New Year - Same Old Shit
Now Playing: Amarilo, probably - read on, you'll see why...
Topic: Pop
It’s Friday morning, and I’m in a field watching four rather overweight, middle-aged men, attempting to recapture the former glory of the early nineties, when they set the lives of many a rebellious teenager alight, with such hits as ‘Saturn 5’, and ‘I Want You’, and had a certain Mr Noel Gallagher for a roadie. These are Inspiral Carpets (as opposed to The Inspiral Carpets, but notice how much easier it is to say ‘The Inspiral Carpets’ as opposed to their preferred ‘Inspiral Carpets’?), and any minute now, they’re going to play that song that was used at the start of Saturday morning kids show from the 1990s ‘The 8:15 From Manchester’ (hosted by Ross ‘I so loved myself so much when I was on the telly’ King, Charlotte ‘Last heard of lecturing at Salford University – fact fans!’ Hindle, and occasionally Sonia ‘the one-time ‘80s - not selling as well as Kylie and Jason – Stock Aitken and Waterman whipping-girl’ erm, Sonia), except they’re singing the original lyrics and not singing ‘The 8.15 From Manchester’ in the chorus, and it’s all very disappointing, and my word, they have been eating the pies, haven’t they (incidentally, for those of you out there unaware of who ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets are, they’re a little like The Pussy Cat Dolls, but without the Tits). Up next, it’s Echo and the Bunnymen, whereby the heavens will open, and I’ll end up trudging back to the tent in search of my raincoat, as everyone else has got these waterproof poncho things, and I haven’t, and I’ll end up getting lost along the way. Still, worse was endured earlier in the day, when the Darkness played their debut set, but that’s a different story.

Yes, this is The Glastonbury Festival in 2003, and not 1992, as you might expect (or even the early 1980s, as The Darkness would have no doubt loved). As 1992 was the year when the two former bands described were at the height of their fame, and not dishing out half remembered tunes played in bedrooms years earlier on crackly 45s, or if you were lucky enough, cassettes!*

*I didn’t have a CD Player until 1995, that’s how working class I am

But, why this flashback to a music festival that took place over two years ago, I hear you cry? Why else but to bang on about bloody pop revivals

Yes, 2005 is now as much history as 2003, or even 1992. But, more so than ever before, 2005 was the year of the come-back, whereby pop acts once consigned to the charity shop of time, are mercilessly resurrected by lazy record companies in search of a quick buck. Be it the Backstreet Boys, Tony Christie, or (dare I say it), Take That.

These, and more all made a somewhat unwelcome reappearance in 2005.

Hanson were suddenly no longer merely boys, and yet strangely enough, still weren’t shaving, how fortunate we were that their revival lasted little longer than 5 minute tongue in cheek segment on Popworld. The Backstreet Boys turned to the ‘Redneck’ market when they realised that they were getting too old for their previously pre-teen audience. Shaken Stevens won an ITV talent show for dead pop stars, and then promptly released a cover of a Pink record. Busted reformed as Son of Dork. Then, thank our lucky stars, Peter Kay resurrected the career of Tony Christie. Okay, so it was for charity, Comic Relief no less, but just remember that this was the same charity that had unleashed the Cher/Chrissie Hind/Neneh Cherry coloured Hell that was ‘Love Will Build A Bridge’. Thanks Pete, what did the rest of us ever do to you?

And to round it all off, Take That got back together, albeit without their fat dancer (Copyright – Noel Gallagher 1995), a mere ten years after Gary Barlow was sent plummeting into the abyss below at the close of their Bee Gees cover ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ (the one with the video where that crazed woman kidnapped the four remaining members of Take That, having probably already bludgeoned Williams to death with a kitchen knife, and then ‘accidentally’ on purpose pushed Barlow off a cliff, something many a man would have happily done after seeing him act in an episode of Heart Beat). All thanks to an hour long prime-time ITV show, they’ve re-entered the hearts of many a woman who should really know better, prompting them to rush out and buy yet another greatest hits album containing the same version of every song they already own (unless you count a poorly ‘danced-up’ version of Relight My Fire), and buying up all the tickets for their reunion tour in five-seconds flat (although, in this day and age it’s more likely to have been the touts buying up all the tickets, and then flooding them onto e-bay and slapping a 500% mark-up on the cover charge).

On the other hand, I’d be nothing more than a compulsive liar, if I were to say that it was only the above suspects that made my blood run cold. Be it any two bit pop and rock combo who think they can come back and swindle more money out of the unlucky punter, just because they lost it all on some dodgy timeshare scheme, or business deal, or flitted it all away on women, or flushed it all down the loo, or shoved it all up their nose.

Admittedly, I did get slightly excited, for maybe all of two seconds, when The Wonder Stuff announced they were going to reform and stage a comeback tour. The Wonder Stuff were probably one of the first bands I could say that I ‘got into’, around 1992, when I blagged a copy of their debut album, ‘The Eight Legged Groove Machine’, from my sister. Having come to them late, I was only able to catch their last hoorah in the form of their final album ‘Construction For The Modern Idiot’ (again copied off my sister), but was lucky enough to catch them on their final tour when they set down in Bristol at the Colston Hall. Being a theatre house, this was an all seater affair, and so not how proper bands should be seen at all, but this didn’t detract from the spectacle created by Miles Hunt and Co.

I was hooked.

Just a shame that a few months later they announced they were splitting up. To put it mildly, I was slightly gutted, not least because I was in the middle of my mock-GCSEs at the time. Thanks a lot guys.

However, the nostalgia trip lasted about as long as it took me to turn to the back of the weeks NME, and go ‘Oh’ when I saw the tour dates for their comeback tour.

Similarly, I was mildly interested in revisiting, the aforementioned, Inspiral Carpets (sounding slightly easier to say without the ‘The’ in this case – strange), until I discovered they were demanding a #15 ticket price for the privilege. Why I ask you you, is nostalgia so damn expensive?

Strictly speaking, this whole rock ‘n’ roll revival trend was started (slightly ironically) by the momentary reunion of The Sex Pistols in 1997, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of ‘God Saved The Queen’, a record deemed so controversial at the time, that, as folklore would have it, the Pistols were mysteriously bumped into second place in the weeks record charts. And so it seemed, Anarchy was not allowed to rule the airwaves in the week of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Anyway, in 1997, freely admitting that they were only in it for the money, Johnny Rotten et al, trotted onto Top of the Pops, played the doomed Phoenix Festival, and then promptly buggered off again.

At the time I remember having a discussion in the pub (I think it might have been with Cath), that it was all a bit sad really, these old punks acting as if they were twenty years younger.

And maybe that’s the crux of the matter. Maybe it’s an ageist thing (bringing us back to the four slightly overweight, middle aged members of – oh sod it – ‘The’ Inspiral Carpets again). Maybe I can’t bear to see people in a band once they hit the wrong side of forty, or dare I say it, thirty? When I last saw Blur play The Reading Festival, one of the first things I thought was, “my God, they’re looking old.”

Take The Rolling Stones as an example. Mick Jagger has been nothing but an embarrassment since the dawn of the 1980s, peaking with his collaborative effort with Mr David Bowie on ‘Dancing In The Streets’. Then again, Bowie himself still seems to have an air of grace about him, as do the resurrected New Order, possibly in this case because they’re still intent on producing records of worth and not merely trumping out their back catalogue (What? New Order have released another Greatest Hits record? Really?).

Then again, if there’s anything worse than an old rocker, it’s a dead rocker. Yet another Nirvana ‘rarities’ album? Kurt Cobain to do the commentary in a new documentary on his life? Yet, another new record from the very dead Tupac and Notorious BIG? Can we not let these people rest in peace?

On the age theme, it’s suddenly become a scary reality that all then new bands out there are probably all younger than my good self. Where did my youth go to? Take the Subways, as an example. Barely out of hot pants.

Where did all my contemporaries go to? When I first started listening to indie music, the likes of Blur, Oasis, Elastica and Sleeper, were all in their mid-twenties, and I was only 15. I remember feeling quite proud that the members of Ash would have only been in the year above me at school (there young enterprise project was to form a band and release an album, mine was to make candles). And then my life seemed complete when I learnt that Kenickie front-woman Lauren Laverne was just a few months younger than myself. Sheer bliss!

Nowadays everyone in a new band’s so flippin’ young. A band called Transition headlined the Carling Academy a few weeks ago. A band made up of people who’d gone to my school a full ten years after me! That could have been me, if I’d ever bothered to learn to play the guitar, or play the drums, or been able to sing (never stopped Ian Brown), or actually taken an interest in forming a band!

Have I passed my peak? Only the other week, I met Annie’s sister ‘Deedus’ and she thought I was 35. Now what’s going on there? I could’ve passed for someone in their early twenties a couple of years ago!

Am I getting to that age where I’ll start hankering over the bands of ‘my generation’, praying for that elusive comeback tour? The thrill of a Sleeper revival? The trepidation of seeing Lush clamber out onto the stage again, even though one of them’s dead? Would I fall in love with Kenickie all over again if they adorned Top of the Pops once more?

Maybe I’m not at that stage quite yet, but God I wish Lauren Laverne would record some more solo material.

Anyway, we can but hope that the revival bandwagon will eventually skid to a halt in 2006. Still, I fear that Lolly revival is looming ever closer….

Double-0 Potty Mouth
Happy new year people. Just thought i'd share this gem from former Bond, Pierce Brosnan, who's been cast in forthcoming film the Matador, just to show he has no ill feelings towards his former employers.

"When the f**kers try and hem you in with Bond, it's great to come back with the Matador. It's great to say f**k you arsehole. F**k you who wouldn't give me a job. F**k you who thought i was some wuss. Fuck you who thought i was a pretty boy. F**k you who thought anything of me without even knowing me or giving me the chance. F**k you."

The Case of the Missing Cellar
Topic: levers
I'm doing New Years Eve at mine again. This wouldn't be a problem, except I'm expecting around 13 people to come, of which at least 12 will be in need of sleeping over. A similar number bedded down in my place last year. Only, this year, the house I'm in is about half the size.

I did have something of a brain wave in order to maximize the amount of floor space available, as there is only my room, the front room and the box room as realistic places of rest. For some apparent reason, I became convinced that we had a cellar, and I had planned to move all the crap out of the box room and the lounge, etc and place it in the lower ground floor. This belief continued, until I had actually popped back to the house to drop off alcohol, etc, ably assisted by Manny, and went as far as actually opening the door under the stairs to find that there were no steps leading down to the cellar, and in fact no cellar at all, but just a rather cramped cupboard under the stairs. I even went as far as phoning my house mate, who was currently residing in her home town of Newquay, to ask her "if we did in fact have a cellar and if so, where the hell was it"?

Only later did I realise that the cellar I was thinking of was in fact the cellar in Jen's house, 120 miles away in Nottingham.

Not much help, there then.

I must be getting old.

Some Americans are apparently nuts
American talkshow host David Letterman is fighting a restraining order brought by a viewer claiming Letterman regularly sent her coded messages via her television. The woman claims he sent her messages to marry him and train as his cohost. If successful, Letterman will be forbidden to come within 3ft of her.

Alright then. Does this include when he's actually on the telly and she's sat at home watching him? America's a pretty big place and i can't see him actually going to the trouble of physically hanging out with this kook. Otherwise, why's he wasting his time fighting this case? What's wrong with this world?

The REAL Queen's Speech
Topic: TV
Remember kids, if you do one good thing on Xmas Day, make sure it's watching Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion on BBC ONE at 7pm, and not bloody Millionaire on the other channel, as Phillip will be very, very angry (and you won't like him one bit, when he's angry). And I'll be forced to set the Corgies on ya!

Now, pass us the bloody gin!

Arsenal scrape into the semi finals.....
Topic: Football
...Not that we'd know it.

Well that'll teach me to leave the pub before the final whistle. On the face of it, it looked like Arsenal were headed for a fourth consecutive defeat, falling 2~1 behind to Donacster Rovers in the quarter finals of the Carling Cup. Arsenal eventually won on penalties after an injury time equaliser. Still at least i lasted longer than the flippin' metro reporter, who'd obviously buggered off home after the first ninety minutes, seeming fit to print in this morning's paper that it was in fact still 1~1 between the two sides.

They just don't like working late, these hacks.

Shoddy work guys, shoddy work.

NEWSFLASH - Popworld Genius - Mutya Quits!
Topic: Pop
"Hello. I'm Simon Amstell, and this week on Popworld I'm joined by my two guest presenters, Heidi and Keisha from The Sugababes. And before anyone asks, MUTYA'S ILL!"

"LOOK SHE'S ILL. I WISH PEOPLE WOULD STOP GOING ON ABOUT IT!"

-Simon Amstell on the last regular edition of Popworld for 2005, dated Saturday December 10th

Yes, how perceptive are we? As a mere 12 days later, the nations youth woke up to the news that Mutya was 'ill', in so far as Geri was 'ill' when she had a no show on the National Lottery, and then promptly quit ths Spice Girls.

But don't think that people like Mutya can be replaced just willy nilly. Oh no. As the Sugababes Management revealed, it would take at least 24 hours before they could reveal her successor.

But it would seem that Mutya has quit for the noblest of causes, to spend more time with her family. Then again, all the the world needs is another Kerry McFadden.

Hair
Topic: levers
I’ve started to grow my hair long again, having had enough of the Dermot O’Leary/Grant Mitchell “I’m hard as f###” look, which wasn’t really taken seriously, or appreciated by anyone, apart from former one-time work colleague, and all round office ‘hottie’, Nadia, or Naddie as I’d somewhat touchingly Christened her (in the strictly secular, non-Christian sense of the word. Nope, to tell the truth, there was no holding her head under water until she turned blue, while I recited the lyrics to Jesus’s last supper, or whatever it is the Catholics of the world do. Well this would’ve been difficult to do anyhow, what with not being a vicar, and also being Jewish to boot. I suppose the Jewish equivalent would have been the circumcision, an operation that you’d find quite impossible to perform on a girl, unless she had an Adams apple, and lived in Bangkok). She thought I was ‘sweet’. She probably doesn’t now.

Anyway, rather than go for the Afro look I’d mastered during the 1990s (a mere twenty years after it had gone out of fashion), my head is currently resembling something like Morrissey crossed with ex-Spandau Ballett, ex-Eastenders Hard-Man, ex-ITV Golden Handcuffs recipient/current face of (snigger) furniture showroom DFS – Martin Kemp. Oh, what a na?ve fool we were Mr Kemp. Thought we’d take the same route as our namesake Ross ‘Grant Mitchell’ Kemp, and get a role as an SAS Commando, in an ITV Handcuffs deal that would last for a hundred years, and then if it didn’t work out, get our old job back again, did we? Only, our character got killed-off when we left Eastenders, didn’t he! So, we can’t go back there now. Never mind, Kempy. I’m sure you can convince your brother and the other bloke that the world needs yet another band from the 1980s reforming and going on a reunion tour. Still, it’s gotta be better than Take That.

I mean, honestly! I know half of you reading this have probably been creaming yourselves since Barlow, Orange, Passion Fruit et al announced they were going to trundle out in their little tour bus again, but what’s next? A Lolly revival?!

Anyway, Annie thought I looked something like a ‘King’ with my new hairstyle, although her exact words were along the lines of “Oh Mark. Your hair! It’s so funny! You look like Elvis!”

I’m kinda thinking she must mean the young Elvis, as opposed to the fat ‘Vegas’ Elvis, who died eating burgers on the toilet.

The so-called ‘Afro’ cut I had in the ‘90s (so-called by Mr Cowler and Mr Hill), came to a sudden and abrupt end after I’d been traumatised during history at school, when on a particularly hot Summer’s day, a wasp seeking shelter from the sun’s harsh rays, decided to try and set-up home in my ‘barnet’, and so determined was the brown and yellow stripped servant of Satan, I was forced to flee the classroom in a fit of terror.

I wonder if famous purveyor of the Afro, Richard Pryor, ever experienced a similar trauma, God bless his soul?

Wasps and myself have never been the best of friends, something I had come to terms with, while holidaying in Paris one year. Stood on a bridge over looking the river Seine, taking in the ambiance of French Parisian life in a way that only a thirteen year old boy from Bristol can, a wasp decided he was going to take up residence, not in my hair you understand, but up my left nostril. And so yours truly found himself rooted to the spot for what seemed like the longest thirty seconds a boy this age had ever experienced, beads of sweat dripping from his brow, until the wasp finally decided it didn’t fancy crawling all the way through the boys nostril, tunnelling through layers of mucus, and eventually up to his brain, and promptly flew out. Could’ve been worse, I could’ve sneezed. Well, I couldn’t very well lop off a nostril, or ‘cut off ones nose to spite ones face’, but I could certainly shave off ones Afro, when it happened in history, five years later.

Anyway, the ‘Thierry Henry/occasionally Beckham’ look also had to go, partly for the reasons described at the top of the article, but also for the repeated bashing of head on tables/walls/low ceilings and beams, reaching a pinnacle of potential concussion and brain damage while on a canal boating holiday during the Summer of 2004, when my head would repeatedly impact with the low ceiling at the stern of the boat, every time and I mean every time I attempted to come up on deck. This combined with prolonged motion sickness (the swaying, God the swaying), and having to repeatedly do impressions of Lord Melchard for Pully & Gail’s amusement (Baaaaaaarrrrrrpppp), would make me seriously question the state of my mental health when I was struck down with the feeling I was still travelling on the water for a full month after the holiday, when most people would be cured of this affliction after no more than a day. .

How long my current ‘look’ will last is anyone’s guess, but at my hair’s current rate of vertical growth, I’ve got a feeling that it’ll be doing a ‘Gary Rhodes’ before the year is out.

Phones 4 A Fool - Part 2
Topic: levers
For those of you who haven't at least skim-read Phones 4 A Fool - Part 1 (posted November 12), the following article might make even less sense that it might otherwise. You have been warned.........

Several months ago, my second mobile phone met with something of a premature death, plummeting towards a watery grave down one of Oxford’s finest lavatories. The events that led up to this incident are as follows.

With great joy, we gathered in Oxford to witness the coming together in holy matrimony of our long-term friends, Alex Roger Rogers and Gail Roger Bartlett (I believe she chose to keep her maiden name for professional purposes, making her full name Gail Roger Bartlett-Rogers*).

*This again, may be factually incorrect. I feel I really must sack my researcher.

My main duty for the duration, along with the world renowned fish fetishist Mr Robert Cowler (and, if you’ve ever seen http://robcowler.tripod.com/robblog you’ll know what I mean), was to act as DJ for the evening’s entertainment. Now, having never Deejay’d previously, I thought it something of a good idea to get in plenty of practice beforehand. And when I say practice, I mean writing lots and lots of set lists as opposed to actual proper deejaying. Oh no, neither me, nor Mr Cowler would actually come within walking distance of an actual turntable until the morning of the wedding, so confident were we.

Now, whenever your compiling a list of suitable records for a DJ set, I believe you have to take into consideration a number of factors such, as the audience, the type of occasion, and the time the time of day the set would be going out (only done it once, but already thinks he’s an expert).

Certain tracks are a definite no-no on such occasions. For example, when someone important dies, radio stations up and down the country revert to what’s known as their emergency play-list. When Diana died, it might’ve been deemed offensive to have played a Mungo Gerry’s ‘In the Summertime’, which includes the line ‘Have a drink, have a drive, Go out and see what you can find’. In Diana, and Dodi’s case, this was to have their chauffeur driven limousine wrapped around the inside of a Paris tunnel. Not that I’m in anyway implying the chauffer was pissed that night, as I don’t particularly want to be seen to be adding to the ever growing list of conspiracy theories that have been populating column inches in the Daily Express for the last ten years. Incidentally, someone who finds ‘In the Summertime’ offensive all the time, is Mungo Gerry’s drummer, who is still to this day, completely cut up that a) it was Mungo Gerry’s only hit, and b) that he never actually got to appear on the record.
I know, because I’ve been to his club in Burnham, and I must have lost count of the number of times someone’s made the mistake of slipping the record on the Jukebox, and then they act so surprised when they’re barred.

Anyway, when the Queen Mother died, one of the specified tracks radio stations opted to play was Golden Brown by the Stranglers, which is of course about taking heroin. What does that say about our Royal Family, huh?

And no, I’m afraid there could be no hardcore house played at the wedding, either. Sorry, Matthew Mann.

Similarly, I found I had to avoid songs with lyrics that could in anyway be deemed to be approaching anything even remotely resembling swearing, as this could potentially alienate the more senior members of the wedding party. And so, “The Man Don’t Give A F***” by the Super Furry Animals was definitely out, as the number of f***s involved probably approaches treble figures. Although Radio 1 were forced to play a hastily arranged radio edit one Sunday afternoon, when the track entered the Top 40, but as the edit didn’t extend much beyond the 30 second mark, it probably wasn’t worth the bother

In the same vain, I had to drop “Holla Back Girl” by Gwen Stefani. An excellent pop record, which had been doing the rounds on radio and television for a number of weeks in the run up to the wedding. Unfortunately, the version of the song I had was taken from the album, as opposed to the clean radio friendly version that had been gaining airplay. If you’ve got a copy of the LP, you’ll find that the word “s***” appears a total of 38 times in a little over three minutes. I know, because I’ve counted.

And so, alas this song also had to go. Although Chris thought it would have been a great idea to slip it into Rob’s set, and thus unleash the combined wrath of the Rogers and Bartlett families upon him. However, as I was relying on Rob for a lift back to Bristol the next day, I didn’t think it was such a good idea.

Anyway, the first set had gone so damn well that I thought I should’ve been presented with a Sony Award on the spot. But, alas none were presented, and so I left the DJ booth to relieve myself in one of Corpus Christie’s finest gold plated lavatories, whilst Rob took to the, er, ‘decks’ as I believe they’re called. Although when I say DJ booth, I actual mean the 3ft space between the dance floor and the bar, where the DJ equipment was propped up on a hastily erected table.

To tell the truth, I had great trouble actually finding the toilet, and it was only through the combined efforts of myself and Mr Hill, that we were able to find it at all. If your wondering, Chris’s seal had broken at this point, and he would be making a return trip approximately every thirty minutes for the rest of the night.

Anyway, Chris took the first stall, I took the second. I imagine Mr Hill was stood up, as I believe he only required to relieve himself of a number one (if you really want me to paint a picture). As I’d been eating my daily intake of ruffage (or more likely, the McDonald’s chicken nugget’s and chips I’d had about twelve o’clock earlier in the day) I chose to take a more seated stance, as I felt that I might be in for something of . Little did I know quite how long that would actually be.

Chris finished his business, and asked if I was indeed partaking in a number two. I replied to the affirmative, and he walked off to rejoin the throng.
Little did he know, only moments earlier, I had sat on the throne, and my mobile which was at the time secreted in my jacket pocket, had opted to make a bid for freedom and leapt from my jacket pocket down into the watery depths of the toilet bowel below

Fortunately at this stage I had not begun the act that becomes naturally (well not yet anyway), and by the time Mr Hill had enquired to the status of my bodily functions, I had already plucked the phone from it’s watery grave, and set about trying to restore the phone to health, using ample amounts of toilet paper.

What follows next, is so grim and disgusting that I can barely bring myself to write about it. And so I won’t be too offended if you opt at this point to close this browser window, and actually get on with some work.

Okay, you have been warned.

In order to try and salvage my mobile’s well being, I had made the decision to separate it into bits. So I now had the phone itself, the back of the phone, the sim card, and the battery.

And so, it was while wiping down the battery that my hand slipped, and the said technologically piece of hardware brilliance opted to make a second break for freedom in as many minutes, and plunged back down into the watery depths below, only this time I’d been merely going about filling the bowl with all manners of McDonald’s incrusted bodily waste.

Now as far as I was concerned, I had a number of choices: 1. I could throw in the towel and walk away that instant (but on the other hand it would mean having to shell out for a new one and if there was still a chance of salvaging it; and besides, I still had to wipe and didn’t fancy spending the rest of the night with a funny limp); 2. I could flush the toilet and hope that the battery acts like a ‘floater’ (a risk I could have taken, but on the other hand it may well have resulted in Corpus Christie’s aging sewerage system bursting under the pressure, and unleashing a torrent upon the wedding party); or 3. like a man (albeit a very smelly man), I could plunge my hand back into the somewhat murkier depths below, and recover the want away piece of hardware there and then.

And so of course like anyone worth his salt, I went for option 3.

I can guess the look you’ve got on your face right is probably the closest it’s ever come to resemble complete and utter disgust and repulsion, as I describe in intricate detail how I waded through my own faeces in retrieval of my phone battery, resembling something very much like that scene out of Trainspotting, where Renton pushes his body head first down the toilet system. Are you seriously telling me you wouldn’t have done the same? These things don,’t come cheap y’know.

And then, let me assure you, I scrubbed and washed my hands, arms, face, neck, upper body, legs, feet, and genitalia, like I’ve never scrubbed and washed before. It was a credit to the good people of Corpus Christie that they had stocked such an usually generous amount of soaps, hand washes, balms, shampoos, conditioners, shower gels, all over body wash, bubble baths, swarfegers, and paint stripers; almost as if they had been expecting such a thing to happen. Could it be that it hadn’t just been me? That there was an unholy curse upon the college, resulting in many an undergraduate, post-grad, lecturer or tourist, to lose their phones in a similar manner?

No. Didn’t think so.

Well after all that, did my phone still work? No it bloody didn’t. All it would do was making a sickly whirring sound. My phone had become very ill indeed. And, so from that point, I resigned myself to buying a new phone the very next day.

But, I could dwell on my phone no more. I had more deejaying to do, and an expectant crowd all rooting for my return. First tune I put on? ‘A Town Called Malice’ by the Jam, and the dance floor emptied instantly. Philistines!

Thanks must go to all those people who joined me in McDonald’s the next day to attempt a salvage job on the phone, as it was taken apart piece by piece, stripped down to its basic components. Circuits were dried; fluff was removed (as were these ominous strands of long curly hair, the origin of which I don’t particularly want to know, but can probably guess anyway).

I opted not to enlighten the participants of the full horror of what I had endured the night before in the toilet, merely stopping at the ‘phone fell down the toilet once and only once’, story. To be honest, I doubt they would have wanted to have been anywhere near me, if I had told them the full horror, and besides, bringing a phone back from the dead’s more than a one man job now.

To tell the truth, my phone did start working again, but the trauma had been too much, and rather than take the risk of being branded “Mr Stinky Phone” for the rest of my life, I fled in the direction of the nearest Phones4U in search of a replacement. Of course, I didn’t want any of this contract nonsense. No, another Orange Pay As You Go would do me fine. Little did I know that only a few months later, I would find myself in the situation of living in a house with no mobile msignal and no landline, thus resigning myself to the plight of having to make all my calls from the corner of the garden, and in doing so, attracting the unwelcome attention of the local Neighbourhood Watch Association.

And so I find myself throwing my lot in with ‘them’, bloody Man Utd. Not that selling your soul to the devil hasn’t been without its merits. After all, for the first time in my life, I can actually have something approaching a conversation on the phone. Now, all I need to do is find someone to have a conversation with.

Note. Since the publication of this article, Vodafone have announced they are to sever all ties with Manchester United, instead focusing on their sponsorship deal with the Champions League. Do I feel elated? No I bloody don’t. As since purchasing my new mobile, I’ve come to realise that the phone is in fact manufactured by Samsung, who are now the shirt sponsor of Chelsea Football Club. Now, these are the reasons why I hate Chelsea…………

The Mirror Woz Wrong
Yes, not content with printing falsified images of tortured Iraqi prisoners at the hands of British troops, they have now commited the greater sin of publishing Xmas TV listings that are in fact utterly bogus. Not only are there no programmes actually called TO BE ANNOUNCED on any of the networks, but worse they fluffed the start time of the Dr Who xmas special. I am reliably informed by the digiguide website, the special will in fact go out at 1900 and not 1815, putting them up against rural rubbish Emmerdale.

String 'em up i say. It's the only language they understand.