Word To Your Mother

Hurray for our mothers, who will no doubt be unwrapping their Engelbert Humperdinck CDs and being treated to vaguely patronising lunches on this day, of all days, Mother’s Day. Mine lives in Spain and I rarely get the chance to see her unless it’s through the pixelated lens of a cheap webcam. I love her dearly, though, and miss her company a lot: it’s probably down to her sheer passion for writing that got me scribbling away in the first place. All I seem to have offered in return is debt and dirty washing. Who’d have kids, right?

There is a new film coming out called Motherhood that tackles this very question. Uma Thurman plays a New York urban mommy juggling two small children while barely finding enough time to update her blog - think Sex and the City but with kids. She is frayed, scatty and constantly on the brink of a complete emotional breakdown. It’s a pretty decent stab at an adult family comedy and is essentially about finding harmony and balance in a busy, chaotic world where mothers seem to adhere to somewhat self-imposed pressures of being everything to all people: a doting parent, chief organiser, caretaker, inspiration for her kids as well as stern matriarch and, when daddy comes home, a promiscuous partner. It’s a lot to cram into one day, but despite the film’s smug snapshot of contemporary motherhood, I don’t think that the emotional burdens of raising children have altered too much. What clearly has changed is the greater pressure today for career mothers to excel in their work while still maintaining a good home life balance. My Mum stayed at home to raise a family until she felt ready to go back into work, but not every mother can afford such luxuries, particularly young families who have yet to have an opportunity to get a substantial hold on the career ladder.

Knowing my mum she would probably say that it was much easier raising kids when she was younger, which, if she says so, is probably true. After all, mother knows best.


The new Gorillaz album is superb. I have a habit of changing my Favourite Record of the Year So Far almost weekly, but I might stick with this one. Damon Albarn is clearly a genius. His third simian side project leaps from a poppy throwback synth sound to collaborative efforts with some of the best names in hip-hop (Snoop Dogg, Mos Def and Kano) and a plethora of musical legends (Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Bobby Womack) to create a refined sound that’s altogether selfless, contemporary and progressive. And this is the same kid who wrote ‘Girls and Boys’. Buy it now. Right now.


I’m not sure what to make of this current trend for abbreviations. Jedward are to blame, but at least that worked as a joke, as the off-key karaoke twins were practically indistinguishable in both looks and talent. In fact, I blame the media portrayal of shows like The X Factor which have acted to popularise the trend: SuBo (Susan Boyle), PieMo (Piers Morgan), SiCo (Simon Cowell). This has now, annoyingly, moved into politics. In yesterday’s Guardian I read some more rather dubious work: you couldn’t move for references to ‘SamCam’ on an article referring to David Cameron’s wife, Samantha Cameron. I’m looking forward to the electoral candidate debates on TV - when GorBro, DC and Cleggo will render Paxo and co into LOLing, mumbling press idiots, talking in Tweets rather than proper words. Can this nonsense stop now, please?


I’ve always been slightly in love with Billie Piper. She’s from Swindon, you know. We were born in the very same hospital. If it wasn’t for the two year age gap, I like to imagine that we might have met after school once, or got drunk in an alleyway before heading to the Mission nightclub, maybe share a kebab on the way home.

Despite what could have been, I’ve always followed her career intently, which even meant sitting through the first series of ‘Secret Diaries of a Call Girl’, despite it being quite awful. (An oddly hypocritical show, that one, which offers about as much insight into prostitution as a copy of Swank magazine). She’s now an actress of considerable talent, and quite brilliant in Kay Mellor’s new Leeds-based, two-part TV drama ‘A Passionate Woman’. It will be broadcast in April, but luckily the BBC treated guests to a very special preview screening in Leeds at the Hyde Park Picture House.

In an interview after the screening, Mellor was quite teary eyed when discussing the film with ‘Look North’ presenter Christa Ackroyd. It is based on her mother’s ill-fated affair with a young Polish immigrant and set in a 1950s version of Leeds. Billie plays Mellor’s mother as a young, excitable yet sexually repressive housewife in the first part and Sue Johnston takes over in the follow up. The program is filmed in Leeds at various locations including the Town Hall, Roundhay Park and, of course, the Hyde Park Picture House, and it is a testament to the quality invested in the BBC Drama department. And I’m pleased to say that for a Swindon girl, Billie’s grasp of the northern accent is faultless. But as I said, I might be slightly in love.


Another week and, sorry, another Lady Gaga story. There was an awful lot of fuss regarding her new video with Beyonce Knowles (receiving half a million hits within the first 12 hours) - a 9 minute film to promote Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke and a rather limp song called ‘Telephone’, which drew slightly presumptuous comparisons to the ‘Thriller’ video for being the Best Music Video Of All Time, or something equally absurd. It’s not, of course, but thank God for Gaga and completely raising the bar so high that even Beyonce Knowles can't keep up, and she’s actually in the bloody thing.

It’s probably the closest thing to actually wandering around Lady Gaga’s head, with so many great bits to choose from: starting with Gaga’s incarceration and subsequent strip search (“I told you she doesn’t have a dick”), to the lesbian kissing while wearing sunglasses strapped with lit cigarettes (this must have been a continuity nightmare), then Beyonce crops up like a dominatrix to spike the drink of rapper Tyrese (“I knew you’d take all my honey, you selfish motherfucker”) and the two ride out in the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill in a suicidal homage to Thelma and Louise. It’s certainly an outrageous approach and really great fun. Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ95z6ywcBY


The more observant of you would have noticed that out of my six Oscar predictions from last week, I managed to get four correct. Thank you. I’d like to thank God and my agent.

The two I got wrong seem to have stemmed from my own cynicism, but clearly I failed to give the Academy even half as much credit, feeling that they would plump for the baggy, bogged-down CGI master-trump Avatar over Kathryn Bigelow’s tense Iraq war film The Hurt Locker. Luckily, I was wrong, and James Cameron, despite spending the GDP of a small country on his 3D Smurfs-at-war film, had to settle for a few prizes for special effects.

The ceremony received complaints for being a bit of a yawn, but then it is every year. It’s too formal, and the comedy exuberance of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin couldn’t have helped. They should just get Chris Rock to do it every year. “Our next presenter is the first woman to ever breast-feed an Apple… Gwyneth Paltrow.” Ba-doom!