Six Feet Under. Anti-Valentine Party. Birthday. Frankenstein’s Wedding. Elbow. iPhone. Doctor Who Party. First Quizzing event. Eurovision Party. Sufjan. Degree completed with a First. Avenue Q. Chris Barstow’s 30th. Chris Barstow leaves for Japan. That Day We Sang. Mastermind. Move to Manchester. Greenbelt. Kaisers at Kirkstall. Masters started. Masters stopped. Data-entry tedium. Graduation. New job at MMU. Labour doorstep. Movember. Stepping Out. Petra’s funeral. DJ-ing at Pop Curious again. Christmas. About to move again.

2011 in 10 “things”:

1) My OU graduation and the day of great pride for me and my mum
2) Stella Duffy wearing the “I AM NOT CAROL ANN DUFFY” T-shirt
3) The “wedding dance” in Kirkstall Abbey with Rob Butler and Debbie Gibbs
4) The Six Feet Under blog collaboration with Jon Hickman
5) The three-headed Greenbelt Literary Quiz with Ben Whitehouse and Andy Tate
6) Being back in the Black Chair
7) Calling Chorlton “home”
8) Smiths Night with Debbie and the Chrises
9) The joy of live music with wonderful friends
10) Those many quiet moments with the ducks at Kirkstall, and in Alexandra Park

And what of those who’ve helped make the good times good in 2011, lighting up my life face-to-face or via illuminating and entertaining discussions in the Twitterverse? The Special Guest Stars? I can reveal that, in no particular order, with Twitter usernames in brackets so you can follow them if you know what’s good for you, here are just some of them. They’re all very special indeed:

Ben Whitehouse (@benjiw)
Rob Butler (@theninthdoctor)
Debbie Gibbs (@plainnorthern)
Jon Hickman (@jonhickman)
Mary Costello (@maryecostello)
Chris Styles (@iamdresden)
Chris Fitzpatrick (@saxonwhittle)
Chris Barstow
Andrew Tate (@cloudatlaskid)
Stella Duffy (@stellduffy)
Nick Jones
Simon Best (@simonpjbest)
David Gilchrist
Jason Prince (@Jason_Prince)
Jenny & Matt Whitham (@Jenny_Whitham & @mattywhitty)

Oh, and my Mum. Obviously. Love to you all and here’s to happier times in 2012.

Chris x

30 – Sondre Lerche – Sondre Lerche
29 – Deerhoof – Deerhoof vs. Evil
28 – Erland and the Carnival – Nightingale
27 – Feist – Metals
26 – Sarah Nixey – Brave Toy Soldiers
25 – Dutch Uncles – Cadenza
24 – Wye Oak – Civilian
23 – Bon Iver – Bon Iver
22 – British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
21 – Björk – Biophilia
20 – Joan As Police Woman – The Deep Field
19 – Arctic Monkeys – Suck It and See
18 – Hercules and Love Affair – Blue Songs
17 – Wild Beasts – Smother
16 – The Decemberists – The King Is Dead
15 – Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
14 – Guillemots – Walk The River
13 – Bill Ryder-Jones – If…
12 – Leisure Society – Into The Murky Water
11 – The Real Tuesday Weld – Songs for The Last Werewolf

10 – Frankie and the Heartstrings – Hunger
The sons of Sunderland are a musically fecund bunch, what with Futureheads, Field Music and now Frankie and the Heartstrings. Their debut long player was suffused with the spirit of Dexy’s and Orange Juice (the latter especially so on Ungrateful). And they have a hot ginger in their number. What’s not to like.

9 – Kate Bush – Director’s Cut
A frankly hasty six years after Aerial, La Bush released this album of reimaginings of tracks from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. These were mostly sympathetic re-renderings of tracks from her two most overlooked albums – I say “mostly sympathetic”, as I’m still not totally at ease with the lashings of auto-tune on Deeper Understanding. Perhaps the most rewarding is the re-recording of the title track from The Sensual World, in which Kate essays an older, wiser, and infinitely more carnal, Molly Bloom.

8 – Patrick Wolf – Lupercalia
Patrick Wolf doesn’t do predictable, that much is plain. Having appeared to have embraced mainstream pop with 2007′s The Magic Position, he then collaborated with noise merchant Alec Empire on The Bachelor (Part One). Whether the follow-up to this was the intended Part Two, I’m not altogether sure, but it was markedly more accessible: dizzyingly joyous pop music from a man in love and, quite literally, having the time of his life.

7 – Anna Calvi – Anna Calvi
The opening track, Rider To The Sea, puts you in mind of nobody so much as Chris Isaak (and we shall return to the subject of David Lynch collaborators near the very end of this post). The rest of this album is parched and blackened, sung by a young woman who has had her heart broken until she’s numbed to many years beyond her age.

6 – John Maus – We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
Looking at the forbidding title, the listener might assume they were in for a bit of industrial hardcore along the lines of Nine Inch Nails or Add N to X. Not, as is the case here, a perfect simulacrum of what The Human League would have sounded like had they made an album between Travelogue and Dare. After all, this is John Maus, who once recorded a song whose lyrics were mainly a repeated mantra of “rights for gays, oh yeah”. He does his bit for feminism here for declaring “pussy is not a matter of fact”. It’s Maus’s obvious love for 1980s synthpop that saves this from being a purely intellectual exercise and makes it a warmly lovable record.

5 – Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
2008′s Youth Novels had marked Lykke Li out as one to watch, but it was her sophomore record that confirmed her as one of the most exciting and painfully honest pop lyricists of today. Thirty years ago, everyone who had ever had their heart broken had Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret to latch on to. Now, they have this.

4 – Elbow – Build a rocket, boys!
This was the year in which Elbow veered dangerously close to National Treasure territory, with another acclaimed album, a sell-out tour and the kudos of composing the official song for the 2012 Olympics. None of which, fabulously, stops Guy Garvey from being the most unassuming pop star imaginable. This record doesn’t reach the giddy heights of The Seldom-Seen Kid – but then, as far as I was concerned, nothing else released in the whole of the 2000s did. It is, however, as warm and tender a record as you would expect from Elbow, a plea for tolerance and a reminder to remember one’s roots.

3 – Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
In which it was confirmed that Kate Bush albums really are like London buses, as her output over the last six years equalled that of the preceding twenty. Here, some said, was her Christmas album, although the C-word doesn’t appear once, and of course it’s about a weather phenomenon, not a time of year. More than that, it’s about Kate getting horny. Really horny. She has sexytime with snowmen, yeti, even Sir Elton John. The album as a whole is suffused with that muffled, interior acoustic quality that the snow lends to the world. Truly magical.

2 – Metronomy – The English Riviera
When Metronomy first appeared in 2008, with tracks such as Radio Ladio, I dismissed them as Klaxons wannabes. The ravey synths, the day-glo clothes, the funny haircuts. How things change. The Klaxons released a follow-up that left critics and the record-buying public non-plussed, from its Lolcats cover inwards, and even their Mercury Prize-winning debut doesn’t sound so great anymore. Meanwhile, Metronomy go and release this, just about as perfect a paean to romance and the seaside as anyone has recorded, or is ever likely to record. It would probably have won the Mercury, and would have definitely been my album of the year, had it not been for this…

1 – PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t really “get” PJ Harvey until this record came along. Now I’m wishing I’d got her sooner. A meditation on the futility of war (and the shameful coercing by the English of allied nations into our conflicts), an almost pathological examination of what it means to be English, and an attempt to reclaim notions of Englishness from the idiotic bigots of the BNP and the EDL, Let England Shake shows England to be shaken, but still standing, and at a crossroads. You can only hope that, on the advice relayed in this moving, compelling record, England chooses peace and tolerance.

That’s the albums, now how about the individual tracks. Here’s my Top 30:

30 – Holy Ghost! – Do It Again
29 – Dark Dark Dark – Bright Bright Bright
28 – Foster The People – Pumped Up Kicks (Chrome Canyons Mix)
27 – Arctic Monkeys – The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala
26 – Santogold and Karen O – Go
25 – Silvery – Two Halves of the Same Boy
24 – The Decemberists – Calamity Song
23 – Björk – Moon
22 – Those Dancing Days – Can’t Find Entrance
21 – Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
20 – Erland and the Carnival – Springtime
19 – Deerhoof – Behold a Marvel in the Darkness
18 – MEN – Credit Card Babie$
17 – Alex Turner – Piledriver Waltz
16 – Frankie and the Heartstrings – Hunger
15 – Elbow – Jesus is a Rochdale Girl
14 – Joan As Police Woman – Forever and a Year
13 – John Maus – Head for the Country
12 – Lady Gaga – Edge of Glory
11 – Guillemots – Walk the River

10 – Anna Calvi – Blackout
Darkness descends, the singer’s voice periodically like a siren warning of danger. But it’s too late. Because you’re already ensnared and enchanted.

9 – Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
In which Stephen Fry really does do as the Inuit do, giving us terms ranging from the poetically beautiful (“Blackbird braille”, “Hunter’s dream”) to the wonderfully nonsensical (“Icyskidski”, “Santanyeroofdikov”), La Bush egging him on from the sidelines all the time. And, just as it should, every word is perfectly evocative. Now excuse me, as I have to clear the fallop’njoompoola from my drive.

8 – Ladytron – Ace of Hz
Released to tie in with a best-of album, this rises above the usual status of obligatory-song-to-make-diehard-fans-buy-songs-they-already-have to be one of Ladytron’s best tracks. Delivers a sophisticated kick to the heartstrings.

7 – Hercules and Love Affair – Painted Eyes
Still partying like it’s 1989, and still doing so in the most exquisite fashion imaginable, here are Hercules and Love Affair with some of the most elegant string stabs ever laid down in pop music.

6 – Patrick Wolf – The City (Richard X Remix)
That joyousness I mentioned in the review of his album earlier? It’s encapsulated none more so than in this single, and none more so still than in this Richard X remix. May he and his partner William make sweet music for many years to come.

5 – PJ Harvey – The Words That Maketh Murder
What if she takes her problem to the United Nations?

4 – Metronomy – The Look
Those opening and closing few seconds of echoey, haunting, organ, like a thousand late summer evenings on that last day at the seaside before you have to go home, have to leave behind your romance with the seaside, with the person you found there. That.

3 – Nicola Roberts – Beat of My Drum
In which the 21st-century Cilla wipes the floor with the entirety of Cheryl Cole’s solo career to date in less than three minutes and is promptly rewarded with a chart placing barely inside the Top 30. Who said the world was fair?

2 – Lykke Li – Sadness is a Blessing
Continuing the Soft Cell analogy I started earlier, here’s this generation’s Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.

1 – Lana Del Rey – Video Games
And so we arrive at the top tune of 2011. Much has been written about Lana Del Rey. Is she is an artist working of her own free will, or a record company construct? Frankly, if she’s going to produce music like this, then who cares? She is Julee Cruise with better career prospects, the soundtrack to a David Lynch project that hasn’t yet happened but surely must. I can never get tired of hearing this, and I hope you never do either. Roll on 2012 and her album. Happy New Year until then.

Chris x

My review of the year will focus on art stuff. Tomorrow I’m going to run down my songs and albums of the year, but today I’m going to focus on TV and film. The first half of my TV 2011 was dominated by a show that finished in 2005, but which I only discovered after being given it as a box set for Christmas last year. Six Feet Under was the show, and over the course of six months I voraciously consumed its five seasons. As luck would have it, Jon Hickman was on the same journey, and so we frequently swapped notes on the show via Twitter, our exchanges culminating in this blog post.

As for the television that was actually on in 2011, we’ll first deal with Doctor Who. This was the most ambitious series yet since the show’s return, with a story arc centred around River Song and a season split in two. Accusations abounded that the show had become too hard to follow and that ratings were plummeting as a result. These accusations were unfounded for two reasons:

1) The ratings quoted as “evidence” of Doctor Who’s decline in the media were overnights – factor in all the time-shifters and the show’s audience figures were very healthy
2) Anyone with half a brain should have been able to make sense of the whole River business – we were hardly talking Wire levels of complexity here

Anyway, the season was overall a good one (although could happily have lost the pirates, the little boy on the estate and the second half of the Gangers). If I do have one concern, it’s that the show has become over-reliant on shock twists, in particular of the “you thought the Doctor/Amy/Rory was dead, but… TA-DA!!” variety. Crying wolf like this is going to have a damaging impact should a regular actually be properly, permanently killed off, as we’ll just assume they’ll be miraculously resurrected via some timey-wimey device in a few episodes’ time. Rule number one: the Doctor always lies. Rule number two: the Producer and Head Writer needs to tell the truth a bit more.

It was of course a sad year for Doctor Who fans, with the loss of two iconic figures in Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen, the latter’s death meaning a premature demise for hugely successful spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, a rare example of children’s television that treated its audience like adults. As opposed to Doctor Who’s other spin-off, Torchwood, the latest series of which was an all-too-common example of adult television that treats its audiences like cretins. An attempt at a transatlantic storyline based around an immortality scenario, Torchwood: Miracle Day was a hot mess, moving from one plot strand to another, the writers blowing up anything that bored them after a while. The nadir came with an episode that broke new ground for bad sex, mainly by including spying and blackmail. Far better were BBC3′s sci-fi/fantasy offerings: Season 3 of Being Human, which expanded that show’s universe and built towards a powerful and moving climax; and The Fades, a compelling, bleak and kinetic tale of the dead returning to life. Whilst Being Human had an excellent third season, Channel 4′s Misfits wobbled rather badly. It could have managed the loss of Robert Sheehan had Nathan’s replacement been likeable. Unfortunately Rudy was misconceived and repellent, whilst the season itself suffered from a lack of a defined story arc: Simon’s story was eventually resolved, but only after being left hanging, unattended, for several episodes; and the constant swapping of powers meant the characters’ abilities no longer felt special or defining.

As far as the media were concerned, 2011 was the year that European detective drama became cool. Chiefly, of course, this meant The Killing, but as well as Sarah Lund and her jumpers I became enamoured with another deeply flawed continental policewoman, namely Laure Berthaud, heroine of French series Spiral (although excelled as a character by the magnificent Judge Roban). Some of that dark, morally shady flavour leached into the most singular of this year’s new British dramas, The Shadow Line. A thriller with no happy ending, only dead or compromised good guys and one generation of corrupt criminals replaced by another, The Shadow Line was dominated by two contrasting depictions of psychopathic evil: Rafe Spall as the childishly demonic, giggling, cat-bothering Jay Wratten; and Stephen Rea as the icy, meticulous and calmly terrifying Gatehouse. Gatehouse felt like an anachronism, a character from a 1950s spy drama, and as such could happily have slotted into The Hour, in which espionage and fears of “reds under the bed” were a nice hook on which to hang a smart drama about a young female producer and her pioneering current affairs show. The producer in question was played by Romola Garai, who had a pretty good year as she was also the star turn, playing Sugar, in a superb adaptation of Michel Faber’s Victorian-era novel The Crimson Petal and the White. The general theme of corruption, cover-ups and shameful secrets also pervaded The Promise, a drama that asked some very difficult questions about how the situation in Israel/Palestine may have come about. And, right at the end of this year, Joe Gilgun made up for nearly ruining Misfits by turning in another heartbreaking performance as Woody – in amongst a whole raft of heartbreaking performances – as Shane Meadows reconvened his ensemble for a third time in This Is England ’88.

The above may give the impression that my TV year was light on laughs, but it wasn’t so. Friday Night Dinner was the second sitcom in the space of six months to shine an affectionate light on a Jewish family getting together every week, although it was received rather more kindly than Simon Amstell’s effort Grandma’s House. Acutely (but very affectionately) observed and at times hilarious, it also provided life after The In-Betweeners for Simon Bird; whilst his co-star from that show, Joe Thomas, similarly found a winning new vehicle in student houseshare comedy Fresh Meat, although the real star of this show was newcomer Zawe Ashton as Vod. Psychoville served up dark horror and even darker comedy for its second season (which should be the last – a third would only spoil things), and on the other side of the Atlantic the comedy was similarly black with Nurse Jackie (a show that BBC2 never did know what to do with) and The Big C. The latter started out in uncertain fashion, as if acknowledging the questionable nature of trying to make comedy out of terminal cancer, but then became as much about redefinition of the self and appreciating life rather than avoiding death. However, no comedy was as black, and no drama as bleak, as that in Black Mirror. Trust Charlie Brooker to push things to their furthest extent, particularly in a year when the unfolding events on the news continually outdid the efforts of any writers of fiction.

Finally we turn to reality TV, which this year looked increasingly tired. The X-Factor limped through four months of a judging panel that never gelled, contrived scandal and bullying allegations. Big Brother was reborn on Five to the sound of one person watching. The Apprentice produced candidates who questioned whether French people like their children, and who didn’t know what a cloche is. So it’s hardly surprising that Strictly came out on top by firing Russell Grant out of a cannon, although the person who really needs firing out of a cannon is the individual who decided that the VTs of the couples in training should now consist of hideously contrived (and profoundly unfunny) “comedy” scenarios. On a more positive note, Hilary Devey brought an injection of life and realness to Dragon’s Den, whilst Four Rooms, which initially came across as a rather odd hybrid of Dragon’s Den and Dickinson’s Real Deal, ultimately proved to be rather addictive. Love Thy Neighbour could have been a great experiment in social cohesion, but ultimately reeked of cynicism, as the producers attempted to portray Grassington’s inhabitants as Daily Mail-reading bigots reacting angrily to the deliberately chosen array of potential new villagers (single mum, gay couple, black couple etc), only for this to rather blow up in their face. Much better, and far more constructive, was My Transsexual Summer, a thoughtful and sensitive portrayal of the lives of seven trans men and women at various stages in their transitions. Trans people are still the subject of an appalling amount of bigotry (not least from the gay community), and documentaries like this, however much they might at times fall back on the various reality TV tropes, are a vital means of educating the ignorant. Sometimes, however, reality doesn’t need mediating in order to provide us with drama and spectacle, as Frozen Planet demonstrated with added poignancy by being suffused with a “last chance to see” sensibility – wonders we are only now seeing, just as we move dangerously closer to the point when the changes wrought upon the climate by our activity may run away from us.

From the small screen to the big screen. I’ll admit that, as tends to be the case for me, much of my film-going activity was at the start of the year, tailing off a bit afterwards, thanks to the scheduling of awards hopefuls in January and February. Of these, the big winner, The King’s Speech, was pleasant enough as a Sunday afternoon film, but the greatest cinematic achievement since the last Oscars? Hardly. Nor was Darren Aronofsky’s frankly demented Black Swan a cinematic tour de force, although I predict it’ll enjoy the sort of cult audiences in years to come enjoyed by the likes of Mommie Dearest. Far better was Blue Valentine, a real, raw, honest and beautifully soundtracked portrayal of a relationship alternately coming apart and coming together in front of our eyes. Films that scratched the veneer of humanity to reveal savagery beneath the surface seemed to hold a lot of appeal to me this year: hello, then, to Animal Kingdom, Tyrannosaur, Wuthering Heights and We Need To Talk About Kevin (all far more successful in that regard than Black Swan). Those last three also demonstrated, along with darkly comic coming-of-age film Submarine and gay romantic drama Weekend, the real face of British cinema, as opposed to the stultifying heritage face shown by The King’s Speech (but if you wanted heritage with real class, then Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was the go-to film). Providing the best foreign language treats, meanwhile, were two seasoned veterans: François Ozon with Potiche; and Pedro Almodovar, reunited with star Antonio Banderas for The Skin I Live In, yet another parable of how civilised behaviour is, in this case literally, only skin deep.

I’m not going to attempt to make ranking lists out of any of the above, save to say that Blue Valentine was my favourite film of 2011 and The Crimson Petal and the White my favourite TV show (except for Six Feet Under. Obviously). I will however be attempting to rank my favourite songs and albums tomorrow, in one of those hilariously subjective exercises, the results of which will no doubt be the subject of much disagreement. Not least by me.

Chris x

One thing that struck me on a personal level, however, was the striking resemblance of one of the trans men featured, Max, to a very dear friend of mine. So I couldn’t resist showing them alongside one another.

Here they are then, Ben and Max. Or is it Max and Ben..?

Chris x

The degree ceremony took place last Friday at Bridgewater Hall. It was the last of 20-odd that they’ve done this year all over Britain and abroad, but any jadedness that you might expect by that stage wasn’t at all visible. The staff were helpful, enthusiastic (without being forced) and genuinely interested, thus helping each graduate’s day to feel that extra bit special. The ceremony itself was preceded by some organ music and a very formal procession of the great and good of the Open University as they took to the stage. However, any fears that this might be a stuffy, pompous affair were quickly dispelled by the Vice-Chancellor, Martin Bean, a man full of joy and delight at the achievements of his institution’s students. I was one of 253 graduates whose hands were shaken and envelopes passed to them with little cards of congratulations inside, and every single one was enthusiastically welcomed on to the stage with “Hi (insert name)!”, a warm handshake and a few kind words. We were all encouraged to clap and cheer as well, so by the time the final graduate had been across the stage there were a lot of sore hands.

Cameras, understandably, weren’t allowed in the ceremony (official photos only), and my budgetary limitations meant I couldn’t really consider forking out upwards of fifty quid on ceremony photos. So instead, me and my mum took some photos of me in and outside Bridgewater Hall. Here are a few below, for the benefit of those who don’t follow me on Facebook (for those who do, they’re all up on there):

All-in-all, I can’t praise the organisation and presentation of this degree ceremony enough. It was a very positive end to what has been a very positive experience with the Open University, one that has seen me through almost six years.

Yesterday, sadly, my mum had to go back home to Kent. My sadness at having to see her off was, however, mitigated by the event I had lined up for the evening. This was the opening event of this year’s Manchester Literature Festival, a talk hosted at the Martin Harris Centre by Dr David Alderson, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester. Taking part in the talk, two present-day literary greats: Colm Tóibín and Alan Hollinghurst. Tóibín is the University’s new Professor of Creative Writing, whilst Hollinghurst has just had his latest novel, “The Stranger’s Child”, published. Apologies, by the way, for any inaccuracies in the quotes given below: these were scribbled down by me during the talk…

Both men gave brief talks at the start of the event. Tóibín was up first, describing how, in 1980, he lived in Harker Terrace in Dublin for 7 years, next door to a house where Ireland’s most famous gay couple had lived (at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the country), in plain sight of both the police station and the censor’s office. The couple, Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, were a pair of actors and theatrical impresarios. Mac Liammóir, although English-born and raised, reinvented himself with a new identity that was, from Tóibín’s description, more Irish than the Irish. Tóibín described how the pair negotiated their way through multiple layers of society and were thus able to live openly as a couple even though homosexuality was a crime (and continued to be so until 1993). Tóibín related a key moment in his childhood, when Mac Liammóir brought his touring play about Wilde, “The Importance of Being Oscar”, to Tóibín’s home town, a very conservative, rural Irish community, in 1965. Despite the show being about a gay man, Mac Liammóir never alluded directly to the issues that had led to Wilde’s downfall, instead relying on a combination of elision and allusion – thus his show proved hugely popular with conservative Catholic audiences, but also struck a chord with those to whom it spoke about feelings and experiences they dared not articulate.

Two decades later, Tóibín went to Buenos Aires to cover the trial of General Galtieri. He heard the harrowing testimonies of those who had been imprisoned and tortured under his brutal regime, and came to associate the names of the streets in the city with this torture and darkness. Tóibín explained that, as far as the gay scene in mid-1980s Buenos Aires was concerned, there was none. It “lived in a silence between the courthouse and the railway station”, and consisted of furtive encounters in the dead of night. From his descriptions, whereas gay identities in Ireland at the same time were negotiated (such as those of Edwards and Mac Liammóir, the latter both in term of his sexuality and his nationality), in Argentina things were far more binary – you were gay at night, then not gay at all, to anyone, during the day: a silence about one’s own sexuality that Tóibín linked to the silence around the “disappearances” during the Galtieri regime; everyone knew it happened, but no-one dared articulate it. That was survival. And that survival could be aided in the strangest of ways, as Tóibín related meeting a gay Argentinian who had somehow come across, in Argentina, an English-language copy of Hollinghurst’s debut novel, “The Swimming Pool Library”, and how this had become his sole point of reference regarding his sexuality. For Tóibín, this was emblematic of how, in societies where homosexuality could not be out in the open (and here, of course, we should include our own up to less than half-a-century ago), “books were needed, because images were not there; or if they were, they were under so many layers that they could not be trusted or used productively.”

Alan Hollinghurst then took to the podium to give his talk. He started by describing how he came out in 1975 at the age of 20. At the time he was writing a thesis at Oxford on gay writers, such as EM Forster, who were unable to come out because of the laws of the time, and how they (rather like Mac Liammóir in his Oscar Wilde show) concealed or gave clues to their sexuality through their work. He compared their situation with the state that has been reached today, and what Adam Mars-Jones describes as “the essential banality of homosexuality”, so that to write about homosexuality is no longer notable or the cause of outrage. He describes how this stage was reached, first via the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967 (which coincided with Michael Holroyd’s biography of Lytton Strachey, one which openly detailed gay activity in the Bloomsbury Group), through the “embrace of candour” in the 1970s and beyond. Returning to Forster, his sexuality, whilst still never mentioned at the time of his death in 1970, is now a central aspect of his identity when he is discussed. Hollinghurst also talked about “The Swimming Pool Library”, and about how he feels the book has some shortcomings, in particular in his attempts to try and cram in a whole range of issues, not just homosexuality. Nevertheless, he highlighted its themes of candour and concealment, themes central to this particular discussion.

David Alderson then opened up a brief talk between the two authors, commenting on how those themes of concealment and candour were reflected in Tóibín’s often very spare writing style, and on the discoveries and revelations that change our perspectives on characters in Hollinghurst’s narratives. There was some discussion of style, Hollinghurst remarking that it is a “bad thing to be self-conscious about one’s style”. Tóibín meanwhile recalls having read Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” when he was 17, and recognising something in how emotions were written, implicitly rather than explicitly, and finding clues and inspirations through the book to his own writing style. Tóibín added that “writing comes out of the self”, explaining that it is impossible not to put something of yourself into your novels and characters, as “the things of the self feed into the creation of work.”

Picking up on Tóibín’s account of his time in Buenos Aires, David Alderson asked him why the Hispanic connection was so important. Tóibín explained that in 1975, when he was 20, he moved to Barcelona. Spain at the time had just been freed from Franco’s rule, and the country was enjoying a political liberation that happened to coincide with Tóibín’s own sexual liberation in a city of light, colour and freedom (in contrast with the grey repression of Dublin). Thus these experiences were adapted for his debut novel “The South” (albeit filtered through a woman in the 1950s).

After this, the floor was opened to questions and comments from the audience. These ranged from wanting to know why Hollinghurst’s characters didn’t have more enjoyable, fulfilled lives (Hollinghurst pointed out that some of them did); to how Hollinghurst’s 20-year-old self would have reacted to learning he’d become an award-winning writer (he would have been surprised, Hollinghurst commenting that he “can’t even remember when I first heard of the sodding Booker Prize”); to whether it was difficult making adjustments when writing as a character rather than using the authorial voice (Hollinghurst said he actually found it easier when writing as a character than as himself).

One person asked Hollinghurst to expand on AIDS and how this affected his writing. Hollinghurst explained that he had started writing “The Swimming Pool Library” in 1984, and that later that year a close friend had died of AIDS. Whilst he gave a lot of consideration to incorporating AIDS into the novel, at the time he did not feel he could do the justice subject; hence “The Swimming Pool Library” (published in 1988) ends in the summer of 1983, just before the AIDS crisis began in Britain, and he only felt really able to tackle the issue in “The Line of Beauty”, where AIDS formed part of the historical tapestry of 1980s Britain. Tóibín meanwhile remarked on how there have been other instances where authors have depicted events leading up to a moment of change or crisis, but have chosen not to depict the moment itself, instead stopping there (as Hollinghurst did in his debut), or eliding the event and rejoining the action afterwards (as Hollinghurst does in “The Stranger’s Child”, which leads up to the First World War, but then resumes some years afterwards). I can also see the former in “The Line of Beauty”, with the central character on his way to receive the results of an HIV test. He thus exists for us, like Schroedinger’s cat, in a state where he may be either positive or negative, but with the box remaining firmly shut.

Tóibín was asked if he thought people automatically looked for gay connections or messages in his books that had no overtly gay content, or whether he thought he felt a duty to include gay references or allusions in his work. Tóibín responded initially by quoting Anne Enright’s comment that she’s “only Irish on a Tuesday”. He said writing “The Master” was not a problem, as Henry James’s 19th-century London was in many ways similar in its mores to the small Irish community in which Tóibín himself grew up. Meanwhile, “Brooklyn” was based on experiences of his mother and sisters. He said he found that his heroine in the latter had a distance that he could not always “get through”, and would wonder “was it gay, me, or it”. With regards his duty to include some gay reference in his work, Tóibín quoted John McGahern as saying “my duty is to my next sentence” – the words come first, the meaning can be dealt with afterwards.

Both writers were asked to clarify whether they thought a gay “style” was linked to secrecy and code, and whether this particular style would die out now that these were needed less and less. Tóibín said that he identified with a number of authors when younger, such as Thomas Mann and Thom Gunn, without realising at the time that they were gay – however, he did discover that they, like him, had lost a parent when they were children. He thus highlighted how sexuality is merely one part of one’s identity and just one aspect of that identity that others may latch on to. Hollinghurst meanwhile speculated that “gay lit” would become an historical phenomenon, and said he was not sure what gay “style” would mean over a larger historical period. Tóibín meanwhile gave examples of work by straight female writers such as Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” and Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” that gave detailed and convincing depictions of gay sex and relationships, thus giving lie to the notion that only gay writers can “do” gay fiction.

Finally, Tóibín had a question to Hollinghurst about the recurrence and importance of architecture in his novels, and wondered if Hollinghurst would be able to write a book that did not feature architecture. Hollinghurst said that architecture had always been integral to how he sees the world (as a child he had dreamed of becoming an architect and would spend many hours drawing plans of huge imaginary buildings), and hence it was central to how he constructs his books. He said that he liked the idea of entering the book being like entering a house, and the reader knowing their way around that house by the end of the book, adding that characters’ attitudes towards the architecture will often say a lot about them.

There ended a fascinating discussion, and one that got me thinking about some other authors, and in particular Sarah Waters. Two of her novels, “Affinity” and “Fingersmith” rely on concealing essential truths from the reader and from the narrators – thus at the end of the former comes a shattering revelation, and in the latter one a revelation in the middle which serves to completely invert everything we have so far learned. Thence we find the themes of concealment and candour and ways in which our perspectives are shifted. It also brings up the notion of the unreliable narrator – seen in these novels, and in a slightly removed sense in “The Line of Beauty”. Although that novel is delivered in the authorial voice, every single scene is depicted through the eyes of its central character, Nick Guest, and what the author describes is how Guest sees the world and assumes regarding the people in that world. Meanwhile, Waters’ novel “The Night Watch” uses not only concealment and candour, but also elision (with its reverse narrative that feeds us important revelations with three-year gaps in between). The novel also contains a sense of characters failing to find liberation, both emotional and social. And architecture is very much a key player in her most recent novel “The Little Stranger” (also her first “non-lesbian” novel, although many readers will doubtless have looked for gay references in there). Finally, there is a running theme in her work of characters negotiating and re-negotiating their identities: from Nan’s picaresque odyssey of self-discovery in “Tipping the Velvet”; through the shifts in identity and station in “Fingersmith”; to the identity negotiations that entangle the key players in “The Night Watch”, each one revealed to have an almost tragically simple origin.

The notion of architecture as a theme is also a reminder of what one can expect, thematically and stylistically, when reading a novel. I know that, when I read Douglas Coupland, I can probably expect dysfunctional families, a quasi-apocalyptic scenario and a wealth of pop-culture references; or that Margaret Attwood will have something to say on the role of women in society as relational to men; or that Sarah Waters will make copious ironic use of the word “queer”. That is part of their own personal architecture and part of what makes them appeal to me as writers. And after this talk, I’m looking forward to getting lost some more in the literary architecture of both Colm Tóibín and Alan Hollinghurst.

Chris x

Six Feet Under is a simple narrative complicated by three red herrings: Nathaniel Jr. (Nate), Nathaniel Sr. (Nathaniel), and death.

Six Feet Under constantly invites us to consider death as a way of life. The funeral parlour setting frames the story of each episode and frames the story arc. Into this structure the series opens with the death of the Fisher family patriarch – the enigmatic Nathaniel – which forces Nate to reconnect with the family business he tried to escape. In Nate the producers give us an archetypal male hero – he is the uncompromising, good looking, sexually succesful (and heterosexual) lead played by a named star; as an audience we would tend to understand Nate to be our key protagonist. Thrown back into a family business which he has no real aptitude for, he physically grapples with death just as the Fisher family must emotionally grapple with Nathaniel’s passing. But this reading becomes increasingly problematic as the series progresses. We must soon regard Nate as a flawed anti-hero, but his influence becomes increasingly corrupting on those around him until we find ourselves asking “is Nate the villain of Six Feet Under?”. In the final season, Six Feet Under presents a moment of crisis for this reading with Nate’s death, leaving the obvious reading of the show short of a hero for some four episodes; the death of Nate is where the producers show their hand, revealing the need for the audience to find a new story to explain Six Feet Under. We will now consider an alternative reading of Six Feet Under – while you may prefer your own reading, we feel that this explanation of the show is more effective than the “Nate as hero” reading as it overcomes the moment of Nate’s death while unifying the story to themes within the show other than death.

So what is Six Feet Under really about?

Read as a classic Hollywood narrative with Nate as a villain, the disruption to the stable world is Nate’s arrival; the new equilibrium can only happen when he’s dead. In the new stable world we see all other characters have changed, and grown, through their experiences with Nate – death aside Nate has not grown through the events, he has simply become more compromised and damaged more and more people. Within this reading, we will consider Claire Fisher, the youngest Fisher child, to be the true protagonist of the show.

Claire Fisher

There are a number of points in the storywhere we see key truths revealed through Claire’s eyes. Most notably, the finale of the show is seen entirely through Claire’s eyes, but her role as an observer of events is a consistent theme throughout the show. Claire is the first character to recognise and accept David’s sexuality; she is our witness whenever a character steps away from the confines of the funeral home and secret pasts are revealed, being present at Mya’s conception in Seattle and when her mother reconnects with her youth at the party in the canyon; Nate’s death is experienced most vividly through Claire, and she is the frst to understand Lisa’s fate.

Reassessing Nate Fisher

Nate’s role as a villain is complex but pervasive as he smothers other characters through performing his role as patriarch. Nate beats David at every turn: he takes the freedom (from the family business) which David craved, then walks back into the business as his equal (despite a lack of experience or qualification) and in doing so he annuls the years of life that David has invested into the funeral home. In his personal life Nate also beats David without trying, claiming fatherhood and marriage (twice); Nate cares for neither but they come to him easily, almost accidentally, enabled by social norms and laws that support his role as partriach. David has to work hard for success in family life and his business life, but social norms allow Nate to simply have these things even though he resents all of them.

Nate takes sex where he finds it, and while this easy sexuality will eventually be implicated in his downfall, no other character is allowed to have the same sexual success. David is criminalised and physically abused for taking what he wants, while Federico’s bumbling naive attempt to be like Nate is disastrous for his marriage.

Sins of the Mother, Sins of the Father

The big contrast between Nate and Brenda is in now they attempt to or resist becoming their same-sex parent. Nate truly does become Nathaniel Jnr in the end, proving just as inadequate a husband and father, underlined by the fact that his last act before going to his deathbed is to cheat on his wife. Brenda, on the other hand, actively resists trying to become her mother, Margaret Chenowith. This is understandable, given that Brenda’s parents psychoanalysed her and her brother Billy to death when they were children (combined with a total disregard for boundaries). Margaret’s lack of boundaries extends to how she speaks to her daughter, her words often cruel, hurtful and undiplomatic – yet whilst she is set up as a thoroughly unlikeable character, as the series progresses it’s increasingly hard to deny the truth in what she says regarding her daughter’s relationships. Brenda exists in a constant state of denial, particularly in Season 2 when she uses sex to mask her feelings of fear and vulnerability as she and Nate become closer. Possibly she is also starting to feel suffocated – a feeling of suffocation that ultimately overwhelms Lisa in the following season, triggering the events leading to her death. Thus, whilst Brenda’s form of release carries its own hazards, she does at least emerge alive. Something of a background figure for much of Season 3, Brenda re-emerges in Season 4 with a new relationship – only for Nate to blunder along and mess with her head. The result? Brenda acquires her own family at long last, albeit a rebounding widower and another woman’s child. Here again Brenda’s fears of becoming her mother come to the fore, as she and Nate argue over whether or not to tell Maya about what happened to her real mother. Brenda then herself becomes a mother, symbolically just after her husband’s death. Her own child, on her own terms, and one who she will bring up within an enriched extended family, one devoid of the destructive presence of a man who, had he lived would most likely have screwed up his relationship with his daughters just as he had screwed up his relationships with the other women in his life (except Claire, but we’ll come to her later).

Of course, mention of Brenda must also include mention of Billy, for parallel with Brenda’s coming-to-terms with her intimacy needs is her having to come to terms with her younger brother’s feelings for her. There are hints from the earliest episodes that Billy might harbour incestuous feelings for his sister, but these finally come to the fore in a scene in Season 4 when the pair are watching the animated film of Charlotte Light and Dark, the book based around Brenda’s childhood (and the mental disorders she feigned when being observed by her father’s various colleagues, just as she feigns intimacy with her sexual partners as an adult because it’s “what they want”). Billy makes a pass at Brenda, but she recoils from him – subconsciously however, she cannot have been completely repulsed as, in a dream she has shortly before giving birth (and triggered by a suggestion made by her mother), she gets into bed with Billy and they start to make love. Whether these incestuous impulses are ever realised is not answered directly by the show, although it’s notable that, amongst the future deaths of the main characters in the final montage, Brenda is seen dying in a nursing home whilst Billy drones on about their disturbed childhood for the umpteenth time.

Ruth is a different case altogether. Whilst Brenda fears giving in to her emotional needs, a lot of Ruth’s frustration stems from attempting to satisfy hers. Although appearing prim and uptight initially, it is quickly revealed that, even before her husband’s death, Ruth was having an affair with a hairdresser, Hiram. When this peters out, various other relationships ensue – Nikolai the florist, Arthur the junior embalmer, and finally geologist George Sibley. Ruth marries him after a whirlwind romance, only to subsequently discover a litany of ex-wives, estranged children and mental health issues. Significantly, each of these relationships entails Ruth assuming the role of mother and carer, rather than equal; even with Nikolai, who employs her for a time, Ruth still takes it upon herself to try and protect him, in particular when she uses part of her savings to pay off a gangster associate threatening Nikolai. The lack of gratitude that she receives in return signals the end of their relationship; this desperation to please being greeted by at best indifference and at worst ill-treatment is magnified to a grotesque degree in David’s experience with the psychopathic hitchhiker. Indeed, of the three Fisher children, David most closely resembles his mother in his behaviour and, like her, has to work his way through a long arc to self-acceptance and realising that his own happiness cannot constantly be subservient to that of others.

Part of Ruth’s journey to liberation comes through her relationship with her sister Sarah’s friend Bettina. Ruth sees in Bettina the woman she was never able to be due to marriage and motherhood coming upon her at a very young age – and indeed the woman who she envies Sarah for being (although Sarah tells Ruth that in fact she envied her for being able to have children; thus the two sisters symbolically appear to be two halves of the same person). In one episode, Bettina encourages Ruth to shoplift, explaining that they will get away with it because, as women over the age of 40, they are “invisible”. The transgression is perhaps less significant than the accompanying dialogue, as it highlights once again how certain groups tend to be marginalised in the Great American Narrative. It’s also a piquant comment on the treatment of actresses of a certain age in the biggest industry in the Fishers’ home city (made even more piquant through being delivered by Kathy Bates). Ruth’s crucial moment of revelation comes near the end of the series as, in a fantasy sequence, she takes aim at and shoots down all the useless, unreliable, demanding men with whom she has fallen into relationships. Significantly, this happens at the exact same time as Nate is lying in a hospital bed, his death just hours away. For Ruth’s eldest child, having repeated this sins of his father, is the one remaining man still holding her back. His death, whilst horrifically painful for her, is necessary in order for her to be truly free. Ruth goes forward as a friend, a lover and a devoted mother and grandmother – but on far more equal terms now that the men who demanded from her are either dead or neutralised.

One can compare and contrast Ruth and Margaret, Six Feet Under’s two matriarchal figures. Ruth is very selfless, with anything she does for herself almost an act of rebellion. Margaret meanwhile is completely selfish and self-centred – but so is her husband, so they make a perfect couple. Whilst she might see herself as better emotionally equipped to deal with his loss than Ruth is to deal with Nathaniel’s death, in truth she is just as grief-stricken, and emphasising this through her melodramatic side is really just as effective a way of masking her deeper feelings as Ruth’s self-repressive streak. The funeral over, Margaret launches into a carefree relationship with Claire’s college tutor Olivier, someone else who plays around with and insults others unashamedly. Margaret has no real interest in being a “good” parent; Ruth has invested too much in trying to be one for very little return. Ultimately though, Ruth moves more towards a happier central position, whereas Margaret remains pretty much where she started, and is arguably less liberated and enriched than her counterpart by the end.

All Apologies

“regarding him say neither bad nor good for he has gone beyond the good and the bad”

While we do see Nate as a villain, he is allowed a brief moment of redemption, which is permitted through our hero Claire. As we say goodbye to Nate, Claire remembers him as a teenager, alone in his room, crying about the death of Kurt Cobain. It is perhaps also not entirely irrelevant that Kurt Cobain’s death was premature, and hastened by a self-destructive act. He left behind a wife (who has her own issues and is a not entirely sympathetic figure) and a young daughter.

Nate & Claire discuss memory and how the dead live on, and through this Nate is fixed in time for us as an innocent. Music from his room fades up – “What else should I be? All apologies” – as the family mourns for him, Nate reaches out to us through the music, which crosses from the diegis as though crossing from the afterlife and asks us to forgive him for after all, he only did what we expected of him.

Dear Sir/Madam

Chris Wills

So here are a dozen types that have tended to reappear over the years:

1 – The Young Pretender
Bullish, headstrong and not so much full of himself as overflowing, the Young Pretender is always one of the most controversial characters in any series of The Apprentice. His gung-ho attitude tends to rub other candidates up the wrong way, leading to some early boardroom confrontations, not least with Lord Sugar himself. In the latter case, the Young Pretender’s big mouth will very nearly get him fired, but he’ll be offered a reprieve (usually because he reminds Lord Sugar “of me when I was his age”) and come to prove himself over the subsequent weeks. Sooner or later, however, the lack of substance behind his blustering facade will be ruthlessly exposed, particularly if he manages to survive as far as the interviews, where his cocky charm singularly fails to impress his stony-faced interrogators.
Previous candidates: Paul Torrisi, Syed Ahmed, Tre Azam, Philip Taylor, Ben Clarke, Stuart Baggs

2 – The Super Saleswoman
The Super Saleswoman is a no-nonsense, larger-than-life individual who is never happier when she’s flogging all manner of tat to the general public. Because making a quick impact and even quicker sales are her strength, tact and subtlety are not her forte, and a consequence of this is that, like the Young Pretender, she can be perceived as rude, abrasive and overbearing, resulting in her making enemies early on in the process. Her sheer tenacity and will to succeed, as well as her unflagging determination to sell anything and everything, are what keep her in the process, very often all the way to the end. However, she tends to lose out at the last to a more rounded – and, in Lord Sugar’s eyes, probably more pliable – candidate.
Previous candidates: Saira Khan, Ruth Badger, Kristina Grimes, Claire Young, Debra Barr, Joanna Riley

3 – The Complainer
Just as divisive as the first two types, but in a more passive-aggressive (rather than just straightforwardly aggressive) manner, the Complainer is an awkward character. Rather than get involved in the action, they tend to sit on the sidelines and point out all the fatal flaws in the team’s strategy. The problems arise when they fail to offer any constructive solution, and their tendency to be vocal about shortcomings is usually sufficiently aggravating to cause them to be brought back into the boardroom by a losing project manager. However, the passive-aggressive stance means that they often end up being seen as the victim, and this wins them extra time in the competition. Ultimately however, Lord Sugar wants a doer rather than a troubleshooter, and that’s why no Complainer has so far won The Apprentice.
Previous candidates: Sharon McAllister, Adam Hosker, Lucinda Ledgerwood, Lorraine Tighe, Jamie Lester

4 – The Nice Guy
Whilst it would not be true to say that, in order to win The Apprentice, you need to be a total git, being nice will only get you so far if you lack that ruthless streak needed when the competition gets tough. The Nice Guy gets on with other colleagues in the house thanks to their winning personality, and they can usually be found hard at work on the tasks. Because of this, they last a long time in the competition. However, as time goes on, not only are they seen to be insufficiently ruthless, but also lacking the necessary drive and ambition that Lord Sugar is looking for. The Nice Guy is therefore usually dispatched towards the end of the process, albeit “with regret”.
Previous candidates: Raj Dhonota, Tuan Le, Lohit Kalbergi, James McQuillan

5 – The Grafter
Closely related to the Nice Guy, the Grafter gets their head down and gets on with whatever task is given to them. They’re usually excellent at marshalling the troops in any task that involves producing a commodity in high quantity – perhaps not surprising then that a couple of the Grafters listed below were ex-military. However, they are often cruelly exposed when required to lead a team and demonstrate innovation and business acumen. It’s here that the Grafter, found to be badly out of their depth, usually reaches the end of the road.
Previous candidates: Natalie Wood, Simon Smith, Christopher Farrell

6 – The Wallflower
Drifting around in the background, appearing to do very little, the Wallflower is a candidate who never lasts long in The Apprentice. Their lack of initiative and failure to defend themselves in the boardroom make them the perfect get-out-of-jail card for a floundering team leader desperate to avoid getting fired.
Previous candidates: Adenike Ogunduyin, Gerri Blackwood, Shazia Wahab, Majid Nagra

7 – The Fall Guy
In the first couple of weeks of any series of The Apprentice, the process of teams deciding their project manager is akin to a game of Pass The Bomb. It’s hardly surprising: lead your team to defeat at the start of the competition, and chances are you’ll be the first one going home, so why put your neck on the block? There have, however, been a few individuals who have done just that, and with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm. That enthusiasm makes the Fall Guy oblivious to the fact that their team is all too willing to aid their inevitable execution in the boardroom.
Previous candidates: Ben Stanberry, Andy Jackson, Rory Laing, Rocky Andrews, Dan Harris

8 – The Loose Cannon
The Loose Cannon is another candidate who tends to wind up their colleagues and thus end up in trouble early on the process. Loose Cannons tend to be very emotional and impassioned, and when they’re able to channel this into the task at hand then they’re very good indeed. But when things aren’t going their way, they have a tendency to self-destruct. Because they can be capable of brilliance, Lord Sugar often gives Loose Cannons more last chances than most other types in The Apprentice, but sooner or later they exhaust his goodwill.
Previous candidates: Adele Lock, Jo Cameron, Jadine Johnson, Michael Sophocles, Melissa Cohen

9 – The Intellectual
Those who believe that having letters before and/or after their name gives them an advantage over the more “street-smart” candidates in The Apprentice have been consistently proved to be sorely mistaken. Lord Sugar’s tolerance for what he sees as intellectuals playing at being enterpreneurs is notoriously low, and the lawyers and scientists who have put themselves up for the challenge have usually come badly unstuck early on in the process.
Previous candidates: Karen Bremner, Dr Sophie Kain, Nicholas de Lacy Brown, Anita Shah, Dr Shibby Robati

10 – The Player
Of course it’s arguable that all candidates in The Apprentice are playing a game – however, some are a bit more devious and manipulative than others. The Player bides their time, quietly sussing out the competition in the early weeks, looking for weaknesses that they can exploit and playing other candidates off against each other as they skilfully negotiate their own path to the end. Some of them make it all the way, whilst others fall just short, their duplicity exposed. And along the way they might just break one or two hearts.
Previous candidates: Katie Hopkins, Jenny Celerier, Alex Wotherspoon, Kate Walsh

11 – The Nearly Man/Woman
This is the One That Got Away, the candidate who in many ways seemed the most credible, and who has been one of the most consistenly strong in the preceding weeks – but who is let go near the end of the process, often because of one slightly bad week. The Nearly Man/Woman’s firing is usually the most controversial in any given series of The Apprentice, with viewers outraged that Lord Sugar has been short-sighted enough to let them go in favour of another, seemingly less able candidate.
Previous candidates: Miriam Staley, Ansell Henry, Raef Bjayou, Howard Ebison, Liz Locke

And finally…

12 – The Winner
So what does it take to make an Apprentice? Looking at the previous winners of the series, it would seem that being a Nice Guy (or Girl), with a bit of the Player’s ruthlessness; a Grafter and strong at Sales, but with the Intellectual’s ability to think creatively; and with the Complainer’s ability to see where things are going wrong – but crucially able to see how these can be put right; all of these roughly add up to making The Apprentice.
Previous candidates: Tim Campbell, Michelle Dewberry, Simon Ambrose, Lee McQueen, Yasmina Siadatan, Stella English

So there you go: twelve types of candidate on The Apprentice. Obviously we’ll be seeing the last one at the end of the process, and probably at least a few of the eleven others along the way – think of it as “Apprentice Bingo”, alongside the usual drinking games for every time someone talks about “giving it 150%”, “smashing it”, “nailing it” etc (or for every occasion that Nick’s face looks as though he’s just smelled raw sewage). Just remember – none of these people are in it to make friends…

Chris xx

So this year, the BBC decided they couldn’t be arsed with a Song For Europe/Your Country Needs You-style jamboree and instead went down the internal selection route. The result of this is that boyband Blue have got back together and penned this effort, called I Can. I pretty much critiqued this, along with the intelligence-insulting “documentary” about the entry broadcast last Saturday, so I’ll say no more and let you hear for yourselves:

I’m still finding it hard to locate my pulse after listening to it, but that hasn’t stopped it being installed as one of the bookies’ favourites – you suspect that might be something to do with Blue’s prior reputation, and that for once we’re sending an act that other parts of Europe have heard of, although they have by all accounts been touring the song doggedly. However, whilst I think this will do much better than most recent UK efforts (and, let’s face it, it would be hard for them to do much worse), I think France, Estonia and Sweden are all better bets. Indeed, these, the UK and Hungary are the top five favourites to win. Latest odds would suggest that Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Denmark, Norway and hosts Germany are all also worth a punt. However, if you fancy throwing all caution to the wind and backing a total outsider, then you can always go for Portugal, with odds as much as 400-1. But I really wouldn’t contemplate banking your life savings on that one.

And so our preview of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest has come to an end on this very warm Good Friday. I’ll be live-tweeting both semi-finals and the final (the latter from a party in Manchester, so my tweets may become steadily more incoherent as the night progresses) – you can follow me @crispeater. And I’ll provide a more in-depth analysis of all three live shows on this blog, including some number-crunching when the semi-final voting results are released after the final. So to round things off, it’s time for one final classic. And it’s one that’s a personal favourite of mine out of all the songs that have represented Royaume Uni since 1957. Furthermore, it was the late, great John Peel’s personal favourite (he loved Eurovision, so go rationalise THAT, indie snobs). It’s the 1982 entry, One Step Further performed by Bardo, aka Sally Ann Triplett (who had also represented the UK as one-sixth of Prima Donna two years prevoiusly) and Stephen Fischer. I’ve chosen their performance from Cheggers Plays Pop (no, really), as their performance in the Contest itself was ill-served by some heavy-handed orchestral backing – with nerves getting to the vocals not helping matters. Here, however, they’re just great:

And let’s face it: Stephen Fischer, in those trousers. You SO would. Or Sally Ann in that dress and those white boots, if you’d rather. Something for everyone. Which, in my mind, sums up the Eurovision Song Contest itself. Enjoy the rest of Easter – including, of course, a certain TV show that returns tomorrow night at 6pm on BBC1. I’ll be blogging that too. See you then!

Chris x

It’s good to have them back, anyway, and they have reasonable odds to finish Top 10. Wonder if Luxembourg can be persuaded to make a return next year? Next today is the Spanish entry. Spain haven’t missed a contest since they debuted in 1961 (only the UK can boast a longer unbroken run), but in recent years they’ve come to look as though they’re doing little more than making up the numbers in the final – no Top 10 finish since 2004, and the last time they seriously challenged for the crown was in 1995. Not even a stage invasion that led to it being performed twice could save last year’s entry from mid-table mediocrity. Maybe this year will be their return to form (although odds of 150-1 suggest otherwise). Here, anyway, is Lucía Pérez with Que me quiten lo bailao, a pleasant mix of flamenco and FM pop, but sadly unlikely to trouble the big hitters:

So now it’s time for the classic corner. First up is the Spanish classic, and we go back to 1990. The first song to be performed in Eurovision in that decade was Azucar Moreno with Bandido, the country’s second showcasing of flamenco, and a brave move given the nul points humiliation visited upon Remedios Amaya seven years previously. Thankfully, and despite a technical hitch that led to a false start, this flamenco house number finished a very strong 5th:

I suspect it would have done better still had it not been for that rather sudden finish. Talking of finishes, today’s preview ends with the classic Italian entry. 1990 was the year Italy won for the second time, but I’m not going to foist Toto upon you all. Instead, we’re going all the way back to 1964 and Italy’s first victory. It came courtesy of Gigliola Cinquetti singing Non ho l’età. Given she was only 15 at the time, and the song’s title translates as I’m Not Old Enough, it’s a wonder this didn’t get banned. So ignore, if you can, the dodgy subtext, and enjoy a melodramatic 1960s love song Italian style:

Now guess which British singer covered that? Dusty Springfield, maybe? You’d think. But no. Vera Lynn. Seriously. You can’t say Eurovision isn’t full of surprises. And now we’ve nearly reached the end of our preview. Just one more song to go and it’s the United Kingdom entry – I think you probably already know my feelings about this effort, but I’ll be previewing it tomorrow and doing an overall round-up of this year’s songs. Plus, of course, the best United Kingdom Eurovision entry ever. See you then!

Chris x