Money for Nothing鈥攊mage from Amazon Prime, where, as of yesterday, you can watch a presumably cleaner copy than what’s on YouTube.
As a young lad, I enjoyed the Screen One TV movie Money for Nothing (1993), which aired on the BBC in the UK and TV1 here. Not to be confused with the John Cusack movie Money for Nothing (1993).
As someone who started my career very young, I could identify with the lead character, Gary Worrall (played by Christien Anholt), a teenager who finds himself in the adult world鈥攁nd in the TV film, well out of his depth in a massive property deal that takes him to New York. It鈥檚 one film where Martin Short plays it straight (and is really good), Jayne Ashbourne does a cute Scots accent, Julian Glover is his usual brilliant self, and there鈥檚 a fantastic Johnny Dankworth score, with his wife Cleo Laine singing. I had the good fortune to see them both perform in Aotearoa in 1994.
Because it鈥檚 television, of course the deals that Worrall does at the start of the TV movie work out. And he鈥檚 audacious. It was a little easier to believe as a 20-something (Anholt and I are about the same age), not so much in middle age!
I’m still a romantic at heart and the love story that screenwriter Tim Firth added for Anholt and Ashbourne’s characters comes across nicely and innocently.
There鈥檚 a line, however, between actually having made something or being able to do something, then proving to the doubters that you鈥檙e capable (which is where real life is, at least for me); and BSing your way forward not having done the hard yards. As it鈥檚 fiction, Worrall falls into the latter group. You wouldn鈥檛 want to be in the latter in real life鈥攖hat鈥檚 where the Elizabeth Holmeses of this world wind up.
I hadn鈥檛 seen Money for Nothing for over 25 years, but on a whim, I looked it up on July 27, and there it was on YouTube. Enjoy this far more innocent, post-Thatcher time.
PS.: Only today did I realize that Christien is the late Tony Anholt’s (The Protectors) son.
While I care much more about when John Simm will grace our screens again (pun intended), it was hard to avoid the reality TV that gets beamed into our living rooms during prime-time. There is the disgustingMarried at First Sight Australia, where I am speechless with shock that fellow Scots alumnus John Aiken appears to dispense mansplaining without conscience, but, on the other channel, the far more pleasant The Bachelor New Zealand, where, finally, for the first time on our airwaves, I see a Kiwi male that I can identify with. Apart from the times when I appeared on telly (I realize that this sentence sounds wanky, but if you can鈥檛 identify with yourself, then there鈥檚 something wrong).
While Zac the lifeguard from a few years ago seemed like a lovely chap, he was in many ways the usual stereotype: sporty, unfazed, carefree, white, with a great smile. Moses Mackay is cultured, worldly, considered, respectful, humble, well dressed, and, surprisingly for this show, wasn鈥檛 quick to snog every contestant. It was also nice to see a bachelor who鈥檚 a person of colour on our screens for a change. He grew up poor and that鈥檚 not an unfamiliar story to many of us. He鈥檚 comfortable talking about his relationship with God. Heck, he even croons for a living.
I鈥檓 no Matt Monro but I鈥檝e serenaded my partner鈥攋ust get us at the James Cook when the elderly gent is banging out tunes by Michel Legrand, or, as I call him, Big Mike, on the lobby piano. And yes, for some of us, this is perfectly normal. Just ask Moses.
For all of us fellas who wanted to see an example of a cultured Kiwi gentleman on our screens鈥攁nd as the f锚ted star, not the comic relief鈥攐ur wishes were finally granted.
I鈥檝e no idea whom he picked, although I knew one of the contestants who didn鈥檛 make it鈥擭ew Zealand is that small. I could say the same about Zac鈥檚 season as well. I鈥檓 sure not knowing the outcome also puts me in a minority. But I wish him well.
I’m reminded of my friend Frankie Stevens, since I mentioned Matt Monro above. I once did the same to Frankie and he said something along the lines of, ‘I was touring with Matt. We were in Spain, and he’d come in the morning with a glass of whisky.’ Another time I mentioned John Barry. ‘I worked with Johnny and Don Black. On The Dove. I sang the theme tune but Gregory Peck wanted someone else.’
For my overseas readers: you don’t usually have these conversations in Aotearoa with a guy who’s not only met your musical heroes, but worked with them. All I could do was show I had the theme on my phone.
With apologies to Lyn Paul, but Frankie would have been great (and indeed better) singing the theme to The Dove.
When I ran for office, there was often a noticeable difference between how I was treated by locally owned media and foreign- owned media. There are exceptions to that rule鈥The New Zealand Herald and Sky TV gave me a good run while Radio New Zealand opted to do a candidates鈥 round-up in two separate campaigns interviewing the (white) people who were first-, second- and fourth-polling鈥攂ut overall, TVNZ, Radio New Zealand with those two exceptions, and the local community papers were decent. Many others seemed to have either ventured into fake news territory (one Australian-owned tabloid had a 鈥減oll鈥, source unknown, that said I would get 2 per cent in 2010) or simply had a belief that New Zealanders were incapable and that the globalist agenda knew best. As someone who ran on the belief that New Zealand had superior intellectual capital and innovative capability, and talked about how we should grow champions that do the acquiring, not become acquisition targets, then those media who were once acquisition targets of foreign corporations didn鈥檛 like what they heard.
And that, in a nutshell, is why my attitude toward Stuff has changed overnight thanks to Sin茅ad Boucher taking ownership of what I once called, as part of a collective with its Australian owner, the Fairfax Press.
The irony was always that the Fairfax Press in Australia鈥The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald鈥攚ere positive about my work in the 2000s but their New Zealand outpost was quite happy to suggest I was hard to understand because of my accent. (Given that I sound more like an urban Kiwi than, say, the former leader of the opposition, and arguably have a better command of the English language than a number of their journalists, then that鈥檚 a lie you sell to dinosaurs of the Yellow Peril era.) A Twitter apology from The Dominion Post鈥檚 editor-in-chief isn鈥檛 really enough without an erratum in print, but there you go. In two campaigns, the Fairfax Press鈥檚 coverage was notably poor when compared with the others’.
But I am upbeat about Boucher, about what she intends to do with the business back in local ownership, and about the potential of Kiwis finally getting media that aren鈥檛 subject to overseas whims or corporate agenda; certainly Stuff and its print counterparts won鈥檛 be regarded as some line on a balance sheet in Sydney any more, but a real business in Aotearoa serving Kiwis. Welcome back to the real world, we look forward to supporting you.
A lot of the world’s population has come together in the fight against COVID-19. Except Facebook, of course, who is exploiting the virus for profit. Facebook has done well in the first quarter of 2020 with positive earnings. Freedom From Facebook & Google co-chairs Sarah Miller and David Segal note (the links are theirs): ‘Facebook has exploited a global pandemic to grow their monopoly and bottom line. They鈥檝e profited from ads boasting fake cures and harmful information, allowed ad targeting to 鈥pseudoscience鈥 audiences, permitted anti-stay-at-home protests to organize on the platform, and are now launching a COVID 鈥Data for Good鈥 endeavour to harvest even more of our personal information.
鈥楳ake no mistake, Facebook having more of your data is never 鈥済ood”, nor will they just relinquish the collected data when the pandemic鈥檚 curve has been flattened. Rather, they鈥檒l bank it and continue to profit from hyper-targeted ads for years to come.’
It’s been a few weeks (April 19 was my last post on this subject) since I last crunched these numbers but it does appear that overall, COVID-19 infections as a percentage of tests done are dropping, several countries excepting. Here is the source.
France 167,178 of 724,574 = 23路07%
UK 171,253 of 901,905 = 18路99%
Sweden 21,092 of 119,500 = 17路65%
USA 1,095,304 of 6,391,887 = 17路14%
Spain 239,639 of 1,455,306 = 16路47%
Singapore 17,101 of 143,919 = 11路88%
KSA 22,753 of 200,000 = 11路38%
Switzerland 29,586 of 266,200 = 11路11%
Italy 205,463 of 1,979,217 = 10路38%
Germany 163,009 of 2,547,052 = 6路40%
South Korea 10,774 of 623,069 = 1路73%
Australia 6,766 of 581,941 = 1路16%
New Zealand 1,479 of 139,898 = 1路06%
Taiwan 429 of 63,340 = 0路68%
Hong Kong 1,038 of 154,989 = 0路67%
Emmerdale fans will never forgive me. I’ve not been one to watch British soaps, finding them uninteresting. However, in this household, we have had Emmerdale on since it’s scheduled between TV1鈥檚 midday bulletin and the 1 p.m. government press conference on COVID-19, or, as some of us call it, The Ashley Bloomfield Show, named for our director-general of health who not only has to put up with all of this, but took a hit to one-fifth of his pay cheque. Naturally, one sings along to the Emmerdale theme, except I have no clue about its lyrics. Are there lyrics?
Never used to leave the TV on for #Emmerdale, but with #COVID19 I do鈥攁nd like many, I sing along:
Who the hell cares what goes on at that farm? Don鈥檛 really know who has come to some harm. Whatever you see, there鈥檚 no cause for alarm, When we peer in the lives of Emmerdale.
Not a single like on Twitter or Mastodon. I’ve offended a heck of a lot of people.
We are supposedly at Level 3, which someone said was Level 4 (the full lockdown) with takeaways. However, we’ve gone from the 1960s-style near-empty motorways to this almost immediately.
Another late-night calculation of COVID-19 cases as a proportion of total tests done, so the figures will be out of date again, and I鈥檝e also discovered that the total testing numbers some countries are giving are out of date. The ones with asterisks below are those that haven鈥檛 cited increased testing numbers (at least none that I can find; a search actually yielded lower and older figures in some cases), so I imagine the real percentages might be lower. The order of countries hasn鈥檛 changed.
France 109,069 of 224,254 = 48路64%*
Spain 146,690 of 355,000 = 41路32%*
UK 55,242 of 266,694 = 20路71%
USA 400,549 of 2,082,443 = 19路23%
Italy 135,586 of 755,445 = 17路95%
Sweden 8,419 of 54,700 = 15路39%*
Switzerland 22,789 of 171,938 = 13路25%
Germany 109,178 of 918,460 = 11路88%
New Zealand 1,210 of 46,875 = 2路58%
Singapore 1,623 of 65,000 = 2路50%*
South Korea 10,384 of 477,304 = 2路18%
Australia 6,013 of 319,368 = 1路88%
Hong Kong 961 of 96,709 = 1路38%*
Taiwan 379 of 40,702 = 0路93%
I was buoyed by news on what some of us have cheekily dubbed The Ashley Bloomfield Show (the Ministry of Health director-general’s press conference) that we had only 29 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours here. As a sporting nation I think we understand that you can鈥檛 shirk when you鈥檙e playing the second half of the match. If anything, you need to go harder. By now I suspect many of us are finding the hand-washing and other advice second nature.
Hasn’t it been revealing to hear which journalists ask crappy questions at the Bloomfield press conference? Since the pressers are watched by a huge number of New Zealanders during lockdown, I think the scales have fallen from many eyes lately to see how the stories get edited and even editorialized. And which members of the media don’t seem to want to work with the good advice being given by our government, yet have nothing solid (e.g. other experts) to counter it with. In my opinion, it’s put TV1 in a good light, and shown its reasonable balance. It also reinforces that many of our talking heads are irrelevant (see below, from The Press in Christchurch). Science is saving the day and showing loud-mouthed opinions for what they are.
I wanted to see what TV1 news (I can never remember its official name with all its rebrands over the years鈥攊s it One Network News, TVNZ1 News, One News, or something else?) had on GM’s decision to shut Holden, but I missed both the six o’clock and the Plus One screenings. I headed online with some trepidation because I recall that I could never find the most-watched programme on the channel on previous occasions. This time I decided to document my attempt.
Usually I would get stumped by the log-in process that made me lose my place, so this time I decided to log in first.
Nowhere to be seen. Ah, but it’s a TV1 show, so what if I go to the TV1 page?
Nope. Under news and current affairs, we have Breakfast, Seven Sharp, Fair Go and Te Karere. There’s a 1 News link at the top, what if I go there?
No joy, at least not for the full six o’clock broadcast. I did spy a Kiwi category, and surely TV1 news is Kiwi-made. Let’s see 鈥
Apparently only the Tonight and Midday bulletins count as Kiwi-made.
Despite my searching for it around 8 p.m., it wasn’t under ‘What’s new on TV’ either. Something that finished broadcasting an hour ago isn’t new.
By this time what I do is go on Twitter to ask for help and eventually someone finds it for me, which isn’t the most efficient way of doing it, but in the past that’s how I’ve solved it.
Tonight I put news into the search box and got it there after doing all the above, but why does TVNZ make it this hard? It’s their flagship news programme. And Conan Gorbey on Twitter found it for me tonight. Thanks, Conan!
鈥楾here’s an old Polish proverb 鈥’ I believe it’s ‘Reality television can’t stop the motorways in Warsaw from getting icy.’
I’ve always known what sort of telly I liked, and often that was at odds with what broadcasters put on. In the 1970s, my tastes weren’t too dissimilar from the general public’s, but as the years went on, they diverged from what New Zealand programmers believed we should watch.
Shows I liked would prematurely disappear (Dempsey & Makepeace), only to return very late at night a decade later. Some only ever appeared late at night (Hustle), then vanish (in New Zealand, seasons 5 to 8 have never appeared on a terrestrial channel, and they have also never been released on DVD).
We had a British expat visitor on Wednesday. He arrived here in 2008, and had no idea that TV1 had once been the home of British programming, and TV2 was where the Hollywood stuff went.
By the late 2000s and early 2010s, I was watching either DVDs or finding a way to get to BBC Iplayer et al, because less and less of what was on offer had any appeal. We had boxed sets of Mission: Impossible, The Persuaders, and others.
When the country switched to Freeview, I couldn’t be bothered getting a decoder. We were fine with online. Eventually, I did buy a TV set with Freeview, but only because the previous one conked out.
On Thursday night, it became very apparent just how bad television had become here.
Every English-language and Te Reo Māori terrestrial channel had unscripted drama, i.e. “reality” shows, or the occasional panel show or real-life event, other than Prime, showing the MacGyver remake.
Who in the 1980s would have predicted that MacGyver would be the only scripted series on air during prime-time here between 7.30 and 8.30 p.m.?
I realize the economics of television have changed, and there’s no such thing as a TVNZ drama department any more.
Shows which might have had the whole country watching would be lucky to pull in a quarter of the audience today.
But it is a sad reflection that the televised equivalent of the weekly gossip rag is what rates. The effort needed to produce quality drama is expensive, and not enough of us support it.
I also imagine scripted Hollywood shows are cheaper than British ones, hence what we see on our screens is American鈥攁nd why some kids these days now speak with American accents. Yet to some New Zealanders, Chinese-language signs on Auckland high streets are a bigger threat to the local culture. Really?
In this household, we vote with our attention spans鈥攁nd over the last month that has meant DVDs of Banacek and, in true 50 shades of Grade fashion, The Protectors. Sometimes, you feel it’s 1972 in this house鈥攂ut at least the telly was better then.
What a coincidence to come across a letter from composer, arranger, conductor and former TVNZ bandleader Terry Gray, dated May 25, 1991, after I blogged about him on (nearly) the seventh anniversary of his passing. Here it is for others who may be interested in a little slice of Kiwi life. It looks like ITC Garamond Book Narrow here, though the resolution doesn’t make it very clear.
I sincerely hope I鈥檓 wrong when I say that the passing of Kiwi composer, arranger and conductor Terry Gray went unnoticed in our news media.
I only found out last month that Terry died in 2011. As a kid of the 1970s and a teenager of the 1980s, Terry鈥檚 music was a big part of my life. Before we got to New Zealand, he had already composed the Chesdale cheese jingle, which Kiwis above a certain age know. He was the bandleader on Top Dance, what New Zealanders used to watch before the localized version of Strictly. Terry鈥檚 music appeared on variety shows and live events (e.g. Telequest, Miss New Zealand) through the decade. Country GP, The Fire-Raiser, Peppermint Twist, and Daphne and Chlo毛 were also among Terry鈥檚 works. In the late 1980s, Terry released an album, Solitaire, which was one of the first LPs I bought with my own money as a teen. By the turn of the decade, Terry hosted live big band evenings at the Plaza Hotel in Wellington, sponsored by the AM Network鈥攗ntil the AM Network could no longer fund the fun, regular events and the radio network itself, eventually, vanished. Terry鈥檚 Mum used to attend in those days, and I must have gone to at least half a dozen. I also picked up a Top Dance cassette at one of the evenings.
I still have a nice letter from Terry somewhere, thanking me for my support, in the days when he lived in the Hutt. I learned that he eventually moved down south, to Dunedin, and died of leukemia on July 8, 2011.
On (nearly) the seventh anniversary of his passing, I want to pay tribute to Terry. Here he is in action in Top Dance, hosted by Lindsay Yeo, in 1982.
Hong Kong’s skyline in 2008, photographed by Scrolllock.
Has it been 20 years since Dad and I sat in front of the telly to watch both Britannia sail out of the harbour and China set off a magnificent fireworks鈥 display to celebrate getting Hong Kong becoming one of her possessions again?
Following some of the 20th anniversary commemorations through the media, notably the BBC World Service which followed them keenly, I had very mixed feelings.
Having been born British in the then-colony (whilst cheering the All Blacks today, natch) I have some nostalgia for the Hong Kong of old. If it weren鈥檛 for some aspects of colonialism, my mother wouldn鈥檛 have secured a decent job at Wellington Hospital (viz. an English and Welsh qualification) and I probably would never have learned English before the age of three. It all helped.
It was the spectre of 1997, specifically the fear of what the Communists would do after July 1, 1997, that prompted my parents to make plans to emigrate as early as the 1970s.
Of course, history as shown that largely those fears have not come to pass, although the Umbrella Revolution highlights that universal suffrage is not a reality in the city.
In a post-Brexit (or at least a post-Brexit vote) era, these past two decades also highlight that British nationalism is meaningless and little more than a tool for politicians to yield for propaganda.
You can fairly argue that that is what nationalism always has been. It could also equally be argued that nationalism is founded on some rose-coloured-glasses past, painting a picture that actually never existed.
American nostalgia looks back at a 1950s’ economic boom while ignoring segregation while British nostalgia shows a child pushing his bike up a hill to Dvo艡谩k鈥檚 New World Symphony.
Brexiters, rightly or wrongly, want to reassert a British self-determination founded on a British national character.
Most Britons I talked to, regardless of their politics, agree that if you are Hong Kong British, then you are British. That should be some solace to the families of those HKers who lost their lives fighting under the Crown in both World War II and the Falklands.
Yet there is no reality to this claim when it comes to government. Fearful of an influx of Hong Kong British emigrating to the UK, the British National (Overseas) category was invented in 1985, to replace our previous status as Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. It didn鈥檛 do the wealthy any harm, mind: a lot went to Canada and Australia and took their money there. Others stayed and invested in China, and helped fuel the growth of Shenzhen as a technological powerhouse. The Hong Kong Chinese person is generally industrious, many having descended from refugees from China in 1949 who decided to make the most of the freedoms in the colony. That work ethic was certainly nothing any Briton in the UK needed to fear, yet somehow we were classed as Johnny Foreigner.
When I went to the UK in 2001 with that BN(O) passport, I had terrible trouble at immigration, denied entry when queued up with other British subjects. I wound up at the back of the queue with some white South Africans, who were less than impressed and said, 鈥楤ut that鈥檚 apartheid.鈥 Correspondence to the High Commission, Foreign Secretary, and Shadow Foreign Secretary went unanswered, though I did get a response from the PM.
In other words, the fears within Enoch Powell鈥檚 鈥楻ivers of Blood鈥 speech held more sway in Blair鈥檚 Britain than any sacrifice in the Falklands (even if, I should point out, Powell was not addressing immigration per se). Today, I wonder if they still do.
The Tiber was greater than the Atlantic.
Labour were quick to point out how wrong the Tories were with BN(O) back in the 1980s, but in 2001, Labour wasn鈥檛 working.
Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, said at the time of the handover in 1997 that Britain would 鈥榳alk with you鈥, that Britain had won assurances that elections in Hong Kong would be free and fair, and that if China ever failed to live up to this pledge, Britain would take the matter to the United Nations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
In 20 years, Britain has not lifted a finger.
We might get lucky like the Gurkhas one of these days if Joanna Lumley wants to come to our aid. But we certainly can鈥檛 rely on any politician.
Being British (I retained my nationality and applied before the deadline to be a BN(O)), you can see how the pro-Brexit position was hard to stomach to me. The likes of Nigel Farage and the “other” New York-born politician with funny hair, Boris Johnson, seemed to revel in some idea of British unity, but anyone from Hong Kong will tell you that in politics, that is an empty concept.
Only one of my friends who was pro-Brexit voted based on the idea of an independent Britain being more efficient when freed from the whims of Brussels, and I respect him for it; most of what I saw was aimed against immigration. The current PM鈥檚 belief in safeguarding the interests of British subjects should be cold comfort to those affected: if they couldn鈥檛 defend our interests, will others fare any better, especially with a minority government in a Conservative Party that actually remains as divided as ever?
Not that I am championing the People鈥檚 Republic of China for its handling of relations between mainlanders and Hong Kongers; it has equally been exclusive of us and our unique culture. I have already gone into the Umbrella Revolution elsewhere (even if the TV One website omitted my televised comments about Wikileaks鈥 reporting of US State Department interference as this goes against the western narrative), and this doesn鈥檛 need exploring again. The disappearance of publishers critical of Beijing should sound alarm bells鈥擨 note that one of them was a British subject, but the best the UK could muster was an expression of concern. I cannot help but wonder if this is the fate that awaits Britons on the Continent should something happen to them.
Some negatives aside, I am happy that when I visited a 鈥淐hinese鈥 Hong Kong in 2006, I found a city whose character was intact, and I remarked at how unchanged that was. In subsequent visits in 2008, 2010 and 2012, that core remained. Given all the paranoia before 1997, 鈥極ne country, two systems鈥 has certainly not been as bad as many of us鈥攊ncluding those of us who moved our entire lives abroad because of those fears鈥攑redicted. I wish all HKers well on this 20th anniversary.
