The life and times of Jack Napper

GREEDY AS A GOODWIN

2009-02-28T10:03:00.001Z

Hello, again. How can I let Sir Fred Goodwin go without comment. Can’t be done, can it?

The failed banker who somehow talked his way into a £693,000-a-year pension for life, at the age of 50.

Greedy, uncaring, immoral bastard are the first four words that spring to mind. Greasy used car salesman almost sprang to mind, but that isn’t fair on used car salesmen, greasy or otherwise.

The banks and the government ministers/bureaucrats responsible for this shaming debacle are just as guilty, but of neglect and incompetence.

The only constructive thing to come out of it is that our fine inventive language now has a new phrase – greedy as a Goodwin.

THE PARTY THAT DIDN'T QUITE BREAK OUT

2009-01-07T17:14:00.002Z

A belated happy new year to all my reader! I know you’re there somewhere, you little rascal.

I didn’t get round to it on January 1 because I was a mite hung-over. Mrs N and I entertained our two oldest friends (think Methuselah) on new year’s eve, and we decided we’d try to recapture our youth, when new year’s eves could be a day-long affair.

We would, however, bear in mind that all four of us are sexy-genarians, some more than others, and make a steady start with just a glass of wine or two with a snacky lunch. We didn’t bear in mind, however, that today’s wine glasses are buckets compared to the dainty affairs of the 1960s. And by mid-afternoon we were sitting in comfy chairs trying not to nod off.

We had family visitors just before five and they were obviously expecting a drink before going on to to their own celebrations, so my mate Terence and I cracked open some beers. Veronica stuck to wine and Mrs N had a break because she had volunteered to cook.

The family visitors stayed for an hour and a half, and we resumed comfy chair duty and awaited the last supper of 2008. It was a good ‘un, worthy of more wine and then some port, maybe a beer.

A party was ready to break out – but the lure of the comfy chairs was too great. We played music and chatted (to keep ourselves awake) and then joined Jools Holland for his Hootenanny. We made it to almost half-past 2009 before we just had to go to bed or collapse on the floor.

We all slept in on January 1, eventually crawling out for a massive, late-morning fry-up, and a long inquest on why we couldn’t do it any more, and why we did it when we were young.

There is, of course, only one answer. It’s the law when you’re young. It’s the law of diminishing returns when you get past a certain age.

A WORD TO THE WISE ...

2008-12-22T08:44:00.002Z

When I said yesterday that 'it's downhill all the way', I meant downhill, obviously; not downhill.

Downhill as in free-wheeling, easy to do, no hard-pedalling; as opposed to downhill, meaning getting steadily worse.

Funny old language, ours, where a word or phrase can indicate two diametrically opposed ideas.

Still feeling under the weather, by the way. Under the weather, meaning not very well; as opposed to being so well I can stand outside fearlessly whatever the elements. The elements meaning bad weather, obviously; not big grey things with funny long noses.

Merry Christmas! As in Bah humbug ...

THE NEWS IN SHORT ...

2008-12-21T09:39:00.002Z

It’s the shortest day, my tinnitus is whistling like Roger Whittaker on acid, I have an annoying floater in my right eye, I have been laid low by a very bad cold-flu thing, and my head is full of snot.

Yes, it’s the shortest day! It’s downhill all the way now, and things can only get better.

Surely ...

WHAT'S IN A NAME? ASK ARNOLD HITLER ...

2008-12-19T08:42:00.003Z

I googled the word Napper this morning, and came up with Nappers galore from architects to photographers to an acting coach. Then I googled Robert Napper, and came up with Broadmoor inmate, murderer, killer of Rachel Nickell.

Yesterday's conviction 16 years after the murder that outraged the nation makes for a sad story, but it's somehow even sadder for me because the aforementioned psychopath is my namesake. Thank God he’s not a relative.

Napper is not a particularly common name, and I can’t remember anyone else with the name making the national headlines in my 60-odd years on this planet. Shame it had to be this way.

It could be worse, however. Imagine being called Arnold Hitler, or Kevin Pol Pot. Or Simon Cowell.

It makes you shiver, doesn’t it?

MOORES THE UNMERRIER

2008-12-15T10:58:00.003Z

England cricket team, eh? What a load of useless tossers. After the unadulterated glory of England's sporting year was revealed in all its glory by the BBC's Sports Personality Of The Year show last night, our cricketers demonstrate the ultimate act of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

True, India have some fine cricketers, but any half-decent team with fire in their bellies would have shut them down.

How many more debacles must we suffer before coach Peter Moores resigns? I say let Fabio Capello do it in his spare time. He may be Italian, he might not have a clue how cricket works, but he couldn't do worse ...

ANYBODY WANT TO BUY A FLOATER?

2008-12-05T08:39:00.002Z

I’m having trouble with a floater. I can’t seem to get rid of it.

I beg your pardon!? I’m talking about a ghostly little squiggle in my right eye; what were you thinking of?

My floater suddenly appeared the other day. Apparently it’s caused when the eye’s ‘gel’ breaks up, which can happen naturally when you get older. There is a chance it could be something slightly more worrying, so I have to go to the eye hospital to be safe.

Meanwhile, I decided to do a little research on the interweb. I found some useful medical stuff. And then this:

Looking for eye floaters? Go to Kelkoo to compare and shop from thousands of choices online … etc

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d click and see what sort of eye floaters I could buy, should I need a new one. It seems the choice boils down to Eye Cream, Eye Pencil, Eye Shadow, and such like.

I decided not to buy anything. My floater doesn’t need enhancing.

I did, however, decide to try another little experiment. I Yahoo’d ‘sweet kisses’ and (beside lots of weird Youtube offerings) came up with, as if you couldn’t guess: Looking for sweet kisses? Go to Kelkoo to compare and shop from thousands of choices online …

Is there no end to what you can find to buy on Kelkoo? I started looking for a Money Tree last night. I’m up to page 749 …

FINAL WHINGE ON WHINGING BASTARDS. FOR NOW ...

2008-11-24T09:09:00.003Z

So, Alistair Darling says he is going to make us better off this afternoon – unless you’re a high earner. The leaked, and therefore accurate, figure is £150,000 a year. And I would bet at least £149,000 that if you are in that bracket, you are already whinging.

Now, listen here, greedy bastards – the time to whinge is when you’re on the minimum wage and some greedy bastard like you begrudges paying even that.

Anyway, what goes round comes round. In my sixty-plus years I have seen recessions and Chancellors come and go. Good times and bad times. And I have spent the past year and a bit recording some of them. But I have a pile of work to do – in the hope that I might earn £150,000-plus in my dotage. And if do, I won’t whinge when I have to pay a wedge to the Exchequer, to help make this sick country better. I will just thank my lucky stars that I’m not on the minimum wage, sitting in the cold, eating like a mouse, wearing clothes that are falling to bits.

Yes, I know – I keep saying this, but this time I mean it. I am taking a little sabbatical from the blog. I use the word sabbatical rather loosely, however. This is not a paid leave, nor will it be unbroken.

I will pop in every so often, when time and commitments permit, to have my say, so please check occasionally. I just warn you that the entries will, of necessity, be rather pithy.

Tho, thee you thoon …

SO HOW DID I PRODUCE A RABBIT FROM A BLOG?

2008-11-21T08:16:00.004Z

I may have mentioned before, the Google ads on this page are generated randomly by the search engine locking on to key words and topics.

For instance a site about, say, golf might generate ads for Golf Clubs, Golf Balls, Golf Holidays, Golf Courses, Pringle Sweaters, The Weirdest Trousers, The Golfer’s Book Of Unusual Swearwords, and Divorces R Us.

But a blog about everything and nothing, say like this one, is more problematical. That’s why I often get lumbered with ads about Jackhammers, Jack & Cylinder Repair, Jackboots, Jack Russells Need Good Home, Jacket Potatoes U Like.

However … as several readers have pointed out, in recent days the ads have been headed by one promising “Rabbit Rampants Exposed”, with the blurb All Top Brands Tested, Reviewed & Rated. We’ve done the work for you, followed by a web address.

Sorry!? When did I write about Rampant Rabbits? Never. Very strange. My mate Frank mentioned the subject in a funny passage in his novel When It Comes To The Crunch, and I have mentioned the book once or twice (go to www.huckbooks.co.uk). But how did Google know about the Rabbit? Is it psychic as well as Freudian?

The ad isn’t there every time you open my blog. If it isn’t there now, try again later. You can’t keep a Rampant Rabbit down …

JUST ANOTHER DAY IN DREAMLAND

2008-11-20T08:30:00.003Z

What a gent John Sergeant is. As he was saying to me the other day, after reading my blog on his Strictly Come Dancing appearances, ‘I think they’ve suffered enough, Jack. I’ll pull out and give that little rugby player a chance to win.’

I had to remind him that Jessie Wallace had already been voted off.

Ah, the power of the blog, eh?

I’ve also heard from Mr Sulu in the jungle. The helmsman of the USS Enterprise, who recently ‘married’ another man but didn’t invite Captain Kirk (some tiff over a joke involving a warp factor), sounded puzzled. He said: ‘Did you English people know that Esther Rantzen comes from another planet?’

Silly question. Of course we did.

I’m still waiting to hear back from my old mate Johnny Sparrow Depp – Deppie Baby as we call him down the pub – about whether he’s got time to sort out the pirate problem. His missus, the lovely Vanessa, told me he had been in contact with Barack Obama about it.

Barack Obama! I ask you. These celebs live in a dream world …

* Talking of dreams: Germany 1 England Reserves 2. No, I've just looked at the papers – it was real. And Fabio Capello is looking more like the real deal with every match. Halle-bloody-lujah!

ANYONE FOR PIRATE SCHOOL?

2008-11-19T08:05:00.003Z

I wonder how long it will be before a bored careers officer suggests piracy as an option. Well, it appears to be lucrative, and it seems anyone with a fast boat and a few rockets can have a go.

Of course, things being what they are in 2008, the government would have to launch a Pirate School, hopefully as a Private Finance Initiative, and all those with an affinity for piracy could chip in: the banks, of course, the oil and other energy companies, the Inland Revenue, just for starters.

Students could begin on our major rivers by learning how to ease pleasure cruisers laden with expensive booze and women to secluded moorings, only to be released on payment of a hefty ransom.

Their first SATS would be conducted on the Norfolk Broads and the Lakes. Successful students would graduate to the Channel and lure ferries to the Isle of Wight, with the threat of stranding everybody there, in 1956, until a bounty is paid.

Piracy in 2008! What is all this? A concerted international effort off the coast of Somalia, blowing a succession of speedboats and so-called 'mother' ships out of the water, would soon put an end to it. I suggest the UN enlists Johnny Sparrow Depp as operations adviser. Failing that, I’m sure my old friend, Goatee Beard (like Black Beard, only shorter) would help.

I asked him the other day where his buccaneers were at the moment. He replied, ‘Same place as usual – under my buccanhat!’

How we laughed.

THEY ARE CELARIACS, GET ME OUT OF HERE!

2008-11-18T08:24:00.004Z

And while we’re on the subject of celebrities … hands up all those who watch I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! Just as I suspected – no one. My readers are all far too intelligent to watch this pile of jungle doo-doo.

Excuse me, ITV. Celebrities!? – Brian Paddick, Carly Zucker, Joe Swash, Nicola McLean? Not heard of one of them.

The Oxford English Dictionary, the fount of much knowledge, says, and I quote, ‘Person who performs a rite…’ Sorry, that’s a celebrant. Try again. ‘A large swollen tulip-like …’ Sorry, that’s celeriac. Still, bloody close!

Actually, it says ‘Famous person’. And under ‘Famous’, it says ‘Known about by many people’. Well, everyone I asked yesterday (and that was several) had never heard of any of these so-called celeriacs.

Anyway, there are two I have vaguely heard of – Dani Behr, a former model and something, and Simon Webbe, but only because somebody mentioned a pop group called Blue.

Only four would I describe as famous, and therefore celebrants: Esther Rantzen, Martina Navratilova, Mr Sulu, and Robert Kilroy-Silk. And I can only surmise they are all hard-up, and totally besotted by having a camera pointed at them.

I also suspect that each has one other driving force –

Esther: If Not Now, When Can I make A Bigger Idiot Of Myself?
Martina: Fancies Dani Behr.
Mr Sulu: Still living in another universe.
Robert Kilroy-Silk: Twat of the first order. Who sees nothing wrong with ripping off the public by picking up his MEP salary, alongside a huge TV fee, while he is demonstrably not earning it.

WHY MR TWO LEFT FEET IS BEATING THE SNAKE HIPS

2008-11-17T08:30:00.004Z

It’s the vital question of the day, as posed by the BBC breakfast TV show this morning: Is Mr Two Left Feet, John Sergeant, making a mockery of Strictly Come Dancing by knocking out much better dancers?

The answer is: No, the BBC took care of that when it drew up the rules of the celebrity dancing show. Fancy giving the public the chance of a final say in the voting. Any chance of pulling poncey dancers (and here we are talking the ridiculous snake-hipped men, not the flesh-revealing girls) down a peg or two could not be ignored.

The British sense of humour – thank God – is such that any chance to prick pomposity will be snapped up. Especially when it involves supporting an underdog with such a fabulous dry and self-deprecating wit. Can't the BBC see? – it's funny that someone built like a wardrobe and with as much rhythm as a sloth can do well in a dancing contest.

Each series the show's producers put in an awful dancer for the novelty/comedy value. Now they are reaping their just desserts.

There is obviously an unspoken movement afoot. I fully expect to see John in the final. Sadly then the judges have the final say and somebody who can dance – boring! – will win.

TOMMY'S GONNA BE A MUMMY AND DADDY AGAIN!

2008-11-14T08:28:00.008Z

So, as I was saying yesterday, meat or veg? Thomas Beatie obviously couldn’t decided.

Thomas is the ‘man’ who grew up as Tracie in Hawaii, had a sex change in the US in his twenties, and then gave birth to a baby daughter in June because he had somehow forgotten to have his female reproductive organs removed.

Tommy girl is obviously suffering from gender schizophrenia. He hasn't forsaken the female habit of changing his mind, but he has acquired the male habit of leaving contraception to the lady. BECAUSE TOMMMY IS PREGNANT AGAIN! His second baby is due next June.

Are you following all this? I’m buggered if I am. If Tommy will pardon the expression.

Some man, eh? How will he explain it all to the kids in a few years?

TORN BETWEEN THE MEAT AND VEG

2008-11-13T08:19:00.005Z

I’m feeling torn. Working on the premise that you probably don’t want to read any more about battered babies and nauseatingly mealy-mouthed social workers, I’ve been looking for something more uplifting. And I thought I’d got it.

There I was all ready to go with the EU’s decision to scrap its ban on the sale of deformed carrots and bent parsnips. I had a picture of a carrot looking like Esther Rantzen with a willy, a nice joke about two plum tomatoes and a courgette getting together, and a limerick that started with the line There was an EU member and ended with him being embarrassed by a cucumber

Then along came the news that the UK is desperately short of sperm donors.

Don’t all rush at once, boys! Like Esther’s carrot, it’s not as straight-forward as it seems at first sight.

The ready supply of student, other hard-up, and addicted wankers dried up, as it were, after a change in the law in 2005 prevented anonymous sperm donations.

The idea was that children should be able to trace their biological father when they are 18. And who can blame them? It can’t be very nice knowing that you wouldn’t be here if your Dad hadn’t knocked one off just so he could afford a couple of pints. And had he had his way, he would have called you Solitaire or Percy.

So what do you reckon? Meat or veg today?

ENGLAND 2 (MONKEYS), GERMANY 0

2008-11-12T08:36:00.006Z

The credit crunch has obviously reached our criminal fraternity. As law-abiding people flog their jewels to keep themselves afloat, villains are having to learn new skills. Such as bending very thick metal bars very quietly, and handling wild animals.

Both came in useful the other day when thieves nicked two rare squirrel monkeys from Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire, risking nasty bites and gouges and God knows what in the way of diseases. So I guess they won't be selling them on for peanuts.

Our thieves must be better planners than those in Germany. Die Polizei are this week hunting three would-be supermarket raiders who were thwarted by a cashier pelting – and hitting – them with ripe gorganzola cheeses, and an armless man who walked out of a shop with a 24-inch TV clamped to his body.

In the second case, two accomplices apparently clamped the TV on to the thief. But shop staff didn’t realise until they found an empty stand and looked at their CCTV footage.

Did no one in the street see him and ask him why? Or at least if he could stand still while they watched Die Lose Frauen? Did no one run up and offer to help? Or at least unclamp it and run off? Did the accomplices slip a remote control into his pocket? And if so, why?

So many questions. Yet both cases should prove a doddle for German police: Follow that smell! in the first, and Find the walking TV stand! in the latter.

I reckon even dead old Taggart could solve those.

But, conversely, could Inspecktor Von Morse find our monkeys? I doubt it. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

RAINING CATS AND DOGS AND OLD MEN

2008-11-11T08:17:00.004Z

You know the old myth about Eskimos having 40 words for snow (it’s four, really) … well, the recent weather set me wondering how many words we have in this country for pissing it down (1), or merely drizzle (2).

Bloody rain (3). It slowed to the weather forecasters’ favourite ‘spits and spots’ (4) just before mid-day yesterday, so I thought I’d take the chance and go for my daily constitutional. I’d barely gone 50 yards when the spots became a heavy shower (5) and a cat in front of me dashed under the nearest hedge.

By the time I was up to the church, it was bucketing down (6) and I saw the verger in the porch praying. I was about to turn round when it eased off, so I brushed the drops off my nose and marched on. A few minutes later, when I was another half mile from home, suddenly it was coming down like stair rods (7).

I turned and almost bumped into the postman coming out of Mrs B’s place with a soggy, limp kagoul (we had heard rumours). Within yards the deluge (8) had become a torrent (9), a positive cascade (10), but not quite a cataract (11).

By the time I was back level with the church again, with the rain still persisting down (12), the vicar had joined the verger in the porch and they appeared to have started nailing planks of wood together.

Appropriately, it was now hammering down (13), and the cat had been joined by a dog, a hedgehog, and the old feller from No 4. Just proving that these days when it rains, it no longer rains just cats and dogs (14).

By the time I was back to the dry of our conservatory, it was alternately raining pitchforks (15) and coming down in sheets (16).

As I write this morning, the precipitation (17) has gone from a steady mizzle (18) to nothing. And now the sun is trying to come out. Hallelujah!

Just as well – 19 and 20 are unprintable.

BONA FIDE REPLY TO THE WORD POLICE

2008-11-10T08:22:00.003Z

Words is my game, guv'nor. So it’s nice to see some people take them seriously.

Researchers at Oxford University have compiled a list of the UK’s 10 most irritating expressions, starting not surprisingly with ‘At the end of the day …’ When I hear anybody say it, I like to interrupt, very quickly … ‘It will be tomorrow.’ Never gets a laugh.

The one really annoying expression not on the list is the one that begins, ‘Researchers at Oxford University have …’. Haven’t they got anything better to do, like working out how to stop global warming or Simon Cowell?

Politically correct councils have been intruding on my territory in the past few days, telling their staff which words or phrases they shouldn’t use. At Salisbury, for instance, town hall staff have been banned from using the expression ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ because it could upset atheists.

Salisbury Council – it doesn’t bother this atheist one jot. How dare you presume to know what I’m thinking!

A few days earlier, Bournemouth Council decided to ban Latin terms in case its thick populace can’t understand them. Terms such as vice versa (which, of course, means homosexuality), ad hoc (commercial for wine), and bona fide (excellent hard-on).

I have a few expressions that the people of Bournemouth should never use:

Intelligent council officers
Sensible council measures
Town hall elite.

That’s it. See you at the end of the day (some time tomorrow).

BANKING IS A JOKE – I'M GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD INSTEAD

2008-11-07T09:11:00.009Z

I have a confession to make – my plan to launch my own investment bank, Napper Assets Banking (NAB) in the wake of the global financial crisis, was a bit of a joke.

In fact, it was a lot of joke. I know, it takes some believing … but I never really intended to add to the world's supply of legalised thieving operations. As my friends will vouch, I’m just too nice a person to run a bank.

If I had launched NAB, it would be living up to its name. I would now be ignoring the fact that the Bank of England has cut its base rate by one and a half per cent, and still be charging borrowers whatever I could get away with. And reducing interest to savers to slightly above 0%.

Besides, I’ve been much too busy of late. I have been hard at it all hours, working on my plan for a world government to get the planet back on an even keel. Sort out the economy, carbon emissions, terrorism, the world food shortage. My friend Barack has agreed to be my deputy, with our mutual acquaintance Gordon as our joint personal assistant; taking notes, making the tea, that sort of thing.

It’s a bloody good job somebody in this country has got some vision …

DREAMING OF A RIGHT-ON CHRISTMAS ... SORRY, WINTER FESTIVAL

2008-11-06T08:47:00.007Z

All those brainy people in Oxford – and no one’s got the gumption to organise a bit of a rebellion against a council gone mad.

The politically correct burghers of the university city have renamed their Christmas lights a ‘WinterLight festival’ for fear of upsetting Muslims and other non-indigenous religions. They are also forgoing a traditional Christmas tree in favour of lanterns in the shape of the solar system

If I lived in that fine city, which I know reasonably well, I would go Christmas shopping armed with a load of stickers/labels produced on the very computer that provides this blog.

Off the top of my head, I would print off messages such as:
Christmas Lights Courtesy of Jesus
Christmas Trees For Sale At Oxford Town Hall
Oxford welcomes reckless Christmas shoppers.

All this from an old atheist. I might not believe in a deity, but I believe in maintaining the Britishness of Britain, that certain something that makes us what we are, before we become a homogenous splodge. It is our heritage that will safeguard our freedoms and our future.

I am not alone – apparently, most Muslims in Oxford want a traditional Christmas. It’s just the silly burghers who have lost the plot. Or, as we call them in non-PCland, stupid tossers.

ONE TABOO DOWN – QUITE A LOT TO GO

2008-11-05T08:55:00.002Z

So, sanity has prevailed. The US has its first black president, thus proving – after trying to disprove it for so long – that the populace at large does have some brains.

That’s the easy bit.

The difficult – probably nigh on impossible – bit is slaying those other demons right up there alongside racism in the US. The dangerous fundamental redneck Christian philosophies, murderous gun laws (or the lack of them), and the Pro-Life brigade’s simplistic, self-righteous doctrine.

Oh yes … and learning to make proper beer and play cricket.

Then there might be hope for them.

Good luck, Barack Obama. You’ll need it.

QUITE INTERESTING IDEA, MR COWELL

2008-11-04T08:37:00.002Z

Here is today’s burning question: Simon Cowell – why?

The man who gave us The X Factor has been so smitten by the U.S. election he now wants to devise a TV show to bring razzmatazz to the next British general election. He thinks a little glamour will revitalise our ‘tedious’ political culture.

Not sure about the glamour, Simon, but I see where you're coming from. However, I think it needs to be fronted by someone who gives a toss about the democratic process (Cowell admits he has never voted), and not two twots and two bimbos.

How about a series of QI election specials, hosted by someone with brain power to spare, Stephen Fry. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling could team up with Alan Davies, leaving David Cameron and George Osborne to the tender mercies of Bill Bailey.

That would sort out the men from the boys, the shallow from the deep, the self-serving from the serlf-effacing.

Bring it on!

*If you’ve never seen QI, you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about. And you probably deserve Simon Cowell’s idea of democracy.

LEWIS HAMILTON, GLOCK OF THE WALK

2008-11-03T08:57:00.006Z

Cars are for getting from A to B. A little comfort and a lot of reliability is all I ask. Petrolheads who are interested in camshafts and carbs and double-throughput-thingies are, like most obsessive geeks, sad bastards.

Watching cars go round and round a circuit, with maybe the odd overtaking manoeuvre every half an hour, is pretty tedious. Usually the only reason I watch a grand prix on TV is to see if there’s a good crash on the first corner.

So I can in all honesty say that yesterday’s Brazilian grand prix was … the most exciting sporting moment of the year so far.

The incredible low of Lewis Hamilton being overtaken and slipping to sixth place, which would have given the F1 title to local hero Filipe Massa. The boy racer had blown it again. The incredible high of Hamilton’s last-gasp overtaking of German Timo Glock. The title was his; it was his destiny after all to be the youngest world champion.

What a brilliant young man (and what a worthy rival was Massa, so noble and gracious in victory but overall defeat).

I spent the evening waiting for the newsflash that Ferrari, or the FIA, claimed McLaren had bribed Glock, or Toyota, and therefore Hamilton must forfeit his points. It didn’t come, but the sad jealousy will continue. It’s bound to in a sport dominated by the likes of Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley.

Meanwhile, let’s savour and honour the best of a sport tainted by its overlords – Lewis Hamilton, world champion.

DIY SURGERY COMES A STEP CLOSER

2008-10-31T07:58:00.005Z

I went to see the Quack for a check-up yesterday afternoon. I was greeted at the surgery not by a receptionist but by a screen on the wall inviting me to record my presence. Or, if I couldn’t manage that, ring the bell on the counter (you dumbo, it might well have added).

Never one to be deterred by a challenge, I touched the screen, as requested, and went through its programmed sequence. Male, month of birth, day of birth … and the message Welcome, Mr John William Napper came up on screen. Another told me who my appointment was with, and when (even though I already knew that), and that my doctor was running …. 0 …. Minutes Late.

Clever stuff. But what do the bloody receptionists do now!? Gossip, drink tea and dunk bickies in the back room, while keeping a vague eye on their screen, I suspect.

I already make appointments online and order repeat prescriptions online. What next? Will I have to administer my own jabs, locate and then relocate a rectal thermometer, squeeze my own testicles and cough?

I could probably manage one of the three without coming over all unnecessary.

BUY ONE, GET TWO BILLS

2008-10-30T08:28:00.003Z

If you’re gonna make a mistake, make a big one! And no, I’m not still harping on about Jonathan Crass and Russell Brat. I’m referring to that ancient capital of retail mythology, Argos.

The High Street pay-and-queue store charged 190,000 customers twice in one day on their credit and debit cards. A spokesman said yesterday: “At this stage it is impossible to state the exact figure involved but it is likely it will be several million pounds.”

Unfortunately they might not be able to refund the extra cash immediately. Meaning they are earning interest on it, while Joe and Josephine Customer might be overdrawn at their bank, incurring hefty charges.

I did what any sensible new businessman would do – I rang the chairman and asked him if he’d like to be boss of my new bank, NAB. Strangely, he declined – he was too busy restacking some shelves with tenners, twenties, and fifties.

He does have one thing in common with Crass and Brat – he’s got a terrible sense of humour. I offered him a new slogan for free and he went ballistic. I thought it summed them up nicely: Never Knowingly Oversold!

FUNNY, I THOUGHT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE COMEDIANS ...

2008-10-29T08:11:00.004Z

Strange thing, humour. Mrs N thought yesterday’s entry here was corny (probably because she’s heard them before), and I thought they were just plain silly. But then I like silly.

When I was young I couldn’t abide Arthur Askey (an unfunny little twit was my considered opinion), but I loved Spike Milligan. My parents thought Milligan was simply deranged.

Some people or shows are almost universal – but not quite: Billy Connolly, unless you don’t understand his swearing; Round The Horne, unless you are foreign; Peter Kaye, unless you were once mugged in Bolton; Eddie Izzard, unless you have no imagination.

So here’s the punchline to the BBC radio ‘prank’ pair … the first person who ever laughed at Russell Brand in public should now step forward and volunteer to be shot in public. I don’t think I have ever heard the overblown twat say one funny thing.

As for Jonathan Ross ... he can be very funny. The trouble is, he never knows when he isn’t. And as for the people who authorised the broadcast of this totally unfunny pile of shite – off with their headphones!

POOR OLIVIA GARK ...

2008-10-28T08:33:00.005Z

Mr and Mrs Gark, who live two doors down from us, don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the moment. They named their only child Olivia, and a bonny girl she is, too. If they’d had a boy, he was going to be Oliver. Ollie, for short.

Imagine the money he would have made in the past week, doing interviews as Britain’s sole Ollie Gark. (Why should Russia have the monopoly on them, if you see what I mean?)

Reminds me of two favourite school chums:

* Ewan, whose parents, Mr and Mrs Hoosarmy, didn’t think it through
* And Courtenay, whose angling-mad parents definitely did – Mr and Mrs Bigguns-Lately had the wickedest sense of humour.

Come on, think about it!

GIVE A JOT AND WE CAN END THIS DARK AGE

2008-10-27T08:04:00.003Z

I am currently writing an opus that will take me through to the New Year. So my blog entries will of necessity be rather short and sharp for the next couple of months*.

I start with the annual moan about putting the clocks back. It was near bloody dark by five o’clock yesterday! What is this nonsense!? Historically, a key factor has been so that the more northerly parts of Scotland get some sort of daylight in the winter. And ..? The point is?

Never has there been a more valid case for Scottish independence. We can stick with British Summer Time, and they can go on to Jocks’ Offset Time, so none of us down here will legitimately give a JOT.

* The good news is that you can put the time you gain to good use. Click on a few of the advert links on this page and earn the UK (me) some US (Google) dollars. I mean, who could resist the one with the heading 'Bank Jobs'. I ask you ...

SEX: NOW I'M AGONY AUNT TO THE GOVERNMENT

2008-10-24T08:30:00.003+01:00

It’s gratifying to know that most departments of government read – and act on – my Blog. And so quickly.

It was on Monday that I wrote about the folly of the Scouts introducing sex education (‘it’s down to your parents, and then your school, and then the good old behind-the-bikesheds grapevine’); and yesterday the government announced plans to introduce sex and relationship lessons in primary and secondary schools.

The primary aspect is worrying some folk. I have one thing to say to about that. F… F… Finland.

Excuse the stutter – it’s all this talk about … you know, thingy, S-E-X. And there’s the rub. We reticent, reserved, repressed British are just so bloody awful at telling our kids about sex.

My parents never told me. None of my schoolmates’ parents told them. The result is the shaming, embarrassing fact that the UK has one of the worst teenage pregnancy rates in Europe. Along with all its associated and not inconsiderable social and economic costs.

Finland starts its sex and relationship education (slowly and subtly) in primary school and carries it right through the education system. It has one of the lowest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe.

QED.
(Quite Edifying, Ducky).

* And a quick JOCKEY SHORT: If you are prepared to explain the facts of life to your kids, you are entitled to protest against the government’s plans. If you are not prepared to do it, shut your gob!

NOT ONE OF THE BOYS - ONE OF THE CRETINS

2008-10-23T08:33:00.007+01:00

Bloody old farts, eh? I can still hear my Dad saying back in the 1960s, ‘Bloody modern music – it’s just a racket. Can’t even make out the words.’

Yes, Dad, I thought. You stick with Sinatra and all that crooning claptrap and I’ll stick with Elvis, Buddy, the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan – proper music. Our music.

I vowed I’d never be a musical fart.

Okay, so rap is really crap (it’s talking, not singing!) and Boy Bands are just crooning by another name, but otherwise … I’m not all the way to fartsville. I like some heavy stuff, some punk and grunge and house, some of the young new 'guitar bands’ are fabulous, and as for Amy Winehouse. What a voice! What a shambling wreck of a person! What a shame.

And now we have the sub-Winehouse Yank, Katy Perry. Quite a babe and not a bad voice. But what a stupid, pathetic person. Obviously. Or she wouldn’t have to resort to cheap gimmicks. First, the lipstick lesbian ploy of her first hit single, I Kissed A Girl, and now this poster of her wielding a vicious-looking knife to promote her album One Of The Boys.

I don’t say this as an old fart. I say it as a grown-up teenager, who sees today’s teenagers being knifed and killed on our streets. By other teenagers who think it’s okay or even cool to carry a deadly weapon.

Our 60s and 70s teen idols had their gimmicks – ripping trousers, stupid quiffs, swearing on prime-time TV (very risqué at the time!) – but not one of them glorified killing.

Katy Perry – you’re a wanker!

WHY I'VE INVITED OLEG TO LUNCH IN MY SHED ...

2008-10-22T08:44:00.004+01:00

I have a cunning plan to accelerate the launch of NAB, Napper Assets Banking, and therefore quickly disprove the assertion yesterday by Iran’s gloating leaders that the global financial crisis indicates the end of capitalism.

If scrounging from one of the world’s richest men – Russian aluminium king billionaire Oleg Deripaska – is good enough for Lord (Lord! Pah!) Peter Mandelson and Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne, then it’s good enough for me. Lawyers for those two honorable gentlemen should know, of course, that I mean scrounging lunch – aboard his yacht, moored off Corfu, as you do.

But not this cunning new banker. I have invited Oleg to lunch at Napper Towers. He won’t be able to resist because I have some rare aluminium for his perusal in my old shed. Perhaps we could have lunch in there while we're at it. Give a nice rustic feel, which I'm sure he'd appreciate after all the rigours of extravagant luxury.

That should guarantee a reasonable investment in NAB, allowing me to put in an offer to the majority shareholder – the government acting on our behalf – for the Natwest arm of RBS. On the grounds that my local branch isn’t one of those that now opens on a Saturday.

The latest in a long line of crass Natwest TV adverts shows the two idiots spying on a branch doing business on a Saturday while simultaneously trying to ridicule the sensible one. So I phoned my branch, and despite previous ads that you can now ring YOUR OWN BRANCH and talk to someone of authority at YOUR OWN BRANCH, it took me a very long time to get through to no one in particular. And then they told me, No, there was no chance of them opening on a Saturday.

As the (part) owner of Natwest, I shall now instruct the government to sell it to NAB. Once they have done so, I will have the collateral to start buying banks throughout the world. And every one will be open on Saturday. When I have enough banks, I will buy Iran. Then let them tell the world capitalism is dead.

You can’t kill self-interest (let alone greed). It will die when the world ends.

You know, I should have been a philosopher.

A QUESTION OF SANITY

2008-10-21T09:08:00.003+01:00

I would have brought you this Blog entry ten minutes sooner, but the Ministry of Time said that was illegal under the Deliberately Rushing Your Breakfast embargo, championed by the French in the EU.

So I decided to make it seven and a half minutes late, which accords precisely with the Let Us Tell You How To Do Everything legislation being rushed through Parliament now. By the Ministry of Everything, of course.

All this started when I read about the market stallholder who was fined a hefty sum by her London borough for selling greengroceries in pounds and ounces, instead of the EU’s metric measurements. The EU top dog admitted they hadn’t intended that anyone should be prosecuted for such a breach. But the stupid burghers went ahead and did it anyhow.

It was at that point that I decided to make this blog available by the pound. I thought I’d write about eight ounces worth of words a day, generally. More when there are bastards to be castigated. Like today.

Then I learnt about the Win A House competition that has been suspended because the Gambling Commission feared the question set by the house owners was too easy. Too easy!? It involved the cost of an adult coarse fishing licence.

Judging by the standard of most TV/newspaper/magazine single-question competitions these days, that's a Mastermind question. To see if enough of my readers agree, I have decided to run my own. Here it is:

Is the first letter of the alphabet:

A.) B
B.) A
C.) C

Send your answer, on a sheet of toilet tissue, to any central or local government department.

BEHIND-THE-BIKESHEDS SCHOOL OF SEX EDUCATION

2008-10-20T08:52:00.004+01:00

I belong to the best club in the world – I’m one of the Great Unclubables.

My mate and I did join the Boys’ Brigade for a few weeks, mainly because people kept going on about the Scouts but that looked far too regimented. As it turned out, the BB also had adults telling us what to do (we could get enough of that at home), so our membership lasted long enough to get one of those nice little badges each. I still have mine. Somewhere.

Why is it that you can’t be a member of an organisation like the Brigade or the Scouts and still be one of the lads? The two are mutually incompatible. If you’re one of the lads you learn about life the proper way – by whisper, by joke, by dare, by teasing, and then – finally, best of all – by fumbling experience. Yes, I do mean sex, too.

So I was horrified to read yesterday that the Scout Association is to introduce sex education. This from the movement whose founder Lord Baden-Powell's idea of sex education was to urge boys who feel sexual urges to “wash your parts in cold water and cool them down”.

In these politically correct times, it behoves me to say that sex education is down to your parents, and then your school. As someone who puts political correctness on a par with herpes and semolina, I would suggest that the school of life – i.e. behind the bikesheds – still does a reasonable job.

And talking of political correctness, can you imagine a noble idiot like Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell being given permission today to take hundreds of pubescent boys away to camp on a secluded island?

Quite. I rest my case.

TOO MANY APPLES? A LIKELY STORY!

2008-10-17T08:12:00.003+01:00

It’s been a funny old week. Let me share my highlights with you:

The pony called Fat Boy that got drunk by eating hundreds of rotting, fermenting apples and fell in a swimming pool. Fire crews spent two hours rescuing him from the shallow end.

England’s excellent win in Belarus – and a supporter’s Shrek dummy. Why had we never spotted before the ogre’s resemblance to Wayne Rooney?

Former deputy prime minister John Prescott telling how he greeted three girls on a council estate with the words ‘Hello, Chavs!’ He got muddled up, apparently.

Gillian Taylforth on Loose Women, saying her brain went to mush after her baby was born. How did she know? Did anybody else notice the difference?

Ringo Starr’s rant that he won’t be dealing with any more fan mail after October 20. No photos, no autographs. I don’t know how to tell you this, Ringo, but … I was gonna post it on October 21. So I probably won’t bother now.

The news that senior citizens will get a semi-decent rise in their State pension next April, thanks to the rise in inflation, PLUS inflation should now start to fall. And if power prices start to fall as well, as they should following the drop in oil prices, the old folk might even start thinking someone cares. Respects and reveres, even, as our older generation deserves.

What do you mean, how old am I?

Old enough ...

AND HERE IS TODAY'S CATACLYSMIC NEWS-FLASH

2008-10-16T08:53:00.008+01:00

It takes some believing, but there are people who never read a newspaper or watch a TV news bulletin; unless it’s celebrity shit. So they probably haven’t got a clue about the cataclysmic events of the past few weeks.

They know that Cheryl Cole has been called a sex maniac by a former boyfriend. But they don’t know that the rest of us have been screwed by greedy bankers for so long that the world’s entire banking system came within an ace of collapse.

They know that the Beckhams’ housekeepers have been arrested on suspicion of theft after some of the golden couple’s clothes were spotted on ebay. But they don’t know that bank executives around the globe have been sacked for something very similar.

They know that Madonna and Guy Ritchie plan to divorce and no doubt redistribute their wealth. But they don’t know that we taxpayers were separated from £34billion of our money this week to bail out the banks in exchange for a few shares.

They know that Kelly Brook (pictured here) is absolutely stuck on England’s new rugby sensation Danny Cipriani. But they don’t know that the world loves Gordon Brown at the moment for leading the global rescue mission.

Sad, isn’t it … that the hopes of at least half the nation’s population have been dashed by a fly-half.

SOMETHING FISHY ABOUT YESTERDAY'S ALIEN INVASION

2008-10-15T08:40:00.003+01:00

A Wiltshire man had a £1,000 bet with bookmakers William Hill that an intergalactic spaceship would appear in our skies yesterday. His odds of 1000/1 would win him £1million.

Well, I certainly didn’t see any IFO – like a UFO, but identified (Aussie psychic Blossom Goodchild said it would belong to the Federation Of Light). And neither did I see anything on the telly about an alien invasion.

But all is not lost: the wording of the bet is that either the US President or UK Prime Minister will confirm the existence of alien life within a year (on the well-known premise that our dastardly governments have a penchant for keeping strange, other-world creatures a secret from us, although the U.S. made an exception in the case of George W Bush).

And I have this strange feeling that the Wiltshire punter might have some inside knowledge. Well, he is called Lawrence Trout.

Half-man half-fish. What more proof do you want? Especially if the fish is the top half.

It certainly made Hills edgy. They cut the odds to 100/1 pretty sharpish.

LOOK – BEWARE MY PAINFUL POLITICAL LEEK!

2008-10-14T09:00:00.003+01:00

Now, look – I’m going to get friggin’ angry if a politician ever says that to my face. It’s bad enough on TV.

Have you noticed? It’s one of those tricks that politicians are taught by the speaking coaches the major parties hire. It always starts a sentence, and is delivered in such a way that it really means, ‘Look, don’t you dare contradict me, I know what I’m doing, I am right, and everyone else is talking out of their arse.’

Eyebrows Darling said it more than once yesterday morning as he was trying to explain why the Government has given away so much of our money to save the greedy banks.

‘Now, look …’ Or sometimes, the even more dismissive, ‘Look …’

I first really noticed this speech tic when Tony Blair was taught to use it regularly. It has probably been going on ever since politicians realised they didn’t have to speak off the cuff; they could just parrot any number of stock phrases joined together.

But recent or no, it’s certainly caught on. They all do it, whichever party they belong to. So …

Look, I’m warning you silly bastards – STOP IT! Or I’ll track you down one by one and prove the electorate really knows who’s talking out of their arse – by shoving a big fat leek up yours till not a squeak can escape.

THE BANKER PREPARED TO SETTLE FOR £150 BONUS!

2008-10-13T09:00:00.005+01:00

Although my new bank NAB (Napper Assets Banking) isn’t up and running yet, I have decided to apply for a tiny handout from the £37billion of our money that the government is giving to the major banks to keep them afloat.

Maybe a pitiful £5million, to ward off future global financial crises. It’s only fair. Actually, I have a minor problem with the books already, so they could pop it in the post this week. It’s not that my new MD is incompetent, but he had a slight accident on Friday.

I – I mean he – received a letter with a familiar postmark and a card inside. He thought he’d received an invitation; maybe someone in the family or a friend was getting married. So he opened it and found a lovely card from a potential investor thanking NAB for challenging the might of the Big Four banks.

Nice to be appreciated, he thought. And then, as an avid recycler (and ripper-off of addresses to prevent identity fraud), he immediately ripped up the envelope to put in the big blue bin. It was only then that he thought, ‘Shame there wasn’t a cheque in it. A cheque … oh my God!’

He opened up the bits of massacred envelope and sure enough, there hidden inside the ripped folds, were scraps of torn cheque. Oh, bugger.

Thinking about it, Mrs S of Lincolnshire might have trouble believing this entirely accurate version of events, so I will revise my request to the government. To £5,000,150.

How does that sound, Gordon and Alistair. A banker prepared to accept a £150 bonus. If I set a precedent here, the nation will be forever in my debt. Hopefully.

INSTANT RELIEF WITH A THWACK AT THE SHACK

2008-10-10T08:51:00.002+01:00

Had enough of greedy bankers? Heard, seen, and read too many stories about the global economic crisis, while you’re just trying to get by?

Yeah? Why don’t we copy an idea that is knocking ‘em dead in San Diego, and will probably sweep the States. You go to Sarah’s Smash Shack, buy a few old plates or glasses, write the name/s of somebody you hate on them (though that is optional), and sling them as hard as you can at the wall or the floor. Just let it all out. Shout and swear, rant and rave, fling and smash with all your might. Oh, what therapy.

I’m sure it will catch on here soon. If I had the time and money, I’d probably do it myself. But mine wouldn’t be a shop. Mine would be a mobile shack that I could drive round to the taunt the enemies of the people in their own lairs, as and when they deserve it. So they could watch and wince as the huge display on the outside flashes up its appropriate electronic message.

You know: Deck an MP! as the shack pulls up outside the Commons; Thwack An Icelander!, outside the Icelandic Embassy and the home of anybody with a vaguely Nordic name; Club A Car Clamper!, just about anywhere; Stone The Crows!, outside the RSPB (just for the hell of it).

And that’s before we even think about the banks and the London Stock Exchange, because we’re trying to forget the financial crisis for a while, right? Yeah, right.

Just in case you’d like to know (you may want to send a Christmas card, or something), the Stock Exchange is at 10 Paternoster Square, near St Paul’s.

I HEREBY CALL A MEETING OF NATWEST SHAREHOLDERS

2008-10-09T08:44:00.003+01:00

MY bank. The words have got a different ring to them this morning. As a new shareholder of the Natwest (RBS), my first action will be to call an extraordinary meeting of shareholders. Round at our place, next Monday. Hope you can make it.

Could be a tad crowded and Mrs N might struggle to find enough cups for the tea, but I am currently working on a rescue package of measures to make the gathering workable.

We’ll cram as many ordinary shareholders as we can into the piece of land (garden extension) we call the orchard and the good-looking ones into the garden proper. People we wish to castigate – the current greedy bankers – will be packed into the area round the compost heap, so it won’t matter if the over-ripe tomatoes miss their target.

The main item on the agenda will be to replace all the current greedy bankers with a panel of sensible people who will decide how much my new management team (details to be announced later) will be paid in dividends and annual bonuses, and how much the current greedy bankers will be required to put into the payback fund in order to become former greedy bankers and therefore be accepted back into polite society.

The second item will be to decide how much the new sensible bankers are prepared to pay to incorporate NAB – my other bank, Napper Assets Banking – into the New Natwest (New RBS).

Then you can all bugger off home.

THE TALE OF BIGGLES, GINGER VITIS, AND THE SPELLING BEE

2008-10-08T07:37:00.005+01:00

Yes, yes, I know – you don’t spell gingivitis with an 'er' in the middle! Such is the appalling standard of spelling in this country that I haven’t exactly been inundated with messages pointing out my ‘error’ in last Thursday’s entry.

To the one person who mentioned it – it was a bloody joke! Ginger Vitis, the World War Two ace fighter pilot? Mate of Algy? Barrack buddy of Biggles and Co? Yes? Got it!?

Anyway, I went back to the dentist yesterday, to check on my battle against the early stages of gingivitis. And after another wincing clean I was given the all-clear.

Yes, the all-clear, chaps. So put your feet up, Ginger. Have a rest and an ounce of shag, Algy. Lie down and … leave that new recruit alone, Biggles. He’s far too young for you. Organise a spelling bee, instead.

Sadly, I might not win it. For most of my adult life (in pre-spellcheck days, children) I was a professional speller, among other things. Now that I am semi-retired and my talents are veering towards other matters, suddenly my spelling is beginning to falter.

The other day, for instance, I spelled (or spelt) the name of the famous chapel ‘Cistine’ instead of Sistine. I checked the envelope and realised I’d address it to the Pupe.

Ah well, he probably doesn’t want it emulsioning anyway …

P.S. The credit crunch. No knee-jerk reaction from me this morning to Alistair Darling's 'rescue the nation' statement – but only because I have to dash out.

BEND THOSE KNEES – NOT THAT WAY!

2008-10-07T09:02:00.003+01:00

As I was saying about the human body the other day – amazing piece of evolution. But ‘amazing’ barely covers the intricacies of the brain.

The seemingly automatic impulses that somehow helped me to type these words, to work the keyboard at a brisk pace while my creative juices were still deciding on … the … final … words. If you see what I mean. While also thinking about nipping to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. And occasionally scratching my left buttock (it’s my favourite one).

A brain that can come up with a word like kneemaphobia, meaning the fear of the knee bending backwards.

And, even more incredible, a brain that needs to come up with the word kneemaphobia (who was that first nutter?)

Can you just imagine it if the knees could go either way? Or the elbows? It’s no good, I’ve got to stop. I’ve come over all unnecessary just thinking about it. I must be suffering from cogitatitis. Or have I got a touch of profundaphobia?

Excuse me, I’ll have to lie down and try to think of something else. Bloody brain …

OSBORNE, MANDELSON AND CO – YOU'VE GOT TO CHUCKLE!

2008-10-06T09:01:00.002+01:00

Last week’s Tory Party Conference only confirmed what I already suspected. What about you? Can you really imagine smug boy scout George (ne Gideon) Osborne coping with a global economic crisis? A man who couldn’t cope with a distinctive first name, whose first job was a glorified typist, couldn’t settle at Selfridges, couldn’t find a job as a journalist, and so settled for a research post at Conservative Central Office, which was at least his spiritual home.

I could turn this into a full-blown party political broadcast and mention that the only time in his life he’s had to worry about money was when the school tuck shop couldn’t change a £50 note. And that the few ‘policies’ he’s revealed so far for a David Cameron government all revolve around saving money for the reasonably well-off and the downright rich.

BUT … who could bank on Gordon Brown having a brainstorm and scoring the most monumental own goal? Bringing back Peter Mandelson to his Cabinet? The prince of the dark art of spin? The most divisive politician of his generation, and most others (watch out Alistair Darling)? Now the Business Secretary who will guide the UK’s business community through the biggest economic crisis in a century?

Yes, it’s true! Frightening doesn’t come into it. Dracula must be shivering in his grave. Frankenstein’s monster is no doubt pulling himself apart.

All I can say is, it’s a good job I launched Napper Assets Banking, or NAB for short. My start-up fund has reached, ooh, several figures, and not one greedy banker has been employed. The first tranche (flash financial word to prove my credentials) will go towards securing the services of a two-man team that will easily outstrip Osborne and Mandelson, and the rest.

Step up to the plate, you Chuckle Brothers!

THE PAIN OF CREATION

2008-10-03T08:52:00.003+01:00

Superb bit of evolution, the human body. The powerful brain, the incredible eye, the tremendous dexterity of our fingers and thumbs, the joy of the tingly bits (you know!). Then, of course, there’s the joints. And the back. If there were a god-designer, he would draw in his breath and say, ‘Ah … I’ll get back to you on that.’

Because we evolved from creatures that originally went about their lives on all fours, the spine isn’t the perfect piece of engineering for homo erectus. As I rediscovered when I went to my mate Terry’s to help him lay a new patio.

I know the drill from my our other mutual mate Frank, a versatile bastard who can write and do gardens. So I went to Terry’s to give him the benefit of my acquired skills. Laying paving involves a lot of heavy lifting and working on your knees, and I felt the first back twinge a couple of hours in. By the afternoon the twinges were merging into a nagging pain. And we were only halfway through.

The next day (we had allocated two) I was forced to take more of a supervisory role while Terry did most of the humping and kneeling. Fortunately he’s a quick learner and by the end of the day we did indeed have a fine patio. And I crawled home with a throbbing back.

I had a word with Frank later, to find out how the garden designer/landscaper copes with a bad back. He just cackled. Not a clue.

He is an excellent garden designer, though. Check out his website at www.frgardendesign.co.uk.

* While I’m talking of pains … I’m no big fan of Sir Ian Blair, the Met Police chief forced to quit yesterday. But it’s frightening that Boris Johnson has the power to sack him, which is what it boiled down to. It’s frightening that Boris Johnson has the power to sack anybody.

MRS X ISN'T QUITE MY XAVIER

2008-10-02T08:54:00.003+01:00

It’s been a funny few days. Mrs N decided she didn’t want to be in the public print any more, so I rapidly had to advertise for a personal assistant, conduct half a dozen interviews, and chose a candidate for my little job away from home this week. I chose a late-middle-aged, very organised Mrs Xavier (also very good-looking, but that’s by the by).

So it was that Mrs X and I were motoring towards Lincolnshire on a route I know well when suddenly, as I rounded a roundabout and headed towards the second exit, we encountered a row of sturdy bollards and a sign saying ROAD CLOSED and FOLLOW DIVERSION.

Closed!? Diversion? Where were the warning signs in the miles leading up to the closure? Nowhere. Not one. So I had to go back round the roundabout, cussing vehemently about the the incompetence of the highways authority (I fear Mrs X had led a sheltered life – she didn’t seem to know some of my choicer words) until we spotted, lying on the ground by the first exit, a sign saying Diversion.

The diversion went on for miles and miles, so I got Mrs X to locate the mapbook and find out how the road we were now on related to our destination. Or, as I put it, ‘Where the fuck are we?’

Mrs X grimaced and found our position quite easily. I was impressed. Even more so when she realised where the diversion was taking us. She then gave me an option – follow this A road we’re on, till we come to the next A road, and then a nifty left turn will put us back on track, OR I could whip down this B road and maybe save a few minutes.

I chose the latter. I should have known better.

After a few miles, Mrs X missed a sign for a left turn and we ended up going through villages that hadn’t seen a stranger since Queen Victoria’s last procession. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I got a bit cross and started cussing and blaming my navigator (well, shouting and snarling, really); and she said why hadn’t I seen the sign, and if she’d known I’d wanted a navigator she wouldn’t have applied for the job.

Anyway, we got there eventually, did the job, and jointly navigated our way back home without any more mishaps (bar the bad back, but more of that another time). However, the air was distinctly frosty. I’m not sure if the Blog and I can survive without Mrs N.

MY SWIVEL CHAIR, A BANANA, AND THE DANCE OF DEATH

2008-09-26T08:36:00.006+01:00

I’m in the wrong job. I think I’ll become an illusionist. And for my first trick I will sit on my office chair for two hours, type and eat a banana at the same time (putting down the banana only when I have to type) while leaning 45 degrees sideways, and then do the Dance Of Death. This involves jigging to the loo where I will wazz until there is no liquid left in me.

Then I’ll go downstairs to have a cup of coffee and count my money.

Well, if David Blaine can do it, so can I. He hangs upside down for a while, has a coffee and comfort break, maybe something to eat, and then hangs upside down for a little longer.

But wait! There’s the big Dive Of Death finale. In which the Chilled-Blaine jumps and then gets lowered to the ground on wires. Wow! Why didn’t I think of that. But hold on, it’s not over yet ... the darkly clad one is pulled back up into the sky, the lights go off and – gasp! – he disappears.

Genius.

Bring back David Nixon!

* I’m away on a job at the start of next week. Like David Blaine I won’t have disappeared entirely. I’ll be back to entertain and, even more like David Blaine, mystify you some time midweek.

UP A GUM TREEE WITH RICKY GERVAIS

2008-09-25T08:57:00.004+01:00

I went to the dentist yesterday. I was a very brave boy and didn’t bite the bastard once.

My teeth are fine, but I have to have my gums out. That’s a slight exaggeration – but I have been having trouble with my gums. The aforementioned bastard noticed at my last check-up that there were signs of the onset of gingervitis.

I thought he was a tennis player, possibly a distant cousin of the late Vitas Gerulaitis, but I was wrong. Ginger flew a Spitfire in the Second World War until his sad death forever associated him with the dental condition – he was inspecting his sorry teeth and gums in his rear-view mirror when a Messerschmitt got him in the Koblenz region.

Anyway, I underwent a very thorough and at times wincing cleaning session yesterday, and have to have another 'deep clean' in a fortnight, which the bastard told me would be even more ‘uncomfortable’.

Uncomfortable!? He should have been a politician. Come to think of it, there are real similarities between the two professions – overpaid bastards causing great pain to the rest of the population.

When I got home yesterday I stumbled across the story of Ricky Gervais and the difference between British and American teeth. In general, ours are natural and characterful; the Yanks’ are unnaturally straight and blindingly white. The reason, of course, is that in the States vanity overcomes everything, even fear of the drill.

A US journalist complimented Gervais on being prepared to wear unflattering false teeth for his role as an English dentist in his latest film. Only he didn't. The comic replied: “These are my real teeth. You think I'd wear them all the time if they weren't real?”

Laugh? I nearly forgot the ordeal that awaits me in a fortnight.

TIME TO PUT DOWN CRAZY OLD PHILOSOPHERS, EH, AL?

2008-09-24T08:55:00.005+01:00

You wait ages for a JOCKEY SHORT and then three of them come along in a row.

I’m calling for volunteers for a special mission – to put down a dangerous old crone who wants to undermine the essence of a civilized society. Looking after our loved ones. I expect to be crushed in the rush.

Baroness Warnock, a renowned philosopher and one of the country’s leading authorities on medical ethics, says old people in mental decline have a duty to die and should be pushed towards death. I quote: "If you are demented, you are wasting people's lives, your family's lives, and you are wasting the resources of the National Health Service.”

There are many valid arguments in favour of euthanasia for those in chronic pain or decline, physical or mental. This isn’t one of them. Putting aside the fact that the sanctity of life must always come before money and convenience, her charter for killing is wide open to abuse. By greedy/desperate/spiteful relatives after the cash, by a cunning ‘friend’ after the house, by a lazy carer after an easy life. To name but a few.

The thing is fraught. As her fellow philosopher Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, would say: ‘YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHT IT THROUGH, LOVE!”

I’m still trying to work out if the 84-year-old Baroness (my perfect advert for the absurdity of peerages) is crazy enough yet to be assisted out of her and our misery. Send in your application and I’ll file it under Pending until I’ve had a chance to investigate further. Maybe think it through with Al. Compared to her, he speaks a lot of sense.

SPARE THE LITTLE CHILDREN ...

2008-09-23T08:51:00.003+01:00

It’s true my JOCKEY SHORTS can be a bit colourful; a bit shouty. This is dark, sober, and deadly serious.

Come the revolution, clerics of all religions will be forbidden from telling people they will be reunited with their loved ones in the hereafter/heaven/paradise/whatever. On pain of excommunication from the human race.

Yesterday we had news of another sad nutter in a broken relationship who couldn’t or wouldn’t live without his children so he killed them and then himself.

Some of these deranged bastards work on the ‘if I can’t have them, neither can she’ principle; others veer towards ‘we’ll be reunited in heaven’; many find their vindication in a combination of these grotesque assertions.

Without the strange notion that the children will be waiting in another life (presumably not too worried that their father was a murdering psychopath), at least some of these unspeakable tragedies might be avoided.

'AMMER 'OUSE OF 'ORROR – IT'S HAWFUL!

2008-09-22T08:32:00.005+01:00

I’m having withdrawal symptoms. I realised yesterday I haven’t had a JOCKEY SHORT for ages. I need one, and I think the world does, too.

For newcomers to Napper, a JOCKEY is Jack’s Official Crucial Key Educational Yardstick. And if it’s snappy enough, it’s a JOCKEY SHORT. This is today’s:

From now on, anyone who pronounces HBOS as Haitch Boss will be sent back to school for a term. Any school where children over the age of six pronounce an aitch as haitch will have their teachers sent back to college for a term. And TV presenters caught perpetuating this horror, and there are quite a few, will be sent to their nearest Aitch Em Pee until they stop pronouncing it Haitch Em Pee.

Not following me? It’s easy. Although, with a few exceptions, it’s correct to pronounce the 'h' on words beginning with that letter (as in house and hammer), when you pronounce the letter on it own, say as an initial, you do not pronounce an ‘h’.

It’s Aitch Boss, not Haitch Boss; it’s Aitch Queue, not Haitch Queue; it’s Aitch Eye Vee, not Haitch Eye Vee. All right?

There’s is no frigging ‘h’ on Aitch!

Please pass this on to your nearest teacher …

TALE OF THE UNEXPECTED: I HAVE THE BIG 4.5 RUNNING SCARED

2008-09-19T09:00:00.004+01:00

Horse – stable – bolted – springs to mind as the governments of the UK and US outlaw what was until yesterday the most lucrative form of legal robbery known to man.

The short-selling of shares (too involved to explain here; look it up if you don’t know) enabled the very greedy to rob the very stupid and greedy – in this case, the banks – at the expense of everybody else, i.e. me and you.

I’ve heard a lot of talk in the past few days of ‘the death of capitalism’. Bollocks! You can’t kill greed. The very greedy bastards will just lie low till the fuss is over, till the world’s financial markets are on some sort of an even keel, and then start all over again. With a new way of fleecing greedy bankers/brokers/innocent schmucks.

I hereby pledge that greed will not be allowed when Napper Assets Banking is up and running. My start-up (see Tuesday’s entry) has been slow, thanks to some sneaky bastard from one of the Big Four – now Four And A Half since Lloyds TSB swallowed the Halifax (HBOS as was).

I have been infiltrated to distract me from my purpose. In the past week my favourite old gardening watch (as opposed to my semi-posh gold watch) and a new steak knife have disappeared into thin air. Gone. Vanished. Mrs N and I have wasted hours searching for both, turning the house upside down and slowly coming to the conclusion that the other has had a senior moment and put them ‘somewhere safe’.

But I watched enough TV episodes of the Tales Of The Unexpected in the early-80s to know that someone is sneaking into Napper Towers, either in the night or when we are out, to steal things, re-arrange things, hide things, to make us gradually appear bonkers until we are fighting tooth and nail and eventually the authorities are called and we are sectioned. Then they can make off with all our wealth – or in this case, the fledgling NAB.

My money is on the new Lloyds TSB/HBOS conglomerate. I think I have them running scared. Sorry, boys, I have your number. And don’t even try to wangle your way in under an assumed name. Any applicant called Lloyd Bosh will get no shares but plenty of short shrift.

Beats short-selling any day.

C OF E HAS EVOLVED AT LEAST HALF A BRAIN

2008-09-18T08:49:00.003+01:00

The Church of England apologised this week to Charles Darwin for ‘misunderstanding’ his theory of evolution.

Maybe some of its top people have at last evolved a brain. Or maybe not. What they should have really apologised for was ‘misrepresenting, castigating, and falsifying’ his theory to protect their position as the fount of all divine knowledge.

I suspect the pathetic apology was some sort of response to the even more pathetic showing of their leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the TV documentary on Darwin by eminent biologist Richard Dawkins.

Rowan Williams – doing a fair Rowan Atkinson impersonation – stuttered and stumbled and waffled his way through an implausible defence of his unseen boss upstairs.

Not only is the apology 200 years too late, it comes in an article that is as convincing as the original reaction to Darwin.

As far as I can see, there is only one way the Church of England can even get close to redeeming itself for its demonisation of Darwin. And that is to apologise also for a few other gaffes:

• For brainwashing generations of British children through its faith schools, instead of explaining the arguments for and against a God and letting the little innocents decide as they grow older
• For believing that mankind can’t manage a secular moral code without a God to prop it up
• For wearing ridiculous fancy dress at every opportunity
• For colluding with the BBC to force Aled Jones on to us every Sunday evening.

Amen!

CAR OR WIFE? I'LL STICK WITH MY OLD JALOPY!

2008-09-17T08:51:00.003+01:00

Apparently three per cent of male drivers would consider giving up their wife or partner rather than their car, according to a survey last week that almost escaped my radar. I don’t believe it. Only three per cent!?

I mean, how many wives are ready to go immediately after you switch them on with just a flick of the fingers? How many wives would take you to any sporting event anywhere in the UK without a murmur of dissent? How many wives would carry your golf clubs around all the time … just in case.

Even more surprisingly, only two per cent of women drivers would consider ditching their other half rather than their car. I don’t believe it. How can so many women be so self-centered!?

Only joking, dear – put that niblick down.

The really interesting, but not so funny, bit of the survey of AA members was that the top two hates of drivers are tailgating (30 %) and using a mobile phone while driving (26%).

Coming back from Scotland last week, we encountered a prick doing both at once. He was looming so large in my rear-view mirror that I could see the trade name on the Nokia he was holding to his ear. Thankfully he was soon past me, which meant he was speeding, too.

Half an hour later we were caught up in a long traffic delay while the emergency services pulled some poor unfortunate from a car that appeared to have shot off the road and over a fence.

I have no way of knowing if it was the prick. But better him than some poor innocent he forced off the road. That would be natural justice.

So … now let me cheer you up. Buy the finest book on bastard tailgaters ever written. When It Comes To The Crunch is funny and absorbing as well as thought-provoking. Go to www.huckbooks.co.uk for details.

Toodle pip.

*For Mrs N (who likes read my blog, to find out what I'm up to): While you were still asleep this morning I was abducted by an alien race called Allsfairincomedy. They forced a vile liquor down my throat, told me to write a piece about cars for their newsletter, Weird World, and dictated the dastardly headline at the top. I had no choice, darling.

Let me NAB your money

2008-09-16T09:16:00.002+01:00

I have spotted a gap in the market. I am going to open an investment bank. I think I shall call it Napper Assets Banking. Or NAB for short.

It’s quite simple really. Customers take some collateral from their assets, give it to NAB, and we invest it wisely – premium bonds, Tessas, Lottery tickets, scratchcards, National Savings maybe. Nothing too risky. As CEO, I will take about £26milion a year for my efforts. Mrs N, who will do all the electronic paperwork in the afternoons, before Deal Or No Deal comes on, will get about £10K a year. Let no one say we are profligate.

I am currently putting the finishing touches to my start-up package. I narrowly missed out on buying Lehman Brothers – I rang Arsenal to talk to Jens, having completely forgotten that he had been transferred to Stuttgart – but stumbled across something worth considerably more: my old Post Office savings cache (birthday and Christmas money since I was about six).

I am now inviting investors to buy shares in NAB. The initial allocation is on the market from today at a modest £5 per share. Buy as many as you like. Send your cash to my personal brokers at Napper Towers. For more details, reply via the Comments box below.

You know it makes sense.

Per ardua ad Astraeus – now via Bruce Dickinson

2008-09-15T08:31:00.004+01:00

Like most people, I was astounded to read that Bruce Dickinson, lead singer with Iron Maiden, is also a pilot with Astraeus Airlines. I mean … Astraeus! How could he? The airline that doesn’t know its Assisi from its Elba.

Bruce has been helping to bring stranded XL passengers back to Britain, giving Astraeus some flattering publicity it doesn’t deserve.

Let me tell you about Astraeus. No, on second thoughts, as promised last week, let my mate Frank tell you about Astraeus and Thomas Holidays, and how they combined to ruin a dream last year.

This is his account. It’s longish but well worth the read:

WE’D had the family gathering, we’d done all the jokes (‘even Crippen didn’t get 40 years!’), and now we had a blissful holiday to come to celebrate our ruby wedding anniversary.

A four-star hotel perched on a hill with glorious views over Lake Garda in Italy. A week of relaxation and a little gentle sight-seeing away from the rigours of work. Just me and my child-bride, maybe getting a feel for eventual retirement.

Per ardua ad astra. Only this turned out to be Per ardua ad Astraeus.

We had booked with Thomson Lakes & Mountains back in December; a comfortable 1.30pm Saturday flight in early June that meant we could pootle down to Gatwick without having to get up before the dawn chorus. In April I pre-booked my parking at Gatwick South. Barely a week later we received a letter from Thomson telling us that our outbound flight had been changed from a Thomson aircraft to an Astraeus plane, that it would leave at 6.15 am on the Saturday, and from the North Terminal.

I uttered the odd expletive, calmed down, cancelled the parking (fortunately at no charge), rearranged new parking, and booked a hotel room just off the airport for the Friday night. Trying to ignore the fact that we’d now have to check in at some ungodly hour apparently called 4.15 am, we reasoned that we would at least get almost a full day in the resort (should be at Limone by about midday instead of around 7pm).

The following week we received another letter from Thomson, adding that the return flight had been revised: leaving Verona at 6pm instead of 5pm.

No bother. Garda, here we come.

June 2, bloody early: No sooner had we joined the queue heading for the Astraeus check-in points than the first strange rumour reached us. There was some sort of delay. Then the next: Astraeus didn’t have a crew for flight AEU 221. Swiftly followed by: they are trying to get another plane/crew from Shannon in Ireland.

The note we were handed at check-in informed us that indeed there was “a lack of a full Astraeus crew” and that the replacement “sub-service aircraft” from another UK carrier had been cancelled because of engineering problems with that carrier’s fleet. The ray of good news was that there should be an aircraft available for a 7.45pm departure and meanwhile we would be provided with breakfast and a day room at the Hilton Hotel on the airport.

Well, whoopee-doo.

Let me tell you – the Hilton’s breakfast isn’t worth £18. I’m glad Astraeus were footing the bill. We were also given £10 vouchers each for lunch – at any of the airport outlets, but not at the Hilton, which was a small mercy.

June 2, 5.30pm: We had already been at Gatwick more than 12 hours. Our feet were aching and our brains were numb. My child bride and I hadn’t flown abroad since the post-bombing strict security measures were introduced, so we were probably preoccupied with our little plastic bags full of potions and lotions as we approached Departures. We didn’t twig on why some passengers weren’t being allowed past the first desk – until we were asked to join them.

Departures staff hadn’t received notification of flight AEU 221. No one with a boarding card bearing that number could go airside. So before long about 150 of us were milling around one end of Departures, berating Thomson, Astraeus, and the flight handler Aviance, and trying to contact representatives of any of the guilty parties.

Before long airport police were summoned to move us along. We were “too near a fire exit” was the official excuse – but we weren’t. And we weren’t moving. It was all part of the fobbing-off process that went on for the next four hours, while Astraeus apparently tried to secure an aircraft to take us to Verona.

The Astraeus and Aviance people were undoubtedly underlings doing their best; the British Airports Authority chap did his darnedest but obviously couldn’t conjure up a Boeing from the ether; the representative from Thomson was nowhere to be seen.

A Welsh firebrand of a woman in the best Aneurin Bevan tradition – but whose negotiation skills had been honed as a Marks and Spencer manager rather than forged in the mines – suddenly became our semi-official spokeswoman. She gave as good as she got, but you can’t beat an opponent if he won’t climb in the ring.

About half a dozen times we were told to “give it 10 more minutes” and there would be definitive news on whether attempts to secure an aircraft had been successful. Finally, some time after 9pm (time had lost all meaning by then), they admitted it: there would be no flight for us on Saturday June 2. Buses were being arranged to take us to a hotel for the night, and meanwhile we could retrieve our luggage. We would be picked up at about 10 am the following morning for a rearranged flight at about 3pm.

The buses came along after midnight, by which time we were weary and footsore beyond belief. They took us to a hotel at Heathrow! My child bride and I were halfway back to our home in Oxfordshire. If our car hadn’t been parked at Gatwick we might well have joined the handful of very hot-and-bothered passengers who called it a day – a very long day – and went home.

I was so tired as I got ready for bed at about 2am that I dropped one of my contact lenses on the floor, trod on it, and shattered it. Sod it! That’s another £75 Thomson owe me …

June 3, 8.30 am: Very good breakfast at the Park Inn. 10.15am: coach back to Gatwick. High noon: check in again. 2.30pm: plane lifts off the tarmac. Hallelujah!

We are only 33 hours late for our holiday.

The hotel – the Panorama at Limone – lived up to its name and its reputation. There were stunning views from our room, the dining room, the terraces, the pool, the lift, the loo even! The weather was mixed, but we didn’t mind too much. It meant we could do a lot of walking – which we thoroughly enjoyed – that would have been impossible in a heatwave. The only thing missing was the anniversary “fruit basket or flowers” Thomson promised when we booked. Another triumph for its organisational skills.

June 9, 12.50pm: Coach arrives on time to take us back to Verona for our flight home, which was either 6pm or 7pm, but we were getting used to Astraeus Flexitime. Or were we? The young obligatorily blonde rep who stepped off to greet us was obviously nervous, and with good reason. She was sorry to tell us that the return flight would be delayed – perhaps 9 or 10pm. Perhaps a bit later …

Meanwhile, we would be taken to a hotel on the outskirts of Verona where we would be made comfortable until our flight. Comfortable! We were incandescent. But, of course, we had no choice but to go.

On the way we teamed up with other angry Astraeus refugees, including the Welsh firebrand. Many spleens were vented, especially when they started dishing out free water – one bottle per couple, not one each. That was soon resolved, but the air was still hot and sticky, mainly with barely suppressed rage that we had yet again been ambushed by the cowboys.

But suddenly there was a difference. There was a senior Thomson rep there, and then Thomson’s general manager in Italy, one Guiseppe Savastrano. If ever anyone deserved to be a general manager, Guiseppe did. Speaking immaculate if vowel-strangled English, he patiently and politely answered all our questions, promised us dinner in the hotel, coaches to the airport to check in about 9.30pm, and then a flight leaving about 2am on Sunday.

We were sceptical at first – would Verona airport allow planes to take off at that time of the morning?; would Gatwick allow us to land at 3am UK time? – but he won us over. The meal was good. And afterwards some of us took off our socks, rolled up our trousers, and refreshed our hot, sweaty feet in the hotel pool. Glorious.

June 10, 2am: Take-off from Verona. 3.50am: land at Gatwick. 4.30am: stump up for extra day’s parking at Gatwick and get on the road. 6am: arrive home and (first things first) check how things are growing in the garden. Roses out and looking wonderful. 6.30am: flop into bed. 10.30am. wake up, unable to sleep any more.

First time we’ve been jetlagged after a two-hour flight …

God, we could do with a holiday.

AIRLINES THAT XL AT RUINING DREAMS

2008-09-12T09:28:00.003+01:00

Less than a fortnight after the airline Zoom zoomed into oblivion, XL has now proved it excelled at bugger all. Particularly management and accounts.

Again we have sorry tales and TV pictures of holidaymakers stranded abroad and, even worse, would-be holidaymakers turning up at Gatwick after months of looking forward to their break only to discover they ain’t getting one.

Then we get a host of glib bastards from the holiday industry – the Civil Aviation Authority, other airlines, Richard Branson – telling us not to worry, things will work out, people will get their cash back (if they’re lucky), the industry will pull together, the major airlines are safe …

I was particularly struck by the bloke (whose name/job title I didn’t catch) reassuring viewers they could fly with the greatest confidence with the big two holiday operators, Thomson's and Thomas Cook.

I could just imagine my mate Frank throwing his toast at the telly. He and his lovely missus had their Thomson holiday flight delayed by 33 hours last year. Yes, 33 hours! A day and a half almost out of a seven-day holiday. A special holiday – to celebrate their ruby wedding anniversary.

Were Thomson bovvered? Yes, they were so distressed they sent out letters full of platitudes, they wriggled like snakes on steroids, they did everything in their power to avoid paying decent compensation. That’s how worried they were about fucking up somebody’s dreams.

Frank, a fellow hack, wrote a telling piece about the ordeal. I’ll bring it to you next week. Don’t book your Thomson holiday until you’ve read it …

I'M SICK OVER THE MOON!

2008-09-11T09:03:00.004+01:00

I’m gutted. Sick as a parrot. But over the moon as well.

The tactics were sorted – 7 5 5 (or five to eight), the time I was due to meet my buddy in a pub to watch the Croatia v England game. The line-up was settled – a steady pint of Guinness and then a coffee or soft drink, because I was driving (the nearest Setanta pub was several miles away). The nerves were well under control. The kick-off was still a few hours away.

Then Mrs N dropped the bombshell: she wanted the car, she had told me some time ago she wanted the car on Wednesday night, and there was no way round it. And suddenly I remembered the one reason that had eluded me when we decided to become a one-car couple.

BUGGER AND SHIT!

Obviously, I made the best of a bad job. I brought in the DAB radio as substitute, changed the line-up to several cans of Ruddles (silver lining and all that), and swopped my seat for a luxury recliner in my very own executive box.

I like radio. But for sport it just ain’t quite there. I cheered like hell when Theo Walcott set us on our way to a fabulous victory, I whooped at his second, I shouted joyously for Rooney’s goal, I frightened a returning Mrs N as I screeched for Theo’s hat-trick. But I couldn’t wait to see the action on TV.

I had both my downstairs tellies going for the ten o’clock news, so I could watch the goals on ITV and BBC. And I was very tempted to stay up for Setanta’s free rerun at some ungodly hour this morning. But the whole experience had left me shattered.

I already have the car booked for England’s next away game and my letter written to the FA. Asking why the greedy bastards sold their souls to a TV operator that has just a couple more subscribers than Princes Risborough Reserves have fans.

Lunacy. All England/Scotland/Wales/Ireland games (of whatever sport) should be among the sporting ‘crown jewels’ guarded by legislation. I certainly ain’t putting any money in the pocket of Mr Setanta, any more than I would dream of giving cash to Sky and Rupert Murdoch. Robber barons all. The bastards.

THE BIG BANG THAT RATTLED NAPPER TOWERS!

2008-09-10T09:02:00.003+01:00

As I write this sentence it is 8.35am, and the Big Bang experiment deep beneath the Swiss-French border has begun. So far so good – I’m still here writing. And as far as I can ascertain the Earth is not in a black hole.

It’s 8.38am, and I note that the Daily Mirror has taken the story seriously. While scientists try to find the so-called "God particle" that some theorists believe gives matter its mass, and thus discover how the universe was created, the Mirror’s team of highly paid journalists has treated us to a huge front page picture and story about Victoria Beckham’s new pixie haircut. The wankers.

It is 8.45am, and we are still here. And I’ve just remembered something I should have put in yesterday’s entry. While Mrs N and I, and our lovely hosts, were perusing the quaint shops of Rothesay on the Isle of Bute, I spotted in a beyond-quaint menswear shop a pair of old-fashioned slippers with the notice attached SLIPPERS FOR FEET. (There's a special prize for the first person to give me a credible answer to what else the islanders do with their slippers.)

It’s 8.55am and the experiment is well underway. And I am beginning to wonder how the England football team will fare in Croatia tonight. Another disaster, or will national pride at last overcome a lack of confidence that at times looks more like inertia?

It’s 9.00am, and all is quiet.

SHIT! WHAT’S THAT!? SOUNDED LIKE A F……

9.05am. No panic, folks. It was just Mrs N dropping a tray of cutlery.

It’s no good – my nerves won’t take any more. I’m uploading this while I can. See you tomorrow. Hopefully.

BUTE'S A BEAUT, GLASGIE'S WIERD, HOME IS ALWAYS SWEET

2008-09-09T09:37:00.005+01:00

So, the Scotsman, the caber, and the KY Jelly salesman …

No, I’m afraid it can’t be told. Largely because neither I nor Frankie Boyle have made it up yet. And if you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about, you’ll have to have a peek at the previous, pre-break entry.

This is the Napper report on our short UK meander:

Keswick and Derwent Water were wonderful, the Isle of Bute was beautiful (if you ignore the shopping experience that is Rothesay town centre), peaceful and quiet, and Glasgow was in mourning after the Scottish football team lost to Princes Risborough Reserves, or something similar.

In Glasgow we saw the amazing Burrell Collection, the mind-boggling Science Centre, and the bustling, edgy, sparky, merry-to-drunken, almost-inviting-but-slightly-intimidating, cosmopolitan-to-ultra-Scottish legend that is Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night.

Don’t take your maiden aunt there. Unless she’s a party girl who so-doesn’t feel the cold that she likes to wear a slip of a dress and little else when the Nappers have a fleece and a waterproof on over the top of several other layers.

Different world.

We couldn’t wait to get back to ours. Where nothing had changed – it was raining, Kevin Keegan had resigned again, and people were moaning about immigration, the cost of food, and the housing market.

It's good to be back. I'll be in top gear again tomorrow. Well, third at least ...

ZOOM CRASH AS FUNNY AS A BOYLE ON THE BUM

2008-08-29T09:22:00.005+01:00

Okay, what’s going on here? I tell the world I’m having a few days off in Scotland – and suddenly you can’t move for stories from beyond Adrian’s Wall. That’s not poor spelling, by the way – I’m referring to the builder Adrian McSqoggle, who lives in Gretna. (That’s a fiver you owe me, Adrian.)

Following midges and Queen Victoria, and the deep-fried Mars bar that is really Scotland’s secret slimming aid, comes news of the low life expectancy in poor areas of Glasgow, and then the collapse of the Scots-owned airline Zoom.

So parochial am I that I’d never heard of Zoom before, but I was interested to note that it is owned by John and Hugh Boyle. Now if they are in any way related to Frankie Boyle, the Scottish comedian who has played such a major part in the success of Mock The Week, they will be cracking jokes right now about their hundreds of stranded passengers and the 700 employees whose futures are in doubt.

Frankie is without a doubt the cruellest comedian on the circuit at present – and one of the funniest. He cracks jokes where no other comedian dares to go. And after a little gasp I find myself laughing at his latest outrage. I suspect many people stop at the gasp.

More fool them. There should be no limits or censorship in comedy, as in any other art. Only the self-imposed ones. If Frankie dies, he perishes by his own sword.

Now, did I tell you the story of the Scotsman, the caber, and the KY Jelly salesman...?

No? Tell you what, I’ll just check it out next week, make sure I’ve got it right, and if it passes the Frankie Test ... hold on to your breeks.

See you in a few days.

WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN ... BUT NOT DOWN SOUTH

2008-08-28T09:10:00.005+01:00

Take a second look at the obesity map of the UK published today. With the lean, green bits largely in the Home Counties, it could easily be a prosperity map of the UK. Except for some strange reason, Scotland (is it really that lean or rich?).

It can only mean that the deep-fried Mars bar is not the calorie-buster we suspected. Indeed, it may well be the secret weapon of Slimming World Scotland. As I shall be up there next week I shall use my journalistic training, and penchant for fish and chip shops, to investigate.

What the map does make evident is that in the 21st century lack of money doesn’t mean lack of food, hunger, and rib-thin people. It means cheap, fattening stodge and a couch-potato lifestyle.

If you are reasonably well off, you can afford to eat sensibly, or if you have no commonsense you can afford the gym fees/pills/personal trainer/surgery to get rid of your excess fat.

As with all health matters today, someone has come up with a hundred reasons why we mustn’t castigate obese people for being obese. Bullying, low self-esteem, overactive glands, water retention, you name it.

Personally, as someone who has never had much of a weight problem, I plump for chip retention.

Yes, plump. Nice word. Onomatopoeic.

BUGGED BY INVISIBLE BUGS, THE LITTLE BUGGERS

2008-08-27T09:01:00.002+01:00

I think I have discovered a new species of bug – invisible mosquitoes.

I have eight or nine insect bites scattered about my body, from ankles upwards. So has Mrs N. And neither of us saw, heard, or felt an attack of any description.

Napper Towers is, of course, spotless, and we spent many an hour in the garden over the weekend, so we are pretty sure our unseen attacker lurks outside, waiting for some juicy flesh to inject with its venom. And venom it is. The little red spots itch like hell, despite liberal applications of a ‘bite and sting cream’.

Next week I am going to Scotland, where the little biting buggers are not so sneaky – they attack gleefully in gangs. And the midges are almost as bad.

I can see only one consolation. The little bastards don’t like smoke. Apparently Queen Victoria used to smoke a cigarette or two for this very reason when she stayed at Balmoral. So I shall have to carry a medicinal cigar with me at all times.

By royal approval, don’t you know...

SACK RACE TO ENSURE A FABULOUS 2012

2008-08-26T08:09:00.003+01:00

Okay. So when I said, See you Monday, I meant Tuesday. Get over it.

I’ve written more than enough about the Olympics – but I can’t resist a few final points as we look towards 2012.

1. Our team did us proud – except for field and track, the one that really matters, and they were pretty average. And what did I witness when it was all but over – one of the guys in charge of the athletics team, Mr Cliché, I think his name was, telling us that ‘the team made progress and now we must learn from the negatives and take heart from the positives’. He blatantly lied that our runners had made lots of finals (oh, no they didn’t) and then tried to kid us (he’s obviously already kidded himself) that everything will be fine in 2012.

Somebody sack the blusterer now!

2. Did you, like me, watch the closing ceremony in horror, waiting for the disaster that must surely accompany the arrival of the shambling ghoul? Yes, I also watched through my fingers as Boris Johnson didn’t quite live up to his reputation. But he will. Come the day – if he hasn’t already resigned following one too many gaffe – Boris will embarrass us in front of the world.

Somebody sack the buffoon now!

3. It’s right that we don’t try to emulate China when our turn arrives in 2012. We haven’t the cash to spare or the unquestioning, disciplined talent to do it. We have other talents. We have Jimmy Page, we have Leona Lewis, we have talent in spades in the performing arts. All we have to guard against is that the BBC isn’t allowed to take it over and present its Claudia Winkleman version of young and edgy and funky and quirky. The London concert that followed the closing ceremony belonged to BBC producers and directors; not the kids, not the people. If we go that route, let’s do it properly.

Somebody sack the bastards now!

SEVERE CASE OF WRITER'S BLOG

2008-08-22T08:47:00.004+01:00

I’m in limbo – in that strange place between going on holiday and a few days before going on holiday.

I can't seem to concentrate on anything, I’m not doing anything that’s worth a blog, I can’t keep going on about the Olympics, the only real news seems to be tragic.

The papers tell me Gary Glitter is back in Britain and Mel C is pregnant (not, it couldn’t, could it…?); Kerry Katona has been declared bankrupt and the Queen is now only the 12th richest ruler in the world. Ah – my heart bleeds for both of them. Buckets of piss.

Both gas and electricity prices are going up for the SECOND time this year – by massive amounts – but somehow it seems unreal. Maybe Scottish & Southern Energy and Eon are having a whip-round to get Kerry and Liz out of trouble. Or maybe both their chairpersons are aiming to be the richest ruler in the world. Tossers.

The weather’s still distinctly un-summery. England’s footballers are as useless as ever. But at least the nation’s kids are celebrating their GCSE passes. I’m not one of those old farts who claims the exams get easier every year and God knows how they would have coped with the O-levels we faced … but I was a tad surprised when next door’s cat celebrated her Grade A in Maths (I thought she’d lost count of the times she’d crapped in our garden).

And I still can’t find out how Sharon or Sharron Davies spells her first name.

Maybe … no. Or perhaps ...

No, it’s no good, I can’t think of anything to write today.

See you Monday.

RIDING A SLIPPERY SLOPE ON A PLASTIC CARD

2008-08-21T08:04:00.003+01:00

Enough of the Olympics! For a day at least.

I’d just like to take a short hop-skip-and-jump back to Monday’s entry on the ‘Arsehole’ minister. Thinking about it, I soon came round to my parents’ maxim: Live within your means. It really as simple as that. No credit; no credit crunch.

The only trouble is, it’s not that simple any more.

My parents drummed it into me; Mrs N’s parents drummed it into her. Live within your means. And they did. Except the new-fangled telly, of course. We have to have a telly; it’s educational, it’s entertainment, it’s the Coronation, it’s the Cup Final. Okay, we’ll have a telly on HP – but that’s all.

Mrs N and I bought some furniture and a telly on Hire Purchase. And, of course, everyone buys a car on ‘finance’ (now it’s a plan, not the much-maligned HP). But that’s it. We bought one item at a time on HP; the payments were comfortable. The mortgage had to wait; until we’d gone through enough hoops.

Not having kids, I shall have to ‘borrow’ my mate Frank’s to continue with the next step. He and his missus drummed it into their children: Live within your means. Okay, a little HP, a finance plan for the car, an achievable mortgage. Whoa, whoa … stop there! Credit card? Who said anything about a credit card?

And there you have it – the start of a slippery slope, just right for whizzing down on a little plastic card. You want it now? Of course you can have it now. Just pay off as much as you like every month, as long as it’s at least the bank’s minimum. Just like HP. Except, unlike HP, if you pay only the minimum the debt keeps getting bigger.

And there you have it: a generation that thinks the ‘live now pay later’ lifestyle is a lifestyle to aspire to. Why wait – you only die.

Snag is, you might die of worry, depression, heart attack, stroke, suicide, whatever, well before you should. That’s the true price of not living within your means.

Don’t do it! Let’s make the banks suffer for a change!

THE ONE MEDAL I'D PREFER TO FORGET

2008-08-20T09:04:00.002+01:00

I wouldn’t normally watch grown-up kids BMX racing on the telly over breakfast. Let alone be gripped by it. But that’s what I found myself doing this morning when I came to. It’s got a lot to answer for, this Olympic TV fest. Fortunately, most of it good.

Hopefully it’s inspiring lots of youngsters to take up sport – and not just couch-potato sport-watching on the telly, like us old farts. Hopefully it’s teaching them that success is down to lots of hard work – and not ingesting chemicals. Hopefully it's teaching them that real Brits don't cheat.

Which brings me to Christine Ohuruogu. Sorry, girl, but your gold medal is tainted.

I didn’t scream at the screen yesterday, urging the Brit to win, as is my wont; I watched with sad detachment as she ran the perfect race to take the 400m gold medal.

She may be clean. There may be a reason why someone in the prime of life FORGOT THREE TIMES to turn up for a drugs test, but when it involves the love of your life, your career, your future .. I can’t think of a good one.

I’m a sexy-genarian now and I forget things all the time. You were barely in your twenties when you FORGOT THREE TIMES, Christine.

So what’s your excuse?

PRIMATE MAKES A MONKEY OF HIMSELF

2008-08-19T08:30:00.005+01:00

The best TV of the week, if not the year: the sight of the Archbishop of Canterbury last night floundering as he tried to explain how the Church of England reconciles its doctrine with evolution and Darwin. And then tying himself up in verbal knots as he further tried to explain why the Church believes in the virgin birth. Never was a man so roundly damned by his waffling.

Second best sight of the week, if not the year: a group of science teachers trying to explain to Professor Richard Dawkins in his Darwin documentary why evolution is no longer taught properly, if at all, in our schools. What a pathetic bunch they were, as they gradually wound down and began to realise the paucity of their politically correct argument in the face of Dawkins’ concise rebuttals.

Mind you, those images of the Great Britain cyclists grinding the rest of the world into the velodrome track are right up there, too. Fabulous heartwarming stuff compared to the sad plight of the Primate of All England

What I want to know is how humanity has evolved into such two distinct breeds – supertwit and superhero.

LET'S TAX THE FATUOUS TO HELP THE POOR!

2008-08-18T09:06:00.004+01:00

In days of old a Labour minister would have said, ‘Let’s tax the wealthy to help the poor.’

New Labour health minister Ivan Lewis said yesterday, ‘Let’s tax the wealthy to help the middle-classes hit by the credit crunch’.

That’s not an exact quote. That’s the gist of it. But that’s enough.

I don’t know Mr Lewis, such a non-entity is he, so I decided to have a quick browse-research on the man. The first thing I found, on Wikipedia, was: ‘In 2008 Ivan Lewis was described in the House of Commons as an "arsehole" by Greg Mulholland MP, following Lewis's refusal to allow Mulholland to intervene to correct statements Lewis had made in debate on hospice funding.’

Frankly, I don’t think that’s fair on arseholes.

As a socialist by conscience if not always by deed, I believe the very rich should pay a higher percentage income tax than the merely well-off, and very rich companies should contribute more by way of higher taxes on profits.

The benefactors of this forced generosity should be the poor – and by and large that means the working-class.

Mr Lewis says we should also protect those with large mortgage commitments (like fatuous politicians, no doubt). In that case, we should also insist that those who can in good times afford large mortgage commitments should be made to take an intelligence test with just one question: ‘How will you cope when times are hard?’

If they can’t give a satisfactory answer, they will be forced to listen to Ivan Lewis speeches on a looped tape every evening when they get home from work. Unless they have a second job to go to ... to pay for their reckless borrowing.

I wonder what the Arsehole’s second job would be?

THOSE LEGS WERE MADE FOR TALKING ...

2008-08-15T08:51:00.004+01:00

So – Prince Charles and genetically modified food. His Royal High-And-Mighty thinks he knows more than some of our most respected scientific minds.

It’s a matter of not tampering with God’s work, apparently. Never mind that GM foods could feed a starving world (God’s got a thing about famines, anyway – just refer to your Bible). Never mind that genetic research could lead to all sorts of advances, particularly for human health and the environment.

The man’s got pickled walnuts for brains – organic pickled walnuts, though, so that’s all right.

Talking of GM foods … did you see Sharon Davies’s legs on TV this morning? Wowee.

The former swimmer (above) was in the Beijing Olympics studio, wearing, just about, a pair of short shorts with her lovely legs crossed and stretching almost to Shanghai.

I seem to remember that a couple of years ago Ms Davies got a lot of stick for wearing tops that did nothing to conceal the outline of her nipples. She must have taken it it to heart because this time her nipples are a model of concealment. But Sharon is obviously a feisty lady. She knows all her good points, as it were, and sees no reason to cover them up.

Up to a about a year ago, she spoke like she swam – at a furious pace. It was sometimes hard to follow her, not that most of us blokes were listening that carefully. She’s gradually learned to slow it down a bit. And now that I can understand what she’s saying, I have to say that she makes more sense than Prince Charles.

The Legs are definitely streets ahead of The Ears.

THE TRUE OLYMPIC SPIRIT: SHOUTING AT THE FROGS

2008-08-14T09:06:00.004+01:00

I just love the Olympics – sitting there over my breakfast watching enthralling sports such as archery and sailing. Sports that most of us know nothing about, but a Brit is taking part so it suddenly becomes as thrilling as football or rugby.

The other day I found myself shouting at three British female archers to pull their collective finger out, and urging the French trio to miss the target, or indeed the stadium, altogether.

‘Remember Agincourt!’ I shrieked.

Remembering very little about Agincourt myself, I’m not entirely sure what I was trying to do – tell the Brits we always beat the French with bows and arrows so get on with it, or remind the French that British archers are always superior so they might as well go home now.

Whichever – it failed. The Frogs won! How dare they!? How dare our women let them win!?

All this while the Russians were invading Georgia, while the Georgians were invading South Oswestry, or South Somewhere. Which, of course, we all condemn as barbarous.

Strange thing, patriotism. If the Olympic spirit truly ruled more than two weeks every four years, then there would be hope for the world. We could all just shout at our enemies and then get over it. Shake hands and talk over a beer. Sort it out over a plate of fish and GM chips.

Then everybody would be happy. Except Prince Charles.

But that’s another story.

THE BEIJING EXPERIMENT: BRACE YOURSELF, GRANDDAD!

2008-08-13T09:05:00.004+01:00

SO, the little girl ‘singing’ at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony wasn’t really singing at all. The Chinese decided the original singer wasn’t pretty enough so they brought in a cute replacement to mime.

What a good idea.

Now who could we get to mime for the peculiar-looking Amy Winehouse, to match that sensational voice? Obviously someone with a sexy, earthy persona. Well-built, as curvy as a doughnut. Not just come-to-bed eyes, but wow-now-light-me-a-cigarette eyes.

A cross between Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie should do it. Know anyone like that?

As for the blokes … who would we get for a Lionel Richie replacement? Well, anybody really.

It would be better still if we could just replace some people wholesale – get rid of fat boring bastards on the fringe of the music business who think they are funny and replace them with non-egomaniacs who really are funny.

So, Chris Moyles …

My granddad would do. Just give me a couple of days to dig him up.

WANTED IN THE UK: COPS WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR

2008-08-12T07:47:00.002+01:00

A New Zealand friend of mine once told me a crimewave over there was TWO stolen bikes. It seems things have moved on a bit since then.

A teenage boy is currently causing havoc in a suburb of Christchurch with a series of burglaries. And the local police are pulling out all the stops to nab him. They have a Wanted poster and everything. The only snag is NZ law prevents them using a picture of a juvenile.

The cops came up with a brilliant solution – a picture of chunky Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane with the caption ‘Because of the Children and Young Persons Act 1989, police cannot show you a picture of the 16-year- old burglar operating in your neighbourhood. Robbie Coltrane is not the burglar, but imagine him aged 16 with lank greasy hair and you have the picture.'

Think of the fun our cops could have with this. A fresh-faced kid with a toothy grin and a penchant for using deadly weapons – a young Tony Blair will do nicely. A teenage pickpocket with strange eyebrows – imagine a young Alistair Darling. A big fat chav of a girl disturbing the peace – easy, Jade Goody.

But somehow I can't quite imagine our cops rising to the challenge of a public sense of humour. They'd get too bogged down in the political correctness of ridiculing 'little Tony'. Probably end up apologising to him and his parents for daring to think he would even know what a gun is.

We can but hope ...

MEAN GUITARS AND RECURRING CURRY

2008-08-11T07:44:00.006+01:00

I went to the Fairport Convention Cropredy music festival at the weekend – and felt totally inadequate. Why can’t I play a single note of music on any instrument? Why can’t I sing in tune? What a fabulous talent to have.

I went specifically to see Joe Brown (with guest Dave Edmunds) and The Levellers. I was not disappointed.

I’ve never really kept up with Joe Brown since his Bruvvers days, despite rave reviews from two close friends. I guess his cheeky chappie persona and songs such as ‘I’m Enery The Eighff I am’ left me with an image of this plinky-plonky Cockney tunesmith, when I should have been remembering the wonderful ‘Picture Of You’.

Not only does Joe play a mean guitar, he’s also a dab hand with the fiddle – which I never knew.

As for Dave Edmunds … fabulous, powerful guitarist. ‘I Hear You Knocking’ still sends shivers through you.

Then he and Joe got together for some early rock’n’roll stuff. ‘Singing The Blues’ (with me and a fieldful of aging hippies singing along) started the memories; ‘Hello Mary Lou’ almost had me in tears – it has a special meaning for me and my Lovely One, who was back at home, unable to face a night in a tent.

Just as well she wasn't there, really. How would she have reacted to the curry we lads had just before 1a.m. Actually, I do sort of know, because I inadvertently brought a big dollop of it back on my folded-up director’s chair.

It was a ‘Yuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkkk!’ that went on longer than Brian Blessed.

COPING WITH OUZO – IT'S A PIECE OF SQUID!

2008-08-08T08:46:00.004+01:00

The residents of Greek holiday islands Crete and Zakynthos are not terribly happy about young Brits getting trolleyed on their streets. Not surprisingly. It’s a sickening spectacle, literally as well as descriptively.

But if you pack your sea front with cheap bars, offer free shots of rocket fuel at certain times, and get excitable kids to dance like dervishes until they reach a state of mass hysteria, you shouldn’t expect Saturday night at Frinton.

It is a recipe for mayhem.

It was never like that when Mrs N and I were relatively young Grecophiles, or maybe we went to the right places – plenty of restaurants and bars, but no thrumming nightclubs. Hospitality and generosity were the order of the day; not profit at any cost.

We spent many a holiday on their fine islands lapping up their laidback lifestyle, sunshine, and ouzo. And never once did anybody have to call out the cops to sort us out.

Although I suspect we did get close the time we inadvertently overdosed on Retsina and Domestica (it has to be tasted to be believed, but amazingly you get used to it). We spent the next morning with vile hangovers mumbling 'Kalamari' to everybody we bumped into.

We got some terrible looks in return. By the time we reached the main square, I swear there was a mini mob glowering at us.

Maybe we should have said ‘Kalimera’ – which means good morning. It certainly didn’t do Anglo-Greek relations any good to call everybody ‘Squid!’

*Did you spot yesterday’s senile mistake (since corrected)? In my haste, I typed ‘here’ instead of ‘hear’. If you didn’t spot it, welcome to the old codgers’ club.

SHAME ON WHINGING BANKERS, AS THE REV SPOONER MIGHT SAY

2008-08-07T08:54:00.004+01:00

Barclays Bank made £2.75billion profit in the first half of 2008 – and described it as ‘acutely disappointing’.

How often do you hear the words £2.75billion and acutely disappointing in the same sentence!?

Were they disappointed that they didn’t have the entire income of the world locked away in their coffers? Were they disappointed that J Napper felt he had to move his cash to a bank where they actually pay proper interest on current accounts?

I suspect the latter.

But then I read that profits for the previous half were £4.1billion. The 33 per cent drop is apparently largely down to Barclays’ involvement in the U.S. sub-prime mortgage market and other ‘credit market problems’.

In other words, they got greedy, tried to scam some extra profits from those who can least afford it, and got their fingers burnt.

Good.

Will they learn a lesson? Realise the error of their greed? Sadly, no.

Bad.

WANTED: LAPTOP CARRIER DISTRACTERS

2008-08-06T08:50:00.004+01:00

At least 900 civil servants, probably from the MoD and Inland Revenue, go through Heathrow every week. Where do they all go? And how do I know this?

I know because 900 is the average number of laptop computers lost at Heathrow each week. And as we all know, nobody loses a laptop like a civil servant loses a laptop.

Now I’ve not got a great memory, but I think I’d pretty soon realise if I left £400/500/800/take-your-pick worth of vital equipment lying carelessly around.

I have a theory. I think Apple, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, Dell and all the other manufacturers employ people to distract laptop carriers – with their elite squads working at airports and on trains (the civil servant’s other favourite dropping-off place) – to keep sales buoyant.

He’s the guy who engages you in engrossing conversation about last night’s match; the pretty girl who needs some help with her luggage; the grumpy old bastard who likes to fill crowded spaces with noxious farts; the saintly-looking chap with the dog collar who helps you with your crossword, the little s-blank-i-blank.

It’s obviously great business. Globally, about 800,000 laptops are lost or stolen at airports every year. With inflation that will be a million a year by the end of the decade. A million a year! Imagine the commission.

I tried a few oblique Google enquiries and came up with www.apple.com/easymoney4U and www.dell.com/talkthehindlegsoffadonkey.html

Mmmm … I wonder.

RED CARD FOR THE HOLLINS BOY

2008-08-05T07:48:00.005+01:00

I like good old John Hollins. A great little footballer, polite, a gentleman. Articulate for a footballer. But it’s a banal sort of articulacy, with no great spark. He speaks fluent boring. But footie fans still like him. A sort of David Beckham of his era. Without the money or the pout on legs.

His son Chris (pictured), the BBC TV sports presenter, is slightly different. Sparks coming out of his arse, but seemingly not a lot happening behind the shining eyes. But now somebody at the BBC has gone too far. They’re using him – the ultimate TV boy scout – as a news presenter on BBC Breakfast.

Why!?

Because he’s the ultimate example of dumbed-down BBC ‘banter’ – the banter that in reality is as funny as a boil on the arse. The banter that very few elevate and so get away with (Bill Turnbull is usually a notable exception).

When Hollins is introduced to do the sport, he spends an age talking to his fellow presenters, cracking pathetic jokes and exchanging even more pathetic badinage, instead of telling me and you, the viewers, the sports news we are waiting to hear. I often find myself screaming at the screen, ‘Tell me the fucking sports news, idiot!’

He’s obviously a tad more restrained doing the proper grown-up news, but you can’t change a boy scout’s badges. He still lapses into it.

Why!?

Buggered if I know (I’m not a psychiatrist). But I do know his excessive use of the word ‘Why!?’ to reveal an unremarkable fact is driving me mad.

Somebody at the BBC, please put him out of our misery.

TODAY'S TWIN STRIKERS: DARWIN AND DAWKINS

2008-08-04T07:30:00.004+01:00

The banal celebrity-driven dross that is modern TV won’t be quite as painful as usual tonight. Because two real celebrities combine in one proper programme.

The Genius Of Charles Darwin is a three-part documentary by another scientific powerhouse, Professor Richard Dawkins.

The eminent biologist (and advocate of atheism) says: “This series is about perhaps the most powerful idea ever to occur to a human mind – evolution by natural selection. I want to persuade you that evolution offers a richer view of life than any religious story.”

The series is unlikely to change many minds where religion is concerned. Most of us are brainwashed into religion as children and few change course. I am proud to say I was one of the few. I was a Sunday School swot and fervent believer until I started to really think about it when I was about 16.

With faith schools proliferating, I just wish there could be a positive movement for secular schools, primary and secondary. Where Darwinism, evolution, and the unlikely possibility of supernatural beings is discussed every day. Where children aren’t expected to have an imaginary friend in the sky. Where the wonders of the Earth and nature are enough to satisfy the thinking mind. Where there doesn’t have to be a reason for being.

Why should there be?

This TV series should be compulsory for all growing children. And to those who retort, ‘And so should the Bible/Koran/Whatever’ … well, it already is.

It was for me.

These days I prefer evidence.

WHY WE SHOULD ALL REMEMBER REMBER

2008-08-01T08:14:00.008+01:00

Once you get past 50 and head towards Old Fartdom, two great fears lurk in the subconscious: cancer and dementia. I have second-hand knowledge of both through family members and friends, and I wouldn’t wish either on anyone. Except perhaps Radovan Karadzic and Robert Mugabe (they could fight over who gets which).

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean, the good news is that my cholesterol is high. And therefore I am on statins. Good news because scientists have found further evidence that the cholesterol-lowering medicine may protect against dementia and memory loss.

Even better news followed this revelation on Wednesday – a new drug currently being tested to treat Alzheimer’s Disease appears to be twice as effective as current treatments.

The only downside is that the drug is called Rember. It doesn’t fill one with confidence that the scientists working on it couldn’t quite remember how to spell Remember, which would have been an excellent name for a drug combating dementia.

Now if only someone will prove that a pint of Ruddles a day combats cancer, I’m sure I will live a long and contented life.

Then all we’ll need is the safe cigarette.

Have a good weekend!

THIS IS NOT ANY OLD GREED ...

2008-07-31T08:51:00.004+01:00

Remember the good old days? When you were doing a DIY job that you’d been putting off for almost a year but your missus had eventually nagged you into doing … and you found you hadn’t got enough long screws in your toolbox to finish the job.

Ah, in those good old days you’d jump in the motor, gun down to Homebase, have a bit of a browse, get some screws almost like the ones you needed, and gun back.

Now you think, Buggered if I’m going to waste petrol just for some screws! So the job gets put on the back-burner until you’ve got a shopping list of at least half a dozen items you need at Homebase. But then you can only go on 10 per cent discount day.

Well, yesterday I needed some printer ink cartridges for a paying job, not any old DIY job, and I seriously thought several times about leaving it till I had a decent shopping list for stationery. But then I came to and did what I had to do. Leaving me with one thought as I drove there and back – if the price of oil is dropping, why aren't petrol prices coming down with the speed they went up?

What a con.

But hold … do my eyes deceive me? Gas prices are going up 35 per cent!? So now this coming winter we’ll have to decide if we need to keep warm a little bit at a time, or save it all up for the weekend and have a good old warm in front of the fire or round the radiator.

I watched the mealy-mouthed boss of Centrica on TV this morning explaining it all terribly reasonably, blaming everything and everybody except Centrica and having the gall to praise their special tariff for the vulnerable. We’re all fucking vulnerable, mate! Unless we’re on the corporate bandwagon.

That’s what gets me as much as anything. This isn’t just corporate greed; this is also individual, executive greed. The MD has to have his massive bonus, whether he deserves it or not, the non-executive chairman has to have his literally unearned whack, the finance director will have worked out how much he can get away with in unearned shares and pension contributions, the rest of the board and key senior managers also have a hefty bonus scheme to protect, and then we come down to middle management, junior management, local management, line managers … all protecting and perpetuating this huge trough so they can gradually shift up a bit until they get their snouts in the really deep bit.

Tossers.

Phew! Just as well I've got some more ink...

BLOW ME – WHAT A JOLLY AWFUL DAY

2008-07-30T08:34:00.003+01:00

It doesn’t pay to wish for things beyond our control, does it? A couple of hours after I had a rant about the weather yesterday, and requested ‘balmy’, the weather went absolutely barmy for all of two minutes.

A gust from nowhere tore over my rear fence, knocked over a huge terracotta pot, in which I grow runner beans (don't knock it till you've tried it), and flattened a whole row of dahlias. The pot shattered down one side and the Bishops of Llandaff (as the dahlias are called) looked to have met their maker.

After much cussing, half a roll of gaffer mended the pot, and a gaffer called Napper raised the Bishops from the dead.

An hour later I was back at work in front of my computer. I had a load of stuff to print, and the printer ran out of ink. I had an important call to make and couldn’t find the number anywhere. So I made a cup of tea, and knocked it all over my keyboard.

The next sentence I wrote was something like: Fuc-n-coc-*rse,sh**-bllks!

And that was with Earl Grey. Good job it wasn’t Assam.

Today can only get better. Can’t it?

ENOUGH TO DRIVE ME BALMY ...

2008-07-29T08:15:00.002+01:00

I love warm weather. Not hot – but nicely warm. Balmy warm.

As a typical temperate Brit, I find it hard to take much over 70 degrees in old money, which is approximately 21.11111111111111 in centigrade.

But I did my best at the weekend. In temperatures nearer 30 than 21.11111111111111 centigrade, I played golf, fought through the madding tourists crowds in Cambridge, took on M & S in a battle for my money (narrowly losing), and sat around in a garden drinking lots of beer and wine.

Great weekend. It would have been perfect five degrees cooler.

On Sunday, as we lapped up the sun, the booze, some fine food and finer company, it occurred to me that when Mrs N and I were nowt but bairns in the summer of 1976, the summer sizzled for months and months, and I coped admirably. Probably even enjoyed it.

But by the time we arrived back at Napper Towers yesterday, I was praying for a drop of rain. And none more so than when I discovered the seedlings I had left were more shriveled than your wotsit after a dip in the sea at Skeggy.

We did have some rain last night, but everything still feels muggy.

Why can’t we ever seem to do balmy properly any more? Balmy is my ideal state, but the only time we seem to get it, other than for a couple of days in the spring, is for about an hour in the evening when summer eventually graces us with its presence.

That’s why I love Mediterranean countries very early and very late in the season. That’s proper balmy.

I WANT BALMY!

Before I go, er …

Now let me think. What’s the word?

REMEMBER, GORD –THE LAST CUT IS THE DEEPEST

2008-07-25T08:21:00.005+01:00

So, what now for Gordon Brown, after the Scottish Nationalists won the rock-solid Labour seat in the Glasgow by-election?

I have a suggestion, Gord. The pub down by the canal near us is far too cheerful. Sometimes you can’t hear yourself thinking for people laughing and joking. Just go down there, Gord – and sit in the corner for an hour or two every day.

That’ll quieten the bastards.

On the other hand, you could wipe Glasgow off the face of the earth. One press of the button. Your call.

If I had to give serious advice, I’d say there’s no point in fretting about the SNP. Scottish people know which side their bread is buttered and deep-fried.

Sure they moan about the English taking all their North Sea oil money, but if they had to fend for themselves – manage without all the money from income tax, corporation tax, road tax, VAT, and any other of the multifarious taxes that populous England supplies – their oil money would stretch as far as Gordon Brown’s smile this morning. No-bloody-where!

It could have been worse, Gord. The Tories could have won. Can you imagine Glasgow East with a Tory MP!?

You know that pub I mentioned … there's a secluded little spot round the back that's ideal for chucking yourself in the cut.

A SURE SIGN YOU COULD, PERHAPS, MAYBE, WIN THE LOTTERY

2008-07-24T08:39:00.003+01:00

Lottery jackpot winner Susan Crossland reckons her dead dad gave her a sign that she was going to win.

The day he died a white feather floated to the ground near her. Then she won £1.2million – a mere two years later.

Gee. Only the other day I saw TWO blackbird feathers in our garden. And, come to think of it, it’s exactly 30 years and 159 days since my dad died in his car, after he swerved to avoid a blackbird and drove into a ravine. Oh my God – it could be this weekend! Maybe I should do an extra line, just to be doubly sure.

No, I shouldn’t take the piss, should I? There may be, just may be, stranger things out there than we know.

For instance, my mate Frank, who has written two novels (one of them chronicling my adventures), is a firm disbeliever in all things hereafter and similarly spooky, but …

His new novel is titled The Trouble With Money (The diary of a Lottery winner), and two of the first 10 people to buy it won the Lottery the following week. Now, he won’t, or can’t, tell me how much they won (maybe it was a tenner each), but it makes you wonder.

He gave me a copy. Maybe I should buy one …

CHAVS, LESBIANS, AND AN ETYMOLOGICAL CAN OF WORMS

2008-07-23T08:48:00.007+01:00

Fascinating thing, language. Just one little word, one little sound can trigger so many different responses.

Last week it was revealed that the Fabian Society, a left-wing think-tank with dubious relevance to 2008, thinks people should stop using the word ‘chav’. Spokesman Tom Hampson said it betrayed a deep level of "class hatred" and was "deeply offensive to a largely voiceless group".

Tom – bollocks! It’s part of our great British inventiveness and flair for sarcasm/cheek/irony/leg-pulling .. call it what you will. It says what some of us want to say about another section of society – in just four letters. Brilliant.

This morning I read that three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos have lost a court battle to ban the use of the word ‘lesbian’ to describe homosexual women (or ‘gay’, if you must, but that would open up a whole new can of etymological worms).

How can you BAN a word? How many policemen/women would you need to enforce such a law. About one for every person should do it.

Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian! There, Mr Policeman, come and get me!

The Lesbian trio (residents of Lesbos) were worried that all its female inhabitants would be defined as lesbians (female homosexuals).

Durr…

Mrs N and I have been to Lesbos. It’s a delightful place. The people are lovely, and we didn’t mistake any of them for lesbians (female homosexuals).

We have also been to St Michael’s Mount. And not one of the people we saw there resembled a saint or a branch of M&S. Mind you, when we went to Melton Mowbray … all those strange crimped heads. Makes you wonder.

I MEET MY WATERLOO IN A DARKENED ROOM

2008-07-22T09:05:00.002+01:00

I spent a beautiful sunny afternoon yesterday sitting in a darkened room. And enjoyed every minute of it. That’s the beauty of being self-employed – you can take half a day off occasionally in the week, sneak off somewhere with a lovely lady, and not get into trouble.

I took Mrs N to the flicks to see Mamma Mia! The Movie. There were just 20 of us in there, and 19 of us appeared to remember Abba from their Waterloo days. I wouldn’t say we were old, but our mission was to see the film before the schools broke up and you couldn’t move for kids eating popcorn from buckets and speaking a strange language believed to be derived from English.

Everything that’s been written about Mamma Mia is right: it’s a girly film, very cheesy, and the blokes can’t sing for toffee. But it’s great fun, a true feelgood movie, and you come out with all those fabulous, ridiculously catchy songs floating round your bonce. And what’s wrong with that?

Meryl Streep is superb, Julia Walters is as off-the-wall as ever, but the score is the star. In its own way, Abba’s music is up there with the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Stones, Dylan.

And that was the only drawback of sitting in a cinema with just 19 other people. Not one of us had the guts to sing out loud, even though we all wanted to. I may have to buy the DVD. For Mrs N, of course.

Benny and Bjorn, thank you for the music.

MY NEW HANDICAP SYSTEM FOR LIFE

2008-07-21T08:19:00.005+01:00

Just as well veteran golfer Greg Norman didn’t win the Open championship yesterday. The new sponsorship/advertising deals the 53-year-old would have accumulated would have well and truly sealed the reputation golf has among some as a game for old farts.

I mean, imagine:
Greg Norman just loves his Stannah Stairlift...
Ovaltine – Greg Norman wouldn’t go to bed without it...
Even Sharks are hooked on Saga cruises!

Golf is a great leveller; a fabulous way to keep one’s ego in check; to teach humility. But the really great thing is you can play at almost at any age and, thanks to its handicapping system, against almost any player. For non-golfers, that means you are allowed extra shots when you face better players (Tiger will be receiving my challenge any day now).

They ought to try it in other sports. For Lewis Hamilton, say, it would mean having a passenger. A nagging girlfriend perhaps. "Do you have to go this fast, Lew? Shouldn’t you have turned left there? Did we pass this just a couple of minutes ago?'’

Or we could even introduce it into life. Can’t get a girlfriend? Go along to the handicap office and ask for a course of chat-up lines, a new line in amusing anecdotes, or in extreme cases, plastic surgery.

Politicians would give their right hand for a handicap system. Gordon Brown, for instance, would be granted three mistakes, without public condemnation, to make up for his lack of charisma. David Cameron, who obviously thinks he’s God’s gift and has no faults, would be forced to live in a tower block on a hospital porter’s wage for a few months. That would bring Toryboy down to earth.

Me? I think I should be allowed to win a game of golf at least once a year. To ensure this, right-handers must play with a left-handed set of clubs, and cack-handers with sticks of rhubarbs. Take note, Terence!

MPs WITH THEIR SNOUTS IN THE BARREL – WELL DONE!

2008-07-18T08:46:00.005+01:00

Regular readers will know my feelings about free-loading MPs. So when I first came across the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, I suspected this was just another excuse for getting their snouts in the trough – albeit a trough many of us wouldn’t mind getting our snouts in.

But no. It seems they are that rarity – a band of MPs doing something useful. They have just finished a two-year inquiry into the decline of the great British pub. (A tough job if there were site visits involved, but somebody’s got to do it.)

And now, with pubs closing at an alarming rate, they are set to make recommendations about what the government could – or should – do to help pub-less communities. Expectations are high in the trade. I hope they are not misplaced.

My mate Frank, who chronicled my adventures in When It Comes To The Crunch (see www.huckbooks.co.uk), lives in a village where the only pub closed several years ago.

‘It was the hub of the village,’ he said. ‘Now the only time I ever see anybody to have a proper chat to is at the annual fete. The soul’s gone out of the place.’

Well, not quite. The village’s real ale lovers have organised twice-yearly beer festivals at the village hall for the past few years. I shall be there tomorrow, doing my bit for a good cause.

And if I happen to have a rather good time doing it, it will only prove the case: every British citizen should live within walking distance of a pub.

Wasn’t it in the Magna Carta? Or was that the Magners Charter? Anyway, it was just above 'Every citizen shall visit ye www.huckbooks.co.uk, whatsoever that turneth out to be, and purchase yon books.'

JACK THE LAD AT 100!

2008-07-17T08:25:00.002+01:00

Right – smoking, day three.

A guy called Jack Priestly has just celebrated his 100th birthday. He started smoking when he was nine, working up to a 40-a-day habit, but gave up on a nurse’s advice when he was 58 … and switched to cigars. He now smokes up to 10 a day – “the bigger the better”.

The Lincolnshire lad also starts each day with a slug of whisky in his tea.

Jack’s wife died in 1993, but he said this week: “If I had the company of a good woman, I’m sure I’d feel 40 years younger in a flash.”

Jack, you remind me of the late, great George Best, who once said: “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

I have my sights set on making 100 – at least – but not on 10 cigars a day. That would kill me before I was, ooh … 90.

Still, I expect by then you’ll be able to wander down to the Lung Shop and order a new pair. It’ll be at the end of the high street, next to Hips R Us (unless you’re in Cornwall, where it will be Hips Be We).

My crystal ball tells me all this started, of course, as an on-line venture, but it proved just too damned difficult, not to mention messy, measuring up and delivering via The People's Mail (this is several years after the demise of the monarchy).

I don’t know about starting the day with a whisky – a good fantasy seems to do it for me.

FERRY RIDE TO ADDICTION

2008-07-16T08:23:00.006+01:00

Yesterday’s entry took me back to when I was a boy (slightly after Noah). To the time when my mate Terry and I started smoking.

I must have been about 13, Terry a bit younger. We would pool our money and buy five Woodbines (either off an older boy, or get the older boy to buy them), and sneak an illicit smoke in the alleyway between two rows of houses a few hundred yards from school.

Near the end of the alleyway was our ‘humidor’ – a gap in a red-brick wall concealed by a loose half brick. We would leave a long dog end for further smoking on the way home, or a short one to be recycled eventually into a home-made roll-up.

We didn’t smoke many – maybe that five between us in a week. But when I was 16 I went on a school exchange trip to Germany on my own. I was young, I was full of bravado but also full of nerves venturing into Europe on my own. I was also on a ferry for the first time, and it was going up and down like a gigolo’s arse, so I bought a whole packet of duty-frees. Twenty little soothers.

In Germany I bought some more, and then some more duty-frees on the way back. I returned home speaking pretty good German and smoking like an incinerator.

I was hooked. Bugger.

Happy days, though.

REMEMBER – NEVER GIVE UP GIVING UP

2008-07-15T09:03:00.004+01:00

I didn’t know this until yesterday, but apparently nicotine can boost your memory.

Now, where did I leave my fags?

No, that’s just a joke. I gave up smoking in 1990 after a health scare. Totally. For two years. And then I drifted back. How stupid can you get!?

I can’t remember why I drifted back (albeit to a much reduced consumption), but it was either a) because of stress at work, or b) because I got pissed and had a few cigars.

I’m sure of that because since then I have given up several times and drifted back for one of those two reasons. I have given up three times with the help of nicotine chewing gum, and I have given up twice with the help of Zyban. I only tried patches for a day – but they were too difficult to light up.

These days I smoke only intermittently – sometimes once a fortnight, sometimes it’s a month or more in between. It depends largely who I’m with, what I’m drinking, and if there’s anyone around I can cadge a ciggy off.

The last time I gave up totally, I said that if I could stay nicotine-free for 20 years or more I would reward myself by taking it up again at 70. If I lived that long, and could remember I was a smoker.

Which brings me neatly back to my first paragraph. Apparently the latest research shows that nicotine’s ability to improve memory is closely tied in with its addictive properties. And although nicotine is not as toxic as other tobacco chemicals, it may have some harmful side effects.

Scientists are hoping to develop safe nicotine-like substances to treat Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. But first they have to work out how not to kill sufferers in the process.

Tough call.

Phew – I could do with a roll-up just thinking about it. Anyone got one?

STATE FUNERALS ARE FOR HEROES NOT HARRIDANS

2008-07-14T08:30:00.003+01:00

I’ve had the same nightmare two nights running. Each time I imagine someone saying there’s a plan to give Margaret Thatcher a state funeral.

And nightmares don’t come much worse than that.

I mean, the state honouring the woman who did her damnedest to tear the state in two? The woman who all but killed off whole industries in a bid to kill off trade union power; the woman who turned thriving pit and steel communities into tumbleweed towns; the woman who started the programme of post office closures; the woman who started the sell-off of school playing fields; the woman who sold off much of the excellent council housing system for a pittance to win a few votes; the woman who then gave away the rest of the family silver to further enrich the few; the woman who caused riots on the streets with the doomed poll tax; the woman who said there was no such thing as society and knew what she was talking about because she tried to destroy it; the woman who more than any other single individual was responsible for the despair that leads not-very-bright kids into violence.

No, it must have been nightmare.

If it wasn’t, and the proposal is enacted, I predict that this could be the first state funeral accompanied by an outpouring of hate and demonstrations in the streets.

UNCONCISE ENGLISH DICTION, HARRY

2008-07-11T09:17:00.008+01:00

I think someone has been tinkering with the English language overnight.

First I picked up my morning paper, and discovered that Cristiano Ronaldo, the Manchester United right-winger, apparently agrees with Sepp Blatter, the FIFA right-winger, that the club’s refusal to grant him a transfer to Real Madrid amounts to modern-day slavery.

Now let me see … Ronaldo signed a contract with United only last year, of his own free will, to stay with them for five years at a reported king’s ransom of £6million a year.

Er, slavery?

Then when I flicked on the TV Breakfast News, there was yesterday’s Toryman David Davis acclaiming his by-election win as “stunning”.

Erm, excuse me – neither Labour nor the Lib Dems put up a candidate, and Miss Great Britain came in fourth, ahead of 21 other candidates. And these included the Mad Cow-Girl from the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, unofficial Monster Raving Loony David Icke, and the Church of the Militant Elvis Party candidate.

So who decided last night that the word ‘stunning’ now means ‘meaningless’? No one consulted me. And as someone who has been dealing with the written word professionally for 40-plus years, I think I ought to be told.

I intend to write to my MP – that brilliant, principled, unselfish person called Harry Something who represents my interests in parliament – and ask for clarification. He will undoubtedly provide a stunning answer – without a thought for the meagre expenses he receives to deal with this sort of enquiry. This will almost certainly prompt me to congratulate him on his common sense.

By ‘congratulate him on his common sense’, I mean of course, ‘threaten to rip off his knackers’.

PARADISE REGAINED FROM THE RAIN

2008-07-10T08:36:00.002+01:00

As I sit here writing this morning, the sun is shining and all is well with the world. I am even looking forward to a little shopping trip with Mrs N – because I shall probably stay out in the sunshine while she is giving our money to various tradesmen.

Rain!? What rain?

As some idiot once said, Every cloud has a silver lining. This week’s deluge has kept my car gleamingly clean, and my conservatory roof won’t need washing this summer.

Obviously the idiot who turned silver linings into a saying didn’t live on a flood plain. Or deliver the mail (ours turned up yesterday as a soggy heap on the doormat). He was the original optimist, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I checked it out, expecting it to be a Shakespeare quote – most of them are – but found to my surprise that it derives from a John Milton masque, which as you all know is a dramatic entertainment. Then apparently Charles Dickens and the American showman Phineas T Barnum helped turn Milton’s two lines into one pithy saying.

You see, it’s not all whinge, moan, Fat Cats, MPs with snouts in trough, moan, whinge at Napper Towers. It’s educational, too.

John Milton, by the way, is the man who dreamt up the concept of Milton Keynes. Along with his mate Keynes Mustard. His writing was a bit of a sideline, I believe.

PAMPLONA? HOW ABOUT THE COWES BULL RUN!

2008-07-09T08:29:00.007+01:00

Now here’s a surprise. There were injuries galore – or should that be gore? – as the annual Pamploma bull run took to the streets.

I sense a JOCKEY SHORT! New readers, figure it out, or look up some back entries.

My initial thought was that British yobs involved in street violence deemed not quite worthy of a custodial sentence should be shipped out to the Spanish town, herded together at the start of the bull run course, and given 30 seconds to get the hell out of there before the snorting beasts are unleashed.

Of course, they would have to wear Wellingtons filled with custard. Plus a red rag of a shirt with a bull’s eye on the back.

But then I thought – why should the Spanish have all the fun? Let’s have our own bull run, so that as many Brits as possible can watch and laugh at the spectacle of these bullies running like the cowards they are.

But where? It needs to be an oldish town with narrow streets – the narrower the better. Britain is stuffed full of them. So maybe we can have regional heats with a grand final for the yobs left standing. Cowes on the Isle of Wight would obviously have a good claim, but I would favour the Shambles area of York. For those who don't know it, look at the picture – and then imagine trying to get away from angry bulls rampaging down there.

The yobs who make it to the finish unscathed, bar soiled underwear, will receive as a prize a mandatory summons to talk to schools on the evil of street crime.

Those who don’t … well, shucks!

NO PUN IN CRAP HEADLINES

2008-07-08T07:46:00.007+01:00

What is it about power that turns people blind?

Occasionally men and women of principle become MPs and within months they’ve got their snout firmly in the trough.

Those few men and women who become leaders of their countries can’t see the small print for the looming legacy they hope will be written in the history books. So they meet to show their concern about the plight of the world’s starving – and tuck into a multi-course banquet with 18 dishes on offer.

Or some become editors and rightly kick up a stink about the aforementioned banquet. And then can’t see the world’s worst pun when someone shoves it in their face (unless he or she wrote it in the first place, of course).

The headline in today’s Daily Mirror was HYPOCREATS, with the EAT in red just in case you didn’t get the pun (the red trick being a sure sign that a pun is crap).

When is an editor or one of his minions at the Mirror going to march up to the back bench and rant, ‘Who wrote this shite!? Write a proper headline or get out!’

There’s a fine line in writing punning headlines. An editor should be able to see it.

NADAL VERSUS NORA BATTY – NO CONTEST

2008-07-07T07:47:00.000+01:00

You’ve got to admire the optimists on BBC TV. There is the sports-loving half of the nation glued to possibly the greatest Wimbledon tennis match ever, and they put up an interactive sign ‘Choose Match’.

Oh yeah, of course. Let’s watch the Seniors One-Legged Final instead.

And then, for those fools who decided to stay with Rafa Nadal and Roger Federer, through thick and rain delay, the Beeb put up along the bottom of the screen the enticing notice ‘Songs Of Praise is now on BBC2’. Followed half an hour later by the even more beguiling ‘Last Of The Summer Wine is now on BBC2’.

I couldn’t resist. It was so good I was on BBC2 for the rest of the night. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must dash and see the Breakfast News to find out who won the match.

TODAY'S SPECIAL: BADGER AND CHIPS

2008-07-04T08:52:00.004+01:00

These are violent times we live in. Unless you’re a badger.

Apparently they are passing on deadly bovine TB to our cattle, but the government has rejected the advice of its chief scientist to cull badgers in some areas to prevent further spread of the disease.

At a time when the world is having to face the fact that it is not producing enough food to feed its ever-escalating billions of people, this does not make a lot of sense.

Unless, of course, we start to eat badgers. I therefore propose the first badger farm, to be built in the environs of the Palace of Westminster. A televised celebrity badger hunt, led by Bill Oddie and Kate Humble, will be organised to round up the first inmates – to be collectively called a bristle of badgers.

Celebrity chefs will then take it in turns to create badger recipes. ‘Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Gordon Ramsey will demonstrate Badger En Crouton. In the B Word kitchen with him will be the Anti Swearing League chairman, Celia Molestrangler, who will create her own version of Badger and Kidney Pie. Tonight’s diners will deliver their verdict on which is the best dish. And if Ramsey loses, Celia had better put her hands over her ears.’

Or then again .. we could just organise a cull of the cretinous politicians who decided to ignore their chief scientist.

THE ULTIMATEGOCOMPAREKELCOOTYPESITES.COM

2008-07-03T08:40:00.003+01:00

You may have noticed that several recent entries have included references to making my fortune. This is because, like everybody else, Mrs N and I are feeling the affects of the credit crunch.

I wouldn’t say we’re on our uppers, but two church mice knocked at the door the other day and we had to turn them away. Anyway … I have this fabulous idea, and I am looking for investors.

I am going to start an internet comparison site – for internet comparison sites.

I mean, how do you know if Confused.com is more confusing than Gocomapre.com? Does Pricerunner give you a better run for your money than Kelcoo? Is Shopzilla right up there, or a dinosaur? Is Rupiz taking the michael?

My new site will show not the benefits but the flaws of each comparison site. So you might see:

Site A – not quite as fast as a racing snail
Site B – explanations so bad it must have been put together by a Lithuanian dyslexic
Site C – obviously in the pay of the leading two companies in this field
Site D – total crap.

Like it? Just use the Comment feedback below to give me an idea of how much you would like to invest, and I will send you a prospectus. If I like the sound of your money.

How can it fail!?

HOW I CAN GUARANTEE YOU SUN THIS SUMMER

2008-07-02T09:05:00.005+01:00

Typical British summer. The hottest day of the year followed by a wet weekend (according to the forecasters). Load of crap on the telly followed by more crap and then, just when you’ve turned your back, not one but two gems.

The first, of course, is the Wimbledon Show featuring muscleman Andy Murray, who (according to this forecaster) will be clubbed to defeat by the even bigger muscleman Rafael Nadal this afternoon; but I hope I’m wrong.

The second is the sublime drama Criminal Justice. Serious subject, not-a-word-wasted script, brilliant acting and directing, the whole totally gripping; last night I couldn’t even bring myself to get out of my chair and make my customary 9.30pm cup of tea. It was that good. It’s on every night this week. If you’ve missed the first two … catch up tonight!

All we need now to complete our typical British summer is for the English cricket team to capitulate to South Africa, the gas in my barbecue canister to run out the next time we have people round, the M6 to grind to a standstill when Mrs N and I embark on the Lakes and Scottish legs of our holiday, and for the clouds to cover the sun every time Mrs N puts her shorts on and goes out into the garden. Guaranteed.

I think I’ll start to hire her out to summer events. Or rather, hire her IN. Pay me the proper premium and I’ll ensure she stays indoors for the duration. Or at least doesn’t go out in her shorts, get her sunbathing lounger out of the shed, or even take the sun block out of the cabinet.

Can't fail. I could make my fortune.