The shark classic Jaws reimagined as a gay menage a trois. From the fabulously inventive Brooklyn band Fall on Your Sword.

According to twitter Titanic was a real film – OMG! #mindblown. Why didn’t anybody tell us?
Once agin Twitter has proved  how little people really know. Check out these tweets from people who have only just realised that James Cameron’sTitanic blockbuster was based on a true story.

Everybody likes Sir Michael Parkinson. Everyone trusts him, too — me most of all. He often pops up in ad breaks to bring news of a life insurance plan that will pay for my funeral with enough left over to provide cash gifts for my family, and even when he’s halfway through I’m reaching for the “Yes, I’ll have that” button.

I reckon that at a push he could get me to sign up for a coach tour of north Wales.

But last week we began to see evidence that age had started to eat away at his marbles.

Because he wondered out loud and in print why there were no traditional interview shows on television any more, and why, with Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton, it all had to be played for laughs.

That is easy to answer. In the olden days newspapers reported news. They were filled with earnest stories from around the world and weren’t interested in the opinions or photographs of those who earned their crust by being in Are You Being Served?.

So, to keep themselves in the public eye, the people from Are You Being Served? had to appear on a chat show. They would beg to appear on Parkinson and they would work hard beforehand, thinking up amusing anecdotes and practising their lines. It was important to do this because if people liked them, they would get bigger parts and one day perhaps get a job on Robin’s Nest. If they were really popular, who knows? They might become David Niven.

If you have been listening to the endless parade of tabloid newspaper people who have appeared at the Leveson inquiry, you would imagine that this sort of thing still goes on today. And you’d be right. But instead of appearing on chat shows, people who are orange and have no discernible talent employ public relations people to plant pictures in the papers and the glossy magazines of them cuddling African children and giving money to tramps.

That is why, the argument goes, they can hardly complain when they are subsequently photographed fondling an X Factor hopeful or vomiting on a homeless person. If you use the press to climb over the parapet and into the public consciousness, then you belong to the press. And it can do what it likes with you.

People with no discernible talent employ people to plant pictures of them cuddling African childrenHowever, people who are not orange and who rely on their talent to get work, rather than a PR man, are caught in the same net. There is a photographer on every beach, waiting to spot evidence of a bingo wing or orange-peel thighs.

The star takes someone out to dinner and they are snapped. They go home with them afterwards and it’s front-page news. They get into a cab and we are told what sort of underwear they’ve chosen.

I don’t know Daniel Craig. Never met him. And yet I know, just from skimming the Daily Mail, whom he is married to, where the marriage took place, how many times he had been married before and what he’s doing at the moment. It’s the same with Brad Pitt. If he’d been around in the Sixties, we’d know what films he’d been in and to whom he was married.

But that’s it. Today, we know he hasn’t seen his granny for years and even what brand of cigarette he smokes. I reckon I know more about Brad — whom I have never met either — than I do about my own children.

So, if I asked him to appear in Top Gear’s Reasonably Priced Car, he’d think, “What’s the point? I could sit here, in my lovely Los Angeles home, smoking Marlboros and drinking a fruity burgundy with my lovely girlfriend Angelina. Or I could get on a plane, fly to England, drive a drab little car around an airfield and then have a yellow-toothed buffoon ask me a lot of damn fool questions that are pointless. Because everyone knows the answers already. Because they read OK!.”

The only way you can get an even vaguely interesting guest on a chat show these days is if they are on a publicity tour, promoting their new book or film or fitness DVD. They are dragged into the studio in chains, poked into the chair by a film company exec with a cattle prod and nailed in place to make sure they don’t wander off or fall asleep.

They don’t know who the host is, what the show’s about or what country they’re in. All they know — because off camera there’s a woman with three BlackBerrys and an agitated face tapping her watch — is that they’ve got only five minutes before they have to catch a flight to Germany to go through the whole rigmarole again. And then on Tuesday it’s Uruguay.

Of course, the host could sit back and ask about their relationship with their father — a Parky trick — but there isn’t the time. And on the part of the interviewee there isn’t the inclination either. Plus, the modern audience isn’t interested in a man’s soul. Just his manhood and where it has been.

That’s why I have such huge respect for Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross. I’ve tried to do what they do and it’s bloody difficult. Seriously. You try keeping the viewers happy and entertained while talking to someone who doesn’t want to be there, has nothing to say, feels worn out and is deeply aware that tomorrow the Daily Express is going to run pictures of him snogging a horse.

And there’s no point being rude or refusing to talk about their “important” new project. If you do that, in future the film company will simply book all their big stars onto a rival show. You’ll end up with Mr Motivator, Fred West’s cleaning lady and Christine Hamilton. If you want the big names, you have to massage their egos, you have to show clips from their new DVD and you have to provide the laughs. Because if you don’t, you’ve had it.

That is what Michael Parkinson has to understand. The talk show is dead. It was killed by OK! and the army of paparazzi who trawl the streets bringing us news of Sienna Miller’s underwear.

Man alive, The Voice has been a long time coming. There have been tabloid stories running on it for beyond an age — I feel like I’ve been reading about “The BBC’s hot new talent show, The Voice”, since Ted Heath was Prime Minister. Wasn’t he going to be one of the judges, at one point? Mentoring contestants with a piano accompaniment — until his sad death was announced and they had to get Tom Jones instead?
Why so much pre-publicity and hype? Because there is an innate sense abroad that Simon Cowell’s juggernaut ITV1 talent shows — The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent — have too much power; that they dictate the cultural tone and pace. Everyone would like to see some manner of check, or rival, to Cowell’s monoculture; his monopoly on hopes and dreams. Essentially, television knows it needs to come up with some manner of Mothra, to fight Cowell’s A&R Godzilla. A Batman to his Joker. A penicillin to his cystitis. The universe must be kept in balance, lest Cowell’s dominance disrupt the Force and end in the mass slaughter of Ewoks.
To this end, observe the logo of The Voice: it is two fingers, ostensibly raised in a “V-for-victory, V-for-The Voice” sign. Or is it just two fingers raised at Simon Cowell’s yacht in Barbados?
So how does The Voice intend to triumph over Cowell’s massive power base? By being classy. By being noble. By being kind. Oh dear. That hardly ever works.
“This is a singing competition unlike any other — because it puts the voice first,” presenter Holly Willoughby explained at the top of the show.
“It’s just about the voice — not the package, or the story,” judge Jessie J confirmed bullishly. Yes. The Voice was making it clear: this is the show where all the outsider singing freaks and misfits — the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera; the pot plant from Little Shop of Horrors — can all come, sing, and triumph. And why? Because when the contestants audition, the judges cannot see them. They will judge only what they hear. There will be no anti-Phantom bias here.
I had initially hoped that this was because the contestants would be hiding in some manner of forest or maze, and that the judges would have to hunt them down — following their voices like rare songbirds. In the event, however, it was because the chairs the judges were sitting on were simply facing the wrong way. Sometimes, 2012 is a massive disappointment.
The first contestant was Jessica, from Northern Ireland. She was an odd choice as the debut exemplar of The Voice’s broad-minded talent-picking: hot, confident and dressed in leather trousers and off-the-shoulder top, Jessica didn’t look like she needed the “wrong-way-chair advantage” to help her to thrive in the generally pro-sexy-girl environment of Britain’s Top 40.
Singing a note-perfect version of Jessie J’s Price Tag, Jessica would clearly have got gonged through in any talent show — as, inevitably, she did here. Within 40 seconds, all four judges — Jessie J, Will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas, Tom Jones and some Irish guy that no one on Twitter could recognise — had all pressed their “I WANT YOU” buttons and swung their chairs around to get a look at her.
“There’s no way this girl would have been put through on X Factor,” Popjustice tweeted as the judges ushered her into the next round. “Such a breath of fresh air.”
“You know, there’s something about her that reminds me of me,” Jessie J mused, watching her go. Could it be that she was singing the Jessie J song Price Tag and had the name Jessica?
Jessie wasn’t the only one who thought that they detected a bit of themselves in the contestants. “I think there were a few notes there that were me,” Tom Jones said, after Samuel Buttery’s all-out performance. Buttery was a more “key brand” contestant for The Voice — in glasses with a Brylcreem quiff and trousers from High & Mighty, Buttery admitted: “I don’t think I’m the same package as Beyoncé or J-Lo. I am as fabulous, though.”
For a moment, you thought, “How great that the judges put him through without seeing him!” — before remembering that the judges put Susan Boyle through on Britain’s Got Talent when they had seen her: arguably blowing the entire point of The Voice out of the water with a single glance at Boyle’s subsequent 15 million album sales and £11.9 million fortune.
There’s no two ways about it, on the evidence of the first episode, The Voice will not play Acme anvil to Simon Cowell’s Wile E. Coyote. It’s just too … clean. It doesn’t have the … ratings pheromones. There’s a dirty, sexy, slightly regrettable whiff about Cowell’s shows that makes you come back to them time and time again: the umami of fractional wrongness.
The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent feel like sitting on the war memorial in the centre of town on a Saturday night, watching people wander by, drunk, screaming and falling over.
By way of contrast, The Voice feels like an alternative to all this, organised by the local council. Something in a half-full leisure centre, with the constant, uneasy feeling that it might all end with the vicar coming on stage and saying: “And now, before we all leave, a prayer of thankfulness and unity.”
This isn’t to say that sitting up town at throwing-out time is always great fun — sometimes you get stabbed, and die. Or, contrarywise, that councils can’t ever put on a great show — the GLC put on plenty. It’s just that, you know. Generally. Generally, these things don’t work.
That’s not to say that The Voice couldn’t yet pull through, of course. There’s a couple of things they could try. I suggest parrots. Occasionally, they could bring on a very gifted singing parrot. That would be amazing. All the judges pressing their “I WANT YOU” buttons, only to swing around and see an African Grey sitting on a perch, cracking open monkey nuts. Would they mentor Captain Flint all the way through to the finals? Who wouldn’t tune in to find out?
Given that — as the commissioning of The Voice made so clear — we all live in a post-Simon Cowell world, it’s intriguing to see where the man himself is “at” right now.
The answer is: not an amazing place, really. His attempt to launch The X Factor in the USA tanked. He was too busy to appear in the last series of The X Factor in the UK — which went on to lose the ratings battle against its old nemesis, BBC One’s Strictly Come Dancing. And the last season of Britain’s Got Talent — which Cowell was also too busy to appear on — was generally considered a dud. If the lives of all 7 billion people on Earth relied on more than 20 people in this country being able to remember who won Britain’s Got Talent in 2011, these would be the last words you ever read before humanity was wiped out for ever. (It was Jai McDowall. He was a Scottish singer. I had to Google it. Even looking at a picture of him, I couldn’t remember him. Not that it matters. I’m dead now, anyway. We’re all dead.) But! The Dark Lord has now returned from the States, more orange than ever, for Britain’s Got Talent 2012 — straight after The Voice.
“It’s amazing to have him back!” judge Amanda Holden said at the top of the show.
“He’s like Father Christmas,” David Walliams said, as the rest of the judges waited for Cowell to arrive. “You know he’s going to come; you just don’t know when.”
When Cowell finally did arrive — to Beatlemania-style screaming from the audience — he looked a smaller, quieter man than we remembered. Much of this was, in the event, down to David Walliams.
For, if this year’s Britain’s Got Talent is considered a success, I suspect that it will be because of the presence of Walliams and not the return of Cowell. To put it incredibly simply, Walliams is cleverer than Cowell. On either an instinctive or an intellectual level, he knows that Cowell’s endlessly sneering and reductionist tone — essentially that of a moneyed philistine “playing” at culture — has started to sour his franchises and run them into the ground. He sees that the judges need to emulate the attitude of their audience a little more; ie, eschew scorn in favour of joyous boggling, instead.
We actually saw Walliams teach Cowell this, not once, but twice — the first time when Cowell was unsettled, and dismissive, about a gay ballroom dancing couple. “My gut feeling is that the short one shouldn’t have picked the tall one up,” he said, not even bothering to use their names and vaguely waving at them, like Peter Ustinov as Herod in Jesus of Nazareth.
“I liked it,” Walliams said, with a cheerful firmness. “I think it’s good to be equal. If we danced together, Simon, you could lift me and I could lift you.”
Wrong-footed but amused by Walliams, Cowell waved them through — as he did again, 20 minutes later, with a German guy who was wearing a golden shower cap and had fashioned himself a gigantic set of golden dragonfly wings, which slowly unfolded as he sang.
Cowell was ready to instantly dismiss him as a nutter, but Walliams saw what Cowell should have seen, but didn’t: the odd, child-like magic of someone building their own wings. When one wing fell off, “that only made it better”, Walliams noted.
Bouyed by the gently joyous appreciation of Walliams, Cowell visibly changed from a sneer to a “well, what do I know?” shrug and waved him through.
You know what the difference between Cowell and Walliams is, as judges? Walliams comes across like David Attenborough, revelling in the uniqueness, the unlikeliness and the oddness of evolution. Cowell, on the other hand, still looks like he wants to capture people, etherise them in a jam jar, then pin them in his accounts ledger.

Photos via Best Week Ever

Vajazzles and Crinoline collide in the greatest tale that Hardy never wrote. Essex, shut up! The only way is Wessex!

Tess of the d’Urbervilles TOWIE style courtesy of BBC Comedy.

Using a farmer with two cows is fun way to explain complex economic systems.

SOCIALISM
You have 2 cows.
You give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM
You have 2 cows.
The state takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM
You have 2 cows.
The state takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM
You have 2 cows.
The state takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM
You have 2 cows.
The state takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell one and buy a bull.
Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows.
You sell them and retire on the income.

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND (VENTURE) CAPITALISM
You have two cows.
You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened
by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated
general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows.
The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island
Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven
cows back to your listed company.
The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.
You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows.
No balance sheet provided with the release.
The public then buys your bull.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike, organize a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
You then create a clever cow cartoon image called a Cowkimona and market it worldwide.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows, but you don’t know where they are.
You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION
You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you.
You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them.
You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity.
You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You worship them.

A SPANISH CORPORATION
You have 2 cows but owe Santander for 6.
Nobody drinks milk.
You have a siesta and read about the collapse of the Euro

A GREEK CORPORATION
You lease 2 cows and pay somebody 3 times the going rate to milk them using borrowed money.
You refinance the 4 cows to secure the services of Goldman Sachs. They sell the future milk
production of the 60 cows and fund your lifestyle.
You retire to anywhere that doesn’t use the Euro.

A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Both are mad.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION
Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.
You tell them that you have none.
No-one believes you, so they bomb the cr_ap out of you and invade your country.
You still have no cows, but at least you are now a democracy.

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
Business seems pretty good.
You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows.
The one on the left looks very attractive.

AN ARGENTINIAN CORPORATION
You don’t have any cows.
But you claim sovereignty over the ones belonging to your neighbour

Author unknown.