How to complain when you aren't sure what about

It seems a bit odd how 10,000 people have now complained about a Russell Brand radio show. It seems odd because, firstly, I can't imagine anyone actually listening to it. Its on at Saturday night at 9 PM; not exactly the school run breakfast audience who were offended by Ali G on the Sara Cox breakfast show. How many complaints did they receive from the public after the live show? Um, two. Yep. Andrew Sachs’ agent also complains however. Russell Brand presents his show the following Saturday as usual.

A week later, the Mail on Sunday runs a story about the whole sorry affair. Naturally, as with any other subject, their readers are outraged. Over 10,000 complain. Maybe with good reason. But it is safe to assume that none of them actually heard the show, save the two who already complained, or else it would not have taken a week to get their letters of outrage in the post.

Err, is that how regulation is supposed to work? An incident occurs unnoticed, until it is flagged up by some lazy journalists, at which point everyone decides to be outraged. Bit like how Stonewall went on a tirade a couple of years ago to sack Chris Moyles, despite the comments they were protesting against being several months old.

Why was the BBC so slow to react also? In commercial radio it seems common to be instantly suspended for making an offensive comment, al la Tommy Boyd on Talk Sport. But it took the complaints to start flooding into the BBC before they suspended the pair.

That said, Andrew Sachs and his granddaughter seem to be confused also. He says (in somewhat confusing third person. “They apologise to me and they say how awful for Mr Sachs, but nobody has offered any apology to my granddaughter. I replied to Jonathan Ross and suggested that is where he should direct his attentions. The real focus should be on the harm they have done to her.” However she said; “What’s funny about humiliating a lovely old man who has never harmed anyone in his life? My grandfather is really upset and says he wants the whole situation to end. It has been awful for him”. They should really have a chat. Kinda sweet really.

So no one knows who to blame, what to complain about, or who was offended. We all have to look to the Sunday Mail for guidance.

Russell Brand, who is an idiot, doesn’t seem to be handling it at all well, though. Jonathan Ross sent a nice letter and a bunch of flowers. Lovely. What a nice man. I forgive him. Brand however, commented, on his own radio show (which it is clear no one listens to), “I'd like to take this opportunity to issue a personal Russell Brand apology to Andrew Sachs, the great comic actor who played Manuel, for a message that Jonathan and I left on his answer phone, but it was quite funny. But! Sometimes, you mustn't swear on someone's answer phone and that's why I'd like to apologise personally.” No, Russell, that’s not how to apologise. In the post, not on the radio.

What a sorry situation indeed.

Bloody Football

What's the deal with football? I don't understand. Why oh why is it
so 'important'? When any other form of entertainment is marketed,
exactly how 'entertaining' it is would be stressed. A film might take
you on a journey; make you laugh, make you cry, make you think. A
museum may make you knowledgeable on a given subject. A book might
paint vivid and stimulating pictures in your mind. Art makes your
brain think 'oh, how pretty'. Or modern art just makes you think.
Hopefully.

But what does football do? Well, in any marketing for it, the
importance is usually stressed. The subtext is that is a life or
death situation. But they never suggest that you will actually enjoy
it, that it would bring you days and nights of endless pleasure, that
it might make you a better person, that there is something you should
aspire to. It doesn't have any pretence that it will either educate
nor inform you. And it doesn't seem to pretend to entertain you
either. Maybe some people look upon the amazing players of the ball
with envy, wishing they could one day be amongst them. I doubt this
somehow. It is just somehow essential, necessary and almost
ritualistic that one watches it. The fear of the consequences seem or
paramount importance. If Aston United looses, then they will be going
down. Woo. Or boo. That is the question.

Why do we care how they perform, though? They are just a business.
Most people work for a business, and I bet you don't give a flying
fudge how your company performs in the financial year. Why are you
bothered about how a company you don't even hold a financial interest
in performs?

The other problem with football is that it is a constant. It's never
ends. A film ends. A book ends. Your mortgage ends. September
ends. Therefore we must pay attention to them before they all end.
If we miss them, then they will no longer be there. As I have just
said however, football never ends. If you miss a match, someone will
tell you the result, and your beloved team looses, then it doesn't
matter that much, football will prevail and there will be another game
next week. Forever.

I wonder how many people actually like football. Not that many, I
recon. Lets work it out. I have no evidence, so I will estimate.
Lets say no women are interested, and about half of men are
interested. So therefore only one quarter of people like football.
Also, people often say the most popular sport in the world is fishing,
therefore making it more popular than football. And when was the last
time you, or one of your loved ones, went fishing? Never, I bet. At
least you get something out of fishing; a fish. So there we have it,
I have conclusively proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that football
is only enjoyed by a small minority of idiots, who just want an excuse
to stab people, and they get nothing out of it.

So don't watch football, stab a fish instead.

Getting Old

I have been getting old for quite some years now. Many years, one could say. I have been getting old for many years. If I actually were old, I would have started this article by proclaiming my age to the world; “I’m one hundred and seventy two…”. Better yet, I could have started by stating a given activity, and how long I have been doing it. “I’m seven hundred and I’ve been using the Internet for fifty two years now”, would do nicely. I don’t know if such a statement would automatically add merit to whatever precedes it, a tone, an authority, to distance myself from you, the younger, less learned reader, who would then look up to me as a father figure, hanging on my every word. Is there a cut off for when people should start using such phrases? A day you wish to begin announcing the tenure of your relationship with a particular product, activity or service? To add authority to your otherwise feeble or unquantifiable argument perhaps?

Whatever topic is being discussed, and no matter how long ago we are reminiscing about, here seem to be two striking universal truths about the past. The first is that it was much better. Most goods and services could be purchased for a penny. A bus journey, a book of stamps, a night in a seaside hotel, a loaf of bread, a two bed terrace house, a Roman-Catholic Cathedral? Whatever. It would always a penny, not the extortionate amount it does today. I imagine all shops were one penny shops, like pound shops, but 100 times better, where all the items would be carefully weighed by a surly shop keeper, but it wouldn’t matter as they would all end up costing 1p each anyway. Life was also better in terms of: service, quality, friendship, durability, intellect, safety, life fulfilment, green space, packaging, education, products being made domestically – yes, every measurable element of life is immeasurably superior. However, the second universal truth about the ‘old days’ is that although it was better, it was also much, much harder. One would work the day in the mine, then go fight a war, collect a rationed cup of tea from 30 yards away, ride a mule home, self educate one’s children, all before having a small offal sandwich and blowing out the gas lamp. All the while one would have to manually move the hands of the clock around to the accurate time with a wrench. As clocks have yet to be invented.

So there we have it. Life was better, as nothing has been invented, yet harder, as everything is yet to be invented. If there was a negative element to the past, it would never be ‘worse’, that would be admitting defeat. Having no food was no ‘worse’ than these days of plenty. It was ‘harder’. It would never have been easier in the past either. Not having to learn the many complexities of a computer was not easier. It was better, because you could spend time working out everything yourself. Thus they came out of it as better people.

I’m being cruel to old people. We are just as bad. As soon as possible we all start to reminisce. Remember the Spice Girls? Much better than today’s muck. Remember when computers had 12mhz, 1mb of ram and a no hard drive? We had it so hard waiting for the to load. Eee, the 1st Gen iPod. What about Starburst? It used to be called Opal Fruits, don’t you know? Rainbow, now that was quality children’s TV. Not like now. There wasn’t a Starbucks here last week. I DON’T CARE. Why must humans insist on talking about the past? Its because its by far the easiest thing to talk about. It requires no analytical skills, no learned knowledge, and no understanding. Face it, its far easier to talk about what sweets we used to like than how to deconceptualise French art house cinema. People don’t even need to be right, so long as it seems plausible. I suppose that’s why to announce your age before you state something. To give you authority before you spew a load of spurious guff about how much better and harder it was in the past.