(c)Rap Couture

Why do major recording artists’ egos feel the need to fashion their own clothing ranges, their names writ large in Swarovski crystals on the labels? Everyone from Sean Combs, Gwen Stefani, Jay Z and J-Lo to Justin Timberlake has been playing ‘designer.’  Well, nothing quite spells rock’n’roll like Miley Cyrus for Walmart, I suppose. Singers that could buy out Harrods’ entire designer stock on a whim want to sell to them too, it seems. Will stores be snapping up the latest emperor’s new clothes line from Kanye West? Kanye design? Kanye heck! Rosemary West might have received kinder reviews than he got for his parade of uncommonly ugly threads - think zombie bag lady/ hooker - laughed off the runway by sardonic seasoned observers; The Telegraph’s Lisa Armstrong rated it ‘rap with a capital-C.' while, solicited for her view, Nuclear Wintour reportedly hissed 'ask someone else!' Fail! Cue potty-mouth pearls from the emperor’s new clothes designer who really really wants to be taken seriously in fashion. Hire Roland Mouret to ghost your range? Time for resting designers to turn the tables and release rap CDs: Galliano... rhymes with Chicano. Might just work.

The only Girl Aloud

The only Girl Aloud - at least, on my iPod - is Nicola Roberts. Long dismissed as ‘the ginger one,’ to me, she always seemed edgier than her predictable pap princess band-mates. Kinda stylish in a kooky-awkward way, she has a certain je ne sais quoi. The ‘quoi’, it emerges, is a quirky punchy electro-pop album in the form of the sparkling Cinderella’s Eyes. Listen to it and weep Ms Nadine Coyle - for whose solo effort the Great British public's appetite proved ultimately less than Insatiable. Typical of Nicola’s album is hooky single (Gonna Be My) Lucky Day. Sounds about right, based on this showing. On ‘I’, she worries about ‘waking up one day to find that my bubble’s burst.’ Hon, you’ll still be going strong when Cheryl’s retired to raise Ashley’s bairns in Newcastle, the one gig I suspect the nation's troubled sweetheart would most relish. 

Hear the single here: http://tinyurl.com/3dul4hl

Mercury Rising

With its seemingly insatiable appetite for production line boy-bands (One Direction, JLS) and pappy pop princesses (Cher/ Cheryl), if the Great British public awarded Michelin stars, would KFC have a maximum three above its portals? How refreshing to see 2011 Mercury Prize winner PJ Harvey’s fine concept album, Let England Shake, shoot up Amazon’s chart to number two, just behind the deserved global phenomenon that is fellow Mercury contender, Adele. I may question the inclusion of certain past nominees - U2, Spice Girls, Keane, Kasabian - but any platform that helps bring a wider audience for the likes of Anna Calvi, Everything Everything and Metronomy (whose track, The Look, is a slice of sublimely infectious pop) is a positive. Even if that audience is more likely to currently own a P J and Duncan CD than any of PJ Harvey’s.

How To Spend It

For its sheer fuck-off-flaunti-ness, I secretly admire the Financial Times on Saturday’s glossy supplement, How To Spend It. I only get to see it because I occasionally like to check up on the price of the gas shares Sid sold me and to establish whether buying those get-rich-quick penny shares circa Bananarama was bananas. Currently quoted at 4.5p per share, there's still scant prospect of that infinity pool and villa in the Var, sadly. For those who have better use for the FT’s £2.80 cover price, it goes like this. Worst economic crisis since the Depression, be damned! How to spend it now, apparently, is like a modern Marie Antoinette on terrific teal Dior slip dresses, a snip at £11,450 (£950 heels included) - roughly the same as the annual wage for many nurses. And so the call to conspicuous consumption goes on:’tanzanite’ (me neither) earrings, £22,600; ‘racing machine‘ wristwatches that cost more than some houses; ‘spa junkie’ fixes in ’billionaires’ playground’ Cap-Ferrat; a Duesenberg coupe set to fetch $4.5 plus million at auction. No mention of the cost of a tube of cream to apply to noses grazed from being rubbed in it. This, at a time when some are figuring how not to spend it - e.g. smashing Comet’s windows and grabbing a £10.99 kettle or something equally sad.  ‘Let them eat (Fortnum’s) cake’ and dream, eh?

Ramsay roll-outs

Holy cow! So the foodie tom toms beat out news that Chef Ramsay - as he is reverentially referred to by impressionable Yanks whose rank restaurants even a rabid raccoon would rubber - might be planning to roll out a chain of barbecue joints called Fat Cow?  ‘Total Bull’, or something to that effect, a spokesperson is quoted as saying, denying any such venture is imminent. Shame. I can see the appeal of a Fat Cow all-you-can-eat buffet  followed by a pamper session using Lazy Cow products available from posho spa, Babbington House. Why not join me in a venture aimed at the meaty mass market, Gordon? I’m thinking...a chain of schnitzel joints aimed at chav slappers; let's call it Pauline Calf. What? That name has already been registered? Bullocks! The brand name Mad Cow is apparently still up for grabs. Discount burgers might work in a recession.  

Rock'n'Roll Victims

Amy Winehouse’s passing, shocking as it was, was no surprise. I’d often see her around at parties or in Camden. What I observed was too dark to be dismissed as simply ‘messy.’ Larger than life, in death, she joins the so-called Forever 27 Club, a pantheon of music immortals that includes Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, shooting stars that would also never reach their twenty-eight birthday. ‘Tragic! ’Such a waste’ we sigh, rightly appalled. But, for some, isn’t there also something akin to sneaking admiration going on here? Sure Amy’s prodigious talent, rebellious beehive and exquisite face will forever be held up as iconic but I don’t subscribe to teen thug Nick Romano’s line in a 1940’s Bogart flick - ‘Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse.’ Too many of my contemporaries - talented, gorgeous and too rock and roll for their own good - have gone the same way. Regardless of the actual cause of death, to paraphrase her hit song ‘Drugs are a losing game.’  

Celebrities In Their Own Right

Would we have even heard of Heather Mills, Trudie Styler, Sharon Osbourne and similar media fixtures, if it wasn’t for their famous spouses? When it comes to so-called ‘celebrities in their own right’, one, in particular, gets my goat. Step forward, Nancy Dell’Olio; Sven-Goran’s ex, a ‘charismatic’ diva who could have given Louis Armstrong lessons in blowing your own trumpet. In a short interview for a Sunday supplement, taking self-aggrandisement to a whole new level, the ‘I’ word crops up around 100 times: ‘I’m fascinating; I’m beautiful; I’m a very loved person; I know how good I am; I’m invited everywhere; I love to look 30, like I look now.’ Ha! 30? In dog years? To paraphrase the old musical number, I Yi Yi Yi Yi I Like Me Very Much. Me? Not so much! Delusional? The old Prada bag reportedly reckons she filled the void Princess Di left in Middle England's hearts and that she's the most intelligent person current squeeze, Trevor Nunn, has ever met. Well there's Nunn so foolish as an old fool, I suppose. Can someone explain why fancy Nancy gets photographed at all, other than - like Carmen Miranda - as reference material for drag queens?

The star of Case Histories

Case Histories: the action may be slow. the plot twists more far-fetched than Midsomer Murders crossed with Rebus, but you sure can't knock it for eye candy. I mean, just how handsome is the star of BBC1’s new Sunday/ Monday detective series?  Giddy types may swoon over Jackson Brodie, portrayed by the Mel Gibson-esque Jason Issacs, but for craggy good looks, you can’t beat Arthur’s Seat, the extinct volcano that rises above the show’s real looker, Edinburgh. Admittedly, I’m biased; I was born and raised in its New Town, the area much of the action takes place in, but does any other city photograph so well? Sweeping rain-swept shots over its iconic skyline; moody night-time vistas; cobbled mews locations Phil and Kirstie would die for: the tourist board must be beside itself with glee. Whether it’s in The Illusionist or The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Auld Reekie always appears magical. What about squalid Trainspotting? Sorry, that was mostly filmed in Glasgow.   

Scripting The Bottom Of The Barrel

Mockumentaries aren’t exactly new: the genre can be traced back via Spinal Tap to 1938, when Orson Welles's War of the Worlds panicked gullible American radio listeners into near hysteria. But the current rash of British scripted mock-shockers is really scraping the grubby bottom of an already well-emptied barrel. Just when you thought The Only Way Is Essex - its vacuous vajazzlers manipulated into ever more preposterous situations - was the nadir of civilisation, along came Caggie Dunlop,  that mane-tossing tosser in the Union Jack trews (Ollie? Mollie? Nelly?), and the rest of the SW3 gang to demonstrate why so many Londoners hate Chelsea and all that’s Made (up) In it. But for sheer mind-boggling inanity, visit Geordie Shore, MTV’s lurid British answer to Jersey Shore. If any of what its revolting clap magnets get up to is less Fake than their Bake, it will be a blessing to mankind if Orson’s Martians nuke Newcastle.

The Fashionably Principled

Fashionistas with principles make me queasy: these two-faced PC airheads wear Hamnett-style Save The Planet Ts yet happily drive flash gas guzzlers paid for by the boyf's bonus. He works in one of those ghastly banks, the very institutions they were railing against until a chance encounter at Whisky Mist, a shag in his Mayfair townhouse's Frette sheets (no child workers exploited in the manufacture thereof, obviously) and a weekend on his 40 metre Sunseeker yacht off Juan-les-Pins kicked that particular fashionable cause right into the long grass. Skin deep, they support a supermodel’s publicity-grab anti-fur pronouncements, only to skin up, happily wrapping dead animal round their silly, slender necks, the minute the grubby cow does a volte face, paid megabucks to strut mink in Milan.  According to Instantluxe, a website where label Mabels trade second-hand designer gear, stylistas are again adopting the moral high ground, dumping Dior BIG time ahead of Galliano’s trial for alleged anti-Semitism. 'John who? Sorry, did I used to know you?' Shouldn’t they also ditch their coveted vintage Chanel pieces? After all, wasn’t Coco loco for a man in (the wrong) uniform? Burn the Westwood punk top (swastikas just won’t do, whatever the Dame’s intended message was); cull les Le Courbusier chairs - the jury’s out on his wartime leanings - and see if eBay still accepts Lars von Trier DVDs. What about the Wagner CD?  As they probably mean the bloke off X Factor, not Adolf’s favourite, that can stay.

MsMarmitelover

Supper clubs - ‘underground’ restaurants where paying guests do the Come Dine With Me thing in someone else’s home without the sordid business of reciprocating, are the eating trend that ate Britain. Based on Cuba’s ‘paladar’ culture, the best examples feel like a clandestine 80’s rave/ cabaret/ shebeen at which you also happen to be fed like a prince. To the supper club faithful, to eat at the London abode of ex-punk/ anarchic cook Kerstin Rodgers is akin to a pilgrimage to Mecca - make that Noma. Known to her 7,000 Twitter fans as MsMarmitelover, she’s just published a quirky guide to the genre packed with sound DIY supper club advice, ‘I want!’ recipes and anecdotes - such as ‘hot’ guest Hardeep Singh Kholi, stripping off to stir curry (and unexpected longings) in MsMarmite’s pans. Duly inspired (by the book, not the possibility of Hardeep spooning my bhuna), toqued-up and table set, I’m praying I don’t poison my first punters as I dream about riches beyond Ramsay. 

(Supper Club By Kerstin Rodgers: Collins £25)

The Only Way Is Essex: Official Guide

A friend’s new junior receptionist, Billericay-born and bred, recently enquired whether ‘Easter Sunday is on a Monday this year.’ Bless! Could Simple be the make-up remover of choice for your average Essex girl? On the back of the new series, here’s the official guide to how to live it large like a Loughton lass. Let’s see? A frock from Miss Piggy Modes, towering Loo-Boo-’ans, a face like a baboon's behind, fake tits that would protect you in a 150 mph full on car crash and a spray tan that screams ‘radioactive carrot.’ Veneered and vajazzled, you aim to cop off with a bit of class at Faces nightclub - Jack Tweed’s mate Mark, a (stud) muffin with all the sex appeal of one of Nanny Pat’s half-baked sausage plaits? Given the cast’s communication skills, what you get are lots of pretty (damn scary) cast pictures and few words of more than one syllable. No? Shut up!

http://tinyurl.com/46nolex

EightBit.Me

Will Twitter-based social networking gizmo/ iPhone app EightBit.Me capture the public’s imagination? Explained to me as ‘like foursquare squared’, I worry I may be 2square to appreciate its possibilities. There again, at the time of its invention, I couldn’t see how the wheel might enrich my existence. So, silencing my Luddite inner voice, I say ‘tell me more, dude!’ First, you recreate yourself as an old skool computer game-style 8-bit character - in my case, Woody from Toy Story in Allan Carr’s bins and an Orphan Annie wig is a vast improvement on the real McCoy - then your pixelated mini-me roams a realm where checking into venues and Tweetable ‘shouts’ win prizes and….. hold on! Why am I concerned with such vacuous ventures?  Didn’t I used to have a life? Friends that weren’t just avatars? Stop the world, I want to get off...preferably, on activities non-virtual. Besides, the backlash has already begun (see http://.eightshit.me/) 

Blogjammed

I’m a sucker for an enlightening blog: Southern Sudan's Northern Soul Scene; 2,000 Ways With Wasabi; Big Fat Gay Inuit Weddings. The problem with the ultimate form of vanity self-publishing is that too many blogs are just too ruddy wordy. Bookmarked for future reference, are hundreds I’ll never actually find time to read. Blog-jammed, I feel anxious (am I missing The Next Big Thing?) and simultaneously narked (life was a breeze before we got enmeshed in the Web). Self-important food and fashion bloggers are among the worst offenders. I could hunt down, cook and scoff an organic, sustainably sourced, twenty-course Mughal feast faster than it takes some Marina-manqué to describe her ‘unique dinning (sic) experience’ at a Glossop gastro/gastritis-pub’s all-you-can-eat buffet. Pics and captions, not a thesis, are all we need from an alt Emmanuelle Alt to appreciate Lanvin’s new collection. Blog, but blog concisely, you verbose bluggers! 

Rastamouse

Spare me the controversy surrounding reggae ridim king Rastamouse and his band, Da Easy Crew. The new hit CBeebies animation is currently enrapturing rugrats, not to mention big kids like Lily Allen and Dizzee Rascal too. Despite RM’s admirable mission to ‘make bad tings good’, publications such as The Guardian wonder ‘Is Rastamouse a righteous rodent or rank stereotype?’ Outraged of Tunbridge Wells rants about Jamaican patois corrupting the mother tongue. Please! One of the joys of English is its willingness to evolve by absorbing other cultures’ lingo, capisce? Others, such as Reggae Reggae Sauce's Levi Roots, reportedly,  condemn Rastafarians being portrayed as mice (as opposed to lions, presumably) as blatantly racist.  Get over yourselves! Rastamouse is a ranking role model, the cutest, cuddliest mega-star since that (Russian) meerkat. Reespek to his creator, author Michael de Souza, a proud Rastafarian.

The New Lady Gaga

However soulless I may find her manipulatively manufactured, over-produced yodelling, I get Gaga’s pop appeal, but those ‘envelope pushing’ get-ups? Fail! To a true style icon -  Anna Piaggi, Issy Blow or Elsa Schiaparelli who was working Gaga’s lobster look back in the 1930s - it comes naturally... and effortlessly. Ms Germanotta’s pose is clumsy, contrived and cynically sensationalist ; like La Ciccone, before her, a homely bridge and tunnel New Yorker desperate for a brand-building gimmick. Meat dress? Miss Steak!  Sparky British discovery Jessie J - next up on ‘the new Lady Gaga’ comparison conveyor belt, book-ended by Nicki Minaj (a Kylie Minaj tribute act?) Ke$ha and Natalia Kills  - reckons old Poker Face has set the bar so high, other female artists seem boring by comparison. A dressed-down Jess’s acoustic performance on Jools Holland was the real deal, her Gaga tribute vid for Do It Like A Dude? Now, that really is boring! 

Ned Style

 ’We called the new baby Ned,’ says a Lib-Dem voting, Guardian reading, London pal. For Ned’s sake, I hope the child never attends uni in Scotland. For, north of Carlisle, NEDS implies non-educated delinquent 'schemies' - scourge of the Bearsden/ Morningside genteel classes who live in fear of being ‘chibbed’ for crack spends by tooled-up, rickets-y youth with in trackies with track marks all over their spotty, self-tattooed skin. As fashion so often takes its cue from film and TV -  if you had a tenner for every Mad Man manqué out there, you could buy up all of Greenock, Giffnock and Port Glasgow , should you so desire - how long before the streets are awash with doppelgängers from Peter Mullan’s Neds? For pure 70s period effect, adopt flares, long leatherette coat, feather cut hair and a penchant for kissing, Glasgow style. Alternatively, take a masterclass in contemporary Ned-ism courtesy of The Wee Man at http://tinyurl.com/cqwuky Either way, not a good look.

Anti-Social, moi?

For me, it was love at first sight: twenty years on, I’m still besotted with my sexy Mac. That’s Mac as in not-a-PC, equally addictive machines according to users. When not developing curvature of the spine, hunched over lap-or-desktop catching up on Corrie, comparing the market.com, off my face on Facebook or marveling at YouTube clips demonstrating Peaches Geldof’s  command of English - y’know? the one at http://tinyurl.com/y9a7xc5 - I’m tweeting utter twollox. Enough! This obsessive relationship is unhealthy, as my stranger-to-the-gym bod demonstrates. Could salvation lie in the software equivalent of Antabuse, a drug designed to deflect alkies from the cooking sherry?  Anti-Social,  networking block software available to download, promises to deny (s)Mac addicts their daily fix. For PC junkies, there’s Freedom. Either way, isn’t it time to get a life that’s not 99% virtual?

http://anti-social.cc/