ing a moan about kids being able to see these chan­nels, because if you have chil­dren and you have SKY, you’ve prob­a­bly fig­ured out how to lock these chan­nels out of your EPG and pin pro­tect them. If you haven’t, then you’re prob­a­bly just a crap parent.

No, I’m writ­ing about this because I find it inter­est­ing, fas­ci­nat­ing really.

The fur­ther we all travel into the future, the more iso­lat­ing tech­nol­ogy becomes.

It used to be that if you wanted to chat to a pretty girl in her under­wear, you had to go to a bar or club, chat her up, con­vince her to come back to your place, and then sweet talk her into shed­ding her cloth­ing. Today, all you need is a tele­phone, a tele­vi­sion and £1.50 a minute.

How lonely do you have to be to ring one of these chan­nels just to have some con­tact, how­ever dis­tant with the women on screen or one of her off-screen helpers?

How des­per­ate for sex­ual release do you need to become before you’re reach­ing for the phone and dialling that pre­mium rate num­ber, one handed?

I don’t hon­estly know, as it’s one gut­ter I’ve never vis­ited. But as an observer of the human con­di­tion, it’s a ques­tion I’m posing.

What I can tell you is there must be loads of peo­ple (men and women) who must need these chan­nels, or they wouldn’t have grown into such a big busi­ness, so fast.

What does it say about us?

What does it say about our soci­ety that these “babe chan­nels” are flourishing?

Sim­ple, that our lives are mean­ing­less and empty.

You have a nice day, now!

Tele­vi­sion favourite, Gra­ham Nor­ton became con­tro­ver­sial a few days ago, as his hon­est answers to some sim­ple ques­tions about drugs have caused a bit of a firestorm.

Mr. Nor­ton, a fix­ture on British tele­vi­sion and with a cult fol­low­ing in the states, basi­cally said he loved drugs, has done loads and has had pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences with them.

Oh the shock, oh the horror!

You can read about it all in far more detail than I can be both­ered to pro­vide by click­ing RIGHT HERE.

Norton’s employ­ers, the BBC, have so far backed the come­dian over his views on drugs, check out THIS ONE. Well done to the BBC for main­tain­ing a sen­si­ble, smart perspective.

And an even big­ger well-done to Gra­ham Nor­ton for stat­ing the bleed­ing obvi­ous! Of course drugs are enjoy­able, if they weren’t, then peo­ple wouldn’t take them!

Here’s an open secret; celebri­ties love drugs and not just a cer­tain inter­net celebrity hippy from north Lon­don; proper ones too. Espe­cially proper ones, as they’ve got far more spare time and a much larger dis­pos­able income than me.

But celebri­ties don’t want you, the pub­lic, to know this as they think you will love them less. Per­son­ally, if more celebri­ties came out of the drug closet and admit­ted to the things they really enjoy, then maybe, just maybe, we might start to take a more sen­si­ble approach to all mind alter­ing sub­stances! And I’d love them more for it! That’s gotta count for something!

So from today, I call on all celebri­ties who enjoy a toke, a puff, a line, a pill, what­ever, to step out into the light and pro­claim your bad habits to the world! Use your influ­ence, your celebrity in a pos­i­tive way.

Fur­ther to that, I’m announc­ing the very first northlon­don­hippy char­ity; the “I’m a respon­si­ble cit­i­zen and I enjoy ille­gal drugs” move­ment! And I would like to pub­licly invite Mr. Gra­ham Nor­ton to by our celebrity spokesperson!

Mr. Nor­ton, I’m sure like most of us, you Google your name end­lessly and at some point, you will stum­ble upon my blog and read this. Please accept my invi­ta­tion and join my new char­ity. Don’t worry, it’s all tax deductible and on your big, fat, top of the line salary, that has to be a good thing!

And it’s not just celebri­ties who can join up and take the “northlon­don­hippy hon­esty about drug use” pledge; any­one respon­si­ble can sign-up. Just send me an email with your name and your credit card details and I’ll make it all hap­pen for you. Don’t for­get the 3 digit secu­rity code on the sig­na­ture strip!

And it’s not just celebri­ties who dig drugs, but other VIPs as well, as many Ital­ians dis­cov­ered as a TV pro­gramme did some secret drug test­ing on a bunch of their junior gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. Read the full story RIGHT HERE.

The TV show pre­tended to inter­view them on an unre­lated sub­ject and offered them the ser­vices of a make-up artist. Vain as they are, they allowed the make-up artist to mop their brows, pro­vid­ing a per­spi­ra­tion sam­ple that could be checked for weed and coke.

Guess what? One out of four of the politi­cians tested, came up pos­i­tive for cocaine and cannabis use in the pre­vi­ous 36 hours.

Why are we surprised?

Laws don’t deter any­one from doing any­thing if they want to do it bad enough; drug laws sim­ply crim­i­nalise oth­er­wise law-abiding citizens.

So if you’re elected offi­cials are on drugs and all the celebri­ties you adore are on drugs, one might con­clude that every­one is on drugs.

One might be right!

Here’s a treat, I’m blog­ging from my office.

What I need now, more than ever is a lit­er­ary agent and I really should be doing some­thing about it. If any of you knows of one, that would like to make 10% of my prospec­tive, future for­tune, please put them in touch. And no, I’m not jok­ing!