Hey Eddie, how come you're such a big hit with the girls?

Eddie Izzard, there. Thinking out of the box. This "can do" attitude, all over the world. People, all over the world, eating well, training hard, thinking out of the box. Changing things politically by going to the gym for five hours a day, pounding the streets, spinning those wheelchair wheels till they think their arms are going to drop off.

A political statement from these can-doers. Come on, people! Get going!

Get out of that armchair, out of that boring job with long hours, get those metal legs running, faster faster faster!

Don't let that lung disease get you down, look at Eddie, godammit he ran 26 marathons a day every day for a year! Think out of the box stop watching the box, you lazy cunt.

Don't complain about being hungry, just look at your golden compatriots, see what they've achieved!

That poor fucker with no legs just got FOUR gold medals, how the fuck can YOU complain about YOUR lot in life?

Bundle!

I'm currently enjoying The 100 Worst People On Twitter, a necessary antidote to all those awful Famous People To Follow On Twitter you get in the broadsheets.

I say I'm enjoying it, but it's led me to investigate online quarrels, some of them long-standing. This was entertaining at first but now I've had enough.

I don't care any more if The IT Crowd's @Glinner is Twitter's policeman or that he blocked The Lady Magazine's @LFBarfe or that comedy discusser @cookdandbombd and media-recognised blogger @mrsnickyclark are on one side or the other and go on and on and on about it. I'm going to leave them all to it in future. Go ahead and read them if you wish.

And as I'm spreading the love today, here's an absolutely hilarious video including some of those poor celebrities who have to put up with comments from people who think they're shit and get their own back by attacking those few unhinged cancer and rape wishers amongst us.

London Does It Again!

So now we have the Paralympics. It's going to be the best Paralympics ever. Because it's here. That's why it's going to be the best ever.

Politicians have tears of admiration in their eyes for those disabled people who have achieved being on the telly, stretching their bodies to the utmost. The same politicians take away the benefits of those disabled they say are stealing taxpayers' money and really should be working, just look at what can be achieved, look at the examples being set by your fitter brothers and sisters, get off your arse and get a job, come on, put some effort into it you shirking fake!

But as a spectacle, it's really difficult to get worked up about. How can you when you have admiration for every single participant? All athletes perform to the best of their capabilities and you want to see a race where there is a small margin between winners and losers. You want to get behind your man or woman, you desperately want your athlete to beat the rest, you couldn't give a shit if Mary Decker falls over, you think thank fuck for that. You want Great Britain to win a tight, exciting race. If not Britain, you want Jamaica. If not Jamaica, anybody but the USA. We love it when the Americans come just outside the medals. And more than anything we want Ovett to beat Coe.

How can the competitive emotions come to the fore when you're applauding everybody in the race, willing them all to do a personal best? Even Oscar Pistorius as he wins by five miles. Bloody hell, they're all to be admired. Even the Americans and the Tories.

So Proud, So Very, Very Proud

AHOY THERE!

I don't want to piss on anybody's chips but...

Let's have a look at the amounts of funding from UK Sport for the 2012 Olympics.

Surprise surprise rowing gets the most money followed by surprise surprise cycling.

Both events need expensive equipment, £20,000 per boat, £20,000 per bike.

Neither rowing nor cycling are mass participant sports. You can imagine the schools that have rowing clubs! And you can imagine the kids whose parents can't afford to buy them a decent racing bike let alone the kids having the space to ride in safety.

How many non-white athletes have Great Britain in these sports? Surely there would be one or two with the body for rowing, the body for cycling?

The next time somebody says "if only footballers were like our great Olympians," you know where to tell them to stick their words.

Opening Medicine

Everybody loved it. I had glowing reports beforehand from people who'd seen or been involved in the dress rehearsals and when the time came for the actual televisual feast, Twitter was awash with pride.

This was Britain at its best, the stuff that makes us all proud to be part of the greatest nation on earth. Boris Johnson was crying "hot tears of patriotic pride".

Frank Cottrell Boyce in today's Observer: "We shared the things we loved about Britain - the Industrial Revolution, the digital revolution, the NHS, pop music, children's literature, genius engineers."

Two capitalist revolutions, an underfunded health service, the Eurythmics, Mary fucking Poppins and Jeremy Clarkson's hero.

We are proud of our multi-culturalism, well some of "us" think it was right that we accepted people we owed something to, most don't think we owe "them" anything and would like it if "they" went back "home".

Great Ormond Street is a symbol of how we look after our people from the cradle to the pub. We love children more than any other nation and the image of a child in a hospital bed makes us weep with pride and empty our wallets. And all our Mary Poppins's, looking after our precious ones who will grow up to employ nannies of their own.

The night of the ceremony, Boris Johnson had a sweet dream, a sweet wet dream about Julie Andrews tucking him up in bed, bending over him, whispering, "it's going to be alright, everything's going to turn out right".

And he woke up laughing at Mr Bean.


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The Sea Air Will Do Us Good

Looking at the Jack Vettriano poster on the wall of the hospital corridor, just around the corner from the curled-up photographs of nurses, haphazardly arranged in a large smeared frame, I'm waiting for my mum to be made more comfortable three weeks after her life-prolonging operation.

I never used to tell my mum I love her. Now I say it every time we speak. It's not really a thing a boy of my generation and class does easily. It took me years to kiss her goodbye.



What the fuck are you singing? Are you a human vox-box of tricks, a servile Bobby McFerrin? Listeners can't help but dance? Don't worry, be happy?

Why are these beautiful young posh people dancing on the beach in the rain, in formal party clothes? Has the maid brought their medication? Or their booze? Is one of them ill and this is their last dance before amputation? What have you always really wanted to do? Dance in the rain by the sea, with a gruff-voiced butler and a silly fussing maid. One last dance before the hospital bed. Splash and move, more free than we've ever been. Darling, I love you and your unpredictable movement, the wet-dog animality of you. I'll miss your drunken larks when you've got no legs.

Jimmy Carr

I'd have more respect for Jimmy Carr if he'd stuck it out. Cameron said it was "morally wrong". The cunt - his government is morally wrong.

It's become a matter of individual responsibility. A naughty celebrity doing something that's legal but frowned upon. Frowned upon by all right-thinking people who "do the right thing". Individual responsibility to be a good person.

And those who don't "do the right thing"? Frowned upon. Naughty boys and girls, the cheek of them! How can they live with themselves? Still, it's their choice, the cheeky monkeys! You've got to admire their gall!

But those who "do the right thing" can live with themselves. If you work hard and pay your taxes you can feel good about yourself. And there may be a little reward in Heaven for you.

Won't that be worth it?


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Punk Britannia

Punk. Changed things, didn't it? Had its roots in pub rock - small venues, small crowds.

Did I ever tell you about the Pistols gig at Manchester Free Trade Hall?

The kids had nothing. There were all these boring old farts making boring old music for boring old people. There was no future.

The kids picked up their guitars. They taught themselves a chord, another chord, another chord. One, two, three.

The kids had something and nothing would be the same again.

The UK was rubble and rubbish. Bleak, boring. Grim, grey. The kids had nothing. They had nothing to lose.

Then the kids had something. They had nothing, then they had something. Three chords. A synthesiser. One finger. One finger to the establishment.

Nothing. Nothing to lose. Something.

No future. A future.


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Work Till You Drop?

"But what if you don't want to work at 81? What if you have to to pay the bills?" asked Fiona Foster in this ITV Tonight special.

But they all did want to work. What would they do otherwise? Sit and stare at four walls? Vegetate? Work gives them a purpose. It gets them out of the house. And besides, how will they pay the mortgage?

We are living longer. 65 is the new 30. The elderly have not only a wealth of experience, but an excess of energy. We are not losing our braincells like previous generations. We are fit for the job.

But what about the young? If we're retiring later, how will those leaving school and university get a foot on the career ladder?

No worries. The elderly with all their energy, experience and brain power will create new jobs. They will work for themselves. Dare I say it, they could well be the entrepreneurs of the future.


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Just Imagine...

The papers are over it like a rash. He has been having a torrid, exciting new affair at work, his wife found out and kicked him into touch.

"It is his business," says the company, desperate to keep the scandal behind closed doors. They do not want publicity, oh no.

Then imagine...

A man with influence in a company employs an old friend to work with him. The job is created just for her as there was no such job before.

Just an idea for a story I've got.


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If All You Ever Do Is Business...

I've just read Francis Beckett's The Great City Academy Fraud which describes how New Labour passed the running of schools not to big businesses as was originally envisaged but to entrepreneur car dealers, religious nutters and property developers. So instead of millions of pounds of investment from future employers, all kinds of creeps were able to pay peanuts to expel troublesome kids, massage GCSE results and get Norman Foster to design buildings made for the world class business of world class education in a world class country. All paid for by the taxpayer.

Our local school recently became an academy and this is the bloke who the kids I see during the week are grateful to. He seems like a nice man with none of the business bullshit you'd expect.

Doesn't it make you want to be young again?

London is for Lovers

I'm getting used to travelling on the tube. All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

But there are dating agency ads on the tube, tempting London's young singletons, London's young heterosexual graduate professionals. Mr or Ms Right may be sitting beneath this ad, but without us you wouldn't know. And who talks to strangers on the tube, anyway? Nutters, that's who!

The ads are about presenting yourself for your date. Women wonder which pair of shoes would be suitable, not too high, not too low. Men wonder which colour shirt to wear, the blue or the white one, definitely not pink.

"Not the pink one," said Harry.

Last week I noticed the facial hair one. This one's not for the women, apparently.

There is a picture of a razor and shaving brush. And the question for this chap is when would be the right time to shave before his date.

He doesn't want to be clean-shaven. That would suggest a lack of wildness, a boring conversationalist, a predictable lover.

He doesn't want a beard. A beard denotes a lack of interest in self-betterment, a "take me for what I am" attitude, a lazy lover.

No, what he wants is "just the right amount" of stubble. Not a five o'clock shadow, not a three day growth. Just the right amount to make a good impression, to make the lady feel immediately comfortable yet strangely intrigued. Just the right amount to create an air of mystery, yet thoughtful, caring, a responsive and pro-active lover, a giver yet knowing when to take, a protective, manly man, yet a certain vulnerability, a tamed wildness with an appetite for life, sophisticated yet not easily compartmentalised, a no-bullshit yet professional and controlled man with a mind of his own, knowing where he is going with everything to offer to the right woman.

@gilescoren

I must admit I've never read anything by Giles Coren except for his recent tweets. He shouldn't come within my radar. He writes for The Times which I have never read and won't pay money to read in the future. He appears on television in programmes with Sue Perkins who I have never seen on television for more than 30 seconds without changing channels.

So without ever having read any of his "work", why did I refer to him as being a "piss poor columnist" on Twitter this week? It seems a little unfair. I should at least have made the effort to...

Wait a minute! I did get a book of his out of the library once. It was about his anger at things. It was boring. He was boring.

So in the back of my mind I've got this impression that Giles Coren is boring. Just a memory of being bored one day for about ten minutes. For ten minutes of my life I was bored by Giles Coren.

I didn't really need for that ten minutes to take on the significance it has. But for the past few days I've been obsessed with what people have been saying about him on Twitter. And what he's been saying. I've even contributed myself, calling him a sexist and a piss poor columnist. I said this because he called a woman a "barren old hag" and because he bored me silly once for ten minutes.

He didn't offend me, after all. He offended somebody I'm not the least bit interested in. Another journalist I've no interest in reading anything by. And Twitter is full of people making sexist, racist and all sorts of offensive comments to other people.

But that boring ten minutes keeps coming back to haunt me. It's like a bloke I met the other week who now works where I used to work. I spoke to him for maybe five minutes and it was the most boring five minutes of my life. And now he's there, too. In the back of my mind. Gnawing away.

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Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

First of all, thanks to Bob for alerting me to the book and for the review here which should give you the impetus to go out and get it.

I saw a hell of a lot of myself in the book. I have spent a lifetime trying to avoid situations made for extroverts. I really cannot bear gatherings of more than a few people and the idea of pretending to be a social butterfly makes me feel like a lost boy. I spent 17 years till last June in my own tiny office, shutting the door at lunchtime, only communicating with individual people when I had to or when I wanted a bit of a chat.

Now I'm in an open plan office, people in front of me, behind me and to the side of me. There is music and talk. I try to shut them all out and concentrate on my work but it's hard. I've luckily discovered a nice quiet cafe where I can go to lunch to recharge from the overstimulation of the office. I'm so glad I'm only working there three days a week.

The book is well worth reading but...

It is the concentration on the success stories, the find yourself a career you are most suited to, the whatever your interest is, keep to it, study it to be the best at it you can, the presumption that you are a deep-feeling, deep-thinking special person, that we all have something to contribute because there is something out there for everyone, that there are opportunities if you choose correctly and you study hard because you are damned clever and don't rush into things and there are so many introvert success stories who are the best at what they do because they are introverts.

Maybe there is another book to be written about how being an introvert in an extrovert world can fuck you up and make you think life is not worth living, maybe those of us who don't have the right stuff and never had an interest in anything that could make us money.

I have been lucky, I have been able to cope and I've been able to earn money in spite of my quietness, lucky to have worked for a firm for many years that valued diligent work which didn't need great intelligence or a degree in bullshit.

Anyway, power to Obama the introvert and his eradication of poverty in the good old US of A.

Peterborough

"Historian Dominic Sandbrook takes us on an eye opening journey into Britain in the 1970s." Well, not really eye-opening. Same old shit, really. And Dominic was born in 1974 and now lives in Chipping Norton so what the fuck does he know about the 70s or your ordinary person? People wanted more in the 70s and they got it. They bought and decorated their own homes, they took foreign holidays, taking their food and drink with them. But they also discovered wine and sexy shortarse Spanish waiters. The Heath Government privatised Thomas Cook and Lunn Poly and the miners, furious that the holidays they couldn't afford had been sold off, brought the Government down. The working class Marc Bolan wore make up so miners grew their hair and David Bowie made bisexuals attractive to teenage girls. Edward Heath took us into Europe and let in those hordes of Asians who had been kicked out of Uganda. There were street demonstrations protesting about the influx and about Heath's French accent. Said Asians and thousands of London's financially cleansed white working class moved to Peterborough. Peterborough was the soul of the 70s.

It's Not As Easy As It Used To Be

I was out with some middle aged women friends of mine the other evening, listening to stories from lives I cannot contemplate.

Hearing all about the Moulin Rouge themed hen night, the cab driver's reaction to having such a break from the norm, or was this the norm for a Saturday night?

They were fifteen women and one man, a gay man, good-looking ("why are they always so good-looking? It's such a waste").

"Was he camp?" I said, winding her up.

"Oh no, he was well-built, all-man. You would never tell from looking at him."

And that is how things are nowadays, you can't tell from looking at people.

Standing on the Shoulders of the Jolly Green Giant

Noel Gallagher's interview by Mark Lawson was not just an advert for his Low Flying Pigeons project, oh no. Lawson got to the heart of the man.

Gallagher didn't exactly have the most advantageous of upbringings, beaten by his dad and not in the least inspired by school.

But Lawson wanted to get to the heart of the tragedy of Gallagher's failure to conform.

"And did they used to give you the talk? 'You're obviously a bright boy, you could do something with this.' Or did they just ignore you?"

Of course they didn't give him the talk. It wasn't as if he was a gifted scholar, able to fit in if only he applied himself and stopped hanging around with the wrong sorts. He had no interest whatsoever in any subject. Once he'd learnt to read and write that was it. Everything else was just boring and irrelevant to the future of a working class kid with interests as varied as music and football. And Noel was unique amongst the local lads in that he was actually interested in something other than Man City.

"You could do something with this". With this intelligence you could be middle class. You could learn to take an interest in science or literature, once you get into it they're really fascinating, you know. Your English teacher and your Maths teacher and your Physics teacher are itching to get you enthused. A boy with your intelligence shouldn't waste that intelligence, there are fields of study, vast open fields of knowledge, all you need to do is walk outside and smell the atmosphere, breathe in deeply young man, the world is yours.

But Gallagher didn't answer the question. It was a stupid question to ask. It would have been stupid to ask it of other intelligent men and women who didn't give a stuff about the establishment's stupid subjects. But ask it of a multi-millionaire?

Tweet Revenge

Beautiful, brainy Louise Mensch got a bee in her bonnet yesterday about a Labour councillor's tweet expressing disappointment that Margaret Thatcher hadn't died. Read all about it here in the article Lovely Louise linked to.

When Thatcher eventually pops her clogs I, for one, won't be celebrating. She will be at peace and peace is the last thing I'd wish on her. I want her to suffer invisibly in an NHS hospital corridor, without a bed to go to, watching the nurses and doctors scurrying past, oblivious to her lonely plight.

No, something to celebrate would be the abortion of all potential Tory MPs. Stop the fuckers before they have a chance to breathe their privileged air. But life is sacred to me and once they're born all you can hope is that one day they will suffer as they've made others suffer.

The furore got me thinking of Elvis Costello's Tramp the Dirt Down, which looks to a time when Elvis can "savour" tramping the dirt down on Thatcher's grave, tramping like Joe Strummer does in the video to Rock The Casbah.

I remember feeling very moved by this song at the end of the 80s and a tingle of righteous anger tickled my spine when I saw Elvis perform it live. We were such an angry, ticklish audience.

Of course it would never happen. You couldn't get anywhere near the grave. You couldn't get back at her and even if you were to sneak in the Grantham graveyard one night, pissed as a fart and whoop and holler at the top of your voice, stamping to a rock soundtrack, get arrested by the vicar and transported to a cell, would you really feel any better? Would any of her victims have been avenged?

Can You Hear Me, Mother?

I visited my mum for Smothering Sunday. She's eighty now and concerned about a hospital appointment on Tuesday but the doctor only sent her there because my mum just wants peace of mind. Her sister had a similar investigation a couple of months ago (dodgy bowels run in our family, don't I know it!) and they didn't discover anything and let her watch the procedure on a screen. She asked what the things floating around were. "That's your poo," she was told.

My mum's still in good form, still slagging off everybody but the people she's talking to. Today it was my stepbrother's wife's turn.

"She's in her forties and she totters around on these really high heels on these big slippery tiles, clop clop clop, she's got a really short skirt on that goes out like this then up like this, her waist must be about eighteen inches, although she makes sure everybody else has plenty to eat you never see anything pass her lips and she says hello to you at the beginning of the party then goodbye at the end but ignores you for the rest of the time. She's got a lovely house, the best of everything, she really fell on her feet when she met Dave, he does everything for her, he's really good with his hands and he has to travel to Brighton every day to work but his company have bought him a lovely new white car with four circles on it, he said he wanted five circles to fit in with the Olympics, he was being funny."

With a Rebel Yell

Here we have a well-meaning article about a supposed protest song. You can watch the video if you like and drink in the angry words. Ooh, he's so angry.

The problem with Plan B is his voice. His is not the voice of the shat-on. His upbringing is comfortable, from Simon Reynolds' liminal class, a lower-middle class/upper-working class classification which has been created to give writers something to write about. It doesn't exist. And it certainly isn't where the so-called "chavs" are. The upper working class look down on the "chavs". The lower middle class try to teach them to give them a chance to make something of themselves, become respected members of society like the upper working class bigots who look down on them.

Plan B isn't going to change anything. He's just going to make loads more money from those poor saps who loved The Prodigy when Keith found his Spitting Image punk voice.