Last night (Saturday 23rd December 2010) the British Comedy Awards were held at the O2 in London and also broadcast live on Channel 4 – nothing unusual in that I hear you say, what is unusual is that the winners weren’t exactly what you’d expect.

As ever with award ceremonies there will be winners and losers and people will be upset at who won and who didn’t but last nights awards seem to be a the biggest shock.  Most people will be aware that the winners are picked (with the exception of the People’s Choice award which is picked by the public via expensive telephone voting) by a panel of industry experts and fellow funny people, it seems they have lost their way somewhat this year.

For a start who expected ‘Horrible Histories’ to win Best Sketch Show; even though I’ll admit it’s quite good, and who for the love of God picked Newswipe as the winner of Best Comedy Entertainment Show when the likes of Harry Hill’s TV Burp are getting better ratings and Newswipe is stuck on BBC Three late at night, but the biggest shock was yet to come.

Outstanding? Nope.

The Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award was given to that lanky, offensive, flouncy haired know-it-all Russell Brand, when the likes of Peter Kay and his Lordship Stephen Fry have won it before, what were the judges thinking when they picked him?

I can only suggest that they were either bribed or aren’t actually industry experts and they’re actually sixteen year old girls or Katy Perry.

I think you need to pose the question whether award shows such as these are actually worthwhile when you have a comedian (using the term lightly) who is almost universally despised winning a top award, maybe it’s time the whole show was voted for by the public preferably online and for free.  It’s time to give the public back the choice after all we are the people who watch comedians, pay the license fee and support their work.   I’ve sworn that I’ll never watch the comedy awards ever again and I’ll stick by that until they realise that we won’t stand for winners who don’t deserve a top honour.

We can only that next year the winner is more realistic or else we’ll have Lady Gaga getting an OBE for Outstanding Contribution to Fashion in next years new years honours list.

We’ve just launched a short URL Service, at the moment we’re still testing it out but we hope to have it running fully soon!

It’s bullshit.

Well that was easy wasn’t it? Spiritualism is the maybe the third biggest load of bullshit every to have graced our world.  I’ll go into what number two and number one are in the course of this mini-series.  The problem I have with spiritualism is that from a scientific and logical stand point there is not evidence to prove it, so consequently why believe it?

A lot of people who believe in this kind of bullshit are trying to exploit a basic human trait of escapism.  Now escapism is fine most of the time we all do it; some by reading, many by arty things such as drawing or writing.  What I have a problem with is escaping through something which is neither real or can ever be proven to be so.

All those hours wasted by looking at star charts to see which quadrant Venus is in and how that’ll effect your life is complete and utter shite.  Unless of course you’re a muppet.  Personally I don’t believe in fate, why should you when life has infinite possibilities that are determined by nothing but your own actions.

What can I say to deter people from believing in it? Nothing, people are free to believe what they like and no amount of anti-bullshit watching by me is going to make a difference, people will believe it non the less.  Maybe people who has a spiritualist streak should think once in a while that maybe if they just let life take them where it wants to things will work out on their own.

Do you ever think that’s it’s the little things in life that make it fun?  Sometimes there are just some silly little things that make you smile and make you happy for that minute second and induce a feeling of nothing else matters.

I do, dear reader get those feeling from time to time, it’s funny to think that something as simple at being let out at a junction or finding a pound in your pocket just when you needed it can immediately improve your day and make you a smiling fool.

Miserable? Never, well just some of the time, well most of the time, well 99.5% of the time, but for some reason those moments come along just when needed and they make your day; and yes I did just have one.

Simple things eh?

Well, this is turn up for the books isn’t it? Kenneth Tong has now posted a tweet saying that his managed anorexia campaign was a hoax, well that makes it all better then doesn’t it?

No, it doesn’t.

He states his reasons for picking an offensive and sickening topic to promote was to conduct an experiment to see if twitter can be used to garner huge publicity.  It worked but here at Rant Towers we’re still unsure as to whether to believe him or not.

You have to think that after so much bad publicity, wouldn’t someone post something reversing their actions even if they did still believe it? Well we wouldn’t here but some people might.

You can read his comments below.

Kenneth Tong

On Tuesday 11th January 2011, @MrKennethTong said:

I think it is time for to come clean. The whole size zero thing is a hoax. It came about after an interesting discussion I had with a friend of mine. The discussion centered round whether it was possible, to go from nowhere to be a globally recognized figure within a week harnessing the power of the internet and specifically Twitter, which I have always maintained is a better medium than national TV. My friend said it wasn’t possible. I said it was. To prove him wrong, I decided as a hoax to promote via Twitter something that was universally appalling, I chose managed anorexia. I would like to make it clear, I chose the subject as a hoax as I knew it’d be appalling to men and women. The campaign has worked; I have been a Trending topic on Twitter for over a week. I am scheduled to appear on TV, the Press and Radio shows, over the course of the next week: Grazia, Telegraph, The Sun, The Sunday Times etc. Now it’s time to come clean and stop the bandwagon. My honest personal opinion on managed anorexia is it is an disgusting and illogical idea. It is a mental illness. It cannot be managed. To all the people I have offended as part of this scientific experiment, I would like to apologize to you and to show my sincerity I will making a sizeable donation to beat: the leading UK charity for people with eating disorders and their families. Furthermore, I have decided to auction my custom Apple iPod Nano watch on Ebay, the proceeds from this will be going to the charity, beat.

Now if you don’t mind I’ll go back to actually focussing on something important and Mr. Tong you can go and crawl back under which ever rock you came from, now fuck off.

Source: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/82t0bf

Here we go and again, Twitter is a aflame with disgust at the recent Tweets of Kenneth Tong, over the past few months the self styled playboy has been posting offensive and sickening Tweets on the social networking website focussing on his “Endorsement of managed Anorexia”.

He’s clearly forgetting something.

Let’s just take a moment to discuss what Anorexia actually is.  The following is an excerpt from the Merriam-Webster MedLine Plus service.

Anorexia

A serious eating disorder primarily of young women in their teens and early twenties that is characterized especially by a pathological fear of weight gain leading to faulty eating patterns, malnutrition, and usually excessive weight loss

So now we’ve summed it up, it’s pretty obvious that Anorexia is a severe mental health illness which can lead to death.  Now Mr. Tong why are you endorsing it’s use for weight loss? What exactly are you going to get out of it, except a load of publicity for about a week before you’re forgotten and we all move on to the next idiot? Mr. Tong is under the impression that encouraging young impressionable people to starve themselves is the right thing to do.  I have first hand experience of helping someone with a severe eating disorder and let me tell you this it’s not fun.  I watch someone put themselves through a horrifying ordeal on a daily basis to make themselves thin, and guess what?

There was nothing I could do to stop them.

So Mr. Tong before you spout you’re hateful and sickening bullshit to everyone take a moment to think about the people who have to clean up the mess people like you cause, and those who have to deal with the effects of an eating disorder on those they care about.  Grow up and come to the real world.  Alternatively keep your bullshit to yourself and don’t bother us anymore.