Graeme Connelly (THE LIST / CHORTLE)
Graeme Connelly doesn’t really know what sentences are supposed to do. Every time he begins one he has no idea where it will end, or what he wants it to achieve. Most of the time he ends it prematurely, as if suddenly aborting its mission. Sometimes four or five sentences are sent out in succession, eventually achieving the task of one.
It’s this sort of jolting caesura that prevents the reader from discerning what is actually going on: it’s like we’re watching the show through an oscillator.
Of Tom Craine he writes: “It is feelgood stuff throughout, there is even a mention of a giant cuddly toy bear. Craine is slightly bumbling, the clumsy sort. If the show was a romcom the audience would certainly be rooting for him…” You’re left floundering for meaning in all this, Connelly having provided nothing but fuzzy images.
Of Jeff Leach he attests that: “He is a changed man, he says, preferring jogging to partying.
Preferring feminism to misogyny and acutely aware of sexism all around him. He backs this up with habitually referring to women in the audience as beautiful girls. His chats with the crowd prove to be the most impressive of his comedic skills.” I’m sure there’s a reason why calling every woman in the room a ‘beautiful girl’ is feminist rather than creepy, and I’m sure Leach would like it explained rather better than this. But the staccato sentences leave you reading between the lines.
Occasionally the writing breaks down to the point that it reads like phrases converted from the original Russian via freetranslation.com: “It is a worthy and welcome feature of a man’s character to spend any time he gets in the limelight promoting good in others,” Connelly attests, with all the lofty profundity of a note in a fortune cookie.
His review of Sarah Cassidy, Meanwhile, seems obsessed with the fact that the act herself is obsessed with penises, and he makes too many wild guesses as to what is going on: “The serious point here could be to objectify men in the same way women are,” he suggests. “To lend balance, there were a few vagina jokes as well. Perhaps not enough, this may have been a part of the joke.”
“Feminism hasn’t quite finished its work in getting equal gags for genitalia,” he concludes. At last – a solid statement that we can all agree on.
Marigold Bumbellina Froome