“Take that thing off, you look like a homeless pencil!” (Hello!)

Fall semester, you just got interesting. Now, it’s been a huge old while since one of these landed on your mat, and with reason: this has been one of the more difficult posts for me to write, and it’s proved difficult to know where to begin. But one thing I do want to do is warn you straight from the off: it does get a little dark and gloomy in places, because this time out I’m looking principally to write on the theme of evil. And one difficulty I’ve had is that there’s been quite a lot of it about, and often quite intense news at that, the comprehensive reportage of which has provided a quite grisly underscore to the past couple months – the phrase “that toll is expected to rise” is something I’ve been hearing on an almost daily basis. So, over the next few paragraphs I’ll pick apart and pick up on some of the many, varied and complex themes which have presented themselves before me in recent months: I will, though, as ever, be able to offer little in the way of genuine solutions. Still, I need to release, and given the world won’t stop to allow me a breather, now’s as good a time as any to fling another wrist-cracker into the purple ether. The strongest of heart may well make it to the end. Let’s do this.

So my decision to scrawl at large on the subject of this world’s most vile and evil behaviour was sparked not all that long after my last screed stumped up here, when a shocking and needless assault on two young British women brought back memories of assaults past and caused me no little end of worry. Without wishing to rake up too much a story on which the dust is now apparently largely settled, I refer to the case of Katie and Kirstie, two eighteen-year-old British ladies who were attacked with acid on the street in Zanzibar. There does appear to have been a degree of religious intolerance in the area in recent times, and for some reason participants in the dispute feel that it is necessary to use the brutal and barbaric tactic of the acid attack to make their point more permanently than is necessary – a few weeks after our girls were wounded, an elderly Catholic cleric was also abused with caustic fluids in a separate spat. But it did concern me that our young lasses would potentially face a difficult struggle, coping with the significant life changes that I am aware being burned can bring. Perhaps, given much-documented previous acid incidents, I was too worried about these girls’ future, and became too attached to the story: perhaps I should take comfort that, yes, it is possible to rebuild your life and work after being the victim of brutality, and certainly our ladies are not willing to be held back: having taken their A-levels prior to their incident, Katie and Kirstie have since recieved their results and both apparently plan to go to university: it’s unclear what impact, if any, the burn injuries suffered will have on their uni courses, but if our ladies are able to hold their heads up and walk proudly in the light, it is all to the good, and I will continue to offer support and encouragement, should any be needed, if the opportunity to reach out to these fine girls and show my admiration were to present itself. Of course, these still-in-their-teens survivors may just want to go about their normal lives and not recieve any further love and good wishes from me, and if this is the case then I’ll, albeit reluctantly, fade back into the pit and let them crack on with it. Whilst I know, from what I’ve seen of certain other cases, that bouncing back from burns can be a long and frightening road, I hope Katie and Kirstie’s recovery is steady and fair, and that they can rebuild their lives to become the good and strong ladies I know they can be, making a positive contribution to the world. They didn’t deserve to be treated like this, and let’s hope that they can rise above the anticipated trauma to enjoy as far as is practicable the lives they were meant to lead.

The Zanzibar case struck a chord perhaps because it involved British ladies being subjected to the sort of blunt, violent treatment that most right-minded Brits would consider beyond the pale, but in the past few weeks and months the international news has been at points deliriously grim; there have been far too numerous a string of cases of brutality, abuse, assault, intolerance and disaster, and very often it’s difficult to tell, from my limited vantage point sat here in the UK, where to draw the line. It’s gruelling to see the red button news pages each day flooded with hundreds upon hundreds of fresh deaths, knowing there’s nothing I could have done to prevent the circumstance and precious little I can do to resolve the situation in a healthy manner. The reasons for the disputes are many and varied, and only a tiny fraction are driven by factors which it is within our power as individuals to resolve. There have been cultural and religious difficulties in many parts of the world, including Egypt and Syria, with the former proving it’s not yet ready for democracy by ousting its first freely-elected president Morsi less than a year into his tenure amid protests and street violence, and the latter state now moving towards a more peaceful resolution, agreeing to talks on turning over its chemical weapons, after a period of considerable unrest including the much-debated gas attack which indiscriminately killed swathes of civilians. Some say the country’s Assad-helmed regime was behind the brutality whilst others deny this was the case, and as someone with little foreknowledge of the Syrian dispute I can’t say with any clarity for myself who is in the right here; all I can hope is that, after such agony and rage, the more peaceful path of international cooperation which now appears to be being pushed towards holds steady. However, I’m aware that the news moves quickly, and I won’t say too much further on Syria in case I’m accused of flaming tensions, and in case the situation evolves further in the time this soggy word-dump is sitting atop my reverse-chronology. Elsewhere, there have been several incidents in Pakistan, where a combination of bomb attacks in the streets of Peshawar and natural disaster from earthquakes elsewhere in the territory have left scores dead, children among them. While there’s little I can do about the vibration of the Earth’s tectonic plates, and no peacekeeping force can enforce action against such quakes, there is work which can be done I’m sure to protect those who would be victimised by those of differing ideology, and whilst I’m aware of the peculiar circumstances and heightened emotions of Pakistan – such a delicate situation that every time the impartial BBC covers the story it recieves complaints that its output is biased one way or the other – I’m hopeful that in time those involved will come to realise that the terrorist killing of civilian targets is not going to be considered an appropriate way to make a political point, and is something which should only be viewed with contempt from all angles.

Sadly Pakistan is just one place where intolerance and anger has led to needless death and destruction; just recently we’ve seen an apparently Islamist assault on a Nigeria school, a deadly attack which should be looked down on as a needless assault on those too young and socially undeveloped to really defend or represent themselves. And then of course there was the story which dominated news reports of recent weeks and from which not all the bodies may yet have been recovered. The violent and aggressive siege at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi certainly had me gripped and worried for the period, largely because of the scale – this is the sort of brutalism and mass terror rarely seen outside of Hollywood’s most fantastical scripting. There was a religious undercurrent to the atrocity – it seems Muslims were allowed to leave unscathed whilst those of other faiths and creeds were picked off by the invading force, and it appears the mall was specifically targeted because it attracted a wide clientele including Westerners and non-Muslims; al-Shabaab, which claims responsibility for the assault, stated that its motive was retaliation for Kenya’s role in the battle against the group in Somalia. What really upset me about Westgate-gate, though, was the scale of the killing – people of all ages and nationalities were scythed down, including children and pregnant women: from acclaimed poets to skilled journalists to ordinary working people, dozens of unsuspecting folk who had presumably set out for a job of work or day of retail therapy suddenly found themselves caught up in a nightmarish set of circumstances which left them or those around them dead or maimed through no fault of their own. Those who survived will have seen such horrors as to never be the same again: certainly, the relevant authorities should keep an eye out for PTSD among the survivors. What’s also got me looking over my shoulder is the fact that here in the UK we have large retail malls that are potentially terror targets: could such a disaster be visited upon, say, Bluewater? What if I set off for the centre to attend, say, a job interview, only for the Greenhithe supercentre to be swarmed by militant invaders who have taken advantage of the megamall’s free customer parking and easy-ish public transport links to sweep into the building and claim it in the name of whatever deity they say they’re acting in the name of? It’ll certainly give me second thoughts about setting foot in that particular near-Dartford shopping hall. In case you think I’m being illogical and facetious, I would point out that religious intolerance is sadly alive and well in the UK, as evidenced by a swathe of attacks on Britain’s mosques in recent times, ranging from firebombings through to the mailing of Islamophobic DVDs to the centres by short-tempered thickwits. Pavlo Lapshyn, a Ukranian student who had come to the UK, engaged in a campaign of hate almost immediately upon touching down in the UK: he planted a series of bombs outside mosques, and on only his fifth day on our turf fatally stabbed an elderly Muslim man on the street. In court, Lapshyn admitted that he was motivated by racial hatred, and the fact that he hadn’t had time to integrate into society and make friends and connections in Britain before starting his campaign initially helped him evade detection, as very few people knew Lapshyn well enough to report him up to the Bill. Then of course there’s the undignified scuffle between the EDL and those opposed to the party’s activities: a conflict that has seen the League become so militant and extremist that its not-entirely-popular leader chose to distance himself from the organisation. As someone who tries to be open-minded towards all faiths, it’s certainly a troubling time to be me, with vastly differing ideologies in constant conflict to be seen as the one true path. But then, as someone who follows no one faith myself, should I just roll over, grunt “they’re all wrong!” and try to go about my business as calmly as I can? Or should I take it upon myself to bring peace to the globe? It’s a difficult dog to collar.

Even leaving aside terrorism and race-hate, the world’s been a tough place to live in lately: in Chengdu, China a crazed bus passenger went on a fatal stabbing rampage – and this is one of those terrifying moments of chaos which could easily happen in Bexleyheath, as prior knife-wielding events have proved. Mumbai, meanwhile, has seen several fatal building collapses: clearly lessons from the clothing factory crash in Dhaka have not yet been rolled out to pre-existing dangerous premises: in addition, some retailers have been frustratingly slow to sign up to make life better for those in poor countries who meet our need for cheaply-available clobber (River Island have now, belatedly, signed up to the accord after pressure from internet users, meaning you can go back to shopping there, whilst others including Matalan and Peacocks are still holding out at the time of writing, perhaps fearing they’d have to pass the cost of improved worker conditions onto already-tightly-pursed customers.) There have been disputes over elections in Zimbabwe, with dictatorial leader Robert Mugabe keeping a taut grip on control of the country despite local and international concern about his power: many around the world now see that he needs to go, though unfortunately Mugabe himself is not among them. In Russia, which has taken a lead role in defusing the Syria situation, there were concerns over new law which it’s said is homophobic: Stephen Fry wrote an open letter calling for the Winter Olympics, due to be held in Sochi, to be withheld or relocated in response to the new laws, though the IOC and David Cameron refused to act, and Sochi 2014 will go ahead as planned despite the row. Putin has also been showing his pimp hand in the art world, with Russian state heavies storming an art gallery which was showing unflattering works. Is there strong enough check on his power? It appears not. There have also been continued assaults, killings and jailings of journalists around the world, in countries where there are elements – either in the state, or among powerful figures such as drug cartels – who are opposed to being exposed by the free press, and feel the need to engage in a culture of intimidation. Meanwhile, the lure of metal items in public places being accessible to thieves who steal and sell on the metals for profit had a fatal consequence: magpie-eyed thieves pinching bolts from the rails were blamed for a Mexico rail crash in which a number of those aboard the locomotive were killed. When will this selfish disregard for others’ lives and wellbeing be tackled effectively? The evidence suggests never, or at least not in this phase of my lifetime… It’s not solely outlying territories where criminality is rife, and there certainly seems to have been an upswing in selfish, antisocial UK behaviour – for instance a spate of vandalism and arson at a suite of allotments which ultimately led to the death of sixty pigeons when the shed next to their bird-loft was torched, the fire then spreading across; there have also been raids on trading premises bringing bloodshed to the pages of the retail press, including a machete attack on one store-owner, and the needless demise of a cash-and-carry owner who chased a group of robbers out of his store, only to be fatally pushed under a lorry by his assailants. There are no words to describe such violent, thuggish slime as would impart these acts, or at least none I can use publically on this blog at any rate.

Abuse of and violence towards others is very hard to avoid, and if you know where to look, which sadly I do, you can absolutely drown yourself in the horrors. America’s right to bear arms has blown up in its face twice in recent weeks, with a gun-toting student killing a teacher and wounding two classmates when he opened fire on school grounds, and just days later another teacher, a young woman, was found slain, traced by blood discovered on the premises, shortly after demanding that the pupil who now stands accused of her killing stay behind after class. Certainly a shock to the system: in my schooldays it was rare for my classmates to respond to the issue of a detention slip with acts of brutal ultraviolence. Has US education culture really descended into a game of who can fire first? The continued presence of school-based shootings, many perpeterated by disgruntled shootings, suggests despite rhetoric and bluster from all sides of the debate, too little actual action is being taken, perhaps as politicos are cowed by the powerful NRA lobby. The rest of the world’s no angel, either: In China, for instance, a six-year-old boy was binded for life when he was snatched from his area and had his eyes gouged out before being returned: after initial concerns a brutal stranger was on the loose, an aunt of the boy was later linked to the case, and she was subsequently found dead, having supposedly killed herself. Was she conducting some bizarre rite, or was she just an utter nutcase? She’s taken the truth to her grave, sadly. India, meanwhile, saw the ‘honour killing’ (a misnomer, there is no honour in killing in this way) of a man and his lady partner: they had planned to marry despite opposition from their families. Meanwhile, still in the subcontinent, it seems that despite the sentencing of several men involved in last December’s fatal gang-rape attack on a bus, some men still seem keen to use sexual violence as a form of control, with the rape of a journalist just one of the more recent incidents in a city where the guidelines for ‘acceptable behaviour’ are clearly in need of review. However, this lady was not the only woman who was targeted for speaking out: the Taliban have continued to make their mark in blood, and recently carried out the brutal killing of a woman who had earlier written about her time under their rule; having previously moved away from the area and started a new life free of the oppression, she was targeted following her return to her home town and executed by a violent and brutal regime that is founded on inequality and unfairness, and rules with a bloody fist.

Thankfully, it is possible to strike back against the Taliban: I’m cheered by the continued success and strength of the lovely Malala Yousafzai, who having survived the attentions of weapon-toting Taliban insurgents, is now resident in the UK alongside her father, and since last I wrote has opened a major new library in Birmingham, tying in with her desire to improve girls’ access to education and self-betterment, and met President Obama and family at the White House. As I’ve said before, in this particular collision of wits I’m firmly on Malala’s side, and not afraid to say so: whilst I am generally a fearful, cowardly, young-ish man who has a tendency to sit on the fence and a desire not to offend, I’m clear that the attack on Malala was an attack on good order and common decency, two values we take very highly here in the UK. Well, most of us do, but sadly not all: the courts have been dealing with a procession of hateful arseholes in recent times. As a for instance, a nasty chap by the name of Karl Clay was finally hauled before the beak after violent and sexual attacks on women and children over a period of twenty years. Being in a position of public trust doesn’t make you any less likely to be a brute, mind: Dunfermline MSP Bill Walker waged a thirty-year campaign of domestic abuse against his three wives and a then-teenage stepdaughter, battering and brutalising these ladies in a thoughtless and selfish way, something which was totally wrong and should not have been allowed to continue. Thankfully Walker has belatedly been hauled before the beak, jailed for a year. His sentence was not long enough to trigger automatic defenestration from his post, but after initially clinging to his seat he eventually stepped down amid huge public pressure. Elsewhere in politics, UKIP’s dangerously out-of-touch and deranged Godfrey Bloom followed up his earlier ‘Bongo-Bongo-land’ clanger with his appearance at the Eurosceptic party’s conference, where his comments on ‘sluts’ and slapping of C4’s Michael Crick with a brochure after being challenged over the all-white cover stars thereof led to the removal of the party whip. Perhaps his enforced withdrawal from the political sphere to spend the twilight of his days somewhere where nurses are on call 24/7 would be the next suitable move.

We’ve also seen chaos on the roads, with the hit-and-run killing of a police officer in Sutton (hometown of the PhoneShop if you’re keeping score), a Bradford crash in which a car collided with a hair studio, with a 19-year-old cancer survivor among those killed (in one of those life-eerily-imitating-Final Destination moments I hinted at last month, a suggestion that when she kicked the big C, fate felt it had to find another way to tell this lady her time was up). In similar skein, we’ve also seen the death in a road crash of a young woman whose brother was killed by a falling football goalpost in 2011. Some families, it seems, can’t shake off tragedy no matter what they do. But a story that really freaked me out was when British pedestrian Sian Green was caught up in a taxi-based incident in New York, which ultimately led to the loss of part of her leg. Our poor representative was innocently striding the sidewalk and didn’t realise it was the last time she’d ever walk on her own two feet. I’d love to send young Sian my love and support, because I know she’ll have to go through huge emotional stages to cope with the changes in her life. She’ll have to change the way she lives forever – not least having to have half her house demolished so they can put in big trenches, or whatever it is they do to make a home habitable for someone who’s been left hopping (though remember I’m still baffled about how Keeley off Big Brother put her life back together after breaking her foot in a BB task – I’ve mentioned this on the blog (and the old one) several times now and still no information has been forthcoming). Our Sian will have to adjust emotionally to the impact of looking down and seeing a scarred stump where once one of her naturally-grown limbs once sat. She’ll never even have the womanly thrill of going to the shops and enjoying the retail therapy of buying a new pair of shoes (I assume this is what women like doing; I’m led to believe teenage girls and young women spend their weekends going giddy in shoe and clothing shops in similar manner to how I and other music fans used to do back when there was HMV.) Sian – who in the lengthy time it’s taken me to burp this post out, has been released from hospital – needs the help, assistance and warmth of those around her to help her feel good again after the huge trauma she’s suffered, and I hope that when she does return to the public highway that people don’t gawp and point out her injury, and instead welcome her as though she was any normal person. I just hope there’s people out there who can provide support and advice when it’s needed. Is it OK to say that when I heard of her injury, I considered asking a Channel 4 presenter – no, not a certain Ms. Piper, but The Last Leg’s Adam Hills, born with one leg more existent than the other – for advice? And is it wrong that, when the driver involved in the NY crash was blaming a cyclist for the incident, I started to hate the likes of Wiggins and Pendleton a little bit? The theory being, cyclists don’t care who they hurt? Maybe I should stop looking for blame and let Ms. Green’s legal people eke out a resolution from those ultimately found responsible by the US justice system. Maybe if I just shut up and let her get on with this and the recovery process, her life will be better as she won’t have my screeching prolonging her pain: but Sian, if this noisy nonsense does somehow reach you, be aware there is a kind hug for you here: I want to be a caring and supportive guy, which is why circumstances like this grab my attention so much.

Elsewhere, there have been countless scenes which have proven that those who really should not be free to walk the streets have been able to enact their horrible vengeance against innocent civilians, leaving a raft of individuals whose lives have been wrecked forever by violence, crime, greed, anger and disorder. Since last I spake, there has been a torrent of despicable behaviour, which thanks to the lead-time of these leaden posts can’t be detailed individually, but the raft of shootings, stabbings and car-based disasters thrust onto my newsscreen in the past weeks have, amongst others, included the shooting of a young mother, a nursery worker, in London’s Kilburn area whilst out on a birthday celebration with friends: it appears she was ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’ and got caught up in a local feud, though her death leaves a hole in the lives of her own children and those she cared for professionally. An Australian student in the USA was gunned down by a group of teens who had apparently been toting guns just for the fun of it, with no concern as to whose life they snuffed out. We’ve seen an aspiring rapper fatally stabbed in Birmingham, ironically after his attendance at a memorial event for a teen slain in the city a year earlier: clearly the Midlands has yet to shake off its image as a crime hotbed. Then there have been the assaults, abuses and abductions, for instance the carjacking in a Stockport Tesco car park of a mother who was shopping with her young child, the abduction of a teenage girl from the family home by would-be thieves who snatched the youngster after finding little of value to sieze in the premises (the raiders also shot and killed the family’s dog after it began barking at their presence), the permanent facial scaring of a woman in Kent, dragged along the ground outside a nightclub after asking a fellow patron for a ciggy, and the brutal physical assault on a woman in her early 20s near CentrePoint in London, which is set to leave her blind in one eye. All these people and their loved ones have been brought to the brink of terror, and there’s little I can do to support those in trauma, given my limited personal involvement in the cases, except to hope that at some point in the coming years, those responsible will be given their medicine, and that those affected are able to find peace one day. I’d like to hope, for instance, that the woman attacked and blinded in our (un)fair capital is able to get the counselling and support she needs to rebuild her life after the physical and emotional trauma that has so damaged her body and spirit. As we know from Katie Piper’s case and others, the mental scars of abuse can be just as hard to heal, if not more so, than the physical wounds; thankfully as Katie, and Malala, and other strong and intelligent women have shown, it is possible to put your life back on the rails and prove to those who would harm you that you can rise above their cruelty.

Of course, fame is not in and of itself a protection from violence and abuse, as we’ve seen in the last few months with a brutal attack on The Calling frontman Alex Band (and I’ll spare you on this occasion the gag about the guy who inflicted ‘Wherever You Will Go’ on us deserving what he gets), a break-in at the home of lovely water-athlete Rebecca Adlington (thankfully her Olympic golds survived the raid) and Tony Blair’s daughter Kathryn being held at gunpoint (and whatever your views on ex-PM TB’s politics, you have to agree his family don’t deserve that.) Meanwhile, Leicester has seen multiple incidents of fire chaos. Yes, there was the hideous blaze in which a mother and her three teenage children were killed, an already hideous fire the investigation of which faces an additional level of complexity with suggestions it may be connected to the death of an unrelated man in an attack in a nearby area of the city several hours prior. However, this wasn’t the only nasty case Leicestershire’s fire and rescue had to tackle recently, with an earlier arson attack wrecking the home of a deaf couple in the city. Such intolerant hate crime should not be tolerated in this or any day and age. Sometimes, if belatedly, those who are responsible for bad behaviour are pulled up and punished, and that’s a good thing, and I welcome the recently-announced plans to build more jails in the UK (I once suggested, possibly on the old blog after a particularly harsh season of crimes, that the retail units be ripped out of Bluewater and the mall converted to prison cells: though that’s unlikely to happen, other slammer openings, closures and refits have been confirmed by MPs). However, some of the people committing these crimes had a position of trust and power that they chose to abuse, causing huge damage to the victims who thought they could trust their abusers: we’ve recently seen a doctor jailed for abusing female patients, and a police officer convicted of sexual conduct with victims of crime. The actions of these individuals harm trust in these professions, jobs which the vulnerable should feel able to rely on, and when cases like these occur it can only make people who need to seek help worry about what will happen to them if they do.

We need to do more to find out how and why people turn to crime and abuse, as we continue the fight to make people’s lives better. Thankfully, some research has been done which could help us get to the bottom of what drives some of these people to the edge. According to the BBC website, a team of criminologists writing in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice studied 71 cases stretching from 1980 to 2012 of men who killed their families, in a bid to determine if there was any underlying reason why these guys decided to take the most ghastly step (and, in four-fifths of cases, kill themselves, or attempt to, as well). The growing tide of family breakups, driven by ever-more-empowered women feeling more able to refuse to stand by a man they once loved but now dislike, was blamed for some of the killings, with splits in the family the most commonly-cited cause of the father’s wig-out, followed by financial pressure – which can only have got worse in the last few years as the austerity has cut the pound in people’s pocket to a trickle. The influence on Britain’s multicultural populace of those cultures with less openminded attitudes towards women can be seen with ‘honour killing’ named third most common trigger-point. The study suggested men’s need to reassert power and control, having swallowed the stereotypical image of the ‘strong’ husband and father and felt unable to provide to this level, could be a key driver of the slayings, with men apparently taking a very black-and-white view that isn’t up to speed with the more dynamic role women can play in the home and society today. The report also notes the particularly manic and histrionic ways in which some of the killings were carried out, with some of the slayings being in the form of insane stunts which wouldn’t look out of place in a TV soap. The study identified four core types of ‘family annihilator’: self-righteous, a traditional ‘breadwinner’ dad who blames the mother for the breakdown of the family; anomic, where the killer links family life to economic rises and falls; disappointed, where the father believes the family members have undermined him or let him or their culture down; and paranoid, where those who fear an external threat (such as social services) kill their family in a twisted form of self-defence from this percieved invasion. Revenge, which has cropped up as a potential cue in prior studies into family-killers, did not feature heavily in the new study, t hough. The case studies suggest there is no one unequivocal cause for fathers to flick the switch, and we need to get better at spotting the signs and getting these families to safety; however, these men are among the least likely to reach out for help, as it is their increasingly insular and self-centred worldview which is keeping them from seeing and taking up the help and support which is available. It also seems family killing is becoming more commonplace, with half of the cases studied having occurred since 2000 and just six taking place in the 1980s. Perhaps we need to speed up the tackling of the deep-rooted problems which drive people to ice their relatives, in order to help slow the tide of blood. We also perhaps need to look at reshaping the school year: the month with the most family-killings reported was August, with the report suggesting long summer holidays contribute to parental worry about how they’re going to keep the family going, and push parents to the edge. (Cutting school holidays would also make it easier for childless nurks like me to go about their business, letting me have a quieter bus journey to my interviews or giving me the chance to sit in the park and eat my lunch without looking like a total pervo.) It should be pointed out that some academics have said that this study, based on secondhand reportage rather than direct analysis of the killers themselves, is a series of assumptions and inferences which may not be academically rigorous, but in my view anything which can point us towards finding a cure for the illness that leads to murder has to be welcomed.

Of course, the shock and stigma attached to mental illness remains good copy for the popular press. Asda and Tesco withdrew mental-patient themed Halloween costumes after a backlash about the stigmatisation of those with poor mental health, and the Sun recently ran a shock-and-awe frontpage splash about the number of murders committed by those with mental health issues. This did give me rise to wobble, as the report chimed with my own fears about the impact on society caused by those who are not entirely in control of their own actions, though the stark bulletpoints of the Sun article were later put into broader context by a Guardian analysis of the digits, which the Sun calculated from a University of Manchester report covering 2000 to 2010. The Sun stated that over 1200 people had been killed by individuals who had been patients in contact with mental health services in the year preceding the incident, or who had exhibited symptoms linked to mental illness – as the Guardian, and the original UoM report, pointed out, the symptoms of the latter group may not have contributed directly to the slaying and stripping them out almost halves the number of cases. The Guardian also notes the trend of decline year-on-year since 2006, suggesting that the mentally ill are in fact becoming, statistically at least, less dangerous. Indeed, mental health charities say that people with mental problems are more dangerous to themselves than to others, with 90% of those who kill themselves suffering from some form of mental distress, and when compared to the overall homicide level, the number of killings carried out by those featured in the Sun report is only a small percentage – the Guardian pointing out that, when those caught by the Sun/UoM report were stripped out, 95% of murders in the 2010-11 reporting year (the last year covered by the research) were carried out by those not covered by the Sun/UoM definition of mental health problems. A further wrinkle in the datasheet came when the Sun report was published almost simultaneously with a separate and unrelated analysis which indicated that the mentally ill were three times as likely as the population in general to be the victims of crime, perhaps seen as easy pickings by criminals who take advantage of their marks’ limited skills. As someone who is himself not entirely all there mentally, what side should I take? Should I fight the demonisation of the mentally ill and assure the nation we’re not all psychotic butchers? Certainly more needs to be done to clear the stigma, with an earlier NHS survey revealing that a one-in-ten proportion of the respondents said it would be frightening to consider that people with mental issues were living in residential areas, and a similar proportion said ‘ woman would be foolish to marry a man who has suffered from mental illness’. So while the mentally ill aren’t exactly innocent angels, nor are they the demons that scaremongering like the Sun report would have us believe. The difficulty is, though, finding where to draw the line – do I call for more tolerance of the mentally unwell, even if some misuse this freedom to carry out socially unacceptable acts, or do I call for a harder line to be taken, potentially criminalising those of us who have done nothing wrong, in order to prevent continued misery being wrought by the section of the populace who can’t control themselves appropriately? It’s a difficult call to make for someone who is keen to do the right thing by society and help fix our badly-broken nation.

Sometimes it is possible to be taken to the brink of disaster, even by those who you should be able to trust, but in time come away alive and start to rebuild your life. There have been a number of cases of survival and escape in the news in recent times, perhaps the most globally notable being the case of three women abducted north of a decade ago in the US and kept in the home of one Ariel Castro, where they were imprisoned against their will and in some cases forced to bear children. Thankfully, Castro’s watch lapsed briefly, thus the women were at last able to raise the alarm and engineer their escape, and three ladies long thought lost to the world can at last begin to regain their lives and return to some kind of normalcy, even if the media spotlight will continue to glare on them in the short term as the case continues to attract comment such as this one. The ladies won’t, sadly, see full justice, as Castro killed himself in the cells, but at least his evil cannot be meted out to any further women. Elsewhere in the States, one case which caught the media’s, and from there my, attention since my last entry was that of Hannah Anderson, a US teen who was taken hostage by a friend of the family in a harrowing attack in which Hannah’s mother and brother – and the family’s pet dog – were killed. Hannah must have been frightened beyond all belief at the heart of the chaos, and since the event – which ended with the attacker being shot down by police – the innocent girl has had to readjust and rebuild her life. Thankfully, this being the internet age, Hannah did find a way to reconnect with normalcy, turning to online friends to discuss her feelings in an impromptu, lengthy online Q&A following her release. She seemed streetwise and headstrong, declining overtures made towards her by media outlets in favour of talking over her feelings with local pals over the net, and hopefully the strong support and friendship network she has – her chat apparently stretching long into the night – will help poor Hannah get her life back together smoothly and fairly quickly, such that the vile incident which so scarred her teenage years not be allowed to intrude too far into her adult life and impede the strong and solid young woman I’m sure she can become over the coming decades. Of course, just as the internet can help lives, it can also take lives, as we saw just about the time my last post went up, with the death of British girl Hannah Smith after she’d recieved nasty comments on the web, likely on the selfsame sites (or types of site, at least) that subsequently provided kind support for US-based Hannah A. Our Hannah’s passing has led to some sites pledging to strengthen their spam-reporting techniques, which is all to the good, but I do have to admit being a bit choked up when I heard what colour young Ms. Smith’s coffin was: the funeral reports revealing that a fellow fan of purple has bitten the dust. So, having suggested last time out that, being I wasn’t in Hannah’s circle of friends, I couldn’t have done anything to help her, I guess I had a connection of sorts to this fine young lady, albeit not enough of one to intercede in her fate; and while it’s always a great shame to see a member of our lavender-hued family go to the grave, it’s particularly harsh when the deceased is barely half my age, taken far before her time. We’ve been here before, too: on the old blog I spoke about a teen taken too soon (in a road incident, if memory holds up) who was sent to her maker in a mauve casket.

It’s not just ordinary girls who get abusive comments online, of course; Lauren Mayberry, who fronts the marvellous Chvrches, recently spoke about the vile and nasty comments that some have been making about her via the band’s social media platforms. Now, whilst there is no need for me to fight Lauren’s battles for her – she’s a strong, intelligent lady who is capable of standing up and speaking out about the situation – I do feel I should plant my flag in the internet and order the hounds who have been bugging this fine young woman to hold back their attack. I could say lovely things about Lauren all day – she is a talented and beautiful woman, and Chvrches are one of my very favourite groups of recent times, having put out some absolutely magnificent material – but Ms. Mayberry insists she wants to let her music do the talking, as it were, and not be judged in a sexist or misogynistic manner. The article I saw suggests Lauren will, though, as far as is practicable, continue to marshal the group’s social media output herself, to retain a connection to her real fans. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, has indicated that she doesn’t really look at online commentary about her – neither positive nor negative – in order to remain ‘balanced’. It’s a good point to make – too much adulation, no matter how well-intentioned, can warp your view just as much as too much unneeded hate can leave you bereft. Case study? Be Here Now. After two groundbreaking LPs, Oasis were constantly being told they could do no wrong, and so they made the record that represented their worldview at that point, with the fans who had adored the band to near-slavish extent ultimately left disappointed when they finally heard what the soared-too-high Gallaghers dropped for number three. The disconnect between what had been expected and what actually emerged was vast. Maybe if the response to the group had been a bit more realistic at the time, and they’d been cheered as good rather than exalted as empirical, they would have produced a third album that continued along the lineage set by Definitely Maybe and Morning Glory. Though as I’ve said before, in hindsight Be Here Now isn’t the disaster some say it is, it’s certainly a lot better than many non-Oasis albums… But, as my frequent shuddering at the news reveals, constant exposure to a negative angle can also be very damaging, leaving you with too nasty of a taste in your mouth. Perhaps if I took a leaf from lovely Taylor’s book and took a step back from the cliff face, I’d have a more well-balanced worldview. One suite of online commentary I can say with certainty that I disapprove of completely is the wave of abusive and horrid comments left online after Nina Davuluri of Syracuse, New York became the first contestant of Indian descent to win the Miss America pageant. The tide of foul utterances left on the web in the wake of her win ranged from cheap racist jibes about convenience stores to accusations that this ‘Arab’ was supposedly ‘Miss Terrorist’. Has racial tolerance and unity – as fought for by great American heroes such as Rosa Parks – devolved so badly that it is impossible to hold an Indian-American up as a paragon of beauty without inviting boorish, blinkered comments invoking 7-11 and/or 9/11? It’s about time people realised that the colour of someone’s skin isn’t a reason to disparage someone who is trying to do something positive with her life. For instance, witness the fine writing and performing talent of Mindy Kaling. Now, whilst I’ve said in the past that I’m not particularly keen to watch the screechy, kooky sitcom of hers that E4 seems to want to force upon us in the UK, I should perhaps be more positive about the bold steps that have allowed this skilled young lady to create and anchor her own production. It’s probably not wise to watch a show I’m not overly keen on just as a form of positive discrimination, as I should really choose my telly by personal preference, but I should at least show more respect for the Project’s existence than I have done thus far. If I don’t at least encourage others to use it, the world will lose it.

There are some celebs who have found themselves on the wrong end of the internet petard of late. One that found his web persona particularly backfired was an actor from Coronation Street (it’s some Manchester-based drama serial on ITV on weekday evenings, apparently), Chris Fountain, who found that some particularly harshly-worded raps he’d posted ages back under his masked alias The Phantom came back to bite him in the ass after the popular press dredged up the vids and splashed them on the front page (well, the story, not the actual videos, it’s still technically very difficult to embed YouTube clips into a printed newspaper.) It’s been a difficult old time for the cobble-dwellers, with several members of the show’s cast facing legal action over various allegations. One of these, Michael Le Vell, will be returning to the Street now that the case against him has been thrown out of court, but with many other cases against public figures (including non-Corrie folk) still pending, it’s hard for me to be any more committal than that. Sometimes these cases do have wider repercussions for those the accused work with, though, with the remainder of Lostprophets recently announcing their split in the wake of frontman Ian’s still-to-be-tried child sexual abuse allegations, which saw the Welsh rockers’ tracks ripped from radio playlists across the country, and my MP3 player when I remembered they were on there. Of course, not all personal problems stars face are legal in nature, and again we turn to Weatherfield, or at least to someone who recently fled the Rovers: Helen Flanagan hasn’t been far from the headlines in recent weeks, posing for increasingly provocative photoshoots, playing out her on-off relationship with footie’s Scott Sinclair across the front of newspapers and magazines, and participating in low-rent reality shows on crappy Channel 5. As I’ve said in the past, growing up in Corrie (in which she starred from age nine) has meant Flanagan’s had to do a lot of her growing up in the public eye, and clearly isn’t sure who she is yet – is she an actress, a model, a presenter, all of the above, or none of the above? Even Helen herself seems not to know – and perhaps she needs someone a bit more steady in their own shoes to take her under their wing and guide her to make more sensible and reasoned decisions. Though the press won’t say that out loud, as dizzy Helen on the front helps shift papers and mags, and the press barons need this budget boost at a time readers are migrating almost as one to the internet. There are other celebs who need a guiding hand, of course – Lindsay Lohan seems to be getting back on track with a reportedly relatively warm festival-season response to her latest project, but the likes of Amanda Bynes and Miley Cyrus are still a cause for concern – I reiterate that someone needs to look Amanda in the eyes and try and dig back to the fore of her mind the witty, talented girl we used to adore back in the Nickelodeon days, and Miley’s recent online spat with Sinead O’Connor, in which the twerker belittled the Irish singer’s mental health history, can only really be described as a dick move – but sometimes concerns can come too late. Since last time, the death has been announced of actress Lisa Robin Kelly. As someone who used to watch quite a bit of now-long-axed youthy comedy/drama channel Trouble TV back around the turn of the millennium, I remember blonde Lisa well as Eric’s spicy, sassy sister Laurie in then-excellent US retro-hued sitcom That 70s Show. This was the sitcom that also piloted Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis into stardom, if you’re struggling. Anyway, in her later years LRK didn’t quite live up to the potential that her 70s Show role had initially marked her out for; the role of Laurie was recast in later years as Ms. Kelly slipped into drink and substance problems. Sadly she didn’t get the help needed to get back on the right road, and the once-sprightly blonde was taken from us, a shadow of her former self but still only in her forties, far too young an age to go in this day and age. Maybe the likes of Bynes need to look to Lisa’s sad demise as a warning call – a message to these troubled souls that, if they don’t pull their fingers up, they too could find themselves staring out of the obituaries page far too early on, and nobody wants to see that.

I want to be the sort of guy that says nice things about women, to help them find peace and happiness within themselves. I want women to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin. The difficulty with this is, outside of the blogosphere, I’m not exactly in a position where I could make such positive comments without coming off as a bit of a creeper. I’m not particularly liked or wanted – in part because of my physical deficiencies, one notable moment recently coming when a lady coming out of a shop just as I was walking down the road noticed me and said “Oh, that’s where it’s coming from!” as though she’d noticed a bad smell and had been looking for the source (the smell, should you care, is coming from inside of me, as my increasingly-troubled guts become more rotted and gangrenous by the week.) I’m not a pleasant-looking sucker – my gummy, reddish eyes and snuffly nose on one occasion getting me stopped on Bromley’s High Street by police who assumed I was drunk or drugged-up (I had to explain that the baffled, puffy look was completely normal, for me at least.) But maybe I waddle about the area on autopilot too often and don’t take a second to stop and look around me. Despite technically being south-east London, there are lovely-looking ladies dotted around the area, as a for instance a lovely pretty blonde who happened on one occasion to get on the same bus as me. Now of course I didn’t say anything to the lady in question in situ – she was trapped on a bus with me, and I didn’t want to make the journey uncomfortable for either of us, and although she was travelling alone there’s a likelihood there was a partner somewhere down the line who may have been less than enamoured with some hairy git trying to hone in on their lady. I think staying quiet was, in that circumstance, the best policy. Then there was the case of the Superdrug staffer who happened to serve me a drink when I stopped into the store one bank holiday; I found this particular lady to be very beautiful and attractive, and perhaps I should have said something. Trouble is, in the few seconds of service, it was a tough call to make. I could have just said something factual and walk away (a “You’re very pretty!”-type comment) and there’s a 50% chance it would have made her day (“Aw, that guy said something nice!”) though equally she could have taken it the wrong way, particularly had the comment been launched at her by a fella not particularly touched by the beautiful stick himself. And as a shop-drongo myself (when someone can hire me, at least), I’m aware that customers making untoward or unnecessary comments is a key bugbear of the retail employee. So the moment passed, and now I’ll never have the chance to tell this lass how I feel about her sparkling beauty. Unless I get thirsty again, or if she’s reading this ponk, which is unlikely. And of course, you have to be careful what you say to people these days, and who you say it to – at the height of the summer I was treading very carefully given that it was the school holidays and I had no desire to entangle myself, however accidentally, with someone who subsequently transpired to be unacceptably young. Ironically, once the kids were back in school the heatwave was over almost simultaneously, and as anyone who has worked as a chugger would know, people don’t respond kindly to being quizzed on the street when they’re all wrapped up and in a hurry to get indoors out of the cold and rain. But I’d certainly welcome the opportunity to cuddle up to a lovely lady and compliment her beauty. As I’ve said many times, I want to be the kind of guy that says sweet, kind things about women.

Of course, I have on occasion had impetus to be less than pleasant, and pass sometimes quite harsh judgement on certain categories of people, in particular the not-always-clever participants in reality-TV shows. My second ever post back on the old blog, back in the summer of 2006, was a coruscating bellow about the participants in that year’s Big Brother, bellowed long before I really knew anything about the participants outwith that which Channel 4 had thus far broadcast (my opinion towards Nikki Grahame, for instance, has eased considerably since the quite hard line I took back then, given that I have discovered, in the fullness of time, more in-depth detail about her off-camera mental and physical health struggles over the years, and also that she was a 6Music fan.) The third post was a repent of sorts, but that didn’t stop me ploughing into other TV participants later down the line, their presence on a screen divorcing them from reality in my mind and leading me to judge them as monsters rather than real people. Quite often, after taking time to recalibrate my opinions and come up with a more tolerable way of looking at the situation, I’ve taken a different view from that originally posted. This gives me pause to wonder whether it’s worth reposting some of the old content. Having retained a copy of the old posts from my intermittent 2006-10 blog run, I’ve found a way to whack up the old posts on here and backdate them to the original posting date (that was the reason for the sudden appearance, then disappearance, of a ‘testing stuff out’ post up on here since last time.) But the fact is that a lot of my views, thoughts and opinions, particularly in the earlier period, no longer reflect what I think, and probably shouldn’t be dredged back up, at least not without some kind of appended preamble in the guise of a disclaimer. The presence of reality TV in society over the last few years has, though, caused disruption and disturbance to my previous, perhaps overly black-and-white worldview. People, rightly or wrongly, choose to put themselves through this sort of thing, and presumably expect themselves to be judged in the public sphere.

I’ve always had a distaste for reality shows and their participants – I bullied myself into watching the second, third and fourth series of Big Brother after swallowing the media hype that suggested I’d missed some kind of TV-event-of-the-millennium by not bothering with series one, but when it all kicked off bad style in series five’s now-largely-forgotten ‘fight night’, I decided to kick such shows to the curb and decry all reality participants from thereon as slime not worth the spit from the bottom of my shoe. But am I in the wrong for judging them, seeing the monster before I see the person? Or are these folks themselves wrong to inflict themselves upon us? Do these people perhaps need help and advice, supporting them to make better choices? Or should I just let them get on with things the way they choose to, and let those who continue to suckle on the reality teat have their day in the sun? It’s a tough call to make. However, today I don’t let the shows drag me down as much as I did; I’m helped by the fact that, whilst in the past shows like Big Brother got massive multi-media coverage and felt suffocating, today the show is hidden away on Channel 5, which I hardly ever watch anyway, and only the Daily Star (again, fairly easily avoided) only really bothers with press coverage. There are still some all-conquering, media-choking reality things going, of course – I find media guff about The X Factor really hard to dodge, for instance – but I do a lot less screaming and crying about the shows than I had done in the past. In my first couple of years on Twitter I’d rant and rail about Big Brother stuff that I’d heard and seen, to the extent that some good and decent people cut me out of their lives in anger at my constant upset, but I’ve learnt more recently to just not let the BB tools burrow into my brain: they’re doing one thing, while I can just look the other way and do something else.

Of course, reality shows have started to eat themselves, with people who found fame on one show pitching up on another, with boozy Geordie Shore floozy Charlotte Crosby being scraped up into the recent Celebrity Big Brother, and going on to win. I find Charlotte’s win a little sad, as it legitimises the sort of behaviour that the Shore folks apparently get up to – drinking, fighting and sleeping around if the stuff I’ve read is accurate. I’m also led to think less of Charlotte now she’s becoming a regular darling of the lad-tops in similar vein to how Big Brother’s Imogen Thomas used to be back when she was famous. Given some of the behaviour Charlotte’s been up to isn’t what I’d reccommend to impressionable young ladies, and I want people to look up to stronger and more positive role models, there is a disconnect between her public image and the morals I’d like society to uphold. But perhaps I’m wrong to consider Charlotte’s output illegitimate – given reality shows have been part of our ecosystem for some fifteen years or so, this is the way young people live now, so do I need to start being more positive and welcoming to those who choose this as their way of life? I’ve said that I want to be more helpful and decent in assisting young people with their issues, and the likes of Ms. Crosby do have problems and concerns which need resolving: for instance, when Charlotte appeared on Celebrity Juice (which for some reason I do watch, even though it’s a Keith Lemon vehicle broadcast on that hateful citadel ITV2: my opinion towards Juice having softened when I decided to just treat it as Shooting Stars for the new age), the not-actually-Geordie starlet (she’s a Mackem, if you’re keeping tally) expressed one particular concern about her appearance – she was disparaging about the shape and structure of her breastbone (well, the actual word she used was ‘uniboob’, but you know what she meant). Should I assure Charlotte that this is perfectly normal and healthy, and doesn’t in itself make her unattractive given it’s entirely commonplace for people to have this body shape? Or should I stand aside and let someone else, someone better-placed to comment than I, give Charlotte the confidence boost her needy behaviour indicates she requires? Or should I just let Charlotte herself continue to spiral on the vine, without any assistance, until she descends to the sad, inevitable decline? Sure, her behaviour on crappy reality shows isn’t something I’d condone, but does that warrant hatred? Perhaps I should just let her be the person she wants to be and not let her get under my skin too much. Railing against her could, after all, be just as bad as not interceding at all.

Sometimes people from these shows try to better themselves and society, and perhaps it’s right to focus on these for a moment: for instance Billie Faiers from The Only Way is Essex, who has established her own fashion retail boutique, Minnies, and after success in Essex (perhaps driven by the shop featuring heavily in the ghastly ITV2 show) the firm has opened a second store in Manchester. At this time of terrible difficulty on the High Street, it’s right perhaps to celebrate those small British businesses which are developing and expanding. It’s good to see someone investing in their future, too – too many reality folk try to cling onto the limelight far too long because they don’t have anything else to go back to or something else to fall back on once the bubble dies: hopefully Billie will continue to grow and develop Minnies such that, once the lights go out on TOWIE, she has a successful trade to carry on with away from the limelight. Moving into proper business is also a sign that the participant is growing up: Big Brother bruiser Charley Uchea, if comments on t’internet are to be believed, is now working in a ‘shabby chic’ furniture shop in sodding Bromley, having previously perhaps been best known post-BB for falling out of nightclubs and/or her clothes and having moody/drunken punch-ups. I was preparing to consider Charley as having grown up, but a Challenge repeat of an 8 out of 10 Cats from five-plus years ago did threaten to stunt my repentance when it reminded the nation of her belligerent old ways. Returning to the Faiers enterprise, Minnies is a relatively small concern just now when compared to the beefier fast-fashion megachains, but from small acorns huge empires have grown, as a recent BBC documentary showed. Three-part retail history tour Robert Peston Goes Shopping saw the BBC reporter, as recently punted across the bench to replace the outgoing Stephanie Flanders as Economics Editor, document the rises and falls of the British retail entrepreneurs who shaped the way we shop. The series was an interesting and informative look at the shape of shopping today, and also included some brilliant archive clips as it traced the rises of the names we know, from Marks & Spencer to Tesco to Topshop, and also included talking-head interviews with some of the key players of the trading world, such as Dixons founder Lord Kalms and Arcadia Group (Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, Burton) head Sir Phillip Green.

The retail landscape is, of course, forever changing, and as the Peston series showed, the retail store environment is reforming itself periodically to adapt to customer needs and demands. One example of this is the changing shape and nature of stores at Bluewater. In the last couple of years the Greenhithe-area supermall has made a number of significant alterations to adapt to the evolution of customer and retailer behaviour, with the opening of the Glow entertainment venue, the redevelopment of the Wintergarden food area, the relocation of stores including WH Smith to free up a large space for US retailer Forever21, which is expanding its UK presence, the relocation of H&M into the former Zavvi premises, and the enlargement of the prior main H&M to form a store for Japanese fast-fashion giant Uniqlo. We’ve also seen a bit of musical chairs as Superdry has expanded by moving to a store vacated by rival fashion retailer Choice’s relocation. Most recently, Arcadia Group has reshuffled its deck, relocating Evans from its long-held upper-mall position to free up space for a major redevelopment, which will see a relocated and revamped Topshop/Topman store opening on the upper level, with the lower-mall store which was Topshop’s berth since the mall opened to then be reallocated to Victoria’s Secret thereafter. On the level below the new Topshop is the preexisting berth of Arcadia’s Miss Selfridge, Burton and Dorothy Perkins brands, which have also been undertaking a major refreshment and restyle of their store environments, presumably tied in with the changes above. This brings the stores up to date (to the style as seen in more recent openings such as Westfield Stratford) and is the first major replanning of Arcadia’s space since Bluewater’s opening in 1999. (In a separate move, Arcadia’s Wallis is also relocating, to the space left by Superdry’s move, to free up its prior slot for a Clarks move, and more changes are likely to follow in turn.) It’s not the first time Arcadia has reshuffled its store estate to best suit the needs of the retail environment: in Bromley, when Primark moved to the former Allders site a few years back, Topshop and Topman moved to the prior Primark space, allowing for a reshuffle of the previous provision, and we’re now nudging the 20th anniversary of a major Arcadia deck-shuffle in Bexleyheath, when Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Topshop and Topman were shuttled around, with Burton and Perkins taking their current sites; the Topshop/Topman and Evans stores have since closed, however, their post-93 locations now playing home to Clinton Cards and LoveCoffee respectively. In fact, a little touch of the ’93 reshuffle still exists, if you look closely: in the 1993 revamp, when Topshop/Topman took up their new home (for the record, previously Burton’s), the youth-skewing store took on a ‘grungey’ design, as was the style at the time, with a plaster effect on its walls which gave the impression of bare brickwork in patches. This was painted over, but not removed, in a later refit of the store, and repainted again (to a ‘cloudy sky’ format) when Clintons took up the store. OK, so I accept that’s a pretty odd thing to notice, but the fact that a little touch of 90s style is still existing, albeit fairly hidden, is a sign that despite evolution, not everything has to be obliterated.

I’ve always had a bit of an affinity to the shopping world, which today manifests itself in my admittedly failed attempts to work within the sector. Maybe my fondness for shops came from family trips to the stores in childhood – I had a much more positive image of stores back then than I do now, given that since I started doing more of the family shop myself I’ve started getting the pressure shakes in supermarkets. Or perhaps it came from the telly I used to watch, from the parsimonious Arkwright’s corner shop in Yorkshire-set sitcom Open All Hours, through to the quirky antics of the staff in the traditional-toned Grace Bros. department store of Are You Being Served? The role of shopkeeper as sitcom star continues today, with Happy Endings’ Alex running her Minnies-style fashion boutique Xela in the axed-too-soon US series, though unlike in the vintage UK series, the retail business isn’t the sole focus of the show. Open All Hours, incidentally, is coming back, we hear, with David Jason returning as a now grown-up Granville in a one-off likely to take a Christmas slot somewhere on the BBC’s network. Happy Endings, though, won’t get such a revival, I fear, though maybe in a few years time, once web-TV has made enough of an inroads to challenge the traditional linear broadcast world, fan pressure could instigate an Arrested Development-style online revival with the ‘Endings sextet reconvening to mull over the offbeat things which have happened in their lives in the intervening years. And at least the axe of Happy Endings frees up the cast to take on other roles, with Adam Pally (Max) and Damon Wayans Jr (Brad) to remain on E4 by migrating to roles in The Mindy Project (uh oh) and New Girl respectively, Damon notably returning to the role of Coach, which he played in the NG pilot episode before skipping out on the series to instead join the Happy set. And, to complete the circle, if you want to see what Minnies owner Billie Faiers and her Essex-based buddies are up to, you can see new episodes of TOWIE on ITV2 this winter, sadly not alongside that station’s own kooky US import Ben & Kate, which I much preferred to TOWIE, but which has been cancelled by its Fox network paymasters in the States. As in retail, though, the vacation of previously-held space frees up berths into which a new project can be slotted. That, at least, was the reasoning given by the BBC for slapping away That Puppet Game Show and I Love My Country after their recent run-out on Saturday nights underperformed. But then Saturday night TV’s dead to me – I don’t watch the X Factor or Strictly, so months on end of watching ancient 8 out of 10 Cats episodes looping round on 4Music and Challenge awaits me this winter unless I grow a pair. Or unless a Brit remake of Ben & Kate is punted – it’s not impossible to generate a Brit sitcom from a Yank one – The Upper Hand from Who’s The Boss?, for instance – but several high-profile failures in this endeavour (Brighton Belles, Days Like These) may have coerced programme-makers to shy away from such remakes.

Maybe my avoidance of Saturday night’s talent shows is misguided, given their scale in the media landscape, but keeping my eyes largely off the events that have taken place in X Factor and Big Brother has been healthy – whereas in previous years I would, when confronted by media tattle about these shows, become upset, confused and angry, as of this year I’ve started to let the shows rattle on in the background without letting the coverage hurt me. I know to avoid the sort of websites, TV shows and newsrags which would cover such shows extensively. But maybe my attitude could be better. I don’t want to be a bad person, but some of the things I’ve said and done in the past now with hindsight seem unnecessary, nasty or wrong. Whereas these days, with the likes of Twitter, I can repent as quickly as my deranged brain can shift gears – at one point, half my tweets were apologies for the content of the other half – sometimes I’ll write something and not realise until many years later how wrong I was. This is why I’m starting to have second thoughts about reposting some of my past content from the old blog up on here – some of the diktats espoused by me upwards of seven years back no longer tally with my current views. It could be something relatively minor, such as my now-rescinded slagging of E4 sitcom PhoneShop after viewing solely the pilot, for instance, or it could be something more sinister such as my rattling and railing against glamour girls and reality-show contestants who I really shouldn’t have let under my bonnet to the extent that I did: I continued screeching for far too long at people whose imprint on the multinational footprint was, in the grand scheme of time, far smaller than their ubiquity in the media at that moment indicated that it might have come to be. You’ll have seen over the past couple years that this blog’s been running that there’s been a softening of the stance towards, say, the Kardashians (despite their continued front-of-the-mags battles of the heart and body) and Little Mix. When the four-girl pop-group first formed, for the X Factor, I berated their existence, particularly when it emerged that their original pre-LM name had been purloined from a blameless charity. However, I’m today more able to accept these ladies into the pop spectrum, and when I recently saw a report which cited the quartet as stating their upcoming single ‘Move’ was “quirky” and “a risk”, I felt duty-bound to give it a listen at least, given my past appreciation for the quirkier and less normal quadrants of the media (Shooting Stars, Adam & Joe and so forth). And actually, as a bit of pop, it works – quite chirpy, bouncy, twirly pop that’ll put a smile on a lot of young’uns. It’s not my usual sort of music, in fairness – it’s not even the best song called ‘Move’ that I’ve heard in 2013, thanks to Mausi – but it’s not something that I feel the need to hate, either. We could yet see X Factor alumni factor in my chart-of-the-year thing for the first time. Actually, we will – Amelia Lily’s ‘Party Over’ was a phat banger earlier in the year, and I’m no longer ashamed to admit that.

On a ‘quirky’ telly tip, I should point out that, when a placeholder for a new Channel 5 subsidiary called ‘5 Later’ popped up on Freeview recently, I did hold out momentary hope that it’d be the home for quirky, unusual, offbeat, surreal and edgy programming, much in the manner of the 4Later strand that ran on Channel 4 for a bit in the late 90s/early 00s – Freeview being badly in need of something challenging and unusual. However, the prosaic likelihood is that it won’t be – current recieved intel indicates that when fully launched it’ll be a catch-up shuffle channel – 5Seven, essentially. Alas. But maybe someone will surprise us with something innovative and challenging: it’s certainly possible for people to prove themselves far better than I’d earlier been led to believe; for instance, tabloid target Katie Price proving herself to be a fairly decent person in her Celebrity Deal or No Deal appearance, and her former Sky Living protege turned X Factor contestant and Big Brother spinoff host (the trifecta!) Rylan Clark proving himself to have a sense of humour in his appearances on shows such as Celebrity Juice and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Indeed, even some Big Brother contestants have proved that they’re not evil – Sam Evans (no, me neither), who apparently won this year’s Channel 5 series, not that I was paying attention, was born with partial hearing loss, and is to donate a portion of his BB winnings to a hearingcare charity. He’s also keeping his head screwed on – rather than clinging on to a media career, Evans is going back to his day job in Debenhams – yes, like me he’s a retail gonk. Actually, he’s more of one than I am, Debenhams having never taken me on, and having succeeded in his trade without being held back by his ear issues. And sometimes people who’ve had hardship recieve support from an unlikely source, with rappers Drake and The Game recently raising money for an Ohio woman whose boyfriend and children were killed when their mobile home burned down. I’ve slated Drake on my pages in the past, mostly for his role in the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna farrago (which culminated in a massive glass-chucking pub scrap), and on one occasion considered walking out of McDonald’s mid-meal when ‘Take Care’ was piped in over the PA, though I eventually stayed, completing my burger and enjoying a quick go on Fruit Ninja on the in-table tablet to boot. And in fairness I’m not exactly best placed to pass judgement on others given my circumstances, and those visited upon me by others. At one point since last update, I calmly (well, as calmly as I can muster) heated myself up a fish pie for dinner, only to burn the roof of my mouth on eating it; it was sore and tender for several days, but at the time I was worried that it’d be permanently scarred and painful. Have I learned nothing about burns survival over the last few years? I should at least remember that very little is truly forever and not undoable, no matter how end-of-days it feels at the time. Another blunder enacted upon me was when a balls-up in the provision of my discount travel pass (no hate mail please, I’m legally entitled to it) led to me recieving one month less discount than I was supposed to recieve. I probably shouldn’t kick up a fuss though, most rightthinking people would correctly believe I don’t deserve travel or food, given I am for large part reliant on public purse or family handouts to retrieve them unto myself. Maybe if I found reason to live and purpose in my being, and lifted myself to a level where I was above the need to claim the discount, I would feel more settled and rational. Debenhams don’t have a vacancy, as BB’s Sam is returning to his post, but someone somewhere no doubt will. I’ve just got to keep my ear to the ground, if that’s not offensive terminology in the circumstance.

And maybe I’m too quick to brand every mistake as wicked and sinful. It is possible to do something which is either well-intentioned but falls flat, or which seems like a good idea until being exposed to the cold light of day and found to be a bit of a silly idea after all. These blunders can be big and life-threatening – like the Australian miltary training exercise which sparked massive bushfires which have razed hundreds of homes, leading to upsetting images of devastated families turning up on newscasts this side of the hemisphere, or the London skyscraper originally known as the ‘Walkie Talkie’ but later referred to as the ‘fryscraper’ after the sun refracted off the building’s glass windows and became a superheated bolt, damaging nearby cars and shops (it would most likely have caused death or injury to anyone who had happened to stumble into its laserlike glare). There are also the little, perhaps less damaging but still noticeable, balls-ups by the media – Radio 1 made its own contribution to the death of the BBC with unwise sexist Twitter banter around new band London Grammar’s singer Hannah, whilst The Sun’s showbiz account made its own X Factor boo-boo by conflating a shoplifter contestant with the snatching of little Madeleine McCann, a comment rightly followed swiftly by scorn. Another dead-tree organisation recieved an online berating following the recent (well, it was recent when I started writing this) summer heatwave: the Telegraph, unwisely, ran a series of surreptitious and stalkerish paparazzi photographs of young women who happened to be sunbathing in London parks. I think we can all agree that this was a creepy invasion of privacy that, had it been carried out by an individual not acting on the instruction of a media giant, would have resulted in criminal charges. In slightly-related, publishing-photos-of-women-in-a-state-of-undress news, we’ve seen continued and sustained campaigning against men’s magazines, with supermarkets demanding a clean-up or cover-up, and the Co-op dumping the mags outright after publishers refused to blink to their demands. But it’s difficult to say if lad’s papers are genuinely evil, or just making a series of poor judgement calls driven by a feeling they’re giving the audience what they want, coupled with an avaricious demand to make sales in a cramped and declining marketplace. The infamous Zoo Danny Dyer incident of 2009 (“cut your girlfriend’s face”) was probably driven not by genuine hatred of women but by an incorrect assumption that pub-bound blokes want their media to be delivered in cockney gangster wideboy format. It’d be interesting to see what, if anything, Dyer’s upcoming onscreen wife Kellie Bright (they’re joining EastEnders shortly) thinks of her new co-star, though perhaps that’s itself been driven by my recent viewing of repeats of The Upper Hand, featuring a much younger Bright, on ITV3. And then seeing the now-adult (in age, keep your trousers on) actress – more recently in The Archers – on Pointless a few days later. If that doesn’t warp my view of the passage of time, nothing will. While we’re in the TV universe, one lad’s mag has axed its TV outpost, and the demise of Loaded TV does, along with the cutback of Tuune slots on Propeller, mean smaller bands and undiscovered music once again has little to no TV outlet:I was an avid viewer of Loaded’s music series Dial M until its abrupt cessation, for instance, and Tuune gave oxygen to artists whose promos don’t get anywhere near 4Music and Viva.

4Music’s parent, the Box TV network owned by Channel 4 and Zoo publisher Bauer, may have recently made its telecasts more freely available, but it certainly isn’t interested in launching emerging and fresh talent, favouring to run channels based on the familiar and well-trodden, as their recent scuttling of the Smash Hits and Q radio stations in favour of Kiss brand extensions indicated. Bauer have themselves, as it goes, been at the centre of a media row, after calls were made for the firm to be stripped of their broadcast licences – and prevented from buying Absolute Radio – because of their German parent company’s ownership of Der Landser, a magazine accused of glorifying the Nazi organisation. Bauer insisted that their magazine was compliant with German laws on the matter and did not celebrate war-criminal actions; the firm eventually closed the magazine down at the peak of the chaos, citing a review of their publication operations rather than directly pegging the shuttering to the complaints of Bruce Fireman and others. I wouldn’t advise Ofcom to weaken Bauer though, as they’re now the only competitor with significant scale to compete with Global Radio; without a strong Bauer in competition, Global would basically have almost total control of UK commercial radio. And anyway, Bauer can’t be all bad – they also publish the UK’s nicest magazine, Total TV Guide.

On the subject of decent people, it was pleasing to see some of the people I adore placing highly on a list of the most inspirational Britons, with Katie Piper and Stephen Fry placing second and third behind nature-show legend David Attenborough. It’s good to see that, in this age where fly-by-night nobodies can make the papers just by taking their top off and Instagramming, the British populace still has an appreciation for thoroughly decent people. Of course, Katie’s been keeping herself busy since last time I belched one of these up, filming for her still-forthcoming (they told us it’d be on in September, but that was a lie) new series ‘Undo Me’, though I’m slightly unsettled by the suggestion that it’ll have a conflict element, pitting the surgery-addled head-to-head against the untainted but considering it, in the manner of ‘Supersize v Superskinny’ or ‘Beauty and the Beast’. I’ve never walked out of the room during one of Katie’s shows before, and I don’t want to start now. Katie’s also announced that she’s expecting to deliver the next generation of intelligence and beauty – after long wishing to become a mother, Katie has announced that she’s pregnant by her long-term partner. It’s brilliant to see our sainted Katie finding continued love and happiness in her life, continuing to shape her story and take control of her life (it’s probably the baby news that’s held up ‘Undo Me’, to be fair) and I’m sure she will be a loving, caring and intelligent mother. Certainly she’ll be a breath of fresh air compared to some of the grunting, selfish, drunk and drugged-up scum that are bringing up screeching, arrogant brat-kids – or maybe that’s just my prejudice having been frequently overexposed to the underclass in recent years – I spend a lot of time in grimy public places, forced to rub shoulders with the sort of people who use ‘bear’ as a superlative rather than an ursine nominative, and that can become tiring. I need, though, to remember there are good people out there – for instance, the fella on ‘Surprise Surprise’ who gave up much of his life to look after his girlfriend and fundraise for her medical care when she was left in a wheelchair after breaking her back in a fall from the wall she was sitting on after a party. I’d like to think wouldn’t abandon my theoretical future partner if she recieved lifechanging news, and I’d like to think any such girlfriend I had would afford me the same respect, in the unlikely event that the stagnated rut that comprises my life ever throws up a curveball of similar hue to that faced by Holly’s featured folks. Of course, particularly post-Paralympics and Piper, I’d have no problem dating a lady with disabilities or disfigurements, but regardless of her own issue she’d have a problem with me, not least with my lack of finance, my household issues, my general looming unattractiveness and gunkiness, and of course that grotty bowel smell, which I really should have looked into given people are driven to comment loudly on it in the street. Maybe one day I’ll have the confidence to compliment one of the beautiful ladies I see about town on her radiance, and whilst she may well fling it back at my face, it’s at least worth a try; it could help improve her day, after all, to recieve a compliment rather than a complaint.

I’ve long determined that I’ll never be someone inspirational and successful to Attenborough/Piper/Fry levels, and I’m very aware that my moment in the sun has passed – I’m past my best, and any attempt to be, say, a radio DJ will be met with a brick wall – but perhaps I’ll be more engaging in future years. I could easily at least try to see some light amid the sooty sludge that comprises much of my general day, and look to see beyond the usual media rubbish for to find something worth talking about. I have a lot of untapped potential – I could, in theory, be more fun and interesting. Maybe one day a more lighthearted tone will be possible here – a lot of my favourite blogs and sites over the years – TV Cream, Dustbury, BrokenTV for instance – have been those with a defter, lighter, more pleasant batter than I’ve thus far been able to muster. I’ve got a fairly lighthearted piece in the pipe for posting in the near future – regular readers, if I have any, may be able to predict what it comprises – and maybe once my general spirits have lifted sufficiently, or my pressure/peace balance has been improved, I’ll start writing for pleasure again: I’m considering starting up a second WordPress, to feature pop-culture commentary on the lines of the stuff I scrawled for the previous version of OffTheTelly back in 2009, but given it currently takes me months to blart out a blog post – at one point the old MySpace page was getting shorter, written-on-the-day, almost-daily posts – it’ll take me a wee while to get up a head of steam to whisk out scripts for that at a reasonable lick. But maybe if I enjoyed what I was pasting onto t’internet, others would enjoy reading it, certainly more so than you’ve enjoyed putting yourself through the above paragraphs at any rate. But to start writing that, I’ll first have to finish writing this. It’s been quite a tough one to write – hence the long wait to get it out here – and if you made it through, I thank you. You may now return to what you’d normally be doing at this juncture. Stop – Nikki didn’t say.

“And that’s enough out of you, you human platter!” (Goodbye!)

“I’m a watermelon Yoda!” (Hello!)

Thank you for inviting us into your women’s work area. So, once again, it’s been more than two months since I last puked one of these purple puddles into your online space, and I would apologise for the delay, but it would presumably be safer to assume that you actually enjoyed the break. It’s difficult to find the lengthy periods of time needed to sit down and concentrate on writing these missives: I have so many commitments, chores and appointments that lengthy pause – to watch a film, read a book or write at length about nothing in particular – often has to take a backseat breather. That said, I’m sure you’d rather read shorter, more focused updates, and so I’ll try, schedules permitting, to move towards that – I recently discovered that the most-read post here, aside from search-results sarcasm, is a shortish bit of gristle almost exclusively concerned with informing my audience as to what Katie Piper was doing around the media sphere at that point. So, once I’ve got this summer’s scum out of the pipe, I’ll try and punt up a relaunch of some sort, with the aim of one day being considered readable. So let’s get on with the current bumph – and this edition’s main theme, one which I may well come to regret later, is regret. Too few to mention? Not even close…

I regret almost everything I’ve done in these thirty-one terrible years. I look back now at some of the dicky things I did in my schooldays and think, just what was the point of that? From daft and regrettable retail purchases, to daft decisions taken in the schoolroom which seemed perfectly permissible at the time but which I now bitterly regret, such as being a bit of a telly geek, a bit of a self-contained weirdo, and not being particularly good at sports (though that last one was thrust on me by physical stamina, rather than being a decision of choice.) I didn’t particularly socialise at or outside of school: once the educational day was over, I’d waddle off home and watch the Krypton Factor or summat, and not attempt to ‘hang’ outwith the schoolyard. This was in part because those I attended schooling with did not seem particularly keen to have me clanking off their coattails, as I was never particularly popular, but I seemed perfectly content with the situation at the time – it was the best o’ both worlds, my colleagues getting to run free and have fun, experimenting with stunts, ramps and jumps, kissing and hugging, setting fire to cars, and whatever else it was kids of my age would seek out to do, while I was sat indoors watching Spatz or Kappatoo or whatever. So I’ve always played the lone wolf, and even today I have few friends I can turn to in time of tears. It’s telling that on one occasion when I was undergoing financial hardship, my first thought was to run to my then-most-recent workplace, not to beg for further hours but simply to hide myself away somewhere I felt safe and comfortable – my range of enemies meaning there aren’t many places where that is the case! Many of those I was saddled with in school or on courses have since buggered off to do their own thing, and so I rarely knowingly run into them, and when I do I’m not sure what to say and do, often because I’ve little news to impart. On one occasion, I chanced into one lad I’d been to secondary with whilst on a typically-brain-muddling visit to Bluewater, and, not being certain of the etiquette of extracurricular chum-bumping-into, I high-fived him, oblivious to how puzzled he looked at recieving the slappy gesture. Still regret that to this day. Haven’t seen the lad since, mind…

I also regret not being more confident with the ladygirls and thus being a solo singleton well into my thirties. Many ladies in the region of my age are long since settled down with babies or saddled with commitments, whilst I am still awaiting romance. I struggled to convince the chicas of my aptitude back in the day, and regret not doing more to convince the girls at school that I was potential boyfriend material, and wish I’d been more unrelenting and dogged in my pursuit of those I found particularly attractive and personable; on the rare occasion that I did express anything close to romantic intention to any girl, the approach was generally ignored and/or broadly rebuffed. Back in primary school, I developed something of a crush on one lass in particular (it’s not perverted, I was the same age at the same time), but never really pushed the point, and when it appeared the girl in question was not particularly interested in me, I just gave up the chase. Then, during my next phase of education, there were occasions when I fell for a fellow schoolgirl, and my lack of confidence generally saw my advances thrown back in my face. In truth, I was too busy concentrating on getting my general standard of education to really focus on pushing the babe-hunting angle, assuming I’d have plenty of scope for flirts once I hit adulthood, and once rejected by the ladies didn’t feel the need to press on, for fear of annoying them. And unlike some others, I didn’t go to university, mostly as a result of financial concerns, and the as-it-turns-out regrettable and mistaken decision to get out of education and into work, not then knowing how little actual work would be forthcoming over the coming years, so I didn’t have the uni-based meeting and dating experiences that studes would later report on in the likes of Select, Sky and FHM. So whilst others were experimenting with romance in their youth, I was left on the sidelines, and now that I’m ageing (seriously, I’ve even noticed grey [or gray] hair coming through, though that may be stress-related more than anything), it’s only going to be more difficult. When a creaking, bearded, jacket-wearing, pasty, shapeless, unfit, unhealthy weirdo wanders up to a honey and, through wheezes and sneezes, attempts to flirt with her, rejection can be the only result. I’m very aware of my lack of anything which could be considered attractive – a decade of near-constant job rejection has convinced me of how useless I appear to be – and a general fear of offending the lady or sparking reprisals (a punch from a wronged ex, for instance, or drawing the attention of the police) are among the concerns which holds me back from chatting up any pretty ladies who happen to fetch up whilst I’m on my current daily roustabout. Whilst thudding around the local area on my dubious errands, there will oftentimes be a woman who passes my field of gaze who prompts me to think, ‘she’s pretty’, but the opportunity – and the lady herself – has often passed long before my stomach is sufficiently girded to make any kind of decision. In any case, my life’s so dizzying that I’ve usually got the sort of panicky tunnel-vision I usually find myself in when out and about, and am in no fit state to talk to hot girls (and too hot of a state to talk to fit girls, natch), and even if I was able to speak to the relevant women, I have nothing to offer them – no car, no permanent job, no home of my own to take them back to – there are a lot of things I need to put right with my life before a girlfriend even becomes an option. But I’d love to have someone to hold onto in times of trouble, someone who would soothe and calm me when the panic hits, and someone who I could, should the opportunity arise, help out with her own difficulties. I want to be the nice guy who holds a lady close and tells her how lovely she is; I’ve never had the chance to be that man. Maybe I never will. But perhaps that’s the best; no dad wants his daughter shacked up with me, particularly when she could yet have a Royal prince or one off of One Direction or something…

I also regret the impact that fear has had on me in recent years, and how this has held me back; others are more adventurous and fearless, and take part in all sorts of potentially dangerous activities, whilst I stay firmly on the straight and narrow in the fear that any judgement could be my last. Some people race bulls, jump out of planes, or fling themselves off tall buildings; to me, getting from one end of Morrisons to the other is enough to give me palpatations. I’m just not cut out for the dangerman lifestyle – my indecisive and fearful nature stops me from entering potential danger hotbeds. I’ve mentioned in the past my decision not to return to Woolwich or Croydon for some time after the damaging 2011 riots (two years ago now); I still, mostly for time reasons, haven’t returned to Croydon, my current racing about to meet everyone’s demands leaving little time to make journeys which, like Croydon, would be beyond reasonable boundaries. No, really – my summer holiday this year was an afternoon in Dartford, having the closest thing to a picnic I could justify. (The recent heatwave also explains the extended delay in posting this crap – when the weather was excessively warm, it was difficult to sit in front of the computer for long periods of time without feeling uncomfortable.) I have since returned to Woolwich, mainly for jobhunt-related transit or, given it’s my nearest DLR station, transport-based concerns, though thanks to my lack of eyesight did somehow manage to miss out on the massive TK Maxx that opened at one end of Powis Street in 2012, only discovering the fashion discounter’s arrival in SE18 earlier this year while scouting the web for jobs. Of course, the Woolwich area has been back in the news – just days before my previous post here went up, as it happens – when soldier Lee Rigby was attacked close to the Royal Artillery Barracks. That certainly gave the world an image of Woolwich as a dangerous and hateful place – one evening shortly after the incident, admittedly at a point pushing midnight, I happened to land upon CNN, and saw a news anchor in a Hong Kong studio talking to a reporter in New York about the incident in Woolwich. That was quite a surreal thing for someone fairly local to the area in question to see, and persuaded me that perhaps bed, rather than in the company of CNN International, was the place to be at that point of the evening. Being local to the area, I know this sort of thing isn’t ‘the norm’ for Woolwich, though, and that people seeing the reportage will be left with perhaps a more negative view of the area than would be the case if they knew the area more well. It’s similar for Bexleyheath – the only times in my life the town’s been on the front page of the Daily Mirror have been in response to stabbings – the circa 1996 job centre incident, and Nicola Edgington’s much-discussed rampage. (The attack in the job centre – and the general anger and frustration expressed by those who attend the facility, at least when I’m present – shows how mentally taxing unemployment can be; recently, one job centre elsewhere in the country saw a claimant, frustrated at the service provided, drive his car into the front entrance of the building.) But it is I guess wrong to judge places based on their appearance in the news, something I need reminding of just as much as others do – even today, I still get the wrinkles when places like Lockerbie, Soham, Omagh and Dunblane are mentioned, even in circumstances unrelated to their most harrowing events – for instance, the recent retail-press row over a proposed (and opposed) new supermarket development in Soham, whilst containing nothing relevant to Huntley’s proclivities, still gave me the chatters. Heck, after a nasty incident in Melton Mowbray a while back, I still can’t face eating pork pies. As I’ve indicated previously, mention of ‘hallowed’ dates such as September 11th still occasionally fills me with unwanted dread too. I should probably let the fact that a man from Dunblane won Wimbledon on 7th July (this year) pass without comment, though there’ll be more tennis here later.

On the job front, I also regret getting into retail – a sector which, when I arrived in it, at least partly by default, in 2003, was looking plenty rosy, but which in the past five years has entered a toilet from which it may never reemerge. So far in 2013 I’ve had just two days’ work (and thanks to a clerical error by my employer, have only been paid for one of those!) I should explain how I landed in the position of a shop-jockey; whilst in the latter stages of schooling, I formulated a plan, under which I’d finance my longer-term aim – to get into something involving music and/or the media – think radio DJ, journo on NME/Planet Sound (it was still going then), telly linkman, ad writer, that sort of thing – with a more stable regular gig in retail or some other semi-skilled, non-specialist sector, knowing that media work would be fewer, far between and harder to come by, particularly as I didn’t have any prior media connections which could enable me to rely on nepotism as an option. (Didn’t have any connections in retail either, but anyway…) Over the years, I excercised my media cherry, popping up as a letter-writer to Planet Sound, Paramount Text and various other now-disestablised teletext services, contributing, latterly by text message, to radio shows, and penning various bits for the now-archived original version of Off The Telly in a flurry of creativity; I also auditioned, if that’s the word, for a local community radio station, only for the broadcaster to collapse itself financially before I ever got to utter a word on air. However, the hunt for stable, steady retail work proved a lot less steady than that which I’d anticipated: in the early years, my largely-blank CV meant I had to rely on job-club placements at charity stores to bulk up my experience, and even now I can only dredge companies into taking me on for short-term and temporary things – since 2010, only one organisation has bothered with me at all, and only for part-time or ultra-short-term contracts, which suggests I’m barking up the wrong tree if I try to continue my failed career in retail. Problem is, with a shop-heavy CV, I can’t now transfer into another market without some serious reskilling, which is likely only to add to the time and money drain I’m already causing – it’d be better for society if I got off the books sooner, and taking extra training to which I may (or may not) be entitled will only drag on the agony. But the high street ain’t gonna survive anytime soon, reports suggest one in five of those shops which remain will close in the next five years, and the much-hyped Mary Portas ‘pilots’ have failed, with shop vacancies going up in many of the towns included in the scheme, and Portas herself devoting her time principally to those featured in the TV series – indeed, there were suggestions that Channel 4 and Optomen tried to influence the Government’s decision-making in the process, pushing for areas which would seemingly make for ‘good’ (in Jay Hunt’s eye) telly to be included in the scheme. So yeah, the retail industry’s had it. Not that the shops have been a pleasant place to be – since last I spoke among you, we’ve seen a four-year-old killed by a falling mirror in a Hugo Boss outlet in whatever Bicester is, in an incident chillingly reminiscent of me cracking my head open on a ladder in a local shop (that may be the cause of my frontal-lobe deficiencies, if I’m honest); we’ve also had an Anfield newsagent go up in flames in what was described as a ‘hate crime’ linked to an earlier row, a cancer survivor in his 60s perishing after an Asda car-park scuffle, and in the US the patrons of a Sally Army thrift store were buried in rubble by a high-on-Maryjane crane driver at a neighbouring building project. Rumours he was listening to Macklemore at the time of the incident were probably started by me. But still; one should not expect that popping to the shops will lead to a popping of your clogs.

I do regret getting so tied up and upset around the news, and you’ll have noticed my attempts to get those bits of my blog down in size, an attempt not helped by the eight-week-plus interregnum between scrawlings, a timeframe in which a whole heap of a lot can happen around the globe. Certainly my old attitude, to take on board as much as humanly possible of what’s happened, has been too much to bear at times, and I’m starting to ration my access to the deeper news in order to prevent myself from overheating it all. I’m also aware that some of my comments could provoke further offence, rake up old wounds, cause or contribute to ‘jigsaw identification’ of people (albeit no more so than the original article on which I’m basing my voicings), or be considered in contempt of court. In hindsight, I’ve regretted some of the things I’ve said here or on the old blog, and thankfully in MySpace’s recent revamp (yes, another one) the Blogs have been stricken from the site completely, though I still have the RTFs I saved when I quit the site, if anyone’s interested in reading the guff I scrawled in excess of six years ago (didn’t think so). But there’s always a human cost in the incidents which flicker across our news-screens, and it’s difficult to detatch myself emotionally and restore that sheet of glass between myself and incidents I can do nothing about. The roads will continue to claim lives – since my last post, the M6 several times in quick succession, a lorry driver and 11-day-old baby among those slain in separate collisions. Meanwhile, on the M5, the sad case of someone who clearly wasn’t getting the support and affection she needed given her condition became clear when a thirty-year-old mother-of-five was killed driving the wrong way up the M5, naked – clearly something in her brain had snapped and she couldn’t make rational decisions anymore. (This sort of thing is why I don’t drive – I’m barely mentally stable enough to travel by bus as it is!) More recently, Italy played host to a devastating coach crash, and there were train derailments in Spain and collisions in Switzerland, the Spanish crash claiming nearly 80 lives when a driver whipped past a corner at a hell of a lick. And in Alicia Silverstone’s birthplace (or San Francisco to non-Silverstone fans), a plane crash on the runway claimed the lives of Japanese teenagers – heartbreakingly, one reportedly survived the original collision, only to emerge onto the tarmac and be hit by a rescue vehicle rushing to the scene. Maybe I’ve seen too many film adverts, but it seems the world’s starting to resemble Final Destination – some grand overseer is unhappy with our activities and is determined to wipe us out by any chilling means which present themselves. We need to be better people or this sort of mayhem will just keep on happening.

Not that being on the ground is any safer. Nineteen American firefighters were killed battling a masive blaze, sixteen children and a teacher were killed when a school bus in Pakistan was blown up, and a house in Sheffield was levelled by a blast believed to be gas-related: whilst nobody was killed here, it did come on the heels of the possibly-mentioned-here-last-time Newark blast which we now know killed a man in his 70s and his daughter-in-law. Canada, in particular, has been hit by tragedy over recent weeks, far more than it should have to bear – and as someone who is quite fond of Canada and its Canadians (even after the women’s Olympic football), I was not pleased to see such pain and agony visited upon those who I consider my maple-leaf-waving friends. A fireworks plant explosion claimed lives and provoked memories of a prior similar incident here in the UK; flooding in Alberta and, later, Toronto caused destruction, misery and, at least in Alberta, deaths; and in perhaps the most shocking incident, an oil tanker train derailed and exploded, levelling a huge part of a town and eliminating a huge swathe of the local population (some victims reportedly vapourised in a bar which took the brunt of the blast; other premises including homes, a pharmacy and a library were also wiped from the planet). The community has attempted to rebuild – a restaurant close to the site was able to reopen days later and serve its surviving patrons, and those in town to help with recovery – but with such traumatic devastation caused, it will take a long time for this Quebec district to get back on its feet. More recently, there was the case of the young boys suffocated by an escaped snake. And then there was Cory Monteith. I can’t claim to be a Glee fan myself, but it is a show with a huge international fanbase, many of whom were shocked to hear the Canadian actor had been found dead (with alcohol and heroin in his system, as it turned out) in a Vancouver hotel room. Here was someone who had a huge amount ahead of him – he was just 31, the same age as me – in fact literally only a couple of months younger, which is pretty chilling in itself – and his passing leaves hundreds bereft – not just his castmates, including his beautiful girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele, but also the swathes of young folk who had become attached to the show and to Finn over the past few years. It’s a great shame to see someone apparently throw their life away at such an early stage, though perhaps inevitable if reports of Cory’s past brushes with addictions and rehab are accurate. Still, at least the coverage of his passing was handled relatively deftly, with Glee’s UK broadcasters E4, Sky1 and Pick TV paying relatively noble tribute, and the show’s US producers planning to slot a tribute episode into the next season after the already-announced Beatles-themed two-parter. It’s also sobering that in his 31 short years, Cory became so celebrated and talented, whereas I have done nothing to deserve any form of adulation in almost exactly the same time. Maybe Cory needed help dealing with his demons, as others in the public eye seem to do from time to time – the battles fought by the likes of Demi Lovato are, in this fast-moving, tabloidy, social-media-frenzy of an age, perhaps too well-documented, whilst reported suicide attempts by Paris Jackson (the late Michael’s teen daughter) and Stephen Fry (gentleman and scholar of QI amongst others, should you need reminding) made headlines within days of each other earlier this year, Paris reportedly unable to cope with the media glare that she was under in the wake of her dad’s passing, and Fry said to have considered suicide last year. Paris, your life’s still ahead of you yet; and Stephen, you can’t leave us now: your wit, grace and humour is needed now more than ever, and hey, the grand QI encyclopaedia of good-humoured knowledge is not even halfway complete yet. And there’s still rumours of a Blackadder revival every couple of years, too: surely you could coerce Rowan and the now Sir Tony to make room in their diaries? Hell, even Ben Elton’s got time on his hands now The Wright Way’s been given the heave… And yes, while it would be nice to see some legendary new comedy on screen, I have noted that one comic’s performances will now sadly only be in repeats: Atkinson’s Not the Nine O’Clock News cohort Mel Smith recently pulling down the curtain after suffering a heart attack. Another of the ones I watched growing up (mostly in the post-Not ‘Smith & Jones’ series, admittedly), now no longer with us.

There have been numerous cases of death and murder in recent times, far too many sadly to name here individually, but gallingly the number of situations where people – sadly all too often including children – have been found dead in mysterious or suspicious circumstances. You can interrogate the BBC or other news sites for a fuller list of incidents over the last couple months, but cases which particularly struck me included the situation of a teenage girl who disappeared after reportedly meeting her abductor – who as it turned out was living in her local area – online; whilst she and the arrested party were both living in England, the alleged attacker was arrested in Glasgow and the poor girl’s body was, after a period of searching, eventually discovered in Wrexham, Wales. Those cross-country murder trails remind me, not in a pleasant way, of the antics of Peter Tobin, whose track of murder and abduction stretched from Hampshire to western Scotland to Kent. Elsewhere, Mark Bridger was convicted of murdering five-year-old April Jones in Macynlleth, Wales and was himself subsequently attacked in prison (as is often the case with those involved in emotive cases, when fellow lags decide to enact brutal additional justice). Whilst it’ll be a time before I can associate that small and previously little-known Welsh town with anything funny, this year’s Macynlleth Comedy Festival went ahead as planned, even amid all the then-ongoing pain and confusion over the April case, and even recieved coverage on Radio 4 Extra. It would have been interesting to tune in to see if the comics – or indeed the BBC hosts – were walking on eggshells, but to be honest the fear of hearing something offensive led me to shy away from listening at all. Should the fun-fest have gone ahead at all? Maybe, maybe not. That’s a decision to be taken by minds more learned than mine. Certainly, denying the community something positive to rally around in the midst of the most worrying and shocking times in its history would perhaps have been draconian; but to be celebrating something frivolous and silly at the same time as the same town is being spoken of in hushed tones in news reports perhaps smacks of infortuitous timing, ironic as in comedy timing – both within the joke-telling and in the placement of the humour itself – is usually quite important. Elsewhere in Wales, a paranoid schizophrenic was detained after one woman was killed and seventeen others, mainly women and children, were injured in a hit-and-run rampage around Cardiff. Clearly, we are not safe on the streets when those who are so mentally ill as to be driven to this sort of behaviour are out there. Certainly I’m worried about the mental wellbeing of some of those I have to spend my day with – frequently, my bus journey or my time in the library or jobsearch centre is spoiled by the presence of someone whose behaviour is not of the norm. Thankfully, Edgington aside, few of Bexley’s mentally ill are genuinely dangerous, other than to themselves or society more generally, and if I gird my loins, concentrate on what I’m doing and try not to cry too much, they’ll go on about their day and not interact directly with me. Certainly it can feel at times like I’m being held in some sort of town-size facility for the unwell: and being around mental illness so often is leading me to question with some frequency my own mental wellbeing. Certainly some of the thoughts and fears I have wouldn’t subscribe as normal, as a cursory skim of this blog would inform you. My fears and worries are certainly more acute than some – as I’ve mentioned, whilst some can go bungee jumping or whatever without blinking their remaining eyelid, I struggle to get through a supermarket trip without ending up confused, struggling for breath and close to tears.

It’s particularly galling to see someone being killed or injured doing something they love, or which they see as their ‘calling’. Think for instance of young zookeeper Sarah McClay, mauled at just 24 years of age by a tiger which had apparently got into a staff area of the pen set aside for workers to enter when feeding the beasts. See also Madaline Cole, a 25-year-old marine conservationist – that’s far more important a job than what I do – who was fatally hit by a boat’s propellers while out snorkelling. I didn’t know who Ms. Cole was beforehand, but given what I now know posthumously I can say with some certainty that that those who were touched by her work will undoubtedly miss her, and that she was far more important to the world than I will ever be. I’ve never been snorkelling, for one. Elsewhere, an elderly man’s trip to the park in Pudsey, west Yorkshire was cut short when an unattended police van, left by officers responding to an unrelated incident, rolled back into him, and a young woman passed away after a fall at a Glasgow gig by the reunited Stone Roses. Participation in sports and leisure is always risky, as seen in the case of a woman competing in the still-using-Beijing’s-old-name Peking To Paris road race was killed in a collision, along with a man and baby in the other car involved, which was not participating in the competition: it was suggested the driver of this other motor had fallen asleep at the wheel. Horse rider Laura Collett was seriously injured in a fall at a trials event, and most recently the lovely Jo Rowsell found herself with a broken collarbone after a last-lap crash in the RideLondon thing that happened at the start of August. Wishing you all the best, Jo – despite my previous fear of cyclists, you’ve always come across as lovely (well, when I’ve seen you on telly around other cycle-sports events, in any case) and I wouldn’t want such a delightful lady to be in pain and suffering. I should take this point to update on one lady whose death made it into the prior post but whose situation changed shortly after its posting with the publication of her inquest findings: I mentioned how transgender teacher Lucy Meadows had taken her life after a battering from the press: the inquest report was something of a letting-off-the-hook for the publishers after it revealed Ms Meadows’ suicide notes had not mentioned the press explicitly, referring instead to stress, debt and bereavements. However, whilst the notes did not blame the journos, the coroner described the press treatment of this teacher as ‘character assassination’ and said it was likely to have been a contributing factor in her decision to end it all. Will this change the attitude of the press? Will it heck – look at the post-Leveson dragging of feet as the publishers and politicians continue to fail to settle on a workable scheme which allows freedom of the press to crusade, whilst allowing for their nastier excesses to be reined in.

I do regret some of the things I’ve said here and elsewhere, particularly those things which later turned out to be wrong. PhoneShop recently returned to E4 for a third series, and it wouldn’t have done had E4 listened to the garbage I said in the wake of the pilot’s broadcast. Maybe I approached the show in the wrong way, but what I said about that programme nearly four years ago was clearly wrong, and I’d like to apologise for about the sixth time for something that most of the people reading this now will never have heard in the first place. I also regret sticking the knife into US retail firms who turned their noses up at the scheme led by businesses in the UK and Europe to improve conditions for those working on clothing in locations such as Bangladesh in the wake of the Dhaka factory collapse: it has since emerged that WalMart, Gap and other US-based retailers have instead knocked up their own alliance for worker safety in the developing world. I also regret getting so wound up by Big Brother in past years that I’ve upset and angered people with my less-than-friendly comments on the contestants; this year, despite the best efforts of the Daley – sorry, Daily – Star, I’ve largely been avoiding BB and have no reason to pass comment, except to say that the chucked-out boxer fella, with his ‘jumping on ladies and threatening them’ routine, reminds me perhaps too much of the brutal boyfriend who orchestrated the attack on my beloved Katie Piper. But then if this Hazel girl is attacked and injured, she’s only got herself to blame – as a non-viewer I’ve done nothing to encourage this sort of behaviour. Something else that’s been grabbing headlines across the pond is the row over racist comments made by participants in the US version of Big Brother: CBS ultimately deciding to go ahead with the broadcast to allow viewers to make up their own mind, a rare act of bravery by a US broadcaster (in short supply since Janet Jackson’s superbowl slip-out). The racial comments will have repercussions for those participating: two blonde ladies who were involved will find they don’t have jobs to go back to when they leave the house, and I like brunettes now. But in the grand scheme of things, maybe my opinion doesn’t matter at all. Maybe in the past I’ve been part of the problem, spitting more bile into the fire, when taking a step back and taking a deeper, more holistic view would have made me more able to be part of the solution. The problem is, one of the only things I’m any good at is misjudging situations. I just can’t seem to make the right call. I regret being so offended by a Dr Pepper ad which had completely the wrong effect on me (the one where a guy becomes trapped under a store’s cooler, has to be cut out of his underpants, and is then lofted out of the store in full view of a giggling crowd and a newscopter) that my consumption of the drink fell dramatically and still today isn’t up to the levels it reached before the ad aired. I regret being so incapable of coping with chaos and carnage that at the slightest sign of anger I have to leave the room – whether it be in the X Men film my brother has put on, in a replay of clips from the 1993 Emmerdale plane crash, a sequence which pops up with increasing regularity in TV clipshows and will only become more prominent with the 20th anniversary of the incident on the horizon, or in the Mindy Project, the E4-screened US sitcom I now regret watching: I now leave the room every Tuesday evening between New Girl and the actually-good Badults. Badults, in turn, gives me the option to regret something I said here previously about another BBC Three show – its lead female is played by Emer Kenny, who also appears in the same channel’s Pramface as snooty Danielle – I reported here before how Danielle’s selfish behaviour left a nasty taste in the mouth and I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, but her role as Rachel in the good-natured knockabout Badults – in which she appears alongside the members of underrated sketch troupe Pappy’s, whose previous attempts at TV comedy failed unaccountably to take flight, including two seaprate Comedy Labs for Channel 4 – allows me to see another side of her. Emer has also appeared in – and, in another string to her bow I shamefully didn’t know about until I looked it up, even written episodes of – EastEnders and its spinoff E20 (I didn’t know this as, you’ll know by now, I’m not and never have been a soap fan.) I’ll avoid the tabloid-friendly gag that perhaps, rather than ‘Enders, this particular lady should instead have appeared in, ahem, ‘Emer-dale’; whilst I’ve always loved a bit of wordplay (8 out of 10 Cats Countdown is like manna to me), I want to hold back on name-based puns after seeing Frank Skinner give actress Charlotte Salt a nominative going-over on the Beeb’s new Saturday-night funfest I Love My Country. Making fun of someone’s name? Have some principle, Skinner…

Elsewhere on TV, BBC Three appears to be launching a new campaign to dissuade people from applying to work within retail with a new fly-on-the-shop-wall show, Shoplife, which if the trails are to be believed – I’ve not been brave enough to watch the actual show yet – focuses on slightly doofy young folks who presumably have been selected, much like other reality-show participants, to prickle debate among the viewing masses. Of course, the BBC has been here before, with the presumably-blander and certainly more southern late-90s BBC One series Lakesiders. That said, maybe if I make the time to actually listen to what the Metrocentre employees have to say when given more than twenty seconds to articulate themselves I’ll be pleasantly surprised at their nature – maybe the soundbites selected for the trails aren’t exactly representative of their entire personalities – and this being a BBC show the Shoplife set are almost certainly more polite and personable than their fellow northeasterners as displayed on MTV’s sex-and-drinks horrorshow Geordie Shore. The people behind ITV’s I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here have revealed they’d never invite Geordie Shore folk to take part – when you’re too offensive to be invited to cover yourself in cockroaches or eat kangaroo penis, you know you’ve done wrong! And GS people have done wrong – production of the freakshow was suspended recently after a nightclub fracas involving two of the show’s apparently-female participants, Holly and Vicky, in which a fellow drinker was allegedly assaulted. I’d hope the bad behaviour of those who appear in this show soon leads to its axe – TV wasn’t invented to give oxygen to tripe – but sadly the truth is that in 2013, anything good on telly is buried behind thousands of hours of garbage. I’m just grateful that as a viewer primarily of free channels, my exposure to those noisy Geordies is limited by the show’s transmission primarily on MTV’s pay channels, thus far at least. But then, the typical strategy is that shows I love get canned and shows I hate go on for decades – The New Normal, …Apartment 23, Happy Endings and apparently The Cleveland Show will not be returning for the next TV season, whilst The Mindy Project will be coming back. Honestly, it’s like American TV producers don’t know what I watch on E4 and what I avoid. I also note that the Holly girl of the Geordie Shore mob recently appeared on the cover of a weekly lad-rag with purple hair, which quite impressed me until I remembered who she was. And this wasn’t Little Mix-like a-bit-purple-in-tone, this was proper, all-the-way, Leela-off-Futurama purple. A good choice, in principle, and she certainly looked more attractive with the purple than with the louder colour she has usually, but I have to remember that a change of hair colour doesn’t change one’s personality, and she’s still likely to be a nasty piece of work no matter how purple-hued she chooses to become.

But then, maybe we won’t be able to see bikini-clad wannabes on the front of magazines soon: several mags have agreed to tone down their covers after a request from Tesco for more modesty, and this followed the Co-op asking for the publications to be sold in sealed bags from September. The moves aim to reduce exposure of the more salacious elements of these titles to those customers who may be offended by them, and that’s a fair enough request given the broad family audience these retailers attract. Some, though, have called for the shops to go further and pull the rags from sale altogether: a feminist campaign group, similar to that set up to fight against Page Three, deriding the superstores’ moves as a half-measure, and calling for sales of these blokey mags to stop altogether. As you’d expect, I’m indecisively sitting on the fence here. I’ve spoken in the past of my desire to get rid of magazines more generally, but perhaps that itself was too far – I was at the bottom of a mental trough when I wrote that. And I’m all for anything which improves the confidence of women and provides for them to have a happier, healthier life. But then there are those who indicate that an outright ban would be a draconian compression of the freedom of expression not only of the publisher but also the reader and even of those women who actively elect to take part. As in many other walks of life, there is probably a middle way which can be furrowed: a way in which the material will remain available for those who wish to participate to seek it out, but will at same token be shielded from those who don’t wish to be exposed to this particular kind of stuff. That would be fairer overall, including to those who choose to read this ratty rubbish, than an outright ban; however, I’d hope that this debate gives the mag producers pause to rethink some of their business practices – I’d already felt for some years that, in the heat of competition from each other and the internet, men’s mags had at times become too extreme and exploitative, sometimes pushing the boundaries a tad too far – witness the row over the supposedly Danny Dyer-spawned comments of 2009, where someone writing in the wideboy actor’s name encouraged a reader to cut his girlfriend’s face, a debacle I remind myself of whenever I’m tempted to risk buying one of these things – and, with one mag pledging to deliver “more non-girl editorial” (their words), hopefully if the people putting this stuff out week-by-week can be encouraged to row back a bit on the smut and noise, and be a bit more journalistic and intelligent in its place, the magazines could actually become more readable and worthwhile as a result; and hey, that way everybody wins! However, in today’s harsh consumer climate, commercial products will always sink to snapping at the lowest heel, so I’m not hopeful that any change emerging from this will be permanent – witness the post-Leveson heel-dragging by media barons keen not to throw away commercially lucrative but morally questionable operations.

Another campaign hoping for change in the way women are treated is the Chime for Change campaign, which aims to promote positive attitudes towards female equality on a global scale. There have been numerous incidents in recent years of women and girls being badly treated, particularly if they’ve had the gall to stand up for themselves, and the presence of highly restrictive and old-world cultures and attitudes in some parts of the world has proved a barrier to women’s fair development. The Chime campaign looks to ensure that women’s access to justice, education and health is fairer and more complete, something I can agree with wholeheartedly – I want the world to be a better place for all the ladies; I know it sometimes sounds like I don’t, but I do genuinely adore women, or at least those who are genuinely beautiful, brave, intelligent and willing to do something good for the world. I’ve become very fond, for instance, of one young lady who has not let her aims and campaigns be held back by the barriers put in her way by those who would do her harm; the marvellous Malala Yousafzai, the teen the Taliban tried to silence with violence, turned 16 since last I barked out one of these things, and spent her birthday in a more noble and world-changing way than any of MTV’s supposedly ‘super sweet’ sixteen-year-olds ever could: she addressed the UN about her ongoing motive to bring education and enlightenment to her fellow young ladies. On my 16th birthday, I ate lasagne. I think we know who wins. But seriously, Malala is exactly the sort of girl we need more of in this day and age – intelligent, brave, wise, willing to stand up for those who fear they have no voice. I will praise this angel to the high hills any chance I get. Malala is sadly not the only lady to be subjected to, or threatened with violence, and the recent barrage of abuse directed over Twitter at ladies who, for instance, campaigned for female representation on British banknotes (a 6 Music-style success: Jane Austen, a brilliant author, will be on the tenner from 2017 or thereabouts.) The sort of comments flung at these ladies are not uncommon on the internet, but are inexcusable: if you’re that mentally retarded to think abuse of women is OK, maybe you’re not stable enough to be on the internet at all, folks. I’m just glad that my current phone, that which can send tweets by SMS but which can’t access Twitter properly, has meant I’ve not been able to wade thoughtlessly into the debate. However, it has been nearly a year since my prior phone, one which could actually use the site, crapped out in the rain, and I do miss the friends I’d made over my time on Twitter, and sharing the warmth and fun that can often also feature on the site, when it’s not being misused for arrogant bullying by the small-minded. At least I do still get to text in a comment when I’ve got something nice to say, usually something about Katie Piper turning up on the telly. I could tip the nod about Gok Wan’s live show, for instance, on which silky Katie essayed summer beauty titbits; the series started and ended between posts here, but presumably lives on via 4oD in some capacity.

Speaking of telly commentary, BBC tennis voicebox John Inverdale landed himself in hot water when he made some rather cack-handed comments about women’s Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli. Invers was presumably attempting to point out that Bartoli broke the recent mould of female tennis stars predominantly being the lissom European blondes of the Kournikova, Sharapova, Hantuchova ilk (a mould that only really passes muster if you gloss over the Williams sisters entirely, but still…) However, the way the Beeb man phrased his praise (“her dad probably said, you’re never going to be a looker…”) got up people’s noses as it suggested that appearance played a part in Marion’s tennis-playing courage. Not so – and in any case, having seen a bit of Wimbo this year myself (I’m a bit more of a sports fan post-London 2012 than I was before), I can confirm that not only is Ms. Bartoli’s appearance perfectly acceptable to my eye, she’s also an excellent player of the tennis. I also had a lot of love for Britain’s core representative in the ladies’ game, the always-endearing Laura Robson, as she continues her march up the rankings – she’s still very young, so has plenty of years ahead to work her way into the top table. And how about Andy Murray? After all these years of ‘will a Brit win at home?’, finally Andy’s time to shine has come. He came close at SW19 last year, and after proving himself a winner with Olympic gold and the US Open under his belt in the intervening year, was finally ready to take the crown in a crisp and fairly balanced game of tennis. My newfound respect for sport has also seen me cheering on Euro 2013 – even though England’s involvement ended in the group stages, I didn’t become too disgruntled and stayed around to monitor the remainder of the tournament. There was, all around, some excellent play, some great moments of tension and emotion – the excellent Toni Duggan keeping England’s flame briefly alive with a stoppage-time score in the second group game, for instance – and no team were really disgraced – there were no real drubbings or total walkovers, unless you count the 3-0 schooling the English representatives were handed in their final game, and the fluid, strong, immersive football played in the final showed that, on the night, the right teams made it through. The womens’ game is also a lot more real and raw than the mens’ – whilst male pro footballers are relatively pampered and often high-rollers who tend to think nothing of throwing money after mansions or flash cars, in the less-matured female side, a lot of the players are at most semi-pro, with many holding down regular day jobs to keep an income coming in outside of matchday. So you get the best of both worlds – while the players may be closer to ‘amateur’ in the sportive sense of the word, their on-pitch performances are highly polished and professional. And in case Inverdale happens to be looking in, I may as well note that, being athletic, healthy, talented ladies, the footballers were also a considerable sight more attractive to my eye than sleazy reality stars, scrawny models and grotty, overpreened gold-diggers will ever be. The women of sport are hugely positive role models for young people, and let’s hope we see more of them on our screens over the coming years. The BBC have committed to continue screening women’s soccer, including the upcoming World Cup qualifiers, and it’ll be interesting to see how the game develops, particularly from an English perspective, as the interest in lady-footie grows over the coming years. Which it will, there’s no reason for it not to. I was a bit annoyed, though, that the timing of one of the two days of employment I’ve had this year meant I had to miss the first England game of Euro 2013 – the narrow win for Spain. But although the gaffer didn’t give us Five Live to listen to, I did quite enjoy what was coming through the speakers – with the likes of Haim, Foals and the Maccabees on the playlist, this was the closest any employer has come yet to matching my own musical playlist! I’ve also been following up on my adoration of 2012’s Paralympic Games by dipping, where time has allowed, into coverage of recent IPC sports events, including the Lyon championships, as ably covered by More4, and at which lovely Hannah Cockroft again proved herself to be one of the greatest sportspeople Britain has ever produced with an absolutely belting win in her wheelchair racing event. I also watched a chunk of the Paralympic Anniversary Games at the Olympic Stadium, though the fact Channel 4 aired this at the same time as BBC Two was carrying the Euro 2013 final meant I had to watch a truncated stump of the IPC event on plus-one. Better than no presence at all, I guess. I could sign up to BT’s new sports channels if I wanted to watch more events, but as I don’t have broadband it’d cost me at least twelve quid a month, and until I’m getting more than a few days’ work a year I probably couldn’t justify it. But I do today have more of a love and respect for sport than I have had earlier in my youth, which is an admirable start, I guess.

I do have a lot of love and respect for women, and would love the opportunity to express this more often, though my core idea for how to do this – walking around the country telling random women they look nice – probably isn’t workable. But undoubtedly there’s some way to make plain to the many women that are wonderful, warm and beautiful people that I care about them. And there are ladies out there who are doing a lot to deserve approval and appreciation. From Katie Piper’s continuing campaign work, to the bravery of Tina Nash and the determination of Louise ‘Human Mannequin’ Wedderburn, from the warmth of The Undateables’ Sarah Scott to the skill and talent of baker Anna Olson (Food Network if you haven’t heard of her. Seen the doughnuts episode? A Canadian blonde in a purple top talking about doughnuts for half an hour. Someone’s been reading my mind to discover what the perfect TV show would be…), there are a huge swathe of talented, intelligent, beautiful ladies making the world a better place. The world of pop has brought forward a huge range of talented, individual, original ladies who haven’t needed the approval of the X Factor panel to break through in their universe – from Gabrielle Aplin to Nina Nesbitt, from Eliza Doolittle to Katy B; and groups such as sistery trio Haim always know how to brighten the day with a cracking tune. Not forgetting, of course, as if I could, the many beautiful, talented, and skilled women of sport that I’ve been exposed to these last twelve months – to name just a few, Toni Duggan, Laura Trott, Steph Houghton, Hannah Cockroft, Zoe Smith, Amy Williams, Ellie Simmonds, Jordan Nobbs, Victoria Pendleton, Casey Stoney, Becky Adlington, Amy Conroy, Eniola Aluko, Marion Bartoli, Stacy Lewis, Sarah Storey, Laura Robson… There are some absolutely first-class ladies plying their trade fabulously well right about now, and I just wish there were some way I could tell them how amazing they really are. (Y’know, like on a blog or something…) I’d love to be the sort of guy who said warm, kind, genuine, pleasant, caring, positive things to ladies to help build their confidence, improve their self-belief and just plain make them feel good. There’s been too much focus on body image, glamour and wealth over recent years, driven by the kind of magazines that supermarkets now want to see being more modest, the supposedly ‘female-friendly’ mags which focus on pushing the latest fads and fashions towards their impressionable readership, and the sort of websites and TV shows that prioritise the cheap and nasty over genuine substance. The one positive from all this media dreck is that when a genuine diamond appears through the mist, it’s fairly quick and easy for me to take her to heart. My recent scouting around for ladies with a story to tell recently brought me to the blog of one lady over in the US who’s definitely worth reading about. Last December, while most among us were stuck in the traditional post-Chrimbo limbo of too many leftover Pringles, a young lady named Michelle (she uses her own name on her own blog, so I’d assume it’s OK to reproduce it here) was diagnosed with – thankfully treatable – breast cancer. She decided to document her experience, her treatment and her life in a blog – http://killerboobies.wordpress.com – in which she writes with honesty, humour, frankness, openness and warmth about her life and situation. The open-hearted, witty and charming style – a rarity in these days of cackly celeb-dreck drowning out the genuinely good voices – certainly caught my eye, and after stumbling across a recent entry I looked over her past posts to make sure I got the full story of her diagnosis and treatment. Michelle has been approaching her condition with admirable pluck and strength, and in addition to documenting her recovery has also been able to voice her view on other subjects that crop under her purview – for instance, having spent some time in Boston in her youth, and undertaken athletic runs prior to and latterly following her diagnosis, the explosions at the Boston marathon touched her personally on several fronts, and she wrote touchingly on the subject in a post uploaded in the wake of the chaos at the finish line. More recently, Michelle documented a road trip with her best buddy Katie in one of the warmest and most fun bits of travel writing I’ve seen in a fair old while. It’s also notable that Michelle has, in her young life, been quite well-travelled – in addition to Boston she’s also lived in California and New York amongst others, generally following where family, educational or employment opportunities have taken her, and so she’s been exposed to many different paces and styles of life. Conversely, I’ve lived in Bexley for over thirty years and there’s many parts of the UK I’ve never yet seen. To be honest there’s probably still parts of Bexley I haven’t seen. But regardless, if you want to listen to the wise, warm, witty words of a beautiful, intelligent lady who will hopefully have a happier and somewhat prolonged life now that much of her treatment is complete, do keep an eye on Michelle’s marvellous blog. It’s a far more engaging and worthwhile read than this bimonthly dirigible. Maybe in time Micjhelle, with her deft writing style and emotive journey to recount, will be snapped up to write at more length, perhaps in a book of some form; I would be willing to read that, should it emerge anything like as engaging as Katie Piper’s ‘Beautiful’. For now, I’ve added a feed of Michelle’s updates to my Old Reader, and I’ll likely be blogrolling it here, presumably with other interesting sites you folks may suggest, as soon as I figure out how – give us a chance, I have yet to illustrate this page with any photography, preferring to struggle on with TXT files! (Any tips to make my WordPress cheerier are gratefully recieved, should they be sent…)

Elsewhere, it seems that some, but sadly not all, of the ladies who’ve been part of the problem over the last few years are starting to settle down. Chantelle Houghton has said that motherhood has changed her outlook on life, and revealed she felt pressured into glamour modelling and having an (in my opinion, at least, needless) cosmetic boob-job following her participation in Big Brother. Maybe if she’d been braver and more confident in the first place, she wouldn’t have felt so desperate at the time – she maybe wouldn’t have gone into that hugely damaging house at all, as the show does seem to attract those who lack the balls to say no. At least Chantelle’s coming back to the winning team: compare this with the worrying Josie Gibson, who I’m sick of writing about here, and whose body image woe has been a near-permanent fixture of the pink-top magazines over recent years. The other irritating Josie of recent media favour, NHS breast surgery patient Josie Cunningham, meanwhile, has expressed a desire to flip-flop on her honkers – having attracted little other than ire and scorn when she revealed she’d undergone bust enhancement on the public ticket, your Josie more recently said she wants the operation reversed, again on the public purse, because she worries her new assets are too big (you picked them, dear), she’s self-concious having recieved frequent abuse from punters on the street (and whilst I don’t normally condone abuse of women, perhaps in this case at least some of the sour words were at least a little justified), and that the negative attention is putting potential employers off hiring her for modelling jobs. Can’t she just shut her gob and get a desk-job somewhere? I guess her name’s forever tainted, though: when discussing her desire for reduction, Josie confided to the reporter that she “doesn’t want to spend her life being known as the girl with massive NHS boobs.” Bit late for that. But maybe I’m too harsh towards her: if people had been nicer to Josie early on, maybe she wouldn’t have had the confidence issues that led her to the poor decision to undergo surgery in the first place. On similar tone, the gutter press recently puked up reports that troubled former actress Amanda Bynes – who I thought was absolutely class back in the day, I used to love The Amanda Show back when I had access to Nickelodeon – has had her recent bust enlargement reversed because they were apparently “uncomfortable”. Hope her surgeon has a watertight cooling-off period. We’re told Bynesy is addicted to the quick confidence boost that cosmetic surgery brings – she’s certainly addicted to something, perhaps not altogether legal, if her recent worrying behaviour is any guide (recent news reports on her behaviour have included the word ‘bong’, and not because they’ve been broadcast on ITN…) Hopefully, someone will get their hand on the tiller soon – her parents have applied for conservatorship, which seems to have worked well enough in turning Britney Spears around – and maybe in time the Amanda, please, that I remember from my younger days will be back in play. Those who do want to reverse poorly-thought-out cosmetic decisions do have a new champion heading their way, as it goes – the sainted Katie Piper, who has a new series slamming itself into the Channel 4 schedule this Autumn. ‘Undo Me’ will see Katie meeting people who want to restore something like natural beauty after undergoing procedures they now regret. It’ll be on yer screens around September and should be well worth a squint. I should also report here Katie’s upset at Alicia Douvall’s recent invoking of the Piper name in discussing her own beauty struggles. When talking about her decision to undergo an Undo Me-style reversal of cosmetic treatments she’d earlier had, Douvall compared her situation to that Katie underwent, the difference being that “my ‘attackers’ wore white coats, and I paid them to do it.” Katie, it’s fair to say, isn’t pleased with the comparison, and so whilst I support Alicia’s decision to try and rebuild herself, I do have to say to her: please don’t offend my beloved Katie. That said, I do have more respect for Douvall now than when, by being pumped full of plastic, she was indirectly encouraging other girls to go by that route.

Another thing that’s undergone a noticeable change in the media in the last few weeks is that, having only very recently shuttered their preexisting Absolute-aping Q Radio service, and snapping up classic-rock behemoth Planet Rock and shunting it onto FM in Birmingham, Bauer Radio have dipped into their pockets again and struck a still-to-be-completed (Ofcom need to give the nod) deal to become the latest owner of what is now Absolute Radio, the service which is one of only three truly national commercial networks operating in the UK. The station was launched as Virgin Radio in 1993, then was bought by its then breakfast host Chris Evans in the mid-90s; STV took it off his hands in the 00s, then offloaded it to current owners Times of India Group in 2008, whereupon the Absolute name came to the station. Despite all these changes of identity and ownership, the core music format – essentially AOR, with a range of classic and modern rock – has remained broadly untampered with. The station is a fairly good fit for Bauer given that it complements rather than competes with their existing provision – one wonders if the recent scuttling of Q was a decision made with one eye on the long-rumoured addition of Absolute to the Bauer package? It’s also a move with precedent – Bauer predecessor Emap’s magazine division, having launched Sky magazine as a rival to fashion/culture bible The Face, scrapped Sky shortly after their acquisition of The Face from Wagadon, as it was apparently rendered needless by the purchase. It’ll be interesting to see what changes, if any, Bauer make to Absolute, which itself has been a forward-thinking entity in radio – it was the first UK station to draw over half its listening from digital platforms, and often when a new device, app or audioplayer becomes available Absolute is among the first broadcasters to fetch up thereon, rapidly developing apps for smart-TV, games consoles and mobile platforms. Absolute’s also used the capacity available in digital to essay a suite of sister operations, now comprising Absolute Classic Rock and five decade-themed stations covering the 60s to the 00s. Absolute Classic Rock is likely to be binned off in any recombination of assets once the deal completes, as it’s a close competitor to Bauer’s recent acquisition Planet Rock, though some ACR content, such as the award-winning, currently-on-hiatus Ronnie Wood show may survive the combination. Certainly, the tie-up has the potential to be as transformative for radio, if not more so than, the recent move by the UK’s largest group, Global Radio, to buy up Real and Smooth. This transaction is currently being held up by regulatory red-tape as competition watchdogs run the rule over areas where the expanded Global would be too strong. Global have tried to pick their way around with as little interruption to their plans as possible, offering to offload a couple of their AM stations in return for being allowed to keep more of the prime jewels in the acquired portfolio, but as yet the Commission are having none of it and have identified seven areas – basically all the areas where the acquired entity operates, bar London and the West Midlands – where Real, Smooth or existing Global assets will have to be sold off to maintain competition at current levels.

Something good Global Radio is doing just lately, and which I should have bigged up a lot more sooner, is Xfm’s recently-introduced Saturday night hip-hop, spoken-word and poetry showcase, The Beatdown, as hosted by poet-cum-rapper Scroobius Pip (he of Dan Le Sac-partnering ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ infamy). If the show’s Saturday midnight slot is not entirely accessible to you (as it has been to me on a couple of occasions), a listen-again function is provided on the Xfm website. Over recent years I’ve been very wary of allowing myself to enjoy hip-hop and rap, linking the genre to the odious nonsense pumped out by the likes of N-Dubz and Drake, and forgetting that there was a whole other side to hip-hop, a world away from the braggy dreck most outlets are keen to pump out, and the Beatdown has helped me reconnect with genuine street poetry. It’s a genuniely beautiful, at times emotional listen, and it’s brought to my ear names I wouldn’t have known otherwise, or who passed me by first time around – Rhode Island rhymer Sage Francis, for instance, or soulful Brummie poet Jodi Ann Bickley. It’s also always good to see something unique and different going out on the increasingly-samey commercial airwaves, and here the BBC have been playing catch-up, airing on one occasion an ‘MC special’ of their usual Sunday-night new-music show, which took a similar format – and some of the same tunes – as the Beatdown. I’ve been trying to listen to more editions of Ally and Jen’s usual show, in order to have my ears opened to new and emerging music at a time I’m not usually rushing around doing other stuff, but the ultra-late finish (2am) and my often-losing battle with tiredness at the end of the typical dizzying week means thus far I’ve missed more than I’ve caught. Huw Stephens on Wednesdays, which would be my prime stomping ground, is right out now I’ve got to get up early on Thursdays to get the bins out, of course. Listening to these new-music outlets (which also include 6Music, which I should really make more time to sit and listen to, should I ever get sufficient time to stop fussing about) will open my eyes to a much wider, broader range of music and voices than that which the glam-dazzled mainstream has been suffocating us with latterly. It’s certainly been an education in the few weeks so far, with the likes of The Uncluded and Wonder Villains likely to appear close to the top of my ‘favourite tunes of 2013’ list, should one be forthcoming, after being introduced to me by these brave post-midnight hosts. I should also give a shout-out to recently-launched rock outlet TeamRock Radio, which you can hear on DAB and online, and which has decided to play, in the bulk of the day at least, a fairly broad spectrum of rocking anthems old and new. And our old pals at Bauer, as it goes, have just pulled the rug on Freeview-broadcast pop-hits service Smash Hits Radio, which always seemed a little pointless wedged in right next to sister station The Hits, in favour of a ‘new beats’ service named KissFresh, and maybe if I want to better my knowledge of rhythmic urban contemporary I ought to give it a listen once in a while. And, quite unlike Q (which lost both its TV and radio operations), Smash Hits TV will continue, should I ever have the urgent need for Bieber.

So yes, perhaps digging a little deeper and taking a broader view of things would help me feel better. Over recent years I’ve been too acquainted with the surface muck simply because that is what was quicker and cheaper to breathe in – lacking the time and money to make any real commitment has left me paddling in the same sort of slush that is set out for the too easily-pleased; perhaps being a stronger and more stubborn person will help me get my claws into the real meat of the situation. It’d give me the confidence to stop barking on about what the likes of Josie Gibson are up to, and instead use this violet platform as something which can effect genuine change or inspire others to do good. Maybe, should I ever find myself in a life situation where time and money were less compressed, I could invest in seeking out more intelligent pastures – perhaps buying more books, watching more films or maybe even getting over my fear of society and start going out to gigs and events, at least among those which happen to be put on this side of the water. That might be a good way to meet the likeminded few who could in time become friends, acquaintances, supporters, confidantes and associates. Waddling up to a girl at Bluewater while she’s ankle-deep in shopping nirvana and I’m in the midst of a job-hunter’s paddy is unlikely to secure me anything more than a direct sneer, but socialising in a public event-space with someone who I already know likes the same bands could potentially result in a better strike-rate. We’d have to go back to hers, though, for relatively obvious reasons. And it’s not just the ladies, and my chances therewith, that would benefit – I could also finally get to do some of that media scribbling I’ve always wanted to do. I did enjoy penning those five meaty pieces I did for Off The Telly back in 2009 – now held in the archive of http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/oldott – and perhaps one day, should I ever have time to plonk myself down and do some proper keyboard-jocking, I could start up a second blog – or migrate this one – with a view to focus on journalistic babblings about those media mores which have particularly grasped my purview – which would chiefly be the telly and music, and possibly books, films and games, of the 80s, 90s and 00s. Bearing in mind it takes upwards of eight weeks to make enough diary-space to knob one of these bloated whines out, don’t hold your head waiting for any advance on that plan anytime soon, but perhaps if I write about what I enjoy, I’d enjoy writing more. I wouldn’t be getting paid for it – which is why it wouldn’t happen often, the hunt for paid work always takes precedence – but it’d be something to do, and maybe something I could show off to society should it ever ask what I want to do with my day. I wouldn’t be alone in this sort of adventure: the oftentimes-excellent Andrew Collins, pundit, writer, reviewer, script guru (recently working on the aforementioned Badults), and sometime 6 Music host, has established a new secondary blog for which he’s expressing his individual passion for a hundred and forty-three popular beat discs, in a feature which, in a past life, would perhaps have been tucked away in a quiet corner of Q; in this digital age, the feature – which Collins is doing simply for the love of it, he’s not earning a fresh cent from this self-published endeavour – lives at http://circlesoflife143.wordpress.com – ooh, another one for me to blogroll, alongside Michelle’s, once I get the opportunity – and sees big Andy use his mix of memories, musical knowledge, opinion and critical eye to detail, in punchy and engaging prose, just what each track has done to earn its prime spot in his personal playlist. It’s a fairly-recently launched endeavour, so it won’t take you all that long to catch up, and if you’re needing a little sorbet of reading matter to cleanse your eye-palate after suffering my coarse brio, I reccommend nothing more highly. This week, at least. Reading more blogs is something I’d like to do, once time allows – the timid little sliver of time I get online in a week currently has to be portioned out very carefully between jobsearch, newsreader clearance, Twitter catch-up and so on, leaving me sadly little time to take on board the views of others – but if you know anyone whose prose is worth a clock, do tip me the wink via the usual addresses and I’ll have a peep when I can. Their blog theme doesn’t have to be purple – I don’t mind colour-clashes on here, provided the body text remains legible – but it does have to be good stuff. A’ight?

I do get myself too tied up in knots sometimes, and perhaps I forget the simple pleasures. Watching recent reruns of Fun House and Knightmare on Challenge, for instance, has reminded me of simpler days, and also left me with the usual ‘wish they still made them like that’ feeling. Actually, it transpires they do still make them like that – a brand-new episode of Knightmare recently arrived on YouTube as part of the ‘Geek Week’ event, and it was like it’d barely been away, even the original Treguard was present and mostly correct (I, and other viewers it seems, dock points for not introducing the contestants with the traditional ‘Enter, stranger!’ due to the format of the one-off’s intro sequence.) But good on them for doing it, and if Challenge can recommission scaled-down versions of Sale of the Century and Winner Takes All (in the 90s), Bullseye (2006) and Blockbusters (2012), what’s stopping them snapping up this no-longer-wanted-by-ITV relic and dragon-breathing new life into it? I’d watch it! But maybe I shouldn’t – maybe I should use the time more wisely to find good friends, new thrills and fresh joy, or at least some kind of reason. I still want to say lovely things about ladies – I don’t want to be one of those anonymous web bullies who this week sadly drew another teenage girl needlessly to her death, I want to be one of those decent folk who offers the helping hand and gives people the confidence to feel good about themselves. We have a lot of power at our fingertips – sometimes more than we notice, often more than we can safely handle – and I want to see that power used more wisely. Perhaps if my words and writings pointed people in the right direction, society would become a fraction of a percent better. I’m not going to be one of the world’s great heroes – I can’t even come up with a workable replacement for Digitiser – but perhaps if I stopped being such a lone wolf and started reaching out a bit more, some of those deep scars and wounds that have been gouged into society by the recent fixation with catty scraps and aggressive bravado could finally start to heal and fade. Individually, one man will struggle to move a mountain, but perhaps if we pop on matching vest jackets and work together, we can make the tip of anything blue.

“I don’t know what that was before, but now it’s on rollerskates.” (Goodbye!)

The decency within

“The dog on the end, that’s not a real dog. That’s a sewn-on dog.” (Hello!)

We’re on the M4! Woo! Yes, after another two-month interruption, I’ve somehow made my way back to you with more of this drone. A lot of news has flowed under the bridge since last I parped off one of these, so this is roughly my longest post ever; however, my life hasn’t changed enough to allow me space to do blogging properly, meaning this thing took me weeks to write, and as the days passed more stories came up which needed to be wedged into here. Eventually, I had to call a cutoff point and attempt to wrench this monstrosity to some sort of conclusion, which is why you won’t see much mention of the recent nasty incident in Woolwich, which happened just as I was putting the last horrid touches to this entry. I wasn’t helped by the fact that there were several cases from early this year that didn’t make it under the bar into my previous piece; so, this stubborn little wedge of webspace includes both those things which have blossomed onto my timeline over the past two months, and also a few ‘deleted scenes’ which could and should by rights have been in ‘Chuckle at the pastiche’, but which missed out largely as a result of time and space constraints, trimmed out when I looked to determine which topics would actually make it into the entry, as I tried to wrestle the scale of that post into something approaching a readable capacity. So now, I’m now returning to spit forth on matters which have been dangling from my brainstem for all or part of 2013 – stretching right from several months back to just in the last few weeks. Prepare for a rock ‘n rollercoaster of emotions as I share with you the very deepest and darkest of my thoughts on life and death, society, culture and the media. Oh, alright, and boobs, too. Happy now? Alright then, enough of the introductory, here come the beeps…

One story that did grab my attention and that of the world’s media back in February but which for some reason didn’t make the cut last time out was the shocking case involving Oscar Pistorius, the man who was hailed as a hero as recently as 2012, when his Paralympic athletic endeavours earned him stardom and acclaim. However, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day this year, Oscar picked up a weapon and turned his own life, and those watching on the rolling news networks worldwide, upside down. Blasting a bathroom door at his Praetoria home with a shotgun, Pistorius pumped his girlfriend, model Reeve Steenkamp, full of lead. On being hauled before the beak, the former sportsman claimed he had heard movement in his home and, taking the commotion to be a burglar, had lashed out in apparent self-defence, not realising the unseen ‘assailant’ apparently cowering in his bog was in fact his other half. The prosecution, concurrently, claims the sportsman and the model had been in a dispute prior to the attack. Whatever the circumstances – and only the ‘blade ruiner’ himself knows what happened that day – this young woman with the world at her feet has been brought to her knees in a most frightening and brutal circumstance, and a lot of the positive image parasport and Olympians had built up in the largely-successful summer of 2012 has now been wasted, at least in the view of those among us who are geared to allow Pistorius’ actions to reflect badly on athletes as a whole. Speaking as someone who, perhaps wrongly, hadn’t really had much of an interest in or respect for sport prior to summer 2012, it’s certainly been a challenge to see someone who was so prominent in the field of track-and-field – who had been hailed as a hero across the board, even by the venerable Radio Times – fall from grace so comprehensively. The case is ongoing, so I won’t say anything committal about the circumstance, though at best, the situation could have been that he was trying to be gallant, to protect his potentially-vulnerable partner from an impending assailant, not realising at the time who the supposed interloper actually was; at worst, he’d decided to exact some kind of nasty revenge against a lady who surely wouldn’t have expected such violent retribution. Pistorius attracted further headlines while out on bail when he was reported to have been on the tiles partying and laughing with friends, though again your man Oscar defended his actions, and he has now pulled back from all his remaining sports commitments this year whilst the legal cloud continues to hang over his shoulder. With the trial still yet to complete, this is one story which is unlikely to be far from the public mind in 2013. Even if it has taken me four months to write about it here. I’m not exactly operating at the speed and scale of, say, Sky News here, I grant you, but still, given the prominent part Pistorius played in promoting people’s perception of parasport last summer, I felt it merited some sort of comment, eventually…

Something else that bubbled under my line of sight earlier this year was the case of Lucy Meadows. If the story passed you by, this was the case of a teacher who, having been born male (Nathan Upton, as was), underwent gender reassignment surgery in order to live as a woman, whilst remaining employed in an educational post. However, local discussion of the case reached the ear of social networks and ultimately the national press. Once the situation made headlines and the journos began to hassle her in pursuit of the story, Ms Meadows tried to take action – complaining to the Press Complaints Commission about her treatment – and, when this failed to stop the tide of hate, ultimately took her own life. Some of the media reaction to the case was pretty polar – Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail savaging of the decision to allow a transgender teacher to have any influence on children (saying “He’s not only in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job”) itself attracted massive criticism, with Ms Meadows’ supporters holding a vigil outside the Mail’s offices following her death. Through this, the row made its way to the pages of MediaGuardian and Private Eye, and through these to me. As the Meadows case spiralled out of control, more and more voices added to the throng of dissent and soon someone who had already spent many years in agony at her identity was being told in no uncertain terms, in black and white, that she was supposedly ‘wrong’ and a bad person. How the press are allowed to behave like this is unclear; it seems Leveson has changed little about the horrible old attitude of the dead-tree press. It’s not just the media, though: we as a nation are evil, forming vile hate-mobs as soon as something even slightly baffling to our senses gets punted out of the woodwork. Having been part of the mass wad of people who set sail to the BBC when 6 Music – a mere radio station, hardly a matter of life and death – was under the button, I know the power that being en masse can wield; however, this mob mentality can also be dangerous, and sometimes deadly. There’s still a lot of fear, anxiety and anger exhibited among the general audience – and particularly among the tabloid-reading, vengeance-seeking lowest-denominator slime that makes up such a huge, unenlightened proportion of society – whenever LGBT matters present themselves. Look at the Commons uproar over the gay marriage bill, for instance, to see how people (well, politicians in this case, but still…) can be polarised. And it becomes really explosive when coupled with the attitude of “won’t somebody think of the children!”, where ‘protection’ of our young’uns overrides even the sanest thought – witness the wrongheaded, demented reaction to CBeebies’ Cerrie Burnell when the one-armed but otherwise utterly charming presenter joined the kids’ channel. So it sadly seems Ms Meadows was doomed from the start – when people heard that “one of those” was in a position of authority over kids, the result was sadly inevitable. Lucy had done nothing wrong – in fact, she wanted to be more herself, or the person she felt she should be, rather than the person she was born as – and all she got for it was a kicking from our supposedly envy-of-the-world press. What a scummy situation.

More recently, I’ve been cheered up by the story of another couple of wonderful ladies striding forward and preparing, again, to work as teachers despite what some of those who chatter may think. BBC Three has recently screened a reversioned edit of last year’s US TLC series about a pair of conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel, sisters who, having been under the media glare since childhood, are now in their 20s and training to work in education. I’d not seen the girls’ prior films – they came before Katie Piper opened my eyes to this sort of ‘body shock’ documentary, a genre which I’d previously dismissed as gawpy – but the Hensel sisters come across as warm, lovely, well-adjusted, intelligent ladies, and seeing them engaging with a class of kids (in the second of the BBC episodes) was a joy. If they’d tried that over here – which they have done, in fact, they did part of their training in Maidenhead of all places, as the film revealed – the Brit press would’ve ripped them to shreds, as per poor Lucy Meadows. But the US class of kids, at least judging from the footage that made it into the finished edit, had no problem with a two-faced teacher, particularly as the sisters proved how adept they were at engaging with and educating their young charges. The Abby and Brittany films gave plenty of airtime to the opinions and feelings of these warm, sweet ladies who have genuine intelligence and warm, bright personalities, and who haven’t let their medical condition (in their case, a largely-united body) stand too much in their way – whilst there have been times their two-in-one situation has proven difficult, as the girls’ two independent brains have had to work together unconnectedly on things that are more normally done by one person working in isolation (from typing to driving), the twins have been able to work together to move past their obstacles and lead a largely normal life, from studying and working to shopping and partying. Hell, these girls have more friends and fun, and a brighter future, than I do! Abby and Brittany, I salute you: you’re living the lives you want and not letting the difficulties of life grind you down. Ladies, you are far better than I, and I wish you nothing but success.

One woman who has been recieving a lot of barbs, perhaps deservedly, is Josie Cunningham. This wannabe glamour model made headlines just as my last post was squeaking through your internet tubes, after the massively negative reaction to her having undergone bust-enhancement surgery on the NHS’ dollar. I’m no fan of cosmetic surgery or of those who have it, as those who’ve read my prior screeds will be aware, but I am aware that surgery is permitted for those who approach their doctor with physical or mental complaints linked to their physical appearance. I’m one of those who believes people should be comfortable with who they are, but if someone is genuinely unhappy and feel they need a correction – whether that be chest enhancement, or something more serious such as a sex change – then there should be avenue open to them to undertake something – be it surgery, counselling, whatever’s necessary – that would make them happy and more peaceful. I have no qualm with that. Josie claimed, in her defence, that following childbirth she had little or no natural breast tissue, and thus would have needed implants to give her a more feminine figure. But Josie’s case once again brought out the sharp teeth of online commentors and media articles. The lady was, rightly or wrongly, subjected to a torrent of vicious and barbaric abuse online, much of it, I should point out, coming from other women. Her op also, as we should now expect, recieved a severe spear-rattling from the press, who have adopted Josie’s case as another example of benefit-scrounging broken Britain, one of their current reader-whipping-up obsessions. I wasn’t sure how to this situation. At first, I was one of those who wanted to call for Josie’s head to roll: I didn’t see why some bird who wanted to be in the dirty papers with her bups out should have been enabled by the public purse, when there’s folk in much more dire need of food and shelter. I thought that maybe we as a nation should hare her to repay the public purse from her future model income (though surely, if she were to become successful, she’d be paying into the exchequer’s coffers through general taxation on her pay.) At first I saw her as a monster, someone who had leeched from the public purse purely to boost her own lifestyle and chances of following in the footsteps of Katie Price and the like. More recently, though, I’ve calmed towards Cunningham: clearly she had issues which she felt only the surgeon’s knife could solve. Would’ve been nice if, instead of funding her assets, Josie’s GP had instead used the funding for a program of counselling to help her over her issues; that would’ve kept her out of the media crossfire and helped with the mental worry she was clearly having. However, the bust enhancement is the way she chose to go, and so now her figure is the target of public scorn, and whilst the lady claims to be grateful for the investment she’s recieved, her decision to thrust the publically-enhanced boobies into the spotlight in what many still consider a grubby, mucky way – glamour modelling – has put some taxpayers’ noses out of joint. So whilst she’s not necessarily a good person, some of the bile and ire she’s recieved online – up to and including death threats, I hear – has not entirely been deserved. Another Josie whose figure is rarely out of the spotlight, incidentally, is Josie Gibson, who has over recent weeks been continuing her quest to bleat on about her figure on the front pages of magazines, as though that’s the only reason this former Big Brother contestant exists now, it would appear. I really want to stop writing about Gibbo, though her constant body-babble makes the Bristolian hard to avoid; I just need to let her get on with doing whatever the hell she wants to do with her body and not let it get under my skin. The ‘cackle mags’ (women’s magazines) probably still pay fairly well, even though they’re leaking readers to the web – to the extent that More! magazine has been shut down as unviable – and presumably Josie G is looking to fund her body rework from this, rather than risking ire by following her namesake to claim off the public purse. For what it’s worth, from what I’ve seen (probably too much, if I’m honest), Gibson has an alright figure, but the issue here is how she feels about herself, and, given her weight issues and surgical wishlist, clearly Josie isn’t happy within herself. Which is in itself a shame. Again, maybe she needs support with her mental issues and self-image before the surgeon’s knife moves in. There’ll be more on body image later on, if you can stand it.

Women have also been making somewhat stinky comments on the web about a pretty lady who’s been on telly a fair bit recently, even though you may not know her actual name. Camilla Arfwedson is the slinky dark-haired lass from the series of commercials run by holiday firm Secret Escapes (“who are you talking to, darling?”) and, should you happen to pump the company name into social media, you’ll find yourself having to wade through a litany of not-entirely-pleasant comments made, mostly, by ladies who happen to have seen the ads and taken a dislike to Camilla’s flirtatious character. As I’m not a ladygirl myself, and indeed won’t be unless I go down the Meadows route, I don’t quite get why females have been again so keen to turn their barbs: perhaps it’s jealousy, perhaps the illusion of cheating contained thematically in the promos rankles with them, perhaps it’s just that they feel the ad-lass is a poor representation of genuine female holidaymakers. Meanwhile, men haven’t been quite as forthright in their disdain, and indeed many have agreed with me that this Camilla is rather pretty. Maybe, although featuring a female lead, the ads are tailored to promote response from masculine viewers – men, particulrly the dimbos at whom telly ads are generally targeted, are likely to respond well to the encroachments of a cheeky, flirty lady, and rush to the site to book up their hols in the hope that they too will be able to run into a saucy babe, not realising until after they’ve checked into their destination that only a very few holiday companies actively offer perky brunettes as part of the standard bed-and-board package. But given the negative response from the lady viewers, one wonders what they’d prefer? Diet Coke ads recently returned to the traditional ‘hunk’ format to celebrate some anniversary or other, and that got me to thinking maybe SE could run an ad with a lad, as eye-candy for the female observers, but then I realised that wouldn’t work: whilst a flirty lady’s hints at naughty liaisons are, perhaps unwisely, beloved by males, if the ad had featured a fella flirting with the viewer then returning back to his partner the female audience would also dislike this, viewing the chap as a cheating slimeball who can’t be trusted. So the firm can’t win! As a man who appreciates female beauty, though, I hope telly doesn’t turn its back on using the genuinely-pretty Camilla where necessary.

Someone whose own use of social media got her into trouble and dumped her right in the thundering eye of a media firestorm was one Paris Brown. The teenager’s appointment to, and subsequent defenestration from, public office gave the media another chance to flex its mob-mentality hate-muscles, and gave the printed press that self-important sense of victory it so craves. The appointment of Ms Brown was an experiment, an attempt to build bridges between the police and young people – an area where there has historically been friction, sometimes boiling over into disorder (witness the 2011 riots, which some young hoodlums claimed, in a report published after the disorder, was an attempt to “give the feds a bloody nose”). So you can see what Kent’s recently-elected police and crime commissioner was trying to do when she appointed Paris to the role of “youth PCC”, even diverting a portion of her own pay to find the young pretender. So far, so seems like a good idea. But when the redtops got their hands on the 17-year-old’s Twitter and Facebook pages, filled with the typical immature teenage posturing and swagger, things got really out of hand. The papers, led by a Mail on Sunday that had the misfortune of being published in a fairly quiet news weekend, went big on chewing out the teen for her supposed sex ‘n drinks ‘n rock ‘n roll lifestyle that her boastful social media pages claimed her to have, and whipped up their moblike readership to call for Brown’s head to roll. The media urged their attendant readers to holler about comments which, whilst not definitive statements of Paris’ beliefs, and not themselves out of context in the wider maelstrom of social media, the press barons had percieved as derogatory. After several days’ scrutiny and amid suggestions the police should look into her doings, the teen, who had been backed by Kent PCC, eventually handed in her notice, and the press again got the scalp they wanted. The police, incidentally, ultimately decided that no charges would be brought against the teen in relation to her comments, many of which were posted years before the girl knew she’d be taking up public office. In the end, the whole mess has been a huge embarrassment for all concerned. So nobody really wins here: Paris’ name is muddied forevermore, Kent PCC looks foolish for hiring her just weeks after the office was set up (a Commons review criticised the ‘maverick decision’), and the public at large have been reduced once again to a mooing mob, doing the bidding of the media jackals who love to create these storms for the benefit of their dying press empires. I would say I hope the young lady at the centre of this is able to rebuild her life and get back into making some kind of positive contribution to society, but thanks to the near-permanence of the black mark she’s recieved she may find herself out of work for a long time, as employers will take one look at her name and immediately question whether they can handle the scrutiny that hiring Ms. Brown would bring their organisation. And believe me, I know all too well about being blacklisted by employers.

It’s not an easy time to be out of work. With the future of the benefits system in doubt – the Government’s shakeup, aimed at reducing the welfare bill (and in the process demonizing the luckless proles who are already on the bottom rung of society), is in the process of being rolled out, teething problems notwithstanding – many people currently trapped in the poverty cycle probably don’t know where the next meal is coming from. If the continued rationalization of the system forces those in difficulty to make the ultimate choice, Cameron and his beancounters could find themselves with blood on their hands. I’m certainly not sure whether I can continue living for much longer; after all, what purpose do I serve? I’m not likely to be able to continue as a retailer; as I’ve said previously, this stinky little area of South London is unlikely to continue as a business district – Bexleyheath is heading towards having more shops closed than open, for instance, and new store openings in the region have dried to a trickle: opportunities for my preexisting career to continue are heading towards nil. But I don’t have the time or funds available to reskill, and my too-narrow CV means firms outside the retail porthole seem unlikely to take me on – I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, qualified and skilled for a job role which in our modern, online environment, when high-street shopping is basically dead, is completely irrelevant. And it doesn’t help that my current, bottom-of-the-chain lifestyle keeps me brushing shoulders with the worst in society: the sort of tiresome slime you become thoroughly sick of if your day is spent in course centres, buses, public libraries and so forth. Having to spend hours of my day trapped in various unsavoury locations with petty criminals, the mentally unwell, slaggy young mums and drink/drug-addled losers is having a very detrimental impact on my wellbeing. And it’s been going on for years: when, in one course centre in Woolwich, some of my fellow work-losers returned from lunch-break openly cackling about the stuff they’d finger-lifted from Peacocks, I became so hotheadedly angry I started wishing internally that I had had access to some kind of device with which to mete out some form of hyperagressive justice, though that may be as I still had a lingering thread of loyalty to my former employer. And I kept that feeling inside, I didn’t say anything out loud because I know the risks of challenging those more assertive than I: if they’re willing to walk out of a shop without paying, surely they’re the kind of people who would shank the loser who dared challenge their self-importance. Maybe I should be around good people more often, but the truth is I’m not good enough myself to justify trading up.

One project that attempted to help put disadvantaged and challenging young people back on the straight and narrow over recent weeks was Channel 4’s Secret Millions. This series – which you can look out on 4oD should you be so minded – featured five Channel 4 presenters teaming up with charities and public-service groups in order to pilot schemes which could, with Big Lottery Fund backing, be rolled out to support the disadvantaged, with the presenter-led pilots being, unknown to the participants, attempts to convince the Fund to cough up for the full scheme. In a lot of the cases, the presenters were saddled with quite challenging, wrong-side-of-the-tracks trainees: George Clarke working with young offenders on a building project, Katie Piper working with recently-released prisoners, Dave Fishwick working with unemployed young people, Gok Wan with youngsters from challenging backgrounds, and Jimmy Doherty working with disabled children, for completeness. As a committed Piper fan, I dutifully put myself through watching each episode, despite Channel 4 holding Katie’s episode back to broadcast as the fourth of the five episodes screened over seven weeks, presumably in fear that airing her episode first would have dented viewing figures for the remainder of the shows. And the viewing, for someone as enfeebled and mentally disturbed as myself, was fairly challenging. I got through the Doherty episode fairly smoothly, so I’ll pass no further comment on it other than to tip the good hat to the largely good-spirited folk therein, and Katie’s show, despite the presence of convicted criminals, was fairly positive, showing what can be achieved if people who would normally be written off are given a chance to prove themselves. This was also the theme of the other editions, but the quite difficult and challenging participants proved at times quite a burden for the viewer to bear, the viewer in this case being me. The initially shiftless and stubborn young folk in Clarke’s house-makeover opener proved to be good people once they got their feet under the builder’s table: one young lady, sick of being treated like a know-nothing bimbo by those who sneered at her in the street, discovered a passion for electrical work, and it was clear that these young folk benefitted greatly from having the mentoring and support which is all too often denied to those who need it most. I know I could’ve done with support and leadership during my struggle for reason. The youngsters marshalled by Dave Fishwick in his pop-up job shop were at times a reflection of the worst in society – bad attitudes, misbehaviour and tiresome selfishness – but again, with Dave’s help, the kids had their eyes opened to the options which would be available to them if they were willing to knuckle down. Again, difficult young people had found a more peaceful path and their journey, whilst challenging at times, was ultimately uplifting, with several of the participants securing employment or training as a result of their taking part in the project. But then, come the show’s fifth outing, I reached my limit.

Perhaps I should have been more accommodating of the fact that they came from emotionally challenging backgrounds, but for some reason the unpredictable young oiks being yoked into training by Gok Wan in the final show really got on my raw nerve, and having had strong enough stomach to sit through the four prior episodes, I finally hit my tipping point when Gok’s young charges began brawling aggressively. Avoiding conflict is essentially a reflex action to me – I’ve lived in a rough, troubled area (the south-east, keep up) long enough to know that when tempers start to fray, I need to make my exit posthaste to avoid getting drawn into a quarrel. It’s self-preservation, essentially – when fists fly and voices soar, my heart rushes, my head pounds and ultimately I take the nearest exit, a flight plan which applies even if the vicious aggressors are separated from me physically by a television screen. So, when Gok’s short-fused employees began roughhousing, I slipped quietly from the room. I then whined about my decisionmaking on Twitter, via a send-only format thanks to my cruddy phone, which was a bit of a dick move in itself – I should have simply left gracefully, waited for myself and/or the situation to calm down, and then returned politely, without making a fuss. Walking out of the room, though, showed a massive lack of respect on my part for Gok and his charges. I showed just as bad and wrong of a lack of faith in them as society in general had done. I should have had faith in their ability to get back on the right route, as the challenging trainees in t’other four episodes had achieved; when I returned to the seating room towards the end of the show I felt I’d cheated myself out of being part of their journey, and that I’d done them a great disservice by walking away and thereby writing them off as a lost cause. Should I be punished for my error of judgement? I considered notionally banning myself from involvement in several things I like, such as 90s music or Italian food, for a week or two, as a punitive sentence for my crime of escape, until I realised that these themes would be quite difficult to dodge in practice (for instance, whilst I could optionally debar myself access to Absolute 90s for any period of time necessary, and skip any track from the decade that my tatty audio device puked up, what would I do to enforce the ban if, say, another radio or TV channel I happened to be watching, or a shop I was in, started randomly playing something from the decade?). In the event, I couldn’t come up with a suitable self-penance within a reasonable timeframe, though I’d be willing to take suggestions for possible taxations from the wider audience. But this incident certainly throws one thing into the light: my old, unreasonable but not entirely unexpected, views need to be challenged. My snooty, fearful opinion of the ill, poor and disadvantaged needs to change. I’ve spent too long around the bottom ladder of society – rubbing shoulders with criminals, the unemployed and the infirm in affordable public spaces (libraries, shopping malls, buses, job centres) and that’s given to me a perhaps unhealthy fear of challenging those more grotesque in their manner than I. Maybe if I stopped seeing people as a threat, a danger, an enemy, and started looking for the decency within, I’d be able to get from one end of a day to the other without having wild heart palps. As a weakling, I’m too quick to shrink when there’s aggression all around. If I don’t straighten up and become more of a strongman, life will always keep its foot on my throat. It is possible to have one’s views challenged and tested – one of the Millions presenters, Katie Piper, said she’d found making the show quite challenging as it required her, as both a taxpayer and herself a victim of violent crime, to put aside her preconcieved opinion of criminals and work with them on something which could in the longer term provide genuine societal good. I often use Katie as a bulwark for my own foresight, and if the delightful Piper can have her views of “wrong ‘uns” challenged and overturned, why cannot I?

My experience with jobseeking and the underclass means I’ve taken the non-executive decision to swerve completely away from another new TV offering. ITV has drawn humour from our economically strained times by setting a new ‘workplace’ sitcom in the one place you end up if you haven’t got a workplace: The Job Lot, starring BBC Three poster-boy Russell Tovey and the often-glittering Sarah Hadland, is set in the world of unemployment. Now, this show is itself quite a turnup for the books: along with the neighbouring Vicious, it’s the first comedy ITV’s done in ages. You may recall how in my previous post I bemoaned Britain’s formerly-most-popular button for their near-absence from comedy in recent years, an evacuation which came about because in the challenging genre of comedy, it’s difficult to generate hits which are both critically acclaimed and also generative of the sizeable audience needed for commercial justification. But now ITV wants to be back in the humour game: perhaps in response to my last post (though I doubt it), ITV soon after its appearance began to run a laughter-themed entry in their ‘Where [x] lives’ series of glossy promos. So, given my prior misgivings about the state of ITV’s funny stuff, surely I should be watching its new output? Sadly, I fear The Job Lot may cut a little too close to my own experience, and could result in nightmares and heartbreak as I reminisce about my own time on the scrapheap, rather than the guffaws the programme-makers would typically expect it to generate. I’ve been here before – my own time as the outsider in a suburban comprehensive led me to take fright when presented with the first episode of The Inbetweeners, and I’ve not watched an episode – or their wildly-successful movie – since. Which, ironically, makes me even more of an outsider. I want ITV’s comedy to be successful, I really do, because it’ll be a step on the road back to getting telly back to how it was when I was growing up. But to get my bum on the seat it’d need to be something I could laugh at from a safe distance, not something that’ll give me the fear by swiping its barbs a little too closely to my own ear. ITV have also run a pensioner prank series, Off Their Rockers, during Sunday teatime since last I was among you: whilst I’ve said in the past about my general disdain for prank shows, this was a more silly/fun take on the format, in the vein of Dom Joly’s Trigger Happy TV, rather than a Beadle/Hammond-style poking in the eye for blameless individuals, and so was more palatable than most. It’s pairing with the revived Catchphrase (yes, really) in the Sunday night slot also gave rise to a rare bit of connectivity – Royston Mayoh, one of the older folks seen rocking the pranks (at one point ending up naked on a spacehopper), was a producer on Catchphrase during the Roy Walker era! As a gamey nut, I should probably give some verdict on the new-school ‘Phrase: while it’d always have had a hard act to live up to in comparison to the Roy Walker era, I’m just glad that they’ve not messed it up too much, and, bar the addition of Stephen Mulhern, an elimination round, and a revamped take on the grand finale, have remained relatively true to the venerable conceit.

One comedy I have been getting into, albeit only about five years after the rest of the civilized world, is Parks & Recreation. The fact I bigged up Total Drama Island in my previous post whilst letting this gem sail by completely unflagged is perhaps indicative of a massive disorder in my priorities. Anyway, the reason it took so long for me to ride the Pawnee train is that, until BBC Four swallowed up the show this year, no UK broadcaster had bothered to avail themselves of P&R. Having, though, watched a goodly chunk of the shows now brought before us (the Beeb having rattled through the first and straight on into the second season, and in double-bills too), I can now say that I’m a Parks & Rec convert, proud to see a wonderful ensemble cast really giving it plenty in what is a thoroughly enjoyable slice of quality, and one of those now rare things – a show I genuinely look forward to seeing; let’s hope the Beeb’s budget-cut on imports doesn’t stop them from shelling out to bring more of this gem to our screens. I should confirm that we did, too, get to the final championship of Total Drama Island, with the Canadian reality cartoon continuing to amuse right through to the last, despite Kix! mucking about with the TDI schedule when the Easter school holidays drove a wall right down the middle of the run. There have been other things worth laughing about on your box since last I reported, with BBC Two entrusting long-standing comedy-show player Kevin Eldon a show of his own at long last; It’s Kevin was that rare beast, a quirky, unique and unhinged sketch show that made sense entirely because it didn’t make sense. Snuck out after ten at night on a Sunday, it really was one of those things you had to be there for – and if these posts were more frequent, maybe I could’ve encouraged you to look it out, rather than raising toast to a shadow. It’s likely to have gone from iPlayer now, but if a rerun or DVD release fetches up, do check it out – it’s a thing of rare quality. If comedy as a genre is dying out on TV, alternative and edgy comedy is particularly hard-hit – in recent years it’s been reduced to BBC Three squeaking out the likes of The Wrong Door and Snuff Box to an audience comprised almost exclusively of me, when back in the oh-so-90s we used to get stuff like Lee and Herring on a Sunday lunchtime. They’d never do that now. And they call this progress? Elsewhere, Comedy Lab’s Anna & Katy got a full Channel 4 series – though its late-Wednesday night screening, clashing with Parks & Rec, and my typical sodding-early start on Thursdays to fling the bins out, means I’ll be trusting reruns and 4oD to bring me the episodes I had to miss. It’s worth checking out at least the first show though, for the best Countdown pastiche since the IT Crowd stuck its tnettenba over the parapet. The oft-dazzling Katy Wix also pitches up as part of the cast of BBC One’s returning sitcom Not Going Out, which is still worth your time despite the obvious need to rebalance the show to cover for the departure of zinger-witted Tim Vine from the lineup. Speaking of boy/girl flatshare sitcoms, New Girl is back on E4 having been given a fair old baptism of fire on its first UK outing, its kicking from off of the main Channel 4 suggesting a lack of faith in the show, but on E4 it’s been allowed to blossom. I did, during my Secret Millions walkout rant, refer back to an incident early in the first season, when I’d similarly ejected myself from the room during New Girl when Nick and Schmidt came to then-unexpectedly harsh blows (their personality clashes now being an established feature of the show). That revelation didn’t go down well at all, and I was roundly and rightly criticised for my move. Incidentally, when an episode of The Mindy Project, which now partners New Girl on E4, turned into a shouty smash-up, I again left the room in a stinker of a mood, but I did one thing better this time – I didn’t talk about my exit publically. My Hilary Duff-obsessed younger brother, meanwhile, has been forcing Lizzie McGuire upon me now that the series is being rerun on PopGirl. He’s a 25-year-old male, he shouldn’t be anywhere near PopGirl for should-be-obvious legal reasons, but because it’s The Duff, I now have to bow the knee to his whim and find some way to cover my eyes and ears at 5pm daily. Could be worse, I guess – that prick’s got the entire feckin’ series on DVD, so he could absolutely waterboard me with Lizzie torture should the mood take him. I tremble at the very thought. Although it is quite fun to see a now grown-up, married-with-a-kid Hilary be rewound back to her breakout role, in a show PopGirl are touting as ‘new’ (to them, at least) when the thing was first on Disney Channel all of twelve ruddy years ago. Now, PopGirl, pick up the TV version of Clueless, I dare you…

Something else which has come out of the ark from back when its stars were in shorter pants, and this time in fact returned to better than its former glory, was ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble’. The Ant & Dec single, which only just about made the top ten when it came out all of nineteen years ago, was performed on the duo’s Saturday Night Takeaway as part of a Big Reunion skit, and subsequently barged past all other current pop acts to storm to number one! The gap between original release and chart-toppance was quite stark: in the years since the duo, the twosome first had lyrics coming out of their pores, we’ve had two changes of government, A&D themselves have gone from being Byker Grove chancers to bonafide national treasures, and the boys’ original record label Telstar has gone belly-up, leading to the ‘rerelease’ downloads being of a version picked up by Edsel, an arm of the Demon Music Group, for inclusion on the firm’s midprice 90s compilations, the flood of downloads in the process giving Edsel/Demon its first chart-topping single. Indeed, the near-two-decade timelapse means many of the younger elements downloading the track would barely have been born, if at all, when the song first came out! I could have a little chuckle, too – I’ve had the legendary …Rhumble on my player for ages, ripped screaming from one of the aforementioned 90s CDs, since long before it became cool again! The return of Saturday Night Takeaway itself, after several years’ rest (albeit not as many as Rhumble, but still…) is also a welcome nod to how things used to be done: as I’ve said in the past, there are too few opportunities for big sparkly family entertainment shows in an era which has been dominated by celebby sing-and-dance formats. It’s also good to see Takeaway survive the scandal which dogged it in the off-season, after it was revealed through investigations that unclear, inaccurate and incomplete information provided to viewers had essentially misled those taking part in the show’s phone-in competitions in the initial run. The revived show was not cowed by the chastisement, however, and brought both familiar features and new takes on the concept to ensure a fairly strong, steady performance. The boys done good, though with the show now swapped out for Britain’s Got Talent it’s clear ITV isn’t yet ready to shut off the vein of Cowell-derived performance contests. On which note, it is almost time, with the show’s return still months away, to prepare my tin hat to dodge the media squabble which will surround the X Factor for a goodly quadrant of this year: the latest tabloid tattle being that, as the flailing and injured XF recoils, wounded, back into its past, Sharon Osbourne is set to be shuffled back into the judging pack, apparently at the expense of the unpalatable Tulisa; much as when Cheryl Cole was being herded across the Atlantic, though, I fear the Contostavlos/Osbourne push-pull is going to be stretched out through the presses in order to build anticipation among fans, and subject non-viewers to the impenetrable wall of media noise we’ve come to expect from big Simon’s broadcast outlets. Such is life.

Outside of X Factor, though, music does now have slightly more outlet for free-to-air broadcast as, in a somewhat surprising move, since last I fluttered one of these out, the Box TV network of music channels have gone free on satellite, firing a stack of channels into the arms of non-subscribers (six-sevenths of the network has also been guide-listed on the Freesat service, though oddly 4Music – possibly because it screens commissioned/acquired C4 programmes in evenings – has yet to join them, though it remains available on Freeview, where I’ve been able to access the channel since its launch in 2008.) Whilst this does give a music-listener such as me a bite more flexibility – it increases the number of options available for filling oddly-shaped gaps and otherwise-empty time – the freeing up of the channels is slightly a double-edged sword as it is, essentially, piling out more of the same – four of the seven are very mainstream services (the pop-skewed 4Music joined by the similarly charty Smash Hits and The Box, and the current and celebby Heat), with a fifth, Kiss, on paper a specialist dance/RnB channel but in practice also able to benefit from the strong correlation between rhythmic music and the charts just lately. The only channels among the group to really divert from the standard script are the rock-focused Kerrang!, which performs a similar role in Box TV to that which the free-since-2006 Scuzz does within the otherwise-mainstream rival lineup of CSC, and oldies/melodic station Magic, which at least tries to pretend music existed before Justin Bieber did. Box TV did have an alternative-skewing option once upon a moon, but sadly that channel didn’t live to see Freesat – Q TV closed last year in favour of the younger and more female Heat (though as Q was, ratings-wise, historically Box’s worst-performing channel, perhaps change was inevitable…) Bauer’s radio station bloc on Freeview, which uses much the same brands and formats as the TV channel group (albeit without the involvement of Channel 4), has also seen change, with Q again sacrificed: the Q Radio service – primarily delivered on Freeview, aside from a painfully brief tenure on DAB in London a few years back – has been stripped from the air in favour of a ‘classic rhythms’ service spun out of Kiss. One thing that Kiss has been asked by its listeners pretty much constantly since opening up the social media channels of communication is whether the popular back-in-the-day feature Kisstory could be spun off into a fulltime station; and now, it has, and at least it provides an option for those of us wanting a break from the continuous diet of current hits. At least Q was replaced with a radio service rather than dead air: Mojo Radio and Clyde 1 (itself a short-term replacement for country station 3C) were both taken off Freeview by Bauer or its predecessors without being replaced at all. Perhaps the axe falling on Q’s radio and TV outlets may suggest the Q brand that is in danger of being phased out altogether: poor sales for the print magazine have recently seen the defenestration of its editor, and his replacement by the woman who launched weekly celebs-to-real-life title Closer, suggesting Q’s paymasters are looking to take the title more mainstream, in a last-ditch attempt to save it before it joins quite a significant number of other mags which have been punted into the long grass over the years (from Neon, Smash Hits and Arena to Select, Max Power and The Face). A parallel could also be drawn with the rise and fall of NME, which in recent years has established and then pulled back from radio and TV spinoffs.

It also seems Bauer is looking to make cuts to its radio operations too: whilst the rival Global group had been ripping up the radio history books over recent years, turning local CHR stations and the Galaxy rhythmic network into adult-contemporary Heart stations and hit-led Capital services, and rolling out almost entirely networked output on the stations (and the AM Gold network) with the loss of myriad local presentation and identity, Bauer’s stations, whilst taking some networked content (mostly In:Demand on weeknights, and less-commercially-valuable overnight output) had largely retained much of their local and regional identity and independence. Now, though, it seems Bauer is moving in a similar direction to its bigger rival, with several Magic AM local presenters binned in favour of regionalised shows – likely a first step towards a single networked Magic service for the North, as recently permitted by Ofcom (whilst not impacting on London’s FM Magic station, which is run separately from the northern oldies stations.) The former Vibe stations in the east and west of England, having taken the Kiss name, now share all content with the London station, and in a move which proved particularly controversial amongst hardy Northeners, the Teesside station TFM was flipped to take all its content from larger Newcastle-aimed sibling Metro Radio (though split local jingles retain the TFM name, in order to bamboozle listeners into believing little has changed.) It does appear that under its current ownership, Bauer is ruling with its business nose rather than its creative heart, and though this may seem sensible it does constitute another nail in the coffin for the creative arts and intelligent innovation, by removing independence and identity in favour of a ‘more of the same’ attitude. Incidentally, local radio for Teesside could make its way back in the form of a local community station: Mark Page, who recently had his Garrison Radio army services ripped off the air by the Government in favour of handing the licences over to the rival BFBS service, has indicated he would be interested in running any future Tees FM licence handed out by Ofcom, though in a sign that digital radio remains unloved, Page indicated, despite the existing presence of a local DAB platform for Teesside, he wouldn’t countenance a digital-only service as the audience was too small to be viable. DAB also isn’t Bauer’s flavour of the month – the new Kisstory service isn’t being made available on DAB, despite capacity being available (with the main Kiss in the process of moving from local-layer platforms to the national Digital One multiplex) as the young listeners Kiss was targeting listen mostly on apps, mobile phones and TV, whilst DAB skews towards the older audience Bauer is trying to shed with the closure of stations such as Q. It’s untrue to say Bauer’s abandoning DAB altogether, mind – they recently bought out national classic rock station Planet Rock, which had been in independent hands since 2008 when its prior owner (GCap, now part of Global) threatened to close it down if it wasn’t sold (they binned Core, theJazz and Capital Life around the same time). And with the new TeamRock also on the way, now testing on the Digital One service ahead of full launch, heavy, hard and classic rock are in sounder and safer hands than they have been for a while. Meanwhile, there will be a change to the rock provision in the West Midlands, with Kerrang! Radio dumped from FM in favour of a relay of London-headquartered classic-rock DAB station Planet Rock, though this is largely a cost-cutting excercise aimed at shedding the Birmingham studio base, with Planet Rock continuing to feed shows from London, and a smaller Kerrang! service, retargeted at younger, spikier rock fans, will remain on air over digital and online platforms, again fed from the capital after cutting ties with the second city. The tightened-up Kerrang! digital station is, though, likely to have a narrower remit than the current broad rock diet offered. But with Q Radio and NME Radio shuttering within weeks of one another, and mere months after both brands shipped out of telly, maybe it’s contemporary and alternative music we should be scared for. After all, 6 Music is only still going because we made a noise about it (and that’s not a royal we, I was genuinely part of the pro-6 movement, and this victory remains my greatest, and some would say sole, achievement).

The huge concentration of Rihanna/Minaj/1D/Bieber/X Factor in heavy rotation on our remaining TV and radio outlets has been making me increasingly sad and desperate for absolution, but perhaps I’ve been becoming too snobby about mainstream music. I need to remember that in the past I’ve listened to and enjoyed a wide range of music, from the very start of my music-listening days – remember, Kylie Minogue and Shanice were among my musical firsts in the days before Supergrass and Sleeper, and a little later Mansun and Idlewild, made me more of an indie boy. I’ve got Britney Spears CDs in my collection – it’s not dirty, she’s roughly three months older than me – and a deep enough dig through my discs and tapes will even unearth the likes of Solid Harmonie and TSD rubbing shoulders with, say, Serafin and Terris. I’ve always had a broad taste in music – when pressed on just this point in a music-store job interview, I explained that this comes from growing up in the era of The Chart Show and Top of the Pops, where a whole mess of distinct genres would be equitably celebrated one alongside the other – and my cheap nasty audio-player even today boasts the likes of Girls Aloud, Justin Timberlake, Pixie Lott and Bridgit Mendler shuttling round alongside, among others, Slipknot, Biffy Clyro, Fall Out Boy, Muse, Kodaline, Reverend and the Makers, Those Dancing Days, Howard Jones, Pulp, Danananaykroyd, Haim, Nicki Minaj, Ash, Candie Payne, Every Avenue, Underworld, Zwan and the Beatles. What I’m saying is: I don’t necessarily want all media to be the Evening Session, I want a variety of voices, and because this is anathema to the big-boy broadcasters’ desire to narrowcast, there won’t really be that opportunity unless I somehow gather the resource to go it alone Mark Page-style (though as a DAB owner, I’d actually consider going digital should the capacity be presented before me.) But maybe I shouldn’t get such an opportunity to put my tastes before the nation – you’ve seen, in the lists herein, the tip of the iceberg as regards the sort of music mix you’d get on any station under my tutelage, and it’s a variety which would put more than a few noses out of joint… Not that musicians themselves are immune from starting aggro. Madonna was the unlikely heart of a major diplomatic incident when she became embroiled in a war of words with Malawi, home country of two of her adopted children. One is given to believe the removal of the president’s sister as head of a Madge-spawned local charity may have had bearing on the spat, mind you. Elsewhere, two rapping-folk have landed themselves in commercial hot water and lost endorsements thanks to the tone of tracks in which they have been involved: Rick Ross was binned by Reebok after suggestions that a Rocko track Rick rapped on condoned rape and assault, whilst Mountain Dew sacked Lil’ Wayne after his collaboration with Future included controversial reference to Emmett Till, a black teen fatally attacked in 1955 after being accused of flirting with a white woman. (It was a less enlightened time, sure, but racism still exists today – south London recently marked the twentieth anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s death, and with two convictions made so far, police still remain confident in catching other members of the gang which brought blood to the streets of Eltham in 1993.) I try to be openminded and diverse, but not everyone shares these ideals, unfortunately.

Racism is, though, just one of the forms of discrimination that, despite much effort over recent years, we’re still some way from sorting out. Sexism, ageism, homophobia and general bullying are also still a threat to the good order of society, and because these foul and discriminatory views are held so trenchantly and unwaveringly by a thankfully smallish proportion of the populace, they will be extensively challenging to eradicate. And these views, if allowed to germinate within a workplace, often create animosity and fear. The BBC is, sadly, a good example of this. A recent report taking the current temperature of the BBC – commissioned alongside, but reporting prior to, a probe into the Beeb’s inner culture during the 60s, 70s and 80s when Jimmy Savile was at the peak of his misused powers – has suggested that within the Beeb today there is a culture of fear and a degree of poor relations, with some staff sitting on problems amid a fear that more senior staff were in untouchable positions of power. It certainly isn’t pleasant to see our national broadcaster wriggle on the vine in this way, but the report isn’t really a surprise when you see some of the confused and headless decision-making the BBC has been guilty of over recent years, from the 6Music mishandling to the more recent Newsnight chaos. Interestingly, the report suggests that, under Greg Dyke’s ‘cut the crap’ era, there was more of a feeling of unity and of a BBC moving in the same direction, which since his Hutton-enforced departure and replacement with Mark Thompson, was replaced with the current confused culture. This does resonate with my personal, outsider’s view, as expressed in a prior blog – possibly so long ago that it was on the old site rather than here – that the BBC under Thommo was fairly poorly run, with the man himself taking little responsibility and letting his underlings take the fall as crisis and chaos struck the BBC during his tenure – from Queengate to rigged competitions to Miriam O’Reilly to Ross/Brand. Certainly, despite all the Beeb’s posturing, and the impressive Olympic coverage that closed his tenure, the Thompson years will not go down as the highpoint in the BBC’s litany once the dust of history is settled. Of course, one era when we thought, or those of us too young to recall were told, that the Beeb was firing on all cylinders has turned out to be a nightmare for the organisation, with the posthumous Savile scandal followed recently by Stuart Hall, a man famed for his florid and colourful delivery which stretched down the years from It’s a Knockout to Five Live football reports, having his career brought to an abrupt halt as the now-elderly broadcaster admitted before court to the sexual abuse of girls and young women, in his case mostly friends of relatives or relatives of friends, over a period of years when a blinder eye was seemingly turned to this kind of behaviour. Indeed, Hall’s peccadilloes only came to light after the spotlight was shone on telly’s dark past by the Savile allegations. Across the water at ITV, meanwhile, several Coronation Street stars have been accused of inappropriate behaviour, though in these cases the allegations are denied (though not without a hefty helping of tabloid mud-slinging on the way.) Meanwhile, away from the sickening world of the sex scandal, sexism and ageism in TV just won’t go away, with minor gestures such as the appointment of Maggie Philbin to replace Dallas Campbell on Bang Goes the Theory not quite doing enough to cover the shocking stats uncovered by a recent report into the representation of older women in the media. For whatever reason, older women are unrepresented in the broadcast media, with women making up just a fraction of those still on telly past 50 and, notably, none of Channel 5’s presenters at all being older women. It does appear that broadcasters are reluctant to give the older populace – and particularly the female contingent thereof – a voice, perhaps in the mistaken belief that everyone on the visual media has to be young and pretty to keep the commercially-valuable youthy audience interested. The O’Reilly case is an interesting one as Miriam was one of the few women to challenge the criterion, only to make herself an enemy of the BBC, putting noses out of joint simply by winning her case and showing up the flawed, self-serving decision-making process within our struggling national broadcaster. It’s not just older women who suffer – witness the discussion over the limited contribution of female comics to panel shows such as Mock the Week – which favours shoutier male performers due to its macho bearpit of a format – and QI, where, in a show with Sandi Toksvig and Ronni Ancona on the panel, it was revealed that scientific research suggested women react to comedy differently to men; or, in the manner Stephen Fry put it, in an all-woman QI the panel taking part would laugh more, but the audience would laugh less. And that wasn’t some lazy sexism, but proper academic research! Other forms of discrimination still flare their ugly heads at us from time to time too, even if they’re instigated for solid reason: two blind friends who’d planned to go on holiday (to Malaga, if I recall rightly) were kicked off their plane when they asked for assistance in attaching their lifejckets should they be needed: it transpired that, for health and safety reasons, those who could not put on the lifesavers unaided were barred from flight with that particular company. This situation put me in a slightly difficult position: this was a nasty and discriminatory policy, but it was held for reasons of safety and security rather than out of hatred, so I don’t really know where to draw the line on this one. I’m upset the sightless were denied their opportunity to go, um, sight-seeing (OK, so I don’t know what blind people call their holidays, sue me) but there was surely no malice intended by the airline – at worst, a misunderstanding of the needs of their customers. Having worked in customer-facing roles before (when firms have been minded to hire me, at least), I’ve always looked to treat my clientele fairly and equitably, whilst making any adjustments to my usual patter to adapt to the individual’s circumstances, and surely some kind of compromise or alternative access could have been provided here with a shade more aforethought.

The news has not been kind these last few months. It’s been a pretty cold and dull spring, following on from the wettest 2012 on record, and as if to add to the gloom, the headlines we’ve been waking up to haven’t been particularly pleasant. Over the months I’ve been stringing this dross together, there have been more than too many deaths, injuries and incidents of destruction to warrant complete and total inclusion, but I’ll try and put forward a view, or at least a respectful glance, toward some of those which have been most troubling to our spirit. One of the biggest stories of recent times, one which shows that nothing we do is ever truly safe, was the horrifying scene at the Boston Marathon, where explosions close to the finish line caused death and injury on a quite simply staggering scale. Participants and spectators who had expected a happy, cheerful, positive day of racing entertainment and massed public support suddenly found the situation ripped up in a most violent fashion. The blasts were frankly sickening and one can only hope that those who went through that terrible time are able to build up the strength and resilience needed to survive not just the immediate danger to their health but also the long-term impact: many hundreds of people will need long-term rehabilitation and care to cope with the physical and, in a lot more cases, mental anguish they’ve suffered at the hands of these terrorists. Many of those who took part in the horrendous race, even those who did not suffer significant physical harm, will no doubt have the sort of serious post-traumatic stress disorder often associated with those in the armed services who return to society having witnessed the brutal horror of a war zone. Certainly, a lot of people who were affected by the hideous scenes in Boston will have had their lives changed and altered, and they’ll never be the same people again. Those who lost their limbs will have to make physical adjustments to their lives which will impact on what they do forever more; those who lost their lives will leave behind a hole in society that no amount of soothing verbs will ever fully fill. Thankfully, it seems at least some of those caught up in the bloodshed have shown strength and resilience: Russell Howard’s Good News recently playing to UK viewers clips from a US interview with one young lady who remains determined to rebuild her life and return to her beloved dancing despite the loss of a leg in the Boston horror. Her strength shows the sort of positive attitude needed; and after everything I’ve seen in the past few years – from Katie Piper to the Paralympics – it should be clear to me that those who are injured or disadvantaged, even as the result of a hateful act that need never have been bestowed on innocent civilians, can have the power to bounce back and build something beautiful with their lives. And the loss of a leg shouldn’t mean your dreams of success die: I’ve written here before about Martine Wright’s journey from July 7 bombing survivor to Paralympic sitting athlete, and the oft-praised-on-these-pages Amy Conroy hasn’t let losing a leg to cancer hold her back from sporting success. Hell, even Heather Mills – police motorcycle crash, if you’re keeping notes – took part in Dancing With the Stars, so the dancefloor may well still yet welcome back the beautiful young lass highlighted by our Russ! In any case, the perpetrators of the Boston chaos were eventually tracked down, a pair of brothers who had moved to the US from perpetual warzone Chechnya around a decade ago: it seems the older of the two – ultimately shot dead in a police shootout while he and his sibling were evading capture – had over time become radicalised and anti-American, infuriated at the imbalance between sloppy Western standards and his increasingly hardline and closed-minded views. The fact these perpetrators were official residents in the States was what spooked US observers the most – rather than a ‘big bad’ in the mountains as with Saddam and Osama, this pair were, although of foreign birth, essentially the enemy within. The surviving brother ended up under arrest whilst in hospital having been found, injured, hiding in a householder’s parked-up-in-the-yard speedboat. I’d assume the boat-owner will at some point be compensated for the damage to his watercraft caused in the hiding-out and subsequent arrest process, but I’m not personally party to any such arrangements.

The Boston hell did, though, briefly throw question marks over the less-than-a-week-later London Marathon, the annual festival of running which occupies our grand capital’s streets for one Sunday a year. In the wake of Boston, our organisers insisted London’s 26-mile thing would still go ahead, albeit under intense security – after all, cancelling it would essentially show the terrorists that they had won – but it was quite difficult to gague what sort of tone would be appropriate for the usually-happy London event. I’d like to have seen how BBC One’s coverage handled the introduction to the race, given the delicate and unusual situation the hosts would have found themselves in, but as the broadcast started at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and I suffer from severe tiredness – one reason why this one’s taken four months to fling together – I was fated never to see the Beeb walking on eggshells. By the time I did make it to the front of the telly, I wasn’t sure how to feel when I realised that the Corp were covering the marathon in, well, pretty much the same way as they’d cover it any other year, with only occasional reference to events in Boston, usually when the narrators were struggling to fill as the skycam looped round Tower Bridge the umpteenth time. Was the Beeb’s tonal decision apt? Well, probably – it showed that the London event was taking place as planned despite, rather than because of, what had happened in the US. And, of course, running the event meant many people could support charities and causes close to their heart, including the Katie Piper Foundation – though I did wonder, given what happened in Boston, whether it would be safe for Katie herself to be among those present to cheer her supporters on, as she had planned to be: I was reminded of the time that, at the height of the 2011 riots, I’d frantically called on Twitter users to ensure Katie was given safe passage out of the capital and away from the massed firebombing, only to discover that Ms. Piper was, in fact, in America that week. Her views on returning shortly afterward to the steaming pile of rubble that used to be London still remain unknown two years on, however. Still, the riots and resulting recovery show London is adept at getting back on its feet, and if London can survive its own violent bombing attacks – July 2005, if you’ll recall – then it can rebuild the good image of the positives done by athletics after Boston’s anarchic imbeciles damaged it. It was, from what I saw, a largely positive atmosphere (I don’t go to the London Marathon myself – I tend to avoid large gatherings, purely to avoid the sort of potential for chaos that came true in Boston, and I’m not athletic myself – I struggle with walking across a supermarket!) The event wasn’t as sombre or scaled-back as I’d imagined it would have been, and participants focused on doing the best for their own causes or reasons rather than dwelling on what had happened in the prior meet. Runners this year also included a group taking to the streets in honour of Claire Squires, the young lady who passed away whilst participating in last year’s London marathon, and I’m sure they did her proud where possible. Whilst in the athletic universe I should also give the nod to another Claire who made headlines at the marathon last year, and has been mentioned here before: Claire Lomas, the lass who, having earlier been paralysed in a horseriding accident, completed last year’s Marathon in a specially-adapted suit; this year, her challenge, successfully completed since last I wrote to you, was a 400-mile hand-cycle from Nottingham to London. I continue to show affection and support for Ms. Lomas, as she again shows the strength and resilience needed in troubled times, a strength I admire in others but which I myself lack.

Boston wasn’t the only place in the world to see tragedy in the last few months, mind. In China, a massive earthquake claimed scores of lives and left many people homeless and in dire need. Notably, one news reporter interrupted preparations for her wedding that day to file a report on the chaos whilst in her wedding dress, a dedication to duty which gathered plaudits online. Meanwhile, our cheap, nasty Western desire to strip costs out of our wardrobe and dress for too little money claimed hundreds – nay, over a thousand – lives, when a cheaply-erected clothing factory in Dhaka, pumping out cheap tat for the likes of Primark and Bonmarche, collapsed. Staff had been advised to evacuate the day before by safety advisors when cracks were found in the structure, but ignorant factory bosses, perhaps under the whip of the demanding retailer contracts, pressed their workers to roll on, a decision which proved fatal when the premises crashed down. Some survived – one brave woman being retrieved from the rubble a whole seventeen days after the collapse – but many lives were lost as a result of our desire here in the West to be as cheap and nasty as we can. Just days after the Dhaka collapse, incidentally, a fire at another clothing factory claimed further lives. Certainly I’d think twice before shopping at Primark again after the disaster, and I’d advise you to do the same – if we move away from cheap and nasty clothing, maybe the manufacturers and retailers will one day get the message. However, perhaps to head off the threat of any boycott of their horrid tat, it does seem retailers are keen to show they are cleaning up their act: a raft of firms including the hated Primark alongside H&M, New Look, Inditex (Zara’s owner) and Tesco have signed an accord pushing for better working standards and environments in the garment industry of Bangladesh; however, whilst Europe is on board, it seems wary US firms including Gap and WalMart, apparently fearful of potential litigation, have swerved the deal and are refusing to sign up. So perhaps it’s these firms who you should vote against with your pockets, as it were. Another industrial incident, and one which did impact directly on the US, and while the wounds from Boston were still fresh, was the fertiliser plant blast in the awkwardly-named Texan town of West. This fatal disaster, which reduced homes and facilities in the vicinity, including a playground, to sooty rubble, was reminiscent to those of us in the UK of the Buncefield plant blast which blew a hole in Hemel Hempstead in 2005. It did take a fair old while to bring anyone to book over the Buncefield incident, with various corporate bodies responsible for the premises desperately trying to wiggle themselves off the legal hook in the subsequent years, and one can only hope that the people of West will be able to piece their lives back together and rebuild their community spirit as those in Hemel seem to have been able to once the soot had settled.

It seems every time I do one of these, the roads claim more and more victims, as though trying to spite me for my frequent, nay constant, anti-motoring rhetoric. I’m desperately keen to get cars off the roads to cut the number of deaths and injuries caused by those behind, or in some cases those in front of, the wheel, and yet practically every month (or two) that I burp one of these fatboys out, I have to add more names and locations to my seemingly-unendable listing of vehicular misery. Maybe I should stop writing about, or even reading about, this sort of chaos: it adds nothing but pain to my life. One of the most devastating road incidents of recent times came when a minibus carrying a hen party off to their celebratory weekend was in collision with a Farmfoods lorry on the M62. One of the intended bridesmaids, an 18-year-old trainee nurse by the name of Bethany, lost her life, and many of the others, including the would-be bride, picked up injuries, ones which could lead to serious life changes and could well feasibly derail the wedding plan altogether. It’s not uncommon for people to face unexpected challenges on their route to the altar, but this seems like a bigger obstacle than one would normally have to tolerate. One wonders if the survivors would, should the wedding go ahead at, presumably, a later-than-planned date, want to hold a hen party of similar scale to the one the bus sadly didn’t reach, in order to show, London Marathon-style, that their plans will not be cowed by disorder; or whether they’d prefer to stay off the road and raise a quiet glass at home in honour of their fallen comrade. The ladies have, in the interim, revealed plans to band together to take part in events to raise money for the air-ambulance service that attended the incident and aided the injured. But someone who wanted to help others – Bethany was a trainee nurse, remember – will sadly never get the opportunity to put her talents into practise. So whatever the future outcome, the shadow cannot be uncast. And even for those not on the road in question that day, it was a gruelling sight to behold in the news reportage: the ladies’ vehicle on its side beside the road, the girls’ shattered belongings scattered across the carriageway like so much McDonalds trash. It’s also put me off shopping at Farmfoods – given the supermarket’s involvement in this vile incident, a boycott of their sub-Iceland schtick, an offering which I have shamefully relied upon for nosh round my local area on occasion, seems the only right and proper option to register my disgust at the events far to the north of here. This was the biggest disaster to hit the M62 alone since last I spoke, but sadly it was not the sole one: several other crashes took hold of various stretches of that woeful tarmac, including one which killed an elderly woman. What can be done to remove the blight of the M62 from our lives – do I have to turn up at the mouth of the route with a sledgehammer and shovel and personally remove the devil’s tarmac from the skin of our country? There seems little I can do as an individual to turn back the tide of disaster. Wakefield, though, wasn’t the only scene of hen-party vehicle trauma. Across the pond in Alicia Silverstone’s native San Francisco, worse was to come within weeks when a limo carrying a hen party group suddenly combusted into flames on the public highway. Here, five women in the group were killed, with many of the others injured in this hideous scene. Again here, a lot of spirit-rebuilding and rehabilitation will be needed for those who suffered the inferno. Whilst some of the less-well-controlled stag and hen events undertaken in the past have been known to descend into disaster and even death as a result of the often drunken misadventure of the participants, these road deaths put a hideous new spin on the circumstances. If I ever browbeat some poor sap into marrying me, I’d have to think long and hard before allowing her to trot out on the tiles for her last night of freedom before being shackled to my spine – there’s a strong chance I may never see her again, either because she’s run off with the waiter or, more seriously, because her next stop after the party bus is the morgue rather than the altar. Let’s just hope the relationships and communities being tested by events such as these are strong and flexible enough to withstand the difficulties being thrown their way by society’s barbed roulette wheel.

Elsewhere on the roads, another jarring and upsetting day came when five members of one family, including a very young child, were killed when their vehicle was involved in a crash with a lorry on the A18, and several pedestrians were struck by vehicles during the months, including a 21-year-old man in Whitby, a toddler in the Handsworth area of Birmingham and a 14-year-old girl in Barrow-in-Furness; the girl was hit by a minibus carrying a driver and seven teenagers, and though none of the teens on the bus were hurt in the incident, they may well be anguished mentally by what they saw happening, and will probably need counselling to get over the situation emotionally. This teenager’s name, as it goes, was Bethany, and one of the ladies killed in the A18 trauma also went by that: with these and the similarly-named young lady lost to the hen party horror, one has to wonder if there’s some kind of curse or campaign going on, a Final Destination-style scheme to rid the world of Bethanys one vehicle at a time. I’d certainly think twice about giving my daughter that name given the inherent danger amid all that has gone on, though if you’re regular here you should by now know what I’d actually name any first daughter I have, should I ever be saddled with one. Or maybe it’d be better if I started believing coincidence exists. Elsewhere, a female paramedic – like M62 trainee Bethany, someone who was put on this Earth to help others – and an elderly patient were killed when an ambulance crashed into a tree in the New Forest, two young women were killed and three young men injured in a Wiltshire A-road smash, a young couple lost their lives in a Teesside motorbike crash, two ladies were killed in a single-car Scottish Highlands incident, and the fact that several crashes, some fatal, happened within 48 hours of each other in Northern Ireland itself made headlines. Upsettingly, even doing something for good causes can end horribly: a man kicking a football from the US to Brazil in a soccer-themed charity stunt was run down and killed by a car just days into his trek. Maybe, though, those good causes the victim was so keen to support will be able to benefit from the sympathies of those touched by the story, much as the Samaritans recieved donations totalling into the millions from well-wishers following Claire Squires’ London Marathon death while running for the charity. Even the famous aren’t safe – George Michael, the singer, was among those injured in a multi-vehicle smash on the M1. Still in the music world, rock fans have been mourning the passing of Deftones’ Chi Cheng, four years after he sustained injuries in a road crash; in similar circumstances, an Irish man has passed away ten months after a Torquay pile-up which claimed the life of his sixteen-month-old son, and even more upsettingly that of his partner’s unborn baby. For this now-rent-asunder family it has been little more than grief upon grief for the best part of a year. Another road crash involving a pregnant lady took place in Manchester recently, when a taxi collision led to her baby being brought into the world prematurely by way of an emergency Caesarian. One wonders if, in both the long and the short term, mother and baby are able to move past this and build that all-important bond – if the emotional pain is too deep, however, it could leave lasting mental scars that the kid would never really have chance to recover from.

Being on your bike isn’t a safe way to travel, either: the cycling death which hurt me the most, quite early in the gestation period for this post, was the death of Dr Katharine Giles. As someone who is not in scientific circles myself, I shamefully hadn’t heard of her work until her untimely and unneccessary death – when her bike was in collision with a tipper truck – became headline news earlier in the year. We need to encourage women to be intelligent and use their talent, rather than just assuming they have to be glamour models or pop/TV stars, so the passing of a lady who was clearly passionate about her work and about using her skills and intelligence to make the planet a better place is nothing short of a travesty. Dr Giles had, ironically, taken on more duties following the accidental death of a colleague earlier still in the year, and let’s hope someone comes along who is keen and willing to take up the mantle left by Katharine and keep up her projects such that her lifetime’s efforts and discoveries are not to have been in vain. Also knocked from her bicycle in recent weeks (well, months now) was Olympic rider Jo Rowsell, in what she revealed was her first crash in nine years. Thankfully, the delightful Jo was not badly hurt and claimed that her two-wheeled vehicle took the brunt of the battering; as a professional cyclist she’ll more than likely have a hotline to Halfords and know exactly what to bark at the staff regarding frame remoulding and wheel reorientation. But as Dr Giles shows, it could have been so much worse; and having only recently found a liking for those on bikes thanks to the Olympic velodrome’s patrons, I’m not yet ready to kiss goodbye to an Olympian. Completing the cycle, as it were, Sir Chris Hoy has decided to hang up his pro-riding helmet rather than push on towards Glasgow 2014, though that should now leave him more time to cycle for pleasure – just keep an eye out for passing traffic, Sir Chris – and another knight of the bikes, Sir Bradley Wiggins, just recently had to pull out of the Giro D’Italia (which until last week I’d assumed was an Italian job centre) through chest-based ill-health. Get well soon, Wiggo. Meanwhile, one cyclist found himself knocked off the road by a driver who, it’s thought, later commented about the incident on Twitter: the victim noting that a young blonde woman was behind the wheel (OK, so I don’t like blondes anymore, then) and a short while later a tweet appearing on a female user’s timeline which revealed the writer had clattered a cyclist, and ranted that as ‘they don’t pay road tax’ (it doesn’t exist, that’s why) motorists had right of way. The incidents and any potential link between are currently being probed by officers of the police, and the woman supposedly involved – a trainee solicitor, which doesn’t bode well – has wiped her Twitter page after being bombarded with commentary. Let’s hope that irony reigns and the law catches her up in short order. Out on the water there’s been mourning aplenty: a Guernseywoman (if that is the word) was slain on a houseboat out in Indian Kashmir (a Dutch national later reportedly confessing to the stabbing); a mother and daughter died, apparently as the result of fumes, on an Easter-period boating holiday; and a Sky TV executive and his eight-year-old daughter were killed, and other members of his family injured, when they were thrown from, then hit by, their boat off Padstow. A British man drowned whilst swimming off the Italian coast, and a five-year-old from Forest Hill drowned in a recently-opened hotel pool in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt. Bringing the danger of water a little too close to home, a man and woman from my hole in the woods also died in a hotel’s pool, this time in Essex, having apparently taken the trip away as some kind of birthday celebration, which, as many celebrative events are prone to do, went sour in the worst way.

Inland, there have been deaths and injuries too: perhaps the most shocking case being that of a pregnant young mum, who had apparently suffered mental health problems since her own childhood, being found dead at a car park in Lowestoft; her death led police to a house where three young children were found deceased. There were also reports indicating the childrens’ father had suffered a stab injury of some form. The situation does make one wonder what kind of support, if any, is available to young people struggling with parenthood, particularly on top of other concerns? Maybe this is the real face of council cuts: a generation abandoned to fend for themselves, with those unable to survive making the ultimate choice. Bexleyheath’s Broadway Centre car park was also the scene of a death, when an elderly woman plummeted to the pavement below: though it is now long since reopened to the public use, it’ll be a long while before I am strong enough to use the mall’s Norwich Place exit again. Meanwhile, a hostage situation ended in tragedy when one of those held died along with the interloper in a hail of police bullets: the intruder had burst into a house containing twin sisters, another woman and a man; the attacker kept the twins and the chap hostage whilst sending the other lady out to draw her money from a cashpoint for him, under threat of violence: while away from the house, she raised the alarm and police arrived at the premises to find the intruder with one of the twins in a headlock. In the subsequent standoff, both the criminal – who was already known to police – and the woman he’d been holding were fatally hit by gunshots. Clearly the twins will have shared a special bond – even when not conjoined in the Abby and Brittany format, twins have been known to exhibit a particularly tight connection – and the loss of her sister, particularly in such brutal and violent circumstances is likely to hit the surviving twin hard. In Scotland, meanwhile, a mother and her adult daughter were found with serious injuries at a Greenock hospital: it seems they will take the truth about what happened to their graves, as the older lady died soon after arrival at hospital and the younger, who police had been waiting to speak to, lost her fight for life a few days later. Officers have said they’re not looking for anyone else in connection with the case. A 24-year-old woman was found with serious injuries at a hostel in Liverpool’s Anfield area, and the name Boston again came to mean death just days after the US marathon bombing when the Lincolnshire town by that name saw an incident following which a 26-year-old woman was pronounced dead; a man of the same age also found injured at the scene subsequently died in hospital; police have launched a murder case. And in Romford, acid violence – something I’m particularly keen to stamp out, for reasons which should by now be obvious – presented itself again with the violent assault of a young mother named Tara (her surname has been mentioned in some reportage of the case, though the victim herself asked the BBC not to use it, and though I’m not yet a part of the Beeb I’ll honour that pledge too). Tara was brutally and needlessly assaulted on her doorstep by a vicious young white thug who had earlier called at the house in search of a ‘Michelle’ (it’s unclear at this stage if this is a mistaken identity situation or not). Viciously burned in a violent and needless attack, Tara faces a period of recovery I’m sadly all too familiar with from following prior cases; it’s unclear whether Tara had been aware of these cases, mind, but they do at least prove support is there if it needs to be called upon. Tara’s chihuahua was also splashed with the liquid during the incident, though did not suffer any serious injury, though Tara’s real worry was that, as the attacker had flung the acid in recklessly with little thought, it could well have been one of her children burned by the fluid. Whilst I support the work of those who strive to make the world better for burns survivors (see http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk for more on the aid available), and, particularly post-Piper, I don’t shy away from seeing disfigured faces on t’telly or in my news, it’s always gruelling to see someone needlessly burned permanently, particularly when there seems to be no real reason or motive for the attack. Tara’s at the beginning of her road to recovery and can take comfort from the fact that those around her, and those touched by her tale, will rally round to support her, but in the short term at least, she will have pain, fears and concerns, and we all need to be there for her if we can. While I’m on the subject, I should report the latest twist in the previously-discussed-here (and, in Dagenham, not all that far from Romford) case of Naomi Oni: when last I despatched on the case, the assailant was still being traced; since then, an arrest has been made, with at least one report’s lead-in intimating that the person held was a ‘classmate’ of Ms. Oni’s (though I am unable to corroborate this). Hopefully, though, in time we can stop the tide of people being assailed on their doorstep.

Your home isn’t necessarily a safe place to be, mind. Just as I came to wrench this article into some kind of shape, a terraced house in Newark was levelled by an explosion (gas has been hinted as the culprit, though full explanations are still being sought), with neighbouring houses badly damaged (and to be pulled down), at least two people killed and several others injured, and huge upheaval to those in the affected area. As I’ve said in relation to past blasts, it’s never nice to see the family premises ripped to pieces, leaving treasured memories in rubble and necessitating a hunt for fresh shelter, and such destruction is undoubtedly even worse to cope with if your loved ones are killed or injured in the process. We’ve seen a conviction in connection with a similar prior blast, incidentally: one foul man has been hauled up before the beak in connection with the Shaw, Greater Manchester explosion in which a young boy lost his life: it ultimately transpired that the blast-causer had let off the gas following a bitter dispute with his other half. House fires have also been in the news because of current and prior cases: since my last post, a blaze in Birmingham’s Springfield left a woman dead, a teenage girl with 70% burns and four other people at the scene also injured; again, a long and painful struggle of recovery awaits those who survive the horror. Meanwhile, a woman who earlier killed five people including three children in a neighbouring apartment after setting a pushchair alight in a communal hallway following a row has been convicted over the fatal blaze; it’s an indictment of the state of society today that a bitter animosity between two neighbours over something as petty as a pram could spill over into a bitter and vile plan for fiery revenge. Make no mistake, the woman who set this blaze is a monster undeserving of your support and respect. This conviction came on the heels of the conclusion of the long-running case involving Mick and Mairead Philpott. They and an accomplice (Paul Mosley, for completeness) have been convicted of starting the blaze in which the Philpotts’ children were killed. It was all part of a plot to frame another of filthy Mick’s babymamas – with whom the Philpotts had earlier lived, in an unconventional extended-family set-up, the combined clan crammed several-to-a-room into a Derby council house; after the breakdown of relations, Philpott came up with the fire plot, believing that if he raced into a burning building to rescue his kids from their rooms he would be hailed a hero. However, the vile man had failed to account for the ferocity of the flames and was unable to run his plan into action: after the kids lost their lives, he attempted to spin the media circus which followed to his advantage by playing the ‘bereaved father’ card, speaking out to the press pack about the devastation the loss of his offspring had supposedly caused. Holes began to appear in his defence, though, and the discovery of accelerant – petrol, in this case – in the house sink and on Philpott’s clothing led police to consider parental involvement in the brutal deaths. Eventually, after the whole sordid structure of Philpott family life was laid bare in court, the jury decided in favour of putting the plotters behind bars, where they can’t hurt their own family, or anyone else’s, anymore. Following the conclusion of the legal case, the family’s burnt-out council house, which has sat empty and charred whilst the legal process has been ongoing, is to be pulled down, with local residents canvassed on what will occupy the space thereafter – replacement housing is one option on the cards, though a memorial garden to the kids put to death by their parents has also been floated as a possibility. During the lengthy roll-out of the Philpott case, I’d had my misgivings about the situation – the Philpotts had earlier appeared on that noted cultural talking-shop for the intellectual glitterati, the Jeremy Kyle Show, and the expansive brood had also been the subject of an ITV point-and-cackle documentary looking, through the Phipott clan, more widely at the issue of expansive families of council-housed scum, whilst not at the time making any legally-actionable allegations against the man himself. So I’d had an inkling that perhaps these weren’t the sort of decent, honest people that I’m so desperate to see in the world, but, knowing that due legal process had to be followed, I held my tongue, for the most part, until judgement had been handed down. But, whilst I’d dearly love to call for Mucky Mick to be ground down into some kind of viscous soup by his fellow inmates, I feel I should hold back from the deeper insult, for fear of being seen as reactionary and rightwing: the blue press, in their reportage of the Philpott situation, used the case as another hammer with which to tar the jobless and council-dependent, slamming the ‘workshy’ culture that allowed the likes of Philpott to build up uncontrollable gangs of feral youth on the public ticket, and calling on their Tory government to do more to take a blunt instrument to those who dare claim welfare. Certainly, whenever someone on state handouts does something as notably vile as Philpott did, it becomes increasingly impossible to justify my own existence, kept alive as I am largely on the public purse. Look at the case of the grabby mum who claimed her kids were disabled, only for said young’uns to procure stage and screen appearances, blowing her scam wide open. I’ve said several times before on here how my continued life is a stain upon Britain, even though I have not done anything evil myself and would not wish to, but when the right are in charge and the poor are seen universally as scum, a viewpoint aided by the likes of Mick Philpott and their filthy actions, there’s little I can do to turn the tide of opinion around.

One of the rightwing’s most prominent figureheads of recent years passed away recently, of course, and the death of Margaret Thatcher gave the media a chance to show its true colours – which in some cases was very proudly blue. We admittedly have much to thank Thatcher for – her government set in train many of the changes to the fabric and culture of Britain that are still felt today, such as the deregulation of the media that has allowed TV and radio to become the crapheap (mostly) we have now. She was a groundbreaker as Britain’s first and to date only female Prime Minister. As PM from 1979 to 1990 she was in charge of the country throughout the period of immense social and cultural change that was the 1980s. With traditional socialism in decline, the unions under the Thatcher thumb, and traditional heavy industry such as manufacturing and mining being wiped away in favour of a more service-based industry, the right dominated an era. Indeed, it was not until the more centre-leaning, less traditional-red ‘New Labour’ of Tony Blair rose to power in 1997 that I’d been under the rule of anyone other than the Tories. So, despite the strong and polarising views she generated, with her position in British history so prominent, it’s unarguable that Thatcher’s passing would be held as a significant event. But whilst all corners of the media did at least make note of the former PM’s death, some elements of the press – and you can probably guess which – virtually canonised her, the Daily Mail flying its flag proudly by declaring on its front page that Thatch was “the woman who saved Britain”, and, after the current Government confirmed her funeral ceremony would not officially have full state-funeral status, launched an unsuccessful petition calling for the ceremony to be elevated (though the level of coverage and pomp awarded the funeral, plus the presence of royalty, meant the Thatcher ceremony was essentially a state event in all but name). Then, of course, after much obituarising and posture, came the ridiculous point – the war of words over ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’ from the Wizard of Oz being elevated into the pop charts thanks to a Rage Against the Machine-style campaign. The ‘Ding Dong…’ ding-dong gave the Thatch-eulogising, BBC-despising rightwing papers one of their much-beloved opportunities to have a pop at the Beeb, by painting the Corporation into a corner and tying it in knots over the way the Radio 1 Chart Show would cover the track’s inclusion in the countdown: eventually an uneasy compromise was reached whereby the track’s position in the rundown was marked by a newsy report on the circumstances which arose, which seems a fair enough settlement in the circumstances. Of course, no settlement short of hanging would be good enough for the often-vile Mail, which denounced the web-campaign leader as a ‘teacher of hatred’. The BBC itself, of course, carried extensive coverage of the former PM’s passing and funeral, whilst itself dodging brickbats as enemies of the state broadcaster lined up to accuse the Beeb of some kind of bias: allegations the BBC demolished by revealing that the number of complaints made to the firm decrying its supposed anti-Thatcher leaning matched almost equally by a similar number of gripes that the coverage was too pro-Thatch; and both piles lagged behind the number of people bemoaning the sheer volume of Maggie material put out by the Beeb’s various outlets during the period, these complainants concerned that the Corp’s giving-over of much of its radio and TV news airspace to Thatcher’s passing, almost to the exclusion of any other news stories, was, despite her prominence in British history, excessive. In the wider media and social world, the former PM’s death invoked something of a mixed response. Some celebrated her death with impromptu street-parties, a move itself criticised as crass by some quarters, whilst others took to the web to pay respectful tribute, in some cases to a specific element of Thatcher’s reign, though this invited scorn from those opposed to the Iron Lady’s policies: for instance, Katie Piper paid tribute to the Baroness’ role in women’s history, only to then have to defend herself from politically-charged barbs from those followers who supported Piper’s aims but not Thatcher’s. Katie hasn’t hoisted her political colours publically – she prefers to keep much of her private life private – though she is from Hampshire, which along with much of the rest of southern England is historically more rightwing (Labour’s traditional heartland being the North). Other stars’ web comments also caused confusion – it having been some 23 years since MT handed over the wheel of 10 Downing Street to John Major, some younger media users didn’t understand the fuss being made: the misreading of Twitter hashtag #nowthatchersdead led to tributes being paid to the singer Cher, and when a member of One Direction tipped a hat to Thatch on his Twitter, many of the group’s teen fans were puzzled as to why – and many weren’t exactly clear on who she was. No wonder Gove wants to reshuffle the curriculum… From my point of view, Baroness Thatcher’s passing does highlight one thing: I’m not getting any younger. The PM who was in power when I was born has snuffed it, which again suggests time is catching up with me, in similar skein to the closure of stores I worked at and the splitting of bands I’ve listened to, for instance. I have, though, over the past three decades had the luxury of living under both Tory-led and Labour-led administrations, the power base having shifted to red in 1997, when I was 15, and swung back, to the current blue-and-yellow mess, in 2010. I’m not massively politically dogmatic, though: I’m not too fussed on a macro level about who’s in control of the country, as long as someone is, and in our current economic chaos we badly need strong leaders, of any flag colour, to put the nation back on the rails…

One key facet that Margaret Thatcher was noted and renowned for, even among her enemies, was her confidence and tenacity: standing her ground firmly when confronted with difficult choices and holding her own amid the often bitter battles she waged, be it tackling the traditional stronghold of the trade unions, pushing through the privatisation of national industry, or fighting to keep the British flag flying over the Falklands. Not all her decisions met with universal appeal, but she stood by them and carried them off with poise. Thatcher’s statuesque standing in the political spectrum meant that anyone who followed her would seem like a step down in comparison: John Major was to the then Government what Nick Weir was to Catchphrase, what Ed Tudor-Pole was to the Crystal Maze, or what Nick Grimshaw was to Radio 1’s breakfast show – the predecessor’s footprints (in these cases Roy Walker, Richard O’Brien, Chris Moyles) loomed so large in the sand that the successor would always come off second best. Confidence in one’s own skin is something that is often and rightly hailed as important: a lack of confidence and self-belief can drive someone to desperate or distressing lengths, as we’ve seen in far too many cases (the oft-cited-here Amanda Todd, for instance, had her confidence depleted by continuous online and offline bullying, to the extent that the poor girl simply couldn’t see a way out.) I’m not confident in myself – I’ve spent so much of the last decade being told I’m essentially worthless, that I now believe my chances of a future success are almost too distant to maintain. My success rate with jobs and my success rate with, say, finding friends or flirting with ladies, not that I bother doing much of that, are similarly squat, due to the difficulties I face in making my voice heard in a manner acceptable to other folk. Maybe if I was more able to communicate with others, rather than just shutting myself off in my own dark spiral, the world wouldn’t hurt me so much. Sometimes, those who lack genuine confidence mask it with a blunt, aggressive or divisive personality, and there are several examples of this exhibited in the TV I’ve been watching (in some cases against my will) of late. Take for instance Jane Forrest of the New Normal. Jane is someone I fear I may have judged too soon; in the early weeks of the show, I indicated that her blunt, bigoted attitude rubbed me up the wrong way as I instead nailed the colours of my mast to the more openminded and sensitive likes of Bryan, David, Goldie and Shania. However, as the series has progressed (at E4 pace) we’ve learnt more about the backstory which brought Jane to where she is now, and the experiences which have coloured her views, and that perhaps fish-out-of-water Goldie is if anything too sweet for the modern world. There won’t, sadly, be much room for further development of the characters, though – it was announced as part of the recent US ‘upfronts’ that the New Normal would not be surviving for a second season. (The Mindy Project survives, unfortunately.) And yes, I am the type who can judge too soon – look at my wrongheaded reaction to the PhoneShop pilot (way back on the old blog, and hailed subsequently as one of the true low-points in my never-glittering blogging career). It’s why I now try and hold myself back from commenting on legal cases, bar the basic known facts of the situation, until a conclusion has been reached: I am too big of an idiot to be in a position where I am passing judgement over the actions of others.

Another character type known to use an attitude to cover over their confidence issues is the archetypal ‘mean girl’, as exemplified by, say, Kate in Lizzie McGuire or Heather in Total Drama Island. Kate is an acid-tongued bully who holds court over others, but a wise old owl such as me can see she’s trying to compensate for her inner emotional turmoil, lashing out through a lack of faith in herself as her difficult teen years prove troubling to surmount. PopGirl only being a little way into the series, and with me trying to avoid the show where possible, I’ve not got a full picture of how Kate’s attitude evolves, if indeed it does, over the course of the four seasons, but as I said my fetid brother’s got the entire run on DVD so I could, if I had the stomach to, trace her journey. Girls like Kate generally crave affection, support, respect: with the right kind of gentle backing, ladies like this can develop their own independence and confidence and blossom into tolerant, intelligent, good-natured young women: if left to wither on the vine, however, with no support, abandoned teen girls can turn into the sort of mouthy, scummy scrubbers and layabouts you see far too many of these days. On the island, meanwhile, Heather is an example of a young lady who’s keen to find solace in fame, beauty and adoration, as seen in many walks of life today: her personal method is to manipulate and backstab in order to claw her way to the top; however, this is a double-edged sword, as a person acting in this manner can drive people away in the longer term, and isolate the aggressor such that it would be difficult to have friends and supporters available when they are most severely needed. It isn’t just animated girls who crave attention, of course, the theme continues on the streets around us, as seen in the similarly needy souls on BBC Three’s Snog Marry Avoid?, which recently returned for a fresh batch of ‘makeunders’, some taking place in the fairly-near-here Bromley of all places. Many of the participants in SMA are masking a lack of confidence and self-belief behind a protective shield of makeup, fake tan, accessories, false eyelashes, and other assorted gaudy trinkets: some claim they are unhappy with their unadorned appearance, and use the warpaint to present a more confident face than they could naturally; whilst others crave the turning of heads that comes when they walk out on the tiles in minimal outfits. The key purpose of the show is to help rebuild these participants’ confidence by showing them that presenting themselves more simply and calmly can actually have a hugely positive effect on their lives. Sometimes there’s a real breakthrough: some participants retain their smarter, scaled-back style, with one lass even landing a job after swapping out her garish prior look for something more sensible; however, sometimes the feelings that first drove the contributor to fakery are too deeply ingrained and the contestant reverts to their old ways within hours of leaving the POD. We need to ensure that young people who are so mentally unsure of themselves that they feel they need to ‘mask’ who they really are get the support and care they need in order to become more at peace with themselves and more tolerant of their natural worth. I find naturally pretty girls, with normally-shaped bodies and fresh, smiling faces far more attractive than the overpreened, surgery-heavy, glossy-glamour types, but it’s not my place to tell women what they can and cannot wear, as I’m no dictator. Sometimes, someone you usually see acting all flash scales back the shock-value and shows their pretty side, in a Snog Marry Avoid? style, as for instance Nicki Minaj has done: the singer is known, as I’ve indicated before, for her brash, divisive, eyecatching style, but a little while back she participated in a feature for which she scaled back to a simpler look, and I have to admit the toned-down Nicki did look rather pretty.

Of course, going through chaos, tragedy or difficult situations can have a marked impact on one’s confidence and self-image. Many of the people caught up in the tragic news events of recent months (as detailed above) will face difficult period of recovery and rehabilitation in order to get past the grief and shock they’ve suffered, and it’s at times like those that being part of a strong support network of family and friends would be most valuable. In this environment, Katie Piper (yes, again) is often hailed as a touchstone (or is that touched as a hailstone?), as following her attack her family rallied round to help their wounded daughter rebuild her confidence and sparkle, as documented in the recently-repeated (on Community Channel) first Piper documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face. Once that show had gone out, others who became aware of the case found they wanted to be part of the solution and joined Katie’s support network, searching out ways to reach out and make Katie aware that she was respected and admired. In time Katie regained her freedom, in the process launching her charitable campaign to help others out of similarly distressing situations. Building something so positive and successful out of disaster is to be congratulated, and speaking up for those who need support and confidence is always to be welcomed. On that note, elegant Hollywood actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie recently stepped up and confirmed that, after being told by doctors she carried a genetic anomaly which put her at risk of cancer, and having lost relatives to the condition, she had decided to undergo mastectomy and reconstruction work, undergoing the treatment whilst also carrying on her regular red-carpet duties. Here is an example of a lady not letting a potential trauma stand in her way, and in this age of fast fame and breathless gossip it’s cheering to see someone putting their health and family at the forefront of their mind – the treatment means the actress has a lower cancer risk, thus increasing her life expectancy and reducing the worry that the silent killer would withdraw her from her young family. Angelina has rightly won respect for the dignified and mature way she’s dealt with the situation, and it is hoped that her experience will encourage other young women to be more confident in tackling their own health and wellbeing issues. (And yes, it is a bit pot/kettle for me to be advising people to look after their health when my innards are basically liquefied, but I think we all agree that Angelina’s bravery and dignity in the issue deserves to be honoured.) Jolie isn’t the first to face this kind of decision – others including Sharon Osbourne have previously undergone similar procedures, and, despite the sneering in her direction from the more upmarket quarters, Jade Goody’s legacy – aside from being the only person famous enough from original Big Brother to get called back for the Celebrity version, anyway – was to make young women more aware of the risks of ovarian cancer, particularly when many of the prior screening programmes had been targeted at older ladies. Goody, like Jolie, also wanted to make sure her young kids were well cared for, though more recently it emerged that her savings, intended to put the young lads through school, were set to be sucked down by the tax man.

For completeness I should adjunct that Jade was one of quite a fair few former housemates who, following her Big Brother stint, underwent cosmetic surgery (indeed, some of the BB ladies had already had alterations prior to entering the house); many of those who took to the knife presumably doing so in order to further boost their self-image and confidence, or in some cases to suit the whim of the lad-press in which they saw their future opportunity – though clearly, their taking part in a reality show in the first place indicates these ladies, to an extent, had an underlying need to be admired or appreciated in some manner. It’s not just reality-stars who choose to surgically alter themselves if they feel the need for a boost, though. Coronation Street’s Samia Ghadie recently went under the knife in order to get a more womanly figure, claiming that, post-childbirth, her more-slender-than-before figure was depressing her. Samia’s not been far from the papers over recent months thanks to her soap-like love-war with Hollyoaks brunette Jennifer Metcalfe, the triangle completed by Dancing on Ice pro Sylvan Longchambon. I’ve tried to bleach the bulk of the story out of my eyes, sick as I am of this multimedia nonsense, but the fragments I recall are thus: Longchambon and Metcalfe were partnered up on DoI one year and subsequently began dating, then in a later series the fella was paired up with divorcee Ghadie and they grew close, and around this time his relationship with Metcalfe was falling apart. For what felt like too long a time (well, to those like me who don’t really like talking about this stuff, anyway) there was a lot of speculation and clucking in the press as to whether Sylvan and Samia were an item, until they eventually came out and admitted their feelings publically, to no small bad blood from Jennifer and her supporters. The new couple insisted they’d done nothing wrong, not uniting fully until Sylvan and Jennifer had split up, but it certainly left a bad taste in the mouth of many. Thankfully ITV has cancelled Dancing on Ice after the next series, meaning Longchambon will have to find some other way to sweep the next soap star he takes a fancy to off her skates. And don’t worry Jen, if you haven’t already (I can’t keep up), I’m sure you’ll find a guy who appreciates you, and who isn’t a skate-dancing pillock. You’re a very pretty lady. (Did I just say something nice about someone from off Hollyoaks? My standards are slipping – or improving, dunno which…) Aside from boyfriend-snatcher Samia, another Corrie star made headlines with her chest when a pair of boobies made a sudden and unexpected appearance on Michelle Keegan’s Instagram page. Keegan denies the bust featured was hers, claiming the unscheduled chest was the result of a friend’s prank, though the snap appearing shortly after Michelle had spoken online of being in the bath – accompanied by a photo of her toes – and then disappearing seconds later led some to speculate that the brief uncovering was followed by a swift cover-up. Still, Keegan took the issue in good sport, joshing with Twitter-bound fans over the issue, and in the wake of widespread slating of young women online, some of which I’ve documented in paragraphs above, it was pleasing to note that the reaction to this case was, it seems, relatively well-tempered and good-humoured on both sides, something which I’m keen to see continue more generally in an age where hate can be sent out all too quickly. Although I’d quite like to see someone saying something nice about a fully-dressed lady, for once: now that would be a turn-up…

At least the whole Keegan fuss shifted the spotlight away from former co-star Helen Flanagan for a little while. Now, Flanagan is someone people – including, shamefully, this very blog – have been nasty to in the past, particularly after her baffling turn in I’m A Celeb, which didn’t win her any fans unless you count sleazy bikini-pervs. And you all know I don’t. However, I’ve been tempted to revise my view after finding online an interview with the actress from earlier this year, in which she discussed candidly the difficulties and struggles that more commonly go hidden behind the showbiz gloss and gabble. In the article, Helen spoke about her battles with attention-defecit syndrome and bipolar disorder, suggesting that there may have been an underlying mental health issue that wasn’t being appropriately challenged by the circumstances the young lass found herself in during her career; she also spoke about her body image, in particular her struggle with an eating disorder, the development of which suggests Flanagan’s handlers were at times perhaps more interested in her fame than her wellbeing, and also the worries she faced as her figure grew and developed, having harsh words in particular for Corrie bosses who decided to vamp up Rosie’s image and recast her as a sexpot as soon as Helen was legally and physically able to portray one. Cast as a Corrie character from her preteens into her twenties, Helen had the difficult task of growing up onscreen and it seems that producers were keen for much of this evolution to be played out on the cobbles of Weatherfield, without really thinking what the effect of this would be on their young charge when the cameras ceased. Adolescence is a difficult time for many young people as they try to work out who they want to be, and make decisions about their lives, image and environment which could become part of who they are as adults; when your job is professionally being someone else, presenting to the world not your own view but a personality that’s being handed to you on paper, it can I’m sure be even more difficult to develop an independent identity of your own. In Flanagan’s case this meant going along with what the producers wanted her to do, despite revealing in the new article that at times she found what she was being asked to do degrading and a real struggle. Helen, we’re told, became depressed and self-concious and felt she wasn’t being taken seriously; feelings I know only too well from my decade-long battle to keep my head above water in the failing retail industry; as potential employers almost as one throw my attempts to get on with life back in my face, it becomes increasingly difficult to contemplate carrying on. Whilst she has done some unwise things – that infamous ‘gun to the head’ model photo in the wake of a US school shooting was, I think we’re all agreed, a bit of a daft move – Helen claims she’s stung by the frequent criticism of her as an airheaded bimbo. Perhaps, prior to plucking Helen’s point of view out of the ether, I would have joined in the castigation. I just didn’t understand why, when there were so many important things the media could be bringing to light, they were choosing to throw away so much of their airspace on a dippy soap starlet. Now, though, that Flanagan’s gone public with her fears I can see a little beyond the headlines and realise I should in fact be defending and protecting her from the many sharks that conspire to swim in our world: much like other young women I’ve referenced before, Helen needs support and positivity from those well-wishers who would bring her useful and friendly advice, rather than further barbs that would lead her into distress. So I’ve called a truce, which you could call a U-turn if you like: this blog is no longer opposed to Helen Flanagan, provided she goes about her career in a dignified and elegant way, were that possible in the web age, and is given the appropriate dignity, support and comfort by those who would utilise her services. Hey, it could happen…

I’m not particularly keen to dredge this blog down into the depths of the showbiz gutter and resort to discussing celebrity physiques and romantic squabbles, so including the above overviews of Ghadie, Keegan and Flanagan was a difficult decision for me – I wanted this page to be something better, part of the solution rather than part of the problem, but the way the media’s gone over recent years has meant that showbizzy gibberish tends to take precedence over sensible, reasoned discussion, purely it seems because the more bovine end of the populace wish it to be so. It’s garbage in, garbage out: we’re bombarded with slop and slurry by the unfeeling media giants who control what we see and hear, and because that’s all we’re being fed that’s all we can regurgitate back into each others’ cheeks. There are some environments where one can be more self-selective about the media we recieve – my Old Reader is mostly populated by somewhat dry and geeky media-industry and retail discourse, most of which doesn’t often merit further analysis from me on here beyond that provided in the original, more journalistic reportage; for instance, the retail press over recent weeks has been quite interested in covering and digesting major new retail-centre developments that have opened, or will be opening, in Leeds, Gateshead and Fareham, particularly as investment in retail’s been hard to come by these last few years, but whilst it’s been interesting to note and track the developments as they’ve come to fruit, there’s little I can add to the discourse having not visited any of the locations myself, these facilities not being in my usual catchment area. That said, it is encouraging to see the sector moving forwards, and it’s all to the good if the new sites provide the business sphere with the confidence to strengthen and rebuild after a difficult few years that have seen more stores going to the wall than opening their doors. Rest assured, too, if anything significant happens in Bexleyheath that leads to shops actually opening there rather than, as has mostly been the case lately, shuttering, I’ll be all up on it to wade in with my tuppence, albeit not until I’ve CV-bombed the newcomers in the vain hope that one or more of ’em will see potential. It’s also been interesting to trace how some of the square footage that has been vacated over recent years after being declared surplus to Woolworths, Zavvi, Peacocks and the like is being filled – quite often, it seems, by budget-buster firms like pound/99p shops, it appears, particularly in this area – but there are examples of other uses, with pubs/restaurants also taking advantage of the changing nature of the high street to swoop on the spare space to provide a service which can’t yet be replicated online, and some of the larger stores being carved up and remodelled for multi-occupancy developments, to make maximum creative use of the space. Again, good to see facilities which have previously been neglected steadily being brought back into being, as with the new TK Maxx in Woolwich. It’s also good to see firms making use of space to trial new formats – Swarovski, for instance, are in the process of introducing youth-skewing accessories offering lola&grace (their spelling) and premium-jewellery spinoff Cadenza to major retail centres, whilst Topshop, having installed a new-format flagship in what was the upper part of Lakeside’s BHS store, is fitting up a similar new superstore this side of the crossing in Bluewater to provide an up-to-date replacement for their current store at the complex; the move helps Topshop keep pace with rivals, as it follows other fashion retailers upscaling their Bluewater premises, expanding to larger premises (most recently Superdry), or arriving in the centre anew as part of a wider invasion of British soil (hello, Forever21). The thing is, I’m aware there are people who write about this sort of thing much more professionally than I – to carry on the retail theme, the likes of Soult’s Retail View provide intelligent, knowledgeable, engaging, insightful commentary on the changing shape of the retail world, whilst folk such as Matt Deegan offer wisdom and analysis pertinent in their chosen field (in Deegan’s case, radio.) I just gibber. And I’m not even that topical or relevant – this post has taken me two to four months to write, for blotting out loud…

In fairness, sometimes I do see crafty connections even amid the showbiz gubbins: I noted that news of Rihanna suing Topshop for selling a third-party T-shirt with her image on emerged around the same time that the singer’s on-off partner Chris Brown was being linked by the paps to Chloe Green, daughter of Topshop’s owner – though, despite any potential suggestion Ri-Ri wants to stick the claws into Chloe over this supposed love rivalry, the suit’s more likely linked to the singer’s commercial deal to create clothes for the rival River Island chain. Similarly, the above-mentioned Michelle Keegan photo-fuss just happened to have happened around the time that voting periods were imminent in both the British Soap Awards and in FHM’s demeaning annual 100 Sexiest Women list, and a lifetime’s exposure to the media has leant me to indicate that this sort of profile-raising stunt may not entirely be coincidental to such gambits. Perhaps my love of looking between the lines – which can be a curse as well as a blessing, as it can lead me to take things far more seriously than is necessary – is why I enjoy BBC Four’s Only Connect, which is also in the process of returning for a new series, and which is able to sail a course through high and low culture fairly evenhandedly, certainly so than these pages can muster. But I think I need to just shut the trap sometimes, as I don’t particularly need to add my voice to the already clogged-up cloud of gabble around the celeb universe. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’ve never felt so distant from popular culture. I’ve hardly been to the cinema at all in the best part of a decade (though this is both a financial as well as a creative concern), I’ve lost much of my faith in telly (aside from the occasional pockets of goodness, such as noted here) and, as I’ve spoken about previously, my music consumption is, whilst still extant, in decline compared to the boom years. Maybe I’m just still confused about who I should be, post-30 – is it really the case, as I believe it to be, that a man my age shouldn’t know the difference between Iggy Azalea and Iggy Arbuckle? Does knowing which one’s Macklemore and which one’s Paramore make me less of a man? Maybe I’m just frustrated because I know I’ll never be one of the real high-end writers: if I was more cultured, learned and scholarly I could be writing fluently about art, science, law, technology, nature, business or quality music. But for some reason, I’ve never had the gumption to push beyond my boundaries. Instead of taking wing and flying to the ivory towers, I’ve chosen to coast along just doing whatever’s possible to stop my backside bumping too harshly along the ground. Part of this is linked to my circumstances – I’m not moneyed enough to flee to Oxbridge for brain food, and I can’t afford to subscribe to the few TV channels still showing documentaries – but it’s also environmental and behavioural limitations that restrict my spiritual growth. For instance, maybe if I got out into the open air a bit more often I’d be able to reconnect with the natural world a little and regain some inner peace. However, for reasons of passenger-led logic, most buses round this way take an urban route through concrete town centres and rotted housing developments, meaning any diversion into somewhere more peaceful would require careful advance planning that, living as I do day-to-day, I can’t really do, as my blogging schedule clearly shows. Maybe a more peaceful life would inspire change in my writing style, too, which can only be a good thing. Not that there’s much outlet for quality writing even if I could do it, with AOL recently shuttering its music news and review sites. Though I’m not an AOL user myself, I’d assume the impact on these readers would be similar to that I felt when Teletext clobbered Planet Sound. I used to find the text-based news-service an interesting and engaging way to start my day, and the likes of Digitiser – a videogaming magazine with a unique tone of voice and disruptive, creative attitude – were a much more enjoyable read than the showbiz-obsessed gossip dreck we now have to resort to reading. Given the size of the blogosphere I’d assume there are people out there fighting the good fight, and once I’ve recovered from reading this back to myself I’d maybe like to read some of the better scribes’ work, but nowadays, much like with 6 Music, the quality’s got to be actively sought out, rather than being available on the tap of a button. I’ll never be the new Digitiser myself, of course, but perhaps I can crib a little from the edges: to that end, here’s a Digi-style joke. “Which Brazilian model owns a portrait of a bell which was painted by a ghost? Is-a-bell Ghoul-art (Izabel Goulart)!”

One thing that I do want to do is be the opposite to the caustic, crabby media outlets that trade on hurting and belittling the confidence of women. The media loves to screech that women could be thinner, more attractive, better dressed: however, this needs to be taken with a handful of salt as a lot of the media outlets which make these judgements are recieving advertising money from the big clothing and cosmetics firms; these magazines (and latterly websites) owe their continued existence to being the lapdog of the firms whose business is in convincing women that they don’t yet look good enough, and that they need to spend more on their appearance than is actually necessary. Women, generally, are therefore a lot more beautiful than the popular media would have you believe, particularly when they’re combining a natural and healthy body with a positive and warm attitude. Yes, there are some unattractive, at least in persona, ladies in the world – that smallminded solicitor who rammed a bloke off his bike springs to mind – but in general we should be helping build and enhance women’s confidence, not harm and demean it. The modern-day focus on glamour and gloss above all else is hugely damaging to young ladies, who incorrectly believe that you have to be ever skinnier, ever more preened and ever more fake to be beautiful, when that is not the case: the most beautiful ladies are those who are comfortable and confident with a normal, natural, healthy figure and a warm, radiant smile. We should be doing more to build up womens’ confidence, not working hard to destroy it. And I for one would like to be the decent sort of guy that says sweet, honest things about the many wonderful, beautiful ladies that there are in the world. There is a great range of beauty, good spirit and attractiveness out there if you know where to go find it: among the ladies currently in the media, they range from the beautiful and talented Aubrey Plaza, who following the success and acclaim in her role as spiky, supercool April in Parks & Rec has I’m sure a bright future ahead of her, through to Chloe Everton, a witty and pretty TV presenter who made headlines when she was ticked off by her bosses at Sky Sports for cheeky, near-the-knuckle comments on Twitter. Having first clocked the engaging blonde back when she was on bid tv, her tenure at Sky meant she was locked away from those of us viewing only free-to-air channels, but the move was a smart one as it did give her the opportunity to utilise her love of sport in the workplace (in similar skein to how I was always keen to emphasise how my love of music would stand me in good stead for a job at HMV, not that they ever bothered hiring me…) Now, though, Chloe’s back on free TV having joined QVC. And it’s lovely to have her back, as she’s exactly the sort of sweet, warm, fun lady we need more of on our screens. Bridgit Mendler is cute. It’s not just the famous, though: there’s a whole world of people out there in the world who, one presumes, would gratefully recieve the support and affection, not necessarily of me personally, but certainly of those around them, or of society more broadly. I want, as soon as is practicable, to go back to saying nice things to my warm and lovely friends on Twitter; I miss the warm, caring friendship I used to share with the lovely, kind people that I met in my time on the site. However, I’m still limited in my ability to use the service as I’m still on that previously-moaned-about mobile phone that can only send (by SMS), not recieve, tweets, and my tight time available online through public terminal – usually no more than an hour a day, sometimes less – has to be used carefully to squeeze in everything I want and need to do on the web, from job hunts to Reader clearance to posting this sort of ponk, which leaves little time for reading and responding to the Twittersphere. But I do miss my friends, and I do miss having the ability to be a friend and comfort to them. When my web friends were feeling down I’d give them support and friendship, and when I was in a bind the good people out there were willing to offer kindness to me, even when I was droning on about utter garbage, which as I’m sure you’ve established was often. I’ve always craved that friendship and closeness, and I had it for a brief while, and now thanks to my poor decision-making I’m at risk of losing it, if I haven’t already. That’s a really worrying thought.

One of the things I joined Twitter to do back in late 2009 was to spread the word about a young lady who I wanted to offer comfort and support to. And now this lady is herself setting out to make people feel better and more confident, not just with her continuing charity work, but also with her new TV project. Currently in production for Channel 4 broadcast later this year, ‘Undo Me’ will see Katie Piper front a project which reverses cosmetic and surgical beauty procedures people have had to restore to them a more natural appearance, with a particular focus on those whose surgeries were botched, harmful or unnecessary. The theme of restoring natural beauty is akin to that seen in style-based makeover series Snog Marry Avoid?, in which, as explained above, people get to see what they’d look like if they stripped away unnatural adornements and took a simpler, cleaner, more dignified look, though the descriptions of Katie’s new show suggests that it’d be a more medical, Embarrassing Bodies-style angle rather than the fashion-leaning SMA. Regardless, as said above I welcome anything which gives people the confidence in themselves to stand up in their own skin and shun unneccessary cosmetic faff. I’m not the biggest fan of those who have unneeded surgery just to prolong their fame or make themselves more pleasing to the tabloids, and that’s why my sites have reserved their hardest barbs for the likes of Danielle O’Hara (nee Lloyd, if you need), Imogen Thomas (and too many other Big Brother-ers), Gemma Atkinson (if indeed I ever got around to slating her in the first place, I can’t remember), and Katie Price (until she showed me a more human side, on Deal or No Deal of all places), whilst praising those who have shown genuine and wholehearted beauty, including Piper herself, whose surgery was visited upon her not by choice but by medical necessity, and who came across in that first documentary as someone whose warm heart and genuine beauty ran far deeper than skin level. But I have perhaps been a bit too analogue in my thinking when it comes to those who work in the spotlight; I have been in the past one of those old-world sods who considers that society has been on a downward slope since the days of Loaded and Baywatch, and I have been in danger of considering models to be less worthwhile to society than, say, a polar scientist would be. Perhaps, though, that blinkered view of mine needs to be robustly challenged. Sometimes the ladies see the light themselves – former Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell has put her top back on and lent her voice behind campaigns to get the glamour girls kicked out of mainstream papers, whilst Alicia Douvall – for some years now one of the poster-girls for excessive plastic surgery – has recently gone public with her move to withdraw, in an ‘Undo Me’-presaging move, some of her prior enhancements, principally those injected into her face, and speak out about the decision, principally as a warning to other ladies not to go too far down that particular boat. This is to be welcomed: clearly Douvall has seen the light and decided to restore what natural beauty she can, and her decision should be applauded. She’ll never be my favourite Alicia – Ms. Silverstone has that crown in perpetuity – but after years of abusing her body, perhaps in the belief that doing so would bring her the comfort and appreciation she craved, Ms. Douvall is now moving in the right direction, and attempting to restore herself to the person she was meant to be. It’s right and proper that such moves are celebrated.

It’s always good to see positive moves to improve conditions for people, even if those people have chosen to work as models, and so I’m going to tip the star on my hat to Debenhams, for some of their recent decisions as reported in the retail press. Firstly, the firm decided to break from the traditional fashion mould by recruiting a more diverse range of models to take part in a campaign, with women of a wide range of ages and abilities featured in the shoot, itself a very bold and welcome choice; then, they became the first retail store to sign up to a new voluntary code put out by the Equity union, which aims to make the job of modelling safer and more pleasant for the models employed, by providing better safeguards for their confidence, dignity and safety, ranging from better information and support on hours of work, pay and insurance, and the nature of the shoot, through to provision of suitable restroom, refreshment and changing facilities. Vogue magazine has also signed up to the guidelines, which are a step in the right direction in an industry which has too often been accused of misleading and mistreating its participants – the horror of models being bullied, abused or harmed is a sadly all-too-well-worn track. But despite what their job role may lead you to believe, these models aren’t just pieces of unyielding meat to be slapped about and gawped at: during my foolish teenage years as a magazine reader, I saw numerous photomodels who I now realise had been shepherded into position against their will and coerced into a participation that, had they had their time again, they would maybe now have had second thoughts about. Maybe the models felt they needed to do these things – after all, this was their pay packet, and if they refused to bend to the mogul’s whim, they perhaps wouldn’t be able to put any food on the table that month. Maybe these women need the confidence and support to be able to speak up when they feel uncomfortable, but I know how difficult it can be not knowing where the next job is coming from, so it’s not a black and white case. I now read fewer magazines than I once did, but I’d assume that, outside of Vogue, the nasty old tricks are still in force; and the rise of digital technology has meant that, where the model can’t be manipulated, the photo can (witness, amongst many other cases, the saga of Gabriella Cilmi vs FHM). The life of a model is, one assumes, rarely as glamorous as the media giants would have us believe, with the ladies having to drag themselves through some fairly dark days – there is probably much sorrow hidden behind the pretty eyes on the printed page – and the girls are under intense pressure to stay young, thin and photogenic, beyond that which would be natural and normal, so I’m hopeful that the new Equity standards will become commonplace around the industry, in order to help give the women who choose to work in this environment a happier and healthier future.

And sometimes something positive comes from the darkest of horrors. I mentioned here last year the fatal coach crash which involved a group from up north departing Bestival on the Isle of Wight in an ill-fated attempt to return home; this horror story, though, recently achieved a kind of closure when a track recorded by one of the victims, Michael Molloy, made the UK sales top 40 following a posthumous completion of the disc and a commemmorative online campaign by his friends – a bit like a nicer, less politicised version of the Thatcher ‘Ding Dong’ stunt. As I now largely shy away from the charts, I don’t know what sort of tone Jameela Jamil took when introducing the track in the countdown, but I’d assume she gave the track all the enthusiasm and respect it deserved. Even a former T4 presenter can manage that. Elsewhere, the common news grammar of abduction stories ending in a grisly manner was given a rare upending in Cleveland, Ohio when three women who disappeared separately around a decade ago were rescued alive from their collective torment. They do face a period of recovery from their ordeal, which we’re told included various forms of assault, but they are now safe and able to rebuild their lives and health, and that should be celebrated. Obviously there has been intense media interest in these ladies, but hopefully they will be given the time, space and support they need to build themselves back up again. Elsewhere in the States, communities are rallying to rebuild themselves after one of the biggest natural disasters to strike since Hurricane Katrina washed away much of New Orleans. The latest perpetrator, striking just as I was stringing this blog together (hence its positioning here at the back-end), was a tornado that ripped a goodly chunk of Oklahoma apart, killing dozens (including, distressingly, children cowering in their school) and wiping a swathe of homes and businesses off the map. After Katrina, we saw both the best and worst of society, as panhandlers and looters initially took their pound of flesh from the stricken area, before the communities ultimately gathered their strength and began the mammoth task of rebuilding physically and socially. Whilst some areas are still yet to recover fully from Katrina’s non-musical waves, the progress made so far should give the residents of Oklahoma reason to believe that they will one day soon be OK in more than just zip code. There were a hatful of heroes, with tales of teachers striving to protect their young charges from the stormy weather, and one particularly gleaming story amid the mess was the case of a woman who, standing amid the wreckage of her home, told a TV crew that her pet dog was believed deceased, having been in the house when the storm hit; the crew then happened to spot a scruffy, furry figure scrabbling around within the rubble, and the rescuers moved in, reuniting homeowner with beloved pet live on air. It’s always important to have that sense that people will come together – when one’s life is as lonely as mine has been, one has to have faith there’s someone out there, and that leads me to perhaps the most unexpected little glimmer of beauty I’ve spotted recently. Buried away within a rather heavyweight Ofcom document on the takeup of digital communications services (yeah, yeah) was a sentence which carried an unexpected punch, particularly as it was not intended as such. It was merely trying to explain in the simplest possible tongue how the map on the following page worked. The map, as it goes, was an attempt to indicate the disparity between urban and rural areas by way of an interpretation of population density, using light pollution figures to show where the greatest concentration of activity was. Funky, huh? But the way they put it was unexpectedly poetic and moving, even for Ofcom, simply stating: “Where there are lights, there are people.” Whilst some quarters would argue that light pollution in itself is a bad thing, the concept at play is quite a beautiful thought – one is never really alone in the world, and you won’t be left to fend for yourself so long as you’re willing to step up and walk into the light. So maybe that’s a sentence I should carry with me whenever the darkness of the day-to-day threatens to tread too heftily on my all-too-flimsy shoulders.

So there we go. There’s several successive months of my internal monologue finally excised, in easily my longest blog post to date – it took so long to write I kept having to add more and more to the mass as new news popped over the fringe. I really will have to think of a better way to do these in future, or stop blogging altogether and keep this nonsense firmly locked inside my own head – but left there, it wouldn’t be safe! If you have, somehow, made it through these many dozens of paragraphs, thank you for your time and thank you for listening to me. If you’ve got anything to say about what I’ve had to say, then do at least attempt to get in touch with me – I am toying with setting up a blog email address, given that, until I’ve justified the purchase of a properly-functioning phone, Twitter will remain a thoroughly inefficient medium of communication with me. There is, of course, a commentbox down below here, so if you’ve got something constructive to share which won’t get swallowed up by the spam-trapper, do plop it in the relevant text-space. And If you’ve got something to do in the world – be it making music, writing an article, presenting a radio or TV show, acting in a popular soap opera, tackling inappropriate behaviour in public office, helping rebuild the life of an individual or family hit by tragedy, or just standing behind a desk desperately hoping someone will buy some shoes or cards or whatever it is you’re selling that week – then do it well and proudly. If you’ve got someone to love and look after, be sure to hold them extra tight for me. And if you’re going to throw props at my head, at least make them geographically appropriate!

“Now your entire body can smell like wrists!” (Goodbye!)

“I’m wearing a Berocca bra. The more I sweat, the fizzier it gets down there!” (Hello!)

You’re no Gok Wan! You’re not even Gok Two! So yes, it’s been a couple of long, actually-cold months since I last flobbed one of these disgusting little cattle-parps in your purple direction, and you may have been thinking I’d finally got my life sorted out and no longer needed the freedom to babble angrily. You’d be wrong, traveller: it’s simply been I’ve been too busy and tired to actually sit down and write out the letters that, when strung together, happen to make one of these ones. A lot of news, media and disaster has rolled under the bridge during February and March of the year, though, and much of it has been littering up my brain in dire need of release. So let’s kick up some of these, sometimes sadly literal, corpses, and give myself and yourself the opportunity to get bang up to date, as far as this blog can be. Because it’s almost Thanksgiving, that’s gobble!

One of the big news alerts of early 2013, such as it was, was the revelation that up to 100% of the meat in not-actually-supposed-to-be-equine foodstuffs had been sourced from the horse. There seemed a little confusion on the part of the media as to how to play this – horsemeat is not, in itself, hazardous to humans (and indeed is sold openly by some specialist meat-retailers), so they couldn’t do the whole ‘pandemic of disease that could kill us all’ paranoia which puts bums on the seats facing the rolling news channels; the real story was a fairly humdrum trade-description/labelling issue, coupled with a reminder of the gulf between our expectations as grabby consumers and the reality of what can be delivered to us: beef is an expensive meat, but is in high demand for cheap ‘value-line’ meals, so corners are likely to be being cut somewhere along the chain to keep the retailers’ and manufacturers’ profits healthy whilst delivering on our expectations as customer. But then, as the joke goes, at the prices some of these cheap meals are being offered for, it was a surprise they contained meat at all (it’s often tongue-in-cheekishly suggested that for some foods, the box it comes in is more nutritious than the contents!) Joking aside, though, the scandal did at least spur some people who had previously blindly shovelled slop down their familial gullet to take a little more care over what they were chucking in their trolley, which can only be a good thing, and it did also give me, as a pasta fan, pause for one thought: I’ve had (what I believed to be) beef lasagne, I’ve had vegetable lasagne, I’ve even treated myself to oddly-more-expensive-than-beef chicken lasagne on my last couple of birthdays (the ones where I’d actually been the one doing the food shopping); however, I’ve never – knowingly – had horse lasagne. When it was reported that some reportedly-bovine lasagne meals had actually been 100% mare, after the national ‘eurgh’ had subsided, a part of my spaghetti-addled mind thought: actually, it might be quite nice to have a bit of a go on that. Maybe it will come to a point where the British mind and palate is so used to the taste of horse that some enterprising soul in the bowels of a superstore decides to try it out as a properly-billed option to see how it goes, slipping it onto the retail menu experimentally, such that those of us who actively want to meet Shergar’s mates for dinner have the opportunity to do so in full knowledge. The problem is, the vast market of the public still want beef, even after all, so it looks like I may have to follow the herd and settle for cattle-based meals for the remainder of the year. Neigh it ain’t so!

As you’ll have presumably gathered, pals, I’m still responsible for the bulk of food shopping for the household I currently reside in, though it is getting difficult. I’ve mentioned before, I think, about the physical and mental strain I’m under juggling my household responsibilities and my other duties such as jobseeking, and how this is manifesting itself in severe tiredness – some days it takes my body a long time to wake up enough to prise myself out of bed, though rather than lay about like a lazybones I drag myself out and carry on my duties as best as possible. But I simply don’t have the energy to do anything longform, whether it’s reading a book, listening to an album, watching a movie or even writing one of these posts, hence the two-month gap, and I’m instead living in short, unsatisfying bursts, constantly tired and emotionally ragged. Supermarkets, as you’ll know, give me the serious shakes, which makes filling the family feedbag a frequently daunting conceit, and the job market is pretty tired and uninspiring right now, the huge number of retail administrations – on which more later – casting thousands of my fellow retail-workers onto the scrapheap and closing, often permanently, many of the doors that could lead to my employment. It’s no wonder perhaps that my mental sinkholes, as discussed in the previous post, are getting worse. I forgot completely about a previously-arranged task-centre appointment, albeit one which can likely be rescheduled, when I woke up and assumed that, as I’m not usually required in the centre on a Friday, I did not have reason to go there that day, only realising I had in fact had one right at the end of the night, when I returned to my bedroom and belatedly re-discovered the appointment letter. Similarly, a food shopping trip turned to liquidy disaster when, having hurried to leave the superstore in question amid the shopping-quivers, I didn’t realise until I’d returned home that I’d left the soft drinks I’d paid for at the checkout when I’d picked up the other bags. Cue a last-minute dash to the mini-shop over the road for replacement liquids, and the related accusatory tone from mother on my return, amid the feeling I’m really not cut out for this. Not the first time I’ve paid for something and not recieved it, either, as we’ll see a little further along… Another wrinkle comes from the fact that the cost of the household foodlist has, over the past year, often come to more than has been allocated to the general household budget, and I’ve therefore had to supplant this with money from my own account in order to get everything the house wants, and doing this, primarily for convenience, has put me in a very precarious position financially – I’m not a big spender, as you by now know, and tend to use my meagre income for my own essentials such as lunch and travel, with the nominally-separate household budget intended to fund the family evening meals and related materials used by us all. Because I’ve had to divert towards topping up the home spend, though, I’ve been spending more than I’ve had coming in, according to my recent bank statement, and that’s literally not something which can continue, or else my account will be in serious trouble. So cuts will have to be made, and we’ll have to go back to a smallish loop of the cheapest-available, often-supposedly-beef, foods until such a time as we are in a stronger position financially and I can make more of a contribution both to my own wellbeing and that of my family. I know there’s probably better ways to do all this, and that I should really be contributing to the family over and above myself: I now don’t have lunch every day, and on those days I go to collect the house food I now buy only this and go without lunch of my own, but I guess if I wanted to eat lunch every day then I’d go out and get a bloody job paying enough that I could afford that, wouldn’t I! So yes, my mental state hasn’t been all that straight and narrow recently, which probably explains why this blog is ping-ponging all over the place already, even more so than mine already do! I desperately need rest and relaxation, but as you’ll have gathered by now a holiday is not entirely possible on my budget…

There have been some faintly choice finds recently, though. Whilst on a work-scouting trip to Bluewater one day, I happened upon the recently-opened store from US-based fashion concern Forever21, and – assuming their prices would be in the River Island-ish range of slightly too high for a povver like me to afford, reluctantly sighed and had a poke around their pithy little menswear chunk. And therein I found a cardigan. A slightly Jon Richardson-ish one, but a good one. And it was on special offer. It was three quid. THREE QUID! Even ruddy Primark couldn’t beat that, I’d propose! I’ve since been back a couple of times to pick through their sale-rail – as I’ve said before, I am in need of new clothes to replace the shabby, worn-out ones I’ve had for many years previously, but the prices at fashion stores have been extensively offputting. So when something comes along at a walloping great discount, I sit up and take notice. And, unlike the overly-tight H&M clothes I’ve experimented with following an earlier sale event, Forever21 clothes do actually fit me. Which is nice. I won’t be able to shop there on the regular, or pay their normal non-discounted prices, until I’ve got gainful employ, and a shabby barracker like me is most certainly not their target market, but it’s good to have a fresh option to keep under consideration. I’ve also been looking out for bargains in non-clothing fields, and thought I’d found a solution to my crummy-phone problem in a branch of CEX recently. Having been slipped a few quid in lieu of a birthday gift (my 31st having fallen at the start of this month), I decided to look into getting a secondhand cellphone to replace the creaky, featureless brick I’ve been using since last autumn, which if you’ll recall I bought quickly and cheaply to replace the actually-better phone which I had drowned in a heavy Bexleyheath rainstorm. The crapness of my cheap stand-in phone is the reason I’ve not been conversing much with my former friends on Twitter, as the shite new phone can’t do tweeting properly, aside from firing in the occasional one-way broadcast via SMS. It’s been a shame to lose such good people from my life at the time I need them most, but what can be done? Anyway, having spotted among the CEX displays a potentially-better phone – I don’t want something too swanky, just a unit that works at least as well as my water-killed prior mobile, with things like Java and bluetooth that the poor-spec stand-in phone lacks – I bravely stepped up and asked for a look at the relevant celly. When the sales assistant (I could have used a more offensive term there, until I remembered that I am, when employed, one myself) brought it out of the case and attempted to plug it in and set it up, the phone failed to switch on. Yup, it was a dud. So I’m stuck again with the shoddy, feature-free sit-in moby until I find another option for replacing it with something similarly affordable but technically less crap. I’d like, for instance, a Java-based browser such that I can return to the quick-in-comparison-to-WAP Opera Mini, through which I was able to access my Twitter and Google Reader on the go. Of course, since the hunt for a suitable handset began, Google Reader has itself announced that it is to be axed later this year, and this news led me to a web-based panic as I hunted maniacally for some way to keep up with my existing newsfeeds in a timely manner without adding to my stress and strain. I had earlier used Bloglines, until that site announced its own closure and I switched to GR; however, it ultimately transpired that the ‘Lines is in fact actually still going under new ownership, though when I attempted to rejoin I found it didn’t function correctly in my big-web browser of choice (Firefox, should you care); eventually, a surviving Twitter pal spotted my tweets of panic and directed me to an online feature from where I’ve uploaded my subscriptions into summat called The Old Reader, which works off the old Google API. Dunno if it works in mobile though, and maybe if I ever get my thumbs on a decent mobile browser I can have a look, but until then my web use – for jobsearch, newsfeeds and communication – has to be crammed frantically into the tiny pockets of time I can get in front of the library PC. So if I’m not on Twitter for two weeks at a time, as was the case recently, you now know why.

I could, of course, unwind after my daytime chaos by spending time in front of the telly once I eventually get home, but even that can be a minefield for the unprepared. And in the fast-changing world of telly, things can change, and schedules can be rewritten a lot quicker than this bloody blog can be. The very day I published my last post, two of the shows I bemoaned most heavily – Animal Antics and Richard Hammond’s Secret Service, the nadir of will-this-do BBC One weekend scheduling – made what was to be their final appearance in the Saturday primetime schedules. Nice timing! Was it my blog that broke the camel’s back? Was it the generally negative reception and poor viewership to blame for their punting into the long-grass? Or was it the Beeb’s plan all along to put these shows out of their misery early in favour of the Six Nations and random celebrity editions of Pointless? Animal Antics episodes, perhaps unwisely, ended with a call to viewers to submit clips for presumably-not-to-be-made future episodes when they did eventually squeak out as the rugby schedule allowed, and just days ago it was confirmed that the remaining unaired (and rightly so) instalments of worthless Beadle-knockoff Secret Service would in fact not vanish altogether, left to sit unaired on a dusty shelf amid much crowing from yours truly, but would in actuality be squeaked out in midafternoon slots, embarrasingly playing second fiddle to the likes of Kung Fu Panda. This effective dismissal indicates Hammond’s viewer-leaking flagship is unlikely to return, though as I pointed out last time the axe will also deprive us of the delectable American funnygirl Kelly-Anne Lyons – I guess I could just punch her name into Google Images and sit there sighing (nothing ruder, I’d be at a public terminal), but that would take up too much of my already-tight internet time. Inversely, a show I praised – ITV2’s imported US sitcom Ben & Kate, from New Girl prodco Chernin Entertainment – has alarmingly been binned. I bloody loved that show, too. Sweet, funny, witty, well-written – all the things that too many TV shows these days, from both sides of the non-Sky atlantic, simply ain’t – and brilliantly acted by a wonderful principal cast – toast them by name: the Will Ferrell-in-waiting Nat Faxon and the sparklingly pretty Dakota Johnson as the title characters, the wickedly comic Brit export Lucy Punch (who with a form of irony is one of the few TV stars these days I don’t want to punch) as nutty BJ (I’ll avoid the obvious joke), the super-slick Echo Kellum as Ben’s at-times-reluctant sidekick Tommy, and the show’s real revelation, the magnificent Maggie Elizabeth Jones as Kate’s beloved daughter Maddie, a strong contender for sweetest, smartest and cutest little girl on imported TV this year, a title she’ll have to battle The New Nornal’s supremely sweethearted Shania (Bebe Wood) for. To their credit ITV2 rattled through the entire series – latterly in double-bills – in the intended Monday 9pm slot without kicking the series into the back of beyond – contrast this with E4’s treatment of homegrown dating contest My Little Princess, which shunted new unaired episodes back from a peak 10pm slot to an admission-of-failure 1am berth, despite heavy promotion (even on Katie Piper’s Twitter page, which suggests some kind of commercial arrangement had been made. Not that it worked either way…) Anyway, let’s hope the finger-burning with its fairly experimental purchase of Ben & Kate doesn’t discourage the reality-heavy ITV2 from buying other sitcoms should the opportunity come up. Otherwise it could be years before I as an individual tune into that channel again – an ITV2 without Ben & Kate is an ITV2 I’ll hardly watch. It’s moot as to whether a berth on E4 rather than ITV2 would have saved B&K – it was cancelled in the US based on its performance on the FOX network, not based on its then-still-only-weeks-old Brit viewership – but E4 seems to be the natural home for this type of show, and indeed the second series of the cute New Girl rocks up there this month (March, if it still is.) Incidentally, Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 (that’s the actual title), an E4 show over here, has also been scuttled in the States, awkwardly yanked partway through its second run, despite the presence of two beautiful, talented actresses – Krysten Ritter and Dreama Walker – in the leading roles, and a self-parodying turn from the former Dawson himself, James Van der Beek, who as it turns out has fine comic tekkers. Apt 23 was a more divisive show – sassier and spikier than, say, Ben & Kate – and it took me a long time to decide whether I liked it or not, but its hole in the schedule will, I fear, be filled with more-of-the-same rather than something really new, on one or plausibly both sides of the pond.

Ben & Kate’s axing doesn’t leave ITV2 entirely without laughs, however. Another US sitcom has joined their roster – Animal Practice, a Scrubs-on-four-legs with sharp zingers, wacky characters, and cute animals, though the presence of beasts in the cast (most prominently the on-the-money monkey Dr Rizzo) has led campaigners to rail against the show online, petitioning the show’s US and international broadcasters, including ours, to snub the series in the belief that coercing animals to act in your sitcom is a form of mistreatment akin to the days of dancing bears. (Of course, it’s probable on that your man Rizzo has a better life, on a knock-for-knock basis, than any of his homo-sapiens costars, but that’s an argument I don’t want to get into…) And, as I’ve already praised Dakota Johnson and Apartment 23’s lady-stars in the above paragraph, I’ll be unable on this occasion to use my blog to say that married-with-a-young-kid actress Joanna Garcia Swisher, who plays Crane Animal Hospital’s chipper chairwoman Dorothy, is really pretty; so, instead, I’ll say the show is really funny and, despite animal-rights naysayers’ fears, well worth a watch while you still can, particularly if you were a fan of the aforementioned human-treating hospital-set series starring Zach Braff. ITV could, of course, commission original British comedy for ITV2. They do have panel show Celebrity Juice, which started as a cheap bit of showbiz fluff and has grown into one of the channel’s biggest shows, even on one occasion outrating the main ITV News, presumably largely because the young Juice target audience are strong adopters of digital technology and use these new means to get their news in, rather than sitting down for a rigid bulletin as their elders would have done. Celeb Juice aside, though, ITV2 hasn’t had original British laughs since the days of radio-based sitcom FM, some seven or so years ago. (I did get to thinking I’d quite like them to have a go at a British version of Ben & Kate, and there is precedent – the no-longer-called-ITV1 main channel in the network has adapted crime drama serial Law & Order for the Brit market in a licenced remake.) Now, though, ITV2 has finally flagged down something fresh for the nation in the shape of Plebs. Will it succeed given its position on a channel which only shows comedy once every eight years? It’s too early to tell, but it’d be nice for the channel to have something other than TOWIE to crow about. The runes aren’t good, though – ITV, it seems, can’t do comedy anymore. There have been hardly any laughs on any of the ITV channels in recent years, even in the late-night slots once home to the likes of Hale & Pace, Spitting Image and The New Statesman, and in a worrying sign a proposed new David Renwick (One Foot In The Grave – the show, not himself) project set to star Robert Webb was spiked after the writer and ITV were unable to agree on a creative direction for the show – Renwick as writer was steering one way and ITV was attempting to rudder the project in a different direction, we hear – which doesn’t fill me with confidence. But maybe one day something smileworthy will come along. The next Ben & Kate is out there somewhere, hidden in some potential scriptwriter’s brain or laptop, and I have to hope that at some point the idea is able to leak out on some petty little channel or other. One sitcom which was sweeter, calmer and more enjoyable than some reports would have you believe was the new Ricky Gervais concept, Derek, which ran on Channel 4 during the period between blogs here, after a pilot last year. Sweetly written and brilliantly played, this showed the ‘good guys’ – Derek and his fellow Broad Hill care-home staff – battling circumstance and a raft of opponents – from uncaring relatives to council bureaucrats – to defend to the hilt the wellbeing and dignity of their precious cargo of residents, turning people to their cause along the way (the episode with once-snotty chav Vicky being brought into the fold and shown how to turn her life around – “I’ve never got ten out of ten for nothing before” – is a highlight). Ever since The Office, Gervais has oft-times been deft at dividing opinion, but here I feel he’s rolled off a good one. The series, if it passed you by while I was away, is up on 4oD and there’s no Ben & Kate style woe for what might have been as a second series has already been given the go-sign – see it in 2014, folks!

Charlie Brooker also returned – not once but twice – in the first quarter, with a second run of the consistently-twisty Black Mirror anthology – again, 4oD is your buddy if you didn’t catch it as-live – which particularly played with viewers’ emotions in the unsettling second section, White Bear – a really suspenseful ride across the mystery-to-horror faultline. Brooker also returned to reignite his much-hailed ‘Wipe-branded critical canon with the sarky-as-ever Weekly Wipe, a show that sent up its own format late on when the not-particularly-well-recieved (if you believe the online debriefs) interview segment added to this series was parodied in the show’s analysis of time-flipping movie Cloud Atlas, where Brooker interviewed alternate versions of himself (“What’s Mrs Brown’s Boys?”). Katie Piper (bet you were wondering when I’d get to shoehorn her in, weren’t you?) is also back onscreen soon as part of a new Secret Millions series, where Lottery funding is being made available to good causes being championed by a suite of C4 stars including our girl, the Secret Millionaire twist being that the participants in the schemes don’t know that the celeb is angling for a Lotto handout. Reports of this series first surfaced when, in an online video interview (for Red Carpet TV, should you be counting), Katie revealed she was participating in a new film for Channel 4 which would be on-air in February; this was backed up by comments on Twitter, but details of the show remained hidden (Katie saying only that the new project was testing for her and would ‘show another side’ of her). February came and went with no sign of the programme in the listings, and I worried either that it had been yanked from the schedule and binned or that I had somehow missed my favoured lady’s latest contribution; I finally calmed down when details of the Secret Millions shows eventually emerged. Good job I didn’t post a blog in between-times, then. Incidentally, some independent producers have claimed recently that Channel 4 is stifling them creatively, according to reports in the media press; the firms claim that C4 execs are being too hands-on about the direction that projects take and are demanding producers use particular staff (I presume this includes onscreen talent), and that the tone and content of shows is being changed at the channel’s whim, sometimes mere hours before broadcast. Indeed, former C4 comedy overseer Shane Allen, now plying his trade at the BBC, admitted his relations with C4 supremo Jay Hunt had been frosty and they frequently disagreed over the channel’s comic direction – Allen, for instance, a strong cheerleader for Frankie Boyle, whilst Hunt wanted him off her screen as swiftly and completely as possible. Now, as I’m no TV insider, I don’t know what angle to take on this – clearly the C4 management are looking to impose a particular ‘house style’, perhaps to make the channel’s shows stand out as distinctive in a crowded media market – but despite the misgivings I can at last say I again watch Channel 4, a station which is at last starting to find its feet after the difficult Big Brother years. Elsewhere, BBC Three has run the commissioned-before-the-first-even-aired second series of baby-making sitcom Pramface, and whilst it was sterling as ever I had to hold myself back from taking it too seriously: for instance, consider Danielle (Emer Kenny), the selfish and stuck-up university buddy of new mum Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson). During the series I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with Danielle and her stubborn refusal to accept the growing gulf between her and Laura which had manifested itself following the changes childbirth had wrought in Laura’s life. But is it that Danielle needs a slap to knock her down off her self-imposed pedestal, or is she actually the victim, at risk of losing her closest confidante now Laura’s moving on? And should Laura accept her motherly fate and cut all ties with Danielle’s crowd, or will maintaining a link to her past life be beneficial in ensuring she doesn’t get too sucked in to her new world and forget where she came from? Certainly, the Laura/Danielle situation gives someone with a giddy-at-best moral compass a lot of mental matter to chew on. Or should I just accept that these people are little more than silhouettes on a screen and not let them drill too deeply into my decision-making matter? I do sometimes engage myself in more moralistic debate than is literally necessary: witness my ruminations over the video for ‘Get Up (Rattle)’ by Bingo Players, a fairly anonymous dance track that elevated itself to number one on the UK hit-parade almost certainly because of its inescapable video, featuring a group of vigilante ducks taking violent revenge on a group of thugs who offed one of their young by hurling a brick into a duckpond during their mindless reign of antisocial thuggery. It’s difficult to know who’s right and wrong in that video – the thugs are truly vile, imbecilic people, who I have no wish to support or endorse, and the ducks were clearly wronged by the louts’ evil thoughtlessness, but the waterbirds then mete out vicious eye-for-an-eye justice, which is not the way we would traditionally operate in an humane society. Most people, confronted by that video, would simply chuckle at the absurdity of the clearly-fanciful scenario and go download the song. I found myself having to change the channel. And given the video was on almost constant loop on numerous music channels for several continuous weeks, the channel-skip button found itself almost smoking through overuse.

I have a history of taking things that happen on TV to heart; that’s why I don’t watch soaps, and why I’m having to dodge, as far as is practicable, the recent blaze in Coronation Street, for instance. I also tend to avoid reality TV; you’ll have seen me previously overreact on blogs and Twitter – probably a bit too excessively, in honesty – to the unwavering chatter about things that have happened on, say, Big Brother and The X Factor, and developing deep hatred of people thereon whose actions should really have had precious little import on me, but which had been given sufficient oxygen to burrow under my skin through the extensive media, press and online coverage of their rolling machinations. Despite my misgivings for these sorts of show, and for those who participate, I have found myself able to chuckle at the pastiche that is Total Drama Island. This Canadian animated comedy series from 2007 comes from the people behind the actually-excellent animation 6teen, which is what drew me towards the show – as I may well have said before, 6teen was a work of genius, funnier and more entertaining than most non-cartoony shows have been over the last few years. Now TDI, previously screened over ‘ere on pay channel Jetix (as was) in 2009, has belatedly fetched up on free-to-air TV – kids’ channel Kix!, as I’m that desperate – and its weeknights-at-7pm scheduling gives me a viable alternative to Emmerdale and The One Show in the slot. I’ve even been trying to avoid spoilers so as not to wreck my enjoyment of the show, though it’s difficult given the number of years that have passed since original transmission and the fanbase the show has online. Despite my limited favour for reality telly I have been able to enjoy picking out the tropes as they present themselves, with a spotters’ eye for the wellworn idioms cribbed from past telecasts, and contrasting the Canadian contestants with participants from our own TV lineage, for instance recognising schemer Heather as the gameplaying Nasty Nick of the piece, tagging dippy blonde Lindsay as the resident Helen Adams/Jade Goody of the island, and noting slender surfer Bridgette is to the animated show roughly analogue to what Big Brother 2002 winner Kate Lawler was to Elstree’s compound. (As you could probably have guessed following my pronouncements on the subject of blondes in earlier posts here, Bridgette has been one of my favourite participants in the contest, even giving rise to an idiom – ‘if you can see a girl ralphing up potato chips all over a talent-show stage and still find her attractive, that’s how you know she’s a keeper…’) The animated series takes on many of the common reality TV themes – from talent contest clapometers to fear-inducing action stunts to slowburning endurance challenges, leading up to the perfectly-played pastiche of the elimination ceremony. One thing that people who watch proper real-life reality TV shows find most enthralling about the concept is seeing the ‘journey’ the participants go on as they evolve, and there have been moments of this in TDI – for instance, seeing the usually cool and controlling Heather quivering as she prepared to take on a sumo wrestler was quite striking, as it showed a different and rare side to her, vulnerable rather than in command. As we approach the later stages of the series, at Kix! pace at least, it’s certainly been more fun than I’d anticipated and it’s one of the few things on telly I actually look forward to. It’s also been fun to spot 6teen cast members popping up vocalising the Total Drama characters; my brother spotted straight away that TDI’s hotshot host Chris shared a voice with 6teen’s skaterboy Jude (Christian Potenza, there), and as soon as Gwen opened her mouth the first thing my mum – yes, my mum – said was “Jen!”. And no, she hadn’t misheard the TDI emobabe’s name. Loving your work, Megan Fahlenbock! Canadian TV’s been pretty good to me lately, as it goes, with Food Network UK picking up the wild Canuck cooking-cum-comedy bit of mayhem Bitchin’ Kitchen, as created and helmed by the spiky, snappy Nadia Giosia, and – in a sign of the times – picked up for a full TV show after an earlier web-based version. It’s certainly very different to much of the Network’s other output, and I’m glad – we need to see more challenging and unique ways of looking at things on telly, at a time when too many channels are content to pour yet more of the same old same old into the often stale and bland brantub that is the TV set.

Meanwhile, some people who have appeared on the often nastier, non-animated reality TV shows, or in our pop charts, have shown encouraging signs that they may be starting to grow up. Jersey Shore’s Snooki – Nicole Polizzi, if you prefer – has previously been best known for drinking, shagging and fighting, often in the same evening, on the bellowy MTV slutfest. Now, though, having earlier become pregnant, young Miss Snooki has given birth to a baby of a boy, named Lorenzo (I can’t complain, I would name my unlikely-to-be-born son Carlton, as previously discussed here), and has reportedly said that becoming a mother has made her “more responsible and less selfish”, or so the media quote her. This has to be a good thing – maybe not for MTV’s viewers, who seem keen to see noisy and tawdry guff on their tellyscreens, but for society – a sensible Snooki would be a far better role model for today’s kids – and most importantly Nicole herself; she’s growing up and learning how to be a stronger, better person now that, rather than living for her own benefit, she’s got someone other than JWoww to be responsible for. It’ll be interesting to see how someone who’s lived a sizeable chunk of her young life in the public eye adjusts to motherhood, and if she takes to it well; I hope she does, as this’ll mean lil’ Lorenzo will have the chance to grow up a strong, intelligent, wise, creative, independent and decent person, and that could go on to be a far greater legacy for Ms. Polizzi to leave than just being remembered as that Wotsit-coloured bird who got into bar brawls on yoof TV. Elsewhere, there are signs that everpresent R&B firebrand Rihanna, who’s recently been best known for her ability to wrap the media round her finger simply by shoving a seminude photo up her Instagram and waiting for the slavish media to cue the fireworks, may also be growing up. I’ve mentioned previously the mediastorm around her some-say unwise reunion with Chris Brown, and the fact that RiRi has forgiven him for his 2009 behaviour before most others, including myself, seem to have; indeed, Brown himself has indicated he’s today a more mature and grown-up chap than he was four years back. Now, though, the Fenty media-circus has spat out a report that the Barbadian singer is planning to settle down and is looking to become a mother at some point in the next five years or so. Whether that’ll calm her workrate and encourage her to take a backseat after seven solid years in the limelight, pumping out an album a year in the process, remains to be seen, but at least her heavy-rotation of hitmaking is building up a nice little nest egg with which she can feather the nursery. Maybe once she’s got a kid to look after, Rihanna will calm down her media image a tad, and take a classy, grown-up direction; it’ll certainly be a change after her saucy, sexed-up style, which is starting to grate after being rubbed in our face for so long. I should also tip the cap here to the R&B star’s decision to launch a clothing collection with British fashion retailer River Island, though I am leaning to assume that the tie-up came about because River Island’s initials, occasionally used in its branding, are RI, and Rihanna’s nickname, as I used above, is RiRi – surely there has to be some connection there? After all, she could’ve tied up with New Look or Monsoon or Topshop… Cynical, ain’t I? But maybe Rihanna will take to motherhood like a duck to vigilantism – witness for instance how formerly-independent woman Beyoncé Knowles has slickly handled the transition into happy wife and mother whilst retaining her urban-contemporary music career, even naming her new live tour “Mrs. Carter” in reference to the family setup she enjoys now Jay-Z has put a ring on it. I should also briefly speak here in defence of Kim Kardashian, who has apparently been subjected to online taunts due to her pregnancy weight-gain. Leave her alone, guys, she’s having a baby. A baby which will, according to reports, have a ‘unique’ name (oh dear), and, we’re told, not necessarily one which starts with K – baby daddy Kanye West apparently suggesting the kid be named North. What the what what? That’d be like me naming my kid Extra… I also hear on the celebby mediavine that Kim’s sister Kourtney, already a mother twice over, is reortedly worried that her body is ‘flabby’ (her words) and taking its time getting back in shape after tot no. 2 – so here I feel I must step in and soothe the lady, advising Kourt to be proud of her motherly figure.

On along the dial to Big Brother now, and the recent weightloss obsession of one Josie Gibson. In January’s post (I really do have to make these more often than bimonthly…) I related my fear-attack on seeing a wall of magazine covers all spinning Josie-related features to plug her post-Christmas weight-shifting DVD, and since then her pounds-dropping has taken a frightening new turn. Whereas Snooki and Rihanna are among those welcoming or preparing to allow motherhood into their lives, your pal Gibbo has said she’s not planning to have a baby, because she doesn’t want the shape of her body to rise again, even with child, after her recent superslimming. This suggests a slight confusion of priorities; Josie’s put her own appearance above the delights, if there are any, of motherhood. (I’m not 100% in favour of maternity, incidentally, because some mothers end up with hairy, unemployable sons who spend their lives barking gibberish on purple blogs and mucking up the family food shop.) Maybe the Bristolian is just really struggling with her body issues, in which case she needs people around her who can tell her she’s beautiful and that she doesn’t need to be so cray cray about her image. The latest rumblings are that Josie is unhappy with her bosom and is looking to have her assets enhanced. If she’s genuinely unhappy with her figure, then it’s not really my place to stop her, and there is precedent, with people approaching doctors for cosmetic treatment in order to lift depressions caused by their physical anxieties. Whilst I won’t dislike someone purely for their enhancements, I am, in general, opposed to people having cosmetic surgery purely for reasons of vanity. However, I’m more willing to give leeway to those who have work done for genuine medical or health reasons. As a for instance, consider Liberty X member Michelle Heaton. Following a cancer diagnosis, Heaton underwent a mastectomy, followed by breast reconstruction. However, the replacement bust she had installed was, for whatever reasons she chose, noticeably larger than that which she had sported before, as depicted in widely-circulated paparazzi snaps, this then leading to abusive online comments being directed at Michelle over Twitter and the like. Now, I’m no fan of cyberbullying – to be honest, nor am I a fan of Liberty X, but that’s by the by – but a balance call is needed here: clearly Michelle has been through a difficult time health-wise and has chosen to make changes to her body primarily with the view of prolonging her own survival, and I’ve no complaints there. But by thrusting her replacement assets into the media spotlight Ms. Heaton has invited the jackals that make their living from web-based mockery to take potshots, even though to do so is fairly vile. Michelle is stung by the snide accusations, but has chosen to remain in the media circus in part because Liberty X are among the bands taking part in the Big Reunion, the not-entirely-necessary ITV2 celebration of late 90s and early 00s chart-pop troupes and its associated tour. Which of course means the media wheel is greased in 360 degrees – the online gibberish about Michelle, whilst not particularly pleasant to see, keeps the programme in people’s minds. But forget ITV2 for a minute, if you can; your primary concern should be for this woman’s wellbeing. She may ‘only’ be a member of some reality-show pop group, but Michelle’s life is more important than any sarky paparazzi-fodder website or weedy digital telly doco would ever be. Be well, ‘Chelle.

Elsewhere in the casserole of music and telly, I’ve afresh been considering the issue of Freeview’s pop channels, and the gap in provision created by both 4Music and Viva chasing the same youthy market with looped comedy reruns, shrill reality conceits and constricted pop playlists heavy on the Bieber, Swift and 1D. Having two near-identical channels seems a bit of a waste, and in my latest unnecessary attempt to analyse the possible solution I looked back at the days of analogue satellite, when again there were only two slots available to music-led channels – in this case occupied by MTV and VH1. Rather than duplicating content, these two services, in their 90s form at least, covered different demographics – MTV the young, fresh, spiky end of the market and VH1 the more mature listener. So, now the old analogue satellites are space-junk (well, actually 19.2 is pumping digital channels into Germany, but you get the idea), how come this more sensible arrangement hasn’t carried forward to the digital platform of today? Well, in part it’s a corporate issue: MTV and VH1, which now form part of a multichannel network on pay platforms, were and are operated by the same corporate entity, Viacom or whatever it’s called this week, and could therefore be run as complementary services rather than cannibalising each other; conversely, Viva and 4Music are fed from rival broadcasters, Viva being Viacom’s free channel and 4Music being spat out by Box TV, the Bauer/Channel 4 venture which also runs a suite of pay-TV music-video channels. Therefore, because both firms want a slice of the lucrative teen market, the two Freeview channels chase the same viewers with directly-competing programming, even though this seems a bit of a waste of space, and shuts out the more mature music and comedy fan altogether, as there’s no provision on Freeview for those who want music and entertainment that’s a little older or less mainstream. Where is the channel for those of us young enough to still like music and laughs, but old enough to remember Vic & Bob, Adam & Joe, Blur and Oasis the first time around? The current situation is complicated, though, by the limited space available on the DTT service: Viacom only hold the one Freeview slot, Viva’s, so can’t yet offer up a VH1-lite for terrestrial viewers. Conversely, Box TV shareholder Channel 4 does occupy several Freeview berths, but these are mostly used for their main network of channels – E4, More4, Film4, and 4seven alongside 4Music – along with timeshifted versions of C4 and E4. These are all C4’s own, though, as a half-share of 4Music is Bauer’s only participation in Freeview TV (though their fleet of radio stations is also provided to DTT’s audio section.) However, the presence of E4 +1 on Freeview does present an opportunity, given that, with limited available capacity, timeshifts add less value to the platform than standalone channels with separate content would (UKTV have realised this, and binned Dave ja vu from Freeview in favour of Really in 2011, and, having then brought the Dave timeshift back up in another slot, will shortly announce what they’ll be doing with this new space permanently.) There is scope for C4 to do something with the library of music and comedy that doesn’t get called upon quite so often on the young-skewing 4Music, including older and less-frequently-heard tunes from across the genres, and in particular those musical styles that don’t get much play on the current stations, particularly heavier rock and dance sounds that won’t sit well alongside Little Mix and Nicki Minaj. In comedy and entertainment, too, C4 has a history of sailing near to the knuckle, and holds a library of edgy shows that, whilst available on 4oD, barely get seen on 4Music, as I’ve listed extensively here before. The removal of E4 +1 wouldn’t daamge Freeview too extensively, as E4 tends to repeat its repeats fairly often anyway, and in turn C4 could widen the remit of 4seven to include E4 and More4 originals as well as C4’s in order to maintain a form of catch-up window. The full E4 timeshift could live on over satellite and cable, where more capacity is available, and the new channel in the freed-up slot could provide real choice and contrast to the content available elsewhere. Maybe the edgy new station, if created, would be similar to UKTV’s much-missed PlayUK, which mixed a curated collection of cross-genre tracks with spiky archive and new comic gems. This’ll in turn free up 4Music to carry on foisting the pretty Kardashians and their showbiz chums upon the schedule. I won’t hold my breath for change, though: almost nothing I’ve said about Channel 4 in the past, either here in public or inside my own mind, has ever been put into action. Incidentally, I’ve also noticed that you can gague how well-regarded a show is within C4, and potentially how likely it is to be brought back, by seeing how long it takes for the show to filter down onto 4Music – so Spaced, Peep Show and Smack the Pony took years to arrive on the channel, whilst C4’s Hit the Road Jack and E4’s US import Napoleon Dynamite were shipped across almost immediately after their initial run. Stand Up for the Week is now being rerun on 4Music, which is a shame because I liked that and would’ve wanted C4 to keep making new editions.

One change that has been made in the sphere of music, though, is the transfer of the bulk of the iconic Parlophone label to the cabinet of Warner Music, after previously having been under the parentage of EMI. The sale was a result of the Universal-EMI merger, as a condition to prevent Universal being uncompetitively large following its swallowing of EMI (the spate of sell-offs has also seen the Sanctuary label shipped across to another major, BMG, and Co-Operative Music and V2 punted to PIAS.) It’s worth pointing out that one of the crown jewels of Parlo’s deck – the Beatles catalogue – will remain with Universal after the deal – though in fairness, no business would let the Fab Four willingly slip through its fingers nowadays, even if Decca did once turn their nose up in the incorrect belief beat-pop was on the way out. But even after the moptops parted, Parlophone, and its sister labels such as Food, were a force to be reckoned with: it was the home of a number of my favourite acts in the early years of my music obsession – Mansun, one of my alltime best-loved acts, were signed to Parlophone for the entirety of their major-label career – and also responsible for some of the big-ticket acts of the Britpop boom (Blur, for instance, were on Food.) Ultimately, the Parlophone name became something of a beacon as my love for music grew. So the news that the label was being relocated was something of a worry, as it presents potential for upheaval for the current repertoire – and it’s also unclear how Uni’s marshalling of the Parlo catalogue will differ from EMI’s patronage. But perhaps the deal’s a sign of the way the music world has changed; EMI was once a giant, a British institution boldly striding the globe, whilst in recent years it’s been on the back-foot as other labels came to the fore, often backed by multinational giants such as Sony of Japan or European businesses like Vivendi or Bertelsmann. In addition, whilst EMI was primarily a music business, many of the rival firms also have or had operations in other media quadrants, with Universal being part of a huge global film and TV operation, Bertelsmann being tied in with pan-European media giant RTL, and Sony being one of the world’s biggest technology firms. Additionally, the shifts in music buying and listening habits have cut a lot of the rug from under the feet of the traditional players: the move to downloading wrecked the labels’ traditional physical-release-based business model, and as the pendulum of popularity swung away from rock and pop towards the urban-beats domination we’ve seen in the charts latterly, it was fleeter of foot rival imprints that stomped all over EMI (world-owning Bajan chanteuse Rihanna, for instance, is signed to Universal-owned Island Def Jam) and left the once-giant British EMI in financial straits. Let’s just hope that once the horsetrading is over and the dust has settled, the music is able to rise above the noise and the industry gets back to scouting quality new artists for the next generation of music fans to adore. Of course, sometimes firms can sell off their assets to other enterprises but, because the branding remains unchanged, the customer isn’t aware of the ownership split; during the late 90s/early 00s, for example, you could listen to a Virgin Records release on Virgin Radio and then buy it from a Virgin Megastore, without realising your transaction had in fact been with three separate entities rather than with Branson alone (Virgin Records latterly owned by EMI and as a result now part of Universal, and Virgin Radio changing hands several times until being rebranded Absolute Radio on shifting ownership in 2008.) Indeed, you could have added a fourth arm to that triad in mid-2007 if you were listening to the radio station through Virgin Media on your formerly NTL/Telewest cable box, though only until the now-gone Megastores became Zavvi later that year.

Somewhere which has been impressing me with the breadth of its musical knowledgebank is, oddly enough, Bexley borough’s main shopping mall. I’m not kidding; if the person who chooses the music for the Broadway Shopping Centre (Bexleyheath’s retail destination) is female, I may well offer to marry her: she, or indeed he, or indeed it, has got quite some taste! In recent weeks, we’ve heard over the PA system a whole range of tunes that suggest someone at Jones Lang LaSalle may well have nicked my record collection while my back was turned: but hey, anyone who can lay on a musical spread stretching from Len’s ‘Steal My Sunshine’ (yes, really) through to Ellie Goulding (two tracks in one afternoon!) is a friend for life. One afternoon not long back, I was sat in the mall munching my lunch, backed, brilliantly, by Shed Seven’s ‘Chasing Rainbows’, and on another day, and I am not making this up, we had Reef. Yes, really, and it was Place Your Hands. Nice job! And it seems the good tunes are now starting to infest further stores in the wider town: whilst harrying around an overlarge superstore on one of my panicky family food-runs, I was able to momentarily feel peaceful and cheerful when I happened to hear, over the voices in my head, Asda FM blasting out actual Haim. What a touch! However, one thing you sadly can’t do in Bexleyheath any more, unless the minimal selection of chart releases stocked in Asda itself tickles your stocking, is buy an actual CD. As you may have heard, HMV stores around the British country have been shuttering their doors as the entertainment trader is downscaled following its recent slump into administration. I related in a large-ish patch of the previous post how my music spend had swung away from HMV in recent years, principally in tandem with the shift of singles to an essentially online-only existence. So, whilst it was gruelling to see it in black and white, it wasn’t a real surprise that Bexleyheath was among the first run of stores in the firing line when the initial tranche of HMV closures was announced by Deloitte. Indeed, so long it has taken me to pen this doggerel, that Nipper’s Bexleyheath premises announced and then conducted its closure within the time it took me to get this message to you; all you’ll see at unit 67 now is an empty shell. Unless it’s re-let by the time you get to read this, which in the current climate is a bit of an eggy reckon. That said, the closure does give scope for a new or relocating trader to take capacity in a fairly sizeable location with steady pedestrian trade that hasn’t been available for lease in nineteen years. Incidentally, I should correct an error in my last blog – the decline of HMV in the Broadway shed doesn’t rob the wider borough of all its music, as Welling still has, at time of writing, the local concern Cruisin Records – established 1974, twenty years before HMV came to the area, though in fairness I tend not to go into Welling of a weekday because there are lots of schools in the area, and travelling by bus into an area where there are likely to be schoolkids technically counts as a form of suicide, or at least it should do. For the HMV range, though, it’s now a bus trip to Bluewater or Bromley which is required, and only Bromley still has an actual choice of record stores, with the Head store I babbled on about in January presumably still plying its trade on the upper Glades. But in Bexleyheath at least, His Master’s Voice has been silenced; and the demise of what was the last big chain retailer of CDs and suchlike did give me pause to recall some of my HMV-based memoirs.

You see, I’ve been a music fan for about as long as Bexleyheath’s had an HMV, though the timing happened to be coincidental. HMV wasn’t the town’s first ever music store – Our Price was in town at least a decade before Nipper set up his stall, and indeed the closure of HMV is, if I recall appropriately, the first point in my lifetime at least that the town of Bexleyheath has been without a dedicated music outlet. But, as I may have said last time out, the timing of HMV’s arrival in Beefy was mint – I was a twelve-year-old aged 12, just starting to find my independent feet having traded up from the red uniform of the walking-distance primary school to the actually-quite-nice navy blue of a bus-travel-required secondary in, yes, Welling. Outside of school time, I’d started to expand my horizons at weekends, popping either into the ‘Heath itself or setting foot more widely out into the neighbouring likes of Woolwich, Dartford and Bromley, to see what was going on in the retail stores. It was OK to do that back then, as it happens; if I tried that sort of span as a teen today I’d probably end up starting some sort of silly postcode war that resulted in hundreds of deaths. I assume. But back in the 90s, travel to outlying areas was a good experience for me, giving me the confidence to spread my stride a little – indeed by 1997 I was wandering off as far as Croydon for kicks, though more recently I’ve been clipping my wings and refocusing mainly on getting to local foodstores for family dinner purchase. Indeed it was on an early trip to Bromley, a short while before the firm’s Bexley outlet went live, that I had my first experience of HMV, unless you count super-occasional family trips to the West End during my younger years, which would often include a pop into one or more the firm’s big-city enormostores. Whilst the HMV in Bromley wasn’t on the scale of the big London sites, it was – and technically still is, it’s still open – pretty big compared to the pokey little Our Price outlets I’d previously hit up for tuneage in DA6, DA1 or SE18, or even those in BR1 itself (although even Bromley’s Glades Our Price – now subsumed into Superdry – was bigger and prettier than the norm, before falling on its sword such that a Virgin Megastore could come to town.) But the HMV was a revelation – two floors! This was la vita bella! So my expectations were pretty high when, in the November month of 1994, the curtain went up on what HMV had managed to squeeze into the former Miss Selfridge site next to Superdrug in Bexleyheath’s indoor mall. And, whilst not quite the equal in size of Bromley’s majestic outlet, Bexleyheath’s HMV was still the bum duffer when it came to entertainments. A mezzanine, carried over from when Miss Selfridge welded in a false upper floor to house posho sister brand Wallis, gave HMV a whole level dedicated, initially, to classical/’specialist’ music and VHS videos – with far more choice of tapes than the weedy wall display of vids the tiddly Our Price could squeeze in, though I should admit the floor on HMV’s mezza was always a little wonky and slightly worrying to walk on unless you knew where the weak and dippy bits were, and this was something that never got corrected in nearly two decades. Also, the cramming-in of a faux second level into the available retail floor meant that, for those of us who stood above six foot, the upper section was always a bit of a claustrophobic experience. On the ground floor, initially, were albums, videogames, and an initially huge singles department – most of one side wall for new stuff and the chart, plus a huge catalogue of recent releases, which Our Price couldn’t hope to provide on anything like the same scale. This was, quite simply, the full works, and an eye-widening experience for someone whose choice had initially been the far narrower range Our Price could squeak into its given slot. I’d been excitedly counting down to the big store’s arrival in town, but it transpired that on the weekday HMV’s Bexley concern was publically opened, I was in school. So, I missed most of the launch fuss – apparently Neil “Dr” Fox, the radio DJ who presented pop music shows on the wireless, had been in attendance at the ribbon-cutting, along with the then-current Nipper, and for no immediately explicable reason, costumed representatives of Fred Flintstone and Dino, but most of these star-billing guests had shipped out by the time I stopped by in the mid-late afternoon. But despite missing the launch hubbub, the arrival of HMV in my endz was a huge deal – it meant I had access to a much wider range of material than before, and was able to really develop as a music fan – if I heard a track on, say, the Evening Session then I could be fairly sure that at least one of the audioshops in Bexleyheath would now be able to supply me with it. (I didn’t snub Our Price completely once HMV came along, and during the six-year period we had both available, I often paddled between the stores to get the complete view of current products and prices.) Indeed, I’m sure the HMV staff became pigsick of my infrequent ‘list visits’ – popping in with a bulletlist of upcoming releases I’d heard, and wanting to know when (or in some cases if) they’d be made available to me to buy. Such was the breadth of my taste, sometimes even the mighty HMV computer would shrug and suggest ‘dunno’ when confronted with a track I knew and it didn’t.

Whilst my first-ever single purchase was from an Our Price store – regular readers will by now know what it was and the street address and current occupant of the store in question – I did soon fall into the habit of scoping out HMV’s chartwall for the latest cassingles, and when, a couple years down the line, we reached a point where most things were coming out on CD but not cassette, I belatedly made the jump to the compact disc, buying (from the family pocket) my first little player, and also my first silver disc – a Shanice single, picked up unheard from HMV’s 99p rack mostly to give me something to set up my new device with, and bought over and above the other options on display because I’d enjoyed ‘I Love Your Smile’ a few years previously. (It was the 90s, sue me.) In time, CDs would become the bulk of my collection, and my final cassettes were bought around 2000 (the week ‘More Than Us’ by Travis came out, if you recall it), in a week that my CD player had packed in and was awaiting repair or replacement. I also took advantage of catalogue singles being available in the early years – after picking up Mansun’s Two EP in the store around the time of its release, presumably having heard Lammo playing ‘Take It Easy Chicken’ on the Sesh, I was able to then interrogate the back-cat for the group’s first Parlophone release (‘Egg Shaped Fred’ on the One EP), and these two singles set me on course to become a long-time fan of the band, Mansun becoming one of the few acts for whom I would rush down to the stores on the day their albums were released, such that I could get my hands on their longplayers without excessive delay (contrast that with many of the other acts in my purview, whose albums would often have to wait for birthdays, Christmas or the sales before I’d have them in hand.) HMV stores were also known for holding instore performances, though this all but stopped at most sites after a store-wrecking riot when Destiny’s Child pitched up at a London facility; with this, and with the ‘Heath always being some way down the company pecking order, the only stars who ever came in were cheap Eurovision acts – first Love City Groove and, later, Deuce. And this was late-period Deuce, by which point they no longer had the original blonde. OK, so given one of the Bexleyheath store’s alltime highlights involved ruddy Love City Groove, one would have to question whether the store was actually so great at all! But it outlived all pretenders to its throne – the Our Price whose lawn HMV had comprehensively parked on was ripped out in 2000 and replaced with the opticians you’ll see in unit 5 to this day, local indie outlet TW Records was pulled down for Broadway Square’s erection – and Nipper became the borough’s go-to for the big releases. Over the years the mix and presentation of stock changed – DVD came in, initially as a sidecar to VHS before ultimately absorbing the whole visual-media space, whilst singles were whittled down to a smaller wall, then got shoved upstairs and shrank further, until just a tiny stand remained, and ultimately the supply evaporated entirely – the move which led me to reluctantly turn my back on HMV and begin purchasing MP3s online. The move to web-based CD and download retail saw HMV’s space devoted to music decline, as T-shirt showroom ‘The Studio’ was squeezed into the lower level, and eventually, in a sign that the decline of the audio disc was terminal, the biggest swap-around in the store’s history was enacted: the entire CD section, and games, were punted to the mezzanine such that DVDs, Blu-ray, tablet computers and iPod docks could occupy the ground floor, and this was the way it remained until the shutters were coming down. The move of music purchases, including mine, to the online space meant I contributed to the death of HMV: I wasn’t a massive spender anyway, but over time I was spending less time and money in the store, and even in their price-scything closing down sale I struggled to find things I wanted to buy, given that most of the stuff I would’ve wanted in fact had, at some point in the preceding 19 years, ended up in my collection, and my financial tightness prevented me from having a proper, carefree, balls-to-the-wall farewell spend-up. However, in my desperate need to name something I could list as the ‘last record I ever bought from HMV’, in Bexleyheath at least, I resorted to raiding the remaining pre-owned CDs for a stash of easily-affordable second-hand glories, though even here I managed to make a balls-up: on spotting ‘Revolt’ by 3 Colours Red among the second-fiddle selection, I grabbed the opportunity to own the rock longplayer, only to realise on getting home that I had in fact already bought or recieved a copy of ‘Revolt’ some years previously! Whilst rooting through my CD bags to confirm my 3CR error, I spotted that I’d also somehow, and without any deliberate attempt to, managed to gain two separate copies of ‘Homegrown’ by Dodgy at various points in time, one of which was purchased for a quid when the library was flogging off some of its no-longer-in-huge-demand discs. Looks like my memory blanks have been going on longer than I can remember! Indeed, HMV proves that leaving stuff I’d bought at the till isn’t a 2013 phenomenon: I’ve been ‘reverse shoplifting’ in HMV several times, paying the stated price then walking out of the store without my purchase with, on one or more occasions, staff leaping out from behind the desk to hare after me and hand my purchase over! I really am no good at this shopping thing…

HMV is, sadly, far from the only retailer to have pulled the doors down on its DA6 activities, though – in parts of Bexleyheath virtually every other store is vacated and unoccupied. This town is, I fear, coming like a ghost town. In addition to HMV, the collapse of tangible entertainments also claimed another scalp when Blockbuster bolted from their outlet, whilst Millets – which survived the collapse of Blacks Leisure and the slimmed-down chain’s rescue by JD Sports, surviving long enough to get a mention here (in ‘Slattern on t’internet’, wherein someone was looking here for information on ‘Millets in trouble’) – has now decided its Bexleyheath outdoor-store is, in fact, surplus to any requirements and is thus now an empty store, adjacent as it happens to the ghost of the former Hawkin’s Bazaar. Santander have locked one of the three outlets they were left holding in Broadway when they rebranded Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, and in a move which distressingly erases a chunk of my own retail history, the branch of the British Heart Foundation (calm down, it’s a charity) I worked at in a 2003 jobcentre placement has vacated its premises, just weeks after the electrical retailer next door also bolted, leaving, if I’ve counted correctly, the startlingly-upmarket Bang & Olufsen as the sole provider of non-Argos tellies to the Heath. (The earlier collapse of Peacocks, incidentally, and a prior scaling-back of duplicate Welling stores by Cancer Research UK, means the first three shops I worked or did placements at when my ten year – on and mostly off – retail career began are now all closed, albeit years after I left them. Shame.) But for a once-bustling commercial centre like Bexleyheath, the large number of what is known in the industry as ‘voids’ surely has to be a cause for concern. Particularly to supposed retail industry workers like me – if no shops are opening, where am I going to work? And even if I were to get a job, where would I buy stuff from if there’s no shops left for me to exchange my meagre pay for consumer durables in? This isn’t just a Bexley problem, either, as I’m led to believe, and even those solutions which do get put forward don’t appear to be working: I read a recent report that only about 7% of a fighting fund set up in the wake of Mary Portas’ high-street review has actually been paid out, and mostly on short-term stunts like snow machines. (With this slap in the business face, and the news that C4 isn’t recommissioning Hotel GB, it must be a pretty sucky time to be Ms. Portas right now.) Incidentally, the lack of anything which could be considered ‘shops’ isn’t the only problem in Bexleyheath’s pot just now: a major scheme of roadworks is sodding up the Broadway and surrounding roads for much of this year (they claim it’ll be better once it’s finished, and perhaps someone who’s alive in 2014 can report back on whether that was a correct prediction), with the upheaval making it near impossible to get into, out of, around, across or through the town. And closing the bus stop nearest Asda, throwing further spanner into my already fractious food-runs. That stop near Asda, and the currently ripped-up-for-roadworks area around Albion Road, were the scene of part of one of the town’s worst incidents of recent years, which since I Iast spoke among you has concluded with a conviction. You’ll recall the case of Nicola Edgington, the dangerously ill individual who, after her pleas for mental health attention went ignored by police and NHS staff, descended upon Bexleyheath like some kind of sick hawk on a vicious mission. Buying a knife from that vile Asda store (the one that would later play Haim while I was in there, keep up), Edgington first attacked a young woman sitting at the then-operational bus stop, and this victim bravely disarmed the attacker, suffering injuries in the process. Her business unfinished, sicko Edgington then pelted across the not-at-this-point-uprooted Broadway to a butchers’ shop (which has, sadly, somehow survived the butchery of Bexley’s retail stores and is still somehow open for trade at time of writing), and stole a meat-cutting knife from the premises, before belting down to the Albion Road junction and violently near-beheading a grandmother on her way to work. A truly vile point in our borough’s history – we even made the front page of one of those gawpy weekly women’s life-story magazines, under the header ‘Beheaded by the supermarket psycho’ (their words, not mine, in this case), and the scene is one I have to revisit at least weekly, as I walk down the remaining undrilled parts of the Edgington-sullied pavement, dodging heavy plant and, come the afternoon, schoolkid crowds on my way to and/or from my various local appointments. The other day, thanks to a combination of a resited bus stop, a partly-closed pavement and a large afternoon crowd, I found myself having to walk directly past – as in virtually on top of – the butchers’ outlet that Edgington nicked her latter weapon from. I had to physically restrain myself from despoiling the meat in some manner, as some kind of misguided protest against the murderer’s actions. At least I can console myself that, unlike some companies’, their beef probably isn’t actually horse flesh masquerading as bovine. And at least one of those who is not mentally fit to walk the streets is finally caged, though I fear if some kind of campaign was wrought and all mentally ill people were summarily swept off the streets of Bexley, the area would be even emptier of customers than it is now. Ah hell, if such a cleansing were to happen, I’d likely be one of the first people rounded up and sent to the brig, with this very blog used as evidence against me!

The news loop doesn’t stop turning at the boundaries of Bexleyheath, though, and the world has played host to all manner of bad times in the eight or so weeks since I last did one of these. That means I’ve had a lot of nasty stories on file to get upset about, and I’ll try and rattle through them as quickly as I can, for your benefit more than mine. Let’s start, once again, in the world of music and entertainment. Going to music events can be a good way to socialise, and indeed there have been times I’ve regretted not getting out onto the gig-and-club scene more often. However, the live-music universe can be dangerous and indeed fatal, as was proved when a Brazil nightclub hosting a gig burned down – reportedly as a result of the use of pyrotechnics in the band’s show – with the deaths of hundreds of revellers, one of the biggest mass tragedies to hit the music circuit in recent times. A member of the band, presumably the one who came up with the idea of using fireworks indoors – was among those arrested in connection with the grim event. Elsewhere, the collapse of a metal door at a Guildford music venue claimed the life of a member of Port Isaac’s popular seafaring song-group Fisherman’s Friends, who had been due to perform there that night, along with the group’s tour manager. But perhaps the most striking musical loss of the last couple months, though, has been that of Mindy McCready. The blonde vocalist had enjoyed a run of country-pop success in the years prior to Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, but in recent times had been through the mill, suffering significant volumes of personal tragedy and wellbeing problems, ultimately apparently shooting herself on the porch, reportedly also the scene of her latterday partner’s earlier suicide. I think we can all agree it’s been a devastating time for Mindy’s family, and when I heard of the problems and worries she’d been suffering from, I was reminded of my earlier musings here on the death of Amanda Todd, namely that I felt someone could and/or should have been there for her. Maybe if someone had been able to proffer comfort and support to the singer, she would have been in better spirit – had Ms. McCready had someone to turn to who could help ease the burden of her troubles, maybe she wouldn’t have felt the need to reach for the pistol. I know how being alone and unaided feels, as I have to go through most days without any assistance, and it is a weakening experience. But I also know the value of having people to talk to – in my case, the fine folk I used to talk to on Twitter before my previous phone fried. Whilst I’ve never been a huge country fan – Mindy would have been unlikely to mount a serious challenge to Mansun for space in my CD sack – her death did shake and sadden me, as it was so unnecessary – it saw the sad loss of someone who clearly still had the potential to give much joy to the world had she succeeded in resuming her songbird career. Had Mindy had the right support in fighting her demons, she could have rebuilt her spirit and perhaps found solace and salvation in her music, as so many other artists have done, and she wouldn’t have been driven to extinguish her light at far too young an age. Still, what’s done cannot be undone, and I hope this beautiful lady is at last at peace after the much-reported mayhem that her life became. More recently, the chattering pages have been chewing on the news from Twilight actress Ashley Greene, who lost a beloved pet dog in a blaze which destroyed her West Hollywood condo. Whilst Greene and her human companions escaped the chaos unharmed, and the star is, one presumes, unlikely to be left without a roof on her head for long thanks to her connections, it must be devastating to witness a loved and loyal chum perishing in such agonising circumstances. Whilst Greene is in theory as likely to suffer a destructive house fire as any other man on the street, Ashley’s fire does threaten to cue the oft-asked question, just what has she done to deserve this? Oh, right, Twilight. Jokes aside, though, here’s hoping those around her can provide the support she will need to get back to her feet as quickly as feasible, and that she always remembers her pooch fondly.

In what is all too often a traumatic world, the youth and young people of Britain have been particularly hard hit in the past few weeks, with massively too many people to mention losing their lives or facing severe injury in needless accidents, deliberate attacks and chance circumstances. We’ve seen a 17-year-old showjumper killed in a fall from her horse. We’ve seen two British girls lose their lives while on ski trips: a ten-year-old clattering into a tree and subsequently a 13-year-old plummeting from a skilift. We just recently appear to have had a 14-year-old mauled to death by vicious dogs in a residential property. We’ve also seen quite simply masses of road crashes with fatal consequences: a pall was cast over the south-east when a 20-year-old woman perished in a Swanley-area collision, and this was just the tip of the iceberg: from a 22-year-old man in Salford to a 24-year-old nurse in Scotland, the news seemed to prove almost daily that British roads are not and seemingly will never be a safe place to be. Particularly troubling was the death of Hampshire’s wannabe firefighter Jade Clark, at just 16 years of age, when her moped (yes, they still have those) came into collision with a Kentish man’s car in Dorset: a shame that this lady, who had wanted to go on to help save lives, has instead lost her own. You don’t even have to be behind the wheel to be at risk; watching motorsports isn’t safe, either, given the fatal crash of a competing car into spectators at the Snowman Rally. But I’ve been drawn in particular toward several notable traumas for those travelling on two wheels, with two significant and saddening cycling-tinged tragedies in the last few weeks: one was the case of a married couple, who had been struggling to start a family, being killed in a hit-and-run whilst riding a tandem, when the car involved in the collision refused to stop for police. The criminal slime who wiped out this loving couple is beneath contempt. I guess we should at least be thankful that the otherwise-dispiriting failure of their attempts to concieve means that, in this case, there aren’t children being left orphaned, which would be immesurably worse still. Meanwhile, out in Thailand, a British couple who had been on an epic round-the-world cycle quest, chronicling their adventures in an online blog (a bit like what this is, except presumably better-quality and with less stuff about Mansun and Bexleyheath) were needlessly slain by a lorry, as apparently the driver wasn’t paying sufficient attention. A great shame that their grand opus will never be completed, and a crying indictment that people who were trying to do something huge and challenging with their lives are wiped from this planet whilst the lazy sods who just bum around Essex getting drunk, laid and filmed get to crack on with their lives as though nothing’s happened. And, of course, a great shame that their blog will sit unfinished gathering web-dust whilst far more useless sites, such as this mauve nonsense, continue to bash out their screed. But regardless of this snobbishness, it’s certainly been a tough time for all concerned, and far too many lives have been wiped out needlessly. Clearly still not enough is being done to make the roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and road users in general; every month or so I bellow for change and yet every month or so I have more deaths to record in this blog. But still nothing is done, which proves if nothing else that I am genuinely powerless to effect change.

There have also been numerous tales emerging over the recent months of vicious and needless attacks against the person. Perhaps it could be I’m more sensitive to the subject in the wake of a certain Channel 4 documentarian’s sulphuric wounding, but there have been a couple of recent news pieces relating to acid attacks. Bolshoi ballet artistic director Sergei Filin was burned in an incident which cast light on the internal political and artistic rows crippling what was once a prestigious ballet company; questions about the true facts and motive of the attack continued to circulate, with a fug added to the debate by we in the west’s traditional position of taking stories emanating from the former Soviet bloc with a pinch of salt. Many rumours and theories were batted back and forward during the weeks after the attack, and had this blog been updated at any point during the period I may well have swallowed one or more of them and regurgitated it here – at one point questions were being asked in some quarters as to whether the attack had actually even happened at all! Ultimately, a Bolshoi dancer was reported to have confessed to the attack, although it’s still unclear if this confession was voluntary or state-sponsored. Doctors say there is a chance they may be able to salvage some aspect of Filin-san’s sight; however, the deep wounds in the dance organisation which this case has revealed to the world suggest this isn’t a story which will go away quickly, and it’s likely myth and rumour will continue to swirl around the case for many months to come. Back on this side of the iron curtain, though, the shadow of acid violence crept back closer to home with the story of Naomi Oni. This case saw a young woman apparently being scarred with acid by a veil-wearing attacker who, we’re told, pounced as Naomi got off a bus close to her Dagenham home when returning late one night last December from work at a Westfield Stratford lingerie store. Yep, another story about one of my fellow shop-droids, but bear with me. After Naomi went public with her tale, revealing her injuries in news reports having spent the opening weeks of the year in hospital, some people began to question how such savagery could raise its head on our streets, but others instead quizzed the veracity of Ms. Oni’s story – it was suggested at one point that CCTV footage didn’t seem to show any trace of the veiled aggressor, and some voices even suggested the victim had attacked herself in, one can only presume, a misguided bid for fame. Katie Piper was, perhaps inevitably, dragged into the reportage almost from the off, and when it was suggested that Naomi had looked up Piper-related material on t’internet prior to her wounding, fuel was added to the rumour and gossip surrounding the case. Naomi herself strongly denied these comments were legitimate in a highly-charged appearance on ITV’s This Morning, but as the legal case is apparently ongoing I will hold back from making a personal judgement one way or another until the truth, or at least what is recorded as the truth, is made unequivocal. It’s a sad story either way: if Oni genuinely was the victim of abuse, it’s shocking that someone could carry out such violence on our streets; conversely, if she in fact turned the acid onto herself, it’s a damning indictment on how low people could be prepared to sink to get their name in the papers. Either way, Naomi’s got a recovery mountain to climb: from Katie Piper’s case, of course, we should all by now know how difficult and lengthy the road back from such violent assault can be; however, as I’ve probably said before, Katie is a good example of how to rebuild your life and move forward positively, as Katie has used her experiences to build something which can help others, through her books, TV shows and charity work. (In response to the perhaps inevitable post-Oni wave of Twitter comments in her direction, Ms. Piper confirmed that her charitable foundation was in contact with Naomi’s handlers, but refused to divulge anything further on the matter, citing confidentiality.) I should also state here that I’ve also recently watched the Oscar-winning documentary Saving Face, thanks to a Channel 4 screening thereof; if you’re yet to view the film, it’s worth sniffing out. It follows Mohammad Jawad – the surgeon who rebuilt Katie Piper’s face in a first-of-its-kind treatment – as he travels to Pakistan to offer treatment to just some of the hundreds upon hundreds – and sadly that’s not an exaggeration – of women who fall victim to acid violence annually. We really do live in a sick world where people use irreversible chemical abuse as a means of controlling and belittling those around them. I can do little individually to stop the tide of acid, but perhaps if I mark my disapproval strongly enough, someone somewhere may one day listen. If you find the remains of this blog orbiting the planet in some form of capsule in 4000 years’ time, be sure to let my descendants, if any ever deign to exist, know how we’re getting on in the ironic but necessary, and seemingly endless, battle against violence, abuse and assault.

For some reason, teenage girls have been a target for abuse and attack in recent months, and it really does have to stop: there is nothing more a shame than a young life being snuffed out or changed forever before the lady concerned has had chance to really blossom and make her mark on the world. We covered moped crash victim Jade Clark above, but she wasn’t the only sixteen-year-old to be slain in recent months. Perhaps one of the most shocking and unspeakable news developments of early 2013 was the discovery of the body of a teen who had been stabbed and then set on fire in a Blackpool alley; and the chilling danger which presents itself every time one risks bus travel reared its head once again with the stabbing of Christina Edkins, a teen whose only crime was apparently trying to get into school of a morning; she was knifed whilst on a bus, apparently in a random attack by someone she’d had no prior connection with. Having travelled via omnibus since my own schooldays, and even now undertaking thousands of bus journeys a year in the mad scrabble for work and food, I know how horrible bus journeying can be – when you’re on a bus, you’re essentially trapped in a confined and irritating space with often the very worst and most infirm in society; and the chance that one may be interrogated – or worse – by someone with limited mental wellness often stands at a very high level. It seems you’re not safe anywhere – you can be stabbed to death for no reason just for being on a bus (see Edkins) or walking in Bexleyheath (as per Edgington) – it seems one has got to go through life looking over the shoulder, as the flashing blade could be seconds away at any moment, and just getting through the day is a dangerous and risky sport. A truly shocking US case that got news traction lately was the sexual assault of a drunken teenage girl by players from a student sports team. Whilst the girl, it could be argued, had put herself at risk by losing control of her inhibitions, the far-from-sporting sportspeople were way out of bounds when they took advantage of her, and the humiliating sexual attack should not have taken place. In a Black Mirror script come chillingly real, many of the onlookers were more interested in photographing and videoing the unfolding humiliation and assault rather than stepping in to help the victim. And when the case came to be probed, police were frustrated by the lack of support they recieved from students, parents and teaching staff – there were rumblings that some in the hierarchy were trying to sit on the case in order to protect the successful-on-the-field sports team from being brought to book. Clearly more needs to be done to educate young people in the appropriate way to treat others. More education, too, is needed in developing countries on how to treat women – witness the case of the British woman, the same age as me (31, keep up), who leapt from a second-storey hotel window in Agra after apparently being propositioned by a massage-oil-toting hotel manager apparently keen to take advantage of his guests in the early hours of the morning. What a liberty. In amongst all the new news, meanwhile, just recently a couple of stories I’ve warbled about in the past have reached a new stage and thus required filling-in. The nurse earlier cleared of saline tampering at the vile Stepping Hill hospital has – having moved to work at an unrelated care home – been struck off the register following her conviction for stealing opiates and painkillers from the ‘Hill during her time there, the tribunal dismissive of her suggestion that other staff also feathered their nest with pilfered pills. And, still on care homes, Castlebeck, the firm behind the now-shuttered Winterbourne View, where Panorama unveiled abuse of residents by staff, has followed HMV’s lead: no, it’s not selling music, it’s collapsed into administration. Whilst the potential closure of Castlebeck makes me smile as it forms a sort of revenge for the Winterbourne crimes, the move has created concern and confusion for those housed in the company’s other premises, who are now living in fear that their sanctity and safety is at risk until a new investor comes forward to secure their future. Having watched Derek I maybe have a view of the other side of the debate – how difficult it can be for care facilities to keep the standards high when budgets are limited and staff are stretched – so let’s hope that some solution is found that will allow the people whose lives have been put at risk by the vile Castlebeck during their reign of terror can ultimately find peace and happiness with their new provider.

It is possible to bounce back from tragedy and disaster, as some recent reports have been able to show: yes, sometimes there are tiny chunks of glimmering light among the darkness, and perhaps I need to get better at finding and clinging onto these. Of course, Katie Piper’s a positive example of turning negatives into positives, but she cannot remain my sole touchstone and I need to seek out non-Piper good news. To that end, stories which have bubbled up into my radar in recent months include the continued artistic success of one Josie Russell. In childhood, Josie was left for dead following a sickening attack in Kent in which her mother and sister were slaughtered; however, she survived and, following surgery and therapies, moved out to Wales with her father. Josie developed an interest in art following her recovery and relocation, and, after going to university, the now-adult Josie has recently held her first solo exhibit of her artwork. Here’s someone who is moving forward and pushing ahead with her future: she doesn’t want to be known as Josie the attack survivor, she wants to be known as Josie the artist, and whilst our supergrim media world means her past will never be fully obscured, hopefully she can continue the huge progress she’s made and really make a mark in her chosen field – rising above the chaos to stand proud as an arts-world fixture would be the ultimate way to show those who would do wrong that their evil can never truly succeed. Hopefully Ms. Russell’s wish to further develop her career goes well and further positive opportunities will present themselves boldly and firmly unto her life. Elsewhere, the ghoulish shadows of the 2011 riots continue to lift. I’ve spoken here before of the rebuilding works which have been undertaken in the parts of my ‘hood most closely affected by the chaos – the Great Harry lives! – but recently two other premises which had been destroyed in that four-day crimewave returned to trade: an Ealing convenience store’s reopening drew plaudits from the retail press, the independent outlet having been shuttered for nearly eighteen months after being wrecked in the outrage; then, mere days later, a store which became something of a posterchild for the devastation, Battersea’s very own Party Superstore, returned to its original berth following extensive rebuilding works. The wreckage of the partywear firm’s home was one of the more heavily circulated images of the aftermath, and whilst the company had been able to resume trading from temporary locations in the wake of the destruction, the return to their permanent outlet is a big sign that rioters won’t be able to ruin our high streets, as the truly strong of heart will find some way to get their stores back. And if there’s one thing retail needs right now, it’s confidence. Of course, the high street is entirely capable of ruining itself, as HMV and Blockbuster show, but after month upon month of shop closures it’s good to actually have an opening to report, particularly one as hard-fought-for as the Superstore’s. Nearer my neck of the woods, one shopping centre could be set for a new lease of life: the former job centre neighbouring Orpington’s Walnuts shopping complex is to be pulled down to allow a cinema and new stores to be developed alongside the current mall. Orpington’s been fairly underinvested in recently, much of the attention in the last few years being on the more recent edge-of-town Nugent Retail Park, which, incidentally, is, like Bexleyheath, losing its HMV. The new stores up the Walnuts will, though, provide improved employment opportunities for the south-east – it’s possible that, when the new stores on the old jobcentre site are let out, that I’ll be able to wedge my hat into the ring for work positions therein, and it is a cheering irony that the loss of a job centre has created an opportunity to apply for jobs! So maybe I too will be able to bounce back from the misery and strain that my life has become over recent months and years. OK, so I can’t bounce – the state I’m in, I can barely walk in a straight line, never mind project myself across directional vectors – but I have to believe things will improve. Yes, the retail world’s in a murky place at the moment, and retail rank-and-files like me are about as in demand at the moment as flameproof fag-lighters, but Orpington’s development shows there are opportunities to reshape our towns for the future. Bexleyheath’s getting a new Tesco and possibly neighbouring shops in a couple years when the current Civic Offices are pulled down and their staff relocated; that too is something to keep a bit of a tabs on, one presumes.

There will always be developments, new ideas and emerging talents to keep an eye on. When I get the chance to sit down for a while, and get the rest I badly need to stop my head spinning, I’d like to listen out for some of the new musical talent being groomed for the hit parade by the likes of 6Music – maybe I need to rebalance my schedule so that, whilst not cutting back on my jobsearch or derelicting my home duties, I get to weed out more time for things I find fun. As I’ve said, I haven’t had a holiday in an age and clearly need to rest my weakening brain and body. I also need to keep at least part of an eye on the sporting calendar to build on the fondness I now have for the mostly positive role models I found for the nation when I watched the Olympics and Paralympics: for instance, another name has added itself to my internal library of cyclists to keep a watching brief on, as the already-crowded lineage of wheel-based winners has notched up another name thanks to championship gold-medallist Becky James, whose rapid rise up the cycling ranks means we won’t be short of bike-straddling heroes now that the ever-lovely Victoria Pendleton’s stepping back from the saddle. I’ll hold myself back from saying too many nice things about Ms. James, however, as her boyfriend’s an actual real rugby player and I don’t particularly fancy losing my nose. (To be fair, Joanna Garcia Swisher’s fella is a sportsman too…) So, instead I’ll sit back and cheer on the continuing development of British sporting pluck, try not to get too broken down by our representatives’ defeats and simultaneously try not to crow too unsportingly about our large-scale victories (even if we have just steamrollered the oppo eight-nil!) In life, there will be victories and failures, as my jobsearch shows (admittedly that’s mostly failures, but bear with it), and those who are able to rise above the trouble and climb up the ladder most strongly and confidently deserve the associated reward, whether that be successfully obtaining a retail job in southeast London, scoring the top podium in a national cycling contest, exhibiting one’s artwork in a Welsh gallery, or successfully avoiding marshmallow-based elimination from an animated Canadian reality contest. So perhaps I’d better step back from churning out gubbins I’ve been sitting on for the past two months and push on with trying to better myself. At least if I do that, I might one day be able to earn a better phone and thus be able to get back to communicating with y’all two ways on Twitter. Which would be an improvement. Of sorts. Anyroad, I’m offski: see you next time, you Regency clod!

“You’re gonna end up with chocolate scrambled eggs, the breakfast of twits!” (Goodbye!)

“I don’t want her first words to be ‘big metal bellend’!” (Hello!)

Bonjour! It’s the start (just about) of a new year, and time for this oaty barge to fly once more, as this fetid writer returns with prose anew. Yup, the big wheezy ones are back for a new string – though maybe, to spare my own mind and yours, this year they’ll be broken up with more mini-gubbins that’ll hopefully give this place a more inviting feel; I recognise that, thus far, this purple babble has been in parts too grey and miserable. But maybe that’s who I’ve become: I had, in my past and recent years, genuinely wanted to be a nice guy, but life it seems didn’t have that plan for me. Maybe my gloomy feelings over recent weeks have been further overcast by the wintry conditions – lengthy periods of darkness and wet, cold weather conditions have had a horrendous impact on my mind and body. There have been moments of brightness amid the gloom, as you’ll hear over the course of the next hours, but I’m certainly at a low ebb, at least physically, and as ever in these situations I’m worried I’m nearer the end of life than the start. But then maybe getting out here the worries and issues I’ve had playing on my brain since before Christmas would be therapy enough to keep my spirits going for a shade longer. So here goes: another big fatty sandwich of problems, solutions and observations that only a very few of the hardiest souls could ever tackle in one session. Just be assured it’s as difficult to write, if not more so, than it is to read. Seriously, these buckers take ages. RAT BRIDGE!

So yes, my mind and body are in a ridiculous state. If you’ve been following these vague diatribes for a while, you’ll know that my insides are, in honesty, a bit shoddy, and all the internal and external stress and pain I’m in is also having a huge impact on my brain. I’m starting to become very forgetful, and that’s becoming a great risk to the health and safety not just of myself but also others as a result. For instance, when preparing dinner for myself and my brother I’ll sometimes have a short-term mind-blackout and forget whereabouts in the microwave sequence I am, and have to think back to determine as best I can what the remaining required time is. Thus far, I’ve always been able to get it right, but there is a danger something will get overcooked or undercooked if I don’t get my chamber in order. I’ve been forgetting where I put stuff almost as long of my life as my hands have had the wherewithal to grip at all, but it’s getting worse by the week (witness phone-case-gate), and my brief time online is rarely complete without my forgetting one of the things I’d taken to the web to do in the first place, only realising the error when it was too late and having to return to the net later to pick up on it. (The stress of having a cheap clonky phone which can’t do t’internet properly adds to the strain, too, as its stumpy access only increases the pressure on those limited periods when I do have access to the full web). Most catastrophically, I didn’t close the front door properly when the family went out for Christmas lunch, leaving us at risk of home invasion (not that we’ve anything worth taking, but still a concern) – luckily a neighbour was at home and able to keep watch over our premises until our return. I should point out that on Christmas Day and the surrounding days my judgement and brain activity was clouded further than normal by fairly severe illness; due to being very badly clogged up and unwell over the festive era, I’d decided I wanted to take things slowly and calmly, not that any of my sticking-to-their-own-schedule family members chose to listen, and in order to maximise my rest and recuperation time I delayed my departure from the house that special day until the last minute, meaning I was rushing to catch up to the others on their departure, hence not taking my usual care over the door. I’m sure I closed it – it would be very unlike me to leave the barn wide open, but perhaps the latch didn’t catch properly and in my haste to keep up when I wasn’t at full health I omitted to double-check; still, whilst no actual harm befell us as a result of my blooper, it’s a wake-up call that my mind and body problems need to be looked at with something approaching urgency. I’m always worried that one day I’ll be one of those addled folks who is deemed a danger to myself and/or others around me and that this will result in either a massive disaster or my loss of liberty, holed up in a care-home (which I fear after the Panorama-led probes into abusive staff) or locked in a prison for public health and safety. But maybe that’s my long-term civic duty – to take myself out of circulation to make the world better for others by my absence. As I’ve said pretty much every year, Britain would be better off without me.

My ill-feeling over Christmas meant it couldn’t be the feast it should have been – despite our stocking-up on treats and meals ahead of the season, I was refusing, or at least avoiding, much food for the bulk of the break, leading to quite a lot of food going to waste, or at least to my human-dustbin brother – I have to take at least partial personal responsibility for the recent reports that half the world’s food production goes to waste – and my body could barely cope with that food I did eat (though I did keep the flagship turkey ‘n veg meal of the 25th down without too much fuss, thankfully). I’m loath to discuss this next factoid on here for fear of coming across as an element of the base and gutter press, but it’s true to say that at one point over the Christmas week the illness moved south and I became quite badly constipated; however, rather than seek professional medical treatment I just picked up some cheap tablets from Savers or somewhere, and that seemed to solve the problem well enough; readers with long memories will, though, know my guts and bowels have been in hideous shape for some years now, my gassy and distended stomach (from a years-long combination of cheap food and lack of athletic ability) putting huge pressure on other parts of my innards, and breathing has never been easy for me, to the extent that even tasks which would be simple for some risk leaving me puffed-out. Then, as 2013 dawned, I had a new problem emerge, my spine now the cause, as it became suddenly quite difficult for me to stand up (particularly after long seated periods) or walk, at times reduced to hobbling. It’s possible that decades of slouching in the seats at home, in job waiting rooms and on rickety buses has coiled my backbone into an unwelcome curve which is potentially adding to the pressure at the base of my body; I won’t know the full damage, though, unless I go for some kind of scan. And we all know that ain’t gonna happen, unless I can convince Channel 4 or someone to pay for the ruddy thing. I’m decaying and falling apart – some days I can barely breathe, and occasional heart pain should be heeded as a warning – and with no job and nothing to live for there seems little worth in investing fiscally to prolong my existence – I may as well just waddle on in the usual manner until the day, presumably coming relatively soon, that any form of movement becomes impossible. I can’t, however, afford to stop dragging myself through the usual grind just yet to get the hospital rest I need – there is little respite from the duties I’m committed to in family and by government. My festive illness, incidentally, saw me squander the little sliver of time which should have been an opportunity for me to get a titbit of rest and relaxation from my standard activities after a difficult and troubling 2012, the festive season being the only time of the year that my usual stresses – such as shopping runs and job hunts – take a back-burner, most recruiters nipping off on holiday for at least a few days over the festive fortnight; during the time I should and could have used for rest, I could in fact hardly sleep at all due to the ill feeling. What a waste. And now, having not yet had time to fully recover from 2012, I’m expected to throw myself into a 2013 which could well be just as harsh as the prior year was, or even worse – one thing I’m certainly not blessed with is foresight. Hell, I barely have eyesight!

My spirits following on from the seasonal period weren’t helped much, it must be said, by the continued media focus on gruesome, glossy celebs during the dire opening weeks of 2013. The brainless, fame-hungry wannabe ‘actress’ Helen Flanagan continued her pointless, post-I’m A Celeb attempt to remain relevant with a presumably-tacky photoshoot (I have to presume, as I didn’t sully my shopping-bag by buying it) for the hopeless paper-waste that is FHM. When will this girl take the hint? She doesn’t need adulation, she needs a bloody therapist! Anyway, hopefully soon Flanagan will realise that now The Bill, Wild at Heart and Heartbeat are gone, there’s not many opportunities out there for former soap starlets – if other young ex-soapies (Roxanne Pallett being the one most often cited) are anything to go by, a circuit of ever-decreasing-in-stature reality shows, tacky and lurid straight-to-DVD horror flicks, and poorly-funded provincial pantos are what awaits Helen on the slow, inevitable march toward the ‘Where Are They Now?’ columns. Meanwhile, also sullying a whole rack of magazines with her seeming omnipresence was Big Brother-winning Bristolian blonde Josie Gibson. Now I’ve got a little more time for Gibson than for Flanagan, if only because your actual Josie is, like me, a Crystal Maze fan. But then, one dry week at the turn of the year, with journos not yet back to post-Christmas productivity levels, and with Gibson herself having a new fitness DVD to flog, she managed to wangle herself a cover appearance on pretty much all the womens’ mags in the same week. This is not an exaggeration. This made walking through the magazine aisle of Morrisons feel like something out of a horror film – like all the potential mag cover stars had been sucked into a black hole leaving only Helen and Josie in this plane of existence. If she’d been on one cover I wouldn’t have found it remarkable, but the Josie shots were approaching double figures. Seeing the now-slender Bristolian glaring down at me dozens of times over, when I was already riddled with the shakes from (a) shopping in general and (b) having seen Flanagan on a mag at all, reminded me why I’ve turned my back on magazines. Hopefully I won’t have to read many of the ruddy things this year. I’ve already talked myself out of buying lady-weekly Now, despite the presence, for the moment at least, of a weekly column by Katie Piper, on the grounds that the magazine as a whole is not for the likes of me. Incidentally, I’ve decided to start mentioning Katie by name again, as that whole ‘Unnamed Woman’ business I’ve been running for the last few blogs has been getting to be a real drag, and in any case it’s a bit of an insult to this fine lady. Although I am concerned about the number of Piper-based web-searches I’ll get if I keep using her name (see my post “Slattern on t’internet” for some of the worst previous arrivals…) Additionally, with a new run of Celebrity Big Brother sullying Britain’s screens during January 2013, many of the cheapo mags and papers – particularly the Desmond organs – have been hawking CBB fameseekers, most volubly (going by press coverage) The Hills-derived telly-despoilers ‘Speidi’, who were at the centre of a row after they were reintroduced to the house after a time away (shades of series five’s horrendous ‘fight night’, the evening I decided I hated BB forever), and gloryhunting glamourpuss Lacey Banghard (alarmingly, that’s her real name) – it’s telling that in the Channel 4 era, those who worked as glamour models weren’t famous enough to appear in Celebrity BB (the likes of Sophie Reade having to slum it in the civilian version, and then-model Chantelle Houghton’s presence in a celeb run being as a non-celeb stunt) but since the move to C5, booby wannabes are now big enough names to make the ‘star’ version. The fact even the dire, vile Big Brother isn’t as ‘quality’ as it once was shows how far celeb culture itself has sunk. And yet we still mop it up in our droves. Sick.

Someone else who’s been on the front of magazines a lot recently is the previously-mentioned-here Kim Kardashian, and since my last pronouncement she’s blindsided us with the news that she’s pregnant with rapper Kanye West’s baby. Whilst not greeted quite with the sort of media trumpeting that surrounded the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s expectancy, this announcement (which the stars insist isn’t just for publicity, albeit in interviews which are themselves good publicity) did cue walls of mag articles about whether Kim’s also-famous sisters are jealous, about whether she’ll marry Kanye while pregnant or when she’s regained her post-baby figure, and whether her prior husband, from whom Kim is separated, is dragging his heels over a divorce deliberately to derail her happiness. Bloody hell. It’s all a little overweening for the childless, non-4Music-watching (their fault for not putting on the shows and tracks I like) likes of me. I wish Ms. Kardashian nothing but the best with her pregnancy – I know baby news, even for celebrities, does not always end happily – but the media noise around the Kim-Kanye-kid is perhaps leading me to side with one online wag whose social-media gag I spotted on Failblog, suggesting award-show-impeded country-belle Taylor Swift burst into the delivery room and interrupt Kim’s contractions with “I’m happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the cutest babies of all time!”. Class. Of course, pretty Ms. Swift has herself been in the media spotlight thanks to her brief dalliance with Britain’s feted one-man celeb-shagging machine, One Direction’s Harry ‘Swordsman’ Styles. The apparent hookup did furrow brows in the celeb-goss circles, but it fizzled out quickly, allowing the meeja to play their caustic “why did they break up?” game, the favoured gambit among some sources apparently being that Taylor didn’t want to corrupt her wholesome image by shacking up with our wild lad and inviting much clucking and tutting from the nay-sayers. Still, I should maybe venture that Swifty will be awarded bonus points (from any points-based scheme I ever end up running) if she ended the relationship by saying “we are never ever getting back together”, and I could at least console young Taylor by assuring her that, whilst I’m happy for her to finish the relationship, Caroline Flack had one of the best Harry Styles breakups of all time. (See, I can do ’em too!) Also in the love pages, “ITV2 hunk Mark Wright”, whatever that is, seems to be shacked up fairly happily with actually-quite-pretty (and thankfully non-Flanagan) Corrie star Michelle Keegan, though whether this relationship leads to long-term family life or simply to a cheap post-Katie-and-Peter ITV2 fly-on-the-wall series it’s too early to tell. They are, though, apparently trying to keep the relationship out of the spotlight, lest the pressure of publicity proves too heavy a burden on their rapidly-forged love. The fact I read about this ‘low-key’ relationship on Digital Spy suggests their attempts to fly under the showbiz radar haven’t quite worked out, though. And yes, I know treating Digital Spy as journalism is like calling the stuff McDonalds pumps out ‘food’, but it’s one of the few sites that works on my muggy mobile. Still: I wish the lovebirds well enough.

Celeb hook-ups, though, are often too fast-burning, too toxic and acrimonious, or simply too damn silly to muster comment from me; my preferred angle on relationships can be found elsewhere, in a Channel 4 series I’m pleased to see get a second run-out. I’ve probably mentioned The Undateables before, when its first run sprang from the traps last spring, and now it’s back for another, longer, series. In the first of the five new episodes was one lady who certainly proved captivating – not just to me but to quite a lot of fellas, it seems! This wonderful lass is a rather gorgeous and sweet blonde in her early 20s named Sarah Scott, whose ‘undateable’ angle was that she now suffered from aphasia having had a stroke aged just 18, and had struggled to find long-term love in the years following the breakup of her prior relationship. Sarah stated on the show that she wanted someone to cuddle with, and I’d certainly love to give her a nice warm hug – she’s exactly the sort of girl I’d go for, a naturally beautiful lady who came across as very warm, charming and endearing. In the series’ prepublicity Sarah had said she was looking for someone ‘tall, dark and handsome’ (the classic combo in a lady’s armoury, the partnership equivalent of the LBD) and ironically I almost fit the bill here – I was tall, over six foot before my backbone started caving in on itself, and I’ve got fairly dark hair (albeit too much of it and in too many places, but still…), the only stumbling block in this particular ointment being I’m not entirely handsome – as you’ll know from seeing my photos online, I look like I’ve recently dragged my face across a wet boulevard, and the internal problems documented above could make a woman two streets away retch, meaning no right-thinking lass would get close to me for more than the government-mandated minimum number of seconds. Anyway, as it transpires I didn’t have to put myself up for ridicule and offer to partner young Sarah as she in fact did make a date during the course of the show, with a fella from the finance industry (and so already better with money than I). As it turned out, when this fella’s profile was briefly flashed up on screen, a batch of eagle-eyed Twitter folk spotted that the chap in question was from, and you couldn’t make it up, Bexleyheath! So it looks like my chances with Sarah may be over before they ever really began – were this televised partnering-up to go sour, Sarah presumably won’t want to hang around this region much, for fear of the awkwardness that bumping into an ex apparently brings those of us lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been blessed (or cursed) with multiple partners in our litany. I hope Sarah’s love life does go well, though, she deserves it, she’s lovely, and whatever happens her strikerate couldn’t be worse than mine, which is a relief to her I’m sure: anyroad, these supposed ‘undateables’ certainly have a better chance of finding lasting love than a bloated sod like me ever does. Taking part in the programme itself, and the subsequent warm and pleasant reception she recieved, appear to have been very positive for Sarah’s confidence, and that can only be a good thing – people have on the whole been very lovely to Sarah, and this encouragement is something which I’m sure would make a beautiful lady feel good. Sarah, as it happens, is now on Twitter – @SarahBScotty if you need – so you can keep tabs on her romantic, social and personal developments without having to wait for me or Channel 4 to update you. (For instance, she remains on good terms, at time of writing, with the chap she was seen partnered with on telly, should you be keeping score). Of course, if you want to tell Sarah she’s cute, you also now have the opportunity to, so make sure you get in there before I can! Though maybe I’ll find my own Sarah-equivalent, someone to hold onto should my life ever be in a sturdy enough position to support a relationship; much like Sarah, I just want someone nice to hug with. Maybe there’s someone awesome out there who’s looking for me – I just have to retain hope. And one thing The Undateables proves is that there are still good, decent people in the world.

Yes, even aside from Sarah, there’s certainly been some quality people taking part – in the second show of the new run, the adventurous (more so than I) in spite of her dwarfism Sam, and the sufferer of an inherited condition, and my fellow retail-droid, Steve both expressed a liking for good music – or at least, for music which chimed with my own tastes, what with me being a bit of a rock/indie fan myself and that. (Dunno why C4 didn’t punt on putting them together to be honest, they could’ve bonded over their shared admiration of guitary choons!) There’s more Undateables every Tuesday night ’til February 4th, and the episodes transmitted thus-far are on 4oD if you’ve yet to view them. It’s also good to see C4 continuing to put ‘disabled’/’disadvantaged’ people on a fair and equal platform, following on from the warm response to last year’s Paralympics coverage, which also spawned Adam Hills’ lighthearted live magazine The Last Leg, which proved so popular that it’s being revived for a run of new editions outside of its original Paralympic bubble. It’s also been ace to hear Francesca Martinez appear in several editions of Radio 4’s The News Quiz in recent times. The comic and actress – who’s also appeared on Russell Howard’s Good News Extra, amongst other things – is not letting her condition (cerebral palsy, as it goes) hold her back from unleashing her snappy wit, and is more than willing to take cheerful lilt at society – and her own condition – as she showcases her sharp take on the world. Let’s hope we hear a lot more from this talented lady in 2013. Also impressing me of late have been the contestants on the front-runner so far for my favourite gameshow of the year. No, not Loaded TV’s glamour-girl panel-game Babe IQ (though that is quite fun, and good to see it being done like a proper gameshow, complete with catchphrases and audience participation – babe balls ready to fly?) The show I’m actually trying to go on about is BBC One’s new Saturday night talent-quiz thing Britain’s Brightest. With Saturday telly in the last few years having been dominated by cheap clipshows and overweening talent formats, Britain’s Brightest is one of the best things that’s been on Saturday night TV in ages. It’s sort of like the Channel 5 series with Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston a few years back – ranking people’s smarts via a series of flashy puzzles and challenges – and the calibre of contestants has been quite impressive (some of the games have been pretty fly, too – the ‘solve the puzzles to exit the room’ game played on 19 January was proper Crystal Maze stuff). OK, the scoring system’s more baffling than those of The Krypton Factor and QI combined, but that’s by the by. It’s good that after years of shows where the point has been to see which of a bunch of telegenic warbling wannabes has the best chance of keeping Simon Cowell on the front of the papers, there’s finally a primetime show which rates contestants on their substance. It’s also been good to see a Saturday night show which sees women as equals after years of odiously sexist weekend shows. The first week’s winner, who will return to your screens in the grand final, was a gorgeous (and, sadly for me, married) teacher, who has hopefully proved to those girls who, when polled a few years back, said they’d rather be glamour models than teachers, that you can be both beautiful and intelligent, whilst show two had an all-female top-three (something which the gruesome Total Wipeout only ever managed once, in its final series – even the very short-lived 101 Ways To Leave a Gameshow achieved this before Wipeout did). It’s nice to see strong, intelligent women being given fair and equal chance to showcase their talent and flair. Indeed, with week one’s winner being named Clair, one of week two’s top performers being called Clare, and Clare Balding being the host of the show, we now have a good idea what Britain’s most intelligent name is! (Although if they’re that intelligent, how come none of them can spell Claire? B’dum-tssh!)

It’s good to see women being represented fairly, but we must be sure to avoid oversteering towards positive discrimination – Dave ran a stack of episodes of the US Wipeout over Christmas and New Year, and one of the episodes I caught due to not much else being on was a special featuring solely female contestants. Whilst that recognised the disadvantage women were at in the regular non-divided episodes (Wipeout being an inherently macho format that favours men, if the results table from the UK version were to be believed), surely patting ladies on the head and saying they can have their very own special episode is just as demeaning, if not more so? Anyway, it was a gambit the UK edition thankfully didn’t live to repeat. I don’t have any particular axe to grind against Wipeout contestants, male or female, UK- or US-based, bar to question their wisdom in going on the show in the first place, though as I’ve said previously many times, if that “no bird’s gonna beat me” bloke from the first UK run was to die of something horrible, I wouldn’t grieve. However, I disliked Total Wipeout as a programme, and was glad to see the back of it – until I saw what the BBC, Endemol and Richard Hammond have replaced it with. I’ve never really liked prank shows, from Beadle right through to Punk’d, though used to watch Beadle’s About under a form of self-duress as it was shown back when there weren’t enough channels around to have an alternative choice. Now, though, Hammond’s new Saturday night show Secret Service has launched, and as though to punish me, it’s a sub-Beadle (even with many of the same or similar stunts Jeremy used, in fact) wind-up gig. I don’t like shows that mess with people’s lives, and on seeing the ‘here’s what’s coming up’ sequence for the 19 January episode – featuring a would-be wedding planner being confronted with a parade of on-the-job disasters, and someone’s presumably-carefully-tended garden being destroyed in some kind of Time Team-type prank – I knew what I had to do, and went up and sat on the bog moping ’til it was all over and I could watch Britan’s Brightest without having to seethe at the dumbness which preceded it. Screening Hammond’s show directly before Britain’s Brightest has really messed up my Saturday night, given my intention is to watch one and avoid the other, and it’s also strange for the Beeb to pair a really stupid show and a quite intelligent show – surely nobody’ll watch both! Despite my misgivings, I do have to give Secret Service one nod though, for hiring the talented and beautiful US-born/London-resident actress Kelly-Anne Lyons (previously of Dick & Dom’s Funny Business). To be honest, Beeb, you could dump Hammond and the pranks and just give us 45 minutes of Lyons mucking about on-air, that’d be a much better use of British airtime. And, for once, other male viewers would probably agree with me on that (even if a three-quarter-hour of solid Kelly-Anne does pose a similar danger to my and others’ heart-health that The Vault’s recent similar-length block solely of Pixie Lott videos threatened to). Regardless of whether or not such a Lyons-led broadcast comes to pass, Britain’s Brightest is sadly unlikely to get recommissioned – between the Beeb’s lineup (also including sub-You’ve Been Framed pet-clips showcase Animal Antics) and ITV’s much-derided Tom Daley-centric celebs-in-a-pool barrel-scraper Splash! and the bafflingly-popular Take Me Out, commentators and review-wranglers have been sticking the boot fairly firmly into the current weekend output of our formerly-flagship channels, with few kind words for either sequence, and I must admit the quality of weekend shows generally has taken a dive over recent years. I remember the days of You Bet!, Blind Date… heck, I even miss Gladiators. It used to be, even after my household went digital, that we’d still return to the BBC and/or ITV for fully-funded glossy prime weekend evening output. At the tail-end of last year, so desperate was I to avoid the likes of X Factor and Strictly that I chose to watch a repeat run of Bob’s Full House on Challenge. Oh, how the pendulum has swung. Sadly, it seems not enough people joined me at the Monkhouse master card, and with low ratings Challenge are reluctant to buy in further series, though at least they’re replacing it on Saturdays with another show I actually like, the more recent Friends Like These, and not something else I’d have to flee from.

The CITV Channel, fairly surprisingly, also gave me an opportunity to dip into my childhood with its recent Old Skool Weekend. Created as a means of celebrating thirty years since the Children’s ITV block on the ITV network began (whilst this afternoon block is now long-gone, dumped not long after the channel’s launch, it was the genesis for networked CITV in its current form), the weekend dipped into the archive to flush out a raft of vintage shows. Whilst there were some notable omissions – where the hell was Roger and the Rottentrolls, for instance? – there was plenty to be excited about, and I absolutely lapped it up, keeping my excursions away from the telly to an absolute minimum for the whole two days. Many of the shows I’d loved as a kid were represented, from Puddle Lane to Dangermouse to Woof! to Spatz, and recent classics rubbed shoulders with long-hidden gems. One wonders what today’s kids made of the sort of genius we used to get; certainly, a fair few of the shows featured would probably stand full repeat runs mixed in alongside the new stuff in the general CITV schedule – it’s fair to say kids seeing these shows for the first time would probably be wondering what other stories these characters have to tell. Or perhaps ITV3, well-known for mining the back-catalogue of British drama, could be pressed into service for full reruns of the likes of Press Gang or Children’s Ward, well-loved and fondly-remembered dramas which are otherwise gathering dust on the ITV shelves. It should be said that some of the shows and stars featured in this ‘retro’ weekend still appear on CITV fairly regularly, with Art Attack and Sooty just as familiar to today’s CITV generation as they were back in the era of the earlier editions dug out for the stunt, and Tony Gardner pointing out, in response to web comments about My Parents Are Aliens’ inclusion in the event, that the show was looped on the channel every day anyway. But there is scope for ITV to make more use of its archive – whilst CITV were at pains to point out that this was a one-off stunt and the usual mix of Canimals and Horrid Henry would be CITV’s standard diet for 2013, there is also an opportunity to exploit some of these freshly-unearthed strands further – Dramarama, for instance, provided a playpen where writers and actors who would later go on to bigger things could cut their teeth, and two of the strand’s playlets were let out of the bag for the weekend. What’s to stop ITV, which already produces and commissions a raft of dramas and serials for its main networks, commissioning a new run of Dramarama, booking a range of new and established scribes and prodcos to fire ideas into the chain, and thus allow a mine of new formats and themes to develop which could serve the CITV strand well today and in years to come? (It could happen: the original Dramarama contained a one-off, screened as part of the weekend, which spawned the long-running Children’s Ward, two late-era editions of which also featured in the event.) Sadly the once-mighty CITV has become a real dead-zone in recent years, which is a shame not least because whereas pay viewers have Nickelodeon, Disney and the like, CITV is the sole non-BBC provision of kids’ shows on Freeview. When I was a kid, CBBC and CITV were, in their then form of blocks on the main channels, well-funded and rich in ideas and fresh shows despite their limited hours. Whilst the volume of kids’ TV is now bigger – three twelve-plus-hour-a-day channels on Freeview, and further channels running up to 24 hours a day on satellite and cable – the value has dropped, with more repeats, lower investment and now no longer the prominence of presence on the flagship network channels, BBC One having binned its CBBC block at the end of 2012.

One thing notable from the CITV Old Skool Weekend was the presence in the roster of contributors the names of many TV production companies which have now been absorbed into larger entities. Many of the shows came from the archive of the now-defunct regional companies that over time came together into the ITV plc of today, the firm which now runs CITV; Central, Granada and most noticeably Yorkshire TV seemingly contributed huge amounts to the CITV library down the years, Yorkshire’s now-retired chevron being the most-featured of the ITV plc brands. And yet today all YTV is allowed to make are Emmerdale and local news show Calendar, bizarrely, with even long-term Leeds resident Countdown, initially a Yorkshire regional show before debuting nationally at C4’s commencement, having moved to Manchester some time back now. STV also shipped a clutch of shows back south of the border for the event, and in the process proved just how much those regions you didn’t often see productions from in primetime did for ITV’s apparently-less-valuable younger viewers. Indeed, STV’s still a strong producer today, handling shows ranging from Antiques Road Trip to Fake Reaction, as well as continuing to serve local matters to their two Scots patches, albeit now under one brand with much of Grampian having been stripped away. The biggest contributor to the retro-fuelled weekend, though, was the fabled Thames, whose skyline-based logos appeared frequently throughout the weekend, introducing a whole new generation to the excited knowledge that good things were coming over the horizon after ‘Salute to Thames’ boomed out of the speakers, but their contribution to CITV dried up as of the 90s thanks to their defenestration from the network 20 years ago this month in favour of the much less well remembered Carlton, who would go on to form the backbone of today’s ITV plc alongside Northern expansionists Granada. Whilst the Carlton name has now been wiped out by the ITV plc merger, Thames, thankfully, lives on – initially limping on as an indie producer immediately post-ITV, then getting swallowed up into the behemoth hive-mind TalkbackThames for a decade, and then being respun into an entertainment-focussed production minibrand which, with some irony, now produces most of the weekend entertainment shows (Take Me Out, X Factor and so on) in slots which would in a past life have almost certainly been guaranteed to Thames’ old rival, the now-subsumed-into-ITV-plc LWT! At the time The Bill was scrapped, I posted (on the old MySpace) a lament that this signalled the end of the old Thames way, and certainly the new version is much narrower in focus than the original (see clips from some of Thames’ old shows on TVArk, for instance), but at least the firm hasn’t been left to die in the archives like so many other former pre-plc ITV companies. Thames has, incidentally, become another of the recent converts to Twitter, posting as @ThamesTV_ (and remember the underscore, folks), though sadly as it’s 2013 I assume it’s mostly to be BGT/Take Me Out coverage rather than presumably-would’ve-been-more-enjoyable tweeting from the home of Rainbow/Minder/T-Bag/The Bill et al. Even the legendary skyline is no more, and I’m not sure how enamoured and nostalgic viewers of years hence would be towards the modern-age symbol – a magenta disc, if it matters – but at least one of the iconic brands best-loved in television circles is still very much alive, which is an achievement given ITV has even wiped Granada off the map outside its local news shows.

Subsequent to the retro weekender, the wider ITV has also, you may have noticed, been making changes to modernise itself in recent days, introducing a somewhat curly new logo across its activities. I have to admit that when I first saw the logo, in isolation on media websites when the rebrand was unveiled, I didn’t think much of it – a bit too kooky to actually be taken seriously – but rather than badmouth it here and there I decided to wait until it entered use in its proper location, on the screen, before casting judgement. And you know what? On telly, it sort of works, the way they’ve animated and coloured it, though the switchback from ITV1 to ITV after twelve years is something which may take people a while to get used to, particularly those of us who keep forgetting stuff. Elsewhere, ITV3’s come off particularly well with classy ‘origami’-style sequences, and I don’t mind ITV2’s quirky restyle myself, though quite a few of the channel’s more ardent fans online have bemoaned the swap to red after seven years of a lime green look. But whilst ITV has invested heavily in a rebrand, planting the new logo everywhere it can get away with, there’s been little improvement in content – the output of ITV’s channels is, give or take, pretty much the same mush it was before the repaint. That said, ITV2, not normally noted for showing actual comedy, has pulled up one of the new shows I’ve been liking this month, US sitcom Ben & Kate, and here’s hoping the usually-reality-led channel has the gonads to stick with the series and does not, as commonly happens to shows I like, punt the thing to the arse-end of midnight or vanish the show from the screen for months on end before burning off the remaining episodes unheralded in the middle of nowhere, as Channel 4 and E4 did with another Chernin Entertainment production, New Girl. ITV2 has also tried to build on the success of Celebrity Juice – which along with BBC Four’s Only Connect is one of the best-performing digital TV entertainment shows ratings-wise – by launching a new flashy entertainment series, Fake Reaction, which despite the very ITV2 focus on celebs and grossout gags, is at heart a proper classic light entertainment bluffing game, similar in skein to ITV1… oops, ITV series Odd One In. And there aren’t many of these proper entertainment formats around just now, as you’ll have seen me bemoan above. Away from ITV’s channels, E4 has added to its own roster of imported sitcoms with The New Normal, though as with Pramface (which has returned to BBC Three for a new series) the attitude and behaviours of some characters means it can be a difficult show to enjoy, in New Normal’s case principally because of the racist, homophobic, and at times deranged Jane, who I assume is there to provide a contrast to the general tolerance shown by most others in the show, who represents the portion of society set against modern rights and freedoms, and who many of the audience would presumably mock and laugh at for her outdated and irrelevant views; during the first episode I had to hold myself back from wanting to put a foot to her windpipe, perhaps because I’m one of those people who is never tolerant of those who show intolerance. Ironically. But then, how do you represent the real pain and prejudice felt by gay people without, if you’ll pardon the expression, fudging it? Maybe I’ll have to try not to get too upset with those characters who badmouth Bryan and David, and accept everyone’s entitled to their view. Ironically for a show where prejudice is a key theme, the show was dropped by some US stations who didn’t want to screen the series after anti-gay mobs of ‘viewers’ protested. So maybe, though it’s difficult to watch, I should stick with it, in order to show support for a community too often maligned.

Converseley to the above, sometimes contrary and challenging views can be entertaining, and I’m glad to see Charlie Brooker’s “…Wipe” analysis strand return after too long away with a new weekly series for BBC Two, which should be an oasis of right-thinking in the ocean of media ‘meh’ we now find ourselves eddying in. There are some people trying to push against the grain, and it’s never been more important to support them. In a world where all roads seem to lead to Rihanna, some new musical acts have begun to see patches of light through the cracks. You’ll have seen my top-tunes-of-2012 post (the previous post here, if you haven’t) and further badass tuneage from that year was unearthed in BrokenTV’s top 20 (which, interestingly or not, only included one track also present in my rundown), and that site’s footage is worth seeking out – the very-post-80s ‘Madness’ by Hits, for instance, is one I missed first time out. Elsewhere, the BBC’s Sound of 2013 list pulled up some emerging quality, including AlunaGeorge and Chvrches, who I’ll have to keep an eye (or ear) for, and was topped by Haim, who’d also got the biggest writeup in my chart post: the Yank sisters have marked themselves out as ones to watch with their classy, edgy pop sound, and I’m glad new, fresh music is still getting an airing, albeit one which in this case was hidden away behind the red button – surely this sort of show should have been put out on BBC Three or even Two? Is music really that minority an interest that it now has to be hidden away on what is not really a real channel? Mind you, the state of music TV today is not a healthy one: I’ve berated 4Music and Viva for their policy before, but clearly there is scope in the market for a channel which broadcasts some of the less well known music and gives a wider range of genres an airing. Having channels which focus solely on a tiny playlist of the very most mainstream music – and which dump music entirely in the evening in favour of block-booked Kardashians or South Park – isn’t really serving the audience. Unfortunately, these channels aren’t there to serve, inform or even entertain the audience – they solely exist to make money, and so it’s on with the Rihanna, Bieber and 1D loop. 4Music in particular could build on its C4 association to allow a wider range of voices and genres to be heard; instead, all the 4-link seems to provide the channel is repeats of Alan Carr: Chatty Man. That said, there is quality if you know where to look: in the week that most magazine covers featured Helen Flanagan, Josie Gibson or Celebrity Big Brother rubbish, NME had, would you believe, Haim. If I’d have bought a magazine that week, it would probably have been that one – I want to support quality new talent, not tawdry reality trash (even those who are a fellow Crystal Mazer).

But at least magazines remain available in stores: soon, there won’t be anywhere left on the high street to buy a CD. HMV recently collapsed into administration, and though its survival in some form seems likely now Hilco have stepped in to take control of the firm’s debt, the potential loss of the last big music chain (and some of its stores still could shut) really brought into focus the loss of music and entertainment from the high street. Our Price is gone, Virgin/Zavvi has had it, MVC went, taken over by Music Zone which then itself bit the big one, and many indie shops have also lost the fight. In this area, if HMV were to go, Head in Bromley will literally be the last CD/DVD shop left. Again, not an exaggeration. Many towns, particularly since the loss of Our Price, now have no music shop at all – Dartford, Lewisham and Woolwich are all now music-free, and if HMV’s Bexleyheath store cops it there’ll be another town without audio-visual. There have been others: Dartford had not just Our Price, which survived, under various names, right up ’til Zavvi’s demise, but also Challenger & Hicks, a proper local record shop that was both vocal and instrumental in assisting the expansion of my early collection, the always-good-value Slam Entertainment where amongst other things I bought my first-ever DVDs (nothing special, just some cheap comedies to get my then-new player up and running) and the previously-mentioned-on-here Stacey Dash video, and Tracks which replaced Playhouse/Our Price Video (whilst Playhouse was mostly a VHS shop, in its dying, throw-anything-on-the-shelf phase, I even picked up a Blameless cassingle in there, and it’s still one of my favourite tunes.) Bexleyheath, meanwhile, had Our Price (what is now Vision Express, and Beefy’s biggest music retailer ’til HMV pitched up), a belated MVC/Music Zone, though this wasn’t one of the MZ sites saved by Fopp, and local store TW Records, a wonderful little local shop pulled down along with its neighbours to make way for the similarly-initialled but sadly non-musical TK Maxx and JD Sports. (There was also, further down the Broadway, the Mixmag-admired and also-now-cut dance/urban specialist Uncut Records, though as an indieboy I never went there.) The much-missed TW’s was actually a chain, but its other stores (in Erith and Plumstead) have also now packed it in. Woolwich only had Our Price – altogether now, 27 Powis Street, now Designer Kidz – the scene of my first ever self-propelled singles purchase as mentioned here many times, and pre-Head, Bromley played host to US chain Sam Goody, MVC was there for a bit, and at one point the town had two Our Prices (later reduced to one, which then transferred its business to a Virgin Megastore, itself felled in Zavvi’s collapse); Sam Goody also turned up in Orpington for a time, as did CD World, the shop from which I picked up a long-hunted-for copy of Headswim’s ‘Tourniquet’; even the retail monolith Bluewater has seen its largest entertainment store (Virgin/Zavvi) swallowed by H&M, and also lost short-lived post-Playhouse DVD-seller Silverscreen, leaving only HMV ticking away above the foodcourt. It seems the days of music on the high street really are numbered.

To be fair, I have played my part in its downfall. I’ve started shopping online more, not just on cost ground (though for someone in my poor life position every pound saved is vital) but also because of choice – online stores can by nature have a bigger range than a high street store ever could, and my outside-of-centre tastes mean the mainstream retailers can’t always take a punt on stocking the stuff I like in the slim chance I’ll pop in to pick it up at some point. But the real catalyst for me going mostly online was the death of the single. I’ve always been more of a singles buyer than an album man, perhaps driven by the fact that much of my musical education came from multi-artist, skipping-between-the-tunes formats such as pop radio and The Chart Show. So, after Dale Winton and chums (see earlier posts) had broken the levee on singles buying, and I’d started to get into the habit regularly, I would spend, subject to that week’s releases, a few quid a week (this would have been pocket money from parent’s pocket, being while I was still at school and before I was of non-working age) on the latest tracks – initially on cassette for a couple of years as that’s what sort of player we had in the house, then latterly on CD once I’d got my hands on a disc-playing device. The cost, on a week-to-week basis, wasn’t massive and I picked and chose my favoured releases from those available – some weeks had more than others, with nothing really grabbing me some weeks and a large number in others – one week (it was the week ‘The Boy Is Mine’ by Brandy and Monica came out over here, if you’re looking back through the calendar) there were about eight singles out that I’d have wanted, and I had to be selective and pluck the few I most wanted in my collection. Overall, though, it worked out fairly well, and through the years I built up a fairly broad church of platters. The rise of my interest in music came at about the same time as I started travelling more widely around the area – pushing the envelope with Saturday solo shopping trips to Bromley, Dartford or Woolwich to look out the latest tunes and that – and the opening of Bexleyheath’s HMV, in November 1994 (in what used to be Miss Selfridge, as it goes) couldn’t have been any more perfectly timed. With this and Our Price, plus TW’s and then from 1997 MVC, trading in Beefy this was the golden era – if I’d found a tune I loved, there was a pretty strong chance I’d be able to ferret it out in at least one of the four, or by taking a trek to stores in a nearby town. Indeed, music shopping became a hobby of mine – on a family holiday to York in the mid-90s, one of my first ports of call was not a museum or historic monument, but the city’s Virgin Megastore. But then, around the turn of the millennium, the band started to break up. In Bexley, TW got the bulldozer, Our Price became a Vision Express, MVC got themselves and then their successors Music Zone into all kinds of trouble, and before you could know it, HMV was all we had left, and now rather than having Dartford and Woolwich as alternative hunting grounds, people from those towns had to come to Beefy for their sole shot at CD shopping.

But then downloads started to have an impact. Whilst people had been flinging MP3s around since the late 90s – initially illegally peer-to-peer, and latterly through paid sites like iTunes – I’d not been a downloader, preferring music on tangible format that couldn’t be put at risk by computer crashage. The fact I didn’t often have full web access – or, until the advent of USB, any means to get files from the computer home – also played a part in my decision to remain a high-street shopper. However, when the supply of CD singles began to really dry up, I had little other option. I’d noticed the fall of singles for some time, and seen my local HMV’s singles section decline over the years from a pretty huge part of the shop, taking up one whole wall, down to a can’t-be-bothered kickstand. And so, grudgingly, I started downloading, choosing Amazon as (1) I already had an account there, for the increasing amount of physical stuff I’d not been able to get at HMV, and (2) their downloads weren’t tied to a proprietary device, as Apple’s market-leaders were. And so the money I used to spend in HMV started going to Amazon instead: well, only part of it, actually, as downloads are cheaper, and what I’d previously had to spend £1.99 or more in HMV to get I could get on the ‘Zon for as little as 49p – or even less – depending on the track. That’s why, while my ‘best 80 tunes of the year’ list looks like a huge outlay (it’d have cost at least £160 to get that little lot in Nipper’s store), with the individual track prices below £1, and many of the tracks on special offer or even (legally) free, that whole chart probably worked out costing me the equivalent of around £1 a week – which even in my straitened financial situation is not an enormous damage. The damage, though, was done to HMV. My spend of £2-£4 a week on singles through their tills equated to about £10-£20 a month of regular purchase. With my singles buying now done online, I don’t think I spent much more than £20 in HMV in the whole of 2012, and that was mostly on gifts for other people. Whilst I’d never describe myself as the typical customer, if my singles-buying shift is replicated across the population, that’s a huge sum of money disappearing from HMV’s tills, which may explain their debt. (With downloads, I can also dig up older tracks as well as the new stuff; much as with Orpington’s long-sought Headswim CD, I was able to find a long-hunted-for track – in this case Not Katies’ ‘2 Halves of 2′ – on Amazon having struggled to seek out a CD during the preceding eight years). The death of singles also hit part of HMV’s business model, which was based on building customers’ relationship with artists through singles and then into albums – with no more singles, HMV can’t grow artist-customer-store relations in that way anymore. Similarly, part of HMV’s business model had been to support their range – their wider mix of more diverse, and perhaps slower-selling, specialist music – with the underpinning from their volume of sales of bread-and-butter chart releases. But discounters and the big grocers have begun to shift this mainstream music in quite some quantity, devaluing music and taking away the volume sales that HMV needs to support its broader aims. The traditional midmarket retailer has been squeezed very hard by supermarkets and online – Clinton Cards, whilst offering a different product mix to HMV, had similar competitive problems, leading to their own collapse and partial salvation. HMV reacted to the declining of the original model by cutting the space given to music and DVD in favour of giving more space to high-ticket technology products such as iPads, but while these attracted a premium price they didn’t shift in the sort of volume that CDs had once done, particularly in the tight economic times when consumers have been holding back their spend, as Comet recently found out. HMV, like many retailers and individuals, also perhaps put too much faith during the boom years of the late 90s/early 00s that the good times would continue – like other chains, HMV expanded rapidly during this economically-positive period, only for these expanded networks of retail stores to be more starved of income when the crunch hit. With the high street still sluggish five years on from the sub-prime bubble, it seems some towns are destined to sink for good.

It seems the sinking of society is being felt across the board. Not only am I sensing a more tense, powderkeg type of an environment when I’m on a bus or in a shopping mall – or even a library – but society as a whole is struggling: recent reports, lined up for red-button consumption on the self-same day, revealed a rise in the volume of individual/personal fraud in the 2011/12 reporting year, as strained souls struggling to make ends meet stretch the rules – or break them entirely – to squeeze more than they’re entitled to out of the system, presumably as what they’re entitled to isn’t keeping them in the style they’re accustomed to. Another report indicated a rise in the number of suicides in 2011 compared to 2010 – the latest data which is available – which indicates some people really can’t take it anymore and have, in their hour of desperation, sadly resorted to the final solution. I know the circumstances we find ourselves in are not pleasant – as a rifle through the old MySpace posts would prove, I’ve been circling the drain almost as long as I’ve been writing these bloody things, if not longer – but I know there has to be a way out. One thing that will help the gloom lift is, ironically, if I stop getting so wound up about things I see in the news. It’s difficult, though, as there’s been some controversial cases these last few weeks. There’s been a lot said about attacks on women, which as you should know by now is not something I condone, following the internationally-discussed case in India where a woman was brutally gang-raped and later died of her injuries. A horrible situation, for certain, and one which shows up how the role of women in society is still a struggle in some of the less-developed-than-our-own nations; it’s always difficult to judge how far we should impose our values on other territories, however, for fear of being accused of cultural insensitivity: many Muslim countries, for instance, still see women as subservient and a commodity, something we in the West find abhorrent, and they often, in particular the more conservative states, also see Western values and cultures as a threat to their own, and resist our creeping global influence by any means necessary, up to and including terrorism. It’s difficult for me to judge the situation writing as I am from the position of a white man in England who’s been brought up on Western values and media, but hopefully we can all agree that the aghast response to the brutal and fatal attack should serve as a watershed and help Indian society move towards a more enlightened and peaceful culture, and on its own terms rather than having it forced down upon the country from outside. Not that the Western world is always right when it comes to sexual violence – in the United States, a guilty verdict in a rape case was quashed because the court learned that the victim was unmarried. I’m just going to let that one sink in for a moment. A victim of abuse was failed by the justice system because she wasn’t married. And they call us civilised? Of course, brutality and violence takes place everywhere, as the attack on Katie Piper in 2008 proves – though there are some people who want to make life better; Channel 4 recently screened the Oscar-winning documentary Saving Face, in which the plastic surgeon who gave Katie her smile back – the Pakistan-born UK-based Dr Mohammad Jawad – travelled to his birth country to treat some of the hundreds – HUNDREDS! – of women a year who are attacked and burned, often by abusive and dismissive partners. This film – as with many of the shows I’ve watched lately, right through to The New Normal – proves that while there is prejudice, hatred and outright evil in the world, there are also those who are prepared to fight it and stand up for what’s right. I want to be one of those who fights the good fight, but it will have to be within my limited circumstances – I have little money, power, skills and influence to change things – I can’t even use Twitter properly right now, thanks to my cheap phone – so doing the right thing will mean I have to fight harder. But if it makes people’s lives better, then it’s a fight worth trying.

Someone who tried to support others but lost out through no fault of her own was the good Samaritan who stopped at the scene of a road incident and gave two ‘walking wounded’ shelter in her otherwise-uninvolved vehicle; whilst the victims were able to get in OK, when paramedics arrived they decided, to reduce the risk of further injury, the injured patrons should be removed from the car by way of having the roof cut off. The good-deed-doer has thus had her car written off, with no guarantee that it will be replaced – maybe, if nobody comes forward to pay for a new vehicle in respect of her sacrifice, she’ll have to spend the next sixteen to seventeen years living like me, travelling slowly with the disadvantaged and underachieving, and the potheads and lunkheads, on those life-sucking buses that have damaged me so, until she can afford a new vehicle, every day regretting the good deed that cost her her freedom wheels. Elsewhere, the big news here in London town is the fatal helicopter crash, in which a pilot flying his chopper across the capital despite the prevailing poor conditions clipped a crane in Vauxhall, killing himself and a man on the ground in a devastating, much-discussed fireball. Again, there’s little to have been done in the situation – if I had been there that morning, there’s more chance I’d have been victim than hero – but there are always a lot of what-ifs when something like this happens. Someone who had been due to be a passenger on the ‘copter had called on the pilot to call off the journey given the conditions, only for the ill-fated captain to go ahead. Once in the air, the flight was diverted from its original route due to the weather – did this change of flightplan put the pilot on collision course with the construction crane? Thinking too deeply about these variables in these kind of situations is one of the things which has really raddled my brain over recent years, and you’ll have seen this for yourself in my gabbly, breathless whinges about news events in many of my prior posts, and perhaps it’d be better for me to leave well enough alone and let things be. At least we can be thankful that, given the busy and built-up nature of London, the Vauxhall crash didn’t cause more death and destruction than it did. Vauxhall’s day of horror, though, wasn’t the only helicopter disaster to strike the world recently; in Sao Paolo, a ‘helicopter taxi’ – they’re popular due to the congested streets – ditched into a house. That case reminded me of something else I’ve had on my mind recently. Not far from me there’s a train bridge which passes over a road. I’ve only recently noticed, though, how close the trains come to the buildings on the street below – one perhaps-poorly-sited house is so close to the tracks, trains pass literally inches from the loft. That’s a recipe for disaster. Perhaps I’ve seen too many Coronation Street clips, but I know that these close calls can sometimes be missed – I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a house that close to the tracks, as all it takes is one misplaced pebble on the rails and the express service to Charing Cross could skip its usual route and end up embedded in my boxroom. If I was a father, I wouldn’t want to bring my daughter up in a situation where she could be bisected in her sleep by an unintended metal visitor through her ceiling. It can and does happen, not just in Weatherfield but also in the real world – see the recent case of a couple’s rented home in Utah being crashed by a loosened-by-nature boulder; the husband wasn’t at home at the time, but the wife was injured, and the couple have decided not to return to the premises, which is maybe wise given the risk posed by further rockfall in our rapidly-changing environment.

Something that always gets me down, though, as you’ll know if you’ve read my prior posts on the subject, is when young life gets snuffed out before its time. And, sadly, there have been several cases of this in the last few weeks. We’ve seen the shocking case of the eight-year-old sickle-cell anaemia sufferer being shot dead while on a family holiday to Jamaica, her school having sanctioned an extended trip to the sun on the grounds that such a stay in the sun could be beneficial to her health; in fact, it transpired returning to the island was a great mistake, as the innocent girl was apparently targeted by a gunman with a grudge. Back here in the UK it’s no safer, as a criminal contributed to the untimely passing of a teenager not involved in his lawlessness: just over the way in New Cross, a car being pursued by police slammed into an otherwise-unconnected family vehicle, killing the 13-year-old girl in the back seat. There is some correlation here with the death of the pedestrian slain in the Vauxhall copter disaster – someone going about their innocent journey being taken from us through no fault of their own by the thoughtless actions of another, and whilst the Vauxhall pilot took his error to his own grave, let’s hope the old bill absolutely throw the book at the little scrote whose reckless, out-of-control, self-preserving danger-driving has robbed us of someone who would presumably have gone on to be far more valuable to society than he. The recent snow and ice, as with previous cold snaps, also unnecessarily claimed several lives. Finally, I should update you on the situation of someone who’s been mentioned here several times before, the much-admired Cumbrian teen Alice Pyne. However, it’s not good news. Sweet young Alice has sadly lost her lengthy battle with leukemia. Whilst her passing was not a sudden, unexpected shock, given she was terminally ill and thus we all knew this day would ultimately come, it is still sad to see someone noted for her strength, warmth, bravery and good spirit lose the battle. The lovely Alice did a lot of good in her short time with us, raising awareness of the plight of kids and teens struggling with life-limiting conditions, and ultimately setting up her own charity, Alice’s Escapes, aiming to provide fun trips for families with sick children. Let’s hope the charity can continue to be strong and successful, and deliver on Alice’s legacy, to make more people happy in the way she set out to. Alice’s case also encouraged people to sign up to the bone marrow register, something she was particularly keen to see. So her life was, despite her condition, a success which could have positive repercussions for others for years to come. She certainly did more for society in her 17-and-a-bit years than I’ve done in my near-31, which is sobering. The way I’ll remember Alice, as it goes, is most likely the smiling, happy girl who took the stage at the Pride of Britain Awards, and beamed from ear to ear when she was presented with a gong by her favourite pop star, Robbie Williams. It was a lovely moment, and it was wonderful to see someone so kind and sweet being celebrated and respected. There will always be love for you here, beautiful Alice. Rest easy.

It’s also good to see Alice influence other young ladies in difficult situations to stand up and be counted: eighteen-year-old Hannah Booth also punted a bucket-list onto the internet, and much like Alice’s list beforehand, this grid of wishes took root online, and has even been given publicity by digital radio station The Hits, based in Hannah’s native Manchester, with the station able to pull strings to get some of her dreams realised, including a trip to Italy (good choice, girl!) and a meeting with X Factor cheeky-chops Olly Murs, though obviously as The Hits is a commercial enterprise it’s likely the motive here is not completeley altruistic but also brand-positive, as offering the hand of help will also, one presumes, get The Hits a fairly positive writeup. Thing of note: The Hits is run by Bauer, the same multi-skulled media empire that farts out the Flanagan-friendly FHM so violently derided earlier in this mailout. Another Hannah whose plight has barrelled onto my radar in the recent weeks since I last did one of this, is US television presenter Hannah Storm. The ESPN and ABC (they’re both Disney-owned) anchormanwoman suffered severe burns at the rear-end of December when a cooking grill in her home garden exploded, causing injuries to her face and arms. However, the Storm was made of strong stuff, and sitting sobbing in recuperation was not her bag: just a few weeks after being burned, ever-professional Hannah was back on Yank telly, her toasted arm still in bandage and with the aid of hair extensions to sit-in for her scorched-off locks, and her return to TV was widely cheered. Hannah’s clearly keen to rebuild her life and not let her injury hold her back any more than is medically necessary, so let’s hold hope that her dedication and professionalism continues to serve her well and her TV career continues to shine. One thing that did strike me on hearing of Ms Storm’s incident was the realisation that, given American TV stations now seem content to pinch ideas off our Channel 4 and remake them rather than come up with their own ideas – everything from Skins, Shameless and the Inbetweeners to Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and One Born Every Minute has been purloined across the pond – could we get an American remake of Katie Piper’s 2011 series? Katie’s show, where she visited Brits with life-changing injuries and medical conditions, has screened in the States, on OWN (the station recently graced by the disgraced Lance Armstrong for a much-discussed interview with Oprah herself) and there are presumably people in the US who have similarly touching tales they’d like the opportunity to relate to a kind ear. Essentially, one wonders if another format will cross the water such that we get ‘Hannah: My Beautiful Friends’ or somesuch. I’d watch the heck out of that if it fetched up over here – I loved Katie’s shows, and as I’ve said many times it’s always good to see decent, honest people being celebrated. Incidentally, our very own Katie has been working on a new documentary, which will lodge itself on Channel 4 shortly, and it’ll be one of the last times you see her with dark hair: the excellent lass has returned to the world of blonde after a time in the brunette camp. So some changes can be reversed after all, it seems! And you’ll know by now I find blonde women attractive, from Pixie Lott to Mollie King of the Saturdays, and from Ellie Goulding to Sarah of Undateables, so this is one reverse I can react to positively!

Whilst I’m not planning on going blonde, I do have to make changes in 2013. As denoted at excessive length above, my health needs improvement, as just right now it’s only really getting worse. Not only is it physically and mentally uncomfortable to be me right now, the internal and external decay is becoming ever more unavoidable and noticeable, and it’d certainly have a negative bearing on any subsequent attempt I make at dating; it’s likely to have an impact on my job success too, as if I keep turning up for interviews looking, sounding and smelling like the decrepit pusblob I am, the employer will be keen to send me flying out the door empty handed as rapidly as possible. I’m not an attractive man in present form, and my luck won’t improve unless serious rebuilding is undertaken. However, so much has gone wrong that I simply don’t know where to start – and on my tiny budget I’ve not got the confidence I could afford the massive amounts of surgery I need unless some billionaire benefactor steps in to back me. And given the likes of Comet, HMV and Jessops struggled to find backers, it’ll be a lengthy hunt to find someone endowed enough to support my needs. I also need to improve myself culturally and take more risks – read more books, listen to more radio (Adam & Edith shows on 6Music at the tail-end of 2012 helped draw me back in, and introduced me to Haim among others) and, should I happen to find myself with free time sufficient to do so, I would like to see myself tuning into any radio stations which remain broadcasting in the UK in 2013. Sadly, we’re likely to see the back of Real Radio this year when it’s absorbed into Heart – having had access at various times and via various devices to both Real and Heart at various points (though Heart is the more commonly-heard due to its permanent London FM/DAB berth and Freeview/satellite carriage, whilst Real, whilst available on satellite, was only briefly on DAB in the capital, immediately following the closure of Century), I’ve found myself preferring the wider range of ‘variety hits’ pulled out of the box by Real, which appears to have a wider range of genres and eras at its disposal than Heart (Real playing a quite wide mix of pop, rock and rhythmic music stretching from the 70s to today, whilst Heart has a narrower ‘hot AC’ playlist, in part because much of the network now operates on stations originally licenced as local contemporary-hits services). Still, it could be worse – had the Beeb got its own way a few years back, the space devoted to the lustrous 6Music would today be vacant, but thankfully those who fought to save it – including me – stood up for what we believe in.

At this time of year, with the new year only just finding its feet, it sometimes becomes too easy to look back, and I think starting 2013 the same way I started 2012 – dipping heavily into retro TV and music, and spending much of the first quarter rooted in the past – would be a mistake. That said, it’s good to look back over where we’ve come from, the CITV oldskool weekend was a nice nostalgic trip back to remind me of the person I used to be before reality went sour, and when I spotted the legendary 80s film Mannequin, on Channel 5 of all places, one Sunday, I tuned in and wallowed in a couple hours of a true classic, and it left me in a lifted, happy mood. (And yes, I have Mannequin on VHS, but can’t watch it that way just now ‘cos of my busted bedroom telly, which like the rancid stopgap phone has yet to be replaced.) Indeed, it was later that evening, whilst still on a post-Mannequin buzz, that a very sluggish perusal of the BBC’s mobile site informed me of the passing of Alice Pyne; however, given as I was minded at this point to look back fondly on past gloriousness, that evening I was not morose, instead recalling the happy and bright young lass as seen on the POBAs, whose light shone brightly and who contributed so much to this world. So sometimes a dip into the past, either distant or recent, can bring back glorious memories. And indeed, sometimes past wrongs can be righted many years later: a handbag stolen back in 2006 by one of the grubby, opportunistic thieves that make up a too-sizeable portion of the UK population, was recently recovered, with most contents and cash intact, when a bush yards from the rightful owner’s home was pruned back – it seems the thief had grabbed the first thing of value spotted in the sac – £20 in the cash purse – and flung the rest of the purloined material into the hedge to make an escape; freed from its captor and protected from the elements by the foliage, the bag simply sat pat for six-and-a-bit years awaiting its collection. So, it would seem, sometimes, when we think all is lost, what we actually have to do is look in the right place. Good advice for someone like me, who really can’t remember how many things he’s forgotten in the rush to get through the day. Maybe if I’m patient, the good things I seek will come my way. Of course, I can’t rest on my laurels completely, what with various individuals and organisations breathing down my neck, barking their demands that I hurry up and become a man, but perhaps if I take time to put my mind in order there’ll be less agony and more cheerfulness in my life. Which could make this blog an easier read, too. I do want to make this thing more enjoyable for you, given you’ve made the friendly, kind commitment to read it. Thanks for putting up with the current format, though: it gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts, feelings and opinions, even those which contradict each other; it helps give me mental peace as it lets me put my thoughts in order and release some of the pressure that builds up in my life on a daily basis; and it gives me the opportunity to tip the hat to the people, concepts and objects that are actually doing a bit of good for the world. And I can personally guarantee that it has spent less than twenty minutes resting on an astronaut’s penis.

“Tonight, we nail that little fartblossom!” (Goodbye!)

“Well, everyone, prepare to get your guts kicked out by folk singers…” (Hello!)

Green! Wow! Cool! So, you’re probably right busy just now, giftwrapping the turkey and removing the giblets from the tree and all that, but I’m sure you’ve got a spare five minutes/hours/days in your holiday period to let me belch out one more package of text-based ineptitude. This being thankfully my last big noise of the year of the year 2012, I’ll take the opportunity to get even more reflexive than usual by doing what appears to be a review of the past months gone by, picking back over my previous blandish radiocasts to upend my thoughtbox and see if anything relevant to history falls out, and if so in what order. And remember, if you’re turned off, turn off!

I do appear to have been stuck in some sort of juddering loop this year. I’m in much the same position, if not worse off, now than I was at the end of last year. And I’ve been whining about my lack of forward motion quite a lot – though the amount of time and effort I’ve put into jobhunting has thankfully meant these starchy bleats have only appeared about once a month, and my use of Twitter has declined to almost nil thanks to the ropey browser on my second-rate stand-in of a phone. I’ve genuinely tried to better myself and move forward, and my continued rut-sludge has become increasingly frustrating and fractious: I’ve had to build in breaks to my jobsearch to allow me time to recover from the shakes, setbacks and struggles which have become increasingly likely in the way I live. I haven’t really been able to move on and frustratingly it’s not entirely my fault – I’m doing the forms and interviews as set out by the employers, but when it comes to time to make their choice, the employer is often passing me over in favour of taking other action – which in one memorable case this year was to go into administration days after I applied to work there! Aside from the work worry, I’ve also been taking on more duties at home, and have as a result had to spend practically every other day rushing around a large supermarket, a requirement which, when combined with my jobhunt requirements, has meant that I haven’t had any time for relaxation or fun this year: the fact that my sole holiday trip of the year was a couple hours in a Stratford shopping mall suggests I need to treat myself more nicely in 2013. I have been rushing around in a stressed panic to such an extent that I barely know which way is up; I haven’t had time to stop and smell the flowers – literally; one of my many regrets this year was my wrongheaded response to a friend’s kind and polite gesture on my birthday, way back in March, to send me a bunch (if that is the word) of beautiful cut flowers. I became so obsessed with caring for the bouquet that I spent large swathes of their glory days rushing around various local homeware stores buying plant-related gubbins in order to try and nurture them, not realising that I was missing their brightness and beauty by being out of the room. During the period of silly panic I did look up Wikipedia information on cut flowers in a rushed attempt to find out how to look after the poor blooms, and realised with tears in my eyes what sort of limited shelf life flowers enjoy after being separated from the main plant. I did, once I knew how to, try to tend to my beloved gift, and they ultimately had, for cut flowers at least, a fairly good innings; I wish I could manage my own decline in such a caring way!

Elsewhere, many of my posts here in 2012 featured repeated and recurring worries, fears, obsessions and triggers, that kept bouncing up onto these pages – though sometimes my treatment of these individuals or concepts would pendulum from positive to negative, or vice versa, or even back and forth, based on my thoughts, feelings and opinions at the time, and often abetted by media coverage. Shouting at (or, more accurately, about) the telly has long been an obsession here, and maybe if there’d been more good stuff to watch, in what was a pretty shoddy TV year outside of sports events, I would’ve had more opportunity to be entertained rather than annoyed. Aside from that, for some reason I suddenly got stuck into a loop of waffling on about Woolwich for no apparent reason, having plucked the town from my memory, seemingly at random, having at the time not been there for a long while (I have since returned, though the new Tesco is big enough to give me the supermarket shakes!) I’ve also had to dodge the media nonsense flung at me by the ever-grabby and grubby media. I have realised one potential reason why I’ve allowed showbizzy nonsense to intrude too far into my life, and the penny dropped when Ceefax bit the worm recently with digital switchover. Back in the day, or in the late 90s and 00s period between getting a teletext telly at home and the services stopping, in any case, I used to start my day, whilst getting ready for school/college/convincing myself life is worth living, by reading the intelligent music and games journalism delivered into my home at the touch of a few buttons by the likes of Planet Sound and Digitiser. However, I no longer have this available to me, and whilst having the mobile web essentially brings Ceefax-style push-button access to a cut-down version of the news, my clanky current phone can’t work many sites, and one of the few which does function is hateful showbiz tripesite Digital Spy. There isn’t a WAP equivalent of Planet Sound, unless Drowned In Sound or NME or someone starts doing some kind of quick-access, stripped-down, daily-digest news-site, and the mix of news, analysis, opinion, criticism, pig-based insults, snake raps, Inspector Morse jokes and references to Mr T’s bins that the now-a-decade-gone Digitiser once provided isn’t, as far as I can see, replicated anywhere. I did enjoy Digi’s mix of information and entertainment in my youth, much as I enjoyed the similar mix of proper pop DJ links and comedy skits proffered by Mark and Lard on Radio 1 around the same time; now, instead of being informed and entertained by my media choice, I have to put up with what I’m fed, which is increasingly a breathless bellowing of massmedia nonsense about celebby transients who matter little in the grand scheme of things when you really think about it. Still, at least Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose is still, much like I am now, sat around writing, now penning the actually-good CBBC sitcom Dani’s House, something else which has had more mentions than merited on this mauve page, and which stars the genuinely-gorgeous Strictly finalist and former Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer. And I’d much rather read about Harmer’s exploits than some of the stars who’ve been foisted down our throat this year.

Rihanna, for instance, has barely been out of the media spotlight all year, as her continuous heavy-rotation presence in the spotlight really began to grate – it got to the point where you couldn’t open your eyes and/or ears without having that still-very-young Barbadian barraged towards you, either through one of her overplayed music videos (Chart Show TV’s three-hour all-RiRi marathon being the thud at the bottom of that particular barrel, a slot scheduled to please advertisers, onanists and chavvy teens – in that order – but with no recourse to the feelings of actual music fans) or through her constant hovering around the gossip pages thanks to her much-gabbed-about (even on here) on-or-off love connection with Chris ‘Punchy’ Brown or her increasingly-racy photoshoots and self-shots which always get the grubby media salivating, and contribute to the overall air of tackiness and tawdriness that surrounds it all. You didn’t see the pop stars of the 90s behaving this sleazily, at least not in public (though as we discovered this year, the celebs of the 70s were into acting the dirty way, they just chose to do it behind the studio doors.) Maybe this is just a sign of how desensitized and sexualised we’ve become in the internet age; see also the inescapable Kardashians, whose dominance of TV and, oddly, the Daily Mail website (despite barely meriting a mention in the printed paper) is driven by the sisters’ presence in the world of fashion and pop culture, despite (or perhaps because of) Kim’s rise to internet fame when a raunchy video of her bedroom activities with R&B swordsman Ray-J (brother, should it matter, of fellow singer Brandy) appeared on t’web. I’m not certain that sort of behaviour should be celebrated, but then I grew up in an age when the likes of Ceefax wouldn’t have had the bitrate for that sort of nonsense. That said, my comforting-women siren was set off briefly when curvy Kim revealed to the press, during one of her many appearances in the public media, that her partner Kanye West (she loves her music men, does Kim) wanted her to slim down and starve herself such that she would be skinnier. And that’s despite his famous interruption of the waiflike and beautiful Taylor Swift at an awards show several years back to effuse about the videowork of Beyonce Knowles, a lady, like Kim, famed for her badonkadonk, apparently! Anyway, I decided on this occasion to pause my bellows that 4Music should replace her shows with Vic & Bob/Adam & Joe reruns solely for my benefit, and instead took a moment to advise Kim not to let a man bully her and instead to be comfortable in her own body. Speaking of 4Music, there’s thankfully still no sign of Friday Night Project reruns on that gunky pink channel this festive season, perhaps wise given what Justin Lee Collins was convicted of this year, though shamefully at the time listings mags were printed Pick TV was still planning to fling on some Oops TV as a timefiller over the holidays. After widespread condemnation of his rumoured involvement, JLC was forced to issue a statement denying he would be taking part in the sadly-soon-to-return Celeb Big Brother, but those rumours were perhaps started by a Channel 5 desperate to find something for their golden-handcuffed Bristolian to do given all his past shows for the network have flopped horribly, and all his future shows hopefully will too. Nobody has a right to treat a lady the way Justin did.

Yes, I always say nice things about women, even the Kardashians when necessary, and this desire to protect a lady’s honour is perhaps why I’ve taken more interest than I should in the romantic machinations of the aforementioned Rihanna, perhaps in concern that not-entirely-a-mastermind Brown may again revert to his aggressive ways should they shack up again. Maybe it’s not my place to get involved: Ms. Fenty herself seems willing to let the past be the past and made reference to Biblical verse on forgiveness when challenged on the matter by those who can still send messages on Twitter. I also continued to show love this year for a certain Unnamed Woman I have been fond of for several years now, but whom in a self-imposed ban I have decided shall no longer be named by name on here simply in an attempt to avoid sounding obsessed and vulgar. This lady has been quite influential on my life this year – she has released two helpful, uplifting books, for instance – and is returning to Channel 4 with a new programme next year (though sadly there is no sign of any rerun of her prior shows over Christmas on TV, so it’s off to 4oD I must send you); however, it’s clear that this lady no longer needs me in her life – she has a boyfriend, a charity to run, and is planning to move on with her life and activities, regardless of whether I’m still clinging to her hull or not – when asked during a publisher-sponsored Q&A session on Twitter recently what her next big goal was, an apparently-broody Unnamed suggested it was to become a mother (though one feels maybe this is one of those things she should run past her boyfriend first, before declaring to the world online…) Indeed, the fact her Twitter page has switched from a personal conversation to the commercial property of her publisher suggests this lass is trying to move away from one-on-one communication and hide behind the corporate protection afforded to those who find themselves famous. No wonder I cannot talk to, or even mention, her anymore – we’re on different levels now, she heading for the bright lights and chandeliers, me still stuck in the same muddy gutter I’ve always been. I’ll never be a father – I don’t have the health, energy, wealth, responsibility, tolerance, patience, balance or girlfriend necessary to spawn progeny – and now I’ll probably also have to change the name I’d planned to give my never-to-be-born daughter, having previously planned to use Unnamed Woman’s surname as a first name (which, like in some other names such as that of actress Ms. Perabo, it can also be used as) for any girl propelled from my potential partner’s loins. But this year I also noted how even those stars younger than me were moving on with life at a faster pace than I: I noted that two of the five beautiful ladies who form The Saturdays were now married, with one now a mother and the second this year announcing a bun, only to have her thunder blown out the water soon after by another expectant mum (of whom more later).

I’ve devoted a with-hindsight-unlikely volume of this violet gabble to girl bands this year as it goes, and one notable example of a pop outfit over whom I’ve changed my own tune during the course of 2012 is the X Factor-generated all-girl combo Little Mix. Twelve months ago, whilst not myself a viewer of that music-crushing behemoth of a TV series, I had been burned quite badly mentally by the humungous volume of media hype and counterargument that had meant the show and the behaviour of its performers – and judges – had never been far from the top of the media agenda, and quite frankly I was almost literally ill because of it. Little Mix were one of the victims of my tiredness and sickness – amid all the hooha about their original name, Rhythmix if you don’t recall, being ‘stolen’ from a charity, I decided I despised these girls, seeing them as all that was wrong with the Cowell-dominated, money-first-society-second nature of media today, and deciding that their name woes – and their apparent demolition of Cannonball, a Damien Rice song I’d previously liked – meant I couldn’t like or support them. I started to lash out at them, and as a non-viewer this was before I’d even heard them sing a note! And I cheered the Christmas chart which saw the ‘Ball deposed by the astounding Military Wives. But over the subsequent months, somehow the foursome won me over. Maybe it was because, once Cannonball was out of the way and they started to do songs that had actually been written for them, they started to look and sound more like an actual pop group – never one that would challenge, say, British Sea Power or the Cooper Temple Clause for my affections, but a perfectly acceptable substitute for the now-long-in-the-tooth likes of Girls Aloud, the previous watermark for ladybands emergent from these kinds of telly show. Maybe my ice-heart towards LM was also melted by the fact that the girls have been open about their body worries – as I mentioned in the Kardashian-led paragraph above, I want to be the knight that explains to a lady she’s beautiful the way she is, and doesn’t need to change anything about herself. Jesy has become something of a hatred magnet online, with many foul endusers making unnecessary cruel taunts about her figure and appearance despite the fact that the lady herself actually has a perfectly acceptable and natural body; Jade also voiced concerns about herself, this time claiming that, compared to other girls – including Jesy, as it goes – her figure wasn’t curvy enough – again wrong, Jade’s in lovely shape, and the fact she’s often seen with purple hair elevated her quickly to the rank of my favourite Mixer. As it happens, since last I posted on the subject of Jade another member of the Mix has experimented with violet locks, and so if you thought the previously-blonde Perrie couldn’t become any more attractive (to me at least), it seems you were wrong – with lilac hair she’s more stunning than an entire busload of Pixie Lotts. With Jesy having also been spotted sporting a touch of mauve amid her hairs on occasion, only the also-gorgeous Leigh-Anne needs to pick up the dye (if she hasn’t already done so) and we could well have my ultimate pop dream – the first all-purple pop band! OK, so from above they’d look like a pile of Quality Street, but given that a year ago I wouldn’t have used Little Mix and the word ‘quality’ in the same sentence I think we can say for once I’ve moved on and improved.

Conversely, over the years my opinion of Little Mix’s XF mentor Tulisa has worsened. I mentioned recently how I’d been looking back over some of my 2006-10 posts from my old blog in an attempt to potentially make them available on here somehow, and something which appeared among the noise thereon was a kind of radar-tracking of the rise of urban-grime trio N-Dubz, who during my earlier period of bloggage rose from a tinny little local concern to proper big actual stars, and I commented on how good it was to see an original British act pulling themselves up from street level rather than being dumped into sudden fame by some kind of telly show. But fame changed the three: Dappy’s litany of vile behaviour is well-documented, and the grotty Tulisa – a woman I once, perhaps wrongly, described as ‘talented and attractive’ on the old blog – has devoured the trappings of fame (among other things), appearing as judge on that hellish pop-reality chod The X Factor (seemingly in a bid to pull in young, urban viewers and ensure the output of the contestants matches the moronic noise that’s in the charts), popping up online alongside her then-partner (or part of) in a filmed-some-years-prior video giving headline-writers something to crow about, and getting involved in all manner of media spats – even with her now-former fellow N-Dubbers – all of which has meant that Miss T has never been more than a moment away from the media circus, and has, rather ironically, somewhat been rammed down our national throat this year. And to cap it all her sextape costar has, like JLC, been approached by the too-scummy-for-words Channel 5 to appear in Celeb Big Brother (though in this case Tulisa’s lawyers pointed out he’d been banned from going on reality telly under the terms of his legal settlement with the singer.) It’s been really gruelling to see someone I used to admire riding roughshod over my previously-positive image of her, but them’s the breaks – and as a self-confessed indieboy, I gambled on a brief flirtation with the urban scene and lost bad, so perhaps it’s partly my fault for ever liking her in the first place. Maybe I should stop feeling so sorry for myself and instead look for new heroes, but they’re in pretty short supply in a music and media world dominated by the Drake/Rihanna/Chris Brown triangle and the X Factor mediachoke. As I’ve said frequently I don’t watch X Factor, but feel pressured to keep up with what’s going on because of the dominance these folks have in the muso-media spectrum. I don’t particularly like banging on about XF here, as it goes, but at this end of the year Cowell and his footsoldiers make it their business to ensure the public have little else on their mind. X Factor people have wormed their way into my life with increasing and potentially alarming intensity – the moment that spooked me the most and had me asking myself all sorts of questions was the day when, on scanning through the magazine section of a shop, I spotted a blonde singer on the front of some teen mag and, unthinkingly, thought to myself, as I addressed each mag cover in turn ‘…and that’s Amelia Lily…’, before halting myself to question (a) whether I’d actually got that right in the first place – a closer inspection of the mag’s coverlines confirmed this – and (b) how I’d managed, as a non-X Factor viewer, to spot the lass so effortlessly without prior prompting. Amelia – who, along with Karen Gillan’s now-former Doctor Who partner Ms. Pond, has been credited with a revival of interest in the name – has this year begun to release her own pop records, in her case with a dance twist, and looks like giving Pixie Lott and the like a run for their (well, technically our) money.

It’s been a fairly strong year for X Factor people, as it goes – JLS have continued their strong run of success in the crowded boyband market, and one of them is, as mentioned above, now hitched to one of the Saturdays in what must have been the teen-pop wedding of the year. Misha B – slammed during her series as a bully in tabloid hate-stories I’m ashamed to say I swallowed wholesale – has unleashed her own tunes, and they’ve shown quite a range, from the dubby, clubby ‘Homerun’ to the soaring, soulful ‘Do You Think of Me?’, suggesting she may over her career proffer a similar musical spread to the late Whitney Houston, one of the notable stars we lost in 2012, and whose credits also ran from the funky (‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’) to the ballad (‘I Will Always Love You’). Olly Murs has absolutely nailed the cheeky-chappy persona down to a T, and has been the star of several of the more entertaining music videos of recent times (my personal favourite of those available being the pelting-through-a-shopping-mall-in-pursuit-of-random-babe film for ‘Oh My Goodness’ – tip: videos with a Segway in will always score extra points), clips which hark back to the days of the Chart Show when pop acts put a bit of effort into their films rather than just going the route of most artists today, simply shouting in a modified car while girls in bikinis prance about aimlessly. Speaking of videos, Jedward, previously dismissed as a joke act, pulled out an unlikely ace with ‘Luminous’, a proper actual club banger (which the twins described themselves as an attempt to be a bit David Guetta, perhaps wise when the French DJ has lodged himself a near-permanent residence at the upper end of the chart) accompanied by an arty, hi-tech video the likes of Empire of the Sun or Friendly Fires wouldn’t be too ashamed of. (I should point out I was into Guetta’s sound decades before it became cool to be – I bought, on CD which tells you how long ago this was, the original, pre-The Egg version of ‘Love Don’t Let Me Go’, which means I am actually cooler than today’s teenagers!) Elsewhere, Marcus Collins brought out a cover of the White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’ which has actually been mentioned on here before – I mentioned how the completely-different-to-the-original production, with Ronson-style synth horns, gave a totally different take on the tune from what had gone before, and mentioned that I actually like covers which put a different spin on a song, be it A Day To Remember’s punked-up resing of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ or Scala and Kolacny Bros.’ choral workovers of, amongst others, Foo Fighters’ ‘Everlong’. I even recalled buying Eliza Lumley’s album of Radiohead covers back when a dying Zavvi was flogging off whatever it had left. And right at the end of the year, sometime Gorillaz sparring-partner Daley (from off of ‘Doncamatic’, if you’re struggling) teamed up with Jessie J for a rather unique take on The Blueboy’s rave classic ‘Remember Me’. Yes, ‘geng-geng-g-geng’ bits and all. And yes, as male viewers will note, the non-Buxton-partnering J. Cornish (as was) looks ruddy mint in the video, if we must dwell on looks (and the media insists we must, even though I’m certainly not one of those fools who’s all about the b-bling-b-bling), to the shameful extent that, on first viewing of the clip, I didn’t actually recognise her until her name popped onto the infobar at the end of the vid.

And then there’s the seemingly-unstoppable One Direction, storming the charts not only here but also in the US, soaring like a knife through butter in a market where many British artists, including much more ‘serious’ acts, have failed to take flight, and securing themselves star-name girlfriends much to their teen fanbase’s consternation, one lucky 1D sod dating the now-lilac-barnetted Perrie of Little Mix, and supposed swordsman Harry siring seemingly an array of ladies, apparently including Xtra Factor host Caroline Flack, before setting his sights on young and rather pretty US country-pop belle Taylor Swift. Jammy git. Anyhow, it’s too early really to tell whether any of this year’s crop will go on to international hugeness, though apparently-oily Katie Price-inspired Rylan Clark seems keen to cling on to fame and become a ‘brand’ in his own right, which means he should be particularly tough to avoid in the coming months; after surviving the vote by the skin of his teeth in controversial circumstances during the show’s first week, Rylan subsequently secured enough support from the public to keep him buoyant for several more weeks, causing much consternation when apparently-more-polished performers were being scooped out of the contest whilst Clark survived. Meanwhile, the apparently Cowell-despised Christopher Maloney stormed the public vote for seven consecutive weeks, before ultimately being unseated by eventual victor James Arthur (who for some reason has been coerced into singing an R&B track by a non-Rihanna Barbadian chanteuse as his first single, though admittedly that’s no odder than Little Mix doing ‘Cannonball’…) However, Maloney’s apparently been given the chop from the XF tour after supposedly disgraceful behaviour toward Rylan’s first-week victim Carolynne Poole. How much of what was reported was fact and how much was bad blood it’s impossible to tell, but crooner Maloney’s successful run is apparently a sign that XF, having earlier focused on the young pop audience, has recently been viewed mainly by older viewers, a move assisted both by young people moving on to other media and X Factor itself shifting to a later slot to avoid clashing with Strictly Come Dancing. The move away from clashes has benefitted Strictly more than it has XF – now people can watch both, Strictly’s figures have improved, whilst X Factor’s have fallen over the years, a major embarrasment for the once-swaggering Cowell machine; this has perhaps spurred Cowell on to plan a back-to-basics relaunch for the show, which could include changes to the judging panel or to the format of the show. One thing that’s definite is that in the run-up to the relaunch, the tabloids and gossip websites will be packed almost daily with a ‘will (name) leave?/will (name) be back?’ conjecture that’s likely to become very tiresome. But the noise won’t stop – Cowell loves it when his shows are in the papers, even when it’s bad news – as it keeps the X Factor brand’s media dominance alive. Maybe I need to accept that the sort of entertaining media I like is never coming back – urban grime, showbizzy slime and the Cowell mafia have the mass-media sewn up almost to the total exclusion of any other voices, and I have to accept this is the way things are now. 4Music isn’t for the Adam & Joe/Mark Radcliffe/Digitiser-idolising likes of me, it’s for the modern teens whose tastes stretch from One Direction to the Kardashians, and if I don’t approve of that angle there’s little to nothing I can do. I could, of course, continue to support the few alternative options which remain available *cough*6 Music*cough* but I guess I’ll just have to get used to being on the cultural backfoot.

One thing this year that may well change what’s printed in the papers and mags in future was the Leveson Inquiry. Set up in the wake of the 2011 fallout from the News of the World hacking scandal, this year saw the first stage of the probe concluding with the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s leviathan of a report into the culture and ethics (or, increasingly, lack of ethics) of the press. I won’t reprint the entire wodge here – most of the news sites have done fairly concise summaries of what emerged – but it was corroboration that the press, or elements thereof at very least, have engaged in avaricious pursuit of scandalous and salacious stories, often at the expense of decency, dignity and occasionally the law, in an attempt to keep pace with online rivals who have eaten away much of the traditional straight-ahead news market. The reckless behaviour of those in the media is no real surprise – anyone with more than an ounce of nous would have been able to figure out themselves that what the press-pack were up to didn’t always sit right – but the question now is how do we fix this? There’s ongoing debate in politics and the press over the future of media regulation, a discussion which will spill over into the other side of the Christmas recess, and there is still contention over whether, as posited by Leveson, new legislation is wanted or needed to provide a statutory spine to the will-be-protected-either-way freedom of the press (paper barons and PM Cameron don’t want legal underpinning for the new regulator, whilst other MP’s call for Leveson’s request to be implemented in full.) The fact is: the press have failed in their duty and misused their existing freedom. Whilst the media should never be under the thumb of those in power, and should be able to hold public and political figures to account, the media as currently constituted has played fast and loose and the chain needs to be yanked back. We need to protect the freedom of genuine, quality journalism, but what if that also means allowing freedom for the gutter tripe who base their presses on the showbiz trash and often resort to dirty snoopery? It’s a really tough call to make – we need to stamp out the slimy, scummy behaviour which has soiled the name of the British press, but how do we do that without curbing proper journalistic investigation at the same time? One organisation which was little tainted by Leveson but which has had its own scandal to cope with was, of course, the venerable and yet also vulnerable BBC. Whilst their Olympic coverage was more well-recieved than much of the pre-transmission mithering would have had you believe, there were several more bulletholes made in the increasingly-fragile body of what was once our national broadcaster. The weather-hampered, error-strewn, Fearne Cotton-assisted coverage of the Jubilee undid much of the good work the Beeb had done in its coverage of 2011’s Royal Wedding – the disjointed attempt to appeal to the very young and old alike by hybrid inclusion of everything from boat pageant to Horrible Histories skits (well, skit – the Beeb was slammed for dumping several sketches by the well-regarded stars when the running order went to pot) and sick-bag reviews didn’t come off well, with viewers furious at the tone and manner of the coverage, which was given an unexpectedly grim pall by the grey rainclouds which, whilst not physically the Beeb’s fault or something they could fix, dominated the coverage.

But worse was to come at the end of the year when it emerged that some of the Beeb’s stars back in the 60s, 70s and 80s may not have had the noblest of intentions, and may well have been abusing their position to feather their own grimy nest with the crushed dreams of the young people they apparently molested during the course of their career. I was not involved in any of this – indeed much of it occurred before I was born – and I don’t condone this, but, unaware of what was happening behind the scenes, I supported these monsters’ careers, blithely watching Top of the Pops, Jim’ll Fix It and the like and just assuming at the time that these were simple light entertainment shows, not knowing what was going on once the closing credits had clattered down and the cameras been powered off. And the BBC’s news department was quite non-John craven about the whole situation throughout its history, refusing to blow the whistle on one of their own, and whilst those who worked with Savile during his Beeb tenure had inklings as to his dark majesty – Radio 1 then-head Derek Chinnery probing briefly the gossip around Savile back in the 70s, and taking as gospel the DJ’s denials given the lack of hard proof – the true extent of Jim’s urges didn’t start emerging from the woodpile until an ITV documentary in autumn 2012 finally gave voice to those whose whistleblowing was silenced by Newsnight. The recently-completed review into the whole mess found that, whilst there was no truth to the oft-held suspicion that entertainment heads got News to quash the story to protect warm tributes to Savile aired last Christmas (and which, shamefully, I watched), a lack of effective communication within the BBC and a degree of animosity and silo mentality between departments and individuals, coupled with the complex reporting-up and management structure of the unwieldy Beeb, led to a large-scale confusion among staff, confusion which only got worse when, with many senior people stood aside or in acting or dual positions amid the Savile fallout, a Newsnight keen to rebuild its own reputation broadcast a report which, whilst not directly naming the individual, implicated a senior political figure in historic abuse, only to subsequently find that the report was built on a years-old error – the victim had been mistakenly told by police that this peer was the abuser, and had then given this information to the reporter, with the identity of the attacker not double-checked before the allegations were broadcast. The already back-pedalling Beeb, whose new boss George Entwistle had barely got his feet under the Director-General’s desk, was forced into further convulsions and Entwistle was self-elbowed, with a controversially-high payoff, less than two months after arrival in the big chair. This mess did lead to questions about the future of the BBC and whilst my fearful, height-of-the-crisis suggestion a couple months ago that the whole edifice could collapse and be broken down appears, for now, to be unfounded, there will certainly be further timidity at the already-weakened Beeb which still has skeletons in its closet – a report into the culture of the Beeb in the Savile years is set to ‘drop’ in the new year, and may well unearth further political landmines in the floor of the soon-to-be-vacated TV Centre.

Whilst the BBC itself is, at time of writing at least, still going, some parts of the corporation have been sent to Coventry – something innovative and rarely harmful that came out of the 70s, the blocky-but-beautiful Ceefax, left us this year, departing with the digital switchover (leaving my London-area transmitter in April and killed off altogether when Northern Ireland completed the switch-off map in October) and BBC One will no longer be going after kids – no, that’s not a Savile gag, I mean programmes made for children will no longer be part of the main channels and will instead be exiled to the digital CBBC and CBeebies channels now that, with digital platforms live, anyone who can get BBC One can also get the kids’ channels, which allow more flexibility as to scheduling than a block wedged into a general-audience channel can, and broadcast in dedicated, identified kid-friendly walled-gardens of the onscreen channel guide, where the shows for young’uns don’t need to butt against shows which may be less suitable. BBC One will still air shows aimed at families, but the death of CBBC on BBC One – six years after ITV1 killed off weekday CITV in favour of their own cheap digital channel – ends something that TV had been providing since back when I was a lad; I grew up in the 80s and 90s and this was a boom era for kids’ TV – prior to this, according to websites I’ve seen, kids’ shows existed (Blue Peter, Newsround, Magpie, Rainbow, Play School et al) but were often just wedged into regular schedules with no real thought to any dedicated presentation. That changed in the mid-80s when ITV decided to introduce networked specialised presentation links as Children’s ITV, followed in short order by the Beeb shipping Phillip Schofield into a continuity studio to marshall the similarly-skewed Children’s BBC service. Over the years, the studio facilities and presenters accorded to each service changed and evolved – sometimes reducing (in CITV’s case cutting back to voice-links only for a time in the 90s), sometimes expanding (CBBC gaining its own fiefdom in the hallowed Studio 9 on the roof of TVC around 1997, and also gaining a BBC Two breakfast berth) – but the core idea of providing a range of material for kids, from drama and comedy to fun and games, and from animation to factual features – continued to thrive as generations of kids came home from school to enjoy a couple hours of made-for-them entertainment ahead of homework, dinnertime, primetime family telly, and then bed. The fact that the vast majority of schooldays were just that is the reason I can’t write an autobiography, there just wasn’t enough variation in my activity! But that was the media world we lived in in the years before the internet and digital media meant we could watch, within reason, whatever we want whenever we want to – now, if you want to watch kids’ TV at midnight or intense sexually-explicit drama at 3pm, you can, you slimeball, thanks to iPlayer, YouTube and digital channels. People just don’t have the same experience growing up today as we did when I was young, which is why in 20 years’ time there won’t be sites like TV Cream – there won’t be enough people with shared collective memories, as we today live in an age where we can have whatever our heart desires on tap, and fie to the schedulers. That said, the TV companies love slapping themselves on the back, and ITV is celebrating 30 years since CITV in its block-on-ITV1 form was introduced with a special documentary over the New Year and a weekend of retro shows, many of which I remember from my CITV-watching years, in early January. Puddle Lane, based on the books I loved in my tothood! The Raggy Dolls, which taught us about acceptance and tolerance decades before Unnamed Woman embarked on her …Beautiful Friends series! Spatz, for burger-flippers’ sake! This is gonna get CITV Channel its best ratings in years! Even I’m gonna watch the bugger! It’s just a shame that outside of anniversary time ITV seems content to sit on its archive and just roll out Horrid Henry on a loop – some kind of ‘CITV Classics’ strand on the regular schedule could get kids watching with their parents as both enjoy the shows – parent from their own youth, kid being introduced to the show anew – and that kind of shared experience is gold-dust in our ghettoized, suit-the-individual culture.

Away from the TV screen, as I have been since my bedroom telly blew out after 16 years, there has been little good cheer in 2012, as you’ll know if you’ve bothered to read my halting treaties on news events, heavily weighted towards death and disaster, within my wider whine-posts. If some poor soul’s life is devastated enough for their calamity to feature in the newsmedia, there’s a chance that it’ll fetch up in my field of vision and contribute to my unbearable heartache. This year, one common theme which has recurred and devastated many parts of Britain is the destruction wreaked by the weather. It’s been a wet year, as anyone who bothered to watch the Jubilee coverage will not need reminding, and in both summer and winter we’ve had reports from right across the country of homes and businesses being washed away (sometimes quite literally) by rushing water as sodden rivers burst their banks. Mere weeks after Thames Water launched a marketing campaign urging London scum to watch how much water they used, some higher power decided to foist upon Britain more of the wet stuff than we’d ever need. Crops were reduced to slush, leaving less-than-perfect pickings for the supermarkets that have driven so many stores out of business, families were left wringing out the remains as a lifetime of memories sank into the sludge, and the gush seemingly didn’t stop, Cornwall basically being washed away this very week, meaning many people’s Christmas celebrations have, perhaps literally, been washed out of the window. I’m always uncertain what to do in these sort of situations – I don’t have the power or money to be of any practical help to the disadvantaged, a claim I have made repeatedly on this and the earlier blog since 2006. So instead I sit helplessly by and weep as I watch Britain drown, crippled both by worry for those afflicted and rage at my own inadequacy. Mind you, those who do have money and power haven’t always got a blemish-free record: this year the likes of Starbucks, Google, Vodafone and Amazon among others were slammed for their tax payments (or lack of), amid suggestions that if these firms paid up properly, the Tories’ scything cuts to public budgets could have been lower. Starbucks in particular were being crafty, slipping UK income to international subsidiaries such that its Brit operations were technically lossmaking and therefore subject to a lesser tax burden. Indeed, many of the firms implicated in the scandal have the benefit of international operation – the mostly US-owned (Vodafone is European) companies can pool incomes and shuttle balances around the globe to land in whichever domicile gives them the best chance of keeping profits in their back pocket and away from the grab of the taxman. This is perhaps how Amazon has been able to offer such low prices on CDs and drive the likes of Zavvi, MVC, Music Zone, Fopp and nearly HMV out of business, pulling CDs and to an extent DVDs off the high street pretty much altogether. I must again admit some TOTP-like guilt in this program: I have bought from Amazon before, again mostly on cost ground – my copies of all three of Unnamed Woman’s books came through the post from the ‘Zon rather than book-in-hand from a Waterstones pretty much purely for the discount I could get on an early preorder. I won’t be spending much time in Starbucks, though – I’m not the biggest fan of coffee, and for the price of one of their probably-needed-in-this-weather hot drinks, I can get an entire lunch from Boots! Some individuals’ tax arrangements also made the headlines this year, perhaps most prominently comic Jimmy Carr, though here at least he took the upbraiding in a classy way, taking his medicine on 8 out of 10 Cats and adding gags on the subject to his act. This ability to roll with the punches means Carr hasn’t been harmed too badly overall by the situation, and as he himself pointed out in Cats’ own end-of-year review, there’s a Jimmy off the telly who’s been found to have done much worse in his offscreen time…

With this being a jubilee year, you’d expect the Royal Family to have been in the headlines, but their coverage (or in some cases uncoverage) this year was even more deranged than could have been expected. Of course there was the furore over Harry’s naked antics in Vegas (Las, that is), and this perhaps illustrated how frustrated the mainstream media is by the explosion of unregulated online content, the Sun eventually breaking the unspoken embargo and printing the shots. No British papers printed the grubbily-grabbed long-lens shots of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing on holiday, but again the shots were widely circulated internationally and online, leading to much consternation around intrusion into the couple’s privacy and debate around how much of it people in the public eye can or should have. There was better news for William and the former Kate at the end of the year, when it was confirmed – earlier than it usually would have been, due to Catherine’s hospitalisation – that the Duchess was up the duff. There had been masses of wild speculation in the months since their wedding, of course, and the baby news was set to give the midmarket papers something to coo over, until the story took a much darker turn. The news that a lady who had, up ’til a couple years ago, been working for Jigsaw, and who in her childhood presumably assumed as pure Disney fantasy any suggestion she’d one day be birthing the third-in-line to the throne (in the process shunting her hubby’s brother down the queue), made headlines around the globe, and when the gen reached Australia a then-little-known-outside-Oz DJ duo (‘MC and Mel’, if it matters) decided to set up a classic radio crank call. Now, this was slightly off-colour to begin with – if someone high-up in Aussie culture was seriously sick in hospital, would, say, JK and Lucy ring up the hospital? It’s unlikely – but the prank phonecall is an established part of radio output so the Aussie hosts pressed on. Ringing through at 5.30am UK time to the hospital treating Kate for severe morning sickness, and posing as the Queen and Prince Charles, the presenters were put through to the relevant ward and pretended to ask after the Duchess’ condition; the call was then given the green light for broadcast by 2Day FM’s legal high-ups, and once word got out the call went viral, causing a media circus which dragged the DJs into the spotlight and, tragically, led to the duty nurse who’d answered the phone and passed the call onto Kate’s ward being found dead, leaving suicide notes, perhaps ashamed she’d let the scam call slip through the net on her watch rather than protecting the patient under her care. The nurse’s teenage son and daughter will be left living without their mother, whilst MC and Mel – in interviews seemingly shellshocked their simple gag had led so far – have been tainted to the extent their careers may never recover. Amid the sorrow and bad feeling, many stations over here stripped crank call-ups from their line-ups, until the dust has settled at least. But this case was certainly a reminder that sometimes things can spiral out of control and have effects far beyond what was intended. I’m quite timid when it comes to doing anything risky, for fear that I may cause unintended effects, and this timidity is perhaps holding me back in life. But I won’t be making unnecessary phonecalls to hospitals, even if I do somehow end up as a radio DJ, a career I sometimes wanted thanks to my former love of music. There have been other bad tidings emanating from hospitals over recent times – you’ll have seen my rants here this year about abusive staff as exposed by Panorama, and my continued hatred and animosity towards the bilepit that is Stepping Hill Hospital, which always gets a kicking on this purple page despite (or perhaps because of) the fact I’ve never required medical treatment in the northwest. Recently we’ve seen the case of a young cystic fibrosis sufferer being given lungs taken from a heavy smoker, with her subsequent death leading to criticism of the use of ‘dirty’ lungs in the transplant process; and there’s been slimy crime in hospitals themselves, with light-fingered yobs helping themselves to presents intended for kids at both Great Ormond Street hospital in London and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire – though in both cases, donors have replaced the lost toys. How deep in the gutter must someone be to steal kids’ gifts from a hospital? There’s some real scum still sloshing around the streets, and there simply aren’t enough prisons in Britain to hold them all. I did once suggest turning Bluewater from a shopping mall to a prison, ripping out the shop units and replacing them with cells, and now I’ve applied, mostly without success, to work at most of the shops currently there, it’s no longer of use to me as a mall, so perhaps this conversion is the way to go. Maybe I’ll fire up the JCB once it’s back from flattening Stepping Hill… Speaking of vehichles, there has been a seemingly endless parade of death and chaos on Britain’s roads this year: thankfully incidents were on a much smaller scale than the mass pile-up which tainted the M4 forever late in 2011 (to date the organiser of a nearby firework display, who like MC and Mel was presumably unaware of the devastation he was about to cause, is the only person to have been charged with any offence in connection with the chaos), but there’s still far too much death and injury on the roads, the sheer number and frequency of incidents meaning I can no longer write about cases individually on this blog (though one nasty case just days ago was a death when a car collided with a bus stop in South London’s very own – because nowhere else would want it, presumably – Streatham.)

Looking internationally, however, there have been cases which have grabbed global attention because of the needless loss of innocent young lives. In contractually-obliged-to-be-descibed-as-war-torn Afghanistan, nine young girls out collecting firewood for their families were wiped out by a landmine, the latest casualties of a seemingly-endless procession of conflict in the middle east (though David Cameron has at least agreed a timetable for the withdrawal after a decade of Brit troops from the country.) These girls’ deaths were little more than a footnote in most newscasts, however, due to events in Newtown, Connecticut, USA. A man so deranged and vile he doesn’t really deserve to be called a man killed his own mother at her home then descended upon the school where she worked (and where he himself had once been a pupil). Recognised by staff, he was let into the school and there the carnage really kicked into terrifying gear, this monster unloading his rifle into twenty innocent kids, all aged just six or seven, and six adults in the school before turning the weapon on himself. One true hero of a teacher, according to the sombre front page of the following day’s Independent, laid down her life to save her class of 16 tots, hiding the kids in a cupboard and taking Lanza’s bullet after telling him the kids were in the gym. Only the quick thinking of other staff – shepherding their young charges to safety when they heard the gunman’s rampage over the school PA system – stopped there being much more widespread bloodshed. This truly terrible act set the tone for the closing stages of 2012: how can we be truly happy this season when dozens of families who had seen their loved ones head off to school will never see them return? It’s certainly one of the most shocking and wanton acts ever to have taken place in a school, and perhaps inevitably invited comparisons to the similarly shocking attack on UK soil which forever tainted the tiny Scottish area of Dunblane back in 1996. It’s worth pointing out that even now Dunblane is spoken of in hushed tones, though the Daily Mail was perhaps rightly slammed for its needless whinges about the supposedly-wrong behaviour of the now-in-their-late-teens survivors of the Scottish atrocity posting updates about their drunken party antics on Facebook. Y’know, like almost all people in their late teens do. Regardless of that, one thing the Connecticut case did raise in the news was discussion of the mental condition of the gunman, and it can’t have been normal given what he did. I’m aware that those who have mental health issues need help before they overwhelm the sufferer – as someone who’s not in the best of nick myself, and who spends a lot of time around the fellow afflicted (on buses, at the library, at the TC) I know there’s a danger that mental unwellness can lead to societal damage, and I’m shocked by how violent and frustrated I have been – thankfully usually towards myself and the underpowered, trashy computers rather than any of my fellow unemployables – during my often-grim Wednesday visits to the TC. Indeed, one horrible dream which has thankfully yet to become reality saw me flinging myself around the TC building and bellowing, like a wheezy, bearded Mitchell brother. One problem is I really don’t communicate enough – I don’t talk to my family or the jobcentre about how truly ill I am, and aside from these spurts of lilac gibberish mainly suffer in silence. I badly need a rest, but am not in a position to have one – as mentioned above, a couple hours’ wander round the too-far-to-get-to-daily Westfield Stratford is what counted as my holiday this year. I haven’t watched any movies this year, the only time I stepped into a cinema being for a failed job interview as I attempted to broaden my horizons beyond the defunct retail industry. I haven’t made enough time to sit and listen to the radio, and as a result good tunes and quality commentary, should any have existed, may well have passed me by. I’ve virtually stopped listening to whole albums, instead having to squeeze a few tracks here-and-there into the short gaps in life in which I have a few minutes to sit down. I haven’t read any proper books in a good while, which stood me in poor stead when I applied for work in one of the few remaining book stores, and Unnamed Woman’s selfhelp and affirmation tomes aside, the only books I’ve read lately have basically been printouts of the sort of ponk that floods the internet – silly signs, daft misprints and the like – which again I squeeze into available moments whilst not doing other stuff. I did try to expand my literary horizons this year by buying cheaply a preowned copy of not-actually-a-book DS cartridge ‘100 Classic Book Collection’, only to accidentally smash my DS – in unthinking conjunction with my brother – before I’d had a chance to get my teeth into any of the ton of tomes. I really am at rock bottom and, whilst I have social sense enough not to actually pull trigger on another being – after all, perfectly symmetrical violence never solves anything – I don’t know how much lower my mojo can go.

Maybe I should stop taking things so badly. Every knockback I get is like a bodyblow, no matter how used I am to recieving them, and I’ve become resigned to the fact that it’s probably too late in life for me to be successful. I somehow waddled past the 30 mark this year despite my decaying health (some people wake up thankful to a higher being that they’ve survived the night; I often awake quite frankly surprised that I have done so). In the kitchen, the stress of cookery pressure means I get quite giddy at times, and am never sure whether to take the microwave’s vibrant beep as an insulting, arrogant dig (along the lines of “Get your ugly butt over here, you slag”), or a cheery warning from a helpful friend (“The food I’ve carefully and lovingly cooked for you is ready and prepared, my hungry chum!”) I’m alone and unable to even recieve help with my shopping, leading to gibbering and shaking at the checkout; as the years whizz by I become increasingly mottled and unattractive, to the extent that no woman intelligent enough to appear beautiful to me would actually agree to serve as my partner; and I have no real plans for the future, given I’m not entirely sure, given my present predicament, that I have one. I’m too timid and risk-averse – I avoided Woolwich for over a year following the devastating riots, only returning when circumstances (and the job centre’s desire to piss me about over my bus pass) required me to hoik myself off there, and I often stick rigidly to the regular stuff when out shopping. I have now calmed towards Woolwich enough to return there when necessary, and I am looking to become more adventurous in my food choices – I recently took up the offer to buy lemon, and later strawberry, mousse to serve as my dessert in place of the more-usually-purchased chocolate flavour (though I accept that having a dessert at all marks me out as some unthinking, uncaring capitalist pig.) I’ve also tried to experiment with cheeses – not in a filthy way, get your mind out of the gutter, I mean trying something other than the cheddar I’d usually pick up: at Christmas I often have Applewood, after seeing it positively mentioned in passing a magazine somewhere, but that’s basically smoked, flavoured cheddar. But one day, on seeing the various forms of cheese lined up alongside the cheddar whilst on a supermarket giddy-run, I decided I’d experiment with other forms of cheese to see if I could find one to mix up my cheeseboard a little. Wensleydale I found a little too clunky and moist for my needs, though my brother likes it (and will often bring home a block for his own consumption completely unprompted). The next one I tried was Double Gloucester, and I loved the creamy taste – though as my first DG experience was with an onion-and-chive assisted truckle – and there’s a first, I’ve never bought myself a truckle of anything before – I’ll have to see if my response is the same when confronted with a regular workaday slab of the stuff. And then there’s other cheeses yet for me to endeavour upon: whither Cheshire? I do spend a lot of time in the supermarkets, as I have a ‘mail must get through’ mentality when it comes to serving my family – they are reliant on me to safely and successfully get food home to keep them going through the day, and if the scran is lost or damaged in transit (or indeed I am) I will have failed as a son and supplier. It’s not easy when I’m having to contest with frequently mucked-about bus travels – it does appear that in around October/November time, TfL were carrying out some kind of unpublicised experiment to reduce the frequency of buses in my area – and having to dodge my fellow customers to get the items required. Christmas shopping wasn’t much fun either. There have been an increasingly-high number of instances where I’m flailing around a store muttering to myself “It’s just [name of shop or town], it won’t kill me, it’s fine, remain calm…”, though that in itself probably doesn’t leave shop staff and fellow customers with a good impression of me. I even had a breakdown when I arrived for a job interview and couldn’t rouse any of the overworked staff to alert them to the fact I was within their store! Didn’t stop the same firm somehow inviting me back for exactly the same interview a week later, though. And me being mental in supermarkets when required to deliver on my promises is nothing new – remember last Christmas (“Where are the cubes?”) Maybe cube-gate came back to bite me this summer when a yogurt I was buying from the same store burst in my basket, slurrying-up my new jacket in the process and making me look like I sexually molest zoo animals – or perhaps that was a revenge act for having bought the jacket from a rival superstore whilst in a different location a couple weeks previously. But I have, when not scraping spilled yogurt off myself, been thinking a lot about trust, loyalty, responsibility and care. It goes back to those flowers I mentioned earlier – I became so obsessed with caring about them that I forgot to simply sit and admire their beauty. I feel a failure for the occasional mistake – when my weak new phone failed to correctly identify a Thursday and set the alarms off on the wrong day, I missed a bin day, thus causing all sort of waste-based panic, and feeling I had derelicted my duty (though ruining the previous phone I’d entrusted myself with by allowing it to be rained on during Bexleyheath’s unlikely monsoon season and not packing the thing deep into my pocket at the first sign of drizzle was probably in itself a dick move.) Everything comes with ‘care instructions’ these days, even a can opener; maybe I should be more friendly to these devices and less furious with them when they fail to do their duties (I’ve bought three tin openers this year, ranging from a cheapjack £1 bodgejob with a too-weak hinge to a massive weighty purple-handled old beast: between the three of them they can almost open one can.) Sometimes I can be too caring – in attempting to handle my DS gently to avoid adding to the damage my brother had already done, I held the device too loosely and ended up accidentally killing my innocent game-playing friend. Or maybe I attach too much personality to these things. How do I walk the fine line between ‘uncaring’ and ‘oversensitive’ without looking like a bland dweeb? That’s one question it seems I’ll never answer satisfactorily.

I am aware I am very up myself. Despite not having done anything worthy of the channel myself, I still aspire to have a ‘BBC Four girlfriend’ – that is, one who’s talented, peaceful and intelligent, rather than the orange-skinned, silicone-filled slime you see on a depressingly high number of channels these days (ITV2, you created a monster…) But maybe I’ve been too dismissive of the lower classes. After all, the often-mocked-on-here-for-filling-up-4Music-with-their-reality-shows Kardashian sisters are miles more popular and successful than I’ll ever be – I struggle to get work as a shop assistant and I’m supposed to be one of that! – which suggests the K-named crew are in the right and I’m wrong, very wrong. I’ve also been behaving shamefully this year, spending so much time wobbling around in a panic and dragging myself through the motions that I’ve had very little chance to move forward. I’ve also abandoned the lovely people who’ve been helping me out over the last few years on Twitter, though in that case it’s for technical reasons – my sludgy new phone can’t do Twitter properly, so I’ve had to largely stay away. I’ve lost some good friends because of my mobile-based incompetence in the last quarter of 2012, and if you’ve come over here from my Twitter page I’d like to apologise to you. I’ve even been wrong about someone I like, assuming Unnamed Woman had given up on me when in fact she’d simply moved on with her life, getting a boyfriend and focusing on the future and cutting out of her life the unneeded slime that keep eddying around in their own rut (hi) and are thus of little use. I’ve spent too much of the year living in the past – listening to 80s and 90s music for much of the start of the year, perhaps in retaliation to the N-Dubz/Rihanna/Drake et al dominance of the modern scene, and latterly watching the likes of Bob’s Full House, Fawlty Towers and 3-2-1 in preference to more modern entertainments as conveyed by the Strictly/X Factor/Voice/BGT axis. And in what must be a misguided attempt to reconnect with youth, there’s no other explanation for it, I’ve loved CBBC’s retro-tastic series 12 Again, which tries to put vintage concepts – everything from communism and famine to Abba and Ghostwatch – into a modern context. Although presumably the recent episode featuring Lostprophets’ Ian Watkins has been ripped from iPlayer never to be seen again, given recent news. And let’s hope none of those invited to relive their youth on the series had ever said “The show I remember from the year I was 12 was a thing called Jim’ll Fix It…”  Anyway, I’ve spent too long trying to regain the past. It’s not coming back, the heroes we once had are either deceased (poor Sir Patrick Moore, one of the heroes, and not just for his turn as the GamesMaster back when Channel 4 used to show programmes that weren’t The Simpsons…) or discredited. Sometimes heroes are reborn – ITV brought back less-tainted-than-the-other-side dream-maker show Surprise Surprise, though a modern equivalent featuring Holly’s sparring partner Keith Lemon, Saturday night series LemonAid, mainly got slated for giving away a puppy and is thought unlikely to return. But perhaps I should live more in the present or even the future – if I keep looking backwards, either at our cultural history or my own life, it’s only going to be ever more different to move forward. I’m still not fully versed in new media – my YouTube page is only used to watch what Cassetteboy or Unnamed Woman have uploaded recently, I’ve not managed to fart out any videopodcasts yet, and as mentioned my current mobile is more smartass than smartphone. But perhaps there are changes I could make. I’ve been listening to Adam Buxton and Edith Bowman’s recent run on 6 Music – they introduced me to Haim, for one – and if time allows I’d like to spend more time sat soaking in that salvaged and surviving station’s mixpot of musical genius. Also, whilst flipping around the FM dial one night, I randomly stumbled into Mark Radcliffe’s Tuesday night show on Radio 2; whilst I’m loath to judge an entire strand on one sole edition, the usual Scrawn seal of quality was present, if somewhat compressed to fit the tight slot allocated, and it would certainly be worth my while to dip in again. I’ll also start reading more in the new year – if I get my DS and its 100 books back, or get my arse to The Works, or even log on to tax-pisstaker Amazon and have a digital browse, I could pick myself up some proper classics, and maybe even something modern and progressive. (I did go through a phase in my late teens/early 20s of reading modern books – for instance, I’d read James Hawes’ Rancid Aluminium years before it got turned into a film which most reviews seem keen to slag off – but haven’t dipped a toe into that particular fiction pool in a little too long, in all honesty.) I need to believe that things will get better – and this is where battering myself (figuratively, at very least) with the two books of positivity Unnamed Woman released this year may, one hopes, have lasting effect. But as it’s taken me thirty years to discover Double Gloucester, don’t expect change overnight.

Things can, though, as in the title of Unnamed Woman’s February 2012 book (reissued in piperback *cough* sorry, paperback, in January 2013), get better. Woolwich has for the most part been rebuilt – roast to a shell in 2011, the Great Harry pub reopened this year, though I haven’t been in for a pint yet (I was too busy rushing about trying to sort out my bus pass, thanks…) And sometimes stories I fret about have a positive outcome – one of the real-world guttings I worried myself over this year was the wedding-barn blaze that threatened to destroy two busy firefighters’ wedding plans; it’s recently been announced that two vile firebugs have been sentenced to (or of, I forget how this works) arson over the incident, with sentencing to come in February. And of course, there was the happy event which I not only enjoyed, but did to a degree which surprised me. This year we saw some true heroes – those of our own, and those from around the world – descend upon my apparent holiday venue of choice, Stratford, for a festival of pure sportive excellence. Not being much of a sportshead myself, I expected to take little more than a passing interest in the matches, but once the Beeb’s 24 extra channels had got flung up onto my screen I started lapping up the provision, to the extent that my rush-around-worrying schedule would allow at any rate. And I basked in the glow of genuine achievement and endeavour. After months, nay years, of becoming upset at the prevalence of famous-for-nothing slackers and slags dominating the media mix, it was good to see genuine effort and hard work go rewarded. After getting an ‘Ibiza Uncovered’-style reputation for slovenly selfishness, it was good to see the best of Britain being honoured: aside from the tranche of non-Brit badmintoners who contrived to rig the table standings, the majority of the sportspeople behaved and performed impeccably, and those who got their stance on the medal podium by and large deserved and earned their place there. Yes, there were disappointments – I made some unwise, tongue-in-cheek comments about Canadians on my I-could-access-it-then Twitter page after the talented Canuck ladies booted our girls out of the soccer tourney at quarter-final stage when, as an England fan of sorts, I should know that’s usually our limit (as proven when the male squad left the contest at the same level the next day.) And yes, after all the hype heaped on their heads beforehand it was at the time sad to see Victoria Pendleton and Rebecca Adlington end their Olympics in the way they did, but they still put in masses of effort and were recognised for this – indeed Becky’s times for bronze in 2012 were, I hear, better than the times the blonde posted to get gold in 2008! And whilst local hero Zoe Smith didn’t make it into the medal rounds, she certainly proved to all the haters that it was indeed possible to combine strength and beauty, simply by being both (a) strong (she’s a weightlifter, that’s more than I’ll ever be) and (b) beautiful (seriously – she’s properly genuinely hot, and at the lift proved sportswomen could be glamorous by accessorising her weightlifting suit with lush sparkly triangular earrings). And not long after the Olympians had departed the pitch (that’s what it’s called, right? A pitch?) a fresh set of heroes entered the field of vision: the Paralympics proved the doubters wrong by showing that a physical or mental disadvantage is no barrier to representing your people strongly in a sportive endeavour. Some fine performances showed the true strength and depth of the world’s sportspeople, and introduced Britain to sports it had perhaps little knowledge of or interest before (all hail Murderball!) The Paralympic athletes were an oasis of quality in a summer landscape too frequently dominated by slimy wannabes and slutty reality no-marks (and, again, the female athletes were stunningly beautiful – if hotter-than-a-million-popstars wheelchair-basketball player Amy Conroy is looking in, the offer of a date with a decaying, hairy Londoner who can’t really stand up in a straight line even though he’s supposed to is still very much on the table). And of course, there was another of my heroes of 2012, Martine Wright: left without legs in the 7/7 terror blasts the day after London won the frigging Olympic bid, Wright turned her traumatic experience around and ended up on our sitting-volleyball team. Now there’s dignity in action. You listening, Tulisa? The Olympic and Paralympic athletes were honoured not only with Team of the Year – and 11 of the 12 individual nods – at Sports Personality of the Year but also with a collective gong at the Pride of Britain Awards, where other winners included Unnamed Woman for her work championing the disfigured and disadvantaged, and the also-previously-mentioned-here Alice Pyne, the sweet Cumbrian teen who, like Unnamed, now runs a charity to help those in a similar bind to her own. In all then, 2012’s been a jammie dodger of a year – crumbly, dusty and dry at the start and end, but with a brief sliver of delicious jammy goodness wedged around the middle.

The festive season is, of course, a time for celebration and commemmoration. It’s not meant to be a time for misery, even though statistically it sometimes strikes – remember the 2004 tsunami, which still sends chills down Boxing Day eight years on. But I need to accept that, whilst some are able to spend the season with loved ones, others may not have the luxury of family, either because some tragedy has taken its toll or because the natural progress of life has left a sole survivor without relatives. So whilst I’m loath to end my final big-post of the year on a sour note, I would advise you to raise a glass of whatever the heck that is you’re drinking to those who will be glumly left with an empty chair at their Christmas table this year – such as the families in Newtown whose younger members won’t be alive to excitedly celebrate Santa’s visit; the families of murder or suicide victims, be it those of hoax-call nurse Jacintha Saldana or previously-mentioned-on-here teen Amanda Todd, who took her own life after victimisation from her peers; and the families of those lost to illness – this year, the often-mocked Peter Andre is in mourning following the passing of his brother Andrew from cancer, so how about this year you leave aside the taunts directed at Katie Price’s ex-husband, OK? And also raise any subsequent toast to those who, despite difficulties they’ve been through, will be able to celebrate some form of kinship with their loved ones, such as Tina Nash – blinded by her abusive partner but remaining strong for her sons; Gaby Scanlon – a young woman whose stomach was removed after a liquid-nitrogen-addled drink perforated the organ; and Louise Wedderburn, Channel 4’s ‘Human Mannequin’, who isn’t letting a damaging medical condition (FOP, since you ask) stop her living her dream of working in the world of fashion and beauty. She also posts recipes as well as fashion tips on her blog: once I’ve stopped arguing with the microwave and having heart attacks in the supermarket, I may even try some. And of course, my hero-of-the-hour every year, Unnamed Woman, who will continue to soar and fly; maybe one day I will be up among the treetops myself. Albeit keeping a respectful distance from Unnamed, of course, I don’t want to be accused of interfering. And hey, maybe I’ll stumble on good fortune – sometimes good things happen completely by mistake, as the Dutch wing of discount superstore Lidl found out when they launched a Twitter campaign with the aim of boosting publicity, and announced a plan to hand out 1,000 foodpacks to the homeless. The campaign went viral and eventually Lidl had enough messages to equate to 10,000 of the free dinners. Did they do what other firms bowled over by social media have done and rescind the offer? Hell no – they doled out the ten thousand meals with no fuss. OK, it was Lidl food rather than Dutch Waitrose, but those in most need of food aren’t going to make that distinction – sometimes those of us who are free to eat as we choose forget that! So remember, don’t be an idiot like what I am: you don’t need to get too stressed by the value of what you’re doing – it’s the worth of it that matters: a well-meaning gift is more well-recieved than an expensive one, and as the booze ads say, it’s not what’s under the tree that matters, it’s who’s around it. So do feel confident to tip the hat not just to those apparently less fortunate than yourself, but also to your peers and relatives: they will, for the most part, be there for you, ‘cos you’re there for them too. So, from all the OriginalPurple ‘team’ (i.e. me), have a generic, effective Christmas and a servile, dutiful New Year. I’ll see you on or after 2013. Dougal, leave the calendar until tomorrow!

“I’m just a blonde monkey to you, aren’t I?” (Goodbye!)

“I’m gonna be a sexy tall dwarf!” (Hello!)

Welcome, or similar. You’ll know by now that these big purple buggers take me a hella long time to write – you’ll see shortly what I’ve been doing in recent weeks instead of this – and in the intervening days the news has kept steps ahead of me, necessitating many rewrites and resulting in what’s sure to be an absolute wristbreaker of a piece both to write and to read. But I have to get this lot out of me before I collapse, so take a week (or less) off, put some calming music on and ready yourself to watch me weep. And, occasionally, cheer. Spin it, let’s begin it…

So, I was all but ready to sit my Brit-ass down and start writing this digital rubbish when the Beeb imploded again, and once again our once-proud national broadcaster is on the back foot, which is never pleasant to see. It does seem that in recent years, spurred perhaps by the sizeable and swift changes the media has been through in modern times, that the BBC is never more than a few days away from collapse, as the tall tower of broadcasting fingers it holds up sway in the fast-swirling media wind in a quite ungainly manner. And when you’ve got as many enemies as Auntie has, the vultures are never more than a short-hop bus ride away. Pity George Entwistle – he had barely set foot in the Director General’s new office when white-hot scandal and serious abuse allegations, many dating back decades, began to cause ructions, and amid the ensuing row over the governance of the BBC, tainted George was shown the door less than two months after taking over from Mark Thompson. It’s always painful for me to see the Beeb convulsed in the death throes, and there is a real fear that too many more of these nasty scandals could kill the broadcaster altogether. The commercial media is rubbing its hands with glee, ready for the payday which will come when those viewers who currently choose the publically-funded BBC as their news and/or entertainment provider are forced into their grabbing hands by the demise of the BBC empire, and sadly every day is now one day closer to the edge. Farewell, Only Connect. Farewell, 6 Music. Farewell, local news. Farewell, Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Farewell, Horrible Histories. It has to be said, if the Beeb had imposed a tighter grip on the activities of its stars back in the 60s and 70s, when celebrity culture was very different to how it is today, then maybe the years of abuse now clouding Broadcasting House would never have happened; however, the landmines left in the BBC carpet by past activities have now begun to blow up and kill today’s staff. I’ve somehow managed to outlive Ceefax – the blocky but brilliant text service has bowed out alongside digital switchover in Northern Ireland, completing the UK’s move to all-digital TV – but now there’s a real danger I’ll live to see the BBC itself die. The Sun was particularly nasty in its glee over Entwistle falling on his freshly-unwrapped sword (‘Bye Bye Chump’, indeed – I could have whipped my schlong out in the middle of the shop and pissed all over the papers on display, were it not that to do so would get me an unwanted reputation). Maybe this is revenge for Leveson – earlier in the year the excesses of the commercial tabloid media were laid bare and the largely-blameless BBC was able to report and digest quite comprehensively the near-implosion of the press barons (it was pie in the face, both literal and metaphorical, for Murdoch). Now though, the nasty redtops are back in the driving seat, extracting their pound of flesh, and the already cowed and wounded Beeb is hanging on by a thread. The Beeb is still making silly, paranoid decisions even now, though – the daft decision to declare Robbie Williams too old for Radio 1, as the station is now slavishly chasing the teen One Direction/Nicki Minaj audience, was proved foolish when the Grimshaw-scorned single Candy bulleted to number one. I guess that the station believes anyone who’s old enough to remember when Robbie was in Take That first time round is too old to be listening to the station. Again, listeners are just going to roll their eyes and retune to commercial radio. Radio 1’s current paranoia will only be manna to the everpresent Heart machine – soon to expand to ruin the areas currently served by Real Radio – and turn ever more listeners off the BBC. You’ve got to wonder if anyone other than me would mourn if the Beeb actually was killed off. 2012 was supposed to be the Beeb’s big year, with events such as the Olympics, but the panning of the Jubilee coverage was perhaps a portent of how the year would actually go for Britain’s (former?) public media service.

It has been a month of falling heroes, though: it seems there’s nobody left we can trust anymore. The BBC-wrecking scandal kicked off when, following his death, the once-feted presenter and DJ – and the man who invented the concept of two turntables and a microphone – Jimmy Savile was exposed as apparently being a serial fiddler of the kiddies. Much has been made of the fact that Newsnight (1980-2012?) canned a planned report in the wake of his demise just as the BBC’s entertainment staff were preparing to pay tribute with a string of specials. Shamefully, I watched some of the Savile celebrations – at the time, we the audience were unaware of his hidden tendencies as few legitimate official complaints had been made at the time the attacks took place; seemingly believing they wouldn’t be heard when it was their word against a national hero, Jim’s victims kept quiet and waited; only after he’d passed and couldn’t defend or explain himself did the apparent extent of his proclivities become public knowledge. In a further ghastly twist, it’s been alleged that some of the fondly-remembered telly that Savile helmed – such as chart-hits series Top of the Pops and dream-come-true hit Jim’ll Fix It – were deliberately concieved by Jim as a way of getting youngsters into the BBC and into his web of trap. This probably doesn’t bode well for the survival of the traditional Christmas TOTP, which has until now continued as a yearly-roundup format despite the demise of the weekly show in 2006. With Fearne Cotton pregnant and Reggie Yates leaving Radio 1 at the end of the year, there wouldn’t be presenters for it, anyway. A shame – during my many years as a music fan the festive ‘Pops was a must-see. Guess I’ll just have to make do with Wallace and Gromit from now on. And it’s knackered BBC Four’s 70s Pops reruns too… I should also admit I did enjoy a dose of Fix It when I was a lad (I didn’t realise I was his type…) because it was lovely to see the smiles as people’s long-held ambitions and dreams were being made real. Of course I regret watching it now, but back then I believed, like almost everyone else, that JS was just the wacky bloke in the tracksuit on the box of a weekend.  But why, when Savile was at the Beeb for so many years, was the whistle left unblown? Seemingly the Beeb didn’t want to crap on their own doorstep – they missed many chances to expose Savile both during his life (then Radio 1 controller Derek Chinnery asking Jimmy, then a DJ at the station, about the then-extant rumours and taking the presenter’s word for it when he said the comments were ‘all rubbish’) and afterward – it was an ITV documentary finally giving voice to the victims silenced by Newsnight that swayed public knowledge and finally, belatedly spurred the BBC into what passes for action – though as we’ve seen many times before, when backed into a corner the Beeb has a habit of running around headlessly, allowing its rivals to take easy potshots. Away from the BBC, Justin Lee Collins executed the perfect career suicide when he was convicted of harassing his former partner. It seems the shouty, bearded Bristolian lieutenant of Channel 5’s failed attempt to televise Heads or Tails hid a violently aggressive homelife. Certainly, those who once found his particular brand of “good times” agreeable have now viewed their man in a different light; hopefully, this will mean an end to the reruns of the Friday/Sunday/Whatever Night Project on the hideous 4Music, though sadly that does leave more room for Balls of sodding Steel and the Kardashians. With one hand the Lord gives, and with the other… Also finding his name muddied in recent months has been former cyclist Lance Armstrong. Mere weeks after cycling became a new national obsession thanks to Wiggins, Hoy, Trott and Pendleton at the Stratford velodrome, the sport of two wheels was being besmirched by the news that seven-times (well, technically zero-times now) Tour de France winner Armstrong was stretching his performance skills with banned-in-sport substances. And so the supposedly wonderful world of cycling comes crashing down into the ditch again, much as Bradley Wiggins himself did when he was involved in a thankfully minor road collison. Let’s hope that the new generation of young cyclists – including pedal-power-couple Jason Kenny and Laura Trott – can rebuild the shattered image of the two-wheeled sport. And as first-ever British winner of Le Tour Wiggins has pointed out, he can now claim more victories than Armstrong, which is only right in the circumstances.

Some of these recent news stories, and others, have reawakened some nasty ghosts from the pages of the past. Much as I still get a frost shooting down my spine every time Lockerbie or Dunblane are mentioned, even where not in connection with the infamous deaths and disasters therein, the reminders of past evils continue to haunt us. During the reportage of Jimmy Savile’s dark arts, it was suggested that he could have been involved in abuses at Haut de la Guarenne, the Channel Islands childrens’ home (and sometime setting of TV’s Bergerac) which a few years ago hit the headlines when a major investigation into historic abuse shocked the nation and led to a period of heavy grief. Elsewhere, a birth-damage case stemming back to 1994 was finally settled, but the name of the hospital where the mistake had been made back then sickened me: it was Stepping Hill, the vile northwestern dump of a hospital which has been much in the news in recent times over a saline-tampering case. The new development hardened my resolve to wipe that horrible hospital off the map, but sadly I wield too little power over the NHS to demand it; unless I go native (maybe turn up there with a JCB and a loudspeaker, and give the staff and the infirm a period of hours to clear out before I start smashing the place) this beast of a building will go on besmirching the image of the nation’s health service whilst its few remaining staff attempt to get on with the job of curing (or, in some cases, killing) the sick. Sometimes, those in positions of care who don’t care are caught, however: we recently saw the sentencing of six staff of the thankfully-closed Winterbourne View care home (don’t-care home, more like) which – having been exposed by BBC journalists, as it happens – had been the scene of terrible abuse of the residents by macho staff, who mishandled and bullied those in their care, and would still be doing so now if the Beeb’s secret filming hadn’t sparked outrage. Hopefully now these scum are behind bars the standard of care work will improve in the UK: hopefully, more of those who would do harm to those in their power will be taken out of service. I think I take these sort of stories too personally, even where they don’t directly involve me, because I care about people (some would say too much), and that lends itself to suggest I should get involved in care/social work – after all, with retail in the dungpit, my chances of carrying on my preexisting career as a shop assistant are slimming wildly. However, I’m concerned about how unsuited to care work I’d be. Whilst I’m capable of handling requests from a broad range of retail customers, I do frustrate easily, and being shackled to someone whose condition made them difficult to get on with could lead me to blow my top. I’m simply not emotionally strong enough to be around the vulnerable – and I’m a blunderer, too: I would worry too much about the consequences if I let the quality of my care slip: if I was responsible for someone’s wellbeing, and as a result of a simple error on my part they were harmed or killed, I wouldn’t be able to cope with the aftermath. I’ve said before that I’d struggle as a father, not that being one is on the cards given my lack of partner, and I still believe that at this stage, still technically fairly irresponsible despite my advancing age, it’s too early to give me any real fatal responsibility. But I’ll never stop caring about the sanctity of human life, which is why I won’t actually be turning up at Stepping Hill with a bulldozer – I’d far rather see the hospital ceased by peaceful means.

There have also been a number of young women in the news for various reasons and, whilst not wanting to sound like a creepy old Savile, I’d like to offer my support with the issues these beautiful ladies have faced. Sadly, in one case it’s too late to offer a hand of friendship to one of the girls involved. Canadian teen Amanda Todd hit the headlines when she posted an online video relating her tale of modern bullying (she’d sent flirty photos to a fella online, the snaps then went viral and the young lass was subjected to extensive taunts as a result.) Days after the morose YouTube video hit screens, though, Amanda was dead: apparently taking her own life, unable to cope with the vicious hatred she’d recieved in her community. I wish I’d been able to offer comfort to the poor lamb – or as much comfort as a bloke twice her age on t’other side of the Atlantic has any right to offer, anyway. I could have saved her life, had I actually been in contact with her at any point prior to her passing (I was not); it’s always a huge shame to see such a young life so needlessly snuffed out, particularly when a little friendship and kindness could have been enough to pull her back from the edge. I do have something of a random affinity of Canadians – some of the first people I became friends with on Twitter when I joined up and grabbed followers from wherever I could happened to be from the land of the maple leaf, there are plenty of Canucks in my CD racks (Amy Millan, f’rinstance), and I’ve seen more episodes of the awesome 6Teen than a guy my age has the right to have done; and although I did make a slightly tongue-in-cheek slamdown when the Canada team punted our ladies out of the Olympic football tourney, I still have a fondness for the maple-syrup munchers; I guess I just have to accept that I never had the chance to be the voice of reason Amanda in particular needed. It’s a great shame to know she will never now achieve the potential she presumably had to blossom into confident adult life. Another teen who was in the media glare recently was Malala Yousafzai, the teen shot point-blank in the head by a Taliban gunman in retaliation for her speaking out in favour of women’s rights, including on a well-regarded BBC international blog. Now, I don’t wish to attract the ire of the hardline Taliban (not that any of them are likely to see this rubbish), but I’m in favour of young women having the humane rights and freedoms they deserve. The Taliban are, given their conservative Muslim background, concerned about the potential intrusion of Western values onto traditional Muslim countries, and so decided to take action, as is their way; however, the wanton shooting of an innocent, intelligent teenager rightly shocked the world. Malala was flown to the Birmingham here in the UK for part of her treatment and, whilst the circumstances of her arrival were not what I would wish upon anyone, it was at least a pleasure to have such a sweet, smart lady on our shores. Thankfully, doctors say the damage done was relatively slight, and Malala’s recovery has been fairly prompt and comprehensive, meaning she’ll most likely be able to continue to fight for young women’s rights in the ever-changing modern world. Democracy is an important thing, and even if more conservative countries don’t want to introduce Western values, politics and styles, all countries should recognise the will of the people, even if they go on to use that freedom to make mistakes. Human life and wellbeing should be seen as sacred in all religious and cultural environments.

One young woman who made a choice which turned out to be more harmful than anticipated was Gaby Scanlon, a young Lancashire lady who, out at a bar to celebrate turning 18, took delivery of a cocktail to which liquid nitrogen had been added to create a flashy smoke effect. Whilst noted for its many exciting and innovative qualities – as anyone who’s been watching Challenge’s repeats of Brainiac will know well – the substance is harmful if ingested, and poor Gaby glugged down two of the danger-drinks, causing perforation to her gut, and ultimately having her very stomach itself removed by doctors. Whilst Gaby will be able to return to a fairly normal life fairly quickly – the operation was similar to that undertaken by gastric-band patients – she will forever be associated with that one misadventure. Of course, the bar is perhaps as much at fault for offering up poison in a glass as Ms Scanlon is for drinking it, and investigations and a potential lawsuit are pending, but one thing I’d like to do is offer a comforting arm around young Gaby’s shoulder and tell her things are likely to be OK. Of course, she’s perfectly within her right to push me away and ask who the hell I think I am, but all the same, the offer of support is there. One lady I hope to offer more support for over the coming days is a gorgeous young Scottish blonde who you may have seen in The Human Mannequin on Channel 4 (or 4seven) in recent weeks. Louise Wedderburn is hoping to take her passion for beauty products and fashion into a career, and is in the process of setting up her own blog (which would most likely be a lot more fun than this one, even for the non-fashionistas among you). What you may also know is that Louise suffers from FOP, a rare and incurable genetic condition causing her bones to lock up (excess bone develops, which can clog up the joints and lock the body in position). Sweet, pretty Louise is working hard to make her dreams come true, as we saw in the film, and whilst many FOP sufferers currently don’t live to see their 40s, research is ongoing which could lead to new ways to tackle the disease and make life longer and easier for those with the gene. On her Twitter page, Louise has been promoting the work done by FOP charities, and also responding to the ever-growing network of supporters who have been touched by her story and her good heart. I wish this wonderful lady nothing but success; and maybe young people today will be awed by Louise’s story in the same way I and many others were touched by Katie Piper’s first film almost exactly three years before; we’ve seen Katie blossom into a strong, confident, gorgeous young woman over the past few years and I have faith Louise can do the same: she’s genuinely very lovely. I’d like to say nice things about pretty Louise online, though the rubbish-at-Twitter phone I currently use means I haven’t been able to converse with her in depth, and in any case the poor girl’s been snowed under with messages by her fresh followers since her documentary aired. If you haven’t seen it yet it’s repeated on More4 on 20 November at 10pm, if you’re reading this before then (or indeed I’ve finished writing it by then), or the film’s available on 4oD, should you be able to access that. You may as well watch Katie Piper’s shows while you’ve got 4oD open, if you haven’t seen them yet. They’re well worth your time.

Whilst there has been some light coming from my crinkly old CRT, we mustn’t forget it’s been a pretty horrible month for those who follow the news (as ever, if you don’t like reading my news bit, scroll down ’til I start whining about myself). We’ve had the hideous situation in Harlow where a doctor and all five of her children were killed (three of the kids died at the scene with their mother, the other two passing away later in hospital). Only the kids’ father survived, and will likely be haunted by that dire day forever. Truly this was a devastating day. There was also a fatal fire in which children were among the dead in Prestatyn – though again, with investigations ongoing, I’ll hold back on giving forth my full opinion on that case, except to say that clearly action needs to be taken to stop these kind of despicable, deathly attacks. The Prestatyn fire hasn’t been the only horrible thing to have happened in Wales lately, with the disappearance of young April Jones also gripping the nation for a time, as viewers sat aghast that such a young and apparently innocent girl could vanish without trace so suddenly and completely. With legal proceedings ongoing, and action having also been taken against those who have discussed the case online, I won’t speculate or conjecture on the matter, but it was certainly horrible news to hear, particularly given that here in London I could do little to aid in the search for answers. Meanwhile, Cardiff saw carnage as a white van driver went on a horrible half-hour rampage, killing a young mother (who died protecting her children from the maniac’s wheels, the ultimate sacrifice) and maiming many others as he barraged his way across the Welsh capital. What a truly gruesome act. One wonders what pushed this maniac over the edge? Speaking as someone who myself is close to the edge mentally (of which more anon) I know that the simplest straw can crush the camel’s back, but this was way over the line. Maybe, though, this will be the disaster which finally gets those nasty white vans and their horrible occupants off the roads – or at very least, spells the end of laugh-free Will Mellor sitcom White Van Man. Well, the ban on smoking indoors wiped out the actually-fairly-good The Smoking Room, didn’t it? There have been other road crashes and fatalities in recent weeks, as ever sadly too many to name individually but with one notable case being in central Bristol’s Passage Street (which, given that it happened almost literally on the doorstep of the former GWR studios, would have meant comprehensive local radio coverage of the horror, had GWR not been subsumed into the London-based Heart hive-mind.) We’ve had the death of a 73-year-old man in an apparent burglary in southwest London, the demise of a woman who plunged from the third-floor balcony of the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham, and perhaps most horribly the stabbing of a pregnant woman in the grounds of a school in that crime-ridden city of Liverpool. Thankfully both mother and unborn baby survived the assault and are recieving hospital treatment; however, it’s certainly a sign of how low society has sunk that brutal, thoughtless attacks like this still take place in broad daylight. More needs to be done to take evil off the streets, before those who would do wrong wipe out the good in society. We must not let evil win. Sometimes, of course, disaster is wreaked on the innocent not by the hand of others but instead by the finger of fate, as nature itself continues to rain punishment upon us for our callous and sinful misuse of its resources, so I’m led to believe. I speak of course of the ‘superstorm’ (downgraded from hurricane, you see) they call Sandy, which sent shockwaves up the seaboard as it killed many of those in its path and devastated homes and businesses right across a sizeable quadrant of the massive USA. The power loss caused chaos in a world so dominated by technology, and again we saw needless loss of life – for example, people who required assistance breathing died because the powercuts stopped their oxygen machines working – and seemingly uncontrollable devastation in a country too far away for me to be of any practical help. Of course, we’ve been here before – Hurricane Katrina trampled New Orleans a few years back in similarly galling fashion and it has taken the area many months and a lot of gut strength to get back on its feet – but clearly something has to be done: we need to change our ways now, lest these insanities of weatherfront continue to strike the world and, potentially, the UK – much has been made of the recent 25th anniversary of the 1987 storm (“A woman rang the BBC to say there was a hurricane on the way. Well, don’t worry, there isn’t”) which ripped the roof off southern England. As they say on Friends Like These: it can happen, it has happened, and it could happen again.

Whilst my problems are a piddle in the ocean compared to those above, my own life hasn’t exactly been a barrel of kittens lately. I’ve not had means to moan about my life all that extensively on Twitter given my weak-ass phone, but I need to let this anger out somewhere, and so here it goes here. It’s been a month-or-two of feeling fairly rough and frustrated, with occasional positives. Being ill for much of the period hasn’t helped – at one point I was huddled over in the jobsearch centre shivering like I had ice running through my veins, and I spent the next few days mostly choking in bed, only venturing out briefly to keep my jobsearch up (I’m hanging by a frigging thread here) and pick up medical supplies and soup, noodles, crumpets and other warm and easy-to-swallow stuff for lunch. I’m now better than I was at my worst, though the cold winter weather at this time of year is not entirely friendly to my chest. I have been piling on the pressure in my jobsearch in desperate attempt to better myself, and with festive opportunities opening up I have on occasion been required to be in two separate places on the same day (and have had to have the bold nuts to ask for a reschedule on those occasions where I’m expected to be in different places at the same time.) One such occasion came when two separate interviewers wanted me in different places on the same Tuesday morning: having already committed to one interview following a phone call, I then later recieved an email asking me to a different location at around the same time. Not being a Timelord, I had to defeatedly reply-to and advise the emailing employer that I wasn’t available at the given time, but that I would be available on future dates should they ever consider inviting me: they offered me a slot later that afternoon. And so it was that I had a full and fulfilling Tuesday of effort – excitingly, the second interview of the day was in a hotel (not for a post therien, alas, but for a retail store job) and as it came just days after Channel 4’s Hotel GB it was quite fun (ooh, they’ve got hotel rooms, like the hotel rooms on telly… ooh, they’ve got teacups like the teacups on telly.. you get the drift) Despite the insane amount of travelling and walking about needed (neither interview took place in the store I would have been working in, in one case because it hadn’t been fitted out yet) it was quite a bracing and fulfilling day, and I got home happy in the knowledge that I’d made a real effort. Sadly, it seems, my best still wasn’t good enough, as neither interview (one group, one solo) resulted in a job offer, but at least I hadn’t wasted the day sat on my back and/or side watching trashy telly (which these days is just about any telly). Oddly, the day after the double-decker interview I felt really unfulfilled and bored, possibly because that day’s duty was to kick my heels until my afternoon visit to the jobsearch centre. Since then, I’ve had a few more double-appointment days, and these have been even tighter for time – real panic and worry that I wouldn’t make it given the distance to be travelled and the time required to get there, only to actually just about manage it. It’s certainly quite a way to spend the day, and it felt good to make the effort, but I’d really rather just have a job, such that I have more certainty about where I have to be and when. I have been getting really frustrated in the jobsearch centre actually, sat in front of a computer feeling rejected and stressed – a lot of the emails I’m getting are reposts of ads for jobs I’ve already seen, or rejections from posts I’ve gamely applied for, and on one occasion I sent an email to one job I’d seen advertised in a shop window only to see the mail bounce back undeliverable: I rocketed out of the centre and down the road to recheck the address and I’d correctly filled out the address as given in the window, suggesting the error was a misprint on their part rather than a mistake on mine. On one occasion, caught in the mire of stress, I simply let out an anguished, primal squeal. I really need to calm down and rethink: I can’t keep feeling like this. You’ll recall that I’ve previously expressed an interest in having a lengthy discussion about my future options with my task-centre advisor. Her response to this request? To wash her hands of me and palm me off to a newly-arrived colleague. To be fair I’ve been at that centre longer than most of the staff, and it’s one of the few regular appointments I keep (unless I have an interview, which takes preference) in my frantic and ever-changing week. But clearly something needs to change: I’m able to put the applications in and also attend interviews I’m being invited to, but my chance of getting a job is slim. Maybe it’s my age: a lot of the entry-level stuff I’m going for is designed for pretty, fresh-out-of-school 16-year-old girls, and when a wheezing (some weeks more than others) bloke in his admittedly-early thirties turns up the employer’s likely to turn a blind eye. I’m also hamstrung that my CV to date is mostly retail at a time when the shopkeep is in little demand – with the retail industry still in manic flux, there are still more holes in the high streets than strictly necessary, and as such my chances of employment are very reliant on a recovery in the sector. One firm I applied to for an advertised post went into administration mere days later – am I really that hated that the firm would rather fold than hire me? Of course, that particular retailer’s soon-to-be-redundant staff, with their retail experience more current than mine, will shunt ahead of me in the queue for work, just as thousands did when Woolworths went under. I’ve tried to expand my horizons, and have been applying for a wide range of locations where customer service and/or stock handling experience could be applied, such as cinemas, bookmakers, beauty parlours, bingo halls, banks and hotels with almost no success – my retail-heavy CV indicating I’d need extra industry-specific training, when someone who already has the relevant experience could be hired with lower cost and effort.

I’ve definitely got to get out of this charade and into something proper: the Government are making it harder for those of us between the cracks to survive, both with the impending welfare-budget cuts designed to get us abandoned souls off the books and with further hoops to jump through as though they enjoy mucking about with us for their own amusement. I recently had to update my jobseeker’s discount travel card – it’s useful for enabling me to get around to appointments, errands and interviews, so I’m not gonna knock it – and, whereas previously I’d been able to renew it in a local post office, on this occasion I was told I had to go to ‘the station’. So I trotted round to the local rail station, only to be told “it has to be a TfL station – Woolwich [DLR] or [North] Greenwich [tube]”. So, in order to get my bus pass updated I had to get a bus first to Woolwich – where I (re)discovered that Woolwich Arsenal DLR doesn’t have a manned ticket office; the on to North Greenwich, which does. Two bus jorneys to renew my bus pass: only in Britain… But I’m not going through that rigmarole again; if I’m not in work by April 2013 – and I hope I am – I’ll have to reconsider my entire life and operations. This is one of the things I wanted to discuss with my TC advisor, not that they ever have time to talk to me at length. At least the chaos did give me the opportunity, albeit at short notice, to take a walk in Woolwich for the first time since before the 2011 riots. And a lot of my worries and fears about the town post-chaos proved to be unfounded: Powis Street, or at least the bit I was on during my rather rushed visit, was recognisably still for the most part the Powis Street I remembered from prior years: the shops were open and trading (apart from those which had closed in the intervening period: goodbye to Bonmarche, Gamestation and Clinton Cards – all scuppered by corporate collapse – along with Vodafone, Pizza Hut and Nationwide) and some newcomers had even opened (welcome to Deichmann and CEX, who both also recently landed in Bexleyheath). Card Factory and Noir Menswear had moved to new locations, and Blue Inc had reopened in the old Ethel Austin to replace their burnt-down prior store. The Great Harry, as previously mentioned, is back, and Superdrug was even having a refit as part of a rollout of a new store style. Aside from a couple of still-boarded-up stores near the now-reopened Wilkinson, and the construction work on the former Blue Inc site, you’d be hard-pressed to tell anything untoward had happened a year ago at all. I even got a look at what had replaced the landmark No. 27 – previously Bay Trading, before that the legendary Our Price from where I’d purchased my first-ever single, and many years before a butchers. Designer Kidz have even been good enough to make their sign white-on-red, so it looks from the outside almost identical to how it did back in the glorious Our Price days of the 90s. (I did get one scare, mind: walking past Nando’s I heard a loud bang and nearly jumped out of my chinos: it turned out a sudden gust of wind had upended an A-frame outside the restaurant just as I passed. The drilling for the Superdrug refit also spooked me until I craned my neck around and actually saw what was going on.) And more is coming soon – a big new Tesco is nearing completion as part of a long-planned major regeneration. Not sure if getting a job there would be wise – a prior placement at Asda confirmed I’m not very good at supermarkets. And at least the Government have the good grace to give us all a transport-related laugh sometimes, with the George Osborne ticket balls-up proving that the nasty Tories are just as out-of-touch as ever: having purchased the standard-class train ticket he was entitled to under expenses rules, the toffee-nosed chancellor decided he simply couldn’t stand sitting amidst the oiks and instead plonked himself down in the first class carriage he felt he was entitled to. Cue a dispute with a just-doing-his-job member of rail staff, during which Osbo’s shrill aide attempted to insist seating her MP employer in normal-people seats simply wouldn’t do, and eventually the man with the red box paid up out of his own pocket to retain his place in his preferred carriage. Coupled with the Andrew Mitchell police/’plebs’ incident, it’s clear that the current Government, or at least those squad members in the blue shirts, have little respect for those who lack the necessary plum. Of course, some or many of those on benefits are slime – witness the case of a mother who pretended her son had cancer (shaving his head to ape chemotherapy) so she could claim the higher benefits available to carers of sufferers: this sort of garbage gives us all a bad name. Whilst I’m not entirely a Jeremy Kyle viewer and in fact am keen to better myself, stretching almost to breaking point to do so, I would be hugely unpopular with the Tory-led coalition, should they ever deign to discover my existence. But they won’t: to the government I’m just a number, one of those faceless, hopeless berks they’re keen to stop funding the continued survival of because employers clearly aren’t interested.

Whilst on my travels to various appointments, meanwhile, I did notice that the Wintergarden foodcourt at Bluewater – closed for much of 2012 for rebuilding work – has now reopened; whilst some of the old kiosks have gone for good, McDonalds and Harry Ramsdens – the two I frequented most frequently, owing to their being among the cheaper options for lunching whilst embedded in the centre – have returned, alongside several newcomers including Tortilla, Square Pie, Tossed, Indi-go and Giraffe. It’s good to see the more affordable options haven’t been left out: as a fairly (or unfairly, depending on your view) impoverished fella who’s usually eating alone, I’m not in a position to visit any of the large sit-down restaurants. It’d be nice to have someone to travel with, but with no girlfriend and few friends in this area I’m destined to stalk the malls like a loner. That said, I did clock shoppers’ Twitter reports that Katie Piper had been spotted snaking around Bluewater on a recent expedition – on a day I happened not to be there! So I missed the one and possibly only chance to accidentally bump into a lady I really care about and interrupt her day by telling her how fond I am of her, as some of those who were actually there presumably got to do. Ah well, it’s probably for the best that I didn’t rub one or more shoulders with the prime Piper, as I’ll explain later. But I have been keen to get away from Bluewater – all the work-related stress I’ve been under of late has left me needing a getaway from the norm, and so one day when I didn’t have any other appointments pending – and now that the Olympic chaos which kept me away from there during the summer is over – I took myself over for a look at that big Westfield centre in Stratford. Because that’s the closest I’ll get to a holiday this year, OK? It’s too far away and too big of a faff to get to to go there daily for work reasons, but given I’m getting so sick of the places I usually bang around in, I wanted to take time out to take a trip somewhere that was out of my usual loop. And as the places people usually go on holiday are out of my time and/or price range, I had to settle for Stratford. There are some things Westfield’s eastern centre does better than Bluewater – its New Look has menswear, its H&M has homeware, many of its comparable stores are proportionaltely larger – but there are still some things Bluewater does well (the triangle shape is easier to shop, and Greenhithe’s centre has a third department store – House of Fraser, actually – which ‘WSC’ does not). Being on the south side of the river, Bluewater’s easier for me to get to, and so that’s where many of my job applications will be going, but it was nice to have what passes for a day off; I’ve desperately needed it what with all the frustration. And I haven’t had a holiday in best part of a decade. So cut me this one slack, yeah?

I do need to get into work and then down to the shops because I’m currently trapped in a technology K-hole: I’ve spoken before about the death by drowning of my in-hindsight-OK previous phone and its replacement with a slow-moving, poorly-featured, barely-working piece of cack which was the cheapest phone in the nearest shop. I still use that, and I’ve got more used to it since last time, and have resigned myself to accept that I’ll have limited access to online services for the immediate future – this has made it difficult to use the web, as I’ve had to squeeze all my use into the limited time I can get at the libraries: I used to be able to clear unwanted entries from my Google Reader by mobile during the course of the day, leaving the big stuff that I wanted to keep to be collected when I was on the big-web: now I have to dedicate a huge chunk of my limited computer time to cutting down the forest of stuff that builds up between visits. I am no longer able to use Twitter anywhere near as much as I used to: I can no longer offer warmth and hugs to my beloved and much-missed Twitter friends or communicate with my followers in a prompt manner, as I no longer have anytime, read-and-write access, though I can still – at fairly heavy cost – SMS in messages to go up on my feed when necessary, whilst being unable to read any responses these generate. With web time also required for jobsearch, it’s become a chore trying to fit it all in and some of the Reader feeds I find most useful may have to be given the elbows in order to leave me less to do. And now I’ve got more tech to worry about. I’ve spoken last time about the tube on my mid-Nineties bedroom telly going a bit wobbly, and now it’s even nearer the end of life: the hold is now so loose that when I watched The Human Mannequin up there (my brother was watching Russell Howard in the living room, that’s why) poor Louise looked ruddy corrugated! In addition, even though the telly still does, after a fashion, pony up a picture, I can’t watch any DVDs as my purple DVD player (as mentioned here many times here before, and purchased as you may recall some years back at the now-being-refitted Woolwich branch of that electrical powerhouse Superdrug) has decided to pack up – whilst power still goes to the switch-on, it’s no longer actually playing DVDs, which for a DVD player is a pretty major failing. At least I won’t have to replace it if I don’t replace the telly: and with the tiny amount of TV I now watch, there’s not really much point replacing it just now. And then there’s my chunky old Nintendo DS – bought cheaply second-hand a few years back, and already in a pretty blotchy state when it came to me, it’s now completely unusable thanks to a series of accidents: firstly, my brother fell asleep while playing a game late at night, as he occasionally did, and dropped it, cracking one of the hinges. The console was still usable, however, but I was mindful that handling the now-loose-lidded device too harshly may have caused further damage. As a result, when next playing the unit myself, I held it very lightly: too lightly, in fact, as my unusually-loose grip led to the machine falling from my hands as I attempted to switch it off and remove the game, breaking further as it hit the hard floor. I’d been getting on quite well with my Brain Training up til that point, and I dread to think what digital bollocking Dr Kawashima will hand down to me should I ever resume my brain-play. I looked into getting a DS or DS Lite (ideal as they have the Game Boy Advance slot, meaning we can still play our old GBA games) secondhand again, but didn’t feel confident when I saw the prices being charged in the shops I looked in – most places had prices north of fifty quid, and when looking online the only one I found below forty notes was one which was “water damaged and not switching on” – a paperweight, essentially, or something a solderer could scavenge for parts. In arguably worse condition than the one I have now, at any rate. But this technical cock-up coinciding with my continued job rejection (and thus the news I won’t soon be earning enough for fresh tech, or anything more important) did make it feel like I should just give up – is it worth replacing, as cheaply as I can, these items of worthless consumer tech when – if my stomach succumbs to the gaseous, acidic explosion it’s been threatening to, or if the job depression finally drives me under the train – my life isn’t really worth prolonging? Or do I take the death of my below-average gadge as a sign that it’s time I stopped being so silly and just left myself to go to rack and ruin? Or is it a sign that my tactic of buying the cheapest possible tat available is a false economy and that I’ll have to invest, when money is available to do so, in allegedly better-quality stuff? Or should I just go back to living the way I did before these digital timewastes existed? I spoke last time about buying 100 Classic Books on a DS card, and had barely got into Emma (so to speak) before the DS crapped out – maybe I should go back to the analogue way of reading, trot down to Waterstones and spend a fraction of the price of a replacement DS on some printed-on-trees Austen! I should also mention here the recent changes Amazon has made to its MP3 download service, which makes it almost impossible to buy MP3s from the library computers now: it’s a good job I don’t like music as much as I used to anymore!

One thing I did manage to order online was a lapel badge now being offered for sale as part of a range at the Katie Piper Foundation’s recently established online shop. However, whilst the charity appear to have recieved the three quid I paid for the thing, no badge adorns my outerwear: when the envelope arrived from the KPF HQ, it had a huge hole in the back and contained solely a blank KPF compliment slip: of the badge, there was no sign. Either it had fallen out somewhere in the postal system and the Royal Mail had pointlessly delivered me the remains, or the badge had been squeezed out during its wedging through the letterslot (though the absence of badge around the doorstep, inside or out, put paid to that theory); maybe someone had been on the thieve, light-fingering my badge at some point along the way, or maybe the item is/was left jangling around at the bottom of the postie’s sack. Or maybe the KPF squad didn’t put it in in the first place, maybe in an attempt to dissuade me from exposing myself as a supporter of the charity despite the fact that I actually am. Either way, I’m not big enough of an arsehole to actually raise a complaint or demand a refund: I don’t want to deprive a charitable trust of the pathetic sum of three pounds, and I’ll just have to accept that, unless I fling another three down the tubes and take the same gamble on it actually arriving, I will have no badge to display my support for Piper’s fundgathering endeavours. However, the badge-based incident did bring clarity to something I’ve been considering. I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s time for me to stop being such an ardent fan of wonderful Katie. She’s always been mentioned in glowing tones here and on my Twitter, ever since she fell into my life three years ago with the broadcast of her first film. Indeed, it was Katie who inspired me to come back to blogging and networking such that I could spread the word about her lovely glow. However, I’ve noticed that whereas Katie’s moved on with her life, I really haven’t: whilst young Piper is in a better position now than when her road to recovery began, I’m still in much the same mire I was when first I saw her footage. When I first got in touch with Katie following that debut broadcast, I saw her as someone who needed love and support – I wanted to tell her everything would be OK and that there were people out there who cared about her feelings. I wanted to be one of those guys who helped her get back on track and rebuild her life. As Katie joined Twitter herself (some time after I did, just so you know), I made clear that my support was there. Katie knew I was fond of her and welcomed the support as she built up her charity and continued to blossom into the magnificent woman we see today. I’m proud to say that Katie and I even had a couple of lengthier chats – I recall for instance one morning, during the period last summer when I had that part-time, half-hour-from-the-bus-stop job, that I turned to Twitter to help ease the boredom on the long, slow march to the middle-of-nowhere warehouse and responded to some comment or other which Katie had made about early starts: this turned into a cheerful chat which I only terminated when I was approaching entry to my workplace. Katie is a sweet lady and really lovely to talk to. More recently, though, neither Katie nor I have had as much time in our lives for big Twitter stints: me because of the mushy new stopgap phone, Katie because she’s got a lot more to occupy her time with – she has a boyfriend now, so no longer needs my hugs, and with her charity work, TV gigs and printed book publications, she barely has time to put her feet up and chat! In addition, Katie’s now often using Twitter to promote her books and other projects, making her pronouncements less chatty and more commercial, and Katie herself is also presumably wary of the increasing likelihood that people’s Twitter comments could be taken out of context and published by media outlets, given that this is easier for lazy, overstretched hacks than actual journalism. Couple this with the fact that Katie’s made no secret of the fact that positive thinking and upbeat affirmation is her stock in trade today; it’s no wonder that someone whose own page is mostly moody screeches (hello) and is increasingly-rarely updated at all (it’s the crappy phone) deserves to be frozen out of her purview.

So Katie’s changed (most would say for the better) and I haven’t – I’m still the shrill weirdo who’s desperately in need of support, whilst Katie is soaring onto a new plane of celebrity and no longer needs my shoulders to stand on. I’m still slavishly keeping an eye on Katie’s comings and goings, like some demented fanboy, as and when I can, because I still care about and support this delightful woman; I still read her books when I need a pick-up, and I still sit up and cheer when I see my most-admired lady on TV: overall it’s clear, though, I need Katie more than she needs me. I don’t want to be one of those ghastly hangers-on that keeps badgering celebs with nonsense and desperately tries to get noticed by the stars as a way of filling their empty, drudgey lives. You see a lot of that on Twitter – many famous names (whose Twitter pages are often marshalled on their behalf by management staff, such is the scale of the problem) are bombarded almost constantly with inane gibberish from wannabes who don’t actually posess the power to string a sentence together (hey, maybe that’s why they can’t get a job and so just sit on Twitter all day!) I don’t want to be that guy. In fact I criticise that kind of guy/girl – I have little time for the deluded likes of Big Brother’s Tashie, whose brief stint in the house led her to believe she was (a) famous, (b) popular and (c) Pamela Anderson’s best mate. None of these were true outside of Tashie’s warped little mind, and today the hook-nosed wannabe can be found scraping cheap modelling jobs in a desperate and (mostly) naked bid to keep herself in the public eye. I can’t be like that. Maybe Katie’s just decided that, as she’s in a relationship, she will engage with her male followers less; maybe she’s decided that she can’t cope with my needs and I should seek redemption elsewhere; maybe it’s just that, with the various time commitments and constraints that apply, we just haven’t had the chance to be on Twitter at the same time. Or maybe Katie just plum doesn’t like me any more. I don’t know for certain as it’s never been explained directly to me why things between myself and Katie have soured – if indeed they have at all – but I am driven to think: is it time for me to be the bigger man and turn my back on Katie? She doesn’t need a ringpiece like me clouding her otherwise-sunny life. Her charity has much wealthier supporters who can make more of a difference; her books sell by the buttload with or without my stupidly-swift Amazon preorders; her columns are in women’s magazines I shouldn’t really read (and usually don’t); and, as my being unable to tweet much during Hotel GB showed, her TV and Twitter projects are the same – no, better – without my involvement. I’m too reliant on Katie but am now utterly useless to her. It’s time to cut off the teat. It’ll be really hard to stop myself being a fan/supporter of Katie – I still care about her, I don’t plan to unfollow her on Twitter or stop watching her lovely programmes – but I’m clearly too obsessed with this one person and need to move on. It will be hugely sad to say goodbye to someone who’s been such a huge part of my life through what has been a really difficult era for me; however, I am nothing if not realistic. Katie was never really my friend, barely a conversational acquaintance, and whilst she is the sort of sweet, kind woman I’d love to be close to, the likelihood of her actually becoming my partner is and always was nil. We don’t move in the same circles at all – she’s mingling with the champagne set at awards bashes in swanky celebrity dresses, I’m sat stuffing myself with cheap lasagne and watching crappy repeats in ratty old clobber. So, in a rare example of me actually making a decision, I’ve decided that, unless she does anything particularly writeup-worthy, like bringing out a new book or TV show that I want to push your way, this edition of the blog will be the last to mention Katie Piper on these pages. It’s for the best. I need to step out from behind Katie’s strings and start looking for someone else to hail as a hero in my life. Though there aren’t many heroes around these days, which is perhaps how Katie was allowed to become so special to me in the first place. So farewell, sweet Katie. Long may you continue to be happy and successful, and thank you for always making my day brighter with your ever-beautiful smile.

One difficulty which has exposed why I can’t be nice about Katie Piper any more is that I also need the freedom to be critical of that media fireblanket that is The X Factor. Every year, despite not being a viewer of the programme, my mind gets clogged by the media rubbish pumped out around the Cowell-created media frenzy. Whilst I cheer the news that X Factor ratings are continuing to decline – that’s what you get if you try to present that nasty chav Tulisa as some kind of arbiter – Katie Piper remains on-message (Simon Cowell being a patron of the Katie Piper Foundation): when asked on Twitter recently if she watched Strictly Come Dancing (X Factor’s big Saturday rival), Katie said no, she was watching ITV’s Take Me Out instead. She’s also posted updates from her visits to the X Factor studios, too. Clearly, I can’t despise X Factor and also like Katie – if I love one I have to love the other! But there’s been a lot of media clogging by X Factor controversy in the last few weeks, to the point I know who’s taking part and why I hate them, but just as last year I’m judging them when I haven’t heard them sing a note. There was the controversy over Lucy Spraggan, who was asked to remove previously-released music from whatever iTunes is after she made it into the live shows, then withdrew from the competition herself claiming illness (though there have been enough cases in pop history of fake illness covering for legal spats – Geri Halliwell, anyone? – that I always raise an unconvinced eyebrow when a singer claims to be unwell). No idea whether her old stuff will go back online following her withdrawal, or whether Cowell’s people still contractually own her ass until long after the winner is crowned, mind. Then there’s the Chris Maloney case – some have said that boss man Simon, despite not personally being on the judging panel this year, is worried that Maloney could win and become a new Steve Brookstein, and has allegedly instructed those on screen to rubbish Maloney to reduce his chances of winning. In X Factor, the winner isn’t who the public choose, it’s who Cowell chooses. I saw a headline online saying Little Mix were ‘not fans’ of Maloney – those girls aren’t yet ready to bite the hand that feeds them, it seems. Jade’s exit from the series was hyped up by fans and the press as a disaster, and I had to remind myself not to care and that I’d had no idea who she was to begin with – again, I’d heard the moaning of fans but not the vocals of the actual singer herself. Then, of course, there’s the simulant media wormhole that needs little introduction: Rylan. He’s been this year’s controversy-magnet, and early on caused one of the big strops this series when his remaining in the contest at the expense of someone called Carolynne caused massive ructions: Gary Barlow threatened to walk off the show (he should have done, it would have been the brave and noble thing to do, but presumably he returned as Cowell had his knackers in a vice contractually), and there was controversy when it appeared Louis Walsh – whose vote could have sent Rylan home and instead saw him continue – was seen to be recieving direction from a member of show staff before casting his ballot. And then I discovered Rylan had appeared on Sky Living’s sleazy modelling show Signed By Katie Price and the pennies began to fall into place. Rylan (born Ross, if it matters) wants to be a brand rather than a man, a male version of Price in terms of media ubiquity. How the hell do I avoid him if ditching ITV1 (and 2) alone is not going to be enough? I get like this every time stuff like X Factor is on, swallowing all the hype and garbage that the hyperactive media pumps out in a bid to hang on the coattails of the horribly massive show – apparently, this year the recieved wisdom is that a boyband will be anointed winners such that Cowell can groom them (in the non-Savile sense) to One Direction-style international commercial success. But then, that’s what music’s about today – sales will always win out over substance.

X Factor isn’t the only reality show running at the moment. At least Strictly has the good grace to have the lovely Victoria Pendleton (hey, a cyclist!) among its lineup. ITV’s got I’m A Celebrity up and running, and two of this year’s jungle rats have been particularly high in the headlines – blonde MP Nadine Dorries is this year’s contestant chosen to get the chattering classes and formerly-broadsheet papers talking about IACGMOOH, and given she’s known for her needling of David Cameron she’s been one of the most prominently-discussed personalities immediately prior to this year’s run going live. Meanwhile, the red-tops have been able to feast on the needy Helen Flanagan. Having been in Coronation Street since she was so young only Jimmy Savile would crack onto her, Flanagan recently left the soap having become something of a sex symbol, her now-curvaceous figure a popular target for tabloid crowing. Helen was apparently depressed and suffering panic attacks around the time she decided to quit the soap – it seems that having spent so long acting as someone else, the poor lamb perhaps wasn’t sure where Rosie ended and Helen began – and the sudden rage of attention from the sleazy media can’t have helped her health. However, now she’s no longer in a regular gig one does have to ask what her motives are for going in the jungle – does she crave a return to the spotlight? Is she keen to market herself as available to new productions? Is it just some ITV contractual thing? Or is there some sort of backroom deal with the tabloid press to give them plenty of uncovered Flanagan skin to coo over in return for extensive fawning coverage of the series? The media has sunk into such a sleazy pit that I no longer know what to believe – showbiz is built on so many lies, shady deals and self-serving brown-nosings that it’s impossible for the lay reader to identify what’s real and what’s fiction concocted to tantalise fans and sell tickets. Not that the exploited (or self-exploiting?) Helen has been the only celeb in the news for her body lately. Rihanna has become known for flaunting her figure in various photoshoots, web posts and music videos, but a rekindled relationship is reportedly set to cause a change in her physical appearance: the Barbados-born chart-dominator has reportedly reconciled with her former flame Chris Brown – the gruesome R&B hitmaking fella who sickened the pop world when he violently pounded Rihanna in a car the night before the Grammy Awards – and is said to be planning to impress him by undergoing an enhancement to her assets of the breast area. Now, clearly Rihanna has forgiven Chris much sooner than I have, which is awkward, and she is entitled to do so, I guess – when challenged on the reunion by Twitter followers, she posted up a Bible verse on forgiveness – but hasn’t that cruel man done enough damage to the lovesick girl’s body? Is Rihanna that unhappy or lacking in confidence that she needs the closeness to Brown and the approval from him that fake chebs would bring? There has to be some way we as a people can convince her to think again (maybe we can – Rihanna’s is one of the few celeb Twitter accounts operated by the star themselves, and I’m told she gives as good as she gets), but ultimately we have to accept Rihanna is in control of her own mind and body, and that it is ultimately her decision what she does with these. I just wish she was able to make a clear-headed judgement – in her current clouded-by-Brown state, there’s a danger she may do something she later regrets. Elsewhere in modern urban culture, it’s reported that Kim Kardashian, famed for her curves, feels under pressure to keep her weight down and slim her famous figure because, according to some trashy rag’s screeching, her current/former (I can’t keep up) partner, Taylor Swift-interrupting rapper Kanye West, prefers his girls skinny. Now, I’ve never previously been moved to side with the Kardashian media empire, having previously slain the clan’s 4Music-clogging reality show for swallowing slots which should by rights have gone to Adam & Joe and the like, but I feel the need to step in here and say something, So Kim, listen up. Don’t change your body for any man. Be proud of yourself and the person you are. Have the confidence to stand up for yourself, keep your weight and figure at exactly what you’re comfortable with, and if Kanye doesn’t like that, tell him to go stuff an egg – there are a great many men who would love and appreciate you for the woman you are, and wouldn’t try to crush you down into something you feel is unhealthy. Your wellbeing is more important than the College Dropout’s opinions. If you want to be your most beautiful, be true to yourself and natural, in the shape you’re most happy with, and don’t bend to others’ demeaning demands. There we go. I just said something nice about a Kardashian – I guess the old rules don’t apply anymore! Of course, sometimes reality microstars and media celebs do things I actually approve of and reveal hidden depths: as previously mentioned here, Rebeckah Vaughan does a fair bit for the Katie Piper Foundation, and her fellow Big Brothering blonde Nikki Grahame is a 6 Music listener – so maybe I shouldn’t judge people purely on the cackling of the glossy media.

There have been a few media landmarks to celebrate recently: although at current pace it’s sadly unlikely to see the 100th, the BBC did take a break from Savile-gate to celebrate the 90th anniversary of its first 2LO radio broadcast, with a unique synchronised transmission that only an organisation like the Beeb could pull off. See, they are still capable of doing something good! Elsewhere, Channel 4 turned 30 in what has been one of the station’s biggest years – it’s had all manner of headline-making chaos going on this year, with big-bidget event broadcasts strung through the year, such as the C4 Mash Up, Drugs Live, House Party (those were three separate events, not the same thing), Funny Fortnight, the Plane Crash, Hotel GB, Stand Up to Cancer, and of course the magnificent Paralympics – this has really been the year C4 bellied up to the big table and showed it had balls. That said, there was little mention of the anniversary on the birthday itself – a throwaway mention on Countdown was just about all that we got on 2 November – and outside of these special stunt events C4 is still a little too reliant on a few big hits – Come Dine With Me is now making multiple appearances (you can normally expect at least a couple hours a day of it now, plus even more on 4seven and More4) which is leaving the cookery contest looking a little overheated, and the nasty habit of tugging something off the main channel mid-series and flinging it onto a digital station, replacing it on C4 with CDWM, is still very much alive, Gok Wan’s Friday night dating show Baggage being the latest victim. (I should point out that, whilst it was no Blind Date, Baggage was at least more enjoyable than the muttony meat market that is Take Me Out, and was also the first bit of proper shiny-floor entertainment C4 has done in bloody ages.) At least new-to-channel episodes of The Simpsons have finally, belatedly, turned up on C4 as a break from the relentless repeat cycle, but these editions (the 20th season, if you need) will soon become tired and unfunny from endless looping around. C4’s paranoid slicing-up of Simpsons scenes (which began in earnest after the station was slammed for allowing U2 to say ‘wankers’ at 6pm) hasn’t won the channel many friends, either – a segment featuring Ned Flanders and Snake in one of the new eps was so horribly butchered by C4’s censors as to be rendered pretty much meaningless, and the channel has admitted being overly cautious when it ripped an offhand Carl comment from a Sunday lunchtime rerun of an earlier show simply for daring to include the word ‘gay’. After the Simpsons of course comes Hollyoaks, and it’s been tough to avoid chatter around the wedding-day carnage that is a central storyline in the show at the time of writing. It’s wedding-day deaths, disasters and divorces in TV shows which have spooked me from getting married – drama and documentaries have me so worried that some sort of murder, fire or punch-up will blight my future partner’s special day that I’m nervous even to think of it. Although quite how I’m going to find a girl to love me is unclear – a manky jobseeker with no real social skills isn’t going to attract many takers, and in my declining years I may be reduced to crawling along Powis Street or around the still-largely-triangular Bluewater armed with some kind of net-based mechanism. Or perhaps I should just shark Twitter for phrases such as “I wish there was a nice guy around” or “Why can’t I find a fella who’s into Biffy and Muse?”, and then respond, if it’s technically possible to do so, should any such combination turn up on the searchbox. Although with today’s young women largely being followers of folk like the above-mentioned Kim Kardashian and Rihanna, there’s likely to be little love for a fella who knows his Two Door Cinema Club from his Bombay Bicycle Club – that’s also why I can’t get a job in ‘music’ stores, as with CD sales on the high street in decline most entertainment retailers would rather hire someone who knows about iPads and Kinect rather than someone ancient enough to remember a time before MP3. Maybe I’ll get lucky and in the course of scouting around on my usual scruffy roustabout for jobs, food and reason to live I’ll happen to stumble into some sparkly, charming indiegirl who can put up with my foibles (or reattach them when they fall off) – though as I’m usually scurrying around almost on autopilot, nervously avoiding eye contact with those who would do me harm, it’s unlikely I’ll spot a sexy lady in the street unless I blindly thud right into her whilst escaping some store in a baffled state, by which point a date would largely be out of the question. As I told Kim above, I don’t have too many hang-ups on looks – I’d rather be with a lady who was comfortable in her own skin than some botoxed and overpreened confidence-vacuum – though if truth be told I do like blonde hair, possibly because my mother is a brunette, and very few single lads would want to date their mum. (Pro tip – if you look like, say, Kiri out of Bid TV, you stand a chance of catching my eye…) If I did get a girlfriend, though, mum would probably relax a bit, as I’d finally be able to move towards emerging from under the apron strings and letting her get on with her own life…

Some of my, and the nation’s, favourite ladies – and gentlemen – were celebrated publically at the recent Daily Mirror-backed Pride of Britain awards, as screened on ITV1. I don’t usually watch a lot of award shows (though I did used to watch events like the Brits back when I was a music fan) – however, on hearing who was involved this year I decided to tune into the POBA and, well, it was brilliant. One of the people I was watching for was a certain Ms. Piper – her award win was the culmination of all the hard work she’s done over the last few years, not only rebuilding her own life but also laying the groundwork for an organisation through which many others may benefit in the future. Katie’s journey here started with pain and agony, but finally here was the celebration, the moment when our girl was finally rewarded for her courage and strength of spirit. Elsewhere, another lady I was delighted to see on the show was Alice Pyne. The girl behind the Twitter-phenomenon “Alice’s Bucket List”, beautiful Alice has been through a lot of pain and struggle in her young life, but here we saw her smile – particularly when she was handed her award by one of her very favourite pop stars, Robbie “too old for radio” Williams. Alice has, like Katie, decided to use her experience and support to build a better life for others, launching her own charity – Alice’s Escapes – to raise funds to help young people whose days are too often filled with pain have fun, memorable days that they’ll enjoy. I do adore Alice – not in a Savile way but because she is a kind, sweet young lady who has a lot of warmth and sparkle – and you should know by now I admire that in a lady, as you’ll have seen from my comments on other girls above. Also honoured at the POBA was a girl who put herself in the path of an oncoming car and barged her sister out of the way, wrecking her own leg in the process but crucially saving the younger girl’s life – now there’s heroics – and also a woman who has become something of a figurehead for justice in my section of the woods: Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen, the teenager fatally stabbed in Southeast London’s very own Eltham back in the early 90s, back before many of today’s teens were even born and when I was only about 11, has spent the subsequent two decades fighting to see her son’s racist killers put behind bars, and has seen through the establishment of an architecture scholarship in memory of her wannabe-architect son. And, in a neat bit of synch, both Doreen Lawrence and Katie Piper have delivered Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message, albeit in different years. The highpoint of the POBA for many though was the mass-honour for those sportspeople who did Britain proud at the Olympics and Paralympics – and seeing them descend en masse onto the stage in a peer group so rampant they even persuaded HRH Sir Prince Charles to do the Mobot was the champagne-cork moment at the end of a mighty year for them and their supporters. It was lovely to see the athletes I’d become suddenly fond of over the summer being celebrated, and indeed themselves celebrating, having done so much for us. Although dragging on Heather Small (we’re not related – her voice is far deeper than mine, and I’m as white as the driven winter) at the end was perhaps milking it a bit – but hey, they needed a big powerful finish to the show! It was good to see decent people being celebrated, although slightly odd to see it being done on ITV1, a channel which revels in the vile and the mucky (from Jeremy Kyle to X Factor) on practically all the other days of the year. Incidentally, the day after the POBA, Katie Piper attended as a guest the non-televised Cosmopolitan awards, at which winners included Tulisa and the Kardashians. It’s sad to see the normal order so swiftly being restored. But at least for one day I was able to smile.

I did enjoy a little bit of a titter the other day when I saw that kicked-out X Factor contestant Frankie Cocozza had made a stumbling entry into the singles market when his new release – his first post-X serving – was reported to have landed at that fantastic chart position of number 89. This was in the week that the supposedly too old Robbie spent his second week at the top of the modern-day pops with Candy, and also hit the album chart number one. Who’s popular with ver kids now, Grimshaw? Still, I did enjoy the opportunity to smirk at someone’s downfall given that I’m usually so preoccupied with arresting my own! At the time I saw the report I hadn’t heard the song, though on seeing it described as ‘indie pop’ in one report I did wonder whether, given my heritage listening to Supergrass, Sleeper and the like, I would actually have enjoyed the song. When I did eventually stumble across Cocozza’s tune – ‘She’s Got a Motorcycle’, apparently – on Chart Show TV of all places, I found out what it actually was like – and found it to be cheerful scruffy-pop fairly reminiscent of 90s/early 00s guitar-led boynoise – if you recall the likes of Catch (y’know, the ones that did that song Bingo, remember that? Well, if you’re young enough to know who Frankie is, probably not) and their ilk you’ll know about where Frankie’s tune has landed. So whilst it’s no ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’, it’s probably preferable to forcing young people to listen to Chris Brown. And of course, today’s guitar-led pop listener is potentially tomorrow’s rock listener. But then, who am I to force my musical tastes on anyone? If people would rather listen to Drake than Biffy Clyro, I just have to accept that and find fun where I can. And whilst it would suit me to seek out something outside the mainstream – it would be nice, should I ever find a few minutes’ break in the rushing-around I tend to have to do, to spend some time sat listening to the 6 Music I fought so hard to save, for not only myself, not only Nikki Grahame, but for all those who want something of quality amidst a mass of mainstream mush. And I perhaps shouldn’t be so quick to judge people on their media message – there are real people behind the headlines, and we need to remember that these people have insecurities, worries and feelings which the screaming gossip can sometimes mask. And while I’m far too old to chat to any of Cocozza’s fans without looking like a massive Savile (last one, I promise), it would be nice to see young people’s day being brightened by positive role models and good-natured, kind-hearted folk – for instance, on the recently-revived dream-maker show Surprise Surprise, a wheelchair-bound teen girl arranged for her able-bodied sister, who had done so much to support and help her over the years, and who she clearly adored, to meet their favourite pop group (The Saturdays, as it turns out, minus blonde Mollie) in a shopping mall for the show. You should’ve seen the smiles on the girls’ faces when Frankie (Sandford, not Cocozza, as it goes), Rochelle, and, um, two others (alright, Una and Vanessa then) appeared before them – now that was one of the genuinely prettiest (in a good way) TV moments of the year. Maybe in future, with X Factor and the like in decline, and the growing influence of good people across the schedules, Britain could in the longer term return to the spirit of happiness, positivity and friendship it enjoyed back in the days when the original Surprise Surprise (and other such shows) were still on the box. And then we’ll all have some fond memories which hopefully won’t be dashed in years to come. How’s about that, then, boys and girls?

“When he grows up, I want to be like me!” (Goodbye!)

“We’re going to take a big risk and go for excretion…” (Hello!)

Boy howdy, it’s been a rough few weeks since I moved among you last. While you were hopefully chuckling over that bit of filler I punted up about search strings – having been inspired by similar posts on other blogs, since you ask (although technically you didn’t) – I’ve been having a less-than-pleasing few weeks. Not only have I been slightly ill, my inner systems weakened by the recent damp (or very damp) weather, I’ve also had the multi-storey depressions of the job hunt drying up, the world of technology deciding to vote against me, and the news in general being pretty damn miserable now that the positive influence of the unusually-sporty summer has begun to wear off. So, then, there is room now for me to bleat on, in what will be one of the bleaker posts here, about how worn down I have been by recent events. Sometimes it’s like society wants me to fail, but this past month has been particularly difficult to stomach. September, take a bow – you’ve almost killed me.

Regular drinkers at this toxic waterhole will know that my chances of gaining employ are so thin they could feature on Supersize v Superskinny, and not as the Supersize. As I’ve mentioned many times, Ms. Naegle, I’m in an awkward position – the career I ‘chose’ (well, had thrust upon me by dint of the availability of placements) many years ago, when the economy was rosier, has now dumped itself irretrievably down the toilet, and career opportunities for someone with the retail-heavy CV that I have are now essentially nil. (I have now essentially given up completely on my longer-term dream of getting into something involving music/radio, as the original plan, which involved getting myself a grounding in something regular and steady like retail, has stalled so badly). I have had some brighter periods – there was one particularly frantic phase which I refer to as ‘Super Sunday’ for some reason, under which I had consecutive interviews for different firms on a Friday, the next day (Saturday) and the following Monday; just getting the employers to respond to my initial enquiries and haul me in for a further microscope is an achievement, but unfortunately none of the interviews resulted in employment. Why that was the case I’m not sure, but it is something which plays on my mind. Perhaps it’s the impression I create in person – I don’t cut a particularly impressing dash when physically in the presence of other people. Worse was to come, however: having applied for a job online, I was called in for an interview a few days later, only to be told when I turned up that the job I’d applied for had in fact been taken and thus the vacancy had been closed. Not sure how far down the chain my application had got before the decision was taken, or who dropped the ball by hauling me in for a no-longer-existent post, but I’d made the effort for nothing – and, worse still, had to go home at kids-coming-out-of-school time, which is never a pleasant journey. And sometimes there are unique balls-ups: two separate jobs I’d applied to both came back offering interviews – in different locations but on the same morning, meaning I had to bin one of them off simply due to my physical inability to be in two distinct places simultaneously! I can’t afford to throw away too many chances over time-space relativity blunders like that! I swear I’m becoming a pawn for sullen HR bods, being punted between towns like I’m taking the role of ball in some giant game of jobseeker tennis – retail businesses clearly have no interest in actually hiring me, so what more can I do? One of the things I do like about doing my initial applications online, incidentally, is that the employer can’t, unless they’ve asked for a photo, see my contorted face, nasty hair, or weak body, or hear my shrill, nasal, creaky voice. (Some employers do ask to see an image in the initial phase, usually stylish firms which judge potential employees on their looks – needless to say, I rarely apply for these!) But I have to recognise that unless I undergo serious facial surgery, a job is likely to be unlikely – employers simply won’t hire someone who looks like me: I am the opposite of handsome. And with JJB Sports shedding most of its stores and disgorging two thousand retailers onto the dole, I’m now a couple thousand places further away from getting a job than I was before, and with one fewer chain to apply to, although in fairness most of the perenially-troubled JJB’s outlets around here have already shut as part of previous scalings-back (Croydon being the nearest branch to me at the time of the chain’s final collapse). It’s been a really tough time to be me – I have to remember not to give in to the dark thoughts that are never far from the surface when I’m going through a miserable patch.

The hideous weather lately hasn’t done much to lift my mood. The summer is over, and with relish – catastrophic wind and rain have underlined that the ‘good times’, if any, that the public have largely enjoyed over recent months are comprehensively over. Not sure whether I should rank the recent weather as some kind of celestial punishment, or evidence of climate change, or simply the natural ebb-and-flow after a start to 2012 which was so dry water companies had to impose hosepipe bans. I’ll talk later about how the rest of the country suffered, but the pinnacle of the weather woe for me personally came when I got caught up in all sorts of wet chaos trying to bring the dinner home. I’d left the house to minor drizzle, which I could manage, but by the time I’d done the shop it was coming down quite heavily and I had only the slim comfort of the bus shelter to protect me from the increasingly-grim elements. However, one thing that didn’t come down was the bus; after a lengthy wait, one eventually turned up which was being curtailed early for reasons unknown, possibly weather-related; on checking the TfL site using my in-hindsight-OK mobile phone’s Opera browser, I discovered there would not be another one within at least half an hour. So, I had to do what I call a Wanker’s Triangle – getting to a given destination by taking a pointless extra bus journey to a third location which I had no other reason to visit. The third wheel was, on this occasion, the much-derided centre of Bexleyheath and, by the time I got there to make the connection, the already-heavy rain had become an absolute squall – the Broadway was in places starting to resemble a river – and again checking TfL, I found my wait for the bus home from here was an epic nineteen minutes. 19 minutes of standing – without even the aid of a shelter, which was packed – in absolutely tipping rain, becoming increasingly wet and cold to the extent that I could barely keep the increasingly-sodden shopping aloft in my freezing, arthritic hands (though unable to put it down due to the saturated pavement). But worse was to come. In addition to checking the TfL bus times, I’d also been using my phone during the storm chaos to recieve words of comfort from my Twitter associates. However, I was aware that using the phone in heavy rain was a risk – having drowned the phone in rain once before, then revived it in a bag of rice as suggested by Twitter friends and The Gadget Show, I knew that exposing my electronic device to the rushing water was a risk – I even said, during the course of my soggy rant, that the rainwater risked killing my phone, and this then came to pass moments later, with my communicator freezing up mid-tweet. Another stint in the rice couldn’t save it this time, however – many of the buttons no longer function (to be fair, prior to the storm some of them needed a bit of a thump to work, but now they were dead completely) and after its stay in the rice it suddenly started suggesting, at every switch-on, that I reformat the phone and wipe its entire memory (luckily I managed to run off a backup before wiping everything, so I haven’t lost much, and the SIM card was unaffected). So, the phone was essentially dead – even the time/date setting was wiped, and with only the 4, 5 and 6 keys functioning I couldn’t even bring it back into 2012. It was, essentially, no longer functional.

This put me at a disadvantage – I needed a phone, to stay in touch with potential employers (should they ever deign to call me, maybe), family and online friends. With this in mind, I decided I had to get a new one, but my limited time and financial means meant I had to rush to the nearest shop that had phones in its offer – not a proper phone shop but a national catalogue retailer – and buy the cheapest one they had. This particular firm had a little Alcatel – at £20, the cheapest phone in the shop – or more advanced phones from £70 and up into three digits. No prizes for guessing what I bought: your clue is, think budget. The description for the £20 phone said it had dedicated Facebook and Twitter apps: this was untrue, it does not. It is also unable to run Java, meaning it is unable to run the (by comparison) slick and speedy Opera Mini browser my previous phone had; it only has the crumbly WAP browser which runs slowly and has trouble running sites I use, such as Google Reader and Twitter – Google Reader becomes very sluggish to clear, to the extent I may have to unsubscribe from news feeds I actually want to read, whilst Twitter is so difficult to read and write it’s become virtually impossible to use: sending a tweet takes nearly ten minutes, and reading involves such lengthy and slow scrolling that it’s barely worth responding, which defeats the point a little. Even the login process for these sites is slow and unwieldy – and even Google Search is difficult, not bringing up the mobile version of the search page and only letting me highlight ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ and not the main search button. As a means of accessing the web, this phone is worse than just about any other device I’ve ever used. The cheap phone also has no Bluetooth and, unlike the old phone, is not compatible with USB, meaning there is no way to get the backgrounds and such that I’d saved from the old phone onto the new one, save for a period of faffing about with SD cards, and it’s also not possible to filter content into folders as I could before. The new phone has the same weather app as the old one, but whereas it worked on the old one, it has been difficult getting it to bring up the info on the new one, and whilst the new phone does have an alarm clock option, it doesn’t work – I set it to wake me up on the first Thursday (bin-day) after its purchase, and it remained silent – I nearly missed the bins thanks to my cheap purchase – and it again stayed quiet the following Thursday. Oddly, the phone alarm has now started going off, but on completely random days which I didn’t ask it to! Looks like I’m going to need to copy Radio 1 and find a new way to wake up. In fact, radio may be the answer – the only other device in my bedroom which has a working alarm clock built in is my DAB reciever. Which still, signal reception permitting, works.

This new phone simply isn’t good enough, though. I’ve basically bought some hobbled piece-of-crap, presumably (going by its slim styling) one of those phones hassled mothers buy for their impressionable teenage daughters, so the girl can have the kudos and self-belief that comes from phone ownership, but without the dangers of actually being able to use the bloody thing to communicate. It is essentially an overpriced posing toy. I bitterly regret buying it at all: with a need for a speedy solution, and the weather still being none too pleasant on day of purchase, I’d opted for a piece of rubbish sold to me on a lie (the misleading comment in the catalogue that the phone could access a Twitter app) at the nearest shop available rather than making an especial journey into a big-town with a proper phone shop wherein I could have had a better range of mobiles to consider. (I could also have looked online: I later saw a phone with Bluetooth and Java on T-Mobile’s website, for less than I’d paid for the crappy one, though that doesn’t include delivery charge, should one apply.) I don’t want to be wasteful and become one of those flash sods who just buys loads of overly glamorous stuff needlessly, but nor do I want to be saddled with this rotten and frustrating piece of crap for too long; a judgement call will have to be made. I’ll just have to carry on with this stumpy cell until I find the bargain that feels right, or I feel confident enough to commit to something more solid. Or maybe I could make money for a new phone by sending my various broken old ones away for recycling, though punching the model numbers of my past-it mobiles into Envirofone revealed the firm would gladly take the devices and recycle them for free, but with no payment made to me. I would point out here that the little telly in my bedroom is also playing up – the tube appears to be going wonky, and it’s becoming increasingly wobbly in its warm-up, but I’m not looking to replace that immediately – the little amount of TV I now actually watch means it’s barely worth worrying about just now, and in any case I’m not exactly in a position financially or socially where buying a TV set would be considered acceptable, so I can put that on the back burner until I’ve got my many other problems sorted out. I’d also like a bigger-capacity MP3 player for my journeys (well, the music I listen to thereon, at any rate), but that’s the least-pressing issue given I can just take overplayed songs off the machine I have now to free up room for a fresh playlist.

As regards life’s problems in general, however, I’ll need to get something sorted out quick smart. The coalition (driven by the posh boys in the blue sector) are planning to rewrite the welfare book to make being stuck on benefits less attractive to those layabouts who’ve built a life off the state, and cut the amount of tax income dished back out to support the poorest, in a root-and-branch shakeup designed to root out those stuck in the cracks and put ever more pressure on us stragglers. Remember, I’m keen to get off benefits and get into steady work, but I’m struggling because whilst I’m a perfectly adequate employee, if I say so myself, the employers always seem to find someone better. But I want to better myself. I know benefit claimants have this image of slovenly, selfish, lazy scrotes who just want to smoke drugs, drink cider and watch Jeremy Kyle, and in my time out of work I must admit I’ve briefly met across a crowded course centre more than a few of that type of loser, but I am not one of those. I refuse to be. The government’s drive to paint us all as scroungers only strengthens my resolve to get out of this world. However, a lot of it is out of my hands – I’m keeping up my end of the arrangement, filling in the forms and going to the interviews – it’s just when the employers make a choice, they’re not choosing me. I do at least have the basic transferable skills and qualifications which could impress an employer – many jobs look for those with at least Maths and English GCSEs, which I have. However, in a sign I am getting older, even GCSEs themselves are soon to be killed off, in favour of the new English Baccalaureate. The news of the move came just weeks after the hotly-debated fall in the exam pass rate after many years of rising success levels. Over past years, the number of pupils getting top grades has gone up year on year, and there has been much debate over the ages about whether this is due to pupils getting smarter or exams getting easier. The likelihood? It’s a bit of both. Exam setters, having noted the feedback to their tests, had over time got their eye in and knew the sort of standard and style the questions should be pitched at to ensure maximum understanding, whilst teachers, aware of the sort of questions likely to turn up, were teaching to ensure pupils could call on the appropriate response, and pupils, knowing what was expected of them, were better able to adjudge how to attack their paper. So there has been a settling on a common standard which has enabled more to reach the appropriate balance to pass. This allowed those involved in education to crow about the ever-rising pass rate, though this has also caused anger with employers and universities, who’d previously been able to use students’ exam grades as a way of sorting the wheat from the chaff in past years, found that now a much larger pool of leavers had picked up high gradings, and that binning off those who were, on paper, less-educated was no longer a way to guarantee you’d only be left with the truly qualified: as a result, there were calls from these institutions, apparently partly heeded by Government, to make the exams tougher and return to a more restrictive banding, with more students to be considered ‘failed’; however, this was soon matched by opposing views that we shouldn’t deliberately move the goalposts at the cost of de-rosying our children’s future. Now, however, and with exam boards and the Education Department criticised in the wake of the downgrade scandal (with Welsh papers now to be regraded, but Westminster refusing to budge on the English equivalents), the powers that be have decided to make another big break and wipe the slate clean just as was the case when GCSEs themselves replaced O-levels in the 80s. Whether this will actually improve society in the long run remains to be seen, but in time those of us with GCSEs among their qualifications will be considered dinosaurs, just as those with O-levels are today. I’d better be in work long before the EBac comes in; the first students start reading for the courses in 2015, if you’re keeping count…

My schooldays were, it seems, comparitively easygoing compared to how kids today have it, though. My schools didn’t have metal detectors at the doors and G4S guards X-raying kids’ bags on entry – but then, back in the 80s and 90s knife and gun crime wasn’t as rife among the youth as it is today, even in south London. I recall usually having a fairly well-stocked pencil case containing a variety of useful tools at various points in my educative career, including pens, pencils, sharpeners, erasers, rulers, protractors, compasses (the drawing kind, not the directional kind, this isn’t Look Around You – though the navigational tools may have helped my orienteering), staplers and even scissors. Half of that stuff kids wouldn’t be allowed to be anywhere near today. (Admittedly, walking around with half a Rymans stuffed in my bag – albeit legally – wasn’t entirely cool, but at least I could get on with my work with minimal fuss and without needing to constantly badger stuff from other people.) Kids today also have a much more stringent choice of what they eat, thanks to Jamie Oliver shocking and shaming the nation into giving kids healthier choices, and packed lunches are discouraged. I, of course, normally brought a lunch with me, and I can vaguely remember what it contained – usually a sandwich, a soft drink (usually juice of some kind), a bag of crisps (or, if lucky, Quavers or Skips), an apple, a nut/oat-based bar (your Trackers and suchlike) and a chocolate biscuit bar (often a Penguin, Kit Kat, Breakaway or Club, or if I’d done something particularly naughty, a Gold) – a fairly balanced mix of food types and groups, covering various nutrients, proteins, carbohydrates, vegetables and sugars. Good luck getting that lot past the lunchbox censors today though, in this age where any fats, salts or sugars are viewed as evil, and where bringing stuff into school that others may be ‘intolerant’ of is frowned upon. My bento was a fairly good grounding, though – even now I’ve continued to apply a similar tonal balance to my lunch purchases, although rather than packing one up in advance I’ll usually be running around a supermarket in a panic trying to pull one together from what’s available on the day; there have been some changes to the actual content too: hard biscuits and crisps I’ve largely given up on thanks to my teeth, which began collapsing long after I’d left education because, whereas while in school daily I’d had reason to care for them, since coming out of regular routine and schedule I’ve been tending them less. But I still like to get a range of flavours and nutrients.

Something else that kids had back in my day but don’t have today was better telly – CBBC and CITV were properly-funded, dedicated zones of often-new programming delivered within main channels on weekday afternoons, Saturday mornings and during the holidays: today, shows made for kids are ghettoized to repeat-heavy, largely careless, underfunded little channels, with ITV in particular having ended almost all investment in children’s output largely thanks to competition from pay channels which, bankrolled by big-name US-based parent companies and advertising from big corporations, have drawn kids’ attention away from the traditional broadcasters. I get the feeling CITV channel is there because it has to be (it allows ITV1 to screen almost no kids’ programming at all), rather than because it wants to be. But then, the recieved wisdom is that kids today don’t want TV, they’ve got the internet. Which, given my cruddy new phone, is more than I’ve got. I know I’m too old for kids’ TV now (though I still watch the likes of The Slammer, Dani’s House, Tricky TV and Horrible Histories – mainly ‘cos most other shows, including those made for my age group, are awful just now – that’s why I’m not replacing my soon-to-be-broken bedroom telly just yet!) But shows like The Slammer, Globo Loco and Tricky TV would probably go down quite well with family audiences in Saturday night slots (the Total Wipeout/TV Burp/Don’t Scare the Hare type of slot) if they were given the chance, rather than being stuck away on digital-only channels down the butt-end of the guide. Even dear old Blue Peter is going digital-only next year, after over fifty years as the almost-literal flagship of BBC One’s output for the young, with the BBC looking to follow ITV in making their primary channel an adults-only affair (albeit not in the Playboy TV sense of the term). The inclusion of a mix of kids’ content in the main channels was a good thing as it enabled kids to move through the schedules at their own pace – trading up from tots’ shows to general childrens’ content then on to older kids’ shows and ultimately to the main evening schedule at their own pace. I was quite a fast developer and by 12 was already watching the likes of The Day Today but also still enjoying shows like Spatz and Knightmare, for instance. Now, however, everything’s very compartmentalised, and only now are the problems of that approach becoming apparent, the BBC recently admitting it was looking to commission some content which would ‘bridge the gap’ between CBeebies and CBBC, with the aim of encouraging kids becoming too advanced for the Tweenies and Rastamouse to trade up to the Beeb’s older-kids offering. It would be a shame if kids were told to stay away from the top of the guide, but the ‘big five’ channels all seem to be on the move towards a homogenous serving of the typical adult viewer.

Conversely, however, radio is getting younger and younger. Heart has had to make its playlist fresher to accommodate the expansion of the brand onto various former local CHR stations’ frequencies, whilst the dance/urban Galaxy station group has dumped the specialist dance shows (which tended to attract older listeners) in favour of round-the-clock pop under the Capital brand. Meanwhile, Smooth Radio, which went to an over-50s easy listening format after absorbing the Saga stations, has now evolved into a classic-pop station for the over-40s as the 40-50 bracket is more popular with advertisers. Real Radio, likely soon to become Heart following a takeover, has dropped football phone-ins in order to narrow the station’s focus to thirtysomething women. Indeed, local radio has become very ghettoised and tightly playlisted – years ago, the independent (and largely independent of each other) stations would have a much wider range of content and shows, including specialist content and magazine features, which you’d be hard-pressed to find today. In the BBC’s public portfolio, Radio 2 has continued its drive of sweeping across presenters considered too old for Radio 1, with Jo Whiley among the latest to make the switch (Sara Cox currently appears across both stations, having covered some shifts for R2 in addition to retaining her Sunday show on R1, for the moment at least). And then of course there’s the big recent news in radio – the move of Chris Moyles away from Radio 1’s breakfast show in favour of modern day hipster kid Nick Grimshaw. You’ll recall that I once used Grimmy as a yardstick for measuring how far past-it for Topman clothing I was – when I realised the clothes in there were the sort of modish chic you’d see Grimshaw being snapped in alongside his showbizzy chums, I realised I was too old for that particular arm of the Arcadia group, and that they wouldn’t be taking any more of my meagre money offshore. And now Nick’s on breakfast at R1. I guess the departure of Moyles – who was the voice of R1, for better or worse, for a decade and a half, including nearly nine years at breakfast – is a sign that, much as when older DJs were cleared out under Matthew Bannister in the 90s, the station is regearing to pick up a new breed of young listener who Grimmy’s generation is more in tune with, and looking to tell longer-serving listeners they can’t stay tuned, no matter if they like the tunes. It’s telling that in one of his final shows, Moyles referred to having recently met 6Music’s Shaun Keaveny (with the inevitable ‘we haven’t heard your show, you’re on at the same time as us’ quip), as though pointing in the digital station’s direction those older listeners binned off by the change of R1 more in the direction of One Direction.

Referring back to my own schooldays, several of which I missed through genuine ill health (again something which would be slammed like a ton of bricks today by the truancy police), I often used to listen to the radio while wrapped up in bed, and in particular Radio 1, where, in the days long before I had access to music TV channels or DAB stations, I developed my love of music and entertainment, and particularly enjoyed the likes of Mark & Lard, who mixed music with comedy and conversation in a very subversive, unique broadcast. Later in the day, I also listened to the likes of the Evening Session, though often had to interrupt this for my evening meal, and even bought a little radio so a family holiday wouldn’t stop me listening to Mansun’s appearance on the first-ever Lamacq Live (though, tired from the long journey, I did in the event manage to sleep through most of the show.) I even contributed to the station – on one occasion Steve Lamacq read out my ‘fantasy festival’ lineup, which as it was the late 90s was topped by the then-still-a-going-concern Mansun. Mark and Lard’s departure from Radio 1 in 2004 was something of a watershed moment for me – it was the sign that R1 was starting to move away from me, an eight-year process that, with the departure of Moyles, has now been largely completed. I will admit that I was not a regular Moyles listener, as radio has not been part of my morning habit – on most days I don’t have reason to be out of bed at breakfast time, and on those days I do have something to do, I’m usually too busy doing whatever it is that may be to require radio entertainment – but his departure, in my 30th year, is a mark in the sand that it’s time for me to say goodbye to a station which has, rightly or wrongly, been something of a soundtrack to my life, in part because it’s one of only a few stations, even this close to London, that I can pick up on FM. Since Mark & Lard’s departure, however, I’ve now got more ways to listen to the radio than on a crackly FM stereo: as I’ve mentioned before, I now have DAB, having bought one some years ago thanks to one of the all-too-few months of paid work I undertook, and can listen to whatever older or younger music takes my fancy, should broadcasters deign to make it available digitally. Admittedly, I can’t afford a portable DAB, and so outside the house am limited to what’s available on FM, but then I don’t really deserve too much of a good thing, now, do I? Of course, many of those I used to listen to on the not-entirely-wireless are still around, with Mark Radcliffe (now paired with Stuart Maconie), Steve Lamacq and Marc Riley (the former Boy Lard) now making up the afternoon-to-evening lineup on the sainted and thankfully salvaged 6Music – indeed, Radcliffe is now back in the afternoon slot he and Riley once occupied in their halcyon days on R1, after he and Maconie were shunted sideways from Radio 2 to release a slot there for Lamacq’s erstwhile R1 sparring partner Jo Whiley – but as it happens I’m not usually available to listen to ‘RadMac’, given that my afternoons are usually taken up sorting out my life – going to interviews, job hunting, picking up family food – even if I’m feeling under the weather (such as when the recent damp storms gave my throat a good seeing-to), I can’t take a day off to recuperate without risking a breach of my jobseeker’s agreement!) Maybe I should make more time to listen to the radio, but fitting it around the rest of my life is going to be a challenge; however, now I’m going to be watching telly less, perhaps this is the point at which I make the decision to switch to sound-only broadcasting. It could help rekindle my appreciation of music – I’ve spoken before about how my purchase of tunes has dried up, not solely for financial reasons but also because of the state the charts are in. Another indication that I should leave modern music to today’s teens and slowly walk away…

Of course, being able to access the full internet occasionally means I also now have, albeit admittedly brief, access to some online radio and podcasts. When Radioplayer launched – you know, the multistation UK web radio interface at radioplayer.co.uk – I dabbled in listening to snatches of stations from other areas of the country, stations which I couldn’t pick up on any of the radio or TV platforms I have at home, simply to hear what these stations were offering – Boogie and Dingo, who appear on various Scottish stations of a Saturday morning, seem quite entertaining, for instance, but I’m rarely lashed to a computer at that time of the weekend so can’t listen in every week, whilst it’s also been good to hear what all the fuss is about regarding The Breeze, which has been hoovering up small radio licences in the south and west of the country (though there’s no real reason for it to hit London given the likes of Smooth and Magic have the melodic angle sewn up in the capital city). Online downloading has also allowed me to collect up radio clips from the past, primarily from websites set up for that purpose (such as aircheckdownloads.com), and also podcasts containing material from programmes, particularly if they’re discussing a subject I’m interested in. For instance, I was able to download Katie Piper interviews from BBC Radio 5 Live and Glasgow-based RNIB station Insight Radio (I’d also listened to the 5 Live feature going out on air), and also picked up, thanks to Twitter, a feature from Welsh station Point FM on which a Katie Piper Foundation supporter spoke about an event she was planning to hold to fundraise for the charity. (It took place at the end of September, so you can’t go now!) Whilst, due to the lack of a scheduled Bexleyheath-to-Rhyl bus service, I wasn’t able to attend the gala myself, I did promote the shindig on Twitter in the hope it would help the word spread and that the sweet young lady’s event would be a success, given the huge amount of effort she’d put in to make it happen. (One of the star guests taking part in the event was former Big Brother contestant and KPF supporter Rebeckah Vaughan, and those who’ve been reading this blog since the early days will remember that name.) And I always like to find ways to support Katie and her projects: hey, much like Katie and her supporters, I like doing things to help others! Which is why having little-to-no practical access to Twitter until I pony up for a decent cellphone is going to be such a problem…

It also means I haven’t been fully able to join the tweet jamboree around a bit of stunt Channel 4 has been doing. Hotel GB, the latest big event in what has been a pretty huge year for Channel 4, sees a group of the channel’s presenters – yes, a certain Ms. Piper among them – running a real hotel and training up young unemployed people to release their potential, should they happen to have any, for hospitality careers, with income from hotel guests going to charities which help the unemployed. Hang on, those exist? That’s information I could have done with ages ago… Still, I always support anything Katie does to help others! Stripped across a week, and with non-participant C4 presenters Sara ‘Born Sloppy’ Cox (hello again!) and Tim ‘Sunday Brunch’ Lovejoy as Twitter cheerleaders for the period, the heavily-promoted show does come across as a bit Big Brother-meets-Crossroads (even the sponsor, printer firm Brother, seems to have been chosen with a nod to the longrunning series which once delivered C4’s high ratings watermark), but it’s good to see the unemployed portrayed as willing to better themselves and take on new tasks and challenges, and they do, in the main, come across as fairly decent people, which is a rare thing to see on telly these days! (It’s clear the chain-gang also have access to the outside world, as one member of the group remarked on the show about a comment on his appearance that he’d seen on Twitter.) It’s also good to see that across this, the Funny Fortnight, the Paralympics (of which more later) and other big shows, Channel 4 is finally starting to find its confidence again; since the departure of Big Brother’s chicken-runs and Friends reruns to apparently-lesser channels, C4 has been somewhat rudderless, and (the beloved Katie Piper aside) hadn’t really had anything fresh or challenging to offer for a good while, becoming too reliant on a hatful of big-hitters (Come Dine, gypsies et al) and losing almost all of its firebrand mojo from its early years. Maybe now the uncertainty of digital switchover is nearly over, and the dust kicked up by the Burns/Abraham/Hunt new-broom is starting to settle, C4 can rediscover a bit of its legendary creativity.

Incidentally, in addition to taking part in Hotel GB, Katie Piper’s also brought out a new book, a library of affirmations, quotes and inspirations under the collective title Start Your Day With Katie. I desperately need some kind words and soothing messages to get me through my rough days, and once again the Piper has delivered! It won’t tell you anything new about Katie or her life that hasn’t already been reported elsewhere, usually by Katie herself, but if you need peace in your mind, this is definitely one to grab should it fetch up in your district. Although, given it’s called ‘Start Your Day With Katie’, I do have to dock points for not making the book jacket look like a cereal box, as per the original printing of Phill Jupitus’ ‘Good Morning Nantwich’, or Sleeper’s ‘Inbetweener’ cassingle. As you’ll see here. it’s been a pretty grim time for me lately and I’m desperately in need of positivity and uplifting words of comfort, and this new book is as close as you’re gonna get to having lovely Katie whispering uplifting mantras into one or both of your ears when you need cheering. Unless you’re her lucky-sod boyfriend, who sees Katie as often as he likes, or at least in those precious moments when she’s not rushing around working on a new book, TV project or a scheme for her charity. See, she does a lot – a lot more than I do, at least…

Although Piper’s been a particularly busy little beetle these last few weeks, another Kate-lady has dominated the news-sphere lately, largely thanks not to her work but to her recent holiday with her husband. You might have heard of him, given that he’s Prince William and his wife – the Duchess of Cambridge, officially – is the lady who’s been in the media spotlight since marrying the about-the-same-age-as-me now-Duke in that big nuptial jamboree everyone was billying on about last year. As you’ll probably have heard, unless you’ve been holed up in a hotel for months, this young lady decided to sunbathe topless – nothing wrong with that in principle, provided you keep a watch out for nipple-burn – in what she felt was the privacy of a fairly secluded villa, only for some enterprising snap-jockey with a superzoom lens to start clicking pics from a road some metres away, in the hope of raking cash from those media organs obsessed with the figures of public figures. Whilst no British-based land publication has (at time of writing) run the shots, the images have begun to infect Europe like a virus after the vile French garbage-rag Closer (a brand-licenced version of the nasty British title, though with separate editorial content from it) broke the seal and defiantly splashed the shots across its spread. This wasn’t the first Royal scandal of recent weeks, of course, with the family name already burnished by Prince Harry’s bare and ribald antics in Vegas, which after much hype on the internet finally broached the pages of the Sun, thanks to Flt Lt Wales’ cameraphone-toting party pals. Now, I’m neither royalist nor anarchist – I accept the presence of the feted family in the same way I accept the presence of a branch of Superdrug in a shopping mall, say, but nor am I a flag-waving monarch-lover who’d kick someone out of my tearoom for not standing at the National Anthem. However, the fact that the once-revered royals are now subject to the same prurient prying as other famous figures says something about the way the media has sunk in recent years, and that’s a topic which keeps bouncing back to these pages; clearly, things are only going to get more evil before they get better, if they ever do – and given the print media is dying out, the chance of improved behaviour is now nil. I’m hopeful that the brand blowback from the K-Middy (yes, they actually call her that) scandal kills off the otherwise non-guilty British Closer, a part of the same toxic empire which farts out the likes of Zoo, Heat and FHM. Whilst the death of the Bauer media group would sadly spell the end for most of the music journalism still ongoing in the UK (well, Q and Kerrang!, at least) and the otherwise-blameless and even occasionally usable Total TV Guide, it would send a message to those remaining practitioners of print that sleaze will not be tolerated any more.

The Kate row, coupled with the ongoing post-Leveson bad blood towards the Murdochs, could yet kill off a 40-year tradition of nudes in the British newspapers: many years after the Sun slammed MP Clare Short for attempting to bring in a ban on Page 3, the models could soon be given the marching order thanks to a new campaign set up by a young woman and supported by an ever-enlargening group of celebrities and political/social spherepersons (both male and female). The new campaign calls on current Sun editor Dominic (yes, really) Mohan to pull the plugs on third-page dollybirds, the campaign establisher pointing out that on a day when women had achieved a phenomenal amount of Olympic sporting success, the largest photo of a female body in the Sun was that of the topless model. This upstanding woman also spoke in her dossier about how the permatanned P3 pretties had given herself and other young ladies a distorted view of body image. The red-top’s ambivalence and double-standards regarding women doesn’t end on the third page but spills over to the back pages too – Private Eye recently pointed out that on a day when the Sun itself had carried a piece by Clare Balding calling for more coverage of women’s sport, the paper’s own sports pages had carried no mention of several women’s sporting achievements in the preceding 24 hours. After the success of Ennis et al, the populace are hungry for strong, heroic ladies to look up to, and after the linen-washing of Leveson the public are wise to the dirty tactics used by publishers to keep their nasty papers in print. Let’s hope that some sense is knocked into the media soon. I don’t want to see Zoo and Nuts reaching the milestone 60th anniversary, as the NME recently did. The weekly music paper has itself been struggling, its once powerful position weakened by competition from the mass of music news and reviews available elsewhere at a much faster speed. It would be a shame if proper music journalism in the UK died, killed off by the twin evils of commercial avarice of publishers and ambivalent indifference of audiences, but with Melody Maker now twelve years gone, and the likes of Select and the Word punctured in the years since, it’s sadly increasingly hard to see NME – which has already shed its digital TV channel – publishing a celebratory 70th-year edition in 2022. If even the Dandy can’t survive, shuttering its print publication later this year after 75 years on the shelf, what hope is there for the actually-younger New Musical Express? I used to read the NME at the height of my hunger for new music in the 90s, and should maybe start picking it up again once my financial fortunes are more sturdy – spending north of two quid a week on a bit of paper probably isn’t the wisest thing for someone in my situation to do, but it’d probably help me enjoy the week a lot more, and like 6Music could point me in the right direction to avoid the rap and RnB which is clogging so many other media avenues.

Something else which has been in the headlines of late, and which a blast radius including but much wider than the print media, is the publication of the long-demanded report into the Hillsborough disaster of 1989. The report has had fallout for the Sun, again – which has been paper non grata in the Mersey lands since its inflammatory initial reportage into the incident; only in the new report does the source of the paper’s allegations emerge, a press release put out by a Sheffield news agency which was based on – as it turned out misleading or doctored – testimony from police looking to shift the blame away from themselves. Despite the paper’s current contrition, the scars still run deep. Of course, the relationship between the police and the press is already in the spotlight thanks to the Operation Elveden investigation into corrupt payments to police and public officials by journalists, which has seen serving and former cops and current and retired journos from papers including the Sun being spoken to by, well, police, with the first charge now issued (though as proceedings are ongoing, I won’t say anything further). There has, as it goes, been quite a lot of discussion of police misbehaviour and corruption lately – for instance, the officer involved in the death of blameless Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G20 protests has, after being cleared of any offence in court, been dismissed by the force after being found to have breached professional standards – but should he have been on duty at all? This officer, it emerged, had prior black marks including a road rage charge against him, but after an earlier suspension was allowed to rejoin the hardline TSG unit. Meanwhile, a probe by the Independent Police Complaints Commission found over 50 alleged cases of police ‘taking advantage sexually’ of members of the public, presumably by using their position to coerce their victims to comply. Now I’m loath to speak out against the police – those who do question the force are often hauled up before the beak on trumped-up charges – but it’s clear that some of those in the blue are clearly placing themselves above the law, and this needs to be rooted out. Of course, sometimes the police are the victims, and like many others I was shaken by the needless death of two WPCs in a gun attack in Manchester. These officers were doing their duty and had been sent, unarmed, to reports of an incident, only to find they had been lured to their deaths, with the incident apparently linked to a gangland crime feud in the city – though again, with legal matters ongoing, I won’t say anything prejudicial. I will say, though, that after all the bad press the police have had lately, it was pleasing to see there are still good eggs in the police basket, going about their mission without fear or favour. More publically-spirited officers like these, and less like those who only look out for themselves, would improve the public image of the police and reduce tensions, potentially making the officers’ job easier (better relations between the old bill and the great unwashed would, for instance, have defused much of the anger which led to the 2011 riots.)

The deaths of these two constables were just one small part, though, of one of the most gruelling and gruesome months we’ve had to live through in recent times. September, as you’ll probably be aware, is always a bleak month, and not just for those kids who are, after their long jolly, rounded up and parked back in school until at least Christmas. Memories of past tragedies still ring true, and eleven years on the shadow of 9/11 still hangs long in the air, even with reconstruction at Ground Zero itself well underway. Most still hold 11 September in reverence, but not all – in the US, NBC failed their audience by, rather than airing a silent tribute to those lost in the attacks, instead screening an interview with Kris Jenner, mothership of that media-choking evil empire that is the Kardashian klan, on subjects such as cosmetic surgery. This was the same NBC which fouled up their screening of the Olympics and Paralympics by placing their own commercial concerns above the requirements of the sports output – timeshifting Olympic events to air in primetime rather than screening them live in less-valuable slots, then shunting Paralympic coverage to out-of-the-way packages to avoid taking time from shows more desired by advertisers. I’m glad I live in a country that actually gives a damn about sport, even if I didn’t myself until recently. But September 2011 will go down in history as nothing short of a disaster, for many and myriad reasons. The storms which drowned my phone (and nearly took me with them) on my way home did far worse elsewhere: the rains in fact causing massive volumes of devastation around the country; a New Zealander living in London was killed by a storm-loosened branch at Kew botanical gardens, the bodies of a young couple who’d apparently been walking their dogs were found in a river in Wrexham, a boy in Wiltshire was struck by lightning and injured, and a number of people were left homeless as a block of flats in Newcastle was left unstable by flooding, with York also among the areas where roads and homes became rivers. Still nature keeps punishing us, and still we continue to sin; when will we learn?

Elsewhere, there was a staggeringly massive amount of death and disaster flashing up on the news sources during the September just gone: the plane crash in Nepal which killed 19 people (including seven Brits) capped a month which had also seen three generations of a family (a woman, her teenage daughter and the teen’s baby girl) killed in a blaze in Cwmbran which was allegedly started deliberately; a young woman killed in a car fire over which her boyfriend was later arrested (again, legal procedure is ongoing); we had an Irish rugby player killed alongside his father and brother in a slurry-based accident on the family farm (the player’s sister, injured in the incident, led mourners at their funeral). And we’ve seen shocking incidents here in the south east, such as the case of a baby being given a bottle of corrosive substance to drink from in that apparent pit of evil, the Eltham branch of McDonalds. Thankfully, these days I’m rarely in a McDonalds – I’m far too old for that hamburger crap – but if this is the sort of thing that the mentally-ill residents of south London consider acceptable behaviour, then maybe I should review whether I ever set foot in such a place again. There has also, in what’s sadly become a bit of a recurring theme on here, been a slew of death on the roads, too much to analyse in detail, but briefly the fatalities included the death of a driver and two passengers returning home from the Bestival event on the Isle of Wight (I would ask what this means for the future of Bestival, but reports last month suggest that quite a lot of music festivals are set to go to the wall, so there’s only at most a 50% chance of Bestival happening again even had this crash not taken place); elsewhere, two Wiltshire sisters in their 20s died in a road crash on a sadly too literal ‘trip of a lifetime’ to Morocco; a woman in her 20s and a 14-month-old boy were killed in Norfolk; a 20-year-old woman from Leeds was slain in a hit-and-run in that horrible city of Manchester; two separate incidents in Derbyshire claimed lives – one crash killing two including a 16-year-old boy, and another led to the deaths of a five-year-old girl and another aged just 22 months, with a seven-year-old girl and a woman (one presumes the girls’ mother or carer) injured. At the other end of the age scale, a 77-year-old woman was killed in the car park of an Epsom shopping centre. Nobody, it seems, is safe when someone gets behind the wheel. And, again to bring the tragedy closer to (my) home, an 18-year-old woman was killed in Dartford, and her face peering up at me from local papers really brought home how tragic things can turn out if you get mixed up in that hideous drug called motoring. This blog has called many times for more to be done to tackle death and injury on the roads, and still the bodies needlessly mount up; how many more have to die needlessly before someone does something to make our roads safer?

I have been out on the road a lot, pushed from pillar to post by my various demands, and have bleated about the road-based rage from which I’ve been suffering; the above-mentioned Wanker’s Triangle being the pinnacle of my travelling daftness. After one such bellowing session, one of my long-suffering Twitter friends reassured me that journeys tell a good story, and referred to Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. As it turns out, I have recently picked up several Austen books, along with some Dickens and Shakespeare, and numerous others – 100 books in all, and they only cost me 4p each. Now that’s a bargain even The Works can’t beat! How did I do this? Well, several weeks before my drowned-phone disaster, I spotted a preowned copy of the ‘100 Classic Book Collection’ on Nintendo DS being offered for four quid in a videogame shop. I’d had my eye on the cart for a while – a quick and convenient way to own a stack of legendary literature in one payment, and without having to reinforce my arms or bookshelf to carry them. However, as a penny-pinching tight sod, I’d always previously talked myself out of actually buying the thing on price grounds. However, when I saw the thing going for under £4, I felt the fiscal cost was now low enough to justify. I got something of a pride from walking around town knowing I was carrying 100 books around with me, and that I’d finally be able to do some reading again, having neglected the printed word along with albums, movies, videogames and other longform entertainments as my life became increasingly fragmented and bitty – I’d just not made time to sit down and do something indulgent for myself, relying instead on squeezing the short-burst blasts of fun provided by TV and, when I could access it properly, the mobile web in around my appointments and home duties. I really should read more books – I haven’t sat down with a big block of fiction for a while, my recent reading matter consisting mostly of Katie Piper’s two books so far this year, and short-shot humour collections (among the likes of Colemanballs, Heroic Failures, and the web-derived Signspotting and Texts From Last Night). So, now I find web-use sluggish and frustrating, maybe I should rediscover my lost love for reading, albeit in part aided by a digital device. Hey, I could even start writing – these blog belches are already approaching chapter-length chunks, which suggests if I flesh out my thoughts a little more fully, one day my pitiful whines may be voluminous enough to find themselves bound between boards. And maybe there’s scope for me to pick up, when time and money allows, more former-tree versions of books, should there still be bookshops available to do so in. I’ll have to grab the print version of one particular tome – as Northanger Abbey isn’t among the Austen works listed in the DS book collection, though Emma – which inspired the oft-mentioned-here Clueless – is present on the card, which is something of a win. And, assuming my chunky old second-hand first-generation DS doesn’t crap out at some point like most electrical gadgetry tends to do in my care, I now have enough reading matter that it’ll take me some years to chew through it all. Wonder if I’ll live long enough to read all 100? And maybe, once I can justify buying a non-wobbly TV, I could get my hands on a DVD of that recent adaptation of Northanger Abbey, which flew past my head on original transmission, given – and my love of Clueless should have been a clue to this – I commonly prefer modern-era movies to period pieces.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, sport is also something which many others enjoy but which has not previously held much truck with me. I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d followed the Summer Olympics with a scale of devotion which surprised me given my previous general ambivalence towards sportive endeavour. And, just a few weeks later, the gold rush resumed with the Paralympics, which again offered a superlative board of activity for me to dinner on between my other bits of rushing around. The lead-up to the opening of the Games saw an event at Stoke Mandeville, the home of the Paralympic movement, at which the flame was hoisted onto stage by a procession of people including one Ms. K. Piper. Which I guess I found a pleasing circle as I’ve been carrying a torch for her for years! But awkwardly Channel 4’s coverage of the event ended due to the next show in the schedule starting partway through the event, sending me scurrying to Sky News of all places to watch the rest of the procession, including Katie’s bit. Still, once the torch had landed in its berth in Stratford, the sports could properly begin, and we were in for a treat. Although the coverage was on a smaller scale than that of the Olympics (just three extra channels rather than 24), there was a pleasing depth of sport available during the period, and it proved something of a test for Channel 4, which pleasingly threw out its daft original plan to break off from sports coverage for several hours in the afternoon for regular shows such as Come Dine with Me, Deal or No Deal and Hollyoaks, instead exiling these to digital channels for the period (for the first time in eight years, you could go a whole day without seeing The Simpsons, a show I have become very tired of given its unending repeat cycle, on Four.) There were criticisms – while the livestream channels were uninterrupted, the main channel’s output was accused of being a rolling highlights show, preferring long slugs of discussion to live output (possibly as studio banter was easier to break into for ads than live events would be) – indeed, the placement of breaks became something of a bugbear for viewers, with one such case I myself saw go out live seeing C4 take its leave from a wheelchair rugby match with just a couple of minutes left to play, so they could fit in an ad break before cutting across to swimming coverage. Of course, some of the discomfort with ads may have been because the earlier Olympics had been broadcast on the commercial-free BBC, and working out how to keep everyone happy – advertisers, viewers, and regulators who monitor the amount of ads in an hour – is an inexact science during unpredictable live shows. But for the most part, the coverage was well-recieved and professional, and certainly did a lot to improve the image of disability sports – and if I’m honest, of sports in general – in the UK. There are many competitors (and in some cases entire events – Boccia springs to mind) for whom the Paralympic shows were their first significant TV exposure, and many fine sportspeople’s careers will have been nothing but enhanced by the output. And it was pleasing to see Britain continuing to celebrate and get behind its athletes just as the country had done for Wiggins, Ennis, Farah and so forth a few weeks prior. There were some astonishing GB performances right across the Paralympics, with storming results from Sarah Storey to Richard Whitehead and from Hannah Cockroft to Ellie Simmonds; Britain has much to be proud of this summer. There were stumbles and awkward moments – the Jason Cundy tantrum for instance (though he later apologised in words, and also atoned in his actions by picking up a medal in a subsequent race.) And, yes, being male, as in the Olympics I found the female athletes not only talented and spirited but also hugely attractive – basketball player Amy Conroy being a particularly beautiful blonde, for instance. All told, the athletes have done a fantastic amount to showcase the breadth of sporting talent this and other countries can offer, and collectively they can be justly proud of their medal wins and the many record-breaking times secured during London 2012’s second phase.

The Paralympics also brought one British woman’s traumatic journey full-circle: Martine Wright was injured in the July 7 2005 bombing on the London Underground, which tempered the mood just a day after the Olympics and Paralympics had been awarded to London. However, after losing her legs Ms. Wright rebuilt her life, and eventually took up seated volleyball, going on to become part of the team representing Britain at the Games. This fine woman’s success proves that trauma can be overcome; if I need further proof, over and above my regular drinking from the well of Katie Piper, that troubles will pass and better days can be built, then Martine is certainly someone to look up to as a hero: in seven years she’s gone from representing the legacy of one of the most destructive acts of evil ever committed on British soil, to representing the great leaps that can be made with strength, self-belief and athletic endeavour. Channel 4’s Paralympic coverage also offered something which was lacking in the BBC’s more deferential output: a comic review, with The Last Leg, the nightly humourous look at the quirkier side of the Games, fast becoming a regular fixture of my evenings thanks to its irreverent and unpretentious style, anchored with some flair by Australian comic Adam Hills, who, as you’ll already know if you’re a Mock the Week viewer, wears a false leg. A leg which, during the course of the series, was emblazoned with the Ghanian flag after the Last Leg team decided to throw their weight behind the African Paralympic underdogs, and which at the end of the series recieved a Cundy-style Union Jack paintjob as a result of a bet with the destined-for-great-things co-host Alex Brooker. Here was a good-natured show, laughing with the athletes rather than at them (indeed several Olympic and Paralympic athletes appeared on the show to poke fun at their own universe) and being all the better for it. This tied in nicely with C4’s remit to be challenging and take an alternative view of the world. Compare this attitude with that of the BBC, where – aside from a couple of Now Show specials slipped out quietly on Radio 4 – comedy was largely absent from the BBC across the period, with Russell Howard recently complaining that the Beeb had effectively neutered comics during the Olympics, his own Good News and his former berth Mock the Week being among the shows, along with Have I Got News for You, that were put on ice over the summer period.

A sector which didn’t enjoy the Olympic/Paralympic period much was the retail sector, which reported low trading figures during August as the expected Olympic bonanza to the flagging high street didn’t come, with most people watching the sports at home, in the pub or live in the Olympic park, and not bothering much with the shops – aside from bolted-to-the-Olympic-entrance megamall Westfield Stratford City, of course. (Incidentally, shortly after the centre opened one media/fashion person whose name evades me revealed on Twitter that they’d been singing the centre’s name to the tune of Tina Turner’s ‘Nutbush City Limits’. I’m cooler than that. I sing it to the tune of ‘Gainesville Rock City’ by Less Than Jake.) However, most centres reported sluggish sales, and despite the strong London 2012 ratings, some Olympic merchandise was left littering the shelves long after the athletes had gone home. The situation in some areas wasn’t helped by the systems put in place to herd event attendees safely and promptly to venues – traders in central Greenwich who hoped for a sales bounce from events held at Greenwich Park were upset that barriers were put up to ferry foot passengers from the station straight to the park, which meant fewer visitors stopped to use the shops in the centre than had been hoped for. Meanwhile, TfL’s scare tactics to get non-Olympic passengers off the public transport network to avoid causing gridlock for those attending events worked too well, with Oxford Street reportedly a ghost town in the opening days of the Games. Elsewhile, as part of the flinging-open of Britain’s doors to celebrate our Olympic host role, there was a temporary lifting some of the restrictions on Sunday shop opening for the Olympic/Paralympic period, and it has been reported that the Government are looking at the pros and cons of relieving the restrictions permanently. Now, as a job-needy retailer I should be all in favour of anything that may make additional shop-work shifts available for grabs, but I can see both sides of the argument in what is something of a political potato. The “keep it special” brigade, driven as ever by religious fervour, are keen to see the day continue to recieve special dispensation, and while some businesses are seeing the potential windfall from expanded hours, some – including Sainsbury’s, as it happens – are against the move, feeling funding extra hours will add to the costs of running their business. Convenience stores, which currently have a freer hand on Sundays due to the restrictions on larger stores, fear the introduction of a free-for-all will rob smaller firms of the one day a week they have the upper hand, whilst politicians are keen to get the private sector to put more people in work and get the still-stale economy growing again. Now, I’m not religious myself, but can see that some would prefer if Sunday was set aside for observance and non-commercial affairs; however, I’m also aware we’re in a multicultural, multi-faith society with each group having their own standard as to what constitutes religious observance and when/how it is undertaken. Additionally, some individuals are more strict than others in the manner they express their faith: personal choice is much more powerful and prominent than it was when the rules were enacted; and the move would make life easier for those whose schedule means Sunday’s the only day they have free to shop. Online retailers are not subject to the trading restrictions and so an easing of the red tape for land-based retailers would help them better defend against this web competition. And of course, much as 24-hour drink licencing didn’t lead to a rash of pubs opening all ’round the clock, so the new move won’t see shops flinging the shutters open willy-nilly; it’s likely that a shop open from, say, 9am to 6pm on weekdays and Saturdays would simply introduce similar hours at weekends; only a few very large stores currently offer round-the-clock opening on Mon-Sat, and it’s probable that only those which already do this would consider expanding to near-permanent opening should Sunday be relieved of its burden. So, in the main I’m in favour of the relaxation of the blocks, to enable people to have the personal choice of how to spend their day, provided that sufficient latitude is left on the books to allow those who wish to use the day as a day of rest or observance to continue to do so. That would be a fairly steady compromise. Maybe, in lieu of a full removal of the rules, a slight relaxation to allow more flexibility could be considered: perhaps a trial scheme upping the allowed hours, from six to eight, say, could be introduced as a stepping stone, to see if retailers and shoppers would welcome such expansion of choice in a normal trading period not skewed by the Olympics, even if the rush and crush predicted ahead of the games didn’t come to pass.

Maybe, perhaps, my slightly bitter September was in part fuelled by the knowledge that, having enjoyed a multi-week banquet of freely-available sporting action featuring the best of the world’s best, it would be four years before I could see sport on TV again, the majority of live sportive action being locked away on pay-to-view channels. Maybe, perhaps, after what had been a fairly pleasant, if rushed, summer, I let the crunch back into a gruelling autumn of bad news, bad weather and bad luck in the job hunt hit me too hard. Maybe, with my advancing age and incoming changes to my income breathing down my neck, and having made too little time to relax, I’d shut out the positive and peaceful voices in favour of those urging me to hurry along and get on with it at too great a speed. Maybe I should take more time to stop and relax. I don’t want to be one of those lazy dolies that just sits around watching trash TV and smoking da ‘erb, I want, much like the jobseekers in Hotel GB, to get out there and make a difference, or at least build myself a more respectable standard of living. And OK, maybe I haven’t got Mary Portas, Katie Piper, Gok Wan and the presence of a C4 camera crew to haul me up to standard, but I could make something of myself if I take a better, more nurtured approach rather than just butting my head rapidly against the crag of opportunity, like a deranged woodpecker trying to burst through a wall in order to unseal the fuel behind. There will be more interviews – the recent rash of appointments and opportunities is why I rarely have time to sit and update this! – and let’s hope they’re not often going to fall on the same day (although it was inevitable, given the high number of jobs I apply for, that something like this would come along at some point.) And it’s not just my job chances which will improve. Although, for the moment at least, reading Twitter (or indeed pretty much any other website) is near-impossible, there are some improving things I can read, such as Start Your Day With Katie or the legendary books on the DS card. I don’t particularly want to go back to reading magazines, which is an evil thing to do, but I could always make time to listen to the radio – we didn’t lose 6Music, but we’ve now got to use it, and if sufficient gap in my rushabout opens up to do so I will do! And, of course, October’s a month to celebrate some of the greatest ladies who have inspired and influenced my life: as I loved Treasure Hunt in the 80s and Clueless in the 90s, it tickled me to discover two of my all-time favourite ladies, Anneka Rice and Alicia Silverstone, share a birthday, 4th October (I would have mentioned this on Twitter on the day itself, but crappy-phone lost connection and didn’t send the tweet, so it’ll be 2013 before I can tip the hat to those ladies, sadly), with the always-adorable Katie Piper’s birthday falling just eight days later on the 12th. October babies are clearly the most beautiful. (I was born in March. Go fig.)

Of course, I could sit here and whine all day about my problems (in fact, I just have), but there’s always someone who has it worse – and even if that’s not true right at this moment in time, the likelihood is your ancestors, who had to live through all kinds of hideous situations, would consider your modern-day troubles a piddle in the ocean compared to their trauma. Whilst life-altering war and conflict is a near-continuous part of our world, most of the worst atrocities are not taking place in the western world, which gives those of us who only see these events on screen something of a separation, a distance, from what’s going on on the ground, the emotion only really hitting home or the headlines when it’s one of our own noble fellas, having done the ultimate and finite tour of duty, being solemnly flown back to Brize Norton in a military coffin. But of course, in the 1940s the war came to our front door, with death and destruction causing untold misery and huge disruption to daily life; only those who lived through it can truly understand the horror. One project which aims to bring the wartime experience to our modern eyes is the BBC Two series Wartime Farm, which has co-opted a Hampshire farm to run it pretty much entirely as it would have been in WWII, silage, land girls, pig clubs and all. And it really brings home how good we have it now – even those of us who are far from millionaires have it far too easy, I have far too free a choice of what to do, where to go, what to eat, what to spend my meagre pittance on. Watching the episode on rationing, I became convinced such a scheme should be reintroduced today, to give the state more control over what people eat and reduce overconsumption and cut our Earth-destroying reliance on fatty convenience foods. But then, would that be a step too far given our victory in the war (sorry for the spoiler if you’re following the show in realtime) allowed us the very freedoms we today squander? Wartime Farm also has a high emphasis on make-do-and-mend, with everything from bedding to toys to farm machinery made from scraps lying around, given much of Britain’s production capacity had been turned over to the war effort. Today’s Primark-to-Poundland buy-cheap-and-throw-away culture has created waste mountains and a lazy populace who don’t really care about durability. OK, it’s a lot harder to sew together a broken mobile phone and get it working again, unless you’ve got specialist equipment, than it is to rebuild a ripped pair of trousers, but it’d be nice to see Brits today learning a bit of humility and honouring their fallen forebears by being that little bit politer and less selfish with their use of resources.

And maybe, whilst I’m not a wartime baby, I could take the hint and live in the past a little bit more – by going back to the way I used to be in my gangly history before I had access to mobile phones and the internet. Whilst Ceefax isn’t coming back as a means of getting the news – it’s been unavailable to me since switchover from Crystal Palace in April and dies altogether with Northern Irish switchover at the end of October – I could maybe go back to the me-against-the-elements, mano-a-mano days I used to have before I had the web in my pocket, when I’d be waiting for the bus to school not knowing when it’d come, with no access to the latest headlines, no ability to chat to people on the other side of the region, nation or world, and no music to listen to on the journey. (Well, actually, my MP3 player still works, but I could always leave it at home for that true 90s experience…) I’m a spoilt brat now compared to my childhood – I didn’t even have the means to get my thoughts and feelings out to the wider world ’til I started blogging in 2006 – and perhaps dropping back to only having the fewer media options available to me in my youth will teach me to be less wasteful with my time. Perhaps it would be wrong to buy a new phone right away, and I should keep on using that crappy one that doesn’t work properly and can’t even ruddy wake me up in the morning – it may be frustrating, nay near impossible, to use, but it’s what I’ve earned. Anything better would be wasted on a rapscallion like me. So I’ll see you around – just don’t expect too many tweets from me for a while. And, as I probably won’t get to say this on Twitter, happy birthday (for the 12th) Katie Piper, and thank you for being the sweet, kind, pretty lady you are and always have been. (And no, I’m not just saying that to get a free Hotel GB-style massage, even though I probably quite badly need one!) And that’s enough!

“How could you eat that goo? You don’t know what galaxy it’s from!” (Goodbye!)

“You can pretty much hit anything and it counts as music!” (Hello!)

Gatsby! So, you’re probably wondering what’s been chewing up my mind-ropes during the course of April. Well, aside from the usual generic worry, with the job market still dirt-dry and the economy still struggling to fly, like a jumbo-jet full of bumblebees or something, there have been, as you would expect, a lot of wriggles and niggles which have been making me uncomfortable over recent hours and decades. As ever, my perpetually-declining band of Twitter followers have been party to some of the more shrill whines of the period, but I’ve saved the more over-driven analysis for those poorly sods who’ve chosen to join me here on WordPress. That’s you that is. So here goes – and this time I’ve decided to experiment with the length of my paragraphs; you may therefore have to amend your break-pattern accordingly. Let’s play!

Buying food doesn’t… get tougher… than this. You’ll know by now I’ve been tasked with purchasing much of the household scran, and there have been problems. As I shop alone, I can only carry a couple days’ worth of stuff at a time, meaning I typically have to spend every other day running around a noisy, crowded supermarket, and tackling that anxiety has really depleted me – trying to avoid other customers, particularly those with children, is hard to do when my own family situation means I have to throw myself to the retail lions on a regular basis. It’s particularly hard at weekends, when stores become increasingly crowded and difficult to shop in, and often I have to make flash decisions: do I continue to suffer the pain as I struggle to get something suitable, or do I panic-buy the nearest available things just to get myself out of the store more rapidly, albeit with stuff that doesn’t meet my needs? Additionally, having already had to avert myself from purchasing anything which couldn’t be microwaved, given our elderly gas oven is in poor health, I’ve had further restriction applied on my purchasing power; now the freezer is also on its last/only legs – opening and, particularly, closing the door is now more difficult than can reasonably be excused, which defeats the object of having the ruddy thing in the first place, which now means frozen meal deals are off the table, meaning I’m left to pick suitable meal options from the very limited range of chilled and tinned products available in store. Whereas, aside from one previously-discussed bollock-drop involving toad in the hole, I’d been getting by, just about, with the microwave-led narrowcast, this latest twist leaves me precious little wiggle room, as well as committing us to almost daily beef – cattle-based products being the primary affordable option in the non-frozen mealpacks, with other meats, say chicken, largely absent from the tubs which are within my budget. The freezer situation has meant I’ve also made another unlucky break – my mum happened to have recently put some large ceramic fridge magnets with slogans on onto the fridge and freezer doors, having presumably been given them by some friend or colleague; however, one day, whilst trying to force the freezer door to actually stay closed for once, and in full view of mother at the time, I dislodged one of said weak magnets and cracked a corner off it. Not deliberately, of course, this was another of my lengthy litany of accidents, and the ceramic was easily fixable (though mum seemed as though she couldn’t be arsed to do so); it’s certainly proof that nobody can have anything nice whilst in my company, and it’ll be a while before I can let this slip slide. (Incidentally, the other, unbroken, magnet has also vanished from the kitchen, as though mum’s decided they’re more trouble than they’re worth – indeed things do have a habit of ‘disappearing’ if they cause a problem; for instance, I bought one of those V-bladed mandolin slicer things from a shop somewhere – Woolies, if I recall – after seeing an ad on TV and thinking it could help me chop up food in order to eat it more easily; not long after making the purchase, I attempted to dislodge a chunk of apple that had become stuck in the blade, and nicked my thumb in the process – but after repairing my digit, the device was nowhere to be seen, suggesting mother had deemed it so dangerous it was worthy only of the bin, or perhaps squirreled it away in a cupboard somewhere in order to be used only by someone with better spatial awareness than mine.) The magnet-cracking is another example of the nearly continuous bad luck I’ve been having these last few years. I’m still not over that whole wine glass thing in 2003, and even if I’m supposed to have got seven years’ bad luck off it (or is that mirrors?) wouldn’t that have expired in 2010? I remind you that the people whose wine glass it technically was forgave me pretty much on the spot, and admitted that they had overstuffed the cupboard, but it still plays on my heart: I broke a wine glass, and I’m not going to be able to go back in time nine years and un-break it. Incidentally, only a couple of days after my magnetic hell, having cooked my brother’s dinner and my own, I heard a ceramic-sounding crash from the kitchen as mum was preparing her meal; when I was next in the kitchen I noticed one fewer plate in the rack than had been there previously; I didn’t raise the spectre of broken dinnerware, for fear of extending the wedge between us that already exists, but I would assume that at some point in the medium term I may be sent down to Wilkinsons or Argos or something for replacements, were it not for the fact that this would conflict with mum’s preexisting plan to empty as much as possible from the house to facilitate her dream of one day being able to box up her few remaining belongings and flee somewhere else, leaving her decayed sons twisting in her wake. But at least it isn’t just me that has the ability to break stuff. In a non-Limp Bizkit manner, of course.

Elsewhere, I’ve also had something of a brush with the law – no, this gabbled mauve-hued idiocy hasn’t yet been made illegal, you’ll be saddened to hear; the legal activity which clouded me for much of the month was in fact an invitation to apply to do my civic duty and serve on a jury. Now, anyone who has had the iron will to wade through any of the previous worry-posts that have been isolated here will know that judgement calls are not something I am mentally prepared to make. However, there is also a degree of willingness on my part to do more to help society, and this courtroom stint could thus be my key to feeling like I’d made a positive, non-bellowing difference to the world, helping either an innocent person to reclaim justice or take a guilty person off the streets. I recalled, for instance, the Katie Piper situation, where the successful conviction of her attackers helped lift the weight of worry off Katie’s mind and helped her move on with her life and build her successful charitable empire. I could be one-twelfth of a hero, which is better than being one hundred percent of a loser as at now. However, this invitation also triggered a lot of fear; in first case, I worried what would happen if I made the wrong call, or encouraged others to do so, and convict the innocent/release the guilty. I’ve heard of miscarriages of justice, and don’t want to be one! Elsewhere, I also shivered as I recalled past reported cases of jury intimidation and witness tampering – the case I would have been sat on was to be heard at Belmarsh, the Alcatraz of Thamesmead, and I was concerned that the crim’s associates and accomplices, seated as they may well be in the public gallery, would be taking the names and identities of the jurors with a view to enacting the sort of brutal, hammer-assisted revenge you are likely to be familiar with if you watch a lot of post-watershed TV drama serials. Of course, there’s every chance that the person in the dock would be not a hardened, violent career criminal with dangerous colleagues but a nervous, bookish bond-trader whose first-time dabble in creative accounting landed him up before the beak. The very fact that I’m so easily able to be prejudiced in this way – to start making conclusions about the person I’d be trying months before I even set foot in the courthouse – would suggest that a stint in the legal system probably wouldn’t be something I could adapt to. I was also worried about my own jumpiness, impatience and intolerance, again things which will be familiar to my regular reader, and concerned that I would, in willingness to close the trial early, leap up, confess to the crime myself, grab myself by the scruff and haul myself down to the cells to serve an indeterminate sentence for something I didn’t actually do. Also, of course, committing to a lengthy trial would mean little to no time available to me to continue with the other duties that currently occupy the bulk of my time – principally hunting for a job and shopping for my family – with the jury application form stating that the job centre would only continue to pay me for a certain number of weeks whilst I was on the panel, and I would therefore recieve little to no money, bar my juror’s expenses, into my account thereafter. Despite all these misgivings, I felt duty-bound to respond in the manner supplied, to avoid hoisting myself into legal trouble – you’ll recall I jump through every silly hoop the job centre put in my eyeline, even those that contradict the other tasks given, in order to avoid being accused of shirking my responsibilities – and so filled out the form as presented. There were spaces on the grid to fill out medical and mental issues which may impair my participation, and in the name of honesty I disclosed both my vision problems (wonky left eye, as mentioned here before) and the mental health condition I had been diagnosed with in my younger days. There was no box to tick for “would you become jumpy and flail around in a panic when placed within a courtroom environment?”, but if there had been I would have ticked this, as it too would have been the truth. I’m more frightened of the court than many criminals are – and I’m an innocent (well, mostly) citizen! Anyway, I began to prepare myself for the inevitable call-up, and assumed that it was my destiny to serve the public and learn from such an experience, when subsequently I got a rather blunt and brief (about a minute in length, if that) phone call from someone at the court service, who said that they were considering withdrawing me from participation on the grounds of my disclosures, and gave me seconds to confirm whether I wanted them to drop me from the pool. Flustered and ordered to make a snap decision, I muttered something about my mental condition making it difficult for me to make judgements, and that was that. I didn’t have to refuse as such – I’d been excused! So the fear and fright was lifted from my shoulders, but it was then replaced with doubt and concern – was I wrong to turn down the opportunity to serve my sole remaining civic function? Have I committed some form of gross misconduct by agreeing not to step up to the plate? I’d assume that my portion of the seat will be taken by someone of stronger constitution drawn from the same general area as I would have been, and that the trial would proceed much more smoothly without my dizzy involvement than it would do with; but still, my opportunity to do something good and potentially save the world, or a smallish quadrant of England at least, has now passed; it’s difficult not to feel like I’ve failed you ‘all’.

Of course, I’m never far from crime and disorder, either in my personal life or in the news, which I continue to absorb like some sort of grey, decaying sponge that’s been thrown into a muddy, bloody puddle. Indeed, I was a victim of a kind of minor, unreported crime myself. You’ll recall that since last time I belched out one of these brainfarts, we’ve had the Easter school holidays, or at least those of us young enough to still be in school had them, anyway. I do try and avoid contact with children, in part because I don’t want to be accused of something untoward by the News of the World, and in part because I don’t particularly like being bullied by noisy, arrogant little brats a third of my age. I’ve long had a self-imposed ban on entering Woolworths or McDonalds during school holidays, and although only one of those bans is now required, for a couple of weeks I wasn’t able to step outside my door without risking conflict. It became difficult to use the library computers without wanting to complain, with screaming infants freewheeling around the building bellowing at the top of their lungs having completely failed to understand the concept of a library. I got sick of all the petulant, arrogant screaming and stomping around – to the point that eventually I’d have to stop doing it! Anyway, one day whilst walking from a sullen library stint up to a local Tesco (sorry, but I refuse to starve myself for your own political gain, and it was the nearest thing to a shop that I could reach on foot), I was encountered by a wall of youths, strolling the other way along the pavement, and taking up its entire width in the process. There was literally nowhere to go but back – the kids were between me and the nearest crossing, and so the only options I had were keep my head down and try to pass them without attracting ire, or turn and run back towards the town centre, attempt to stay ahead of them (which in my physical condition would be near impossible), and find somewhere to hide (Wilko’s?) until the youths and the danger had passed. However, rather than fleeing like a frightened lamb running from the slaughterman, I chose to walk on, incorrectly believing I had as much right to walk to Britain’s most evil supermarket as any other innocent civilian. Needless to say, it was a naff effort. As I passed, the youngfolk became rowdy, and started catcalling. I sought to ignore them and stepped out into the road at my own personal risk in order to bypass them. This displeased them further: one of the kids stuck an arm out for an Obama-style fist-bump greeting, but not wishing to escalate the situation I marched on as though I couldn’t hear them. They took this as disrespect, of course, and I was physically assaulted – they threw a still-perfectly-usable pink hairbrush, presumably grasped from the hipbag of one of the female girls in the group, at my back as I trotted onward; it caused no discernible damage except to increase my fear of the outdoors, and they ended up down on the deal as they presumably had to buy the stroppy girl a new brush, given that the one they flung at me bounced off my spine and landed in the roadway as I continued my solemn march towards Stockwell and Cohen’s store, unhurt externally but dying inside. So now I’m being physically abused by people I’m legally too old to even be in the same oxygen-space as. I think you’ll find they win. To be honest I’ve been getting depressed about how nasty and chavvy this area has got lately, it’s genuinely a dangerous place for someone as weak and unthreatening as me to live, with every bus journey potentially being fatal to me. Do I go to the streets and run to freedom, plead for sanctuary from someone who lives in a nicer part of the island, or just accept that I am my region’s doormat, and let the louder, stronger, more aggressively confident people continue their vile rule over me? I also face having to replan my operations to account for the difficult situation South and East London will be landed in this summer – namely the hosting of the Olympics. I’m sure armed officers will be out in force over the summer months to prevent myself and others going about their business lest we interfere with the operation and security of the biggest sporting event to have taken place in England’s capital for some decades. How I’ll be able to get on with my day with the Olympic restrictions, regulations and policing in place remains to be seen, but it’ll certainly add to the stress that living in this concrete cacophony already brings. With powerful missiles apparently armed and ready from the top of towerblocks (causing great concern to the residents within) intended to guard Fortress London during Games-time, woe betide any luckless blunderer who strays into the secure zone by mistake, triggering some kind of armed scramble which blows East London apart in a bid to protect it from the percieved threat. Now do you see why I want to stay at home this summer?

Elsewhere in the country, though, may not be as nice as I believe; there’s been masses of death, crime, misery and disorder news around the nation, with the economy still stuck in reverse and the ever-familiar parade of road crashes, stabbings and house fires flickering their way across the web and the red button, which I then devour to fill the odd-shaped empty spaces between hunting work, feeding relatives, squeezing out these breezeblocks of text, and finding something calming to watch or listen to (I’ve increasingly found myself having to tune to Real Radio or Gold or similar, during breaks between run-abouts, in order to relax myself and stop myself becoming agitated).  We now don’t have time to recover from one tragedy before another hits. We’ve just had a family of five in Essex made homeless after a blaze in a building which had been converted into flats – there’s a group who’ll be living out of boxes and eating out of bins for months to come, and loath as I am to say nice things about that portal-to-hell that is Essex (ITV2 twice-weekly provides evidence as to why that hideous county must be destroyed) it does seem harsh to drag a family through what will be many years of hell and insecurity. I would say ‘blameless’ family, but they must have done something criminal or evil, as they were in Essex – and you see now why I couldn’t be on a jury? Elsewhere, someone who did have a previous conviction plummeted seventeen storeys to her death from a flat in the frequently-mentioned (in this blog at least) town of Woolwich after police officers made an early-morning housecall – we don’t know whether this teenager was trying to escape fresh charges or simply slipped her footing, and she has taken at least some of her decision-making process to her grave, but this case did prove to news-viewers nationally that south London residential towers aren’t all Only Fools-style japes. Meanwhile, following the earlier conviction of a rioter for their part in the arson at Woolwich’s Great Harry pub, the criminal behind another of last August’s looting hotspots has been hauled before court, as the laptop-pinching sofa firebug who levelled long-standing Croydon furniture retail landmark House of Reeves was convicted on the basis of CCTV evidence, and the fact he told witnesses at the scene “that was me!” as he fled the soon-to-be-enflamed store. He clearly hasn’t read chapter one of the criminal handbook… However, whilst some hellraisers have been slapped in clink, others remain on the loose, and the recent news that a violent double killer, who had previous convictions, had absconded in the north of England and shown willingness to move around at speed, killing with some abandon, has filled me with the sort of trepidation one feels when presented with the news that someone who could end your life in a single blow is freely on the streets and could, M1 permitting, have been heading for London with a view to beheading some luckless Londoner, had he not been picked up by the police mere hours before this babble went live. The roads, of course, have become adept at claiming their own victims – in recent days three generations of relatives – a 75-year-old man, his grandson’s 18-year-old partner and her baby of just 14 months old – were wiped out in a County Durham crash which is going to resonate through their relatives for many decades to come, and this was followed in short order by a fatal collision a shade further south, as Burton-on-Trent hosted the death of two women and the serious injury of a number of other road-travellers, including several children/teenagers; there was the Sheffield ski village arson (clearly someone in Yorkshire has a grudge against winter-sports), and there have also been a series of mysterious and violent shooting and stabbing incidents, though in several cases police aren’t looking for anyone else in connection thereto. There was the mysterious and unhinged incident which marred Tottenham Court Road in London, where some apparently disgruntled chap excercised an overly aggressive revenge against a commercial premises which had, we’re told, angered him in some way. Then there’s been the mystery of the MI6/GCHQ fella who was found dead locked inside a bag. Now, I’ve seen enough episodes of Chuck and Alias, or at least of those episodes broadcast free-to-air in the UK, to know that something is afoot here. How, exactly, does one padlock oneself inside a holdall? There’s clearly been some kind of secretive cover-up, and in the name of national security we’re unlikely ever to know the honest truth (and because I don’t want this blog picked up by the secret service, I’d better not espouse any further theorems). But then, thanks to the conspiratorial media my grip on what’s true and what’s a lie is so loose I could appear on Rob Brydon’s BBC panel show without damaging the overall format. There is an awful lot of crime and hatred in the world right now, from petty local disputes to life-ending street warfare, enough to keep Crimewatch UK on screen year-round, and I need someone to calm me down. I need a Katie Piper figure blowing on my ear and whispering that things will get better, or a Nick Ross-style reassurance not to have nightmares. Unfortunately, as much of my rushing around trying to sort life out is done alone, with no girlfriend or good local chum to turn to, there isn’t anyone to take me by the hand and soothe me when the pressure of living amid Britain’s horrible histrionics gets too weighty to bear. Won’t some lovely soul please be my Nick Ross, before I end up going the same way as Jill Dando? (And yes, I know Kirsty Wark and/or Young hosts CWUK now, but I’m a child of the 80s, to me Neil Buchanan is still presenter of Art Attack…)

Politics has also been in the news, as it ever tends to be, with the continuing media soap opera of the Leveson Inquiry continuing to blow all sorts of gaskets off my MediaGuardian feedreader, as politicians and press barons confirmed the cosy relations they had enjoyed in a frenzy of back-scratching which was designed in part to boost the profitability of the press but mostly to boost the egos and careers of political figures. See for instance the Murdoch-sucking soon-to-be-former culture secretary and gift to rhyming slang Jeremy Hunt, whose snuggly relationship with NewsCorp has left his political career in tatters, as the dodgy alliance between Sky’s billionaire tyrant and the prissy Tories begins to unroll; looking further north, there was the greedy SNP-Murdoch alliance under which vain Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond agreed to ring down from Holyrood to lobby his governmental colleagues in Westminster to rally support for NewsCorp’s BSkyB takeover bid, and in return the Scottish version of the Sun swung its might behind getting the SNP reelected, giving the party its first Scottish Parliament majority, which wasn’t welcomed by all in the political spectrum, not least because it raised the spectre of Scottish separation from the UK, something the central government is keen to avoid, in order it seems to protect Westminster’s access to North Sea fuel lucre. The Murdochs and their workdroids know their papers can change minds and lives, with their huge readership enabling the firm to essentially seed its point of view into the national conversation, and the posturing politicians know it helps their ends to get NewsCorp onside and keep the media mafia sweet. So we end up having policies which slam down the BBC and hand more of the media power to Sky, and in return NewsCorp encourages its mass of sheeplike readers to keep its political friends in power. This all wasn’t news, of course, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of how the media and/or politics work will have figured this out for themselves decades ago, but to have it confirmed that those we elect and those we rely on for news are acting not in our interest but in their own is still galling to know. How warped is our landscape because of these machinations? We will never know. Elsewhere in politics, we’ve had another petrol crisis, after ministerial blundering and petrol-industry jitters led drivers to panic-buy at the pumps. This had a tragic human cost when a woman was burned decanting petrol in her kitchen. Whilst having petrol near the oven was a pretty dim move, and so the victim does have to take a portion of the blame, it’s certainly true that if the price of fuel continues to cause consternation there may well be further disasters as drivers look for ways to bypass the chaos. And then there’s the hideously-badly-handled attempt to claw more money away from the public and business to refill the country’s coffers just as the public and business are in dire economic straits – there’s the wave of tax rises and benefit cuts which the government outwardly hope will force people, no matter how unemployable, into work, but which will simply plunge more people into poverty – for instance, see the awkwardly-applied ‘pasty tax’, aimed at getting the likes of Greggs to ratchet up the amount they pay into the Treasury to be more in line with what sit-in restaurants pay and presumably a back-door to introducing VAT on more foods (many of which are currently exempt the tax) in order to compel those who want to eat to put more pennies in the Chancellor’s piggybank for doing so, and the potential crash of the free school meals system when some of the benefits which currently entitle children to free food are rolled into a new universal credit which won’t, potentially leaving poorer parents much worse off. (I could quote Karen Taylor here – “can’t afford a car, can’t afford a baby” – but it does seem a great many kids these days are born unexpectedly as the result of an alcohol-fuelled grope round the back of a nightclub, and then given an ear-piercing and a name like Rihanna or Tulisa before being let loose to run around the library screaming and annoying me. And so the circle continues…) And then there’s the mass layoffs in the public sector, which will hit services, and cuts/selloffs in schools, libraries and the NHS in an attempt to get these services out of the public purse. So the Coalition want us to pay more to recieve less service, something which British people aren’t keen on (the national sport being paying less to get more, as the popularity of BOGOFs, coupons and looting prove) – it’s a tough sell. And, of course, those on benefits will continue to be demonised, meaning until I can convince some luckless employer to hire me and break their wine glasses, I should expect many more hairbrushes, and probably substances much worse, to be flung at me in the street.

There are some truly horrendous people out there – and it’s even more gruelling when these hideous monsters are placed in a position of care. I’ve lost any and all respect I may once have had for the nursing and caring profession after a series of scandals, crimes and revelations. There have been numerous court reports of unscrupulous, clumsy or careless nursing staff being brought to book over callous mistakes which have in some cases severely harmed a patient’s quality of life. Recently, though, things have got worse. You’ll probably have seen on news reports and current affairs shows the scandal of care home workers almost universally mistreating and abusing their often elderly and/or infirm patients – have a look on the BBC website, for instance, for material from the recent and previous Panorama investigations into such situations. It seems care providers aren’t learning from past investigations into such maltreatment – except possibly learning how to treat their inhabitants in a foul manner. Suspicious relatives’ secret filming only confirms what we all knew all along – bedside manner is a myth, nursing and care staff only smile and speak politely as long as they think someone in posession of power of attorney is watching; as soon as the relatives are out of the room and the door is closed, the fangs come out and the ‘carer’ (I spit that word with real venom) shows their true, disgusting colours. There have been some truly hideous nurses on television recently – and I don’t just mean the blonde “representation of a nurse” from the toothpaste ad, who in any case looks far too much like Billie Faiers (ick!) to actually get a job as a real nurse. Why, for instance, have Bovis or Wimpey or whoever not turned up at gateway-to-Hell Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport and levelled it to rubble yet? Clearly that building has gone way beyond what would be expected of NHS premises, and the saline saboteur may or may not still be on the loose. If I were a resident of the Mancunian region, I’d refuse to be treated there – I’d rather suffer and die from whatever debilitating illness or injury I’d suffered that week than set foot in the foul cathedral of hate that is Stepping Hell. Why can I not give the staff 24-48 hours to remove all patients to a safe place, then fire them all, and then step forward to blow the building to pieces with some form of non-Napoleon dynamite? Blowing that facility off the OS map would certainly give myself and those impacted by its evil ways a form of closure, and it’d be nice to destroy something deliberately rather than, as is usually my way, accidentally. Why does this hospital even exist? Can it not at least go through some kind of root-to-branch makeover under new management, akin to the Windscale-Sellafield rebranding? That would, at least, be a start, though broadcasting the destruction of the entire hospital on national television would give a much starker sense of closure (and it’d piss directly on Holby City’s chips, which is always something I’m keen for television to do.) It would also give me a rare chance to bellow hideous obscenities at medical staff, something I very rarely get the opportunity to do given I haven’t yet myself sought medical treatment for the many and various things that are wrong within and around my body and mind. Or, on the other hand, have I misjudged and prejudiced an entire profession based on the actions of a visible, irascible few? Is it actually the case that those proportion of nurses who haven’t been featured on Crimewatch and/or Panorama have been going about their duties with the required level of care and attention? I don’t have enough inside knowledge of the nursing profession to have a genuine statistic as to the ratio of good to evil practicioners therein, but am I wrong to believe that a majority of nurses are the children of Satan? I’ll need to start being nicer to nurses and doctors – my declining health means I’ll need them sooner rather than later, and I don’t fancy being slapped about by a supposed carer keen to jack in the career…

One genuinely evil organisation which is, thankfully, currently dormant is that hatred-spouting tower of terror that is/was N-Dubz. The warring threesome have turned their burners on each other as fame has eaten the north London trio alive and appears to have, for now at least, spat them out. They are genuinely horrible people – well, two of them are, Fazer seems to have kept his head largely under the waterline and not caused any significant beef; his erstwhile bandmates have, however, found a string of ways to keep themselves needlessly documented in the sadly-all-too-popular papers. Professional scrotebag Dappy, fresh from ruining Never Mind the Buzzcocks forever, seems keen to get involved in all manner of scandal, with a rap sheet longer than most of his rap songs, and nary a week passes without the hat-clad ballbag being caught smoking/snorting/slapping/spitting at/shouting at someone or something, and the event then being splashed all over the media. Then there’s his actual relative, the gargling gargoyle that is Tulisa, who has begun to believe herself to be something of a celebrity, appearing on the front of newspapers and magazines on an almost permanent basis, to the point where her image is virtually burned into our national retina as well as the walls of Smith’s. The horror really began when she signed up for a judging post on that carnival of the grotesque that is the X Factor, becoming another pawn in the Cowell power-game, and since then she’s become something of a darling of the presses, popping up constantly and needlessly amid the breathless babble of the weekly rags and redtops – she was even in the Guardian (yes, the actual Guardian) the other week, and I nearly deleted the MediaGuardian feed from my reader in protest – and now she’s releasing a solo single I’m unable to watch any music channel for more than a few minutes without having to scream and shut the telly off in disgust, much as I had to when Dappy’s solo video was doing the rounds. How far Brian May has fallen. Speaking of disgust, the terrible Tulisa has joined the ranks of stars who have released a rather different, less telly-friendly kind of video, and references to that are if anything even more difficult to avoid in the grotty papers and on the horrendous cesspool that is the internet. Even the Channel 4 announcers have been taking the mick out of her. But I don’t want that slaggy wannabe to inflate me, I’m too busy worrying about how to deflate her – can I not go one day without any reference to Tulisa in my life? The really horrible thing is the huge influence that the N-Dubz monsters have on today’s young people – teens idolise these terrible beasts, and there’s nothing I can do to stop that, and we face bringing up a generation who think it’s OK to behave like Tulisa and Dappy do. Parents, as we’ve seen, have little to no control over their kids these days. It’s also horrendous to think I used to have respect for these devils – I’ve spoken here before about how I’d first spotted them on tiny channels back in the early days and followed their trajectory as they marched up the programme guide, their beats, videos, outfits and performances getting slicker as the trail rolled on; I even bought their first two albums, keen to cheer on and support new UK talent, even in a genre I wasn’t perhaps as regular a consumer of as I was of, say, indie rock. Now, though, they have become famous and nasty celebrities, proved themselves to be just like the rest of the showbiz cattle, and as such I regret bitterly ever having aided their ascent. For tightness-of-money reasons, I didn’t get around to buying their third (and as it turned out final) studio set; I now probably never will. And, having already deleted all digital N-Dubz tracks I had on my crappy MP3 player, I’m left wondering what to do with the N-Dubz CDs I wrongly own. Do I grind them into some tactile silvery powder and scatter it into the wind from a hill, damaging the environment almost as much as their music tends to do? Do I go around in a horse-drawn cart bellowing at parents to bring their kids’ N-Dubz albums to my vehicle for a book-style burning (with CDs instead of books) out on some kind of heath, and during the pyre bellow rhetoric at the gathered jeering crowds through a megaphone? Do I simply get on board a train, slip a CD onto the seat, and walk away as though I’ve forgotten it? Or do I do what I did to my copy of Damien Rice’s Cannonball after the Tulisa-mentored Little Mix runied/covered it as a result of winning X Factor, and sit the CDs to side for a few decades until the half-life of my current hatred has subsided? Or do I simply take the CDs down to a charity shop and continue the evil cycle by allowing someone else to buy the CDs, albeit with a good cause benefitting from the sale? Maybe if I did do the decent/horrible thing and donate the CDs to charity, I could take the sting off by bundling the discs in a package also including some of the pairs of trousers that actually fit me (leaving me with the horrible, rotten ones which don’t), and maybe also some new wine glasses which I’ve bought from somewhere specifically to give to charity, with no intention of using them myself. It’d help me get over 2003, at least…

Simon Cowell’s grip on pop culture has been long – he was responsible for Robson and Jerome’s pop domination of the mid-90s, when the Soldier Soldier stars outsold Blur and Oasis combined, and continues to his current ownership of the conversation around Saturday night (to the extent I no longer use Twitter on weekend evenings, in order to avoid people who talk about his shows and similar productions). He’s been in the news over the last few weeks thanks to a new semi-authorised biography which sees author Tom Bower reveal some of the skeletons hidden around castle Cowell, most sickeningly to the public gut his brief romantic dalliance with sometime X Factor judge Dannii Minogue. I’ve always been more of a Kylie man myself, to be fair (I refer you to the previous post in which I revealed what the first album I ever bought was), but it was also interesting to see the claim Cowell was mesmerised by Cheryl Cole. This lady is one who has somehow managed to become something of a national superstar, even though she deserves no more or less adulation than any other member of Girls Aloud; the grip Cheryl has over media and the public is simply bizarre and, sadly, she too will make a comeback soon, having been given time to lick her wounds from the stumble she took when she wrongly believed she’d be able to sucker the Americans in the same manner as she did the Brits, principally by cooing at them about hair in a Geordie accent. Then, of course, there’s been all the blather about Cowell’s other show, Britain’s Got Talent, and the media’s continued hunger for conflict led the press to invent a fictitious dispute between Amanda Holden and newcomer Alesha Dixon over who gets the screen time, a row defused by Holden herself claiming there was no bad blood. Unless, of course, this itself is a lie. I could take some comfort from the knowledge that Cowell’s shows are in decline – ratings for X Factor and BGT have been in decline and Talent has been given a kicking around the schoolyard by incoming BBC song-contest The Voice, leading to much gnashing from the ITV camp about overlaps between the shows, which have thus far generally been won by the Beeb. As I’ve screamed before, particularly around Big Brother time, it’s very difficult to avoid these kind of mass-audience shows, and I wish there was some kind of magic button I could press to give myself a version of the press, TV and internet that didn’t have any Tulisa, Cheryl, Alesha or similar – similar to the button some Norwegian websites have installed for those readers who want to avoid the blanket coverage of the Anders Breivik case. But no media business with pound and/or dollar signs in its eyes would ever give its audience the option to avoid the retina-scorching celebs of the day, so my aim for a Cowell-ites-free day will forever remain a pipedream. One of Cowell’s pop-show creations have, after charming UK bedwetters, bafflingly become a global phenomenon. Largely thanks to their fans flooding Twitter with OMGspam, One Direction have become a jetsetting flag-carrier for British popular industry, storming America and Australia in a voluminous manner few other stars of these isles have been able to manage. Whilst I have no personal grudge against Niall, Zayn and so forth, it would be a shame if the globe felt that all Britain was capable of creatively was a radio-friendly, teencentric melodic pop band. Thankfully, the selfsame new technology which has allowed the 1D virus to spread also gives us the opportunity to flag up a wide range of quality talent in seconds, and allows people in territories other than our own to punt up their own country’s tips for the top, thus narrowing the cultural difference between us. As a for instance, I’ve got Twitter contacts residing in Poland, Canada and some other countries, allowing me access to a world of influence and experience I could never physically reach without finding some way to transport my body across the waters. The connected web has also allowed us to have a hearty chuckle at 1D’s expense – one of the quirkier recent showbiz stories, of the boys getting caught up in a chlamydia scare after being piddled on by a koala, was certainly fuel for the punmasters, mentioned on shows including Million Pound Drop and Have I Got News For You as well as attracting many chuckles on Twitter. However, 1D have also been involved in one of the more petty media scuffles of recent times: if you listen to stations such as Heart or Capital you won’t have heard much of the Directioners, and that’s because of a petty pouting match by the stations’ parent Global Radio. Apparently, while accepting an award at the Brits back in February, 1D bigged-up the BBC’s pop station Radio 1, which would be all fine and dandy had it not been Capital listeners who had voted for the boys to get the gong. In some kind of vindictive retailiation for the lack of Global shout-out and the bigging-up of its publically-paid-for competitor, Global’s bosses have stripped their stations of the X Factor band, leaving more room on the playlist for rival groups such as The Wanted (who just happen to be signed to Global’s artist-management sister company, and are also the band with potentially most to lose from a successful 1D… Just putting it out there…) A canny radio operator would have brought the offending band back in to big-up the station on-air in a stunt broadcast which enhanced the image both of band and station, but Global appears to have decided to use this as a crafty means of elbowing out a group who would otherwise have pretty much a guaranteed presence on Global’s network of mainstream pop-led stations. So we end up with a case of a large broadcaster cutting off its nose in order to shoot itself in the foot. But then, showbiz and the media has got really petty and nasty of late, as has society as a whole, and you’ll have learnt that by now if you’ve bothered to read much of this blogfodder…

Elsewhere, the plug has, it appears, been pulled on two programmes that previously attracted comment from me. Harry Hill’s TV Burp was something which could delight, confuse and irritate me at turns – some weeks it was the funniest thing on screen, other weeks it was ghastly and unbearable, with an overreliance on soap clips and cheap gags. I really could not make the call; now, however, the curtain has fallen, or so it would seem, with an apparently final edition being broadcast earlier this spring – though ITV are being unusually cagey about whether the show has been canned entirely, with conflicting reports suggesting either (a) the show would continue with a new host replacing Hill at the helm or (b) Hill would take the format to another channel after the end of the ITV run. Neither plan, though, yet seems to be growing much traction. One potential thorn in the demise of Burp is the voice of ITV’s god Simon Cowell, who is apparently nervous the loss of ratings banker Burp will harm the Cowell-generated talent shows it has typically provided a healthy lead-in audience to. Whilst the loss of one of TV’s more quirky mainstream shows is not entirely good news, I’m glad TV Burp dissipated before it went completely flat – increasing numbers of people, latterly including Harry Hill himself, had openly wondered how much longer the format would be able to carry on repeating on us before it became exhausted. I could also mention a cash-strapped BBC Three binning acclaimed but underperforming drama The Fades after one run to concentrate spending on the more popular Being Human, but as I watch neither show it doesn’t really require my input. Perhaps the biggest piece of TV cancellation news to have emerged since the last time one of these big guffy ones went up is the very welcome announcement from the BBC that after one final run later this year, Total Wipeout will have breathed its last. Given what I’ve screamed about the show previously, you can only imagine the relief I felt when the oafish visual cartoon was put to death. I won’t re-roll my opposition here, you can interrogate the archive for that, but it’s safe to say I was greatly cheered by the demise of this series, which has really burnt out very quickly – with two series a year since it was vomited onto our screens in January 2009, and seemingly commissioned because the BBC wanted to give Richard Hammond more to do (in 2009 he also hosted two series of Blast Lab and co-hosted two series of Top Gear, as well as appearing in the acquired-from-National-Geographic Engineering Connections series) it would always loom somewhat larger over the schedules than it deserved to, and with the goofy show’s worrying near-permanence it’s been almost impossible for someone who doesn’t approve of it to avoid. Whether the Wipeout’s regular berth was due to a BBC desire to pander to the dim, demented lowest-denominator audiences usually catered for much further down the programme guide, or whether it was a well-intentioned attempt to get a slot filled on the cheap with a repeatable, internationally-reversionable format, we don’t know; all we do know is, only one more series to go and it will, CBBC reruns aside, be out of my greasy old hair forever. Based on the show’s past record, it seems the final run may not have many successful women – two female participants in regular shows, and Danielle Lloyd in a celebrity edition, are the only non-male lifters of the trophy to date, and I am concerned at the fact the show considers Danielle Lloyd a celebrity of high enough status to warrant an appearance on BBC One (she isn’t, under normal circumstances, but Wipeout specials did seem to have a lot of barrel-scraping microstars and reality-show regulars, as though bigger stars rightly considered leaping off the rubbery balls to be beneath them…) Still, Total Wipeout is dead, and thankfully the actually-enjoyable bit of comic ITV fluff Keith’s Lemon Aid is much more like the sort of Saturday night telly that used to be on when I was a nipper, mixing good-natured fun, money-can’t-buy dreamweaving and corny jokes, albeit with slightly sharper innuendo than would have been allowed back then, such is the nature of the current century. Meanwhile, he telly-clogging reality show which puked the likes of Mark Wright and Amy Childs into celeb culture, The Only Way Is Evil – or …Essex, whatever – has sadly returned to an ITV2 and again is a show with too much glitter in its eyes to see the futility of its actions. It seems the days of polite telly are on the back foot. Needless to say, I’m trying not to watch it, but the fact it’s relentlessly promoted in just about every ad break on any ITV channel suggests the depth to which what was once one of our national broadcasters has sunk. Is this the limit of our conversation? Have British people become so shallow that TOWIE – I shudder even to type it – is now the peak of civilisation? Let it not be! This is why we need to preserve the BBC – to protect us from the dangerous and nasty tripe ITV now broadcasts! At least The Cube is back, to show us what ITV can do when they can be bothered to. I guess I just need to have faith that there are still some good people working somewhere in the bowels of the media industry.

Elsewhere on the rectangular pail, I’ve spotted an influx. In this case, an influx of romance and dating. Perhaps buoyed by the joys of spring, and not put off by the wildly-fluctuating weatherfront, several shows with a romantic/relationship theme have fetched their way across the LCD (or plasma if your posh, or CRT if you really ain’t) in the recent months since this blog last happened. Whilst you’ll know from my last blog I love a romantic comedy, the line between romance and comedy has been willingly trampled on, with thankfully largely good-natured results, by a recent BBC Three commission. World Series of Dating features apparently real blokes gathered together for a speed-dating session with hired ladies (mostly models and promo girls, it seems) at that most romantic and luxurious of destinations, Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow, with the ladies able to buzz out boring, bland, blunt or boorish blokes with a Take Me Out-style red button. However, the comedy element comes from the presentation, with the dates run not as typical romantic endeavours but as a sporting event, with sportscaster-style commentary and interviews (Balls of Steel’s Thalia Zucchi and The Daily Show’s Rob Riggle are among the cast), a striped-shirted referee calling out the infractions, and a medal for the bloke who can charm the ladies for longest. WSOD is essentially a comedy show with dating as its theme, and everyone, including the ladies, is playing a part. Imagine if Beadle’s About and Blind Date had a baby, but one which grew up glued to ESPN, and you’ll be there. It’s an enjoyable show as long as you go in with the right expectations. Romance also made its way into the documentary world with the Channel 4 series that seems to have replaced Katie: My Beautiful Friends on the channel’s roster. The Undateables was a three-parter about people with various physical and mental conditions who were looking to find love and companionship. Needless to say I adored the series, and it resonated with me – as someone who finds it almost impossible to engage with others and who has resigned himself to a life alone, Undateables was a warming and welcome insight into the lives and hearts of people one may well walk past in the street on a typical afternoon, if one is not trying to avoid contact with others as I do. It’s always good to see decent people on what passes for the screen these days, and in the main the viewer was essentially cheering on the good souls in their quest to gain someone special in their life. There were complaints about the tone and title/marketing of the series, but C4 was being deliberately provocative with the marketing in its quest to attract gawkers who would otherwise ignore a more prosaically-named series, as it has done with Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and other shows, and on the whole the programmes themselves and the people therein were broadly well-recieved. Ashamedly, prior to 2009 this is one show I may well have bypassed myself, but since Katie Piper’s heartwarming shows I’ve actively sought to watch more shows about people coping with difficulties in their lives; maybe I could well in time learn how to overcome my struggles by monitoring theirs. I hear Channel 5, already known for its gawpy ‘shock-docs’, will in June join the people-show jamboree with a documentary about young burns victim Terri Calvesbert; I’m hoping the piece will be similar in tone to last year’s BBC Three film about Kellie O’Farrell, but knowing what I do about Channel 5’s largely-ghastly output, I’m concerned Terri’s film may well be more uncomfortable and exploitative than I am capable of viewing. Remember, this is the channel which brought us Big Brother, which has sadly been recommissioned to 2014. There will be at least two more years of me whining at people I shouldn’t even know or care about. On the subject of cheap tat, ITV’s recently wrapped up another run of Take Me Out, the show where wannabe glamour models pout for the attention of sheeplike male boors in front of a cackling hen-night audience. At least, I assume the show’s still like that, I managed to largely dodge the series as broadcast, though the media and magazines continued to attempt to ram Paddy’s people down our national throat for some demented commercial reason. Thankfully I don’t recieve slimy Sky Living on my telly, so I’ve been spared the full horror of the Chris Moyles-addled (alongside Stacey Solomon, for completeness) confection The Love Machine, but that didn’t stop me being bombarded with trails whilst trying to innocently watch Challenge (well, as innocently as one can, anyway). From the seconds of snatches I saw, it does seem to be a gaudy, flashy Take Me Out-like celebration of gimmicks over romance, and I’m saddened to believe that in a couple of years, once its Living run has run its course, the epsiodes may well be shipped over to clog up the Challenge schedules cheaply, much as prior Living commission Four Weddings is now doing to Pick TV, home of many not-much-cop shows (and, for that matter, many cop shows). Still, at least Challenge are bringing back Blockbusters next month (now set for the 14th of May, after the original 8th May launch was shunted back for unstated reasons), with Simon Mayo stepping on Bob Holness’ recently turned-up toes to host. Given Blockbusters’ previously-discussed place in my cultural history, its imminent return means I’m almost having a P with excitement. Watching various dating/romance shows, seeing couples in real life and on telly, and generally spending a lot of time around married and dating partnerships given my increasing age is really opening up to me how empty my life is, though. I’m undateable, to an almost unbelievable degree, and am in no fit state to begin romancing. My chances of finding love are stone cold zero, and I’ve accepted that. There are lots of reasons why no girl’s gonna date me – my hideous home situation, living in a dilapidated crapshack with moody relatives, rendering any privacy or intimacy minimal; I wouldn’t be able to show a girl a good time – I can barely afford to feed myself, having a lady in life to lavish with gifts and day trips would bankrupt me; I don’t have any of the things that the movies and mags claim girls find attractive, such as a job, a car or muscle definition; health-wise I’m disgusting – my body is in the latter stages of decay, and women struggle to talk to me publically, never mind kiss me in any prevailing attraction-based scenario. So, yeah, seems I’ll take my bachelor’s tunic to my grave. Unlike in the job market, where there’s no guarantee of a place for me – there are fewer jobs in the marketplace than there are unemployed people, so even with 100% of jobs filled we’d still have in excess of a million people in the UK with no hired work to go to – finding a woman should technically be a case of picking off the numbers, given that in the UK there are more women than men. Even accounting for the fact that the figure includes those too old or young for me morally and legally (principally the elderly and children), as well as the already married and attached, and same-sex lesbians, there should, numerically at least, be someone out there who has drawn my tag from the global tombola and is simply waiting for me to stumble upon her should I happen to wander into her eyeline. That would, of course, require me to leave the house and put myself at risk of murderers, revenge attacks by wronged members of urban hip-hop trios, and screamy hairbrush-armed noise-kids. To be honest, staying in and watching Simon Mayo-helmed quizzes does sound preferable to that, but I guess one cannot find reward without risk. A life of watching gameshows should have taught me at least that. Whilst, post-Piper at least (and in all honestly beforehand too), I don’t have too many hangups when it comes to the appearance of a lady (I’d be willing to date an ‘Undateable’, in Channel 4 terms at least, lady with a prevailing health or social issue, should one enter my airspace), I’m quite picky, as you’ll have seen previously, when it comes to attitude. I’d rather not date a glossy, preening, permaglow trash-talker like the sort you’d see on cheapy ITV2 fly-on-the-bar-wall shows, and would like to be with a girl who is sweet and caring and intelligent, which are qualities in short supply down here in skanky South London. There are good people in existence: as a for instance, for instance, Kayleigh from Katie: My Beautiful Friends recently got engaged to her not-seen-in-the-show partner, and many bottles of my equivalent of champagne (7-Up, if it matters) were popped in her honour that week; but what I want to know is, where is my equivalent of Kayleigh? Do I have to dredge the nation for available sweetness, or is the sweetheart I crave sat right under my nose? It’s going to take a portion of my entire supply of bravery to find out.

Whilst it did sometimes seem that the only women who I’d ever be inviting into my home were those ladies who appear on the pages of the no-longer-popular printed magazine format, I do latterly sometimes feel quite guilty for associating myself with such exploitation. I’ve spoken at great length before about my growing hatred of magazines and the damage they do to women and to society in general, and my regret that in my younger (you may scoff) days I blithely bought printed periodicals with no thought to the evil that they’d do. But now I can refloat that particular putrid vessel thanks to one lady who used to be part of the problem, not herself in front of the camera but instead from behind the scenes – journalist Terri White spoke out to the Observer on how she built her career on the back of exploitative ‘real-girl’ features as she rose up the ranks of Nuts magazine. White speaks of how, at the time, it didn’t seem so vile – the magazine was at first a success (though more recently is in decline), her own career was rocketing and the featured young ladies were willingly participating and submitting themselves to the publication’s whims. With hindsight, though, White has noted that her work contributed to the sexualisation and vileness of modern culture. Young women look up to slime like Katie Price, Kerry Katona and Amy Childs, and Nuts, as part of the whirling storm of early-21st-century terror that also whipped up the likes of Big Brother and womens’ babble magazine Heat, helped fuel that terrible boom. I used to read magazines – at the time I didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong, but now in hindsight I realise how stupid and inhuman I was being. Terri White’s article sees her explain how the initial high ideals – putting the featured ladies on a pedestal – declined into boorish crowing at purely physical attributes as the battle for readers became more intense; only after leaving did White see the wrong she did. The article also sees White meet up with girls who took part in the shoots – who oddly largely don’t regret doing so – and feminists who discuss how this culture has become dangerously normalised. White also reveals what the culture inside the Nuts hacks’ HQ was like, and it seems it was not as bawdy as one would initially suspect from the tone of the mag… If you want to see White’s piece for yourself, and believe me you’ll need something more intelligent to read after all this tripe, find it on the Guardian site at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/apr/22/nuts-magazine-lads-mags-women – and I guess I am glad I didn’t delete my Guardian feed after Tulisa-gate after all! The lad mag culture has me conflicted: I don’t like treating women like objects, and many women have been abused, insulted or assaulted by people who have judged them based on looks alone or thought of the lady as a disposable commodity; however, I also support women’s right to have free choice as to what to do with their body, and I don’t want to impose Sharia-style must-cover-up legislation. So it’s a tough call to make: do we crush the innocent dreams of honest women in a bid to rid the world of the gruesome machinations of the evil, largely (but, as the existence of Terri White and others proves, not exclusively) male-dominated media? Or do I just let society make its own decisions as to what’s right and what’s wrong at macro-level, and leave my own decision-making sequence solely to which bit of papery tripe, if any at all, I personally choose to pick out of the mag-rack of a Tuesday? Then there’s the legal case in the US where a woman went to a bar with friends, was forced by a (female) producer to flash unwillingly for a Girls Gone Wild video that happened to be filming there that night, and who has had strain in her marriage and family life as a result. Do I carry out a sustained bombing campaign of those shops over here stupid enough to stock GGW discs, or just let the Yanks iron this one out between themselves and pass no further judgement? It’s things like GGW that have harmed our perception of women globally. Post-Piper, I’d like to see more charming young women being celebrated for the good things they do in life. One lady who sadly won’t be able to continue her own caring work, but whose good deed is being carried on in her honour by folks around the globe, is one Claire Squires. Now, I’m not keen on those instances where tributes to the deceased are hijacked by those who had no known connection to the individual in life, so I’ll save the eulogising to those who actually meant something to this lady and her next of kin, given my knowledge of her work was entirely posthumous. However, it was a striking story, a young and apparently healthy woman giving her all (more, in fact, as it sadly turned out, than she actually could) for a cause she believed in – in this case the Samaritans. While I didn’t know Ms. Squires personally, what is known is this: her passing away around a mile from the finish line of London’s annual marathon (the race’s first death since 2007, the eleventh overall and apparently also the first female fatality in the event’s history, I’m told) did spark an outpouring of global support which showed the positive side of life on the internet; within hours of the sad news being confirmed, well-wishers from across Britain and latterly the globe chipped in to her JustGiving fund, wanting to ensure that the good work young Claire had so clearly wanted to support could continue. Whilst it is always a shame to lose someone, particularly in such circumstances, at least we can say something positive has risen from the ashes, and that the lady would most probably be proud of what people have committed to in her name. I do tend to mourn and mope – you only have to see how upset I get about car crashes hundreds of miles from my home and in which I had no hand whatsoever – but another thing I learned from Katie Piper is to appreciate the positives, and to be aware of how to build positives out of terrible negatives. Piper herself has, as we already know, taken the assault that could easily have destroyed her and used it as platform to build a thriving charitable concern which is making the world a better place, and not a day goes by when I’m not proud of everything Katie has created. Although that was an awkward double negative, which I should probably be a bit careful of. Anyway, do feel free to tip the hat to the clearly-loved-by-those-around-her Claire Squires, and if you’re that way inclined to, and it is your choice to do so, pop a few quid in her charitable tip-jar, and ensure that the society Claire was so keen to help can itself carry on helping those in need. Should I find myself able to release my iron grip on my purse-strings, I may well do more for charity at some point soon – not as a kneejerk donation to respond to an individual’s passing, but as part of my wider aim to make the world better. However you choose to do it, let the circle of love keep shining on – it’ll make the world smile and that’s a good thing to do in these dark, evil and twisted times.

Skirting into the issue of charity and young ladies brings me to something I want to close my ‘article’ with this ‘month’. I have needlessly mentioned Katie Piper and her works (televisual, charitable and printed) in virtually every one of the posts here, largely because she is often relevant in some way to my life and activities, and in the wake of my discovery of her story I have frequently been applying the life lessons I’ve learned from Katie to assist in the analysis of my own horrible existence. I do (well, did) try and limit references to Katie here to only those places where it appears necessary to do so, but because the young lady in question has become very relevant, probably too much so, to my existence I’ve ended up lazily referring back (or occasionally forwards) to things Ms. Piper has done (or is about to do), where these had some kind of portent or mirror to situations I myself found myself in. This has meant the blog has sounded somewhat obsessed with one individual, and I recognise how this could appear threatening or damaging if taken the wrong way or viewed out of context. I do talk about Katie a fair lot, but that is in part because of the quite significant impact she has had within my life over the last couple years; the last thing I would want to do is abuse or damage her in any way. I will try and cut back on the Katie comments over the coming editions, in order to avoid creating any needless bad feeling, and attempt to restore the protocol of only bringing her into the debate when strictly necessary. This month, it is vaguely necessary to refer to Piper-related activities given that the lady herself is actually doing some new stuff – her latest book, Things Get Better, is less than a month away from arriving on yourselves’ shelves, and yes, I preordered it on Amazon a lot earlier and at a more stalkerishly-timed point than I probably should’ve. But hey, I get the lowest-price guarantee with that, which always helps when my book-budget is tight, and the book itself appears to be one which will prove helpful – it is, don’t forget, a Piper-helmed guide to coping with any agony, anxiety and trauma one may find oneself in. Katie herself will be doing her first ever signing event at WH Smith within Selfridges in London to tie in with the release, though it’s not clear if those of us who have already bought the book online would have to buy a second copy at the scene in order to qualify for the signing; I’ll probably stay away, in any case, as I don’t want to get caught up in any incident or cause embarrassment or damage to myself or Ms. Piper. I’ll spend the day sat indoors reading my unsigned but legally-sourced copy of the tome, thanks. Mind you, it’d be nice to have the rare chance (if you don’t count Twitter) to tell young Katie exactly how important she is to me. As it happens I went to a Terry Pratchett signing at Bluewater a good few years ago. He made a cheery comment about the hat I happened to be wearing at the time. If I’d been less socially awkward, I could have made a return-riff on his headwear. Maybe I did and I’ve forgotten it in the mist of time. I was just jazzed about having met an actual author. He signed a Discworld cookbook for my mum so as I could give it to her as a gift. No idea if she’s still got it, mind. Maybe it’s gone to the same place as the ceramic magnets and thumb-murdering mandolin slicer. Or it’s up on a shelf someplace. Anyway, we’re getting off the subject. Returning to the (much more solemn than it was prior to the Claire Squires incident) subject of sponsored charity athletics, Katie Piper is also soon undertaking a 10k trek, the first she’s done herself for the charity known as the Katie Piper Foundation (though other races, including the recent Squires-clouded London Marathon, had previously played host to sponsored KPF runners). As part of my wider drive to support Katie’s aims, I chipped in a slice of society’s money to support Katie’s efforts, and if there’s something you want to donate to back Katie for the jog, do so at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/KatiePiper – I know you all have it in you to support someone! Of course, the Squires case has got me slightly prickly and panicky at the prospect of losing our beloved Piper, but I need to remind myself that Claire’s sad passing was the exception, not the rule – Katie is in training for this and wants to take it seriously, and I’m backing her all the way. Or at least, as far as is safe, logical and legal. I don’t want any trouble. The one thing I won’t be doing is running any races or marathons myself – I’m that out of shape I can barely make it to the bus and back! It is quite gruelling to know that people are making efforts to help others and save the world, whereas I struggle to get food back from Morrisons just to feed my own brother. But I guess everyone has their own battle to fight. I may be in poor general health, but I wish you all nothing but the best in whatever endeavours you undertake: I just wish I had the social skills, money and support to put more weight and action behind society than mere words. But hey, words are better than nothing at all, and if you like to see someone use a lot of words then hey, you just did.

“I now pronounce you man and blah. You may blah the bride.” (Goodbye!)

“Shona was thinking that it might be ITV…” (Hello!)

So here we are, ploughing towards the end of the first not-quite-full year of this barely-credible violet rubbish and, more by accident than design, it’s my first Christmas special in this form. Unlike those of, say, Moreecambe and Wise, though, this one’s not going to be particularly pleasant and likeable, at first at least; if you want a more cheerful, level-headed look at the twelve months gone by, you’d do well to take a look elsewhere! Whilst there have been some positive crumbs, which you’ll see towards the base of this post, I’ve not had all that pleasant a year in myself, as you’ll have seen previously, so I’ve had to sully this poor, unfortunate blog-site and other web-avenues with petulant whines; and, looking more widely, it’s been a pretty horrid year for everyone. I don’t know if you’ve been following the news as stringently as I have, but given the wave of horror that’s hit the world this year, the truth is you couldn’t honestly describe 2011 as anything other than horrendous. It’s been a year dominated by crime and slime, rage and hate, abuse and assault, theft and death. What a horrible world we live in today.

Look at the case of Nellie Geraghty, a pensioner brutally attacked for her handbag (containing her late husband’s ashes); she died shortly afterwards. Some scummy robber saw an elderly lady as an easy target and descended upon her, not caring for her welfare and only for their own gain. Look, too, at the 72-year-old man run over with his own car by the thieves who had just light-fingered it. At the other end of the age scale, see the many cases of young people attacking each other – for instance the stabbing in Newham, a part of East London which plays host to crime, gangs, disorder, hatred and, next year, the Olympic Games. There have been numerous instances of parents attacking their children, too – see the ‘twin-swap’ case where parents were switching the identity of their twins to cover up to the authorities that one of the children had suffered horrifying injuries, or the case of Kristiana Logina, held under a hot shower and scalded on purpose. How a parent, even one under considerable stress, can see fit to maim or even kill their own child shows just how disturbed the human animal can be. Then there’s the recent spate of cases where whole families have been slain apparently by the head of household: such as with the Smith family of Pudsey or the Day family of Melton Mowbray; in each case, though investigations were still ongoing at time of writing, it currently appears that stressed fathers have taken out frustrations on their wife and children, then killing themselves (and the locations of these harrowing cases are going to make it massively more difficult for a sensitive soul like me to support Children In Need or eat a pork pie again without being reminded of the hideous situations that played out on those terrible days). How is this horrendous situation allowed to develop? What can I do to stop it and bring some calm to these troubled peoples? Elsewhere, the hideous Liverpool cemented its position as one of the cities in the UK I’d least like to be stranded in unaided with a violent stabbing incident in a convenience store.

There’s been nothing short of carnage on the roads this year. Following on from the world-shattering multi-vehicle pile-up on the M5 earlier (covered in the previous blog) there have been yet more terrible disasters to befall those foolish enough to involve themselves with cars. There was another fatal crash on the same motorway just recently in which a Royal Mail van driver lost his life – and there’s probably more than a few Christmas cards that’ll never reach their intended recipients to boot. Elsewhere in the network, a four-year-old was killed on the M6, and another crash left a teenager paralysed, their hopes, plans and dreams for a future now in tatters. Just in the last few days, icy conditions on Britain’s nasty road network have left dozens dead and injured in a series of severe crashes. Surely it’s time for some kind of mass campaign to have Britain’s evil motorways destroyed? They’ve certainly destroyed lives – look at Emma Barton, one of the survivors of the massive M5 pile-up; she’s not only been left permanently injured but also without her family – her father and sister, travelling in the back of the car were killed; the earlier death of Ms Barton’s mother indicates this is a family that has already been touched by tragedy: indeed on the night of the smash, their road journey was the return home from a funeral; I just can’t think of the situation without wanting to bawl my eyes out; will nothing ever go well for the remaining members of this struggling clan? Harming myself won’t bring the Bartons back together, I know, but there has to be something I can do? No, there’s nothing. I’m useless in this situation. Roads are an evil thing, anyway. Even when the driver themselves is going about their business quite normally, outside forces can enact a horribly needless revenge: the apparent new sport of large concrete blocks being thrown from bridges onto cars in Essex has shocked me this year, with people violently injured and almost killed by the thoughtless block-chucking louts. Mind you, even if you can somehow get home from the shops and get your Christmas presents home safely, there’s no guarantee they’ll still be in your home by the 25th; there have been several cases where greedy thieves have broken into houses and stolen, damaged or unwrapped Christmas presents; whilst this happens every year, there’s a particularly nasty taste to it this year given the desperation cash-strapped thieves are sinking to in order to give themselves a happy festive season at others’ disadvantage.

There has been a huge amount of petty and excessive behaviour where those out to suit their own ends have harmed, abused or inconvenienced others. An ice-cream man was attacked with an axe, the heavily-armed thieves escaping with his stack of 20p coins. Two fathers traded harsh words and then blows at a school nativity play of all places (is nothing sacred?), resulting in one pater biting a fingertip off of the other. And then there’s the case of scummy Croydon racist Emma West, filmed verbally abusing fellow passengers on the tram – tram! – she was on with her child. People like her shouldn’t be allowed to breed – maybe people with below a certain IQ, or membership of the BNP, or other such warning-sign of potential trouble, should be compulsorily sterilised to stop these foul views passing through the generations. Whilst the crux of the year’s petty, selfish, immoral behaviour was August’s disgusting riots, which I’ve covered more extensively in previous posts, there have been many moments of thoughtless selfishness this year – see the sadly numerous cases where metal memorial plaques from war memorials and monuments have been stolen by on-the-make yobs keen to sell the tablets for scrap to thoughtless dealers more interested in turning a profit at a time of high metal prices than raising the alarm about illegal behaviour. On similar skein, there have been hundreds of cases where the running of hospitals and train services have been interrupted by vandals scraping up cabling to sell in order to feather their own ends. And then there was the case of a disabled man being left housebound after his mobility scooter was carted away from outside his home. Talk about taking liberties.

With the economy still circling the toilet, the business world still having not properly recovered from its near-flatlining, and job prospects still in the gutter for feckless, faceless job-screwers like me, and the eurozone (which isn’t a boyband) continually on the verge of bailing into a black hole, it’s been a pretty dispiriting year to be on the recieving end of the news bulletins; and coupled with all the floods, crashes, death, injury, fires, disorder and hurtfulness we’ve experienced it’s more than likely that tens of thousands, nay hundreds of thousands, of people will not be celebrating this winter, but will instead be having a horrendous, distraught Christmastide: separated, perhaps permanently, from the loved ones they had hoped to be sharing turkey (or equivalent) with, or sitting in a smoke-damaged shell of a home around the charred remains of their tree, or in damp temporary accommodation sat among the small stack of boxes containing their surviving belongings, or any remaining photos of the relative(s) that didn’t make it out alive. I don’t know if I’ll be able to enjoy my December Festival in the full knowledge that so many souls will be hurting while I sit there callously stuffing myself with whatever minty chocolates happened to be on special offer at Asda in the week beforehand. Of course, there’s little I can do to help the people who are most in need this season, given I can barely afford new trousers myself, and in many cases I’m not personally connected to those involved and so do not have a direct means of providing assistance, and this lack of ability to assist only fuels my own feelings of isolation. Maybe I shouldn’t read so much into the news of the world’s-end (as opposed to the ‘News Of The World’s end, which I wholeheartedly support); but how do I stop myself becoming so afraid and alone every time I depress the red button?

One crumb of positivity I can take from this whole hellish circuit is that some of the reports I smothered myself in came from criminal trials, where the scumbag perpetrators of these odious behaviours were handed down their sentences; I have to believe that in time the system will work and the vicious scum will be given the punishment due. Not that it always works – reoffending rates are high, and a huge majority of those taking part in August’s rioting were already known to the Old Bill, suggesting that attempts to keep evil off our streets aren’t perfect. But then, even those we are supposed to look up to are not exactly paragons – from the MP’s expenses scandal to allegations of police brutality and corruption, it seems there’s nobody who can genuinely be trusted. And even the media which is charged with exposing this cruelty and disorder unto us is itself devoid of morals – the press itself is essentially now on trial, in the form of the Leveson inquiry, which has been hearing tales of how the tabloid media has smashed its way into people’s lives in order to generate spicy stories to sell papers, and how they become increasingly desperate to get the scoop in an age when the fast-changing nature of the internet has made the print media so very irrelevant. Look at the case of Mary-Ellen Field, former PA to then-supermodel Elle Macpherson. The model assumed her assistant was leaking stories to the press, and relations broke down to the point that Field was sent to a high-security rehabilitation centre. Had the supposedly loose-lipped PA been selling her boss out to the press? No, as it turned out – the journos had been sneaking their way into the model’s inbox. Has Macpherson apologised to Field, made amends for dragging her life into the dirt? I don’t know, but I would assume not. Although, as you’ll have seen above, I tend to assume the worst. Even about supermodels.

But then, is the media worth saving? I’ve bleated at excessive length about Big Brother previously, but there’s more than one show destroying the fabric of society simply by being broadcast. You may have seen Iain Duncan Smith recently saying that the culture of instant gratification that the X Factor generation has grown up believing in helped fuel this summer’s riots. That’s one way to convince me to vote Tory! But he has a point. The era of The Only Way Is Essex and Desperate Scousewives shows how far society has sunk – one of the Scousewives, Amanda Harrington, said in an interview ahead of the series that “it was either this [her modelling/reality TV ‘career’] or get a proper job!” Why young people think the latter is such a terrible proposition I don’t know, but acres of young people are looking up to these permatanned donothings and getting the wholly wrong-headed idea that this is the right way to be! I know I moan about not having money to spend on others (or indeed myself), but there are people out there blowing mindblowing amounts of money on hyped-up cars, designer dog-handbags and unneeded body enhancement operations when there are people in the world who don’t even have water to drink. If that’s a fair distribution of wealth, I’m a doorknob. Even those who have accrued fame from these hateful shows can’t stay humble for long before the mask slips – witness the recent harsh war of words between housemates from Big Brother – first some of this year’s mob began badmouthing each other on Twitter, then housemates from previous years started weighing in, and today Twitter looks like an Endemol-sponsored attempt to remake the Jeremy Kyle Show by post. It’s enough to make you want to stuff the internet in a sack and chuck it in the river…

I’ve also ripped into The X Factor more extensively elsewhere – my distaste for the handling of this year’s publicity and the attitude of this year’s contestants – but the fact that those who have been exposed to my opinions on the subject have largely taken a negative and opposing view of my thoughts suggests maybe I have been too extreme in my distaste. Whilst there is a lot to dislike about Misha B’s supposed attitude problem, Frankie Cocozza’s talentless wildman ways, Kitty Brucknell’s demented wannabe diva behaviour or the badly-handled Rhythmix situation, should I continue fighting and protesting this apparent injustice or just accept that these people are now, for better or worse, part of my/our life? Should I turn my nose up at those who emerge from Cowell’s cocoon or readily accept that what the charts need is a teen-pop cover of a Damien Rice song I used to think was alright? At least it wasn’t, say, ‘Killing Position’ or ‘Juxtaposed With U’ they attempted, then I’d really have a problem. And to be fair, Girls Aloud have shown that groups which come from these shows can have a relatively long, in pop terms at least, shelf-life, and the fact that “GA” (as at least one person calls them) appear now to have disbanded leaves a space in the pop piggybank for a female group, but still I can’t really bring myself to think of Little Mix as winners, given that I still haven’t really felt able to forgive them for the whole Rhythmix farrago. But am I taking all this too personally? Should I donate my long-owned CD of Cannonball (Rice version) to a local charity shop, such that I can never hear the song again, or just put it aside and ‘rediscover’ it once all this fuss-factor has calmed away? Should I no longer listen to the everyone-assumes-they’re-shortly-to-disband N-Dubz, a group which I’d had a surprising (given the rest of my collection) amount of support for during their long, hard climb up the media ladder, but whom I have lost almost all my respect for as a result of Tulisa’s participation in the X Factor circus? Should I join/begin a campaign to keep Little Mix off the top of the charts, to try and spoil their moment in the sun and give them a Joe McElderry-sized bloody nose on the Christmas TOTP, or just let them stroll to the victory, have their fun, sell downloads to those who enjoy their performances, and just choose not to listen myself? Less than a year ago these girls were assuming they’d be stuck doing low-paid menial jobs in their deprived hometowns, and now every teenager in the country wants to be like at least one-quarter of them – should I celebrate their rise to ‘better’ things, or prepare my verbal knife for their collective back? If, say, Misha B releases a record, what do I do – scream and fight or let her take flight? Going back further in X Factor time, should I be bitter that bratty, rising-to-the-haters teenage joke-act Cher Lloyd is successful, or just let her have her fun and try not to let her get under my skin too much? It’s really difficult to make these kind of judgement calls, even about something as trivial and insignificant as pop music, so you can imagine how stressed I’ve been about things that actually matter!

Of course, by next Christmas there will be no way of buying music on the High Street, the death warrant having already been all but signed for the sadly-soon-to-be-defunct HMV chain, and all other CD/DVD retailers – from Zavvi to Music Zone and from Tower to MVC – having long since bitten the fat one. But even for those stores still trading well enough to have a marketing budget, it’s “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. I spoke before about how the X Factor contestants’ M&S ad had spoiled my enjoyment of just about anything I’ve tried to watch on commercial TV channels these last couple of months, but it’s not just the M&S ad that’s been ruffling feathers – it’s been a pretty ropey year in advertising. Someone at a Nando’s overseas wing (chicken? wing? C’mon!) forgot YouTube exists, commissioned an ad featuring a Robert Mugabe lookalike mourning the loss of other iconic dictators, then was backed into a corner by the massive international reaction to it. Not that UK advertising was any better. The wave of situations where companies have gone whining to the regulator to get rivals’ ads banned has seen the Advertising Standards Authority introduce stricter conditions on such complaints in an attempt to stop tit-for-tat bickering and free up more time for the ASA to handle content which is genuinely in error. And is there a link between the rise in nasty/stupid behaviour in life generally and the volume of it in ads? I’m probably the only person offended by the relatively nasty, spiteful undertones clearly evident in the Aldi “Happy Christmas, Laura!” ad – well, aside from Laura herself, I suppose. But I probably can’t go bleating to the ASA that “the bloke on telly has a slightly snidey, sinister tone of voice!” I guess this is, much like X Factor, one of those things that I’m going to have to sit and stoically tolerate in the runup to the festive season and then afterwards try to forget about as quickly as everyone else seems able to.

Not that commercial-free TV’s been free of complaints. Jeremy Clarkson’s should-have-seen-it-coming controversial appearance on the BBC’s mid-market mid-evening One Show generated an inexplicable level of bile on the Brand-Ross Memorial Hate Register (free inside every copy of your Daily Mail) given that Clarkson is known for his off-the-cuff comments. However, Clarkson’s continued presence on the BBC is a symptom of something wider, a problem the BBC has really got to address. The BBC is an inherently, institutionally sexist organisation. Top Gear, of course, is the theatre of masculinity, but why does the BBC not have an internationally-successful series in which three sassy, chatty women bicker about squid, set things on fire and occasionally talk about the purported subject of the show? Look at Total Wipeout – if you can stand to. I’ve slated this cheeky Saturday night gameshow before, probably (it’ll be on the old blog somewhere, most likely) but clearly this show is weighted very heavily in favour of men. I always sulk when a female competitor is knocked out and cheer when a man fails to make it into the next round. And I’m male! It’s sadly rare for a woman to make it to the final round, and to date only one woman has ever lifted the trophy. Should I start a campaign to get people to switch off or walk out of the room the minute the last remaining female competitor is eliminated from the contest? I want to support women in all their endeavours – even those women who wrongly think going to Argentina to fling themselves off a foam-covered obstacle for Richard Hammond’s entertainment is a good way to spend their time – but am I wrong to find Total Wipeout offensive? Should I just switch my brain off and giggle at people getting thrown in water, as the rest of the nation seems able to do? The most odious example of BBC sexism of late is, of course, the somewhat wrong-headed decision to blithely stand by the results of the Sports Personality of the Year panel and have an all-male shortlist for the award this year. The oft-criticised BBC chose not to meddle with the results of the polling of the predominantly male panel of so-called ‘experts’ and allowed the vote results to stand, meaning that, mere months ahead of the Olympics coming to what’s left of London, the athletic endeavours of Britain’s females will, wrongly, go utterly unrecognised. Much as on Total Wipeout, female competitors are putting in as much work, if not more than, their male counterparts but it’s pretty much cast-iron that a man will hoist aloft the zinc trinket at the end of the competition. It’s probably going to get worse now BBC One is in the hands of a man (Danny Cohen, former head of BBC Three) – at least former channel head Jay Hunt, now at Channel 4, could pretend that, under female leadership, the channel would stand up for women (though the Miriam O’Reilly case showed that Hunt was equally as hopeless as her male counterparts at handling female on-air talent!) Other channels have been guilty too – Channel 5, now run by porn-king Richard Desmond (and as a result my viewing of C5 has dropped from ‘negligible’ to ‘virtually nil’), announced one of its first commissions following the takeover to be Candy Bar Girls, a series commissioned solely to allow programme-makers and viewers alike to snigger at lesbians. It’s 2011 (for a bit longer, anyway), for crying out loud! The inevitable, pedestrian innuendo-filled trails for the series were, inevitably, banned by Ofcom (albeit not until after they’d actually run, of course) but overall 2011 was dirty, smelly proof once and for all that the television was invented by a man. Poor show all round – some of my favourite shows of the year (which we’ll look at in more depth momentarily) featured strong, intelligent, honest, genuine women being thoroughly decent, caring people.

I guess one of the things that has rubbed me the wrong way about telly this year is the severe lack of anything I can really get behind, whilst the shows I dislike continue to colonise the schedules almost inescapably. I got sick of Come Dine With Me pretty quickly, and have never liked Hollyoaks, but the presence of these shows on Channel 4 on a basically daily basis is guaranteed. And what, exactly, is a man who doesn’t like Total Wipeout, The X Factor, Take Me Out or Casualty, but doesn’t have enough friends or money to go out, do on a Saturday night? The amount of Dave and Challenge I watch is probably legally unhealthy, but how else do I avoid the utter carwash that ITV1 has become? I’ve seen the Christmas TV listings and quite frankly I’m not best pleased. There is rather a lot of QI on this Christmas, which is good news (though given the series, including festive specials, is on near-continuous rotation on Dave it has ceased to really be all that special…) I guess I’m just a little upset ‘cos, as a cursory glance at, say, TV Cream will tell you, Christmas was traditionally the time that TV stations pulled out their big guns and really went to town: over the past few years it’s become increasingly dominated by relatively unfestive shows chosen for their ability to draw ratings and newspaper column inches, rather than their ability to create much-loved magic for a family audience. I’m also pretty sore that Channel 4 has given Christmas specials to highly-hated reality shows Made in Chelsea and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, but not to the beloved Katie Piper: for a second consecutive year C4’s Christmas line-up is a Katie-free zone. This is unacceptable. If C4 can show The Snowman and, latterly, A Christmassy Ted every year, they can find a spare hour in which young Katie can enrich all our lives. There’s not time enough for her to save 2011, but an hour or more of Piper quality would certainly look good on the 2012 pages, assuming television still exists a year from now. Certainly 2012 – the year of digital switchover, lest we forget – will start badly for TV fans. Already confirmed is the closure of NME TV – apparently broadcasting quality, intelligent music doesn’t shift as many ads as Justin Bieber and One Direction videos, so one of the few free outlets for original, underground music is biting the big one just days into the new year. Also on the cards for January is the relaunch of More4 so that instead of a serious culture, arts and documentary channel, it becomes a food-and-homes station. Which will seriously deplete the amount of intelligent content on Freeview, what with Yesterday and Really now showing loads of drama (Taggart on the former, Grey’s Anatomy and The OC on the latter) and BBC Four set to be scythed to ribbons by BBC budget cuts. At least there’s still Quest, so the supply of How It’s Made shouldn’t dry up just yet. 2012 may well be the year of switchover, but it increasingly seems that you have to be stupid, or at least unintelligent, to take up digital TV. Free digital TV, anyway – there are actually a couple of decent shows apparently buried somewhere among the dreck on the channels you have to pay upwards of £20 a month for, or so I’m told. I loved This Is Jinsy when it piloted on BBC Three, but haven’t seen the resulting series ‘cos it went out on pay channel Sky Atlantic. I guess that’s the definition of ‘you get what you pay for…’

The Jinsy commission was a rare example of someone making the right move (albeit in a way that did not benefit me personally), and it’s just been called back for a second series, so there is some good in the world (Lucy Lumsden, who commissioned the pilot while at the BBC and subsequently took the show with her when she moved to Sky, is the person to thank: I’ve slated others by name, so it’s only fair my favourite, albeit by default, TV executive gets her moment in the sun). CBBC’s Horrible Histories punched above its weight and held its own, scoring awards and outclassing comedy shows aimed at a supposedly much older audience (though the decision to scrap the still-very-lively Sorry I’ve Got No Head showed the Beeb didn’t really have much of a clue when it comes to kids’ TV). Telly has also given a platform to allow decent people to showcase their kindness and decency in thoroughly wonderful shows. The aforementioned Katie Piper finally got her long-awaited series in February when Channel 4 screened “Katie: My Beautiful Friends” – and, despite my worry that every change in senior staff at C4 would see Katie given the boot, she was subsequently signed to a two-year deal which will hopefully see her gorgeous smile continue to light up our screens. I’ll try not to upset myself with the news that, according to ratings data, the first of Katie’s four episodes was beaten in the ratings by CSI on Channel 5 – let’s just hope that when she returns, people make the right choice. Katie’s series featured eight people who were overcoming various different adversities and impediments to try and live their lives. Such is the nature of modern media that one can choose to continue to track the progress of these lovely people via Twitter – well, the six of them that tweet (and Katie) in any case. One of the eight “Friends”, meanwhile, has recorded, with vocal group Eden Voices, a single for Katie’s charity, the Katie Piper Foundation – and the Eden Voices version of True Colours (which I mentioned in the last blog) is now available for download on Amazon and iTunes in the UK. So go slam it on your ‘pod, folks! Oh, and a note to Little Mix: this is how you cover a classic song.

BBC Three has also broadcast several fine documentaries this year on people who are living fine, upstanding lives despite their difficult circumstances – and have really shown how tepid and petty my whines really are, grizzling about irrelevant matters when I’ve still got at least a percentage of my health. Jono Lancaster, born with Treacher-Collins syndrome, appeared in his second and third BBC documentaries this year, as he considered starting a family of his own, and also looked into his own family history, and he does appear to be lined up to become one of the channel’s leading factual names (BBC Three docs having been one of the few areas of the Beeb to have thus far been female-dominated, thanks to Cherry Healey – apparently not to be confused with Waterloo Road and Strictly stay Chelsee – and Stacey Dooley). Two new and beautiful young ladies did talk about their lives in lovely documentaries for the channel: Kellie O’Farrell – a charming Irish redhead burned in a car fire in childhood – talked about how she was branching out in her life as she moved on into adulthood in the engaging “Kellie: The Girl Who Played With Fire” – though why she chose to give up beautiful, leafy Ireland for the I-live-there-so-I-know-it’s-crap South London I won’t know. Then, late in the year, another lady who had spent far too much of her young life on the surgical table pitched up on Three – Kirstie Tancock, who had previously appeared on “Russell Howard’s Good News” for documenting her battle with Cystic Fibrosis on her blog (http://kirstie-2ndchanceatlife.blogspot.com), got a full-length film about her desperate wait for a lung transplant and her entry into married life with her young gentleman of a husband. Although those who followed the blog prior to broadcast will have known how the story turned out, the film itself was genuinely gripping and emotionally charged – seeing Kirstie cling to life, mere days or possibly even hours from death, was a moving and heartbreaking sight, and the ultimate resolution – seeing her post-transplant, now healthy and happy in life, was one of the most uplifting sights of the year, and certainly a real tonic after a difficult few months in my own life and in society at large. We need more women like Kellie and Kirstie, and men like Jono, on our screens, inspiring and doing good, but shamefully the broadcasters, BBC Three aside, seem keen to pump out the kind of people you see on TOWIE and its many panregional clones. Although ITV2 must be kicking themselves, having renewed TOWIE to run for 40 weeks of 2012, then lost most of their key players to other reality shows. [Points at ITV2 and cackles] (wait, since when did a blog have stage directions?)

Anyhow, the lovely Kirstie’s film showed her entering into married life, and long may it continue. Someone else planning her wedding is the young lady mentioned quite near the top of this post. Emma Barton, M5 crash survivor (she’ll come to become sick of being called that, much as Katie Piper despised being the “acid attack blonde” to the extent she is now a brunette) has, having awoken from her coma, agreed to tie the knot with her long-time partner Chris next summer. (The gentleman she is betrothed to was behind the wheel on the night of the pile-up, but if Emma can, for now at least, put that behind her and keep him as a rock in her life, then so can I, I guess). I want to see this as the happy ending she deserves after a lifetime of difficulty – losing her mother, dealing with her father’s medical issues, then losing her father and sister on Telford’s night of terror – but I can’t shake the feeling that this is not the end, just the next step along the story orb. They’ll have to look for a suitable new home. They’ll have to go through what will be one of the most emotionally challenging wedding days 2012 will most likely see. They’ll have to spend the rest of their lives haunted by the memories of that hideous night – I was scared and upset, and I was sitting at home at the time; it must be tens of billions of times worse for those who were actually there. And of course, they haven’t got BBC Three behind them (yet), meaning I’ll have to scour the newspapers, magazines and websites for reassuring news about their progress. But in truth I want to be happy for them: this was the kind of incident which could easily have parted the couple, in more ways than one, but instead it seems to have made them stronger. One of Emma’s feet is, due to her injuries, now bigger than the other, meaning she will have to buy two pairs of ridiculously-expensive wedding shoes: should I pay for the extra pair needed? It would bankrupt me – I can’t even afford trousers to fit myself – but would make Emma’s day easier! The rise of strong relationships – Emma and husband-to-be Chris, Kirstie and new husband Stu, Jono Lancaster and caring girlfriend Laura – certainly provides a more positive outlook than the fly-by-night dalliances of reality stars, and helps restore my faith in relationships. The problem is, of course, any woman desperate enough to marry me would have to be willing to live with a brain-mangled freak who looks like a shoebox full of dead goats, meaning I’m gonna die single. Guess I’m gonna have to be OK with that. Or willing to lower my standards and get it on with someone so desperate for publicity she’d marry anything male. What’s [redacted] from Big Brother up to nowadays, anyway?

That said, after a fairly fractious few years in showbiz culture, it seems a lot of celebs are settling down a little. We’ve had an absolute avalanche of stories about celebs getting engaged, getting married, getting pregnant and/or giving birth, and let’s hope the increasing proportion of wives and/or mothers in the public eye leads to a softening of the sharply acidic and corrosive celebrity culture we’ve seen in recent decades – when combined with the likely wrist-slapping the oily papers are likely to get from Leveson, it should become a little easier to live under the shadow of the celeb whirlwind than it has been. And of course, celebs do sometimes have their uses; one story a number of leading stars on Twitter got behind was that of the sweet teenager Alice Pyne. Rather than letting her terminal cancer diagnosis drag her down, Alice has become an active blogger (http://alicepyne.blogspot.com) and Twitter user, and this year young Alice became a web sensation when her “bucket list” went viral, and the great and good came together to help Alice live her dream, and raise support for young people with terminal illness. All I’ve done with my crappy little blog this year is annoy you all with long, depressing posts and made nasty comments about reality TV contestants. And I’m nearly twice Alice’s age. Makes you think, eh? Alice is someone young people should look up to, as an example of triumph over adversity, and is someone I’m very glad to see living her life as fully as is permissible. It will be a sad day for Britain when this intelligent, engaging young woman leaves us, but until that day, the lovely Alice definitely has my support; I love to see a sweet, beautiful lady smile!

There are a lot of nice people on Twitter, as it goes, and a ridiculously-impressive number of good souls have been there to support me through this up-and-down year. Too often I’ve been put out of joint by the number of those who have unfollowed, bailing out of my follow-list when the going gets particularly moany, but I’m guilty of neglecting to notice those who have actually been kind enough to offer help and assistance. That’s something which needs to change. I’m often quick (well, as quick as my increasingly-clattering phone allows) to send hugs, when they appear needed, to the sweet people I care about, and when in whatever petty little trouble I find myself in, I now often get more responses of support than I can safely reply to inside the remainder of the day. I’ve never been the most social of creatures – you’ll only rarely see me in a pub, and Bluewater gives me a nasty itch – but being around lovely people for an increased proportion of the day is by osmosis making me a better person. It’s not yet quelling my desire to bellow out all my fears and pains, of course, but then that’s what this mauve gibberish is for. If you haven’t noticed that by now, how come you made it this far down?

And sometimes, just sometimes, something I get the needle about comes good without any input from yours truly. You may recall I got in a bit of a stink about the treatment of Gamu from last year’s X Factor, first by the programme makers and subsequently by the Borders Agency, or whichever wing of our arsehole government it was that wanted to pluck her out of Scotland and fling her back to Zimbabwe. Whilst, as in this and previous years, I didn’t watch X Factor, the general concensus on Twitter and so forth from those who did see it was that Gamu should have gone through and Cher Lloyd and/or Katie Waissell sent home; there were suggestions the question marks over Gamu’s residence status forced Cheryl Cole’s hand. Now, though, and despite Oily Cameron’s best efforts, Gamu has been given leave to stay in the UK and has been signed up to release an album. One which, one hopes, will give Cowell and his Little Mix lickspittles a bloody nose, charts-wise. (Although, while checking the news sites for this write-up, it appears Gamu was backing the ‘Mix to win the show. Not sure what to say about that. Oh well.) Anyway, this young lady has, in time triumphed at what she wanted to attempt, and that alone is something for me to celebrate. The views on Gamu’s successful comeback which are held by X Factor racist Kitty Brucknell and/or Croydon tram racist Emma West are not known. What is known is I probably won’t be allowed back into Croydon after this. And yes, I do believe Kitty’s a racist: after all, it was said that she was on the internet and in the papers and that.

What I do want to do next year is to be more positive. I’ve spent far too much of 2011 moaning.My Twitter feed has become little more than a stream of complaints and panic. This blog is, thus far, and despite its fairly bright colouring, a procession of ill-will.  Even the top half or so of this post is tearful bleating about things I only have a variable limit of control over. I’ve had too depressing of a year and it has affected me mentally and physically. If I keep up this pace I don’t know if my mind and body will make it to Christmas 2012. To be honest, Christmas 2011 will be a bit of a push. But I don’t want you to worry about me. If I survive the winter weather, I resolve to be a better person. To stop taking reality TV so seriously (my first big test will be Celebrity Big Brother, Channel 5 in January and reportedly featuring X Factor hatesponge Frankie Cocozza). To stop gnawing my teeth over being unfollowed or ignored. To get properly behind new talent and innovative new content – even though, with NME TV gone, it’ll be more difficult and require harder digging on my part. To stop getting so stressed by tiny problems with buses or shopping malls when things could clearly be so much worse. I look up to good people – now it’s time to put my meagre money where my scabby little mouth is and actually become a good person myself. That’ll require an almost complete personality change, but with the support of good people I’m sure I can crack through my feet of clay. I’ve had a lot of stress and trouble this year – job pain, worsened by the economic situation, a poor relationship with my family, and increasingly fractious health – but I need to take a more positive view and assume something good will come to me in time. Much like Gamu, I’ll just have to wait for my moment to shine.

I do hope, though, that your festive season shines. Assuming you’ve got someone special in your life (and dedicating in the region of an hour to reading this tud suggests otherwise), spend what little time you can with them this festive seasonal period, because you never know when death’s icy knock will be at your fingers. Gather the people you love, eat the food you love (or the Asda own-brand equivalent), watch the TV you love (or if that’s not on, How It’s Made), and take some time to just relax. After a busy, breathless, painful year we all need a bit of time to unwind. But don’t forget also to look out for those whose Decembermas isn’t as pleasant; I’m not going to prescribe which charitable concern you should tip the hatbox to, as that is ultimately your choice, but we don’t just live in an age where it’s easier to hurt one another than ever before (though that is also true); we also have more opportunity than ever to be of help to those around us and to those many hundreds of miles away. And that’s all my time here; have a merry Christmas, and a happy new… hey, stop hitting me with that!

“If you stand outside this tower block, all you can hear is giggling!” (Goodbye!)

“I don’t wanna hear no radio, I’m racing, dude!” (Hello!)

Ribbit. Here we go then – the long-promised gut-spill where I finally lay bare the clouds that have been causing me stress and strain during the course of 2011. Some of the stuff you’re about to read has been weighing on my mind since April, some has emerged in the last couple of weeks, but what links it all is the level of tension and pain it has caused me. The pain has had a terrible effect on me: I have become unbearable on Twitter, where I have struggled to make my voice heard within the confines of that site’s format; I should have instead let my thoughts breathe by posting here more frequently, which would have allowed a safer, more flexible way to release some of the massive pressure I’ve been under. In the months since I started pre-forming this post in my mind, I have mentally amended it dozens of times – if I’d spent the time actually writing here, then I’d possibly be in a better state of mental health than I actually am at the moment. I’m taking everything so hard I can barely think straight any more, and at times have become so stressed my skull threatened to explode. Which probably isn’t a good idea, maybe?

If you read the earlier post “A shifting of the sands”, you’ll have seen that some of my stress has come from things that have been forced upon me by the media, and such is the fast-moving nature of reality TV that a little housekeeping is needed on that post before I launch into the other reasons for my latest pain in a few paragraphs’ time. Big Brother continued in much the same dispiriting vein as previously, with grim behaviour, nasty rows and general public dislike for the contestants continuing right up to the final, when Aaron simultaneously won the series and emerged to a chorus of boos – so do the viewers like him or not? From the beginning, though, there was only one real winner of this series: Channel 5 owner Richard Desmond, whose sleazy microceleb magazines will benefit from having a fresh crop of famewhores to exploit for profit. Over the course of the series I became increasingly distressed at the continued and, bizarrely, growing support for thuggish Jay – and the fact he came within minutes of winning the series suggests how low society has sunk. At one point I felt like screaming “if Jay wins, I’ll mutilate myself!” in protest, but thought better of it – particularly as people already had the hump with me for a panicked “how do I stop this guy?”-style cry for help I’d submitted one morning at 2am, which suggested “pay someone to throw a firework in his face” as one possible means of removing him from my life. Probably not the best thing for a Katie Piper fan to say, in hindsight, but I was rattled by this vile man being hailed as a hero by a growing portion of the population. At one point I heard unconfirmed suggestions (well OK, Digital Spy forum speculation) that Channel 5 were lining that monster up for his own series, possibly in partnership with his in-house love-interest, dippy glamour model Louise Cliffe. Were that to come to pass, the day it is broadcast would be the day television dies. I don’t want to say much more about Jay, however, as now he’s out of the house there is a chance he could track me down and have me killed. He’s that dangerous. Or so I’m led to believe: I’m not sure how much of what I’ve read is true and how much is hype!

Although Jay had the most damaging effect on me, the others taking part in that multi-week irrelevance weren’t exactly covered in glory: Louise wanted to boost her modelling and acting career but has now forever been tainted by the unpleasant new image she has as a result of her appearance on that terrible show; and Alex, a nuclear-tanned Snog Marry Avoid girl who has apparently been playing up the ‘dumb blonde’ angle to cash in on potential Jade Goody-style success (supposedly on the instructions of a certain R. Desmond) is, according to some viewers, not a very nice person at all (having admitted to short-changing a blind person whilst selling sandwiches, which marked her out in my mind and others as selfish and calculating, though some viewers questioned the timing of this revelation, believing it to be an attempt to derail her ‘victory’ chances.) From earlier in the series, the nasty-piece-of-work Rebeckah, who was at least honest about her dislike for her fellow captives, has cut ties with the show, refusing to attend the final, and boasting about how her new spokesmodel roles have scooped her more money than winning the series would, whilst also defending herself in Twitter-based flamewars with hateful viewers. Tacky Tashie, meanwhile, has shown her deluded desire for fame shows no sign of abating despite her first-out-the-door status, and has shown willingness to pitch up to various parties and photoshoots with as much of her body hanging out as is physically feasible.

It doesn’t help that as I don’t watch the Big Brother programming itself, my knowledge of what happens and what the housemates are like is coloured by several layers of editing and opinion – first going through Channel 5’s editorial filter to determine what actually emerges from the house, then through the further process of hype and inflation that the sources delivering the information to me – mostly gossipy news sites, Twitter and Digital Spy – have put the information through before it hits me. It doesn’t help that much of the commentary required me to sift fact from opinion, and there was a lot of unfounded speculation and opinion over the course of the series which has added to my confusion as to what to think about these people. The sensible thing, of course, would have been not to think about them at all – if Big Brother returns (and there is a danger that it might), I will need support to keep me away from the events and people in the house, lest I become concerned and upset about their behaviour. I just have to hope that this year’s gruesome housemates realise how little they’ll be able to gain from appearing in a series that even Desmond’s own papers shunned in favour of the X Factor, and crawl back to their homes soon enough. I fear though, in the immediate future at least, that they’ll attempt to cash in on their brief fame by clogging the media with their unwanted presence. It is a great shame that many of the people I watched on TV while I was growing up are no longer with us – from Bob Monkhouse to Jeremy Beadle to Ronnie Barker, the heroes of the golden age are increasingly being laid to rest, replaced by selfish, noisy idiots who don’t posess the mental faculties to lick the boots of the classic-era stars. The recent passing of Jimmy Savile reminded me of this; back in the 80s and 90s, the Jim’ll Fix It to Noel’s House Party era, Saturday night TV was about rewarding good, honest, positive people or providing bold, sparkling, A-list entertainment; now, it’s literally a competition seeing who can scream the loudest, and with Noel now doing deals in daytime, the only show which puts a load of needless, garish slime in a big fake house is, well, Big Brother!

The X Factor, which I also don’t watch, has been little better – indeed it’s no longer a talent/singing contest, and has turned into Big Brother: The Musical. Not only is there apparently constant bad feeling between the contestants in the X Factor house, but the petty rows between the judges have created a huge amount of ill will, peaking with Kelly Rowland throwing a sickie and contributing from LA the week after a public falling-out with Tulisa. Fame-hungry Kitty divided the audience and was frequently slated, perhaps inevitable given her slightly dramatic diva behaviour and tabloid-baiting “sexy secrets”, with the red-tops unsurprisingly interested in the leggy blonde. Meanwhile, hairbrained Frankie Cocozza pissed off viewers with his apparent (and self-admitted) lack of talent, but kept getting through based on the votes of a highly mobile group of giggling teens – until his forced ejection from the contest. Having survived a double-eviction that some said was deliberately engineered to hasten his departure (again, this is gossip/hearsay rather than gospel), Frankie was whisked away after his hard-partying ways and drink/drug/sex binges – the very things keeping him on the front pages – attracted controversy and the threat of an Ofcom sanction. This did lead to the unexpected return of one of the four acts earlier booted out by the judges – though from the outset most people assumed that Amelia Lily, a young singer who proved popular with the public and who had apparently been herself wrongfooted by Cocozza’s romantic advances, would return, though some of the other contestants apparently feared the competition (indeed, many of the existing lineup, including Kitty, had been surprisingly vocal in their desire for partially-pregnant Essex duo 2Shoes to return, presumably as they posed less competitive threat). Amelia’s return also gave more food to the conspiracy theorists, particularly when STV posted draft versions of each “[contestant] returns to X Factor” news story before lines had closed; Amelia’s was the only return not described as a “shock” in the headline, and the copy of the story described with eerie prediction exactly what Kelly Rowland would do when she heard her girl had been returned by the voters. Mind you, the press have also claimed Gary Barlow has a scriptwriter penning his comments about the performers. ITV clearly doesn’t want to leave anything to chance and is scripting the show more tightly than Coronation Street – making it even more visible when people deviate from the given lines, such as Cokenoser’s “f***ing get in there!”, which ironically was what woke Ofcom’s censor sensors up in the first place…

Maybe if Tulisa and Kelly had invested in getting someone to write their lines, the nasty tiff which cast a pall over this year’s series would not have happened. Though outwardly the ladies claim to have settled their differences, there is the whiff of the contractual smile about it; and Rowland has hinted that she’s angling to work alongside Simon Cowell (i.e. on the US version of the show) in future. There’s presumably a degree of professional jealousy at play here, but with the RnB queens bickering and Barlow spectacularly failing in his mentoring duties, and Louis Walsh having basically given up on the show, it does appear there will have to be changes if ITV makes the mistake of commissioning a ninth series. The show really is running out of steam – its acts have had mixed success at best (for every chart-hoggigng JLS or teen bed-wetter’s dream One Direction, there are a dozen forgotten Steve Brooksteins in each run), its judges don’t care, its viewing figures are tanking and Simon Cowell’s instruction that the series should dominate the headlines has backfired spectacularly, with viewers already tired of the backstabbing, catfights and manipulation, with a month or more still to run on the series. And of course, the undignified Rhythmix situation left a nasty taste: one that an attempt at publically backing down from (changing the girlband’s onscreen name to Little Mix) didn’t quite make go away: the dispute was only recently settled with Cowell ultimately making an unspecified donation to cover the charity’s legal costs. It does seem that having Big Brother running at the same time as X Factor hasn’t really helped: although ITV’s series gets a significantly larger on-the-night audience, the level of heated discussion, dislike and online disquiet towards the shows is similar, and the programmes themselves are closer in format than ever before: many BB contestants entered their contest with a view to becoming public heroes and tabloid darlings, whilst X Factor increasingly relies on scandal and ill-will rather than genuine personality to keep people talking. There’s also a degree of arrogance involved in the production – I don’t think ITV have taken into account the fact that some of us (i.e. me) never want to hear from Kitty Brucknell again, for instance, yet they insisted on ramming her down our throats without any choice. But then, should I take these people to heart at all? Should I resent, abuse and detest Misha B, as others seem content to do, or just shut up and let the poor girl sing? It’s a tough judgement call to make.

Not watching the actual shows, and getting my gen reading online comments and interviews/articles published after-the-fact, however, shows the mistake I may have made. It seems I’ve been to quick to swallow the hype, spin and opinion that surrounds series such as these. I tried to take on board everything I heard about these shows’ contestants and as a result they became grotesques in my mind; in fact, in their real life and outside the pressured and hyped-up environment of their nasty TV shows, they’re probably not as monstrous as they appear: they’re people who are probably quite badly hurt by the level of hate shown towards them online – see for instance the horrid statements, which I don’t approve of, being hurtled continuously at, say, Big Brother’s Rebeckah on Twitter lately. Whilst I’ve not exactly been kind about them, I’ve at least been fairly civil and have tried to avoid direct personal attacks or venomous bullying, but other web-users have not had the restraint to hold their tongues. So we’ve ended up with the weird situation that I now need to protect people I’m not overly fond of, from attack by hatred far harsher than my own. It’s a real moral dilemma. The only other option is just to turn a blind eye to the whole situation – let people choose whether to go on these shows, let people choose whether to watch them, and let those involved duke out the best way to resolve any outstanding issues. But then, is being ignorant the right thing to do? It has been really difficult to avoid this sort of TV. I’ve watched a lot of Challenge, Dave and Quest to try and stay clear, though even that doesn’t help: the Marks & Spencer ad featuring X Factor contestants – the only thing I’ve heard them singing on, to be fair – only makes me want to boycott the otherwise-lovely channels it airs on, and of course M&S. However, as I say, TV’s only a tiny part of my recent brain-stew, and having been sitting on this pain for a while it is, finally, time for me to tell all.

You may well have been wondering why this blog “went dark” between early April and early September. One key reason is that over the summer I somehow managed to secure myself something to do with my day other than sit around moaning. I found myself part-time temporary work! It wasn’t anything earth-shaking – a retail stock-handling post on an industrial estate half an hour’s walk from the nearest bus stop, and usually working as little as four hours a week, therefore not earning me enough to come off benefits fully, but it was a reason to get out of what I have in lieu of a bed at some point in the morning for three-and-a-bit months. It boosted my CV and experience, and I enjoyed doing the job; I’d have been happy to carry on – the only reason I didn’t continue with it being that my contract wasn’t extended beyond its scheduled expiry. There were stressful elements – for me, the difficult journey, including the aforementioned half-hour walk, was painful, particularly as the firm I was working for had other branches physically nearer to me, and I’m not entirely comfotable with ladders, the use of which formed a sizeable part of the job – but I stuck with it and saw it through, knowing how much good it was doing. Taking the job did, though, cause me problems financially. I had expected that, having notified the job centre of my part-time work as required, that my total earnings would not fall below the level I recieved when claiming benefit in isolation. However, there was in fact a money drop: rather than docking my payments to counter my job earnings, the jobcentre stopped paying me completely, meaning I was not earning enough to live on (my outgoings largely didn’t change) and I became severely overdrawn. That was a difficult time for me – compounded by the fact that I didn’t find out about the stoppage for several months, due to a lack of effective communication from my bank and the job centre (the latter didn’t send a letter confirming they’d stopped paying me until some time after I’d figured that out for myself and queried it!). Essentially my hands were tied and I was reduced to living off handouts from family members for several months until someone finally started listening to my complaints and put the problem right. I was initially reluctant to make a fuss, as I don’t want to be seen as a drain on the already-strained taxpayer, but on this occasion I was in the right – I’d followed the instructions I’d been given, kept my end of the deal and kept my nose clean to avoid committing fraud, and still been dicked over.

That horrible situation did further strain my already difficult relationship with money – even before the incident, I’d been a bit of a moody sod when it comes to money, always trying to spend as little as necessary, and in the wake of the problem, even after the error was corrected I resolved to further tighten my already steely grip on my wallet, to the point that I now only spend money when absolutely vital, to the extent that perfectly reasonable purchases require hours of overly careful consideration and reconsideration. I desperately need new trousers, for instance, to replace those I currently own, many of which are old/worn/damaged or no longer fit me; but even at cheaper shops like Matalan and Primark prices start at £8 to £10 and are often much higher, and if you’d prefer me to shop at the likes of New Look, River Island, Next or Topman, I’d be asked to part with £25 to £35 or significantly more. However, as I recently whined on Twitter, on a budget like mine that level of spending can be the equivalent of a million pounds to someone who does have cash – £35 could buy me lunch for ten days! I did find one pair purportedly in my size for £3.50 (only one day out of the lunch budget, then) in a charity shop, and buying from there does contribute to my goal of doing more to help others, so perhaps this is the route I should be looking to go for more stuff! I’m very aware of the risk of false economy, though – items bought secondhand or from cheap new shops are apparently likely to last less long than costlier belongings; look at my shoes (but not too closely!) In childhood I would be escorted to Clarks by a relative as and when required, to make a relatively hefty investment in suitable shoes for the schoolday; now in adulthood I tend to waddle into Shoe Zone and fuss about until I find the cheapest mens’ shoes approaching my size, then wear same until they fall apart, then repeat the process. The options I have are stark: pay an insurmountably high £70 or so for well-made, comfortable, potentially long-lasting shoes from a reputable organisation with a history of intelligent shoecraft, or throw a series of angry tenners at an ill-tempered, tired salesperson in a blue shirt at irregular intervals, to recieve a couple of lumps of wood/rubber/whatever to cram my feet into? At present I’ve taken the cheap-and-nasty option, but I long for the day when I’m earning a regular wage and have the freedom to actually buy things I don’t have to sneer at myself for owning. I can be a real snob sometimes – as evidenced by my preference for Only Connect and QI over Big Brother – and I regret daily that I’m not doing better at life.

It has been really quite difficult to secure regular work, however. I’ve continued, week in week out, to apply for numerous posts, rush around the region attending interviews and appointments, and generally run myself into the ground for very little reward – I’m physically and mentally exhausted to the point of near-total collapse, but given I have not yet been successful in my attempts to secure a purpose, I have to keep on pushing and dragging myself until some good comes through. I am desperately in need of a break, some time away from my grotty concrete hell, but I can’t take a holiday if I don’t have a job! Indeed, given how most of my jobs and placements down the years have been short-term and temporary posts, I’ve never been in a job permanently enough to claim any holiday therefrom! With the need to be on alert to respond to any possible job offer at the drop of a hat, I’ve been unable to stop the pain and pressure with a pause in the hand-to-mouth chaos I’ve been under. Essentially, I haven’t technically taken a ‘leisure break’ in over a decade! That’s had a huge impact on me physically and mentally, as those who’ve become increasingly tired of my stringy, terse ranting on a certain microblog site would only be too keen to point out.The national economic situation is also making employers cagey about taking new people on, too, and that has left me with a decreasing pool of options to choose from, particularly if you discount the many thousands of potential employers who I have applied to but who have chosen not to bring me aboard. I’m keeping up my end of the deal, going to the interviews and appointments, but the employers have always been able to find someone better – the decline in graduate jobs means grads are taking the entry-level jobs and those still on the base of the ladder are dispensed with entirely. I really am cycling round in tighter and tighter little circles and am running heavily out of ideas. Of course, the job websites don’t help much in my search – they still insist on sending me emails about jobs local to Andover, no matter how many times I type ‘Bexleyheath’ into the frigging search box. (The possibility of Andover being the closest place to Bexley with jobs available cannot, of course, be ruled out…)

But it’s not been that fantastic of a summer to be a south Londoner, or at least a decent, honest one. Yes, there is such a thing as an honest South Londoner, he exists (and is writing these very words!) Society really has disappeared down its own skidpan in recent years, and nowhere was it illustrated more clearly than in the hideous and hellish display of reckless mass-disorder that was exhibited in early August in the form of riots across London and ultimately many other areas of this no-longer-green-and-pleasant land. The culture of entitlement created by our have-it-all-and-have-it-now, no-consequences, instant-gratification culture combined with unprecedented levels of economic despair and a hotbed of friction between disaffected, disinterested youth and the forces of law and order to create the most shocking orgy of vile, selfish destruction seen in peacetime Britain, or at least the bit of it I’ve been alive for. For four nights I and many others sat awake through the night, glued to the news channel and unable to sleep for fear that the country was descending into some new dystopian anarchy. The hardest night for me was the night South London went up. Seeing areas I’m familiar with – Woolwich and Croydon most prominently – basically reduced to rubble was one of the most frightening experiences of my life, and I was only watching it on Freeview (a box legitimately paid for, not stolen, and thus as you’d expect one of the cheaper models on the market) – it must have been millions of times worse for those in the thick of the chaos. Lives have been uprooted and destroyed by this wanton abandon – homes levelled, businesses destroyed, the already-weak economy sent into weeks of uncertainty and tailspin. Never before have I felt such fear, anger and resentment. It was a horrific time to live through and yet I had to carry on as normal, or as normal as I could in the circumstances, in order to keep up with my job hunt and other such duties (my part-time summer job having come to an end just days before the riots broke out). It was an awful time, trying to act normal in the knowledge that any manner of hell could kick off and I could be caught up right in the arse of it all. Needless to say, I jobhunted rapidly and rattled straight back home to squirrel myself back under the bed very rapidly that week.

The fear manifested itself in the concern that the rioting could continue (it eventually largely petered out after four days in the face of expanded police presence) and that I could be next on the hitlist (in the event, Bexley was one of only 10 of the 32 London boroughs to go largely untouched by the vandals, largely because we’re not on the Tube one presumes, but it’s true to say the night Woolwich and Croydon went up I was rocking back and forth thinking “we’re next!”). Anger at the sheer mindless stupidity of those taking part (exactly what political point does burning down a Nando’s make, then?) and anger on behalf of those left sleeping on the street after their home fell, or sweeping up the charred remains of their shattered retail stores. Reeves Corner was a particularly notable point to consider – it’s survived two world wars, several recessions which have seen better-known national names wiped from the high street, and still it stood defiantly serving the people in and around Croydon – until some nutty firebug came along and took advantage of Britain’s week of shame to bring the family-owned, centuries-old firm to a stack of charred timber. In Woolwich, meanwhile, a Wetherspoon pub and newly-opened Wilkinsons were torched for reasons which have yet to be adequately explained. I knew that DLR extension would be a mistake. And of course in response to the riots I’ve modified my behaviour: I’ve not been back to Croydon or Woolwich since (although, as Woolwich is my nearest access to the DLR/tube network, and a potential site of future jobs within relatively sane distance of home once the shops have been rebuilt, I may have to return to the scene of the crime at some unspecified future point.) One point of humour did emerge: amid all the crisis and chaos, I became worried for Katie Piper’s safety and repeatedly ordered my followers to ensure she was removed from London and placed at a safe distance from harm. Katie then herself took to inform me that that particular week she was in fact in America, and therefore unlikely to be wounded by marauding looters. What Katie thought when she returned to the smoking heap of rubble that used to be the UK is, however, unrecorded.

Outside of the brief attempt to relaunch August as some kind of apocalyptic hell-month, evidence of society’s decline has been clear to see. One extreme example was the unnecessarily violent attack on Sam and Billie Faiers of The Only Way Is Essex. Now, whilst I’d love for all those involved in the abominable waste-of-bandwidth that is TOWIE to be repeatedly and harshly punished for inflicting that hateful programme upon the nation, I can’t stand by and support unprovoked nasty violence. Yes, the sisters brought it upon themselves in a way by flaunting their airy existence on ITV2’s fly-on-the-wall nonsense, but clearly the attackers felt some kind of entitlement. People didn’t do that when I was a kid – in the 90s, you didn’t get drunk teenagers mobbing Bruce Forsyth going “There’s the bloke from Takeover Bid – let’s batter him until he needs hospital treatment!” It just wasn’t the done thing. The walls between reality and celebrity have collapsed to such an extent that not only are people now used to seeing “personalities” going about their “business”, but the public are now more than ever ready to mete out the sort of violent “interactivity” that goes beyond even what the red button can provide. Twitter has helped foster this, too, by breaking the traditional separation, allowing celebrities to offend their fans directly, and said fans to berate and bully their chosen star at the click of a tab. There can be good sides to this dropping of the curtain – sufficient people were moved by Katie Piper’s story to offer support in her recovery, and this in turn assisted in the buildup of her charitable foundation – but overall the democratisation and mobilisation of culture has had a devastating effect and warped people’s view of reality. We have a whole generation of people who’ve grown up with Big Brother, Facebook, ITV2 and happy slapping in their lives – they don’t know any better, so society’s only going to get worse!

This fear of society and its dangers is having an impact on my own life, too – I now fear that other people are dangerous to me and would do me harm at the slightest provocation. I tend not to go out after nightfall, to avoid being beaten by drunken thugs (not that I have anywhere to go by night in any case, given that most of my destinations – libraries, job centre – are daytime operations). Increasingly, I tend not to leave the house at all unless I absolutely have to, and I only do so because I can’t do my jobsearch sat on my arse! (That’s why these long-blogs take so long to write – I have to squeeze them in into spare minutes between other stuff I’m doing!) When I do go out, I try to avoid interacting with people – I rarely make eye contact, in order to avoid “what are you looking at?”-type scenarios (though this too can backfire – it takes me longer to get out of people’s way if I’m looking at the ground rather than monitoring their approach, and on one occasion my failure to notice those around me got me dirty looks in Dartford when people assumed I’d been staring at a nearby breastfeeding mother – quite the opposite in fact, I’d been looking into the middle distance, hadn’t even noticed she was there, and would have averted my gaze appropriately had I been!) The point is, I try to limit others’ exposure to me. I’m aware I’m disliked – my woeful job strikerate is testament to that – and so I’ve decided to contribute mainly to the world from the other side of a screen – though how big of a contribution I can make in that way, bar supportive Twitter hugs to web-friends and occasional donations to the Katie Piper Foundation, is open to debate! I don’t want to get involved in nasty situations and try and steer clear of events and incidents wherever possible (hence my refusal to return to the Croydon-Woolwich triangle of hate even four months after things settled down a bit). I don’t go to music gigs (though this is as much due to my lack of money and isolated transport location as to my fear of others) and whilst other Twitter users have met up in public places (and sometimes ended up dating!) I have yet to be invited on any “tweetups” – and on past evidence of people’s reaction to me, even if I was I’d be unlikely to be invited back. Plus, someone else (either in the group or in terms of the public purse) would have to pay for my drinks, and that’s just not on!

I do, therefore, feel quite isolated. I’m stuck here in possibly the worst-connected of London’s 32 boroughs, limited by travel radius and cost from going to areas where work and/or entertainment options may be broader; whilst I have Twitter acquaintances across the country and around the world, I have few genuine friends with whom I could move in, resulting in me still being stuck with my increasingly-dotty mother and oafish brother in order to continue to have what’s left of a roof over my head; and whilst I’d dearly love to see more of this fine country, aforementioned time/money pressures mean I’m not going to be able to get out of here for some considerable time to come. And it’s not been a particularly pleasant place to be. Whilst largely untouched by the August uprising, Bexleyheath has had its own day in the news – the town got its first national news coverage since the 1996 job centre stabbing when an innocent woman was slain whilst on her way to work, assaulted in a ‘cry for help’ by a woman with mental problems. The really difficult part for me was going back. Two days after the stabbing, I had to return to central Bexleyheath for a jobsearch appointment at the task centre – this meant literally walking in the path of a killer, past the butcher’s shop she snatched the murder weapon from. It was the most ghastly, gruesome moment of my life. I genuinely didn’t want to be there; I was virtually in floods of tears by the time I actually got to the centre, and let’s just say I had trouble keeping a lid on my emotions during a difficult and pressured jobsearch session. Now, I’ll only go into the centre of town when absolutely necessary – for my weekly appointment at the TC, a job interview or transport interchange thereto, or signing-on (and hopefully soon signing-off) at the new jobcentre (it has moved since ’96, not due to the incident back then, but by process of relocating several smaller local centres onto a single larger site.) Outside of that, though, I try to avoid the town which has become increasingly horrid and chavvy, much like Britain on the whole. There is one other reason I bully myself into going – mum often leaves lists of shopping she wants, and requires this to be purchased from the Asda in Bexleyheath. There are other supermarkets in the borough, but mum likes Asda as there’s a bus stop right outside, making it easy for her to get stuff home when she’s doing the pick-up. I don’t like going there myself, however; I was already on bad terms there after a placement in 2006 which didn’t go well (it remains technically the only “job” I’ve ever “resigned” from, transferring the remainder of my placement to a smaller charity shop), and the store also played a role in the recent stabbing – the attacker first bought a knife there and wounded a woman waiting at the bus stop, before being disarmed and going on to snatch the butcher’s knife for her subsequent fatal lashing-out at another victim. So yeah, that particular supermarket causes a lot of stress; also, as a very large store, it can be quite difficult to find what I’m looking for, and this brings its own pressure, particularly when I’m rushing the errand in order to get out of the situation as quickly as possible.

Many’s the time I feel I ought to leave London. I’ve seen calm rural areas on telly and thought it’d be less stressful to live there, though the once-a-week buses and limited number of major retail stores out in the sticks would probably bust up my job hunting. (Of course, I could move to Andover as that’s where the jobs in Bexleyheath seem to be, but as I’ve already admitted to being a Katie Piper fan that move may seem slightly unnerving and stalkerish to the resident Hampshicureans!) I’ve also toyed with the idea of moving north; I’ve had brief visits to the north of England of the country – a couple of holidays in various bits of Yorkshire and a three-day college trip to the actual Manchester – and I wouldn’t mind going back: whether the Northerners who were perfectly civil to me during these brief stints would be so willing to welcome this creaky Southern bile-ball for a longer term, though, is unknown. Until August of this year kicked off and Manc chavs decided to imitate London’s violent apes by torching Miss Selfridge for no clear reason, I’d been thinking for a time that I’d like to go back to Manchester – it’s now been a decade since my last visit to the city of Coronation Street, given that my last Mancunian jaunt was in 2001, and it’s probably going to be fun to hop back into the Arndale even briefly now that Bluewater is boring me to tears. Yorkshire would be nice to revisit too – it’s been even longer since my mid-90s family holidays to that enormous county, and it’d be nice to see some of the actual proper genuine sight-spots, having wasted most of my previous trip to the city of York by spending a with-hindsight ridiculous amount of time in that legendary Jorvik landmark, the Virgin Megastore. Of course, leaving London even for a weekend would require significant time and money decisions, and to be further from home would mean that if I got in trouble it’d be harder to get home (compared to, say, Bexleyheath, where there are several permissible escape routes in the event of an emergency that requires me to clear off out of town.)

And of course, there’s the danger that I’ll run into girls like the Geordie Shore drunken (happy) slappers or Big Brother’s Mancunian model Louise Cliffe. Yes, I am going to keep slagging her off. I’d call for someone to viciously interrupt her modelling career, but there is an inherent danger that someone will interpret that as incentive to conduct a Katie Piper-style assault upon her, so I’m instead going to do for that brunette finalist the same thing I do for another Big Brotherite, Imogen Thomas: if I see her on the front of a magazine, I will simply walk out of the shop in an almighty huff and publically redouble my ongoing effort to get magazines banned. (Yes, that’s still going. Not successfully, obviously, but then nothing I do is ever successful!) Just going in Smith’s is a really daunting procedure for me at the minute as most of the papers and magazines have extensive front-page coverage of people from X Factor, TOWIE, I’m A Celeb, Strictly and so forth, and just being around those brief headlines makes my blood boil. In truth, I’ve given up on print media – as the ongoing News of the World inquiry shows, newspapers and magazines are scum, hounding and destroying people who are blameless, who have been dragged into the public eye by circumstance, or have committed transgressions only minor in the grand scheme of things. Look at Elle Macpherson’s assistant – sacked from her job and sent to a rehab facility after being accused of leaking stories to the press, only for Glenn Mulcaire to later admit he’d hacked the model’s phone. Has Elle apologised to her former PA or made amends? I don’t know, but I’m predicting she hasn’t (if she has, do feel free to correct me!) The culture of instant celebrity and rapid gratification brought by the likes of Big Brother, Facebook and Babestation has warped our view of right and wrong to such an extent that society and culture is now incurably diseased. And of course, media portrayals can be misleading – am I right or wrong to believe that all Geordies and Scousers are scum simply because those on TV and in the papers are? Again, a judgement call is needed!

Leaving the South East for my own safety and sanity may well be wise. but it’s not exactly been safe and happy times anywhere else in the country. A news incident that got me worried more recently was the M5 crash; here was something where again a huge life-changing disaster had occurred and I literally could do physically nothing to help. I’ve always been wary of cars – I’ve never learned to drive, in part on cost grounds but also because putting me behind the wheel would be a quick and easy way of causing thousands of deaths. But the fact remains that the severity of the M5 incident was a real confidence-shaker. It was one of those up-all-night-watching-the-news-channel situations, and I was only able to get some sleep when my Freeview reception froze! I really should get rid of that box in my bedroom… I did also feel a bit guilty, as I only found out about the incident after midnight, having been watching Have I Got News For You, QI, Stand Up For The Week and that. Much like in 2004, when a Boxing Day visit to relatives (in Woolwich, as it goes) led me to have a delayed awareness of the tsunami that struck that day, I’d failed to keep on top of the news in a timely fashion. It was genuinely shocking to see devastation on that scale, and much as with the August riots, imagining the pain that people involved in the situation must be going through is causing significant mental anguish. Given I’m still upset about Keeley from last year’s Big Brother breaking her leg during a house task, it should be no surprise I would be inconsolable at the occurrence of a fatal pile-up several hundred miles west of my home, which among other things left a young lady in a coma unaware her father and sister had perished in the disaster. Needless to say, I’m never using the M5 again. Though as I don’t drive, and I don’t live in Somerset, that boycott will be easier to enforce than my self-imposed bans on entering Bexleyheath Asda or Woolwich town centre. (I was already self-banned from Croydon’s WH Smith and Game stores, but that related to a much earlier embarrasing incident, around 2003-ish, when Game forgot to deactivate a security tag on an item I’d bought there, leading to it setting Smith’s alarms off.) As I’ve said on Twitter, it does startle me how people are able to just go about their business as though nothing’s happened – when I went to the TC two days after the Bexleyheath murder, I was stunned to see people just walking along Broadway as they normally would, as though nothing had happened – weren’t they doubled over with guilt at walking in the footsteps of a deranged killer, like I was? I did make sure on subsequent trips to the TC to visibly turn my nose up like a snob when I walked past the butcher’s shop involved, just so they knew how I felt about the whole situation…

All this blather should tell you that I’m having great trouble dealing with the numerous and various pressures which have infested my brain over recent months. Poor relations with my family, feeling stuck with no escape, isolation and being in limited contact with those who can genuinely help, job hunt stress, money worries, limited social skills, worry about the state of society, the need to change my behaviour to accommodate events and the actions of others, and anger at the crap they put on telly today… it’s not a fantastic time to be me! My brain is under a lot of pressure and too often it explodes and leads me to have panic attacks in public places (usually Bexleyheath, if history’s any guide) or send needless and resentful tweets. I need to let my anger out in a safe way rather than in a Safeway (alright, an Asda, but the comment doesn’t really work with that…) I used to see a mentor as part of an earlier jobsearch/training program, but when the program came to an end I stopped seeing the mentor, the only person who I’d been able to talk over some of my pressures and problems with face-to-face. I have nobody to speak to at length about my worries, fears and concerns, hence my Twitter sour-ups and this lengthy bit of mauve nonsense. You might say “oh well, at least you’ve got your health” – but I haven’t even got that: I’m in terrible shape. Decades of inactivity has left me with, let’s be quite honest here, boobies; my teeth are constantly on the verge of resigning from my mouth entirely in a blaze of soiled enamel; my spine’s riding so out of whack that I can’t even bend back to wipe my arse properly (one for the “JayLou” fans there, I guess), and in possibly related news there’s some kind of blockage or swelling making my bowel region somewhat painful (though I’m not completely clogged up, so I’m not sure exactly what’s going on!) My stomach’s frequently disagreeable; my skin’s in terrible condition  – I look like someone’s sandpapered a cat; my ankles aren’t doing a great job at supporting me; and my bones and muscles are in such a worn-out state that just standing up and sitting down’s becoming a bit of a production – I’m frequently pulling, jarring or straining muscles just trying to go about my usual daily duties! It’s not a good situation to be in by any means, and I probably need medical treatment; however, I have quite simply given up. I probably could go to the doctor and finally admit I’ve run out of patience with my brain and body, and seek some kind of invasive solution, but isn’t it already too late? I’ve been sitting (sometimes literally) on my many problems in the hope they’ll dry up, fall off or go away – I’m one of those blokes who won’t bother the medical profession unless half my arm was hanging off. Even then, it’d probably depend which half…

So, hopefully after reading (or, more likely, skimming) through this directional field of slop, you’ll perhaps have a better idea of why I’ve been such a horrendous person to be around just lately. 2011 really has been a horrible year, for myself in particular and for society in general. For me, my continued failure to encounter proper paid work for two-thirds of the year despite continuous efforts to do so, my increasingly-rapidly fading health and my increasing unease and distaste for TV and the media have made this an unsettling and unpleasant hundredth-of-a-century. The world’s seen some pretty terrible situations that outpace even this though: from the unrest and protest in Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere which has led to near-continuous conflict, regime change and many thousands of deaths; to devastating, destructive, fatal earthquakes in eastern Japan early in the year and Turkey later on; to terror attacks, shootings and bombings such as the blasts in Mogadishu and at Domodedovo Airport; to the handiwork of lone attackers such as Anders Breivik in Norway or the aforementioned Bexleyheath knife-toter; from the mass deaths at sea (such as the Zanzibar ferry disaster) and in the air (even Mexico’s interior minister did not have power enough to override God’s hatred for those who defy him by using the aeroplane as a mode of transport). The torrid economic climate has destroyed life for millions of those who did manage to survive the year, made life difficult for those on the poverty line or who, like me, are seeking work, and the growing unrest and uncertainty came violently to the UK in August’s unprecedented and above-mentioned riot phase. Despite mass death-events, though, the world population is growing, with a seven billionth person on the globe born in 2011; however, I’m more worried about the growing proportion of the population that are mindless idiots.

That said, there are some lovely people in the world – one of the few TV programmes I enjoyed this year, Katie: My Beautiful Friends was proof of that, though this was just four hours of positivity versus thousands of hours of horrid idiocy on other shows, so the war’s not won yet! And I know from Twitter that there are kind and decent people out there, I just have to dig a little deeper to find them and not assume that the people on the pages of the papers are representative of the population as a whole. I just have to believe that there are people out there who are trying, like TV’s Rastamouse, to “make a bad t’ing good”. Vocal collective Eden Voices have annexed Adele Pope (from Katie: My Beautiful Friends, keep up) to record a cover of ‘True Colours’ for the Katie Piper Foundation – go download that, it’s a far more worthwhile occupier of a slot in Rastamouse star Reggie Yates’ Radio 1 chart show than anyone that’s fallen off the back of the X Factor – and there have been some positive news-crumbs this year – the falls of Bin Laden and later of Gaddafi, the celebration of national pride that surrounded the Royal Wedding – and it’s now up to me to try and find more positivity in my own life. It’s just been in pretty short supply lately, and that’s why I’ve been so giddy and dizzy that I can barely make it from one side of a supermarket to another without breaking down or needlessly shrieking for advice. I either need some kind of carer or mentor, someone who’ll stand on my shoulder and reassure me I’m doing the right thing (and talk me down when I’m not); or I need to man up and start behaving like other people and just act normally. And if that means running about with my willy out or wiping my orse on my so-called girlfriend’s pillow, then so be it. That is what nohrmahl people do these days, isn’t it? Why-aye…

“And I want you to hold me, and I want you to pray, this is bigger than us” (Goodbye!)