Torn

This time of year tests the cheerfulness of even the nicest shop assistant, forced to wear Santa hats and apologise to every crabby customer for the wait in line whilst also suffering again and again from listening to the same old background Christmas songs that have been on repeat play in store since July.

I’m amazed these people don’t let off steam every few minutes by putting on a Grinch mask and shouting “Rudolph is a drunk” or “Santa’s going to throw up on your carpet”.

With the High Street going crazy just now, these customer helpers are doing a great job and, if I’m in a store that has as feedback button, I’ll always give it a punch with a smile that says “Happy With The Service”.

But now this “service comment thing” is spreading everywhere. Call up any company with a query and you’ll find that Customer Service people have sneakily become the best emotional blackmailers in the world.

Yesterday I had a problem with my mobile ‘phone, so I called Orange. The service agent was very helpful and resolved my query but, just as I was thanking him, he said “you will receive a text asking to rate me for my help today. I hope you will give me full marks as that would help me a lot in return”. Of course I should have said something like, “I’ll be the judge of that”, but instead I summoned up all my reserves of courage and strength and meekly said “Of course. No problem.”

This is not the first time this has happened to me. In fact it’s the fourth time in just a couple of weeks.

We had a new gas boiler installed by British Gas and, as he left, the engineer told me I would receive a questionnaire asking how he had done. He informed me he would be most grateful if I gave him full marks as it affects his Christmas bonus. Again I said I would help out, but inwardly I began to wonder what the point of these things is. If all of us are asked to give top marks then it’s a bit redundant, isn’t it? Why don’t they save time and effort and just let the engineer fill it in himself?

We also bought a new car a few weeks ago and I must confess the dealer was very helpful and kept us informed throughout. “In the next few days you will get a call asking how we did”, he told me. “Can I presume you’ll give us five out of five?”. Frankly, you can assume whatever you want but I’m going to give you zero just for presuming I thought, but when the call came I rolled over and had my tummy tickled, then gave him five. I only hope he’s getting his Christmas bonus too.

Perhaps all this charity I’m dispensing means I don’t have to tip the bin men, the postman or the paper girl this year. I’ll just pop in to my local council, post office and newsagent and tell them I’m giving their staff five out of five, and no need to come round my house for a tip and, by the way, a very Happy Christmas to one and all. Think it might work?

Last week my technical problem of the week was with my internet provider so, one chat with a call centre in India later, I was back on track with my problem solved. “Please stay on the line Paul as you will be asked a question about my service” said my new Indian buddy. “I would appreciate you giving me full marks.” Again, I did exactly as he asked so I think I’ve managed, indirectly, to give a Christmas tip in the Far East. Happy Diwali to you all over there.

But enough is enough. I don’t mind this nonsense in December – good will to all mankind and all that – but come January the gloves are off. Anyone who asks for feedback is going to get it in a string of words last put together by a freezing docker hanging naked from a frozen drainpipe when his girlfriend’s husband came home unexpectedly. I’ve had enough. My new year resolution will be that I’m not going to be bullied any more. You want feedback mister, you’re going to get it, big time.

I do hope you enjoyed the blog this week. The guy who looks after my internet site will be calling you tomorrow to give me a rating out of five. I assume you’ll give me full marks? Thank you.

Deck The Halls

It was time to put up the Christmas tree in our house this weekend, a time for family fun, laughter and jollity. The reality, though, is that here it’s been a more stress filled time than when I stripped naked, covered myself in chocolate truffles, and ran through a weight watchers convention. Unlike that memorable occasion, as far as the tree goes this year I haven’t got it licked yet.

Here’s the problem. I’m fed up with the real, freshly cut, trees that demand watering each day and then, ungratefully, drop their needles everywhere so they attach themselves to your carpet, curtains, clothes and even feet. I’ve lost count of the number of times in past years that Debbie’s asked me to cut my toe nails only to find I have half a Norwegian Spruce sticking to my bedsheets.

So this year I made an executive decision. No more cheating the environment of oxygen by cutting down a tree that was once used as an emergency toilet on a ski slope in the Alps. No more getting ripped off by someone who sets up for two weeks in our local car park and then is gone when the branches droop like the shoulders of someone who misses out in the January sales. No more watering and sweeping, no more finding needles in the carpet for months after. No more squeezing the thing out of the front door come January only to find the branches pinging back and firing their missiles in my eye.

This year I decided to get an artificial tree. After all, if God had wanted us to have real foliage in our house Robinson Crusoe would have hosted a makeover series, not written a diary.

But, my God, what a drawn out saga it turned out to be. The problem is that our hallway, where the tree stands, is massive with a high ceiling, and we usually get a ten foot high tree. I tried at least fourteen or fifteen web sites and found that all had sold out, apart from those that wanted over five hundred pounds in payment. Surprisingly they seemed full of unsold stock, despite their very generous offer of free postage. I don’t want a decoration that’s worth more than my house thank you.

Eventually I found a twelve foot high tree in B&Q, paid two hundred and fifty hard earned pounds, lugged it to the car and got it home. Excitedly I unpacked the boxes and started putting it together, taking about an hour to fluff out the branches. I was so proud and it looked magnificent - and then the boss returned home! Debbie decided with one look that it was too big and demanded it was taken down and returned. So I spent Sunday dismantling the scaffolding and packing away the bits of plastic, then trying to squeeze them all back in the boxes. Like all things at Christmas, it seemed to have put on a lot of weight.

And now we’re back to square one.

We have a ten foot high natural tree, bought from the usual dodgy geezer down the road, that demands water like a thirsty liquid fetishist in the desert, and we also have our usual free gift of a new carpet of pine needles all over the hallway. As is usual at Christmas, Debbie’s started asking me to cut my toe nails again, and I’ve booked my appointment with the optometrist for my eye check up in January when I’ll fight to get the dead wood out of our front door and in to the caring hands of the binmen.

Know what? It feels like a traditional Christmas. But next year, to save disappointment, I’m ordering a proper sized fake tree in July.

Labour Of Love

I’m having a bit of a rant this week I’m afraid, so those of a cheery disposition look away now.

An alien landing here on Wednesday will assume Britain is celebrating a public holiday.

Almost nothing, apart from politicians’ mouths and Eamonn Holmes’ fridge, will be open; no public buildings will be open, no operations will be carried out in hospitals, children will be walking the streets as no schools will be open for business, and if you want to illegally enter the UK to help the kids celebrate, there will be no border guards to stop you either. It will be a bit like this year’s Royal Wedding day but cost us a lot more. Britain will be on strike.

Why? Well that’s the problem, because I must admit I find it difficult to understand. I catch myself thinking that I’m missing something. The people who will be withdrawing their labour and taking the day off are all public sector workers who are hacked off about their future pensions being downgraded. Well, welcome to the club. I’m hacked off too, but I can’t strike.

I understand that a lot of these people don’t earn much money, and if they wanted to shout about getting better pay I’d give them wholehearted support. Everyone has the right to expect a decent salary for a day’s hard work. But these people are striking because they’ve been told their promised pensions will be lower and they will have to contribute more, something the self employed, like myself, have had to get used to over the past two years as we watch our carefully invested savings drop.

It’s easier to strike for a day when you have a degree of job security like those who are withdrawing labour on Wednesday, but others, the self employed, have none of this security at all. If we go on strike our clients simply find someone else and we never work for them again. But we accept that those are the rules of the game. The self employed work hard, deliver their best, and cross their fingers that they work again, all the while knowing that responsibility for their well being lies totally with themselves. No one else helps.

So, again, please tell me what I’m missing.

Public sector workers get paid when they are off work sick, the self employed don’t. These workers still have salaries paid in to their bank accounts when they’re on holiday, but that’s only a dream for self employed people who earn nothing while lying on the beach. As the Speedos go on, the earnings get turned off.

Public and private sector workers enjoy having an employer who pays extra contributions in to their pensions over and above what they themselves are saving, but those of us looking after ourselves don’t have that luxury. Every penny in our pensions has been paid in over the years by each individual alone, so the pain of watching the current financial situation decimate our potential retirement pots is more than worrying but, grudgingly, understandable against the current global backdrop.

So, these people who have safety nets beyond my wildest dreams are going on strike because they don’t feel they should have to suffer like the rest of us in a once in a lifetime global financial plummet. Doesn’t this just make them sound like the greedy bankers who feel they’re above the “we’re all in this together” mantra? Am I alone in agreeing that we all have to limit our horizons now? I don’t like it any more than anyone else, in fact I hate it, but I understand it.

Let me say again, anyone who is not being paid a fair wage for a day’s hard work has my full support and sympathy. But we all have to pause just now and take stock. The future may not be as bright as we had hoped and saved for, but we’re all suffering. Wednesday’s cancelled operations and closed schools simply mean we will all be suffering even more.

The Young Ones

I received an email via my web site this week from a very nice lady in the Philippines. She had just watched a video on YouTube of me hosting a quiz show from years ago and she decided to contact me to ask this question. “How’s your carer doing?”

I confess I did a double take. Yes, I know I am getting a bit older, but that’s the first time anyone has assumed I need help going to the bathroom. When it comes to putting on my support stockings and corset, or rubbing liniment in to my stiff old joints, I can manage by myself thank you but, after emailing her back, I discovered to my relief that it was simply a typo; she had meant to write “how’s your career doing?”. Phew.

It made me think, though, that it won’t be long before we’re all interviewing for carers whilst hoping our kids carry no grudges as they pick out our nursing home.

Thanks to the fact I stole some sweets from their Christmas stocking four years ago, mine tell me they’re going to choose one that smells of cabbage and wee and they’re going to tell matron that, despite any protestations or begging from me, I’m allergic to chocolate. Apparently they’re also going to furnish my room with nailed down chairs that face the wall and a TV set that can only pick up QVC Japan unless I put up their pocket money. Blackmail seems to suit them. When the time comes I will rest easy in the home reflecting that I’ve obviously done a good job of bringing them up.

I don’t think I mind the idea of getting old, in the same way I don’t mind the idea of waking up as a woman, or having a werewolf visit me in the middle of the night. There’s no point worrying because it’s just not going to happen. If God meant us to get old he wouldn’t have invented Wikipedia. There you can go in and change your date of birth and make yourself as old as Justin Bieber’s younger brother any time you want.

A close pal of mine asked me last week if I knew how to change Wiki entries and, like a good friend, I said I’d find out. Turns out it’s not that difficult, so he then he asked me to alter his entry. I guessed he wanted his age or marital status changed, or maybe I was to insert the lie that he was a male model in his spare time. But no, he wanted his “official” nationality altered. He was born while his parents were on holiday and he won’t accept that he, therefore, isn’t “properly” English by birth. Had his mum and dad been vacationing in Italy or The Seychelles he probably wouldn’t have minded but it seems he could no longer take the humiliation of having his Wiki entry begin “Welsh born....”. I’ve now fixed it and he’s happy to be “British born” though, being a Celt myself, I may revenge the Welsh by going back in and adding that he has haemorrhoids.

But age has its advantages. I had the privilege this week of being invited to a showcase for Norwegain singer Anita Skorgan, a lady who has served her apprenticeship and consequently doesn’t have that distracted, “look at me”, air about her when she talks to you. Anita sang four or five numbers, and she has so distilled down her song writing and vocal technique that I found myself with tears in my eyes.

And there’s the thing. When we’re younger, our choice of music is designed to get us dancing, snogging, impressing our friends or singing along, but with a bit of maturity we look for something more, and Anita has it in spades.

Mind you, now that I know how to change Wikipedia entries I may go in to her page and change just one thing. It states she’s represented Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest five times. No one should have to put up with that in the public domain, should they?

Yakkety Yak, Don't Talk Back

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.

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.

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.