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!

Vocal Point

The cultural delights on offer in Leeds never fail to surprise me. Having enjoyed Northern Ballet Theatre’s updated version of Romeo & Juliet, we were lucky enough to pop across to the Howard Assembly Rooms to catch the last day of Janet Cardiff’s rather stirring sound installation ‘Voices: A Forty Part Motet’. Forty individual speakers magnificently capture the solo intricacies involved in Thomas Tallis’ piece ‘Spem in alium’, originally designed for eight choirs of five voices. Sit, or lie (as many visitors do) in the middle and it is the closest thing, I can only imagine, to being within the booming epicentre of a real choir. If you chose to inspect individual speakers, you can not only grasp the intricate measure and tonal perfection of each voice, but also, if you catch their idle chatter before the piece begins, you can even hear them cough, advise and talk to one another. An invigorating experience, I hope it comes back.

As for the ballet, I was amazed to discover that the Northern Ballet Theatre - based in Leeds and possibly the country’s most pre-eminent dance company spanning a globe-trotting forty years - prepare for their next ballet while simultaneously performing their current one. Not only that, but the performers mix up the roles, so depending on which performance you see, my Mercutio could be your Romeo. I guess this helps to balance what must be a rather punishing schedule, and goes a long way to understanding the abundance of talent there is within the company.


I feel that I should jump to the defence of Lady Gaga, not just because she’s clearly ace and possibly the most interesting thing to happen to pop music since Madonna did all that monochrome stuff during her Exotica period, but mainly because some slightly misguided scribes have really been sticking the Stilettos in of late. Apart from a couple of good tracks, I don’t really get Ms Gaga’s musical appeal, but I certainly get everything else: the outlandish “oh no she didn’t” get up, enough to make Liberace look like a soiled tramp, and her equally cryptic and compelling persona, brilliantly personified in her teacup sketch on ‘Friday Night with Jonathan Ross', which saw the TV host squirm in his seat and first enamoured this batty woman into all of our humdrum British hearts.

But “so much for Lady Gaga’s feminist credentials”, says Hermione Hoby in last Sunday’s Observer, who was heartbroken to find Gaga cupping her bosom in a topless photo shoot for Q magazine. Before I get into questioning what on earth a once Britpop-championing institution like Q is doing putting pop’s first Lady on their cover (following on from a previous issue's dubious choice of a black leather porcupine-esque Cheryl Cole with the caption “Cheryl rocks” - like, what the hell is happening here?), it’s the misogynistic lads mag appeal that Hoby is taking offence too, and more specifically, that her “jutted hip, parted lips and vacuous expression tick the remaining boxes that constitute the mainstream image of sexy.”

But I don’t think Hoby is giving Gaga even half as much credit. Someone who went out in Knightsbridge the other day wearing a lobster on her head and a transparent nurse outfit with electrical tape over her nipples is evidently someone who is challenging “the mainstream image of sexy” and this is something that she has done from the start - clearly Hoby must have held her in much higher feminist regard beforehand, you know, when she did all those gigs in nothing but a turquoise leotard. And it’s quite impossible to clearly define someone like Gaga who goes out her way to avoid "ticking the boxes": yes, she’s clearly topless on the cover of this month’s Q, but I’m pretty sure her elongated fingers are down the front of her trousers, producing a dildo-shaped dong in her pants. Well, you certainly won’t find that on the front of Nuts magazine, that’s all I’m saying. Perhaps in Hoby’s too-quick-to-judge riposte she may have slightly missed the point. Here's the original article anyway: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/feb/28/lady-gaga-feminist-credentials.


In Radio Head: Up and Down the Dial of British Radio, John Osborne sums up BBC 6 Music as bridging the gap between people who feel too old for Radio 1, but not yet old enough for Radio 2. People like me, basically. It plays an eclectic mix of mostly great music from some of the country's best DJs, and George Lamb. As well as the brilliant Adam and Joe, there is also Steve Lamacq, Gideon Coe, Stuart Maconie, Lauren Laverne: all exceptional talent who clearly revel in working within an environment that doesn't seem to be too hung up on playlists or minding your manners.

DJs of this calibre are hardly going to be left homeless in a year's time when the station is set to be decommissioned, but I find it hard to believe that these personalities will suddenly be happy to start hawking the latest Taylor Swift single when they've been able to play the Pixies for the past few years. Which makes the whole decision of cutting 6 Music and BBC Asian Network (not to mention a vast percentage of the BBC's online content) to focus more on their main radio stations (that’s Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) even more perplexing. So, let me get this right, in order to be more brilliant, the BBC is cutting things that are already brilliant? Eh?

The arguments in favour of this decision talk of the benefits for commercial radio, and given that the BBC own so much of the radio pie their competitors have to fight for the remaining slices. This is felt more at a regional level, where commercial stations are really struggling. But who is saying that there needs to be a limit on these things? Digital stations and the internet has blown radio wide open. Surely now only the best radio stations with the best content and a complete understanding of their market will be sure to survive. This again makes the elbowing of 6 Music and BBC Asian Network even more confusing. Being so niche, I hardly think that stations like Virgin and Magic are going to benefit from their absence whatsoever. Get rid of the local stations and, yes, maybe they would.

Surely in this global audio market where it is very easy people to listen to what is being broadcast right now from Iraq to Israel, from Norwich to Nebraska, the fact that the Beeb should be at their best is even more relevant, not downsizing in an attempt to filter their content. In Radio Head, Osborne asks the radio critic for the 'Radio Times', Jane Anderson, whether there are too many radio station. "That's like saying there are too many books." So if this was merely a cost-cutting exercise, can't we just assume that they will spend the money improving stations that are already fine as they are? Maybe Radio 2 can fill the 6 Music void and I'm just getting in a bit of tizz over nothing. But I find it very hard to imagine Steve Wright discussing the importance of The Wedding Present before spinning the new Peaches single.


I managed to humiliate myself quite convincingly on BBC Leeds the other day, where I present a 20 minute, fortnightly look at the new cinematic and DVD releases. An impromptu Oscar-related quiz occurred after ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ by Van Morrison, and I lost to Johnny I’Anson’s ever-pleasant co-host Isma Almas. For someone who is recruited for their knowledge of film, this is humiliating to say the least. I’ve always watched people squirm under the pressure of answering seemingly redundant questions on TV shows normally presented by people like Ant and Dec and Dale Winton and yelling at the screen for knowing the answers to the easiest of questions, but I have now developed renewed sympathy for the sort of pressure these people must be under.

So I’ll offer my predictions for tonight’s Academy Awards, which I’ll be watching, more for revision purposes than entertainment. And if any of them are indeed correct, try not to act too surprised.

Best Picture
My choice: The Hurt Locker - A real seat-of-the-pants nerve jangler set during the Iraq war which, for such a relevant concept, side steps political comment in favour of the psychological repercussions of conflict and the relationship between recruits.
And the Oscar goes to… Avatar - For costing so much bloody money

Best Actor
My choice: Colin Firth - Sensitive, intelligent, well-measured and well-tailored performance in A Single Man from an actor who hardens his synonymously wet Brit routine into something altogether more troubling.
And the Oscar goes to… Jeff Bridges - He’s an all round good egg and plays his own country music.

Best Actress My choice: Carey Mulligan - Bolstered by a Nick Hornby script for An Education, she’s a newbie with plenty of charm and talent, but perhaps an Oscar is stretching it a bit.
And the Oscar goes to… Sandra Bullock - Have you heard her Texan accent? That ought to just about tip it.

Best Supporting Actor
My choice: Christoph Waltz - For being the most sublimely creepy Nazi since that guy who’s face came off at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was easily the best thing in Tarantino’s absurdist war comedy.
And the Oscar goes to… Christoph Waltz - Easily, I should imagine.

Best Supporting Actress My choice: Mo’Nique - She’s a stand up comedian, believe it or not - her snarling, aggressive turn as the mother of Precious in Lee Daniels’ intense poverty piece is just about as bad as a mother can get.
And the Oscar goes to… Mo’Nique - And she doesn’t even plan on shaving her legs.

Best Director My choice: Kathryn Bigelow - For making great use of location, timing, and maintaining a knife-edge approach to suspense instead of investing all energy into bangs and whistles. Unlike her ex-husband, James Cameron, who will win this one easily.
And the Oscar goes to… James Cameron - He did spend a hell of a lot money.