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• Down with Bond villains

  January 14, 2012 @ 8:16 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  You’d think the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry would have better things to do with his time than talk down Bond villains. Shouldn’t he be off discovering new elements and making blue steam emerge from retorts? The current holder of that post, David Phillips, does seem to find the eccentric behaviour of those master-criminals worthy of comment. Professor Phillips argues that for too long our perceptions of nuclear energy have been coloured by goings-on in huge underground bunkers. “Let’s say yes to nuclear and no to Dr No’s nonsense,” he remarked recently. Odd. I suppose Bond villains do often have a reactor in their basement, but it’s not exactly the first thing you think of when considering such satanic masterminds.

  Mind you, he is right in suggesting that Fleming’s characters have a malign influence on the public psyche. Just think of all those hideous racial stereotypes. Dr No is not just an evil “Chinaman”, he also (horror of horrors) has some German blood in his veins. Rosa Klebb offered a somewhat unhelpful caricature of  Lesbianism. The less we say about Mr Big in Live and Let Die the sooner the NAACP will recover from an understandable fit of the vapours.Fleming made sure to clarify that Auric Goldfinger was not actually Jewish, but certain queasy odours do hang around that character. A trainee racist could do worse than immerse himself in the Bond back-catalogue.

  Never mind all that. The most outrageous slurs in all Fleming’s work — and the the films adapted therefrom — surely appear in the depictions of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (whose name was, apparently, inspired by a relative of the great cricket commentator Henry Blofeld).  I was, just minutes ago, pondering this while cradling the cat in a downstairs room. We’ll let Charles Gray off the hook. But the versions inhabited by Donald Pleasence in You Only Live Twice and Telly Savalas in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service positively seethe with hatred for bald people and cat lovers. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” I hear you say. “The baldness and the felinophilia are mere accidents.” Don’t be so naive!  My friends at the National Association for the Advancement of Bald People have long been campaigning for the banning of this manifestation of hate crime from all television screens. Just look at the healthy head of hair on James Bond in the early films. More to the point, remember that — as the thatch began to wither — Sean Connery took to wearing a wig when playing 007. What does that say to you? It’s fine for the megalomaniac villain to sport a shiny dome, but the hero is allowed no such privilege. Good people have hair. Bad people no longer require visits to the barber. The cradling of cats is seen as further evidence of  an unreliable personality.

  Think about this. Can you imaging a bond villain wearing his hair over his shoulders? Can you imagine such a fellow feeding choc-treats to a panting beagle? Of course you can’t. You have already been lured into their trap. There is still time to start a campaign. Write to Sam Mendes, director of Skyfall, and demand that the upcoming Bond villain feature a maniac with a hippie haircut and a big, slobbering pooch. This continuing outrage has to be  stopped.

• I hate the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame

  September 28, 2011 @ 10:02 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Oh Lord, is there anything quite so irritating as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame? This outburst is prompted by the news that poodle-barband Guns N’ Roses and pop-goths The Cure have been nominated for — such a pompous word — induction into this frightful institution in Cleveland, Ohio. It doesn’t pay to get to naive about popular music. Right from the beginning, the form was compromised by commerce. The smaller record labels were, quite often, as corrupt and money-grabbing as the mighty conglomerates. The first rock and roll singers might have sneered at the cosiness of the cardigan-wearimg crooners, but step back a few paces and it became clear that they were all involved in the business that goes by the name of show.

  And yet. I still naively expect rock musicians to at least pretend to a suspicion of ordered institutions and meaningless decorations. The Americans never really got that. Right from the beginning they were handing each other gongs and turning up at preposterous back-slapping dinner dances. In the United States, even supposed renegades feel that the successful deserve formal signs of respect. Just look at the horrendous Grammys for proof. Eugh!

  Anyway, the stupid Hall of Fame continues to lure otherwise respectable people to its appalling shindigs. The one band who have responded to the event with the disdain it deserves are the mighty Sex Pistols. It hardly needs to be said that, what with those dreary reformations and John Lydon’s butter commercials, the Pistols are not exactly in any position to occupy the moral high ground. But their letter to the hall of fame — gloriously incoherent and misspelled — remains a very impressive venting of spleen. Now this is telling them.

  “Next to the SEX-PISTOLS rock and roll and that hall of fame is a piss stain. Your museum. Urine in wine. Were not coming. Were not your monkey and so what? Fame at $25,000 if we paid for a table, or $15000 to squeak up in the gallery, goes to a non-profit organisation selling us a load of old famous. Congradulations. If you voted for us, hope you noted your reasons. Your anonymous as judges, but your still music industry people. Were not coming. Your not paying attention. Outside the shit-stem is a real SEX PISTOL”

• 18 cert for smoking in movies?

  September 23, 2011 @ 9:27 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Some report by the Thorax, organ of the British Thoracic Society, has suggested that all films depicting smoking should be given an 18 cert. What a load of garbage. At the risk of sounding like Richard Littlejohn, this is the sort of nonsense that tempts me to reach immediately for an untipped Craven A. Sod that. I’m going to spend the weekend watching endless film noir while injecting tar directly into my biggest, most throbby vein.

  

  No more M Hulot for you, kiddies.

  Let’s get the disclaimers out of the way. Of course, smoking is appallingly bad for your health. Of course, glamorous depictions of the habit have, in the past, lured youths towards the fags and cigars. Of course, any parent catching a child lighting up should send said youth immediately to the wood shed with no spaghetti hoops.

  But there comes a point when understandable caution gets in the way of artistic freedom. The obvious problem is that kids would now be prohibited from witnessing many films in the area of social realism. Under these laws, any child would be banned (in theory) from watching films such as Distant Voices, Still Lives, Kes or Bicycle Thieves. I admit that Terrence Davies, Ken Loach and Vittorio de Sica are rarely at the top of the average youth’s hit parade. But, if any contemporary version of those films arrived in cinemas, you would surely wish your budding cinephile to get a glimpse of the thing. Wouldn’t you?

  But there’s more to it than that. As Ben Child in the Guardian points out, such a regulation would have either prohibited Peter Jackson from allowing Gandalf his pipe or required the censor to plaster an 18 cert on all three Lord of the Rings pictures. Aside from anything else, it seems fantastic to assume that many Tolkien fans take up clay pipes after a Rings marathon. (Mind you, if my memory serves me, the first generation of Middle-earth enthusiasts in the 1960s were disproportionately disposed towards certain, more exotic smoking materials.)

  Not being Ben Goldacre, I am not in a position to pull apart the reliability of the BTS’s study, but it is awfully hard to take the following statement seriously: “Their study of more than 5,000 adolescents found that 15-year-olds who saw the most films showing actors smoking were 73% more likely to have tried it than those who had seen the fewest.” Does one thing necessarily follow from the other. Are the kids boasting? I am immediately reminded of those notoriously unreliable studies of the effects of so-called video nasties on young people. When more sober scientists examined the results they discovered that the kids were making up much of the material they had allegedly seen.

  But that’s not the point. Even if the study does hold up, I would still maintain that the notion of an 18-cert for all puffing movies is utterly absurd. Smoking is, for good or ill (mostly ill obviously), a part of life (and death). To shuffle it into the corner entirely would be to further sanitise an art form that, to remain strong, must feel able to show people — and wizards — as they are. The claim, made by Dr Andrea Waylen, that “smoking depictions in films are not consistent with the ban on smoking in public places in the UK” is completely preposterous. The main reason for the ban was to allow non-smokers to breath freely, unaffected by other people’s carcinogenic effusions. Nobody is going to get emphysema from watching Now Voyager.

  One thinks of a 2004 campaign — successful sadly — by the NAACP to stop the fine Silent Movie Theater in LA from screening The Birth of a Nation. Yes, D W Griffith’s film is appallingly, unforgivably racist. But that does not — you might add an “alas” here — stop it from being one of the most significant in cinema history. The case is very different. But it also shows campaigners allowing their prime concerns to inhibit important freedoms.

  Of course, film-makers should be responsible in this area. It is, perhaps, best that they don’t encourage heroic figures to smoke in films aimed at younger audiences. It would be nice if they avoided suggesting that smoking makes you sexier. As it happens, Hollywood has been drifting in this direction for ages. In mainstream films smoking is almost always seen as a sign of weakness, unreliability, insanity or unspeakable villainy. But the notion of legislating to enforce those conventions is utterly nuts.

  Anyway, as I say, don’t smoke. It’ll kill you in the end. That is all.

• Remakes are great

  September 13, 2011 @ 10:14 pm | by Donald Clarke

  As you may have gathered from various remarks made here and in various features (read Clarke on John Hurt in tomorrow’s soaraway Irish Times!) I was not disappointed by Tomas Alfredson’s take on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I won’t preempt Friday’s review by saying too much here.

  

  Oh Jesus. Not him again!

  Let’s just remark that the film offers a delicious complement to the classic BBC TV series. By doing things slightly differently, Alfredson proves that remakes can have a point. The two versions — like two productions of, say, Hamlet — approach the material from very different angles. (Oh and I, of course, know that, being preceded by a TV series, the new Tinker, Tailor is not strictly a remake. Look, just play along. Okay?)

  One of the supposedly unshakable tenets of movie lore states that the remake never lives up to the original. Now, it is true that a recent slew of unimaginative sequels does rather turn one against this particular field of endeavour. Think for a moment of the remakes of The Stepford Wives, Alfie, The Poseidon Adventure and The Pink Panther. Now fold down the flap on your vomit bag and hand it to the helpful stewardess. There’s a good fellow.

  It needn’t be this way. What links A Star is Born (1954), The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Fly (1986), Scarface (1983) and The Thing (1982)? Oh, you’re way ahead of me. They are all remakes. What’s more, rather than being clever reinventions of forgotten trash, most of these films were preceded by very decent efforts. Indeed, I would argue that the 1937 version of A Star is Born — with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March — is slightly better than the transcendent Judy Garland version. It is true that almost all were originally based on non-filmic material, but you won’t find much of the source stories in the later versions of Scarface, The Fly or The Thing. (Though the Coens’ recent version of True Grit did follow the novel closely.)

  What binds these films together, apart from their excellence, is the visible application of a fresh, original sensibility. Each of these film-makers used the original framework merely as a structure on which to hang their own idiosyncratic musings. The best way to respect the former film is to put it out of one’s mind and make believe that the new script just emerged damp and squealing from the womb. Too often, hack directors think that, standing on the shoulder of a giant, they just need to stand up straight to get their head in the stars.

  This explains why, when knocking together the Autumn movie preview for Friday’s Ticket, I found it hard to get excited about the upcoming remakes of  Straw Dogs and (yes, again) The Thing. I sincerely hope that Rod Lurie and  Matthijs van Heijningen Jr have found new ways of attacking those deliciously violent films. But the trailers for both suggest that they’ve just put younger actors into the clothes previously worn by Dustin Hoffman and Kurt Russell. The sad fact is that, knowing callow viewers rarely bother with anything made before 1990, the film-makers needn’t really bother fretting about the Anxiety of Influence. Heck, only a few old bastards such as me will have seen the original films.

  Shape up, gentlemen. Sit down and watch The Fly or A Star is Born — or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy  for that matter — and you’ll learn that, yes, remakes can be great.

• Stuff over (and after) the credits

  August 23, 2011 @ 9:11 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  At the beginning of the summer — when the blockbusters were still emerging from hibernation — I attended a London press screening of The Tolerable Thor! As the mighty warrior stowed his hammer and the initial credits rolled, I gathered my things together and began making a move for the door. “Where are you going?” a colleague from another organ snapped. “There’s a post-credit sequence.” Not wanting to appear unprofessional, I dropped my bag and waited impatiently for another one of those increasingly irritating advertisements for The Avengers. You may have seen a few. Then again, you may have more important things to do with your time. What happens is that (most often) Sam Jackson emerges from a darkened room and barks orders at some actors who, one assumes, will later be donning leotards for the upcoming Marvel ensemble superhero flick. I forgot about the one after the surprisingly entertaining Captain America and, as a result, am now going through Jackson-deprivation syndrome. Perhaps I should not have received my modest fee for reviewing the film.

  Like a lot of movie fans, I greatly enjoy trailers. The first sight of an anticipated release always engenders at least a tiny shudder of excitement. Some little part of the viewer, aware that it is better to travel hopefully than arrive, suspects that this is the most fun that he or she will extract from Mothra Vs The Horse People. Sitting through the end credits of a good film — something I always used to do — can offer its own class of pleasure: a chance to soak up a few more minutes of stolen atmosphere.

  But this is getting ridiculous. The post-credit sequence is now considered part of the movie experience. A sliver of the alleged appeal stems, I guess, from the knowledge that, by staying, you have demonstrated you are part of some tragic in-crowd. Look at all those fools running for their buses. They’re going to miss 30 seconds of Jeremy Renner staring at Sam Jackson’s eyepatch. Amateurs! Now you can go home, log on and, in the virtual presence of similar maniacs throughout the world, discuss whether the appearance of Loki in the Thor post-credit confirms that he will appear in The Avengers.

  This is not to suggest there can’t be things worth watching after the official action has ended. The best examples are from comedies. It’s worth sitting through the credits of Airplane! — at least once, anyway — to discover the taxi still waiting outside the terminus. The blooper reels from, say, Adam Sandler projects are generally funnier than the main body of the film (mind you, so is dysentery). The band’s musings on alternative lives in This is Spinal Tap are up to the high standards of the rest of that peerless movie.

  But such sequences offer actual jokes. Rather than being commercials for the studio’s product, they are, in their own right, little nuggets of entertainment content. Unlike with the ridiculous Avengers plugs, we are not placidly inviting the studios to flog us upcoming product. Resist! Get out of your seat and leave.

  Ah, yes. It wouldn’t be Screenwriter without a final guilty confession of hypocrisy. When I was a young twit I would always sit through the credits of James Bond movies to catch the legend that began: “James Bond will return in…”. Mind you, with no internet about the place, I was actually waiting for a genuine piece of information. It seems hard to believe now, but, even by the time the film opened, we really didn’t know which Fleming novel they were going to adapt next. More than anything though, it was an opportunity to prolong the experience and to reassure myself that it would begin again in a few years. Actually, thinking of this now, I am reminded that on one occasion the credits lied. At the close of The Spy Who Loved Me, the title read “James Bond will return in For Your Eyes Only.” He did not (or not immediately). Star Wars intervened and — launching the series second serious decline — the producers opted to make the ghastly Moonraker.

  I wonder if that erroneous credit is still on the DVD version of The Spy Who Loved Me. To the internet! I have my own gang of sad maniacs with whom I need to converse.

  

• Mark Kermode says hello to The Irish Times

  July 28, 2011 @ 2:25 pm | by Donald Clarke

  Last week, despite being on holiday, I filed a Screenwriter column concerning the naughty way film distributors present quotes out of context for their promotional material. Regular readers will be aware that I have touched on this subject at least twice in this place. Sue me. Stuff that goes in a “blog” doesn’t count as grown-up journalism. Anyway, as you will have read here and in the column, my favourite example of this practice involved gratuitous misuse of a quote by Mr Mark Kermode.

  Happy to relate, Mr Kermode appears to have seen the piece and approved its general drift. Here is a recent video “blog” in which he muses upon the matter.

  To use the language of his radio slot, it’s a big hello from the Irish Times.

  

• How long is a feature film?

  June 14, 2011 @ 11:04 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  Well, some are two-hours long. Others are three-hours long. Films featuring Adam Sandler last about two and a half days (or so it seems). That’s a pretty stupid question, buddy. You want to pull yourself together.

  Let’s start again. How long does a film have to be to qualify as a feature? The question is prompted by a tiny controversy concerning the latest film to be directed by that great film-maker Madonna. WE, a study of Mrs Wallis Simpson’s adventures with the Duke of Windsor, has recently been acquired by the good people at the Weinstein Company. Announcing their coup, Bob and Harvey explained that they now had the rights to “Madonna’s debut feature”. Those words appeared above several reports in the trade press. But wait a minute. Didn’t Madonna, in 2008, direct a panned, almost unseen picture entitled Filth and Wisdom?

  The Weinsteins quickly explained that, as that picture was only 81 minutes long, it must be regarded as a short film. WE was thus, indeed, her full-length debut. Reports such as that at Entertainment Weekly were quickly amended.

  Sorry, what now? It is true to say that we generally expect features to exceed an hour and a half, but an 81-minute picture does, surely, still deserve to be regarded as a full-length entertainment.

  Happily, my good friend Dr Wikipedia was able to offer some firm definitions. Apparently, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute all define a feature as a picture with a running time over 40 minutes (a tad too lenient, methinks). The Screen Actors Guild — presumably working hard to gain its members full rates — strays too far in the other direction by setting the lower limit at 80 minutes.

  At any rate, it seems that, applying even the most unforgiving definitions, Filth and Wisdom qualifies as a feature. By the Weinstein’s reckoning, at 75 economic minutes, Tod Browning’s 1931 version of  Dracula must be regarded as a short. The same director’s Freaks was originally released in a 65-minute cut. The Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup runs to 68 minutes. Mervyn Le Roy’s Little Caesar is 79 minutes. Have the Weinsteins suddenly reclassed all these great films as shorts? I knew they were powerful. But really…

  A question requiring more nuanced answers is “How long should a film be?” There are plenty of long films that we wouldn’t wish a minute shorter. The huge version of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander is notably superior to the edited cut. Mighty works by Bela Tarr, Theo Angelopoulos and Andrei Tarkovsky thrive on leisurely movement towards an obscure objective. Length is, you could argue, a defining characteristic of such films. You may as well ask Van Gough to paint in acrylics as ask Tarr to trim his pictures.

  Equally, there are many brief films that — noting their perfect balance — you would never wish a moment longer. Who would tamper with the perfection of Robert Bresson’s 75-minute Pickpocket (now a short, according to Bob and Harvey)?

  Notwithstanding the danger of such generalisations, I would venture that a worrying giganticism is creeping into populist cinema. Who in their right minds wanted each of the last three Pirates of the Caribbean films to exceed two and half hours? The last few Harry Potter films have all been around the same length. The bagginess is unforgivable.

  Maybe we should be urging the Weinstein Company to put an upper limit on the length of a feature. Such films could then be given another name. I know what I’d call Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Oh, never mind.

• Phoenix Magazine doesn’t get the joke.

  April 21, 2011 @ 4:54 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  All my writing life I have yearned to get into Pseuds’ Corner in Private Eye. Well, it looks as if I will have to make do with the domestic equivalent: The Hot Air Brigade in Phoenix Magazine. An entry in this issue features the following snippet from my recent review of The White Ribbon 3D:

  “Yet the proto-earthly intensity of the sub-Monostrovian narrative remains visibly, uncomfortably stratified. Val Kilmer’s deranged turn as the austere Baptist preacher, whose unterdrückung of his own children precipitates violent juvenile anti-conformity, illustrates how easily, after passing through several vicious cycles, deep belief can mutate into militant pop nihilism.”

  Oh dear. It seems as if the good people at Phoenix didn’t note the peculiar six stars — last awarded to Sail Proof Lady — the suspicious inclusion of Val Kilmer in the cast list, the general absurdity of the project and, dare I say it, the deliberately ludicrous prolixity  of the prose. “Monostrovian” isn’t even a bleeding word, for Pete’s sake.  The review was, of course, an April Fool. Was Phoenix carrying on the gag? Let’s do them a favour and pretend that is the case.

  The late Michael Dwyer, who set the traditions in motion with Sail Proof Lady (an anagram, Pheonix folk), would have been delighted to see the joke develop such legs.

  Oh, and that’s a spaghetti tree at the top of the post. Phoenix might like to run a story on the phenomenon.

• What’s the worst film of all time?

  April 19, 2011 @ 10:30 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  It’s not the silly season yet, so don’t take the question too seriously. Obviously, it’s always good fun to attach that title to something that people really love. If I want to annoy students, I generally suggest that the worst film of all time is Fight Club. I don’t suppose I really believe that, but the hollow, posturing, knuckle-headed pretensions of that film do really set my teeth on edge. Yes I know that we are not supposed to take Tyler Durden’s sermons entirely seriously, but the film does still — and Chuck Palahniuk confirmed this to me in person — have something to do with a supposed “crisis in masculinity“. Aww, diddums. Are the poor little menny wenny laid low by several millennia of patriarchal dominance? Let’s have a whip round and, while we’re at, let’s raise some money for distressed millionaires and troubled movie stars. I mean, honestly.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. Most everyone has their own favourite worst film, but, if yours falls among the bottom 20 of the IMDb voters’ list then you probably need to get out a little more. Here’s the current sh*t parade…

  1.  Dream Well (2009)

  2.  Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004)

  3.  Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

  4.  Daniel – Der Zauberer (2004)

  5.  Monster a-Go Go (1965)

  6.  Night Train to Mundo Fine (1966)

  7.  Ben & Arthur (2002)

  8.  Pocket Ninjas (1997)

  9.  The Skydivers (1963)

  10.  The Starfighters (1964)

  11.  Zombie Nation (2004)

  12.  Pledge This! (2006)

  13.  Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007)

  14.  Zaat (1971)

  15.  From Justin to Kelly (2003)

  16.  The Little Fox 2 (2008)

  17.  Too Beautiful (2005)

  18.  Disaster Movie (2008)

  19.  The Final Sacrifice (1990)

  20.  The Hillz (2004)

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining chart to peruse. But, over the years, it has become completely taken over by a kind of anti-canon. A series of admittedly terrible films — Manos: The Hand of Fate, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, From Justin to Kelly — have become installed as the trash establishment and, thus, gained a sort of unwanted critical traction. Naming one of these as the worst ever film is a little like naming Citizen Kane as the best. You might be right (after all, how many films are better than Kane?), but the choice doesn’t say much about your capacity for original thought.

  Having said all that, there is always some movement in the chart. I suspect that, just as those involved with independent flicks that need a boost sometimes devote themselves to hitting the “10 stars” button over and over again, the crew, backers and cast of utterly terrible films strive to get their projects to the top (bottom?) of this list.

  Be honest. You’re really intrigued by Dream Well, the current number one. Actually, it does sound fascinating. Apparently, it is a Hungarian high-school comedy that seems to model itself on the likes of Mean Girls. Oh, come on. Don’t tell me that got there by accident. Director Gábor Forgács and his mates must have been working the keyboard night and day. The trailer — identifying it under the alternate title Dream.Net — suggests that it is no worse than its American equivalents.

  

• What’s wrong with 10 O’clock Live?

  March 8, 2011 @ 3:56 pm | by Donald Clarke

  

  When Channel 4′s attempt at a satirical news show was launched, more than a few commentators urged caution before condemning it outright. After all, comedy takes a while to settle in. It is well known that the initial reviews of Fawlty Towers were appalling. One of the most famous notices in British entertainment history related to Morecambe and Wise’s first appearance on TV.  ”Definition of the week: TV set – the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise,” a wiseacre remarked.

  There was, surely, every chance that, as the weeks passed, the comics would find their feet and the show would take off. It hasn’t really happened. David Mitchell tries very, very hard, but, though he raises the odd titter, a faint sense of desperation hangs around his segments. Charlie Brooker isn’t doing badly, but, with only one or two monologues a week, you couldn’t say he was working his bum off. Jimmy Carr’s skits are unspeakable (though his straight-to-camera pieces are okay). And… Well, we’ll come to that in a moment.

  There are, it seems to me, two main problems. The first would be an easy one to solve if they hadn’t saddled themselves with that title. Why does it have to be live? Tension can be useful in TV, but, stuck in a busy, complex format, the presenters always appear to have one eye on that floor manager whirling his index finger. The main objective appears to involve getting through the material as quickly as possible. One can live with the fluffs, but the shoddy, hurried delivery is less easy to excuse. Shows such as Have I Got News For You have remained topical without going out live. Please, allow these guys some space.

  The other problem is more tricky. Why is Lauren Laverne on the show? One approaches this topic with some cautiousness. A streak of misogyny still permeates the world of comedy and, by singling out the sole woman, it could look as if we were entertaining absurd notions about the unfunniness of women. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are dozens of funny British — and Irish — female comics who could do the job superbly well. Sarah Millican, Natalie Haynes, Carrie Quinlan, Susan Calman and Josie Long all jump out as obvious candidates. If the producers allowed themselves to (shock horror!) employ an older person they might consider Jo Brand or Sandi Toksvig.

  Lauren seems like a nice person. But here’s the thing. To this point, I wasn’t aware she was even supposed to be funny. She’s an arts presenter, musician and DJ. Why not hire Margaret Beckett or A S Byatt? They seem equally qualified. It’s all very puzzling.

  Anyway, I will keep watching. It can only get better. Can’t it?

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