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."
----------------------------------------------------------------
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
Monday, 29 November 2010
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Back to more non-footballing issues from now on...COYS...Solly
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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
Thursday, 18 November 2010
The Milf of Human Kindness
It's the wife's birthday in a couple of weeks so I suggested she have a few of her friends over for a sleepover.
It didn't go down as well as I thought it would.
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Anyone see John Lydon's piece in The Sun about the Royal Wedding? It was probably the best thing in the papers today and quite obviously written as Lydon said it, particularly the bit about him admiring William for being able to 'drive a helicopter.'
Hilarious.
Sign him up as a columnist. He can't be any worse than Lorraine bloody Kelly.
I'm from the generation that remembers Lydon as Johnny Rotten first time round. Particularly when John Dillon (now Daily Express chief sports writer no less) came to school with a box of 'Never Mind the Bollocks' LPs selling them for £2 each, as I recall. Don't know where he got them. We were about 14-years-old I think and it was so exciting at the time to see a rude word on a record cover.
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I'd like to thank my friend Andy for forwarding the link to this blog to all his chums in the exciting world of IT contracting. Unfortunately most of them seemed to hate it and didn't think I was very funny, particularly a man with the avatar 'Stylish Masturbator.' Well I can't argue with that and I continue to welcome any feedback.
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At the end of this year we will be moving my business from the cultured environs of Holborn and Covent Garden to the more 'up and coming' Bermondsey. Wherever that is. I will miss a lot about this area, such as The Mutant Arms pub next door and the occasional sight of a celebrity - I once stood behind Gary Oldman in the sandwich shop. (I once sat next to his mum on a flight to New York too but that's another story.)
I'll miss the Elite Model Agency up the road, which is visible clearly from the aforementioned Mutant Arms, and the hilarious stick insects who continually stand outside it smoking a cigarette and trying to throw up.
I'll miss the fairly new Apple store which is full of people who have no intention of buying anything but just love the store.
And I'll miss Dinos the barber who never has any customers and wears dark glasses so no one can see that he's asleep as they pass the shop, though he gives it away by lolling his head back and snoring.
But I won't miss those tossers who paint themselves gold and stand on a beer crate in The Piazza without moving for hours on end and then expect to be paid for it.
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Thank you for reading, even IT contractors...tell your friends....Solly
It didn't go down as well as I thought it would.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Anyone see John Lydon's piece in The Sun about the Royal Wedding? It was probably the best thing in the papers today and quite obviously written as Lydon said it, particularly the bit about him admiring William for being able to 'drive a helicopter.'
Hilarious.
Sign him up as a columnist. He can't be any worse than Lorraine bloody Kelly.
I'm from the generation that remembers Lydon as Johnny Rotten first time round. Particularly when John Dillon (now Daily Express chief sports writer no less) came to school with a box of 'Never Mind the Bollocks' LPs selling them for £2 each, as I recall. Don't know where he got them. We were about 14-years-old I think and it was so exciting at the time to see a rude word on a record cover.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I'd like to thank my friend Andy for forwarding the link to this blog to all his chums in the exciting world of IT contracting. Unfortunately most of them seemed to hate it and didn't think I was very funny, particularly a man with the avatar 'Stylish Masturbator.' Well I can't argue with that and I continue to welcome any feedback.
---------------------------------------------------------------
At the end of this year we will be moving my business from the cultured environs of Holborn and Covent Garden to the more 'up and coming' Bermondsey. Wherever that is. I will miss a lot about this area, such as The Mutant Arms pub next door and the occasional sight of a celebrity - I once stood behind Gary Oldman in the sandwich shop. (I once sat next to his mum on a flight to New York too but that's another story.)
I'll miss the Elite Model Agency up the road, which is visible clearly from the aforementioned Mutant Arms, and the hilarious stick insects who continually stand outside it smoking a cigarette and trying to throw up.
I'll miss the fairly new Apple store which is full of people who have no intention of buying anything but just love the store.
And I'll miss Dinos the barber who never has any customers and wears dark glasses so no one can see that he's asleep as they pass the shop, though he gives it away by lolling his head back and snoring.
But I won't miss those tossers who paint themselves gold and stand on a beer crate in The Piazza without moving for hours on end and then expect to be paid for it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for reading, even IT contractors...tell your friends....Solly
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Help! I need somebody to stop writing Beatles headlines.
The encroachment of human civilisation into the domains of wild animals is causing problems. In one Indian village, one man is attacked by a tiger, on average, every 10 days. The solution is simple, that man should move to a village where there are no tigers and then he wouldn't get attacked so often.
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According to the Telegraph it's been a long and winding road to get Apple and The Beatles to agree. For The Sun it was Love Me Dough and some tortured rubbish about Lucy in the Sky, and everyone else had headlines from Come Together to The Guardian's Hard Drive's Night. Even the Financial Times whittled on about Beatles For Sale though most of its readers had no idea what they were talking about.
But you know what would really Please, Please, Me is if the Yellow Sub Machines of national newspapers, Across the Universe, would stop it, now. Because you know what you get if you compile all these headlines into one collection? That's right, The Shite Album.
Postscript: Fox News website described The Beatles as 'Manchester Mopheads' in its early edition, but changed it to 'England's Mopheads' later on when it still couldn't remember exactly where they were from. Fab. Have they been living in a cavern?
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This is formulaic photographer Annie Leibowitz whose pictures have helped turn Vanity Fair into the celebrity wankfest it is today. Doesn't she look like Bamber Gascoigne?
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On Saturday, at Twickenham, a Northern bloke who had once played rugby league and so was thinner and fitter than all his posh fat mates from public schools, managed to run faster than several Australians while holding what looked like a leather egg. Because of this a lot of inbred, square jawed men ejaculated all over their Boden sweaters while declaring it to be the greatest try of all time. They then got drunk and took down their trousers, formed a line while holding the willy of the man behind them through their legs and doing something called The Elephant Dance.
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I'm in a bit of a grumpy mood today. I liked my idea, the PR company loved it, but the client wanted an alternative that was, frankly, bollocks.
Every time things look good, remember, fate has a way of pissing on your pizza.
From Me To You...(hello) Goodbye...Rubber Solly (that's enough Beatles headlines...ed)
Tuesday, 16 November 2010
...added the tubby hack, aged 47
I've been working in newspapers for much too long. I was in conversation with someone about celebrities and I actually said 'Welsh songbird Charlotte Church'.
Next I'll be ringing home and saying 'is that curvy mum Sue, it's your husband, Mark, 47, from Ilford, east London, he fumed' before talking about 'suburban love nests', revealing how much the house is worth and referring to 'a sex act'. Though chance would be a fine thing.
Newspapers always describe Ilford as east London rather than Essex by the way. Never quite got that.
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Blah blah...what a lovely couple...blah blah...biggest royal event since 1981...blah blah...if only his mum was here to see it...blah blah...bet they won't have a wedding list at Harrods.
Perhaps it's the similarities rather than the differences which are most interesting. When Wills 'n Kate (as they are officially to be known) announced their engagement yesterday, readers of online newspapers rushed to make their comments.
What was noticeable was that on both The Guardian and Daily Mail's sites, among the first comments was: "Are we having to pay for this?"
Mail readers, of course, love royal weddings but object to anything that costs taxpayers money while Guardian readers love public sector spending but hate royalty.
Unlike The Sun comments section, where the best one for me was 'Is Kate up the duff then?' Don't you just love the earthy humour of the plebs.
One of my more erudite friends commented on my Facebook page 'bread and circuses' except he did it in the original Latin, the smartypants. That's a grammar school education for you.
Personally I'm making bunting out of old copies of the Telegraph Saturday supplement and organising a street party for the big day. I trust we'll all get a day off won't we?
And if we can recreate the spirit of Chas and Di's wedding in 1981 then all the better. I understand Toxteth and Brixton are making celebratory Molatov Cocktails as we speak while my old schoolmate Marc Fox is going to reform Haircut 100. And he still hasn't added me as a Facebook friend!
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That advert for Iceland (yes, I know, I'm obsessed) which shows all those 'real' women doing the can can with Jason Donovan...why don't they cut the crap and just call them MILFs rather than 'mums'. We all know that's what they're thinking.
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Talking of TV - for a change - The Trip. I think it's absolutely brilliant but I seem to be in the minority. For me, Steve Coogan playing himself as an obsessed, insecure, over compensating, pretentious and competitive lothario is a piece of pure genius. It may reflect who he really is or how he thinks the rest of the world sees him but as far as I'm concerned, and I realise this is just my opinion, I think that is why I am just completely in awe of the guy, for all his faults. A haaaaaaaaa!
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I pointed out, on F/B of course, the most wonderful obituary in today's paper of the Rev Roger Holloway who had been in the army, a big game hunter, a leading figure in the wine industry, a charity fundraiser and then an Anglican vicar as well as sharing a plane with Iron Maiden and various other feats. What a fantastic life, I mentioned. Ah yes, replied my chum Tom Savage, but he's no Tanky Challenor.
And indeed he isn't. All you need to know about Tanky is this one line description from the Daily Telegraph following his death in 2008.
"Soldier who won a Military Medal with the SAS, became a fearsome detective in Soho, and was later declared insane." Brilliant, quite brilliant.
Every day is a different Logan Mountstuart who has just passed on.
According to another story in the Telegraph, people who live their lives slowly will live longer. Looks like I'm going to live to 150 then. And not 54 as I'm supposed to (I'll explain another day).
Three cheers to the happy couple and vive la republic...Solly
Next I'll be ringing home and saying 'is that curvy mum Sue, it's your husband, Mark, 47, from Ilford, east London, he fumed' before talking about 'suburban love nests', revealing how much the house is worth and referring to 'a sex act'. Though chance would be a fine thing.
Newspapers always describe Ilford as east London rather than Essex by the way. Never quite got that.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Blah blah...what a lovely couple...blah blah...biggest royal event since 1981...blah blah...if only his mum was here to see it...blah blah...bet they won't have a wedding list at Harrods.
Perhaps it's the similarities rather than the differences which are most interesting. When Wills 'n Kate (as they are officially to be known) announced their engagement yesterday, readers of online newspapers rushed to make their comments.
What was noticeable was that on both The Guardian and Daily Mail's sites, among the first comments was: "Are we having to pay for this?"
Mail readers, of course, love royal weddings but object to anything that costs taxpayers money while Guardian readers love public sector spending but hate royalty.
Unlike The Sun comments section, where the best one for me was 'Is Kate up the duff then?' Don't you just love the earthy humour of the plebs.
One of my more erudite friends commented on my Facebook page 'bread and circuses' except he did it in the original Latin, the smartypants. That's a grammar school education for you.
Personally I'm making bunting out of old copies of the Telegraph Saturday supplement and organising a street party for the big day. I trust we'll all get a day off won't we?
And if we can recreate the spirit of Chas and Di's wedding in 1981 then all the better. I understand Toxteth and Brixton are making celebratory Molatov Cocktails as we speak while my old schoolmate Marc Fox is going to reform Haircut 100. And he still hasn't added me as a Facebook friend!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
That advert for Iceland (yes, I know, I'm obsessed) which shows all those 'real' women doing the can can with Jason Donovan...why don't they cut the crap and just call them MILFs rather than 'mums'. We all know that's what they're thinking.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of TV - for a change - The Trip. I think it's absolutely brilliant but I seem to be in the minority. For me, Steve Coogan playing himself as an obsessed, insecure, over compensating, pretentious and competitive lothario is a piece of pure genius. It may reflect who he really is or how he thinks the rest of the world sees him but as far as I'm concerned, and I realise this is just my opinion, I think that is why I am just completely in awe of the guy, for all his faults. A haaaaaaaaa!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I pointed out, on F/B of course, the most wonderful obituary in today's paper of the Rev Roger Holloway who had been in the army, a big game hunter, a leading figure in the wine industry, a charity fundraiser and then an Anglican vicar as well as sharing a plane with Iron Maiden and various other feats. What a fantastic life, I mentioned. Ah yes, replied my chum Tom Savage, but he's no Tanky Challenor.
And indeed he isn't. All you need to know about Tanky is this one line description from the Daily Telegraph following his death in 2008.
"Soldier who won a Military Medal with the SAS, became a fearsome detective in Soho, and was later declared insane." Brilliant, quite brilliant.
Every day is a different Logan Mountstuart who has just passed on.
According to another story in the Telegraph, people who live their lives slowly will live longer. Looks like I'm going to live to 150 then. And not 54 as I'm supposed to (I'll explain another day).
Three cheers to the happy couple and vive la republic...Solly
Monday, 15 November 2010
A jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place
I never liked Laurence Olivier, ever since I saw him blacked up for Othello and then overacting his little heart out in the Marathon Man. But he did describe Michael Caine as a 'jumped up pantry boy who never knew his place' in the film Sleuth which led to its inclusion by the sainted Smiths in the song This Charming Man. And I love Morrissey to bits.
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Channel 4 are about to show a dramatisation of William Boyd's Any Human Heart, one of the few writers of fiction I quite like and it's a decent tale so should be a bit of a laugh. But why do so many middle aged male writers (Boyd, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie for example) insist on writing about middle aged male characters who get to have sex with young, nubile women? Because they can, is the obvious answer. Boyd does it in Any Human Heart. The wrinkly Logan Mountstuart manages to boink someone half his age in the book. But has it always been thus? Some say this has only been a particularly prevalent feature of literature written by men of a certain age since the invention of Viagra although movies have often portrayed pensioners pulling much younger women (Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, they've all done it).
Isn't there some kind of simple formula to tell if a girl is too young for a man where you halve his age and add seven and if she is still younger than that, then it's wrong? That's 30 for me then. I wonder how old Joan Holloway/Harris is in Mad Men?
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When it comes to reality TV I'll join the queue bemoaning the barbarians at the gate. X Factor is cruel and Big Brother became a freak show.
But I can't write off a whole genre and we all have our guilty pleasures (no, I don't mean the PVC nurse's uniform) and in my case it's a little of Come Dine With Me as long as it's not the celebrity specials, and I'm A Celebrity...
There's something rather curious about so-called celebrities who don't recognise each other as being celebrities, while we also have no idea who some of them are. It varies with age. My generation look at it and say 'bloody hell, that's Britt Ekland' remembering the phone sex scene in Get Carter. Others say 'Britt who' but get excited by Santa Asbo or whatever his name is.
I find the whole thing quite good fun and, in a way, it retains that social experiment aspect that Big Brother had before the weirdoes realised they were weirdoes. It's like men who wear cartoon ties to be 'wacky' without realising they are the least wacky people in the room or saying 'I'm mad, I am' when they're wankers rather than bonkers.
Incidentally, I'm A Celebrity was invented by a group of people including my old work buddy Brent Baker who was with me at both the Recorder and The Sun before going to the ill fated London Daily News and then ITV. I think he got something like £50 for coming up with the idea. I didn't always enjoy life on local papers but the Recorder wasn't half a good breeding ground for talent.
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Christopher Hitchens does not believe in God, thinks the invasion of Iraq was right and is the brother of Peter 'Bonkers' Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday. They fell out as teenagers over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia...as you do. He now has cancer and may not survive though there's a bloody good interview with him in the arty farty section (I think it's called Book) of the Guardian today.
Personally - and I accept this is purely my opinion - people like Hitchens are proof that you don't have to agree with someone to like them.
If that was the case, I wouldn't have any friends and most of my family would disown me. And I bet the same goes for you out there.
---------------------------------------------------------------
My eldest has received offers of a university place at Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham so far. As she's doing physics and former pop singer Brian Cox teaches the course at Manchester, I can guess which one she prefers. She is still waiting to hear back from two more places, so things can only get better.
Boom boom....love Solly
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Channel 4 are about to show a dramatisation of William Boyd's Any Human Heart, one of the few writers of fiction I quite like and it's a decent tale so should be a bit of a laugh. But why do so many middle aged male writers (Boyd, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie for example) insist on writing about middle aged male characters who get to have sex with young, nubile women? Because they can, is the obvious answer. Boyd does it in Any Human Heart. The wrinkly Logan Mountstuart manages to boink someone half his age in the book. But has it always been thus? Some say this has only been a particularly prevalent feature of literature written by men of a certain age since the invention of Viagra although movies have often portrayed pensioners pulling much younger women (Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, they've all done it).
Isn't there some kind of simple formula to tell if a girl is too young for a man where you halve his age and add seven and if she is still younger than that, then it's wrong? That's 30 for me then. I wonder how old Joan Holloway/Harris is in Mad Men?
-------------------------------------------------------------
When it comes to reality TV I'll join the queue bemoaning the barbarians at the gate. X Factor is cruel and Big Brother became a freak show.
But I can't write off a whole genre and we all have our guilty pleasures (no, I don't mean the PVC nurse's uniform) and in my case it's a little of Come Dine With Me as long as it's not the celebrity specials, and I'm A Celebrity...
There's something rather curious about so-called celebrities who don't recognise each other as being celebrities, while we also have no idea who some of them are. It varies with age. My generation look at it and say 'bloody hell, that's Britt Ekland' remembering the phone sex scene in Get Carter. Others say 'Britt who' but get excited by Santa Asbo or whatever his name is.
I find the whole thing quite good fun and, in a way, it retains that social experiment aspect that Big Brother had before the weirdoes realised they were weirdoes. It's like men who wear cartoon ties to be 'wacky' without realising they are the least wacky people in the room or saying 'I'm mad, I am' when they're wankers rather than bonkers.
Incidentally, I'm A Celebrity was invented by a group of people including my old work buddy Brent Baker who was with me at both the Recorder and The Sun before going to the ill fated London Daily News and then ITV. I think he got something like £50 for coming up with the idea. I didn't always enjoy life on local papers but the Recorder wasn't half a good breeding ground for talent.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Christopher Hitchens does not believe in God, thinks the invasion of Iraq was right and is the brother of Peter 'Bonkers' Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday. They fell out as teenagers over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia...as you do. He now has cancer and may not survive though there's a bloody good interview with him in the arty farty section (I think it's called Book) of the Guardian today.
Personally - and I accept this is purely my opinion - people like Hitchens are proof that you don't have to agree with someone to like them.
If that was the case, I wouldn't have any friends and most of my family would disown me. And I bet the same goes for you out there.
---------------------------------------------------------------
My eldest has received offers of a university place at Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham so far. As she's doing physics and former pop singer Brian Cox teaches the course at Manchester, I can guess which one she prefers. She is still waiting to hear back from two more places, so things can only get better.
Boom boom....love Solly
Sunday, 14 November 2010
I Clavdivs. And making up letters for the Sunday Sport.
Derek Jacobi is playing Scrooge...in a Christmas ad for Sony. Derek Jacobi!! From I Claudius to I Wanker.
Sorry, I really wanted to think of something that sounded a bit more like Claudius but couldn't be bothered.
Next week, Dame Vanessa Redgrave teams up with Fearne Cotton for T-Mobile.
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Deirdre Saunders is great. She's been an agony aunt for 100 years and helped something like 1.2 million people's erection problems. When I worked at The Sun, what I admired most was that every case was completely genuine. She really did get a massive postbag and didn't make anything up. Unlike me, I'm almost ashamed to admit (obviously not that ashamed otherwise I wouldn't mention it).
I had to make up stuff for both the Recorder and the Sunday Sport but, perhaps strangely in the eyes of some, not at The Sun.
But yes, for a brief period I had to write the letters page for the Sunday Sport. It wasn't the dirty kind, mainly Viz style letters like a bloke whose budgie swore every time Terry Wogan came on and things like that. It was to make up for the classic lack of real letters the paper got.
I was really quite good at it but crap at everything else they wanted and got fired. It's the only time I've ever been fired.
Similarly at the Ilford Recorder, we had a Legal Helpline kind of thing. Three legal problems from readers for a lawyer to answer. But no one ever wrote in so I had to make them up, ring the lawyer and get him to answer queries about people with overhanging sycamore trees or a TV that didn't work when they got it home.
Also, at the Ilford Recorder, the newspaper group had a contract dispute with Russell Grant over his horoscope syndication so we, the reporters, stepped in to write a replacement.
Basically one reporter who shall remain nameless (Helen!) went round the office asking people their star sign and what their plans were for the weekend. So, for instance, if I was going to football she'd write 'Sagitarrius: Sport and pleasure combine for you this weekend' and so on.
We even had a letter from someone to say how much better her horoscope was now that Russell Grant wasn't doing it.
Anyway, that's my shameful confession. My cross-dressing revelations will have to wait.
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Nine little boys from public school sitting in a bowling alley talking about one of their mates. 'He's got £3 million in the bank apparently and owns 1.5 acres.' 'You mean his mum and dad.' 'No he says HE has.' 'He was like that at prep school. He takes pills because he's mental.' 'Are you sure it's for being mental.'
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Does anyone remember the days when Marks & Spencer considered themselves too posh to advertise? If only that was still the case. I loved Rufus Hound's description of Peter Kay's act: 'He's good at remembering.'
Nighty night...Solly
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Sorry, I really wanted to think of something that sounded a bit more like Claudius but couldn't be bothered.
Next week, Dame Vanessa Redgrave teams up with Fearne Cotton for T-Mobile.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Deirdre Saunders is great. She's been an agony aunt for 100 years and helped something like 1.2 million people's erection problems. When I worked at The Sun, what I admired most was that every case was completely genuine. She really did get a massive postbag and didn't make anything up. Unlike me, I'm almost ashamed to admit (obviously not that ashamed otherwise I wouldn't mention it).
I had to make up stuff for both the Recorder and the Sunday Sport but, perhaps strangely in the eyes of some, not at The Sun.
But yes, for a brief period I had to write the letters page for the Sunday Sport. It wasn't the dirty kind, mainly Viz style letters like a bloke whose budgie swore every time Terry Wogan came on and things like that. It was to make up for the classic lack of real letters the paper got.
I was really quite good at it but crap at everything else they wanted and got fired. It's the only time I've ever been fired.
Similarly at the Ilford Recorder, we had a Legal Helpline kind of thing. Three legal problems from readers for a lawyer to answer. But no one ever wrote in so I had to make them up, ring the lawyer and get him to answer queries about people with overhanging sycamore trees or a TV that didn't work when they got it home.
Also, at the Ilford Recorder, the newspaper group had a contract dispute with Russell Grant over his horoscope syndication so we, the reporters, stepped in to write a replacement.
Basically one reporter who shall remain nameless (Helen!) went round the office asking people their star sign and what their plans were for the weekend. So, for instance, if I was going to football she'd write 'Sagitarrius: Sport and pleasure combine for you this weekend' and so on.
We even had a letter from someone to say how much better her horoscope was now that Russell Grant wasn't doing it.
Anyway, that's my shameful confession. My cross-dressing revelations will have to wait.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Nine little boys from public school sitting in a bowling alley talking about one of their mates. 'He's got £3 million in the bank apparently and owns 1.5 acres.' 'You mean his mum and dad.' 'No he says HE has.' 'He was like that at prep school. He takes pills because he's mental.' 'Are you sure it's for being mental.'
------------------------------------------------------------------
Does anyone remember the days when Marks & Spencer considered themselves too posh to advertise? If only that was still the case. I loved Rufus Hound's description of Peter Kay's act: 'He's good at remembering.'
Nighty night...Solly
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Saturday, 13 November 2010
Me, Myself, I
These cold nights. My wife complains of waking up under a heavy dew. At least that's what I think she says.
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Like a lot of people there's something sad about Pontin's going bust but then, like a lot of people, I haven't been on a Pontin's holiday since I was a teenager. Which is why it's going bust (not because I haven't been, but because I'm typical of a lot of people...durrrr).
I went to Pontin's in Devon when I was 16 with three mates and it was the first time we'd been allowed to go away as lads and without parents so we had a wonderful time.
My mate Paul met a girl - Angela from Harlow - who he ended up dating for years and years afterwards. I got stabbed in the chest by a girl's stiletto. She was from Hemel Hempstead. Funny but every holiday I've ever taken with the lads, I've met a girl from Hemel Hempstead.
What I remember most though was that our O Level results came in while we were on holiday. I phoned home (from a phone box, as was the way then) to find out I'd passed three and failed the rest.
It fair spoiled the rest of the holiday and when I got home my dad didn't speak to us for what seemed like weeks.
Of course, it all turned out for the best. If I'd done well I may have been under pressure to go to university and to media studies or philosphy and completely waste three years of my life.
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I've refused to join that Facebook group suggesting we throw a party when Thatcher dies. Don't get me wrong, I am anti-Thatch (as my alter ego Ben Elton would say). But being bitter and nasty is just a negative aspect of getting older and I am not going to let that happen to me. So, I will always detest her but I won't celebrate when she eventually goes. After all, it will merely be the death of an old lady and people dying is never a cause for celebration, no matter what. But I won't go teary eyed either.
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I'm so old I can remember when Craig Brown was funny. Mind you that was before he joined the Daily Mail.
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It's my son's birthday tomorrow. He'll be 12, the little soldier. He's invited eight of his friends to go bowling and although I've tried, I can't get out of it. Oh joy.
Expect a slightly exasperated blog tomorrow. Until then, xxx, Solly
------------------------------------------------------
Like a lot of people there's something sad about Pontin's going bust but then, like a lot of people, I haven't been on a Pontin's holiday since I was a teenager. Which is why it's going bust (not because I haven't been, but because I'm typical of a lot of people...durrrr).
I went to Pontin's in Devon when I was 16 with three mates and it was the first time we'd been allowed to go away as lads and without parents so we had a wonderful time.
My mate Paul met a girl - Angela from Harlow - who he ended up dating for years and years afterwards. I got stabbed in the chest by a girl's stiletto. She was from Hemel Hempstead. Funny but every holiday I've ever taken with the lads, I've met a girl from Hemel Hempstead.
What I remember most though was that our O Level results came in while we were on holiday. I phoned home (from a phone box, as was the way then) to find out I'd passed three and failed the rest.
It fair spoiled the rest of the holiday and when I got home my dad didn't speak to us for what seemed like weeks.
Of course, it all turned out for the best. If I'd done well I may have been under pressure to go to university and to media studies or philosphy and completely waste three years of my life.
---------------------------------------------------------
I've refused to join that Facebook group suggesting we throw a party when Thatcher dies. Don't get me wrong, I am anti-Thatch (as my alter ego Ben Elton would say). But being bitter and nasty is just a negative aspect of getting older and I am not going to let that happen to me. So, I will always detest her but I won't celebrate when she eventually goes. After all, it will merely be the death of an old lady and people dying is never a cause for celebration, no matter what. But I won't go teary eyed either.
---------------------------------------------------------
I'm so old I can remember when Craig Brown was funny. Mind you that was before he joined the Daily Mail.
---------------------------------------------------------
It's my son's birthday tomorrow. He'll be 12, the little soldier. He's invited eight of his friends to go bowling and although I've tried, I can't get out of it. Oh joy.
Expect a slightly exasperated blog tomorrow. Until then, xxx, Solly
Friday, 12 November 2010
You're not unreadable you're not unbeatable
Amid the scenes of students wrecking Millbank, it was reassuring to see so many rioters hadn't forgotten basic health and safety standards and were wearing high-vis jackets. You can never be too careful.
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Every time I think I'm really immature I discover I'm not alone. Andy Collier has admitted he too goes 'woo hoo' when the TV continuity bloke says the next programme contains scenes of sex and violence. And Kim Skilton also sticks chopsticks up her nose and pretends to be a walrus when in a Chinese restaurant. I'm all in favour of name and shame in such circumstances. Any more examples are most welcome!
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I've been accused of making this blog a bit blokey and honestly that's not my intention. I do consider myself a feminist. In this day and age, it's ridiculous not to be. Besides, birds love it.
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They've closed Pizza Hut in the high street. And they've opened something called a children's lifestyle boutique across the road. No, I'm not sure either. It's not clothes (which is what I thought it would be) but brightly coloured, er, stuff.
We also have a Superdry. Superdry used to be cool (I thought) but now that every orange chav in Loughton is wearing it, that no longer appears to be the case.
Bring back Mr Byrite. You can never go wrong in a shiny suit, that's what I say.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, I had to look it up but at least it fulfils one of those 'learn something new every day' mantras.
Anyhow, after all these years I finally found out the indecipherable bit of The Jags 'I Got Your Number (Written on the back of my hand).
I always thought they mumbled 'da da de beedle boo' (listen to it 30 seconds in and see what I mean).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjKL7e0mdsA
But it turns out it's 'you're not unreadable, you're not unbeatable'. They really should enunciate. But it's still better than anything by anyone from X Factor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw an advert for a reunion gig by Big Country. I may be wrong but I'm sure Stuart Adamson is dead. What next, The Associates reforming?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've a little money and a takeaway curry, I'm on the way home to my wife...goodnight, Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every time I think I'm really immature I discover I'm not alone. Andy Collier has admitted he too goes 'woo hoo' when the TV continuity bloke says the next programme contains scenes of sex and violence. And Kim Skilton also sticks chopsticks up her nose and pretends to be a walrus when in a Chinese restaurant. I'm all in favour of name and shame in such circumstances. Any more examples are most welcome!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been accused of making this blog a bit blokey and honestly that's not my intention. I do consider myself a feminist. In this day and age, it's ridiculous not to be. Besides, birds love it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They've closed Pizza Hut in the high street. And they've opened something called a children's lifestyle boutique across the road. No, I'm not sure either. It's not clothes (which is what I thought it would be) but brightly coloured, er, stuff.
We also have a Superdry. Superdry used to be cool (I thought) but now that every orange chav in Loughton is wearing it, that no longer appears to be the case.
Bring back Mr Byrite. You can never go wrong in a shiny suit, that's what I say.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, I had to look it up but at least it fulfils one of those 'learn something new every day' mantras.
Anyhow, after all these years I finally found out the indecipherable bit of The Jags 'I Got Your Number (Written on the back of my hand).
I always thought they mumbled 'da da de beedle boo' (listen to it 30 seconds in and see what I mean).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjKL7e0mdsA
But it turns out it's 'you're not unreadable, you're not unbeatable'. They really should enunciate. But it's still better than anything by anyone from X Factor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I saw an advert for a reunion gig by Big Country. I may be wrong but I'm sure Stuart Adamson is dead. What next, The Associates reforming?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've a little money and a takeaway curry, I'm on the way home to my wife...goodnight, Solly
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Tits
Most of you won't remember this but in an episode of Mork and Mindy back in the day, there was a character called Arnold Wanker. Genuinely. They really had no idea and you can find the clip on YouTube if you look hard enough. As I have. It's hilarious. Well, to men mainly.
All blokes have this - that moment when the missus looks at you and either says (or just thinks in that really obvious way) "Oh for goodness sake, just grow up."
Come on, we all do it. For me it's when the TV announcer says 'the following programme contains bad language and scenes of a sexual nature' and I immediately go 'woo hoo' in a Homeresque manner.
She gives me evils or just rolls her eyes.
I'm afraid all these birdwatching programmes on BBC3 are another example. She's watching it with the kids and every time Bill Oddie or David Attenborough mentions cocks, tits, bustards and - my particular favourite - the chough, I naturally snigger like Finbar Saunders.
It's a reminder of the day your class is introduced to a new teacher called Mr Willey or Mrs Balls or whatever.
Personally, I think it's a sad day when this is something you grow out of. My wife may disagree but she's not a bloke.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's several natural reactions to seeing groups of young middle class people throwing chairs through the windows of Tory HQ. The first, of course, is indignation and anger and a stiff letter to the Daily Mail that these layabouts can do this. Another is 'go on my son' at the realisation that direct action is the only thing that works sometimes. And for those of us who were of a similar age in the years immediately after Mrs Thatcher came to power, I guess it's a feeling of nostalgia. Mind you, at least we had The Jam playing off the back of a lorry when we went on a demo.
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Talking of blokes, that Dino de Laurentiis. Died at 91 but what a life. Sold spaghetti as a youngster, like all good Italian stereotypes must if they are to be famous one day. Made really arty films with Fellini which won him an Oscar. Went to Hollywood and made, among other things, the wonderful Barbarella which was responsible for more sprained wrists than Swingball.
He was also behind an awful remake of King Kong but still better than Jack Black's version, and the classic, Mandingo, a film so bad it's wonderful. Oh yeah, and Hannibal. And even Evil Dead II, which is almost as good a sequel as Weekend At Bernie's II. So truly great and truly shite movies, all in the same career.
Mind you Nora Ephron wrote the brilliant Silkwood but the woeful You've Got Mail, so everyone's flawed.
Apparently Dino invented a hovercraft used in Dr Who (with Jon Pertwee) and came up with the idea for Come Dine With Me but I rather suspect that a practical joker has added these two 'facts' to Wikipedia after hearing of the great man's death and is now waiting to see which newspapers reprint them (Independent I'd bet, they usually do).
He was definitely 5' 4". Which may be why he overcompensated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I notice the electrical store group RGB are now expanding beyond their normal Ilford/Loughton catchment area to advertise in Holborn Underground station.
We all have personal favourites when it comes to goods and services. I guess the acid test is not the quality of the goods or the service but how they react when something goes wrong.
On that basis my humble advice is that you should not buy anything at all from RGB. Ever. Nor Sainsbury's Insurance for that matter. If you ever see me, I'd be more than happy to explain why.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not one, not two but THREE gratuitous mentions of Kim Kardashian in the Mail Online today. The rightful order of the universe has been restored. Just so you know, Carol Vorderman looks a bit like her, she was pictured near my old mate Piers Morgan and she's advertising a bikini.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Woolas has reappeared as my Facebook friend almost as mysteriously as he disappeared. I thought it was something I said. But I think it is more likely it was something he said.
Ciao....Solly
All blokes have this - that moment when the missus looks at you and either says (or just thinks in that really obvious way) "Oh for goodness sake, just grow up."
Come on, we all do it. For me it's when the TV announcer says 'the following programme contains bad language and scenes of a sexual nature' and I immediately go 'woo hoo' in a Homeresque manner.
She gives me evils or just rolls her eyes.
I'm afraid all these birdwatching programmes on BBC3 are another example. She's watching it with the kids and every time Bill Oddie or David Attenborough mentions cocks, tits, bustards and - my particular favourite - the chough, I naturally snigger like Finbar Saunders.
It's a reminder of the day your class is introduced to a new teacher called Mr Willey or Mrs Balls or whatever.
Personally, I think it's a sad day when this is something you grow out of. My wife may disagree but she's not a bloke.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's several natural reactions to seeing groups of young middle class people throwing chairs through the windows of Tory HQ. The first, of course, is indignation and anger and a stiff letter to the Daily Mail that these layabouts can do this. Another is 'go on my son' at the realisation that direct action is the only thing that works sometimes. And for those of us who were of a similar age in the years immediately after Mrs Thatcher came to power, I guess it's a feeling of nostalgia. Mind you, at least we had The Jam playing off the back of a lorry when we went on a demo.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of blokes, that Dino de Laurentiis. Died at 91 but what a life. Sold spaghetti as a youngster, like all good Italian stereotypes must if they are to be famous one day. Made really arty films with Fellini which won him an Oscar. Went to Hollywood and made, among other things, the wonderful Barbarella which was responsible for more sprained wrists than Swingball.
He was also behind an awful remake of King Kong but still better than Jack Black's version, and the classic, Mandingo, a film so bad it's wonderful. Oh yeah, and Hannibal. And even Evil Dead II, which is almost as good a sequel as Weekend At Bernie's II. So truly great and truly shite movies, all in the same career.
Mind you Nora Ephron wrote the brilliant Silkwood but the woeful You've Got Mail, so everyone's flawed.
Apparently Dino invented a hovercraft used in Dr Who (with Jon Pertwee) and came up with the idea for Come Dine With Me but I rather suspect that a practical joker has added these two 'facts' to Wikipedia after hearing of the great man's death and is now waiting to see which newspapers reprint them (Independent I'd bet, they usually do).
He was definitely 5' 4". Which may be why he overcompensated.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I notice the electrical store group RGB are now expanding beyond their normal Ilford/Loughton catchment area to advertise in Holborn Underground station.
We all have personal favourites when it comes to goods and services. I guess the acid test is not the quality of the goods or the service but how they react when something goes wrong.
On that basis my humble advice is that you should not buy anything at all from RGB. Ever. Nor Sainsbury's Insurance for that matter. If you ever see me, I'd be more than happy to explain why.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not one, not two but THREE gratuitous mentions of Kim Kardashian in the Mail Online today. The rightful order of the universe has been restored. Just so you know, Carol Vorderman looks a bit like her, she was pictured near my old mate Piers Morgan and she's advertising a bikini.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Woolas has reappeared as my Facebook friend almost as mysteriously as he disappeared. I thought it was something I said. But I think it is more likely it was something he said.
Ciao....Solly
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Cricket Balls...
Today we had a story in the paper about the bushcricket, a kind of grasshopper for whom 14 per cent of its body weight is taken up by its testicles.
So next time the wife tells me I'm hung like an insect.....
--------------------------------------------------------------
Christmas parties, eh? Although we are still a two man partnership, we have picked the venue for this year's bash today by visiting a number of establishments in the Covent Garden area.
No it's not a phone box - we tend to link up with others in the area to have a bit of a do.
We considered a number of pubs, worked out the size of the dining areas, whether they had a private bar, the cost of the meal, the quality of the wine, the general demeanour of the manager and all that.
In the end, we did what we always do and chose the pub with the bustiest barmaids. We're that shallow.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Have you ever noticed how camp the men are who work in the travel business? I don't mean gay, I mean camp - it's two very different things. This week is World Travel Market and a number of our contacts and friends are in the Excel centre camping it up with free champagne and trying to reassure each other that the recession is over while hanging round the Brazil Tourism stall wondering which are men and which are women. I have no explanation why so many fiercely heterosexual men in the travel industry are so camp. It's not just that they don't like football - even I'm not that narrow minded - or the fact so many of them have such wonderfully neat moustaches (like the women on the Spanish Tourism stall). It's the Giles Brandrethy-way they talk or the ever so slightly Butlins-Redcoat way they walk or the bitchy oneupmanship discussions they have about the places they've been to...'oh of course I went to that hotel in Outer Mongolia years ago when it still had some class, darling.' If anyone knows why this should me, answers on a postcard, preferably from a 5* hotel while on a freebie.
Wish you were here....Solly
So next time the wife tells me I'm hung like an insect.....
--------------------------------------------------------------
Christmas parties, eh? Although we are still a two man partnership, we have picked the venue for this year's bash today by visiting a number of establishments in the Covent Garden area.
No it's not a phone box - we tend to link up with others in the area to have a bit of a do.
We considered a number of pubs, worked out the size of the dining areas, whether they had a private bar, the cost of the meal, the quality of the wine, the general demeanour of the manager and all that.
In the end, we did what we always do and chose the pub with the bustiest barmaids. We're that shallow.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Have you ever noticed how camp the men are who work in the travel business? I don't mean gay, I mean camp - it's two very different things. This week is World Travel Market and a number of our contacts and friends are in the Excel centre camping it up with free champagne and trying to reassure each other that the recession is over while hanging round the Brazil Tourism stall wondering which are men and which are women. I have no explanation why so many fiercely heterosexual men in the travel industry are so camp. It's not just that they don't like football - even I'm not that narrow minded - or the fact so many of them have such wonderfully neat moustaches (like the women on the Spanish Tourism stall). It's the Giles Brandrethy-way they talk or the ever so slightly Butlins-Redcoat way they walk or the bitchy oneupmanship discussions they have about the places they've been to...'oh of course I went to that hotel in Outer Mongolia years ago when it still had some class, darling.' If anyone knows why this should me, answers on a postcard, preferably from a 5* hotel while on a freebie.
Wish you were here....Solly
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Bean flicking
Lip Service - new series all about gorgeous lesbians. How on earth could they make fail? But they did. Perhaps it was too Scottish. Perhaps it was the fact no one could act. Anyway, that was a letdown. But it means I'm going to be thinking about lesbians all night. Again.
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If you see a comedian called Jeff Innocent performing, then go see him. He's very funny indeed. Proper East End lad - there's not enough references to Beckton among today's public school educated stand ups if you ask me.
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Well, I've booked it. I'm going to have my eyes zapped to give me back the vision I haven't had for 40 years. They advertise it as 'from £325 per eye' except mine are so bad it's treble that. Hey ho, I've given them my deposit, there's no turning back now. If I can see, I'll blog about it when it happens in a couple of weeks.
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What I love about Facebook, number 132: I asked whether new Tory MP Rory Stewart was disarmingly honest about not voting Conservative before, or whether he was just another Tim Nice-But-Dim. The general response was that he's a tosser. And all the comments came from guys I went to school with and haven't seen for 30 years. I'm so proud the old Ilford boys have turned out so reactionary - I'd have been disappointed if they had grown middle aged and boring.
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I loved Adam Boulton's account of his spat with Alistair Campbell. I've had dealings with Campbell many years ago and all were good, actually. He was complimentary to me when I set up the business.
And my missus worked for Anji Hunter and adores her. So it was hard to pick sides. Personally I thought both acted a bit unprofessionally over the Sky bust up but AC should never have then emailed Sky bosses to discipline Boulton.
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Parents night tomorrow. So much better that the ones my parents used to go to....xx Solly
----------------------------------------------------------------
If you see a comedian called Jeff Innocent performing, then go see him. He's very funny indeed. Proper East End lad - there's not enough references to Beckton among today's public school educated stand ups if you ask me.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I've booked it. I'm going to have my eyes zapped to give me back the vision I haven't had for 40 years. They advertise it as 'from £325 per eye' except mine are so bad it's treble that. Hey ho, I've given them my deposit, there's no turning back now. If I can see, I'll blog about it when it happens in a couple of weeks.
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What I love about Facebook, number 132: I asked whether new Tory MP Rory Stewart was disarmingly honest about not voting Conservative before, or whether he was just another Tim Nice-But-Dim. The general response was that he's a tosser. And all the comments came from guys I went to school with and haven't seen for 30 years. I'm so proud the old Ilford boys have turned out so reactionary - I'd have been disappointed if they had grown middle aged and boring.
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I loved Adam Boulton's account of his spat with Alistair Campbell. I've had dealings with Campbell many years ago and all were good, actually. He was complimentary to me when I set up the business.
And my missus worked for Anji Hunter and adores her. So it was hard to pick sides. Personally I thought both acted a bit unprofessionally over the Sky bust up but AC should never have then emailed Sky bosses to discipline Boulton.
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Parents night tomorrow. So much better that the ones my parents used to go to....xx Solly
Monday, 8 November 2010
Huhne do you think you are kidding, Mr Speaker?
Now here's the thing...if we made every MP who lied during the election give up their seat, how many by-elections would we have coming up? I mean, Chris Huhne was portrayed as a family man in his campaign (or so his wife says), then a month later he left her after having an affair.
And every Lib Dem stood on a platform of abolishing tuition fees but have just voted to treble them. It's not just Liberals, it's all of them.
Bizarrely I've discovered a distant family connection to Elwyn Watkins, the Lib Dem defeated by Phil 'Woolyback' Woolas in the election. He's some kind of cousin to my eldest daughter's step father.
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What's all the fuss about whether or not Rupert Murdoch owns 40 per cent of BSkyB or all of it? I bet most of you thought he owned it anyway. Does anyone think things will change if he buys the rest of it? I don't.
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The difference between a sport and a game is whether or not you can smoke a cigarette while doing it without affecting your performance.
Hence, fishing is a game but rugby is a sport, even if, in England at least, it's obviously for latent homosexual men (tight shirts, shaved heads, fun in the showers - you boys know what I mean).
If you've got a better definition, tell me and help settle a pub argument.
------------------------------------------------
Someone in Belgium is reading my blog, according to that stats page they send out. No idea who. Must be someone who likes waffle.
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Off to The Comedy Store tonight to see my old mate John Maloney plus others including Stephen K.Amos in a charity gig. If there's any good oneliners I'll nick the best one and stick it into tomorrow's blog, claiming it as my own (of course not, I'll credit Bob Monkhouse as I always do.)
I heard a silly one last night about what to do if you get hurt by someone's rhythm stick. Just log on to http://www.iandurylawyers4you.com/
And with that I'm off to Piccadilly for a proper laugh....Solly
And every Lib Dem stood on a platform of abolishing tuition fees but have just voted to treble them. It's not just Liberals, it's all of them.
Bizarrely I've discovered a distant family connection to Elwyn Watkins, the Lib Dem defeated by Phil 'Woolyback' Woolas in the election. He's some kind of cousin to my eldest daughter's step father.
-----------------------------------------------
What's all the fuss about whether or not Rupert Murdoch owns 40 per cent of BSkyB or all of it? I bet most of you thought he owned it anyway. Does anyone think things will change if he buys the rest of it? I don't.
-----------------------------------------------
The difference between a sport and a game is whether or not you can smoke a cigarette while doing it without affecting your performance.
Hence, fishing is a game but rugby is a sport, even if, in England at least, it's obviously for latent homosexual men (tight shirts, shaved heads, fun in the showers - you boys know what I mean).
If you've got a better definition, tell me and help settle a pub argument.
------------------------------------------------
Someone in Belgium is reading my blog, according to that stats page they send out. No idea who. Must be someone who likes waffle.
------------------------------------------------
Off to The Comedy Store tonight to see my old mate John Maloney plus others including Stephen K.Amos in a charity gig. If there's any good oneliners I'll nick the best one and stick it into tomorrow's blog, claiming it as my own (of course not, I'll credit Bob Monkhouse as I always do.)
I heard a silly one last night about what to do if you get hurt by someone's rhythm stick. Just log on to http://www.iandurylawyers4you.com/
And with that I'm off to Piccadilly for a proper laugh....Solly
Sunday, 7 November 2010
Michelle Green
Schoolgirl Michelle Green can't stop talking, teacher tells her off, 20 years later she still can't shut her yap, that's why she's in a crappy job in a call centre surrounded by people who think she's a mouthy little gobshite. I'm willing to bet she goes home and cries herself to sleep every night while eating chocolates. Nice ad First Direct.
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And while we're ranting about adverts....LG reckon life is good when you share great television. So the house is about to be repossessed, your best mate's wife's left him for his brother, your team's lost again and the cat needs to be put down but, hey, as long as you and the wife can tune in to The Simpsons together, then life's great.
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Does anyone else think Andy Gray's comments after someone scores a goal are a bit, well, rehearsed? It's as if he already knows what he's going to say should Torres/Drogba/Gerard score.
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I think my 11-year-old son watches too much comedy on Dave. Over dinner, with all the relatives, my wife said she didn't want a chocolate if someone else had already taken a bite out of it. Harry chimes in: "Well you married dad after someone else had already taken a bite out of him!"
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Apropros of nothing, we're got four long tailed tits visiting the back garden for the first time and goldfinches in the front. And if we walk 100 yards to the forest at the end of the road you can see at least two types of deer more often now that the leaves have fallen and they have less cover. I love autumn.
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Good luck to my eldest. She's going to a fancy dress costume as one half of Salt 'n Pepa. She's not old enough to remember assymetric hair so good luck with that one sweetheart.
xx - Solly
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And while we're ranting about adverts....LG reckon life is good when you share great television. So the house is about to be repossessed, your best mate's wife's left him for his brother, your team's lost again and the cat needs to be put down but, hey, as long as you and the wife can tune in to The Simpsons together, then life's great.
----------------------------------------------------------
Does anyone else think Andy Gray's comments after someone scores a goal are a bit, well, rehearsed? It's as if he already knows what he's going to say should Torres/Drogba/Gerard score.
----------------------------------------------------------
I think my 11-year-old son watches too much comedy on Dave. Over dinner, with all the relatives, my wife said she didn't want a chocolate if someone else had already taken a bite out of it. Harry chimes in: "Well you married dad after someone else had already taken a bite out of him!"
----------------------------------------------------------
Apropros of nothing, we're got four long tailed tits visiting the back garden for the first time and goldfinches in the front. And if we walk 100 yards to the forest at the end of the road you can see at least two types of deer more often now that the leaves have fallen and they have less cover. I love autumn.
----------------------------------------------------------
Good luck to my eldest. She's going to a fancy dress costume as one half of Salt 'n Pepa. She's not old enough to remember assymetric hair so good luck with that one sweetheart.
xx - Solly
Saturday, 6 November 2010
Looked a lot like Che Guevara
PHEW....the Mail Online has a story today about Kourtney Kardashian, ending its 24-hour Kardashian drought. Thank goodness, I was getting withdrawal symptoms. The story? I can't remember now. I think she was wearing jewellery.
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The elixir of youth is the disavowment of middle aged prejudices.
Let me give you an example. You (a man or woman in their forties) walks into a PR company where there are lines and lines of earnest young men and women, many sporting unusual arrangements of facial hair. Particularly the men.
The strangest thing, to many of us, is how some of these young Turks can have two styles of beard going on at the same time, on the same face. Two tiered bushes of fuzz. Goatees seem to be out now but hirsute is everywhere. I realise this has something to do with Movember (look it up) and all credit to those taking part.
But then, 20-odd years ago, young men were trying all sorts of hairy arrangements too - George Michael has had the same five o'clock shadow ever since, New Romantics had strange, waxy lines under their nostrils. My mate Howard Thomas grew a full Tom Selleck just to show that he could.
The prejudicial view is to tut inwardly and wonder what has happened to young people while pondering the latest line in baggy trousers with drainpipe legs and wondering who on earth thinks they look good in such a bizarre combination of styles in one garment.
Then you remember the ridiculous things we used to wear. I dyed my hair blonde, used Sun-In, developed an accidental frizz and looked like Shaft in negative.
That's why we're wrong, us of a certain age. The whole point of slavishly following fashion when you're young is that it makes your parents' generation inwardly tut. Outwardly too sometimes.
Otherwise the young would wear Fat Face tees, untucked, with Clarkson-style jeans and cheap trainers and breathe in every time their wife's friends popped round for a coffee. Er, for instance.
And it's still far better than a 55-year-old woman walking round Waitrose, Buckhurst Hill, with a fake tan in a Juicy Couture tracksuit. Or anyone driving a Range Rover.
------------------------------------------------
I used to know Phil Woolas. Not well but I was The Sun's industrial reporter and he was part of a new wave of young, politically aware but tabloid friendly union press officers including Charlie Whelan, Daniel Harris (still a f/b friend) and John Healey (who also become an MP).
Phil was not quite as outward going as the others, always seemed to be a bit suspicious of everyone, and wasn't easy to warm to but I was genuinely pleased to see him do well, as I am about a lot of people I used to work with (even you Piers). He made himself look a bit of cock over the Joanna Lumley thing but not as much as he does now. I'm just not sure he's the only guilty MP out there but he really should have known better.
Am I being too generous?
-------------------------------------------------
Happiness is having all your family round you. Or at least the expectation of having all your family round you. Ask me again in 24 hours if I still feel that way.
Good shabbas...Solly
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The elixir of youth is the disavowment of middle aged prejudices.
Let me give you an example. You (a man or woman in their forties) walks into a PR company where there are lines and lines of earnest young men and women, many sporting unusual arrangements of facial hair. Particularly the men.
The strangest thing, to many of us, is how some of these young Turks can have two styles of beard going on at the same time, on the same face. Two tiered bushes of fuzz. Goatees seem to be out now but hirsute is everywhere. I realise this has something to do with Movember (look it up) and all credit to those taking part.
But then, 20-odd years ago, young men were trying all sorts of hairy arrangements too - George Michael has had the same five o'clock shadow ever since, New Romantics had strange, waxy lines under their nostrils. My mate Howard Thomas grew a full Tom Selleck just to show that he could.
The prejudicial view is to tut inwardly and wonder what has happened to young people while pondering the latest line in baggy trousers with drainpipe legs and wondering who on earth thinks they look good in such a bizarre combination of styles in one garment.
Then you remember the ridiculous things we used to wear. I dyed my hair blonde, used Sun-In, developed an accidental frizz and looked like Shaft in negative.
That's why we're wrong, us of a certain age. The whole point of slavishly following fashion when you're young is that it makes your parents' generation inwardly tut. Outwardly too sometimes.
Otherwise the young would wear Fat Face tees, untucked, with Clarkson-style jeans and cheap trainers and breathe in every time their wife's friends popped round for a coffee. Er, for instance.
And it's still far better than a 55-year-old woman walking round Waitrose, Buckhurst Hill, with a fake tan in a Juicy Couture tracksuit. Or anyone driving a Range Rover.
------------------------------------------------
I used to know Phil Woolas. Not well but I was The Sun's industrial reporter and he was part of a new wave of young, politically aware but tabloid friendly union press officers including Charlie Whelan, Daniel Harris (still a f/b friend) and John Healey (who also become an MP).
Phil was not quite as outward going as the others, always seemed to be a bit suspicious of everyone, and wasn't easy to warm to but I was genuinely pleased to see him do well, as I am about a lot of people I used to work with (even you Piers). He made himself look a bit of cock over the Joanna Lumley thing but not as much as he does now. I'm just not sure he's the only guilty MP out there but he really should have known better.
Am I being too generous?
-------------------------------------------------
Happiness is having all your family round you. Or at least the expectation of having all your family round you. Ask me again in 24 hours if I still feel that way.
Good shabbas...Solly
Friday, 5 November 2010
What? No Kardashian
I'm an outraged reader of the Daily Mail online (is there any other sort of reader of the Daily Mail online?)
For the first time since I can remember, the website has not got a story about Kim Kardashian or, indeed any of her sisters, Khloe, Kourtney and, er, Korky, Kris, Krumpelstilskin?
Surely one of them has bought a new pair of shoes, been to a party or just left the house wearing something?
I'm konsidering komplaining to the press kouncil.
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The Halifax Building Society is considering one of two options regarding its £25 million ad account. The first is to give it to a new agency after ten years of being with DLKW Lowe (who are a bit like Mad Men but without the style, panache, personality and, Joan) or hand it to someone else.
The incumbents are responsible for Howard, that fat bird in the railway station murdering Aretha Franklin's Think, and Radio Halifax with some chicken necked clerk-turned-DJ singing Ice Ice Baby while her nerdy chum tries to act.
And don't even start on the banking crisis.
You may think the path to righteousness is clear but Confuscious, he say: Bad advertising make many memories in public mind. Better bad than boring.
I bet they keep the same agency and continue to make adverts so bad that the ones for Go Compare look like Proust in (price) comparison.
--------------------------------------------------------
My Scouse in-laws are coming to stay for the weekend. Naturally whenever I mention this it sparks jokes about hubcaps and the like. But, although I'm supposed to be a judgemental little git, I actually like people from Liverpool. And Manchester. Not so much Leeds though.
The truth is the Solomons boys have always had an eerie attraction to girls from Merseyside.
My wife's family are from Anfield and West Derby and like all sensible Liverpudlians moved out as soon as they were able to do so.
My little brother's ex and their two children are from Prescot (and still live there) while the middle Solly was engaged to a lass from Crosby before calling it off, marrying someone else and then getting divorced.
That's another thing about the Solomons brothers - we've kept a lot of divorce lawyers very happy through some tough economic times.
----------------------------------------------------------
As this is a new thing for me (blogging) I have decided I'm going to try and keep it football free for the most part. But I mentioned this on Facebook and would like to say again, get well soon to Danny Baker. That's one for the youngsters, as he would say.
Ahoy ahoy...Solly
For the first time since I can remember, the website has not got a story about Kim Kardashian or, indeed any of her sisters, Khloe, Kourtney and, er, Korky, Kris, Krumpelstilskin?
Surely one of them has bought a new pair of shoes, been to a party or just left the house wearing something?
I'm konsidering komplaining to the press kouncil.
--------------------------------------------------------
The Halifax Building Society is considering one of two options regarding its £25 million ad account. The first is to give it to a new agency after ten years of being with DLKW Lowe (who are a bit like Mad Men but without the style, panache, personality and, Joan) or hand it to someone else.
The incumbents are responsible for Howard, that fat bird in the railway station murdering Aretha Franklin's Think, and Radio Halifax with some chicken necked clerk-turned-DJ singing Ice Ice Baby while her nerdy chum tries to act.
And don't even start on the banking crisis.
You may think the path to righteousness is clear but Confuscious, he say: Bad advertising make many memories in public mind. Better bad than boring.
I bet they keep the same agency and continue to make adverts so bad that the ones for Go Compare look like Proust in (price) comparison.
--------------------------------------------------------
My Scouse in-laws are coming to stay for the weekend. Naturally whenever I mention this it sparks jokes about hubcaps and the like. But, although I'm supposed to be a judgemental little git, I actually like people from Liverpool. And Manchester. Not so much Leeds though.
The truth is the Solomons boys have always had an eerie attraction to girls from Merseyside.
My wife's family are from Anfield and West Derby and like all sensible Liverpudlians moved out as soon as they were able to do so.
My little brother's ex and their two children are from Prescot (and still live there) while the middle Solly was engaged to a lass from Crosby before calling it off, marrying someone else and then getting divorced.
That's another thing about the Solomons brothers - we've kept a lot of divorce lawyers very happy through some tough economic times.
----------------------------------------------------------
As this is a new thing for me (blogging) I have decided I'm going to try and keep it football free for the most part. But I mentioned this on Facebook and would like to say again, get well soon to Danny Baker. That's one for the youngsters, as he would say.
Ahoy ahoy...Solly
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Awesome. People in The Guardian I've never heard of.
Continuing the theme of people I've never heard of. Yesterday I mentioned a few from the Mail Online, today, in the interests of balance because that's the kind of guy I am, here's a few names from The Guardian's culture pages that I've never heard of either. I've included a brief description of what they do, though of course I expect they are as familiar to you lot as Kim Kardashian is to people in the Nu Bar. (What do you mean, you've never heard of the Nu Bar?)
Me: 'Sorry, it really doesn't sound like a story. I don't think it's one for us but feel free to email it over if you must.'
The youngest sounding PR assistant I think I have ever spoken to: "Ok, awesome."
Note: Dictionary definition of awesome = that which inspires awe.
Nice to know I still have that effect on girls.
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MDR is French for LOL. It stands for mort de rire (I think) which means 'die of laughing'.
You've gotta love them Frenchies. No, you really do have to love them. Apparently it's now the law since the ConDems signed the Entente Frugale. That means loving their language, their culture and, of course, their crazy cocktail drinks. After all, absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
Sorry.
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This weekend will be interesting. Both my brothers are coming over - I don't think the three of us have been in the same room since my mum's funeral. Plus my in-laws. We must make sure we have plenty of booze. With any luck, my youngest brother is still a dopehead - if he brings his stash then I can mush some of it up and give it to my father in law and we can all escape the evening mentally unscathed.
As I now blog and therefore have absolutely no secrets or a private life any more, I will be sure to let you all know if anything happens!
adieu, a Jew, to you and you and you-oo....Solly
David Hoyle - performance artist
Mobb Deep - 1990s rap artist
Lucas Moodysson - Swedish director
Jennifer Lynn Barnes - wrote Raised by Wolves
Edmund Clarke - photographer
Miles Kane - Last Shadow Puppets (heard of them, not him)
Jean Adamson - children's writer
Miriam O'Reilly - former Countryfile presenter
Is the world passing me by, I wonder?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Me: 'Sorry, it really doesn't sound like a story. I don't think it's one for us but feel free to email it over if you must.'
The youngest sounding PR assistant I think I have ever spoken to: "Ok, awesome."
Note: Dictionary definition of awesome = that which inspires awe.
Nice to know I still have that effect on girls.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MDR is French for LOL. It stands for mort de rire (I think) which means 'die of laughing'.
You've gotta love them Frenchies. No, you really do have to love them. Apparently it's now the law since the ConDems signed the Entente Frugale. That means loving their language, their culture and, of course, their crazy cocktail drinks. After all, absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
Sorry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This weekend will be interesting. Both my brothers are coming over - I don't think the three of us have been in the same room since my mum's funeral. Plus my in-laws. We must make sure we have plenty of booze. With any luck, my youngest brother is still a dopehead - if he brings his stash then I can mush some of it up and give it to my father in law and we can all escape the evening mentally unscathed.
As I now blog and therefore have absolutely no secrets or a private life any more, I will be sure to let you all know if anything happens!
adieu, a Jew, to you and you and you-oo....Solly
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
People I would never have heard of if it wasn't for the Daily Mail
As a middle aged man with teenage kids I am expected to have heard of some people like Justin Bieberlake and Twilight star CowPatz but as a journalist with his finger on the tabloid pulse, it means I also have to know names like Kim Kardashian, even if it doesn't matter that I have no idea what she does. She, or one of her crazily monikered sisters, is in the Mail Online every single day. I kid you not.
I have also heard of the two Lloyds - that's Cher and Danielle, not Grosman and HBOS. They are in the paper quite a lot. Considering how much Mail readers hate pikeys, I find this a little surprising.
But every now and then I scan the online pages of the Daily Mail (I do it so you don't have to, folks) and come across new and exotic characters from a nether world where only the Z List exists.
And, honestly? I haven't a clue.
Today there was an announcement that AnnaLynn someone had split up with Kellan someoneelse. I didn't even know these two anagrams had got together in the first place so I'm devastated to learn they've split up.
Then there's Kaya Scodalario. I know, I know. Apparently she's in Skins and that's her real name, not her character name. But she's now famous for crying when a bloke punched her boyfriend, Elliot Tittensor.
Don't laugh. I was born in Tittensor. Really.
And he's famous for being in Shameless. Which is brilliant, I grant you.
Then there's Mark Wright. I thought he was an average defender who punched above his weight enough to get into the England team. But no, he's in the disgracefully lowlife The Only Way Is Essex which is so awful it's beyond parody. And while we're at it, have you heard of Mike Sorrentino. He has a nickname which is 'The Situation' and is in Jersey Shore. What's that? Well, as any self respecting Daily Mail reader knows, it's the US reality show that TOWIE is based on.
The Mail will no doubt claim it has a younger and lower socio economic reader online who is into these celebs but not judging by the rabid comments online - which generally go along the lines of 'Who is this ridiculous woman??? Why do you write about them' and signed 'Sick of Tony Bliar, Whitchurch, What Used to Be England'.
However, to prove this is not a one way street, later this week I shall reveal ten people in the Guardian I've never heard of, to balance the books.
----------------------------------------------------
In a poll of 14,000 Britons, 12 per cent said Nietzsche had the greatest moustache ever. That's 12 per cent. Even we didn't do that story because we thought it so ridiculous. But the Telegraph did. What the hell do I know.
----------------------------------------------------
I have also heard of the two Lloyds - that's Cher and Danielle, not Grosman and HBOS. They are in the paper quite a lot. Considering how much Mail readers hate pikeys, I find this a little surprising.
But every now and then I scan the online pages of the Daily Mail (I do it so you don't have to, folks) and come across new and exotic characters from a nether world where only the Z List exists.
And, honestly? I haven't a clue.
Today there was an announcement that AnnaLynn someone had split up with Kellan someoneelse. I didn't even know these two anagrams had got together in the first place so I'm devastated to learn they've split up.
Then there's Kaya Scodalario. I know, I know. Apparently she's in Skins and that's her real name, not her character name. But she's now famous for crying when a bloke punched her boyfriend, Elliot Tittensor.
Don't laugh. I was born in Tittensor. Really.
And he's famous for being in Shameless. Which is brilliant, I grant you.
Then there's Mark Wright. I thought he was an average defender who punched above his weight enough to get into the England team. But no, he's in the disgracefully lowlife The Only Way Is Essex which is so awful it's beyond parody. And while we're at it, have you heard of Mike Sorrentino. He has a nickname which is 'The Situation' and is in Jersey Shore. What's that? Well, as any self respecting Daily Mail reader knows, it's the US reality show that TOWIE is based on.
The Mail will no doubt claim it has a younger and lower socio economic reader online who is into these celebs but not judging by the rabid comments online - which generally go along the lines of 'Who is this ridiculous woman??? Why do you write about them' and signed 'Sick of Tony Bliar, Whitchurch, What Used to Be England'.
However, to prove this is not a one way street, later this week I shall reveal ten people in the Guardian I've never heard of, to balance the books.
----------------------------------------------------
In a poll of 14,000 Britons, 12 per cent said Nietzsche had the greatest moustache ever. That's 12 per cent. Even we didn't do that story because we thought it so ridiculous. But the Telegraph did. What the hell do I know.
----------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
What the hell do I blog about?
You can't just do a blog, the wife says, it has to have a theme. Blog about being middle aged, or about supporting Spurs or living in Essex.
You can't just blog about random thoughts.
Like: I thought it said 'Extreme Fisting With Robson Green' on the TV schedule. Thankfully I was wrong.
Like: Why can't you get black coffee at White Hart Lane (it comes ready made, with milk!) Fat Bill the Binman, who I sit next to, but one, threw a right wobbly with the East European serving staff over this. And when they suggested he have hot chocolate, I thought he'd have a heart attack.
Like: Have you seen that advert with Jamie Theakston for Activa? He looks soooo fat. I thought having Martine 'I'll make it big in Hollywood' McCutcheon was bad enough but Jamie, you've really let yourself go since being found in a prostitute's torture chamber. Well you would, wouldn't you.
--------------------------
Has there ever been a good 'comedy' song? I mean one that you can still listen to more than a couple of times and laugh? Harry Hill's tried it and failed, in my opinion, yet he's a comedy God. That one about 'hello mudda hello fudda' was quite funny I suppose but not laugh out loud. I guess no one has ever beaten Benny Hill's Ernie. And yet he was a strange little perv living in a Southampton bedsit.
*Benny Hill anecdote warning* I worked at The Sun when Frankie Howerd died and a few of us were charged with ringing comedians to ask them for their reaction. One of us, possibly George Pascoe Watson, got hold of Benny Hill's agent and he said: "Can't reach Benny but you can quote him as saying Frankie was a comedy legend etc." So the quote went in the paper. Next day they found Benny dead, he'd been dead for three days. Turned out he died before Frankie Howerd. Made the quote look spooky!
----------------------------
Thinking of having my eyes lasered. Optical Express rang me during the Spurs match against Inter, which pissed me off, but I've agreed to have a test to see if I'm 'suitable'. Now I'm doing a blog I suppose I'll have to keep you all updated.
I've worn glasses for 40 years, it will be strange not to have the bins on any more but we'll see.
-----------------------------
It's the ex-wife's birthday today. She's six weeks older than me. That's reassuring. We divorced 15 years ago but I still sent her an email. A nice one, this time. Ah, sweet. As our daughter was 18 the day before, they both went to the pub I believe. The end of maintenance payments draws ever nearer!
------------------------------
Anyway, as a middle-aged Spurs fan living in Essex....I've got to top up my St Tropez and get the Range Rover facing the right way for the wife in the morning. She's having her vajazzle polished.
xxx
Solly
You can't just blog about random thoughts.
Like: I thought it said 'Extreme Fisting With Robson Green' on the TV schedule. Thankfully I was wrong.
Like: Why can't you get black coffee at White Hart Lane (it comes ready made, with milk!) Fat Bill the Binman, who I sit next to, but one, threw a right wobbly with the East European serving staff over this. And when they suggested he have hot chocolate, I thought he'd have a heart attack.
Like: Have you seen that advert with Jamie Theakston for Activa? He looks soooo fat. I thought having Martine 'I'll make it big in Hollywood' McCutcheon was bad enough but Jamie, you've really let yourself go since being found in a prostitute's torture chamber. Well you would, wouldn't you.
--------------------------
Has there ever been a good 'comedy' song? I mean one that you can still listen to more than a couple of times and laugh? Harry Hill's tried it and failed, in my opinion, yet he's a comedy God. That one about 'hello mudda hello fudda' was quite funny I suppose but not laugh out loud. I guess no one has ever beaten Benny Hill's Ernie. And yet he was a strange little perv living in a Southampton bedsit.
*Benny Hill anecdote warning* I worked at The Sun when Frankie Howerd died and a few of us were charged with ringing comedians to ask them for their reaction. One of us, possibly George Pascoe Watson, got hold of Benny Hill's agent and he said: "Can't reach Benny but you can quote him as saying Frankie was a comedy legend etc." So the quote went in the paper. Next day they found Benny dead, he'd been dead for three days. Turned out he died before Frankie Howerd. Made the quote look spooky!
----------------------------
Thinking of having my eyes lasered. Optical Express rang me during the Spurs match against Inter, which pissed me off, but I've agreed to have a test to see if I'm 'suitable'. Now I'm doing a blog I suppose I'll have to keep you all updated.
I've worn glasses for 40 years, it will be strange not to have the bins on any more but we'll see.
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It's the ex-wife's birthday today. She's six weeks older than me. That's reassuring. We divorced 15 years ago but I still sent her an email. A nice one, this time. Ah, sweet. As our daughter was 18 the day before, they both went to the pub I believe. The end of maintenance payments draws ever nearer!
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Anyway, as a middle-aged Spurs fan living in Essex....I've got to top up my St Tropez and get the Range Rover facing the right way for the wife in the morning. She's having her vajazzle polished.
xxx
Solly
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