What's The Problem With Anne Robinson?

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

If Brigstocke is an angry, anti-bullshit, politically-minded comic (as he's reinvented himself to be, by his own admission), then why does he participate in such a plebby enterprise as What's the Problem? He must know full-well that the entire premise of the show (ie, 'Anne Robinson is evil and scary! LOL!') is in itself media wankerdom of the highest kind?

He doesn't seem to have any real views, that's my problem with him. Whereas Baddiel - in MWE, Stab in the Dark, Hersey - seems to be someone who genuinely enjoys thinking aloud and taking opinions into uncomfortable areas.

[TJ]

Given the number of ordinary people who have been contestants on the Weakest Link, I always wondered why no one ever really stood up to her and became moderately famous because of it. Then I met someone who had on the show and he told me that the producers told the contestants not to fight back too much or else risk being thrown off the show.

She can give it, but she can't take it.

Ah - so *that's* why no-one ever said, "Yeah, well at least I never drank vodka for breakfast like you did".

I'm genuinely waiting for the day when an evicted unpopular Big Brother contestant, humiliated by the crowd's jeering and Davina McCall's sneering, snaps back with a comment about her erstwhile smack habit live on air.

[Jemble Fred]

The Brigstoke and his voice in the Guardian. I'll paste it to save people using bugmenot etc.

Not big, not clever ... not even funny

Marcus Brigstocke
Tuesday June 21, 2005
The Guardian

For a few brief, terrible weeks I worked on The Eleven O'Clock Show. It was essentially a drop in centre for socially retarded comics who didn't know any better and had nowhere else to go. Granted, it launched Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais into the stratosphere of excellent comic achievement. My contributions, however, fell more often into The Eleven O'Clock Show specialty of running down to the Elephant and Castle and shouting "Quick, old man, say wank before we lose the light". He'd look politely back at the camera crew, wondering how to leave without causing offence, so we'd have to squeeze it out of him. "You see, old man, the producer and I have spent the afternoon thinking of ways to make you look stupid - the whole afternoon, in fact, so being as English is your second language I'll ask you a lame, half-arsed, loosely euphemistic question, then you look confused while the camera lunges towards your face and then say, "I don't really know" in your funny accent. When you've gone I'll look smugly into the camera to show how much cleverer I am than you, because I have a producer and you don't."

Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci could never have known when they made The Day Today that thousands of devotees would so carelessly, crappily copy their model and so many nice old people would be left wondering what the hell just happened as four big men and a camera strode away giggling.

All of that was a long time ago though, and of course producers and Channel 4 have moved on in leaps and bounds since then. I mean, now the gags are as sophisticated as squirting Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol microphone. That is literally thigh-slappingly funny, isn't it? Take the week off, whichever genius thought up that "prank". In fact, take the month off, or better still the life. I don't much care about Tom Cruise - he was a good prop for Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, he was a great advertisement for warmongery in Top Gun and was, of course, the reason Rebecca De Mornay got her kit off in Risky Business making my teenage years a happier place than it might otherwise have been. Beyond that he is pretty good at what he does, he might be an acting genius appreciated by generations to come, he might not be/he might be gay, he might not be - who knows or cares? My problem is that it's just so bloody easy to squirt Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol shaped microphone so why bother? Perhaps it was a protest against the dominance of the Hollywood studio system and the vanity of celebrity culture, perhaps a strange, watery satire on the transparent tasteless nature of a red carpet plug for a tiresome remake of an already tiresome film.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just shit. Happily the Steve Penk wannabe and his crew were arrested and the microphone confiscated so with any luck we will never know. Paul Kaye, aka Dennis Pennis, did all this years ago, didn't he? No wonder happy slapping is all the rage when people are paid to make TV like this, (and in case anyone is wondering - I know the ice upon which I skate is perilously thin). But how long will it be before some barrel-scraping TV production company is asking kids to email in their wackiest hate crimes caught on mobile video. "This week on Mobile Maulings and Muggery we see this zany gang of hooded thugs terrify a junior school pupil - "just look at her face as they pull out a big knife - classic."

Whatever hot-shot, peroxide-headed producer is reading this with pen in hand and finger poised over the speed dial button to Endemol, I was only kidding. Please just stop.

Make of that what you will. "Good on him!"/"He was always a whore, he's only saying it now because it's safe to"... Take your pick.

I suppose, although I was rather warmed by the article, the fact that he's now working on something at least AS shit as T11OCS kind of ruins his argument.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

"He was always a whore, he's only saying it now because it's safe to"

Yeah, that's the one.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

"The 11OCS was shit. Apart from Ali G and Ricky Gervais, of course!"

[The Mumbler]

Marcus Brigstocke, who now works for the BBC, not Channel 4.  Thus he can afford to write such a column.

"Well it gave us Sacha Baron-Cohen and Ricky Gervais, so if you throw enough shit at the wall, two people who look better than they are will rise to greatness afterwards, the world of TV comedy isn't so fragmented that that sort of networking can't be achieved".

What exactly is Brigstocke supposed to be angry about?  Because I'm buggered if he ever does any comedy that represents it.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Brigstocke' s interviewed in the new Time Out. 'The Iraq war turned me from a Where's-the-Clitoris? comedian into a Where's-the-WMD? one,' he says. Fuck's sake.

He also says there are too many topical comedy-chat programmes on at the moment, and that FAQ U was awful.

It must be a bugger when he has the builders in. All that glass.

[Jon_Norton]

Given enough time with writers ANYONE can be absolutely hilarious.

It's been a very long wait for Roy Walker.

[Jon_Norton]

Lenny Henry- I can't quite put my finger on what is wrong with it, but it is just... wrong. It's a shame, as he is a funny, intelligent man. The show has its moments, but like most of his output over the last 15 years, is very hit and miss.

From the little I've seen/heard of it, I'd say the trouble is just that it is pretty much the same show he was doing 20 years ago. And if you liked that then, then you're a lot older now, and you've seen loads of other stuff, so it doesn't work for you anymore.

It's the same effect that DW would have had if it had come back as exactly the same show it left off as.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Astonishingly, the final episode is still on tonight. To quote Bean Is A Carrot, 'What on earth are they going to make jokes about? Stephen Byers and Railtrack?'

Might be worth a watch, out of curiosity.

[Ambient Sheep]

I'm genuinely waiting for the day when an evicted unpopular Big Brother contestant, humiliated by the crowd's jeering and Davina McCall's sneering, snaps back with a comment about her erstwhile smack habit live on air.

Indeed, or the way she used to worship Eric Clapton.

Mind you, they probably have it written into their contracts that any such behaviour would result in them not getting paid (which they do, jury service rates, apparently), let alone having their precious appearances on BBLB cancelled.

[Darrell]

Indeed, or the way she used to worship Eric Clapton.

Or the GANGRENE she allegedly had with him.

[Ambient Sheep]

Indeed, or the way she used to worship Eric Clapton.

<something>

Indeed...perhaps you should think about my sentence above, and the specific word that I chose, a little more carefully..:-)

[Darrell]

Indeed...perhaps you should think about my sentence above, and the specific word that I chose, a little more carefully..:-)

Ah. Luckily, the BBC censorship people came to my rescue!

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

A few bombings gags, then. Mainly about the 'Come and have a go' way the British react to terrorism.

[Ambient Sheep]

Ah. Luckily, the BBC censorship people came to my rescue!

<broad grin>

Funnily enough though, that word probably now looks like it's hiding a far worse sin than it actually is.  :-)

[Mr. Analytical]

I'm left wondering what kind of depraved and potentially libellous activities can result in someone getting gangrene.  I've got a little list and it isn't pretty.

[Ambient Sheep]

I'm left wondering what kind of depraved and potentially libellous activities can result in someone getting gangrene.  I've got a little list and it isn't pretty.

Just in case you really think that's what's meant, it's a reference to a Monty Python sketch where they censored the word "cancer" (spoken by Carol Cleveland) with a hilariously overdubbed "GANGRENE" from John Cleese.

(And no, cancer has nothing to do with it either - just the censorship was the gag this time round.)

[Mister Cairo]

So they couldn`t show Mock The Week because of the bombings, but they could put this dross out

And Kelvin McKenzie. They even showed the "GOTCHA" headline without explaining how it gloated over the death of 300+ conscripted Argentine sailors, or challenging him on anything. How Brigstock can call himself "anti-bullshit" and not challenge that scumbag is beyond me.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Brigstocke has no balls whatsoever. He actually makes me angry - he failed to challenge the Christian Voice cunt on his shitty BBC4 vehicle, which left me fuming for a good few hours.

[The Mumbler]

Gets about these days, does Kelvin Mackenzie.  The cunt was also on This Week doing a scaremongering piece to camera about the post-bomb capital.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

It's only just struck me, actually: What's the Problem? pretty much is The 11 O'Clock show, isn't it? Same mix of no-longer-in-the-public-eye celebrities, half-hearted 'shock' humour, rubbish double entendres, etc. So why is Brigstocke making a big thing of how he's left his 11OCS days behind him?

That's the trouble with The 11OCS - people talk about it as if it's been and gone, as if it's a horrible memory from five years ago. But in spirit, it's still being transmitted.

What was that gag Brigstocke did about the new Harry Potter book - how, in the final chapter, 'Hermione finally shows Harry her golden snitch'? That's a classic 11OCS-style joke - you could imagine Iain Lee or Daisy Donovan saying it. And it got a laugh, even though it doesn't really work as an innuendo.

[Gypsum Fantastic]

It doesn't even work as a single-entendre, does it? Or is a 'snitch' something you'd find in the Harry Potter universe? If it's that thing they're chasing after in that odd sport in the first film then why would Hermoine have one of those, and want to show it to Harry anyway? He may as well have said 'vagina'.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Yes, 'golden snitch' is the ball they use in Quidditch matches. OK, it sounds like 'snatch', very good, but where does the 'golden' come in?

Maybe John Oliver should have rewritten it?

[mayer]

She's got "golden" hair, hasn't she?

It's a rubbish, old, obvious joke, but pretending that it isn't a joke or it "doesn't make sense" when it clearly does is a bit pointless.

[Gypsum Fantastic]

Sorry for being pointless, mayer. Though I honestly didn't get it.

[Bean Is A Carrot]

Hermoine's hair is red. Although it is curly.

[Morrisfan82]

Axed.

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

How long before Brigstocke writes an article for The Guardian about how he was forced to do it, I wonder.

[The Mumbler]

He probably wrote it the day after show 1 went out.  He's doubtless just forwarded it to the paper this morning.