All posts in category: Entertainment/Media/Arts

Attention impoverished authors, here is a surefire bestseller with forever royalties

Why...

Struggle at the typewriter?

It seems to me the woke brigade have won in their determination to extract the humour chromosome from humans along with rejecting any disagreement with their point of view as either racist, right wing or offensive.

Ladies and Gentlemen, where is the woke version of the biggest selling book in the world? No, not Agatha Christie or the terms and conditions of Twitter… but The Bible.

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“Liar Liar Pants on Fire”

March 12, 2023
Entertainment/Media/Arts Life Politics Technology
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Why...

Is watching 24 hour news reminding me of a primary school fight over break-time sticky buns?

If you try and explain to kids today that once we only had a news reader who told us the facts, leaving us to make up our own minds as to the substance, they look at you with utter incredulity.

The trouble all started with CNN and 24 hour news. Someone or something had to fill in the time between bulletins so what could be better or cheaper than an organised debate between opposing views.

Of course that’s about as exciting as watching toast get cold. However, screaming, shouting, abuse and the odd guest even flouncing out of the studio in a strop, is ratings gold. So out went decorum, in came the forum. In fact worse than the forum, more like the Colosseum with the collective audience giving the thumbs up or down as to who can live or die.

Who cares if fact takes second place to drama? Fuel to the fire was added with the relentless advance of digital media, where people’s inability to grasp basic facts is not a valid argument against them!

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I want to be left alone - TV and magazine interviews on exactly why, to follow.

December 12, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Friends Sex Technology
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Why...

Do some people who shriek for privacy, remind me of a quote from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, me thinks”. In days gone by, certain people really meant it when they withdrew from the limelight. Every female mimic in the world vamps us as Greta Garbo famously saying “Dahlink, I vant to be left alone”. The difference then was the Swedish icon stuck to it. No frantic interviews as to why she wanted to pull away from the public, an oxymoron of an event if ever there was one. She retreated to Manhattan and her art collection. Manhattan! Can you imagine that? No seeking out the paparazzi and in the one of the most publicity hungry cities on earth. At the height of her fame and beauty she had decided to retreat from the world, possibly due to the negative reviews of The Two Faced Woman. She was 36. The title of that failed movie is pretty ironic when you look at the two-faced women since, who have protested their desire for privacy but who continue seeking the limelight and would attend even the opening of a fridge.

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🎶Memories are made of this🎵

December 4, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Finance/Law Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations Sex Sport Technology
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Why...

Can nostalgia be dangerous? Brrrm Brrrm! Walking straight onto a plane with no security checks Carrying my speargun as cabin baggage in a plane First and business class transatlantic flights with no beds Airplane tickets made by travel agents only Smoking carriages on the subway/smoking sections on a plane Asking what is the movie on the plane Hovercraft to France Railway carriages with compartments and corridors Going for a Sunday drive 101 Octane Fuel Buses with conductors Driving without a seatbelt Just a radio with a single speaker in the car Spare tyres in cars No speed limits on motorways Electric Milk Floats Parking meters fed with coins

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What will you do over the holiday season?

November 13, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Kids/Family/Relations Technology
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Why...

Does the impending holiday season now revolve exclusively around my TV? Firstly I should say that while tapping out this blog, the sky here in Malta is blue and the dogs are sunbathing in 22c/72f. Thanksgiving and Christmas are about as far from my mind as next year’s tax bill. However television commercials insist on dragging me away from my balmy reality into the fantasy of snow, turkey, goodwill to all men….and get me to start buying. I really do not understand how these companies who start commercials in November and scatterbomb the schedule for nearly two months with the same message, think this warms viewers to their cause. No matter how brilliant a commercial is, there comes a tipping point when repeated viewing turns into watching it again is worse than nails dragged down a backboard.

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For ffff fakes sake

October 10, 2022
Animals/Pets Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Technology
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Why...

Care about a fake? I note with interest a puff piece in The London Times about the Hollywood nouveau riche hiring Art Consultants. The need is because these well coiffed beings can shuffle their A list clients to the heads of the queue to get a chance to gobble up a piece of art before anyone else. It also makes A listers feel less insecure having someone there to praise or confirm their good taste or have the expert lend Hollywood Royalty some of their own. Really? I agree if you made a few zillion dollars parading around in Spandex with the superpower to create a hurricane by blowing through your nose, you don’t really have much credibility as a Serious Actor; but in the art world, like any other, money is money. If the Hulk is prepared to pay more than a Titan of Wall Street for a scribble and dots by Cy Twombly, let the richest man win. I would lend more credibility to all these art experts were it not for the unfeasibly large amount of fakes or overbid artwork that has been sold to our brave Hollywood friends! As long ago as 1989 Sylvester Stallone sued his art consultant for $5m.(Brave person. I would have been more worried about a jab and a hook rather than a law suit). Steve Martin bought a fake Heinrich Campendonk (crazy name crazy guy) as have hoards of others. It appears these consultants no more protect you from a painting by Pinocchio rather than Pollock as anyone else

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Oh, to be CEO of an energy company

September 13, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Kids/Family/Relations
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Why...

Am I feeling the teensiest bit envious today? They used to say the definition of rich was when you could not hear your spoon hit the bottom of the caviar jar. This winter in the UK, rich as Croesus will be if you can live in your home without wearing thermal underwear or not sucking on frozen TV meals like ice lollies. Meanwhile the Czars of energy will be taking a dip in their heated swimming pool followed by a nice sauna and a dinner of roasted lark’s tongues and baked Alaska, the country not the pudding. Well, my imagination is a strange thing but you get the picture. Now don’t get me wrong. If you build up a company from scratch, eat nothing but pot noodle and sleep on a bean bag for years, you deserve all the rewards you reap. But common decency also needs to step in. Do you really have to pay yourself £469m per annum (as is alleged for Bet 365 founder Denise Coates)? Greed seems to have made a comeback, making its first appearance in the 1980’s when it meant missing lunch with Gordon Gekko, look like it was a philanthropist. What is more galling is most of these energy companies are not run by the people who created them. Talented as I am sure they are, these are salaried people, whose risk reward ratio has gone potty. Someone was always going to be head of these companies. Unless I missed a trick, none of them persuaded Putin to duff up Ukraine causing a tenfold hike in what Vlad charges for a therm of gas, so resulting in the energy companies with a bonanza of profits and bonuses. The current situation for the energy companies is really serendipity.

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Disco. It still exists. Only in nightmares. Or holidays

July 17, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Sex Travel/Nature
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Why...

To add to the list of things you do on holiday and leave on holiday is dancing to disco music.

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If an airline can charge you for a seat on a plane that does not exist, why can they also charge you if you don’t appear at the gate?

July 3, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Finance/Law Friends Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
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Why...

Are some airlines hellbent on pi##ing off their passengers, whilst some notable exceptions bend over backwards to be helpful? Let’s face it. Airports in certain cities are in chaos. I recently heard of a passenger checking into First Class on an international carrier asking for his bags to go to Rio as he went to New York. An exasperated check in staff called over the manager who explained this was simply impossible. Baggage had to accompany the passenger. “Well, you managed it last time I flew to New York”, came the response, to a ripple of applause from other passengers.

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It’s not about the money … honestly

June 19, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Finance/Law Sport
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Why...

Is everyone so coy about admitting ‘I am doing it for the money?’ There is a huge brouhaha going on because a bunch of sportsmen dressed in awful tartan and plaid clothing have decided to whack a few balls around God’s largest bunker, Saudi Arabia. Now, dear reader, have a guess what attracted these already rich men to play golf there? Was it… 1. The quality and diversity of the golf courses bathed in 100 degree heat 2. The range of free alcoholic beverages on offer 3. The chance to dance the night away with local unescorted ladies in some jiving nightclub and the wonderful variety of nightlife and entertainment 4. The opportunity to mingle freely with people of either sex or sexual orientation without fear of segregation or arrest 5. Their support to the regime that chopped up poor journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, and has a habit of beheading people whose sexual orientation or religion they disagree with, bans free speech and can use torture as a punishment from courts…… or 6. Could it possibly be the multimillion dollar prize money? Whilst trying not to reveal themselves as the money grabbing venal people most of us are, the golfers have tied themselves into a Gordian knot trying to say money was the last reason they agreed to the tour. Such a shame. I would have hugely respected the man who had piped up and said: “The only reason to visit this godforsaken sandpit with stone-age rules about women and gay people is to make vast amounts of money. If people honestly believe my presence here has anything to do with supporting a repressive regime they are either dreaming or drive in Formula I.” Previous F1 events have taken place in such well known beacons of human rights as Russia, Turkey, Bahrain, China, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and AbuDhabi.

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Why a spring break is like a Pringle

May 29, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Fasion Health & Beauty Friends Kids/Family/Relations Travel/Nature
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Why...

During two years of lockdown and feeling like Papillon on Devil’s Island, locked in and no way out, my wife and I took the sports car to Sicily then on to Calabria and Puglia in the boot of Italy. The problem was we did not want to come home. After being cooped up in Malta, an island so small you could carpet it in an afternoon, the sense of freedom was overwhelming. And just like a single Pringle, a short break is not nearly enough. Had we not had two pooches waiting for us, we would be in Croatia by now on the way to Istanbul!

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Hmmmm. A gorgeous hint of bullshit, with on-the-palate flavour of Edward Lear nonsense poems and a strong aftertaste of swallowing a quaalude and The Complete Oxford dictionary. Welcome to tasting notes on wine and spirits

May 8, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Life
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Why...

Are descriptions of taste so pompous and indecipherable? I read recently that a wooden cask tub of Macallans Whisky, which was bought for £5,000 thirty years ago on a whim of I suspect some rich dipso, has just sold for over £1m! To justify this ludicrous bar bill, that works out at around £2,000 a bottle, the descriptions of the taste have reached epic proportions of nonsense. Can anyone really tell me what… “a yellow halo with a mesmerising nose with a scent of salted caramel drizzled chocolate brownie restrained with a background of fresh orange marmalade and neroli with a dying hint of tobacco leaf” really smells like? To me it stinks like an Oreo cookie covered in Robertson finest Golden Shred marmalade, sprinkled with fag ends. And that’s just the smell. The rapturous pretentious waffle goes into overdrive when describing the taste; I dare you to read this and take it seriously. “On the palate waves of sweetness carries and mingles mature oak and library leather bound book dryness. This breaks into a regal spice mix of nutmeg ginger and ground coriander, over a wash of ginger perkin biscuits, soft buttery dates and freshly baked Danish apricot pastries.” (London The Times 27 April 2022) A perkin biscuit? WTF is that? I mean, just line up six whiskies and tell me which one they are referring to. “I say, Cedric, I think it might be this one though I not sure if the spice mix is regal enough and I think sweaty sock juice mingled with old leather football boots more apt than library books.” What makes my jaw hit the floor in admiration at the effusive nonsense is the ingredients of scotch are simply malted barley, water and yeast. And yet it reads here that someone tipped half the content of the unused drawer in the kitchen into the still used to ferment the whisky. The people who write this tripe I assume double as Real Estate novelists. The people who describe bathrooms as bijoux when you have to stand on the loo to shut the door.

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Beelzebub is extremely grateful to TV’s commissioning editors

April 3, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Politics Technology
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Why...

Is streamed TV drama suddenly so boring? I don’t know if you have noticed but after a cracking first few years, Netflix, Prime and Hulu et al are abandoning main stream entertainment for more PC and worthy subjects. “Shame on you,” I hear you all cry. However, this is my blog and you are welcome to challenge me. My theory however, is very simple. Back in the day when Netflix etc. were Davids to the established broadcast Goliaths, the middle aged owners took a keen interest in the commissioning process. Not least because they simply did not have the luxury of appointing high flying commissioning editors. They sought out established producers which gave out massive hits like, Bosch, Money Heist, Sneaky Pete, The Grand Tour, Catastrophe, The Kominsky Method, The Handmaid’s Tale etc., etc. (Before you say Breaking Bad remember that was an AMC show that caught fire on Netflix due to every episode being available in one go).

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Orgies are overrated

March 20, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Sex
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Why...

Ever since some Roman Oligarch came up with the idea of a vomitorium, have orgies have gone down hill? In this little cubicle there was a flowerpot full of feathers with which you could tickle the back of your throat, throw up then go back to eating and fornicating with an empty stomach so you could start eating again… but with breath that could strip wallpaper. I mean would you snog a puke smelling orgy participant, even if it was Bradus Pittus or Angelina Jolia? The orgies from the Ottoman’s must have been as exciting as watching paint dry. One bloke, the Sultan, and dozens of members of his harem. I suspect the whole shebang lasted five minutes with most of the girls just casual observers till the Grand Vizir, seeing his Lord and master already spent, called for a time out with a round of backgammon and some squares of Turkish delight. A male fantasy but in reality all over before all the ‘toys’ have been unwrapped.

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A musical instrument is a friend for life

March 13, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Friends Kids/Family/Relations Technology
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Why...

Do parents inflict on their children the misery of learning an instrument?

Well of course the answer to the above is probably one upmanship and ignorance.

“My Johnnie is learning the recorder…”

“Ah yes, the sweet little simpleton’s flute. Miranda found that soooooo easy she is now playing the oboe…”

All this lasts as long as the parent can stand the noise. No sane person would ever inflict on themselves, a child practicing the violin. Strangling a cat produces melodic bliss in comparison.

Then of course you get trendy parents who allow kids something a bit more useful and contemporary like drums or electric guitar. That is just masochistic. An electric guitar wails, and it’s the listener who ‘gently weeps’.

Drum solos are like nails down a blackboard even at a rock concert, but performed for hours on end, it is likely to end in mass murder. In addition, unlike a pair of maracas which your child can carry anywhere, you need a lorry to lug a drum kit about and a fork lift truck to load the stuff into the lorry. And then what? If your beloved keeps it up, he or she will spend all their teenage years doing no work but instead auditioning for bands convinced they are the next Nirvana.

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It’s not over till the fat lady sings

February 21, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Politics Sport Technology
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Why...

Do we expect the TV news anchors to read the future?

Such is our insatiable appetite for news bites, we have forgotten how to sit down for a proper five course news meal.

It doesn’t matter if it’s Oscar nominees (yawn), COVID rules, Putin’s lack of rules or who is going to run as US President in the next elections, newscasters are permanently trying to predict these answers rather than wait and report them.

I am amazed that CNN or Fox News don’t have a crystal ball on their bulletin desks or their outside reporters don’t include Mystic Meg and Nostradamus. I suspect for the weather reports, these last two may be better than the systems currently employed! Last week in London I got soaked on what was supposed to be “sunny with occasional clouds”.

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Before I agree to sign on for 2022 I want to read the small print

January 4, 2022
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends
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Why...

It is good riddance to bad rubbish that was 2021. Everyone seems to have suffered. In my case, multiple surgeries, a law suit and a multi-coloured silk shirt my wife decided looked like a kaftan on me and nearly led to divorce!

I used to think ‘annus horribilis’ was a polite way of describing a bad case of piles. However, 2021 will take some beating as a pretty grim year and in fact a pretty grim decade. The only roaring of this Century 20’s is from frustrated revellers and travellers!

Much as I look forward to the sunny uplands of 2022, I can envision the lookalike of Harry Potter character Dobby, a.k.a Putin taking a bite out of the Ukraine and depending on the West’s reaction, Panda Xi helping himself to a new form of Chinese takeaway, Taiwan.

Then we have a Winter Olympics in which all western dignitaries have stamped their diplomatic foot and refused to partake of Dimsum and a glass of Baijiu with the hosts. In addition, despite locking down anything that moves, COVID seems intent on derailing that spectacle.

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Vital academic study shows The Hulk has piles

Why...

Are academics allowed to waste resources on utterly pointless research.

The University of Queenstown have been working diligently on the health issues of Marvel Superheroes. Yup that’s right, they spent hours of University time to come to the following conclusions after reviewers watched 24 Marvel films… the superheroes would all face chronic conditions in old age. The Hulk’s excessive weight and permanent anger means he is at risk to a series of diseases, from heart attacks and dementia to maybe piles. Black Widow’s traumatic childhood means she is at increased risk of becoming physically and mentally ill. Spider Man works at night as a teenager which means he is not getting the recommended eight hours of sleep which leads to health problems, obesity and unintentional injuries. So now it’s woke problems that affect fictional characters. Anger, lack of eight hours sleep and traumatic childhood. You couldn’t make this up… well, you don’t need to. It’s research into made up people. Academics have gone loopy.

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Whatever happened to the three martini lunch?

September 26, 2021
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Friends Kids/Family/Relations
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Why...

Have we let naked ambition put cordial working relationships on a strict diet? Of course I blame purple braces, red Porsches and Gordon Gekko. The first casualty from Big Bang in the 1980’s was the three martini lunch. If lunch was for wimps, then count me in (if that’s no too much trouble)! I remember my early days in the City working in Lloyd’s Insurance market on Kidnap and Ransom insurance. Twice a year I would have lunch in the Directors boardroom at Fenchurch Street Brokers with an underwriter who got deeply offended if after cocktails then wine, we did not finish off a bottle of port. Of course we were fried as owls and no work was done that afternoon, but we never had a row, always got our man back if someone was kidnapped and the world shone brightly through the gimlet of the bi-annual assault on our livers. Could this Underwriter have been a touch richer, more ruthless and generate more moohlah for his company? Possibly? But then I probably would not have wanted to spend time with him or give him my business. In 1980 everything suddenly got serious. Fun was out as the new slave drivers assured us no one could possibly get rich being a bit silly. I suppose that’s one reason why shortly after Big Bang I left the City and ended up working for a man who had made millions sticking his hand up a Frog’s bottom. Jim Henson and The Muppets were back then an Entertainment behemoth... and not that we ever overindulged in anything to the detriment of that wonderful company, but indulge we all did. And it all (like Kermit) went along swimmingly. Chalk one up to the silly people.

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“I would rather cry in my Rolls-Royce than laugh on a bicycle” - Patrizia Reggiani, the notoriously greedy wife to Maurizio Gucci… whom she murdered. I agree

June 13, 2021
Entertainment/Media/Arts Food & Drink Politics Sex
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Why...

Whoever said the best things in life are free is an idiot. He or she probably believes stars are God’s daisy chain or that rain is just liquid sunshine.

Before you all leap to fire emails at me like Exocet missiles, note the word things.

Love, friendship, good health, a decent moral compass, humour, compassion etc… yes they are the building blocks of happiness… but not things.

Things are what you can touch, be it jets, yachts, mansions, jewellery, caviar, Vintage Krug; even a pair of gravity defying boobs or a six pack. In each case they are eye-wateringly expensive. In fact, the only limit is the size of your wallet and personal greed or lack of taste or real sense of self worth.

However, some of these excesses imbue in me not only head shaking incredulity but equally a feeling of moral and intellectual superiority that the super rich can be super stupid. I remember meeting one of the Producers of Dallas who told me the secret to it’s success (and for the same reason Dynasty) was:

“There is nothing more satisfying than the eye-candy of rich people lives and toys then to watch them screw up a situation you think you could handle better yourself.”

Things like Vicuña cod pieces for $5,000 or a Hammacher Schlemmer single ice cube maker for $759.95 are not on my wish list now and if I won the Lottery, I cannot see they would ever be.

..and another thing (continue to read this post)

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All posts in category: Entertainment/Media/Arts

Attention impoverished authors, here is a surefire bestseller with forever royalties

Why...

“Liar Liar Pants on Fire”

Why...

I want to be left alone - TV and magazine interviews on exactly why, to follow.

Why...

🎶Memories are made of this🎵

Why...

What will you do over the holiday season?

Why...

For ffff fakes sake

Why...

Oh, to be CEO of an energy company

Why...

Disco. It still exists. Only in nightmares. Or holidays

Why...

If an airline can charge you for a seat on a plane that does not exist, why can they also charge you if you don’t appear at the gate?

Why...

It’s not about the money … honestly

Why...

Why a spring break is like a Pringle

Why...

Hmmmm. A gorgeous hint of bullshit, with on-the-palate flavour of Edward Lear nonsense poems and a strong aftertaste of swallowing a quaalude and The Complete Oxford dictionary. Welcome to tasting notes on wine and spirits

Why...

Beelzebub is extremely grateful to TV’s commissioning editors

Why...

Orgies are overrated

Why...

A musical instrument is a friend for life

Why...

It’s not over till the fat lady sings

Why...

Before I agree to sign on for 2022 I want to read the small print

Why...

Vital academic study shows The Hulk has piles

Why...

Whatever happened to the three martini lunch?

Why...

“I would rather cry in my Rolls-Royce than laugh on a bicycle” - Patrizia Reggiani, the notoriously greedy wife to Maurizio Gucci… whom she murdered. I agree

Why...