For the third year in a row, I did the full series of liveblogs for guardian.co.uk. The links below represent all the ones I did - the ones when I was double-booked or otherwise indisposed we by Heidi Stephens or Carrie Dunn, and were ace, but clearly not mine to claim on this site.
1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
For the sake of it, the final of The Apprentice 2009 is reproduced below.
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On the opening day of the Crufts dog show, Anna discovers prancing poodles and strutting St Bernards are among life’s more entertaining sights. But don’t for one minute think the owners are there for a laugh
[for The Guardian News Blog, March 6, 2008]
It is 11am on a Thursday and I have just stepped over a pile of collie sick and avoided a crowd of surly teenagers who thought they were way too cool for school - though not, apparently, for hats shaped like spaniels. The arena is slowly filling, as I watch 16 labradors dance in formation to Mika. Hands up who’s having the most random day so far then…
The dogs stand, the handlers walk around them. The dogs sit, the handlers walk away from them. And then come back. You only have to hope that there’s a practical use for this somewhere, because someone’s spent an awful lot of time on it. Good for calming down hostage situations, perhaps?
Well, whatever, it is five minutes before the controversial heelwork-to-music freestyle final. This is the Southern Golden Retriever Display Team, and their schtick, it seems, is that they’ve trained their dogs not to run away when subjected to renditions of fey pop artistes at eardrum-bursting levels. Which is not only remarkable, it is almost miraculous.
Suddenly, the gruff Brummie PA announcer pipes up: “It’s one of the most exciting events here at Crufts, and you might have seen it mentioned in the press today…”. Well, here’s another mention. But with the growing popularity of what were previously considered novelty or side events - agility, flyball (posh “fetch”) and the event I’m waiting for, heelwork-to-music (or, as the papers have disdainfully called it, “dancing dogs”) - it would seem ludicrous to miss this, the the freestyle final.
“We don’t call this doggy dancing,” says the event commentator. “The enthusiasts don’t like that - this is pure, pure skill; it’s pure dog training. It’s not a new thing, either - there was always a tricks section, this is just about stringing those tricks together. But to music,” he says, and everyone claps, meekly, having Been Told.
It clearly is extremely skilled, with precision body-language commands and physically demanding choreography (obviously, if you’re a dog - otherwise it’s not terribly hard), But with points given for musical interpretation, it’s possible to see where people might have got confused about the dancing issue. In fact, as the first competitor arrives in full 1980s aerobic Lycra, it’s possible to see why everyone’s got the wrong idea about the novelty thing, as well.
Performing to Flashdance (or Flashheelwork-to-music, as they maybe should have retitled it), complete with dumbbells and yoga mat, is Borderlair Cinnnamon Twist and handler Lesley who “after all that exciting marking”, says the announcer, have “gone into the lead!” Which is not entirely surprising, seeing as they’re first up.
While the individual arenas are surrounded by small crowds of breed enthusiasts, as the much-scorned freestyle heelwork-to-music continues in the arena, the crowds slowly dribble in, and soon people are excuseme-ing to find a seat to watch the impressive not-dancing the dogs are doing.
The crowd goes wild for the entertainment: dogs carrying cups of tea; dogs jumping on the spot. A particularly cute mongrel - sorry, crossbreed - clowns around to “If I only had a brain”, during which excitement levels might only be higher if the dog was wearing comedy dungarees and a floppy hat.
The judges, the announcer keeps sternly reminding us, are marking for technical accuracy. Nevertheless, they also seem to coincidentally score the highest to the dog-handler teams that are the most entertaining. Looking at the crowd, they aren’t all experts in the form, so perhaps the wisdom of the masses holds sway in this instance.
Eventually, after an animal dressed in rainbows spinning umbrellas, a poor unfortunate Portuguese Water Dog that loses concentration to the strains of The A Team (well who wouldn’t?) and something in vaguely bad taste involving a collie, a blanket and a sign saying ‘DANGER: MINES!’. the Wizard of Oz dog (not Toto, he’s fictional, and dead) eventually wins the day.
The crowd goes wild. Heelwork-to-music may, it seems, be contentious, but it’s big in Birmingham.
I wander off to find the real spirit of the competition, away from the Flashdance and the flashing lights and the flashy moves, because though this populist fun may be the way Crufts is heading, its roots are in the practiced trotting of perfect examples of their breed. So I’m off to find one of those. And then maybe put some money on it. Although apparently William Hill’s stopped taking bets on a dog from today’s Toy and Utility group taking best in show, so I’m going to have to get a little more specific and just pick one. Maybe the one with the best name.
[Full post and comments can be found here]
In 1891 Charles Cruft, travelling purveyor of fine dog cakes, decided the existing competitions open to compare British pooches were paltry in comparison to their European equivalents. So began the event that would grow to be the largest annual dog show in the world and would, to this day, bear his name.
Crufts. Even the word sounds like a well-bred puppy, barking. Drawing more than 150,000 visitors to the Birmingham NEC, and a million viewers to the television last year alone, there’s no business like dog show business, apparently. And yet, due to various good excuses - like not owning a pedigree dog, having more important things to do and annually forgetting that it is on - it is, sadly, a closed world to so many of us.
Which is why, for the next few days, News blog will be reporting from Crufts on behalf of all those who have ever wondered what it might be like to go to a dog show - perhaps after seeing a film like Best In Show, or simply after spending a couple of hypnotic hours watching preened pets march around in a circle as part of the show coverage. I’m here, hoping to lay my hands on some dog experts who can give us an insight into the inner workings of the competition and, when I can’t, tackling all the non-dog expert questions like: Do dogs actually look like their owners? (candid photography allowing). Are the best of the best trained to answer to their full kennel name of Chi Am Windows Vista Norbert Shake ‘n’ Vac III, or can you just call them Rex?
Does the entire Birmingham NEC smell of dog wee, or, after 17 years of staging the event, have they built some dog toilets to go with the male and female ones? Perhaps most importantly, at least in betting circles: is it possible for a complete dog novice - or “dovice”, as it may be technically known in show circles - to spot an out-and-out Best In Show winner from instinct alone?
My guess, especially for the last, would most probably be a pretty clear ‘No’, but I’m willing to give it a go - why not? Of course, this won’t be of interest to many, but it’s a big site, and there will be something that tickles them instead. Hopefully to some, it might at least be light relief, especially seeing as they couldn’t send any of guardian.co.uk’s dog experts, they were all busy, so they’re sending a blogger instead. And one who’s scared of dogs.
So, join us on News blog for reports from the fiercest competition between man’s best friends; for galleries, hopefully, of the most remarkable-looking dogs; for discussion, probably, of what dogs performing to music might or might not do for international relations; and on Sunday, join us for a live blog of the television coverage of the denouement of the whole thing - Best In Show, from 7-9 on BBC2.
In the meantime, do let me know if there’s something you’ve always wondered about the culture or convention of the great British dog show, and I will endeavour to find out for you.
To the dogs!
Holiday cover for Weekend magazine Columnist, January 12th 2008, 600 words
There are four weeks to go until Valentine’s Day, and this is causing some considerable amount of worry in my tiny brain. This is unusual, given that a) it isn’t a real holiday that any rational person would concern themselves with; and b) there being many more pressing things to worry about: being hit by falling frozen toilet waste from an overhead aeroplane, for example. Or the ever-present fear of choking on a peanut while alone in the house. You know, the normal, everyday stuff.
All of these concerns, however, are currently put on the back worry-burner while I concentrate my considerable anxiety on Valentine’s Day.
The problem is that last year I bought my beloved a ukulele. This was a mistake, because he liked it. He liked it a lot. It arrived in a cardboard box the size and weight of a rabbit coffin - and after getting over the initial disappointment of not having been given his own dead rabbit, he immediately set about becoming one of the leading exponents of modern ukuleleing in the UK, if not the world.
By the weekend he’d learned something by the Beatles. He was very pleased with this, so he played it to me. Many times. It was at this point that I realised that being trapped in a small room with an amateur ukulele enthusiast is only slightly less irritating than having your nose attacked with a cheese grater.
Throughout the year my dear boy and his tiny toy have come on in leaps and bounds (”leaps” and “bounds” being, in this case, extremely small spatial measurements, such as the leap of a tiny crippled spider or the bound of a heavy oak coffee table).
If there is a ukulele version to be found anywhere on the internet, he has uncovered it. George Formby, obviously, the Smiths and, strangely for a normally vehemently anti-U2 household, large swaths of the U2 back catalogue. The U2 oeuvre is apparently ideally suited to the ring-a-ting strings of the uke. Bastards.
Having learned that I flinch whenever the rabbit coffin is opened, he has developed the art of stealth-serenade. So just as you’re coming to the critical moment of CSI, he’ll sneak up behind you and strike up Killing Me Softly with the volume turned up to 11. I have been woken more than once by a music-hall version of the Bon Jovi classic Sleep When I’m Dead.
Or (and this was the final turn that snapped the final string in the life of the ukulele and me), the moment when, on a weekend cleaning purge, I finished vacuuming and announced to the nice man cleaning the kitchen that I was going to clean windows.
Half an hour later, pissed off and covered in vinegar, having risked life and limb to bring light to our lives, I re-entered the house to the same half-clean kitchen and the announcement that he’d just learned When I’m Cleaning Windows specially as a tribute … and did I want to hear it?
I am glad that he likes it. Honest I am. I’m so happy to have given him something that brings such happiness. I just sometimes wish that it could make him happy in some sort of soundproof bunker several miles underneath the house.
Which is why, this year, I have to give something for Valentine’s Day that will surpass the great majesty of last year’s gift. It has to be something that is a) quiet, b) brilliant and c) capable of distracting someone long enough for someone else to, say, set light to a ukulele in the back yard.
The other day, walking down the street, we happened upon an unshaven old man asleep in a car. Gently, we shook him awake and, after a while he invited us back to his house, where he made us herbal tea and fed us herbal cake, showed us old photo albums of happier days, and told us a sad, sad story of grand gestures gone awry on a skiing jolly with a gang of happy yuppies…
When he passed out again at the end of his tale we nicked the photos and his stash and you know, a couple of DVD players and stuff, but only so we could run back to you and share the tale. Here - the self same sad, sad story, in the very words of the mumbling man.
“Yeah, this was my car. It was a jeep. I think.” These were his first words. We looked at our watches and hoped that either this story was going to get better, or at the very least his memory might improve.
“That’s me!” he said. “Hello me!!!”
We pointed out that with his big eyes and his feather-cut, he looked an awful lot like Princess Diana back then. He seemed really pleased, which is funny, because we didn’t mean it in a good way …
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
Thursday December 20, 2007
The Guardian, G2 section, Shortcuts
350 words
W00t - an interjection, used to convey excitement. And now, says the Merriam-Webster dictionary, 2007’s word of the year - albeit one coined at least 15 years ago by early internet users. But with this development, internet slang, verb-acronyms, creative misspellings, portmanteux and joyfully painful grammar, is officially no longer confined to life online. A simple guide to some other popular terms from the geektionary includes:
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Paddington is far from being the only character whose behaviour could be subject to legal questions
[for books.guardian.co.uk blog, 850 words]
The news that Paddington Bear has got into “a bit of a kerfuffle” with the Metropolitan police in Micheal Bond’s new set of stories about the loveable London bear has rocked the imaginary world of children’s book characters this week.
For if children’s book characters are to be held accountable to the laws of whichever country they live in, are read in, or written in, then many, right now, are very worried. At least according to imaginary “pals” close to the troubled figments.
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… Here they are, the Fast Food Rockers, a band of three people and as many hits (ever) displaying all the things that can happen when you’re too camp for the campest market of all: Christmas.
But suddenly it all ended for them, The Fast Food Rockers were scooped up by a magical sleigh fllled with no presents at all, only a big blue dog. This is not Father Christmas’s sleigh: No, this is what happens when you haven’t been good enough for Father Christmas to come to your house. Instead, the Big Blue Dog called “Hot Dog” or something similar will come to your house and …
Well, you should just try to be good. That is all…
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
… We are in a north London boozer. I know that mainly because I read it on the YouTube page, which says that this, the second video for this beautiful track by the Maccabees, planned for the post-mobile-phone-advert re-release of the song, was filmed in a north London boozer. I’m just assuming YouTube is telling the truth. That’s investigative journalism for you…
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
‘Ello! We’re the Arctic Monkeys, and we’re here today to present a proper top-notch masterclass on How to Record a Hit Single. As we’ve done lots of singles now, and a couple of top-selling award-winning albums and that, we thought it would be a bit nice to pass on that knowledge to up and coming young bands who might need a bit of help…
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
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