In Praise of the Printed Page, Newspapers

Newspapers, it is reported on teevee, on the wireless and online, are in decline.

Newspapers have been in decline for years, in terms of quality there has been a shift from journalism to comment.  Newspapers had something of a reputation of never letting the facts get in the way of a story, but now it is a case of never letting any facts get in the way of an opinion.  Comment used to be serious writers writing about what they knew, then moved to essentially being blogs that somebody could be bothered to print out, and are now repackaged extended tweets.

There has also been a decline in quantity, declining budgets, declining circulation.  Most importantly of all, a decline in the size of the newspapers themselves.

Broadsheets used to have gravitas.  Sure, they didn’t always print the truth, and maybe the facts weren’t always right, and there may have been libels and damaging speculation, but the page was fifty inches wide and who can argue with a headline that is rendered in Time New Roman 400 point?  No matter what it says.

The introduction of the tabloid newspaper heralded a new age, with the printed page becoming more accessible to the working man, who wanted to read the news in a way that spoke to him in his own language, about issues that mattered to him, and had a picture of a dolly bird with her top off.  Serious journalism still mattered in the tabloids, yes, there were pictures of topless women, but you got their name, age and learned that they enjoyed pottery in their spare time.  Gone now is such journalistic rigor with some hack just getting their ‘facts’ about Jane, 21 from Stevenage off Wikipedia.

From boardsheet to tabloid to mobile telephone screen, the news has gotten smaller.  Which is a shame, because issues like environmental problems, economic crisis and challenges to our security and democracy remain as big as ever.

There is, still, arguably, a place for newspapers in our culture.  That place is on line.

Kidding.  There is something about an actual physical newspaper that remains important.  What exactly that is, I’m not entirely sure, I think it has something to do with the crossword and other puzzles but I’m sure it must be important to all those who read the ‘Metro’, a newspaper that is given away for free at train stations and, on examination of the content, can be described as ‘overpriced’.

The Metro is owned by a rich proprietor.  This at least is a tradition that has endured in the newspaper industry when others have not.  If you are a normal human being with forthright views that you think others should know, you set up a blog that nobody reads.  If you have immense wealth and want to influence society, you either train your private army in an undersea volcano base, or buy a newspaper and exert subtle influence over first the editorial policy and then in turn over the population.  Remember, it’s not fake news if it’s your news, and if you are reporting what people want to know, where’s the harm, even if the news you print is not in total alignment with the facts?

The weekend though is when newspapers come into their own.  That’s when the majority of the newspaper can be given over to sections that are not already out of date by the time they are printed, like teevee listings.  It’s also the time when the review sections are published, and authors who had their last novel trashed by a reviewer can exact terrible revenge by describing the new work of their nemesis as ‘insipid’.  The same review can be recycled, not unlike the newspaper’s destiny, in the restaurant section where any restaurant in the whole of London can expect a dull rave review or a terribly witty crap one.  Places to eat outside London may be found in the supplement about rural gastropubs.

I gave up on reading the weekend newspaper some time ago, when it became like the opposite of a guided meditation.  The weekend is too short for fits of rage, except when reading the Telegraph, when it’s a perfectly normal, healthy reaction.

Welcome to Earth, Population: growing!

When we think about threats to the environment, obvious examples include meteors, zombies, alien invasions or giant mutated swarms of stuff.  ‘Threats to the environment’ you understand, for most people, mean ‘threats to my way of living’ or more precisely ‘threats to my comfy lifestyle’.

Plastic, since the broadcast of a particular episode of ‘Blue Planet II’ is now a threat to the environment.  This is not new, plastic products, or more precisely the irresponsible use and disposal of plastic products, have been a threat to the environment since the first Cola bottle ended up in a hedge rather than a bin.  What was under threat was guilt-free cosy Sunday night television viewing.

Arguably, overpopulation is an environmental threat.  In this case ‘environmental threat’ means both an actual threat to the environment (trees, clouds, otters) and to cosy lifestyles.  Overpopulation means too many people relying on too few resources, as used to happen back in the day when the ‘must have Christmas toy’ was made of plastic rather than being a string of ones and zeros that could be downloaded on December 25.  This led to three inevitable results; a 90 second bit on the news about Cabbage Patch Dolls that informed hitherto blissfully ignorant parents that they were failures because they were condemning their child to a substandard Christmas; an ungrateful child on Christmas Morning, and hammer fights in the aisles Toys R Us.

There have been warnings about global overpopulation, but as ‘Make Room! Make Room!’ was a genre novel and the resulting movie ‘Soylent Green’ was a sci-fi movie, nobody paid much attention.

Moreover, overpopulation is subjective.  Fears of overpopulation played a part in the arguments surrounding the ill-fated 2016 Brexit referendum, when the argument was made that Great Britain was a small island and could not bear the influx of filthy foreigners coming here to clutter up our streets by taking selfies of themselves next to landmarks.  Anyone who has had to try and force themselves onto any form of public transport at a reasonable hour will also have their own thoughts on overpopulation, in particular how the battle for resources has not started with oil or water as predicted, but apparently with deodorant.

There are also places where it would be hard to argue that overpopulation is a threat, such as Exmoor, or behind the bar at All Bar One.

Overpopulation, and what to do about it, remains a popular fictional theme, from the TV programme ‘Utopia’ where the critical acclaim of the programme went unchallenged because nobody other than critics actually watched it, to ‘Avengers Infinity War’ where critical acclaim met viewer opinion that maybe those fuckers at Marvel should have put ‘Pt I’ on the title.

For much of the later part of the 20^th Century, overpopulation was not a widespread concern.  This was because global conflict was.

Attempts to halt overpopulation, in fiction anyway, usually involve megalomaniac billionaires plotting genocide, as in ‘Moonraker’, the Bond movie.

The reality, of course, would be very different.  If a billionaire industrialist were to try and control population growth, there are far more subtle and effective ways to do so than trying to kill off large numbers of people, the sort of activity that always leaves one vulnerable to the actions of a lone individual with a laser in his watch.

You could, for instance, invent an alcohol-free beer that did not taste completely disgusting.  This would mean that single people would not get hammered and have unprotected sex.

You could invent the ‘box set’, meaning that humans of breeding age would remain at home instead of socialising.

Invent Netflix, same thing.

You could invent magazines for women that give women unrealistic expectations of body image, but at the same time also publish magazines that show how awful the private lives of celebrity women are, meaning that the sort of women who are influenced by that sort of thing don’t think they are attractive enough to hook up with blokes, but also don’t have such low self-esteem that they will shag the first bloke that shows an interest in them.

Or, and this is probably ridiculous, you could popularise fantasy literature, ensuring the virginity of millions.

Whatever happened to CELEBDAQ?

Back in the days when you had to plug your computer into your telephone line in order to download pornography, sorry, in order to go online, the BBC had a website called CELEBDAQ.  It was fabulous, but it’s probably a good thing that this site no longer exists, for the reasons explained below.

CELEBDAQ was, as the name implies, a trading game.  It was sort of a combination of Fantasy Football and Hello! magazine.  So it was a fantasy trading game, but unlike a game of trading footballers so that you could demonstrate that you were just as fucking clueless as any other manager in the Premiership about squad selection, or fantasy share dealing where you could pretend to be the sort of person who in their day job in the City meddled with the economies of developing countries and fucked them up, then at the weekend continued to spread social ill by supporting the drugs trade and so, generally, being the sort of person Dickens tried to warn us about, you traded in how famous a particular celebrity was that week.

Celebrity fame fluctuated, so if somebody had a film premier coming out, they would get more time in the media and their profile would rise and they would become more valuable as a celebrity.  However, as their fame rose, so their share price did, so if you knew that a blue chip famous person like Tom Hanks was going to be in London promoting his new film, he’s a sound investment for that week but you could only buy a few shares.

Much, much better to go to the ‘B’ listers or, as they were also known, those who appeared on television.

As far as I am aware, ‘personalities’ were not listed.

It was tremendous fun.  You had to register, all the cash was virtual and every week there was a star trader award.

Obviously, it had to end.

The trouble with celebrities is that they have, in recent years, traded fame for infamy.  Jimmy Saville got a lot of press coverage after he died, because it turned out that more than just looking like a nonce, he was a nonce.  Who knew?  Apparently, everyone knew.  People in the industry new and, in front rooms up and down the country when the news broke people who had seen him on telly years ago knew, or at least said ‘I fucking knew it’ under their breath.  Then Operation Yewtree got underway, and might as well have been titled Operation Yewboat because it sank the careers of quite a few telly personalities without trace.

That, as we now know, was just the tip of the shitberg.  Who would have imagined that greasy fucktards would have used their positions of power and influence to take advantage of vulnerable young people.  I mean, really, who knew?

We all know that nonces look like nonces.  We all now also know that any bloke with a fat BMI who is pictured with his arm around a young woman who looks like she is wishing that teleportation were a thing is what the newspapers term a ‘predator’.  And not something sleek that lives on the veldt, or even something with a cool shoulder mounted laser canon that hunts Arnie in the jungle, no, the sort of predator that disguises its distinctive scent of sweat and fat with money and lawyers.

Bluntly, it is no fun trading celebrities when they might make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Celebrities are, by and large, individuals who have used their talent in a way that has resulted in public notoriety in a good way.

The democratisation of the media has meant that anyone with the means to do so can upload a media clip of themselves to a media platform, and other folk can watch it and leave snarky comments.  What this has proved is that although the number of people who think they have a talent is apparently limitless, the pool of really talented people remains finite.

So maybe CELEBDAQ deserves a comeback after all, because of the listing, a bona fide list of who is, and who is not, a celebrity.  Youtubers need not apply.

The snarking of the Hunt

The internet has given us many things, the ability to call up as if by magic images of cats in humorous situations being just one of them.  It’s also the Gateway to Porn.  Back in the day, the gateway to porn was a doorway, either to a local newsagent where, you know, your mum and dad got their paper and ciggies and the owner knew you and would rather laugh his fat arse off (newsagents always used to be fat, when did that change?) telling them that you had tried, and failed, to buy a copy of ‘Razzle’ (very much the tabloid of porn mags) than have your repeat custom, or the dark door of a ‘private shop’ selling exotic foreign porn which was essentially continental naked women less hairy or more hairy than the domestic variety.

Before the wide availability of the internet, if you were a (manic) minor, your opportunities for obtaining porn were limited to the close surveillance of the hedgerow.  It may be something of a cliché but honest to God, back in the day porn used to appear in hedgerows the way Costa cups do today.  Presumably the same drivers applied; an adult disposed of something messy unthinkingly by tossing it in a hedge.  I mean the mag.

One of these days Naturewatch will do a piece on HedgePorn (although Kate Humble’s emails back to me on the subject so far have been dismissive bordering on rude), but until then, you’ll have to take my word for it.  Before the internet and Channel 4’s red triangle, you found your porn in hedges.

Of course, there was always ‘soft porn’.

Today, if you say ‘Catalogue’ to somebody, they may, if you are talking to the right sort of person, respond with reference to the ‘Laminated Book Of Dreams’, the Argos catalogue.  This was basically aspiration porn for the whole family; dad could look at the tech, mum could look at the [reference removed because of the whole metoo thing] and the kids could look at Sindy and other forms of moulded plastic that were just so cool.

Other catalogues used to be available.  Rather than being paper shops, these were mail order catalogues where you saw stuff and ordered it, and could pay by instalments.  Like a benign Wonga.

‘Stuff’ includes clothing.  Includes underwear.

Mention ‘Kays Catalogue’ to any bloke of a certain age and they will smile knowingly not at memories of He-Mans castle, but at the underwear section of the catalogue that, in the absence of Hedge Porn, was erotic to the point of emission.

Top Tip: always keep your ‘free’ hand clamped over the spine of the catalogue, or on subsequent legitimate use it might naturally flop open at a particular page.  My mate told me.

The peruse and purchase catalogue is something of a lost, possibly lamented (but not laminated), marvel.

Catalogues have been used to sell many items.  The fabulous ‘Maplin’ catalogue for electronics naturally, but my understanding is that there are other catalogues offering other products.  All sorts of stuff.

So, Jeremy Hunt got into trouble with the media, and presumably Mrs Hunt, because he forgot where his wife was from.  Japan, or China.  Easily confused.  If you are an arsehole.

It could be worse.

Given the current enmity between the previously warring nations and the unresolved ‘comfort women’ issue, the only way it could be worse if by introducing your York born and raised wife as ‘A proud Lancastrian”.  That final ‘an’ syllable would be silent as the kick to the bollocks would put your voice beyond the hearing of humans.

It’s just so awful.  Putting aside the implied stupidity and casual racism, it suggests that Jeremy Hunt is actually on a mission to make everyone in the world, even his wife, angry with him.  This is a man who already has everyone in the NHS, who look after with a smile tramps that assault them, Googling ‘Novochock’.  But to get the nationality of the Little Missus wrong?  Bad form old boy.

I am not suggesting for a moment that prospective MP J Hunt flipped to page 43 of ‘Asianish Mail Order Brides’ and made a hasty selection.

Your country needs you, or at least your data

They have stolen your data?  Boo hoo.  Who knew?

Everyone knew.

If you thought your data was ever secure, then you probably live off grid, meaning you have a cabin in Montana or a zero hours contract in Eastleigh, either way, you eat roadkill, even if you do buy it from a shop called ‘Tennassee Fried Chicken’, and you find innovative ways to heat your home, such as chopping your own firewood or buying cloned keycards from a bloke in the pub.

If you are smart enough to read to the end of any privacy agreement, ever, related to the use of a free service remotely connected to anything featuring a silicone chip, then you are smart enough to stop reading two thirds of the way down, hit ‘decline’ and read a book instead.  Not on a Kindle.

If however, like billions of others, you see the words ‘yadda yadda yadda’ immediately after reading the word ‘heretofore’ and skip straight to pressing the button that states ‘I agree, I want to join a social network where I can view pictures of my ex, just to see how happy they are with their perfect home, and perfect kids and Jesus is that a Lexus they’re driving?’ then you should know that, at the very, very best, the senior leadership of North Korea are in an underground bunker, watching vast screens with your social media feed on it, laughing themselves stupid at your ongoing Twitter feud with ‘StarWarsH8ter’, in actuality a NK Bot run on a ZX Spectrum, 16k, which is still getting more likes and retweets than you.

I remember the first time I went online.  We plugged an external modem into the PC, loaded up Pipex Dial from a floppy, opened up the browser and…nothing, we had no idea what to do next until one of the group suggested ‘type www.playboy.com into that box there’.

The next thing that was said was ‘You realise GCHQ know we’re doing this’.  Nervous laughter.

But that was about right.  There has always been that awareness that, unlike traditional secure methods of communication such as purchasing porn from an out-of-town newsagents where the only reason you would bump into anyone you knew is that they were there buying porn too, or writing a letter, electronic communication has always been open to monitoring.

Back when newsgroups were a thing, there were essentially two types of newsgroup.  The first discussed kinky sex, the other discussed ‘Star Trek’.  I never worked out which had the higher quotient of virgins posting, but I firmly believe that whoever was in charge of internet monitoring back in the day is the world expert on two things, how to turn the spare room into a sex dungeon on a budget, and the definitive answer to just who the best Star Trek captain was.

Just what data is it on Facebook that people are so worried about being used?  I could understand it if it was something important, private and personal, like a picture of your genitalia or your browsing history, but apparently it’s just some fuckwit quiz outcome, basically the sort of thing that used to be on the back page of Cosmo (If you answered mostly A you are slightly slutty and think toddlers should be allowed to carry guns) or Jackie (If you answered mostly C then you and David Cassidy would enjoy smooching, and you detest free trade agreements).

Given that we have all basically made Mark Zuckerberg a Bond villain, I reckon the guy shows tremendous restraint.  He is the absolute ruler of a digital domain with over two billion citizens.  Imagine if you annoy him, your Facebook status could change from ‘Single but hopeful J’ to ‘I fuck babboons’.  And that’s best case scenario.  This is a guy who could change your status to ‘I like to get fucked by baboons.  I paint my ass red and let them go to town on me.  Then I don’t call them back.  Who’s the animal now?’.

You are, you ape fucking freak.

Essentially, don’t commit anything to a string of ones and zeros that you would not be happy to see stapled to a lamppost in your neighbourhood.

Jumping the snark

Some years ago, I wrote on G&P of my decision to stop reading ‘The Guardian’ newspaper.  This was, for the avoidance of doubt, the newspaper formally known as ‘The Manchester Guardian’, a publication beloved of liberals, lefties, vegetarians and the sort of people who criticise your lifestyle choices as if you were Cruella DeVille rather than a bloke in a shop contemplating the purchase of a pot noodle.  I read The Guardian back in the day because, before the launch of iPlayer, Netflix  and digital downloads for programmes like ‘Game of Thrones’ meant all we had to do to enjoy ourselves was watch teevee, I enjoyed its arts coverage and being informed about what books I should, and would fail to, read, what moving and improving foreign language films I would decide to see the latest instalment of the ‘Transformers’ franchise instead of, and particularly what new video games were coming out.  The newspaper was also the only thing in print with anything like a social conscience.

Something, however, changed for the worse.  Always somewhat self centered, the tone of the newspaper became smug and it was soon spouting claptrap in a manner that defied challenge in the same way the right wing tabloids, or a mate who has given up drinking and insists on joining you in the pub straight from the squash court with racquets protruding from a kit bag and opinions on the benefits of sobriety protruding from his gob instead of joining in conventional discussion in the bloke’s salon such as naming all the principal characters in ‘Bergerac’.

And so I stopped reading it, preferring instead to get my news from the BBC website, and Twitter.

The exception is Saturday when, because the newspaper, sports business and lifestyle sections come with the only teevee guide you can rely on not to have a picture of Danny Dyer gurning like a simpleton passing a satisfying stool gracing the front cover, is the teevee guide and so newspaper of choice.

Selective reading ensures incredulity and outrage at the breakfast table is kept to a minimum, like flipping channels when an upsetting story appears on the BBC News, or hitting the ‘mute’ button on the remote whenever Boris Johnson appears on television, allowing one to do the voices yourself as when one watches Crufts, or pretend that one is watching an ill-conceived spin-off of ‘The Muppet Show’ where the puppets are grotesque rather than lovable, or a play about one of those ugly but anatomically correct dolls they get kids to use when describing sex offenders, come to life, not so much dressed as a human as rolled around in a donations bag left outside a middle class charity shop, and decided to use its magic powers for evil.

But even a straightforward teevee guide is not safe from the tone of the newspaper as a whole.

Teevee listings should be a straightforward publication.  I want to know what is on and when, and I want anything related to ‘Doctor Who’ featured heavily.  Not much to ask.

For a while now though, the back page has featured a snarky regular feature about ‘when good teevee goes bad’ titled ‘Jump the Shark’.  In this feature, a writer or writers I’ve never bothered to check, briefly discuss the pivotal point where a hitherto beloved telly programme went shit.  The title is taken from the internet, which documents that it was the eponymous episode of ‘Happy Days’ where that show went from being cool to, well, not quite so cool.  As the internet is never wrong about anything, though I have yet to see a piano playing cat in reality, we must accept this as fact.

‘The Guardian’ have taken a half-arsed opinion and weaponised it.

The trouble is, of course, that the shows that jumped the shark number one, ‘Happy Days’.  This would make for a very short series in a teevee guide, and one that bore a tremendously close resemblance to the Wikipedia entry for ‘Jump the shark’.  The solution, if you are a hack unafraid of flogging the greasy spot where the format used to be, is to randomly pick beloved or obscure television shows and explain why they stopped being good.

The sense of regret that one experiences on reading one of these snarkly spiteful pieces is not even offset by the overwhelming realisation that you made the right decision swearing off this newspaper many moons ago.  There is a shame to not seeing that commitment through, not unlike the shame of falling off the wagon, of an illicit fag ten years after giving up, of murdering a badger with a hammer, of in the performing of an act of self pollution realising, at what should be the moment of unconfined joy, that one has Googled, safesearch off, an indecent image not of Katie Price, but of Katie Hopkins.  The shame and the self loathing rise as the bitter tears of regret begin to flow.

Ironically, this series of affronts will never itself jump the shark.  To do so requires a thing to be good before it can go bad, and this sad affair was never that.  Essentially, what we have here is the result one can only presume of somebody attending one of those meetings where ‘there are no bad ideas’ but missing the crucial point that yes, there are.  Do Walls do a Cornetto with fox shit in the bottom of the cone?  No, because that would be a bad idea.

Maybe be I should switch to ‘The Sun’?  Clarkson writes for it I understand.  Bet he wouldn’t criticise ‘Happy Days’.

Knives out

If the media are to be believed, and why in the world should they not be? then before you read to the end of this sentence you will have stopped reading and taken a few moments out to stab someone.

Stabbing, it would appear, is this week’s Brexit, that is, a story that dominates the news, like pictures of Jordan falling out of nightclubs and her dress simultaneously used to dominate the red tops.

Now, let’s be quite, quite serious for a moment.  Stabbing is, by and large, a very bad thing.  The only people who have any business handling sharp things are surgeons (and even then, not always) and people opening boxes.  Also, anyone who has legitimate business handling a cutting tool.

You can usually tell people that actually need to use a knife, because they spend twenty to thirty quid more than they actually need to on the knife in question.  A fisherman will normally cut lines and gut fish with something called the ‘piscine plunger 8000’, which probably features an ergonomic grip and was ordered from a catalogue, not on line mind, a catalogue.  The fact that a kitchen knife from Wilkos, costing roughly £1.99, will do much the same job is an uncomfortable truth.

I myself own a knife, and am very pleased with it.  It’s a Swiss Army knife and it features two blades and a corkscrew.  It may will have other ingenious stuff tucked away in its chubby ruddy form, but so far I have only ever needed the two blades and the corkscrew.  The longer blade is used to open Amazon packages, the shorter blade is used to break the foil seal on wine bottles before the corkscrew is deployed.  To date, I have not had to plunge any of the aforementioned proddy tools into anything more exciting than a box of books, or a decent but competitively priced Zinfandel.

Which is why I read headlines about ‘Zombie Knives’ with such interest.  Presumably these are not knives that have been killed and then have risen from the dead.  This is a hard enough ask for something previously living, never mind an inanimate object, although it is cheering when my garden solar lights twinkle into life every spring after a winter of sullen darkness leads me to believe that this time they really are done.

Nor are they, presumably, knives that one uses on zombies.  Everyone who has made a close study of the undead horror genre knows that the best way to stop a zombie is blunt force trauma to the head.  Or to play ‘Thriller’ and make your escape while they get their groove on.

Are they, then, the tool of choice for the undead to open their Amazon deliveries?  Unlikely.  Again, close study of the genre demonstrates that zombies like to moan, shamble and tear things apart with their hands.  On taking delivery of, say, a box of much needed skin care products by Clarins, they would be more likely to rend the box than carefully insert the tip of the knife under flap A and then cut carefully along the dotted line.

Presumably then they are called Zombie Knives because the manufacturer thought that ‘Bloody Big Knife with a Nasty Jagged Edge’ was insufficiently catchy.  Looking at the fearsome pictures of these things, my main concern is that anyone in possession of such a thing is more likely to harm themselves than anyone else.

Indeed, a solution to this problem might be in plastic packaging.  Simply secure the blade in question inside a sufficiently robust plastic blister pack and any little ned with stabby ambitions is likely to be both frustrated and exhausted in attempting to open the thing.

So Zombie Knives are a thing, and one wonders how long it will be before vampire forks, werewolf can-openers and the like start to make an appearance.  Possibly the placing of scary words before an object is intended to make that object intimidating, in which case the makers of Monster Munch clearly did not get the memo, because that snack is just delicious even if the original 1970s pickled onion flavoured variety did render your breath an offensive weapon after consumption.

Man up

Dave Barry, the straight man’s David Sedaris, once wrote about the ‘Martian Death Flu’*.  A funny column I seem to recall, and an excellent example of the gender that does not have to give birth hugely over-reacting to minor health inconveniences.

Documentation of illness has, naturally enough, evolved over the years, like germs developing a resistance to Lucozade, a bubbling coppery liquid guzzled by wan tots in my youth and, if my colleague who told me this the other day is to be believed, loaded with caffeine, which would explain its restorative effect on the metabolism of a seven year old in 1970, if nothing else.

Dickens wrote movingly of poxes and ailments.  Operas trade in consumptive maids, oddly able to sing about their condition for three hours at a stretch.  In the 1970s there were a lot of films like ‘Love Story’, where a happy, handsome couple started a new life together, until he or she got something cinematic.  Luckily this trend ended with a bang in the 80’s when family members were killed not by a virus but by terrorists, enabling 110 minutes of bloody retribution by the Slow One, the Austrian One or the Balding One.

Journalism has cultivated a reputation for sensitively chronicling illness, and anyone that does so is to be applauded and rewarded, by getting better.  This is because when you feel under the weather, the last thing you feel like being is creative.  I’ve had a cold for the last two days and the only thing I have crated is a mound of crumpled tissues next to my bed that would put the floor of a bedroom of a teenager in a house with no parental controls on the internet to shame.

In the age of social media, people are able to share their experiences of being ill in the short, medium and long term and get support and sympathy.  A word of warning though, if you start reading any post titled ‘does this look normal?’ think twice before scrolling down.  Then don’t.

One of the worst things about being ill is that one cannot enjoy it.  Normally if somebody were to suggest to you that you should spend a few days in bed watching TV† and being brought sustaining broths, you might show an interest.  However, if the quid pro quo is a tickly cough that really gets going a few minutes after you want to get to sleep, you might be wondering if finally getting to see every season of ‘Will & Grace’ is actually worth the cost.

It’s not.  When you have a cold you suffer the double whammy of feeling ill, but not having the flu, the one everyone takes seriously.  Even the name ‘Common’, means that it’s undistinguished.  Best thing to do is hunker down and plot vile revenge upon all those bastards who still insist on soldiering on into work, on public transport, your public transport, instead of taking a couple of days to get better.

And frankly, anyone with the fortitude to successfully write about, photograph, paint, draw, etch, stain glass window or otherwise document their ailment deserves plaudits for being able to condense a cohesive thought in a medicated mind, even if that medication is simply caffeine and about 800% of the RDA of sugar for an adult, courtesy of ‘Lockets’.  This on top of the disturbance to the mental processes brought about by the constant consideration you are giving to spraying your hands with sanitiser, and the face of anyone who sneezes near you with CS gas, the next time you leave the house.

Having learned never to Google symptoms, the internet is, I suppose, a decent place for the snotty and the coughy to exchange supportive messages and a sure sign of mankinds’ advancement to a point beyond issuing anyone afflicted with anything with a pot of paint to mark their door and a bell to ring to advise others of their condition.  Insert topical joke about underfunding of NHS here.

Ironically, it marks a healthy relationship with illness that is very British, such as is not exhibited by tourists you see wearing surgical masks on London’s streets.  Not many haiku about snot.

* Don’t know where he wrote this originally** and for those who have not read the rest of the blog post before skipping to this footnote, can’t be arsed to research it.  However, I can tell you that it’s collected in the Pan paperback ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’.  This was published in 1988 when the only way to access transatlantic written humour was to go to the US or to buy collections such as this one, lovingly put together by an editor.  This was before the internet, and meant there was a lot of quality control.  The two conditions may not be entirely unrelated.

** Miami Herald most likely, just looked at the introduction to the book.

† Or as it’s known these days, ‘Netflix’.  Being in bed for a couple of days offered an excellent opportunity to catch up on all those documentaries that I have taped‡ and had hoped to catch up on when I had the time.  However, I have discovered that the perfect sickbed viewing is actually horror, specifically anything with a zombie in it.  I love a gory special effect as much as the next man, but nothing I’ve seen on screen compares to the contents of my tissue bin when it comes to biohazard.

‡ Should this be recorded?  Fuck it, I’m going to carry on using ‘taped’ until everyone stops using ‘dialled’.

A foreign correspondent, in my own country

Previous, fanciful, blog posts have referenced the role of the foreign correspondent in general, and the war correspondent in particular.  The musings have been on the correspondent abroad, the foreign being the country in question being other than the UK, rather than a foreign correspondent visiting the UK.  This despite all those posts being written in the UK.

The posts in question are usually stimulated by my staying in a hotel, and the mini bar.  My residence in hotels is an infrequent occurrence and still an occasion of a sense of novelty.  I adore miniature toiletries almost as much as I adore mini sauces, an adoration well documented in this blog.  Who cannot find a tiny bottle of shampoo or body wash charming, and who could fail to be thrilled by using a tiny bar of soap, a tiny bar of soap that starts out being the size of a bar of soap that most bars of soap end up being at home before they are discarded as being impractical?

My affinity with foreign correspondents probably begins and ends with sitting in a hotel room banging out words.  There are other, definitive, measures of a foreign correspondent, none of which I comply with.  Putting aside any kind of talent, experience or journalistic rigor, the hotels I stay at rarely, if ever, have helicopters landing on the roof, journalists and generals in the bar and militiamen sitting in pick up trucks in the lobby.  Nor do I sit round campfires getting interviews with, depending on your point of view, terrorists or freedom fighters, enjoying a supper of an animal that, back in the UK, would be the lead character in a popular cartoon programme for younger viewers.

Following the Brexit referendum though, there is a whiff of something unsavoury in my own country.

Arguably, the only platform that bigots should be permitted one with a trapdoor that swings open to a shark pool.  Following the Brexit referendum however, it would appear that the sort of people who previously confined their views to themselves, their ‘journal’ (also home to their conspiracy theories), a ‘group of like minded patriots’, or the internet consider that they have license to take a tilt at those whose opinions do not exactly align with their own.  This used to be foreigners, now it’s those who did not vote their way in the referendum.

The remainers consider those who voted leave to be a bunch of ignorant, racist, xenophobic, bigoted, narrow-minded little Englanders.  They are confident of espousing this view not just because they are right, but also because the remainers are in the minority.  They are the plucky underdog, facing down fear, ignorance and the rise of politicians who were merely ‘characters’ before the referendum when they had little or no power, but are now auditioning for despotism.

The leavers also consider themselves the plucky underdogs, the patriots who against all the odds defied the political establishment to throw off the shackles of oppression.  They think that this is the time for bold, decisive action and if that means expelling the immigrants who keep our social services running, so be it.

The battleground is social media and the airwaves.

The language is increasingly of division.  Students of history are probably awaiting somebody, probably a Tory, declaring himself (it’s always a bloke) the Lord Protector just to put the civil war on a formal footing.  Certainly, Brexit has divided families, communities and the country like no other crisis since somebody who wasn’t white won ‘Bake Off’.

Foreign correspondents are used to filing copy from the bars of hotels that, before the disputed result of a vote, used to serve the best cocktails on that continent and are now the last place with booze and electricity in a country where the leader is in hiding and the opposition has seized control of the national broadcaster.

We’re not quite at the point where combat boots, one of those Middle-Eastern scarf things, and a laptop are now the accepted dress code at the bar of the Athenaeum, but judging by the content of teevee, radio and the papers, extremists from both sides may have already seized control of the national media.

The war on fake news

As usual about this time of year, I am sitting in a hotel room, thinking that this must be very much what it is like to be a foreign correspondent in general and a war correspondent in particular.  Except of course it’s not.  The hotel room is in central London and so unless I have undergone an unexpected and unnoticed transformation of nationality, I’m not a foreign correspondent.  Having said that, English does appear to be the minority language here in the hotel, a consequence of the continued popularity of London as a tourist destination, a weak pound making it even more popular and lots of worried Europeans getting in a visit while they can before a fucking huge fence goes up all round Britain, or something.  But as has been stated before on this blog, there is something about staying in a hotel room and having a laptop open on the desk that suggests something of the war correspondent.

Previously, I was in the happy position of exaggerating the foreignness of places when the most exotic thing about them was that they had not one but two Chinese take aways.  I was also in the happy position of inventing the ‘war’ element of the correspondent bit.  And actually, as anyone who has read this post this far will know, inventing the ‘correspondent’ element too.  Sadly, this is no longer true.

Of what war do I speak?  Certainly, the next few hundred or few thousand words could be about the war on terror, a war where the front line is on our streets, or actually on our high street.  Various nutters with pokey things have made right nuisances of themselves in 2017, but they don’t really deserve a mention here.  If you want one defining image of the war on terror, it’s that bloke fleeing from the attack at Borough market, still holding his pint.  When the little fuckers roll up in a tank, we might put our drinks down.  Until then, cheers!

Nor is it the war that is being fought over inappropriate touching, usually by celebrities, occasionally of people who wish to become celebrities.  This is not a war as such, merely a continuation of the battle of the sexes, which appears to have somewhat hotted up again.  The view from the G&P trenches (not, you will note, the view from the feminine equivalent, which I guess would be ‘Lady and Spectator’ or ‘Lady and Person Responsible For Cakes’ or something) is that that bastard Wienerstiener has ruined it for all of us.  Basically, if I call somebody ‘Love’ in the office, I’m fucked.  Not that I ever would.  I call everyone ‘chaps’.  ‘Chaps’ is a gender neutral form of address.  In all my tears of using it, I only ever had one person comment that one of those addressed was a woman, or a chappess.  The person complaining was not the lady in question, because she was a bloody good chap and would not do that sort of thing.  No, it was, I stringly suspect, the same person who complained when I brought doughnuts into the office for a treat that I had neglected to provide a fruit alternative.  FFS.

The war in question is the war on fake news, or as Fox News calls it, ‘news’.

London is, of course, the home of the BBC, a corporation with correspondents both foreign and domestic, both war and peace.  The BBC is funded not, as you might imagine, by flogging episodes of ‘Top Gear’ to China and a TARDISload of ‘Doctor Who’ merchandise, but through the license fee, which everyone is happy to pay even if the BBC only ever broadcast ‘Blue Planet II’.  That alone would be worth it and you won’t find anyone that will contradict that because nobody wants to look like an idiot in public.  Recent voting patters demonstrate that people are happy to be idiots in the privacy of a booth, but in public, unwise social media posts aside, it’s a different matter.

Because everyone pays their license fee, two mind-sets simultaneously evolve.  They can be held by the same person at the same time.  The first is that evey license fee payer feels that they have the right to criticise any aspect of the BBC.  The second is that when anyone who does not pay a license fee tries to criticise the BBC, they defend it like Horatio defends a bridge.

Case in point.  The BBC loves to cover extreme weather events by sending presenters with usually immaculate hair and make up to report live from the scene.  This usually involves wellies but it’s not unusual to see a BBC presenter in a North Face parka, screaming into a microphone held to their lips, trying to make themselves heard over the screaming wind that is driving the rain into their face.  So essentially you have a BBC reporter doing their bit from where was until yesterday a busy high street, but is now the Little Puddling Water Recreation Centre.

Then you have one of those masochistic BBC programmes where the viewer gets to make their point, usually that a presenter has been too rude, or too Tory, or too Leftie, or too female, or too black.  And the complaint in question, that the BBC reporter was giving advertising to a particular brand of anorak.

Now, the benefit of this sort of attitude is that there is no other broadcaster of news, in the world, with such rigorous oversight.

Which is why fake news does not happen on the BBC.

Admittedly, some of the correspondents and editors can give an opinion on something that is about as palatable as a Bush Tucker Trial, but that’s part of the fun and it all balances out.

The problem now is that the BBC is reporting on certain individuals, naming no names, who lie, and because the BBC has a duty to report, those lies get broadcast.  It’s like retweeting fake news.

And that’s the soft end.  The hard end is the truly terrifying boiler rooms in malign states that are pumping out fake news clickbait.

By the way, I can assure you that G&P is not written in a vast warehouse just outside of Minsk.  If it was, it would be so much more better writtener.

Every screen is the front line in the war on fake news.  And right now, I’m not sure who is winning.  Certainly, fake news has gained considerable ground.  It used to be that fake news was confined to the playground and the pub.  Not any more.  Thanks to malicious minds taking the innocent internet, that used to be used for such lofty pursuits as porn and bickering about Star Trek, and using it to drip poison into the ear of Joe Public, fake news is a Key Opinion Influencer.

Maybe though things will change.  Fake news is getting easier to identify.  Everyone should have the fake news equivalent of one of those aircraft spotter posters showing the silhouette of enemy aeroplanes, except that they would show the signature shapes of fake news, such as ‘anything that you really want to believe is true, probably isn’t’, or a picture of a fox.

And those that peddle fake news need to be identified too.  It’s a pity that the entire established media hate Facebook because they fear it so, and also a pity that facebook does appear to be a home for fake news.  But so what, who cares?  The Internet is the wild fucking west, there are no rules.  And really, what sort of person believes something they read on Facebook.  Unless it’s about kittles.

Trusted sources, that’s what it’s all about.  Like the BBC.  Never knowingly fake.

Finally, a note on the hotel.  It’s in the centre of London which is a big area I admit, as any area connected to the tube might make that claim, but this really is, there are more busses and cabs than cars.  The hotel is discreet but posh, and judging by the fluffyness of the towels is luxurious.  My room is on the first floor, meaning that the window, with views of a typically cosmopolitan London street, is a few fee above the windows of the top deck of the busses that stop outside at the lights.  Nobody has waved yet.  The bar looks like the sort of place a foreign correspondent might frequent in that it sells cocktails, which is hard liquor mixed with more hard liquor or, if you’re a lady, some fruit.  There was also what appeared to be a fashion shoot going on.  Rude to stare.

Brexiteers would loath this place.  It’s full of foreigners, coming over here, boosting our economy.  And that’s just the staff.

Harshtag

Every time that engorged Oompa Loompa squatting in the White House empties the contents of his bile scrotum up the chutney funnel of an unsuspecting Twitter, the cost to the public of policing the fiasco-in-waiting that is his potential visit to London goes up.

Not that I am suggesting for a moment that a visit from Li’ll Donnie might result in problems.  Londoners have been putting up with all sorts of shit for centuries and if the Luftwaffe didn’t get their backs up, then a visit from Cuprinol Boy is hardly likely to stir passions.

Besides, Londoners know that stretch limos are to be avoided.  Not because they are bristling with Secret Servicemen, but because they are more likely to contain an inebriated hen party.

As for this week’s tweets, it’s been amusing to wonder ‘is the president of the US a fucking idiot?’, it’s not at all amusing to ponder if anyone on Twitter is a far right scumbag.  The best way to deal with these attention-seeking wastewads is to unfollow them.  If all broadcast media could start that trend, it might catch on.  At least it would make the news less annoying.

Typewriter 2.0

I am once again in a hotel, and I am once again thinking about journalism in general and war correspondents in particular.

It’s a rather pleasant hotel.  It’s in the centre of London, with a view out over the docks to the city (and there is almost everything you need to know about London, if you wrote that on the back of a postcard from the past anywhere else in the world, you would have the mental image of a place of transit smelling of desperation and mackerel, populated by wanton types with earrings, and that’s just the sailors.  The only boats bobbing in the dock here are Sunseekers and the city is the City, proud to leave all the lights on in their huge office blocks to create the impression that everyone is still hard at it after dark, shouting into telephones, Like In The Movies).

The air conditioning is hidden and efficient, there is no lazily rotating ceiling fan that can cross fade to become the rotating blades of a helicopter.  Maybe it’s stealth?

Nevertheless, there’s something about being in a hotel and not being on holiday that makes me think about journalism in general and war correspondents in particular.  I’d like to say it’s the mutual incompatibility of pool toys and AK47s that make any holiday hotel a haven, but sadly that’s no longer true.

So on the strength of my previous post about ambient soundtracks, I should probably be putting together the faux war correspondent soundtrack, era by era.  Let’s start with the 1970s.  Busy traffic, foreign murmuring, farting scooters, the occasional mooing of an ox, the whup whup whup of a Huey passing overhead and the clackity clack (‘don’t talk back!’) of the typewriter.

Vietnam was, I have read, the first televised war.

There have been plenty since.  I remember ITV reporting Afghanistan.  Film reports of Sandy Gall sitting in a cave somewhere in Afgan, breaking (unleavened) bread with the Taliban, who were off to beat back the Russians. 

And of course the Falklands.  ‘I counted them all out, I counted them all back’.  A Union Flag waving from the top of an aerial as a squaddie yomped to Port Stanley and Victory.

Gulf War I and Gulf War II.  Gulf War I was night vision cameras on tanks streaking across the desert.  Gulf War II took things to the next level, that next level being vertical as we were treated to footage of the nosecone cam of a bunker buster.  Not to mention the ‘shock and awe-shit there goes that little place that does great falafel’ of the opening night bombardment.

Gulf War II was the last television war.  Now, conflict plays out on snapchat and Twitter, barbarism on Youtube.

What the medium of the next Big One will be I’m not sure.  Possibly when the nukes start flying, the next war will be recorded by the cave paintings of the survivors but actually I think a more realistic prospect will be that the next major conflict will be reported by ABC when it’s a throw down between the Red and the Blue, rather than the Grey and the Blue.  I think Blue won last time?

Vietnam was certainly a reporters’ war.  It also produced memoirs and collections of reportage and, of course, a load of great movies (although the greatest war movie ever made is ‘Where Eagles Dare’, followed by ‘The Eagle Has Landed”, followed by ‘Heartbreak Ridge’.  Basically, if it has ‘Eagle or Clint, it’s all good).

As previously reported from the front line in Salisbury, I’m pretty sure that my ancient Powerbook could stop a .303 round that would take down a Decepticon, but I would rather like it if the keyboard sounds could be set to different themes.  Obviously ‘space’ and ‘rainforest’ or similar would be popular, but I’m attracted to the idea of ‘quill’ and, of course ‘Imperial typewriter’.

For the (written) record, I once owned an electric typewriter, a Brother, once plugged in and placed upon a table, typing generated a report like a fucking artillery barrage.  Hardly the sort of thing to write tender love poetry upon, that ladies could then read, and frot themselves senseless to.

Believe in Blather

For an organisation purporting to be a communications company, Sky appear to have a poor grasp of the working of the Telephone Preference Service, a scheme that allows you to opt out of receiving marketing telephone calls, the audio equivalent of junk mail but without the occasional benefit of a free pen or handy blank envelope to write a shopping list or to do list on.

One of the consequences of working at home is that you are at home during the day.  If you watch television you will know that the sort of adverts aimed at the at home during the day demographic are heavily skewed towards health plans for the elderly, or sedate cruising, the holiday equivalent of two spoonfuls of Benzedrine stirred gently into your Horlicks.  It also means that marketing people call you and you pick up the ‘phone because you think it might be something important, or at least not something that is either going to sap your will to live, descend into a blazing row, or both.

I don’t have Sky for a number of reasons, some practical, some principled.  For instance, I don’t enjoy association football very much, but if I am interested in knowing how a match is going, I’ll tune into Radio 5.  I also don’t need any more encouragement to watch any more television.  My sporting needs are well catered for via the wireless, thanks to Test Match Special, and my drama needs are taken care of thanks to box sets and binging.

I also don’t like Murdoch products, and although I have not seen Sky programming, I have no reason to think that his television programmes would be any different to his newspapers.

Finally, I don’t like the way in which Sky’s commercialisation of football and sport generally has eroded the social value it has, with kick off times for footie matches now arranged around the teevee schedule.  Football matches kick off at 3:00 on a Saturday.  This gives the fans time to get to the venue from wherever, have a pie, watch the match, and get home.  A footie match that finishes at 9:00 at night is bugger all use to anyone facing a five hour journey home.  Likewise, test cricket should be on BBC 2.  Like a nuclear deterrent, I might not ever use it, but it’s bloody good to know it’s there if necessary, for instance to be deployed during summer holidays in England.

The lad who called me was obviously working off a script, and the script included the many, many objections that I have to Murdoch in general and Sky in particular.

I was told that Murdoch does not own Sky, or much of it, the details were unclear, anymore.  Presumably the people that own the controlling interests are not megalomaniac despots, although if this is indeed the case I am baffled as to why and how they could acquire a controlling interest in a global communications company.

The lad extolled the virtues of the product and the programmes.  Fair play to him he did a good job.

However, what he was doing was arguing with me.  He just would not take no for an answer as he more of less rebutted or corrected the many objections I trotted out as to why I didn’t want Sky.

Eventually, I just went nuclear.  I don’t want Sky, I said, because ‘A Game of Thrones’ is one of my favourite books, and the television adaptation is poor by comparison.

Silence in the call centre.  Now, it is true that GoT the teevee show is great, I am not denying that.  Got the box set, love it.  But it is not as good as the books.  Moreover, I resent the hell out of its popularity.  Before the teevee adaptation, if you saw a stranger reading A Game of Thrones you could strike up a conversation with them.  In England.

There was no rebuttal.  Sky Lad must have known that for somebody to say something so provocative meant that there was no hope of selling the package.

Also, and I am not an expert, but having an argument with a prospective customer is unlikely to seal the deal.

ITDB

The chaps who invented IMDB.Com deserve a Nobel Prize.  I’ll get to why in a moment.

The internet has now been around long enough for apocryphal stories to grow up about it.  I don’t mean web pages that record camp fire stories or folk tales or any of that nonsense, or eBay selling haunted crap, I don’t know much about the paranormal but I do know that if there was an artefact that proved beyond doubt the existence of the supernatural, it would not be on eBay.  It would be in the cellar of the Pentagon with all the alien stuff.  What I mean is stories about the internet that are only possible because of the existence of the internet.

One such story is how IMDB revolutionised the dating scene in LA.  Prior to the existence of IMDB, any asshole with a Porche an a wrap of coke could hit on a girl in a club, tell her he’s a producer or something, and try to get her to sleep with him in the expectation that she would get a guest spot on Magum P.I as ‘Pool Girl 2’.  Only afterwards would the ugly truth emerge, that he works in a Porche dealership in Sacramento (should such a thing even exist).

Thanks to IMDB.Com, girl goes back to her place, makes an excuse to lock herself in the loo with her laptop and after a brief search, finds out that ‘Gary Hairful’ has no production credits and so will not be getting sex that night.  He will, however, get tasered in the nutsack while she films it on her ‘phone, or whatever they do in Hollywood.

The International Movie Database, or IMDB, is an internet success story the way that all success stores about tech should be success stories.  Apparently, IMDB was started by a couple of blokes (disclaimer: women can be tech giants too), probably in their bedrooms, that probably smelled of socks and Lynx, and was basically a listing of who starred in what movie and who the best boy, key grip and gaffer were.  I have no idea how they got this information but I really, really hope that one sat hunched over a keyboard and the other one read the credits as they rolled on a TV screen as a VHS tape played/paused/played/paused.  The truth is probably less romantic and no doubt involved less Pot Noodle than I imagine.

Fast forward and IMDB is now the definitive resource of who did what on movies and television.  That’s why the inventors deserve a Nobel Prize.  While others win the Prize for curing disease, these guys have cured the awful suffering of recognising an actor, and wondering where the hell you have seen them before.  ‘The Bill’, it’s always ‘The Bill’.

So, IMDB, is a force for good.

So why not another definitive and comprehensive source of useful information that could be used in social situations?

Why not an International Tattoo Database?

Just a few years ago, tattoos were a relatively scarce commodity per square inch of human flesh.  Before blokes started getting Maori markings to show their tribal allegiance to Oswestry and women started getting Cantonese symbols because they liked Number 38 on the menu or whatever, you got a tat if you were in the military, where part of a tribe, had been in prison or had been in a concentration camp.

Before tattoos became fashionable, they used to mean something.

Now, you’re in a bar, your hitting it off with a young woman and you notice her shoulder tattoo.  Does she like mystical symbols, or hot and sour soup, is she a committed lepidopterist of renown, or a sex worker, or is it a curiously shaped birthmark and she is the rightful Queen of Wessex?  A discreet visit to the ITDB and you can decide whether the evening is going to end with you already thinking about what to name your kids, or exiting the venue now via the lavvy window.

Likewise a lady can establish whether that coat of arms on a fella’s forearm is a distinguished regiment, C Block HMP Chelmsford, or even worse, a minor public school.

ITDB, a force for good.

1 Across, F**k

Famously, the internal telephones at MI6 during the fifties and sixties were always busy for the first hour of the business day, as pipe smoking men with initials instead of names ‘phoned one another for assistance with the that day’s Times crossword.  That, at least, is how the story is reported in Peter Wright’s memoir ‘Spycatcher’.  One would hope, of course, that this is, if not an outright case of a writer being ‘economical with the truth’, then at least having the courtesy to disguise the real purpose of the exercise, that during those decades crosswords were used by the security services to, not as you might imagine communicate hidden messages to agents, but rather to keep Oxbridge Commie Pooftas preoccupied with matters cryptic rather than Cyrillic, and above all prevent them doing the will of their red paymasters.

I fucking hate crosswords.

And they hate me.

But I hate them more.

I am also truly awful at them.  This is possibly (probably) because I lack the education and the lateral thinking abilities to realise that ‘Trojans mince with alacrity’ means ‘Effervescence’, but is more likely the result of their being situated towards the back of the newspaper.  This means by the time you reach the crossword, you will have read about who has been doing what to whom on an international, national and personal scale.  Then it’s the horoscope ‘No chance of getting nine across today, you fuckwit’ and onto the puzzles.

When did the puzzles become so difficult?  Crosswords?  Sodyouto?  What happened to join the dots?

Get angrier and angrier and angrier, give up, turn page.  Sports.  Set controls for ‘incandescent’.

There are, it’s fair to say, different types of crosswords.  Mixed ability, so to speak.

General knowledge.  If you can answer three questions on round two of ‘Mastermind’ or any question, at all, in any series of ‘University Challenge’, this is the one for you.

Quick.  By far the most satisfying, but can go very wrong very quickly.  The thing about quick crosswords is that those that set them like to establish a theme.  So once you realise that all of the answers are the surnames of characters from the popular soap ‘Crossroads’, you’re away.  However, if the theme of the day is ‘something other than ‘Crossroads’’, you’re fucked.

Cryptic.  The only one that matters.  A proper crossword.  The clues are things like ‘Lakes sailed by cheeses’. And the answer will probably be something like ‘Buzz Aldrin’.

How?

How the fuck is that even possible?

I once went through a period (‘Moon river’ (6)) of buying a daily paper, keeping it, then the next day sitting with the crossword, and the solution, to see if I could work out how ‘angry owls’ becomes ‘defenestrates’.

The answer?  It fucking doesn’t!  I am now convinced that the cryptic crossword is a ruse perpetrated on us by people, and I’m not saying they are all working in the intelligence community, to do two things.  To keep us busy, and to keep us in our place.

That’s why I make a point of, just now and again, picking up a copy of ‘The Times’ and, in the space of a ten minute train journey, ‘completing’ the crossword while chuckling to myself.

Of course I don’t, I’m not fucking insane.  But I would be, if I had to work out what ‘Woodland folk’s banquet, enjoyed quietly’ (9) means.  (I check the next day, the answer was ‘Archbishop’.  ‘TWF!’ (Anag.)).

Of course I admire the mental agility of the sort of people who set these things.  And indeed those that solve them.  But I can’t help but think that they are in competition with one another, or even cahoots (Mr Toad’s exclamation! (7)) and that the whole thing is a male-dominated attempt to find the dominant male, judged on who has the biggest lexicon.

That being the case, the only setter I continue to look on with favour is a red one, and until the news gets so unpalatable that they start using cryptic clues for headlines, I’ll leave the puzzles to men who measure their masculinity by how hard a clue is, and how long it takes them to solve it.

Terrorists could never make 'Bake off' - their video's are shit!

Back when the world was black and white, people knew how to behave in front of the camera.  They stared into the lens as if hypnotised and spoke either in a sort of strangulated RP, or with a regional accent, usually northern.  Headscarves featured.

The popularisation of the family cine camera did little to lessen the public’s respect for film, which was finite and had to be processed by the chemist.  The early days of video cameras started to erode the mystique of moving images, when anyone could appear on their own telly and mistakes could be taped over, or sent to television shows so that you could appear on other peoples’ tellies with your skirt ticked into your knickers or something equally hilarious.

It took Yoohootube to make us realise that the democratisation of broadcasting proved that talent is not democratic, but the lack of it certainly is.

‘The Great British Bake Off’ is beyond Event Television, it is Phenomenon Television that has made stars of its presenters (a bloke apparently made of mahogany and a woman who is a cross between an Aunt Sally and Zelda from ‘Terrahawks’) and of the contestants.  How?  Two words: Peril!

Women directors like Jerry Bruckheimer strive to introduce peril into their movies, and usually do so by Blowing Shit Up while all the time threatening something that will make those explosions look like atom farts.  This can be a meteor, or a bomb, or a bomb strapped to a meteor.

But fuck that.  You want to know what peril is?  Peril is having your bake judged.  Anyone who has every put a plate of home baked biscuits down in front of a bunch of unsuspecting friends knows the moment of peril just after one of them takes the first bite.  The next thing out of their mouth had better be ‘that’s delicious’ and not ‘as I was saying…’ or ‘fuck, that’s atrocious’, because you can go from friend to cunt in one chew if you don’t praise the bake.  That’s what it means to bakers.  They all know this.  Anyone who has ever had their cooking criticised will know that there is only one reaction, a cocktail of shame and psychosis.

That’s why the audience are on the edge of their seats.

That, and the British fucking LOVE cake.  National game is cricket, yea?  Right, name me one other game, IN THE WORLD, that stops for lunch, and then for afternoon tea.  Test matches last for five days.  That’s ten opportunities to get some cake down you.  Think I’m kidding?  Google images of Mike Gatting and tell me that there’s a man who refuses carbs.

People look forward to Bake Off before it starts, enjoy it when it’s one and talk about it when it’s finished.  Know why?  Because it’s lovely.  This is a reality show where the only villain is time and whatever idiot confesses to bringing along any sort of store bought gadget or device.  Knocked up that cookie cutter in your shed?  Great!  Bought it?  You fucking disgust me!

Bake Off is British through and through.  The clue is in the title.  It’s great television and it demonstrates beyond a doubt that you need talent to appear on telly, either to make, present or just fucking cook scones badly on, you need talent.

A sword just don’t cut it.  Terrorists have taken to sharing their holiday videos with the world and the news media.  For what reason, Christ alone knows because if they think it’s somehow going to frighten, scare, intimidate or impress people, they really, really need to fire their audience research people.  The same audience that are nearly in tears when the old chap gets a hug from the Sex Pest on bake off and hang around to watch the news are then shouting ‘arsehole!’ at the bloke with his mum’s headscarf, a balaclava and a glaring deficiency in the girlfriend department.  Whatever terrorist videos are (and the only thing I can possibly think they are in internet terms is ‘troll bait’), they certainly aren’t good.

Think you’re tough?  Try baking two dozen identical flapjacks with the nation waiting to Tweet things about you?  No?  Thought not.