When Harry Met Solly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy New Year one and all....Solly

The Age of Stupid

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

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

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

It's Christmas.

Have a good one....Solly

Listing Badly

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

Tamara never comes...without a publicist

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

Egged On

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

Chewsround

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