Heavy mettle

Some time ago, I boxed all my cassette tapes and gave them away to a charity shop. Among them were some of those I used to exchange with pen friends when I had about a dozen the world over with titles Vice Eager Sings Elvis Presley.

At the time, there was a spate of artists whose voices sounded quite similar to that of popular stars - and on the strength of this, wanted to become equally famous by doing cover versions of their songs. They never did. These days, of course, these performers call themselves 'tribute' singers or bands, and not copycats or at least imitators. A point of interest is that a recent contest organised to find a 'perfect' doppelganger of Madonna, was won by a man.

These days we have Yvonne Haylen doing Cher, Tony Grant doing Freddy Mercury, Rob Lamberti doing George Michael, and so forth.

In my day James Lloyd was another imitator - of Englebert Humper-dinck. However, this singer cut records that had never been sung by the former.

A recent trend, across different radio stations, has disc jockeys making fun of a colleague who is playing James Lloyd's Keep On Smiling and saying it is Englebert Humperdinck several times over the course of the last few months.

My guess is that this person has a lot of CDs that are not original, and therefore there are no inserts to indicate this or other information. Sometimes, this person does not even tell us the name of the song and singer until after the record has been played - making it appear as though he has no idea what will be on next.

It never, ever impresses me when names of listeners ostensibly requesting this or that song to be played, are bandied about.

And it is amazing that despite all the repeated warnings about keeping away from the beach from 11 a.m. up to at least 4 p.m., the titles of some programmes indicate that their presenters assume we are watching or listening to them as we roast ourselves.

The word is that the talents of Brainbox and Cliché are about to join forces to provide the local version of Who Do You Think You Are?, the genealogy television series in which celebrities trace their family trees, currently in its fifth series on BBC (in which Esther Rantzen discovers an ancestor was a murderer and Boris Johnson said his great-grandfather was a devout Turkish Muslim, and that his blonde thatch probably came from a Circassian slave girl from the Caucasus mountains).

In Malta, it is par for the course that all of us are probably related to some degree. Sabrina Mulligan and Claudette Pace have taken this premise to a new level, and opting for the hackneyed Maltese idiom Ir-Razza u r-Radika, will be giving us a similar insight into our heritage.

Obviously, Mulligan's surname does not lend itself to umpteen local connections - but that of Ms Pace does - and certainly will. Moreover, the series will include live links with Maltese expatriates on the same mission. The prizes being offered are a bonus.

This collaboration is probably a first in local television history (other alliances could have existed, but for reasons best left unexplored and unexplained, were never made public). The programme will air on Net TV, on Thursdays at 8.30 p.m. in the coming schedule.

It bodes well for future programmes of quality, because in the line of my work, I have noticed that different production houses have different strengths, and different talents, and amalgamating them could even work towards annihilating some of the silly back-biting and tiresome competitive pressure that goes on most of the time.

The new brooms are still sweeping clean; PBS has announced the new, improved regulations for Eurosong 2009.

Eurosong 2009 will consist of four phases, with a maximum of 80 songs chosen by judges to participate in a weekly, live, television programme. The final results will be announced during the last programme in the series in mid-January. There will be a combined judges' decision and televoting campaign to bring the number down to 20 - 75 per cent of the results will be determined by the judges. Yet, if some of the songs appear on both lists, the next in line from the public vote will make it through.

A point of interest - especially pertinent about all the fuss about how il-barrani could come and dump himself upon us - is that participants must be Maltese, or hold dual nationality. There are several other details, relevant only to those who intend to take part.

Meanwhile, I could not confirm whether yet another television station, with the working title 'Favourite', will be launched come December, just in time for Christmas omnibus editions of locally-produced series.

Producers who are already working in the film and television industries would do well to look into a programme being offered by the European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE). More information and the application form (deadline for admissions in 2009 is October 1) are available from http://206.125.213.242/admission.html

This week, I could not decide which of the quotes sent to me was the better one: Josephine said: "I like deadlines ... especially the whooshing sound they make as they fly by!" And Louise said: "At one point they decided to fight fire with fire, and their house burned down even faster!"