Best thing on this Christmas by a country mile. Managed to be a "Christmas Night With The Stars" style celeb-spotting fest, but funny with it. And you're right, it should make French and Saunders THOROUGHLY ashamed of themselves.

(Billie Piper, Roger Cook and June Brown on "Painting By Numbers Challenge" was the perfect line up, by the way. Just naff and daytime enough to be convincing. Laughed about that for ages.)

I can't stand it when "celebs" conspire in parodies of themselves. It's like French and Saunders getting the real actors off House of Eliot to "show they can send themselves up". All the French and Saunders parodies for about 3 years now have been careful recreations of the original, where the joke is that Dawn French is a bit fat and therefore different from the person she's portraying, and something goes a bit wrong and they mumble to each other.
A parody should implicitly point out the defects or at least idiosyncracies of the original. If the original stars want to be involved in it, something's wrong. Either it's a spineless quasi-parody in the French and Saunders mode, or the people involved are soulless media lampreys who care only about exposure, and know very well that their work is piss-poor (but "ironically" so, so that's alright).

Agreed - and this is why the Victoria Wood spesh scored over F&S on two important counts:
1) The parodies captured brilliantly the idiosyncracies of the originals - The 'Brassed Off' and 'Brief Encounter' spoofs were particularly excellent in this regard.
2)The celeb appearances were well thought out - and often highly self-deprecating. Billie Piper and Bob Monkhouse stood out here (not a sentence I ever imagined typing.)

Bob was self-deprecating - not sure if Billie Piper was genuinely so or just in it for the exposure. It would have been genuinely self-deprecating if she'd appeared snorting coke and passing the effects off as a kidney infection. Uh, for example.

She's Billie! She's hilarious and she knows exactly what she's doing. More power to her, I say. She'll be presenting Animal Hospital in the next series.

Ah, Ms William Piper.
Mouth like a postbox, nose like a hoover, tits like a sherbert fountain...

Personally, I found the film parodies to be the most irritating elements (alongside the Widdecombe finale which I very much disliked). They may well have knocked French and Saunders-style parodies into a cocked hat, but they still suffer from being latter-day Wood-style parodies ie. a surfeit of immensely detailed non-sequiturs about biscuit crumbs and the like. They're almost twee, and lack the satire of her earlier work, "As Seen on TV" and the like.

I could have done without Michael Parkinson, or Alan Titchmarsh playing a gardener. A little too pleb-pleasing for my taste.

As far as Christmas specials are concerned, Wood's work would be perfect if it developed a harder edge.

This 'pleb' thing is getting out of hand. I mean, who else would have had the temerity to parody 'The Billy Cotton Band Show' at a time when the BBC is obsessed to the point of neurosis about 'target audiences'? The 'Brassed Off' parody was very satirical I thought, and was refreshingly subtle. Have to say I found the Widdicome thing extremely funny...

>Mouth like a postbox, nose like a hoover, tits like a sherbert fountain...

If I ever have to run a Personals ad, these attributes will be listed as "mandatory".

Can I put some more Billie slander here?
Oh, excellent.

Disappeared into hospital for a while. Supposed to be "exhaustion" or something. Actually getting rid of the sprog she'd got landed with by her regional radio plugger.

Chris Evans deserves her.

God. I'm possibly slightly naive regarding some of the things that go on in the industry of pop, but I find that genuinely shocking. Is there any truth in it, or is it just gossip?

>God. I'm possibly slightly naive regarding some of the things that go on in the industry of pop, but I find that genuinely shocking. Is there any truth in it, or is it just gossip?

I don't know, but here's some great gossip I heard from the wardrobe people on "This Morning", namely that Richard routinely wanks on Judy's shoes. Also, on the morning after the 'bra' incident, when the halter-neck dress was held up on screen by Judy, the wardrobe people had spent half-an-hour cleaning all his spunk off it to make it presentable after their night in the Savoy Hotel....

>This 'pleb' thing is getting out of hand.

You're absolutely right - it's a convenient cliche to lapse into when writing on the fora, and from now on I will abate this practice in my postings.

As I've mentioned previously on the other forum, Wood's show was the best thing I saw on TV this Christmas. My criticism may have been strong earlier in this thread, but just imagine my feelings about the rest of the seasonal TV...

>God. I'm possibly slightly naive regarding some of the things that go on in the industry of pop, but I find that genuinely shocking. Is there any truth in it, or is it just gossip?

It's gossip, but pretty well circulated gossip within the pop business. Regional radio pluggers are (apparently) always doing things like this. I was told another similar story at the same time, but I forget whom it concerned.
Seems they take the title "plugger" a little too literally, some of them.

> or is it just gossip?

What, like "H" from Steps only being in the band because he was sleeping with the band's manager? Tch, yeah. Vicious industry rumours. Totally divorced from reality.

Good popbitch rumour today:

Geri Halliwell recently had a cheque she'd written out for some dental work returned.

She'd made it out to "The Dentist".

Ah, bless.

>As far as Christmas specials are concerned, Wood's work would be perfect if it developed a harder edge.

I didn't see the Victoria Wood Xmas special, although I would have had I not been busy. However I would love to see Victoria Wood go back to the days when her stuff did have a bit of a harder edge. Stuff like the song "Had It Up To Here With Men" should be what she's known for, not fucking dinnerladies. Maybe she's just gone soft/safe in her old age, a lot of people do it. Shame though.

>Can I put some more Billie slander here?
>Oh, excellent.
>
>Disappeared into hospital for a while. Supposed to be "exhaustion" or something. Actually getting rid of the sprog she'd got landed with by her regional radio plugger.
>
>Chris Evans deserves her.


Contact within the BBC who had booked her as a guest and then find a replacement insists that this was the reason for her no-show.

I shall say no more.

>Ah, Ms William Piper.
>Mouth like a postbox, nose like a hoover, tits like a sherbert fountain...

Used to fancy her. Gone off her since she decided to show off her 'sexiness'.

She held more appeal for me when she looked like someone that you might actually _know_, as opposed to just see in a magazine...