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November 29 I don't share your greed. The only card I need is the ace of spades, the ace of spades...Most people who know me will be well aware that I've long had a bit of a fascination with one of the true legends of rock - yes, Motorhead frontman Ian 'Lemmy' Kilmister.
And the other day, I happened to chance upon a highly amusing Lemmy-related story on BBC news online. You can view this by clicking here.
Imagine that - playing for a football team that's sponsored by Motorhead!
In a word - rock! November 27 And all the memories of the pubs and the clubs and the drugs and the tubs we shared together, will stay with me forever…Well, the weekend I’ve just had was probably pretty similar to Pete Doherty’s really – in that it involved me having my veins pumped with several hundred quid’s worth of drugs! Don’t get too alarmed though – as the ‘fix’ in question was actually a series of vaccinations that I need ready for when I go off travelling next year. I suppose it’s money well spent really, as I can’t say I particularly want to end up getting rabies of malaria! However, it has left my bank account in a rather sorry state – and only a few days after payday as well! That said, this weekend did offer me a timely reminder of something we are often guilty of forgetting in this crazy world of consumerism where we all have to have the latest plasma screen TV and whatnot - that some of the best things in life are the simple pleasures that don’t actually cost anything. Such as? Well, feeding the ducks! After departing for the drug dealer’s premises you see, I headed down to the City Ground ready for Nottingham Forest’s home game against Millwall. And with having a bit of time to kill before I was due to go and meet some fellow Forest-goers, I decided to go and sit by the River Trent and eat a picnic that I’d brought along with me, consisting of a load of sandwiches left over from a buffet that there’d been at my work the previous day. Inevitably, a number of passing wildfowl quite made it very apparent that my lunch was a matter of great interest to them - and as soon as I started flinging a few titbits their way, I quickly found myself surrounded by swans, geese, ducks and seagulls, all keen to muscle in on the sarnie action! It was a real case of 'Eh-up, me duck' - and I love birds’ attitude when they want your food. A far cry from dogs, who do the whole ‘trying to look cute’ thing, geese in particular just stare at you in a slightly belligerent way, as if they think they have a divine right to extort food from you! I’m no Dr Doolittle, but you suspect their impatient honks, in goose-speak, are something like “Come on then, I haven’t got all day – stop fannying about and gimme some fookin’ scran, bitch!” Just as amusing as the geese were the seagulls, who performed some spectacular aerobatics in their attempts – often successful - to catch some of the bits of bread I was flinging before they hit the riverbank. I’m probably a bit of a sad case, but all this little episode entertained me no end! And the fact that Forest went on to record an emphatic 3-1 win against Millwall – well, it was a good day all round really! November 24 Got to teach an' everything you learn, will point to the fact that time is eternal...Well, it’s been an eventful week – and it’s nowhere near finished yet! Work over the last few days has been a complete whirlwind, including a trip to Nottingham Crown Court to observe part of a murder trial, and then a media shitstorm over another matter. We also had a Dukes of Hazzard-style car chase yesterday through the site where I work! Never a dull moment..! But that's just work – and as we all know, there’s much more important things in life. Such as music! And this week has seen me pack quite a lot in on that front, what with me having been to three gigs – all of which were interesting, and all for very different reasons! The first gig was Alabama 3, who played an acoustic set at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham. Now if you’ve heard of the A3, it’s more than likely because one of their songs – ‘Woke Up This Morning’ – is used as the theme tune for the TV series ‘The Sopranos’. For those who DON'T know them, they are a bonkers collective from London, whose music is best described as a hybrid of country and acid house! Oh, and as if that isn’t crazy enough for you, their two frontmen – who go by the understated monikers of Larry Love and The Very Reverend Dr D Wayne Love – both perform entire gigs pretending they’re a pair of deranged preachers from the Bible Belt, with unerring pseudo Deep South drawls! All of this, needless to say, makes for a very entertaining show whenever the A3 play live! For me, highlight of this latest gig was ‘Hello… I’m Johnny Cash’, a track from their last album. Part of the chorus of this song goes, surprisingly enough, "Hello… I’m Johnny Cash" – and at this point in their rendition, Larry Love jumped into the crowd and challenged members of the audience to take the mic and sing the line in question in the style of the Man in Black! And to be fair, here were actually a couple of sterling attempts! So that was the A3! Next up was The Aliens, a new band who I went to see at another venue in Nottingham called The Social, purely on the strength of their line-up including three former members of the Beta Band. The Beta Band, incidentally, are responsible for a long-running in-joke between me and my mate James. Basically, James and I were at one of their gigs a couple of years ago… and fuelled by alcohol, we spent much of the gig shouting out for a particular song – ‘Dog’s Got a Bone’ Looking back, I think our motive here was more to do with the fact that "Dog’s Got a Bone!" is quite a funny thing to shout out when you’re drunk than any particular desire to hear the song – ace as it is. Either way though, it appeared our (very vocal!) requests was set to fall on deaf ears - as by the time the Beta Band got to the "This is our last song, thanks very much" stage of the evening, there’d not been a whiff of dogs or bones! Gloriously though, after exiting the stage, the band came back on for an encore. And the first song of the encore? Yes, ‘Dog’s Got a Bone’! Needless to say, James and me were overjoyed. You probably had to be there really, but it’s an incident that’s gone down in legend – at least to James and me, anyway! Indeed, there’s been a number of times subsequently when I’ve arranged to meet James at a gig and haven’t been able to spot him in a packed venue - yet we’ve managed to make our respective whereabouts known to one another by simply shouting out ‘Dog’s Got a Bone’! You get some strange looks off people, but it’s a very effective system, and one for which we have the Beta Band to thank! But anyway, what of The Aliens? Well, they were very good – not a million miles away from the genius skewed pop of the Beta Band. Definitely ‘ones to watch’! Lastly then, my third gig was one in which I actually took part! It was a show held up in Huddersfield as part of Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, orchestrated by Bill Drummond – as in the guy from The KLF, who infamously burnt a million quid in cash. I’ve always found Drummond quite a fascinating character, and as such I snapped up a ticket as soon as I heard about the show – which the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s website described as follows: "Bill Drummond will be hosting introductions to The17 throughout the Festival. The17 IS A CHOIR. ITS MUSIC HAS NO HISTORY, FOLLOWS NO TRADITIONS, RECOGNISES NO CONTEMPORARIES. The17 HAS MANY VOICES. IT USES NO LIBRETTO, LYRICS OR WORDS; NO TIME SIGNATURES, RHYTHM OR BEATS; AND HAS NO KNOWLEDGE OF MELODY, COUNTERPOINT OR HARMONY. The17 STRUGGLES WITH THE DARK AND RESPONDS TO THE LIGHT. Please note: Tickets are limited - only 17 available." As I set off to Huddersfield, I was certain of one thing – that whether the show ended up being brilliant or a load of pretentious guff, it certainly wouldn’t be dull! One thing I didn’t know though till I arrived was that, rather than simply sitting down and enjoying some music, I, and the rest of the audience, would actually BE the music! First though, after being ushered into a dimly-lit room and given some red wine, we were given an introductory explanation by Drummond on the whole concept of The17. Basically, it all comes from Drummond’s belief that music has become too much of a staid, carefully-marketed commodity. To recapture the magic that made him fall in love with music in the first place, he feels we need to find ways to make it feel like a unique ‘moment’ each time we listen to something. Now I could relate to this. As many of you will know, I’m a big fan of a band called the Flaming Lips – indeed, this site is actually named after one of their albums, ‘The Soft Bulletin’! In addition though to 'The Soft Bulletin', one of many other amazing albums created by the Lips is ‘Zaireeka’, which was released on four CDs - all of which you have to play simultaneously! Needless to say, it’s a bit of an effort to set up four stereos and have enough people to hit the ‘play’ button on each of them at exactly the same time – so by definition, each time you play ‘Zaireeka’, it’s a becomes a unique 'moment'. And this performance of The17 proved to be a bit of a moment too. Basically, for one night, the 17 of us who attended the show WERE The17 – and after the introductions were done, we duly got to work! Things kicked off with Drummond hitting a note on a piano – which we, as The17, had to sing continuously for the next five minutes! This was all being recorded by Drummond’s accomplices, John and ‘Gimpo’. Naturally, it all felt a bit weird at first – though Drummond turned all the lights out as soon as we started singing… and while this made the whole thing seem slightly sinister, the darkness did make everyone feel much less self-conscious!. It’s funny though – the one thing that I’m always most aware of whenever I try to sing is how crap I sound! et on this occasion, the fact that there were 16 other people singing the same note at the same time meant I couldn’t actually hear myself unless I stuck my fingers in my ears. But what happened at the end of the five minutes? Well, we simply had to repeat the exercise four times with a series of different notes! Each time, Drummond instructed us to try and imagine we were singing as a series of different personas – for instance, for one of the notes we had to imagine we were full of the arrogance of youth! By the end of the recording, we’d be singing constantly for 25 minutes – a surprisingly tiring experience! At this point we were ushered out of the room, while Drummond and co mixed all of the recordings together into one five-minute piece of music – and as soon as they’d done this, we were allowed back in the hear the results. Needless to say, it was very interesting indeed – an eerie wall of sound is probably the best way to describe it. It’s probably not.the sort of thing I’d really want to listen to at home – but then, that was never the point with The17. It was, of course, all about creating a moment – and fittingly, as soon as we’d finished listening to the piece of music we’d just created, Drummond deleted the file from the laptop onto which it had been recorded… so it was lost forever! All in all, a pretty amazing experience. It’s certainly not every day you get to sing in an experimental choir conducted by arguably one of the most subversive men in the history of modern art and pop! For more info about The17, click here. No time for losers - cos we are the champions!If you're a regular visitor to this site, then you'll be well aware that one of the subjects I tend to witter on about on with great regularity is the football team I support - Nottingham Forest.
For the benefit of any non-footy types among you, Forest have a very proud history - not least the fact that, for two years running in 1979 and 1980, they were champions of Europe.
Sadly though, recent years have seen Forest grab people's attention for all the wrong reasons. Thanks to the club employing a succession of hapless managers, they last few seasons have seen them plummet, frankly, to unprecedented levels of shitness for a former European champion.
Happily, it's starting to look like things are on the up again. However, one of the many humiliations associated with Forest's current lowly status is that the club are obligated to compete in a completely meaningtless cup competition called the Johnstone's Paint Trophy!
To be fair to Forest though, they're making a decent fist of this, having already sailed through to the 'area quarter final'. However, there's still no escaping the fact that the competition is utterly pointless - a fact underlined by the fact that the Reds' victory against Brentford in the second round attracted the club's lowest crowd for a home game since the war!
To be fair though to the organisers of the JPT, they're not taking this indifference lying down. As a means of drumming up interest among fans, they sent the actual trophy itself on a tour of paint retailers across UK this week - the idea being that fans could come along and have their photo taken with it!
Yesterday , the trophy was in Nottingham - and always eager for a daft photo opportunity, my brother Al and me couldn't resist going along.. dressed, naturally, in matching Forest shirts!
Surprisingly, the trophy is actually quite impressive - certainly pretty hefty! According to the woman from Johnstones Paint who was looking after it, it cost about eight grand to have made - and so needless to say, she looked quite alarmed when I grabbed it and proceeded to wave it in the air in the manner of a triumphant footballer after a cup final victory!
Guess it just remains to be seen now whether the Forest team will be pulling similar poses come April..! November 21 Sell me a coat I can wear, and a comb for my hair. I would dance you to death on a Friday night...Being someone who’s obsessed with music to a possibly unhealthy degree, there’s seldom a minute of the day when I don’t have a tune rattling round my brain. Maddeningly, the kind of songs that get stuck in my head often tend to be among the more dubious selections from the rich tapestry of pop. For instance, I spent a whole day yesterday with an internal soundtrack of ‘Never Forget’ by bloody Take That – probably something to do with the fact that it came on the radio as I was driving to work in the morning! Happily though, today has brought a much superior song – namely ‘Walk You Home Tonight’, by tea cosy-headed Mancunian troubadour Badly Drawn Boy.
The track is from BDB’s latest album ‘Born in the UK’… which I’m loving at the moment. However, while it’s a great record, possibly the most interesting thing about ‘Born in the UK’ for me personally is the circumstances in which I happened to buy my copy.
It was a few Saturdays ago, and I’d popped into Nottingham city centre to get a few things – one of them being a copy of ‘Born in the UK’. I decided that the record store Fopp would be where I’d make my purchase – and after a few minutes spent browsing the racks, I duly picked up a copy and headed for the tills. It was when I reached the front of the queue that I did a complete double-take – as it suddenly dawned on me that the guy serving me was none other than James Flower, the keyboard player from Six By Seven!
Now let me just say a few words about Six By Seven for the benefit of those of you who aren’t familiar with them – and to be fair, that’s probably most of you, because they’re not a band that ever enjoyed a huge degree of mainstream success. Nevertheless, they have long been one of my favourite bands - and not just because they happen to come from Nottingham! Their first three albums in particular contain some of the most spellbinding music I have ever heard… and it was a sad day for me personally when I discovered last year that they’d decided to call it a day.
Now it’s funny… when I was a lot younger and less worldly, I always thought that any band with a record deal must be rolling in cash. I’ve subsequently learned a bit about the music industry though – and in reality, it’s actually only bands that manage to sell LOTS of records that ever manage to make a decent living out of their music. Hence, rather than retire to a trout farm somewhere, James Flower is clearly no different to you or I, in that he has to go out and earn an honest crust – in his case, by working behind the counter at Fopp.
And for me – well, in my little world, I felt a bit like how a Yes fan might feel if they walked into their local record emporium, to find Rick Wakeman serving behind the counter! Naturally though, I was far too cool to give any inkling that I recognised him..!
So there you have it - quite an interesting little tale, if I say so myself... If any of you are sufficiently intrigued to want to investigate the music of Six By Seven, I’d heartily recommend their debut album ‘The Things We Make’ as a starting point. And if you want to find out a bit more about the band, click here to view an interview I did with their frontman Chris Olley back in 2004 for the BBC website. The page on the BBC site that you’ll be redirected to also has some cool pictures of the band that I took during a gig they did in Nottingham… November 20 Goodnight Irene, I'll see you in my dreams...Well, another busy weekend!
To start off with, Friday saw me spend the whole night on the end of a red hot telephone, taking credit card donations for Children in Need!
This is something I've done every year now for the last four years. As a lot of you will know, I used to work at the head office of Boots The Chemists - and every year, Boots give up their call centre facilities to Children in Need for the evening, and get staff members to volunteer to answer the phones.
As someone who likes to try and 'do his bit' for good causes, I've always found this to be an enjoyable and rewarding experierience. And though I left Boots in 2004, I still play football with a few of the guys who work in the call centre... and they always fix it for me to sneak back in and help out.
This year, I did the shift commonly referred to as 'The Lionel' . Yes, I was on the phones 'All Night Long' - from the moment the lines opened at 7pm, right through to when they closed at 2am! Needless to say, I was cream-crackered by the end of the night... especially with having gone into it straight from a busy day at work.
It was a successful night though, with the Boots call centre taking around £300,000 in donations - out of a around £18 million raised in total across the country.
As for the rest of the weekend - well, Saturday saw me take a step closer to achieving a long-held ambition of mine.
Yes, it probably makes me a bit of a trainspotter... but I've long wanted be able lay claim to having visited each of the country's 92 football league grounds.
As it happens, I'm not far off achieving this goal. Indeed, I'm a big believer in trying to take positives from even the crappiest of situations - and one good thing about my beloved Nottingham Forest having nosedived down the divisions in recent years is the fact that it's enabled me to tick off lots of new grounds.
I mean, the Chelsea and Manchester United fans of this world might have the razzmatazz of the Premiership - BUT, have they ever been to Yeovil or Hartlepool?!
A few days ago I bought tickets for Al and me for Forest's forthcoming game away at Bournemouth... which will be another ground ticked off the list.
But my keen-ness to qualify as a fully paid-up member of the '92 club' is such that I'm by no means relying on just Forest games to throw up opportunities to visit 'new grounds'. For instance, I recently made arrangements to get Brentford in the bag by scheduling a visit to London next month to see my mate Susan, deliberately picking a weekend when Brentford - who Susan's boyfriend Steve supports - are playing at home.
This weekend meanwhile, I managed to get Bury crossed off the list - by attending their home game against Bristol Rovers!
Now this may sound a bit of a random game for me to have gone to! However, here was some rhyme and reason to it - namely, the fact that my mate Gaz was going.
Though Gaz has lived in Nottingham for years, he's originally from down Bristol way, and remains a staunch Rovers fan. I'd been promising him for years that I'd join him on a Rovers away trip - and so the game at Bury ended up becoming my long-awaited introduction to the world of 'The Gas' (as Rovers fans mysteriously refer to their team!)
Pleasingly, the match eventually proved to be worth braving the biting cold for - as despite Bury having home advantage and going into the game on the back of seven straight victories, The Gas finished 2-0 winners.
To be fair though, the fact that the Gas bagged all three points was largely down to an astonishing performance by goalkeeper Steve Phillips, who pulled off a good four or five top-drawer saves. Amusingly, this performance inspired a chant of "Thank fuck we've got you in goal" from the few hundred travelling Rovers fans - who also, bizarrely, spent much of the game 'singing' the famous horn part from 'Ring of Fire' by Johnny Cash!
Despite Gaz's confident prediction though that I'd be a fully converted 'Gashead' by full-time, I'm pleased to report though that I'll definitely be back at the City Ground cheering on Forest this coming Saturday..! November 16 On a rope, on a rope, on a rope, on a rope, on a rope...As you’ll probably know if you’re reading this, I’m someone who’s been fascinated by the media for pretty much as long as I can remember.
One of the things about the media that continues to amuse me greatly to this day is ‘local news’. Though they probably don’t mean to, provincial newspapers are often an immense source of hilarity – especially ones for places where there’s not a lot going on, and the reporters clearly have to do a lot of barrel-scraping in order to actually gather enough ‘news’ to fill the paper. Not that I’m knocking the hacks in question – as I know what it’s like t from the time I spent myself working on the Chester Evening Leader, where I did more than my fair share of ‘cat stuck up tree’-type stories!
It’s probably from having had this experience that I find provincial newspapers so entertaining. A classic example is the newspaper for the Nottinghamshire town of Hucknall, which is called the Hucknall Dispatch. The title in question is a weekly, and I get it sent to me at work – as the part of the NHS that I work for includes a major hospital site in Hucknall… so we like to keep tabs and make sure they’re not publishing any scurrilous lies about us!
Anyway – receiving the Dispatch has long been one of the highlights of my week at work, purely because there’s seldom an edition that doesn’t contain an unintentionally hilarious ‘story’. One week for instance, there’d clearly been so little going on in the local area that the main front page story was ‘HUCKNALL MIGHT BE GETTING A LIDL’. You can just imagine the frenzy of excitement that this must have caused among the people of the town! It’s clearly not just me that finds this sort of stuff funny either. A group of people I know who work at the Nottingham Evening Post have, for a number of years, actually kept a scrapbook of amusing stuff that’s appeared in newspapers – usually stories from their own title! The tome in question is known as ‘The Book of Woe’ - and I sincerely hope it somehow gets published one day, as it’s a work of twisted genius!
Local radio can also be similarly funny. I often tune into BBC Radio Nottingham, and the daytime shows where people can ring in are sometimes priceless. “Right, we’ve got Brenda on the line from Bobbers Mill. Brenda, what can we do for you?”
“Oh hi [insert name of presenter], I’m wondering if anyone has any brown pipe-cleaners that they don’t need…” “Okay listeners – if anyone has any brown pipe-cleaners that they can spare for Brenda, then please give us a call on Nottingham nine three-four, three-four, three-four…”
It was a recent such snapshot of the utterly banal that actually inspired me to ramble on along this theme. Basically, I was sat in a car listening to Radio Nottingham the other week – and goodness knows why, but the presenter was getting people to phone in with stories of mishaps that they’ve had in graveyards!
Now some of you may have met my good friend Mikey B – a Scouser who’s now living out in Malaysia. Now as well as being a top bloke, Mikey B is responsible for one of the funniest stories I have ever heard – namely, an episode from his misspent youth when he somehow managed to get trapped in a disused crypt and ended up having to be rescued by emergency services!
Needless to say, this is a tale that would blow any other ‘mishaps in graveyards’ story out of the water – so I quickly rattled off a text to Radio Nottingham, explaining the gist of what happened, in the hope that they’d read it out on air! Scandalously though, my missive was completely overlooked – instead, they let Fred from Beeston blather on for seemingly half an hour about how a gravestone once nearly fell on him. Yawn…
Still, if any of you want to read a brilliant, blow-by-blow eye witness account of what happened with Mikey B and the crypt, you can do so by clicking here. Enjoy! November 14 Yeah she looks like a painting - Jackson Pollock's Number Five...My Gran and I went along to an exhibition last night that's just opened of some paintings by a local artist called Phil Dakin. And very good it was too!
Most of the works included were portraits of famous people, including all four Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. If any of you who live in Nottingham are interested, the exhibition's running till the end of the month - full details can be found by clicking here. November 13 Drag your feathers 'cross the dancefloor. Throw your shapes, electric blue...Two very amusing news items caught my attention today.
First of all, as someone who actually competed in the UK Air Guitar Championships back in 2003 - one of the more bizaare episodes of my brief but eventful time as a freelance music journalist! - I was amazed to learn that a T-Shirt has been invented that actually blasts out music whenever the wearer strums the hallowed 'oxygen axe'!
You can view this story online by clicking here. Whatever will they think of next?!
Equally amusing meanwhile was a story on the BBC website - which read as follows...
Talent scouts are looking for a parrot which may star in the next Pirates Of The Caribbean alongside Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom.
The "feathered superstar" will be required to speak and learn a script. It will also be an official "spokesparrot" for the film. The chosen avian will have an "outgoing personality" and "screen presence", a spokesperson for Disney said. The auditions will be held at Disney's office in Hammersmith, west London. Disney executives, parrot expert Peter Bloom, and Mark Harden, the Pirates Of The Caribbean animal trainer, will judge the birds on 16 November. Mr Bloom said: "Most parrots can talk if they are given the right encouragement... Amazon parrots and African Greys are the most talkative, so anyone that owns one has got a great chance." Mr Harden emphasised that the bird needs to be well-behaved. "Obviously speaking is important but, ironically, when on set the most important thing is that the parrot can sit quietly on somebody's shoulder - in this case a pirate - and not muck around with the character's hair, hat or earrings." The question is - should, or should I not, take my parrot Doris (see photo below) along to this audition?! Or would this make me no better than one of those horrible pushy parents that force their kids to enter talent contests etc?! November 12 Monday comes crashing in, and all the world looks grey again. Faces on the train seem grim when yesterday the same were smiling...Well, another weekend over. It's been a good 'un though - what with me having spent most of it in North Wales as part of my mate Paul's stag do!
The signs were there from the off that it was going to be an entertaining couple of days!
With him being the only other person from the midlands partaking in the stag do, I'd arranged to travel to Wales with Ed - the agreed plan having been that he'd get the train from Grantham (where he lives) to Nottingham (where I live)... and that we'd then hit the road to Wales from there.
Just as I was about to leave the house though to pick up Ed from Nottingham station, I received a slightly distressed text message from him, in which he confessed to having forgotten to pack an essential item that he'd been tasked with bringing - namely, a golf ball!
Now you will probably be aware that aforesaid object is an essentual prop for the sort of drinking games that invariably take place on any stag do. You will also probaby be aware that I'm someone who can't resist a challenge - and so I immediately decided I would take responsibility for saving the day by acquiring!
Now I know bugger all about golf - nevertheless, I immediately knew where I could go to get the required item! For when we were kids, my brother Al and I used to take great delight in going to this particular footpath that backed onto the local driving range, and reaching through the fence and nicking golf balls! We used to collect literally hundreds of them - quite why I'm not really sure, as we never actually did anything with them once we'd got our sweaty mitts on them!
But even so, our kleptomania was not without its consequences... because presumably convinced that the copious amounts of mysteriously disappearing golf balls were being flogged for a tidy profit, the powers-that-be at the driving range eventually started printing 'STOLEN FROM CARLTON FORUM' on them!
Needless to say, this was a proud moment for the brothers Fisher..!
Alas though, as I jumped in the car with the intention of revisiting my misspent youth, I suddenly remembered that the driving range actually got flattened a few years ago and turned into a housing estate. Presumably it never recovered from the losses incurred through thieving local urchins!
Happily though, I quickly thought of a plan B, and promptly found myself heading to the posh golf club up the road, having made the reasonable assumption that they'd probably have a shop where golfing paraphernalia could be purchased! Alas though, I arrived to find a barrier at the gate - and the guy on the other end of the intercom was clearly VERY confused by the sound of a slightly breathless man going "Er, hi... can I come and buy a golf ball please?"
Somewhat reluctantly though, they let me in... and after getting some strange looks off a group of posho golf types wearing dodgy Alan Partridge-style Slazenger jumpers, I left triumphant with what I had set out in search of. The weekend was saved then - and pleasingly, it proved to be a belter!
The venue for the stag do was a very pleasant small town called Machynlleth. We stayed for two nights in a B&B, where we merrily quaffed some truly great food... not to mention copious amounts of booze!
In addition, the Saturday morning saw us prove what men we were, by shooting guns at clay pigeons - which was great fun! Following the rather shameful sight of a dozen or so grown men bunking over a fence onto the local school sports field, we also fitted in a crafty game of footy on the Saturday afternoon!
You're probably thinking that this is more than enough physical endeavour for one weekend. But oh no - in addition, there was a point when we were all going to get up early on the Sunday morning too and attempt to climb Mount Snowdon! Perhaps unsurprisingly though, this ended up never happening!
Still, a great weekend - have just uploaded a few pics to my gallery. I've also a uploaded a couple of video clips to YouTube - one which can be viewed by clicking here, and the other by clicking here!
Roll on the wedding now I guess! November 09 Get down to the City Ground, it's the place where you wanna be. See the boys in red and white play football that's a joy to see...I've just had my latest monthly 'fan's view on latest goings-on at Nottingham Forest' column published on the Nottingham culture website Left Lion.
Anyone who's remotely arsed can view this by clicking here.
Meanwhile, in other web-based entertainment, I was very amused to discover today that music rag the NME is running a competition on its website where the winner will get to carry out the ultimate piece of rock star folly - yes, chucking a TV out of a hotel window!
Here's the wording from the website if you don't believe me..!
Yep, we’re offering one unhinged reader the chance-of-a-lifetime opportunity to act like a drug-addled rock god and chuck a big telly out of a posh London hotel window. Gasp as the big plastic beast smashes to smithereens! Howl as passers-by dash away in terror! Feel a slight sense of shame that you didn’t become an accountant like your mother wanted you to (NB:groupies not included in the prize). We’re having the whole thing filmed for NME.COM to immortalise you in all your depraved glory, and we’re throwing in a limited-edition Epiphone Guitar Hero guitar to get you on the road to long-term rock stardom, as well as a copy of the new Guitar Hero game for the PlayStation 2. The competition closes at midnight Monday November 13.
Needless to say, my entry for this competition has been submitted - though to be fair, the prize is an experience that's sort of already on my 'been there, done that' list. In my case however, the projectile was actually a hi-fi rather than a TV... and rather than a hotel it was actually hurled from an upstairs window of the house that my brother Al and I were renting at the time!
Basically, it was back in 2002. Aforesaid electrical appliance had given up the ghost - and with the two of us generally being a bit of a bad influence on each another when it comes to encouraging one another to get up to mischief, Al and me decided to finish it off for good in the most spectacular of fashions!
Pleased to say that the hi-fi made a satisfying thud as it hit the patio. I seem to remember that we filmed the whole episode - Al could probably dig out the footage if anyone's actually arsed about seeing it! November 08 Boo to the business world, you know a girl who's tax-free on her back and making petty cash, while you are working for the joy of giving...A month or so ago, I waxed lyrical on this site about the fact that there is actually such thing as International Talk ‘Like a Pirate’ Day! Of course, there’s a ‘National Such and Such Day’ for pretty much everything in this crazy world. Indeed, I got sent a list of all the health-related ones at work the other day… and it was so long that I almost mistook it for War and Peace by Tolstoy!
Nevertheless, I did read through the list from start to finish - and I’m glad I did, because there were four corkers on there!
In the case of most of the four, the links with health struck me as being tenuous to say the least! However, I shall be supporting all four wholeheartedly - not least International Scouse Day, what with me having spent nearly four years of my life as a Liverpool resident…
Anyway - without further a do, here’s four dates for the diaries of any right thinking person. And no jokes please about International Scouse Day being a day when everyone has to go out robbing hub caps!
Monday 20 November 2006 National Chilli Week “Week promoting the positive health and lifestyle benefits associated with eating chillies. The fiery peppers are known as a good source of vitamin C which helps protect the body from colds and flu, but also trigger the release of endorphins, which lift the spirits and libido. Runs until November 26.”
March 2007 - tbc International Scouse Day “Celebration of all things Liverpudlian, raising funds for The Alder Hey Imagine Appeal. Liverpudlians cook scouse (lamb and veg stew) at scouse parties across the UK.”
March 2007 - tbc National Nap At Work Week
“Timed to coincide with the clocks going forward and dedicated promoting the positive aspects of napping at work.”
Friday 22 June 2007 Beard Week 2007
“Beard Liberation Front promotes the growth of facial hair and draws attention to the dangers of shaving. Runs until June 29.” November 06 Hold the line... love isn't always on time...Pleased to report that I had an all too rare experience this morning - yes, a pleasurable call to a customer service helpline!
The call in question was to my mobile phone network provider, and the pleasure actually came in what you'd expect to be the biggest ballache of the whole thing - namely, the inevitable moment when I got put on hold. For rather than the usual 'Hits of Kenny G played by Pan Pipes' guff that you tend to be subjected to in these situations, 3 Mobile's on-hold music was actually a song by one of my very favourite bands - Scottish indie legends Belle and Sebastian!
It all reminded me of a episode many moons ago in my illustrious (?!) journalism career, back when I was doing some work experience down in Bath on the now-defunct national footy magazine 'Total Football'. During the week I spent at the magazine, I had to ring up a football club to find something out, and ended up getting put on hold. And this got me thinking - why didn't I ring round every club in the country, ask to be put on hold... and then write a piece for the magazine about which clubs have the coolest on-hold music!
I duly suggested this to the editor - and with 'Total Football' having been a fairly irreverent magazine, he loved the idea and told me to go to it!
Hence, I duly embarked upon the same conversation 92 times...
'Hello, Such and Such Football Club... how can I help?"
"Oh hi... could you put me on hold please?"
Needless to say, this caused mass confusion at football clubs across the land! The only time I've heard greater bewilderment in the voice of a switchboard operator was during the long drive home from the Glastonbury festival in 2003, when one of my friends I was with decided it'd be a right wheeze to phone up one of those 'How am I driving?' numbers you get on the back of lorries - but to offer lavish praise upon the driver about how courteous and wonderful he was!
Sadly, in the mists of time, I forget which football club it was who had the coolest on-hold music. If anyone is sufficiently intrigued though, I can, upon request, trawl through my old cuttings files and dig out the article that I wrote! November 04 The priest in the booth had a photographic memory for all he had heard. He took all of my sins, and wrote a pocket novel called 'The State I Am In'...I had to go and see my lawyer today. Or yesterday to be strictly accurate, seeing as it's now the small hours of the morning as I sit doodling these words!
Now the aforementioned appointment probably sounds slightly high-faluted and exciting - as though I'm some sort of swashbuckling business tycoon in a Hollywood blockbuster... the sort of character that'd probably be played by Bruce Willis or someone. Needless to say though, the reality was much more mundane, In fact, the biggest drama of the whole thing was the lunchtime traffic I got caught up in on the way, which made me arrive late. Naturally, with lawyers charging silly money for their time, I'd sprinted the 200 or so metres to their office from the parking space I managed to find in order to keep my late-ness to a bare minimum - only to find, as I arrived out of breath, that my legal eagle had been over-running all along. Typical! Now if I was Canadian singer-songwriter harridan Alanis Morissette, I'd probably have composed a ludicrous vignette describing this episode as being like having 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife. Or something. Fortunately though, I'm not Alanis Morisette! I was nevertheless cursing at the fact that I'd rushed when I needn't have. Yet it turned out to be one of those scenarios where, in hindsight, I ended up being quite happy with how things panned out. This is mainly because I spent the 20 minutes that I had to wait for my appointment reading a newspaper that I never normally read... and chanced upon one of the funniest articles I've read in ages. The paper in question was the Times, and the article was about a guy who's waging a one-man war against these cretins you get from overseas who send you emails trying to scam money out of you. You know the type - "Dear Honoured Friend, I am the widow of a rich deceased Sultan, and I need you to help me ensure I don't lose his inheritence by transferring it into a bank account in your country. Please send me your bank details and I will reward you by letting you keep 10% of the money..." To be honest, I have little sympathy with anyone who's enough of a simpleton to be taken in by such a scam - but nevertheless, the article in the Times makes for enormously entertaining reading. You can view it on the Times' website by clicking here. Meanwhile, the same edition of the Times also had an article in about Guilty Pleasures! Now if you're familiar with the term Guilty Pleasures, it'll probably be in a musical context - what with Sean Rowley's Guilty Pleasures club night having been something of a mini-phenomenon in the last few years. For those of you who are uninitiated, the ethos is all about embracing those records that are deeply uncool, but which you nevertheless secretly love! '9 to 5' by Dolly Parton, 'Easy Lover' by Phil Collins... that sort of thing! It's all fairly interactive too, with punters encouraged to bring CDs along featuring their own favourite Guilty Pleasures for Rowley to play*. What's more, as part of the night there's even a confession booth manned by a guy dressed as a priest, where you can go in and 'fess up to your musical sins. Indeed, I've found it much easier to look myself in the face in the mirror ever since the night I popped in and unburdened myself of the shame of having been to see Mark 'Dire Straits' Knopfler live in concert! "My child, that is a grievous sin!" the priest gasped, before passing me a shot of vodka for absolution! If he thought my confession was bad though, next up was my mate Charles - a truly sick man! - who admitted having a weakness for the truly loathesome 'Lady in Red' by Chris De Burgh! In the article about Guilty Pleasures in the Times though, the concept was actually extended beyond music. And I must say, it hit the nail on the head unerringly - with the various non-musical Guilty Pleasures listed ranging from dog shows to Diedre's Photo Casebook! Again, you can view this article on the Times' website, by clicking here. As with the article about the scambuster guy, it's a very entertaining read - though I was amazed there was no mention of what is surely the ultimate non-musical Guilty Pleasure... yes, going for a leisurely dump at work!!! I defy anyone to deny having gained immense enjoyment from laying a nice big cable in the office crapper, safe in the knowledge that you're being paid for it! Though saying that - if you're a builder and have to use one of those Glastonbury-style portaloos, you may be inclined to disagree..!
* Be careful though if you decide to enter into the spirit of things on this front - as once when I went to a Guilty Pleasures night, I took along a cheesy 'Best Powerballads in the World.. Ever!'-type album, purely on the strength of it having the mighty 'You're the Voice' by John Farnham on it. And the dastardly so and so never gave it me back! November 03 Mr Big Stuff... who do you think you are?!I've been blamed for various things in my time... and not without justification on occasion!
One thing I refuse to accept responsibility for though - much as I'd like to! - is being the man responsible for David Hasselhoff's growing cult status here in the UK.
Yet despite my protestations along these lines, my mate Dan Hawkins* is convinced that I'm some sort of shadowy svenagali figure behind the phoenix-like rise in recent times of 'The Hoff'!
His evidence for this seems to consist of little more than the fact that I happen to have forwarded him one or two Hoff-related joke emails... and also that me and my mate Charlene went to the theatre a couple of years ago to see the great man star as Billy Flynn in the musical Chicago!
But nevertheless, Dan is adamant that the 'Hoff-mania' currently sweeping the nation is entirely down to me. And this belief led to me receiving a very strange item through the post this week...
Now in these cruel times of electronic communication, I think it's fair to say that it's pretty exciting to get anything via snail mail these days - let alone a satisfyingly bulky package!
"What can this be?" I wondered.
Sadly though, the item that met my gaze after I'd torn open the package left me nothing other than bemused! From Dan, it was a 3-DVD box set of a horrifically rubbish-looking 60s sitcom called 'Here Come the Brides', starring David Soul of Starsky and Hutch fame! (See image below).
"Hi Rich," came the accompanying note. "Seeing as you've single-handedly turned the Hoff into a cult figure, I thought you could use this DVD as inspiration for achieving similar success with another David - yes, David Soul"!
Goodness knows where Dan got this DVD monstrosity from! He doesn't know what he's started though - because I intend to fight fire with fire by launching a brand new sport... which I hereby Christen 'Shite DVD Tennis'. Yes, Dan remains merrily oblivious at this moment in time... but having served me 'Here Come the Brides', I've today volleyed right back at him a DVD box set of the entire last series of the unspeakably bad TV series Casualty**!!!
Your move, Hawkins!!!
* For the benefit of anyone familar with the personnel of shite East Anglian cock-rock bands, this a different Dan Hawkins to the one that plays guitar for The Darkness!
** For the benefit of anyone wondering why on earth I ever owned a Casualty DVD box set - well it's all down to my Gran's amusing hatred of aforesaid programme! She loathes it so such that, when I saw a competition a few months back to win aforesaid box set, I couldn't resist entering in her name! Hilariously, this led to my mum getting a phone call a few weeks later from my Gran who, rather confused, wanted to know why she'd received an entire series through the post of her least favourite TV show! The box set has been sat gathering dust ever since on top of my mum and dad's DVD player - so I'm just happy that it's now found a good home!!! |
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