Knitting sweaters for dead squirrels

10:03 am - Celebrity Eurohost Deathmatch: Quarter finals parts 3 and 4

Eddie Izzard

Izzard certainly has an appreciation of the glamour that Eurovision is all about, and is capable of comedy in more than one language, which would allow him to be
funny in french. Izzard loves Europe and Europeans, and his appointment may reverse the perception that the Brits are chronically Europhobic.

However, do we really want to reverse the perception that we're Europhobic? Futhermore, a lot of Izzards humour depends on imagined conversations between two people - there's not a lot of time to build one of those in the intervals between ice skating from Russia and pirates from Latvia.

vs

Phil Jupitus ^{1 2}

Like Bailey, Jupitus appears in almost all of the clips relating to Fry and Amstell. I've presented two clips of Jupitus's work to demonstrate the point that his comedy often relies on imitation of other comics. The Eurovision gig would give Jupitus much material to work with, but how well would he do with it?

Poll #1241646
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Izzard or Jupitus: You Decide

Perkins or de Caunes: You Decide

emperor

10:28 pm - Celebrity Eurohost Deathmatch: Quarter finals part 2

(You Tube clips linked via names)

Bill Bailey

It's impossible to remember when you first saw Bill Bailey, or heard him. He's always there, just being funny. When I look for clips, I put the name of the contender into You Tube, and look at one or two of the most popular clips on the list from that contender. Bill Bailey occurs in most of the the most popular clips from Simon Amstell and Stephen Fry. He raises the game of those around him, resulting in long, rambling dances of absurdity. Bailey can think on his feet, knows his music back to front, and, as this clip shows, is able to see the ridiculous in music. His comedy is often related to the detail found in the collision of 'culture' and music, and this is the arena in which Eurovision plays out. Bailey's repartee in the non scripted game shows depends on the absurdities that the other contestants represent, and he'd also be good with a similar aspect of Eurovision.

OTOH, Bailey's off-the-cuff stuff is dependent on other people being there. There's no guarantee that he'd maintain this in the commentary box. As part of a pair, maybe.

At the risk of demonstrating a bias: Bill Bailey on Dr Who

vs

Mark Radcliffe

That clip shows just the sort of thing we expect from our Eurovision co-hosts.

The thing is: Does Mark need Lard?

Poll #1241242
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Bailey or Radcliffe? You Decide.

07:30 pm - Celebrity Eurohost Deathmatch: Quarter finals part 1

(You Tube clips linked to via the names)

Stephen Fry

The favourite in the pick eight stage, Fry certainly has the gravitas to take over from Sir Tel, and is indeed, already a national treasure, what with nervous breakdowns, credit card frauds, twenty years of celibacy and a book on writing poetry under his belt. It is said that Stephen Fry knows absolutely everything about anything, and if he does, I'd like to say to him that when I kissed Peter Fields in the bathroom at age eight we didn't use tongues, only, of course, he probably already knows that as well. To me, the book of poetry is the problem. Fry is likely to suffer from tangible aches and pains in all of his joints over some of Eurovision's wilder misjudgements in either the English language or the universal language of symbol and archetype commonly known as costuming. Plus, he really isn't into shallow pop music. Eurovision is simply the wrong century for him.

OTOH, it's Stephen Fry, a man so deeply ironic that they named a chocolate bar after him. He'd just have to say 'Hello' for the hordes of lycra clad Eastern and Baltic Europeans to suspect that he was extracting the glyoxyldiureide, if they only know what he was talking about.

vs

Simon Amstell

Amstell is well known enough that enough of you knew who I meant by 'Anstell' to enable him to scrape into the top eight. He deserves more than this tenous postion. He has lightening unscripted ripostes and is genuinely funny. On Buzzcocks however, a lot of his humour is visual or nuanced, full of telling silences - his timing can't be faulted - and he sparks off the absurdities in the panelists. There's no telling how he would do as a commentator without the visual sphere to play with.

Which of these two would make a better substitute for Tel on the ESC?

Poll #1240804
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Fry or Amstell? You Decide

11:23 am - Celebrity Deathmatch: Replacement for Tel at the ESC.

Right. I've selected fifteen of the suggested national-treasures-in-waiting from the possibilities offered up in this post by very complicated criteria which was to do with whether I knew who they are or not.

Please select any that you think might be up to the job. I'll pick the top eight and put them through three rounds of celebrity death match. Note: If you pick all of them that's the same as not voting at all as it just ups each score by one and keeps the relative positions the same.

Poll #1240004
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which of the following could be an adquate replacement for Sir Tel?

01:16 pm - Tidying up

About to do a bit of an flist prune, mostly people who haven't posted for ages. If I take you off and you would like to be added back on, please shout underneath.

10:28 am

For various reasons, this journal has had to go friends only. Please comment if you want to be added, below, although I will probably limit myself to adding friends of friends, iyswim.