Nerd is the Word.

I hope you feel worthless. I hope you feel like your existence is pointless, and that any attempts to achieve anything will be futile, you pitiful human. As a nation, every citizen of the United Kingdom should just call it quits on breathing. Because let’s face it, the most talented inhabitant of this fair isle is…er, a dog.

This is all your fault, Great British Public. Yes, you. Either you voted for a pooch to become the champion of Britain’s Got Talent, or you abstained from the voting process. Which, if we apply the same principle that we do to elections, makes you just as responsible if a bad party comes to power. Pudsey is your Golden Dawn Party.

Forget about all the singers and dancers and acrobats and synchronised swimmers or whatever skills were also showcased in this year’s final. That’s all our talent as a nation apparently amounts to. Entertainment. I highly doubt there was an entrant who displayed to a blithering Amanda Holden their ability to do some particularly cruel quadratic equations, or got a blabbering Alesha Dixon on stage to correct her grammar. Admittedly I didn’t watch the series, but I’m sure I would have heard if the latter actually occurred. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, where the hell are all the nerds!?

Let’s face it. Being a boffin isn’t glamorous. You wouldn’t find academia on a TV talent search because it’s just not entertaining. But this hasn’t stopped television and films from giving nerds a bad name. Intelligence is not necessarily demonised within today’s society, but it’s definitely a means to point and laugh at someone. Television has tried to give nerds a voice. To look at The IT Crowd, we see a pair of IT specialists coping with their day-to-day life. However, I wouldn’t exactly describe them as cool and sophisticated. Moss, the archetypal computer geek, earns his street-cred amongst fellow nerds by winning games of Countdown and sips on a cool glass of milk. Hell, even the slightly-cooler Roy needs ‘Bluffball’, a website giving the language necessary to communicate with real men via the lexicon of football. By trying to create a programme about nerds, instead it just creates a gap between the nerds and the ‘normals’.

There is a show that undoubtedly gives a more clichéd view of the typical intellectual. The Big Bang Theory shows its nerds of choice as sufferers of OCD who have no regard for emotions or liberal arts, Masters students who live with their mothers way into adulthood, unable to speak to girls or, the worst crime of all, lactose-intolerant. So that’s what life has in store for you if you’re particularly good at science. You have no luck with your love-life and to top it off, you can’t eat pizza without a bad case of the toots afterwards.

What we need is a celebration of smart. It’s not fair to ask Brian Cox to take on this burden single-handedly, and I think Tony Stark is a bit busy with avenging some stuff at the moment. All I’m asking is for a rise of intelligent characters who aren’t too busy with upgrading their iOS to talk to the opposite sex to be shoved in the dreaded Friend Zone. Or hell, even a girl who’s able to spout sophisticated philosophy by day and is a complete fox by night. And I want this on primetime slots, goddamnit. So I propose a programme, television companies, if you’re listening. Britain’s Got Smarts. Where people who excel academically can show off to others in a way that’s probably a lot more beneficial to society than looking a dog and going OMG HE JUST DID A THING! DID YOU SEE THAT TRACEY? HE DID A THING LIKE A REAL PERSON! LOLOLOL! I want a girl with a decent haircut on stage coming up with a novel way to learn the difference between ‘its’ and ‘it’s’, or a younger, hotter Dawkins making the theory of evolution fun and exciting. Nerds are people too, and even if we’re not going to make you shout at your screen in glee, our ability to recite poetry or debate whether Marx is still relevant today deserves some form of recognition from reality television without patronising us as hopeless pale-folk. Nerds of the world, do not despair. There’s a place for us somewhere. And by no means are you inferior to a fucking dog.

Here’s a very good song about nerds. Enjoy.

Please Don’t Stop The Music..als.

As anyone who has spoken to me for more than approximately ten minutes can tell, it’s pretty common knowledge that I am insatiably attracted to any television show or film with a song-and-dance number. As a child, I was convinced that ‘Where Is Love’ from Oliver! was the best song I had ever heard; I saw a lot of of myself in Greta from The Sound of Music.

*WANT WANT WANT*

It’s how I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and even how someone tried to tempt me into watching Indiana Jones…y’know, because there’s a snippet of a Japanese production of Cole Porter’s classic Anything Goes. And so, it’s obvious that Glee has been ideal watching for one Anna Hallissey.

I was one of those saddos who downloaded the whole of series one before the rest of the UK really knew what it was, and, on the whole, I have been rather impressed. Ultimately it’s utter shite smattered with cheese, what with Will Schuester’s ‘lessons’ becoming more saccharine than golden syrup-filled sugarcubes, but hey, that’s what escapism’s about, after all.

Today I watched the season finale. And, being the emotional mess that I am, I unsurprisingly wept like an infant. We see character functions that Vladmir Propp could recite in his sleep (that’s right, I’m getting all Media terminology on this shit), ridiculously predictable plotlines, and no purpose for Mike and Matt, the token silent boys in New Directions. Sure, it wasn’t groundbreaking television, but that’s what Lost is for. Glee is uplifting. It perfectly demonstrates the point I have often upheld that life would be much better if it were a musical. We would all be able to express ourselves in unprecedented ways, and if we were miserable, hell, we’d sing and all our troubles would just melt away. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a pretty fucking awesome place to me.

To cope with the loss of Glee (well, until next season), I have been dosing myself up on High School Musical-esque movies. I’ve reached the realisation that musicals could, in fact, be back. I know we will never return to the joys of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Never again will we see superstars like Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra dominate the genre, with an elegance that is still astounding today.

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

Instead, that baton has been passed to a younger generation. I’m not suggesting that we should remake High Society with children (because let’s face it…that would be some fucked-up shit), but instead not condemn films like ‘Starstruck’, ‘The American Mall’ or ‘Spectacular’. A friend recommended these to me, and sure, they are AWFUL, but there is a certain degree of charm. They’re keeping a dying art alive.

Don’t get me wrong, recent attempts at blockbuster musicals have been far from appalling. Just look at Chicago, proudly sporting 6 Oscars, or the undeniable brilliance of Moulin Rouge. Hairspray brought back a sense of family fun that the two previous films lacked, and don’t even get me started on how amazing Enchanted was. But hit movie-musicals are few and far between, as the Hollywood machine is set to either shit rom-com or shit horror mode for the majority of the time.

I guess what I’m trying to say (in a very long-winded manner) is that while the classy wonder of the musicals of yesteryear may be disappearing, the role of the musical is still yet to fade. Sure, it’s been left in the hands of a teeny-bopper market, but Glee has proved that this genre is still accessible to everyone. My mum watches it, her 10-year-old pupils watch it, uni students watch it. Clearly corny escapism and jazz-hands still have a big place in all our hearts. Well, until they make the Footloose remake, anyway. Heads will fucking roll.

Reality TV Competitions Are Not The Enemy

They’ve dominated our television screens for the best part of decade. They’re on every channel. They make us laugh, they make us cry (well, perhaps just me, I’m ridiculously hyper-sensitive after all). We see winners, we see losers. We see the mundane, and the outright ridiculous. We see art. There is nothing better, in my eyes, than a good ol’ reality television competition.

Last night, Rufus Hound spectacularly took the title of champion of Let’s Dance for Sport Relief. With an awe-inspiring rendition of ‘Fight For This Love’, Hound beat off competition from fantastic efforts such as Katy Brand’s ‘Single Ladies’ (and I still don’t think it’s an insult to say that she really did look like a fat white Beyonce). He took the title from last year’s winner Robert Webb, whose version of ‘Flashdance’ still stands as a beacon of perfect television. So, with these two performances in mind, I thought I’d count down my top 5 moments of this type of competition. I’m a complete sucker for any programme full of singing and dancing, after all.

5. Last Choir Standing – ‘I’m Still Standing’

I personally think that ‘I’m Still Standing’ is one of the best songs of all time. It’s been seen many times in this kind of competition (Jill Halfpenny’s jive on series 2 of Strictly Come Dancing is potentially the best dance ever seen in any series, and Lloyd Daniels murdered it on this year’s X Factor). But Last Choir Standing showcased the song at its musical best, in the way only an ensemble can.

4. Let’s Dance for Comic Relief – ‘Flashdance’

It would be heresy to not include this in the All-Time Greatest list. Let’s face it. When it’s done well, we love drag. And watching ‘the one that’s not David Mitchell’ busting some sweet moves around a stage is a prime example of the unexpected being, well, amazing.

3. Strictly Come Dancing – Rachel Stevens’s Tango

I’m not a dancing expert, on any level. However, I think anyone can tell that this is perfect choreography by Vincent Simone. I’m going to refrain from gushing about how ‘Here Comes The Rain Again’ makes me glad music exists, but instead focus on how the dynamics of this dance are absolutely perfect. It’s got the perfect mix of slow and fast, and high and low, and the staccatos are fantastic. The musicality is spot-on throughout (that little ‘ding’ and the foot touch? Oooh, gives me shivers!), and shows how these programmes can make an amazing result from an otherwise dull and failing popstar.

2. Popstars – Darius does Britney

Unfortunately I couldn’t find a YouTube video for this one, but Popstars was the programme to start them all off. I’m sure no one who watched it has been able to release this little gem from their memory. Darius Danesh, that arsey Scottish bloke with a dodgy beard, diva-fying Britney’s debut hit. It was a classic.

1. Jedward – Everything Jedward ever did.

Enough. Said.

I fully understand if you don’t agree with me on any of these, I’m up for debate about this. But I hope you enjoyed these little snippets of gold, and reminisce the joy that reality competitions have brought to our lives. And remember…keeeep dancing!