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D IA N G UA R N T E D U T S E A Z IN M AG E H T OF YEAR
FUN IN N U S E H T tickets? ry u b n to s la G t e g ’t n id D Won’t be par tying on the Pyramid stage? Quench on the other events you can pretend you’d rather go to
FESTIVAL S
PLAYING I
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PECIAL
THE HAY BOOKS PR EVIEW THE ULTIMATE LITERARY EVENT
BON E T I T E P P A TO FOOD GO PARIS
WELSH WO
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DERS GOING OUT ON THE BE ST WELSH FE STIVALS
MUSICAL T
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EATS MUSIC LOO K AT THE R EST OF THE SUMM ER’S SCEN E
QUENCH.GAIRRHYDD.COM > VOL 4.53 > MAY 2007
CONTENTS
features 09INTERVIEWS
Who?: Quench talks sex, religion and TV with Dr Who writer Russell T Davies
16FEATURES
20GAY
Carry on camping: Camp classics hit the pages
22FOOD
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Dorothy and her homoerotic harem just keep giving to gay culture some 70 years after they first danced along the yellow brick road
Bon Appetite: Food goes to Paris to check out what’s on offer
regulars 04THE BLURB
Essays, exams, no one’s happy this week
06DEBATE
The ultimate debate
07GRACE Phat talk
14TRAVEL
What you Ghana do?
18FASHION
Get your glasses on
Gay on camp cult classics/ page 20
38ARTS
The right impression
40BOOKS
Let’s all play in the Hay
42DIGITAL
Advertisers playing the game
44GOING OUT Fun in the sun
45CULT CLASSICS Cult Classic cliches
25MUSIC
46THE FINAL WHISTLE
Sing when you’re winning
It’s a man’s world
33FILM
47TUNNEL VISION
No filler, all killer
QUENCH@GAIRRHYDD.COM
“
Trust me, I’m Carol Vorderman: Features check out the good, the bad and the ugly of advertising
Executive editor Perri Lewis Editor Sophie Robehmed Assistant to the Editors Elaine Morgan
Arts Kim O’Connor, Rebecca Child Blind Date Rosanne and Olivia Books Daisy Beare Columnists Gareth Paisey, Grace DeVille, Dave Menon, John Widdop Cult Classics Tom Brookes Debate Caleb Woodbridge Digital Dom MukwambaSendall Fashion Leana Crookes, Matt Hitt Features Amy Harrison, Ben Bryant Film Ewen Hosie, Si Truss Food Joanne Grew Gay Deen Lloyd, Jenny Hall Going Out Kayleigh Excell, Rachel Clare Interviews Amira Hashish, Nicola Menage Music Mike Richards, Sofie Jenkinson, Will Hitchins Photography Adam Gasson, James Perou, Sarah Day Travel Chris Rogers, Jim Whiteley Proof Readers Kate Dobbs, Amy Harrison Contributors Aisling Tempany, Tasha Prest-Smith, Tim Scriven, Ben Marshall, Hazel Plush, Cat Grogan, Thea Cunningham, Josie Allchin, Emily Kendrick, Ed Vanstone, Jim Finucane, Tom Williams, Renyi Lim, Ashley James, Katie Kennedy, Natalie Newbigging, Matthew Horwood, John Davies, Roseanna Eastoe, Laura Gibbons, Rhys Trigg, Gareth JS. Moss, Matt Cutler, TV Andrew, TV Will, Francesca Jarvis Front cover illustration: Andrew Styles
Wrecking TV
Best Student Publication 2005
Best Student Magazine 2005 & 2006
THE BLURB q.ed. “I guess we’ll just have to adjust”
THE FIGHT
Eggheads special
Daphne ‘Pauline’s sister’ Fowler Strengths: Bestows the most powerful brain in the world ever. FACT. Being Pauline’s much nicer sister. FACT-ish.
Wake Up, The Arcade Fire
Weaknesses: Her lack of ambition - it’s about time she ditched the others Eggs to take over the world.
A
s I write this, I am lying prostrate in my bed, surrounded by paper, books and chaos. My final essays are due in three days. I will finally be released from the constraints of academia and will once more be able to read a book for pleasure without having to analyse every single word. But that does mean that the ‘Real World’* is waiting to suck up my bone marrow through a curly-wurly straw before spitting it out. And that means I suddenly have the urge to run down the M5 to Devon where my Mother currently resides oblivious to the fact that I would like to be inserted back inside her womb. And I’m not entirely sure how she is going to take this news. Don’t fear, I’m not suffering from a pseudo-Oedipus complex nor am I a downright sicko and deviant. I’m simply scared of leaving the university bubble. Quite the norm then really. You see, education (education, education), has looked after me in this warm cocoon for so long now. It has always told me what I am doing in September when I’ve had some months off to enjoy the British summer and perhaps dabbled in a rather tame job that has never eaten much into my hedonistic holidays. And for the first time this year, it’s not going to do that because there is not going to be any education to return to in September. Instead, I start a job in July. Not a job that I can pick up or drop like before because of ‘academic commitments.’ This job has a contract that lasts a year that I signed and sent away yesterday (along with my blood, sweat, tears, soul et al). On the up side, this is a job that entitles me to free use of their gym facilities. Not that I’ve ever entered the gym facilities on Park Place except to get some chocolate out of the machine but I’ve been meaning to sculpt my guns for some time now. I just have to accept that the student cliché of eating yoghurts with no spoon, rising out of my pit in time for Neighbours and attending a few lectures will be replaced by 9am starts and 25 days annual holiday. So, goodbye Education. Thank you for your warm embrace. And hello, Real World. I’m ready for you. Well, nearly. *No, not that original reality MTV programme. That would be silly. And not feasible, really.
FOUR
CJ ‘Twat’ De Mooi
vs.
Strengths: Looking down his noes at contestancts for not knowing the capital of the third smallest Indonesian island in 1642. Weaknesses: being a twat.
THE VERDICT As Daphne and CJ take to the ring the atmosphere is tense. The other unmemorable Eggheads - the fat guy, the posh bird and that one that no one ever remembers - sit back and wait for the clash of the titans. Dermot Murnaghan rings the bell and the battle commences. The first round sees the duo prove their intelligence as they answer questions on the birthdays of the prominant pre-war statespeople of the Balkan regions. CJ is thwarted to the ground as the indestructible Daphne reels off the birthdays and wedding anniversaries of all the statespeople in the entire history of the Balkans. CJ’s lack of knowledge about the life times of Thomas Hardy’s cat leaves
him close to tears as Daphne walks away the champion of round two. In desperation, CJ holds back the tears as he tries to reassert his masculinity by reciting the result of every single match in the history of Accrington Stanley Football Club. Inevitably, he fails as he forgets the result of the game on the 16th September 1986. Daphne smiles sweetly and announces the correct answer. The final round sees Daphne knock all the smug intelligence from CJ as she beats him - as expected - in a round on the dietary benefits of Marks and Spencers’ Chicken Korma. It wasn’t really much of a fight but Daphne Fowler floors CJ to the ground with amazing gusto. Amy Harrison
THEBLURB@GAIRRHYDD.COM
THE BLURB Space in the 50s tackles Quench’s five big questions
! s i h t r e w Ans What's the best thing you've ever stolen? I once stole a frozen dead dog from a vet’s freezer. But when I got it home it wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be. Um... I stole a friend’s birthday cake and ate it all once - that was fun. What's the best lesson you've learnt in life? Dead dogs aren’t funny. If you could be anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? What? Do you mean forever? Or just a day? If it was a day I think maybe Scooby Doo. If it was forever I’d probably be Buddha. Do you have any guilty pleasures? There’s no such thing as guilt, just an underlying fear of getting caught. What would your special powers be if you were a super hero? Flying, freeze breath, laser eyes, super strength, invisibility, stretchy limbs all the good stuff. Is Inspector Gadget a superhero? If he is I would like all his cool stuff like his gadget legs and helicopter hat.
Apologies for the lack of KEVTHINKSTHINGS. Unfortunately Kev is a hard-working student who is using all his creative juices to pass his exams. He will return soon.
h has: This week Quenc gger, our Been thinking: Busoon. Bugger, we er ov e ar s degree have exams. Been looking at:at.com/i-are-serihttp://www.roflc rious-thread.php ous-cat-this-is-se Cat is actually a Because Seriouso makes us laugh very nice cat wh g inside. Cheers to when we’re cr yin ing him to our TV Desk for bring attention.
THEBLURB@GAIRRHYDD.COM
“Yes, the summer of sequels is upon us and I for one am not looking forward to it one bit”
I
n a month of late night essay writing, viscous swearing at a temperamental laptop and crying like a baby at the relegation of my football team, I have been in search of a light at the end of the tunnel. Traditionally the thought of a summer full of block busting, action-filled films packed with explosions and one liners would be enough to haul me out of my existential funk. This year however, is different. Yes, the summer of sequels is upon us and I for one am not looking forward to it one bit. Having already had the misfortune of having to sit through a frankly laughable Spiderman 3, I can honestly say that the thought of having to watch another five or six poorly written re-hashes, makes me feel physically sick. Pirates 3, Harry Potter 5, Shrek 3, Hostel 2, Oceans 13, Die Hard 4.0… 4.0! As if the decimal place makes any sodding difference. I have more originality stuck in my belly button than all of these films put together, and yet…. Of course, I don’t have to go. But the chances are, if I don’t I’ll spend my time wallowing in depression about the sorry state of my football team whilst watching all six hundred hours of The Lord of the Rings extended edition including the director’s commentary, eating my own body weight in flying saucers and weeping quietly, and that just wouldn’t be cool, or healthy. So you see my predicament; go and get depressed at the state of Hollywood cinema (and the state of Bruce Willis’ abs), or stay at home and endanger my own sanity. Oh well, he must have worked out a bit musn’t he?
FIVE
DEBATE
Cymru vs Lloegr The dragon and the unicorn are fighting for the crown...
WALES W
Aisling Tempany
ales and England have always had something of a friendly (and not so friendly) rivalry. When I was young Wales was just a place of holiday homes and camping sites, mostly full of Liverpudlians. As I got older I found myself coming down to Wales (well Cardiff) a lot. It might have had something to do with a famous Welsh band and a stadium on Millennium Eve. As a teenager, all the cool stuff was in Wales. The Manic Street Preachers, for instance, are from Wales therefore Wales is so much better than England. Nobody's better than the Manic Street Preachers. It's got Dylan Thomas too. The country’s most famous poet died drinking too much. Welsh men are hardcore! In the Poet’s Corner pub on City Road there's a line on the wall that says: “if Wales were as flat as England it would be the bigger country.” Hills are cool. They make you fit, and if you live at the top of one, you get to look down on people. Wales has lots of hills for doing this. There's a big house near Abergavenny perched on a hill I plan to buy one day, just for the purpose of looking down on people around me. A silly little English student recently said they thought Wales was 'flat.' Only if you never leave Cathays. Wales does have its disadvantages. Past Carmathen and into mid-Wales parts of it can feel like civilisation has stopped. But then it's nice to be away from that rushing, noisy city culture, unlike London, which is just big and smelly. Wales has Welsh. Welsh is fun! Who wants all those irritating vowels in a language? I like lots of ‘l’s and ‘d’s in a language. I do not speak Welsh. I just like looking at it (I'd probably learn it if I had the chance though.) Bilingual street signs fill my heart with joy - it's just weird in Bristol where 'lift' only has one 'f' in it. Best of all though, Wales has a dragon on its flag! A red dragon. I want a dragon. I'd name it Hugh. The only thing that beats a dragon on a flag is a unicorn. And England doesn't have a unicorn on its flag.
SIX
Tasha Prest-Smith
ENGLAND
I
could be really mean about Wales, spouting about how the English don't get personally offended when the Welsh beat us at the rugby, or that we don't need government funding to keep our language alive, but I'm not going to. Instead, I want to start by pointing out that the English are unafraid to laugh at themselves, to be eccentric and offbeat. Just look at our sitcoms from the brilliant Absolutely Fabulous, to golden oldies like Fawlty Towers, The Vicar of Dibley and granny's favourite, The Last of the Summer Wine. Similarly, there is a neverending list of talented actors and comedians that England has produced, such as Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Ricky Gervais and Harry Enfield. Wales may have given us the stunner Catherine Zeta-Jones, but we've got the quintessential English rose, Kate Winslet, one of the prime darlings of Hollywood. I barely need to go into music. We've got the cultic artists like The Arctic Monkeys, The Verve and The Beatles, the soul divas like Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone, the electronica whizz kids Morcheeba, Faithless and Groove Armada, and an infinite number of indie and rock bands, spanning Coldplay to The Kaiser Chefs to The Zutons. Whatever your taste, England's musical genii have got it in hand. Then there's our men. English men are stereotypically awkward, bashful and hopelessly romantic, à la Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. There is definitely some truth in 'English reserve'. But we love them for it; it's endearing and very sweet. Wales has the Brecon Beacons, Pembrokeshire and Snowdonia, but England has yet more treasures on offer, from the age-old intrigue of Hadrian's Wall, to the aweinspiring mountains of the Lake District, to the eerie Norfolk fens, to the quaint fishing villages of Cornwall, not to mention a dazzling capital city. No wonder our national treasure, Shakespeare, had a field day describing the wild heath in King Lear. England is the land that gave us Hardy and Austen, cream teas and fish and chips, Harrods and Harvey Nichols. In a nutshell, it's absolutely fabulous.
DEBATE@GAIRRHYDD.COM
GRACE
Fat is a Royalist Grace Issue
L
de Ville
Why obesity is not fit for a king
et me tell you a story. There was once this guy called Henry VIII who was massively popular with the ladies. I think it had something to do with his imposing bulk and swanky codpiece. Oh yeah, and he was also a king. I'm quite certain that his divine right aided his pulling power somewhat. Back then, Henry's portly frame was envied across the land and fat was the ultimate symbol of prosperity. If you had the physique of Brian Blessed, you were probably a Big Deal. Fast forward a few hundred years and the tubby bastard himself is about to be portrayed by he of oh-sorippled torso, Jonathon Rhys Meyers, in a new dramatisation of the steamier aspects of Hen's life. As Jonathan and Henry: two effects of much as one can appreciate the peas in a pod idealistic aesthetic merits of a fragrant, representations of impossibly thin toned thespian, it's evident that the body shapes, but being overweight is lack of adipose tissue on display is no good to anyone either. Your eyes rather anachronistic. Fat is now so get smaller as they sink into your hideously unacceptable that even cheeks, moving becomes problemathistory is undergoing liposuction. ic and Lycra is a nightmare, not a Being fat in 2007 is a curse. man-made fibre. Getting fat is like People either pity you or ignore you. walking into the direst of sports In an age of celebrity diet plans and shops, trying on a revolting shiny Pilates, it's seen as a sign of weakwhite jacket for a laugh and then ness, laziness and lack of self-conbeing unable to unzip the zipper. trol. People are intensely scared of After a while, you convince yourself getting fat, precisely because it's so that the coat isn't actually that bad easy for cosseted westerners like you and me and Brian McFadden and and you may as well keep it on until you get home. It doesn't go with any Vanessa Feltz to scoff the world, of your outfits and makes you look should we wish to. Endless amounts like a twat, but what the hell; it'd be of glutinous, fat-laden foods are an effort to wriggle yourself out of it. everywhere we turn. And it's going to get cold soon, so I tell you, back in the days of neck ruffles and witch-burning, it was you tell yourself that the extra layer will be a godsend during those bitter much harder to obtain a king-sized November mornings. Mars Bar. I dare you to try and A great many people are walking source an apple at 2.30am in the heart of Cathays. It's not the easiest around with these coats of fat this very minute, and I know exactly how of tasks, but if you want a battered it feels. I've outdone the Duchess of sausage or triple-fried rice then the York in terms of weight fluctuation. world is your greasy kebab shop. One minute there wasn't a scrap of The problem of obesity is widely recognised. As a nation, we're collec- blubber on my chicken bones, and the next I was storing peanuts tively chubbers. Something HAS to between my fat rolls. I know. Don't change. I'm aware of the negative
GRACEDEVILLE@GAIRRHYDD.COM
judge the fat person; they were probably thin, once. I'm currently normalsized and puffy around the edges, but I can live with that. Since January, ten per cent of my body mass has just fallen off. It appears that bereavement, perpetual disappointment and destitution do wonders for the physique. I should bring out a diet book; they seem to be quite popular these days.
“
I tell you, back in the days of neck ruffles and witch-burning, it was much harder to obtain a king-sized Mars Bar There really is no solution to this lipid-shaped issue. The gulf between the svelte figures in the public eye and the common garden size 18 secretary will continue to widen. Crisps will still outsell broccoli and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Buy some Snack-a-Jacks, slump yourself on the sofa and watch the historical fat melt away as the elastic in your pants battles against the strain of your gut. This IS the future.
SEVEN
INTERVIEWS
? t i n n u d Who
s of Doctor Who rie se st te la e th e or ef B ught up with its began, gair rhydd cahead writer and executive producer, honcho, Russell T all-round Who head ridge talks to him Davies. Caleb Woodb d why Doctor Who about religion, sex an will never die. ..
I
can come here in the mornings and sit and have a coffee. Just watch the world go by, I love it,” Davies tells me as we sit down to talk in a café down in Cardiff Bay, just round the corner from where Torchwood supposedly have their underground Hub. At an impressive 6’6”, one of Britain’s top television writers is something of a friendly giant. He has a boundless enthusiasm, with the superlatives flowing fast and free. “We’ve just finished the first three episodes, and they’re the most spectacular things we’ve ever, ever produced,” he says proudly. As Doctor Who hits its third series, can we expect any changes to the format? “The format is to be different every week - different story, different setting, different cast, very often a different style every week. With that as a given, you don’t want to change it too much.” The show seems as energised as ever, with series three featuring the Family of Blood, the planet Malcassairo, the return of Captain Jack and the arrival of the Doctor’s mysterious nemesis, Mr Saxon. It
INTERVIEWS@GAIRRHYDD.COM
also sees the introduction of Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones. “She’s absolutely lovely, we’re dead chuffed with her. She brings a whole new energy with her to the TARDIS,” enthuses Davies. As with Rose, Martha’s family also play a role in the series. So far Francine, Leo, Tish and the rest of the Jones clan have featured less than Mickey, Jackie and Pete Tyler. But watch out for them again towards the end of the series – one of them will have a crucial decision to make. Davies already Russell T had a distinguished writing career to his name before reviving Doctor Who. He studied at Worcester College, Oxford, and went on to work in television. But what’s not as well known is that he spent a year studying in Cardiff. I ask Davies about his time here.
“When I came to Cardiff there was this most fantastic course, a Theatre Studies course, which was run by the University but based at the Sherman Theatre. They chose 15 people every year for a year long course and you formed a theatre company, the Sherman Arena Company with set budgets and design budgets and they taught you lighting and choreography and things like that. Really, really lovely, so, that’s when I first came and lived here.” Do you ever feel like you’re spearheading a Welsh takeover of the television schedules? “Hahaha! Not a takeover, but I honestly feel one of my most important tasks is getting Welsh people on TV. Before Doctor Who and all this came along, I wrote a series called Mine All Mine for ITV with a highly Welsh cast. It’s very important to normalise it as a voice, as an accent, because television is full of Scottish and Irish characters, and we’re genuinely underserved. It’s a long process, but Davies you’ve just got to keep chipping away.” So how did you make the transition from working on shows like Why Don’t You? and Chucklevision to writing award-winning shows like Queer as Folk?
NINE
“I was so singled minded in those days, so determined, I look back and laugh at myself. I was working at BBC Manchester and down the road was Granada, which was a powerhouse, even more so then than it is now, so I literally thought I was in the wrong building. I was so determined I left my job at the BBC and went on the dole with no money. I was a producer by this stage, they thought I was mad! “But I said ‘No, I’m in the wrong job’, and so left that and went to Granada and went making contacts, knocking on doors… Determined as I was, it worked, and it only took about three months. I blagged my way into a job as a script editor, having never been a proper script editor. And on my first day at work, I was on Children’s Ward, with Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor, who now run television drama. It was like the gods were shining on me that day.” About the humanism in your writing, I begin... “A proper interview. Hooray!” Davies beams. In The Second Coming, Christopher Eccleston’s working-class Son of God tells humanity that if they want the position of God, then takes the responsibility. Do you think humanity can take that responsibility? “We’re still alive! I think you have to recognise that responsibility, rather than referring upwards. I think that’s something of what religion is… [But also] I think religion is a very primal instinct within humans, a very good one, part of our imagination. I’m not an enemy of that instinct that tells us to look upwards. “It’s as fundamental an instinct as it is to look up at the sun… It’s that in-built, that hard-wired. I think even the most in-born atheist like myself would look up when we talk about this sort of stuff. It’s a solar thing. “It’s equally clear that the power of the religious over the White House is terrifying. I know when The Second Coming came out, people were saying on Newsnight Review that religion hardly matters in the world any more. Next thing we know, we’re practically in a holy war. It’s going to go on for centuries, unless we deal with it all very quickly. This is so ingrained, this is the axis of power in the world now, and the philosophical
TEN
PHOTO: CALEB WOODBRIDGE
INTERVIEWS
“I don’t think my view of sexuality is quite as fluid as I portray it on screen, because what you’re portraying on screen is extraordinary events happening to ordinary people” struggle in the world from now on. And that is fundamentally based on religion.” In Torchwood, Captain Jack speaks disparagingly of our “neat little categories” when it comes to sexuality, and Bob and Rose upset some
in the gay community by having a gay man fall in love with a woman… “Well, they’re idiots!” Davies says. “I don’t think my view of sexuality is quite as fluid as I portray it on screen, because what you’re portraying on screen is extraordinary events happening to ordinary people. The fact that it’s a drama means it’s got to be more dramatic! A lot of people are just straight, and equally, I’m just gay. There’s a fair amount of fixedness, within which, you have to look at the possibility that anything can happen.” Do you see yourself as having any responsibilities as a writer beyond telling a good story? “That’s interesting… No. Not really. I think the story is the thing, because if you start to imagine other responsibilities, then you’re starting to imagine other people’s voices in your head, and the most important thing you can do is keep your voice pure and strong. This doesn’t mean not listening to criticism - actually, it probably does mean not listening to criticism.
INTERVIEWS@GAIRRHYDD.COM
INTERVIEWS “If after I’d written Queer as Folk I’d felt very responsible to that gay audience that was watching, then that could have convinced me not to write Bob and Rose, which is probably the finest thing I’ve ever written. I still think that episode one is just about perfect, and that’s very rare. But you could argue that my responsibility as a gay man then becomes a responsibility not to write a drama in which a gay man becomes straight.” Speaking of criticism, Torchwood got something of a mixed reaction. Charlie Brooker compared it to Scooby Doo with swearing, blood and sex, for example. What do you think of these criticisms? “Um, we don’t really pay much attention to it really, equally, when Doctor Who is praised to the skies, we don’t pay any attention to that. Praise is just as unhelpful as criticism. We know what’s working and what isn’t, which is not necessarily what you think is working and what isn’t, and never will be, and we’ll work on that.
OPPOSITE PAGE: Doctor Who filiming in the Bay and a clip from the new series. THIS PAGE: The Doctor and his new assistant and another clip
INTERVIEWS@GAIRRHYDD.COM
“And that Charlie Brooker column was hilarious, brilliantly written, the man’s a fantastic polemic writer. But if you turned round to Charlie Brooker and said ‘So does that mean you think television dramatists should listen to the word of TV columnists?’, he’d run away in horror!
“
Torchwood got something of a mixed reaction. Charlie Brooker compared it to Scooby Doo with swearing, blood and sex, for example Doctor Who is a very optimistic show. Do you think that optimism is always honest and justified? For example, in the episode Boom Town, the Doctor faces a dilemma between justice and mercy taking the villainous Margaret Slitheen to her home planet, where she will be executed for her crimes, or letting her go in the hope that she will change. (“In that restaurant up there!” Davies says, pointing to where the Doctor and Margaret discussed that question over a last supper together in that story.) In the end, the TARDIS returns her to an egg, giving her a chance at a new life, but it just seems to be a magic answer out of nowhere. “Yes, I see what you mean, but of course it comes out of magic, because that is our only option, because what is the resolution to the debate around that table up there. What is it? Imagine the outcry if the Doctor had decided one opinion either way. He
couldn’t, he literally couldn’t. There is no answer to that debate. We all want a chance to start again, we’d all go back and redo things. Only science fiction can give you that ending. “What I love about that, is you’re having a philosophical debate that eight-year olds can sit there and get involved in, about the death penalty. The whole planet hasn’t come up with an ending to that argument, and we never will. And that’s why the Earth opens and the sky shakes, that is literally a sort of divine intervention.” “Everything has its time, and everything dies.” When the time comes, should that apply to the Doctor? “Ooh no, never! He’s beyond that now. If someone took over and the show got axed, and they decided to kill him in the very last episode, you and I know he wouldn’t be dead. In ten years time, someone would come along and say ‘Oh look, he was wearing the Crystal of Gothnar and has been resurrected!’, or they’d just open with scene one in the TARDIS with him flying along. “I think it’s very important when you’re writing it that you don’t write him as immortal. A couple of times in this series we point out that being able to regenerate doesn’t mean you can’t die. If he were shot through the heart, he’d be dead. He wouldn’t have time to regenerate, to trigger the process.” Everything has its time, and that includes this interview. “Not short answers, as you can tell, Caleb - a lot of transcribing, I’m sorry!” he apologises unnecessarily. “I hope you can edit me down. This will have to be a special pull-out brochure gair rhydd, 100 pages with Russell T Davies!”
ELEVEN
Want to get involved in a new and exciting online project here at Quench? Email editor@gairrhydd.com for more details
INTERVIEWS
Pull my tail Francesca Jarvis meets MySpace tour favourites, PullTigerTail
N
amed after how boring the zoo can be as a mini-tiger-tailer, and who describe themselves as "boisterious boy-rock", PullTigerTail are funny little fuckers. They are Marcus, Davo and Jack, a 3-piece indie-rock band from Stratford Upon Avon, and they make up the Myspace Bleep Bleep tour's headlining act. For those who don't know, PTT are a band out to change the face of music. "We want to destroy the music industry." Tiger #1 says. "It's all about trying different things, and writing without formula." I'm afraid to say I'm finding it hard to match the words to the faces, but Tiger #2 agrees; "We want to produce songs that will last forever, and write to the songs, not to sounds." Nifty little job if you can get it. MySpace is sponsoring the 30date tour, which sees PullTigerTail
playing alongside Ali Love, Hadouken!, and I Say Marvin, with sold out dates at London's ULU. "MySpace haven't told us what to say in interviews about them yet." Tiger One quips, "Apparently there's no dossier. Never know, they might
They talk well of their fellow tour mates, detailing I Say Marvin's antics; "They're so enthusiastic." Tiger One explains, "Ever since they've escaped Cornwall, they enjoy shutting themselves in cages on tour and stuff." "And Hadouken! have been there since the start, from like our second gig. They were playing with us, but whatever.." Tiger Two laughs. And Mr Love? "Ali Love's from our neck of the woods. He brings the funk to the tour." As for the future, PullTigerTail are lined up to appear on the next NME tour, praising the magazine for what it does for the industry. "It's amazing the power it yields." Tiger Three says, provoking laughs around the room. "Yields? Or wields?" Tiger One asks. "What the fuck?" The three begin ribbing each other, and after eventually concluding that "Ebay is great" and Arcade Fire "are amazing!", I decide to piss off and leave them to eat their neglected Subways. With MySpace and NME behind them, PullTigerTail have got a blinding future ahead. Watch out for that industry apocalypse any day now.
to say “MySpace haven't told us what in interviews about them yet”
INTERVIEWS@GAIRRHYDD.COM
want us to slag it off." Perhaps the quietest member, number 3 over in the corner, sums it up well; "It's just a website, innit." Turns out, ironically, that the boys aren't They go on to chat about MySpace and how it’s impacted the world. "It's just Friendster with music. Remember Friendster?" Tiger Two asks, but perhaps Tiger One has the most fitting description of the new, whirlwind MySpace craze; "It's just shit isn't it."
THIRTEEN
TRAVEL When you got no money, no plan, and no hope...
What ya’ Ghana do? Travel would probably panic and hide under the duvet. But not Hazel Plush. Oh no. See how she got on in her quest for free money...
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nfortunately I got the travel bug (along with several other unidentified illnesses) last year when I took a trip to Africa and Australia. This term’s 15 hours paid work per week and the remains of a student loan were never going to get me very far. For months I pondered all the low budget options: work my way around Europe (no thanks, I do enough of that at home), staying with long lost relatives in America (would be a great idea if I had any) and googleing ‘free travel adventure’ (only brings up south Essex railway– why is it?). It was never going to work, but then I read about a guy who’d funded his whole trip with sponsorship from charitable trusts. Seemed like an easy enough option: arrange to do something ‘worthwhile’ and then get a whip round from loads of organisations who are practically begging to give money away. The idea of volunteering abroad had never crossed my mind - I always thought of it as something only royals do on their gap years. But another (more fruitful) google search threw up a few possibilities. I entered the world of volunteer travel, an openminded and generous place where you can rehabilitate Golden Lion Tamarinds in Brazil, work with aids orphans in Uganda or build schools in Honduras. Whatever you fancy doing there’s sure to be a volunteering company who would love to take you on, regardless of age or experience. I had the idea of going back to Africa with a small-scale project: I
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The founder of the project, a former member of Newcastle University, is now an honorary chief of a West African tribe, so he must know his stuff
had the impression that many volunteers go out with the intention of changing the world, but it seemed to me that the most effective projects would be the ones with realistic ambitions. A few weeks and a couple more hundred pounds later I was booked on a placement in Ghana with Madventurer, a company which specialises in rural community development. The founder, a former member of Newcastle University set up the organisation following a trip to Ghana one summer holiday and is now an honorary chief of a West African tribe, so he must know his stuff. The project is genuinely worthwhile, and this was no longer a mission of finding a cheap trip abroad, but of funding exciting and meaningful travel. Past ventures have included constructing schools, community buildings and clean water facilities, as well as teaching children in the rural communities where these projects take place.
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TRAVEL
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My flights out there were covered, thanks to a healthy tax rebate, but I still needed the placement fee. And so the fun(draising) began …
...to be a Jew living in Merseyside was the most beneficial position to be in... The past few months have been fraught, not with revision or essays, but with preparations for my summer adventure. You may have seen me in the library, pouring over the huge ‘Directory of Grant Making Trusts’, the bible of people applying for sponsorship. It’s a weighty book containing names, addresses and interests of trusts in the UK which give money to what they consider to be worthy causes. Not too challenging, you might think, but after a week of ploughing through it I had only written down a handful of potential targets and was nursing burned retinas thanks to the library’s luminous strip lighting. The organisations ranged from the ludicrous ‘Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers Charity’ and ‘Scottish Slimmers Charitable Trust’ to the prejudiced
HAZEL: Organised
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animal trust which would consider cases with dogs, cats and horses, but not rabbits. Puzzlingly, it also seemed that to be a Jew living in Merseyside was the most beneficial position to be in: every other trust was prepared to give them money, lucky devils. There were, however, very few charities prepared to give funding to a poor student intent on going to Africa, and I was feeling very disheartened. I jotted down the few addresses that I had highlighted and started on the mammoth task of convincing these people they wanted to give me money. After several days of slaving over a hot computer I managed to produce (though I say so myself) a fairly impressive little portfolio of who I was, what I was doing etc, and most importantly, why I was a worthy cause. If you ever feel inclined to do this it’s essential to consider the costs of buying folders, paper and sending the damn things off: in the end I was about £20 worse off than to begin with. But speculate to accumulate and all that, and now the only thing left to do was hang around waiting for the post and checking my mobile for that all-important phone call. The first few rejections were polite and justifiable, but that didn’t stop me plunging into self pity: the trip was booked already and I didn’t want to spend the new few months sitting in bathtubs full of baked beans pleading for money. A month later, however, relief came in the form of a big fat cheque for £300 from the lengthily named Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust: officially my favourite aid charity! After this, another £150 popped through the letterbox, bringing the total to £450, not a bad return from a week in the library and £20s worth of old WHSmith gift vouchers. And two weeks later that is still the total in the Africa Trip fund, and although I no longer get up early to rifle through the post I am about to embark on some more fundraising schemes. Next up is another barrage of proposals, this time heading for my old school and another lot of grant making trusts I’ve found by trawling through the internet. It’s not quite the easy money-making lark I envisioned, but my mum always told me if you don’t ask, you don’t get. And that’s what I intend to do.
COMPETITION TIME Travel would like to reward its loyal readers by inviting them to take part in a competition to win a year’s subscription to...
Working Abroad Magazine comes out twice a year and features employer and worker profiles, job vacancies and much more. It is geared towards young people and particularly appeals to graduates, gap year students and those seeking a break. From stilt walking at Disneyland to club promoting in Magaluf, it offers the reader a chance to find out about the opportunities of working abroad. For your chance to win a year’s subscription to this wonderful magazine we want you to send in your best travel pictures to travel@gairrhydd.com to be judged by none other than the best editors here at Quench (Chris and Jim) Working Abroad Magazine is sold at the Students’ Union. For more information visit: www.workingabroadmagazine.com
FIFTEEN
FEATURES
As Seen Annoying filler or a chance to worship at the altar of Barry ‘Cillit BANG’ Scott? Cat Grogan investigates the hidden joys of that two minute interval...
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ost of us will agree that, generally speaking, adverts are rubbish. They are everywhere; on the sides of buildings, in the cinema, in magazines, on the radio, on the telly, and being shoved in your hand as you leave or enter any university building. It is this very over abundance that kills them for most of us. Adverts are repetitive and boring. But the odd gem occasionally rears its head to become the centre of frenzied water cooler conversation. Howard from the Halifax ads, Flat Eric in Levi’s 1999 campaign, the Diet Coke break, the Budweiser catchphrase… the list could go on. These adverts were national, if not worldwide, phenomena, and will undoubtedly always occupy a tiny part of your brain. It’s not all that surprising that, for the most part, these ads
are American. In the States they spend over $72 billion a year on TV advertising alone, which is a hell of a lot more than the measly £3.9 billion that the UK put into adverts.
minutes are strictly restricted to ad breaks. Programmers are not allowed use product placement during programmes, even on commercially funded TV, which is why if you watch American Idol, the strategically placed Coca Cola branded cups are always carefully pixellated for the UK audience.
TV adverts can sometimes be a blessing in disguise
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TV advertising Although it may not seem like it, TV adverts can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. They have many advantages that you only realise you miss when you are subjected to a two hour drama on the advert-free BBC. Adverts provide an opportunity for you to actually communicate with the people you are with, instead of ignoring them as you stare blankly at a small box in the corner. More specifically, it is an opportunity to empty the person you are with of all their chatter, especially if they are the sort of person that insists on talking for the entirety of a programme and then have the cheek to ask you what’s going on. Failing that, the ad break provides a little rest for your eyes and an excellent opportunity to pop the kettle on. Although it may not seem like it, in the UK you are only allowed 12 minutes of advertising per hour. And these 12
Misleading adverts However, it would be foolish to think that adverts had many other positive effects. Carol Vorderman, once exclusively the queen of Countdown, is now, somewhat less respectably, the queen of secured loan advertisements. Carol appears on numerous TV adverts urging daytime TV viewers to ‘consolidate their debt’, which sounds appealing but really means bundle it into one colossal debt, slap a load of interest on it, then secure it on your home. Lovely. This dubious endorsement resulted in much controversy in 2006 when it was claimed the adverts were misleading. People trusted her reputation as a maths whiz with a Cambridge degree, and assumed she would only advertise a company that was financially trustworthy (like Alan ‘the god’ Sugar who appeared in the National Savings adverts).
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FEATURES
On TV... 88,000 people signed a petition pleading with her to stop doing these advertisements on this basis. You might maintain that people are idiotic to trust in a celebrity, Cambridge degree or not. But if I had a CCJ I would definitely go with a company represented by Carol over one that dragged in Phil Tufnell. Having said that, even Phil was smart enough to cover his back in his advert, which began with the quip “I know nothing about loans...”
never be able to get another job due to problems of being ‘type cast’, but at least Cillit Bang can comfort themselves with the thought they must have spent a maximum of £50 on that advert.
Internet advertising As much as we may think that TV is the ultimate way to advertise, the Internet is fast becoming the new goto medium, which makes a lot of sense. The Internet is very loosely regulated, especially for advertising, and generally a lot cheaper, so promoters can take a no-holesbarred approach. As a nation we
You might maintain that people
are idiotic to trust in a celebrity, Cambridge degree or not This wasn’t the first time Carol had been in trouble for advertising. She was dropped as a presenter on Tomorrow’s World due to a ‘conflict of interest’ after she featured in an advert for washing power.
The joys of ads There are the rather odd few of us who positively enjoy a good ad break; and see the programmes as simply vessels, which interrupt these three minute snippets of joy. The big companies spend millions of pounds, hire top notch ad agencies to come up with concepts and celebrities and catchphrases, yet they are blown out of the water whenever ‘Hi I’m Barry Scott…’ and the ‘penny test’ takes to our screens. He may shout for no apparent reason, and will probably
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spend hours online every week, and are constantly subjected to adverts on every page we want to look at, and pop-ups jumping out at us every five minutes. Unlike TV there is no standards agency waiting to give them a good ticking off when the ad is unacceptable, cue the ‘mastication for de nation’ chewing gum advert that got panned by OFCom when hundreds of people complained it was racially offensive. For better or for worse, adverts and their sneaky ways are a big part of a modern world. It’s even been suggested that the publicly-funded BBC will struggle to hold out against privatisation for much longer. So I guess we are stuck with them interrupting our viewing and getting stuck in our heads for days, or even longer. I’ve had ‘if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club’ stuck in my head for the last ten years.
Who would you trust with
your debt
? SEVENTEEN
FASHION
Here comes the sun Fashion Desk delve into the world of sunglasses and take a look at the shapes of the summer
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ue to some kind of wild ironic twist, it will probably be raining on the day you read this. Such is life. Nevertheless, global warming has been rearing it’s gorgeously boiling head recently and Cardiff has seen a fair few days of sunshine. As the readership of this fine publication is mostly made up of intellectual types, I trust you do not need reminding that the sun harms your eyes. Luckily though, a contraption has been invented to protect your peepers. Ah, sunglasses. Worn by celebrities, posers and Stevie Wonder. There’s a lot of tat on the high street so allow Fashion Desk to guide you through the shapes of the summer. Oh yeah, and NEVER wear sunglasses inside or at night.
The Aviator The vanilla ice cream of the student eye-wear world. Last summer you couldn’t walk through Talybont without seeing a dozen gap year students drinking foreign beer and talking loudly about Thailand, while wearing these standard shades. Nevertheless, the standard is safe and aviators will no doubt adorn student faces again this summer.
The ‘Bug-eye’ The sunglasses of choice for a) the hungover b), those hunted by the papparazzi and c), those less than handsome. The bug-eye style covers most of your face so it’s almost impossible to look ugly in them. Although if they are too over-sized you’re guaranteed to look silly.
The Wayferer Rayban re-launched the Wayferer this year and had a very exclusive party to celebrate. I wasn’t there but I hear it was a riot. Apparently the ‘distinctive trapezoidal frame spoke a non-verbal language that hinted at unstable dangerousness, but one nicely tempered by the sturdy arms which give the frames a 'masculine look.’ Whatevz mate, Bob Dylan wore them, they’re cool.
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FASHION
Edie does it Next month sees the release of Factory Girl on DVD. Thea Cunningham looks back to Edie’s stlye in anticipation of the Second Coming of Sedgwick
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ew York It Girl, fashion icon and original Warhol superstar, no other epitomized the rebellion of the 1960s quite like Edie Sedgwick. Portrayed by Sienna Miller in recent release Factory Girl, few have failed to succumb to the ultimate divinity of Edie’s wardrobe. Sedgwick simply defined the rebellious nature of the Factory. Highly caught up in the New York pop art culture of the time, waif-like Edie threw together a gorgeous collection of fur, stripes and geometric print, polishing off such creations with chandelier earrings, psychedelic sunglasses and peak caps. Her popularity channelled the likes of designers Betsey Johnson and Christobal Balenciaga into mainstream fashion. It’s not hard to understand the idolisation and adoration with which Warhol lavished upon his muse. Her stark, iconic beauty infamously adorned the covers of Time, Life and Vogue from 1963-1965, inspiring flocks of infatuated teenage fans to reach for the liquid eyeliner. Indeed, real-life clotheshorse Sienna is nothing less than a style
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and beige lips in a monochrome fashion are Edie personified – a stick of black kohl will come in handy to instantly ‘mod’-ify your look. And if your lashes fail to meet swoopingproportions, you may want to pump up the volume with a pair of falsies. Loud, bold and brash, Sedgwick’s style brought a fresh eccentricity to a mid-60s American culture immersed in sex, drugs and rock and roll. In a period obsessed with self-expression, Edie Sedgwick was everything an icon should be. Fashion will always need muses, and Edie is the ultimate.
icon herself. Only Miller could oh so fabulously pull off the tights and leotard ensemble that Edie would wear to Warhol’s Factory in moments of pure laziness. Sienna has religiously paid homage to the 60s icon in deluxe vintage pieces. Similarly, when models sashayed down the catwalk at Gucci spring/summer ’07 in designs reminiscent of the 60s silhouette, it was just the start of the Pucci-inspired Primark overload to come. The Mod look is certainly not for the timid. Uber-mini shift dresses in thigh-skimming, knicker-flashing proportions are best avoided if your legs resemble anything other than Twiggy’s. But don’t be afraid to experiment - the juxtaposition of patterns and clashing of colours were part of Edie’s allure. Team retro shapes with houndstooth, crochet with leopardprint and leather with patent. True Edie followers will know an outfit is not complete without a pair of Sedgwick’s signature black opaques. Make up EDIE: Perfect. Except for the drug addict thing should be neutral but striking; beauty spots, thick brows
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GAY
s c i s s a l c p Cam The Wizard of Oz Between the rainbow and the ruby slippers, the queer appeal of The Merry Ole Land of Oz is as explicit as the camel toe in Madonna's leotard. No other film has entered into the hearts and psyche of the gay community like the technicolour-acid-trip that is the wonderful Wizard of Oz. It established Judy Garland as one of the most well-loved gay icons of all time and secured Somewhere Over The Rainbow as a clichĂŠd yet still crucial anthem amongst the gays of the globe. From Elton John's Yellow Brick Road album to the high camp catchphrase "Fly my prettys, fly" of Ugly Betty's superbitch and new discovered gay idol Wilhemina Slater, Dorothy and her homoerotic harem of Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion just keep on giving to gay culture some 70 years after they first danced along the yellow brick road and into our souls.
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Queer as Folk
Love it for it's brutal honesty or loath it for its portrayal of the hedonism of gay culture, Queer As Folk, released by Channel 4 in 1999, made its own important mark in television history. It forced the viewing public to sit up and accept homosexuality whether they wanted to or not. In this show gay characters on TV were no longer token support castmembers, but by the writing of Russell T Davies, they were made gritty, essential and more real then ever before. Set in and around Canal Street, the Mancunian Mecca of gay culture, the show was both praised and detested for tackling drugs, under-age sex and good old-fashioned family values. Triumphant in ratings even if despised by the more conservative
audience, Davies got to carry his message of all things homosexual to the USA where the format of Queer As Folk has been hugely successful.
Loose Women It is nothing but a poor man's Sex and the City: these ladies swap Carrie’s Cosmos for cuppas and her Prada for Primark. The goddesses of lunchtime telly have done their hardest to fill the Monolos of Carrie Bradshaw and Co, since their departure from our screens back in 2004. At 12.30 every day comes the essential daily fix of sex and scandal (if you just so happen to have missed Jeremy Kyle). There's nothing a homosexual loves more then a cynical bitch like Carol McGiffin, just as we all have a place in our heart for botox-filled geriatrics. Take Joan Rivers as testament to that, as well as Loose Women's Cherie 'Let's Hear It' Hughson. And not forgetting everyone's favourite Nolan, Ms Coleen, who has a gay appeal to rival even the Chers and the Dollys of the world:
she was one fifth of Ireland's answer to the Von Trapps. And not forgetting that she has the kind of gravity-defying boobs that would bring any ladyloving lesbian to climax over their mid-afternoon munchies.
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GAY Team Madge vs Team Minogue It is a battle that is as old as time (or at least as far back as the 80s); the clash of two great titans of music, fashion and gay culture. Madonna vs Kylie. Who is the true poptastic leader of the homosexual race? The gay population has not been so split since the days of deciding between the blonde and brunette from ABBA (or ‘Agnethagate’ as history books would like to record it). From Her Madgesty's conical bras to Minogue’s gold hot-pants, there can be no certain answer as to who holds the title of the ultimate gay icon. Sure Madge was strutting her sexy stuff first, and by default gets the title of Queen. But Kylie has kept her fans more then satisfied in recent years by churning out more danceable delights then you can shake a didgeridoo at. Madonna, however, has only just recently gone back to her musical roots and given the gay community what they have been waiting for since she lost her blonde ambition way back in the 90s – Abba remixes, disco dancing and sparkly stilettos. But really there is no need to decide – you can love both Madonna's controversy and still show respect for Minogue's cheese. No matter if you Can't Get Kylie Outta Your Head, you can still always be Hung Up on Madonna.
Eurovision Pop music is camp and kitsch but with Eurovision, it truly out-gays itself. If heterosexual men obsess over the World Cup, then gay men and women go all out for Eurovision. The competition has spawned many of the greatest gay idols of our homo-heritage; Abba in 1974, Celine Dion in 1988 and transsexual Dana International in 1998. Eurovision 2007 was one of the gayest ever, with a Ukrainian drag queen and Scooch, a band made up of what seems to be two Shelia's
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Wheels rejects, the missing peroxide Mitchell brother and the illegitimate offspring of Dale Winton. Their classic line "would you like something to suck on for landing, sir" is
perhaps taking Eurovision's homo appeal a bit far though. As if Terry Wogan didn't keep things gay enough already: his acid tongue makes Pixie Perez sound like orphan Annie.
TWENTYONE
FOOD
The Pleasure of Paris Food mixes with Travel as Tasha Prest-Smith discovers the delights of Parisian Cuisine
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arisian cuisine is dynamic and constantly evolving. Classical dishes tend to be butter-based and centre on meat, poultry or fish. However, Paris has moved on from the minimalistic “nouvelle cuisine” of the 1980s. Today, many Parisian restaurants choose to base their meals on regional food (for example, Lyonnais cuisine), rooting their menus in tradition and simplicity. Provençal traditions, using olive oil, garlic and fresh herbs, are also gaining in popularity. In most Parisian restaurants, there is a focus on neat presentation and colour as well as taste. Paris’s best ethnic food derives, unsurprisingly, from France’s former colonies: Vietnam and North Africa. North African eateries are known as ‘couscous restaurants’, and serve cheap, filling, spicy foods. The capital also houses a number of Japanese restaurants, notably on the Rue St-Roch. The Latin Quarter, which buzzes with energy at night and is popular with students, contains Italian,
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Greek, Lebanese and Indian restaurants. Cafés are an inherent component of Parisian culture – Paris wouldn’t be Paris if you couldn’t sit at an outdoor table with a cappuccino and watch the world unravel before you. As with anywhere, they vary in size and according to taste; some of the most beautiful are those that contain Belle Époque décor (zinc bars, big mirrors and pretty tiles). Cafés in the main tourist and nightlife areas, such as those along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Boulevard StGermain, stay open until 3am. Some great cafés of the 1920s are on the
Boulevard Montparnasse. Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots, two cafés famed for their classiness, in the St-Germain-des-Prés area of the city, are loved by the élite literati and tourists alike. Of course, cafés aren’t all that’s on offer. Bistros are small, intimate restaurants, often with a limited but authentic menu. Brasseries, on the other hand, are large and bustling, with more extensive menus; often they serve Alsatian-style dishes, such as sausage platters and sauerkraut. Tea salons are best to visit mid-afternoon, when you can enjoy a fine tea, coffee or mint tea (served in dinky, goldrimmed glasses) along with a sweet, sticky pastry. Angélina on the Rue de Rivoli is a tea salon famed for its hot chocolate, and Lauderée on Rue Royale is renowned for its chocolate macaroons.
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FOOD
The Latin Quarter. Below: Traditional French oysters and Brie
supreme in summer. But perhaps the most popular street snack is the crêpe, filled with anything from pesto to chocolate praline sauce to honey. Some of the best crêpes, in my experience, can be found in the Place du Tetre, the artists’ square in Montmatre. If you are eating out, there will be the foods everyone associates with France available – brioche, croissants and pain au chocolat for breakfast, foie gras (goose liver pâté) and stuffed snail shells when going gourmet, and Brie and Camembert cheeses, eaten after the main course. But if you’re feeling more adventurous, there are some lesser-known meals floating around, such as homard persillé (lobster terrine cooked in a flavoured stock with parsley, shallots and herbs), oeufs en cocotte à l’estragon (a simple dish of eggs baked in ramekin dishes, topped with tarragon-flavoured
Some of the best crêpes, in my experience, sauce), or chèvre tiede sur un lit de salade (grilled goat’s cheese with a classic mixedleaf salad). One of the most aesthetically pleasing dishes is coquilles SaintJacques, scallops cooked with sliced mushrooms, lemon juice, butter and white wine, which are then served on one half of the scallop shell, with piped mashed potato circling the edge. For those of you with a sweet tooth, and for the veggies who can’t hack all the meat and seafood, Paris excels at desserts. Fruit tarts are probably the most common sweet; two typical ones are tarte tatin (upside-down apple tart) and tarte Alsacienne, containing confectioner’s custard and various sliced fruits. For pure indulgence, cut out the fruit and have a sugar rush with a traditional crème brûlée or crème caramel. Whatever your taste, Paris is a culinary treasure-trove, with a greater wealth of eating places than any other city of comparable size. Bon appetit!
can be found in the Place du Tetre, the artists’ square in Montmatre Wine bars also serve snacks throughout the day – open sandwiches, made with sourdough Poilâne bread and topped with pâté, sausage or cheese, are common favourites. Finally, Paris has both pubs and ‘beer bars’, the latter being larger and selling particular styles of food. These include tarte aux poireaux (leek tart), moules-frites (a generous bowl of steamed mussels and French fries) and tarte aux oignons (onion tart). The French take their cuisine very seriously, so snack and take-away foods can be just as good as eat-in meals. Parisian natives often buy half a baguette and their preferred fillings to eat in the gorgeous parks dotted about the city, such as those in the Tuileries Quarter or the Luxembourg gardens. Baked goods such as mille feuilles, quiche and pizza can be obtained from street stands and bakeries. Sandwich bars offer flat focaccia bread straight from a wood-burning oven, and ice-cream stands rule
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TWENTYTHREE
The Band Wagon
MUSIC
Averages, halves and percentages
Thought of the week...
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Anything Goes DJ-ing Show will be at Club Tantra on Wednesday June 13
Dangerous self-reflection
riday night on the BBC often provides an interesting mixture of musical entertainment. Bands fall over each other to plug their latest recorded offerings on Johnathan Ross and the slightly less shameless attempts of those ‘doing it for the music’ are showcased on Jools Holland. Last Friday was no different as Ricky Wilson swaggered forth onto BBC1’s plug-happy stage. Carefully placing his sweaty mits on the microphone, looking straight down the barrel of the tube with his beady, self-assured eyes and screeching out new single Everything Is Average These Days. The sheer irony of these words falling out of Wilson’s mouth are enough to warrant a national shortage of clean underwear through uncontrolable urination. The Kaiser Chiefs have apparently achieved a new level of banal insignifance on most recent album Yours Truly, Angry Mob. The fact that they even presume themselves wise enough to pass comment on the state of todays society, into which they are pumping their oh so ordinary excuse for modern day britpop , is as laughable as the album name. SJ
NEWS IN BRIEF: Crisp-chomping Welsh singer Charlotte Church has slated the judges on the X-Factor, saying that she could do a better job than any of them. Ugly freak-magnet The Eurovision Song Contest was won by freakishly ugly Serbian Serifovic, with her bythe-book power ballard Molitva, complete with electronic drums and cheesey key-change. Mighty shepherds of the stoned immaculate Pink Floyd reunited just over a week ago to play a tribute to original singer Syd Barrett. However, ego-maniacs Waters and Gilmour did not play on the stage at the same time. But this was made up for by guest appearances from the likes of Damon Albarn and Chrissie Hynde
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The night will be a delicious cocktail of hip-hop, breaks and drum and bass. Will dirty electronica on the side. Get your dancing boots and wind down after the exam torment. Entry is just £3. For more details check out: myspace.com/agdishow
QUENCH LOVES LOCAL THE VICTORIAN ENGLISH GENTLEMANS CLUB Chapter Arts Center
6th May onight sees The Victorian English Gentlemens Club play their last date of a mammoth tour, headlining a bill of femalefronted bands selected by local promoter Peppermintpatti. After the perplexing support act Party Weirdo (think ‘the Woman’s Liberation Movement do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), the indie-punk spikiness of the VEG Club, with their boy/girl harmonies and intuitive togetherness offer an all round more sophisticated spectacle. Guitarist Adam Taylor’s vocals quiver with a twisted fragility on Dead Anyway, before he’s whipped into a frenzy during old favourite Ban The Gin. Drummer Emma Daman, clad in
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a vibrant pink cocktail dress, continually threatens to crush him beneath a tirade of rampant drums, while bassist Louise Mason broods mysteriously throughout. With Taylor dressed in camo jacket and beret, who would bet against this trio achieving world domination. Jim Finucane
Check Out: Quench’s blues-rock favourites
Suns of Thunder release a brand new EP on May 23. Catch their launch party at The Monkey Bar in Swansea. TWENTYFIVE
MUSIC TRADEMARK Raise The Stakes Truck
Don’t Mess With Copyright
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here’s nothing wrong with a bit of innovation – in fact it’s great when it works, resulting
sometimes in the musical pioneers of our time. Thing is, there’s a fine line between great originality and, well, crap. And this record crossed the line spectacularly. It starts with some sort of orchestral arrangement, leading into what can only be described as what the Lightening Seeds would sound like if they were trying to be camp or electronica gone wrong. And then
some extra cheese thrown in for fun. The only redeeming feature I can find about these people is that they signed to one of my local record labels, although I’m not sure whether this makes me happy or sad. So, I don’t think there is anything more to say before I throw this CD across the room in disgust. 2/10 Josie Allchin
Trademark “Thing is, there’s a fine line between great originality, and, well, crap.” NINE INCH NAILS Year Zero Halo
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REZNOR: Piercing
ELVIS PERKINS Ash Wednesday
XL Recordings
Uh-Huh
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debut from the beautifully soulful voice with impressive range and heartbreaking verve. Perkins announces himself from Willy Mason support act
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Vanstonised
he year is 2022. The powers that be have reduced the world to a right old shambles. There’s this weird thing called The Presence. And everyone’s gone a bit fanatically religious. Such is the world as envisaged in Nine Inch Nails’ new record, Year Zero, which insolently disobeys the rule of the concept album by being utterly not crap. Better than that, it’s fantastic. First single Survivalism is a particular stand-out, its stripped-downmachismo demanding a pumping fist and snarling face. Elsewhere, The Warning boasts a riff of such silken-squealiness that it haunts the mind for minutes afterwards, threatening to ruin the following few tracks. Throughout, Reznor’s supernatural ability to force an army of synths and beats to tunefully mur-
to a yarn spinner of great potential. With blistering songs that burn slowly he demonstrates inspired arrangements with violin, horns, and glockenspiel adding the extra mile to almost common-place gems like Ash Wednesday.. It is in this mid-album comfort zone that Perkin’s truly shines with the obscure French voice samples on Emile’s Vietnam In The Sky and wistful The Night & The Liquor. Where folk is easily summated as toe-tapping skiffle or poetic pro-
der each other refuses to let the listener keep still. Despite being over an hour long, there is not a single track that could be described as filler. Even the token instrumental, Another Version Of The Truth, justifies itself as a necessary breather after 13 tracks of squeak-and-beat-laden frenzy. And to put the bitter cherry on the wonderfully nihilistic cake, Reznor saves the best of his despairing lyrics for a gloriously anthemic chorus on the final track, Zero Sum: Shame on us / Doomed from the start / May God have mercy on our dirty little hearts. So catchy is the wailing that it begs to be ripped from its crackly submergence in layers of white noise andfrenetic drums (doubtlessly a fiddled and filtered version will soon surface on the internet, courtesy of an eager fan). By the end of the journey - and, yes, it is a journey - it is almost impossible to resist rushing outside, getting down on your knees, and screaming the word ‘Wrath’ repeatedly at the moon. But in a good way. 9/10 Ed Vanstone found musings of love, Perkins cleverly treads the tightrope. The wealth of instrumental diversity is promising with the female harmonies of Ariana Lenarsky mystifying It’s a Sad World After All. An album that perhaps without added intricacies would fade into the background of his contemporaries but one with the depth of character to make some ripples. 8/10 Emily Kendrick
MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
MUSIC ZEN MOTEL Stations Of The Dead
TWO GALLANTS
The Scenery Of Farewell E.P
Imprint Records
Saddle Creek
T
John
he product of two recording sessions in early 2007, this E.P sees Two Gallants in an even more stripped-down arrangement providing melancholic tales primarily of love and loss. Anybody familiar with their previous two albums though will be unsurprised by the duo’s ability to produce folk-drenched ballads, accompanied here principally by picking guitar and a focus on harmonica. Seems Like Home To Me hints at the inevitable tour-bus blues that blights any successful band, while the powerful dual vocals on All Your Faithless Loyalties emphasises a despair that runs throughout the E.P. But after 28 minutes of downtrodden lament, the prospect of the fully electric third L.P to come later this year is as exciting as ever. 7/10 Jim Finucane
MUMM-RA: NO “THE”
but the Essex-based band are really only taking an already well-trodden path. This isn’t to say, however, that this is a poor album; Dress Code Violence and Head stand out as enjoyably grainy, grimy tracks, while Pissed both staggers and swaggers as an anthem for the most determined partygoers and alcoholics. At best, the band’s lyrics are clichéd, but with down-and-dirty riffs and thrashing drums like those in Howl, who cares about the words? The way to Zen in this album is clearly through headbanging - lots of it. 5/10 Renyi Lim
J
Morgue Music
udging by the demonic stripper on the front of this album and the Towers of London – Motley Crue hybrids on the back, this looks like the kind of record that, when opened, will be accompanied by a dribble of Jack Daniels and several hundred cigarette butts. True, Zen Motel are all about the booze, sex, and everything else that comes with the cock-rock package,
HOLY GHOST REVIVAL Bleeding Light
MUMM-RA These Things Move In Threes
1965
Sony BMG
B
RARRRRR!!!
ursting out of Bexhill-On-Sea and straight onto the pages of the NME, Mumm-Ra are the latest ‘hotly tipped new band’ ready to ‘provide the soundtrack to 2007’. Mixing fundamental indie-ness with a strong pop awareness, Mumm-Ra sound like a more acceptable Kooks, you know, like how The Kooks would be if your mum didn’t like them and couldn’t hum some of their songs. These Things Move In Threes is a reasonable debut from these young tykes, with tracks such as What Would Steve Do and Sick Deal showing some potential to set them apart from boring NME-raped wankstains The Horrors and The View and The Automatic with whom they shared the stage on this year’s (you guessed it, kids!) NME Awards Tour. Plus, there is not a ‘The’ in their name, which incidentally, is taken from the main antagonist of popular 80s cartoon series Thundercats. So, they must be good, obviously. 6/10 Tom Williams
“They sound like a more
H
Popular with Casper
oly Ghost Revival is clearly a band with a fixation on the supernatural, expressing their intrigue in ten tracks of Vaudevilleinspired glam rock. A combination of strings and piano provide a grand, orchestral feel, while Conor Kiley sings with an eccentricity that sits somewhere between Television’s Tom Verlaine and Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock. The tracks float into one another, undetected by the listener, just like the individual who unwittingly stumbles further into the depths of a haunted house: the scene that this album is undoubtedly meant to soundtrack. Kiley talks of gypsies, princesses, and death, while closer Ignight, Ignight, Goodnight… is an unashamedly baroque ditty. Of course, all this is rather entertaining, as long as the HGR tongue is firmly in cheek, but that is something that is not so easy to decipher merely on record. 6/10 Jim Finucane
Mumm-Ra
acceptable Kooks...like if your Mum didn’t listen to them.” MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
TWENTYSEVEN
MUSIC
e live live live live live live live live live live live live live Friday May 11th
Clwb Ifor Bach
Saturday Looks Good To Me
I
sn't it nice when someone picks all the right support bands? After one man and his loop peddle, Chris Bathgate, warms up Clwb to the extent that I have to remove my jumper, The School sweeten us up with songs poppier than a popsicle, and just as delicious. Next, Spencer McGarry Season bash out another effortless set of post-punkery. Finally then, Saturday Looks Good To Me grin at us from the stage and play, what seems to be, a 20-minute set of Dinosaur Jr. covers. But, hell, none of us are getting any younger and at least they do it well. The little pocket of hardcore-SLGTM fans are quite happily making fools of themselves, by proving to be the world's worst dancers, while the rest of us smile and tap our toes, quite contently, to the indie-pop beat. It's just a little disappointing their set is so teasingly short. Matthew Hitt
O
The Twang Friday March 2nd
T THE SCHOOL: Ry Vs. Glock
h Dear, the omens aren't good for tonight. Zany band name? Check. NME backing? Check. Derivative sub-Arctics indie rock racket? Oh hang on, wait a minute, this just got a bit interesting. The Wombats saunter on stage bringing the sense of pleasure that one can only gleam from knowing that you can see at least three scousers, so that's at least three car stereos that are safe. Regional stereotyping aside, The Wombats charm and exuberance gushes from the stage, uniting both Stella-swilling lager lout and first gig Indie Cindies in a collective pool of scally pop bliss. Lyrically, The Wombats are superb, evoking ASBO Britain without having to resort to chip shop cliches, a remarkable feat when you take into account the current vogue for 'gritty realism' in lieu of actual substance (Yes I'm talking about you, The Twang. Seriously, how old is their frontman?). Suprisingly, the musicianship is pretty spot on too, the drummer especially, kicking the living shit out of his drumkit as if it were an Everton fan. An undiscovered jangle pop gem, with a singalongability to challenge even Monster for it's universality. Catch them before Jo Whiley starts playing them and ruins it for everybody. Ben Marshall
TWENTYEIGHT
Barfly
Tuesday May 8th
The Point
The Wombats
SLGTM: Better than Sunday
he great deal of hype surrounding the Twang is itself good enough reason to be sceptical about this ‘Streets-meets-Stone Roses’ quintet, but as a fellow Brummie I felt obliged to attend the sold-out Point. Encouragingly, the older crowd offer the hope that the fuss may in fact be more than mere NME hysteria.However, seconds in and my faint hopes are conclusively shattered. Singer Phil Etheridge swaggers on stage then proceeds to shout incoherently over meek melodies. My companion sums up the dismal vocals: “it sounds like he’s saying racist things, but I can’t make them out.” Ah yes, the beauty of the Midlands accent. Another bouncing, grinning character provides the occasional harmony to quell Etheridge’s torrents, but is merely reminiscent of the role Peep Show’s Jez would perform if he did in fact ever ‘make it’. Tonight is the first night of an extensive nationwide tour for the Twang, which may excuse the shambolic beginnings. Things do gradually improve with the Stone Roses-esque melodies coming to the fore, but that is surely scant justification for the unnerving title of ‘Britain’s Best New Band’. Jim Finucane.
MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
MUSIC
e live live live live live live live live live live live live liv Wednesday March 7th
I
The Point
A Hawk and a Hacksaw
love the Point. It's such a wonderful intimate venue; big enough to pull the bands you really love but not too big to loose the feeling that you're watching them play in you're school sports hall. A Hawk and a Hacksaw are known for their, for want of a better word, “mental” live shows, and everyone was expecting something special. Tonight proved to be more than I could have even hoped for. This is no ordinary show, for tonight Jeremy Barnes (one half of a Hawk and ex-Neutral Milk Hotel) is joined by the Hun Hungar Ensemble, five grizzled Hungarian musicians they picked up one night in Budapest, perhaps on some sort of absinthe fuelled binge. The show starts with two figures on stage, one playing a flat open piano thingy which he hits with sticks (apparently its called a cymbalon) and Heather Trost (the other half of a Hawk) playing the most mournful Romanian violin. Then through the crowd walk four masked troubadours, playing a mix of brass instruments, accordion, violins and a giant clacker. After wandering around the crowd for a while, a large amount of whom are seated on the floor in that cosy intimate manner, these masked Eastern European minstrels arrive on stage
and the set truly begins. The accordion player unmasks as the musical traveller that is Mr Barnes and, donned with bell hat, begins to fiddle away madly on his accordion, pounding on drums and sporadically shouting into his microphone. Meanwhile the band are trumpeting and tromboning away, playing the type of Eastern European wistful tunes that make me feel like I'm in a small village tavern 1000 miles outside Bratislava. Mid way through the set everyone left the stage for “a glass of red wine”, a particularly endearing
“Perhaps on some sort
of absinthe fuelled binge” equivalent to an encore, before which however is a spectacular Cymbalon solo (yes…the piano thingy). This almost makes me cry, I'm not really sure why but the mood is so delicate and charged at the same time that it almost brings tear to my eye, I find my self wishing these four bearded men from the East were my uncles, playing in my front room at Christmas and other family occasions. The set hurtles on with Transylvanian wedding songs and Bosnian folk tunes making he crowd dance away until the nights inevitably conclusion. Hungarian toasts over and wine drunk we stumble out of the old church, overwhelmed by new Europe. Will Hitchins
ES M O C HERE SUN... THE The Quench mini-preview to some of festivals from Bristol to Cardiff to Europe. Here’s a taste of some of the best line-ups around this summer... Dot to Dot Bristol, May 26th:
New Young Pony Club, Chromeo, Annuals, Sky Larkin, Architecture in Helsinki, The Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club
Full Pony Ponypridd, May 26th:
Lost Prophets, Gallows, Paramore, Kids in Glass Houses, Gethin Pearson
Metro Weekender/Cardiff Calling Cardiff, August 26th: The Streets, Dirty Pretty Things, Dizzee Rascal, 2 Many DJs
Roskilde Denmark, July 5th-8th
Bjork, Mastodon, Queens of the Stone Age, The Who
Bestival Isle of Wight, September 7th-9th:
Beastie Boys, Chemical Brothers, Primal Scream, James Lavelle, Mr. Scruff
Carling Weekend Reading/Leeds, August 24th-26th HAWK AND A HACKSAW: Standoff
MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, Eagles of Death Metal, Arcade Fire
TWENTYNINE
MUSIC
ngles singles singles singles singles singles singles LILLY ALLEN Shame For You
TINY DANCERS Hannah We Know
Humorous and honest lyrics are let down by poor writing in places, and the lame attempt to add ‘class’ by layering jazz influences over musically weak riffs (not to mention a “wtf?” bassline) leaves me, personally, pretty pissed off. This track is a musical incarnation of diamante. Avoid if possible. 3/10 SB
At times it sounds like an annoying Peter Kay charity single, but at others it's a melodic cocktail of spirited summer pop and beautiful-easy listening. 7/10 FJ
EMI
BE BE SEE Disney Eyes Synth melodies whirl around jingle bells with Divine Comedy quips, pretty unmemorable and repetitive, except for the pronunciation of Kilimanjaro. And no wiser about what precisely Disney Eyes are either? 5/10 EK
SCOTT MATTHEWS Elusive Island
With a tender voice and choral backing, Elusive is a pleasing three or so minutes; but with inevitable comparisons to Jeff Buckley likely to eclipse any praise, this struggles to set Matthews apart from the rest of theacoustic minstrels. 7/10 JF
21 The FUN way to fill your fortnight...
24
THURSDAY
Secondsmile/Meet Me in St Louis at Barfly [friends of friends you see]
28
MONDAY
Killing for Company at The Point
THIRTY
BIFFY CLYRO Living is a Problem Because Everything Dies 14th Floor
EMI
Baked & bladdered
Parlophone
MONDAY
Isis at The Point [Toolesque technical metal]
25
FRIDAY
Smokey Smothers & Mellow Fellows at the Cafe Jazz [it’s dir ty and it’s blues]
29
TUESDAY
Milburn at The Barfly [Zane Lowe would want you to go]
Living… is the second single from the forthcoming album Puzzle; perfect for a Scream soundtrack. Particularly morbid lyrics, but, as you would expect, a sublimely interweaving mix of randomness and ambience, with choral and orchestral backing. This is everything you’d expect from a trio of hairy pedalhappy Scotsmen. 7/10 BL
THE BIRD AND THE BEE Again and Again EMI
A slice of twinkly summery pop washed over with samba beats that would better suit tropical sunshine rather than a dark, damp student house in Cathays. It’s not that I don’t like it, more that I can’t bring myself to when it’s as wet as a soggy nappy outside. 6/10 JA
22
TUESDAY
Along Came Man at The Barfly [support by Gethin Pearson]
26
SATURDAY
Beatbox Ballroom at Buffalo [beats and beats]
23
Girls Aloud at CIA [I’m only going for the music... honest]
27
SUNDAY
APERTURE Bank Holiday Special at Clwb [ drum/ bass/jungle and stuff £3 before 11, £5 after]
30WEDNESDAY 31 Dufus at Buffalo [on a rare Buffalo band night]
WEDNESDAY
THURSDAY
Soft hearted Scientists at Clwb Ifor Bach [with awsome support from My Kung Fu DJs]
MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
MUSIC
s
Canada usic and Canada should by rights be a match made in fiery, eternal damnation. Alanis Morrisette, Sum 41, Avril Lavigne etc. Frankly, a blazing pitchfork of hellacious pain and a life as Satan’s bitch seems much more appealing in comparison. But before you go cancelling your flight and assuming Montreal is in fact Hell on Earth, you should know that that place, that quiet little spot just outside America, is in fact the true home of alternative music.
M
Metric Despite forming in 1998, scene lynchpins Metric found themselves to be the hot tasty treat that everybody wanted a bite of last year. But let’s be honest, when your album Live It Out is such a sweet slice of pop-punk perfection was it really any surprise? Broken Social Scene Like Metric, Broken Social Scene had
been making beautiful music long before people decided to open their ears and actually give it much attention. While centred around Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the band features a revolving door of musicians (including Feist and Metric’s Emily Haines) which has ensured an eclectic and always amazing sound. The Dears For all Canada’s indie eccentricities, when you’re in the mood for some anthems of downright heartbreak or blissful romanticism look no further than The Dears. Unashamedly inspired by The Smiths, Murray Lightburn’s soulful Anglo-tinged tones can actually make people’s eyes explode with tears. True story. Arcade Fire Towering above the rest though stand Arcade Fire, saviours of planet earth from the dull and the generic. Crushing everything in their path with the sweep of a violin bow and the
Behind the music...
great to work with bands you respect. Great to provide a service that hasn’t been done before on the same level. Working one on one with artists on a personal level.
Max Kolombos What do you do? I design website for bands. Basically my role is to act as an intermediary between artists and tell them what they can and can’t be done with art concepts and then make it happen. Why do you do it? It’s incredibly interesing and
MUSIC@GAIRRHYDD.COM
How did you get started? Personal recommendation basically, I built up a portfolio and pushed myself on people. When i started the whole internet deal was a new thing. The Radiohead stuff came through knowing Stanley Donwood. What's coming up that I should know about? I recently completely re designed the radiohead website, there was very little to work with, just bits and pieces. It was cool, I had to create something out of not that much.
blasting honk of an accordion. With their second album Neon Bible having already been touted as the ‘bestrecord-ever’…well, at least since their last album, they can clearly do no wrong. But this isn’t even scratching at the surface of Canadian music, this is merely poking it with a stick and running away. How about oft-forgotten nu-nu-wave originals Hot Hot Heat, indie legends like The New Pornographers or relative new kids on the block like garage rock monkeys Tokyo Police Club to name but a few. Helped by labels like Arts & Crafts (home to some of Canada’s finest and Cardiff’s own Los Campesinos!) the incredible DIY aesthetic that has emerged is ensuring that some of the most interesting and exciting bands are finally getting the love and respect they deserve. And what’s more there isn’t a skater boi in sight. Ladies and gentlemen, heaven awaits. Tom Brookes What's the best gig you've seen recently? A couple of weeks ago I saw Silver Mount Zion downstairs at the Oxford Zodiac. It was a brilliant, really initmate gig. Only about 200 people. Almost like a final farewell to the Zodiac before it gets taken over by the giant that is the Carling cooperation. One all-time favourite record? Pavement; Wowee Zowee. The recent re-release is the perfect way of listening to this record. Current Favourite Record? The Hate Rock Trio; Nostalgia. There a band from New Zealand and it’s an amazing album. Give it a listen.
THIRTYONE
F I L M
N E W S
FILM film@gairrhydd By Hose Cuervo High Class Escort
O
k, so there’s not too much to the film section this week, but hey, we’re students too. Damn essays.
HAMMER HORROR: Aaaaaargh!
TIN-MOTHER-FUCKING-TIN
Possibly the best thing ever to come out of Belgium (go on, try to prove me wrong) comic book legend Tintin is set to hit the big screennext year. Even more tantalising the heavy weight combination of Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson are the ones set to put him there. Between the two of them they are set to make a trilogy of films (with direction duties split between the two of them) which shall be filmed using motion capture technology, recreating the animated adventure of the great detective in 3D. It is as yet unclear which of his adventures are going to make up the plot of the three films, but it matters little to us, we’re well excited.
M ORE Film Section
IT’S HAMMER TIME
For years Hammer House of Horror was one of the biggest names in British film making. Now, decades after its hay-day as a horror instutution Hammer is set to make its return. After being taken over for an undisclosed amount by some Dutch company or other, Hammer are looking to make their return to film making. Best known for their takes on the likes of Dracula and Frankenstein back in the 60s and 70s, Hammer did a lot to launched the careers of the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. However, the question is whether their lo-fi tongue in cheek aesthetic can be pulled off in the 21st century, or whether it’ll just suck.
Noone is marking us or giving us damn percentages when we write this stuff. Ok, so we may get criticised in darkened allyways and back street clubs but hey, we can’t here you. So its ok.
Sixteen thousand words I’ve writen this week. Sixteen thousand mother munching words! Would of been ok too if I’d done them a while ago and not just tried to do it all in the last week.
L ESS Essays
On DVD: German Cinema boxset ! The Last King of Scotland ! General Idi Amin Dada ! The Pursuit of Happyness ! Diary of a Lost Girl ! Rocky Balboa ! Sid and Nancy SE In cinemas: ! Spider-man 3 ! This is England
FILM@GAIRRHYDD.COM
SLOTH: Eeeergh?
Coming soon... Designed to get you sweating at the mere thought of their arrival: Pirates of the Carribean: Worlds End (Very Soon!) We’re literally moistening ourselves here at the anticipation of finding out what happens to Captain Jack and Co. The Simpsons Movie (July-ish) Finally, the big screen version of the best thing on TV arrives. We just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hope that its not shit.
THIRTYTHREE
FILM
THIS IS ENGLAND: Oi! Oi! THIS IS ENGLAND
SPIDER-MAN 3
Dir: Shane Meadows Starring: Thomas Turgoose, Stephen Graham, Jo Hartley
Dir: Sam Raimi Starring: Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Thomas Haden Church
Out Now, 100 mins
Shaun Fields, a lost and bullied twelve year old Northerner becomes accepted into a local skinhead gang through which he finds acceptance. The group is ruptured by the return of a racist convict to the affable group’s lives.
I
n a word, gritty. Shane Meadows’s latest work is a film about the skinhead movement which is dark and funny in equal measures. Meadows explores the origin of the skinhead movement which contrary to popular belief had initially multicultural origins. It is very difficult to flaw this piece of work, it is gentle and delicate in its handling of the loneliness of childhood, and violent and powerful where it needs to be. All the performances are excellent with every character utterly believable. An astonishing piece of cinema. Will Hitchins
FILM@GAIRRHYDD.COM
Out Now, 140 mins
Things are going swimmingly for Peter Parker (Maguire); Spiderman is a New York hero and he’s head over heels in love with MJ (Dunst). However, things are about to change. A link to his past in the form of Flint Marko a.k.a ‘The Sandman’ (Church); his former best friend Harry Osborn (Franco) as the ‘New Goblin,’ while at work new hot-shot photographer Eddie Brock (Grace) threatens his job. Also, (deep breath) a strange extra-terrestrial goo has attached itself to his costume, revealing a dark side to his personality...
W
ith three separate villains (four depending on your definition of a villain), there was equally a lurking sense of dread that perhaps that was too many. Unfortunately those fears are confounded in a confused, mismatched
movie.This suffers from Godfather part 3 syndrome; in so much as it has the unenviable task of following up a second movie of a trilogy that was damn near perfect film-making. Yes, there is at least one too many villains present in a film that suffers badly due the confusion and disorientation that the task of ensuring each of them sufficient screen-time causes. The New Goblin works well, interwoven with the conflicts of Peter’s personal life this deep-rooted backstory allows the character that much more resonance, especially in the hands of the impressive Franco. Disappointingly however, neither Sandman nor Venom fare so well. While Sandman is given an interesting story-arc that gives an important role in the evolution of Peter as Spiderman it is somewhat unnecessary and many scenes are overly sentimental. This criticism could be levelled at the film as a whole, while there are undoubted moments that tug at the heart strings, many seem enforced, injected with a sense of emotion that would have benefited from allowing the scenes to play-out naturally. While it can be argued that Sandman is overly utilised, to the extent that he should not have been included at all, the most intriguing villain of all, Venom, is severely underused, coming and going all within a final act that seems rushed even for a two-hour plus movie. Spiderman 3 is an indecisive and disorderly film, under the direction of someone other than Raimi it could have been a chaotic disaster. While it lacks the visual panache of its older siblings, Raimi has maintained a level of control over proceedings that ensures a decent but disappointing movie. Ashley James
THIRTYFIVE
FILM
dvds
box set THE CLASSICS OF GERMAN CINEMA 1920 - 1943 Out May 21 erhaps no period of any national cinema extends its influence so powerfully into the present day of movies as that of the German cinema of the Weimar era. From the fraught angles to the dreamlike interplay of light and shadow, German films of the pre-WWII era defined the famed "expressionistic" visual style even as they tested the boundaries of social and sexual taboos. Paul Wegener's and Carl Boese's 1920 film Der Golem features impressive sets and make-up for such an early film, and is seen as where modern horror began. More impressively, Der Golem was partly the inspiration for James Whales' version of Frankenstein. Robert Wiene's nightmarish classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari too is a story of mesmerism, sleepwalking, and murder - a demented dreamscape that perhaps single-handedly galvanized the Expressionist movement of silent cinema. This boxset presents outstanding restorations of monumental films within the Expressionist period but more importantly films that stand the test of time, inspiring filmmaking still today. Ryan Owen
P new release
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (MASTERS OF CINEMA) Out May 21 .W Pabst’s second work with Louise Brooks is a startling mix of German expressionism and social realism that still has the power to shock and move today. The innocent daughter of a pharmacist, Thymian, who is struggling to find her place in a world full of social restraints. Her rape by a family friend and subsequent illegitimate child take Thymian on a journey through a strict reform school, work in a brothel and “adoption” by a wealthy Count. She learns that the world is a harsh place but through this develops a sense of herself and the strength to forgive the family that cast her out. “With enough love, no-one need ever be lost again.”
G
SID AND NANCY: He did it his way
ROCKY BALBOA: a body like a condom filled with walnuts
re-release
new release
SID AND NANCY SPECIAL EDITION Out May 21 s relevant and disturbing now as it was 20 years ago, Sid and Nancy is both a scathing social commentary on the squalid decadence of the punk movement and at its heart, a love story. Although it deals with the rise and spectacular fall of one of punk’s most notorious characters, this really is the tragic story of two people who loved each other to destruction. Gary Oldman’s performance as Sid is breathtaking and worthy of the ensuing acclaim. 21 years on this movie still strikes a raw chord and takes an honest and often brutal look at one of rock’s enduring mysteries. Natalie Newbigging
ROCKY BALBOA Out May 21 he famous training scene is the same, Philadelphia’s the same and Rocky looks kind of the same, but there are big changes. Adrian’s died of the ‘woman cancer’, the clothes are different; Rocky’s veins are popping out more than ever before. 30 years on from the original film, Rocky decides there’s more in the “basement” that is his soul, and decides to fight the current undefeated heavyweight champion. The underdog struggledoes not seem as present as in the other films. You still get the stupid Rockysayings, like when he thinks Jamaica’s in Europe; but you never believe he might actually lose. Watch out for the best line in the film, Rocky: “Don’t hit me, my bones are brittle.” Katie Kennedy.
A
THIRTYSIX
T
FEATURES@GAIRRHYDD.COM
FILM new release
new release THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND Out Now n the 1970s, Idi Amin has just seized power after a military coup, and the naive young Scotsman Nicholas Garrigan (McAvoy) is the perfect candidate to be personal physician to the Ugandan president. Nicholas initially enjoys the job, but when the novelty of the fast cars and spacious apartments wear off, his eyes are drawn to the ruthless brutality of Amin's regime. He wants out, but Amin, who is rapidly losing international support, is having none of it. Don’t be fooled by the misleading title. The Last King of Scotland has very little to do with Scottish kings. Instead this is an incredible story of pain and suffering, on an unimaginable scale. Between 1971 and 1979 Idi Amin, who dubbed himself the Lord of All the Beasts, ruled Uganda with an iron fist. The former laundry boy seized power after a military coup, and is responsible for the death of more than 300,000 civilians. Forest Whitaker's Oscar-winning performance is simply breathtaking, but what really makes The Last King of Scotland such a hit is the simple fact that the blood, the tears and the anguish are real, and should never be forgotten. Matthew Horwood
I
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS Out Now ased on the life of Christopher Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness is a story about a man who digs deep in his desperate struggle for success. Playing the part of Chris Gardner, Will Smith stars as a hard-working farther who makes a living trying to sell dodgy medical equipment. Times are tough, money is short and the bills are mounting, yet the intimidating pile of medical junk in the family's shoebox kitchen is not shifting. To make matters worse, Chris is considering ditching his job to take up a traineeship as a high-flying stock-broker. Unfortunately for him, his wife, Linda (Thandie Newton), doesn't seem to share his ambitious and apparently farfetched plans. Before you know it, father and son are sleeping rough in train stations and on the floor in public toilets, but never-beaten Chris isstill determined to make it big as a stockbroker. Despite a solid start, it doesn't take long before things begin to sag; slowly but surely a promising film turns into a monumental bore - running in at just under two hours, you might wonder whether The Pursuit of an Ending, would have been a more appropriate title. Matthew Horwood
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GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA: starring Forest Whitaker
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND: starring idi Amin
new release
new release
GENERAL IDI AMIN DADA (MASTERS OF CINEMA) Out Now n acclaimed documentary following the real despot and his chilling plans for Uganda. Filmmaker Barbet Schroeder’s influential 1970s feature makes for compelling viewing as Idi Amin himself stares down the camera as he explains his views on the eradication if Israel, US foreign policies, Arab nations and the economy. It is simply shot, adopting an expressive fly-onthe-wall style that set the template for later works. Forest Whitaker’s performance in the more recent and fictional portrait of the ‘Lord of all Beasts and the Fish in the Sea’ is an excellent rendition of mad rage, but can not replicate the madness behind Amin’s eyes. Ewen Hosie
BABEL Out May 21 ere, Iñárritu weaves four interlocking stories that are linked by the shot of a bullet, delving into isolation, youth, family, immigration, terrorism. The cast are perfect, but relative newcomer Rinko Kikuchi excels. Also, the editing pulls you into each character, and lingers long enough so that when it pulls you out, you feel a momentary loss. The cinematography and sound are sublime, working its magic most poignantly when a teenage deaf girl called Chieko is in a Tokyo disco, mixing the vivid visuals with the almost silent audio. For fans of Crash, Babel has far more depth and less contrivences than that film, and has more poetry than many filmmakers will achieve in their lifetime. Ryan Owen
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THIRTYSEVEN
ARTS
The right impres
Tasha Prest-Smith looks back to the revoluntio Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement that began when a group of Parisian artists got together and started throwing around new ideas in the 1860s. They were a diverse group in terms of style and temperament, but unified primarily by their spirit of independence and rebellion. The Impressionists form some of the most influential artistic figures of the Victorian era; Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir are some of the most prolific and well-known. From the 1880s onwards, several artists, including Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec, began to develop different concepts for the use of colour, pattern, form and line, derived from the Impressionists before them, and their work is known as post-Impressionism. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by
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giving colours, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspiration from the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the act of painting out of the studio and into the world, sharing an affinity with their contemporaries, The PreRaphaelites, an English-based group of artists.
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Impressionism became seminal to the movements and lovers should head to Cardiff's very own National Museum Gallery Painting realistic scenes of modern life, the Impressionists emphasized vivid overall effects rather than individual details. Characteristics of Impressionist painting include: visible brushstrokes, open composition,
emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), everyday subject matter and unusual visual angles. They used short, broken brush strokes of pure, unmixed colour (a technique known as impasto), not smoothly blended, as was the custom at the time. So instead of physically mixing yellow and blue paint, they would place unmixed yellow paint on the canvas next to unmixed blue paint, so that the colours would mingle in the eye of the viewer to create the impression of green. The public, hostile at first, gradually acknowledged that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision. The artists did not, however, receive the approval of the art critics and establishment. In 1863, for example, the jury of the annual art show, the Salon de Paris, rejected Luncheon on the Grass by Manet, primarily because it depicted a nude woman with two clothed men at a picnic.
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ARTS
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onary Impressionist era The Impressionists give us a fascinating insight into 19th-century Paris, from the serenity of a trip along the Seine in Renoir's Luncheon of The Boating Party (1880), to Monet's world-renowned depictions of water lilies, to the posters in Art Nouveau style of cabaret performers by ToulouseLautrec (along with a fair few prostitutes), to Degas's famous portrayals of ballerinas in works such as The Dance Class (1876). By recreating the sensation in the eye that views the subject, rather than recreating the subject itself, and by revolutionising artistic techniques, Impressionism became seminal to the movements of the Fuart lovers should head to Cardiff's very own National Museum and Gallery, with its world-class collection of Impressionist paintings.
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BROADWAY DANCE The Gate Friday, May 11 Jazzy
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o be honest, I was quite skeptical about the dance show, since the society is only two years old. It was thus a pleasant surprise when the show turned out to be very energetic and dynamic, and the moves well synchronized. Also, there was a wide variety of dances: classical ballet, jazz dance, Irish dancing, and, last but not least, tap. As a bonus, there was live singing, which gave the show an extra dimension. Even though some dancers seemed to be a bit insecure, their smiles and energy gave an excellent vibe to the show, and made it into a very nice evening. Tasha Prest-Smith
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BOOKS
Bukowski Goes Postal Booze, women and post offices: John Davies explores one of America’s most prolific cult authors and his seminal debut novel Post Office.
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harles Bukowski’s heavily autobiographical debut novel, Post Office, first published in 1971 is a landmark in American literature. However the work is presented as a piece of fiction and Bukowski takes on the alter ego of Henry Chinaski. Henry is a low life; looking for easy gigs, booze and easy women. He is not part of the underground, he is not a criminal, he can hold down a job; he just simply has no respect for society, or the human race. He is at best tolerant of authority and at his funniest, aggressive, relentless and unforgiving particularly to his superiors or anyone who shows ambition in the workplace. The novel opens with a memo from the United States Post Office bringing the code of ethics to the attention to employees. It reads as the antithesis to Chinaski’s attitude; “all postal personnel must act with unwavering integrity and complete devotion to the public interest”. In the penultimate chapter we read letters of complaints against Chinaski’s behaviour, and official charges due to his regular unauthorised absences. In between, Henry struggles with small-town white-hot women. One of them marries him, bears his baby daughter and leaves with child in tow to find refuge from Henry in a hippy
camp. He struggles with 14-hour night shifts, his arch nemesis The Stone, “I was tired of reading his write-ups and knew from my trip downtown that any protest was useless. Without looking I threw it into the wastebasket” and the frustrations of being a postman without a permanent route. Then he struggles with the life of being a ‘regular’, “That meant holiday pay (subs didn’t get paid for holidays) and a 40 hour week with 2 days off”.
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Bukowski portrays himself as a womanising drunk, a big man who doesn’t give a fuck
Things start looking up for Henry, he was winning at the race track, enough that he could afford to quit his postal gig. He had a new girl, Joyce, with a huge sex drive and a father with more money than everyone else in the town put together. However, Joyce wanted to show her parents that he was not after their money and suggested that they both get jobs, and before he knows it he’s “taking the civil service exam again. Only this time I marked the paper ‘clerk’ instead of ‘Carrier.’” Chinaski is not without problems here, again with superiors, but also with deadlines. During this period we have glimpses that Chinaski is more than just a drunk. He may not treat his women perfectly but he genuinely cares for them, and there are tender moments in this novel. He rekindles a relationship with an alcoholic ex and tries his best to look after her. He is the first at the hosBUKOWSKI: On the job pital when she is taken in after a massive alcohol binge. When
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an old carrier can’t hack the job anymore, breaks down, and fades away, Chinaski tries to take care of him and demands acknowledgement, or help from the supervisors. To Henry’s dismay nobody cares, apart from the superiors who just worry about who is going to “throw his case” and the old fellow is never seen again. Charles Bukowski, like 1970’s underground comic writer Harvey Pekar, wonderfully illustrates the prosaic nature of life. The motto of Pekar is that ordinary life is pretty complex stuff, and this is true of this piece of grime fiction. Bukowski sometimes portrays himself as a womanising drunk, a big man who doesn’t give a fuck. But the most resonating characteristics of Bukowski’s work are his tenderness and ability to convey the language of everyday people that often have no voice in society. John Davies Bukowski: The Man Behind the Myth •Born 1920, died 1994. •Bukowski wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, screenplays and novels. •He left his job at the post office for the promise of $100 a month to write for Black Sparrow Press •Much of his work is semi-autobiographical, using the character of Henry Chinaski as his alter-ego. •He penned the screenplay of Barfly (1987), a semi-autobiographical look at his own life •The film Factotum (2005) was based on his novel of the same name, focusing on Henry Chinaski as he moves from job to job. •Bukowski has influenced countless authors, but has also had an effect on the music world with everyone from Tom Waits to Modest Mouse listing him as an influence. TW
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BOOKS
The Guardian Hay Festival
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very year since 1988, Hay-onWye has been home to one of the world’s most prolific and most-visited literary festivals. Bibliophiles flock to the small Welsh market town to attend talks and readings from some of the biggest names in literature. Described as “the town of books”, Hay-on-Wye is home to over 30 bookshops, most of which deal in second-hand books. Recently, the festival has expanded to include music events and specialist film screenings, as well as hosting a children’s literary festival dubbed “Hay Fever”. This year there is also a week-long creative writing workshop, showing you how to do it right. There really is something for everyone at the Hay Festival which runs this year from May 24 to June 3.
Books Recommends 26/05 Roger Cook Investigative journalism pioneer who exposed lots and lots of naughty The Raw Shark Texts Steven Hall
Canongate Books
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y eyes slammed capital O open and so Eric Sanderson finds himself thrust back into his life, a life which entirely eludes his memory and is explainable only through the equally elusive First Eric Sanderson’s ciphers and suggestions. In pursuit of his past, our protagonist embarks upon a bizarre voyage peppered with such inspired characters as a temperamental professor of CryptoConceptual Oceanography, the mysterious Un-space Committee, and aggressively territorial conceptual sharks. Propelling this surreal story is the love that withstands Eric’s imposed
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things talks about his work and new autobiography. Gordon Brown Now looking certain to take over from old Tony, Brown talks about some of his political heroes. Gruff Rhys Super Furries legend talks music and politics and also performs some tracks off the superb solo album ‘Candylion’. Nick Broomfield The prolific serious film-maker discusses the film ‘Ghosts’ and previews his new film ‘Haditha’. 27/05 AA Gill The scathing Sunday Times journalist talks about his work. Ruth Rendall Everyone’s mum’s favourite crime writer discusses her work. 28/05 A discussion on the merits of Public Service broadcasting with Edwina Currie, Alan Yentob and friends. Andrew Marr The long-armed correspondent gives
his take on modern Britain. Dara O’Brien A stand-up set from the Irish guy. 30/05 Iain Banks A novelist talks about a novel Simon Finch and Gabriel Range They killed George Bush in a film, now they talk about it. 02/05 Quentin Blake The innovative illustrator talks about his creations and also draws some stuff. Alex James The Blur bassist turned country bumpkin talks about musical celebrity. Armando Ianucci The man behind Alan Partridge and The Day Today presumably talks about funny things. David Attenborough Everyone’s favourite Sunday morning hangover cure voice talks about filming nature. Tom Williams
on its outskirts. amnesia, the woman that consumes Hall’s torrential creativity comhis sub-conscious. Their romance is bines innovative content with invennot saccharine or synthetic, but hontive form, the pages punctuated with esty depicted and heart-wrenchingly textual pictures which can be philorelatable. Though this devotion is sophical, thrilling or just funny. never euphuistically eulogised, the Though bursting with such animatenderness which permeates the tion, the novel is restrained from the tale is infinitely more touching. Love ridiculous by more sombre reflecbecomes the unobtrusive and unaftions on the respective and relative fected loom onto which the threads natures of love and language. The of this narrative are interlaced, and Raw Shark Texts is a clever love story without which the tapestry of life that is simultaneously sorrowful, could not be woven. sleuthing, surreal and so, so sweet. Despite the implausible premises 9/10 and personas, the novel is not Roseanna Eastoe so much in the tradition of magical-realism as hallucinogenic-realism. Luxuriant description and lapses into stream of consciousness cocoon the narrative in a dreamlike haze, at times poetic in its fluidity; yet the strikingly natural dialogue and plentiful pop-culture references ground events in the Real World – though perhaps, like the characters, SHARK: completely irrelevant only precariously teetering
FORTYONE
DIGITAL
Tim Scriven Looks at the games industry’s dirty little secret....
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echnology is fostered by capitalism in the same way as an innocent child might be suckled on the teat of some hideous, androgynous wet-nurse. For every forward-thinking lefty who wants to push forward the bounds of human perception there are approximately 26.5 executives called Rupert simultaneously wanking into a tophat at the prospect of how much money can be made. Hence the conception of ‘the games industry’ and the console computer, a second surrogate parent to take over from the TV when it gets too tired from raising the nation’s children. The games industry spends loads of money on adverts to convince everybody everywhere that these new inventions are completely indispensable. “Deary me!” chuckles the games industry to itself like a benevolent forest-Lord. “I need some more sexually licentious maids to
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help me milk this, the largest of cash cows!” But there’s no need to stop there, thinks the games
sider kissing. The bastard progeny of this heinous scheme includes the classic
I had Mick and Mack on the Amiga and it was about as fun and difficult
t of fire as trying to build a snowman ou industry. Why should I be the only one raking in the billions. Surely my friend the fast food industry is entitled to a slice of the pie. We can make a game that simultaneously makes money for me and shamelessly promotes your chronically unhealthy sugar-fats! “But hang about” says the fast food industry. “Surely nobody is stupid enough to engage with a story that actually revolves around that trash we serve.” “Yes they are!” cackles the games industry “Kids are stupid remember! Why just look at their tiny heads and selfish toes! They already buy meals solely for the fact the box contains a fragile piece of plastic made in Taiwan!” The old friends collapse in a heap of laughter. For the briefest of moments they con-
exploito-romp ‘Mick & Mack in McDonalds land’ in which two ethnically representative (one of them is black) children harness the power of McDonalds to reclaim a magic bag stolen by the hamburgler. Golden arches are collected in much the same way as gold coins in traditional platformers. The message is the same regardless of which tokens one has to collect – the pursuit of money or commodities is beneficial. Its natural – why, it’s the way of life. Success is measured on how much of the product you can consume. Frontal lobes throb as the senses are bombarded by a wall of sound and colour that makes Spearmint Rhino’s look like a Franciscan monastery. The icons are burnt into retinas of young minds like the image of catching their parents having sex. Consume the Products! The same logic lies behind the game Cool Spot in which you control the red dot logo of the 7-Up brand. The objective of the game lies literally in ensuring the success of the product. The fact that the games themselves were cack is a slap in
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DIGITAL vertising A Shor t Histor y of Ad in Computer Gam es 1978 : Advenureland a text game on Home Compute features an adver t for rs for th coming title Pirate Adventure. 1992: Zool, Gremlin Gra phics attempt to rival Sonic, features Chupa Chups lollipops practically eve rywhere. 1994: FIFA Games begin to place in game billbo ard adver ts pitch-side. 1996: Wipeout 2097 Inc ludes adver tising for Re and a soundtrack featur d-Bull ing, among others, The Prodigy and Chemical Brothers. Red Bull the n initiates a nightclub tour featur ing artists from the sou ndtrack and video footage from the game. 2003: Online world The re.com features Nike ad ver tising campaign. 2005: SWAT4 features in-game adver ts by Ma ssi Incorporated to public ise upcoming US T.V. sho ve ws. 2006: The Vir tual World Second Life tests a virt ual hotel that is an exact replica of one to be bu ilt in 2008 by Starwood Ho tels & Resor ts Worldwid e. Second Life now regula rly features adver tisem ents for brands such as Lego, Sony, Toyota and many others.
the face equivalent to that of being urinated on after you’ve been blackmailed into having sex by your boss. I had Mick and Mack on the Amiga and it was about as fun and difficult as trying to build a snowman out of fire. There is nothing particularly new or enlightening in all this. Hyper-capitalism has been at work for years now. He-man, Transfromers and Thundercats were all programmes based around selling toys. The modern day soap operas were intended as nothing more than stop-gaps between advertisements for, - well, soap. The media exists to perpetuate itself and the ideology which underlies it, which since the 1980s has been unbridled consumerism. The frightening implications can
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be found in the extent to which these brainwashing techniques can be employed. Already we have Full Spectrum Warrior, a game initially commissioned to train the U.S infantry. The game rather handily doubles as effective propaganda for enlistment in the armed forces from the masculinity-in-crisis oiks who buy into this tosh. Pandemics scheduled Mercenaries 2: World in Flames (World in flames?!) is set in Venezuela where a ‘power hungry tyrant’ (Bush speak for ‘socialist’) has taken control of the countries oil supply. You brave student, and I, writer of words may be clever enough to stave off this indoctrination, but spare a thought for the great unwashed who sadly are not. Because if the people in charge want to, they’ll get them to kill you.
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GOING OUT
Festival Frenzy Didn’t get Glasonbury tickets? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of festivals taking place in Wales over the summer. Rachel Clare and Kayleigh Excell’s guide you through some of the best...
Cardiff Calling
Coopers Field, Bute Park 25 August
Green Man Glanusk Park, near Crickhowell Brecon Beacons August 17 - August 19 This folkey festival is set in Glanusk Park in the Brecon Beacons National Park, with its 20,000 acres of peaceful parkland in the Sugar Loaf mountains. The Estate site is unique to the Festival and artists confirmed so far include Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation, Joanna Newsom, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Vashti Bunyan, Gruff Rhys, Bill Callahan, Stephen Duffy & The Lilac Time, Vetiver, The Earlies, and many more. This will be a really laid-back hippy fest, so get your flower power t-shirts out: For more info visit: http://www.thegreenmanfestival.co .uk
Cardiff Festival
Around the wonderful city of Cardiff, all over summer Offering the very best of street theatre, live music, youth and children's entertainment, fun fairs and drama, summer in Cardiff promises to be
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The indie-dance loving summer festival Cardiff Calling will be returning to the glorious greens of Coopers Field, Bute Park for a second unmissable day of live music, DJs and festival fun on Bank Holiday Saturday August 25. As part of the Metro Weekender (together with dance all-dayer South West Four), which launched so spectacularly in 2006, Cardiff Calling will offer another roguish day of rock and roll in the company of some of the world’s biggest names and it looks to sell-out for the second year in a row. Acts include: The Streets, The Automatic, Super Furry Animal and Dizzee Rascal. For more information and tickets go to: http://www.cardiffcalling.com/ three months of thrilling entertainment day and night, including Cardiff International Food & Drink Festival, Tesco Children's Festival and the Admiral Cardiff Big Weekend. The Big Weekend just got bigger…as well as the much-loved free live music stage and the UK’s largest travelling funfair around the civic centre, this year will see the colourful MAS Carnival parade bring lots of carnival revellers to the Big Weekend celebrations.
Preachers, Feeder and Enter Shikari and other big bands such as Keane and Placebo. Tickets are available online now at http://www.fflamfestival.com. It’s great chance to go to a big music festival for the first time locally.
Fflam festival
Singleton Park, Swansea 13 July - 15 July Wales’ first major music festival set over three days on days on four stages with over 50 bands and 30,000 people. Bands include some top Welsh talent Manic Street
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GOING OUT
Doing it for the kids
Kids TV, what was that all about eh? Mad wasn’t it? Remember Zippy? Mental! Cult Classics reminisces... Bernard’s Watch
Transformers
Fun House
here’s no point denying it, Bernard’s Watch, as a programme, was utter rubbish; as a concept, however, the show was pure genius. The series follows Bernard who, after sitting at the end of a rainbow and wishing for ‘more time’, was given a magical watch by a mysterious postman. The watch’s wondrous properties allowed Bernard to freeze and resume time as he saw fit, setting the scene for all kinds of timerelated fun. To be in possession of such a watch would be any students dream, lie-ins before morning lectures and swift visits to the library in the middle of exams would be greatly appreciated by many. I cannot help but feel this incredible opportunity was wasted on a person as mind-numbingly dull as Bernard. Fair enough, the conditions of the watch were that it couldn’t be used for committing crime or being ‘too greedy’, but surely Bernard could have thought of something more beneficial than scaring burglars with possessed gnomes or borrowing his neighbours Playstation for the afternoon? Nevertheless, the legacy of Bernard’s Watch lives on till this day, despite last being aired in 2004. Everyone has their own opinion on what should have been done with the watch, but let’s not be too harsh on poor Bernard. After all, with great power comes great responsibility, Bernard single-handedly taught the nineties viewers of CITV sound morals for the future. Laura Gibbons
he 1980s were a fertile time for cartoon brilliance. This magical decade provided bemulleted children with a huge range of choices as to what programmes to hold close to their young hearts; from Ninja Turtles to Rescue Rangers, heroes were certainly not hard to find. In 1984, some gentlemen of notinconsiderable genius came up with a cartoon based upon a little-known Japanese toy line called Diaclone. Boring, right? Wrong. These toys, and the characters they would become, were giant, sentient alien robots who could turn, at will, into vehicles or weaponry to wage war on each other. Welcome to the world of Transformers. The programme detailed the conflict between the two factions of Transformers, the heroic Autobots, led by Optimus Prime (think two parts John Wayne to one part Peter Parker, in 40ft robot/18-wheeler form); and the evil Decepticons, under the command of Megatron (evil as hell, but hampered by some frankly terrible world domination plans); as their war was displaced from their home planet Cybertron to Earth. Transformers as a programme swung wildly from the sublime (subplots involving dark gods, burdens of responsibility and codes of honour, to name but a few) to the silly (an evil little bolt of energy called Kremzeek – I shit you not) and even to the really-bloodyscary-when-you’re-a-kid (Optimus’ reanimated corpse. Argh, the nightmares!) but when it was good – which roughly 90% of its four-series run was - it was the greatest cartoon of its time, teaching vital life lessons like responsibility, acceptance, and the correct place to shoot a 200ft tall Decepticon death machine. Roll out. Rhys Trigg
here are few programmes that have managed to define a generation. Fun House is not one of them, but that doesn’t mean as a child you didn’t want to have the opportunity to let it rip in the house. Even as students, I think half of us would jump at the opportunity. Let’s be fair, no one really cared for the other tasks involved (how slow did those go karts go? I mean, let’s be realistic). All that really mattered was the final event, the grand finale. Along with Pat Sharp (and his freakishly large hair) and the two cheerleaders (Melanie and Martina), Fun House would not have been as good as it would have been without that theme tune: ‘Whole lotta fun, prizes to be won …’ Pure cult gold. When compared with other children’s television programmes, Fun House has not existed or outlived itself, like many others have in myth form. The ranges of activities were not overwhelming, nor did they really offer any challenge. However, ultimately Fun House was exactly what is said on the box. It was fun. In a house. With balloons. And go karts. You get the picture. With its rumoured return, one can only hope that Pat Sharp has a better stylist. The fun house is essentially the type of house that should be sold at student letting agencies. And therefore with its return, one can only hope, nay – pray, that those go karts have now got real engines, and that the house remains as fun as ever. Gareth J.S. Mogg
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Bernard: Get your clock out
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FORTYFIVE
THE FINAL WHISTLE
She’s a ball
Matt Cutler on whether women have a place in sport
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port generally is under a grip of masculine-monopolisation. Football, the nation’s most popular sport, is no exception. The World Cup, European Championships, Champions League, FA Cup. None are gender specified but neither do they have to be: players, managers and officials are expected to be men. However, this season the dulcet tones of Jacqui Oatley have accompanied the football highlights, for the first time in Match of the Day’s 43year history. Oatley’s introduction into the crux of the beautiful game is one example of a growing trend to increase women’s representation in a male-dominated world. The BBC's head of sport, Roger Mosey, says "to reflect the nation, we want our team to be modern, diverse - and excellent at what they do." The reactions from the conservative football elite has been less than sophisticated This gender supremacy is such that the introduction of women, of which Oatley plays an integral part, has raised issues of sexism that does not tend to rear its ugly head in modern-day society. Steve Curry, a football writer for the Daily Mail, described her appointment as "an insult to the controlled commentaries” of men. Gabby Logan, headhunted to present BBC Sport, has also experienced tenuous criticism of a sexist nature. In discussing her position as a woman presenting prime-time football, Logan observed that previous co-worker Ally McCoist “can say things that aren't necessarily factually correct and get away with it. But if I get something wrong as a woman, there are going to be a lot more people telling me about it.” In recent years women have begun to enter the football world not only in broadcasting but as match officials. Yet it is here that perhaps one sees explicit sexism to the extreme as it habitually appears on
the pitch. Earlier this season, exLuton Town manager Mike Newell had blamed assistant referee Amy Rayner for his team’s 3-2 loss. Not only was she at fault, her appointment was described by the Luton man as a token political correctness. “This is not park football,” he said, “So what are women doing here? She should not be here. I know that sounds sexist, but I am sexist.” Newell blasted key decisions that the lineswoman had made incorrectly, directly linking her incompetence to the fact her biology made her an inferior official.
banish the inferior sex from the world where when it comes down to it, men do it better. Unless any anthropologist or biologist can prove to the contrary, there is no biological reason that women would be incompetent in footballrelated jobs on account of their sex. Criticism of the performance of women must be criticised. Oatley’s style of delivery has been seen by many as over the top, but it’s not because of the absence of tackle between her legs. So too did Rayner have a bad game of officiating, and deserved a tirade. Nevertheless the gender issue should never have come into it. Fortunately some of the big names in football have been setting a precedence centred on sincere level-headedness. Des Lynam, although long-retired from the hectic atmosphere of sports broadcasting, recognises that “a long time ago, when a woman came in to present sport there was a tokenism about it. Nowadays, you have to know your subject matter.” Jacqui Oatley played football at an amateur level, worked in sport on BBC national radio with Five Live and did a postgraduate course before going into broadcasting. So too has Gabby Logan built up a wealth of sporting knowledge in her upbringing, daughter of a Welsh international and national coach, later too marrying a Scottish international rugby player. These professionals are equally as qualified as the men: their femininity does not prohibit their talent. The introduction of women into football needs to be applauded. The barriers that need to be broken down however show that there is a long way to go before the conservative ignorance can be overcome. The BBC and the FA need to pursue the policy and make sure it is an issue that does not go away and sexism can ultimately be banished from the national past-time.
“So what are women doing here? She should not be here. Mike Newell on women in football
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The issue comes down to a black and white argument. Either women are not as good as man with regards to jobs in the football sphere, or on the other hand they are equally as capable and the gender issue should be laid to rest. For many, Rayner has an inability to process the rules of football which come rather more naturally to men. Oatley’s tone of voice distracts from the action, and her football knowledge lacks. Logan’s mistakes are out of incompetency rather than merely a slip-up, which would explain the lapse of her malecounterpart. As such, the traditionalist followers of football would rather
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TELEVISION
T unnel Vi s i o n TV Andrew TV Will
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o, I'm not your usual TV columnist William Hitchins. I don't have the same loveable idiosyncrasies that all you Quench readers love. I don’t get dates and times of programmes mixed up and actors names. However I, like the aforementioned Will, may throw in the odd meandering bollocks statement, put quirkily to make me seem more fun and intelligent. Right, to start off with, I'm not going to talk about old TV shows. I know last week, a certain someone - and it's all right ‘cause he's held this view for a long time - launched a scathing attack on the good-old nostalgic "do you remember" conversations - and then proceeded to talk about some new children's show. Now I don't mind those student-friendly conversations, it's just I don't usually remember any of the things people are talking about, (I was a late developer, you see). So, I shall take this opportunity to discuss the current situation in the student stables (well mine anyway. There’s no Neighbours or Deal or No Deal for me, I’ve got to have some time for being smelly and drinking my own bodyweight). So back to the world of TV and onto Shipwrecked – there’s so many questions left unanswered. Why on earth did Stevie break up with Amy? She's lovely. What is Ben Lunt doing with the most beautiful girl in the world (if incredibly annoying)? Will Hannah's story line ever come up again? Fat bitch. Why do we all agree with what Mark is saying but still seem to go out three times a week? Oh goodness, where to
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start? Now, please don’t run off crying and screaming, dismayed at Quench reinforcing stereotypes of pathetic students who all watch the same old stuff. I’m not talking about you lot - I know you don't all do that, and you watch such new comedy shows that even the creators haven't seen them because they are blind and deaf and live in a cave in Eastern Europe. A couple of
ABOVE: Less Tigers AMY: fit STEVIE: Egg on his face. Idiot.
Shipwrecked - there’s so many ered questions left unansw other programmes I’d like to mention: World’s Most Offensive Joke and Roy 'Chubby' Brown - Britain's rudest comedian on Channel 4. Both were massively worth watching and in some ways were even quite thought-provoking - what we "should" and "shouldn't" laugh at and why. Also it was great for racist gags - there were also some topnotch disabled, sexist jokes, and even nice mixtures of all three. So, moving onto decent TV stuff coming up. Carry on watching Derren Brown, obviously - maybe he'll "treat" me someday, with his soothing sensual voice. Maybe he’ll make me enjoy revision, or maybe he’ll just make a "story time" tape.
Mmm... Onto Peep Show – isn’t there just the sexiest doublechin in the world on that show? He'll stay with Sophie, of course (she's great, although didn’t her Dad reminded you of your Dad?) No? Just me, then. Now back to Shipwrecked – it’s getting boring. We need less of the Tigers, more of Will, less of the new Shipwreckers (bloody dullards). And of course, Hollyoaks. There’s lots to look forward to, especially the return of mentalcase Will. Oh, sorry, did I not mention it yet. It's summer guys - what does that mean? A whole new heap of loveable trolls and coarse-crazies in a house for nine weeks. Big Brother’s back baby.
FORTYSEVEN