Men like making lists. It's because we're all nerds with a deep seated OCD. In fact there's probably a top ten reasons why men liking lists. But I can't be bothered. So here are the ten things from 2010 that I just don't get:
1.Dance acts. Diversity et al. And it's not just them. I don't get the enduring popularity of Riverdance either.
2.Chat shows for anyone who appears in Gavin and Stacey. Rob Brydon, James Corden and Ruth Bloody Jones for crying out loud.
3.Louie Spence. A one trick pony who is just too desperate to be noticed.
4.Vince Cable. Remember how everyone used to think he was sooo clever in opposition but now think he's a dickhead.
5.Perfume ads. Nope, me neither. Haven't got a clue what they're all about. Apart from Lynx.
6.Downton Abbey. And Lark Rise to Candleford. And the remake of Upstairs Downstairs.
7.24. Lost. Prison Breakout. Pretty much anything that demands you have to watch every week for half the year just to see what's going on. (Note: Mad Men has half as many episodes.)
8.The Tea Party. Why is being racist and religious suddenly seen as 'a good thing'.
9.North Cornwall. All that Kensington-on-sea and Rick Stein imperialism. South Cornwall is so much cooler.
10.The England football team.
And what was good? Well, in my opinion, Mad Men and The Trip showed there is more to TV than reality shows. Toy Story 3 is the best sequel since Weekend at Bernie's II, Gareth Bale can have my children, cricket is cool again and quite right too, bands who play their own instruments are still there and trying their hardest and good luck to them, Costa Coffee's Flat White is delicious, Wikileaks, and having people say nice things about my blogs. Thank you once again.
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I have a small obsession (can you have a small obsession?) with bridges. I love them. Not as much as that bloke a few years ago who was arrested for trying to have sex with a pavement. But the hairs on the back of my neck bristle when I see a particularly wonderful feat of bridge building. In February I am going to Segovia where there is a fabulous viaduct. My daughter bought me a book of the world's greatest bridges and I am now determined to see them all. Any suggestions gratefully received.
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Went to the funeral of my mate's mum yesterday. It was a Jewish affair with a rabbi who speaks like Jackie Mason and a bleak, miserable graveyard with familiar names all around. You can tell a Jewish mourner. When you say 'how are you?' they answer 'what's the point of complaining.'
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I know it's never going to happen but I will put it on the record now that if I was to ever be offered an honour, from OBE to Knighthood to being made a Dame, then I would have no hesitation in refusing. And I have no respect for all these former rebels who accept a gong the moment they are offered one. Katherine Hamnett.
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The boiler keeps packing up, the dog spent yesterday being sick and someone (possibly Chinese) has hacked into my iTunes account and spent my £15 credit on some game downloads (in Chinese). Happy New Year everyone....Solly
Friday, 31 December 2010
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Tis the season to be Solly
There are the equivalent of eight Celebration-size Snickers in one full size Snickers bar. So why does one feel so much guiltier scoffing eight of the little ones than when eating a normal one? And no, I am not one of those old gits who still calls them Marathons. You know who you are!
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There is an obvious sadness when a friend dies, a different remote kind of sadness when it is an older, more distant relative and a strange, nostalgic sadness when it is a combination of both.
The mother of my oldest friend died yesterday. She was old and had suffered from Alzheimer's for years so it is one of those occasions where the immediate family felt a genuine sense of relief.
Although I hadn't seen her for many, many years and I have less than regular contact with the friend I have known since I was two years old, it still hit me when he rang to tell me.
It wasn't one of those teary conversations nor one of those where two grown men desperately try to show how manly they are. It was calm, matter of fact with a tinge of 'do you remember' thrown in.
Besides, I was in the middle of Epping Forest with the dog, it was raining and although you think you know the best things to say in such circumstances, the truth is you don't.
Charlie was the first child I met when my mum and dad bought their first house and we moved out of my grandparents' home. He lived across the road so we were forever in each other's houses, playing in the street or cycling to Valentine's Park.
My mum and his mum - Hilda, now there's a name from a different generation - looked after us while the other worked and took us to and from school.
So, in effect, I grew up with her. Charlie's dad died when he was seven or eight so she brought him up on her own, while holding down a full time job. Not the kind of thing you're aware of as a kid.
Even though Charlie lives the other side of town and does odd things like supports Arsenal, votes Conservative and doesn't live in debt like any normal person, and though we just about manage to see each other twice a year and speak now and again in between, your oldest friend is your oldest friend no matter what.
As we used to say in Gants Hill - I wish you long life Andrew 'Charlie' Mendelson.
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I missed Dr Who, I haven't seen or read any of the Harry Potter books or films and I'll skip the Sky Premier of Avatar thanks. After all it's just Dances With Wolves in blue paint. And the important thing is, they're for children and I'm 48 years old.
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It's not a resolution as such but next year I'm going to do more. Not work (though that's changing for me in many ways) but fun. My wife worked 50 weeks last year and I didn't do much less - although how much I actually work in that time is debatable. So I'm already booked to see two operas in the next couple of months, a One Day International at the Oval in the summer, Brian Wilson at the Festival Hall next September, a few days in Segovia with the missus, the Guineas meeting at Newmarket, a week in Scotland in the summer and I've joined the British Film Institute.
In between I hope to catch up with old friends so look out! - all the best, Solly
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There is an obvious sadness when a friend dies, a different remote kind of sadness when it is an older, more distant relative and a strange, nostalgic sadness when it is a combination of both.
The mother of my oldest friend died yesterday. She was old and had suffered from Alzheimer's for years so it is one of those occasions where the immediate family felt a genuine sense of relief.
Although I hadn't seen her for many, many years and I have less than regular contact with the friend I have known since I was two years old, it still hit me when he rang to tell me.
It wasn't one of those teary conversations nor one of those where two grown men desperately try to show how manly they are. It was calm, matter of fact with a tinge of 'do you remember' thrown in.
Besides, I was in the middle of Epping Forest with the dog, it was raining and although you think you know the best things to say in such circumstances, the truth is you don't.
Charlie was the first child I met when my mum and dad bought their first house and we moved out of my grandparents' home. He lived across the road so we were forever in each other's houses, playing in the street or cycling to Valentine's Park.
My mum and his mum - Hilda, now there's a name from a different generation - looked after us while the other worked and took us to and from school.
So, in effect, I grew up with her. Charlie's dad died when he was seven or eight so she brought him up on her own, while holding down a full time job. Not the kind of thing you're aware of as a kid.
Even though Charlie lives the other side of town and does odd things like supports Arsenal, votes Conservative and doesn't live in debt like any normal person, and though we just about manage to see each other twice a year and speak now and again in between, your oldest friend is your oldest friend no matter what.
As we used to say in Gants Hill - I wish you long life Andrew 'Charlie' Mendelson.
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I missed Dr Who, I haven't seen or read any of the Harry Potter books or films and I'll skip the Sky Premier of Avatar thanks. After all it's just Dances With Wolves in blue paint. And the important thing is, they're for children and I'm 48 years old.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not a resolution as such but next year I'm going to do more. Not work (though that's changing for me in many ways) but fun. My wife worked 50 weeks last year and I didn't do much less - although how much I actually work in that time is debatable. So I'm already booked to see two operas in the next couple of months, a One Day International at the Oval in the summer, Brian Wilson at the Festival Hall next September, a few days in Segovia with the missus, the Guineas meeting at Newmarket, a week in Scotland in the summer and I've joined the British Film Institute.
In between I hope to catch up with old friends so look out! - all the best, Solly
Thursday, 23 December 2010
Laying a Cable
I know there's a theory that we all start to look like our dogs, and that Jewish men marry women who then turn into his mother but did you see the pictures of Mrs Vince Cable dealing with reporters outside the family home this week? Blimey, it's Vince in a wig. The likeness is uncanny.
The papers helpfully described the house as a semi in Twickenham - which is what posh blokes usually get when turning up for corporate hospitality at the rugby. Boom boom.
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Apparently - and I didn't know this - if there is an accident in rehearsal for a Broadway show, the insurance companies only pay out once the show has opened (ie - after press night.)
So if dozens of the cast get killed as it builds up to the opening night, then tough. Anyone in the current Spider-man production had better watch out then.
You've gotta love them insurance companies.
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Metro, the free newspaper, printed a letter this morning from 'Ben, Manchester' who simply said: 'Merry Christmas to my favourite newspaper.'
Now, either this was a made up letter (and as someone who used to make up letters for the Sunday Sport then I can empathise), or it was from someone who genuinely wants to wish a newspaper Merry Christmas.
Sorry Ben, but if that's the case, you're mental.
It does remind me of the time that The Daily Star had its tenth anniversary and Kelvin Mackenzie sent them a letter saying: 'Happy 10th birthday to the Daily Star, a year for each of its readers.'
The Star printed the letter minus the last few words and made it the £10 Prize Letter though I'm pretty sure Kelvin rang up to complain that he never got his tenner.
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I didn't 'do' Christmas when I was growing up, and it's only since I've had kids that we've gone full pelt for the tree and presents and everything.
So I was always one of the first to volunteer to do the Christmas Day shift at The Sun when I was a freelance casual (that's a reporter who does shifts, not a football hooligan in an expensive track suit).
It was a good gig. You'd get double your money, you could go to the pub at lunchtime, do overtime and have very little to write. As long as the night news editor wasn't Barrie Mattei, who used to try and win our shift money back off us in a game of late night poker, then you came out of it quids in.
I think the most challenging thing I ever had to do was go to the Docklands home of Bros (Luke Goss and his brother whose name escapes me), chat to some of the fans who had camped outside in the hope of seeing the heart-throbs and get a token quote from the boys. They were fine, gave me five minutes, posed for a picture with a couple of female fans and that was it.
Happy days - Solly
The papers helpfully described the house as a semi in Twickenham - which is what posh blokes usually get when turning up for corporate hospitality at the rugby. Boom boom.
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Apparently - and I didn't know this - if there is an accident in rehearsal for a Broadway show, the insurance companies only pay out once the show has opened (ie - after press night.)
So if dozens of the cast get killed as it builds up to the opening night, then tough. Anyone in the current Spider-man production had better watch out then.
You've gotta love them insurance companies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Metro, the free newspaper, printed a letter this morning from 'Ben, Manchester' who simply said: 'Merry Christmas to my favourite newspaper.'
Now, either this was a made up letter (and as someone who used to make up letters for the Sunday Sport then I can empathise), or it was from someone who genuinely wants to wish a newspaper Merry Christmas.
Sorry Ben, but if that's the case, you're mental.
It does remind me of the time that The Daily Star had its tenth anniversary and Kelvin Mackenzie sent them a letter saying: 'Happy 10th birthday to the Daily Star, a year for each of its readers.'
The Star printed the letter minus the last few words and made it the £10 Prize Letter though I'm pretty sure Kelvin rang up to complain that he never got his tenner.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't 'do' Christmas when I was growing up, and it's only since I've had kids that we've gone full pelt for the tree and presents and everything.
So I was always one of the first to volunteer to do the Christmas Day shift at The Sun when I was a freelance casual (that's a reporter who does shifts, not a football hooligan in an expensive track suit).
It was a good gig. You'd get double your money, you could go to the pub at lunchtime, do overtime and have very little to write. As long as the night news editor wasn't Barrie Mattei, who used to try and win our shift money back off us in a game of late night poker, then you came out of it quids in.
I think the most challenging thing I ever had to do was go to the Docklands home of Bros (Luke Goss and his brother whose name escapes me), chat to some of the fans who had camped outside in the hope of seeing the heart-throbs and get a token quote from the boys. They were fine, gave me five minutes, posed for a picture with a couple of female fans and that was it.
Happy days - Solly
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Will Fevre, Rick Rees, Miss Carr, Di Wright
A topical Viz Top Tip: Convince your friends you've booked Christmas in Barbados by spending the night on the floor of Terminal Five.
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Serious debate on climate change is always welcome but when you start basing scientific arguments on something Jeremy Clarkson once said, then there really is no point in going on with the discussion.
Take, for example, that old chestnut about the Toyota Prius causing more damage to the environment than other cars because of the nickel in the battery coming from a factory that is destroying the landscape somewhere in Canada.
Now it's true that the factory is not the best gatekeeper for the environment and it does need to clean up and anyone who has a go at it has a fair point, in my opinion.
However, Toyota's order for nickel accounts for less than one per cent of its output. Pretty much every other carmaker has stainless steel which includes nickel bought from the same plant, though. And the bigger the car the more stainless steel it uses.
Not only that, the factory has been going for over 100 years and supplied nickel which went towards building the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Cathedral, so perhaps we should pull those down.
If anything, the fuss over the Prius has highlighted the way the plant disposes of chemicals and has helped it clean up its act a bit.
That isn't to say it's right but just that it's best not to base environmental opinions on Clarkson.
Mind you, if Southend ends up underwater because of global warming, is it such a bad thing? (Eh, Andy?)
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It's funny to read comments blaming Gordon Brown for everything from the snow to Heathrow being owned by a bunch of Spanish builders. I'm no fan of Brown's but it's worth noting that it wasn't the last government that sold Heathrow and other airports to the dodgy Senors but BAA's own shareholders.
And the reason BAA has its own shareholders is because it was privatised under Thatcher.
But I haven't got a reason not to blame Gordon for the weather turning a bit parky.
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The following contains adult language but no nudity or sexual content (a muted woohoo then).
Whenever a bunch of journalists get together the conversation eventually centres on a number of topics - who do we know who's just died, every new generation of hacks is not a patch on us gnarled, cynical, bitter and twisted veterans and anecdotes about who is the most famous person to have ever told us to fuck off.
I have been told this by John Prescott but that wins no prizes because in a room of 20 journalists, each with more than five years experience, at least 15 will have had the same. Particularly if they ever worked for News International, the Telegraph group, the BBC, Associated, Express Group or the Exchange and Mart.
I have also been told to fuck off by Jimmy Tarbuck. No biggie.
I also once invited Terry Venables to do the same but he was an absolute gentleman. I nabbed him outside Spurs' old training ground in Cheshunt and asked him to confirm that he was leaving his wife for a French girlfriend (which he was, incidentally.) He put his arm round me, smiled, and said he wouldn't comment. I told him I was a Spurs fan. He said he still wouldn't comment but hoped I was enjoying the season so far. I replied that I thought he was going to tell me to fuck off but he said he would never be so rude and that I was only doing my job and so on. Then we went on to win the cup so I have no complaints.
I have another story about the time David Norris, the simply wonderful former industrial editor of the Daily Mail, got so drunk he didn't recognise Tony Blair in the pub and told him to fuck off but that's enough four lettered anecdotal nostalgia for one day.
See ya, wouldn't want to be ya...Solly
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Serious debate on climate change is always welcome but when you start basing scientific arguments on something Jeremy Clarkson once said, then there really is no point in going on with the discussion.
Take, for example, that old chestnut about the Toyota Prius causing more damage to the environment than other cars because of the nickel in the battery coming from a factory that is destroying the landscape somewhere in Canada.
Now it's true that the factory is not the best gatekeeper for the environment and it does need to clean up and anyone who has a go at it has a fair point, in my opinion.
However, Toyota's order for nickel accounts for less than one per cent of its output. Pretty much every other carmaker has stainless steel which includes nickel bought from the same plant, though. And the bigger the car the more stainless steel it uses.
Not only that, the factory has been going for over 100 years and supplied nickel which went towards building the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Cathedral, so perhaps we should pull those down.
If anything, the fuss over the Prius has highlighted the way the plant disposes of chemicals and has helped it clean up its act a bit.
That isn't to say it's right but just that it's best not to base environmental opinions on Clarkson.
Mind you, if Southend ends up underwater because of global warming, is it such a bad thing? (Eh, Andy?)
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It's funny to read comments blaming Gordon Brown for everything from the snow to Heathrow being owned by a bunch of Spanish builders. I'm no fan of Brown's but it's worth noting that it wasn't the last government that sold Heathrow and other airports to the dodgy Senors but BAA's own shareholders.
And the reason BAA has its own shareholders is because it was privatised under Thatcher.
But I haven't got a reason not to blame Gordon for the weather turning a bit parky.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The following contains adult language but no nudity or sexual content (a muted woohoo then).
Whenever a bunch of journalists get together the conversation eventually centres on a number of topics - who do we know who's just died, every new generation of hacks is not a patch on us gnarled, cynical, bitter and twisted veterans and anecdotes about who is the most famous person to have ever told us to fuck off.
I have been told this by John Prescott but that wins no prizes because in a room of 20 journalists, each with more than five years experience, at least 15 will have had the same. Particularly if they ever worked for News International, the Telegraph group, the BBC, Associated, Express Group or the Exchange and Mart.
I have also been told to fuck off by Jimmy Tarbuck. No biggie.
I also once invited Terry Venables to do the same but he was an absolute gentleman. I nabbed him outside Spurs' old training ground in Cheshunt and asked him to confirm that he was leaving his wife for a French girlfriend (which he was, incidentally.) He put his arm round me, smiled, and said he wouldn't comment. I told him I was a Spurs fan. He said he still wouldn't comment but hoped I was enjoying the season so far. I replied that I thought he was going to tell me to fuck off but he said he would never be so rude and that I was only doing my job and so on. Then we went on to win the cup so I have no complaints.
I have another story about the time David Norris, the simply wonderful former industrial editor of the Daily Mail, got so drunk he didn't recognise Tony Blair in the pub and told him to fuck off but that's enough four lettered anecdotal nostalgia for one day.
See ya, wouldn't want to be ya...Solly
Monday, 20 December 2010
Where's Solly?
Anti-terrorism police arrested several men earlier today in Stoke, Cardiff and London. I read the story but I was still in a state of geographical bafflement. I mean, where on earth did they mean? Stoke? Cardiff? London? What are these strange places? If only someone, somewhere could print an illustrative example of cartography that could unravel this mystery. Thank heavens, then, for Her Majesty's Daily Mail online which rode to the rescue and published this map to accompany the story and thus, ensure that not a single one of its several million ex-pat readers would remain in the dark for a minute longer than necessary.
As published in Mail Online today (I know they will probably claim it's for foreign readers but pur-lease!)
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A PR pal called Mark Borkowski, stung by a £30 fine he received for cycling through a red light recently, has come up with a wheeze to support a charity in which £30 buys a year's education for a child in Zimbabwe. Simply break a minor law, don't get caught but, instead, pay the fine to the charity so your conscience is clear.
Of course, I wouldn't want to incite anyone to commit a crime by mentioning that if you shoplift £30 worth of goods from Topshop then pay the charity, the only person who loses is Philip Green and he could, perhaps, count it as going towards the multi-billion tax bill in this country he is legally avoiding while at the same time advising the government on how to cut costs - such as trebling tuition fees. So stealing from Topshop to give to charity would be helping education after all. Of course it's a scurrilous idea and I want nothing whatsoever to do with it. But the charity link is http://www.justgiving.com/educatechildrenzimbabwe
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Well done Tony McCoy. I know it's a crap award and has nothing to do with personality despite being called The Sports Personality of the Year Award, but at last it's gone to someone who rides horses but doesn't look like one. And well done Phil Taylor on coming second. He's from Stoke so look at the map above to find out where that is!
But it has led to the most hilarious conflict of views on the Guardian's website, with many railing against AP McCoy for having the best horses (and therefore it's nothing to do with him that he wins so many races) and that Phil Taylor is playing a game not a sport.
Right, AP McCoy gets good horses because he's a good jockey, possibly the best jump jockey ever. In fact, he often gets ordinary horses and makes them good. If trainers and owners thought anyone could ride their horses, they would simply book the cheapest pilot. Guardian readers who say Mark Cavendish should have won - bollocks. Though I admire the dedication and grit of cyclists (not to mention the homo erotic clothing, pharmaceutical expertise and self obsession), horse racing is more skilful. So too is darts. Cycling requires the fittest athletes in the world, which is tremendous, but it's all about being physically better than opponents, not more skilful. But then the discipline and regime to ride a horse - which AP does every day, not once a year in the French sunshine - is very similar to cyclists in some ways. He permanently exists at a stone and a half below his ideal weight and trains daily, often in great pain. If there is any argument against McCoy it is that he is a role model for anorexics.
As for Phil Taylor. He has dominated his sport in a way no one else has dominated their sport and not just this year but since John Major was in power.
For anyone who thinks either McCoy or Taylor should have lost out to a boxer who has beaten bums, a teenager who falls into a swimming pool or a very pretty girl who didn't even bother to go to the Commonwealth Games, then you try riding a horse over fences, or standing in front of 10,000 cheering drunks trying to get three darts in the same tiny space and see how difficult it is.
Bully for Tony and the Power....cheers, Solly
Saturday, 18 December 2010
The Solly and the Ivy
The old boiler's not working well at the moment. But she's good with the kids (with apologies to Tommy Cooper).
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And if that wasn't enough, it's snowing. It wasn't snowing when I dropped my daughter Naomi off but when I went to pick her up again it was a blizzard. Opening the boot of the car in poor visibility I banged my head on the rim and, I later discovered, had cut it quite badly.
Got to the end of our road, which is on a steep hill, and couldn't drive up it so dumped the car and Naomi and I walked up the hill, me dripping blood and carry a saxophone and three carrier bags.
In the car, she kindly looked up NHS Direct's advice on head injuries which said - and I paraphrase - if you're not unconscious, you should be all right.
However, I have so far managed to use the excuse of a dodgy bonce to avoid writing Christmas cards and make the dinner.
So I've decided to have a quiet night in, do my blog and finish off a bottle of Bailey's. Well it is Christmas.
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Having a sore head was not enough to get me out of walking the dog and what a bonus. I do believe that today, for one day only perhaps, Epping Forest could be the most beautiful place in the world.
It was one of those days when people were going into the forest just to see what it looked like. Lovely.
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The papers spent all week going on about how this weekend was going to be the busiest day for retail in years but they also spent all week going on about how the weather this weekend was going to be the worst in years. It doesn't take a genius to work out that you can't have both.
Brent Cross closed at 1pm today on what should have been one of its best days of the year. In Loughton, locally to me, there was the added problem of a power cut in the high street so the stores all closed.
The place was so quiet that the tanning salons had less than a 20 minute wait - well you can't go through Christmas without a bit of orange.
Ho ho snow...Solly
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And if that wasn't enough, it's snowing. It wasn't snowing when I dropped my daughter Naomi off but when I went to pick her up again it was a blizzard. Opening the boot of the car in poor visibility I banged my head on the rim and, I later discovered, had cut it quite badly.
Got to the end of our road, which is on a steep hill, and couldn't drive up it so dumped the car and Naomi and I walked up the hill, me dripping blood and carry a saxophone and three carrier bags.
In the car, she kindly looked up NHS Direct's advice on head injuries which said - and I paraphrase - if you're not unconscious, you should be all right.
However, I have so far managed to use the excuse of a dodgy bonce to avoid writing Christmas cards and make the dinner.
So I've decided to have a quiet night in, do my blog and finish off a bottle of Bailey's. Well it is Christmas.
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Having a sore head was not enough to get me out of walking the dog and what a bonus. I do believe that today, for one day only perhaps, Epping Forest could be the most beautiful place in the world.
It was one of those days when people were going into the forest just to see what it looked like. Lovely.
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The papers spent all week going on about how this weekend was going to be the busiest day for retail in years but they also spent all week going on about how the weather this weekend was going to be the worst in years. It doesn't take a genius to work out that you can't have both.
Brent Cross closed at 1pm today on what should have been one of its best days of the year. In Loughton, locally to me, there was the added problem of a power cut in the high street so the stores all closed.
The place was so quiet that the tanning salons had less than a 20 minute wait - well you can't go through Christmas without a bit of orange.
Ho ho snow...Solly
Friday, 17 December 2010
Chelsea Stagger
When does Santa ride a bicycle? Or climb a ladder come to that - surely he lands on roofs and goes down the chimney. So why do Christmas decorations in High Streets include St Nick cycling (and without a safety helmet I might add) and B&Q sell ones of him going up and down a ladder? I know there are more important things to rant about but this bugs me even more than perfume ads.
Who exactly came up with these ideas?
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Thought about doing one of those middle class card things this Christmas. Where you tell people you haven't seen for decades all about what the kids have been doing in the past year, as if they care. You know - little Chloe won a rosette at the gymkhana and Charlie got his first Asbo, that kind of thing.
But it's much more fun putting it on a blog, and it reminds you how nice it is to be able to embarrass your children once in a while. The eldest has already banned me from being a Facebook friend as a result.
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Went to Chelsea today for a posh festive lunch with the people we are going to be sharing an office with next year.
It's odd round here. Not a single house with a giant inflatable Homer-dressed-as-Santa attached to it and not a single cycling Santa.
Our new co-workers seem nice. They all drink, they all smoke, they all seem to be aged 30 or under and most of them are called Sophie as far as I can make out. They also wear very little, even in winter. I think I'm going to like working here.
I do feel the generation gap. I was chatting to one girl and the subject of football came up. She mentioned that her stepmother used to be married to a footballer. Someone famous? I asked. 'I've never heard of him' she answered, 'nor have any of my friends. I think he played a long time ago.'
'What's his name, try me" I replied.
'Malcolm Macdonald' she said.
Malcolm Bloody Macdonald! Supermac! Five goals for England against Cyprus (I was there, with my dad!) Did the 100 metres in some ridiculously fast time on Superstars. I mentioned all this, of course, and just got blank looks.
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I'm not a fan of The Apprentice or the contestants who, frankly, you wouldn't employ in a million years. But when I read that Sugar's pal Claude Littner had a go at Stuart Baggs for his now famous comment 'I'm Stuart Baggs the brand', I wondered: Just how many people have any idea who Littner is let alone ever remember a single thing he has ever said.
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Gillian McKeith is 51 and recommends various organic diets, holistic healing and healthy living. She looks like a hunchbacked walnut and pretends to faint all the time. Nigella Lawson is 50 and seems to eat nothing but butter, fat and cakes. She looks like the kind of woman who, if you could spend 20 minutes alone with her, you'd go in a boy and come out a man. Have you seen the way she licks a spoon?
I'd like to thank my wife for pointing this out to me.
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Kelvin Mackenzie was my editor at The Sun for six years. He gave me a bollocking most days along with everyone else at the paper. His insults were legendary. But it was the subtle ones that hurt the most. He once said to me, in an almost kindly voice: "Solly, you'd make a really good Daily Express reporter."
See ya (that's a bye-line!) - Solly
Who exactly came up with these ideas?
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Thought about doing one of those middle class card things this Christmas. Where you tell people you haven't seen for decades all about what the kids have been doing in the past year, as if they care. You know - little Chloe won a rosette at the gymkhana and Charlie got his first Asbo, that kind of thing.
But it's much more fun putting it on a blog, and it reminds you how nice it is to be able to embarrass your children once in a while. The eldest has already banned me from being a Facebook friend as a result.
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Went to Chelsea today for a posh festive lunch with the people we are going to be sharing an office with next year.
It's odd round here. Not a single house with a giant inflatable Homer-dressed-as-Santa attached to it and not a single cycling Santa.
Our new co-workers seem nice. They all drink, they all smoke, they all seem to be aged 30 or under and most of them are called Sophie as far as I can make out. They also wear very little, even in winter. I think I'm going to like working here.
I do feel the generation gap. I was chatting to one girl and the subject of football came up. She mentioned that her stepmother used to be married to a footballer. Someone famous? I asked. 'I've never heard of him' she answered, 'nor have any of my friends. I think he played a long time ago.'
'What's his name, try me" I replied.
'Malcolm Macdonald' she said.
Malcolm Bloody Macdonald! Supermac! Five goals for England against Cyprus (I was there, with my dad!) Did the 100 metres in some ridiculously fast time on Superstars. I mentioned all this, of course, and just got blank looks.
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I'm not a fan of The Apprentice or the contestants who, frankly, you wouldn't employ in a million years. But when I read that Sugar's pal Claude Littner had a go at Stuart Baggs for his now famous comment 'I'm Stuart Baggs the brand', I wondered: Just how many people have any idea who Littner is let alone ever remember a single thing he has ever said.
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Gillian McKeith is 51 and recommends various organic diets, holistic healing and healthy living. She looks like a hunchbacked walnut and pretends to faint all the time. Nigella Lawson is 50 and seems to eat nothing but butter, fat and cakes. She looks like the kind of woman who, if you could spend 20 minutes alone with her, you'd go in a boy and come out a man. Have you seen the way she licks a spoon?
I'd like to thank my wife for pointing this out to me.
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Kelvin Mackenzie was my editor at The Sun for six years. He gave me a bollocking most days along with everyone else at the paper. His insults were legendary. But it was the subtle ones that hurt the most. He once said to me, in an almost kindly voice: "Solly, you'd make a really good Daily Express reporter."
See ya (that's a bye-line!) - Solly
Thursday, 16 December 2010
Any complaints?
Got a Christmas card from my financial adviser. I'd send one back but I can't afford it.
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Rules for reading newspapers (continued)...if something has attracted more than 1,000 complaints then it isn't actually offensive, but the target of a carefully co-ordinated complaining campaign.
It's not just one side that does it. For every Daily Mail outrage at Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross there's one that has been just as orchestrated against Jan Moir.
This week is a good example. More than 5,000 people have complained against scantily clad dance routines on the X Factor final but you can be sure that most of these are people who didn't watch the show but read about it later, probably in the Daily Mail.
On the other side of the fence, something between 500 and 1,000 predominantly Guardian readers have complained to the PCC about Richard Littlejohn's column in the Mail in which he took the mickey out of a wheelchair-bound protestor at the student rally who got beaten up by a copper.
The trouble with these is that it's actually hard to work out what causes genuine offence and what does not. And by genuine offence, I mean how many people are simply enjoying the chance to complain about the X Factor because they don't like it.
Personally, I find it offensive that Simon Cowell completely controls it all and that bland, boring karaoke singers are exploited at the expense of genuine musicians and bands who deserve the chance to be signed to a record label but don't get the exposure.
Similarly, if the Littlejohn complaints were genuinely from the disabled and not just people who don't like him (and that's a lot of people!) then I'd be more likely to think it caused genuine offence.
For the record, I've never complained, officially, to either the ASA, Ofcom, the PCC, the BBC or CBeebies.
But they've provided me with a rich source of stories (well, not so much CBeebies, of course.)
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I watched It's A Wonderful Life last night. All of it. I've seen it before of course. I believe there are only 17 people over 30 in Britain who have never seen it. It is truly, truly, beautiful.
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Farewell to blogging to Iain Dale, the West Ham supporting, Conservative who - despite giving me at least two reasons in that description alone to dislike him - actually wrote a damn fine blog. I wish him luck with his radio show.
Talking of show, Larry King is retiring this week, to be replaced by Piers Morgan, which a lot of people think is a big deal.
But frankly, have you actually seen a Larry King show in the last few years? They make Michael Parkinson look like Jeremy Paxman quite frankly. They are the most appalling sycophantic displays and whatever you think of Piers, I reckon he's going to be a massive improvement.
Thank you and good night...Solly
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Rules for reading newspapers (continued)...if something has attracted more than 1,000 complaints then it isn't actually offensive, but the target of a carefully co-ordinated complaining campaign.
It's not just one side that does it. For every Daily Mail outrage at Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross there's one that has been just as orchestrated against Jan Moir.
This week is a good example. More than 5,000 people have complained against scantily clad dance routines on the X Factor final but you can be sure that most of these are people who didn't watch the show but read about it later, probably in the Daily Mail.
On the other side of the fence, something between 500 and 1,000 predominantly Guardian readers have complained to the PCC about Richard Littlejohn's column in the Mail in which he took the mickey out of a wheelchair-bound protestor at the student rally who got beaten up by a copper.
The trouble with these is that it's actually hard to work out what causes genuine offence and what does not. And by genuine offence, I mean how many people are simply enjoying the chance to complain about the X Factor because they don't like it.
Personally, I find it offensive that Simon Cowell completely controls it all and that bland, boring karaoke singers are exploited at the expense of genuine musicians and bands who deserve the chance to be signed to a record label but don't get the exposure.
Similarly, if the Littlejohn complaints were genuinely from the disabled and not just people who don't like him (and that's a lot of people!) then I'd be more likely to think it caused genuine offence.
For the record, I've never complained, officially, to either the ASA, Ofcom, the PCC, the BBC or CBeebies.
But they've provided me with a rich source of stories (well, not so much CBeebies, of course.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I watched It's A Wonderful Life last night. All of it. I've seen it before of course. I believe there are only 17 people over 30 in Britain who have never seen it. It is truly, truly, beautiful.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Farewell to blogging to Iain Dale, the West Ham supporting, Conservative who - despite giving me at least two reasons in that description alone to dislike him - actually wrote a damn fine blog. I wish him luck with his radio show.
Talking of show, Larry King is retiring this week, to be replaced by Piers Morgan, which a lot of people think is a big deal.
But frankly, have you actually seen a Larry King show in the last few years? They make Michael Parkinson look like Jeremy Paxman quite frankly. They are the most appalling sycophantic displays and whatever you think of Piers, I reckon he's going to be a massive improvement.
Thank you and good night...Solly
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
A pack of cards
Dear Solly, we have decided not to send you a Christmas card this year but to spend the marketing budget on buying a goat in Africa with the money we've saved....with love from your client.
Dear client - I'm happy not to get a mass produced Christmas card signed by Debbie in accounts who I've never met. But f**k the goat and spend the money on increasing our fees which haven't changed in more than five years - love Solly
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What is the collective noun for tabloid hacks? A galley of reporters perhaps. A pack of cards more like.
A veritable rabble of journos rolled up at the Mail on Sunday's Christmas party for contributors in posh Kensington on Tuesday night with loads of free champagne, nibbles and anecdotes. So that's where the money goes.
There's one thing such a group (a composition of reporters?) does well and that is tell stories and it was one of the nicest evenings I've spent with old friends in years.
True, many are now once-a-year acquaintances unfortunately, but it was good to bump into the multi talented Shekhar 'I can't believe it's not' Bhatia who writes for everyone from Eastern Eye to the Evening Standard and 'Our Man In Paris' Peter Allen who has some deliciously juicy gossip about Sarkozy that you suspect will only be printed once the little man pops his men-be-taller Chelsea boots.
Then there is the eternal Shan Lancaster, the first person who ever paid me a tip fee when I was a junior reporter on the Ilford Recorder and she was on The Sun. Something to do with Rod Stewart's house in Epping as I recall. And I got paid.
That was over 25 years ago and it helped persuade me that my future was not on Insight on The Sunday Times or as a foreign correspondent for The Observer but that I really did belong on a mass circulation tabloid. But like many of us gathered in High Street Ken on Monday night, we represented a generation who also knew when to get out while the going was good.
Shan's other half is a wonderful photographer called Roger Bamber who has spent the last couple of decades taking arty shots for the likes of The Guardian but during the 1970s was regularly taking pictures of Page Three girls for The Sun including, I was genuinely shocked to learn, 'Pussy Week In The Sun' in which each day a different girl was photographed with, yes, a cat.
However, what I hadn't realised was that this caused a strange retail phenomenon. Hundreds of girls in those days wanted to be page three models and all were told to turn up to a Sun audition with their own cat. Which meant that all over the country, pet shops were besieged by busty young beauties buying kittens.
If that was today, The Mail would probably report it as kind of strange feline cult leaving animal welfare charities bemused.
Now I know what the word is. A fabrication of tabloid journalists.
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According to the Daily Mail more than 5,000 people have complained about the outrageously sexy outfits and routines by Christina Aguilera and Rhianna on X Factor on Saturday night.
And if you didn't see the disgusting outfits and poses that has outraged the Mail, then the paper has helpfully provided pictures of them across the whole of pages 5 and 6 of the paper and will repeat them several times over the next few days and online. Just make sure you don't look at them before the 9pm watershed.
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Banks are busy at lunchtimes. Who'd have thought it? Well, not HSBfreakingC in Holborn, that's for sure. Rant over.
Toodle pip...Solly
Dear client - I'm happy not to get a mass produced Christmas card signed by Debbie in accounts who I've never met. But f**k the goat and spend the money on increasing our fees which haven't changed in more than five years - love Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is the collective noun for tabloid hacks? A galley of reporters perhaps. A pack of cards more like.
A veritable rabble of journos rolled up at the Mail on Sunday's Christmas party for contributors in posh Kensington on Tuesday night with loads of free champagne, nibbles and anecdotes. So that's where the money goes.
There's one thing such a group (a composition of reporters?) does well and that is tell stories and it was one of the nicest evenings I've spent with old friends in years.
True, many are now once-a-year acquaintances unfortunately, but it was good to bump into the multi talented Shekhar 'I can't believe it's not' Bhatia who writes for everyone from Eastern Eye to the Evening Standard and 'Our Man In Paris' Peter Allen who has some deliciously juicy gossip about Sarkozy that you suspect will only be printed once the little man pops his men-be-taller Chelsea boots.
Then there is the eternal Shan Lancaster, the first person who ever paid me a tip fee when I was a junior reporter on the Ilford Recorder and she was on The Sun. Something to do with Rod Stewart's house in Epping as I recall. And I got paid.
That was over 25 years ago and it helped persuade me that my future was not on Insight on The Sunday Times or as a foreign correspondent for The Observer but that I really did belong on a mass circulation tabloid. But like many of us gathered in High Street Ken on Monday night, we represented a generation who also knew when to get out while the going was good.
Shan's other half is a wonderful photographer called Roger Bamber who has spent the last couple of decades taking arty shots for the likes of The Guardian but during the 1970s was regularly taking pictures of Page Three girls for The Sun including, I was genuinely shocked to learn, 'Pussy Week In The Sun' in which each day a different girl was photographed with, yes, a cat.
However, what I hadn't realised was that this caused a strange retail phenomenon. Hundreds of girls in those days wanted to be page three models and all were told to turn up to a Sun audition with their own cat. Which meant that all over the country, pet shops were besieged by busty young beauties buying kittens.
If that was today, The Mail would probably report it as kind of strange feline cult leaving animal welfare charities bemused.
Now I know what the word is. A fabrication of tabloid journalists.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the Daily Mail more than 5,000 people have complained about the outrageously sexy outfits and routines by Christina Aguilera and Rhianna on X Factor on Saturday night.
And if you didn't see the disgusting outfits and poses that has outraged the Mail, then the paper has helpfully provided pictures of them across the whole of pages 5 and 6 of the paper and will repeat them several times over the next few days and online. Just make sure you don't look at them before the 9pm watershed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Banks are busy at lunchtimes. Who'd have thought it? Well, not HSBfreakingC in Holborn, that's for sure. Rant over.
Toodle pip...Solly
Monday, 13 December 2010
The Middle East: Less war war, more jaws jaws.
Special signs are being put up in the water to signify safe areas for swimming and diving at the popular resort of Sharm El Sheikh, according to a press release from the Egyptian Tourist authorities.
They are going to put the signs up in English, Arabic and French, because no one is quite sure what language sharks speak.
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A former decorator won X Factor. So he's used to watching paint dry. Now he knows how we feel.
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Golden rules of reading newspapers #73. If the headline in the Daily Mail ends with a question mark, the answer is invariably 'no'.
(See 'Are immigrants killing our swans?', 'Do gypsies give you cancer?', 'Can you get fat watching Jonathan Ross?' etc etc.)
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Shane Warne and Elizabeth Hurley were clearly having an affair, according to the press, after they had dinner with the newspaper owner Alexander Lebedev a few weeks ago and were 'all over each other.'
Which begs the question, why was the affair revealed by the News of the World and not the Independent or the Evening Standard whose owner is one Alexander Lebedev?
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Had our Christmas office party today, 25 of us which isn't bad considering we're a two man band. I've had a few drinks, so at least I have an excuse for any spelling mistakes (though that doesn't excuse every other day.)
As people who know me will attest, I'm not a big drinker. It's down to some gene shared by Jews and the Chinese apparently which means we don't build up much of an intolerance to alcohol even if we wanted to. And as for poor old Wang Yin Goldberg, he falls over at the merest sniff of a barmaid's apron. So a bottle of wine and a few Jack Daniels and I'm ready to take on the world, though there are few things more sobering than having to wait for a connecting tube at Leytonstone in December.
It was a good do. Many of those present work in the travel industry, as journalists or PRs. What strikes me about this particular business is that even the straight men are exceedingly camp, although they overcompensate - usually by getting married several times and leering after 48-year-old cruise ship specialists and anyone else in a low cut top (perhaps I should wear a suit next year.) Travel photographers tend to come in two types. The quiet, slow drunks who get all lachrymose and the loud, fast, drunks who shout at you even when they are standing two feet away.
Then there are the former heavy drinkers on the wagon who are not as much fun as a result, the morbid old soldiers who are not sure if they'll be here next year and a general impression that people simply don't drink, smoke or stay out as late as they used to.
Tomorrow night is the Mail on Sunday festive bash for freelances and I expect much of the same sentimental nonsense but with more expensive wine.
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According to my kids, pupils no longer shower after sports lessons because there's not enough time. When I expressed surprise that teachers don't insist on it, they said I was being old fashioned. As if being clean was sooooo 20th century!
Cheersshh....Sholly (hic)
They are going to put the signs up in English, Arabic and French, because no one is quite sure what language sharks speak.
--------------------------------------------------------------
A former decorator won X Factor. So he's used to watching paint dry. Now he knows how we feel.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Golden rules of reading newspapers #73. If the headline in the Daily Mail ends with a question mark, the answer is invariably 'no'.
(See 'Are immigrants killing our swans?', 'Do gypsies give you cancer?', 'Can you get fat watching Jonathan Ross?' etc etc.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Shane Warne and Elizabeth Hurley were clearly having an affair, according to the press, after they had dinner with the newspaper owner Alexander Lebedev a few weeks ago and were 'all over each other.'
Which begs the question, why was the affair revealed by the News of the World and not the Independent or the Evening Standard whose owner is one Alexander Lebedev?
--------------------------------------------------------------
Had our Christmas office party today, 25 of us which isn't bad considering we're a two man band. I've had a few drinks, so at least I have an excuse for any spelling mistakes (though that doesn't excuse every other day.)
As people who know me will attest, I'm not a big drinker. It's down to some gene shared by Jews and the Chinese apparently which means we don't build up much of an intolerance to alcohol even if we wanted to. And as for poor old Wang Yin Goldberg, he falls over at the merest sniff of a barmaid's apron. So a bottle of wine and a few Jack Daniels and I'm ready to take on the world, though there are few things more sobering than having to wait for a connecting tube at Leytonstone in December.
It was a good do. Many of those present work in the travel industry, as journalists or PRs. What strikes me about this particular business is that even the straight men are exceedingly camp, although they overcompensate - usually by getting married several times and leering after 48-year-old cruise ship specialists and anyone else in a low cut top (perhaps I should wear a suit next year.) Travel photographers tend to come in two types. The quiet, slow drunks who get all lachrymose and the loud, fast, drunks who shout at you even when they are standing two feet away.
Then there are the former heavy drinkers on the wagon who are not as much fun as a result, the morbid old soldiers who are not sure if they'll be here next year and a general impression that people simply don't drink, smoke or stay out as late as they used to.
Tomorrow night is the Mail on Sunday festive bash for freelances and I expect much of the same sentimental nonsense but with more expensive wine.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
According to my kids, pupils no longer shower after sports lessons because there's not enough time. When I expressed surprise that teachers don't insist on it, they said I was being old fashioned. As if being clean was sooooo 20th century!
Cheersshh....Sholly (hic)
Saturday, 11 December 2010
My name is Solly and I've got a link to Alcoholics Anonymous
Just caught that Matt Cardle singing on TV. Why did he have a band dressed as the Ku Klux Klan behind him? And One Direction. They're just five individual kids singing but not as a group. I don't get it, I really don't. Even JLS, who aren't great, seem a million times better. Am I missing something?
Also, when they are interviewed, all these X Factor contestants tell people (their old schoolmates, the audience, anyone who will listen) 'you can be who you want to be'. That's not true, is it? I want to be Paul Weller but it's not going to happen. Or Jay-Z sometimes. And my wife wants me to be Clive Owen. It's just not true, you can't be who you want to be.
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Did you know that on this day in 1934 the bloke who founded Alcoholics Anonymous had his last ever drink?
Some people have wars beginning or ending on their birthday. Others share their big day with movie stars, presidents and Nobel Prize winners.
I've got Cliff Michelmore and Brenda Lee. Nothing against Cliff and Brenda but no one under 40 has heard of them, and most people over 40 aren't quite sure either.
True, Teri Garr is also celebrating today and she did star in one of the best films of all time, One From The Heart. But it's not quite in the league of Gandhi or Mandela.
And Arthur Mullard died on this day too. According to Wikipedia. Better than Wikileaks - they just published a memo he wrote in 1978 in which he described Hilda Baker as an old slapper.
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We went to Woodbridge in Suffolk today, for my birthday. We wanted to get away from Christmas shopping crowds and that we did. Pub lunch, walk by the river - it was lovely. This isn't a part of the world I know well but I gather it's changed a bit over the years. My wife thinks she saw a black person but it remains an unconfirmed sighting at this stage.
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I never did go in for those lists of 'things to do before I die' or 'places to go before I'm 40' and so on. Particularly now I'm 37 years old!! Okay, 48. There are things I want to do - you know, the usual like write a book, have a foursome with all of Destiny's Child, go to Manaus, see Spurs win the league and then be killed by a piano falling on my head as if I was in a Buster Keaton film. But I'm realistic to know some things are unattainable - Manaus is quite expensive to get to I understand.
Instead of measuring these things in terms of significant birthdays, I tend to look at the kids growing up and realising that, while not wanting to wish their lives away, it's getting to the stage where we do less and less as a family. The eldest is unlikely to come on many more holidays with us and the others will soon be like that.
That's growing up. Both for them and us. But I've had a lovely birthday and it was with all of us so it was special.
Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes (isn't Facebook great for this sort of thing?) - Solly
Also, when they are interviewed, all these X Factor contestants tell people (their old schoolmates, the audience, anyone who will listen) 'you can be who you want to be'. That's not true, is it? I want to be Paul Weller but it's not going to happen. Or Jay-Z sometimes. And my wife wants me to be Clive Owen. It's just not true, you can't be who you want to be.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Did you know that on this day in 1934 the bloke who founded Alcoholics Anonymous had his last ever drink?
Some people have wars beginning or ending on their birthday. Others share their big day with movie stars, presidents and Nobel Prize winners.
I've got Cliff Michelmore and Brenda Lee. Nothing against Cliff and Brenda but no one under 40 has heard of them, and most people over 40 aren't quite sure either.
True, Teri Garr is also celebrating today and she did star in one of the best films of all time, One From The Heart. But it's not quite in the league of Gandhi or Mandela.
And Arthur Mullard died on this day too. According to Wikipedia. Better than Wikileaks - they just published a memo he wrote in 1978 in which he described Hilda Baker as an old slapper.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We went to Woodbridge in Suffolk today, for my birthday. We wanted to get away from Christmas shopping crowds and that we did. Pub lunch, walk by the river - it was lovely. This isn't a part of the world I know well but I gather it's changed a bit over the years. My wife thinks she saw a black person but it remains an unconfirmed sighting at this stage.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I never did go in for those lists of 'things to do before I die' or 'places to go before I'm 40' and so on. Particularly now I'm 37 years old!! Okay, 48. There are things I want to do - you know, the usual like write a book, have a foursome with all of Destiny's Child, go to Manaus, see Spurs win the league and then be killed by a piano falling on my head as if I was in a Buster Keaton film. But I'm realistic to know some things are unattainable - Manaus is quite expensive to get to I understand.
Instead of measuring these things in terms of significant birthdays, I tend to look at the kids growing up and realising that, while not wanting to wish their lives away, it's getting to the stage where we do less and less as a family. The eldest is unlikely to come on many more holidays with us and the others will soon be like that.
That's growing up. Both for them and us. But I've had a lovely birthday and it was with all of us so it was special.
Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes (isn't Facebook great for this sort of thing?) - Solly
Friday, 10 December 2010
Load of cobbles
This is my last day aged 47. Too old to skateboard, too young to vote Tory, that's me.
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Coronation Street Live...why? I mean, why live, not why Coronation Street. I know it's a gimmick designed to get viewers but what's the point? They've had a tram crashing off a viaduct into a shop - isn't that enough of a gimmick in the first place? It was very good incidentally but it won't make me watch Corrie regularly like I used to. And I can just picture lots of first-time viewers in the south east watching it and thinking 'a tram? Heavens, how deliciously northern' and then going back to EastEnders and watching it and saying 'an integrated token black family, how deliciously BBC.'
But I just don't see how it is enhanced in any way by making all the actors do it live so there is more chance of mistakes. It's not like watching a play on a stage for instance.
During my time on The Sun it was considered de rigueur to watch the soaps so that we would know who was who in various page leads and splashes about them - remember the Ken and Deirdre saga when she had an affair with Mike? Great stuff.
Mind you, if we ever used the phrase de rigueur Kelvin would sack us instantly.
But turning back to the soaps occasionally is quite a culture shock though at least Rita, Ken and Deirdre are still in Weatherfield. Aren't they?
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My daughter is, quite probably, going to be a student next year and quite possibly in Manchester where trams drive off viaducts into cobbled streets.
And though not everyone here will agree with me on this, if she ever decides to go on a protest march against this - or indeed any - government that decides to treble the cost of education, then I will be bloody proud of her, even if it turns into a riot.
I've already let my 14-year-old daughter protest outside a fur shop. And I hope they all become militant, and angry, and agitate about anything that they feel is unjust, unfair or wrong. It's their right and we should all do it more often. Even if we just do that Network thing of opening a window and shouting out 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more.'
Watching Charles and Camilla in that ridiculously ostentatious car (what's the mpg on that, your royal greenliness?) in their finery waving at the rioters while getting pelted with paint was quite the funniest thing I've seen in years on a news report. 'And you're an anarchist you say? How lovely, did you come far?'
And when that police chief said protesters were lucky not to get shot, I thought, blimey, is this a college campus in 1960s America or something? My mate commented: 'Have I woken up in Burma?' It really is that ridiculous.
Don't go moaning about how dangerous it was for our heir to the throne. Compared to being a Princess in a car driven by a drunken Frenchman, it wasn't really that bad was it?
Besides, he went on to watch Susan Boyle, N-Dubz, Take That and Jack Whitehall (who's even posher than the Queen) so an even greater ordeal was yet to come. And then he went home to bed with Camilla so you could argue the riot was the best bit of the whole evening for him.
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I get great enjoyment reading all the comments in the Daily Mail, Telegraph and indeed on Facebook about how awful these students are, how stupid they are and how they obviously don't deserve a free education. Particularly from all those readers who did enjoy a free education, didn't grow up texting and yet still can't tell the difference between 'they're' and 'their' and 'there.' Typos are one thing. Bad grammar something else.
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I'm going to spend my birthday in Suffolk with my family and come back in such a nice mood that tomorrow's blog will be all sweetness and light. There there...Solly
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Coronation Street Live...why? I mean, why live, not why Coronation Street. I know it's a gimmick designed to get viewers but what's the point? They've had a tram crashing off a viaduct into a shop - isn't that enough of a gimmick in the first place? It was very good incidentally but it won't make me watch Corrie regularly like I used to. And I can just picture lots of first-time viewers in the south east watching it and thinking 'a tram? Heavens, how deliciously northern' and then going back to EastEnders and watching it and saying 'an integrated token black family, how deliciously BBC.'
But I just don't see how it is enhanced in any way by making all the actors do it live so there is more chance of mistakes. It's not like watching a play on a stage for instance.
During my time on The Sun it was considered de rigueur to watch the soaps so that we would know who was who in various page leads and splashes about them - remember the Ken and Deirdre saga when she had an affair with Mike? Great stuff.
Mind you, if we ever used the phrase de rigueur Kelvin would sack us instantly.
But turning back to the soaps occasionally is quite a culture shock though at least Rita, Ken and Deirdre are still in Weatherfield. Aren't they?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
My daughter is, quite probably, going to be a student next year and quite possibly in Manchester where trams drive off viaducts into cobbled streets.
And though not everyone here will agree with me on this, if she ever decides to go on a protest march against this - or indeed any - government that decides to treble the cost of education, then I will be bloody proud of her, even if it turns into a riot.
I've already let my 14-year-old daughter protest outside a fur shop. And I hope they all become militant, and angry, and agitate about anything that they feel is unjust, unfair or wrong. It's their right and we should all do it more often. Even if we just do that Network thing of opening a window and shouting out 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more.'
Watching Charles and Camilla in that ridiculously ostentatious car (what's the mpg on that, your royal greenliness?) in their finery waving at the rioters while getting pelted with paint was quite the funniest thing I've seen in years on a news report. 'And you're an anarchist you say? How lovely, did you come far?'
And when that police chief said protesters were lucky not to get shot, I thought, blimey, is this a college campus in 1960s America or something? My mate commented: 'Have I woken up in Burma?' It really is that ridiculous.
Don't go moaning about how dangerous it was for our heir to the throne. Compared to being a Princess in a car driven by a drunken Frenchman, it wasn't really that bad was it?
Besides, he went on to watch Susan Boyle, N-Dubz, Take That and Jack Whitehall (who's even posher than the Queen) so an even greater ordeal was yet to come. And then he went home to bed with Camilla so you could argue the riot was the best bit of the whole evening for him.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I get great enjoyment reading all the comments in the Daily Mail, Telegraph and indeed on Facebook about how awful these students are, how stupid they are and how they obviously don't deserve a free education. Particularly from all those readers who did enjoy a free education, didn't grow up texting and yet still can't tell the difference between 'they're' and 'their' and 'there.' Typos are one thing. Bad grammar something else.
------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm going to spend my birthday in Suffolk with my family and come back in such a nice mood that tomorrow's blog will be all sweetness and light. There there...Solly
Thursday, 9 December 2010
It's All Academic
According to a story today, not one we wrote, married couples who have regular sex (with each other I presume) are happier and stay together longer.
I mentioned this to my wife. She pointed out that once every two months is very regular. Regular as clockwork. So that's why I'm so happy.
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Education is a right not a privilege. So to charge students £9,000 a year is simply wrong. Guess who's got a daughter coming up for university then? But supposing we assume the government needs the extra money to pay for our education system. Here's my ten point plan to raising the funds.
1.Tax anyone doing media studies the full £9,000. Of course.
2.Housewives with degrees. Tax all women who slaved for three years to get a degree only to then go and marry a rich man and stay at home, supposedly looking after the kids and joining book clubs. Tax them £9k a year - their husbands can afford it. It's the cost of a couple of decent handbags and a pair of Jimmy Choo's plus a weekly sesh at the Manhattan Nail Bar (Loughton branch.) Call it The Milf Round or a Cougar Tax to make it go up the rankings on a search engine. Catching the women is easy. Send hit squads to hang around double yellow lines near schools, wait for a 4x4 to park badly and for a woman with dyed hair and wearing Uggs to get out then pounce. Alternatively, raid Costa Coffee at around 9.15am on a weekday morning and round up everyone inside. Failing that, get them at the David Lloyd a little later.
3.Sir Philip Green, Vodafone and every company worth billions who pay less tax than those on the minimum wage. Tax them on every penny they have avoided through legal loopholes and give it to students.
4.Any student who wears one of them PLO/Hamas-style red and white (or black and white) scarf shawl things as a fashion statement. Unless they really are in Hamas of course. Make them pay the full £9k tuition fee. Then punch them.
5.Make all footballers pay a bad taste tax on tinted windows, blacked out wheels, monogrammed leather seats, chrome paintwork and any other car 'improvement.' And all those who wear snoods too.
6.Tax any man who wears Crocs. Or those quilted jackets with a corduroy collar.
7.All those students who went to Twickenham today to watch the Oxford-Cambridge rugby match instead of going on the march. Tax them and their parents.
8.Any celebrity who has ever been awarded one of those ridiculous 'honorary degrees' in a vain bid to get that university into the paper should be made to sponsor 10 students a year at that university for the rest of his or her life, whether it's Billy Connolly or Nelson Mandela (but better if it's someone younger because then the sponsorship will last longer). And cut the funding of the university that pulls this lame stunt.
9.Tax all members of the Bullingdon Club and any similar organisation. Then punch them too.
10.Tax Sir Philip Green. Again. Just for the hell of it. Call it The Wanker Tax. Then extend it to Simon Cowell, Michael Winner and Alan Sugar.
Problem solved. Next!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Why do masons all dress the same in very distinct outfits of black jackets, pin stripe trousers and carry those ostentatious big square briefcases? I thought it was supposed to be a secret society. The Mutant Arms, my local, was full of them again today. Some of them even had matching boaters on. Most bizarre.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe it's just me but I don't get this fascination with David Walliams' missus, Lara Stone. She's just been voted model of the year. A model for what? Methodone? Fence posts? Not a role model surely. I know they are thin - we work up the road from Premier Models and from The Mutant we see them on the street smoking and the male models pulling those faces like Ben Stiller in Zoolander.
But Lara Stone looks like a hollowed out skeleton who needs a good dentist and a good meal. She's a model but she's not looking good.
Air kiss, mwah....Solly
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I mentioned this to my wife. She pointed out that once every two months is very regular. Regular as clockwork. So that's why I'm so happy.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Education is a right not a privilege. So to charge students £9,000 a year is simply wrong. Guess who's got a daughter coming up for university then? But supposing we assume the government needs the extra money to pay for our education system. Here's my ten point plan to raising the funds.
1.Tax anyone doing media studies the full £9,000. Of course.
2.Housewives with degrees. Tax all women who slaved for three years to get a degree only to then go and marry a rich man and stay at home, supposedly looking after the kids and joining book clubs. Tax them £9k a year - their husbands can afford it. It's the cost of a couple of decent handbags and a pair of Jimmy Choo's plus a weekly sesh at the Manhattan Nail Bar (Loughton branch.) Call it The Milf Round or a Cougar Tax to make it go up the rankings on a search engine. Catching the women is easy. Send hit squads to hang around double yellow lines near schools, wait for a 4x4 to park badly and for a woman with dyed hair and wearing Uggs to get out then pounce. Alternatively, raid Costa Coffee at around 9.15am on a weekday morning and round up everyone inside. Failing that, get them at the David Lloyd a little later.
3.Sir Philip Green, Vodafone and every company worth billions who pay less tax than those on the minimum wage. Tax them on every penny they have avoided through legal loopholes and give it to students.
4.Any student who wears one of them PLO/Hamas-style red and white (or black and white) scarf shawl things as a fashion statement. Unless they really are in Hamas of course. Make them pay the full £9k tuition fee. Then punch them.
5.Make all footballers pay a bad taste tax on tinted windows, blacked out wheels, monogrammed leather seats, chrome paintwork and any other car 'improvement.' And all those who wear snoods too.
6.Tax any man who wears Crocs. Or those quilted jackets with a corduroy collar.
7.All those students who went to Twickenham today to watch the Oxford-Cambridge rugby match instead of going on the march. Tax them and their parents.
8.Any celebrity who has ever been awarded one of those ridiculous 'honorary degrees' in a vain bid to get that university into the paper should be made to sponsor 10 students a year at that university for the rest of his or her life, whether it's Billy Connolly or Nelson Mandela (but better if it's someone younger because then the sponsorship will last longer). And cut the funding of the university that pulls this lame stunt.
9.Tax all members of the Bullingdon Club and any similar organisation. Then punch them too.
10.Tax Sir Philip Green. Again. Just for the hell of it. Call it The Wanker Tax. Then extend it to Simon Cowell, Michael Winner and Alan Sugar.
Problem solved. Next!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Why do masons all dress the same in very distinct outfits of black jackets, pin stripe trousers and carry those ostentatious big square briefcases? I thought it was supposed to be a secret society. The Mutant Arms, my local, was full of them again today. Some of them even had matching boaters on. Most bizarre.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Maybe it's just me but I don't get this fascination with David Walliams' missus, Lara Stone. She's just been voted model of the year. A model for what? Methodone? Fence posts? Not a role model surely. I know they are thin - we work up the road from Premier Models and from The Mutant we see them on the street smoking and the male models pulling those faces like Ben Stiller in Zoolander.
But Lara Stone looks like a hollowed out skeleton who needs a good dentist and a good meal. She's a model but she's not looking good.
Air kiss, mwah....Solly
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
Secret Santa and Sugar
I take it all back. The best Wikileaks joke - with thanks to Martin Orpen and about a million people on Twitter - is:
Freedom of speech - priceless. For everything else there's Mastercard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For 17 years I have worked as part of a two man band. No secretaries, support staff, admin, bosses or serfs. Okay, so it means we have our Christmas parties in a phone box and the annual day out is quite cheap. And though we have shared our offices with various PR oddballs and freelances, it has allowed us a lot of autonomy.
But in the New Year that is going to change, at least in part, as we move to a four storey building where we are expected to mingle and interact with, gulp, OTHER PEOPLE.
We have had our first taste of what to expect by being invited to participate in our prospective new office's secret Santa. I've never been entirely familiar with this concept but I'm learning.
We have been told who we have to spend a fiver on and that someone we have never met is spending a fiver on us. I have to buy something for this bloke who sold his last company (Pet Plan actually) for £30 million. What do you get a man who has everything. Especially when you've only got a fiver to spend. I don't even know if he likes football so that rules out pretty much everything I can ever think of to buy a bloke.
At least Beyonce bought Jay-Z a £1.3 million sports car. As if she wasn't perfect enough already! She could buy me a packet of crisps and I'd still be prepared to make her the third Mrs Solomons. Only joking Sue (she's the same about Clive Owen by the way.)
Back to our new office. The portents aren't good. It starts with Secret Santa and I bet within a month we'll be expected to buy everyone cupcakes whenever there's a birthday. Still, there's the office party next week with our new colleagues and it will be nice to pull a cracker with someone else for a change.
------------------------------------------------------------
I now realise I'm the last person in Britain who knew that one of the X Factor acts is called Wand Erection.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I used to like Alan Sugar. Really I did. Not just because he rescued my football team from financial ruin, or that he came from the East End and moved to Essex. He just seemed to be a genuine grafter who came up the hard way, as he continually points out.
Even the fact his company was Amstrad didn't dent his likeability. Someone I know had a summer job at the Amstrad factory in the 1980s. Their job was to send out new machines to all the people who sent their failed old ones in. Some were on their fourth or fifth and would send letters begging for their money back rather than yet another computer. The instructions were to send them a new one.
The point is, and I realise an awful lot of people out there came to this conclusion a long time ago, but he's not a very likeable person any more (any more?) I don't think he's as clever as he thinks he is. His rags to riches shtick is a bit boring now and he's really not that funny or charming even though he thinks this is why people like him.
Neither does he seem particularly genuine these days. I met him now and again and he was okay. I remember getting him to write a piece on Thatcher when she got kicked out by her own party and he fawned over her in 500 words. That was before he put his head up Blair and Brown's backside, subsequently becoming Lord Sugar and joining the government not long before they got kicked out too.
But now he seems to go on Twitter every five minutes to slag someone off. Fine, Chris Evans and that Kirstie woman who sells houses are fair game but the insults are generally juvenile, on a level with calling someone fatty or poo poo head.
I think the problem may be Nick Hewer, his terminally nice right hand man. In the old days, all Sugar's public utterings went through Nick (Nick hated football and when Sugar took over Spurs, realising I was a fan, he used to ring me up and ask me what I thought of various players so he could bring them into a conversation with Sugar). Now that Sugar has access to Twitter he's like a child with a toy and can say what he likes without the sensible Nick being able to temper it.
Thus Sugar now comes across as a pastiche of a grumpy old millionaire who thinks he is incredibly witty and urbane but is more Kim Wilde than Oscar Wilde (I wish I could think of a better example of someone called either Oscar or Wilde. Kim's not that bad.)
Oh well, I'm fired....Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom of speech - priceless. For everything else there's Mastercard.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
For 17 years I have worked as part of a two man band. No secretaries, support staff, admin, bosses or serfs. Okay, so it means we have our Christmas parties in a phone box and the annual day out is quite cheap. And though we have shared our offices with various PR oddballs and freelances, it has allowed us a lot of autonomy.
But in the New Year that is going to change, at least in part, as we move to a four storey building where we are expected to mingle and interact with, gulp, OTHER PEOPLE.
We have had our first taste of what to expect by being invited to participate in our prospective new office's secret Santa. I've never been entirely familiar with this concept but I'm learning.
We have been told who we have to spend a fiver on and that someone we have never met is spending a fiver on us. I have to buy something for this bloke who sold his last company (Pet Plan actually) for £30 million. What do you get a man who has everything. Especially when you've only got a fiver to spend. I don't even know if he likes football so that rules out pretty much everything I can ever think of to buy a bloke.
At least Beyonce bought Jay-Z a £1.3 million sports car. As if she wasn't perfect enough already! She could buy me a packet of crisps and I'd still be prepared to make her the third Mrs Solomons. Only joking Sue (she's the same about Clive Owen by the way.)
Back to our new office. The portents aren't good. It starts with Secret Santa and I bet within a month we'll be expected to buy everyone cupcakes whenever there's a birthday. Still, there's the office party next week with our new colleagues and it will be nice to pull a cracker with someone else for a change.
------------------------------------------------------------
I now realise I'm the last person in Britain who knew that one of the X Factor acts is called Wand Erection.
-------------------------------------------------------------
I used to like Alan Sugar. Really I did. Not just because he rescued my football team from financial ruin, or that he came from the East End and moved to Essex. He just seemed to be a genuine grafter who came up the hard way, as he continually points out.
Even the fact his company was Amstrad didn't dent his likeability. Someone I know had a summer job at the Amstrad factory in the 1980s. Their job was to send out new machines to all the people who sent their failed old ones in. Some were on their fourth or fifth and would send letters begging for their money back rather than yet another computer. The instructions were to send them a new one.
The point is, and I realise an awful lot of people out there came to this conclusion a long time ago, but he's not a very likeable person any more (any more?) I don't think he's as clever as he thinks he is. His rags to riches shtick is a bit boring now and he's really not that funny or charming even though he thinks this is why people like him.
Neither does he seem particularly genuine these days. I met him now and again and he was okay. I remember getting him to write a piece on Thatcher when she got kicked out by her own party and he fawned over her in 500 words. That was before he put his head up Blair and Brown's backside, subsequently becoming Lord Sugar and joining the government not long before they got kicked out too.
But now he seems to go on Twitter every five minutes to slag someone off. Fine, Chris Evans and that Kirstie woman who sells houses are fair game but the insults are generally juvenile, on a level with calling someone fatty or poo poo head.
I think the problem may be Nick Hewer, his terminally nice right hand man. In the old days, all Sugar's public utterings went through Nick (Nick hated football and when Sugar took over Spurs, realising I was a fan, he used to ring me up and ask me what I thought of various players so he could bring them into a conversation with Sugar). Now that Sugar has access to Twitter he's like a child with a toy and can say what he likes without the sensible Nick being able to temper it.
Thus Sugar now comes across as a pastiche of a grumpy old millionaire who thinks he is incredibly witty and urbane but is more Kim Wilde than Oscar Wilde (I wish I could think of a better example of someone called either Oscar or Wilde. Kim's not that bad.)
Oh well, I'm fired....Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 7 December 2010
Mock the Wiki
Apparently there's a new site where some old woman is giving away all the secrets to Strictly Come Dancing votes. It's called Widileaks.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you noticed how many anti-Facebook stories there are in the Daily Mail recently? I counted three yesterday and two today plus another general one about how emails give you cancer, or something like that.
I shouldn't complain. For a start I spend far too long on Facebook and secondly, we actually write some of those stories.
But it is funny how the Mail combines its reliance on the internet - its website is one of the most popular news sites in the world and delivers a refreshngly upbeat account of what Kim Kardashian is wearing at any one time - with an old fashioned, retired Colonel's attitude to anything modern.
'Facebook? It's all tosh. In my day, the only way to update your status was to marry into money.'
'Email? What's wrong with talking to people.'
'Wikileaks? How dare they expose secret behaviour that we have used for hundreds of years to subjugate the colonies?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Went to meet a contact in a tiny pub hidden in a mews in Mayfair, before he - the contact - went to a real life Ambassador's Party, at the Argentine Embassy, complete with pyramids of chocolates. This is a strange part of town. Posher than posh, the last time I was in these tiny backstreets was many years ago when I was looking for prostitutes. In particular, I was looking for high class hookers who might have slept with Jeffrey Archer though I ended up having a chat with Stirling Moss. As you do.
In those days the homes round here were lived in by Arabs and the odd celebrity or Sir Clive Sinclair. Now, the accents are mainly East European. Things change I guess.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have inquisitive children, forever asking me to explain things to them that I do not understand myself but can often bluff my way through. History, politics, sport. But have you ever tried to explain 'Allo 'Allo to a 14-year-old? Give me quantum physics any time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just when I thought I couldn't love Morrissey any more than I already do, the former Smiths frontman goes and rants against David Cameron and makes me love him even more. What's more, he has agreed with Johnny Marr for the first time in years. Both hate the fact Cameron claims to be a Smiths fan.
David Cameron used to think Eton Rifles was a tribute to his old school. The man's a wanker. Not because he's a Tory - I believe there are a lot more intelligent Conservatives than he. I remember Cameron when he was PR for Carlton Communications, as it was then. I asked him a question and he lied to me. I've never trusted him since then. And it's not just me. Look up what Jeff Randall says about him - it's online somewhere. And Jeff's not exactly anti-Tory.
Back to The Smiths. Never has one band provided so many good choices for songs to play at my funeral. There Is A Light, First of the Gang to Die, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. But perhaps most appropriate of all, You're The One For Me Fatty.
I'll blog tomorrow, when Bigmouth Strikes Again...cheers, Solly
------------------------------------------------------------------
Have you noticed how many anti-Facebook stories there are in the Daily Mail recently? I counted three yesterday and two today plus another general one about how emails give you cancer, or something like that.
I shouldn't complain. For a start I spend far too long on Facebook and secondly, we actually write some of those stories.
But it is funny how the Mail combines its reliance on the internet - its website is one of the most popular news sites in the world and delivers a refreshngly upbeat account of what Kim Kardashian is wearing at any one time - with an old fashioned, retired Colonel's attitude to anything modern.
'Facebook? It's all tosh. In my day, the only way to update your status was to marry into money.'
'Email? What's wrong with talking to people.'
'Wikileaks? How dare they expose secret behaviour that we have used for hundreds of years to subjugate the colonies?'
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Went to meet a contact in a tiny pub hidden in a mews in Mayfair, before he - the contact - went to a real life Ambassador's Party, at the Argentine Embassy, complete with pyramids of chocolates. This is a strange part of town. Posher than posh, the last time I was in these tiny backstreets was many years ago when I was looking for prostitutes. In particular, I was looking for high class hookers who might have slept with Jeffrey Archer though I ended up having a chat with Stirling Moss. As you do.
In those days the homes round here were lived in by Arabs and the odd celebrity or Sir Clive Sinclair. Now, the accents are mainly East European. Things change I guess.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I have inquisitive children, forever asking me to explain things to them that I do not understand myself but can often bluff my way through. History, politics, sport. But have you ever tried to explain 'Allo 'Allo to a 14-year-old? Give me quantum physics any time.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Just when I thought I couldn't love Morrissey any more than I already do, the former Smiths frontman goes and rants against David Cameron and makes me love him even more. What's more, he has agreed with Johnny Marr for the first time in years. Both hate the fact Cameron claims to be a Smiths fan.
David Cameron used to think Eton Rifles was a tribute to his old school. The man's a wanker. Not because he's a Tory - I believe there are a lot more intelligent Conservatives than he. I remember Cameron when he was PR for Carlton Communications, as it was then. I asked him a question and he lied to me. I've never trusted him since then. And it's not just me. Look up what Jeff Randall says about him - it's online somewhere. And Jeff's not exactly anti-Tory.
Back to The Smiths. Never has one band provided so many good choices for songs to play at my funeral. There Is A Light, First of the Gang to Die, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want. But perhaps most appropriate of all, You're The One For Me Fatty.
I'll blog tomorrow, when Bigmouth Strikes Again...cheers, Solly
Monday, 6 December 2010
Ashes to ashes
Delia, eh? She can cook, she's rich and she owns a football club. She even writes and if you follow her recipes, guess what? They work. Is there anything more a man could ask for in a woman? She may not have Nigella's eroticism but then she didn't have a famous dad to help her on her way either.
------------------------------------------------------------------
This is how it works. You are, basically, a football writer who gets given the title of 'chief sports correspondent' or similar, of a national paper. You've never really had that much time for cricket but the choice is going to Australia in December or staying at home and going to Manchester only to find the game cancelled. It's a no-brainer.
What this means, for readers of tabloid and midmarket newspapers in particular, is that instead of getting insightful cricket coverage by someone who has grown up with the game, you get platitudes from someone whose real love is West Ham. Nothing against West Ham but just as I don't have any interest in reading Mike Atherton or Derek Pringle's account of West Brom versus Newcastle, neither do I want to read the latest piece about the Ashes by someone who has to go on to Google to look up Googly.
It's not like I don't like these guys. I was at school with half of them, as were some of you reading this, but, let's face it, they're on a jolly and overshadowing the genuine cricket writers employed by the papers in question.
And they overcompensate. They look up so many cricket expressions and terminology that their pieces are overladen with references to opening up the bat and wrist spinners versus off spinners and urbane nods to former greats of the game that emphasise the fact that, yes, they really have liked cricket for years and years, really. Even though I don't remember any of the Ilford County old boys being particularly into it when we were at school together.
I don't blame them either. An all expenses trip to Australia during a summer Down Under, all expenses paid, which gets them out of having to go Christmas shopping, who wouldn't?
The chief sports writers even have this semi-secret club called The Grand Dukes where every time they get a plum foreign job, one of them chooses the best restaurant in town to go to and they all pile in.
That is why, if you ever see that Sky show Hold The Back Page, everyone who is on it is the size of a house.
-------------------------------------------------------
Good grief, ITV are reporting on the Corrie crash as if it's a real incident. The world's gone mad, I tells yer. Mind you, it's the first time I've watched it in years and it was good. Better than Extreme Fisting with Robson Green which I totally misread. Turns out he's angling.
-------------------------------------------------------
There's some argument that Wikileaks is going to make it harder for diplomats to do their job correctly in future. My tuppenceworth is this. If a diplomat doesn't do what he considers to be the right thing because he is worried people will find out about it, then perhaps what he, or she, is planning to do is not the right thing after all.
-------------------------------------------------------
Two million people are thinking of switching from public transport to their cars next year because of fare rises, delays and congestion. As if. I got a Virgin train to and from Manchester today and a number 20 bus from Walthamstow (you see the world differently from the top of a London bus.) Both were brilliant. I know, it's not much of a rant but that's how it is sometimes.
Ding ding...Solly
------------------------------------------------------------------
This is how it works. You are, basically, a football writer who gets given the title of 'chief sports correspondent' or similar, of a national paper. You've never really had that much time for cricket but the choice is going to Australia in December or staying at home and going to Manchester only to find the game cancelled. It's a no-brainer.
What this means, for readers of tabloid and midmarket newspapers in particular, is that instead of getting insightful cricket coverage by someone who has grown up with the game, you get platitudes from someone whose real love is West Ham. Nothing against West Ham but just as I don't have any interest in reading Mike Atherton or Derek Pringle's account of West Brom versus Newcastle, neither do I want to read the latest piece about the Ashes by someone who has to go on to Google to look up Googly.
It's not like I don't like these guys. I was at school with half of them, as were some of you reading this, but, let's face it, they're on a jolly and overshadowing the genuine cricket writers employed by the papers in question.
And they overcompensate. They look up so many cricket expressions and terminology that their pieces are overladen with references to opening up the bat and wrist spinners versus off spinners and urbane nods to former greats of the game that emphasise the fact that, yes, they really have liked cricket for years and years, really. Even though I don't remember any of the Ilford County old boys being particularly into it when we were at school together.
I don't blame them either. An all expenses trip to Australia during a summer Down Under, all expenses paid, which gets them out of having to go Christmas shopping, who wouldn't?
The chief sports writers even have this semi-secret club called The Grand Dukes where every time they get a plum foreign job, one of them chooses the best restaurant in town to go to and they all pile in.
That is why, if you ever see that Sky show Hold The Back Page, everyone who is on it is the size of a house.
-------------------------------------------------------
Good grief, ITV are reporting on the Corrie crash as if it's a real incident. The world's gone mad, I tells yer. Mind you, it's the first time I've watched it in years and it was good. Better than Extreme Fisting with Robson Green which I totally misread. Turns out he's angling.
-------------------------------------------------------
There's some argument that Wikileaks is going to make it harder for diplomats to do their job correctly in future. My tuppenceworth is this. If a diplomat doesn't do what he considers to be the right thing because he is worried people will find out about it, then perhaps what he, or she, is planning to do is not the right thing after all.
-------------------------------------------------------
Two million people are thinking of switching from public transport to their cars next year because of fare rises, delays and congestion. As if. I got a Virgin train to and from Manchester today and a number 20 bus from Walthamstow (you see the world differently from the top of a London bus.) Both were brilliant. I know, it's not much of a rant but that's how it is sometimes.
Ding ding...Solly
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Blog, shmog
With thanks to my friend, Dr Mark Hammond who spotted this at our local secondary school.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I'll repeat the best joke I've heard in the last few days. Sepp Blatter was asked 'who's your favourite Qatar player?' He replied: "Eric Clapton."
---------------------------------------------------------------
That story about the MP's Russian assistant being a spy had all the makings of a good but one-dimensional story which would have just made the inside pages of one or two serious papers until it turns out that someone managed to find a picture of her wearing a grass skirt and bikini top on a beach escorted by two African tribal gentlemen.
This is what is known in the trade as a 'thank f*** for that' moment.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm biased of course, but Jewish people are very funny. I'm half Jewish so I'm only half funny. It's the bottom half of course.
Went to a party in Watford last night. Someone has to. And there was a Jewish couple who, naturally, took a shine to me and we chatted about the various things people of all religions talk about at a middle class party, like house prices, school fees and what kind of car people drive and did I know that the woman over there trying to dance was having an affair with her neighbour. The price of fish etc is not just a Jewish thing. Have you ever met anyone in the medical profession? They are obsessed about how much things cost. All things. Golf clubs, sandwiches, pot plants, everything.
Anyway, back to my new found chum. He told me a story.
He went on a cruise and found he couldn't get into the second sitting for dinner because it was booked up.
Then a waiter told him there was available space but if was with a couple no one else had wanted to sit next to because they were so annoying, telling unfunny jokes and long winded stories and ranting about things generally.
So they said they'd try it out. Turns out the unpopular couple were Jewish and, guess what, they got on like a house on fire. 'They were hilarious, charming and we had so much in common.' And, it turns out, they lived in Loughton (which is how we got on to the conversation in the first place.)
Another Jewish couple joined them on their table and now the six of them are bestie mates.
Later my lapsed Catholic wife (that makes me sound like I have a variety of wives of different religions and political persuasions and every time I go to a party, I pick the most appropriate one to take with me) - anyway, my missus reckons that story sums up Jewish people better than any she knows.
I have no idea what she's talking about of course.
And thanks to Derrick Tempest, owner of the world's most expensive toasted sandwich maker (ie an Aga) for the party after he moaned that he's not famous enough to ever get name dropped in anyone's blog.
Happy Chanukah everybody...Solly
I'll repeat the best joke I've heard in the last few days. Sepp Blatter was asked 'who's your favourite Qatar player?' He replied: "Eric Clapton."
---------------------------------------------------------------
That story about the MP's Russian assistant being a spy had all the makings of a good but one-dimensional story which would have just made the inside pages of one or two serious papers until it turns out that someone managed to find a picture of her wearing a grass skirt and bikini top on a beach escorted by two African tribal gentlemen.
This is what is known in the trade as a 'thank f*** for that' moment.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I'm biased of course, but Jewish people are very funny. I'm half Jewish so I'm only half funny. It's the bottom half of course.
Went to a party in Watford last night. Someone has to. And there was a Jewish couple who, naturally, took a shine to me and we chatted about the various things people of all religions talk about at a middle class party, like house prices, school fees and what kind of car people drive and did I know that the woman over there trying to dance was having an affair with her neighbour. The price of fish etc is not just a Jewish thing. Have you ever met anyone in the medical profession? They are obsessed about how much things cost. All things. Golf clubs, sandwiches, pot plants, everything.
Anyway, back to my new found chum. He told me a story.
He went on a cruise and found he couldn't get into the second sitting for dinner because it was booked up.
Then a waiter told him there was available space but if was with a couple no one else had wanted to sit next to because they were so annoying, telling unfunny jokes and long winded stories and ranting about things generally.
So they said they'd try it out. Turns out the unpopular couple were Jewish and, guess what, they got on like a house on fire. 'They were hilarious, charming and we had so much in common.' And, it turns out, they lived in Loughton (which is how we got on to the conversation in the first place.)
Another Jewish couple joined them on their table and now the six of them are bestie mates.
Later my lapsed Catholic wife (that makes me sound like I have a variety of wives of different religions and political persuasions and every time I go to a party, I pick the most appropriate one to take with me) - anyway, my missus reckons that story sums up Jewish people better than any she knows.
I have no idea what she's talking about of course.
And thanks to Derrick Tempest, owner of the world's most expensive toasted sandwich maker (ie an Aga) for the party after he moaned that he's not famous enough to ever get name dropped in anyone's blog.
Happy Chanukah everybody...Solly
Friday, 3 December 2010
Too posh and Becks
How can they give the World Cup to such a corrupt country? The government is run by a stitch up coalition of two minority parties, most of the members of all parties fiddle their expenses, the cabinet is a clique of old boys from the same school while most of the establishment - including the state broadcaster - is run by men who did the same course, at the same college, of the same university. The economy is broke because it had to bail out a banking system that was either dishonest or incompetent or both yet the bosses within that system continue to make millions while workers are sacked. A large proportion of the population works for the state while another hefty chunk is so bent they fraudulently claim benefits. Binge drinking, drug taking and crime are at record levels and the weather's crap.
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At the risk of sounding like rantalongasolly, whose idea was it that English football is best epitomised by two Old Etonians who would be far more at home at Twickenham than Wembley?
Beckham I can understand. Not just because of his looks and reputation but because if he hadn't been blessed with the talent to become a footballer, you just know he'd be an ordinary punter paying to watch a match just like the rest of us.
But Cameron and Prince William, you feel, have never paid for a ticket to see a football match in their lives. I bet Cameron has no idea what Bovril tastes like, or a Wagon Wheel. He's never stood in a market town square in a strange country with complete strangers drinking weak lager before going to the ground to see his team. I don't suppose he even has a team.
At least William purports to like Aston Villa, although let's face it, the Villa fans at the game against Birmingham City last week are far more representative of English football than someone who prefers Buckingham Palace to Crystal Palace (mind you, don't we all?)
This isn't a class rant. Football is far more classless now than it has ever been - and probably far less class based than, say, cricket or rugby and tennis.
You go to an England away game, as I do occasionally, and it resembles a PTA meeting from an inner London Cof E school with men in North Face fleeces and Hackett t-shirts, kids called Alexander and girls who work for PR companies whose first names end with 'A' wearing that ridiculous face paint of a flag of St. George.
Yes, there are still the gangs of tattooed men singing No Surrender to the IRA but in South Africa there were an awful lot of families combining an England game with a couple of days in this sooooper little safari lodge they'd read about in the Sunday Telegraph travel supplement.
And there's loads of journalists at these games now. Not reporting, just watching or on freebies. I went to Portugal for a game once (got a free seat of course) and it was like some kind of Fleet Street reunion.
My point is, why does English football persist in trying to convince the rest of the world that it's some kind of modern version of the Eton Wall Game. And this isn't a dig at Eton. My Old Etonian mates - they all support Chelsea of course - are genuine football fans. And Old Etonians did win a couple of FA Cups in the century before last.
But this isn't what English football is all about. And it's not all about money either, despite the wages and the Bentleys and the WAGs.
It's still about the hairs on the back of your neck going up when you see something on the pitch that you've never seen before whether it's in a cup final or a damp Tuesday in February at Tranmere.
It's about you and your son being forced to go out on a Saturday afternoon with the family but getting surreptitious texts about the latest score and telling each other (the modern day equivalent of sneaking into Dixons to see the TV screens at 4.45pm when out shopping with the girlfriend).
And it's about England not winning the World Cup bid but qualifying to play in Russia, or Qatar - who cares about human rights, eh FIFA? - and then trying to get out there to see them where you can stand in a market square of a strange city in a strange land drinking weak lager with a bunch of men you've never met before. Except there's no lager in Qatar of course - there would have been plenty in Australia though.
I'd even buy a new North Face fleece especially for the occasion.
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My ancestors were from Russia. The Solomons side of the family. Not sure when they came over but we have always tried to claim Ikey Solomons as one of our own. He was the real life villain in the mid-19th Century who was the inspiration for Fagin in Oliver. He eventually got transported to Tasmania but came back again. He was known as the Prince of Fences. Not the garden kind. That's about as close as I'll come to Royalty.
Do svidaniyah - Solski
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At the risk of sounding like rantalongasolly, whose idea was it that English football is best epitomised by two Old Etonians who would be far more at home at Twickenham than Wembley?
Beckham I can understand. Not just because of his looks and reputation but because if he hadn't been blessed with the talent to become a footballer, you just know he'd be an ordinary punter paying to watch a match just like the rest of us.
But Cameron and Prince William, you feel, have never paid for a ticket to see a football match in their lives. I bet Cameron has no idea what Bovril tastes like, or a Wagon Wheel. He's never stood in a market town square in a strange country with complete strangers drinking weak lager before going to the ground to see his team. I don't suppose he even has a team.
At least William purports to like Aston Villa, although let's face it, the Villa fans at the game against Birmingham City last week are far more representative of English football than someone who prefers Buckingham Palace to Crystal Palace (mind you, don't we all?)
This isn't a class rant. Football is far more classless now than it has ever been - and probably far less class based than, say, cricket or rugby and tennis.
You go to an England away game, as I do occasionally, and it resembles a PTA meeting from an inner London Cof E school with men in North Face fleeces and Hackett t-shirts, kids called Alexander and girls who work for PR companies whose first names end with 'A' wearing that ridiculous face paint of a flag of St. George.
Yes, there are still the gangs of tattooed men singing No Surrender to the IRA but in South Africa there were an awful lot of families combining an England game with a couple of days in this sooooper little safari lodge they'd read about in the Sunday Telegraph travel supplement.
And there's loads of journalists at these games now. Not reporting, just watching or on freebies. I went to Portugal for a game once (got a free seat of course) and it was like some kind of Fleet Street reunion.
My point is, why does English football persist in trying to convince the rest of the world that it's some kind of modern version of the Eton Wall Game. And this isn't a dig at Eton. My Old Etonian mates - they all support Chelsea of course - are genuine football fans. And Old Etonians did win a couple of FA Cups in the century before last.
But this isn't what English football is all about. And it's not all about money either, despite the wages and the Bentleys and the WAGs.
It's still about the hairs on the back of your neck going up when you see something on the pitch that you've never seen before whether it's in a cup final or a damp Tuesday in February at Tranmere.
It's about you and your son being forced to go out on a Saturday afternoon with the family but getting surreptitious texts about the latest score and telling each other (the modern day equivalent of sneaking into Dixons to see the TV screens at 4.45pm when out shopping with the girlfriend).
And it's about England not winning the World Cup bid but qualifying to play in Russia, or Qatar - who cares about human rights, eh FIFA? - and then trying to get out there to see them where you can stand in a market square of a strange city in a strange land drinking weak lager with a bunch of men you've never met before. Except there's no lager in Qatar of course - there would have been plenty in Australia though.
I'd even buy a new North Face fleece especially for the occasion.
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My ancestors were from Russia. The Solomons side of the family. Not sure when they came over but we have always tried to claim Ikey Solomons as one of our own. He was the real life villain in the mid-19th Century who was the inspiration for Fagin in Oliver. He eventually got transported to Tasmania but came back again. He was known as the Prince of Fences. Not the garden kind. That's about as close as I'll come to Royalty.
Do svidaniyah - Solski
Thursday, 2 December 2010
Hit me baby one more time
The eyes are gradually returning to normal after the laser surgery and I've suddenly discovered I have eyebrows like the Archbishop of Canterbury, so they've got to go. And this haircut. Jeez. It may look okay with the speccy image but not any longer. So that old adage about men ending up with the haircut they had when they were 21 might be true, though I may forego the blonde highlights.
And while I'm at it, have I always had those bags under my eyes and crow's feet at the edge? How much is botox? This could be a slippery road.
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All this fuss about my peepers has made me neglect this blog so I hope I can get back to doing it daily if you'll allow me to.
Today is my wife's birthday. As well as that of Britney Spears. Do you think they could be twins?
It must be nice to share your birthday with someone famous. Me? I've got Cliff Michelmore, Brenda Lee and Nigel Winterburn so I really got the dregs of the celebrity barrel whereas my mate Stuart Selner shares his with former President Jimmy Carter and Dame Julie Andrews (as well as Robert Shepherd, ex Ilford County and now on the News of the World.) Stuart sees this as a form of oneupmanship for some reason. That's what boys are like, always cheap point scoring. But then he's a four eyed git and I now have 20/20 vision!
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Interesting exchange on Sky News the other day as I woke up with better vision to be confronted by the sight of Eamonn Holmes, a man for whom flatscreen TV seems a misnomer. He had a journalist from the New Statesmen on the sofa with some blonde autocutie journalist from Sky and they were talking about the BBC running the Panorama programme on FIFA fixing.
The blonde, and I really don't know her name, said she thought the BBC should have held on to the report until after the World Cup and you could see the real journalist next to her almost visibly scoff.
I'm with him. What's the point of doing the report AFTER FIFA's result and, second, what kind of journalist would ever suggest holding off a genuine story on FIFA corruption to avoid embarassing FIFA, for goodness sake. Sky is turning into Fox.
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Talking of which. Wikileaks. Don't care if loads of the revelations were obvious (Russia is run by the Mafia, the French smell of garlic, James Corden isn't funny, bears shit in the wood etc). It was a damn good story and the fact that it annoyed Sarah Palin is good enough for me.
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It's Christmas and I'll avoid the obvious blogger remarks but I went up (or down?) Oxford Street this week, during lunch, and it was surprisingly quiet. Even at the Tottenham Court Road end - or as it's known by Londoners, 'the Chav End' where they sell knock off perfume and men shout at you through loudspeakers.
That's my analytical research into the economic situation. It's quieter than last year.
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Over the last week three journalists who I have worked with have passed on, the latest being Lester Middlehurst, possibly the campest man in Fleet Street at a time when the industry tried its very best to be as macho as it could be. The full details are not out but his death seems particular tragic and sad.
Before that was Jim Lewthwaite who, I remember from when I was on The Sun, was 'retired' by phone while he was on the train going home one night after decades of service. Enough reporters made a fuss about this that he was taken out for lunch and fired properly!
Both will be missed....cheers, Solly
And while I'm at it, have I always had those bags under my eyes and crow's feet at the edge? How much is botox? This could be a slippery road.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All this fuss about my peepers has made me neglect this blog so I hope I can get back to doing it daily if you'll allow me to.
Today is my wife's birthday. As well as that of Britney Spears. Do you think they could be twins?
It must be nice to share your birthday with someone famous. Me? I've got Cliff Michelmore, Brenda Lee and Nigel Winterburn so I really got the dregs of the celebrity barrel whereas my mate Stuart Selner shares his with former President Jimmy Carter and Dame Julie Andrews (as well as Robert Shepherd, ex Ilford County and now on the News of the World.) Stuart sees this as a form of oneupmanship for some reason. That's what boys are like, always cheap point scoring. But then he's a four eyed git and I now have 20/20 vision!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interesting exchange on Sky News the other day as I woke up with better vision to be confronted by the sight of Eamonn Holmes, a man for whom flatscreen TV seems a misnomer. He had a journalist from the New Statesmen on the sofa with some blonde autocutie journalist from Sky and they were talking about the BBC running the Panorama programme on FIFA fixing.
The blonde, and I really don't know her name, said she thought the BBC should have held on to the report until after the World Cup and you could see the real journalist next to her almost visibly scoff.
I'm with him. What's the point of doing the report AFTER FIFA's result and, second, what kind of journalist would ever suggest holding off a genuine story on FIFA corruption to avoid embarassing FIFA, for goodness sake. Sky is turning into Fox.
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Talking of which. Wikileaks. Don't care if loads of the revelations were obvious (Russia is run by the Mafia, the French smell of garlic, James Corden isn't funny, bears shit in the wood etc). It was a damn good story and the fact that it annoyed Sarah Palin is good enough for me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's Christmas and I'll avoid the obvious blogger remarks but I went up (or down?) Oxford Street this week, during lunch, and it was surprisingly quiet. Even at the Tottenham Court Road end - or as it's known by Londoners, 'the Chav End' where they sell knock off perfume and men shout at you through loudspeakers.
That's my analytical research into the economic situation. It's quieter than last year.
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Over the last week three journalists who I have worked with have passed on, the latest being Lester Middlehurst, possibly the campest man in Fleet Street at a time when the industry tried its very best to be as macho as it could be. The full details are not out but his death seems particular tragic and sad.
Before that was Jim Lewthwaite who, I remember from when I was on The Sun, was 'retired' by phone while he was on the train going home one night after decades of service. Enough reporters made a fuss about this that he was taken out for lunch and fired properly!
Both will be missed....cheers, Solly
Monday, 29 November 2010
Eye eye
Girl on tube, about 19 but sounded 12, on mobile, doesn't break for breath: "I'm not angry because you did it, I'm angry because you didn't tell me when I asked you, you wouldn't like it if, oh my God there's a sign saying don't feed the pigeons, I did something wrong and didn't tell you."
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I apologise for my recent absence. Did you miss me? Oh. Anyway, I've done the middle aged vanity thing and had my eyes lasered. It was a bit of an ordeal to be honest. Although it was in Soho it wasn't a backstreet clinic, it was all kosher. They didn't strap me to a wheel of fortune and spin me round while someone dressed as Captain Kirk with his back to me, swung round suddenly and fired his laser gun into the middle of my eye.
No it was all very civilised. I got coffee and everything afterwards. But the thing is, I'd been expecting this treatment that takes a day or two to recover from and then, hey presto, the scales lifted. As Debbie said, all I want is 20-20 vision. I've had specs since I was eight and quite frankly I'm sick of them. It's taken almost 40 years to make this decision.
So the surgeon, a jolly man with lots of hand movements, says to me: "We were going to give you the Lasik treatment but the angle of the edge of your eye is irregular so we are going to give you the Lasek treatment instead." OK, I thought, you say tomato etc.
Lasik is the nice cuddly treatment. You have a day where it feels like you've got a bit of grit in your eye and then suddenly you're reading out the registrations of passing 747s. Lasek is the evil brother. It takes three to four days to recover from the initial treatment and then a few more weeks to get perfect vision.
Unfortunately there's no difference in price. There is another treatment called Wavefront which is half as much again, but having got this far I went ahead with Lasek.
And boy did it hurt. First the treatment. Ten minutes watching this funny light while they poke your eye. And there's no laser sound like sci-fi movies. It crackles like someone cranking the handle of a car on the London to Brighton rally. And then there's the burning. That's right, you can smell your eyeballs burning. Mind you, that's not that bad. I once had a vasectomy. Imagine being able to smell something burning south of the border while an Irish nurse, on her knees, is looking straight at One Eyed Solly and asking if you've been anywhere nice on your holidays.
Back to eyes. In the pre-amble the jolly surgeon told me, as did the blurb, that there was a 'certain level of discomfort' to come. Ha. It was as discomfortable as hell. It discomforted like crazy. It continued to discomfort me for days.
After it's done, you spend 15 minutes thinking that wasn't so bad, before stepping outside and your eyes start to sting like the Devil's burning hot pitchfork is being jabbed into each pupil. You have to have a lift home. They don't let you out without one. Then they expect you to come back the next day on the tube but 12 hours later I was still in agony. Four different kinds of eyedrops, loads of painkillers (and Nurofen is best for eyes apparently) and early nights. Every now and again you get a moment of clarity in the gloom. A bit like life.
Two days later it doesn't hurt so much and the eyesight is a bit better than it used to be minus the bins but I can't keep my eyes open for long periods so I feel pretty useless. Saturday night's Thanksgiving Dinner was cancelled. Sunday meant no going to Spurs and squinting to catch it on Sky. Monday is better and it is only now I can focus on a screen for long enough to type this.
Tomorrow it's back to work and the 'bandages' taken off at the clinic. The bandages are invisible dressings on the eye and once they are off, things should be a bit clearer.
In a week or two, I'll be like everyone else who's had the treatment and wondering what all the fuss is about. I'll no longer wear glasses, except perhaps for reading now and again, and after 40 years of failing eyesight, I'll have perfect vision once more. Is it worth it? Ask me again in a few weeks.
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Talking to American friends it turns out I'm an Americophile. That conjures up visions of standing in bushes waving a hot dog to lure fat people into some kind of sordid den of iniquity. But it just means I like Americans. Though judging the revelations from Wikileaks, I'm not sure the Americans like anyone else. What I don't get though, is that depending on your prejudices, the Western world is either in the pocket of the Saudis or is controlled by a great big Zionist plot. Seeing as both the Arabs and the Israelis want America to bomb Iran, why on earth haven't they done so yet?
I'll be seeing you (hopefully)...Solly
----------------------------------------------------------------
I apologise for my recent absence. Did you miss me? Oh. Anyway, I've done the middle aged vanity thing and had my eyes lasered. It was a bit of an ordeal to be honest. Although it was in Soho it wasn't a backstreet clinic, it was all kosher. They didn't strap me to a wheel of fortune and spin me round while someone dressed as Captain Kirk with his back to me, swung round suddenly and fired his laser gun into the middle of my eye.
No it was all very civilised. I got coffee and everything afterwards. But the thing is, I'd been expecting this treatment that takes a day or two to recover from and then, hey presto, the scales lifted. As Debbie said, all I want is 20-20 vision. I've had specs since I was eight and quite frankly I'm sick of them. It's taken almost 40 years to make this decision.
So the surgeon, a jolly man with lots of hand movements, says to me: "We were going to give you the Lasik treatment but the angle of the edge of your eye is irregular so we are going to give you the Lasek treatment instead." OK, I thought, you say tomato etc.
Lasik is the nice cuddly treatment. You have a day where it feels like you've got a bit of grit in your eye and then suddenly you're reading out the registrations of passing 747s. Lasek is the evil brother. It takes three to four days to recover from the initial treatment and then a few more weeks to get perfect vision.
Unfortunately there's no difference in price. There is another treatment called Wavefront which is half as much again, but having got this far I went ahead with Lasek.
And boy did it hurt. First the treatment. Ten minutes watching this funny light while they poke your eye. And there's no laser sound like sci-fi movies. It crackles like someone cranking the handle of a car on the London to Brighton rally. And then there's the burning. That's right, you can smell your eyeballs burning. Mind you, that's not that bad. I once had a vasectomy. Imagine being able to smell something burning south of the border while an Irish nurse, on her knees, is looking straight at One Eyed Solly and asking if you've been anywhere nice on your holidays.
Back to eyes. In the pre-amble the jolly surgeon told me, as did the blurb, that there was a 'certain level of discomfort' to come. Ha. It was as discomfortable as hell. It discomforted like crazy. It continued to discomfort me for days.
After it's done, you spend 15 minutes thinking that wasn't so bad, before stepping outside and your eyes start to sting like the Devil's burning hot pitchfork is being jabbed into each pupil. You have to have a lift home. They don't let you out without one. Then they expect you to come back the next day on the tube but 12 hours later I was still in agony. Four different kinds of eyedrops, loads of painkillers (and Nurofen is best for eyes apparently) and early nights. Every now and again you get a moment of clarity in the gloom. A bit like life.
Two days later it doesn't hurt so much and the eyesight is a bit better than it used to be minus the bins but I can't keep my eyes open for long periods so I feel pretty useless. Saturday night's Thanksgiving Dinner was cancelled. Sunday meant no going to Spurs and squinting to catch it on Sky. Monday is better and it is only now I can focus on a screen for long enough to type this.
Tomorrow it's back to work and the 'bandages' taken off at the clinic. The bandages are invisible dressings on the eye and once they are off, things should be a bit clearer.
In a week or two, I'll be like everyone else who's had the treatment and wondering what all the fuss is about. I'll no longer wear glasses, except perhaps for reading now and again, and after 40 years of failing eyesight, I'll have perfect vision once more. Is it worth it? Ask me again in a few weeks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking to American friends it turns out I'm an Americophile. That conjures up visions of standing in bushes waving a hot dog to lure fat people into some kind of sordid den of iniquity. But it just means I like Americans. Though judging the revelations from Wikileaks, I'm not sure the Americans like anyone else. What I don't get though, is that depending on your prejudices, the Western world is either in the pocket of the Saudis or is controlled by a great big Zionist plot. Seeing as both the Arabs and the Israelis want America to bomb Iran, why on earth haven't they done so yet?
I'll be seeing you (hopefully)...Solly
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
TO 55 ER5
There was a long running Top Tip in the comic Viz which said that instead of buying expensive personalised number plates, why not change your name instead. It was signed 'PW02 TBB' or similar.
I was reminded of that by a Bentley which keeps driving past our office. It has the registration HA5 1 LEG.
I imagine the owner is a one legged millionaire. Or it's a reference to something obscure. Or perhaps the driver bought the car with the number plate already on it and has since had his leg amputated voluntarily.
Then I was at the football and saw the number plate YDO 8 AFC.
Now I am among possibly one per cent of the population who realises that stands for 'Yiddo hates Arsenal Football Club' as Yiddo is the nickname for Spurs supporters.
But it seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for the sake of such an obscure reference.
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My 12-year-old son is getting awfully excited. Apparently there's a new game coming out - Gran Turismo or something. He's pre-ordered it so that it arrives on the day it comes out and, after six months, that day is about now I believe.
I am not sure that there was anything at all that I got THAT excited about at the age of 12. Not a new release by Sweet, not a new episode of The Persuaders or the latest edition of Look In magazine.
There were moments of course. My gran got me the autographs of the cast of Crossroads (one of them came in her pub) and I was a ballboy at a match between a Jewish charity team and a celebrity XI which included Denis Waterman and someone called Steve Bent who I hadn't heard of then and still haven't.
But I don't think I was ever one of those who wanted something on the first day it came out. A few years later I can remember that boys from school would go to a record shop at lunchtime to buy the latest Jam single on the day it came out. But I wasn't that bothered then and I'm still not now.
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Actually there were some things that got me - and a lot of boys my age - quite excited in the early to mid-1970s. Unobtainable women. Ann-Margret covered in baked beans in Tommy, Britt Ekland before she had her lips done, dancing in The Wicker Man (and I know now it was a body double) Suzi Quatro, an actress called Jenny Runacre, and, of course, the magnificent Ingrid Pitt.
Ms Pitt died this week aged just 73 having packed several lifetimes into just one.
You can keep your RPatz and Buffy. They are not a patch on Hammer, Ingrid and Vampire Lovers.
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This is all a bit morbid but I wanted to pay tribute to Roger Duffield of the Daily Mirror newsdesk who died this week aged just 53. In my role as boss of a press agency, I have spent the best part of two decades trying to get stories past Roger and into, first, Today newspaper and latterly the Mirror. He was always fair, always honest - sometimes brutally so - and we always got paid when he was marking up. He will be missed by many but most of all by his family.
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I'm not sure I've still got the stamina to stay up till the early hours in front of the TV but I've paid for Sky and the Ashes don't come round that often so let's see.
G'day and g'night....Solly
I was reminded of that by a Bentley which keeps driving past our office. It has the registration HA5 1 LEG.
I imagine the owner is a one legged millionaire. Or it's a reference to something obscure. Or perhaps the driver bought the car with the number plate already on it and has since had his leg amputated voluntarily.
Then I was at the football and saw the number plate YDO 8 AFC.
Now I am among possibly one per cent of the population who realises that stands for 'Yiddo hates Arsenal Football Club' as Yiddo is the nickname for Spurs supporters.
But it seems an awful lot of trouble to go to for the sake of such an obscure reference.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My 12-year-old son is getting awfully excited. Apparently there's a new game coming out - Gran Turismo or something. He's pre-ordered it so that it arrives on the day it comes out and, after six months, that day is about now I believe.
I am not sure that there was anything at all that I got THAT excited about at the age of 12. Not a new release by Sweet, not a new episode of The Persuaders or the latest edition of Look In magazine.
There were moments of course. My gran got me the autographs of the cast of Crossroads (one of them came in her pub) and I was a ballboy at a match between a Jewish charity team and a celebrity XI which included Denis Waterman and someone called Steve Bent who I hadn't heard of then and still haven't.
But I don't think I was ever one of those who wanted something on the first day it came out. A few years later I can remember that boys from school would go to a record shop at lunchtime to buy the latest Jam single on the day it came out. But I wasn't that bothered then and I'm still not now.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually there were some things that got me - and a lot of boys my age - quite excited in the early to mid-1970s. Unobtainable women. Ann-Margret covered in baked beans in Tommy, Britt Ekland before she had her lips done, dancing in The Wicker Man (and I know now it was a body double) Suzi Quatro, an actress called Jenny Runacre, and, of course, the magnificent Ingrid Pitt.
Ms Pitt died this week aged just 73 having packed several lifetimes into just one.
You can keep your RPatz and Buffy. They are not a patch on Hammer, Ingrid and Vampire Lovers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is all a bit morbid but I wanted to pay tribute to Roger Duffield of the Daily Mirror newsdesk who died this week aged just 53. In my role as boss of a press agency, I have spent the best part of two decades trying to get stories past Roger and into, first, Today newspaper and latterly the Mirror. He was always fair, always honest - sometimes brutally so - and we always got paid when he was marking up. He will be missed by many but most of all by his family.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not sure I've still got the stamina to stay up till the early hours in front of the TV but I've paid for Sky and the Ashes don't come round that often so let's see.
G'day and g'night....Solly
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Koreas Advice
Almost got run over this morning. Totally my fault, wandered across the entrance to Sainsbury's car park at 7am while in another world.
So what was it that distracted me so much? Gareth Bale? Joan Holloway (she'll never be Mrs Harris to me)? How the latest Kellogg's Christmas ad makes me want to puke?
No, it was this bloody blog. I had thought of something witty and pertinent. Of course, that idea went pop when the BMW driver honked his horn. So this is what you're left with.
This blog is going to be the death of me.
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North Korea, South Korea, we're on the brink of World War III so what better place to look than the readers' comments of newspaper websites to get a proper view of what's going on.
The Telegraph's loyal following provided some detailed analysis of the situation from an historic perspective as did The Guardian, though some thoughtfully provided the link to 'I'm so ronery' from Team America (look it up on YouTube) because this is all any of us really knows about Kim Jong Il - or is it Kim Il Jong?
Naturally some at The Guardian said it wasn't totally the fault of the North and pointed an accusing finger at America while The Times was behind a paywall so I didn't bother looking.
The Mail, naturally, compared Kimbo to Tony Blair and wanted assurances that British troops wouldn't be sent in while the Express didn't have any reader comments at all when I looked - but 79 had taken part in the debate 'Should benefit scroungers be deported?'
Which is one better than The Star which didn't even have the story. The Mirror, which has by far the scruffiest and hardest-to-navigate website of any national paper (it might as well be behind a paywall to be honest) had three reader comments. Two had been blocked by the mods and one was 'under review.'
Finally The Sun. No surprise that an early comment called on the Western forces to nuke North Korea. But what was surprising was the response. A lot of readers completely slated this idea, pointing out how stupid it was to advocate killing millions of innocent people and suggested the earlier poster should go back to his PS3. It was almost refreshing.
I suggest they send in Hans Blix and see if he ends up being fed to the sharks as in Team America (again). I love that movie.
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I am occasionally called a lairy, fat, useless, Cockney wanker. And that's just by my wife. But it's not true. I'm not a Cockney. Although my infancy was spent in Stepney, an accident of birth meant I was in fact born in the glamourous sounding Tittensor in the romantic city of Stoke-on-Trent.
So I still feel a kind of loyalty to the Potteries and noticed today a criticism by some in the city that so many Victorian factories and buildings were now just rubble that the landscape looked like Helmand province.
This is, of course, an insult. To Helmand mainly. Apparently (I've never been there) but Helmand is known for its sand dunes, birdsong and bustling villages with a thriving community life.
Stoke is known for closed down pottery factories, Phil 'The Power' Taylor and Robbie 'I'm really, really heterosexual' Williams. And a football team that won the League Cup in 1972. As an 11-year-old in my gran's pub in Staffordshire, I remember the celebrations went on for weeks. And then Terry Conroy opened a shop in the village and you'd have thought the Messiah had arrived.
Stoke's decline is sad. But the point that was being made, and which I agree with, is that although the industry has gone, the industrial architecture can be quite beautiful and instead of knocking it down to build some steel and glass identikit public building, why not convert what's already there.
The pottery towns that make up Stoke have a unique skyline of kiln chimneys and ruddy brick stained by years of endeavour.
If you take the life out of the environment, what chance have you ever got of trying to revive the life of the city itself?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm having my eyes lasered on Thursday. My wife thinks it's a mid-life crisis. They did explain how it all works, I absorbed the information for a while but in doing so lost all memory of Jon Pertwee piloting a hovercraft in an episode of Dr Who because that's what happens when I try and learn something remotely technical or scientific. Once I'd forgotten the science bit about the surgery, I regained my memory of children's programmes from the 1970s. Catweazle's toad was called Touchwood. See?
Now is the time to say goodbye...goodbye...Solly
So what was it that distracted me so much? Gareth Bale? Joan Holloway (she'll never be Mrs Harris to me)? How the latest Kellogg's Christmas ad makes me want to puke?
No, it was this bloody blog. I had thought of something witty and pertinent. Of course, that idea went pop when the BMW driver honked his horn. So this is what you're left with.
This blog is going to be the death of me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
North Korea, South Korea, we're on the brink of World War III so what better place to look than the readers' comments of newspaper websites to get a proper view of what's going on.
The Telegraph's loyal following provided some detailed analysis of the situation from an historic perspective as did The Guardian, though some thoughtfully provided the link to 'I'm so ronery' from Team America (look it up on YouTube) because this is all any of us really knows about Kim Jong Il - or is it Kim Il Jong?
Naturally some at The Guardian said it wasn't totally the fault of the North and pointed an accusing finger at America while The Times was behind a paywall so I didn't bother looking.
The Mail, naturally, compared Kimbo to Tony Blair and wanted assurances that British troops wouldn't be sent in while the Express didn't have any reader comments at all when I looked - but 79 had taken part in the debate 'Should benefit scroungers be deported?'
Which is one better than The Star which didn't even have the story. The Mirror, which has by far the scruffiest and hardest-to-navigate website of any national paper (it might as well be behind a paywall to be honest) had three reader comments. Two had been blocked by the mods and one was 'under review.'
Finally The Sun. No surprise that an early comment called on the Western forces to nuke North Korea. But what was surprising was the response. A lot of readers completely slated this idea, pointing out how stupid it was to advocate killing millions of innocent people and suggested the earlier poster should go back to his PS3. It was almost refreshing.
I suggest they send in Hans Blix and see if he ends up being fed to the sharks as in Team America (again). I love that movie.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am occasionally called a lairy, fat, useless, Cockney wanker. And that's just by my wife. But it's not true. I'm not a Cockney. Although my infancy was spent in Stepney, an accident of birth meant I was in fact born in the glamourous sounding Tittensor in the romantic city of Stoke-on-Trent.
So I still feel a kind of loyalty to the Potteries and noticed today a criticism by some in the city that so many Victorian factories and buildings were now just rubble that the landscape looked like Helmand province.
This is, of course, an insult. To Helmand mainly. Apparently (I've never been there) but Helmand is known for its sand dunes, birdsong and bustling villages with a thriving community life.
Stoke is known for closed down pottery factories, Phil 'The Power' Taylor and Robbie 'I'm really, really heterosexual' Williams. And a football team that won the League Cup in 1972. As an 11-year-old in my gran's pub in Staffordshire, I remember the celebrations went on for weeks. And then Terry Conroy opened a shop in the village and you'd have thought the Messiah had arrived.
Stoke's decline is sad. But the point that was being made, and which I agree with, is that although the industry has gone, the industrial architecture can be quite beautiful and instead of knocking it down to build some steel and glass identikit public building, why not convert what's already there.
The pottery towns that make up Stoke have a unique skyline of kiln chimneys and ruddy brick stained by years of endeavour.
If you take the life out of the environment, what chance have you ever got of trying to revive the life of the city itself?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm having my eyes lasered on Thursday. My wife thinks it's a mid-life crisis. They did explain how it all works, I absorbed the information for a while but in doing so lost all memory of Jon Pertwee piloting a hovercraft in an episode of Dr Who because that's what happens when I try and learn something remotely technical or scientific. Once I'd forgotten the science bit about the surgery, I regained my memory of children's programmes from the 1970s. Catweazle's toad was called Touchwood. See?
Now is the time to say goodbye...goodbye...Solly
Monday, 22 November 2010
Making plans for Nigel
Nigel Havers complains there wasn't enough stimulating conversation in I'm A Celebrity. He was there with Stacey Solomon, Linford Christie, Lembit Opik and some fat woman from daytime television that even I haven't heard of.
What did he expect, a debate about self determinism versus pre determinism and whether or not the self actually exists?
I didn't see him start any conversations either. I think the trouble was that he once starred in an Oscar winning movie and looked around to realise he'd descended down more layers of hell than anyone else there. The others haven't fallen so far.
------------------------------------------------------------------
There are only 26 sperm donors in the whole of Scotland. Officially that is.
Who says you don't learn something from reading newspapers.
That one's in the Daily Record. A newspaper in English but not all the time. They say jags instead of jabs, neds instead of chavs (or yobs or hoodies) and once they used a pun on the phrase 'we're all Jock Tamson's bairns' in a headline for one of our stories (I forget what the story was about).
This was pre-Google and, I'm not kidding, we had to phone them up to ask them what the headline meant. Once I'd got past the inimitable Derek Masterton's opening gambit: "Aye Solly, you fat southern c**t", I found out it meant something along the lines of 'we're all the same under the skin.'
Of course we're not. The Scots are completely different. And thanks God for that otherwise we wouldn't have Charlie Rae, Iain Banks (my mate, not the writer) and the late great Jimmy Airlie, among others.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mind you, I'm not so sure about Rod Stewart. Anyone who isn't Scottish but wears a kilt immediately joins that list of 'never trust anyone who...'
You know, like men whose eyebrows meet in the middle or who wear bow ties when not at formal occasions or genuinely like Harry Potter and Dr Who even though they are grown up. And then there's those who don't own a television.
It's mainly a broadsheet thing but The Guardian in particular. You get a review or a preview of a TV programme or a story about ratings or schedules and one of the online comments comes from some dick declaring: 'TV rots the mind, I threw out my flickering goggle box years ago and got a life.'
It makes you wonder why he went to so much trouble reading a review of a TV show if there was never any chance of seeing it and then going to the added trouble of writing in to tell everyone that he doesn't have a TV and so didn't see the programme that they are all talking about! But, while he's at it, why not pretend to be intellectually superior to everyone else there. When he's not of course.
There is something horrendously snobby about people who haven't got a television. Of course there's something horrendously snobby about a lot of people who have got a TV too. Like those who look down their nose at me because I happen to like I'm A Celebrity and Beauty and the Geek (honestly, it's hilarious).
But people without a TV like to tell everyone about it and make out that because of it, they are so much better/cleverer/more socially adjusted than the rest of us. They're not. They're just slightly weirder and more self obsessed. And they really have very little of interest to say.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I went to lunch at the house of an Israeli friend of mine on Saturday. Also there was her very good friend who is Scottish (another one!) but also runs a charity for Palestinian orphans. And so a variety of views were shared over a few glasses of wine and decent food without the need for a great big wall in the middle, a blockade, launching missiles or George Galloway.
I mentioned to someone that this bloke ran a charity for Palestinian orphans and he said 'huh, I see he doesn't do one for Jewish orphans.'
Which is a bit like meeting someone who has cured cancer and berating them for not finding the cure for Alzheimer's.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I know there's a lot of self-righteous indignation about the man who won £56 million on the lottery and has had to pay £2 million to his ex-wife ten years after she ran off with another man.
This is something I know a little about. The money isn't for his wife, it's for his 13-year-old daughter. He probably didn't have a clean break settlement. And it amounts to four per cent of his winnings (roughly) - even I know maintenance payments are a lot more than four per cent of a man's wealth. He's still got £54 million left and gets to see the kid. It's hardly the kind of issue to make him dress up as Spiderman.
Peace and love to all....Solly
What did he expect, a debate about self determinism versus pre determinism and whether or not the self actually exists?
I didn't see him start any conversations either. I think the trouble was that he once starred in an Oscar winning movie and looked around to realise he'd descended down more layers of hell than anyone else there. The others haven't fallen so far.
------------------------------------------------------------------
There are only 26 sperm donors in the whole of Scotland. Officially that is.
Who says you don't learn something from reading newspapers.
That one's in the Daily Record. A newspaper in English but not all the time. They say jags instead of jabs, neds instead of chavs (or yobs or hoodies) and once they used a pun on the phrase 'we're all Jock Tamson's bairns' in a headline for one of our stories (I forget what the story was about).
This was pre-Google and, I'm not kidding, we had to phone them up to ask them what the headline meant. Once I'd got past the inimitable Derek Masterton's opening gambit: "Aye Solly, you fat southern c**t", I found out it meant something along the lines of 'we're all the same under the skin.'
Of course we're not. The Scots are completely different. And thanks God for that otherwise we wouldn't have Charlie Rae, Iain Banks (my mate, not the writer) and the late great Jimmy Airlie, among others.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mind you, I'm not so sure about Rod Stewart. Anyone who isn't Scottish but wears a kilt immediately joins that list of 'never trust anyone who...'
You know, like men whose eyebrows meet in the middle or who wear bow ties when not at formal occasions or genuinely like Harry Potter and Dr Who even though they are grown up. And then there's those who don't own a television.
It's mainly a broadsheet thing but The Guardian in particular. You get a review or a preview of a TV programme or a story about ratings or schedules and one of the online comments comes from some dick declaring: 'TV rots the mind, I threw out my flickering goggle box years ago and got a life.'
It makes you wonder why he went to so much trouble reading a review of a TV show if there was never any chance of seeing it and then going to the added trouble of writing in to tell everyone that he doesn't have a TV and so didn't see the programme that they are all talking about! But, while he's at it, why not pretend to be intellectually superior to everyone else there. When he's not of course.
There is something horrendously snobby about people who haven't got a television. Of course there's something horrendously snobby about a lot of people who have got a TV too. Like those who look down their nose at me because I happen to like I'm A Celebrity and Beauty and the Geek (honestly, it's hilarious).
But people without a TV like to tell everyone about it and make out that because of it, they are so much better/cleverer/more socially adjusted than the rest of us. They're not. They're just slightly weirder and more self obsessed. And they really have very little of interest to say.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I went to lunch at the house of an Israeli friend of mine on Saturday. Also there was her very good friend who is Scottish (another one!) but also runs a charity for Palestinian orphans. And so a variety of views were shared over a few glasses of wine and decent food without the need for a great big wall in the middle, a blockade, launching missiles or George Galloway.
I mentioned to someone that this bloke ran a charity for Palestinian orphans and he said 'huh, I see he doesn't do one for Jewish orphans.'
Which is a bit like meeting someone who has cured cancer and berating them for not finding the cure for Alzheimer's.
---------------------------------------------------------------
I know there's a lot of self-righteous indignation about the man who won £56 million on the lottery and has had to pay £2 million to his ex-wife ten years after she ran off with another man.
This is something I know a little about. The money isn't for his wife, it's for his 13-year-old daughter. He probably didn't have a clean break settlement. And it amounts to four per cent of his winnings (roughly) - even I know maintenance payments are a lot more than four per cent of a man's wealth. He's still got £54 million left and gets to see the kid. It's hardly the kind of issue to make him dress up as Spiderman.
Peace and love to all....Solly
Sunday, 21 November 2010
Jazz. And all that.
Marmite? I can take it or leave it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jazz? Bit like Marmite they say. I have spent the afternoon watching a bunch of teenagers play jazz. Not just jazz but the modern stuff. And improvised.
It's my daughter Naomi's fault. She's in the Essex Jazz Youth Orchestra, Jazz Essex Youth and The Judean People's Popular Front, I think. For some reason it was in Suffolk. Quite beautiful but a long way to go.
So an earnest and, on occasions, quite talented bunch of kids, mostly with strange hair and under the guidance of a grown up called Martin who looked a bit like Jesus, they went through Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and some of that World Music stuff that Radio One used to play after John Peel's show in the old days.
I've nothing against jazz. My old man played double bass in a jazz band, though he was a classically trained violinist, so the music in our house included a lot of Oscar Peterson and Brubeck, Grappelli and even Chris Barber to stay patriotic.
I grew up listening to songs by men with nicknames - Blind Willie Fishsticks, Fats O'Hoolahan, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Stripes McDonald, One Eyed Solly, Arthur 'the Accountant' Smythe-Watkins.
Or something like that.
But the sound of someone going 'skit skat scooby' or Django's distinctive three fingered guitar playing was a regular part of my growing up.
I happened to mention this, just once, soon after I started work at my local paper, the Ilford Recorder.
Within weeks, the 'entertainment page' included 'Scene with Mark Solomons' which was all about pop music in the area, 'Mark Solomons' Jazz Talk' which was basically anything remotely jazz-like within a 20 miles radius of Redbridge and 'Folk Focus' in which I'd ring a bloke at the Eagle and Child pub in Walthamstow and ask him to tell me anything half resembling folk anywhere in the Home Counties (but mostly the line up at his pub's Folk Night') Usually some bloke in a woolly jumper with a finger in his ear singing songs about boats to Liverpool, as I recall.
So throughout my life, jazz has haunted me in one form or another, whether it's part of my home environment, my working life and now, through my musically talented children.
When they have grown out of it, as they surely will, all that will be left will be my funeral. I've asked for The Smiths but the jazz Gods may intervene and I'll end up with one of those New Orleans' style jazz funerals like they had in that James Bond film.
Or knowing my luck I'll go out to Kenny Ball playing Midnight in Moscow.
Nice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Right, everyone's now seen that John Lewis ad with the Elton John cover and the Xmas message that we should all show someone we care. In it, a boy puts a stocking on a kennel for his pet pooch. The dog, like the kennel, are outside and it's snowing and clearly freezing. Shows how much they bloody care.
What's the number for the RSPCA?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, yes, I know. Bleeding Gums Murphy is a saxophone player in The Simpsons. And I"m pretty sure One Eyed Solly is a character in a Damon Runyon short story but I can't find it on Google anywhere so you'll have to believe me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's been a fair bit about Ed Balls in the paper recently.
I'm reluctant to dislike Ed Balls but for a peculiar reason. He was one of the last people to speak to me and my missus before the birth of the aforementioned Naomi. I know, bizarre. But we were at a party he was at and he went out of the way to make my pregnant wife comfortable and chatted to her outside, in the cold, for ages while she sat down away from the party.
We got home and the next day, whoosh, straight into hospital, long labour, me on the gas and air and nipping out for a cigarette and then beautiful baby girl. And the thing my wife remembers more than any is how nice Ed Balls was the night before.
I know I know. If he ever becomes Prime Minister and totally f***s up the country, this isn't a justifiable reason for liking him. But then that's probably not going to happen, so I'll like who I like for whatever reason I like.
Take Five...Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jazz? Bit like Marmite they say. I have spent the afternoon watching a bunch of teenagers play jazz. Not just jazz but the modern stuff. And improvised.
It's my daughter Naomi's fault. She's in the Essex Jazz Youth Orchestra, Jazz Essex Youth and The Judean People's Popular Front, I think. For some reason it was in Suffolk. Quite beautiful but a long way to go.
So an earnest and, on occasions, quite talented bunch of kids, mostly with strange hair and under the guidance of a grown up called Martin who looked a bit like Jesus, they went through Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and some of that World Music stuff that Radio One used to play after John Peel's show in the old days.
I've nothing against jazz. My old man played double bass in a jazz band, though he was a classically trained violinist, so the music in our house included a lot of Oscar Peterson and Brubeck, Grappelli and even Chris Barber to stay patriotic.
I grew up listening to songs by men with nicknames - Blind Willie Fishsticks, Fats O'Hoolahan, Bleeding Gums Murphy, Stripes McDonald, One Eyed Solly, Arthur 'the Accountant' Smythe-Watkins.
Or something like that.
But the sound of someone going 'skit skat scooby' or Django's distinctive three fingered guitar playing was a regular part of my growing up.
I happened to mention this, just once, soon after I started work at my local paper, the Ilford Recorder.
Within weeks, the 'entertainment page' included 'Scene with Mark Solomons' which was all about pop music in the area, 'Mark Solomons' Jazz Talk' which was basically anything remotely jazz-like within a 20 miles radius of Redbridge and 'Folk Focus' in which I'd ring a bloke at the Eagle and Child pub in Walthamstow and ask him to tell me anything half resembling folk anywhere in the Home Counties (but mostly the line up at his pub's Folk Night') Usually some bloke in a woolly jumper with a finger in his ear singing songs about boats to Liverpool, as I recall.
So throughout my life, jazz has haunted me in one form or another, whether it's part of my home environment, my working life and now, through my musically talented children.
When they have grown out of it, as they surely will, all that will be left will be my funeral. I've asked for The Smiths but the jazz Gods may intervene and I'll end up with one of those New Orleans' style jazz funerals like they had in that James Bond film.
Or knowing my luck I'll go out to Kenny Ball playing Midnight in Moscow.
Nice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Right, everyone's now seen that John Lewis ad with the Elton John cover and the Xmas message that we should all show someone we care. In it, a boy puts a stocking on a kennel for his pet pooch. The dog, like the kennel, are outside and it's snowing and clearly freezing. Shows how much they bloody care.
What's the number for the RSPCA?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yes, yes, I know. Bleeding Gums Murphy is a saxophone player in The Simpsons. And I"m pretty sure One Eyed Solly is a character in a Damon Runyon short story but I can't find it on Google anywhere so you'll have to believe me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's been a fair bit about Ed Balls in the paper recently.
I'm reluctant to dislike Ed Balls but for a peculiar reason. He was one of the last people to speak to me and my missus before the birth of the aforementioned Naomi. I know, bizarre. But we were at a party he was at and he went out of the way to make my pregnant wife comfortable and chatted to her outside, in the cold, for ages while she sat down away from the party.
We got home and the next day, whoosh, straight into hospital, long labour, me on the gas and air and nipping out for a cigarette and then beautiful baby girl. And the thing my wife remembers more than any is how nice Ed Balls was the night before.
I know I know. If he ever becomes Prime Minister and totally f***s up the country, this isn't a justifiable reason for liking him. But then that's probably not going to happen, so I'll like who I like for whatever reason I like.
Take Five...Solly
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Carry on up the Kaboul!
What does the X Factor and Mark Chapman have in common. Murdering Beatles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the world had always been ruled by giant beavers, the Danish pastry would never have been invented. (The Big Bang Theory, Channel 4). See below for explanation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry but I'm going to talk about football. But in a general way.
Today I watched the first half, got pissed off and went out for the rest of the day. If I was the superstitious sort then this would have to be an annual ritual now.
I used to have these little rituals like parking in the same place and walking the same route to the ground but when my wife pointed out that it hadn't worked for 20 years, it made me decide that, like horoscopes, lucky heather and God, it was basically bollocks.
Now I realise that what I do makes little difference to whether or not they win or lose.
I once went to Anfield, only once. It happened to be the day when we beat them there for the first time in 75 years - since the sinking of the Titanic I believe.
I could argue I was the reason why. I was the one who brought the luck. But if that was the case then me and Danny Keene wouldn't have been jumped by a gang of Tacchini-tracksuit wearing Scousers after the game. So it wasn't that lucky.
In a similar way, I have stopped using the argument 'but I pay their wages' when I'm annoyed at them.
I've had a season ticket for 25 years and been going to matches for a dozen years before that. If you add up all the money I have spent on admission in that time it comes to around one week's wages for some of the players today.
So I have come to the reluctant conclusion that my support has made absolutely no difference to them whatsover.
But of course this makes no difference. I should be asking not what I have done for my team but what have they done for me. And on days like this, the answer is: quite a lot actually.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of football, here's a message to Andy Townsend (and others). If you add the two letters 'ly' to the end of some words then, as it by magic, you get an adverb.
This fulfils several criteria. It better describes want you want to say and has the added benefit of being grammatically correct (see, grammatically. Not grammatic.)
It may not matter but considering you get paid enormous amounts of money to talk on television then you should get it right. Even if what you say is tripe anyway.
So don't say: Crouch has been playing brilliant. Milner passed the ball excellent. I'm a crap commentator who doesn't speak proper.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowing about physics is, let's say, the equivalent of matter. Not knowing about physics is, let's say, the equivalent of anti-matter. I don't know anything about physics but if I did I would know that when matter and anti-matter meet you get annihilation. They destroy each other.
As I don't know anything about physics, when someone tries to explain this to me it reacts to my lack of knowledge and creates an explosion that knocks something interesting out of my head.
Last week the papers were full of that experiment at CERN that created anti-matter. Reading it meant that I can no longer remember the album World Shut Your Mouth by Julian Cope.
That's what happens when I try and learn something about physics.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beavers and Danish pastries....according to the show, which remains a hidden gem in the schedules, the answer is that to please their beaver overlords man cuts down forests to create damns which floods low lying cities, among them Copenhagen where they invented the Danish so the pastry would never have been invented.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to more non-footballing issues from now on...COYS...Solly
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the world had always been ruled by giant beavers, the Danish pastry would never have been invented. (The Big Bang Theory, Channel 4). See below for explanation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry but I'm going to talk about football. But in a general way.
Today I watched the first half, got pissed off and went out for the rest of the day. If I was the superstitious sort then this would have to be an annual ritual now.
I used to have these little rituals like parking in the same place and walking the same route to the ground but when my wife pointed out that it hadn't worked for 20 years, it made me decide that, like horoscopes, lucky heather and God, it was basically bollocks.
Now I realise that what I do makes little difference to whether or not they win or lose.
I once went to Anfield, only once. It happened to be the day when we beat them there for the first time in 75 years - since the sinking of the Titanic I believe.
I could argue I was the reason why. I was the one who brought the luck. But if that was the case then me and Danny Keene wouldn't have been jumped by a gang of Tacchini-tracksuit wearing Scousers after the game. So it wasn't that lucky.
In a similar way, I have stopped using the argument 'but I pay their wages' when I'm annoyed at them.
I've had a season ticket for 25 years and been going to matches for a dozen years before that. If you add up all the money I have spent on admission in that time it comes to around one week's wages for some of the players today.
So I have come to the reluctant conclusion that my support has made absolutely no difference to them whatsover.
But of course this makes no difference. I should be asking not what I have done for my team but what have they done for me. And on days like this, the answer is: quite a lot actually.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of football, here's a message to Andy Townsend (and others). If you add the two letters 'ly' to the end of some words then, as it by magic, you get an adverb.
This fulfils several criteria. It better describes want you want to say and has the added benefit of being grammatically correct (see, grammatically. Not grammatic.)
It may not matter but considering you get paid enormous amounts of money to talk on television then you should get it right. Even if what you say is tripe anyway.
So don't say: Crouch has been playing brilliant. Milner passed the ball excellent. I'm a crap commentator who doesn't speak proper.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowing about physics is, let's say, the equivalent of matter. Not knowing about physics is, let's say, the equivalent of anti-matter. I don't know anything about physics but if I did I would know that when matter and anti-matter meet you get annihilation. They destroy each other.
As I don't know anything about physics, when someone tries to explain this to me it reacts to my lack of knowledge and creates an explosion that knocks something interesting out of my head.
Last week the papers were full of that experiment at CERN that created anti-matter. Reading it meant that I can no longer remember the album World Shut Your Mouth by Julian Cope.
That's what happens when I try and learn something about physics.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beavers and Danish pastries....according to the show, which remains a hidden gem in the schedules, the answer is that to please their beaver overlords man cuts down forests to create damns which floods low lying cities, among them Copenhagen where they invented the Danish so the pastry would never have been invented.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to more non-footballing issues from now on...COYS...Solly
Friday, 19 November 2010
The Egos Have Landed
She's now on Children in Need dressed up as Catwoman or Lady GaGa or whoever in that bit of the show where someone has fuelled the egos of 'serious' presenters by telling them they are really funny and sexy and talented and that it would do their careers good to do a musical pastiche.
So we get Fiona Bruce in PVC and Andrew Marr in drag and we're all supposed to give our credit card numbers over to the BBC because we like it.
Notice you never get Jeremy Paxman all dolled up like Danny La Rue, by the way.
When it comes to donations, never mind sitting in a bath of beans. I'll stump up a tenner to the first person to tear off Terry Wogan's gently ageing wig on live television (every five years he seems to get a new one with just a little more grey) or happily forward a couple of quid if someone pokes Fearne Cotton in the eye every time she says the word 'amazing'.
Bet we don't see Jason Manford though. Mind you, having 'internet' sex with 12 women is hardly the stuff of Casanova. It's like a teenager boasting 'I did it with all three of Destiny's Child' when he was in his bedroom with just a sock and she was in a video on his TV.
But sometimes I feel guilty about being so cynical. Only sometimes mind (say that in a Michael Caine voice, sounds a lot better.)
CIN raises an awful lot of money for such a good cause and gives the Daily Mail a chance to find a charity that DIDN'T get any money claiming the BBC told them they weren't diverse enough.
Being cynical does seem to be the current default setting for most of us when it comes to charity.
As someone who does a lot for charity but doesn't like to talk about it (!) I know how hard it can be to get others to part with cash, no matter how worthy the reason.
And if it means the BBC give Sainsbury's a bit of a free plug and Jamie earns a few more Nectar card points that he can eventually cash in for a beatification, then is it such a bad thing?
All those egos battling against each other can be grating and, yes, it can do their careers no harm to appear on the show.
But on the way to the station this morning I went past a nursery school where they had put up a gazebo and a bath (yes, a bath) in the car park and were preparing some daft stunt that, no doubt, the kids would have a lot of fun taking part in.
And if it introduces the little Boden-clad toddlers to the concept of charity before their permatanned mums pick them up in giant 4x4s and take them back to gated estates in Essex's 'Golden Triangle' then is it such a bad thing?
Or am I going soft?
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The Daily Telegraph confirmed to us this week that it pays £35 for stories of up to 300 words. This is less than it used to pay but is not unusual in the agency game any more. Seems we're all treated like charities these days.
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Talking of Terry Wogan's alleged wigs, I used to work and be very good friends with David Yelland at The Sun, long before he became editor of the paper. He wore a wig then and it wasn't a particularly good one.
As I seemed to be his closest colleague - I covered industry and Dave ran the Money Page - Kelvin Mackenzie would keep sidling up to me (never a good sign as it usually meant a bollocking) and saying: "Ask him about his Irish, go on, ask him." Irish jig being slang for wig. Occasionally it would be syrup, as in syrup of figs.
"He does wear a wig, doesn't he Solly?" Kelvin would ask. "Go and ask him yourself," I would venture. "You're his mate, it's your job to find out" he would growl.
Like most young reporters I was generally too scared to argue with Kelvin but usually wriggled out of it by changing the subject to horses or house prices or Millwall (who he used to support in those days though he now says he's a Charlton fan.)
Eventually of course, Dave 'came out'. He was working in New York and having a new set of colleagues gave him the confidence to go bald. He rang to tell me one day, asking 'you may not have realised it but I've been wearing a wig.'
I had to explain that we all realised it and had done for years. But I figured that if he wanted to tell me about it he would and if he didn't, well, I wouldn't ask. That's what mates do.
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Downs lookalike Kelly Osborne has lost loads of weight and is posing in a bikini for some mag or other. Rumour has it she's writing an autobiography and looking for a title. On seeing the latest pictures, how about 'You Can't Polish A Turd.'
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I'm off to Stanmore to reconnect with my Jewish roots before the second holiest day in our calendar (it's covered on Sky Sports 2 at lunchtime tomorrow I believe)...Shabbat Shalom, Solly
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