Month: September 2007

X Factor’s inverse racism

Emma ChawnerI finally caught up with Saturday’s latest instalment of the nadir of primetime TV, that is The X Factor last night. Something lodged in my brain and was then provoked further after reading Clair’s great piece on her Urban Woo blog.

Now, I know that Emma, the rather large girl who made the headlines of the desperate tabloids, couldn’t sing, but it always amazes me that black people who are ‘larger than the average bear’ are never treated to the same sort of ridicule on these auditions.

Is this because the X Factor producers are terrified that they’ll be had up for racism, or are black people allowed to be big, because they have ‘huge voices’?

I don’t know the answer, do you?

Urban hunters

Yeah, yeah, I know foxes are now practically dying out in rural areas and are taking over towns and cities, but that still didn’t prepare me for the surprise I saw the other day.

I was walking to the station at around 8am. It was bright and I was going along a pretty busy main road.

Suddenly, I looked to my left and about 10 feet away, in the open was a fox, crouched (can a fox crouch? Hmm, well it sounds good) over a dead pigeon that it had obviously killed.

The thing is, it’s no surprise to see foxes in the city any more and it’s clearly not a surprise to see one scragging a pigeon. I guess I’m just amazed at the brazen-ness of foxes now.

I mean what next? Perhaps, they’ll start to dress up in hoodies and hang outside off-licences in gangs, brandishing sticks and frightening teenagers with their sharp teeth.

Maybe they’ll get fed up hunting for their supper and they’ll queue up outside Waitrose, desperate to be first in line for the latest delivery of Gressingham ducks.

The mind boggles…

Barry Norman’s pickled onions

Barry NormanIn recent years, some famous people have branched out from their chosen specialist subject and lent their name to certain consumer products.

Paul Newman’s salad dressings spring to mind, as do Loyd Grossman’s pasta sauces (which are actually pretty good). Hey, even Cliff Richard produces his own wine.

Now at the time, some of these seemed pretty weird, but we’ve got used to them. You can imagine my surprise then, when I was sauntering along the aisles of my local supermarket and spotted on sale umpteen jars of, I kid you not, Barry Norman’s Pickled Onions.

Here’s a quote from the supermarket’s website:

Barry Norman never buys pickled onions. He doesn’t need to. Using a 19th century recipe handed down from grandmother to mother to son he makes them himself.

The ploughman’s favourite side order are apparently grown on Bazzer’s own farm and the former BBC film critic has decided to cash in and lend his name to the product,

The question is, does this totally undermine the credibility that he has built up over decades of movie reviewing?

From All About Eve to alliums…