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!