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One web site that I love to dip into now and again is this one, the history of Butlins, the first and best known holiday camp operators in the UK.
Not that we ever went there as kids, oh no, Butlins was a bit too down market for our family, although our dad would have loved the opportunity to take part in the famous Butlins national talent competition where the weekly winners went forward to a grand final at the end of the season, he'd have won the grand final easy with his crooning.
No, instead of going to the Butlins Filey camp we went five miles or so up the road to Wallis's holiday camp , a smaller, privately owned version of Butlins, the full story of our times at Wallis's in the early 1960's can be found here.
But back to Butlins and in particular the full copy of the 1974 entertainment guide to the Filey camp which is itemised page by page here. It gives an extraordinary insight into the life of a holiday camp where each individual day of your seven day stay revolved around the entertainment guide and the clock, including your meal times where you had to arrive at the huge dining hall on time and at the right sitting or you went hungry.
Of course Butlins had its redcoats to ensure that you were kept busy and active right through the day in order that you didn't dwell too much on the fact that you were contained within a barbed wire compound for the whole of your holiday but what they don't tell you in the brochure is that the Filey camp was certainly run on an almost military basis. Our Uncle Ralph owned a caravan on a site right next door to Butlins and the one thing that he regretted was choosing a pitch so close to the Butlins barbed wire fence as they were woken up every morning by the Butlins tannoy announcements informing campers that if they were on the first breakfast sitting then they should be shifting their lazy arses out of bed by now, followed by a song about Gibbs SR toothpaste.
We did once visit the Filey camp on a day pass as our dad knew someone who was staying there at the same time that we were at Wallis's, it must have been around 1963-ish and all I can remember about the visit was the fact that our dad took the piss out of everything there, pointing out how shabby the buildings were and how corny the frequent tannoy announcements were, he may also have goosestepped his way down one of the campsite roads holding the index finger of his right hand horizontally under his nose and his left arm stiffly raised in a nazi salute as we were all shuffled along by a redcoat to the next event on the sports field, its the sort of thing he'd do as he was never shy of making his point of view, especially if he felt superior about something - our host never invited us back to Butlins.
That sort of thing never happened at Wallis's, we did not have tannoy announcements and while there was always plenty of organised shennanigans going on you were never forced to take part like the guards, erm, redcoats did at Butlins, in fact Wallis's only had a small staff and more then likely it would be our dad that would be organising a cricket or football match on the beach or the solitary Wallis's playing field, 130-a-side football with me in goals wishing I was making sand castles on the beach instead of letting in a goal a minute in our 92-0 defeat which would take our dad two days to get over - he could never understand why sport never mattered to me.
I did once stay in the Butlins hotel in Scarborough around 1978 when I was old enough to know better but me and three mates had gone to the resort on the north east coast on a sudden impulse for a weekend pissup and the only place with a vacancy was The Grand Hotel, a run down victorian monster of a place (when built it was the largest hotel in Europe) which had recently been bought by the Butlins organisation and which had so many bedrooms that it would never be filled.
On our weekend I had a room on floor nine, I should have suspected something was slightly amiss when we took the lift to floor eight where my friends were staying, for there was no button for floor nine in the lift.
Eventually we found a narrow door with my room number on it and upon opening it saw a narrow staircase winding its way upwards into darkness - my room was actually in one of the four decorative towers at each corner of the hotel which sounds very romantic but in reality I shared my room with several hot and cold water tanks and their associated pipework and every time someone went to the toilet during the night my room shook and I lay awake until the water tank filled again - having the main hot water tank for that end of the hotel actually in my room with me did mean that I was as warm as toast right through the cold February weekend though.
The whole of that weekend was block booked by dozens of coach party's which meant that the four of us twenty-something year olds were marooned in a hotel full of pensioners who thought that the idea of being shepherded from entertainment room to entertainment room to dingin room and then more entertainment was a superb way to spend three days, £28 all-in. Fortunately we managed to find an escape route through an open emergency exit that the guards dogs had missed so donkey derby's and bingo were forsaken for beer in pubs, disgraceful behaviour that was frowned upon when we returned to Butlins hell.
My children refuse to believe me when I tell them this sort of stuff.
I finally sent my old premium bond away to Blackpool to be surrendered and checked against the list of winners.
The story in the family that I have always followed is that I was born just a few months after Premium Bonds were introduced, as indeed I was, and that my dads billiards partner, Old George Hughes, bought me, the new-born first-born of his young protege, one of the first issues of the Bonds for one whole pound as a christening present.
And so all through my boyhood I always checked the monthly list of premium bond winners in the newspaper, I never remembered the whole number, just the first three, "1AK" it started and without fail I always scanned the lists for a "1AK" - never won a penny.
The bond itself was always kept in the envelope that Old George Hughes bought it in and it was always at the back of a sideboard drawer somewhere but over the years it disappeared and when we cleared our dads bungalow out after he'd died we couldn't find it anywhere, end of story.
But not quite.
We sold the bungalow to a really nice old bloke called Fred and in the course of moving in he'd popped up into the loft where he found the Old George Hughes envelope with the premium bond in it, and he popped it through my letterbox one day.
And here is where the mystery starts.
As I've said, Premium Bonds started in July 1956, I was born in September 1956, it makes sense that it would be a present for me.
But the date stamp on the bond is January 1959, my brother Ned was born in August 1958.
I've had to come to terms with the fact that it might not be my bond after all, it could be his.
But how ?
So anyway, I rang the Premium Bond people in Blackpool seven years ago and asked whether it was possible to check whether the bond had ever been a winner and was told that as the bond was actually in our dads name that we'd have to fill in a long government form and send the death certificate off to redeem the bond for one whole pound, during which time they'd check the list to see if it had ever been lucky.
That was seven years ago - I sent the form off last week.
So what do you reckon - 47 years sitting in a prize draw (up to £1million every month don't forget), thats 564 chances to win something, anything would do, surely after 47 years it must have been drawn at least once ?
I wait in suspense.
If it wins with more than five zero's at the end then the beer is on me.
But no-one, no-one tells Ned, ok ?
Alan "Fluff" Freeman 1927-2006
Fluff's death was announced today, 79 years old, not bad, I'd settle for that, especially if you've made your living from playing music for the whole of your life.
To many people, and to all of the obituaries that will appear today Fluff Freeman was the voice of the chart show "Pick of the Pops" on Sunday nights which he claimed as his own for five years until 1972 and then again on and off in a retro form throughout the 80's and 90's.
But to me Alan Freeman will always be Saturday afternoon with your head under a car dashboard or sanding the filler on a car wing, for that is where I always was right through the 70's with one old car or another, repairing things, fitting radios or cassette players in mates cars, or plastering gallons of plastic filler onto wire mesh then sanding it down when it dried to fill in the multitude of rust holes that were endemic in British cars of the 1970's.
His "Saturday Rock Show" had a huge following through the 70's and played an eclectic range of what is now called, by people of my vintage, "proper rock music" as opposed to the weak immitation "rock" that boy bands mime to nowadays.
And the one thing that springs to my mind when I recall me lying on the pavement underneath my old Austin 1300 Vanden Plas, wet and dry paper in one hand, black and decker drill with a sanding attachment in the other, is Emerson Lake and Palmer - not only did Fluff play a lot of ELP, and I mean everything that they'd ever recorded, but he used clips of their music as jingles during his show, his masters at the BBC must have cringed as the news bullitens were concluded with the piano stanza from "Benny the Bouncer" - or more likely his masters at the BBC would never listen to such output, preferring to pretend that Radio 1 wasn't one of their stations.
This is quite a good biography of the man, although the page isn't updated yet, the home page of the site is.
Do you know what that is in the picture
I know what it is.
I know what it is because I've fitted three of those in the last 18 months.
The latest one on Friday night when I should have been on a pub crawl in Otley.
Its a toilet flush siphon valve assembly.
And they are made by fekkwits in the far east who use the flimsiest of materials so that heavy handed females in the UK will break them when they wrench the toilet flushing lever too hard.
Lets get technical - when its at rest in your toilet cistern that green box thing (ours was clear plastic) is submerged in, and full of water. When you pull the handle to flush the toilet a panel of plastic film inside the green box is pulled up to the top of the box thus forcing all of the water in the box to run up to the top of the green thing there, and then run down the tube into the toilet - pull the handle and let go and only the water in the box will flush the toilet, pull the handle and leave it pressed down and the syphon effect of the water will drag more water down the tube with it until the cistern is empty.
There, its easy isn't it ?
Do you know how I learned all that ?
By being to skinflint to employ a proper plumber and doing all the plumbing in our house myself.
Its a piece of piss is plumbing.
So last week I got the call from the upstairs bathroom from one of the females in the household "dad the toilet won't flush - again" I knew straight away that it was the crap Taiwanese flush valve that was broken again, and I knew straight away that I would be expected to fix it immediately and that my Friday night in the pub would be replaced by me standing at the toilet cistern with my hand down inside it.
Are you bored yet ?
I don't care, I'm still pissed off about ruining my Friday night - to change that valve thing you have to take the whole of the cistern off the wall, disconnect the live feed pipe and the overflow pipe, carry the full cistern over to the bath and empty it - I didn't manage this last bit because I tipped up the wrong end and half of the water came out of the overflow and all over my legs and the bathroom floor, so that didn't help my mood very much then.
I fitted the new one pretty quick, put the cistern back on the wall then connected the water feed pipe back up, turned the local valve to switch the water back one (I've fitted local valves and flexible connections on all of the tap connections - I'm fucking ace at plumbing me) and it pissed water out everywhere.
Problem is you see the flexible connection from mains pressure feed pipe is a chrome connection whereas the input pipe the sticks out of the cistern is plastic - chrome to plastic screw thread, not good.
Oh piss off then if you're that bored, I'm going to finish this anyway.
Wrapped some more PTF tape around the plastic thread and tightened the nut up until I just got one drip every minute, good enough for me, put a bowl underneath it and made a mental note to empty it in the morning.
Got called back immediately by the wife, "that can't stay there" she yelled, pointing at the bowl, "we're supposed to be selling this house"
"They'll understand" I pleaded, "anyway, it usually stops dripping of its own accord after a few days", which is true, it does and I don't know why.
So since friday I've been tweaking the nut just a quarter turn before I go to bed, emptying the bowl then seeing how much water is there in the morning - I've got it down to one drip every five minutes now which is good enough for me but I just know that tonight I'll give it a quarter turn, something will crack and I'll be soaked again - its happened before.
I keep seeing and hearing clips from Michael Ball's new album, "released just in time for christmas folks, buy your grandma a copy", and frankly, I see no point.
He's entitled to his own website, I'll grant him that small luxury but other than that he should not assault my ears and my well being with his flacid and damp renditions of classic songs that other artists have made their own.
The track listing from his new album reads thus ...
One Voice (originally by Barry Mannilow)
Hero (originally by Mariah Carey)
The Living Years (originally by Mike & The Mechanics)
Where Do I Begin (originally by Andy Williams from the film Love Story)
Since You've Been Gone (originally by Rainbow)
I Don't Wanna Talk About It (originally by Rod Stewart)
I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing (originally by Aerosmith)
If You're Not The One (originally by Daniel Beddingfield)
Lyin' Eyes (originally by The Eagles)
Everybody Hurts (originally by R.E.M.)
Home (originally by Michael Boublรจ)
...please don't trouble yourself to actually have to listen to the album, I'll tell you right now, its as poor as you'd imagine it to be.
I heard him on a random TV programme a couple of weeks ago introducing himself performing that last track on the album "Home" by Michael Bouble. He actually said something like "Michael Bouble did a terrific recording of this song last year so I thought I'd have a go", well Michael, you fooled no-one, your producer and musical director were so lazy that they just used the Michael Bouble arrangement, probably actually scrounged the Michael Bouble backing tape actually, and then got you to sing over the top of it - you used the same phrasing and sang in the same key, in short you brought nothing new to the song and you voice is not as good as the original artist.
So why do you do it ?
Do you really think that I'd like to hear a poorer version of a selection of songs ?
"Michael Ball fooks up all your favourite songs" is that the unique selling point ?
Heres another singer who thinks we desperately need to hear worse versions of classic songs, Andy Abraham
I must warn you that when you click that link you will be treated to the sound of Andy rattling out several short clips of tracks off his new album "Soul Man", don't worry, they will not excite you, but they may encourage you to go and seek the original recordings...
The tunes that Andy would like to ruin for you are ...
1. Still (originally by The Commodores)
2. What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted (originally by David Ruffin)
3. Don’t Leave Me This Way (originally by Harold Melvin)
4. Ain’t No Sunshine (originally by Bill Withers)
5. Just My Imagination (originally by The Temptations)
6. I Can’t Help Myself (originally by The Four Tops)
7. Easy (originally by The Commodores)
8. Tracks Of My Tears (originally by Smokey Robinson)
9. This Ole Heart Of Mine (originally by The Isleys)
10.Too Busy Thinking ‘Bout My Baby (originally by Marvin Gaye)
11. I’m Gonna Make You Love Me (originally by Diana Ross)
12. Heaven Help Us All (originally by Stevie Wonder)
... and fortunately you can hear the clips and decide for yourself whether or not Andy's new album is just a little indulgence on his behalf or whether he really should be allowed to be set loose on these sort of classics, personally I think there should be a law against it.
Remember last weeks blog about how the London 2012 Olympics seemed to be, well, sort of disorganised at the moment ?
And remember last weeks blog about how we get the politicians that we deserve and about how most of them nowadays are professional politicians who come striaght from university into politics without the benefit of a real job/life experience ?
Well have a little read of this.
It seems like our professional politicians don't even have the budget ready for the construction work yet, which is probably why there doesn't seem to be much work going on at the moment, and probably explains why the International Olympic Committee were dropping hints last week that something should really be moving by now in London.
It seems like, if we don't yet know what the budget for the games is going to be, then could it just be the case that we bid for the games without knowing what the budget would be ?
And if that is the case, can you imagine the board of directors of a PLC (lets call it The UK plc), bidding for a contract without knowing what their costs would be or whether they would make a profit - or not ?
Like I say, we vote people into government who have no experience of business life and then expect them to run the largest organisation in the country - The UK plc - as if they know what they are doing.
Here's a snip from the biography of the official Olympics Minister, Member of Parliament Tessa Jowell ;
"Before her election to Parliament in 1992, Tessa had a career in psychiatric social work, social policy and public sector management."
So she was a social worker in the real world, that makes an excellent CV for the person in charge of the biggest building project in this country since the second world war, an excellent background for the person responsible for what could possibly be an £8,000,000,000 budget, I'm stuffed full of confidence, no really.
And we all know of Lord Sebastian Coe's CV for his post of Chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games don't we ?
Yes thats right, he, erm, ran some running races for a while and then, erm, became a politician, makes him emminently suitable for running the whole shooting match then.
They have got some professional people at the helm though - Chief Executive of the London Olympic Delivery Authority (no I don't know how many other organisations are involved either) is David Higgins - the bloke who delivered the Sydney Olympics on time and on budget, so erm, David, how about the budget then, have we got near to one yet ?
I'm beginning to think its true.
Returning from running my eldest and her boyfriend to Leeds Station - actually returning from the (nearly) hour long trip having been conned into giving them the lift (I thought they meant our local five minutes away station when they asked for "a lift to the station") - I noticed one of the shrubs in our front garden has started sprouting a new growth of leaf buds, before the old leaves have finished falling off.
We used to have defined seasons in the UK, autumn was the time for all the leaves to fall off and for the trees and shrubs to shut down, winter was for shivering in and shovelling snow off the driveway, and spring was for the new buds - thats spring in about five months time, sometimes spring wouldn't happen until April or so...
Not now, we haven't had a good snowy winter for about ten years now, and Leeds is quite a long way up the country, we're on the same latitude as Northern Germany/Denmark, now we just get wet mild winters with only a few weeks of frost and one, maybe two days of snow (thin, unimpressive snow) at worst.
So as far as the shrubs in my front garden are concerned its spring right now, we've had a wet week but the temperature has not dropped and its not really been cold so I kind of understand how the shrubs are getting confused , but I've never seen a year where they are making new growth before the old leaves have even finished falling off.
And since my attention was grabbed to all things horticultural I looked in the two oak half barrels that we have by the front door - the Gerbera or African Daisy's that had died back in one of the planters have come back again and look like they are almost ready to flower, and the trailing lobelia in the other one which were pulled out dead a few months ago must have seeded because that planter is full of new growth.
Leeds a tropical climate ?
Looks like it to me.
"They" say that the public get the press they deserve, its true.
And hanging onto the coat tails of the popular press come our Members of Parliament - casting laws by the latest newspaper headlines, actually believing and following the newspaper polls.
What other explanation is there for this story ?
Since christmas hamper company Farepak went into liquidation back in October the popular press and GMTV have been campaigning and championing the cause of all the poor little children up and down the country who will now simply not have any christmas presents to open on christmas day this year because their mums were daft enough to hand money over to someone in their street who then hopefully paid it into Farepak's bank account who then hopefully would send them some Argos and Aldi vouchers in time for little Johnny's christmas box.
You may think that I sound a tad unsympathetic.
You would be correct.
I don't believe for one minute that the uncounted families up and down the country will have nothing at all this christmas, ok they might not have all of the Argos vouchers that they thought they would have, but (for example) since the collapse of Farepak and before christmas they will have three family allowance payments, with two children thats £300+ or £150 per child, plenty enough to avoid a distraught christmas using just a few seconds forethought.
So why do we get a group of MP's signing a petition to ask Britains FTSE100 companies to donate a days profit to the welfare fund that has been set up for the "victims", nay, "innocent wee victims" of the Farepak crash ?
This isn't another tsunami appeal, no-one has died, no-one even knows how many creditors there are nor will they ever know because like other such credit clubs, Farepak didn't deal direct with its savers, the savers handed their money to "agents", often women in the same street as them who agreed to collect the money and distribute the vouchers at christmas, no written records, no membership details means incredibly inaccurate creditor numbers and leaves any appeal fund wide open to massive corruption - all I need to do is find a Farepak agent and offer her a 50% share of anything I get in compensation if she puts me on her list of members.
So far the "victims of Farepak" appeal fund has raised around £5million and they "think" that there could be "up to" 150,000 "victims", so thats £33 each then - thats a nice xmas day turkey dinner and a bottle of cheap whisky to wash it all down with then, so who's christmas has been spoiled ?
Its another example of Members of Parliament jumping on a tabloid newspaper band wagon in order to garner what they see as "good publicity" whereas the non-stupid members of our society can see right through what they are doing and sum them up as shallow, unthinking media whores with a desperation to be re-elected over and over again and make a lifetimes career out of this politiking business, especially as most of them have arrived at the sharp end of politics straight from studying politics at university and without having had the benefit of a real job in the real world first .
We get the professional politicians that we deserve, is there any wonder that they are so far detached from our lives ?
In theory we have a free trade situation throughout the whole of Europe.
My company could, for instance, win a contract in Belgium and I could go and work there without the need for permits or an export licence or any other such crap.
In theory, when I travel to Europe, anything I buy there is not supposed to be subject to any further taxation when I bring it back to the UK because I've already paid tax on it in the EU country of origin, in theory you shouldn't be taxed on purchases every time you cross an EU border.
And by and large thats how it works.
Fly into Leeds/Bradford Airport from (say) Barcelona and you'll be lucky to see a customs officer there, you just walk straight through arrivals with your bags stuffed full of Barcelona-type stuff and no-one here asks you to pay any more tax on it than the tax you already paid in Barcelona.
A few years ago HM Customs decided to remove their office at Leeds/Bradford Airport and instead stuck up a sign advising that if you had anything to devclare to them you should take a taxi to their offices located in Lawnswood, about three miles distant, I'm only guessing that over the course of a couple of years they weren't ever troubled by visitors at Lawnswood because they've moved back to the airport again, but still, they are not over-worked.
The overwhelming principal to the European Union is that because there should be an equilibrium of taxation throughout all of the member states then it doesn't matter which of the states you have paid your purchase tax (VAT), and as an EU citizen you don't have to pay it twice.
Thats the theory anyway.
In practice there is nothing like tax harmony throughout the union and there is no other area where this is more apparent than in alcohol and tobacco sales.
Here in the UK we have been hammered mercilessly by successive governments who use alcohol and tobacco sales as a huge cash cow - £16,000,000,000 was collected in taxation last year from such sales in the UK and so of course the UK government is very keen to prevent any sort of outside interference in their ability to soak our population for every penny that they can.
For instance a humble bottle of wine in Belgium will attract 35 cents (Euros) in taxation and in 13 EU countries there is zero taxation on wine, including France, obviously. In the UK we pay 1.80 Euros tax on the same bottle, while the poor sods in Ireland have to pay 2.1 Euros.
We aren't daft though, with flights from local airports to hundreds of destinations throughout Europe available for as little as 5p (yes I booked one such flight last year) we are well travelled and most of us would think nothing of popping on an flight to a random city for a weekend break once, or several times a year - and we notice things.
We notice first of all that the bas'tad French keep all the best wine for themselves and of course its much, much cheaper than in the UK, so we bring some home, we bring home as much as we can carry actually, then some more, and our kids get to carry packs of wine and beer too, its a good idea to take the neighbours kids with you on a weekend break, especially teenagers as they can carry more.
And while I have never smoked, even I can see the massive descrepency between French tobacco prices and UK tobacco prices, so carton upon carton of cigarettes are stuffed into suitcases too and not content with that, many people hire large vans and trucks and catch one of many, many ferries plying the channel trade, and bring back mountains of booze and ciggies, thus denying HM Government of nearly £1,000,000,000 worth of taxation last year.
And HM Government is not best pleased.
For several years now HM Governments Customs Officers have been instructed to apply limits to the amount of alcohol and tobacco that an individual can bring back to the UK, in direct contravention of the EU law which states that anyone can buy any amount of such products as long as it is for their own personal use and not for commercial gain.Anyone who is found to be carrying more than the invented and anti-EU-law UK Government limits will have their cargo confiscated and in some cases will even have their vehicle confiscated and sold to pay the excess duty, the excess duty that is not actually chargeable according to EU law - and they've been doing this for years.
It was all due to change today thanks to random Belgium chap who had challenged his own country from doing something similar to the UK government - he argued that the wine club that he was running should be able to buy wine in France at their rate of taxation (zero) and then sell to his Belgium customers without any further taxation - this opened up a flurry of speculation about how suppliers in low taxed EU states could now sell products to high taxed EU states on the internet, which would of course be bad news for HM Government and chancellor Gordon Brown must have spent a sleepless night last night wondering where he was going to find the £16billion in lost taxation next year.
But he needn't have worried.
The European court has just ruled that a third party cannot sell such products across EU borders to individuals without regard to the destination country's different taxation laws, you can still go to another country and bring home stuff for your personal consumption, but it still cannot be commercially sold across borders without being taxed again.
Boo-fekkin-hiss.
Are we suprised ?
No.
Why ?
Because who stands to lose more ? Yes thats correct, the governments who impose the draconian levels of taxation.
And who makes up and funds the European Union ?
Yes, the governments of each European state.
We should have seen right through this one, it was too good to be true.
I'm sick of selling our house now.
Fed up, I've had enough.
I've had enough of endless showing people around our house, whittering on about the layout and why its got a downstairs shower room ("I don't fooking know"), why its hasn't got a garage ("theres no fooking room, can't you see?") and how big the kitchen is and why its got three, sometimes four computers in it ("so we don't fight").
Its been five months now, the estate agent promised it would sell "without a problem" but its true that she didn't exactly explain how long it would take to sell without a problem.
We had three lots of people looking around on sunday, two of them for the second time, I'm so sick of explaining what the function of each room is ("this is called a toilet, we shit down that bowl thing there and it goes into the ground somehow"), so sick that I just open the door, wave my arm in the direction of the hallway and tell them to show themselves around, so far no-one has come back to ask if those rooms upstairs are where we sleep so I guess my method is ok.
We had an old couple come and look around last night who freely admitted that their house wasn't up for sale and they weren't even sure if they'd be selling their house or buying a new one, they just wanted to look around, I was writing that piece below about the London Olympics when they came so just waved them on their way upstairs, they didn't stay long and I checked to see that my ipod was still at the side of the bed after they'd gone.
I'm also fed up of looking around other peoples houses, of walking around, smiling, nodding, saying "oooh thats nice" when in fact you're thinking "jesus how do they live like this" and then telling the estate agent "its not for us".
We looked around a house on sunday on an estate that we used to live on 15 years ago (we've moved four times since then), it was a new house 20 years ago, its quite a nice house, it would do for us, but the lazy bas'tad people who live in it haven't done a thing to it since they bought it in 1984. Its still got the same tired old kitchen in it and its still got single glazing for gods sake, single fooking glazing when you're one mile away from an international airport, how bloody gormless is that ?
If we put an offer in for that one, and we may, then I'm going to knock £20K off the price, see if they like that, idle bas'tads.
We're going back to the street we used to live in tonight to look at an identical house to the one that we used to live in eight years ago (we've moved twice since then), its just three doors away - just to give you an idea of how enthusiastic I am to live back in that street again, think of those people tonight when they are showing me around their house, me with a face like Jack Dee on downers, "its alright but its not for us", "has it got a garage?"
I'm going to see a mortgage advisor this afternoon and I'm not going to give them any personal details, no salary details, nothing, I'm just going to tell her how much I want to pay each month and then get her to find out who will lend me enough money so I can buy the house I want, in other words I'm going to make the old cow work for her money.
Am I in a bad mood today ?
You be the judge.
PS - mentioning mortgages there - thats going to get me loads of spam isn't it ? Bas'tads.
Hands up all of you UK taxpayers who were not suprised today when Tessa Jowell announced that the estimated cost of hosting the London 2012 Olympics has just increased by 40%, in one year.
Thats all of you then.
Let me fill in some background to those from outside of the UK.
Our government is fucking useless at project management, A1, 24 carat fucking useless at organising anything that involves a budget and public spending.
Example : Back in the mid 1990's the conservative government decided that the UK should greet the oncoming millenium with a huge year long celebration of Britishness and to that end they commissioned the building of a big tent in Greenwich, London - The Millenium Dome.
It was estiimated that the big tent and the stuff that went inside it (they didn't know at that point what to actually put inside it) would cost £399 million and would attract 12 million visitors in the year that it would be open.
At the end of the year 2000 it was revealed that it had in fact only attracted 6 million visitors and that the total cost of the project was £789 million, of which £603 million was pick-pocketed out of the National Lottery Fund, the fund that was created to raise money "for good causes".
Example : Wembley Stadium (London again), closed to a huge sigh of relief from those of us who had ever been there, in October 2000 for redevelopment, with a plan for demolition before the end of 2000 and the new Wembley Stadium to be completed sometime in 2003, however at that point Tony Blairs labour government were still bickering about what should be included in the "new national stadium" and all sorts of weird and wonderful suggestions were bounded about with an elevated athletics running track suggested to get around the fact that the seating for the football and rugby events needed to be too close to the pitch for such a track to be included.
After it seemed like every single member of parliament had stuck his or her oar and spanner into the works the contract was finally started in 2003 at an estimated cost of £757 million with a scheduled opening date of 13th May 2006.
Its still not finished.
Luckily the main contractor had signed a fixed price contract which is probably the only sensible thing that the government insisted upon during the whole design phase, otherwise we could easily be paying over £1billion for our national stadium by now - it is however well worth noting that the Welsh National Sports Stadium in Cardiff, 74500 seats and a sliding roof, only cost £126 million in 1999.
Example : The Leeds Supertram Scheme, I can't even bring myself to recount this tale again, its here if you want to read some of it suffice to say that our national government led our local council a merry dance for ten years and made them spend £40 million of our local rates money on a project that they never intended to fund, nett result, nothing, zippo, fookall to show for our £40 million, sorry, one altered road junction and, erm, thats all.
So back in July of 2005 when London celebrated the winning of the bid for the 2012 olympics the first question on everyones lips was "who pays for it ?" and the second question was "who project manages it ?" and after hearing the answer "the government will" the third question was "you're fooking joking aren't you, have you forgotten the dome already ?"
The original estimate to build the olympic village, all of its stadia, and to host the event was put at £2.4billion, thats just £2,400,000,000 then, plus a bit more for extra security and a bit more on top for clearing up some of the sites after the olympics and converting the accomodation into social housing schemes.
We all gasped at the sums involved and then laughed when government ministers promised that the 2005 budget was "robust" and "viable" and we all shouted "remember the dome" and "look at wembley" and in Leeds we all shouted "where the fook is our supertram" and none of us believed them.
Sure enough, today Tessa Jowell, Minister for Culture asked parliament to stump up an extra £900million, thats a 40% increase in just 15 months with not much evidence of any work actually having started on the project yet, and I laughed very loud when driving my car today as I heard on the radio one of our local MP's ask Tessa Jowell why she thought it necessary to spend an additional £400 million on a firm of consultants who were being employed to make sure that the budget didn't increase any further, presumably they'll start consulting after their £400million has been banked ?
The good news is that most of the extra £900,000,000 will come from London taxpayers - serves the bas'tads right for nicking all of the blue riband events for themselves every time - but once again HM Government will be dipping into the "good causes" lottery fund, you know, the fund thats there for worthy causes like charities and government overspending and such like.
One of the crazy accounting anomolies is that HM Government are now having to pay VAT (a sort of sales tax) on the new buildings, which they apparently didn't think they'd have to do - well slap my buttocks and call me Daisy but I'd hazard a guess that VAT would be chargeable and I ain't nobody's treasury minister - so we taxpayers will pay the VAT out of our lottery fund which will go back to, yes, the government, who will spend it on, yes, anyone, more weapons for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, correct at the back, creative accounting at its best.
And despite Tessa Jowells assurances that she doesn't expect the budget to rise much further, she readily admits that she still has not yet costed the security measures and the post-olympic costs into the budget and some soothsayers are predicted a final cost of between £5billion and £8billion, thats £8000,000,000 - it looks better with the zeros on the end.
When you doubt politicians its not being cynical, its being realistic, this one will run and run, we've six more years of new budgets to come yet.
Yesterday a god-botherer lost her second appeal against her employer who had requested that she not wear her cruxifix over the top of her company uniform.
Full story here
British Airways are the employer in question and their company uniform policy states that religious symbolism should not be visible - end of story.
You can wear a cruxifix, they are not preventing you from wearing a cruxifix, you just wear it underneath your shirt, blouse, whatever.
But that wasn't good enough for Nadia Eweida, check-in desk clerk, who insisted that she be allowed to wear her cruxifix over the top of her uniform, to the extent where she was suspended without pay pending an enquiry into her complaint.
She has now been ruled against twice by the airline who have asked her to return to work with the cruxifix suitably concealed, or to take another job in the organisation which doesn't require a uniform and where the cruxfix rule doesn't apply - she's refused to do both.
Why ?
Because she is more than just a lady with a strong religious belief - she is a god-botherer.
She confirmed this when interviewed on that bastion of news gathering this morning - GMTV. During the interview she displayed all of the atributes of 100%, nailed-on (no pun intended) god-botherers, in that every sentence that she used had to contain a reference to her religious beliefs and/or her "father", "saviour", "lord almighty" and other such tosh.
She actually stated that it was not in her remit to decide how to wear the cruxifix, she had been told by the almighty to wear it outside of her uniform and she could not deny her saviour as she would have to face him one day and explain why she'd tucked the cross inside her shirt - lady that is one very petty and vindictive god that you are worshipping.
She's even got the Archbishop of York on her side who called the BA decision "nonsense", but of course he would say that wouldn't he, being that he wears the biggest cross you've ever seen outside of his frock on a sunday.
I have nothing but sympathy for people such as Nadia Eweida, but its sympathy for her state of mind rather than sympathy for her cause, she has a serious problem inside her head if she thinks that her god gives one flying fuck about how she wears her cruxifix, but therein lies the problem with god-botherers - they honestly believe that they have a direct line to their god and their lives are totally ruled by the voice in their head or the voice of a bloke in a frock at their local church.
We used to have a business competitor in Leeds who was a 24 carat gold-embossed god-botherer, the rep for Yellow Pages once came to us straight from a visit to his business and she couldn't get over the fact that he wouldn't make a decision on whether to take out some extra advertising until he'd popped upstairs and had a word with god to see whether He thought it was a good deal, she was flabergasted when god said that it was too expensive and would not make a good enough return on the investment, even more so when Bob, the god-botherer, explained that god ruled his whole life, god had given him his wife, his house, his business, the food on his table, and his Yellow Pages advertising budget.
Bob would sometimes pop in to see us at our office, have a cup of coffee, chat about business - but he never failed to leave us without trying to press a god-bothering leaflet into our hands, or to bless us, or get us to sing one of his little hymn-things with him, he never left our office without the words "fuck off Bob" ringing in his ears.
I will finish with a parable from that great prophet Eddie Izzard who tells the story of how God looked down at earth in the 21st century and was displeased with what he saw, he called for his son Jesus and pointed out to him all of the evil corrupt ways of man and how the world was in a much worse state now than when Jesus had been sent down to sort it all out 2000 years previously.
God spaketh unto Jesus and told him to go back down to earth and sort the mess out properly this time, to which Jesus replied "You must be fuckin jokin dad, don't you remember last time, they're animals down there, they nailed me to a fuckin tree for gods sake"
Somewhere in our house is a Sony Playstation 2.
Gathering dust in a box in a cupboard it rests there with its plethora of PS1 and PS2 game CD's, unwanted, unloved, un-needed.
We have moved on, me and my teenage daughters.
Somewhere in our house are two Sony Playstation 1 consoles, probably in the loft, probably in a landfill site somewhere actually, we have moved on, we no longer need them.
Which is more than can be said for these sad bas'tads here.
In my defence I will categorically state that I bought the Playstations for the girls, when they were young, they persuaded me that they were good things to buy and all their friends had one and they were as vital to a childs life as food was.
I caved into their demands after five minutes, bought them their first PS1 and some random games that were girly inspired plus two car racing games which I thought would be mildly amusing to my goodself - we then quickly aquired a second PS1 when the children complained that they couldn't get to use the first one because I was never off the bloody thing.
When the time came to upgrade to PS2 we did so, but by now the eldest daughter had grown tired of gaming and moved on to horses, real horses. The youngest however wanted a PS2 so that she could play a game called "Crazy Taxi" which turned out to be the only specific PS2 game we ever bought - daughter number 2 grew tired of Crazy Taxi an hour after we had bought it and the whole kit was dumped unceremoniously somewhere where it still probably lies until we move house sometime soon (more on that later).
So we moved on from gaming, in the same way that you can never watch a dvd film more than twice, we found it mind numbingly boring to start the same game and use the same procedures to get to the same level in the same time, every time we played any of the games - its boring, simple as.
So why do these people quit their jobs and sleep on streets for several nights on the strength of a rumour that one shop may have some stock of whatever is the latest "box" to have this christmas ?
What sort of a brain does a person need inside their head to spend their whole waking life clicking buttons, waggling joysticks, and imagining that they really are killing deadly laser toting Quarks from the planet Zarg in order to save the world, how many times do you actually play at being a soldier in a combat zone before you actually believe that you really are a soldier in a combat zone and walk down the street shooting random people - and more importantly and more pertinent, how many times do you drive your imaginary car the wrong way down a one way street smashing any vehicles out of your way without damage to your car or yourself, before you steal a real car and try to do the same thing ?
Or does none of that really happen and its just a harmless way of keeping nerds off the street who would otherwise annoy the rest of us in so many other ways ?
Carry on queueing nerds, it makes good news stories and the rest of us get to put the shopping down for a few minutes and laugh at you before we have to carry on with our real lives.
This weekend, like all weekends, the UK Style satellite channel is dominated by the scrumptious Amanda Lamb and her "Place In The Sun" TV programme.
For those too poor to have cable, satellite, or freeview, or for those few people left in the world who have not emigrated to the UK, "Place In The Sun" takes two people to an exotic resort every week and shows them around four or five properties on the pretence that they are actually actively looking to purchase a holiday home in another country.
And its not just Europe that they look in, this mornings programme featured four properties in Barbados and the lucky couple "apparently" and "allegedly" put in an offer on a villa in St James - yes of course they did Amanda, you didn't exactly show us living in their new villa though did you ?
Thereby hangs my plan.
Nobody on "Place In The Sun" ever buys anything. They get a week in a sunny foreign country of their choice and all they have to do is put up with Amanda Lamb (what a chore) for two days and look around four houses, pretending to be all enthusiastic about each of them.
An interview at the end of the show follows where Amanda asks if you've made up your mind about which house you'd choose and whether or not you're going to put an offer in - and if you are like 90% of the people on the programme you'll tell Amanda,
"Well Amanda, we loved the little pink villa on the beach, it really ticked all our boxes and we'd love to buy that one please"
To which Amanda will say,
"Well thats fantastic, so what are you going to do now"
"Well Amanda we're going to go home and think about it"
End of programme.
You've had a free holiday in your own choice of foreign resort and if you're lucky, and if the production company are particularly stupid, you could apply again next year using a slightly different surname and do the whole thing over again.
I just can't wait to see the "Place In The Sun Special Day" when UK Style show "Place In The Sun" back to back all day long and I'm on every episode using a slightly different surname each time in my quest to visit every resort in the world before I die.
A 50th birthday present for a friend's birthday in December, this is the view that he requested from his favourite hole at Sandmoor Golf Club in Leeds.
Its not quite finished and Suzanne has complained constantly that the sky is too dark but I'm happy enough to leave it for the time being and get on with my next commission - a view of Robin Hoods Bay for Amanda's boyfriends Grandma (I think thats who its for) - it'll be watercolour so a different set of demands than pastel.
Its back, its that time of year again, its the night to stay indoors rather than visit anywhere that could possibly attract another member of the public - because that other random member of the british public is likely today to ask you for money.
Back in the days when I could always be found in The Fox every friday night, this is the one night of the year when I would stay in the house, and like a fool I would watch the blanket BBC coverage called "Children In Need", from 7pm right through to the early hours of the morning I would sit there like an idiot and watch other idiots make idiots of themselves and call it "entertainment" - then they would, at regular intervals, tell me where to send money, all of my money.
It still hurts to confess that for several years my wife rang the freephone numbers and left my credit card details with instructions to take whatever amount they liked out of my account.
It won't happen tonight.
This afternoon I will close the office at 4pm as per usual and ajourn to The Fox where myself and my good lady will partake of some fine real ale and stuff some extremely palatable food down our gullets for a couple of hours at which point we will scurry from the place before the students get there with their fancy dress and begging bowls.
The stuff on BBC1 tonight will be to its usual low standard, already I have heard of a team of newscasters paying a musical tribute to James Bond - for christ sake no - and ex-spice girl Emma Bunton has recorded the "official" C-I-N record this year, a remake of Petula Clark's "Downtown" which only serves to highlight just how pointless remakes of old classics can be, the spice girl with the weakest voice manages to make herself and her record sound exactly like Petula Clarks 1965 recording , in fact I think they may have saved money by using the old backing track and the whole thing leaves you with just one word in mind - "why ?"
The TV show itself is, as always, as it has been since 1863, presented by Terry Wogan, the now officially unfunny Radio 2 presenter. Terry Wogan's breakfast radio show was original and amusing in 1972 but unsuprisingly the exact same format wore thin many years ago and the same goes for his year-on-year presentation of the C-I-N tv programme.
However tonight he will apparently, along with some posh totty, present the winner of a competition to find the new voice of the speaking clock (that alone is surely worth staying in for tonight), so-called music from McFly (seen them last week, offer zero to music heritage), Girls Aloud (watch for the ginger haired one, I just think "council house mongrel" every time), Sugababes ( who they), Westlife and several other bland stars of the popular music genre who will perform and then mention their forthcoming christmas single as instructed by their agent.
Oh yes, and David Cassidy.
But the worst, most cringeworthy parts of the whole evenings dross are the several sections where "stars" of soap operas appear to sing, or dance, or do a party piece, and Terry Wogan and his audience pretend that they were very good and please send some money or we'll get them back on again - tonights offering is predictable and I didn't even need to look it up on the web site to state that the cast of Corrie Street, Holby City, Bad Girls and Hollyoaks will all be "doing a turn" and mentioning the time and date of their next episode.
Is that really the worst bit ?
No, actually the worst bit is the parade of London's West End musical actors who turn up at the studio and do a quick turn from their current productions - Shepherds Bush must have a queue of actors in various musical costumes stretching all the way around the corner all night as these mercenaries bid to grab five minutes on the show and mention which theatre they are appearing at, what time is curtain up, and seats in all parts still available, its a busy night for theatrical agents and limousine drivers.
Fortunately tonight sees Emmerdale and two episodes of Coronation Street on ITV (how do they do Corrie Street and still appear on C-I-N at the same time), and for once I will be grateful that the women in our house choose the TV programmes that I watch.
The arabic TV News programme Al-Jazeera launched its English language version into Europe yesterday and in an effort to shit-stir at lunchtime our local Radio Leeds programme ran a poll of listeners asking if the news channel should be banned - fortunately the result was an overwhelming "of course not you fuckwits".
We like our news to have at least two flavours and here in the UK we have lots of choice...
The BBC - the bastion of truth and honesty the world over, except here in the UK where every month someone accuses the BBC of being too right wing, then too left wing, then over zealous in its selective employment of black people, or asian people, or homosexuals, or not as the case may be that month - as a public funded broadcaster it has to be seen to be neutral and if you listened to the critics it hardly ever is, still, its the BBC.
ITN News - the commercial side of broadcasting in the UK, funded entirely from crumbs of advertising revenue that the Rupert Murdoch empire missed or let fall to the floor, ITN News spends too much of its time trying to compete with the BBC instead of doing its own thing which sometimes results in unfortunate incidents such as their main news crew headed by vetran braodcaster Terry Lloyd being killed on one of the first days of the Iraq invasion when they went ahead of the allied forces without authorisation or armed backup and got themselves entangled in the crossfire - all in the quest for an exclusive report over and above what the BBC could garner from behind the tanks. ITN is usually seen as a poor mans BBC.
Sky News - the first UK broadcaster to present a 24 hour news channel and which revolutionised tv news in the UK, funded by the Murdoch global tv empire its seen as the channel of choice for anyone who wants the news NOW rather than wait for the BBC to catch up and ITN to arrive a few days later - it was Sky News that we switched on this saturday when we got a text message from our daughter in Trafalger Square to say that something was going on there - switched the tv on in panic and there she was in Trafalger Square at the rememberence service - really must explain to our daughter what rememberence day is all about.
The American broadcasters - the likes of NBC, ABC et all who sneak onto spare channels on our satellite providers for that exclusive USA-only coverage of world events - want to know what that nuclear explosion in Iran was all about this morning ? Switch on your choice of American News channels and find out what all the obscure college basketball scores were last night instead.
The problem with all of those channels is of course that we only get the one point of view, our point of view, our western point of view - watch an Isreali move to rid Gaza of arabs and you'll watch the coverage from behind an Isreali tank and you'll get the sanitised Isreali version of what happened and you might suspect that its not the full story, but you have nowehere else to see or hear the other version of events.
Until now.
Now you have Al-Jazeera to tune in to.
Presented by European correspondants the news channel provides the same stories that the western news channels provide, but their cameras show the action from the other side of the fence, and they pull no punches, and at last we can now get two often very obtuse and polarised reports and most importantly - MAKE OUR OWN MINDS UP.
There is one tiny little glitch in the news though - despite being available now to a 40 million European audience no American broadcasters have stepped forward to carry the channel yet, land of the free thought ?
Not yet it seems.
Tecumseh Valley
by Townes Van Zandt
A superb version exists out there in the ethernet by Nanci Griffith, ably assisted by another of my favourite singers Arlo Guthrie, it was on YouTube last week but I seem to have lost it, never mind eh, the lyrics are beautiful all on their own...
The name she gave was Caroline
The daughter of a miner
And her ways were free and it seemed to me
The sunshine walked beside her
She come from Spencer across the hill
She said her Pa had sent her
'Cause the coal was low and soon the snow
Would tuwn the skies to winter
Well she said she'd come to look for work
She was not seeking favors
For a dime a day and a place to stay
She'd turn those hands to labor
The times were hard Lord the jobs were few
All through Tecumseh Valley
But she asked around and a job she found
Tending bar for Gypsy Sally
She saved enough to get back home
When spring replaced the winter
But her dreams were denied her Pa had died
The word came down from Spencer
She turned to whorin' out on the streets
With all the lust inside her
It was many a man returned again
To lay himself beside her
Well they found her down beneath the stairs
That led to Gypsy Sally's
In her hand when she died
Was a note that cried
Fare thee well Tecumseh Valley
The name she gave was Caroline
The daughter of a miner
And her ways were free and it seemed to me
The sunshine walked beside her
And just for desserts, this working of Nanci Griffith's "Gulf Coast Highway", lush, just lush.
Today sees the premiere of the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale and my Interest-o-Meter (above) is already showing signs of complete disinterest.
The suprising thing about this film is that the original Casino Royale starred David Niven and was actually a spoof James Bond film - is this the first time that a film company has remade a spoof film into its real object of derision ?
I hate James Bond films, always have.
I hated them as a kid for two reasons - Shirley Bassey and the terrible storylines.
Shirley Bassey was/is a pet hate of mine, a singer that shouts every line, it works in a punk band but not for Shirley Bassey, I cannot do with her and unfortunately they let her sing theme tunes from James Bond, even the ones that she wasn't supposed to officially sing, she's awful, just awful, my Auntie Irene likes her though.
The storylines are something else and usually involve some terrible person who wants to take over the world, but do it secretly so that no-one will know that he's taken over the world. To this end he usually builds a secret hideout the size of a large shopping mall and employs thousands of people to walk around all day dressed in white overalls, carrying clipboards and looking busy.
Some top secret method of dominating the worlds population is invented, secretly, in the top secret shopping mall, which is usually hidden under a mountain or disguised as a shopping mall, and the top secret method of dominating the world usually involves lasers or hi-tech bombs, anything as long as the James Bond film audience don't quite understand what is involved because its too technical to explain properly, which isn't that difficult really as the James Bond film audience , the ones who have actually paid real money to watch the film at a real cinema, usually can't maintain an IQ that can be measured in any way.
To stop the horrible villian, who manages to maintain his empire without anyone ever knowing, even the wives of the men who work for him don't suspect anything ...
"Don't forget your packed lunch love, what time will you be home tonight ?"
"I'll get the 5.05 from Paddington love, as usual"
"Oh good, I'll put the casserole on, don't forget to ask Mr X if you can have the first week in august off"
"I don't think we do holidays at Evil World Domination PLC love"
...to stop him, the world turns to one man, James Bond, who must be getting fairly pissed off with evil world dominating villians by now, and to aid him in his quest to rid the world of evil world dominating villians we, the British government, give him a pen that fires gas, or little bullets, or a laser light that can cut through steel.
And of course he gets captured because all evil world dominating villians know what he looks like by now, they've all seen the films before, James Bond must be the worst kept secret, secret agent ever. Even if you don't recognise him instantly you'd know who he was when you stand next to him in a bar and hear him order a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, for only a top secret agent or a complete plonker would order a nancy drink like that in a working mens club.
And instead of simply shooting him dead the evil world dominating villian usually ties him to a table where a huge circular saw starts to turn ever so slowly, moving towards his spread-eagled legs at the speed of a speeding glacier, threatening to split the top secret agent asunder at anytime in the next, well, half hour or so - and instead of hanging around to watch the top secret, secret agents demise, the evil world dominating villian buggers off to do something more important instead, leaving James Bond to escape with the aid of a pocket circular saw disabling tool that he hid in, erm, his pocket - why do evil world dominating villians never search James Bonds pockets when they capture him in every film ?
The evil world dominating villian is foiled once again, his top secret hideaway is blown to smithereens but he and all of his white overall clad employees escape without harming a hair on their head because no-one ever dies in a James Bond film. Meanwhile, James Bond gets to shag a girl who appeared halfway through the film just for the eye candy effect.
The End.
There, you don't need to pay to go watch the crap now.
The X Factor takes over saturday night viewing in our house and to be honest its getting to a point now with six "performers" left where the cream is rising to the top and the dross is struggling - or at least that is the theory.
On Saturday night there were two outstanding acts, Leona who has been consistently the best singer bar none right through the rounds, and Robert who has been very shaky some weeks and twice has had to sing for his supper at the end.
They were both head and shoulders above the rest and were both rightly voted through to the next round but all six of the acts are now showing themselves to be fairly un-versatile one trick ponies, even Leona who should be declared winner right now has not performed in anything other than a Whitney/Maria clone stylee.
The rest of them are just the best of a poor bunch.
Raymond, the twelve year old with a seventy year old's love of swing music will struggle to perform in any other genre, I predict that he may be the next one to go if Simon Cowell persists in introducing a big band element into his performance next week - he will then tour the UK's nursing homes performing for old ladies would will pinch his cheeks and tell him what a lovely little boy he is.
Robert can belt out a soul song as he showed on saturday, but as he has also shown, when he performs a song that is outside his skill level he wallows in complete confusion and embarrasment and he also sounds far too much like Frank Bruno to ever be taken seriously by an audience, he will not make the final and will disappear from the TV radar , appearing in panto as a Frank substitute.
Ben is starting to annoy me now, I wish he would stand upright when he sings instead of bending double on stage as if trying to force out a particularly wide and nobbly turd. His voice is suitable only for a "stadium soft rock" band of the sort favoured by mid-american college students, but he is twenty years too late in his application form, a return to a career erecting marquees while singing to himself is what he should be focussing upon.
And then we come to Louis Walsh's two groups, and deary me are these two scraping the bottom of the talent barrell.
Eton Road are right up Louis Walsh's street, another poor impression of a boy band, several years after the last of the boy bands were thrown on the scrap heap of pop stardom by the twelve year old girls who once worshipped them. The big difference between Eton road and (for instance) Westlife is of course that Eton Road are crap but dear old Louis can't see it - he chose the Beatles song "From me to you" on saturday for them and it was quite frankly appalling, a terrible choice of a song in the "love" genre where he could have chosen anything. When The Beatles had a hit with the song in '63 it was new and fresh and only two minutes long, on Saturday it was corny and badly delivered by a group of young boys who had no idea of what they were doing - they could well be the next ones to go if Louis makes another terrible decision like last saturdays.
And finally, the McDonald Brothers. Words fail me. Prior to X Factor they were making a few quid every weekend singing at weddings and their ambitions should have stopped right there, where drunken guests never actually listen to them and would dance to a screaming cat when they've drunk the bar dry. The Scottish vote has kept them in the competition so far and will continue to do so right through (I fear) to the final and if that happens then they could actually win the competition - this is not as stupid as it sounds, remember Michelle Mcmanus the zeppelin sized scottish bird who won X Factor a couple of years ago ? No ? Well its not suprising really, the Scottish vote won her the competition then, and she sunk without trace, which isn't that difficult to do when you're 35 stone.
The competition should be about talent, there is one talented singer in there at the moment, but now its about young girls and old ladies voting for the act that they'd like to meet in a shopping mall or in the common room of their residential home.
It'll be worth the Wedding SIngers winning it just to watch Simon Cowell storm off stage in the final though.
Our eldest daughter Amanda is away to that there London this weekend with her boyfriend Chris who has treated her to two nights in a swanky Piccadily hotel, the fool.
He's known her for long enough now to realise that, even more than her mother, Amanda lives to shop, and he should know by now that when she shops she does not use her own money to pay for the stuff she buys, she uses either her fathers money or her boyfriends money.
Even before she left, with her own money saved up and sitting safely in her bank account, she attempted to prise some "spenders" off her mother, who, showing great resolve, refused and told her to spend her own to which she replied "right I'll ask my dad then".
She did ask me, I diplomatically ignored her request as a reply at this stage would have upset either the wife or the daughter resulting in a two day tantrum by either or both - see how good I am at this woman control thing ?
However when I was taking them to the railway station on Friday morning I confess to giving her £50 "for emergency use only", so thats the last I'll see of that then as "emergency use only" to Amanda means seeing something else she wants to buy in Top Shop when she's spent all of her own money.
Some of my "emergency use only" money was no doubt spent on Friday night when we received a text telling us that they were in a bar waiting for food and that their round of two drinks (beer and wine) had just cost them £10, they wouldn't be able to get drunk on my "emergency use only" money then.
Unbeknown to both of them they have of course picked one of the busiest weekends of the year to go to London, yesterday was the 11th Nov, Rememberance Day, and an event in Trafalger Square completely spoiled her plans for a shopping morning as Chris wanted to attend - we got a very annoyed text message from her just before the two minutes silence at 11am telling us that "they were wasting time hanging around TrafalgerSquare because HE wanted to take some photographs".
Following the 11am event was the Lord Mayors Parade which I doubt very much she attended, by that time the clothes shopping frenzy would have started on Oxford Street, no more texts arrived after noon so we assume that shopping filled the rest of the day to total exclusion of sending messages back home, or anything else.
Today of course they have the proper Rememberance Service to battle through on the embankment although I have told them to head for Covent Garden this morning - its a typical touristy thing to do but sunday morning drinking over-priced coffee whilst beating off the beggars in Covent Garden is one of the more pleasant tasks that one can achieve.
Personally I hate London, its filthy, over-priced to the extent of robbery, teems with crooks just waiting to extract money from you in a variety of ingenious ways, and contains far too many ignorant, miserable, self obsessed people - and still the overseas tourists make it their first port of call and base their impression on English people from the rag-tag bunch of misfits that they meet there.
So I hope they enjoy their weekend and I hope they find someone to give them a lift home from the station when they arrive there this afternoon - I will be gently sozzled at a rugby club dinner all afternoon.
For some strange reason I agreed last night to go to the "Switching on Of The Christmas Lights" ceremony in Leeds City Centre.
I've never understood why the city have to do this, hold a ceremony I mean and I confess that I still don't.
I stood there outside Cuthbert Brodericks magnificent Town Hall with a crowd of probably ten thousand or so, in front of a stage and big screen, freezing our cobblers off for half an hour before the "turns" started.
We were richly rewarded (no really) for our wait by a preview of "The WIzard of Oz" which is lodged firmy at the West Yorkshire Playhouse through the winter, Dorothy and the Scarecrow sang a couple of songs and a pair of so-called "radio personalities" who I had never heard of got all excited when Gaynor Faye (her of Coronation St and Fat Friends) rushed on stage with Father Christmas who sounded like a pissed up Peter Cook - three songs from Santa later and I was convinced that it was a pissed up Peter Cook inside the costume.
The Lord Mayor was next, with a 16 year old girl from a High School who had won a competition to pretend to be mayor for the day - both dressed in their civic regalia of three cornered hat and red cloaks with feather and fur flying, very impressive our mayor was, so impressive that a little girl behind me screamed out "look, a pirate" - and being that he was a local politician she may have been correct.
Finally a popular beat combo by the name of McFly appeared and mimed to four of their songs, I had never heard of them but they assured the crowd that they had had six number one hit singles, well I'm sorry boys, but I haven't paid much attention to the hit parade in these past thirty years and judging by last night I haven't missed much either.
And as I stood there with ten thousand screaming voices thankfully drowning out the delightful sound of McFly who were jumping all over the stage to their backing tracks, I was reminded of a similar night, many, many years ago, a warm summers night in a village somewhere in France...
...a village somewhere in France, somewhere so random that I can't even hazard a guess as to whether it was in Brittany or le Cote d'Atlantique, we were there on our three week summer holiday, circa 1970, and had found ourself in this random village where our dad spotted a poster for a free concert that was taking place in the market place that very evening - starring Sacha Distell.
Sacha Who ? You may well ask. Sacha Distell was a French heartthrob of the 1960's who had found fame on the many British TV variety programmes of the time, the likes of "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" and "The Generation Game" were forever being haunted by Sacha Distells heavy French accent pouring out his felicitations of "lurve" to all the ladies - they loved him and he had a big hit with "Raindrerps are farleeng on ma heed" in 1968.
He was the big star at the free concert and so that evening we all trooped into the little French village square and took up our place with thousands of French people, all eagerly awaiting the arrival of Sacha the sex symbol.
The event was a national tour of France sponsored by a toothpaste company eager to get French people to start using toothpaste and we were treated for several hours to the sight of giant tubes of McLeans dancing on stage with giant toothbrushes, interspersed with juggling acts, fire eaters, and lots and lots of announcements and advertisements, none of which we understood.
Four hours later we were still stood rooted to the spot and our dad was not best pleased, Sacha still had to make his appearance and it was now well past midnight, we were hungry and tired and our legs ached and our dad had missed a whole night of beer drinking to watch a four hour toothpaste advertisement, it was not funny.
And then finally Sacha Distell appeared on stage, although by this time we had been shoved so far to the back of the market place that it could have been anyone in the light blue blazer on stage.
He sang one song then buggered off.
It was not a very happy car ride home.
At least last night was all over in one hour, the lights were switched on , a big firwork display, then we buggered off to The Fox - two pints of Taylors Landlord later and I was ready to pronounce the evening a success.
And on yet another music inspired topic...
I am apparently going to see McFly perform tonight as they switch on the Leeds Christmas Lights, or at least thats what my youngest daughter tells me, she insists that I stay and watch the popular beat combo after I've taxi'ed her into town.
Has anyone got the faintest idea of who McFly are ?
Sticking with the musical theme this morning I have a plea, a warning to all of you record buyers out there - Cliff is back in town.
And this time he's got Brian and Tony with him...
And they want a christmas chart topping, pick of the hits, number one.
Please, please do not encourage them, not even with one single single purchase, please, it will only get worse if you do.
They were featured on GMTV this morning singing a truly awful reworking of Cliffy's first hit from 1872, "Move It", Cliff and Brian May and Tony Meehan (The Shadows drummer), three old gits who really should know better than to have yet one more go at the "hit parade".
Your time has passed gentlemen, it passed you by several decades ago and you didn't notice, your friends should really have told you not to go on making fools of yourselves but then that asumes that you have friends, or that your friends aren't cruel enough to let you press on and have everyone laugh at you - you are not what 12 year old girls buy into when they sit around in coffee bars called "Le Cafe Bongo" or "Cafe a-go-go" talking of the latest heartthrob to hit the hit parade - its gone gentlemen, its all gone, and so should you.
Cliff danced this morning on GMTV, he danced to Brian May's bog-standard guitar break, (circa "Radio Ga-Ga" days), he danced and looked like your drunk grandad dancing at a wedding and we all cringed and curled up in embarassment and hoped that the video tape would break soon, now.
And then they interviewed Brian May and he spoke of his thrill at working with Cliff, and how he had always wanted to work with Cliff, and how he and Cliff had reinvented the song that Cliff had last recorded with Mr Edison back in 1883, and the bit where he explained that he was only doing this because his agent had been on a bit of a losing streak recently and he needed a favour doing quickly before the boys in suits came to see him, was mysteriously cut from the interview.
I have watched them, and I did it so that you would not have to, heed my words, watching this will spoil your appetite, avoid at all costs.
Iris Dement, singing "Our Town" with Emmylou Harris, sheer bliss.
Its here on YouTube on one of those annoying slow loading connections but well, well worth the wait,
if only I could embed the YouTube video in here then I would but this logon of mine doesn't seem to like it.
I love Iris Dement's music, my wife hates Iris Dement's voice, its a perfect marriage made in heaven is ours, we've disagreed on everything for the last 23 years - she has no taste and couldn't recognise musical genius if it kicked her hard up the arse - she bought a Brother Beyond CD in the 80's, need I say more ?
And while we're at it, an old video of Emmylou singing "Boulder to Birmingham".
Sheer bliss, sheer unadulterated bliss.
Sit back, breath deep, close eyes and let it waft all over you.
