In the frame . . . the artist and the case of the headless model
WE’VE all done it — cut someone’s head off. Not literally... unless you’re one of those four murderous police trainees on unforgotten, with a decapitated corpse in the freezer.
But when we snap a holiday photo, it’s easy to chop off a subject at the neck. Amateur artist Sarah did it, in the opening episode of comedian Jenny Eclair’s painting contest, Drawers Off (C4).
The model was a Las Vegas showgirl’s daughter called Shevon, aged 34, who paid tribute to her mum by posing in a scanty bit of blue satin.
Shevon wore a headdress like the Statue of Liberty.
Sarah was so intent on filling the canvas with her long legs that she left no room for the giant tiara, and had to shrink the model’s head to the size of an avocado.
Art coach Diana Ali peered over the contestant’s shoulder, from a socially distanced safe remove, and wondered aloud whether the proportions were quite right.
Sarah’s response was to take a cloth and scrub away everything she’d already painted.
Nothing stings like a bit of constructive criticism. Insults and sneers can feel almost like compliments — the disapproval of the ignorant is flattery. But to see your mistakes through the eyes of others is quite a test of character. Watching other people’s errors being corrected is both good fun and useful instruction. This show serves up plenty of both.
Diana doesn’t mince her words: ‘It looks like she’s broken her ankle,’ she told 46-year- old Will, who was having trouble with the model’s feet. ‘Can we get a bit more realism in there, please?’
PR consultant Sara was filling her frame with washes of purple, because she wanted to capture Shevon’s ‘aura’ — the Technicolor glow around her body, visible only to the psychic eye. ‘I’m smirking a bit,’ Jenny said, ‘because obviously I don’t believe a word of it.’
At just half an hour, the format doesn’t drag, And it offers a couple of neat twists. Each day one of the artists takes a turn at posing — almost — in the altogether. Tomorrow, it’ll be Sara’s go.
The day’s winner is picked by the model. This time, Shevon chose tattoo artist glyn’s effort, which depicted her being run through with dagger-like crucifixes. Perhaps he thought she was a vampire. Any vampire would be well advised to avoid South African arms dealer Johan Erasmus, who always carries seven knives, a gun, and probably a couple of stakes for good measure.
Erasmus was one of the characters that appeared to have escaped from a Frederick Forsyth novel, and were hunting for pallets laden with shrink-wrapped blocks of banknotes in the Storyville documentary The Hunt For Gaddafi’s Billions (BBC4).
Film-maker Misha Wessel set up the facts in a plodding voiceover, weighed down by her heavy Dutch accent.
As the world’s richest man, Libyan dictator Muammar gaddafi, faced overthrow in 2011, he scrambled to get his vast wealth out of the country. Piling gold, diamonds and mountains of dollars into 179 cargo flights, he sent it to South Africa. It hasn’t been seen since.
gaddafi would have done better to leave his gold behind and head to Johannesburg himself. Instead, he ended his life at the hands of a mob, who stabbed him with a bayonet and shot him several times.
unlike a Forsyth thriller, this 90-minute film didn’t build to any sort of climax. Instead, it fizzled out, with the investigators and gun-toting accountants frustrated by the complete disappearance of all that money.
Meanwhile, the allegedly corrupt former South African president Jacob Zuma is saying nothing . . .