May Loves and Loathes

What we're loving and loathing at the moment, by the Women's Fiction Team...

Loves

Heroes. We knew if we called them, they would come.

New Look. Gone are all associations with bad denim jackets and shiny Lycra leggings from the 90s: New Look is churning out some nifty little summer bargains and aisles of shoes. Shoes, I tell you!

The Apprentice. Highlights so far include: Nicholas de Lacy Brown and his big fat F; Raef with possibly the best quote by anyone in the whole world EVER – ‘it’s not like I labelled a hamster a shark’. Quite. Also stroppy Jenny with her dry cleaning tips. Here’s a tip: try returning all the customers’ clothes before asking for one. Will somebody please make these people stand at the back of the class with their hands on their heads? On second thoughts, don’t – they’re quite entertaining where they are.

Great US telly. Hooray for the end of the writers’ strike – all our fave hip, glossy new shows are back on our screens. And not a moment too soon, we were almost tempted to start watching Holby Blue.

The beautiful Virago Modern Classics reissues. Virago celebrates its 30th birthday this month and, in celebration, is reissuing eight of its classic titles. With cover designs by Cath Kidston, Celia Birtwell and Orla Keily among others, and introductions by the likes of Zadie Smith and Juliet Stevenson, these are truly gorgeous packages and absolute must-haves.

Come Dine With Me. Bad food, ugly homes, awkward conversation, horrible guests – Channel Four has got this little slice of reality TV heaven so right, with four strangers thrown together to host a dinner party each, all hoping to get their oblivious mitts on £1000. Our most memorable recipe to date has to be ‘Banana and orange surprise’: uncooked bananas cut in half, placed on a plate with canned mandarin slices, sprinkled with cinnamon and covered in cheap whipped cream out of a can. What a surprise.

Gavin and Stacey: Gavlar! The final episode of series two had us welling up from start to finish and though we knew Gav and Stace would sort it out and get back together, it didn’t stop us going ‘Ahhhhhh’ from our sofas. We can’t wait until series three but at least we have the last episode of Pulling still to look forward to. Fingers crossed Donna comes to her senses.

Loathes

The Sugar Puffs advert that, without any shame whatsoever, rips off the Mighty Boosh and their very unique ‘crimping’. Terrible terrible terrible. The ad executives responsible should watch out for the skinny-jean-clad backlash. Be afraid.

Also, while we’re on ads – Vic Reeves in a bingo advert??!! I think our over-use of punctuation says it all.  

And while we’re still on ads: Berocca have ripped off OK Go’s video using treadmills. Someone needs to have an original thought soon.

Sandwiches with too much mayonnaise in them. Stop putting so much mayonnaise in my sandwich, for God’s sake!

Sandwiches with too much filling in them. How am I supposed to eat this? Can I have some bread with this house of cheese? Is someone having a laugh?

Sandwiches with too much mayonnaise and too much filling in them. Well it’s all just going to fall out, isn’t it?

The wardrobe changeover dilemma: is it time to pack the cardis away and fill our rails with lovely summer dresses? Sometimes it seems like the breezy sunshiney days are here to stay, but you never can be too sure. It’s almost guaranteed that the moment we do change over, the weird snow-sleet-rain spells will be back . . .

Birds. Not all birds, obviously, we’re not species-ist, but specifically birds that learn to impersonate mobile phone alarm sounds so that at 5.30am you’re scrabbling about in your pjs, trying to find whatever it is that’s beeping when in fact the little b*stard is perched in a tree outside, using a weird Nokia-influenced mating call. We’re all for evolution and survival of the fittest but this is ri-god-damn-diculous.  

Bear Grylls: A former secret crush now fallen far far far from grace. Yes, it’s clever to know how to survive in the desert and maybe quite sexy in an Indiana Jones way, but biting the head off a live frog and eating it on Sunday night telly is SICK AND WRONG. RIP Kermit.

Posted 21/05/2008 10:01:31 by The Between the Sheets team with 1 comments.