Your Democracy Pounds At Work

As of the start of this paragraph, the eager eyes of umpteen million political car-crash loving viewers are only thirteen minutes away from seeing Britain's most popular fascist appear on BBC One's flagship political debate show. The previous sentence was never one I foresaw myself typing during my short and anteillustrious blogging non-career, but there we are, I've been forced into it by the moronic actions of a million protest-vote cretins. If not for them, GSGC could have continued to wallow in internet obscurity.

So, our Question Time players for tonight, shortly to be introduced by BBC super-stalwart Dimbleby, include Demon Headmaster clone and Justice Minister (surely a job for a Demon Headmaster itself) Jack Straw, woman who appears in the Guardian and the Indy a lot Bonnie Greer, generic Lib Dem Chris Huhne, Conservative something-or-other Baroness Warsi (didn't she write the Scarlet Pimpernel?), and a room full of angry hippies and BNP supporters on their best behaviour. Oh, and a fat racist.

And we're off! To answer Mark Lawson's question posed in the G2 this morning, Griffin's been sat second from the right, with Bonnie Greer on one side and Dimbleby on the other. I note she's got her back to the racist swine, in quite a fantastic gesture of pretending he doesn't exist. She keeps this up throughout the show, even when addressing him directly, and sometimes when pointing viciously at him. Her eyes are locked directly on the studio lights, presumably so she can blind herself and not have to see him at the end when she gets up.

First question about how shit the BNP is goes to Jack Straw, who says yes, they're well shit, because they define themselves on race. He goes on to talk about how the World Wars were won by so many black and asian soldiers. Griffin bats back with "Churchill hated Muslims" and "my Dad was in the RAF while yours was a consciencious objector." That was, of course, fucking cheap, and the audience ain't buying it. Dimbleby calls him on his bullshit, which he pretends to ignore.

A black bloke in the audience asks why Griffin won't acknowledge the contribution immigrants like his parents have made. Racism-chops reckons he's been misquoted, but won't say which quotes in the media were false. Not even the one about holocaust denial.

Baroness Warsi digs out a quote from a (presumably former, by the way fatty denies it) communications type calling Churchill a "bleeping bleep" (bless the BBC compliance department) who shouldn't have joined the war. Griffin splutters. He'll be doing that a lot tonight.

A bloke at the back of the room has just noted that Enoch Powell had the same attitudes as Griffin. He seems to be reading it as given that the room liked Powell, for some mad reason. Then it's Huhne's go to have a dig at the racist nobhead, finding his own quote-of-evil. I couldn't really concentrate on it, mind, because I just realised how much Chris Huhne looked like the deputy head at my primary school.

Anyway, just tuned in on Dimbleby observing that he's on Youtube hanging out with the head of the KKK. Griffin denies it, saying he was only the leader of "a Ku Klux Klan, an almost totally non-violent one". He's looking ever more blustery, even trying for a rabble rousing "why should anyone trust any politician" line, normally the kind to make the QT audiences scream with approval, but the best he gets is a don't-try-to-play-us murmur. Jack Straw calls him the Dr. Strangelove of British politics, which was actually a fucking nice comparison.

What the hell IS an ethnic minority, asks some girl, in the audience, followed by why did you deny the holocaust from an unfortunately stereotypical Jewish-looking lad. I can't explain because of the law! claims Tubby, shot down by the two people in the room who pretty much make said law. He stutters and blusters on, and then Dimbleby says its time to move on.

"Why is Islam a wicked and vicious faith" asks an audience chappy. Griffin replies it's because a
literal interpretation of the Koran would be well bad, with the stoning and the whipping and that. Britain should remain a Christian country, he claims, rather missing all those nasty things in the Christian holy book. Warsi gets another dig in, and says he brings Christianity into disrepute.
I'm going to stop mentioning when people get a dig in, otherwise this will be a long read. Bonnie Greer's coming in with a nice speech about how selective Nick Griffin is about British history, which in his book seems to start at 700AD. Later, Fatty Grffin reckons the English have been here for over seventeen thousand years. Bonnie Greer corrects him, pointing out that the only humans present at that point were Neanderthals. She's too classy to point out the obvious gag, mind.

We're 35 minutes in, and it looks like the whole thing's descending into a BNP-bashing circus. Obviously the panel can only work with the questions they're given, but nobody wants to get off the subject of what a bunch of shits they are and how wrong they are to be racist. Obviously, none of this needs saying, and everyone spending an entire political panel show reiterating it gives too much attention to them. Having said that, we are now onto Labour's immigration policies, and Warsi's taken the opportunity to point out her lot would change immigration for the better. But not in a racist way. But for the better. But not racist. Ad infinitum. Tubby seems to be taking notes, so look out for a recycling of this bit for future misquote purposes.

Good ol' Jack Straw. He's almost certainly espousing some kind of clever policy on immigration now, but I can't for the life of me concentrate on his hypnotically boring voice.

A bloke at the back shouts out that we should kick 'em all out, or similar. He's wearing a horrible yellow jumper, and he asked the question about Enoch Powell earlier. Another bloke sat in front of him goes yeeurrr. I can see where the dickhead contingent's sitting, now.

Chris Huhne's dropping a classic Lib Dem trick now, by dissing things that any previous Tory or Labour government's done. It's one of those that only a party which hasn't been in power since the fifties can't pull off, unless Jack Straw later intends to have a go at past Liberal policies on gramophone ownership or mangles.

A bloke now has a question for 'Dick' Griffin. There's a cheer, like you'd get in the school cafeteria when someone drops a plate.

"Under ten minutes left, and I didn't want this whole programme to be about the BNP" - Dimbleby there, demonstrating how little control he really had over proceedings tonight. Still, we now have a question about whether the Daily Mail should have printed the Jan Moir article about Stephen Gately. Is this a weak parrallel for racism on Question Time I spy? Of course it fucking well is, and Bonnie Greer is so damn careful to not look Captain Racism in the eye while she approves of Jan Moir's right to write the article while at the same time knocking her prejudice. Chris Huhne has a go, too, but drops the ball by mentioning the racist elephant in the room. Damn it, man, try to emulate some Greer-class!

Tubby has a go at the teaching of "homosexuality... indeed, any sex, to primary school children", which would indicate that breeding rates in a BNP-led Britain would be likely to shoot through the roof. He also claims "there is no head of the Christian sect in Britain" which rather makes me wonder what exactly the Queen's job is, then.

"The British people have too much common sense" says our Bonnie, with regards to being swayed by Griffin's appearance on QT. Judging by the standard of common sense I see out in the street, the average BNP voter must have less than most doormats.

And so, with a little more bluster and racist-dissing, Dimbleby calls a halt, and the credits roll. So what have we learnt tonight? That racists appear to melt under studio lights, and that members of the Big Three political parties are always willing to climb all over each other to point out how not racist they are. We've learnt that Bonnie Greer is the epitome of class, while I'm quite the opposite, choosing to refer to a man's unsightly waist a little too often for humour. It's alright, he's a racist; racists don't have feelings. We've learnt that grey hair and headmastery appearances are de rigeur when it comes to putting down bigotry, and that my usual style of televisual blog-review doesn't work as well with political hot topics as with glossy entertainment shows. This is almost certainly because Nick Griffin doesn't have a very good tan, what with needing to look whiter than Daz.

Bitchanca!

How does that Bianca Jackson do it? Not only has she starred in what is possibly EastEnders' most ill-concieved TV trailer ever (and if you haven't seen it, be grateful and make sure never to turn on the Beeb at switch-over time for the next week or two, just in case), turns out she's also the business world's most evil bitchmonster on the side.

This week's Apprentice has to rank as one of the best ever, alongside that one with the cheese. Beautiful juxtapositioning showed us the awesome power of an Apprentice team at full pelt, with Raef (wittily retitled Lawrence of Araefia by his team of wags) leading the boys through that rarest of things, a perfect game. It looked like maybe there was some tension as the poshos took their time getting to the laundry to help out the Johnny Commoners, but then they did get there and they did help out, much to the chagrin of the programme's editors.

Thank fuck for Bianca, then, who cunningly disguised herself as sales manager Jenny Celerier and proceeded to give a room full of salespeople a one-hour lecture on selling before pissing that away when she offered to iron a hotel's pillowcases for a fiver a pop. Luckily, though, she'd already spotted her scapegoat, and dragged the poor girl kicking and screaming into the slaughterhouse with her by ignoring everything she offered then making her cry for not offering any help. Grade A bitch material indeed, particularly because she picked the clearly-quite-lovely-but-clearly-no-Apprentice-winner Lucinda as her target, who, bless her cotton socks, was taken aback by the fact that she was given no real orders from the off and never recovered. She didn't really make that good a showing of herself in the boardroom, alas, which meant the ire of Alan Sugar had to be directed on Shazia, a mostly-innocent, who just happened to be there because she'd opened her trap.

Much as the Bianca from hell deserves to burn at the stake for her evils this night, I'm confident that her punishment will be justice enough: when she finally pops her boardroom clogs, she'll have to face the audience on The Apprentice: You're Fired which the rather genial (and increasingly ubiquitous) Adrian Chiles gets to host on BBC2 straight after the main show. For one of those low-budget reality show discussion bits, it's actually rather good, in part because every week the Chilester points out all the funny bits you'd already pointed out to the rest of your living room, thus making you look witty and that. Anyway, it also involves the just-fired contestant getting to say their bit in front of an audience who've just watched the main show, so by rights Bianca ought to be set upon like Pope Joan was.

Alan Sugar Wants YOU

Ah, yes, there are few better ways to kick off a cliched knockoff tellyblog than to talk about what everyone else in the talking about telly world already talked about this morning; The Apprentice kicked off for a fourth bout last night on BBC One. See that? It was in bold, like in the papers and everything.

This year, Sir Alan appears to have obtained his wannabe apprentices from the books of a low-grade lookalike agency. Already, David "yah, call me Dave" Cameron, in his less known but even more toffy guise as Nicholas de Lacey-Brown, barrister, surname embellisher and suspicious facial hair grower, has been given the Sugary boot. Chief among his crimes, and let's not kid ourselves on this, was publically acknowledging that he was in school for longer than Alan "call me Sir" Sugar. Possibly the array of poshos paraded into the boardroom every year should be given a cheat sheet advising them not to bring up class, education or an inability to discuss football when defending their business decisions. I imagine mentioning shoddy electronics and ridiculous telephones wouldn't go down too well either. He'll never let anyone forget that he's got less education than a barnacle and still has zillions of pounds.

The best thing about the whole affair is the fact that this left-school-at-sixteen, done-it-all-meself, ain't-never-needed-nothing-from-nobody-and-anyone-who-did-is-a-sissy overgrown barrow-boy is so fond of his knighthood that he insists on having everyone else use it all the damn time. You'd think he'd do the courtesy of returning the favour and addressing everyone else by their formal titles, too, but does he fuck. It's all Raef this, Claire that and Alex the other, although in the latter case that's probably a blessing in disguise, because there'd be too much cracking up if he turned to the boys' team and asked Mr Wotherspoon* what went wrong. I look forward to the day he has a baronet or an honourable on or something, so's he can learn what a dick he looks when he gets people to massage his ego like that.

It's shaping up to be a pretty fun series, as it generally is, and I'm looking forward to Lord Snooty and his Pals being recreated before our eyes courtesy of the likes of Raef "hair like a tunnel into eternity" Bjayou and Michael "I *sniff* thought we were friends" Sophocles while the rest of the lads form up into an hilariously incompetent version of the Bash Street Kids. Possibly even the Jocks and the Geordies, should we manage to squeeze another schism out of them.

Raef for the win, incidentally, mostly because Sugar would quickly come to loathe having to work with him.

* - Anyone else picturing a chain of kuh-razy pubs, where everything is topsy-turvy and nothing is what it seems?