Amazement permeates every pore of the staff here at News Hour, as information reaches us about the madcap experiments of scientists at the North Pole. In order to prove the theory of ‘transpolar drift’, whitecoated boffins have wedged the double-masted schooner Tara into the ice floe, to see where it will go. Why not just stick a GPS transponder in the ice and leggit somewhere warm? Perhaps we’re missing the point.
A similar sense of travelling without moving was recently provided by Posh wannabe Chanelle Hayes, who is apparently still going on about her break-up with Ziggy. But don’t call him that anymore – the former boybander is now known to Chanelle and her friends as Rebecca. Don’t get it? Chanelle explains:
“We all refer to him as Rebecca, after Rebecca Loos, the kiss-and-tell merchant.”
All clear now? Good. Chanelle will be glad to note that television likes and rather relies on the enjoyment of repetition – allowing franchises to be revived and reinvented over the years. why not? It’s rather like the movies – there’s only so many stories to tell. It certainly wasn’t a mistake with Battlestar Galactica, although the Bionic Woman is looking like less of a sure bet, especially with the writers’ strike crippling production across the board. While the scribes’ demand compensation for exploitation of their work in DVD in new media, an understandable gripe considering the conflation of revenues these days, the cost to both them and the industry is rising daily. No wonder then that the latest resurrection is American Gladiators, a show that will require precious few words to script. Note an evolution in the concept: Wolf looks even more like a wolf than he did in the British version. The man is positively feral.
A British version surely cannot be far behind, perhaps with a ‘reality’ element tagged on to spice things up – a backstage romance between the gladiators and the contestants? Ulrika Jonsson laid the groundwork when she bedded Hunter, so the sky’s the limit. Elsewhere in the land of showbiz, diminutive star Gary Coleman would seem to know all there is to know about being in a rut, being apparently unable to sell his used motor on eBay. Still, does that photo look 100 per cent genuine to you? (Also, check the other items brassonline has for sale.) We’re not so sure. This one however, is <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&itemcount=4&sspagename=MERC_VIC_RCRX_Pr4_PcY_BIN_IT&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=CrossSell_LogicX&viewitem=&refitem=180181532113&item=180194956548&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget
“>rather troubling.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 