I gave away my tickets to see Rod Stewart on Sunday. The thought of him still singing about being seduced by an older woman conjures up quite a horrible vision.
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My business partner did a careers advice talk on journalism at his kids' school this week. Times change. It's hard to know what to tell a teenager whose journalistic ambition is to work for Popbitch or The Daily Mash.
Once it was easy enough to tell them to be good at English then do an apprenticeship with a press agency or local paper where they would have to cover church fetes and council meetings for crap wages. Then, if they were lucky, they could do shifts at unsociable hours on a national paper or magazine and hope that one day they'd get a full time job.
Skills they need would include shorthand and typing and a basic knowledge of the law and politics and an interest in what goes on in the world.
Not so much now. They can already type and text, which is where they get their spelling from. They take photos on an iPhone and think they're the new Monte Fresco. And they have a basic knowledge of what goes on in Easties and the names of various people who have won Big Brother.
Mind you, it could have been worse. Simon, my business partner, got around 20 kids asking about journalism, which is pretty respectable. I believe only the 'how to get on X Factor' table did better.
In contrast, my mate Nigel who writes the Ear I Am blog referenced to the right hand side of this one, sat at a table all night at his daughter's school once and no one came up apart from one to ask him what 'PR' meant.
And even that is better than my old school. We had a Mr Campbell, I believe, in a brown suit who gave every boy careers advice. Basically he gave them a leaflet on banking and recommended they got a summer job working for Barclays.
I told him I wanted to be a journalist and he snorted and gave me a leaflet on banking. When Derek Cunningham told him he wanted to be a pilot Mr Campbell said 'don't be ridiculous' and gave him the same leaflet. Even the boy who said he wanted to be a careers advisor was given the same advice.
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There's an ad with Paul Whitehouse for Aviva where he looks round foreign properties thanks to the fantastic pension he got from the company which spent millions to drop the name Norwich Union. But doesn't he look like Gordon Banks in it?
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A lot of papers have made a lot out the fact that George Clooney is single again and how every woman in the world now stood a chance. Just like they would if Simon Cowell wasn't 'engaged' I guess.
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Pretty much everyone alive knows that Planet of the Apes is a film set in the future when monkeys have taken over the earth and now dominate humans (or, alternatively, that it's an allegory of racist America in the 1960s if you want to be all highbrow about it.)
So when describing the soon-to-be-released prequel, why does the Daily Mail, describing the plot, add 'Can Rodman (the scientist) stop them before the apes win and become the dominant species?'
Well, what do you think?
You maniacs. Damn you, damn you all to hell....Solly
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