The Top Ten Lookie-Likeys That Probably Don’t Get Much Work

“Don’t wanna be ignored at the door. We all look the same, we’re all lookalikes.”

So sang criminally underrated German electropop band Tok Tok Vs Soffy O in their 2002 non-hit “The Lookalikes”. And do you know, they were right, pretty much everyone looks a bit like someone else. Often, that someone else is someone a bit famous. We’ve variously been told over the years that we look a lot like Jarvis Cocker, Rik Mayall and Sunderland bench-warmer Boudewijn Zenden, even though we don’t look anything like any of them, and not that there’s much work out there for a Boudewijn Zenden lookalike. OR IS THERE?

One thing that always amuses us for up to several minutes at a time is looking through the websites of professional lookalike agencies, mean-spiritedly scoffing at the ‘acts’ who don’t look anything like their famous supposed doppelgangers. Anyway, instead of that, we’re going to take a look at some of the lookie-likeys who’ll probably need to keep plugging away at their day job for quite a while yet. But first (and this’ll only really make sense if you’re reading this intro text from the front page of the blog, and not the article itself), see if you can work out who this is supposed to be. Answer after the ‘jump’.

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Graph of the Day

In summary: On roads – “Eep”. On an empty work car park – “Wheeeeee!”

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The BrokenTV Awards 2010: Sneak Preview

THE WORST TELEVISION PROGRAMME OF 2010 IS GOING TO BE: TRAMADOL NIGHTS

Yeah, no brainer really. If you’re going to be shocking, at least remember to be funny. A bit like this show from New Zealand, about a decade ago:

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“The 1986 World Cup on the Moon?” It Must Be The Christmas 1973 TV Times!

We’ve chipped the icicles off the office computer to bring you the last of our glances at TVTimes gone by, and what could be better than a double Christmas issue with a cover that sums up the era perfectly?

Hyuk-yuk-yuk. Or however one is supposed to spell Sid James’ guttural guffaw. It’s 1973!

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Meanwhile, In An Alternate Universe… (rpt)

So, the Christmas listings guide begin tomorrow, meaning the festive season is officially GO. And, to be fair, the schedule is quite a good one, with repeats of Rowan Atkinson Live and The Goodies scheduled over the next fortnight. In tribute to those, here’s a repeat of our own, the fake Christmas Day schedule we put together when we were being sarcastic about Mark Thommo Thompson’s budget cuts.

Yes, we don’t normally ‘do’ repeats on here, but this is our favourite update of the year (yes, it’s a TVGoHome ripoff, but we think it’s a good one), and deserves a wider audience. Also, we’re going out in an office Christmas ‘do’ in about twenty minutes, so this is all we’ve got time for today.

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Mobile Mediocrity

Just a quick update, this. BrokenTV has now been tweaked to look 47% less horrible on your mobile phone or iThing.

Admittedly, it’s a quick fix, so it still looks a bit rubbish.

But, as it’s only nabbing the RSS feed for now, that’s to be expected. Still, at least this kind of approach to design is in keeping with the remainder of content in this blog, eh?

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Ar-Gosh (The Inflationally Adjusted 1985 and 1986 Argos Catalogues)

We could think of a pun for the title this time. Not a good one, though.

So, slightly surprisingly for us, yesterday’s update on the 1976 Argos catalogue seems to have been really quite popular. We know this because there are several hits on our Feedjit page linked to something on Facebook, though thanks to the way Facebook handles outgoing links, we don’t know which particular bit of Facebook everyone is coming in from. Anyway, that means we’d probably better make good on our promise to look at some items from the 1980s, and what they’d cost in nowmoney.

In case you haven’t seen yesterday’s update yet, we’d said this:

“Thanks to the utterly magnificent work of someone calling themselves Trippyglitters, Flickr now plays host to not one, not two, not four, but THREE complete Argos catalogues from the past. One from 1976, one from 1985 and one from 1986. This, as any reasonably rational person will understand, is absolutely fantastic news.”

Indeed, this is still fantastic news, especially as we can actually remember items in the catalogues we’ll look at today, which are from 1985 and 1986.

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It’s The Argos Catalogue From 1976 And What The Things In It Cost Now After Accounting For Inflation!

We couldn’t think of a good pun for the title.

Thanks to the utterly magnificent work of someone calling themselves Trippyglitters, Flickr now plays host to not one, not two, not four, but THREE complete Argos catalogues from the past. One from 1976, one from 1985 and one from 1986. This, as any reasonably rational person will understand, is absolutely fantastic news.

So, what are the items therein which seem comically aged from a modern-day point of view? And how much did they actually cost, both at the time, and when accounting for inflation? WE SHALL INVESTIGATE. And hopefully squeeze some mileage out of the zany concept that things from the past are different to things from now. Don’t think anyone has ever thought about exploiting that potential comedic goldmine, have they? They have? Well, we’re going to do it anyway.

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Exciting Free Gift For All Readers Inside

Way back in 2008, we ran a little contest over on the BeEx forum called Song Wars (no relation to the Adam & Joe thing of the same name). The rules were too complicated to run through in detail here, but it was basically a World Cup Of Liking Music – with group stages and a knockout phase and a prize and everything. Basically, each ‘player’ picked one song per week, often based on a theme, sometimes not. The songs from each group were listed, with no clue as to which player had picked which song, and everyone else got to vote for their favourites, with identities revealed and points allocated at the end of each week. It was fun, and we should have really carried on with it.

Anyway, the first song-card we decided to play was the We Are Terrorists remix of Revolte’s ‘Ironical Sexism’. Problem was, we couldn’t find a streaming version of it anywhere, so we uploaded it to YouTube after designing a quick ‘cover’, and used that. It did well, too, narrowing missing first place thanks to someone else picking the even better MacArthur Park by Richard Harris.

And here it is. It’s still thunderingly brilliant, by the way.

A few years later, after we’d long forgotten it, we received a YouTube private message from French electropopsters WAT themselves (their name since shortened, possibly just so they could get their stuff through airports without having to hear the sound of a customs guy snapping on a body cavity search glove). Was it a polite bollocking about us trampling all over their copyright by uploading it without their permission? Well, nope. It was them thanking us for promoting their work – the YouTube upload was nudging 10,000 hits at the time of the message – and offering us a free copy of their debut album. What with us not being as stupid as we look, we gratefully accepted their offer, and got a free copy of something we were almost certainly going to buy anyway. Hurrah, eh?

And, as luck would have it, the debut album from WAT is something we’d classify as Really Rather Bloody Brilliant Actually. If you’re a fan of the genre the band themselves call ‘positivelectrorocknewwavediscotecawithahiphoptwist’, you’ll love this album. If you’re not a fan of positiveelectrorocketc, you should prepare to have your expectations elbowed sharply in the ribs, because you’ll probably find you love it anyway. That’s how good it is.

But don’t take our inelegantly phrased words for it. We’ve asked nicely, and we’ve got a medley of songs from the album, specially mixed into excellence by DaTraxer, to share with you all. Yes, it’s a promo track that we could probably have just made available without even asking permission anyway, but shush. We’re polite like that.  It works as a pretty damn good song in it’s own right if you’re asking us, and gives you a pretty good idea of the joyous jumpiness contained within the album proper. Download, listen, enjoy.

WAT - Wonder (Teddy-Beer's Millenium Flocon Teaser By DaTraxer)

Because it’s Christmas (well, early mid-December), here’s another freebie of a WAT song not on the album. It’s a remix of the theme to Knight Rider, which is a television programme, which means this whole blog update is still on topic. Yay!

We Are Terrorists - Kangou 2000 (Remix Of Knight Rider Theme)

You can buy Wonder from iTunes, buy the CD direct from Boxon Records, or digitally from 7Digital. Oh, and here’s Soundcloud link to their next single, which is splendid.

 

COMPANIES! Would YOU like to offer us a free copy of things we would probably have gone out and bought anyway in return for us being nice about it here? Feel free to contact us on Twitter. (We’ll be extra nice about whatever if you throw in some cash, too.)

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To Russia With… Elton? It Must Be The Christmas 1980 Issue Of TV Times!

Okay, who had “December 8th” in the “Which Day Will BrokenTV Miss A Daily Update Sweepstake”? That tiny plastic bag of pound coins is all yours. We’re back now, and it’s time for another flip through a TV Times of yuletides past. To make things ever more exciting, inspired by tonight’s episode of Coronation Street, we’re typing all this out LIVE. Let’s hope nothing bad happens as we delve into the double Christmas issue from WEEK COMMENCING 19th DECEMBER 1980:

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