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.

Timbaland's Threat to Grammar

Looks like my hypothesis on Rihanna directly causing the rain has rung true. For the fist time in a generation there is a new song riding high at the top of the popular hit parade, the considerably more sunny Timbaland Ft Keri Hilson with the feel good sunshine mega super hit "The Way I Are". Timbaland spreads himself about too thinly for my liking. In fact if I hear a record which doesn't involve Timbaland in some respect I now feel somewhat cheated. And he always puts those Timbaland beats behind everything – do you think he is listening to one of the few records which he hasn’t produced at home, Adelina Patti perhaps, he just adds his beats to it for his own gratification?

Having a weather-neutral song at the top of the chart might avert the floods, but if number one records are quite so influential to national events, with "The Way I Are" currently the country’s most popular song I do now feel the need pray for the nation's grammar.

Why are we so pedantic with grammar, yet so bad? Signage, which one would imagine would be carefully constructed and often cross checked is a prime candidate for criticism. The number of times I have seen adverts for 'cake's' and the like. Still, its about getting the message across really. I think we could all benefit from being a good deal more fluid with such things, so as to make everything as easy to understand as possible.

What puzzles me more is our obsession with pronunciation. When talking about the popular Spanish rice dish paella, we fall over ourselves backwards to say ‘pie-ae-a’ rather than ‘pie-ella’? Yet I wonder what the capital of France is? Just Paris, not 'Parrie'. And we would always say ‘France’, not ‘Franc-ae’. If you want some hard cheese on your bolognaise, please ask for 'Parm-is-an', not 'parmizagno reggiano'. Thanks.

I doubt Timberland is too concerned about the endemic he may cause with his slap dash attitude to naming records. I just hope no one sings a song about Foot and Mouth.

Rihanna, Umbrellas and Tyrrells

You may remember many moons ago: Tony Blair used to be prime minister, I was at university, the UK hadn't seen any major floods for fifty years (see my facebook note), the sun was shining, forecasters were predicting the best summer on record, and a song called umbrella by a little known Rihanna and Jay-Z was riding high in the charts. Oh wait, some things never change. Despite the fact that we clearly now live in an unrecognisably different country, that sodding song about a rain accessory is still at number one in the popular hit parade. Ten weeks it has been. Ten weeks. Just think about it. Who would go into HMV in late July thinking "I wonder which record I should purchase today?". They might consider it for a minute. Then, after a moment of pondering, a moment of realisation may occur. "I know, I think I will buy that song which as been number one for over three months - Umberella by Rihanna. Yes, that's definitely the record for me". Why would you not have bought it earlier? Surely you would have realised you liked it after it had been number one for two weeks and Urchin FM had been playing it every half hour for five weeks, not thirteen? Maybe the children born due to the joyous heat wave of April 2007 have grown up quicker and are wearing mini skirts sooner than ever, and have now bought the record they were conceived to on iTunes.

But what else used to happen in the pre-historic times which we fondly refer to as April 2007? Oh yeah, I used to write a blog. This one. I haven't really kept it up to date, but then I never said I would. But do I have some updates? Yes I do. You may remember that I wrote a letter to my preferred mainstream supermarket (Sainsbury's) to request that they sell my preferred brand of premium crisps (Tyrrells). Sounds like a marriage made in heaven. Their response is shown below (click the picture).

Basically, although I addressed the letter to the 'Product Team', it was intercepted by the 'Customer Response Team', who correctly identified that Tyrrells aren't stocked by the UK's third largest grocer. They did say they would pass the suggestion to the 'Buyers', who probably won't buy it. A glimmer of hope is given in the sentence "If enough customers want to see a particular item on the shelves, we will certainly do our best to provide it". Maybe I should organise a campaign. On the packaging, Tyrrells now claim not only to be low in fat, but also are sutable for vegans and coeliacs, and to top it off also have a low carbon footprint. Has there ever been a crisp which more perfectly fits the place, time and mood they existed in as much as this? I think not.

Maybe they ought to just stock up on water instead. However, I imagine the majority shoppers, not to mention panic buyers, just want to buy their copies of 'Umbrella' by Rihanna and Jay-Z and be out, though. And when that single ceases to be number one, the clouds will open and the floods will clear.

You Laughed Me Into Bed

I was watching an ancient episode of The Frank Skinner Show with Kylie on it the other day, and she claimed that Frank could probably ‘laugh women into bed’. What a load of crap.

Every single top ten list of the ‘sexiest men’ has George Clooney and Brad Pitt as the top two. David Beckham is usually in there too. These are not funny men. Peter Kay, Johnny Vegas, Jimmy Carr, Jack Dee, Ken Dodd, Ricky Gervais; these are funny men. Are they ever in sexiest men lists? No. Men can not laugh themselves into bed.

Women are so obtuse with their rationale for liking men. Firstly from a physical point of view they sometimes say they think that a man is ‘too good looking’. What is that supposed to mean? I find it endlessly difficult to pin point exactly what sort of men women will find attractive.

Secondly, women do quite clearly seem to be attracted, at least sometimes (note the sometimes Lizzie), by fame and money. Rod Stuart isn’t a very good looking man, as far as I can work out, but he does not seem to have to resort to lonely heart columns to find himself a girl. Peter Stringfellow, Hugh Hefner, any high flying business man – they really don’t seem to have trouble picking up chicks, no matter how grotesque they are.

I suppose it might be deeper than this – women are going for winners, as opposed to the actual amount of money these people have, but it still seems like a pretty bizarre way to choose yourself a husband.

Men are much easier to pin down – they just like endlessly beautiful women. We are hopelessly shallow. We discust me. At least there seems to be some logic to men, though. Money doesn’t seem to come into it at all, I suppose maybe men would actually feel quite threatened by the power of a women earning more money than she is.

But men can not laugh women into bed. Frank finds the chloroform sorts that out.

Primark

The centre of Manchester is mixed – the east is pretty up market these days, with Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, the north is still quirky with botiques and sex shops, but the south really has some catching up to do. Primark is the main attraction here, and it is a pretty sorry place. It has taken up almost all of what was Lewis’s (nothing to do with John) since 2001, and does a roaring trade. It is pretty massive, but so is its client base – single parents, the terminally unemployed, the tight, old people and students. That seems to be about everyone. You have to fight your way around, past maddening crowds of angry mums with bleached blonde hair and at least an inch of their roots on display.

I assumed it must be a northern thing – former industrial workers and old people who still think the war is going on probably think it is their only option, where as the south would be far to civilised for such things, with their ‘Cook Shop’ and Krispy Kream donuts. My trip to the Hammersmith Primark affirmed this view – it was calm, small and almost verging on pleasant. No one pushed past me, and the woman at the checkout even greeted me with a friendly ‘hello’. That is approaching customer service. However, apparently I am wrong – London has its share of these nutters, desperate for some cut price crap too.

Joy of joys, there is now a Primark on Oxford Street, which combines the two worst shopping phenomenon going. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these northerners who just hates everything in the south by default; far from it – aside from the: prices, transport and lack of hills, London is great, with so much to do and so many places to explore. I do hate Oxford Street, though. Why does anyone go there? It is so busy you can hardly walk down the pavement and all the shops are just the generic chain stores you find in every city, with some awful discount t-shirt shops mixed in. The only shop I can think of worth the trip is Selfridges. If you want chains why not just go to a shopping centre? It would be much more pleasant and easy to get around. And now there is Primark.

Apparently on the day it opened two staff had to be taken to hospital, despite the presence of fifty security grads. There wasn’t even a discount, so all this was to avoid a short trip down the Piccadilly line. No one should be shopping at Primark anyway – the quality is just crap. Sure, it might be cheap, but for less than twice as much you can buy something which will last more than twice as long. It will also have the added bonus of actually fitting, so you won’t feel the need to injure yourself again when going back to Primark.

There is a special name for these people, who will needlessly push past their advisories to get clothes, and then buy them even though they don’t fit, without even trying them on, just because they are 50% off. The name for these people is ‘women’. I have honestly known women to buy shoes in the wrong size just because of the wonderful bargain they are getting. You aren’t actually going to wear these, so it is thus a complete waste of money. Not only that, what a waste of resources – it is hardly doing your bit for the environment. But there is just something in women’s mentality which attracts them to bargains. I mentioned a while ago that women only make themselves look good to impress other women, so I assume this is the case for bargains too. “Do you know how much these shoes cost? I got a really good bargain at the Primark sale. They don’t fit, but they only cost 50p”, at which point other women will look impressed and launch into tales of how little their ill fitting clothes cost. I despair.

On Oxford Street there is also a man with a megaphone who tells us that we are all going to die because God wants us to. Hopefully if I have to go to Primark again God will do the kindest thing and finish me off. But not before I have had time to get three t-shirts for a fiver.

Primark Update - I have been told that the Oxford Street Branch is one in one out