Clive Davis

CELEBRITY ILLNESS

From Telegraph columnist Jim White, an insight into how VIP-mania has taken hold of the next generation:

I was at a school recently, giving a talk to the sixth form. I asked the assembled youngsters which newspapers they read. Of the 150 present, no more than a dozen regularly took a broadsheet. So I asked them what they did read. One girl said Heat magazine, the bible of celebrity tittle-tattle. There was murmured assent, so I asked how many others read it. All but four or five hands went up. And what was it they liked about Heat? The pictures of celebrities looking rough, came back the giggled reply. This, incidentally, was not some bog standard comprehensive. It was one of the country's leading public schools. As my father used to say of me and my teenage chums: if this is the cream of the country, God help the skimmed milk.

All but four or five hands... What a depressing thought.

NOT THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Are my ears deceiving me? An even-handed and nuanced programme about anti-Americanism? I missed the first instalment of Justin Webb's R4 series, Death to America, but just caught up with the second, an examination of what people in Latin America - and especially Venezuela -  think about Uncle Sam. Sharp intakes of breath from the radicals as our man with the microphone asks awkward questions about whether hostility to yanqui power is sometimes a smokescreen for local failures. Excellent, thought-provoking radio.

Webb has spoken up on this subject before, as you may recall. He'll be reporting from Cairo next week. As soon as I have a free moment, I'll listen to the first programme as well.

ONE MAN & HIS PEN

I almost forgot to set the VCR... That proto-blogger from the Victorian era, Mr Pooter, addresses the nation tonight in BBC4's adaptation of The Diary of A Nobody. I'm not sure actor Hugh Bonneville is prim enough (watch the clip and see for yourself) but, with any luck, that notoriously raunchy scriptwriter Andrew Davies will resist the temptation to turn Charles and Carrie into suburban swingers. I once wrote a Times feature on the Pooter phenomenon, and was not particularly surprised to discover that Mike Leigh is a huge fan of the book. He told me that he and his wife, Alison Steadman, used to have a catch-phrase whenever anything particularly funny happened on-set: "Carrie roared". [Hat-tip: Jo]

THE MORNING AFTER: Ah well, nice try, but Bonneville was much too broad - more like Lupin, really. And maybe it's one of those books that just can't be transferred to the screen. Reading about the pot of red paint is so much funnier than seeing it. I'm afraid I slipped back to the Man Utd thriller before the end.

THE MASTER'S VOICE

For more than 20 years I worked in Fleet Street, but everything changed on May 14 2004, when I was sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror for publishing hoax photographs that could have been real if they weren't faked. Having no obvious talent, there was only one thing I could do. Become a celebrity.

John Crace has set himself an impossible task. I mean, how do you parody a man who is beyond parody? That said, his one-page condensation of the Piers Morgan Diaries, Vol 2, is still very funny.

IN AND OUT OF THE DEN

Richard Sambrook reflects on his visit to Iain Dale's sofa:

As colleagues suggested to me in advance, the idea of a BBC executive submitting to the Doughty St experience brings to mind phrases like "Christians, Lions and Ritual Sacrifice". A view reinforced by some of the advance comments on his blog when he asked for questions ("Father Tim said...Ggrrrrrrr, I fecking hate the BBC. I must destroy them. Gnash. Gnash.") Iain was, of course, thoroughly professional, courteous, quietly probing and an all round decent bloke.

Does this mean that Robin Aitken's claims of bias at the Beeb will be given some air-time soon?

THE END OF THE NEWS

Another of the JibJab team's animation spectaculars. This time it's the TV news follies, from Afghanistan to Britney.

[Via Adrian Monck]

EPIC TIMEWASTERS

Not that I was likely to buy a ticket anyway, but Mark Holland's two-word summary of the Spartan thong-saga, 300 finally scared me off:

Turd. Polished.

As for TV, the one TV programme I've been watching religiously is Lost. My eldest son put me on to it well after the first season began, and I've been catching up on DVDs. He still loves it, but my enthusiasm has been waning ever since Jack and Co wandered into the hatch. I'm still hanging on, but only just. Not so John Podhoretz, who's several episodes ahead of me, and now pronounces the show brain-dead:

Let me say that "Lost" has grown so absurdly bad that it's now alternating between its pointlessly convoluted central mystery-within-a-mystery-within-a-mystery — which clearly its own creators no longer understand or can follow — and unbelievably stupid episodes like the one last night, which was little more than a Twilight Zone knockoff.

THEY GOT THERE IN THE END

As I was cleaning the floor last night (yes, another exciting evening in the Davis household) my attention was caught by a report on The World Tonight about a documentary debunking Michael Moore. Made by two left-of-centre Canadians, no less. The chat didn't contain a huge amount of analysis of his sleight-of-hand; even now, media folk feel safer talking about his outsize ego and his money-making instincts. Still, every little bit helps. It's just a shame we didn't see more of this kind of probing when Moore was at his peak as an opinion-former. (At this point, regular readers will know, I always plug my interview with his biographer, Jesse Larner.) Variety gives the film a generous review. But I couldn't help smiling at the qualifier in the opening sentence: "An intelligent, provocative and, arguably, even necessary examination..."  Er, who's arguing?

PEERLESS

If you saw Dave Hill's little item about Piers Morgan's antics on The Apprentice Does Comic Relief, you may care to watch the tabloid legend reducing a 12 year-old to tears on a talent show.

GETTING IN, GETTING ON

Never mind the glass ceiling, it's becoming harder and harder even to get a foot in the media's front door. Adrian Monck overhears a remark (made tongue-in-cheek, I hope) at an industry gathering:

We get hundreds of applications for every job we advertise. Too many to go through. But we have developed a strategy for dealing with them. Before scanning the CVs, we split the pile in two and chuck half away. After all, you don't want unlucky people working for you.

While a survey by Television and Young People - the charitable arm of the Edinburgh International Television Festival - finds that newcomers worry that they don't have the right contacts to make any headway:

The research echoes a study last year commissioned by TVYP, which found that low starting salaries were a key disincentive for those from low income backgrounds, with the average starting salary in TV just £12,000 per annum. Last year's survey also revealed that 77% of young people trying to get a foothold in the TV industry had worked without pay for up to three months and 12% had worked for free for over six months.

I find it slightly depressing that the two faces shown on the TVYP web site belong to Vernon Kay and Graham Norton, but that's life, post-Big Brother, I suppose.