For Crying Out Loud!

The point of binge drinking is that you drink and then you stop drinking. And this is the key. The real problem is when you drink – and you keep on drinking. This is known as alcoholism and that, so far as I can tell, is the worst thing in the world.

There is nothing quite so pitiable and wretched as an alcoholic. I know plenty of people who take drugs, drive too fast and kill foxes. And they’re all good company. But honestly, I would rather do time in a Turkish prison than spend time with a drinker.

They ramble, they fall over, they think they are 10 times more interesting than is actually the case – and if they get the slightest inkling that you disapprove or are bored a great many become aggressive.

These are the people whom the busybodies should be concentrating on. Not with stern words and dire warnings, neither of which will make the slightest bit of difference, but with help and understanding and patience.

Seriously, telling me that I’m an alcoholic because I binge drink on holiday and share a bottle of wine with my wife over supper every night is the same as persecuting everyone who breaks the speed limit.

We need to make a distinction between someone doing 32 mph and someone doing 175 mph.

And it’s the same story with child abuse. By telling me that I’m breaking the law every time I smack my children’s bottoms, you are taking the pressure off those who lock their kids in a broom cupboard and only let them out to go thieving.

My handy hint this morning, then, is simple. Leave the normal people who do normal things alone. Forget about the people who drink for fun and worry only about those who drink to live.

Sunday 2 September 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Public school is the hell we need

Over the years I have filled this column with many things. I’ve suggested Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon should have a fight in the Albert Hall. I’ve revealed that Mars once crashed into my chimney pots and I’ve explained that if you painted a picture using a sheep’s dingleberries instead of oils you could sell it to Walsall borough council for £150,000.

In other words, when it comes to subject matter I have plumbed the bottom of the barrel and then kept right on going. But I have never written about one of the most discussed topics in Britain today. Education.

There’s a very good reason for this. I don’t understand any of the debates.

I’ve talked to David Cameron about grammar schools, about how he doesn’t want any more but he doesn’t mind if councils build lots, and I’m afraid my eyes glazed over – partly because it all sounded like politico-gobbledegook and partly because, if I’m honest, I don’t actually know what a grammar school is.

I think they are places for pupils who can tie up their own shoelaces, as opposed to comprehensive schools, which are big ugly buildings on the outskirts of town for pupils who wish to be stabbed.

Then you have assisted schools. Again, I’m afraid I’m not your man for guidance.

All I can say for sure is that you should avoid them like the plague because, having read Alastair Campbell’s book – Why I Am Brilliant – it seems they are entirely filled with the children of new Labour ministers.

What does interest me are public schools. I went to one. My mother went to one. And I’ve always sort of known that my children would go to one as well.

Of course, you may well sneer at that. You may say it is entirely unfair that some children are given a better start in life than others. And I would absolutely have to agree with you. In the same way that it’s entirely unfair that some people are born fat or ugly or dyslexic or disabled or ginger or small or Welsh. Life, I’m afraid, is tragic.

And besides, I use exactly the same argument with private schools that I use with private medicine. People who can afford it should be required to indulge because it stops rich bastards clogging up the system for everyone else.

Why should my kids take a place at our local comp – which is excellent, I hear – when it could go to someone whose parents can’t afford the alternative? Answer me that, Mr Lenin.

And no. Please don’t say that you’ve read somewhere that state schools now provide a better education than those in the private sector. I’ve read the stories too and never, in all my years, have I seen so many mangled statistics. In essence, they find one state school that has (just) outperformed one private school and whoopee-do. It’s a red-letter day in the Guardian.

Well, I’m sorry, but that’s like watching Doncaster Rovers beat Derby County in an FA Cup match and then arguing that all League One clubs are better than all clubs in the Barclays Premiership.

Here’s something to chew on. In order to be the school lad at Repton, all I had to do was rub a gallon of creosote into the housemaster’s cormorant. Had I wished to be the school lad at my local comp, I would have had to burn it down.

That’s why I laugh at all those stories about misbehaving public-school kids wreaking havoc in Cornwall every summer. Oh do me a favour. What sort of havoc are we talking about here?

Smoking joints on the beach? Vomiting Pimm’s into your hydrangeas? Did one of them debag the vicar? And is that so bad? Or would you rather your village was taken over each year by a gang of yobs from Croxteth with their sub-machine guns?

Again, you might say you can’t bear spoilt rich kids with their trusts and their floppy Boden hair. Fine. But if you are going to use extremes then I hope you don’t mind if I respond in kind. I can’t bear gormless louts who hang around in shopping centres, shoplifting and catching venereal diseases.

But let’s stop the insults. I’ve always felt that sending a child away to boarding school helps them learn, very quickly, that if they upset others, there’s no running home afterwards. They have to deal with it. This means they are more likely, in later life, to be ‘good in a room’.

Then there is the range of opportunities. The state system, we keep being told, struggles to find an inflated football, let alone somewhere it can be kicked, while most public schools have their own underwater hang-glider display team.

And, of course, gone are the days when you packed your boy off at 13 saying: ‘See you when you’re 18. And try not to get buggered too much.’ Nowadays, almost everyone employed by the main public schools isn’t a predatory homosexual.

As you can see, I am entirely blinkered and useless when it comes to schools. I’ve always been the biggest fan of private education, the boarding-school system, and I have to be physically restrained when it’s criticised.

Right up to the point last week when I dropped my eldest off at her new boarding school. After the death of my father, it was, without doubt, the most painful experience of my life. Leaving my daughter in a strange place, in the hands of a group of people I barely know. And then just driving away.

It’s a barbaric and hateful thing to do. And what makes it worse is that she’s going to absolutely love it.

Sunday 9 September 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Dial M for a mobile I can actually work

There are a great many mobile telephones on the market these days. All are made by companies with preposterous mission statements, all have idiotic names and all are full of ridiculous features that you neither need nor want. So where do you go for some no-nonsense advice?

Films are reviewed in all the major newspapers so that you can avoid the expense and embarrassment of accidentally seeing one with Vin Diesel in it. And it’s the same story with books. You want to know what’s worth reading and what’s not, you tune into Richard and Judy.

Everything is reviewed. Cars. Restaurants. Holidays. You name it. But the only place you’re going to find advice on mobile phones is on the internet.

On paper this is a good idea. We’re not being regaled by people who we suspect have been bribed with a press junket to Bali. We’re reading the words of real people who’ve spent real money on a product. Their experiences, then, should be worthwhile.

They’re not. The page always starts with one post that says the product is excellent value for money, well designed and sold as standard with a battery that lasts for a thousand years. This, you know, has come from the marketing department of the manufacturer in question.

So you skip it and get to the meat. As a general rule each phone has about i million reviews, all of which fall into two distinct camps. When presented with the opportunity to be a reviewer, people think they have to either gush or damn.

Hand them a choice of giving a rating of anything from one to 10 and all you get are ones and 10s. Six, in the world of amateur reviewing, does not exist.

So the phone you’re reading about is either better than Uma Thurman’s bottom or the worst use of plastic since Leslie Ash asked for a lip job.

Absolutely none the wiser, you will go to a shop and seek advice from the nine-year-old boy at the counter. ‘Which mobile is best for me?’ you’ll say in a language that marks you out as being English. A point he plainly doesn’t notice because, and I guarantee this, he will reply in a tongue you simply will not understand.

He will tell you how many ‘pixels’ the camera has. How many ‘gigs’ the music player contains. He will talk about ‘Waps’, ‘browsers’, ‘USB connectivity’, ‘Bluetooth’ and, unless you are quick with your fists, ‘Eee-zee finance deals’ that his company happen to be offering at the moment.

What I want is a mobile phone with a battery that lasts for more than six seconds.

This means no colour screen. A colour screen uses more electricity than the Pentagon. I do not want it to take photographs. I do not want it to play music. I do not want to receive emails. I want it to be a telephone.

No such device is offered. Can you believe that? Seriously. Not one single mobile-phone company in this vast and glorious world is offering a phone that is just that. A phone. A device that enables you to speak with someone a long way away.

Why? When I go to my local off-licence to buy a bottle of wine, I am not told that the bottle also contains a packet of Werther’s Originals, a typewriter, some insect repellent, the throttle cable from a 1974 Moto Guzzi and a million other things that will simply impair my enjoyment of the wine. I am very angry about this.

My previous telephone was made by Motorola (mission statement – Web. Email. Music. Blade thin. Experience it – along with a picture of a stupid-looking black man).

It was called a Razr (not so much a name as a spelling mistake) and it was great if you wanted to download pornographic images from cyberspace into your pocket.

But, unfortunately, if you tried to make a telephone call it would let you say ‘Hello’ and then the battery would be exhausted.

My wife suggested I buy a RaspBerry, but I dislike these phones with the passion I normally reserve for ramblers and John Prescott. This is because people who have RaspBerries do nothing all day but fiddle with them. Since my wife got hers all she has said to anyone is ‘Mmm?’

Nokia was high on my list as a replacement possibility. Its mission statement – ‘Connecting people’ – gave me hope that it might do just that. But no. It should be ‘Connecting people, photographing them and annoying them with a vast range of mindless ringtones’.

And it was the same story with LG – ‘Life’s good’, Samsung – ‘Where imagination becomes reality’, and Sony Ericsson, which claims to sell simple talk and text phones, but that’s like claiming the Bible is a book about a man.

It’s ridiculous. They’re making phones only for 12-year-old girls who want something cool, or businessmen who want something enormous so they look impressive in departure lounges. There’s nothing for normal people. Nothing with a screen you can read. Nothing for people whose fingers are finger-sized. And nothing for people who don’t do e-speak.

But, despite this, it’s important that you buy now because soon you will be able to use your phone to bet on the horses and watch television.

It will become a device of such mind-boggling complexity that you will be lost and its battery will be flat anyway.

I ended up buying the nicest looking. It’s called the V8 and, in the best traditions of phone reviewing, I’d give it one.

Sunday 16 September 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Biggles, you’re a crashing bore

Last weekend, a friend of mine was killed when his helicopter crashed in Scotland.

And then, just hours later, another friend was lucky to walk away when his chopper flipped onto its side while making an emergency landing in Essex.

Strangely, however, it’s not a fear of dying that puts me off the idea of private aviation. It’s the sure-fire knowledge that nothing in all the world is likely to be quite so boring and pointless.

The idea of piloting your own helicopter or light aircraft, among the clouds and the linnets, far above the jams and the pressure, is an appealing prospect for anyone who doesn’t know what to do with his money.

Better still, you might imagine that you could enliven your journey by swooping underneath low bridges, dive-bombing fields of cattle, looping the loop over friends’ houses and landing for the hell of it in beauty spots and bird sanctuaries.

Only last month I flew down the Okavango River in Botswana in a twin-engined light aircraft, following the waterway’s endless twists and turns just 6 feet up, at 150 mph. It was a joyous and brilliant thing to do. But, unfortunately, if you tried that at home, skimming the Don in Sheffield, for instance, a man with adenoids and a clipboard would come round and take your licence away.

In fact, the whole process of learning to fly, it seems to me, is designed specifically to weed out those who might want a plane or a helicopter for fun.

When you want a driving licence, all you have to do is demonstrate to a man in beige trousers that you can reverse round a corner. But when you want a licence to fly, you must demonstrate to the entire Civil Aviation Authority that you are prepared to spend several months with your nose in various text books on meteorology and aerodynamics. Plainly, it only wants pedants up there.

Then you have to spend more months learning how to use a radio. Why? I know already. You just stab away at various buttons until someone comes over the speaker. Then you tell him what you want.

Oh no, you don’t. You have to talk in a stupid code, saying ‘over’ when you’ve finished speaking for the moment and ‘out’ when you’ve finished altogether. Why? When I ring the plumber or the local Indian restaurant, I am able to convey the nature of my request perfectly well using English. So why, when I’m in a plane, do I have to talk in gibberish?

‘Hello, it’s Jeremy. Is it all right to land?’ is a much easier way of saying, ‘Weston Tower, this is Charlie Victor Tango on 8453.113 requesting a westerly approach to runway 27.’

But private pilots love all this sort of stuff. They love doing utterly pointless pre-flight checks, tapping dials and making sure that a bunch of goblins didn’t come in the night and chew through all the wires.

They never think: ‘I bought this plane to make my life more convenient but in the time I’ve spent checking it, I could have driven to Leeds.’ And nor do they ever think: ‘If these checks are so foolproof, how come that in the western United States, more small planes fall out of the sky than rain drops.’

No, really. In America, more than one person a day is killed in private-plane crashes. Light aircraft, over there, are known as ‘dentist killers’.

And try this for size. You don’t have to check your plane if you leave it alone for a few hours in the day. But you do if it’s been left alone at night. Why?

Do the plane goblins only come out when it’s dark? No. Will a comprehensive pre-flight check keep your plane in the air? No. The fact is that pilots love checking things. They love details.

I know this from glancing at the magazines they read. Boat magazines are full of boats skimming the waves with naked girls on the foredeck. But plane magazines are filled with lists of serial numbers and adverts for stuff that no one could conceivably ever want to buy. Quarter-scale cockpit models, for instance. And hideous pictures of Lancasters, at sunset, over Dresden.

Just last night, I spent some time in the company of two private-plane enthusiasts who never once talked about the speed of their machines, or the convenience, or the sheer, unbridled fun of skimming the treetops at 150 mph. Instead, they talked for hours about parking and refuelling. I bet they think the best bit of sex is unwrapping the condom.

Certainly, they seem to have a weird love for the medical, which they must take every 15 minutes. I can’t see why this is necessary because medicals cannot predict a heart attack, which is about the only thing that will affect someone’s ability to fly a plane.

And you know what. Hardly anyone with a plane ever uses it to go somewhere useful.

Instead, they take ‘the old kite’ from their flying-club headquarters to another flying-club headquarters where they have some cheese and Branston pickle. And then they fly home again. What’s that all about?

And while they’re flying around, spoiling the peace and quiet for everyone on the ground, they are having absolutely no fun whatsoever. This is because they are at 3,000 feet, where 100 mph feels like you’re standing still. And they can’t come down low for fear of the man with adenoids.

So, the recipe for flying, then. You drive to an airfield, check your plane for two hours, take off, sit still, speak gibberish into a radio, land, eat cheese and then sit still again till you’re home again. Repeat until one day you hear a loud bang…

Sunday 23 September 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

The kids are all right with lousy TV

Oh deary me. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth last week when the most extensive report ever compiled into the state of children’s television found that our kids are being brought up on a diet of American violence, schmaltz and pink fluffy nonsense.

The figures were terribly gloomy. Just nine years ago, 22 per cent of shows made by the BBC and ITVwere for kids. Now it’s just 4 per cent. And as a result, fewer than one in five children’s programmes on British television are actually made here.

This produced a torrent of angry missives to the nation’s blogs. Angry middle-aged people from all over Surrey and Sussex raged furiously, saying that children should be made to watch wholesome Enid Blyton stories. And that they must be broadcast mute and with subtitles in Latin.

Oh for heaven’s sake. Yes, Enid Blyton was tremendous 40 years ago. I particularly enjoyed the Famous Five series. Especially, although I did not know why at the time, when the smugglers took the tousle-haired Georgina to a cave and tied her up. But times change.

And children change too. My grandfather was born up a chimney and was only allowed out when it was time for him to be beaten. My father looked forward to the orange and piece of string he was given every year at Christmas. I spent most of my childhood watching television. And my kids pass the time doing anything but.

Apart from The Simpsons and Doctor Who, I cannot get them to watch it at all.

The rot set in during an episode of Planet Earth. David Attenborough had just shown us a charming little bird of paradise that danced about in a funny way and my youngest daughter was much taken with it. ‘I’d like to see that again,’ she said, happily.

But of course, this being television, she couldn’t. So on to the internet she went, where, hey presto, she found the clip on a BBC website. And then she found lots of other clips as well. Just the good bits with all the talking taken out.

This, to her, was perfect entertainment. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s how we watch porn films. You fast-forward through the bits where the plumber comes up the drive, and the lady in a nightie makes him a cup of tea, and slow it down when the action starts.

Now my daughter only really watches YouTube. There’s no plot. No Attenborough explaining stuff. No tedious instructions on how to make a space helmet out of a squeezy bottle. No adverts. Just loads of people falling off their bicycles and catching fire. And when she finds one she likes a lot, she watches it over and over again. For nothing.

How can television possibly compete with that? When I was eight, I watched Marine Boy because on a wet Thursday afternoon in October, there was absolutely nothing else to do.

Now kids have got YouTube, Xbox, MSN, MySpace, text, email, PSP, DVD and SkyPlus.

All the world’s ones and noughts have been harnessed for their edification and you’re not going to drag them back to the box with a bunch of jolly-what tally-ho Enid kids in big shorts getting into scrapes with smugglers. That was then, and it’s as gone as the ruffand tuberculosis.

Every week (starting tonight, incidentally) I make a television programme called Top Gear. But I never watch it. What I do is watch my children watching it. And it’s depressing. Because they only really perk up when someone falls in a lake. Whenever there’s talking, they start to unpick the stitching in the sofa. It isn’t that they have a limited attention span. They haven’t got one at all.

There is no solution to this. Forcing broadcasters to make shows for children is a complete waste of time. Because to make anything they want to see, it would have to be a non-stop orgy of fire, and people getting their heads stuck in lifts.

Fearne Cotton would have to be injured every five seconds and then at the end she’d have to explode. And they couldn’t fake it because that’s not allowed any more. She really would have to say: ‘That’s it for this week, kids, and now I’m going to blow up.’

The best thing I can suggest is not to worry. Ofcom says the vast majority of programmes for children are stupid American cartoons. And this is true. But they’re all shown on faraway distant satellite channels. And no one is watching them.

If you look behind the hysterical headlines, you’ll discover that the most-watched children’s programme on television is Evacuation, a British-made BBC reality show that gives kids a taste of what it was like to be an evacuee in the Second World War.

The top 20 is almost all British-made. You’ve got Blue Peter at two, Newsround at three, Jackanory at ten and so on. The old wholesome favourites are still there.

It’s just that in our day, they were watched by 5 million and today they are watched by about half a dozen. The rest? The missing hordes? Well, they’re doing something else, but we mustn’t worry because, honestly, the kids are all right.

My big problem is that broadcasters will react to the report by redoubling their efforts to win back an audience that simply isn’t there any more. This will mean there’ll be even fewer programmes for those who really do watch television. People who don’t have a PlayStation or an account with My Book. People who don’t go out on a Saturday night. We’re called adults.

The message, then, is simple. Sod the children. And bring back Minder.

Sunday 7 October 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

It’s a man’s game being a rugby ref

Unbelievable. What a match. Having proved to the Australians that they aren’t even any good at sport, we took on the French in the semi-finals… and won.

Or lost. It’s hard to say for sure because today’s Friday and the match hasn’t happened yet. But one thing’s certain: when it does I’ll be there, glued to the screen, with my boy and some beers, talking a load of absolute codswallop.

The problem is that I like rugby very much and I have many opinions about who should do what and when, but never having played I do not have the first clue what’s going on. I have no idea why the forwards play at the back and the backs at the front. And nor do I understand what’s meant by ‘the blind side’.

I can’t see why one side of the pitch is blind and the other is in full view. It all makes no sense.

And it makes even less sense when 140 tons of beef all lands in a big muddy lump on top of the ball and you have no idea what on earth is going on in there. Not until the referee blows his whistle, does some signing for the deaf and decides that someone at the bottom of the pile has let go too soon, or not at all, or come in from the side, or made the ball go forwards and that, as a result, another big muddy lump must be formed to get the game going again.

Despite all this, though, you have to love the collisions, the moments when someone with thighs made from oak and a chest the size of a tugboat smashes into a winger with such ferocity that you wonder how his skeleton hasn’t just disintegrated into a million pieces.

That and the fights, those cherished moments when a man-mountain smashes his fist, which is the size of a Christmas ham, into someone else’s face and all hell breaks loose. Brilliant.

And that brings us on to the referee who, instead of wading into the melee and showering the participants with red cards, simply asks everyone to calm down, pauses while the more badly injured have their noses and ears sewn back on, and then restarts the game.

Compare this attitude with the homosexual nonsense we see in football. Flick someone’s earlobe in a game of football and some jumped-up little gnome, sweating like a rapist, will mince over and order you off the pitch.

What’s more, a rugby referee is not so drunk on power that he won’t go to the video ref if he’s not sure. The commentators complain about this but I think it’s marvellous: the chap knows how important this game is to the players and he wants to make sure he gets the decision right.

Football refs are not allowed to consult technology even though, so far as I can see, they never ever make a correct decision. No, really. They don’t notice when the ball goes over the goal line, they send players off for breathing and do nothing when Ronaldo hurls himself to the ground and claws at his face as though he’s been showered with acid.

And you can’t argue with these power-crazed idiots because then you get sent off as well.

Do you know a football referee? Do you know anyone who knows a football referee? Have you ever even met anyone who sold a dog to someone who knows a football referee? No. And don’t you think that’s weird? I know an astronaut. I’ve even met someone who makes a living from sexing the Queen’s ducks. But I’ve never met a football ref.

Perhaps they’re bred on farms, like The Boys from Brazil. Either that or they all hide behind meaningless day jobs in PC World, emerging only on a Saturday like a troop of SuperNazis with their too-tight Hitler Youth shorts and their silly whistles.

It’s not just football either. The unseen referees in Formula One motor racing distinguish themselves every year by getting every single decision wrong. Only the other week a Polish driver was made to come and sit on the naughty step because he had the temerity to try to overtake a rival.

Then there’s Wimbledon. Halfa trillion pounds’ worth of electronic projections say the ball was out. But sometimes, and I often feel for the hell of it, the umpire calls it in.

And then docks the player points if he objects. But what’s the player supposed to do? He’s been on a court, solidly, since he was old enough to vomit. He’s never been out with a girl, he’s never had a beer, he’s never been allowed to masturbate. He has dedicated his whole life to this match and this moment and now some jumped-up power-crazed lunatic has denied him the point.

Of course he’s going to be angry. Of course he’s going to throw his racket on the floor.

If I were in charge of tennis, I would allow aggrieved players to actually punch the officials in certain circumstances.

Either that, or I would get them all down to Twickenham to see how it should be done.

They will note that rugby refs josh and joke with the players. They give off a sense that they’re pleased to be out there and – by constantly issuing instructions during rucks and mauls – that they are on hand to offer advice, as much as they are to enforce the rules.

I was going to say that they are the most important feature in rugby. But obviously that’s not true. The most important feature in the game, of course, is watching Australia lose.

Again.

Sunday 14 October 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Feed the world – eat blue whales

We begin this morning, I’m afraid, with an alarming revelation. Never mind the war, the rugby or gun crime. It has come to my attention that in the whole of the British Isles there isn’t a single eco-nutritionist.

The government’s Food Standards Agency employs about a million and a half working groups who tour the nation in cheap suits making sure that Bernard Matthews is not filling his turkeys with asbestos and that Sainsbury’s isn’t using polonium to make its bananas more bent.

But not one of them is thinking: ‘Wait a minute. If we build the 3 million new houses Gordon Brown has promised by 2020, where will we grow all the stuff needed to feed the people who live in them?’

And worse. Nobody is wondering where we might get the water. Not for our lawns and our lavatories but for the crops, the cows and the piggy-wigs. Like I said, this is an alarming problem.

Already the Atlantic has fewer cod in it than Elton John’s bath, so we are having to import fish fingers from China. And you may think this is fine. Your underpants come from the Far East, and your mobile phone, so why should we not import our watercress and beef from those industrious little yellow fellows on the banks of the Yangtze?

I’ll tell you why. Because China’s population is growing too, and soon they won’t be able to send us their fish fingers because they will have been scoffed before they get to the docks.

It is a fact that the world can just about feed 6.5 billion people. But it will not be able to feed 7 billion or 8 billion. And certainly not if, as the lunatic Al Gore suggests, Canada stops growing food and turns over its prairies to the production of biodiesel.

Maybe man is causing the world to warm, but we’ll never know because, frankly, we will all have starved to death long before anyone gets the chance to find out.

Obviously, one solution is to burn the entire Amazon rainforest and turn this rich and fertile place into the world’s pantry. But, unfortunately, this is not possible because Sting will turn up on a chat show with some pygmy who’s sewn a saucer into his bottom lip, arguing that the world’s ‘indigenous tribes’ are suffering because of the West’s greed.

And never mind that the pygmy is wearing a Manchester United football shirt.

Another solution is that we all become, with immediate effect, vegetarians. It takes 1,790 litres of water to grow 1 kilo of wheat. But 9,680 litres to produce 1 kilo of cow. Sadly, however, this doesn’t work for people like me who only really enjoy eating something if it once had a face.

I fear, too, that if we all became vegetablists, the world would smell of halitosis and we’d all start to vote Liberal Democrat. Furthermore, all the veg-heads I know are sickly and grey and unable to climb a flight of stairs without fainting.

It all looks bleak. But don’t worry, because I have a suggestion that I worked out this morning.

At the moment, we eat only a very small number of things. Cows. Pigs. Potatoes. Lettuce. And that’s about it. So what I propose is that we spice up our lives with a bit of variety.

David Attenborough is forever finding unusual creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean. He tells us how they can see down there in the murky depths and how they mate. He tells us where they live, how they raise their young and how they use their tentacles to find prey. But he never tells us the most important thing: what they taste like.

It’s the same story with Monty Don. Each week, he crops up on Gardeners’ World and explains how lupins form the perfect backdrop to any rockery. Yes. Fine. But can you put them on toast?

I’m looking at my garden now and wondering. I know I can’t eat the yew hedge because it will bounce off my diaphragm and come right back out again. But what about the lawn? Would that be delicious and nutritious? And, gulp, what about Kristin Scott Donkey, who died recently?

Should I have given her poor body to the hunt, or should I have garnished it with some lupins and a sea horse and had her for supper?

Why not? Over the years I have eaten dog, snake, crocodile, guillemot, whale, puffin and a scorpion. They all tasted like chicken, so it’s a fair bet donkeys would too. Or what about camels, which, as we all know, need very little water?

This brings me on to the final solution. There are many people who are greatly concerned for the plight of endangered species such as the tiger, the panda and the blue whale. They work very hard doing charity marathons in zany T-shirts to help keep these poor creatures teetering on the right side of extinction.

So how’s this for a plan? We start eating them. I believe that if enough people demanded blue whale for supper, garnished with the ears of a panda and the left wing of a juicy great bustard, it wouldn’t take very long for big business to move in.

When there’s a quid to be made, pandas will be having babies with the regularity of hens and you won’t be able to go to the shops for all the leopards you’ll meet on the way.

It’s either this or, I’m afraid, we are going to have to start eating each other.

If that happens, bagsy I get John Prescott.

Sunday 21 October 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

It’s lies that make TV interesting

There has been a great deal of brouhaha in the newspapers recently about what is real on television and what is not. The Daily Mail in particular is very keen that the BBC is above board, honest and fair. And doesn’t spend its days making up hysterical stories that happened only in the imagination of the reporter…

Of course, some of the criticism is fair. You cannot ask people to vote in a telephone poll if you know full well the lines are closed. And you cannot show film of the Queen exploding when she has done no such thing.

Although, amazingly, it turns out you can make a global-warming film that contains nine proven factual inaccuracies. And they’ll give you a Nobel peace prize.

Still, we’ve now reached a point of such hysteria that people are poking their noses into every little corner of the television world and finding out that when Gordon Ramsay emerged from the sea with some fish on the end of his spear gun he hadn’t actually caught them himself. Oh Jesus, no.

And worse, it now transpires that Alan Yentob may not have been in the room when some dreary old Czech playwright was being interviewed. Seriously. Never mind the bush fires and the Iranian sanctions. Yentob’s ‘noddies’ may have been filmed afterwards.

The problem is that the people who get arsey about this kind of thing don’t have a clue how television works.

Do you really think Gordon’s production company has the money to stand around while he flounders about in the oggin, shooting bits of seabed near to where a fish had been swimming moments earlier? No. Exactly. So why not just pretend?

Then there’s Alan. Let’s say the dreary old Czech rambled on about the meaning of Ibsen for two hours. That needs to be cut down because the programme is only an hour long. And how do you cover the edit points? Simple. At some later stage, you film the interviewer pretending to be interested in what the man is saying, even though he’s gone home. And then you use these shots to plaster over the joins.

There is no one in television who has not done this. Although what I like to do instead of nodding and looking earnest is yawn. It drives the director mad.

There’s more. On Top Gear I whiz about for the camera until I have a feel for the car. Then I disappear into a hut for an hour or so to corral my thoughts into a workable script. And how do we occupy the expensive film crew while I’m doing that? Stand them down? Or put a researcher in the car and have him slither about until I’m ready to come back?

Yes, in the film you watch, some of the shots feature a car not being driven by me. But ask yourself a question: does it matter?

This is the most important question. In Japan recently, TV producers changed the subtitles to make foreign interviewees say something they were not saying. And because this was a programme about what gives Tojo cancer, plainly that does matter. But most of the scandals you’ve read about recently do not.

However, because of the furore over Gordon’s fish and Ant’s telephone and Alan’s noddies, we have a serious problem. No one believes anything they ever see on television any more. No one believes we were attacked by a gang of crazies in an Alabama petrol station. No one believes we really did go across the Channel in a pick-up truck. No one believes we went to the North Pole. They spend their whole time looking for the smoke and mirrors.

And now there’s an even bigger consequence. Television producers have become so paranoid about making sure that every little thing is real that it’s beginning to have an effect on what we watch.

Last week there was a programme on BBC2 called The Truth About Property. And at one point the presenter, a keen young chap in a short-sleeved shirt, explained that he was on his way to look at the house where he grew up.

In a piece to camera, he said that he had lived there from the age of five and that he hadn’t been back since he was 18. It would, he said, be a trip down memory lane.

Fine. In the olden days, a researcher would have called at the house several weeks earlier. Arrangements would have been made with the owners to let the crew in and show the presenter his old bedroom. He would then get all teary-eyed and everything would be lovely.

Not any more. He arrived at the house, rang the bell, waited a while and then said to the camera: ‘No one is in.’

Is that what you want? Lots of foreplay and a withered ending? Because if you want total transparency from every single show, that’s what you’re going to get.

You’re going to have midgets sticking their heads out of their Dalek suits saying: ‘Hey, kids. It’s not a ray gun. It’s a sink plunger.’ You’re going to have the people on Blue Peter saying: ‘Here’s one a researcher made earlier.’ And David Attenborough explaining that meerkats don’t really make that cute little snuffling noise. The film was shot mute and all the effects were added on in a lab in Bristol by a man in a jumper.

And imagine if this sort of thing were to spread to the Daily Mail. You’d have a paper full of stories saying that Princess Diana died in an accident, that you won’t get breast cancer if you eat cornflakes, and that immigrants will not cause your house to be valueless.

Sunday 28 October 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

A Met Office severe bossiness warning

We’re told that a recession is coming. Apparently, it’s got something to do with the Chinese, who have, in a complex way, affected America’s sub-prime. Inflation here will spiral out of control, millions will find themselves on the dole and thousands of immigrants will be eaten by rats.

Good. Because this will give the government something to do. And maybe it will then stop sitting around all day finding new ways to boss us around.

Already, in the period of Great Boredom, they’ve stopped us smoking, killing foxes, reversing without a banksman, playing conkers, enjoying bonfire night and taking toothpaste on an aeroplane.

And now they are thinking of banning patio heaters, doing 30, and wearing hooded tops. Soon, it will be illegal to not be George Monbiot.

The latest wheeze comes from the Highways Agency, which is ‘concerned’ that over half of those interviewed in a recent survey would carry on with a journey, regardless of a severe-weather warning.

Well, of course we would, you non-conker-playing, health-and-safety-obsessed, hard-hatted, high-visibility clowns. Because, and I want to make this absolutely clear, your idea of severe weather is very far removed from anyone who’s got an IQ in double figures.

You may have noticed these days that every single weather forecast tells us the Met Office has issued a severe-weather warning.

Two weeks ago they said the whole of East Anglia was to be engulfed by a flood so massive and so destructive that billions would die in screaming agony. Last week they were banging on about fog so dense and impenetrable that we’d all be eaten by werewolves we never saw coming.

I see what’s going on here. The weather people are cross because they have to follow the news, which is full of interesting stuff like murder and war, and all they’ve got to talk about is drizzle and clouds in the west by mid-morning. So they try to spice things up a bit, to make their job look a bit more interesting.

We can all see it’s a sham. British severe weather is like British severe poverty, a fairly limp-wristed affair when placed in a global context. Northern Norway has severe weather. Oklahoma, in the tornado season, has severe weather. And a Cuban has every right to say ‘Wow, that was severe’ after a category-five hurricane has just blown his house into the middle of Houston. But in Barnsley? No.

When you’ve seen the flooding in Bangladesh during the monsoon, you’ll realise how idiotic Gordon Brown looked in Tewkesbury earlier this year, comforting those whose DFS sofas had been ruined. And when you’ve experienced an Icelandic white-out, you will cry with laughter when some hapless reporter in wellies comes on the rolling news channel to say Britain is locked in ice chaos. It’s all complete claptrap.

I am 47 years old and I do not ever remember weather so severe that I could not go out. The so-called hurricane of 1987 was so pathetic it passed right over my house and I never even woke up. And the snowstorms of my youth were never so bad that we couldn’t drive 20 miles to find a tobogganing hill.

Undeterred by the bothersome notion of facts, however, the Highways Agency has enlisted the help of the Met Office which, spurred on by the chance for a bit of bossiness, agrees that we should stay at home whenever it’s windy, and possibly move to the cellar with some soup until the all-clear is sounded.

Only then they get themselves in a bit of a pickle because arguing that we’re in for a cold winter doesn’t sit well with their directive to big up climate change.

So they say we mustn’t be lulled into a false sense of security by global warming because cold snaps are still possible.

How cold exactly? Minus 4? Minus 8? The coldest temperature ever recorded in Britain was minus 27.2°C and I’ll admit this is far too nippy for, say, swimming. But when I went to the North Pole earlier this year, it went to minus 58°C, and even though I was in a tent, I didn’t even slightly die.

As humans we can cope. We have central heating, and patio heaters that will keep us warm when we go outside for a cigarette. And at the other end of the scale, last year I worked in Death Valley for 10 days where it rarely dropped below no°F (43°C). And that was fine too. I even got a suntan, which, amazingly, failed to give me cancer.

The trouble is, of course, that the Highways Agency nitwits don’t really care about reality. What they care about is that motorists are ignoring weather warnings from the Met Office. And that, in bossy Britain, won’t do.

So they’ve come up with a new system of red and amber alerts that will be broadcast over the radio and flashed up on motorway gantries warning drivers of severe weather ahead.

And, of course, we will ignore these too because we know that unless we’ve accidentally driven to Archangel the severe weather in question will be as frightening as an ageing Labrador.

Which means a law will be necessary that forces us to stay at home when the Met Office has decided it will be windy.

I promise you this. It is a cast-iron guarantee. Unless we get a recession to occupy the minds of those in charge, they will impose legislation. And when they do, the profitability of your business, the wealth of the nation and the education of your children will depend entirely on the whim of Michael Fish.

Sunday 18 November 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Make my day, sir, shoot a hoodie

Almost every day a politician comes onto the news and tells us all that Britain’s town centres are being overrun by teenage gangs who drink vast quantities of cider and then run about all night stabbing passers-by. While the event is videoed on mobile phones for the edification of YouTube viewers.

It all sounds frightful, but frankly they could be talking about events on the moons of Jupiter because, happily, I live in Chipping Norton, where a lost kitten is front-page news. Of course, there are teenagers here, and some of them have hoodies, but mostly they are called Araminta and Harry, and I’ve never once got the feeling they want to plunge a kitchen knife into my heart.

It’s the same story in Notting Hill, where I spend the working week. While dining in restaurants such as E&O, I have no real sense that outside the window gangs of 14-year-olds are lurking in the shadows, eager to punch me in the face for a moment’s glory on the internet.

Last week, however, I had to go to Milton Keynes. It was my youngest daughter’s birthday and she wanted to spend the afternoon at the town’s snow dome. Directions were sent, and then more, with even greater detail about how this indoor Alp might be found. But none of this was really necessary, because you just head for the largest building ever created by man.

It’s a brilliant place, all full of snow and vending machines offering energy drinks. But sadly, because of Mr Blair’s smoking ban, you have to go outside for a cigarette, which puts you slap-bang in one of the happy-slapping town centres the politicians keep talking about.

I wasn’t even remotely bothered when the swarm of children first approached. I figured they were fans of Top Gear and wanted to know about Richard Hammond’s head. But no. What they wanted to know most of all was if I had any security.

I asked them politely to leave me alone. I walked away. I even walked away a bit more. But they kept coming. And so, figuring that attack was probably the best form of defence, I grabbed the ringleader by his hoodie, lifted him off the ground and explained, firmly, that it’d be best if he went back to his tenement.

He declined. They all did. In fact, they all reached for their mobile phones and began to take pictures of the altercation. And that put me in a tricky spot…

I have reached the age where I am no longer able to tell how old a child is. The boy I was holding could have been 18. Or he could have been eight. And if he did turn out to be eight, I figured the photographs could look a bit like bullying.

So, weirdly, I was standing there holding this boy by the scruff of his neck, and instead of worrying about being stabbed I was actually thinking: ‘Jesus, I’m going to get done for assault if I’m not careful.’

I therefore put him down, and in a flurry of swearing and hand gestures involving various fingers he was gone. Leaving the entire nation with a very serious problem.

It’s this. Plainly, this boy’s parents are useless, allowing him to be out and about on the streets, harassing passers-by at will. Think about it. Every single time one of these children is found stabbed or shot, his mum and stepdad always tell the papers he was a ‘good lad’. And that he ‘didn’t deserve to die’.

And nobody ever says: ‘Well, if he was such a frigging angel, what was he doing on a derelict building site at four in the morning, you halfwits?’ He didn’t deserve to die, for sure, but you do, for having the parenting skills of a Welsh dresser.

There’s an equally big problem at school. Children, as far as I can see, are at liberty to do just about anything to one another at school because there is absolutely nothing the teacher can do. Not without being hauled out of the classroom by some frizzy-haired human-rights lawyer, sacked and sent to prison.

The police? Oh come on. They are far too busy filling in health and safety forms and processing speeding tickets to be bothered with every single gang of teenage ruffians. Which means that every single gang of teenage ruffians is completely free to go out and do whatever it pleases.

And we – the normal people who see town centres as somewhere to go to buy takeaway food or organise a loan for a new house – can’t do anything either because a) the politicians keep telling us all these kids are tooled up like special-forces hitmen, and b) if we stand up for ourselves we will spend the next 40 years in the Scrubs fighting off the unwelcome advances of Pinkski, the Albanian nonce.

Happily, I think I have a solution. Nothing can be done about the parents because they are too thick. It’d be like trying to train a hedgehog to smoke a pipe. We can’t rely on the police either – not without unpicking every single thing done by new Labour in the past 10 years.

And, I’m sorry, but even if the law is changed so that adults are allowed to defend themselves, you’d think twice about poking a boy in the eye or slamming his head in a car door if you thought his friends had machetes down their trouser legs.

The only place where this issue can be tackled, then, is at school. So you fit airport-style metal detectors at the doors to ensure no pupil is packing heat, you put all the troublemakers in one class and you give the teacher in charge immunity from criminal charges. And a sub-machine gun.

Sunday 2 December 2007

For Crying Out Loud!

Enough, I’m gonna torch my antiques

According to the Daily Express, falling house prices have now caused house prices to fall. But if I were you, I’d stop worrying about the value of your bricks and mortar and start addressing the value of your furniture.

I do not know why Britain developed a fondness for buying antiques. Perhaps it was the day, at some point in 1952, when people began to think of the past as a better place than the present. Or maybe it’s because we think a Georgian dining table will hold its value well whereas something that came flat-packed in cellophane from Sweden will be worthless from the moment you take it out of the box.

Especially if you choose to make it yourself. Because it will be all covered in arterial splashback.

Giving your children an elegant Victorian hatstand means something. Giving them a red leather button-backed sofa that you bought from DFS in the sales 30 years earlier will just make them angry.

Certainly, I’ve always felt this way, which is why my house is full of ancient pieces I’ve picked up at antiques markets and little hidden-away shops over the years. However, the other day a man came round to value my collection for insurance purposes and it seems that a large, all-consuming fire would leave me out of pocket to the tune of £4.50.

He mooched from room to room, examining the various writing desks, grandfather clocks and oak linen chests, and not a single thing aroused even the slightest bit of interest. I live, it seems, in nothing more than a woodworm’s larder.

Here’s the problem. When you go into an antiques shop, the charming man with the wild white hair, the waistcoat and the eccentric spectacles looks like he knows his onions.

But secretly, deep down, you think that there have been 17 million furniture makers over the years and that no matter how wise the dealer looks, occasionally he’s going to make a mistake. And accidentally sell you the Ark of the Covenant for £3 50.