All posts by Paul Lang

Hubble bubble

Video March 14, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

It’s the end of another eventful week in Crossroads.

Dave, TV’s most unlikely adulterer, is still knocking off Tracey behind Oona’s back. We hope that, when his infidelity is exposed, Oona uses the Friday night karaoke as a forum to damn the deceitful pair, in song.

Meanwhile, Betty is concocting a love potion, which looks like something the McWitch would have produced in Rentaghost, coming as it does in a comedy cauldron that belches green smoke.

Elsewhere, Rocky’s evil twin has arrived, played by the same actor in an ill-fitting wig, Angel has been shagging the handyman in the basement, and barmy Beena has built a shrine to Ryan in her bedroom.

This stuff is pure dynamite, and how they can even think of taking it off is a mystery to us.

Incidentally, our obsession with Kate’s shot in the opening credits has taken a sinister turn. We realised yesterday that when she does her big toothy grin, we can’t help smiling along with her. We’re thinking of buying a clipboard and a nice burgundy trouser suit for extra authenticity. Say a prayer or something.

Music

Get those tills not ringing

Video March 14, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Shania Twain’s new single, Ka-Ching – out this week – is a scathing analysis of our society’s buy-now-pay-later spending culture.

Shania is angry that we’re all greedy, and run to the shops all the time to spend money on things we don’t really want or need.

lowculture quite agrees, and our economising will begin this weekend when we go into town and don’t buy her stupid single. We might try to save even more money by not buying her album either.

2013 UPDATE: No idea what I was on about here – I fucking love this song.

Of all the things we were ever planning for …

Video March 13, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Can you pinpoint the exact second you realised that last night’s Coronation Street was going to be the best soap episode ever?

For us, it was when we realised that Richard planned to gas himself, Gail and the kids to death to a soundtrack of the You And Me Song by (wait for it) The Wannadies.

And how brilliant was that underwater stuff? Awards all round, we think.

The TV drama was shocking enough, but there was much more to come this morning, as anyone who bought the Daily Star will know.

If anyone had told you this time last year that topless pictures of Helen Worth, alias Gail, would be splashed across two pages of a tabloid newspaper, you would probably have laughed in their face, and then been sick.

But there they were, in full glorious colour. We will never see their like again (hopefully).

lowculture has had a smashing day going round the office flashing the pictures at people and watching the look of horror spread across their faces – that’s got to be worth 25p of anyone’s money.

Sweet memory, please come back to me

Video March 10, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

According to newspaper reports, poor little Sonia has fled back to the UK in shame after finding herself at the bottom of the heap after the first Reborn in the USA. She’s been given a couple of days to think things over and decide whether she wants to stay in the competition.

We hope she decides to give it another go. Admittedly, it wasn’t the best performance of her career (that remains her triumphant Eurovision-nearly-winning version of Better The Devil You Know), but Dollar were much more annoying – Therese even sang a line about singing out of key out of key.

Dollar are also moaning to the press about how Gina G only got the most votes because she had the cheek to wear a revealing dress that flashed her arse – a tactic which, of course, has never before brought a fading artist major, career-reviving success.

This dreadful pair must be stopped. Do the right thing and text vote sonia to 83200, or call 09011 155 402.

Although the idea of them only getting through by default if Sonia pulls out also has a certain perverse appeal.

UPDATE: Hoorah! Sonia is feeling much better and has rejoined the tour. Turns out she didn’t fly home after all. The sympathy vote is surely hers for the taking.

Say it ain’t so!

March 10, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Sadly, the rumours are true. Crossroads is fucked.

Fan site Planet Crossroads has posted this statement from producers Carlton TV:

“Crossroad returned in March 2001 and has run for nearly two years. Unfortunately, despite working with ITV to develop a new, distinctive style for the show, viewers have not warmed to Crossroads in sufficient numbers. ITV has taken the decision to end transmission in the summer.

“It is disappointing to all those people who have worked and been involved with the show and, of course, those who have become fans of the new Crossroads.”

thecustard reports that producer Yvon Grace informed the cast and crew of the decision on Friday night. Production ends in three weeks’ time, leaving enough episodes to run for another couple of months.

Life without Jane Gurnett’s grinning mug leering at us at 5pm each day from inside a big gold heart scarcely bears thinking about, but we will go on, somehow. In the meantime, lowculture’s logo will be black for a suitable mourning period.

• How do you think Crossroads should end? Suggestions, please – click on the comment link below (if it’s even there – SquawkBox are having server problems that are outwith our control)

Music

H, Claire in ‘not dropped’ shocker

Video March 8, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Don’t ask us what we were doing at the official H&Claire website, but we were. Anyway, it contains this message, dated March 3:

“Hey there!

“Hope you’re all well :o) Sorry to have been out of touch for so long. We have noticed a lot of misinformed speculation on the message board lately which seems to be upsetting some people. For the record, we are currently taking a break but we are still with WEA Records and you guys will of course be the first to know what we’re going to be up to next. So keep it here!”

Well, that’s all right then.

2013 UPDATE: Liars! They never released anything else.

Music, TV

Gareth vs camp dancing

Video March 7, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Since the sad demise of Steps, there’s been something lacking from the world of pop – ie camp-as-tits dances that we can all do when we’re visiting provincial gay nightclubs at the weekend.

Happily, this situation has now been rectified – and nobody is more surprised than us that our saviour has turned out to be Mr Gareth Gates.

We’re talking, of course, about the video for Spirit in the Sky, which would be fantastic if it didn’t have those krazy Kumars being ‘amusing’ in the background.

Our favourite move is that one where his hand’s up by his face and he’s moving it to and fro. It’s made us see the boy in a whole new light, so we’ve decided that his throwing to the pop dogs can be postponed indefinitely.

Meaty goodness

March 4, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

After all the wailing and gnashing of teeth following Maxine’s demise in Coronation Street, it was fantastic to see Fred and Ashley perform a comedy scene last night.

Boris, the little-seen assistant from Fred’s butcher’s shop, called at Ashley’s demanding the night off to take his girlfriend to the pictures, so Fred stepped into the breach to see to a troublesome leg of lamb, saying:

“It would be wonderful to get my hands mucky again.”

For one heart-stopping moment, we thought we was going to say it would be wonderful to get his hands on some meat again but, alas, it was not to be.

He returned a short while later enthusing about how he had thoroughly enjoyed “the feel of a good ‘eavy cleaver slicing through a beast”. Ahem.

Sweets

Eggstatic

Video March 2, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

For many years, lowculture has been hoping for innovation in the Easter egg market.

Where, we wondered, were the Creme Egg offerings that were actually filled with creme, so you had to set about them with the aid of a spoon?

Well, we’re happy to report that something startling has happened this year.

There we were, innocently browsing through Sainsbury’s when we noticed a strange flash on the latest Maltesers eggs, promising New Crunchy Shell.

Closer inspection revealed that the shell actually has all bits of Malteser in it. Fan-fucking-tastic!

It gets better. The Fruit and Nut eggs have fruit. And nuts! The Crunchie eggs contain bits of Crunchie. And so on.

It was back down to earth with a bump, though, when we came to the official Blue egg. It doesn’t have little bits of Lee, Duncan, Simon or the other one mixed into it. It does have a rubbish plastic radio, but we know which we’d rather be getting stuck into on Easter morning.

Russell Grant reveals hitherto-unknown love of sport

March 2, 2003 Paul Lang Leave a comment

Thanks to our mates at Popjustice for being far better at spotting low culture than we are.

They tipped us off about an ITV1 gem called Russell Grant’s Sporting Scandals, which was shown in some regions this afternoon.

“It’s about how there’s not enough sport in schools, or something, and not enough funding for sport,” our spy reports. “Not sure about your scandalometer, but that doesn’t rate very highly on mine.

“Tessa Sanderson was a guest. Russell started his first question: ‘Now Tessa, to a lot of people this could all seem rather boring’. Hmm… ”

We quite agree with Popjustice when they say that they love the irony of fat bastard Russell Grant saying “It’s not like in my day when you kept fit at school”.

And why did we miss this lowbrow gem? Because our local ITV company was treating us to the 357th showing of Frankie Howerd and Sid James in Carry On Up The Arse (or whatever it was called), so we couldn’t have watched it even if we wanted to.

lowculture