How Soon Is Norw?

This letter is fairly typical of the batch I received (LOT, POLB, Merseyside, they'll get through) after the last blog went up  

"Why don't you ever talk about what's been on the television?Its all very well this heady brew of fetishism over old football games laced with some stuff about films and the the odd drop of music - but  a great deal more people watch TV every night than hunt down Sheff Wed goals from the 90s on YouTube. I must inform you that you rather come across as somewhat out of touch. That said, I did like it when you had a go at Danny Alexander. Yours, Mr I.Jenkins, Dundee".

I'm aware that this is the prime-time of the year for sales of DVD box-sets, but I think it would be insulting to the readership to lurch suddenly that way. If a reference to the medium is suitable, then I might include it - but it would be frankly lacking in integrity to try to force the issue by shoe-horning in references to programmes for the sake of it and go zeitgeist-chasing trying to look relevant.

In the most recent episode of Sherlock (BBC 2010-) Benedict Cumberbatch was asked by Martin Freeman "how cant you remember? You remember everything?!" and replied "No, you have to delete some things!". I think that's right: you just cant retain every scrap of information you come across in a lifetime. Where there's a difference is that the implication was that he has developed a system whereby, the majority of the time, he can data-bank important stuff and get rid of the inconsequential.

I'm not sure I've got that filter working fully correctly. The  first thing that came into my mind when I thought about Saturday's opponents was a reference from Fantasy Football League (BBC 1994-96) when David Baddiel quipped that half of Norwich's team at the time sounded like an elaborately long name dreamt up to be the title of a high-end solicitors in a period drama or Radio 4 sketch:

"The firm of Butterworth, Culverhouse, Woodthorpe, Ullathorne & Crook".

Still gold that. As for Sherlock, I thought it was okay: perfectly entertaining, but both episodes have actually copped-out of any real detailed plot. Its nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is when they lunge for pure comedy, although the false-reveal at the start of the first of the two shows in this series was very well pulled off.

But perhaps this as good a time as any to try to work push this particular medium to the fore, as there has been a mini-rash of Everton on the small-screen recently.

Firstly, this bit of graffiti from Eastenders (BBC 1985-), but I didn't see that so cant really comment. 

Rigorous research.

Then we had Roberto Martinez startling a 94 year old in a rather unforeseen (I suppose they all are given the theme) appearance on Surprise Surprise (ITV 1984-). I didn't watch
this either, and although I gather from a rather woolly re-cap from my Gran that there were wide-ranging benefits to the family involved, I'm not sure exactly what went 'down', although I am assured it there was no Cilla Black on hand to throw herself at stylishly smiley Spanish super-sage.

Finally, Big Bill himself rolled up on Pointless (BBC 2009-), and, no, I was not among the viewing audience for that either. His outing did earn the following sour write-up from arch miserabists Toffeweb though:

....as usual (and what we have come to expect), he failed to produce the money, failing to win a £2,000 jackpot for charity... there was a mention of Romelu Lukaku being the only Belgian he knows, quite surprising as we have Mirallas as well.... he failed to mention he was the club Chairman, maybe he is so out of his depth he doesn't know who or what he does. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the pit of negativity that website is, this is not parody, they actually do think he should have gone on bragging about how important he is, held up the show to list all Belgian players Everton have had and deliberately got his questions wrong, such is his ingrained obsession to minimising outlay. 

We are an unabashedly staunch The Chase (ITV 2009-) household though. I don't mind Pointless but it can be overly leisurely at times: the cerebral pace always seems to be dragging out 30 minutes content over twice as long as necessary - tending  to ramble off onto lengthy diversions and tenuously linked conversational gambits which must test the full-time audience's patience. Another odd aspect to the brain, similar to the one mentioned earlier, is that intermittent phenomenon whereby you don't know what a word means, or never hear it - then you do and its suddenly everywhere. 

That happened to me over the festive period, when the precise meaning of the word 'troglodyte' was explained to me. Its someone who lives in a cave, not just a broadly unsophisticated luddite type as I had assumed. On Saturday afternoon there was a repeat of The Chase on, and the question was "Where would a troglodyte traditionally live: a) a cave b) under the sea c) a dessert?".

Knowing which was the answer, I said aloud "cave" and any lasting doubt as to the etymological or historical origins of the description were erased by universal arbiter of fact Bradley Walsh affirming this was the case. 

Bradley Walsh of course was also in Day & Night (ITV 2001-2003). Remember that? I did vaguely and on looking up the details, came to a conclusion I have long suspected to be true -  that people are wrong to single out politicians for speaking in bizarre ways and pathetically trying to put a positive spin, even when such a view is beyond any plausible interpretation. In this case, the decision to remove Day & Night from its tea-time slot and re-schedule it : 

"The series has already established itself as cult viewing for young adults and repositioning it with a first showing in at a later time can only build on its appeal".

So thoroughly repositioned was it that, 'in late 2002, episodes aired at 2am'. That must have made it more cult than David Koresh watching a Scientology documentary wearing a Charles Manson T-Shirt in a hut made entirely from tin foil, with She Sells Sanctuary playing in the background. 

Another irritating aspect of Pointless is that you get people on who end up giving answers that totally refute the premise of the show - 'a film starring Charlie Sheen? Ooo, I'll go Platoon...". 

Brill. 

Same person, if you asked them to "reference a television clip involving a female chairman of an East Anglian football club" would probably go 'um, that time she went on the pitch and was a shrieky mess'. Why not go with 'that time Delia Smith was on Fantasy Football League and got presented with a mounted seed on a velvet plaque and they said it was Caraway Road?'. I bet not many people would say that. 

Even less people would venture a mention for the moment from the same show when, in a skit that posited Matt Le Tissier as a videoshop salesman, a reference is made to the fictional(?) "Skinner-Strachan Antics" home movie - and you can see why it wouldn't be volunteered as an answer, given it has no link whatsoever to even the nonsensical fictitious question I made up. But the above picture is worth shoe-horning anything in to use isn't it? Another inexplicably lodged snippet of useless ephemera I have internalised is a pathos-soaked sob story from a Sunday tabloid magazine interview with Micahela Strachan, about ten years ago, and she was asked something probing and hard-hitting like "so, why are you looking so healthy lately?". She replied:

"I was at a beach last summer, in my bikini, and I overheard two teenage lads talking about me. I was quite flattered until I heard one of them say 'Nah, no way is that Micahela Strachan, she has much better legs and is wayyyy fitter than her!' and I decided I had to get back in shape".

She must have feared the worst for her career then and thought she might have already have had her best years behind her. But here we are in 2014 and she's just come second behind a 6 year old dancer to squeeze through to the next round of celebrity diving and light-entertainment spectacular Splash! (ITV 2013-). And squeeze through she did, as LOT favourite Tom Daley helmed a serviceable return to air on Saturday night, although we said goodbye to some fat tit who used to be in Eastenders, the 'lets put a fit one from Hollyoaks (C4 1995-)  in' candidate, and in a typically tense Splash-Off finale, the massive loudmouth from TOWIE (ITV 2010-) who's feat of falling maladroitly head-first into the pool from an inch above the water twice was deemed inferior to Michaela's efforts by a majority judge's verdict. 

Also a guest on Fantasy Football League was Sue Johnston. She's relatively recently been in a couple of shows which I haven't seen a good word for anywhere, but which I oddly enjoyed. In Being Eileen (BBC 2013) there were two plots that made me genuinely titter (going to see Rihanna, and a cheeky dig at the proliferation of weird fitness classes). 

In Jam & Jerusalem (BBC 2006-08), although the whole programme was a bit of a struggle it fitted in a storyline where David Mitchell was being lured into running as a rural MP that was brilliantly pitched and some of the best work he's ever done. 

Apparently, Bill Kenwright also regaled viewers on his recent cameo with his tale of when Everton won the FA Cup in 1966. I first heard this anecdote ("I Got Wet!")  in 1993 on a short-lived Sky Sports show where each week they focused on a different club 'behind the scenes' (The Club Show(?) Sky, 1992(?)-93(?)). He jumped in a fountain by the way. 

Our episode honed-in on the fevered build-up to a January home game against Norwich. Which, you have to admit, is quite convenient. 

How the show pads itself out is beyond even my memory, but it does show lots of pointless footage of 'the lads' chattering in the dressing room, reading the programme and Billy Kenny getting a calf-massage. At some juncture it cuts to the peripheral figures in the ground, and there is a scene where a smart-ass, wise-cracking, thinks-he's-great Kopite Head Steward briefs his underlings by telling them how Norwich are doing so well and are so far ahead of Everton (they came 3rd to our 13th), and follows some snarky repartee about there not being much of a crowd to cause trouble (20,000) by caustically quipping "and lets not forget .... even Everton aren't looking too bad right now, by their standards......" (we'd won three in a row). 

Needless to say....

....we didn't have the last laugh. There was precious little humour on show at all as  a maybe offside Chris Sutton goal and an incredible save by Bryan Gunn off Tony Cottee in injury time consigned us to a 0-1 defeat. Nine months later, this fixture remained staunchly chuckle free from an Everton perspective as Paul Rideout's early goal was erased, then scribbled over in big fuck-off marker pen by Efan Ekoku who ludicrously plundered four goals as Mike Walker's confident Canaries fluttered to a 5-1 rout in my first game after reaching double figures. 

And that much-sought giggle & grim remained elusive in our rivalry even after Everton incurred the wrath of international football and conservation caucuses by poaching The Norfolk Silver Fox and installing him in the Bellefield hen-house to shake things up - one of his first games was a return to his old trotting ground, resulting in an ignominious thrashing by Gary Megson's until-then winless side (3-0 and it should have been more) which was oddly taken without much fuss at the time as far as I can recall. 

Fast-forward another 9 months to November 1994 and Goodison under Walker's gormless reign continued to raise about as many smiles as The Wright Way (BBC 2013-) Vs The Life Of Riley (BBC 2009-) Live Comic Relief Wacky-Dance-Off, his last game being a dire 0-0 back at Norwich. After he was sacked, lo-and-behold, things improved rapidly and after an innocuous if important 2-1 win in February 1995 under Joe Royle (Stuart & Rideout) both were to find the net again later in the month in a 5-0 monstering (Limpar, Ferguson & Parkinson getting the others) that propelled us towards our last trophy success and safety - whilst sending Norwich careering into despair, a disastrous run and relegation from which they weren't to recover for over a decade.

Where was that steward then eh? 

Not much of note has really happened in Goodison league games between the teams since really. In 2005, a scrappy 1-0 as we inched towards 4th could have been good - until an anonymous jaundiced kill-joy carpet-bombed the FA with a letter writing campaign inveigling them to review secret footage he shot on a home video-recorded from a concrete pedestal near St Luke's church proving that the last touch was by all-time Premier-era worst XI contender Gary Doherty and not all-time Everton fan idol Duncan Ferguson. So that was good....

Since then, two pretty drab 1-1 draws (although I enjoyed Osman's late poke to equalise in the first, during a spell we were really struggling) . I expect a comfortable 2-0 win on Saturday. If Norwich come to just sit back - and has there been a more passive, unmemorable top-flight team over the course of this 3 year run they're on? - they're going to be at the mercy of how well we finish/play the final ball. With no reason to not field our strongest available line-up as well as Jelavic, Oviedo and Osman all pushing hard for a start, if we 'click' we could actually bloody murder them. 

Bloody Murder (ITV 2002) was a six part series in which Lee Boardman/Jez Quigley hammed it up gloriously to narrate murder mysteries of the 20th century, and simultaneously created beta/meta/3rd wall television. When you think that seven years later Larry David got rave reviews (from me at least) for playing a role in Whatever Works that was a rip-off of both himself and his most famous character, but officially billed as 'Boris', its a scandal that Boardman/Quigley is overlooked for going further, earlier, harder. 

His narration of this was done entirely in his massive  Corrie heel role, and the only fathomable reason for him to be linked with this subject matter was by dint of the underworld, fiendish, bad-boy character he was playing. Remember, officially, this was the actor doing a totally unconnected show, free from any shackles. In taking a persona created in fiction for a soap opera, extracting it from those confines , transposing it to a 'real life' show, and reading out historical accounts in a hysterically over-menacing manner he challenged the audience in a forward-thinking audacious leap, and this blog for one salutes him wholeheartedly for that.