6 Lessons learned from the Daily Mail

I’m feeling fairly lazy this week, so I’m choosing something it’s easy to write about with a certain amount of vitriol: The Daily Mail. Unfortunately, I fear that this article will be able to be summed up in a single line. So for those who have better things to do than read the rants of a former student can read the abridged version (complete with capital letters to denote scandal):

The Lesson: “IMMIGRANT chavs MAY or MAY NOT be responsible for causing CANCER, so take your mind off it with a FREE DVD of a Harrison Ford film which no-one cared about when it was released and hasn’t since.”

Still here? Suit yourself. 6 Lessons learned from The Daily Mail (complete with sensationalist headlines)…


1: The Lesson: The country is full of immigrants.

I’m going to start with an obvious thing that people typically associate with The Daily Mail. Illegal immigrants. Typing the word ‘immigrants’ into the search bar on the Daily Mail website yields 2304 results. Including this chestnut:

“Hundreds of illegal immigrants armed with knives and crowbars swarm around Calais trucks heading for Britain”.

I have no intention of picking apart the headline to comment on its overtly provocative language (or the parallels drawn between immigrants and locusts), but this conjures images of a dystopian future. In fact, I’m pretty certain I saw this scene in V for Vendetta.
Whilst I can understand the concerns over the influx of migrant workers into the UK, particularly when they are illegal immigrants and hence it is difficult to regulate or even calculate their numbers. I still cannot see how it is necessary or constructive to use headlines such as the one above to voice said concerns. Except, of course, that it sells more papers.


2: The Lesson: Everything causes cancer.

If there is one thing The Daily Mail loves more than immigrants, its cancer. Again, using the search bar on their site to see how many results can be found, Cancer gives 11000 results. A large amount of these are telling you things that will give you cancer.
There is a list of 20 of the oddest here, and this list includes: wine, oral sex, chips, sausages, burgers, chocolate, Pringles, sun cream and vitamin E.
And in a move proving that The Daily Mail is not afraid to embrace the 21st Century, it published this article:

“How using facebook could raise your risk of cancer”

Being an avid user of facebook, I simply had to read this. What if I found that every minute on facebook was equivalent to spending a minute out in the mid-day sun in Corsica? What if I discovered that every time I logged onto facebook, my life was reduced by 5 minutes?
Well it turns out that the situation isn’t as bad as the headline suggests- its not just facebook, it’s a general lack of face-to-face contact that causes health problems. So officially this blog causes cancer.
According to the article- which despite the shocking headline seems to focus as much on social effects on children as facebook's cancer giving credentials- “[‘socially regulated’ genes] activities may account for higher rates of inflammatory disease and other health problems seen in socially isolated individuals”. Note the use of the word ‘may’, which absolves The Daily Mail from blame should it be proven later (after further research) that social isolation has no link to cancer. The rest of the article lacks much in the way of research evidence actually linking said genes to cancer. In fact, the only quantitative figures quoted are regarding the social implications caused by electronic media.
Sadly it is not atypical for a scientific article in The Daily Mail to lack conviction…


3: The Lesson: Scientific articles can be about as scientific as a L’Oreal advert and still be published.

As it seems to be my benchmarking tool for this particular post, I again used the search bar on The Daily Mail website to search for the word ‘could’. Limited to the health pages, the search found 10600 articles. Half of these were dangling the tantalising possibility of miracle cures for cancer, motor neurone disease, Alzheimer’s or pretty much any other ailment you care to mention. Meanwhile, the other half suggest that a particular study has linked one of the above diseases to an utterly banal cause, or sometimes even a cure for something else- such as MMR vaccines causing autism, which was later proven not to be the case. For the record, searching a less ambiguous term such as ‘proven’ returned only 482 articles.
Thankfully I do not suffer from an incurable disease, and I’m not related to anyone with a severely debilitating illness such as multiple sclerosis, but I’m fairly certain if I was either a relative or sufferer, I wouldn’t appreciate having a potential cure waved around in front of me by a newspaper, years before it could be brought to market, or before the efficacy of it could even be proven.
On the other hand, the widely publicised ‘link’ between MMR and autism has caused damage to the image of the jab, causing many parents to forego it, putting their children at risk. Apparently the rate of children affected by measles is increasing and I’m going to suggest it could be linked to the reduced levels of children being inoculated against it.
Surely it would be better to ensure that a link is definitive before going to the trouble of telling millions of people about it, particularly when it can heavily impact their lives.


4: The Lesson: Everyone in television is evil. Grab your pitchforks and torches and march on their ivory tower.

The last few months have been an interesting time for Britain, many age-old institutions are starting to show cracks; television and radio presenters, bankers, even politicians (I know, I didn’t believe it either) have been found to be lying, stealing and cheating. Fortunately there has been one format that has proven itself trustworthy enough to publicise the awful transgressions that have occurred right under our very noses. Acting as part whistle-blower, part shoulder to cry on (via their forums and letter sections), and several thousand parts mob-ringleader, newspapers have, on several occasions, been responsible for whipping up a frenzied rabble who then abandoned all sense of scope and reason and mobilised to march on whichever institution had crossed them.
A perfect example of this is the ‘Sachsgate’ scandal which affected the BBC, particularly Russel Brand and Jonathan Ross, a few months ago (if you don’t know what it was, go away and google it, I’ll wait), despite going out to a limited number of people- prompting a negligible number of complaints- newspapers such as The Daily Mail got their teeth into the story. Then proceeded to drag it into a river and perform several death rolls. The complaints about the programme started coming in, mostly from people who hadn’t even heard the original broadcast.
All of a sudden you couldn’t turn a television on without hearing a septuagenarian bleating that Ross is overpaid, a young person gleefully exalting the edginess of Russell Brand’s unique variety of comedy, or a politician attempting to agree with one of these two demographics in the hope of securing their vote. Still, its taken our minds off all that cancer we're getting.
In the words of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A Changin’ (presumably not a reference to the newspaper) “don’t speak too soon for the wheel’s still in spin”. This would have been reasonable advice for the newspapers, as the focus has been shifted onto them, and with the News of the World currently mired in accusations of phone tapping, it will be interesting to see who is going to bite the bullet next…


5: The Lesson: A picture is worth a thousand words, and if there isn’t a good one to hand, use an irrelevant one. Or Photoshop one.

A site which I regularly read (whilst giving myself cancer by not talking to real people) recently featured this rather wonderful blog, which helped fill me with enough ire to write this post. Anyway, this blog details some rather ‘creative’ uses of imagery in The Daily Mail, in order to tell a story.

Look at this picture:


and then this...


According to the mail, they are the same event, a vitriol-fuelled Islamic anti-war protest directed at homecoming soldiers. Despite the fact that they took place weeks apart, for different reasons (the bottom picture is in fact a picture of a peaceful event which was in no way linked to the top picture- and the story being printed- other than the fact it contained a gathering of Muslims) the bottom picture was still used in the article.
A complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission and The Daily Mail issued this response:

“On May 25, 2009, we published an article ‘Nine arrested after masked mob’s march against Muslim extremists turns violent’, in which we inadvertently included an archive photograph of a peaceful unconnected parade held in Luton some weeks earlier. We are happy to clarify that this march had in fact passed without incident and regret our error in wrongly captioning the photograph.”

So thats extremist (and since the Mail sees no distinction between them, rather less extremist) Muslims dealt with. How about something that The Daily Mail actually likes? How about celebrities?


Now to be fair, this isn't a photo taken from a serious article, this is from a lighthearted article showing celebrities that have been made fatter through the wonders of photoshop. I'm not certain that celebrities being made fatter through the wonders of modern technology is news, but at least they're not attempting to apply their photoshop skills to actual news.


Oh.

This photo was eventually taken down after a complaint suggested that it could be misleading. This seems to be something of a trend, The Daily Mail publishes a picture, gets a slapped wrist by the PCC, then takes it down and issues a rather poor apology.


6: The Lesson: All of the world’s problems can be solved with free wrinkle cream and a dvd.

This is the oddest thing I find with The Daily Mail, they report that an army of immigrants is marching on your home as you read this, wielding knives that give you cancer when they are so much as pointed at you. There is very little to feel even vaguely positive about.
Except there is. It transpires that amid the chaos The Daily Mail is a shining beacon of hope guiding us through the turbulent maelstrom in which we exist with free wrinkle cream. And the occasional UB40 cd!
So when that recently released ex-con asylum seeker, currently living on benefits paid for by your taxes, breaks down your door, stabs you, then steals your cd player, at least the last thing you will hear will be the mellow tones of “Red Red Wine” disappearing out of your door. Also, your corpse will be wrinkle-free.

6 Lessons learned from kid’s TV and Films

This week has been a particularly soul-destroying week for me, having been searching for a job (the lack of which gives me ample time to write nigh on 2000 word posts) as there is nothing out there in either location I am searching for which doesn’t require 2-5 years experience, and being a fresh-faced graduate, I am sadly lacking in this department.

In order to combat these blues I found refuge in the memories of happier times, watching Disney films and kid’s TV. Sadly my video player got thrown out last week, having been broken for 2 or so years, so hazy memories (and wikipedia and youtube) were all I had to go on.

So, with that in mind, here is 6 lessons learned from kids TV and films...

1: The Lesson: Animals can talk

Where From: Just about every film by Disney.

This is something that I never really thought about until recently, but animals don’t actually talk outside of films (except for a few species of bird, a seal, various cats on youtube, and a number of apes which were taught American Sign Language) and I’m surprised that there aren’t more complaints made about the misrepresentation of animals. Of course I don’t remember a crushing disappointment when my dog first urinated on the floor and failed to apologise in an eloquent manner to my mum, but then again she was a vindictive little bitch (the dog that is) so I probably wouldn’t have been expecting it much.

2: The Lesson: Its alright to be ugly, you will end up being beautiful despite a complete lack of effort.

Where From: The ugly duckling

To me this is one of the most disturbing messages you can give to young children via the medium of cheap vhs (until Disney makes a box office smashing CGI version you’ll have to cope with the cheaper bargain bin variants of the story).

Firstly, it places massive emphasis on the importance of beauty, as the poor little duckling is ostracised for failing to adhere to their duck rules of attractiveness. And whilst this may be a soft way of introducing kids to the notion of discrimination, and the fairytale ending may help soften the blow when at school, little Elizabeth gets spiders put in her hair or whatever the hell kids do nowadays (steal her ipod perhaps?) on the grounds that she’s ginger, there is one fairly significant flaw:

In the story the duckling isn’t a duckling- it’s a swan (or cygnet if you wish to be a pedant). The fact that the ending is happy is not a result of the duckling striving to help itself, the ending is happy because external circumstances beyond the control of the swan (largely a group of ducks’ inability to tell the difference between a duck and a swan) have conspired to improve its life.

Surely this sends a message to children that it’s ok to be obese and spotty, they’ll grow up to be a majestic human equivalent of a swan. “You don’t have to cut down on KFC or go out and get some exercise. Just sit and watch some television and wait yourself thin! Here, have a deep fried kit-kat”.

Yes, I’m blaming the nation’s obesity problems on a single fairy tale.

3: The Lesson: Its alright to be ugly, we’ll simply lock you in a tower. Also no-one will love you, regardless of how you act.

Where From: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an interesting film, it is a Disney film that introduces you to the Quasimodo, who like the swan above, fails to adhere to societal norms of attractiveness just because he has a hideous deformity on his back and a lumpy face. The film then shows how wonderful he is, in spite of his ugliness. He meets Esmeralda, and falls for her. Unfortunately, in a twist more likely to occur in a poorly thought out romantic comedy then in a Disney film, Frollo (the religious guy with the silly hat, for those who haven’t seen it in a while) and Phoebus (the preening prick replacement for a prince) also become infatuated with Esmeralda prompting one of the best songs a Disney film:

This is all well and good, Frollo is an insane zealot, and Phoebus, while not evil or insane, is a bit of a douchebag (although having read the synopsis of the book upon which the Disney film is very loosely based, he’s already engaged and simply wants to bone Esmeralda so is technically striving to be a cheating douchebag), and whilst Quasimodo is ugly on the surface, he proves what a noble heart he has by repeatedly saving people and being generally nice.

In what could easily pass for a curiously extreme edition of an MTV dating show, Esmeralda goes off and has a happy ending with Phoebus, Frollo falls to a fiery death (more on that later!) and Quasimodo reverts to his bachelor’s lifestyle, lonely except for some disturbingly animate sentient gargoyles.

Of course, if Disney must take inspiration from books in which the protagonist’s love interest is hanged and he is later uncovered having starved to death while embracing her corpse, then I guess it can be expected that they’ll change it.

4: The Lesson: The laws of righteous men (and lions) are not capable of effectively punishing those who have broken them. So they have to fall off high things.

Where From: A surprisingly large number of kids films and TV programmes, although the most memorable ones for me were Hunchback of Notre Dame, Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King.

This is something that never quite sat comfortably with me as a child, whilst I got as much of a schadenfreude-based kick as the next child when I saw the antagonist at the end of a film fall to a painful death I never really felt that it was right.

In The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Frollo falls into a raging inferno. In Beauty and The Beast, Gaston falls onto some decidedly pointy looking rocks below. In the Lion King, Scar is literally torn apart by hyenas.

I always felt, even as a child, that an ideal way to portray the infallibility of a Disney hero’s moral compass, and the moral guidelines set down in most Disney films is to follow them, locking up Gaston for inciting a mob (and for being a bit of a poser) and attempting to kill the Beast who, to be fair, was a 9 ft tall teethy thing, may be fair justice. Having him fall several thousand feet onto some unnaturally craggy rocks is not really reasonable. The heroes of Disney films rarely get the chance to actually forgive and the villains of Disney films rarely get a chance to earn forgiveness or show repentance for what they’ve done because they’re too busy falling off unnecessarily high structures.

5: The Lesson: People are fundamentally horrible and are responsible for everything wrong in the world.

Where From: Fern Gully (remember that?), The Animals Of Farthing Wood, Princess Mononoke

Another thing that I always felt uneasy about was the way that humans are portrayed in the above films and programmes, and quite a lot of films in which animals are the main characters.

I have chosen the above films on the grounds that they all have a similar theme around which they base their vilification of man: the environment. The Animals Of Farthing Wood portrays the journey of a group of animals who have put aside their natural instincts to hunt and eat each other to find a nature reserve, as their environment is being built upon. Not content with usurping the eponymous animals, humans proceed to shoot at, drive at, and litter in the general direction of them, causing the numbers to dwindle as the series went on.

Put in a list like that it reads more like the humans are the Nazis in Escape From Colditz than the ignorant, self-centred beings that they more typically are. (On a side note, the humans weren’t the worst, there was a bastard shrike bird that killed all of the baby mice and put them on thorns).

Fern Gully had much the same sort of sponsored-by-Greenpeace feel to it, although it was much more based around fairies’ reaction to having their habitat destroyed than actual animals. Princess Mononoke is a slightly more adult Japanese anime along similar lines, only being Japanese, it has a traumatising amount of hideous tentacles and a guy getting his arms shot off.

also feral children and giant wolves

Again, like the ugly cygnet-who-was-previously-assumed-to-be-a-duckling, I can see the point and the moral of the stories. At this time it is very important to be teaching our children that the environment is precious and irreplaceable, and that we have to live in harmony with it and so on.

I didn’t realise that the ideal method of teaching would be to ingrain horrifying, bloody images into the minds of our children so that they still sometimes see Fox being dragged away by a large bit of driftwood when they close their eyes. 13 years after they originally witnessed it. Thanks mum.

6: The Lesson: Jazz is awesome. Particularly for cats.

Where From: The Aristocats

Having mounted my soapbox several times this week, and delved into far more philosophical territory then I ever intended whilst talking about children’s television, I figured I should end on something I actually like.

I’m not sure how well this transfers to the real world, I am more of a dog person, and therefore have no cat and no idea of how cats react to a mean improvised saxophone solo. I assume that they grab the nearest double bass and start taking the bassline for a walk.

However, I don’t care, the Aristocats for me is the one of a handful of Disney films that hasn’t been ruined by a healthy dose of cynicism in my adolescent years- another one being Robin Hood with its folky soundtrack and the bromance between Robin Hood and Little John (who, like Thomas O’Malley, was voiced by the late Phil Harris) these are films that I still adore without any kind of irony.

I know that cats don’t dance (or if they do, they hide it well when I’m in the room with them), but frankly I don’t care, seeing a group of two-dimensional cats jiving across Parisienne rooftops is all I could possibly want from a film.

Damn it I love a cat with a French accent.

6 Lessons learned from university (which didn’t help me get a degree)

So having gone to the trouble of actually starting this blog, I haven’t updated it for a few weeks. This is, in part, because I have been undergoing preparations for graduation (and applying for jobs and the like). Anyway, it went ok, I looked like an idiot in my gown, but so did everyone else. And whilst waiting to be called up for my six seconds of fame- to cross the stage, shake the chancellor’s hand, then go back to my seat- I had plenty of time to reflect on university, and the stuff I learned.

So in honour of this fact, and as a final nail in the coffin of my time at uni here you are, 6 lessons from university that weren’t part of my course and didn't help me get a degree.

1: The Lesson: Shaking hands

When: The first week onwards

A little bit banal this one, but before I went to university, I hardly ever shook hands with anyone, but it started to become commonplace in the first few weeks to shake hands with more or less anyone who I met. And at university there are a lot of new people.

I have no idea who introduced such a formal way of greeting someone in the student union, but for the first couple of weeks it was the standard thing. Eventually people stopped doing it so much, but I like to think that I spent the entire 3 years of my degree in training for that one handshake with the chancellor at graduation.

2: The Lesson: Life is expensive

When: Every first of the month, when rent came out of my account

Something I was blissfully aware of until I went to uni was just how expensive it is to simply continue existing. Housing, food, electricity, water, surprisingly enough, all cost money. Whilst a lot of money was spent doing fun things, such as drinking a lot and buying new things I didn’t technically need, it was the necessities that were the most shocking.

The most disheartening thing was when I worked over the holidays, amassing several hundred pounds (or at least reducing my overdraft by several hundred pounds), which went on paying my first month’s rent and outstanding bills.

And the more most disheartening thing (other than grammar check not finding fault in placing ‘more’ next to ‘most’) is the fact that I haven’t even got to a point in life where I pay taxes.

3: The Lesson: How to kill my liver in new fun and creative ways

When: Various occasions, mostly in the first year

While I used to drink before I went to university, it was a pastime, limited to Friday and Saturday nights, on the rare occasions when I was able to get hold of alcohol from somewhere (being shorter than average and lacking an older sibling made this rather difficult). Nights were short lived (I was usually in bed by 1am) and the hangovers were lean.

Upon getting to university, this changed radically. Going out became far more common (largely because clubs would let us in and pubs would serve us, and student nights are awesome) and the duration of said nights were rather longer- my record was drinking from 2 in the afternoon after handing in an essay and ended at half past 4 in a club that had remained open after its licensed hours, then going home and drinking until physical exhaustion rendered me asleep.

The drinking itself became far more structured and even competitive. Halo became drinking Halo. Scrabble became drinking scrabble. Staying in on a Friday night watching Eastenders became drinking staying in on a Friday night watching Eastenders. Then inevitably going out after.

Other greatest hits (to my liver) were shots, dirty pints, ring of fire, and pub golf. Pub golf sums up the drinking at university experience perfectly. It is drinking, competitive, induces fancy dress, and involves drinking a large and rather unpleasant mixture of drinks, I could probably write a post on 6 lessons learned from pub golf alone, but it would mostly be a list of which cocktails don’t sit well on top of other drinks and ways to covertly throw up without people finding out and nullifying your score.

4: The Lesson: Dancing.

When: Throughout.

As mentioned previously, I didn’t really go out clubbing much before I went to university, I have memories of going to Newquay in the summer before university and having to drink a huge amount before moving onto the edge of the dance floor and shuffling a little.

Three years on, I’m one of the first people on the dance floor and will literally drag people up there, usually only after a couple of drinks, where I will proceed to embarrass them- and anyone nearby- with unnecessarily flamboyant moves. I don’t remember there being a specific night on which this change happened, but it probably involved winning a dance off.

5: The Lesson: Fencing, capoeira, squash, badminton, djing, the plight of Venezuelan farmers, playing the

piano, rock climbing, anything that seems like a good idea when you’re going around a societies fair.

When: The beginning of every semester.

I’d like to say that time management was something that I managed to learn whilst at university, but it wasn’t. At the beginning of every semester I joined many societies and attempted to partake in the activities required of them. I gave up on a great deal of these within a couple of weeks.

A perfect example of this decline: Squash clashed with capoeira, so I dropped the former as I was already playing badminton, I then found capoeira whilst being fun, was leaving me far too achy to play badminton the next day, so I dropped that too (although to my credit, I was playing badminton 4 times a week by the end of uni).

This is before even taking social activities into account, of the list up there, I managed to maintain being a member of the badminton society, and the radio society, and there were numerous occasions where events and socials clashed.

6: The Lesson: People don’t really change that much over the three year period

When: The horrible reflective period between the last piece of coursework and the first exam.

Like all things, university had to come to an end, and whilst for the first two and a half years its easy to hope that it will somehow continue beyond the final exams, there’s a point at which you realise that soon you will be fruitlessly searching for a job and the trip will be over.

At that point it is incredibly easy to get reflective (certainly in my case, after all, this blog is about nothing if not unnecessary and self-indulgent reflection), and I thought about the ways in which I had changed and how my friends had changed, and found that, fundamentally speaking, I hadn’t changed much.

I’d had many new experiences, and changed in some small ways- I lost roughly a metric ton of hair for starters, but no colossal epiphany had been had, no new beliefs had been acquired, although I’d acquired a nice new amp and a lot of cds.

Not a particularly funny thing to end on I know, so to balance that out here is a video of Chester the Amazing Peeing Dog:

6 Lessons learned from Romantic comedies (that are utter bullshit)

Romantic Comedies are wonderful. There. I said it. I am a man who actually enjoys romantic comedies. Sometimes I would rather watch a good romantic comedy than a film with explosions and huge fighting robots. But only sometimes.

Still, there seem to be a number of themes that are common in romantic comedies. And whilst I can happily sit through the most recent Michael Bay film with my brain turned off, dribbling whilst hulking extraterrestrial robots kick and punch and transform on screen, when I see certain rather more plausible events unfold in a romantic comedy, I find it difficult not to instantly call “bullshit”.

1: The Lesson: Its perfectly acceptable to leave your husband in order to pursue a lesbian relationship (or a new exciting person of any kind). It will also work out with them and be better for you.

Learned from: Imagine Me and You, The Heartbreak Kid

I didn’t just include the word “Lesbian” in an attempt to maintain the interest of any male readers who turned off after the first mention of a romantic comedy. This film (Imagine Me and You) perfectly exemplifies this particular point- Woman marries man, then decides that the florist at the wedding is far more exciting and goes off with her.

However the principle applies to so many other films- not just those with lesbians. Other popular groups include: Other nationalities (typically if you’re American, a Brit, if you’re British, an American), someone younger, someone older, an old flame who has suddenly changed. Pretty much anyone is more exciting than the spouse in question.

The reasons for this are often shown to be inner turmoil or because the new husband/wife turns out to be a dick/dickette or just boring by comparison to Miguel or Tina or whoever.

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

After a brief exciting spell with their new lesbian/foreigner/toyboy/pensioner, someone is left feeling unfulfilled and the lustre disappears.

The new pair splits up and wife attempts to go back to husband, who either a) Rejects her, leaving everyone unhappy, or b) Accepts her apology, and the two get back together, with an indelible black mark on her perceived fidelity, neither partner feels particularly happy or comfortable and they live out their lives mired in regret, but putting on a happy face for the rest of the world to see. Probably.

2: The Lesson: If you’re a nice guy with an interest in someone who is unavailable, the person they are currently with will end up being utterly despicable somewhere further down the line.

Learned from: Made Of Honour, Bridget Jones’ Diary

This is one of my favourite things to complain about films. Hollywood typically pulls this character assassination card out of their hat about 20-15 minutes before the credits start rolling. The guy who was good enough for the lead female to start with has suddenly gone from being a kind and considerate person to the kind of person who abuses his spouse either mentally or physically, is overly obsessive, or just flat out cheats (see the first lesson for a classic example of double standards).

My personal favourite use of this is in the film Made of Honour, where the rival turns out to be a bloodthirsty hunt nut with a penchant for singing at the table, throw this in with the daddy issues clearly exhibited by the female lead (a deceased father liking the man we’re supposed to root for) and you’ve got a clear justification (at least in the minds of the writers) for her leaving her fiancée at the altar.

Obviously its in the interest of the movie makers of a relatively light-hearted genre to ensure that everyone who deserves to he happy is left happy at the conclusion of the film, and films are more comfortable dealing in moral absolutes (films dealing with moral grey areas are often said to be edgy), so in order to do this, any kind of rival has to be instantly branded a complete Neanderthal or some sort of pathetic simpering loser- or a variation of both if they really want to seal up that coffin.

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

Aside from the fact that the guy she’s currently with isn’t likely to be quite that reprehensible, extreme changes in behaviour tend to be the result of some sort of head trauma, not just ‘getting comfortable’ or whatever bollocks is used to justify this inexplicable behavioural change. People don’t tend to be completely lovely or completely horrible.

Alternatively, if he really is that bad and has been that skilled at acting: Lady finds excuses for the sudden change of behaviour with her new beau and allows it to continue. I’m not a psychologist, but I’m quite certain this how domestic violence starts.

3: The Lesson: Kismet is always on your side

Learned from: Serendipity. It’s in the name (its also a massively guilty pleasure of mine).

It always amazes me in films when people always seem to end up inextricably linked, they eat at the same restaurant only minutes apart, one misses a train the other one is sat on. They are ships passing in the night (technologically retarded ships lacking even the most simple lighting equipment, obviously). It is almost as if some external force is drawing them closer together and their story is being written with a greater plan ahead.

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

Well, it is true about everything being written with a plan in mind, not by some omnipotent external power, but by a screenwriter. Assuming the character overcomes the odds and actually meets the other ship (although at the point the analogy falls apart as ships ‘meeting’ in the middle of a dark ocean usually results in insurance claims and a great deal of dead sealife), a plethora of things could still go wrong; he may look particularly rough that day, he may fail to make a move of some description, or he even may make some hideous faux pas (not in a pseudo-charming Hugh Grantesque fashion but something utterly moronic and unforgivable) and never get the second chance to woo her because he’s been labelled smug or arrogant. Or a racist.

4: The Lesson: If you want her, you have to catch her…

Learned from: Any film with Hugh Grant in, in fact pretty much any romantic comedy.

My personal favourite cliché to be found within romantic comedies, the chase at the end occasionally arrives shortly after the protagonist’s rival in love has had their formerly kind personality brutally murdered in a back alley in a torrent of threatening behaviour. The guilty party is left realising they’ve made a mistake, almost invariably when the other partner is shortly going to be getting married or boarding a plane to some far off destination, so it’s a race against time to reach them before they board.

And its certainly no Bullit. Usually at some point there will be a) some ‘hilarious’ switching of cars, b) the ‘more hilarious’ use of a bicycle in the event of a traffic jam or c) the use of a skill the lead possesses which has been shoehorned into the plot in a passing reference earlier in the film (sadly my screenplay in which a free-runner falls for a female trial biker has yet to be picked up by a major Hollywood studio).

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

Rush hour traffic, bad luck with red lights, accidentally leaving your wallet behind and being unable to foot the cab fare, the chain falling off the bike, there are any number of things which could go wrong here. In ‘Love Actually’, where the boy runs through the terminal in order to catch his American sweetheart? I would be unsurprised if he was shot in the spine before he got within shouting distance of the plane.

5: The Lesson: …and come up with some brilliant impromptu speech convincing her to stay or marry you.

Learned from: Seriously, this and the previous point are the bread and butter of romantic comedies.

It never fails to impress me just how loquacious the male lead manages to be at the end of a romantic comedy, despite some pretty crazy chase sequences he nearly always manages to catch the plane just before it leaves, then invariably brings out an amazing speech in which he begs for a second chance or a marriage or something.

This amazing unprepared sermon is usually preached not just to the woman he’s trying to woo (the woo-ee?) but also to a large crowd of stunned onlookers. Despite this, the male protagonist, punchdrunk on love, is compelled to finally open up and say what he’s thinking, in front of all those people.

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

I know this isn’t quite the same, but I think this video goes some way to explaining why virtually no-one would really want to do this (with added keyboard cat).

and while it can definitely be said that you really like someone if you’re willing to make a complete fool of yourself in front of a large crowd, its not going to be a great deal of fun for the lady, and I can’t help but feel there is a certain amount of emotional blackmail involved in it. Now excuse me while I dismount my soap-box.

Anyway, by the time this chase has ended, there would probably be a couple of minutes during which the man will need to catch his breath, then he would (being a man) proceed to use ineffective and pointless metaphors like a blunt saw at a ballet dance, impressing no-one in the process. Best-case scenario: that woman is getting on the plane. Worst-case scenario: the woman gets on the plane which then later crashes, leaving one of her final images as her life flashes before her being that of a pathetic, crumpled, sweaty man possibly crying on the floor. Perhaps that’s just the way I view the world.

6: The Lesson: Crashing a wedding then attempting to steal the bride whilst the groom stands there is not only reasonable etiquette, but you will nearly always succeed with only the most minor of consequences.

Learned from: Made of Honour, basically every romantic comedy that doesn’t hold the climax in an airport

This still keeps the chase element and typically the speech, but with the addition of having some poor schmuck stood there whilst having his wife chatted up at a particularly inconvenient moment. If he intervenes, then he’s some sort of jealous arsehole, and this only gives his wife-to-be a push in the direction of this suitor. See the video above? Now imagine that the woman is stood at the altar getting married to someone else (who is stood there), in front of her friends and family, and her future in-laws.

What probably would have happened outside of a film script:

A restraining order.