Happy Face

BECAUSEICOULDNTSEE in the work sweep. I'll not throw away any more money than that.

Looks interesting. Cheers keep it for the film thread though Billy Big Bollocks

Disabled people can be arseholes too. Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny. curb does those things without it feeling nasty though. So did Derek. EDIT: not that he's even a disabled character.

For the past few days, opprobrium has rained down upon the head of Ricky Gervais for daring to make Derek, a comedy drama pilot for Channel 4, in which he plays a learning disabled man who works at an old people’s home. It appears on the surface as if Gervais has picked on one of society’s most vulnerable individuals. Derek is presented as of low mental acuity, with impaired language skills and a facial mannerism. He also has an unrealisable crush on the home’s duty nurse Hannah (Kerry Godliman) – “I’m probably going to marry her.” Gervais would certainly be aware of the danger of setting up Derek as a figure of fun. Born in 1960, the comedian would have been 14 when the Horizon documentary Joey, about cerebral palsy sufferer Joey Deacon appeared on TV. Deacon, who had spent most of his life in an institution, despite being of normal intelligence, was able to become a published author. But, after a Blue Peter appearance in 1981, his mannerisms and speech difficulties became widely mocked and imitated. Gervais has made a career out of testing the boundaries of what is and isn’t okay to laugh at. From David Brent’s unthinking racism in The Office to Clive Owen’s misogyny in Extras (“If I’d just slept with that, I wouldn’t throw the food on the floor, I’d throw it in her face”), Gervais specialises in confronting us with situations that are at once appalling and very funny – cringe comedy, as it is sometimes known. But in Derek, Gervais seems to have found a character that he relates to deeply. When Derek found a worm, tried to give it a drink in the pond in the garden of the nursing home, and wondered, in his child-like speech: “Is that its head? I give it both ends,” it simply didn’t come across as mocking. It was a way of looking at the world that was both joyful and touching. And, when Derek's favourite resident Joan fell asleep, and he touched her curls gently: “I likes her hair, it’s fluffy,” you could almost feel the perm bounce against your fingers. Once again, Gervais employed a fake documentary format, allowing Derek to describe his world view directly to camera, inter-cutting it with scenes from the home. Derek’s philosophy – “I likes old people, they’re kind and they’re not going to be around forever so be nice to them” – was contrasted with that of the morose caretaker Douglas (Karl Pilkington), who viewed the home’s residents with gloom: “I don’t know at what point you can say life’s ended.” In Hannah, Gervais had also created another of his sympathetic female characters (the most underrated aspect of his writing), who are aware that life is not quite working out as they might have hoped – “I’m not in a relationship, not married” – but remain pragmatic and cheerful. When, later in the episode, Joan died, Derek remembered her saying: “Kindness is magic Derek.” Just writing that seems to have worked a strange spell on Gervais. Derek was, at its heart, nothing if not kind.

Disabled people can be arseholes too. Some of the best Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes take the piss out of characters that happen to be disabled and the situations they find themselves in, though not the disability...which is where I thought Life's Too short went wrong. Not that I found LTS offensive, it just wasn't funny.

I thought Life's Too Short was total gash by the way. Dressing a dwarf in a shit Ewok outfit, making him climb a bookcase or standing him in a toilet and laughing at him. None of it rang true as events that would happen to a real person and the character was nothing more than an object of ridicule. Derek was much better observed, a totally believable and loveable character with a total lack of social skills....a bit like David Brent.

He had me close to tears when he was crying about Joan.

precious little comedy in it, but still brilliant Iyam.

Channel 4 now The irony of all the attacks on Ricky Gervais for daring to make a comedy about a mentally challenged bloke is that they are motored by some deep prejudices of their own. The Gervais-bashers going mental over his new sitcom Derek, having previously gone mental over his use of the word “mong”, pose as well-meaning defenders of disabled people. But actually their anti-Ricky ranting is driven by fear of everyday TV-viewing folk, who are presumed to be so suggestible that one new sitcom about a man with a low IQ will be enough to unleash their deep-seated hate for disabled people. Derek, which premieres tonight on Channel 4, features Gervais in the title role, a sort of super-nerdy loser who is obsessed with collecting autographs. Gervais insists the character is not mentally handicapped, pointing out that "he's cleverer than Father Dougal [from Father Ted] and not [that] different to Mr Bean". But his critics aren't convinced. They think Derek is at the very least autistic and that inviting viewers to laugh at such an unfortunate character is a very bad thing. Why? Because apparently it will stoke the general public's already existing "contempt" for anyone with a disability. Virtually every anti-Gervais commentary is built on the assumption that there is a mob of people out there – Them, of course, not Us – whose dormant anti-disabled bigotry will be reawakened by this evil new sitcom. A Guardian writer says the show will "feed bigots" and even hints at a link between the cruel humour of the likes of Gervais and the claim that there has been "a 75% rise in disability hate crime" – as if comedy leads directly to kickings, by coaxing viewers to act on their inner hate. The comedian Stewart Lee is worried that we will soon see "feral children trailing real Dereks around supermarkets, chanting 'Derek, Derek'" –which, for all its disability-sympathising PC-ness, is only an updated version of the sort of media-effects theories once promoted by Mary Whitehouse. She, too, was constantly panicked by the possibility that edgy or depraved TV shows would corrupt children – Their children, of course, not Ours – and make them even more feral than they were. The panic about Derek and the impact it will have on uncouth TV viewers echoes the fury that greeted Gervais's use of the word "mong" last year. When he tweeted that word a few times, the reaction was so hysterical you could have been forgiven for thinking he had gone out and actually beaten up a disabled person. Commentators accused him of inflaming “bigotry and ignorance around disability” and of stirring up “extreme, open contempt for disabled people”, as if the public is such a seething pit of anti-disabled sentiment that a 140-character comment by a comedian might be enough to turn us into a hateful horde. A columnist for the Observer even suggested that Gervais was contributing to a climate of anti-disabled prejudice not seen since Nazi Germany. There were campaigns to "stop" Gervais from using the m-word. But where are all these haters of disabled people? Where is this "extreme, open contempt" for the disabled, this festering "bigotry and ignorance"? These things exist largely in the caliginous minds of the chattering classes, who fancy, on the basis of no serious evidence, that the ruffians out there, the kind of people who don't have newspaper columns, are consumed by a frenzied fear and loathing of disabled people. Ironically, in attacking Gervais for being prejudiced, they reveal their own prejudices, their fear of the easily goaded febrile throng, who are just assumed to be less tolerant and loving than Us. Believe it or not, your average bloke and his wife and kids (even the feral ones) do not make a habit of chasing disabled people through the street shouting "retard!" That is a figment of opinion-formers' imaginations. The censorious instinct (and yes, there is an implicitly censorious desire in all the Gervais-bashing, a desire to prevent him from making certain jokes) is always underpinned by prejudice. It is always driven by the snobbish fear that if a certain section of society claps eyes upon a saucy image or overhears an offensive word, then it will be driven mad with lust or hate and will do something crazy. Just as feminists fret that sexist t-shirts will lead to domestic violence and anti-fascist groups believe that if the BNP appears on TV then there will be an outburst of racist violence, so the Gervais-haters fantasise that Derek will unleash widespread loathing of disabled folk. But people aren't monkeys, who see and then do. What we have here is an updated version of the elitist question that was posed at the Lady Chatterley trial, with commentators effectively saying: "Would you let an average, uneducated man watch this sitcom?"

I prefer the More or less podcast. A Statistical feast.

Yakubu's had almost a decade in this league to learn the ropes. Back in 06/07 Yakubu averaged a paltry goal every 264 minutes himself. Suarez has has been hitting one every 274 in his first full year. He's clearly no Cisse or Ba sort in terms of business or hitting the ground running, but he's been Liverpool's only hope. So what he scored goals as soon as he got here. So the worst stat you can find for Yakubu is he scored more than 1 goal in 3 full games in 06/07 whereas £25m Suarez can't. Yakubu was a punt based on a Champions League hatrick for some jew team against Man Utd Reserves. He's been a flop, that's fact. If Cristiano Ronaldo went to Real Madrid and scored 15 in 38 games would he be a flop? Yes. Would Yakubu have been a flop with that ratio? No. They paid £22m for a 25 year old who'd scored 80 goals in 110 games for Ajax. and a goal in every other international he played. MVP in the Copa America (which he's won) and a world cup semi finalist. Then they paid £35m for a bloke who'd managed 17 in 39 games in the championship and didn't have a cap to his name. Suarez was excellent business, Carroll was hilarious business. Comolli's job ends with bringing quality through the door.

The point. and moreso the combined foreign total versus the combined English total.

Yakubu's had almost a decade in this league to learn the ropes. Back in 06/07 Yakubu averaged a paltry goal every 264 minutes himself. Suarez has has been hitting one every 274 in his first full year. He's clearly no Cisse or Ba sort in terms of business or hitting the ground running, but he's been Liverpool's only hope.

Suarez is their main goalscorer and he doesn't fucking score. £25m for a bloke who turns and flicks but doesn't score, well he does but it's more or less 1 in 4, borderline flop in my view. He's not banged them away like a prolific twat, but you have to look at the team. He's got more goals than any other Liverpool player and the second most assists.

Should have used the title music from Reginald Perrin. Otherwise, enjoyable.

Bellamy, Enrique and Suarez were all excellent business tbf, with a combined fee of £30m It's just the English players which (as has been suggested) stink of Dalglish that have been ridiculous.

Cech pops to Asda.

Not sure where this idea most people saw us in the relegation places comes from. A couple of people may have said it, "Widely tipped?" Bollocks. 7 teams had shorter odds http://www.thatsagoal.com/premier-league-relegation-betting-tips-201112/1608/ We were a daft outside bet for some haters.

Ben Arfa praises Messiah

I'm very sympathetic. I also fully support any campaign to get classified documents on the matter released and a proper independent investigation done. That these issues have still not been exhaustively and transparently ruled upon is a shameful blight on the game and over 2 decades of government. But they're taking liberties with our sympathy when they refuse to play games according to the calendar, 23 years after the event. No other club that's suffered any of their own disasters claims any comparable divine right.

Here. There's not many other sites I go to daily now. I pick up the majority of my favourite content using Pulse reader....and I have silver bird for Twitter, which I always forget to check.

Playing the academy in December, tickets on general sale tomorrow...though probably available through O2 already

So if it stays like this man city could get within 2 points of man u on Saturday. I'd love to see Fergie blow it

Just got back from the shops with 3 albums. I did a few laps of the shop (as I do). It was only as I was adding them to Itunes i noticed they all start with an 'R' REM - Murmer Rahzel - Make the Music 2000 Run DMC - Crown Royal The 3 Rs. Can any of your readers beat that? All 3 for a fiver by the way. I know the Run DMC one is mostly shite but I needed a third to make up the numbers.