bozo's return

The Musketeers, seriously?

So, Bozo has always avoided reviewing things.

When you write - and when your work (rubbish though it might be) is criticised - it feels like you are witnessing your children being slaughtered by marauding savages.

 

So - slaughtering the offspring of hard-working writers seems kinda wrong.

And when you write (and Bozo has started writing screenplays as well as novels) and fail to be recognized - when you criticise the work of someone who has been published or produced - it can sound like awful sour grapes.

But - in this instance - I need to ask a question more than criticise.

 

My question is this.

Is it really only possible to tell a story set 400 years ago on modern television by sacrificing all of the language and cultural mores of the time in question to language and cultural mores of the 21st Century?

Seriously?

If the answer is "yes" and The Musketeers  (Sundays BBC1 9pm) seems to suggest it is - I for one am a bit sad.

A few episodes ago someone said "I have been set up!"

Of course we all knew what he meant.

But not a single soul in 1630s paris would have had a clue.

Of course I grew up with Dumas (well not physically - he died 100 years before I was born - even Bozo isnt that old!) - I must have read the Three Musketeers a dozen times. As well as Twenty Years On and the rest of the adventures.. So I love it as it was.

And then in 1973/74 - probably before the Writers of The Musketeers were born Richard Lester directed a masterful screenplay by George Macdonald Fraser to produce the two classic movies which I still enjoy watching.

In those - the Musketeers manage to convince me they are in the 1630s, but remain perfectly understandable.

So, the question remains - can you not persuade anyone to make a period drama in which people act and speak in at least a reasonable facsimile of a period way?

And don't get me started on Mr Darcy leaping in the lake. Sheesh.

Of course you are the TV experts - so if you tell me you cannot have an audience for a period piece unless you use modern street-talk and modern issues (noble though they might be - like women's rights) as cornerstones of story and dialogue - then I have to believe you.

But when I was young -  and I was 15 when Richard Lester's Three Musketeers came out (oops, gave away my ancient-ness) - I found that I learned a lot of history  - and certainly a lot of my interest in history - from the way Lester and Macdonald Fraser told the story.

I hope no one takes the Paris of the Musketeers, or the social life portrayed as anything like a picture of actual 1630s France.

And if you say to me - of course they won't, people aren't that stupid!

Then I will say to you.... Excellent, then stop pandering to them with 21st century dialogue that doesnt stretch their ears.

This is not meant to be an unmitigated slagging off of the series.

I like it actually - it just disappoints me.

The stories are fun (if often historically implausible) and reasonably well told. - Of course it is streets behind dramas such as Justified or The Americans as far as plot, story, character and suspense go - but it's a creditable effort.

But my question still remains - does this actually mean that if my period novel is to be published everyone needs to speak as if they are in 2014 Hoxton?

If my period spy screenplay is to get produced does it really need to sound like Spooks?

Because if it does I may actually prefer to remain unpublished and unproduced.

 

Gold, other medals - and Prizes for All

We are a funny country - or maybe we are a funny species.

Let me give some contextual examples as background.

Do you remember Hunter and Purchase, exhausted mentally and physically - and apologising in tears to the country that they only got Silver?

Do you remember Rebecca Adlington tearfully saying she felt she had let everyone down when she got bronze and not Gold?

(Let us not mention the millionaire soccer playings limping out as usual with no apology at all)

Do you remember Tom Daley ecstatic about his Bronze - even though he had Gold from the world championships and he himself and the country both had higher expectations.

Tom was happy... not sad .. and not apologetic. And I believe rightly so. "Diving is such an on-the-day sport" he said. "All you can do is your best on the day and hope that the years of training get rewarded with a medal."

How mature! He came 16th in the opening phase and barely qualified for the semi-final. But, David Boudia - who won the Gold - had come 18th and qualified dead last for the semi! It is indeed an on-the-day sport. And Tom had every right to be happy - and in my view so did Becca and Hunter/Purchase - and the four rowing boys who missed Gold by 0.2 seconds.

Ok, I hear you cry, enough context, what's your point?

Well shortly after the Games I heard that David Cameron had said we needed a new focus on competitive sport in schools and an end to the "prizes for all" philosophy.

And I agree with him.

Then, on Tuesday I was at a meeting with a client in which we discussed a performance and reward project I did a year or two back for a major global blue-chip employing over a hundred thousand people. This project had as its challenge (and it was a big challenge) the task of moving middle management away from rewarding people for how hard they tried or how hard they worked and instead rewarding them for what they achieved.

All of this comes together in my mind. Because medals for all is wrong.

I know why many people like it. They don't like that the poor geeky kid who is rubbish at football and cannot run or swim for toffee always comes last and gets jeered at by his compatriots. Well for a start let us acknowledge that this is two separate problems. The problem of kids jeering at- and being cruel to- one another hasn't been solved in many thousands of years of recorded civilisation - and you aren't going to solve it by giving the kids who run slow prizes. The second problem is that (in my experience at least) most kids/people are actually good at some sort of sport - but there isn't enough sport diversity in schools to find out what the geeky kid is good at.  You may say that sports clubs abound - but if he has never seen a squash court - who decides to go to a squash club?

The BBC (as Bozo has bemoaned) along with the other media have placed athletics at the pinnacle of Olympic endeavour - and let us face some facts - 65 UK medals - 8 of them from athletics. Sport is bigger than running jumping and throwing - and it is certainly bigger than premiership football - but that is another blog altogether.

And, you ask, what has all this got to do with performance and reward? What is the link between poor reward strategies and giving geeky kids medals for coming last?

Well first - the major selling point of prizes-for-all is that people believe (and rightly so I think) the old saying that: "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, so long as you tried your best!".

But - if someone comes last - or second last - or even fourth - how do you know they tried their best? How? Given human ability to game and con any system ever devised - one of the easier challenges is not bothering to come better than last - and not trying at all - especially when the reward for last is the same as the reward for first!

Companies that like low differentiated pay - and low differentiated bonuses and equal rewards for all employees in the spirit of "fairness" are of course just being UNFAIR to the people who achieve the most. If 20% of your people produce 80% of your value (and Pareto seems to work in most instances) is it fair to pair those 20% the same as the others? Really?

Bill Shankley once said "If it doesn't matter if you win or lose, how come we keep score?"

You see  in Sport and business both we need to reward people who are doing their best - but to know they are doing their best we need to measure their performance.

Tom Daley provides us with a good example. Scoring over 500 in a diving competition is considered good. Its about 83.33 points per dive. 9 of the 12 finalists managed that. I am led to believe that Tom's 557 points would win a lot of competitions quite handily. The winner - was we have noted - came 18th and barely scraped into the semi.  The fact was that Tom was brilliant on the day - and two blokes were more brilliant. Tom was worthy of his Bronze - worthy of being happy - and worthy of being judged to have done all he could on the day. Certainly worthy of being called successful. If you had asked Victor Minibaev ahead of the tournament if he would take a place in the final and 527 points - he would have said yes - and he placed fourth! I hope no one is Russia thinks Victor failed (If he was Australian he would have been run out of town).

You see the point is we know by measurement that Tom performed well. His reward was well earned.

There was British bloke who came last in the 800m race that saw a new world record. His time was both his personal best - and the fourth fastest time ever by a Brit AND would have won the last 3 Olympic 800m finals! Does anyone think Andrew Osagie was a failure? He did his best - prove-ably - by measurement and by historical analysis - and his reward? Nothing. Nada. Niente. That is the harshness of sport.

Actually there may be one member of the British media who thought Andrew was a failure. She interviewed Ben Ainslie and asked if Britain's 1 Gold and 4 silvers at sailing were a failure!! How dim.

The thing is - you cannot give prizes to all (nor yet bonuses). You have to reward success. And, you have to be measuring things to know if someone is trying their best/improving/achieving.

Prizes for all do not work. Because it encourages people not to try at all.

And, frankly - if you can discourage your staff from working very very hard whilst achieving nothing of value - well that is a good idea too.

So what is all this about?

Well no matter how well Andrew Osagie ran - he didn't get rewarded - and he shouldn't. Was he a failure? No. Should he get a medal? No.

And there are many people in your organisation who fit that profile. It's sad but true.

Because if you reward Andrew for doing his best - well the point of achieving excellence - and the incentive to do it - will be lost to your organisation forever.

So ask yourselves:

• do I measure?
• Do I measure the right things?
• Do I measure honestly and realistically?
• And does my pay and bonus scheme reflect a desire to build a culture that values achievement and success?

I wrote last week about how heartbreaking it was for fourth placed Elizabeth Simmonds. We can measure that she didn't fail - but the system is clear - you need third to get the medal - the system is clear and transparent. She got the right reward.

Is your reward system as clear and transparent as that? You may have such good measures in place that you can give "medals" to your foruth - or even tenth - place finishers - but if your reward system gives bonuses for people for turning up, doing their day job - and maybe staying late a few times - without measuring what they actually achieve - you have got it wrong - and will be unfair to your most productive people -and drive a culture of mediocrity through your firm. The harsh realities of how UK Sport has funded different disciplines based on success has accurately reflected the harshness of global elite sport - and has driven a culture of excellence through some disciplines that have produced shiny medal results for all to see.

If they respond in a "soft" way to the performance of UK Swimming against expectation -I predict it will have negative repercussions for the culture of excellence. I it heard loud and clear when former US Olympic champ and World record holder Michael Johnson said on Gabby Logan's show "the most refreshing thing I have seen this time - in all the years of working for the BBC is that the culture of rewarding mediocrity has gone."

 

...............

 

Now... there is PS/Aside/Coda to this involving banking...

You see proponents of Bill Shankley's view abound in investment banks and use it to justify their own bonus strategies. But banking isn't a game of football. Paying a man £5 million for buying a load of sub-prime mortgages that make money by the end of the year isn't the same as giving a winners medal to people who win the cup final.

Because nothing you did to win the cup final last year carries a risk over into this year. But as we all know - those sub-prime mortgages became both unsellable and worthless. They generated billions in losses. But the man who bought them still has £5 million in the bank doesn't he?

You see the final whistle is a good time to measure who won the cup final. The final whistle of the final game is a good time to measure who won the Premiership. The winner crossing the finish line is a good time to measure who won the 800m. After the 6th dive seems a good time to measure who won the diving.

But is the end of the financial year really a good time to measure who should get paid what in banking? When the evidence that asset values can go from 100 to 0 as quickly as we saw in 2007-2008? Is mark-to-market as sound a concept as you think? (especially when market measures like LIBO are discredited and rig-able)??

Reward success - all in favour - reward extravagant success extravagantly - all in favour.

But please, please, please let us measure the right things, measure them honestly and measure them realistically.

 

 

Final note on the closing...

I forgot the classic quote of Mrs Bozo during the closing tonight.

At one stage a couple of dozen people in grey suits with orange wigs and clown makeup came tumbling down a slope.

 

And Mrs Bozo said:

"Clowns in suits - they must be bankers"

Priceless

Gabby Logan

Having kept late night company with Ms Logan (Bozo is old enough to remember when she was Ms Yorath, in fact Bozo is old enough to remember her dad playing football for Leeds Utd...but I digress...)...

Bozo, chaperoned by Mrs Bozo watched Gabby every night of the games. The first couple of shows were a bit grim - but as team GB started winning medals and Gabby's rapport with her guests grew it got to be absolutely compulsive viewing. So having given it the Gold Star Bozo thumbs up - let me drop my only criticism in here...

Gabby - you really need to work on your interview technique. Your standard approach is to ask the question and then spend a minute or two suggesting what the answer might be - while some poor Olympian sits there trying to get a word in edgeways (and often failing). It looked grim in the studio - but when the poor soul was sat in Weymouth or Windsor with a 2-3 second delay in the question, they were starting to answer just as you were getting to the midway point of answering for them! Cringe making.

But - if you develop the confidence to sit quietly and listen (like Parkinson) they will give you gold - and you will look much cleverer. Trust me.

That being said - you gave us enormous joy. Ian Thorpe and Michael Johnson were spectacular regulars. Denise Lewis was good (aside from the "minority sports" faux pas) and so was McEnroe.

The whole show became like watching tele with your mates. Up there with Soocer Am vintage 2000 (after which Lovejoy became increasingly insufferable - do please learn from that).

The only contemporary thing that gets close is Dan LeBatard's show on ESPN with his dad #DLHQ ...the best sports chat on tv these days.

Well done Gabby.

 

Goodbye Olympics (sob) Bozo really will miss you

And wasn't the closing ceremony good?

Bozo was castigated for not liking the opening - but his view on the opening remains unchanged. No theatre really works of the audience need someone to explain whats going on... and while you might prefer to claim that Bozo may be theatrically dim - the fact is anything staged for an audience of 80,000 live and a billion or so on tv (from 204 countries) needs to be a bit more obvious.

But enough of that...

The closing was magnificent. The most amazing (and easily understandable) set. great broad brush staging of music and dance and some iconic (if rather geriatric) musical heroes.

But my favourite was the massive irony...

Jessie J entered and proclaimed to the world in song...

It's not about the money, money, money
We don't need your money, money, money

Noble sentiments.... but may have worked better if she hadn't been singing from the back of a Rolls Royce convertible.

Someone didn't think that through!

Someone however did think through the Who's big closing. Which was a shame in some ways.

Those of us (like Bozo) who were actually born when The Who's My Generation was first released particularly liked the iconic line from the song...

I hope I die before I get old...

I was rather looking forward to 68 year old multi-millionaire Roger singing that to a billion people.

Sadly someone decided it was best to write the line out of the perfromance version.

However. He did still sing "talking about my generation..." and that must have given joy to all the other pensioners out there who remember the glory days when they aspired to be revolutionaries and not millionaire pop icons.

All in all - it was a winner - a great show - following a great games.

Real or Spoof

No one can deny that 10 O'Clock Live is pretty left-leaning. And that means not everyone will think it's as funny as Bozo does. The slaughtering the give to Ed Milliband is however priceless and likely to get as many laughs from Tories.

It's far from perfect however.

Last week, in discussing the cuts package my man David Mitchell had amassed a 3 person panel to offer views. One was an acitivist. She was passionate, very good at telling us all that was wrong with the package, and pretty crap at offering alternatives. The man from The Times, who couldn't compete in passion and charm because his support for cuts, like Bozo's comes entirely from the position of "It's crap but we have to do it" field.

But I want to discuss the final guest.

Was she a real economist? Surely she was a spoof put there to get a few extra laughs?

Don't ask me to remember her name, but frankly I will never forget her hairdo!

Anyway... among the dodgy sounding arguments she came up with was to compare the US stimulus package with the coalition efforts.

What?

Forget the ridiculous amount being pumped into the economy by the Americans (actually in specific terms I have forgotten...but it was $750 billion or something...) but if we are comparing Britain and the US let us compare Britain with the US ... there is no way this woman can be a real economist.

Firtstly the Americans can print $750 billion and we cannot. Why?

Well of other comparative reasons. The US treasury bond is THE risk benchmark for AAA. It sort of doesnt matter how bad things get, people will always have to buy them for portfolios. No one has to buy gilts. So the American move can make markets jittery, any attempt to force British Government Bonds into a saturated market will cause meltdown.

Second, the woman may not have noticed bu Gordon Brown spent the 10 years prior to the sub-prome disaster building the biggest and most expensive welfare state in the history of welfare states.

Let us compare the ten years of welfare state building in Britain with the US. Let;s compare the NHS with its American equivalent.

Oh Sh*t! They don't have one.

You stupid woman you cannot compare an apple and an orange, let alone an apple and a hand grenade.

I do so hope she was a spoof, because the national Association of Television Econimists needs to expel her if she wasn't.

I am not against the welfare state... any regular reader will know that. But I don't advocate paying for it with fictitious money. I cannot say with borrowed money, because it is always going to be paid with borrowed money - but hopefully sensible borrowed money. Gordon Brown dismantled the welfare state when he gormlessly believed all his scottish banking cronies and decided to keep borrowing their money and thrusting it into the NHS.

I don;t expect the spoof economist to realise that - especially when she seemed to think that the world's bond buyers would happily fund a UK stimulus package.

Sheesh