Greenwich man ‘outcast’ after criticising The Dark Knight

A Greenwich man has been cast out of his family home after not appreciating The Dark Knight enough. The incident happened over Christmas but is only now being reported.

Brian Greene, 31, says his family have “totally gone ape” over his failure to recognise 2008’s tour de force as the greatest movie of all time.

Heath Ledger: literally the world's greatest actor ever. Fact.

“I can’t understand it,” Greene said. “After Christmas dinner we usually watch a film and my cousin Milo wanted to show off his new Blu-ray player. It’s like DVD but clearer, or something.

“Anyway, my other cousin was given The Dark Knight so we stuck it on.

“But after the best part of three hours of turgid moralising and overdone set pieces I was pretty glad to see the back of it. And that was when the trouble started.

“I flicked on the light and said something like, “Wow, even Aunt June’s turkey wasn’t that dry. And why does Christian Bale have to sound like he’s gargling hammers?””

Unfortunately for Greene, his family had fallen under the spell of the innate genius of Christopher Nolan’s screenplay and Heath Ledger’s deservedly award-winning turn as The Joker. Understandably, they did not take kindly to the clearly unwarranted criticism.

“They just flipped. You want to know how I got these scars? My uncle just stared, then smashed his sherry on the table and rushed me. I fell back on my brother’s Star Wars Lego and that’s when my Gran’s pug Buster went for my face.”

Greene contrived to escape when, cowering under a table still heaving under the remnants of turkey and trimmings, his hand fell on the very pack of mini-screwdrivers he had earlier won in a cracker.

“For some reason they loved it when I threatened them. My aunt screamed I should jam it in her eye “like Heath did”. They kept coming at me. I found myself shouting “come on, I want you to do it, I want you to do it. Come on, hit me. Hit me!”

“That’s when I got the Hell out of there – I knew they wouldn’t go down without a fight, but this was different. They crossed the line”

Greene dashed to the park in a hail of pigs in blankets, but his future looks bleak.

“I’m still finding parsnips in my hair. I thought I was dead. Well, at least half. There’s no way back for me now, not unless I agree to love the film.

“I haven’t anywhere to go – I’m an outcast. Everyone’s creaming themselves over The Dark Knight. When I’m bored I usually head to the IMAX but that piece of crap is on four times a day”

Greene’s case is not an isolated incident. Many other Britons seem to have been affected by the undeniable brilliance of 2008’s highest grossing movie.

In November, a Tolworth man threatened to “blow” the Isle of Wight ferry, bellowing, “They’re talking over the same exact thing in the other boat. They’re murderers…they’ll blow us sky-high in a second”

The Dark Knight is out now on DVD and Blu-Ray. The producers have released as statement saying “anyone who chooses not to buy The Dark Knight in ALL formats is clearly homosexual”.

Cheerfully concocted by Will Nichols

Reports of Pop’s death have been greatly exaggerated

It was Dr. Pepper that did it. Promising a free can to everyone in America seems to have embarrassed Axl Rose in a way that the multi-million dollar ‘hurry-up’ payments and tales of chicken coops in the recording studio did not. And with a cheery “what’s the worst that could happen?” Chinese Democracy was released in November, a mere 15 years after Guns N’ Roses’ previous effort.

And 2008 seemed to be the year of the comeback for aging rockers, with new material from The Verve, Paul Weller and Oasis, along with news that Britpop rivals Blur are to reform. In pop, Britney and Boyzone returned, with varying degrees of success, while Snap’s Rhythm is a Dancer blasted its way back into the charts, presumably on the back of Brains from Thunderbirds pulling shapes around bottled water.

Katy Perry has kissed more girls than The Equivalent this year

But most of all, 2008 was a great year for quality, well-written pop, with new-comers Katy Parry and Alphabeat laying down the challenge to established acts. So much so that picking 10 songs of the year out of songs that have made the top 40 takes a huge amount of whittling down. This is why I can’t bring myself to agree with Phil Seaman that the late 2000s have been devoid of pop classics.

Babestation: could Iran be right on this one?

Never one to be told ‘write about what you know’, Will Nichols, a single man, ponders TV and Onanism

For those yet to venture to the outer frontiers of their Digibox, Babestation (go on, click the link – no one’s watching) is a vision of what all TV would be like were the networks scheduled by fourteen-year olf FHM subscribers. Using similar technology to the nest-cams from Springwatch,  four screens display the dubious talent that England’s provincial clubs have to offer, rolling and rubbing and smiling at you.

Amazingly, the girls manage all this while on the phone. I can’t even type at the same time, but they’re off humping and pumping on screen whilst relaying this information in such intricate detail you suspect they can only be catering for a sizeable blind audience. It’s possible that many viewers has perfect vision before encountering Babestation, but their actions since…well, you get the picture.

Ayatollah Khamenei probably isn't a Babestation viewer

For your premium rate penny you, the drooling viewer too timid for strip clubs, can pose the dolls: bend them over, demand that they get various parts of themselves ‘out’ or – amazingly and bizarrely common – ask them to show you their feet. One has to hope that someone is coming out ahead here, because sure as  sure can be, everyone involved is heading for Dante’s pit.

It’s programmes like Babestation that make you wonder if Ahmadinejad might have a point after all. Under totalitarian Islamic discipline and censorship, Iran has massed $70bn in foreign exchange reserves. Meanwhile, we’re literally fiddling while Rome burns, spanking ourselves silly as our economic foundations crumble and the whole darn cathedral of ‘decadent capitalism collapses around our ears.

In the absence of clear leadership from Brown, Paulsen et al, I guess saving the world as we know it has fallen at my door – again. Contrary to the pun-tastic but ultimately ‘bully in the playground’ tactics of freezing Iceland’s assets – clearly Brown doesn’t have a small cat he can give a good shoeing – Babestation can drag us out of the mire.

Picture the scene: in a rented Daventry home, a band if enterprising, if lunar-skinned, ex-Lehman Brothers employees found their own show. With equipment borrowed from Bill Oddie, currently in a fallow period, they steadfastly refuse to alter the bumping and grinding formula, and even export it overseas. Although probably not to Iran.

By owning their own phone-lines they wrest control of their own means of production back from the wasteful, bourgeois pornographers. Soon, Britain’s shrivelled financial services sector is rocking back on forth on the command of lonely foreign businessmen. The pound soars. George Soros, sensing a profit, begins scouring Essex nightclubs for the next entrepreneuse. Britain out-Hollands Holland.

This all slots nicely into the Soviet system nationalising the banks has kick-started and, more to the point, surely amateur porn encapsulates the paradise Marx envisaged.

Artists to look out for in 2009

Unperturbed by dismissing the Spice Girls as one hit wonders and tipping Hawksley Workman and Carina Round (who? exactly…) for global domination, Will Nichols brings you five bands who may well be selling iPods this time next year…

The Gaslight Anthem

Sounding like The Killers would normally be a problem given Brandon Flowers’ prolificacy but with the Las Vegas boys due some time off after four albums in as many years, the Gaslight Anthem may have struck gold. Sure, they’ve got enough nods to The Boss to pull off the whole blue-collar New Jersey image – check out the hats and leather jackets – but somehow it’s unconvincing. They’re all a bit too pretty. If CD:UK was still going, these guys would be huge; unfortunately for them, they have to rely on Radio 1 latching on and exciting all those kids in River Island checked shirts.

The ’59 Sound is out now
Top Track: Old White Lincoln

The Gaslight Anthem: pretty

Florence and the Machine

You know how you kind of fall in love with talented women on stages, how they don’t need a spotlight because they’re radiating their own light somehow? Well, as a live act Florence burns like the sun. You pretty much know you’re watching someone special if they keep in tune whilst chasing their keyboard player around the stage and hurdling the drum kit. If the world actually worked properly she would own it instead of propping up the bill of the NME Awards Tour. Beware following the link: she might ruin you for normal women. That said, if there’s a couple of us stumbling around, dazzled, perhaps we can start a support group or something.

Top Track: Between two lungs

Dent May and his magnificent ukulele

First, a confession: I know nothing about this band. Zip, nada. Yeah, you might say that about most of the band here but Dent May is well beyond my threshold of ignorance. But if you like your Ronettes with a twist of French pop, Dent May might well fill that long-term vacancy you’ve had for a Mississippi-based, lo-fi Jens Lekman impersonator.

Top Track: Pierce Avenue

VV Brown

Gravity-defying hair is just one of this Northampton born singer’s charms. Model height and looks, and with a deft line in stage patter, she was writing songs for the Pussycat Dolls and the Sugababes until, flat broke, she sold her keyboard to buy a ticket home. Installed in her aunt’s attic she had written her album, Travelling Like the Light, within weeks. Island loved it, bought it and her subsequent success is so cliched I’m almost embarrassed to mention it. She performed Crying Blood on Jools Holland, was name-checked in Vogue and, well, you can write your own ending, but ‘superstar’ is in there somewhere.

Travelling like the Light is out early 2009
Top Track: Crying Blood (Challenge: try not shouting out “the moooooonster mash over the chorus)

Emmy the Great

I tip Emmy for actual greatness every year, and every year she remains firmly on the outskirts. Seriously Emmy, you’re showing me up here. At least an album, First Love, is scheduled for 2009, which should shunt Emmy and her collaborators – now seemingly part of a gestalt Emmy the Great – into the limelight, and I might FINALLY get some recognition.

Top Track: We almost had a baby (but check out the Where is my Mind cover)

The Grants

No less a blowhard that Alan Mcgee has annointed The Grants as the best unsigned band in the world. This is partially true – they are unsigned. Frankly, I just plain don’t like The Grants, but I thought I’d best include them because they’re probably going to be huge. Glasvegas huge. Strictly for those who lament the passing of Lowgold.

Top Track: My games

Will Nichols will return with his favourite songs of 2008, but he needs more time to think about that.

Could Pennant be the key to Liverpool’s title challenge?

by Will Nichols

Perhaps it is a strange time to be highlighting failings now Liverpool top the Premier league in December for the first time in seven years, but problems were evident in the lacklustre home draws with Stoke, Fulham, and now West Ham.

Width and goal scoring are the issues to concern Benitez. Whilst the defence remains resolute, Liverpool have only managed 21 goals in 15 games – less than Hull – which compared to Man Utd’s 26 and Chelsea’s whopping 33 is a real problem.

Pennant could be the man to bring the title back to Anfield

Liverpool are struggling to partner an injury-hit Torres with an out of form Robbie Keane, who may well end up as the latest big name striker to be pushed to the Anfield flanks. It could not have helped Keane’s fragile confidence to be hauled off for the untried David Ngog on Monday but the truth is that two league goals so far is a poor return for £20m.

On Monday Keane was adrift, lacking support admittedly, but failing to create anything of note against a decidedly poor West Ham defence. Calls for Ryan Babel to be partnered with Dirk Kuyt up front floundered as the Dutchman put in a non-performance after replacing Riera for the last 15 minutes.

Riera plodded through a largely unspectacular spell with new rich kids on the block, Manchester City, but the left-winger has been excellent this season. However, he has looked fatigued in the last few games and the width he provides has been lacking.

The narrowness of Liverpool’s recent play is as much to blame for the goal-scoring woes as the strikers’ collective dips in form. Anfield is not the largest pitch, and teams coming to defend find closing the space down far easier than they would do on the green expanses of The Emirates or Old Trafford. Having players stick to the flanks pulls defenders wide creates more space for the talents of Gerrard and Alonso.

Riera, Aurelio and to an extent, Babel, provide this width down the left, but on the right, options are limited. The willing but desperately limited Dirk Kuyt, out of position Yossi Benayoun and defensively minded Arbeloa cramp up space by cutting inside. Benitez dropping Mascherano on Monday was a positive move to free up the centre but chances were still scarce with so little coming down the right hand side.

Perhaps the solution is a player rumoured to be on his way out of the club. Jermaine Pennant’s stock has sunk so low at Liverpool that he was omitted from the Carling Cup squad that lost to Spurs. He even surprised the serial burglars of players’ houses by being at home when they attempted a break in. Mind you, as a popular football site has pointed out, with reasons as good as this you might stay at home too.