Tuesday, 11th April 2005.

God Save (the) Queen

This evening, I'm going to reveal myself as an enormous hypocrite. After whinging in a movie chat forum about what I think I described as "a single minded obsession with running down [book-to-screen] adaptations purely because they're different", I now want to talk about the ghastly nightmare that was Saturday night's Queen Mania.

It was Emily who described it best. As we lay on the queen-size double bed in the converted barn that was that evening's rest stop, I asked - for the umpteenth time - why on earth I'd found myself so compelled to watch something that I was obviously going to hate. It has nothing to do with a wish to criticise it, which is my justification for reading The Sun on a daily basis. I've seen enough bad karaoke to build up reasonable grounds to give it a critical mauling. I love Queen and have done for years, and one look at the line-up told me that it was going to be an absolute disaster, so why sit through it?

She responded, quite sensibly, by telling me that it was like driving past the scene of a car wreck. You don't want to look, because you know that the carnage will be horrific, and haunt your sleep for weeks. And then at the last moment, you turn your head and greet the ensuing tragedy head on. And as unpleasant as it is, something calls to you from the depths of the soul, something base, that demands that you keep looking - and try as you might, you can't tear your eyes away from the whole sorry scene.

So it was last weekend. I should have seen it coming, really: earlier in the year I'd had the misfortune of seeing the second Abba Mania programme, which featured a set of soap stars and C-list celebrities crashing their way through some of Benny and Bjorn's finest. The lengthy gaps between songs were filled with superficial niceties about how wonderful they were, along with the same archive footage they use in every documentary and a ridiculous "My favourite Abba song" vignette that would have been right at home in Just Seventeen. The audience was full of screaming twenty-somethings in clothes that barely fit them: a hundred hen parties out for a riotous evening's entertainment. My worst nightmare come true.

This time around: roll credits, and bring out Zoe Ball (who's never been particularly inspiring - she always looks half asleep, lacking the watchable enthusiasm of her father and the insight and dry humour of someone like Paula Yates - but at least, thank God, it wasn't Cat Deeley). "We are here to pay tribute to one of the finest rock bands ever - to QUEEEEEENNNN!" Thunderous cheers from the crowd, as if they were hearing it for the first time. I suppose I ought to give the show's creators some credit for filling the bill with actual musicians instead of Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes rejects, and it's plausible that this shift in personnel might signify the beginnings of a new way forward - a return to traditional roots, decent sets, as opposed to actors who think they can sing or models who think they can sing and act.

Any sense of kudos that the producers might have gained, however, was instantly dissolved once the music started properly. It would have been nice to have been met with a group of fresh interpretations of Queen classics, delivered with thoughtfulness and originality, showcasing the talents of the artists singing them as well as emphasising the lasting impact of the band's extraordinary songwriting. That would have been a fitting tribute. What we actually got was Melanie C drawling her way through One Vision with an emptiness that once more caused me to question the reasons for her inexplicable and enduring popularity. She was trying, I'm sure - but in the process of attempting to sound like herself she actually merely came across as a third-rate Freddie Mercury, without the looks. A sharp black suit and a new haircut don't convince: she may no longer be a Spice Girl, but Melanie C will always resemble an Eastenders cast-off.

In fairness to the woman, the sense of mediocrity wasn't limited to her performance - the backing band stumbled along with appropriate clumsiness, losing beats here and there, while the lead guitarist stumbled over May's powerhouse riff with the dexterity of an eleven year old learning Streets of Laredo. If nothing else, Queen Mania did at least make you realise what good musicians the original band were, purely because their songs are evidently difficult to master. Freddie's death left an enormous hole - as the Independent put it, "when you see Annie Lennox, in a shocking dress and plastered in make-up, warbling her way through Under Pressure, just you try not missing him". But if the February Mercury Tribute concert emphasised the deceased icon's tremendous abilities by using a string of artists who just couldn't reach those high notes, at least the rest of the band were there in force to back them up come the second half of the evening.

Mel takes her bow to rapturous applause, before flouncing off, and this more or less set the theme for the entire evening. As well as everyone's favourite Northern Star, we also had Russell Watson in an admittedly not-too-bad rendition of Who Wants To Live Forever, followed later by Myleene Klass (Hear'say, gone tomorrow) massacring Too Much Love Will Kill You: a tinny, musical box version with about as much soul as a box of spent fireworks. Admittedly it was never one of Freddie's finest performances, but this is excused on the grounds that it was one of the last recordings he made - and in any case, at least May sang it with the emotional intensity and gravity that the song deserved. The young Ms Klass cut it to ribbons, rendering the verses almost nonsensical and losing the flow completely, while she picked nervously at the keys like a grade one piano student, refusing to use any more than two octaves. Cue rapturous applause and whistles, and me wondering if we were watching the same thing.

Elsewhere: Toyah Wilcox, who screamed kitten-like sexiness in a well-meant but thoroughly misguided performance of Don't Stop Me Now. Oh, and Tony Christie, who wouldn't have even been there were it not for the widespread success of the irritatingly catchy Is This a Jaded Armadillo?, but bonus points are awarded for at least trying to do something different with You're My Best Friend - the lounge-jazz arrangement brought back memories of Will Young's soulless version of Light My Fire, and some of the substitutions were tenuous to say the least, but at least it was different, as opposed to another soulless copy. The same cannot be said for Heather Small, who sleepwalked through Somebody To Love - although to give the former M-person her due, it was really only a shambles because of the backing choir, who seemed to have very little to do. Backing vocals are an integral part of Somebody To Love, acting as a crucial counterpoint and complementing the lead vocal with ferocious, gospel-like intensity, but in this arrangement they only seemed to feature in about half the song, and rarely when they were desperately needed. Cue an abundance of uncomfortable silences between phrases, while the black-clad session singers glanced around at each other, as if waiting for their next cue, plastered with awkward stage smiles.

Full marks to the Coronation Street lads for trying their best - what their rendition of I Want To Break Free lacked in vocal ability was more than compensated for by the unforgettable sight of Les Battersby in drag. It may have been dreadful, but at least it was sufficiently tongue-in-cheek to be wholly enjoyable. Even this segment, however, didn't seem to work - perhaps the whole idea was better suited to Children in Need or Comic Relief than a third-rate ITV karaoke party, or perhaps it was the fact that the video was built up to such an immense extent that disappointment was inevitable. Any element of surprise was lost, largely as a result of the relentless plugging that took place before and during the show. The supposedly spontaneous interview with the lads before and after the performance had the air of a previously videotaped conversation with appropriate gaps left for Zoe's schoolgirl questions, delivered with all the girlish enthusiasm of a Live and Kicking presenter.

Such mind-numbing signposting is sadly typical of our culture these days. In itself, the Coronation Street video was quite funny, but when someone sits you down and gives you a five minute introduction to the joke that they're about to tell you, full of constant reassurances that it's absolutely hilarious, you're liable to lose interest. This is particularly notable in the emails that I seem to constantly receive (and always from the same well-meaning colleague), urging you with telethon-like eagerness to "scroll down….keep going….it's worth it, it really is…". And, of course, it never is. The relentless build-up towards the evening's supposed high spot reminded me an awful lot of Martine McCutcheon's one-hour TV special a few years back, in which the artist formerly known as Tiffany proved that she was a much better singer than she was a compere. Not content with harping on to the point of tedium about "the wonders of modern technology", implemented in this instance in order to lay down her vocals on top of Judy Garland's on The Man That Got Away, Ms. McCutcheon then proceeded to take a couple of minutes between each and every well-staged musical number to remind us yet again about what was going to happen later in the show. After gushing about her impending duet with "the wonderful tenor Andrea Bocelli, innit" on no less than six occasions, she finally brought him out - and, of course, by this point, I was bored stiff. Similarly, Queen Mania's omnipresent Peter Dickson (or someone who sounded a lot like him) chipped in every five minutes or so to tell us what was coming next - presumably part of a desperate plea for us to keep the TV on.

But it was G4 who created the evening's biggest upset. After an early duet with Lesley Garrett in which they more or less reduced Barcelona to a smoking ruin, the fab foursome returned for the evening's final number, a let's-plug-the-album-boys phoned-in rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. I have to admit to dreading this moment, after hearing bits of the song on commercials for their debut album - and once more the producers see fit to introduce the song with a lot of inane rambling by Wilcox and Small about the song's meaning (which, let's face it, no one knows). Most insulting of all, we're informed by Zoe that "G4 have brought this song to a whole new generation" - a generation who, no doubt, is wondering what on earth all the fuss was about.

Here's the thing - the popera machine has been going with great gusto over the past few months, and in a way represents the epitome of musical marriages. If Pavarotti was a classical artist who could reach the singles chart, and Vanessa Mae was a classical artist who managed to fuse house and Bach into a radio-friendly combination, and the Medieval Babes were - well, just a complete waste of time, then it seems apparent that G4 are a bunch of chubby lads in ill-fitting suits who are basically pop stars dressed as classical artists. Their immaculate appearance carries echoes of Brian Epstein's early insistence on smart turnouts for his newly-signed Beatles - as with so many pop groups, you get the feeling that they've been groomed, like polished wooden puppets, or dogs waiting for their fifteen seconds of fame at Crufts.

So far, so good. Manufactured opera stars, then. And they come through the smoke and sing Bohemian Rhapsody, one of the finest songs of the last forty years, as a fully-fledged aria, where the strings and horns reign supreme. And it's not even fun. The whole point behind the song, as my wife pointed out, is its diversity - it jumps from barbershop to epic piano-driven ballad to opera to heavy rock and then back to ballad in the space of just under six minutes. To play the whole thing in the same style is to ruin it completely: it has the (previously considered impossible) effect of making Bohemian Rhapsody dull. Worse still, they've cut the thing to shreds: presumably uncomfortable with singing certain passages, or perhaps merely living with a tight time limit and a desire to finish the show so that Parkinson can get on, they jump and skip around so that seasoned veterans of the song (like me) get lost with alarming regularity. I don't want to sound all grouchy (although I think it's too late for that) but you have to play the whole thing from beginning to end if you're going to keep your audience, because that's the way we like it and we will take no substitutions. If you're going to ruin one of our favourite numbers, at least leave it reasonably intact so that we can sing along without wondering where on earth bars 32-36 went. Will You Do The Fandango? Not tonight, it seems: we don't have the time.

"Who are this lot, anyway?" said Emily, nuzzling into my back and draping an arm over the side of the bed. "They're Il Divo, right? Only uglier?"
"I think that’s the idea, yes," I replied. "I don't know whether they're another of Mr Cowell's bright ideas, or whether they're a rival group established to jump on the bandwagon. But the ugliness is apparent. Look, they're all complete mingers."
"But they're nowhere near as oily as Il Divo, are they?" she said. "Or as smarmy, come to that."
"I suppose not. It's just that I know who I'd rather wake up with."

And when all else fails, bring on the pyrotechnics. What am I to make of this confusing spectacle? The next audience shot featured a whole host of people jumping out of their seats, yelling and screaming with delight, apparently genuinely enjoying it. For a moment or two I wondered if they had been pasted in from archive footage of another show - Jerry Springer, perhaps - but a closer inspection revealed an abundance of leather, white t-shirts, male pattern baldness and moustaches. These were Queen fans, all right - in fact, I'm convinced I saw Mr Tingley, the unfortunate owner of the Golf that I drove into a few weeks ago. Yet these fans seemed to be completely caught up in the moment - there was no clever editing to hide the faces of the bored or disgusted, but instead the whole studio seemed to be alight with wonder and ecstasy. I ruminated on what on earth the world was coming to, when such drivel could amply pass for prime-time entertainment; the sort of ratings winner that ITV considers to be the top of its pile of talent.

Or perhaps it's just me. Perhaps I am getting cynical in my old age, or perhaps my puritanical nature is never as strong as it is where music is concerned. The simple fact of the matter is that if this had been a group of performances at an amateur talent night I probably would have loved it. But these are supposed to be professionals. Maybe I'm too hard to please, and a lowering of my standards is in order if I'm to survive without sounding like a permanently grumpy old man, but I can't see what this is going to do to enhance the Queen legacy: if anything, it's merely going to put people off. I suppose it's plausible that this is the whole point: perhaps the programme was a self-conscious display of irony, a string of mediocrity designed to enhance your appreciation of the original.

Somehow, I doubt that ITV are capable of such cleverness. If the programme made me want to dig out my copy of News of the World and play it at full volume to rinse out the unpleasant taste of saccharine, it has obviously done its job, albeit not in the way that it intended. And yet herein lies the final irony, because the length of this diary entry has betrayed an obvious sense of fascination, even when it's coupled with revulsion. After the credits, Peter Dickson announced that the following Saturday night's fare would be Madonna Mania, with another third-rate line-up and a musical selection that looked equally dreadful. I have a feeling I'll be watching it.