A sad day today: two genuine heroines have been laid low.
First, a solemn RIP for Molly Weir, who died this week aged 84. A proud Scot, Molly was familiar to millions of 80s-era schoolchildren as whirruping clay-faced Hazel McWitch out of Rentaghost.
I remember watching at the time and suspecting even then that Rentaghost was fundamentally rubbish. How they managed to spread their meagre supply of panto laughs over 60 episodes is quite beyond me; a task akin to buttering the surface of the Moon with a single foil-wrapped triangle of Dairylea.
The reviews on the BBC site confirm my childhood fears – reach not for a nostalgic ‘ghost DVD. And don’t believe the Scotsman report either – Molly did not play Supergran. She was in ultracamp Scots gem The High Life though – dearie me!
Heroine #2 comes from the supremely prole-entertaining show The X-Factor. I had always wondered why the shouty black singer looked strangely familiar… my first guess was that I had seen her straining in Ryan’s favourite piece of world cinema Mocha Madness. However, it transpires that bonkers goggle-eyed alcoholic punchbag Rowetta is actually, wait for it, the singer from the Happy Mondays.
Hold the phone; butty down; stand by. Could not believe it.
We had actually gone to see their shambling near-death performance at Glastonbury in 2000, where Rowetta had stalked chubbily about with a whip, clad entirely in leather… presumably protection against being bitten by the clearly undead Shaun Ryder.
How the mighty have fallen: from fleeting indie success, to lame cash-in retreads, to tearfully begging Simon Cowell to let her on the telly.
RIP Rowetta’s dignity.
30-Nov-04 at 11:07 pm | Permalink
Old Molly was 94 air.
01-Dec-04 at 1:04 pm | Permalink
Hazel McWitch > I detested rentaghost. I was such an americaphile when I was a kid, like most of us from the ET generation. Hazel McWitch left me cold. Exceptions to the rule though, include Dr. Who*, Hart beat**, Morph, and Magic Roundabout. Weren’t terrorhawks british? Or am I being a dumbass?
*I’ve just realised! Haha. The first girl I ever fancied *wasn’t* Michella Strachan (I still love her. And her dangly parrot earrings), but Sophie Aldridge, the doc’s assistant and uber-tomboy. She would have got half my cola cubes any day.
**Margo. Nuff said.
01-Dec-04 at 5:33 pm | Permalink
Rentaghost was a sack of shit. ‘Bertha’ was the boss of all UK programmes.
Although I never liked Doctor Who, Sophie Aldridge was all kinds of awesome, although I mostly knew her for her voice on primary school radio programme, ‘Singing Together’. Someone get her in a Tarantino film and revitalise her career, Travolta-style!
01-Dec-04 at 10:41 pm | Permalink
Bertha, right enough. One episode, loads of gold coins came out of her mouth and the Paki said “Have I won the jackpot?!” I’m laughing about it right now. Those crazy Pakis. It wasn’t just American films like “Short Circuit” and “California Man” that realised the comedy potential of the budbud.
01-Dec-04 at 11:05 pm | Permalink
Is ironic racism the new ‘thing’? It’s everywhere at the moment. The 80′s revival has obviously gone too far.
02-Dec-04 at 4:55 pm | Permalink
It’s not all that new, no. And you soon realise you really are racist. Then you shake the thought out of your head and start laughing and saying the most awful things about Ainsley Harriott.
02-Dec-04 at 5:43 pm | Permalink
Racism’s only funny if it’s spoken with a South African accent, right? “Ohm nit raaceest, ah jus don’ like th’ blicks”
Or is that Cajun?
I don’t know anything about anything anymore.
02-Dec-04 at 6:13 pm | Permalink
I was on the phone to one someone at work the other day, whilst my friend Samir was getting his appraisal beside me. His team leader asked him why he kept logging out of the system a couple of minutes before the end of his shift, to which he replied with a stony face;
‘Because I have to help my dad close our cornershop.’
Ironic racism rocks.
08-Dec-04 at 10:05 pm | Permalink
God that Sophie was annoying. I had to do the singalong tapes and she drove me up the wall.
Michaela Strachan? Just no.
But Challenge Anneka. Nothing like it.