BritishMediaBitch

From our correspondents in Abu Dhabi

cinefile — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:48:32 +0000

In the time since I was last on BMB I have been working on a really secretive project in which I reveal I was sleeping with Princess Diana and Prince Charles, and neither of them were aware of it. Anyway, more serious news; Abu Dhabi, which, as the IHT rightly points out didn’t exist 20 years ago, has secured deals with a raft of leading media organisations to set up shop in the middle of the Middle East. Abu Dhabi, or as the locals call it Abu Dah-ling, began life as an oil well and then an oil drill and finally an oil refinery. Now they’re getting rid of the oil men in favour of an even dirtier set of professionals – journalists from the BBC, CNN, the Financial Times as well as the company formerly known as Reuters and now called something else and Rueters.

For me Abu Dhabi is like a familiar smelling toilet. From the word go I was taking wrong turns and one of my debutant jobs was covering the camel beat for Hello Camel! - a now defunct magazine on the who’s who in the camel world. Many people might not be aware but up until a few decades ago camels ruled the Middle East. I was based just outside Dhabi, quite close to Abu, and my beat consisted of keeping up to date with the notoriously patriarchal and secretive world of the camel elite. While stationed in the dunes I got to know both Abu and Dhabi quite well. I often contributed to International Journal of Sand Castles trying to keep myself amused. Camels, as you’ll appreciate can be quite humpy subjects and the trick is to treat them like your local shopkeeper; friendly yet snooty. Of course the BBC et les autres are only there for the tax, terrorism and tanning and while they did consult me about moving back – I just couldn’t take eating sand filled sandwiches anymore.

In other news Peaches keeps pleading with me to do a piece on her sleeping rough in Chelsea for a whole night. Peaches – fuck off in the best possible way. LOL

My name is Jammes Joyce.

cinefile — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:31:28 +0000

Now many a young writer will attest to the difficulties of slogging away in hum drum offices re-writing press releases or just simply making up plausible sounding news. Others toil away in porous garrets pondering over plot lines and leit motifs taking breaks only to look at porn on their neighbours wireless network. Behind the enthusiasm and dreams of doing multi-million dollar publishing deals lies the realisation, no the desperation, that one lives like that tree that fell in the forest; completely unheard of.

One way to circumvent obscurity is to dabble in a litte bit of duplicity - adopt and adapt a famous writer’s name. This idea came to me when I was reading some industry fodder announcement about Thoby Young – “not to be confused with Toby Young, the much-liked polemical writer(sic)”. Anyway this Thoby with a ‘h’ – (is he generally not liked for his moderate infused writing?) made me think. How much more authoritative would any of my several million manuscripts be if under the title appeared the name Samuel Beckett or Anton Chekov or Harry Potter? Easy as that.

I have posted off my first draft of a wonderful light-hearted tale of an Albanian Albino who overcomes his fear of throwing things to become an Olympic hammer-thrower and marry his childhood sweetheart – who is still a child – as she has some rare disease which causes her to be forever nine-years-old. And my new pen name – it had to be Joyce, Jammes Joyce – not to be confused with the largely unread and repressed Dubliner who could have a done with god damn sub editor.

The Boring Bland Corporation – BBC that is

cinefile — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:53:08 +0000

As unbelievable as it sounds someone with my knowledge, experience, contacts, tenaciousness, nice hair, irritability and ambidexterity (not to mention my brief flirtation with Marxism) has never worked for Britain’s redoubtable public news broadcaster, the BBC. Although I had umpteen interviews I never managed to get further than a ‘lovely to meet you and here’s the door, whack job’ .

Anyway like anyone who has ever done a bungee jump and hasn’t had the chord snap, I have no regrets. Just death wishes. However, one thing the BBC excels at is blandness. Now news is news, you might insist, no need to dress it up. But, when you have a million headlines a day from Aunty Beeb that are less interesting than brown shoe polish I do wish that they would inject a little meta amphetamines into their headlines instead of stuff like “Jersey man sues over fall”. They should so get like Perez Hilton to write them.

New York Times, Puts comma in Headline

cinefile — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:19:58 +0000

Headline writers in the US have a zealous love affair with the humble comma, and none more so than those at the NY Times. N’er a page on the Grey Lady’s sheets goes without shoving a comma into a headline. I presume the reasoning is for dramatic effect – similar to that of Days of our Lives, where dramatic pauses can sometimes fill an entire episode. Here’s a headline from todays NYT:

Out of the Wardrobe, Into a War Zone

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: May 16, 2008

Here in the unenchanted world of ordinary moviegoing, it has been about two and a half years since “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the first installment in Walt Disney and Walden Media’s mighty “Chronicles of Narnia” franchise. In wartime England, where…

Here in Britain, (the first country to rule the world) it’s different. When I was chief deputy sub-editor at The Economist in the eighties we cast those little ruddy tadpoles out in favour of (maximum) nine word sentences. At the Daily Mirror, where I was consultant editor for eleven years, we went one better and reduced all sentences to one word. Impossble. Not, at all. Certainly. Not

Obligatory Mark Frith post

cinefile — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:14:09 +0000

The ego has left heat, following eighteen million announcements that he would do so, Mark Frith has done so. Do these donuts think they are the news, and not the people who make it up? Anyway the title of his tell-all book – in which he reveals how his favourite colour, magenta, was also Gerri Halliwell’s favourite colour – anyway I shouldn’t divulge the plot – the name of his magnum opus is ‘The Celeb Diaries’. For hate mail, spam and invitations to hairdresser’s appointments Mark can be reached at Mark.Frith@hotmail.co.uk. Incidentally, the spare door that replaced him at heat is doing a stand up job.

Amy Winehouse’s underwear

cinefile — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:42:50 +0000

So if the headline is anything to go by I’ve succumbed to tabloid fever. Yes and, well, yes. Yesterday I was deep in the bowels of one of London’s snazziest publishing houses in the company of a snarly but thoroughly entertaining photographer who had just completed a photo shoot of trash plucked from Amy Winehouse’s box, I mean bin box. Included in the detritus were a pair of the thin lizzy’s knickers (black), rolling papers, a Nando’s flier, cosmetics, indecipherable love notes and a copy of Watchtower magazine.

Okay the the Jehovah Witness magazine wasn’t in amongst the other worthless rubbish, but that’s where (unnamed magazine) slipped up. When I was editor in charge of incredible but true stories at the National Inquirer (US Pulitzer prize winning publication) we were old hands at rummaging through rubbish belonging to celebrities and politicans for entertaining stories. The thing is we used to routinely plant unexpected items in amongst the thrash . I remember once going through Martha Stewart‘s thrash and planting recipes for hash cookies and heroin pies. Or another time we put human scalps in Donald Trump’s trash and zebra sequined leggings and bell bottom pants in Anna Wintour’s trash. Oh the giggles, it was so nice for a time not do journalism while doing journalism.

Fleet Street moves en masse to Abu Dhabi

cinefile — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:20:46 +0000

Another day, another journalist ditches the UK for the Middle East – that is, the part of the Middle East where footballers wives holiday and is home to quarter of the world’s cranes – the Gulf – the home away from home for British journalists.

In April, The National, (it is without a website) an English language paper based in Abu Dhabi, came off the printing presses and the FT announced that it will publish a Middle East edition. All this press flurry in a part of the world not exactly renowned for press freedom. There was this one time when I was editor-at-large of The Abu Dhabi Diary and I happened to say at a party that the weather was too hot. The local prince and his nineteen wives disagreed and I was asked to retract my statement. I declined, pretending it was an opinion and not a fact, adding that I had heard the French ambassador say it first. The very next day I was asked to leave Abu Dhabi and had to give back all the gold I had amassed. Am I bitter? No, it was too hot over there.

Clarkson, you….

cinefile — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:24:45 +0000

The Times Online has taken more than a year to grow on me – having been a senior editor there for nine years I was initially disappointed with the lime green website (I much prefer deep purple) when it went live over 18 months ago. But now I am integrated with it, that is, until the homepage opens up and I see a pull quote from the greatest turd talker (possibly only in line to Mayor Johnson) in the northern hemisphere – Jeremy ‘look at the size of my head’ Clarkson. May JC be run over by a thousand bicycles?

Desks for rent for shit freelancers

cinefile — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:28:14 +0000

You’re a freelancer but you’re shit. Possibly because you’re desk is shit and you don’t have a cleaner, or you do, but she’s Polish and talks in a whiney voice about stonewashed jeans. Anyway the remedy is working with other ‘creatives’.

Read more below for redemption. By the way if you take up the offer you deserve to be nailed to the desk.

Are you bored of working at home? There are desks to rent in friendly, light office space on the Portobello Road. You would be sharing with other creatives. The desks are £300 pcm and include WiFi, a kitchen, cleaner and 24 hour access. If you are interested contact Jane Taylor on +44 (0)7976 628 558 and jane@positivenews.co.uk

Mark Firth is no longer in heat

cinefile — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:31:10 +0000

Mark Frith, editor of gossip mag-rag heat, leaves his post tomorrow. He’s going to write a book pretty much along the same lines as P.S. I Love You. If you need to leave him hate mail he can be reached on Mark.Frith@hotmail.co.uk. He will be replaced by a spare door for the mean time.