Ring Out The Old Ring In The New

Well that’s 2009 over with and I hope it was a good one for you. Here’s my usual, tongue in cheek, look back at the year.

January

People gathered in Washington to honour a man who had made the nation vote in numbers unheard of even though his race had been a question that divided many. Now, officially, he had become the most powerful man in the world. As he looked over the million plus crowd, Simon Cowell thanked everyone for coming to his early birthday party.

February

Sir Fred Goodwin, the disgraced Royal Bank Of Scotland boss, walked away with a huge pension after his disastrous leadership led the bank to the edge of destruction. He was declared the worst manager the business world had ever seen, and an unmitigated disaster who should hang his head in shame for evermore. Newcastle FC prepare to offer him a job.

March

Heston Blumenthal has to close his restaurant, The Fat Duck, after a food poisoning scare that left many diners throwing up and bed ridden. Later he re opens the restaurant, and the new ‘Emaciated But On The Mend Duck’ is now doing a roaring trade.

April

Bobby Ball is momentarily stunned to discover he has become one of the most viewed internet videos ever - until he watches and finds he doesn’t recognise the dress he’s wearing in the clip, doesn’t remember singing on Britain’s Got Talent, and remembers he’s not even Scottish.

May

Veronica Lario announces she will divorce Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accusing him of being unfaithful. Berlusconi says he’ll grin and bare it, appoints himself head of foreign and domestic affairs, vows to remain on top, and promises to tirelessly stay on the job.

June

Michael Jackson dies, aged 50. Or, if you listen to some, moves to Belgium to rehearse with Curt Cobain and Elvis for a new tour.

July

Andy Murray enjoys all the traditions of Wimbledon – strawberries and cream, playing in white, bowing to the Royal box, Pimms on the lawn, and British players getting stuffed after the country thinks we have a chance.

August

A neighbour throws a party for Bonnie Riggs after reading that she’s been released from jail. Bonnie points out that her neighbour is dyslexic and, anyway, she’s too young to have been a Great Train Robber.

September

Vera Lynn is pronounced the oldest ever recording artist to make Number One in the album charts. Elton John, Sting and Sir Cliff ask to see her birth certificate.

October

Afghanistan’s elections fall in to disarray as opposition leader Abdullah Abdullah is accused of using a false name. In his defence he says he simply has a stammer.

November

Andre Agassi admits he has a lot in common with Bruce Forsyth and Terry Wogan as his memoirs reveal he loves music. On unrelated pages he admits to wearing a wig.

December

Tiger Woods is appalled when details of his many affairs are made public. He changes his first name to Cheetah. One mistress says he was a gentleman and never spoke about golf during their love making but, contractually, he had to speak about Nike and American Express. Tiger agrees to appear in panto next year. It’s to be called Woods In The Babes.

I wish you all the very best for 2010. Let’s hope it’s a good one. We all deserve it.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

I was watching True Blood, a TV series about vampires, this week when one of the characters in this drama set in an oppressively hot Southern state said “I’ve never seen snow”. Leaving aside that he, and most of the other characters in this sexy series, have never seen clothes either I found it hard to think that some people really have never seen snow and ice. They should move to London.

This week’s weather seemed dictated by Dean Martin’s “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”. Slipping and sliding all over our driveway on my way to the car I could imagine Dean curled up on the big rug in the sky with a glass in one hand and, well, another glass in the other thinking “Well, the weather outside is frightful, But this wine is so delightful, Long as you love me so, I think I’ll just stay here and have another”.

Global warming is not an issue in our neighbourhood yet. Our kids only want to save a polar bear so he can come live in our Wendy House. Mind you, though they may have had a great time building snowmen and throwing snowballs, I had an even better one staying warm indoors and taking pictures.

But I’m told by my kids that this shows I’m getting old.

Indeed they’re right. I used to love the white stuff, and time was when happiness for me was a bit of snow and my sledge. All too soon, my childhood mittens gave way to driving gloves, my duffel coat to a leather jacket, and soon my fashion look will be a Slanket and slippers and a good sleep will simply involve the armchair. I guess that what used to be me drooling over attractive women will be replaced by, well, just drooling. Childhood means never being far from affection but middle age means never being too far from the loo.

Yet I interviewed Rosemary Conley this week who put me to shame. This energetic lady is in her Sixties, is a size eight and does aerobics every day of her life. She’s also about to release a DVD, a book, and will start up her own internet TV station in January. I wouldn’t be surprised if this dynamic lady was out on her sledge this week. Incidentally, if you want a bit of gossip, the Queen of diets and exercise, who has become a multi millionaire out of giving dietary advice, takes two sugars in her tea. She also can’t eat in restaurants without waiters or diners phoning the papers to say what she ate so pudding are a no no.

I also spoke to Ruthie Henshall, the west end musical star, who is going back in to Chicago after a few years away. She also has down sides to her life and became a bit emotional during our interview – I’m not going to divulge why – but she also has the dynamism and energy of a teenager. Following two months in London she’ll be off to play the part on Broadway but Ruthie confessed she’d love to do a movie.

My final guest of the week was Les McKeown who was once the most famous singer in the world as leader of The Bay City Rollers. Les has just come through Rehab and is gearing up to try and win back millions of pound in lost royalties from his record company. He told me he fought against being remembered as a former Bay City Roller but has had to come to accept that’s what he is and it’s what people want him to be. As he says “I’m their own Doctor Who, taking them back in time.”

So, as even the stars have the problems, issues or challenges that we normal people have, yet they still just get their head down and batter on, I’m going to rediscover the hidden kid in me. I’m going to build a sledge, buy some mittens, and knock on my neighbour’s door asking him to come out and play in the snow.

Dean’s right. Let it snow! And from me I wish you a very Happy White Christmas.

Think I Better Leave Right Now

I have always admired people who have the right exit line at their finger tips at the right time. If finding a great put down line or something funny to say before walking off and leaving people shocked with admiration is an art then I’m more Tracy Beaker than Tracey Emin. My heroes are those who unfailingly know how to give “good exit”.

I first became aware of the power of a good leaving line when I was a kid watching James Cagney in the movie White Heat on telly. As Cagney was about to die in a blaze of glory he shouted the famous line “Made it ma. Top of the world.” Powerful stuff, and even as a small kid I recognised class.

Pancho Villa the renowned Mexican bandit realised the power of a good exit line as he lay dying when he said, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something”. Doctor Who regularly gives up all signs of modesty each time he dies. The ninth Doctor, Christopher Ecclestone, went out with "Rose, before I go, I just wanna tell you...you were fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. And you know what? So was I!"

The reason I was thinking of good exit lines this week was that I was in the audience for The Bootleg Beatles at The Albert Hall, with a packed house enjoying it to the full apart from a woman who was having her view spoiled by two men in front of her. They talked away on their mobile phones through the gig, chatted to each other blocking her view, and were up and down to the toilet three or four times in the first half.

When I heard one of them slating her for asking them to be quiet I felt I had to support her so, at the interval, I climbed over the seats and told them to shut up in the second half. One became belligerent so I threw in the odd bad word, for once came up with the perfect exit line, and then proudly headed back to my seat - and fell flat on my face. A great exit ruined.

Why is life never like the movies? Why can I never have the glory that Mel Gibson’s lot had in Braveheart when their exit line was just one shouted word? “Freeeeeedooooom”.

I don’t believe you have to be a literary genius to think of a good exit, though Oscar Wilde did not do badly with “Either that wallpaper goes or I do.” The great British actor John Le Mesurier, who played the bumbling Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army, dictated his own exit line to his wife the week before he died. She published it in the Times newspaper and it read. "John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on Nov. 15. He sadly misses family and friends."

I’m going to start thinking of my exit line now so that with a few years of thinking about it I may come up with something memorable.

Mind you, I can always ask my daughter for advice on memorable exit lines. This week she sat a history exam at school and was asked to account for the lower number of kids in the UK now, compared to Victorian times. She didn’t know the answer so came up with one of her own. As she later told me what it was, she walked out the kitchen leaving me stunned. She had answered, “The reason we have fewer children in Britain today is that we now have more lesbians.”

As exit lines for a twelve year old go, that’s a great one.

You'd Better Watch Out

I can feel the panic rise up in me as Christmas approaches and I get left behind with no shopping done, no cards bought and not even an inkling of an idea on what presents to get for anyone. I am to Christmas organisation what Tiger Woods is to domesticity.

As the festive season approaches imperiously like Tiger’s wife with a three iron, I felt I really had to get a move on this week and so I sourced our tree and put it up at the weekend. Notice I said “sourced” rather than “bought”. I realise that most people do simply buy a tree, but I have to study the form card, check prices, needle drop, whether it’s potted or not and whether they pick up the carcass after Christmas. I really should get a hobby.

This year the tradition of newspapers panicking us over the festive tree has been followed to the letter because, year after every blinkin’ year, they tell us there will be a shortage due to adverse weather/ blight/pests/pesticides/swine flu/the millennium bug/ or famous golfers driving in to them - and this year is no exception. I believe there is a press officer who each year releases a story to keep prices inflated on behalf of the Nordic Arctic Fir Federation. This NAFF Press Release lands on editors’ desks each year as sure as cigarette ash and Katie Price's bottom.

The tradition in our house is that we share the load. I find the tree, pay for it, carry it to the car on my own and lift it in, drive it home, unload it, put it up, get all the tinsel and baubles down from the loft, decorate it and then the kids tell their friends to come see the tree they put up and decorated. That’s called sharing in our house. This year they did help a bit and the three of us worked away listening to Christmas carols, full of the Christmas spirit, exchanging greetings like “watch out you’ll pull it over” at the top of our voices while Silent Night played in the background.

This year’s tree is nine feet tall and came wrapped in a hairnet that took twenty minutes plus two Stanley knives to cut through. When released from its bondage the branches sprung out like an opera diva released from a corset, sending bits flying everywhere and blinding people five miles away. With the Christmas albums playing in the background and mince pies warming in the oven, I made the mistake of decorating the tree barefoot meaning as each bauble fell off and smashed on the floor my feet had more slashes than a Guns ‘n’ Roses lookalike convention. The soles of my feet resembled Gordon Ramsay before the Botox.

Next, out come the decorations for the rest of the house, made up mainly of figures the girls have made at school over the years out of pottery or empty toilet rolls. The pottery figurines of three wise men are so oddly shaped they look curiously arty, and one day I’m sure we’ll con some art critic in to paying fortunes for them. The angel is made from a toilet roll with a ping pong ball on the top and some macaroni for hair, and pasta shells for hands. It’s ten years old now and has become a family heirloom we’ll never part with, though we may eat it one day.

So, the Coia household is waiting for Santa now. All I have to do is make a list, buy the presents, wrap them, get some chocolate food in, buy the Christmas cards and stamps, address them, post them, and put the lights up in the garden. If Santa could just put off his visit till, say March, I might be actually ready.

It's Got To Be Perfect

Kermit memorably said it wasn’t easy being green. But, as Miss Piggy must have told him with a wag of her trotter, it’s even harder being perfect.

After all Elpheba, the tinted witch in the musical Wicked, finds it easy being green every night on stage, twice on Wednesdays and again on Saturdays. The boss of British Home Stores has no problem being green, he's quite happy being Philip Green, and I myself find it easy being green when I smell kippers. In fact I’m feeling quite queasy just thinking about it right now.

But being perfect? Well, it seems there are very few of us who can carry that off.

You see being perfect is made more difficult, in my experience, by living with someone who has lots of strange habits and who doesn’t quite see you in the light that you see yourself. Debbie, my wife, thinks I’m both green and perfect only in the sense that she says I’m a perfect copy of Shrek.

Apparently my shaving bristles in the sink don’t get her excited and nor do the holes in my socks, or my perfect underwear lying on the bathroom floor, or my perfectly dreadful time keeping, my chocolate intake, my obsessive tidiness, and my lack of patience. Of course it’s perfectly clear that she’s making all that up.

She’s jealous of me being male as that means, unlike the girlies, we don't waste so much time every day on fripperies and nonsense. Guys will bump in to each other with a quick handshake and a “Hi”, or if we’re really saving time just a quick grunt and nod. Women on the other hand have to kiss, scream, and compliment each other on their hair products, jewellery and clothing. If a Martian arrived asking how to be a woman you could issue him with a template and it would go something like “Greet other women with a big kiss while saying ‘that’s a lovely bracelet/necklace/dress/coat/hairstyle. Where did you get it?’ Remember to pretend to be interested in the answer.”

We men tend to be perfect at noticing these little imperfections in you women. It’s not easy biting our tongues and holding back from pointing this out, but we do try. Sometimes we let ourselves down and emulate you like, for instance, Top Gear’s James May trying his best to look the spit of Susan Boyle at the moment, but often we try to keep our distance just so we can help point out where the fairer sex is going wrong.

My wife for some reason doesn’t take kindly to me mentioning the absurdities of being a woman and that this involves her sticking her tongue out whenever she does anything that demands the slightest concentration. Strangely, she objects to me getting upset when she calls saying she can’t remember where in the car park she’s left her car, or indeed which street the car park actually is in, or even in which town. Neither is she fond of my perfect willingness to help her save time by mentioning that visits to the hairdresser aren’t supposed to last as long as our yearly holiday, that going to Tesco isn’t meant to be a day out, that televised football really will help her live longer and that TV commercials were actually designed so that we can channel surf.

It isn’t easy being green? Well last night, after I helpfully pointed out to Debbie that the broccoli she’d made was a bit mushy, I found it very easy being green – and so did my hair, my shirt, and the kitchen walls.

Why can't women be more like men? I'd have ordered a takeaway.

Tis (nearly) The Season

We’re approaching that time of year - the beginning of December - when our house goes in to a mad state of anticipation as the Christmas CDs are dusted off while the freshly cut tree is put up and we chase all the little bugs that came with it as they set up home in our skirting boards, refusing to budge even when we’re still sweeping pine needles up in March.

It’s also the time of the Advent calendars, those little cardboard windows our kids open while counting down to the big day and filling their chops with chocolate shaped rocking horses and jolly bearded men, before joining in the Yuletide kids’ tradition of throwing up.

This year I thought we’d do away with the usual High School Musical and Jonas Brothers countdown calendars and opt for the religious ones that tell the story of the first Christmas instead. My kids were up for it - after all it ticks all the teen boxes as the baby Jesus is a celebrity, his story has been made in to a movie and they know the soundtrack or, as we adults call it, the carols. But they had one stipulation. If the holy calendar was going to have a message, it also had to have chocolate.

I have now looked exhaustively and can’t find a single Nativity calendar with chocolate inside anywhere. I can get sweets hidden behind advent calendars counting down to when Tinkie Winkie wakes up on Christmas day, to the day Ken gives Barbie her present, or when Liverpool FC win silverware – admittedly that calendar is marked in years rather than days – but I can’t find a stable in Bethlehem with some mini chocolate angels hidden behind windows anywhere. Even the inn keeper must have left sweets on the pillow when he turned down the beds at night, surely?

I don’t want to sound fundamentalist here but if we’re going to call it Christmas, as opposed to Decembermas, Wintermas, EndOfTheYearmas or StuffYourFaceTillItHurtsmas, then someone enterprising should be able to come up with an advent calendar containing chocolates and a message. I don’t care if Torvill and Dean are Joseph and Mary, or the Strictly Come Dancing judges are the Three Wise Men. I’d even let Kai Rooney play the baby and his dad the donkey.

If the story was set today, of course, there is only one baddie who could play Herod. I can imagine the boos and hisses as Simon Cowell asks viewers to vote before sending out his soldiers. That’s after, of course, taking Joseph aside and suggesting an evening of Carpenters’ songs.

I spoke to Shakin’ Stevens this week and another piece of the magic disappeared when he told me his Christmas hit, Merry Christmas Everyone, was recorded in Spring. I know Slade’s big Christmas hit was recorded in T shirts and shorts in June and that even my favourite Christmas movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, was made in a sweltering studio in the height of summer. Perhaps we’ll find one day that David Bowie’s hit “Fashion” was inspired by Primark, Cliff’s “Summer Holiday” was recorded in the Arctic Circle, and “Hey Macarena” was actually a tribute to pasta.

As we get older, much of the magic of Christmas disappears as we discover that we’re no longer the centre of attention. This was brought home to me when my wife told me that Santa isn’t interested in leaving a new HD television and DVD Blue Ray player for me on Christmas morning this year - not even if I get a bigger stocking.

But I may go to the North Pole and plead with him. It’s where Wham recorded Club Tropicana you know.

Sweet Charity

Charity is a funny thing. I mean it’s serious and all that, but it can raise a laugh too can’t it? When I was a student I stood, very woozily, outside Buchanan Street Bus Station having missed my last bus and started singing “Show Me The Way To Go Home”. A polite lady gave me fifty pence for a coffee and told me I needed to find God. Unfortunately she didn’t tell me which bus route he was on but her heart was in the right place.

We’ve just finished Help For Heroes, and now Children In Need is upon us. Then it will be filling shoe boxes for needy families at Christmas and New Year haggis collections for Burns night. It’s serious and it’s necessary, but it’s bound to make you laugh at some point too.

Doing Help For Heroes last week on the radio I was struck by how much ego had been left at the door by the stars. There were no agents, managers, bodyguards, tax advisors or tipped off paparazzi, so I was hugely disappointed that my new suit, sunglasses and tinted make up went unnoticed.

Some stars sat in their cars outside drinking coffee from a paper cup because there was no room in our packed reception area for them, Ronan Keating hung around for ages signing autographs, Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet filled in magnificently for singer Tony Hadley who was stuck in a jam, and Jimmy Tarbuck dashed to a phone when he encountered traffic and called in pledging a round of golf for the auction.

Lee Mead meanwhile encountered nothing more alarming than my cheek but he complied willingly when I asked him to embarrass himself and share the warm up exercises he does before going on stage. However when I questioned whether he and Denise van Outen were having kids yet he said No, they were still practising. Next morning the papers had the announcement that a baby is on the way. I’ll kill him next time I see him.

Michael Bolton’s assistant told him and me that her boyfriend, who is ex army, saw some terrible things in Afghanistan and sometimes wakens up shaking. Aware that the conversation was getting heavy Michael lightened it perfectly by saying “and you thought it was foreplay?”.

I’ve hosted Telethons and it’s always the same. After coming off air, the euphoria evaporates and tiredness hits like quick drying liquid cement being poured over your head. As the Telethons lasted twenty seven hours and I was the only constant while everyone else did shifts, I watched enviously as they all headed off to a huge party while I drove home to my bed, once ending up an embankment after falling asleep at the wheel. After Help For Heroes, the boss gave us a beer. I sat all the way home on the train smiling, singing to myself like all those years ago at the bus station, and generally feeling like Dean Martin at Happy Hour. For all I know the beer may have been almost non alcoholic, but it was enough.

Next morning, feeling rough and looking unshaved and dishevelled, I was stopped at the station by a woman with a charity tin. “I’m collecting for underprivileged kids - you know the ones that won’t get any presents this Christmas.” I put my hand in my pocket but couldn’t find any change, same in my bag and wallet. I must have looked a pauper. “If you like I can put you in touch with the charity”, she said. Whether this was to make a later donation or to ask for help with my kids’ Christmas, she didn’t make clear.

In the past I’ve been punched at Children In Need by angry parents because their kids couldn’t get on telly, I’ve been threatened and I’ve been pushed and shoved by people desperate to get in the camera shot during Telethons, but I still maintain charity is funny.

A few years ago I was rushing to meet my parents after picking up a charity cheque back home when I was stopped by a drunk Glaswegian who recognised me and asked how I was doing. With bad grace, and a lack of charity, I said “fine” through gritted teeth and I then asked how he was doing. Back came the answer “mind your own blo*dy business”.

I laughed for hours afterwards, as I have after every charity fundraiser I’ve been involved with. I leave with the euphoria of knowing that people want to do good, that they’re having fun, and that they make me laugh.

Charity is a funny thing.

Go West

I spoke to my mum this weekend after having a week’s break in Cornwall.

“Where have you been?”, she asked with the unspoken frustration of someone who has been waiting for a call all week. “Well, I’ve had a week off”, I answered honestly. She anxiously replied, “have you taken anything for it ?”

Eh? No, mum, not a wee cough, a week off! Mums! They just never want to let go, do they?

My week away was spent in Cornwall, home of a pace of life that we seem to have forgotten here in London. There’s very little traffic, tractors let you pass, people wave Thank You if you return the favour, and even the horses seem pleased to see you, leaving little presents all over the road.

We spent days doing ordinary family things including lond walks, cream teas and watching videos. My kids enjoyed Educating Rita but were surprised to realise that the very young Julie Walters in that movie is the same Ms Walters who is Ron Weasley’s mum in Harry Potter. My older daughter, in particular, was shattered that this young skinny girl could grow in to a plump, but kind, old witch. “Oh my gosh”, she said. Then, after a few seconds of pondering followed it with “Oh…....my…... gosh”. And then for full dramatic effect “Oh… my… actual… gosh!!” Not for the first time I thought those private school fees were a real investment.

However, idyllic though the week was, it started out badly with rain that was so torrential, blinding and persistent that my showerproof jacket was about as useful as a shark with rubber teeth. I knew immediately why most people in Cornwall own a boat. It’s to get the shopping in. I’ve never seen weather like it and I was soaked through.

As I sheltered for a moment in the Tourist Information shop in Plymouth, which is on the dock opposite where the Mayflower set sail, I realised why those pilgrims left for America. It wasn’t to spread the Christian message or to explore the New World. They’d had enough of the weather and were off to buy a holiday home in Florida. I asked the nice woman behind the information desk if the weather was always like this and she replied “No. Sometimes it really rains.”

I’m not sure how diligent the Customs people were in America when The Pilgrims arrived but if they had searched the immigrants’ suitcases then chances are they’d have found lots of pies being smuggled in as the Cornish are never far from a huge feed and live on clotted cream, which is something I highly recommend. I discovered they were ahead of their time too, going green before everyone else. For centuries they have been recycling their food leftovers, not in a special bin for the council but wrapped up in pastry instead. They call it a Cornish pastie.

Cornwall, home of the mighty Pirate FM Radio (no, really), boasts place names that let your imagination run riot. As we passed through the village of Hatt I imagined it was once the centre of production for bonnets and caps in Britain. The hamlet of Catchfrench made me think of invading naval fleets from across the Channel getting rounded up, and I don’t think I should share with you what I conjured up as we passed through the village of Stanleys Bottom though, as it’s situated between to hills, it does get a bit windy.

Souvenirs are a must in Cornwall with the usual tea towels, pirate’s chests, pints of clotted cream and postcards on sale everywhere, and I did notice that the big seller this year is a wall chart called the Volkswagen Camper Van Calendar with each month featuring, you’ve guessed it, a different coloured Volkswagen van - a snip at three pounds fifty. You’re all getting one for Christmas.

So, now I’m back and raring to go, refreshed and ready for the winter ahead. But, as I look at the rain pouring down here in London, am I counting the days to my next holiday already? Oh…. My….. Actual…. Gosh….Yes.

Sweet Charity

I have a genuine question this week for you. It’s not a Smart Alec question like “What disease did Cured Ham originally have”, or “Why do dogs get annoyed when you blow in their faces yet the first thing they do when you take them for a drive is stick their head out the window?” Important though these riddles may be, there is something much more pressing in my world.

This is a question I’m genuinely troubled by and I hope you can help me. There’s no hidden agenda and no trying to get a cheap funny line (unlike the paragraph above). I’ve been grappling with this question for a few weeks and I don’t know the answer, so I’m looking to you for guidance.

What do you do if you regularly buy the magazine for the homeless called The Big Issue from someone, or frequently give a few coins to a beggar who appears every week on your train home, and then one day you spot them talking on their mobile ‘phone?

Do you carry on giving money because you feel that what these people do with your gift is their own affair and if a mobile phone is more important to them than a bed for the night then so be it? Or, like me, do you start to have doubts? That’s the moral maze I’m trying to navigate this week.

I’ve always felt that selling The Big Issue is a respectable and honourable way for the homeless to raise enough money to feed themselves and raise them from the twin dangers of lack of respect and sleeping on the streets, ensuring they get a roof over their heads and safety. So am I mean or wicked when I find myself perplexed? I have found my feelings a bit uneasy as I wonder how they can afford a monthly tariff or pay as you go mobile, and then I get even more uncomfortable when I wonder whether it’s any of my business anyway.

So, do I give as unthinkingly as before or do I now question myself and their motives and cut back what I give? I ask because this has happened to me with two different Big Issue sellers in the past month, both of whom have had my money regularly.

The first bloke gets on my train home once a week and comes through the carriages holding one, battered copy of the magazine. He is very polite and his spiel never changes. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m not trying to sell you this magazine but just asking for money so I have somewhere to sleep tonight”.

This is all fine, but a couple of weeks ago he stood beside me at my station on his phone arranging to see his mates later in the pub. “I’ll get the first round”, he said. Now I don’t know how I’m supposed to react to that but when he gave his rehearsed, polite speech later on the train I refused to hand over my change. Was I wrong?

The other Big Issue seller is a very nice, polite lady who sits on an upturned box outside our local bakery shop and, again, I’ve bought the magazine from her in the past. Yesterday she was sitting chatting away on her mobile and I walked past without buying. Again, was I wrong?

There’s an old expression from the Wild West where someone who gives a present but expects something in return was called an Indian Giver. The cowboys didn’t understand the customs of Native Americans where it was traditional to give a present and then get one in return. If nothing was forthcoming then the present was taken back. Is that what I’ve become, an Indian Giver? I don’t expect a present in return but am I expecting someone who gets a donation from me to let me know how it will be spent or I’ll take it back?

Perhaps the idea is simply to go with your conscience at the time and, unlike me, not to think too much about it.

It is a genuine question I’m asking this week but I fear that there are no correct answers.

There's No Business Like Showbusiness

I’ve been going to the theatre a lot over the past few months and I must admit that this, for a modest, unassuming person like I am, can be a bit difficult. You see it’s hard for me to sit and see someone else up on stage getting all the attention and, unlike my real life, never stuttering or being stuck for a good exit line or wracking their ageing brain for what word comes next. Also, I envy their happy endings and exciting lives. You never see anyone on stage stuck in queues or trying to park at B&Q do you? And they don’t ever do mundane things like dig the back garden or clean the toilet.

The way that I’ve found is best to handle my envy of all this is to quickly stand up at the end of a show and pretend the riotous applause from the audience is for me. This only works for a moment as it leads to everyone else getting up and the cast receiving a standing ovation, but I’m sure they know it’s all really for me and that it’s my caring nature that is letting them share.

I only realised this week that my trips to the theatre have involved seeing too many musicals recently like Wicked, Jersey Boys, Dreamboats and Petticoats, Oliver, etc, and so a “proper” play now takes me by surprise. The realisation came to me when I saw a performance of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice last week and wondered where the songs had gone and where the orchestra was hiding. If the bard had been really savvy he could have written a tune or two in his time and Shylock could have burst in to a ballad when demanding his pound of flesh. Maybe First Cut Is The Deepest?

I heard that my love of theatre is shared with The Queen and Prince Phillip who sneaked in late to a West End show last week, climbing over everyone and sending tubs of Maltesers flying as they fought to get to their seats. I’d hate to be the poor soul stuck sitting behind Her Majesty though. After the initial nudge, nudge excitement, you can’t exactly ask her to take her crown off as it’s restricting your view can you? And what’s the etiquette? Can you ask her to sign your programme? Do you offer to buy her a choc ice at the interval?

Hopefully she would turn down the offer anyway as a programme and choc ice in theatres today cost roughly the same as the upkeep of Balmoral for six months. I often think the best actors in the theatre are the usherettes who put on a wonderful welcoming smile as they hand you one triple chocolate Ben & Jerry’s and say “that will be fifty pounds please. Have a good evening”. To make legal theft look so innocent and appealing takes some amount of acting.

The toilets in all theatres are tiny and look like they were built for royalty – King Arthur that is – and that’s why there are always queues outside these antiquated, quaintly aromatic, stalls. Perhaps when it comes to loos our current monarch has someone who does it for her – the queueing that is, not the actual sitting down bit.

I think it’s important for the public to support theatre, a tradition that obviously stretches way back to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre days and even further, perhaps back as far as Bruce Forsyth’s first gig, so I fervently support my local theatre even though it is often half empty and puts on shows that are too arty with a capital “F”.

I find that supporting your local theatre is a bit like following your local football team in that you know it will always be a minor player, never win out on the big day and will always be unloved by others. I imagine it’s a bit like being a Liberal Democrat.

So I urge you to be that unfashionable supporter of your local theatre and all its silly ways and Victorian charm. It needs you if it’s going to survive. Just get along and support. But make sure you go to the loo before leaving home.

Sharp Dressed Man

I have a bit of a phobia when it comes to buying clothes. If I strain my ears I can just about hear you shouting “but you always look so elegant Paul, so what’s this with problems about clothes?”. That was what you were shouting, wasn’t it?

Well you see the buying bit’s easy for me so long as I go early and avoid the crowds, but I just can’t bring myself to stand in line and collect multi coloured plastic discs with numbers on to go in to some tiny, manky changing room where I’m supposed to balance on one foot to try on my purchases and see if they fit. This leads to my wardrobe being packed with trousers that are too short, jackets that are too big, and waistbands that are too tight, tho’ I confess chocolate may have something to do with that last one.

What is it that especially puts me off? I don’t know where to start. It could be the actual plastic discs, which firstly look cheap, secondly are easy to misplace, and fifthly make me feel I’m back in kindergarten being taught to count. Or maybe it’s the frayed curtains you have to pull across before stripping down, knowing it’s a waste of time anyway as they hang half way off. Or perhaps it’s the stains on the carpet, the smell of sweaty bodies or just that I hate shopping so much that I want it over and done with quicker than a Madonna marriage.

Whatever the reason I never, ever try on clothes before buying, preferring to throw them in a basket and hope for the best. So now you know why I very rarely wear anything that fits.

I bought a pair of jeans last week and, after pulling bits of plastic and cardboard sizing off, threw them on this morning for the first time. To my horror I discovered that they are the low waisted type where you are supposed to have your flies down around your knees and show off your lower back tattoo and designer underwear. Nowhere on the label did it give a clue that I would look like Scooby Doo’s pal Shaggy in a nappy, so now I will have to go out and buy designer underwear to show off above my new saggy waistband.

These “droopy drawer” jeans are fine if you want to let everyone see your Dolce and Gabanna Y- fronts or your Armani boxers - but I don’t have any. My underwear is a bit like the Scotland football team, washed out and losing support, and my designer labels at the back read simply Medium or Machine Washable. On a cold day they also read Boy, aged 10 to 12.

I seem to be alone in shunning designers for my undercarckers as everyone else seems to be following David Beckham and wearing expensive knickers just for show, so I think it’s time for a change. I’m considering starting up a new underwear range that will invert the retail snobbery while still making people proud to exhibit in public. I want to go to the other extreme, miles away from couture pants and trendy logos. Sadly it seems you can’t yet buy underwear with the Primark logo embroidered on the waist band, or Matalan either, and TK Maxx hasn’t woken up to the possibilities either. So, I am going to start my own downmarket range called Boot Sale.

Imagine walking behind me as I proudly show off my new, swing low, jeans with my boxer shorts showing at the back with Boot Sale proudly on display. You’d think that I was a stylish bloke wouldn’t you? And, like all really tacky, cheap stuff, it will cost the earth. I’ll make them for a couple of quid, sell them to Harrods at a fiver and they’ll retail at two hundred and forty quid. With buttons at the front, I bet they’ll fly (pun intended).

In a similar vein I looked at the bags carried by women on the train the other day and found they’re all branded as either Bradley, Kipling or Timberland. So, if women are really in to showing off designer labels on bags then I’m going to launch a range called “Fake”. Someone with a sense of humour would surely spend a few hundred pounds on that wouldn’t they?

Meantime, until I can get my business plans drawn up, I’m off to buy new underwear. And no, I’m not trying those on first either!

Get Out Your Lazy Bed

Getting my daughters out of the house for school in the morning is a bit like being a news reader on a twenty four hour news channel. It’s a painful struggle, you use the same words over and over again, and you end up looking haggard and exhausted while feeling relieved that only a couple of people were watching you.

Every morning as the moment of departure approaches, I use a script that goes something like “It’s eight o’clock. Stop looking in the mirror and start looking at the garden gates.” Then, “it’s five past eight, you’re late and you’ll wear that mirror out.” I follow this with “it’s ten past eight now, it’s really late, and I’m going to break that blooming mirror.” Then, “it’s quarter past. Do you think you’re Simon Cowell?”

This morning I thought Katherine Jenkins had slept over at our house as my oldest daughter appeared looking like she had been experimenting with a clown’s make up box a little bit early for Halloween. My pleas that she is too young to wear mascara and lippy to school were met with ridicule of course and expressions that suggested I belonged in a home dunking biscuits in my Horlicks and keeping an eye out for thieves stealing my teeth from the bedside table.

I was on the receiving end of similar pity when I watched the MOBO awards with her a few nights ago. These are awards for Music Of Black Origin and go to musicians who make garage, r’n’b, and black pop hits. The organisers decided to have the awards this year in Glasgow and I made the mistake of laughing out loud as the poor, out of their depth, presenters desperately repeated to a bored audience
“are you ready to party?”, over and over again.

Being born in Glasgow I could have told them that to get the crowd going they should have forgotten the party bit and just changed one letter, shouting instead “are you ready to pastry?”. Since Glasgow is not renowned for being a city with a large black population, a sticky bun would have been understood and appreciated much, much better.

I made the mistake of saying this out loud and daughter number one tutted and shook her head with sympathy as if looking at road kill. Apparently, when I can talk knowingly about whether Tinchy Strider or Dappy are more crucial to the success of NDubz, and where Taio Cruz’s sunglasses fit in to today’s musical style movement then, and only then, will I be entitled to voice an opinion. I rushed for my dictionary.

It only seems like yesterday when Teletubbies were role models for my kids, hoovering up any mess and getting to bed early ready for adventures on their scooters the next day. Sadly, the big sun in the sky baby that smiled and giggled on that show is probably now a student at university giggling in the beer bar and hoovering up illegal substances and rolling her own.

This week Tesco have announced they’re bringing back Action Man, a toy from an era when Dappy was in a nappy and kids grew up at a normal rate. The soldier was pensioned off and put in civvies years ago but thanks to the media reporting daily from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq kids want the pensioner back, so now the old timer is heading for stores with all guns, or should that be gums, blazing.

Of course he’s changed and his off duty clothing will now probably include a hoodie, lots of bling, and a pouch for keeping his asbo safe. Unlike real soldiers he is getting an update to his kit and it creates an interesting scenario for Tesco as it doesn’t matter if his battery operated laser guided missiles or the walkie talkies don’t work. Take them back for a refund and the girl on the Customer Service desk can say “but they’re not supposed to work. They’re authentic.”

I still have my Action Man from the first time around and I was discussing with him how kids grow up too quickly. Well I say discussing… it’s pretty much a one way conversation but he has a cord in his back that I pull and he says something like “let’s kick some butt”. He’s been a bit indecipherable since I washed him in my bath when I was ten.

But, as I said to him, in some ways kids today don’t grow up quickly enough. Thinking about my morning rant at my daughters to get them off to school, I wondered when they will eventually grow up enough to get to the stage of actually being able to tell the time unaided by a foghorn timecheck from dad, and also knowing instinctively to avoid mirrors because of the disappointment of what they’ll see.

It will make mornings in our house so much quicker and quieter and I, for one, can’t wait.

Putting On the Ritz

It was Debbie’s birthday last week. Now this is not like your birthday, or mine, or anyone else’s come to that because when Debbie’s special day approaches there’s an all encompassing panic that fills the heads of anyone around her for months before the event. Anticipating the day is a bit like knowing the police and social services are coming to check if you’re a fit parent, or awaiting the arrival of those two women who clean houses on the telly, running their white gloves over your garage floor looking for dust.

The words “birthday” and “Debbie” in the same sentence strike fear in to my heart. In fact I’d rather have triple bypass surgery on that heart, using blunt plastic knives and without anaesthetic, than get the preparations wrong. My wife likes her annual celebrations to be done with Mary Poppins like precision and to be practically perfect in every way.

I made my first mistake on the birthday immediately after we met by assuming she had the same attitude as mine – ignore the years and you can stay twenty one for ever. As we lived four hundred miles apart and hadn’t yet exchanged birth dates I didn’t send a card or get a present, but apparently I should just have known by instinct. My reception when I saw her a few days afterwards was like Margaret Thatcher would have had while attending an unemployed miners’ rally in communist Russia wearing a T shirt with the slogan Down With Vodka. The red flag that I saw flying was actually my hanky after I had tried to stop my nose bleeding following a punch that Wonder Woman would have envied.

Debbie doesn’t just open presents. She feels them, squeezes them, sniffs them, rattles them, and eventually, after a few cups of tea, she opens them. And woe betide you if you haven’t bought the right one as “faking it” is not in her vocabulary. Well, not with presents anyway.

Over the years I’ve had my share of hits and misses with presents I’ve bought for her. I’m still trying to work out why the season ticket for Celtic Park didn’t go down well, although it did get received a bit better than the gleaming, stainless steel wheelbarrow or the blue, metallic tool box I selected with love and care. In my defence we needed them, but that’s not the point of presents in our house. As if by way of making her point, the year after the wheelbarrow, I was given a box of Brillo pads, six toilet rolls and a packet of disposable razors. “Well”, she said emphatically, “we need them”. I kind of got the point.

So, last week, I pulled out all the stops and took her to the Ritz Hotel for dinner – the whole string quartet, palm court bit with waiters removing silver domes over the plates with a “ta dah” flourish as they reveal the food underneath like a magician finding his rabbit. To make these waiters feel good I always put on an act of surprise when they do their choreographed bit, as if I’m in my dotage, have forgotten what I ordered, and have just seen food for the first time. I’m a good audience.

Anyway, I think I got away with the celebrations this year and just about got it right. I wore a suit and so avoided hiring a jacket off the waiter unlike the poor bloke next to us in the bar whose wife was apoplectic as he’d met her from work in a luminous safety anorak. I was also spared the embarrassment of asking for a tie. They are very discreet at The Ritz and bring round a wooden box, like a cigar display case, filled to the brim with kipper ties like those my grandad used to tie up his trousers when he couldn’t find his belt. You hand over a tenner deposit, put the tie on, and everyone assumes you are an Open University teacher or work in recycling.

Through in the restaurant everything went well with great cocktails, superb food and a really special atmosphere until the string quartet started to play selections from the musicals, settling eventually on Carousel and the song You’ll Never Walk Alone. As she slowly recognised the tune, Debbie’s Scouse roots came to the fore and she jumped on the table singing “One Stevie Gerrard, there’s only one Stevie Gerrard”.

You can take the girl out of Liverpool……….

Tears In Heaven

I don’t watch much TV as I find that getting the time to sit down and relax is proving more difficult the busier I get. Or am I simply confusing busier with older? I’ll make a point of sitting with my Horlicks watching House, Gray’s Anatomy and Dexter plus maybe a bit of Spooks, but that’s about it. There doesn’t seem to be much I’d take time out to follow week after week.

I was watching the News last week and felt really sad to hear of Patrick Swayze’s death. The movie star seemed to be one of life’s decent people, married to his childhood sweetheart for over thirty, happy, years. Though I only met him briefly once he was utterly charming. As he smiled and introduced himself, our conversation went something like this …….

Swayze – Hi, how you doin’?
Me – Good thanks. You?
Swayze - Good too. Great movie, huh?
Me - Yep.
Swayze - He’s good isn’t he?
Me – Yep.
Swayze – Good to meet you. Bye.
Me – Bye.

As you can see it was not my finest hour of scintillating wit and repartee. In my defence may I say that the whole conversation was conducted while standing at a urinal in The Odeon Leicester Square answering a call of nature after the premiere of a Timothy Dalton James Bond movie. It’s hard to be witty and scintillating with your flies open and with a Hollywood star standing having a wee beside you. Uppermost in my mind wasn’t that I had to try and make an impression. It was “for goodness sake whatever you do just look straight ahead”.

Swayze didn’t have to say hello to me, a complete stranger, so he was obviously a sociable guy rather than being self important and big headed. Nice bloke. And yes, he did wash his hands after.

I also was sad to hear of the death of TV chef Keith Floyd. Not watching much telly I’m not really in to those cooking shows and I can only just about distinguish my Jamie from my Delia but I have real problems telling my Gordon Ramsay from my Anthony Worral Thompson. I think I’ve got it sussed now though. Thompson’s the one with the Scottish accent, face like foam rubber, says he used to be a footballer and uses language like Sauchiehall Street populated by drunk people with Tourette’s. Isn’t he?

Keith Floyd came on a TV show I hosted and I was asked to interview him while he gave us his guide to good barbecue food. Of course he was uncontrollable and threw food over his shoulder when he didn’t like it. To keep up his image as a rebel he drank gallons of Ribena from a huge glass hoping, or so I thought, that the viewers would think it was red wine. After the show I sniffed the glass and sure enough it wasn’t red wine. It was red wine with whisky or something else in it. I’m told he had the liver of a youngster when he died of a heart attack last week and I can only assume it was the liver of a young whale.

With people leaving us this week it makes me wonder again what Heaven might be like. I used to think of fluffy clouds and angels playing Carpenters’ hits on harps, but then I grew up and imagined it would be like Willie Wonka’s factory with a series of rivers of melted chocolate with custard tart boats. Now, I imagine it will be a place where mobile phones are banned and email has been banished to the bad fire, and where you get told off if you don’t relax and spend time with your family while drinking champagne.

Of course I’ve also changed my ideas on Hell. I used to think it was hot and full of screaming souls, but now I imagine it’s called Top Gear and you are constantly forced to watch Clarkson, Hammond and the other one no one remembers share their opinions on anything and everything. On earth the least used words are “I’m sorry”, in Top Gear Hell I imagine the least heard words will be “no, I don’t actually have an opinion on that”.

Someone tipped manure over Clarkson this week. Disgusting, smelly, offensive, embarrassing and anti social. And the manure probably is too. But I have a sneaking regard for whoever did it.

However, before every nutter starts to have a go at the denim perm, I reckon they should calm things down a bit and feminise Top Gear just a little. Maybe get Paul O’Grady to host it. Just imagine the test drives. “What? You want me to put my dry cleaned trousers on those seats? Wear a crash helmet and hide my highlights? You kidding? And could you wash that manky old exhaust pipe first? Bit of Windowlene on the windscreen please. Any chance of a few lights around the mirror?” And then perhaps an item on colour coordinating your seat covers for the new season, presented by Dale Winton.

I don’t watch much TV. But that? That I would watch.

Home On the Range

As the chiropractor’s waiting room poster said, “It’s good to be back”.

The annual cattle drive that is the Coia family holiday is over, the kids corralled back at school, and Debbie’s come down from her high horse’s saddle with her conversation at last expanding beyond “are you sure you’ve got your passport?” and “we’ll miss the plane”.

Debbie is not the most relaxing of people to be around when anything is being planned as she panics. In fact when she’s not panicking she panics at not being panicked. She’s the kind of person who has sleepless nights and cold sweats if her Christmas shopping isn’t done by July – the year before – and if she thought she’d get a reply she would argue with the speaking clock telling it that it’s a few minutes slow. As I come from a very much more relaxed relationship with Time she gets angry, wants to kill me, and throws things. Fortunately, like me with deadlines, she misses a lot.

I will reluctantly confess that her nagging would have been useful one day last year when I was flying to Switzerland to record a video. She was away for a couple of days when I took my cab to the airport at the last minute and rushed to the check in desk with seconds to go. As the bored ticket collector asked for my passport I just knew I didn’t even have to bother making a show of looking through my case. I’d forgotten it.

I called my cab driver on his mobile, had him turn back, went home and retrieved the little red book with the photo taken by Mr Magoo, and then set off again hopelessly late. I’ve never admitted it to her so don’t you dare tell her. It would be enough to fuel hundreds of smug smiles.

Now I’ve settled back at work, sunburned perhaps but poorer for sure, and I’m finding the credit card bills have arrived before the holiday postcards. I wasn’t ready to leave the fresh, bracing, salty sea air of the seaside behind, a fact reinforced by my first day on the Tube where I inhaled our city’s distinctive aroma. If London were an air freshener then the marketing people would have their jobs cut out. A snappy tag line like “freshen your rooms with kebab and fumes” would please the advertising authorities with its honesty but probably wouldn’t shift many aerosols. If it were a perfume then perhaps “Enjoy love play with Sweaty Subway” might work. You just can’t beat home can you?

It’s been a tense summer for us as my oldest daughter has been waiting on the results of her GCSE Maths. Her school made her sit it a year early which surprised me as I would have problems sitting it a year late. A wise man once said that the rule for parents is that boys mess up your house but girls mess up your mind, but in our house I have to admit we’re lucky as our girls are good as gold, though twice as expensive. They also believe that boys have the right attitude to tidiness and spend the year treating their bedrooms as conceptual art inspired by Tracy Emin’s Unmade Bed.

Anyway, the results are in and the jury voted for an “A” in Maths so we can all get back to normal now, even if this is the time of year when my daughters remind me just how hopeless I am as a father. After all, they tell me, everyone else’s dad can cover their school books in clear sticky back plastic without getting air bubbles. I can fix their computer, assemble a study desk with no parts left over and even help with Maths, but sticky back plastic? A science too far.

I started back this week at Smooth Radio by interviewing hypnotist Paul McKenna and also that very funny, best selling, author Kathy Lette. Let me share two of their “off air” anecdotes that you won’t hear, and I pray they won’t mind me telling you.

Kathy told me that she uses real life experiences in her books which are very funny. They’re usually about how horrible men are, so I asked her to tell me the worst thing any man had said to her. “One boyfriend asked me to switch off the light whenever we kissed”, she said. “Eventually I asked why and he said it was because I felt much younger than I looked.” Ouch!

Let me finish by sharing a great comeback line from Paul McKenna. He and I were talking off air about illusionist Derren Brown and he said they’d had a minor disagreement recently, nothing terrible. Derren sent a few texts to Paul which went ignored so he followed up with a final one that simply said “Are we still friends?”.

Paul texted straight back. “Well, you’re the bloody mind reader”.

Now you don’t get to laugh like that too often on holiday do you? As I said earlier - It’s great to be back.

We're All Going On A Summer Holiday

You’ll be cheered to hear that this will be my last blog for a few weeks as I’m going on holiday – a whole two weeks away from the rain, traffic problems, congestion charge, wheelie bins, politicians, bills, the start of the football season, and chavs employed by the stationery store Rymans who carry on conversations with their mates about whether to get married or not while they serve you, never once making eye contact, carrying out the whole transaction in profile, and handing you the receipt and change without a word of “thank you”.

Or was that just for me?

My parting words of wisdom as I head off for foreign climes would be that if you need paper clips then make your own out of coat hangers. Want staples? Then use nails instead. Box files? Try old handbags. A hole punch? A Black and Decker drill will do the job. Use your imagination. Anything, but anything, to avoid the demeaning experience of being served in Rymans, the High Street store that makes Darth Vader seem cuddly.

I’m going abroad this year rather than having the trendy “staycation” that everyone else seems to be having by holidaying here in Britain. It’s not that I have anything against having my vacation in Cornwall or Devon say, in fact I have always had brilliant holidays there, but this year I just feel I need a break from everything I listed at the top. I need to clear out all of the nonsense that gets in our way here at home so that I can come back refreshed and enthused again ready for speed cameras, standing in queues at the post office, rip off bank charges, taxes, pleading with traffic wardens, and those ridiculous prices – that’s the petrol price, and Katie Price.

There is so much bad news around just now I’ve decided that not only do I need a break, but I’m going to take a joke book with me to cheer myself up.

Jokes get you going, make you lose your inhibitions and control, and leave you happier for the experience. Little and often is the way to go. Reading a joke book in one sitting is a big mistake as you get immune to the humour after a while, so I’ll dip in for a few each day on holiday. I’ve already had a sneak peek and I like the style of the person who’s compiled it. He knows we laugh loudest at someone else’s misfortune rather than our own. For instance, if someone else slips down a manhole, that’s funny. If I slip down the hole, that’s tragedy.

The first one I spotted in the book was about a grumpy man who worries about whether to bin his wife as she’s going deaf. He stands across the room and says “Can you hear me?” There’s no answer. He moves closer and asks again “Can you hear me?” Again nothing. So he eventually moves right up beside her and shouts “Can you hear me now?” She replies: “For the third time, yes!”

A few years ago two scientific researchers called Dr Graham Ritchie and Dr Kim Binstead created a computer program that could make up jokes. Most of the humour invented by the computer was really unfunny, but one joke scored highly with people who were polled. You will undoubtedly have heard it before, and it’s now in Christmas crackers and joke books around the world, but it was actually made up by the computer. It’s this one. “What kind of murderer has fibre? A cereal killer.”

Unfortunately for me the program also predicted what physical attributes make people laugh the most and top of the list was a big nose. Perhaps I shouldn’t come back from my holiday after all.

If you’re going away, have a nice one. If you’re staying put and your bored rush in to Ryman’s and tell them you’re from the Government and are proud to tell them they’ve won an award for customer service. That one wasn’t in the joke book, but you must admit it’s funny.

Love On The Line

A pal of mine, who is back on the hunt for romance, has just signed up to an internet dating site.

If I’m honest, this has surprised me as he’s just not the type to resort to mechanical devices when pulling the women. He’s never been one to use flashy cars or let them swoon over his automatic gates and up and over remotely operated garage doors, though he did once succeed in impressing one TV starlet with his fifty seven inch plasma screen. Unfortunately, while he was trying to nuzzle her neck, she was watching reruns of herself and moaning about how her spots looked like boulders on the big screen.

So having all the success of the Scotland football team, and now reaching the age where he has as many leaks as their back line, he’s on the web looking for a new smoochy partner. I always thought these internet dating sites were run along the lines of the new web based takeaways where the local restaurants have banded together to run businesses where you look at the menu, key in what you’re looking for, and whoever is closest or is running special offers based on your choices, gets to bring your food.

From what I gathered, internet dating was exactly the same and you simply put your details in, got lots of pics back, chose from the menu and then waited to see if you got the sweet or the sour delivered and whether the dumplings were big enough. A few hours later, I reasoned, you probably wanted another one.

Turns out it’s not at all like that unless your dating takes place on sites like OldFatGitNeedsDesperatelyUnfussyThaiBride.com.

My friend has found the dating site he uses to be very upstanding and is now in regular correspondence with five women all of whom look alike, which may have something to do with the fact they seem to have all used photos of Jennifer Aniston. This is fair enough as my pal used one of Brad Pitt for his, but I can’t help thinking that since the real Jennifer and Brad didn’t make a go of it then it just might be jinxed.

Anyway, he has just been on his first date and reported back that it went well and he even got a peck on the cheek, so he’s batting with a higher average than I did when I was single.

Come to think of it I have another friend, Ian, who has now been with someone he met through a personal ad in Time Out around ten years ago, and yet another gal pal has lived with her cyber space dating buddy for a couple of years now, so there must be something in this “home shopping” approach to romance. If your intended has used a movie star’s photo but turns up looking like Boris Karloff wearing a fat suit, I wonder if you can send it back saying it’s the wrong size.

A guy I know who manages an upcoming band has bought the domain name www.loveforlushes.com and wants to use it, when the band comes to an end, to launch a dating site exclusively for recovering alcoholics. Now I’m all for mutual support, but if I were addicted to something I think I’d prefer a partner who was a bit more grounded rather than us both heading off to karaoke restaurants to duet on Lean On Me very night. I can’t wait till he presents his business plan at the bank to see the reaction.

Research conducted in to personal ads shows that men and women react differently to what they read and see. The perfect ad should contain seventy per cent about yourself and thirty per cent about the person you want to meet. Any more than seventy and you look big headed, any less and you’re hiding something. As an aside, when you get your first date you should either take them to a horror movie or rollercoaster ride as they confuse their heart beating faster with fancying you.

I asked my wife Debbie what a personal ad from me would be like and she said it would be cheaper to stand at a car boot sale with a price on my forehead. As if that didn’t hurt enough, she added “and take lots of change”.

I persevered and asked her what I would put in my ad if I wasn’t deliriously happy being married to the most beautiful woman ever to have walked the earth. Her reply? “Depends on whether you want to be honest or whether you want someone to reply.”

That hurt. Eventually she came up with this. “Fanatically tidy television addict, loves chocolate, refuses vegetables, would like to meet new slave as last one got fed up.”

Charming! I might just run it on an internet dating site without telling her to see what happens. That’ll teach her. Though knowing my luck the only reply I'll get will be from my mate.

Dreamboats and Petticoats

I had a great time this week at the opening of a new musical called, and I have to think hard on this, Dreamboats and Petticoats. The reason I have to pause to remember the proper title of the musical is not that it was unmemorable, but that my ditsy brain and trippy tongue keep telling me, for no reason at all, to call it Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

If I was in a band it would be Simple Minds or Thick Lizzy, but I’m not alone. A pal of mine Mike, who is forty three, tried to tell me on Thursday of the death of someone we both knew vaguely and he just couldn’t remember her name. Later he couldn’t come up with a colleague’s name, the place he’s going on holiday and even his own brother’s age. Mike works as the head of an investment desk in one of the banks so perhaps there’s a clue in there somewhere as to why the credit crunch reared its head.

Of course I’d love my Bedknobs and Broomsticks wrinkle to be airbrushed quicker than a Twiggy advertising photo, but I can’t. David Cameron had the same problem on radio this week when he used the word tw*t, thinking it meant the same as twit, and the papers seem to think he did it purposefully to “get down” with the kids. But I think he either didn’t know that the word has another meaning or, like my friend Mike, he had a senior moment.

I once used the same word in a TV game show I hosted called Press Your Luck when a contestant came out with a ridiculous answer. The audience dissolved in fits of laughter and the floor manager shouted “cut”. I honestly didn’t know that in Bristol, where we were recording, the word meant something rude.

So did Cameron have a senior moment? Is he now in the Forgetful Forties heading towards the Flummoxed Fifties? Do we all start to get this memory loss now earlier and earlier? Will I end up soon like the guy who was in a crowded pub listening to really loud music and decided to pass wind for several minutes in time to the beat? Feeling better he turned to see everyone staring at him and then remembered he was wearing an iPod.

Why I have this mental block - confusing the new musical Dreamboats and Petticoats with Disney’s true life story of a flying bed that can go under the sea ensuring anyone on board doesn’t need masks or breathing equipment - I have no idea, unless there’s a secret part of me that’s in love with Angela Lansbury.

She must have been the only star not at the opening night of Dreamboats where I spotted Cilla Black, Vanessa Feltz and various Sixties DJs and movie stars who embraced each other with the “Amanda Holden” air kiss, missing contact with a slightly bigger gap than planes in a holding pattern at Heathrow.

Also there was Jess Conrad. He’s a very nice bloke to talk to, he looks exactly like a star should look with slicked back hair and a jacket only Tony Blackburn might envy, and I’ve met him many, many times. But I have no idea why he is famous. I looked him up when I came home to find that Jess was a pop star in the Sixties and must have been pretty good as he toured with Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. Then he became Jesus. Not in a confused, David Icke, type way but in the musical Godspell. He was eventually demoted in Heaven to play Joseph in the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Susan George, the actress who became famous opposite Dustin Hoffman in the movie Straw Dogs was also a guest along with her beau Simon McCorkindale, the dashing surgeon in Holby, Casualty, ER or The Royal. I can’t remember which hospital drama it is, but it’s the one where everyone looks strained and unhappy all the time and where patients refuse treatment every week because they’re worried about getting home to feed their twelve cats and four rehabilitated ponies in their top floor flat.

But I also met a couple who do more than all the stars and celebs to make the world a bit better. Bill Kenwright, the show’s producer, introduced me to a man saying he was his doctor. I, jokingly, said “Is he your prostate man?” to find that, actually, he was. He and his wife started a charity called The Teenage Cancer Trust a few years ago and with help from The Who, Paul Weller and others they have raised millions to enable kids to get access to the best treatment.

Feeling better for having met them, my idea that there’s something in the water today and that we’re all getting forgetful because of it was reinforced when I ran in to a friend I hadn’t seen in years. We hugged, chatted, laughed, exchanged numbers and then went our own ways.

The next morning I realised with embarrassment that I had never met him in my life. I had only recognised him because he had been on stage in Dreamboats earlier.

The one thing I can’t forget, because I’m reminded all the time by things like that, is that I am a right tw*t!

Back To Life, Back To Reality

I don’t know if it escaped you but the Beatles broke up over the past few days, prime minister Harold Wilson looks like retiring, and Richard Nixon said he thinks this new fangled flower power thing will die out soon.

This week I felt that I was in a bad Sixties movie, all Albert Finney shouting at Rita Tushingham in the rain and everything available only in black and white, and I would not have been surprised at one point to see Gene Kelly swinging round a lamppost and jumping in puddles. I feel I stepped in to the Tardis and flew back to a time when typists manned customer service desks and filed their nails rather than complaints.

I’ve written about this before, which probably shows I’m becoming an angry old man, but what is it about some businesses that it seems a badge of pride to keep their customer service stuck in monochrome? Twice in the past week or two I have been left wanting to scream, shout, kick the cat and then send the vet’s bill to the companies that have driven me insane with customer service operators who are thicker than Russell Brand’s mattress. If a new tax was brought in on brain cells they wouldn’t pay a penny.

My satellite TV provider and the company who look after the water softener in my house should be shamed, exposed, have custard pies thrown at them, be made to clean toilets at a camel race in the desert and then forced to watch Loose Women. Well, maybe the Loose Women thing is a bit much, but, like the camels, you get my drift.

On a global scale of things to worry about (war, credit crunch and the decline of Coronation Street) I realise satellite TV and water softener employees making me mad is small beer, and that you’re probably thinking anyone who needs a water softener is a great big wuss anyway, but I just hate the rudeness and incompetence of some companies, especially since so many others seem to have smartened up their act and got it right.

Incidentally, I need the water company to stop the pipes in my house furring up with lime and not, as you probably thought when looking at my photo, to keep my amazing baby like skin soft and gentle. They didn’t call me after promising that they would ring back immediately, leaving me to do all the chasing for a whole week, and then didn’t even apologise when I finally got hold of them for the fourth time. The satellite telly company, meanwhile, made me take three different mornings off work to get my box renewed, turning up each time with replacements that didn’t work. And again, as that great philosopher Elton of Pinner said, “sorry seems to be the hardest word”. Apology? You are so clearly kidding that I am now laughing in HD.

These companies are like The Fonz in Happy Days, but without the laughs. Arthur Fonzarelli, memorably, couldn’t ever say “sorry” for anything and the word stuck in his throat so that he’d get as far as “I’m sssssss” before going quiet again. Mind you, at least he tried.

Eventually, the TV people agreed that my taking mornings off was getting ridiculous so they said I should call them the day before on a special number at four o’clock and get a more specific time when the engineer would arrive. So, I did call at the appointed hour. It was an answering machine telling me the office was closed.

None the wiser I waited next day and the bloke, who I had been wrongly promised would phone me, turned up just before lunchtime. When I vented my frustration he, disarmingly, agreed with every word and told me he spends his working day apologising for his employer.

So, I’ve had enough. I can do the rude thing too, just like the head of customer service at the water softener company who was so soft himself he put me on hold and didn’t come back. I’m hoping it was because his car was nicked or his house broken in to and his stamp collection flushed down the toilet.

Behaving badly is easy, but being nice takes more effort. I can act like a badly brought up waste of skin who has never been taught that the word “sorry” goes a long way too. I’m going to stop my payments to these companies and, when they call to ask why, I’ll say that I’ll call them straight back.

And then I’ll go on holiday.

Summer Breeze

Being a Scotsman living in the land of London, I just love Summer. This is the best time of year to see England, and the English, in all their glory as this season seems to confirm all the prejudices people have about the country being stuck in scratchy black and white celluloid and portrayed as the old, infirm, matriarch with a stiff upper hip and vowels more rounded than Beyonce’s sitting gear.

English summers may be quaint, but they work. Back home, this is the time when we Scots have the odd Highland Games meeting in the rain or throw open Edinburgh Castle to rampaging military bands who show off the musical baton twirling and dog acrobatics that have the world’s terrorists trembling in shock and awe. We even put on the Festival to give theatre groups and arty farties a chance to watch each other perform Shakespeare on unicycles for three people in cagoules.

But when we organise these events we always do it with one eye on the tourist dollar and the other on deposit rates. The land of Adam Smith and Andrew Carnegie loves the tradition of making money, and so our tourist traditions tend to be simply functional and cash generating, whereas the English have turned theirs in to an art form that would have Toad throwing his bowler hat in the air with a quick Hoorah while steering his punt away from Toad Hall over a river of pink champagne.

The English are very good at keeping the tourists happy and ignore the ridicule and sniggers. I’m not thinking here of the Changing Of The Guard at Buckingham Palace or the kicking of the guard at the Tower of London to see if he reacts, but I’m thinking more of the summer traditions which are everywhere just now.

We’ve just had Royal Ascot, which for those of you reading this in far off places is where a bunch of horse faced people get very drunk on champagne while watching their relatives race round a course for a few days. The Simons and Ashleys of England take their Taras and Nigellas to the Ascot racecourse each year in a chauffered limo while more cars follow behind with their wallets and hats. The event kicks off with Ladies Day which belongs to the fairer sex and is a highlight for press photographers who look for skirts flying up or hats blowing off, while Simon and Ashley take a back seat in the champagne tent, blowing off too.

Over at the summer Henley Regatta, deckchair manufacturers use off cuts of material to run up blazers and caps for the male spectators who wear them like a Sixth form boarding school outing accompanied by lashings of lemonade and oodles of cake. Foul mouthed cries of “Gosh”, “Golly” and “Cripes” greet any rowing crew which loses, and then it’s back to the picnic and a visit to matron for upset tummy.

Sticks figure heavily in English summers. Morris dancers, who are bearded men dressed in pyjamas and wearing hats stolen from Spanish donkeys, hit each other with bits of wood while their mate stands by ready to wallop the loser with an accordion.

And sticks feature in Cricket too. This is the summer sport invented by the English to confuse Americans, and trying to explain the rules is akin to detailing the complete DNA breakdown of a parasitical mite whilst reciting the periodic table, backwards. Basically someone throws a ball at some sticks while his opponent protects the sticks with a bigger one. After five minutes they break for tea, then start again for a few minutes before stopping for elevenses, lunch, siesta, afternoon tea and tiffin, with any clouds in the sky halting proceedings for a scone and clotted cream break. After a game lasting several months, it can still be declared a draw.

Of course the English tradition the world is watching just now is Wimbledon, perhaps the pinnacle of English summer madness, and when I visited last week the sun was blazing, a chance to see the straw hats and flannels sup their Pimms and eat strawberries with colonial efficiency on the lawn whilst watching the world pass by. Most had probably come fresh from the Hay Festival, a gathering of book people in faded khaki T shirts with thinning hair and beards. It’s not all sexist as some men go too. They exchange recipes for organic pulse lasagne, sign a few copies of their latest book on mediaeval knitting, and then back to the tent for a sing along before bed time.

This is just one of the many festivals over summer and, as I wasn’t made for camping, when I want the authentic pop festival experience, I sit on the grass in my garden with my kids pouring buckets of water on me while I drink Red Bull and squint at a band on my tiny iPod screen which is hanging on a fence a hundred metres away. Occasionally I get up and go in the kitchen where my wife charges me ten pounds for a bottle of water and a jam roll.

I cannot fathom events like the very English Glastonbury Festival which has just ended. At Scottish festivals bands are booked only if their decibel levels directly correlate to their testosterone levels with rock bands competing in bad behaviour and macho posturing. Glastonbury had Gilbert O’Sullivan, Neil Diamond and Shakin’ Stevens and the organisers must have been gutted that they couldn’t get The New Seekers back together to close with a rousing I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.

So the English, and their summers, are madder than a stalker in sandals but the world would be a sadder place without them. Quaint, bonkers, old fashioned and daft. A great combination.

Old Before I Die

Of course I’d heard about that time of life when you start to notice that you can’t stand up, or even sit down, without a great expulsion of air – through your mouth I hasten to add– making a great “aaaahhh” sound. But I never thought much about it, assuming it would happen in many years time when I was coming back from the Post Office with my pension book and bag of boiled sweets to watch Countdown.

I do find, though, that I frequently make that “aaaaahh” sound like most blokes because it’s a guy’s thing, a way of telling the fairer sex that we are doing manly, strenuous things they couldn’t possibly understand. We guys like to be sympathised with as if we are superheroes who save the planet every day, and I’m told that even getting out of the shower and towelling myself I sound like a cross between a marathon runner and a whale’s blow hole, as if expelling air hard makes my wife aware just how manly I am.

But I’ve noticed that after a visit to the gym now I have started overdoing the gasping bit even when just sitting down, a bit like my grandparents used to do. I think I’m starting to fall apart.

Back home in Glasgow there’s a great Scottish expression for someone who is getting on a bit and suffering the aches and pains of older age. They’re called “fonty”, as in “fonty bits” (falling to bits).

So I have to admit to becoming a bit fonty now, as my various visits to sports injury clinics and MRI machines over the past year will testify. My big problem, of course, is that I think I’m still a teenager and that racing against gym instructors in running classes and trying to beat them is a good idea.

I recently had a medical and was told I had the heart and lungs of someone in their mid twenties but that the rest of my body looked like Rip Van Winkle, two hundred years after he’d woken up. All my running and five a side football has knackered my body and, even if they had the technology to make it good again, the makers of the million dollar man would be looking at rampant inflation to get near rebuilding me.

So this week, for the first time, I bought a Men’s Fitness magazine. To be honest, I was a bit embarrassed as the muscle laden hulk on the front in his gym shorts made me feel I was buying a soft porn mag for middle aged ladies. I fell for the promise of a six pack in six weeks but, having read the exercise regime needed, I feel I’ll have to meet them half way – a three pack in three years.

What really entertained me amongst the articles and vitamin supplement advice was the adverts, with lots of suggestions for treatments to restore my hair. Fortunately I’m not bald but, judging by this magazine, everyone else must be. The before and after photos are hilarious with deliberately depressed looking men showing their shiny heads in the “before” picture followed by them smiling, with make up on, and with road kill balanced on their heads in the “after”.

Another batch of adverts insisted they’d cure snoring, yet more dealt with flatulence, and one was headed The Male Menopause – Your Prostate And You. What had I wandered in to? I thought in was getting a fitness magazine but ended up reading about a lifestyle more suited to a comfy chair staring at a wall while the nice lady in an overall makes me a cup of tea before the Bingo starts.

Delving a bit deeper I did find an ad called Enhance Your Pulling Power. Thinking this would be a bit more vital and vibrant I read on to find it was a face mask for men which had to be pulled off after ten minutes to unblock my pores. I’m as willing to try new things as anyone but a face mask? It’s also blue, so there’s no way you could hide it when the pools man comes for his money or the neighbour drops by for a chat.

I don’t care about enlarged pores, ingrowing hair, revitalising creams, hormone supplements or tummy tucks. I just want to be me, and this feminisation of men’s magazines seems to me to be the first step on the slippery road to us macho types setting the hard drives to record Loose Women.

And then, of course, there are the pages devoted to improving men’s performance in the romantic entanglement area, if you get my drift. A man called Lee Murray, aged 29 and a stand up comedian we’re told, swears by something called Prelox. My first thought was “he’s having a laugh”, but then that’s his audience’s job. He says it has improved his love life, heart, blood pressure, cholesterol and confidence. It hasn’t improved his hair line though, as his photo shows it’s receding faster then the chances of me ever buying one of these magazines again.

So why can’t someone come up with a decent men’s health magazine that doesn’t make us feel old before our time? I’m guessing women must have loads of them but we men are forgotten about unless we’re bald, impotent, spotty fat people with nasal hair and flatulence.

Mind you, according to my wife, I’ve just bought the mag a year too early.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

I was stuck at a party this week with a man who could qualify for a degree level qualification in being boring. I was going to say he deserved a PhD but, as there is no letter “I” in there, he’d probably refuse to take it. I reckon this bore should have been a policeman as I can imagine him really enjoying a walk around his beat each day, saying to anyone he met “I, I, what’s going on here then?”.

Imagine listening to the most boring sermon, given by the most boring person, about the most boring subject, and it being delivered in a language you don’t understand and you will still not get close to how life defeatingly crass this bloke was.

He had obviously trained hard all his days for this sport of droning on, and believe me he was Olympic standard. As an example, and I’m not kidding here, I mentioned the weather was just a little uncomfortably warm and he proceeded to talk of his hottest ever holiday in Morocco at length, including what he ate, bought, and saw, plus the effect it had on his bowel movements.

Trying to change the subject I asked the lady who was standing with us if she was going anywhere exciting this summer and, before she could reply, Mr B. O’Ring jumped in with facts about his past summer vacations and how surprised he was that no one ever kept in touch with him after a holiday, and he made our eyes roll in their sockets until, I’m sorry to say, I deliberately spilled my wine over him so he had to go and get a towel and I could make my escape.

I was ashamed of my behaviour but it was either that or suicide, and if I’d elected to top myself I just know he would have advised me for hours about the best way to do it. Unfortunately he would not be speaking from experience.

So how do you get away from social misfits at parties? Please let me know because I am lousy at it. I seem to have a sign on my head saying “Over Here for Sympathy” and I even find my mates standing behind these outcasts making faces at me as if they knew it would happen. The thing is, all my friends say I am too nice to nutters. I should tell them to get lost and walk away, but I am a sucker for the underdog and waste hours talking to social outcasts - most of whom are broadcasters.

It’s an easy mistake to make, thinking that people on telly or radio must be interesting, but trust me they’re not. Most do it because nowhere else would put up with them and their ego.

This bloke, for instance, works in the music world and must think that I Tunes was named after him. He told me he felt he should keep a low profile in case the public recognised him. Even I didn’t recognise him and he had already spent two hours reciting his CV. I played up a bit and took the Mickey just to stop me drawing blood as I dug my nails in my wrists. Expressing concern that his fame meant carrying a great burden, I offered him my sunglasses to put on in case he was recognised by the barman. He actually took them and, stupid me, as he ran off to get a towel, he kept them too.

I have met and interviewed many, many stars over the years and the bigger they are the nicer they tend to be. Apart from Madonna of course. It’s the small people who are the bores because they are the ones who are big, big stars in their imaginations.
Worst of all is when they come along to present a prize at some awards ceremony and, no matter how often you tell them just to keep it brief, they always have a “funny” routine worked out involving some “funny” line they’ve delivered. They seem to come with their own laughter track that gets switched on in their head as they believe they are going down a storm and they then walk off stage and hang around hoping someone will ask for an autograph.

One, who shall remain anonymous, owed me a favour and so came to open our local garden fete. He sent a list of demands ahead of time as if he was playing the Albert Hall and turned up asking what security arrangements had been made and where the Press were going to be told to stand. I reminded him this was very local and just a Saturday afternoon summer get together to raise funds, but he insisted a table was set up and people told to stand in line for autographs. As very few bothered with his signature I called in a favour and asked some kids to pretend to be interested. Afterwards they told me he’d been so obnoxious they had gone out of their way to tell him they loved the soap opera he was in. Actually he was a news reader.

So maybe the next time I’m stuck at a party with a showbiz bore I should look for a member of the public to bring them down to size.

I remember one local radio presenter who was asked to open a Christmas bazaar and turned up to be greeted by the organiser with the words “Who are you? We thought we were getting someone famous. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to do.”

It took that radio presenter a long time to get over that. In fact, if I’m honest, I’m still trying.

Rage Against The Machine

When I was about thirteen years old I had one of those awkward, early teenage birthdays where people just don’t know what to get you. The days of bikes and cowboy outfits were long gone and I’d never quite got round to using my granny’s hand knitted balaclava with drawstrings.

But then I opened a fantastic present. It was a “build your own” Airfix model of a famously dour looking and unshaved grumpy man dressed top to toe in white. No, it wasn’t Andy Murray, it was Doctor Jekyll, and I slaved for weeks fixing together his arms and other body parts, glueing on his lab coat and then painting him in “glow in the dark” paint just to scare my brother when I placed it on his pillow and woke him up at midnight by growling in his ear.

I was reminded of that scary, foot high, statue this week when reading about Jordan in the tabloids. The parallels are easy to spot. Both are tiny models mainly composed of plastic with some bits obviously not quite fitting properly. They are both the creation of a strange mind, and you wouldn’t want to waken up and find either one of them on the pillow beside you.

It seems to me that Jordan can’t seem to make up her mind whether she’s a full time tabloid cartoon character just now or a part time mum, and so she has cemented her reputation in my mind as some kind of Doctor Jekyll and Mrs Hype.

This week she risked breaking a nail extension or two as she prised her phone out of her gold lame hot pants long enough to Twitter to the world about ex husband Peter Andre’s anatomy, specifically moaning about the size of his, er, shall we say, thing that makes men different from women. And I’m not talking about brains here.

I confess I was really, really surprised by her typing out this spiteful message. I mean who knew Katie Price could spell?

But this seems the way business is done nowadays with people using technology more and more to get their bitter messages across, whether it’s through celebrity Twitter accounts, Facebook, blogs, emails or Gordon Brown using You Tube. As an aside, whoever our Scottish Prime Minister’s adviser is he must be English otherwise he’d know that an often used insult north of the border for anyone who is seen as a complete waste of space is “you tube!”

News of Michael Jackson’s death was broken by a web site and spread like wild fire because of the internet and Twitter, but the technology was then used for nasty rumours and silly conspiracy theories, including one I read which said Jackson was really living in a bunker underground with Elvis Presley and Glen Miller.

Actor Matthew Horne gave up Twitter last weeks as someone was using it to defame his girlfriend and, as modern day technology has taken over as a way of spreading news but increasingly also silly, unfactual and downright nasty stuff, I was resolved not to let my two daughters get Facebook. They have been on at me for over a year to allow them to get it and I’ve resisted, partly because any loony out there can ask to be their friend, partly because for some it’s a substitute for a good social worker, partly because it lets socially inept outcasts waste their time sending bile while pretending that people really like them, and partly because I’m one of those outcasts and I got there first.

I’m sure my social worker would approve of my one, pretend, friend leading to many other pretend friends and I’ve had hundreds of requests from strangers who want me to join groups like Guppies Are Cool, or I Love Beatrix Potter Prayer Mats. Then there’s the clubs for afficianados of Latin Choral Chant, Victorian Lawn Mowers and any number of societies dedicated to bringing back Baywatch. This is all relatively harmless but the serious side is that I was also asked to sign up to a suicide pact site and others you just don’t want to know about. Anyway, if Facebook is so great, how come Megan Fox or Victoria Pendleton haven’t asked to be my friends?

After twelve months of unsuccessfully asking for the social networking pages to be added to their email accounts, my kids tried a different tack this week. I came home from work and was asked to sit at my computer where they had prepared a Power Point presentation entitled Why We Need Facebook. And not forgetting that a bit of flattery gets you everywhere in life, it was subtitled Remember We Love You.

The presentation made me laugh with tears rolling down my face as each page told how they were in danger of losing touch with humanity, suffering from terminal acne and ending up as old spinsters with nine cats. They are eleven and fourteen but already seem to have learned that if you want your own way, make them laugh. Deal done, I gave in and they now have Facebook but, after a week, the crushing thing is that neither of them has asked me to be their friend.

They only text me when they need money, any emails they send me are jokes about Scotsmen being mean, and they keep updating my Wickipedia page to say that I’m sixty five years old and gay. See what I mean about technology being nasty?

Sensitive and kind souls like I am don’t deserve this. People like myself just want to spread happiness and joy. So I think I’m going to leave something on their pillows one night soon. That’ll teach them.

The Hippy Hippy Shake

I was listening to a guy being interviewed on the radio today and I was full of awe for his courage and sense of what’s right. He spends his life sitting in a tree communing with nature and praying for us all to wise up soon to the dangers of environmental damage. Listening to him, though, I suddenly realised I’d make a lousy hippy. Trees are fine but they don’t have satellite telly do they? Or microwaves, or access to eBay. And is it possible to get takeaways delivered?

I guess I’m just spoiled, a product of the abundance we take for granted, and I’m not at all good with what you might call the airy fairy. The downside of being grounded is that you never fly, but the upside is that with the summer solstice arriving this week I didn’t feel the need to make a fool of myself by cramming my mates into a camper van and heading off to Stonehenge to dance around like a dad at a wedding while wearing a smock and herbs in my hair.

But I do sympathise with the tree man. I think times must be hard for hippies in general just now as it seems the rules have changed. Back in the Sixties hippies fought for human rights and were noticed, but now they’re ignored. I found a bunch who seem to do nothing at all but preach about peace and the environment while refusing to buy anything with their own money. They don’t live in a tree but in a place called the House of Commons.

Being a real hippy in this new millennium is much tougher. Sure, you still have to get up before dawn to welcome the sun but now it’s with the new, and ironic, knowledge that it’s burning us up, making polar bears homeless and killing off native species of plants. Not being a morning person would make me fail the selection process anyway, but modern day hippy life is just too complicated for me to join in.

They’ve binned the good stuff, like free love and Janis Joplin, and kept the bad taste bits like the braided hair, the tattooed ankles, the eyebrow piercing and having to grow a long, bushy, beard. Whenever I try growing facial hair, rather than looking like an environment angel I resemble a Hell’s Angel and scare myself half to death when catching a glimpse in shop windows.

The old, Beatles era, hippy culture meant travelling to San Francisco and watching a bit of bra burning before settling down and opening a branch of Interflora, but new millennium hippies have to park up their caravans in crop circles before linking their wind powered tapestry looms to nearby windmills, washing their dungarees in ionised water and then drying them over ley lines, before recycling cat litter as burgers served with organic rice. We’ve just got too much information now and the simplicity has gone.

I’m all for saving the whales, the Welsh, the bees, the birds on Page 3 and the chocolate bean too but it’s all the other things that come with being “other wordly” that sink my boat. I’m too practical and unbending.

While I could wish with all my heart to believe in this fanciful stuff, I’m afraid I don’t have enough imagination to see chakras, auras and Homeopathic medicine as anything other than fantasies for dreamers. And I could just about embrace the notion of wearing rainbow colours all the time to make the world a happier place, but then I do wonder how come Ricky Gervais dresses from head to toe in black and everyone still laughs a lot.

And what about astrology? There was an excuse in the Sixties to believe in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but now? Well, here’s an experiment. Think of your birthdate, and the year you first came in to the world, and concentrate hard while I do a reading for you. A bit harder. Send me those thoughts. A bit more. Ok. Got it.

You have a need for other people to like you but you are self critical. You have some personality weaknesses but you compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity and, while disciplined and self controlled on the outside, you can be worried and insecure on the inside. You like a certain amount of change and variety and don’t like being hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.

So, how did I do? Well, that reading was given to one hundred students after they were asked to fill in a personality test in the Nineteen Forties. Each student was given exactly the same reading but told it was uniquely based on their personality test and they were asked to rate it for accuracy. Every single one of them said it was spot on.

So, am I just a well meaning cynic who sympathises from the touch line without getting himself dirty in the game? I hope not. I really do want to save the world for the next generation and I really do want world peace. I simply want to do it from under my duck down duvet rather than perched on an old English oak tree with only the neighbourhood owl to cuddle up to.

Of course, if they bring back the free love bit I might just be persuaded.