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Chocoholics eponymous Willie

by Johnny Bull
April 15th, 2009

You either love them or you hate them. TV’s alpha males. I used to hate them with a hatred born of pure fear and loathing. Sir Alan shouts and scares me to death; what scares me more is his fantastic awareness of where everything is, everyone is; you feel that a snooze in the bog at Amstrad Towers would be only possible for Derren Brown to contemplate with any certainty.

Gordon Ramsay’s probably a pussycat, (have you noticed how there’s always someone to say this? Someone who knows his missus or walks his dogs…) and maybe it’s not his fault that he has to put up with those morons who cry a lot. The producers will be taking out small ads for yet more lachrymose incompetents to achieve their fifteen minutes of shame. And still they’ll come.

I hate Simon Hightrousers because, oh I don’t know, what is there to like? I started to hate him when my daughter came into the kitchen crying uncontrollably because he’d shouted at some (probably tuneless) nice old man. She was inconsolable for ten minutes.

Same with the wretchedly unfunny Chris Moyles. I think Mark Lamarr distinguished himself by imploring anyone who saw him to give him a bit of a slap which I thought was an attempt at really good community broadcasting. But then I used to know a woman textile designer who thought he was fantastic. And a presumably sober Stephen Fry graced his quiz show the other night… It’s fear and loathing turning to envy, slightly. If I’m honest.

But wait. All is not lost.

There’s a new kid (to me) on the block whose kicks aren’t had from from being rude and sarky and potty-mouthed. He has that annoyingly attractive amount of hair and chiselled-ness, too. A bit like Monty Don (who gave Alan Titchmarsh a breather as Britain’s most fancied pricker-outer) combined with Rupert Everett. In fact, a bit like the picture I took at least ten minutes over.

Anyway, he’s called Willie and he loves chocolate. Willie Harcourt-Cooze (apparently) and whether chocolate’s to your taste or not, he’s necessary viewing for the simple reason that he does things that bring deep furrows to his rather posh and high brow. I saw him with his mates unload 36 metric tons of cacao beans from a container that came from Venezuela, I think. It turns out that it’s the wrong consignment. His massive shipment of better-grade choc has been delivered to Japan.

Furrow. Also there’s a furrow on the brow of his daftly beautiful missus, too. But he doesn’t bawl out the lorry driver or any gormless wretch the telly people can wheel in front of him. He says he needs some rest, he needs to regroup; he’ll sort it in the morning.

What’s he going to do? I mean what? Really? He’s spent nearly all of his overdraft and his credit cards are all maxed-out or something and he’s going to sleep on it.

Yes, sleep on it.

He seems to be well and truly in the molten brown stuff. But he’s going to alpha it into submission. You know it.

I caught a glimpse of him last Christmas digging a hole for a sheep that he reckoned would take 12 hours (or days) to cook after the fire had been removed. He assembled about forty hors d’oeuvres, made the mulled wine before feeding the village after he’d chopped down and erected in his drive a Trafalgarish Christmas Tree, and then managed to get all the bloody lights working (this is all outside; oh, it’s snowing too…) The sheep was perfect. Baaa. Humbug.

I know he sounds annoying, but he’s not. Well, a bit, maybe… He’s a great example to us all. You’ve got a tax bill. And some more bills over there. The bank has battened down the cash machine. LoveFilm have sent the wrong dvd. The house is on the verge of repossession…

Luxury.

That doesn’t even amount to problem foreplay in the World of Willie.

Comments (4)

Looks like Marco’s back. I don’t actually watch him in the hellish kitchen because he is forever seared into my memory as the moody, (cutting)edgy, if-i-didn’t-cook-i’d-kill figure from the pages of Bob Carlos Clarke’s landmark 80’s book ‘White Heat’. I don’t want to see him terrorising bland celebrities (who should just stick to what they do) not looking their best in the heat of the studio kitchen with health & safety hair and chef’s whites. I’m still intrigued though and wd more than happily accompany him on an afternoon’s fishing on the Test.

Same but different is my response to watching re-runs of Loius Theroux’s Wierd Weekends series. Like a latter-day Candide, he lopes in and out of some pretty inscrubable lives (Sir Jimmy Saville for example). He is a study in politeness, or is it a studied politeness? As a woman (no, alright, as me) you want to look after him a bit. Alternatively it seems it might be fun to make him laugh over the course of an afternoon which could end up with him being all goofily romantic, like an elongated Woody Allen with more hair. Each wierd weekend concludes, or rather fades away with no one any the wiser. In fact that cd be on Louis’ headstone one day – ‘he was none the wiser’. And yet, beneath that bumbling, public-school (Bedales? Summerhill?) exterior, there must be more than we are given. You don’t get tv contracts for an eponymous series by being a flake…….

Posted by bin • 15 April 2009, 16:16

Why, seems like I oughta watch this geezer, but where DOES the time go? Still, if you reckon he’s kosha Johnny, I’ll give him a spin. And yes, you can get a an eponymous TV series by being a flake, don’t kid yourself…

XX P

Posted by Paul Rodger • 15 April 2009, 20:09

v entertaining blog, JB – had me laughing out loud even though, so far as I know, I’ve never seen the choco king. Makes me think I shd start watching something other than football on the tele.
Thanks bin, for giving me half an opening by posting re Louis Theroux. I did see his wierd weekend with Sir James Saville, and thought it had one of the great moments of modern tele when the eccentric, but cunning Yorkshireman spots that Louis has left the camera running while he (and presumably the crew of half a dozen) goes to the bar to get another drink. Down gets Sir Jim, distorted head thrust into lens at floor level, and intones “Oh-oh-oh-oh, Guys and Gals, they think I don’t realise they’ve left the camera running. They want to see if I talk to myself or do something mad when I think there’s no one watching, but I’m not so daft” (Or words to that effect, as Sir LP wd say)
An even more entertaining battle of wits, though, and one of the great radio programmes of all time was Anthony Clare v J Saville “In the Psychiatrist’s Chair.” If ever it washes up on the beach of recycled progs don’t miss it.
Once tried to get L Theroux to apply his brand of Socratic ignorance to the euro for a tele prog. Bizarrely, he turned down this mouth-watering opportunity because he was “too busy”. Often wonder how much more rounded a talent he might have become under my expert guidance.

Posted by Disaster Historian • 16 April 2009, 10:37

Hang on, Bin, Paul, DH… This flake thing will run and run; I just scrolled down a page of Wiki or somewhere where there’s some Willie info, and a local of his village in Cornwall, I’m too lazy to look it up, is called Joss Stone, the teenage warbler, who has, incredibly, and true to the gales and avalanches of snags that assail our boy, has done a Cadbury’s Chocolate Flake commercial. Bloody asking for it, isn’t she? No, I don’t think that’ll elicit the slightest whisker of a frenzy; it’s just something else to get over. Fine posts all; thanks a bundle. Sir Jim, I suppose is YouTubeable. He’s almost in a league of his own. In a Royston Vaisey kind of way. Shudder.

Posted by Johnny Bull • 16 April 2009, 12:31