Russell Brand resigns, OpenOffice.org Calc and Christmas at M&S

PARSLEY'S COMMLOCK
Media News : Russell Brand resigns
It's always interesting when top politicians get drawn into a fairly mainstream media issue. I can't help feeling that their comments on Shilpa Shetty's treatment in Big Brother were rather worthier than Gordon Brown's bizarre wading into the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand affair. The cynic in me feels he was a little too happy to find a diversion away from the economic woes of the world. The irony of course was that the debacle drowned out news of stock market recoveries.

I was hearing about the BBC's media village in White City. From what I know of television production a lot of managers, particularly those that stand between senior managers and the people actually working on the shows, spend their time in a state of complete paranoia about whether they've understood what they've been asked to do. They seem unable to be clear about what is wanted, and change their minds leaving their underlings breathless trying to satisfy them. Then at some review meeting they realise they've not done what their bosses wanted so head off in a completely different direction. In this context the sort of situation that Ross/Brand found themselves in was all too predictable. From one minute to the next they won't know whether they're supposed to be ground-breaking attracting criticism, or conservative extremely safe.

Recently I'm not a major supporter of Jonathan Ross, who I much preferred when he was on Channel4. However the relentless pressure/expectation on him to be funny seems to have simply driven him into using obscenity as the nearest thing he could find to what people think of as comedy. On German TV Stefan Raab was, so I'm told, very funny until he was rewarded with endless exposure to the point that humour couldn't sustain. And we all know about Ricky Gervais.

The fact that popular elder figures of radio & television have been driven off to make way for the new generation of egos like Ross and lightweights like Gary Lineker (in my humble personal opinion) only adds insult to injury. In my daydreams I can imagine Jimmy Young and Terry Wogan making crank calls to Jeremy Vine (self-declared Christian) pretending to be God.

So where are the criticisms of Bart Simpson for his crank calls to Moe's bar? And as my friend Tony Reeve (himself mourning the passing of the radio comedy he had been enjoying from Russell Brand) pointed out - what about Fonejacker on C4?

I can't comment about the show's apparent transgressions, which I've not heard, but I can say that Brand seems to have acquitted himself better than Ross has, in my opinion. His apology to camera and resignation seemed sincere and decent. I could almost imagine tears welling up in his eyes. He also tried to take responsibility for the whole thing and save Jonathan Ross, despite friends suggesting to me that it was Ross who had egged him on where his usual co-host would have calmed it down.

I have enjoyed Brand's writings in The Guardian. I confess an interest in particularly hoping that his honourable approach at this stage enables him to survive the story, as like Barack Obama he is a West Ham fan, and it would be a shame if he could not provide a positive endorsement to the club.

Bizarrely some things haven't changed. Previously I railed against Russell Harty's interviewing of Peter Wyngarde in the seventies as being unnecessarily unpleasant. My Aunt's friend used to work at London Weekend Television and enlightened me that Harty was an extremely nice man who was deliberately provocative as part of his technique of making interesting television.

Barry Cryer was on radio explaining that if paranoia about television had the place it is sometimes accorded then some of the best comedy would never have seen the light of day.

Software review : OpenOffice.org Calc
I can't often say that a piece of software has cheered me up. As I struggled to complete a list of a year's transactions for my tax, I was genuinely surprised as my copy of 'OpenOffice.org' Calc spreadsheet software (the free alternative to Microsoft Office Excel) did what I was expecting nicely. It is more like the Excel I was familiar with than the new version of Excel, where the interface has amazingly changed to make it more difficult, for me at least, to get it to do what I want.

Retail News : Christmas at M&S
Just time to say that the excellent £5 and £10 presents I had found at Peacock's in the last two years seem to have made their way to Marks and Spencers who are offering a '3 for 2' deal that I found irresistable. Wind-up mini Spacehoppers that you can race against each other particularly caught my eye.

parsley@gardenrecords.com [www.gardenrecords.com]