Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
Last night was George Michael night on X Factor - a particularly ill-starred night as far as the contestants went, with a number of duff performances.Yet again, Joe McElderry was the star of the show with his version of Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me. As Louis Walsh - Mr Rulebook for this year's X Factor - pointed out, it's technically an Elton John track and not a George Michael one. George only guested on it.
Surprisingly, though, none of the judges picked up on the fact that Stacy Solomon also sang a technically 'illegal' song. I Can't Make You Love Me was indeed recorded by George Michael, as part of Double A Side back in 1997 with Older, but that was a cover version.
The original rendition was recorded by Bonnie Raitt. Clearly Louis, Cheryl, Dannii and Simon don't know their music as well as they think they do.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
So I'm A Celebrity's back for another year giving all us couch potatoes the justification we need not to go out for the next couple of weeks.
Chief among this year's contestants are the perma-tanned George Hamilton, 80s Page 3 'stunna' Sam Fox and camp design duo Colin & Justin.
But woe betide anyone who thinks that winning the annual jungle junket is a key to further riches. If you look back at the roster of previous winners, many of them have fallen foul of the IMACGMOOH curse.
Of the 8 previous victors, four have fallen on hard times. Kerry Katona's - queen of 2004's jungle - problems have been well-documented, but few could have predicted that when she overcame the likes of Peter Andre and Jordan to lift the crown.
In 2006, Carol Thatcher took the crown and all was going swimmingly until she was booted off of the One Show earlier this year for calling a tennis player a golliwog.
The following year, former Busted member Matt Willis charmed the pants off of the viewing public and donned the regal get-up. Any thought that he would go on to conquer the pop charts again were swiftly dispensed with. His debut solo album failed to crack the top 50, he was dropped by his label and then had to go to rehab to clean up his drinking habits. Happily, he's back in fighting form, but things weren't good for a while.
Even last year's victor, former EastEnder Joe Swash isn't immune. He may have got a gig for Living following Pamela Anderson around, but he had to file for bankruptcy in the past few weeks. Money's a sore spot even for the success stories.
Of the other four winners, three are what one might call veteran entertainers who had a solid career before they started, so were unlikely to lose out too much. Tony Blackburn, Joe Pasquale and Christopher Biggins weren't exactly A-List, but it meant that their careers got a little boost for a bit longer. Phil Tufnell is, well, Phil Tufnell.
Anyway, my point is that winning the show doesn't necessarily guarantee success after the celebs fly back from Australia.
So all this year's contestants: you have been warned.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
After much fannying around with Belkin USB adaptors, we managed to get the broadband connection working and, lo and behold, the internet was there.
We set up email accounts for them both and typed out some basic instructions for using it and other simple web behaviour.
We also downloaded Skype and set up an account and sorted out a basic webcam.
A week on and it has already been revolutionary, according to my girlfriend's mum. Not only is she able to video call every day for 10-15 minutes and see our daughter, but our little girl gets a kick out of seeing her grandparents and their assorted animals.
On top of that, they've discovered the wonders of things like Amazon - the ability to buy obscure books at half the price and get them delivered for free, rather than trawl round half-a-dozen bookshops in the faint hope that they'll be there.
OK, so they're not about to code and launch their own website, but that's not what digital inclusion is all about. It's about opening up basic access to the internet and allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits.
Seeing someone discover this for the first time is a lot of fun!
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
Even in death, Michael Jackson continues to cast a spell over his fans and beyond. The premiere of Is This It?, footage of his rehearsals for his O2 Tour, hits cinemas worldwide tonight.
Handily, his first (and you'll note the use of the word first) posthumous single is also called Is This It, even though it was co-written with Paul Anka back in 1983.
Some may think that this will be the last we'll hear of Michael Jackson for a while. The circumstances surrounding his death seem to have been cleared up and now this footage is about to be shown finally.
And yet, we all know that music legends never really go away, do they? Jimi Hendrix recordings were unearthed long after he shuffled of this mortal coil, MTV Unplugged and the single You Know You're Right were released after Kurt Cobain's death and even Nick Drake's early unheard recordings have been turned into something 'new'.
Jackson will be no different. There will always be new fans to attract. My six-year-old daughter had never really heard of Michael Jackson before his death. While watching Up in the cinema at the weekend, the trailer for Is This It? came on and she turned to me and said, 'That's Michael Jackson. It's sad that he died,' before proceeding to sing along to all the songs playing in the background.
I'm not suggesting people should forget him, but let's face it, we can all be pretty certain that in a year or two or 10, some more 'new' recordings will be 'mysteriously' discovered.
The Jackson bandwagon will roll on long after his death, because he is still a money-making machine and probably still has a line of creditors longer than your arm, queuing up to claw back some of the money still owed to them. For that reason, and that reason alone, Michael Jackson will never be allowed to die.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
I remember well when The Proclaimers burst onto the scene in the mid-1980s. Even though they looked as if they should be mocked with their geeky specs and extraordinarily strong accents, there was something undeniably compelling about their music.
Most people remember '(I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles' and 'Letter From America', which was, indeed, their breakout hit and the one that firmly entrenched them into the hearts of most British music-lovers.
However, I was always more taken with one of their follow-up tracks, Sunshine On Leith. Far more poignant and elegiac, it seemed to sum up the Proclaimers for me far better.
The only recording I ever had of it was a dodgy home-taping from a R1 Simon Mayo show (I know because his voice comes in over the start of the song), so I finally downloaded it recently and can't stop listening to it. If you've never heard it before, or even haven't for a long time, give it a listen. Beautiful.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
After the first week of this year's X Factor live finals, I blogged about the fact that Louis Walsh had obviously had eye surgery.
At the time, I didn't have access to footage of new Louis, so it was all speculation. Now he's back in the chair, I've taken the liberty of doing a dodgy comparison (left), so you can judge for yourself.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
In spite of the furore over Nick Griffin's appearance on last night's Question Time and the running commentary provided by almost everyone I know during the show's broadcast, it's been a quiet week on Twitter.
Quiet, that is, when you compare it to last week. There has been acres of web space devoted to the double whammy of Twitter-power in the previous 7 days.
First, there was the now infamous Twitter campaign to embarrass lawyers Carter Ruck and their client Trafigura to lift the quite bewildering gag order on reporting in the House Of Commons.
Being part of the constant Twitterthon on Tuesday felt rather special. It was like going on a student demo without leaving the comfort of your own living room. Populace action using the web in a way that had previously been unimaginable.
And the Twitter community had only just recovered, when the second huge 'scandal' of the week erupted. Namely, the now equally infamous Daily Mail article, penned by Jan Moir about the 'strange, lonely and troubling death' of Stephen Gately.
My partner read it very early on Friday morning and said, rather presciently, 'That's going to cause a bit of a stink'. Too right - a stench that Jan Moir herself and the Daily Mail could never have imagined.
In an even greater show of strength than the earlier Trafigura moment, the Twitterverse went into meltdown. The level of astonishment at the column's content was quite something to behold.
When a friend of mine tweeted that Moir had quite rightly breached the PCC code and forwarded the message to Derren Brown, the die was cast. His retweet flooded Twitter and the PCC was deluged with complaints - in itself a delicious irony given the relentless Daily Mail campaign against Ross and Brand last year - a number that currently stands at around 25,000.
Every development was noted. When the article headline changed and the ads were removed, tweets went round everywhere. When Charlie Brooker published his comment on the whole sorry saga, a link to his article achieved almost equal saturation.
But all good things come to an end. At lunch the other day with some friends, we noted how quiet it had been on Twitter this week, in comparison to the fire and brimstone of the previous seven days.
And we all agreed that actually a quiet week was actually really important. A sense of order and decorum has returned. Changing the world, or at least a couple of small parts of it, takes energy and emotion that cannot be continuously maintained.
Twitter needs time to gather itself before the next assault on freedom of speech and the erosion of liberal values. Let us get our breath back!
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
As the Kindle hits the UK, there's divided opinion on whether or not, it's a good thing. David Hepworth wrote an elegant post on why he can't see the point of a Kindle and all the other e-readers.
Nicholson Baker has also written about his Kindle experience - not all of it positive.
But e-readers are here to stay, no matter how perfect a product the book is, for a number of reasons.
1) Digital is now. For the same reason that digital music has succeeded, there are a lot of people who just aren't fussed about having a physical product any more. For those of us who still buy CDs/vinyl/paperbacks, this is still a strange concept, but as the digital world progresses, ever more people will be less and less interested in having clutter around.
2) No need to buy crap paperbacks. As much as I love to read new, hot releases, I also like to keep my brain stress-free on occasion and veg out to the latest Lee Child or Kathy Reichs book. The thing is, I don't really feel the need to buy them physically - an e-reader will be perfect for a space-saving download, speed read and then I won't feel bad if I keep it, or discard it.
3) You don't need to tell everyone what you're reading. Some people have suggested that e-readers could do for the adult fiction industry what DVDs and the internet did for the sex video industry. Imagine the joy of being able to read whatever you want without the need to hide it in a different book jacket.
It's clear that the book is a pretty perfect product, but technology has a way of taking things to a new place and a new level. When the iPod arrived, there wasn't total agreement that it would create the music listening revolution that it did. I'm not suggesting that the Kindle will have quite the impact of Apple's invention, but it's definitely the next step on the way to a new chapter for books.
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
When you're looking for a job, this isn't exactly the kind of opportunity you really want to see offered!
Guess it could have been worse - might have been McDonald's looking for someone...
Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.
Watched the Saturday X Factor show tonight (a day late, admittedly) and it's obvious that Louis Walsh has had the eye surgery to remove his bags that had been talked about in the papers.
Apparently, Simon has been urging Louis to have it for a while, and Sharon Osbourne has obviously passed on the number of her own plastic surgeon.
If you didn't notice this week, make sure you look closely at Louis' eyes next week and you'll spot the difference!
