Read Screen Burn for Free Online Page A

billed as a ‘technology journalist’, an astoundingly highfalutin way of saying I reviewed video games for a living (which in most people’s eyes is the lowest a man can sink short of playing the role of ‘anguished receiving-end farmhand’ in a bestial-porn movie).
    I was appearing on BBC News 24 at around midnight so hardly anyone was watching – fortunate, considering most of the time I didn’t know what the hell I was going on about. Computer games were simple enough, but the moment I was asked to comment on anything else we entered extremely shaky ground. Knowing mypearls of ignorance were being spilt on live television exacerbated the situation: I still get the sweats when I recall the moment the host turned to ask whether I’d seen any evidence the Internet was having a thawing effect on Chinese society, and I responded by making a long, strangulated, non-committal ‘Mmmmmnnnnnuuuurrrmmm’ – the sound of my brain drying, live on air.
    Still, I came away having learned two valuable lessons: 1) never believe anything any ‘expert’ says; and 2) whatever the appearance may be, any televised conversation is going to be about as unforced and natural as a chat between Lieutenant Columbo and a man with a blood-encrusted shovel in his toolshed.
    It’s surprising, then, that talk shows don’t go abysmally wrong more often. Just about every instance over the last twenty years in which they have done is covered in It Shouldn’t Happen to a Chat Show Host (ITV), a compilation of car-crash television which manages to entertain from beginning to end despite the presence of Gloria Hunniford (an achievement on a par with successfully climbing a spiral staircase with a dead horse strapped to your back).
    Ignore the regulation-dull talking-head soundbites; the archive footage is great. Watching talk shows derail themselves completely is immeasurably more interesting than sitting through successful ones, which tend to be as diverting as an automated platform announcement.
    Michael Aspel, so bland he probably poos boiled eggs, features heavily: for a man with a reputation as a steady albeit uninteresting hand, he’s been responsible for a surprising number of calamities. First, there’s the infamous appearance by an impossibly drunk Oliver Reed in which the bearded alco-sponge reeled around the set looking like he was about to start vomiting eels. Aspel describes it as ‘a great TV moment’, although ‘an unplanned and monumental embarrassment’ is nearer the mark.
    Still, were this a humiliation contest, his subsequent encounter with Willis, Stallone and Schwarzenegger would surely take first prize. Desperate to bag this all-star triumvirate, the producers agreed to their every demand. Unfortunately the three were hell-bent on turning the entire show into an extended commercial for Planet Hollywood, their newly founded chain of mediocre dunce-troughs.
    The result was mesmerising for all the wrong reasons: a trio of world-famous waxworks plastered head to toe in Planet Hollywood logos (Willis even had one painted on his chest) smirking openly while Aspel asked meaningless questions about burgers and cookery, at one point reduced to reading the menu out loud. He’d have retained more dignity if he’d dropped to his knees and fellated the lot of them, clapping his hands like a circus seal and playing the kazoo with his backside.
    Other highlights include Anne Bancroft drying completely for a 10-minute trial-by-awkwardness during a live edition of Wogan (all the fun of a slow-motion hanging), and the jaw-dropping moment Keith Chegwin unexpectedly confessed to alcoholism in the middle of a chirpy Richard and Judy chinwag. Anyone sheeplike enough to doubt Chegwin’s credentials as a genuine TV hero should be forced to watch this – he’s one of the most honest, couldn’t-give-a-monkey’s people on television.

Concrete and Piss     [4 November]
     
    If you like your drama gritty, uncompromising and guaranteed to