<img align=left src="http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/images/ACDSimages/cottingley.jpg"></img>Recently there was a depressing TV advert doing the rounds, promoting a new reality TV programme called "Lapdancing Island". It now transpires this was a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3170075.stm">hoax.</a> Which is even more depressing.

"The trailer… is part of an elaborate advertising campaign to promote The Pilot Show… which sets up the public and celebrities to take part in wacky recordings and auditions for fake TV shows, believing they are experimental runs for the real thing. A spokesman for the show said although the Lapdance Island trailers were still running, there would soon be a new one which apologises to all those who were taken in and will be disappointed to learn there was never any intention to make the programme."

I'd love to see this starting a trend. Producers giving public apologies for wasting people's time. Can we also expect similar apologies from the makers of Fame Academy?

"We're sorry this programme isn't a fake."

Or the makers of many a guilty show:

"We're sorry for letting Kate Thornton anywhere near a camera".

Perhaps self-awareness could be the new cocaine:

"We are sorry that, in our privileged position as programme makers to educate, entertain, edify and elevate millions of people, we have instead chosen to waste a lot of time and money, for the sake of making a very, very, obvious point. Without realising the connection between people applying to go on reality TV shows and people like us actually making reality TV shows. Cheap jokes with expensive budgets. Next up on Channel Boy Who Cried Wolf – TV Producers Taking Pleasure From Smelling Their Own Farts. Followed by, oh, more of the same. "

I've always found many hoaxes rather pointless, hollow, tragic and tiresomely unfunny, in the same way I find many April Fools jokes, celebrity impersonation, anonymity and, yes, fake web diaries and "Fakesters", pointless, hollow, tragic and tiresomely unfunny. Chris Morris and Ali G are notable exceptions, preying on the gullibility of self-appointed celebrities and experts in order to make rather good TV comedy. But, and I hate to break this to a lot of people, everyone's not a comedian. Look upon the works of Steve Penk, ye mighty, and despair.

There's just much better ways of making a point, and much better ways of making people laugh. And indeed, much more interesting, even stylish ways of creating a hoax. <a href="http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/pcaraboo.html">Not least the story of Princess Caraboo</a>. Or the case of <a href="http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/ACDFAIRIES.html">Arthur Conan Doyle and The Cottingley Fairies</a>. That's the way to do it. Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths – anticipating PhotoShop by some eighty years.

The "dead pet rabbit" web diary entry I linked to in my post about soliciting abuse was also, <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/siamang/44222.html">its author now admits</a>, a complete hoax. Or rather, they offer a rather risible pseudo-philosophical explanation of their motives.

This reminded me of a 90s hoax TV series by Muriel Gray about the state of modern art. In the final programme, she admitted all the artists she had featured were actors, and went into a big self-important speech about reality, TV, modern art, and so forth. Like the dead bunny person, she said she wanted to provoke a response, to make the viewer go away and think about things. She didn't seem to anticipate that such thoughts were most likely to be, "Yes, and I now think, get lost, Ms Gray, you cheap, sanctimonious waste of my time." And she did. She hasn't worked in TV since.

Ultimately, the only way hoaxes can justify themselves is by producing something of genuine comic and satirical excellence (Chris Morris, Ali G), or providing a great story much retold (the cases of Princess Caraboo and The Cottingley Fairies were both made into rather good films), or by stopping Muriel Gray appearing on TV again. This Lapdancing Island hoax, however, is just a depressing symptom of the state of current things televisual. The tragedy is, its instigators have the temerity to look down on people who apply to go on reality TV shows, without realising that by saturating the schedules with those sort of inane programmes in the first place, they themselves are hardly prime, hypocrisy-free, edifying examples of humanity.

Here's my pitch: a programme that addresses why it is that the premise of Lapdancing Island was entirely believable in the first place. Why "Touch The Truck" (game show where people have stay touching said vehicle for days on end) and "Chained" (strangers having to carry on their lives while chained together) are actually very real programmes. The show would put a group of TV producers in a house surrounded by cameras and mirrors….

"Day 32. And Jeremy Nokia-Comfortable, producer of Abbatoir Academy and Britain's Sexiest Children, is in the diary room weeping again:

"There's something wrong with the mirrors in this place. Instead of being covered in lines of white powder, I can actually see the lines of accountability etched into my wretched face". "

There's an Alan Bennett TV season at the NFT next month. How terrible that the only way of getting good TV is by going to the cinema.

I do feel like dragging the makers of The Pilot Show along to the NFT, saying,

"Look, do you see? THIS is how to make television! There IS a better way! Everyone will benefit! Your lives need NOT be in vain!"

I'm writing this entry as I bleach my roots in preparation for <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/dickon_edwards/39214.html">tomorrow's concert</a>. In case you're wondering, I currently use the Jerome Russell kit, the one for men. This isn't at all important chemically, as the kit's contents are identical to the distaff version. And I'm hardly one of those men put off by the thought of being caught using women's hair products. In fact, I'm more embarrassed by the thought of being caught with men's grooming products. Lynx, Gillette, Old Spice, that's your lot. What a choice. The least a man can get.

No, the reason I deliberately plump for the men's bleaching kit is purely because of the larger plastic gloves included. Contrary to the boasts of many a smug drag queen spotter, not all male hands are bigger than females – I've encountered males with palms as slender as rain. Admittedly, such epicene creatures of the night would hardly win any Mr Universe competitions, but you get my point. My own hands, however, <i>are</i> too large for the standard gloves in the women's bleaching kits, and so I must resort to the Y chromosome version for this purely practical reason.

<img align=left src="http://www.wholepoint.co.uk/tschits85.jpg"></img>
While waiting for the chemicals to do their sacred work, I listen to a recent Radio 2 documentary on The Style Council. What a wonderful and strange 80s pop group they were. Paul Weller as far removed from his rockist personae in The Jam and in his solo career as one could possibly imagine. Blissful, timeless pop classics like "Speak Like A Child", "You're The Best Thing", "Long Hot Summer", "My Ever Changing Moods" and "Shout To The Top". Achingly beautiful lesser-known songs like "Changing Of The Guard", "It's A Very Deep Sea" and "Spring Summer Autumn." The only band that played Live Aid AND benefits for the miners' strike. Chart pop record sleeves with incredibly arch sleeve notes (from "The Capuccino Kid") alternating with <i>reading lists</i> and addresses for contacting CND, anti-vivisection and hunt sabs groups, and so on. It's very easy to get cynical now about their brazen "SOUL-cialist" agenda – not least a lot of the lyrics, but their attendant sly, self-mocking sense of humour, noticeably absent in The Jam, always endeared themselves to me. From Michael Moore to Morrissey to Ken Livingstone, seriousness is more sincere when spiked with a smirk.

"We had a choice between doing a soundcheck and meeting Charles and Diana. We did the soundcheck". – on Live Aid.

I'd also forgotten how much more <i>uranist</i> Mr Weller was back then. The sleeve of their biggest selling album, "Our Favourite Shop" featured Joe Orton, Kenneth Williams, and a poster of Rupert Everett in "Another Country". Half-naked men and much EM Forster-like riverside earlobe-stroking in the video to "Long Hot Summer". Titles like ""I Was A Dole Dad's Toy Boy". And, in the sleeve notes to the recent compilation, "The Sound Of The Style Council", Mr Weller has this to say about rare Style Council gem "The Piccadilly Trail":

"I imagined a middle-aged teacher who has got a love affair going on with a Soho rent boy, but the tables get turned. The teacher is always being used by this boy… It's a great London song."

Returning to the subject of bleached boys, Mr Weller also attempted the peroxide look for the "Cost Of Loving" album era, with somewhat unflattering results. I think the look he had on this Smash Hits cover, the boyish – well, let's face it, girlish – dark floppy side-parting, was far more fetching.

Mind you, standing next to Mick Talbot was always going to pay dividends.

My group Fosca are performing at the Kings Cross Water Rats this Thursday, with The Free French (featuring <lj user=rhodri>) and Simon Bookish (<lj user=automatique>). Perhaps we could jointly procure a laptop and update our web diaries from the stage, commenting on the audience's dress sense.

Fosca are onstage 9pm. Full details here:

http://www.hitbackonline.co.uk/festival.html

We'll be airing a new pop anthem called "I've Agreed To Something I Shouldn't Have."

In the last few weeks, I've put myself on hip dating / befriending website Friendster at the invitation of someone I vaguely know. I suspect they wanted to make their numbers up – there's an uneasy element of a popularity contest.

Very odd, Friendster. You register a profile, describe yourself and your interests, upload a photo and let other people give approved Testimonials on what sort of wonderful person you are. And that really is it.

The London media adage of "any friend of yours is not necessarily a friend of mine" comes into its own here. Looking at Friends of Friends of Friends, I see lots of music industry types and proper pop stars who really should have better things to do. And some seem to be genuinely using it as a dating agency.

There's also lots of ex boyfriends and girlfriends happily extolling each other's virtues. "Here's my former lover – help yourself, they're a great catch." All very civilised. In a very hedonistic way.

I have deeply jaundiced and immensely unpopular views on Relationships, and am ashamed to admit that on hearing of Jude Law's divorce, my heart skipped a little. As if he'd be phoning me up the next day for a roll in a sandpit.

Unsurprisingly, I am rarely invited to weddings.

I'm not convinced Friendster will be more than a short-lived Internet fad as it's fairly limited (unlike LiveJournal), and the server keeps breaking down. But it IS less anonymous than LJ, which I naturally approve of. You're encouraged to be yourself rather than pretend you're a picture of a kitten.

The trouble is, all anyone wants to be is a picture of a kitten.

As an experiment, I've switched on the Screen Anonymous Comments option of this diary.

This was rather a difficult decision for me, as I firmly believe in free speech, anti-censorship, and not cutting the sound off when someone in the Big Brother house says anything vaguely interesting.

So I came up with a personal rule: I'll only censor completely anonymous comments that are unkind to my own readers. That doesn't happen very often, I know, but I want to ensure it doesn't happen at all. Everything else will go straight through, including any unkind comments on myself. Anonymous comments that sign off with a name will always be allowed, and are encouraged.

As this diary is a performance on the world stage, I'll lap up the hecklers, but am uneasy about meta-Altamonts. Throw milk cartons at me if you must, but leave my readers out of it, please. Goodness, that's the butchest thing I've said in my life. Badge-wearing Dickon Edwards Readers should be rewarded for their excellent taste and extreme physical beauty, and it's the least I can do for them. So that's why I've done it.

It's not so much <i>what</i> anonymous whelks of no woman born say. It's their anonymity per se. Anonymity is a waste of life, and has no place in the world of Dickonism, where identity is all. If you have something to say, why don't you put your name or even a nickname to it? Oh dear, I sound like John Leslie.

The only thing worse than anonymity is anonymous impersonation. I find "amusing" fake web diaries extremely unfunny, bordering on the devastatingly tragic. And that's coming from <i>me!</i> We can smell our own.

I'm referring to people pretending to be Michael Winner, or Alan Partridge, or <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=dave_rowntree">Dave From Blur</a>. Do these people <i>really</i> require impersonation anyway?

I'm mindful of that admittedly rather useful (and probably American) popular catchphrase for defining one's existence. The one with connotations of meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates:

"So what do YOU bring to the party?"

The Impersonator: "Er… (looks at feet) someone else…"

"I see. Well, better luck with your next life. Next time, try and be yourself more. And David Dickinson less. It was quite funny at first. On second thoughts, no it wasn't."

I'm always intrigued as to which diaries on the Web come in for the most angry comments from strangers. Today, I came across a diary entry that's attracted all kinds of reactions: extreme abuse, extreme laughter, extreme revulsion, extreme sympathy, extreme suspicion of the author's veracity. Quite a feat. Warning: do not read if you are an easily-offended animal-lover, or a squeamish vegetarian:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/siamang/43717.html

Unable to sleep, unable to write, cursing the cheap pink fan I bought that only succeeds in redistributing London's hot air back into my face, even with the window open, I find myself thinking about Hobbyism. It probably doesn't help that I've also just watched the film "Adaptation", concerning as it does a writer stricken with self-doubt about his own talent, his own worth.

When strangers ask me what I Do, and they're not even a member of the Royal Family, I try to remain calm. Immediately my entire life is called into question. I am in the dock. I say I'm a writer, but my magazine pieces are very sporadic, and besides I'm just not interested, or more to the point very good at, being a Journalist. I'm more of a Book Writer, but I've never had any books published. Though that's mainly because the books are all unfinished, which doesn't help. I intend to do something about that shortly.

I sometimes say I'm a Professional Being, that I've had my photo taken by magazines in clubs for just being me, and even taken to lunch by the editorial staff of one style mag to dish out my Philosophy Of Dickonism. But it rarely results in a proper piece, because I have no Product to plug.

Well, I do: Fosca. And myself. But neither Fosca nor I have a bullying PR person, so I am effectively nothing. No one will listen to you if you don't have a PR person. Even Mr Christ was a client of Messrs Mark, Matthew, Luke and John Associates. Who also do Geri Halliwell.

As I believe Ms James of the late and strangely fashionable again Transvision Vamp put it, you are born to be sold. You just need someone to do the selling.

On top of that, it's all about PR timing as well. Articles, interviews and reviews have to be synchronised with release dates of Product. And then, if, say, the Radioheads have a new record out, everything else lesser gets cancelled or postponed. How to know your place, indeed.

It's the world where a single chart position much below #25 means Failure and being thrown off the label. All those people involved in plugging your music, most of whom you've never met and are likely to change jobs halfway through their sentences, so much money being spent without your say-so, everything depending on whether Mr Jeff Chins, 46, Head Of Music at Radio Snort, likes your singles or not. If he doesn't, you've had it. You're making music for no one but him. Which is, obviously, no way to make music. But that is the only Proper way to do it.

I tried being in that world once, with the band Orlando. The Proper Pop world in 1995 was a ruthless, masculine Britpop beast back then, too much for a fragile gossamer thing like myself. And it's clearly far, far, worse right now. When people, and this does still happen, stuff their demos into my hand and ask ME for advice on Making It in the pop world (stop laughing), I instruct them to go on one of those TV programmes and be prepared to sing some granny-pleasing old tune. Or be like The Coral, and make records that sound so completely akin to the hits of decades outworn without actually being cover versions, that it's impossible for Radio Q to NOT playlist you. People will always want the Old, but with the illusion of the New. That's a given. But what's the point?

I <i>could</i> try doing it all over again with Fosca. Hustle the right people until they give in. Stranger things have happened. One of the Headcoatees was in the NME the other week, for being in the same recording studio as Derek from the White Strokes. But my nerves couldn't take it, to be honest. And, the crucial difference this time is, I don't <i>care</i> about the Proper Music World anymore. It seems unfair to expect it to care about me.

So, the band I'm in, Creme Brulee, I mean Fosca, is PR-less. We couldn't afford one, as it is, existing as we do on earnings after the event rather than (as with Proper groups) before. Said earnings are all ploughed back into future band costs. Fosca makes a profit, but not enough of one for myself and my bandmates to do it full-time. We have to get by with jobs or benefits depending on how lucky we are. Recording dates and gigs have to be scheduled around work days. Sometimes people have to use their precious allotted holiday days for Fosca. I'm the luckiest one, surviving (just about) on benefits. The others really should nag me more, they've every right to.

Glen from Piano Magic once said to me, "The only good bands are the ones with day jobs". Where the lack of pressure to Succeed results in better music. That's a theory I don't entirely agree with, but the parable of Hear'Say is one that should be foremost in the thoughts of every contestant of Fame Academy.

I'm currently writing the rest of the third Fosca album. Which most of the Real World will never know about. Purely because Look Ma, No PR. We are a band on a tiny one-man cottage-industry indie label with no PR, no radio plugger, no tour agent, no press officer, no manager, and no millions in a marketing budget. Success is impossible, because you have to spend money to make money. We are, as far as the Real World is concerned, a Hobby Band. Hobby as opposed to Proper.

So why bother at all? If a job's worth doing it's surely worth doing Properly?

Well, as ever, it's partly the passive soul in me. We never hustle. For better or for worse. Shinkansen ask and pay Fosca to make records. Promoters invite Fosca to play concerts. At each gig we play, people buy our albums at the merchandise stall, so that helps us to do it again another day. And we get invited to play in foreign countries, which is highly recommended as an interesting way to kill time between now and the grave.

And today I had an email confirming that <a href="http://www.rockacola.com/music/artist.asp?artist_no=19100">our 2002 album, "Diary Of An Antibody" has just been released on license in Taiwan</a>. A friendly Canadian who resides over there has this to say (with apologies if they're reading this):

<i>They have done a fantastic packaging job. You might also be pleased to note that, although I live in a fairly small town in Taiwan (there are a grand total of 4 record stores in my entire city), there were no less than 5 copies of "Diary" prominantly displayed on the front rack of my small local store… There were also 5 imported copies of the original Shinkansen26 "On Earth To Make The Numbers Up" in the section next to 5 more "Diary" CDs. I was absolutely floored (I never found your CDs this easily in Canada, for pity sake!).</i>

So it's possible Fosca could be Big In Taiwan. Or at least, Vaguely Visible In Taiwan. We were invited to play a festival over there recently, but had to turn it down due to a big disease with a little name. As Mr Prince once put it. But it's likely we'll go there soon. And that, too, helps with the Justification of Fosca.

Also, I'm pleased about Fosca existing at all. Everything we've recorded, as the saying goes, brings something new to the party. At least, in my head. I'm immensely proud of "Storytelling Johnny" and "Rude Esperanto" in particular. If I hadn't written those songs, I'd be impossibly envious of the person who had.

I can't deny I'd like to be on the PR Radar a bit more than I am. But that's really for me as Dickon Edwards. Forcing Fosca on the current UK music scene seems harder than ever. With no PR and no desire to hustle, it's pretty much impossible. It's no good just making The Greatest Album Of The Year. You have to hire someone to tell people this fact as well. And then get the "buzz" going. With the right "angle". And so on. I used to believe in All That. Now I just find it boring and would much rather listen to The Supremes or The Smiths or Galaxie 500 for the 738th time. The Darknesses? The YeahNo YeahNo YeahNos? Well, I suppose they're All Right. If you like that sort of thing. Guitars, drums, heigh-ho. If you insist. If you say so. Can I go now? I'm nearly 32 and there's still so much I have to say, and have to do.

But enthuse about Richard Marsh's "The Beetle", or the new Alan Bennett play, and I will sit up and take notice.

So it's just as well I'm happy with Fosca's part-time, no-pressure little world. It's just as well that the current music scene has less interest for me than ever before, especially if the feeling is mutual. One thing's for certain about the new Fosca album. It won't sound like anything else around right now. Purely because, I haven't <i>listened</i> to anything else around right now.

The only CD I've bought this year, aside from the Hidden Cameras, is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0563494352/qid=1059798068/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_3_5/026-8463195-2166843">"Ladies Of Letters"</a>. Patricia Routledge, Prunella Scales. Marvellous.