Top 10 Songs of 2012

10)  Coldplay feat. Rihanna – Princess Of China

A very sparkly and magical fairytale-ish track about a princess and beginning with “Once Upon A Time”. While Rihanna has collaborated with seemingly everybody in the music world, Coldplay is the most surprising. Coldplay wrote it especially with Rihanna in mind, which is probably why the unlikely collaboration worked so well and created one of the band’s best ‘pop’ moments.

9)  Miss 600 – Typically Me

Derby duo Miss 600, vocalist Hannah Garner and multi-instrumentalist David Amar, offer a jazzy take on Sod’s Law. Buy a half-price car and it breaks down soon after, book a holiday in the sun it ends up raining all week. With the brassy, smoky backing track and the lyrics delivered with such class, charisma and style by singer Hannah Garner, this shows great potential.

8)  Loreen – Euphoria

Few Eurovision Song Contest songs are able to crossover to become international hits these days no matter how much of a success they are in the contest itself. But not only did ‘Euphoria’ do exceptionally well in the vote it ended up as one the biggest international hits to come out of the contest in a long time, and with good reason as it is an uplifting summer dance anthem.

7)  Cover Drive – Twilight

It’s nice to see something called Twilight that had nothing to do with… a certain terrible vampire & Mary Sue lurve story franchise. There was something of a rule of diminishing returns with Cover Drive’s releases after this single, but this number one hit was very happy, a lot of fun and a grower that benefited from strong airplay.

6)  Paloma Faith – Picking Up The Pieces

Paloma Faith finally got a top ten single with this track. She gives a great vocal performance,  particularly in the middle-eight, conveying the heartache and sorrow of thinking her partner doesn’t share the love she does and the feeling of not measuring up to the perceived perfection of another.

5)  Sub Focus feat. Alice Gold – Out The Blue

Another unlikely collaboration, this time between drum & bass act Sub Focus and folksy singer-songwriter Alice Gold, but once again not only did it work, it worked extremely well. Alice Gold’s serene voice backed with by the polished production of Sub Focus gave us a marvelous tune.

4)  Scissor Sisters – Only The Horses

This song was created with the band collaborating with Calvin Harris and echoes piano led old school dance classics, and the vocals by Jake Shears are so vivacious and lively. It’s just a very nice track. I think deserved to have been a much bigger hit than it was. That said it was their first top 20 hit in a while, and it may be their last for another while as the band are on hiatus. For now it shows what good pop songs they can make.

3) Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks

This has a fantastic animated video in some bizarre nightmare universe featuring a snowy landscape with unusual wood carvings and multicoloured comets where adventurers face a giant bird, a beast with thick black fur and shark teeth, some kind of sea monster with octopus tentacles and a towering monster with goat horns and bat wings. ‘Little Talks’ is Of Monsters And Men’s debut single. It went to number one in their home country Iceland and then became a hit internationally. It is a refreshing change that a song this brilliant can become so popular.

2)   The Gaslight Anthem – “45”

The Gaslight Anthem released their fourth album Handwritten and this was  the first single to be released from it. With Bruce Springsteen stadium rock influences, powerful guitars, and  a theme of moving on after heartbreak this was a magnificent song and the type that iPod replay was made for.

1)  Florence and the Machine – Never Let Me Go

Some songs end up having a very personal meaning to you, and this one is an example for me. Earlier this year my grandma and a friend of mine both passed away, and this song helped me deal with some of the emotions I was going through. Perhaps it’s the clear sadness of the song and that the track has a comforting nature to it in an unusual way. It’s ethereal and dream-like with mystical and oceanic sounds and with a coldness to it, all of which gives it a kind of beauty that many Florence and the Machine tracks have. But on a purely personal level, this song is an example of how music can help you through tough times.

The Royle Family Christmas Special 2012

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Royle Family has in a way become the new The Vicar of Dibley in that it was a show that was a huge hit in the ’90s and technically they are still making it but it only exists as Christmas specials nowadays.

The specials saw what for me was probably the strongest ever episode, The Queen of Sheba which was a fantastic swansong to the character of Nana and had some incredibly moving scenes, such as when Barbara was doing Norma’s hair and she was saying how she was happy she never had to go into a home, not to mention the way her death and the family’s reactions to it.

But the subsequent specials also showed the lowest point of the whole series in The New Sofa with Dave and Denise kicking turkey round a kitchen floor, using powertools to cut it and having a bubble bath with the turkey still defrosting in there, which for me was a step too far into far-fetched sitcom silliness.

I’m not usually one to say that shows have to stick to a rigid formula and if they don’t they are RUINED FOREVER, but I think The Royle Family generally works best when it is just set in Jim and Barbara’s house and they are just hanging around chatting, which is more or less the case in this new special Barbara’s Old Ring. There is some stuff with them trying to help Joe on dates and giving him a makeover which is more than a little contrived. Joe getting one of his dates Philomela’s name wrong (fillet-o-fish and Philadelphia being two examples) was a bit corny. I liked the way one of his dates complained about missing Eggheads to be on the date though, and Barbara offering a cheeseboard of Dairylea, Primula, Cheesestrings and Kraft Cheese Slices.

For many fans, what’s good about The Royle Family is that we feel like we know these characters well, so we share their opinions of each other. Like them we too can tell that something is the matter with Denise as she actually is getting off her arse and offering to make a brew, we too know that Jim is going to take the piss out of Dave’s impotence in the bedroom.

There’s also the way they talk about unseen characters, like Dandruff Derek, Vertigo Vernon and that unseen character who has been a constant through the series, Beverley Macca. When they mention Cadging Carol it seems like she’s going to be one of these at first, but we are introduced to her when she muscles her way into the house. I think Cadging Carol (played by Lorraine Bruce) is one of the best new characters they’ve done in ages. She mentions one of her kids ‘borrowing’ a book from WH Smiths (“He nicked it, but that’s Broken Britain for you”) and ends up scrounging half of the Royle’s supplies for Christmas dinner, inviting herself over to join them and acting like returning the items she cadged in the first place was something out of the goodness of her heart.

Jim as usual gets the best lines, many at Dave’s expense (“Flop yourself down there”, “Bet you were bored stiff”).  His view on Loose Women (“All that’s missing is the bloody cauldron”) and pointing out that Isaac Newton didn’t ‘invent’ gravity were two of my favourites, as was his comment about the back of the Royle’s sofa being like The Generation Game.

This last thing provides the main plot of the episode. Barbara is looking for an old ring that she’s lost, she finds a scratch card down the back of the sofa. She later finds out that Jim wins £100 on it and that he didn’t tell her. She becomes upset and thinks Jim doesn’t care about her. You can probably guess where this is leading up to, and indeed in the end it turns out Jim bought Barbara a new ring with the money he won. But as predictable as it is, it is framed and acted very well. Barbara’s character is the emotional core of this series, and the audience can really empathise with Barbara’s sad tears at the dinner table telling Jim and the rest of the family that she feels unloved by him, and then when they turn to happy tears when she finds out he bought a new ring for her and hid it in the Christmas pudding because he wanted to surprise her.

The episode was dedicated to the memory of Geoffrey Hughes who played Twiggy, and a caption describes him as “a lovely man”.

So while the Royle Family isn’t the show it once was, this special showed that there is still the material and the talent there to make it a good programme.

Edit – 03/07/16

This will almost certainly be the final ever episode too, after the very sad news of Caroline Aherne’s untimely death. R.I.P. Caroline Aherne, and thanks for creating this brilliant programme, I’d say one of the best British sitcoms that has ever been made.

Edit – 27/12/16

Just under 6 months after Caroline Aherne’s death, Liz Smith, who played Nana Norma Jean Speakman, has passed away too. R.I.P Liz Smith. Liz Smith was one of the greatest things in The Royle Family, and in the many other programmes and films she appeared in, and ‘The Queen of Sheba’ will be even more poignant than it already was now.

Doctor Who – The Snowmen

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Series 7, Episode 6, Christmas Special

The traditional Doctor Who Christmas special, but it’s also technically in the sixth episode of series 7.  The Doctor has taken the role of the spirits of Christmas trying to teach the Scrooge-like figure the error of his ways in A Christmas Carol. This time for some of this episode the Doctor himself is the Scrooge figure, having become disillusioned with being the Doctor. But luckily he gets back into the swing of things.

He makes a terrible pun (“Takes one to SNOW one”). To be fair, the Victorians were fond of terrible puns. He gets some better lines when pointing out that “Snowmen are useless in July” and using computer terms such as “most read file” and “delete your history” to the villain, but as this is the Victorian era he is talking about paper records rather than electronic ones.The Doctor goes from Scrooge to another well known Victorian character Sherlock Holmes, which is of course another Steven Moffat series. It gets another shout out with the reference to Silurian Madame Vastra and her both professional and romantic human partner Jenny being the possible inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. To complete this reunion of allies introduced in A Good Man Goes To War we also have resurrected Sontaran Strax.  They make a good, if unlikely, TARDIS team.

For the baddies in this epsiode, The Snowmen are creepy with pointed, sharp teeth which look similar to shark’s teeth. There’s also an evil ice governess who impersonates Mr. Punch. We have some guest stars Richard E. Grant as Doctor Simeon and the voice of Sir Ian McKellen as the Great Intelligence as well, but as a whole the villains and indeed the whole threat are a little sidelined. As with many episodes that are the first proper showing of a new companion, it is more about introducing them than the story.

We have sort of met Clara before, in Asylum Of The Daleks when she was known as Oswin Oswald,  but this is her first time meeting the Doctor personally and having an adventure with him. It also turns out to be her last, at least in this incarnation, as she doesn’t make it out alive… It’s not uncommon for companions introduced in specials to die, but there is more going on here. She’s has the same personality, but she can’t really be the same person as she’s from a completely different time, and neither version appeared to have any knowledge of another version of them somewhere else, or if they did they didn’t consider it worth mentioning. Furthermore, at the end of this episode we see yet another Clara Oswin, this time in the modern day, walking past the gravestone of her Victorian self no less. We can probably rule out it being identical ancestors. The Dalek version and the Victorian version both have a penchant for making souffles, but I’m pretty sure that’s not something that’s a genetic trait. In any case both had the exact same last words to the Doctor. It appears that the same individual is splintered across time and space. But how and why? I am very interested in this latest mystery in the series, although the inbox for mysteries in this series always seems fuller than the outbox. I have to say I wasn’t keen on the “Doctor Who?” thing to begin with, but they are REALLY overdoing that now. It’s going to get very tedious if that happens in every single episode.

Mystery or no mystery, Clara shows signs of being a great companion. She’s certainly very keen and shows gumption, and in this incarnation of the character she’s adaptable having a double life as a Cockney barmaid similar to Nancy in Oliver Twist and as a posh governess for a wealthy family. She provides the best scene in the episode, as her climbing up a spiralling white staircase to a misty TARDIS in the sky against the backdrop of a dark blue starry night is a wonderful image.

But by far her highlight as a companion in this episode is her reaction to the TARDIS, being the first to say “It’s smaller on the outside” rather than “It’s bigger on the inside”.

The Snowman and The Snowdog

CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Snowman, the 1982 animation of the Raymond Briggs graphic novel, is rightly regarded as a Christmas classic, certainly here in Britain. It is shown every year and still has a fairly timeless appeal to it today.  There were requests to make a sequel, which didn’t happen, unless you count Father Christmas in 1991, which was another animation of a Raymond Briggs graphic novel and featured the Snowman and James in a brief cameo. Now 30 years since the broadcast of the original one has been made.

It is one of those sequels that’s more of a remake. It links back to the original by having a new family move into the house and the boy, Billy, finding a box with a photograph of James and the Snowman and the Snowman’s hat and scarf plus the coal and satsuma used to make him from the first film. From then on it follows the same basic plot of the first one. Boy builds a snowman, it comes to life, they fly through the air, meet Father Christmas who gives the boy a present, and in the morning the boy finds out the Snowman has melted (if you’ve seen the original then you know that is coming). If you’d suspected from the title the only real difference is the addition of a cute ickle snow puppy then, you’d be right. It isn’t as good as the first one. But… I still really liked it

The Snowdog is adorable. It’s playful and very cute with its mitten ears and satsuma nose.  I liked that Billy scooped snow from the top of a shed roof and from bushes and branches as he didn’t have quite enough snow to make a full snowman, because I think most people who have made a snowman have done that at some point.

The song used while they are flying through the sky is called ‘Light The Night’ by former Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows. It has been described as like a Coldplay song, but it reminds me more of Mike Batt’s ‘Better Than A Dream’ from the cartoon series The Dreamstone. It isn’t as memorable as the first film’s ‘Walking In The Air’, but what it works very well with the flying sequence, making it very pleasant and quite moving.

When they get to the snowman party the animators seem to have a lot of fun. There were two snowmen that resembled Laurel & Hardy. I  liked the snowmen skiing, partly because it reminded me of an old Christmas tree decoration we had when I was a kid. There was also a skiing penguin, and just like in the first film many have pointed out that penguins live in the South Pole rather than the North Pole, but then as TV Tropes put it, Everything’s Better With Penguins.

The ending features Father Christmas giving Billy a dog collar to put on the Snowdog, which turns it into a real dog. That seems to have triggered the arbitrary “UNREALISTIC!” nerve of some viewers. I say arbitrary because it wasn’t any less unrealistic than the premise of a snowman coming to life. Of course everyone has their own limits as to what they will and won’t accept in any work of fiction and what they think is worth nitpicking. For me it was a bit strange that the snowman and Billy fly a plane. OK fair enough flying in a plane might be fun, but the Snowman can fly anyway, why bother even using a plane?

Personally, I think it was a good idea to go for a slightly happier ending in this version, because I was expecting the Snowdog to be melted by the end. Billy finding the Snowman melted in this version, as well played as it is, isn’t anywhere near as affecting for people who have seen the first film because, well, we’ve seen it before. I don’t think seeing the Snowdog melted as well would have made much difference either. The Snowdog becoming a real dog is a sweet moment, and it’s different from what they did before.

I think they were probably trying to make this as a tribute to the original, and it seems to have had a generally positive response from viewers. So while it isn’t as good as the first one, it is really lovely and warm-hearted, and it was a nice programme for Christmas.

Young Apprentice (Series 3)

Young Apprentice is, as you might expect, like the normal version, but the contestants are teenagers. It has a shorter run, there is no You’re Fired spin-off show and Lord Sugar at least appears to be attempting to me more lenient to the contestants. Although most of the time his persona in this version of the show is a bit like an embarrassing uncle cracking corny jokes that go right over the young ‘uns heads.

The first contestant to go this series was Maximilian, who unfortunately only stayed long enough to fold some clothes and sound very posh. Then there was publisher Sean, a boy who seemed to be 97% hair. Amy showed that she was a great choice to be a contestant on an Apprentice show by her boast that she was like a lion or a tiger and the way she managed to sell a tatty denim jacket to some bloke who’s girlfriend hated it by telling him to basically sod what the dull girlfriend thought and go out wearing the jacket with his mates and pull a more interesting girlfriend instead. Of the contestants that went in the first half of the show the one I was most sorry to see go was egg farmer Alice. Calm and elegant with a slight air of malevolence, especially when she was declaring courgettes to be her arch-nemesis.

The two contestants that left in the middle turned out to be the elimination escapee followed next week by the SHOCK! ELIMINATION! The former, David, had one of the strangest reality TV contestant arcs I’ve ever seen. In the first week he was arrogant and a bit sexist, and surprisingly survived elimination despite being bought into the boardroom 3 times in a row. But then the next week he was project manager and was a complete goofball… yet he won! The week after he did nothing but dress up as a mascot, a sort of human paint splat called Mr. Splodge, which he enjoyed doing and was probably his most popular week as far as viewers were concerned, and then he was fired. So he went from a potential series ‘baddie’ to, well, a bit like Homer Simpson, “succeeding despite idiocy” like in Homer Defined and finding popularity as a mascot like in Dancin’ Homer.

The SHOCK!ELMINATION was Navdeep, a former head girl who came across as very pleasant and a high achiever. Her main strength shown in the show was her pitching, but in the week she went she didn’t pitch too well. Even so, her firing was more to do with Lord Sugar’s belief that she was probably better suited to going to university to study law for example than going into business. I’m sure she’ll do well for herself in whatever career she chooses.

Falling at the last hurdle that is the semi-final were Steven and Andrew.

If they are going to make The Inbetweeners: The New Class, that… would probably be a bad idea, but if they were the best chance of it being not shit would be if Steven was in it.  His highlights included looking uncomfortable in a rabbit costume, somewhat happier in astronaut costume and his geezer-lad voice over he did for an advert. And of course his epic bromance with Andrew.

Andrew was my favourite contestant of this series. He’s from Huddersfield where I used to live, so HUDDERSFIELD REPRESENT! But besides that, he was one of the more… multifaceted contestants shall we say. He started out as the normal everylad, he was good at sales and negotiations and had a lively personality. But the week he was the boardroom all that confidence evaporated and he ended up struggling to hold back tears. The week after he acted a bit like a hissing, scratching cornered cat to his team mates, and found time to stick some toilet paper to the shoe of a pompous, pretentious guy who was modelling for an advert they were filming. But once again, in the boardroom all the bravado evaporated and he was less successful in holding back tears this time. He was a bit more upbeat in his final week though.  If there was a constant with Andrew, it was that he was a very funny deadpan snarker throughout, and also that he managed to be very likeable and charming all the time despite everything.

The final four were split into two groups and became joint project managers. Fashion designer Patrick created the Wetsuit Kimono dress in week one, but for the rest of the series he got a bit of an invisible edit. Either that or he secretly decided to go on holiday, leaving an automated mannequin for himself in his place to model his own designs, then returning for the final. Even in the final though he didn’t do much other than hire a choir to sing Lady Gaga songs in a shopping centre. Of course it was unlikely to be an equal partnership as the other project manager was Maria, who had frequently ignored her other team mates and even market research in favour of her own views. It was almost as if she had been lost here from another dimension, and was longing to get back to her own universe. And it would be her own universe, where there are posters of her all over, gigantic fire-breathing monuments to her everywhere, they only play her favourite songs, she invented electricity and ALL WAYS ARE HER WAY.

It was the other team that ended up winning the final task, a duo so unlikely it was like one of those buddy cop movies where two different people team up, although in this case the two would be more of a Sunday evening ITV1 lady detective series of a posh pristine blonde and a tough no-nonsense hardy Northern lass. But as they were two of the best candidates throughout the series it was not a surprising result.

The two contestants in question were Lucy and Ashleigh. Lucy was an aspiring lawyer who sells cupcakes. While I’m sure she’ll be a far better lawyer than Lionel Hutz from The Simpsons, it reminded me of his law firm, which also provides “expert shoe repair”, and will deliver a free pizza if you lose. She sort of resembled the Cookie Queen from the Disney Silly Symphony The Cookie Carnival, and in some ways she was similar to The Apprentice series 7’s Helen Milligan, who was a disillusioned ex-lawyer who then worked for a bakery, and like Helen, Lucy ended the series as the runner-up.

As I’m  Yorkshire born and bred myself, I kind of liked that Ashleigh did her best to keep Northern stereotypes, and specifically Yorkshire ones, alive. A hard grafter, very stubbon, all common sense and call a spade a spade, and stressing the importance of thrift. I am pleased that she won, as she was definitely a strong character. She  seemed to be the most mature of the contestants, made the right call on the tasks most of the time, and I liked the way she always stood her ground.

So well done Ashleigh. In fact, I think all the contestants deserve some credit, because at 16/17 they are at the start of their working life and clearly have achieved a fair bit to be picked to go on the show in the first place, I know that when I was that age I wasn’t as enterprising as these contestants are, so good luck to all of them.

Only Connect: My highlights from series six

The sixth series of Only Connect has been a big success, having higher viewing figures than the show has ever had, and the final of this series was also its 100th episode.

Over the series I managed to get a few questions right (although they are hugely outweighed by the ones I didn’t get right). Because I am such a massive pop music geek, that was the subject I did by far the best on compared to any other subject. I go the connection of Jukebox musicals, and one where the connection was singers with jewels/gemstones in their name like Caro Emerald, Neil Diamond and Pearl Bailey. I got Eurovision acts Dana International and Lordi in the missing vowels round, songs with famous people in the titles like ‘Clint Eastwood’ by Gorrilaz, and on the connecting walls I got Madonna songs (‘Frozen’, ‘Holiday’, ‘True Blue’, ‘Borderline’), and UK number one singles of the 2010s (‘Wherever You Are’ by the Military Wives Choir, ‘Fireflies’ by Owl City, ‘Domino’ by Jessie J, ‘Forget You’ by Cee-Lo Green).

Elsewhere on the connecting walls I got a chocolate bars connection right (Bounty, Fudge, Fuse, Maverick). Doctor Who aliens (Weeping Angels, The Silence, the Ood, Macra), Blackadder Goes Forth (General Melchett, Captain Darling, Driver Parkhurst and Captain Flasheart) and Steven Moffat shows (Press Gang, Chalk, Sherlock, Jekyll).

Cartoons were probably my second strongest subject overall. I got connections of Pokemon (Bulbasaw, Jigglypuff, Snorklax, Ditto), cartoon dogs (Odie, Lady, Ren, Spike),  ways Kenny was killed in South Park and a connecting wall of Family Guy characters.

Speaking of Family Guy, if you remember that episode where they referenced The More You Know and all Peter said about Canada was “Canada sucks?”. Well on this show I learnt that Canada invented Trivial Pursuit, instant mashed potatoes, paint roller and the wonderbra. That is one great thing about this show, is that you can find out so much. Over this series I learnt that one of the careers Barbie has tried was palaeontologist (!), Chopin’s heart was preserved in cognac in Warsaw after his death and that a zebra’s stripes, a dog’s nose and a whale’s fluke are all as individual as a human’s fingerprint.

The most ‘high-brow’ question I got right wasn’t even a question, it was in the missing vowels rounds it came in handy that as I’m also a bit of a natural history geek I knew that panther, cougar, mountain lion and puma are different names for the same animal.

Victoria Coren was on top form throughout the series.

“There are no prizes for coming second, and indeed no prizes for coming first, so if they’re here for their cash, their boat or their commemorative chequebook and pen, they’re not as bright as they’ll need to be”.

“If the questions seem easier, you’re getting smarter. Or you’re watching a repeat”.

In one episode she pretended that they were recording dozens of episodes one after the other as the BBC are so strapped for cash, then that she had been told through her ear piece to “Say goodbye to them? Goodbye to them” and collapsing while the credits rolled.

One of the best moments of the series was when one of her introductions turned out to be one of the sequences; things she claimed to not be allowed within 100 yards of (the DVLA in Swansea, the British saddleback pig, the Albion pub in London and Alex Guttenplan).

In the final she said to a team who were going to play the water wall as the previous had picked the lion wall, “I’m afraid I have to say like a stern bartender, it’s water for you”.

The final was a very good episode. I was quite pleased with myself that I somehow managed to get two questions right in the final, one was the coloured beards. Marty Feldman’s last film (Yellowbeard), Captain of Queen Anne’s Revenge (Blackbeard), Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I (Redbeard) and wife-murdering Perrault character (Bluebeard). Although I have to confess I only got this because of a of memory of an  old Aardman animations Weetabix advert from my childhood, which is also the first time I heard of the Mary Celeste.

The other question I got right was one of the connecting walls which had Viz comic strips,  (Black Bag, Tinribs, Mr. Logic, Eight Ace).

To celebrate the 100th episode there were seven glasses of sherry next to the trophy (as Victoria Coren put it “so I’m going to give out the trophy and then get on with drinking them”) and it was a nice touch that they ended with picture of the whole crew and a missing vowels message THN KY (THANK YOU).

So once again, it’s very pleasing to see that this show is doing so well, and I look forward to the next series.