I Can't See Clearly Now

With TV now going high definition, and with 3D the new big thing, I thought it best to upgrade my eyesight – I mean what use is spending money on the best quality TV picture to see Scotland losing at football, or gasping at the gore in True Blood, with eyes like mine?

I sit there squinting and wondering whether I’m watching Big Brother or a wild life programme, and I can’t tell if Britain’s Next Top Model is a guy or a girl, and that’s only if I happen, by chance, to be facing the right way and I’m looking at the set instead of the door.

Sometimes I’ve found myself wondering why London’s Burning or Towering Inferno is going on a tad long before I’m told I’m actually looking at the fireplace. I’ve never had great eyesight but now it has deteriorated so much even Mister Magoo would be embarrassed.

So, after years of talking about it, I’m actually getting my eyes lasered. I don’t expect too much, just twenty twenty sight and the power of X Ray vision.

I’ve been thinking about this for years and I’ve bored the pants off every optometrist and optician at every party. When they see me coming now they change their job description to jet pilot and, as I can’t see their faces properly, I never know if we’ve met before.

At least they can get away with saying they’re jet pilots. With my sight I wouldn’t be allowed to pilot an elevator, and I’m also colour blind which means I can’t even qualify to fly Easyjet . It also explains my taste in clothes.

Am I scared? Well put it this way. If scared were fat, I’d be Eamonn Holmes in a fat suit listening to the Fatback Band. But you have to suffer for beauty, right?

So, on Friday morning, after I finish doing the Breakfast show, I’m going to the Laser Vision surgery and putting myself in the hands of David Allamby. He seems a nice bloke and his hands don’t shake too much so what have I got to lose?

Next week I’ll report on how I get on. That’s if I can see the computer keyboard. If the blog reads something like “Caf*jd thh%ruu$ 8hgnaplw’’ then you’ll know I might need some further work. And if you see me with my shades on indoors I’m not being cool. Just careful.

Best stay off the roads for a while.

Sweets For My Sweet

I spent last weekend up in Glasgow looking for a few days of peace but working my buns off instead on various projects before settling on Saturday evening for a good old fashioned fish supper from the local chippie.

Now the Glasgow diet is a bit like The X Factor – bad for you, tasteless in some places, sickly sweet in others, but ultimately irresistible. However, even I was surprised when one youngster ordered his Saturday dinner. “Chips with cheese and curry sauce”, he said before adding as an afterthought “and a deep fried pizza on top.”

Tony, the shop owner, has now stopped doing deep fried Mars bars after a harrowing incident when three teenagers recently ordered “a deep fried Mars, same for a Twix, and a deep fried Toffee Crisp as well.” The Toffee Crisp exploded sending fat everywhere and I have a picture in my head of three teenagers licking the walls.

Having been brought up on that diet you can see why chocolate features so heavily in my life. I recently wrote a blog complaining that I have to hide chocolate from my wife who steals it and then lies that she has no clue what I’m going on about.

Debbie then posted her blog on her QVC web page and was inundated with women backing her and saying that, as we’re married, what’s mine is hers. She asked me to write a reply, so this week I’ve put this on her page. I’m expecting the sisterhood to torch my car any day now.

Reply

I recently came across an animated movie, made in 1998 by an American called Bill Plympton, which seems to sum up my life. I’m not recommending the plot as it is ridiculous, with an everyday normal bloke gaining special powers after two birds fly in to his satellite dish while making love.

So, as I don’t have special powers, how does this film sum up my life? Well, partly because every day I wake up wishing I had the super power to hide chocolate successfully, but mainly because of the movie’s title – I Married A Strange Person.

As readers of Debbie’s blog know she has no willpower whatsoever when eating chocolate and I have to hide the stuff as an act of charity. It’s not that I want it all for myself you understand. I’m simply stopping her ruining her teeth and ballooning to the size of a small village – like Manchester.

After Debbie told of my secret, the reaction and comments posted on her blog would have hurt me deeply if I had feelings. My obvious charity work in keeping my wife slim and healthy is going unmarked by you all, ‘though I did notice that all the comments came from the (un)fair sex.

So I’ve now changed my hiding places and, so far, Debbie’s none the wiser. Trust me that this way is better as we can now enjoy some chocolate when watching TV rather than the cupboard being bare and us making do with Ryvita or, if I’m very lucky, the special treat of a girly apple.

If you study the bible closely you’ll find, as many scholars already have, that Adam took the apple in the first place simply to dip it in a QVC chocolate fountain that Richard Jackson had left as a feature in the Garden Of Eden. Women have been getting men in to trouble ever since.

If you don’t believe me that I’m the good guy in all this then all I ask is that you put my case to any male partners or friends you have.

Debbie appreciated your support but I’m the injured party and it’s not fair. I know, of course, that I am the mature one in this dispute and that I have to take the moral high ground and behave sensibly. I do have a proper sense of perspective on all this.

Or so my divorce lawyer tells me anyway.

Men at work?

My apologies for not writing a blog over the past couple of weeks but a lot has happened. Holland lost the world cup, Andy Murray lost Wimbledon, Cheryl Cole lost the contents of her stomach and Mel Gibson lost, well, it.

The French also lost out, losing the right to cover their heads. I know this was aimed at muslim women, but a rule is a rule so where does this leave bald French men, astronauts and bee keepers?

Oh, I almost forgot something else that was lost. I lost my job.

In the grand scheme of things being told the radio station where you work is closing down isn’t up there in the devastation charts with the four horsemen of the apocalypse giving away free war and pestilence - though an empty wallet may mean I’ll be grateful for a deep fried locust or two soon - but it does take your eye off the ball for a bit doesn’t it?

It seems that in the modern advertising environment radio just doesn’t work anymore as a business that employs any actual people. Stations, including the one I work for, are closing down across Britain faster than Usain Bolt with an upset tummy and a toilet at the finishing line. We’ll leave details of his following wind for another day.

The doom merchants suggest that in the age of MP3 players, free music streaming and music video on the move, the game may not quite be over for radio but the ball has certainly burst and the parkie is starting to lock the gates. So, how did we come to this?

At the risk of sounding older than Joan Rivers first Botox, radio only has itself to blame. It simply all sounds the same. The same style, the same songs, the same repetition. Try to step out of line and suggest anything different and you can almost hear the outraged echoes of the workhouse where Oliver Twist has just asked for more.

Over the past few years as radio has grown in the UK, a line of wise consultants have been employed – called wise consultants as they were probably trained by Ernie Wise as it turns out – and they’ve given the same advice to each station before taking the money and scarpering off, leaving their customers following their advice with bland faith and falling off a cliff. Not that the consultants would advise you to have anything to do with Cliff of course.

It means that the only way now to get people to tune in to your station, as opposed to every other station which is doing the same thing, is to spend mountains of money on advertising and then give away millions in cash and prizes. For the moment times have never been better for listeners who can be bothered entering competitions and soon one lucky winner will win a radio station or, as it’s known in the business, an empty building.

Apparently the future is digital and we’ll all forgive the changes once everyone stops resisting and buys a DAB radio. This is like spending money on a Sinclair C5 or an iPhone 4. In other words it just doesn’t work. I have a digital radio and it’s as much use as an MP3 of a mime artist performing opera.

So I guess I’ll now have to retrain for another job. Maybe as a mattress tester or a politician, or perhaps as a radio consultant. If I’m going to be a layabout I might as well get paid for it.

The Kids Are Alright

I missed the part in the marriage vows that said “forsaking all other hobbies, interests and pastimes till death do you part”, so this becoming a butler and chauffeur thing for my kids came as a big surprise to me.

Last weekend was devoted to my kids’ usual request for me to do a “Robert De Niro”. In this re enactment I find it easy to look fed up as I drive round all day providing a taxi service for them. Unlike Travis Bickle, however, I don’t get the satisfaction of killing anyone for ruining my days off.

First up was daughter number one, Annalie, who was going off hiking and camping in order to get her Duke Of Edinburgh Silver award. This is set up to give youngsters a sense of responsibility and survival and involves hiking for nine hours a day with only a compass and map for guidance. I wasn’t sure the message had quite got through as I ended up collecting three of my daughter’s friends who couldn’t find their way to the starting line, one of them turning up with a helium balloon attached to her rucksack announcing her sixteenth birthday.

As the chatter in the car turned to the birthday girl’s new hair dye job and how many of them had shaved their legs, I thought how proud I was that my daughter is a bit more sensible and rugged. She looks like she could eat the countryside up whole. But as I dropped them off Annalie asked her friend if she thought she’d brought enough make up and then enquired where she could plug in her hair dryer. Had she asked where the bar was I just know it would have been a nail bar.

Arriving back from the camp site it was time to be taxi driver to daughter number two, Luisa, who was being Confirmed. Various far flung family members had arrived for her big day and she decided to relax by watching television. She announced to us during a commercial break that she had decided she’d just seen what she wanted for her upcoming birthday. Looking at a cute tiny dog playing with a toilet roll she said, “I want a Durex puppy.”

Picking myself up off the ceiling I asked if that’s what she really meant and, after she’d repeated it, I explained that while Durex did make something that wiped up silly little mistakes, it was an all together different product. “Of course”, she knowingly told us. “Silly me. Durex make paint, don’t they?”

Please God she’ll believe that for many years to come.

After the ceremony where, incidentally, eighty kids and adults were confirmed in a ceremony lasting slightly longer than the War of the Roses, we all came back for a cordon bleu dinner cooked by me. And let me tell you, cooking for fifteen people is not easy when you only have a barbecue big enough for six. Fortunately, God realised this and gave us beer which means everyone forgets whether they’ve actually eaten or not. I usually just fire up the barbie, place a few dirty dishes on the table, and then start by asking everyone if they want more. They look at the plates and usually slur “no thanks, I’m stuffed.” Sometimes I’ve been known to get away without actually cooking one single sausage.

Now, at last, I have a few hours off and then it’s the kids’ birthdays, both this week. More running around daft, more barbecues, more make up tips, more tantrums and hairdryers.

In my next life I’m putting my foot down. We’re having boys.

The Games People Play

I live near Wimbledon, the town where for the next two weeks all the residents pull together to put on a posh face for the tourists. For fourteen days no one hangs out their washing or goes shopping in their curlers, door handles are polished till they shine brighter than a Channel Four newscaster’s tie, people get their cats and dogs permed, some wife swapping stops, and the local yobs are sent off on work experience with Club 18-30 tour guides in Ayia Napa.

It’s the annual bar and restaurant crawl known as the All England Lawn Tennis Championship where men who really should know better dig out their straw hats and striped blazers and sit around drinking Pimms while looking at the legs of pretty, tanned, visitors.

In Wimbledon suntans are nothing new – we’ve had sunbeds mandatorily installed on all street corners and in all public toilets, libraries, delicatessens and bijou coffee shops since Queen Victoria first looked pale – but this time of year the tourists remind us that other countries really do know what the actual sun is as we watch the rain stream down incessantly on Centre Court’s new, designer, roof.

I feel especially sorry for our American visitors. Fancy knowing two thirds of the world doesn’t like you and the other third are back at home in The States. They gave us Apple and Microsoft, we gave them BP. We gave them tennis and they embraced it, they gave us baseball and we ignored it and then called it Rounders and organised leagues of drunken office workers to play it over summer in public parks before falling down drunk and snogging each other.

Our lack of gratitude gets worse. They sent us Hollywood and we gave them Piers Morgan. If any Americans are reading this incidentally then please believe me that we really do think it is better to give than to receive, so please keep the present and don’t send it back for exchange or refund as a refusal often offends.

For some reason, the colours of the Wimbledon Championship seem to have been replaced in the village this year by flags from sponsors Evian, who have picked a colour of pink left over from a Mary Kate and Ashley sleepover pyjama pack. It now looks as if Wimbledon village is ready for the tennis tournament but also London’s gay pride march if it gets re routed by mistake.

I spoke to Tim Henman this week who says Wimbledon is the best tournament in the world, and he should know, but he’s not one of the locals who can’t park anywhere or finds roads suddenly changed to decorative one way systems. Anywhere else, flowers on lamp posts mean some accident has occurred but here it means bespoke flower arrangements in All England colours with ribbons fluttering in the hailstones.

The locals canot wait for the tournament to be over. Apart from the restaurants and bar owners we all think it’s a pain, but it’s our pain so we’ll leave you thinking we love it as we keep up the pretence of being posh.

But let me let you in on a secret. Come to Wimbledon over the next couple of weeks and you’ll think we all live in a perfumed garden eating the Queen’s venison stuffed with champagne soaked strawberries accompanied by cream from a sacred cow, but the reality is that for the other fifty weeks of the year we let our expensively coloured hair down and behave like a bad episode of Eastenders. We’re as common as muck.

That’s exclusive organic muck, of course. From cashmere goats.

Bad

Last Thursday was a very important day for one of the listeners to my radio show. He wrote to tell me that his favourite star was going to make a comeback on June 10th and announce a series of concerts. Problem is that his favourite star is Michael Jackson.

His information came from an impeccable source and I’m sure that even now he’s contacting the White House and demanding to speak to his pal Obama as he says it was the American President who told him of the upcoming gigs.

Now there’s nothing wrong with living in hope that your favourite singer will come out of hiding to make a comeback, but there must be a stage where common sense kicks in. I could believe that Kurt Cobain is about to announce a series of comeback gigs with Glen Miller as musical director and James Dean selling the T shirts but I’d know deep down that it wasn’t actually going to happen – even if Barack called me at home personally.

There are some comebacks from the dead that I would kill for, like Angel Delight for dessert, Charlotte coming back to her web, and my sex appeal rising again like Lazarus, but I know it ain’t going to happen – not even to celebrate the first anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death.

According to internet theories Michael was either killed by a new experimental bio chemical weapon, had actually died years before after recording his album Bad and had been replaced by an impostor, was killed by the CIA firing an electro magnetic pulse at him because he knew something about Afghanistan, or is hiding out with Janis Joplin on a farm. Next we’ll be hearing that Dan Brown is a great writer and Last Of The Summer Wine is actually funny.

Crackpot theories are great and good fun, but they leave the embarrassment of explaining after the deadline why nothing has actually happened. I know that if I wrote back to my listener and asked what went wrong he’d say that it’s been postponed because Michael’s had to take Sheargar to the vet or has gone on a cruise on the Marie Celeste, and in his mind it will make sense. Good for him. Whatever gets you through.

The list of the more bizarre internet theories that people believe includes the “fact” that Diana told her lady in waiting that the Royal Family were reptilian aliens and could shapeshift. If that were true why wouldn’t Prince Edward shapeshift his head in to one with hair?

David Icke, former BBC sports reporter, believes we’re controlled by dinosaur aliens who need human blood to survive. So how come the blood banks don’t get raided weekly by Barney and his mates keen on a picnic?

Some believe the moon landings were faked because the foreground and background look the same in most photos. But that’s what you get on the moon – lots of barren ground and a big black sky behind. What were they expecting? Perhaps a cyclist or two? Maybe an ice cream van passing behind some trees?

Typing the letters NYC in to your computer’s wingding font brings up the characters of a Skull and Crossbones, The Star Of David and a thumbs up sign – go on, try it - so you can imagine what the anoraks make of that.

I think I prefer my route where things just happen without any logical reason rather than some grim conspiratorial fiction. That’s why we have words like serendipity, chance and luck.

As we get ready for even more conspiracy theories on Jackson’s anniversary, I’ll be reading Gullible’s Travels rather than Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

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I had the pleasure of interviewing Kelly Rowland of destiny's Child this week. For the radio interview click here, and for the video interview click here.

You Little Thief

I wish to report a crime.

Regular readers will know that I was stuck in Dubai recently when the Icelandic volcano erupted, and while stealing ten days of my life is a crime in itself, it just got worse this week in a mini crime wave mystery that Sherlock Holmes himself would have found taxing.

After I returned home from the Middle East, the company I was working for in Dubai very kindly sent me a box of luxury chocolates as a “thank you”, and if you know anything about me then you will realise that presenting me with chocolate is like giving me gold wrapped in hundred pound notes inside Louis Vuitton himself.

To say I like chocolate is like saying Lionel Messi is fond of a kick about, Simon Cowell likes mirrors, or Romeo had a wee bit of a fancy for Juliet. If I ever find a magic lamp then the genie will be busy turning the world’s glaciers in to Walnut Whips and the seas in to melted chocolate, and global warming will lead to nothing more sinister than hot chocolate on tap everywhere.

I get this small weakness, or very great talent as I prefer to call it, from my Mum who has a sweet tooth bigger than a giant vampire dragon’s fang. Unfortunately, the older I get the more attached I get to chocolate which, now that I think of it, is fair as it seems to be getting more attached to me - especially around the waist and chins.

Anyway, back to the crime I want to report. This box of chocolates from Dubai was very expensive and only available in the Middle East. The individual pieces were thick and crunchy and promised luxurious melting experiences on my tongue so, of course, I hid the box in a place at home where it would never be found. Or so I thought.

You’re ahead of me now, aren’t you?

At the weekend I was watching TV and said to my wife we should eat the chocolates just to make the evening complete. I searched every hidey hole I have in the house and couldn’t find them and, when I asked, Debbie and the kids insisted they hadn’t seen them. Debbie even swore blind that she knew nothing about them and I never had them in the first place.

Then today I found the box hidden behind a bag of flour in a cupboard in our utility room. And the box was empty!

Actually, to be truthful, it wasn’t completely empty as it had two and a half chocolates remaining. I challenged my wife who burst out laughing and said she’d started on them when I was on a trip two weeks ago and just couldn’t stop. The half of one chocolate remaining was because she didn’t like it and hoped, if I ever found out, that having a half would mollify me. The remaining two were on the execution list but she hadn’t had time to polish them off before I found them. I was desolate.

When your wife lies to you about something as serious as this you know that trust has gone forever and the divorce court beckons.

I suggested to my lawyer that stealing and lying about chocolate were grounds for divorce, but he seems not to understand and has informed me it would have to be something less important, like adultery.

So, adultery it is. I just have to find a chocolate lover who wants to join me.