When a man loves a woman

I was looking at a new survey the other day which says that women may be getting more masculine. The report wasn’t intended to suggest that ladies are now picking up the great and unique habits that we males have been refining over centuries like always being tidy, and never, ever, being wrong. It suggested, though, that women were more interested in football and going to the pub than they used to be and are more likely than ever to get out the overalls and take up DIY.

I can only assume this survey was carried out at a drag artists convention, or perhaps an away day for pantomime dames, or maybe the survey was done on a fictional street like Wisteria Lane where the Desperate Housewives do everything from rebuilding hurricane damaged houses overnight to taking on armed lunatics, before checking their make up and baking scones for the church fete.

Wherever it was done I can assure you that no one in my house was consulted for the research. There are no signs of this new order of masculine girls amongst my kids who I had assumed years ago would grow in to youngsters with a Macauley Culkin take on life, getting left alone at Christmas but having the time of their lives battering baddies. The reality is that pink is still the colour of choice here and any ideas of electrifying door handles or swinging paint pots at burglars while defending their home would come way after buying perfume and bath salts. My girls are less Home Alone and more Jo Malone.

As the only bloke in our house I’m banned from watching football but, lately, I think I’ve hit on a solution to my problem by mentioning two words that send my wife running out the door screaming. The words are Science and Fiction, and if I lock myself away in the TV room saying I’m going to watch a Star Wars movie, the effect is like saying I have swine fever. It clears the house straight away leaving me free for the footie.

As the gentle sex is so off the scale alien to me, despite the lack of enthusiasm for tackling robbers in a toyboy fashion I’m relaxed about our house getting broken in to because of the little habits of the females who live here. I’m sure I could tell if we had been burgled before I even stepped over the threshold. Opening the door I would notice strange footprints in the talcum powder that spreads like a plague over our floors, I would see the blood left by Kirby grips sticking through the soles of whatever soft, quiet shoes villains use when they’re turning over your house, and I know that any burglar would have to tidy up in our house first before finding anything worth stealing.

At home I’m hopelessly outnumbered by women, three to one. My wife Debbie has passed on to our daughters the magical tricks of being a real woman which we men will never, ever understand. So far as I can see, these involve being able to “turban” a towel round wet hair without it unravelling, learning to decorate surfaces with cotton wool, and putting talcum powder on after a shower by throwing it up in the air and then running round and round naked underneath as it fall to the floor and spreads to the walls.

It seems to me it’s also necessary if you want to stay in the girlies club that you never, ever put things back where they belong, you must talk to people only if there’s a mirror behind them that you can use at the same time, and remember to always leave your undies hanging up on the floor.

When we moved in to our house we bought a cream carpet for our bedroom. I remember fondly how clean and chic it looked and, if I dig out old photos of five years ago, I can smile with the memories of that carpet, an old friend long gone. Now it has abstract patterns all over it, a mix of dropped eyeliner, sparkly foundation and widespread multi coloured hair bands. Do these bands just fly off their head without women knowing? Am I likely to be hit in the face in a crowded Top Shop by hair bands spontaneously pinging off and jumping everywhere? No wonder people look bruised after the January sales.

And, of course, since time immemorial there have been complaints about men leaving shaving bristles in the sink. Well, what about the bath after a lady, of any age, decides to shave her legs? That’s got to be the worst of all as it’s usually mixed in with conditioner and bath oil in a gooey mess that could clean graffiti off the Great Wall of China. Our bath used to be white until it discovered the delights of multi coloured fizzing bath bombs from Lush. Now, like a girlie at her first disco, it has a permanent pink flush.

Girls also seem to come with an extra chromosome which I call the cat chromosome where everything from a moggy to a herd of stampeding rhinoceros have to be welcomed in to the house with open arms, adopted and fed, and perhaps even given Dad’s dinner if he’s late home.

So, surveys are all very well. But girls getting more masculine? I don’t think so. Next thing you know we’ll have a survey saying men are getting more feminine. I bet you all my moisturiser and hair products that it will be a lie.

Art For Art's Sake

I’m not a big fan of pain so I don’t understand why people volunteer to have someone stick needles in them and squirt ink under their skin. To me tattoos are a bit like big, hairy warts – fine on others but I wouldn’t want one myself, though they make for great reading in T shirt weather when I’ve forgotten my newspaper on the train.

I’m against body art as, apart from the pain, I also worry that I would get the same dyslexic tattooist who did a friend of mine a few years ago. He is a huge fan of Disney, and Simba the lion in particular, and he loves the morality tale of good triumphing over evil, but every summer he is aware of pretty girls avoiding him in the street when they see the tattoo on his bare arm proclaiming him to be The Loin King.

And, as my pal now realises only too well, a tattoo is for life. The BBC recently reported on a girl called Joanne Raine, a teenager who wanted to tattoo her lover’s name on her stomach and paid extra to have it written in Chinese. She had the tattoo for months before learning that her local parlour had mistranslated some symbols when she had the artwork done. Instead of having I Love Roo across her belly button she now has the Chinese word for “supermarket”.

I guess poor Joanne could have got away with it by telling people that it was his nickname but unfortunately Roo binned her soon afterwards and she’s stuck with it. So I’m hoping she’s currently looking for a new boyfriend who is reliable, great sense of humour, own car, and answers to the name of Tesco.

This week I read of a guy in Australia who has devoted the last fifteen years of his life to getting tattooed all over (his body that is, not Australia) and has just written his will leaving his skin to the Australian National Gallery. He’s deadly serious and wants them to flay him after he kicks the bucket and then show his epidermis as a work of art on the gallery wall. I’m not sure which bit of dangly skin they’ll use to hang him on the picture hook but I only hope it’s long enough!

Another American guy this week tried to get in to the Guinness Book of records for having the most body piercings but decided that he would get them all done in one sitting. He managed to have over a thousand holes put in him in five hours before passing out with the pain.

So, what I want to know is, is all this nonsense really art? If it is then I confess I’m just not getting it, but then I can’t tell the difference between a Van Gogh and a Van Halen. If art’s in the eye of the beholder then my eyes have cataracts. But I do wonder if art is all a con anyway. I was once told by an artist I interviewed that she had recently lost her temper and had thrown a wet painting in her bin out of frustration. After calming down she pulled it out and was about to remove the cat hair and baked beans from the canvas when her client turned up early and hailed it as great conceptual artwork.

Two years ago I was in New York filming at MOMA, the Big Apple’s Museum Of Modern Art which is where Madonna chose to wear her bunny ears to a party a couple of weeks ago. The place is magnificent, but my director placed me in front of wall sign that said something like “In Case Of Fire, Panic” in a dozen different languages and prepared to film me. I pointed out that a health and safety notice was perhaps not the best background but our guide told me it was worth several million dollars and was a statement about our frenetic world by some Sixties hippy artist. In the end I did my piece standing under an aeroplane which dangled from the roof and was probably an Airfix model by Hockney and worth more than the whole Boeing Corporation.

These large “installation” pieces really pass me by. I just don’t get how slicing a shark in two and putting it in a case warrants someone paying several million dollars. A gold star maybe, some new crayons and a week off the naughty step perhaps, but that’s all. Now it seems that the guy who bought Damien Hirst’s shark has had it replaced as it keeps decaying and he’s now on the third one. No wonder marine biologists are worried about species disappearing.

Then there was the diamond encrusted skull Hirst made which sold for fifty million dollars. It turns out he didn’t make it at all but told his workforce to weld it together in a loft somewhere. Do you think if I wrote down a few “gems” and handed them to some friends asking them to present my radio show for me while I sat at home I’d still get paid?

I’m not quite saying let’s all put flying ducks and posters of Che Guevara on our walls but I do think it’s all got a bit out of hand. Even if it’s a masterpiece, I am sure that walking in to a gallery and seeing a dead man’s tattooed bottom staring back at me from a wall probably isn’t going to make me want to buy a print of it for my office.

And if Damien Hirst gets anywhere near it I have a feeling I know where he’d place his diamond.

Pant Music

www.paulcoia.com

A peek around my underwear drawer would be a strange and wonderful trip indeed for those who are in to looking at ruins and ancient memorabilia. It’s perhaps not up there with a weekend in Rome exploring the Coliseum or a trip to Greece and a wander round the Parthenon but, as I tend to keep my favourites from years ago, my boxer shorts drawer would still allow for happy photographs and memories of historical exploring.

I keep all sorts of things in my underwear drawer because it seems a safe place so you will find receipts, chocolate bars, pens and the odd bit of change as well as the garments themselves which will be the most interesting to historians of the future.

Even though I no longer wear them, the under crackers of my past still sit with my current, day to day, favourites as if, one day soon, the Victoria and Albert costume curator will call and ask me to exhibit. I know deep down that won’t happen so I have to admit that I have no idea why I hang on to these threadbare old rags so long, other than that there’s some half formed relationship and bond with them that the ones I now use as car cloths didn’t have.

I know some people have what they call “lucky pants”, those that remind them of great moments in life when they wore them for a great job interview or when asking successfully for a pay rise, or on that day they finally got that supermodel in to the back row of the movies. I had to settle for the Glasgow Odeon and a girl whose dad had a great chip shop in Springburn. Smelling her hair was always a treat as I got a kiss and a feeling of having had a great fry up all in one. A great double dipper.

But, the reason I’m getting a bit worried about my underwear drawer now is the announcement last week that Marks and Spencers were targeting ladies with bigger chests who must pay more for their bras than those who are less well endowed. Granted, M&S backed down saying they’d made a mistake and those with double G sized inflation busters will pay the same as those with the credit crunch economy sized ones but I bet the High Street retailer still gets its money back somehow.

And that’s why I’m worried. What if they decide to make guys who need bigger underpants than others pay more?

Before you think this is my way of boasting, what I’m really anxious about is that I will get caught in a store changing the price tags on the packages when I next buy. Just think it through. If a price hike on pants for larger guys goes ahead then we men will be peeling off the more expensive labels from the ghetto blaster sized shorts and putting them on our little iPod sized purchases so that they get admiring glances, rather than sympathy, at the till. I’d definitely be tempted in to that.

Of course this worry I have is a bit premature as, having renewed my underwear three years ago I’m not due to renew them for another ten or twelve years, but the thought still bothers me.

And, in truth, I’m glad I don’t have to replace my relics just yet as I admit I have no idea what is currently fashionable in the downstairs department. Is it a la mode just now to wear boxers, briefs, Y fronts or go commando? The normal way I have of judging these things is much cheaper than buying fashion magazines and is quicker than sitting through Gok Wan’s fashion fixes on telly. I simply look around the changing room at the gym but, as I haven’t been for a while, my fashion compass is hopelessly spinning in all directions.

Perhaps I should just watch Britain’s Got Talent which seems to consist of one guy after another stripping off and showing his brand new pants while eating fire or juggling. I couldn’t watch the sword swallower without wondering if he has a lot of underpants with holes in them.

Not only is men’s underwear big on talent shows just now, even Nicholas Bendtner the Arsenal footballer is so keen to inherit Beckham’s “soccer player is pants” modelling gig that he decided to show off his assets this week when he fell out of a nightclub with his trousers at his ankles after his team had been beaten by Manchester United.

Perhaps it was Nicholas’ clever way of telling us was upset and felt that he was to blame for the defeat as he had poor ball control. Still, like all good teams and footballers, he would be grateful for his supporters which seemed from the photographs to be called Emporio and Armani! Being a less than prolific goal scorer I’m sure he’s not worried about being a world class dribbler.

Now Ledley King who plays for Tottenham has been arrested with his trousers down and went defiantly to the cell shouting how rich he was and that his undies cost more than the arresting officer’s house. He then bravely marched in to isolation, heard the door bang, cried his eyes out and wet himself. Class!

So, this week my thoughts are all about underwear. And then I saw Victoria Beckham posing in hers for a newspaper shoot.

I never want to see underwear ever again.

Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking

Judging by my email inbox this week people seem determined to have a laugh despite us all being flushed down the pandemic with swine fever, recession, bent politicians and age defeating injections paralysing our facial muscles. Was it Einstein, or was it Galileo, who said Botox = Skin - Time – Emotion?

Like you I tend to get inundated with jokes that do the rounds so much that I see the same gag seven or eight times and usually delete it unread, depending on who sent it. I’ve started a ratings system based on the jokes people send me and if they haven’t got at least a three or four star rating based on past performance then I bin them unopened.

However, I have never had so many jokes and cartoons appear in my in tray as this week, along with funny stories and pithy sayings, a sure sign that, at last, we are waking up to the fact that we have to be cheerful if we’re going to get through this gloomy time and financial Armageddon. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse may be riding across the sky but they’re wearing comic red noses and funny hats.

You would think that swine fever is no laughing matter – I almost said not to be sneezed at - until you see street loads of Mexicans with face masks looking like Michael Jackson, some even painting false noses and moustaches on their masks, while others just thank God for the chance to cover up their real noses and moustaches. I’m guessing that Mexican beauty salons are not doing a roaring trade just now in bleaching the top lip area.

But, awful as it is, this swine fever has led to the jokes appearing thick and fast. “I called the swine line for advice this week and all I could hear was crackling” being one of the first out of the blocks. Then it was “my family must have swine flu otherwise how do explain all these rashers on our skin?” I also received a drawing from the Winnie The Pooh stories with Piglet and Pooh walking side by side. Piglet is thinking “I’m glad I have such a good friend as Pooh” while the bear is thinking “one sneeze from him and I’ll kill him”.

Another pal decided to cheer me up by sending a list of gags used by the inimitable Tommy Cooper. There were pages of them including ‘I went to buy a watch, and the man in the shop said 'Analogue?' I said 'No, just a watch.' Then there was the cowboy who walked in to the car showroom and shouted “Audi”. Or what about the man who goes to Blockbuster and asks to borrow Batman Forever. He’s told “No. You bring it back tomorrow like everyone else.”

My favourite Tommy Cooper gag was about the bloke who bought a theatre. He told his mum of his purchase and she said “You’re having me on”. He replied “well, I’ll give you an audition but I’m not promising anything”.

Even The Sun newspaper gave over a page a day last week to comedians making light of the problems we’re all facing. So, amidst the gloom, we’re finding the first shoots of our sense of humour returning. In Washington, folk who are having their houses repossessed have started to copy Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone and have balanced paint pots on top of doors, wired their car batteries to door handles and put dog’s muck all over their door mats to have one last giggle as the mortgage company representatives enter their homes.

My favourite email joke that I received this week came from a long standing friend who works on the X Factor and, like me, is Scottish. I’ve told the joke to many English people this week and all have laughed, with no one taking offence, so don’t you be the first. Just enjoy.

A farmer in Scotland is walking across his land when he spots a man using his hand to scoop water from a stream that flows through his land. He shouts to the man, "Dinnae drink tha waater! It's fu' ae coo's shite an pish!" The man replies, "My Good fellow, I'm from England . Could you repeat that in the Queen’s English for me?" The farmer replies with a smile, "I said, use two hands - you'll spill less that way!!!"

And to round off a perfect week, I’ve discovered that Bono, the world saver, faith healer and miracle worker, has made me laugh too. It’s not often I can say that but the blind Irish singer (what do you mean he’s not blind?) has written a poem about Elvis Presley which goes, and I quote verbatim, “Elvis wore a gold suit and trained his lip to curl/ Elvis was macho but could sing like a girl”.

He then goes on “Elvis, white trash/ Elvis the Memphis flash/ Elvis didn’t smoke hash/ and would have been a sissy without Johnny Cash.”

You want more? How about “Elvis with God on his knees/ Elvis on three TVs/Elvis, here come the killer bees/ Head full of honey, potato chips and cheese.

And what makes this an especially funny poem is that Bono wrote it as a tribute to the King and is very proud of it. Which brings me back to my senses and an acceptance of how serious things are. I mean, how will they ever tell if Bono catches swine fever and starts talking nonsense?