How The $#!* Did This Get Made?

In today's How The $#!* Did This Get Made?, we take a look at BBC Three television programme How Not To Live Your Life.

How Not To Live Your Life then? If you are an aspiring writer/actor/director, exactly like this:

Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1511)

 If you desire to be damned as devil-spawn, to be spurned by your fellow man, to be whipped and beaten and cast out like Connor MacLeod, then this effort, this turd-sodden quiche of a show, offers an unsurpassed guide as to how to live your life, both in content and execution.

How (Not) To Live Your Life:

1. Through witchcraft, dominate the minds of the BBC's team responsible for the commissioning of comedy.
2. Dip an ant's feet in ink, as per the BBC's submission guidelines.
3. Release said ant onto 90 gsm.
4. Send result to brainwashed team, with an offer to play the lead.

Ladies and gentlemen, today I bore witness to proof that the above method not only works, but results in recommissioning. There are now three whole series.

THREE. MIND-UNSPOOLING. SERIES.

Disclaimer: I could only watch for a few minutes, at which point the aneurysms became too frequent to continue. I apologise to all concerned if the remaining 5/6ths were 21st Century Shakespeare.

Around the 00:01:00 mark, I questioned what sins I had committed that would deserve such brain-fisting torment. Surely no God was this vengeful? And yet, Dante could not have envisioned Brutus in worse agony than that served upon me by the comedic stylings of one Dan Clark.

I'm not naturally a wrathful person, my philosophy being generally maim-and-let-maim, and let bygones be bygones; so it was an understandable shock to experience the work of a spirit so antagonistic to my own. How Not To Live Your Life is plainly the work of a vicious, brutal bully, who, desirous to strip the world of all fair-play, decency and Englishness, has, colubrine, blighted our souls with his crippling, festering comedy.

To fully grasp the monotonous violence of Mr Clark's crime, rendered hatefully in sound and moving pictures, consider a victim's response. One does not simply "not laugh" at the discrete events identified as jokes by interminable, SG1-esque reaction shots. No. One unlaughs.

What? Unlaughs, you say? Surely these are the Cromwellian fairies of a puritanical void, a grey, senseless realm of which few poets dared dream? Not the stuff of reality.

Sadly, I would that were true. No, I unlaughed until I could bear to watch no more, each joke stripping forever from me a happy memory, a childhood pratfall or game. Each joke left me less a man, and mankind less a dreamer. I fear to sleep now, lest this comedian's witticisms return in the night and claim the ruins of my soul.

That said, there was one moment that wasn't ear-shaftingly awful - Nick Mohammed's line "On with the show, my rancid little puppets". I liked that. But just as a Nazi commandant is not absolved of his crimes by once choosing organic eggs the supermarket, no single gust of sweet-smelling, rose-petal comedy could redeem the scat pile that is How Not To Live Your Life.

In conclusion, I fully support and endorse any attempts made by those responsible for this thirty minute stain to Not Live Their Lives anymore - Thank you.

Matt Cardle invests £1.3m into scheme to ensure that Fame won't change Matt Cardle

I'll bite my tongue to avoid saying something not 'real'

Such is X-Factor winner Matt Cardle's desire to "keep it real" that he has gone to new and extraordinary lengths to maintain a level of "groundedness" that will endear him to the people; "the very fact that I used the word groundedness proves that my grasp of grammar hasn't changed since before the X-Factor, I am still the same, also I often swear"

Key to the lumbering iguana's grounding scheme is "realness advisor" Alan Cliffe, who Matt has hired to be on hand 24 hours a day, observing what Matt says and does and then, using a bespoke electronic realness-moderation system, Cliffe is then able to rate how real Matt is keeping it and upload the results to Matt's Realness Analytics Centre which will provide up to the minute stats on how well Matt is performing and offer tell-tale clues as to whether the big fucking meat neck has, in fact, been changed by fame. "Think of it as a sort of reality thermometer if you will" says Matt "... or a reality barometer... a barometer measures pressure... I'm under a lot of pressure lately" 

Matt will also be maintaining a level of real-ness by continuing to work as a painter decorator, thought he will not be decorating the houses of the public as he would be at risk of being recognised as the X-Factor winner and plummeting into an "ego canyon". Instead, Matt will be contracted to gradually work his way through a dilapidated 38 room mansion in the South West of England, decorating each room in turn, to the specifications of hired actors playing the role of unimpressed home-owners. Said Alan Cliffe; "once he's finished one room we just rip the wallpaper off, piss all over the skirting boards and wait for him to come round to it again. It is my belief that monotony is key to maintaining a link to your roots. That and ugly women." 

Actors will also be hired to fill a fake job centre, which is located underground in a secret location  for Matt to gain experience in trying to find work during these supposedly tough economic times. "Matt will be queueing, printing off job descriptions, talking to advisers and smoking outside with other job seekers. The fact that no one has thought of this before just goes to show how serious Matt Cardle is about remaining normal." 

And should Cardle fail to maintain grounded as the amounts roll in? "I will shoot him" says Cliffe, "I will not hesitate to put him down"

In other news, Matt Cardle has written a book. 

A Personal Personal Appeal Appeal

Please read this appeal from someone who actually has to use the Internet, and then leave me alone.

Easy.

When I first saw Jimmy Wales' stupid face mugging out at me from above whatever Wiki page I was reading (probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayce_and_the_Wheeled_Warriors), I recognised its potential for parody. His face was almost uncomfortably close, his eyes sociopathic. His was smile loaded with hipster pity, like a douchebag Mona Lisa.

The text was arrogant, sparse and begging to be 'shopped. I expected to see a tool similar to the Conservative Party parody poster generator by the end of the day.

The next time, he was walking alone, a lonely Garfunkel no doubt intended to take the edge off Jimmy's "I will kill you" eyes. The spoof-force was strong with this one.

Finally, "the horror" - Wales lurking in the darkness, his message now screaming out to the Internet "MOCK ME".

But I urge you to resist. If you value the Internet as a source of humour, "lolz", cats playing pianos etc, don't pick the lowest-hanging fruit, the easy score. A child could make fun of this.

If you consider yourself a humourist, try harder. Aim higher. Make us laugh not with sub-Seinfeld "What's the deal with the Wikipedia guy?" bits, or spoof "Jimmy watches you poop" banners, or ambiguously self-referential pictures of cats.

The next time you post, ask yourself "Am I a fry-cook or a chef?".

All the best,

Some Guy

User, Wikipedia