True Blood vs. Twilight, or 'Cloth vs. Clobber Redux'

Back in days of yore, Loaded magazine (in its James Brown-edited incarnation) was actually worth reading. One article from this era that stood out for me was 'Cloth vs. Clobber', a grand unifying theory that sought to explain all events in history on whether the participants were 'cloth' (as in, affected, individualistic and possibly well-tailored or art student-esque) or 'clobber' (as in, JGB Sports, whatever your mum buys you at Primark, trainers, work clothes, etc.). Put simply, it's Noel Fielding vs. Noel Gallagher, or possibly Zoe Heriot vs. Rose Tyler.

This article has stayed with me ever since. Even now I view the world between these two poles. NATO vs. the Taliban, for example - our boys are obviously clobber because they're all in uniform, wear glorified Doc Martens and drink lots of lager. Whereas, 'The Scholars' are cloth because they all dress like Obi Wan Kenobi and have a thing for mascara and pederasty. You see? It all makes sense now.

Anyway, let's now talk about vampires, or rather, HBO's Deep South haemovore soap, True Blood, and the upcoming vamps 'n werewolves epic, Twilight: New Moon. Again, I refer you to 'Cloth vs. Clobber'. True Blood is plainly clobber, not least because it revolves around the nation's favourite hung up telepath waitress, Sookie Stackhouse, prancing around like a latter day Daisy Duke, right down to the tight but dead common t-shirts and matching shorts. The rest of the cast is also clad in that functional, naively gauche way of many Americans - all jeans, strappy tops, check shirts and Nascar baseball caps. Everyone shags like rabbits and most of the action takes place in the town bar where everyone eats burgers and drinks Budweiser. Even Bill, the in-house brooding vampire, is more akin to a dressed-down Southern Gent than a blood-hungry New Romantic. The fact that Bill's Clan Elder, Eric, looks like he's just been on tour with Opeth notwithstanding, True Blood and its characters are as said most assuredly clobber.

Meanwhile, the Twilight series has just got to be cloth. Wan, winsome teenage virgins listening to Muse and getting lovelorn over a wet prat of a vampire that can't even bring himself to bite/bonk them is proof enough. But if the trailer for the new sequel is anything to go by, we've also got suspiciously well-groomed Byronic Hero werewolves stripped to the waist and looking rather troubled, and a Vampire Court that makes the Borgias look rather understated. It's so cloth, it makes Hot Topic look like Footlocker.

But who prevails? In this case, it has to be clobber. True Blood just seems much more compelling, believable and nuanced, like a living world waiting to explore, whereas the Twilight Saga can only really be seen as a sort of sanitised, simplified romantic smut for tween and teenage girls who want all the vicarious thrills without the grot or nuance of the real thing. So chalk another one up then, clobber. Chavs, rejoice!

NEXT WEEK: Is Being Human the new Rising Damp? Log on next week for the answers!