When Harry Met Solly

Thirteen years after deciding that Harry was the perfect name for my son (naturally with a name like Harry Solomons I want him to be a divorce lawyer or a theatrical agent) I see the good taste has rubbed off and it is now the most popular boys' name in Britain for new born babies. And my second choice, Mohammed, is doing well too, I see.

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What have the following got in common? Michael Madsen, Mohammed Al-Fayed, Ricky Hatton, Tinie Tempah, Amy Winehouse, Charlie Sheen and Steve Strange? All never or will never go into the Celebrity Big Brother house. Yet all have been rumoured to have been going in by the Daily Star.

I don't know what Leveson has planned for a revamped PCC but here's an idea. Fine the Daily Star £100,000 for every celebrity they say is going into the CBB house but doesn't. Then give the money out to freelances and agencies whose stories have not got into their paper because they've been forced out by CBB exclusives.

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A new boutique hotel has opened in what used to be Bethnal Green Town Hall and I'm told it's very exclusive and trendy. So much so that it is advertising local culture to those visiting, including a tour of what we used to call graffiti but is now termed as London Street Art. I'm guessing it's not some bloke pointing out 'George Davis Is Innocent' in white paint to bemused Americans.

According to a friend of mine who stayed there, they also recommend a night of 'risque' entertainment at the Bethnal Green Working Man's Club. Bethnal Green clubs appear to have come a long way since the 1940s when my dad and his mates were chased out of one by two young twins called Ronnie and Reggie, for straying the wrong side of the Mile End Road from their Stepney patch.

But it got me thinking that there could be quite a racket in East End culture tours away from the usual Jack the Ripper walks or tours of Jewish London that I once did.

Why not show the tourists where Bob Hoskins made his last great film, The Long Good Friday, including the remains of the lido where a dead body ruined his day?

Or perhaps they could try one of my new East End Experience Trips?

*The Race Hate Experience (aka Hurrah For The Blackshirts) - feel the warm Cockney welcome that generations of Huguenots, Jews, Bangladeshis, Irish and Chinese have been through by getting local old people to spit at you as you walk past. Burning dog poo pushed through your door will cost more.

*The Flying Bottle (and other local pubs) - we'll provide you with some useful local phrases such as 'are you staring at my bird?' and 'did you call my pint a poof?' as you travel on a rollercoaster through broken pool cues, smashed bottles, finishing with being down in the tube station at midnight with a little money and a takeaway curry

*East London Nature Trail - pitbulls, sparrers that can't sing, one eyed cats and rats the size of Mini Metros.

*Foreign customs and habits - our tactful guides will talk you through the new local customs brought in by devout religions to the area such as female circumcision, child brides, East European prostitution trafficking and, of course, aggressive begging introduced by post-war Scottish protestants.

Happy New Year one and all....Solly

The Age of Stupid

I have come to the conclusion that we are living in the age of the stupid. I know, I know, what took me so long?
Was it yet another politically incisive tweet by Lily Allen (my God that woman is thick as a brick)?
Was it Ricky Gervais becoming the pin up for atheists days after the death of Christopher Hitchens?
Perhaps it was the latest fuss over racist footballers in which there is a genuine discussion to have about the term 'coloured' but instead which gets hijacked by those who can't see what the fuss is about and those who can but relegate the arguments to 'everyone's a racist'.
It is not that complicated. Sometimes there are words or phrases which are unacceptable to a bunch of people but because they are used by the majority, they seem ok.
Black people, and I accept that not even all black people, find the word coloured unacceptable. It suggests there are white people and everyone else is coloured. Which is derogatory. It is also a reminder of apartheid and segregationalist America, both of which happened within my lifetime.
The point is this. If people find it offensive, then we, as intelligent people, should simply stop using it when there are alternatives. We have a choice. We can choose not to be offensive or to be offensive. Why would we choose the latter option? 'Oh but I have always used it' is not good enough.
I can remember when words like wog, coon, paki and yid were used a lot. Thankfully they are not any more. We can decide whether we want to use the excuse of 'tradition' to be offensive, or not. Simple.
Alan Hansen used the word because he is from a generation who can remember when it was ok. He then realised he should not have so apologised. And that's the matter closed. Hansen is not racist. Suarez, I think, is. Let's face it. Whatever word he used to Evra - and it was probably something like 'negrito' - it was not done to be friendly. He wasn't saying, 'I say, that tackle was a bit late my black friend'. Dalglish is making himself looking stupid for getting his team to wear those t-shirts supporting Suarez. That's a team containing Glenn Johnson and 10 white blokes by the way. Try finding one other Premiership side that only has one black player in its starting line up. You probably have to go back as far as the Premiership winning Blackburn side to find a team made up of so many white players. Which was managed by? Er, remind me.
No, what made me think that we are living in the age of the stupid was David Jason. Del Boy if you will. He came out and said, and I paraphrase, the current situation with Europe was akin to Germany wanting to run Europe like the Fourth Reich.
It was stupid and ignorant.
There are a lot of arguments for and against closer integration in Europe and a lot of intelligent ones at that.
One of these is not that Germany is looking to invade the rest of Europe. This kind of kneejerk, xenophobic attitude does no one any favours. The plonker.
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I'm not doing a review of the year. If you want a review of the year buy a newspaper, switch on the TV or click on a million different websites.
If you did read a newspaper, any newspaper, during 2011 you have been well informed with thousands upon thousands of articles about everything from Imogen Thomas to the Arab Spring.
Obviously, now that the News of the World has been closed down based on five per cent of a Guardian story being wrong, then you will be less well informed about a variety of subjects that didn't interest the likes of Steve Coogan and Hugh Grant but were enough to satisfy several million or so Britons every week.
But, hey, on the plus side, you have a much higher proportion of 'serious' newspapers to choose from so you can read a lot more about how much bread costs in Tuscany or how Michael McIntyre will spend Christmas.
No, of course not. There's loads of serious stuff in the broadsheets that are covered a lot more flippantly in the tabloids if at all.
Thanks to painstaking research by the excellent journalist blogger Jon Slattery, he found there were 2,346 articles on Osama Bin Laden in the national papers in 2011. I think it's fair to say this was spread across the titles.
But there were 2,381 articles on Andy Coulson. I think it's fair to say most of these were in one particular paper. So that's more wordage on Coulson than the man who, this year, was shot dead by US forces.
Of course one is a ruthless tyrant ordering crack squads of evil men and women to go out and destroy opponents of their crazed philosphy. And the other is Osama Bin Laden.
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I really tried my best to be hard and cynical and nasty about Christmas, moaning about the songs on the radio, the over commercialisation, the rubbish TV, the John Lewis ad and all the rest.

And then a mate of mine showed me a website from the RNIB which listed letters to Santa from blind children and, well, it's no good. I'm going to have to realise how lucky I am after all.

It's here: http://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2011/12/20/read-letters-from-blind-children-to-santa/

It's Christmas.

Have a good one....Solly

Listing Badly

Well that was a surprise. Just watched Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett sing a duet of The Lady Is A Tramp and it was brilliant.
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Perhaps the definition of devotion is standing in the snow watching your son's football team go from 3-1 up to 4-3 down by the final whistle while you freeze your nuts off.
Or perhaps it's to then go to Spurs and watch a dull 1-0 win in the cold while freezing your nuts off.
Still, it was lifted by the bloke behind mentioning that the Sunderland striker Stephane Sessegnon reminded him of Kenny Lynch. That led to half of those around us nodding sagely and the other half (who are aged 40 and under) simply going 'who?'
That's the trouble with young people. They haven't heard of Kenny Lynch. Probably have no idea who Harry Fowler is either, I dare say. Or Peter Wyngarde. Tsk.
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Not one but two Christmas parties this week. And I haven't got the stamina anymore. But seeing old friends in the surrounding of a pub does entail a wonderful evening of anecdotes.
My mate, who shall remain nameless, has a ghostly wan not helped by constantly finding himself unexpectedly drunk and prey to the occasional dodgy 'e' (whatever that is).
Because of this, and a similar surname (there's a clue I suppose) he has recently been mistaken by the barman of a posh London hotel for the father of Twilight star Robert Pattinson after once signing for his room number.
He has decided not to put the man right. Mainly because if he goes to this bar in this very famous trendy hotel he gets free cocktails. Each one costs around £20 normally.
At the end of the night, the barman mentions that he is going to get the nightbus home because he cannot afford a cab.
So my mate gives him £25 on the basis that he's had £100 worth of booze for that price.
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I'm 50 next year and have accepted the fact that I won't complete any of those '50 things to do before you're 50' lists. Frankly I'm not bothered.
If I have to consult a list to find things to do, then something's wrong. So it doesn't really matter than I'm unlikely to go bungee jumping or spend a night in jail over the next 12 months.
And there's other things I have yet to do and can't see myself doing either.
I have never seen Downton Abbey, played Angry Birds, been to a rugby match or visited a lap dancing club.
I have never tried skiing, eaten lobster, been to Belfast, had a tattoo or seen Blade Runner.
I've nothing against any of most of these - though there are principled reasons behind the lap dancing and lobsters. And I may yet try one or two of the other things purely out of curiosity.
The point is, if any of us really wanted to do any of those things we probably could. But only if we want to, rather than to merely tick boxes.
Besides, some the things that seem to appear on all these lists are not worth the wait, if you ask me.
Take swimming with dolphins. Tried it and, quite honestly, all it did was remind me that these wonderful animals are better off in the wild than brought up in captivity and then made to perform for humans.
One of the dolphins we were supposed to be swimming with decided to throw a moody and wouldn't come out and join in. That's when I realised that perhaps they didn't enjoy it quite as much as the handlers had claimed.
Next day we went out on a boat and saw a couple, in the wild, jumping out the water and it was much more thrilling, and cheaper, than the day before. Plus we never felt that we were getting in their way, impeding on their patch or altering their normal way of life.
That's not to say some of the items on these regular lists are not worth trying. Parascending was exhilarating, but water skiing was a letdown. Though that was my fault for trying to ski on the bottom of the seabed rather than on the water I think.
 The Great Wall of China and The Grand Canyon were truly breathtaking and, for my money, worth seeing in the flesh. The Sistine Chapel though, was too crowded and lacked atmosphere. And seeing the Mona Lisa in the Louvre is possibly less exciting that seeing it in a magazine on the sofa.
Of course it's all personal. I could make up my own list about things to do before you're 50 based on my own experiences. It would include seeing Jurgen Klinsmann score his first goal at White Hart Lane and having sex in a Ford Cortina outside a pub on the Kennington Road but I don't expect these to appeal to everyone.
So go and do what you want, and work out that if you were going to die tomorrow, compile a list of 50 brilliant things you've experienced and then tick them all and consider it job done.
Happy Chanukah....Solly

Tamara never comes...without a publicist

I see Tamara Ecclestone is complaining that her privacy has been invaded. Something to do with blackmail.
She's the heiress who calls a press conference every time she buys a pair of shoes and has a reality TV crew following her 24/7.
Blackmail's a nasty business. What I don't understand is this. How much privacy does she have left to invade?
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You'd think I'd blow off about The Guardian telling lies which led to the News of the World closing down. Quite honestly, I can't be bothered. They will wheel out Charlie Brooker and His Holiness Pope Greenslime III to explain how they might have got it wrong over Millie Dowler's voicemail but that all tabloid journalists are scum anyway and the paper should close down for interviewing Steve Coogan and not giving him copy approval.
Brooker will make a joke out of it and Greenslade will simply say 'I told you so.'
That's if they do anything at all. They buried the story about them getting it wrong - it wasn't even the lead item in their media page. You can still see their original story, where they got it wrong, which led to the NotW closing. It remains intact with, somewhat unintentionally hilariously, an 'editor's note' beneath it that, in a very roundabout way, explains what a bunch of lying tosspots they've been.
Still, some of them probably have books to sell so perhaps we shouldn't be too harsh!
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Channel 4 is pushing a series This Is England 88 which is a gritty drama about that period, involving lots of northern folk suffering a lot. And it is brightly accompanied by a snatch of What Difference Does It Make? by The Smiths. Except that song was released in 1984.
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I haven't watched any of the X Factor but can't avoid it of course. I tuned in for the last five minutes of the very last show.
At the risk of sounding like a High Court judge, I don't get it. You spend six months watching hundreds of acts, you narrow them down to a few who, I take it, are supposed to be the most talented, and spend lots of money texting or phoning a vote in to that effect.
So why, at the end of this long and laborious process, did they pick four orange slappers with bad dress sense, bad skin and who can't even sing anyway?
I can't quite work out who comes out of this worse. All those other acts who, by definition are worse that this lot? All the people who wasted money on voting for them? The judges who have picked, as stars, a group without either an image or talent? Or all of us for letting them get away with it.
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Today was my birthday. I had to get up at the crack of sparrow's and drive to Rainham (it's out in the marshes somewhere) and watch an under-13s football match - it involved my son, I'm not trawling round Essex to find young boys playing sport.
Then I went to a carol concert involving my daughter and fell in love with some classical music celebrating a God I don't believe in. Joseph Lieber Joseph Mein for instance.
Meanwhile I've done my back in and Spurs lost (so making a wish when I blew out the candles didn't work).
It's the most interesting birthday I've had for ages. Cheers...Solly

Egged On

There's been too much doom and gloom lately, much of it personal as well as in general. So let's lighten the mood.
Have I ever told you about the day I threw eggs at a bloke from the Daily Mail while I was still at school?
And I didn't even realise it until a dozen or so years later when I had a drink with him and it all came out.
It all goes back to the heady days of 1978 when Ilford was plunged into a sudden by-election after our Labour MP died, the hardworking Millie Miller.
Now, she had a tiny majority of around 700 and the Labour Party, in its wisdom, put up some young leftie councillor called Tessa Jowell to fight the seat against an estate agent from Croydon called Vivian Bendall representing the Tories.
Extra spice was added by the resurgence locally of the National Front in what was a mixed Jewish and Asian area during a time of industrial unrest, high immigration and general dissatisfaction (ring any bells?)
Plus, James Callaghan was already trying to fend off a vote of no confidence by making the Lib-Lab deal. Losing Ilford North, which he did of course, eventually led to a general election and allowed Margaret Thatcher in.
At the time I was a 15 year old schoolboy at the local boys school when we found out the NF had hired OUR school for a meeting. We were told by the sports master who said football matches had been cancelled that weekend as a result.
Tensions were high and so some of my less Semitic looking mates - including at least two who became national newspaper journalists - went to the meeting itself 'for a laugh'.
The rest of us stayed outside, alongside an assortment of Jewish taxi drivers trying to form a blockade. and local Indian youths up for a scrap.
We all had eggs and flour and other missiles and when the NF round the roundabout, escorted by police and towards the school gates, OUR school gates. we pelted them, aiming in particularly for the bloke holding the Union Jack on a pole, as he seemed a suitable target.
Following that and other incidents the government banned any group of more than four people from getting together in public in Ilford until after the election. The police put extra officers on duty outside the synagogues. Bill Grundy sat on the wall of Dave Dillon's house (he's now the news editor of the Mail on Sunday), pointed at Hainault and basically called it a shithole on the Today show on ITV.
It was an awkward time, not least because it was my brother's barmitzvah that weekend. And we had a coachload of my mum's family - the non-Jewish lot - coming down from Staffordshire for the big event.
As their coach, driven by the ever reliable Jeff Bennett, a regular in my nan's pub, weaved its way through roadblocks and skinheads selling copies of Bulldog and armed policemen outside the synagogue, they started to wonder why on earth my mum had ever moved to 'that London'.
But back to the Daily Mail.
After leaving school, going through local papers and then joining The Sun I became industrial correspondent which introduced me to a whole new breed of journalist, and Richard Littlejohn.
One of this new breed was the funny and fantastic David Norris who always introduced himself as being from 'Her Majesty's Daily Mail.'
Despite what Max Hastings may say, David Norris was THE first journalist in Port Stanley after the liberation of The Falklands. He was already in The Stanley Arms on his third pint by the time the British Army got there though Hastings took the credit. Norris did try and shoot Hastings but was stopped by a couple of paras.
Nozzer and Littlejohn and some others were swapping stories one night at the TUC in Blackpool around 1990 I reckon.
Nozzer was quite drunk. So drunk that when a young Tony Blair came in the pub - The Alexandra - Nozzer mistook him for a freelance who had been hassling him and told him to f*** off.
Next day Blair, to his credit, came up to a hungover Norris and asked him if he still wanted him to f*** off.
One of the stories Nozzer related was when, as a young reporter for the Daily Mail, he had to infiltrate the National Front to find out about their recruiting strategy and catch them out some how. Perhaps he hoped to catch them firebombing local restaurants or something.
Trouble was, David Norris was so convincing he started to get promoted within the right wing organisation above the various traffic wardens and council workers they were used to.
So much so that when a high profile march was organised, Norris was given the duty of carrying the flag - a rare honour.
And so he did so, through the gates of Ilford County High School in front of the TV cameras one Saturday afternoon.
And as he did so he got pelted by eggs thrown by a bunch of lefties and some scruffy schoolkids.
It was only fair that I pointed out to him that I was one of those schoolkids. He made me buy him a pint as recompense and carried on telling stories. How I miss that bloke.
Cheerio....Solly

Chewsround

Caught a bit of Countryfile on the BBC. As someone who remembers John Craven from Newsround, can I just give a little bit of advice? Get some new teeth John. The new ones look good but sound awful.
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The wife's got a new radio so I'm both enjoying and suffering Radio Four. Enjoying such delights as I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue which recently featured possibly the funniest sketch I've ever heard on the wireless, where the contestants had to act out a famous scene from Spartacus but as ducks.
A description doesn't do it justice so get on to iPlayer and get hold of the second episode of the current series and go to about five minutes before the end.
But I'm not a full convert yet to Radio Four. For instance there's a consumer programme featuring Paul Lewis who looks like Count Duckula with hair inappropriate for a man his age. And he doesn't sound much better with one of those clipped BBC accents I thought they'd left behind in the 1940s.
There's other good stuff like Desert Island Discs which has been good every since they got rid of Michael Parkinson. But then there's The Archers, possibly the worst acting I've ever heard, and The Now Show, a poor, stupid man's version of 100 other shows that take the mickey out of current affairs.
Of course the wife's into Woman's Hour because it reminds her how far women have come in this country. So I'm more than happy to leave her in peace to listen to it while she irons my shirts and cooks my dinner.
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The worst aspect of all this Clarkson nonsense is not what the man says or does - intelligent people can make up their own mind about whether or not he is funny. No, the worst aspect is how po-faced and humourless it makes 'the left' look.
Union leaders calling for him to be sacked are no better than the Daily Mail trying to whip the nation into a fervour about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross when no one who reads the paper has actually heard the programme.
They're both as bad as each other. Besides which, Clarkson was joking. It was obvious he was joking. Even to public sector workers who aren't always the brightest of folk (have you ever tried having a conversation with a surgeon, for instance, that doesn't involve talking about money?)
Far worse are those who believe what Clarkson says on subjects like the environment without bothering to check his 'facts'. Then they come out with the same misinformed arguments in any pub conversation where you dare to express any kind of opinion that maybe things like cars and planes and people can damage the environment if we're not careful.
The Prius is more environmentally damaging than a tank. Clarkson said so. It's snowing so there can't be global warming. Clarkson proved it.
You have to ask yourself, who would you believe? Clarkson or Attenborough?
And which one would you rather see taken out in the street and shot in front of their family?
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It's not a good time to be a journalist. What with Leveson's one sided 'inquest' and the celebrity circus from Coogan to Campbell alleging that photographers eat human babies and tabloid reporters shot Kennedy. Or something like that.
Well, the whole bad rap filters down. According to my local paper, six snappers from something called the Chingford Amateur Photogaphic Club went to take photos at an event called The Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. You know, arty shots of fake snow and Santa.
But they didn't have security clearnance which means, according to the people running it, they may well have been paedophiles taking pictures of children.
Looks like they'll have to go back to doing studio sessions with dodgy local 'models' instead, the poor sods.
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I did notice that Alastair Campbell described the press as putrid. This is a man who, according to former News of the World politico Ian Kirby, told reporters from that paper to ask Tony and Cherie about joining the Mile High Club so they could get a good headline and make the couple seem 'normal.'
And you have to wonder what is more putrid. Taking snaps of Sienna Miller in a public street or sexing up a dossier that sends this country to war.
Just a thought....take care, Solly

Good Grief/Bad Grief

Oh well, 'Movember' is almost over and so we won't have to see quite so much bumfluff around and Gary Lineker can stop looking like an arsehole with teeth.

But congrats to my wife for making such a fine effort for charity (hat tip: John Moloney).

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I don't want to sound like a middle aged football fan harking back to the good old days of terraces, Bovril and man-sized refreshments but have you seen the size of Wagon Wheels these days? They are only slightly bigger than a chocolate digestive. No, really. It's a disgrace.

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So, do you reckon Jessica had a sugary nightmare or a surgery nightmare? Did she wake up screaming that she was being forcefed a giant marshmallow only to find a pillow in her mouth (and not for the first time I'd guess.)

Or did she wake up from an operation to find a surgeon had made her look like a broom handle with two beach balls sewn to her ribcage?

Bet it wasn't a 'sugery' nightmare, as stated below by the Daily Star Sunday magazine cover.

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Interesting to see how people react to bad news. I was watching my son playing football when one of the other dads told the rest of us that Gary Speed had committed suicide.
My first reaction was that it was very sad. Another of the dads, a Welshman who drives from Essex to Wales for every Cardiff City home game (he and his boy have season tickets) showed shock before summising 'I bet it's a tabloid thing.'
That's how low my industry has sunk. A youngish man commits suicide and some people instantly think it must have something to do with newspaper dirty tricks.
Of course, he may be right. But then again, it may be that the rest of us don't understand aspects of mental illness and depression enough to pass judgement.
Perhaps it turns out that he has a relative who has gone missing or a close friend died recently or a crisis of confidence. Truth is, we don't know but that doesn't stop us guessing.
There are other reactions.
At Swansea City's match, what was supposed to be a minute's silence quickly turned into a minute's applause.
Scared of upsetting the Welsh, most of the media described this as a spontaneous gesture of grief.
But what's wrong with a silence? We saw on November 11th how poignant and powerful silence can be.
The penchant for clapping a dead footballer began with George Best and has continued since. Occasionally it is used when there are fears opposition fans wouldn't respect a silence.
It seems appropriate when it's someone who has been in the game for years and dies of old age like Sir Bobby Robson, for instance.
But when it is such an unexpected tragedy like Speed's I tend to agree with those who think a silence is more appropriate.
And there are yet more ways to react.
Within two hours of the news around 380 people had instantly gone to the BBC website so that, in their grief, they could quickly let the rest of the world know that 'I never knew him but he seemed like a great bloke. RIP - Dave, Basingstoke.'
Thanks for that Dave. It's good to know 380-odd people like you are there to help guide the rest of us through the grieving process.
I'm not against commenting on newspaper websites. It's quite cathartic to post 'I think Rupert Murdoch is fantastic' on The Guardian's 'Comment Is Free' section just to see the reaction from people who wear corduroy.
Similarly, it's a nice feeling to go to a Daily Mail story and big up gypsies, immigrants or global warming to wind up right wing expats.
But what's the point in adding some guff about how sad it is that someone you've never met died in circumstances about which you've no idea. And then add a really corny line like 'you're with the angels now' which is a particular tabloid favourite.
It's the online equivalent of dashing to the scene of an accident to leave a crappy bunch of petrol station flowers tied to a lamp-post.
And to cap it all, they don't even sign off with their real name. So a Daily Mail reader who prefers to sign off as 'Mad Melvin, Florida ex-pat sick of NuLiebor' can anonymously tell the world how sad they are that someone they never knew has died.
The papers and the BBC don't help either by asking readers to 'send us your tribute to Gary Speed.'
Worse still is the short form 'text us your tributes' so that some nasal gimp on a radio phone-in can read out 'Dave from Basingstoke says Gary was a great bloke. RIP.'
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Jokes that make physicists laugh: Heisenberg is driving along and gets pulled over by traffic cops who say to him: 'Do you know how fast you were going?' to which he replies: 'No but I know exactly where I am.' No, I'm a bit uncertain about that one too, at least in principle.
Night all...Solly

It's Raining Mendacious

I try hard to take Boris Johnson seriously. Visiting some of the worst ravages of the riots today he said: "I'm going to make Croydon great again." He was doing so well until that last word.
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Paul Dacre is many things. He's not, though, Pol Dacre. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of around one in four of Cambodia's population.
They beat and stabbed children, they forced little girls to marry grown men, they ripped the flesh off tortured prisoners using pincers and they even banned the concept of 'love'.
The trial of a couple of withered of Mr Burnsalike despots is currently taking place. If you search the media hard enough you can read about it. Though it isn't getting the line by line, live coverage afforced a bunch of egotistical celebrities at the Leveson Enquiry.
Dacre got it spot on when the Daily Mail today called Hugh Grant 'mendacious' for suggesting, without any evidence whatsoever, that the Mail on Sunday hacked his phone, broke into his flat and hired criminals as paparazzi. The last accusation is ludicrous. Real photographers are far more sociopathic.
Grant was clearly reprising his most famous roles. You know, those simpering posh twats from likeable but inconsequential romcoms. Because he couldn't really be like that could he? His line about standing up to bullies was straight out of About A Boy. His self-deprecating dealing with his arrest could have been from Four Weddings and his well-spoken tosspot routine was a dead spit of Love Actually.
Worse was to come. Garry Flitcroft, a footballer you probably haven't heard of, appeared to say that the fact that two women approached a newspaper claiming he shagged them was such a coincidence that it must have been down to phone hacking.
Except everyone in Blackburn knew he was a serial shagger with a penchant for lap dancing munters.
So he took out an injunction and when it was lifted he had to tell his wife, his father-in-law was ill and several years later his dad committed suicide. He's now divorced by the way. Not all footballer's wives have the patience of the woman married to multi-millionaire Ryan Giggs.
And it was all the fault of the papers. Nothing to do with the fact his wife left him over his philandering, his father-in-law was probably pissed off with the husband of his daughter using local gold-diggers as an ornament for his knob. I'd wager his own dad eventually died of shame.
There's only one man to blame for what happened and that's the two bob footballer who decided to dip his wick in a couple of publicity seeking tarts.
But nothing could prepare for the sight of the unwashed comedy God that is Steve Coogan. Unfortunately in real life he's not as funny as Alan Partridge. And his hair's worse too.
He seems to think publicity is an unfortunate byproduct of being famous. Though it didn't stop him doing several in depth interviews to publicise his various shows, books and DVDs.
It's like saying earning lots of money and, yes, being able to shag lap dancers, was an unfortunate accident that befalls people in the public eye. Funny how all these anti-press celebs like to sleep around.
Unfortunately Grant, Coogan and Flitcroft are pushing at an open door. They could claim the Daily Mail eat babies, the Sunday People drugged their kittens and the Daily Star has reporters permanently living under their floorboards and an army of Guardian readers will believe them.
Even the usually excellent Guardian writer Michael White was fooled. In a brown nosing column he heaped praise on Grant as some kind of hero citing his bravery and kindness. Such sycophantic arse-licking has not been seen since Alastair Campbell's defence of Robert Maxwell, which spared a punch up between White and the future spin doctor many years ago in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, there's a trial going on in Cambodia.
You can read about it with a couple of clicks of a computer mouse on any number of British media websites. That's because you have a free press.
It means you have a choice. You can, if you wish, read about what Kim Kardashian had for breakfast or you can peruse a report of how some of the world's worst criminals get treated when they caught.
You can read about James Corden going to Broadway, if you want, or you can analyse the Greek debt. You can learn what Amy Childs said on Twitter, what Sinitta had to eat in the Bushtucker trial (another trial, the papers are full of them) and what Lady Gaga wore for some awards ceremony.
The point is, you can do all these things here. And journalists won't come round and connect electrodes to your balls if you don't.
And when they do misbehave, they will get fired or even jailed. Several senior policemen will resign, loads of D-listers will get compensation, Britain's best read newspaper will close and the taxpayer will spend millions on listening to Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan telling us all which bits of their lives you're allowed to read about.
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Oh dear. Russell Grant now claims he 'knew' Diana would die. Funny how horoscopes themselves never actually say such things. Naturally I don't believe a word they say, but then us Sagitarrians are a pretty cynical bunch.
He used to do the horoscopes, through syndication, for the Ilford Recorder. Once when there was some contractualy dispute, we couldn't use it. So instead we, the reporters, did it.
And you know what, it was no less accurate. I'll tell you how we did it next time.
Court adjourned...Solly

Hand in Glove

Well done to Alastair Campbell for winnng the Football Focus predictions cup. Obviously better at predicting what's going to happen over 90 minutes than within 45 minutes. Burnley 1 WMD 0.
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Attended my first ever boxing match over the weekend. An amateur event involving several short bouts with lots of padding so not much blood. Being a namby pamby liberal, I'm not a natural fan of boxing.
But three things in particular struck me. Because the judges score points for accuracy rather than the ability to brawl, there is a very, very, high level of skill that is obvious, even to the untrained eye.
Second, the boys themselves (none of those boxing seemed older than about 19) are incredibly polite and courteous outside the ring. I believe it's something to do with the discipline. I chatted to a trainer and, although there are a couple of exceptions, he said that over the years hardly any of the young boys from his club who boxed got into trouble in their everyday lives, not even fights at school.
A lot of the lads turned up with family, some from miles away. The parents didn't look so well disciplined frankly. The third thing I noticed (and you couldn't help but notice) is how many people connected with boxers seem to have tattooed necks.
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The Guardian this week had an article online about 'the new boring'. It was a condescending attack on the comfy middle classes who spend all their time talking about Downton Abbey, who watch Kirstie Allsopp, prefer Strictly to X Factor and are into knitting and home baking.
They may have well just called it We Hate the Daily Mail and be done with it.
I've never watched Downton, hate the Allsopp woman and neither knit nor bake but The Guardian is a fine one to talk.
Every episode of Mad Men is treated like the second coming in the paper, analysed to death and blogged to within an inch of its finely attired life. Same for The Wire and The Killing and any number of trendy non-British shows. Most of which I love, incidentally.
The Guardian, remember, bored the world to death with the whole Wikileaks saga and for the past year has been putting everyone into a coma with its self-righteous analysis of the hacking 'scandal.'
It has failed to realise that 90 per cent of the country are bored stiff of the whole hacking debate. I work in journalism and know well some of the guys who have been sacked or arrested and even I'm bored. Heaven knows how much everyone else is tired of endless debates on the BBC and mind-numbing government committees featuring some tubby attention seeker who thinks he's funny.
I'm bored by James Murdoch's robotic voice too, and by Whoring Hugh Grant becoming the paragon of virtue for the whole sorry tale.  I'm sick of hearing that another 15 D-List celebrities may have been on the list and are so offended they'll settle for a £10,000 back door payment.
I'm also sick of meeting strangers, telling them I'm a journalist when they ask, and then laughing lamely when they say 'oops, you going to hack my phone now, hee hee.'
Then you have interminable, expensive, public enquiries led by a group of posh people with no knowledge of the tabloid press and even less awareness of the type of people who read them.
It's rare to agree with both Kelvin McKenzie and Paul Dacre but they were spot on in the Leveson Enquiry.
And it's all over a little trick that was discovered by journalists involving mobile phones belonging to people who didn't realise you needed to change the factory setting code in order not to have your voicemails read.
It's not hacking, it's a scam. Showbiz reporters used to do it to each other to see what stories they were working on. It was a running joke at the Princess Margaret awards held by entertainment hacks. All those names in Glenn Mulcaire's notebook? I'll bet that most of the them are journalists who have had their voicemails entered by other journalists.
The journalists responsible for deleting Millie Dowler's messages should have been sacked but to close the paper down was ridiculous. But, frankly, no one gives a flying one that Sienna Miller didn't delete her voicemail messages or change the code on her mobile before someone listened to them.
I know this isn't the popular view, but I simply think to much fuss is being made and I'm bored, bored, bored. As journalists, most of us have occasionally done things that are a little suspect in order to get a story. I've got this nagging feeling that even I may have done at some point in the past.
Before digital communications, we had readers tuning in to police and other emergency broadcasts via shortwave radio then ringing the newsdesk when something happened to try and make a quick buck.
This is quite clearly just as much of a theft as voicemail interception but no one bothered, not even the police who, in effect, were the 'victims' of the theft. And it was through this that, when I was on The Sun, enabled us at 2am to discover a disaster of epic proportions unfolding on the Piper Alpha oilrig, despite the official comments from the rig's owners and the authorities at the time that it wasn't that serious.
And reporters have been slipping a bit of dosh to coppers for almost 100 years. Suddenly it's a hanging offence? Do me a favour.
Want to the know the 'new boring'? Just read The Guardian's media page on most days.
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I noticed that in their joint column in the Daily Express, Richard and Judy described the new drama series Pan Am as about as boring as an in-flight mag. Now I've read the excellent and very professional in flight mags for airlines like BA and I've read Richard and Judy's excuse of a column in the Express and I know which one I'd prefer.
Sit back and belt up....Solly

Falling Standards

According to a survey by Bath Spa University (which is one step below the Bath Londis University), the kind of dog a person owns reflects their personality. It said that owners of labradors are 'agreeable.'
I have a labrador. No we're not. Argument over.
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The paucity of decent female columnists - and there are notable exceptions - is ever more apparent when reading the Evening Standard. What was once a great paper for London is now a collection of stories about Boris Johnson and the latest back slapping charity campaign. Plus the editorial cure for insomnia, an interview by Mihir Bose.
Sarah Sands, who I once thought of as an intelligent writer, now peddles drivel for the paper. Tonight she sought to make an argument against arch atheists Stephen Fry and Richard Dawkins.
She'd been to see them in a debate on the existence of God. Naturally they were witty and urbane and logical. Unnaturally, her way of countering their argument was not.
In a nutshell, she tried to prove that God exists because of two TV programmes she had recently seen. A documentary on Leonardo da Vinci proved there is a God because so many of his paintings were holy and the sitcom Rev did so because, er, it was funny.
And that was it. That was the best she could come up with to try and prove there is an omnipotent being in charge of creation. A decent painter with a spiritual side and a decent sitcom about vicars.
I don't believe in God but I have spoken to and heard many people who make good arguments why I might be wrong. And for atheists to make their argument, they need a robust opposition because that encourages a better debate.
Poor old Sarah Sands does the theist cause no good at all. Nor her reputation come to that.
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There was once a sketch on Not the Nine O'Clock News where two politicians are insulting each other on a TV debate when one keels over and dies. The other immediately stops slagging him off and goes into a speech about what a wonderful MP the dead man was.
Mark Antony said something about the good men do oft gets interred with their bones. But not if you're an MP they don't. Oh no. When an MP dies all the sycophantic journos from the lobby line up to Tweet what a great bloke/woman they were, no matter what.
I've no doubt Alan Keen was a good bloke. He liked football, and not in the Tony 'I remember Jackie Milburn' Blair way either. He died too soon and was a great constituency MP somewhere in West London miles away from his Middlesbrough roots.
But while he may be remembered as a Boro scout and a keen player against the mainly public school XI of political journos, arguably his best known accomplishment while in office was to fiddle thousands of pounds of expenses on the public purse for him and his MP wife, Ann, to claim for a second home they never lived in.
They were known, not unkindly, as Mr and Mrs Expenses. So among all the praise, perhaps we shouldn't forget just how many of our 'decent' MPs had their hands in the till all those years.
For me, as a Labour supporter, I feel it is somehow worse when it's one of your own who does it.
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The more I take my son to his various sporting commitments, the more I can only admire the poor sods who run the various football and cricket teams, tennis clubs and swimming lessons for juniors.
Particularly football. Standing on the touchline, belting out tactics to a bunch of 12/13 year olds in the freezing cold, looks like hell to me. But having to deal with stroppy dads and stupid mums telling him what to do when they clearly have no idea, is a nightmare.
To all those dads who run teams, who fall out with other parents, who have to balance the hopes of all the kids, good and bad, not to mention balance the books, collect the fees, persuade one of us to run the line and bring the corner flags in, I salute you.
And no, I'm not going to to do it. It's bad enough running the line at football or trying to score at cricket without trying to acquire the patience of a saint, which I clearly don't have.
My attitude is to stand as far away from most of the other dads as possible and have a sneaky fag while they argue about whether or not to play five in the middle.
They think it's all over...it is now - Solly

Cemetry Gates

Stop me if you've heard this one before but I caught this joke on Radio Four. A Frenchman, Italian, Brit and German are discussing who has got the most beautiful language. The Brit says: "Look at the word 'butterfly'. It is so descriptive, both of the silky, buttery wings and practical as it tells you what it does.'
'Non' says the Frenchman. 'Papillon, the French for butterfly is more beautiful. You can whisper it 'papillon, papillon' to suggest the gentle beauty of a butterfly.'
'Hey, waddabout oura worda for butterfly, farfalle' said the slightly stereotyped Italian, 'you say farfalle, farfalle and it describes the beating of the wings on the wind.' They all nod at each other.
The German pipes up: 'Und vat exactly is wrong wiz Schmetterling!'
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I'm going to have to change my will. Thanks to John Lewis. I'd always intended to go out to the strains of The Smiths and I'd chosen two, perhaps obvious, tunes from the brilliant miserabalists.
One was 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out' and the other was 'Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time.'
The latter was chosen because I love it, it's quite a short tune, and it would piss off my family and many of my friends who hate The Smiths.
My wife has always said that she'd have the last laugh by playing Charles and Eddie instead and there is nothing I could do about it.
However, John Lewis has done it instead by using Please Please etc for their latest 'tear-jerking' Christmas ad. Morrissey, ever contrary, is 'said to be' delighted.
I've no objection to Smiths tunes being used in ads. The band is, to all extents and purposes, a middle class combo. For rebellious teenagers it says nothing to them about their life. But when everyone from John Lewis to David Cameron now claim to be influenced by them, then you know the game is up.
So it's open season for all advertisers to use them. BUPA could have Girlfriend in a Coma, Tesco can have Shoplifters of the World Unite and those awful Halifax ads featuring 'real' members of staff can have Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others.
And if we're going to swap roles between Smiths and advertising jingles, then for my funeral, I choose this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYj5o4kQsXs
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Did anyone see James Murdoch in the select committee thingy this week? And if so, did your eyes glaze over?
I tried to get a verbatim version of what he said at one point because, I swear, I had no idea what he was talking about.
It was one of those questions where you could say yes, no or I don't know.
So he said something on the lines of: 'In response to that, may I see that at all times I was reliably informed by, if you will, the relevant sources, in mitigating the circumstance of the situation which was wider spread than we had, at first, been led to believe, if you will, and as such, I'm confident that had it been of relevance then I would have acted upon the information that was not available at the time but has subsequently become pertinent to what was to subsequently occur. If you will.'
At least, I think so. Now James Murdoch is the son and heir of quite a lot in particular, a giant corporation which - whatever your political views may be - deals in one major area. Communication.
Whether it is information via Dow Jones or entertainment through The Simpsons, his empire is about communication.
So why can't he communicate? I'll tell you why. Because he spends most of his life surrounded by rich, preppy nerds with MBAs from US universities (yes, I know I've banged on about this before) who sit in meetings talking in this strange, alien version of English as we know it.
Which is fine in high tech video conferencing meetings or one of those get togethers where they all wear open necked shirts and drink espresso, but not in real life.
I mean, for heaven's sake, he even made Louise Mensch look bright.
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I have absolutely nothing against videogames. I just don't really do them. I'm happy enough with games of patience.
But if they were around when I was young then I'm sure I would have spent hours shooting people or playing football on a screen instead of in Valentines Park.
But they weren't and so our sprained wrists were more likely to be down to posters of Charlie's Angels than X-Box.
But sometimes I despair. A teenage friend of one of my kids queued up during the night so he could buy something called Call of Duty.
Then he got home and played it until, by 7am, he'd 'done it' and then posted the results on Facebook and YouTube.
There's something very odd in this and I know I'm not alone in thinking this.
The kid (he's 17 I think) is a genius on a computer apparently. You can only hope he eventually uses his power for good, and not dressed as an alien at Star Trek conventions.
Live long and prosper....Solly

Come On You SPQRs

Drachenfutter. You know how the Germans have 'got a word for it'? Well Drachenfutter is that bunch of flowers you buy from the petrol station when you've forgotten the wife's birthday. It literally means dragon fodder, as in a guilty present to keep her happy.
For more of these get hold of a book called The Meaning of Tingo by the extravagantly named Adam Jacot de Boinod who is a jolly nice chap who I once interviewed even though he has what sounds like a made up name.
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The words Roman Holiday (or Holliday) conjures up, for me, the name of a great film with Audrey Hepburn or a crap 1980s band that I once went to see but never got in to the audience. That's because I turned up with two male mates and they wanted more women in the audience so wouldn't let us in. I had a lucky escape. Another mate turned up later to meet us and got in - thinking we were already inside - so watched the whole gig by himself while the rest of us went to the pictures to see a double bill of Taxi Driver and Midnight Express for the fourth time.
But now I have had my own Roman Holiday, a four day trip to the Eternal City and while I am not a travel writer (I do not wear mismatched clothing or talk in a voice designed to make everyone listen to what I'm saying in a crowded pub) I must say it's a grand place to visit.
Well, you need at least a grand to afford to eat, drink, stay and travel there for four days when travelling with a wife and two children.
I loved it all. My immediate reaction afterwards was: 1. It's bloody expensive but 2. Why the hell haven't I been here before?
Did you know the mostly densely populated country on the planet also has the lowest birth rate?
The Vatican was an eye opener. It shapes the whole of Rome both spiritually and physically. No building in Rome can be built to be higher than St Peter's and that means it has few modern skyscrapers and office blocks.
We think we do history in London but most of the best buildings in Rome were already falling down before The Tower of London was being put up.
The Colisseum, The Forum, Capitoline and, my favourite, The Pantheon are worth a day trip each. The Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain - and dozens of other spectacular fountains - are truly beautiful.
The Sistine Chapel is marvellous but spoilt by being way too crowded and lacking all spirituality as a result. But a statue of Jesus and Mary by the 18-year-old Michaelangelo is enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of this atheist's neck. It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.
In fact the whole of The Vatican is a mass (pun intended) of people. Keep the kids close, and not just because it is a city populated by Catholic priests. You move in crowds. It spoils the place a bit but only a bit. The whole place is dripping in splendour. The number of visitors shows how the church has made so much money. The decor shows how it has spent a lot of it.
There are parties of 40 or 50 from places like The Phillipines or Brazil on £50-a-head guided tours who then spend as much again on Pope John Paul fridge magnets or wobbly headed nuns for the back of the car.
There are the strange sights that you probably don't find anywhere else in the world, not even in Father Ted, of gangs of young priests roaming the streets taking photos of each other outside the monuments, smoking cigarettes and riding scooters or filling up their basket with Papal souvenirs from the shops around the Vatican.
Rome is truly one of the great cities of the world. It's an expensive place once you get there, even though it's the capital of a country slowly going bust. But like New York, Paris, Berlin and, for me, Tokyo, it's one of those places you'll never regret going to.
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Not even flying Ryanair will spoil it. I reckon two thirds of the people I meet on Ryanair flights say the same thing. "I keep saying 'never again' but they are so cheap'. I'm not one of those. You put up and you shut up. What people resent, I guess, is the indignity of the Ryanair style.
I was more cheesed off by the lack of logic. They make you queue to get the best seat on the plane then you go through the gate and get on a bus to go to the aircraft. So if you're ahead in the queue you're first on the bus and are furthest from the door. Someone 50 places behind you (ignoring the East Europeans who push in) gets on the same bus but ends up by the doors so when they open they get on the place first. What's the point?
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The funniest show on TV at the moment is probably The Big Bang Theory as I may have mentioned before. But did you know that great scientists are getting older? The nerds on TBBT are out of synch.
In the 1920s all the great scientific breakthroughs were made by, mainly, men in their 20s. Many of them weren't even working as scientists at the time they had their lightbulb moment. Einstein was a 26-year-old clerk in a patents office when he came up with the theory of relativity. There are others. Paul Dirac who came up with something I don't understand and loads involved in quantum mechanics, whatever that is, during the prewar years.
But now the average Nobel prize winner is aged 50.
The trouble is they no longer have their Eureka moment to make a breakthrough. Instead they build up a body of work over two decades to come up with something substantial.
Oh, and baby faced boffin Brian Cox is 43.
Arrivederci...Solly

Old Boot Camp

Has anyone seen that TV magician Dynamo? His tricks are great but when he talks...well, let's just say the magic goes. You'd think someone with that much talent could conjure up a personality. And how comes he can walk on water but can't pronounce his rs.
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I'm not obsessed by The Only Way Is Essex, honest. But it seems that everywhere I go round here I'm destined to bump into the oddly coloured cast and crew of this particular programme.
Popped in for a coffee in the road that used to be my local high street, Buckhurst Hill. The local paper proudly reported, this week, that this road now has 13 hair salons.
This is a street with around 50 shops in all so one in four is now a place to get your hair done. And yet so many seem to have blonde highlights that looks like straw growing through tarmac.
I was standing outside chatting to my old primary school teacher who was on her way to pilates (which I want to pronounce to rhyme with pirates) when that strange one from TOWIE walked past. Which strange one? The tall dark haired skinny bird who has had so much work done she has lips like Daffy Duck with a touch of the former Libyan leader's melted face look thrown in - Gadaffi Duck if you will.
And she was wearing a dressing gown.
Soon the whole lot were milling round the street, all in dressing gowns.
Then back home I'm walking past a clothes shop and some second rate paparazzi are outside waiting for Sam or someone to come out of the shop. She's being filmed inside buying underwear, apparently.
So I take the dog for a walk in the forest and come to a clearing and there is a group of people wearing high vis vests saying 'Loughton Boot Camp' hopping through tyres.
Looking closely I see that instead of a bunch of fat people getting slim, it's once again the cast of TOWIE in perfect make up, running around picking up logs.
I looked up Loughton Boot Camp and they claim to be based in a lodge in the middle of Epping Forest. As far as I'm aware there is no lodge in the middle of Epping Forest.
They are obviously holed up in a house round here somewhere but instead of using their own grounds, they run around the public forest for free shouting 'shu'up' and 'reem' while bench pressing a semi decaf moccachino.
It's getting so bad that the last time I popped in to get a paper I ended up with a burnt ochre St Tropez spray tan and a vajazzle.
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The news is begin to confuse me. I don't understand why a load of people in tents means a load of blokes in dresses have to resign. I don't understand why the Greeks can't work beyond lunch and pay tax and I don't understand why someone doesn't just punch Hugh Grant in the face.
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Perhaps the answer is to treat every world event in a Homer Simpson manner. The Greeks are going bust. D'oh. But the rest of Europe will help them out. Woo hoo. But they are going to have a referendum to see if they want to be helped out. D'oh. But that doesn't matter because the Chinese say they'll prop them up. Er, woo hoo?
Hugh Grant is a dad. Woo hoo. But it's the result of a brief fling. D'oh. But he'll play his part in his upbringing. Woo hoo. By popping round for an hour every few months between playing golf and leading the fight against corruption in the world's media. D'oh.
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Is there a more useless sop to 'doing the right thing' than that most nonsensical of small print additions to alcohol ads, Drink Responsibly? We're offering ten cans of extra strong lager for 10p. Drink Responsibly. Come to our arms fair and buy lots of lovely weapons of mass destruction. Nuke Responsibly. This set of steak knives will be the only knives you'll ever need. Stab Responsibly.
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Off to Rome for a few days, as it's somewhere I've never been. That's me, an atheist Jew and the missus, a lapsed Catholic. I'll blog on it when I get back. Read Responsibly....Solly

Tramps Like Us,Baby

Only four more sleeps till the National Insomniac Conference on December 14th.
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Driving the kids to the shops and Born to Run comes on the radio. Possibly one of the best songs to singalong to, particularly in the car. The kids? Straight over their heads. No interest whatsoever in the lyrics, the tune, the artist, nothing. Turn into the trading estate, one sings 'Where in the world?' and the whole car joins in, in unison 'PC World.'
I give up.
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A lot will be written about Jimmy Savile over the next few days, including some not very nice stuff I suspect. I can remember Tony Blackburn, many years ago, playing the song 'Young Girl' by Gary Puckett and saying afterwards 'that one's for Jimmy Savile.'
I think the transcript involving Savile from Have I Got News For You? was a hoax. And I'm not convinced about all those rumours involving the children's home in Jersey and Edward Heath. Though he was happy to be pictured with mass murderer Peter Sutcliffe and admitted to dealing with trouble makers in his nightclubs by tying them up in the boiler rooms.
That wouldn't be allowed these days. Health and safety gone mad I tell you.
However, he did invent the disco, at Ilford Palais, a club I used to know well. Back in the 1950s musicians had to perform live to audiences. Their union had it all sewn up. Down at the Palais Savile noticed people danced more to the records in between the live bands than the bands themselves.
So he paid the bands NOT to perform and played records, on what is believed to be the first ever twin turntable, and hence the disco was born.
By the way, the rowing boat dance to Oops Upside Your Head was invented at Lords nightclub just down the road from the Palais.
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Of course the death of Jimmy Savile, adding to those of David Coleman and Tommy Cooper means that Bruce Forsyth is the only living Briton that everyone in the country can do an impression of with any confidence.
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For some reason Jamie Oliver is presenting a cookery show, as I write, wearing a stupid hat. My missus reckons it's to divert attention from the fact he looks so fat these days.
Personally, given the choice between trusting a chef who is carrying a few pounds and looks like he enjoys his food or one who runs marathons and seems to spend more time up David Beckham's backside than in the kitchen, then I know which one I'd go for.
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The great thing about the John Terry case is that he can deny he's a racist until he's blue in the face - and I'd like to ask Ledley King for his opinion on this - but we all have the choice of whether or not we believe him.
We can base this opinion on what he says. Or we can base it on what we know about him from his 'previous'. We can decide to believe his club manager, Senor Doogie Howser. Or we can make up our own mind by looking into Terry's thin, cold, lifeless eyes as he speaks. Obviously there's not enough proof to write that John Terry is a nasty racist from a nasty criminal family. But we can think what we like. In context or out of context.
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As a treat for my daughter, I took her to see Alice Cooper being interviewed on stage at the NFT in London about his love of horror films. He was great and his fans were, well, weird. Dressed up like their hero, some in full make up with horns and everything.
The interview was followed by a screening of the original Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis. It seems corny now but it comes from an age when horror was about making you jump, not trying to make you vomit with CGI gore and special effects.
It's funny watching a film with a cinema audience of arty film buff types. They openly laughed at the more cliched elements of the film. The bits where teenage girls take their clothes off when it adds nothing to the plot but satisfies the need, at that time, for a bit of flesh.
And one moment in particular united the audience. Jamie Lee Curtis stabs Michael Myers who falls to the ground. Now we all know that no matter what you do to him, he gets up. But in the film, Miss Curtis stabs him. He falls. She sits down, back to the body of Michael Myers and slowly drops the knife to the ground. At this point the whole cinema audience audibly groaned.
It was the funniest mass reaction to a scene on screen I've ever come across.
Don't have nightmares....Solly

EU're 'aving a laugh

What do we want? More analogies? When do we want them? If your neighbour's house is on fire you don't hang around for analogies, you get on with them straight away.

According to David Cameron, if your neighbour's house was on fire, you'd help put it out to protect your own property. That's for those of us who do not have a house in its own grounds of course. In David's case, he probably thinks the servants will do it by all lining up from the well and passing each other buckets of water to throw on the flames.

Down my road if a neighbour's house was on fire, we'd stand back and let the fire brigade put it out while going online to complain to the council about it.

If it happened down a Daily Mail reader's road no one would help because Britain has lost all sense of community and, besides, it was caused by the lighted candles of illegal immigrants celebrating Diwali.

If it happened down a Daily Express reader's road the fire brigade would be unable to turn up because of EU Time Directives and new health and safety rules created by barmy Brussels.

If it happened down a Sun reader's road, then it would be an insurance job so you wouldn't want to help out if you knew what was good for you.

If it happened down a Mirror reader's road then it is Thatcher's fault. The unemployed can't afford the latest electricity charges so they are setting fire to their furniture to keep warm and burning to death in their thousands under this heartless Tory government.

In a road of Times readers then you wouldn't find out about the fire because it was blocked from view.

And among Telegraph readers, they would watch the flames while arguing that this was nothing compared to what our generation went through during the war.

As for Guardian homes, they would offer counselling to the neighbour while carefully moving all their Apple products out of the way in case the flames spread to their home.

And good old Daily Star readers would only find out about the fire to their neighbour's house if it had been in the Daily Mail the day before.

Oh, and Metro readers would dress up as frogs and hop across the Kalahari while taking wacky pictures of grains of sand or some other non-news nonsense to help those who had lost possessions in their neighbour's fire as long as they could have a story about it on page three of the free paper.

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Many of those in favour of the UK leaving the EU are fed up at being portrayed as, in the words of one of my mates, swivel eyed nutters. The Daily Express believes it is the cheerleader for the anti-EU lobby, as both of its readers once signed a petition. But you would have thought the paper, in order to present a rational argument for leaving the union, could have chosen a better example of the sort of person who supports them than the swivel eyed nutter it featured in the paper today. Here's a link.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/279322
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I'm not anti-EU but have you noticed how everything prefixed by Euro ends up being either too expensive or a disaster? Eurostar, Eurovision, Europop, the Euro, the Europa League, Eurotunnel, Eurodisney?

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Went to Manchester to see my eldest at university for the first time. I let her choose where we would go and naturally she chose a decent restaurant that she could not otherwise afford but which also was guaranteed to be the kind of place where we wouldn't bump into any of her mates.
And naturally again, at least seven tables at Kro in Piccadilly Gardens, were occupied by middle aged dads or couples with their student offspring. It felt like a theme restaurant, the theme being embarrassed teenagers and uncool parents.
The rest of Manchester was full of delirious men in sky blue football shirts standing outside pubs cheering while lots of other men in red shirts looking dejected were filing into the railway station to get the trains back to Surrey.
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I drove past Jodrell Bank yesterday. First time I've ever seen it in the flesh. It's bloody brilliant. And quite near Alderley Edge which I also went to for the first time yesterday. It's a bit like Essex but done by northerners.
Aye up...Solly

Another Fine Mensch

Some songs you think of us your own. The ones you really love but seem to do nothing for anyone else. You don't let that put you off. In fact you revel in that lack of public acclaim. It could be The Trumpton Riots by Half Man Half Biscuit, it could be an album track like Lady Grinning Soul by David Bowie.
Or it could be the fantastic Different Drum by the Linda Ronstadt-led group Stone Poneys (not Stone Roses, the monkey faced Mancs everyone is getting excited about. Again.)
And when 'your song' suddenly appears on an advert, for Lynx no less, you feel as if something beautiful has been taken away from you.
It's as bad as hearing California Soul being used to sell Kentucky Fried Chicken.
There are songs for adverts. Mostly by Moby. Stick to those please.
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Did anyone see Louise Mensch on Have I Got News for You? Should I have two question marks at the end of that sentence?
To all extents and purposes she got monstered, particularly by Ian Hislop, for saying that the anti-capitalist protesters in St. Paul's were hypocritical for all lining up to get a coffee from Starbucks while having a go at big money corporations.
All three panelists rounded on her with the basic argument that it is 'only a cup of coffee' and Hislop was particularly scathing about how it is possible not to want to see bankers destroy the world economy on one hand while wanting a latte on/in the other.
Don't get me wrong, I loved watching the smug, shiny faced chick lit author get her come uppance. She represents what's wrong with so many of our elected politicians - all soundbite and no substance.
Somewhere, in parliament, there are politicians who will come up with an idea that will help make this country better. You get the feeling she is not one of them.
And this isn't a left v right argument. For every Louise Mensch there's a Barbara Follett.
The thing is, she may well have had a point. All those vicars' daughters and protest season ticket holders camping outside St Paul's to call for the collapse of capitalism, love their capuccinos and will one day go on to own buy-to-let properties and ISA portfolios. I have no problem with that. Capitalism is not going to collapse and even if it did, it would do nothing to alleviate the real problems of poverty and inequality anyway.
And it is good to see a small but noisy protest remind the bankers that they have still not been forgiven.
But the cheering at the sight of Louise Mensch's loss of hubris underlines our distrust of glory seeking politicians. In fact it highlights our contempt, largely, for politicians as a whole.
But what do we want, and what do we expect? During the Thatcher years, it seemed that most MPs were drab, grey men - apart from Thatcher herself of course. On one side of the house you had former union leaders and career politicans from local councils and the accusation was that they had never done a proper job.
On the other you had middle aged men with increasingly bizarre haircuts who had the career path of public school, Oxbridge, the forces, big business and then politics because that had been the long term plan all along. The complaint were these were men who had never experienced the kind of problems they were supposed to be solving.
As if to counter this, we began to see celebrity MPs who had been famous before going into parliament. Gyles Brandreth or Glenda Jackson, Sebastian Coe and Martin Bell. I blame Ronald Reagan of course.
Let's face it, MPs are never going to be 'like us' and I speak from a profession which has provided the Commons with Michael Gove so, personally, I'd rather they weren't 'like us'.
But I've come across plenty of MPs and liked and disliked many from both sides of the house. What we don't see, of course, are the ones who are not trying to get their face on Have I Got News For You? or you know won't come up on an advert for a price comparison website when they retire.
Which is a shame to a point because if we saw more of them, it might restore our faith - just a bit - in a collection of men and women who, at the moment, are associated with selling our gold reserves and building duck houses, putting thousands on the dole and taking peerages when they said they never would. And often called Neil.
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A quote from Newsnight this week: 'It was like deja vu all over again.'
Or in other words, deja vu.
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The death of Colonel Gadaffi, however you want to spell it, has brought forth reminders that dictators eventually get what's coming to them. I still reckon that if you offered any ambitious despot in a poor country whether they would take 40 years in power with gold toilets, hot and cold running prostitutes and the chance to meet Beyonce, in return for being shot in the head or hung upside down from a lamp-post at the end of it, most would still say yes.
It also makes redundant all that rhetoric from the West that 'watch out Saddam/Osama/whoever because we're coming to get you.'
Robert Mugabe is 87.
Have a nice day....Solly

Rebel Without A Clue

There's an advert for npower which starts by saying how much they want to reduce our bills. I think after the news that fuel prices have gone up by 18 per cent this week, we all know this is patently rubbish. Why do they bother saying this?
A man from British Gas on TV argued plaintively that the company only make £60 profit a year from people paying by direct debit. Which suggests they make a lot more from all those people who don't pay by direct debit which, experience tells us, is the poor, the elderly and the unemployed.
Nice to know where they see the greatest profits.
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I'm all for a bit of a demo. I used to go on a few and they were great. Anti-apartheid, save the GLC, CND. You used to get a good turnout - 250,000 at one they said (and the police said there were 40,000 so there must have been a lot).
And the bands. The Jam playing unannounced off the back of a lorry and then, five minutes later, The Spinners walking on the march in woolly jumpers playing some old folkie nonsense.
And I always thought British demos had a bit more grit and a lot less staged drama than American ones.
We could never do a million man march here or a Woodstock but put The Damned on stage at Brockwell Park immediately followed by Madness in the days when they attracted a good skinhead following and it made for fireworks.
But now? Now you ask the country to occupy the city and you get 200 middle class kids outside a wedding at St Paul's who even have the good manners to applaud the bride and groom as they come out.
They can't occupy the City itself because, unlike Wall Street, a lot of the roads aren't public thoroughfares officially. So they have to go to St Paul's, on a weekend, when there's no bankers.
And have you seen who's there? A collection of vicar's daughters and middle aged teachers who haven't the foggiest.
I'm sorry, but it's not going to bring down the system. The system had packed up and gone to the country for the weekend and didn't even realise they were there.
I caught a few of the demonstrators interviewed on the wireless. They were rubbish. One girl - I shouldn't make assumptions but I bet she was once head girl at a very good home counties grammar - actually stated that most poor people in Britain were 'literally' living off nothing but baked beans. No, really.
Then when the interviewer asked another spotty kid (and even though it was radio you could tell she was spotty) what they wanted, she said she was protesting against mortgages being so high.
Honestly. Mortgages are now among the lowest they've ever been.
If anyone was going to protest against anything involving the obscene wealth of the city it should be cardigan wearing grannies and those who have paid off their mortgages because it's savings that are affected far more than borrowing.
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A word in support of MPs. No, really. There will be some fuss about MPs having another five days off in November. But actually it's just five days off from Westminster. Not actually five days holiday per se.
The thing is, some MPs won't see it like that and they'll be on the first plane to a mate's house in the Med.
But then there are those with school age kids who will not. And many others, like my old mate Teresa Pearce, who is an MP in South London, will welcome the break from Westminster for a completely different reason as it will give her another five days to do constituency work.
You see, there are a lot of freeloading politicians on both sides of the house but there are also a lot who really do spend a lot of their working time helping their constituents deal with problems and less time on TV shows.
It would be nice if they were all like that, but that's not how it works these days.
During the height of the expenses scandal, a few papers managed to find a handful of MPs who had not made any outrageous claims. And the story, of course, was that there were so few that could be found.
If MPs want to be taken a bit more seriously may I suggest one thing. If you are going to take another five day break from Westminster, don't call it a holiday.
We already have lists of who attends the most debates and votes. But that doesn't explain what they are doing when they are not there - it's perfectly feasible that many are doing something worthy somewhere else.
But let's find out.
At the end of the year, let's list every vacation taken by every MP of all sides and we can see for ourselves how much 'holiday' they actually have.
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And if that wasn't surprising enough, a word in support of Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail. His speech to the Leveson Inquiry was not as funny as Kelvin's but a lot of it made sense. Though his claim to be more of a broadsheet than the red-tops was slightly undermined by the online version of his paper that day in which I counted no fewer than five stories about Kim and the other Kardashians and four about The Only Way Is Essex.
However, I have to take issue with Alastair Campbell who described Dacre as poisoning democracy. I think he has the opposite effect. By polarising opinion, he brings out debate among the millions who hate the Daily Mail which stimulates democracy.
Alastair's way of dealing with this is to hide free copies of the Mail at airports. Which is, unfortunately, a very modern Labour Party way of winning an argument in recent years.
And after all, what could poison democracy more than, say, unelected civil servants sexing up an official intelligence document that leads to this country invading another under the false premise that they have weapons of mass destruction?
Perhaps we need some more demos. What do we want? A cup of tea actually....night night...Solly

Fox on the run

You know what I really hate? When Jeremy Paxman asks a question right at the end of University Challenge and the gong goes and he doesn't have the courtesy to tell us the answer.
No? It's just me then.
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I've just seen a bit of a programme on BBC2 about pottery and the narrator said 'pottery is almost as old as we are.' Well I'm 48 and I could swear pottery is, at the very least, over 50 years old.
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It seems perfectly acceptable for newspapers to accuse Liam Fox of lowering the defences of this country by allowing his mate to go with him on official ministry trips.
But let's face it, what they can't quite bring themselves to say is what they really want to write, in very big letters, which is this: Is Dr Fox gay?
They are hiding behind the usual nudge, nudge innuendo they often do in these cases - or as some hacks call it, up your endo. You know the sort. Phrases like 'very close friend' and putting words like 'special advisor' in parentheses.
No we're not talking about Dr Fox, the DJ who was once duped by Chris Morris on Brass Eye into saying that paedophiles' DNA had more in common with crabs than 'you and me'.
I'm talking about the shortish politician who once allowed the papers to hint that he'd shagged Natalie Imbruglia and who is now in trouble for taking his best man with him on numerous official foreign trips.
Yes, that's right. His best man. Just a few months ago. Which proves there's no way Liam Fox could be gay. I mean, gay people wouldn't marry someone just to cover up their homosexuality would they?
Of course the sexual preference of a politician shouldn't matter in this day and age, and largely it doesn't.
Not even when a person might be gay but goes to extraordinary lengths to appear heterosexual. I believe some people call this Simon Syndrome (or perhaps The Ex-girlfriend Factor).
But Liam Fox has voted or abstained on various votes on gay adoption, lowering the age of consent for homosexuals and others. If he is gay, then he's gone to incredibly homophobic lengths to cover it up.
And IF he is gay but found to have covered it up in order to progress his political career and let his chum go away with him, then that would be a very serious breach of trust.
Some of his closest friends are suggesting that it's nonsense to suggest Dr Fox is gay. These friends haven't been identified. For all I know they could be Robbie Williams, Sol Campbell, George Clooney and William Hague.
David Cameron has recently shown that he can be quite pro-equal rights for homosexuals. Well, he went to Eton so we shouldn't be too surprised.
My guess is that Fox will be confirmed as a raging heterosexual but hung out to dry for letting his mate Adam claim to be a 'special adviser.'
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I am a little sad that Sarah Palin will not stand for President as it may mean the end of the wonderfully satirical impressions of her by Tina Fey. It's also the only funny thing on Saturday Night Live for years.
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I know I really, really dislike Halifax ads where they get social misfit staff members to sing but in the latest one - where they murder Walking on Sunshine - there's a little snippet in which the words Marry Me are spelt out on a Scrabble board.
And since that is the way I proposed to my wife (the current one!) then I find it hard to hate the ad completely.
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I've become a touchline dad. My son has started playing for an under-13 team which has just formed and is in the bottom division. So far he has played four games and they have lost 12-2, 4-0, 13-0 and 8-1. I have already started to lose my temper, not at the boys but the other parents, but I am holding it in. Particular against the mums who shout 'mark up' to our lads when it's OUR goal kick.
Instead, me and a private investment banker called Simon (who also has a Spurs season ticket) move quietly away from the others, have a sneaky cigarette, and discuss the EU debt crisis and Harry Redknapp's latest strategy. I never thought being bored to bits by economics would be so cathartic but it's saving my blood pressure from exploding.
They think it's all over...it is now - Solly

Crow's Feat

Now Bob Crow is not everyone's cup of Earl Grey but he's just secured a deal for tube drivers that could mean they are on a whack of £52k a year within four years.
In actual fact, there's a good chance they'll be on about £45k I reckon because inflation won't stay sky high for that long.
But the point is, by doing this he has instantly made himself the most unpopular man in the country...unless you're a tube driver.
And that's where he should receive some praise. Because what he's done is exactly what his job description says he should do and he's done it better than anyone else in his industry.
I'm not his greatest fan. I've been getting the tube every day for the last 20 years or so and I could fill a book with the problems I've encountered.
But his job is getting the best deal for his union members and, by heck, he ain't half done well.
Put it this way, if he was a football manager, then what he's achieved would be like winning the league. If he was a banker he'd be on a seven figure bonus. If he was a banker he'd be more responsible for bringing the economy to its knees than the leader of a rail workers' union, that's for sure.
Union leaders may be despised but it's the ones who do well - in their world, not necessarily yours - that are despised most of all.
This isn't to say he's a nice bloke, a great guy or even the sort of person you'd want running the local whelk stall but if you are/were in a union, by God you'd want someone like him representing you.
If the printers, the miners or even journalists had ever had a leader half as efficient, a lot more people wouldn't be in the mess they're in.
I feel almost guilty defending the big lump, but however much you hate him, in getting this deal for tube drivers, he has done exactly what it says on his tin.
There will be a lot of fuss made about the fact there isn't a 'no strike' deal. I'm not so sure. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of agreement under the table that ensures the drivers forfeit some of their deal should they go on strike.
Of course this would make Crow a lot more popular with the travelling public but not with his union members - and you know which set he values more highly.
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I've said it before and I maintain it's still true - most people couldn't give a damn if their household refuse was collected weekly. The advent of wheelie bins and alternatve weeks collecting recyclable waste and household rubbish - with garden and food scraps collected weekly - actually suits most people.
But for some reason Eric Pickles thinks it is so paramount in these days of trying to save money that he's allocating a staggering £250 million to a weekly collection nationwide, just so he can please Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre.
Now £250,000,000 can buy a lot of things. It can secure contracts for British companies over German ones, for instance. It can create jobs, though that's not really a Tory thing is it.
It could be used to stop the cuts in services far more vital than refuse collection. It could even do something radical like go to the NHS.
There was an episode of The Simpsons where Homer gets elected to the local council in charge of rubbish and ensures a fleet of white suited operatives who came round almost every day and emptied peoples bins into shiny new lorries.
Pretty soon the town went bust and had to charge other states to dump their rubbish in Springfield until it was so full of rubbish they had to pick up the whole town and move it.
Pickles, the government's version of Comic Book Guy in so many ways, is the rubbish commissar (again, in so many ways). Meanwhile Boris Johnson could be Mayor Quimby. After all, he likes quoting Homer.
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The Godfather was, as we all know, a great, great film. Arguably the second film was better, but nonetheless, the original is iconic for a variety of reasons.
So what better way to celebrate a marvellous account of racketeers, cold blooded murderers, violent criminals and animal slaughterers than to name a meal deal by KFC after it.
We already have Goodfellas pizzas, in case you want a topping inspired by a gang of Italian mobsters who liked to shoot waiters and grass up their mates to policemen they had previously bribed, then away you go.
Now, if if you want a bucket of something that claims to be chicken, named in honour of a film whose most famous scene was a hacked off horse's head in a music agent's bed, then trot down to KFC.
Where will it end? The Borgia Beanburger? The Charles Manson Milkshake? BK's Attila the Hun in a Bun?
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The two sides of Essex. In the morning as I walked through Loughton High Street, there was a gaggle of paparazzi style photographers around my local newsagent. Or so I thought. Actually they were outside the underwear shop next door where some pear shaped tart from The Only Way Is Essex was buying underwear. Apparently this is big news for the Mail Online.
Later that day I turned on the TV to see The Culture Show. In the few minutes before the kids made me turn over to Family Guy or South Park or whatever, I saw a report on a fabulous looking new art gallery.
It was funky enough to be in Bilbao or New York but, it turned out, it is in Colchester. Britain's oldest city has had little going for it for many years, what with its sterile shopping centre and army barracks.
But now it genuinely has a good reason for going for anyone with even a passing interest in art.
It's a revolutionary building - look up Firstsite, Colchester - and I truly hope the locals can tear themselves away from TOWIE long enough to try it out.
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By the time you read this, we'll know if Amanda 'Foxy' Knox is determined to be guilty or not of the murder of Meredith Kercher, whose father used to be quite a well known journalist among Fleet Street's veterans.
I have no idea whether or not she is guilty. I've read the statements from over-excited Italian lawyers playing for the cameras. I've read numerous columnists chipping in with their five cents' worth.
And I've heard people on the tube declaring with an amazing amount of certainty that she's guilty/innocent (depends which carriage you're on.)
Well, I don't know. And you know what, neither does anyone else with any certainly apart from one or possibly two, people in the world. So let's stop pretending we're Perry Mason and let the experts do it, eh?
Blog adjourned....Solly