Rory's week - Rory Bremner doesn't do Elvis
Published 06 March 2006
The worst problem we face on the show is clearing songs for parody. Elvis songs are off limits: "You Were Always Undermined", a John Major classic, never saw the light of day
The Conservative Parliamentary Party may consider itself to be the world's most sophisticated electorate, but the Great British Public surely is one of the most capricious, if the voting on the BBC's latest reality show, Just the Two of Us, is anything to go by. For the benefit of those readers who don't know what the programme is about, or indeed those of you who have a life, it pairs "celebrities" (the word once again being stretched to its limit) with professional singers (such as opera singer Russell "The Voice" Watson or soul singer Beverley Knight). The duos are then invited to murder a selection of well-known songs - an activity for which the term "extreme rendition" might well have been invented. The audience then vote for their favourites, which you might reasonably expect to be the pair they think have done best.
But the British Public have long since given up playing along with that sort of malarkey, and decided to take on the producers and make up their own rules. The lovely Julian Clary was not so much thrilled as embarrassed when the viewers of Strictly Come Dancing kept him in the competition week after week not on the strength of his dancing, but on the strength of his personality. Jack Dee won Celebrity Big Brother by doing what any sane person would do and tried to break out of the madhouse at the first opportunity. GMTV's Penny Smith seems to have adopted the same tactic on Just the Two of Us, but so far to no avail. Alarmed to find that most of the other "celebs" had form when it came to singing, she and her partner clearly decided to perform as madly as possible, on the basis that even if they went out early, they would go down in flames.
However, their subsequent performances were so mad that the public have decided to keep them in. This could be for three reasons. First, that the viewers are sadists who want to know how long Penny can withstand the lack of sleep involved in getting up at 4am to present GMTV, having gone to bed around midnight the night before; second, that they find car-crash madness compulsive viewing (there's a precedent for this with George Galloway on Celebrity Big Brother); or third, that they found the spectacle of Fiona Bruce's whooping teenage karaoke persona a complete turn-off. I myself find it difficult to be asked if I can assist this woman with her inquiries into a brutal stabbing in east London on Crimewatch when I have seen her living out her wannabe fantasy so embarrassingly the previous week.
But what lessons could Helena Kennedy and her committee on democracy learn from such voting patterns? On this evidence, it is conceivable that Mark Oaten made a mistake by pulling out of the Lib Dem leadership race, because his episodes of madness would appear to be exactly what the public want to see. Who knows, maybe Simon Hughes's gay confession was just an attempt to win the Julian Clary vote, albeit slightly compromised by the Liberals' unpleasant campaign against Peter Tatchell 20 years ago. I have to say I'd vote for Hague, IDS or Howard any day, but that's for personal reasons. There's so much more fun to be had with a lame duck, unless of course it has bird flu, in which case it all gets serious again.
This week sees the start of another series of Bremner, Bird and Fortune. I'm often asked if we ever get grief from the people we ridicule. (The answer is "not enough".) The worst problem we face is clearing songs for parody. A particularly good John Major version of "The Girl from Ipanema" ("Dull and bland and grey and hapless/the boy from Rutlish Grammar goes walking/and as he passes/the boy with glasses goes/aaaah") bit the dust when an irate publisher threatened to "sue our ass". Elvis songs are similarly off-limits."You Were Always Undermined", another John Major classic, never saw the light of day, and I'd actually already recorded Tony Blair singing "In the Ghetto" before the suits intervened. We were (successfully) collared by EMI for an early Blair cover of the Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" (retitled "All You Need Is Me") that sounded too close to the original. As the great Stanley Baxter once warned me, "Even if you think it's sufficiently different from the original, they can still do you for 'flavour'."
What beats me is that they're perfectly happy to let Penny, Fiona and Nicky Campbell loose on their songs, but draw the line at parody. Maybe we're just not mad enough.
Bremner, Bird and Fortune returns to Channel 4 on Saturdays at 8.10pm
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