Sofia's birthday in the office. As we cut the cake and sang happy birthday, Saskia (who we call Sask-yah because of her very posh accent) asked about Sofia's age and exclaimed: 'Oh. My. God. That is, like, so, like old yah? Actually.'
Sofia is 26 today.
---------------------------------------------------------------
And so to lunch. At The Market Porter pub, a little bit of London life in the heart of Borough Market to meet two women who run a PR company with whom we may or may not get some work out of.
Got there and they were already at the table - spartan but clean, quite neat but without any fancy adornments, old fashioned in a traditional sense. And the pub was quite nice too.
They were both over 25 which was a good sign but then we spotted they had already ordered their own drinks and one was on Coke and the other was orange juice.
Never a good sign.
I'm not much of a lunchtime drinker but we instantly had a beer each just to reiterate the fact that we were independent enough to have a drink at lunchtime if we wanted to!
It is increasingly rare to have a 'getting to know you' lunch these days which involves booze. We are constantly meeting up with PR people who offer us a proper drink but then stick to mineral water or Diet Coke themselves.
It was not always that way. In house PR departments, for instance, often included at least one boozy former journalist who took you to lunch as an excuse for a good old booze up on the company's expense.
Although this could be misused. There were a couple of guys at the BT press office - Ted Graham and David Orr - who were two of the main men in trying to give BT a better profile with us at The Sun.
When Kelvin was editor he was forever trying to find way to kick BT in the nuts. It led to some of my best bylines in the paper. A couple of us used to do the BT profits story every quarter or so.
They kept making billions and Kelvin hated it because of their virtual monopoly. But after a while we were struggling to find a new way of saying 'Greedy bastards'. So we were mulling over how to write the story that BT had made a billion quid's profit while phone boxes still smelled of piss and the price of a phone call was continuing to rise.
We had already reconstructed what a billion pounds would look like in piles on a table, how it would reach to the moon and back if laid end to end, how it weighed as much as three elephants if in ten pound notes etc etc.
But we were running out of ideas, us 'specialist writers' - there was Patrick Hennessy and I doing industry and David Yelland on the City page if I remember rightly. Paddy is now the Sunday Telegraph's political editor and Yelland, having edited The Sun, now earns big bucks in PR. And I'm happy too!
Kelvin wanted a new angle. He kept coming over and muttering 'a billion quid, you just can't imagine a billion quid.'
Then he said: 'Even if I worked for 100 years I wouldn't earn that would I?'
So we started working it out. I forget what the exact profit figure was but we began to calculate sums on the basis of how much you would earn a week to earn a billion odd quid in the period being talked about. But it was still too much.
Then we came up with it. Whatever the profit was, and I think it was around a billion pounds, we worked out how much that was a second.
And so the headline for the front page splash was 'BT makes £103 a SECOND' and the damage was done.
After that, everyone - and I mean everyone from the BBC to the FT to news organisations all over the world - started referring to BT's profits by the second. And not just BT. Every time any figure was too big to comprehend, it got broken down into seconds.
Britons spend £27 a second on beer, ITV sells advertising during the World Cup for £200 a second, footballers earn £100 a second and so on.
We began to get a lot of good BT stories so Ted and David came up with a new tactic. They took us to lunch in January. We expected a boozy time so would pile into the wine. However, Ted would go 'dry' in January as a new year's resolution so he remained sober and the poor hack would be pissed by the cheese board. Not me, actually, but a very esteemed colleague who had got a great story about BT ditching their old ad campaign for a bizarre 'piper' logo (for those who remember it).
Ted and David remained sober and my colleague, who shall remain nameless, got drunk, was quizzed about his source, accidentally blurted it out and BT found their mole!
So perhaps not drinking with contacts at lunchtime isn't such a bad idea after all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The nice thing about working in Bermondsey is that I have a couple of bridges nearby to wander over when I want to return north of the river.
This evening I had a stroll across Tower Bridge, past all the tourists taking photos of each other, with wonderful views both left and right of old London with all its history and the new, the big shiny monoliths to capitalism. The Shard is wonderful but The Tower of London remains my favourite building of all. I love watching Americans get to grips that the Tower is several hundreds years older than their nation.
Being in London I went for a drink at, naturally, the Bavarian Beer Cellar where the barmaids are East European but wear those German wench outfits. That proved too much for me and my drinking partner Nigel Hughes, author of the Ear I Am blog - linked to this page - and responsible for my small but loyal following in his hometown. Respect to the Newton-le-Willows massive.
So we went to The Cheshire Cheese, which is geographically more up his street. I love London.
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My wife and I first met when I was a junior reporter on the Ilford Recorder and she was a press officer at the local Redbridge council. I used to think she rang me up with stories because I was either a) the best reporter in Ilford or b) she fancied the arse off me.
It was only later I found out that when the council had some piece of rubbish they wanted the Recorder to run, they would tell her 'ring Solly, he's lazy.'
They may have had a point. I could be lazy.
Also, at that time I was trying to get to grips with very uncomfortable hard contact lenses. For those who remember them, they were a nightmare if worn for more than a couple of hours and I used to wear mine for 24 hours straight.
So my eyes were inevitably bloodshot. I had dyed blonde hair and an earring and wore shiny suits from Mr Byrite and black suede pixie boots from Shelleys. So they warned my wife-to-be that I was not only lazy but on drugs.
They may have had a point on that one too actually.
All of us had to do our share of council meetings which would start at around 7pm. We finished work at 5.30pm. So I would go round to the house of one of our subs who introduced me to the pleasures of a bong.
Sometimes it was only that or imagining Cllr Hazel Weinberg in a leather dominatrix outfit that kept me going during those planning sub-committee marathons.
Any other business? No? Then the press are excused. Thank you for your attendance...Solly
Tuesday 31 May 2011
Monday 30 May 2011
What do you think of it so far?
One of Tony Blair's most fawning acts of arse-licking was, in my opinion, giving Sir Alex Ferguson a knighthood (once he'd got Alastair Campbell's head out of the Manchester United boss's rectum). At that time Ferguson had won the European Cup (Champions League or whatever it is called) just the once. That's fewer than Brian Clough, Bob Paisley and the same as Ron Saunders and Jock Stein, none of whom got knighthoods.
Since then United have won it once more and perhaps if he hadn't got his honour back then, Ferguson's achievement in the Premiership alone may mean he warrants the gong.
But in 25 years he has now won the world's top club competition twice. Pep Guardiola has won it twice in the last three years. If he was British he'd probably now be Lord Guardiola of Peckham and be allowed to marry Pippa Middleton.
----------------------------------------------------------
What's the biggest issue affecting middle England? Tax rises? Immigration? Post Office closures? No, if you read any of the mid-market papers, it's quite clear what keeps us awake at night. Fortnightly bin collections.
And to appease the armies of readers of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph - plus the half dozen who still get the Express - the government is going to reintroduce weekly bin rounds.
As if any of these people would ever vote anyone but Conservative anyway.
But why? I don't consider myself an eco-warrior but the way I see it, if you need your main dustbin emptied every week then, quite simply, you are creating too much rubbish.
I don't know how it works where you are but our council is a mix of Tories and LibDems and NIMBY independents who want to see the whole district coated in yellow lines and speed bumps made out of East European immigrants.
We have our green wheelie bins collected weekly. They are full of garden refuse and chucked out food. The main black wheelie is domestic rubbish and collected fortnightly and in the weeks in between they collect the bags of recycled paper and plastic and a crate of empty Waitrose wine bottles (except the bloke three doors down who, every fortnight, fills a blue crate with empty bottles of whisky).
And the thing is, it works. Perfectly. Those who want can get a slightly larger black wheelie but I have three kids, a childminder, a cat and a dog and make do with the small one. The dog and cat is relevant as they produce quite a lot of waste between them.
On one hand we want the council to cut back on what it spends and on the other we want a totally unnecessary extra bin collection for every single home in the country.
Big plastic wheelie bins means foxes, rats, stoats and wildebeeste don't go rummaging around the remains of my Dominos vegetarian supreme or Whiskas rabbit in jelly.
Eric Pickles - and you all know exactly who he is - spouted some nonsense today about how it's every Englishman's right to have the remains of his chicken tikka masala collected weekly. Like he's ever thrown away any food.
--------------------------------------------------
The shelves of Sainsbury's are laden with cucumbers and other salad staples, according to my wife. Apparently they are selling like the opposite of hot cakes (cold cakes?) And I feel partly responsible.
You see, we did a story for the papers this weekend about an e.coli outbreak in Germany which has affected 500 and killed around a dozen. And it's all down to killer cucumbers.
It is worth noting that the story clearly stated the rogue veg were organic ones from Spain - Almeria mainly where thousands of Brits live in caravans and spend the afternoon watching reruns of EastEnders on satellite televisions. I know, I've been there.
Anyway, the point is, most of the salad veg unsold in the supermarkets the day the story broke was not from Spain. But that doesn't stop a good scare story doing what it does best - frightening the living daylights out of us shoppers.
I would feel guilty but ever since Sainsbury's insurance went to extraordinary lengths not to pay out a claim when my car got stolen, I hope the bastards suffer.
----------------------------------------------------
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (I think that's what it's called). Can't quite make up my mind if this is brilliantly inspired or just odd. One thing's for sure. Much as we moan about the BBC, I can't see this programme being made by anyone else and for that reason, I'm going to persevere.
It's just a bit, well, clever. It's got no chance against Britain's Got Talent for most people I guess.
-----------------------------------------------------
Springwatch. Always fabulous. Tonight they showed a beaver examining a tree trunk (that's not a euphemism.) The long-haired bloke on it who so desperately wants to be Chris Packham, said it was 'reading the tree like a bar code'. That'll be a barkode then.
Incidentally, did you know that the Welsh word for a red kite is barcud. Not a lot of people know that. I know it because my dad was a volunteer at the Red Kite centre in Tregaron, Wales, for a year or two before he died and, as a family, we became rather obsessed with these magnificent animals.
Hwyl fawr...Solly
Since then United have won it once more and perhaps if he hadn't got his honour back then, Ferguson's achievement in the Premiership alone may mean he warrants the gong.
But in 25 years he has now won the world's top club competition twice. Pep Guardiola has won it twice in the last three years. If he was British he'd probably now be Lord Guardiola of Peckham and be allowed to marry Pippa Middleton.
----------------------------------------------------------
What's the biggest issue affecting middle England? Tax rises? Immigration? Post Office closures? No, if you read any of the mid-market papers, it's quite clear what keeps us awake at night. Fortnightly bin collections.
And to appease the armies of readers of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph - plus the half dozen who still get the Express - the government is going to reintroduce weekly bin rounds.
As if any of these people would ever vote anyone but Conservative anyway.
But why? I don't consider myself an eco-warrior but the way I see it, if you need your main dustbin emptied every week then, quite simply, you are creating too much rubbish.
I don't know how it works where you are but our council is a mix of Tories and LibDems and NIMBY independents who want to see the whole district coated in yellow lines and speed bumps made out of East European immigrants.
We have our green wheelie bins collected weekly. They are full of garden refuse and chucked out food. The main black wheelie is domestic rubbish and collected fortnightly and in the weeks in between they collect the bags of recycled paper and plastic and a crate of empty Waitrose wine bottles (except the bloke three doors down who, every fortnight, fills a blue crate with empty bottles of whisky).
And the thing is, it works. Perfectly. Those who want can get a slightly larger black wheelie but I have three kids, a childminder, a cat and a dog and make do with the small one. The dog and cat is relevant as they produce quite a lot of waste between them.
On one hand we want the council to cut back on what it spends and on the other we want a totally unnecessary extra bin collection for every single home in the country.
Big plastic wheelie bins means foxes, rats, stoats and wildebeeste don't go rummaging around the remains of my Dominos vegetarian supreme or Whiskas rabbit in jelly.
Eric Pickles - and you all know exactly who he is - spouted some nonsense today about how it's every Englishman's right to have the remains of his chicken tikka masala collected weekly. Like he's ever thrown away any food.
--------------------------------------------------
The shelves of Sainsbury's are laden with cucumbers and other salad staples, according to my wife. Apparently they are selling like the opposite of hot cakes (cold cakes?) And I feel partly responsible.
You see, we did a story for the papers this weekend about an e.coli outbreak in Germany which has affected 500 and killed around a dozen. And it's all down to killer cucumbers.
It is worth noting that the story clearly stated the rogue veg were organic ones from Spain - Almeria mainly where thousands of Brits live in caravans and spend the afternoon watching reruns of EastEnders on satellite televisions. I know, I've been there.
Anyway, the point is, most of the salad veg unsold in the supermarkets the day the story broke was not from Spain. But that doesn't stop a good scare story doing what it does best - frightening the living daylights out of us shoppers.
I would feel guilty but ever since Sainsbury's insurance went to extraordinary lengths not to pay out a claim when my car got stolen, I hope the bastards suffer.
----------------------------------------------------
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (I think that's what it's called). Can't quite make up my mind if this is brilliantly inspired or just odd. One thing's for sure. Much as we moan about the BBC, I can't see this programme being made by anyone else and for that reason, I'm going to persevere.
It's just a bit, well, clever. It's got no chance against Britain's Got Talent for most people I guess.
-----------------------------------------------------
Springwatch. Always fabulous. Tonight they showed a beaver examining a tree trunk (that's not a euphemism.) The long-haired bloke on it who so desperately wants to be Chris Packham, said it was 'reading the tree like a bar code'. That'll be a barkode then.
Incidentally, did you know that the Welsh word for a red kite is barcud. Not a lot of people know that. I know it because my dad was a volunteer at the Red Kite centre in Tregaron, Wales, for a year or two before he died and, as a family, we became rather obsessed with these magnificent animals.
Hwyl fawr...Solly
Saturday 28 May 2011
Hooray for Sollywood
I've had my way and the house is being painted in the colour I want. I've also managed to prevail in choice of front door. However, the missus has put her foot down over my proposal to give our house a name to go with the number.
My ex-wife was the same. Her name was Angela, I wanted to combine her name with my first name and my all-time Spurs hero but she said Glenmarangie sounded daft.
And we're here again. No, we're not going to name our house. And no, I've been told, we can't have giant white letters, standing upright on the front lawn, spelling out SOLLYWOOD. Back to the drawing board.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shame about Gil Scott Heron. Saw him at The Commonwealth Institute in London in 1983 and it was, truly, one of the best five concerts I've ever been to. It was the most chilled venue I've ever watched
His spoken commentary to The Revolution Will Not Be Televised may have dated in some of its cultural references but remains one of the most powerful political statements put to song I've ever heard. Just as moving was Johannesburg, about apartheid. Funny how there is now a whole generation growing up who find it hard to believe apartheid ever happened and, when they ask how it was allowed to continue for so long, then I haven't really got an answer.
But I love Heron's The Bottle.
I went to a charity ball last year and, while we ate and quaffed champagne in our dinner suits, the house band played a kind of cheesy listening version of The Bottle. Not sure if they knew that while we were getting pie eyed on fine wine, they were singing a song about the painful and debilitating slide into alcoholism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any group of at least three men, all over 40, in a pub on a lunchtime, will end up talking about one thing...lawnmowers.
Women believe we stand around talking about football or, more ridiculously, women. My wife is convinced we just make lists of which famous females have the best breast like some middle aged version of Gary and Tony in Men Behaving Badly.
By the way, my top five is Ann-Margret, Kim Novak, Anita Ekberg, Claudia Cardinale and Maria Grazia Cucinotta who was in a film called Il Postino. Oh, and maybe Snooki from Jersey Shore. Only joking.
And I wish we were. Talking about boobs I mean. Because inevitably, these days, it seems the convo (I love that abbreviation!) sooner or later turns to power tools, DIY and lawnmowers. And that's when I become hopeless.
I can bluff to a certain extent but the simple truth is, I'm hopeless at DIY and though I do it, I don't much enjoy gardening and have absolutely no interest in machines or gadgets in general and ones that are practical in particular.
Actually, that's not completely true. I do get fussy about choosing which TV we should buy, I love Apple products even though I know they're overpriced and I have a good eye for flash cappuccino makers, as long as my wife descales it now and again.
I try and get out of gardening or DIY using several old age excuses for why I can't do it. 1.I'm mostly Jewish - by which I mean I'm not so much a Jew, just Jew-ish. I tell my RC-raised wife that it is a well known fact Jewish men are no good at DIY. We're wired to be entrepreneurs or lawyers or in showbiz where we can earn enough money to pay other people to put our shelves up. We're not really supposed to be that sporty either. I mean, look at Avram Grant. And Mark Spitz was an exception. Joan Rivers once said that if Jewish women were meant to do aerobics, God would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds.
However, my wife then points out that some of my Jewish friends can sand a floor and build an extension while making chicken soup and playing the violin, all at the same time. So she buys into some stereotypes but not others.
2.I'm an artist darling. I create, not construct. I build with words not bricks. The blank page is my workshop and the typewriter, pen and intellect are my tools. To which she says I should get them sharpened then.
And 3.I'm left handed and it's well known that left handed people generally cock up DIY because of the way our brain is dominated by...blah blah blah. We make good celebrity chefs, fine presidents of the USA, excellent creators of long running American cartoon series and longer living Beatles. But builders? No.
Plus, I don't want to. Also, I'd get it wrong and that means paying extra to get it fixed. And I'm too busy blogging.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was supposed to go and see Duran Duran tonight on a corporate freebie at the O2 but Simon Le Bon has cancelled. So instead of Rio who dances on the sand, I'll be watching Rio who has a mouth like a guppy, playing at Wembley. I hope to see a good game of football and may the best team win.
Buenos noches amigos...El Solly
My ex-wife was the same. Her name was Angela, I wanted to combine her name with my first name and my all-time Spurs hero but she said Glenmarangie sounded daft.
And we're here again. No, we're not going to name our house. And no, I've been told, we can't have giant white letters, standing upright on the front lawn, spelling out SOLLYWOOD. Back to the drawing board.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shame about Gil Scott Heron. Saw him at The Commonwealth Institute in London in 1983 and it was, truly, one of the best five concerts I've ever been to. It was the most chilled venue I've ever watched
His spoken commentary to The Revolution Will Not Be Televised may have dated in some of its cultural references but remains one of the most powerful political statements put to song I've ever heard. Just as moving was Johannesburg, about apartheid. Funny how there is now a whole generation growing up who find it hard to believe apartheid ever happened and, when they ask how it was allowed to continue for so long, then I haven't really got an answer.
But I love Heron's The Bottle.
I went to a charity ball last year and, while we ate and quaffed champagne in our dinner suits, the house band played a kind of cheesy listening version of The Bottle. Not sure if they knew that while we were getting pie eyed on fine wine, they were singing a song about the painful and debilitating slide into alcoholism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any group of at least three men, all over 40, in a pub on a lunchtime, will end up talking about one thing...lawnmowers.
Women believe we stand around talking about football or, more ridiculously, women. My wife is convinced we just make lists of which famous females have the best breast like some middle aged version of Gary and Tony in Men Behaving Badly.
By the way, my top five is Ann-Margret, Kim Novak, Anita Ekberg, Claudia Cardinale and Maria Grazia Cucinotta who was in a film called Il Postino. Oh, and maybe Snooki from Jersey Shore. Only joking.
And I wish we were. Talking about boobs I mean. Because inevitably, these days, it seems the convo (I love that abbreviation!) sooner or later turns to power tools, DIY and lawnmowers. And that's when I become hopeless.
I can bluff to a certain extent but the simple truth is, I'm hopeless at DIY and though I do it, I don't much enjoy gardening and have absolutely no interest in machines or gadgets in general and ones that are practical in particular.
Actually, that's not completely true. I do get fussy about choosing which TV we should buy, I love Apple products even though I know they're overpriced and I have a good eye for flash cappuccino makers, as long as my wife descales it now and again.
I try and get out of gardening or DIY using several old age excuses for why I can't do it. 1.I'm mostly Jewish - by which I mean I'm not so much a Jew, just Jew-ish. I tell my RC-raised wife that it is a well known fact Jewish men are no good at DIY. We're wired to be entrepreneurs or lawyers or in showbiz where we can earn enough money to pay other people to put our shelves up. We're not really supposed to be that sporty either. I mean, look at Avram Grant. And Mark Spitz was an exception. Joan Rivers once said that if Jewish women were meant to do aerobics, God would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds.
However, my wife then points out that some of my Jewish friends can sand a floor and build an extension while making chicken soup and playing the violin, all at the same time. So she buys into some stereotypes but not others.
2.I'm an artist darling. I create, not construct. I build with words not bricks. The blank page is my workshop and the typewriter, pen and intellect are my tools. To which she says I should get them sharpened then.
And 3.I'm left handed and it's well known that left handed people generally cock up DIY because of the way our brain is dominated by...blah blah blah. We make good celebrity chefs, fine presidents of the USA, excellent creators of long running American cartoon series and longer living Beatles. But builders? No.
Plus, I don't want to. Also, I'd get it wrong and that means paying extra to get it fixed. And I'm too busy blogging.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was supposed to go and see Duran Duran tonight on a corporate freebie at the O2 but Simon Le Bon has cancelled. So instead of Rio who dances on the sand, I'll be watching Rio who has a mouth like a guppy, playing at Wembley. I hope to see a good game of football and may the best team win.
Buenos noches amigos...El Solly
Thursday 26 May 2011
Special Relationship Special
Love those photos of Michelle Obama meeting the new princess of our hearts, Kate Middleton and the caption given by the excellent blogger Fleet Street Fox who pointed out that one looked like a normal sized woman and the other resembled a lollipop.
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I think we get the better end of the special relationship. We give them Piers Morgan, they give us Kevin Spacey. We give them David Beckham, Jason Statham, Simon Cowell and, for large chunks of the year, Gordon Ramsay and they give us Madonna but then do us a favour and take her back.
We also manage to temporarily offload the likes of Kelly Brook, Martine McCutcheon, Cheryl Cole and every other useless bit of fluff who thinks she's got what it takes to 'break into Hollywood' only to come back with their tails between their legs when they find out Americans are, to their surprise, much more discerning and sophisticated in their tastes than we give them credit for.
Though I guess they probably feel they have enough publicity shitehawks with no talent of their own without having to import ours. Particularly some toilet-attendant-attacking Geordie bint who looks like a broomstick handle with nylon hair stuck on top (because she's worth it), who they can't understand and who has an autotune addiction when she's not lip synching to crap pop songs.
No, I think we've done well. We've welcomed Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos and The Wire while they get Ricky Gervais, Benny Hill and Hugh Grant.
Admittedly they've given us Maccy Ds, KFC, Loyd Grossman and Miller Lite but every relationship has its baggage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On my second honeymoon - by which I mean the honeymoon to my second marriage, not an extra curricular romantic break to put back the spark in our relationship - we met a very prim and proper elderly American couple over breakfast in our hotel.
We were in Eilat to catch some sun and they were doing the Holy Land bit because of their deeply held Christianity.
They were very upstanding and respectable, even a bit dull, as they told us of their desire to see where the Lord did his work and all that. I didn't argue, it didn't seem polite.
So I did what I always do when I can't have a conversation about football, I try and steer the chat on to television. It's the next lowest common denominator.
I told them how much I liked US television and they told me how much they liked British TV, particularly comedy. Oh, I wondered, which ones? 'Are You Being Served?' they replied, with the straightest of straight faces.
Sue and I looked at each other, looked at them, looked at each other again - like they do in badly made sitcoms from the 1970s for instance.
'Oh yes,' said the Christians, 'your humour is very subtle. Much more so than our comedies. We love the characters and their funny ways.'
And Mrs Slocombe with her pussy and John Inman's homosexuality? Surely that's all going against the word of the Lord? 'Oh, Mrs Slocombe is very funny, we know people just like her. And Mr Humphries always saying 'I'm free', it's hilarious.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
However, The Sopranos remains the only series currently around that I will watch every week, right the way through to the end of the series and straight into the next one the week after (hooray for Sky Atlantic). And this despite the fact I did exactly the same when it was first on Channel 4 at what seemed like a different time every week.
There is something reassuring about tuning in the same time every week to sit down and enjoy a programme - different to the boxset experience where you cram in three episodes at once, leave it a few weeks, do the same again and so on.
The weekly commitment is a dedication, a way of showing you really, really, want to watch it as an event rather than as a justification for buying the boxset.
No extras, no director's interview, no bloopers, or behind the scenes clips. Just pure unadulterated 'sit back and enjoy the ride' fun. It really is THAT good.
Too many shows with 15 or 20 or 26 episodes require too much dedication to get into. Lost? I was after three goes and as for 24, I never even started.
The Wire was an exception. I watched and loved it even thought the BBC put it on ridiculously late. Channel 4 also spoiled Curb by sending it to the nether regions of the schedules.
I can't bear soaps any more. Used to love Brookside and have tried the others but to no avail. And now I don't work on The Sun, there's no editorial requirement for me to know what's going on.
So until the same time, same channel, some time soon, it's goodnight...Solly
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think we get the better end of the special relationship. We give them Piers Morgan, they give us Kevin Spacey. We give them David Beckham, Jason Statham, Simon Cowell and, for large chunks of the year, Gordon Ramsay and they give us Madonna but then do us a favour and take her back.
We also manage to temporarily offload the likes of Kelly Brook, Martine McCutcheon, Cheryl Cole and every other useless bit of fluff who thinks she's got what it takes to 'break into Hollywood' only to come back with their tails between their legs when they find out Americans are, to their surprise, much more discerning and sophisticated in their tastes than we give them credit for.
Though I guess they probably feel they have enough publicity shitehawks with no talent of their own without having to import ours. Particularly some toilet-attendant-attacking Geordie bint who looks like a broomstick handle with nylon hair stuck on top (because she's worth it), who they can't understand and who has an autotune addiction when she's not lip synching to crap pop songs.
No, I think we've done well. We've welcomed Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos and The Wire while they get Ricky Gervais, Benny Hill and Hugh Grant.
Admittedly they've given us Maccy Ds, KFC, Loyd Grossman and Miller Lite but every relationship has its baggage.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On my second honeymoon - by which I mean the honeymoon to my second marriage, not an extra curricular romantic break to put back the spark in our relationship - we met a very prim and proper elderly American couple over breakfast in our hotel.
We were in Eilat to catch some sun and they were doing the Holy Land bit because of their deeply held Christianity.
They were very upstanding and respectable, even a bit dull, as they told us of their desire to see where the Lord did his work and all that. I didn't argue, it didn't seem polite.
So I did what I always do when I can't have a conversation about football, I try and steer the chat on to television. It's the next lowest common denominator.
I told them how much I liked US television and they told me how much they liked British TV, particularly comedy. Oh, I wondered, which ones? 'Are You Being Served?' they replied, with the straightest of straight faces.
Sue and I looked at each other, looked at them, looked at each other again - like they do in badly made sitcoms from the 1970s for instance.
'Oh yes,' said the Christians, 'your humour is very subtle. Much more so than our comedies. We love the characters and their funny ways.'
And Mrs Slocombe with her pussy and John Inman's homosexuality? Surely that's all going against the word of the Lord? 'Oh, Mrs Slocombe is very funny, we know people just like her. And Mr Humphries always saying 'I'm free', it's hilarious.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------
However, The Sopranos remains the only series currently around that I will watch every week, right the way through to the end of the series and straight into the next one the week after (hooray for Sky Atlantic). And this despite the fact I did exactly the same when it was first on Channel 4 at what seemed like a different time every week.
There is something reassuring about tuning in the same time every week to sit down and enjoy a programme - different to the boxset experience where you cram in three episodes at once, leave it a few weeks, do the same again and so on.
The weekly commitment is a dedication, a way of showing you really, really, want to watch it as an event rather than as a justification for buying the boxset.
No extras, no director's interview, no bloopers, or behind the scenes clips. Just pure unadulterated 'sit back and enjoy the ride' fun. It really is THAT good.
Too many shows with 15 or 20 or 26 episodes require too much dedication to get into. Lost? I was after three goes and as for 24, I never even started.
The Wire was an exception. I watched and loved it even thought the BBC put it on ridiculously late. Channel 4 also spoiled Curb by sending it to the nether regions of the schedules.
I can't bear soaps any more. Used to love Brookside and have tried the others but to no avail. And now I don't work on The Sun, there's no editorial requirement for me to know what's going on.
So until the same time, same channel, some time soon, it's goodnight...Solly
Tuesday 24 May 2011
Hi maintenance. Bye maintenance
I have just paid the last of my monthly maintenance payments after 17 years. Blimey, that seems a lifetime. Well it is, in some ways. Not my lifetime, her's.
I could have bought a Ferrari or two, or a house in Leytonstone with that amount of money. But instead I have got a well-balanced, beautiful and talented teenage daughter who has never asked for anything and is worth a million times what I've spent and who hates me talking about her in public. So I'll shut up. And save up for her university fees!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strange thing this privacy lark. Everyone has a right to a private life so why should newspapers be allowed to expose secrets of the rich and famous? At least that's the argument.
A lot of the injunctions - and all but two are genuinely 'superinjunctions' - are not about sex. Many relate to victims of blackmail, children, company law, rape cases and other matters which should rightly remain out of the papers where innocent people could be exposed to the glare of publicity.
It has been suggested that witless bloggers (guilty!) and the Twitterati could expose them just like they've exposed so many others so far. But have you noticed? Social media users don't seem that bothered in exposing the dying non-famous woman who has an injunction against being named, the child victims of a paedophile ring and other injunctions. That's because we're talking about gossip. What the posh papers like to view as downmarket, scummy, tabloid gossip that they wouldn't touch with a bargepole. Until it has been in the redtops. Then they can name them, using the justification of social commentary - 'oh how awful those tabloids are in naming Ryan Giggs. That's Ryan Giggs, the 12-times Premiership winner who has been having an affair with a reality TV star.'
The trouble is that when it costs something like £40,000 in legal fees to get a judge to impose a blanket ban on newspapers, it becomes a law for the rich and powerful not for the likes of you and me.
But then I suspect you and I haven't cruised the streets of Los Angeles looking for a hooker who can perform a 'sex act'. If you want the full, unadulterated meaning of that, read a broadsheet.
And of course, there's the old chestnut of public interest. Now, I have a confession to make - I actually agree that who Ryan Giggs has sex with is not in the public interest. But then, most things in the newspapers are not either. That's not the point of newspapers. Z-listers flashing the flesh at a premier, birds nesting in a traffic light, the latest phenomeon on YouTube, what Princess Bea wore, none of this is in the public interest.
The greatest censor for newspapers is the public. Stop buying them and they'll stop publishing what they publish. Only when a backlash comes from the masses will this change.
But let's not use this as an excuse to allow footballers or politicians to cover up their indiscretions. Imogen Thomas may be a slapper but she's not the one cheating on a spouse and children. He may have a personal life but if he doesn't want to be exposed as a cheating adulterer then he shouldn't sleep with a publicity-hungry reality TV show contestant. And he shouldn't be allowed to use a law that it meant to protect the wronged and the abused.
A privacy law would protect errant footballers and posh TV actors who like to pay prostitutes £175 to bugger them with a sex toy but it would also protect MPs squandering public money on duck islands, companies paying backhanders to drive competitors out of the market, arms dealers buying votes in parliament and bankers letting their sex lives distract them from the business of not fucking up the economy.
If judges showed a little more tact in dishing out the injunctions then we might have a more equitable law. But they don't.
No one is saying that Ryan Giggs can't have secrets. Who knows, he might have loads of secrets, many of which don't have third party involvement. If he kept it in his trousers it could have saved him north of £150,000 so far. But you can imagine his lawyers licking their lips when they suggest he try and sue Twitter users and he simply agrees.
Now he faces being remembr, when he finally retires, as a third rate shagger rather than the finest footballer of his generation and perhaps that's the biggest crime in this, the crumbling of his legacy.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently there's a film coming out called Cockneys V Zombies, along the lines of every other 'versus' film of the past few years. As long as it doesn't star Danny Dyer, I'll watch it. It has led to criticism of all these Alien v Predator movies but hasn't it always been thus. We used to have Tommies v Hun, Cowboys v Indians, Humans v Aliens, Good cowboys v Bad cowboys and so on. Except they were called The Great Escape, The Searchers, Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven and so on. Though I have to admit, I was disappointed with Kramer versus Kramer.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I see the Obamas landed in Essex for the UK visit. Being black, they probably spent seven hours getting past Stansted's notorious lesbian ninjas (or immigration as I believe it's known) and Michelle got a vajazzle at Femme Fatale in Loughton. Hopefully they avoided some of the rougher pubs in nearby Harlow. They used to be named after breeds of butterfly and moth I recall. We used to avoid them to when we were at college. Particularly the ones nicknamed 'The Flying Bottle', the 'Cabbage Whites-Only' and 'The Racist Admiral'.
Time gentleman please....Solly
I could have bought a Ferrari or two, or a house in Leytonstone with that amount of money. But instead I have got a well-balanced, beautiful and talented teenage daughter who has never asked for anything and is worth a million times what I've spent and who hates me talking about her in public. So I'll shut up. And save up for her university fees!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Strange thing this privacy lark. Everyone has a right to a private life so why should newspapers be allowed to expose secrets of the rich and famous? At least that's the argument.
A lot of the injunctions - and all but two are genuinely 'superinjunctions' - are not about sex. Many relate to victims of blackmail, children, company law, rape cases and other matters which should rightly remain out of the papers where innocent people could be exposed to the glare of publicity.
It has been suggested that witless bloggers (guilty!) and the Twitterati could expose them just like they've exposed so many others so far. But have you noticed? Social media users don't seem that bothered in exposing the dying non-famous woman who has an injunction against being named, the child victims of a paedophile ring and other injunctions. That's because we're talking about gossip. What the posh papers like to view as downmarket, scummy, tabloid gossip that they wouldn't touch with a bargepole. Until it has been in the redtops. Then they can name them, using the justification of social commentary - 'oh how awful those tabloids are in naming Ryan Giggs. That's Ryan Giggs, the 12-times Premiership winner who has been having an affair with a reality TV star.'
The trouble is that when it costs something like £40,000 in legal fees to get a judge to impose a blanket ban on newspapers, it becomes a law for the rich and powerful not for the likes of you and me.
But then I suspect you and I haven't cruised the streets of Los Angeles looking for a hooker who can perform a 'sex act'. If you want the full, unadulterated meaning of that, read a broadsheet.
And of course, there's the old chestnut of public interest. Now, I have a confession to make - I actually agree that who Ryan Giggs has sex with is not in the public interest. But then, most things in the newspapers are not either. That's not the point of newspapers. Z-listers flashing the flesh at a premier, birds nesting in a traffic light, the latest phenomeon on YouTube, what Princess Bea wore, none of this is in the public interest.
The greatest censor for newspapers is the public. Stop buying them and they'll stop publishing what they publish. Only when a backlash comes from the masses will this change.
But let's not use this as an excuse to allow footballers or politicians to cover up their indiscretions. Imogen Thomas may be a slapper but she's not the one cheating on a spouse and children. He may have a personal life but if he doesn't want to be exposed as a cheating adulterer then he shouldn't sleep with a publicity-hungry reality TV show contestant. And he shouldn't be allowed to use a law that it meant to protect the wronged and the abused.
A privacy law would protect errant footballers and posh TV actors who like to pay prostitutes £175 to bugger them with a sex toy but it would also protect MPs squandering public money on duck islands, companies paying backhanders to drive competitors out of the market, arms dealers buying votes in parliament and bankers letting their sex lives distract them from the business of not fucking up the economy.
If judges showed a little more tact in dishing out the injunctions then we might have a more equitable law. But they don't.
No one is saying that Ryan Giggs can't have secrets. Who knows, he might have loads of secrets, many of which don't have third party involvement. If he kept it in his trousers it could have saved him north of £150,000 so far. But you can imagine his lawyers licking their lips when they suggest he try and sue Twitter users and he simply agrees.
Now he faces being remembr, when he finally retires, as a third rate shagger rather than the finest footballer of his generation and perhaps that's the biggest crime in this, the crumbling of his legacy.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently there's a film coming out called Cockneys V Zombies, along the lines of every other 'versus' film of the past few years. As long as it doesn't star Danny Dyer, I'll watch it. It has led to criticism of all these Alien v Predator movies but hasn't it always been thus. We used to have Tommies v Hun, Cowboys v Indians, Humans v Aliens, Good cowboys v Bad cowboys and so on. Except they were called The Great Escape, The Searchers, Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven and so on. Though I have to admit, I was disappointed with Kramer versus Kramer.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I see the Obamas landed in Essex for the UK visit. Being black, they probably spent seven hours getting past Stansted's notorious lesbian ninjas (or immigration as I believe it's known) and Michelle got a vajazzle at Femme Fatale in Loughton. Hopefully they avoided some of the rougher pubs in nearby Harlow. They used to be named after breeds of butterfly and moth I recall. We used to avoid them to when we were at college. Particularly the ones nicknamed 'The Flying Bottle', the 'Cabbage Whites-Only' and 'The Racist Admiral'.
Time gentleman please....Solly
Saturday 21 May 2011
Baker's Treat
I don't much like Britain's Got Talent or The X Factor but they get massive ratings. As I settled down in front of the TV and looked through the 762 channels on offer, I finally get it. There really is nothing else on. I know it's a cliche but Casualty or some reality show about fat people or the latest CSI:Romford or the Police Stop Action real life equivalent are not decent alternatives. It's all just different kinds of crap.
So Britain's Got Talent it is, with three kids who, every time some oddball comes on, say to each other 'your date's here. hahahaha.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------
But there is hope elsewhere. On Radio Five this morning, Danny Baker returned to the airwaves after his cancer battle which, he didn't dwell on at all to his credit. He made a comment that good radio is not just TV without pictures. If only someone would tell Fearne 'Amazing' Cotton, Chris Moyles and the rest of them.
Radio's an interesting one. I know a lot of people who religiously listen to Today on Radio Four and lecture me about it. Yet they remain some of the most unempathetic and ill-informed people I know, particularly when it comes to current affairs and politics. I don't bother with it and they think I'm missing out. But if I want to know the mainfesto of each political party I'll simply read it instead of listening to MPs read it out parrot fashion to any question on any subject they are asked by the egotistical interviewers who like the sound of their own voice a little too much for my liking.
Then you get Danny Baker come on and remind you what it's all about. This morning he interviewed Paul Merton about a TV series he is doing on silent movies (which admittedly is one thing that wouldn't work on the wireless.)
To hear two, intelligent, men talk about a subject on which they are both passionate was refreshing and brilliant radio. They bantered, swapped information and their genuine love of the subject was evident through the speakers.
Because it was radio, because it was allowed to run and because it was an intelligent interviewer who did not rely on an autocue, it was wonderful.
And funny. Don't forget funny. He kept making wonderfully inventive jokes about injunctions, introducing the concept of retrospective ones, claiming Ashley Cole has taken out a number of them so that he must be referred to as still married to Cheryl Cole.
I like the radio. Apart from Today and The Archers (if you are under 60 and you like this badly acted crap then you are merely pandering to a middle class stereotype and you should snap out of it immediately) I don't dislike Radio Four as they still produce things like The News Quiz which has the same jokes as Have I Got News For You? but a couple of days earlier. The real hidden pleasures, though, are to be found on the most bizarre networks. There's a soul show on Radio Oxford on Sundays which I think is called The Soul Prescription and Smooth had a three hour Northern Soul special recently. Then there are various other titbits. Radio Five's football coverage still knocks TalkSport into a cocked hat, and that's despite rather than because of Alan Green and Robbie Savage. Test Match Special remains forever unrivalled even though it is hidden away on some obscure bit of the network that my car radio can't reach. Radio One has absolutely nothing to recommend it. Mark Kermode's film reviews are very good and Simon Mayo is an excellent foil to him on Five Live.
And there are also a million regional gems hidden away around the country that I haven't yet found.
------------------------------------------------------------
Exclamation marks. They are meant to show surprise or astonishment. At a push, they can be used to show a shout - they were often called 'screamers' by sub editors.
But they are not meant to be added to a comment on Twitter referring to something that everyone already knows about. Like 'it's Monday!!!' or 'right, off for a drink!!'. Or, as I heard someone mention, after Liz Taylor died, thousands posted messages ending in 'RIP!!'. Screen icon dies. Fair enough. But the RIP is not an expression of shock or surprise, is it? Liz Taylor's dead. REST IN PEACE!!!!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Took the kids to Portobello Road market today. Fab place. I've never been. Spent my whole life in London and been to the Notting Hill Festival and the Gate Theatre and other parts of this part of the world but never been to the market. The girls loved it, too. Although a lot of the stuff there is vastly overpriced. The boy wasn't as keen but then it meant a few hours away from his Playstation.
Market traders are a miserable lot. You watch them. It used to be that they were happy with a customer and as soon as the customer left, would curse and cuss. Now they don't even bother to wait until the customer goes. As soon as they think you're not buying, they sit there looking like you've just bitten the head of their pet budgie.
The older ones are better. They remember the service ethic. Not one learnt on some marketing course in Milton Keynes featuring teachers called Julian and Amanda. One that comes from standing on a stall in freezing weather trying to make a living.
I had a brief Saturday job on market stalls. I did one week selling shirts at Lea Valley, to help out a mate, and a couple of weeks around Christmas as a 15 and 16-year-old helping another friend's uncle at the world famous Romford Market. We sold handbags, purses and small leather goods like wallets or gloves. I remember I was working there on Boxing Day just after my 16th birthday, freezing cold and selling to men who had forgotten to buy a Xmas present for some female member of the family. I also remember it for other reasons. Not least because it was 1978 and I had committed myself to work there before realising Spurs were playing Arsenal that day. It was the match that we lost, at home, 5-0.
I loved the market experience. Even as a young teen, I soon got the hang of it. The calling out, the jokes, the flirting, the wide boy language. The other stallholders were brilliant. There was an air of community. Everyone watched each other's backs. But it was bloody cold and about the same time I got a weekend job for a press agency as a messenger and my whole life changed.
Otherwise, who knows, I could have ended up as a kind of Romford Delboy.
Lovely jubbly....Solly
So Britain's Got Talent it is, with three kids who, every time some oddball comes on, say to each other 'your date's here. hahahaha.'
-------------------------------------------------------------------
But there is hope elsewhere. On Radio Five this morning, Danny Baker returned to the airwaves after his cancer battle which, he didn't dwell on at all to his credit. He made a comment that good radio is not just TV without pictures. If only someone would tell Fearne 'Amazing' Cotton, Chris Moyles and the rest of them.
Radio's an interesting one. I know a lot of people who religiously listen to Today on Radio Four and lecture me about it. Yet they remain some of the most unempathetic and ill-informed people I know, particularly when it comes to current affairs and politics. I don't bother with it and they think I'm missing out. But if I want to know the mainfesto of each political party I'll simply read it instead of listening to MPs read it out parrot fashion to any question on any subject they are asked by the egotistical interviewers who like the sound of their own voice a little too much for my liking.
Then you get Danny Baker come on and remind you what it's all about. This morning he interviewed Paul Merton about a TV series he is doing on silent movies (which admittedly is one thing that wouldn't work on the wireless.)
To hear two, intelligent, men talk about a subject on which they are both passionate was refreshing and brilliant radio. They bantered, swapped information and their genuine love of the subject was evident through the speakers.
Because it was radio, because it was allowed to run and because it was an intelligent interviewer who did not rely on an autocue, it was wonderful.
And funny. Don't forget funny. He kept making wonderfully inventive jokes about injunctions, introducing the concept of retrospective ones, claiming Ashley Cole has taken out a number of them so that he must be referred to as still married to Cheryl Cole.
I like the radio. Apart from Today and The Archers (if you are under 60 and you like this badly acted crap then you are merely pandering to a middle class stereotype and you should snap out of it immediately) I don't dislike Radio Four as they still produce things like The News Quiz which has the same jokes as Have I Got News For You? but a couple of days earlier. The real hidden pleasures, though, are to be found on the most bizarre networks. There's a soul show on Radio Oxford on Sundays which I think is called The Soul Prescription and Smooth had a three hour Northern Soul special recently. Then there are various other titbits. Radio Five's football coverage still knocks TalkSport into a cocked hat, and that's despite rather than because of Alan Green and Robbie Savage. Test Match Special remains forever unrivalled even though it is hidden away on some obscure bit of the network that my car radio can't reach. Radio One has absolutely nothing to recommend it. Mark Kermode's film reviews are very good and Simon Mayo is an excellent foil to him on Five Live.
And there are also a million regional gems hidden away around the country that I haven't yet found.
------------------------------------------------------------
Exclamation marks. They are meant to show surprise or astonishment. At a push, they can be used to show a shout - they were often called 'screamers' by sub editors.
But they are not meant to be added to a comment on Twitter referring to something that everyone already knows about. Like 'it's Monday!!!' or 'right, off for a drink!!'. Or, as I heard someone mention, after Liz Taylor died, thousands posted messages ending in 'RIP!!'. Screen icon dies. Fair enough. But the RIP is not an expression of shock or surprise, is it? Liz Taylor's dead. REST IN PEACE!!!!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------
Took the kids to Portobello Road market today. Fab place. I've never been. Spent my whole life in London and been to the Notting Hill Festival and the Gate Theatre and other parts of this part of the world but never been to the market. The girls loved it, too. Although a lot of the stuff there is vastly overpriced. The boy wasn't as keen but then it meant a few hours away from his Playstation.
Market traders are a miserable lot. You watch them. It used to be that they were happy with a customer and as soon as the customer left, would curse and cuss. Now they don't even bother to wait until the customer goes. As soon as they think you're not buying, they sit there looking like you've just bitten the head of their pet budgie.
The older ones are better. They remember the service ethic. Not one learnt on some marketing course in Milton Keynes featuring teachers called Julian and Amanda. One that comes from standing on a stall in freezing weather trying to make a living.
I had a brief Saturday job on market stalls. I did one week selling shirts at Lea Valley, to help out a mate, and a couple of weeks around Christmas as a 15 and 16-year-old helping another friend's uncle at the world famous Romford Market. We sold handbags, purses and small leather goods like wallets or gloves. I remember I was working there on Boxing Day just after my 16th birthday, freezing cold and selling to men who had forgotten to buy a Xmas present for some female member of the family. I also remember it for other reasons. Not least because it was 1978 and I had committed myself to work there before realising Spurs were playing Arsenal that day. It was the match that we lost, at home, 5-0.
I loved the market experience. Even as a young teen, I soon got the hang of it. The calling out, the jokes, the flirting, the wide boy language. The other stallholders were brilliant. There was an air of community. Everyone watched each other's backs. But it was bloody cold and about the same time I got a weekend job for a press agency as a messenger and my whole life changed.
Otherwise, who knows, I could have ended up as a kind of Romford Delboy.
Lovely jubbly....Solly
Wednesday 18 May 2011
Cooper dooper
My brother says he has CDO. Actually he has OCD but he insists on putting it into alphabetical order.
------------------------------------------
Football fans are not a cultured lot. I've been trying to get my lot to nickname the Spurs midfielder Danny Rose as 'Broadway' but I just get blank looks. And this from a team with a large Jewish fanbase. You'd think they'd have more idea about Woody Allen's oeuvre wouldn't you?
-----------------------------------------
The online versions of our daily newspapers are a varied bunch and indicative of how seriously, I think, they treat this whole web publication issue.
Today was a good example. It was the funeral of Henry Cooper. Lots of good emotional detail to be had but, most of all, pictorially it was a newsdesk's dream. Plenty of celebs past and present, all looking smart, giving the nostalgia addicts on the backbenches something to work with.
Unfortunately a lot of people who work on the web editions of newspapers are under 12 so don't have much idea who Frank Carson, Barry McGuigan, Pat Jennings and the like are. They may just about recognise Kevin Keegan as that manager who had a bit of a paddy during a Sky interview and Bruce Forsyth could be familiar because of Strictly.
Sky's website had pictures online almost immediately after the funeral cortege passed by. The BBC were soon after. The Mail didn't seem to have it at first but soon caught up and used lots and lots of pictures and plenty of detail. It was by far the best show of the pops.
However, the state of online subbing on the Mail also meant that on another headline they had the words 'Insert Line Here' so that blotted their copybook.
The Sun had a good detailed report but, strangely, no pictures for ages. The Mirror had some pics but their website is so hard to navigate that you might as well not have bothered. The Express had its usual cursory nod to the day's events and by then I'd had enough of looking.
It strikes me a lot of the best selling daily papers still have a lot to learn.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Money's a funny thing. I've been trying to research holidays and there is something instinctive within me that makes me avoid sites with names like LoCost or Poundstretcher and it has nothing to do with grammar or spelling.
But I have friends, far wealthier than I, who are instantly drawn to these names and will automatically sail past anything with the word 'luxury' or 'tailor made' attached to them. Admittedly many of them are in the medical profession where it's hard to have any conversation that doesn't, at some point, end up talking about how much things cost.
'How's the handicap doc?' 'Oh it's not bad but they've put the green fees up. I bought a new driver the other day, it cost £400 but I got it for £397.'
Or 'fancy a pint later' 'yeah, but not at that place, they charge £3.90 a pint!'
And so on.
I know there's an argument that rich people are the tightest and that's how come they are rich but I don't buy it. That may work for entrepreneurs who pile it high and sell it cheap like my dad's old mate Johnny Bloom (look him up) but not for those in highly paid professions. They're just tightwads.
But in a strange way because tight, rich people can be amazingly generous at times - donating hundreds of pounds at a charity auction in an instant - and then remarkably stingy at others, arguing over buying a bottle of wine for 50p less than another.
Although I tend to think that they often budget months ahead that they'll have a day when they spend recklessly before going home to a sleepless night and three more months of furious pennypinching.
-----------------------------------------------------
The advert starts with a spotty youth in a chef's outfit saying 'When I was young I wasn't interested in food.' To prove how devoted he now is to the culinary art it shows him preparing chicken 'by hand' and cooking it lovingly. Then he takes it out of the oven and shoves it in a KFC bucket.
I'm off to eat something that doesn't come in a bucket (as the actress said)...finger licking goodnight...Solly
------------------------------------------
Football fans are not a cultured lot. I've been trying to get my lot to nickname the Spurs midfielder Danny Rose as 'Broadway' but I just get blank looks. And this from a team with a large Jewish fanbase. You'd think they'd have more idea about Woody Allen's oeuvre wouldn't you?
-----------------------------------------
The online versions of our daily newspapers are a varied bunch and indicative of how seriously, I think, they treat this whole web publication issue.
Today was a good example. It was the funeral of Henry Cooper. Lots of good emotional detail to be had but, most of all, pictorially it was a newsdesk's dream. Plenty of celebs past and present, all looking smart, giving the nostalgia addicts on the backbenches something to work with.
Unfortunately a lot of people who work on the web editions of newspapers are under 12 so don't have much idea who Frank Carson, Barry McGuigan, Pat Jennings and the like are. They may just about recognise Kevin Keegan as that manager who had a bit of a paddy during a Sky interview and Bruce Forsyth could be familiar because of Strictly.
Sky's website had pictures online almost immediately after the funeral cortege passed by. The BBC were soon after. The Mail didn't seem to have it at first but soon caught up and used lots and lots of pictures and plenty of detail. It was by far the best show of the pops.
However, the state of online subbing on the Mail also meant that on another headline they had the words 'Insert Line Here' so that blotted their copybook.
The Sun had a good detailed report but, strangely, no pictures for ages. The Mirror had some pics but their website is so hard to navigate that you might as well not have bothered. The Express had its usual cursory nod to the day's events and by then I'd had enough of looking.
It strikes me a lot of the best selling daily papers still have a lot to learn.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Money's a funny thing. I've been trying to research holidays and there is something instinctive within me that makes me avoid sites with names like LoCost or Poundstretcher and it has nothing to do with grammar or spelling.
But I have friends, far wealthier than I, who are instantly drawn to these names and will automatically sail past anything with the word 'luxury' or 'tailor made' attached to them. Admittedly many of them are in the medical profession where it's hard to have any conversation that doesn't, at some point, end up talking about how much things cost.
'How's the handicap doc?' 'Oh it's not bad but they've put the green fees up. I bought a new driver the other day, it cost £400 but I got it for £397.'
Or 'fancy a pint later' 'yeah, but not at that place, they charge £3.90 a pint!'
And so on.
I know there's an argument that rich people are the tightest and that's how come they are rich but I don't buy it. That may work for entrepreneurs who pile it high and sell it cheap like my dad's old mate Johnny Bloom (look him up) but not for those in highly paid professions. They're just tightwads.
But in a strange way because tight, rich people can be amazingly generous at times - donating hundreds of pounds at a charity auction in an instant - and then remarkably stingy at others, arguing over buying a bottle of wine for 50p less than another.
Although I tend to think that they often budget months ahead that they'll have a day when they spend recklessly before going home to a sleepless night and three more months of furious pennypinching.
-----------------------------------------------------
The advert starts with a spotty youth in a chef's outfit saying 'When I was young I wasn't interested in food.' To prove how devoted he now is to the culinary art it shows him preparing chicken 'by hand' and cooking it lovingly. Then he takes it out of the oven and shoves it in a KFC bucket.
I'm off to eat something that doesn't come in a bucket (as the actress said)...finger licking goodnight...Solly
Sunday 15 May 2011
Onan the Barbarian
This, genuinely, was the front page of the New York Post at the weekend where somehow you feel the word is not considered as rude over there as it is here. Fans of the famous Mork and Mindy episode featuring the character Arnold Wanker will attest to that.
And it proves that for all those years that Bush was looking for Osama, Osama was looking for bush.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
On a road sign as you come out of Gatwick - or Chavwick - Airport - are directions to the M25 and, I quote, Lond'n. Not London but Lond'n. That's an abbreviation of London except with just as many characters as the original. Which means it's not actualy an abbreviation. Can anyone explain?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think I finally get it. Downing Street's dodgy dossier is like The Only Way Is Essex. Wait. Bear with me because it helps explain the report better than Chilcott ever could.
TOWIE is a reality TV programme where the events are real but the characters are 'directed.' So if Sam breaks up with Spanner, or whatever he's called, then normally she would text him but for the purposes of TV the directors make them go through a break up scene in front of the camera, say in a wine bar.
If it just filmed their normal lives and normal conversations then no one would watch. So they are told what to talk about and how to develop the 'plot.' The language they use is still their own, which is why it looks like a load of kids badly acting a nativity play.
The dodgy dossier was supposed to be neutral report into whether or not there was a case for war except the spooks who compiled it were 'directed' to concentrate on the negative.
So one military geezer chews over the possibility that Saddam could be making weapons of mass destruction. And someone, like Alistair or Crystal Tips or Mary, Mungo or Midge, in the government PR department, leaves this in the final cut and takes out the boring bits like 'but on the other hand' or 'of course we have no proof'.
The army brass are asked to talk about the reasons why Saddam could be dangerous, and not to bother much with all that dull stuff about why he might not be, and hence they come up with some meaty stuff, in their own language, with a touch of extra spice from Blair's wonks.
So there it is. Tony Blair's case for making war was the government's version of The Only Way Is Essex - it left in all the juicy bits, the WMD equivalent of Amy bending over to do up her laces and Lauren getting an all over spray tan but it leaves out the boring bits such as a fly on the wall listen-in to the one who's a bit chubby and thinks he may be dropped from the series so he sits in his room playing with a razor blade and wondering why his sad little life has come to this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought I might have to sue Cliff Richard when I heard he'd called his latest tour the Sollycious Tour. But then I saw it in print and it said Soulicious. In which case, any surviving star from Motown, Phillie, Atlantic or dozens of other labels should be suing the smug, Christian pensioner who has, strangely, never married.
Because Cliff Richard may once have been a rock and roll star, pop singer and Europop favourite but soul? From the man who made Wired for Sound and Mistletoe and Wine? Do me a favour. He is to soul what Mario Lanza was to reggae. Or Hugh Laurie is to blues.
Don't get me wrong, I like Laurie in House - even if it is a blatant rip off of Sherlock Holmes. But if you want to hear blues, then buy a record of a blues singer doing it, not an Old Etonian who gets paid more, per week, than a Premiership footballer. You just get the impression he's playing at it.
I'm not saying that the only people who have the right to sing blues have to be poor, or that ginger people have no soul. You don't have to be black, disenfranchised and living in the deep south to play jazz or soul or blues (look at Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen for instance!!)
But it strikes me that the hardest thing faced by Hugh Laurie in his life was probably when the monthly hamper arrived from his mum and dad and it didn't have the right kind of marmalade. I wonder if he supports Aston Villa? To see him doing his golly gosh act on chat shows promoting his inner Howling Wolf or whatever, just seems patronising. I imagine I'd feel the same if they announced a biopic of Miles Davis with Hugh Grant playing the lead role. Or seeing Laurence Olivier playing Othello for instance.
I don't care if Hugh Laurie has a half decent singing voice and grade 11 on the piano, blues comes from something else. So does soul. As indeed does gospel, jazz, reggae and even opera.
And while we're at it, when did R&B stop standing for rhythm and blues and include stars with names like Tinchy and Diddy and start to mean songs about how great it is to be rich and do naughty things to women with big bottoms.
---------------------------------------------------------
Wife's away for a week. She's left me a schedule so I know what my kids are doing, and where I fit in. There's a freezer full of food with instructions for meals. Though it all seems pointless as I have the number for Domino's in my mobile memory. And they are old enough to use a toaster now.
R&B, WMD? TTFN...Solly
Friday 13 May 2011
A nice drop of claret
Old Etonian Prince William - or are they now the Duke and Duchess of Anorexia - says he supports Aston Villa. So does Nigel Kennedy, who used to be posh but then discovered a strange Mockney accent hidden in an old violin case. And now David Cameron, another Old Etonian, says he, too, supports Aston Villa. Must be as a result of growing up in the slums of Lozells. I've no idea why so many toffs support the Villa. Though it's the only time Cameron said yes to AV.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes the best arguments are the funny ones, the trivial ones, the meaningless ones. Not the big ones about whether or not there's a God or which political system is the better. They are pointless in some ways because you have set views and the person you are arguing with has the opposite view and neither or you will ever change your mind no matter what.
The ones that get you most worked up are the ones where there is no right or wrong. I say The Sopranos is better than The Wire. Both are great, but I'm right. What? You have ten reasons why The Wire is better? Bring it on. Nope, you're still wrong. It's the second best US drama ever.
Spurs are better than Arsenal. I know Arsenal consistently finish higher in the league than Spurs, have won more cups and leagues and so on, but I also know Spurs are better. They were first to win a double, the first to win a European competition, the first to sign Argentinians, sell bagels in the West Stand, we were in North London before them and generally we are a lot nicer. And better looking. So end of.
Last week a number of people on a Facebook page claimed they remember Valentines Park in Redbridge having red squirrels living wild. I practically grew up in that park and there were grey squirrels, hunting in packs, but no red ones. I'm 100 per cent certain. No matter how many people claim they remember the red ones. I can't say why they think what they think. Senility? Wishful thinking?
Strangely, this isn't my first pointless argument about red squirrels. Not strange you say? Oh.
Everyone knows about red squirrels. Prince Charles likes them. They live in Scotland, bits of northern England (that are near Scotland) and the Isle of Wight. And nowhere else. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. The North American grey squirrel has driven the fluffy red ones to the brink of extinction. The grey ones have a disease that doesn't affect them but does kill the red ones.
However, a couple of years ago my wife swears categorically that a red squirrel ran out in front of her on the M25 slip road in Waltham Abbey. She told me about it and I got on the Essex Conservation Trust.
Naturally I believed my wife. No, really. She's an intelligent woman. She's got qualifications - a degree and some NLP diploma from the University of West Norwood I think. And she does this really complicated and well paid job loosely connected to internal comms, she tells me. But despite that, she really is quite bright so if she says she saw a red squirrel, in Essex, on a motorway slip road, then she did.
Oh no she didn't, said the ECT. She couldn't have. There's no red squirrels in Essex. Or any of the counties that join Essex. Or the ones that join the ones that join Essex. Perhaps it was a grey one with lots of red.
No, I said, this looked like the one from the Tufty Club. Could it have escaped from a zoo or private collection, I said. No, he said, it definitely wasn't a red squirrel.
And so it went on.
It will never be proved that my wife was wrong. And somehow I suspect it will never be proved she was right either. But I know who I'd rather believe.
And Spurs are better than Arsenal.
----------------------------------------------------
My football team has a large Jewish support. It also has a player called Danny Rose. So naturally I have started to refer to him as 'Broadway.'
You wouldn't believe the number of humourless sods there are at football matches these days who have no idea of the works of Woody Allen and think I'm just being odd.
----------------------------------------------------
This is my 100th blog. I've found it really cathartic doing this. I've had some nice comments and some shitty ones. Some posts have been read by a couple of hundred people, some have had less than 50. But I'm just grateful, truly, that anyone bothers to read my ramblings on such an eclectic bunch of topics including, I've been told, a number of obsessions that I wasn't aware of such.
These include Ilford, Piers Morgan, annoying adverts, Spurs, my aversion to thin people, journalists, Ilford, dog walking, Jews, Stoke, The Smiths, atheism, class and, of course, Ilford. But hey, write what you know Solly, write what you know.
So I'm sorry if I occasionally repeat myself. I'm sorry if I occasionally offend - I'm not trying to be Frankie Boyle.
But thank you so very much for popping in to read occasionally. And please contact me with any comments. There is room for comment below. I'm not hard to find on Facebook and I won't be upset if you want to criticise.
Thanks again...love Solly
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes the best arguments are the funny ones, the trivial ones, the meaningless ones. Not the big ones about whether or not there's a God or which political system is the better. They are pointless in some ways because you have set views and the person you are arguing with has the opposite view and neither or you will ever change your mind no matter what.
The ones that get you most worked up are the ones where there is no right or wrong. I say The Sopranos is better than The Wire. Both are great, but I'm right. What? You have ten reasons why The Wire is better? Bring it on. Nope, you're still wrong. It's the second best US drama ever.
Spurs are better than Arsenal. I know Arsenal consistently finish higher in the league than Spurs, have won more cups and leagues and so on, but I also know Spurs are better. They were first to win a double, the first to win a European competition, the first to sign Argentinians, sell bagels in the West Stand, we were in North London before them and generally we are a lot nicer. And better looking. So end of.
Last week a number of people on a Facebook page claimed they remember Valentines Park in Redbridge having red squirrels living wild. I practically grew up in that park and there were grey squirrels, hunting in packs, but no red ones. I'm 100 per cent certain. No matter how many people claim they remember the red ones. I can't say why they think what they think. Senility? Wishful thinking?
Strangely, this isn't my first pointless argument about red squirrels. Not strange you say? Oh.
Everyone knows about red squirrels. Prince Charles likes them. They live in Scotland, bits of northern England (that are near Scotland) and the Isle of Wight. And nowhere else. And it's been that way for hundreds of years. The North American grey squirrel has driven the fluffy red ones to the brink of extinction. The grey ones have a disease that doesn't affect them but does kill the red ones.
However, a couple of years ago my wife swears categorically that a red squirrel ran out in front of her on the M25 slip road in Waltham Abbey. She told me about it and I got on the Essex Conservation Trust.
Naturally I believed my wife. No, really. She's an intelligent woman. She's got qualifications - a degree and some NLP diploma from the University of West Norwood I think. And she does this really complicated and well paid job loosely connected to internal comms, she tells me. But despite that, she really is quite bright so if she says she saw a red squirrel, in Essex, on a motorway slip road, then she did.
Oh no she didn't, said the ECT. She couldn't have. There's no red squirrels in Essex. Or any of the counties that join Essex. Or the ones that join the ones that join Essex. Perhaps it was a grey one with lots of red.
No, I said, this looked like the one from the Tufty Club. Could it have escaped from a zoo or private collection, I said. No, he said, it definitely wasn't a red squirrel.
And so it went on.
It will never be proved that my wife was wrong. And somehow I suspect it will never be proved she was right either. But I know who I'd rather believe.
And Spurs are better than Arsenal.
----------------------------------------------------
My football team has a large Jewish support. It also has a player called Danny Rose. So naturally I have started to refer to him as 'Broadway.'
You wouldn't believe the number of humourless sods there are at football matches these days who have no idea of the works of Woody Allen and think I'm just being odd.
----------------------------------------------------
This is my 100th blog. I've found it really cathartic doing this. I've had some nice comments and some shitty ones. Some posts have been read by a couple of hundred people, some have had less than 50. But I'm just grateful, truly, that anyone bothers to read my ramblings on such an eclectic bunch of topics including, I've been told, a number of obsessions that I wasn't aware of such.
These include Ilford, Piers Morgan, annoying adverts, Spurs, my aversion to thin people, journalists, Ilford, dog walking, Jews, Stoke, The Smiths, atheism, class and, of course, Ilford. But hey, write what you know Solly, write what you know.
So I'm sorry if I occasionally repeat myself. I'm sorry if I occasionally offend - I'm not trying to be Frankie Boyle.
But thank you so very much for popping in to read occasionally. And please contact me with any comments. There is room for comment below. I'm not hard to find on Facebook and I won't be upset if you want to criticise.
Thanks again...love Solly
Tuesday 10 May 2011
Victims of the mental health function
According to the social media website Linked In, I'm now someone in the 'writing/journalism function'. I've been called a lot of things but never that.
---------------------------------------------------------
Growing up, there were always certain characters you were told to avoid. There was a woman with a hunchback called Mavis (and yes, that would spark someone into asking why a woman would give her deformity a name and someone else saying she just did it on a hunch.)
Then there was a man who stood outside a shop in Barkingside who simply said 'packet of Bird's custard' to everyone who walked past. Thank you Peter Poyton for reminding me of that.
And we also had the Major. Long before Fawlty Towers, this was a man with a ramrod straight back who wore a blue blazer with a regimental badge, slacks and a shirt and tie and would march around barking orders and muttering under his breath.
Our parents simply told us that if we saw him we should not talk to him and stay away. It was part of the 'don't take sweets from strangers' routine. The word paedophile was never used and we did not grow up in fear of being snatched from the streets, otherwise we wouldn't have been allowed to get the bus to school at the age of nine.
People who were perceived as being odd were dismissed as 'loonies' and the reasons may not have been much different then as to now - drink, drugs, or genetic.
Although this was the seventies, we did not have the problem the Americans had of shellshocked war vets coming home from Vietnam and being forced on to the streets.
The nearest we ever got to that was the whole care in the community fiasco when suddenly the 'looney bin' seemed to pour its residents out on to the streets.
I did hospital radio at a couple of these places - one which still exists in Goodmayes and one which is now a posh housing estate occupied by Spurs and West Ham players in Claybury.
Every area is probably characterised by its local loonies but somehow, looking back, they seemed more eccentric than dangerous, though the haze of nostalgia may disguise the issue.
I, and several of my generation from the area, remember one man we nicknamed Indian Jim. He wore Red Indian clothes including feathers in his hair and fired a toy bow and arrow at people around Ilford High Road.
When I was a reporter at the Ilford Recorder he came up at Redbridge Magistrates Court one day when I was doing court duty.
It was a drunk and disorderly charge or possibly disturbing the peace and it was not his first time before the mags. The clerk asked him his name and he replied: "Hiawatha." The clerk turned to the bench and whispered 'Malcolm Johnson' or whatever his real name was (I forget the exact details.) The clerk then asked: "And your address?" To which he replied: "The reservation." Clerk: "Which is where exactly?" Jim: "52 Ley Street, Ilford."
Like many of the other regulars, he was given one day in the cells which meant he was taken down and released at the end of the morning session.
I believe that statistically, there are no more incidents of children being snatched and killed now than there were back then - an era in which the memories of Myra Hindley and Mary Bell were still strong.
But somehow it's hard to be totally confident about the permanent safety of children anywhere in a week when a man with a couple of similar convictions behind him is on trial for the murder of Millie Dowler.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robbie Savage won a radio award for perpetually squeaking on Five Live about how much money he has made. And the say satire is dead. And to prove how far mediocre talent can go on the BBC as long as they have a regional accent, Colin Murray - basically a hospital DJ out of his depth - also won something or other at the same awards. Of course, what upset The Guardian types was that talkSport won various awards too because in the eyes of the intelligentsia, what right has a station listened to by men who drive white vans got to win an award that should go to Radio Four?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading some papers you would think that the whole country is divided between choosing Made In Chelsea or The Only Way Is Essex. But look closely and you see that TOWIE (as it must be called, apparently) gets a million viewers at best. Which means approximately 59 million people in Britain don't watch it. And MIC (as it is destined to become) gets around a third of that.
Sometimes we get carried away by assuming that whatever we do in our own little circles is automatically mirrored by everyone else in Britain.
For instance, a major England football match in, say, a World Cup, gets around 20 million viewers if you're lucky. That's just 40 per cent of the nation. Which means 60 per cent have something better to do.
Audience figures for the Royal Wedding were 25 million. Yes, the roads were empty and everyone YOU know probably watched it (well, not everyone. I didn't.) But 35 million didn't.
That's 35 million who didn't bang on about how nice the anorexic sisters looked, how great it was for Britain, how we should be proud to have a monarchy sucking us dry and so on and so on until you want to turn the Mall into a great big vomitorium.
Just thought I'd mention it. Your ever faithful servant...Solly
---------------------------------------------------------
Growing up, there were always certain characters you were told to avoid. There was a woman with a hunchback called Mavis (and yes, that would spark someone into asking why a woman would give her deformity a name and someone else saying she just did it on a hunch.)
Then there was a man who stood outside a shop in Barkingside who simply said 'packet of Bird's custard' to everyone who walked past. Thank you Peter Poyton for reminding me of that.
And we also had the Major. Long before Fawlty Towers, this was a man with a ramrod straight back who wore a blue blazer with a regimental badge, slacks and a shirt and tie and would march around barking orders and muttering under his breath.
Our parents simply told us that if we saw him we should not talk to him and stay away. It was part of the 'don't take sweets from strangers' routine. The word paedophile was never used and we did not grow up in fear of being snatched from the streets, otherwise we wouldn't have been allowed to get the bus to school at the age of nine.
People who were perceived as being odd were dismissed as 'loonies' and the reasons may not have been much different then as to now - drink, drugs, or genetic.
Although this was the seventies, we did not have the problem the Americans had of shellshocked war vets coming home from Vietnam and being forced on to the streets.
The nearest we ever got to that was the whole care in the community fiasco when suddenly the 'looney bin' seemed to pour its residents out on to the streets.
I did hospital radio at a couple of these places - one which still exists in Goodmayes and one which is now a posh housing estate occupied by Spurs and West Ham players in Claybury.
Every area is probably characterised by its local loonies but somehow, looking back, they seemed more eccentric than dangerous, though the haze of nostalgia may disguise the issue.
I, and several of my generation from the area, remember one man we nicknamed Indian Jim. He wore Red Indian clothes including feathers in his hair and fired a toy bow and arrow at people around Ilford High Road.
When I was a reporter at the Ilford Recorder he came up at Redbridge Magistrates Court one day when I was doing court duty.
It was a drunk and disorderly charge or possibly disturbing the peace and it was not his first time before the mags. The clerk asked him his name and he replied: "Hiawatha." The clerk turned to the bench and whispered 'Malcolm Johnson' or whatever his real name was (I forget the exact details.) The clerk then asked: "And your address?" To which he replied: "The reservation." Clerk: "Which is where exactly?" Jim: "52 Ley Street, Ilford."
Like many of the other regulars, he was given one day in the cells which meant he was taken down and released at the end of the morning session.
I believe that statistically, there are no more incidents of children being snatched and killed now than there were back then - an era in which the memories of Myra Hindley and Mary Bell were still strong.
But somehow it's hard to be totally confident about the permanent safety of children anywhere in a week when a man with a couple of similar convictions behind him is on trial for the murder of Millie Dowler.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robbie Savage won a radio award for perpetually squeaking on Five Live about how much money he has made. And the say satire is dead. And to prove how far mediocre talent can go on the BBC as long as they have a regional accent, Colin Murray - basically a hospital DJ out of his depth - also won something or other at the same awards. Of course, what upset The Guardian types was that talkSport won various awards too because in the eyes of the intelligentsia, what right has a station listened to by men who drive white vans got to win an award that should go to Radio Four?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading some papers you would think that the whole country is divided between choosing Made In Chelsea or The Only Way Is Essex. But look closely and you see that TOWIE (as it must be called, apparently) gets a million viewers at best. Which means approximately 59 million people in Britain don't watch it. And MIC (as it is destined to become) gets around a third of that.
Sometimes we get carried away by assuming that whatever we do in our own little circles is automatically mirrored by everyone else in Britain.
For instance, a major England football match in, say, a World Cup, gets around 20 million viewers if you're lucky. That's just 40 per cent of the nation. Which means 60 per cent have something better to do.
Audience figures for the Royal Wedding were 25 million. Yes, the roads were empty and everyone YOU know probably watched it (well, not everyone. I didn't.) But 35 million didn't.
That's 35 million who didn't bang on about how nice the anorexic sisters looked, how great it was for Britain, how we should be proud to have a monarchy sucking us dry and so on and so on until you want to turn the Mall into a great big vomitorium.
Just thought I'd mention it. Your ever faithful servant...Solly
Monday 9 May 2011
Intellectual my arse
Sure sign of getting older (number 152 in an endless series). A lot of my friends can't stop banging on about Kate and Pippa but those skinny posh kids leave me cold if truth be told. However, former air hostess Carole...well, dress her in a Britney-style stewardess outfit, let her check I'm strapped in properly and offering to refresh my nuts in first class and now you're talking.
--------------------------------------------------------
Interested to see that programme fronted by well known football expert Alan Sugar into the state of the game on TV last night which revealed absolutely nothing that any of us didn't already know. The best insight into his attitude into running a football club was encapsulated by a tale of when he was at Spurs and wondered why the fans never chanted his name in the way they did the manager or players. Or so it is said.
I must admit, having read various interviews with the great man, I'm not sure exactly why he does The Apprentice. It's not the money as he's got enough already. It's not to promote his companies as his main income now is property it seems. And it's not to give someone worthy a job as the cast of the pogramme are not the most suitable candidates to work for him but those who make the best TV. Hence Stuart Baggs. And this year the winner doesn't even work for Lord Nookie Bear lookalike - he gives them £250,000 in a Dragon's Den style payment to set up their own business.
So why does he do it? The media exposure? He doesn't come across as a media darling. And, unlike Donald Trump who did the US version, I don't think Sugar's interested in a career in politics. So what is it, you think, that makes this slightly awkward billionaire who doesn't need the publicity embark on being a TV star?
---------------------------------------------------------
The Guardian has printed a list of the 300 greatest living British intellectuals which includes at least one person who is dead and five who are Irish (Seamus Heaney? British? FFS!). Of course it does, it's The Guardian. Here's the list.
http://tinyurl.com/6fow8hk
It also includes Clive Anderson and a number of writers like Polly Toynbee for her deep understanding of the nation's working class, Ben Goldacre for being able to slag off medical stories that don't involve him and Marina Hyde whose valuable insights into showbiz are a must-read for other intellectuals.
Funnily enough, all three of these have a column in The Guardian.
Which is possibly why they haven't included Clarkson, Littlejohn and Richard and Judy while they're at it.
But much as I think journalists are the greatest people in the world, I have to conclude that few are intellectuals and this list is overladen with them.
Apart from those listed as journos, many of those mentioned for their prowess in other fields were once journalists - Andrew Adonis (hilariously called Anthony Adonis here who I'm sure is a porn star), Michael Gove and Gordon Brown. Yes, he's there.
That's another problem. If you think someone is completely wrong in what they believe, then do they qualify as an intellectual? For instance, if you are an atheist, then you may feel that anyone who can believe in God doesn't qualify. Similar claims can be made about Communists - many so called intellectuals are fervently political but if they believe in something you find abhorrent, then are they an intellectual (at least in your eyes?) Or do you take the approach that while you may disagree with, say, George Orwell or Keith Joseph, Christopher Hitchens or Peter Hitchens, they are still intellectuals?
Trying to define someone as an intellectual is pretty pointless. Stephen Fry, who is able to recite a lot of things that he has remembered, is often named as one, yet being able to absorb information is not the same as original thought or creating something new. Mind you, I couldn't see him on this list. Will Self is there, possibly for his ability to use long words. I've read The Book of Dave. If that's an intellectual then my dick's a bloater, as Kelvin Mackenzie used to say (and no, I'm not suggesting him either).
If creativity was a factor then we should give it to a comedian or at least the person who writes his or her jokes. And there is an argument - though possibly a poor one - that say what Wayne Rooney does with a football is more creative than most of the journalists and writers who seem to populate The Guardian's list.
I think the true intellectual is the person who has actually heard of all 300 people on this list.
---------------------------------------------------------
I owe Neil Warnock (anagram Colin Wanker) an apology. When The Sun suggested his team, Queen's Park Rangers, would be deducted points, Warnock questioned their 'source' and maintained he had a better source who said they would only be fined. He was right and The Sun (and the Express and others who copied him) were wrong.
This follows the main tactic of football journalists in general who can throw enough theories into the paper every day so that when one is eventually proved right they can trumpet it from the rooftops - hence all the agent-fed tales of who is likely to be transferred to who. You can be wrong seven times but if you are then right, that's the one that counts.
----------------------------------------------------------
Regarding all these superinjunctions, and in particularly the ones from prostitutes: what about client confidentiality? Surely any hooker who sells her story is in breach of contract or is there just no honour in the oldest profession any more?
----------------------------------------------------------
Two very strange stories in the papers in the last couple of days. One in the Mail on Sunday about Hugh Bonneville describing him as the Ryan Giggs of the acting world and one in the Telegraph today about fans of the comedian David Schneider puzzled by his lack of Twitter activity. Look them up and see if you can understand what they are all about and tell me, please, because I'm very confused.
Resting my case....Solly
--------------------------------------------------------
Interested to see that programme fronted by well known football expert Alan Sugar into the state of the game on TV last night which revealed absolutely nothing that any of us didn't already know. The best insight into his attitude into running a football club was encapsulated by a tale of when he was at Spurs and wondered why the fans never chanted his name in the way they did the manager or players. Or so it is said.
I must admit, having read various interviews with the great man, I'm not sure exactly why he does The Apprentice. It's not the money as he's got enough already. It's not to promote his companies as his main income now is property it seems. And it's not to give someone worthy a job as the cast of the pogramme are not the most suitable candidates to work for him but those who make the best TV. Hence Stuart Baggs. And this year the winner doesn't even work for Lord Nookie Bear lookalike - he gives them £250,000 in a Dragon's Den style payment to set up their own business.
So why does he do it? The media exposure? He doesn't come across as a media darling. And, unlike Donald Trump who did the US version, I don't think Sugar's interested in a career in politics. So what is it, you think, that makes this slightly awkward billionaire who doesn't need the publicity embark on being a TV star?
---------------------------------------------------------
The Guardian has printed a list of the 300 greatest living British intellectuals which includes at least one person who is dead and five who are Irish (Seamus Heaney? British? FFS!). Of course it does, it's The Guardian. Here's the list.
http://tinyurl.com/6fow8hk
It also includes Clive Anderson and a number of writers like Polly Toynbee for her deep understanding of the nation's working class, Ben Goldacre for being able to slag off medical stories that don't involve him and Marina Hyde whose valuable insights into showbiz are a must-read for other intellectuals.
Funnily enough, all three of these have a column in The Guardian.
Which is possibly why they haven't included Clarkson, Littlejohn and Richard and Judy while they're at it.
But much as I think journalists are the greatest people in the world, I have to conclude that few are intellectuals and this list is overladen with them.
Apart from those listed as journos, many of those mentioned for their prowess in other fields were once journalists - Andrew Adonis (hilariously called Anthony Adonis here who I'm sure is a porn star), Michael Gove and Gordon Brown. Yes, he's there.
That's another problem. If you think someone is completely wrong in what they believe, then do they qualify as an intellectual? For instance, if you are an atheist, then you may feel that anyone who can believe in God doesn't qualify. Similar claims can be made about Communists - many so called intellectuals are fervently political but if they believe in something you find abhorrent, then are they an intellectual (at least in your eyes?) Or do you take the approach that while you may disagree with, say, George Orwell or Keith Joseph, Christopher Hitchens or Peter Hitchens, they are still intellectuals?
Trying to define someone as an intellectual is pretty pointless. Stephen Fry, who is able to recite a lot of things that he has remembered, is often named as one, yet being able to absorb information is not the same as original thought or creating something new. Mind you, I couldn't see him on this list. Will Self is there, possibly for his ability to use long words. I've read The Book of Dave. If that's an intellectual then my dick's a bloater, as Kelvin Mackenzie used to say (and no, I'm not suggesting him either).
If creativity was a factor then we should give it to a comedian or at least the person who writes his or her jokes. And there is an argument - though possibly a poor one - that say what Wayne Rooney does with a football is more creative than most of the journalists and writers who seem to populate The Guardian's list.
I think the true intellectual is the person who has actually heard of all 300 people on this list.
---------------------------------------------------------
I owe Neil Warnock (anagram Colin Wanker) an apology. When The Sun suggested his team, Queen's Park Rangers, would be deducted points, Warnock questioned their 'source' and maintained he had a better source who said they would only be fined. He was right and The Sun (and the Express and others who copied him) were wrong.
This follows the main tactic of football journalists in general who can throw enough theories into the paper every day so that when one is eventually proved right they can trumpet it from the rooftops - hence all the agent-fed tales of who is likely to be transferred to who. You can be wrong seven times but if you are then right, that's the one that counts.
----------------------------------------------------------
Regarding all these superinjunctions, and in particularly the ones from prostitutes: what about client confidentiality? Surely any hooker who sells her story is in breach of contract or is there just no honour in the oldest profession any more?
----------------------------------------------------------
Two very strange stories in the papers in the last couple of days. One in the Mail on Sunday about Hugh Bonneville describing him as the Ryan Giggs of the acting world and one in the Telegraph today about fans of the comedian David Schneider puzzled by his lack of Twitter activity. Look them up and see if you can understand what they are all about and tell me, please, because I'm very confused.
Resting my case....Solly
Wednesday 4 May 2011
And the silver stream is a poor man's wine
Apparently Wayne Rooney tweeted a lovely message on the death of Henry Cooper describing him as a gentleman who will be sorely missed, adding 'and when he wore that Fez he right cracked me up he did.'
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Country Life has a rather amusing list in its current edition of 39 things young people should be able to do. It includes such gems as skin a rabbit, reverse a tractor, host a dinner party, do card tricks, know how to address royalty, dance a waltz, know the difference between Chardonnay and Chablis and handle a shotgun (of course). It's very good - see this link: http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countryside/article/524440/Country-Life-s-39-steps-to-a-better-life.html
Naturally this does not apply to the likes of me and you though it does raise an interesting point about the extra-curricular life skills we should hope our kids can manage by the time they leave school. For those of us with teenage children growing up in a more urban environment, the kind of skills they need by the time they leave full time education are very different. So here's my 39 skills young people without land owning parents should know:
1.How to speak to a 'gangsta' without sounding like Ali G.
2.Tell the difference between chicken sold at KFC and Nandos.
3.What to do when spilling someone's pint in a pub
4.The areas of London where you should not let anyone see you have a mobile phone.
5.How to check a partner's Facebook without them knowing
6.Know at least one off licence which will sell you Smirnoff Ice without asking for ID.
7.Where to buy cheap drugs without getting ripped off.
8.When to adopt a glottal stop to avoid standing out for sounding too posh.
9.The best shade of fake tan for a night out.
10.Recognising the one person on a nightbus you should definitely not sit next to.
11.Driving a car out of a pub car park when you are being chased.
12.The best place to buy pirate DVDs.
13.Spotting a paedophile who wants to follow you on Twitter
14.Joining in a conversation about rugby among posh people.
15.Being able to discern the best daily deal on a Dominos menu.
16.Making a cocktail involving cheap cider, red bull, vodka and coke.
17.How to roll a joint.
18.Travel from A to B on public transport without paying.
19.Dance to the latest mind numbing bass-laden music without looking like your mum/dad
20.The nearest place to buy a morning after pill
21.The words to at least three songs you may need for a karaoke club
22.Know a few words in at least five languages including Polish and, if buying a Big Issue, Glaswegian.
23.Tell the difference between a pit bull and a Staffie
24.Which pubs to avoid if Arsenal are on TV
25.Name all the cast of EastEnders
26.Correctly pronounce every type of coffee, and cup size, from a Starbucks menu board
27.Gatecrash someone else's party by claiming to know another guest
28.Recite the names of the winners of Big Brother from the past nine series
29.Be able to fake a sickie
30.Convince your parents you paid back the tenner you borrowed
31.Memorise the times of the last tube from Central London
32.Know how to convey irony and sarcasm in a well written email
33.Be able to convincingly give someone the wrong number when they ask for your mobile number
34.Remember to claim Irish heritage every St Paddy's Day
35.Successfully lip synch the lyrics to a rap song in a nightclub
36.Get a tattoo that won't look naff in ten years' time
37.Be able to kick a football properly (for boys) or throw a ball (for girls)
38.Recognise the first signs of an STD
39.Support at least one political cause that you'll regret in later life
As for most of these...I'm still learning!
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I'm still waiting for the Daily Mail, in its exhaustive coverage of the death of Osama Bin Laden, to tell me exactly how much his luxurious rural country compound has been valued at by the local estate agent.
Apparently, when he died he had 500 Euros and two phone numbers stiched in to his clothes. Investigators are trying to work out who the numbers belong to. The comedian John Moloney came up with a good suggestion today on Facebook. Why not ring them?
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Talking of comedians, when did it become de rigueur for every stand-up to end his or her act by reminding the audience of their name? I think, but may be wrong, that this was something started by that very good looking funnyman Ben Elton - you know the Jewish one with the dark hair and glasses and shiny suits. Damned handsome fellow. He always said 'my name's Ben Elton, good night'. Now they all do it. Except they use their own name, not Ben Elton. Did anyone do it before then? And why do it? We know you're Alan Carr or Jimmy Carr or John Bishop or whoever it is.
Contrary to several dozen people who, in the old days, would stop me to point it out, my name's not Ben Elton, good night...Solly
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Country Life has a rather amusing list in its current edition of 39 things young people should be able to do. It includes such gems as skin a rabbit, reverse a tractor, host a dinner party, do card tricks, know how to address royalty, dance a waltz, know the difference between Chardonnay and Chablis and handle a shotgun (of course). It's very good - see this link: http://www.countrylife.co.uk/countryside/article/524440/Country-Life-s-39-steps-to-a-better-life.html
Naturally this does not apply to the likes of me and you though it does raise an interesting point about the extra-curricular life skills we should hope our kids can manage by the time they leave school. For those of us with teenage children growing up in a more urban environment, the kind of skills they need by the time they leave full time education are very different. So here's my 39 skills young people without land owning parents should know:
1.How to speak to a 'gangsta' without sounding like Ali G.
2.Tell the difference between chicken sold at KFC and Nandos.
3.What to do when spilling someone's pint in a pub
4.The areas of London where you should not let anyone see you have a mobile phone.
5.How to check a partner's Facebook without them knowing
6.Know at least one off licence which will sell you Smirnoff Ice without asking for ID.
7.Where to buy cheap drugs without getting ripped off.
8.When to adopt a glottal stop to avoid standing out for sounding too posh.
9.The best shade of fake tan for a night out.
10.Recognising the one person on a nightbus you should definitely not sit next to.
11.Driving a car out of a pub car park when you are being chased.
12.The best place to buy pirate DVDs.
13.Spotting a paedophile who wants to follow you on Twitter
14.Joining in a conversation about rugby among posh people.
15.Being able to discern the best daily deal on a Dominos menu.
16.Making a cocktail involving cheap cider, red bull, vodka and coke.
17.How to roll a joint.
18.Travel from A to B on public transport without paying.
19.Dance to the latest mind numbing bass-laden music without looking like your mum/dad
20.The nearest place to buy a morning after pill
21.The words to at least three songs you may need for a karaoke club
22.Know a few words in at least five languages including Polish and, if buying a Big Issue, Glaswegian.
23.Tell the difference between a pit bull and a Staffie
24.Which pubs to avoid if Arsenal are on TV
25.Name all the cast of EastEnders
26.Correctly pronounce every type of coffee, and cup size, from a Starbucks menu board
27.Gatecrash someone else's party by claiming to know another guest
28.Recite the names of the winners of Big Brother from the past nine series
29.Be able to fake a sickie
30.Convince your parents you paid back the tenner you borrowed
31.Memorise the times of the last tube from Central London
32.Know how to convey irony and sarcasm in a well written email
33.Be able to convincingly give someone the wrong number when they ask for your mobile number
34.Remember to claim Irish heritage every St Paddy's Day
35.Successfully lip synch the lyrics to a rap song in a nightclub
36.Get a tattoo that won't look naff in ten years' time
37.Be able to kick a football properly (for boys) or throw a ball (for girls)
38.Recognise the first signs of an STD
39.Support at least one political cause that you'll regret in later life
As for most of these...I'm still learning!
----------------------------------------------------
I'm still waiting for the Daily Mail, in its exhaustive coverage of the death of Osama Bin Laden, to tell me exactly how much his luxurious rural country compound has been valued at by the local estate agent.
Apparently, when he died he had 500 Euros and two phone numbers stiched in to his clothes. Investigators are trying to work out who the numbers belong to. The comedian John Moloney came up with a good suggestion today on Facebook. Why not ring them?
-----------------------------------------------------
Talking of comedians, when did it become de rigueur for every stand-up to end his or her act by reminding the audience of their name? I think, but may be wrong, that this was something started by that very good looking funnyman Ben Elton - you know the Jewish one with the dark hair and glasses and shiny suits. Damned handsome fellow. He always said 'my name's Ben Elton, good night'. Now they all do it. Except they use their own name, not Ben Elton. Did anyone do it before then? And why do it? We know you're Alan Carr or Jimmy Carr or John Bishop or whoever it is.
Contrary to several dozen people who, in the old days, would stop me to point it out, my name's not Ben Elton, good night...Solly
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Word of moth
Now that OBL is RIP, who's going to have his season ticket at Arsenal? Perhaps, as the US special forces approached, shouting 'come on you Gunners' may not have sent out the right message.
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Ah, these are the stories that take me back. A street in Exeter has been warned about a plague of toxic caterpillars and Richard Littlejohn wondered in the Mail today whether or not this was to do with the bins not being emptied for three weeks. It isn't, as I'm sure he'll know from his local newspaper days.
When I worked on the Ilford Recorder we had a ready made page lead about this time every year with a story on how a plague of the caterpillars of the brown-tailed moth was making its way down from the coast to strike fear into the hearts of Redbridge residents.
Basically we waited until the first complaint to the council about these creepy crawlies whose hairs could cause itchiness (or as I think we described it, severe illness to anyone with an allergic reaction). If there was no complaint to the council we would keep an eye out in our own gardens and if we saw one get Phil or Ron (the photographers) round to take a picture of it on a suitable road sign to prove they had reached Ilford.
We even had a ready made councillor to give us a rentaquote - Cllr Harry Moth who would play ball with us at the same time every year.
And we had weekly collections of the rubbish and no wheely bins either.
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Interesting BBC drama, Exile, about a journalist whose dad suffers from Alzheimer's. It reminds me of the time I sold my own grandfather. After a fashion. I sold a story about my grandad to the Daily Express.
My grandfather, Israel Alfred Solomons (known as Izzy to family and Alf to his mates) had Alzheimer's and it led to him going into a home after he disappeared once too often (it wasn't a big problem as we always found him in Stepney Way, near the London Hospital, because that's where he grew up).
The home was run by Tower Hamlets council including a very kind matron who was the natural mother of John and Justin Fashanu.
One day Tower Hamlets decided to take the residents of the home to France on a day trip. Which was fine. But they came back without my grandad. He'd walked off and they hadn't noticed until they did a headcount.
We actually thought we'd lost him for good. He didn't know his way round. He didn't know his own grandson (he used to call me Percy and asked if I was still a postman).
About two or three days later we had a call from a police station in Folkestone who asked if we could identify a man in their custody as my grandad.
Apparently the French police had picked him up wandering around Calais. They asked him who he was but all he would say was "I am British and I am Jewish."
He didn't even give them his name, rank and serial number. The police didn't know what do do so they put him on a ferry and told the British police. They got him to the station, gave him a cup of tea and something to eat and gradually worked out he was the old geezer who had been mislaid by Tower Hamlets council.
And I sold the story to the Daily Express. Although my uncle, to his credit, had also been ringing the papers to complain about what had happened too, which had got their interest up.
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The very good journalist blogger Fleet Street Fox writes today about how hard it is for a hack on a national newspaper to get anything in the paper when it is dominated by one big story like a royal wedding or Osama's death.
Tell me about it love. Imagine trying to do it when it's your living.
I can remember working at The Sun during a day when, as industrial reporter, I didn't have much to do. The editor, Kelvin Mackenzie, walked past and said 'anything going on?'. 'No boss' I replied, 'not much happening.' He sneered: 'Well make it f**king happen then," and walked off. So that's what I've had to do every since. Make it happen.
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Anyone who uses London Transport knows how bad the Jubilee Line is. Just like we all shrug off the announcement 'this weekend there will be planned engineering works on the Central, Piccadilly, Metropolitan, Victoria, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Circle and District Lines. There will be a good service on all other lines.'
But it's the Jubilee Line which is the most appalling. I reckon it doesn't help having the on board train announcements in the voice of some kind of Wurzel-like West Country bloke who says 'All change please, this train terminates 'ere' like a middle aged Justin Lee Collins. All he need to is add 'moy lover' and it will be complete.
This is London so we should have a London voice. Or at least a Polish one for when the train terminates at Stratford. The same thing used to happen at Covent Garden station where the recorded message in the lift was by a bleedin' Aussie!
As the sign on the trains used to be altered to say, Obstruct the doors, be dangerous and cause delay. Mind the gap....Solly
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Ah, these are the stories that take me back. A street in Exeter has been warned about a plague of toxic caterpillars and Richard Littlejohn wondered in the Mail today whether or not this was to do with the bins not being emptied for three weeks. It isn't, as I'm sure he'll know from his local newspaper days.
When I worked on the Ilford Recorder we had a ready made page lead about this time every year with a story on how a plague of the caterpillars of the brown-tailed moth was making its way down from the coast to strike fear into the hearts of Redbridge residents.
Basically we waited until the first complaint to the council about these creepy crawlies whose hairs could cause itchiness (or as I think we described it, severe illness to anyone with an allergic reaction). If there was no complaint to the council we would keep an eye out in our own gardens and if we saw one get Phil or Ron (the photographers) round to take a picture of it on a suitable road sign to prove they had reached Ilford.
We even had a ready made councillor to give us a rentaquote - Cllr Harry Moth who would play ball with us at the same time every year.
And we had weekly collections of the rubbish and no wheely bins either.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Interesting BBC drama, Exile, about a journalist whose dad suffers from Alzheimer's. It reminds me of the time I sold my own grandfather. After a fashion. I sold a story about my grandad to the Daily Express.
My grandfather, Israel Alfred Solomons (known as Izzy to family and Alf to his mates) had Alzheimer's and it led to him going into a home after he disappeared once too often (it wasn't a big problem as we always found him in Stepney Way, near the London Hospital, because that's where he grew up).
The home was run by Tower Hamlets council including a very kind matron who was the natural mother of John and Justin Fashanu.
One day Tower Hamlets decided to take the residents of the home to France on a day trip. Which was fine. But they came back without my grandad. He'd walked off and they hadn't noticed until they did a headcount.
We actually thought we'd lost him for good. He didn't know his way round. He didn't know his own grandson (he used to call me Percy and asked if I was still a postman).
About two or three days later we had a call from a police station in Folkestone who asked if we could identify a man in their custody as my grandad.
Apparently the French police had picked him up wandering around Calais. They asked him who he was but all he would say was "I am British and I am Jewish."
He didn't even give them his name, rank and serial number. The police didn't know what do do so they put him on a ferry and told the British police. They got him to the station, gave him a cup of tea and something to eat and gradually worked out he was the old geezer who had been mislaid by Tower Hamlets council.
And I sold the story to the Daily Express. Although my uncle, to his credit, had also been ringing the papers to complain about what had happened too, which had got their interest up.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The very good journalist blogger Fleet Street Fox writes today about how hard it is for a hack on a national newspaper to get anything in the paper when it is dominated by one big story like a royal wedding or Osama's death.
Tell me about it love. Imagine trying to do it when it's your living.
I can remember working at The Sun during a day when, as industrial reporter, I didn't have much to do. The editor, Kelvin Mackenzie, walked past and said 'anything going on?'. 'No boss' I replied, 'not much happening.' He sneered: 'Well make it f**king happen then," and walked off. So that's what I've had to do every since. Make it happen.
------------------------------------------------------------
Anyone who uses London Transport knows how bad the Jubilee Line is. Just like we all shrug off the announcement 'this weekend there will be planned engineering works on the Central, Piccadilly, Metropolitan, Victoria, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Circle and District Lines. There will be a good service on all other lines.'
But it's the Jubilee Line which is the most appalling. I reckon it doesn't help having the on board train announcements in the voice of some kind of Wurzel-like West Country bloke who says 'All change please, this train terminates 'ere' like a middle aged Justin Lee Collins. All he need to is add 'moy lover' and it will be complete.
This is London so we should have a London voice. Or at least a Polish one for when the train terminates at Stratford. The same thing used to happen at Covent Garden station where the recorded message in the lift was by a bleedin' Aussie!
As the sign on the trains used to be altered to say, Obstruct the doors, be dangerous and cause delay. Mind the gap....Solly
Monday 2 May 2011
Bin there, done that
Nurses are obviously being paid too much. Have you seen that advert for Sky? It shows a couple coming home late after a shift at the hospital - she's obviously a nurse, I think he is too. And they're ordering a Sky subscription or an upgrade or something.
It's not the Sky bit that suggests they have cash - you can't go past a council estate without seeing a zillion satellite dishes - but if you look, the downtrodden nurses have a gleaming new Aga in the kitchen. An Aga? On NHS pay? Blimey.
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The thing about Osama Bin Laden's death, apart from the fact everyone now seems to refer to him as OBL, is that you can't help wondering how different things would have been been without him.
In particular, what would Blair have been like without OBL? Whether or not you like or loathe him, much of that is probably based on the conflicts in Iraq (mainly) and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, the lies over weapons of mass destruction, the part he and Alistair Campbell may or may not have played in the death of Dr David Kelly, the whole 'not in my name' campaign.
I know there's other aspects of his premiership that will help form an opinion but a lot of his natural supporters hate him for the war, for example, and many of his natural opponents may not have turned against him so much if there had never been a 9/11 for him to react to.
All the WMD, BBC and other TLAs (three letter acronyms) may not have happened. We would have had a completely different kind of Prime Minister. Indeed America may have had a completely different president.
And whatever else, this is a good day for Obama. Even if he was lucky, it doesn't matter. It happened on his watch and his ratings will soar. I watched his very funny 'roasting' of Donald Trump in the speech he gave to the Washington correspondents a couple of days ago - when he probably knew OBL's death was on the horizon. Grab a look on YouTube, he's got a very good delivery for humour.
He also took the mickey out of Fox News who got their own back. Their on-screen headline about OBL called him Obama instead of Osama.
------------------------------------------------------
I was actually in America the day of 9/11. To say it was strange is an understatement. I was staying in a remote hotel in the middle of the Everglades.
As I checked out the receptionist said the oddest thing had happened. A plane of some sort had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. I pictured a kind of two seater plane going off course and hitting the skyscraper.
I got in the car to drive down to the Keys where my brother was getting married the next day. Instead of my usual easy listening music station (which was called something like KRXW-Y Miami) there was news on, talking about a second plane crashing into the Towers.
They stayed with CNN and as I drove I got the whole story. So much so that by the time I pulled into a diner in Key Biscayne, I seemed to know everything while locals coming in to gawp at the TV couldn't get their heads around it.
So I started explaining what was going on. How they were terrorists, how the lead suspect was someone called Bin Laden who had been responsible for other atrocities.
But the Americans couldn't cope with the fact this had happened in their own country, not as a US Embassy abroad or a warship or the kidnap of citizens in a foreign hotspot.
Gradually a crowd gathered round me. Every time someone said 'what's going on?' others would point at me and say 'the British guy, ask him, he'll tell you' and so I became like some sort of sage simply by being able to translate what the experts were saying on the TV behind me. It was a bizarre episode and continued to be for the next few days out there in Florida.
As I went to leave the diner, a little old Jewish couple with a fierce Noo Yoik accent came up. The guy, about 80 and 5 ft nothing with a cigar in his mouth and a trilby, pointed to the screen and said 'you know what dat iz?' He took a puff, looked up and down and said 'terrorism, dat's what it is,' turned round and left with his wife. As I said, everything was a bit bizarre out there in that period immediately afterwards.
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We all hope that if our lives achieve anything, it is to leave this place better than we found it.
I once saved someone's life. No really. Well, possibly. My friend Kim and I were on our way home from a club in town very late one night. This is almost 30 years ago when I used to have late nights. And friends. And went to clubs 'up west'.
Anyway. We were walking down the Embankment, north side, past Westminster Bridge, streets were empty, and we saw a man sitting on the wall overlooking the river, feet dangling over the edge, clearly getting his bottle up to jump in. He kept making to jump but stopping.
We approached him and started chatting. He sat on the wall and chatted though it felt a bit uneasy. Turned out he lived in one of those council blocks you see almost adjoining the river, possibly the most expensive land in Britain for 'social housing' as they call it.
He was a youngish man, not much older than us at the time, in his 20s. He'd lost his job (it was Thatcher's Britain back then don't forget) and his brother had been killed by a motorcyclist. The biker got off and continued to zoom up and down the road where this guy lived. It ate him up so much, his mum was on anti-depressants as I recall, and he'd had enough.
Kim and I kept eyeing each other thinking what the hell would we do if he jumped so we persuaded him to come down and took him to have a cup of tea in an all-night cafe in Westminster and then we walked him home and left.
No idea what happened to him and I must admit that for the next few nights I kept an eye out in the papers for London suicides and saw nothing so I like to think, and hope, that he did okay.
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My wife and daughter went swimming yesterday in a woman's pond. Which, for me, conjures up an image of a lascivious fisherman who looks like Terry-Thomas tweaking his moustache and saying 'I say girls, just take the bait, ding dong' as he waits for a bite.
Actually it's a female-only, outdoor pond in leafy North London, the posh bit where the people are ever so slightly different. The missus and youngest daughter met up with an American friend and her teenage girls while another woman took photos for a book she was doing on 'mothers and daughters' while some more friends turned up on a tandem. And despite my preconceptions, the place is not heaving with lesbians. Which conjures up an entirely different image all together.
On that thought....good night, Solly.
It's not the Sky bit that suggests they have cash - you can't go past a council estate without seeing a zillion satellite dishes - but if you look, the downtrodden nurses have a gleaming new Aga in the kitchen. An Aga? On NHS pay? Blimey.
-------------------------------------------------------
The thing about Osama Bin Laden's death, apart from the fact everyone now seems to refer to him as OBL, is that you can't help wondering how different things would have been been without him.
In particular, what would Blair have been like without OBL? Whether or not you like or loathe him, much of that is probably based on the conflicts in Iraq (mainly) and, to a lesser degree, Afghanistan, the lies over weapons of mass destruction, the part he and Alistair Campbell may or may not have played in the death of Dr David Kelly, the whole 'not in my name' campaign.
I know there's other aspects of his premiership that will help form an opinion but a lot of his natural supporters hate him for the war, for example, and many of his natural opponents may not have turned against him so much if there had never been a 9/11 for him to react to.
All the WMD, BBC and other TLAs (three letter acronyms) may not have happened. We would have had a completely different kind of Prime Minister. Indeed America may have had a completely different president.
And whatever else, this is a good day for Obama. Even if he was lucky, it doesn't matter. It happened on his watch and his ratings will soar. I watched his very funny 'roasting' of Donald Trump in the speech he gave to the Washington correspondents a couple of days ago - when he probably knew OBL's death was on the horizon. Grab a look on YouTube, he's got a very good delivery for humour.
He also took the mickey out of Fox News who got their own back. Their on-screen headline about OBL called him Obama instead of Osama.
------------------------------------------------------
I was actually in America the day of 9/11. To say it was strange is an understatement. I was staying in a remote hotel in the middle of the Everglades.
As I checked out the receptionist said the oddest thing had happened. A plane of some sort had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. I pictured a kind of two seater plane going off course and hitting the skyscraper.
I got in the car to drive down to the Keys where my brother was getting married the next day. Instead of my usual easy listening music station (which was called something like KRXW-Y Miami) there was news on, talking about a second plane crashing into the Towers.
They stayed with CNN and as I drove I got the whole story. So much so that by the time I pulled into a diner in Key Biscayne, I seemed to know everything while locals coming in to gawp at the TV couldn't get their heads around it.
So I started explaining what was going on. How they were terrorists, how the lead suspect was someone called Bin Laden who had been responsible for other atrocities.
But the Americans couldn't cope with the fact this had happened in their own country, not as a US Embassy abroad or a warship or the kidnap of citizens in a foreign hotspot.
Gradually a crowd gathered round me. Every time someone said 'what's going on?' others would point at me and say 'the British guy, ask him, he'll tell you' and so I became like some sort of sage simply by being able to translate what the experts were saying on the TV behind me. It was a bizarre episode and continued to be for the next few days out there in Florida.
As I went to leave the diner, a little old Jewish couple with a fierce Noo Yoik accent came up. The guy, about 80 and 5 ft nothing with a cigar in his mouth and a trilby, pointed to the screen and said 'you know what dat iz?' He took a puff, looked up and down and said 'terrorism, dat's what it is,' turned round and left with his wife. As I said, everything was a bit bizarre out there in that period immediately afterwards.
--------------------------------------------------
We all hope that if our lives achieve anything, it is to leave this place better than we found it.
I once saved someone's life. No really. Well, possibly. My friend Kim and I were on our way home from a club in town very late one night. This is almost 30 years ago when I used to have late nights. And friends. And went to clubs 'up west'.
Anyway. We were walking down the Embankment, north side, past Westminster Bridge, streets were empty, and we saw a man sitting on the wall overlooking the river, feet dangling over the edge, clearly getting his bottle up to jump in. He kept making to jump but stopping.
We approached him and started chatting. He sat on the wall and chatted though it felt a bit uneasy. Turned out he lived in one of those council blocks you see almost adjoining the river, possibly the most expensive land in Britain for 'social housing' as they call it.
He was a youngish man, not much older than us at the time, in his 20s. He'd lost his job (it was Thatcher's Britain back then don't forget) and his brother had been killed by a motorcyclist. The biker got off and continued to zoom up and down the road where this guy lived. It ate him up so much, his mum was on anti-depressants as I recall, and he'd had enough.
Kim and I kept eyeing each other thinking what the hell would we do if he jumped so we persuaded him to come down and took him to have a cup of tea in an all-night cafe in Westminster and then we walked him home and left.
No idea what happened to him and I must admit that for the next few nights I kept an eye out in the papers for London suicides and saw nothing so I like to think, and hope, that he did okay.
------------------------------------------------------------------
My wife and daughter went swimming yesterday in a woman's pond. Which, for me, conjures up an image of a lascivious fisherman who looks like Terry-Thomas tweaking his moustache and saying 'I say girls, just take the bait, ding dong' as he waits for a bite.
Actually it's a female-only, outdoor pond in leafy North London, the posh bit where the people are ever so slightly different. The missus and youngest daughter met up with an American friend and her teenage girls while another woman took photos for a book she was doing on 'mothers and daughters' while some more friends turned up on a tandem. And despite my preconceptions, the place is not heaving with lesbians. Which conjures up an entirely different image all together.
On that thought....good night, Solly.
Sunday 1 May 2011
Franks for the memory
Some folk in these parts are worried about a new reality show called Made in Chelsea because it may distract attention from The Only Way is Essex. Let's hope so. Apparently it portrays a bunch of nice-but-dim Sloanes with lots of money but no taste (I will mention the Royal Wedding later). As opposed to TOWIE which...er....
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Occasionally one is privileged to witness one of those sporting events you hadn't quite prepared yourself for like those who turned up at Old Trafford on the last day of the 1981 test believing it was all over or who went along to the athletics meeting in which Usain Bolt smashed the world 100 metres record or when Tiger Woods won his first major.
Yesterday I watched a kind of Usain Bolt moment and felt honoured to have done so when I went to Newmarket for the 2,000 Guineas and saw a horse called Frankel storm to victory in a way which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Thanks to that coach crash on the M11 and my son's cricket match we only arrived 20 minutes before the big race. But what a race.
As racing fans will know, Frankel was odds on favourite so it was no surprise to see him win but the style in which he did so, streaking into the front at the beginning and just galloping further and further away from his rivals was remarkable.
We were near the finishing line and the crowd cheered and applauded Frankel as if was Rocky beating Apollo Creed at the end of 12 punishing rounds. Of course many had money on him but there was still a kind of appreciation of witnessing a true classic.
Some memorable sporting occasions are the result of an underdog overcoming the odds or a team on the ropes recovering to win. But others are the sheer pleasure in watching someone or something dominate their sport or their event to such as extent you can only stand back and gasp and say 'wow' and that's what Frankel did. These things tend to happen when you are not eaten up by the fervent loyalty of supporting 'your team' so you can truly appreciate a sporting colossus as a neutral.
Like Federer or Woods or the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s, this was a 'wow' moment.
And I had an each way bet on the 33-1 outsider which came second! (Thanks to John Halpin for the tip.)
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I'm not going to say much on the royal wedding which attracted 25 million UK viewers - which means 35 million didn't watch it. And I thought I was the only one.
According to the Radio Four bulletin, 19 million of those viewers saw it on the BBC. You couldn't help but imagine the newsreader was waving two fingers in the air at ITV as she read it.
A couple of observations. Even in tails Elton John looks like my wife's nan. And Beatrice or Eugenie appeared to come as Tim Curry, one of my friends pointed out. Apparently fascinators are the big fashion howler of nos jours, whatever that means.
A lot of people seem to think it was a 'people's wedding', as if it's the sort of wedding any of us will ever have.
Equally a lot of people seem to think this is an excuse to offer the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge advice. Not me. I reckon someone will have had a word in Kate's shell-like to warn her against accepting lifts from someone with a French accent driving a Mercedes. And I'll just point out to Wills that, like many men marrying for the first time, the second one is usually better.
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What the royal wedding did do was introduce me to our next door but one neighbours, Terry and Val, a retired couple who, it turns out, spent most of their married life two streets away from where I grew up in Ilford.
We met at a royal barbie held by our mutual next door neighbour. It is striking that even though we've lived here six years, we do not know many of our closest neighbours. And I bet that happens in a lot of areas, unfortunately.
Terry and Val are lovely and, like a lot of us, have moved further East as they prospered in life.
But increasingly, people tend to keep themselves to themselves these days and it means you don't chat over the garden fence any more.
I've never believed the old days were always the rose tinted utopia where you could leave your door open and everyone knew each other like my parents made out (my dad grew up near Cable Street in the 1930s so not all his neighbours would pop round for a cup of tea and a plate of chopped liver as they passed).
But, as the Ilford-Manor Park pop combo The Small Faces once remarked: "Wouldn't it be nice to get on with your neighbours?"
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Talking of neighbourhoods, as a young man, I used to think Leytonstone High Road was, in many ways, one of the most quirky and original streets in London and loved its diversity. Not just in ethnic terms but in the kind of shops. I reckoned you could buy everything you ever needed in life in this East London road with few, if any, need of major chains.
I'm sure there are other streets in other cities in other parts of Britain the same and I bet they are not any more.
There was a car showroom that specialised in British classic sports car even though it was nestled in one of the drabbest and poorest parts of the capital. There was a shop selling model railway equipment for enthusiasts who came from all over the country, a music store stocking instruments and sheet music and for some bizarre reason, an office for the National Union of Seamen even though, as far as I can fathom (geddit) London E11 is as far from the coast as you can imagine.
Some chains had a branch here, like Woolworths, the Co-op and incongruously, Russell & Bromley.
The road had several pubs of varying degrees of roughness, including The Green Man and Laurel and Hardy, many of which had independent bands on stage and the restaurants included a fantastic Jamaican, a South African, Nepalese and every other nationality under the sun.
And now? Well, driving through today for the first time in a while, The Engine Shed is still there I think (it's not easy to spot unless you know it's there) for the trainspotters, but there's no Hills garage with an E-Type in the window. There's a Tesco at one end which has done for many of the smaller food shops though there is an East European specialist and a couple of Asian minimarkets.
There's some but not many sit-down restaurants which seem to have been replaced by 100 takeaways selling various forms of chicken and, naturally a McDonalds but thankfully no Starbucks, Costa or Nero.
The eel and pie shop is boarded up, I noticed, which is another part of East End life disappearing, and someone tells me that thousands of South Africans now live round here, adding their own colour and spontaneity to the area.
But it's also full of pound shops and those ubiquitous mobile 'fone' outlets that can unlock a locked handset, which is not for people who have bought a stolen mobile, no not at all for that kind of thing.
It's a drab, dreary street and I recall some three or four years ago there was talk about a massive regeneration of the area to coincide with the Olympics down the road.
Apart from installing a confusing one way system and speed bumps every ten years, I can't really see the improvement.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Sun ran a story quoting an 'FA' source confirming that newly promoted QPR will be deducted points for some complicated irregularities over a player's registration. Manager Neil Warnock is on TV quite a lot at the moment describing The Sun's source as being in their own newsroom adding 'my barrister says we won't be deducted points'. Which, let's face it, is what you pay a barrister for. I don't know who's right or wrong. But Neil Warnock is an anagram of Colin Wanker. Thought I'd just mention it.
Have a lovely May Day comrades...Solly
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Occasionally one is privileged to witness one of those sporting events you hadn't quite prepared yourself for like those who turned up at Old Trafford on the last day of the 1981 test believing it was all over or who went along to the athletics meeting in which Usain Bolt smashed the world 100 metres record or when Tiger Woods won his first major.
Yesterday I watched a kind of Usain Bolt moment and felt honoured to have done so when I went to Newmarket for the 2,000 Guineas and saw a horse called Frankel storm to victory in a way which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Thanks to that coach crash on the M11 and my son's cricket match we only arrived 20 minutes before the big race. But what a race.
As racing fans will know, Frankel was odds on favourite so it was no surprise to see him win but the style in which he did so, streaking into the front at the beginning and just galloping further and further away from his rivals was remarkable.
We were near the finishing line and the crowd cheered and applauded Frankel as if was Rocky beating Apollo Creed at the end of 12 punishing rounds. Of course many had money on him but there was still a kind of appreciation of witnessing a true classic.
Some memorable sporting occasions are the result of an underdog overcoming the odds or a team on the ropes recovering to win. But others are the sheer pleasure in watching someone or something dominate their sport or their event to such as extent you can only stand back and gasp and say 'wow' and that's what Frankel did. These things tend to happen when you are not eaten up by the fervent loyalty of supporting 'your team' so you can truly appreciate a sporting colossus as a neutral.
Like Federer or Woods or the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s, this was a 'wow' moment.
And I had an each way bet on the 33-1 outsider which came second! (Thanks to John Halpin for the tip.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not going to say much on the royal wedding which attracted 25 million UK viewers - which means 35 million didn't watch it. And I thought I was the only one.
According to the Radio Four bulletin, 19 million of those viewers saw it on the BBC. You couldn't help but imagine the newsreader was waving two fingers in the air at ITV as she read it.
A couple of observations. Even in tails Elton John looks like my wife's nan. And Beatrice or Eugenie appeared to come as Tim Curry, one of my friends pointed out. Apparently fascinators are the big fashion howler of nos jours, whatever that means.
A lot of people seem to think it was a 'people's wedding', as if it's the sort of wedding any of us will ever have.
Equally a lot of people seem to think this is an excuse to offer the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge advice. Not me. I reckon someone will have had a word in Kate's shell-like to warn her against accepting lifts from someone with a French accent driving a Mercedes. And I'll just point out to Wills that, like many men marrying for the first time, the second one is usually better.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What the royal wedding did do was introduce me to our next door but one neighbours, Terry and Val, a retired couple who, it turns out, spent most of their married life two streets away from where I grew up in Ilford.
We met at a royal barbie held by our mutual next door neighbour. It is striking that even though we've lived here six years, we do not know many of our closest neighbours. And I bet that happens in a lot of areas, unfortunately.
Terry and Val are lovely and, like a lot of us, have moved further East as they prospered in life.
But increasingly, people tend to keep themselves to themselves these days and it means you don't chat over the garden fence any more.
I've never believed the old days were always the rose tinted utopia where you could leave your door open and everyone knew each other like my parents made out (my dad grew up near Cable Street in the 1930s so not all his neighbours would pop round for a cup of tea and a plate of chopped liver as they passed).
But, as the Ilford-Manor Park pop combo The Small Faces once remarked: "Wouldn't it be nice to get on with your neighbours?"
-----------------------------------------------------
Talking of neighbourhoods, as a young man, I used to think Leytonstone High Road was, in many ways, one of the most quirky and original streets in London and loved its diversity. Not just in ethnic terms but in the kind of shops. I reckoned you could buy everything you ever needed in life in this East London road with few, if any, need of major chains.
I'm sure there are other streets in other cities in other parts of Britain the same and I bet they are not any more.
There was a car showroom that specialised in British classic sports car even though it was nestled in one of the drabbest and poorest parts of the capital. There was a shop selling model railway equipment for enthusiasts who came from all over the country, a music store stocking instruments and sheet music and for some bizarre reason, an office for the National Union of Seamen even though, as far as I can fathom (geddit) London E11 is as far from the coast as you can imagine.
Some chains had a branch here, like Woolworths, the Co-op and incongruously, Russell & Bromley.
The road had several pubs of varying degrees of roughness, including The Green Man and Laurel and Hardy, many of which had independent bands on stage and the restaurants included a fantastic Jamaican, a South African, Nepalese and every other nationality under the sun.
And now? Well, driving through today for the first time in a while, The Engine Shed is still there I think (it's not easy to spot unless you know it's there) for the trainspotters, but there's no Hills garage with an E-Type in the window. There's a Tesco at one end which has done for many of the smaller food shops though there is an East European specialist and a couple of Asian minimarkets.
There's some but not many sit-down restaurants which seem to have been replaced by 100 takeaways selling various forms of chicken and, naturally a McDonalds but thankfully no Starbucks, Costa or Nero.
The eel and pie shop is boarded up, I noticed, which is another part of East End life disappearing, and someone tells me that thousands of South Africans now live round here, adding their own colour and spontaneity to the area.
But it's also full of pound shops and those ubiquitous mobile 'fone' outlets that can unlock a locked handset, which is not for people who have bought a stolen mobile, no not at all for that kind of thing.
It's a drab, dreary street and I recall some three or four years ago there was talk about a massive regeneration of the area to coincide with the Olympics down the road.
Apart from installing a confusing one way system and speed bumps every ten years, I can't really see the improvement.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The Sun ran a story quoting an 'FA' source confirming that newly promoted QPR will be deducted points for some complicated irregularities over a player's registration. Manager Neil Warnock is on TV quite a lot at the moment describing The Sun's source as being in their own newsroom adding 'my barrister says we won't be deducted points'. Which, let's face it, is what you pay a barrister for. I don't know who's right or wrong. But Neil Warnock is an anagram of Colin Wanker. Thought I'd just mention it.
Have a lovely May Day comrades...Solly
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