Laugh Now, Pay Later

I love Leicester Comedy Festival.

Let’s start there, because I don’t want this to read as some miserable little takedown of a thing I actually think is rather brilliant. Leicester Comedy Festival is one of the best things about the city. It gets audiences through the doors of venues they might not normally enter, and it’s a chance for emerging acts to perform. More importantly, it makes February in Leicester feel less like a wet sock has been placed over the sun.

When I moved back to Leicester during the pandemic, the festival was one of the things that got me out of the house again. It helped me re-enter the world a bit as well as repeatedly giving me that specific festival joy of discovering someone before they’re everywhere. I’ve fallen in love with shows like Lucy Pearman’s beautifully whimsical and hilarious Lunartic. Found Brennan Reece, Alison Spittle, Kuan-wen Huang, Sarah Keyworth, drag king John Travulva, and Paddy Young before he went became one of the best bits of SNL UK . I’ve watched brilliant queer comedy at The Y. Taken chances on shows because they were free, or Pay What You Want, or a fiver.

And that matters. Not just in a soft, “culture is good for the soul” way (although it is!) and my soul does need help. But it also means tills ringing, pints poured, hotel rooms booked too. Leicester Comedy Festival isn’t a few comics in a cupboard. In 2025, it ran across 81 venues in Leicester and Leicestershire, from theatres to pubs, restaurants and libraries. The festival has previously been reported as having an economic impact of around £3 million a year. So no, this is not some tiny fringe concern. It’s a major cultural engine for the city.

Which is why the news reported by Chortle this week is so grim.

According to them, hundreds of comedians who performed at this year’s Leicester Comedy Festival have allegedly been left unpaid, up to 75 days after performing. The article reports that only 22% of settlements had been paid on time, leaving potentially 289 shows still waiting. The festival reportedly told performers that, rather than ring-fencing ticket money, it had prioritised “urgent operational expenditure” so the festival could go ahead.

The festival’s own ticket information says that it doesn’t keep ticket income; and that “100% of this is passed on directly” to acts, promoters and venues. It also charges a standard £1.50 booking fee per ticket, capped at £15 per basket, to cover box office and processing costs.

I have long thought the booking fee was outrageous, btw. Charging another £1.50 PER TICKET for the privilege of using the internet. Grim. But if the stated arrangement is that ticket income belongs to the acts, then that money needs to belong to the acts. Not spiritually. Not eventually. Not once the charity has navigated its reported cashflow issues. Actually. Like right now.

Because sorry, but no.

If ticket money that performers have earned is being used first to cover operational costs, then that looks, from the outside, like artists’ money being treated as available cashflow.

This is especially galling because taking a show to a festival already costs artists money. The 2026 registration fees listed for Leicester Comedy Festival range from £72 for a first performance in a venue seating up to 80 people, up to £310 per performance in a venue seating over 400. There are travel, accommodation, rehearsal, publicity and tech costs. It can often mean time off other work, and emotional labour of trying to convince strangers to come and watch you at 5.45pm in a room above a pizza restaraunt (Peter’s Pizzeria is excellent btw).

It is already becoming harder for artists to take part in this stuff. Believe it or not, Leicester isn’t magically cheap to reach. The East Midlands train line remains, in my view, a crime scene. Existing is expensive. And then performers are asked to absorb all of that upfront, pay to register, bring audiences in, generate economic activity for the city, and wait two and a half months to be paid the ticket money they have earned.

This is not an abstract issue. A few hundred quid might not sound like much to an organisation balancing spreadsheets, but it might be the gas bill. Or a chunk of the rent. It might be the difference between someone being able to keep making work or quietly stopping. And those are exactly the people festivals claim to champion. Chaotic little weirdos with handmade props and big dreams.

And yes, I know it’s hard out there. I know festivals are under pressure. Arts organisations are trying to deliver ambitious programmes while funding shrinks and the AI overloads take over.

But the answer cannot be… pay the artists last.

I feel like a broken record, but there has to be a line.

If a festival is big enough to market itself as a major cultural event, attract sponsors, partner with institutions, run awards, sell memberships, programme hundreds of shows, operate a box office, and create economic value for a city, then it has too be big enough to protect artist income. If ticket money is owed to performers, that money should be ring-fenced.

And that is where the journalism bit comes in. Where are the arts correspondents? Or the local reporters? Where are the national culture desks who love a cheerful festival preview but go oddly shy when the people making the culture are out of pocket?

This should not be a niche comedy industry story. It’s a workers’ rights story. And it is also, frankly, a Leicester story, because this festival matters A LOT to the city.

I want Leicester Comedy Festival to survive. Thrive. But not on the backs of unpaid performers.

The festival has given a lot to Leicester and to audiences. Now it needs to give artists what they are owed.

Ben x

p.s. sign up below if you want blogs from me, which happen about three times a year 😂

When the Artist Becomes the Contingency Fund

For the past couple of years, I’ve been writing a new play. It's been the usual long journey of drafts, development meetings, notes, and more drafts. But recently, something happened within that process that felt worth reflecting on. Not because the incident itself is unique, but because it speaks to something happening across the UK theatre sector more broadly.

In short: I was asked, more than once, to reduce my contracted royalty in order to “help” get the production on.

I said no. Eventually, the request was withdrawn. But the experience stayed with me.

And I think we need to talk about why requests like this are becoming more common; and why they quietly set damaging precedents for artists...

A royalty isn’t a favour. It’s a wage.

A writer’s royalty is not an optional extra, a generous bonus, or a flexible pot of goodwill. It’s the mechanism through which writers are paid when their work reaches an audience. It’s part of the basic structure of how writing is valued.

When a theatre asks a writer to lower that (especially late in the process) they’re not just making a practical budget query. They’re signalling something more troubling:

That the artist’s income is the most movable part of the equation.
That the artist’s contribution is the first potential cut.
That the burden of financial instability should fall on the person with the least security.

And that is not a neutral request. It becomes a precedent, whether anyone acknowledges it or not.

UK theatre is under incredible pressure, but that pressure is not distributed fairly.

Theatres are struggling: funding cuts, rising costs, shrinking audiences. All of this is real. But the way those pressures play out internally tells a different story. The financial strain rarely spreads evenly. It falls, again and again, on freelancers.

We’re asked to take fee cuts, do extra work for the same rate, squeeze deadlines, be flexible, be grateful, be accommodating - all in the name of helping the show go on.

But helping the show go on should not mean the artist goes without. This is not collective sacrifice. It is structural inequity wearing the mask of teamwork.

And here’s the important nuance: there were plenty of reasons I wanted to say yes.

If I’m honest, part of me instinctively wanted to agree. That impulse is familiar to most artists I know. You love the project. You’ve poured years into it. You don’t want to risk losing the opportunity or being labelled “difficult.” You tell yourself that maybe saying yes now will build goodwill, lead to future work, strengthen the relationship. You’re deeply invested and don’t want the whole thing to fall apart when it’s so close to happening.

There’s also the reality that visibility, momentum, and having your work on a stage can feel as vital as the fee itself. And for many (especially those from less financially cushioned backgrounds) there’s a learned guilt that creeps in whenever you insist on being paid properly: as if needing the money is somehow gauche, or as if protecting your own livelihood is a kind of betrayal of the art.

So yes: I had all the same impulses anyone else might. None of those feelings are weaknesses. None of them are naïve. They are the entirely rational responses of a freelancer navigating a sector where precarity is the norm. And that’s precisely why this kind of request is so fraught; because theatres know, even unconsciously, that artists often feel compelled to say yes for reasons that have nothing to do with fairness.

Which is why institutions should think twice before making the request at all.

The emotional impact is real (even when everyone is “being nice.”)

What struck me wasn’t just the request itself, but the doubt it quietly planted.

It made me ask questions I don’t think any writer should have to ask:

Is my work seen as worth less than other production costs? Why was my labour the easiest thing to reduce? Is this a comment on the value of what I’ve written?
Is it wrong to expect to be paid fairly? Am I a greedy guts?

These questions are corrosive, and if I hadn’t been kicking around this industry for what now feels like a millennium, they could have sunk much deeper. Many artists carry a constant low-grade guilt for even asking to be paid properly. We’ve been trained to feel like the villain for holding the most basic boundaries.

But the problem is not the artist who says no. The problem is a system in which saying no feels risky, and saying yes feels compulsory.

If the sector wants to survive, the burden cannot keep falling on the artist.

What became clear to me is that no theatre can patch a budget hole by asking a writer  (or indeed any freelancer) to absorb the cost through their own income. It’s simply not a sustainable model. In practice, it amounts to a slow, quiet erosion of the very people the industry relies on.

And the truth is, theatres know this. Everyone does. There isn’t some easy, utopian fix waiting in the wings; we all understand how hard it is out there, how thin the margins are.

But even in that reality, there has to be a line. Contracts need to be honoured. Budgets need to be realistic from the outset. Whatever impossible mathematics theatres are being forced to do, the solution cannot be to treat the artist’s fee as the contingency fund. Once you start normalising that, you don’t just lose goodwill. You lose people.

Because at the end of the day, if the people who make the work can no longer afford to remain in the sector, then the sector itself becomes hollow. Even more stuffed full of richkids who can afford to subsidise themselves. There is no theatre without the artists who constitute it. And if they disappear, then no amount of institutional survival will mean very much.

I held my boundary. But I shouldn’t have been asked to.

And that, really, is the heart of it. This isn’t about one conversation, or one play, or one theatre. It’s about a pattern.

When institutions treat the artist’s fee as the most elastic part of a budget, they erode the very foundation on which new work stands. If we want a theatre ecology that is vibrant, diverse, and sustainable, then respecting the value of artistic labour cannot be optional.

It has to be non-negotiable.

Ben x

p.s. sign up below if you want blogs from me, which happen about three times a year 😂

June Joys

Hello lovely people,

Shocking that you are hearing from me again so soon, but I wanted to plug some things that are happening in June and some are like this week so here goes!

My birthday month has arrived (hello fellow Geminis) bringing with it a delightful array of cultural happenings across the East Midlands. From restaurant bargains, to thought-provoking theatre and cute bee encounters, there's something for everyone. Here's what's catching my eye this month:

🍽️ Nottingham Restaurant Week: 2–8 June 🍽️

Hungry for something new? Nottingham Restaurant Week is back from 2–8 June, with over 50 restaurants, cafés, and bars offering fixed-price menus at £10, £20, £25, and £30. It’s the perfect excuse to try that place you always walk past or fall back in love with an old fav without bankrupting yourself in the process.

Tuck into these highlights:

• Pizzamisu – Authentic Neapolitan pizzas crafted with care (and flour flown in from Italy). Don’t skip the tiramisu—it’s in the name for a reason.

• No.Twelve – A plant-based fine dining experience tucked inside a former lace factory. Inventive, elegant, and ideal for herbivores and omnivores alike.

• Fellows, Morton & Clayton – A proper pub on the canal serving comfort food with a polished twist. The scotch eggs are borderline spiritual.

• Kushi-ya – A Japanese skewer spot hidden away on Cannon Court. Think grilled brilliance, clever small plates, and a very cool vibe.

• Guided Food Tours – Want someone else to do the choosing? There are four themed walking tours including Tapas with a Twist and Pan-Asian Rice and Spice—a curated bite-sized adventure through the city.

You can browse all the participating venues and book tables through the It’s in Nottingham app. Go forth and feast. Your tastebuds deserve a treat.

🎭 Pig Heart Boy at Curve Theatre, Leicester: 10–14 June 🎭

Adapted by Winsome Pinnock from Malorie Blackman's acclaimed novel, Pig Heart Boy takes the stage at Curve Theatre from 10–14 June. Directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, this production delves into the ethical complexities of medical science through the story of 13-year-old Cameron, who undergoes a pioneering heart transplant. A must-see for audiences ages 9 and up. Winsome Pinnock is one of our great dramatists, and seeing her work brought to life on stage is always something special. Loads of tickets are fifteen quid.

🐝 See the Bees at Bosworth Battlefield: 7 June 🐝

Enjoy a buzz (sorry) at Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre on Saturday 7 June during Big Green Week. 'See the Bees' offers 30-minute sessions where resident beekeeper Chris shares insights into historical honey uses, followed by a chance to don a bee suit and observe the hives.

Sessions run from 11:00 am to 3:15 pm, priced at £2 per person. Suitable for ages 5 and up, it's a sweet outing for families and nature enthusiasts alike. More info here.

🎉 Derby Caribbean Carnival's 50th Anniversary: 28 June

Get ready to celebrate a vibrant milestone, as the Derby Caribbean Carnival marks its 50th anniversary on 28 June. Hosted by the Derby West Indian Community Association, this dazzling event at Derby Theatre showcases the infectious energy, artistry, and joy of Caribbean culture. Expect dazzling colours, music, and dance that brings the community together in a spectacular display of unity and heritage.

That's all for now, I promise! As always, feel free to share your experiences or suggest events for future posts. Also, if you like the blog, sign up below.

Ben x

£4.67 and a Dream

Why Regional Theatre Can’t Keep Surviving on Resilience Alone

I was recently told by someone in the arts funding world that the East Midlands is “resilient.” It was meant as a compliment. But the truth is, when people keep calling you resilient, it’s usually because they’ve stopped giving you any actual help.

In the D2N2 region - Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham, and Nottinghamshire - arts investment is just £4.67 per person. The national average is £8.30. In London? £22.17.
(These figures come from a 2024 analysis by Arts Professional, which compared Arts Council England investment across regions using published NPO data.)

Theatres in our region are delivering extraordinary work on what amounts to very little. And yet still, there are cries to be more “innovative,” “community-led,” “adaptive.” Code for: do even more with less plz.

And yes, it’s true, we are doing more. Nottingham Playhouse’s Spring 2025 season featured the blistering regional premiere of Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys and a major adaptation of A Thousand Splendid Suns, Looking ahead, Maxine Peake is set to star as Mary Whitehouse in the world premiere of The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, a new play by Caroline Bird, running from 5 to 27 September 2025. New writing on a scale many would assume impossible in this funding climate.

Elsewhere, Derby Theatre continues to lead the way in community engagement and co-creation. Independent companies like Fifth Word are going from strength to strength - they’re launching Pop-Up Plays, taking bold new work into non-traditional spaces: cafés, parks, libraries. And New Perspectives continue to champion regional stories and artists, touring work nationally and investing in the next generation. The East Midlands has never lacked talent or ambition.

But we are now at the point where success stories feel like exceptions, not the rule. And they are hard-won. Behind the scenes: burnt-out producers, scrapped tour plans, brilliant freelancers quietly giving up.

Why This Matters Beyond Theatre

Arts funding isn't merely about cultural enrichment; it's a catalyst for that old thing economic growth. According to a report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, every £1 of public funding invested in the culture sector contributes £5 in tax revenue to the Treasury.

The Arts Council of Wales commissioned research showing that for every £1 of public funding received, £2.51 is returned to the economy - with projections suggesting this could rise to £3.29 by 2035 with just a 10% increase in investment.

In the East Midlands (where productivity is flatlining and high streets are hollowing out ) culture creates jobs, drives footfall, supports local suppliers, and anchors tourism. And that’s before you even factor in the health, education, and community benefits. It’s about creating reasons to stay, to build, to (dare I say it) believe in the place you’re from.

The Risk of Silence

What worries me most, is how normalised all of this has become. Buildings cost too much to run. Programming decisions become shaped by what might be fundable, rather than what’s most urgent. Cities like Derby (population over 260,000) have no regularly funded producing house in the top Arts Council tier.

And yet the strategy documents keep promising “place-based investment” and “levelling up.” It’s hard to level up when the floorboards are falling in.

What Could Actually Help

Rebalance National Funding Formulas
ACE and DCMS (if it’s not broken up into other departments by the time this is published…) need to take regional inequalities seriously. Not just in rhetoric, but in hard cash. I know(!) The country can’t afford to stop children going hungry, or a functioning NHS. But somehow, there’s always money for war, and the latest branding exercise for “Global Britain.” Maybe it’s time we found a bit of money for people, stories, and places instead.

Back Independent Artists with Multi-Year Support
Yes, ACE funds freelancers through DYCP and Project Grants. However, these are short-term, hyper-competitive, and come with admin burdens that favour those with time, support, and existing infrastructure. Not every artist wants to become part of an NPO, and many work solo or in small collectives. We need multi-year funding for individuals and micro-companies - with lighter reporting, optional admin support, and space to develop work without the pressure of constant bidding. If we want a thriving regional ecology, we have to stop treating freelancers like they’re lucky to be here. They are the backbone of the sector. Fund them like it.

Link Local Authority Investment to Cultural Return
If culture keeps high streets alive, reduces social isolation, and creates jobs, show us the maths. Make the argument! And then fund accordingly.

Let Regional Theatres Lead National Conversations
Not as a token 'regional voice', but because the best ideas, artists, and audiences are happening there. Derby Theatre leads in co-creation. Nottingham Playhouse premieres work that tours nationally. Curve builds large-scale musicals in Leicester that rival the West End. These aren’t fringe experiments - they’re setting the agenda. Fund them, platform them, let them lead.

Final Thought

Artists are juggling three jobs and one show. Audiences, when asked, say they want more local stories, more relevance, more access. The East Midlands is full of those stories.

But it can’t keep running on fumes and passion.

We need more than praise. We need policy, redistribution, and a belief that regional doesn’t mean lesser. It means rooted.

Live, Laugh, Lights

Hello,

Hope you are all having a lovely month. February’s newsletter has everything from theatre, ghosts, to a lovely walk from a pub car park, featuring a very well made sausage roll. Hope you enjoy and don’t forget to sign up below.

Love Ben X

Girls & Boys @ Nottingham Playhouse

Dennis Kelly’s shocking, funny and violent monologue, written for one performer, explodes on to stage at the Nottingham Playhouse. It starts as a love story – boy meets girl and sparks fly. But beneath the veneer of normality, a disturbing undercurrent is growing. Nottingham born star, Aisling Lotus, gives a tremendously committed performance, never better than when miming stroking her invisible children’s hair, or playing their imagined games. It’s a potent, but rewarding watch about a disaster waiting to happen and the courage required simply to go on.

Nottingham Playhouse continues to go from strength to strength, and Anna Ledwich’s production is no exception. Ticket prices start from a tenner, and it runs until Saturday 1st March.

Leicester Comedy Festival

Leicester’s annual comedy knees-up is in full swing. February means that a wide array of performing talent assembles along the River Soar, many of them warming up for the Edinburgh Fringe. You’ll find something for all tastes - trad stand up, sketches, musical acts, improv troupes, clowning, and workshops. My full review of this year’s festival will be coming once it’s over - but shows I’m looking forward to are: the witty and brilliant Alison Spittle; Brennan Reece (destined to be a superstar); Kuan-wen Huang’s show about how all Andrews are the worst; and Lucy Pearman, whose hour last year (performing as the moon) was totally absurd, daft and impossible not to fall in love with.

The festival runs until the 23rd February. Of course, go and see your favourite TV comic, but also take a gamble on someone you don’t know, that’s where the hidden gems are.

Ghost Walk in Derby

Less of a ghost tour, and more a paranormal pub crawl, my brother and I ventured into Derby City Centre on a Friday night and came out alive. One of my favourite tales was when we visited Lock Up Yard, situated between the Tiger Bar and Primark, to hear a chilling story at the old fishmongers, involving the only police officer murdered in Derbyshire. Something a little different, but I think the scariest thing about it was the absolutely bladdered Senior Leadership Team from a nearby Catholic secondary school, who spent the entire two hours consumed by their own psycho-dramas, but managed to take a moment out to dance to Sophie Ellis Bextor’s seminal classic Murder on the Dancefloor whilst the guide attempted to tell us about a hundred year old execution.

Tickets were £15. https://richardfelix.co.uk/ghost-walks/

Anchor Church Round - Ingleby (Derbyshire)

A walk of very a different kind. This leisurely 2.5 hours stroll (you’d do it quicker without a cute dog insistent on smelling everything) takes you to Heath Wood, which is the only known Viking Cremation Cemetery in England, and continues on to Anchor Church, the name given to a series of caves carved out of a sandstone outcrop. The caves have been extended by human intervention to form a crude dwelling place, complete with door and window holes. It was to isolated places such as these that the early Christians sought refuge to worship God whilst avoiding persecution.

The walk starts and ends at the John Thompson Inn, which I can confirm is dog friendly and does a well stuffed sausage roll.

Light Up Leicester

Looking ahead slightly to next month, I wanted to include this as it’ll undoubtedly happen before I have chance to get the next newsletter out. From 12-15 March, Leicester’s city centre will come alive with dazzling light installations, vibrant performances, and interactive events for all ages. This FREE festival celebrates community, creativity, and connection, transforming the streets into a glowing celebration of art and culture.

That’s all from me - if you enjoyed this newsletter, sign up below:

Puddings, Pit Walks & Painting

Hello,

As threatened, I’m continuing to blog this year. I didn’t want it to merely be my unhinged ramblings, so I’ve decided to do a monthly post that highlights the cultural stuff going on here in the East Mids. Bit of theatre, food, comedy, art, decent dog walks (yes, that is culture). There may be a slight bias towards Leicester, but I’ll improve on that as the year goes on. Oh! And do let me know if you have stuff going on etcetera that I can come to as I am both nosey and supportive. You can sign up if you fancy me clogging up your inbox on a monthly basis, and I hope you enjoy my recommendations below. Ben x

Restaurant 263 - Leicester

When it comes to fine dining, Leicester (perhaps unfairly) has often been labelled a graveyard of ambition. But chef Keith Sadomba’s Restaurant 263 was awarded its second AA Rosette last year, so on New Year’s Eve I tottered off to try their 8-course tasting menu, which aims to champion seasonal and locally sourced ingredients. But is it any good?

Amuse-bouches all impressed, including a delicate whipped goats cheese savoury yeast tartlet. Subsequent highlights included beautifully presented venison with Jerusalem artichoke, a nutty cauliflower & truffle tortellini with a moreish champagne sauce, and an intensely cheesy brie bon bon with a punchy butternut espuma (Spanish, for foam). The night’s crowd pleaser was the pork belly with wild garlic capers - I think people would’ve licked the plate clean if it had been socially acceptable.

If I was picking pube hairs, the dessert left me underwhelmed. It was a sugar tuile, served with white chocolate and a meadowsweet custard (I had to Google what meadowsweet was and it’s essentially a plant that grows in damp - yum.) Far too savoury and a little bland, I prefer the ending of my meal to smack me around the chops. Overall, we had a jolly time with friendly, attentive service and you could sense the pride the chefs took in the food as they talked you passionately through each course.

The menu changes monthly, and vegetarian/vegan options are available. The tasting menu is £60 (I didn’t go for the spenny wine pairings) but they also have a 3-course and a pre-theatre option.

All in all, nice if you fancy a treat.

Calverton Pit Circular - Notts

This was a gorgeous circular walk, perfect for a winter’s day. The dog was chuffed as she was pretty much off lead the entire way, and if you are into your birds I am pleased to report that you stand a pretty good chance of spotting sparrow-hawks and kites in the area. The trail I picked was 6km long, but there are plenty of other options if you fancy something shorter.

Best of all, and in a move that would please my Granddad no end, there is free parking at the start of the trail.

Bond, Brass, Budgies & Butternut Squash

@ Derby Theatre

Perfect to listen to on the commute, or indeed a dog walk, this is a lovely collection of four audio stories, recorded by local actors, that tell of the ways in which our people, places and culture have been shaped by, and stand up to, social and economic forces.

“Midlands-based playwright Andy Barrett has been out and about in towns and villages across Derbyshire, meeting brass band members, budgie enthusiasts, dance teachers, cinema usherettes and those who work tirelessly to nurture the idea of community.” Sweet and nostalgic.

Open: The People’s Exhibition - Leicester

In this annual exhibition, Leicester Museum & Art Gallery gives East Midlands residents from any background and ability an opportunity to enter their artwork for display. It features over 200+ artists and makers, with the majority of artworks also being for sale. The Open Exhibition accepts artwork from adults, children and young people, making for a truly original and exciting show. From paintings, to sculpture, textiles, and more - it’s an exhibition that celebrates the diverse creativity of the region.

In case you haven’t got the hint, I really recommend it - and it is only on until Friday 31st January. Boasting free entry(!) this is truly a fantastic celebration of the abundance of creative talent in Leicester and the East Midlands.

Until next month, take care. x

Films I Loved in 2024

Hello,

I haven’t written a blog for a while, but my last one was in 2021 and was about my Celebrity Masterchef predictions which doesn’t feel particularly great right now. One of my resolutions for 2025 is to actually blog again, so as a start, here is something no one asked for - a list of the films I really liked in 2024.

Comedy

My Old Ass

directed and written by Megan Park

The kind of film I wish the industry would make more of - smaller, character focussed storytelling with a cute what-if premise. In this case, what would you ask your older self? Teenage Elliott (a ludicrously charismatic Maisy Stella) takes mushrooms and meets her thrity-nine-year-old self (played by Aubrey Plaza, naturally) during the ensuing psychedelic trip. Very much comforting coming-of-age territory, but the old themes are given such a loving and refreshing going over that the ninety minutes breeze by.

The ending is signposted if you know and love the genre, but it is handled so beautifully that it’s impossible not to be moved. I would definitely re-watch this funny, romantic and off-beat film again. It’ll also make you really want to go wild swimming in Canada.

The Origin of Evil

directed by Sébastien Marnier and written by Fanny Burdino

I love it when Lesbians do crime. Sébastien Marnier's sardonic film tells the tale of Nathalie, a woman on the verge of bankruptcy who impersonates Stéphane (her imprisoned lover) in an attempt to con her girlfriend’s estranged father out of his fortune. The only thing standing in her way is his new family, who are all exceptionally unwelcoming and rather suspicious.

Deliciously, the tone more than flirts with melodrama, there are ample glamorous French women smoking, and enough viperish antics to rival your average episode of Footballers’ Wives. Treachery, obscene riches, and a step-mother addicted to online shopping - what’s not to love?

Horror

The Substance

written and directed by Coralie Fargeat

Grotesque, hilarious and unsubtle - it’s definitely a visceral experience, put it that way. Demi Moore gives us the performance of her life as an actress who makes a Faustian pact for the ages when she begins to take a mysterious cellular reproduction drug. The last half hour is completely demented.

Five stars from me.

Heretic

written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

My favourite genre of film is Hugh Grant being a baddie. He is fantastic in this - from comparing Jesus to Jar Jar Binks, to chillingly hunting down his mormon prey. The climax doesn’t totally climax, but you do really invest in the two young missionaries (brilliant performances from Sophie Thatcher & Chloe East) who become ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

LGBT+ Stuff

love lies bleeding

directed by Rose Glass and co-written with Weronika Tofilska

I saw this at a rooftop cinema in Melbourne with my sister - a screening packed with lesbians who audibly moaned when Kirsten Stewart was elbow deep in that toilet in her overhauls. Needless to say, this was great. Lou (Stewart) is a reclusive gym manager who falls hard for Jackie (a powerful Katy M O’Brian). Their love soon leads to violence as they get pulled into the seedy underbelly of Lou's criminal family. A very wild, sexy and visual ride which isn’t afraid to take big swings.

unicorns

directed by Sally El Hosaini and James Krishna Floyd (also writer)

An Essex mechanic (Ben Hardy) falls for a magnetic drag artist (Jason Patel). Internal wrestling for both ensues as sparks fly and boundaries are tested. This is a story lifted by the specificity of the worlds it dives into, and also heartfelt performances from its lead performers. Easily maudlin (or indeed fetishising) in the wrong hands, I thought this was a pleasingly matter-of-fact film.

mothers’ instinct

written by Sarah Conradt and directed by Benoît Delhomme

Okay so there isn’t anything overtly queer about this film; I include it here because I think the gays will love it. Operatic, compelling and twisted - Chastain and Hathaway have a mother-off when a tragic accident shatters their seemingly perfect suburban lives. What’s not to enjoy about these two homoerotically gaslighting each other into insanity whilst wearing pastels?

Drama

blackbird blackbird blackberry

directed by Elene Naveriani and co-written with Nikoloz Mdivani

Spearheaded by a fierce and sensual performance from Eka Chavleishvili (possessing the most expressive pair of eyebrows I have ever seen) this is a bittersweet film about an independent Georgian woman, who defies society’s entrenched expectations of her by beginning a late in life affair with a delivery driver.

I really enjoyed this powerful ode to centring yourself in your own life. And all the pastry porn is an added bonus.

all we imagine as light

written and directed by Payal Kapadia

Stoic and quiet at times, but manages to capture both the allure and pervasive nature of living in a thronging city. Writer/director Payal Kapadia has created a gorgeous film about the search for intimacy - as three nurses juggle personal aspirations and societal constraints in Mumbai. I was very absorbed by the whole thing and it very gently sweeps you along.

Films I’d not seen before

Bringing Up Baby (1963)

directed by Howard Hawks with screenplay by Hagar Wilde and Dudley Nichols

Take a shot every time someone falls over in this movie. All in all, this was chaotic in a very entertaining way. A befuddled paleontologist (Cary Grant) is pursued by a free-spirited heiress (Katharine Hepburn) and her pet leopard(!) called Baby.

Completely absurd and really does cheer you up.

Sweetheart (2021)

written and directed by Marley Morrison

One of those films that I felt had been specifically made for me. Achingly true, it captures what it means to be a suffering, grumpy, gay teenager who feels like at odds with the world and their own family. Nell Barlow’s droll lead performance is peppered with the awkward details of adolescence.

Very endearing and quintessentially British, this is for anyone who has ever been dragged to a coastal holiday park when they were just a little too old for it. But as AJ unexpectedly becomes captivated by a sun-loving lifeguard named Isla, the summer might just turn around after all.

Great Performances

I’m starting the award-season campaign right here for Saorise Ronan’s barnstorming turn as a recovering alcoholic in The Outrun. I also enjoyed Ralph Fiennes, Lucian Msamati and the criminally underused Isabella Rossellini in Conclave (but the ending of that movie gave me the ick). Mikey Madison was the best thing about Anora, and Fantasia Barrino sang her heart out in the Broadway musical adaptation of The Color Purple. Finally, Alisha Weir (pictured above) further proved her star quality as a murderous child-vampire in Abigail.

Honourable Mentions

The Idea of You

A film based on Harry Styles fanfiction that somehow manages to be hot, largely down to Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine’s chemistry.

The Wild Robot

A very lovely animation about a lost robot who raises a cute gosling. Will make you cry.

I Saw the TV Glow

For anyone who (rightfully) makes loving Buffy the Vampire Slayer their entire personality.

Wicked

So easily could have been horrendable but is actually just very very exquisitely made.

My Celebrity Masterchef 2021 Predictions

Hello everyone,

I hope you’re all happy and healthy. I got double vaxxed yesterday- hurrah! It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog, but I went through a stage where I didn’t want to write, or do, or indeed feel anything at all. However, I’ve started to see things differently in the last month or so, and I’ve started writing something new. I haven’t had an idea in a while. And this feels like a good one, maybe.

For me, when I think about ideas they don’t come from within. They’re outside things, things I have to be listening out and be present for, and I’ve been spending too much time in my own head with my own demons and paranoias and bullshit. But I’m going to let myself off the hook for that, I think, acknowledge it and try and move forward. Do more listening.

But yes, a seed of an idea, a few scenes, two old gay men and their dogs, falling in love. It feels like a love story, and that would be nice, I think. This time it was the ending that came to me first, and I think it’s a really good ending. I want to see it through, anyway.

To more pressing matters. Celebrity Masterchef starts again tonight at 9pm on BBC One. This evening, Su Pollard, Rita Simons (Roxy off Eastenders), Duncan James from Blue, Bez from the Happy Mondays and comedian Munya Chawawa will be put through their paces by homoerotic duo John Torode and Gregg Wallace.

And by the sound of the challenges, they’re really spoiling us. The first round, Under The Cloche, is brand new and sees contestants preparing a meal showcasing a mystery ingredient. After that, they must prepare a street food dish from Denmark and whip up something fit for a dinner party. I cannot stress to you how excited I am for 9pm.

In some years, Celebrity Masterchef is the only stable thing in my life. It’s reassuring, almost therapeutic, to watch a soap star bollocks up a chocolate fondant in front of a table full of past champions, or witness a TOWIE stalwart construct a pasta bake for one hundred Rolls Royce employees. It’s like the best comfort food- warm, tastes exactly as you remember it, and leaves you feeling full afterwards.

This year’s crop of contestants is an eclectic bunch, and here are my predictions, based purely on Masterchef seasons past.

Duncan James- Great at presentation but will either have too many flavours on the plate at once, or not enough seasoning at all. Will make it through to the quarter finals, but one of his courses will have big issues.

Su Pollard- Complete chaos, out in the heats. Will become emotional after the mass catering challenge as she realises her team’s accomplishments.

Munya Chawawa- Will also love the mass catering challenge, bantering with the resident chef there. A few early wobbles but then will suddenly flourish in the back half of the competition.

Rita Simons- Quite competent in the kitchen- might be big on spice? Has recently rediscovered her love of cooking and is really excited to learn new skills.

Bez from the Happy Mondays- Pub grub, presented extremely haphazardly but with plenty of flavour. Will have an incredibly messy kitchen that Gregg will roll his eyes over. Perhaps won’t make it all the way. However, he could pull a Les Dennis and win the hearts of the nation but just miss out on the trophy.

Journalist Gavin Esler- I did have to Google him, which means it’s hard to get a measure of how well he will do. I think he will have eaten in nice restaurants, will probably be into classic flavours. Could embrace his Scottish roots. A rogue entity.

Michelle Collins aka Cindy Beale- I can’t quite believe Michelle Collins hasn’t been on Celebrity Masterchef before, but I am thrilled to see her in this line up. I think she’ll definitely make it through to the semis, and have the time of her life. Will learn quickly, a team player. Might find out she’s good at desserts?

Strictly profesh dancer Johannes Radebe- Could do quite well here. Might play with new flavours that will have Gregg and John with their eyes on stalks during the talking heads but will be surprisingly nice when they try them. I wouldn’t put him in my final three- could flounder when it comes to cooking for critics.

Paralympic champion Kadeena Cox- athletes tend to historically do very well in the competition, so I expect Kadeena will excel. Competitive, and will try new things with her food. Gets super into it and grows to love professional kitchens. Could have her eye on the final.

Kem from Love Island- A safe bet, has been around the block when it comes to the reality TV circuit. Will make it through to the quarter finals and be knocked out in a tight contest. Will not enjoy the professional kitchens at all, will struggle with time management and probably burn himself.

The Repair Shop’s Will Kirk- there for the experience. Relishes in it all and goes with the flow but could be out rather early. Might struggle to improvise when given a rogue ingredient.

Actress Melissa Johns- a competent chef, who throws herself in 100%. Will definitely stick around. Openly loves avocados on Twitter, so we could see a lot of tasty breakfast food.

The one and only Katie Price- Do not underestimate the power of Pricey. I think she’ll have fire in her belly. And it’s a given that the presentation skills will be on point. Another contestant who might discover she’s cracking at desserts. I might even say she could make it to the final to be honest. Alternatively, she could be out first round for overcooking a fish she’s never heard of.

TV Presenter of Joe Swash- Joe Swash falls into the same category as Jeff Brazier for me: celebrity dads I’d like to f**k. That being said, I don’t think Joe will make it past the quarter finals. A fantastic sport, enthusiastic and will have to refine his presentation skills. Might drop a whole tart on the floor or serve raw chicken.

Ex- England footballer Dion Dublin- will put in a solid showing. A fantastic home cook, who is generous with flavour. Will relish the heat and the energy of a professional kitchen, and will cook a huge batch of chilli or spag bol in the mass catering challenge.

Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant- I think Patrick is a shoe-in for the final. There’s just an aura he gives off- competent, calm, wouldn’t be seen dead in a Prezzo. Will cook extremely tasty food, Gregg will lick a plate at some point.

Reality star Megan Mckenna- Has had time to prepare and could possibly have utilised cooking lessons with a professional chef. Gets a lot done in a short space of time- uses plenty of processes and will make fantastic tasting dishes. An early front runner and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her in the final.

Media personality Penny Lancaster- knows what scrummy food tastes like, and will perhaps be too ambitious early on. Out early-ish, but has had a wonderful time and won’t stop cooking just because the journey ends here.

Melanie Sykes- Might like fusion flavours. Could divide John and Gregg. Very professional and a quality booking IMHO.

BGT comedian Nabil Abdulrashid- hearty food, big portions and everything served with love and charm. Could make it to the semis.

Have a good week,

Love Ben x

Thrills, Kills and Gills

For nearly half a century, the shark movie has proved itself as a well-swum path that will deliver screams, profits and, occasionally, storytelling magic. It’s no wonder that shark movies have become a Hollywood staple. They’re incredibly successful, largely due to their unpretentiousness, and span cinematic classics, to indie projects such as The Reef, to the absurd, high-octane, unashamedly camp Sharknado and Shark Attack franchises.

And then there’s also Shark Exorcist.

The most commercially successful example from the last decade is The Meg. The film has landed on UK Netflix this month, and it features Jason Statham battling a twenty-three-metre-long megalodon for 113 minutes. Released in 2018, it had a $178 million budget, and clinched a rather meaty $530 million dollars at the Box Office, despite the film holding a score of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes and being nominated for a Golden Raspberry. Time and time again, shark movies have proven to be summer blockbusters. The Meg is also a movie that spent 20 years in development hell, by the way, so there’s a lesson in that for all of us.

Now, let’s talk about the great white in the room: Steven Spielberg’s 1975 classic, JAWS. Richard Dreyfuss famously declared: “We started without a script, without a cast and without a shark”. And production seems to have been stressful at best. Despite tensions between its cast, an escalating budget and a mechanical shark called Bruce who refused to work, Spielberg and team achieved an aquatic success that provided the tentpole features that would go on to dominate the summer filmgoing experience — huge earners that capture both the zeitgeist and substantial audiences. Driven by saturation marketing, the film redefined what a hit was both in terms of profitability and cultural impact.

Unable to get the shark action shots he wanted, Spielberg worked with editor Verna Fields to create tense sequences in which what we don’t see is more important that what we do. Meanwhile, composer John Williams utilised the gaps where the shark was missing with an ominous score (of mostly two notes) that has become synonymous with screen terror. The result was pure magic, summed up by an unforgettable opening sequence featuring poor Susan Backline.

It’s no wonder one of the film’s most memorable tag-lines was “see it before you go swimming!” There are countless tense sequences: Ben Gardner’s WHOLE HEAD emerging from the deep, and Matt Hooper surviving an attack in a shark-cage are two moments that stand out. Spielberg’s brilliantly structured spine-chiller struck a nerve with young audiences whose natural habitat was not the beach, but the shopping mall. And history was made.

But it didn’t just end there. Jaws spawned three sequels and is the inspiration for another 180+ shark movies. So what is intrinsically appealing about watching helpless swimmers meet their terrifying end? What are the ingredients that make this subgenre of horror so successful? And how do you write a shark movie with bite?

Before we dive into the depths of it, it’s important to note that shark movies are not the authority on sharks. For starters, as long as there have been monsters in movies, those monsters have roared, sharks included, but sharks actually have no sound-producing organs at all.Secondly, sharks are not vampires. Contrary to popular belief, sharks are not attracted to human blood. They’re more likely to be attracted to a “bleeding fish or sea lion” than a human being with a cut in the ocean.

And finally, actively hunting and mauling people, is just not something that most sharks are into. We know that the majority of attacks occur as a result of mistaken identity, or feeling threatened by the unusual presence of a human. So the ‘shark’ in a shark movie isn’t really a shark, just as King Kong isn’t a gorilla.

Despite what the movies lead us to believe, sharks are mainly non-aggressive creatures who aren’t evil killing machines. They’re certainly not an unstoppable force — humans kill a staggering 100 million sharks each year, that’s 11,000 sharks every single hour, mainly due to high demand for shark fins. Furthermore, you’re statistically more likely to die from a hotdog related accident than from a shark attack.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the PR problem that sharks have (this particular brand of horror movie has lots to answer for on that front) and I want to point you in the direction of a couple of great charities, working to combat the problems sharks face. Both The Shark Trust and Fin Fighters are charities working within the UK to safeguard the future of sharks through positive change, and Shark Spotters is a pioneering shark safety program in Cape Town, that focuses on solutions to shark-human conflicts.

However, when all is said and done, there’s no denying that sharks make fantastic horror movie villains and the best movies of the genre give you the big 3: thrills, kills and gills.

Let’s break it down. 

WHY DO SHARK MOVIES WORK WHEN THEY WORK?

If you drill down into the bones of a shark movie, what you’ll find is a humans vs nature narrative. Stories that pit a protagonist against ominous terrors of the deep have been a mainstay of folklore for centuries: kraken, mermaids, Moby Dick, tentacled horrors, sea draugrs and Jonah and the Whale all have their place in legend. Each of these watery antagonists are key to narratives about heroes triumphing over their fears, coming to terms with their humanity, and playing at being Bear Grylls.

In reality, we know our own battles with nature are only just beginning, and that our consumerism (and corrupt, destructive governments) are really the problem. That’s why the best shark movies know that the majority of humans deserve to get eaten. They also play on the fact that we’ve hardly explored any of the ocean. Less than 5% of the planet’s seas have been explored. That’s why they’re scary- we literally don’t know what’s lurking out there. Our relationship with the sea and what dwells beneath the waves is complex, and it’s what makes watching people clobber big fishy stuff and conquering the wilderness entertaining, reflective and transportive for the audience. But these stories also tap into a primal desire…

All films that fall into the natural horror category, whether they concern sharks, snakes, crocs or spiders, are all about beating nature at its own game. The desire to control the uncontrollable is, let’s face it, a flaw that a few of us recognise, and the good shark movies embed this into the main character and their battle with the monster.

The journey in any ‘beasty’ plot is as much internal as external, with the hero learning transferable skills like courage, resilience and resourcefulness whilst facing mortal danger. To be trite for a moment, these kinds of stories also remind us that no matter what challenges ‘we’ face in our lives, we can overcome them. They help us to believe that we will succeed.

Harking back to Jaws again, the underlying story is more complex than the terror of being lacerated at the beach. Its novel reads as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of extramarital sex and the inability of a weak father to protect his family and his community. As a film, it has been interpreted as everything from a depiction of masculinity in crisis to a post-Watergate parable about corruption. At the Jaws 40th Anniversary Symposium (De Montfort University, Leicester) the case was made that the film depicted the archetypal American villain as a queer dissident attacking the heteronormative, which is quite a pleasing version. However you see the nitty gritty of it, Jaws is a classic morality tale in which the watery fate of potential victims is sealed by their on-land behaviour. And really, so is every decent shark movie made since.

Like all man-versus-nature tropes, man-versus-shark movies can reveal important truths about human nature and serve as fascinating, in-depth character studies. However, the winning formula is that they do all this with a side of terrifying, razor-sharp choppers.

Which leads me on to my next observation.

the shark should be a ‘shark’

This may sound obvious, but a lot of shark films get this wrong. I know I said that shark movie sharks aren’t really sharks (already contradicting myself) but hear me out.

Sharks are big. They have teeth — extremely sharp teeth! They have scars, dead eyes and they stalk their prey. Let’s be honest, they tick a lot of horror movie archetypes. They’re also highly intelligent creatures, and we’ve all seen a video of them playing with a seal. Sharks swim into the shallow parts of the ocean where humans frolic. They are drawn to loud noises and activity in the water, and as we encroach on their habitats, attacks can go up. It’s possible, admittedly not probable, but it’s possible that they could be lurking in the water where you or the person you love are splashing about having a gay old time.

Even though sharks are almost never aggressive toward humans, the biggest ones have the power and the potential to chomp you in half. And the reality is, a small number of shark attacks inevitably do happen. The Indianapolis speech in Jaws is based on the real sinking of a navy ship and subsequent shark attacks on sailors stranded in the water. Additionally, Hooper’s shark-cage attack was the unplanned wrecking of an empty cage by a real-life predator (after which stuntman Carl Rizzo was reluctant to get back in the water). Whales are gentle giants. Sharks are a natural fit.

They are a good horror villain because even in this modern age, we still know surprisingly little about sharks. This perceived unknowability, combined with being an apex predator and our own myths fuelled by pop culture are what make the shark, particularly the great white shark, such a great antagonist. They’re an omnipresent threat waiting to happen, in a mysterious blue setting that humans are still learning to voyage.

As I mentioned earlier, none of this is great for actual sharks. There is an element of public misunderstanding that arises from these tropes and can actually threaten endangered shark species. Research showed that when you’re shown frightening shark images and videos, you’re less likely to support shark conservation, and that’s a problem. It’s why some folks prefer films like Shark Avalanche, Three-Headed Shark Attack and Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus as they are safely preposterous. Dr. David Shiffman, who inspired a character in the Meg book series, digs deep into some of this here.

Personally, I prefer it when my sharks are realistic. In Deep Blue Sea, an isolated underwater facility plunges into chaos when multiple genetically engineered sharks go on a rampage and flood the joint. It’s a lot of fun, but sharks with manipulated intelligence, or fantasy elements with humanoid sharks, are ultimately less interesting than an animal that has evolved for thousand of years deciding to bite back.

High budget special effects to recreate sharks, especially massive ones, I get, but I think at the end of the day the movie only works if you think that the shark, and therefore the threat, are genuine. I know it’s allegedly all about suspending your disbelief, but I don’t think the rule applies to shark movies. The shark can have a personality, it has to have nous, and it certainly helps if the shark has a morbid sense of humour, but it should stay firmly in the realm of what we collectively know about them, I believe. A shark doesn’t need bells and whistles.

keep the setting simple but the characters’ internal struggle complex

A setting where helpless humans are trapped with the hungry apex predator, in places where the latter has an upper hand are the scariest films! The simplest versions of these stories tend to involve scenarios where a group of people get trapped on a boat/in the sea, and one of them goes in the water and is totally unaware of the sharks that we all know are lurking. A feeding frenzy commences. Drawing on ‘authentic’ plots really helps with the fear factor. Bait is let down by its characters, but the plot centres around a group of people trying to escape a submerged grocery store as a result of a freak tsunami while being hunted by bloodthirsty great whites. I’m in.

That being said, you can’t just strand your characters in a kayak and hope for the best. The Reef features a monstrous great white shark stalking the crew of a capsized boat on the Great Barrier Reef. The exposed situation the characters find themselves in is believable, but when the shark finally appears at the 50 minute-mark we’re ready for most of the humdrum characters to be eaten, and that’s not what you want.

You don’t just want a handful of characters floating in an inexplicably calm sea for 90 minutes, slowly being picked off until the last hyperventilating survivor hauls themselves up onto a rock. It’s hard to maintain suspense when waiting for the next attack is literally all the viewer is doing.

A good example of what I mean is 47 Metres Down. Disregarding the dialogue, Johannes Roberts’ thalassophobia causing hellscape is much more than a shark movie- it is an underwater panic attack. Mandy Moore and Claire Hole star as sisters, Lisa and Kate, who end up trapped in a shark cage at the bottom of the ocean floor. From there, it becomes about whether they can escape with their lives and their fractured sisterly bond. The first-person perspective really helps us empathise with the characters, but the film also takes care to dial up the harsh realities of the situation: they're locked in a cage, their oxygen supply is dwindling, and they're staring down a nasty case of the bends.

The sisters must resolve their differences- the entire situation epitomises the fact Lisa’s overly cautious nature impedes her, and Kate should reconsider living impulse to impulse. Not only does the film have to resolve the tension between one sister’s assertive lead and the other’s passion for living, they have to escape the clutches of the shark! The two should be intrinsically linked- it’s why that flare scene in 47 Metres really puts you through the wringer.

SPOILERS:  Lisa is forced to drag Kate to the surface of the water because she is injured. Kate’s blood, inevitably, attracts sharks. Gripping Kate with one arm and lighting flares with the other to ward off the predators, they have to ascend high enough for communications with the boat to kick in again. It’s tense.

By keeping the setting instantly recognisable and simple, you’re able to examine how the characters’ internal struggles/motivations are impeding/helping their attempts to escape the predators. Most of the time, it’s your protagonist’s own hubris that lands them in the situation in the first place.

Whilst re-watching Jaws, as Brody reopened the beaches, I couldn’t help but think of Rishi Sunak declaring that we should all be eating out to help out…

the shark should be the sole obstacle

When I say this, I mean that the shark should be the driving force of the film. Don’t get bogged down in complicated subplots that inevitably detract from the real issue at hand: the massive fucking shark just under the boat.  

As for useless subplots in shark films, the list is endless. Jaws 3 has it all, a romance, a mother shark out for revenge, jet skis and meddling dolphins. The Meg is crammed with pseudo-science, a six-year-old to protect, family melodrama, villainous CEOs, a team of researchers, and two love interests for Jason Statham. Jaws: The Revenge bungles together a psychic shark connection, a sherrif’s widow, a trip to the Bahamas, and Michael Caine (who is very impressed by the house this Jaws sequel built) no less. It also spares all of its main characters from death— a major no no.

The narrative of Jaws explores a lot, sure. Toxic masculinity, anti-capitalist sentiment, man vs nature are all there, but the thematic exploration is always wrapped up in Brody et al. having to actively deal with the shark as it prowls the beaches during a busy summer. The crux of all this is, you don’t want your shark film to focus too much on the background gumpf, as you’ll then have to rely heavily on stupid characters making stupid decisions in order to make anything happen.

That is why, for my money, the second-best shark movie ever made (apologies Sharktopus stans) is The Shallows, a tightly wound tale of survival, which is the catalyst for a woman’s reckoning with her own grief.  Jaume Collet-Serra’s film stars Blake Lively as Nancy, who returns to her deceased mother's fav beach in an act of mourning, and Collet-Serra uses that grief as a backdrop for her trials of human strength.

Trapped a mere 200 metres from the shore, Lively gives a tremendous and physical performance in the action-hero role, and we literally watch her go through it whilst marooned on a large rock, with nothing but a small stretch of water and one gigantic shark between her and the beach. It also usurps many of the ‘women in wet bikinis’ tropes that have come to define the most mercenary contributions towards the genre.

In The Shallows, all Nancy has to do is get past the shark! Admittedly, we then have to endure some self-surgery, as story beats become harder and harder to find over the ninety minutes, but for the most part this is a sharp, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, foaming with scares/plenty of set-pieces, and the shark does get a few tasty snacks too. And it’s all built around the fact that, in the end, she is going to have to face the shark (and her grief) head on.

Look, your lead character can survive a ferocious shark attack without also having to overcome trauma and decide whether or not they want to be a doctor, but you can also have your cake and eat it if your story plays by a very simple rule: get to safety and don’t die.

make your kills count

Horror fans will tell you that who you kill and when is very important, but in a shark movie it’s even more crucial. The temptation to get one in early is real, Jaws famously did so and Dark Tide opens with yet another poor diver meeting a grizzly end. But sometimes holding off can let you build up much needed tension.

Fundamentally, it’s the who that is more important. By killing 6-year-old Alex Kitner so early on, Jaws propels its stakes sky-high. The horror of losing a child is more terrifying than any shark, setting up a pretty drastic situation for Chief Brody to resolve. Killing people that we care about, or have a strong emotional/societal reaction to, will pay dividends.

Equally, killing people we don’t care about will have the opposite effect. There is a fine line between too many killings, where the viewer becomes jaded and immune to shock, and the result is a film lacking in jeopardy. Surrounded tries to build a shark tale out of hedonistic entangled influencers, who are documenting their illegal snorkling trip to a protected cove for their vlog when their plane crashes, and the unlikable survivors are forced to contend with a pack of great whites. Because the film employs the trope of obnoxious characters not listening to each other in order to create the peril, the kills become a bit pointless.

I can also recommend rationing your bloodthirst. A few memorable kills are far better than ten boring ones.

And finally…

HOW IS IT RELEVANT?

Shark movies can be about a lot more than “bobbing and bloodbath”. There is space for shark movies to encounter the contemporary relevance of our fears of the sea and its inhabitants – through the encroaching ecological disasters of global warming, pollution and the threat of mass marine extinction. Just last week, it was reported that the climate crisis is forcing great whites to start feeding in new waters. The time is now! For both climate action, and a brilliant new shark movie. With all our pillaging of the natural world, surely sharks deserve a good, old fashioned revenge story?

I mentioned Rishi Sunak earlier, but there are countless examples throughout the pandemic of when those in charge have screamed GET BACK IN THE WATER, only to discover that their selfish and detail-lacking guidance has brought about more catastrophe. The modern day parallels are endless— the focus on short term solutions to problems that are already making their way into the shallows costs us all dearly. I think these films are the perfect metaphor for now, and I can’t wait for a shark movie to make me too scared to run a bath again.

Love Ben x

ONE MORE THING!

Renee Capozzola has become the first female Underwater Photographer of the Year winner after her stunning image of blacktip reef sharks in French Polynesia scooped the award for 2021. The Guardian covered the prize, including more of the images here and they’re splendid.

Why We Should Ban The Johnsons From Reality T.V.

Imagine my horror when I turned on Celebrity Best Home Cook to find Rachel Johnson presenting a goat’s cheese and spinach frittata.

As proven by Celebrity Masterchef- the ultimate cooking competition (with a winning formula of disastrous mass catering challenges, failed fondants, and a homoerotic bromance between John Torode and Gregg Wallace)- there are precisely five types of celebrity cooking show contestant:

• Olympians- these folk tend to do well as they can multitask, know nutritious, tasty food like the back of their hand, and are ridiculously competitive (Sam Quek, Greg Rutherford and Matthew Pinsent all put in excellent performances)

• National Treasures- this contestant usually wins the heart of the nation, makes you laugh and cry, fucks up somewhere in the middle but finds a newfound grit and determination, and always cooks from the heart no matter what. I’m looking at you Les Dennis and Wayne Sleep.

• Kooky Underdogs- the kind of person you assume would be terrible at cooking, but then discovers a passion they never knew they had (Rylan, Vicky Pattison and Riyadh Khalaf are notable examples)

• Hot Messes- the kind of person you assume would be terrible at cooking, and then they are. Gemma Collins, Sinitta and Baga Chipz all fit this mould.

• Competent Cooks- completely smash the competition from the beginning and make you dream of going to their house for dinner (Angelica Bell, Kimberly Wyatt and Ade Edmonson all went on to win their respective series)

Rachel Johnson would never appear on Celebrity Masterchef. Because, for a very good reason, there isn’t a category for Prime Minister’s Relatives. Why Boris Johnson’s sister is on BBC ONE at 9pm every Tuesday night vying to make a family-sized mac and cheese is beyond me. However, this isn’t her first foray into reality television, having appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018 alongside Drag Race alumni Courtney Act and dogmatic dinosaur Ann Widdecombe.

Despite Rachel’s promises following her CBB elimination that she was “definitely not going to do any reality TV again”, she’s back.

Of course, she isn’t the only Johnson who’s gotten in on the action.

Their father, Stanley, tainted a series of I’m a Celeb in 2017 before going on to make appearances on shows such as The Real Marigold Hotel, Celebrity Hunted and, most recently, Celebrity Gogglebox, during which Georgia “Toff” Toffolo taught him how to upload a selfie to Instagram.

Anyone with any connection to Johnson appears to be cashing in on their links to the PM and bagging a spot on whatever show manages to cough up the right fee. Jennifer Acuri, whose controversial ties with Boris ended with him being investigated for misconduct in public office, was also set to star in a celeb version of Hunted on Channel 4 before COVID-19 postponed production.

Mark my words, in ten months time we’ll all be watching The Masked Singer as Davina McCall screams “take it off!” at a praying mantis, who turns out to be a sweaty Jo Johnson belting out a ropey rendition of Copacabana. Speaking of Jo Johnson, being made a lord by one’s own brother, is never a good look.

When I expressed my annoyance to a friend, they didn’t share my irritation. ‘They’re not Boris, Ben.' Fair enough, is there any harm in watching Stanley dye his hair orange before going on the run with ‘unlikely, but not that unlikely’ friend Toff? And how much damage could be done witnessing Carrie Symonds tackle the headbanger on a future series of Dancing on Ice?

The answers are yes and a lot.

The Johnsons have notably always been a media-keen family, despite Boris’ insistance that the more nefarious aspects of his private life, and number of children, are off-limits. Because beneath the self-deprecating and bumbling personas cultivated by the Johnson clan, they are all cut-throat, highly educated and astute operators who are out do one thing: campaign. And at a time in our history where the Prime Minister has helmed a disastrous response to a national crisis with a horrifyingly high and avoidable death toll, it needs to stop. The very day the U.K. passed 100,000 deaths, scientists were citing “a legacy of poor decisions", but the Prime Minister’s sister was on the small screen guffawing about how she “can’t cook an egg.”

You may argue that there’s a bit of transference going on here. Rachel Johnson has a career in her own right and her politics are not necessarily aligned with her brother’s, as well as the schedulers being unable to predict the tragic events of yesterday. But the very reason that the two events were able to coincide should be cause for alarm- because his family are there to maintain an illusion that Boris “gets it” and, when all is said and done, is a harmless oaf who we can love (and forgive) a little bit.

This is undoubtedly a team effort. It’s no coincidence that the day Boris became Tory Leader, ITV re-aired an episode of The Chase Stanley appeared on. And in her recent book (Rake’s Progress), Rachel herself acknowledges “If I hadn’t been born [Boris] would probably not be prime minister.”

Among recent British leaders, Margaret Thatcher had a sister and Blair/Cameron a brother, none of whom we were ever forced to endure in public, despite frequent media requests. Only Terry Major-Ball, John Major's idiosyncratic elder sibling, ever came close to causing the kind of furore that Stanley Johnson can by frequenting the This Morning sofa. Perhaps the cultural zeitgeist is missing something having never witnessed Alexander Cameron eating a pigs’ anus (a favourite of David’s) in the Australian jungle, but I think we can survive without it.

Because inviting the Johnsons into our homes under the guise of a friendly reality competition (sometimes even for-shock horror- charity) does one thing: makes them palatable. These shows have become a way for the Johnsons to endear themselves to the public in a country where self-deprecation is an art form. It’s free PR for them, and more importantly, their relative.

If the careers of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have taught us anything, it’s that power and popularity won through celebrity, and the falsely reassuring public personas it often involves, can be brutally abused, particularly when it is transferred from single-issue campaigning to the grind of daily politics. And Boris doesn’t even have to court the world of celebrity himself anymore- he has stooges to do it for him.

The fact that Rachel Johnson is on the very public broadcaster that her brother is trying to dismantle and fill with cronies, promoting the Johnson brand when (rumour has it) she is being courted by Rupert Murdoch’s forthcoming Fox-News type channel, raises a few red flags. And don’t forget the fact she went on Good Morning Britain in September 2018, to defend her brother’s racist attitudes about Muslim women, saying his comments about the burka didn’t “go far enough” and called for a full ban in the UK. The Johnsons’ chronic, bottomless need for attention knows no bounds. And we should all be worried about it.

Having the Johnson clan appear on the nation’s favourite TV shows helps build up a base of popular recognition; fame that helps to enable the Torys to enjoy the continued polling success of the Johnson government. It’s not the only reason, I know, but the apparent willingness of Boris’ supporters not only to overlook his constant grotesque lapses of taste and decency is partly fuelled by this illusion that he is a harmless, man of the people, whose buffoonery would make your uncle laugh down the pub. And his family are perpetuating this myth on TV, especially Reality T.V, all the time. Shows like I’m a Celeb and Celebrity Best Home Cook are perfect bookings as they ensure they’re in our lives for long stretches of time, week on week, ingratiating Boris with voters.

Boris, after all, would probably not be in 10 Downing Street today if he hadn’t established a cosy relationship with millions of voters through his appearances on Have I Got News For You. Sonia Purnell’s biography of Boris, describes his appearances on the BBC stalwart as “pop culture classics.” She goes on to state: “In the end, his TV career may have proved his greatest electoral asset.”

As always, the alarm bells have been there from the beginning. During Johnson’s first appearance on HIGNFY, he was asked about the incriminating recording of him offering to help find the address of a journalist so his mate (who was later convicted of fraud) could beat them to a pulp. The audience howled with laughter.

Over his six appearances, you can see Boris honing his maladroit persona. Even back then he would meticulously mess up his hair just before the cameras rolled. For one appearance, he was even nominated for a BAFTA. A BAFTA. Look, HIGNFY can’t be accused of being pro-Boris or pro-Brexit, as they rarely pass up an opportunity to take the piss out of either. However, Have I Got News For You is a fantastic place to turn a public persona around. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former director of communications who was accused of overstating the case for Britain and America to invade Iraq, arguably used appearances to make himself seem less of a war criminal.

Some may say that instances such as Stanley going on national telly to tell the UK public that they “couldn't spell Pinocchio” does more harm than good, but don’t forget Stanley was on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show with a different message- that it is “utterly absurd and wrong that you can read out on air a tweet coming in from one of your readers which calls the prime minister a liar. I think it is amazing you can do that.” His family act as apologists whilst Boris avoids accountability.

Stanley Johnson does not have a formal role in government or the Conservative party, but he played a part in the election campaign of his son. Don’t forget he turned up at the Channel 4 leaders’ debate as part of the Conservatives’ attempt to have Michael Gove appear in place of the prime minister. Because despite Stanley’s liability, he delivers what Boris wants, a distraction. Because if we’re looking at Stanley being a jester, we’re not thinking about policy.

Back to Rachel on Celebrity Best Home Cook. Yes, former MP Ed Balls is on the same show. However, Yvette Cooper isn’t running the country, nor is she likely to be any time soon. Also, an ex MP pursuing a TV career is very different to Tory MP Nadine Dorries’ stint on I’m a Celeb and subsequent failure to declare her £82,000 fee in 2012.

Furthermore, Victoria Starmer isn’t on Channel 4 competing in Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins, is she? Although, I wouldn’t have put it past some bright spark to have tried to rope Piers Corbyn into Celebrity Coach Trip. I would be levelling the same criticisms at other political leaders who did this. The point is, they’re not.

Admittedly, Boris hasn’t gone the whole hog and given his family crucial jobs like Trump did in his administration (choosing instead to award millions of pounds worth of public money in contracts for his mates) but his kith and kin have a far more valuable job: amplifying the brand.

Amplifying the brand is why we have Times articles about Rachel Johnson giving her Somerset farmhouse a colourful makeover, Stanley Johnson on Loose Women waxing lyrical about the ‘Johnson Family Christmas’ and Boris’ godmother (Rachel Billington) in The Telegraph talking about how pleased she is that Boris has returned to Catholicism. At this point he may as well be a chuffing Kardashian.

Rachel Johnson likes to remind us repeatedly about how much it irritates her being introduced as ‘Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris’ yet used her own recent appearance alongside the Loose Ladies to defend her father’s pub idiocy and offer a critical analysis of Boris’ handling of the pandemic – “I think he’s doing an incredible job.” You can’t have it both ways.

So I say it’s time we de-platform them. Harsh, you might think, but reasonable. If we live in a world where Dancing on Ice contestant Rufus Hound’s comments about the government refusing to feed hungry children led a brigade to call for the show to remain a politically neutral space, then I think I can ask for people to stop providing Boris Johnson’s family with a soapbox at every given opportunity.

Besides, the same people upset by Rufus Hound will most likely be the same people who voted for Ann Widdecombe (who made a lucrative political career out of peddling destructive views) and propelled her straight to the final on CBB. “Ann can’t straighten her hair- so relatable!”

Maybe the same viewers voted to watch Stanley pass bull testicles using nothing but his teeth.

Placing toxic people on a beloved show ensures their opinions and life choices become water under the bridge for the public so long as the offending person can cook a focaccia well.

Recently, there was surprise when Nigel Farage took Phillip Schofield seriously after he was asked if he would consider doing Strictly Come Dancing. Nigel knows these shows beam celebs into millions of homes on a weekly basis, and if he can be further normalised this way, so too will his abhorrent views.

If Farage, Carrie Symonds, or Jo Johnson do end up on Strictly, whatever you do don’t vote for them. And to programme-makers who consider regular Johnson-flattering a defensible exercise, maybe it’s time you start booking Sinitta instead.

Love Ben xx

ONE OTHER THING!

I binged all of Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher this week. It’s an FX show that’s all landed on iPlayer, and as each episode is a sleek twenty five minutes, you can do the whole thing in a day. I think it benefits from this. It’s about a teacher and a student, who have an affair. It’s a non judgmental, knotty, uncomfortable and characterful ride that ultimately emphasises just how differently this abuse of power affects the lead characters.

Why Are Drama Schools Charging For Online Auditions?

In the great words of Sophia Petrillo, picture it. The United Kingdom, 2021. The government is causing thousands of deaths due to criminal incompetence, pro-Trump riots terrify fans of liberal democracy everywhere and a pesticide believed to kill bees has been authorised for use. And yet, somehow, by the good grace of Liza Minnelli, you’ve managed to cling on to your dreams and have decided to apply for drama school.

With the sector in crisis, everything currently seems muddled. But after the pandemic, we are going to need new artists with innovative ideas to do what we do best: reflect the world back at audiences, help us process our collective trauma, and to shine a light on unheard voices. That’s where drama schools come in- they’re there to produce self-sustaining, collaborative artists who might help shape the future of the industry.

So you’ve prepared your classic and contemporary speech, maybe even a song. Perhaps you’ve even rehearsed and developed a specific audition piece that a certain school requires- Central are currently asking all applicants to prepare a 30-90 second solo devised piece inspired by a painting.

Let’s just pause there for a second. In the middle of a global pandemic, you’ve heroically managed to create something. Maybe it’s a bit of storytelling, stand up, puppetry, mask work, sound scape, or a movement piece. The possibilities are endless. You’ve poured your heart and soul into getting prepared for auditions that could shape the rest of your life. You may have created different pieces for different schools. One thing’s certain, a lot of time, energy and hard work has gone into it. And now you have to pay to share it.

Usually, drama schools would be preparing to host in-person auditions. When I was a wee impressionable young thing, studying Performance Art (shoutout to Ron Athey) at drama school, I earned a bit of extra cash ferrying potential students to audition rooms, or giving them tours of the building on open days. Then we’d all get bladdered in the SU afterwards on Jack Rabbit rosé. Simpler times.

Except none of that is happening this year. The audition process has gone virtual and moved entirely online for most institutions. Some are promising unlikely in-person recalls, but the majority of this process is now being conducted via the internet. Most establishments have requested candidates prepare video auditions. That part makes sense.

Now, I am not here to re-hash old arguments about drama school audition fees. Most schools will very happily tell you what an expensive process it is to audition thousands of hopeful performers, and that’s why they simply have to charge. Giving the benefit of the doubt, could it conceivably be the case that schools aren’t making tonnes of cash to roll around naked in from students auditioning?

According to the Federation of Drama Schools, drama schools operate as non-profit organisations, which is why audition fees exist despite students paying to attend drama school each year, and this money goes towards the running of the school i.e. keeping the building safe and equipped with all the necessities, and paying teachers etc.

Let’s just imagine all that is truth for a second. Let’s say you have to pay additional administrative costs to run auditions in your building.

Then why on earth charge a fee for ONLINE AUDITIONS?

Before we get into this, here’s a full round up of what schools are charging for their online audition processes. I am happy to correct any unintended misinformation, but this is accurate to the best of my knowledge.

WHAT ARE THE SCHOOLS CHARGING?

RADA- a flat fee of £34, with no additional fee for recalls.

OXFORD SCHOOL OF DRAMA- £45, a single audition fee per applicant.

BRISTOL OLD VIC-  There is an application fee of £25 for BA (Hons) Professional Acting.

ARTS ED- (Round 1) £15 / (Round 2) £30. For the Carol Vorderman’s among us, if you end up doing both auditions, that’s a total of £45.

URDANG- £45 for an administration fee (this is non-refundable).

MOUNTVIEW- they charge £20 for the online audition fee, and a further £25 for a recall. If you’re lucky enough to make it that far, that’s a total of £45.

GUILDHALL- a one off application fee of £35.

ITALIA CONTI- there’s a £45 audition fee payment here.

ROYAL WELSH COLLEGE OF MUSIC AND DRAMA- There is an audition fee of £35 to ‘cover the cost of arranging and delivering auditions’.

EAST 15- There’s a round one audition fee of £15.

LAMDA- A bit more detail here.

Round 1 (self tape)
£12

Round 2 (audition on Zoom)
£0

Final recall
£36

If you make it all the way to the end you can expect to cough up a total of £48.

LSMT- To complete your online application you’re required to pay an audition fee of £10 via PayPal.

ROYAL CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA- Their audition fee is £40.

THE ROYAL CONSERVATOIRE OF SCOTLAND- They charge an administration fee of £55 per course.

GSA-

• For a First Round audition the fee is £15

• If an applicant is successful and invited to a second round Audition Workshop (presumably online again), there is an additional fee of £30

Audition fees for MA Acting and MA Musical Theatre are:

• Single Round Audition fee £45

PPA- They charge £35 for a video audition. They have also arranged some free virtual workshops for students 16-24 yrs old from underrepresented backgrounds. Those taking part in the workshops will also receive a free audition.

ROSE BROFURD- Aren’t charging for the first round stage, but otherwise intend to charge fees ranging between £25 to £55.

MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF THEATRE- Here you do not have to pay to audition! Hurrah!

THE MTA- free here too.

*There may well be other institutions who aren’t charging for online auditions. I’ll happily add them to the list when I find them.

why?

So if you’re auditioning for drama school this year you can expect to pay between ten and fifty five quid per school you can afford to go up for. This quickly adds up. That’s a lot of cash to fork out for the privilege of being locked down in your home auditioning in front of a screen.

Most of the schools listed have FEE WAIVER SCHEMES. Each school has a slightly different criteria, but it usually looks something like this. You can apply for your fee to be waived if you’re a UK student who is entering higher education for the first time, and fall into this criteria:

• You attended a state school

and one or more of the following:

• Your family income is below a certain amount.

• Your home address is in a neighbourhood with low participation.

• You will be considered to be a care leaver when you begin your training.

• You meet the school’s Widening Participation and Outreach criteria.

All of the schools require students to complete extra admin/jump through hoops in order to engage with the process. The schools are placing the burden back on to the students already facing access barriers. You come to us. Despite the audition waivers, hard-working, talented folk will undoubtedly still fall through the cracks.

Back to the numbers. The first thing that strikes me about those fees are that they appear pretty arbitrary. At best, it seems like the schools have decided what they feel is reasonable for their individual process. At worst, it screams of what can we get away with?

Any fees at all for an online process should be minimal and cover the time of the panel watching the video. Time that would already be built into a drama school’s usual annual schedule, I might add. Regardless of this, the fee does not need to be FORTY FIVE BRITISH SODDING POUNDS.

I had a little look at PPA’s available audition slots.

I’m not sure how many slots per audition date there were to begin with, but let’s be generous and say each of the fourteen available dates had only 20 slots. With a £35 application fee, PPA make £9800 off of people’s dreams. Ten grand is not a life-changing sum of money to a big institution, but the numbers that I’ve just played around with are just the tip of the iceberg. My instincts tell me that a move to online auditions actually makes the work of the schools cheaper and easier; plus auditioning online means that they can actually audition more people now if they choose to. The very fact many of those slots have been allowed to be ‘over booked’ should indicate something.

Look, Higher Education is in crisis, and costs will no doubt have spiralled during the Covid crisis, including big spending increases and investment to improve online learning and ensure everyone can access it, and more support for mental health and wellbeing. Staff are going above and beyond to make online learning happen.

However, let’t not forget it is still prospective students that the drama schools are burdening with audition fees. University students, at all levels from freshers to graduates, have been woefully treated by the government during the pandemic. To them being blamed for the spread of the virus, becoming cash-cows for landlords, and facing pressure to head to campuses under the illusion that it was going to be something approaching normal, when that was, quite frankly, always a lie.

It’s no wonder calls for Downing Street to cancel student debt accrued during the pandemic are growing. If the government had spent the summer preparing to make our education settings safe for both teachers and students instead of paying us to go to Wagamamas on a Monday, then we might not be where we are. But it is what it is.

What I’m trying to say is, this online audition fee reeks of the attitude that students are merely consumers to be loaded with debt and then cast off into an unstable future job market. Students at drama schools will have already had their studies impacted immeasurably. Students I’ve spoken to have an overwhelming consensus that they are not getting the training that they paid for. With everything moved online and the majority of training now taking place over zoom in living rooms, there needs to be more done for the current students value for money as well as for prospective students. At this point, to expect applicants to still pay to audition just doesn’t seem particularly compassionate to me.

With drama schools reluctant to share data surrounding auditions, it’s hard to measure how much they earn from the process vs. how much they spend, but something’s definitely fishy here. Call me cynical, but do we really need to charge someone to send across two or three 90 second video clips of them singing in their bathroom? You’re paying for the privilege of being considered. It’s elitist and the schools need to do better.

HELPFUL RESOURCES:

OPEN DOOR- Open Door know how difficult and expensive the process of applying for drama school can be. Open Door help young people by giving them the support they need to go to auditions feeling prepared, confident and without any worry of financial strain. And it’s all free!

Stage Scholarships- In 2021 The Stage is partnering with six performing arts schools and training institutions from across the UK to offer more than £160,000 worth of training.

The dos and dont’s of self-taping drama school auditions.

Happy New Year! Love Ben xx

ONE OTHER THING!

This week’s One Other Thing was the fact I watched Pooch Perfect on BBC Two-a dog grooming reality competition television program. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t think it’s entertaining to watch dogs get shampooed on telly whilst Sheridan Smith cracks jokes with her cohost (a dog called Stanley), then I feel sorry for you.

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A Definitive Ranking of the GLEE Christmas Specials

I’ll admit it, I’m a recovering Gleek. When Rachel Berry et al. burst on to the screen in 2009, I was a seventeen-year-old, bullied gay theatre kid, so needless to say the New Directions found an audience in me. Well, me and millions of other horny, repressed and musical-loving teenagers across the globe. I had spent many a lonely night living out my Elphaba fantasy, wailing to Defying Gravity in my bedroom, so it was nice to find out that Kurt Hummel had been doing the same.

By the time it ended, Glee’s main problem was that it had a total disinterest in maintaining character continuity or resolving its story arcs, but the early days were bodacious.

Glee’s first season followed the fictional high school show choir New Directions competing for the first time on the circuit, while its members and faculty dealt with a myriad of sociopolitical talking points, including (but certainly not limited to): bullying, body image, queerness, teenage pregnancy, disabilities, adoption and ED. 

Let’s just say that Glee certainly got lots wrong with the manner in which it handled some of this representation-particularly in its casting an non-disabled actor to play a student with disabilities- but the triumphant thing about those early seasons was that they tapped into a coming of age truth. That High School is not just about a journey towards graduation and beyond, but also to accepting your identity and singularities. Glee at its best was about the compromises we make between what we want/need, and who we are outwardly as well as inside. AND THERE WERE SONGS. Say what you want about the FOX juggernaut, but it was completely different.

During its freshman season, Glee was nominated for 86 awards; it won 27 of them. The show's musical performances proved to be a commercial success (surpassing records set by The Beatles), and a thirteen-date concert tour of North America (Glee Live! In Concert!) sold out, grossing over $5,000,000 dollars.

It wasn’t long before Ryan Murphy and team set their sights on giving the most commercial of holidays the Glee treatment: Christmas. 

Themed episodes would become a staple of the series: Madonna, Britney, The Rocky Horror Show and Grease were all given their dues. Why they didn’t tackle Grease 2 I’ll never know. Amber Riley straddling a Harley Davidson, belting about how desperately she wants a ‘devil in skin-tight leather’, backed up by the Cheerios being fired from cannons is a fever dream we could all have treasured.

With all that in mind, it was no surprise that from Season 2 onwards, the New Directions delved into Christmas’ back catalogue. By the time Glee ended, we had been blessed with four Christmas specials and accompanying albums. But which Christmas edition of Glee is the best? I’m glad you didn’t ask.

Recently, I went down a bit of a yuletide rabbit hole and binged all of them so you didn’t have to. It was a wild ride.

4.) Season 5: Previously Unaired Christmas

At number four on the list is the Season 5 contribution. Some may have abandoned Glee by this point, so to bring you up to speed: the original New Directions members had mostly all left Ohio for New York and moved into the largest loft apartment known to humankind and were busy frequenting themselves with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker and Demi Lovato.

This special starts with Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) addressing the audience, explaining that the original 2012 Christmas episode of Glee was banned by FOX for being too offensive, but due to fan uproar the channel has decided to air a severely edited version. What the premise sets up is a naughty, uproarious alternative to your standard, drab Xmas specials. But does it deliver?

To begin with, yes. Santana (Naya Rivera) rocks up at Kurt’s massive apartment, presenting him with tickets to a Canadian resort called ‘Dildo Island’ in order for him to get over his breakup with Blaine.  Sadly, we don’t get to see any of what seems like a truly magical family destination (although there is a real Dildo Island) and instead Rachel, Kurt and Santana take jobs as Christmas elves in a mall. Here, the brilliant Naya Rivera’s talents are put to full use- she is a horrifying and hilarious Mrs Claus, complaining to a child about his terrible teeth and rejecting a girl's request for a 'molesty' doll.

There is a slightly scandalous incident in which Kurt (Chris Colfer) is tied up with Christmas paraphernalia by a hunky, yet disturbed, Kris Kringle and robbed, which some would describe as the perfect Christmas gift. This was, admittedly, a dark(ish) festive storyline, but the hour ends with all three robbery victims singing carols in a Bergdorf-Goodman window. So don’t feel too glum.

Beyond that, this episode doesn’t really break out of the “holiday special” mould. Back at McKinley High School, we’re treated to a Christmas tree-decorating competition and the creation of a living nativity scene. As a result, the outrageous/banned idea becomes restrained by festive television conventions, rather than usurping them.

In fairness, the nativity does involve a trans character called Unique (Alex Newell) performing to The Supremes whilst throwing a plastic baby Jesus around the room, and it’s hard to imagine this sequence being done in today’s political climate without unwarranted controversy. Glee was strongest when it portrayed minorityhood as more than victimisation and let characters fly their flag proudly and weirdly, and this ticks both boxes.

It’s more that this “banned’ special doesn’t feel much more disruptive than your standard episode of Glee. It tries to get under the skin and as a result is a hot mess- there are explicit references to race and religion, plot holes are exposed and it sticks a middle finger up at those who call it insensitive by being ridiculously insensitive, but Glee sort of did that on a weekly basis and got away from it.

If it had gone the whole nine yards, I think this could’ve been brilliant. Instead, it just feels slightly grey. Like sleet on Christmas morning. 

The Musical Numbers

The Best:

Love Child, by The Supremes.

Performed by: Unique, Tina and Marley.

Notes: This is the second-best cover of this song I’ve seen. The first, of course, is Whoopi Goldberg’s brief rendition in Sister Act.

Grade: A-

Episode: Previously Unaired ChristmasPerformer: Unique, Tina and MarleyOriginal: Diana Ross & The Supremes

The Worst:

The Chipmunk Song (Don’t Be Late), by Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Performed by: Rachel, Kurt, Creepy Santa and Santana

Notes: Creepy thief Santa whips out his sack, which is filled with helium balloons. They all suck it back as if it’s laughing gas and sprint around the apartment squeaking. It is sheer nonsense.

Grade: D. You try your hardest not to hate every second of it, but you end up feeling a worse person for having witnessed it. This is everything that people who hated Glee said the show was. It’s also kind of mesmerising.

The Chipmunk Song Christmas Don't Be Late

Honourable Mention:

Here Comes Santa Claus, by Gene Autry.

Performed by: Rachel, Santana and Kurt.

Notes: This is a set-piece worthy of a Christmas special. Candy-canes, red/green outfits and unimpressed young’uns are all present.

Grade: B. I like the jaunty bells.

3.) Season 4: Glee, Actually

Despite its title, the episode doesn’t have that much in common with its Richard Curtis namesake.

Love Actually, Sue Sylvester says, “is a movie that I don't think anyone cares for but is constantly on cable." I’m sure if you were to switch on ITV2 right you’d find Emma Thompson sobbing in her bedroom to Joni Mitchell, swiftly followed by a repeat of Cameron Diaz’s seminal performance in The Holiday. Let’s face it, it wouldn’t be Christmas without either.

Instead of loosely linked plots like Love Actually, this episode takes the form of a series of vignettes told one right after the other, with, naturally, various levels of Glee insanity, romance and emotional resonance.

 The first resembles another Christmas favourite all together: It’s a Wonderful Life. The inciting incident involves an angry, humiliated Archie (Kevin McHale) slipping on some ice, smacking his head and waking up in a black and white dream world that serves as an alternative reality. Artie doesn’t use a wheelchair, Rachel (Lea Michele) works in (shock horror) an office job, and Mr. Schuster (Matthew Morrison) never left his manipulative wife Teri from season one, who has now convinced him that a plastic doll is their new-born child and abuses his alcoholism in order to steal his salary. This show was always pretty out there. Artie sings Feliz Navidad and learns a similar lesson to George Bailey before waking up and realising that his life is pretty great.

Next up for a holiday interlude is Kurt. Rachel is off on a Rosie O’Donnell cruise with her dads for Christmas, so Kurt’s dad Burt (Mike O’Malley) shows up with a Christmas tree and devastating news to share. After taking in The Rockettes and the live camel, Burt reveals that he has prostate cancer. The poor guy has only just recovered from a heart attack and now this. In typical Glee style, Burt’s health issues actually serve as a device to give us a romantic semi-reunion between Blaine (Darren Criss) and Kurt, who have JUST BROKEN UP.

Burt gives Kurt the address of an ice skating rink… and who should be there waiting with a ‘package for Kurt Hummel’? I must admit, as Kurt and Blaine skated and sang their traditional holiday duet with choreographed dancers behind them my ice heart did thaw slightly. And when Burt tearily told Kurt the story of his first Christmas tree, I did well up. But it’s been a long year.

The rest of the plots are a mixed bag. In one, Brittany (Heather Morris) has watched a documentary about the Mayan Apocalypse, which was a fun 2012 reference, and decided to cash in her savings so her and her friends can enjoy the rest of their lives. She ends up marrying sexy Sam (Chord Overstreet) on a whim. In another, Sue ends up helping a student with bulimia via a faculty member Secret Santa.

All in all, the episode is a heartening undertaking, albeit an assault on the senses. The structural device of smaller stories actually helps to centre the diversity of tones, randomness of plots and clash of styles. It feels lively and allows members of the ensemble to shine. Although, it doesn’t make any sense to do a Love Actually spoof and not include “Christmas Is All Around ”

Billy Mack not give you the rights?

The Musical Numbers

The Best:

White Christmas, by Bing Crosby.

Performed by: Kurt and Blaine.

Notes: This performance had everything: figure skating, homoeroticism, scarves and daddy’s approval. What’s not to love? And I like Blaine’s coat.

Grade: A

GLEE - Full Performance of White Christmas.Sung by: Blaine Anderson/Darren Criss and Chris Colfer/Kurt Hummel.From 4x10 (Glee, Actually).

The Worst:

Jingle Bell Rock, by Bobby Helms.

Performed by: Sam and The Cheerios.

Notes: I enjoyed the choreography, and it was a jovial moment in what was a darker episode. However, Regina, Cady, Karen and Gretchen have already got this covered.

Grade: C.

Iscriviti a FoxTv: https://goo.gl/LF27jhGUARDA TUTTI I VIDEO SU http://www.foxtv.it/gleeSam sorprende Brittany con una canzone natalizia e... effetti special...

Honourable Mention:

Feliz Navidad, by José Feliciano

Performed by: Artie

Notes: Will Schuster is meant to be a Spanish teacher, so this felt quite cross curricular. The costuming and maracas are a choice.

Grade: B-

4.10 - Glee ActuallyMusic download: http://migre.me/dbz8b

2.) Season 2: A Very Glee Christmas

Despite its perceived relentlessly upbeat persona, Glee is actually a slightly depressing show about unstable performing arts fanatics in Ohio. On the surface, you’d think that Glee would deliver a saccharine hour for its first Christmas special, but actually it’s an episode that's mostly about being lonely at this time of year.

The plot lines are kept loosey-goosey: Rachel tries to win Finn (Corey Monteith) back by singing at him relentlessly; Artie finds out that Brittany still believes in Santa; a manipulative Sue Sylvester abuses the rules of Secret Santa for the first time.

Let’s start with Rachel. She attempts to use Finn’s love of Christmas to her advantage, gifting him “one song of Rachel Berry’s choosing.” It backfires, and Rachel has no choice but to sing WHAM!’s Last Christmas at a Christmas Tree Farm. In fairness, the plan works and they end up snogging under some mistletoe (we’ve all been there) but Finn isn’t ready to forgive Rachel for cheating on him with his best friend. Maybe she should have frosted her hair and worn a giant cross earring. This is all very standard Glee, but Rachel isn’t very fun when she’s at her most manipulative. I prefer her relentless and ruthless pursuit of stardom to her romantic foils.

On to Artie, whose storyline culminates in him receiving a pair of robotic legs from the P.E. teacher, who’s a millionaire, apparently. They do this because for some reason no one wants to explain to Brittany that Santa doesn’t exist. Needless to say, this entire plot feeds into the wider questionable narrative of Archie’s character. The show constantly ran storylines that involved Artie’s wheelchair being something that held him back. Glee positions Archie's disability as a source of antagonism, rather than the inaccessibility and social inequality that he faces. Jay Tee Rattray wrote a piece on this and more over here.

That brings us to Sue, who steals Christmas by ensuring she is the only name in the Secret Santa. There’s nothing not to like about seeing a bright green Jane Lynch slink around, hamming it up and pinching presents. It’s a pastiche of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas that works because it completely suits her character. It’s milked for all it’s worth and I still wanted more of it.

However, in relying so much on the offerings of other Christmas favourites, the episode doesn’t really carve a groove of its own. There’s an emotional core to Xmas stories- a simple sentimentality that escapes this slightly. There is a touching moment at the end of the episode where Will opens up to Sue, explaining that he is trying so hard to make a good Christmas for others because his is going to be shitty, but other than that we’re not sure where our feelings are meant to lie.

The episode's inspiration, the Grinch, absolutely earns its mawkishness because his heart ends up growing three sizes, but we don’t see that anywhere here. The story was totes full of the spirit of the season and it had miracles, carols and joy, but it didn’t quite earn a place as an absolute classic.

The Musical Numbers

The Best:

You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch

Performed by: Sue Sylvester.

Notes: This was a perfect homage to the animated classic. I sort of wish they’d let Jane Lynch do the vocals, but it’s nice to hear K. D. Lang.

Grade: A

You're a Mean One, Sue the Grinch

The Worst:

We Need a Little Christmas, by Johnny Mathis.

Performed by: The whole cast.

Notes: This one was too short so you can’t really get into it and it’s at the top of the episode so you forget about it. But I love Mercedes (Amber Riley).

Grade: C+

This is my favorite Glee Christmas song! It's a little short, but I love it!I do not own any rights to this video or the music therein. I am simply posting...

Honourable Mention:

Baby it’s Cold Outside, by Frank Loesser

Performed by: Kurt and Blaine

Notes: There wasn't much going on for either of the characters this episode (apart from the constant question of if and when these two will EVER get together), but they did get this charming little moment to sing a wintertime favourite. The fire is so gay in this it’s too cute. The chemistry sparkles!

Sidebar: Check out the Darren Day and Gemma Collins effort if you haven’t already.

Grade: B+

GLEE - Baby, It's Cold Outside (Full Performance) HDSeason 2, Episode 10 - "A Very Glee Christmas"

1.) Season 3: An Extraordinary Christmas

Honestly, all I remembered about this episode before I rewatched it was the fact that somehow Chewbacca was in it.

Now, a lot of why I think this special is the best is that the set list for the episode has some great Christmas classics from big hitters like Bruce Springsteen, The Waitresses, Elvis, Mariah Carey, Joni Mitchell, Frank Sinatra and Julie Andrews. That being said, it also contains what I consider to be the worst Christmas song of all time. More on that later.

The plot contains a classic Glee conflict: the New Directions end up double booked for a night when they first agree to perform at a homeless shelter on Sue’s request, but also leap at the chance to film a Christmas special for Lima’s PBS affiliate station. By the end of the hour, you just know that everyone is going have learnt something about Christmas spirit.

Sue is missing her sister Jean as it is her first Christmas without her. She’s volunteering at the shelter and has arranged the gig for them, so the New Directions incur her wrath when they initially choose the selfish option and decide to film the PBS special. Off the back of his debut production of A West Side Story, Artie is hired as the director. He wants to pay homage to classic Christmas Specials: The Star Wars Holiday Special, and the 1963 July Garland Show Christmas Special. As a result, Chewbacca and lightsabers will feature as well as the whole thing being shot in black and white. On a budget of only $800, what Artie achieves is seriously impressive.

The whole thing is set in the Swiss Alps in the exceptionally decorated living room of Kurt and Blaine’s chalet for an evening of Noel Coward-esque banter and innuendo that ends with Rory (Damian McGinty, who won the bananas reality show The Glee Project, earning him what ended up being an 18-episode guest-starring role) dressed as Itchy the elf reciting Luke 2: 8-14 from The Bible.

The actual performances during the special are mostly good; the ones that work best are those that play up to the variety-show vibe with a wink and a nudge. Glee often took big format swings like this, and this is one that it pulls off. And of course, as the end of the episode roles around the show choir realise that there is more to Christmas than selfish endeavours and show up at the homeless charity.

For a show that allegedly places celebrating diversity and difference at its heart there is a lack of another perspective on the Holiday Season in this episode, or any of the specials actually. It would’ve been great to see something that pushed the boundaries of what we expect from “Christmastime". I bring this up as the one storyline I didn’t enjoy in An Extraordinary Christmas was Rachel’s. If there are three things we know about Glee’s protagonist it’s that she loves to perform, is a big Barbra fan and is Jewish. Rachel spends the entire episode demanding that Finn buy her five Christmas presents and not giving a shit about feeding vulnerable people and it just doesn’t seem to ring true with what we know about her, particularly as in Season Two’s special she mentions not celebrating the holiday. Glee digs into its characters defining traits and then drops them when it’s convenient for the story, but it felt careless here.

The emotional heart of the episode, a story about helping those who are less fortunate at Christmas, is classic Glee, but the plot fails to centre the homeless group that the gang are singing for and the payoff as a result is a bit muddy. However, the ride along is very funny and packed with great festive tunes.

Overall, this one’s the best because it’s got good music, a quirky premise and plenty of laughs from a script penned by Buffy’s Marti Noxon. The episode builds on its Judy Garland origins really well, has lots of lovely character moments and is the perfect one to watch a little stoned after an argument with the family.

The Musical Numbers

The Best:

All I Want for Christmas is You, by Mariah Carey

Performed by: Mercedes

Notes: This show persistently underserved Amber Riley’s talents.

Grade: A. It would’ve been an A+ if they’d let her do the full version.

Episode: Extraordinary Merry ChristmasPerformer: MercedesOriginal: Mariah Carey

The Worst:

Do They Know It’s Christmas, by Band Aid.

Performed by: The whole cast.

Notes: This is the worst Christmas song ever.

Grade: F.

Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid is featured in Extraordinary Merry Christmas, the ninth episode of Season Three. It is sung by the New Directions as...

Honourable Mentions:

River by Joni Mitchell

Performed by: Rachel

Notes: This song is a Desert Island Disc of mine, so I appreciate its inclusion anywhere. But it doesn’t have the emotion of Joni’s version, or the theatrics of Ben Platt’s in The Politician.

Grade: B

Episode: Extraordinary Merry ChristmasPerformer: RachelOriginal: Joni Mitchell

Let it Snow by Frank Sinatra

Performed by: Kurt and Blaine

Notes: I think I’m displaying the fanfiction writer within me, but I can’t help but enjoy a number with these two at the helm.

Grade: A-

Love Ben xx

ONE OTHER THING!

I couldn’t do a Glee blog without revealing what I think the best Glee cover is. I think as a rule you can’t pick Don’t Stop Believing, so this would be my choice:

Glee Cast Full Performance Landslide HD

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SLAG WARS

Seven Slags. One Mission. Become The Next Cock Destroyer.

“Do you know what we are? We’re fucking cock destroyers.” Rebecca More and Sophie Anderson are The Cock Destroyers- a pair of sex-positive porn performers with a habit for going viral. In 2018, they posted a NSFW video to promote a gangbang and gay twitter immediately went into overdrive. The memes are as hilarious as they are relentless, and The Cock Destroyers have quickly become internet icons, investing in queer brands and (along with MNEK) inadvertently delivering us one of the best girl groups to emerge in recent years.

Now Sophie and Rebecca are back, and they are on the hunt to reclaim the word slag, celebrate sex positivity and find the next international queer sex symbol/Cock Destroyer in their new Reality Show- SLAG WARS. After two weeks quarantining in the British countryside, seven slags with gumption turn up at the ‘slag house’ with what appears to be only a rucksack and their dreams to compete in raunchy, nonsensical challenges to win the title of The Next Destroyer. Like Bake Off and Mastermind, winning this show is all about the pride and esteem of it.

The seven contestants consist of queer sex workers, models, performers and content creators. There’s Nicky- a trans performer and burlesque artist, who has performed all over the world. Kevin is a self-confessed Cock Destroyer superfan, who doesn’t have any sexwork experience and is the only Scottish slag in the competition. On the other hand, Cain has lots of experience and is looking forward to ‘destroying some dicks.’ Tyreece is a non-binary party animal, who wants to make everyone gag for the right reasons. Adding spice to the mix are Levi and Cameron, a couple who are competing separately! Rounding off our eclectic group is Gustavo, who is proud to be representing Mexico, has sexy tattoos and is eating custard creams in every single talking head. Gustavo is my winner already.

Whilst shows like Drag Race are embroiled in controversy over who gets to take part, The Cock Destroyers are showing aspiring sex symbols that everyone is welcome. That being said, it would have been great to see a Black trans woman competing here too.

So that’s all the potential Next Destroyers! Assisting Sophie and Rebeccca in their search is Matthew Camp- actor, performer and adult entertainer- who isn’t encumbered by practical things like clothes or shoes.

SPOILERS AHEAD…

Like all great reality concepts before it, there’s a mini and a main challenge. The first episode’s foreplay challenge tests the contestant’s sex appeal and performance skills as they pole dance outside erotically. The pole isn’t the sturdiest and I’m sure the participants were all very glad it was filmed on what seems like a sunny day. There are nerves, splits, twerking and slaggy moves.

The main challenge involves the potential next destroyers working in groups to ‘spread it all over the internet’ and produce their own viral videos. Scenarios include vampire twinks, lumberjacks and two rich slags having trouble with their bath. Slag Wars has full Channel 4 in the 90s vibes and needless to say, it’s a show best enjoyed with a few amaretto and cokes and a friend to whatsapp along with.

Alongside this, the drama at the slag house is sure to provide must-see reality TV moments. During the opening fifty minutes, we were treated to arguments that had the familiar appeal of being trapped in the smoking area at 4am with a mouthy, sexy stranger, but also were privy to discussions about struggles in the LGBTQ+ community that are rarely given screen-time. Ultimately, it’s lovely seeing queer people on the telly empowered within their sexuality.

But this is a competition! Or is it? When Chris Crocker joins them for judging- have you been sucking any juicy cocks recently Chris?- things heat up. I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that when it’s time to eliminate someone The Cock Destroyers prove exactly what made them such stars in the first place and provide us with a cliff-hanger that will be sure to have you tuned in next week.

All that is to say, I am not sure why we are enduring daily episodes of I’m a Celeb on primetime TV when we should be getting this at 9pm instead? The whole thing is completely enlightening and tackles judgments about sex workers, gender identity and kink. Slag Wars is a cacophony of camp, sex and silicone, but it’s also about pushing boundaries, being sex-positive and embracing your body. It’s accessible, it’s naughty, it’s free.

I wish there was more space for the runway element (the first episode’s theme of lavish latex could do with being a squeeze more licentious) but this is an extremely minor gripe in what is essentially a queer masterpiece. The indiscriminate bleeping of fuck and cock is bewildering and hysterical, the Cock Destroyers are born presenters and the contestants seem like they’re having a ball.

So after all that, what exactly is being a Cock Destroyer all about? As far as I can tell, it’s about being true to yourself, exuding sexiness and embracing your wild side. Deep down, I am sure we can all be Cock Destroyers if we put our minds to it.

Love Ben x

A FEW OTHER THINGS!

More than one this week, but here’s a few things I’ve been enjoying recently.

1. Bob The Drag Queen is doing recaps here of each episode of Slag Wars. Well worth your time.

2. Both Kylie Minogue’s “DISCO” and Miley Cyrus’ “Plastic Hearts” are albums you should have in your ears.

3. Dolly Parton’s “Christmas on the Square” is finally on Netflix and is a festive fever dream.

4. My brother has started a tie-dye clothing business and I know I am biased, but they are awesome and here.

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5 Great Things By Great Writers I've Read Recently

Hello all,

I hope everyone is safe and well. Here are some things I’ve read over the past few weeks that I wanted to share with you. I’ve had more time recently to catch up on great things that I’d missed. There’s a couple of articles, a novel, an autobiography and a weed memoir. Hope you enjoy these great writers as much as I did.

1. How To Tell Your Husband You’re A Witch

   by Lisa Richardson

This article is from April 2020, which I know now seems like a lifetime ago, but it was Halloween a few days ago, so why not? Lisa Richardson writes for Longreads about witchiness in a time of pandemic, being a skull collector, plant magic and how to trust and problem solve from within. It questions if our power can lie much closer to home.

2.) The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

I bought Laila Lalami’s novel and the end of 2019 and whilst self isolating this week it has been good company. Late one spring night, Driss Guerraoui, a Moroccan immigrant living in California, is walking across a darkened intersection when he is killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraq War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.

The novel is a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story that exposes secrets, lies and a legacy of violence.

3. Baking Through A Plague

article in: Guernica mag

This is an excerpt from Alia Volz’s book that came out earlier this year: Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco. It’s about her memories of her parents’ underground marijuana brownie business in San Francisco, California, at the onset of the AIDS epidemic. Fifteen years before the first effective treatments were available on the market, weed was used as a palliative remedy for many symptoms, particularly nausea and appetite loss. It looks like it’s going to be a super funny and heartfelt memoir from the daughter of a larger-than-life woman who ran Sticky Fingers Brownies, an underground bakery that distributed thousands of weed brownies per month. I have just ordered the book and can’t wait to munch my way through it.

4. Hungry by Grace Dent

My eternal love of Masterchef means I have been extremely excited about this. It’s sharp, cutting and sports a dry sense of humour, but Dent’s writing is most exquisite when talking about grief or the joys of Cadbury’s Fruit ‘n’ Nut. Most of all, it comes across as brutally honest, which is want you want from a critic. There was an extract in The Guardian here that should give you (forgive me) a flavour.

5.What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?

article by Rhaina Cohen in the atlantic.

A great Long Read on committed friendships and what a world of platonic partnership looks like. Could placing friendship at the centre of our lives transform society and ourselves for better?

Take care everyone,

Love Ben xx

ONE OTHER THING!

Each time I do one of these, I'll highlight something that might be of interest. This week, I wanted to draw you to an episode of Scriptnotes I caught up on. It was all about conflict- why it’s bad in real life but essential in screenwriting. I didn’t hear it the first time around (it’s a rebroadcast) but it’s great. They look at 6 common forms of conflict in storytelling and give advice on how to sustain it throughout your story.

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A Holly Dolly Christmas Review

There’s no doubt about it; a Christmas album in early October is sacrilegious. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a mince pie or three in early November, but as a rule Christmas songs don’t get played until December 1st. Not even Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree. That being said, Dolly Parton is back after 30 years with her album A Holly Dolly Christmas and I am willing to put aside the small fact that it was released exactly 12 weeks before the big day. This year, with the entire festive season in danger of being cancelled, I’m feeling more forgiving. Besides, if anyone has earned the right to do what the fuck they want, it’s Dolly Parton.

If there’s one thing camper than Dolly, it’s Christmas. The two make natural bedfellows given Parton’s angelic spirit, penchant for shiny things and specific brand of Christianity. But despite the longevity of her career and broad range of her catalogue, Dolly Parton has only birthed two previous Christmas albums; a 1984 collaboration with the late Kenny Rogers and 1990’s Home for Christmas, which relied on traditional carols. Neither reached the UK chart, but this latest release has already topped the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart, becoming Parton’s eight album to do so.  

Bursting back on to the Yuletide scene in 2020, this album is heavy on originals, with two songs tied to TV movies set in the Dolly Parton Universe. Although the term original is one that’s used fast and loose when it comes to writing Christmas songs. The words “Ding” and Dong” are applied liberally here.

A number of Dolly’s celeb family and friends lent their voices to this project too- from icon and goddaughter Miley Cyrus to Michael Bublé, who will of course imminently emerge from hibernation to serenade us with his unique brand of perfunctory-car-salesman festive crooning.

“I’ve never been more excited about a project in my whole career than my Holly Dolly Christmas album,” says Parton. “I’m singing with some of the greatest artists ever on some of our favourite classic Christmas songs and a few new ones that I have written. I hope we all have a Holly Dolly Christmas this year!” Despite me being hard pushed to believe that Dolly has never been more excited for a project in her career, I’m up for whatever constitutes a Holly Dolly Christmas.

But is the album any good? Should Mariah be quaking in her snow boots? Is it any better than Jessica Simpson’s 2010 offering Happy Christmas? And will it warrant a listen every Christmas from now until the end of time?

Here are my thoughts on each track:

1.)   Holly Jolly Christmas

Official audio for "Holly Jolly Christmas" by Dolly Parton from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christmas' here: https:...

The tune that inspired the album is the opening track- a cheeky tribute to Burl Ives. The production has a smidgen of country twang. There are spoken words sections where it seems like Dolly is thinking aloud: “Oh, I just love Christmas. All the celebrations, all the presents. Fun with family and friends. Oh, every year I love singin' this song and I thought, well, why not just do a whole album called A Holly Dolly Christmas. So I did.” All in all, a great opening.

Christmas Cheer: 9/10.                     Camp Level: 8/10.                                  Rhyming: 9/10

Is it better than Leona Lewis’ One More Sleep? No.

2. Christmas Is (ft. Miley Cyrus)

Official audio for "Christmas Is" by Dolly Parton (featuring Miley Cyrus) from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christma...

Dolly reprises her role as Hannah Montana’s Aunt Dolly as Miley Cyrus joins her on this track, another Parton original. According to Miley, Dolly Parton is the only person you “sing a Christmas carol in July” for. The song’s message is that it’s better to give than to receive, which is disputed at best, but it gets to the heart of traditional Christmas values. Dolly’s fanbase will lap it up. And Dolly and Miley sound great together. I’d like more music from the two of them.

Christmas Cheer: 8/10.                     Camp Level: 8/10.                                  Rhyming: 7/10

Is it better than 8 Days of Christmas by Destiny’s Child? No.

3. Cuddle up, cozy down christmas

(ft. Michael bublé)

Official audio for "Christmas Is" by Dolly Parton (featuring Miley Cyrus) from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christma...

Some people will find this cozy, some people will find this titillating, some people will find this too syrupy, some people will tap their toes along to it and some people may find the overt sexual tension too much. On some levels, it’s a nice antidote to Baby, it’s Cold Outside. I do have a question about whether Michael and Dolly are playing themselves, or characters. I would’ve liked more information on the wider story.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 6/10.                                  Rhyming: 8/10

Is it better than Michael’s duet White Christmas with Shania Twain? Yes.

Is it better than Michael’s duet Baby it’s Cold Outside with Idina Menzel? Yes.

Is it better than Michael’s duet Winter Wonderland with Rod Stewart? Yes.

4. christmas on the sqaure

This is my favourite song on the album. I’m sure it’s only improved by the context of the TV movie it’s taken from. Just when you think you’ve had enough banjo Dolly gives you more banjo and you realise what the song needed was more banjo. This track is nothing short of a hoot. A hoedown. A foot stomping romp of a group number. I’m in.

Christmas Cheer: 9/10.                     Camp Level: 9/10.                                  Rhyming: 10/10

Is it better than Taylor Swift’s Christmas Tree Farm? Yes.

5. circle of love

Official audio for "Circle of Love" by Dolly Parton from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christmas' here: https://dolly...

This is the second song attached to a movie that features on the album. Dolly shows off her belt as she sings ‘Happy Birthday dear Jesus.’ Her voice sounds really full and gawj. The atmospheric backing vocals are quite fun. It’s not breaking any rules, and the song is very traditional, but it has an open hearted sentiment synonymous with Christmas and Dolly that’s irresistible.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 4/10.                                  Rhyming: 7/10

Is it better than Dolly Parton’s version of Silent Night? No.

6. all i want for christmas is you (ft. jimmy fallon)

Official audio for "All I Want For Christmas is You" by Dolly Parton with Jimmy Fallon from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly D...

My main thought on this is thank God it’s not James Corden.

Christmas Cheer: 8/10.                     Camp Level: 7/10.                                  Rhyming: n/a

Is it better than Mariah Carey’s original? Sadly no, but nothing is.

P.S. skip to 3.50 for a treat.

7. comin’ home for christmas

Official audio for "Comin' Home For Christmas" by Dolly Parton from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christmas' here: ht...

Quite similar to Drivin’ Home For Christmas (click here for Stacey Solmon’s version).

After a slightly ominous start (“daddy’s in the woodshed / with axe and overcoat”) the song gets more jolly if slightly maudlin. I actually thought she sounded quite like Kylie Minogue on parts of this track, but I could have been inside too long. Overall, a sweet ballad. One to listen to when you’re feeling emotional on Christmas Eve whilst drinking a big tumbler of port.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 6/10.                                  Rhyming: 6/10

Is it better than Kylie Minogue's Christmas Isn't Christmas 'Til You Get Here? No.

8. christmas where we are (FT. BILLY RAY CYRUS)

Not content with just one Cyrus on the album, Dolly ropes in Billy Ray. It’s the rockiest track on the collection and Dolly sounds really great. Billy Ray sounds like he’s recorded it on Boxing Day after a heavy lunch. I like the energy of the song and the pair of them seem like they’re having fun. Jamming, the kids might say. The fiddles sound lush, but there's a little Xmas magic missing.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 5/10.                                  Rhyming: 6/10

Is it better than the Jonas Brothers and Like It's Christmas? Yes.

9. pretty paper (FT. willie nelson)

I must admit I wasn’t familiar with Willie’s 1979 version or Roy Orbison’s version either, which I prefer. Dolly’s duet with Willie is crisp and joyful. One for falling asleep in front of the fire.

Willie Nelson is a country music legend btw, so if you don't know him, introduce yourself.

Christmas Cheer: 6/10.     

Camp Level: 5/10.                                  

Rhyming: 6/10

Is it better than Christmas Love by Justin Bieber? Yes.

10. i saw mommy kissing santa claus

Official audio for "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" by Dolly Parton from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christmas' he...

If you can suspend your disbelief and believe that 74 year old Dolly is six, then this is very enjoyable.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 10/10.                                  Rhyming: 9/10

Is it better than the Ronnetes’ version? No.

11. you are my christmas (ft. randy parton)

IMHO, this is the best duet on the album. Randy and Dolly’s chemistry fizzles and it is full of infectious energy. It’s got lashings of warmth and out of the friskier helpings on the album, this is the one that stands out and does a great job of blending the Christmas and Country vibes. I’m now a Randy Parton fan.

Christmas Cheer: 10/10.                     Camp Level: 7/10.                                  Rhyming: 8/10

Is it better than Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Mel and Kim? Arguably.

12. mary, did you know?

Official audio for "Mary, Did You Know?" by Dolly Parton from her holiday album 'A Holly Dolly Christmas.' Listen to 'A Holly Dolly Christmas' here: https://...

A song in which Dolly interviews the Virgin Mary. It’s classy, it’s humble and it is light on the production at the beginning, before ramping things up for a campy, evangelical finish. It’s melancholy undertones are rather nice, before its uplifting crescendo. Rousing backing vocals help raise the stakes emotionally. It's a conventional closer.

Christmas Cheer: 7/10.                     Camp Level: 6/10.                                  Rhyming: 4/10

Is it better than Christmas Lights by Coldplay? Yes.

THE OVERALL VERDICT

I don't think Mariah needs to worry about her bank balance, but this is a solid effort that showcases Dolly's trademark vocals and positive attitude. It's down to earth like the star who made it and focusses on kindness, compassion and empathy. In a year that gets more and more divisive, Dolly is one of the few figures that can bring us all together. And whilst things grow darker outside figuratively and literally, why not follow Dolly's lead and start celebrating a little early? I'm off for a Buck's Fizz and a family argument over a board game.
 
Love Ben x

ONE OTHER THING!

Each time I do one of these, I'll highlight something that might be of interest. This week, I binged all four episodes of Lucky Kirkwood's Adult Material. I loved how unashamed it is tonally. And how it doesn't avoid messy, truthful or uncomfortable choices. It covers an awful lot of ground whilst wearing its heart on its sleeve. The cast were fantastic- Hayley Squires gives the best performance I've seen on telly this year. I'll be thinking about it for a while.

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5 Things Every Writer Can Learn from the Desperate Housewives Pilot

Sixteen years ago this week, Desperate Housewives premiered on ABC. 21.6 million people watched the first episode. Many compared the pilot to Sex and the City, with one critic prophetically declaring that it could “potentially replace the departed Sex and the City as the TV Sunday ritual for women and gay men everywhere, although DH is the guiltier pleasure of the two."

Goodbye Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha.

Hello Bree, Susan, Lynette and Gaby!

But the pilot’s success wasn’t always guaranteed. Like most overnight sensations, Desperate Housewives wound up on screen after a slog of rejections. CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, Showtime and Lifetime all turned it down.

Marc Cherry (the show’s creator) said about that period of time: "I was broke, unable to get even an interview for a writing job, and seriously concerned about my future. I had just turned forty and was starting to wonder if I was one of those deluded writers that wander around, convincing themselves they're talented when all the evidence points to the contrary.”  Sounds familiar.

After Cherry’s agent was arrested for alleged embezzlement (including $79,000 of his own cash), he signed with Paradigm Talent Agency, who urged him to rewrite his ‘30-minute dark comedy’ as a soap opera. Cherry reworked the script and pitched the series to ABC, who picked up the pilot. Silver linings, I guess.

For ABC, Housewives couldn’t have arrived at a better time. The network was floundering and needed a serious reversal in fortunes. Its ratings were tanking- save for cash-cow Who Wants to be a Millionaire- and things were looking desperate.  Along with Lost and Greys Anatomy, the 2004-2005 season revised ABC’s prospects and also reminded viewers and broadcasters alike of the pleasures (and, more importantly for some, profits) to be found in new and original ideas for scripted television. Up to this point, Reality TV and Light Entertainment were dominating schedules, until they were was usurped by the campy antics of the women of Wisteria Lane and an island with smoke monsters and polar bears.

The floodgates seemed to open in 2004; the success of Housewives and other breakout hits sparked huge appetite for scripted hours on broadcast television. This was also the TV season that begifted us Veronica Mars and House, if Hugh Laurie doing a Golden Globe clinching accent is your thing.

These new batch of shows each offered compelling reasons to switch off reality series and revel in strongly etched characters and well-told stories. These shows generated huge amounts of critical and commercial success. At the height of its powers, Housewives was pulling in $2.74 million worth of revenue per half hour. Once again, scripted shows were money making machines. No one could have predicted it. In fact, network execs Llyod Braun and Susan Lyne were fired after greenlighting these risky and expensive pilots- with the first episode of Lost costing $13+ million, one of the most expensive in modern broadcasting.

(iconic)

For those who have been hiding under a white picket fence and haven’t the total pleasure of watching it (spoilers are present from here on out) Desperate Housewives follows the lives of a group of women (Susan Mayer, Bree Van de Kamp, Gabrielle Solis and Lynette Scavo) as seen through the eyes of their friend and neighbour, Mary Alice, who takes her own life in the pilot episode. Her friends try to find out the reason for her suicide, whilst dealing with the problems of their personal lives.

Very few TV shows have a first season like Housewives. It was an immediate hit, was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards, won six, made overnight stars of new talent like Eva Longoria, and its season finale was watched by over 30 million people in the US alone. It was a juggernaut.

Desperate Housewives didn’t maintain the level of ingenuity and quality of this stellar first season and its legacy has been overshadowed by rumours (and confirmation) of bitter feuds between cast members, a lawsuit, Felicity Huffman’s involvement in the college admissions scandal and Teri Hatcher’s Celebrity Bake Off win. Despite all this, episodes such as Season 3's ‘Bang’ in which all of the main characters are involved in a supermarket hostage situation (yes, really) are still examples of the best writing you’d find anywhere on mainstream television.

Like most relics of the 00s era, there are storylines that haven’t aged well at all, but for the most part the series keeps hold of the things that make it so brilliant: an electric cast, a tonal elasticity not matched by any show since, a devilish wit and subversive nature.

By the time it went off air, it was (and still is) the longest running hour-long television series featuring all-female leads, with 180 episodes. But I want to talk about the first one- the pilot. What made it so irresistible? What made 20 million people tune back in for episode two? I’m making the bold (and not at all objective) claim that Desperate Housewives is the most well-constructed, and more importantly, entertaining, first episode of television… ever.

What ingredients make it so? I thought you’d never ask.

1.) A Brilliant Mission Statement

Picture this: Los Angeles, 2002. Former Golden Girls writer Marc Cherry is broke, out of writing work, and living with his mother, Martha. One day, they were watching coverage of the tragic Andrea Yates trial together. As Cherry tells it, whilst the news broke that Andrea had been found guilty of drowning her children in the bathtub, he turned to his mother, horrified, "Can you imagine being so desperate that you would do that to your children?"

His mother, he says, took the cigarette that she was smoking out of her mouth and said, "I've been there."

He started writing.

It’s all well and good having the spark of a good idea. If we’re lucky, we might get a few of them in our writing careers. And the story engine of Desperate Housewives is good and simple- what’s the truth about Mary Alice?

Just over a minute into the pilot episode of Desperate Housewives, we’re thrown into one of the biggest TV mysteries of all time. Was Mary Alice’s seemingly perfect suburban life simply too much to deal with, or was there something far more sinister going on? I think, to a 2020 audience, there might be push back against this mode of storytelling- not every suicide is a mystery that can or should be ‘solved.’ But I’d suggest that it is what the Mary Alice storyline is trojan horseing in that made Housewives so compelling.

The idea that women like Andrea (and in turn Mary Alice) could lead the lives they wanted, taking on the role of mother, breadwinner and wife, but still be plagued by terrible secrets and quiet desperation is what grounds the more heightened aspects of the pilot. It’s this common theme that every single character on the show is juggling. They all have their secrets, they all have their burdens, their mental health issues, and they don’t always speak up about them until it’s too late. Unlike the characters of Sex and the City, who shared every sordid detail of their lives; Susan, Lynette, Gaby and Bree kept things from each other to their detriment. Housewives sets out from page one letting us know that it wanted us to question how much we really want to know about our neighbours.

It masked this goal in a whodunit, or to be more accurate, a whydunit. But the twists and turns of the mystery isn’t what makes the pilot brilliant, or the series bingeable. It’s watching a group of women shed their suburban facades behind closed doors that at the time felt revolutionary, largely because the comedic undertones set it apart from its cinematic cousins like American Beauty.

Desperate Housewives’ mission was to put every character flaw you could think of through its unique filter: adultery, addiction, manipulation, dangerous driving, seduction, jealousy, murder, revenge and don’t forget: nanny-poaching.

These women didn't always adore their kids and they weren’t selfless devotees to the ‘American Dream’ and their communities. Before Don Draper and Walter White were lauded as examples of the macho-centric antihero that has come to dominate our TV landscape, a group of women were, in a refreshing twist, the ones who filled these roles. Housewives was determined to exhibit tenacious, scurrilous women outside of the fantasy genre, or the wives of laugh-track sitcoms who fire zingers about their useless husbands. In its own subversive way, Desperate Housewives screamed with every fibre of its being that as long as women are expected to fulfil clear-cut roles, they would be pushed to all lengths to escape these stereotypes.

I’m sure every writer has had a certain note come back. It usually goes along the lines of: ‘I really like this, as you know. Feels like a great way in. My only thought would be, I feel like it needs something extra.’

As annoying as that might be when you’ve had a great idea, what that usually translates to is that the mission statement isn’t slapping everyone in the face. Everything I’ve just gone on and on about is there from page one of the Desperate Housewives pilot. It’s there from the very first voiceover when Mary Alice tells us:

“I made breakfast for my family, I performed my chores, I completed my projects, I ran my errands. In truth, I spent the day as I spend every other day: quietly polishing the routine of my life till it gleamed with perfection. That’s why it was so astonishing when I decided to go to my hallway closet and retrieve a revolver that had never been used.”

2.) Every Character Gets a Water Cooler Moment

One of the trickiest feats that the Housewives pilot pulls off is that you get to know each of its four leads characters equally. Not only does Mary Alice introduce everyone with typical sledgehammer subtlety through the medium of what food they bring to her wake, the pilot also carves out space for each member of the ensemble to shine. All the women have a showpiece scene that could be described as the most memorable moment of the pilot. Each set-piece also gives the audience a crystal clear insight into character, and who you’re going to spending each week with. Let’s break them down.

LYNETTE

Lynette (Felicity Huffman) is a former advertising exec, frustrated with raising four young children. She brings fried chicken.The pilot slowly pushes and pushes her to the end of her tether. Threatening to call Santa only gets her so far, and it’s clear that she’s drowning at home. At Mary Alice’s wake, her children jump into the pool in the backyard, causing havoc whilst she’s trying to breastfeed. But then she does something that tells us everything we need to know about her character- she gets into the pool, in her heels (obviously) and drags the little shits out of there.

As she wades in, the other neighbours stand around looking judgmental- a snapshot of what she has to deal with on what’s probably an hourly basis. It not only encapsulates the character’s spiralling situation, it’s funny, and demonstrates who Lynette is at her core- a no-nonsense, unorthodox and volatile mother, who is quite literally struggling to keep her head above water. Few moments introduce a character as successfully.

GABRIELLE

Before we get into this, let’s just caveat that the one aspect of the pilot that definitely isn’t perfect is Gaby’s relationship with her teenager gardener, John Rowland. Gabrielle (Eva Longoria) is a narcissistic, hilarious and egotistical ex-model who is struggling to reconcile her previous lifestyle with her mundane existence in the suburbs. To counteract the boredom and her inattentive husband, she’s struck up an affair with her sixteen-year-old horticulturist. Um.

It’s not the wake (she brings chilled gazpacho) that gives us Gabrielle’s defining moment. Later on in the episode, Gabrielle and her husband Carlos (Ricardo Antonio Chavira) are attending a swanky party. He’s pissed off that the front lawn hasn’t been mowed and wants to fire John. CONFLICT. Instead of letting that happen, Gabrielle flees the party and ends up mowing the lawn in her expensive (and very long) evening gown. It’s high camp, ludicrous and exceptionally enjoyable. It sets Gabrielle up as resourceful and manipulative, but also raises the stakes for her perfectly. If anyone discovers her affair, she’ll lose everything. It also gives her something to do. Like Lynette diving into the pool, it’s a physical and active demonstration of whats going on for her internally- something you want for your characters in your pilot.

BREE

Bree (Marcia Cross) is my favourite housewife. She’s one of the most complex and evolved characters on telly, but that’s for a different blog post. In the pilot, she’s a perfectionist homemaker (she brings baskets of muffins to the wake and she will need the baskets back afterwards) who feels unappreciated by her family, and is shellshocked when her husband Rex (Steven Culp) tells her, whilst they’re out to dinner, that he doesn’t “want to live in a detergent commercial anymore” and asks for a divorce.

Mortified that this has unfolded in an establishment that labels its restrooms “chicks and dudes” Bree goes to fix Rex a salad. The only trouble is, Rex is deathly allergic to the onions she piles on top. The moment speaks deeply to her character. As someone who has clearly built her entire existence on paying close attention to the details, it lets us know just how adrift Bree is underneath her pasted on smile. And as Rex goes into anaphylaxis, Bree is left wondering was she distracted, or was it a deliberate act of malice?

It’s an interesting provocation, and as she sits at Rex’s bedside he tells her he longs for the woman “who used to burn toast and drink milk out of the carton” and it’s clear that Bree also longs to be that person too, she just can’t get out of her own head long enough. It’s a contrast to Gabrielle’s frantic landscaping, and one that sets Bree out as the series’ emotional compass.

SUSAN

Susan (Teri Hatcher) brings a mac and cheese to the wake that tastes both burned and undercooked. She’s a newly divorced, single mother and a clumsy, likeable, hopeless romantic. She’s the character we’re meant to root for. Every ensemble show has a character that’s the eyes of the audience- the every human- and that’s Susan. She’s the most recognisable, and is the one who is most invested in finding out what was going on with Mary Alice. She’s our entry point.

Her water cooler moment comes when she burns fellow neighbour, and love rival, Edie Britt’s (Nicollete Sheridan) house down. This does push the limits of Susan’s ‘adorable and kooky’ persona, but that only serves to highlight how important casting is- Teri Hatcher makes light work of a moment that could easily be declared ‘too much’ for an opening episode. In another universe, I imagine this moment getting cut during a round of notes and ‘saving’ the story until later, but Susan accidentally burning down the house of her frenemy in the very first episode works because it’s a moment of crisis that highlights exactly (forgive me) how desperate she feels. Her idealistic view of romance literally causes a house to burst into flames. Which brings me on to my next point…

3.) Romance!

Does a pilot have to set up a romance between two of your leads? No. Does it help? Yes. In Housewives, the job of getting our hearts fluttering goes to Susan and Mike (James Denton).

These stories are the backbones of some of the best shows on television, but they’re also done to death. And if you build a huge arc around a couple that the audience just doesn’t want to invest in, it can make for arduous viewing. The big danger is that you’re a Carrie and Aleksandr Petrovsky rather than a Kermit and Miss Piggy.

A lot of it does come down to chemistry, but Susan and Mike work on Desperate Housewives for two other reasons, both of which are there in the pilot.

THE MEET CUTE IS CUTE

Susan and Mike first cross paths at Mary Alice’s wake, where Susan attempts to stop Mike from eating her terrible afore mentioned Mac and Cheese. This type of meet cute is a classic- the Good Samaritan- the love interest charges in to save a stranger because she knows he’ll most likely get food poisoning, but she doesn’t expect to lose her heart in the process.

This interaction remembers that it’s not just the meet cute between the characters, it’s the meet cute between the audience and the characters, too. It’s the first time we see Mike- and after spending a few minutes with his character on screen- most people want him to come over and snake their drain. This is a tale of suburban housewife meets hunky neighbourhood plumber- to be honest it’s the stuff of bad porn. But none of this matters because the pilot successfully uses this first encounter to create the fireworks that makes the audience believe that these two characters are meant for each other.

This is so important, because if it falls flat, there’s a good chance the audience will emotionally checkout. The best meetings between characters are the ones that give you insight into how they’re going to have a ripple effect on each other’s lives.

However, the pilot also has the job of setting up the external factors and internal conflict that will keep the characters apart despite their mutual desire for each other.

A MYSTERIOUS PAST

The other reason the romance works in the pilot is because just as we are starting to root for Susan and Mike to get together, the rug is pulled. As the end of the episode draws to a close, it looks like Susan and Mike are destined for the typical will/they won’t they journey, until Mike gets home, removes a gun from his jacket and receives a mysterious and dangerous sounding phone call. Uh oh.

This gives the story an extra level. By tying Mike to the central mystery, it raises the stakes for the couple. Not only are we now invested in whether or not these two lovers will ever shack up together, but the story actually becomes about whether or not they can trust each other. As Mike’s shady behaviour increases, Susan begins to doubt him and starts behaving shadily herself. It’s the perfect reason to keep them apart and maximise the tension later on.

4.) Tone

We’re not sure of the tone of it. On paper, Housewives is part comedy, part drama, part telenovela and part insanity. Having said that, what set the pilot apart was its voice. it’s easy to forget now that shows like Dead to Me, Pretty Little Liars and Good Girls have followed in its wake, but back in 2004 this type of tonal diversity wasn’t a staple. Tom Shales of The Washington Post praised the pilot, assessing, "In visual style, witty language, borderline surrealism and overall mad attitude, [the series] stands on a mountaintop all its own, the best new drama of the season and perhaps the best new comedy, too.”

The show was originally pitched as a comedy, but none of the networks were interested. When it was re-pitched as satire, suddenly it found a home. Perhaps gatekeepers were scared that people would tune in, get freaked out by the indiscriminate emotional chords and flip over to something safe. But the fantastic thing about Housewives is that it stretches from sharp satire to soap opera to sentimentality and back again. The success of the pilot is a lesson in holding on to your style and pushing the boundaries of comedy and drama.

5.) A Great End of Episode Hook

In the closing moments of the episode, in a box of Mary Alice's clothes, the women discover a blackmail note. It’s all very I Know What You Did Last Summer, but it’s a hook that propels us into the next episode with a hell of a lot of questions. What did Mary Alice do? Who sent the note? Was it someone on the street? Should they tell her creepy husband, Paul, about it? It allows for the story to go in a hundred different directions, and that’s why it’s such an effective closing moment for a pilot.

It’s also a hook that ties into the wider thematics of the pilot: people struggling behind closed doors and keeping up the pretence that life is hunky dory. By having a great twist that’s rooted in the emotional mechanics of your story, it guarantees that people are going to want to know what the hell happens next.

*

So that’s enough from me!

Was Housewives as a whole perfect? No.

What about the pilot? Now, that’s as perfect as Bree Van De Kamp’s coiffed hair.

Love Ben

x

ONE OTHER THING!

Each time I do one of these, I'll highlight something that might be of interest. This week, I finally got around to watching The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty- equal parts chilling and fascinating. All three parts are available on BBC iplayer here.

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Why Theatres Becoming Courts is a Bad Idea

Today, the HM Courts & Tribunals Service announced plans for an extra 8 Nightingale Courts to tackle the impact of the dreaded ‘c word’ on the justice system. As far as I’m aware, they’ve named just three of these new locations that will host criminal, civil, family and tribunal hearings: Middlesbrough’s Jury’s Inn, a Hilton hotel in York and The Lowry Theatre in Salford. The last one threw me.
 
Before I say anything else, I want to caveat all of this that I think the fact this is happening at all demonstrates what strain both the arts and the justice system is being placed under- people are scrambling to survive right now.

The Lowry, like many arts venues, saw the majority of its income disappear overnight when it shut in March at a time in which an appalling lack of government guidance meant that the likes of theatres, galleries, music venues and comedy clubs were all scrambling to adapt to ‘unprecedented’ events.

The Lowry has now lost "£16m of income" and it says that it will host trials in three temporary courtrooms during the daytimes from Monday to Fridays. In the evenings and weekends, the venue will stage shows and open its galleries again, using funds from the court deal. This means that performances that will not have been taking place otherwise can now begin. It means jobs, protection and the lights can be kept on.
 
The Lowry have said, “…This partnership provides vital funds to enable us to relaunch our programme… Furthermore, we hope to spread the benefit of this partnership across Greater Manchester by commissioning new work from local artists specifically designed for the post-COVID audience environment.”

Having said that, an arts venue propping up a ministry of justice which displays all of the inherent traits of a classist, racist, ableist and chaotic Tory government can’t help but churn my stomach. Yes, it’s a court, not a prison, and the Lowry are no doubt alleviating a backlog of cases (some of which will provide comfort to families and victims). Yes, this a valued arts organisation trying to do their best in a frankly diabolical situation. Yes, safeguarding hundreds of jobs at a time like this is a welcome relief. Yes, some young people and audiences will undoubtedly benefit from having access to the arts again in Salford at a time like this.
 
Still, it sends a message. Undoubtedly, there will be audiences that will feel like a venue is now ‘not for them.’ There may be some that argue that arts organisations shouldn’t hold themselves up as bastions of left-wing values and shouldn’t sit outside of society’s normal structures.
 
But this isn’t the same thing. What we need is for the government to fund the court system and CPS, fund services for vulnerable young people and radically reform policing. Oh, and support the entertainment industries instead of letting them all disintegrate before our very eyes. I thought Nightingale Courts set up in our theatres would be the stuff of dystopian novels, but 2020 and the Tories strike again.
 
Don’t get me wrong, the theatre industry in the UK has a long way to go before it is able to claim to be a safe space for everyone, whatever your background, but make no mistake- theatres are places that should be embedded in their communities, championing them, and fostering audiences that feel like they belong when they walk into your foyer.
 
I am sure The Lowry had no choice. I am sure that the complexities of this run deep and wide and I am very sure I’m just a gobshite playwright, but if we don’t stop and question these things as they happen, then pretty soon everything we love about the arts could be up for grabs. It can’t just be one more thing that gets destroyed during this crumbling, capitalist horror show.

There’s just no escaping the fact that, for some people, walking past an arts venue will now be associated with events that will remind them of the very worst times in their life, when they should be a place of escape.
 
The sad thing here is that, for some, The Lowry still will be, but maybe now not for everyone.
 
Love to all,
 
Ben x

I watched a lot of body swaps and here’s what I learned

Over the past few weeks, for research, I’ve had the pleasure (and occasional misfortune) of watching a plethora of body swap movies in order to establish what’s so compelling and timeless about the genre, and to try and steal the good bits to apply to my own idea that I’m developing. The ‘absorbing’ part of the writing process is the best part, although forcing loved ones to sit through a dozen body swaps would be sadistic even when not at the height of a pandemic.
 
Regrettably, I excluded age transformation movies like 13 Going on 30 (despite Jennifer Garner’s cultural reset of a performance) and Big (although I did see Jay McGuinness and Kimberly Walsh have a bash at this recently), but at least that means I didn’t have to factor in any creepy did-they-or-didn’t-they-technically-have-sex-with-a-child elements.

But first, where does the idea of a body swap come from?

As far as I can tell, John Locke’s ‘personal identity’ chapter in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding first popularised the idea. In the prince and the cobbler passage, Locke asks the reader to imagine the soul of a prince entering the body of a cobbler, taking all of its ‘princely thoughts’ with it. In this scenario, the prince ends up existing in the man identified as the cobbler. Voilà! The body swap was born.

However, the body swap movies we all know and love most likely owe their basic architecture to F. Anstey’s 1882 novel- Vice Versa: A Lesson to Fathers. Set during the Victorian Era, the novel tells the story of businessman Paul Bultitude and his son Dick (hehe). Dick is about to be packed off to boarding school, which is run by a cane enthusiast. Paul, the definition of toxic masculinity, tells Dick that he needs to get a grip- schooldays are the best years of a boy's life; how he wishes he were the one going!

Cue a magic stone bought by an uncle which grants the possessor one wish. And away we go. Paul has to attend his son's boarding school, while Dick gets a chance to run his father's business in the big city. The source material gave birth to five film adaptations, a play, a radio adaptation and a TV series. People ate it up.

It was 1976’s Freaky Friday, written by Mary Rodgers (and based on her own novel) that defined the genre for more recent audiences, grossing $36 million on a $5 million budget despite The Washington Post writing that the film "suffers from sluggish exposition, mediocre direction and one-closeup-after-another, but it probably salvages things with juvenile audiences by finishing fast."

The plot is simple. Annabel (Barbara Harris) swaps places with her daughter Ellen (Jodie Foster) and they get a taste of each other's lives. Eventually, they both gain some perspective and stop squabbling. It also features one of the only water-skiing subplots in cinema history.

In the 30+ years that followed, it's been remade—in one form or another—dozens of times. Three actual remakes (shout out to Jamie Lee and Lindsay), and also the DNA of Freaky Friday exists in Like Father Like Son, The Hot Chick, 18 Again!, Little, Overboard, It’s a Boy Girl Thing, Trading Places- the list is endless.
 
There are fewer examples on TV, where the story engine becomes hard to maintain (although I’m currently trying to give it a good crack) and the body swap usually tends to be confined to one episode. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ‘Who Are You’ is a great example of how to use the device to thoroughly examine characters you love. When Buffy and Faith swap places, they’re able to interrogate the outside view that causes a person to redefine themselves from the perspective of ‘the other.’ It’s a standout episode in the (rocky) fourth season.

Comedy is often the first port of call for the body swap: it’s pure farce, being caught in someone else’s skin and having to live as them. Who ain’t a fan of shenanigans? If done correctly, and the creatives have embraced both the pitfalls and the benefits of the genre, the body swap can be an absolute joy.

So, what common threads make a successful one?

A (usually ludicrous) Method of Transference

You never go full Face Off, but your two lead characters, who (of course) are polar opposites, at odds and could do with learning a thing or two from each other, need to do the actual swapping clearly and succinctly.
 
Car accidents, arguing under the stars, mystic skulls, science experiments, demonic rituals, fortune cookies and rays from an alien spaceship have all been used. The method can be as bizarre as you want so long as it makes sense in the universe that you’re creating. In The Change-Up, two unbearable chumps played by Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds switch souls after pissing in a magical water fountain. As you can see, it doesn’t have to be convoluted, but it should be entertaining, ideally inoffensive and out of the realm of plausibility. We all like a bit of wizardry.
 
Side bar: Ryan Reynolds has been in six, yes six, body swap movies. I know what you’re thinking: so what? Who wouldn’t want to be inside Ryan Reynolds?
 
Anyway, it is the fantastical nature of these films, the idea that a body switch of hilarious (and emotional) proportions can happen, that truly works in their favour. These movies don't need to get bogged down in the why of it all. All they need to do is present a scenario where a body switch can happen, and if the performances and story are truthful and engaging, the film will work. But does it help to have a cool reason? Sure.

The characters should want the other person's life

The two people switching places should find something inherently attractive in the other’s existence, that then turns out to be a crock of shit once they switch. The classic parent/child swap ends with the child realising that it’s hard to be a grown up, but accountability is important, and the adult usually learns that they need to loosen up a bit.
 
Envy is a great motivator, and the bigger the gulf between the characters, the better. Not to further slag off The Change Up, but the main problem with the movie (setting aside the fact that it consistently makes disabled people the joke and Jason Bateman ends up with baby shit in his mouth in the first ninety seconds) is the fact that neither of the characters desire the other’s life. They both seem quite content with the status quo. How are they meant to be introspective and change if they’re indifferent about the other person’s privileges?

Trendy vs. Dork

This one’s a cliché, but like most clichés, it works. Both characters need to be a fish out of water in their new body. In the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, Jamie Lee Curtis has a ball letting loose on the back of a motorbike with Chad Michael Murray whilst Lindsay Lohan criticises her bandmates’ exposed midriffs and struggles to understand why her best friend from primary school is now a massive dick. As much chaos and raised eyebrows as possible should occur. All as a result of two very different sausages being squeezed into contrasting casings.

Somebody else knows!

This isn’t a staple of all body swaps, but I’m a fan. Obviously, all the fun of the fair comes from mistaken identity, lack of knowledge and from ruining well established relationships with people they care about. However, I like it when someone else is let in on the secret.

Usually, it’s the kid’s best friend, as in Like Father Like Son and Shazam! Age swapping movies commonly utilise this device (17 Again and the aforementioned Big both do this) but I think having someone who recognises the person despite the new body lends a much-needed emotional gravitas. If no one clocks on, I think it makes the body swap seem trivial and inconsequential. Give someone else a stake in the story even if they choose to keep the revelation to themselves.

An awesome montage

I’m a sucker for a montage. In this case, I’d like a montage that involves spending loads of money on the other person’s credit card, eating ice cream, new clothes, a killer soundtrack and I’d like a puppy thrown in too.  Because why not? This is all about FUN and showing how FABULOUS it could be to let loose without any consequences. It’s the other person’s life you’re ruining, right?

A big event hinging on a unique talent

Whatever kind of swap it is, there always has to be some sort of event that requires the talent of a character who is in the wrong body. This could be a sports game, or a rock concert, or a wedding, or an important presentation- amongst other things. Whatever it is, it should require everyone being in the correct body in order for it to go off without a hitch, and then, of course, they’re not and all hell breaks loose. But DON’T WORRY- this event will teach our characters empathy and understanding for the other individual.

Crucially, the moment of change when the characters finally get what they both need should be linked to this event, otherwise what the hell are we still watching for?

An emotional (and earned) swap back

Grab your tissues. Everyone knows that eventually the characters will swap back, unless you’re ripping up the entire rulebook. But some returns to normal are more satisfying than others. Your leads will have learned to appreciate and respect what each other has, awwww. But to really stick the landing, there needs to have been a bigger question at play the whole way through. The characters need to change their original beliefs alongside some genuine jeopardy.
 
In trying to recapture their best years, is your character going to lose the best things that ever happened to them?
 
What does it take for a mother and daughter to truly understand one another when generations are so polarised in this modern age?
 
If the grass truly isn't always greener, what can you do when you struggle to love and accept who you are?
 
You get my point. It’s not enough to have the shits and giggles. I want to be punched in the gut, too.

But are body swaps problematic? It’s very easy for this type of story to cross lines into ableism, racism, transphobia, sexism and homophobia. The comedy inherently arises from the fact these two characters are different, and I believe the best versions of these stories are ones that spring from inherent differences in character, not identity. At their heart, the narratives should be about creating empathy. One of the arenas in which the silver screen shines in, is dropping us effortlessly in other people's shoes and letting us peek behind another pair of eyes. If only temporarily.

Speak soon,

Love Ben x

ONE OTHER THING!

Each time I do one of these, I'll highlight something that might be of interest. This time, I’ve started reading ENTANGLED LIFE by Merlin Sheldrake, which is ‘a mind-altering journey into a spectacular and neglected world, and shows that fungi provide a key to understanding both the planet on which we live, and life itself.’

More on the book here.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG HERE.

A Love Letter to Paddington Old Cemetery

I'm leaving London for a bit. What will I miss most about this knotty, surprising and innovative city?

In 1855, Paddington Burial Board built a public cemetery on 10 hectares of land in Willesden. Thomas Little (who contributed to many of London's cemeteries) designed a series of paths in the shape of a horseshoe. Trees were planted along the paths, lodges built on either side of the entrance, and two Gothic-style chapels erected in the centre of the grounds. When the cemetery was laid out in 1855, it stood in a rural landscape; it is now a green open space in the midst of busy Brent.

When the oily estate agent showed us around our one bedroom flat on Tennyson Road just under three years ago, he pointed out that many tenants would kill to live by a graveyard. "Think of how well you'll sleep. It's not like they'll keep you up at night, is it?"

In fairness, he was right. And in any case, it meant I got to live out my Buffy the Vampire Slayer fantasy.  My bedroom window overlooked the cemetery, and I grew used to opening my curtains in the morning to be greeted by a sea of headstones. To be honest, it wasn't somewhere I thought much about. I'd occasionally take a walk around it if I needed a break from writing, and there was a traumatic period of about 10 days when I attempted couch-to-5k and decided that running around the cemetery was less humiliating than Queen's Park.

But then Lockdown arrived, narrowing our options, but reigniting our appreciation of our local area. As we looked for places to go to stop us slowly slipping into delirium, suddenly, the graveyard got a new lease of life. I started to take daily trips there. Sometimes I'd listen to a podcast, or take a bit of writing with me, but mostly I lay on the grass and people watched. It seemed like anyone who was anybody frequented the graveyard. There were people sunbathing, having picnics, walking their dogs, picking blackberries from the overgrown brambles and others smoking joints, tucked behind gravestones for privacy. It became a community space, and quickly felt like a place to come to feel alive.

The irony of the pandemic forcing us to confront our own mortality whilst sat amongst the dead wasn't lost on me. And mourning is something the Victorians were particularly adept at. Who better to learn from? Paddington is not one of the 'magnificent seven' cemeteries that once encircled the capital, but I certainly wouldn't mind being laid to rest there. It's a peaceful and respectful place that is still a working cemetery, but none of the mourners seemed affronted by this impromptu wave of activity. In fact, one man who was visiting his wife's grave told me that it was nice to see the place so busy. "It makes me feel good, knowing she has company."

So when people ask me what my favourite spot in London is, I won't wax lyrical about Primrose Hill or send them off to Mildreds in Soho, I'll tell them to check out Paddington Cemetery. Because I've grown to love it and will miss it dearly. I'll miss the crumbling headstones that are fighting for space with wildflowers, long grass and weeds. I'll miss the beehives hidden away under a canopy of gnarled trees and the soft clucking of hens from the chicken coops. And most of all, I'll miss wandering over to Michael Bond's grave, and seeing what little Paddington trinkets have been left for him.

Speak soon,

Love Ben xx

ONE OTHER THING!

Each time I do one of these, I'll highlight something that might be of interest. This week, it's the FUND FOR THE ARTS IN BEIRUT. Led by Lebanese-born artist Walid Raad, the Brussels-based nonprofit Mophradat had launched a fundraising
initiative to aid artists and art organisations following the devastating explosions in Beirut.

There is more information here.
And the link to donate is here.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG HERE

What I learned in School

Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia in Schools

I recently left my job. Resigned, to be completely transparent. And it’s sparked a lot of thinking. There are many positives.

1.) I am able to focus for the first time on writing, which for the most part feels amazing rather than terrifying. Trying to make a living as a freelancer is increasingly more and more difficult and financial worry is not character building for any artist, even though unhelpful depictions of the ‘starving’, but tortured “genius” are common, and there has been plenty of thoughtful and eloquent writing on this. Hannah Khalil wrote something fantastic earlier this year about this.

And Lyn Gardner also wrote about this in The Stage in July.

So there is an enormous privilege that I want to acknowledge (that being that I am for the first time stable-ish financially and was able to even QUIT in the first place) and I don’t know what I would have done in the same circumstances if I hadn’t had the luxury of so freely being able to walk away.

2.)  I am sleeping better.

3.)  I’m not as stressed. I am less irritable, anxious and tense. A weight does feel like it’s lifted. As Elphaba would say, something has changed within me.

What was my day job?  I was a teacher. Not always, I have had plenty of day jobs (including ushering at West End theatres, bar jobs and some questionable market research gigs), but for the last four and a half years I have worked in an education setting.

I started out as a Teaching Assistant (some of the BEST PEOPLE in the world are TAs), soon became a HLTA (Higher Level Teaching Assistant) and went on to be employed as a UQT (Unqualified Teacher) in a primary school in London. I was asked whether I wanted to complete a SCITT programme and train, but felt like committing in such a way would mean writing was placed on the back burner.

I worked at the same school, with various iterations of senior leadership and governing body. I mainly taught Upper Key Stage Two. Before I left, I was in a job share across two classes, teaching full time.

Let me just make one thing clear: teachers are amazing. They are passionate, enthusiastic, hard working, crucial, under-appreciated, influential and often herculean in nature. I mean that. My mum is a teacher. I am biased, but she works harder than anyone else I know and is BRILLIANT and engaging and the kids are lucky to have her on their side.

(This is Cameron Diaz, not my mum)

The Guardian wrote in January this year that a YouGov survey commissioned by an education charity in 2017 found 75% of teachers in the UK reporting symptoms of stress – including depression, anxiety and panic attacks – compared with just 62% of the working population as a whole.

Suicide risks for primary and nursery school teachers in England was 42% higher than in the general population between 2011 to 2015, according to the Office of National Statistics. Some 102 suicides were recorded as primary and nursery school teachers in the period.

So, to make it clear, this is not an attack on those who work within the profession. Good.

I have written three blog posts about my half a decade working at a primary school. The fourth thing my resignation has afforded me is time to reflect. I wanted to talk about workload and expectations and how that has impacted my colleagues and friends, as well as discuss how continued austerity is affecting young people in the education system.

But first let’s talk about bullying.

Image taken from the campaign for LGBT-inclusive education in Scottish schools #EducatetoLiberate

This might not be an easy read for everyone, and I will discuss the subject frankly from here on out. My experiences are also very specific in regards to homophobic bullying, but both biphobic and transphobic bullying are common place and I will go on to talk about this later.

To understand why I quit my job, let’s go back to my own experiences at school.

The first time I kissed another boy I was 13. I was in year seven. This is the most accurate representation of what I looked like. LOL.

Apologies for the sheer size of that terrifying image.

So, the first kiss. I was in year seven. I thought he was gorgeous. He was 15. He had blue eyes, a wispy beard and a lip ring. I kissed him during a game of spin the bottle at a friend’s house. I was pissed on Strongbow and he tasted of beer and cigarettes. Sexy. I was fucking terrified. It was something I had thought about for a LONG time and it felt like fireworks. It felt natural. It might sound daft, but something clicked. I let go of something I’d been carrying around and I could suddenly breathe.

The next day, we all woke up on a very sticky (through alcohol not bodily fluids) living room carpet and I had the benefit of being thirteen and hangover proof, so bounded out the door with a huge smile on my face.

And then Monday came. And it was all anyone could talk about. There was no use denying it. The boy in question shrugged it off as being pissed, but for some reason I couldn’t do the same. Maybe I wasn’t convincing. Maybe I didn’t entirely want to deny it. I don’t know. Either way, people wouldn’t let it drop.

The name calling started. Faggot, bender (this one was a favourite due to its interchangeable nature with my first name), fudge packer and poof. “That’s so gay” was already part of the everyday vernacular at this time and, according to Stonewall’s Tackling Homophobic Language Teachers guide, 99% of gay young people still report hearing the casual use of these phrases in school.

I was also constantly asked if I was gay, and I took the approach of simply answering yes as this seemed to end the interaction abruptly and meant that I could get on with my day. This wasn’t always easy to do.

After a while, I started receiving physical abuse to, usually accompanied with a homophobic insult. I lost times of how many time I was punched in the ribs (or the balls) by other pupils in the corridor. Personally, I didn’t feel like I could tell an adult as this would mean coming out and I didn’t feel able to do that with a relative stranger at this point.

Additionally, my mum was also working at the school as an LSA (Learning Support Assistant) and people would often ask her if they knew I’d ‘snogged a boy’ and she fielded a lot of questions about whether or not she knew I was gay. I did tell my parents I was gay around this time, too. I never let on what a shite time I was having, we did talk about some idiots, but I bottled up a lot of the bullying I was getting. In hindsight, I wish I was more open, but that’s easier to say at 26 than 14.

The worst incident I can recall is two girls following me into the toilet in the science block with a pair of scissors and trying to cut my hair off. My hair was quite long then (which obvs added fuel to the fire as it was assumed I was deliberately choosing to look girly) and I had to lock myself in a cubicle until they fucked off.

When I moved up to my next school to complete my GCSEs and A Levels (Leicestershire’s school system is three-tier for some inexplicable reason) things got slightly better in some ways. I found a group of female friends, who didn’t give a shit and I could make laugh. I spent many a free period watching Loose Women and musicals instead of going to Film Studies and it was glorious.

Most of my problems came in P.E. Many boys accused me of ‘perving’ on them and ‘getting hard’ looking at them, which wasn’t true. Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I don’t have standards. And in lessons where I didn’t have a friend for back up, I was isolated and teased.

I lost three stone and was quite unhappy.

I became mean and bitter. I wrote, a hell of a lot. I did find a boyfriend via myspace, and that meant that I was able to begin exploring who I was in a much more safe and meaningful way (which I wasn’t always doing, taking MANY risks early on). Things did come to a head one day at school when I was summoned to the Head of Year’s office as my form tutor had picked up on the way I was being treated. Note: she didn’t address what she saw with me directly.

The Head of Year offered to see whether there were any organisations who could help with my problem. I initially thought that she had meant the bullies. She didn’t. She meant my sexuality. It was the problem. She was saying I had brought this on myself and when I asked her to speak to some of the more regular perpetrators, she said that she couldn’t stop boys from being boys.

At a time when school was hell for me, when I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone else, an adult undermined my experience. My truth.

There are many, many stories that are similar, and in lots of cases, much more complex, violent and heartbreaking than mine. And there is plenty of evidence and research that shows just how damaging bullying like this can be, the recent death of nine year old Jamel Myles, being particularly harrowing to read about. His mother has previously said she hopes her son's death can raise awareness of the effects of bullying.

In terms of the big picture, Homophobic Hate Crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2013 found that one in six gay people had been victims of hate crimes and hate incidents, rising to one in five amongst 18-24 year olds. Half of these victims reported that the perpetrators were aged under 25, highlighting the dangerous progression from homophobic language and bullying in school to homophobic hate crime.

Other worrying statistics, provided by Stonewall, indicated that 64% of trans pupils - are bullied for being themselves in Britain's schools. Furthermore, just above one in three bi pupils (35 per cent) are bullied at school. At school. Which is meant to be safe. Sometimes the only safe place for some children.

For more detail on this, Stonewall commissioned YouGov to carry out a survey asking more than 5,000 lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people across England, Scotland and Wales about their life in Britain today and it can be found here. The report is from 2017.

Stonewall go on to say that only 10% of teachers make a challenge every time homophobic language is used. Consistently challenging is the only way to help young people see that it won’t and can’t be tolerated. In a conversation had in the staff room at the school I used to work in, a teaching assistant  remarked on this as ‘ridiculous’ as it happens far too often for it to be dealt with all the time.

This leads me on to why I resigned. Some slight context: I was out to all members of staff. I was out to the Year Six class I taught last year, but I was not out to all pupils. I do know teachers that are, but I had MAJOR reservations. Some of these may probably have been unfounded and rooted in my own experiences of school, but they did seem real to me. Also, I would often walk around school like this, so I am sure lots of the kids drew their own conclusions.

 As well as dealing with the same issues many LGBT+ students face, LGBT+ teachers also have to contend with resistance, even abuse, from senior management, co-workers and parents. Those that do come out can find an already challenging job becomes even harder.

My personal reservations about coming out to the students was that if I had to assert my authority, some pupils may have met me with a 'I'm going to hurt you with what I know about you,' reaction. I was scared of that happening if I’m honest. I do regret not being brave enough to be fully out, with so few role models of people who are different for students to look up to, teacher visibility is essential. We need it more than ever. But what’s preventing them from coming out in the classroom?

During my time at the school as a member of staff, I was referred to as the 'lady boy teacher' by a parent, called a faggot by a pupil, repeatedly called “too emotional” by a staff member and have had staff members refuse to sign a card celebrating my marriage to my now husband as they didn’t agree. Additionally, I had a big issue with a parent who didn’t want me taking their male child to the swimming lessons and wanted a different male teacher to do it. Go figure.

In the end, I couldn’t consciously make a decision to work in an environment that triggers things that I have worked hard to avoid in my life. The current head (and other members of SLT) worked hard to take these incidents seriously, but that didn’t happen always throughout my time working there, and I was not always in a position to walk away when I felt like I needed to. Many people are not as fortunate.

Essentially, I didn’t feel  like I had the respect of  some of the parents that were a part of the school community and couldn’t see how to maintain positive relationships with them. It all came to a head when I was having to deal with a behavioural issue and attempted to discuss this with the child’s parent, who mocked my “high-pitched” voice and my “feminine” hand movements. She also swore at me and allegedly branded me a batty boy in the reception area in front of staff and other parents.

 What really stuck the knife in, was to hear that other staff had been gossiping and joking about me being called a ‘batty boy’ and therefore I found out this information second hand. When the head rightfully tried to get to the bottom of this, there was a closing of ranks, and the staff who witnessed the parent saying that about me weren’t willing to back me up.

Our schools HAVE to be environments where this sort of behaviour is absolutely stamped out. If I, as a what I considered to be a relatively “liked” and valued member of staff, dealt with this, then what else goes on in schools on a day to day basis that people aren’t prepared to talk about? Is it nerves? Do we not want to rock the boat? For me, we need a seismic shift in the way schools tackle this. If staff members are feeling this, then the students are definitely suffering too.

 Heterosexuality isn't an excuse for shifting the responsibility for tackling homophobia and transphobia. Before I left, I was asked to deliver all of the lessons to another teacher’s class surrounding GEORGE, a children's novel about a young transgender pupil written by Alex Gino. Why the reluctance to tackle the subject themselves? Lack of knowledge or experience? While bigotry no doubt plays a role, it is lack of confidence and ignorance in staff that is what needs to be tackled.

The situation is also complex for trans teachers, especially those that transition while teaching. In 2016, BuzzFeed News spoke to three teachers about their experiences, and they discussed what has changed since the death of Lucy Meadows, and what they think needs to happen next. 

Schools can be terrified about the response from parents, the response from pupils, of all the practical things. But until this fear is trained out of schools, nothing will change. Schools need to deal with the language, report and record all incidents of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and have clear policies on how consequences escalate for repeat incidents.

Explaining the language clearly to younger children can often help. Asking ‘do you know what the word means?’ can lead to a conversation of clarity, context and reflection for the young person.

It’s about being brave, about having a script as a school for how you define the word, and having a collective approach and voice when tackling the behaviours. Assemblies, targeted lessons and events to celebrate LGBT+ History Month would also help to conquer barriers.

The Education and Inspections Act 2006 places a duty on school governing bodies in England and Wales to promote the safety and wellbeing of ALL the children and young people in their care. Tackling the issues that make school such a difficult environment for out LGBT+ young people (AND ADULTS!) needs to be a priority. It’s gone on for too long. OFSTED have framework (from 2013, I couldn’t find anything more recent but I may be wrong) about this, but it is still going on in our schools every single day and more needs to be done. It’s simple as.

Stonewall’s Train the Trainer course gives pastoral, anti-bullying and personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) leads the knowledge, tools and confidence to train colleagues on tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and celebrating difference, as well as meeting the requirement of the new Ofsted inspection framework. However, there is still so much to be done. We participated in this training as a school, but not everyone was willing to get on board and make the necessary changes. There were cries of ‘snowflake’ and ‘one more thing to deal with.’ But we have to deal with it. Today.

I wasn’t brave enough to always take my own advice, and didn’t always feel able to celebrate my own differences. I worry that this is because I hadn’t properly dealt with what happened to me at school, but I am talking about it and working through. The school I worked with now has a brilliant headteacher, who is determined to change the school’s culture. He even made me a rainbow cake for my wedding. There were many people who worked there who treated me with respect and who are great friends. Things will get better. It all just became a bit too much. And I am lucky I had somewhere to run to. I am looking at ways to help be part of a change. Now I’ve had time to reflect. Now I can breathe again.

Thank you for reading. 

Amazing People:

School’s Out- their over-arching aim is to make our schools safe and inclusive for everyone.

Just Like Us- an LGBT+ charity for young people. They work to people from the classroom to their careers