I spent two days this week in Zurich and I wholeheartedly recommend visiting Switzerland just now if you are a multi millionaire.
It’s expensive in the same way as hiring Lewis Hamilton as your chauffeur and Daniel Craig as your bodyguard, then driving around in your new, gold plated Ferrari which runs only on fuel extracted from moon rock, throwing hundred pound notes out the windows. Switzerland is the Harrods of Europe right now and there’s no sign of a Christmas sale any time soon.
At Zurich airport I ordered a hot chocolate in the small Costa coffee shop and tried not to gasp when I was asked for eight Swiss francs, which is about seven pounds. I then took a taxi for a journey of less than fifteen minutes and was charged fifty six pounds, made the mistake of having a bag of crisps costing over four pounds, and my pasta dinner at night lightened my pocket by almost one hundred pounds. Bill Gates would last about a week there.
Flying home very much poorer after a couple of days of work, I stood in line as we all boarded the aircraft, when two guys in front of me suddenly recognised each other. I’m not sure if each hadn’t seen the other in years, but I suspect what actually happened was that they had made a mistake and didn’t know each other at all. I loved the conversation and kept repeating it in my head so that I could write it down later for you. It went exactly like this.
Guy 1. Hi there.
Guy 2. (loudly and excitedly) Hi. How ARE you?
G1. Good thanks. You?
G2. Yeah, good. So, how are you?
G1. Yeah. Good. Good. Busy. How about you? How are you?
G2. Good. Good. You?
By this time I had worked out that they were deeply embarrassed and couldn’t think of a thing to say but, of course, they were stuck in a queue that was going nowhere.
G1. Yeah. Good. How’s, er........
G2. She’s good thanks. What about er.....
G1 Yeah, she’s fine thanks. All good. Kids?
G2 Yeah good. Yours?
G1 Good thanks. Good. Yeah, good.
This went on for what seemed like ages until I thought I would expire from holding in my laughter. I wanted to see the floor open up and swallow both of them to cover their embarrassment.
Why is it that we feel we have to put on a great show of excitement and pleasure when meeting someone we hardly know? I do it myself, and always feel false, yet I carry on getting more and more excited, as if they are my long lost brother. Often I’ll finish and walk away and then Debbie will say to me “You’ve no idea who he is, have you?”
I have had long conversations with people who I then discover later I’ve never met, but who look like someone I once worked with. They must have wandered off thinking I was nuts. I also get strangers coming up saying “you don’t remember me do you?” and I always say “of course I do” to save their embarrassment, then have to suffer ten minutes of conversation while trying not to give away that I haven’t a clue who they are. Perhaps I should just say “You’re right, I don’t remember you. There’s probably a reason for that.”
I once did the equivalent of the aircraft conversation with a bloke who approached me at a gig saying we’d once worked together in TV. I pretended to remember him, pretended also to recognise the names of old colleagues he brought up, but faltered when it came to the killer question. He said “of course you were always close to Sam. How’s Sam doing?”
I, of course, had no idea who Sam was, didn’t even know if it was a he or a she, so I panicked. To admit the preceding five minute conversation had been nonsense and false would have been embarrassing, but to answer any more questions about Sam would have caught me out. So I took the only route possible. Knowing I would never bump in to this stranger again I put on a serious face and said “I’m afraid Sam passed away.”
If you have any tips on how to deal with these awkward situations please let me know. I’d offer an incentive but I’m scared the winner might live in Switzerland and ask for a hot chocolate as a prize. I’m not a millionaire you know.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Humble Pie
Humility is a funny thing. Those who know me may be wondering if someone has bought me a new dictionary, but I assure you I have heard of this word before. It’s like haemorrhoids or varicose veins - something other people suffer from. A nicer analogy might be that humility is similar to getting to Heaven – definitely to be aimed at, but just not yet.
The reason I bring this up is that after Jimmy Saville died last week I noticed all his obituaries and tributes avoided the use of the word “humble”. Yet normally when someone raises as much money for charity as he did over his lifetime, writers fall over themselves to stress how down to earth and self effacing he was. Not this time.
I met Jimmy several times, the first when I spent a day interviewing him in the morning and then doing a gig with him in the afternoon. As I thanked him after lunch and told him his interview was great, he looked at me and said, without irony, “of course it was”. He really wasn’t kidding, but he didn’t realise I was just being polite as the interview was truly awful and almost unbroadcastable because he insisted we did it whilst out running, for no apparent reason.
Ricky Gervais, whose first TV chat show featured Jimmy as a guest, lacked humility this week by refusing to apologise for upsetting people with Down’s Syndrome by Tweeting horrible remarks about them, using an offensive word, and posting photos of himself screwing up his face in an impression, so he thought, of someone with Down’s. After complaints multiplied he suddenly found the humility shelf in his Press officer’s cupboard after it was pointed out he has a new TV series starting next week and shouldn’t be upsetting the punters. He eventually, grudgingly apologised.
Even good old DLT, a.k.a. former Radio One disc jockey Dave Lee Travis, was a stranger to humility when asked live on air why Jimmy Saville was getting tributes, respect and love even though he had disappeared off the radar for years. The answer should have been something like “Jimmy may have been low profile recently but you don’t know how great something is till it’s gone.” Instead he made it all about himself, saying “people could say the same about me. No one wanted to talk to me until Burmese dissident Aung Sang Suu Kyi said she listened to me on the world service this year.”
I hope it was nerves but if it was meant as a tribute it was “humble” with a capital F.
Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’ former golf bag carrier, claims the golfer owes all his success to him and his advice. Having been sacked, he now says his new golf client also owes a recent win solely to him, and he used a private dinner to make a racial slur against Woods. Reporters were so appalled they lifted their voluntary embargo on reporting the dinner and told organisers that Williams arrogance blew the “off the record” event agreement to pieces.
A man who knows reporters well, Rupert Murdoch, had to be seen to be humble when his newspapers were caught hacking in to the ‘phones of celebrities and dead children but he seems to have become bored with that now, shouting down dissenting shareholders at his company’s annual meeting and mocking a priest in the audience. Shareholders tried, in vain, to get Murdoch and his hubris voted off the board.
But it’s not just men who think God created them first and then everything else in an orbit around them. Nancy Dell Olio, who was voted off Strictly Come Dancing, has said this week that the only reason for the show’s high ratings was her presence, that the nation is now bereft, that she’ll sue the judges for criticism caused only by their jealousy as she was too popular for the show, and that she’ll come back as the host one day because everyone loves her. She is such a stranger to humility that she could soon become an adjective, as in “Gaddafi had that Dell Olio thing about him, didn’t he?”. Look her up in a dictionary soon and it will say “Deluded, hubristic, charmless, and complete pain in the bum.”
Whether it’s Saville, Gervais, Travis, Williams, Murdoch, Dell Olio or any of the other dozens of examples I’ve left out because of space, it seems that the world has become a more self obsessed place over the past few weeks. But why? What is happening? Is it because we’re all scared of the daily global news which seems to get worse by the day, therefore we have to make ourselves feel bigger and more important? Has the internet and social networking changed our usual modesty and diffidence making us shout louder to be heard? Does instant global communication now mean more "mean"?
Whatever the reason, I’d like to make a plea. Let’s all be a bit nicer to each other. Let’s rediscover humility. Let us all strive to become a bit more down to earth. After all, king or commoner, that’s where we’re all ultimately headed.
The reason I bring this up is that after Jimmy Saville died last week I noticed all his obituaries and tributes avoided the use of the word “humble”. Yet normally when someone raises as much money for charity as he did over his lifetime, writers fall over themselves to stress how down to earth and self effacing he was. Not this time.
I met Jimmy several times, the first when I spent a day interviewing him in the morning and then doing a gig with him in the afternoon. As I thanked him after lunch and told him his interview was great, he looked at me and said, without irony, “of course it was”. He really wasn’t kidding, but he didn’t realise I was just being polite as the interview was truly awful and almost unbroadcastable because he insisted we did it whilst out running, for no apparent reason.
Ricky Gervais, whose first TV chat show featured Jimmy as a guest, lacked humility this week by refusing to apologise for upsetting people with Down’s Syndrome by Tweeting horrible remarks about them, using an offensive word, and posting photos of himself screwing up his face in an impression, so he thought, of someone with Down’s. After complaints multiplied he suddenly found the humility shelf in his Press officer’s cupboard after it was pointed out he has a new TV series starting next week and shouldn’t be upsetting the punters. He eventually, grudgingly apologised.
Even good old DLT, a.k.a. former Radio One disc jockey Dave Lee Travis, was a stranger to humility when asked live on air why Jimmy Saville was getting tributes, respect and love even though he had disappeared off the radar for years. The answer should have been something like “Jimmy may have been low profile recently but you don’t know how great something is till it’s gone.” Instead he made it all about himself, saying “people could say the same about me. No one wanted to talk to me until Burmese dissident Aung Sang Suu Kyi said she listened to me on the world service this year.”
I hope it was nerves but if it was meant as a tribute it was “humble” with a capital F.
Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’ former golf bag carrier, claims the golfer owes all his success to him and his advice. Having been sacked, he now says his new golf client also owes a recent win solely to him, and he used a private dinner to make a racial slur against Woods. Reporters were so appalled they lifted their voluntary embargo on reporting the dinner and told organisers that Williams arrogance blew the “off the record” event agreement to pieces.
A man who knows reporters well, Rupert Murdoch, had to be seen to be humble when his newspapers were caught hacking in to the ‘phones of celebrities and dead children but he seems to have become bored with that now, shouting down dissenting shareholders at his company’s annual meeting and mocking a priest in the audience. Shareholders tried, in vain, to get Murdoch and his hubris voted off the board.
But it’s not just men who think God created them first and then everything else in an orbit around them. Nancy Dell Olio, who was voted off Strictly Come Dancing, has said this week that the only reason for the show’s high ratings was her presence, that the nation is now bereft, that she’ll sue the judges for criticism caused only by their jealousy as she was too popular for the show, and that she’ll come back as the host one day because everyone loves her. She is such a stranger to humility that she could soon become an adjective, as in “Gaddafi had that Dell Olio thing about him, didn’t he?”. Look her up in a dictionary soon and it will say “Deluded, hubristic, charmless, and complete pain in the bum.”
Whether it’s Saville, Gervais, Travis, Williams, Murdoch, Dell Olio or any of the other dozens of examples I’ve left out because of space, it seems that the world has become a more self obsessed place over the past few weeks. But why? What is happening? Is it because we’re all scared of the daily global news which seems to get worse by the day, therefore we have to make ourselves feel bigger and more important? Has the internet and social networking changed our usual modesty and diffidence making us shout louder to be heard? Does instant global communication now mean more "mean"?
Whatever the reason, I’d like to make a plea. Let’s all be a bit nicer to each other. Let’s rediscover humility. Let us all strive to become a bit more down to earth. After all, king or commoner, that’s where we’re all ultimately headed.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Food, Glorious Food
This week I enjoyed the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten, and I also know it’s the most expensive meal I will EVER eat in my life. Unless you count my wedding meal of course– I’ve been paying for that ever since.
Two very nice folk from Kilmarnock named Drew and Marie paid twenty thousand pounds to a kids’ charity to win Gordon Ramsay’s chef table at The Savoy Hotel for the evening, and they were kind enough to invite me along to the meal. Eight of us sat down to an eight course dinner in a small private room with one glass wall looking out on the kitchen. I’ve only just realised that is we could see them, they could see us. Oops. My weird faces pressed against the glass with my tongue hanging out were probably a bad idea.
For each of the eight courses, a different chef would come in to our little room and explain what he had made, followed by the sommelier who took us through the eight wines he had chosen, and as someone who only gets close to money by eating millionaire’s shortbread, I suddenly felt I knew how Simon Cowell lives. Without the Botox and smarm, obviously.
Our party of eight was made up of Drew and Marie, myself and five others consisting of the great and good - from MPs to a Baroness, from leading lights of entertainment through to heads of household name businesses, and we ended up laughing louder and longer than I can remember doing for a long time. We even sang rude songs when one of us (not me) suggested doing “the knob song”. This apparently involves going round the table substituting the word “knob” for “love”. So we had to sing The Beatles’ hits She Knobs You Yeah Yeah Yeah, Knob Knob Me Do, All You Need is Knob....... you get the idea. Childish, but fun.
One of the party told us she’s going to play Susan Boyle in a musical of her life next year and she passed on hilarious stories of the Britain’s Got Talent singer who panics her chauffeur by taking the bus instead. Susan is so modest she couldn’t understand why she had to make her first album. She knew she had lost the competition therefore she thought the dream was all over. Now, of course, she’s arguably one of the world’s wealthiest stars and the musical will be going to Australia, Japan, China and America.
I’m not sure Susan would have enjoyed the Savoy as it may have made her inhibited about asking for pie, chips and Irn Bru, but she would have liked the bit where we were all taken in to the kitchen to meet the chefs, given aprons, and asked to cook our own steak. It was hot in there and the chefs were much friendlier than the one I worked with when I was at University making some money at weekends as a waiter. Whenever anyone sent back their food because it was too cold or the steak wasn’t well done enough, he would throw it on the floor, stand on it, baste it in the bin and then grill it a bit more and send it back out.
The Savoy has been closed for years for a face lift and it looks magnificent, and the final course of melting chocolate sponge was as heavenly as you’d expect from a twenty thousand pound meal in a multi million pound hotel that’s famous the world over.
So, I know what you’re asking. Why, if all the guests were famous in politics, business or showbiz, was I invited? I hung around at the end expecting to be given a pair of rubber gloves and a sink to wash up the pots but I wasn’t called in to action. I can only guess they needed cover in case one of the waiters went sick.
Forget whoever else was at that meal. Drew and Marie were the stars. To generously give all that money to help kids in difficulty was a wonderful gesture, and they gave this big kid the evening of his life. Thank you.
Two very nice folk from Kilmarnock named Drew and Marie paid twenty thousand pounds to a kids’ charity to win Gordon Ramsay’s chef table at The Savoy Hotel for the evening, and they were kind enough to invite me along to the meal. Eight of us sat down to an eight course dinner in a small private room with one glass wall looking out on the kitchen. I’ve only just realised that is we could see them, they could see us. Oops. My weird faces pressed against the glass with my tongue hanging out were probably a bad idea.
For each of the eight courses, a different chef would come in to our little room and explain what he had made, followed by the sommelier who took us through the eight wines he had chosen, and as someone who only gets close to money by eating millionaire’s shortbread, I suddenly felt I knew how Simon Cowell lives. Without the Botox and smarm, obviously.
Our party of eight was made up of Drew and Marie, myself and five others consisting of the great and good - from MPs to a Baroness, from leading lights of entertainment through to heads of household name businesses, and we ended up laughing louder and longer than I can remember doing for a long time. We even sang rude songs when one of us (not me) suggested doing “the knob song”. This apparently involves going round the table substituting the word “knob” for “love”. So we had to sing The Beatles’ hits She Knobs You Yeah Yeah Yeah, Knob Knob Me Do, All You Need is Knob....... you get the idea. Childish, but fun.
One of the party told us she’s going to play Susan Boyle in a musical of her life next year and she passed on hilarious stories of the Britain’s Got Talent singer who panics her chauffeur by taking the bus instead. Susan is so modest she couldn’t understand why she had to make her first album. She knew she had lost the competition therefore she thought the dream was all over. Now, of course, she’s arguably one of the world’s wealthiest stars and the musical will be going to Australia, Japan, China and America.
I’m not sure Susan would have enjoyed the Savoy as it may have made her inhibited about asking for pie, chips and Irn Bru, but she would have liked the bit where we were all taken in to the kitchen to meet the chefs, given aprons, and asked to cook our own steak. It was hot in there and the chefs were much friendlier than the one I worked with when I was at University making some money at weekends as a waiter. Whenever anyone sent back their food because it was too cold or the steak wasn’t well done enough, he would throw it on the floor, stand on it, baste it in the bin and then grill it a bit more and send it back out.
The Savoy has been closed for years for a face lift and it looks magnificent, and the final course of melting chocolate sponge was as heavenly as you’d expect from a twenty thousand pound meal in a multi million pound hotel that’s famous the world over.
So, I know what you’re asking. Why, if all the guests were famous in politics, business or showbiz, was I invited? I hung around at the end expecting to be given a pair of rubber gloves and a sink to wash up the pots but I wasn’t called in to action. I can only guess they needed cover in case one of the waiters went sick.
Forget whoever else was at that meal. Drew and Marie were the stars. To generously give all that money to help kids in difficulty was a wonderful gesture, and they gave this big kid the evening of his life. Thank you.
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Boss
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.
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.
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.
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