Booby Prizes

I was in Frankfurt this week or, to be more accurate, in Frankfurt airport, and I noticed how different the terminal is from any similar building here. The B.A.A. - that’s British Airport Authority or Bloody Awful Amateurs depending on your viewpoint - should go have a look.

It’s not just that the German version was cleaner than a UK hospital operating theatre, brighter than Einstein, more efficient than Ulrika Jonsson’s womb and better decorated than the Tate Modern. It wasn’t just the reassuringly thorough security that made a Pharaoh’s casket, locked inside a sarcophagus, sealed inside a pyramid and buried one hundred miles under the sands of Giza, seem an open invitation to pilfer the king’s golden pick ‘n mix.

The ambience in Frankfurt is comfortable and the food is actually fresh, unlike here where a mouldy old airport happy meal is likely to have a promotional tie in with the latest new silent movie release from Charlie Chaplin.

And another big, wonderful, difference from our airports is that, unlike BAA, they know that we simply need to get on a plane quickly and go home, not stop and buy raffle tickets for a prize we’ll never win. I don’t want to have to squeeze past a big shiny motor car standing in the middle of the concourse with a countdown clock hectoring me in to buying fifty pound tickets before the life changing draw is made.

Usually there are photos of smiling faces, attached to bodies which will never fit in the low slung sports seats, accepting the keys to a new Porsche or a yellow V2 rocket.

What I always want to see is a photo of the winners six months later after the the local hoodies have sprayed their tag on the bonnet. When they realise a Ferrari needs a new clutch at roughly every five thousand miles would the smile, perhaps, look a little more strained? Might the insurance quote of several thousand pounds make their complexion just a fraction pale? And that Russian oil well they’ve had to purchase to slake the thirst of their new beast, would it make them feel just a little bit queasy?

Winning a top prize can be the beginning of misery. Ask some of the lottery winners who have fallen out with family and friends, been inundated with begging letters or spent the lot and got in to debt.

A recent game show offered each week a brand new holiday home. The programme makers, sensibly, hadn’t bought the house, just put it on hold, and each week they took the winners aside after the recording and said something like “Do you want the expense of flying there every few months to check on it? Do you really want to cough up for local taxes and have foreign cowboy plumbers rip you off? How about if we just offer you a few grand instead?”

By the end of the series, the savvy makers had saved a fortune as not one single winner had opted for the house, but the audience had been treated to a journey round the estate agents of the world and watched keys to paradise handed over every week.

Perhaps I’m simply jealous as the only things I’ve ever won are a calculator and a trip to a James Bond premiere that wasn’t. I still have a photo from the local newspaper with me proudly holding my Sinclair calculator and wearing a dodgy beard. I look like the male model in those Joy Of Sex pencil drawings who moonlights as the Open University professor that fashion forgot.

The prize of the Bond premiere was won in a computer magazine and I turned up, washed and brushed, expecting to meet Timothy Dalton, only to find that it was simply an advanced screening. The closest I got to a star was an Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike selling the ice creams. I would have asked for an autograph but I felt she may have been offended.

This week it’s Heathrow, Zurich and Glasgow airports for me. One of them won’t have a shiny sports car clogging the place up and that suits me just fine. If any of you have won a great prize which turned in to a disaster, do let me know. And shares in BAA don’t count!
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Whilst in my Frankfurt hotel I managed to catch their version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Instead of Ant and Dec presenting, they have a small Danny de Vito look alike who really, really wants to be Timmy Mallett and wears garishly decorated shirts and hats to show how wild and wacky he really, really is. His co host is a blonde woman who would not be out of place as a careworn hostess on a flight to the Outer Hebrides who’s hoping the Scottish gloaming will hide her wrinkles.

The contestants, to a man and woman, looked like they’d wandered off a tour bus on a day out from a nursing home and I’m sure one asked what time tea would be served in the nice botanical garden. I can’t understand German so, sadly, I can’t tell you what the show is called but I’ve a feeling it might be ‘I’m a Celebrity? Remind Me Who I Am’.