Bros: After The Screaming Stops is must-see TV

HAVE you watched the Bros documentary After the Screaming Stops yet? It charts Matt and Luke Goss’ 30th anniversary comeback gig at London’s O2 Arena and it is something else.

It was by far the best thing on telly over Christmas and if you missed it you simply must hop on to the BBC iPlayer and settle down for 90 minutes of TV gold. It’s unintentionally hilarious because of Matt’s insistence on taking himself very, very seriously indeed and a fondness for sharing nuggets of wisdom – after all, CNN is “the thinking man’s reality show”.

The brothers haven’t performed together in almost 30 years and it seems they haven’t spoken much either. However, they are keen to make up for lost time and re-establish the connection they had as children or, as Matt puts it: “I was a rectangle and [Luke] was a rectangle and we made a square that became a fortress.”

The documentary follows them from their homes in the US (“The letters h-o-m-e are so important because they personify the word home,” says Matt) to their childhood stomping grounds where Matt gets vexed that children nowadays aren’t allowed to play conkers unless they wear safety goggles.

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He implores Luke to join him in starting a petition, as Bros, to have the travesty rectified. Luke replies diplomatically, “I can live with it”.

Other great Matt-isms include “I made a conscious decision because of Stevie Wonder not to be superstitious” and, describing how the documentary helped his relationship with Luke: “If there was ever 15 one-way streets and one solitary two-way street where me and my brother got to meet in the middle – you helped [us] find that one street. We’ve met in the middle. Two worlds definitely collided. When two worlds collide, two things happen: Destruction or the genesis of new beginnings, and you created water on a new planet, mate.”

Say what now?

Twitter was chortling so much about the documentary that Sleb Safari thought it was going to be a meme-tastic laugh fest and it was, but it was unexpectedly moving too.

Neither brother coped well with the fallout from Bros and they lost each other as well as their livelihoods. Luke is still smarting. “I thought I was a waste of space, I thought I was useless; he was perceived as the gifted one, he was the special one,” he says.

Matt sees it differently. “It’s been a never ending apology being Matt Goss”.

They speak with difficulty about the deaths of their sister and their mother and there’s a touching scene where they struggle to perform a song about their mum. There are plenty of arguments too, fuelled by decades of hurt.

If anything the documentary should serve as a cautionary tale and any pop band being assembled by the likes of Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh should be sat down by their parents and made watch it. Here endeth the lecture from Aunty Sleb Safari.

The Stork Is Going To Be Busy in 2019

There was as many celebrity baby announcements as happy new year messages when December 31 rolled into January 1.

Among the celebrities lining up to share their lovely news were Gordon and Tana Ramsay who revealed they’re having their fifth baby, while Abbey Clancy and Peter Crouch are having their fourth and so too are Kim Kardashian and Kanye West who will welcome their baby via a surrogate.

The stork better start warming up on the side-line.

The Notebook Goes to Broadway

Yet another Hollywood film is being turned into a musical theatre extravaganza. The Notebook started life as a Nicholas Sparks novel before being made into a film starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan “I wrote you 365 letters. I wrote you every day for a year. It wasn’t over. It still isn’t over” Gosling.

The Notebook will eventually open on Broadway alongside other films which are currently being turned into musicals including Mrs Doubtfire and The Devil Wears Prada. The Notebook will be such a tear jerker set to music.

Hat Tip To Madonna

The first Sassy Lady Award of 2019 goes to Madonna for, as always, not giving two flying frogs what anyone thinks.

She and her son performed in a New York bar on New Year's Eve and her appearance had people wondering whether she'd cosmetic surgery on her bottom.

Madonna addressed the speculation in an Instagram post:

High five Madonna, keep up the good work.

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