Tempora mutantur

This is sad news, if hardly unexpected. As I remarked at the time, the Great Man seemed unhappy last year, even showing signs of taking the whole thing seriously - so clearly it was time to move on. Eurovision will be very different with the twinkly, giggly, hyperfluent Norton providing the commentary. Wogan's comments were always few and far between, perfectly timed to make the silences between them eloquent - hard to see Norton managing that trick. His turns of phrase were pleasingly archaic (not, needless to say, in the arch, self-advertising Russell Brand way) and he made telling use of understatement - again not Norton's forte. Ah well, times change - and Royaume Unie seems to have been suckered into trying to win next time, with a Lloyd-Webber-led Surge. It won't work - and watching the proceedings will, I fear, no longer have its obscure but potent charm.

Celebrations

As the annual work tsunami engulfs NigeCorp - hence my recent sparse blogging - it is of course time for the Office Party. It was last night. The Office Party, sadly, is never in keeping with the grand tradition of NigeCorp celebrations - oxroast, choral singing, orations, downing of bumpers of claret, no heeltaps - but this year the arrangements had apparently been hijacked by the provisional wing of GirlieCorp. As a result, we found ourselves descending ankle-breaking steps into a basement bar that my old friend Cheever pithily described as 'the inside of the White Rabbit's womb'. 'Yes,' I concurred, surveying the decor, 'with a nasty case of fibroids.' All done in shades of beige and cream, with worryingly bedlike, wipe-clean seating and bizarre gestures at Christmas decoration, it looked like a cut-price Winter Wonderland crossed with a swingers' club. And the 'music' - all drum machine, thumping bass and moaning - fitted perfectly, while inedible canapés and sickly, mud-brown cocktails completed the picture. I managed to procure wine (in special easy-spill glasses) but did not, needless to say, stay long. Long enough, though, to feel a little frail this morning - mostly, I think, from lack of food.
Never mind, here are two causes for celebration - Jonathan the tortoise, bless him - and the dear old EU. Having announced that it would 'lead the world' in the matter of carbon-cutting, it has proceeded to lead the world in failing to reach an agreement. I am sure this is a lead the world will indeed follow, if only because, once the thrill of setting impossible targets has faded, it will realise it actually has no choice.

Banks in Bad Company

A headline on the BBC news caught my ear this morning. Proposed legislation in today's Queen's Speech will be 'targeting banks, binge drinkers and benefit cheats'. Who would have thought, just a year ago, that bankers would find themselves rubbing shoulders with boozers and fraudsters as government 'targets' - the whirligig of time... But the most worrying target has been kept half-hidden - once again it's the recalcitrant citizenry, guilty until proved innocent. Police powers to stop, without any pretext, anyone who has 'entered the country' and demand proof of their identity is as unmistakable a step towards a police state as there could be. I hope it is blown out of the water at the first opportunity. There's a good piece on the ID card business in Standpoint, which gives reason to hope that the whole dubiously legal edifice could yet be brought crashing down. Let's hope so.

Obama-Clinton Coe-Ovett

Watching Barack Obama introducing his 'dear friend' Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State took me back to that memorable scene at the 1980 Olympics when Steve Ovett, victorious in the 800 metres, held out his hand to Sebastian Coe. Clive James, if memory serves, described Coe's reaction to having to shake that hand as being like a man who's been asked if he'd mind holding this dog turd for a minute. Little Lord Coe, that charming man and true Corinthian, is now of course presiding over the mounting horror that is the London 2012 Olympiad.

News from Nowhere

Why is this preposterous fantasy being indulged? Ah I know - because we're still at the feelgood, aspirational stage and politicians like that. When, in a few years, fuel bills are soaring by 25 per cent and more, the lights are going out, industries are closing down, and great tracts of the country have been given over to useless wind turbines (doubly useless because by then there'll be no capacity to back them up), reality might finally bite - and people might finally get very angry at having been sold such delusional nonsense. All these absurd, wholly unworkable projections should be scrapped forthwith, Lord Turner should be taken to a discreet clinic, and we should get down to building more nuclear - and coal-fired (recognising that carbon capture is another delusion) - power stations. There is, as someone used to say, no alternative.

Baseline TV

Call it shameless plagiarism if you like - I prefer to think of it as (hem hem) creatively developing a good idea. The good idea is Bryan's Baseline Movie and Baseline Book - and my question is: What about your Baseline TV programme? For me (and Bryan I suspect) it's Frasier every time - when nothing will quite do, nothing else will do. Quite apart from being the greatest sitcom ever made, it manages to be at once smart and sharp and cosy and comforting - exactly what one needs for a Baseline TV programme. But there must be others? Over to you...

The Hallelujah Factor

I'm still reeling from the news that the X Factor Christmas single is going to be Hallelujah. It seems that Leonard Cohen's strange and beautiful song, which he spent a year wrestling with and was never entirely sure about, has - thanks to over-exposure and endless cover versions - not only entered the mainstream (making Simon Cowell yet more money along the way) but become all-purpose musical shorthand for any kind of vague spiritual yearning. It's the melody that does it - the fourth, the fith, the minor fall. If only Len had stayed within his usual, shall was say, limited melodic horizons, the song would have been safe - but alas it seems he's inadvertently gifed the world with... a new Imagine, to be lazily reached for every time a little effort-free, content-free spiritual uplift seems called for . Well, I suppose there's some consolation in the fact that it's an infinitely better song than Imagine - and presumably, if Len's on any kind of royalties deal, his coffers will be swelling nicely and he need never tour again. Hallelujah!