ITV, apparently having decided its output is so high quality it can waste money on dotcom acquisitions, has decided to spend £120 million on Friends Reunited. Nutters.
Does anyone really bother with Friends Reunited any more? I haven’t updated my entry in a year. Neither has anyone else at any of the schools, clubs, workplaces, etc that I went to. The bulletin boards aren’t clogged up with people chatting. None of the people who failed to sign up when it was at its peak have had a change of heart recently.
It’s dead. It’s so 2001-2003.
If ITV really has that much money to throw around, perhaps it might like to spend more on decent programming and its ITN contract so that the latter’s journalists can afford to eat food for a change.
Year: 2005
Gordon Ramsay’s manly recipes
I’ve signed up for tickets for The F Word, Gordon Ramsay’s cooking and chat show. Unlike the BBC’s tickets request service, this required filling out about a dozen questions, including “Favourite Chef” (Gordon, of course), “Favourite meal ever had” (Bradley Ogden’s at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. That was some tasty food) and profession (see how well “Freelance journalist” goes down).
H&M=S&M. Well, S anyway.
I found the longest 10 minutes of my life tonight. They were hidden between 6.40pm and 6.50pm at Greenwich filmworks. Who’d have thought it?
I’d gone to see Serenity but found anything but (do you like what I did there?). Serenity itself was nice enough, although I felt like I’d walked in during act three of a play and all the good stuff had already happened. The first two acts must have been good, because the audience at the back were snivelling away like nobody’s business by the end. Clearly, they knew something I didn’t.
No, the particular problem I had was with an advert: H&M’s Romeo & Juliet. Not only was it awful, a “romantic”, musical jeans advert based around drive-by shootings (!), it just went on forever. A few minutes in, people were gnawing their own legs off for relief. When it finished, there were audible sighs of relief and bemusement something that bad had been foisted on us.
A Google search reveals that not only is this ad reviled around the world, it has been hastily dropped in Canada. It’s even caused people who previously liked the company, to despise them.
Yes, friends, it really is that bad. If you go to see Serenity, sneak in after the ads if you can.
Comedic good news for the other place
Armando Ianucci is to be Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University, the Media Guardian reports. I’m slightly surprised he’d he sign up for a post sponsored by Rupert Murdoch and News International, but at least he’s smart enough for the job. His radio work is still some of the funniest around, although his Channel 4 show a few years back was significantly lacking. We need more Armandos.
Bloody Goldfrapp
Today’s “tune I really wish I could get out of my head, even though I really rather like it” is Goldfrapp’s Number One, available in the iTunes Music Store and on Amazon. It’s really rather good and it makes you wonder why she’s been unknown for so long when she’s been putting stuff like this out for ages. Still, not as long as Pulp, hey?