TV programme of the month: I'm Alan Partridge. He has the third best slot on Radio Norwich, and he's been away from our screens for too long. Great to have him back, a-haa. Of course not everyone in Norfolk is that dull, loud and opinionated, although the Norfolk councillors now complaining about the show certainly seem to be doing their best to live up to that stereotype.
Film of the month: 28 Days Later. OK, so I nearly chose Harry Potter, but the last five minutes shunted that film down into second place. Instead I've gone for this excellent portrayal of a post-apocalyptic Britain, full of mad red-eyed zombies. Much like the East London I know and love, then.
Pop celebrity comeback of the month: Mark Owen. Former boyband member turns out to be a nice person with a winning personality. Who'd have thought? Or is it just that all the teenage girls who once voted him Smash Hits Most Fanciable Male have since grown up and now reckon he's perfect husband material?
Album of the month: This category is suspended until at least February. Because.
Gigs of the month: There are going to have to be three of these this month, because they're too hard to choose between. Vega 4 at the Water Rats in Kings Cross, The Cling at the Metro Club in Oxford Street, and Kieran and Neil from The Buffseeds live and acoustic at the Enterprise, Chalk Farm. That's Kieran and Neil, by the way, in miniature. Oh, go on, I think the Buffs win again. An excellent performance in an upstairs room decked out like a cheap Greek restaurant, and you should hear Kieran's unaccompanied Genie In A Bottle...
Google search of the month: I've been getting a lot of visits recently from people searching online for the mysterious combination of Chip Hawkes and The Monkees. Now I'm sorry if you've arrived at this page expecting to find out something about the former lead singer of the Tremeloes and the 1960s version of S Club 7, but I know nothing of any importance about these people. This page's appearance on Google is merely a coincidence, because I once happened to write about a chip van, Chesney Hawkes and the last train to Clarksville. Of course, now I've written this post, I'm sure I'll be even higher up the search list than before. This can have its downside, as some people have found to their cost by innocently asking what all this current fuss concerning Mr Beckham is all about. However, I suspect I'll be fine... just so long as I never mention Br*tney Spears and chicken bre*sts in the same sentence.
My parents came down from Norfolk for the day, and we spent most of our time failing to buy any Christmas presents. Not that there weren't lots of shops selling things, because there were, but there weren't any shops selling anything worth buying. Or, perhaps more importantly, there weren't any shops selling anything worth opening on Christmas morning and pretending to be excited about.
So, instead, we headed down to Somerset House to look at the ice rink in the courtyard there. It opened for the winter yesterday, and it's already busy throughout the day with people willing to make complete fools of themselves. Every hour a new group of about a hundred budding skaters is sent out onto the ice. They emerge sheepishly, clutching onto the handrail and shuffling slowly round the edge of the rink. Most look as if they've never been skating before, which of course they haven't. Our intrepid on-the-spot reporter took this picture. Eventually the punters risk their first short skate across the ice, at which point half of them fall over, look up in an embarrassed way and attempt to pick themselves up without getting too cold. After a few falls or near misses most people slowly gain in skill and confidence, and 45 minutes later they're skating round the rink with ease. Unfortunately this is the signal for the ice marshals to announce 'time up', and usher everyone back to the changing rooms. At this point a huge ice-vacuum-cleaner comes out to pick up any severed limbs, or maybe just to smooth over the surface of the ice, and then the whole cycle starts again with a new group of ice virgins. See you down there?
If you've looked upwards in London recently, you'll have have noticed one striking new building taking a dominant position on the City skyline. One minute there was just Tower 42, the old Nat West Tower, and then suddenly there was this 40-storey cigar-shaped skyscraper with green-lit windows.
It's the Swiss RE Tower, otherwise known as 30 St Mary Axe, already better known to Londoners as the Gherkin. Architect Sir Norman Foster was previously responsible for nearby City Hall, also known as the 'glass testicle'. I'm sure it won't be long before this new tower gains a ruder, matching nickname.
Last night they topped off the Gherkin. To celebrate the final steel beam being lifted to the top of the building they set off a 15-minute light and laser show, visible across London. Very impressive it all looked too, even from my 7th floor office a couple of miles away. I already have a stunning view over London as a backdrop to my daily grind, but a gherkin has just improved it.
you say pot-ah-to, we say pot-ay-to
you say tom-ah-to, we say tom-ay-to
you voted Bush, we voted Blair
you follow baseball, we don't care
you eat french fries, we eat chips
you eat huge portions, we don't give tips
you drink mocha lattes, we drink teas
you make movies, we make turkeys
you sailed from Plymouth, we all stayed here
you have no history, we have no power
pot-ay-to, pot-ah-to, ir-ark-i, ir-ack-i
let's call the whole thing off
• 1 litre of orange juice - 78p • 1 litre of orange juice with added calcium - £1.09
Side by side in my local supermarket sit two identical drinks sold in identical cartons, except that one contains a bit of calcium. Less than a tenth of a gram of calcium has been included, but that's added an extra 31p to the cost. At these prices, I reckon one kilogram of calcium would set you back over £4000. Calcium may indeed be good for your bones and teeth, but it seems the supermarket's profits will be looking healthy well before you do. When's Watchdog on next?
Just down the road from here is the Bow Flyover, a less-than glamorous concrete wasteland where the A11 and A12 meet. There's an overpass, an underpass, a roundabout, a lot of traffic lights, and usually four snarling queues of very angry traffic.
A couple of months ago, workmen came to clear away some derelict land on one corner of the roundabout. They took their time removing the debris, removed some high metal fences that blocked the view and slowly levelled the site. Last weekend the only evidence of any construction taking place were a few basic foundations and a couple of workmen drinking tea. Then this evening I walked past and, all of a sudden, a whole new building has sprung up complete with roof. It's by no means an enormous building, and only a single storey high, but it already has doors, furniture and windows. There are a lot of windows at one end, none at all at the other end and, on the side nearest the main road, just the one single window. On closer inspection there's the beginnings of a paved roadway all round the building, with that window on the driver's side, and a number of cling-wrapped plastic tables sat inside. And just visible on one small black pipe sticking up out of the ground is that oh-so-familiar golden arches logo. Ronald McDonald is giving birth.
I read in the paper last week that McDonalds is finally suffering from the global downturn in the economy, or maybe it's just that people don't fancy eating reprocessed cow in a sesame seed bun any more. The corporation are closing 175 restaurants in 10 countries, including six under threat in London. They used to open over 2000 sites worldwide every year but, in this brave new era of cholesterol-inflicted lawsuits, they only plan to open 600 this year. One of that total of new so-called-restaurants will soon be just a couple of minutes walk from my house. I promise not to visit too often, because I prefer real food. Honest.
CBB: Back at the start of Celebrity Big Brother this blog came out in support of Goldie, because he was a diamond geezer, and Anne Diamond, because she was a Diamond. Alas, that seems to have been the kiss of death for both of them. In which case, I'd like to transfer my 'support' to Les and Melinda. Except that, sadly, neither of them are up for eviction tomorrow.
So, Winston Churchill has been chosen as the Greatest Briton ever voted for by a middle-class BBC audience at the start of the 21st Century. That I can cope with, and I'm just about OK with Brunel being second, but Princess Di third? That can't be right - surely there must be some other blue-eyed adulterers far more worthy of the title?
I was nearly home tonight when a police car sped by, sirens blaring and lights flashing, closely followed by the rare sight of a Green Goddess fire engine. Two minutes later the same convoy reappeared on the other side of the road speeding in the opposite direction. Gave me a huge amount of confidence in the current emergency arrangements, that.
Sorry to worry you, but there's only a month to go until Christmas. I find it particularly frightening that a French episode of Only Fools And Horses is expected to be the festive TV highlight, that the two rival Popstars groups will be battling it out for the Christmas number one, and that S Club Juniors are daring to release a single called Puppy Love/Sleigh Ride. Any chance of November going on a bit longer this year?
Gadgets and inventions are very much a part of modern life. Many things that we take for granted today weren't even around ten or twenty years ago, but for many of us life is now unthinkable without them. Some people just have to have the latest gadget, else their life is incomplete. These people can be found kerb-crawling on Tottenham Court Road trying to haggle down the price of some pocket-sized electronic miracle, or else they're queueing outside the Bang & Olufsen shop waiting to purchase the latest overpriced slab of brushed-chrome gadgetry. Meanwhile the rest of us just prefer to wait a bit longer until the technology improves and the price comes down.
I will confess to needing wide screentelevision, compact discs, mobile phones, the internet and broadband in order to survive. However, there is one really common-place gadget that I have never ever felt I needed or wanted. This gadget may only have been around for five years or less, but I still get strange looks when I admit to not having one of them. I confess. I do not own a DVD player.
Now, don't get me wrong, I can see the point of video recorders. A nation's TV viewing changed overnight with the advent of the video recorder, because at last you could watch a programme even if you were out when it was shown, or if there was something else on you wanted to watch at the same time. I love being able to record what I want and to watch it when I want. I'm even pretty good at remembering to watch what I've recorded before I accidentally tape something else over the top of it. However, it appears that most people prefer the other use of the video recorder - the ability to play back pre-recorded videos, as hired or bought from the shops. That's not me. Over the course of the last 20 years I've accumulated a massive collection of just 23 pre-recorded video tapes. And, as I've said, zero DVDs.
The DVD player, like the CD player before it, is the perfect opportunity for entertainment corporations to reissue product you already own, in the hope that you'll buy it again. You may already own Star Wars on video, but we can sell it to you again with better picture quality, and then can we sell it to you again with three minutes of extra footage we didn't think was good enough to put in the original film, plus a commentary by the director that's probably almost worth listening to once, plus a couple of teletext-type pages of biographical information just to pad the menu out. DVDs also have this annoying habit of 'going back to the beginning', so you have to watch the intro again plus the warning not to show this film on an oil-rig, before trying to remember exactly where you were in the film before you accidentally pressed the wrong button. And don't get me started on the great regional-DVD corporate scam to stop people from buying more cheaply abroad, although thankfully this plot does appears to have failed.
So, why don't I do DVDs? It's because I have this annoying thing called a memory, which means that when I've seen a film once I tend to remember the plot and so it doesn't hold up to repeated viewing every Saturday night for a year. I'm happy to wait three years from a film's first showing at the cinema and then watch it when a TV station tells me I ought to. Or, of course, I can video it instead. OK, so the picture quality isn't quite as good, and you can't freeze-frame that one moment where your favourite movie star gets their kit off, but the plot doesn't get any better just because the film's on DVD, and neither does the acting. And I'm not forking out £20 a week, or a grand a year, on a whole wall of shelving at home covered by films I'll only watch once, if that.
So, my apologies if you are the sort of person who's bought all the Star Trek DVDs and arranged them in order so that the spines make up a picture of Captain Janeway, or if there's a rickety pile of plastic cases balanced so precariously on your floor so that you can never find The Matrix even though you know it's in there somewhere, probably twice. I hope you won't ostracise me just because I'm a DVD-less deviant. Who knows, if you ever came round to my place we might even be forced to have a conversation.
Four things I'd rather not have known: • DIY dentistry - what not to do with a pair of pliers when attacked by a luminous green and pink fly.
• Celebrityhell - seems Melinda's running out of clean knickers and Sue's burst a large spot on her face.
• Harry Skywalker - has J K Rowling been stealing her plots from another highly successful fantasy saga?
• Saints3, Arse2 - the footballing depression continues, even if we are still somehow top of the Premiership.
Emma Clarke is the woman who provides the voice for the recorded announcements on the Victoria, Bakerloo, and Central lines. This train terminates at Hainault, via Newbury Park. She also does a lot of voiceovers for adverts, websites, and may even be that voice you get on the phone asking you to press the star button and then hold. Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. It's a pity Emma doesn't do the Hammersmith and City line as well because, unlike the current voice, I bet she could pronounce Bow Road and Plaistow properly. The next station is Green Park. Change at Green Park for Piccadilly and Jubilee lines. Emma was recently interviewed by the folks at b3ta, and comes across as considerably more human than her inanimate underground voice might suggest. Waterloo, how does it feel to have won the war? I shall be smiling more often on the tube now that I know a little more about the personality behind the voice.
I live very near to the BB House. That's the Channel 4 BB House. In fact, that's both of the Channel 4 BB Houses. Or rather, sadly, both of the former Channel 4 BB houses.
I moved to this part of London last year, just after the end of Big Brother 2. The BB House where Craig and Brian reigned supreme was just down the road at Three Mills, and all the housemates' weekly shopping came from my local Tesco nextdoor. I was looking forward to being within walking distance of Big Brother 3, but alas the Channel 4 bosses had failed to get long-term planning permission and the BB House had to be demolished. Now, on the site where Helen and Paul almost snogged each other and Nasty Nick was unmasked, there's just a grassy wasteland. No plaques, no tourists with cameras, just a nature trail for local schools and a great view of the local gasworks. Channel 4 have decamped to Borehamwood, only a few hundred yards away from that other legendary East End location - the set of Albert Square.
That still left one more major Channel 4 location round here, the lock-keeper's cottages used by the Big Breakfast. Home to Chris and Gaby, and Johnny and Denise, this garishly-painted building by the Bow River hosted a breakfast TV revolution for almost ten years. Had I ever been awake enough I could have wandered up to Old Ford Lock and hung over the fence to gawp at C-list celebrities giving D-list interviews and playing Z-list games. Alas, Channel 4 bosses decided that the Big Breakfast's days were numbered and the show was to be terminated. Never mind that the show's replacement, RI:SE, was to be vacant drivel watched by nobody, it was time to consign Zig and Zag to the scrap heap. After an emotional final show last Easter the vacant house was mothballed, ready to be put up for sale for an estimated £1million. And then, earlier this month, the cottage mysteriously burnt to the ground, undoubtedly in an arson attack and definitely not as part of any Channel 4 insurance scam.
I used to live very near to the BB House. Alas, I now live within walking distance of nothing more than memories.
lakeside: I've bin aht up Essex Cafedral, uvverwise known az Laikeside shoppin centa. the ole place wuz fulla locals aht buyin chrissy prezzies n lookin ard. i wuz opin ta buy sum prezzies of me own but there wernt nuffink worf gettin, just a lot of overpriced tat. looked ta me like all der geezers in sarf essex av no hair wile all der birds av far too much. all da girlz wer angin round Claires Accesries buyin scrunchies n ringin their matez on their moby, meanwile all the ladz fort they wuz dressed like gangstas in the 'hood, xcept they all just looked like fat bastardz in hoodies. ok, so i admit i did liv in sarf essex meself fa a few monfs, but i saw da error of me ways and i ope i got aht just in time. dya reckon?
I'm always suspicious of surveys in the media masquerading as news. There's always one somewhere in every newspaper, an advertising campaign dressed up as serious research.
When a survey was published recently suggesting that carbohydrate-loaded lunches are to blame for 40% of the total UK workforce suffering from "afternoon apathy", it came as no surprise to find that that this research was sponsored by Ryvita. It just had to be a survey by a bedding manufacturer that found that one in six workers aren't sleeping enough because they work from their beds, and that if you sleep with a partner it's best to use separate duvets to minimise the disturbance created by the other person's movement. And one suspects that the Girl Guide movement knew all along that their survey into teenage girls' life skills would uncover that 40% of the girls questioned had never even boiled an egg.
Today a survey sponsored by the Halifax reports that office staff spend an average of 13 minutes of their working day planning their finances. Hey presto, that's another advert they've sneaked into the newspaper without paying for it. Of more interest is that their finding that the average office worker also spends 54 minutes gossipping, 14 minutes surfing the internet and 16 minutes flirting. Apparently men flirt for 17 minutes a day compared with only 15 for women. I guess that means the men are spending 2 minutes a day flirting with each other...
CBB: So, Anne's lost her diamond earrings, Goldie has a blond wig, Sue's an expert at Connect 4, and half of them are Virgos. It's all utterly, utterly trivial, and over 7 million of us are watching already. Unbeatable.
Apologies, but I am about to be hooked for ten days. Six celebrities and their egos shut away in a big house with only a few million viewers for company. It's all for charity, honest, and not merely a blatant attempt to boost Channel 4's disappointing ratings and rescue a few flagging careers. Let's hope someone else follows in Vanessa Feltz's footsteps and suffers a nervous breakdown live on air. I'll try not to go on about it too much, honest.
The six contestants: Goldie: Disappointingly this Goldie is the top drum 'n' bass DJ and not the Blue Peter dog that Simon Groom used to puppy-walk. Could get my vote, because he's a geezer with diamond teeth...
Anne Diamond: ... however, Anne has to be a Diamond Geezer's top choice. The smiling queen of daytime telly, she'll be right at home on the Big Brother sofa.
Sue Perkins: One half of comedy duo Mel and Sue, once loved by students for their Light Lunch, but since resigned to advertising sliced bread.
Melinda Messenger: Two-for-the-price-of-one, her appearance is clearly a shameless attempt to attract an audience of Sun-readers. Alas, being November, the outside jacuzzi and sun loungers are unlikely to be her location of choice.
Les Dennis: 100 people were asked 'Name someone who really gets on your nerves." In the absence of Bob Monkhouse and Max Bygraves, Les Dennis has made it into the Celebrity Big Brother house instead.
Mark Owen: Formerly 20% of top pop group Take That, he once sold a million love songs, but everything changes. Can this show relight his fire so he's back for good? Sure.
Mobile phones have replaced cigarettes as the must-have status symbol for teenagers. Just like cigarettes, mobile phones slip into your pocket, look good held near the mouth, make you look older than you really are, use up most of your pocket money, and will probably end up killing you except that nobody will admit this for the next 30 years.
I think it's time for health warnings to be placed on all mobile phones - how about the following?
Warning: Your ringtone is nowhere near as amusing as you think it is.
Warning: It would be much cheaper to use that BT phone you’re sitting next to.
Warning: Your boss now thinks that you're fully contactable 24 hours a day.
Warning: Yes, we know you're on a train, thankyou, we can all hear you.
Warning: txt messages r puttn govt LiterRC targets unda 4midable thret :)
Warning: Don't step off the pavement in front of a bus while out txt-ing, it'll hurt.
Warning: Is your partner using his/her mobile in order to be unfaithful to you?
Warning: Your left hand is for the gear lever, your right hand is for the steering wheel.
Warning: Don't forget to turn off all sound before going to your mate’s dad’s funeral.
Warning: How will you notice if this phone is slowly destroying your brain?
Gigs of the month: There are going to have to be three of these this month, because they're too hard to choose between. Vega 4 at the Water Rats in Kings Cross, The Cling at the Metro Club in Oxford Street, and Kieran and Neil from The Buffseeds live and acoustic at the Enterprise, Chalk Farm. That's Kieran and Neil, by the way, in miniature. Oh, go on, I think the Buffs win again. An excellent performance in an upstairs room decked out like a cheap Greek restaurant, and you should hear Kieran's unaccompanied Genie In A Bottle...
If you've looked upwards in London recently, you'll have have noticed one striking new building taking a dominant position on the City skyline. One minute there was just Tower 42, the old Nat West Tower, and then suddenly there was this 40-storey cigar-shaped skyscraper with green-lit windows.
So, Winston Churchill has been chosen as the Greatest Briton ever voted for by a middle-class BBC audience at the start of the 21st Century. That I can cope with, and I'm just about OK with Brunel being second, but Princess Di third? That can't be right - surely there must be some other blue-eyed adulterers far more worthy of the title?
I was nearly home tonight when a police car sped by, sirens blaring and lights flashing, closely followed by the rare sight of a Green Goddess fire engine. Two minutes later the same convoy reappeared on the other side of the road speeding in the opposite direction. Gave me a huge amount of confidence in the current emergency arrangements, that.
Sorry to worry you, but there's only a month to go until Christmas. I find it particularly frightening that a French episode of Only Fools And Horses is expected to be the festive TV highlight, that the two rival Popstars groups will be battling it out for the Christmas number one, and that S Club Juniors are daring to release a single called Puppy Love/Sleigh Ride. Any chance of November going on a bit longer this year?
