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| TEENAGE
VIDEO DIARIES - "IN BED WITH CHRIS NEEDHAM" Saturday 13/06/92, BBC2 reviewed by Ian Jones |
September
2000
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Back before the docusoap and the fly-on-the-wall, there was the Video Diary - and more significantly, the Teenage Video Diary. The premise - give a video camera to a teenager, tell them they can shoot whatever they want, and that they have total editorial control over the final product - could have made for horrendous TV that was in turn intensely dull, self-indulgent, offensive, or more likely all of these. But this was not the case. For one of the subjects was 16-year old Chris Needham, resident of my hometown Loughborough, and a man with a mission: to record in hysterically faux-serious detail the self-professed torture of his angst-ridden existence, to document upfront his wild lifestyle of drink (cans of cheap lager) and rock'n'roll ("Speed metal is just some of the finest, fantastic musicianship you'll ever hear") then dress it all up as some kind of state-of-the-nation finger-pointing polemic; one hell of a broadside against life, love, and The Man. "In Bed With Chris Needham", with its subject's po-faced moralising and penchant for self-pity, plus his endless why-doesn't-anybody-understand-me rants, is simply classic TV: hilarious from start to finish, instantly memorable, lampoonable, and - above all - quotable. For here was a programme to recycle and repeat back at each other at school for days and weeks after. Chris is a student at Rawlins, situated just out of Loughborough itself, and a sort of rival to Burleigh, where I went (both state schools, both 14-18). He presents himself to us as an unashamed heavy metal fanatic: black T-shirts, appropriate posters on his bedroom wall, and - with the long hair and fluffy semi-moustache - the half-realised adolescent "look" of the metal fan. But wait: he's also here to save the world - through ROCK. He is trying to start a band, with himself (naturally) on lead guitar and vocals, and he's settled on the name: Manslaughter. Throughout the film the "band" slide through numerous line-up changes, rehearse in a mate's specially-constructed shed, and generally bicker incessantly. It is clear the group exist only to gratify Chris' starlust; their repertoire is, of course, dreadful, and none of them can play or sing. They cover AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long, and it's awful. Chris cannot understand why the band aren't any good. Cue ranting to camera. His impassioned, pompous monologues, close-up into the screen, are - predictably - ridiculous, winsome ... and (again) eminently quotable. The whole programme is peppered with Chris' preaching, because he believes - as most people should do at 16 - that he has all the answers, and everybody else, quite simply, is wrong. Amongst his many Thoughts For The Day are ones on ecology: "There are solutions that I've come up with myself, but, I don't see why I should try and share these ideas for the simple reason, one, impracticality, and two, nobody's going to be liable to listen to me."; vegetarianism: "They say, 'do you realise you're eating something dead there?' - yes, I do, and as a matter of fact, I'm enjoying it."; and on his perception of himself: "I'm beginning to become a moral preacher, and that's the last thing I want." At times the pressure of being who he is - a self-assumed mouthpiece for his generation - clearly gets him a little rattled. "That kind of shit gets me down," he cries from the sanctuary of his bedroom; "Fuck you if you even think about that. Don't bother me with that shit!" Ambling past the Three Nuns pub (as if he'd just emerged from this student watering hole), he spies a church notice board that has been vandalised with red paint. "I have to say I kind of agree with that," he pontificates, and another Needham pearl of wisdom is dispatched. Amongst the many in-jokes in circulation between Chris and his mates is one that necessitates referring to porn whenever possible. Hence a wall display in one of the Rawlins corridors is heralded: "'Communicating Through Media'? Communicating Through Porn!" Wandering into the Wimpy in Loughborough town centre, Chris orders a milkshake - only to declare, eyeing its contents, "There's some porn in here!" All the while the film is framed by voice-overs from concerned friends and family - "No-one knows why he gets these depressions ..." Chris tries to pretend he's world-wise when off on another rant, then flips back into immature mode when a condom is found on his bedroom floor and he tries to argue it belongs to his younger brother. The rest of his family, suffice to say, all appear totally sane, ordinary and rational. There is a climax of sorts with the staging of a Manslaughter gig during a Rawlins lunchtime. It is dreadful, of course, and is followed by yet another to-camera analysis, delivered fittingly yet somewhat curiously by Chris fully dressed and sat on an open toilet seat in the school gents. Glowing with post-gig satisfaction Chris delivers a favourable review of his own efforts, and then pulls the toilet handle to symbolically mark the end of his reflection. "Oh, I don't believe it" he moans, as the roar of water wets his trousered behind. Thinking back, what made the programme especially significant was undoubtedly its setting: namely, seeing bits of your own town on national telly for the first time. And the inevitable: was that one of your friends walking past in one shot? Almost the entire teenage population of Loughborough tuned in for the repeat as part of BBC2's DEF II - shorn of the swearing, unfortunately. Needham became a sort of star, but not a hero, cos he went to the "other" school (Rodney Bennett to our Grange Hill). So he was feted and riled at the same time; when he showed up outside Burleigh on a ludicrously large motorcycle he was met with a distinctly cool reaction. What became of this teenage prodigy? After a notable gig at the London Marquee Club supporting Lawnmower Death, nothing. Or was it? A couple of years ago the local paper, The Loughborough Echo, responded to a letter from someone citing the programme by launching a where-is-he-now? campaign. With almost indecent haste word arrived that Chris was still in the area and - gasp! - working in a fishing tackle shop - a shocking waste of musicianship. But, incredibly the band was still going. Best of all, a contemporary photo was printed, so there he was, once again, looking almost identical to his Video Diary persona, only just a bit older and a bit hairier. Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Needham: a man of, and out of, his time. |
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