mostly david ephgrave

I find myself trying to avoid negativity at every turn at the moment, which is particularly hard when you venture near the internet.  I know sometimes I’m the one complaining, be it here or on Twitter - or just shouting at my television - but I wish we spent more time celebrating the good instead of looking for the worst in everything, particularly when coming from an uninformed viewpoint. For example, I read an article today, which as an aside threw out the statement, "Carole King could never sing”; I don't think we need dignify that with a response. The problem is, we live in a society where it’s become fashionable to tear people down instead of build them up; Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan and the Daily Mail, I’m talking to you. All three examples will spout on relentlessly from a point of complete ignorance and sadly, a disquieting proportion of people lap it up. It’s like drivers slowing to look at a road accident or the abundance of magazines discussing whether celeb...

Sometimes, it pays to be childish. Wholly unedited. Like a fool, I today committed the double heresy of clicking on an article by Piers Morgan on the Daily Mail website, in which he bemoaned the terrible inconvenience of having to listen to people showing solidarity for whistle-blowing campaigns such as #MeToo, #TimesUp and #NeverAgain at the Oscars. True to form, Morgan seems to completely miss the point: for him, hearing - as he puts it - “actress after actress playing the victim card on Sunday night” is far too tiresome, as if somehow, years of patriarchy and gun crime have all been solved by being raised by figures in the media once or twice. (But would you expect anything less from a man who proudly displays a picture of himself standing shoulder to shoulder with alleged serial-committer of sexual misconduct, Donald Trump, as his Twitter profile picture?) Don’t get me wrong; I know the game people like Piers Morgan (and fellow Ma...

It seems like, after 44 years, The Sun will finally excise topless women from page 3. If they could fix their content from pages 1-2 and 4+ too, I’d be happy. It’s not much of a news paper if we’re honest; more a collection of pictures loosely tied together by a few trashy, tabloid-style headlines. Its outlook is childish. The emphasis isn’t so much on news as celebrity lifestyle, based on the simplistic assumption you can guess what’s going on in someone’s private life from a few hastily snapped paparazzi photographs. You can’t, by the way. (Bang goes my chance to appear in one of their adverts.) There’s something archaic about The Sun. It’s attitude is firmly rooted in the 1970s. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to see in Fletcher and Godber’s cell, or poking out of Rigsby’s back pocket. The semi-nude girl dominating its immediate innards is a major factor of this. Page 1 becomes a cover story in more ways than one: a way of saying ...

I bought a newspaper today and didn’t read it. Sometimes, experiencing the transaction is enough. That’s actually not true. I hate wasting money. It may surprise you to learn my line of work isn’t always the most lucrative. It’s got to the point where I’ve started seeing my wallet less as a functioning item and more as a prop. I only carry it to maintain the passing semblance of an adult. Buying the paper was a miscalculation. I had a casting with Glyn today, and thought he’d be joining me later than he was. In the end he met me on the train into town. The time for catching up on all the latest (or yesterday’s latest) news had gone. Instead it became something to fill my bag with: a journalistic stuffing, of sorts. I suppose I can still read it tomorrow, provided nothing happens of note overnight to render it defunct. If not, I’ll just keep it to hold under my cat’s head the next time she's sick. It’s a shame it’s the Guardian and not t...

I just read an article on the Daily Mail website that told me Paul McCartney has returned “after 25 years out of the music business”. I found this surprising. I hadn’t realised he’d been out of the limelight for so long. I was sure I remembered him doing something since 1989. I must be mistaken. The Daily Mail always checks its facts. If they're wrong, it's an easy gaffe to make: McCartney does keep a constant low profile. Didn’t he close Live 8, the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee concerts and the Olympics Opening Ceremony? Didn’t he organise a massive benefit concert in New York in the wake of 9/11? Didn’t I see him at Earls Court in 1992, at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 1994, at Sheffield Arena in 2002, at The Roundhouse in 2007, at The O2 in 2009 and at Maida Vale Studios last year? If it wasn’t Paul McCartney, then who the fuck was it – an exceptionally convincing, ageing animatronic? Maybe the conspiracy theorists were right...

There was a brief moment yesterday when I was worried I might look like a paedophile. Before you sharpen your pitchforks, let me explain*. If it had happened, it wouldn’t have been by choice. There was no sinister intention on my part. I know: they all say that. I was on a bus full of secondary school kids. There was one sitting next to me, and they were all down the aisle. A couple of girls stood by my seat, chatting. One of them was leaning on the rail that had the bell button on it – and I was concerned that if I went to press it, I’d look like I was reaching for her chest. This is what the Daily Mail does. It makes you consider each action with a guilty conscience. If I hadn’t been white and born in the UK, I’d have headed to the nearest port to hand myself into passport control. I must be up to something shifty without knowing it. As my stop approached, I panicked. I started overthinking it. What would be the correct speed and direction to take to suggest innocenc...