Apologies for not updating the blog for a few weeks. I have been working abroad and found I had very little time between working, eating banquets, pampering myself in spas, hunting down chocolate, sun bathing and beach inspections. My life is tougher than you think.
Just as I flew off Oswald Grubel, the chairman of Swiss bank UBS, resigned after someone he’d never met, at a building he’s probably never entered, in an office he’s not set foot in, lost his bank a wee bit of money in a deal that made a Nigerian email scam seem attractive.
Over two billion dollars was lost – don’t start looking under hedges (or hedge funds for that matter) because you won’t find it. The money has disappeared in to electronic, push button, trading land, one minute there the next a red, trouser soiling, mark on a computer screen.
The reason I bring this to your attention is that I have met Mr Grubel, in fact I worked with him a few times coaching him for speeches, and I can tell you that he looks normal. No Superman cape or Batmobile car. No ability to weave webs between buildings or turn green when he’s angry. He’s just a big, normal, bloke. So why do we expect everyday people to have all the answers and look after financial empires that straddle the globe, spending more in a day than some countries in a year?
The answer is that we don’t, or at least shouldn’t. These giants of commerce should always surround themselves with teams of good people who will be constantly warning, evaluating, anticipating, judging and offering advice.
To watch Ozzie Grubel and other similarly placed global financial superstars in action, as I have frequently, is to marvel at how they have space in their head for all the nonsense that assaults them from all quarters, daily. They enter a room and everyone wants their ear, each person wishes to push their agenda or lobby for their favourites, and somewhere in there could be a quick “by the way I think someone’s got his hand in the till and we might have a bit of a problem”.
How on earth their heads don’t explode with the responsibility is beyond me. You can surround yourself with the best of aides and help, but ultimately the buck stops with the chief.
Carol Bartz, boss of Yahoo, was sacked a few weeks ago after a brief spell in charge of the household name company and instead of saying she was leaving “to spend more time with her family” or wanted “to pursue other projects” she told a reporter that Yahoo was filled with “dooffuses who f**ked me over”. There’s nothing quite like falling on your sword while slagging off your enemy just as you get disembowelled. It should happen more often.
Here in the UK, top of the tree public and private sector jobs are disappearing quicker than snow off a barbecue and you’ll find many former chief executives selling The Big Issue from the trunk of their Bentleys and Aston Martins.
The point I’m making is that if the current economic horrors have affected your job, take comfort from the fact that you are not alone. It doesn’t matter whether you work as a chief executive or a shop assistant right now, job security is a thing of the distant past. We should all just decide to go freelance and look after ourselves. The upside is that it pays better, the downside is that you don’t work everyday and there’s no pension at the end unless you save money yourself.
But at least you are your own boss and no one can lose you your job. Except you.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Underground, Overground, Wombling Free
So, it’s Autumn, the time when rain and wind step up their game from Summer time, and the cold air homes in on your bones quicker than Ashley Cole on a blonde with a boob tube.
Any sensible race would spend a Saturday afternoon at this time of year indoors but, in this country, bad weather is an opportunity to stand freezing for two hours with horizontal rain driving in to your eyes and blurring the vision as you take in twenty two men who worry the rain is spoiling their hairdos as they kick a football around a field.
Because I spent so much time in Birmingham when I presented BBC1s Pebble Mill At One show, I often go to St Andrews to eat balti curry pies and watch Birmingham City play – you need a strong stomach for both by the way - but my local home team is AFC Wimbledon, an outfit started by local subscriptions when the “big” team Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes and became MK Dons.
AFC have now worked their way up from the Marigold Glove Conference and the Miracle Stick Oven Cleaner League through the Mister Sheen Divisions, and they are now in with the big boys of the professional Leagues, in League Two.
I have to admit that this is small town football, about as close to what Christiano Ronaldo and David Beckham do as Oxford Street’s January Sales scrums are to World Cup Rugby. But I like it.
AFC Wimbledon have a life sized mascot like most professional teams but, while other clubs have fierce dragons, snarling wolves or red devils to scare the opposition, we have a big, blue, cuddly Womble. He tried on Saturday to get the crowd whipped up in to a frenzy before the teams ran out but a tempest of rain made his fur heavier and wetter by the minute. This eventually impeded his enthusiasm and progress until he was so slow in moving he was in danger of getting a game.
The mascot would have felt very much at home on the pitch as some of the players performed like Great Uncle Bulgaria on crutches or Madame Cholet on rohipnol. One winger is so left footed he has a bright future in panto as the one legged Long John Silver.
Our supporters are very well behaved tho’. None of this flying banners that read No Surrender, or Faithful Till Death. The biggest banner that was unfurled simply read Kent Wombles, which could only scare a very jittery litter lout. Our crowd chants came from just one man who stood next to me looking like a self portrait by Van Gogh with his little pointy red beard and curly ginger top. He also smelled as if he had been too near the paint brush cleaner every time he opened his mouth to shout Who Are Ya? at the opposition supporters. I don’t think he was being aggressive, just confused as to who they were, what day of the week it was, and even who he himself was.
AFC Wimbledon’s ground is small but was packed. It’s situated in a small park area which means that if someone kicks the ball too hard it goes over the stand and disappears for ever as passing kids in the park steal it. After this happened three or four times, no one could find a ball to allow play to continue, leading to an irate lady in front of me shouting “Where’s the ball? Come on. Get on with it. It’s round and white. It rolls down hills. Find one”. Then, as we’re all so polite and posh, she apologised to everyone around her for getting carried away.
At the end, as I walked out after we had won 4-1, supporters of both teams mingled outside and the visitors were wished a safe journey home as they boarded the bus back to Cheltenham.
You wouldn’t get the Wombles and lost balls at Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester United, but you wouldn’t get half the fun either.
Now watch us go. We’re coming to play your team soon. As Van Gogh would say, “Who are ya?”.
Any sensible race would spend a Saturday afternoon at this time of year indoors but, in this country, bad weather is an opportunity to stand freezing for two hours with horizontal rain driving in to your eyes and blurring the vision as you take in twenty two men who worry the rain is spoiling their hairdos as they kick a football around a field.
Because I spent so much time in Birmingham when I presented BBC1s Pebble Mill At One show, I often go to St Andrews to eat balti curry pies and watch Birmingham City play – you need a strong stomach for both by the way - but my local home team is AFC Wimbledon, an outfit started by local subscriptions when the “big” team Wimbledon moved to Milton Keynes and became MK Dons.
AFC have now worked their way up from the Marigold Glove Conference and the Miracle Stick Oven Cleaner League through the Mister Sheen Divisions, and they are now in with the big boys of the professional Leagues, in League Two.
I have to admit that this is small town football, about as close to what Christiano Ronaldo and David Beckham do as Oxford Street’s January Sales scrums are to World Cup Rugby. But I like it.
AFC Wimbledon have a life sized mascot like most professional teams but, while other clubs have fierce dragons, snarling wolves or red devils to scare the opposition, we have a big, blue, cuddly Womble. He tried on Saturday to get the crowd whipped up in to a frenzy before the teams ran out but a tempest of rain made his fur heavier and wetter by the minute. This eventually impeded his enthusiasm and progress until he was so slow in moving he was in danger of getting a game.
The mascot would have felt very much at home on the pitch as some of the players performed like Great Uncle Bulgaria on crutches or Madame Cholet on rohipnol. One winger is so left footed he has a bright future in panto as the one legged Long John Silver.
Our supporters are very well behaved tho’. None of this flying banners that read No Surrender, or Faithful Till Death. The biggest banner that was unfurled simply read Kent Wombles, which could only scare a very jittery litter lout. Our crowd chants came from just one man who stood next to me looking like a self portrait by Van Gogh with his little pointy red beard and curly ginger top. He also smelled as if he had been too near the paint brush cleaner every time he opened his mouth to shout Who Are Ya? at the opposition supporters. I don’t think he was being aggressive, just confused as to who they were, what day of the week it was, and even who he himself was.
AFC Wimbledon’s ground is small but was packed. It’s situated in a small park area which means that if someone kicks the ball too hard it goes over the stand and disappears for ever as passing kids in the park steal it. After this happened three or four times, no one could find a ball to allow play to continue, leading to an irate lady in front of me shouting “Where’s the ball? Come on. Get on with it. It’s round and white. It rolls down hills. Find one”. Then, as we’re all so polite and posh, she apologised to everyone around her for getting carried away.
At the end, as I walked out after we had won 4-1, supporters of both teams mingled outside and the visitors were wished a safe journey home as they boarded the bus back to Cheltenham.
You wouldn’t get the Wombles and lost balls at Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester United, but you wouldn’t get half the fun either.
Now watch us go. We’re coming to play your team soon. As Van Gogh would say, “Who are ya?”.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
I'll Be There For You
I read an article this week which said that the traditional Spring Clean our mums used to do around the house has now moved ever later in the year and most people do their great “throw out” around about now instead. Unwanted, slightly battered, useless old objects like out of date magazines, photographs, cushions, boxes and husbands tend to get thrown out in September as the promise of Summer fades to the dread of Autumn and its trailing, non identical, evil twin Winter.
I remember when I was a kid that Spring meant my mum asking us to gather old toys and comics ready for the rag and bone man who used to give us a balloon for a few Dandy annuals, a plastic gun, my wigwam and some Thunderbirds T shirts we’d grown out of. We didn’t realise at the time but that’s one really bad exchange rate, and nowadays I like to think our rag man is retired and living in a stately home with his chauffeur and maids. Either that or his early training while ripping off us kids means he’s now a banker.
But I don’t believe it’s just objects that should be tidied out.
I’ve decided to get rid of people who drag me down through their lack of manners or politeness. In the spirit of cleaning out stuff I don’t need, I made a big decision this week and decided to start by ridding myself of someone who has, more than anyone I’ve known, sucked the fun and confidence from my business life. On Thursday I sacked my agent.
Before you think this is just a typical showbiz fit of pique, consider this. My agent has not returned a ‘phone call, text or email from me in almost three years and when I rang last week to ask her to do a deal which would have netted her a few thousand pounds in commission, she didn’t even bother to call back.
Still don’t see why she had to go? Don’t understand why she’s like a Harry Potter dementor sucking the joy out of life? Until three years ago I used to get a Christmas card, birthday card and a call on my birthday. Since then, nothing. No work, no calls, no cards, no courtesy, no sense of responsibility. So why did I put up with it? It’s a lesson I pass on after three years of humiliation, embarrassment and a growing loss of self worth.
I made the mistake of becoming friends.
Friends are great when they are as committed to the friendship as you are. This (ex) agent of mine made our wedding cake, I attended her wedding, her kids’ birthday parties and so on, but when you get nothing back the danger is that you start to make allowances. Friends forgive everything, but mere business partners holler and squeal when things aren’t done professionally. I realised I had made excuses for her, to myself, for years.
Now I feel so much better. Calling old contacts yesterday and being warmly greeted has made me feel wanted and, simply, normal where, until Thursday, I felt useless.
So I’m going to carry on with my Autumn Clean. I’m going to get rid of friendships where I’ve bashed my head against walls to keep contact going. Any friendship boulevard that has been all one way is getting closed down as of now. We’ve all got mates who just don’t give enough and the news is We Don’t Need Them. Get rid. I’ll keep you posted on how I get on.
Meantime, do an inventory of your relationships and be honest. Which of your links can be decoupled so that you soar again rather than getting dragged down by the lack of thought of others?
Life’s short. Let’s get the friends we deserve.
I remember when I was a kid that Spring meant my mum asking us to gather old toys and comics ready for the rag and bone man who used to give us a balloon for a few Dandy annuals, a plastic gun, my wigwam and some Thunderbirds T shirts we’d grown out of. We didn’t realise at the time but that’s one really bad exchange rate, and nowadays I like to think our rag man is retired and living in a stately home with his chauffeur and maids. Either that or his early training while ripping off us kids means he’s now a banker.
But I don’t believe it’s just objects that should be tidied out.
I’ve decided to get rid of people who drag me down through their lack of manners or politeness. In the spirit of cleaning out stuff I don’t need, I made a big decision this week and decided to start by ridding myself of someone who has, more than anyone I’ve known, sucked the fun and confidence from my business life. On Thursday I sacked my agent.
Before you think this is just a typical showbiz fit of pique, consider this. My agent has not returned a ‘phone call, text or email from me in almost three years and when I rang last week to ask her to do a deal which would have netted her a few thousand pounds in commission, she didn’t even bother to call back.
Still don’t see why she had to go? Don’t understand why she’s like a Harry Potter dementor sucking the joy out of life? Until three years ago I used to get a Christmas card, birthday card and a call on my birthday. Since then, nothing. No work, no calls, no cards, no courtesy, no sense of responsibility. So why did I put up with it? It’s a lesson I pass on after three years of humiliation, embarrassment and a growing loss of self worth.
I made the mistake of becoming friends.
Friends are great when they are as committed to the friendship as you are. This (ex) agent of mine made our wedding cake, I attended her wedding, her kids’ birthday parties and so on, but when you get nothing back the danger is that you start to make allowances. Friends forgive everything, but mere business partners holler and squeal when things aren’t done professionally. I realised I had made excuses for her, to myself, for years.
Now I feel so much better. Calling old contacts yesterday and being warmly greeted has made me feel wanted and, simply, normal where, until Thursday, I felt useless.
So I’m going to carry on with my Autumn Clean. I’m going to get rid of friendships where I’ve bashed my head against walls to keep contact going. Any friendship boulevard that has been all one way is getting closed down as of now. We’ve all got mates who just don’t give enough and the news is We Don’t Need Them. Get rid. I’ll keep you posted on how I get on.
Meantime, do an inventory of your relationships and be honest. Which of your links can be decoupled so that you soar again rather than getting dragged down by the lack of thought of others?
Life’s short. Let’s get the friends we deserve.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Touch Me In The Morning
My friend Peter called this week and said he had a very important question to ask me.
Now Pete, (I’ve changed the name to protect his reputation and, more importantly, my face) is not the sharpest tool in the box. In fact next to the screwdrivers, saw blades and pointy things in any self respecting tool box he has the sharpness of a duvet filled with jelly, so I wasn’t expecting him to ask my opinions on the revolution in Libya or quantitative easing.
Peter works for the government in the Public Health service as a boss looking after some sanitation department or other and he is a lovely bloke, but I do sometimes think that when brains were handed out he misheard and asked for Drains. Recently he dropped his mobile phone in the holy water font at church. When he claimed on his insurance form he put “act of God” as the reason for the accident.
Actually, Pete’s excuse doesn’t seem quite so silly when compared to the list of daft reasons released this week by the Child Protection Service who chase maintenance payments from missing parents. They are anxious to show us the kind of numpties they have to deal with as some sort of mitigation for the criticism they receive about their lack of results. One father told them he couldn’t pay maintenance as a father because he’d had a sex change and was therefore no longer a man. Another said that he’d used all his money to pay for his ex wife’s boob job, and since he was no longer getting the benefits why not let her new man pay instead? My favourite came from the dad who said he couldn’t pay since he “no longer exists” as he is in the witness protection program.
Suddenly Pete doesn’t seem so bad after all.
Anyway, back to the burning question he wanted to ask me. “If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you pick?”.
At first I thought he was gently breaking it to me that he was going deaf or blind but it turned out he had been in a bar and had overheard someone else asking a pal the same question. I said I’d think about it and, believe it or not, it has taken over almost every waking moment in my life this week. A silly question, a ridiculous amount of time spent on thinking about it, but I think I have an answer for him – and it came to me yesterday in a toy shop.
I spotted a life size Lego model of Darth Vader and while looking at it from a few yards away I noticed how many people walked past and touched it. Why? I have no idea, but while I had been debating between losing sight, sound or smell I realised then that I would never want to lose my sense of touch.
This was reinforced this morning when I read that this Friday is National Pippa Middleton’s Bum Appreciation Day. Go on, admit it, seeing it is one thing but wouldn’t you just love to pinch an inch, give it a tweak to see if it’s flabby or firm?
Touch means everything to me. I’m lucky that I can see my wife and children, sometimes unlucky that I can hear them, but imagine what it would be like if cuddles meant nothing. A stroke of a cheek felt like absolutely zero. The feel of grass on bear feet didn’t even register. Mind you, why the kids leave grass on our bedroom carpet is beyond me.
A few years ago I was filming in the Tate Gallery in London, and while the lights were being set up I wandered over to a magnificent oil painting and automatically reached out to touch it. A bloke in one of those pullovers with epaulettes on the shoulders, a logo on the breast and stains on the sleeves, shouted at me and tried to force me out of the room. He was quite right of course, and it’s probably not the only time touch has got me in to trouble. But we’ll pass over that.
So Pete, I still haven’t chosen which sense I could do without, but I have decided which one I couldn’t ever lose. It’s Touch - that thing that tells you when you’ve hit something sharp in the toolbox.
Now Pete, (I’ve changed the name to protect his reputation and, more importantly, my face) is not the sharpest tool in the box. In fact next to the screwdrivers, saw blades and pointy things in any self respecting tool box he has the sharpness of a duvet filled with jelly, so I wasn’t expecting him to ask my opinions on the revolution in Libya or quantitative easing.
Peter works for the government in the Public Health service as a boss looking after some sanitation department or other and he is a lovely bloke, but I do sometimes think that when brains were handed out he misheard and asked for Drains. Recently he dropped his mobile phone in the holy water font at church. When he claimed on his insurance form he put “act of God” as the reason for the accident.
Actually, Pete’s excuse doesn’t seem quite so silly when compared to the list of daft reasons released this week by the Child Protection Service who chase maintenance payments from missing parents. They are anxious to show us the kind of numpties they have to deal with as some sort of mitigation for the criticism they receive about their lack of results. One father told them he couldn’t pay maintenance as a father because he’d had a sex change and was therefore no longer a man. Another said that he’d used all his money to pay for his ex wife’s boob job, and since he was no longer getting the benefits why not let her new man pay instead? My favourite came from the dad who said he couldn’t pay since he “no longer exists” as he is in the witness protection program.
Suddenly Pete doesn’t seem so bad after all.
Anyway, back to the burning question he wanted to ask me. “If you had to lose one of your senses, which one would you pick?”.
At first I thought he was gently breaking it to me that he was going deaf or blind but it turned out he had been in a bar and had overheard someone else asking a pal the same question. I said I’d think about it and, believe it or not, it has taken over almost every waking moment in my life this week. A silly question, a ridiculous amount of time spent on thinking about it, but I think I have an answer for him – and it came to me yesterday in a toy shop.
I spotted a life size Lego model of Darth Vader and while looking at it from a few yards away I noticed how many people walked past and touched it. Why? I have no idea, but while I had been debating between losing sight, sound or smell I realised then that I would never want to lose my sense of touch.
This was reinforced this morning when I read that this Friday is National Pippa Middleton’s Bum Appreciation Day. Go on, admit it, seeing it is one thing but wouldn’t you just love to pinch an inch, give it a tweak to see if it’s flabby or firm?
Touch means everything to me. I’m lucky that I can see my wife and children, sometimes unlucky that I can hear them, but imagine what it would be like if cuddles meant nothing. A stroke of a cheek felt like absolutely zero. The feel of grass on bear feet didn’t even register. Mind you, why the kids leave grass on our bedroom carpet is beyond me.
A few years ago I was filming in the Tate Gallery in London, and while the lights were being set up I wandered over to a magnificent oil painting and automatically reached out to touch it. A bloke in one of those pullovers with epaulettes on the shoulders, a logo on the breast and stains on the sleeves, shouted at me and tried to force me out of the room. He was quite right of course, and it’s probably not the only time touch has got me in to trouble. But we’ll pass over that.
So Pete, I still haven’t chosen which sense I could do without, but I have decided which one I couldn’t ever lose. It’s Touch - that thing that tells you when you’ve hit something sharp in the toolbox.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Send In The Clowns
I see that old time comedian Frank Carson is recovering from a cancer operation, God bless him.
I don’t know how old you have to be before people add “God bless him” after your name but, whatever it is, Carson seems to have passed that about two hundred years ago. Yet the old codger still does over two hundred gigs a year so good on him.
You’ve got to admire his enduring love for the sounds of laughter, or, to be more realistic, the sound of sweeties being sucked, dentures being put back in, and woollen gloves softly meeting in arthritic applause .
Anyway, last week he wrote an article for a national newspaper and the message was that all modern comedians have simply stolen his stuff and are rubbish - or at least not as good as he is - and he also got in a mention that he does lots of charity work. I found it a bit sad that he spent hundreds of words in self praise and that he couldn’t be more gracious. He even found time to slag off the winning joke from the Edinburgh Festival this year by saying that he had to have it explained to him and even then it just wasn’t funny. Actually Frank, it was clever AND funny.
The winning punchline came from comedian Nick Hemp who said “My computer asked for a password with eight characters, so I chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Now come on, that’s a good joke isn’t it? The runner up was also great. It came from last year’s winner Tim Vine who said “Crime in multi storey car parks. Wrong on so many levels.” Frank˒ God bless him˒ didn’t like Tim’s winner last year “I went on a once in a lifetime holiday. Never again,” saying it was stolen from a joke he told years ago about an Irishman losing his teeth.
My advice Frank is to relax. You have nothing to prove. Let this generation get on with it. Being so critical makes you look like a deformed lemon - bitter and twisted. He wouldn't like that gag either.
Despite Frank it’s been a great week for jokes though. My favourite came on an email I received. I think I’ve mentioned before here that I am colour blind, so with that in mind, you might see why I loved this one so much. The joke goes “I’ve just discovered I’m colour blind. It hit me like a bolt out of the green.” You can’t beat a bit of self mockery.
Another good one I heard this week was also on the short list from Edinburgh. Comedian Alan Sharp came up with “I used to be in a band. We called ourselves The Prevention, because we wanted people to say we were better than The Cure”. And I also liked DeAnne Jones’ gag, “my friend died doing what he loves. Heroin.”
Some funnies have to be said in a certain accent. A Glaswegian guy takes home his new rather tall girlfriend. “This is Amanda” he says to his dad who replies “It’s a WHAT?”.
Of course I realise that humour is a personal thing and you may read these gags and not even smile. So let me finish by telling you of something that everyone in the world should find hilarious, as well as totally absurd. And it’s all true!
A guy sent me a request this week asking if he could be my “friend” on Facebook. No problem there except his profile photo, for the whole world to see, was not the traditional passport photo but an image of the outlawed terrorist organisation The Ulster Volunteer Force.
I laughed for ages at the absurdity of this man before, of course, refusing his request and then feeling sorry for him. I’m sure he would be offended at me laughing, and I’m not sure he realises how silly he looks, but surely even Frank would have laughed. God bless him.
I don’t know how old you have to be before people add “God bless him” after your name but, whatever it is, Carson seems to have passed that about two hundred years ago. Yet the old codger still does over two hundred gigs a year so good on him.
You’ve got to admire his enduring love for the sounds of laughter, or, to be more realistic, the sound of sweeties being sucked, dentures being put back in, and woollen gloves softly meeting in arthritic applause .
Anyway, last week he wrote an article for a national newspaper and the message was that all modern comedians have simply stolen his stuff and are rubbish - or at least not as good as he is - and he also got in a mention that he does lots of charity work. I found it a bit sad that he spent hundreds of words in self praise and that he couldn’t be more gracious. He even found time to slag off the winning joke from the Edinburgh Festival this year by saying that he had to have it explained to him and even then it just wasn’t funny. Actually Frank, it was clever AND funny.
The winning punchline came from comedian Nick Hemp who said “My computer asked for a password with eight characters, so I chose Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Now come on, that’s a good joke isn’t it? The runner up was also great. It came from last year’s winner Tim Vine who said “Crime in multi storey car parks. Wrong on so many levels.” Frank˒ God bless him˒ didn’t like Tim’s winner last year “I went on a once in a lifetime holiday. Never again,” saying it was stolen from a joke he told years ago about an Irishman losing his teeth.
My advice Frank is to relax. You have nothing to prove. Let this generation get on with it. Being so critical makes you look like a deformed lemon - bitter and twisted. He wouldn't like that gag either.
Despite Frank it’s been a great week for jokes though. My favourite came on an email I received. I think I’ve mentioned before here that I am colour blind, so with that in mind, you might see why I loved this one so much. The joke goes “I’ve just discovered I’m colour blind. It hit me like a bolt out of the green.” You can’t beat a bit of self mockery.
Another good one I heard this week was also on the short list from Edinburgh. Comedian Alan Sharp came up with “I used to be in a band. We called ourselves The Prevention, because we wanted people to say we were better than The Cure”. And I also liked DeAnne Jones’ gag, “my friend died doing what he loves. Heroin.”
Some funnies have to be said in a certain accent. A Glaswegian guy takes home his new rather tall girlfriend. “This is Amanda” he says to his dad who replies “It’s a WHAT?”.
Of course I realise that humour is a personal thing and you may read these gags and not even smile. So let me finish by telling you of something that everyone in the world should find hilarious, as well as totally absurd. And it’s all true!
A guy sent me a request this week asking if he could be my “friend” on Facebook. No problem there except his profile photo, for the whole world to see, was not the traditional passport photo but an image of the outlawed terrorist organisation The Ulster Volunteer Force.
I laughed for ages at the absurdity of this man before, of course, refusing his request and then feeling sorry for him. I’m sure he would be offended at me laughing, and I’m not sure he realises how silly he looks, but surely even Frank would have laughed. God bless him.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Another One Bites The Dust
I lost my crown this week.
In case you think I have delusions of royal grandeur, I’m referring to my fake front tooth which fell out with a splash as I ploughed my way through the biggest bowl of soup since Desperate Dan came off a diet.
I had gone off on holiday weeks ago knowing that my tooth was slack but I had eaten cautiously just in case I was stranded, toothless, thousands of miles from home. Now at home I wanted it to come out so that I could get it properly fixed, and I have been gnawing on apples and corn on the cob since my flight back. I would even have moved up to chomping broken glass and concrete had they not had calories.
But nothing seemed to work at all until, down at the gym canteen, I slurped an innocuous bowl of mushroom soup that shouldn’t have troubled a pensioner wearing someone else’s dentures. I’ve always been a bit of a soup dragon and my mum reckons it’s because I haven’t grown up yet, so I guess it serves me right. The tooth came out while I was speaking with my mouth full and it soiled the lady sitting next to me as it splashed in to the plate with a huge “kerplunk”.
After apologising, I fished the thing out of my bowl, excused myself from the table sounding like Sylvester the cartoon cat, and headed to the gents toilets to find a mirror and put it back. Trust me, no matter how ugly you may think you are, seeing yourself with a front tooth missing does nothing for your self esteem. If I thought I might look like a cute kid, or Dennis The Menace, or a macho cage fighter, I was soon to be disappointed. Staring back from the mirror was what looked like a seedy toothpaste dodger who had been sleeping rough for years. I apologise to any seedy toothpaste dodgers who have been sleeping rough and may be reading this.
Looking at your teeth outside of your mouth, incidentally, is a big surprise as you are immediately struck by the fact that they are as far from white as Dracula’s wardrobe. If you don’t believe me then take a pair of pliers and pull one of your gnashers out. I highly recommend it.
So, anxious to get rid of this off colour gemstone, and with vanity screaming at me to lose the horrible image in the mirror as soon as possible, I hurried and washed excess mushroom off the crown by running it under a tap. You can see what’s coming can’t you? It slipped from my fingers and spun round the sink like one of those charity pennies put in a Perspex collecting bowl. I chased it round and round but couldn’t catch it and the thing disappeared down the plug hole and in to oblivion.
That’s four hundred pounds Sterling worth of oblivion to you and me. Ever met a poor dentist?
I was frantic. I’d lost a good tooth, good money, and my less than good looks in one accidental slip up and, after a moment’s panic, I ran to find the maintenance man to ask him to unscrew the U bend under the sink. Five minutes later I was reunited with the crown, covered in slime, soap, hair and goodness knows what else.
So, here’s the question. Would you then wash the germs off and put the tooth back in your mouth to save your vanity, or would you place it carefully in your pocket and walk around looking like a pirate till a dental appointment could be made? With me I have to confess I agonised for minutes, watching the race in my head between those two thoroughbreds Vanity and Sanitary, and I’d like to say it was a close run thing, but it wasn’t. Vanity won by a few laps.
So now I’ve been to the dentist, a new crown has been ordered, and things will soon be back to normal. I briefly enjoyed the feeling of being toothless, a sensation I hadn’t felt since childhood. But I remember way back then the obvious excitement of feeling almost heroic and manly as it seemed a big part of growing up.
This time I just felt vain, so maybe my mum’s right and I still haven’t grown up after all.
In case you think I have delusions of royal grandeur, I’m referring to my fake front tooth which fell out with a splash as I ploughed my way through the biggest bowl of soup since Desperate Dan came off a diet.
I had gone off on holiday weeks ago knowing that my tooth was slack but I had eaten cautiously just in case I was stranded, toothless, thousands of miles from home. Now at home I wanted it to come out so that I could get it properly fixed, and I have been gnawing on apples and corn on the cob since my flight back. I would even have moved up to chomping broken glass and concrete had they not had calories.
But nothing seemed to work at all until, down at the gym canteen, I slurped an innocuous bowl of mushroom soup that shouldn’t have troubled a pensioner wearing someone else’s dentures. I’ve always been a bit of a soup dragon and my mum reckons it’s because I haven’t grown up yet, so I guess it serves me right. The tooth came out while I was speaking with my mouth full and it soiled the lady sitting next to me as it splashed in to the plate with a huge “kerplunk”.
After apologising, I fished the thing out of my bowl, excused myself from the table sounding like Sylvester the cartoon cat, and headed to the gents toilets to find a mirror and put it back. Trust me, no matter how ugly you may think you are, seeing yourself with a front tooth missing does nothing for your self esteem. If I thought I might look like a cute kid, or Dennis The Menace, or a macho cage fighter, I was soon to be disappointed. Staring back from the mirror was what looked like a seedy toothpaste dodger who had been sleeping rough for years. I apologise to any seedy toothpaste dodgers who have been sleeping rough and may be reading this.
Looking at your teeth outside of your mouth, incidentally, is a big surprise as you are immediately struck by the fact that they are as far from white as Dracula’s wardrobe. If you don’t believe me then take a pair of pliers and pull one of your gnashers out. I highly recommend it.
So, anxious to get rid of this off colour gemstone, and with vanity screaming at me to lose the horrible image in the mirror as soon as possible, I hurried and washed excess mushroom off the crown by running it under a tap. You can see what’s coming can’t you? It slipped from my fingers and spun round the sink like one of those charity pennies put in a Perspex collecting bowl. I chased it round and round but couldn’t catch it and the thing disappeared down the plug hole and in to oblivion.
That’s four hundred pounds Sterling worth of oblivion to you and me. Ever met a poor dentist?
I was frantic. I’d lost a good tooth, good money, and my less than good looks in one accidental slip up and, after a moment’s panic, I ran to find the maintenance man to ask him to unscrew the U bend under the sink. Five minutes later I was reunited with the crown, covered in slime, soap, hair and goodness knows what else.
So, here’s the question. Would you then wash the germs off and put the tooth back in your mouth to save your vanity, or would you place it carefully in your pocket and walk around looking like a pirate till a dental appointment could be made? With me I have to confess I agonised for minutes, watching the race in my head between those two thoroughbreds Vanity and Sanitary, and I’d like to say it was a close run thing, but it wasn’t. Vanity won by a few laps.
So now I’ve been to the dentist, a new crown has been ordered, and things will soon be back to normal. I briefly enjoyed the feeling of being toothless, a sensation I hadn’t felt since childhood. But I remember way back then the obvious excitement of feeling almost heroic and manly as it seemed a big part of growing up.
This time I just felt vain, so maybe my mum’s right and I still haven’t grown up after all.
Monday, August 15, 2011
A Horse With No Name
I’ve just spent three, very enjoyable weeks in the USA which, as you may not know, stands for Ubiquitous Singing from Adele .
Everywhere I went in Florida the London singer was exercising her lungs on radio, TV shows, commercials, bars and restaurants. They have gone lady gaga for her and will probably now trace her roots back to Calamity Jane, qualifying her to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the Superbowl next year in a cowboy hat.
I love visiting America where the “great service” in retail is all a myth as supermarket check out staff find new ways to ignore you while waiters fake their bonhomie and politeness, a fakeness that’s at least sincere as they sincerely want a big tip. No one waits for you in America or says “you first” as you stand in line, and it’s such a change from our polite culture shown last week as we Brits queued up to be charged in court for rioting.
While Brit lawyers were tied up in court defending the undefensible, American lawyers were advertising at the side of the road. They are the usual, ambulance chasing, chancers we get here, but they’re more inventive. They take out huge road side adverts inviting us to dial 1-400-I-AM HURT, or 1-400-ITS-SORE. I even saw one that read 1-800-OUCH-MAD.
The natives, for some reason, are obsessed with where every other American they meet was born and the second sentence uttered is always “where are you from?”. They then get the answer Tulsa or New Jersey and, no matter what they’ve heard, always answer with “Oh, OK.” Are they all secretly conducting a cost saving census for the government?
As well as Adele, Brits seem everywhere in the American media just now, voicing adverts or appearing on shows. I watched America’s Got Talent with Brit Sharon Osborne showing off her new face and, surprisingly, her new voice too as she currently sounds like an extra from The Exorcist. Piers Morgan was another judge, praising a man for belly flopping off a diving board then later talking politics on CNN. Or maybe it was the other way round. With Piers I never hear what he says above my cries of “how does he get away with this rubbish?”.
TV adverts are dominated by food and medicine. With drug laws the Americans have to put all the side effects on screen too, so a cream for flaky skin will have a voice over that says “can also cause cancer, leukaemia and death, check with your doctor” over happy pictures of people having a picnic in a boat.
As they’re very religious I was not surprised to see a commercial that was shown in almost every TV break for an agency called ChristianMingle.com, a dating site for the religious which had a message that “it’s what God would want”. The Lutheran church along the road from where I was staying had an electronic message board with inspirational messages like “Chew on the bible. It stops truth decay,” and my own favourite “Dusty bibles lead to dirty lives.”
But the religious majority won’t be happy with me as I discovered a great new vice. It’s called Nestle’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and comes in a tube shape ready to be cut up and placed in a baking tray. For those who remember scraping the cooking bowl when mum was making cakes, this is incredibly evocative stuff. I bought a tube and ate the whole thing raw. It’s brilliant. Can we get it here soon please?
My daughters, of course, just wanted to go to McDonalds all the time for hot fudge sundaes but I’m a bit worried about what my youngest has been reading as she slipped up and asked for “a hot flush sundae”. But I think she may have inadvertently hit on something. Maybe we could have a global awareness day for women of a certain age and call it Hot Flush Sunday?
It’s good to be back home for a while. In the past four weeks I’ve travelled to Dubai, Nepal and Florida so it’s relief not to be carrying bags around or constantly taking my shoes off at airport security. I really did enjoy my trip to the U.S. but, as Dorothy almost said in the Wizard of Oz,” East West Home’s Best”.
Apart from the lack of cookie dough of course.
Everywhere I went in Florida the London singer was exercising her lungs on radio, TV shows, commercials, bars and restaurants. They have gone lady gaga for her and will probably now trace her roots back to Calamity Jane, qualifying her to sing the Star Spangled Banner at the Superbowl next year in a cowboy hat.
I love visiting America where the “great service” in retail is all a myth as supermarket check out staff find new ways to ignore you while waiters fake their bonhomie and politeness, a fakeness that’s at least sincere as they sincerely want a big tip. No one waits for you in America or says “you first” as you stand in line, and it’s such a change from our polite culture shown last week as we Brits queued up to be charged in court for rioting.
While Brit lawyers were tied up in court defending the undefensible, American lawyers were advertising at the side of the road. They are the usual, ambulance chasing, chancers we get here, but they’re more inventive. They take out huge road side adverts inviting us to dial 1-400-I-AM HURT, or 1-400-ITS-SORE. I even saw one that read 1-800-OUCH-MAD.
The natives, for some reason, are obsessed with where every other American they meet was born and the second sentence uttered is always “where are you from?”. They then get the answer Tulsa or New Jersey and, no matter what they’ve heard, always answer with “Oh, OK.” Are they all secretly conducting a cost saving census for the government?
As well as Adele, Brits seem everywhere in the American media just now, voicing adverts or appearing on shows. I watched America’s Got Talent with Brit Sharon Osborne showing off her new face and, surprisingly, her new voice too as she currently sounds like an extra from The Exorcist. Piers Morgan was another judge, praising a man for belly flopping off a diving board then later talking politics on CNN. Or maybe it was the other way round. With Piers I never hear what he says above my cries of “how does he get away with this rubbish?”.
TV adverts are dominated by food and medicine. With drug laws the Americans have to put all the side effects on screen too, so a cream for flaky skin will have a voice over that says “can also cause cancer, leukaemia and death, check with your doctor” over happy pictures of people having a picnic in a boat.
As they’re very religious I was not surprised to see a commercial that was shown in almost every TV break for an agency called ChristianMingle.com, a dating site for the religious which had a message that “it’s what God would want”. The Lutheran church along the road from where I was staying had an electronic message board with inspirational messages like “Chew on the bible. It stops truth decay,” and my own favourite “Dusty bibles lead to dirty lives.”
But the religious majority won’t be happy with me as I discovered a great new vice. It’s called Nestle’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and comes in a tube shape ready to be cut up and placed in a baking tray. For those who remember scraping the cooking bowl when mum was making cakes, this is incredibly evocative stuff. I bought a tube and ate the whole thing raw. It’s brilliant. Can we get it here soon please?
My daughters, of course, just wanted to go to McDonalds all the time for hot fudge sundaes but I’m a bit worried about what my youngest has been reading as she slipped up and asked for “a hot flush sundae”. But I think she may have inadvertently hit on something. Maybe we could have a global awareness day for women of a certain age and call it Hot Flush Sunday?
It’s good to be back home for a while. In the past four weeks I’ve travelled to Dubai, Nepal and Florida so it’s relief not to be carrying bags around or constantly taking my shoes off at airport security. I really did enjoy my trip to the U.S. but, as Dorothy almost said in the Wizard of Oz,” East West Home’s Best”.
Apart from the lack of cookie dough of course.
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