too many ducks in the park: January 2006

pop will eat itself

The latest series of Celebrity Big Brother has just finished over here. We didn’t watch it, not least of all because of the 12 or so ‘celebrities’ featured, there was only one we had even heard of before. The British love their celebrities: everyone from the A-list right through to the Z-list (Big Brother draws its cast largely from the bottom end of the alphabet). Tellingly, the only ‘celebrity’ we did know wasn’t even a local one, being American ex-basketballer/ general weirdo Dennis Rodman.

Saturday morning TV repeated the grand finale episode and everyone could have saved themselves the effort of sitting through three weeks of the show by tuning into this collected highlights package.

The twist for the series was that amongst the celebrities was a ‘nobody from Essex’ called Chantelle. Her task was to convince the ‘real celebrities’ that she was actually a celebrity too, specifically a member of the fictitious five-strong girl band Kandyfloss (‘With a K!’). They showed a clip of her singing their supposed hit single and despite the fact that she had no singing ability whatsoever, the other housemates were all easily convinced and she was allowed to stay and compete for the Celebrity Big Brother title.

In real life Chantelle worked as an office temp/ Paris Hilton impersonator, a look she maintained in the house, with her super short outfits and constant flicking of waist-length blonde hair extensions. So here she is pretending to be someone famous, largely by imitating someone famous, who is famous primarily for nothing more than being famous. And she did a pretty good job of it too; because she actually went on to win the show with over 50 percent of the vote.

I think my favourite bit was when an older celebrity, realising her obvious popularity on the outside as one of the few remaining competitors, said to her in a serious and encouraging mentor-like tone, ‘You know, if you want to make the most of this, you’ve got it in you to become a celebrity’. Yes that’s right, he wasn’t encouraging her to pursue a singing career or an acting career or any career at all for that matter, but as someone who knows, he felt that she had already proven that she was good at being a celebrity - a job that clearly doesn’t require any special skills at all.

With a logic that makes my brain hurt, as the only person on the show without the actual celebrity credential she really did deserve to emerge victorious as everyone’s favourite celebrity.

london photo #2

This week’s photo takes us ‘sarf of the riva’ to Tooting High Street. If only I could put in a video rather than a photo to give you the full impact of the robotic model that turns her head as she raises and lowers her hands in prayer… but you get the idea. A bit frightening really.

london photo #1

Time Out London magazine has started a competition asking people to send in unusual images of London. I’ve set myself the challenge of taking one photo a week for the next few months and here’s the first: a pavement stone on our street.

This, somewhat obscurely, tells people to clean up after their dogs. They’ve chosen a cute symbol, but unfortunately it doesn’t really do the job.

You know how you always hear that there is a lot of dog poo on the streets of Paris? This rumour was obviously started by the English to deflect the attention from their own poo-lined streets. I remember how yucky it was to see the occasional deposit on a Melbourne nature strip. Well there ain’t no nature strips here baby – it’s right on the pavement. When you see images of Londoners walking purposefully with their heads tucked down into their jackets, they’re not shielding themselves from the cold and the wind. No, they are intently staring down as they make their way through the minefield, vigilantly watching and dodging and hoping, hoping that each footfall comes out clean.

Lisbon (…its in Portugal)

Lisbon is a cool, laidback place that doesn’t draw attention to itself. So much so that people tend to have a vague notion of it being a place… somewhere… in the world – not that they feel confident saying exactly where. Although it’s a capital city, as Europe’s smallest, with cobblestone streets and old school stores, it very much has a ‘getting away from it all’ vibe.

One evening whilst out strolling we were approached by some lost Australian tourists who asked if we knew the way to the Barrio Alto area - the trendy part of town with the best nightlife, bars and restaurants. (Of course we did, we’d been in Lisbon for three days - we were practically locals.) The fact was we were standing in the middle of it. It doesn’t announce itself: the streets are dark and places keep their doors closed, with perhaps a small window illuminated at the top to indicate they are open for business. The overall impression is of an exclusive club open to those who are willing to explore beyond the obvious places.

The trip coincided with my thirtieth birthday and we chose Lisbon mainly for its advertised average of eight hours a day of sunlight in January (compared with London’s measly two hours). It didn’t disappoint, with beautiful warm sunshine everyday and the added benefits of great coffee everywhere for just 50¢, fantastic scenery, sights and food including reportedly the world’s best custard tarts (we had at least ten and can vouch for the claim). A surprising bonus was seeing people of all ages living in the city, including not a small number of post-retirement aged ladies and gentlemen. I say this was surprising because it really drew my attention to the fact that everyone is London is aged 20 to 35*, placing me on the older side of the curve. So what a lovely present: to feel like a young girl again, if only for a few days.