Oh dear (from a Scottish town)

Branding an offie thus must have seemed like a really good idea, right up 'til precisely  the 23rd of July 2011...

Waterloo Road comes north, River City goes south

In what is being seen as a really good idea, BBC Scotland's (ahem) "flagship" drama production River City is to relocate production from Glasgow to the small affluent Sussex hamlet  of Much Puddling In The Marsh. 
The move come after the BBC network announced that school soap Waterloo Road would head north from its current production in Manchesterford*. 


A spokesdaddygotmein for The BBC told The JT :"The move of the  production north will provide 250 new technical posts on Waterloo Road, while the move south of River City will mean that hundreds of people who can act nane will mercifully just fuck right aff south." 


While we're on Planet Luvvie, I note from The Herald that Brad and Angelina visited the Macintosh designed Hill House in Helensburgh because, er, Bradney, is a big architecture fan. 


The copy for the feature reads as follows. This from Ms Lorna Hepburn, The House manager: "We treated them with the same courtesy we would extend to any visitor  and let them enjoy their tour without intrusion or interruption"


Which all sounds perfectly normal and everyday right? Er no. Because in the very next sentence oor Lorna's records that : "After they'd gone we all felt exhausted" 
"Exhausted"?
Lorna! What were you up to?


Inside: *Department of Obscure references. Manchesterford? Any takers?

"Oh Mr Pitt! What ever shall we do if Angelina comes back from the toilet unexpectedly?
Oh, alright then, but hurry, we'll need to be quick."

From The Scotsbaby

TV girls' four little rays of sunshineGail McGrane, Judith Ralston and Gillian Smart made the headlines last year, when they all become pregnant and took maternity leave at the same time.

Concern was growing last night that there might be something in the water at BBC Scotland as it was revealed that the forecasters hired to replace the three ladies were also now pregnant. A spokeswithchild told The JT: "Cat Cubie we can understand but the two blokes we hired are up the duff as well. Fuckin' weird or what?"

I'm ashamed to admit

it but I only picked up on the gem below via Private Eye's "Riotballs" a collection of clippings throwing a lot of heat but not a lot of light on the recent unpleasantness in London.
It might not be up there with The Courier's past historical record of (ahem) " localising" the impact of cataclysmic events, but its an honourable  addition to that proud headline record that includes :" Torry man grows giant marrow" - on the day WW1 was declared.
 Michty me etc.

Fuck me, that's a bit harsh.

(From the BBC)"Brad Pitt zombie filming begins"

I mean, I know he's got a limited range in terms of expression and cadence but I would've thought describing him as a zombie is a bit harsh. Oh wait, I've just read on in the story. Just forget I said anything....

And while we're here. The BBC story sub-headed with "the rise of the bedroom games developer" isn't nearly as intriguingly salacious as it sounds.Its just about computer games. Tsk.

The little

humour to be had out of what, let's face it, has been a pretty  dire week, comes as usual from the bizarre mash ups that only reality can come up with. Item: the two kids in Dundee arrested for inciting a riot in Dundee via Facebook. A riot? In Dundee? 
Anyone who has every been in that charming post-industrial riverside hamlet of a Friday evening knows that the locals need no instruction in activities carnivale. Every night's riot night in the City of Despondency. Now there's a marketing slogan!


And Cameron and Johnson were both stridently attacking the whole practice of gang culture. You know where a group of young men, band together in distinctive, weird dress to behave badly without thought or care for consequences.
Oh,hang on...

Selective perception.(From The BBC)

One of the most extraordinary sights at the Edinburgh Fringe this year is the Mirazozo, a giant inflatable that is illuminated by natural light.

Every morning the mass of silver plastic is blown-up and transformed into a huge shining structure of domes and tunnels.

It is designed to enhance and alter the audience's visual perceptions.

But only to a certain extent. The uterinally-enabled and innocent children may have their visual perceptions challenged, but most screaming heterosexual men will just say:" Look at the giant tits!"

God knows I'm not one

to intrude on private grief, especially in the context of the current (ahem)"unpleasantness" in That London, however...
 If you every wanted to illustrate the meaning of the expression "so and so having their arse handed to them", you could do no better than direct interest to this news footage of London mayor Boris Johnson desperately attempting to deal with hecklers.
And failing desperately to so deal.

We've all met them.

We'd now like to sing Fuck Da Police

Those perfectly polite, friendly people who are just a wee bit too intense and over-think the fun out of everything. We came across the clip below while looking for ways to  walk up Ben Lawers. As in "ways to walk up Ben Lawers without buying a route map."
Anyone who thinks, like me, that the narrator is channelling the spirit of Keith out of Leigh's Nuts in May must be way older than they look.            

This "news" certainly puts trivial things

like chronic war, global poverty and disease into perspective does it no?

Seriously dude, who gives a fuck?

Alles ist klar, nicht wahr?

The reader of The JT might recall that I speculated on these ,er, pages a few weeks back why a perfectly nice German couple might want to move to Scotland. The post looked a bit like this.













Anyway, you'll no doubt recall that I burbled on a bit about context, a theme which which was subsequently taken up by another reader of The JT (Two readers! Two!) who wrote in from That Germany to explain why someone from Frankfurt might want to move to Scotland.
 I'm very carefully avoiding identifying this individual for reasons that are about to become all too apparent. Suffice to say I think I can confidently confirm that its unlikely this person works for the local tourist board.
Can I also stress that this is not my opinion, I'm just reporting it. I trust all is clear...

"Dear Jaggy,

I was most amused by your article about the visiting Germans the other day. As you say, it's all about context. The "OF" on the car's numberplate means that they come from Offenbach rather than Frankfurt per se. Offenbach is a city of around 120,000 souls to the east of Frankfurt & is seen by Frankfurt rather as "Apache Country", with high levels of unemployment and crime.

 In fact your first impression of them being Govanites is not too far off the mark. Offenbach used to be an industrial powerhouse before we bombed the crap out of it in the war. Nowadays there's only a couple of chemical factories and a lot of kebab shops left. As a native born Glaswegian, even I drive through there wi' the windaes up."

"Gr-eat"

I see that freelancer Stephen Duffy,according to The Scotsperson, fronted BBC Scotland's news programmes when regular, NUJ hacks, went on strike to protest redundancies at the Corporation.

 For those of you living in Foreign, Mr Duffy also fronts the station's jazz programming but that is not the only string to his bow. 

Oh no. 

Again, according to the paper, he also works full-time in marketing for the Scottish Symphony Orchestra. And lets not forget that, in addition, he freelances on the Fred MacAulay week-day bore-fest as well.

Th JT learns that emboldened by his helpful attitude towards the suits at the station, Mr Duffy is to pitch a new programme idea- Scab Club. 

Nice.

"Careful,men.This looks suspiciously easy.We could be walking right into a tr..."