What did you binge on last night?

Newspaper columns, which tend to be written by middle aged and profoundly middle class columnists, have a habit of being filled with self-pitying pieces about what it is to be middle aged and middle class.

Thus, if you read such class stalwarts as The Times, the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian you will regularly encounter problems such as Waitrose running out of humous, the inconvenience of getting vaccinated for holidays in remote parts of Asia, and why something should be done about car parking in Clerkenwell. Yada, and, if I may, yada.

This weekend, The Times actually ran a feature about being boring.

When the Pet Shop Boys wrote a song about it, they were being ironic. The Times, though, devoted a lengthy piece on how you know you've become boring when you start discussing with your partner gardening, optimal driving routes to visit relatives, the school area postcode system and plot developments in American drama series.

The Telegraph's Judith Woods even wrote an extensive piece on the role of TV box sets in holding together a marriage, arguing that lounging around on the couch for days on end is the new "country walks and meals out". I'm not so sure.

What is true is that television viewing has been turned upside down, inside out, rethought, remade and forced to reconsider itself all over again. Whereas not so long ago, the advertising sales departments of American television networks came up with the notion of "appointment TV" - that you would build your entire Thursday evening around The West Wing coming on at 9pm, with hit sitcoms building up to it, and the 10pm news and the flagship nightly chat show building off it - now, thanks to box sets, online downloads and IPTV, scheduling is fast turning into a crapshoot.

In Britain, the fact that American dramas should, now, even be regarded as routine conversation pieces is equally as significant. With, perhaps, the exception of Dallas in the 1980s, American shows have rarely been cited as of such cultural importance that they should equal schools and gardening as dinner discussion. Rarely, as a teenager, do I recall meals animated by conversations about whether the A-Team will ever cure BA Baracus of his fear of flying, or if Hill Street Blues' Norman Buntz should get a spinoff series (which I believe he did).

In these dark days of economic downturn and, as the excruciating phrase goes, "staying in is the new going out" (strange, I never thought of staying in as fashion statement, quite the reverse), we are comforting ourselves with the technology to indulge.

We won't just watch an episode of Homeland and spent seven days wondering whether Saul will, once more, dig Carrie out of her latest career blunder, we'll mainline four episodes in a row. This is the television equivalent of finishing off an entire tube of Pringles in one setting. Which often goes hand in hand with the box set binge.

Much of this has, I have to say, to do with the quality on offer. Now I know, as the son of a former BBC technician and therefore a BBC loyalist (take that, Daily Mail...!) I should uphold British television for being a world leader. And it is. But ever since the American cable network HBO made Band Of Brothers (starring Homeland's old Etonian, and very English, Damian Lewis in the D-Day epic), and The Sopranos ("it's almost Shakespearian" - everyone), the bar has been set impeccably high for long-form television drama.

The Wire (starring Brits Idris Elba and Dominic West, an Eton contemporary of Damian Lewis), came along to challenge The Sopranos' critical acclaim further. More recently, American cable has produced Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Dexter and many more shows of a quality that could be argued now eclipses that of cinema, especially seeing as Hollywood seems to be obsessed only with moneyspinning but pointless remakes and superhero franchises.

British television, I'm required to point out, isn't without its comparative quality: anything with David Tennant in it tends to be excellent, be it Broadchurch or his mesmerising run in Doctor Who which, despite being sci-fi and therefore a bit soppy, contained some of the best acting and writing in a primetime family show for decades.

What has changed is risk. Some years ago, a hint of buttock in a shower scene in NYPD Blue (then the high watermark for quality drama) resulted in advertisers on TV stations in the American Bible Belt pulling out, followed by the stations themselves disenfranchising themselves from their host network. American television really couldn't say boo to a goose.

Cable has changed that, and with it, has brought a sumptuous quality of richness. Today, the high mantle has been deservedly taken by Breaking Bad. If, a few years ago, you'd have pitched me a TV show about a high school chemistry teacher who becomes New Mexico's methamphetamine kingpin in order to pay for his chemotherapy, I would have accused you of taking too much methamphetamine.

But herein lies the addictive nature of good television writing - and why we are compelled to binge on it: I downloaded the first season of Breaking Bad out of curiosity. Like a good novel, it was slow to heat up. Five and a half seasons in, I recognise what a brilliant arc Vince Gilligan's show has taken, the balance between Walter White's Jekyll and Heisenberg's Hyde gradually shifting, as the mild-mannered teacher descends into compelling menace.

These shows, then, are the good book you can't put down. Which may explain how we consume them. Box sets are hardly new, and nor is high quality drama, but, says actor Kevin Spacey, "The audience wants control. They want freedom."

Spacey's recent US remake of the seminal BBC political satire House Of Cards has challenged the notion of television scheduling still further, being made for and distributed by Netflix, a company previously best known for pioneering DVD rentals by mail order, and which is positioning itself as an 'over the top' online content provider.

Spacey's House Of Cards demonstrated how far US television has walked in and almost taken over cinema's ground, being directed by David Fincher. The real revolution, however, was that all 13 episodes of the series were released at once, rather than in weekly instalments, catering fully to the box-set binger.

"If they want to binge, then we should let them binge," Spacey recently told the Edinburgh Television Festival in his MacTaggart Lecture, the first actor ever to give the prestigious speech. Online distribution of series like his was, he said, proof that the TV industry could learn "the lesson that the music industry didn't learn". "Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they'll more likely pay for it rather than steal it."

Spacey also noted that the Internet's facilitation of mega consumption challenged the idea that television damages intellect: "For years, particularly with the advent of the Internet, people have been griping about lessening attention spans. But if someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span? When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera."

"The audience has spoken," he added. "They want stories. They're dying for them. And they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook… and God knows what else."

Ricky Gervais recently weighed in this too, with his edgy sitcom Derek being signed up by Netflix: "TV habits have been changing drastically over the last 10 years and it’s been exponential in the last five years," Gervais told NBC's Today show.

"There’s a new generation of 12-to-15-year-olds who don’t even know what we mean when we say we used to sit down at 9 o’clock as a family to watch a show. 'Why would you sit down at nine? I’ll watch it on my way to school.'

At this point, and almost at the end of this post, I must acknowledge that many people - actually, probably most - don't have the ability to spend hours at a time lounging around in their pyjamas watching an entire season of Family Guy in one go, because - you know - of things like children and work commitments. But given that DVD and Blu-ray box sets are just about the only thing keeping HMV stores alive these days, the box set binge is no phenomenon restricted to the lazy and immobile.

And, as pretentious as it sounds, there's a very strong case to be made that, with the quality of product on offer, spending an entire Sunday afternoon and evening intravenously consuming The Sopranos for only the 100th time in the 14 years since they made their debut, you are indulging in high art and one of the most significant evolutions of popular culture in a generation.

Doctor What?

Pictures courtesy of the BBC

Those who remember the BBC's "anarchic" 80s comedy The Young Ones may recall its final episode which begins with Rick, Vyvyan, Mike and Neil very bored indeed in the garden on the first day of the college summer holiday.

"I'm bored and deserve to die! This is the end. Armageddon!" declares Vyvyan, adding the Sex Pistols' "No future!" for good measure. He then pulls out a hand grenade, removes the pin and waits for the bang. It doesn't go off. "Bastard!", he exclaims. 80s comedy, eh?

Summer is, mostly, boring. If you're of school age, it's six weeks of amazing adventures, which actually soon becomes two weeks of bucket-and-spade time followed by four weeks of kicking a football against the garage.

If you're the sports editor of a national newspaper, it's three months of idle speculation about which manager is going where, and what players are being bought for silly amounts by clubs with more money than sense.

Showbiz editors rarely get such a summer as they're too busy pouring over pictures of papped celebrities turning pink on a beach, and then calling it news because a) they've "dramatically" lost weight and friends are now "concerned", b) they've "dramatically" put on weight, and friends are now "concerned", or that they're wearing clothing of such skimpiness that they have "left little to the imagination" (note to newspapers who do this - if you keep saying that items of clothing leave little to the imagination, our imaginations will soon get the message. OK?).

This summer, in Britain at least, showbiz editors and, for that matter, online betting sites, will be whipping themselves into a frenzy over the identity of the next star of Doctor Who (an occasional feature which, along with speculation about a new James Bond, is the closest Brits get to the Vatican appointing a new Pope).

Because, within minutes of news escaping on Saturday night that Matt Smith would be stepping down in December, at the end of the show's 50th year, the speculation began in earnest. Already names like Idris Elba, John Hurt (who cryptically appeared as 'The Doctor' at the end of the latest run), David Harewood from Homeland, Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, and Bilbo Baggins himself, Martin Freeman, are being tipped.

There have even been ridiculous suggestions that Tom Cruise should do it, as well as, bizarrely, David Beckham. And, maddest of all, Simon Cowell, although one can imagine most Doctor Who viewers actually willing the Daleks to exterminate him back to the grammatically torturous Britain's Got Talent on ITV.

However, the maddest suggestions of all have come from newspapers suggesting the next Doctor should be a woman. Odds have even been shortened to 20/1 on Dame Helen Mirren getting the gig, or Twenty Twelve's Olivia Colman or Zawe Ashton from Channel 4's Fresh Meat.

This is a touchy subject: suggestions that a future James Bond could be played by a black actor have met with howls of disagreement, not from racists but traditionalists who still see Bond as the Ian Fleming ideal - tall, dark and white. That the role is currently being played by a short blond man has shown some tolerance. But the traditionalists do have a point. The character was designed a certain way.

I know we're dealing with the creative industry here, darling, and that if Ken Branagh wants to remake Henry V as a modern day battlefield epic he damn well will, but does everything have to be turned upside down and inside out just for the sake of freshness, creativity and interest? Would you recast Mary Poppins with a bloke? Should we remake The Diary of Anne Frank as The Diary of Anton Frank? Should the Wonder Woman reboot star...OK, you know where I'm going with this.

When he first appeared in 1963 - in a fragile world still reeling from the assassination of President Kennedy 24 hours earlier - the Doctor was a strange and even sinister character, a grumpy, grandfatherly time traveller escaping his home world in a hot-wired time machine.

William Hartnell played this character to distinction. Over the years - as Hartnell gave way to Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee (my 'first' Doctor), Tom Baker, Peter Davison, and all the rest - the character evolved into something more whimsical, right up to Smith today. That no female actor has been cast up until now probably does have something to do with television's inherent sexism - the Doctor's long line of comely assistants (shout out, there, to Nicola Bryant as Peri) hasn't been any accident, any more so than the real star of Baywatch was never the beach or The Hoff.

And while, I'm sure, a female Doctor would give the scriptwriters all sorts of licence to go off into directions never before travelled by the previous eleven incarnations, wouldn't it just feel wrong?

Since Doctor Who was revived in 2005, its showrunners Russell T Davis and latterly Steven Moffat have boldly gone where no British teatime sci-fi show has gone before, wonderfully testing the Daily Mail's anti-BBC intolerance by introducing the bisexual Captain Jack Harkness character and the bizarre lesbian relationship between Madame Vastra, who appears to be a lizard, and Jenny Flint, a Victorian Londoner. OK, different. Brilliant, actually. Quite properly, the fact that these characters are gay never becomes a focal point, although there are one or two reactionary journalists amongst the British tabloid press who might deem this to some form of pinko BBC PC subversion.

In addition, they've given Doctors Ecclestone, Tennant and Smith some strong female co-stars - Billie Piper's Rose Tyler (one of the best 'human' characters in the series' history), Catherine Tate's gobby Donna Noble, not to mention Alex Kingston's cross between Indiana Jones and Alien's Ripley, River Song. But the idea of making the Doctor female is just mad to me.

The fact that, according to The Sun, "Sources said several female stars are in the running to be the show’s 12th Time Lord", suggests that this is more than just an early summer silly season story. In fact, it sounds more like the kind of BBC political correctness that had moved half its staff from London to Salford to be more representative and have more sports presenters read out the footy results with a Northern accent.

If some sci-fi writer wants to go ahead and create a female time traveller, or a male nanny who flies across London by umbrella, or dramatise the story of a teenage Dutch boy who hid from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic, go ahead, with my blessing, and fill your boots. Just don't put a lady Doctor in the TARDIS. Apart from anything else, we now know the TARDIS is a she, and that wouldn't be good for the chemistry.

A big deal - in celebration of James Bond theme music

When you're a child everything lacks the correct perspective. That is why Marge Simpson has a huge blue ceiling-dusting beehive: because to The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening that's what his mother's hair looked like from the floor-height perspective of being a small boy.

When I was a child, small deals were big deals. Like, for example, the mother of the bass player in Mud worked in my local Sainsbury's. Or that Sally James from Tiswas lived in the area (just Google her...). The Eurovision Song Contest was another big deal, along with who won It's A Knockout and its mad continental cousin, Jeux Sans Frontières.


Doctor Who was - and, I believe, still is - a very big deal indeed. The 'appointment' of a new Doctor (yes, pedants, I know he's "regenerated", but let's live in the real world, eh?") was an enormous deal. But for me, the grand daddio of big deals is, was and always will be Bond, James Bond.

From the first time I saw clips of the Live And Let Die boat chase on Michael Rodd's groundbreaking movie quiz Screen Test, I knew Bond was going to be a big deal for me.

It was, though, a while before I actually saw a Bond film all the way through. This was the era when children actually went to bed at bedtime, and not just slope off to watch TV on their own set (in our house "the television" referred to just that - a single, living room television).

Today Bond films are available to watch at anytime on DVD or Blu-ray Disc, but then, the premiere of a Bond movie on TV was an event, and an evening event at that. As a result, I'd be lucky to watch up until the first ad break before being dispatched upstairs. My, them '70s were harsh...

Thus, the first Bond movie I saw at the cinema was The Spy Who Loved Me in July 1977. This was my tenth year, and with Star Wars also coming out that summer, it was my first immersion in proper cinema (for the record, school holiday visits to see Disney's Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Herbie Rides Again did not constitute the all-senses assault cinematic experience).

Being PI (pre-Internet), too, cinematic big deals were different. Films were marketed by tie-in toys and special edition cereal packets. Movie 'buzz' was something within the film industry, not gossip inside any old Starbucks. The Bond films, however, were - to me at least - a breed apart (and still are). Their original producers, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, developed their own formula for hyping up a new Bond film, and it was built around creating the same expectation each time - starting with the film before ("James Bond will return in...").

Firstly, fans would get excited about the film's opening scene. Since Dr No, released 50 years ago, a Bond movie must have it's opening 'gag', a scene that either informs the remainder of the film, or at least gets it underway with a spectacular stunt.

In the case of The Spy Who Loved Me, it was Bond being chased off a mountain by Russians angry that he'd just been shagging Ringo Starr's wife (long story). This culminated in one of the most famous stunts in film history, the ski jump by stuntman Rick Sylvester (filling in for Roger Moore) who releases a Union Jack parachute and lands to safety.

Secondly, the opening gag must dissolve into an oblique title sequence by Maurice Binder, in which silhouettes of naked women float about like cruising mermaids around the apparent silhouette of a dinner-suited man carrying a gun, which he fires, wiping into the first actual scene of the movie.

That Binder more or less repeated the same sequence each time is eclipsed by the third most vital element, one which overshadows everything else at this stage of the film and, to be honest, continues to fire debate and open argument still, 50 years after the first time you heard the words "the name's Bond, James Bond".

I am, of course, talking about The Bond Song. It is so famous, so redolent, so important, that it even has its own proper noun. Because The Bond Song is a big deal. And it began with The Bond Theme, Monty Norman's fabulous string and brass arrangement first heard over the opening credits of Dr No and featuring one of the most famous guitar riffs in history, played by Worcester Park, Surrey-born session musician Vic Flick. With his Paragon Deluxe guitar plugged into a Vox AC15 amp, Flick allowed the sound to bleed into adjacent, open microphones, creating that distinct, reverbed twang. He  received a one-off fee of £6 in the summer of 1962 for the session.

Since then, the Bond song has evolved, and has become a genre in its own right. That distinctive chord progression of the string section can be performed anywhere on its own, and people will still instantly think 'Bond'. Over the years, composer John Barry (and more recently, his 'heir' David Arnold) have, mostly, kept the Bond theme within certain parameters - sweeping strings and a strong feeling of glamour, excitement and danger.

Then there's the choice of performer. This IS a big deal. The early, Sean Connery films not only benefitted from great, detail- and style-minded directors like Terence Young, Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert, but also their choice of theme songs and their singers: Matt Monro (From Russia With Love), Shirley Bassey (Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever), Tom Jones (Thunderball) or Nancy Sinatra (You Only Live Twice).

These remain - for me, at least - the quintessential Bond theme songs. With Roger Moore taking over the title role from Connery (via George Lazenby), the Bond franchise welcomed the 1970s with a change of musical direction, and Paul McCartney and Wings'  Live And Let Die. It's still a great song, with its switching of tempos from reggae to rock making it a nightmare to drive to. But then it was the first time the Bond people took a contemporary approach - something that hasn't always been a success since.

"Writing a James Bond song is a tough assignment, I should know - I've co-written one," says Sean Hannam, who when not working as a journalist is a DJ and musician. Sean is a passionate Bond fan, but equally passionate about the traditions of Bond - especially its music.

"Four years ago, after watching Quantum of Solace, I and my singer/songwriter friend Matt Hill, who records as Quiet Loner, decided to embark on a mission," Sean recalls. Together with arranger and studio wizard Will Dobson ("our very own Q!"), they set about writing their own contribution to the canon of Bond themes.

Sean explains that they'd been bitterly disappointed by the number of poor songs in recent Bond movies: "Like, for example, Jack White and Alicia Keys' blustering and bluesy Another Way To Die, which played over the opening credits of Quantum. We thought we could do much better."

Sean Hannam, Matt Hill and their studio 'Q', Will Dobson

"We went back to Ian Fleming for our inspiration - always a good place to start," Sean recalls. "Firstly, we chose the title, The Property of a Lady, from a [Ian] Fleming short story of the same name. Matt and I were attracted to the various connotations of the title: who is the lady? Could it be the Queen, could it be 'M', as portrayed by Dame Judi Dench, or could it refer to Bond himself, being the property of a lady?

"With this in mind, I penned a suitable lyric. I wanted to capture the feel of an old Bond song like Goldfinger - which is still the best Bond song by far -  but to also make it sound relevant to [Daniel] Craig's new era of 007. I thought my words should mix the camp rhymes of Goldfinger's lyricists Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, but with a touch of darkness and revenge."


The end result incorporated classic Bond song words like "danger" and "stranger'", as well as references to the deaths of Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale and Bond's new bride Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service ("...those that he's loved have all withered and died...").

"If that wasn't enough to please Bond fans," Sean adds, "I also threw in some classic 007 imagery and themes –  exotic locations, girls, fire, revenge, death and destruction."

Hannam and Hill took the view that even when a new Bond actor takes over, or a new director joins the franchise, they should bring something fresh, but also tip a trilby to the past. "Judging by the reviews of Skyfall [which opens tomorrow] it manages to do this very well," Sean feels. "It pays homage to the iconic 007 films of the '60s, but also manages to play around with the formula, subverting the audience's expectations, but, ultimately, creating a very modern movie that's dark, exciting and daring, but that still captures the best of Bond."

That, Sean feels, should apply to the music as well. "It's a difficult trick to pull off. Adele's Skyfall song just sounds like one of her bland, dinner party background ballads that's been swathed in moody strings and big brass to give it some added drama. It simply isn't sexy or dangerous enough to be a Bond song. It so dearly wants to be considered as a classic, Bassey-style Bond anthem,  but, instead, it's as if someone's dressed up 007 in a cheap tuxedo from Primark."

Tough words indeed, but indicative of just how precious a film franchise Bond is. Remember when they announced Daniel Craig? Outcry that 007 - the quintessential tall, dark and handsome action hero - would be played by a shortish blond Liverpudlian. Most people now consider him to be the best Bond since Sean Connery...

When David Arnold took over from the late John Barry to score Tomorrow Never Dies, the self-confessed Bond fan had already shown form with his theme song featuring Björk for the thriller Play Dead, as well as his excellent compilation Shaken And Stirred, featuring covers of Bond themes by David McAlmont, Pulp, Propellerheads and others. It was clear that Arnold already had the formula.

And yet, the Bond producers have continued to tamper. "Madonna's Die Another Day attempted to drag Bond onto the dance floor, but ended up as a clunky orchestral-techno hybrid monstrosity," says Sean Hannam. All in all, Die Another Day was not 007's finest moment, given the CGI horror that it largely was.

The trouble with Bond theme songs is that, when poor, they act as a lightning rod of criticism for the film itself. Sheryl Crow's Tomorrow Never Dies was the wrong voice on the right song in a mostly forgettable Bond outing. Ditto Garbage on The World Is Not Enough. You have to go back to Goldeneye - written by U2's Bono and The Edge, and sung by Tina Turner - to get a half-decent, on-formula Bond theme.

Sean comments that while Soundgarden's Chris Cornell's You Know My Name from Casino Royale tried to toughen up the Bond sound to coincide with newcomer Daniel Craig's portrayal of 007, it also failed. "Failed miserably," says Sean. "It's an instantly forgettable soft rock song that lacks style, charm or excitement."

As we now know, Sean and Matt's Bond lost out to Adele for Skyfall. "If only we'd had the budget to be able to afford a full orchestra," he says. "Matt's vocals were definitely channeling crooner Matt Monro, who sang the theme to From Russia With Love  - my favourite Bond film."

Adele was a strong early choice for Skyfall. Love her or loathe her, her melodramatic balladeering, not to mention the phenomenal global success of her 19 and 21 albums more or less made her a shoe-in. There have been precedents: Lulu recorded The Man With The Golden Gun at the height of her 70s fame, while Carly Simon's Marvin Hamlisch/Carole Bayer Sager-penned Nobody Does It Better came out while she was the darling of the LA music scene. It's also a brilliant Bond song, fitting for the flared trousered, eyebrow-raising, scenery chewing lounge lizard era of Roger Moore.

So, who for Bond 24? Let me offer a surprise choice: Liam Gallagher. Just listen to I'm Outta Time from the final Oasis album Dig Out Your Soul. Written by the junior Gallagher, it had all the hallmarks of a classic Bond theme, even if from the last person you'd associate with anything about Bond.

Then there is Muse. "Forget them," says Sean bluntly. "They seem to be the popular choice with the general public at the moment, but their histrionic, prog-rock shrieking is far too over-the-top and cringe-worthy." I fully agree.

And so a suggestion Sean and I also agree upon wholeheartedly: Richard Hawley. "He’d be a dead cert to compose a heartbreaking ballad to rival Louis Armstrong's We Have All The Time In The World from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service," says Sean, who could see the Yorkshire crooner produce something dark, moody and dramatic to go with the Craig-era Bond. "What if he partnered with fellow Sheffielder Alex Turner, whose Arctic Monkeys side project, Last Shadow Puppets, are perfect at crafting swooning, cinematic soundtracks with twangy guitars and lush, orchestral backing?"

The name that comes back again and again, however, is the singer who has sung on three Bond songs and is probably the most associated with the form: Shirley Bassey. "For Skyfall," says Sean, "I think Shirley Bassey should have been invited back to belt out a new song, ideally penned by composer and arranger David Arnold and veteran lyricist Don Black.

"An Arnold, Black and Bassey collaboration would've been a fitting tribute to the 50th anniversary of the 007 movies," adds Sean, "and to John Barry, who created the Bond sound, but, sadly, died in 2011. Black once said in a TV interview that he thought Shirley should sing all the Bond songs. He's got a point. When it comes to Bond songs, nobody does it better!"

Because you wouldn't want The Daleks every week

Barry Levinson's comedy Tin Men brilliantly pitched a feud between rival 'aluminum siding' salesmen Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfuss that erupted out of nothing. Literally nothing more than an accidental, innocuous and minor clash of car bumpers.

As the film progresses, the feud snowballs into all-out war between the two, a dispute made all the funnier by their ever-increasing, cartoon character-delinquent attempts to get one over the other. In real life, however, such feuds are anything but.

Twenty years ago I saw something similar develop between two news presenters at a national television station. What started as a clash of egos, accompanied by light banter, ended with the pair rolling down a newsroom corridor, like a (thankfully) clothed version of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed's drunken wrestle in Women In Love. The tussle ended with one newsreader going to hospital, both ending up out of work, and one or two others on the periphery posted KIA through collateral damage.

The saga of John Terry and Anton Ferdinand has anything but an innocuous origin. It's where the whole shabby mess ends up that matters now. The FA's verdict on Chelsea's never-say-die skipper is anything but conclusive, and has left the faultline that emerged almost 12 months ago at Loftus Road still fizzing away, the threat of steaming magma periodically bursting through the Earth's crust remains.

Since the intial incident between Ferdinand and Terry, the affair has surfaced and submerged again with similar consistency to the Daleks in TV's Doctor Who. Its writers know they can't be in every episode, so they hold back, introducing them like sink plunger-equipped pantomime villains when their entry will have the greatest shock value. As a result, when I was a child, a Dalek Doctor Who episode was always a bonus, like discovering the green triangle in a tin of Quality Street. You'd have weeks of 'ordinary' baddies and then - they're back! To which you'd scurry behind the sofa. It was an event, long before some fool invented the phrase "appointment television".

The difference between the Daleks and the Terry-Ferdinand saga is that the recurrence of the latter has never been met by people scurrying for the protection of living room furniture. I don't know about you, but the way it has dragged on has just become tedious, not helped by the fact that the original contretemps was a case of two players who should know better, getting into the kind of rival sledging that takes place on every football pitch and at every level of the game.

The matter should have been addressed and solved as soon as it occurred, especially by the FA, who - typically - farted around while the police investigated, the Crown Prosecution Service prepared charges, the England manager walked out, a criminal court acquitted Terry, the Euros took place, and then the opening qualifiers for the 2014 World Cup, only to then haul in Terry, fine him a week's wages and give him a four-game ban.

Which means that the FA's pursuit of disciplinary proceedings against Terry smacks, if nothing else, of extreme bumptiousness. John Terry has become the FA's own Al Capone, Public Enemy No.1, English football´s adminstrator a pathetic version of Elliott Ness, vowing, Boy Scout-style to bring down Capone come-what-may and then only doing so on tax charges, punching the air like Tim Henman in pumped-up self pride: "now we've got him!".Well, no they haven't. Terry is now preparing for martyrdom and the faultlines continue to hiss away.

I'm a Chelsea fan, as most people know, and I've had my doubts and suspicions from the very beginning. Is Terry racist? No. Did he address Ferdinand with a racist word? Ferdinand and YouTube-watching lip readers say yes. Did Ferdinand use the word in the first place to provoke Terry? According to Terry, yes he did.

Verdict? You try working it out. A criminal court failed to reach a guilty verdict and the FA, by the sounds of it, couldn't really, either, but had to act. Mainly because they'd done bugger all so far, more than 11 months since it all began. If stamping out racism is as important to the FA as they keep saying it is, they should have been on Terry's case on October 24 last year, not trying to seek their pound of flesh almost a year later.

While Terry considers appeals and a possible High Court review, Ferdinand continues to fight for his corner via Twitter - the Ferdinand family mouthpiece of choice - by saying "the footage don't lie". Ignoring the less serious charge of grammatical error, Ferdinand should just keep quiet now.

Yes, Terry's punishment is lean (for once, I find myself agreeing with Sir Alex Ferguson on something...), but punishment it is. For the good of he game, both Ferdinand and Terry need to drop it and try and move on.

Anton Ferdinand and John Terry will never be friends. John Terry will never be the most popular footballer in England. He never was, why should he ever be - whether acting as a lightning rod for Chelsea's wealth or the money flooding football in general, or for his various misadventures (including one involving Wayne Bridge's ex). Few though can or should deny JT's sterling contribution to the Chelsea and England defence, boot-defying contributions that have at times defied logic.

We Chelsea fans are regularly - and, I've got to admit, quite justifiably - accused of myopia when it comes to Terry, or indeed anything else this team commits. Nothing new there: Manchester United fans all believe the clocks at Old Trafford are tuned to Swiss perfection, and many Arsenal fans share the selective vision of their own team manager.

Terry, though, will be forever regarded a racist. Some stains can´t be removed. But if he is, surely he'd be using the sort of "industrial" language he became charged for on a regular basis. In this Twitter age there would be dressing room tweets about Terry calling so-and-so a such-and-such, interviews in French newspapers surfacing in which a Chelsea player complains about Terry's offensive attitude towards the club's black players. Odd, then, that we haven't read any of this.

I deplore racism, but I'm equally ill at ease with people exploiting an issue for a cause. If Terry used a racist word in his exchange with Ferdinand, then he should have been punished immediately and with the same weight as that meted out to Luis Suarez.

I'm not blaming the FA to deflect attention away from Terry. I'm blaming the FA because of their bureaucratic ineptitude in installing anything resembling consistency in the game that we can all recognise and all who play the game can adhere to. In giving JT nothing but a slap on the wrist, they're admitting that they had nothing to impose a heavier sanction with, or they realised that this far out from the original incident, this is the best they can do.

What will it have achieved? Nothing. Football will still be perceived as a festering bed of simmering, bile-dripping inter-player, inter-team and inter-fan hostility.

Little more than a month ago I posted about how, following our glorious summer of running and jumping, football was back like a snarling attack dog wearing the chavviest, flashiest diamond-studded collar. Some critics felt that I'd over-simplified the differences between football and the Olympic spirit that beautified London like a fragrance over the summer. Well, I stand by my statement. The feral beast is showing no sign of going away.