Spiral Notebook: Busy recapping

Giles Broadbent watches The Bill but there's help at hand if he loses the plot

Just watched an episode of The Bill. First for a long time. Loved it.

Only there was a problem with the script. It's just... no, let me show you.

SUNHILL POLICE STATION

DI Nixon: "Right, Leon I see you are looking at the CCTV footage of the mugging in Canley High Street in which a person was mugged by a mugger. I have a hunch this marks the return of the mugger Percy Snatch."

Leon: "Guv, you know I'm looking at CCTV footage of Canley High Street for evidence of a mugging by a mugger you think marks the return of Percy Snatch? Well, your hunch appears to be right."

"Great. I want a team watching Percy Snatch's house in relation to this mugging case which, as you may recall, we are dealing with now."

OUTSIDE PERCY'S SNATCH'S HOUSE

PC Taylor: "This is crazy. Just sitting outside the home of mugger Percy Snatch because he might be the mugger involved in that mugging in Canley High Street that took place earlier. All because of a hunch."

PC Brown: "Someone's in a bad mood. Out on the razz last night?"

SUPT HEATON'S OFFICE

Supt Heaton: "So, Nixon, we're watching mugger Percy Snatch because he might be the mugger in that mugging earlier in Canley High Street?"

"I had a hunch..." Radio crackles. "Excuse me sir."

PC Brown on radio: "Guv, we've just questioned a man matching the description of Percy Snatch because, as you may recall, earlier there was a mugging in Canley High Street and you said you had a hunch it could be mugger Percy Snatch who did the mugging which is why we questioned a man matching his description."

"And?"

"It's not Percy Snatch. Percy Snatch died last year."

Supt Heaton: "Nixon!"

Nixon : "I have to go PC Brown. Supt Heaton shouted 'Nixon!' indicating he wants to speak to me. You keep following the man we all thought was Percy Snatch but probably isn't due to the fact that Percy Snatch apparently died last year. I won't rest until we apprehend the mugger who was engaged earlier in the mugging in Canley High Street involving a mugger we originally thought was Percy Snatch but who now cannot be because you just told me that person died last year. I still have a hunch it's him."

Supt Heaton: "Nixon, I've just heard the mugger you thought was responsible for the earlier mugging in Canley High Street who was identified as mugger Percy Snatch cannot be him because he died last year. I further understand you still have a hunch it's still him. I'm backing you on this one Nixon although at the same time, your job is on the line."

CANTEEN

Leon: " DI Nixon's really putting her job on the line with her hunch about this mugger Percy Snatch what with her thinking he's the mugger what did the mugging earlier today. Tony? Are you listening to me?"

Tony: "I heard you."

Leon: "Someone's in a bad mood. Out on the razz last night?"

OPS ROOM

DI Nixon: "I need results. I'm going out on a limb and/or putting my job on the line with this hunch that, as you may recall, involves my contention that mugger Percy Snatch is not dead but mugging people."

DC Moss: "Er, guv?"

"Yes Stevie."

"I have news pertaining to the Canley High Street mugging case which, as you may recall, resulted in us pursuing a mugger we thought was Percy Snatch but could not have been Percy Snatch because he died last year. You're hunch was right. Percy Snatch didn't die last year. The man we thought was Percy Snatch lied to us and is, in fact, actually Percy Snatch. He has confessed to being the mugger who did the mugging in Canley High Street earlier. Which you may recall."

"Charge him, Stevie."

"Yes, guv. And guv..."

"Yes, Stevie."

"We never doubted your hunch in the case of the mugging in Canley High Street and its relation to the mugger Percy Snatch who, as you may recall, we are about to charge for crimes relating the Canley High Street mugging earlier because that's what you just told me to do."

"Thanks Stevie."

"And Guv, we're all going out on the razz later. You want to come?"

"I had a hunch you'd say that."

Laughter. Credits.

– First published in The Wharf on June 25

Spiral Notebook: A word to the wise

The millionth word has just been added to the English lexicon. according to the Global Language Monitor

The winner of this resounding honour is a timely entry "Web 2.0".

As we begin the mountain climb to the next milestone, I'd like to offer a few neological suggestions of my own...

Apathite (noun) - Person who writes on messageboards to share the revelation that they have no opinion on the subject under discussion.

Deaveatigue (noun) - Weariness experienced when watching a DVD solely for the purpose of getting your money's worth.

Fazebook (verb) - to commence winding down your online social networking.

Feignship (noun) - the false bond of mutual affection you create on the phone with a stranger who can do you a favour. Example: "If you can get that package over to me by tomorrow I'll be your best feign."

Glap (noun) - the uncertain silence at the end of a show before the start of the applause.

Inflectious (adj) - mispronounced or incorrect word that no one dare correct to avoid offending the author of the error. Example: "Man! Now I'm saying irregardless! That's inflectious, that is."

Lappse (verb intrans) - to become redundant (of iPhone widgets). Example: "Light Saber is lappsed."

Nadiritate (verb derog) - to erroneously call the bottom of the market on a daily basis.

Oysternation (noun) - feeling of anxiety or dismay that sweeps over you on the DLR when you can't recall touching in (not to be confused withconsterlation (noun) - feelings of dismay caused by an array of tiny toothpaste blobs on the mirror).

Perlandean (adj) - pertaining to a vast span of geological time, defined as the period between entering the cinema and the film beginning.

Scandling (noun) - the act of flicking through newspapers looking for juicy gossip.

Sleepage (noun) - confusion wrought by a blurring of the line between what's real and what you dreamt about last night.

Suckumb (verb) - to give in to temptation and looking round to see what everyone's pointing at only to find out it's nothing and you've been had.

Tumulchuous (adj) - excited, confused or disorderly state that comes when you finally get round to tidying the garden.

Spiral Notebook: TV's love of sob stories

Giles Broadbent on TV's new-found craze - the manipulative narrative

OK, so I watched the final of Britain's Got Talent. Mostly. I saw the acts then turned down the sound on the bits in between.

Not that I'm overtly cynical about the narrative segments.

Quite the reverse, I'm an absolute sucker for a sob story which means an evening watching BGT is akin to playing Kitten Spartacus. (You know how it goes - which one will be slowly crucified, which one gets to die quickly by the sword.)

"Narrative" is the watchword and the saviour of BGT, The X Factor et al. In fact, narrative has been yanked wholesale from the fiction department and dripfed into every form of factual television.

I was amazed by its deployment in the BBC's documentary Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestors: The Link. This programme focused on a 47-million-year-old lemur-like fossil, a revolutionary discovery which represented a moment in time when primates divided into lemurs on one side and apes and humans on the other.

A staggering find in any circumstances, made all the more unlikely by the completeness of the fossil.

But somehow this revelation was too much science and not enough Dr Who for the BBC and, in particular, David Attenborough, who wrote the script.

The death of this young lemur-type thing - which was named Ida so we could bond with her - was described as a "tragedy" while the manner of her parting was laid out, without a shred of evidence, in a manner designed to tell a story to tax the tissue box.

Evidence shows that she did break her wrist. It was "a tragic surprise" for paleontologists, (presumably greater than the tragic surprise that they found themselves to be paleontologists).

However, nothing save Dickensian sentimentality could have led Attenborough to add "maybe she was dropped by her mother" as if the babe had been failed by some form of Cenozoic Haringey Council.

After the broken wrist, Ida was forced from the trees to forage by the edge of the lake... "And tragically for the injured Ida [the volcanic gases] played a crucial role in her demise."

"She was thirsty," said one scientist unequivocally, "so she went to the shore for a drink not realising that this was a bad day for her."

In other words: Ida, you are the weakest (missing) link. Goodbye.

– First published in The Wharf on June 4

Review: Aunt Dan And Lemon, Royal Court

Aunt Dan And Lemon, Royal Court
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Lemon recalls her childhood and a charismatic adopted Aunt, who filled her young head full of tales of hedonism and decadence, stories that would leave a sinister legacy.

REVIEW

She sits there, as pale as a ghost and as gleeful as a schoolgirl with a secret. But there's a twist with Lemon. She's a poisonous Pollyanna.

Lemon's titillating praise for all things clean and necessary - including genocide - and her revulsion for all things phony and hypocritical - such as compassion - is told with such delicious lucidity that the whey-faced recluse in her isolated flat make us complicit in her sinister thesis.

This is where playwright Wallace Shawn wants us. Dumbstruck as he seduces with tales from the dark side, testing the tolerance of our liberal passivity. Charm is an essential part of misdirection, he seems to say.

A younger Lemon is our guide on this journey. She is as white and blank as a piece of paper, onto which is imprinted the amoral worldview of characters delivered to her through a series of anecdotes and diatribes by hedonist and bombast Aunt Dan (a charismatic Lorraine Ashbourne).

As adult Lemon, Jane Horrocks is captivating when she needs us pliable, but as younger Lemon she is translucent, her childish reactions serving only to re-orientate our moral compass when we get turned around in this whirlpool of sleaze.

Shawn's baggy flashback structure embraces all comers, from Scarlett Johnson's cut-glass femme fatale to Mary Roscoe's saintly Mother whose artless compassion is no match for Aunt Dan's battering ram of hard-edged verbiage.

So we're treated to a patchwork of Potter-esque recollections of hats and spats and insect hum summers, all filtered through Aunt Dan and wrapped up in silky riffs on subjects such as the banality of evil, the honesty of the Holocaust and the humility of Henry Kissinger.

The bombardment of words - so many words - is meant to void our judgment too. The insistent direction by Dominic Cooke pursues the theme and Lemon's drab flat seamlessly becomes a jazz club, a frazzled family dinner, a noirish murder scene without a moment to reflect.

Ultimately, the play expends vast amounts of energy taking us not very far from Lemon's opening argument. But round trips are about the voyage not the destination, and this one was pleasurable, if uncomfortable. Like walking to the sweet shop and back with a stone in your shoe.

– First published on wharf.co.uk on May 31