Merry Christmas

A merry Christmas to all of my readers, whether you know me or you’ve just stumbled across me over the last year. As our time after the noughties continues, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a healthy and happy new year.

Children Raising Children

It takes all sorts, and today, according to the paper, it takes a few more. I have just read the story of April Webster and Nathan Fishbourne who, at just fourteen years old, have become the youngest parents in Britain. Obviously, as I wouldn’t be talking about it on my blog if not, but, I have some problems with this.

Let’s start first at what two thirteen-year-olds were doing having sex to get to this point of them holding this dubious record. Personally, I didn’t even kiss anyone until I was sixteen. Late bloomer? No, I don’t think so – most of my friends clock in around a similar age. And, granted, everyone loses their virginity at their own pace but at thirteen, I wouldn’t have known the first thing about sex.

I can’t get myself into the mind of these children (they might be parents, but they are still children) who thought that it was something they should do. Maybe they felt they had to. Apparently Nathan used a condom once, didn’t like it, so they stopped using protection. So let’s thank god that the government has plugged extra money and emphasis onto sex education at younger ages since everyone’s clearly paying attention.

Look, different strokes for different folks, I get that, but personally I feel that fourteen is far too young to be having sex. Besides, isn’t sex under the age of sixteen illegal? Or is it fine when it’s between two children?

I don’t believe that two fourteen-year-olds, no matter how mature they may seem, are at all capable of raising a child when they haven’t finished being raised themselves. What annoys me most, perhaps, is that their parents are so accepting and supportive of the situation.

Things have moved on but, let’s be honest, in some places they haven’t moved on as much as others, and the new grandparents will be stuck with the social stigma of how they let their children have sex. I know parents can’t physically stop you, but what about education? Were Nathan and April at all aware of the potential consequences of their actions?

Nathan’s parents, at least, had the decency to be angry at their son (at first at least) and tell him that he’d been stupid and irresponsible, but now they seem to love the idea. April’s parents, on the other hand, seem really chuffed.

Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned on this front, but I don’t believe it is possible to be a good parent at such a young age. I mean, you can do everything you can think of for the child in theory, but how are they going to pay for the new addition without hand outs from their parents or draining more money from the taxpayer?

Like I said, you can’t stop people having sex but you can get them to wise up. If two thirteen-year-olds do decide to have sex then fine, but they should be responsible. If Nathan didn’t like condoms, then April should have refused to have sex with him, or perhaps gone on the pill. They both appear like doting parents now but do you remember how fickle you were at fourteen? Tomorrow’s next big thing was very quickly yesterday’s junk. But having a baby isn’t a novelty, it is for life, and I just don’t think that’s something many of these teenage mothers grasp.

I always think that this kind of thing isn’t fair, to anyone involved. The baby may not be raised in a secure environment and the child-parents have thrown away any chance of a normal teenage life. Nights out in the park or drunken parties aren’t possible when you’re responsible for a young child.

I’m not saying it can’t work, because it can. I just think that at fourteen, it is practically impossible to be able to raise a child better than if you had waited ten years or so.

I wish April, Nathan and Jamie good luck and I hope that they can make this a success. I do however hope that this doesn’t make other children sit up and go, “Hey, that looks like fun.”

Enjoy your childhood while you can and never be in a rush to grow up.

Home is Where the Hart Is

Has everyone reading this seen Miranda on BBC2? If you have, you are a sensible human being. If you haven’t, what is the point of you?

OK, OK, that’s harsh of me but if you haven’t seen it, check it out in BBC iPlayer or on TV this Monday because it is genuinely one of the funniest things that has ever existed. I know that comedy is subjective – I can’t stand The Mighty Boosh and love Eddie Izzard, for example, and I know people who are the opposite of me in that respect – but Miranda is just hilarious, which is mostly down to the star, Miranda Hart.

The basic premise of the sitcom is that Miranda (a much-exaggerated version of the real one) is a single woman in her thirties who owns a joke shop which she runs with her best friend Stevie. Miranda is a constant source of embarrassment to herself and her mother and she has never found a way to fit into the world, not least because she’s over six feet tall and gets mistaken for a man a little too often.

She’s also in love with the chef at her local restaurant, Gary, who loves her back, but they are too shy to try anything. In amongst this there is also Miranda’s overbearing mother who is desperate to marry her daughter off, Clive the owner of Gary’s restaurant who can’t keep his nose out of everyone’s business, and Miranda’s old school friend Tilly who refers to Miranda as “Queen Kong”.

The show seems to have divided the critics and the public quite strongly, with some people (me included) who think it is the best thing since the toaster, and some thinking that it is old-fashioned, ridiculous and simple, thereby, I feel, completely missing the point of it. The world seems to expect sitcoms to be filmed away from a live studio audience, with characters talking about sex and drugs all the time, swearing to be funny and trying to be so clever you miss the jokes because you’re too busy trying to get the subtle one from five minutes ago.

And that’s fine. I enjoy a lot of sitcoms like that – “alternative comedy”, they call it. But you can’t have alternative comedy without having the mainstream and I think that’s what a lot of comedians and others fear – Miranda does not care if she is a mainstream performer. She wants to be mainstream! As such, the show works because there is very little like it around anymore and it harkens back wonderfully to the times of Are You Being Served? and the like, complete with the actors waving to the camera during the credits.

In the hands of many others, a show like this wouldn’t work but Miranda Hart is, without question, funny. Everything about her is hilarious.  Whenever I see her on any TV programme, she is consistently charming, funny and seemingly very friendly. I would liken her to Eric Morecambe, Tommy Cooper and Victoria Wood who were (or in the case of Victoria, still is) capable of bringing an audience to tears often with just one line or even a look.

The show throws away the all-to-common stereotype of the present age that suggests that any woman who is still single in her thirties is lonely and sad and desperate for a man, but Miranda subverts that by giving us a woman who is genuinely happy with her own company. Obviously she’d like a little more – most of us do, that’s just human nature – but she’s fine for now drawing faces on fruit and doing karaoke with a vacuum cleaner. She’s mad, but we all feel like that some days. She is a character that you can’t help but love – you just want to be around her for two reasons. The first is that she’s always happy and would brighten your day too, and the second is because you’re never going to be the embarrassing one when Miranda is there to trip up, fall over or drop whatever she’s holding.

Alright, some of the jokes you can see coming a mile off, but so what? She falls over and off things a lot too, but what does that matter? That form of comedy did Britain pretty well for decades. Fawlty Towers, Dad’s Army, The Good Life – that is what Miranda should be being compared to. You shouldn’t try and compare it to, say, Peep Show which, while an incredible sitcom in its own right (although I was slightly less impressed by season six and am dubious about the just started season seven), is nothing like Miranda. There is nothing like Miranda out there right now.

Likewise, you can’t compare it to The Office, which is another different kettle of fish. You can’t even compare America’s version to the original anymore, so why bother trying with anything else? Miranda is timeless in the way those seventies sitcoms were and I hope that people stop thinking of it as a guilty pleasure.

It may have just a handful of sets, it may be filmed in front of an audience and it may be predictable but thanks to Ms Hart’s amazing comedic skills – the sort that can’t be learnt, can only be dealt out at birth – it should stand the test of time and should be an essential addition to the collection of any comedy connoisseur.