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May 09 2012
Two Tusks of Vengeance
TCAF was amazing!!!
Just thought I’d get that out of the way. To all of you who came out to see me, it was a pleasure. That show is my favourite of the year, filled with interesting, creative people – and I’m not just talking about the exhibitors. The attendees are always well-read and pointing me in the direction of interesting new things to check out. Can’t wait ’til next year’s show.
I was a late addition to the guest list, so many didn’t know I was even there, but if you follow me on Twitter or the Abominable Facebook group, I try to post dates and info there to keep everyone informed. AND it helps spread the word about the comic, which is also nice.
That’s all for now! Tune in next week as the wild boar hunt continues…
May 05 2012
May 03 2012
Toronto!
Did you know that the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is the best comics-related show of the year? Because it is!
I missed it last year due to baby-rearing, but I’ll be there this weekend (May 5-6) to make up for it, with a strong drawing arm and lots of books and t-shirts for sale.
If you’re in or near Toronto, please come by and check out the show. There are so many wonderful artists, writers and publishers attending (including Jeff Smith, one of my heroes!), there’s a whole section of the show just for kids, and it’s FREE. FREE! All weekend!
All of the relevant info can be found here.
See you soon!
April 29 2012
What is the difference between The Hobbit and the news? Not as much as there should be | Charlie Brooker
News reports are looking more like movies – and movies are looking more like news reports. How are we supposed to tell them apart?
Quick, close your eyes for a second and picture the 1920s. What did you see? If you're anything like me, the projectionist in your head put on a newsreel consisting of black-and-white footage of flappers doing the Charleston, or a queue of men in flat caps patiently waiting for the great depression to kick off in earnest. And chances are the footage was jittery and slightly speeded-up.
It's a curious testament to the power of moving pictures that you have to strain to remember that in reality, people walked at a normal pace back then. The population didn't skitter about like restless insects. If the 20s had actually unfolded at the speed they appear to in archive footage, the decade would've ended early, somewhere in the middle of 1925, thereby causing a five-year "time gap" during which everyone would have to stand perfectly still for fear of creating an "event" that might burst the bubble, sucking in all the neighbouring matter in the universe. Or something like that. Ask Doctor Who, he's the expert.
Our perception of eras seems chiefly dependent on the limitations of the technology that records them. The 20s are speeded up in our heads because the cameras were cranked by hand, creating an unnaturally hasty frame-rate. The 40s, however, are in part characterised by the crackly analogue sound that accompanies most war footage. The 50s are a combination of starchy monochrome US shows and lush cinematic Eastmancolor that stretches into the 60s: this is the era of glamour and dreams, and a colour palette Mad Men seeks to emulate. The 70s have a raw deal: they seem to chiefly exist in the form of grim, murky 16mm news footage of people gazing sullenly at acres of brown wallpaper. With the sole exception of the Wombles, everyone in 70s footage looks as if they're being held there against their will.
Then in the 80s, our memories are transferred on to video, lending them a shiny, slightly tinny feel. The analogue video age lasts until roughly the turn of the century, at which point everything starts turning crisp and widescreen.
Around 2005 things start making the transition to HD – and then we get to today, and a weird new trend is emerging. I first noticed it some time around the Egyptian revolution, when I was suddenly struck by a Sky News report from Cairo that looked almost precisely like a movie. Not in terms of action (although that helped – there were people rioting on camelback), but in terms of picture quality. It seemed to be shot using fancy lenses. The depth of field was different to standard news reports, which traditionally tend to have everything in focus at once, and it appeared to be running at a filmic 24 frames per second. The end result was that it resembled a sleek advert framing the Arab Spring as a lifestyle choice. I kept expecting it to cut to a Pepsi Max pack shot.
Since then, I've noticed similarly glossy-looking reports popping up on Newsnight and the like, so it may not be long until this is the norm. I'm guessing it's a practical decision rather than an artistic one: this is how the new ultra-portable, ultra-useful digital cameras make things look: everything's a teeny bit polished, a teeny bit Instagrammed. You see it everywhere: even Holby City looks like a movie these days. The news is just following suit.
And oddly, this coincides with reports that an audience of cult movie buffs reacted badly to test footage from Peter Jackson's forthcoming Hobbit movie. The Hobbit is shot at 48 frames per second – twice as many frames as standard films. The studio claims this gives it an unparalleled fluidity. The viewers complained it was too smooth – like raw video. Some said it looked like daytime TV. What they meant, I guess, is that it seemed too "real", and therefore inherently underwhelming. The traditional cinematic frame rate lends everything a comforting, unreal and faintly velvety feel, whereas the crisper motion of video seems closer to reality, and therefore intrinsically more harsh and pedestrian. Therefore watching The Hobbit at 48 frames per second might feel like watching an edition of Homes Under the Hammer starring Bilbo Baggins (admittedly, every edition of Homes Under the Hammer features someone who looks like Bilbo Baggins, but you get my drift).
All of which means we may be nearing a frankly baffling position where TV news reports look more like traditional movies, and movies look more like traditional TV news reports. It's going to be harder than ever to tell the two apart, especially when you've got crossover stars such as George Clooney or Hugh Grant seamlessly flitting between the two. Soon the news will be broadcast in 3D and the only way you'll be able to distinguish it from Hollywood cinema is to wait till the end to see if it ends with a CGi bunny in sunglasses dancing to a Black Eyed Peas cover version of a song you used to like, or a harrowing shot of an open grave stuffed with decaying corpses. Both of which tend to put me off my popcorn.
Thankfully, for the sake of our collective sanity, the star-studded Leveson Inquiry has had the decency to commit to appalling production values. It's nothing but witnesses burbling away in front of a dull white wall, intercut with one badly framed shot of a lawyer. It looks like a soap opera shot on a shoestring by a local TV channel in Guernsey circa 1989, and for this alone it should be applauded. Call me old-fashioned, but I think news should look like news, and hobbits should look like hobbits – and never the twain shall meet.
April 28 2012
An appetite for self-improvement is more embarrassing than overeating | David Mitchell
Getting help with weight loss is a confession of weakness and need that few are comfortable displaying publicly
There are lean times ahead for Britain's high streets: Weight Watchers is opening a chain of shops. And, if you hated that joke, take comfort from the fact that its days are numbered. As obesity rather than thinness becomes established as the west's poverty signifier, lean-equals-broke will have no resonance in the shiny, sweaty, globulous and wheezing future.
The rich thincats of the decades to come will pay good money to remain skinny, and the aspirant plump to become so, which is presumably why Weight Watchers thinks it's on to a winner with these new "Lifestyle Centres", which will provide one-to-one weight-loss consultations and "express weigh-ins" and in general will, as spokesman Chris Stirk puts it, "offer a more personalised and flexible service for busy people like working mums and office workers who can pop in when they have time".
You can see the way they're styling themselves: it's weight loss for today's busy, connected, results-orientated fat person. It's for the fatty on the move, wobbling dynamically from one meeting to the next: they've only got time to hop on those scales and get a pep talk from a dietician, before whizzing off to their next appointment, executive moo moo billowing in their wake. If they haven't had time for lunch (unlikely but possible), they might get one of the centres' "grab and go" meals, such as their 243-calorie prawn mayonnaise sandwich, which would probably leave you hungry, but that's OK because, on a British high street, there's bound to be a KFC next door.
But will this catch on? Won't people be embarrassed to be seen wandering into a high-street weight-loss centre, however much it adopts the rhetoric of business class? Going there is still an admission that you're worried about your weight, of lack of confidence. In normal-sized people this might betray poor self-esteem; in the skinny, it looks anorexic; and, even in the demonstrably obese, it would be a sign that they're not as proud of "who they are" as we're all supposed to be nowadays. Getting help with weight loss is a brave confession of weakness and need – but few are comfortable displaying those traits publicly. That's why so many dirty-video stores went out of business because of the internet, while Waterstones limps on. There aren't many of us who'd be happy to stride openly from the sex shop to the Lifestyle Centre, proclaiming to the world: "Yeah, I'm a fat guy who wanks – deal with it."
A survey into women's attitudes to exercise conducted for mental health charity Mind suggests this sort of embarrassment might be a problem for the centres. More than half of those questioned said they were too self-conscious to exercise in public. Fears of unforgiving Lycra, "wobbly bits", sweating or going red, lead them to try to get fit, if they try at all, very early in the morning or late at night. So that's why everyone you see jogging looks intimidatingly fit! The flabby do their running under cover of darkness.
It's easy to understand their feelings. Watching a fat or unfit person jog evokes two main responses. First, it's funny – in the way a pratfall is funny. It's a physical misfortune that's happening to somebody else. The sweaty, panting discomfort, the glazed-over expression of dread, the pink-and-cerise-pocked face, the hilariously slow rate of progress that has nevertheless proved so exhausting, the thought of the cakes and ale that went before – you want to laugh. And the runner knows you want to laugh.
Worse still is the other simultaneous response: sympathy, empathy, even pity. Most of us have been there or think, if we broke into a run, we'd soon find ourselves there. But those feelings are seldom welcomed, any more than it is soothing when you bump your head for someone to say: "Ooh, that must have hurt!" On some deep evolutionary level, we reject this pity – maybe we sense that it leads gradually but inevitably to people concluding that we may be surplus to the tribe's requirements.
Our aversion to sympathy for quite trivial misfortunes is laid bare when you watch someone narrowly miss a train or bus. Almost everyone, in the moment it becomes clear they're not going to catch it, tries to make it look like they didn't really want to. "It's fine, I was just kind of jogging anyway – I'd rather get the next one" is what they're desperate to convey, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. Even those who go the other way and express annoyance usually do it in a slightly performed way; they are portraying an annoyed person, but concealing their true desire, which, more than to have caught the train or bus, is now for the ground to swallow them up. It is very rare to see annoyance unselfconsciously or unashamedly expressed in those moments – I certainly can't do it myself.
As a species, we seem much more comfortable with implausible shows of empty pride than unremarkable admissions of weakness. This may explain the existence of the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, which offers free meals to anyone weighing over 25 stone, and where last week a woman suffered a cardiac arrest while eating one of their "double bypass burgers". She was also drinking a margarita and smoking a cigarette, but was being abstemious compared to the establishment's previous heart-attack victim, a man tucking into a "triple bypass burger" in February. Presumably one of the things those customers are trying to say is: "We know what we're doing – we're going into this with our eyes open. We're unafraid, we're not running away from anything, and that's not just because we'd immediately be drenched in sweat if we tried."
We humans have a deeply conservative instinct that we should know our place: paupers should stay in hovels and kings on thrones. Gyms should be full of fit people exercising, diners full of fat ones eating. Everyone just being and no one trying. It's the trying, the aspiration, that people find threatening – trying to get a better job, move somewhere nicer, lose weight. And that's why those who are doing it feel vulnerable.
Can Weight Watchers outlets thrive on the high street? I hope so, but I doubt it. More than they're ashamed of over-eating or buying pornography or missing a train, people are ashamed of wanting to change themselves. They fear they can't and that others will resent the attempt. That's why fat people exercise by night.
April 25 2012
Royal Hunt
This should be interesting. I hope he fares better in his hunt than Robert Baratheon, right everybody? Ha ha!
That’s some Game of Thrones humour for y’all right there.
ahem.
Anyway, here’s a Book Update: if you were one of the many people who ordered a Sketch Edition of Abominable Book One, know that I am almost finished drawing in them and they’ll ship very soon. I already did a big shipment a couple of weeks ago, but if you’ve been waiting, hang tight. It won’t be much longer.
Until next week…
April 22 2012
Not excited by the Olympics? Then thank God for the sponsors | Charlie Brooker
British people don't appear to care about the Games, so it's handy there are the Olympic sponsors to help us get into the spirit of things
The Olympic games trundle ever closer, and already you can smell the excitement in the air, because it's being wafted in by gigantic corporate excitement blowers. Try as they might to engage us, we're not on tenterhooks yet. On paper it's virtually illegal to be anything other than thrilled to self-pissing point at the prospect of hours of running, jumping, swimming etc filling our minds and airwaves for several weeks, but in reality, the majority of Britons appear to be acknowledging the forthcoming games with little more than an offhand shrug. We're just not that arsed – not right now, anyway. That'll change the moment any of our athletes gets within sniffing distance of any kind of medal – then it'll be all cheering and jubilant BBC montages – but until then we're being very British about the whole thing by largely ignoring it, aside from the odd quiet moan about the negative effect it'll have on the traffic.
It'd be worrisome if this low-level grumpiness extended into the Games themselves: if the crowd audibly tutted whenever anyone other than Britain won, and the medals were handed over by an official displaying the same vaguely begrudging air as a checkout assistant passing you a replacement carrier bag when the first one splits. That's definitely how we would behave if we didn't have guests. Hopefully instead we'll plaster on a fake smile for our overseas visitors, and after 10 minutes forget we were faking and actively start to enjoy the whole thing. But what if that doesn't happen? How else can we get into the spirit of the Games?
Well, for starters we could make that fake smile frosty-white by brushing our teeth with an Oral-B electric toothbrush. "Oral-B is getting behind the London 2012 Olympics," cheers the Boots website. "Share the excitement with their Professional Care 500 floss action electric toothbrush." Yes: the exhilaration, the agony, the sheer elation experienced by athletes operating at the peak of their physical aptitude – all this can be yours in the form of a vibrating twig you stick in your mouth.
In case you think the mere notion of an official Olympic electric toothbrush is absurd, remember: athletes need clean teeth to attain peak performance. Steve Ovett was the favourite to win the 1500m at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but was hopelessly weighed down by a heavy buildup of plaque that had accumulated in his mouth in the months leading up to the contest, allowing Sebastian Coe to snatch the gold.
Oral-B's official Olympic toothbrush exists because its parent company, Procter & Gamble, has a sponsorship deal enabling it to associate all its products with the Games. That's why if you look up Viakal limescale remover on a supermarket website, the famous five interlocking rings pop up alongside it. This in no way cheapens the Olympic emblem, which traditionally symbolises global unity, peaceful competition and gleaming stainless steel shower baskets.
When you're done sprucing up your teeth and your bathroom, you could further embrace the Olympic spirit by slurping a Coca-Cola (official Olympic drink) followed by a Twirl from Cadbury's (official Olympic snack provider). Or really go the whole hog and polish off a couple of Sausage-and-Egg McMuffins at your local McDonald's (official Olympic restaurant), after which you should be ready to represent Britain in the 400-litre diarrhoea.
I've never understood why firms are prepared to shell out a fortune simply to refer to the Olympics in their advertising, but then I've always been mildly baffled by the popularity of sport full-stop. I also never understood why Gillette paid Tiger Woods, a man famous for hitting balls with a stick, a huge amount of money to promote scraping a bit of sharp metal across your face – only to sideline him when it became apparent that as well as hitting balls with a stick, he had been inserting his penis into as many different women as possible, an aspiration he presumably shared with the vast majority of Gillette's customers.
My natural inclination is to find the wave of "official" branding vaguely sinister, but on reflection it's actually rather touching the way these companies seem to earnestly believe their consumers give a toss. Will anyone in the country choose a Dairy Milk over a Yorkie just because the former has the Olympic rings printed on the wrapper? After all, now that it appears alongside everything from toothbrushes to Viakal, the official Olympic iconography has become just another bit of background visual noise – like the Keep Britain Tidy icon, or a barcode. Your brain filters it out before your mind even notices it was there in the first place. If I was Adidas (official Team GB Olympic outfitters), I'd be furious. At least sportswear has some connection to the traditional Olympic ideal of people from far-flung corners of the Earth engaging in hard physical graft for little financial reward, especially if it turns out it was made in an Indonesian sweatshop.
Instead, the Olympic rings have been whored around so much they've become valueless: a status symbol for a few corporations to tote like a badge for several weeks, impressing almost no one except themselves. It's bizarre, and it's increasingly far removed from the event itself, which, last time I checked, chiefly involves running around and jumping over things. And, if you're British, moaning about the traffic.
April 21 2012
Give a minicab man a few column inches and he'll take a whole bus lane
The chairman of London-based minicab firm Addison Lee has used the company's in-cab magazine to launch a series of eye-catching polemics
Are you a regular reader of the "Chairman's Column"? I can heartily recommend it. You may not even have heard of it. It's the short opinion piece near the front of the quarterly in-cab magazine Add Lib, which you'll find in all cars affiliated to Addison Lee plc, a large London-based minicab firm. It's written by the chairman of the company, John Griffin. If you live outside London or don't use minicabs, I'm happy to report that it's available online via the company's website.
I just love the fact of it. Add Lib is not a political publication. It's a bit of fluff to read in the car while the driver slavishly follows the satnav through gridlock – it's a glossy compilation of retail opportunities. So when, a couple of pages in, you stumble across a short but highly politically opinionated article by the bloke who runs the company, it's something of a surprise. Yet it refuses to explain itself. There it is, among the reprinted press releases about new bars and shoe shops and the photos of models and celebrities: the words "Chairman's Column" with a picture of John Griffin, looking grumpy in glasses and a suit, and then a piquant taste of his views. As if it's long been part of the duties of someone running a minicab firm to write a regular column about topical issues. As if, like the Queen's Christmas broadcast, it was a regrettable and unavoidable duty which it would be churlish of him not to fulfil. As if chairman and column went together like best man and speech or auctioneer and gavel.
He's broached a wide range of subjects over the years. London politics: "During the last mayoral election it seemed that the real issue was getting rid of Ken and his Trotsky agenda." The war on drugs: "We need to start asking the question as to what visible means of support these dealers can point to which has led them to such good circumstances. If they fail to offer a satisfactory explanation, then we must assume that their expensive items are from the proceeds of criminal activity." Even phone hacking: "It does not come as a surprise to me that any journalist worth his salt would take advantage of this opportunity."
Eye-catching stuff, I'm sure you'll agree: Ken Livingstone's stewardship of London through eight years of an insane financial services boom was in fact a communist regime. The solution to the drugs problem is to arrest young people who look incongruously wealthy. Phone hacking was just a creditable sign of initiative. It's not hugely unusual that he holds these views – just that he's so desperate for a context in which to express them. Thank God he doesn't drive a cab.
His latest piece is a real humdinger. Perhaps appropriately for an authority figure among drivers, it's a diatribe against cyclists. His sympathy lies with the motorist who might quite understandably fail to spot "a granny wobbling to avoid a pothole or a rain drain" and thus find themselves "guilty of failing to anticipate that this was somebody on her maiden voyage into the abyss". He bemoans cyclists' lack of training, insurance, impact bars, air bags and road tax liability, and ends: "It is time for us to say to cyclists 'You want to join our gang, get trained and pay up'." (His punctuation, not mine.)
This is classic Griffin. A more oleaginous arguer might have conjured up an unsympathetic cyclist: a cocky shades-wearing courier, weaving between cars while listening to his iPod, or a self-promoting politician surrounded by obliging paps and tailed by his ministerial car. But not Griffin – he's happy to go straight for the granny: the stupid, myopic, shaky old biddy, wobbling around the road in the way of minicabs, who doesn't even have the goodness to look where she's going, get a driving licence or buy a fully taxed Lamborghini. The thought that she, and cyclists in general, probably don't want to join his "gang" simply doesn't occur to him.
This guy is a major talent. I've often wondered when he'd break through. Well, it happened last week when Griffin wrote a letter to all 3,500 Addison Lee drivers exhorting them to use London's bus lanes. They're reserved for buses and black cabs so this is illegal. But Griffin doesn't see it that way: "The current bus lane legislation is anti-competitive and unfairly discriminates against the millions of passengers that use Addison Lee."
At last he's found a big enough fan to throw shit at. Amid consternation from cyclists' groups, taxi drivers and Transport for London, it emerged that Addison Lee has donated £250,000 to the Conservative party and Griffin has personally lobbied former transport secretary Philip Hammond. Meanwhile several government departments are continuing to patronise Addison Lee.
I can understand why. It's a very reliable service for anyone visiting the capital. Using a smartphone, you can effectively hail an Addison Lee car in minutes, and some of the drivers even know their way round London. The others are often as amenable to following a passenger's directions as those being barked out by their in-car machines. It's a bit expensive but not terribly expensive which, in London, is the closest you get to the sensation of a bargain.
Griffin's suggestion that his drivers have a right to the same privileges as proper cabbies who've done "the Knowledge" is, of course, offensive. But that's exactly what he means it to be. He must be one of those men who can only unwind by winding people up. I'd say that he wasn't a very nice fellow if I thought he was even momentarily concerned with coming across as one. But he can't be stupid enough not to know how his pronouncements will make him seem.
Like Michael O'Leary's strategy with Ryanair, this could be very effective. We don't need to like the guy who runs the minicab firm we use – just to feel that the company is well run and will get us from A to B as quickly as possible. Griffin's attempt to appropriate the bus lanes makes us think exactly that.
It's ridiculous to claim that bus lane rules discriminate against "the millions of passengers that use Addison Lee", as if they didn't have every right to get on a bus. It's not an argument that holds up for a second. Except if, in that second, you're late, sitting in a minicab in stationary traffic, and enviously eying the empty bus lane to your left. In those moments of towering selfishness, Griffin's arguments have real eloquence.
April 18 2012
Courting Disaster
Look, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m sure this girl is perfectly nice.
April 15 2012
Charlie Brooker: Some people are gay in space. Get over it
Video game players can now identify their characters as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Which is wonderful, unless you're a sad homophobe
It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They're seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man's imaginary penis rises from the murk, bowing ominously in your direction, sensing your discomfort. Laughing. Mocking. Possibly even winking. How dare they, this man and his penis? How dare they do this to you?
Obviously you can't fight the big gay penis in your head. It has no physical form, so you can't get a grip on it, much as you'd like to. You'd love to grab it and throttle it until it splutters its last. That might bring you closure. But no. So you do the next best thing. You condemn homosexuals in the real world. Maybe if they could just stop all this "being gay" business for 10 minutes, you'd get some respite from that scary headcock. It might shrivel away completely, leaving nothing behind. Except maybe a nice bit of bum.
No, dammit! Forget I said that! No bum either!
Of course sometimes the act of condemning homosexuals in the real world overlaps with the imaginary realm. Over the past few weeks, games company Electronic Arts has been subjected to a letter-writing campaign from idiots outraged by its decision to allow players to define their characters as gay in a Star Wars game. The Florida Family Association says, "children and teens, who never thought any way but heterosexual, are now given a choice to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender" – adding that even if they chose to be straight, they would still "be forced to deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters chosen by other players". Personal choice and co-operation: two appalling threats to our youth.
They also claim "there were no LGBT characters in any of the Star Wars movies". I don't know which wacky re-cut version of Star Wars they've been watching, but I saw the original when I was about six years old and even then I was struck by how outrageously camp C3PO is. He was a gilded John Inman in space. And what about Luke Skywalker? Apart from briefly kissing his own sister, he shows no interest in women whatsoever. The first film is a tender gay parable in which Luke falls in love with Alec Guinness and gradually "comes out" as a Jedi. The final scene oozes symbolism: having penetrated the Death Star's trench in his phallic spacecraft, he closes his eyes, submits to his true inner instinct and triumphantly blasts his X-Wing's seed into an anus-like aperture, causing an orgasmic eruption that changes his universe for ever. It's hard to see how they could make Star Wars any gayer, unless they gave the Millennium Falcon a handlebar moustache.
But hang on, some of you are saying, this is a video game we're talking about. Isn't this gay content a bit shoehorned in? Sonic the Hedgehog never agonised over his sexual identity. He was too busy sprinting through a rainbow-coloured landscape leaping at rings. True, but that was in 1991 – which in "technology years" was about nine millennia ago. It's like comparing a cave painting with a surround-sound 3D movie. EA's Star Wars title in question is an MMORPG or massively multiplayer online role-playing game with more than a million subscribers: real people playing and interacting with each other in real-time, and hey, statistically, at least three of those people are going to be gay. The least you can do is let them reflect that in the characters they pick.
But wait: there's even more gay content in another EA space epic, Mass Effect 3, which to the uninitiated is a bit like playing through an entire Star Trek boxset. It's bold space hokum and it's great fun – and just like Star Trek, it includes a range of potential love interests for the main character. Previous Mass Effect titles have let you play as a woman and – gasp – seduce other women: this final instalment is the first to give players the option playing a man who woos men. Play your cards right (or play your dialogue tree options right) throughout hours of gameplay and you'll be rewarded with a short, chaste love scene in which two bare-chested men kiss and cuddle in bed.
Players have complained bitterly about the ending of Mass Effect 3 – not because of the potential for homosexual love, but because they found the narrative underwhelming. The game has a variety of different endings, depending on your decisions: some have moaned that none of the possible endings are happy or satisfying enough. In fact, they've moaned so much, EA has hastily released an additional ending free-of-charge, so these players can experience "further closure".
I can't work out if that's depressing or sweet. On the one hand, they're spoiled little emperors with a mind-boggling sense of entitlement: it's one thing to be disappointed by the end of a story, but another to demand the author sits down and writes you a new one RIGHT NOW. You need "further closure"? What's wrong with you? But on the other hand, it's a sign that players sometimes invest so much of themselves into the characters they play, they care about them to a degree that should make any author jealous. Sneerers will doubtless leave comments about "saddoes" and "shut-ins", oblivious that by doing so, they too are playing a character in an immense MMORPG called the internet. Face it: you've even chosen a nickname and an avatar just to join in.
Allowing players to identify their characters as homosexual isn't, as the anti-gay campaigners claim, a tokenistic novelty, but an unavoidable consequence of the fascinating evolution of video games. Not that there's much point explaining that to them. They don't believe in evolution either. And they wouldn't hear you anyway over the thunderous roar of dicks screaming for ever in their frightened mind's ear.
April 14 2012
If you've lost the philatelists, your days are surely numbered
Who will buy Royal Mail now that even the stamp collectors have turned against it?
The beleaguered Royal Mail is losing the last of its natural allies: stamp collectors. John Baron, chairman of the Association of British Philatelic Societies, said it had "killed the market" while Alec MacGuire, a collector from Surrey, thinks it's "making Britain a laughing stock of the philatelic world". When you get this sort of response to a series of stamps depicting picturesque British landmarks, you know you've lost your touch.
So what is the philatelists' complaint? Cumulative adhesive poisoning? Respiratory problems caused by repeated sneeze-suppression? Hinge-licker's tongue? In this case, no. They're angry that the Mail (Royal, not Daily – although, since the abolition of the second post, it is only daily) is issuing too many new stamps. It would beggar most collectors to keep up. They're cynical about the motives: "Doubtless once the privatisation process has gone ahead, the number of issues will increase still further," the Great Britain Philatelic Society's website administrator responded drily (that's hinge-licker's tongue for you).
But who is going to want to buy Royal Mail now? The manifest desperation of its current owner to sell isn't much of a draw. All recent governments have seemed keen to flog it, very much as if there'd been any kind of public clamour for this to happen. We live in the era of determinedly selling public assets and then carrying on as if the consequences aren't annoying – as if we haven't just endured a sodden Easter weekend with months of hosepipe ban ahead and no one at whom to scream "Why didn't you dig more sodding reservoirs, you incompetent scum?!", other than various consortia of international investors. There's no government department to blame for the shortage. No feeling that the cash saved by failing to improve the infrastructure is at least money the British public has retained rather than economies made at our collective expense by unaccountable strangers.
As if the choice of electricity and gas suppliers that we currently enjoy were an inviting menu rather than two depressing options: waste your time or waste your money. An unappetising prospect imposed on us to sustain the free market ideology of a dying 90s Tory government and perpetuated by its New Labour successors out of fear of looking like enemies of commerce if they did anything too sensible.
As if the railways aren't more over-priced and ineptly run than under British Rail but with the added irritation of each line having a different logo and platitudinous slogan plastered all over the filthy, outdated, sluggish rolling stock – a desecration more indecent than the filthiest graffito. First Great Western is the most infuriating because it both makes the spurious claim of being first and deliberately echoes the name of the company which actually was first in that region: the Great Western Railway, Brunel's firm which built the line. Companies like First Great Western are so far from making that kind of contribution to the transport network that they can't even understand how offensive it is to make the comparison. It's like an illiterate Anglo-Saxon chieftain using a derelict Roman temple as a shelter for shitting and then crowning himself emperor in honour of the achievement.
But who, even among the rapacious and amoral forces of international finance that the government is so keen to harness to build schools and hospitals, is going to want Royal Mail? It would be such a depressing thing to buy. Once mighty, reliable, profitable, it now struggles to make ends meet providing a vastly inferior service to a shrinking pool of customers amid price rises almost as far ahead of inflation as email is quicker than the post. We should have known trouble was coming in 2001 when it spent £2m changing its name to Consignia for 16 months. We hoped it was just a midlife crisis but in fact it was the onset of dementia. This is clearly not an institution with the mental health to confront the digital revolution with fortitude.
Not that over-supplying the market with novelty stamps is the worst of its failings. If it can make a fast buck out of people who collect stamps which prolongs its ability to employ people who collect letters, then fine. Then again, if it goes too far, that source of income could be eradicated (pun carefully avoided), which would be an even stupider mistake than a name-change to Letterinterceptatron Inc because, as John Baron points out, it's a financial win-win for Royal Mail when a collector buys a stamp as "They don't have to deliver the letter".
I suppose someone will buy Royal Mail eventually. You can sell anything for the right price thanks to the internet – it's the perfect tool for bringing buyers and sellers together, which is why it must pose such a threat to collecting as a hobby. Gone are the days of scouring obscure philatelic fairs to improve your collection of 1920s Belgian stamps. Now you can just put your requirements into Google and, for the right price, purchase what was once a lifetime's painstaking collecting in a click.
Some say that collecting things is pointless and dull: the trainspotter is as universally accepted a cliche of mockery as the jobsworth is of annoyance. We imagine that trainspotting is what jobsworths do in their time off, rather than something zeitgeistier like tai chi or anal bleaching. But I can understand the appeal of arbitrarily picking something to look for and care about in this bewildering world – of taking pleasure in creating a bit of order amid the chaos. It's a shame if the internet spoils that by making it too easy and driven by money rather than dedication.
Maybe collectors need to go back to base principles: to collecting things, like train numbers, that are of no monetary value, purely for the joy of completeness. The stamp game is up – it was up long before the internet, before Royal Mail started over-issuing – it was up when the first stamps were issued with collectors in mind. Its purity as a hobby came from people eccentrically deciding to treasure those functional little stickers for showing that postage had been paid – to turn them into objects of desire, purely out of a need to lavish something with attention, like a bewildered gorilla mistaking a Barbie for its dead cub.
Royal Mail's enticing new stamps, with their attractive pictures of York Minster and the white cliffs of Dover, are just a prostitute's wiles: desperately extorting cash by exploiting people's need to love. And it'll only inject it straight in its parcel delivery arm.
April 11 2012
In the Company of Birds
Every time I do one of these Father Bird strips now, I have to text my wife and tell her that it is not a reflection of my feelings about our marriage. Just in case she reads it and becomes concerned. I should probably just post a formal disclaimer on the fridge stating this.
It’s an interesting question, though – how much of any character is a reflection of his or her author? All of it reflects the author’s experience in the world but none of it may reflect their actual beliefs. That’s why it’s always exciting for me to meet my favourite authors/artists; it’s fun to see which of their characters is the most prominent in their demeanor and presence.
If I had to guess, I’d say I’m probably mostly the fat raccoon.
AND: Big thanks to everyone who ordered books last week! I’m now up to my ears in book sketches, but they’ll start shipping soon. Maybe I’ll video stream the drawing of a few of them.
April 05 2012
Sketch Editions Are Back!
Get an original drawing in your copy of The Abominable Charles Christopher: Book One! These have been unavailable since before Christmas but I’ve freed up some time to offer them again. Sketches are of random characters from the Cedar Forest and are drawn using pen, ink and marker (example above). All of them come signed by the author (that’s me!)
You can get yours here while they last!
Long Live The King
I’ve wrapped up work on the new Assassin’s Creed book I’ve been writing and drawing with Cameron Stewart! That means that I’m out from under the deadline guillotine and I have more time to devote to webcomics!
For starters, I’m bringing back the Sketch Editions of Book One! They’re available in the store now.
And I’ll be able to devote more time to the production of Book Two. So there’ll be more news on that front later this year.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mass Effect 3 is waiting…
April 01 2012
For one week only, I'm allowed to say it: I get babies | Charlie Brooker
Call me dense or cold or both, but I wasn't anticipating the wave of euphoria I'm experiencing now that I've become a father
Last week, I became a parent. Can I tell you what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to turn this column into a series of wry observations on fatherhood, and/or lengthy descriptions of just how brilliant my son is. A few weeks of that and you'd vomit yourself inside out, and if I wasn't writing it myself I'd be right beside you, holding your hair out of the way and rubbing your back in sympathy with each volcanic heave. There's quite enough deification of kiddywinks in the media already, thanks. The way people burble on about the joy of infants, you'd have thought babies were being beamed down from heaven to save us. A cursory glance at human history suggests otherwise.
Having said all that, I am going to burble on about babies, for one week only – and you're going to sit there and take it. And when I'm finished, you'll leave in silence. Those are the rules.
Right. So it turns out the birth of your first child is perhaps the most emotionally charged experience you'll ever have. I even put down the new Angry Birds game for 10 minutes so I could concentrate fully, and that's set in space.
You're buffeted by a range of feelings so intense, your face doesn't know how to deal with them, and keeps leaking fluid from somewhere round the eyeholes. Obviously, I can only speak for the men here. Women find childbirth far easier. Many hardly even notice it's happening, which is why they tend to break into absent-minded howls of agony instead of concentrating on the task at hand. (Incidentally, this is hardly my area of expertise, but I fail to comprehend why any sane 21st-century human would refuse an epidural. OK, you might view the full, unvarnished experience as some kind of precious rite, but come on: I heard the screams from the natural birth centre. It sounded like a werewolf exorcising a roomful of crucified sopranos.)
Labour takes ages. In the end, after hours of not-much-happening, there was a moment of drama. The entire cast of Holby City quickly filled the room and I found myself changing into a set of scrubs, in the toilet, in tears. I also held on to a sink for support. By the time I came out the crisis had passed, and my wife was smiling. We then had a further four hours of waiting, during which we both slept, after which the doctors decided to perform a caesarean.
And "perform" is right. It's the most astounding magic trick I've ever witnessed. I didn't hover round the business end. I'm not a fan of innards. What if you go mad and lean forward and dunk a biscuit in them or something? Instead I sat up "the face end", where a blue sheet was erected to protect our eyes from the Fangoria convention taking place below. Then, after some furtive rustling, they lowered the drape just enough to let you clap eyes on a squealing, squirming creature which your brain doesn't quite believe is actually there in the room. And in this moment, your universe momentarily pauses while a fundamental shift in perspective takes place.
Apologies for swearing in the presence of a child, but the first thing I thought was "Fuck me". Not just as an expression of surprise, but as a mission statement, as in: "Fuck me and what I want – from now on, my task is to protect you, whatever or whoever you are." Prior to the birth, other dads had warned me that "bonding" might not happen for weeks, even months. Also, I was worried I might simply feel nothing. Instead I felt reprogrammed, head-to-toe, in an instant. That was a shock.
Just as gap-year students like to brag about the stomach bug they caught in India, so parents like to brag about how tired and hectic their life has become since the new arrival. During the pregnancy, whenever a parent spotted me so much as eating a biscuit, they'd chortle and say: "Ho ho: enjoy eating biscuits while you can! Your biscuit-eating days are over, my friend! There'll be no time for biscuits once the baby arrives!"
All of which can make a dad-to-be somewhat apprehensive. I was worried I might simply resent the baby for disrupting my lazy, self-centred lifestyle. But the truth is this: when it actually happens, it's surprising how little you mind. Also, you eat loads of biscuits because there's no time to eat anything else.
Still, that's enough baby talk from me. I'm aware this is an uncharacteristically upbeat column by my standards, for which I apologise, as smiles sit wonkily on the collection of serviceable flesh apps I collectively call my face. I look sinister when I grin, like I'm secretly defecating in my trousers and enjoying the warm glow more than is strictly necessary. But only a cardboard man could fail to acknowledge that some things simply leave you feeling deeply, deeply happy. Call me dense or cold or both, but I wasn't anticipating the wave of euphoria I've been experiencing. It'll wear off, I'm sure, and these pages aren't the place for it anyway, but yes: I understand why people have kids. Right now, at the moment, I "get" babies.
Now let us never speak of this again.
March 31 2012
Without Jocky Wilson, Subo would still be singing in the bath
The professionalisation of sport has left an excitement vacuum for the likes of Simon Cowell to fill
Few can have read the reporting of Jocky Wilson's sad death last weekend without reflecting on how similar he was to Susan Boyle. I'm not talking about a physical likeness – although, stick the Jocky Wilson of his 80s heyday in a Bobby Ball wig and I reckon it would be uncanny – but about the similar role they play in the culture. Both were down-on-their-luck rotund Scots who burst on to our screens in wildly popular televised competitions that they then failed to win. For Susan it was Britain's Got Talent in 2009; for Jocky it was the 1979 World Darts Championship.
Both went on to better things: for Boyle unlikely megastardom, for Wilson two Darts World Championship titles and the launch of Jocky Wilson's Darts Challenge for the ZX Spectrum. Both seemed like real, vulnerable, likable human beings – they shared an ability to make large numbers of the British public give a damn about their dreams. That's key to the appeal of reality television, particularly in its oldest and most successful form: sport.
Spectator sport seems to have changed a lot over my lifetime. I was watching the rugby a few weeks ago and they showed a clip of Bill Beaumont's Grand Slam-winning England team of 1980. It didn't look like sport looks nowadays. They were just normal men. Wearing rugby kit, in relatively good shape, and quite big and burly, but recognisable as people you might see walking down the street, having a pint in a pub or wearing a suit and tie in a meeting.
Then the coverage cut back to a clip of today's players: muscled, toned, ripped into the shape of a comic book superhero. Aided by the futuristically figure-hugging fabrics that sports kit is now made from, they don't look like the same species as the rest of us. Their sporting prowess is undeniable but watching them play is closer to admiring the grace of a cheetah than rooting for a fellow human desperately bombing up a muddy pitch with his socks round his ankles while being chased by an angry bunch of opposing forwards sweating down their beer guts.
I have the same reaction to 70s and 80s footage of cricket or tennis, and I'm sure football is the same. John McEnroe, for all his brilliance, is just a skinny bloke in shorts. Rafael Nadal is a strange tennis-evolved organism. International cricketers are probably less weird-looking than most sportsmen but, back in the 70s, half the England batsmen, just like half the Blue Peter presenters, were balding middle-aged men. I miss them. Those men weren't just more interesting than people in the front rank of professional sport today, paradoxically they were also more normal.
Why has this happened? It's probably inevitable. The very popularity of sport raises the stakes, increases the rewards and makes the participants focus even more on success – which focus is itself aided by better training technology. The flabby stars of yesteryear thought they were elite athletes: when Bill Werbeniuk took a long drag on his cigarette and a quenching glug of beer before groaning as he got down to a long red, I'm sure he felt he was trying as hard to win as was humanly possible. We now know that still greater efforts can be made, even if it has a dehumanising effect on the body and can suppress the interesting parts of the personality.
You can't fight this. Part of the appeal of watching sport is seeing it played at the highest level. Jocky Wilson, toothless and paunchy though he looked, was the best darts player in the world when he won the championship. In his prime, Alex Higgins, despite his erratic lifestyle, was as good at snooker as anyone then playing. His human flaws made him more charismatic but his genuine excellence was crucial to the appeal. People won't just watch a random argumentative alcoholic play mediocre snooker, however badly he wants to win – even Stephen Hendry is more watchable than that.
But we could at least stop celebrating this change as if it's good news. We could reject the muddle-headed notion that everyone getting better at a sport is part of some shared aim – that we want the standard of football, cricket, rugby, snooker or bowls to be higher overall. That's not in our collective interests at all. Each player must strive to be better so that he or she is more likely to win. But we spectators just want it to be exciting and close. I suppose it's fun when a world record is broken at the Olympics, but not as much fun as a nail-bitingly close contest between opponents you either love or hate.
When rugby union was an amateur sport, it was undoubtedly played to a much lower standard, but no one felt that at the time. The crowds watching Bill Beaumont weren't missing the rugby union of today, ruthlessly played by 30 versions of Mr Incredible. Professionalism has brought remuneration to players, and the greater corporate involvement required to fund that, but it hasn't done much for spectators except put more adverts on the pitch. A higher standard of play isn't in the interests of sport any more than inflation is in the interests of commerce.
With greater demands on their time and physique, it's no surprise that the sportspeople of today can seem one-dimensional – and I don't just mean they're thinner. Like most contemporary politicians, our elite athletes haven't lived normal lives, so there's something alien about them. Simon Cowell, among others, spotted this change. His primetime TV formats are plugging the emotional gap that sport used to fill – replacing Jimmy White and Jocky Wilson in the same way that astrology and homeopathy are supplanting religion.
But it's not the same. Like the X Factor or Britain's Got Talent, top-level sport derives much of its drama from how high the stakes are for the participants. But unlike those shows, sport isn't primarily about entertainment, and can be more entertaining as a result. When entertaining the crowd becomes its stated priority, as in exhibition matches, it ironically becomes harder to achieve as the event is robbed of the chance of that real drama. The appeal of sport above other reality TV comes from the feeling that it might be happening anyway; that these games have always been played, for fun and glory, and that while spectators have changed it, they didn't create it.
Susan Boyle is to Jocky Wilson as methadone is to heroin – a synthetic attempt to satisfy the nation's cravings for the opiate of its youth.
March 28 2012
Dinner Conversation
You know how writers always talk about characters ‘writing themselves’?
This is one of those examples of a character who was originally just a piece of set dressing in a previous episode forcing his way into the spotlight. I had no plans for this rat other than to be a potential owl dinner. Now he has a voice and a point of view and will probably be around for a while and I had nothing to do with it.
He probably has a name and will tell me when the time is right.
March 25 2012
I'm sorry but this constant demand for public apologies really offends me
Newt Gingrich's faux outrage at a joke made by Robert De Niro is the latest evidence of a thriving apology extortion racket in public life
Robert De Niro got into trouble last week for telling a joke. When introducing Michelle Obama at a Democratic fundraiser, he said: "Callista Gingrich, Karen Santorum, Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?" It went down well at the time but the next day Newt Gingrich seemed unamused: "What De Niro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologise for him. It was… beyond the pale and he should be ashamed of himself."
That's a tough response. Gingrich reckons that De Niro's remark is so offensive that he can't even apologise for it himself. The apology has to come from the head of state. Not even Russell Brand ever went so far that Her Majesty was called upon publicly to atone. So I doubt that De Niro's half-hearted attempt to say sorry will have quite slaked Newt's thirst for contrition: "My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone – especially the first lady," the actor said.
Gingrich is attempting a particularly ambitious scam here, but it comes amid a thriving apology extortion racket in public life. Those who wish to silence others have noticed that expressions of offence and demands that people say sorry are the best way of doing it. Once you've demanded an apology, you can logically continue to demand it until you receive it. Often those called upon to apologise will do so just to silence the clamour – they can't match the complainants for bloody-mindedness.
Not even Jeremy Clarkson can. He's a man accustomed to causing offence and yet last year even he said sorry for a remark he'd made on The One Show purely to silence apology-extortionists' demands. I say "purely" because, when seen in context – even a tiny bit of context – there was nothing offensive about what he said. On the subject of public sector strikers, he spoke the words: "I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families", but he was clearly not advocating any such thing, or even using it as an off-colour superlative of disapproval. It was a comedic dig at the BBC's requirement to represent all opinions. I'd be surprised if I agreed with Jeremy Clarkson's views on the trade union movement, but not as surprised as if I discovered that they were that strikers should be shot. He's a Tory, not a Nazi.
But we live in such lamentably literal times that those who understood the joke were shouted down by an alliance of the stupid and the opportunistic – which meant the government called for an apology, and so did the opposition; the BBC gave way and then Clarkson also caved, saying: "If the BBC and I have caused any offence, I'm quite happy to apologise for it alongside them." Like De Niro, he's covered his pride by saying sorry for the offence caused rather than the remark itself – but you can feel the frustration, the shrug: "So we surrender to stupidity, do we?" Freedom of speech is sacrificed at the altar of manufactured rage.
It reminds me of being made to apologise as a child. I remember a specific occasion when my parents were furious with me for some reason. And I was furious with them. It was a standoff. They were demanding an apology or else, as I recall it, basically nothing was to be allowed in future: food, sleep, not eating all my food, not immediately going to sleep, going outside, being allowed inside, contact with the cat – all banned. It was a massive campaign of sanctions and I was livid. And so I apologised. And then my mother said: "Say it like you mean it."
"But I don't mean it!" I screamed, trying to reason with her.
"Well it doesn't count if you don't mean it."
This was evil, I immediately felt. They might be able to force me to apologise but surely it was inhuman for them to attempt to make me mean it. It was none of their business what I meant. Was I to be punished for a thought crime? My insincere apology was the best they were going to get.
What they tried to explain was that such an apology was worthless to them. They wanted me actually to be sorry, not just to say it – to understand that I'd done something wrong. Only that sort of apology meant anything. They didn't want to humiliate me – they wanted me to learn something.
The same cannot be said for Newt Gingrich. If he were acting honourably in this case then an extorted apology, one that he'd demanded, whether it came from De Niro or Obama, would have no value for him. If he or his wife were really hurt, or if he felt genuine concern that the joke, as he complained, "divides the country", then he should say only that. And if, in consequence, Robert De Niro felt sorry and said so, then it would mean something. Or if, bizarre though it would be, Barack Obama felt guilty that this epoch-endangering quip had been made at an event in aid of his cause and was moved to express contrition at having been so thoughtless as to allow an Oscar-winning actor to make an unvetted remark at a dinner, then that would have some power to soothe poor Newt's bruised soul.
But that's not the situation. Clearly Gingrich isn't hurt. Neither is he worried that a gag at a fundraiser will have any negative impact on American racial harmony. It would take a bigger fool than him to think any such thing. He merely sees this as an opportunity to humiliate an opponent and boost his fading chances of the Republican nomination in the process. That's how politics is played these days, both in Britain and America.
Such vindictiveness offends me and I demand an apology. Also, as a pale person, I consider Gingrich's phrase "beyond the pale" to be deeply racist. It's inexcusable, in fact. The least Newt could do is get down on his knees and pray for forgiveness – preferably to Allah. And I want Robert De Niro to say sorry too, just for being in the same sentence. And I want an autograph. Anything less would be disgraceful. I mean it. I'm as genuinely upset as Newt.
March 21 2012
First Day of Spring
Guess what day it is!
Now that I’ve read this strip again, I think it works best to the tune of ‘Fraggle Rock’. Specifically, the end of the song where Boober repeats the last line with a deadpan delivery.
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
David Mitchell: Let royals eat mangoes in Berkshire
Whether it's Queen Noor of Jordan or our own jubilee girl, royalty will never survive if it's humbler-than-thou
"Do you want to tell that to Her Majesty Queen Noor?" thundered the estate manager to the head gardener. Or at least she did according to the now ex-head gardener, Amanda Hill, who has brought a constructive dismissal case against her former employers. Allegedly this remark was the response to Mrs Hill explaining that, for compelling climatic reasons, she was unable to accede to her boss Queen Noor of Jordan's demand that she grow mangoes and avocados in the Berkshire countryside.
"Can't is not a word for princes," as Elizabeth I said (or at least did in Blackadder). If this story is true then it's inspiring that Queen Noor, an educated woman who must surely have a reasonable grasp of the flora of the Home Counties, has sufficient belief in the power of royalty to ask for the impossible. That's what command is all about – exhorting people to superhuman efforts, making them believe that, with royal favour, anything can be done. This is the spirit of Agincourt, the bravado of Canute, the self-belief that allowed Henry VIII to cock a snook at the Pope. Alternatively she may have thought there was a greenhouse.
Queen Noor's regal hauteur compares favourably with our own royal family's beleaguered self-esteem. Last week the Duke of York, who was going to India to represent his mother on the occasion of the diamond jubilee, was criticised for flying first class. This made me feel sorry for him. Maybe we just shouldn't have princes at all – it's not exactly the most modern of systems. Personally I'm fine with it but I can see the arguments against. But if we're going to have them, we can't really make them fly economy, can we? If we're having a constitutional monarchy, we've got to accept that the royals will be on one side of the barrier accepting flowers and smiling while the rest of us are on the other, presenting them and waving flags. That system doesn't really work if these arbitrarily appointed guests of honour have to travel to the event by bus and then queue with everyone else to meet themselves.
Even the Queen (EIIR, not Noor) is facing problems. Her diamond jubilee pageant is undergoing a funding crisis, with the organiser Lord Salisbury complaining that "the lack of generosity from British firms has given me a huge amount of unnecessary work". Do you want to tell that to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth? Come on, man, stop moaning! Pull your finger out before she chops your head off! You've only got to organise a boat show not make the Aberdeenshire loam bring forth pineapples. Sadly though, he clearly has no fear of his sovereign's wrath.
Maybe she should take a leaf out of Ray O'Rourke's book. He's the multimillionaire construction boss who wants to demolish his Essex mansion and build an identical one in its place. Or more or less identical, anyway. Obviously it'll be a lot more horrible and have a home cinema. The council won't let him – it seems "can't" is still a word for captains of industry. For now. But he's appealing. Which is deeply unappealing.
But that's only because he's a businessman. What seems unpleasantly vulgar in a tycoon is appropriately headstrong in a king. Getting massive portraits painted of yourself, wearing enormous gold accessories, employing staff in funny uniforms, being driven around in horse-drawn carriages – these are the preserves of the most and least pukka: of Charles II and Mr T, of Louis XIV and Richard Branson, of the Queen of Jordan and Jordan. When Henry IV of France built the Grande Gallerie of the Louvre in 1607, it was the longest corridor in the world and he reputedly used it to hold indoor fox hunts. People thought that was classy as hell but, in modern terms, it might as well have been a revolving rooftop bowling alley lined with tropical fish tanks.
When commoners do these things it seems pretentious and presumptuous. But what does being royal really mean? It just refers to families who have kept up the pretence and continued to presume for centuries. William the Conqueror took England by force and most of his descendants have subsequently held their nerve: royalty is a confidence trick and that requires confidence. You can't keep that show on the road with humility – you do it by claiming to be anointed by the Almighty, by asserting that you can cure scrofula, by branding rivals as traitors and usurpers when in truth they're just competitors, by demanding loyalty with the intensity of an organised criminal, by expecting home-grown mangoes in Berkshire.
The Queen needs to get back to basics. She's talked the talk of service so long that she's started to believe it. Most of her ancestors would not approve. "I serve" may be what the Prince of Wales's motto means but the monarch's translates as "God and my right". If she wants to keep her right, she may have to assert it more forcefully. Napoleon Bonaparte knew a thing or two about claiming royal status, having styled himself an emperor. He was amazed that, on the night the Tuileries palace was finally stormed, Louis XVI taken into custody and his guards slaughtered, the king didn't make more of a show of resistance: "If Louis XVI had mounted his horse, the victory would have been his," he said.
For our monarch, though, the answer may lie in dogs rather than horses. I was heartened to read last year of an occasion when, according to "a royal insider", the Queen "quite simply… went bonkers". This was when she discovered that the food that her beloved corgis were being given wasn't fresh but had been frozen and reheated. That's more like it, ma'am, I thought. Going mental because the dogs have been given, not dog food – that would be unimaginable – but normal human-quality food that's been in the freezer. That's exactly the sort of thing you can imagine George V or Mariah Carey doing.
Royal protocol is nothing but a massive rider, dignified by centuries. Bowing and curtsying is only an historical version of a bowl of M&Ms with the brown ones removed. Both rock stars and royals are treated with the sort of weird reverence that, if not rigidly maintained, will quickly turn to contempt. Stop demanding impossible mangoes for one second, and you'll end up shopping in Iceland with everyone else – and it won't just be for the dog.