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Jeffrey survived into a second day, whilst all the snow around him melted. Proof, if proof be needed that Raymond Briggs never built a snowman in his life of the Snowman faked his own death to get away from David Bowie as a boy. That's quite a niche reference but I am not going to explain it.
It's sometimes hard to find time for a date when you're hardworking parents, but being self-employed gives us a chance to try a day date instead and after walking the dog and dropping the kids off at school, we walked to the train station and went to Kings Cross for brunch at Dishoom. This would have been technically possible when we lived in the village, but it's much easier to do now. We thought we might go on to do something else, but there was nothing we fancied at the cinema and it was cold, so after visiting a book shop in St Pancras we came home again. Which somehow made it feel much more special and decadent - going to London, just for brunch and back home before non-brunchers are eating their lunch (if the train home hadn't been running very slowly). After the last two weeks' rather stressful drives to the podcast I think I might try training it on Monday (and also this Friday to the gig I am doing at Cadogan Hall).
Even though we were home by 1pm and the train cost more than the breakfast, it was great to have a couple of hours away and a reminder that we're only 40 minutes away from town, if the trains work.
And Dishoom is fab for breakfast and they accidentally gave me a free glass of chai. I didn't really like it, but it was free, so that's a win right?
After seeing a couple of clips on Instagram yesterday I decided to revisit Shallow Hal to see how it stood up in the modern world. I am not sure it stood up very well even when it came out. My memory was that it tried to make a make a point about judging people by their appearance, whilst simultaneously doing loads of crap fat gags. I would say it was having its cake and eating it, but then might be accused of doing the same with that joke.
Was it as bad as I recalled?
Of course it was, but it came from a different time. Warming Up hadn't even started, that's how long ago it was made.
I watched half of it yesterday and the rest this afternoon. Could you make it today? Should they have made it then? Is there a slightly better film under the surface which looks more at the reasons men are so superficial and where the "unattractive" women are more realistic and more like actual women. It's a world where women are either supermodels or overweight or witch-like, but the protagonists are either overweight or bald (or have a tail) and it doesn't really go into why they should be rejecting women or why they aren't judged by their own looks (it's there, but it's not really explored).
There's an attempt to look at disability and difference in a positive light (I see on wikipedia that the idea came from a blind writer) and there's a sweetness to some of it (I am really struggling to find something nice to say). But it's funnier thinking about how this was made and why the people of 2001 didn't think it was a bit off. I suppose in a way it's a step up from the films where the supposedly plain woman is only slightly less conventionally gorgeous than the stunning one.
The best bit about the whole film is that during the credits they show photos and film of all the people in the crew. Nice both that they get a proper nod for their work and also to see a huge group of regular looking people after the fantastical extremes of the movie.
But you can't get away from the undercurrent that this was a misjudged step. Even a casual google makes you realise that it had profound effects on the women in the cast.
Gwyneth Paltrow didn't like wearing the fat suit and As I am sure did many of the people who watched and felt they were the joke, not the hero. Comedians are nothing if not people with Messiah complexes who are actually more like Pontius Pilate.
For some reason in the nineties and noughties it was hilarious for a thin person to dress up as a fat one and then play that for the cheapest possible laughs. Imagine if really thin women (usually) were fat. Which I suppose was distracting us from having to think about why those women were so thin or why we found being fat so hilarious.
Doubtless I have sinned - I don't remember much about my show Richard Herring is Fat, though hope it was about celebrating my own relative podginess (would like to be that thin again) and at least shining that light on men rather than women. I have done some dodgy material of course, usually trying to highlight my own (and men's) limitations, but yes... under the microscope of 2024 and shorn of context some of that might seem similarly misjudged. The past is a foreign country. But what a great sense of humour its inhabitants have. Also they have funny accents and customs. Let's laugh at them.
Richard Herring is Shockingly Thin and Gorgeous
Shallow Hal probably felt wrong even in 2001 though. The Noughties were the worst time for comedy, because, I think, the white men in charge of most of it felt like the various isms had all been sorted out now and so we could have ironic fun with them. Bad call white men. You fucking idiots.
Let he who wasn't the script editor of series 3 of Little Britain cast the first stone.
A rather more enjoyable attempt at comedy (hopefully) for RHLSTP this week as I talk to one of my comedy heroes, Adrian Edmondson. Listen here.
Sliding Doors was the pinnacle of Paltrow’s work.