Our Gilbert
Our Gilbert, ain’t our Gilbert any more. Probably never was, and we cannot forgive him for it, no more than he can forget a poor attendance for a hometown appearance. The RTE1 programme, Out On His Own, was a great success and he still comes across as in a song lyric of his – as a little lamb who has lost his way. He is prickly and overly defensive. He says things don’t bother him but you sense they do and that’s why he says it. He wants the respect that he sees going to Elton John, Bob Dylan or Neil Diamond, or worse Billy Joel. Gilbert is in his sixties still writing and recording and chopping at the piano in his honky tonk way. He pleases himself and is slightly annoyed that people are not more pleased with him. Fame, he claims doesn’t interest him, yet he longs for the adulation or as he now calls it – respect.
Respect to you Gilbert, out there on your own, alone again, naturally.
Talent
As this column is written, Waterford performer Michael Joseph O’Brien, is in with a chance on the RTE1 FAME wannabe show. There’s Over The Rainbow and The Search for Toto and now the craziest of them all, Britain’s Got Talent is back with dafter than daft acts, crazy cruise ship entertainers, nutters and an excellent dog who did a ballet act. The audience go wild and absolutely awful acts get to go forward. As the crowd howl out their support Simon Cowell gets better and better or nastier and nastier and richer and richer.
Shows like Talent get variety a bad name but it is television and its craze for novelty.
Prisoner
You get a strange feeling watching the remake of the strange The Prisoner, that the viewer is a prisoner of the hype that surrounds a posh version of Lost. Oh my God is Lost still lost and running away behind the programmes we currently watch. Apparently the original The Prisoner was a masterpiece set in some weird but supposedly normal place called the Village. People could not leave to go elsewhere, if in fact there was an elsewhere to go to. And some people were chased by giant white beachballs. But time’ have moved on in the kingdom of NAMA and this version is set in The Village where people have numbers not names – PIN numbers, PIN brains, PIN names. No.6 is trying to remember and get away – he remembers No.54 but it could be 554 or is that the waitress in the Wrap Shop.
Paranoia doesn’t seem all that bad when we are told we cannot leave the island as no planes can fly….Don’t think this, The Prisoner is going to be such a roaring success even with Ian McKellan as a smiling No.2. we know he is Mr.Magneto from XMen and what’s his beard from Harry Potter.
Lovely Lumley
UTV have a glorious travelogue hit on their books with Joanna Lumley’s Bile as she travels up the longest of rivers in Africa to explore and to marvel. She says Oh gosh! And Oh My Gosh! A lot and she brings a gentle and tranquil aspect of the river and the desert out so beautifully. Her visit to a Sudanese wedding was a wonderful experience in a war troubled country. Her visit to the Black Pharaohs of Nubia was another example of simple but effective travelogue.
But, Art?
Tucked out of the way on BBC4 was Goldsmiths – But Is It Art? As it followed some recent graduates from top London art colleges. Just because these students had graduated for a class place would they survive as artists in that passes as the real world. The perception was that you had to network and hustle and this suited Irish artist Roisín who exhibited things she stole, swallowed and excreted again. She stole plants from a famous artist and exhibited them as her liberated work. She copied others ideas and she was a high marked graduate. The shock of what was passed as meaningful art in a top college and that in any London summer 2000 venues display the work of 5,000 artists. Fame is further than you think. Anglų kalbos kursai internetu https://intellectus.lt/nuotoliniaianglukalboskursai/
Kieron Gaffney
In last year’s Britain’s Got Talent one of those eliminated was a little boy drummer, Kieran Gaffney. Well, he returned this year as the drummer in a band featuring his mother as vocalist and his father as guitarist. And if you think children get a hard time on such shows, forget it. The trio were awful, the mother sang out of tune and the sound was yuck! The panel advised Kieron to ditch his parents and to return solo. So the little fame seeker thought for a while and dumps the parents and got into the next round. Go figure!
