It felt a bit like a Hollywood movie last week with volcanic ash menacingly making its way across Europe. If the Russians wanted to invade then that was the time to do it as Wing Commander Johnny Hero sipped tea and James Bond remained stuck at his skiing chalet waiting for it to blow over.
I still think it was an insurance scam by the government of Iceland as Jeremy Clarkson visited and was allowed to smoke as much as he wanted. Hot air and a packet of Woodbines is a lethal combination, but the get out for insurers is that Clarkson will boast to everyone that, as he did it, it must be an "act of God".
When things erupted, so to speak, I was stuck in Dubai on business and unable to get home so I managed a few days sight seeing. I realise you have no sympathy and there are worse places to be stuck. I could have been held in Kazakhstan or Croydon.
They love being biggest and best in Dubai. It's home to the world’s tallest building, where I sat in a restaurant with the world’s best food and watched the world’s tallest fountains go off every fifteen minutes, choreographed to the world’s worst music.
Where other schools would employ former Raith Rovers second eleven players as football coaches, one school here has ex England midfielder Carlton Palmer. Dubai - never knowingly understated.
Armani has a hotel here though Giorgio himself couldn’t make the opening because of the travel chaos, there’s Dolce and Gabanna and Chanel, as well as McDonalds and Costa. But that’s just where the fun starts. Look further and you’ll find outlets that reflect the Arab love of the gaudy. Shops like ‘You Bring It We Bling It’, a place where you can get anything from your mobile phone to your wife blinged with diamante or Swarovsky. Stupidly I had my underpants done. Now I know what having piles must be like.
I visited The Palm, a reclaimed area where the footballers have bought their holiday homes. It is a man made island in the shape of a palm tree with the Atlantis, a castle like hotel, at the end and having a foyer which is underwater. I was mesmerised looking through the floor to ceiling glass walls at giant fish and sharks swimming around a recreation of a sunken city. Wait till Dubai realises they can open the world’s biggest dentist waiting room here.
I spent some time in what’s billed as the world’s biggest shopping mall. There’s the front half of a full sized aeroplane here for kids to virtually fly, an operating theatre for them to play doctors and nurses, a university for them to graduate, and a law court in which to play lawyers and bad guys. There’s also an ice rink, a twenty screen cinema complex, and another floor to ceiling aquarium but with a cage for shoppers to be lowered in for photo opportunities as they swim with sharks. Beats the wet fish counter at the Wimbledon Waitrose.
Here I bought some sweatshirts for the kids but extra small size of course. Dubai does everything bigger
Perhaps what sums up Dubai best for me was a letter published last Tuesday in the local newspaper 7 Days. It mentioned the world’s biggest travel chaos caused by the world’s biggest ash cloud with the world's greatest publicity from the world’s largest currently erupting volcano.
The letter ended, “when can we get one?”.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Secret Lovers
I’m going to tell you a secret this week. In fact I’m going to tell you several.
Secrets are in the news as it has been shown that one in five men keep secret bank accounts that their wives know nothing about. The smiley, innocent side of me says that this is fine as the men are obviously doing it as a nice surprise, but the cynical, and let’s face it, more sensible side of me says two things – first, how sneaky and underhand of them, and second I thought I was the only one doing this.
My secret bank account isn’t meant to be underhand, it’s there just for emergencies. And don’t rat on me to the tax man. It's not that much but you just never know when you’ll need a few million here and there do you?
This week I asked my listeners on Smooth Radio to text me, under reassurance of anonymity, telling me the secrets that they keep from their partners. And, my goodness, what a lot of secrets there were.
One man in Liverpool has yet to tell his wife that he sees dead people everywhere. He says he also neglected to tell her that he fancies Judith Kepple off TV’s Eggheads. I’m guessing here, but I think he’s kept quiet because he’s scared his wife might think he’s mad. I mean who on earth fancies Judith Kepple?
There were plenty of naughty secrets revealed on the texts too, like the woman who confessed that she had been seeing a married circuit judge for the past year, and yet another who told me that her husband doesn’t know she’s been having a string of affairs throughout their eleven years of marriage. Her reason? “Men just fascinate me”. This confession led, of course, to plenty of requests from male listeners asking for her number.
Our listeners must be a wealthy lot as one had kept secret from her partner that she owns three racehorses, while another had fixed a date for her marriage to her future husband without telling him she had just inherited three million pounds. A male listener in Birmingham kept secret from his wife that he had been betting successfully on horses throughout their twenty three years marriage and had a small fortune in a secret bank account. Well he did keep it secret until just after they divorced, and he then took great pleasure in telling her and showing the pass book.
And it seemed that more women had secrets than men. A lady from Bolton hated her husband’s snobbery so much she bought cheap ketchup and kept refilling the expensive Heinz bottle all the years they were together without him noticing, another encouraged her dog to wee regularly on her husband’s prize pumpkins, and yet another confessed she hadn’t told her partner that she had been abducted by aliens a few years ago. Then a Manchester woman said her husband thought she didn’t know that he dressed in her clothes when she was out. What he doesn’t know is that she does know, and that she’s about to serve divorce papers.
My favourite secret, though, was also the nicest. A male listener told me he has been buying up shares in his company without telling his wife so that when they retire he can sell them and give her a surprise nest egg. He can’t wait to see her face.
Secrets are probably not a good idea but they don’t have to be nasty, do they?
Secrets are in the news as it has been shown that one in five men keep secret bank accounts that their wives know nothing about. The smiley, innocent side of me says that this is fine as the men are obviously doing it as a nice surprise, but the cynical, and let’s face it, more sensible side of me says two things – first, how sneaky and underhand of them, and second I thought I was the only one doing this.
My secret bank account isn’t meant to be underhand, it’s there just for emergencies. And don’t rat on me to the tax man. It's not that much but you just never know when you’ll need a few million here and there do you?
This week I asked my listeners on Smooth Radio to text me, under reassurance of anonymity, telling me the secrets that they keep from their partners. And, my goodness, what a lot of secrets there were.
One man in Liverpool has yet to tell his wife that he sees dead people everywhere. He says he also neglected to tell her that he fancies Judith Kepple off TV’s Eggheads. I’m guessing here, but I think he’s kept quiet because he’s scared his wife might think he’s mad. I mean who on earth fancies Judith Kepple?
There were plenty of naughty secrets revealed on the texts too, like the woman who confessed that she had been seeing a married circuit judge for the past year, and yet another who told me that her husband doesn’t know she’s been having a string of affairs throughout their eleven years of marriage. Her reason? “Men just fascinate me”. This confession led, of course, to plenty of requests from male listeners asking for her number.
Our listeners must be a wealthy lot as one had kept secret from her partner that she owns three racehorses, while another had fixed a date for her marriage to her future husband without telling him she had just inherited three million pounds. A male listener in Birmingham kept secret from his wife that he had been betting successfully on horses throughout their twenty three years marriage and had a small fortune in a secret bank account. Well he did keep it secret until just after they divorced, and he then took great pleasure in telling her and showing the pass book.
And it seemed that more women had secrets than men. A lady from Bolton hated her husband’s snobbery so much she bought cheap ketchup and kept refilling the expensive Heinz bottle all the years they were together without him noticing, another encouraged her dog to wee regularly on her husband’s prize pumpkins, and yet another confessed she hadn’t told her partner that she had been abducted by aliens a few years ago. Then a Manchester woman said her husband thought she didn’t know that he dressed in her clothes when she was out. What he doesn’t know is that she does know, and that she’s about to serve divorce papers.
My favourite secret, though, was also the nicest. A male listener told me he has been buying up shares in his company without telling his wife so that when they retire he can sell them and give her a surprise nest egg. He can’t wait to see her face.
Secrets are probably not a good idea but they don’t have to be nasty, do they?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
American Pie
I spent part of Easter Sunday catching up on the last episode of series one of Glee. As an admission designed to shatter any image I might have of being macho, I realise this is up there with being word perfect in Judy Garland’s role in Meet Me In St Louis, having posters on my wall of Audrey Hepburn, and just slightly behind choosing Elton John, Ricky Martin, Edith Piaf and Tinkerbell as my all time fantasy band. But I can’t help it. I love it.
Poor old America gets some really bad programmes on television, as we do, but we’re lucky in the UK as we usually get the best of their stuff because that’s what sells abroad. I exempt from this, of course, anything with the word “Model” in it and everything that includes Paris Hilton.
My weekly viewing seems more and more to lean towards Americana with my faves including Mad Men, Glee and True Blood along with comedies like 30 Rock, Modern Family and Fox News. Except, of course, Fox News is supposed to be serious.
Being a news anchor is one of the cheesiest, most shameful jobs in television when you take yourself seriously and, my goodness, they take themselves seriously on American News. The bad acting as they read distressing stories, the forced, unfunny jollity between co anchors as they fill between stories, and the over rehearsed questions and answers with reporters live from a scene, are beyond parody. These nylon headed tailor’s dummies make a fortune and are hammier than Animal Farm during Pork Festival week.
Think of the worst programme idea you can come up with and it’s already been done in America. Just this year “One Thousand Ways To Lie”, an American show where people share the biggest lies they have ever told, was cancelled after just one outing. “The Will”, a show that followed bereaved families attending the reading of loved ones’ wills, premiered in December and was cancelled after the pilot. Also cancelled after just a few shows this month were Past Lives, a detective story based on reincarnation, and Ruby And The Rockits, in which David Cassidy played a “past it” pop star.
But all these lasted longer than a show called Blonde Charity Mafia which followed three blonde twenty somethings who think work is something servants do to feel useful. These princesses worship the Bank Of Daddy and were such poor company the networks hid their embarrassment and it never aired at all. Ditto with Our Little Genius, where child prodigies competed for money by answering questions like “name five Trojan asteroids around Neptune”. No one understood the questions, no one liked the kids.
But before we all start to feel sanctimonious we must remember that because we get a filtered version of American TV, they also get an unrepresentatively good version of ours. They watch The Office or whatever and think all our TV is like that, blissfully unaware of Nick Knowles, My Family, or Last Of The Summer Wine.
We saw off Michael Winner’s Dinners, but you may think a country that allows Ian Wright on Channel Five, or Amanda Holden on anything, or lets Jeremy Kyle earn a living rather than putting him in a cage with Loose Women and a pride of starving lions, is in no position to comment at all.
You may think that. I of course couldn’t possibly comment.
Poor old America gets some really bad programmes on television, as we do, but we’re lucky in the UK as we usually get the best of their stuff because that’s what sells abroad. I exempt from this, of course, anything with the word “Model” in it and everything that includes Paris Hilton.
My weekly viewing seems more and more to lean towards Americana with my faves including Mad Men, Glee and True Blood along with comedies like 30 Rock, Modern Family and Fox News. Except, of course, Fox News is supposed to be serious.
Being a news anchor is one of the cheesiest, most shameful jobs in television when you take yourself seriously and, my goodness, they take themselves seriously on American News. The bad acting as they read distressing stories, the forced, unfunny jollity between co anchors as they fill between stories, and the over rehearsed questions and answers with reporters live from a scene, are beyond parody. These nylon headed tailor’s dummies make a fortune and are hammier than Animal Farm during Pork Festival week.
Think of the worst programme idea you can come up with and it’s already been done in America. Just this year “One Thousand Ways To Lie”, an American show where people share the biggest lies they have ever told, was cancelled after just one outing. “The Will”, a show that followed bereaved families attending the reading of loved ones’ wills, premiered in December and was cancelled after the pilot. Also cancelled after just a few shows this month were Past Lives, a detective story based on reincarnation, and Ruby And The Rockits, in which David Cassidy played a “past it” pop star.
But all these lasted longer than a show called Blonde Charity Mafia which followed three blonde twenty somethings who think work is something servants do to feel useful. These princesses worship the Bank Of Daddy and were such poor company the networks hid their embarrassment and it never aired at all. Ditto with Our Little Genius, where child prodigies competed for money by answering questions like “name five Trojan asteroids around Neptune”. No one understood the questions, no one liked the kids.
But before we all start to feel sanctimonious we must remember that because we get a filtered version of American TV, they also get an unrepresentatively good version of ours. They watch The Office or whatever and think all our TV is like that, blissfully unaware of Nick Knowles, My Family, or Last Of The Summer Wine.
We saw off Michael Winner’s Dinners, but you may think a country that allows Ian Wright on Channel Five, or Amanda Holden on anything, or lets Jeremy Kyle earn a living rather than putting him in a cage with Loose Women and a pride of starving lions, is in no position to comment at all.
You may think that. I of course couldn’t possibly comment.
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