Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: Advertising

Dear God, how I'd love to watch TV round Charlie Brooker's house, spitting bile at anyone and everyone. We could be best friends, I know it! Take my calls, Charlie! Please!
Ahem. I liked last weeks show about Britainia High, and this weeks show about advertising. I liked seeing the ads for cigs and the 60s ads. I liked him refering to someone as a 'twatamaboob' and dissing Carol Vorderman for hawking loans to the Jeremy Kyle generation.
Easily the best thing on TV by a mile, and also my favourite columnist (although I'm crazy for American sex advice columnist Dan Savage right now too- his advice is amazing, surely he can't be in the paper over there, it's too filthy!)
But I digress. I even had a DREAM about Charlie Brooker the other night and he was giving me the brush off. Sob. I LOVE the fact he has Aisleyne in his show too, it's such a piss-take. I'm sure it pisses people off and that's why it's good. Know yourself!
People say CB is angry, and he is, but he's also just... right. About everything. And just funny, and a great writer. But he still looks like Max Branning.
PS. I know you're meant to but I fucking hate the poetry bit.

Rant: The London Paper- Make-up on the tube (shock horror!)

Firstly, I hate the columns in the London Paper. You are not a writer because you think you’ve made some genius point about something stupid that no one outside London cares about anyway. You can’t write. You’re not funny. You're a stereotype. But you have ENRAGED me, thus, I will reply here, on my own terms, in my fantabulous blog.
Yesterday one of the readers wrote a lazy column about the so-awful-it-must-be-stopped-before-someone-dies INJUSTICE of people putting make up on on the tube. Except of course it’s not ‘people’ who do that, it’s women. A woman hating on other women! Well I never, what a shock. Women deal in misogyny so beautifully these days that we hardly need men to do it for us.
Apart from the fact the column is badly-written (that’s a given), I do not understand the complaint. I literally cannot understand it whatsoever. Talk of ‘modesty’ is a cloak for oppression as far as I’m concerned. This dimwit compares putting on make up to ‘cleaning your teeth’ on the tube. I’d like to see you try it, darling. (Ooh I came over all Littlejohn then, pet!) ‘Bulging make up bags!’ Whatever next? Bulging rucksacks full of bombs would be preferably, presumably. Also, ‘like wildfire’ is the laziest description ever. Don't even ATTEMPT to write if this is the kind of crap you are going to churn out.
If anything, I actually think I should be COMMENDED for putting my make up on on the tube. I’d like to see you do liquid eyeliner in the exact five seconds the train becomes stationary. In fact, I think it’s sexy when I see women putting make up on on the tube. I think they look cool, and it’s fascinating to see people’s routines. If you’re being ‘subjected to it’; try looking at something else. Read a book, you idiot. You don’t need to worry about me poking my eye out; I do this every morning, just to annoy clucking bores like you.
Things I don’t like to look at on the tube; other people’s armpits, babies, people kissing, people picking their nose, people eating KFC, JKFC and PFC, sanctimonious people tutting at someone putting a bit of lipstick on, people reading their papers on someone else’s back, people turning up their shit RnB music on their crappy mp3 players. Do you hear me complaining? Yes you do, but only because you have driven me to it!
I don’t WANT to get up early to put make up on. I want to stay in bed for five minutes longer. What kind of sadist wants to get out of bed in the mornings? I hate waiting at platforms, so if I can do my mascara whilst you stand there like a numpty fretting about how you’re going to squeeze into the next carriage, who wins? I got up late, and I’m filling in time, not getting stressed. I'm also small enough to fit into that tiny gap in front of you. Sweet.
As for the point that we are ‘ruining the illusion’, oh dear; are you the type of person who won’t let your boyfriend see you without make up on? Feminism lives! Sex with the lights off, is it?It’s not an illusion in my case, I don’t wipe my make up off at night and turn into a gargoyle, I don’t trowel it on to hide something. It’s merely a quick, painless enhancement.
‘White wine spritzers’- somebody shoot me. Also that last paragraph makes no sense either. Who are you, Bridget Jones?
I admit this is a particular hot topic of mine at the moment; I recently had a row on a messageboard about it (yeah, I don’t get out much, because people like the person who wrote this column are everywhere)! Morrissey, on one of his many underrated b-sides, sang ‘If you don’t like me, don’t look at me. There must be somebody else who can take your gaze away.’ And I couldn’t agree more. Look at some braindead bloke instead. You'll still be getting off alone because you're uptight and annoying.

You are Not a Writer

Being on telly, getting your boobs done, being in a band: none of these things give you any sort of writing credentials. Indeed, even writing credentials don't give you writing credentials unless you can- wait for it- actually write. There are a trillion people who think they can write. There are creative writers everywhere churning out complete and utter drivel and expecting it to outsell the Bible. Poets are the worst- any old cobbled together rhyming or non-rhyming pap about death or kittens and they declare it poetry. I never tell people I write poetry because although my poetry is half-decent, anyone who has never seen it will assume perfectly reasonably that it is useless because of they 99% of other poetry that came before it.
The irony is, despite a plethora of nutcases declaring themselves to be literary geniuses whilst churning out shit, every day you will get an effortless email or even a text message from a friend that is one billion percent (thank you, Simon Cowell) more creative and well-written than anything these 'writers' could dream of. Yet your genius friend would never call themselves a writer.
So why then, am I subjected to Michelle Heaton of Liberty X fame 'writing' a column in the magazine in the middle of OK magazine? Answer: because I buy OK magazine. Admittedly, it is my own fault. But I tolerate Kerry Katona's 'the papers hate me! I don't drink nuffink! My husband is a good-looking man whom won't let me own my own mobile and definitely won't run off with another woman and all my money in six months!' drivel (hold on, Katona would never use the word 'whom'). I even allow Jordan's (what qualifies her to be a psychotherapist?) trite problem page, but Heaton's column is just a smack in the mouth too far.
SHE HAS NO OPINION ON ANYTHING.
It's all 'I hope Kylie's feeling better' and 'I hope Robbie is Ok after rehab' and 'I hope Britney's hair grows back quickly'. URGH. This is not what we want to hear from a columnist, and she's messing it up because she's NOT A WRITER. Half her double page spread is a picture of her with her ridiculous eyebrows leering out. And if it's not inane wittering about how much she loves everyone and everything it's unashamed plugs of her band or her latest TV show or she rambles on about her boring husband whom she trapped into marriage.
Michelle Heaton: you are not a writer. You aren't even a singer really, but hey, you're not stepping on my toes churning out rubbish pop music. Your column however, offends my sensibilities.
Great writers are heroic. Morrissey, Conor Oberst, Charlie Brooker, Grace Dent, that guy off http://www.wwtd.com/ and Dr David Thorpe off www.somethingawful.com/yourbandsucks These are writers.
Michelle Heaton or Michelle Scott-Lee or whoever the fuck you are now. It won't be long before you're sacked. Unfortunately no one good will take your place because all the cool people swear too much, or are lyricists or on the internet, not sandwiched grotesquely between Katona and Jordan, sucking the souls of the too-dumb-to-question-it masses.