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The decency within

“The dog on the end, that’s not a real dog. That’s a sewn-on dog.” (Hello!)

We’re on the M4! Woo! Yes, after another two-month interruption, I’ve somehow made my way back to you with more of this drone. A lot of news has flowed under the bridge since last I parped off one of these, so this is roughly my longest post ever; however, my life hasn’t changed enough to allow me space to do blogging properly, meaning this thing took me weeks to write, and as the days passed more stories came up which needed to be wedged into here. Eventually, I had to call a cutoff point and attempt to wrench this monstrosity to some sort of conclusion, which is why you won’t see much mention of the recent nasty incident in Woolwich, which happened just as I was putting the last horrid touches to this entry. I wasn’t helped by the fact that there were several cases from early this year that didn’t make it under the bar into my previous piece; so, this stubborn little wedge of webspace includes both those things which have blossomed onto my timeline over the past two months, and also a few ‘deleted scenes’ which could and should by rights have been in ‘Chuckle at the pastiche’, but which missed out largely as a result of time and space constraints, trimmed out when I looked to determine which topics would actually make it into the entry, as I tried to wrestle the scale of that post into something approaching a readable capacity. So now, I’m now returning to spit forth on matters which have been dangling from my brainstem for all or part of 2013 – stretching right from several months back to just in the last few weeks. Prepare for a rock ‘n rollercoaster of emotions as I share with you the very deepest and darkest of my thoughts on life and death, society, culture and the media. Oh, alright, and boobs, too. Happy now? Alright then, enough of the introductory, here come the beeps…

One story that did grab my attention and that of the world’s media back in February but which for some reason didn’t make the cut last time out was the shocking case involving Oscar Pistorius, the man who was hailed as a hero as recently as 2012, when his Paralympic athletic endeavours earned him stardom and acclaim. However, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day this year, Oscar picked up a weapon and turned his own life, and those watching on the rolling news networks worldwide, upside down. Blasting a bathroom door at his Praetoria home with a shotgun, Pistorius pumped his girlfriend, model Reeve Steenkamp, full of lead. On being hauled before the beak, the former sportsman claimed he had heard movement in his home and, taking the commotion to be a burglar, had lashed out in apparent self-defence, not realising the unseen ‘assailant’ apparently cowering in his bog was in fact his other half. The prosecution, concurrently, claims the sportsman and the model had been in a dispute prior to the attack. Whatever the circumstances – and only the ‘blade ruiner’ himself knows what happened that day – this young woman with the world at her feet has been brought to her knees in a most frightening and brutal circumstance, and a lot of the positive image parasport and Olympians had built up in the largely-successful summer of 2012 has now been wasted, at least in the view of those among us who are geared to allow Pistorius’ actions to reflect badly on athletes as a whole. Speaking as someone who, perhaps wrongly, hadn’t really had much of an interest in or respect for sport prior to summer 2012, it’s certainly been a challenge to see someone who was so prominent in the field of track-and-field – who had been hailed as a hero across the board, even by the venerable Radio Times – fall from grace so comprehensively. The case is ongoing, so I won’t say anything committal about the circumstance, though at best, the situation could have been that he was trying to be gallant, to protect his potentially-vulnerable partner from an impending assailant, not realising at the time who the supposed interloper actually was; at worst, he’d decided to exact some kind of nasty revenge against a lady who surely wouldn’t have expected such violent retribution. Pistorius attracted further headlines while out on bail when he was reported to have been on the tiles partying and laughing with friends, though again your man Oscar defended his actions, and he has now pulled back from all his remaining sports commitments this year whilst the legal cloud continues to hang over his shoulder. With the trial still yet to complete, this is one story which is unlikely to be far from the public mind in 2013. Even if it has taken me four months to write about it here. I’m not exactly operating at the speed and scale of, say, Sky News here, I grant you, but still, given the prominent part Pistorius played in promoting people’s perception of parasport last summer, I felt it merited some sort of comment, eventually…

Something else that bubbled under my line of sight earlier this year was the case of Lucy Meadows. If the story passed you by, this was the case of a teacher who, having been born male (Nathan Upton, as was), underwent gender reassignment surgery in order to live as a woman, whilst remaining employed in an educational post. However, local discussion of the case reached the ear of social networks and ultimately the national press. Once the situation made headlines and the journos began to hassle her in pursuit of the story, Ms Meadows tried to take action – complaining to the Press Complaints Commission about her treatment – and, when this failed to stop the tide of hate, ultimately took her own life. Some of the media reaction to the case was pretty polar – Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail savaging of the decision to allow a transgender teacher to have any influence on children (saying “He’s not only in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job”) itself attracted massive criticism, with Ms Meadows’ supporters holding a vigil outside the Mail’s offices following her death. Through this, the row made its way to the pages of MediaGuardian and Private Eye, and through these to me. As the Meadows case spiralled out of control, more and more voices added to the throng of dissent and soon someone who had already spent many years in agony at her identity was being told in no uncertain terms, in black and white, that she was supposedly ‘wrong’ and a bad person. How the press are allowed to behave like this is unclear; it seems Leveson has changed little about the horrible old attitude of the dead-tree press. It’s not just the media, though: we as a nation are evil, forming vile hate-mobs as soon as something even slightly baffling to our senses gets punted out of the woodwork. Having been part of the mass wad of people who set sail to the BBC when 6 Music – a mere radio station, hardly a matter of life and death – was under the button, I know the power that being en masse can wield; however, this mob mentality can also be dangerous, and sometimes deadly. There’s still a lot of fear, anxiety and anger exhibited among the general audience – and particularly among the tabloid-reading, vengeance-seeking lowest-denominator slime that makes up such a huge, unenlightened proportion of society – whenever LGBT matters present themselves. Look at the Commons uproar over the gay marriage bill, for instance, to see how people (well, politicians in this case, but still…) can be polarised. And it becomes really explosive when coupled with the attitude of “won’t somebody think of the children!”, where ‘protection’ of our young’uns overrides even the sanest thought – witness the wrongheaded, demented reaction to CBeebies’ Cerrie Burnell when the one-armed but otherwise utterly charming presenter joined the kids’ channel. So it sadly seems Ms Meadows was doomed from the start – when people heard that “one of those” was in a position of authority over kids, the result was sadly inevitable. Lucy had done nothing wrong – in fact, she wanted to be more herself, or the person she felt she should be, rather than the person she was born as – and all she got for it was a kicking from our supposedly envy-of-the-world press. What a scummy situation.

More recently, I’ve been cheered up by the story of another couple of wonderful ladies striding forward and preparing, again, to work as teachers despite what some of those who chatter may think. BBC Three has recently screened a reversioned edit of last year’s US TLC series about a pair of conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel, sisters who, having been under the media glare since childhood, are now in their 20s and training to work in education. I’d not seen the girls’ prior films – they came before Katie Piper opened my eyes to this sort of ‘body shock’ documentary, a genre which I’d previously dismissed as gawpy – but the Hensel sisters come across as warm, lovely, well-adjusted, intelligent ladies, and seeing them engaging with a class of kids (in the second of the BBC episodes) was a joy. If they’d tried that over here – which they have done, in fact, they did part of their training in Maidenhead of all places, as the film revealed – the Brit press would’ve ripped them to shreds, as per poor Lucy Meadows. But the US class of kids, at least judging from the footage that made it into the finished edit, had no problem with a two-faced teacher, particularly as the sisters proved how adept they were at engaging with and educating their young charges. The Abby and Brittany films gave plenty of airtime to the opinions and feelings of these warm, sweet ladies who have genuine intelligence and warm, bright personalities, and who haven’t let their medical condition (in their case, a largely-united body) stand too much in their way – whilst there have been times their two-in-one situation has proven difficult, as the girls’ two independent brains have had to work together unconnectedly on things that are more normally done by one person working in isolation (from typing to driving), the twins have been able to work together to move past their obstacles and lead a largely normal life, from studying and working to shopping and partying. Hell, these girls have more friends and fun, and a brighter future, than I do! Abby and Brittany, I salute you: you’re living the lives you want and not letting the difficulties of life grind you down. Ladies, you are far better than I, and I wish you nothing but success.

One woman who has been recieving a lot of barbs, perhaps deservedly, is Josie Cunningham. This wannabe glamour model made headlines just as my last post was squeaking through your internet tubes, after the massively negative reaction to her having undergone bust-enhancement surgery on the NHS’ dollar. I’m no fan of cosmetic surgery or of those who have it, as those who’ve read my prior screeds will be aware, but I am aware that surgery is permitted for those who approach their doctor with physical or mental complaints linked to their physical appearance. I’m one of those who believes people should be comfortable with who they are, but if someone is genuinely unhappy and feel they need a correction – whether that be chest enhancement, or something more serious such as a sex change – then there should be avenue open to them to undertake something – be it surgery, counselling, whatever’s necessary – that would make them happy and more peaceful. I have no qualm with that. Josie claimed, in her defence, that following childbirth she had little or no natural breast tissue, and thus would have needed implants to give her a more feminine figure. But Josie’s case once again brought out the sharp teeth of online commentors and media articles. The lady was, rightly or wrongly, subjected to a torrent of vicious and barbaric abuse online, much of it, I should point out, coming from other women. Her op also, as we should now expect, recieved a severe spear-rattling from the press, who have adopted Josie’s case as another example of benefit-scrounging broken Britain, one of their current reader-whipping-up obsessions. I wasn’t sure how to this situation. At first, I was one of those who wanted to call for Josie’s head to roll: I didn’t see why some bird who wanted to be in the dirty papers with her bups out should have been enabled by the public purse, when there’s folk in much more dire need of food and shelter. I thought that maybe we as a nation should hare her to repay the public purse from her future model income (though surely, if she were to become successful, she’d be paying into the exchequer’s coffers through general taxation on her pay.) At first I saw her as a monster, someone who had leeched from the public purse purely to boost her own lifestyle and chances of following in the footsteps of Katie Price and the like. More recently, though, I’ve calmed towards Cunningham: clearly she had issues which she felt only the surgeon’s knife could solve. Would’ve been nice if, instead of funding her assets, Josie’s GP had instead used the funding for a program of counselling to help her over her issues; that would’ve kept her out of the media crossfire and helped with the mental worry she was clearly having. However, the bust enhancement is the way she chose to go, and so now her figure is the target of public scorn, and whilst the lady claims to be grateful for the investment she’s recieved, her decision to thrust the publically-enhanced boobies into the spotlight in what many still consider a grubby, mucky way – glamour modelling – has put some taxpayers’ noses out of joint. So whilst she’s not necessarily a good person, some of the bile and ire she’s recieved online – up to and including death threats, I hear – has not entirely been deserved. Another Josie whose figure is rarely out of the spotlight, incidentally, is Josie Gibson, who has over recent weeks been continuing her quest to bleat on about her figure on the front pages of magazines, as though that’s the only reason this former Big Brother contestant exists now, it would appear. I really want to stop writing about Gibbo, though her constant body-babble makes the Bristolian hard to avoid; I just need to let her get on with doing whatever the hell she wants to do with her body and not let it get under my skin. The ‘cackle mags’ (women’s magazines) probably still pay fairly well, even though they’re leaking readers to the web – to the extent that More! magazine has been shut down as unviable – and presumably Josie G is looking to fund her body rework from this, rather than risking ire by following her namesake to claim off the public purse. For what it’s worth, from what I’ve seen (probably too much, if I’m honest), Gibson has an alright figure, but the issue here is how she feels about herself, and, given her weight issues and surgical wishlist, clearly Josie isn’t happy within herself. Which is in itself a shame. Again, maybe she needs support with her mental issues and self-image before the surgeon’s knife moves in. There’ll be more on body image later on, if you can stand it.

Women have also been making somewhat stinky comments on the web about a pretty lady who’s been on telly a fair bit recently, even though you may not know her actual name. Camilla Arfwedson is the slinky dark-haired lass from the series of commercials run by holiday firm Secret Escapes (“who are you talking to, darling?”) and, should you happen to pump the company name into social media, you’ll find yourself having to wade through a litany of not-entirely-pleasant comments made, mostly, by ladies who happen to have seen the ads and taken a dislike to Camilla’s flirtatious character. As I’m not a ladygirl myself, and indeed won’t be unless I go down the Meadows route, I don’t quite get why females have been again so keen to turn their barbs: perhaps it’s jealousy, perhaps the illusion of cheating contained thematically in the promos rankles with them, perhaps it’s just that they feel the ad-lass is a poor representation of genuine female holidaymakers. Meanwhile, men haven’t been quite as forthright in their disdain, and indeed many have agreed with me that this Camilla is rather pretty. Maybe, although featuring a female lead, the ads are tailored to promote response from masculine viewers – men, particulrly the dimbos at whom telly ads are generally targeted, are likely to respond well to the encroachments of a cheeky, flirty lady, and rush to the site to book up their hols in the hope that they too will be able to run into a saucy babe, not realising until after they’ve checked into their destination that only a very few holiday companies actively offer perky brunettes as part of the standard bed-and-board package. But given the negative response from the lady viewers, one wonders what they’d prefer? Diet Coke ads recently returned to the traditional ‘hunk’ format to celebrate some anniversary or other, and that got me to thinking maybe SE could run an ad with a lad, as eye-candy for the female observers, but then I realised that wouldn’t work: whilst a flirty lady’s hints at naughty liaisons are, perhaps unwisely, beloved by males, if the ad had featured a fella flirting with the viewer then returning back to his partner the female audience would also dislike this, viewing the chap as a cheating slimeball who can’t be trusted. So the firm can’t win! As a man who appreciates female beauty, though, I hope telly doesn’t turn its back on using the genuinely-pretty Camilla where necessary.

Someone whose own use of social media got her into trouble and dumped her right in the thundering eye of a media firestorm was one Paris Brown. The teenager’s appointment to, and subsequent defenestration from, public office gave the media another chance to flex its mob-mentality hate-muscles, and gave the printed press that self-important sense of victory it so craves. The appointment of Ms Brown was an experiment, an attempt to build bridges between the police and young people – an area where there has historically been friction, sometimes boiling over into disorder (witness the 2011 riots, which some young hoodlums claimed, in a report published after the disorder, was an attempt to “give the feds a bloody nose”). So you can see what Kent’s recently-elected police and crime commissioner was trying to do when she appointed Paris to the role of “youth PCC”, even diverting a portion of her own pay to find the young pretender. So far, so seems like a good idea. But when the redtops got their hands on the 17-year-old’s Twitter and Facebook pages, filled with the typical immature teenage posturing and swagger, things got really out of hand. The papers, led by a Mail on Sunday that had the misfortune of being published in a fairly quiet news weekend, went big on chewing out the teen for her supposed sex ‘n drinks ‘n rock ‘n roll lifestyle that her boastful social media pages claimed her to have, and whipped up their moblike readership to call for Brown’s head to roll. The media urged their attendant readers to holler about comments which, whilst not definitive statements of Paris’ beliefs, and not themselves out of context in the wider maelstrom of social media, the press barons had percieved as derogatory. After several days’ scrutiny and amid suggestions the police should look into her doings, the teen, who had been backed by Kent PCC, eventually handed in her notice, and the press again got the scalp they wanted. The police, incidentally, ultimately decided that no charges would be brought against the teen in relation to her comments, many of which were posted years before the girl knew she’d be taking up public office. In the end, the whole mess has been a huge embarrassment for all concerned. So nobody really wins here: Paris’ name is muddied forevermore, Kent PCC looks foolish for hiring her just weeks after the office was set up (a Commons review criticised the ‘maverick decision’), and the public at large have been reduced once again to a mooing mob, doing the bidding of the media jackals who love to create these storms for the benefit of their dying press empires. I would say I hope the young lady at the centre of this is able to rebuild her life and get back into making some kind of positive contribution to society, but thanks to the near-permanence of the black mark she’s recieved she may find herself out of work for a long time, as employers will take one look at her name and immediately question whether they can handle the scrutiny that hiring Ms. Brown would bring their organisation. And believe me, I know all too well about being blacklisted by employers.

It’s not an easy time to be out of work. With the future of the benefits system in doubt – the Government’s shakeup, aimed at reducing the welfare bill (and in the process demonizing the luckless proles who are already on the bottom rung of society), is in the process of being rolled out, teething problems notwithstanding – many people currently trapped in the poverty cycle probably don’t know where the next meal is coming from. If the continued rationalization of the system forces those in difficulty to make the ultimate choice, Cameron and his beancounters could find themselves with blood on their hands. I’m certainly not sure whether I can continue living for much longer; after all, what purpose do I serve? I’m not likely to be able to continue as a retailer; as I’ve said previously, this stinky little area of South London is unlikely to continue as a business district – Bexleyheath is heading towards having more shops closed than open, for instance, and new store openings in the region have dried to a trickle: opportunities for my preexisting career to continue are heading towards nil. But I don’t have the time or funds available to reskill, and my too-narrow CV means firms outside the retail porthole seem unlikely to take me on – I’m caught between a rock and a hard place, qualified and skilled for a job role which in our modern, online environment, when high-street shopping is basically dead, is completely irrelevant. And it doesn’t help that my current, bottom-of-the-chain lifestyle keeps me brushing shoulders with the worst in society: the sort of tiresome slime you become thoroughly sick of if your day is spent in course centres, buses, public libraries and so forth. Having to spend hours of my day trapped in various unsavoury locations with petty criminals, the mentally unwell, slaggy young mums and drink/drug-addled losers is having a very detrimental impact on my wellbeing. And it’s been going on for years: when, in one course centre in Woolwich, some of my fellow work-losers returned from lunch-break openly cackling about the stuff they’d finger-lifted from Peacocks, I became so hotheadedly angry I started wishing internally that I had had access to some kind of device with which to mete out some form of hyperagressive justice, though that may be as I still had a lingering thread of loyalty to my former employer. And I kept that feeling inside, I didn’t say anything out loud because I know the risks of challenging those more assertive than I: if they’re willing to walk out of a shop without paying, surely they’re the kind of people who would shank the loser who dared challenge their self-importance. Maybe I should be around good people more often, but the truth is I’m not good enough myself to justify trading up.

One project that attempted to help put disadvantaged and challenging young people back on the straight and narrow over recent weeks was Channel 4’s Secret Millions. This series – which you can look out on 4oD should you be so minded – featured five Channel 4 presenters teaming up with charities and public-service groups in order to pilot schemes which could, with Big Lottery Fund backing, be rolled out to support the disadvantaged, with the presenter-led pilots being, unknown to the participants, attempts to convince the Fund to cough up for the full scheme. In a lot of the cases, the presenters were saddled with quite challenging, wrong-side-of-the-tracks trainees: George Clarke working with young offenders on a building project, Katie Piper working with recently-released prisoners, Dave Fishwick working with unemployed young people, Gok Wan with youngsters from challenging backgrounds, and Jimmy Doherty working with disabled children, for completeness. As a committed Piper fan, I dutifully put myself through watching each episode, despite Channel 4 holding Katie’s episode back to broadcast as the fourth of the five episodes screened over seven weeks, presumably in fear that airing her episode first would have dented viewing figures for the remainder of the shows. And the viewing, for someone as enfeebled and mentally disturbed as myself, was fairly challenging. I got through the Doherty episode fairly smoothly, so I’ll pass no further comment on it other than to tip the good hat to the largely good-spirited folk therein, and Katie’s show, despite the presence of convicted criminals, was fairly positive, showing what can be achieved if people who would normally be written off are given a chance to prove themselves. This was also the theme of the other editions, but the quite difficult and challenging participants proved at times quite a burden for the viewer to bear, the viewer in this case being me. The initially shiftless and stubborn young folk in Clarke’s house-makeover opener proved to be good people once they got their feet under the builder’s table: one young lady, sick of being treated like a know-nothing bimbo by those who sneered at her in the street, discovered a passion for electrical work, and it was clear that these young folk benefitted greatly from having the mentoring and support which is all too often denied to those who need it most. I know I could’ve done with support and leadership during my struggle for reason. The youngsters marshalled by Dave Fishwick in his pop-up job shop were at times a reflection of the worst in society – bad attitudes, misbehaviour and tiresome selfishness – but again, with Dave’s help, the kids had their eyes opened to the options which would be available to them if they were willing to knuckle down. Again, difficult young people had found a more peaceful path and their journey, whilst challenging at times, was ultimately uplifting, with several of the participants securing employment or training as a result of their taking part in the project. But then, come the show’s fifth outing, I reached my limit.

Perhaps I should have been more accommodating of the fact that they came from emotionally challenging backgrounds, but for some reason the unpredictable young oiks being yoked into training by Gok Wan in the final show really got on my raw nerve, and having had strong enough stomach to sit through the four prior episodes, I finally hit my tipping point when Gok’s young charges began brawling aggressively. Avoiding conflict is essentially a reflex action to me – I’ve lived in a rough, troubled area (the south-east, keep up) long enough to know that when tempers start to fray, I need to make my exit posthaste to avoid getting drawn into a quarrel. It’s self-preservation, essentially – when fists fly and voices soar, my heart rushes, my head pounds and ultimately I take the nearest exit, a flight plan which applies even if the vicious aggressors are separated from me physically by a television screen. So, when Gok’s short-fused employees began roughhousing, I slipped quietly from the room. I then whined about my decisionmaking on Twitter, via a send-only format thanks to my cruddy phone, which was a bit of a dick move in itself – I should have simply left gracefully, waited for myself and/or the situation to calm down, and then returned politely, without making a fuss. Walking out of the room, though, showed a massive lack of respect on my part for Gok and his charges. I showed just as bad and wrong of a lack of faith in them as society in general had done. I should have had faith in their ability to get back on the right route, as the challenging trainees in t’other four episodes had achieved; when I returned to the seating room towards the end of the show I felt I’d cheated myself out of being part of their journey, and that I’d done them a great disservice by walking away and thereby writing them off as a lost cause. Should I be punished for my error of judgement? I considered notionally banning myself from involvement in several things I like, such as 90s music or Italian food, for a week or two, as a punitive sentence for my crime of escape, until I realised that these themes would be quite difficult to dodge in practice (for instance, whilst I could optionally debar myself access to Absolute 90s for any period of time necessary, and skip any track from the decade that my tatty audio device puked up, what would I do to enforce the ban if, say, another radio or TV channel I happened to be watching, or a shop I was in, started randomly playing something from the decade?). In the event, I couldn’t come up with a suitable self-penance within a reasonable timeframe, though I’d be willing to take suggestions for possible taxations from the wider audience. But this incident certainly throws one thing into the light: my old, unreasonable but not entirely unexpected, views need to be challenged. My snooty, fearful opinion of the ill, poor and disadvantaged needs to change. I’ve spent too long around the bottom ladder of society – rubbing shoulders with criminals, the unemployed and the infirm in affordable public spaces (libraries, shopping malls, buses, job centres) and that’s given to me a perhaps unhealthy fear of challenging those more grotesque in their manner than I. Maybe if I stopped seeing people as a threat, a danger, an enemy, and started looking for the decency within, I’d be able to get from one end of a day to the other without having wild heart palps. As a weakling, I’m too quick to shrink when there’s aggression all around. If I don’t straighten up and become more of a strongman, life will always keep its foot on my throat. It is possible to have one’s views challenged and tested – one of the Millions presenters, Katie Piper, said she’d found making the show quite challenging as it required her, as both a taxpayer and herself a victim of violent crime, to put aside her preconcieved opinion of criminals and work with them on something which could in the longer term provide genuine societal good. I often use Katie as a bulwark for my own foresight, and if the delightful Piper can have her views of “wrong ‘uns” challenged and overturned, why cannot I?

My experience with jobseeking and the underclass means I’ve taken the non-executive decision to swerve completely away from another new TV offering. ITV has drawn humour from our economically strained times by setting a new ‘workplace’ sitcom in the one place you end up if you haven’t got a workplace: The Job Lot, starring BBC Three poster-boy Russell Tovey and the often-glittering Sarah Hadland, is set in the world of unemployment. Now, this show is itself quite a turnup for the books: along with the neighbouring Vicious, it’s the first comedy ITV’s done in ages. You may recall how in my previous post I bemoaned Britain’s formerly-most-popular button for their near-absence from comedy in recent years, an evacuation which came about because in the challenging genre of comedy, it’s difficult to generate hits which are both critically acclaimed and also generative of the sizeable audience needed for commercial justification. But now ITV wants to be back in the humour game: perhaps in response to my last post (though I doubt it), ITV soon after its appearance began to run a laughter-themed entry in their ‘Where [x] lives’ series of glossy promos. So, given my prior misgivings about the state of ITV’s funny stuff, surely I should be watching its new output? Sadly, I fear The Job Lot may cut a little too close to my own experience, and could result in nightmares and heartbreak as I reminisce about my own time on the scrapheap, rather than the guffaws the programme-makers would typically expect it to generate. I’ve been here before – my own time as the outsider in a suburban comprehensive led me to take fright when presented with the first episode of The Inbetweeners, and I’ve not watched an episode – or their wildly-successful movie – since. Which, ironically, makes me even more of an outsider. I want ITV’s comedy to be successful, I really do, because it’ll be a step on the road back to getting telly back to how it was when I was growing up. But to get my bum on the seat it’d need to be something I could laugh at from a safe distance, not something that’ll give me the fear by swiping its barbs a little too closely to my own ear. ITV have also run a pensioner prank series, Off Their Rockers, during Sunday teatime since last I was among you: whilst I’ve said in the past about my general disdain for prank shows, this was a more silly/fun take on the format, in the vein of Dom Joly’s Trigger Happy TV, rather than a Beadle/Hammond-style poking in the eye for blameless individuals, and so was more palatable than most. It’s pairing with the revived Catchphrase (yes, really) in the Sunday night slot also gave rise to a rare bit of connectivity – Royston Mayoh, one of the older folks seen rocking the pranks (at one point ending up naked on a spacehopper), was a producer on Catchphrase during the Roy Walker era! As a gamey nut, I should probably give some verdict on the new-school ‘Phrase: while it’d always have had a hard act to live up to in comparison to the Roy Walker era, I’m just glad that they’ve not messed it up too much, and, bar the addition of Stephen Mulhern, an elimination round, and a revamped take on the grand finale, have remained relatively true to the venerable conceit.

One comedy I have been getting into, albeit only about five years after the rest of the civilized world, is Parks & Recreation. The fact I bigged up Total Drama Island in my previous post whilst letting this gem sail by completely unflagged is perhaps indicative of a massive disorder in my priorities. Anyway, the reason it took so long for me to ride the Pawnee train is that, until BBC Four swallowed up the show this year, no UK broadcaster had bothered to avail themselves of P&R. Having, though, watched a goodly chunk of the shows now brought before us (the Beeb having rattled through the first and straight on into the second season, and in double-bills too), I can now say that I’m a Parks & Rec convert, proud to see a wonderful ensemble cast really giving it plenty in what is a thoroughly enjoyable slice of quality, and one of those now rare things – a show I genuinely look forward to seeing; let’s hope the Beeb’s budget-cut on imports doesn’t stop them from shelling out to bring more of this gem to our screens. I should confirm that we did, too, get to the final championship of Total Drama Island, with the Canadian reality cartoon continuing to amuse right through to the last, despite Kix! mucking about with the TDI schedule when the Easter school holidays drove a wall right down the middle of the run. There have been other things worth laughing about on your box since last I reported, with BBC Two entrusting long-standing comedy-show player Kevin Eldon a show of his own at long last; It’s Kevin was that rare beast, a quirky, unique and unhinged sketch show that made sense entirely because it didn’t make sense. Snuck out after ten at night on a Sunday, it really was one of those things you had to be there for – and if these posts were more frequent, maybe I could’ve encouraged you to look it out, rather than raising toast to a shadow. It’s likely to have gone from iPlayer now, but if a rerun or DVD release fetches up, do check it out – it’s a thing of rare quality. If comedy as a genre is dying out on TV, alternative and edgy comedy is particularly hard-hit – in recent years it’s been reduced to BBC Three squeaking out the likes of The Wrong Door and Snuff Box to an audience comprised almost exclusively of me, when back in the oh-so-90s we used to get stuff like Lee and Herring on a Sunday lunchtime. They’d never do that now. And they call this progress? Elsewhere, Comedy Lab’s Anna & Katy got a full Channel 4 series – though its late-Wednesday night screening, clashing with Parks & Rec, and my typical sodding-early start on Thursdays to fling the bins out, means I’ll be trusting reruns and 4oD to bring me the episodes I had to miss. It’s worth checking out at least the first show though, for the best Countdown pastiche since the IT Crowd stuck its tnettenba over the parapet. The oft-dazzling Katy Wix also pitches up as part of the cast of BBC One’s returning sitcom Not Going Out, which is still worth your time despite the obvious need to rebalance the show to cover for the departure of zinger-witted Tim Vine from the lineup. Speaking of boy/girl flatshare sitcoms, New Girl is back on E4 having been given a fair old baptism of fire on its first UK outing, its kicking from off of the main Channel 4 suggesting a lack of faith in the show, but on E4 it’s been allowed to blossom. I did, during my Secret Millions walkout rant, refer back to an incident early in the first season, when I’d similarly ejected myself from the room during New Girl when Nick and Schmidt came to then-unexpectedly harsh blows (their personality clashes now being an established feature of the show). That revelation didn’t go down well at all, and I was roundly and rightly criticised for my move. Incidentally, when an episode of The Mindy Project, which now partners New Girl on E4, turned into a shouty smash-up, I again left the room in a stinker of a mood, but I did one thing better this time – I didn’t talk about my exit publically. My Hilary Duff-obsessed younger brother, meanwhile, has been forcing Lizzie McGuire upon me now that the series is being rerun on PopGirl. He’s a 25-year-old male, he shouldn’t be anywhere near PopGirl for should-be-obvious legal reasons, but because it’s The Duff, I now have to bow the knee to his whim and find some way to cover my eyes and ears at 5pm daily. Could be worse, I guess – that prick’s got the entire feckin’ series on DVD, so he could absolutely waterboard me with Lizzie torture should the mood take him. I tremble at the very thought. Although it is quite fun to see a now grown-up, married-with-a-kid Hilary be rewound back to her breakout role, in a show PopGirl are touting as ‘new’ (to them, at least) when the thing was first on Disney Channel all of twelve ruddy years ago. Now, PopGirl, pick up the TV version of Clueless, I dare you…

Something else which has come out of the ark from back when its stars were in shorter pants, and this time in fact returned to better than its former glory, was ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble’. The Ant & Dec single, which only just about made the top ten when it came out all of nineteen years ago, was performed on the duo’s Saturday Night Takeaway as part of a Big Reunion skit, and subsequently barged past all other current pop acts to storm to number one! The gap between original release and chart-toppance was quite stark: in the years since the duo, the twosome first had lyrics coming out of their pores, we’ve had two changes of government, A&D themselves have gone from being Byker Grove chancers to bonafide national treasures, and the boys’ original record label Telstar has gone belly-up, leading to the ‘rerelease’ downloads being of a version picked up by Edsel, an arm of the Demon Music Group, for inclusion on the firm’s midprice 90s compilations, the flood of downloads in the process giving Edsel/Demon its first chart-topping single. Indeed, the near-two-decade timelapse means many of the younger elements downloading the track would barely have been born, if at all, when the song first came out! I could have a little chuckle, too – I’ve had the legendary …Rhumble on my player for ages, ripped screaming from one of the aforementioned 90s CDs, since long before it became cool again! The return of Saturday Night Takeaway itself, after several years’ rest (albeit not as many as Rhumble, but still…) is also a welcome nod to how things used to be done: as I’ve said in the past, there are too few opportunities for big sparkly family entertainment shows in an era which has been dominated by celebby sing-and-dance formats. It’s also good to see Takeaway survive the scandal which dogged it in the off-season, after it was revealed through investigations that unclear, inaccurate and incomplete information provided to viewers had essentially misled those taking part in the show’s phone-in competitions in the initial run. The revived show was not cowed by the chastisement, however, and brought both familiar features and new takes on the concept to ensure a fairly strong, steady performance. The boys done good, though with the show now swapped out for Britain’s Got Talent it’s clear ITV isn’t yet ready to shut off the vein of Cowell-derived performance contests. On which note, it is almost time, with the show’s return still months away, to prepare my tin hat to dodge the media squabble which will surround the X Factor for a goodly quadrant of this year: the latest tabloid tattle being that, as the flailing and injured XF recoils, wounded, back into its past, Sharon Osbourne is set to be shuffled back into the judging pack, apparently at the expense of the unpalatable Tulisa; much as when Cheryl Cole was being herded across the Atlantic, though, I fear the Contostavlos/Osbourne push-pull is going to be stretched out through the presses in order to build anticipation among fans, and subject non-viewers to the impenetrable wall of media noise we’ve come to expect from big Simon’s broadcast outlets. Such is life.

Outside of X Factor, though, music does now have slightly more outlet for free-to-air broadcast as, in a somewhat surprising move, since last I fluttered one of these out, the Box TV network of music channels have gone free on satellite, firing a stack of channels into the arms of non-subscribers (six-sevenths of the network has also been guide-listed on the Freesat service, though oddly 4Music – possibly because it screens commissioned/acquired C4 programmes in evenings – has yet to join them, though it remains available on Freeview, where I’ve been able to access the channel since its launch in 2008.) Whilst this does give a music-listener such as me a bite more flexibility – it increases the number of options available for filling oddly-shaped gaps and otherwise-empty time – the freeing up of the channels is slightly a double-edged sword as it is, essentially, piling out more of the same – four of the seven are very mainstream services (the pop-skewed 4Music joined by the similarly charty Smash Hits and The Box, and the current and celebby Heat), with a fifth, Kiss, on paper a specialist dance/RnB channel but in practice also able to benefit from the strong correlation between rhythmic music and the charts just lately. The only channels among the group to really divert from the standard script are the rock-focused Kerrang!, which performs a similar role in Box TV to that which the free-since-2006 Scuzz does within the otherwise-mainstream rival lineup of CSC, and oldies/melodic station Magic, which at least tries to pretend music existed before Justin Bieber did. Box TV did have an alternative-skewing option once upon a moon, but sadly that channel didn’t live to see Freesat – Q TV closed last year in favour of the younger and more female Heat (though as Q was, ratings-wise, historically Box’s worst-performing channel, perhaps change was inevitable…) Bauer’s radio station bloc on Freeview, which uses much the same brands and formats as the TV channel group (albeit without the involvement of Channel 4), has also seen change, with Q again sacrificed: the Q Radio service – primarily delivered on Freeview, aside from a painfully brief tenure on DAB in London a few years back – has been stripped from the air in favour of a ‘classic rhythms’ service spun out of Kiss. One thing that Kiss has been asked by its listeners pretty much constantly since opening up the social media channels of communication is whether the popular back-in-the-day feature Kisstory could be spun off into a fulltime station; and now, it has, and at least it provides an option for those of us wanting a break from the continuous diet of current hits. At least Q was replaced with a radio service rather than dead air: Mojo Radio and Clyde 1 (itself a short-term replacement for country station 3C) were both taken off Freeview by Bauer or its predecessors without being replaced at all. Perhaps the axe falling on Q’s radio and TV outlets may suggest the Q brand that is in danger of being phased out altogether: poor sales for the print magazine have recently seen the defenestration of its editor, and his replacement by the woman who launched weekly celebs-to-real-life title Closer, suggesting Q’s paymasters are looking to take the title more mainstream, in a last-ditch attempt to save it before it joins quite a significant number of other mags which have been punted into the long grass over the years (from Neon, Smash Hits and Arena to Select, Max Power and The Face). A parallel could also be drawn with the rise and fall of NME, which in recent years has established and then pulled back from radio and TV spinoffs.

It also seems Bauer is looking to make cuts to its radio operations too: whilst the rival Global group had been ripping up the radio history books over recent years, turning local CHR stations and the Galaxy rhythmic network into adult-contemporary Heart stations and hit-led Capital services, and rolling out almost entirely networked output on the stations (and the AM Gold network) with the loss of myriad local presentation and identity, Bauer’s stations, whilst taking some networked content (mostly In:Demand on weeknights, and less-commercially-valuable overnight output) had largely retained much of their local and regional identity and independence. Now, though, it seems Bauer is moving in a similar direction to its bigger rival, with several Magic AM local presenters binned in favour of regionalised shows – likely a first step towards a single networked Magic service for the North, as recently permitted by Ofcom (whilst not impacting on London’s FM Magic station, which is run separately from the northern oldies stations.) The former Vibe stations in the east and west of England, having taken the Kiss name, now share all content with the London station, and in a move which proved particularly controversial amongst hardy Northeners, the Teesside station TFM was flipped to take all its content from larger Newcastle-aimed sibling Metro Radio (though split local jingles retain the TFM name, in order to bamboozle listeners into believing little has changed.) It does appear that under its current ownership, Bauer is ruling with its business nose rather than its creative heart, and though this may seem sensible it does constitute another nail in the coffin for the creative arts and intelligent innovation, by removing independence and identity in favour of a ‘more of the same’ attitude. Incidentally, local radio for Teesside could make its way back in the form of a local community station: Mark Page, who recently had his Garrison Radio army services ripped off the air by the Government in favour of handing the licences over to the rival BFBS service, has indicated he would be interested in running any future Tees FM licence handed out by Ofcom, though in a sign that digital radio remains unloved, Page indicated, despite the existing presence of a local DAB platform for Teesside, he wouldn’t countenance a digital-only service as the audience was too small to be viable. DAB also isn’t Bauer’s flavour of the month – the new Kisstory service isn’t being made available on DAB, despite capacity being available (with the main Kiss in the process of moving from local-layer platforms to the national Digital One multiplex) as the young listeners Kiss was targeting listen mostly on apps, mobile phones and TV, whilst DAB skews towards the older audience Bauer is trying to shed with the closure of stations such as Q. It’s untrue to say Bauer’s abandoning DAB altogether, mind – they recently bought out national classic rock station Planet Rock, which had been in independent hands since 2008 when its prior owner (GCap, now part of Global) threatened to close it down if it wasn’t sold (they binned Core, theJazz and Capital Life around the same time). And with the new TeamRock also on the way, now testing on the Digital One service ahead of full launch, heavy, hard and classic rock are in sounder and safer hands than they have been for a while. Meanwhile, there will be a change to the rock provision in the West Midlands, with Kerrang! Radio dumped from FM in favour of a relay of London-headquartered classic-rock DAB station Planet Rock, though this is largely a cost-cutting excercise aimed at shedding the Birmingham studio base, with Planet Rock continuing to feed shows from London, and a smaller Kerrang! service, retargeted at younger, spikier rock fans, will remain on air over digital and online platforms, again fed from the capital after cutting ties with the second city. The tightened-up Kerrang! digital station is, though, likely to have a narrower remit than the current broad rock diet offered. But with Q Radio and NME Radio shuttering within weeks of one another, and mere months after both brands shipped out of telly, maybe it’s contemporary and alternative music we should be scared for. After all, 6 Music is only still going because we made a noise about it (and that’s not a royal we, I was genuinely part of the pro-6 movement, and this victory remains my greatest, and some would say sole, achievement).

The huge concentration of Rihanna/Minaj/1D/Bieber/X Factor in heavy rotation on our remaining TV and radio outlets has been making me increasingly sad and desperate for absolution, but perhaps I’ve been becoming too snobby about mainstream music. I need to remember that in the past I’ve listened to and enjoyed a wide range of music, from the very start of my music-listening days – remember, Kylie Minogue and Shanice were among my musical firsts in the days before Supergrass and Sleeper, and a little later Mansun and Idlewild, made me more of an indie boy. I’ve got Britney Spears CDs in my collection – it’s not dirty, she’s roughly three months older than me – and a deep enough dig through my discs and tapes will even unearth the likes of Solid Harmonie and TSD rubbing shoulders with, say, Serafin and Terris. I’ve always had a broad taste in music – when pressed on just this point in a music-store job interview, I explained that this comes from growing up in the era of The Chart Show and Top of the Pops, where a whole mess of distinct genres would be equitably celebrated one alongside the other – and my cheap nasty audio-player even today boasts the likes of Girls Aloud, Justin Timberlake, Pixie Lott and Bridgit Mendler shuttling round alongside, among others, Slipknot, Biffy Clyro, Fall Out Boy, Muse, Kodaline, Reverend and the Makers, Those Dancing Days, Howard Jones, Pulp, Danananaykroyd, Haim, Nicki Minaj, Ash, Candie Payne, Every Avenue, Underworld, Zwan and the Beatles. What I’m saying is: I don’t necessarily want all media to be the Evening Session, I want a variety of voices, and because this is anathema to the big-boy broadcasters’ desire to narrowcast, there won’t really be that opportunity unless I somehow gather the resource to go it alone Mark Page-style (though as a DAB owner, I’d actually consider going digital should the capacity be presented before me.) But maybe I shouldn’t get such an opportunity to put my tastes before the nation – you’ve seen, in the lists herein, the tip of the iceberg as regards the sort of music mix you’d get on any station under my tutelage, and it’s a variety which would put more than a few noses out of joint… Not that musicians themselves are immune from starting aggro. Madonna was the unlikely heart of a major diplomatic incident when she became embroiled in a war of words with Malawi, home country of two of her adopted children. One is given to believe the removal of the president’s sister as head of a Madge-spawned local charity may have had bearing on the spat, mind you. Elsewhere, two rapping-folk have landed themselves in commercial hot water and lost endorsements thanks to the tone of tracks in which they have been involved: Rick Ross was binned by Reebok after suggestions that a Rocko track Rick rapped on condoned rape and assault, whilst Mountain Dew sacked Lil’ Wayne after his collaboration with Future included controversial reference to Emmett Till, a black teen fatally attacked in 1955 after being accused of flirting with a white woman. (It was a less enlightened time, sure, but racism still exists today – south London recently marked the twentieth anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s death, and with two convictions made so far, police still remain confident in catching other members of the gang which brought blood to the streets of Eltham in 1993.) I try to be openminded and diverse, but not everyone shares these ideals, unfortunately.

Racism is, though, just one of the forms of discrimination that, despite much effort over recent years, we’re still some way from sorting out. Sexism, ageism, homophobia and general bullying are also still a threat to the good order of society, and because these foul and discriminatory views are held so trenchantly and unwaveringly by a thankfully smallish proportion of the populace, they will be extensively challenging to eradicate. And these views, if allowed to germinate within a workplace, often create animosity and fear. The BBC is, sadly, a good example of this. A recent report taking the current temperature of the BBC – commissioned alongside, but reporting prior to, a probe into the Beeb’s inner culture during the 60s, 70s and 80s when Jimmy Savile was at the peak of his misused powers – has suggested that within the Beeb today there is a culture of fear and a degree of poor relations, with some staff sitting on problems amid a fear that more senior staff were in untouchable positions of power. It certainly isn’t pleasant to see our national broadcaster wriggle on the vine in this way, but the report isn’t really a surprise when you see some of the confused and headless decision-making the BBC has been guilty of over recent years, from the 6Music mishandling to the more recent Newsnight chaos. Interestingly, the report suggests that, under Greg Dyke’s ‘cut the crap’ era, there was more of a feeling of unity and of a BBC moving in the same direction, which since his Hutton-enforced departure and replacement with Mark Thompson, was replaced with the current confused culture. This does resonate with my personal, outsider’s view, as expressed in a prior blog – possibly so long ago that it was on the old site rather than here – that the BBC under Thommo was fairly poorly run, with the man himself taking little responsibility and letting his underlings take the fall as crisis and chaos struck the BBC during his tenure – from Queengate to rigged competitions to Miriam O’Reilly to Ross/Brand. Certainly, despite all the Beeb’s posturing, and the impressive Olympic coverage that closed his tenure, the Thompson years will not go down as the highpoint in the BBC’s litany once the dust of history is settled. Of course, one era when we thought, or those of us too young to recall were told, that the Beeb was firing on all cylinders has turned out to be a nightmare for the organisation, with the posthumous Savile scandal followed recently by Stuart Hall, a man famed for his florid and colourful delivery which stretched down the years from It’s a Knockout to Five Live football reports, having his career brought to an abrupt halt as the now-elderly broadcaster admitted before court to the sexual abuse of girls and young women, in his case mostly friends of relatives or relatives of friends, over a period of years when a blinder eye was seemingly turned to this kind of behaviour. Indeed, Hall’s peccadilloes only came to light after the spotlight was shone on telly’s dark past by the Savile allegations. Across the water at ITV, meanwhile, several Coronation Street stars have been accused of inappropriate behaviour, though in these cases the allegations are denied (though not without a hefty helping of tabloid mud-slinging on the way.) Meanwhile, away from the sickening world of the sex scandal, sexism and ageism in TV just won’t go away, with minor gestures such as the appointment of Maggie Philbin to replace Dallas Campbell on Bang Goes the Theory not quite doing enough to cover the shocking stats uncovered by a recent report into the representation of older women in the media. For whatever reason, older women are unrepresented in the broadcast media, with women making up just a fraction of those still on telly past 50 and, notably, none of Channel 5’s presenters at all being older women. It does appear that broadcasters are reluctant to give the older populace – and particularly the female contingent thereof – a voice, perhaps in the mistaken belief that everyone on the visual media has to be young and pretty to keep the commercially-valuable youthy audience interested. The O’Reilly case is an interesting one as Miriam was one of the few women to challenge the criterion, only to make herself an enemy of the BBC, putting noses out of joint simply by winning her case and showing up the flawed, self-serving decision-making process within our struggling national broadcaster. It’s not just older women who suffer – witness the discussion over the limited contribution of female comics to panel shows such as Mock the Week – which favours shoutier male performers due to its macho bearpit of a format – and QI, where, in a show with Sandi Toksvig and Ronni Ancona on the panel, it was revealed that scientific research suggested women react to comedy differently to men; or, in the manner Stephen Fry put it, in an all-woman QI the panel taking part would laugh more, but the audience would laugh less. And that wasn’t some lazy sexism, but proper academic research! Other forms of discrimination still flare their ugly heads at us from time to time too, even if they’re instigated for solid reason: two blind friends who’d planned to go on holiday (to Malaga, if I recall rightly) were kicked off their plane when they asked for assistance in attaching their lifejckets should they be needed: it transpired that, for health and safety reasons, those who could not put on the lifesavers unaided were barred from flight with that particular company. This situation put me in a slightly difficult position: this was a nasty and discriminatory policy, but it was held for reasons of safety and security rather than out of hatred, so I don’t really know where to draw the line on this one. I’m upset the sightless were denied their opportunity to go, um, sight-seeing (OK, so I don’t know what blind people call their holidays, sue me) but there was surely no malice intended by the airline – at worst, a misunderstanding of the needs of their customers. Having worked in customer-facing roles before (when firms have been minded to hire me, at least), I’ve always looked to treat my clientele fairly and equitably, whilst making any adjustments to my usual patter to adapt to the individual’s circumstances, and surely some kind of compromise or alternative access could have been provided here with a shade more aforethought.

The news has not been kind these last few months. It’s been a pretty cold and dull spring, following on from the wettest 2012 on record, and as if to add to the gloom, the headlines we’ve been waking up to haven’t been particularly pleasant. Over the months I’ve been stringing this dross together, there have been more than too many deaths, injuries and incidents of destruction to warrant complete and total inclusion, but I’ll try and put forward a view, or at least a respectful glance, toward some of those which have been most troubling to our spirit. One of the biggest stories of recent times, one which shows that nothing we do is ever truly safe, was the horrifying scene at the Boston Marathon, where explosions close to the finish line caused death and injury on a quite simply staggering scale. Participants and spectators who had expected a happy, cheerful, positive day of racing entertainment and massed public support suddenly found the situation ripped up in a most violent fashion. The blasts were frankly sickening and one can only hope that those who went through that terrible time are able to build up the strength and resilience needed to survive not just the immediate danger to their health but also the long-term impact: many hundreds of people will need long-term rehabilitation and care to cope with the physical and, in a lot more cases, mental anguish they’ve suffered at the hands of these terrorists. Many of those who took part in the horrendous race, even those who did not suffer significant physical harm, will no doubt have the sort of serious post-traumatic stress disorder often associated with those in the armed services who return to society having witnessed the brutal horror of a war zone. Certainly, a lot of people who were affected by the hideous scenes in Boston will have had their lives changed and altered, and they’ll never be the same people again. Those who lost their limbs will have to make physical adjustments to their lives which will impact on what they do forever more; those who lost their lives will leave behind a hole in society that no amount of soothing verbs will ever fully fill. Thankfully, it seems at least some of those caught up in the bloodshed have shown strength and resilience: Russell Howard’s Good News recently playing to UK viewers clips from a US interview with one young lady who remains determined to rebuild her life and return to her beloved dancing despite the loss of a leg in the Boston horror. Her strength shows the sort of positive attitude needed; and after everything I’ve seen in the past few years – from Katie Piper to the Paralympics – it should be clear to me that those who are injured or disadvantaged, even as the result of a hateful act that need never have been bestowed on innocent civilians, can have the power to bounce back and build something beautiful with their lives. And the loss of a leg shouldn’t mean your dreams of success die: I’ve written here before about Martine Wright’s journey from July 7 bombing survivor to Paralympic sitting athlete, and the oft-praised-on-these-pages Amy Conroy hasn’t let losing a leg to cancer hold her back from sporting success. Hell, even Heather Mills – police motorcycle crash, if you’re keeping notes – took part in Dancing With the Stars, so the dancefloor may well still yet welcome back the beautiful young lass highlighted by our Russ! In any case, the perpetrators of the Boston chaos were eventually tracked down, a pair of brothers who had moved to the US from perpetual warzone Chechnya around a decade ago: it seems the older of the two – ultimately shot dead in a police shootout while he and his sibling were evading capture – had over time become radicalised and anti-American, infuriated at the imbalance between sloppy Western standards and his increasingly hardline and closed-minded views. The fact these perpetrators were official residents in the States was what spooked US observers the most – rather than a ‘big bad’ in the mountains as with Saddam and Osama, this pair were, although of foreign birth, essentially the enemy within. The surviving brother ended up under arrest whilst in hospital having been found, injured, hiding in a householder’s parked-up-in-the-yard speedboat. I’d assume the boat-owner will at some point be compensated for the damage to his watercraft caused in the hiding-out and subsequent arrest process, but I’m not personally party to any such arrangements.

The Boston hell did, though, briefly throw question marks over the less-than-a-week-later London Marathon, the annual festival of running which occupies our grand capital’s streets for one Sunday a year. In the wake of Boston, our organisers insisted London’s 26-mile thing would still go ahead, albeit under intense security – after all, cancelling it would essentially show the terrorists that they had won – but it was quite difficult to gague what sort of tone would be appropriate for the usually-happy London event. I’d like to have seen how BBC One’s coverage handled the introduction to the race, given the delicate and unusual situation the hosts would have found themselves in, but as the broadcast started at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and I suffer from severe tiredness – one reason why this one’s taken four months to fling together – I was fated never to see the Beeb walking on eggshells. By the time I did make it to the front of the telly, I wasn’t sure how to feel when I realised that the Corp were covering the marathon in, well, pretty much the same way as they’d cover it any other year, with only occasional reference to events in Boston, usually when the narrators were struggling to fill as the skycam looped round Tower Bridge the umpteenth time. Was the Beeb’s tonal decision apt? Well, probably – it showed that the London event was taking place as planned despite, rather than because of, what had happened in the US. And, of course, running the event meant many people could support charities and causes close to their heart, including the Katie Piper Foundation – though I did wonder, given what happened in Boston, whether it would be safe for Katie herself to be among those present to cheer her supporters on, as she had planned to be: I was reminded of the time that, at the height of the 2011 riots, I’d frantically called on Twitter users to ensure Katie was given safe passage out of the capital and away from the massed firebombing, only to discover that Ms. Piper was, in fact, in America that week. Her views on returning shortly afterward to the steaming pile of rubble that used to be London still remain unknown two years on, however. Still, the riots and resulting recovery show London is adept at getting back on its feet, and if London can survive its own violent bombing attacks – July 2005, if you’ll recall – then it can rebuild the good image of the positives done by athletics after Boston’s anarchic imbeciles damaged it. It was, from what I saw, a largely positive atmosphere (I don’t go to the London Marathon myself – I tend to avoid large gatherings, purely to avoid the sort of potential for chaos that came true in Boston, and I’m not athletic myself – I struggle with walking across a supermarket!) The event wasn’t as sombre or scaled-back as I’d imagined it would have been, and participants focused on doing the best for their own causes or reasons rather than dwelling on what had happened in the prior meet. Runners this year also included a group taking to the streets in honour of Claire Squires, the young lady who passed away whilst participating in last year’s London marathon, and I’m sure they did her proud where possible. Whilst in the athletic universe I should also give the nod to another Claire who made headlines at the marathon last year, and has been mentioned here before: Claire Lomas, the lass who, having earlier been paralysed in a horseriding accident, completed last year’s Marathon in a specially-adapted suit; this year, her challenge, successfully completed since last I wrote to you, was a 400-mile hand-cycle from Nottingham to London. I continue to show affection and support for Ms. Lomas, as she again shows the strength and resilience needed in troubled times, a strength I admire in others but which I myself lack.

Boston wasn’t the only place in the world to see tragedy in the last few months, mind. In China, a massive earthquake claimed scores of lives and left many people homeless and in dire need. Notably, one news reporter interrupted preparations for her wedding that day to file a report on the chaos whilst in her wedding dress, a dedication to duty which gathered plaudits online. Meanwhile, our cheap, nasty Western desire to strip costs out of our wardrobe and dress for too little money claimed hundreds – nay, over a thousand – lives, when a cheaply-erected clothing factory in Dhaka, pumping out cheap tat for the likes of Primark and Bonmarche, collapsed. Staff had been advised to evacuate the day before by safety advisors when cracks were found in the structure, but ignorant factory bosses, perhaps under the whip of the demanding retailer contracts, pressed their workers to roll on, a decision which proved fatal when the premises crashed down. Some survived – one brave woman being retrieved from the rubble a whole seventeen days after the collapse – but many lives were lost as a result of our desire here in the West to be as cheap and nasty as we can. Just days after the Dhaka collapse, incidentally, a fire at another clothing factory claimed further lives. Certainly I’d think twice before shopping at Primark again after the disaster, and I’d advise you to do the same – if we move away from cheap and nasty clothing, maybe the manufacturers and retailers will one day get the message. However, perhaps to head off the threat of any boycott of their horrid tat, it does seem retailers are keen to show they are cleaning up their act: a raft of firms including the hated Primark alongside H&M, New Look, Inditex (Zara’s owner) and Tesco have signed an accord pushing for better working standards and environments in the garment industry of Bangladesh; however, whilst Europe is on board, it seems wary US firms including Gap and WalMart, apparently fearful of potential litigation, have swerved the deal and are refusing to sign up. So perhaps it’s these firms who you should vote against with your pockets, as it were. Another industrial incident, and one which did impact directly on the US, and while the wounds from Boston were still fresh, was the fertiliser plant blast in the awkwardly-named Texan town of West. This fatal disaster, which reduced homes and facilities in the vicinity, including a playground, to sooty rubble, was reminiscent to those of us in the UK of the Buncefield plant blast which blew a hole in Hemel Hempstead in 2005. It did take a fair old while to bring anyone to book over the Buncefield incident, with various corporate bodies responsible for the premises desperately trying to wiggle themselves off the legal hook in the subsequent years, and one can only hope that the people of West will be able to piece their lives back together and rebuild their community spirit as those in Hemel seem to have been able to once the soot had settled.

It seems every time I do one of these, the roads claim more and more victims, as though trying to spite me for my frequent, nay constant, anti-motoring rhetoric. I’m desperately keen to get cars off the roads to cut the number of deaths and injuries caused by those behind, or in some cases those in front of, the wheel, and yet practically every month (or two) that I burp one of these fatboys out, I have to add more names and locations to my seemingly-unendable listing of vehicular misery. Maybe I should stop writing about, or even reading about, this sort of chaos: it adds nothing but pain to my life. One of the most devastating road incidents of recent times came when a minibus carrying a hen party off to their celebratory weekend was in collision with a Farmfoods lorry on the M62. One of the intended bridesmaids, an 18-year-old trainee nurse by the name of Bethany, lost her life, and many of the others, including the would-be bride, picked up injuries, ones which could lead to serious life changes and could well feasibly derail the wedding plan altogether. It’s not uncommon for people to face unexpected challenges on their route to the altar, but this seems like a bigger obstacle than one would normally have to tolerate. One wonders if the survivors would, should the wedding go ahead at, presumably, a later-than-planned date, want to hold a hen party of similar scale to the one the bus sadly didn’t reach, in order to show, London Marathon-style, that their plans will not be cowed by disorder; or whether they’d prefer to stay off the road and raise a quiet glass at home in honour of their fallen comrade. The ladies have, in the interim, revealed plans to band together to take part in events to raise money for the air-ambulance service that attended the incident and aided the injured. But someone who wanted to help others – Bethany was a trainee nurse, remember – will sadly never get the opportunity to put her talents into practise. So whatever the future outcome, the shadow cannot be uncast. And even for those not on the road in question that day, it was a gruelling sight to behold in the news reportage: the ladies’ vehicle on its side beside the road, the girls’ shattered belongings scattered across the carriageway like so much McDonalds trash. It’s also put me off shopping at Farmfoods – given the supermarket’s involvement in this vile incident, a boycott of their sub-Iceland schtick, an offering which I have shamefully relied upon for nosh round my local area on occasion, seems the only right and proper option to register my disgust at the events far to the north of here. This was the biggest disaster to hit the M62 alone since last I spoke, but sadly it was not the sole one: several other crashes took hold of various stretches of that woeful tarmac, including one which killed an elderly woman. What can be done to remove the blight of the M62 from our lives – do I have to turn up at the mouth of the route with a sledgehammer and shovel and personally remove the devil’s tarmac from the skin of our country? There seems little I can do as an individual to turn back the tide of disaster. Wakefield, though, wasn’t the only scene of hen-party vehicle trauma. Across the pond in Alicia Silverstone’s native San Francisco, worse was to come within weeks when a limo carrying a hen party group suddenly combusted into flames on the public highway. Here, five women in the group were killed, with many of the others injured in this hideous scene. Again here, a lot of spirit-rebuilding and rehabilitation will be needed for those who suffered the inferno. Whilst some of the less-well-controlled stag and hen events undertaken in the past have been known to descend into disaster and even death as a result of the often drunken misadventure of the participants, these road deaths put a hideous new spin on the circumstances. If I ever browbeat some poor sap into marrying me, I’d have to think long and hard before allowing her to trot out on the tiles for her last night of freedom before being shackled to my spine – there’s a strong chance I may never see her again, either because she’s run off with the waiter or, more seriously, because her next stop after the party bus is the morgue rather than the altar. Let’s just hope the relationships and communities being tested by events such as these are strong and flexible enough to withstand the difficulties being thrown their way by society’s barbed roulette wheel.

Elsewhere on the roads, another jarring and upsetting day came when five members of one family, including a very young child, were killed when their vehicle was involved in a crash with a lorry on the A18, and several pedestrians were struck by vehicles during the months, including a 21-year-old man in Whitby, a toddler in the Handsworth area of Birmingham and a 14-year-old girl in Barrow-in-Furness; the girl was hit by a minibus carrying a driver and seven teenagers, and though none of the teens on the bus were hurt in the incident, they may well be anguished mentally by what they saw happening, and will probably need counselling to get over the situation emotionally. This teenager’s name, as it goes, was Bethany, and one of the ladies killed in the A18 trauma also went by that: with these and the similarly-named young lady lost to the hen party horror, one has to wonder if there’s some kind of curse or campaign going on, a Final Destination-style scheme to rid the world of Bethanys one vehicle at a time. I’d certainly think twice about giving my daughter that name given the inherent danger amid all that has gone on, though if you’re regular here you should by now know what I’d actually name any first daughter I have, should I ever be saddled with one. Or maybe it’d be better if I started believing coincidence exists. Elsewhere, a female paramedic – like M62 trainee Bethany, someone who was put on this Earth to help others – and an elderly patient were killed when an ambulance crashed into a tree in the New Forest, two young women were killed and three young men injured in a Wiltshire A-road smash, a young couple lost their lives in a Teesside motorbike crash, two ladies were killed in a single-car Scottish Highlands incident, and the fact that several crashes, some fatal, happened within 48 hours of each other in Northern Ireland itself made headlines. Upsettingly, even doing something for good causes can end horribly: a man kicking a football from the US to Brazil in a soccer-themed charity stunt was run down and killed by a car just days into his trek. Maybe, though, those good causes the victim was so keen to support will be able to benefit from the sympathies of those touched by the story, much as the Samaritans recieved donations totalling into the millions from well-wishers following Claire Squires’ London Marathon death while running for the charity. Even the famous aren’t safe – George Michael, the singer, was among those injured in a multi-vehicle smash on the M1. Still in the music world, rock fans have been mourning the passing of Deftones’ Chi Cheng, four years after he sustained injuries in a road crash; in similar circumstances, an Irish man has passed away ten months after a Torquay pile-up which claimed the life of his sixteen-month-old son, and even more upsettingly that of his partner’s unborn baby. For this now-rent-asunder family it has been little more than grief upon grief for the best part of a year. Another road crash involving a pregnant lady took place in Manchester recently, when a taxi collision led to her baby being brought into the world prematurely by way of an emergency Caesarian. One wonders if, in both the long and the short term, mother and baby are able to move past this and build that all-important bond – if the emotional pain is too deep, however, it could leave lasting mental scars that the kid would never really have chance to recover from.

Being on your bike isn’t a safe way to travel, either: the cycling death which hurt me the most, quite early in the gestation period for this post, was the death of Dr Katharine Giles. As someone who is not in scientific circles myself, I shamefully hadn’t heard of her work until her untimely and unneccessary death – when her bike was in collision with a tipper truck – became headline news earlier in the year. We need to encourage women to be intelligent and use their talent, rather than just assuming they have to be glamour models or pop/TV stars, so the passing of a lady who was clearly passionate about her work and about using her skills and intelligence to make the planet a better place is nothing short of a travesty. Dr Giles had, ironically, taken on more duties following the accidental death of a colleague earlier still in the year, and let’s hope someone comes along who is keen and willing to take up the mantle left by Katharine and keep up her projects such that her lifetime’s efforts and discoveries are not to have been in vain. Also knocked from her bicycle in recent weeks (well, months now) was Olympic rider Jo Rowsell, in what she revealed was her first crash in nine years. Thankfully, the delightful Jo was not badly hurt and claimed that her two-wheeled vehicle took the brunt of the battering; as a professional cyclist she’ll more than likely have a hotline to Halfords and know exactly what to bark at the staff regarding frame remoulding and wheel reorientation. But as Dr Giles shows, it could have been so much worse; and having only recently found a liking for those on bikes thanks to the Olympic velodrome’s patrons, I’m not yet ready to kiss goodbye to an Olympian. Completing the cycle, as it were, Sir Chris Hoy has decided to hang up his pro-riding helmet rather than push on towards Glasgow 2014, though that should now leave him more time to cycle for pleasure – just keep an eye out for passing traffic, Sir Chris – and another knight of the bikes, Sir Bradley Wiggins, just recently had to pull out of the Giro D’Italia (which until last week I’d assumed was an Italian job centre) through chest-based ill-health. Get well soon, Wiggo. Meanwhile, one cyclist found himself knocked off the road by a driver who, it’s thought, later commented about the incident on Twitter: the victim noting that a young blonde woman was behind the wheel (OK, so I don’t like blondes anymore, then) and a short while later a tweet appearing on a female user’s timeline which revealed the writer had clattered a cyclist, and ranted that as ‘they don’t pay road tax’ (it doesn’t exist, that’s why) motorists had right of way. The incidents and any potential link between are currently being probed by officers of the police, and the woman supposedly involved – a trainee solicitor, which doesn’t bode well – has wiped her Twitter page after being bombarded with commentary. Let’s hope that irony reigns and the law catches her up in short order. Out on the water there’s been mourning aplenty: a Guernseywoman (if that is the word) was slain on a houseboat out in Indian Kashmir (a Dutch national later reportedly confessing to the stabbing); a mother and daughter died, apparently as the result of fumes, on an Easter-period boating holiday; and a Sky TV executive and his eight-year-old daughter were killed, and other members of his family injured, when they were thrown from, then hit by, their boat off Padstow. A British man drowned whilst swimming off the Italian coast, and a five-year-old from Forest Hill drowned in a recently-opened hotel pool in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt. Bringing the danger of water a little too close to home, a man and woman from my hole in the woods also died in a hotel’s pool, this time in Essex, having apparently taken the trip away as some kind of birthday celebration, which, as many celebrative events are prone to do, went sour in the worst way.

Inland, there have been deaths and injuries too: perhaps the most shocking case being that of a pregnant young mum, who had apparently suffered mental health problems since her own childhood, being found dead at a car park in Lowestoft; her death led police to a house where three young children were found deceased. There were also reports indicating the childrens’ father had suffered a stab injury of some form. The situation does make one wonder what kind of support, if any, is available to young people struggling with parenthood, particularly on top of other concerns? Maybe this is the real face of council cuts: a generation abandoned to fend for themselves, with those unable to survive making the ultimate choice. Bexleyheath’s Broadway Centre car park was also the scene of a death, when an elderly woman plummeted to the pavement below: though it is now long since reopened to the public use, it’ll be a long while before I am strong enough to use the mall’s Norwich Place exit again. Meanwhile, a hostage situation ended in tragedy when one of those held died along with the interloper in a hail of police bullets: the intruder had burst into a house containing twin sisters, another woman and a man; the attacker kept the twins and the chap hostage whilst sending the other lady out to draw her money from a cashpoint for him, under threat of violence: while away from the house, she raised the alarm and police arrived at the premises to find the intruder with one of the twins in a headlock. In the subsequent standoff, both the criminal – who was already known to police – and the woman he’d been holding were fatally hit by gunshots. Clearly the twins will have shared a special bond – even when not conjoined in the Abby and Brittany format, twins have been known to exhibit a particularly tight connection – and the loss of her sister, particularly in such brutal and violent circumstances is likely to hit the surviving twin hard. In Scotland, meanwhile, a mother and her adult daughter were found with serious injuries at a Greenock hospital: it seems they will take the truth about what happened to their graves, as the older lady died soon after arrival at hospital and the younger, who police had been waiting to speak to, lost her fight for life a few days later. Officers have said they’re not looking for anyone else in connection with the case. A 24-year-old woman was found with serious injuries at a hostel in Liverpool’s Anfield area, and the name Boston again came to mean death just days after the US marathon bombing when the Lincolnshire town by that name saw an incident following which a 26-year-old woman was pronounced dead; a man of the same age also found injured at the scene subsequently died in hospital; police have launched a murder case. And in Romford, acid violence – something I’m particularly keen to stamp out, for reasons which should by now be obvious – presented itself again with the violent assault of a young mother named Tara (her surname has been mentioned in some reportage of the case, though the victim herself asked the BBC not to use it, and though I’m not yet a part of the Beeb I’ll honour that pledge too). Tara was brutally and needlessly assaulted on her doorstep by a vicious young white thug who had earlier called at the house in search of a ‘Michelle’ (it’s unclear at this stage if this is a mistaken identity situation or not). Viciously burned in a violent and needless attack, Tara faces a period of recovery I’m sadly all too familiar with from following prior cases; it’s unclear whether Tara had been aware of these cases, mind, but they do at least prove support is there if it needs to be called upon. Tara’s chihuahua was also splashed with the liquid during the incident, though did not suffer any serious injury, though Tara’s real worry was that, as the attacker had flung the acid in recklessly with little thought, it could well have been one of her children burned by the fluid. Whilst I support the work of those who strive to make the world better for burns survivors (see http://www.katiepiperfoundation.org.uk for more on the aid available), and, particularly post-Piper, I don’t shy away from seeing disfigured faces on t’telly or in my news, it’s always gruelling to see someone needlessly burned permanently, particularly when there seems to be no real reason or motive for the attack. Tara’s at the beginning of her road to recovery and can take comfort from the fact that those around her, and those touched by her tale, will rally round to support her, but in the short term at least, she will have pain, fears and concerns, and we all need to be there for her if we can. While I’m on the subject, I should report the latest twist in the previously-discussed-here (and, in Dagenham, not all that far from Romford) case of Naomi Oni: when last I despatched on the case, the assailant was still being traced; since then, an arrest has been made, with at least one report’s lead-in intimating that the person held was a ‘classmate’ of Ms. Oni’s (though I am unable to corroborate this). Hopefully, though, in time we can stop the tide of people being assailed on their doorstep.

Your home isn’t necessarily a safe place to be, mind. Just as I came to wrench this article into some kind of shape, a terraced house in Newark was levelled by an explosion (gas has been hinted as the culprit, though full explanations are still being sought), with neighbouring houses badly damaged (and to be pulled down), at least two people killed and several others injured, and huge upheaval to those in the affected area. As I’ve said in relation to past blasts, it’s never nice to see the family premises ripped to pieces, leaving treasured memories in rubble and necessitating a hunt for fresh shelter, and such destruction is undoubtedly even worse to cope with if your loved ones are killed or injured in the process. We’ve seen a conviction in connection with a similar prior blast, incidentally: one foul man has been hauled up before the beak in connection with the Shaw, Greater Manchester explosion in which a young boy lost his life: it ultimately transpired that the blast-causer had let off the gas following a bitter dispute with his other half. House fires have also been in the news because of current and prior cases: since my last post, a blaze in Birmingham’s Springfield left a woman dead, a teenage girl with 70% burns and four other people at the scene also injured; again, a long and painful struggle of recovery awaits those who survive the horror. Meanwhile, a woman who earlier killed five people including three children in a neighbouring apartment after setting a pushchair alight in a communal hallway following a row has been convicted over the fatal blaze; it’s an indictment of the state of society today that a bitter animosity between two neighbours over something as petty as a pram could spill over into a bitter and vile plan for fiery revenge. Make no mistake, the woman who set this blaze is a monster undeserving of your support and respect. This conviction came on the heels of the conclusion of the long-running case involving Mick and Mairead Philpott. They and an accomplice (Paul Mosley, for completeness) have been convicted of starting the blaze in which the Philpotts’ children were killed. It was all part of a plot to frame another of filthy Mick’s babymamas – with whom the Philpotts had earlier lived, in an unconventional extended-family set-up, the combined clan crammed several-to-a-room into a Derby council house; after the breakdown of relations, Philpott came up with the fire plot, believing that if he raced into a burning building to rescue his kids from their rooms he would be hailed a hero. However, the vile man had failed to account for the ferocity of the flames and was unable to run his plan into action: after the kids lost their lives, he attempted to spin the media circus which followed to his advantage by playing the ‘bereaved father’ card, speaking out to the press pack about the devastation the loss of his offspring had supposedly caused. Holes began to appear in his defence, though, and the discovery of accelerant – petrol, in this case – in the house sink and on Philpott’s clothing led police to consider parental involvement in the brutal deaths. Eventually, after the whole sordid structure of Philpott family life was laid bare in court, the jury decided in favour of putting the plotters behind bars, where they can’t hurt their own family, or anyone else’s, anymore. Following the conclusion of the legal case, the family’s burnt-out council house, which has sat empty and charred whilst the legal process has been ongoing, is to be pulled down, with local residents canvassed on what will occupy the space thereafter – replacement housing is one option on the cards, though a memorial garden to the kids put to death by their parents has also been floated as a possibility. During the lengthy roll-out of the Philpott case, I’d had my misgivings about the situation – the Philpotts had earlier appeared on that noted cultural talking-shop for the intellectual glitterati, the Jeremy Kyle Show, and the expansive brood had also been the subject of an ITV point-and-cackle documentary looking, through the Phipott clan, more widely at the issue of expansive families of council-housed scum, whilst not at the time making any legally-actionable allegations against the man himself. So I’d had an inkling that perhaps these weren’t the sort of decent, honest people that I’m so desperate to see in the world, but, knowing that due legal process had to be followed, I held my tongue, for the most part, until judgement had been handed down. But, whilst I’d dearly love to call for Mucky Mick to be ground down into some kind of viscous soup by his fellow inmates, I feel I should hold back from the deeper insult, for fear of being seen as reactionary and rightwing: the blue press, in their reportage of the Philpott situation, used the case as another hammer with which to tar the jobless and council-dependent, slamming the ‘workshy’ culture that allowed the likes of Philpott to build up uncontrollable gangs of feral youth on the public ticket, and calling on their Tory government to do more to take a blunt instrument to those who dare claim welfare. Certainly, whenever someone on state handouts does something as notably vile as Philpott did, it becomes increasingly impossible to justify my own existence, kept alive as I am largely on the public purse. Look at the case of the grabby mum who claimed her kids were disabled, only for said young’uns to procure stage and screen appearances, blowing her scam wide open. I’ve said several times before on here how my continued life is a stain upon Britain, even though I have not done anything evil myself and would not wish to, but when the right are in charge and the poor are seen universally as scum, a viewpoint aided by the likes of Mick Philpott and their filthy actions, there’s little I can do to turn the tide of opinion around.

One of the rightwing’s most prominent figureheads of recent years passed away recently, of course, and the death of Margaret Thatcher gave the media a chance to show its true colours – which in some cases was very proudly blue. We admittedly have much to thank Thatcher for – her government set in train many of the changes to the fabric and culture of Britain that are still felt today, such as the deregulation of the media that has allowed TV and radio to become the crapheap (mostly) we have now. She was a groundbreaker as Britain’s first and to date only female Prime Minister. As PM from 1979 to 1990 she was in charge of the country throughout the period of immense social and cultural change that was the 1980s. With traditional socialism in decline, the unions under the Thatcher thumb, and traditional heavy industry such as manufacturing and mining being wiped away in favour of a more service-based industry, the right dominated an era. Indeed, it was not until the more centre-leaning, less traditional-red ‘New Labour’ of Tony Blair rose to power in 1997 that I’d been under the rule of anyone other than the Tories. So, despite the strong and polarising views she generated, with her position in British history so prominent, it’s unarguable that Thatcher’s passing would be held as a significant event. But whilst all corners of the media did at least make note of the former PM’s death, some elements of the press – and you can probably guess which – virtually canonised her, the Daily Mail flying its flag proudly by declaring on its front page that Thatch was “the woman who saved Britain”, and, after the current Government confirmed her funeral ceremony would not officially have full state-funeral status, launched an unsuccessful petition calling for the ceremony to be elevated (though the level of coverage and pomp awarded the funeral, plus the presence of royalty, meant the Thatcher ceremony was essentially a state event in all but name). Then, of course, after much obituarising and posture, came the ridiculous point – the war of words over ‘Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead’ from the Wizard of Oz being elevated into the pop charts thanks to a Rage Against the Machine-style campaign. The ‘Ding Dong…’ ding-dong gave the Thatch-eulogising, BBC-despising rightwing papers one of their much-beloved opportunities to have a pop at the Beeb, by painting the Corporation into a corner and tying it in knots over the way the Radio 1 Chart Show would cover the track’s inclusion in the countdown: eventually an uneasy compromise was reached whereby the track’s position in the rundown was marked by a newsy report on the circumstances which arose, which seems a fair enough settlement in the circumstances. Of course, no settlement short of hanging would be good enough for the often-vile Mail, which denounced the web-campaign leader as a ‘teacher of hatred’. The BBC itself, of course, carried extensive coverage of the former PM’s passing and funeral, whilst itself dodging brickbats as enemies of the state broadcaster lined up to accuse the Beeb of some kind of bias: allegations the BBC demolished by revealing that the number of complaints made to the firm decrying its supposed anti-Thatcher leaning matched almost equally by a similar number of gripes that the coverage was too pro-Thatch; and both piles lagged behind the number of people bemoaning the sheer volume of Maggie material put out by the Beeb’s various outlets during the period, these complainants concerned that the Corp’s giving-over of much of its radio and TV news airspace to Thatcher’s passing, almost to the exclusion of any other news stories, was, despite her prominence in British history, excessive. In the wider media and social world, the former PM’s death invoked something of a mixed response. Some celebrated her death with impromptu street-parties, a move itself criticised as crass by some quarters, whilst others took to the web to pay respectful tribute, in some cases to a specific element of Thatcher’s reign, though this invited scorn from those opposed to the Iron Lady’s policies: for instance, Katie Piper paid tribute to the Baroness’ role in women’s history, only to then have to defend herself from politically-charged barbs from those followers who supported Piper’s aims but not Thatcher’s. Katie hasn’t hoisted her political colours publically – she prefers to keep much of her private life private – though she is from Hampshire, which along with much of the rest of southern England is historically more rightwing (Labour’s traditional heartland being the North). Other stars’ web comments also caused confusion – it having been some 23 years since MT handed over the wheel of 10 Downing Street to John Major, some younger media users didn’t understand the fuss being made: the misreading of Twitter hashtag #nowthatchersdead led to tributes being paid to the singer Cher, and when a member of One Direction tipped a hat to Thatch on his Twitter, many of the group’s teen fans were puzzled as to why – and many weren’t exactly clear on who she was. No wonder Gove wants to reshuffle the curriculum… From my point of view, Baroness Thatcher’s passing does highlight one thing: I’m not getting any younger. The PM who was in power when I was born has snuffed it, which again suggests time is catching up with me, in similar skein to the closure of stores I worked at and the splitting of bands I’ve listened to, for instance. I have, though, over the past three decades had the luxury of living under both Tory-led and Labour-led administrations, the power base having shifted to red in 1997, when I was 15, and swung back, to the current blue-and-yellow mess, in 2010. I’m not massively politically dogmatic, though: I’m not too fussed on a macro level about who’s in control of the country, as long as someone is, and in our current economic chaos we badly need strong leaders, of any flag colour, to put the nation back on the rails…

One key facet that Margaret Thatcher was noted and renowned for, even among her enemies, was her confidence and tenacity: standing her ground firmly when confronted with difficult choices and holding her own amid the often bitter battles she waged, be it tackling the traditional stronghold of the trade unions, pushing through the privatisation of national industry, or fighting to keep the British flag flying over the Falklands. Not all her decisions met with universal appeal, but she stood by them and carried them off with poise. Thatcher’s statuesque standing in the political spectrum meant that anyone who followed her would seem like a step down in comparison: John Major was to the then Government what Nick Weir was to Catchphrase, what Ed Tudor-Pole was to the Crystal Maze, or what Nick Grimshaw was to Radio 1’s breakfast show – the predecessor’s footprints (in these cases Roy Walker, Richard O’Brien, Chris Moyles) loomed so large in the sand that the successor would always come off second best. Confidence in one’s own skin is something that is often and rightly hailed as important: a lack of confidence and self-belief can drive someone to desperate or distressing lengths, as we’ve seen in far too many cases (the oft-cited-here Amanda Todd, for instance, had her confidence depleted by continuous online and offline bullying, to the extent that the poor girl simply couldn’t see a way out.) I’m not confident in myself – I’ve spent so much of the last decade being told I’m essentially worthless, that I now believe my chances of a future success are almost too distant to maintain. My success rate with jobs and my success rate with, say, finding friends or flirting with ladies, not that I bother doing much of that, are similarly squat, due to the difficulties I face in making my voice heard in a manner acceptable to other folk. Maybe if I was more able to communicate with others, rather than just shutting myself off in my own dark spiral, the world wouldn’t hurt me so much. Sometimes, those who lack genuine confidence mask it with a blunt, aggressive or divisive personality, and there are several examples of this exhibited in the TV I’ve been watching (in some cases against my will) of late. Take for instance Jane Forrest of the New Normal. Jane is someone I fear I may have judged too soon; in the early weeks of the show, I indicated that her blunt, bigoted attitude rubbed me up the wrong way as I instead nailed the colours of my mast to the more openminded and sensitive likes of Bryan, David, Goldie and Shania. However, as the series has progressed (at E4 pace) we’ve learnt more about the backstory which brought Jane to where she is now, and the experiences which have coloured her views, and that perhaps fish-out-of-water Goldie is if anything too sweet for the modern world. There won’t, sadly, be much room for further development of the characters, though – it was announced as part of the recent US ‘upfronts’ that the New Normal would not be surviving for a second season. (The Mindy Project survives, unfortunately.) And yes, I am the type who can judge too soon – look at my wrongheaded reaction to the PhoneShop pilot (way back on the old blog, and hailed subsequently as one of the true low-points in my never-glittering blogging career). It’s why I now try and hold myself back from commenting on legal cases, bar the basic known facts of the situation, until a conclusion has been reached: I am too big of an idiot to be in a position where I am passing judgement over the actions of others.

Another character type known to use an attitude to cover over their confidence issues is the archetypal ‘mean girl’, as exemplified by, say, Kate in Lizzie McGuire or Heather in Total Drama Island. Kate is an acid-tongued bully who holds court over others, but a wise old owl such as me can see she’s trying to compensate for her inner emotional turmoil, lashing out through a lack of faith in herself as her difficult teen years prove troubling to surmount. PopGirl only being a little way into the series, and with me trying to avoid the show where possible, I’ve not got a full picture of how Kate’s attitude evolves, if indeed it does, over the course of the four seasons, but as I said my fetid brother’s got the entire run on DVD so I could, if I had the stomach to, trace her journey. Girls like Kate generally crave affection, support, respect: with the right kind of gentle backing, ladies like this can develop their own independence and confidence and blossom into tolerant, intelligent, good-natured young women: if left to wither on the vine, however, with no support, abandoned teen girls can turn into the sort of mouthy, scummy scrubbers and layabouts you see far too many of these days. On the island, meanwhile, Heather is an example of a young lady who’s keen to find solace in fame, beauty and adoration, as seen in many walks of life today: her personal method is to manipulate and backstab in order to claw her way to the top; however, this is a double-edged sword, as a person acting in this manner can drive people away in the longer term, and isolate the aggressor such that it would be difficult to have friends and supporters available when they are most severely needed. It isn’t just animated girls who crave attention, of course, the theme continues on the streets around us, as seen in the similarly needy souls on BBC Three’s Snog Marry Avoid?, which recently returned for a fresh batch of ‘makeunders’, some taking place in the fairly-near-here Bromley of all places. Many of the participants in SMA are masking a lack of confidence and self-belief behind a protective shield of makeup, fake tan, accessories, false eyelashes, and other assorted gaudy trinkets: some claim they are unhappy with their unadorned appearance, and use the warpaint to present a more confident face than they could naturally; whilst others crave the turning of heads that comes when they walk out on the tiles in minimal outfits. The key purpose of the show is to help rebuild these participants’ confidence by showing them that presenting themselves more simply and calmly can actually have a hugely positive effect on their lives. Sometimes there’s a real breakthrough: some participants retain their smarter, scaled-back style, with one lass even landing a job after swapping out her garish prior look for something more sensible; however, sometimes the feelings that first drove the contributor to fakery are too deeply ingrained and the contestant reverts to their old ways within hours of leaving the POD. We need to ensure that young people who are so mentally unsure of themselves that they feel they need to ‘mask’ who they really are get the support and care they need in order to become more at peace with themselves and more tolerant of their natural worth. I find naturally pretty girls, with normally-shaped bodies and fresh, smiling faces far more attractive than the overpreened, surgery-heavy, glossy-glamour types, but it’s not my place to tell women what they can and cannot wear, as I’m no dictator. Sometimes, someone you usually see acting all flash scales back the shock-value and shows their pretty side, in a Snog Marry Avoid? style, as for instance Nicki Minaj has done: the singer is known, as I’ve indicated before, for her brash, divisive, eyecatching style, but a little while back she participated in a feature for which she scaled back to a simpler look, and I have to admit the toned-down Nicki did look rather pretty.

Of course, going through chaos, tragedy or difficult situations can have a marked impact on one’s confidence and self-image. Many of the people caught up in the tragic news events of recent months (as detailed above) will face difficult period of recovery and rehabilitation in order to get past the grief and shock they’ve suffered, and it’s at times like those that being part of a strong support network of family and friends would be most valuable. In this environment, Katie Piper (yes, again) is often hailed as a touchstone (or is that touched as a hailstone?), as following her attack her family rallied round to help their wounded daughter rebuild her confidence and sparkle, as documented in the recently-repeated (on Community Channel) first Piper documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face. Once that show had gone out, others who became aware of the case found they wanted to be part of the solution and joined Katie’s support network, searching out ways to reach out and make Katie aware that she was respected and admired. In time Katie regained her freedom, in the process launching her charitable campaign to help others out of similarly distressing situations. Building something so positive and successful out of disaster is to be congratulated, and speaking up for those who need support and confidence is always to be welcomed. On that note, elegant Hollywood actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie recently stepped up and confirmed that, after being told by doctors she carried a genetic anomaly which put her at risk of cancer, and having lost relatives to the condition, she had decided to undergo mastectomy and reconstruction work, undergoing the treatment whilst also carrying on her regular red-carpet duties. Here is an example of a lady not letting a potential trauma stand in her way, and in this age of fast fame and breathless gossip it’s cheering to see someone putting their health and family at the forefront of their mind – the treatment means the actress has a lower cancer risk, thus increasing her life expectancy and reducing the worry that the silent killer would withdraw her from her young family. Angelina has rightly won respect for the dignified and mature way she’s dealt with the situation, and it is hoped that her experience will encourage other young women to be more confident in tackling their own health and wellbeing issues. (And yes, it is a bit pot/kettle for me to be advising people to look after their health when my innards are basically liquefied, but I think we all agree that Angelina’s bravery and dignity in the issue deserves to be honoured.) Jolie isn’t the first to face this kind of decision – others including Sharon Osbourne have previously undergone similar procedures, and, despite the sneering in her direction from the more upmarket quarters, Jade Goody’s legacy – aside from being the only person famous enough from original Big Brother to get called back for the Celebrity version, anyway – was to make young women more aware of the risks of ovarian cancer, particularly when many of the prior screening programmes had been targeted at older ladies. Goody, like Jolie, also wanted to make sure her young kids were well cared for, though more recently it emerged that her savings, intended to put the young lads through school, were set to be sucked down by the tax man.

For completeness I should adjunct that Jade was one of quite a fair few former housemates who, following her Big Brother stint, underwent cosmetic surgery (indeed, some of the BB ladies had already had alterations prior to entering the house); many of those who took to the knife presumably doing so in order to further boost their self-image and confidence, or in some cases to suit the whim of the lad-press in which they saw their future opportunity – though clearly, their taking part in a reality show in the first place indicates these ladies, to an extent, had an underlying need to be admired or appreciated in some manner. It’s not just reality-stars who choose to surgically alter themselves if they feel the need for a boost, though. Coronation Street’s Samia Ghadie recently went under the knife in order to get a more womanly figure, claiming that, post-childbirth, her more-slender-than-before figure was depressing her. Samia’s not been far from the papers over recent months thanks to her soap-like love-war with Hollyoaks brunette Jennifer Metcalfe, the triangle completed by Dancing on Ice pro Sylvan Longchambon. I’ve tried to bleach the bulk of the story out of my eyes, sick as I am of this multimedia nonsense, but the fragments I recall are thus: Longchambon and Metcalfe were partnered up on DoI one year and subsequently began dating, then in a later series the fella was paired up with divorcee Ghadie and they grew close, and around this time his relationship with Metcalfe was falling apart. For what felt like too long a time (well, to those like me who don’t really like talking about this stuff, anyway) there was a lot of speculation and clucking in the press as to whether Sylvan and Samia were an item, until they eventually came out and admitted their feelings publically, to no small bad blood from Jennifer and her supporters. The new couple insisted they’d done nothing wrong, not uniting fully until Sylvan and Jennifer had split up, but it certainly left a bad taste in the mouth of many. Thankfully ITV has cancelled Dancing on Ice after the next series, meaning Longchambon will have to find some other way to sweep the next soap star he takes a fancy to off her skates. And don’t worry Jen, if you haven’t already (I can’t keep up), I’m sure you’ll find a guy who appreciates you, and who isn’t a skate-dancing pillock. You’re a very pretty lady. (Did I just say something nice about someone from off Hollyoaks? My standards are slipping – or improving, dunno which…) Aside from boyfriend-snatcher Samia, another Corrie star made headlines with her chest when a pair of boobies made a sudden and unexpected appearance on Michelle Keegan’s Instagram page. Keegan denies the bust featured was hers, claiming the unscheduled chest was the result of a friend’s prank, though the snap appearing shortly after Michelle had spoken online of being in the bath – accompanied by a photo of her toes – and then disappearing seconds later led some to speculate that the brief uncovering was followed by a swift cover-up. Still, Keegan took the issue in good sport, joshing with Twitter-bound fans over the issue, and in the wake of widespread slating of young women online, some of which I’ve documented in paragraphs above, it was pleasing to note that the reaction to this case was, it seems, relatively well-tempered and good-humoured on both sides, something which I’m keen to see continue more generally in an age where hate can be sent out all too quickly. Although I’d quite like to see someone saying something nice about a fully-dressed lady, for once: now that would be a turn-up…

At least the whole Keegan fuss shifted the spotlight away from former co-star Helen Flanagan for a little while. Now, Flanagan is someone people – including, shamefully, this very blog – have been nasty to in the past, particularly after her baffling turn in I’m A Celeb, which didn’t win her any fans unless you count sleazy bikini-pervs. And you all know I don’t. However, I’ve been tempted to revise my view after finding online an interview with the actress from earlier this year, in which she discussed candidly the difficulties and struggles that more commonly go hidden behind the showbiz gloss and gabble. In the article, Helen spoke about her battles with attention-defecit syndrome and bipolar disorder, suggesting that there may have been an underlying mental health issue that wasn’t being appropriately challenged by the circumstances the young lass found herself in during her career; she also spoke about her body image, in particular her struggle with an eating disorder, the development of which suggests Flanagan’s handlers were at times perhaps more interested in her fame than her wellbeing, and also the worries she faced as her figure grew and developed, having harsh words in particular for Corrie bosses who decided to vamp up Rosie’s image and recast her as a sexpot as soon as Helen was legally and physically able to portray one. Cast as a Corrie character from her preteens into her twenties, Helen had the difficult task of growing up onscreen and it seems that producers were keen for much of this evolution to be played out on the cobbles of Weatherfield, without really thinking what the effect of this would be on their young charge when the cameras ceased. Adolescence is a difficult time for many young people as they try to work out who they want to be, and make decisions about their lives, image and environment which could become part of who they are as adults; when your job is professionally being someone else, presenting to the world not your own view but a personality that’s being handed to you on paper, it can I’m sure be even more difficult to develop an independent identity of your own. In Flanagan’s case this meant going along with what the producers wanted her to do, despite revealing in the new article that at times she found what she was being asked to do degrading and a real struggle. Helen, we’re told, became depressed and self-concious and felt she wasn’t being taken seriously; feelings I know only too well from my decade-long battle to keep my head above water in the failing retail industry; as potential employers almost as one throw my attempts to get on with life back in my face, it becomes increasingly difficult to contemplate carrying on. Whilst she has done some unwise things – that infamous ‘gun to the head’ model photo in the wake of a US school shooting was, I think we’re all agreed, a bit of a daft move – Helen claims she’s stung by the frequent criticism of her as an airheaded bimbo. Perhaps, prior to plucking Helen’s point of view out of the ether, I would have joined in the castigation. I just didn’t understand why, when there were so many important things the media could be bringing to light, they were choosing to throw away so much of their airspace on a dippy soap starlet. Now, though, that Flanagan’s gone public with her fears I can see a little beyond the headlines and realise I should in fact be defending and protecting her from the many sharks that conspire to swim in our world: much like other young women I’ve referenced before, Helen needs support and positivity from those well-wishers who would bring her useful and friendly advice, rather than further barbs that would lead her into distress. So I’ve called a truce, which you could call a U-turn if you like: this blog is no longer opposed to Helen Flanagan, provided she goes about her career in a dignified and elegant way, were that possible in the web age, and is given the appropriate dignity, support and comfort by those who would utilise her services. Hey, it could happen…

I’m not particularly keen to dredge this blog down into the depths of the showbiz gutter and resort to discussing celebrity physiques and romantic squabbles, so including the above overviews of Ghadie, Keegan and Flanagan was a difficult decision for me – I wanted this page to be something better, part of the solution rather than part of the problem, but the way the media’s gone over recent years has meant that showbizzy gibberish tends to take precedence over sensible, reasoned discussion, purely it seems because the more bovine end of the populace wish it to be so. It’s garbage in, garbage out: we’re bombarded with slop and slurry by the unfeeling media giants who control what we see and hear, and because that’s all we’re being fed that’s all we can regurgitate back into each others’ cheeks. There are some environments where one can be more self-selective about the media we recieve – my Old Reader is mostly populated by somewhat dry and geeky media-industry and retail discourse, most of which doesn’t often merit further analysis from me on here beyond that provided in the original, more journalistic reportage; for instance, the retail press over recent weeks has been quite interested in covering and digesting major new retail-centre developments that have opened, or will be opening, in Leeds, Gateshead and Fareham, particularly as investment in retail’s been hard to come by these last few years, but whilst it’s been interesting to note and track the developments as they’ve come to fruit, there’s little I can add to the discourse having not visited any of the locations myself, these facilities not being in my usual catchment area. That said, it is encouraging to see the sector moving forwards, and it’s all to the good if the new sites provide the business sphere with the confidence to strengthen and rebuild after a difficult few years that have seen more stores going to the wall than opening their doors. Rest assured, too, if anything significant happens in Bexleyheath that leads to shops actually opening there rather than, as has mostly been the case lately, shuttering, I’ll be all up on it to wade in with my tuppence, albeit not until I’ve CV-bombed the newcomers in the vain hope that one or more of ’em will see potential. It’s also been interesting to trace how some of the square footage that has been vacated over recent years after being declared surplus to Woolworths, Zavvi, Peacocks and the like is being filled – quite often, it seems, by budget-buster firms like pound/99p shops, it appears, particularly in this area – but there are examples of other uses, with pubs/restaurants also taking advantage of the changing nature of the high street to swoop on the spare space to provide a service which can’t yet be replicated online, and some of the larger stores being carved up and remodelled for multi-occupancy developments, to make maximum creative use of the space. Again, good to see facilities which have previously been neglected steadily being brought back into being, as with the new TK Maxx in Woolwich. It’s also good to see firms making use of space to trial new formats – Swarovski, for instance, are in the process of introducing youth-skewing accessories offering lola&grace (their spelling) and premium-jewellery spinoff Cadenza to major retail centres, whilst Topshop, having installed a new-format flagship in what was the upper part of Lakeside’s BHS store, is fitting up a similar new superstore this side of the crossing in Bluewater to provide an up-to-date replacement for their current store at the complex; the move helps Topshop keep pace with rivals, as it follows other fashion retailers upscaling their Bluewater premises, expanding to larger premises (most recently Superdry), or arriving in the centre anew as part of a wider invasion of British soil (hello, Forever21). The thing is, I’m aware there are people who write about this sort of thing much more professionally than I – to carry on the retail theme, the likes of Soult’s Retail View provide intelligent, knowledgeable, engaging, insightful commentary on the changing shape of the retail world, whilst folk such as Matt Deegan offer wisdom and analysis pertinent in their chosen field (in Deegan’s case, radio.) I just gibber. And I’m not even that topical or relevant – this post has taken me two to four months to write, for blotting out loud…

In fairness, sometimes I do see crafty connections even amid the showbiz gubbins: I noted that news of Rihanna suing Topshop for selling a third-party T-shirt with her image on emerged around the same time that the singer’s on-off partner Chris Brown was being linked by the paps to Chloe Green, daughter of Topshop’s owner – though, despite any potential suggestion Ri-Ri wants to stick the claws into Chloe over this supposed love rivalry, the suit’s more likely linked to the singer’s commercial deal to create clothes for the rival River Island chain. Similarly, the above-mentioned Michelle Keegan photo-fuss just happened to have happened around the time that voting periods were imminent in both the British Soap Awards and in FHM’s demeaning annual 100 Sexiest Women list, and a lifetime’s exposure to the media has leant me to indicate that this sort of profile-raising stunt may not entirely be coincidental to such gambits. Perhaps my love of looking between the lines – which can be a curse as well as a blessing, as it can lead me to take things far more seriously than is necessary – is why I enjoy BBC Four’s Only Connect, which is also in the process of returning for a new series, and which is able to sail a course through high and low culture fairly evenhandedly, certainly so than these pages can muster. But I think I need to just shut the trap sometimes, as I don’t particularly need to add my voice to the already clogged-up cloud of gabble around the celeb universe. Maybe I’m getting old, but I’ve never felt so distant from popular culture. I’ve hardly been to the cinema at all in the best part of a decade (though this is both a financial as well as a creative concern), I’ve lost much of my faith in telly (aside from the occasional pockets of goodness, such as noted here) and, as I’ve spoken about previously, my music consumption is, whilst still extant, in decline compared to the boom years. Maybe I’m just still confused about who I should be, post-30 – is it really the case, as I believe it to be, that a man my age shouldn’t know the difference between Iggy Azalea and Iggy Arbuckle? Does knowing which one’s Macklemore and which one’s Paramore make me less of a man? Maybe I’m just frustrated because I know I’ll never be one of the real high-end writers: if I was more cultured, learned and scholarly I could be writing fluently about art, science, law, technology, nature, business or quality music. But for some reason, I’ve never had the gumption to push beyond my boundaries. Instead of taking wing and flying to the ivory towers, I’ve chosen to coast along just doing whatever’s possible to stop my backside bumping too harshly along the ground. Part of this is linked to my circumstances – I’m not moneyed enough to flee to Oxbridge for brain food, and I can’t afford to subscribe to the few TV channels still showing documentaries – but it’s also environmental and behavioural limitations that restrict my spiritual growth. For instance, maybe if I got out into the open air a bit more often I’d be able to reconnect with the natural world a little and regain some inner peace. However, for reasons of passenger-led logic, most buses round this way take an urban route through concrete town centres and rotted housing developments, meaning any diversion into somewhere more peaceful would require careful advance planning that, living as I do day-to-day, I can’t really do, as my blogging schedule clearly shows. Maybe a more peaceful life would inspire change in my writing style, too, which can only be a good thing. Not that there’s much outlet for quality writing even if I could do it, with AOL recently shuttering its music news and review sites. Though I’m not an AOL user myself, I’d assume the impact on these readers would be similar to that I felt when Teletext clobbered Planet Sound. I used to find the text-based news-service an interesting and engaging way to start my day, and the likes of Digitiser – a videogaming magazine with a unique tone of voice and disruptive, creative attitude – were a much more enjoyable read than the showbiz-obsessed gossip dreck we now have to resort to reading. Given the size of the blogosphere I’d assume there are people out there fighting the good fight, and once I’ve recovered from reading this back to myself I’d maybe like to read some of the better scribes’ work, but nowadays, much like with 6 Music, the quality’s got to be actively sought out, rather than being available on the tap of a button. I’ll never be the new Digitiser myself, of course, but perhaps I can crib a little from the edges: to that end, here’s a Digi-style joke. “Which Brazilian model owns a portrait of a bell which was painted by a ghost? Is-a-bell Ghoul-art (Izabel Goulart)!”

One thing that I do want to do is be the opposite to the caustic, crabby media outlets that trade on hurting and belittling the confidence of women. The media loves to screech that women could be thinner, more attractive, better dressed: however, this needs to be taken with a handful of salt as a lot of the media outlets which make these judgements are recieving advertising money from the big clothing and cosmetics firms; these magazines (and latterly websites) owe their continued existence to being the lapdog of the firms whose business is in convincing women that they don’t yet look good enough, and that they need to spend more on their appearance than is actually necessary. Women, generally, are therefore a lot more beautiful than the popular media would have you believe, particularly when they’re combining a natural and healthy body with a positive and warm attitude. Yes, there are some unattractive, at least in persona, ladies in the world – that smallminded solicitor who rammed a bloke off his bike springs to mind – but in general we should be helping build and enhance women’s confidence, not harm and demean it. The modern-day focus on glamour and gloss above all else is hugely damaging to young ladies, who incorrectly believe that you have to be ever skinnier, ever more preened and ever more fake to be beautiful, when that is not the case: the most beautiful ladies are those who are comfortable and confident with a normal, natural, healthy figure and a warm, radiant smile. We should be doing more to build up womens’ confidence, not working hard to destroy it. And I for one would like to be the decent sort of guy that says sweet, honest things about the many wonderful, beautiful ladies that there are in the world. There is a great range of beauty, good spirit and attractiveness out there if you know where to go find it: among the ladies currently in the media, they range from the beautiful and talented Aubrey Plaza, who following the success and acclaim in her role as spiky, supercool April in Parks & Rec has I’m sure a bright future ahead of her, through to Chloe Everton, a witty and pretty TV presenter who made headlines when she was ticked off by her bosses at Sky Sports for cheeky, near-the-knuckle comments on Twitter. Having first clocked the engaging blonde back when she was on bid tv, her tenure at Sky meant she was locked away from those of us viewing only free-to-air channels, but the move was a smart one as it did give her the opportunity to utilise her love of sport in the workplace (in similar skein to how I was always keen to emphasise how my love of music would stand me in good stead for a job at HMV, not that they ever bothered hiring me…) Now, though, Chloe’s back on free TV having joined QVC. And it’s lovely to have her back, as she’s exactly the sort of sweet, warm, fun lady we need more of on our screens. Bridgit Mendler is cute. It’s not just the famous, though: there’s a whole world of people out there in the world who, one presumes, would gratefully recieve the support and affection, not necessarily of me personally, but certainly of those around them, or of society more broadly. I want, as soon as is practicable, to go back to saying nice things to my warm and lovely friends on Twitter; I miss the warm, caring friendship I used to share with the lovely, kind people that I met in my time on the site. However, I’m still limited in my ability to use the service as I’m still on that previously-moaned-about mobile phone that can only send (by SMS), not recieve, tweets, and my tight time available online through public terminal – usually no more than an hour a day, sometimes less – has to be used carefully to squeeze in everything I want and need to do on the web, from job hunts to Reader clearance to posting this sort of ponk, which leaves little time for reading and responding to the Twittersphere. But I do miss my friends, and I do miss having the ability to be a friend and comfort to them. When my web friends were feeling down I’d give them support and friendship, and when I was in a bind the good people out there were willing to offer kindness to me, even when I was droning on about utter garbage, which as I’m sure you’ve established was often. I’ve always craved that friendship and closeness, and I had it for a brief while, and now thanks to my poor decision-making I’m at risk of losing it, if I haven’t already. That’s a really worrying thought.

One of the things I joined Twitter to do back in late 2009 was to spread the word about a young lady who I wanted to offer comfort and support to. And now this lady is herself setting out to make people feel better and more confident, not just with her continuing charity work, but also with her new TV project. Currently in production for Channel 4 broadcast later this year, ‘Undo Me’ will see Katie Piper front a project which reverses cosmetic and surgical beauty procedures people have had to restore to them a more natural appearance, with a particular focus on those whose surgeries were botched, harmful or unnecessary. The theme of restoring natural beauty is akin to that seen in style-based makeover series Snog Marry Avoid?, in which, as explained above, people get to see what they’d look like if they stripped away unnatural adornements and took a simpler, cleaner, more dignified look, though the descriptions of Katie’s new show suggests that it’d be a more medical, Embarrassing Bodies-style angle rather than the fashion-leaning SMA. Regardless, as said above I welcome anything which gives people the confidence in themselves to stand up in their own skin and shun unneccessary cosmetic faff. I’m not the biggest fan of those who have unneeded surgery just to prolong their fame or make themselves more pleasing to the tabloids, and that’s why my sites have reserved their hardest barbs for the likes of Danielle O’Hara (nee Lloyd, if you need), Imogen Thomas (and too many other Big Brother-ers), Gemma Atkinson (if indeed I ever got around to slating her in the first place, I can’t remember), and Katie Price (until she showed me a more human side, on Deal or No Deal of all places), whilst praising those who have shown genuine and wholehearted beauty, including Piper herself, whose surgery was visited upon her not by choice but by medical necessity, and who came across in that first documentary as someone whose warm heart and genuine beauty ran far deeper than skin level. But I have perhaps been a bit too analogue in my thinking when it comes to those who work in the spotlight; I have been in the past one of those old-world sods who considers that society has been on a downward slope since the days of Loaded and Baywatch, and I have been in danger of considering models to be less worthwhile to society than, say, a polar scientist would be. Perhaps, though, that blinkered view of mine needs to be robustly challenged. Sometimes the ladies see the light themselves – former Page 3 girl Keeley Hazell has put her top back on and lent her voice behind campaigns to get the glamour girls kicked out of mainstream papers, whilst Alicia Douvall – for some years now one of the poster-girls for excessive plastic surgery – has recently gone public with her move to withdraw, in an ‘Undo Me’-presaging move, some of her prior enhancements, principally those injected into her face, and speak out about the decision, principally as a warning to other ladies not to go too far down that particular boat. This is to be welcomed: clearly Douvall has seen the light and decided to restore what natural beauty she can, and her decision should be applauded. She’ll never be my favourite Alicia – Ms. Silverstone has that crown in perpetuity – but after years of abusing her body, perhaps in the belief that doing so would bring her the comfort and appreciation she craved, Ms. Douvall is now moving in the right direction, and attempting to restore herself to the person she was meant to be. It’s right and proper that such moves are celebrated.

It’s always good to see positive moves to improve conditions for people, even if those people have chosen to work as models, and so I’m going to tip the star on my hat to Debenhams, for some of their recent decisions as reported in the retail press. Firstly, the firm decided to break from the traditional fashion mould by recruiting a more diverse range of models to take part in a campaign, with women of a wide range of ages and abilities featured in the shoot, itself a very bold and welcome choice; then, they became the first retail store to sign up to a new voluntary code put out by the Equity union, which aims to make the job of modelling safer and more pleasant for the models employed, by providing better safeguards for their confidence, dignity and safety, ranging from better information and support on hours of work, pay and insurance, and the nature of the shoot, through to provision of suitable restroom, refreshment and changing facilities. Vogue magazine has also signed up to the guidelines, which are a step in the right direction in an industry which has too often been accused of misleading and mistreating its participants – the horror of models being bullied, abused or harmed is a sadly all-too-well-worn track. But despite what their job role may lead you to believe, these models aren’t just pieces of unyielding meat to be slapped about and gawped at: during my foolish teenage years as a magazine reader, I saw numerous photomodels who I now realise had been shepherded into position against their will and coerced into a participation that, had they had their time again, they would maybe now have had second thoughts about. Maybe the models felt they needed to do these things – after all, this was their pay packet, and if they refused to bend to the mogul’s whim, they perhaps wouldn’t be able to put any food on the table that month. Maybe these women need the confidence and support to be able to speak up when they feel uncomfortable, but I know how difficult it can be not knowing where the next job is coming from, so it’s not a black and white case. I now read fewer magazines than I once did, but I’d assume that, outside of Vogue, the nasty old tricks are still in force; and the rise of digital technology has meant that, where the model can’t be manipulated, the photo can (witness, amongst many other cases, the saga of Gabriella Cilmi vs FHM). The life of a model is, one assumes, rarely as glamorous as the media giants would have us believe, with the ladies having to drag themselves through some fairly dark days – there is probably much sorrow hidden behind the pretty eyes on the printed page – and the girls are under intense pressure to stay young, thin and photogenic, beyond that which would be natural and normal, so I’m hopeful that the new Equity standards will become commonplace around the industry, in order to help give the women who choose to work in this environment a happier and healthier future.

And sometimes something positive comes from the darkest of horrors. I mentioned here last year the fatal coach crash which involved a group from up north departing Bestival on the Isle of Wight in an ill-fated attempt to return home; this horror story, though, recently achieved a kind of closure when a track recorded by one of the victims, Michael Molloy, made the UK sales top 40 following a posthumous completion of the disc and a commemmorative online campaign by his friends – a bit like a nicer, less politicised version of the Thatcher ‘Ding Dong’ stunt. As I now largely shy away from the charts, I don’t know what sort of tone Jameela Jamil took when introducing the track in the countdown, but I’d assume she gave the track all the enthusiasm and respect it deserved. Even a former T4 presenter can manage that. Elsewhere, the common news grammar of abduction stories ending in a grisly manner was given a rare upending in Cleveland, Ohio when three women who disappeared separately around a decade ago were rescued alive from their collective torment. They do face a period of recovery from their ordeal, which we’re told included various forms of assault, but they are now safe and able to rebuild their lives and health, and that should be celebrated. Obviously there has been intense media interest in these ladies, but hopefully they will be given the time, space and support they need to build themselves back up again. Elsewhere in the States, communities are rallying to rebuild themselves after one of the biggest natural disasters to strike since Hurricane Katrina washed away much of New Orleans. The latest perpetrator, striking just as I was stringing this blog together (hence its positioning here at the back-end), was a tornado that ripped a goodly chunk of Oklahoma apart, killing dozens (including, distressingly, children cowering in their school) and wiping a swathe of homes and businesses off the map. After Katrina, we saw both the best and worst of society, as panhandlers and looters initially took their pound of flesh from the stricken area, before the communities ultimately gathered their strength and began the mammoth task of rebuilding physically and socially. Whilst some areas are still yet to recover fully from Katrina’s non-musical waves, the progress made so far should give the residents of Oklahoma reason to believe that they will one day soon be OK in more than just zip code. There were a hatful of heroes, with tales of teachers striving to protect their young charges from the stormy weather, and one particularly gleaming story amid the mess was the case of a woman who, standing amid the wreckage of her home, told a TV crew that her pet dog was believed deceased, having been in the house when the storm hit; the crew then happened to spot a scruffy, furry figure scrabbling around within the rubble, and the rescuers moved in, reuniting homeowner with beloved pet live on air. It’s always important to have that sense that people will come together – when one’s life is as lonely as mine has been, one has to have faith there’s someone out there, and that leads me to perhaps the most unexpected little glimmer of beauty I’ve spotted recently. Buried away within a rather heavyweight Ofcom document on the takeup of digital communications services (yeah, yeah) was a sentence which carried an unexpected punch, particularly as it was not intended as such. It was merely trying to explain in the simplest possible tongue how the map on the following page worked. The map, as it goes, was an attempt to indicate the disparity between urban and rural areas by way of an interpretation of population density, using light pollution figures to show where the greatest concentration of activity was. Funky, huh? But the way they put it was unexpectedly poetic and moving, even for Ofcom, simply stating: “Where there are lights, there are people.” Whilst some quarters would argue that light pollution in itself is a bad thing, the concept at play is quite a beautiful thought – one is never really alone in the world, and you won’t be left to fend for yourself so long as you’re willing to step up and walk into the light. So maybe that’s a sentence I should carry with me whenever the darkness of the day-to-day threatens to tread too heftily on my all-too-flimsy shoulders.

So there we go. There’s several successive months of my internal monologue finally excised, in easily my longest blog post to date – it took so long to write I kept having to add more and more to the mass as new news popped over the fringe. I really will have to think of a better way to do these in future, or stop blogging altogether and keep this nonsense firmly locked inside my own head – but left there, it wouldn’t be safe! If you have, somehow, made it through these many dozens of paragraphs, thank you for your time and thank you for listening to me. If you’ve got anything to say about what I’ve had to say, then do at least attempt to get in touch with me – I am toying with setting up a blog email address, given that, until I’ve justified the purchase of a properly-functioning phone, Twitter will remain a thoroughly inefficient medium of communication with me. There is, of course, a commentbox down below here, so if you’ve got something constructive to share which won’t get swallowed up by the spam-trapper, do plop it in the relevant text-space. And If you’ve got something to do in the world – be it making music, writing an article, presenting a radio or TV show, acting in a popular soap opera, tackling inappropriate behaviour in public office, helping rebuild the life of an individual or family hit by tragedy, or just standing behind a desk desperately hoping someone will buy some shoes or cards or whatever it is you’re selling that week – then do it well and proudly. If you’ve got someone to love and look after, be sure to hold them extra tight for me. And if you’re going to throw props at my head, at least make them geographically appropriate!

“Now your entire body can smell like wrists!” (Goodbye!)

“I don’t want her first words to be ‘big metal bellend’!” (Hello!)

Bonjour! It’s the start (just about) of a new year, and time for this oaty barge to fly once more, as this fetid writer returns with prose anew. Yup, the big wheezy ones are back for a new string – though maybe, to spare my own mind and yours, this year they’ll be broken up with more mini-gubbins that’ll hopefully give this place a more inviting feel; I recognise that, thus far, this purple babble has been in parts too grey and miserable. But maybe that’s who I’ve become: I had, in my past and recent years, genuinely wanted to be a nice guy, but life it seems didn’t have that plan for me. Maybe my gloomy feelings over recent weeks have been further overcast by the wintry conditions – lengthy periods of darkness and wet, cold weather conditions have had a horrendous impact on my mind and body. There have been moments of brightness amid the gloom, as you’ll hear over the course of the next hours, but I’m certainly at a low ebb, at least physically, and as ever in these situations I’m worried I’m nearer the end of life than the start. But then maybe getting out here the worries and issues I’ve had playing on my brain since before Christmas would be therapy enough to keep my spirits going for a shade longer. So here goes: another big fatty sandwich of problems, solutions and observations that only a very few of the hardiest souls could ever tackle in one session. Just be assured it’s as difficult to write, if not more so, than it is to read. Seriously, these buckers take ages. RAT BRIDGE!

So yes, my mind and body are in a ridiculous state. If you’ve been following these vague diatribes for a while, you’ll know that my insides are, in honesty, a bit shoddy, and all the internal and external stress and pain I’m in is also having a huge impact on my brain. I’m starting to become very forgetful, and that’s becoming a great risk to the health and safety not just of myself but also others as a result. For instance, when preparing dinner for myself and my brother I’ll sometimes have a short-term mind-blackout and forget whereabouts in the microwave sequence I am, and have to think back to determine as best I can what the remaining required time is. Thus far, I’ve always been able to get it right, but there is a danger something will get overcooked or undercooked if I don’t get my chamber in order. I’ve been forgetting where I put stuff almost as long of my life as my hands have had the wherewithal to grip at all, but it’s getting worse by the week (witness phone-case-gate), and my brief time online is rarely complete without my forgetting one of the things I’d taken to the web to do in the first place, only realising the error when it was too late and having to return to the net later to pick up on it. (The stress of having a cheap clonky phone which can’t do t’internet properly adds to the strain, too, as its stumpy access only increases the pressure on those limited periods when I do have access to the full web). Most catastrophically, I didn’t close the front door properly when the family went out for Christmas lunch, leaving us at risk of home invasion (not that we’ve anything worth taking, but still a concern) – luckily a neighbour was at home and able to keep watch over our premises until our return. I should point out that on Christmas Day and the surrounding days my judgement and brain activity was clouded further than normal by fairly severe illness; due to being very badly clogged up and unwell over the festive era, I’d decided I wanted to take things slowly and calmly, not that any of my sticking-to-their-own-schedule family members chose to listen, and in order to maximise my rest and recuperation time I delayed my departure from the house that special day until the last minute, meaning I was rushing to catch up to the others on their departure, hence not taking my usual care over the door. I’m sure I closed it – it would be very unlike me to leave the barn wide open, but perhaps the latch didn’t catch properly and in my haste to keep up when I wasn’t at full health I omitted to double-check; still, whilst no actual harm befell us as a result of my blooper, it’s a wake-up call that my mind and body problems need to be looked at with something approaching urgency. I’m always worried that one day I’ll be one of those addled folks who is deemed a danger to myself and/or others around me and that this will result in either a massive disaster or my loss of liberty, holed up in a care-home (which I fear after the Panorama-led probes into abusive staff) or locked in a prison for public health and safety. But maybe that’s my long-term civic duty – to take myself out of circulation to make the world better for others by my absence. As I’ve said pretty much every year, Britain would be better off without me.

My ill-feeling over Christmas meant it couldn’t be the feast it should have been – despite our stocking-up on treats and meals ahead of the season, I was refusing, or at least avoiding, much food for the bulk of the break, leading to quite a lot of food going to waste, or at least to my human-dustbin brother – I have to take at least partial personal responsibility for the recent reports that half the world’s food production goes to waste – and my body could barely cope with that food I did eat (though I did keep the flagship turkey ‘n veg meal of the 25th down without too much fuss, thankfully). I’m loath to discuss this next factoid on here for fear of coming across as an element of the base and gutter press, but it’s true to say that at one point over the Christmas week the illness moved south and I became quite badly constipated; however, rather than seek professional medical treatment I just picked up some cheap tablets from Savers or somewhere, and that seemed to solve the problem well enough; readers with long memories will, though, know my guts and bowels have been in hideous shape for some years now, my gassy and distended stomach (from a years-long combination of cheap food and lack of athletic ability) putting huge pressure on other parts of my innards, and breathing has never been easy for me, to the extent that even tasks which would be simple for some risk leaving me puffed-out. Then, as 2013 dawned, I had a new problem emerge, my spine now the cause, as it became suddenly quite difficult for me to stand up (particularly after long seated periods) or walk, at times reduced to hobbling. It’s possible that decades of slouching in the seats at home, in job waiting rooms and on rickety buses has coiled my backbone into an unwelcome curve which is potentially adding to the pressure at the base of my body; I won’t know the full damage, though, unless I go for some kind of scan. And we all know that ain’t gonna happen, unless I can convince Channel 4 or someone to pay for the ruddy thing. I’m decaying and falling apart – some days I can barely breathe, and occasional heart pain should be heeded as a warning – and with no job and nothing to live for there seems little worth in investing fiscally to prolong my existence – I may as well just waddle on in the usual manner until the day, presumably coming relatively soon, that any form of movement becomes impossible. I can’t, however, afford to stop dragging myself through the usual grind just yet to get the hospital rest I need – there is little respite from the duties I’m committed to in family and by government. My festive illness, incidentally, saw me squander the little sliver of time which should have been an opportunity for me to get a titbit of rest and relaxation from my standard activities after a difficult and troubling 2012, the festive season being the only time of the year that my usual stresses – such as shopping runs and job hunts – take a back-burner, most recruiters nipping off on holiday for at least a few days over the festive fortnight; during the time I should and could have used for rest, I could in fact hardly sleep at all due to the ill feeling. What a waste. And now, having not yet had time to fully recover from 2012, I’m expected to throw myself into a 2013 which could well be just as harsh as the prior year was, or even worse – one thing I’m certainly not blessed with is foresight. Hell, I barely have eyesight!

My spirits following on from the seasonal period weren’t helped much, it must be said, by the continued media focus on gruesome, glossy celebs during the dire opening weeks of 2013. The brainless, fame-hungry wannabe ‘actress’ Helen Flanagan continued her pointless, post-I’m A Celeb attempt to remain relevant with a presumably-tacky photoshoot (I have to presume, as I didn’t sully my shopping-bag by buying it) for the hopeless paper-waste that is FHM. When will this girl take the hint? She doesn’t need adulation, she needs a bloody therapist! Anyway, hopefully soon Flanagan will realise that now The Bill, Wild at Heart and Heartbeat are gone, there’s not many opportunities out there for former soap starlets – if other young ex-soapies (Roxanne Pallett being the one most often cited) are anything to go by, a circuit of ever-decreasing-in-stature reality shows, tacky and lurid straight-to-DVD horror flicks, and poorly-funded provincial pantos are what awaits Helen on the slow, inevitable march toward the ‘Where Are They Now?’ columns. Meanwhile, also sullying a whole rack of magazines with her seeming omnipresence was Big Brother-winning Bristolian blonde Josie Gibson. Now I’ve got a little more time for Gibson than for Flanagan, if only because your actual Josie is, like me, a Crystal Maze fan. But then, one dry week at the turn of the year, with journos not yet back to post-Christmas productivity levels, and with Gibson herself having a new fitness DVD to flog, she managed to wangle herself a cover appearance on pretty much all the womens’ mags in the same week. This is not an exaggeration. This made walking through the magazine aisle of Morrisons feel like something out of a horror film – like all the potential mag cover stars had been sucked into a black hole leaving only Helen and Josie in this plane of existence. If she’d been on one cover I wouldn’t have found it remarkable, but the Josie shots were approaching double figures. Seeing the now-slender Bristolian glaring down at me dozens of times over, when I was already riddled with the shakes from (a) shopping in general and (b) having seen Flanagan on a mag at all, reminded me why I’ve turned my back on magazines. Hopefully I won’t have to read many of the ruddy things this year. I’ve already talked myself out of buying lady-weekly Now, despite the presence, for the moment at least, of a weekly column by Katie Piper, on the grounds that the magazine as a whole is not for the likes of me. Incidentally, I’ve decided to start mentioning Katie by name again, as that whole ‘Unnamed Woman’ business I’ve been running for the last few blogs has been getting to be a real drag, and in any case it’s a bit of an insult to this fine lady. Although I am concerned about the number of Piper-based web-searches I’ll get if I keep using her name (see my post “Slattern on t’internet” for some of the worst previous arrivals…) Additionally, with a new run of Celebrity Big Brother sullying Britain’s screens during January 2013, many of the cheapo mags and papers – particularly the Desmond organs – have been hawking CBB fameseekers, most volubly (going by press coverage) The Hills-derived telly-despoilers ‘Speidi’, who were at the centre of a row after they were reintroduced to the house after a time away (shades of series five’s horrendous ‘fight night’, the evening I decided I hated BB forever), and gloryhunting glamourpuss Lacey Banghard (alarmingly, that’s her real name) – it’s telling that in the Channel 4 era, those who worked as glamour models weren’t famous enough to appear in Celebrity BB (the likes of Sophie Reade having to slum it in the civilian version, and then-model Chantelle Houghton’s presence in a celeb run being as a non-celeb stunt) but since the move to C5, booby wannabes are now big enough names to make the ‘star’ version. The fact even the dire, vile Big Brother isn’t as ‘quality’ as it once was shows how far celeb culture itself has sunk. And yet we still mop it up in our droves. Sick.

Someone else who’s been on the front of magazines a lot recently is the previously-mentioned-here Kim Kardashian, and since my last pronouncement she’s blindsided us with the news that she’s pregnant with rapper Kanye West’s baby. Whilst not greeted quite with the sort of media trumpeting that surrounded the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s expectancy, this announcement (which the stars insist isn’t just for publicity, albeit in interviews which are themselves good publicity) did cue walls of mag articles about whether Kim’s also-famous sisters are jealous, about whether she’ll marry Kanye while pregnant or when she’s regained her post-baby figure, and whether her prior husband, from whom Kim is separated, is dragging his heels over a divorce deliberately to derail her happiness. Bloody hell. It’s all a little overweening for the childless, non-4Music-watching (their fault for not putting on the shows and tracks I like) likes of me. I wish Ms. Kardashian nothing but the best with her pregnancy – I know baby news, even for celebrities, does not always end happily – but the media noise around the Kim-Kanye-kid is perhaps leading me to side with one online wag whose social-media gag I spotted on Failblog, suggesting award-show-impeded country-belle Taylor Swift burst into the delivery room and interrupt Kim’s contractions with “I’m happy for you, I’ma let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the cutest babies of all time!”. Class. Of course, pretty Ms. Swift has herself been in the media spotlight thanks to her brief dalliance with Britain’s feted one-man celeb-shagging machine, One Direction’s Harry ‘Swordsman’ Styles. The apparent hookup did furrow brows in the celeb-goss circles, but it fizzled out quickly, allowing the meeja to play their caustic “why did they break up?” game, the favoured gambit among some sources apparently being that Taylor didn’t want to corrupt her wholesome image by shacking up with our wild lad and inviting much clucking and tutting from the nay-sayers. Still, I should maybe venture that Swifty will be awarded bonus points (from any points-based scheme I ever end up running) if she ended the relationship by saying “we are never ever getting back together”, and I could at least console young Taylor by assuring her that, whilst I’m happy for her to finish the relationship, Caroline Flack had one of the best Harry Styles breakups of all time. (See, I can do ’em too!) Also in the love pages, “ITV2 hunk Mark Wright”, whatever that is, seems to be shacked up fairly happily with actually-quite-pretty (and thankfully non-Flanagan) Corrie star Michelle Keegan, though whether this relationship leads to long-term family life or simply to a cheap post-Katie-and-Peter ITV2 fly-on-the-wall series it’s too early to tell. They are, though, apparently trying to keep the relationship out of the spotlight, lest the pressure of publicity proves too heavy a burden on their rapidly-forged love. The fact I read about this ‘low-key’ relationship on Digital Spy suggests their attempts to fly under the showbiz radar haven’t quite worked out, though. And yes, I know treating Digital Spy as journalism is like calling the stuff McDonalds pumps out ‘food’, but it’s one of the few sites that works on my muggy mobile. Still: I wish the lovebirds well enough.

Celeb hook-ups, though, are often too fast-burning, too toxic and acrimonious, or simply too damn silly to muster comment from me; my preferred angle on relationships can be found elsewhere, in a Channel 4 series I’m pleased to see get a second run-out. I’ve probably mentioned The Undateables before, when its first run sprang from the traps last spring, and now it’s back for another, longer, series. In the first of the five new episodes was one lady who certainly proved captivating – not just to me but to quite a lot of fellas, it seems! This wonderful lass is a rather gorgeous and sweet blonde in her early 20s named Sarah Scott, whose ‘undateable’ angle was that she now suffered from aphasia having had a stroke aged just 18, and had struggled to find long-term love in the years following the breakup of her prior relationship. Sarah stated on the show that she wanted someone to cuddle with, and I’d certainly love to give her a nice warm hug – she’s exactly the sort of girl I’d go for, a naturally beautiful lady who came across as very warm, charming and endearing. In the series’ prepublicity Sarah had said she was looking for someone ‘tall, dark and handsome’ (the classic combo in a lady’s armoury, the partnership equivalent of the LBD) and ironically I almost fit the bill here – I was tall, over six foot before my backbone started caving in on itself, and I’ve got fairly dark hair (albeit too much of it and in too many places, but still…), the only stumbling block in this particular ointment being I’m not entirely handsome – as you’ll know from seeing my photos online, I look like I’ve recently dragged my face across a wet boulevard, and the internal problems documented above could make a woman two streets away retch, meaning no right-thinking lass would get close to me for more than the government-mandated minimum number of seconds. Anyway, as it transpires I didn’t have to put myself up for ridicule and offer to partner young Sarah as she in fact did make a date during the course of the show, with a fella from the finance industry (and so already better with money than I). As it turned out, when this fella’s profile was briefly flashed up on screen, a batch of eagle-eyed Twitter folk spotted that the chap in question was from, and you couldn’t make it up, Bexleyheath! So it looks like my chances with Sarah may be over before they ever really began – were this televised partnering-up to go sour, Sarah presumably won’t want to hang around this region much, for fear of the awkwardness that bumping into an ex apparently brings those of us lucky (or unlucky) enough to have been blessed (or cursed) with multiple partners in our litany. I hope Sarah’s love life does go well, though, she deserves it, she’s lovely, and whatever happens her strikerate couldn’t be worse than mine, which is a relief to her I’m sure: anyroad, these supposed ‘undateables’ certainly have a better chance of finding lasting love than a bloated sod like me ever does. Taking part in the programme itself, and the subsequent warm and pleasant reception she recieved, appear to have been very positive for Sarah’s confidence, and that can only be a good thing – people have on the whole been very lovely to Sarah, and this encouragement is something which I’m sure would make a beautiful lady feel good. Sarah, as it happens, is now on Twitter – @SarahBScotty if you need – so you can keep tabs on her romantic, social and personal developments without having to wait for me or Channel 4 to update you. (For instance, she remains on good terms, at time of writing, with the chap she was seen partnered with on telly, should you be keeping score). Of course, if you want to tell Sarah she’s cute, you also now have the opportunity to, so make sure you get in there before I can! Though maybe I’ll find my own Sarah-equivalent, someone to hold onto should my life ever be in a sturdy enough position to support a relationship; much like Sarah, I just want someone nice to hug with. Maybe there’s someone awesome out there who’s looking for me – I just have to retain hope. And one thing The Undateables proves is that there are still good, decent people in the world.

Yes, even aside from Sarah, there’s certainly been some quality people taking part – in the second show of the new run, the adventurous (more so than I) in spite of her dwarfism Sam, and the sufferer of an inherited condition, and my fellow retail-droid, Steve both expressed a liking for good music – or at least, for music which chimed with my own tastes, what with me being a bit of a rock/indie fan myself and that. (Dunno why C4 didn’t punt on putting them together to be honest, they could’ve bonded over their shared admiration of guitary choons!) There’s more Undateables every Tuesday night ’til February 4th, and the episodes transmitted thus-far are on 4oD if you’ve yet to view them. It’s also good to see C4 continuing to put ‘disabled’/’disadvantaged’ people on a fair and equal platform, following on from the warm response to last year’s Paralympics coverage, which also spawned Adam Hills’ lighthearted live magazine The Last Leg, which proved so popular that it’s being revived for a run of new editions outside of its original Paralympic bubble. It’s also been ace to hear Francesca Martinez appear in several editions of Radio 4’s The News Quiz in recent times. The comic and actress – who’s also appeared on Russell Howard’s Good News Extra, amongst other things – is not letting her condition (cerebral palsy, as it goes) hold her back from unleashing her snappy wit, and is more than willing to take cheerful lilt at society – and her own condition – as she showcases her sharp take on the world. Let’s hope we hear a lot more from this talented lady in 2013. Also impressing me of late have been the contestants on the front-runner so far for my favourite gameshow of the year. No, not Loaded TV’s glamour-girl panel-game Babe IQ (though that is quite fun, and good to see it being done like a proper gameshow, complete with catchphrases and audience participation – babe balls ready to fly?) The show I’m actually trying to go on about is BBC One’s new Saturday night talent-quiz thing Britain’s Brightest. With Saturday telly in the last few years having been dominated by cheap clipshows and overweening talent formats, Britain’s Brightest is one of the best things that’s been on Saturday night TV in ages. It’s sort of like the Channel 5 series with Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston a few years back – ranking people’s smarts via a series of flashy puzzles and challenges – and the calibre of contestants has been quite impressive (some of the games have been pretty fly, too – the ‘solve the puzzles to exit the room’ game played on 19 January was proper Crystal Maze stuff). OK, the scoring system’s more baffling than those of The Krypton Factor and QI combined, but that’s by the by. It’s good that after years of shows where the point has been to see which of a bunch of telegenic warbling wannabes has the best chance of keeping Simon Cowell on the front of the papers, there’s finally a primetime show which rates contestants on their substance. It’s also been good to see a Saturday night show which sees women as equals after years of odiously sexist weekend shows. The first week’s winner, who will return to your screens in the grand final, was a gorgeous (and, sadly for me, married) teacher, who has hopefully proved to those girls who, when polled a few years back, said they’d rather be glamour models than teachers, that you can be both beautiful and intelligent, whilst show two had an all-female top-three (something which the gruesome Total Wipeout only ever managed once, in its final series – even the very short-lived 101 Ways To Leave a Gameshow achieved this before Wipeout did). It’s nice to see strong, intelligent women being given fair and equal chance to showcase their talent and flair. Indeed, with week one’s winner being named Clair, one of week two’s top performers being called Clare, and Clare Balding being the host of the show, we now have a good idea what Britain’s most intelligent name is! (Although if they’re that intelligent, how come none of them can spell Claire? B’dum-tssh!)

It’s good to see women being represented fairly, but we must be sure to avoid oversteering towards positive discrimination – Dave ran a stack of episodes of the US Wipeout over Christmas and New Year, and one of the episodes I caught due to not much else being on was a special featuring solely female contestants. Whilst that recognised the disadvantage women were at in the regular non-divided episodes (Wipeout being an inherently macho format that favours men, if the results table from the UK version were to be believed), surely patting ladies on the head and saying they can have their very own special episode is just as demeaning, if not more so? Anyway, it was a gambit the UK edition thankfully didn’t live to repeat. I don’t have any particular axe to grind against Wipeout contestants, male or female, UK- or US-based, bar to question their wisdom in going on the show in the first place, though as I’ve said previously many times, if that “no bird’s gonna beat me” bloke from the first UK run was to die of something horrible, I wouldn’t grieve. However, I disliked Total Wipeout as a programme, and was glad to see the back of it – until I saw what the BBC, Endemol and Richard Hammond have replaced it with. I’ve never really liked prank shows, from Beadle right through to Punk’d, though used to watch Beadle’s About under a form of self-duress as it was shown back when there weren’t enough channels around to have an alternative choice. Now, though, Hammond’s new Saturday night show Secret Service has launched, and as though to punish me, it’s a sub-Beadle (even with many of the same or similar stunts Jeremy used, in fact) wind-up gig. I don’t like shows that mess with people’s lives, and on seeing the ‘here’s what’s coming up’ sequence for the 19 January episode – featuring a would-be wedding planner being confronted with a parade of on-the-job disasters, and someone’s presumably-carefully-tended garden being destroyed in some kind of Time Team-type prank – I knew what I had to do, and went up and sat on the bog moping ’til it was all over and I could watch Britan’s Brightest without having to seethe at the dumbness which preceded it. Screening Hammond’s show directly before Britain’s Brightest has really messed up my Saturday night, given my intention is to watch one and avoid the other, and it’s also strange for the Beeb to pair a really stupid show and a quite intelligent show – surely nobody’ll watch both! Despite my misgivings, I do have to give Secret Service one nod though, for hiring the talented and beautiful US-born/London-resident actress Kelly-Anne Lyons (previously of Dick & Dom’s Funny Business). To be honest, Beeb, you could dump Hammond and the pranks and just give us 45 minutes of Lyons mucking about on-air, that’d be a much better use of British airtime. And, for once, other male viewers would probably agree with me on that (even if a three-quarter-hour of solid Kelly-Anne does pose a similar danger to my and others’ heart-health that The Vault’s recent similar-length block solely of Pixie Lott videos threatened to). Regardless of whether or not such a Lyons-led broadcast comes to pass, Britain’s Brightest is sadly unlikely to get recommissioned – between the Beeb’s lineup (also including sub-You’ve Been Framed pet-clips showcase Animal Antics) and ITV’s much-derided Tom Daley-centric celebs-in-a-pool barrel-scraper Splash! and the bafflingly-popular Take Me Out, commentators and review-wranglers have been sticking the boot fairly firmly into the current weekend output of our formerly-flagship channels, with few kind words for either sequence, and I must admit the quality of weekend shows generally has taken a dive over recent years. I remember the days of You Bet!, Blind Date… heck, I even miss Gladiators. It used to be, even after my household went digital, that we’d still return to the BBC and/or ITV for fully-funded glossy prime weekend evening output. At the tail-end of last year, so desperate was I to avoid the likes of X Factor and Strictly that I chose to watch a repeat run of Bob’s Full House on Challenge. Oh, how the pendulum has swung. Sadly, it seems not enough people joined me at the Monkhouse master card, and with low ratings Challenge are reluctant to buy in further series, though at least they’re replacing it on Saturdays with another show I actually like, the more recent Friends Like These, and not something else I’d have to flee from.

The CITV Channel, fairly surprisingly, also gave me an opportunity to dip into my childhood with its recent Old Skool Weekend. Created as a means of celebrating thirty years since the Children’s ITV block on the ITV network began (whilst this afternoon block is now long-gone, dumped not long after the channel’s launch, it was the genesis for networked CITV in its current form), the weekend dipped into the archive to flush out a raft of vintage shows. Whilst there were some notable omissions – where the hell was Roger and the Rottentrolls, for instance? – there was plenty to be excited about, and I absolutely lapped it up, keeping my excursions away from the telly to an absolute minimum for the whole two days. Many of the shows I’d loved as a kid were represented, from Puddle Lane to Dangermouse to Woof! to Spatz, and recent classics rubbed shoulders with long-hidden gems. One wonders what today’s kids made of the sort of genius we used to get; certainly, a fair few of the shows featured would probably stand full repeat runs mixed in alongside the new stuff in the general CITV schedule – it’s fair to say kids seeing these shows for the first time would probably be wondering what other stories these characters have to tell. Or perhaps ITV3, well-known for mining the back-catalogue of British drama, could be pressed into service for full reruns of the likes of Press Gang or Children’s Ward, well-loved and fondly-remembered dramas which are otherwise gathering dust on the ITV shelves. It should be said that some of the shows and stars featured in this ‘retro’ weekend still appear on CITV fairly regularly, with Art Attack and Sooty just as familiar to today’s CITV generation as they were back in the era of the earlier editions dug out for the stunt, and Tony Gardner pointing out, in response to web comments about My Parents Are Aliens’ inclusion in the event, that the show was looped on the channel every day anyway. But there is scope for ITV to make more use of its archive – whilst CITV were at pains to point out that this was a one-off stunt and the usual mix of Canimals and Horrid Henry would be CITV’s standard diet for 2013, there is also an opportunity to exploit some of these freshly-unearthed strands further – Dramarama, for instance, provided a playpen where writers and actors who would later go on to bigger things could cut their teeth, and two of the strand’s playlets were let out of the bag for the weekend. What’s to stop ITV, which already produces and commissions a raft of dramas and serials for its main networks, commissioning a new run of Dramarama, booking a range of new and established scribes and prodcos to fire ideas into the chain, and thus allow a mine of new formats and themes to develop which could serve the CITV strand well today and in years to come? (It could happen: the original Dramarama contained a one-off, screened as part of the weekend, which spawned the long-running Children’s Ward, two late-era editions of which also featured in the event.) Sadly the once-mighty CITV has become a real dead-zone in recent years, which is a shame not least because whereas pay viewers have Nickelodeon, Disney and the like, CITV is the sole non-BBC provision of kids’ shows on Freeview. When I was a kid, CBBC and CITV were, in their then form of blocks on the main channels, well-funded and rich in ideas and fresh shows despite their limited hours. Whilst the volume of kids’ TV is now bigger – three twelve-plus-hour-a-day channels on Freeview, and further channels running up to 24 hours a day on satellite and cable – the value has dropped, with more repeats, lower investment and now no longer the prominence of presence on the flagship network channels, BBC One having binned its CBBC block at the end of 2012.

One thing notable from the CITV Old Skool Weekend was the presence in the roster of contributors the names of many TV production companies which have now been absorbed into larger entities. Many of the shows came from the archive of the now-defunct regional companies that over time came together into the ITV plc of today, the firm which now runs CITV; Central, Granada and most noticeably Yorkshire TV seemingly contributed huge amounts to the CITV library down the years, Yorkshire’s now-retired chevron being the most-featured of the ITV plc brands. And yet today all YTV is allowed to make are Emmerdale and local news show Calendar, bizarrely, with even long-term Leeds resident Countdown, initially a Yorkshire regional show before debuting nationally at C4’s commencement, having moved to Manchester some time back now. STV also shipped a clutch of shows back south of the border for the event, and in the process proved just how much those regions you didn’t often see productions from in primetime did for ITV’s apparently-less-valuable younger viewers. Indeed, STV’s still a strong producer today, handling shows ranging from Antiques Road Trip to Fake Reaction, as well as continuing to serve local matters to their two Scots patches, albeit now under one brand with much of Grampian having been stripped away. The biggest contributor to the retro-fuelled weekend, though, was the fabled Thames, whose skyline-based logos appeared frequently throughout the weekend, introducing a whole new generation to the excited knowledge that good things were coming over the horizon after ‘Salute to Thames’ boomed out of the speakers, but their contribution to CITV dried up as of the 90s thanks to their defenestration from the network 20 years ago this month in favour of the much less well remembered Carlton, who would go on to form the backbone of today’s ITV plc alongside Northern expansionists Granada. Whilst the Carlton name has now been wiped out by the ITV plc merger, Thames, thankfully, lives on – initially limping on as an indie producer immediately post-ITV, then getting swallowed up into the behemoth hive-mind TalkbackThames for a decade, and then being respun into an entertainment-focussed production minibrand which, with some irony, now produces most of the weekend entertainment shows (Take Me Out, X Factor and so on) in slots which would in a past life have almost certainly been guaranteed to Thames’ old rival, the now-subsumed-into-ITV-plc LWT! At the time The Bill was scrapped, I posted (on the old MySpace) a lament that this signalled the end of the old Thames way, and certainly the new version is much narrower in focus than the original (see clips from some of Thames’ old shows on TVArk, for instance), but at least the firm hasn’t been left to die in the archives like so many other former pre-plc ITV companies. Thames has, incidentally, become another of the recent converts to Twitter, posting as @ThamesTV_ (and remember the underscore, folks), though sadly as it’s 2013 I assume it’s mostly to be BGT/Take Me Out coverage rather than presumably-would’ve-been-more-enjoyable tweeting from the home of Rainbow/Minder/T-Bag/The Bill et al. Even the legendary skyline is no more, and I’m not sure how enamoured and nostalgic viewers of years hence would be towards the modern-age symbol – a magenta disc, if it matters – but at least one of the iconic brands best-loved in television circles is still very much alive, which is an achievement given ITV has even wiped Granada off the map outside its local news shows.

Subsequent to the retro weekender, the wider ITV has also, you may have noticed, been making changes to modernise itself in recent days, introducing a somewhat curly new logo across its activities. I have to admit that when I first saw the logo, in isolation on media websites when the rebrand was unveiled, I didn’t think much of it – a bit too kooky to actually be taken seriously – but rather than badmouth it here and there I decided to wait until it entered use in its proper location, on the screen, before casting judgement. And you know what? On telly, it sort of works, the way they’ve animated and coloured it, though the switchback from ITV1 to ITV after twelve years is something which may take people a while to get used to, particularly those of us who keep forgetting stuff. Elsewhere, ITV3’s come off particularly well with classy ‘origami’-style sequences, and I don’t mind ITV2’s quirky restyle myself, though quite a few of the channel’s more ardent fans online have bemoaned the swap to red after seven years of a lime green look. But whilst ITV has invested heavily in a rebrand, planting the new logo everywhere it can get away with, there’s been little improvement in content – the output of ITV’s channels is, give or take, pretty much the same mush it was before the repaint. That said, ITV2, not normally noted for showing actual comedy, has pulled up one of the new shows I’ve been liking this month, US sitcom Ben & Kate, and here’s hoping the usually-reality-led channel has the gonads to stick with the series and does not, as commonly happens to shows I like, punt the thing to the arse-end of midnight or vanish the show from the screen for months on end before burning off the remaining episodes unheralded in the middle of nowhere, as Channel 4 and E4 did with another Chernin Entertainment production, New Girl. ITV2 has also tried to build on the success of Celebrity Juice – which along with BBC Four’s Only Connect is one of the best-performing digital TV entertainment shows ratings-wise – by launching a new flashy entertainment series, Fake Reaction, which despite the very ITV2 focus on celebs and grossout gags, is at heart a proper classic light entertainment bluffing game, similar in skein to ITV1… oops, ITV series Odd One In. And there aren’t many of these proper entertainment formats around just now, as you’ll have seen me bemoan above. Away from ITV’s channels, E4 has added to its own roster of imported sitcoms with The New Normal, though as with Pramface (which has returned to BBC Three for a new series) the attitude and behaviours of some characters means it can be a difficult show to enjoy, in New Normal’s case principally because of the racist, homophobic, and at times deranged Jane, who I assume is there to provide a contrast to the general tolerance shown by most others in the show, who represents the portion of society set against modern rights and freedoms, and who many of the audience would presumably mock and laugh at for her outdated and irrelevant views; during the first episode I had to hold myself back from wanting to put a foot to her windpipe, perhaps because I’m one of those people who is never tolerant of those who show intolerance. Ironically. But then, how do you represent the real pain and prejudice felt by gay people without, if you’ll pardon the expression, fudging it? Maybe I’ll have to try not to get too upset with those characters who badmouth Bryan and David, and accept everyone’s entitled to their view. Ironically for a show where prejudice is a key theme, the show was dropped by some US stations who didn’t want to screen the series after anti-gay mobs of ‘viewers’ protested. So maybe, though it’s difficult to watch, I should stick with it, in order to show support for a community too often maligned.

Converseley to the above, sometimes contrary and challenging views can be entertaining, and I’m glad to see Charlie Brooker’s “…Wipe” analysis strand return after too long away with a new weekly series for BBC Two, which should be an oasis of right-thinking in the ocean of media ‘meh’ we now find ourselves eddying in. There are some people trying to push against the grain, and it’s never been more important to support them. In a world where all roads seem to lead to Rihanna, some new musical acts have begun to see patches of light through the cracks. You’ll have seen my top-tunes-of-2012 post (the previous post here, if you haven’t) and further badass tuneage from that year was unearthed in BrokenTV’s top 20 (which, interestingly or not, only included one track also present in my rundown), and that site’s footage is worth seeking out – the very-post-80s ‘Madness’ by Hits, for instance, is one I missed first time out. Elsewhere, the BBC’s Sound of 2013 list pulled up some emerging quality, including AlunaGeorge and Chvrches, who I’ll have to keep an eye (or ear) for, and was topped by Haim, who’d also got the biggest writeup in my chart post: the Yank sisters have marked themselves out as ones to watch with their classy, edgy pop sound, and I’m glad new, fresh music is still getting an airing, albeit one which in this case was hidden away behind the red button – surely this sort of show should have been put out on BBC Three or even Two? Is music really that minority an interest that it now has to be hidden away on what is not really a real channel? Mind you, the state of music TV today is not a healthy one: I’ve berated 4Music and Viva for their policy before, but clearly there is scope in the market for a channel which broadcasts some of the less well known music and gives a wider range of genres an airing. Having channels which focus solely on a tiny playlist of the very most mainstream music – and which dump music entirely in the evening in favour of block-booked Kardashians or South Park – isn’t really serving the audience. Unfortunately, these channels aren’t there to serve, inform or even entertain the audience – they solely exist to make money, and so it’s on with the Rihanna, Bieber and 1D loop. 4Music in particular could build on its C4 association to allow a wider range of voices and genres to be heard; instead, all the 4-link seems to provide the channel is repeats of Alan Carr: Chatty Man. That said, there is quality if you know where to look: in the week that most magazine covers featured Helen Flanagan, Josie Gibson or Celebrity Big Brother rubbish, NME had, would you believe, Haim. If I’d have bought a magazine that week, it would probably have been that one – I want to support quality new talent, not tawdry reality trash (even those who are a fellow Crystal Mazer).

But at least magazines remain available in stores: soon, there won’t be anywhere left on the high street to buy a CD. HMV recently collapsed into administration, and though its survival in some form seems likely now Hilco have stepped in to take control of the firm’s debt, the potential loss of the last big music chain (and some of its stores still could shut) really brought into focus the loss of music and entertainment from the high street. Our Price is gone, Virgin/Zavvi has had it, MVC went, taken over by Music Zone which then itself bit the big one, and many indie shops have also lost the fight. In this area, if HMV were to go, Head in Bromley will literally be the last CD/DVD shop left. Again, not an exaggeration. Many towns, particularly since the loss of Our Price, now have no music shop at all – Dartford, Lewisham and Woolwich are all now music-free, and if HMV’s Bexleyheath store cops it there’ll be another town without audio-visual. There have been others: Dartford had not just Our Price, which survived, under various names, right up ’til Zavvi’s demise, but also Challenger & Hicks, a proper local record shop that was both vocal and instrumental in assisting the expansion of my early collection, the always-good-value Slam Entertainment where amongst other things I bought my first-ever DVDs (nothing special, just some cheap comedies to get my then-new player up and running) and the previously-mentioned-on-here Stacey Dash video, and Tracks which replaced Playhouse/Our Price Video (whilst Playhouse was mostly a VHS shop, in its dying, throw-anything-on-the-shelf phase, I even picked up a Blameless cassingle in there, and it’s still one of my favourite tunes.) Bexleyheath, meanwhile, had Our Price (what is now Vision Express, and Beefy’s biggest music retailer ’til HMV pitched up), a belated MVC/Music Zone, though this wasn’t one of the MZ sites saved by Fopp, and local store TW Records, a wonderful little local shop pulled down along with its neighbours to make way for the similarly-initialled but sadly non-musical TK Maxx and JD Sports. (There was also, further down the Broadway, the Mixmag-admired and also-now-cut dance/urban specialist Uncut Records, though as an indieboy I never went there.) The much-missed TW’s was actually a chain, but its other stores (in Erith and Plumstead) have also now packed it in. Woolwich only had Our Price – altogether now, 27 Powis Street, now Designer Kidz – the scene of my first ever self-propelled singles purchase as mentioned here many times, and pre-Head, Bromley played host to US chain Sam Goody, MVC was there for a bit, and at one point the town had two Our Prices (later reduced to one, which then transferred its business to a Virgin Megastore, itself felled in Zavvi’s collapse); Sam Goody also turned up in Orpington for a time, as did CD World, the shop from which I picked up a long-hunted-for copy of Headswim’s ‘Tourniquet’; even the retail monolith Bluewater has seen its largest entertainment store (Virgin/Zavvi) swallowed by H&M, and also lost short-lived post-Playhouse DVD-seller Silverscreen, leaving only HMV ticking away above the foodcourt. It seems the days of music on the high street really are numbered.

To be fair, I have played my part in its downfall. I’ve started shopping online more, not just on cost ground (though for someone in my poor life position every pound saved is vital) but also because of choice – online stores can by nature have a bigger range than a high street store ever could, and my outside-of-centre tastes mean the mainstream retailers can’t always take a punt on stocking the stuff I like in the slim chance I’ll pop in to pick it up at some point. But the real catalyst for me going mostly online was the death of the single. I’ve always been more of a singles buyer than an album man, perhaps driven by the fact that much of my musical education came from multi-artist, skipping-between-the-tunes formats such as pop radio and The Chart Show. So, after Dale Winton and chums (see earlier posts) had broken the levee on singles buying, and I’d started to get into the habit regularly, I would spend, subject to that week’s releases, a few quid a week (this would have been pocket money from parent’s pocket, being while I was still at school and before I was of non-working age) on the latest tracks – initially on cassette for a couple of years as that’s what sort of player we had in the house, then latterly on CD once I’d got my hands on a disc-playing device. The cost, on a week-to-week basis, wasn’t massive and I picked and chose my favoured releases from those available – some weeks had more than others, with nothing really grabbing me some weeks and a large number in others – one week (it was the week ‘The Boy Is Mine’ by Brandy and Monica came out over here, if you’re looking back through the calendar) there were about eight singles out that I’d have wanted, and I had to be selective and pluck the few I most wanted in my collection. Overall, though, it worked out fairly well, and through the years I built up a fairly broad church of platters. The rise of my interest in music came at about the same time as I started travelling more widely around the area – pushing the envelope with Saturday solo shopping trips to Bromley, Dartford or Woolwich to look out the latest tunes and that – and the opening of Bexleyheath’s HMV, in November 1994 (in what used to be Miss Selfridge, as it goes) couldn’t have been any more perfectly timed. With this and Our Price, plus TW’s and then from 1997 MVC, trading in Beefy this was the golden era – if I’d found a tune I loved, there was a pretty strong chance I’d be able to ferret it out in at least one of the four, or by taking a trek to stores in a nearby town. Indeed, music shopping became a hobby of mine – on a family holiday to York in the mid-90s, one of my first ports of call was not a museum or historic monument, but the city’s Virgin Megastore. But then, around the turn of the millennium, the band started to break up. In Bexley, TW got the bulldozer, Our Price became a Vision Express, MVC got themselves and then their successors Music Zone into all kinds of trouble, and before you could know it, HMV was all we had left, and now rather than having Dartford and Woolwich as alternative hunting grounds, people from those towns had to come to Beefy for their sole shot at CD shopping.

But then downloads started to have an impact. Whilst people had been flinging MP3s around since the late 90s – initially illegally peer-to-peer, and latterly through paid sites like iTunes – I’d not been a downloader, preferring music on tangible format that couldn’t be put at risk by computer crashage. The fact I didn’t often have full web access – or, until the advent of USB, any means to get files from the computer home – also played a part in my decision to remain a high-street shopper. However, when the supply of CD singles began to really dry up, I had little other option. I’d noticed the fall of singles for some time, and seen my local HMV’s singles section decline over the years from a pretty huge part of the shop, taking up one whole wall, down to a can’t-be-bothered kickstand. And so, grudgingly, I started downloading, choosing Amazon as (1) I already had an account there, for the increasing amount of physical stuff I’d not been able to get at HMV, and (2) their downloads weren’t tied to a proprietary device, as Apple’s market-leaders were. And so the money I used to spend in HMV started going to Amazon instead: well, only part of it, actually, as downloads are cheaper, and what I’d previously had to spend £1.99 or more in HMV to get I could get on the ‘Zon for as little as 49p – or even less – depending on the track. That’s why, while my ‘best 80 tunes of the year’ list looks like a huge outlay (it’d have cost at least £160 to get that little lot in Nipper’s store), with the individual track prices below £1, and many of the tracks on special offer or even (legally) free, that whole chart probably worked out costing me the equivalent of around £1 a week – which even in my straitened financial situation is not an enormous damage. The damage, though, was done to HMV. My spend of £2-£4 a week on singles through their tills equated to about £10-£20 a month of regular purchase. With my singles buying now done online, I don’t think I spent much more than £20 in HMV in the whole of 2012, and that was mostly on gifts for other people. Whilst I’d never describe myself as the typical customer, if my singles-buying shift is replicated across the population, that’s a huge sum of money disappearing from HMV’s tills, which may explain their debt. (With downloads, I can also dig up older tracks as well as the new stuff; much as with Orpington’s long-sought Headswim CD, I was able to find a long-hunted-for track – in this case Not Katies’ ‘2 Halves of 2′ – on Amazon having struggled to seek out a CD during the preceding eight years). The death of singles also hit part of HMV’s business model, which was based on building customers’ relationship with artists through singles and then into albums – with no more singles, HMV can’t grow artist-customer-store relations in that way anymore. Similarly, part of HMV’s business model had been to support their range – their wider mix of more diverse, and perhaps slower-selling, specialist music – with the underpinning from their volume of sales of bread-and-butter chart releases. But discounters and the big grocers have begun to shift this mainstream music in quite some quantity, devaluing music and taking away the volume sales that HMV needs to support its broader aims. The traditional midmarket retailer has been squeezed very hard by supermarkets and online – Clinton Cards, whilst offering a different product mix to HMV, had similar competitive problems, leading to their own collapse and partial salvation. HMV reacted to the declining of the original model by cutting the space given to music and DVD in favour of giving more space to high-ticket technology products such as iPads, but while these attracted a premium price they didn’t shift in the sort of volume that CDs had once done, particularly in the tight economic times when consumers have been holding back their spend, as Comet recently found out. HMV, like many retailers and individuals, also perhaps put too much faith during the boom years of the late 90s/early 00s that the good times would continue – like other chains, HMV expanded rapidly during this economically-positive period, only for these expanded networks of retail stores to be more starved of income when the crunch hit. With the high street still sluggish five years on from the sub-prime bubble, it seems some towns are destined to sink for good.

It seems the sinking of society is being felt across the board. Not only am I sensing a more tense, powderkeg type of an environment when I’m on a bus or in a shopping mall – or even a library – but society as a whole is struggling: recent reports, lined up for red-button consumption on the self-same day, revealed a rise in the volume of individual/personal fraud in the 2011/12 reporting year, as strained souls struggling to make ends meet stretch the rules – or break them entirely – to squeeze more than they’re entitled to out of the system, presumably as what they’re entitled to isn’t keeping them in the style they’re accustomed to. Another report indicated a rise in the number of suicides in 2011 compared to 2010 – the latest data which is available – which indicates some people really can’t take it anymore and have, in their hour of desperation, sadly resorted to the final solution. I know the circumstances we find ourselves in are not pleasant – as a rifle through the old MySpace posts would prove, I’ve been circling the drain almost as long as I’ve been writing these bloody things, if not longer – but I know there has to be a way out. One thing that will help the gloom lift is, ironically, if I stop getting so wound up about things I see in the news. It’s difficult, though, as there’s been some controversial cases these last few weeks. There’s been a lot said about attacks on women, which as you should know by now is not something I condone, following the internationally-discussed case in India where a woman was brutally gang-raped and later died of her injuries. A horrible situation, for certain, and one which shows up how the role of women in society is still a struggle in some of the less-developed-than-our-own nations; it’s always difficult to judge how far we should impose our values on other territories, however, for fear of being accused of cultural insensitivity: many Muslim countries, for instance, still see women as subservient and a commodity, something we in the West find abhorrent, and they often, in particular the more conservative states, also see Western values and cultures as a threat to their own, and resist our creeping global influence by any means necessary, up to and including terrorism. It’s difficult for me to judge the situation writing as I am from the position of a white man in England who’s been brought up on Western values and media, but hopefully we can all agree that the aghast response to the brutal and fatal attack should serve as a watershed and help Indian society move towards a more enlightened and peaceful culture, and on its own terms rather than having it forced down upon the country from outside. Not that the Western world is always right when it comes to sexual violence – in the United States, a guilty verdict in a rape case was quashed because the court learned that the victim was unmarried. I’m just going to let that one sink in for a moment. A victim of abuse was failed by the justice system because she wasn’t married. And they call us civilised? Of course, brutality and violence takes place everywhere, as the attack on Katie Piper in 2008 proves – though there are some people who want to make life better; Channel 4 recently screened the Oscar-winning documentary Saving Face, in which the plastic surgeon who gave Katie her smile back – the Pakistan-born UK-based Dr Mohammad Jawad – travelled to his birth country to treat some of the hundreds – HUNDREDS! – of women a year who are attacked and burned, often by abusive and dismissive partners. This film – as with many of the shows I’ve watched lately, right through to The New Normal – proves that while there is prejudice, hatred and outright evil in the world, there are also those who are prepared to fight it and stand up for what’s right. I want to be one of those who fights the good fight, but it will have to be within my limited circumstances – I have little money, power, skills and influence to change things – I can’t even use Twitter properly right now, thanks to my cheap phone – so doing the right thing will mean I have to fight harder. But if it makes people’s lives better, then it’s a fight worth trying.

Someone who tried to support others but lost out through no fault of her own was the good Samaritan who stopped at the scene of a road incident and gave two ‘walking wounded’ shelter in her otherwise-uninvolved vehicle; whilst the victims were able to get in OK, when paramedics arrived they decided, to reduce the risk of further injury, the injured patrons should be removed from the car by way of having the roof cut off. The good-deed-doer has thus had her car written off, with no guarantee that it will be replaced – maybe, if nobody comes forward to pay for a new vehicle in respect of her sacrifice, she’ll have to spend the next sixteen to seventeen years living like me, travelling slowly with the disadvantaged and underachieving, and the potheads and lunkheads, on those life-sucking buses that have damaged me so, until she can afford a new vehicle, every day regretting the good deed that cost her her freedom wheels. Elsewhere, the big news here in London town is the fatal helicopter crash, in which a pilot flying his chopper across the capital despite the prevailing poor conditions clipped a crane in Vauxhall, killing himself and a man on the ground in a devastating, much-discussed fireball. Again, there’s little to have been done in the situation – if I had been there that morning, there’s more chance I’d have been victim than hero – but there are always a lot of what-ifs when something like this happens. Someone who had been due to be a passenger on the ‘copter had called on the pilot to call off the journey given the conditions, only for the ill-fated captain to go ahead. Once in the air, the flight was diverted from its original route due to the weather – did this change of flightplan put the pilot on collision course with the construction crane? Thinking too deeply about these variables in these kind of situations is one of the things which has really raddled my brain over recent years, and you’ll have seen this for yourself in my gabbly, breathless whinges about news events in many of my prior posts, and perhaps it’d be better for me to leave well enough alone and let things be. At least we can be thankful that, given the busy and built-up nature of London, the Vauxhall crash didn’t cause more death and destruction than it did. Vauxhall’s day of horror, though, wasn’t the only helicopter disaster to strike the world recently; in Sao Paolo, a ‘helicopter taxi’ – they’re popular due to the congested streets – ditched into a house. That case reminded me of something else I’ve had on my mind recently. Not far from me there’s a train bridge which passes over a road. I’ve only recently noticed, though, how close the trains come to the buildings on the street below – one perhaps-poorly-sited house is so close to the tracks, trains pass literally inches from the loft. That’s a recipe for disaster. Perhaps I’ve seen too many Coronation Street clips, but I know that these close calls can sometimes be missed – I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a house that close to the tracks, as all it takes is one misplaced pebble on the rails and the express service to Charing Cross could skip its usual route and end up embedded in my boxroom. If I was a father, I wouldn’t want to bring my daughter up in a situation where she could be bisected in her sleep by an unintended metal visitor through her ceiling. It can and does happen, not just in Weatherfield but also in the real world – see the recent case of a couple’s rented home in Utah being crashed by a loosened-by-nature boulder; the husband wasn’t at home at the time, but the wife was injured, and the couple have decided not to return to the premises, which is maybe wise given the risk posed by further rockfall in our rapidly-changing environment.

Something that always gets me down, though, as you’ll know if you’ve read my prior posts on the subject, is when young life gets snuffed out before its time. And, sadly, there have been several cases of this in the last few weeks. We’ve seen the shocking case of the eight-year-old sickle-cell anaemia sufferer being shot dead while on a family holiday to Jamaica, her school having sanctioned an extended trip to the sun on the grounds that such a stay in the sun could be beneficial to her health; in fact, it transpired returning to the island was a great mistake, as the innocent girl was apparently targeted by a gunman with a grudge. Back here in the UK it’s no safer, as a criminal contributed to the untimely passing of a teenager not involved in his lawlessness: just over the way in New Cross, a car being pursued by police slammed into an otherwise-unconnected family vehicle, killing the 13-year-old girl in the back seat. There is some correlation here with the death of the pedestrian slain in the Vauxhall copter disaster – someone going about their innocent journey being taken from us through no fault of their own by the thoughtless actions of another, and whilst the Vauxhall pilot took his error to his own grave, let’s hope the old bill absolutely throw the book at the little scrote whose reckless, out-of-control, self-preserving danger-driving has robbed us of someone who would presumably have gone on to be far more valuable to society than he. The recent snow and ice, as with previous cold snaps, also unnecessarily claimed several lives. Finally, I should update you on the situation of someone who’s been mentioned here several times before, the much-admired Cumbrian teen Alice Pyne. However, it’s not good news. Sweet young Alice has sadly lost her lengthy battle with leukemia. Whilst her passing was not a sudden, unexpected shock, given she was terminally ill and thus we all knew this day would ultimately come, it is still sad to see someone noted for her strength, warmth, bravery and good spirit lose the battle. The lovely Alice did a lot of good in her short time with us, raising awareness of the plight of kids and teens struggling with life-limiting conditions, and ultimately setting up her own charity, Alice’s Escapes, aiming to provide fun trips for families with sick children. Let’s hope the charity can continue to be strong and successful, and deliver on Alice’s legacy, to make more people happy in the way she set out to. Alice’s case also encouraged people to sign up to the bone marrow register, something she was particularly keen to see. So her life was, despite her condition, a success which could have positive repercussions for others for years to come. She certainly did more for society in her 17-and-a-bit years than I’ve done in my near-31, which is sobering. The way I’ll remember Alice, as it goes, is most likely the smiling, happy girl who took the stage at the Pride of Britain Awards, and beamed from ear to ear when she was presented with a gong by her favourite pop star, Robbie Williams. It was a lovely moment, and it was wonderful to see someone so kind and sweet being celebrated and respected. There will always be love for you here, beautiful Alice. Rest easy.

It’s also good to see Alice influence other young ladies in difficult situations to stand up and be counted: eighteen-year-old Hannah Booth also punted a bucket-list onto the internet, and much like Alice’s list beforehand, this grid of wishes took root online, and has even been given publicity by digital radio station The Hits, based in Hannah’s native Manchester, with the station able to pull strings to get some of her dreams realised, including a trip to Italy (good choice, girl!) and a meeting with X Factor cheeky-chops Olly Murs, though obviously as The Hits is a commercial enterprise it’s likely the motive here is not completeley altruistic but also brand-positive, as offering the hand of help will also, one presumes, get The Hits a fairly positive writeup. Thing of note: The Hits is run by Bauer, the same multi-skulled media empire that farts out the Flanagan-friendly FHM so violently derided earlier in this mailout. Another Hannah whose plight has barrelled onto my radar in the recent weeks since I last did one of this, is US television presenter Hannah Storm. The ESPN and ABC (they’re both Disney-owned) anchormanwoman suffered severe burns at the rear-end of December when a cooking grill in her home garden exploded, causing injuries to her face and arms. However, the Storm was made of strong stuff, and sitting sobbing in recuperation was not her bag: just a few weeks after being burned, ever-professional Hannah was back on Yank telly, her toasted arm still in bandage and with the aid of hair extensions to sit-in for her scorched-off locks, and her return to TV was widely cheered. Hannah’s clearly keen to rebuild her life and not let her injury hold her back any more than is medically necessary, so let’s hold hope that her dedication and professionalism continues to serve her well and her TV career continues to shine. One thing that did strike me on hearing of Ms Storm’s incident was the realisation that, given American TV stations now seem content to pinch ideas off our Channel 4 and remake them rather than come up with their own ideas – everything from Skins, Shameless and the Inbetweeners to Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and One Born Every Minute has been purloined across the pond – could we get an American remake of Katie Piper’s 2011 series? Katie’s show, where she visited Brits with life-changing injuries and medical conditions, has screened in the States, on OWN (the station recently graced by the disgraced Lance Armstrong for a much-discussed interview with Oprah herself) and there are presumably people in the US who have similarly touching tales they’d like the opportunity to relate to a kind ear. Essentially, one wonders if another format will cross the water such that we get ‘Hannah: My Beautiful Friends’ or somesuch. I’d watch the heck out of that if it fetched up over here – I loved Katie’s shows, and as I’ve said many times it’s always good to see decent, honest people being celebrated. Incidentally, our very own Katie has been working on a new documentary, which will lodge itself on Channel 4 shortly, and it’ll be one of the last times you see her with dark hair: the excellent lass has returned to the world of blonde after a time in the brunette camp. So some changes can be reversed after all, it seems! And you’ll know by now I find blonde women attractive, from Pixie Lott to Mollie King of the Saturdays, and from Ellie Goulding to Sarah of Undateables, so this is one reverse I can react to positively!

Whilst I’m not planning on going blonde, I do have to make changes in 2013. As denoted at excessive length above, my health needs improvement, as just right now it’s only really getting worse. Not only is it physically and mentally uncomfortable to be me right now, the internal and external decay is becoming ever more unavoidable and noticeable, and it’d certainly have a negative bearing on any subsequent attempt I make at dating; it’s likely to have an impact on my job success too, as if I keep turning up for interviews looking, sounding and smelling like the decrepit pusblob I am, the employer will be keen to send me flying out the door empty handed as rapidly as possible. I’m not an attractive man in present form, and my luck won’t improve unless serious rebuilding is undertaken. However, so much has gone wrong that I simply don’t know where to start – and on my tiny budget I’ve not got the confidence I could afford the massive amounts of surgery I need unless some billionaire benefactor steps in to back me. And given the likes of Comet, HMV and Jessops struggled to find backers, it’ll be a lengthy hunt to find someone endowed enough to support my needs. I also need to improve myself culturally and take more risks – read more books, listen to more radio (Adam & Edith shows on 6Music at the tail-end of 2012 helped draw me back in, and introduced me to Haim among others) and, should I happen to find myself with free time sufficient to do so, I would like to see myself tuning into any radio stations which remain broadcasting in the UK in 2013. Sadly, we’re likely to see the back of Real Radio this year when it’s absorbed into Heart – having had access at various times and via various devices to both Real and Heart at various points (though Heart is the more commonly-heard due to its permanent London FM/DAB berth and Freeview/satellite carriage, whilst Real, whilst available on satellite, was only briefly on DAB in the capital, immediately following the closure of Century), I’ve found myself preferring the wider range of ‘variety hits’ pulled out of the box by Real, which appears to have a wider range of genres and eras at its disposal than Heart (Real playing a quite wide mix of pop, rock and rhythmic music stretching from the 70s to today, whilst Heart has a narrower ‘hot AC’ playlist, in part because much of the network now operates on stations originally licenced as local contemporary-hits services). Still, it could be worse – had the Beeb got its own way a few years back, the space devoted to the lustrous 6Music would today be vacant, but thankfully those who fought to save it – including me – stood up for what we believe in.

At this time of year, with the new year only just finding its feet, it sometimes becomes too easy to look back, and I think starting 2013 the same way I started 2012 – dipping heavily into retro TV and music, and spending much of the first quarter rooted in the past – would be a mistake. That said, it’s good to look back over where we’ve come from, the CITV oldskool weekend was a nice nostalgic trip back to remind me of the person I used to be before reality went sour, and when I spotted the legendary 80s film Mannequin, on Channel 5 of all places, one Sunday, I tuned in and wallowed in a couple hours of a true classic, and it left me in a lifted, happy mood. (And yes, I have Mannequin on VHS, but can’t watch it that way just now ‘cos of my busted bedroom telly, which like the rancid stopgap phone has yet to be replaced.) Indeed, it was later that evening, whilst still on a post-Mannequin buzz, that a very sluggish perusal of the BBC’s mobile site informed me of the passing of Alice Pyne; however, given as I was minded at this point to look back fondly on past gloriousness, that evening I was not morose, instead recalling the happy and bright young lass as seen on the POBAs, whose light shone brightly and who contributed so much to this world. So sometimes a dip into the past, either distant or recent, can bring back glorious memories. And indeed, sometimes past wrongs can be righted many years later: a handbag stolen back in 2006 by one of the grubby, opportunistic thieves that make up a too-sizeable portion of the UK population, was recently recovered, with most contents and cash intact, when a bush yards from the rightful owner’s home was pruned back – it seems the thief had grabbed the first thing of value spotted in the sac – £20 in the cash purse – and flung the rest of the purloined material into the hedge to make an escape; freed from its captor and protected from the elements by the foliage, the bag simply sat pat for six-and-a-bit years awaiting its collection. So, it would seem, sometimes, when we think all is lost, what we actually have to do is look in the right place. Good advice for someone like me, who really can’t remember how many things he’s forgotten in the rush to get through the day. Maybe if I’m patient, the good things I seek will come my way. Of course, I can’t rest on my laurels completely, what with various individuals and organisations breathing down my neck, barking their demands that I hurry up and become a man, but perhaps if I take time to put my mind in order there’ll be less agony and more cheerfulness in my life. Which could make this blog an easier read, too. I do want to make this thing more enjoyable for you, given you’ve made the friendly, kind commitment to read it. Thanks for putting up with the current format, though: it gives me the opportunity to share my thoughts, feelings and opinions, even those which contradict each other; it helps give me mental peace as it lets me put my thoughts in order and release some of the pressure that builds up in my life on a daily basis; and it gives me the opportunity to tip the hat to the people, concepts and objects that are actually doing a bit of good for the world. And I can personally guarantee that it has spent less than twenty minutes resting on an astronaut’s penis.

“Tonight, we nail that little fartblossom!” (Goodbye!)

“Well, everyone, prepare to get your guts kicked out by folk singers…” (Hello!)

Green! Wow! Cool! So, you’re probably right busy just now, giftwrapping the turkey and removing the giblets from the tree and all that, but I’m sure you’ve got a spare five minutes/hours/days in your holiday period to let me belch out one more package of text-based ineptitude. This being thankfully my last big noise of the year of the year 2012, I’ll take the opportunity to get even more reflexive than usual by doing what appears to be a review of the past months gone by, picking back over my previous blandish radiocasts to upend my thoughtbox and see if anything relevant to history falls out, and if so in what order. And remember, if you’re turned off, turn off!

I do appear to have been stuck in some sort of juddering loop this year. I’m in much the same position, if not worse off, now than I was at the end of last year. And I’ve been whining about my lack of forward motion quite a lot – though the amount of time and effort I’ve put into jobhunting has thankfully meant these starchy bleats have only appeared about once a month, and my use of Twitter has declined to almost nil thanks to the ropey browser on my second-rate stand-in of a phone. I’ve genuinely tried to better myself and move forward, and my continued rut-sludge has become increasingly frustrating and fractious: I’ve had to build in breaks to my jobsearch to allow me time to recover from the shakes, setbacks and struggles which have become increasingly likely in the way I live. I haven’t really been able to move on and frustratingly it’s not entirely my fault – I’m doing the forms and interviews as set out by the employers, but when it comes to time to make their choice, the employer is often passing me over in favour of taking other action – which in one memorable case this year was to go into administration days after I applied to work there! Aside from the work worry, I’ve also been taking on more duties at home, and have as a result had to spend practically every other day rushing around a large supermarket, a requirement which, when combined with my jobhunt requirements, has meant that I haven’t had any time for relaxation or fun this year: the fact that my sole holiday trip of the year was a couple hours in a Stratford shopping mall suggests I need to treat myself more nicely in 2013. I have been rushing around in a stressed panic to such an extent that I barely know which way is up; I haven’t had time to stop and smell the flowers – literally; one of my many regrets this year was my wrongheaded response to a friend’s kind and polite gesture on my birthday, way back in March, to send me a bunch (if that is the word) of beautiful cut flowers. I became so obsessed with caring for the bouquet that I spent large swathes of their glory days rushing around various local homeware stores buying plant-related gubbins in order to try and nurture them, not realising that I was missing their brightness and beauty by being out of the room. During the period of silly panic I did look up Wikipedia information on cut flowers in a rushed attempt to find out how to look after the poor blooms, and realised with tears in my eyes what sort of limited shelf life flowers enjoy after being separated from the main plant. I did, once I knew how to, try to tend to my beloved gift, and they ultimately had, for cut flowers at least, a fairly good innings; I wish I could manage my own decline in such a caring way!

Elsewhere, many of my posts here in 2012 featured repeated and recurring worries, fears, obsessions and triggers, that kept bouncing up onto these pages – though sometimes my treatment of these individuals or concepts would pendulum from positive to negative, or vice versa, or even back and forth, based on my thoughts, feelings and opinions at the time, and often abetted by media coverage. Shouting at (or, more accurately, about) the telly has long been an obsession here, and maybe if there’d been more good stuff to watch, in what was a pretty shoddy TV year outside of sports events, I would’ve had more opportunity to be entertained rather than annoyed. Aside from that, for some reason I suddenly got stuck into a loop of waffling on about Woolwich for no apparent reason, having plucked the town from my memory, seemingly at random, having at the time not been there for a long while (I have since returned, though the new Tesco is big enough to give me the supermarket shakes!) I’ve also had to dodge the media nonsense flung at me by the ever-grabby and grubby media. I have realised one potential reason why I’ve allowed showbizzy nonsense to intrude too far into my life, and the penny dropped when Ceefax bit the worm recently with digital switchover. Back in the day, or in the late 90s and 00s period between getting a teletext telly at home and the services stopping, in any case, I used to start my day, whilst getting ready for school/college/convincing myself life is worth living, by reading the intelligent music and games journalism delivered into my home at the touch of a few buttons by the likes of Planet Sound and Digitiser. However, I no longer have this available to me, and whilst having the mobile web essentially brings Ceefax-style push-button access to a cut-down version of the news, my clanky current phone can’t work many sites, and one of the few which does function is hateful showbiz tripesite Digital Spy. There isn’t a WAP equivalent of Planet Sound, unless Drowned In Sound or NME or someone starts doing some kind of quick-access, stripped-down, daily-digest news-site, and the mix of news, analysis, opinion, criticism, pig-based insults, snake raps, Inspector Morse jokes and references to Mr T’s bins that the now-a-decade-gone Digitiser once provided isn’t, as far as I can see, replicated anywhere. I did enjoy Digi’s mix of information and entertainment in my youth, much as I enjoyed the similar mix of proper pop DJ links and comedy skits proffered by Mark and Lard on Radio 1 around the same time; now, instead of being informed and entertained by my media choice, I have to put up with what I’m fed, which is increasingly a breathless bellowing of massmedia nonsense about celebby transients who matter little in the grand scheme of things when you really think about it. Still, at least Paul “Mr Biffo” Rose is still, much like I am now, sat around writing, now penning the actually-good CBBC sitcom Dani’s House, something else which has had more mentions than merited on this mauve page, and which stars the genuinely-gorgeous Strictly finalist and former Tracy Beaker star Dani Harmer. And I’d much rather read about Harmer’s exploits than some of the stars who’ve been foisted down our throat this year.

Rihanna, for instance, has barely been out of the media spotlight all year, as her continuous heavy-rotation presence in the spotlight really began to grate – it got to the point where you couldn’t open your eyes and/or ears without having that still-very-young Barbadian barraged towards you, either through one of her overplayed music videos (Chart Show TV’s three-hour all-RiRi marathon being the thud at the bottom of that particular barrel, a slot scheduled to please advertisers, onanists and chavvy teens – in that order – but with no recourse to the feelings of actual music fans) or through her constant hovering around the gossip pages thanks to her much-gabbed-about (even on here) on-or-off love connection with Chris ‘Punchy’ Brown or her increasingly-racy photoshoots and self-shots which always get the grubby media salivating, and contribute to the overall air of tackiness and tawdriness that surrounds it all. You didn’t see the pop stars of the 90s behaving this sleazily, at least not in public (though as we discovered this year, the celebs of the 70s were into acting the dirty way, they just chose to do it behind the studio doors.) Maybe this is just a sign of how desensitized and sexualised we’ve become in the internet age; see also the inescapable Kardashians, whose dominance of TV and, oddly, the Daily Mail website (despite barely meriting a mention in the printed paper) is driven by the sisters’ presence in the world of fashion and pop culture, despite (or perhaps because of) Kim’s rise to internet fame when a raunchy video of her bedroom activities with R&B swordsman Ray-J (brother, should it matter, of fellow singer Brandy) appeared on t’web. I’m not certain that sort of behaviour should be celebrated, but then I grew up in an age when the likes of Ceefax wouldn’t have had the bitrate for that sort of nonsense. That said, my comforting-women siren was set off briefly when curvy Kim revealed to the press, during one of her many appearances in the public media, that her partner Kanye West (she loves her music men, does Kim) wanted her to slim down and starve herself such that she would be skinnier. And that’s despite his famous interruption of the waiflike and beautiful Taylor Swift at an awards show several years back to effuse about the videowork of Beyonce Knowles, a lady, like Kim, famed for her badonkadonk, apparently! Anyway, I decided on this occasion to pause my bellows that 4Music should replace her shows with Vic & Bob/Adam & Joe reruns solely for my benefit, and instead took a moment to advise Kim not to let a man bully her and instead to be comfortable in her own body. Speaking of 4Music, there’s thankfully still no sign of Friday Night Project reruns on that gunky pink channel this festive season, perhaps wise given what Justin Lee Collins was convicted of this year, though shamefully at the time listings mags were printed Pick TV was still planning to fling on some Oops TV as a timefiller over the holidays. After widespread condemnation of his rumoured involvement, JLC was forced to issue a statement denying he would be taking part in the sadly-soon-to-return Celeb Big Brother, but those rumours were perhaps started by a Channel 5 desperate to find something for their golden-handcuffed Bristolian to do given all his past shows for the network have flopped horribly, and all his future shows hopefully will too. Nobody has a right to treat a lady the way Justin did.

Yes, I always say nice things about women, even the Kardashians when necessary, and this desire to protect a lady’s honour is perhaps why I’ve taken more interest than I should in the romantic machinations of the aforementioned Rihanna, perhaps in concern that not-entirely-a-mastermind Brown may again revert to his aggressive ways should they shack up again. Maybe it’s not my place to get involved: Ms. Fenty herself seems willing to let the past be the past and made reference to Biblical verse on forgiveness when challenged on the matter by those who can still send messages on Twitter. I also continued to show love this year for a certain Unnamed Woman I have been fond of for several years now, but whom in a self-imposed ban I have decided shall no longer be named by name on here simply in an attempt to avoid sounding obsessed and vulgar. This lady has been quite influential on my life this year – she has released two helpful, uplifting books, for instance – and is returning to Channel 4 with a new programme next year (though sadly there is no sign of any rerun of her prior shows over Christmas on TV, so it’s off to 4oD I must send you); however, it’s clear that this lady no longer needs me in her life – she has a boyfriend, a charity to run, and is planning to move on with her life and activities, regardless of whether I’m still clinging to her hull or not – when asked during a publisher-sponsored Q&A session on Twitter recently what her next big goal was, an apparently-broody Unnamed suggested it was to become a mother (though one feels maybe this is one of those things she should run past her boyfriend first, before declaring to the world online…) Indeed, the fact her Twitter page has switched from a personal conversation to the commercial property of her publisher suggests this lass is trying to move away from one-on-one communication and hide behind the corporate protection afforded to those who find themselves famous. No wonder I cannot talk to, or even mention, her anymore – we’re on different levels now, she heading for the bright lights and chandeliers, me still stuck in the same muddy gutter I’ve always been. I’ll never be a father – I don’t have the health, energy, wealth, responsibility, tolerance, patience, balance or girlfriend necessary to spawn progeny – and now I’ll probably also have to change the name I’d planned to give my never-to-be-born daughter, having previously planned to use Unnamed Woman’s surname as a first name (which, like in some other names such as that of actress Ms. Perabo, it can also be used as) for any girl propelled from my potential partner’s loins. But this year I also noted how even those stars younger than me were moving on with life at a faster pace than I: I noted that two of the five beautiful ladies who form The Saturdays were now married, with one now a mother and the second this year announcing a bun, only to have her thunder blown out the water soon after by another expectant mum (of whom more later).

I’ve devoted a with-hindsight-unlikely volume of this violet gabble to girl bands this year as it goes, and one notable example of a pop outfit over whom I’ve changed my own tune during the course of 2012 is the X Factor-generated all-girl combo Little Mix. Twelve months ago, whilst not myself a viewer of that music-crushing behemoth of a TV series, I had been burned quite badly mentally by the humungous volume of media hype and counterargument that had meant the show and the behaviour of its performers – and judges – had never been far from the top of the media agenda, and quite frankly I was almost literally ill because of it. Little Mix were one of the victims of my tiredness and sickness – amid all the hooha about their original name, Rhythmix if you don’t recall, being ‘stolen’ from a charity, I decided I despised these girls, seeing them as all that was wrong with the Cowell-dominated, money-first-society-second nature of media today, and deciding that their name woes – and their apparent demolition of Cannonball, a Damien Rice song I’d previously liked – meant I couldn’t like or support them. I started to lash out at them, and as a non-viewer this was before I’d even heard them sing a note! And I cheered the Christmas chart which saw the ‘Ball deposed by the astounding Military Wives. But over the subsequent months, somehow the foursome won me over. Maybe it was because, once Cannonball was out of the way and they started to do songs that had actually been written for them, they started to look and sound more like an actual pop group – never one that would challenge, say, British Sea Power or the Cooper Temple Clause for my affections, but a perfectly acceptable substitute for the now-long-in-the-tooth likes of Girls Aloud, the previous watermark for ladybands emergent from these kinds of telly show. Maybe my ice-heart towards LM was also melted by the fact that the girls have been open about their body worries – as I mentioned in the Kardashian-led paragraph above, I want to be the knight that explains to a lady she’s beautiful the way she is, and doesn’t need to change anything about herself. Jesy has become something of a hatred magnet online, with many foul endusers making unnecessary cruel taunts about her figure and appearance despite the fact that the lady herself actually has a perfectly acceptable and natural body; Jade also voiced concerns about herself, this time claiming that, compared to other girls – including Jesy, as it goes – her figure wasn’t curvy enough – again wrong, Jade’s in lovely shape, and the fact she’s often seen with purple hair elevated her quickly to the rank of my favourite Mixer. As it happens, since last I posted on the subject of Jade another member of the Mix has experimented with violet locks, and so if you thought the previously-blonde Perrie couldn’t become any more attractive (to me at least), it seems you were wrong – with lilac hair she’s more stunning than an entire busload of Pixie Lotts. With Jesy having also been spotted sporting a touch of mauve amid her hairs on occasion, only the also-gorgeous Leigh-Anne needs to pick up the dye (if she hasn’t already done so) and we could well have my ultimate pop dream – the first all-purple pop band! OK, so from above they’d look like a pile of Quality Street, but given that a year ago I wouldn’t have used Little Mix and the word ‘quality’ in the same sentence I think we can say for once I’ve moved on and improved.

Conversely, over the years my opinion of Little Mix’s XF mentor Tulisa has worsened. I mentioned recently how I’d been looking back over some of my 2006-10 posts from my old blog in an attempt to potentially make them available on here somehow, and something which appeared among the noise thereon was a kind of radar-tracking of the rise of urban-grime trio N-Dubz, who during my earlier period of bloggage rose from a tinny little local concern to proper big actual stars, and I commented on how good it was to see an original British act pulling themselves up from street level rather than being dumped into sudden fame by some kind of telly show. But fame changed the three: Dappy’s litany of vile behaviour is well-documented, and the grotty Tulisa – a woman I once, perhaps wrongly, described as ‘talented and attractive’ on the old blog – has devoured the trappings of fame (among other things), appearing as judge on that hellish pop-reality chod The X Factor (seemingly in a bid to pull in young, urban viewers and ensure the output of the contestants matches the moronic noise that’s in the charts), popping up online alongside her then-partner (or part of) in a filmed-some-years-prior video giving headline-writers something to crow about, and getting involved in all manner of media spats – even with her now-former fellow N-Dubbers – all of which has meant that Miss T has never been more than a moment away from the media circus, and has, rather ironically, somewhat been rammed down our national throat this year. And to cap it all her sextape costar has, like JLC, been approached by the too-scummy-for-words Channel 5 to appear in Celeb Big Brother (though in this case Tulisa’s lawyers pointed out he’d been banned from going on reality telly under the terms of his legal settlement with the singer.) It’s been really gruelling to see someone I used to admire riding roughshod over my previously-positive image of her, but them’s the breaks – and as a self-confessed indieboy, I gambled on a brief flirtation with the urban scene and lost bad, so perhaps it’s partly my fault for ever liking her in the first place. Maybe I should stop feeling so sorry for myself and instead look for new heroes, but they’re in pretty short supply in a music and media world dominated by the Drake/Rihanna/Chris Brown triangle and the X Factor mediachoke. As I’ve said frequently I don’t watch X Factor, but feel pressured to keep up with what’s going on because of the dominance these folks have in the muso-media spectrum. I don’t particularly like banging on about XF here, as it goes, but at this end of the year Cowell and his footsoldiers make it their business to ensure the public have little else on their mind. X Factor people have wormed their way into my life with increasing and potentially alarming intensity – the moment that spooked me the most and had me asking myself all sorts of questions was the day when, on scanning through the magazine section of a shop, I spotted a blonde singer on the front of some teen mag and, unthinkingly, thought to myself, as I addressed each mag cover in turn ‘…and that’s Amelia Lily…’, before halting myself to question (a) whether I’d actually got that right in the first place – a closer inspection of the mag’s coverlines confirmed this – and (b) how I’d managed, as a non-X Factor viewer, to spot the lass so effortlessly without prior prompting. Amelia – who, along with Karen Gillan’s now-former Doctor Who partner Ms. Pond, has been credited with a revival of interest in the name – has this year begun to release her own pop records, in her case with a dance twist, and looks like giving Pixie Lott and the like a run for their (well, technically our) money.

It’s been a fairly strong year for X Factor people, as it goes – JLS have continued their strong run of success in the crowded boyband market, and one of them is, as mentioned above, now hitched to one of the Saturdays in what must have been the teen-pop wedding of the year. Misha B – slammed during her series as a bully in tabloid hate-stories I’m ashamed to say I swallowed wholesale – has unleashed her own tunes, and they’ve shown quite a range, from the dubby, clubby ‘Homerun’ to the soaring, soulful ‘Do You Think of Me?’, suggesting she may over her career proffer a similar musical spread to the late Whitney Houston, one of the notable stars we lost in 2012, and whose credits also ran from the funky (‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’) to the ballad (‘I Will Always Love You’). Olly Murs has absolutely nailed the cheeky-chappy persona down to a T, and has been the star of several of the more entertaining music videos of recent times (my personal favourite of those available being the pelting-through-a-shopping-mall-in-pursuit-of-random-babe film for ‘Oh My Goodness’ – tip: videos with a Segway in will always score extra points), clips which hark back to the days of the Chart Show when pop acts put a bit of effort into their films rather than just going the route of most artists today, simply shouting in a modified car while girls in bikinis prance about aimlessly. Speaking of videos, Jedward, previously dismissed as a joke act, pulled out an unlikely ace with ‘Luminous’, a proper actual club banger (which the twins described themselves as an attempt to be a bit David Guetta, perhaps wise when the French DJ has lodged himself a near-permanent residence at the upper end of the chart) accompanied by an arty, hi-tech video the likes of Empire of the Sun or Friendly Fires wouldn’t be too ashamed of. (I should point out I was into Guetta’s sound decades before it became cool to be – I bought, on CD which tells you how long ago this was, the original, pre-The Egg version of ‘Love Don’t Let Me Go’, which means I am actually cooler than today’s teenagers!) Elsewhere, Marcus Collins brought out a cover of the White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’ which has actually been mentioned on here before – I mentioned how the completely-different-to-the-original production, with Ronson-style synth horns, gave a totally different take on the tune from what had gone before, and mentioned that I actually like covers which put a different spin on a song, be it A Day To Remember’s punked-up resing of Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Since U Been Gone’ or Scala and Kolacny Bros.’ choral workovers of, amongst others, Foo Fighters’ ‘Everlong’. I even recalled buying Eliza Lumley’s album of Radiohead covers back when a dying Zavvi was flogging off whatever it had left. And right at the end of the year, sometime Gorillaz sparring-partner Daley (from off of ‘Doncamatic’, if you’re struggling) teamed up with Jessie J for a rather unique take on The Blueboy’s rave classic ‘Remember Me’. Yes, ‘geng-geng-g-geng’ bits and all. And yes, as male viewers will note, the non-Buxton-partnering J. Cornish (as was) looks ruddy mint in the video, if we must dwell on looks (and the media insists we must, even though I’m certainly not one of those fools who’s all about the b-bling-b-bling), to the shameful extent that, on first viewing of the clip, I didn’t actually recognise her until her name popped onto the infobar at the end of the vid.

And then there’s the seemingly-unstoppable One Direction, storming the charts not only here but also in the US, soaring like a knife through butter in a market where many British artists, including much more ‘serious’ acts, have failed to take flight, and securing themselves star-name girlfriends much to their teen fanbase’s consternation, one lucky 1D sod dating the now-lilac-barnetted Perrie of Little Mix, and supposed swordsman Harry siring seemingly an array of ladies, apparently including Xtra Factor host Caroline Flack, before setting his sights on young and rather pretty US country-pop belle Taylor Swift. Jammy git. Anyhow, it’s too early really to tell whether any of this year’s crop will go on to international hugeness, though apparently-oily Katie Price-inspired Rylan Clark seems keen to cling on to fame and become a ‘brand’ in his own right, which means he should be particularly tough to avoid in the coming months; after surviving the vote by the skin of his teeth in controversial circumstances during the show’s first week, Rylan subsequently secured enough support from the public to keep him buoyant for several more weeks, causing much consternation when apparently-more-polished performers were being scooped out of the contest whilst Clark survived. Meanwhile, the apparently Cowell-despised Christopher Maloney stormed the public vote for seven consecutive weeks, before ultimately being unseated by eventual victor James Arthur (who for some reason has been coerced into singing an R&B track by a non-Rihanna Barbadian chanteuse as his first single, though admittedly that’s no odder than Little Mix doing ‘Cannonball’…) However, Maloney’s apparently been given the chop from the XF tour after supposedly disgraceful behaviour toward Rylan’s first-week victim Carolynne Poole. How much of what was reported was fact and how much was bad blood it’s impossible to tell, but crooner Maloney’s successful run is apparently a sign that XF, having earlier focused on the young pop audience, has recently been viewed mainly by older viewers, a move assisted both by young people moving on to other media and X Factor itself shifting to a later slot to avoid clashing with Strictly Come Dancing. The move away from clashes has benefitted Strictly more than it has XF – now people can watch both, Strictly’s figures have improved, whilst X Factor’s have fallen over the years, a major embarrasment for the once-swaggering Cowell machine; this has perhaps spurred Cowell on to plan a back-to-basics relaunch for the show, which could include changes to the judging panel or to the format of the show. One thing that’s definite is that in the run-up to the relaunch, the tabloids and gossip websites will be packed almost daily with a ‘will (name) leave?/will (name) be back?’ conjecture that’s likely to become very tiresome. But the noise won’t stop – Cowell loves it when his shows are in the papers, even when it’s bad news – as it keeps the X Factor brand’s media dominance alive. Maybe I need to accept that the sort of entertaining media I like is never coming back – urban grime, showbizzy slime and the Cowell mafia have the mass-media sewn up almost to the total exclusion of any other voices, and I have to accept this is the way things are now. 4Music isn’t for the Adam & Joe/Mark Radcliffe/Digitiser-idolising likes of me, it’s for the modern teens whose tastes stretch from One Direction to the Kardashians, and if I don’t approve of that angle there’s little to nothing I can do. I could, of course, continue to support the few alternative options which remain available *cough*6 Music*cough* but I guess I’ll just have to get used to being on the cultural backfoot.

One thing this year that may well change what’s printed in the papers and mags in future was the Leveson Inquiry. Set up in the wake of the 2011 fallout from the News of the World hacking scandal, this year saw the first stage of the probe concluding with the publication of Lord Justice Leveson’s leviathan of a report into the culture and ethics (or, increasingly, lack of ethics) of the press. I won’t reprint the entire wodge here – most of the news sites have done fairly concise summaries of what emerged – but it was corroboration that the press, or elements thereof at very least, have engaged in avaricious pursuit of scandalous and salacious stories, often at the expense of decency, dignity and occasionally the law, in an attempt to keep pace with online rivals who have eaten away much of the traditional straight-ahead news market. The reckless behaviour of those in the media is no real surprise – anyone with more than an ounce of nous would have been able to figure out themselves that what the press-pack were up to didn’t always sit right – but the question now is how do we fix this? There’s ongoing debate in politics and the press over the future of media regulation, a discussion which will spill over into the other side of the Christmas recess, and there is still contention over whether, as posited by Leveson, new legislation is wanted or needed to provide a statutory spine to the will-be-protected-either-way freedom of the press (paper barons and PM Cameron don’t want legal underpinning for the new regulator, whilst other MP’s call for Leveson’s request to be implemented in full.) The fact is: the press have failed in their duty and misused their existing freedom. Whilst the media should never be under the thumb of those in power, and should be able to hold public and political figures to account, the media as currently constituted has played fast and loose and the chain needs to be yanked back. We need to protect the freedom of genuine, quality journalism, but what if that also means allowing freedom for the gutter tripe who base their presses on the showbiz trash and often resort to dirty snoopery? It’s a really tough call to make – we need to stamp out the slimy, scummy behaviour which has soiled the name of the British press, but how do we do that without curbing proper journalistic investigation at the same time? One organisation which was little tainted by Leveson but which has had its own scandal to cope with was, of course, the venerable and yet also vulnerable BBC. Whilst their Olympic coverage was more well-recieved than much of the pre-transmission mithering would have had you believe, there were several more bulletholes made in the increasingly-fragile body of what was once our national broadcaster. The weather-hampered, error-strewn, Fearne Cotton-assisted coverage of the Jubilee undid much of the good work the Beeb had done in its coverage of 2011’s Royal Wedding – the disjointed attempt to appeal to the very young and old alike by hybrid inclusion of everything from boat pageant to Horrible Histories skits (well, skit – the Beeb was slammed for dumping several sketches by the well-regarded stars when the running order went to pot) and sick-bag reviews didn’t come off well, with viewers furious at the tone and manner of the coverage, which was given an unexpectedly grim pall by the grey rainclouds which, whilst not physically the Beeb’s fault or something they could fix, dominated the coverage.

But worse was to come at the end of the year when it emerged that some of the Beeb’s stars back in the 60s, 70s and 80s may not have had the noblest of intentions, and may well have been abusing their position to feather their own grimy nest with the crushed dreams of the young people they apparently molested during the course of their career. I was not involved in any of this – indeed much of it occurred before I was born – and I don’t condone this, but, unaware of what was happening behind the scenes, I supported these monsters’ careers, blithely watching Top of the Pops, Jim’ll Fix It and the like and just assuming at the time that these were simple light entertainment shows, not knowing what was going on once the closing credits had clattered down and the cameras been powered off. And the BBC’s news department was quite non-John craven about the whole situation throughout its history, refusing to blow the whistle on one of their own, and whilst those who worked with Savile during his Beeb tenure had inklings as to his dark majesty – Radio 1 then-head Derek Chinnery probing briefly the gossip around Savile back in the 70s, and taking as gospel the DJ’s denials given the lack of hard proof – the true extent of Jim’s urges didn’t start emerging from the woodpile until an ITV documentary in autumn 2012 finally gave voice to those whose whistleblowing was silenced by Newsnight. The recently-completed review into the whole mess found that, whilst there was no truth to the oft-held suspicion that entertainment heads got News to quash the story to protect warm tributes to Savile aired last Christmas (and which, shamefully, I watched), a lack of effective communication within the BBC and a degree of animosity and silo mentality between departments and individuals, coupled with the complex reporting-up and management structure of the unwieldy Beeb, led to a large-scale confusion among staff, confusion which only got worse when, with many senior people stood aside or in acting or dual positions amid the Savile fallout, a Newsnight keen to rebuild its own reputation broadcast a report which, whilst not directly naming the individual, implicated a senior political figure in historic abuse, only to subsequently find that the report was built on a years-old error – the victim had been mistakenly told by police that this peer was the abuser, and had then given this information to the reporter, with the identity of the attacker not double-checked before the allegations were broadcast. The already back-pedalling Beeb, whose new boss George Entwistle had barely got his feet under the Director-General’s desk, was forced into further convulsions and Entwistle was self-elbowed, with a controversially-high payoff, less than two months after arrival in the big chair. This mess did lead to questions about the future of the BBC and whilst my fearful, height-of-the-crisis suggestion a couple months ago that the whole edifice could collapse and be broken down appears, for now, to be unfounded, there will certainly be further timidity at the already-weakened Beeb which still has skeletons in its closet – a report into the culture of the Beeb in the Savile years is set to ‘drop’ in the new year, and may well unearth further political landmines in the floor of the soon-to-be-vacated TV Centre.

Whilst the BBC itself is, at time of writing at least, still going, some parts of the corporation have been sent to Coventry – something innovative and rarely harmful that came out of the 70s, the blocky-but-beautiful Ceefax, left us this year, departing with the digital switchover (leaving my London-area transmitter in April and killed off altogether when Northern Ireland completed the switch-off map in October) and BBC One will no longer be going after kids – no, that’s not a Savile gag, I mean programmes made for children will no longer be part of the main channels and will instead be exiled to the digital CBBC and CBeebies channels now that, with digital platforms live, anyone who can get BBC One can also get the kids’ channels, which allow more flexibility as to scheduling than a block wedged into a general-audience channel can, and broadcast in dedicated, identified kid-friendly walled-gardens of the onscreen channel guide, where the shows for young’uns don’t need to butt against shows which may be less suitable. BBC One will still air shows aimed at families, but the death of CBBC on BBC One – six years after ITV1 killed off weekday CITV in favour of their own cheap digital channel – ends something that TV had been providing since back when I was a lad; I grew up in the 80s and 90s and this was a boom era for kids’ TV – prior to this, according to websites I’ve seen, kids’ shows existed (Blue Peter, Newsround, Magpie, Rainbow, Play School et al) but were often just wedged into regular schedules with no real thought to any dedicated presentation. That changed in the mid-80s when ITV decided to introduce networked specialised presentation links as Children’s ITV, followed in short order by the Beeb shipping Phillip Schofield into a continuity studio to marshall the similarly-skewed Children’s BBC service. Over the years, the studio facilities and presenters accorded to each service changed and evolved – sometimes reducing (in CITV’s case cutting back to voice-links only for a time in the 90s), sometimes expanding (CBBC gaining its own fiefdom in the hallowed Studio 9 on the roof of TVC around 1997, and also gaining a BBC Two breakfast berth) – but the core idea of providing a range of material for kids, from drama and comedy to fun and games, and from animation to factual features – continued to thrive as generations of kids came home from school to enjoy a couple hours of made-for-them entertainment ahead of homework, dinnertime, primetime family telly, and then bed. The fact that the vast majority of schooldays were just that is the reason I can’t write an autobiography, there just wasn’t enough variation in my activity! But that was the media world we lived in in the years before the internet and digital media meant we could watch, within reason, whatever we want whenever we want to – now, if you want to watch kids’ TV at midnight or intense sexually-explicit drama at 3pm, you can, you slimeball, thanks to iPlayer, YouTube and digital channels. People just don’t have the same experience growing up today as we did when I was young, which is why in 20 years’ time there won’t be sites like TV Cream – there won’t be enough people with shared collective memories, as we today live in an age where we can have whatever our heart desires on tap, and fie to the schedulers. That said, the TV companies love slapping themselves on the back, and ITV is celebrating 30 years since CITV in its block-on-ITV1 form was introduced with a special documentary over the New Year and a weekend of retro shows, many of which I remember from my CITV-watching years, in early January. Puddle Lane, based on the books I loved in my tothood! The Raggy Dolls, which taught us about acceptance and tolerance decades before Unnamed Woman embarked on her …Beautiful Friends series! Spatz, for burger-flippers’ sake! This is gonna get CITV Channel its best ratings in years! Even I’m gonna watch the bugger! It’s just a shame that outside of anniversary time ITV seems content to sit on its archive and just roll out Horrid Henry on a loop – some kind of ‘CITV Classics’ strand on the regular schedule could get kids watching with their parents as both enjoy the shows – parent from their own youth, kid being introduced to the show anew – and that kind of shared experience is gold-dust in our ghettoized, suit-the-individual culture.

Away from the TV screen, as I have been since my bedroom telly blew out after 16 years, there has been little good cheer in 2012, as you’ll know if you’ve bothered to read my halting treaties on news events, heavily weighted towards death and disaster, within my wider whine-posts. If some poor soul’s life is devastated enough for their calamity to feature in the newsmedia, there’s a chance that it’ll fetch up in my field of vision and contribute to my unbearable heartache. This year, one common theme which has recurred and devastated many parts of Britain is the destruction wreaked by the weather. It’s been a wet year, as anyone who bothered to watch the Jubilee coverage will not need reminding, and in both summer and winter we’ve had reports from right across the country of homes and businesses being washed away (sometimes quite literally) by rushing water as sodden rivers burst their banks. Mere weeks after Thames Water launched a marketing campaign urging London scum to watch how much water they used, some higher power decided to foist upon Britain more of the wet stuff than we’d ever need. Crops were reduced to slush, leaving less-than-perfect pickings for the supermarkets that have driven so many stores out of business, families were left wringing out the remains as a lifetime of memories sank into the sludge, and the gush seemingly didn’t stop, Cornwall basically being washed away this very week, meaning many people’s Christmas celebrations have, perhaps literally, been washed out of the window. I’m always uncertain what to do in these sort of situations – I don’t have the power or money to be of any practical help to the disadvantaged, a claim I have made repeatedly on this and the earlier blog since 2006. So instead I sit helplessly by and weep as I watch Britain drown, crippled both by worry for those afflicted and rage at my own inadequacy. Mind you, those who do have money and power haven’t always got a blemish-free record: this year the likes of Starbucks, Google, Vodafone and Amazon among others were slammed for their tax payments (or lack of), amid suggestions that if these firms paid up properly, the Tories’ scything cuts to public budgets could have been lower. Starbucks in particular were being crafty, slipping UK income to international subsidiaries such that its Brit operations were technically lossmaking and therefore subject to a lesser tax burden. Indeed, many of the firms implicated in the scandal have the benefit of international operation – the mostly US-owned (Vodafone is European) companies can pool incomes and shuttle balances around the globe to land in whichever domicile gives them the best chance of keeping profits in their back pocket and away from the grab of the taxman. This is perhaps how Amazon has been able to offer such low prices on CDs and drive the likes of Zavvi, MVC, Music Zone, Fopp and nearly HMV out of business, pulling CDs and to an extent DVDs off the high street pretty much altogether. I must again admit some TOTP-like guilt in this program: I have bought from Amazon before, again mostly on cost ground – my copies of all three of Unnamed Woman’s books came through the post from the ‘Zon rather than book-in-hand from a Waterstones pretty much purely for the discount I could get on an early preorder. I won’t be spending much time in Starbucks, though – I’m not the biggest fan of coffee, and for the price of one of their probably-needed-in-this-weather hot drinks, I can get an entire lunch from Boots! Some individuals’ tax arrangements also made the headlines this year, perhaps most prominently comic Jimmy Carr, though here at least he took the upbraiding in a classy way, taking his medicine on 8 out of 10 Cats and adding gags on the subject to his act. This ability to roll with the punches means Carr hasn’t been harmed too badly overall by the situation, and as he himself pointed out in Cats’ own end-of-year review, there’s a Jimmy off the telly who’s been found to have done much worse in his offscreen time…

With this being a jubilee year, you’d expect the Royal Family to have been in the headlines, but their coverage (or in some cases uncoverage) this year was even more deranged than could have been expected. Of course there was the furore over Harry’s naked antics in Vegas (Las, that is), and this perhaps illustrated how frustrated the mainstream media is by the explosion of unregulated online content, the Sun eventually breaking the unspoken embargo and printing the shots. No British papers printed the grubbily-grabbed long-lens shots of the Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing on holiday, but again the shots were widely circulated internationally and online, leading to much consternation around intrusion into the couple’s privacy and debate around how much of it people in the public eye can or should have. There was better news for William and the former Kate at the end of the year, when it was confirmed – earlier than it usually would have been, due to Catherine’s hospitalisation – that the Duchess was up the duff. There had been masses of wild speculation in the months since their wedding, of course, and the baby news was set to give the midmarket papers something to coo over, until the story took a much darker turn. The news that a lady who had, up ’til a couple years ago, been working for Jigsaw, and who in her childhood presumably assumed as pure Disney fantasy any suggestion she’d one day be birthing the third-in-line to the throne (in the process shunting her hubby’s brother down the queue), made headlines around the globe, and when the gen reached Australia a then-little-known-outside-Oz DJ duo (‘MC and Mel’, if it matters) decided to set up a classic radio crank call. Now, this was slightly off-colour to begin with – if someone high-up in Aussie culture was seriously sick in hospital, would, say, JK and Lucy ring up the hospital? It’s unlikely – but the prank phonecall is an established part of radio output so the Aussie hosts pressed on. Ringing through at 5.30am UK time to the hospital treating Kate for severe morning sickness, and posing as the Queen and Prince Charles, the presenters were put through to the relevant ward and pretended to ask after the Duchess’ condition; the call was then given the green light for broadcast by 2Day FM’s legal high-ups, and once word got out the call went viral, causing a media circus which dragged the DJs into the spotlight and, tragically, led to the duty nurse who’d answered the phone and passed the call onto Kate’s ward being found dead, leaving suicide notes, perhaps ashamed she’d let the scam call slip through the net on her watch rather than protecting the patient under her care. The nurse’s teenage son and daughter will be left living without their mother, whilst MC and Mel – in interviews seemingly shellshocked their simple gag had led so far – have been tainted to the extent their careers may never recover. Amid the sorrow and bad feeling, many stations over here stripped crank call-ups from their line-ups, until the dust has settled at least. But this case was certainly a reminder that sometimes things can spiral out of control and have effects far beyond what was intended. I’m quite timid when it comes to doing anything risky, for fear that I may cause unintended effects, and this timidity is perhaps holding me back in life. But I won’t be making unnecessary phonecalls to hospitals, even if I do somehow end up as a radio DJ, a career I sometimes wanted thanks to my former love of music. There have been other bad tidings emanating from hospitals over recent times – you’ll have seen my rants here this year about abusive staff as exposed by Panorama, and my continued hatred and animosity towards the bilepit that is Stepping Hill Hospital, which always gets a kicking on this purple page despite (or perhaps because of) the fact I’ve never required medical treatment in the northwest. Recently we’ve seen the case of a young cystic fibrosis sufferer being given lungs taken from a heavy smoker, with her subsequent death leading to criticism of the use of ‘dirty’ lungs in the transplant process; and there’s been slimy crime in hospitals themselves, with light-fingered yobs helping themselves to presents intended for kids at both Great Ormond Street hospital in London and the University Hospital of North Staffordshire – though in both cases, donors have replaced the lost toys. How deep in the gutter must someone be to steal kids’ gifts from a hospital? There’s some real scum still sloshing around the streets, and there simply aren’t enough prisons in Britain to hold them all. I did once suggest turning Bluewater from a shopping mall to a prison, ripping out the shop units and replacing them with cells, and now I’ve applied, mostly without success, to work at most of the shops currently there, it’s no longer of use to me as a mall, so perhaps this conversion is the way to go. Maybe I’ll fire up the JCB once it’s back from flattening Stepping Hill… Speaking of vehichles, there has been a seemingly endless parade of death and chaos on Britain’s roads this year: thankfully incidents were on a much smaller scale than the mass pile-up which tainted the M4 forever late in 2011 (to date the organiser of a nearby firework display, who like MC and Mel was presumably unaware of the devastation he was about to cause, is the only person to have been charged with any offence in connection with the chaos), but there’s still far too much death and injury on the roads, the sheer number and frequency of incidents meaning I can no longer write about cases individually on this blog (though one nasty case just days ago was a death when a car collided with a bus stop in South London’s very own – because nowhere else would want it, presumably – Streatham.)

Looking internationally, however, there have been cases which have grabbed global attention because of the needless loss of innocent young lives. In contractually-obliged-to-be-descibed-as-war-torn Afghanistan, nine young girls out collecting firewood for their families were wiped out by a landmine, the latest casualties of a seemingly-endless procession of conflict in the middle east (though David Cameron has at least agreed a timetable for the withdrawal after a decade of Brit troops from the country.) These girls’ deaths were little more than a footnote in most newscasts, however, due to events in Newtown, Connecticut, USA. A man so deranged and vile he doesn’t really deserve to be called a man killed his own mother at her home then descended upon the school where she worked (and where he himself had once been a pupil). Recognised by staff, he was let into the school and there the carnage really kicked into terrifying gear, this monster unloading his rifle into twenty innocent kids, all aged just six or seven, and six adults in the school before turning the weapon on himself. One true hero of a teacher, according to the sombre front page of the following day’s Independent, laid down her life to save her class of 16 tots, hiding the kids in a cupboard and taking Lanza’s bullet after telling him the kids were in the gym. Only the quick thinking of other staff – shepherding their young charges to safety when they heard the gunman’s rampage over the school PA system – stopped there being much more widespread bloodshed. This truly terrible act set the tone for the closing stages of 2012: how can we be truly happy this season when dozens of families who had seen their loved ones head off to school will never see them return? It’s certainly one of the most shocking and wanton acts ever to have taken place in a school, and perhaps inevitably invited comparisons to the similarly shocking attack on UK soil which forever tainted the tiny Scottish area of Dunblane back in 1996. It’s worth pointing out that even now Dunblane is spoken of in hushed tones, though the Daily Mail was perhaps rightly slammed for its needless whinges about the supposedly-wrong behaviour of the now-in-their-late-teens survivors of the Scottish atrocity posting updates about their drunken party antics on Facebook. Y’know, like almost all people in their late teens do. Regardless of that, one thing the Connecticut case did raise in the news was discussion of the mental condition of the gunman, and it can’t have been normal given what he did. I’m aware that those who have mental health issues need help before they overwhelm the sufferer – as someone who’s not in the best of nick myself, and who spends a lot of time around the fellow afflicted (on buses, at the library, at the TC) I know there’s a danger that mental unwellness can lead to societal damage, and I’m shocked by how violent and frustrated I have been – thankfully usually towards myself and the underpowered, trashy computers rather than any of my fellow unemployables – during my often-grim Wednesday visits to the TC. Indeed, one horrible dream which has thankfully yet to become reality saw me flinging myself around the TC building and bellowing, like a wheezy, bearded Mitchell brother. One problem is I really don’t communicate enough – I don’t talk to my family or the jobcentre about how truly ill I am, and aside from these spurts of lilac gibberish mainly suffer in silence. I badly need a rest, but am not in a position to have one – as mentioned above, a couple hours’ wander round the too-far-to-get-to-daily Westfield Stratford is what counted as my holiday this year. I haven’t watched any movies this year, the only time I stepped into a cinema being for a failed job interview as I attempted to broaden my horizons beyond the defunct retail industry. I haven’t made enough time to sit and listen to the radio, and as a result good tunes and quality commentary, should any have existed, may well have passed me by. I’ve virtually stopped listening to whole albums, instead having to squeeze a few tracks here-and-there into the short gaps in life in which I have a few minutes to sit down. I haven’t read any proper books in a good while, which stood me in poor stead when I applied for work in one of the few remaining book stores, and Unnamed Woman’s selfhelp and affirmation tomes aside, the only books I’ve read lately have basically been printouts of the sort of ponk that floods the internet – silly signs, daft misprints and the like – which again I squeeze into available moments whilst not doing other stuff. I did try to expand my literary horizons this year by buying cheaply a preowned copy of not-actually-a-book DS cartridge ‘100 Classic Book Collection’, only to accidentally smash my DS – in unthinking conjunction with my brother – before I’d had a chance to get my teeth into any of the ton of tomes. I really am at rock bottom and, whilst I have social sense enough not to actually pull trigger on another being – after all, perfectly symmetrical violence never solves anything – I don’t know how much lower my mojo can go.

Maybe I should stop taking things so badly. Every knockback I get is like a bodyblow, no matter how used I am to recieving them, and I’ve become resigned to the fact that it’s probably too late in life for me to be successful. I somehow waddled past the 30 mark this year despite my decaying health (some people wake up thankful to a higher being that they’ve survived the night; I often awake quite frankly surprised that I have done so). In the kitchen, the stress of cookery pressure means I get quite giddy at times, and am never sure whether to take the microwave’s vibrant beep as an insulting, arrogant dig (along the lines of “Get your ugly butt over here, you slag”), or a cheery warning from a helpful friend (“The food I’ve carefully and lovingly cooked for you is ready and prepared, my hungry chum!”) I’m alone and unable to even recieve help with my shopping, leading to gibbering and shaking at the checkout; as the years whizz by I become increasingly mottled and unattractive, to the extent that no woman intelligent enough to appear beautiful to me would actually agree to serve as my partner; and I have no real plans for the future, given I’m not entirely sure, given my present predicament, that I have one. I’m too timid and risk-averse – I avoided Woolwich for over a year following the devastating riots, only returning when circumstances (and the job centre’s desire to piss me about over my bus pass) required me to hoik myself off there, and I often stick rigidly to the regular stuff when out shopping. I have now calmed towards Woolwich enough to return there when necessary, and I am looking to become more adventurous in my food choices – I recently took up the offer to buy lemon, and later strawberry, mousse to serve as my dessert in place of the more-usually-purchased chocolate flavour (though I accept that having a dessert at all marks me out as some unthinking, uncaring capitalist pig.) I’ve also tried to experiment with cheeses – not in a filthy way, get your mind out of the gutter, I mean trying something other than the cheddar I’d usually pick up: at Christmas I often have Applewood, after seeing it positively mentioned in passing a magazine somewhere, but that’s basically smoked, flavoured cheddar. But one day, on seeing the various forms of cheese lined up alongside the cheddar whilst on a supermarket giddy-run, I decided I’d experiment with other forms of cheese to see if I could find one to mix up my cheeseboard a little. Wensleydale I found a little too clunky and moist for my needs, though my brother likes it (and will often bring home a block for his own consumption completely unprompted). The next one I tried was Double Gloucester, and I loved the creamy taste – though as my first DG experience was with an onion-and-chive assisted truckle – and there’s a first, I’ve never bought myself a truckle of anything before – I’ll have to see if my response is the same when confronted with a regular workaday slab of the stuff. And then there’s other cheeses yet for me to endeavour upon: whither Cheshire? I do spend a lot of time in the supermarkets, as I have a ‘mail must get through’ mentality when it comes to serving my family – they are reliant on me to safely and successfully get food home to keep them going through the day, and if the scran is lost or damaged in transit (or indeed I am) I will have failed as a son and supplier. It’s not easy when I’m having to contest with frequently mucked-about bus travels – it does appear that in around October/November time, TfL were carrying out some kind of unpublicised experiment to reduce the frequency of buses in my area – and having to dodge my fellow customers to get the items required. Christmas shopping wasn’t much fun either. There have been an increasingly-high number of instances where I’m flailing around a store muttering to myself “It’s just [name of shop or town], it won’t kill me, it’s fine, remain calm…”, though that in itself probably doesn’t leave shop staff and fellow customers with a good impression of me. I even had a breakdown when I arrived for a job interview and couldn’t rouse any of the overworked staff to alert them to the fact I was within their store! Didn’t stop the same firm somehow inviting me back for exactly the same interview a week later, though. And me being mental in supermarkets when required to deliver on my promises is nothing new – remember last Christmas (“Where are the cubes?”) Maybe cube-gate came back to bite me this summer when a yogurt I was buying from the same store burst in my basket, slurrying-up my new jacket in the process and making me look like I sexually molest zoo animals – or perhaps that was a revenge act for having bought the jacket from a rival superstore whilst in a different location a couple weeks previously. But I have, when not scraping spilled yogurt off myself, been thinking a lot about trust, loyalty, responsibility and care. It goes back to those flowers I mentioned earlier – I became so obsessed with caring about them that I forgot to simply sit and admire their beauty. I feel a failure for the occasional mistake – when my weak new phone failed to correctly identify a Thursday and set the alarms off on the wrong day, I missed a bin day, thus causing all sort of waste-based panic, and feeling I had derelicted my duty (though ruining the previous phone I’d entrusted myself with by allowing it to be rained on during Bexleyheath’s unlikely monsoon season and not packing the thing deep into my pocket at the first sign of drizzle was probably in itself a dick move.) Everything comes with ‘care instructions’ these days, even a can opener; maybe I should be more friendly to these devices and less furious with them when they fail to do their duties (I’ve bought three tin openers this year, ranging from a cheapjack £1 bodgejob with a too-weak hinge to a massive weighty purple-handled old beast: between the three of them they can almost open one can.) Sometimes I can be too caring – in attempting to handle my DS gently to avoid adding to the damage my brother had already done, I held the device too loosely and ended up accidentally killing my innocent game-playing friend. Or maybe I attach too much personality to these things. How do I walk the fine line between ‘uncaring’ and ‘oversensitive’ without looking like a bland dweeb? That’s one question it seems I’ll never answer satisfactorily.

I am aware I am very up myself. Despite not having done anything worthy of the channel myself, I still aspire to have a ‘BBC Four girlfriend’ – that is, one who’s talented, peaceful and intelligent, rather than the orange-skinned, silicone-filled slime you see on a depressingly high number of channels these days (ITV2, you created a monster…) But maybe I’ve been too dismissive of the lower classes. After all, the often-mocked-on-here-for-filling-up-4Music-with-their-reality-shows Kardashian sisters are miles more popular and successful than I’ll ever be – I struggle to get work as a shop assistant and I’m supposed to be one of that! – which suggests the K-named crew are in the right and I’m wrong, very wrong. I’ve also been behaving shamefully this year, spending so much time wobbling around in a panic and dragging myself through the motions that I’ve had very little chance to move forward. I’ve also abandoned the lovely people who’ve been helping me out over the last few years on Twitter, though in that case it’s for technical reasons – my sludgy new phone can’t do Twitter properly, so I’ve had to largely stay away. I’ve lost some good friends because of my mobile-based incompetence in the last quarter of 2012, and if you’ve come over here from my Twitter page I’d like to apologise to you. I’ve even been wrong about someone I like, assuming Unnamed Woman had given up on me when in fact she’d simply moved on with her life, getting a boyfriend and focusing on the future and cutting out of her life the unneeded slime that keep eddying around in their own rut (hi) and are thus of little use. I’ve spent too much of the year living in the past – listening to 80s and 90s music for much of the start of the year, perhaps in retaliation to the N-Dubz/Rihanna/Drake et al dominance of the modern scene, and latterly watching the likes of Bob’s Full House, Fawlty Towers and 3-2-1 in preference to more modern entertainments as conveyed by the Strictly/X Factor/Voice/BGT axis. And in what must be a misguided attempt to reconnect with youth, there’s no other explanation for it, I’ve loved CBBC’s retro-tastic series 12 Again, which tries to put vintage concepts – everything from communism and famine to Abba and Ghostwatch – into a modern context. Although presumably the recent episode featuring Lostprophets’ Ian Watkins has been ripped from iPlayer never to be seen again, given recent news. And let’s hope none of those invited to relive their youth on the series had ever said “The show I remember from the year I was 12 was a thing called Jim’ll Fix It…”  Anyway, I’ve spent too long trying to regain the past. It’s not coming back, the heroes we once had are either deceased (poor Sir Patrick Moore, one of the heroes, and not just for his turn as the GamesMaster back when Channel 4 used to show programmes that weren’t The Simpsons…) or discredited. Sometimes heroes are reborn – ITV brought back less-tainted-than-the-other-side dream-maker show Surprise Surprise, though a modern equivalent featuring Holly’s sparring partner Keith Lemon, Saturday night series LemonAid, mainly got slated for giving away a puppy and is thought unlikely to return. But perhaps I should live more in the present or even the future – if I keep looking backwards, either at our cultural history or my own life, it’s only going to be ever more different to move forward. I’m still not fully versed in new media – my YouTube page is only used to watch what Cassetteboy or Unnamed Woman have uploaded recently, I’ve not managed to fart out any videopodcasts yet, and as mentioned my current mobile is more smartass than smartphone. But perhaps there are changes I could make. I’ve been listening to Adam Buxton and Edith Bowman’s recent run on 6 Music – they introduced me to Haim, for one – and if time allows I’d like to spend more time sat soaking in that salvaged and surviving station’s mixpot of musical genius. Also, whilst flipping around the FM dial one night, I randomly stumbled into Mark Radcliffe’s Tuesday night show on Radio 2; whilst I’m loath to judge an entire strand on one sole edition, the usual Scrawn seal of quality was present, if somewhat compressed to fit the tight slot allocated, and it would certainly be worth my while to dip in again. I’ll also start reading more in the new year – if I get my DS and its 100 books back, or get my arse to The Works, or even log on to tax-pisstaker Amazon and have a digital browse, I could pick myself up some proper classics, and maybe even something modern and progressive. (I did go through a phase in my late teens/early 20s of reading modern books – for instance, I’d read James Hawes’ Rancid Aluminium years before it got turned into a film which most reviews seem keen to slag off – but haven’t dipped a toe into that particular fiction pool in a little too long, in all honesty.) I need to believe that things will get better – and this is where battering myself (figuratively, at very least) with the two books of positivity Unnamed Woman released this year may, one hopes, have lasting effect. But as it’s taken me thirty years to discover Double Gloucester, don’t expect change overnight.

Things can, though, as in the title of Unnamed Woman’s February 2012 book (reissued in piperback *cough* sorry, paperback, in January 2013), get better. Woolwich has for the most part been rebuilt – roast to a shell in 2011, the Great Harry pub reopened this year, though I haven’t been in for a pint yet (I was too busy rushing about trying to sort out my bus pass, thanks…) And sometimes stories I fret about have a positive outcome – one of the real-world guttings I worried myself over this year was the wedding-barn blaze that threatened to destroy two busy firefighters’ wedding plans; it’s recently been announced that two vile firebugs have been sentenced to (or of, I forget how this works) arson over the incident, with sentencing to come in February. And of course, there was the happy event which I not only enjoyed, but did to a degree which surprised me. This year we saw some true heroes – those of our own, and those from around the world – descend upon my apparent holiday venue of choice, Stratford, for a festival of pure sportive excellence. Not being much of a sportshead myself, I expected to take little more than a passing interest in the matches, but once the Beeb’s 24 extra channels had got flung up onto my screen I started lapping up the provision, to the extent that my rush-around-worrying schedule would allow at any rate. And I basked in the glow of genuine achievement and endeavour. After months, nay years, of becoming upset at the prevalence of famous-for-nothing slackers and slags dominating the media mix, it was good to see genuine effort and hard work go rewarded. After getting an ‘Ibiza Uncovered’-style reputation for slovenly selfishness, it was good to see the best of Britain being honoured: aside from the tranche of non-Brit badmintoners who contrived to rig the table standings, the majority of the sportspeople behaved and performed impeccably, and those who got their stance on the medal podium by and large deserved and earned their place there. Yes, there were disappointments – I made some unwise, tongue-in-cheek comments about Canadians on my I-could-access-it-then Twitter page after the talented Canuck ladies booted our girls out of the soccer tourney at quarter-final stage when, as an England fan of sorts, I should know that’s usually our limit (as proven when the male squad left the contest at the same level the next day.) And yes, after all the hype heaped on their heads beforehand it was at the time sad to see Victoria Pendleton and Rebecca Adlington end their Olympics in the way they did, but they still put in masses of effort and were recognised for this – indeed Becky’s times for bronze in 2012 were, I hear, better than the times the blonde posted to get gold in 2008! And whilst local hero Zoe Smith didn’t make it into the medal rounds, she certainly proved to all the haters that it was indeed possible to combine strength and beauty, simply by being both (a) strong (she’s a weightlifter, that’s more than I’ll ever be) and (b) beautiful (seriously – she’s properly genuinely hot, and at the lift proved sportswomen could be glamorous by accessorising her weightlifting suit with lush sparkly triangular earrings). And not long after the Olympians had departed the pitch (that’s what it’s called, right? A pitch?) a fresh set of heroes entered the field of vision: the Paralympics proved the doubters wrong by showing that a physical or mental disadvantage is no barrier to representing your people strongly in a sportive endeavour. Some fine performances showed the true strength and depth of the world’s sportspeople, and introduced Britain to sports it had perhaps little knowledge of or interest before (all hail Murderball!) The Paralympic athletes were an oasis of quality in a summer landscape too frequently dominated by slimy wannabes and slutty reality no-marks (and, again, the female athletes were stunningly beautiful – if hotter-than-a-million-popstars wheelchair-basketball player Amy Conroy is looking in, the offer of a date with a decaying, hairy Londoner who can’t really stand up in a straight line even though he’s supposed to is still very much on the table). And of course, there was another of my heroes of 2012, Martine Wright: left without legs in the 7/7 terror blasts the day after London won the frigging Olympic bid, Wright turned her traumatic experience around and ended up on our sitting-volleyball team. Now there’s dignity in action. You listening, Tulisa? The Olympic and Paralympic athletes were honoured not only with Team of the Year – and 11 of the 12 individual nods – at Sports Personality of the Year but also with a collective gong at the Pride of Britain Awards, where other winners included Unnamed Woman for her work championing the disfigured and disadvantaged, and the also-previously-mentioned-here Alice Pyne, the sweet Cumbrian teen who, like Unnamed, now runs a charity to help those in a similar bind to her own. In all then, 2012’s been a jammie dodger of a year – crumbly, dusty and dry at the start and end, but with a brief sliver of delicious jammy goodness wedged around the middle.

The festive season is, of course, a time for celebration and commemmoration. It’s not meant to be a time for misery, even though statistically it sometimes strikes – remember the 2004 tsunami, which still sends chills down Boxing Day eight years on. But I need to accept that, whilst some are able to spend the season with loved ones, others may not have the luxury of family, either because some tragedy has taken its toll or because the natural progress of life has left a sole survivor without relatives. So whilst I’m loath to end my final big-post of the year on a sour note, I would advise you to raise a glass of whatever the heck that is you’re drinking to those who will be glumly left with an empty chair at their Christmas table this year – such as the families in Newtown whose younger members won’t be alive to excitedly celebrate Santa’s visit; the families of murder or suicide victims, be it those of hoax-call nurse Jacintha Saldana or previously-mentioned-on-here teen Amanda Todd, who took her own life after victimisation from her peers; and the families of those lost to illness – this year, the often-mocked Peter Andre is in mourning following the passing of his brother Andrew from cancer, so how about this year you leave aside the taunts directed at Katie Price’s ex-husband, OK? And also raise any subsequent toast to those who, despite difficulties they’ve been through, will be able to celebrate some form of kinship with their loved ones, such as Tina Nash – blinded by her abusive partner but remaining strong for her sons; Gaby Scanlon – a young woman whose stomach was removed after a liquid-nitrogen-addled drink perforated the organ; and Louise Wedderburn, Channel 4’s ‘Human Mannequin’, who isn’t letting a damaging medical condition (FOP, since you ask) stop her living her dream of working in the world of fashion and beauty. She also posts recipes as well as fashion tips on her blog: once I’ve stopped arguing with the microwave and having heart attacks in the supermarket, I may even try some. And of course, my hero-of-the-hour every year, Unnamed Woman, who will continue to soar and fly; maybe one day I will be up among the treetops myself. Albeit keeping a respectful distance from Unnamed, of course, I don’t want to be accused of interfering. And hey, maybe I’ll stumble on good fortune – sometimes good things happen completely by mistake, as the Dutch wing of discount superstore Lidl found out when they launched a Twitter campaign with the aim of boosting publicity, and announced a plan to hand out 1,000 foodpacks to the homeless. The campaign went viral and eventually Lidl had enough messages to equate to 10,000 of the free dinners. Did they do what other firms bowled over by social media have done and rescind the offer? Hell no – they doled out the ten thousand meals with no fuss. OK, it was Lidl food rather than Dutch Waitrose, but those in most need of food aren’t going to make that distinction – sometimes those of us who are free to eat as we choose forget that! So remember, don’t be an idiot like what I am: you don’t need to get too stressed by the value of what you’re doing – it’s the worth of it that matters: a well-meaning gift is more well-recieved than an expensive one, and as the booze ads say, it’s not what’s under the tree that matters, it’s who’s around it. So do feel confident to tip the hat not just to those apparently less fortunate than yourself, but also to your peers and relatives: they will, for the most part, be there for you, ‘cos you’re there for them too. So, from all the OriginalPurple ‘team’ (i.e. me), have a generic, effective Christmas and a servile, dutiful New Year. I’ll see you on or after 2013. Dougal, leave the calendar until tomorrow!

“I’m just a blonde monkey to you, aren’t I?” (Goodbye!)