Tom Cruise Slightly Wet Shock

[John Self]

News story of the day is Tom Cruise being squirted with water by someone from Channel 4 pretending to be interviewing him at the War of the Worlds premiere but actually recording a stunt for a playing-pranks-on-celebrities show, presumably a terrestrial version of MTV's Punk'd.

Now if there's one media phenomenon I hate more than worshipping at the altar of celebrity, it's practical joke shows. I just have never seen the hilarity in frightening someone into thinking something has gone terribly wrong in their life (remember the 'classic' Beadle's About where they pretended to dump into the sea a van containing a man's entire working life, stock, possessions and tools? How funny it was to see him reduced to tears, screaming and crying!!). Squirting water is, well, piddling by comparison but something about the whole incident just got up my nose (insert own joke here). Maybe it's because, unlike the similar incident against Robert Kilroy-Silk, it was done for a TV show's own self-involved sense of fun, rather than just because some so-and-so couldn't stick the bastard. Or maybe it's because, as Hollywood A-listers go, Tom Cruise is surely one of the less objectionable. He may be an adherent to a crackpot religion, and be engaged to a woman literally young enough to be his daughter, but he occasionally chooses interesting projects which show he can actually act, and also treats his fans with a bit of decency - his famous two-hour walkabouts at premieres being somewhat above the industry norm of a wave and a quickly receding rear view.

If you click the link on this (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4107922.stm)page, you can watch the incident and I have to admit that I thought Cruise dealt with it very well, repeatedly asking the squirter politely "Why would you do that?" with Paxmanesque tenacity, while holding his hands in a matey gesture actually calculated to keep him there while security came running. Only at the end does he lose his cool a bit, calling the guy a 'jerk'. And apparently four people were arrested on suspicion of assault, which is fairly hilarious. Wouldn't it be good if they ended up with criminal records as a result of their adherence to lowest common denominator television? What a reality show that would make!

[ono no komachi]

It does strike me as something more suited to the level of Little Ant & Dec - oh no hang on, they're usually a bit more mature than that, aren't they?

Personally I'd have enjoyed it much more if they'd done it to Russell Crowe and ended up getting decked.

[Colyngbourne]

I hate pranks of any kind on anyone. When children do it, it's bad enough but this kind of thing deserves to get prosecuted. I always feared, in Beadle's About and similar barrel-scraping TV, that someone would suffer with a stroke or heart attack or lasting psychological damage from the 'jokes' played on them. Like a lot of people, I am less than keen on the whole Scientology and Katie Holmes stuff, but I respect Cruise for how he handled this so calmly. I'd be unhappy if Crowe was targeted - simply because it would be to provoke his temper and he *would* very likely over-react and he'd get the blame, not the TV idiots.

[John Self]

Well they could be prosecuted, as any sort of physical attack on someone irrespective of injury or lack of it, constitutes assault (well actually it constitutes battery, you don't even need physical contact to constitute technical assault). I suppose it comes down to whether or not Cruise wants to press charges, aware as he would no doubt be of subsequent media jibes for not being able to take a joke.

[John Self]

Marcus Brigstocke in today's Guardian:

For a few brief, terrible weeks I worked on The Eleven O'Clock Show. It was essentially a drop in centre for socially retarded comics who didn't know any better and had nowhere else to go. Granted, it launched Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais into the stratosphere of excellent comic achievement. My contributions, however, fell more often into The Eleven O'Clock Show specialty of running down to the Elephant and Castle and shouting "Quick, old man, say wank before we lose the light". He'd look politely back at the camera crew, wondering how to leave without causing offence, so we'd have to squeeze it out of him. "You see, old man, the producer and I have spent the afternoon thinking of ways to make you look stupid - the whole afternoon, in fact, so being as English is your second language I'll ask you a lame, half-arsed, loosely euphemistic question, then you look confused while the camera lunges towards your face and then say, "I don't really know" in your funny accent. When you've gone I'll look smugly into the camera to show how much cleverer I am than you, because I have a producer and you don't."

Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci could never have known when they made The Day Today that thousands of devotees would so carelessly, crappily copy their model and so many nice old people would be left wondering what the hell just happened as four big men and a camera strode away giggling.

All of that was a long time ago though, and of course producers and Channel 4 have moved on in leaps and bounds since then. I mean, now the gags are as sophisticated as squirting Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol microphone. That is literally thigh-slappingly funny, isn't it? Take the week off, whichever genius thought up that "prank". In fact, take the month off, or better still the life. I don't much care about Tom Cruise - he was a good prop for Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, he was a great advertisement for warmongery in Top Gun and was, of course, the reason Rebecca De Mornay got her kit off in Risky Business making my teenage years a happier place than it might otherwise have been. Beyond that he is pretty good at what he does, he might be an acting genius appreciated by generations to come, he might not be/he might be gay, he might not be - who knows or cares? My problem is that it's just so bloody easy to squirt Tom Cruise in the face with a water pistol shaped microphone so why bother? Perhaps it was a protest against the dominance of the Hollywood studio system and the vanity of celebrity culture, perhaps a strange, watery satire on the transparent tasteless nature of a red carpet plug for a tiresome remake of an already tiresome film.

Perhaps. Or perhaps it was just shit. Happily the Steve Penk wannabe and his crew were arrested and the microphone confiscated so with any luck we will never know. Paul Kaye, aka Dennis Pennis, did all this years ago, didn't he? No wonder happy slapping is all the rage when people are paid to make TV like this, (and in case anyone is wondering - I know the ice upon which I skate is perilously thin). But how long will it be before some barrel-scraping TV production company is asking kids to email in their wackiest hate crimes caught on mobile video. "This week on Mobile Maulings and Muggery we see this zany gang of hooded thugs terrify a junior school pupil - "just look at her face as they pull out a big knife - classic."

Whatever hot-shot, peroxide-headed producer is reading this with pen in hand and finger poised over the speed dial button to Endemol, I was only kidding. Please just stop.