Funnier than anything on the box this Christmas

'tis the season of beliefs.

I read yesterday some of the best Christmas crackers ever.

It was new research designed to find out what the yoof of today think that Christmas is all about. Laugh? I nearly wasted my mulled wine by spraying it. Here are the highlights.

1. The wise men found out about Jesus through Facebook.

2. They gave him chocolate, a TV and a Peppa Pig toy.

3. Lapland is a nightclub.

Now before we all get Mail-like huffy and puffy about what may or may not be a sharp decline in educational standards let me ask you the following. How many of you believed in the stork? Or the tooth fairy? And how many of you pass this stuff on?

We do our jobs well (on the whole) so is it any wonder that kids think that Facebook is the font of all knowledge? Or that Christmas isn’t Christmas without some of the brown stuff - milk or plain - but most probably Quality Street or Matchmakers given the heady cocktail of spend and Christmas mythology. Or that Peppa Pig would confer cool status upon anyone? As to Lapland: how many of you know where it is, or could point it out on a Mercator Projection? Thought not. This is about their perception. Let's not impress reality upon them...for now.

Enjoy everyone.

On being 'as advertised'...

How many times have you bought something that wasn't quite as advertised? Or dated someone who turned out to be someone else or turned into someone you didn't want to know? Or employed someone (or joined a company) who turned out not to be what you thought you'd bought?

Earlier this week I met with someone I hadn't seen for around 10 years. He said that I hadn't changed a bit and I was reminded of something he said to me when we first met (in a professional capacity) at the end of the 90's. He said that the thing he found refreshing about me was the fact that I said what everyone else was thinking. And that's true. It's a trait, not a confection. You could say that I'm well known for it.

Being clear about what you mean, what you think and what you are means that you inevitably acquire a sub-set of descriptors: difficult, maverick, opinionated and polarising being just a few. But is there any other way to be? I decided a long time ago that there wasn't because it can cost you dear. Here's why.

Barnsley School of Art 1979. The school had a 3 late’s and you get a formal warning letter policy. I'd been late twice in one week and had somehow managed to orchestrate a third. I was up the you-know-what creek. I arrived to find an empty studio, which made matters much, much worse, because according to the timetable that's where everyone should have been. So I went to the office and, naturally, it was being manned by no less than the Senior Tutor (crapola!) who told me to go to the 2nd year studio where some people were waiting to speak to me.

That was it. Warning letter. Big fat splodge on my copybook. I was bricking it, so – ever the strategist – I hastily decided that humility was the best defence (even though it goes against the grain) and that I would be as compliant as possible and not return verbal fire in the usual manner in the hope that they would let me off.

Opening the door to find 8-10 people found me cranking up the humility knob to 11 and mentally sellotaping it there. I noticed that they were scrutinizing every gesture and movement and looking me up and down. They never took their eyes off me. One chap, who I took to be the leader since he was the only one sitting down, started asking me questions about me, my family and basically my opinion on 'stuff'. Think Anne of Green Gables... I didn't even recognise myself. I remember wondering if they were educational shrinks, so I pulled the sellotape off the knob and created another couple of notches.

That afternoon I sought out the Senior Tutor to apologize for my tardiness and to find out what it was all about.

It transpired that I had just been auditioned by Ken Loach and his associates for the lead in his new film and I had been totally oblivious to it. He had sent a brief to the school (this was the way he had cast Kes in neighbouring schools, Barnsley being a favorite casting pond) detailing the kind of personalities he wanted to meet and all had agreed that is was me to a 'T'. My tutors said that they were flummoxed by his description of me as being too sweet and girly and therefore not right, since as far as they were concerned I was a shoo-in. So I fessed up and all became clear.

But it was too late.
I'd f***ed up by being something I wasn't.

Never again.

Which is why I'm not.

It really doesn't pay.

A hod for your ears

D'Arblay Street has a new shop. It's called Weekend Offender. If you want to feel very, very old, or crap yourself laughing while simultaneously thanking whoever that you were born in more recent times, go and have a look what's in the window. 


'It' stopped me in my tracks last week - I haven't seen anything like it since the 80's. Some 2ft by 1.5ft and about 10 inches deep: a Sony portable LP player / blaster. A relic from the days when doing a bit of part-time hod-carrying on a building site was required practice if you wanted to carry one of those mothers around without spending an afternoon in the local A&E.


I was joined by a twenty-something. I asked her if she knew what it was. She didn't. So I explained. At which point she pulled her iPhone out of her pocket, held it in front of the window to highlight the comparison and said "and now we have this." "Yay!"


Yay indeed.

Aqua Manda: OMG! Mexborough Grammar School 1975!

Why was I watching Jack and George batter down some "slag's" door at 6.30am? Sarah Montague. It was her turn to sit in the big chair and her over-enunciation and total absence of interrogation skills (like witnessing a hamster 'offer-out' next door's Rottweiler) makes both my teeth and hair curl, which would be self-defeating, since at that time of the morning I'm usually running the GHD's through it. It was company I didn't have to share the facilities with.

The Sweeney: a socio-economic photo-fit. Every domestic adornment: the Crying Blue Boy; Auntie Betty's house in Harlington; Joker's Wild; Homepride flour graders; Caramac biscuits; Embassy coupons; Heinz Beans and Pork Sausages; and avocado green - lots of it. Every car: the Ford siblings, Granada and Capri - did we really think they were so cool and play that spotting game? Every item of clothing: cheesecloth shirts and flares - never throwing them away - can't anyhow; they're the boomerangs of high street couture. And on the "slag's" dressing table sat the distinctive Deco brown glass bottle of Aqua Manda.

Aqua Manda: Mexborough Grammar School 1975. We all wore it; our skunk-like trails merging to form one giant invisible stink-cloud that permeated the entire school. Why did we all want to be the same?

So many memories were being let out on day-release.

And then came the most persuasive exhibit illustrating just how far we've come and why we'll be in no hurry to go back: a branch of MACE in all its GUM-esque glory (it made we feel very moist eyed about Tesco) complete with a hanging banner near the checkout proclaiming, "We give Green Shield Stamps."

Green Shield Stamps: Doncaster Watergate Centre; ABC Cinema; Chelsea Girl; The Arndale Centre and that mad semi-pornographic gold statue of 'The Lovers' we used to take the 'p' out of.

For those not of a certain age, Green Shield Stamps (GGS) were a kind of prehistoric Clubcard. You had a book into which you stuck the stamps, how many you got each shop depended on how much you spent, and the books became progressively Dairylea-shaped as they got full. These were then exchanged for whatever you had set your heart on in the GGS catalogue. The barmy bartering rate meaning that a new cruet set would require the pulping of forestland the size of Bluewater to provide the necessary books. Night's in flicking through the GGS and Embassy catalogues!

There are those who think that the use of retro references is lazy. I disagree. Used creatively even the haziest reference can prove to be very clever and effective indeed. (Check out Gordon's 'Yes you can' campaign. See what I mean?) They provide us with a direct channel to the heart and the means with which to tap into the emotions locked within memories. 

I remember reading a quote from a well-known comedian in which he slated (rather peevishly) Peter Kay. He said that Kay doesn't do comedy; he does 'remembering'. There's something in that, but it works. And it continues to work. His shows sell out as soon as they are announced and his DVD's and books are record-breaking best sellers I seem to recall. It seems everyone wants to re-taste Rolla-Cola.

Sometimes our best memories are the things we can't remember. We need a spark, someone or something to draw them out, just like the newspaper and shovel my gran used to put across the fireplace to draw the fire. (What would HSE make of that today?) That's Peter Kay's genius.

And it’s no accident that his material is heavy on brands, because brands are the very best accelerants. They are conversational firelighters. They make people glow, just as Jack and George made me glow, all day, just like the Ready Brek Kid: Reginald Molehusband; Pineapple Chunks...