Filed under: Daily Life, Media | Tags: butter, clergy, country life, etiquette, gentlemen, johnny rotten, manners, protocol, rain, television, umbrella, umbrellas
Whilst doing the ironing today, I saw an advertisement for Country Life Butter, fronted by former Sex Pistols frontman, Johnny Rotten. Playing on the name of the product, there were various shots of him frolicking around in the countryside. One sequence caught my eye in particular: the rain/umbrella shots. An umbrella? In the country? Not the done thing.
Why? It was (and still is by some) considered that umbrellas are only suitable to be sported with town-wear (suits etc). Gentlemen in the country wear ‘country’ and thus an umbrella is not required. If it rains, then it is time to bring out the macintosh. The only exception to this no-umbrellas-in-the-country rule is for clergymen: they can walk about with umbrellas anywhere in the country.
Odd? That’s etiquette.
_____________________________________________
See the advertisement here
I am slowly trying to upload as many of my TV appearances onto YouTube as I can – it’s a work in progress and possibly I’ll eventually get all the radio stuff on there too. But for now, if you want to have a look, click here.
Filed under: Media | Tags: bad, channel m, habits, how rude, hygine, manchester, television, tv, vox pops
Today saw the premiere of my first film for Manchester’s only dedicated tv network, Channel M. It saw me going round the city centre asking people what their most bad-mannered habit was (nice). You can see the video by clicking here. Once the page has loaded, select the ‘Highlights from 26th Jan 2009′ video. The item appears about 30 seconds in. Hope you enjoy it.
Filed under: Media | Tags: bbc radio 5 live, guest, interview, newsnight, paxman, radio, rude
Many find Jeremy Paxman’s abrasive interview technique to be blatant rudeness. And yes, it may be classed as ‘rude’, but why is it so successful? As I drone on about regularly, the secret of good manners is putting people at ease. Paxman is constantly cutting into his guests’ responses, and thus making them ill at ease. In my opinion, because they’re thrown off balance by his interjections, the sometimes prepared responses that their advisers or PR bods have painstakingly compiled are thrown into thrown into the wind. Sometimes the best interviewees go into a Paxman interrogation with no script and worry very little about prepared responses. (Of course, if the politicians and the like go into the interview with nothing to hide or cover up they fare better also!)
This is something I recently experienced on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Stephen Nolan programme. I’ve done the show several times but the first occasion really had me on edge as Stephen was/is a journalist like no other I’ve ever encountered. Everything I said was interrupted and Stephen played devil’s advocate to each of my answers. Now that I’ve done his show several times I know what to expect – indeed, I would be worried and not at ease if I walked into his studio now and he was obsequiously polite and agreed to my every word! Wishful thinking, though.
Anyway – what is your opinion on Paxman? Please participate in the poll:
Filed under: Housekeeping, Media | Tags: australia, channel 9, ladette, ladette to lady, lady, manners, television, tv
I can now reveal, to anyone who is remotely interested, that in mid-November I shall be filming for the Australian Channel 9’s new series of ‘Ladette to Lady’. Sadly, we film in Britain and not in Australia. More details of my appearance will appear here once I’ve completed filming. (I can’t post specific details at the moment, sorry.)
Filed under: Housekeeping, Media | Tags: 1950s, bblb, big brother, blog, edwardian, rachel rice, television, tv
It’s out with the old and in with the new at the blog. I’ve moved to a different blog hosting site now (www.wordpress.com – v good), and hopefully you can all notice the aesthetic difference; I’m already reveling in all the new fun and games I can do as a ‘webmaster’. Sadly, the one bad thing about moving sites is I’ve lost all your comments you’ve made about the entries. Ho hum. It’s a good excuse for you all to make more on the new posts (or the old, whatever you please).
Well, last night 4.9 million saw Rachel Rice win ‘Big Brother 9′. Good for her. She deserved to win. I have a passing interest in this series as I was the manners expert on Big Brother’s Little Brother, the official fanzine show. For once I’m actually going to say something positive as I’m normally just on here, frantically bashing away the the keyboard typing some tirade and coming to the conclusion that life as we know it is awful and we should all go back to loving in the 1950s or even the Edwardian era. But, nevertheless, Rachel was well-mannered, logical and decent. A break from some of the past winners of the series. Rachel should be celebrated, lauded, canonized. My only fear is that the press will tire quickly of her and instead spend the next two months focussing on her fellow ex-housemates (mentioning no names) and bypass her as she’s too ‘normal’. Therefore, let’s all go back to living in the 1950s.
Filed under: Media | Tags: bblb, big brother, compliment, dale, dress, neck, television, tv
Earlier this week I was on Big Brother’s Little Brother again, this time giving evicted housemate Dale some dating etiquette tips. For those that didn’t see it, I gave Dale a suggestion for a compliment he could pay a lady that wouldn’t backfire. I suggested he admire the neck-line on a dress. Now, in rehearsals, it was clearly explained and the production team and George, the presenter, knew what I meant and agreed. However, when it came to air time (live) I somehow forgot to explain that it was the dresses’ neck-line Dale should say he admires and not the woman’s! Hence why the studio rightly descended into a short fit of the giggles, and my phone shortly produced a barrage of texts from friends making jokes about necklines.
I’ll just explain the logic with the neck-line compliment: if a gentleman said to a lady, “is that a new dress?: it could backfire on them as she could have worn the dress on hundreds of occasions before in his company (she’d get cross for his lack of observation). Yet if you said something neutral like, “that’s a great neckline on that dress” you’re sure to offend no one.
Message to self for future: don’t be ambiguous on live TV again!
On Friday I appeared on the E4 programme ‘Big Brother’s Little Brother’ to talk about the manners and etiquette (or lack it!) in the Big Brother house.
Now in its ninth series, many people in the UK wonder why the Channel 4 bosses re-commission the series year-after-year. Whilst it may, in parts, be puerile reality viewing, if you scratch the surface a bit deeper what you actually have is an experiment in human behavior and social interaction; manners cannot be more relevant when people are put in groups (after all, manners are all about putting people at ease/respect for each other – there is no selfishness in manners or etiquette).
Whilst I was there to highlight pretty obvious areas of bad manners and etiquette, there are some examples of very good manners and civility. Take, for example, the way Rachel comforted Kat after the latter failed to complete a task. Kat was worried it was all her fault (which it wasn’t) so Rachel began to reassure her and to PUT HER AT EASE! It was a very touching moment…well, I thought so, anyway.
Filed under: Media | Tags: bbc, doctor who, grandstand, itv, jackanory, strictly come dancing, television, tv
Strictly Come Dancing, Doctor Who, Jackanory, Mr and Mrs, Bill and Ben, To the Manor Born…can you spot a pattern? They are all shows that have made a return to television in the last few years; they were all shows my parents watched in their youth. I could list many more programmes that have been reawakened, tweaked slightly but, in essence, are exactly the same as they used to be. Am I the only one who has noticed that media executives are bringing back the old favourites?
Why are they though? In my opinion, I suggest that perhaps all these new programmes have run along for a few years but haven’t proved as popular as the old show they were trying to emulate. For example, Grandstand: the BBC took that off air and replaced it with ‘Inside Sport’, which means it instantly loses any reputation and gravitas Grandstand had and then has to rebuild and establish a reputation of its own. Give it six years and Grandstand will return. In my opinion, these media-types are re-lighting the old flames of programmes for two reasons. Firstly, they’ve run out of new ideas, so some bright spark a few years ago suggested they bring back the old shows but give them a 21st Century revamp…for example, Come Dancing had the world ‘Strictly’ slapped on to it (although it was at first going to be ‘Celebrity’, I’m told). Secondly, and perhaps the same open-necked-shirted-media-type-bright-spark knew this when he suggested it, the old programmes are actually much better in most cases.
And this, I think, is reflective of society, and perhaps the old values and traditions are more beneficial to us. I see this everyday with manners, and people’s reactions. Whilst some may consider manners and etiquette to be out-dated and irrelevant, they don’t realise that all of the ‘rules’ haven’t just been devised overnight; they have been road-tested and developed over centuries. Shunning manners is nothing new, it’s been done before, and, hopefully, like with television, some bright young spark will suggest that we all revert to being civil to one another…or has someone already started to do that…?!
