Footballer Titus Bramble is to face charges of sexual assault and possession of drugs. I don't want to prejudice the case but let's just hope he doesn't defend himself. Have you ever seen him defend?
---------------------------------------------------------
Yet another advert using a classic song to get its dubious message across. Last week it was the Halifax - this time, British Gas backed by Rescue Me by Fontella Bass.
They want to let you know that if your boiler breaks down or the pipes burst or some other domestic tragedy affects you, their nice men (and in real life they are always men) will come round and, yes that's right, 'rescue' you.
It's wonderful. It's like they're the fourth emergency service, coming round to help us poor householders out of the goodness of their hearts.
Perhaps they should dress them up like Virgil and Scott from Thunderbirds just to drive home the message that these are heroes, just in case anyone mistakenly thought they were just blokes doing the job they are paid to do.
And how do you get them to help? Do you beam a British Gas logo from a floodlight into the night sky? Do you leave a message in a personal newspaper ad in the hope that they come round in a black van led by a bloke who was once in Breakfast at Tiffany's? Or do women have to stand in the street waving a handkerchief and wailing loudly until they spot you?
Or do you sign up to an expensive service contract that means you end up paying through the nose whether or not you actually ever require any help and then find there's quite a lot of small print which means that they may not be quite the 24 hour emergency service you thought you signed up for?
By the way it's around £327 a year for the full service and it doesn't include appliances and if you've added an extra radiator yourself, then be careful.
Oh and they eat all your bloody biscuits and will probably have a pony in your downstairs loo.
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There are two kinds of idiot, those who don't take action because they have received a threat and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat - Paulo Coelho.
No there are not, you Brazilian tosser - Solly.
Actually there are several other kinds of idiot. There's the kind who thinks he is clever because he writes cod philosphy that wouldn't look out of place in Clintons Cards.
There's the kind who women - possibly hormonal and sometimes lonely but not always! - think of as a kind of mystic guru because he can blind them with crap dressed as pearls of wisdom.
Then there's the kind who has his silver hair in a pony tail and writes the most vainglorious piece of puffery disguised as a novel for middle aged, lonely people to adopt as a kind of bible when it's really just an old man trying to prove he can still shag like he used to.
I'm indebted to my old mentor Allan Hall for reminding me that Suzanne Klatten, the lonely BMW heiress who was conned out of her millions by the Swiss conman Helg Sgarbi, was reading some shite by Coelho when he targeted her. Well, seeing what she was reading made her an obvious target for someone preying on the vulnerable I guess.
If you want to read philosphy then read someone intelligent with something interesting and insightful to say about the world around us, someone who can challenge conventional thought and someone you may enjoy even if you don't agree with them.
Anyone can write the kind of bogus pisspoor pretend polemic of Paulo. Don't be fooled. There are genuinely intelligent people out there who are worth reading. He's not one of them. I tried once. I read The Alchemist. It was rubbish but a lot of people fall for it.
Life is like a jellyfish, it has hundreds of strands going in different directions but eventually they all come back to the heart and soul from where they started.
You see how easy it is?
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Shana Tova by the way - that's happy new year to all my Jewish friends. Although I no longer do the religious bit (Fast? For a whole day? You've got to be joking) I do have fond memories of the high holy days back in the 70s and 80s in Gants Hill at a time when it was estimated that the area had the biggest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel and New York.
The day was pretty fixed for us teenagers. We'd take the day off school, lie in then put on our best clothes (suits and ties no less). We'd meet up late morning outside the Odeon cinema which had been converted into a synagogue because none of the local ones was big enough to handle the crowds.
We'd say hi to parents of friends, go in for a quick prayer then come out again and go round the corner for a cigarette where our folks couldn't see us.
Then there were options. We'd go back to someone's house, or maybe to the snooker hall for a couple of hours until eventually we'd all gather outside the cafeteria in Valentines Park.
There would be, literally, hundreds of us between the ages of 14 and 18 mainly. Standing round, chatting (and chatting up quite often), before going back for evening prayers or getting changed and going down one of the local pubs.
I may be anti-religion as a philosphy but it doesn't mean I don't miss some of the more pleasant by-products of those times.
The Odeon's gone now - it's a block of flats that looks like a dodgy cut-price version of the Flat Iron building in New York. The park's still there but most of the local Jewish population have long gone.
Ilford's synagogues are still there but all the occupants of the houses around them are Muslim.
Still, there is a one place where thousands of those original Jews will congregate this weekend - Spurs are playing Arsenal at the Lane on Sunday.
Then we'll see if there's a God or not.
Shana nana - hey hey - goodbye....Solly
Wednesday 28 September 2011
Friday 23 September 2011
X marks the tosspot
What do you think when you hear Halifax? A small town in Yorkshire, a former and quite friendly building society, or a bank responsible for some of the worst adverts in TV history?
Or perhaps you were a customer who felt they handle complaints so badly that you complained to the authorities who then fined Halifax £3.5 million as a result.
Or perhaps you're a taxpayer whose money is helping to prop up the Halifax after they were a part of the banking industry responsible for sending the world into an economic crisis.
Or perhaps you've tried to get a first mortgage with them to find that they no longer lend enough money to put young, working couples on the housing ladder.
But what you don't see, I'll wager, is an organisation full of nice people who are there purely to help you out.
And to prove this, a few of the social misfits, fat counter staff, spotty undermanagers and occasional ethnic (to keep the mix right) will get together and sing 'I'll Be There' while you watch film clips of a woman giving a sneezing commuter a tissue or a man helping a mum with a pushchair up some steps.
There's even one of a girl giving a young boy the flake out of her 99. Though if you try that you may get reported and go on some kind of register.
These are those little deeds one does for no personal reward. That's just how a bank works, isn't it?
The point of these actors pretending to be nice people helping others is to remind you, the public, that the Halifax is really just full of nice people wanting to help you. They are not just a cog in a giant banking group that includes Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB (the bank that used to like to say yes but now likes to say 'we've got your money, we'll pay our bonuses, now fuck off.')
No, not at all. This is the bank that brought you Howard, the singing nerd and some fat bird at a train station before excrutiating adverts featuring an imaginary radio station.
Now they've done it again. Trying to prove that, like the great song they're murdering, they'll 'be there' for you. Unless you want a mortgage, or go a couple of quid overdrawn and query why this warrants a letter that then costs you another £20 of course.
Of course we're not fooled, are we. But why are they doing it then?
First of all, remember who they are aiming at. Like cigarette ads are meant to appeal to smokers, bank ads are meant to appeal to those who already have bank accounts.
Apple may try and sell iPods to those who don't have anything similar but banks are not trying to grab a market of people who don't have bank accounts.
These are probably poor people who could use the most help but are no good for banks because they go into debt too easily.
While this can mean lots of lovely interest charges, they are so poor they can't pay these and so they either do a runner or the bank writes it off. How do you think the sub-prime crisis started?
Banks don't want poor people. They want middle class people who spend more money than they should because the debts are highly profitable but won't do a runner.
Halifax ads are meant to appeal to people who have a bank account with someone else who may want to transfer. Just like cigarette ads try and get you to switch brands.
So, would you move from one bunch of greedy bastards responsible for bringing down the economy to another set of greedy bastards who did the same? Well, there is a fiver on offer. And there's enough greedy bastards out there who may just move for that.
Though chances are the Halifax will get that fiver back off you pretty quickly. Let's call it their little bit extra shall we.
And when you're in debt and want the bank to help, pop in to a branch and see if they'll be there to comfort you, if they'll be your strength, if they'll keep holding on.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Quick postscript: I can't stand the new Facebook layout. And I've yet to find anyone who likes it. I still think that in ten years time we'll all look back on the whole Facebook phenomenon and think 'did we really do that?'
--------------------------------------------------------------
Scientists have conceded that there might be something faster than the speed of light. Which may well mean that Einstein was wrong and Freddie Mercury was right.
But then the point of science has always been to find ways of disproving what was previously believed with new evidence. Which is the complete opposite of religion if you think about it.
God bless all...Solly
Or perhaps you were a customer who felt they handle complaints so badly that you complained to the authorities who then fined Halifax £3.5 million as a result.
Or perhaps you're a taxpayer whose money is helping to prop up the Halifax after they were a part of the banking industry responsible for sending the world into an economic crisis.
Or perhaps you've tried to get a first mortgage with them to find that they no longer lend enough money to put young, working couples on the housing ladder.
But what you don't see, I'll wager, is an organisation full of nice people who are there purely to help you out.
And to prove this, a few of the social misfits, fat counter staff, spotty undermanagers and occasional ethnic (to keep the mix right) will get together and sing 'I'll Be There' while you watch film clips of a woman giving a sneezing commuter a tissue or a man helping a mum with a pushchair up some steps.
There's even one of a girl giving a young boy the flake out of her 99. Though if you try that you may get reported and go on some kind of register.
These are those little deeds one does for no personal reward. That's just how a bank works, isn't it?
The point of these actors pretending to be nice people helping others is to remind you, the public, that the Halifax is really just full of nice people wanting to help you. They are not just a cog in a giant banking group that includes Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB (the bank that used to like to say yes but now likes to say 'we've got your money, we'll pay our bonuses, now fuck off.')
No, not at all. This is the bank that brought you Howard, the singing nerd and some fat bird at a train station before excrutiating adverts featuring an imaginary radio station.
Now they've done it again. Trying to prove that, like the great song they're murdering, they'll 'be there' for you. Unless you want a mortgage, or go a couple of quid overdrawn and query why this warrants a letter that then costs you another £20 of course.
Of course we're not fooled, are we. But why are they doing it then?
First of all, remember who they are aiming at. Like cigarette ads are meant to appeal to smokers, bank ads are meant to appeal to those who already have bank accounts.
Apple may try and sell iPods to those who don't have anything similar but banks are not trying to grab a market of people who don't have bank accounts.
These are probably poor people who could use the most help but are no good for banks because they go into debt too easily.
While this can mean lots of lovely interest charges, they are so poor they can't pay these and so they either do a runner or the bank writes it off. How do you think the sub-prime crisis started?
Banks don't want poor people. They want middle class people who spend more money than they should because the debts are highly profitable but won't do a runner.
Halifax ads are meant to appeal to people who have a bank account with someone else who may want to transfer. Just like cigarette ads try and get you to switch brands.
So, would you move from one bunch of greedy bastards responsible for bringing down the economy to another set of greedy bastards who did the same? Well, there is a fiver on offer. And there's enough greedy bastards out there who may just move for that.
Though chances are the Halifax will get that fiver back off you pretty quickly. Let's call it their little bit extra shall we.
And when you're in debt and want the bank to help, pop in to a branch and see if they'll be there to comfort you, if they'll be your strength, if they'll keep holding on.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Quick postscript: I can't stand the new Facebook layout. And I've yet to find anyone who likes it. I still think that in ten years time we'll all look back on the whole Facebook phenomenon and think 'did we really do that?'
--------------------------------------------------------------
Scientists have conceded that there might be something faster than the speed of light. Which may well mean that Einstein was wrong and Freddie Mercury was right.
But then the point of science has always been to find ways of disproving what was previously believed with new evidence. Which is the complete opposite of religion if you think about it.
God bless all...Solly
Monday 19 September 2011
Having a Mare
Prompted by The Guardian's 'Reading the Riots' analysis of the civil unrest, The Times belatedly sent two of its staff out to Hackney to do 'After the Riots' research.
The youngsters came back full of beans, excitedly babbling about their experience with East London's social underclass whose base is the seedy but thriving area around Marray Street.
They recounted their digging into the drug infested epicentre of some of the worst of the rioting as the art desk searched Google Maps for Marray Street so they could do a graphic.
But they couldn't locate it so they called out to the reporters for the spelling. M-A-R-E they replied.
And some people think the broadsheets are full of posh people?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another anecdote which I'm inclined to believe but, for legal reasons, will not name the footballer involved or his club.
A Premiership player was out on the town and got drunk. No surprise there. He got a minicab home. The driver, recognising the £50,000 a week or so player in the back, decided to sneakily add a tenner to the fare.
The player spotted this and punched the driver in the face, breaking his nose. The club got a call about it and sent out a 'fixer' to sort it out.
The fixer happened to hate this particular player because he was always having to be bailed out. He went to the minicab office and said: 'How long is your driver going to be off work?'
'About two weeks' said his boss. 'Two months? Blimey. Let's call it ten weeks then to round it up,' said the fixer. 'Er, okay' said the minicab boss. 'And how much does the driver earn a week?' asked the fixer. 'About two...' The fixer cut him short: 'Two grand a week? Fair enough. That's £20,000. If I get the player to write a cheque for that, can I be sure nothing else will happen?'
'Okay' said the minicab boss, confused. The fixer went back to the club and the player. 'Write a cheque for £40,000 and the whole thing will be forgotten.' The player paid up.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm told that Coca-Cola chiefs in America are apparently very unhappy with the British habit of calling the regular version of the fizzy drink 'Fat Coke' instead of just Coke or Regular Coke. Now you know, I dare say you'll all stop doing it immediately.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I couldn't help but notice, at White Hart Lane on Sunday, that Liverpool fielded a side completely made up of white men. It's unusual in this day and age. We were racking out brains for the last time this might have happened and reckoned it was probably the Blackburn Rovers side of the mid-1990s that went on to win the league. Or have I got that wrong?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's nothing like a nice little gypsy eviction to bring out the hidden Nazi in many. I know that it's an illegal campsite, I know how awful it is if you live nearby, and I realise that they should have been moved out long ago. But the number of comments on various newspaper comment sections about bringing them out in body bags and bombing the site is nothing short of disgusting. The Nazis looked at gypsies like they looked at Jews and homosexuals. Just swap the word pikey for Yid or poof and see if it's still as funny.
Don't have night marrays....Solly
The youngsters came back full of beans, excitedly babbling about their experience with East London's social underclass whose base is the seedy but thriving area around Marray Street.
They recounted their digging into the drug infested epicentre of some of the worst of the rioting as the art desk searched Google Maps for Marray Street so they could do a graphic.
But they couldn't locate it so they called out to the reporters for the spelling. M-A-R-E they replied.
And some people think the broadsheets are full of posh people?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another anecdote which I'm inclined to believe but, for legal reasons, will not name the footballer involved or his club.
A Premiership player was out on the town and got drunk. No surprise there. He got a minicab home. The driver, recognising the £50,000 a week or so player in the back, decided to sneakily add a tenner to the fare.
The player spotted this and punched the driver in the face, breaking his nose. The club got a call about it and sent out a 'fixer' to sort it out.
The fixer happened to hate this particular player because he was always having to be bailed out. He went to the minicab office and said: 'How long is your driver going to be off work?'
'About two weeks' said his boss. 'Two months? Blimey. Let's call it ten weeks then to round it up,' said the fixer. 'Er, okay' said the minicab boss. 'And how much does the driver earn a week?' asked the fixer. 'About two...' The fixer cut him short: 'Two grand a week? Fair enough. That's £20,000. If I get the player to write a cheque for that, can I be sure nothing else will happen?'
'Okay' said the minicab boss, confused. The fixer went back to the club and the player. 'Write a cheque for £40,000 and the whole thing will be forgotten.' The player paid up.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm told that Coca-Cola chiefs in America are apparently very unhappy with the British habit of calling the regular version of the fizzy drink 'Fat Coke' instead of just Coke or Regular Coke. Now you know, I dare say you'll all stop doing it immediately.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I couldn't help but notice, at White Hart Lane on Sunday, that Liverpool fielded a side completely made up of white men. It's unusual in this day and age. We were racking out brains for the last time this might have happened and reckoned it was probably the Blackburn Rovers side of the mid-1990s that went on to win the league. Or have I got that wrong?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's nothing like a nice little gypsy eviction to bring out the hidden Nazi in many. I know that it's an illegal campsite, I know how awful it is if you live nearby, and I realise that they should have been moved out long ago. But the number of comments on various newspaper comment sections about bringing them out in body bags and bombing the site is nothing short of disgusting. The Nazis looked at gypsies like they looked at Jews and homosexuals. Just swap the word pikey for Yid or poof and see if it's still as funny.
Don't have night marrays....Solly
Saturday 17 September 2011
We Know Shit
At three o'clock this morning I was standing on the balcony of a club in London while Miss Great Britain tried to scrounge a cigarette off me, chatting to a guy who writes the diary for The Guardian, another who runs the press office for a county police force, a corporate PR troubleshooter for some of the biggest firms in the world and a freelance sub at a number of national broadsheet newspapers.
We laughed about the day we first met 30 years ago as we embarked on a career in journalism (not Miss Great Britain - she'd just come to scrounge a cigarette) and about how little we knew but how much we thought we knew and how we once ordered a fleet of mini cabs to call at 15 minute intervals through the night at the home of a lecturer who go on our nerves.
We talked about years of death knocks and council meetings, editorial bollockings and mistakes made in order to get to where we were...wherever that may be.
We worked out that what three decades had taught us was that we still make as much effort now in our work as we ever did but the difference experience teaches you is that you know where and when to make the effort and when not to because you know it won't pay.
And we decided that if our generation needed a motto is would be this: We Know Shit.
Put the emphasis on the word 'know' and you'll see what we mean. We're not the young generation but we've still got something to say.
People pay us for what we know. For what we've learnt by making mistakes and then getting it right so you reach a point where you get it right pretty much most of the time.
But not all the time. We know that. We know that the more you know the more you realise you don't know. But then we can decide how much of that we're going to learn and decide that we're only going to learn the bits that are any use to us and save all that wasted effort learning the rest.
You know why people pay us - and that means you as well? Because we know shit. We know what works. We know what doesn't. And that applies to our generation across the board, not just journalists.
We can relate to it in journalism because that's what we do. But I've met analysts and computer technicians, car mechanics and plumbers who have the same expertise. They know shit. They know how to fix an engine by getting straight to the bit that doesn't work rather than take the whole thing apart to find out what's wrong which they may have done when they started out in that business.
Our generation knows shit. We can yearn to be young again when the fun was in discovering what that shit was. Or we can be pleased that we know stuff others are going to find out but it's going to take them a while. And we know that back then we didn't know half as much as we thought we did and that even now we don't know everything.
People who know shit about what they've been doing for 30 years know why the tap leaks, where all that lost data has gone on the computer, why it's best to avoid the A406 on a Saturday afternoon, why you shouldn't shop in a supermarket the moment the doors open but wait half an hour, the best place to get a drink after closing, why you shouldn't trust a man who starts a conversation with 'I'm really whacky I am', how to write the intro that turns an ordinary story into a page lead, the way to get on to the Central Line at Tottenham Court Road without following the signs that take you the long way and so on.
It's a small point to remember when you are trying to win business or get promotion or convince someone you're right for a job they want to offer to a 22-year-old. We know shit.
And it's great.
Cheers...Solly
We laughed about the day we first met 30 years ago as we embarked on a career in journalism (not Miss Great Britain - she'd just come to scrounge a cigarette) and about how little we knew but how much we thought we knew and how we once ordered a fleet of mini cabs to call at 15 minute intervals through the night at the home of a lecturer who go on our nerves.
We talked about years of death knocks and council meetings, editorial bollockings and mistakes made in order to get to where we were...wherever that may be.
We worked out that what three decades had taught us was that we still make as much effort now in our work as we ever did but the difference experience teaches you is that you know where and when to make the effort and when not to because you know it won't pay.
And we decided that if our generation needed a motto is would be this: We Know Shit.
Put the emphasis on the word 'know' and you'll see what we mean. We're not the young generation but we've still got something to say.
People pay us for what we know. For what we've learnt by making mistakes and then getting it right so you reach a point where you get it right pretty much most of the time.
But not all the time. We know that. We know that the more you know the more you realise you don't know. But then we can decide how much of that we're going to learn and decide that we're only going to learn the bits that are any use to us and save all that wasted effort learning the rest.
You know why people pay us - and that means you as well? Because we know shit. We know what works. We know what doesn't. And that applies to our generation across the board, not just journalists.
We can relate to it in journalism because that's what we do. But I've met analysts and computer technicians, car mechanics and plumbers who have the same expertise. They know shit. They know how to fix an engine by getting straight to the bit that doesn't work rather than take the whole thing apart to find out what's wrong which they may have done when they started out in that business.
Our generation knows shit. We can yearn to be young again when the fun was in discovering what that shit was. Or we can be pleased that we know stuff others are going to find out but it's going to take them a while. And we know that back then we didn't know half as much as we thought we did and that even now we don't know everything.
People who know shit about what they've been doing for 30 years know why the tap leaks, where all that lost data has gone on the computer, why it's best to avoid the A406 on a Saturday afternoon, why you shouldn't shop in a supermarket the moment the doors open but wait half an hour, the best place to get a drink after closing, why you shouldn't trust a man who starts a conversation with 'I'm really whacky I am', how to write the intro that turns an ordinary story into a page lead, the way to get on to the Central Line at Tottenham Court Road without following the signs that take you the long way and so on.
It's a small point to remember when you are trying to win business or get promotion or convince someone you're right for a job they want to offer to a 22-year-old. We know shit.
And it's great.
Cheers...Solly
Thursday 15 September 2011
Say Harlow Wave Goodbye
Thirty years ago this week I embarked, properly, on what was to be my life's career when I began a journalism course at Harlow Technical College.
I mention this for two reasons. One, a few of us from that fateful nine month course in the hellhole of Essex are meeting up tomorrow night and what an odd bunch the creme de la creme of the 1981 intake promises to be.
The second is the strange case of Johann Hari, a 'journalist' with the Independent who went straight into national journalism from university and then proceeded to besmirch an already well besmirched profession even further.
You may not have heard of him. He writes for a small circulation paper that few people read but he's made a name for himself as a left wing writer of some repute, garnering awards and enemies along the way.
Anyway, in short, he's been caught out. In interviews where he failed to get enough decent material he simply lifted quotes the subject had given before and then pretended it had been said to him. He also went under a pseudonym onto Wikipedia and inserted false and malicious 'facts' into the entries of people he didn't like, including accusing one person of being a drunk and another of being an anti-semite.
Considering some of the stuff he's written about Palestine then he's treading a fine line with the last of those.
If he had been a redtop hack then you probably would have heard about this. Parliament would have been recalled, two chief constables would have resigned, the Home Secretary would have beheaded herself in an act of contrition at the Tower of London and The Guardian, led by pious 'Professor' Roy Greenslade, would have been calling it the worst constitutional crisis since Suez.
But it's the Independent and they haven't even fired him. They've sent him away, he's returned his Orwell prize for journalism (but hasn't said if he's returned the money that he got as part of that) and Johann is going to 'retrain' as a journalist. Not that he trained in the first place.
Rumour has it he's going to retrain in the States. I doubt if he'll learn shorthand at 100 wpm, typing, law, local government and 'how to keep a contacts book' as we were laughingly taught 30 years ago.
But he should be sent to Harlow for nine months at the very least. Now that would be a suitable punishment.
------------------------------------------------------------------
So 1981, Harlow. Human League are top of the charts, Spurs were between successive FA Cup Final victories, everyone had mullets or asymmetrical haircuts and I looked like Marc Almond.
Tomorrow will be interesting. A certain Daily Mail columnist has cancelled to see a child prodigy pianist from Belgrade (why she couldn't say she had a migraine I don't know) but The Guardian columnist, two freelances, a couple of public sector communication bosses and a high flying corporate PR 'reputation' manager will be there at least.
We're not meeting in Harlow. A couple of those coming have never set foot there since leaving 29 years and three months ago and have no intention of going back.
Personally, I've been back a few times, not least for the births of my three children.
But we're meeting in central London. Which poses a new problem. What to wear. Do I try and look like I'm really rich and successful with these people that I haven't seen in 30 years? Do I tone down and look less successful but happy? Or should I just dress as I normally do and find the last clean shirt I've got?
We'll see.
------------------------------------------------------------------
This is eye opening. It's from the Telegraph and it's a series of photos of what looks at first like those chocolate Matchmakers you used to give your girlfriend's mum when they invited you round to dinner.
But it turns out it's the fashion editors of some of the world's most prestigious glossy magazines.
If you've ever wondered why the industry continues to promote poster girls for anorexia despite the obvious criticism then this may explain why. They make Princess Lollipop, the Duchess of Cambridge, look like Vaness Feltz.
http://tinyurl.com/63pxerg
Harlow? Goodbye...Solly
I mention this for two reasons. One, a few of us from that fateful nine month course in the hellhole of Essex are meeting up tomorrow night and what an odd bunch the creme de la creme of the 1981 intake promises to be.
The second is the strange case of Johann Hari, a 'journalist' with the Independent who went straight into national journalism from university and then proceeded to besmirch an already well besmirched profession even further.
You may not have heard of him. He writes for a small circulation paper that few people read but he's made a name for himself as a left wing writer of some repute, garnering awards and enemies along the way.
Anyway, in short, he's been caught out. In interviews where he failed to get enough decent material he simply lifted quotes the subject had given before and then pretended it had been said to him. He also went under a pseudonym onto Wikipedia and inserted false and malicious 'facts' into the entries of people he didn't like, including accusing one person of being a drunk and another of being an anti-semite.
Considering some of the stuff he's written about Palestine then he's treading a fine line with the last of those.
If he had been a redtop hack then you probably would have heard about this. Parliament would have been recalled, two chief constables would have resigned, the Home Secretary would have beheaded herself in an act of contrition at the Tower of London and The Guardian, led by pious 'Professor' Roy Greenslade, would have been calling it the worst constitutional crisis since Suez.
But it's the Independent and they haven't even fired him. They've sent him away, he's returned his Orwell prize for journalism (but hasn't said if he's returned the money that he got as part of that) and Johann is going to 'retrain' as a journalist. Not that he trained in the first place.
Rumour has it he's going to retrain in the States. I doubt if he'll learn shorthand at 100 wpm, typing, law, local government and 'how to keep a contacts book' as we were laughingly taught 30 years ago.
But he should be sent to Harlow for nine months at the very least. Now that would be a suitable punishment.
------------------------------------------------------------------
So 1981, Harlow. Human League are top of the charts, Spurs were between successive FA Cup Final victories, everyone had mullets or asymmetrical haircuts and I looked like Marc Almond.
Tomorrow will be interesting. A certain Daily Mail columnist has cancelled to see a child prodigy pianist from Belgrade (why she couldn't say she had a migraine I don't know) but The Guardian columnist, two freelances, a couple of public sector communication bosses and a high flying corporate PR 'reputation' manager will be there at least.
We're not meeting in Harlow. A couple of those coming have never set foot there since leaving 29 years and three months ago and have no intention of going back.
Personally, I've been back a few times, not least for the births of my three children.
But we're meeting in central London. Which poses a new problem. What to wear. Do I try and look like I'm really rich and successful with these people that I haven't seen in 30 years? Do I tone down and look less successful but happy? Or should I just dress as I normally do and find the last clean shirt I've got?
We'll see.
------------------------------------------------------------------
This is eye opening. It's from the Telegraph and it's a series of photos of what looks at first like those chocolate Matchmakers you used to give your girlfriend's mum when they invited you round to dinner.
But it turns out it's the fashion editors of some of the world's most prestigious glossy magazines.
If you've ever wondered why the industry continues to promote poster girls for anorexia despite the obvious criticism then this may explain why. They make Princess Lollipop, the Duchess of Cambridge, look like Vaness Feltz.
http://tinyurl.com/63pxerg
Harlow? Goodbye...Solly
Sunday 11 September 2011
Penthouses and pavements
Why did the chicken cross the Mobius Strip? To get to the same side.
I had to ask my kids what that meant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where were you when you were first asked where were you when the Twin Towers fell?
Ten years ago today...well you know what happened. And we were not even there. I was in the middle of the Everglades looking for alligators and was on the way to attend my brother's wedding in Key West a couple of days later. Seeing American grief and shock at close hand was moving and emotional but not as much as being on my own, so far away from home, and missing my wife and three very young children as they were then.
But others will not forget for other reasons. A young Malaysian girl who had never been away from home, let alone abroad, turned up in New York that morning ready to start work. She had two addresses on a piece of paper, one was for a hotel where she left her bags, the other was for Seven World Trade Centre where she was due to begin her first day for the British based bank Standard Chartered.
She got off the subway at the appointed stop and walked towards the Twin Towers when first one then the other exploded in front of her and thousands of people ran towards her.
She ran too until she reached a side street, not knowing where she was, not knowing anyone, with no police or anyone else to ask as everyone was rushing round in a panic.
Mobile phone networks had been turned off. The subway was closed and there were no taxis.
Meanwhile back in London my wife's job for the bank was ringing round every worker they employed in NY simply to check they were alive. One by one they got hold of them all. They had been evacuated, shortly before the building collapsed in approximately 6.5 seconds.
All that is, apart from the young Malaysian girl due to start work that day. No one could verify whether she had been in the building or not, it was all a bit, well, chaotic.
Her mum was ringing the bank in London to see if they had heard, because no one had rung her.
This went on all night.
But the next day the mother rang. She had heard from her daughter eventually.
What had happened was this. The young girl, bewildered and away from home for the first time ever, had stood crying in a side road without the faintest idea of what to do and where to go.
And then, like something out of It's A Wonderful Life, an American family saw her and took her back to their apartment. They then gave her food and shelter and rang her mum in Malaysia from a landline and looked after her until everything had settled down.
One small act of kindness probably changed that young woman's life forever. That's what it's all about.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incidentally, more than 2,000 Iraqis and 200 British and American troops have died in suicide bombs since 2003 in Iraq. Around a third of all civilian casualties are children. So perhaps it's all about that too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not afraid to admit I don't understand rugby to any great degree but I'll watch the occasional big match. Though league seems to be a lot more exciting than union. However, the union code has the big international tournament at the moment so can anyone explain to me why England are wearing an All Black kit and why Nike can't design a rugby shirt without the numbers peeling off half way through the game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I'm not going to be the person I'm expected to be any more'. A great quote from a great statesman? No, some bollocks from a pouty knob in an advert for Bleu de Chanel after shave. Still makes more sense than Paolo Coelho though.
Adieu, Solly
I had to ask my kids what that meant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Where were you when you were first asked where were you when the Twin Towers fell?
Ten years ago today...well you know what happened. And we were not even there. I was in the middle of the Everglades looking for alligators and was on the way to attend my brother's wedding in Key West a couple of days later. Seeing American grief and shock at close hand was moving and emotional but not as much as being on my own, so far away from home, and missing my wife and three very young children as they were then.
But others will not forget for other reasons. A young Malaysian girl who had never been away from home, let alone abroad, turned up in New York that morning ready to start work. She had two addresses on a piece of paper, one was for a hotel where she left her bags, the other was for Seven World Trade Centre where she was due to begin her first day for the British based bank Standard Chartered.
She got off the subway at the appointed stop and walked towards the Twin Towers when first one then the other exploded in front of her and thousands of people ran towards her.
She ran too until she reached a side street, not knowing where she was, not knowing anyone, with no police or anyone else to ask as everyone was rushing round in a panic.
Mobile phone networks had been turned off. The subway was closed and there were no taxis.
Meanwhile back in London my wife's job for the bank was ringing round every worker they employed in NY simply to check they were alive. One by one they got hold of them all. They had been evacuated, shortly before the building collapsed in approximately 6.5 seconds.
All that is, apart from the young Malaysian girl due to start work that day. No one could verify whether she had been in the building or not, it was all a bit, well, chaotic.
Her mum was ringing the bank in London to see if they had heard, because no one had rung her.
This went on all night.
But the next day the mother rang. She had heard from her daughter eventually.
What had happened was this. The young girl, bewildered and away from home for the first time ever, had stood crying in a side road without the faintest idea of what to do and where to go.
And then, like something out of It's A Wonderful Life, an American family saw her and took her back to their apartment. They then gave her food and shelter and rang her mum in Malaysia from a landline and looked after her until everything had settled down.
One small act of kindness probably changed that young woman's life forever. That's what it's all about.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Incidentally, more than 2,000 Iraqis and 200 British and American troops have died in suicide bombs since 2003 in Iraq. Around a third of all civilian casualties are children. So perhaps it's all about that too.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not afraid to admit I don't understand rugby to any great degree but I'll watch the occasional big match. Though league seems to be a lot more exciting than union. However, the union code has the big international tournament at the moment so can anyone explain to me why England are wearing an All Black kit and why Nike can't design a rugby shirt without the numbers peeling off half way through the game.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'I'm not going to be the person I'm expected to be any more'. A great quote from a great statesman? No, some bollocks from a pouty knob in an advert for Bleu de Chanel after shave. Still makes more sense than Paolo Coelho though.
Adieu, Solly
Saturday 10 September 2011
Talking Bull
How pretentious is this?
Deborah Bull, the artistic director of the Royal Opera House, was on Radio Four's Saturday Review arts programme (I was trying to find Magic FM and got lost) when the guests were asked about the latest film version of Jane Eyre.
Some compared the screenplay to the book - for good or bad - but like many of us, Deborah hadn't read the book. Fair enough. She's a dancer not a raving intellectual after all. And have you ever tried to read Bronte (any of them?) They are soooo dull.
So, she could have said 'I haven't read the book.'
But no. What she actually said was that when she was 14 she read The Idiot and had become so obsessed with Russian literature she never read anything else, so had never visited Bronte.
She's 48. If she really wanted to have 'visited' Bronte, then she could have done. I don't blame her for not doing it. Life's too short.
However, to say that she never read it because she was up to her eyes in Dostoevsky - whichever way you want to spell it - really is trying too hard.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of radio - I know it makes for a bit of a laugh but I'm tiring of the confrontational approach to interviewing. Whether it's politicians or 'experts' or anyone else, radio and much of TV news programmes seem to be less about informing us and more about trying to get the people they are interviewing to make a mistake.
Sometimes they deserve it, I think we all agree. Michael Howard's refusal to answer a question from Jeremy Paxman eight or nine times was fair game.
But from Paxman to the Today programme, politics is now simply presented as black and white, one v one. Not just Humphrys versus Tony Blair, such as the interview I heard yesterday but in particular when there are two guests.
It seems that the only way a radio show like Today or a TV programme like Newsnight can have a discussion on a major issue is to have two people with completely opposing views slug it out.
I heard another example on Any Questions as well (I had a bit of a Radio Four day yesterday I'm afraid). It was over Israel. One man was defending the state's right to exist, a woman was opposing occupation. What gets me is that there is no middle ground. Two people, two sets of opinions, both well rehearsed and unbendable and for the average listener, it simply explains that there are only two ways to do it - A or B. That's the trouble with news programmes these days, no one will tell you a route C.
We don't all fit in to neat little categories where all our views can be divided down the middle.
I may not agree with Tony Blair, for instance, particularly when he pronounces ideology as 'iddy ology' rather than 'eye dee ology'.
But putting that aside, he has spent a lot of time in the Middle East and I genuinely would like to hear what he thinks about the current situation - particularly as it was he who took us into war in the first place.
Instead, we had an interview with John Humphrys who, as usual, was more keen on the sound of his own voice than the guest. And he spent the whole interview trying to trip Tony Blair up. I realise it tries to make is entertaining, like an audio form of fox hunting is. But is that really the point of intelligent political programming?
I want to learn something occasionally. Not all the time, but sometimes. I don't want two politicians putting across two diametrically opposite points of view with nothing in between. I don't mind debate but if they're going to discuss problems then let them discuss solutions, not just shout at each other or see who is the first to blink.
Even those who don't want to play ball are given little option but to take sides by pushy interviewers (look up comedy scriptwriter Graham Linehan's thoughts on the subject).
If I want to see people make mistakes I'll watch You've Been Framed instead.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I'm in a Radio 4 sort of mind, Sandi Toksvig. I think she's brilliant on The News Quiz, and awful on travel programmes. But she popped up on TV the other day and it seems that as she realises she is more and more of a national treasure, is determined to dress more and more like she believes we expect lesbians to dress.
She used to be all frilly Princess Di collars and the occasional Giles Brandreth jumper. Now it's tweed suits and gentlemen's shirts. Pretty soon she'll be smoking a pipe on QI and complete the stereotype.
It's as if she's realised that most of us don't care about her sexuality and decided she can dress like a lesbian should dress.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norwich. For years it meant the home of the quiz of the week, Sale of the Century and the occasional visit to Carrow Road to see my side get three points on a regular basis but have you ever been to the city itself? It's beautiful, there's a lot of wonderful architecture, a massive shopping centre and quite a lot of culture.
However, it's possibly the whitest city I've ever been to, at least in England. It's a big, proper city with fat teenage girls sporting tattoos pushing babies who are born with earrings just like every other big city.
But you can count the dark faces on one hand. It's quite strange, it really is. You spend a while wandering round thinking 'why does this not feel quite right?' before it dawns on you that it's a kind of ethnically cleansed city. And no better for it, I may add.
Diversity? Norfolk Enchants. Cheers, Solly
Deborah Bull, the artistic director of the Royal Opera House, was on Radio Four's Saturday Review arts programme (I was trying to find Magic FM and got lost) when the guests were asked about the latest film version of Jane Eyre.
Some compared the screenplay to the book - for good or bad - but like many of us, Deborah hadn't read the book. Fair enough. She's a dancer not a raving intellectual after all. And have you ever tried to read Bronte (any of them?) They are soooo dull.
So, she could have said 'I haven't read the book.'
But no. What she actually said was that when she was 14 she read The Idiot and had become so obsessed with Russian literature she never read anything else, so had never visited Bronte.
She's 48. If she really wanted to have 'visited' Bronte, then she could have done. I don't blame her for not doing it. Life's too short.
However, to say that she never read it because she was up to her eyes in Dostoevsky - whichever way you want to spell it - really is trying too hard.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talking of radio - I know it makes for a bit of a laugh but I'm tiring of the confrontational approach to interviewing. Whether it's politicians or 'experts' or anyone else, radio and much of TV news programmes seem to be less about informing us and more about trying to get the people they are interviewing to make a mistake.
Sometimes they deserve it, I think we all agree. Michael Howard's refusal to answer a question from Jeremy Paxman eight or nine times was fair game.
But from Paxman to the Today programme, politics is now simply presented as black and white, one v one. Not just Humphrys versus Tony Blair, such as the interview I heard yesterday but in particular when there are two guests.
It seems that the only way a radio show like Today or a TV programme like Newsnight can have a discussion on a major issue is to have two people with completely opposing views slug it out.
I heard another example on Any Questions as well (I had a bit of a Radio Four day yesterday I'm afraid). It was over Israel. One man was defending the state's right to exist, a woman was opposing occupation. What gets me is that there is no middle ground. Two people, two sets of opinions, both well rehearsed and unbendable and for the average listener, it simply explains that there are only two ways to do it - A or B. That's the trouble with news programmes these days, no one will tell you a route C.
We don't all fit in to neat little categories where all our views can be divided down the middle.
I may not agree with Tony Blair, for instance, particularly when he pronounces ideology as 'iddy ology' rather than 'eye dee ology'.
But putting that aside, he has spent a lot of time in the Middle East and I genuinely would like to hear what he thinks about the current situation - particularly as it was he who took us into war in the first place.
Instead, we had an interview with John Humphrys who, as usual, was more keen on the sound of his own voice than the guest. And he spent the whole interview trying to trip Tony Blair up. I realise it tries to make is entertaining, like an audio form of fox hunting is. But is that really the point of intelligent political programming?
I want to learn something occasionally. Not all the time, but sometimes. I don't want two politicians putting across two diametrically opposite points of view with nothing in between. I don't mind debate but if they're going to discuss problems then let them discuss solutions, not just shout at each other or see who is the first to blink.
Even those who don't want to play ball are given little option but to take sides by pushy interviewers (look up comedy scriptwriter Graham Linehan's thoughts on the subject).
If I want to see people make mistakes I'll watch You've Been Framed instead.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
As I'm in a Radio 4 sort of mind, Sandi Toksvig. I think she's brilliant on The News Quiz, and awful on travel programmes. But she popped up on TV the other day and it seems that as she realises she is more and more of a national treasure, is determined to dress more and more like she believes we expect lesbians to dress.
She used to be all frilly Princess Di collars and the occasional Giles Brandreth jumper. Now it's tweed suits and gentlemen's shirts. Pretty soon she'll be smoking a pipe on QI and complete the stereotype.
It's as if she's realised that most of us don't care about her sexuality and decided she can dress like a lesbian should dress.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norwich. For years it meant the home of the quiz of the week, Sale of the Century and the occasional visit to Carrow Road to see my side get three points on a regular basis but have you ever been to the city itself? It's beautiful, there's a lot of wonderful architecture, a massive shopping centre and quite a lot of culture.
However, it's possibly the whitest city I've ever been to, at least in England. It's a big, proper city with fat teenage girls sporting tattoos pushing babies who are born with earrings just like every other big city.
But you can count the dark faces on one hand. It's quite strange, it really is. You spend a while wandering round thinking 'why does this not feel quite right?' before it dawns on you that it's a kind of ethnically cleansed city. And no better for it, I may add.
Diversity? Norfolk Enchants. Cheers, Solly
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Cor blimey trousers
My old college pal Sandra Parsons, in her Daily Mail column this week, mentioned that women had come a long way from the days when they were banned from certain clubs and restaurants for wearing trousers and I agree with her.
Though, interestingly, I'm told that when Daily Mail photographers are sent to take pictures of women of any age for a feature, the subjects are told they must wear skirts for the photo as it is something the editor insists on.
I don't know if this is true. But a good way to see if it might be is to look at the set up photos in the Mail (ie: not paparazzi shots or news pictures but ones where the subject is posing specifically for the paper) and see how many of the women in them are wearing skirts and how many are wearing trousers.
-------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if anything has annoyed me recently quite so much as a bullying, threatening, holier-than-thou piece of religious nutjobbery from uberCatholic Christine 'Odious' Odone in the Telegraph today.
If you haven't seen it - and I wouldn't recommend it - she joins in the debate on abortion spearheaded by the dizzyingly anti-intellectual Tory MP Nadine Dorries.
In a worrying development akin to America's inbred Christian lobby, she threatens any MP who doesn't vote the way she wants them to will lose their seat at the next election just like Dr Evan Harris, the seemingly popular atheist Lib-Dem who lost a majority at the last poll.
She infers it was because he was a non-believer, ignoring the fact that boundary changes and a pretty poor performance by Lib Dems in general may have contributed. He lost by 17 votes.
Now she says any MP who dares not to believe in exactly the same God as she does could be voted out by Christians. As if they are the only voters in Britain allowed to have a conscience.
It's not her exact words but basically she says to MPs, if you mess with Christian beliefs then you're out.
It is dangerous and nasty. It not only rules out atheists as having morals or principles but also Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Jews.
Personally I will vote for the candidate I think will do a decent job, has principles with which I broadly agree and not whether or not they believe in God, Buddha, the tooth fairy or the Honey Monster (and I have only ever seen evidence of the existence of one of those and even then I suspect it was a bloke in a costume).
Likewise, Christian fundamentalists like Ms Odious are free to vote for anyone they want, even if the only qualification is they believe that the wine they are drinking really is the blood of some bloke who lived 2,000 years ago.
However, I also think it is a short step from threatening every MP in the country who doesn't adhere to the same medieval beliefs and antiquated views on giving women a choice in how they live their lives to shooting abortionists on their doorsteps using the bizarre argument that this is 'pro life'.
------------------------------------------------------------
I paid one of my rare visits to the burgeoning media mecca that is Shoreditch. Every time I go there I'm impressed, and not just with the Nathan Barleys playing fussball in the various ad, marketing, new technology and other start ups in the area.
This time I came back via the super duper new overground station which is immaculate and even runs. Unlike so much of the London Transport system. Of course it's been built for the Olympics but unlike Lord Coe, will continue to serve East London long after the games.
I know Shoreditch has this ultra-trendy image of skinny jeans and skinny lattes but for those of us old enough to remember what it used to be like - my uncle was born in a flat above Spitalfields Market, lived there his whole life and died there.
Not long after it was transformed from a grubby fruit and veg market where overnighting lorry drivers would be serviced by a parade of dodgy prostitutes to an upmarket collection of restaurants and art galleries.
Brick Lane now has a fabulous market yet still retains the curry houses and the Beigel Bake, still the best place in London for a beigel (which some of you may know as a bagel) just as it always has been.
Sometimes we look at these places as examples of the gentrification of working class districts which do little more than give the surface a coat of paint while ignoring the problems that lie beneath.
I'm sure there are still problems of poverty and community in this part of East London, just like the regeneration in cities all over the country, but it is still better than it was. And that's worth raising a £4.20 glass of wine in the Hoxton Grill for.
Lechaim...Solly
Though, interestingly, I'm told that when Daily Mail photographers are sent to take pictures of women of any age for a feature, the subjects are told they must wear skirts for the photo as it is something the editor insists on.
I don't know if this is true. But a good way to see if it might be is to look at the set up photos in the Mail (ie: not paparazzi shots or news pictures but ones where the subject is posing specifically for the paper) and see how many of the women in them are wearing skirts and how many are wearing trousers.
-------------------------------------------------------
I don't know if anything has annoyed me recently quite so much as a bullying, threatening, holier-than-thou piece of religious nutjobbery from uberCatholic Christine 'Odious' Odone in the Telegraph today.
If you haven't seen it - and I wouldn't recommend it - she joins in the debate on abortion spearheaded by the dizzyingly anti-intellectual Tory MP Nadine Dorries.
In a worrying development akin to America's inbred Christian lobby, she threatens any MP who doesn't vote the way she wants them to will lose their seat at the next election just like Dr Evan Harris, the seemingly popular atheist Lib-Dem who lost a majority at the last poll.
She infers it was because he was a non-believer, ignoring the fact that boundary changes and a pretty poor performance by Lib Dems in general may have contributed. He lost by 17 votes.
Now she says any MP who dares not to believe in exactly the same God as she does could be voted out by Christians. As if they are the only voters in Britain allowed to have a conscience.
It's not her exact words but basically she says to MPs, if you mess with Christian beliefs then you're out.
It is dangerous and nasty. It not only rules out atheists as having morals or principles but also Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims and Jews.
Personally I will vote for the candidate I think will do a decent job, has principles with which I broadly agree and not whether or not they believe in God, Buddha, the tooth fairy or the Honey Monster (and I have only ever seen evidence of the existence of one of those and even then I suspect it was a bloke in a costume).
Likewise, Christian fundamentalists like Ms Odious are free to vote for anyone they want, even if the only qualification is they believe that the wine they are drinking really is the blood of some bloke who lived 2,000 years ago.
However, I also think it is a short step from threatening every MP in the country who doesn't adhere to the same medieval beliefs and antiquated views on giving women a choice in how they live their lives to shooting abortionists on their doorsteps using the bizarre argument that this is 'pro life'.
------------------------------------------------------------
I paid one of my rare visits to the burgeoning media mecca that is Shoreditch. Every time I go there I'm impressed, and not just with the Nathan Barleys playing fussball in the various ad, marketing, new technology and other start ups in the area.
This time I came back via the super duper new overground station which is immaculate and even runs. Unlike so much of the London Transport system. Of course it's been built for the Olympics but unlike Lord Coe, will continue to serve East London long after the games.
I know Shoreditch has this ultra-trendy image of skinny jeans and skinny lattes but for those of us old enough to remember what it used to be like - my uncle was born in a flat above Spitalfields Market, lived there his whole life and died there.
Not long after it was transformed from a grubby fruit and veg market where overnighting lorry drivers would be serviced by a parade of dodgy prostitutes to an upmarket collection of restaurants and art galleries.
Brick Lane now has a fabulous market yet still retains the curry houses and the Beigel Bake, still the best place in London for a beigel (which some of you may know as a bagel) just as it always has been.
Sometimes we look at these places as examples of the gentrification of working class districts which do little more than give the surface a coat of paint while ignoring the problems that lie beneath.
I'm sure there are still problems of poverty and community in this part of East London, just like the regeneration in cities all over the country, but it is still better than it was. And that's worth raising a £4.20 glass of wine in the Hoxton Grill for.
Lechaim...Solly
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Red or Flak
The British Humanist Association. Is that the first example of a true not-for-prophet organisation?
------------------------------
Range Rover has brought out a new £28k car called the Evoque which I expect to soon see in abundance talking all those famous hills in Essex that separate orange women from the school gates.
To celebrate, Range Rover gave away the first model off the production line to Zara Philips because she is, apparently, an 'ambassador' for the brand. I never realised so many people bought a Range Rover because it was endorsed by a minor member of the royal family.
---------------------------
Now I don't much care for Simon Cowell (let's face it who does) but he's getting a disproportionate amount of stick over his latest wheeze, Red or Black and not because it's a rip off of so many other game shows that rely on a total lack of skill, intelligence or knowledge.
It's because some bloke who won £1million was once convicted for hitting his girlfriend. Now it's a heinous offence for which he was punished but there are calls for the guy not be allowed to keep his million, including an MP, the honourable member for Bandwagon South I believe.
But so what? Are we to vet what kind of people go on game shows? Most of them are pretty chavvy anyway but do we give them a CRB check before they are allowed to have their name picked out of a hat? Do we then decide that the big prizes can only go to people who are poor but virtuous, for instance? Particularly in games with no degree of skill.
You can't go on Deal or No Deal if you've paid off your mortgage, for instance. Adjudicators from The Weakest Link will visit you first to make sure you don't own more than one car. And you can only go on Bullseye if you're a fat bloke who lives on a council estate and has no use for a speedboat. Oh, ok, that last one might be true.
Then we have a sliding scale. If we only allowed Mastermind contestants to be over 40 and with a degree perhaps we would be spared the sight of some spotty sales assistant getting through to the semi finals after answering questions on the films of Jennifer Aniston for instance.
Contestants on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? should not be allowed to keep the money unless they promise they won't spend it on hookers and cocaine but on building up a property portfolio and investing wisely in an ISA.
Vetting for nice middle class quiz shows like Only Connect or Eggheads will mean that only men who drink real ale, as opposed to lager, can go on the programmes. And they mustn't have a tattoo. Or perhaps only let in women who gave up work to look after the kids but occasionally helped out at the local Citizens Advice Bureau as a volunteer. That should keep out the riff raff.
And why stop there? Perhaps we shouldn't allow anyone with a criminal record to buy a lottery ticket. Nor, for that matter, anyone over 60 who lives in a caravan in Scotland who claims they won't let a win change their life. If you don't want to change your life then why enter a competition to win a first prize of £14 million for crying out loud?
The lottery, like Mayfair cigarettes, betting shops and Special Brew, is basically a tax on the poor anyway so anyone for whom winning a lot of money won't change their life should not be allowed to enter but neither too should anyone found guilty of benefit fraud - thereby pleasing both the Daily Mail and The Guardian at the same time.
You see these kind of kneejerk calls quite a lot. A footballer goes to prison for a crime off the pitch, he comes out again a few months later and there's an outcry when he gets signed for a new club.
I don't see the problem. If a plumber gets a six month sentence for shooting a donkey or something, then should he be banned from being a plumber again when he gets out? Obviously he should be banned from keeping a donkey but that's not the same thing.
Or perhaps we draw the line at a certain salary. If someone on £100,000 a year gets banged up, then when they come out of prison they must take a job where they only get £20k a year.
Ridiculous? Of course it is. When Joey Barton got jailed, his punishment was a bit of porridge. It wasn't six months in pokey followed by a free transfer to a Championship side and a ban on collecting any signing on fee when going to QPR.
And when a man gets convicted for hitting a woman, hopefully he'll get the proper punishment from the court which will be time behind bars and not followed by a judge ruling that he should not be allowed to enter any Simon Cowell-related show for a minimum period of 10 years after his release.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Incidentally, if Simon Cowell is supposed to ban anyone with a conviction for assaulting women from his shows, then what was Cheryl Cole doing on The X Factor?
Night night pet....Solly
------------------------------
Range Rover has brought out a new £28k car called the Evoque which I expect to soon see in abundance talking all those famous hills in Essex that separate orange women from the school gates.
To celebrate, Range Rover gave away the first model off the production line to Zara Philips because she is, apparently, an 'ambassador' for the brand. I never realised so many people bought a Range Rover because it was endorsed by a minor member of the royal family.
---------------------------
Now I don't much care for Simon Cowell (let's face it who does) but he's getting a disproportionate amount of stick over his latest wheeze, Red or Black and not because it's a rip off of so many other game shows that rely on a total lack of skill, intelligence or knowledge.
It's because some bloke who won £1million was once convicted for hitting his girlfriend. Now it's a heinous offence for which he was punished but there are calls for the guy not be allowed to keep his million, including an MP, the honourable member for Bandwagon South I believe.
But so what? Are we to vet what kind of people go on game shows? Most of them are pretty chavvy anyway but do we give them a CRB check before they are allowed to have their name picked out of a hat? Do we then decide that the big prizes can only go to people who are poor but virtuous, for instance? Particularly in games with no degree of skill.
You can't go on Deal or No Deal if you've paid off your mortgage, for instance. Adjudicators from The Weakest Link will visit you first to make sure you don't own more than one car. And you can only go on Bullseye if you're a fat bloke who lives on a council estate and has no use for a speedboat. Oh, ok, that last one might be true.
Then we have a sliding scale. If we only allowed Mastermind contestants to be over 40 and with a degree perhaps we would be spared the sight of some spotty sales assistant getting through to the semi finals after answering questions on the films of Jennifer Aniston for instance.
Contestants on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? should not be allowed to keep the money unless they promise they won't spend it on hookers and cocaine but on building up a property portfolio and investing wisely in an ISA.
Vetting for nice middle class quiz shows like Only Connect or Eggheads will mean that only men who drink real ale, as opposed to lager, can go on the programmes. And they mustn't have a tattoo. Or perhaps only let in women who gave up work to look after the kids but occasionally helped out at the local Citizens Advice Bureau as a volunteer. That should keep out the riff raff.
And why stop there? Perhaps we shouldn't allow anyone with a criminal record to buy a lottery ticket. Nor, for that matter, anyone over 60 who lives in a caravan in Scotland who claims they won't let a win change their life. If you don't want to change your life then why enter a competition to win a first prize of £14 million for crying out loud?
The lottery, like Mayfair cigarettes, betting shops and Special Brew, is basically a tax on the poor anyway so anyone for whom winning a lot of money won't change their life should not be allowed to enter but neither too should anyone found guilty of benefit fraud - thereby pleasing both the Daily Mail and The Guardian at the same time.
You see these kind of kneejerk calls quite a lot. A footballer goes to prison for a crime off the pitch, he comes out again a few months later and there's an outcry when he gets signed for a new club.
I don't see the problem. If a plumber gets a six month sentence for shooting a donkey or something, then should he be banned from being a plumber again when he gets out? Obviously he should be banned from keeping a donkey but that's not the same thing.
Or perhaps we draw the line at a certain salary. If someone on £100,000 a year gets banged up, then when they come out of prison they must take a job where they only get £20k a year.
Ridiculous? Of course it is. When Joey Barton got jailed, his punishment was a bit of porridge. It wasn't six months in pokey followed by a free transfer to a Championship side and a ban on collecting any signing on fee when going to QPR.
And when a man gets convicted for hitting a woman, hopefully he'll get the proper punishment from the court which will be time behind bars and not followed by a judge ruling that he should not be allowed to enter any Simon Cowell-related show for a minimum period of 10 years after his release.
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Incidentally, if Simon Cowell is supposed to ban anyone with a conviction for assaulting women from his shows, then what was Cheryl Cole doing on The X Factor?
Night night pet....Solly
Thursday 1 September 2011
Bingo was his name
So no sooner had I left Notting Hill and blogged how nice it all was, than someone goes and gets stabbed right in front of a photographer from Getty Images. But, two days, 500,000 people, one minor stabbing. Statistically it still makes the carnival safer than a week swimming in the Seychelles by my reckoning.
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Helen Wood, the prostitute who slept with Wayne Rooney, was on TV last night. Seeing her in the flesh, she looks disturbingly like Peter Crouch in drag. I don't suppose that's what attracted the spud-faced nipper in the first place was it?
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Went to see The Kitchen at The National in That London on The Thursday night. It's by the patron Jewish saint of what used to be known as the angry young men, Arnold Wesker, and written (and set) in the 1950s.
Terrific entertainment. It reminded me of a Spitting Image sketch from way back when uber-luvvies Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were all the rage alongside accusations that she only got to appear in plays and films that he was putting on. In the sketch, he's making a cup of tea and she calls down 'are you there darling?' and he answers 'I'm in the kitchen' and she says 'oh, can I be in it too?'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week saw the death of legendary sub-editor and one of the greatest drinkers in Fleet Street history, Mike Terry. He will, perhaps to his chagrin, forever be remembered among tabloids as the man who cocked up the bingo numbers for The Sun so that 3,000 readers won, all thinking they had got the top prize and they queued round the block of Bouverie Street to claim their winnings. As a result, The Sun photographed Mike wearing a dunce's hat, called him The Bingo Bungler and had him in the paper dressed like that, apologising for his mistake. He was famous for having a glass eye which he used to put in people's pints after a few so perhaps they should have had the headline 'eyes down'.
We've all been there. When I was at the paper, supposedly covering the industrial beat and reporting on recession-hit Britain, I saw a release from Thomson Holidays. It was promoting last minute holidays for something like £39 for a week in Spain. This was way cheaper than anything else, even considering the economic hard times but everyone was suffering so it seemed a brave move. Having left a message for Thomson's press office, I wrote up the story about a new holiday price war sending the costs down to an all-new low and that it could spark massive cuts among competitors across the whole industry.
It seemed ridiculously cheap for flights and hotels and it was. The price didn't include the flight. I missed that. Didn't read the small print. But I wrote the story as if it did and, of course, thousands of Sun readers bombarded Thomson to get the deal. When they were told it didn't exist and that it was just for a room, many responded by saying 'It was in The Sun so it must be true!'
It was totally my fault. Thomson hadn't commented to me and I'd gone gung ho on the story in a bid to impress Kelvin who had probably been giving me a hard time (he often did!)
The next day the office was besieged by angry readers ringing in to complain - as well as a tortuous conversation with Gloria Ward, the indominatable press officer for Thomson who, to her credit, did not call for my head.
Instead, she gave my direct number to every Sun reader who called Thomson direct. So I spent the whole day in the office, sat in the corner answering the calls of angry and often abusive readers.
Mind you, if you think that was bad, as a young casual reporter I was given the job of manning the telephone the day The Sun published the Hillsborough headline 'The Truth' and deal with all calls from Liverpool fans for the whole day even though I had nothing to do with the original story. I'd like to say it was a distressing experience for me but of course it wasn't anything compared to what many of the callers had been through.
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Anyone with a brain cell who has watched The Gadget Show will have wanted, at some point, to have seen the presenters try out the latest suicide vests as part of the programme. Well, Jason 'I wear my flat cap at a jaunty angle in the hope that people will notice me' Bradbury was given a top BBC entertainment show called Don't Scare the Hare that was so dreadful it was cancelled after three episodes.
Now co-presenter Ortis Deley has failed so abysmally at fronting Channel 4's ill-conceived coverage of the world athletics championships that he too has been sidelined.
Incidentally Jason's Wikipedia page describes him as an actor, presenter, pilot, actor and comedian. Do you think there's just the teeniest weeniest chance that he wrote it himself?
There's also another, tubby middle-aged bloke (and I'm a good one to talk) on The Gadget Show. He has white hair and black eyebrows and over-enunciates in an exaggerated fashion in the vain hope that it makes him look eccentric but I can't be bothered to look him up to find out his name.
Either way, they're all rubbish. Suzi Perry though...mmm.
Thanks for reading....Solly
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Helen Wood, the prostitute who slept with Wayne Rooney, was on TV last night. Seeing her in the flesh, she looks disturbingly like Peter Crouch in drag. I don't suppose that's what attracted the spud-faced nipper in the first place was it?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Went to see The Kitchen at The National in That London on The Thursday night. It's by the patron Jewish saint of what used to be known as the angry young men, Arnold Wesker, and written (and set) in the 1950s.
Terrific entertainment. It reminded me of a Spitting Image sketch from way back when uber-luvvies Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson were all the rage alongside accusations that she only got to appear in plays and films that he was putting on. In the sketch, he's making a cup of tea and she calls down 'are you there darling?' and he answers 'I'm in the kitchen' and she says 'oh, can I be in it too?'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week saw the death of legendary sub-editor and one of the greatest drinkers in Fleet Street history, Mike Terry. He will, perhaps to his chagrin, forever be remembered among tabloids as the man who cocked up the bingo numbers for The Sun so that 3,000 readers won, all thinking they had got the top prize and they queued round the block of Bouverie Street to claim their winnings. As a result, The Sun photographed Mike wearing a dunce's hat, called him The Bingo Bungler and had him in the paper dressed like that, apologising for his mistake. He was famous for having a glass eye which he used to put in people's pints after a few so perhaps they should have had the headline 'eyes down'.
We've all been there. When I was at the paper, supposedly covering the industrial beat and reporting on recession-hit Britain, I saw a release from Thomson Holidays. It was promoting last minute holidays for something like £39 for a week in Spain. This was way cheaper than anything else, even considering the economic hard times but everyone was suffering so it seemed a brave move. Having left a message for Thomson's press office, I wrote up the story about a new holiday price war sending the costs down to an all-new low and that it could spark massive cuts among competitors across the whole industry.
It seemed ridiculously cheap for flights and hotels and it was. The price didn't include the flight. I missed that. Didn't read the small print. But I wrote the story as if it did and, of course, thousands of Sun readers bombarded Thomson to get the deal. When they were told it didn't exist and that it was just for a room, many responded by saying 'It was in The Sun so it must be true!'
It was totally my fault. Thomson hadn't commented to me and I'd gone gung ho on the story in a bid to impress Kelvin who had probably been giving me a hard time (he often did!)
The next day the office was besieged by angry readers ringing in to complain - as well as a tortuous conversation with Gloria Ward, the indominatable press officer for Thomson who, to her credit, did not call for my head.
Instead, she gave my direct number to every Sun reader who called Thomson direct. So I spent the whole day in the office, sat in the corner answering the calls of angry and often abusive readers.
Mind you, if you think that was bad, as a young casual reporter I was given the job of manning the telephone the day The Sun published the Hillsborough headline 'The Truth' and deal with all calls from Liverpool fans for the whole day even though I had nothing to do with the original story. I'd like to say it was a distressing experience for me but of course it wasn't anything compared to what many of the callers had been through.
---------------------------------------------------------
Anyone with a brain cell who has watched The Gadget Show will have wanted, at some point, to have seen the presenters try out the latest suicide vests as part of the programme. Well, Jason 'I wear my flat cap at a jaunty angle in the hope that people will notice me' Bradbury was given a top BBC entertainment show called Don't Scare the Hare that was so dreadful it was cancelled after three episodes.
Now co-presenter Ortis Deley has failed so abysmally at fronting Channel 4's ill-conceived coverage of the world athletics championships that he too has been sidelined.
Incidentally Jason's Wikipedia page describes him as an actor, presenter, pilot, actor and comedian. Do you think there's just the teeniest weeniest chance that he wrote it himself?
There's also another, tubby middle-aged bloke (and I'm a good one to talk) on The Gadget Show. He has white hair and black eyebrows and over-enunciates in an exaggerated fashion in the vain hope that it makes him look eccentric but I can't be bothered to look him up to find out his name.
Either way, they're all rubbish. Suzi Perry though...mmm.
Thanks for reading....Solly
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