Soap’s singular sadsack – REVIEWED
Ian Beale – and by extension, Adam Woodyatt – is widely regarded as something of a sad case. And it’s an outrage. How misleading can public perception be? Every couple of years, Beale’s life falls apart. He has been targeted by a hitman, left homeless and abandoned, and suffered serious mental illness. He has visited prostitutes, haunted strip clubs and been blackmailed for attempted murder. He has lied about his daughter having cancer, lied about his wife’s death and even, for all we know, lied about his extensive catering qualifications. Even after all this, he was once cited as “the most boring man in Walford” by no less an authority than Virgin Media. Well frankly, Virgin Media, we shudder to think of what you might consider interesting. Ian Beale is many things, but boring is not one of them.
So where does this leave the man behind the Beale? Adam Woodyatt, it has become clear, is essentially a working-class cockney Klaus Kinski. How much of the screen persona is Ian Beale and how much is Woodyatt? In this life of dizzying highs and desperate, miserable lows, it’s now impossible to say. But it’s hard to imagine any real separation. After all, Woodyatt has been Beale (and, really, only Beale) since his mid-teens. While Kinski’s turbulent personality found expression via a multitude of different voices, Woodyatt has compressed his savage, animalistic lust for life into just one. But that’s the only real difference. Sneer all you want, Virgin Media. But it’s time for the sustained performance art lifework that is Woodyatt as Beale to get its long-overdue recognition.
10/10
PH
Tiny specks of muck, mites and dead human skin – REVIEWED
We’re all made of stardust, sure, but it still makes us sneeze. Or, more precisely, it’s proteins in the droppings of the beings who dwell in debris that set off the allergies that accompany our annual winter-coat de-cupboarding. Such is the story of dust: always getting the blame for something else’s mess.
You ever heard that gross thing that house dust is 90% human skin? It’s not – Jesus, if you believe that, how much do you shed, pal? – but such is the bad rep being little specks of dirt gets. Even astrophysicists can’t stand it. But it’s everywhere, affecting everything – book jackets, interstellar nebulae, Duchamp’s Bride – all down to the visible but indistinct minutiae we insist of vaccing up relentlessly. Yes, it might be irritating, but it is also clearly important. So, thanks for suggestion, @RushianLFC. Dust: at times annoying, but also underrated. Poor little mites.
2/10
CJ
An alarming musical delivery mechanism – REVIEWED
Picture the conversation in Sophie HQ, which is probably some shoebox bedroom in Peckham, as the electronic producer and his underlings bat ideas back and forth for his new merch line. “Hmm, but Deadmau5 has already created cat headphones. The Flaming Lips did that foetus-shaped Christmas tree ornament. And Slayer and Wu-Tang Clan nailed the Christmas jumper game. What can we do?” A few clicks around on the dark web. “Wait, what? Dave Stewart brought out a rhinestone-encrusted vibrator? Guys, we can do that twice, can’t we?” And lo, the Sophie-branded double-ended dildo was born.
Sadly there were no samples available at the time of furiously writing this review last minute on a Friday morning, but the sex toy – just one of a range of silicon “products” that Sophie is releasing his singles collection with – looks, well, slick. It may be shaped like a hand grip that a stacked LAD Bible unit would use in the gym, but it has an appealing amorphous shape, as if it were made from the mercury in the Busta Rhymes and Janet Jackson video for What’s It Gonna Be?
What’s more pressing, though, is whether anyone is actually going to use it. Imagine getting down to it, only for your partner to see “Sophie” inscribed on the side (“Who the hell is Sophie? What other bottoms has this been in, you two-timing creep!” etc). Imagine trying to get freaky under the sheets as, say, Sophie’s track Hard – an alien clatter of ping-ponging metallic beats, fetishistic lyrics about latex gloves, platform shoes and PVC, trance synths and apocalyptic hip-hop drums – cranks out of your iPod speakers. You could poke someone’s eye out with it. In conclusion, just like Deadmau5’s cat headphones, Sophie’s silicon is a case of better in theory than in practice.
6/10
KH
The trusty rubber – REVIEWED
So I thought this was gonna be essentially a review of the olden days – how things were less efficient then, but we made do and it was ok. Because back in the olden days people used pencils and pencils with rubbers, whereas nowadays it’s all done on Snapchat.
It turns out I was wrong, though. People still make pencils, they’re just called mechanical pencils, and instead of the rubbers being that disgusting shade of pink that suggested an unwelcome human growth, they’re now pristine, futuristic white.
And so, in the mode of one of those Which? reviews I shall now review the efficacy of the rubber on the end of a mechanical pencil:
1 – The Pencil
2 – The Text
3 – The Text After Rubbing
4 – The Pencil After Rubbing
I think we can all agree there’s a trace of “there” there. And while the rubber is still quite white, it has a tail hanging off. I have to factor both of these aspects into the final score. I believe that rubbers on the end of pencils still have a role to play in society. But that role is limited.
6/10
PM
Weary travellers – REVIEWED
Harder than it sounds, this. Much more at play than you’d think. Firstly, one must review the people who nod off on public transport themselves, as entities – and they’re as diverse a sample of people as any within humanity’s rich tapestry. Some will be idiots – snorers, shoulder-leaners, this gorp – while others will be perfectly upstanding members of society. Only not upstanding in this instance; more spreadeagled across two damp seats in a position that could only be comfortable to someone with no bones.
We must also then review the act itself. Is falling asleep on a bus a solipsistic handing over of the keys of one’s well-being to others, using them, effectively, as alarm clocks, sleep-guardians and meat-pillows? Or is it an unintended byproduct of one-too-many Pernods and a dinner consisting of a handful of stolen cheese and onion, a strawberry Haribo and three Marlboro Lights? Both are true: For every drooling idiot prostrate on the bus because they feel the need to be someone else’s farty little problem, there will be a nurse, or a farrier, or someone else totally heroic, temporarily and accidentally indisposed. And this is the rub: individual instances are unique. So for the sake of a review we must depend on averages.
It looks like we’re heading for a 5/10 then. But there’s one more factor at play. As everyone knows, there is actually nothing more boring in the world than an overheard nightbus conversation between a load of second-year students who think everything is, like, LITERALLY amazing. So, for allowing people to miss the teeth-gnashing, I-might-genuinely-have-to-throw-my-chips-at-them annoyance of this, people kipping on buses gets bumped up to a cool:
7/10
LH
