1.看见你就笑－－－我觉得这是喜欢的首要条件吧，就算再隐藏，看见喜欢的人，心里的喜悦是掩饰不了的。但天平太礼貌了，这只是他们最外的一层吧。
2.常在你身边－－－喜欢一个人，时刻都希望在对方身边，但是天平是很害羞的，不会笨到坐在喜欢的人身边（没表白时），特别是别人让他或她坐到你身旁时，她或他绝对不坐，更是有戏！！～～（但前提是你们是谈得来得）但是，起码，他或她会常出现在你眼前，喜欢的表现看第三点
3.眼神接触－－－－虽然坐不了身边，眼神的偷望都是吧里的朋友公认的吧，请大家不要害羞，就用很坦诚微笑看着天平吧（记得要多次重复这动作），如果眼神接触时，对方望你后眼神笑笑但马上转开，接着变得很高兴，话忽然多了（虽然不再看你，但是他或她的余光绝对可以扫到你的)说明对方是表现给你看。
4.身体接触－－－－这招真的很好区别的，天平再暧昧也不可能对一般朋友或不喜欢的人做身体接触。如果你常常靠近她或他身边，有时不小心碰到身体的敏感部位时（不小心，但不要做色狼）对方没有退后或者好像没事发生一样，证明你们的关系已经很不错了. 天平男对关系好的女可以打闹，但不会主动靠在她们身上，绝对会留有空间的，但对喜欢的人就会身体接触都可以：
例子1： 天平男拿一样东东，前面有几个他很熟的女挡着（你的潜在情敌），入他会退后一点，身体不会接触（恭喜你，他还不是喜欢她们）。但是他喜欢的人在前面（他也觉得你喜欢他时）他会很自然地身体靠着你去拿一样东西。
例子2：天平MM还是GG，只要她或他心里是喜欢你，就算你拉着他或她的手，对方也不会有反应的。下雨，或坐电梯是，你特地用身体贴着她或他，如果对方让你身体完全贴在一起都不退后，那就大大地恭喜啦！！
5.突然的沉默，尴尬的气氛－－－－－天平的人很怕冷场的，一般和好的朋友来说都不会出现冷场，如果，他或她和其他异性都从不冷场，大大闹闹，唯独和你这位好友出现冷场，或互相都不知说啥时，你在望着她或他，给个微笑，他或她会宛然一笑时，这就是喜欢啦，因为天平遇到喜欢的人在面前时，脑袋瓜就不会太好使的，聪明的他们有时紧张就会乱，除了说错话，还会出现尴尬的气氛，而且他们的语速都会很快，当你问：“你刚啥意思？你说什么？”他或她就会答：“算，你不懂，或 只说一次，听不到就算”嘻嘻，有耐心的人遇到爱情时就会乱，谁还重复得了？～～
6.不会主动问你要电话－－－－－呵呵，但是，却老玩你的电话，其实她或他就是想知道你有没有记他的电话，或者看看你有没有男或女友，给的暗示：你还不问我电话号码？？？？ 这时，你一定要打蛇随棍上，马上介绍你的手机，然后再看他的手机，然后看看对方会不会表示拿你电话。。。。。（一般，对方都会主动要的～～只要你跟这个门他或她进）
7.一天到晚都试探问你有没有男或女朋友， 如常问：“这东东谁送的？”“周末佳人有约吧？”（如果常这样问，就是喜欢你了，想知道你是否有喜欢的人，自己有没有机会）
8.答应你无理的要求－－－－这种无理的要求是男女交往中出现的，如，你要他贴身或心爱的物品，他或她都给你；你无意对他或她有意义的要求，她或她记住，并努力去做，还会告诉你自己的进度（重视你，喜欢你）.撒娇要他或她唱歌等很傻的事，她或他口头上不肯，但最后都败给你。。。。你让他或她帮忙做作业，写东东，拿东东，他或她肯定做到（虽然口头上会埋怨，但行动完成了）呵呵，恭喜你啦～～
9.告诉你对某人不好的看法或表现出真实的自己－－－－－－天平是完美的人，在一般人眼中都是脾气很好的，和平为主，但是很少听到她或他对人的反面评价。如果你的他或她跟你抱怨谁不好或心烦事，或者发点小脾气，呵呵，她或他把你放到心上了，只有对信任的人才会表示心中的真实～～（记住，千万不要把这些话外泻出去）
10.关心你的困难，啥事都会告诉你－－－－天平是风，他或她一般不会把行踪告诉别人，除非他或她拜托你请假～～ 但是，如果对方无意中会透露自己要去哪玩，和谁在一起，邀你一起去。。。。跟你说，就是喜欢你，让你了解她或他～～
11.想认识你的朋友，这条是男天平特有的～～ 女天平就不一定～～
12.很自然地让你用他或她的东东，也很自然地用你的东东，从借到不用还，就是不分你我的感觉，呵呵~~(只要你好好注意一下，你会发现，天平和异性的这种不分你我的默契只有喜欢的人专属的，如你不确定，你可以不还，如果她或他发现不见,嚷到： “谁拿了我的。。。？”你答：“我啊～”对方马上无奈笑笑，不追你还就算，呵呵，喜欢你啦～
13.时刻在你面前说出他或她的爱好，人生目标～～ 并表明要好好努力～～这种分享只有在心爱的人面前才会说的，天平虽然朋友多，但是他们一般都不会透露自己的野心或想很成功的心，只有在亲人和喜欢的人面前才会放松和说出来～
Sunday 27 June 2010
Apple boss Steve Jobs reveals iPhone 4 may be recalled
The much-vaunted new iPhone 4 may be recalled, Apple boss Steve Jobs revealed last night.
Posting a message on the social networking site Twitter, the tycoon said: ‘We may have to recall the new iPhone. This I did not expect.’
Launched in Britain last week, the £500 handset has been dogged by technical problems.
Steve Jobs shows Russian President Dimitry Medvedev the new iPhone 4. The Apple boss has revealed the new phone may be recalled following a glut of complaints
Steve Jobs shows Russian President Dimitry Medvedev the new iPhone 4. The Apple boss said the new phone may be recalled following a glut of complaints
Reception has been found to cut out when users cover a metal band built into the phone’s bottom left-hand corner.
The new iPhone was also said to be unsuitable for left-handed people.
Mr Jobs responded to complaints about the new iPhone losing its signal by telling users to 'just avoid holding it in that way'.
Angry users have complained that the phone's reception suddenly plunges to almost zero when they simply hold it in their hand.
Dozens of videos have been placed on YouTube showing the iPhone 4 losing signal the moment the metal antenna that surrounds the edge of the new device is covered.
Mr Jobs issued his bizarre advice as he responded to an email from a user on the Ars Technica technology news site who had complained about the sudden loss of signal.
A clip from an iPhone 4 advert which shows the model holding the device in the 'wrong' way
A clip from an iPhone 4 advert which shows the model holding the device in the 'wrong' way
In an astonishingly blunt response, Mr Jobs replied: 'Just avoid holding it in that way. All phones have sensitive areas'.
In a statement, Apple said: 'Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas.'
'This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.'
Apple claims that using one of its 'bumpers' - which cost £25 each and clip over the iPhone to protect it - will stop the user's hand interfering with the signal.
apple1iphone2.jpg
Another iPhone 4 ad shows the model's hand blocking the antenna
The firm is selling the rubber bumpers on its website but none will be shipped to the UK until July 16th.
Users have flooded Twitter with rumours about the problem and stop-gap remedies including using tape to cover the bottom of the phone.
Left-handed users are being particularly affected because when they hold the phone in their left hand their fingers cover more of the right-hand side of the phone - where the antenna is.
The left side of the iPhone 4 receives Wi-Fi signals while the right side picks up the 3G signal for calls.
Technology website T3 ran a test using one of the ‘bumper’ cover for the phone which appears to solve the issue.
Danish wireless technology expert called Gert Frølund Pedersen told Wired magazine that the problem is probably because the phone’s new antenna is built into the metal frame which surrounds the device.
‘Human tissue will have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost.
'This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals,’ he said.
A loss of signal, known as attenuation, can occur when an antenna is bridged.
Holding it in your hand will change the length of the antenna and interfere with the specific wavelengths it is calibrated to pick up.
The Apple iPad also faced some teething problems when it was launched with users reporting problems when they tried to connect to wi-fi. A software update had to be issued to sort this problem out.
A new iPhone complete with black rubber 'bumper' which Apple claims will help solve the problem
A new iPhone complete with black rubber 'bumper' which Apple claims will help solve the problem
And the iPhone 4 is not the first Apple 3G phone to have problems with its reception - users also reported problems with the earlier iPhone 3GS when it was first released too.
There have also been early reports of problems with the iPhone’s screen.
Launched by Steve Jobs as ‘retina display’, with an paralleled definition and number of pixels, some users in the US have complained about some yellow discolouration.
The spots can appear in corners and the thin bands have shown up toward the tops and bottoms of customers' screens.
Some Apple insiders on web forums have claimed that the yellow colour is down to the clue that the firm uses to bond the glass on its screens which has not had the time to evaporate.
They claim that the discolouration will clear after a day or two as the glue evaporates.
The iPhone 4 was unveiled earlier this month. At the time, Mr Jobs said it represented 'the biggest leap since the original iPhone'.
It offers video calling, a higher-resolution display and the ability to record and view high-definition video.
The new handset updates the iPhone 3GS which launched a year ago and sold more than a million units in its first weekend.
A spokesperson for Apple was not immediately available to comment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1289965/Apple-iPhone-4-recalled-says-Steve-Jobs.html#ixzz0s3G4UAQo
Posting a message on the social networking site Twitter, the tycoon said: ‘We may have to recall the new iPhone. This I did not expect.’
Launched in Britain last week, the £500 handset has been dogged by technical problems.
Steve Jobs shows Russian President Dimitry Medvedev the new iPhone 4. The Apple boss has revealed the new phone may be recalled following a glut of complaints
Steve Jobs shows Russian President Dimitry Medvedev the new iPhone 4. The Apple boss said the new phone may be recalled following a glut of complaints
Reception has been found to cut out when users cover a metal band built into the phone’s bottom left-hand corner.
The new iPhone was also said to be unsuitable for left-handed people.
Mr Jobs responded to complaints about the new iPhone losing its signal by telling users to 'just avoid holding it in that way'.
Angry users have complained that the phone's reception suddenly plunges to almost zero when they simply hold it in their hand.
Dozens of videos have been placed on YouTube showing the iPhone 4 losing signal the moment the metal antenna that surrounds the edge of the new device is covered.
Mr Jobs issued his bizarre advice as he responded to an email from a user on the Ars Technica technology news site who had complained about the sudden loss of signal.
A clip from an iPhone 4 advert which shows the model holding the device in the 'wrong' way
A clip from an iPhone 4 advert which shows the model holding the device in the 'wrong' way
In an astonishingly blunt response, Mr Jobs replied: 'Just avoid holding it in that way. All phones have sensitive areas'.
In a statement, Apple said: 'Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas.'
'This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.'
Apple claims that using one of its 'bumpers' - which cost £25 each and clip over the iPhone to protect it - will stop the user's hand interfering with the signal.
apple1iphone2.jpg
Another iPhone 4 ad shows the model's hand blocking the antenna
The firm is selling the rubber bumpers on its website but none will be shipped to the UK until July 16th.
Users have flooded Twitter with rumours about the problem and stop-gap remedies including using tape to cover the bottom of the phone.
Left-handed users are being particularly affected because when they hold the phone in their left hand their fingers cover more of the right-hand side of the phone - where the antenna is.
The left side of the iPhone 4 receives Wi-Fi signals while the right side picks up the 3G signal for calls.
Technology website T3 ran a test using one of the ‘bumper’ cover for the phone which appears to solve the issue.
Danish wireless technology expert called Gert Frølund Pedersen told Wired magazine that the problem is probably because the phone’s new antenna is built into the metal frame which surrounds the device.
‘Human tissue will have an inhibitory effect on the antenna. Touch means that a larger portion of the antenna energy turns into heat and lost.
'This makes the antenna less efficient to send and receive radio signals,’ he said.
A loss of signal, known as attenuation, can occur when an antenna is bridged.
Holding it in your hand will change the length of the antenna and interfere with the specific wavelengths it is calibrated to pick up.
The Apple iPad also faced some teething problems when it was launched with users reporting problems when they tried to connect to wi-fi. A software update had to be issued to sort this problem out.
A new iPhone complete with black rubber 'bumper' which Apple claims will help solve the problem
A new iPhone complete with black rubber 'bumper' which Apple claims will help solve the problem
And the iPhone 4 is not the first Apple 3G phone to have problems with its reception - users also reported problems with the earlier iPhone 3GS when it was first released too.
There have also been early reports of problems with the iPhone’s screen.
Launched by Steve Jobs as ‘retina display’, with an paralleled definition and number of pixels, some users in the US have complained about some yellow discolouration.
The spots can appear in corners and the thin bands have shown up toward the tops and bottoms of customers' screens.
Some Apple insiders on web forums have claimed that the yellow colour is down to the clue that the firm uses to bond the glass on its screens which has not had the time to evaporate.
They claim that the discolouration will clear after a day or two as the glue evaporates.
The iPhone 4 was unveiled earlier this month. At the time, Mr Jobs said it represented 'the biggest leap since the original iPhone'.
It offers video calling, a higher-resolution display and the ability to record and view high-definition video.
The new handset updates the iPhone 3GS which launched a year ago and sold more than a million units in its first weekend.
A spokesperson for Apple was not immediately available to comment.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1289965/Apple-iPhone-4-recalled-says-Steve-Jobs.html#ixzz0s3G4UAQo
Why British students are flocking to America
Forget Oxbridge. The cream of Britain’s undergraduates are being seduced by North American universities. Where does this leave our own stuffy, underfunded institutions?
Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe
Imagine a dinner party in west London. The wine is flowing and so is the conversation. A successful baby-boomer father turns to the woman on his left and boasts: “Chloe’s at Oxford, you know.” But she merely raises an eyebrow. Oxbridge is so common these days. “Henry’s at Yale,” she replies coolly. In the silence that follows the envy is palpable as the man, who is used to feeling superior, realises he’s missed a trick. This is the nightmare scenario propelling today’s pushy parents to go one step further for their school-leaving children. The bar has been raised. The best British universities no longer carry enough cachet to impress.
At a North American university fair in the towering panelled hall of King’s College School, Wimbledon, one mother hovers protectively over her 16-year-old son and whispers, conspiratorially: “We haven’t told anyone.”
Of course they haven’t: they want to get one up on them. “Our friends have no idea we are considering the States.” Her son stands obediently mute among the din from throngs of kids quizzing delegates at stalls emblazoned with Harvard, Yale, MIT and the rest. Their excitement suggests the secret is out. The higher education to die for is across the pond.
Buoyed by glowing feedback from students already in America, the “Obama effect” and international recruitment efforts by American universities, British students are increasingly badgering their teachers for information about American degrees. “I realised it was an important area of the boys’ lives and I didn’t know enough,” says Andrew Halls, King’s energetic headmaster.
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* Middle class tighten grip on top universities
A male member of the audience leans close. “The parents here are very upwardly mobile. Very,” he says, catching my gaze and widening his eyes dramatically before recoiling as if he’d said nothing at all. But a brief scan of the crowd reveals only a few fathers’ heads canopying above the crowd and an occasional stylish mother. Surely this is helicopter parent utopia — where are the rest? “We didn’t invite them,” says Halls; the idea was for the students to find out for themselves. One American delegate reveals why: “I frequently meet with a student and the parent does all the talking and the child stands there like a ventriloquist’s dummy. One wanted to move into her daughter’s dorm room.”
When I was at school, American universities weren’t on the radar. My US stint in 1996 was my headmistress’s pioneering attempt to open us up to study abroad. I was plucked from my sixth-form biology class and whisked off to a genetics lab perched on Long Island’s coastline an hour’s drive from New York. In the entire year there I met only one Brit my age on campus. Nowadays, Jack Wills-clad exports are guaranteed sightings on any top American university campus. Right now, there are 4,352 undergraduates from the UK out there, 3% up on the previous academic year, and - thanks in part to a few high-profile recruits like the Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, who snubbed Cambridge for the liberal Brown University in Rhode Island - top US and Canadian universities are in vogue.
“People automatically think I’m so intelligent,” says Londoner Charlotte Beecham. “They love the accent.” The ferociously hip 21-year-old, drawn to the artsy glamour of New York University’s Greenwich Village campus in Manhattan, is unabashed about its lure.
“It’s the money,” she says. “The facilities are insane. In lectures, every seat has a pop-out map book, and my campus has a NYU Starbucks and flags everywhere, and basketball teams and everyone is really enthusiastic, and the library is nine floors and open 24 hours.”
With just a few UK students among more than 21,000 undergraduates, it takes a gutsy soul to hunker down here. “Some days I feel quite alone, and New York is intimidating from time to time, but you just get on with it.” She has moved on from her old London schoolmates. “They’re jealous,” she shrugs. “I’ve made new friends and tried new places and they are pretty much doing the same things, which I think is quite dull.”
So, who’s applying? “It tends to be a girl who sees herself in the world on a big stage,” says Vicky Tuck, principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College. “Parents have raised their children to be very aspirational, and the child pursues excellence with an international outlook.” Lisa Montgomery, a private-education consultant specialising in US undergraduate admissions, agrees. “The families tend to shop globally and vacation globally; it’s the same for education.”
But coughing up thousands, over £30,000 a year for the top universities, means many parents like to know precisely what their child has said on their application forms and are furious if they are sidelined. “Universities struggle with the freedom-of-information laws,” says one delegate. “If the student is 18 or over, we can’t give out any information about grades or what is on their forms without written authorisation from the student. You can imagine how that goes.”
Snobbery and oneupmanship aren’t the only reason parents look stateside. At the fair, I chat to a father and his son, a gentle kid who balances on crutches, tucking his crippled leg to one side. “He’s so excited about going,” the father says. “I feel the education is the best.
But,” he glances tenderly at his son, “it comes out top for other reasons too.” Funding for disability access comes easily when there are bulging coffers to raid, and money is something the top American institutions have in excess. Even their state-run universities have plenty to go around. “We are publicly funded as opposed to publicly under-funded,” the University of British Columbia delegate jokes, taking a jibe at what many consider to be the flailing attempt at government support for our own pillars of excellence.
After trawling the rain-soaked, facility-starved UK campuses, entering an American equivalent is like stepping into nirvana for some parents - and the pulling power of these dazzling displays is not lost on those staging them. “I only want the best for my girls,” says Charlotte Beecham’s father, Robert, a private-company director who has lost both his daughters to the States and whose son will soon join them across the pond. “We did a proper survey of what was available in this country, and compared it to the east coast of America. It was all over in five minutes.”
The need to sell their wares has only recently dawned on British universities, which, before hefty tuition fees and global league tables turned applicants into consumers, were happy to stuff hordes of parents into a grotty lecture hall, mumble through a few slides and wave them towards the canteen. In the States, it’s all about one-on-one time with the cash cows, and boy, does it pay off. “The way the faculty members speak to parents over there, the way the school is portrayed, the motivation and encouragement and the sheer chasing of good achievement through honest labour... you just can’t walk away from it,” says Beecham’s awestruck dad.
It may seem unfair to compare America’s well-oiled, heftily endowed recruitment machine, liberally serviced by alumni who pour money back into their alma maters, to our embryonic one — with 2.9% (£252 billion) of GDP spent on higher education, the US can easily entice top students and researchers to star institutions, something that the UK, at 1.3% (£18.3 billion), struggles to do. Nevertheless, education is on an unswervingly global trajectory and what we’ve got is, well, in some cases, embarrassing.
“You can’t go into adult life, especially when there is no job for you, with a £20,000 debt and not care that you had poor teaching,” says Halls, who warned at the conference about “dumbed-down”, “apathetic” teaching at some of the UK’s best institutions. “We all know UK tuition fees are going to go up. Pupils think Oxbridge and Imperial are fantastic, but they quickly hit disillusionment and wonder if, instead of paying £20,000 to go through a broken system, they could pay more - or try to get these surprisingly good bursaries - and study in the States.”
Sceptics, however, believe the “flight to the US” is less about parents wanting to give their child an elite education and more about their saving face when the child doesn’t make the grade for Britain’s golden quintet: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL and LSE. “There is a perception that getting into some of the UK universities is more difficult,” says Tuck. Particularly for privately educated pupils. “One of the problems with top UK universities is the pressure the government’s been putting on them to widen access,” confides an expert. “There is concern that students at independent schools may not get a fair crack of the whip. Parents are increasingly looking at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the others so their children can compete educationally on equal terms.”
For many, however, the leap is for more superficial reasons, a point not lost on Wellington’s headmaster, Anthony Seldon. “The vogue at the moment is for America,” he says. “I expect in 10 years’ time they will be talking about Chinese universities. It’s human nature to boast that you or your children have been somewhere, got a bigger car or bigger house or better holidays or your child goes to a better school or university.” Vicky Tuck concurs: “Oxford and Cambridge still occupy a very high-status position but some people regard getting into an American Ivy League university as a more prestigious thing to have done,” she says.
Such comments are supported by an Oxbridge-educated, early-thirties aristocrat who, when asked whether an Ivy League stint is seen in his parents’ circle as something to crow about, admits: “It’s absolutely true. A Harvard degree is a ‘one up’.” This same elitist British crowd are happy to pay whatever it takes to “keep their options open”, notes Lisa Montgomery. “There’s a rise in old-school, Eton-going British families contacting us,” she says.
Social cachet is, however, usually the last thing on the students’ minds. I speak to another hopeful, a honey-blonde 16-year-old with an Identikit mother. The teen has the sophisticated poise of a beauty queen with “destined for California” invisibly etched on her forehead.
So, why does she want to study in America? “It sounds fun?” she says, rolling her oversized eyes at the mother gurning anxiously by her side. “No, darling, that’s not what the lady asked. Why do you want to go?” The ingénue pauses, a slight indent on her brow. “Because it sounds great,” she decides. “The facilities, the parties, the men.”
Ah, the men. She is not alone in finding the brash Abercrombie-and-Fitch-wearing American hunks alluring; the Ivy League alumni are enough to make any girl gibber. In today’s enlightened times, however, the hope of snaffling a future CEO of Goldman Sachs is appealing but not the only path to wealth. As one female British student in her final year at Yale says, “I am here to become a CEO, not marry one.”
Charlotte Beecham baulks at the thought of hooking up with an American boy. “I’ve been really disappointed. I thought, ‘They can’t be worse,’ and I found that the men are so stupid. My new thing is I only aim 27-plus.”
Jasmine Hay, 19, from Walton-on-Thames, is more optimistic. “There are a lot of cute guys here, more than at my friends’ universities in the UK,” she confides from her dorm at Holder Hall on Princeton’s New Jersey campus, 18 months into her stint there. “They seem more confident and outgoing than their UK counterparts.” Saying that, she’s plumped for an Australian/English squeeze. Hay plans to major in chemistry, and volunteers two hours each week to teach local school kids, something she seamlessly slots around her own English, organic chemistry, physics and Spanish classes.
Parents keen to push their kids into higher learning stateside should note the words of Thomas Sprenkle, 29, an American graduate of Brown and Pennsylvania universities: “Even at exclusive colleges, heavy drinking, casual sex and soft drugs are prevalent,” he says. “Penn, Dartmouth and Cornell are Ivies with large ‘Greek scenes’ [undergraduate fraternities and sororities] and Princeton’s eating clubs are legendary for their booze-fuelled parties. Many of America’s liberal arts colleges are in isolated, rural areas where boredom often leads to drinking and casual sex.”
From her New York base, Beecham is non-plussed about the party scene. “In the city it’s very different to the fraternity/sorority scene,” she says. “I’ve taken trips with friends to Harvard and Penn and it is like the movies. People do play weird drinking games.” But not everyone wants to join the Greek scene. “At the time I loved it,” says Alice Howard, 26, a graduate of George Mason, Virginia. “When I met the sororities and found out what it was all about, it was ghastly.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. At George Mason it was about having matching red sports cars and being cliquey. Watch any stereotypical American movie and it’s like that.”
Another rite of passage for American students is the infamous spring break, where popular Florida and Cayman resorts are taken over by legions of college students from all over the States, becoming “one massive booze-fuelled spree” which, says Sprenkle, “most students treat as a solid weekend of partying”. One alumni from the University of Toronto, who’s snogged “about 20 British girls”, says UK girls are seen as “a bit of a catch” and not remotely well behaved. This is countered, however, by an Ivy alumni who suggests that “British students are more likely to emulate grown-ups in hosting private dinner parties and participating in fancy balls.”
Although most families that send their kids across the Atlantic are ones that can freely splash cash (two-thirds of international undergraduates in America are funded this way), not all can. At Harvard, for example, “needs blind” funding lets kids from families on incomes of up to £33,000 go for free, and even those on up to £93,000 a year pay just £9,000. British families without those resources will do everything within their power to get their children there. “I met Brits in America who were down to their last pennies to give their children the education they never had,” says Robert Beecham. “It’s magnificent.”
David Naylor, a retired dentist from Penarth, near Cardiff, says he would have sold the house to fulfil his son’s dream of going to Harvard. Luckily, his razor-sharp son, Tim, 26, was a sure-fire hit for the university and, thanks to needs-blind funding, the cost to the family was about the same as for Tim’s brother to go to Falmouth University in the UK. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” says fair-haired rugby enthusiast Tim, now in his last year of barrister training in Cardiff with a top-of-the-range-pupilage in the bag. “The first five months were difficult. But I loved it. The study opportunities are out of this world, and the extras, the people that come in, the alumni you meet - incredible.”
He confesses that the move from his Welsh hometown was a wrench. “My grandfather passed away in my first few months and it was tough being so far away.” He also notes the period of adjustment, and of being “lost in translation”. “I found it very difficult socialising at first. Things like getting a pint when you’re 18 in a country where the legal age is 21. Proctors police you to make sure you’re not drinking. When I went back after Christmas a few rugby guys took me under their wing, we had a good season that year and from then on I loved it.”
Naylor considered Oxford but, a small-town boy from Wales, he felt “intimidated” and out of his depth on the Oxford interview circuit. His own comprehensive school in Wales “had no idea” how to apply to the States; he was the first to venture to America. He now works hard to raise awareness of funding available for talented, super-bright state-school kids, one group that is lagging behind in American applications.
Norman Renshaw, who manages Intuition Scholarships, a clearing-house for 110 non-Ivy-League universities with international scholarships to give away, aims to entice people to different locations, generally perceived to be the flyover zone — everywhere from Florida and Louisiana to Missouri and Idaho. “People think, ‘If I can get a good-quality, well-ranked university over there, it will only cost me $8,000 a year,’ ” he says. These universities needn’t be sniffed at. “They may not have the Ivy League tag,” says Halls, “but you pass a lot of them on the world league tables before you get to somewhere like Edinburgh University [ranked 20th in the world, just behind the University of Michigan]”.
“I had universities throwing scholarships at me when I applied to the US,” says Hays. “But they were lesser-known ones. It’s annoying that Princeton only give financial aid if you can’t afford to come — they don’t give scholarships, even for the brightest kids, if you can pay. And my family can.” But if you are sporty, or after the American experience and aren’t too fussed about the Ivy Leagues, there are plenty of alternatives with extremely lucrative scholarship deals.
Hayley Thompson, 23, a highly motivated ex-Millfield girl, turned down a medical degree at King’s College London for a scholarship and a broad liberal arts education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She considers it a great decision. “I sailed in Maine and conserved manatees in Mexico. It opened me up to experiences like Thanksgiving and Hallowe’en.”
For the basketball coach Matt Shaw, 31, the outstanding sports facilities and rigorous coaching were the draw. After four years between the College of the Desert in California and University of Mary in North Dakota, he’s now running the Noel-Baker basketball academy in Derby and sticking close to the US style of teaching: “If you didn’t study, you didn’t play. That’s a powerful way to teach kids.”
Paul Kelly, the headmaster of Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside, advises caution, however. “You have to be very careful what you buy into.” His school made headlines in 2000 when its pupil Laura Spence was rejected by Oxford then taken on by Harvard, a move that sparked accusations of “political elitism”. “America has a much wider range of universities than England, both better and worse, and it is highly inadvisable to go to one that doesn’t appear on the league tables, has a very small number of students or is very new.”
Location is also important. No matter how fantastic the scholarship deal is, no child is going to thank you for sending them to a No Country for Old Men-style outback, where a sweltering, dust-ridden trip to the pub ends staring down the barrel of a redneck’s gun. “America is not all beaches and cosmopolitan and the things you see on the television,” says Kelly. “There are states with good universities like Colorado and Kansas, but the environment can be harsh and it’s a long way to go to get to anywhere.”
And as much as aspirational parents might hope their child is a Steve Jobs in the making, it’s best to be realistic. “You can get kids who think, ‘I won’t get to Oxbridge so I’ll go to Yale,’” says Halls. “Which is idiotic.” Professor Niall Ferguson, the British historian who, before his current post as a professor at Harvard, taught at Oxbridge, adds: “It’s about twice as hard to get into Harvard as it is Oxford. Only 7% of applicants are successful.” This figure, an all-time low, follows others with falling admission rates such as Yale at 7.5%, down almost 1%, and Stanford at 7.6%, a fall of over 2% on the year before.
Anyone who does get into a top American uni soon realises that the study is intense. “My son says he’s startled by the amount of teaching he gets compared with his friends studying here,” says Emma Duncan, the deputy editor of The Economist, whose son Jack Harman, 19, is studying at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And Natalie Durant, 19, who is three months into a degree at Stanford, says it can be tough. “Sometimes you feel everyone is so much cleverer than you, or better at a sport or just generally more accomplished,” she says - quite something coming from a top-of-the-range ex-Lady Eleanor Holles schoolgirl.
James Cartright, 32, an officer with the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who graduated from Rutgers in New Jersey nine years ago, calls the learning “brilliant”. His sentiment is shared by Jasmine Hay. “I love the open structure of the degree, and how I can choose to take classes in pretty much anything,” she raves. “It’s incredible. I’ve learnt so much about subjects like philosophy that I never would have got to take in the British system.”
But it’s not for everyone. For those who know exactly what they want to study, a liberal-arts degree won’t specialise fast enough. And some subjects, like law, don’t transfer overseas without a lot more work when you get back. “I recommend the cheapest option,” says Sprenkle. “If the American school offers full funding, take it. Resources and facilities will likely be better but not necessarily the teaching. I have a hard time justifying that my diploma, even from a leading university, cost my parents $140,000.”
British university leavers tend to soar up career ladders, leaving their American counterparts eating their dust — something that irritates many Ivy League graduates who have to return to university to re-train in a speciality. But a stretch in America can open doors, as Alice Howard can attest. “After graduation I moved to New York and got an internship in fashion PR,” she says. “When I came back to London for a holiday I went to the PR firm Freud where I’d interned before the States and said, ‘Look! Hire me.’ I think there was a sense of, ‘This girl took herself to the States so if she wants something, she’ll go for it.’ I was thrown in at the deep end in the fast-paced, cut-throat fashion-PR world in New York and it definitely helped me be punchier in London.”
Cartwright also got a boost. “Americans believe you can do stuff,” he says. “I want to become an astronaut, how am I going to do that? Let’s give it a shot. I’m a bit like that anyway, but I thrived on the unfettered enthusiasm.”
It’s worth sparing a thought for those who have a lot to lose, in the short term at least: the parents. Financial loss pales in comparison to the loss of control over a child and the physical separation. “It’s a complete and utter disaster,” wails Robert Beecham. “But they are happy - which is all well and good as long as they don’t meet any nice American boys.” The internet offers some comfort: Hay emails her mother daily and skypes her family twice a week, but Montgomery sees many parents struggle with the decision to let them go. “They largely want their children to stay on the east coast to keep them closer,” she says. “Sending a child to California is daunting.”
And it’s worth being aware that the experience will change your child, possibly beyond recognition. Parents hoping for more sophistication may open the door to a strange creature in sweat pants with a Yogi Bear accent and a stomach to match. Others may notice alarming habits, like their previously TV-addicted child reading Kafka and trying out their newly acquired transatlantic lilt on anyone within earshot. But it’s highly likely that what comes back will be a delight. “Charlotte’s got an interview for a placement at American Harper’s Bazaar! It’s part of the deal - incredible, isn’t it?” says Beecham’s father proudly. Indeed, and how very à la mode.
How they rank:
The world's top universities
1 Harvard
2 Cambridge
3 Yale
4 University College London
5 = Imperial College London
5 = Oxford
7 Chicago
8 Princeton
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10 California Institute of Technology
Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe
Imagine a dinner party in west London. The wine is flowing and so is the conversation. A successful baby-boomer father turns to the woman on his left and boasts: “Chloe’s at Oxford, you know.” But she merely raises an eyebrow. Oxbridge is so common these days. “Henry’s at Yale,” she replies coolly. In the silence that follows the envy is palpable as the man, who is used to feeling superior, realises he’s missed a trick. This is the nightmare scenario propelling today’s pushy parents to go one step further for their school-leaving children. The bar has been raised. The best British universities no longer carry enough cachet to impress.
At a North American university fair in the towering panelled hall of King’s College School, Wimbledon, one mother hovers protectively over her 16-year-old son and whispers, conspiratorially: “We haven’t told anyone.”
Of course they haven’t: they want to get one up on them. “Our friends have no idea we are considering the States.” Her son stands obediently mute among the din from throngs of kids quizzing delegates at stalls emblazoned with Harvard, Yale, MIT and the rest. Their excitement suggests the secret is out. The higher education to die for is across the pond.
Buoyed by glowing feedback from students already in America, the “Obama effect” and international recruitment efforts by American universities, British students are increasingly badgering their teachers for information about American degrees. “I realised it was an important area of the boys’ lives and I didn’t know enough,” says Andrew Halls, King’s energetic headmaster.
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A male member of the audience leans close. “The parents here are very upwardly mobile. Very,” he says, catching my gaze and widening his eyes dramatically before recoiling as if he’d said nothing at all. But a brief scan of the crowd reveals only a few fathers’ heads canopying above the crowd and an occasional stylish mother. Surely this is helicopter parent utopia — where are the rest? “We didn’t invite them,” says Halls; the idea was for the students to find out for themselves. One American delegate reveals why: “I frequently meet with a student and the parent does all the talking and the child stands there like a ventriloquist’s dummy. One wanted to move into her daughter’s dorm room.”
When I was at school, American universities weren’t on the radar. My US stint in 1996 was my headmistress’s pioneering attempt to open us up to study abroad. I was plucked from my sixth-form biology class and whisked off to a genetics lab perched on Long Island’s coastline an hour’s drive from New York. In the entire year there I met only one Brit my age on campus. Nowadays, Jack Wills-clad exports are guaranteed sightings on any top American university campus. Right now, there are 4,352 undergraduates from the UK out there, 3% up on the previous academic year, and - thanks in part to a few high-profile recruits like the Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, who snubbed Cambridge for the liberal Brown University in Rhode Island - top US and Canadian universities are in vogue.
“People automatically think I’m so intelligent,” says Londoner Charlotte Beecham. “They love the accent.” The ferociously hip 21-year-old, drawn to the artsy glamour of New York University’s Greenwich Village campus in Manhattan, is unabashed about its lure.
“It’s the money,” she says. “The facilities are insane. In lectures, every seat has a pop-out map book, and my campus has a NYU Starbucks and flags everywhere, and basketball teams and everyone is really enthusiastic, and the library is nine floors and open 24 hours.”
With just a few UK students among more than 21,000 undergraduates, it takes a gutsy soul to hunker down here. “Some days I feel quite alone, and New York is intimidating from time to time, but you just get on with it.” She has moved on from her old London schoolmates. “They’re jealous,” she shrugs. “I’ve made new friends and tried new places and they are pretty much doing the same things, which I think is quite dull.”
So, who’s applying? “It tends to be a girl who sees herself in the world on a big stage,” says Vicky Tuck, principal of Cheltenham Ladies’ College. “Parents have raised their children to be very aspirational, and the child pursues excellence with an international outlook.” Lisa Montgomery, a private-education consultant specialising in US undergraduate admissions, agrees. “The families tend to shop globally and vacation globally; it’s the same for education.”
But coughing up thousands, over £30,000 a year for the top universities, means many parents like to know precisely what their child has said on their application forms and are furious if they are sidelined. “Universities struggle with the freedom-of-information laws,” says one delegate. “If the student is 18 or over, we can’t give out any information about grades or what is on their forms without written authorisation from the student. You can imagine how that goes.”
Snobbery and oneupmanship aren’t the only reason parents look stateside. At the fair, I chat to a father and his son, a gentle kid who balances on crutches, tucking his crippled leg to one side. “He’s so excited about going,” the father says. “I feel the education is the best.
But,” he glances tenderly at his son, “it comes out top for other reasons too.” Funding for disability access comes easily when there are bulging coffers to raid, and money is something the top American institutions have in excess. Even their state-run universities have plenty to go around. “We are publicly funded as opposed to publicly under-funded,” the University of British Columbia delegate jokes, taking a jibe at what many consider to be the flailing attempt at government support for our own pillars of excellence.
After trawling the rain-soaked, facility-starved UK campuses, entering an American equivalent is like stepping into nirvana for some parents - and the pulling power of these dazzling displays is not lost on those staging them. “I only want the best for my girls,” says Charlotte Beecham’s father, Robert, a private-company director who has lost both his daughters to the States and whose son will soon join them across the pond. “We did a proper survey of what was available in this country, and compared it to the east coast of America. It was all over in five minutes.”
The need to sell their wares has only recently dawned on British universities, which, before hefty tuition fees and global league tables turned applicants into consumers, were happy to stuff hordes of parents into a grotty lecture hall, mumble through a few slides and wave them towards the canteen. In the States, it’s all about one-on-one time with the cash cows, and boy, does it pay off. “The way the faculty members speak to parents over there, the way the school is portrayed, the motivation and encouragement and the sheer chasing of good achievement through honest labour... you just can’t walk away from it,” says Beecham’s awestruck dad.
It may seem unfair to compare America’s well-oiled, heftily endowed recruitment machine, liberally serviced by alumni who pour money back into their alma maters, to our embryonic one — with 2.9% (£252 billion) of GDP spent on higher education, the US can easily entice top students and researchers to star institutions, something that the UK, at 1.3% (£18.3 billion), struggles to do. Nevertheless, education is on an unswervingly global trajectory and what we’ve got is, well, in some cases, embarrassing.
“You can’t go into adult life, especially when there is no job for you, with a £20,000 debt and not care that you had poor teaching,” says Halls, who warned at the conference about “dumbed-down”, “apathetic” teaching at some of the UK’s best institutions. “We all know UK tuition fees are going to go up. Pupils think Oxbridge and Imperial are fantastic, but they quickly hit disillusionment and wonder if, instead of paying £20,000 to go through a broken system, they could pay more - or try to get these surprisingly good bursaries - and study in the States.”
Sceptics, however, believe the “flight to the US” is less about parents wanting to give their child an elite education and more about their saving face when the child doesn’t make the grade for Britain’s golden quintet: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, UCL and LSE. “There is a perception that getting into some of the UK universities is more difficult,” says Tuck. Particularly for privately educated pupils. “One of the problems with top UK universities is the pressure the government’s been putting on them to widen access,” confides an expert. “There is concern that students at independent schools may not get a fair crack of the whip. Parents are increasingly looking at Harvard, Yale and Princeton and the others so their children can compete educationally on equal terms.”
For many, however, the leap is for more superficial reasons, a point not lost on Wellington’s headmaster, Anthony Seldon. “The vogue at the moment is for America,” he says. “I expect in 10 years’ time they will be talking about Chinese universities. It’s human nature to boast that you or your children have been somewhere, got a bigger car or bigger house or better holidays or your child goes to a better school or university.” Vicky Tuck concurs: “Oxford and Cambridge still occupy a very high-status position but some people regard getting into an American Ivy League university as a more prestigious thing to have done,” she says.
Such comments are supported by an Oxbridge-educated, early-thirties aristocrat who, when asked whether an Ivy League stint is seen in his parents’ circle as something to crow about, admits: “It’s absolutely true. A Harvard degree is a ‘one up’.” This same elitist British crowd are happy to pay whatever it takes to “keep their options open”, notes Lisa Montgomery. “There’s a rise in old-school, Eton-going British families contacting us,” she says.
Social cachet is, however, usually the last thing on the students’ minds. I speak to another hopeful, a honey-blonde 16-year-old with an Identikit mother. The teen has the sophisticated poise of a beauty queen with “destined for California” invisibly etched on her forehead.
So, why does she want to study in America? “It sounds fun?” she says, rolling her oversized eyes at the mother gurning anxiously by her side. “No, darling, that’s not what the lady asked. Why do you want to go?” The ingénue pauses, a slight indent on her brow. “Because it sounds great,” she decides. “The facilities, the parties, the men.”
Ah, the men. She is not alone in finding the brash Abercrombie-and-Fitch-wearing American hunks alluring; the Ivy League alumni are enough to make any girl gibber. In today’s enlightened times, however, the hope of snaffling a future CEO of Goldman Sachs is appealing but not the only path to wealth. As one female British student in her final year at Yale says, “I am here to become a CEO, not marry one.”
Charlotte Beecham baulks at the thought of hooking up with an American boy. “I’ve been really disappointed. I thought, ‘They can’t be worse,’ and I found that the men are so stupid. My new thing is I only aim 27-plus.”
Jasmine Hay, 19, from Walton-on-Thames, is more optimistic. “There are a lot of cute guys here, more than at my friends’ universities in the UK,” she confides from her dorm at Holder Hall on Princeton’s New Jersey campus, 18 months into her stint there. “They seem more confident and outgoing than their UK counterparts.” Saying that, she’s plumped for an Australian/English squeeze. Hay plans to major in chemistry, and volunteers two hours each week to teach local school kids, something she seamlessly slots around her own English, organic chemistry, physics and Spanish classes.
Parents keen to push their kids into higher learning stateside should note the words of Thomas Sprenkle, 29, an American graduate of Brown and Pennsylvania universities: “Even at exclusive colleges, heavy drinking, casual sex and soft drugs are prevalent,” he says. “Penn, Dartmouth and Cornell are Ivies with large ‘Greek scenes’ [undergraduate fraternities and sororities] and Princeton’s eating clubs are legendary for their booze-fuelled parties. Many of America’s liberal arts colleges are in isolated, rural areas where boredom often leads to drinking and casual sex.”
From her New York base, Beecham is non-plussed about the party scene. “In the city it’s very different to the fraternity/sorority scene,” she says. “I’ve taken trips with friends to Harvard and Penn and it is like the movies. People do play weird drinking games.” But not everyone wants to join the Greek scene. “At the time I loved it,” says Alice Howard, 26, a graduate of George Mason, Virginia. “When I met the sororities and found out what it was all about, it was ghastly.
I couldn’t bring myself to do it. At George Mason it was about having matching red sports cars and being cliquey. Watch any stereotypical American movie and it’s like that.”
Another rite of passage for American students is the infamous spring break, where popular Florida and Cayman resorts are taken over by legions of college students from all over the States, becoming “one massive booze-fuelled spree” which, says Sprenkle, “most students treat as a solid weekend of partying”. One alumni from the University of Toronto, who’s snogged “about 20 British girls”, says UK girls are seen as “a bit of a catch” and not remotely well behaved. This is countered, however, by an Ivy alumni who suggests that “British students are more likely to emulate grown-ups in hosting private dinner parties and participating in fancy balls.”
Although most families that send their kids across the Atlantic are ones that can freely splash cash (two-thirds of international undergraduates in America are funded this way), not all can. At Harvard, for example, “needs blind” funding lets kids from families on incomes of up to £33,000 go for free, and even those on up to £93,000 a year pay just £9,000. British families without those resources will do everything within their power to get their children there. “I met Brits in America who were down to their last pennies to give their children the education they never had,” says Robert Beecham. “It’s magnificent.”
David Naylor, a retired dentist from Penarth, near Cardiff, says he would have sold the house to fulfil his son’s dream of going to Harvard. Luckily, his razor-sharp son, Tim, 26, was a sure-fire hit for the university and, thanks to needs-blind funding, the cost to the family was about the same as for Tim’s brother to go to Falmouth University in the UK. “It’s the best thing I’ve ever done,” says fair-haired rugby enthusiast Tim, now in his last year of barrister training in Cardiff with a top-of-the-range-pupilage in the bag. “The first five months were difficult. But I loved it. The study opportunities are out of this world, and the extras, the people that come in, the alumni you meet - incredible.”
He confesses that the move from his Welsh hometown was a wrench. “My grandfather passed away in my first few months and it was tough being so far away.” He also notes the period of adjustment, and of being “lost in translation”. “I found it very difficult socialising at first. Things like getting a pint when you’re 18 in a country where the legal age is 21. Proctors police you to make sure you’re not drinking. When I went back after Christmas a few rugby guys took me under their wing, we had a good season that year and from then on I loved it.”
Naylor considered Oxford but, a small-town boy from Wales, he felt “intimidated” and out of his depth on the Oxford interview circuit. His own comprehensive school in Wales “had no idea” how to apply to the States; he was the first to venture to America. He now works hard to raise awareness of funding available for talented, super-bright state-school kids, one group that is lagging behind in American applications.
Norman Renshaw, who manages Intuition Scholarships, a clearing-house for 110 non-Ivy-League universities with international scholarships to give away, aims to entice people to different locations, generally perceived to be the flyover zone — everywhere from Florida and Louisiana to Missouri and Idaho. “People think, ‘If I can get a good-quality, well-ranked university over there, it will only cost me $8,000 a year,’ ” he says. These universities needn’t be sniffed at. “They may not have the Ivy League tag,” says Halls, “but you pass a lot of them on the world league tables before you get to somewhere like Edinburgh University [ranked 20th in the world, just behind the University of Michigan]”.
“I had universities throwing scholarships at me when I applied to the US,” says Hays. “But they were lesser-known ones. It’s annoying that Princeton only give financial aid if you can’t afford to come — they don’t give scholarships, even for the brightest kids, if you can pay. And my family can.” But if you are sporty, or after the American experience and aren’t too fussed about the Ivy Leagues, there are plenty of alternatives with extremely lucrative scholarship deals.
Hayley Thompson, 23, a highly motivated ex-Millfield girl, turned down a medical degree at King’s College London for a scholarship and a broad liberal arts education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She considers it a great decision. “I sailed in Maine and conserved manatees in Mexico. It opened me up to experiences like Thanksgiving and Hallowe’en.”
For the basketball coach Matt Shaw, 31, the outstanding sports facilities and rigorous coaching were the draw. After four years between the College of the Desert in California and University of Mary in North Dakota, he’s now running the Noel-Baker basketball academy in Derby and sticking close to the US style of teaching: “If you didn’t study, you didn’t play. That’s a powerful way to teach kids.”
Paul Kelly, the headmaster of Monkseaton High School in North Tyneside, advises caution, however. “You have to be very careful what you buy into.” His school made headlines in 2000 when its pupil Laura Spence was rejected by Oxford then taken on by Harvard, a move that sparked accusations of “political elitism”. “America has a much wider range of universities than England, both better and worse, and it is highly inadvisable to go to one that doesn’t appear on the league tables, has a very small number of students or is very new.”
Location is also important. No matter how fantastic the scholarship deal is, no child is going to thank you for sending them to a No Country for Old Men-style outback, where a sweltering, dust-ridden trip to the pub ends staring down the barrel of a redneck’s gun. “America is not all beaches and cosmopolitan and the things you see on the television,” says Kelly. “There are states with good universities like Colorado and Kansas, but the environment can be harsh and it’s a long way to go to get to anywhere.”
And as much as aspirational parents might hope their child is a Steve Jobs in the making, it’s best to be realistic. “You can get kids who think, ‘I won’t get to Oxbridge so I’ll go to Yale,’” says Halls. “Which is idiotic.” Professor Niall Ferguson, the British historian who, before his current post as a professor at Harvard, taught at Oxbridge, adds: “It’s about twice as hard to get into Harvard as it is Oxford. Only 7% of applicants are successful.” This figure, an all-time low, follows others with falling admission rates such as Yale at 7.5%, down almost 1%, and Stanford at 7.6%, a fall of over 2% on the year before.
Anyone who does get into a top American uni soon realises that the study is intense. “My son says he’s startled by the amount of teaching he gets compared with his friends studying here,” says Emma Duncan, the deputy editor of The Economist, whose son Jack Harman, 19, is studying at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And Natalie Durant, 19, who is three months into a degree at Stanford, says it can be tough. “Sometimes you feel everyone is so much cleverer than you, or better at a sport or just generally more accomplished,” she says - quite something coming from a top-of-the-range ex-Lady Eleanor Holles schoolgirl.
James Cartright, 32, an officer with the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who graduated from Rutgers in New Jersey nine years ago, calls the learning “brilliant”. His sentiment is shared by Jasmine Hay. “I love the open structure of the degree, and how I can choose to take classes in pretty much anything,” she raves. “It’s incredible. I’ve learnt so much about subjects like philosophy that I never would have got to take in the British system.”
But it’s not for everyone. For those who know exactly what they want to study, a liberal-arts degree won’t specialise fast enough. And some subjects, like law, don’t transfer overseas without a lot more work when you get back. “I recommend the cheapest option,” says Sprenkle. “If the American school offers full funding, take it. Resources and facilities will likely be better but not necessarily the teaching. I have a hard time justifying that my diploma, even from a leading university, cost my parents $140,000.”
British university leavers tend to soar up career ladders, leaving their American counterparts eating their dust — something that irritates many Ivy League graduates who have to return to university to re-train in a speciality. But a stretch in America can open doors, as Alice Howard can attest. “After graduation I moved to New York and got an internship in fashion PR,” she says. “When I came back to London for a holiday I went to the PR firm Freud where I’d interned before the States and said, ‘Look! Hire me.’ I think there was a sense of, ‘This girl took herself to the States so if she wants something, she’ll go for it.’ I was thrown in at the deep end in the fast-paced, cut-throat fashion-PR world in New York and it definitely helped me be punchier in London.”
Cartwright also got a boost. “Americans believe you can do stuff,” he says. “I want to become an astronaut, how am I going to do that? Let’s give it a shot. I’m a bit like that anyway, but I thrived on the unfettered enthusiasm.”
It’s worth sparing a thought for those who have a lot to lose, in the short term at least: the parents. Financial loss pales in comparison to the loss of control over a child and the physical separation. “It’s a complete and utter disaster,” wails Robert Beecham. “But they are happy - which is all well and good as long as they don’t meet any nice American boys.” The internet offers some comfort: Hay emails her mother daily and skypes her family twice a week, but Montgomery sees many parents struggle with the decision to let them go. “They largely want their children to stay on the east coast to keep them closer,” she says. “Sending a child to California is daunting.”
And it’s worth being aware that the experience will change your child, possibly beyond recognition. Parents hoping for more sophistication may open the door to a strange creature in sweat pants with a Yogi Bear accent and a stomach to match. Others may notice alarming habits, like their previously TV-addicted child reading Kafka and trying out their newly acquired transatlantic lilt on anyone within earshot. But it’s highly likely that what comes back will be a delight. “Charlotte’s got an interview for a placement at American Harper’s Bazaar! It’s part of the deal - incredible, isn’t it?” says Beecham’s father proudly. Indeed, and how very à la mode.
How they rank:
The world's top universities
1 Harvard
2 Cambridge
3 Yale
4 University College London
5 = Imperial College London
5 = Oxford
7 Chicago
8 Princeton
9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10 California Institute of Technology
Monday 21 June 2010
Stupid in love
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid. The root word stupid, which can serve as an adjective or noun itself, comes from the Latin verb stupere, for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor.
There is no better time to be in love than summer. The days are long and the nights are warm, so it is the perfect time to lie in the grass, go for a bike ride, or just sit on the beach, even if it only lasts until September.
Let me tell you something, never have I ever been a size 10 in my whole life.
I always left the engine running and came to see what you would do if I gave you a chance to make things right.
So I made it even though Ethan told me this would be nothing, but a waste of time and he was right.
Don’t understand it, blood on your hands and still you insist on repeatedly trying to tell me lies. How come is that easy for you to spit out?
This is stupid and I am not stupid, don’t talk to me like I am stupid.
My new nickname is “You Idiot”, such an idiot, that’s what my friends are calling me when they see me yelling into my phone. They tell me let go; you are not the right one. I thought I saw your potential, guess that’s what made me dumb.
Scheming and cheating, why do I, therefore, enjoy wasting my time on it?
As my life flashes before my eyes, I am wondering will I ever see another sunrise?
Many won’t get the chance to sat goodbye, but it is too late to think of the value of my life.
I am terrified, but I am not leaving anywhere because I know I must pass the test.
So just pull the trigger.
To beat the froggiest of morning voices, I get out of bed ad tale a lumpish song along – a little lyric learned in kindergarten - Something about a boat.
I have found it in the bog of my throat before my feet have hit the ground, follows its wonky melody down the hall and into the loo, as if it were the most natural thing for a little boy to do, and lets it loose awhile in there to a tinkling sound while you lie still in bed, alive like you have never been, in love again with life. Afraid they will find us drowned here, drowned in more than our fair share of joy.
There is no better time to be in love than summer. The days are long and the nights are warm, so it is the perfect time to lie in the grass, go for a bike ride, or just sit on the beach, even if it only lasts until September.
Let me tell you something, never have I ever been a size 10 in my whole life.
I always left the engine running and came to see what you would do if I gave you a chance to make things right.
So I made it even though Ethan told me this would be nothing, but a waste of time and he was right.
Don’t understand it, blood on your hands and still you insist on repeatedly trying to tell me lies. How come is that easy for you to spit out?
This is stupid and I am not stupid, don’t talk to me like I am stupid.
My new nickname is “You Idiot”, such an idiot, that’s what my friends are calling me when they see me yelling into my phone. They tell me let go; you are not the right one. I thought I saw your potential, guess that’s what made me dumb.
Scheming and cheating, why do I, therefore, enjoy wasting my time on it?
As my life flashes before my eyes, I am wondering will I ever see another sunrise?
Many won’t get the chance to sat goodbye, but it is too late to think of the value of my life.
I am terrified, but I am not leaving anywhere because I know I must pass the test.
So just pull the trigger.
To beat the froggiest of morning voices, I get out of bed ad tale a lumpish song along – a little lyric learned in kindergarten - Something about a boat.
I have found it in the bog of my throat before my feet have hit the ground, follows its wonky melody down the hall and into the loo, as if it were the most natural thing for a little boy to do, and lets it loose awhile in there to a tinkling sound while you lie still in bed, alive like you have never been, in love again with life. Afraid they will find us drowned here, drowned in more than our fair share of joy.
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Don't I Love in Vain
Someone once told me that I have to choose what I win or lose, I cannot have everything.
Don't I take chances, I might feel the pain. Don't I love in vain as love won't set me free.
I could stand by the side, and watch this life pass me by. Be unhappy, therefore, but safe as could be.
Happiness is like the old man told me, look for it, but you'll never find it all.
Fling all the grudges that are tugging at your heartstrings.
Forgive her/him/them no matter how bad she/he/they hurt you.
Forgive yourself.
..'cause only then you can wangle the happiness that you're after, God willing.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who'll decide where to go.
~*~
I've spent most of my life walking under that hovering cloud, jealousy, whose acid raindrops blurred my vision and burned holes in my heart. Once I learned to use the umbrella of confidence, the skies cleared up for me and the sunshine called joy became my faithful companion.
~*~
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognise them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
Don't I take chances, I might feel the pain. Don't I love in vain as love won't set me free.
I could stand by the side, and watch this life pass me by. Be unhappy, therefore, but safe as could be.
Happiness is like the old man told me, look for it, but you'll never find it all.
Fling all the grudges that are tugging at your heartstrings.
Forgive her/him/them no matter how bad she/he/they hurt you.
Forgive yourself.
..'cause only then you can wangle the happiness that you're after, God willing.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who'll decide where to go.
~*~
I've spent most of my life walking under that hovering cloud, jealousy, whose acid raindrops blurred my vision and burned holes in my heart. Once I learned to use the umbrella of confidence, the skies cleared up for me and the sunshine called joy became my faithful companion.
~*~
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognise them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
addicted to the pain
A hug is two hearts wrapped in arms, A hug is the shortest distance between friends.
If you're angry at a loved one, hug that person. And mean it. You may not want to hug - which is all the more reason to do so. It's hard to stay angry when someone shows they love you, and that's precisely what happens when we hug each other.
Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of all eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you.
Love me when I least deserve it because that is when I really need it.
Don't give your mind permission to get disturbed. A disturbed mind is easily influenced. This will cost you your peace. Learn to maintain your peace by freeing yourself from attachments. Competing or comparing yourself with others will not allow you to focus inwards. An inner focus allows you to keep your eye on your higher self. Remember your original nature. It allows you to forge a link with the Divine. Then it becomes easy to recognise useless thoughts and replace them with a spiritual perspective. A calm mind is not just peaceful, it is focused, self-directing and Divine.
In love relationships there is a fine line between pleasure and pain. In fact, it is a common belief that a relationship without pain is a relationship not worth having.
To some pain implies growth but how do we know when the growing pains stop and the pain pains take over?
Are we masochist or optimist if we continue to walk that fine line? When it comes to relationships how do you know when enough is enough?
We have seen each other three or four times a week since we could. We send each other mixed signals.
Why do I keep doing this to myself? I must be a masochist or something.
Why is it so hard for [us] to factor us into [our] life in any real way?
We are actually having real conversations. We are finally getting to know each other. Something that should have happened four months ago. It is like we are developing a friendship. Minus the fact that he is a douche whenever we are not hanging out and the physical part of our relationship. Yes, we are still very physical. That’s probably the hardest part to give up. In a place where I feel all alone being in your arms makes this place less lonely.
After we made love I new it was over. Did I ever really love you or was I addicted to the pain, the exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable?
I drove home on a complete high from the past 12+ hours. I was sad our Valentines weekend was cut short because of a special situation. Now I’m at home and questioning everything.
On the way home I was furious. Not with you, with myself. I was the real sadist. You might be the one with the whip but I was the one who tied myself up. Tied myself to a person who was terrified of being tied down.
I can not have my feelings dependent on someone who is so hot and cold with me.
When I am lacking any real connections with people here its not so easy to give one up even if it is unhealthy.
To all my friends:
I’m in the middle of this and I can’t, I can’t see. So I need you to yank me out of it. You have to say stuff, to yank me out of it.
I know what I’m doing to myself. I’m not an idiot. I’m just an idiot for continuing to do this. I’m just not sure what else to do.
I wanted to go to you but I felt like I was tied to the chair. Some part of me was holding me back, knowing I had gone too far, reached my limit. And just like that I had untied myself from you. I was free, but there was nothing exquisite about it.
Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens.
If you're angry at a loved one, hug that person. And mean it. You may not want to hug - which is all the more reason to do so. It's hard to stay angry when someone shows they love you, and that's precisely what happens when we hug each other.
Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of all eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you.
Love me when I least deserve it because that is when I really need it.
Don't give your mind permission to get disturbed. A disturbed mind is easily influenced. This will cost you your peace. Learn to maintain your peace by freeing yourself from attachments. Competing or comparing yourself with others will not allow you to focus inwards. An inner focus allows you to keep your eye on your higher self. Remember your original nature. It allows you to forge a link with the Divine. Then it becomes easy to recognise useless thoughts and replace them with a spiritual perspective. A calm mind is not just peaceful, it is focused, self-directing and Divine.
In love relationships there is a fine line between pleasure and pain. In fact, it is a common belief that a relationship without pain is a relationship not worth having.
To some pain implies growth but how do we know when the growing pains stop and the pain pains take over?
Are we masochist or optimist if we continue to walk that fine line? When it comes to relationships how do you know when enough is enough?
We have seen each other three or four times a week since we could. We send each other mixed signals.
Why do I keep doing this to myself? I must be a masochist or something.
Why is it so hard for [us] to factor us into [our] life in any real way?
We are actually having real conversations. We are finally getting to know each other. Something that should have happened four months ago. It is like we are developing a friendship. Minus the fact that he is a douche whenever we are not hanging out and the physical part of our relationship. Yes, we are still very physical. That’s probably the hardest part to give up. In a place where I feel all alone being in your arms makes this place less lonely.
After we made love I new it was over. Did I ever really love you or was I addicted to the pain, the exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable?
I drove home on a complete high from the past 12+ hours. I was sad our Valentines weekend was cut short because of a special situation. Now I’m at home and questioning everything.
On the way home I was furious. Not with you, with myself. I was the real sadist. You might be the one with the whip but I was the one who tied myself up. Tied myself to a person who was terrified of being tied down.
I can not have my feelings dependent on someone who is so hot and cold with me.
When I am lacking any real connections with people here its not so easy to give one up even if it is unhealthy.
To all my friends:
I’m in the middle of this and I can’t, I can’t see. So I need you to yank me out of it. You have to say stuff, to yank me out of it.
I know what I’m doing to myself. I’m not an idiot. I’m just an idiot for continuing to do this. I’m just not sure what else to do.
I wanted to go to you but I felt like I was tied to the chair. Some part of me was holding me back, knowing I had gone too far, reached my limit. And just like that I had untied myself from you. I was free, but there was nothing exquisite about it.
Sometimes we need to stop analyzing the past, stop planning the future, stop figuring out precisely how we feel, stop deciding exactly what we want, and just see what happens.
Saturday 12 June 2010
Our father has cancer and I don't know if I should tell my estranged brother
I just learned that my father has lung cancer a couple of days ago. We are four children; two boys (43 and 42) from my dad's first marriage, and me (31) and my little brother (21) with my Mom.
My older brothers' mom died about 15 years ago from lung and throat cancer. She was an alcoholic and drank and smoked herself to death. About five years ago, right around the time he got married, one of my older brothers starting blaming my father leaving his mom for her slow descent into self-destruction. The truth is that she was already drinking so much that he couldn't take it and took off. I heard horrible stories of her passing out on train tracks covered in her own vomit. However, he took really great care of my brothers throughout the ordeal, he's a very loving and doting father - who can be a tad overbearing, but is always there for us.
During the past 5 years, my other siblings and I tried to reconcile my dad and my brother, but to no avail. He's become a really nasty person who says horrible things about my Dad, so we stopped having contact with him. During that time, my Dad got pretty sick a couple of times; he had to have part of his colon removed after getting septiscemia; and an artery in his leg had to be replaced by a graft because it was blocked. Both times it was a life and death situation, and my oldest brother tried to talk our estranged brother into reconciling with my Dad - but he wouldn't. He went so far as saying "Good, I hope he dies". Sad
My brother has 2 children whom my Dad has never met. They are his only grandkids, since my oldest brother is gay, I haven't managed to talk my BF into procreating just yet (!), and my younger brother is just... well, just a kid. So it breaks our heart that our Dad has never met his grandchildren and I know he misses his son a great deal. He's been on anti-depressants for years now.
With the recent news, and despite a good prognosis (the cancer was caught really early), I feel like we should try to reconcile them once more. My Dad has gone through so much hardship in his life, and I really would like to help mend his relationship with my brother. The situation is really unbearable to us, and we want to do something.
What do you guys think? Should we go for it? And if we do, how should we go about it? He lives just one town away, so we could go see him... Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
My older brothers' mom died about 15 years ago from lung and throat cancer. She was an alcoholic and drank and smoked herself to death. About five years ago, right around the time he got married, one of my older brothers starting blaming my father leaving his mom for her slow descent into self-destruction. The truth is that she was already drinking so much that he couldn't take it and took off. I heard horrible stories of her passing out on train tracks covered in her own vomit. However, he took really great care of my brothers throughout the ordeal, he's a very loving and doting father - who can be a tad overbearing, but is always there for us.
During the past 5 years, my other siblings and I tried to reconcile my dad and my brother, but to no avail. He's become a really nasty person who says horrible things about my Dad, so we stopped having contact with him. During that time, my Dad got pretty sick a couple of times; he had to have part of his colon removed after getting septiscemia; and an artery in his leg had to be replaced by a graft because it was blocked. Both times it was a life and death situation, and my oldest brother tried to talk our estranged brother into reconciling with my Dad - but he wouldn't. He went so far as saying "Good, I hope he dies". Sad
My brother has 2 children whom my Dad has never met. They are his only grandkids, since my oldest brother is gay, I haven't managed to talk my BF into procreating just yet (!), and my younger brother is just... well, just a kid. So it breaks our heart that our Dad has never met his grandchildren and I know he misses his son a great deal. He's been on anti-depressants for years now.
With the recent news, and despite a good prognosis (the cancer was caught really early), I feel like we should try to reconcile them once more. My Dad has gone through so much hardship in his life, and I really would like to help mend his relationship with my brother. The situation is really unbearable to us, and we want to do something.
What do you guys think? Should we go for it? And if we do, how should we go about it? He lives just one town away, so we could go see him... Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Monday 7 June 2010
Worthy winners, yes...but Britain's got a lot of oddballs
Spectacular gymnastic troupe Spelbound flipped their way to victory in the final of Britain's Got Talent on Saturday night. The group had relied on their parents' financial support to keep them going to the final --and now they are hoping the determination will pay off.Sources at the show say showbiz offers are 'flooding in'. But there are doubts Spelbound can achieve the same success as previous winners of the show - leading many viewers to wonder if the talent pool is running dry. It is a view shared by our expert columnist...
Tonight, there could be a surprise in store, I've got a feeling,' declared Simon Cowell at the start of Saturday Britain's Got Talent final.
'This is the best and strongest line-up of talent we've ever had,' agreed fellow judge Amanda Holden. 'A night to be proud of Britain,' chimed Piers Morgan.
Alas, a more honest introduction would have been: 'Tune in for tonight's largely lacklustre line-up.....oh, and by the way, the result is a foregone conclusion'
Spelbound
Spelbound: 1 Abigail Ralph, 2 Nicholas Illingworth, 3 Adam McAssey, 4 Alex Uttley, 5 Adam Buckingham, 6 Douglas Fordyce, 7 Leighanne Cowler, 8 Jonathan Strainks, 9 Amy Mackenzie, 10 Katie Axten, 11 Lauren Kemp, 12 Edward Upcott, 13 Hollianne Wood
The simple truth was, too many of the finalists just didn't deserve to be there. And though the best act won on the night, the evens-favourite Spellbound were technically superb but lacking much in the way of showbiz charisma.
More Vorsprung Durch Technik than Va-va-va-voom.
With their skimpy PVC costumes, perfectlyrippled torsos and plastinated hair they resembled the cloned product of some twisted genius desperate for world domination. But that's enough about Simon Cowell.
Spelbound
Strongest act: Spelbound take the Britain's Got Talent crown
Yes, their routine took guts - at one point, catapulting a young gymnast over the heads of the judges (no mean achievement, given the size of Piers Morgan's ego) - but have they got staying power?
God knows, the rest of us certainly needed it. Two-and-a-half hours! A marathon of Cowell's botoxed brow struggling to form a frown, Holden's 'my-eyes-are-so-wide-open-I'm-going-to-fall-over' gaze and Morgan's practised ' sincerity' look.
And, of course, the small matter of ten of the nation's (allegedly) finest acts competing for £100,000 and a place in the next Royal Variety Performance.
In fact, throughout this series, there wasn't much evidence that Britain's Got Talent at all.
Rather, it was proof that Britain's Got Lots of Oddballs Down the Pub.
Performers with the sort of obscure aptitude that's hard to acquire but dull to watch for more than 30 seconds.
Earlier on in the auditions process, we'd been treated to an egg swallower, a woman who plays the teapot using a washing-up glove and a man with a floppy grey elephant's trunk fixed over his private parts.
Then there was the 'kindling king', a bloke with a trestle table and a big knife, who sang and, er, chopped wood.
And Kevin Cruise, a camp singer and dancer who performed next to a 6ft bubble-blowing model of a cruise ship and whose main achievement was to make Graham Norton seem butch. An excruciating BBC sitcom surely beckons.
During previous BGT series, fruitcakes like these were brought in to provide fleeting comedy moments amid the high drama - and to give a sense of superiority to us couch potatoes at home.
Britains Got Talent
Britains Got Talent: A marathon of Cowell's botoxed brow, Holden's 'my-eyes-are-so-wide-open-I'm-going-to-fall-over' gaze and Morgan's practised ' sincerity' look
But this year, someone forgot to tell the judges and the voting public to weed out all the pub acts before the final.
Thus we had Twist and Pulse (who inexplicably came second on Saturday) - two cockney dancers, dressed as playing-card jokers, who performed comedy streetdance to snatches of the theme tunes from Scooby Doo and The Simpsons.
Then there was the impressionist. Paul Burlong has been a holiday camp entertainer for 25 years and looks like the Pontin's workhorse that he is.
Kevin Cruise
Fruitcake: Camp singer and dancer Kevin Cruise
When he began imitating Billy Connolly (at least, I think it was supposed to be him) we were transported back more than 30 years to ITV's last 'anyone can enter' talent show, New Faces.
More...
* Going for gold, the Britain's Got Talent winners reveal their dream of Olympic success
* And now for 2012: Britain's Got Talent winners Spelbound lined up to appear at the London Olympics
It would have been impolitic for Amanda Holden to make the comparison with the old programme - she'd hardly want to admit that BGT is Mickie Most with a shinier floor, some dry ice, and operatic music - but she gave the game away somewhat when she congratulated Burlong for the fact that there was 'no Frank Spencer' during his act.
Is that what it takes to impress the judges nowadays?
To forego the 'do a whoopsie' schtick?
The evening, more than anything else, was a celebration of the staying power of the British cliche industry. These days TV contestants - the 'real people', who conveniently don't ask for a fee - are so schooled in the language of the medium that they know what they're expected to say, how they're expected to say it and usually when to shed a tear (though mercifully there weren't many this time).
Twist and Pulse
Runners up: Twist and Pulse -two cockney dancers, dressed as playing-card jokers
Their script could have come from any one of Alan Sugar's '110-percenters' on The Apprentice or the pre-match interviews we're about to endure at the World Cup. Everyone is 'about to embark on the most important night' of his or her life... they 'know there are no second chances'... they're to 'go out there and give it their all'.
Alas, sometimes even that's not enough. The most poignant moment of the night was its biggest disaster. White-haired Scottish granny Janey Cutler, 81, was supposed to be this year's Susan Boyle.
But it didn't quite turn out like that. Singing an English translation of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - that managed to strip the song of all its mystique and grace - she performed virtually the whole song out of sync, a full phrase behind the backing track. Then ended the screeching performance on a painful flat note.
Janey Cutler
White-haired Scottish granny Janey Cutler, 81,singing an English translation of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - that managed to strip the song of all its mystique and grace
The judges, as one, treated her with uncharacteristic mercy. Cowell told her what a 'gutsy lady' she is and how well she'd done to catch up with where she should have been all along.
Even the meanest man on TV knows there are no points to be gained by being beastly to a sweet old lady trying her best.
There was another moment of mercy later in the show, when seven of the 10 contestants were told that they had not made it into the final.
Six obediently left the stage, resigned to their fate, but either confusion or defiance meant that Tina and her dancing dog Chandi did not budge.
'Tina, Tina. Just out the back, pet,' said Ant, ushering the poor woman towards the exit with the same tone of voice you'd use before putting your dog out last thing at night.
Earlier in the evening, Cowell had voiced concerns that Chandi - at one time, a hot favourite to win - was looking old and tired and that perhaps the kindest thing would be for the night to serve as the swansong of the mutt's career.
On the evidence of this series, one might say the same thing about Britain's Got Talent.
Comments (108)
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below, or debate this issue live on our message boards.
The show was flagging and then 'suddenly' in come Spelbound who are magnificent, many of them gymnastic champions in their individual disciplines. Worthy winners and certainly wonderful ambassadors for youth, dedication and the 2012 Olympics to demonstrate the SportsAcro. Coinidence? Saved the show that is for sure but I suppose whatever at least they put in the work to become as breathtaking as they are
- amazonmothe, hastings, 7/6/2010 16:55
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Well I thought the show was brilliant and good on all the people who entered it. If the knockers of this and other shows like it are so against them then they know where the 'off' button is. It's called entertainment folks, and unlike some of the people who've posted here us who enjoy these shows see them as entertainment and don't try to read too much into the motives behind them. I hope the contestants get a decent living out of it - I doubt any of them will be superstars but if their quality of life is improved by participating then good luck to them - all of them!
- jackie, manchester, 7/6/2010 16:37
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I always record this show and then use the fast forward button a lot !!
- ubuntuphil, Lancashire, 7/6/2010 16:36
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:27
Barry
I dont know why you got red arrowed (they can give me purple) But I totally agree with you. It happened on X factor 2009 too when he passed up Lucie for Jedward with a very lame excuse.
I am happy for Spellbound, but if you follow gymnastics especially in the olympics and want to be truthful, spellbound is not as good as chinese,russian and american and other east european gymnasts.
THAT IS IF ONE WANTS TO BE TRUTHFUL
- andrea shane, bedford, 7/6/2010 16:31
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I'm definitely going to audition for BGT next year as a Cheryl Cole tribute act. I'd wear a copy of her sparkly leotard which I ran up on my sewing machine. I'm sure the audience will absolutely love my performance as the great lady and I'd get a standing ovation from everyone in the theatre including all 3 judges. Simon will be left smiling with utter admiration for me. I would then easily sail through my semi-final to get to the big final.
Chavina - a star is born.
- Chavina, UK, 7/6/2010 16:29
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That Janey woman was terrible. She was only in the final so we can say how it doesn't matter about age and isn't she "gutsy". Her translated version of Edith Piaf's classic was just embarrassing.
- Goosey, Lincs, 7/6/2010 16:29
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I always record this show and then use the fast forward button, a lot !!!
- PB, Lancashire, 7/6/2010 16:21
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I think that the judges already have a good idea of who they want to win and deliberately push through some of the "less talented" so that the wanted winners will have more of a chance.
- Emma, Brighton, 7/6/2010 16:18
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you sound quite jealous mr graff, i think you should trying being a bit nicer and as for tina and chandi you could see she was confused as to where she was meant to go, and wasnt being defiant. stop trying to influence how people see someone, and to tarnish their reputation.
- susan, blackburn, 7/6/2010 15:56
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These programmes are part of the subtle dumbing down of society. While we are concentrating on endless reality shows, getting personally involved in who wins etc we are ignoring what is really going on in the real world around us. We don't get a breather nowadays as soon as one show ends another one starts. We have endless celebs & every detail fed to us daily, and there are many people who buy into it, and feel its just a harmless past-time, but is it? simon is making money by the bucketload for this for old rope, just pushing it from all angles via the media, shows, merchandise etc.
Something the last government no doubt were grateful for. Even the guy who works on Heat mag and does sky paper reviews used to work for Labour. While people were reading about celebs our country was getting into debt without anyone noticing.
Read 1984, you will be shocked at the similarties fo today. BB cameras, indifference. Noone is a loser, all the stuff we have ingrained into us today.
- anon, uk, 7/6/2010 15:54
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Spellbound are very talented and they no doubt have to work hard for it. They deserved to win.
It just puts to shame Ant & Dec and and the medicore judges who earn all this money for having very little talent at all. If you look past all the hype.
All we do nowadays is celebrate and overpay the mediocre whilst finding something to criticise in genuine talent..
- a, uk, 7/6/2010 15:35
Click to rate Rating 18
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For once I agree with this DM editorial. Apart from Spelbound some acts were just about good enough for a Butlin's summer season, the rest were just a bit of fun at best.
We're in danger of celebrating mediocrity, especially when the judges use very complimentary words to describe the essentially poor acts. Amanda Holden obviously doesn't have a clue and is there for a bit of sparkle and botox. I don't understand Piers Morgan though, as an ex-editor of the Mirror you wouldn't have thought he'd be afraid of making honest cutting comments. Simon is the only remotely honest one but he's going a bit soft.
Britain has got incedible talent, way above what has been shown in this series. ITV should be searching them out and putting them on our Saturday night screens instead of this dated over-rated talent-less show.
- Ed, Manchester, UK, 7/6/2010 15:30
Click to rate Rating 11
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They would make good gymnasts cry. Air-head Holden her usual self ,talentless and boring.
- Molly Cule, UK, 7/6/2010 15:27
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Really talented people don't compete in such events, B.G.T. is a little like the Eurovision song contest, in that any artist, (who knows what they are about) wishing to have future credibility doesn't perform there.
- Ian Simms, Outer Limits, 7/6/2010 15:23
Click to rate Rating 16
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I dont understand what Piers and Amanda are for. They provide NIL insight and NIL entertainment.
The endless "what does this mean to you? -- This means everything to me" interviews are bad enough; but there is a further half hour of padding when Amanda and Pompous Piers get to say absolutely nothing.
I like Simon, and I like the Talent Acts. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have two hours of "talent" and five minutes boring waffle; rather than the other way round.
- TP, Reading, 7/6/2010 15:22
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Sorry but 5 minutes of Spelbound is enough, there's only so much gymnastics a person can watch.
The drummer? how much of that could you stand?
My favourite act was Christopher Stone, I thought he had an amazing voice.
- chris, uk, 7/6/2010 15:22
Click to rate Rating 2
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Merely the song-and-dance version of Big Brother!
- badger, Above the high water line, 7/6/2010 15:22
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Perhaps there should be two prizes. Best real talent and best "oddball"?
- David Rimington, Harrogate, North Yorks UK, 7/6/2010 15:17
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I thought it was a good final, I just wish Twist and Pulse or Gaffney (the drummer) had won. I wonder what mr Graff's ideal line up would have been. Nijinsky, Maria Callas, Maya Angelou, Einstein and Marie Curie perhaps could isolate some radioactive isotopes while clogging. (yes I know they aren't british-or alive except for Angelou, I am just using the names as an example of how mr Graff is apparently very hard to please).
- jen muir, london,uk, 7/6/2010 15:16
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Yes, Gymnastics has been around for years and you say "this has been done before many times" using Cirque du Soleil as an example. Well they are a French Troupe and I don't know of any British Troupes doing gymnastics in the same style of Spelbound. Twist & Pulse were great and were previously part of both Peridot and Mystikal but have managed to put a unique twist on their dancing.
- Kal, England, 7/6/2010 13:39
I agree with all your comments, Kal, but Cirque du Soliel are Canadian, not French.
- Janice, Manchester, 7/6/2010 14:51
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The best thing about this programme is the beautiful Amanda Holden. If she left it really would not be worth watching.
- Goosey, Lincs, 7/6/2010 14:44
Click to rate Rating 48
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It is apparent from his article that DM correspondent Vincent Graff didn't enjoy the show.
I'm always puzzled why someone would sit and watch a program in its entire length when they are obviously not getting any pleasure from doing so.
Perhaps Vincent Graff couldn't think of any other way of amusing himself on Saturday evening...
- Andy, Frodsham, 7/6/2010 14:42
Click to rate Rating 28
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Spelbound were amazing
But- does anyone else think it was irresponsible of the tanning salon to offer free unlimited sunbeds to them? Especially considering the age of some of them
- Angela, Saffron Walden, 7/6/2010 14:25
Click to rate Rating 25
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Why does this article just completely slate absolutely everybody involved with the show? An 82 year old lady who is brave enough to put herself in front of millions of people and sing (and well at that!) doesn't really deserve to be slated.
I agree completely that some of the acts were completely shocking and shouldn't have been put through, they were there for the ratings.
But Spelbound were amazing and yes they are talented. Does it really matter if they're going to achieve the same success as the last lot of winners? They are on a talent show and the prize is to perform in at the Royal Variety Performance. Whatever happens after should be seen as a bonus.
- Helen, Yorkshire, 7/6/2010 13:59
Click to rate Rating 32
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This isn't really a talent show. More a show to see how many crazy sad people can make fools of themselves. Yes I know they volunteer for it and yes some of them do need to be brought down a peg or two, but there are some 'acts' that genuinely seem mentally ill. Why is there no screening process before the auditions start?
Simon is the only one everyone listens to, as he's the only one who knows what he's talking about. Piers, Amanda and Louie just put rubbish acts through so they can laugh at them. They know these people don't have a hope in hell but it makes good ratings for everyone to tune in at home and have a good snigger at a confused old man dressed as a leprechaun. People with real talent don't need shows like this, or Simon for that matter.
- Katie, London, 7/6/2010 13:49
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@ Sally Austen, London, 07/6/2010 12:54
Yes, Gymnastics has been around for years and you say "this has been done before many times" using Cirque du Soleil as an example. Well they are a French Troupe and I don't know of any British Troupes doing gymnastics in the same style of Spelbound. Twist & Pulse were great and were previously part of both Peridot and Mystikal but have managed to put a unique twist on their dancing.
- Kal, England, 7/6/2010 13:39
Click to rate Rating 24
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LOOK at the viewing figures for Saturday night!! Someone said that these sort of shows have had their day. I doubt it!! There are some bitter people writing comments on here. How can anyone say there is no talent on the show. Spelbound were fantastic. Half the people on here slating the show should perhaps enter next year and show the UK exactly what talent they have!!!
- Jen, Surrey, 7/6/2010 13:36
Click to rate Rating 29
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I thought they were truly amazing! I am glad they won. Good luck to them. Im sure they will have no end of offers flooding in. Would love to see them perform live.
- Jake, South Coast, 7/6/2010 13:33
Click to rate Rating 41
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:28
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:27
Click to rate Rating 20
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what a brilliantly written article...BGT....was pants....i wonder what hughie green would think.......
- jonn dobrowski, wpton england, 7/6/2010 13:19
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This years so-called talent were bunch of desperate losers!!! That old bag's singing was a joke! That kid playing the drums was nothing more than a noise, throw in a couple of average male singers, an old dog doing tricks, a Butlins impressionist and a group of gymnasts! BORING!!!!
- Adam, Glasgow, UK, 7/6/2010 13:14
Click to rate Rating 54
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Twist and Pulse should have won. Their originality and talent is second to none. Gymnastics has been around for years and, although Spelbound are clearly a talented bunch, this has been done before many times. Cirque du Soleil for example. Twist and Pulse are new, fresh, highly amusing and it would be hard to compare them to anyone around at present. I honestly think Prince C would agree!
- Sally Austen, London, 7/6/2010 12:54
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The benchmark of any "winner is -
1. Could you go and watch ANY of them live for 2+ hours without being bored after the first 15 minutes ?
2. Would you go to the hastle of driving / parking for such a show and spending £100+ minimum for a pair of tickets?
So being totally honest, based upon the 2 mins snippet of 'talent' you get to see on the show...........would you?
The fact that barely anyone is still around from this show or the "X" Factor after, say, 18 months or 2 years says it all really.
- Gary, Stoke, 7/6/2010 12:45
Click to rate Rating 30
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Although i enjoyed watching bgt up until the final i agree with some people on here some of the acts should not have got through in the first place (camp cruise, chopping wood, gaga and madonna impersonators) my god since when did they have any talent but on the night of the final i decided to watch something with more talent then anything else that was LOTR, best ever film made and in HD fantastic!!
- Kate field, Leeds, 7/6/2010 12:44
Click to rate Rating 18
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This years final line up was no more than a bunch of pub entertainers.
None were/are worthy to be performing at the Royal Command. They are all summer fair cum pub acts.
They are at best novelty acts and nothing more. Most should not have been allowed to get through the first round let alone the final.
On this line up it would indicate sadly that, 'Britain Has Not Got Talent'.
- Pip Waller, North Yorkshire, 7/6/2010 12:33
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Spelbound? just a circus act.
- Gordon Bennett, Bristol UK, 7/6/2010 9:39
And what's wrong with circus acts?
Have you ever seen any of Cirque du Soleil's Vegas shows? Must be amongst the best theatrical entertainment in the world. I'm sure Spelbound have a glittering future and if people in the UK can't appreciate them then I'm sure the US will.
- Stella, Faversham, Kent, 7/6/2010 12:19
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Never watched it, can't be bothered...........
- Kevin kemp, Milton Keynes, 7/6/2010 12:18
Click to rate Rating 13
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The talented people don't get through only the desperate one's make it so we can all laugh at them poor deluded souls only one winner here and we all know who he is.
- a sutherland, hartlepool england, 7/6/2010 12:11
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I am glad they won, but please spell their name correctly, its . . . SPELBOUND. Twist & Pulse were also good.
Can't we just be nice& pleased for them instead of moaning about their class background etc? Good on them, wish I could do what they do!
I thank you.
- NN, Bristol, 7/6/2010 12:07
Click to rate Rating 91
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As usual ' Britain Knocks Winners', I thought they were great, and if Britain doesn't support them Europe will love them. I flicked in and out the show over the weeks, and think that its great that we can still make public fools of ourselves, and believe in ourselves completely. OK it makes a lot of money for Mr Cowell, but he's built himself up a great business, oh, of course we knock him too!
- Jools, Bristol, 7/6/2010 12:02
Click to rate Rating 51
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There's lots of great entertainers in this country but the fact is that not one of them want to put themselves on a show like this, it's career death. My suggestion is to switch off the TV and go and support performers that have been training and performing their whole lives but usually end up playing to about a dozen people on a Saturday night.
- Anya, London, UK, 7/6/2010 11:57
Click to rate Rating 6
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I'm surprised that so far no columnist has commented on the extraordinary stage sets and lighting. No doubt someone is paid a lot of money to mastermind the spotlights and pulses of smoke and flame.
Unfortunately the use of these effects, and also very often the overwhelming backdrops, managed to obscure the perfomers with flashing lights and flame, or if nothing else, to distract the viewer away from the actual performance.
I think the judges should have asked the producer to tone the whole thing down out of fairness to the performers.
- martin, Yeovil, UK, 7/6/2010 11:54
Click to rate Rating 15
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Britains has got talent- but none of them would be seen dead on this show. The truly great talents of the last fifty years would never have succeeded if they'd come through the talent shows.
Talent shows are all about the lowest common denominator. Original talent wouldn't get a second glance. While it's true that talent shows have produced some stars, it could be argued that they'd have made it anyway.
The truly talented artists out there wouldn't touch BGT with a bargepole.
- Dave`, Kettering, 7/6/2010 11:53
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That's right. Start knocking everyone the minute they have a moment of success.
- Stella, London, 7/6/2010 11:50
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I will never know why they wasted semi final positions on wood chopper, lady gaga/madonna impersonators and the old Irish dancer. WASTE.
- CK, Sheff, 7/6/2010 11:49
Click to rate Rating 38
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I intensely dislike it when you are editing my comments when there was absolutely no offence in them. The words "put the poisened pen away" are not offensive.
Either publish my comments as I wrote them or dont publish them at all.
Thank you!
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 11:44
Click to rate Rating 8
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Appalling show. Like X Factor, just an excuse to laugh at some unfortunate deluded people. Simon Cowell is dominating television entertainment - and that's not a good thing.
- Ruth, Britain, 7/6/2010 11:35
Click to rate Rating 6
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Britain has got a lot of talent, they just don't audition for this programme.
- Minxie, UK, 7/6/2010 11:28
Click to rate Rating 24
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Simon Cowell uses the talentless to fill his show and make his millions-and that's just the judges.
- james c, london, 7/6/2010 11:27
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Talent shows have gone ahead leaps and bounds since the days of New Faces and Opportunity Knocks, though those shows did produce some worthy stars like Lenny Henry, Pam Ayres etc.
But this year,s Britain's Got Talent has produced some good acts who will no doubt go on to make a career in showbusiness.
Can't wait for the X-Factor.
- Geoff Wall-Davis,, Longbridge, Birmingham, England., 7/6/2010 11:26
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The show is fun though. We don't believe a word the panel says (Cowell changing his mind from day to day)
Take the programme with a pinch of salt and enjoy ripping someones's act to bits. Bliss.
- CK, UK, 7/6/2010 11:24
Click to rate Rating 14
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Couldn't have put it better myself. Going off what we saw in this programme, Britain's got naff all!
- SUSAN, OLDHAM, 7/6/2010 11:24
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timibob, Alicante Spain
Probably because someone dreamed up a title that would attract the dumbed down TV audiences to watch it! Get it? Lets think of a title that sounds good for people, no matter that we will be abusing people for money! I doubt if they called it what it really is 'The Simon Cowell Bank Balance increasing Show', that they would get many viewers, mind you, maybe they would, some people would watch any rubbish that has a 'Z' list celebrity panel!
- Nigel, Somerset, 7/6/2010 11:15
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It is not a lack of talent in this country that is a problem, it is the quality of the judges simon Cowell uses. Amanda and Piers!!!!!! what does either of them know about performing. That is why some of the acts in the semi finals were so poor, I think they just put them through for the laugh. It must have been hard for some of the good acts who didn't get through to the semis to see some that did! Once the public were allowed to vote the mediocre acts soon disappeared.
Why do they not have judges who know something about singing, dancing or performing of any sort. Instead of Pinky and The Brain????
- Rosie, Belfast, 7/6/2010 11:13
Click to rate Rating 15
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It is surely notable that you don't get serious musicians performing classical music on the show. The bottom line is that there are numerous amateur singers out there on a level with Paul Potts or Susan Boyle or those two young choral singers who did so well last year, and countless singers vastly better than the 80 year old who, let's be honest, would have been straight out in the first round if she had been 30. It's not about who has the most talent, it only about who is the most marketable.
- Liz Ward, Huddersfield UK, 7/6/2010 11:09
Click to rate Rating 19
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Joshua Croydon 11.05
If it's not a talent programme just an entertainment's programme why then is it called "Britain's Got Talent"?
- timibob, Alicante Spain, 7/6/2010 10:47
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The write of this article is so negative. Obviously only his opinion counts!
- Gab, London, 7/6/2010 10:35
Click to rate Rating 31
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we have always had talent shows on tv and i think bgt is the best so far and i love watching it. If people want to do something on there why not even if they do not get anywhere. Only the other day Two grand were giving an interview on our local radio as they were performing at Scunthorpe. Yes, it is only a small town but they had enjoyed a wonderful time performing on BGT and getting work. The adverts inbetween bgt had one with stavros flatley and one with diversity in them. The daily mail had an interview with stavros flatley and what a fantastic year they had. The performers do not have to win to get work. Simon Cowell and his team do a fantastic job, the reviewer does not seem to understand. dontstopgoodentertainment.
- milly, hull east yorkshire, 7/6/2010 10:33
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Joshua, London
You have it wrong: this program, and it's sister shows, have the sole purpose to expand the bank account of Simon Cowell.
- bob, warrington, 7/6/2010 10:27
Click to rate Rating 21
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Josh if this is not a talent programme, why is it called "Britain's Got Talent?"
- Elton, Brighton, 7/6/2010 10:22
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Britain does have talent - a lot of it, but they are, quite rightly, cautious of who they sell their soul to. Andrew Lloyd Webbers programmes have managed to gain the kudos due to previous contestents really making it where they want to be - in the West End. All SC does is use those he finds in the way he wishes and that may mean you are dumped after the tour rather than nurtured (as ALW and his cronies do with those who lose his shows but make the series)
My son has musical talent (not good enough for young musician of the year). I would never let him go for audition to BGT . Never in a million years. Life should be about freedom and creativity.
- Kez100, Plymouth, 7/6/2010 10:22
Click to rate Rating 17
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Joshua, Croydon
None of these people has any real talent, it is all about Simon Cowell making money by humiliating poor deluded fools, who really think they have got a talent, whereas, truth be told they are mediocre to plain rubbish! Cowell uses them, as he has used every act he was ever involved with, to make millions.
He has brought the entertainment business down to his level, the gutter, he has no idea what talent is, he is just a marketing man! None of the, so called, judging panel has the slightest idea about talent, musical or any other, they are just pawns in his greedy little world!
As Victoria Wood says, it's not right to make money from the humiliation of others!
- Nigel, Somerset, 7/6/2010 10:21
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I cannot stand watching anything with Simon Cowell, Ant and Dec and Amanda Holden in. They make me cringe.
- jerry heath, brighton, sussex, 7/6/2010 10:19
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Useless article.
Count the amount of viewers to see whether the general public thought there was a lack of talent on show.
And please learn something about dance if you're seriously trying to criticise Twist and Pulse. Technically superb, not a foot out of place in all of their long, intricate routines, as well as some light-hearted humour to make us all laugh. Deserved second place without a doubt.
- don't worry, South London, 7/6/2010 10:16
Click to rate Rating 40
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Bring back Gladiators (on normal TV), Cilla Black's Blind Date, Beadle's About and Noel's House Party....
Normal Saturday night TV, where you don't have to re-mortgage your house to pay for the telephone vote bill!
(or possibly sacarfice 10 Lambert and Butler and a four pack of Stella)
- Gem, London, 7/6/2010 10:10
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The reviewer doesn't understand the programme.
It is not a talent programme, but an entertainment programme. Its sole purpose is to entertain; whether that be that the audience are shocked, horrified or embarrassed.
The 'oddball' acts are put through to provide difference and entertainment - if they weren't it would be just another streetdance act.
ACCEPT that it's a TV show whose key purpose is to entertain - and this includes the showcasing of the 'oddball' acts.
- Joshua, Croydon, 7/6/2010 10:05
Click to rate Rating 37
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I completely disagree with the article, I think Spellbound were great! They should be congratulated on doing so well and putting in all the hard work and long hours that they do. I was a gymnast once, not as good as them though, but even so I trained 4 days a week and I know how much practise and committment is required to be good at gymnastics; it's a tough sport. Wonder whether the writer of this article could do what they do - I very much doubt it. Out of all the other acts, they probably are the most professional and worked the hardest over the years to get to the level that they've got to. They seem quite polite and down to earth as well, so good to them.
- Louise, London, 7/6/2010 10:02
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I think you have become out of touch with the 'ordinary' person, it is just a TV show that all the family can watch with out worrying about inappropriate language and behaviour, and it IS enjoyable, viewing figures have proved the show is popular and that the general public enjoy it. I think your bosses should perhaps review your skills as a journalist and consider finding a journalist that is in touch with the general public and who's ego is not quite so huge
- sue c, Portsmouth Hants, 7/6/2010 10:00
Click to rate Rating 25
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I will say what I always say about TV shows, if you don't enjoy it, do not watch it. If you think it is failing or not what you have come to expect, don't watch it. If you just want to see some good acts then that's the great thing about BGT, wait until the semis as most of them are brilliant acts. I do not like Big Brother anymore but I do not criticise those that do. Find something you like and enjoy it, but do not criticise what others watch. Especially as 19 million people tuned in to watch the BGT final.
- Lara, Berks, 7/6/2010 9:54
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The article mentions how all these people,like footballers, are schooled in what to say.....We all know the usual repetitive guff.......But I would say that if certain words were removed from the English language'brilliant' and 'amazing' (have you noticed how everything and everyone is or are 'amazing') then a whole generation of young people and tv presenters would be struck dumb......I know, be great wouldnt it....total silence from the 'amazing' generation.
As far as the contestants in BGT are concerned ...none of them were of any use as serious entertainers. Pub acts, novelty dog acts , jumping about the stage..yes yes all very well and good.....and where the hell have all these street dance troupes suddenly sprung up from......If there was anything that proved the saying..seen one you've seen 'em all....they are it....pathetic....
- RB, Brum, 7/6/2010 9:51
Click to rate Rating 6
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Couldn't disagree with this article more.
The BGT final was fun and there was absolutely talent on show - Spelbound were wonderful & showed what dedication, hard work and imagination can achieve. Twist & Pulse and Tobias were fabulous. Liam was adorable and sang like an angel. Tina must have put in hours and hours of work with Chandi and their act was fabulous. Think Mr. Graff must have been watching another programme - or, as I suspect, he didn't watch it at all.
- Gerard, London, 7/6/2010 9:47
Click to rate Rating 35
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I believe britain does have talent, however the production team who audition people in a pre audition before the ones you see on tv are looking for entertaining freaks who really we should not laugh at but get them help. Many talented people do not get through to see simon and the other judges. This show could go on for years because of all the talent that does not get seen. Many wonderful talented people who could have a fantastic career in entertainment dont get a chance any more.
- Annie Hughes, Wirral, 7/6/2010 9:38
Click to rate Rating 31
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Mike from Petersfield, you must be an unemployed working class socialist with a chip on your shoulder the size of Petersfield. Get out of your armchair and get a life. At least Spelbound have motivation, energy and direction. What do you have to offer society? Who cares if they are middle or working class - why does that matter? Can you do what they can? Are you going to be competing in any type of sporting event? Darts don't count by the way, nor does your local pub quiz. Get a life.
- lawrence, bournemouth, 7/6/2010 9:37
Click to rate Rating 63
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One thing this show served to highlight was just how little Simon Cowell knows about music - along with Piers and Amanda he raved about the drummer, Kieran saying how talented he was.
In reality all the kid did was play in 4/4 time, which is the standard for a drummer. As for the raised playing area. He didn't think of that himself - he ripped off the Rush drummer Neil Peart.
I think the problem was that when voting for him, people took into account the backing track rather than just his drumming ability - he was average at best.
- AB, Edinburgh, 7/6/2010 9:37
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If there were a lot of oddballs in the final then that is down to the judges and should not be used as a sly backward opportunity to have a go at everyday people trying to better themselves or make ends meet. It's just a cruel attempt at 'I'm bigger than you' and 'listen to me'. Your opinion was worth nothing to me, from the second you couldn't even be bothered to spell the winners name correctly.
Vincent Graff, whoever you are (probably some nobody), shut up and sit down. I hate it when people think they have the right to heckle someone else having a go.
- Catherine, Blackpool, 7/6/2010 9:36
Click to rate Rating 19
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What a spiteful article.
I thought the BGT final provided a thoroughly entertaining evening of light-hearted TV. How can anyone say that the acts didn't show talent? Some more than others, of course, but with a couple of exceptions the standard was pretty high and the whole programme was easily as fun as the actual Royal Variety Show.
- Sara, Kent, 7/6/2010 9:34
Click to rate Rating 50
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I think that this type of show, including ' Pop Idol' have run thier course. It used to be amusing watching the heats, however, this year it was very emarrasing veiwing. It appears that the so called talented public seem to think that no talent or limited talent will get you through, and the big break is waiting around the corner. What ever happened to hard graft and learning your trade. X Factor Pop Idol and BGT all give the impression that no work is required and celebrity status will be dropped in their laps. What individuals will do for 15 mins of fame and then cry when it does not happen. Did any of these finalists apart from Spellbund reherse, it did not look like it. Very very poor performance and NO TALENT.
- Nancy Burns, Glasgow, 7/6/2010 9:30
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Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity.
- Mike, Petersfield, 07/6/2010 08:50
And your point is what, exactly? Middle-class people can't be talented? Middle-class people can't work their socks off honing a skill in order to give a fantastic performance? I had hoped this bitter sort of class comment was dead.
- Stella, Faversham, Kent, 7/6/2010 9:26
Click to rate Rating 200
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"Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity."
- Mike, Petersfield
I think you'll find Mike that they are not. One of them is a cousin of mine and I can assure you he does come from an honest, working class background.
Why make a comment like that when you obviously have no idea! Jealousy, I assume, is the problem.
- Jenny, Dorset, 7/6/2010 9:25
Click to rate Rating 239
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There is plenty of talent in this country, but this show is not the best forum to bring it out. It's not the acts' fault they have to trot out those tired old cliches about journeys and biggest nights of their lives - they're probably coached by the production team, with the underlying implication that if they don't play ball, they don't have a chance. BGT is primarily about entertainment, and that which is entertaining is not necessarily based on acquired skill or natural ability arduously nurtured. Anyone who entered the competition only to be knocked out in favour of a man whose 'talent' was racing snails should get the message and look to furthering further his/her career by other means. BTW, Twist and Pulse were worthy runners-up, original, skilful and fun, and I for one wish them every success in the future.
- RAS, Bristol, England, 7/6/2010 9:17
Click to rate Rating 27
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Spelbound are good and deserved to win but they have still have some way to go in achieving the sort of polished performances as exhibited by the Cirque Du Soleil acrobats. To watch the amazing 'banquine' act from the Quidam show just google 'cirque du soleil banqine'.
- Sarah, UK, 7/6/2010 9:14
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"Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity."
- Mike, Petersfield
Mike, because they are talented, are you saying they are from a dishonest non-working class background?
- Mikeyboy, Manchester, 7/6/2010 9:11
Click to rate Rating 193
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I agree that it should be called "Britain's Got Freaks" because lordy, how we love the totally appalling acts in the auditions round of both "Britain's Got Talent" and the "X Factor". We love the terribly bad, the terminally deluded and the truly talentless. `
- sd, uk, 7/6/2010 9:07
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Actually I think the writer is missing the whole point. It's not really a talent show, it's a television programme to entertain the viewing public. Good old fashioned tv that the family can sit down and watch together. Cringe, shudder, gasp, laugh and cry together for a couple of hours. That generates a huge audience and massive advertising revenue for ITV. It's called television, well planned and rehearsed. That's why we have those boxes in our house, for entertainment. And when it comes to entertainment we all have different tastes, 19 million like this programme.
- Brian, Spain, 7/6/2010 9:06
Click to rate Rating 148
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Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity.
- Mike, Petersfield, 7/6/2010 8:50
Click to rate Rating 401
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english and welsh soldiers killed in A/gstan over w/end ........, and we have debate on this glorified talent show,,,,,,,,,
- rob, Scotland, 7/6/2010 8:49
Click to rate Rating 82
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I think this review is slightly unfair. Yes there weren't as many talented acts this year as there previously have been but they weren't that bad! Twist and Pulse were original and fun and a good example of how not all teenagers are gang membered hooligans. Spellbound were amazing. This is a talent show to find a performer for the royal variety show, which is by nature slightly cheesy anyway. There was variety and I for one enjoyed all 2 .5 hours of it!!
- Kate, London, 7/6/2010 8:39
Click to rate Rating 243
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Spelbound? just a circus act.
You can't blame Cowell and Co for taking the money and running.
It's all down to the potatoes that sit and watch this padded overblown garbage.
- Gordon Bennett, Bristol UK, 7/6/2010 8:39
Click to rate Rating 153
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Maybe we can look forward to som edecent programmes being made...or more likely even more frequent showings of repeats of Porridge, Morecambe and Wise and Dad's Army ... all of which I would much prefer to these so called "Talent" shows!
- Jeremy, London, 7/6/2010 8:01
Click to rate Rating 71
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The heats for this were ridiculous - they put through someone walked about the stage apparently dressed as Madonna and yet a musician who had spent 40 years perfecting his clarinet playing was rudely dismissed by Amanda Holden. I bet the Queen would have preferred to har a beautiful piece of music played well, rather than a daft bloke dressed as Madonna.
- fed - up, colchester, 7/6/2010 7:59
Click to rate Rating 172
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what a load of rubbish on BGT and what the judges thinking of an 80 year old women not singing but shouting and screeching and not in tune .
he only decent group was spellbound and the singing accountent,now we cal look forward to the american rubbish next week
- colin, ellesmere port, 7/6/2010 7:58
Click to rate Rating 11
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Itdoesn't matter whether the 'talent' is good enough or not. The show will survive as long as people are willing to continue paying Cowell via trheir phone bills.
- David, Bristol, 7/6/2010 7:54
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The finals were good, yes, Janey Cutler was out of sinc put I like to see you doing that at the age of 81.
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 7:53
Click to rate Rating 27
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Why? Why? Why do you do it? BGT was brilliant there was loads of talent and it was fabulous. You are talking rubbish. So shut up if you havent got anything positive to say.
- Tilly, Monmouth, 7/6/2010 7:47
Click to rate Rating 36
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Why is everyone always so negative?! It was a great show, full of talent, yet you newspapers just have to criticise. Is it because you're jealous of Simon Cowell? It just seems stupid that you are putting down something enjoyed by so many.
- Alex Potley, Leicester, 7/6/2010 7:46
Click to rate Rating 31
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How cruel this article is. As regards Tina not leaving the stage quickly enough for Ant and Dec, with all the racket from a revved up audience Tina was probably concentrating on keeping her dog calm. Simon left it until the final to say he thought Chandi was getting too old. The sooner Cowell and co. return to oblivion the better.
- Max Davies, Aberdeen., 7/6/2010 7:38
Click to rate Rating 4
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After watching the auditions I thought some of the finalists were very good but as soon as the live show came they were rubbish!
I think its time to scrap this poor excuse for a entertainment show and put something decent on!
- Mak D, London, 7/6/2010 7:33
Click to rate Rating 46
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Couldn't agree more that Britain has NOT got talent according to what was on offer on Saturday night. The acts were dreadful it was painful to watch. I cannot understand why the 80 year old scottish lady was put through as she sang out of key. She shouldn't have been put through out of sympathy because of her age. What a talentless bunch apart from Spelbound who were fantastic and could actually entertain. Well Done to them and the rest were rubbish!!
- Peggy, Broadstairs, Kent, 7/6/2010 7:27
Click to rate Rating 8
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I thought Janey's performance was dreadful. It was the worst act of the night and she should never have been put in that position. At 80 she is a remarkable women who is obviously going DEAF and could not hear the music properly hence she was behind the beat and struggled through her whole song. The same thing happened during her performance in the Semi-Final and I thought she would have had a "spotter" to tell her when to start singing. Her best performance was the audition!! Why did Simon and Co put thru Chandi if they thought she was old and past her best. BGT this year has been very poor indeed. No excitement at all for the Final.
Itdoesn't matter whether the 'talent' is good enough or not. The show will survive as long as people are willing to continue paying Cowell via trheir phone bills.
- David, Bristol, 7/6/2010 7:54
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The finals were good, yes, Janey Cutler was out of sinc put I like to see you doing that at the age of 81.
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 7:53
Click to rate Rating 29
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Why? Why? Why do you do it? BGT was brilliant there was loads of talent and it was fabulous. You are talking rubbish. So shut up if you havent got anything positive to say.
- Tilly, Monmouth, 7/6/2010 7:47
Click to rate Rating 36
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Why is everyone always so negative?! It was a great show, full of talent, yet you newspapers just have to criticise. Is it because you're jealous of Simon Cowell? It just seems stupid that you are putting down something enjoyed by so many.
- Alex Potley, Leicester, 7/6/2010 7:46
Click to rate Rating 31
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How cruel this article is. As regards Tina not leaving the stage quickly enough for Ant and Dec, with all the racket from a revved up audience Tina was probably concentrating on keeping her dog calm. Simon left it until the final to say he thought Chandi was getting too old. The sooner Cowell and co. return to oblivion the better.
- Max Davies, Aberdeen., 7/6/2010 7:38
Click to rate Rating 4
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After watching the auditions I thought some of the finalists were very good but as soon as the live show came they were rubbish!
I think its time to scrap this poor excuse for a entertainment show and put something decent on!
- Mak D, London, 7/6/2010 7:33
Click to rate Rating 45
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Couldn't agree more that Britain has NOT got talent according to what was on offer on Saturday night. The acts were dreadful it was painful to watch. I cannot understand why the 80 year old scottish lady was put through as she sang out of key. She shouldn't have been put through out of sympathy because of her age. What a talentless bunch apart from Spelbound who were fantastic and could actually entertain. Well Done to them and the rest were rubbish!!
- Peggy, Broadstairs, Kent, 7/6/2010 7:27
Click to rate Rating 9
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I thought Janey's performance was dreadful. It was the worst act of the night and she should never have been put in that position. At 80 she is a remarkable women who is obviously going DEAF and could not hear the music properly hence she was behind the beat and struggled through her whole song. The same thing happened during her performance in the Semi-Final and I thought she would have had a "spotter" to tell her when to start singing. Her best performance was the audition!! Why did Simon and Co put thru Chandi if they thought she was old and past her best. BGT this year has been very poor indeed. No excitement at all for the Final.
- Rita Ex Pat, Bonn Germany, 7/6/2010 7:14
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Sounds like someone has a grudge against people trying to go for something they believe in. Janey Cutler is 81 years old for god sake, id praise her for just getting on stage and humming to a song, yea she might have lost her way with the song, it werent terrible but for a person of that age to at least attempt a song like that, then you have to give her credit. I actually think the line up was ok just the fact that i think there were a few people that should have come through instead of some of the other contestants.
all in all, i enjoyed watching the show, if anything, they should be given respect for going up on stage and doing what they believe in
- Dan, Hong Kong, China, 7/6/2010 7:09
Click to rate Rating 20
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The winners were fine! The probelm is this kind of trail by tv show! Give them this then all of the council; estates will come running! Was so much better when they under control by Ted Rogers.
- simon kk, Higuey DR, 7/6/2010 6:41
Click to rate Rating 12
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It was a great show and thoroughly deserved last nights Bafta . All the acts gave 100% and were more than qualified to be in the final. A few of them will, I am sure, go on to make brilliant careers.
Well done to you all, and thank you.
- Linda, Maida Vale, 7/6/2010 6:00
Click to rate Rating 36
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A funny, but well-written article.
- Pip, United Kingdom, 7/6/2010 5:52
Click to rate Rating 25
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Oh, don't be so miserable! It was a fun show and a nice treat for kids, too, allowed to stay up a bit later during half-term.
Personally, I'm missing it already and no, I'm not an uneducated slob with no life, just in case you're wondering, I'm a lecturer in English Literature.
(psst! I love Big Brother, X Factor and Jeremy Kyle, too - shocking isn't it?)
- Sue, UK, 7/6/2010 4:59
Click to rate Rating 34
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Although I don't do dance, I was amused by Twist & Pulse, and admired the effort they must have put in to attain such a high standard. That being said, this was, to me, their worst performance.
The granny was, simply, dire. Out of tune, and using someone else's teeth.
The boy band were cute, I guess. But they, too, had difficulties holding tune, and have the added problem of puberty and changing voices. Or so they hope.
- Chris, Southampton, 7/6/2010 4:30
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Britain's Got Talent is entertaining because we need a respite from what's happening around the world.! It's amazing that Twist & Pulse came in second when someone so incredibley talented like Christopher Stone wasn't even mentioned . I guess the British masses have really poor taste????? Who do you think is voting for these untalented oddballs?
My grandchildren loved watching Tina & Chandi, and so did my husband. I spent nearly an hour letting them watch Tina & Chandi on the internet after we saw it the first time. There have also been numerous young singers on BGT who have been extremely talented. I was thinking that America doesn't have many talented people after watching BGT for the last several years. Adam Lambert was definitely a star, but this year's performer's wern't terribly impressive.
- cjay, Indianapolis, IN USA, 7/6/2010 4:19
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bring back tobias.. least his act was entertaining...while spellbound have a lot of talent (and yes i know its britains got TALENT) they just werent exciting enough for me. Whereas acts like tobias mead, twist and pull, tina and chandi or even paul burling were entertaining and fun..surely thats what makes an act worthy of winning...bit disappointed really, but good luck to all of them for the future
- lauren, watford, 7/6/2010 3:09
Click to rate Rating 34
Tonight, there could be a surprise in store, I've got a feeling,' declared Simon Cowell at the start of Saturday Britain's Got Talent final.
'This is the best and strongest line-up of talent we've ever had,' agreed fellow judge Amanda Holden. 'A night to be proud of Britain,' chimed Piers Morgan.
Alas, a more honest introduction would have been: 'Tune in for tonight's largely lacklustre line-up.....oh, and by the way, the result is a foregone conclusion'
Spelbound
Spelbound: 1 Abigail Ralph, 2 Nicholas Illingworth, 3 Adam McAssey, 4 Alex Uttley, 5 Adam Buckingham, 6 Douglas Fordyce, 7 Leighanne Cowler, 8 Jonathan Strainks, 9 Amy Mackenzie, 10 Katie Axten, 11 Lauren Kemp, 12 Edward Upcott, 13 Hollianne Wood
The simple truth was, too many of the finalists just didn't deserve to be there. And though the best act won on the night, the evens-favourite Spellbound were technically superb but lacking much in the way of showbiz charisma.
More Vorsprung Durch Technik than Va-va-va-voom.
With their skimpy PVC costumes, perfectlyrippled torsos and plastinated hair they resembled the cloned product of some twisted genius desperate for world domination. But that's enough about Simon Cowell.
Spelbound
Strongest act: Spelbound take the Britain's Got Talent crown
Yes, their routine took guts - at one point, catapulting a young gymnast over the heads of the judges (no mean achievement, given the size of Piers Morgan's ego) - but have they got staying power?
God knows, the rest of us certainly needed it. Two-and-a-half hours! A marathon of Cowell's botoxed brow struggling to form a frown, Holden's 'my-eyes-are-so-wide-open-I'm-going-to-fall-over' gaze and Morgan's practised ' sincerity' look.
And, of course, the small matter of ten of the nation's (allegedly) finest acts competing for £100,000 and a place in the next Royal Variety Performance.
In fact, throughout this series, there wasn't much evidence that Britain's Got Talent at all.
Rather, it was proof that Britain's Got Lots of Oddballs Down the Pub.
Performers with the sort of obscure aptitude that's hard to acquire but dull to watch for more than 30 seconds.
Earlier on in the auditions process, we'd been treated to an egg swallower, a woman who plays the teapot using a washing-up glove and a man with a floppy grey elephant's trunk fixed over his private parts.
Then there was the 'kindling king', a bloke with a trestle table and a big knife, who sang and, er, chopped wood.
And Kevin Cruise, a camp singer and dancer who performed next to a 6ft bubble-blowing model of a cruise ship and whose main achievement was to make Graham Norton seem butch. An excruciating BBC sitcom surely beckons.
During previous BGT series, fruitcakes like these were brought in to provide fleeting comedy moments amid the high drama - and to give a sense of superiority to us couch potatoes at home.
Britains Got Talent
Britains Got Talent: A marathon of Cowell's botoxed brow, Holden's 'my-eyes-are-so-wide-open-I'm-going-to-fall-over' gaze and Morgan's practised ' sincerity' look
But this year, someone forgot to tell the judges and the voting public to weed out all the pub acts before the final.
Thus we had Twist and Pulse (who inexplicably came second on Saturday) - two cockney dancers, dressed as playing-card jokers, who performed comedy streetdance to snatches of the theme tunes from Scooby Doo and The Simpsons.
Then there was the impressionist. Paul Burlong has been a holiday camp entertainer for 25 years and looks like the Pontin's workhorse that he is.
Kevin Cruise
Fruitcake: Camp singer and dancer Kevin Cruise
When he began imitating Billy Connolly (at least, I think it was supposed to be him) we were transported back more than 30 years to ITV's last 'anyone can enter' talent show, New Faces.
More...
* Going for gold, the Britain's Got Talent winners reveal their dream of Olympic success
* And now for 2012: Britain's Got Talent winners Spelbound lined up to appear at the London Olympics
It would have been impolitic for Amanda Holden to make the comparison with the old programme - she'd hardly want to admit that BGT is Mickie Most with a shinier floor, some dry ice, and operatic music - but she gave the game away somewhat when she congratulated Burlong for the fact that there was 'no Frank Spencer' during his act.
Is that what it takes to impress the judges nowadays?
To forego the 'do a whoopsie' schtick?
The evening, more than anything else, was a celebration of the staying power of the British cliche industry. These days TV contestants - the 'real people', who conveniently don't ask for a fee - are so schooled in the language of the medium that they know what they're expected to say, how they're expected to say it and usually when to shed a tear (though mercifully there weren't many this time).
Twist and Pulse
Runners up: Twist and Pulse -two cockney dancers, dressed as playing-card jokers
Their script could have come from any one of Alan Sugar's '110-percenters' on The Apprentice or the pre-match interviews we're about to endure at the World Cup. Everyone is 'about to embark on the most important night' of his or her life... they 'know there are no second chances'... they're to 'go out there and give it their all'.
Alas, sometimes even that's not enough. The most poignant moment of the night was its biggest disaster. White-haired Scottish granny Janey Cutler, 81, was supposed to be this year's Susan Boyle.
But it didn't quite turn out like that. Singing an English translation of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - that managed to strip the song of all its mystique and grace - she performed virtually the whole song out of sync, a full phrase behind the backing track. Then ended the screeching performance on a painful flat note.
Janey Cutler
White-haired Scottish granny Janey Cutler, 81,singing an English translation of Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien - that managed to strip the song of all its mystique and grace
The judges, as one, treated her with uncharacteristic mercy. Cowell told her what a 'gutsy lady' she is and how well she'd done to catch up with where she should have been all along.
Even the meanest man on TV knows there are no points to be gained by being beastly to a sweet old lady trying her best.
There was another moment of mercy later in the show, when seven of the 10 contestants were told that they had not made it into the final.
Six obediently left the stage, resigned to their fate, but either confusion or defiance meant that Tina and her dancing dog Chandi did not budge.
'Tina, Tina. Just out the back, pet,' said Ant, ushering the poor woman towards the exit with the same tone of voice you'd use before putting your dog out last thing at night.
Earlier in the evening, Cowell had voiced concerns that Chandi - at one time, a hot favourite to win - was looking old and tired and that perhaps the kindest thing would be for the night to serve as the swansong of the mutt's career.
On the evidence of this series, one might say the same thing about Britain's Got Talent.
Comments (108)
Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below, or debate this issue live on our message boards.
The show was flagging and then 'suddenly' in come Spelbound who are magnificent, many of them gymnastic champions in their individual disciplines. Worthy winners and certainly wonderful ambassadors for youth, dedication and the 2012 Olympics to demonstrate the SportsAcro. Coinidence? Saved the show that is for sure but I suppose whatever at least they put in the work to become as breathtaking as they are
- amazonmothe, hastings, 7/6/2010 16:55
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Well I thought the show was brilliant and good on all the people who entered it. If the knockers of this and other shows like it are so against them then they know where the 'off' button is. It's called entertainment folks, and unlike some of the people who've posted here us who enjoy these shows see them as entertainment and don't try to read too much into the motives behind them. I hope the contestants get a decent living out of it - I doubt any of them will be superstars but if their quality of life is improved by participating then good luck to them - all of them!
- jackie, manchester, 7/6/2010 16:37
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I always record this show and then use the fast forward button a lot !!
- ubuntuphil, Lancashire, 7/6/2010 16:36
Click to rate Rating 9
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:27
Barry
I dont know why you got red arrowed (they can give me purple) But I totally agree with you. It happened on X factor 2009 too when he passed up Lucie for Jedward with a very lame excuse.
I am happy for Spellbound, but if you follow gymnastics especially in the olympics and want to be truthful, spellbound is not as good as chinese,russian and american and other east european gymnasts.
THAT IS IF ONE WANTS TO BE TRUTHFUL
- andrea shane, bedford, 7/6/2010 16:31
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I'm definitely going to audition for BGT next year as a Cheryl Cole tribute act. I'd wear a copy of her sparkly leotard which I ran up on my sewing machine. I'm sure the audience will absolutely love my performance as the great lady and I'd get a standing ovation from everyone in the theatre including all 3 judges. Simon will be left smiling with utter admiration for me. I would then easily sail through my semi-final to get to the big final.
Chavina - a star is born.
- Chavina, UK, 7/6/2010 16:29
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That Janey woman was terrible. She was only in the final so we can say how it doesn't matter about age and isn't she "gutsy". Her translated version of Edith Piaf's classic was just embarrassing.
- Goosey, Lincs, 7/6/2010 16:29
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I always record this show and then use the fast forward button, a lot !!!
- PB, Lancashire, 7/6/2010 16:21
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I think that the judges already have a good idea of who they want to win and deliberately push through some of the "less talented" so that the wanted winners will have more of a chance.
- Emma, Brighton, 7/6/2010 16:18
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you sound quite jealous mr graff, i think you should trying being a bit nicer and as for tina and chandi you could see she was confused as to where she was meant to go, and wasnt being defiant. stop trying to influence how people see someone, and to tarnish their reputation.
- susan, blackburn, 7/6/2010 15:56
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These programmes are part of the subtle dumbing down of society. While we are concentrating on endless reality shows, getting personally involved in who wins etc we are ignoring what is really going on in the real world around us. We don't get a breather nowadays as soon as one show ends another one starts. We have endless celebs & every detail fed to us daily, and there are many people who buy into it, and feel its just a harmless past-time, but is it? simon is making money by the bucketload for this for old rope, just pushing it from all angles via the media, shows, merchandise etc.
Something the last government no doubt were grateful for. Even the guy who works on Heat mag and does sky paper reviews used to work for Labour. While people were reading about celebs our country was getting into debt without anyone noticing.
Read 1984, you will be shocked at the similarties fo today. BB cameras, indifference. Noone is a loser, all the stuff we have ingrained into us today.
- anon, uk, 7/6/2010 15:54
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Spellbound are very talented and they no doubt have to work hard for it. They deserved to win.
It just puts to shame Ant & Dec and and the medicore judges who earn all this money for having very little talent at all. If you look past all the hype.
All we do nowadays is celebrate and overpay the mediocre whilst finding something to criticise in genuine talent..
- a, uk, 7/6/2010 15:35
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For once I agree with this DM editorial. Apart from Spelbound some acts were just about good enough for a Butlin's summer season, the rest were just a bit of fun at best.
We're in danger of celebrating mediocrity, especially when the judges use very complimentary words to describe the essentially poor acts. Amanda Holden obviously doesn't have a clue and is there for a bit of sparkle and botox. I don't understand Piers Morgan though, as an ex-editor of the Mirror you wouldn't have thought he'd be afraid of making honest cutting comments. Simon is the only remotely honest one but he's going a bit soft.
Britain has got incedible talent, way above what has been shown in this series. ITV should be searching them out and putting them on our Saturday night screens instead of this dated over-rated talent-less show.
- Ed, Manchester, UK, 7/6/2010 15:30
Click to rate Rating 11
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They would make good gymnasts cry. Air-head Holden her usual self ,talentless and boring.
- Molly Cule, UK, 7/6/2010 15:27
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Really talented people don't compete in such events, B.G.T. is a little like the Eurovision song contest, in that any artist, (who knows what they are about) wishing to have future credibility doesn't perform there.
- Ian Simms, Outer Limits, 7/6/2010 15:23
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I dont understand what Piers and Amanda are for. They provide NIL insight and NIL entertainment.
The endless "what does this mean to you? -- This means everything to me" interviews are bad enough; but there is a further half hour of padding when Amanda and Pompous Piers get to say absolutely nothing.
I like Simon, and I like the Talent Acts. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have two hours of "talent" and five minutes boring waffle; rather than the other way round.
- TP, Reading, 7/6/2010 15:22
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Sorry but 5 minutes of Spelbound is enough, there's only so much gymnastics a person can watch.
The drummer? how much of that could you stand?
My favourite act was Christopher Stone, I thought he had an amazing voice.
- chris, uk, 7/6/2010 15:22
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Merely the song-and-dance version of Big Brother!
- badger, Above the high water line, 7/6/2010 15:22
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Perhaps there should be two prizes. Best real talent and best "oddball"?
- David Rimington, Harrogate, North Yorks UK, 7/6/2010 15:17
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I thought it was a good final, I just wish Twist and Pulse or Gaffney (the drummer) had won. I wonder what mr Graff's ideal line up would have been. Nijinsky, Maria Callas, Maya Angelou, Einstein and Marie Curie perhaps could isolate some radioactive isotopes while clogging. (yes I know they aren't british-or alive except for Angelou, I am just using the names as an example of how mr Graff is apparently very hard to please).
- jen muir, london,uk, 7/6/2010 15:16
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Yes, Gymnastics has been around for years and you say "this has been done before many times" using Cirque du Soleil as an example. Well they are a French Troupe and I don't know of any British Troupes doing gymnastics in the same style of Spelbound. Twist & Pulse were great and were previously part of both Peridot and Mystikal but have managed to put a unique twist on their dancing.
- Kal, England, 7/6/2010 13:39
I agree with all your comments, Kal, but Cirque du Soliel are Canadian, not French.
- Janice, Manchester, 7/6/2010 14:51
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The best thing about this programme is the beautiful Amanda Holden. If she left it really would not be worth watching.
- Goosey, Lincs, 7/6/2010 14:44
Click to rate Rating 48
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It is apparent from his article that DM correspondent Vincent Graff didn't enjoy the show.
I'm always puzzled why someone would sit and watch a program in its entire length when they are obviously not getting any pleasure from doing so.
Perhaps Vincent Graff couldn't think of any other way of amusing himself on Saturday evening...
- Andy, Frodsham, 7/6/2010 14:42
Click to rate Rating 28
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Spelbound were amazing
But- does anyone else think it was irresponsible of the tanning salon to offer free unlimited sunbeds to them? Especially considering the age of some of them
- Angela, Saffron Walden, 7/6/2010 14:25
Click to rate Rating 25
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Why does this article just completely slate absolutely everybody involved with the show? An 82 year old lady who is brave enough to put herself in front of millions of people and sing (and well at that!) doesn't really deserve to be slated.
I agree completely that some of the acts were completely shocking and shouldn't have been put through, they were there for the ratings.
But Spelbound were amazing and yes they are talented. Does it really matter if they're going to achieve the same success as the last lot of winners? They are on a talent show and the prize is to perform in at the Royal Variety Performance. Whatever happens after should be seen as a bonus.
- Helen, Yorkshire, 7/6/2010 13:59
Click to rate Rating 32
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This isn't really a talent show. More a show to see how many crazy sad people can make fools of themselves. Yes I know they volunteer for it and yes some of them do need to be brought down a peg or two, but there are some 'acts' that genuinely seem mentally ill. Why is there no screening process before the auditions start?
Simon is the only one everyone listens to, as he's the only one who knows what he's talking about. Piers, Amanda and Louie just put rubbish acts through so they can laugh at them. They know these people don't have a hope in hell but it makes good ratings for everyone to tune in at home and have a good snigger at a confused old man dressed as a leprechaun. People with real talent don't need shows like this, or Simon for that matter.
- Katie, London, 7/6/2010 13:49
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@ Sally Austen, London, 07/6/2010 12:54
Yes, Gymnastics has been around for years and you say "this has been done before many times" using Cirque du Soleil as an example. Well they are a French Troupe and I don't know of any British Troupes doing gymnastics in the same style of Spelbound. Twist & Pulse were great and were previously part of both Peridot and Mystikal but have managed to put a unique twist on their dancing.
- Kal, England, 7/6/2010 13:39
Click to rate Rating 24
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LOOK at the viewing figures for Saturday night!! Someone said that these sort of shows have had their day. I doubt it!! There are some bitter people writing comments on here. How can anyone say there is no talent on the show. Spelbound were fantastic. Half the people on here slating the show should perhaps enter next year and show the UK exactly what talent they have!!!
- Jen, Surrey, 7/6/2010 13:36
Click to rate Rating 29
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I thought they were truly amazing! I am glad they won. Good luck to them. Im sure they will have no end of offers flooding in. Would love to see them perform live.
- Jake, South Coast, 7/6/2010 13:33
Click to rate Rating 41
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:28
Click to rate Rating 18
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The only 'act' they could have given Spelbound a run for their money never appeared in the final. I am talking about Olivia Archibold. How on earth, why on earth, the judges passed her over for Tobias Meade is beyond me. She has the most gorgeous voice. Surely a promoter worth his/her salt will sign her up otherwise what's life living for?
- Barry Chick, Edmonton, London, N9, 7/6/2010 13:27
Click to rate Rating 20
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what a brilliantly written article...BGT....was pants....i wonder what hughie green would think.......
- jonn dobrowski, wpton england, 7/6/2010 13:19
Click to rate Rating 7
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This years so-called talent were bunch of desperate losers!!! That old bag's singing was a joke! That kid playing the drums was nothing more than a noise, throw in a couple of average male singers, an old dog doing tricks, a Butlins impressionist and a group of gymnasts! BORING!!!!
- Adam, Glasgow, UK, 7/6/2010 13:14
Click to rate Rating 54
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Twist and Pulse should have won. Their originality and talent is second to none. Gymnastics has been around for years and, although Spelbound are clearly a talented bunch, this has been done before many times. Cirque du Soleil for example. Twist and Pulse are new, fresh, highly amusing and it would be hard to compare them to anyone around at present. I honestly think Prince C would agree!
- Sally Austen, London, 7/6/2010 12:54
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The benchmark of any "winner is -
1. Could you go and watch ANY of them live for 2+ hours without being bored after the first 15 minutes ?
2. Would you go to the hastle of driving / parking for such a show and spending £100+ minimum for a pair of tickets?
So being totally honest, based upon the 2 mins snippet of 'talent' you get to see on the show...........would you?
The fact that barely anyone is still around from this show or the "X" Factor after, say, 18 months or 2 years says it all really.
- Gary, Stoke, 7/6/2010 12:45
Click to rate Rating 30
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Although i enjoyed watching bgt up until the final i agree with some people on here some of the acts should not have got through in the first place (camp cruise, chopping wood, gaga and madonna impersonators) my god since when did they have any talent but on the night of the final i decided to watch something with more talent then anything else that was LOTR, best ever film made and in HD fantastic!!
- Kate field, Leeds, 7/6/2010 12:44
Click to rate Rating 18
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This years final line up was no more than a bunch of pub entertainers.
None were/are worthy to be performing at the Royal Command. They are all summer fair cum pub acts.
They are at best novelty acts and nothing more. Most should not have been allowed to get through the first round let alone the final.
On this line up it would indicate sadly that, 'Britain Has Not Got Talent'.
- Pip Waller, North Yorkshire, 7/6/2010 12:33
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Spelbound? just a circus act.
- Gordon Bennett, Bristol UK, 7/6/2010 9:39
And what's wrong with circus acts?
Have you ever seen any of Cirque du Soleil's Vegas shows? Must be amongst the best theatrical entertainment in the world. I'm sure Spelbound have a glittering future and if people in the UK can't appreciate them then I'm sure the US will.
- Stella, Faversham, Kent, 7/6/2010 12:19
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Never watched it, can't be bothered...........
- Kevin kemp, Milton Keynes, 7/6/2010 12:18
Click to rate Rating 13
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The talented people don't get through only the desperate one's make it so we can all laugh at them poor deluded souls only one winner here and we all know who he is.
- a sutherland, hartlepool england, 7/6/2010 12:11
Click to rate Rating 6
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I am glad they won, but please spell their name correctly, its . . . SPELBOUND. Twist & Pulse were also good.
Can't we just be nice& pleased for them instead of moaning about their class background etc? Good on them, wish I could do what they do!
I thank you.
- NN, Bristol, 7/6/2010 12:07
Click to rate Rating 91
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As usual ' Britain Knocks Winners', I thought they were great, and if Britain doesn't support them Europe will love them. I flicked in and out the show over the weeks, and think that its great that we can still make public fools of ourselves, and believe in ourselves completely. OK it makes a lot of money for Mr Cowell, but he's built himself up a great business, oh, of course we knock him too!
- Jools, Bristol, 7/6/2010 12:02
Click to rate Rating 51
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There's lots of great entertainers in this country but the fact is that not one of them want to put themselves on a show like this, it's career death. My suggestion is to switch off the TV and go and support performers that have been training and performing their whole lives but usually end up playing to about a dozen people on a Saturday night.
- Anya, London, UK, 7/6/2010 11:57
Click to rate Rating 6
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I'm surprised that so far no columnist has commented on the extraordinary stage sets and lighting. No doubt someone is paid a lot of money to mastermind the spotlights and pulses of smoke and flame.
Unfortunately the use of these effects, and also very often the overwhelming backdrops, managed to obscure the perfomers with flashing lights and flame, or if nothing else, to distract the viewer away from the actual performance.
I think the judges should have asked the producer to tone the whole thing down out of fairness to the performers.
- martin, Yeovil, UK, 7/6/2010 11:54
Click to rate Rating 15
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Britains has got talent- but none of them would be seen dead on this show. The truly great talents of the last fifty years would never have succeeded if they'd come through the talent shows.
Talent shows are all about the lowest common denominator. Original talent wouldn't get a second glance. While it's true that talent shows have produced some stars, it could be argued that they'd have made it anyway.
The truly talented artists out there wouldn't touch BGT with a bargepole.
- Dave`, Kettering, 7/6/2010 11:53
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That's right. Start knocking everyone the minute they have a moment of success.
- Stella, London, 7/6/2010 11:50
Click to rate Rating 1
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I will never know why they wasted semi final positions on wood chopper, lady gaga/madonna impersonators and the old Irish dancer. WASTE.
- CK, Sheff, 7/6/2010 11:49
Click to rate Rating 38
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I intensely dislike it when you are editing my comments when there was absolutely no offence in them. The words "put the poisened pen away" are not offensive.
Either publish my comments as I wrote them or dont publish them at all.
Thank you!
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 11:44
Click to rate Rating 8
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Appalling show. Like X Factor, just an excuse to laugh at some unfortunate deluded people. Simon Cowell is dominating television entertainment - and that's not a good thing.
- Ruth, Britain, 7/6/2010 11:35
Click to rate Rating 6
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Britain has got a lot of talent, they just don't audition for this programme.
- Minxie, UK, 7/6/2010 11:28
Click to rate Rating 24
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Simon Cowell uses the talentless to fill his show and make his millions-and that's just the judges.
- james c, london, 7/6/2010 11:27
Click to rate Rating 5
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Talent shows have gone ahead leaps and bounds since the days of New Faces and Opportunity Knocks, though those shows did produce some worthy stars like Lenny Henry, Pam Ayres etc.
But this year,s Britain's Got Talent has produced some good acts who will no doubt go on to make a career in showbusiness.
Can't wait for the X-Factor.
- Geoff Wall-Davis,, Longbridge, Birmingham, England., 7/6/2010 11:26
Click to rate Rating 4
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The show is fun though. We don't believe a word the panel says (Cowell changing his mind from day to day)
Take the programme with a pinch of salt and enjoy ripping someones's act to bits. Bliss.
- CK, UK, 7/6/2010 11:24
Click to rate Rating 14
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Couldn't have put it better myself. Going off what we saw in this programme, Britain's got naff all!
- SUSAN, OLDHAM, 7/6/2010 11:24
Click to rate Rating 2
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timibob, Alicante Spain
Probably because someone dreamed up a title that would attract the dumbed down TV audiences to watch it! Get it? Lets think of a title that sounds good for people, no matter that we will be abusing people for money! I doubt if they called it what it really is 'The Simon Cowell Bank Balance increasing Show', that they would get many viewers, mind you, maybe they would, some people would watch any rubbish that has a 'Z' list celebrity panel!
- Nigel, Somerset, 7/6/2010 11:15
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It is not a lack of talent in this country that is a problem, it is the quality of the judges simon Cowell uses. Amanda and Piers!!!!!! what does either of them know about performing. That is why some of the acts in the semi finals were so poor, I think they just put them through for the laugh. It must have been hard for some of the good acts who didn't get through to the semis to see some that did! Once the public were allowed to vote the mediocre acts soon disappeared.
Why do they not have judges who know something about singing, dancing or performing of any sort. Instead of Pinky and The Brain????
- Rosie, Belfast, 7/6/2010 11:13
Click to rate Rating 15
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It is surely notable that you don't get serious musicians performing classical music on the show. The bottom line is that there are numerous amateur singers out there on a level with Paul Potts or Susan Boyle or those two young choral singers who did so well last year, and countless singers vastly better than the 80 year old who, let's be honest, would have been straight out in the first round if she had been 30. It's not about who has the most talent, it only about who is the most marketable.
- Liz Ward, Huddersfield UK, 7/6/2010 11:09
Click to rate Rating 19
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Joshua Croydon 11.05
If it's not a talent programme just an entertainment's programme why then is it called "Britain's Got Talent"?
- timibob, Alicante Spain, 7/6/2010 10:47
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The write of this article is so negative. Obviously only his opinion counts!
- Gab, London, 7/6/2010 10:35
Click to rate Rating 31
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we have always had talent shows on tv and i think bgt is the best so far and i love watching it. If people want to do something on there why not even if they do not get anywhere. Only the other day Two grand were giving an interview on our local radio as they were performing at Scunthorpe. Yes, it is only a small town but they had enjoyed a wonderful time performing on BGT and getting work. The adverts inbetween bgt had one with stavros flatley and one with diversity in them. The daily mail had an interview with stavros flatley and what a fantastic year they had. The performers do not have to win to get work. Simon Cowell and his team do a fantastic job, the reviewer does not seem to understand. dontstopgoodentertainment.
- milly, hull east yorkshire, 7/6/2010 10:33
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Joshua, London
You have it wrong: this program, and it's sister shows, have the sole purpose to expand the bank account of Simon Cowell.
- bob, warrington, 7/6/2010 10:27
Click to rate Rating 21
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Josh if this is not a talent programme, why is it called "Britain's Got Talent?"
- Elton, Brighton, 7/6/2010 10:22
Click to rate Rating 9
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Britain does have talent - a lot of it, but they are, quite rightly, cautious of who they sell their soul to. Andrew Lloyd Webbers programmes have managed to gain the kudos due to previous contestents really making it where they want to be - in the West End. All SC does is use those he finds in the way he wishes and that may mean you are dumped after the tour rather than nurtured (as ALW and his cronies do with those who lose his shows but make the series)
My son has musical talent (not good enough for young musician of the year). I would never let him go for audition to BGT . Never in a million years. Life should be about freedom and creativity.
- Kez100, Plymouth, 7/6/2010 10:22
Click to rate Rating 17
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Joshua, Croydon
None of these people has any real talent, it is all about Simon Cowell making money by humiliating poor deluded fools, who really think they have got a talent, whereas, truth be told they are mediocre to plain rubbish! Cowell uses them, as he has used every act he was ever involved with, to make millions.
He has brought the entertainment business down to his level, the gutter, he has no idea what talent is, he is just a marketing man! None of the, so called, judging panel has the slightest idea about talent, musical or any other, they are just pawns in his greedy little world!
As Victoria Wood says, it's not right to make money from the humiliation of others!
- Nigel, Somerset, 7/6/2010 10:21
Click to rate Rating 5
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I cannot stand watching anything with Simon Cowell, Ant and Dec and Amanda Holden in. They make me cringe.
- jerry heath, brighton, sussex, 7/6/2010 10:19
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Useless article.
Count the amount of viewers to see whether the general public thought there was a lack of talent on show.
And please learn something about dance if you're seriously trying to criticise Twist and Pulse. Technically superb, not a foot out of place in all of their long, intricate routines, as well as some light-hearted humour to make us all laugh. Deserved second place without a doubt.
- don't worry, South London, 7/6/2010 10:16
Click to rate Rating 40
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Bring back Gladiators (on normal TV), Cilla Black's Blind Date, Beadle's About and Noel's House Party....
Normal Saturday night TV, where you don't have to re-mortgage your house to pay for the telephone vote bill!
(or possibly sacarfice 10 Lambert and Butler and a four pack of Stella)
- Gem, London, 7/6/2010 10:10
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The reviewer doesn't understand the programme.
It is not a talent programme, but an entertainment programme. Its sole purpose is to entertain; whether that be that the audience are shocked, horrified or embarrassed.
The 'oddball' acts are put through to provide difference and entertainment - if they weren't it would be just another streetdance act.
ACCEPT that it's a TV show whose key purpose is to entertain - and this includes the showcasing of the 'oddball' acts.
- Joshua, Croydon, 7/6/2010 10:05
Click to rate Rating 37
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I completely disagree with the article, I think Spellbound were great! They should be congratulated on doing so well and putting in all the hard work and long hours that they do. I was a gymnast once, not as good as them though, but even so I trained 4 days a week and I know how much practise and committment is required to be good at gymnastics; it's a tough sport. Wonder whether the writer of this article could do what they do - I very much doubt it. Out of all the other acts, they probably are the most professional and worked the hardest over the years to get to the level that they've got to. They seem quite polite and down to earth as well, so good to them.
- Louise, London, 7/6/2010 10:02
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I think you have become out of touch with the 'ordinary' person, it is just a TV show that all the family can watch with out worrying about inappropriate language and behaviour, and it IS enjoyable, viewing figures have proved the show is popular and that the general public enjoy it. I think your bosses should perhaps review your skills as a journalist and consider finding a journalist that is in touch with the general public and who's ego is not quite so huge
- sue c, Portsmouth Hants, 7/6/2010 10:00
Click to rate Rating 25
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I will say what I always say about TV shows, if you don't enjoy it, do not watch it. If you think it is failing or not what you have come to expect, don't watch it. If you just want to see some good acts then that's the great thing about BGT, wait until the semis as most of them are brilliant acts. I do not like Big Brother anymore but I do not criticise those that do. Find something you like and enjoy it, but do not criticise what others watch. Especially as 19 million people tuned in to watch the BGT final.
- Lara, Berks, 7/6/2010 9:54
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The article mentions how all these people,like footballers, are schooled in what to say.....We all know the usual repetitive guff.......But I would say that if certain words were removed from the English language'brilliant' and 'amazing' (have you noticed how everything and everyone is or are 'amazing') then a whole generation of young people and tv presenters would be struck dumb......I know, be great wouldnt it....total silence from the 'amazing' generation.
As far as the contestants in BGT are concerned ...none of them were of any use as serious entertainers. Pub acts, novelty dog acts , jumping about the stage..yes yes all very well and good.....and where the hell have all these street dance troupes suddenly sprung up from......If there was anything that proved the saying..seen one you've seen 'em all....they are it....pathetic....
- RB, Brum, 7/6/2010 9:51
Click to rate Rating 6
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Couldn't disagree with this article more.
The BGT final was fun and there was absolutely talent on show - Spelbound were wonderful & showed what dedication, hard work and imagination can achieve. Twist & Pulse and Tobias were fabulous. Liam was adorable and sang like an angel. Tina must have put in hours and hours of work with Chandi and their act was fabulous. Think Mr. Graff must have been watching another programme - or, as I suspect, he didn't watch it at all.
- Gerard, London, 7/6/2010 9:47
Click to rate Rating 35
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I believe britain does have talent, however the production team who audition people in a pre audition before the ones you see on tv are looking for entertaining freaks who really we should not laugh at but get them help. Many talented people do not get through to see simon and the other judges. This show could go on for years because of all the talent that does not get seen. Many wonderful talented people who could have a fantastic career in entertainment dont get a chance any more.
- Annie Hughes, Wirral, 7/6/2010 9:38
Click to rate Rating 31
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Mike from Petersfield, you must be an unemployed working class socialist with a chip on your shoulder the size of Petersfield. Get out of your armchair and get a life. At least Spelbound have motivation, energy and direction. What do you have to offer society? Who cares if they are middle or working class - why does that matter? Can you do what they can? Are you going to be competing in any type of sporting event? Darts don't count by the way, nor does your local pub quiz. Get a life.
- lawrence, bournemouth, 7/6/2010 9:37
Click to rate Rating 63
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One thing this show served to highlight was just how little Simon Cowell knows about music - along with Piers and Amanda he raved about the drummer, Kieran saying how talented he was.
In reality all the kid did was play in 4/4 time, which is the standard for a drummer. As for the raised playing area. He didn't think of that himself - he ripped off the Rush drummer Neil Peart.
I think the problem was that when voting for him, people took into account the backing track rather than just his drumming ability - he was average at best.
- AB, Edinburgh, 7/6/2010 9:37
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If there were a lot of oddballs in the final then that is down to the judges and should not be used as a sly backward opportunity to have a go at everyday people trying to better themselves or make ends meet. It's just a cruel attempt at 'I'm bigger than you' and 'listen to me'. Your opinion was worth nothing to me, from the second you couldn't even be bothered to spell the winners name correctly.
Vincent Graff, whoever you are (probably some nobody), shut up and sit down. I hate it when people think they have the right to heckle someone else having a go.
- Catherine, Blackpool, 7/6/2010 9:36
Click to rate Rating 19
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What a spiteful article.
I thought the BGT final provided a thoroughly entertaining evening of light-hearted TV. How can anyone say that the acts didn't show talent? Some more than others, of course, but with a couple of exceptions the standard was pretty high and the whole programme was easily as fun as the actual Royal Variety Show.
- Sara, Kent, 7/6/2010 9:34
Click to rate Rating 50
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I think that this type of show, including ' Pop Idol' have run thier course. It used to be amusing watching the heats, however, this year it was very emarrasing veiwing. It appears that the so called talented public seem to think that no talent or limited talent will get you through, and the big break is waiting around the corner. What ever happened to hard graft and learning your trade. X Factor Pop Idol and BGT all give the impression that no work is required and celebrity status will be dropped in their laps. What individuals will do for 15 mins of fame and then cry when it does not happen. Did any of these finalists apart from Spellbund reherse, it did not look like it. Very very poor performance and NO TALENT.
- Nancy Burns, Glasgow, 7/6/2010 9:30
Click to rate Rating 7
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Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity.
- Mike, Petersfield, 07/6/2010 08:50
And your point is what, exactly? Middle-class people can't be talented? Middle-class people can't work their socks off honing a skill in order to give a fantastic performance? I had hoped this bitter sort of class comment was dead.
- Stella, Faversham, Kent, 7/6/2010 9:26
Click to rate Rating 200
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"Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity."
- Mike, Petersfield
I think you'll find Mike that they are not. One of them is a cousin of mine and I can assure you he does come from an honest, working class background.
Why make a comment like that when you obviously have no idea! Jealousy, I assume, is the problem.
- Jenny, Dorset, 7/6/2010 9:25
Click to rate Rating 239
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There is plenty of talent in this country, but this show is not the best forum to bring it out. It's not the acts' fault they have to trot out those tired old cliches about journeys and biggest nights of their lives - they're probably coached by the production team, with the underlying implication that if they don't play ball, they don't have a chance. BGT is primarily about entertainment, and that which is entertaining is not necessarily based on acquired skill or natural ability arduously nurtured. Anyone who entered the competition only to be knocked out in favour of a man whose 'talent' was racing snails should get the message and look to furthering further his/her career by other means. BTW, Twist and Pulse were worthy runners-up, original, skilful and fun, and I for one wish them every success in the future.
- RAS, Bristol, England, 7/6/2010 9:17
Click to rate Rating 27
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Spelbound are good and deserved to win but they have still have some way to go in achieving the sort of polished performances as exhibited by the Cirque Du Soleil acrobats. To watch the amazing 'banquine' act from the Quidam show just google 'cirque du soleil banqine'.
- Sarah, UK, 7/6/2010 9:14
Click to rate Rating 13
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"Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity."
- Mike, Petersfield
Mike, because they are talented, are you saying they are from a dishonest non-working class background?
- Mikeyboy, Manchester, 7/6/2010 9:11
Click to rate Rating 193
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I agree that it should be called "Britain's Got Freaks" because lordy, how we love the totally appalling acts in the auditions round of both "Britain's Got Talent" and the "X Factor". We love the terribly bad, the terminally deluded and the truly talentless. `
- sd, uk, 7/6/2010 9:07
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Actually I think the writer is missing the whole point. It's not really a talent show, it's a television programme to entertain the viewing public. Good old fashioned tv that the family can sit down and watch together. Cringe, shudder, gasp, laugh and cry together for a couple of hours. That generates a huge audience and massive advertising revenue for ITV. It's called television, well planned and rehearsed. That's why we have those boxes in our house, for entertainment. And when it comes to entertainment we all have different tastes, 19 million like this programme.
- Brian, Spain, 7/6/2010 9:06
Click to rate Rating 148
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Spelbound are just a shower of over-privileged middle-class hurrah henries. I bet there is not one girl or boy from an honest, working-class background. They are probably all called Rupert, Fabian and Felicity.
- Mike, Petersfield, 7/6/2010 8:50
Click to rate Rating 401
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english and welsh soldiers killed in A/gstan over w/end ........, and we have debate on this glorified talent show,,,,,,,,,
- rob, Scotland, 7/6/2010 8:49
Click to rate Rating 82
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I think this review is slightly unfair. Yes there weren't as many talented acts this year as there previously have been but they weren't that bad! Twist and Pulse were original and fun and a good example of how not all teenagers are gang membered hooligans. Spellbound were amazing. This is a talent show to find a performer for the royal variety show, which is by nature slightly cheesy anyway. There was variety and I for one enjoyed all 2 .5 hours of it!!
- Kate, London, 7/6/2010 8:39
Click to rate Rating 243
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Spelbound? just a circus act.
You can't blame Cowell and Co for taking the money and running.
It's all down to the potatoes that sit and watch this padded overblown garbage.
- Gordon Bennett, Bristol UK, 7/6/2010 8:39
Click to rate Rating 153
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Maybe we can look forward to som edecent programmes being made...or more likely even more frequent showings of repeats of Porridge, Morecambe and Wise and Dad's Army ... all of which I would much prefer to these so called "Talent" shows!
- Jeremy, London, 7/6/2010 8:01
Click to rate Rating 71
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The heats for this were ridiculous - they put through someone walked about the stage apparently dressed as Madonna and yet a musician who had spent 40 years perfecting his clarinet playing was rudely dismissed by Amanda Holden. I bet the Queen would have preferred to har a beautiful piece of music played well, rather than a daft bloke dressed as Madonna.
- fed - up, colchester, 7/6/2010 7:59
Click to rate Rating 172
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what a load of rubbish on BGT and what the judges thinking of an 80 year old women not singing but shouting and screeching and not in tune .
he only decent group was spellbound and the singing accountent,now we cal look forward to the american rubbish next week
- colin, ellesmere port, 7/6/2010 7:58
Click to rate Rating 11
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Itdoesn't matter whether the 'talent' is good enough or not. The show will survive as long as people are willing to continue paying Cowell via trheir phone bills.
- David, Bristol, 7/6/2010 7:54
Click to rate Rating 3
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The finals were good, yes, Janey Cutler was out of sinc put I like to see you doing that at the age of 81.
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 7:53
Click to rate Rating 27
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Why? Why? Why do you do it? BGT was brilliant there was loads of talent and it was fabulous. You are talking rubbish. So shut up if you havent got anything positive to say.
- Tilly, Monmouth, 7/6/2010 7:47
Click to rate Rating 36
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Why is everyone always so negative?! It was a great show, full of talent, yet you newspapers just have to criticise. Is it because you're jealous of Simon Cowell? It just seems stupid that you are putting down something enjoyed by so many.
- Alex Potley, Leicester, 7/6/2010 7:46
Click to rate Rating 31
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How cruel this article is. As regards Tina not leaving the stage quickly enough for Ant and Dec, with all the racket from a revved up audience Tina was probably concentrating on keeping her dog calm. Simon left it until the final to say he thought Chandi was getting too old. The sooner Cowell and co. return to oblivion the better.
- Max Davies, Aberdeen., 7/6/2010 7:38
Click to rate Rating 4
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After watching the auditions I thought some of the finalists were very good but as soon as the live show came they were rubbish!
I think its time to scrap this poor excuse for a entertainment show and put something decent on!
- Mak D, London, 7/6/2010 7:33
Click to rate Rating 46
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Couldn't agree more that Britain has NOT got talent according to what was on offer on Saturday night. The acts were dreadful it was painful to watch. I cannot understand why the 80 year old scottish lady was put through as she sang out of key. She shouldn't have been put through out of sympathy because of her age. What a talentless bunch apart from Spelbound who were fantastic and could actually entertain. Well Done to them and the rest were rubbish!!
- Peggy, Broadstairs, Kent, 7/6/2010 7:27
Click to rate Rating 8
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I thought Janey's performance was dreadful. It was the worst act of the night and she should never have been put in that position. At 80 she is a remarkable women who is obviously going DEAF and could not hear the music properly hence she was behind the beat and struggled through her whole song. The same thing happened during her performance in the Semi-Final and I thought she would have had a "spotter" to tell her when to start singing. Her best performance was the audition!! Why did Simon and Co put thru Chandi if they thought she was old and past her best. BGT this year has been very poor indeed. No excitement at all for the Final.
Itdoesn't matter whether the 'talent' is good enough or not. The show will survive as long as people are willing to continue paying Cowell via trheir phone bills.
- David, Bristol, 7/6/2010 7:54
Click to rate Rating 4
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The finals were good, yes, Janey Cutler was out of sinc put I like to see you doing that at the age of 81.
- AM, brussels, 7/6/2010 7:53
Click to rate Rating 29
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Why? Why? Why do you do it? BGT was brilliant there was loads of talent and it was fabulous. You are talking rubbish. So shut up if you havent got anything positive to say.
- Tilly, Monmouth, 7/6/2010 7:47
Click to rate Rating 36
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Why is everyone always so negative?! It was a great show, full of talent, yet you newspapers just have to criticise. Is it because you're jealous of Simon Cowell? It just seems stupid that you are putting down something enjoyed by so many.
- Alex Potley, Leicester, 7/6/2010 7:46
Click to rate Rating 31
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How cruel this article is. As regards Tina not leaving the stage quickly enough for Ant and Dec, with all the racket from a revved up audience Tina was probably concentrating on keeping her dog calm. Simon left it until the final to say he thought Chandi was getting too old. The sooner Cowell and co. return to oblivion the better.
- Max Davies, Aberdeen., 7/6/2010 7:38
Click to rate Rating 4
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After watching the auditions I thought some of the finalists were very good but as soon as the live show came they were rubbish!
I think its time to scrap this poor excuse for a entertainment show and put something decent on!
- Mak D, London, 7/6/2010 7:33
Click to rate Rating 45
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Couldn't agree more that Britain has NOT got talent according to what was on offer on Saturday night. The acts were dreadful it was painful to watch. I cannot understand why the 80 year old scottish lady was put through as she sang out of key. She shouldn't have been put through out of sympathy because of her age. What a talentless bunch apart from Spelbound who were fantastic and could actually entertain. Well Done to them and the rest were rubbish!!
- Peggy, Broadstairs, Kent, 7/6/2010 7:27
Click to rate Rating 9
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I thought Janey's performance was dreadful. It was the worst act of the night and she should never have been put in that position. At 80 she is a remarkable women who is obviously going DEAF and could not hear the music properly hence she was behind the beat and struggled through her whole song. The same thing happened during her performance in the Semi-Final and I thought she would have had a "spotter" to tell her when to start singing. Her best performance was the audition!! Why did Simon and Co put thru Chandi if they thought she was old and past her best. BGT this year has been very poor indeed. No excitement at all for the Final.
- Rita Ex Pat, Bonn Germany, 7/6/2010 7:14
Click to rate Rating 1
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Sounds like someone has a grudge against people trying to go for something they believe in. Janey Cutler is 81 years old for god sake, id praise her for just getting on stage and humming to a song, yea she might have lost her way with the song, it werent terrible but for a person of that age to at least attempt a song like that, then you have to give her credit. I actually think the line up was ok just the fact that i think there were a few people that should have come through instead of some of the other contestants.
all in all, i enjoyed watching the show, if anything, they should be given respect for going up on stage and doing what they believe in
- Dan, Hong Kong, China, 7/6/2010 7:09
Click to rate Rating 20
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The winners were fine! The probelm is this kind of trail by tv show! Give them this then all of the council; estates will come running! Was so much better when they under control by Ted Rogers.
- simon kk, Higuey DR, 7/6/2010 6:41
Click to rate Rating 12
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It was a great show and thoroughly deserved last nights Bafta . All the acts gave 100% and were more than qualified to be in the final. A few of them will, I am sure, go on to make brilliant careers.
Well done to you all, and thank you.
- Linda, Maida Vale, 7/6/2010 6:00
Click to rate Rating 36
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A funny, but well-written article.
- Pip, United Kingdom, 7/6/2010 5:52
Click to rate Rating 25
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Oh, don't be so miserable! It was a fun show and a nice treat for kids, too, allowed to stay up a bit later during half-term.
Personally, I'm missing it already and no, I'm not an uneducated slob with no life, just in case you're wondering, I'm a lecturer in English Literature.
(psst! I love Big Brother, X Factor and Jeremy Kyle, too - shocking isn't it?)
- Sue, UK, 7/6/2010 4:59
Click to rate Rating 34
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Although I don't do dance, I was amused by Twist & Pulse, and admired the effort they must have put in to attain such a high standard. That being said, this was, to me, their worst performance.
The granny was, simply, dire. Out of tune, and using someone else's teeth.
The boy band were cute, I guess. But they, too, had difficulties holding tune, and have the added problem of puberty and changing voices. Or so they hope.
- Chris, Southampton, 7/6/2010 4:30
Click to rate Rating 16
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Britain's Got Talent is entertaining because we need a respite from what's happening around the world.! It's amazing that Twist & Pulse came in second when someone so incredibley talented like Christopher Stone wasn't even mentioned . I guess the British masses have really poor taste????? Who do you think is voting for these untalented oddballs?
My grandchildren loved watching Tina & Chandi, and so did my husband. I spent nearly an hour letting them watch Tina & Chandi on the internet after we saw it the first time. There have also been numerous young singers on BGT who have been extremely talented. I was thinking that America doesn't have many talented people after watching BGT for the last several years. Adam Lambert was definitely a star, but this year's performer's wern't terribly impressive.
- cjay, Indianapolis, IN USA, 7/6/2010 4:19
Click to rate Rating 4
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bring back tobias.. least his act was entertaining...while spellbound have a lot of talent (and yes i know its britains got TALENT) they just werent exciting enough for me. Whereas acts like tobias mead, twist and pull, tina and chandi or even paul burling were entertaining and fun..surely thats what makes an act worthy of winning...bit disappointed really, but good luck to all of them for the future
- lauren, watford, 7/6/2010 3:09
Click to rate Rating 34
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