He's normally half-way there, of course, but in this outing for the BBC, in which the horrid little prick played scientist, instead of wacky racer with Cameron's buddy, Clarkson, he achieved full penetration.
DOES MY HAIR LOOK BIG IN THIS?
It's bad enough that a supposedly cash-strapped BBC sends proper scientists, historians and art critics all around the globe at my expense, when they could just as easily present their theses from a static studio, sending Hammond to the depths of the ocean - and bringing the little monster back - to California, Iceland and fuck knows where else, is an extravagance offensive to all license payers,
There was a great cop and motorcycle film in the '70s - ElectraGlide In Blue - and the opening sequence was of a diminutive cop strapping himself into the various bits of leather,firearms accoutrements and sunglasses which made up his Harley-riding uniform; the scene was reprised in this load of old nonsense, with Hammond clicking and zipping and snapping the various parts of his SCUBA gear onto his tiny frame and then a cut to him pipsqueaking his way through an underwater crack in the continental plates, all flippers and bubbles and his dreadful tinny little voice, metronoming on and on, some shit about Machine Earth; it was like Michael J Fox playing David Attenborough, on helium.
The central motif of this geology for infants programme was a virtual Earth, apparently a hundred feet high, around which Wheels Hammond, veteran of a thousand rigged motoring adventures, piloted a cherrypicker, up, he went, and then up some more, skilfully operating the hydraulics just like a proper man, draining the oceans with all the panache of Peter fucking Snow on election night. Look, he squeaked, as he emptied the Pacific, a ring of volcanoes, Look, he exclaimed, the deepest, deepest place ever.
It was actually worse than I describe it, the whole programme merely a vehicle for the pint-sized, gibbering egomaniac, pointless and trivial, the few sprinklings of geological information revealed being eclipsed by Hammond's repulsive, cheeky chappie wisecracking; one is tempted to believe that the wretched little oik really does do his shopping down at Morrisons, with Alan BigBoy Hansen.... is it Hansen??? That Scottish gabshite, the one who sounds like a protection racketeer but you know he's a big fairy.
It is one of Ruin's milestones, that the BBC more and more panders to the idea of a presenter's brand supremacy, and it being interchangeable, across all subjects, believes that we would watch the thicko, Adrian Chiles, discussing heart surgery, current affairs or football and watch him with equal enthusiasm, regardless of his overwhelming unsuitability. And they are right, the boyish Alan Titmarsh in his jumpers, fronting first gardening, then natural history and then the fucking Proms; Fiona Slut-Bruce doing news, that fucking crimewatch rubbish, antiques and now art. It's alright with lightweight frothy trivia but passing mediaslag Hammond off as some sort of geophysicist is awful, the dwarf himself is obviously too far up his own arse to be bothered by the fraudulence of this tacky endeavour but anyone tuning-in and expecting an informative progarmme fronted by a knowledgeable presenter would have been disappointed to find himself watching broadcasting at the Blue Peter level. Still, fuck 'em, as they say on Feedback, the viewers, they only pay for it all.
8 comments:
They could save millions of tv taxes by by telling us to google 'how was the earth formed ' and other such shit.
That mad prof Bryan Ferry Cox did the same prog last month. Attenborough has done the earth prog a few dozen times.
Good for their air miles I suppose.
I am, for the first time, genuinely aggrieved at the BBC and the licence fee. What is it I'm paying for?
I have had two lengthy conversations with very polite Scottish young people at the Digital Switchover helpline. You see, when it rains, we have no digital channels. And when the rain stops, we may have anywhere between 3 and 15 channels of a wholly random nature. At some point, a retune will return the rest, until it rains again.
So, the solutions I was offered by said helpline are:
1. a new freeview box (£20+)
2. a new aerial (£65+)
3. a freesat dish (£235+installation)
with the caveat that none of these will necessarily solve the problem.
So from the 17th August, since I have not the means to do any of the above, I may or may not have any telly on which to avoid Hamster Hammond squeaking his peculiar brand of pitiful wonder. And they want me to prove why I don't need a TV licence anymore. I asked for a pro rata rebate for the days when it had rained. They haven't replied yet.
Why do I have to have 101 channels of codswallop when 5 was sufficient? And pay extra for the privilege?
As throbber says Prof Cox did exactly the same thing and whilst it was a piss take then at least the guy had quaffillicashuns and explained highly complex knowledge so that 8-80 year olds would understand it. There was 1 point, I think on entropy, when he said 'and that's as far as science has got' whereupon viewers (or me, rather) thought, 'oh, well then, bit of a puzzle'.
And now Newsnight treats us to another tabloid (competition) bashing - own agenda? Gadzooks no!
I have an O-level in geology if that helps, Mr I. Christ alone knows how that happened but I think that that makes me more qualified than that wee lad. (Alas, all I can remember is "argillaceous shale" and I don't remember what it is so I may as well forget that too.)
A similar yawn happened midweek with "The Code" (how numbers are a part of nature). As you can imagine, a nerd like me was salivating for an epic numbers-fest but, jeez, it was tedious. I thought it was just me - educated in numbers beyond me wits, it was aimed at other folk but even the lad looked at it blearily and popped off to bed before it finished. The beeb is going downhill fast.
PT Barnum...
Yes the digital switchover is a mess.
Your telly has probably tuned in to the wrong digital transmitter on occasions and only gets the signal intermittently. It needs an expert to determine the transmitter you should be tuned in to . Doing an 'automatic installation' or 'setup' via the remote control set up procedure is often a waste of time as the telly gets confused and locks onto a rogue signal sometimes. Our area has two transmitters at equal distance from the house. One has 24 channels and one has over a hundred. The 24 channel transmitter is the stronger signal but people lock their tv onto the other transmitter to get more channels. Unfortunately if the signal drops power they get the 'no signal' message and have to retune.
The digital switchover team are really for OAP's and did a £40 deal that covered the decoder and a years follow up help ( inc free aerial). It was quite a good scheme.
Cox, although over-exposed, is infinitely preferable to Hammond, all of whose programmes should go straight to Channel Dave.
They can't touch you, about the teevee license, mr ptb, tell them to go and fuck themselves, you'll be in good company. Just don't, should they arrive, let them in the door, they have no rights of entry, they are a private company.
Most of the people spending time for watching entertainment shows few of them are watching this kind of information.
I was delighted and astonished at Hammond's revelation that in the abyss there dwells a metal snail. This information is not, however, worth my license fee.
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