Party Fears Two

Good music engages the emotions. Listening to Nessun Dorma will probably make your spine tingle if it’s sung properly, when Walking On Sunshine comes on the radio everyone seems to smile, and hearing Dance With My Father will either make you cry or throw up depending on how much cynicism you have in the bank.

But even rubbish music forces emotions to the surface. Don’t you want to kill when you hear something you really hate the sound of? Top Of The World by the Carpenters induces in me the desire to walk to the North Pole and throw myself off, while I frequently want to cut Simon Cowell’s digits off every time I find he’s had a hand in some new hit.

I remember hearing the song Fight For The Right To Party and thinking it was so, so wrong and getting wound up as I would personally fight for the right to avoid party invites and just stay in while catching up on my recordings of Gray’s Anatomy with a box of chocolates and a disconnected ‘phone. If I were a politician I’d certainly strive for peace, especially when the TV is on, but I’d also ban parties.

I’m sure the only reason that political groupings are known as the Labour Party or the Conservative Party is because no one has a good time, they all want to go home, and they’re fed up listening to boring people droning on at great length. Like smoked fish, smelly feet and new underwear, I like to think parties are for other people.

Occasionally I demur, like last Saturday when our neighbours invited us over for a farewell get together as they’re emigrating to France. I knew it would be a night to remember when I saw Richard Drummie from the band Go West doing Greek dancing to the Zorba tune followed by our host performing a country and western line dance send up.

But I really knew the rest would be a night to forget when I mistook Rosé wine for Rosé liquer and had a large tumbler full. My legs went wobbly, closely followed by my speech.

Before losing all sense in my legs and head I passed through that smiley phase where all the world was my best friend and I spotted all the familiar types that congregate at any party. There are the wallflowers like me who stand around failing to look cool alongside the guys who have never grown up and try desperately to give off the vibe that they’ve had more women than the Sugababes. Unfortunately, as they stroke their mane and admire their mullet in the mirror, the rest of us regret that none of these women was a hairdresser.

Then there’s the networker who hands his business card around hoping his new internet business selling paper craft models of the Titanic will take off, and the outrageous woman who gets louder as she drinks and then dances as if her life depends on it while cackling at any casual remark as if Billy Connolly personally had delivered it in her ear. Next time I’ll leave her at home.

I did have a good time even though my head felt every last drop of that liquer the next day, and I’m very grateful that anyone wants to invite me to their party, even if I secretly know it’s only as a “plus one” for Debbie.

But I think I’m with my daughter who said after her first day at school, “I’ve done that now. Can we do something else tomorrow?”

The Eye Of The Tiger

Last Saturday I compered a charity concert in my home town of Glasgow. I felt straight at home as my cab driver beamed “You’re Paul Coia. Nice to see you.” And then, because it’s Glasgow, came the put down line as he said, “ I thought you were dead.” Brilliant.

Afterwards I was sitting in a mini bus, squeezed between singers Midge Ure and Jim Diamond, when actor Tony Roper in the front seat said “I looked at the line up tonight and couldn’t believe I was on stage with you lot.” Then Midge said the same followed by Marti Pellow and Graeme Clarke of Wet Wet Wet from the back seat. In a night devoid of ego, along with Paolo Nutini and many others, we had gathered to honour an old colleague of mine who is suffering from ill health.

Tiger Tim is the only man I know who could have got all these people to drop what they were doing and turn up for him. Midge, originator of Band Aid with Bob Geldof, sang his number one hits like Vienna, Jim sang his number one I Should have Known Better, The Wets sang their number one record breaker Love Is All Around and Paolo sang around five numbers that are currently making him a superstar all over the world. Paul McCartney even recorded a message for the evening.

So what makes Tiger Tim special enough that so many people made such a huge effort? Well, it’s because he is completely, one hundred per cent, bonkers. A nutcase. A sink plunger short of a Dalek. A legend in his own diary.

I once asked colleagues at Radio Clyde to record a story about their favourite Christmas. Tim delivered his well after everyone else so I had to take him at his word that it was ok. I put it straight out on air to find he had recorded it after the Christmas lunch, was drunk, had exposed his bottom to passers by, and was then sick all over someone’s desk. His last words were “There’s a piece of carrot coming down my nose.” I though my career was over.

Tim would always make a point of dropping in to the studio when any of us were doing interviews, dropping a few remarks - and then dropping his trousers. Annie Lennox walked out early in fits of giggles, and Rod Stewart and other big names had to carry on as if it was an everyday occurrence. Often he would walk in to the news studio while the journalist was reading the headlines and wee in the waste bucket very loudly to put them off.

When I was at school, he had a big recording contract, supported David Cassidy in stadium gigs, hosted TV shows and made fortunes. One theatre boss told me that Tim used to come off stage and tickle Cinderella’s ponies in such a way that they took to the stage showing graphically just how excited they were to be in panto. Kids were confused, parents were irate, but it just encouraged him more. One night the ponies remained untouched and Tim could be found nowhere. Someone broke in to his dressing room to find him naked and handcuffed to the sink, laughing his head off.

He is a real one off. A unique talent, and one that will never be replaced as he heads for a well earned rest and his personal battle with his illness. Marti Pellow may be about to tour with George Benson, Midge Ure may be about to finish off his Ultravox reunion dates, and Paolo will pick up the rest of his world tour. But none of them will enjoy themselves, or laugh as much, as much as they did on Saturday.

And it’s all thanks to the one, unique, completely bonkers, Tiger Tim.

Strangers In The NIght

What a day Friday was. We woke to find that the UK had scored an own goal, with none of our political party leaders winning enough votes to get promoted to captain of the first team and help Great Britain escape relegation. We’re in a bigger mess than this metaphor.

Now we have rival Westminster squad players, who detest each other, pretending to be pals and practising moves on the training pitch while communicating through gritted teeth. A bit like what it must be like to play for Liverpool.

Coming home from work on Friday, the election was all people spoke about on the trains.

I wear fancy clothes about as frequently as Greece wins the lottery but I had a nice new suit on as I had been hosting an awards event. Fellow travellers must have confused my smart clothing with my intelligence, asking me for my opinions on politics on two or three occasions. As Cameron and Clegg now know, if the election did nothing else it made strangers talk to one another.

In my suit I looked professional, I guess, but if I expected anything from others I suppose it would have been someone assuming my mum had dressed me up for my First Communion and slipping a fiver in my pocket, or people mistaking me for a Jehovah’s Witness who’d lost his way (geographically, not spiritually). I wasn’t prepared for what really did happen.

As I got on the escalator at Waterloo, the lady in front turned around to me and said “I was looking at you on the Tube train and I thought ‘what a lovely suit’ so I’d just like to compliment you. You really carry it off.”

And yes, before you ask, she was fully sighted, was not wearing sunglasses or drooling, was unrelated to me and was not trying to be funny.

I’m telling you this not just because I am being more boastful than usual, nor am I revealing it because I only get compliments about every time Andrew Lloyd Webber wins Britain’s Next Top Model, but I’m sharing because I realised what was really great. A complete stranger had risked ridicule and rebuff just to be nice, without worrying that it would be misconstrued. Her very small act of kindness made me feel good all the way home.

So Friday was a good day to talk to strangers, whether in politics or in railway stations. But why is it that we rarely compliment people or talk to each other any more? Is it because we’re so used to emails and texts that we’ve forgotten how to speak? Without putting LOL or OMG or LMAO in every sentence or drawing a smiley face in the air, can we no longer communicate?

Some strangers should be avoided of course. Like the family who moved in around the corner from us and have a drummer in the family who practises non stop. Being American they only know one rhythm which is a cross between a marching band and My Sharona. Try listening to that all day long and you would compliment anyone with a shotgun and the neighbour’s address.

I do try complimenting my wife if she is looking extra specially pretty, but it apparently comes out wrong. I say “Wow, you’re dressed up” and then she looks cross and shouts, “Do you mean ‘You’re looking nice, darling?’”. To me they’re one and the same, but not to her.

Friday has made me resolve to work harder on complimenting people and being nice. I know the difference the lady at Waterloo station made to my day so it’s time now for me to approach strangers armed only with nice things to say.

If I’m arrested for harassment, your Honour, this week’s blog is my alibi.

Swear To God

Who, apart from someone with no friends, would want to go in to politics?

Any time I say this to friends who are journalists they tell me I should be less cynical and more interested as these things determine the future of the country and the world my kids will live in. I’ll then say something like “fine, why don’t you get involved, run for Parliament, and make a difference?”. And that’s when they shut up. They deny it but they treat politics as a sport, like sitting in the Coliseum watching the lions get religion. They won’t admit it’s easy just to be an opinionated spectator.

Occasionally, though, politics gets interesting even for me. One of the surprising things about our Prime Minister’s huge gaffe last week, when he made rude remarks about a senior citizen who had questioned him about immigration, seems to have gone completely unremarked upon and I’m sure it says too much about me that I have noticed.

As Gordon landed himself in the Brown stuff while forgetting he had a microphone on, he laid in to his team for allowing him to encounter an actual real person. He thought he was speaking in private at the time while, as you know, a TV microphone picked it up. But here’s the thing. While undeniably angry, Gordon Brown didn’t use one single swear word.

The next time he speaks to an ordinary person it will be to answer the question “How much bubble wrap would you like for the packing cases sir?”, and he might well use some choice words then.

If you or I were under pressure and losing ground in the polls for the country’s biggest job, we would have lost it completely and thrown in a few choice words that only dockers and verbally challenged premier league footballers would understand. A good sweary word here and there when you’re angry makes life easier doesn’t it?

I remember my then five year old daughter coming home from school and confiding she had learned a bad word which she said was the rudest word in the world. My wife and I were horrified, of course and asked her what it was. She looked coy and then said it was “the ‘F’ word”. I tried to look unflustered while telling her never to use it as it was a very bad word indeed but she chuckled, as if she had discovered the biggest secret in the world.

Over the next few days we debated whether we’d chosen the right school for her and whether we should perhaps move her up a notch or two to a nearby Borstal or get her to board at a local boozer instead. It was a further three days before she told us what the word was as she proudly shouted it out with a smile on her face. It was ‘Fart’.

They say swearing is the last refuge of those who have limited vocabulary but you only have to watch the TV show In The Loop to see that’s not true. It’s about a fictional political spin doctor, and his creative use of swear words is almost Shakespearean in invention.

When told by a department head that she should have been informed about a colleague’s appearance on television as it “falls well within my purview”, head of spin Malcolm Tucker looks at her coldly and says “Within your 'purview'? Where do you think you are? Some f**king Regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some f**king Jane f**king Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your ........”.

Now if that’s not creative, I don’t know what is, and I personally wish the real world of politics was as creative.

A few colourful and inventive uses of expletives might have had our Prime Minister winning voters the length and breadth of the country.

Back Home

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?”.

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?

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.