Category Archives: Life & Style

The Voice Week 7

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LIVE, LIVE, LIVE! The BBC love a bit of LIVE don’t they? They spend so much money sending people out to report LIVE for no reason whatsoever because they just can’t get enough of it. Some poor, soaked and miserable journo has to stand outside the houses of parliament to talk about a politician who’s not only not there but is watching at home from the comfort of his own gimp mask.

Why? We know what the houses of parliament look like! Just do it from the studio and save our license fee a few quid.

“NO!” Auntie Beeb would reply, “We are the BBC and we do live TV, reasons are for commercial channels!”
Well, you’d think they’d at least be good at it, wouldn’t you?

At the very least they’d drop this ridiculous pretense of , “what a great show last night was” for the results show even though EVERYONE knows it was filmed on the Saturday. They get away with it on Strictly because… well it’s Strictly, but this is meant to be a slicker than snot, smoother than the cream in Simon Cowell’s Twinkie, all singing (no dancing) flagship live broadcast to put them on top of the global talent show pile.

Will someone please just admit it’s filmed right after the live show and be done with it? These contestants are already way out of their league just by being asked their name so expecting them to remember to lie to 11 million people is asking too much, and all that , “err… yeah, last night was great! (wink, wink)” rubbish makes it look like Wayne’s World.

Last week’s Live final was roundly criticized by pretty much everyone with a keyboard. The production was stilted and awkward. There was more dead air than a séance and the whole thing had the feel of a corporate training weekend where unwilling participants who, would rather be at the bar, have to stand up and ‘tell the group’ about themselves.

This week they responded by pulling it off with a touch more professionalism but it was still way short of the mark.

Now, I’m no fashionista, as anyone who has ever seen me will contest. In fact I get snotty looks from the old ladies in ‘Age Concern’ and was actually paid to leave Abercrombie & Fitch to spare the screams of the models that work there, in spite of it being too dark for even ‘Most Haunted’ to see anything. But I have to ask what was going on with the wardrobe department?

Billy Piping’s jacket was yet another variation on the same thing he’s never seen without. He looked like and extra from TRON and I’m sure he’s flogging them out of a van in the BBC car park. Jessie J was in her grandma’s pajamas and feint uncle Tom was still waiting for someone to colour him in.

Even the contestants weren’t spared the horrors of ‘S.Wonder &Co’ (“ We guess- You dress”) in the dressing rooms.

Poor Ruth- Ann was thrown into a neon metallic blue jump suit from 1976. I couldn’t help wondering if Sheila Fergusson of the 3 degrees wasn’t at home rummaging through an old suitcase with the sneaking suspicion something was missing. She didn’t sing well, but then again she never does. It’s a bit much of the live finals of a talent contest when you get a standing ovation from your coach for, “Singing a whole song, in tune, and smiling!” Jeepers! Someone book this genius a stadium tour immediately!
Vince Kidd, whose weight was quadrupled to 8 stone when he put his chains on came out looking like he was going to sing, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ and Toni looked… well, to be honest I have no idea what she was wearing because I’m constantly mesmerized by her head whenever she’s on stage. She has a very strong bone structure too, which doesn’t help because for an attractive woman, and she’s certainly
attractive, she can come over a bit ‘Zelda’. If there’s one glaring wardrobe requirement in the whole production it must be to put something on her head, surely, if not just for the cameraman’s sake. The lens flare from her scalp must be like filming a solar eclipse if she stands in the wrong place.

Holly looked very nice, but then she’s clearly some kind of angel and incapable of being anything but heavenly, and she was a little more relaxed about the in-betweeny bits where she has to draw blood from the stony judges and overly emotional contestants.

This week she stopped short of adopting everyone who got rejected and blubbing into her cleavage. She even opened with the classic, “What will you be looking for tonight Will?” And I half expected him to reply,

“Somewhere to plug my iphone charger in.”

I suspect this subtle shift in attitude came about because someone high up in the BBC had been reading the reviews and sent a memo.

The memo should have been along the lines of, ‘Stop being so nice and giving everyone who manages to crawl on stage a standing ovation. We paid a fortune for those spinning chairs, and your opinions- use them both with greater effect!’

But what it probably said was something far more vague and open to interpretation because what we actually got was judges- sorry, ‘coaches’, avoiding anything like real criticism or, for that matter, a language spoken by humans and swapped some of their vacuous praise for just babbling like a Tasmanian devil, mid-exorcism.

At one point Will had to correct Jessie for saying’ boom’ when, of course, it should have been ‘zoom’ (everyone knows that, right?) and I seriously suspected they’d been sharing a back-stage ‘doobie’ with Derren Brown and Paul McKenna. He even threw a ‘knock- knock’ joke in there which nobody but him was aware of and so it took about half an hour and no small amount of TV agony to get to the end of and even THAT got a standing ovation from Danny!

It was to young Aleks who had just crooned his way onto the next round. Again, the praise was way over the top and everyone said that it had effectively ended Michael Buble’s career. Really? Some kid built like a finger puppet can come on and blow his way through one song, and suddenly the biggest selling male artist on the planet is yesterdays chips?

I suspect a slightly stronger memo might be in order.

All in all, there was some redeeming quality. Max was fantastic and so was Bo, who Danny was extremely proud of choosing for his team, (yes, well done Danny, you’re an excellent Bo Selector.. sorry) and the right people went home so all the frailty of the BBC’s dedication to bad live TV was forgotten for another week… well, not really, because The Voice was followed by ‘Planet Earth Live’ which was just about the most pointlessly live thing I’ve seen since Frankenstein’s Monster.

Oh well, see you next week and remember, if you can stomach it, and if I can get to a TV on time, you can follow my live tweets @MrIanWatson during next week’s show.

Londoner’s Life 29 – by Phil Ryan

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Londoner’s Life 29 – By Phil Ryan

Boris won. Ken lost. So that’s the Mayoral nonsense out of the way. I popped into my local church and put my cross in the boxes. Curious really, a kind of religious voting experience. But it was probably a futile gesture as nothing much will change. Everything will stay expensive. Nothing will get cheaper. And the weirdo fringe candidates like the BNP and Liberal Democrats attracted hardly any support in the end. So what was the point of them all? It was Boris vs Ken. And think of all the money they both wasted. But hey that’s democracy so I guess I shouldn’t complain. In London we seem to lead the way in fairness and openness. That is unless of course you’re trying to get into the country via Heathrow. Yes London’s premier airport is leading the world now in queues. It’s our Olympic year and London is saying welcome and come on in. You’ve flown for a few hours and now as a welcoming exercise we’d like you to stand in line for three more tedious hours and shuffle along like drugged penguins. Our staff have all been employed only if they are miserable and intolerant. Make any kind of fuss – even slightly raise your voice and miraculously we have loads of staff to escort you to an interrogation room. Hm. And I love our chip and pin type passports with their hi tec machines plus their human components. Last month I flew back from France. Confidently headed for the chipped passport gates but before I got there a very kind lady stopped me and explained how to use them. Hm.

Isn’t the point being that it’s a machine with clear instructions. So I listened to her briefly and her two colleagues who came across to assist her! I didn’t want to seem rude so instead of putting my passport on the reader I politely let them waste five minutes of my time and then I did what I was intending all along. I put my passport on the reader and looked at the camera thing. The gates opened and I ran for the Heathrow Express. Over manning or what? Meanwhile the other queue snaked back out of the corridor. Welcome to London.

My favourite new bit of over hyping Olympic nonsense was the pure London moment when the army went to Bow to put missiles onto the roofs of tower blocks to find many already had them. Just kidding! But seriously the kids are more armed than the army round that way. Pity the terrorist who wanders into Bow, he’s done for. Personally I think it’s a scam by Barratt’s Homes or even the Government. I mean imagine if they do shoot down a plane. Where does it crash exactly? Bow or Canning Town somewhere. It’s a regeneration project essentially dressed up as security. But we lurch closer to the joy of the Olympics with each passing week. My most chilling moment was watching some bland nerk from Transport for London (TFL) colloquially known as Totally ********* London. He stood in front of the front of a station and calmly asserted that there would be 3 million more tube passengers using the system EVERY DAY during the Olympics. What? Have any of them actually been on the tube? It is going to be a nightmare. But then only a London official could make the following statement. He went on to say that today they were launching a poster campaign and get this ‘encouraging Londoner’s to find different ways to get to work’. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh. Different ways? What Hot Air balloons, jet packs, levitation. How about roller skates? It’s like they’ve collectively all dropped some acid. They have abandoned any grasp on reality. But hey ho! This is London and TFL and anything is possible apparently. Come the games it’s essentially going to be the world’s largest and sweatiest mobile game of Twister!

But it’s not all bad news. It’s the Queens Diamond Jubilee celebration soon (god bless her). A procession of golden boats and pageantry and an opportunity for street parties. So here in London it’s a chance for another holiday as remember its bank holiday season. Every other week seems to be a holiday. Which on the one hand is great. On the other the train companies calmly make every weekend a train free zone. And from what I see on some of the weekend jubilee celebrations the train companies will do their level best to stop you getting there. No wonder Londoners get so resigned to their travelling fate. However at my local London Overground station when I head for the platform the staff now excitedly tell me we have trains honestly lots of them look go and see! It’s quite touching in a way.

Finally trend news moment. It’s now the complete rise of the east with the Sushi places I’ve mentioned before. But now I see a blossoming undercurrent of new British themed gastro pubs or ‘eating rooms’ as they trendily call themselves. It’s suddenly organic sausages and Kent potatoes and gravy. And whilst I cautiously welcome this type of place (all very 50’s in decor but British 50’s mind you so coooool) again the prices are very scary. I went to a new one plugged in the Evening Standard and paid eighteen pounds for some chops. Not very recession friendly. Conversely I notice most of them are signed up to that Taste Card company (as am I) Discount food seems the only way they can get people in at the start of the week. Remember folks it’s a double dip recession so watch those pennies. And choose carefully. Although is it stopping us going out to these places? Are people baulking at the prices? No not really. It’s a London thing.

Boris Johnson’s Workout Secrets. (Yes, Really)

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THE WINNERS WORKOUT


Boris Johnson’s personal trainer, Jon Denoris reveals the secrets behind Boris’s workout routine

After a month working with his new personal trainer, Jon Denoris, the new Mayor of London Boris Johnson can do 100 push up’s p/session, has lost 8kg and three inches of his waistband, as well as making significant life changes.

As part of Jon’s new ‘Pop Up Gym’ initiative to improve fitness and office diets in preparation for 2012 London Olympics, he has released a bespoke workout plan; similar to Boris Johnson’s to help readers get fit at work.

7AM – Power Smoothie

Blend two scoops of strawberry whey protein, two tablespoons of bio yoghurt, a handful of granola and a cup of skimmed milk. Add ice to finish. Drink one third immediately.

7.30AM – Clock-face drill

A simple ten-minute exercise routine. Begin in the starting position for a press-up, spin your body round like clock hands with your bellybutton as the axis. Randomly choose clock-face positions to spin to.

7.40AM – Power Smoothie

Finish the Power Smoothie made earlier.

8AM – Commute

In honour of our new mayor, take a Boris bike to work or walk at a brisk pace.

11AM – Desk based exercise

Break up your morning with a quick ten-minute stretch.

With your left hand, grip the underside of your chair. Slide to the right hand side of your chair and then pull down with your left arm. Whilst doing this, turn your head to the right and place your right hand on your head. Apply gentle pressure before swapping.

11.10AM – Snack

Elevenses are the highlight of most office workers’ mornings. Ensure that your meal contains a combination of protein and carbohydrates, such as peanut butter on wholegrain toast, orange segments and cottage cheese or nuts and an apple.

1PM – Lunchtime workout

If the office doesn’t subscribe to the Pop Up Gym classes, Denoris recommends a circuit based routine designed to be done in the office or in a nearby park. Do 20 reps for each exercise and then repeat as many times as possible in half anhour.

· Body weight squats. With your hands across your chest and your backside stickingout, lower your thighs so that they are parallel to the floor. Hold and then rise slowly.

· T-stand push-ups. When at the top of your push-up, rotate the body and stretch one arm out to the side and then up to the sky. Follow by switching sides.

· Lateral lunges. Begin by standing with both legs together and then lunge sideways, bending your knees. Follow by touching your feet with both hands, keeping the trailing leg straight. Return to a standing position before alternating legs.

· Single-arm rowing. Once squatting, lean forwards, sticking your bum out until it is 45degrees to the floor. Whilst using one arm to stabilise yourself, pick up your bag and lift it up and down ten times. Then alternate.

· Bicycle kicks. Lying on your back, cradle your head with your hands. Bring your shoulder blades off the ground whilst bending your knees. Alternate, touching each elbow to the opposite knee.

1.45PM –Lunch

Aim for a vegetable and protein-rich lunch. For example, two grilled mackerel fillets on a bed of spinach, with olive oil and lemon to taste.

4PM – Desk stretch

Place your left leg on a chair or staircase. Bend your knee, extend your right arm until vertical and pulse forwards until you feel a gentle stretch through the hip. Alternate sides.

4.10PM – Snack

Similar to the morning snack, mix up protein with carbohydrates. Denoris suggests pitta bread and tuna or a hard-boiled egg and a whole wheat bagel.

6.30PM – Commute home

Again on a bike or walking.

7.30PM – Dinner

Denoris recommends chicken stir-fried in peanut oil with garlic chilli soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce and basil leaves. Serve with brown rice.

00.00AM – Bedtime

Constantly restricting sleep is an easy way to gain weight. Keep your sleep and waking times consistent. Aim for between six to eight hours a night.

THQ CONFIRMS DEVELOPMENT OF SAINTS ROW: THE THIRD – ENTER THE DOMINATRIX

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Thank heavens April Fools day jokes are long gone – otherwise one could be forgiven for thinking this latest announcement from THQ Inc was a prank but isn’t.  THQ and Volition, Inc have announced the development of Saints Row: The Third – Enter The Dominatrix, a standalone expansion to Saints Row: The Third.

Slated for an Augsty/ Septemberish release date on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC, Saints Row: The Third – Enter The Dominatrix looks to take the award-winning, over-the-top action of Saints Row: and mix it up a little by throwing in super powers.

Executive Vice President of THQ Danny Bilson, stated in a recent press release “Faster than a speeding cyber jet bike, more powerful than a chromed-out SUV, able to leap flying aircraft carriers in a single bound… That’s the power you’ll find inside the Dominatrix. Use it for good. Use it for evil. Use it for whatever you want. As always in Saints Row, it’s up to you,”

With a franchise of reportedly more than 11 million units shipped globally so far, it looks like an incredible amount of fun for Saints Row fans and most importantly as it’s a standalone expansion will give users good reason to hold on to their copies and not trade them in just yet.

Enter the Dominatrix picks up immediately following the events of Saints Row: The Third with a story just as wacky and fun. For those of you not up to date with Saints Row, it is kind of like a mix between Grand Theft Auto and…erm something very very different. Put it this way, it has long been regarded as the guilty pleasure of gaming. Very tongue in cheek and serious at the same time, wrestlers, gangsters, guns and hitting people over the head with a huge bright pink dildo. This expansion sounds like it will add something very Matrixy to the mix and increase its longetivity.

More details and a first look at Saints Row: The Third – Enter the Dominatrix will be available this summer stay tuned to Frost for more details.

Does the packaging in your bin annoy you?

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Does the packaging in your bin annoy you?

Packaging is funny stuff. No-one goes out to buy it; they go to buy the things inside. And by the time you get it home, and remove (or use up) the contents of the pack, it has worked quite hard.

But most of what it does is invisible to consumers. We don’t see products stacked meters high in warehouses, stacked on an open dockside in the heat or shaken about in the back of a lorry. Even a humble crisp packet, which uses the tiniest amount of material, performs a number of jobs to ensure that crisps are crisp, not stale, and not crushed into tiny bits.

There has been lots of publicity recently for the huge quantity of food we waste in the UK each year. Wasting food is an environmental disaster, not least because all of the energy and other resources that went into growing, processing, storing and transporting it are also wasted, along with the food itself. But few of us probably realize that if the UK’s packaging and distribution system was not as sophisticated and technologically advanced as it is, there would be far more food waste.

Most food just would not be available without packaging – sliced bread, yogurt, frozen peas, rice, jam, cream cake. Packaging continually responds to changes in life style – smaller portions for people living alone; prepared microwavable vegetables for time-poor people and those who want to reduce cooking energy – in a way that few other industries have done.

Twenty years ago there was roughly the same amount of packaging in your bin as there is today, but it would have been generated by far fewer goods. That’s because manufacturers and retailers keep doing more with less, reducing the resources used to provide the same (or better) protection, information and hygiene.

On average just 1% of packaged food is wasted compared to 10% of food sold loose. That’s because packaged food does not get damaged in the supply chain and it lasts longer on the shelf.

The public mistakenly sees the packaging in their bin as a sign of failure, but over 80% of packaging can easily be recycled so clean paper, cardboard, glass, metals and plastic bottles should be put in recycling boxes, not rubbish bins. However, even non-recyclable packaging is – in the big picture of total resources used – helping to avoid waste. It also makes much of modern life possible – take-away coffee, ready-made sandwiches, microwaveable meals.

We should learn to love packaging – it’s helping to reduce waste and improve both choice and convenience. How many products can claim that?

Politicians ‘Least Trusted Profession in UK’.

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POLITICIANS VOTED LEAST TRUSTED PROFESSION IN THE UK

The RatedPeople Trust Index, calculated from four different attributes, has today revealed that politicians are the least trusted profession in the UK from a list of professions, coming bottom for reliability, honesty and quality of work.

The research of 2,054 adults, conducted by YouGov on behalf of the online trade recommendation service, assessed a range of different professions on four criteria: value for money, honesty, reliability and quality of work. Politicians were most likely to be voted as poor or very poor for reliability (62%), honesty (70%) and overall quality of work (57%), performing worse than both bankers and estate agents despite the maligned public image of these professions.

However, politicians managed to place ahead of premiership footballers in one category, value for money, where premiership footballers fared considerably worse, perhaps as a result of their multi-million pound annual salaries (76% rated footballers as poor or very poor value for money, compared to 60% for politicians.) By comparison, teachers enjoyed a clean sweep coming top across the board on the four criteria.

The research highlights which professions are trusted most by the British public, and of the different types of tradesmen included in the list, gardeners topped the list, however they came second overall across all the professions, to teachers for reliability, value for money and honesty. Electricians were named as the tradesmen that provide the best quality of work (50% rated the quality of electricians’ work as good or very good).

Perhaps because of the trade’s reputation for cowboys, and reflecting the 2.5 million disputes that happen every year, builders were named as the least trusted tradesmen nationally, scoring the lowest marks of all the trades assessed.

The UK’s most trusted professionals from our list are as follows:

1. Teachers

2. Gardeners

3. Electricians

4. Plumbers

5. Roofers

6. Builders

7. Bankers

8. Estate Agents

9. Premiership Footballers

10. Politicians

Rated across all four criteria: value for money, reliability, honesty and quality

RatedPeople.com’s brand ambassador and celebrity gardener, Toby Buckland, commented:

“I’m delighted to see gardeners made it to the number two spot in this research.

“Perhaps the reason that we have fared so well in the study is that gardening is a labour of love, it’s very easy for people to see the amount of hard work that goes into doing a gardening job and the results can completely transform an outside space.

“Building trust with your customers is an essential part of being a gardener if you want to achieve the best results for them. Trust ensures that they take your recommendations on board and have the confidence to rely on you to achieve the highest standards. Like so many in the trade, our reputation as professionals is built on this.”

The RatedPeople.com Trust Index also assessed which attributes are most likely to cause people to feel distrust when they first meet them. For more than two thirds (68%) of Brits, they are most likely to distrust a person if they have bad manners. This is followed by poor eye contact (52%), an unkempt appearance (40%) and being inarticulate (28%).

Brits aren’t a superficial bunch however, as being shorter (0%), unattractiveness (1%) and being younger (2%) were least likely to be cited as factors that make the most difference when it comes to deciding whether to trust someone. A further 1 in 10 (9%) people said that there are no attributes that would cause them to feel distrust. With actions speaking louder than words for these people, the four trust criteria are all the more important for helping to build a positive impression of a profession.

The features that will most make a Brit distrust someone are:

1. Bad manners

2. Poor eye contact

3. Unkempt appearance

4. Being inarticulate

5. A weak handshake

6. Badly dressed

Tariq Dag Khan from Rated People commented:

“They say that you form an opinion on someone within the first 30 seconds of meeting them, and our research has shown that a person’s behaviour can make all the difference.

“Builders, like other tradesmen, need to improve their image. Shows like Cowboy Builders and Rogue Traders taint the reputation of all tradesmen when in fact the vast majority of them deliver a job well done and at good value. One way for them to counter the unfair misperceptions is to improve communication with homeowners, as not doing so can fuel distrust. What helps is to be clear upfront about each project, starting with: what work is required; when it will be completed; and at what cost.

“Investing in home improvement can be a major commitment. So it helps when homeowners can be sure that the people they’re hiring to carrying out the project can be trusted to do the job right. Services like RatedPeople.com give consumers the confidence to know what they are getting before they take the plunge. The service works like word-of-mouth, by allowing homeowners to review the recommendations of thousands of other homeowners as part of the hiring process. It also allows tradesmen to build a profile for the great work they’re doing. This only helps to boost their trust ranking, so that next year they top the chart.”

The Voice. Week 6. The live shows

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Finally! We can drop the whole, “We’re not the X-Factor. Honestly!” nonsense and get down to a reality sing-off that resembles reality. The good old BBC decided, of course, to do things a little differently though by just having two teams battle it out instead of all four.
Why might this be, I wonder? Surely, in the interests of fairness, everyone sings and everyone gets compared to everyone else- right?

I suppose the Beeb would argue that having twenty acts (I refuse to call them ‘voices’- you know why) singing a song each would make too long a show but Th’exfactor manages it with sixteen and they have commercial breaks to contend with.

It just seemed a bit odd.

This format basically allows all those poor deluded punters who literally can’t watch a program without picking up their phone, to vote four times as often. Think about it. What if your favorite wasn’t on tonight? Do you wait for them to appear next week and just try to enjoy this week’s show without a recorded voice thanking you on one ear? Hell no! You gotta vote, right? Pick another favorite and vote for them- go on! And remember, it’s just within each team so you’d better vote twice!
And what about the acts themselves? The weaker ones have had their chances of survival quadrupled from 20-1 to 5-1 in a stroke!

“Only two teams will compete this week and someone from each team is going home.” No matter what, so the weakest from a strong team will go even though they’re better than someone from another team who stays.

On ITV it’s a free-for-all and the act with the least votes goes home. It doesn’t matter which team they’re on.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the format but it STILL feels like they’re making rules up just to be different.

This week we had Team Will against Team Tom. Team Jones would have been a better name but that would have meant they were against Team ‘i.am’ and I think there’s already a pet food manufacturer sponsoring a bunch of tabbies with that name and we all know what a nightmare that can be. Just ask ‘Rhythmix- sorry, Little Mix.’

I’d hate to see a gang of highly trained pets who jump through hoops and roll over for treats having their name taken away because of… a load of cats.

Now don’t get me wrong. I was relieved that the wise old general public were allowed to take the wheel at last and do the right thing for a change. Until, that is. I saw Joelle standing there in the last two next to Sophie while Tyler returned, unchallenged, to his wind tunnel. At least she went through, and quite right too, but in the other camp we were left with cartoon Sam and Mattsuleen (I’m seeing them as one person now- it’s easier to think like uncle Tom that way) who are probably chuffed to get through in spite of missing out on this week’s goat sacrifice back at the ‘henge’.

Neither are as good as Sophie, I think, and yet this weird ‘team’ setup means they didn’t compete with her anyway.

The low number of songs meant a lot of filling was needed and Holly, bless her, try as she might to get anything like a decent conversation going, ended up wilting under the strain and held the microphone so low while Adam Isaac droned on about his ‘chipped bone’ in his arm that she almost gave him curvature of the spine to go with it.

It was sweet to see Tom filling up when he had to dismiss Sam but it was ok because Sam had been consoled by the overly emotional Holly just long enough for him to curb his bitterness in a final confusing flourish of, “I’m really gutted… but happy too.” Which was his way of telling Tom he’d had enough time in the arms of his first non-inflatable blonde to reflect on his dismissal and will, in fact, forgive him and not nail his quiff to the gates of Castle Sexbomb (Motto: Lie Bach and Prestatyn) after all.

Tom managed to pull his hard-assed, “look, boyo, it’s life. Someone’s gotta go and I’m afraid it’s you” act out of the bag in between a mere dozen ways to describe how ‘hard a decision’ it was, but Will bottled it!

When it came time to ditch Sophie he crumbled and basically promised her a recording contract regardless of being told, in no uncertain terms, that she was about as popular with the British public as Nick Griffin. (Not true of course, she’s a lovely and talented young lady with a bright future, I’m sure).

“Don’t worry, me and Dante and all my team will give you whatever you want.” He said, and I’m pretty sure he meant it so fair play to Willy, but as the weeks roll on and eliminations of more talented people than poor Sophie pile up, his other ‘team’ are going to wish he’d be a lot less sweet and a lot more ‘Sugar’ and just fire people without promising them their own pod with the ‘Peas’.
In the end, of course, the public did mostly the right thing and the eventual winners, Jaz and Ruth went through.

Next week it’s Danny against Jessie where I imagine the other Ruth will be given a series of golden envelopes and told to pick a key to avoid, Vince will be backed by the rest of the Lost Boys and Becky Hill will threaten to glass everyone in the country if they don’t vote for her.
Should be fun! Can’t wait.

I will be tweeting, live, through next week’s shows so join me @elywhitley… if you dare.