Writing for Websites and Business

I CAN’T BELIEVE that I’ve won nothing to recognise my artistic genius which I keep in the desk drawer of my back bedroom. Thank you so much for not beating a path to my door to offer me television contracts, book deals and panel game shows. Everybody in my house knows that my genius deserves this level of ignorance and indifference. Perhaps I could have told someone how brilliant I am, but personally I prefer to stay indoors and plough a lonely furrow. The house is a mess but the seeds of inspiration are growing well, watered by the glamour of dying an unrecognised nonentity. I’d like to thank me, myself and I for keeping my talent such a closely-guarded secret that no-one could have suspected the huge number of books I have in me. Thank you so much for the rejection letters, always thoughtfully re-enclosing the mailshots I intended you to keep. Your willingness to completely miss the point of my offerings is heartwarming and endearing in its human frailty. The blank screen is as much my friend as my blank bank balance and you have all done your best to help me maintain this level of subsistence. When my desk drawers are emptied after my death, the earth-shattering novelties within will recycle completely without harming the environment or threatening the livelihood of an established national institution who simply has to breathe in order to earn applause. After this letter is found, you may find my remains amongst discarded wine and pill bottles in a shabby motel off the M62.

IT WAS WHILE I was lying in a painful, twisted heap on the floor, during my yoga class, that I suddenly wondered whatever happened to an old friend. He is a rake-thin, wiry chap so it was probably the apparent flexibility of his body that brought him to mind at that particular moment.

Trevor Herstmonceux and I shared an interest in comedy and bad jokes. I remember him splitting his none-too-ample sides at one of his own little impromptu gems. ‘My dog was born with an ingrown tail, so I have to take it be X-Rayed every day to see if it’s happy.’ He used to be a regular contributor of jokes to “The Two Ronnies” and “The News Huddlines.” A favourite of mine is the one about the vicar having an affair with a cook. Their liaison was discovered when ‘his vest was found in her pantry and her pants were found in his vestry.’

He’s fascinated by the art of film-making. He has made approximately 190 short films, starring himself and other friends in a variety of offbeat comedy dramas. His favourite period in film history are the 1920s and 1930s. The more obscure the film, it seems, the better it is.

I knew him, mostly, during the break-up of his marriage and I was struck by his slightly over-the-top dress sense. Tartan drainpipe trousers, sharp-toed, leather winklepickers and satin shirts were a regular feature of his wardrobe. Later, I was to find out that clothing of an even more exotic type was a regular feature of his lifestyle.

Trevor’s face has the kindly demeanour of an earnest priest and, indeed, his soft voice would certainly not be out of place heard from a pulpit. His gently hooked nose and heavily-lidded, but small eyes render him faintly reminiscent of Charles Hawtrey, although he prefers it when he occasionally gets compared to Nigel Havers.

Everything that happens to Trevor seems funny. Even his frequent encounters with skinheads who erroneously think they are ‘queer-bashing’ (Trevor is completely straight) can easily become material for a stand-up act or a sitcom. He avoided violence on one occasion by lecturing a group of black thugs on the inaccuracies of the accepted history of slavery. Quite how this pacified them escapes me, but maybe Trevor relied on sending them into a deep sleep.

His meek and mild persona is usually sustained, socially, but occasionally one gets a glimpse of aggression simmering below the surface. His disgust at all bodily functions and any jokes involving toilets seems at an odd variance to his chosen lifestyle which seems to revolve around the worship of that most fundamental of bodily functions, sex.

It was his increasing fascination with other women which led to his marital strife. I only started noticing the evidence after about two years when his emotional wounds were healed. The tartan trousers were hung up and plastic of many a fluorescent hue, with a liberal sprinkling of chains and spikes, became the order of the day. He returned to his old fetishist haunts and we, quite naturally, went our separate ways.

Strangely enough, on the morning after I had thought about him, I received a letter from Trevor regaling me with many of his recent activities. ‘…Caroline enjoyed being chained to a bench and being thoroughly punished by me, Lorna and Mistress A… I wore my long rubber dress. It got very hot. I had to keep exposing myself to cool down.’ So, much the same as yoga, then.

1pr thick rubber gloves
Rope, 2 foot.
Meat cleaver
Hacksaw
Heavy duty plastic bags
Swarfega
Disinfectant
Bleach
Shovel
Grass seeds
Library for book on local beauty spots and book on theatrical make up
Balaclava
Black sweater
Airline ticket to South America (one way).

YOUR DAILY LIFE is punctuated by a series of unbidden pronouncements, commands and warnings. Wherever you go you are warned to ‘keep off the grass’, ‘clean up after your dog’ (even if you only have a goldfish) and to not ‘play ball games’. It seems nigh on impossible to walk for five minutes without receiving some sort of inherent criticism or nosy advice. ‘Stop! Children crossing,’ even when they’re quite patently not. ‘Men working overhead’ is always left in front of an open manhole by girlishly giggling navvies inside their nearby tent. Life is so precarious these days that we have to retreat behind a veil of existential angst which even the sign makers recognise. ‘These doors are alarmed’ – but what about? ‘This door must never be opened’ – well, why put a door there then? The same question applies to the door seen deep in the recesses of the London Underground: ‘Do not open this door: deep shaft behind.’ But are they referring to the actual physical doors or is there a more philosophical intent behind these messages? Certainly, a visionary station master could improve lives if he subtly changed the usual announcement to ‘Mind the gap…between your expectations and reality.’ But it’s all going too far and reaching deep inside our psyches. Only the other day I saw a terrifying message over the counter at Sainsbury’s: ‘We may challenge you to provide proof of your ID.’ Now, how the hell can anyone prove THAT standing in a queue at the supermarket?

THE AROMA OF greasy chips lifted me from an abstract reverie to confront the vision of a grossly overweight woman stuffing her face with fried food from a greaseproof bag. If you ever notice someone eating in public, apart from restaurants, you can bet your life savings that they will be fat. And you can see the cause of their obesity – an unwillingness, for any of a myriad mental or emotional reasons, to stop eating.

The elaborately swaddled immigrant lady had shifted up on the bus stop bench to allow the chip woman to sit down. She had come here from scorching tropical climes to experience the coldest winter for thirty years in London. Sitting at a bus stop outside Sainsbury’s in the most characterless part of Barnet, she must have been able to compare and contrast this to the mud hut dustbowl of a village she may have fled ahead of some anarchic revolutionary insurgency.

Looking impatient and hopping slightly from foot to foot, the forty-something man sported a closely shaven goatee which seemed to want to make a statement. His all-weather hiking jacket, waterproof denims and sturdy gore-tex walking boots were the chorus to this statement. “I’m superior, I am. I’m just waiting for a bus because the car’s stuck in the snow at home.” His impatience suggested nervous awareness of the famous maxim that any man past the age of thirty on a bus must be a failure.

Slim and blonde, the girl wrapped in a navy cord coat was equally restless. Her hair spread over her shoulders from under a fashionable red beret under which were ruminations about tonight’s supper. Which of her flatmates was going to cook it and would she ever be able to catch the eye of Gary in the tyre fitting department? In the meantime, her iPod supplied a bubblegum anaesthetic shield against the worries of the future and the lack of a fairytale ending.

The old man in the trapper’s hat was lugging his Tennent’s six-pack under his arm. Unable to see clearly through his fogged up spectacles, he was looking forward to further blitzing his eyesight with an alcoholic onslaught in front of the oblivion of Sunday night ‘entertainment’ on the small TV set in his rented ground floor bedsit.

All alone with their thoughts, memories and feelings, waiting for a bus to take them to the next destination in their lives. The next meal, the next benefit, the next enterprise, the next boyfriend or the next can of beer.

THE SYMPOSIUM of Significance took place in Stuttgart at the weekend with many of the greatest names in thinking sharing their thoughts. The recent real life crises of volcanic ash disrupting air travel, Thai rebels in Bangkok and Cheryl Cole’s divorce were mulled over, debated and broken down into elemental philosophical formulae. Furtenburg said that possibility is really the only impossibility which was roundly refuted by Clune who said that no fact is, in fact, actually knowable, and that’s a fact. The hoary old English Indefinitivist, Charles Charles, opined that the very nature of our five senses means that the sexual act is the only true expression of individualism. French parallel universe researcher, Maxim Ferrault went one step further and suggested that, as we are all connected, thanks to quantum physics, we should all start having sex now. Lindsey Vogstrom from the University of Beard Stroking in Stockholm said that human nature needs to be broken down into component parts so that we can better understand it. “Emotions are redundant,” she cried as Maxim undressed her with his eyes; a technique he had been learning for thirty years from the sole grand master of Undressing Women With Your Eyes, the Tibetan hermit and holy man, Sid Chisolm from Wapping. A consensus was reached by eleven o’clock when tea and biscuits were provided and the collective group of genii were able to observe the process of inevitable universal chaos and decay through the medium of Peek Freans Shortbread going soggy and dropping off into cups of tea.

THERE WAS A Peach Melba once that has never been equalled. I had it as a boy during a Christmas trip to Paris. The details of the drive to Paris, the hotel, the shops, The Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and Midnight Mass at The Notre Dame Cathedral are all as nothing compared to that sumptuous ice cream and fruit dessert. Ever since, I have been disappointed by so-called Peach Melbas which fail to live up to that memory.

However, I try to keep memories in perspective. ‘At least I’ve got my memories,’ is a common piece of self-consolation. But the knowledge that those events and people are all in the past and physically irretrievable seems to me an acute reason for wistfulness. And I have no desire to make myself any more wistful than usual.
Memories, though, are unavoidable little mental phantoms that seem to have lives of their own. So, even though you may not be searching the cerebral databanks, images and words may still be mysteriously downloaded into your consciousness while you are on a train, eating your cereal or even while enjoying unbridled sex (with a horse).

My earliest memory is of the blazing neon sign ‘ODEON’ which I could see through the window of Great Ormond Street Hospital where I was, for a short while, as a toddler. To this very day, a sight of that cinema brings back the atmosphere of that mysterious time. I can recall my bed in the corner of the ward with its thick brown blankets, the soup which, I was assured, was ‘making me better’ and my parents’ visits.

Everyone’s teenage years are rich with experiences. Dances and discos were the preoccupation of every teenager from Friday to Sunday every week. I remember meeting my first ‘girlfriend’ at a school disco where the naive and rather over-ambitious disc-jockey thought that ‘Twenty-First Century Schizoid Man’ by the underground, Tolkeinesque electro-progressive rock group, King Crimson, was a suitable choice for dancing to (it isn’t, despite being a great piece of music). This was an old-fashioned relationship in that it was mostly a weekly liaison on a sort of hand-holding level. This wasn’t first love or even, first lust. It was more like first curiosity. A curiosity which was well past its sell-by date three months later when we mutually agreed to call it off. I wanted to talk about UFOs, time travel, the occult and rock music but she kept banging on about the three-day week and the power- cuts. The irony is that she’s now a well-respected magazine editor while I’m, well, not.

As a keen people watcher, I have seen things that would raise more than an eyebrow.

The shabby vagrant emitting a powerful fountain of urine in the middle of a crowded Charing Cross Road. The refined-looking lady responding with a laugh and a ‘Good Lord!’

On a bus , there was a strange thin woman with no hair or eyelashes. Her eyes were peculiarly colourless and there was a definite smell of fish. She was dressed in some sort of loose fitting overalls a bit like a uniform. During my days of alien-investigating this seemed like proof positive that extra-terrestrials had landed and were now trying to take over without being spotted.

On a train, the young woman in tight denims stood to leave and, in doing so, firmly placed her hands on my knees whilst looking me directly in the eyes. As a gawky teenager, I had no idea what this meant (despite the fact that I had been reading my biology textbook at the time) but I have spent many an idle second or two since then speculating on what might have happened if I’d got up and followed her. She’d have probably reported me to the police – whose story would they have been likely to believe?

In the sea, off Cyprus, I came across a drowned woman. I had been exploring the shallows with my goggles and snorkel and then, there she was. At first, it looked like her hands were moving in some conscious motion, but I soon realised all was not well. I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her over to be greeted by a violent spurt of foam and saliva from her nostrils and mouth. Her skin was ice-cold and the palest shade of violet. By this time, the boat hire men had spotted the scene and raced to be of assistance. She was given mouth-to-mouth and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and was eventually taken to hospital. To this day, I do not know whether she survived.

And what about the time I was stabbed in the neck by leather-jacketed thugs? Almost went through the artery. That brings back a shudder.

Oh yes, adventures, romances, disappointments, triumphs, tragedies, mysteries, fights and illnesses. They’re all there in the biological RAM but it’s not a territory I am keen to linger in for long. Except, perhaps, for that Peach Melba.

POOR LITTLE GIRL. Golden locks (of course). An only child, she lives with her malevolent stepmother which she finds useful for reaching things on high shelves. Her father, quite likely to be a Social Media Expert, is absent. Naturally, they all live in the woods far away from civilisation and wear costumes common to nineteenth century middle-European farming communities (see current Marks and Spencer catalogue).

There is also always a local ‘woodchopper’. This seems to be a popular career choice for old men living near the homes of blonde girls.

We never find out where her father is but the following possibilities are the most likely:

1) He’s out drinking
2) He’s Mick Jagger
3) He doesn’t exist. The poor little girl is the result of a cloned embryo experiment.

There is never any clear reason why the wicked stepmother hates her, though it is probably because she is jealous of her golden hair.  Blondes, as you know, only attract gentlemen. Brunettes attract vicious thugs. My wife should know. She’s a brunette.

But spare a thought for the poor wicked stepmother. Her husband has been away for weeks and the poor woman is stranded in the middle of nowhere with nothing to eat. It stands to reason that she’s going to fancy a bite of tender little Golden Locks. That’s why she wants to boil her in the pot.

Early attempts by Golden Locks to escape are foiled by various dastardly events such as witches spells, poisoned needles and birds eating breadcrumbs. Usually, at this stage, any excuse is seized upon to introduce elves, pixies, ogres, unicorns, Lionel Blair or Vanessa Feltz.

But eventually her Prince comes, rescues her, pushes the wicked stepmother into the oven and they live happily ever after.

Unless, of course, it’s Prince Charles.

THE BEST THINGS in life are free. Andrew Lloyd Webber is a genius. Not only does he have a haircut to die for, but he has also devised the most brilliant scam in entertainment history. The oleaginous Lord can’t waste time or money on running his own PR department. He certainly can’t fritter away hundreds of thousands of pounds on auditions for new talent for his West End shows. What’s he going to do? That’s right! YOU are going to pay for it. And ME! What a wonderful arrangement. It’s so brilliant, I’m surprised I didn’t think of it. Except that I don’t have a theatre empire, in spite of the fact that my haircut is almost as nice. Yes, the Cunning Conman of modern stage musicals has stolen the wallet of the hapless BBC Licence Fee Payer, aka The Man-in-the-Street (millions of people so efficiently morphed into the body of a single individual – you can see him striding like a bewildered Colossus, hundreds of feet tall, down to BBC Headquarters, scratching his head and moaning ‘Why me?’) But, even better than that, of course, it is highly likely that the Loony-Tunes Lord is also being handsomely rewarded by the BBC for running his recruitment drive in public. And this is what the public want. The public, aka The-Man-on-the-Clapham-Omnibus, are paying for and consuming the very tripe they are creating just so that it can be transferred to a theatre where it will continue to line the coffers of the world’s foremost musical genius. Many commentators much wiser than myself will shake their heads patronisingly and say ‘The public aren’t stupid. If something’s popular with the multitudes, it’s usually got something good about it…’ WRONG! This does not  hold together. Like a baby or a dog with a bar of chocolate, the public is after a mindless sugar rush of swirly wallpaper, bubblegum entertainment that causes no pain but lulls them into a false sense of security that everything’s going to be alright and cosy. No need to do any ‘thinking’ or make any judgements, just sit back and let yourself be brainwashed by Lord Andy’s unique brand of ‘entertainment’. You might as well. You paid for it. Meanwhile, the Webber’s sneaking out the backdoor with a bag marked ‘Swag’ to spend the evening listening to his Mahler collection.

22nd March 2010

SCRAMBLED EGGS and mushrooms on toast (brown) seems like the ideal way to start a week. I’ve often wondered what secrets I could uncover if I could only unscramble the eggs. Is that a face I can see in the intertwined, bubbly ovoid mixture? If it is, it’s Adrian Chiles whose resemblance to a full English breakfast is quite uncanny. So uncanny, in fact, that his TV career success is beyond the comprehension of any sentient being. Oh, I’m being cruel, now. Or am I being cruel to be kind? Perhaps Adrian will read this and say “Fair cop. I’ve had a good innings,” and go back to being what he’s best at – a face for radio. Which, of course, is something I can definitely sympathise with, except that my plight is much worse. I only have a face for telegrams. But if Adrian can do it, who knows, I might be the next ‘ordinary-looking bloke’ hoisted from obscurity to present national TV shows about apple bobbing in Somerset and vietnamese pot-bellied pig wrestling in Runcorn. Hmmm. It’s enough to put a chap off his breakfast.