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?'
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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
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