Playing the long game

Taking a long-term view of things seems to be the common thread linking what's on my mind this week.

The long con

Actually, we're already two-thirds of the way through the fifth season of Hustle - the BBC's take on Ocean's Eleven - but I've only got round to starting it this week. Our favourite team of long con grifters has lost one leader and regained its original one, shed two team members and gained two others. (Of the original main cast of five, only two - the Roberts, Vaughn and Glenister - have appeared in all five seasons.) Such a dramatic turnover usually sounds the death knell for a series, but Hustle has come back, if anything, reinvigorated and stronger than ever, with fresh character dynamics and a sustained high level of plot chicanery and visual style.

A big part of the fun of Hustle is allowing yourself to be swept up in the gang's latest caper and racing along to try and find the sting in the tail before the big reveal at episode's end. But above all, it's just great fun; the show never takes itself too seriously, which in itself is refreshing.

The long road to Paris

The Tour Down Under finished last weekend, and a certain Lance Armstrong finished a decent 29th out of 122 finishers after an absence from competitive racing of more than three years. Since he announced his return last September, Armstrong has been talking up his campaign to raise money for cancer research and talking down his prospects of winning an eighth Tour de France in July, but you just know the fire still burns inside him.

One thing's for sure: we probably will not really know what his chances are until the middle week of the Tour, because the next six months of racing are nothing more than an extended training programme aimed to build his fitness to a peak in July. The odds are against him, certainly, but only a fool would completely discount the chances of a man who has come back from cancer to dominate his sport.

No matter what, it's going to be one hell of a story, and one that I will be following with great interest, both in the media and via Armstrong's own Twitter profile.

Career crossroads

In a world of redundancies, budget cuts and pay freezes, I should probably be thankful to still have a relatively secure job. But the reality is that I need something to change in 2009, or I will have to make the change myself.

In the style of Pushing Daisies (back on ITV1 tonight), the facts are these: three years, seven months and 17 days ago, I started working as a strategic planner for 3M UK. Today, I am effectively still doing the same job in the same company. This is only the second time in my career I have spent more than three years with the same business - indeed, some time around the end of May, 3M will become my longest-serving employer - and it is the also the only time I have been in the same job for more than 24 months.

In short, I need a change. It's something I've been agitating for with gradually increasing volume for over a year now, but nothing has happened yet (although, to be fair, my boss is having the right conversations with the right people). But the reality is that if I don't start seeing some definite prospects in the next few months - in my head, June 13th, my four-year anniversary at 3M, is the absolute drop-dead date - then it will be time for me to start looking elsewhere, because I know that if I don't change I will get bored, and if I get bored my productivity will fall off a cliff. I've done the leadership courses, and I know I'm identified as a 'high potential' candidate within 3M. But promises are nothing without reality: I feel like I'm standing still, and although I have absolutely no desire to be an MD, I also don't want to keep pacing round in the same circles forever. In theory, I still have two-thirds of my working life ahead of me before I retire - it's a long old game. I need something to look forward to.

Artillery excitement and other things

Another week draws to a close, so here are the things which have been at the forefront of my mind these past few days:

Obama inauguration: As the man himself said, "They said this day would never come." It did, and the world is a very different - and, for now at least, more optimistic - place.

iShoot: I downloaded the free 'lite' version of this for my iPhone last week and liked it so much I happily paid for the full game. It's basically an artillery game where you attempt to blow up other tanks using a variety of weapons. Nothing more, nothing less. It's brilliant, and I'm totally hooked.

Battlestar Galactica: BSG returned for its final half-season on Tuesday night (in the UK), and I can't remember the last time I've been so excited about a series' return, even if this week's first episode was one of the most unflinchingly downbeat hours of TV I have ever seen. But that's what makes this show so great: not every problem is neatly solved with a bow on top; not every story has a happy ending. Better still, Lost is back on Sunday, with Volume 4 of Heroes to follow in the next couple of weeks. Gotta love this time of year as a genre series fan.

Money can't buy me love (or Kaka): Oh, how I laughed when the news broke that Manchester City's €100m-plus bid for AC Milan's Kaka had failed. The fact that this was rapidly accompanied by news of Robinho leaving City's winter training camp in Tenerife without permission - and subsequent fine of two weeks' wages (£320k!) - was the icing on the cake. The revelation that City apparently had also tried and failed to sign David Villa, Gianluigi Buffon and Thierry Henry just gave me that pleasant/unpleasant feeling you get when you've pigged out on too much of your favourite food. I believe the word I'm looking for is 'schadenfreude'.

Blue Monday: Apparently this Monday just gone was supposed to be the most depressing day of the year: a combination of Christmas cheer wearing off, bad weather, short days/long nights, holidays being far, far away, it just being a Monday, and so on. I have to admit, it wasn't my best day ever, but somehow I muddled through. However, as I sat in stationary traffic on the M4, I did realise I need to book a holiday soon so I have something to look forward to. Must get on to that.

Taming the tantrum tot: Good God, Zac can throw a strop when he's not happy! A face of perfect misery, rolling tears, a banshee wail, flailing limbs, the lot. Whatever happened to our little baby who used to just cry quietly when he was upset? However, it's interesting to see the things that calm him down; generally, anything on TV that's bright, loud and moving. So, Gladiators, Katy Perry videos and Pink's So What. Go figure.

American Idol

So, New Year has come and gone, and Christmas is but a distant memory. (Sadly, the usual seasonal weight gains are still with me, though.)

Which can mean only one thing: it’s time for American Idol to hit our screens again.

I make no apologies for the fact that I’m a fan of a number of reality TV shows, and they don’t come any bigger than the show which can trace its ancestry directly back to the UK’s Popstars and Pop Idol, and which remains the brainchild of two Brits – Nigel Lythgoe and the ubiquitous Simon Cowell.

As well as being a showcase for new US talent, a number of whom – Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks - have also achieved international success, it is also a ratings juggernaut, regularly topping 30 million viewers and dominating the TV schedules. (By comparison, CSI, the top-rated drama series in the US, achieves a regular audience of around 21 million.)

There is, however, a reason why I religiously watch Idol every year, while ignoring its UK equivalent, The X Factor. It’s all a question of the quality, depth and longevity of its talent.

Obviously, as a country one-sixth the size of the US, the talent pool in the UK is much smaller. Even so, it is fast becoming traditional for the X Factor winner to lose their novelty and become forgotten in the rush to embrace the next year’s winner.

To illustrate the point, here is a potted career history of the winners of X Factor (and its predecessor, Pop Idol) up to 2006:

Will Young (Pop Idol, 2002) – Four number 1s, six other top 10. Four albums: two number 1s, two number 2s. Still going strong. Verdict: HIT.

Michelle McManus (Pop Idol, 2003) – Debut single number 1, one other top 20. Appeared on a You Are What You Eat special. Now presenting on radio station Clyde 1. Verdict: MISS.

Steve Brookstein (X Factor, 2004) - Debut single number 1. Second single peaked at 193. Recording contract terminated. Sang in cabaret on a P&O cruise ship. Now part of the cast of the musical Our House. Verdict: MISS.

Shayne Ward (X Factor, 2005) - Debut single number 1, three other top 10 singles. Both albums to date have gone platinum in the UK, with decent sales in international markets. Verdict: HIT (but in danger of becoming yesterday’s man).

Leona Lewis (X Factor, 2006) - Three number 1s, two other top 5 to date. ‘Bleeding Love’ also reached number 1 in the US, the first chart-topper by a British female solo artist since Kim Wilde in 1987. Verdict: BIG HIT. (Has the talent and profile to become the UK’s biggest-selling export in years, period.)

In addition to the above list, reality shows have also given us Hear’Say and Liberty X (Popstars), Gareth Gates and Darius Danesh (Pop Idol), Girls Aloud, One True Voice, Phixx and Clea (Popstars: The Rivals), and David Sneddon, Lemar and Alex Parks (Fame Academy). Of those, only Girls Aloud and, to a lesser extent, Lemar, have had any significant, lasting impact on the UK pop scene, and most of the others shone briefly (if at all) before sinking faster than the proverbial lead balloon.

Now let’s compare this to the US winners of American Idol (chart positions refer to the US unless otherwise indicated):

2002: Kelly Clarkson - Seven top 10 singles (one number 1). Three top 3 albums (one number 1). Five UK top 10 singles, two top 3 albums. Similar success in several international markets. Verdict: BIG HIT.

2003: Ruben Studdard - Two top 10 singles, one number 1 album, with his other two albums both top 20. Grammy Award-nominated. Verdict: HIT. (Incidentally, runner-up Clay Aiken has released four top 5 albums to date, with global sales totalling over 7 million, as well as starring in Spamalot on Broadway, which makes him an even bigger hit.)

2004: Fantasia Barrino – Debut single reached number 1. Two top 20 albums, totalling nearly 3 million sales globally, with a third album due for release in 2009. Starred in The Colour Purple on Broadway, earning rave reviews. Verdict: HIT. (Seventh-placed Jennifer Hudson recently released her debut album which reached number 2 and, of course, is the proud owner of an Oscar which she won for her turn in Dreamgirls, making her arguably the biggest hit of the lot.)

2005: Carrie Underwood – Seven number 1s on the Country chart. Debut album reached number 2, follow-up topped the album chart; both multi-platinum. Winner of three Grammys and approximately 19 million other awards. Firmly established as one of the biggest names on the country music scene. Verdict: BIG HIT.

2006: Taylor Hicks – one number 1 single, one platinum-selling album which peaked at number 2. Dropped by Arista Records in January 2008. Verdict: MISS. (He was never going to be a mainstream star really.) (Fourth-placed Chris Daughtry’s band Daughtry has achieved two top 5 singles plus a number 1 album, while sixth-placed Kellie Pickler has released two number 1 albums on the Country chart, as well as winning three Country Music Television awards.)

Idol’s two most recent winners, Jordin Sparks (2007) and David Cook (2008) have also had promising starts to their post-Idol careers. Sparks has already registered a top 10 album and four top 20 singles, two of which were top 5. ('No Air' also peaked at number 3 in the UK.) Cook’s debut single and album both reached number 3 on the respective charts, and he also set a record in the week following his Idol win by having 11 singles in the Billboard top 100, the most since the Beatles had 14 in 1964.

Anyway, you get the idea. In terms of pure numbers, there is simply no comparison. And, having seen every season of Idol except the first, I can testify that in terms of that magic combination of talent and marketability, there is no one among the UK set – aside from Leona and, arguably, Girls Aloud – who can hold a candle to their best American counterparts.

The girl next door with the voice to die for? Leona Lewis certainly has ‘it’ and has shown she can break into the all-important US market, but Kelly Clarkson has already been there and done it.

The ‘plus-size’ girl who succeeds in a size zero world? Michelle McManus’s pop career stalled almost before it had started – as far as I was concerned she had, at best, a moderately interesting story married to a competent but mundane voice. Jennifer Hudson, on the other hand, exudes sassiness, won an Oscar for Dreamgirls and made Beyonce Knowles look like a supporting act in doing so. No comparison.

The sweet young man who came out of the closet? Will Young, yes. But Clay Aiken ticked that box and more, from the initial uber-geek look, to a back-story which included teaching autistic children, to the persistent questions about his sexuality (he only officially confirmed he is gay in September 2008, more than five years post-Idol), and, to top it off, he has also fathered a child. Oh, and while Will Young has a very good voice, Aiken’s voice is astounding. Listen to Aiken’s cover of ‘Soiltaire’. Read ‘em and weep.

In short, American Idol may be British in origin – and with Simon Cowell the real star of the show, its beating heart is also British - but in terms of talent and entertainment, it wins hands down over The X Factor any day.

Which is why I’ll be glued to Idol religiously for the next four months. Whereas I can already barely remember 2007 X Factor winner Leon Jackson, and will have probably forgotten his successor, Alexandra Burke, by next Christmas.

Best and worst of 2008

Apropos nothing in particular, here's a random selection of my highlights and lowlights from 2008.

People & events

Scariest person: Sarah Palin, Republican vice-presidential nominee. Proponent of old-fashioned blue collar values. Ignorant of the sensibilities and basic facts relating to the no longer old-fashioned world we now live in. Claimed that being governor of a state (Alaska) whose airspace Vladimir Putin flies through counts as foreign policy experience. Scariest of all: she has significant support within the Republican party to run as their candidate for president in 2012.

Funniest person: Tina Fey, former Saturday Night Live writer and creator of 30 Rock, in her return to SNL as a scarily good Sarah Palin lookalike. Able to successfully lampoon Palin's largely inept interview performances without actually having to change much (or in some cases anything) from what was originally said.

'Living the stereotype' award: Karen Matthews. Looked every inch a chav, turned out to be every inch a chav criminal after it was revealed that she had plotted to have her own daughter Sharon abducted in pursuit of reward money. Single-handedly reinforced what most middle-class people think about the UK's sink estates. Nice one.

'Biggest & most pointless bandwagon' award: The Daily Mail, for fanning the flames in the Brand/Ross/Andrew Sachs/Georgina Baillie scandal and creating the perfect excuse for those people who hadn't had a good, old-fashioned whinge about something they knew nothing about since Shilpa-gate. Hello, people: nothing Brand said about Baillie was untrue. In poor taste, perhaps; a lie, no. (For instance she is indeed part of a burlesque troupe called the Satanic Sluts.) Anyhow, Baillie had her 15 minutes of fame, and Sachs will appear on Coronation Street later this year. Meanwhile, Ross is heading back to the BBC and Brand, with his bad boy reputation enhanced, has taken on a multi-million pound role in the next Pirates of the Caribbean film. That'll teach him, eh?

'Most divorced (literally) from reality' award: Heather Mills. Wanted £125m of former husband Paul McCartney's fortune, having contributed absolutely nothing to it during their six-year marriage. Mills' Wikipedia entry says that, among other things, she stated she needed £176k a year for clothes, the ownership of four homes in Beverly Hills, Long Island and England worth a combined £5.7m, £750k to buy an office for her sister, £500k pa for holidays, £186k pa for chartered helicopters, £43k pa for a chauffeur and £191k pa for 'professional expenses'. Was ultimately awarded £24.3m in cash and assets, but not before having poured a jug of water over McCartney's solicitor, Fiona Shackleton. While describing Mills as a "kindly person" the judge concluded that much of her evidence (Mills chose to represent herself) was "not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid". Which sounds an awful lot like calling her a deceitful liar to me. Good riddance - which is what I imagine Sir Paul himself probably said too.

'Soggy firework' award: CERN's Large Hadron Collider, built to reveal the secrets of the universe (or, more prosaically, to prove/disprove the existence of the Higgs boson). Nine days after the LHC was activated, it broke down and is not expected to be fully operational again until mid-2009. Not so much Big Bang as damp squib. However, see 'Best YouTube video' below.

Entertainment

Best new TV programme: Pushing Daisies. Which ITV invested heavily in and promptly messed up by missing out an episode because they didn't have enough time before Euro 2008 to show them all. And which has subsequently been cancelled in the US after season 2, despite much critical acclaim. Typical.

Worst new TV programme: Knight Rider. An hour-long Ford commercial masquerading as a re-make of the classic 80s show. This is indescribably bad: the acting, the wafer-thin plots, the ADD-fuelled jump-cut editing. I loved the original as a kid and really wanted this to be brilliant; I gave up after two episodes. Naturally, NBC chose to pick up a full season order despite soft ratings. Avoid. Like. The. Plague.

Best radio programme: Fighting Talk, every Saturday morning on BBC Radio 5 Live. Sporting punditry and banter at its best. Contestants' answers may be pre-prepared and Wikipedia-fuelled rather than off the cuff, but it's still exactly the sort of chat you would have with your mates down the pub.

Most & least convincing versions of 'Hallelujah': It may have been the Christmas number 1 in the UK, but The X Factor winner Alexandra Burke's cover of the Leonard Cohen song was functional at best, lacking the poignancy, delicacy and latent sexuality of the original. Vastly inferior to Jeff Buckley’s cover (which an internet campaign pushed to number 2), which Cohen himself declares the definitive version. And not even the best reality TV show cover of the song this year: seek out Jason Castro’s performance on American Idol on YouTube.

Biggest disappointment: Madonna at Wembley. The show itself was actually very good, but she was an hour late onto stage - sorry, that goes way beyond being fashionably rock-and-roll - and there was no encore. I expected better from the queen of pop, impending divorce or not.

Best YouTube video: The 'LHC Rap' posted by CERN employee Katherine McAlpine (alpinekat), in which the aforementioned and some of her mates took us on a guided tour of the Large Hadron Collider, to the tune of a charmingly amateur yet informative rap. ("The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead / And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head"). Over 4 million viewers on YouTube: in one fell swoop, science became cool (at least for a week or so).

Sport

Best moment: 2008 was such a great year from a sporting perspective that I struggled to even distil a shortlist of ten, but if I had to choose one it would be the Federer/Nadal Wimbledon final. Usain Bolt's two world records were the most incredible theatre, but he was head and shoulders (literally) above - and ahead of - everyone else. Lewis Hamilton's last-gasp F1 title win was perhaps the most dramatic moment, but he did it by finishing fifth in the final race. But Federer versus Nadal gave us the undisputed two best players in the world going toe-to-toe in a final of the highest quality; sporting competition at its very finest.

Most over-hyped star: Or, alternatively, 'Peacock of the Year', the ever-preening, self-regarding Cristiano Ronaldo. Don't get me wrong, he is an immensely talented and exciting footballer. However, he's also a prat of the highest order in whose comeuppance I imagine many people would take great delight.

Most under-hyped star: Cycling sprint king Mark Cavendish. Winner of four stages at the Tour de France - a feat no Briton has ever matched - as well as two at the Giro d'Italia and a hat-trick of wins at both the Tours of Ireland and Missouri among his 17 wins in 2008. The forgotten man at the Olympics, where he and Bradley Wiggins failed to add to their World Championship gold in the madison event. And he didn't even make the shortlist of ten for BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Make no mistake: Cavendish was the dominant sprinter in road races just as much as Chris Hoy was on the track. (Runner up: Padraig Harrington. 24 hours before the Open, he wasn't even sure if he would be fit enough to defend his title - he then went and retained it. Like Cavendish, received no more than a mention in dispatches at SPotY.)

A month to forget

In so many ways, December really was a month to forget at the end of what has been, on the whole, a good year.

The back half of November had been bad enough, as I'd had first a cold and then some sort of gastric flu/bug in consecutive weeks. Which, coupled to the stresses and strains of a work environment of redundancies, budget cuts and pay freezes, really didn't help.

But then December kicked off with Isaac spending 48 hours in hospital with ballonitis. I caught another cold. Then, a few days after Zac's birthday (one of the few highlights of the month), Heather's step-father had a mild stroke. That was followed by Zac getting another virus the week before Christmas which manifested itself as tonsilitis and a temperature of 40-plus degrees. That weekend I came down with the flu, which knocked me out until Christmas Eve. Then Heather spent the whole of Christmas with a bad cold. And finally my family, having spent Christmas with us, all got flu as well and have spent the last few days in bed.

Like I said, a month to forget.

And that's not including the stress of having four family members - mum, dad, brother, cousin (the last of whom we struggled to get anything more than monosyllabic conversation out of the whole time) - staying over for two days at Christmas. Truth be told, much though I love my folks, I was so glad when we got to Boxing Day evening and we were able to close the door and just be a family of three again. (Although we then had to pack up and drive down to Heather's mum's for a couple of days, which was actually far more easy-going than expected.)
Still, Zac's birthday (where we got everyone together down at Heather's mum's) went well, and he didn't seem too fazed by Christmas, although he was still a bit too young to understand or appreciate it, other than the fact that he suddenly had lots of new toys to play with.

And the last few days of the month, when it was just the three of us, all sickness-free for the first time in about six weeks, have been lovely. Zac has reminded us just what a smiley, joyful boy he is. We have benefitted from him spending two days in nursery post-Christmas: the first day we both went back to sleep until lunchtime, and then drove to Oxford for a leisurely, buggy-less afternoon of lunch and shopping. And, with both physical and mental batteries recharged, I'm now really looking forward to 2009.

2008 - and December in particular - are now consigned to history. Let's see what the new year brings.