Doctor, Doctor

I didn’t write a blog last week as my wife and I have been playing doctors and nurses. And before you get carried away with some fantasy involving bed baths and visits to the Anne Summers and Victoria’s Secret outlet stores, I mean that my daughter has had pneumonia and we’ve been mopping her fevered brow and her bedroom floor.

Getting any of our local doctors to come and visit this week has been a nightmare as they only come out for old people, or so they say. In the end, and under protest, a lady doctor came, demanded an X ray, pronounced pneumonia and antibiotics, and then reminded us that she would not come back for my teenage daughter, no matter how sick, but only for an old, infirm, patient. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to find one, or perhaps she was looking at me.

But the thing she fails to understand is that old people aren’t at home waiting for doctors. They’re all at work. News on pensions this week means that we’re all going to have to be employed till we’re old and incontinent with whiskery ears and fluffy bits missed by our razors and eyesight. Pensions look set to be postponed later and later in life as yet another politician said this week that we will all have to wait till we’re in our Seventies before we can retire.

So now that no one can be ageist and get rid of staff because of age, who is going to gently tell us when we’re no longer up to the job?

Am I going to see pensioners playing rugby or football for Scotland? Arguably, of course, results may improve. Will we have someone on a zimmer frame going for the Olympic pole vault gold medal? Will Joan Rivers enter beauty contests and Richard Attenborough play Braveheart 2?

The thing about getting older is that you get odder too. Who doesn’t know loads of people of a certain age who are slightly off centre? They call it “speaking their mind” and I often find myself roaring them on, delighted that they don’t care what people think of them. But, in the work place?

Part of playing the game of Work is biting your tongue. When someone messes up or spills coffee over your desk, for the sake of a calm working environment you bite your tongue and shrug it off, don’t you? It won’t be the same if you tell your colleague that you’ve missed a deadline and he shouts back “you young people don’t know you’re born. Bring back hanging and national service, and by the way you should be wearing a vest in this cold weather”.

And fancy going to see an old dentist whose dentures are looser than a skeleton’s waistband? His hand will be shaking so much that your teeth will rattle. And just imagine the reading material in his waiting room. There are only so many back copies of Gardener’s World and People’s Friend I can cope with.

Although I’m way off retiral age, I found a strange side effect of getting older this week. I discovered that I have become a goody goody. I have always hated people telling me what to do and I have ritually rebelled, often realising within minutes what a stupidly embarrassing thing I’d done. But this week I surprised myself by doing something odd and experiencing a strange feeling that I had to look up in the dictionary. Apparently it’s called “maturity”.

A female friend of mine who is Polish asked me for a favour. She has been offered a job doing security at the Olympics but needs to prove she has been living here for five years. She’s one year short so asked if she could give my name and number, telling the authorities that she cleaned my house for the year in question. Now it’s not that I think she’s a secret terrorist or drug smuggler, but it would be wrong wouldn’t it? It would be a lie, so I said “No”, which for a rebel like me is a big step.

So now I am officially “mature”, which is fine. I’m supposed to be grown up now and leave childish things behind. I guess the next stop is old age.

It may mean I’ll get a doctor to visit me a little bit quicker.

Flash Dance

www.paulcoia.com

So like Winter follows Autumn, and “annoys the hell out of me” follows Timmy Mallett, the BBC are again in trouble, this time with actor John Barrowman showing his willy during an interview on Sunday.

The offending incident took place live so couldn’t be edited, but it was on radio, a medium not renowned for its great picture quality. This didn’t stop the Daily Mail from putting the event on their front page today with a headline which reads something like Mad Flasher Kills Four Hundred Babies And Poisons Old Ladies As Civilisation Ends All Thanks to the Labour Government.

Barrowman is only the latest in a long line of distinguished people who like flashing for a laugh, giving his man parts a starring role most days in the movie of his life, though obviously a very small part. Unlike him, while having people laugh at me naked is something I’ve had to come to terms with, it’s not something I’d actively seek.

By coincidence I was driving home and switching around radio stations in my car on Sunday night so, although I’m not normally a Radio One listener, I listened closely to the interview as I had chatted to John just a couple of days before. I came away from it thinking it was a bit juvenile, which seems fair enough as juvenile is Radio One’s target audience.

Last week John told me things about Doctor Who star David Tennant’s anatomy that even a Dalek would find scary so it would appear that Tennant has form on the flashing front too. Any actors invited to take part in the show should pack a bucket of ice and a sense of humour, but you’ll have to wait till the New Year on Smooth Radio London to hear John tell us exactly what Tennant’s peculiarity is.

Barrowman tells these stories, and shows his bottom, with no malice intended and when I asked him last week why he loves flashing he had an obvious, but strictly correct, answer. It’s because he gets told to - whether it’s in a script or in a radio interview. So, John is always polite and waits to be asked first. His mum would be proud. Actually, I did ask if his mum objects when yet another neighbour rings up saying “you’ll never guess what he’s done now”, but he told me she’s happy that, having cleaned it so often, her son’s bum is getting appreciation and attention; a bit like polishing a brass bannister for years and smiling proudly as visitors admire your handiwork .

You’ll be pleased to hear I didn’t ask John to flash but, talking to him, he reminded me of a former colleague of mine at another radio station who used to drop his trousers on a whim. It didn’t matter to him whether he was in a meeting, doing his radio show or opening a shopping centre, though I thought he did take it a bit far at his daughter’s Christening. When I was interviewing stars at Radio Clyde he - let’s call him Tim - used to creep in to the studio and drop his trousers during interviews, leaving us all helpless with laughter.

He did it again during news bulletins, waiting for stories of death and destruction and rendering the newsreader incoherent and giggly. But eventually Tim had to stop after a local traffic warden protested to the police and he was warned as to his future conduct. I must point out in his defence that he was not in the street at the time but was hanging out of our radio station’s sixth floor window and waving at the warden’s office opposite. What he was waving I’ll leave for another day.

For a shy guy like myself, I’m left thinking that it must take a lot of confidence in your anatomy to let everyone see what Mother Nature intended to remain hidden, but it seems there is no shortage of confident flashers in showbiz. Janet Jackson famously had a “wardrobe malfunction” at the Superbowl when her assets popped out, but if she had hoped to shock or, er, titillate, then I’m afraid she failed as my only memory of catching it half way through is being filled with wonder that Michael Jackson’s voice had broken at last. One of them ought to wear a blonde wig or a duffel coat so we can tell them apart.

In paparazzi land Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Mischa Barton and Paris Hilton seem to enjoy flashing back at the cameras that are flashing at them and, in the UK, Jordan and Jodie Marsh, to name just four, have some form here though I believe that’s because it’s in their contract with the surgeon whose signature you can just about read above the belly button, depending on the quality of photo.

Here we have a very typically British way of handling these people. When the craze for flashers at sporting events took off a few years ago, with supporters running on to cricket pitches and trying to jump over the stumps without injury, or weaving nakedly in and out of rugby mauls while trying to avoid puns about great tackles or ball control, some stiff policeman with no sense of humour would remove his helmet and cover the offending appendage. But now increased security at grounds has put paid to all that, a seldom mentioned spin off from Mr Bin Laden.

The BBC and John Barrowman have both now issued an apology and, sadly, John has said it will never happen again. It will of course, even if it’s not John who does it, and I for one am glad. The American stars can almost carry off the innocent “accident” routine, but we can’t. We just roll our eyes, have a laugh, and move on. However, I realise that the audience who rang the BBC switchboard to complain about John, and kick started today’s headline, won’t agree with me.

And to that one caller I can only offer my apologies.