Spiral Notebook: Those crazy teens

Giles Broadbent examines an alien lifeform

Teenager Matthew Robson, a Morgan Stanley intern who put together a paper about his friends' media habits, has the world agog. His findings include the news that teenagers don't use Twitter and that they find adverts "annoying and pointless".

The report has become the talk of a gathering of new media giants in Idaho where executives, apparently, have been stunned.

The Wharf also found a teenager and he also spoke in a way that was both clear and non-intimidating. A list of his exclusive insights into teenage attitudes that will surely shock society includes:

Other conclusions include:

- Teenagers prefer computer games to analyzing debt ratios of major financial institutions.

- They would happily devour burger and chips but would turn up their noses at a plate of wood shavings.

- They are more likely to watch TV programmes aimed at teenagers rather than documentaries on paper towels broadcast in Swedish.

- Fun is more crucial to their sense of happiness than Berkshire or Sellotape.

- Teenagers are more likely to get their news and entertainment from a PC in the bedroom than from snow.

- When they grow up, teenagers would rather be models, actors, writers and scientists but would snub a career as a trapped miner in China's Guizhou province, licking the wall to stay alive.

Scientists and anthropologists are poring over the findings in order to understand this new breed.

One futurologist, who did not want to be named because his conclusions were "early and untested", said he believed that teenagers preferred things that were free to things that cost money because "teenagers don't have much money" and their aversion to advertising is based on the fact that adverts "interrupt the music and teenagers, uniquely, prefer for this not to happen".

Generally, boring things were viewed by teenagers as "tedious" whereas interesting things were seen as "of interest".

He feared that without genetic adaptations to handle mortgage repayments and lace-up shoes, it was possible that this new breed would struggle in the modern world.

He said "only time would tell" if teenagers were capable of evolving into adults.

– First published in The Wharf on July 16

Review: One Day by David Nicholls

BOOK
One Day by David Nicholls
Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Catching up with Emma and Dexter on the same day each year for 20 years as their lives separate and collide.

REVIEW
From a blindingly simple concept comes a truly magnificent book.

Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation on July 15, 1988. "I can imagine you at 40," she says, even though it seems their paths are destined never to cross again.

The novel returns to them every July 15 for the next 20 years, as the under-achieving and listless Emma struggles to find an outlet for her intelligence and Dexter finds fame, success and their perils as a TV presenter.

They do meet occasionally but they do not figure greatly in each other's lives. There is a sense of inevitability about what will follow as they discover what they truly want and who they want to share it with.

In the hands of author David Nicholls, author of Starter For Ten, this is an amusing and touching nostalgia fest as well as a razor sharp depiction of the "friend zone".

From such light beginnings, then, it comes as a shock that the book gets under the skin, weaves its magic and becomes profoundly moving.

– First published in The Wharf, July 16

Review: Jerusalem, Royal Court Theatre

STAGE
Jerusalem, Royal Court Theatre
4/5

IN A NUTSHELL
In Jez Butterworth's contemporary view of this green and pleasant land, waster Johnny Byron awaits eviction from his illegal encampment.

REVIEW
An empty Red Stripe can lies in the grass in front of Rooster Johnny Byron's dilapidated caravan in the woods of Wiltshire. Ginger (Mackenzie Crook) shakes the tin for dregs, drops in a sly fag butt and returns it to the undergrowth.

And yet these same littered woodland floors are trod by fairies, it seems, and yoked to ancient tales of giants. This green and unpleasant plot may contravene the Pollution Order 1974, but something lingers amid the grand old trees with greater potency than the enforcement agents of the Kennet and Avon Council.

In Jerusalem, director Ian Rickson marshals his 14-strong cast with discipline and verve and the setting by Ultz is compelling in its authenticity. But all eyes inevitably fall on Mark Rylance's roaring Rooster Johnny Byron as he plays out the last day of his idyll before the authorities plan to clear away his pile to make way for another identikit estate.

It is a day of epiphanies and revelations. Byron's last day is St George's Day, day of the Flintock Fair, the day before Lee (a delightfully vague Tom Brooke) ventures to Australia, the day Troy Whitlock (Barry Sloane) will have his revenge on the "Worzel maggot" he suspects of harbouring his runaway step-daughter.

Only Byron's not bothered. So he says.

Byron is one of those guys. Every rural town has them. The overgrown youth, the gippo, the amoral drug dealer who welcomes all comers, any age, to his crustie Eden just beyond the grasp of the law.

You like Byron and you loathe him. You want to be free of fluorescent tabards and Health and Safety as he is but you couldn't stand the grubbiness and the hangovers. You admire his particularly English brand of anarchy but you wouldn't want him camped out at the end of your garden.

In a mesmeric performance, punctuated by aching stillness, Mark Rylance captures all these contradictory aspects of this lord of misrule, stitching the opposing parts together with charm and a hypnotic burr in which he marinates tales that are either tall or true or both or none.

When he's alone, you think you'll witness his truth. But even then you're not sure. Is he an out-of-time semi-tragic martyr facing up to humiliation at the hands of clipboard pygmies, or a magical Jack-in-the-green capable of one last act of defiance?

It is that simmering tension that holds together Jez Butterworth's scattergun script, which is as rich and fecund as the Wiltshire woodlands. It is packed with belly laughs and profanities and contemporary resonances and, although it could survive a trim from its three hour length, it is never less than rambunctious.

A strong cast including Alan David as the befuddled Professor, Gerard Horan as henpecked Wesley and Lucy Montgomery as Rooster's former lover Dawn offer strong support.

But it is Rylance's agent of magic and mayhem who will stay long in the memory, like an age-old story that passes in fable.

– First published on wharf.co.uk on July 20.

Review: Public Enemies (15)

FILM
Public Enemies (15)
3/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Johnny Depp as bank robber John Dillinger attempts to evade G-Man Melvin Purvis in Michael Mann's Depression era crime chase thriller.

REVIEW
You're there. Right there. You should see Johnny Depp's hands. They're like normal hands with pits and divots and veins and quick-bitten fingernails.

And the rat-a-tat-tat of the gunfire surrounds you. Actually, it's more of a pop-pop-pop only you expect the rat-a-tat-tat because you've seen a ton of Depression-era gangster movies. But, like I said, it's a pop-pop-pop because director Michael Mann did the research. He always does the research. Either way, it's right there, like they're shooting from the popcorn stand.

And Marion Cotillard has a mole on her forehead and it's in the dead centre, geometrically precise, like a stunted unicorn horn or a left-over motion-capture marker glued on too hard. Normally, on celluloid, the mole would be in the background, biding its time, doing a sudoku till the director called a wrap.

But, here, in this new-fangled ultra high resolution digital filming that Michael Mann's deployed on Public Enemies, the mole... the mole's right there. Mugging the scene, doing a kind of mole equivalent of the soft-shoe shuffle, humming The Tree Of Life and trying to attract the attention of a talent scout.

It's weird. More than that, it's distracting. Because something's not right. The colours are flat and/or coated in nicotine, fast action leaves a residue blur on the screen and in there somewhere there's a movie about real-life villain John Dillinger and his toe-to-toe with clean-cut G-Man Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) but I'm having trouble hacking through a ribcage of innovations to find a heart.

So all that's weird. Then there's the sound, which is like what your Gran would produce if she were asked to capture the family pulling crackers on Christmas day and she couldn't quite master the controls on the Sony handycam because her arthritis was playing up. All soft and mumbly and what-did-he-just-say one minute and SUDDENLY BLARING FOR NO APPARENT reason the next.

So that's two things that are distracting you (meanwhile, there's man two seats in front who's negotiating a fiddly redundancy settlement via Twitter on his BlackBerry and keeps having to leave the auditorium to thrash out another sub-clause 140 characters at a time. I hate him. I hope he gets nothing except hardened arteries. I hate him).

Thirdly, there's Johnny Depp who's... well, who is he? He's given the most devilish, swarve, eyebrow-cocked, trim moustachio'd things to say ("I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars... and you," he says to secure Cotillard's Billie Frechette and she dutifully swoons).

But this is like Jack Sparrow checked into the Oregon Asylum under the name Randle McMurphy and now, one lobo later, he's some Botox-ed drone reciting some words he half-remembers from an old Clark Gable film while shovelling down spoonfuls of Honey Nut Cheerios.

You can see what Mann's trying to do - get in there, among the action, shoulder to shoulder with the hoods and cops, on board the sweeping side platforms of a Ford Model A, a-pop-pop-popping with their Tommy Guns, skimming the brims of their fedoras, turning gunsmoke into frantic spirals and generally looking like a Next catalogue from the '80s.

So you try to get past the distractions and... oops off he goes again with his BlackBerry to secure usage of the company BMW 5-Series during his notice period... and appreciate this good, brave, solid piece of work.

Mann dawdles a little too much on the inbetween bits and the secondary characters never hang around long enough to have a whole subplot each but you give the Miami Vice helmer a setpiece shoot-out and your pulse is racing, time stand stills and you're rooting for the PR savvy gangster who took money from the bad old banks but told the flat-capped proles to put away their hard-earned. Pop, pop and, indeed, pop.

Don't tell Mr Mann, but the story is a lift from his masterwork Heat. Cops and robbers, opposite sides of the same coin, on a fatal collision course. And that Marion mole? That's maybe her third eye because the Oscar-winning Gallic beauty sees terrible things round the corner for her beau although he's just living for today and there's one last job he's gotta do before the Brazilian sunset beckons.

It doesn't end well. For all concerned. And you get the feeling that Mann and Depp and Bale and Cotillard sauntered toward the golden horizon after the last shot, pondered their contribution to the evolution of ultra-high resolution digital era, shrugged their shoulders and went "Meh".

Like us, in fact, only in hats.

– First appeared on wharf.co.uk on July 12

Spiral Notebook: 9 things I've learnt

Giles Broadbent sincerely believes the following...

1. The elephant's ear is a perfect parabola capable of receiving Sky television if it were wired up. It is believed that elephants in London zoo face the 28 degrees east because they find the signal from satellite Astra 2 soothing.

2. Bonnie and Clyde wrote the song "I'm Sticking With You" despite the fact that the hair styling products that dandy Clyde Barrow applied before robberies triggered Bonnie Parker's asthma and they had to stand at least six feet apart.

3. The original cuckoo clock, invented by Jans Cuckhaus in 1753 in the Swiss village of Basle, had no special mechanism to mark the hour. It was Cuckhaus' grandson who added the iconic birdhouse as a marketing gimmick for the 1799 Basle exhibition.

4. The Beshwani religion in India requires its followers to reward all insects for their industry in disposing of the carcasses of animals that die by the roadside. Followers place sweets and pastries next to the carcass, clap and sing songs to create an atmosphere of celebration and gratitude.

5. The colour blue in its purest form was only discovered in 1815 by scientist Sir Humphry Davy. He noticed the hue while testing his revolutionary miner's safety lamp. Grateful pitmen originally called the life-saving device "the old Blue" before trademark law killed off the nickname.

6. According to latest figures from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, 43 people were required hospital treatment last year after pulling off plasters "too quickly" while 78 people were treated for removing them "too slowly". Overall plaster-based casualties are down on the previous year's high when a spate of accidents prompted the Rospa to update their 1964 guidelines.

7. Traditional seaside rock is going out of fashion. In resorts such as Blackpool, rock sales have halved in a decade. The British Rock And Lollipop Association blames poor literacy levels in schools.

8. Ants are more like Transformers than originally thought. Scientists studying the Argentinian fire-ant believe that the creature's metasoma could twist and bend allowing the ant to stand upright for long periods while its exoskeleton could support more aggressive armoury. Scientists say the ant would require several millennia of evolution to exploit this potential.

9. According to tradition in Flagstaff, Arizona, if any single man or woman unknowingly shares the same sauce bottle in The Cherry Pie Diner they are destined to marry. Investigations by the Arizona State Senate, however, have shown that it is true in only 18 per cent of cases and has ordered Flagstaff authorities to remove the claim from tourist brochures.

– First appeared in The Wharf on July 9

Review: Sunshine Cleaning (15)

DRAMA
Sunshine Cleaning (15)
3/5

IN A NUTSHELL
Two down-on-their-luck sisters set up a crime scene clean-up business and find there's more to life than stubborn splatter patterns.

REVIEW
Mattresses. They contain untold horrors - and that's at the best of times when they're just soft shelves for sleeping.

Come the icky moment when some mope self-destructs under the duvet and their essences drain via the nearest exit, they become a universe of humming, vivid mortality. At that point, who you gonna call? Sunshine Cleaning.

Sunshine Cleaning is not a popcorn movie. It may be many things - grimly life affirming, moving, way out wacky - but not that. The consumption of fluids and sweetmeats is best done before the first blood spatter is teased out of the first floorboard with the first toothbrush.

It is down here, amid the gunge and grime and bloody offcuts from shattered lives that we find two sisters, down on their luck and out of cash but, unlike their customer base, not about to give up the ghost.

The more sensible and focussed of the two is Rose Lorkowski (a winning Amy Adams) who wants better things for her bright but wayward son.

With a humiliating Mrs Mop job and a car crash affair with a married detective on her CV, she knows the value of degradation. But, come the crunch, she sees there's more money cleaning up after messy deaths than snooty ex-school pals and two-timing humps.

She calls on sister Norah (a flinty Emily Blunt) to join the enterprise although, in the screw-up stakes, Norah is keen to show who's boss.

These sisters are doing it for themselves, and while they don't exactly storm the barricades they do fumble towards a sense of self-worth of sorts aided by genial if cranky dad (Alan Arkin) and the one-armed man in the detergent shop (Clifton Collins Jr).

Think Thelma and Louise in malodorous overalls.

Sunshine Cleaning is from the same solar system (and lexicon) as Little Miss Sunshine, but this is an altogether darker affair, with the oddballs and quirks seemingly tacked on as an afterthought to up the Indie on a scrappy tale of two plucky sisters who refuse to take it lying down.

And, while this little movie too often bails out early on good ideas, there's no doubting the touching sincerity of Adams and Blunt who act with their hearts on their sleeves (and another in a bucket).

– First published on wharf.co.uk on July 4

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