Children's entertainers, and the 2nd most embarrassing experience of my childhood

I like camomile tea.  I understand that Pilates is probably a good thing.  I’ve even been known to have Enya on in the background.  But I will not, ever, under any circumstances, not even at Nazi gunpoint, embrace my ‘inner child’.  Yes, I realise it’s something to do with letting go your responsibilities and being carefree for a while, which all sounds very nice, but I have the nagging suspicion my inner child is just a version of the real child I used to be.  For 25 years I’ve tried to forget the awkwardness and embarrassment of being a strange child, the kind of boy who had a tendency to say things that made rooms go quiet, with much eye-rolling and eyebrow-raising.  My own particular favourite was the time I asked my dad what the studded slogan on the back of the biker’s jacket in Victoria Coach Station meant.  It read, “Blowjobbers Ain’t Suckers”, and boy did I ask loudly.  This is not a child I want to embrace, it is the child I want to hold underwater until the bubbles stop.

The thing is, I thought for years that I was an unusual child.  Surely no other kids went through a year-long Agatha Christie-inspired paranoid phase convinced that their own family was trying to bump them off?  I reckoned I was Pugsley Addams and everyone else was John-Boy Walton.  One hour of children’s theatre this past weekend has fixed all that though.  I now know that all children, no matter how sweet and innocent they may seem, have an inbuilt drive for mischief and evil.  To be specific, children want adults to make fools of themselves.  They want us to fall over, run into trees, bang our shins, and basically appear like idiots.  Give them a nice song with some clever wordplay and an amusing little dance, and they’ll smile politely; give them comedy violence which involves the villain losing his trousers and they’ll howl their little guts up with laughter.  Little bastards.  Kids love clowns, and that should’ve been the clue.  No, they’re determined to strip the last vestiges of dignity away from us, and the saddest thing is that we go along with it.  I took my brood to see Disney On Ice a few months ago, and witnessed a grown man who should’ve known better dressing up as Tigger, presumably at the insistence of his spawn.

I think what I’m taking from this experience is that we should cherish children’s entertainers in the same way we revere our grandmothers or look up to Gandhi.  This weekend we get to witness the great in-house mutual-masturbationary back-slapping-contest that is the Oscars, when a bunch of massively rich egos gather in a theatre to tell each other how great and necessary they are.  What is it that Dora Finsecker says in Fame?  “I HATE Ralph Garci!  I must remember this feeling and use it in my acting!”  Well, if actors draw on past experience to create their performances, then children’s entertainers are the greatest creative actors in the history of the world, because no one has ever ever been as jolly as they have to be on a daily basis.  They grin, bounce, sing the most inane ditties and generally act the maggot, just to amuse the most critical audience known to man.  Bow before them, because Fassbender and McConaughey have nothing on Mr Tumble.

A letter to some lovely solicitors

 This is the transcript of my letter to Hugh J. Ward, solicitors in Dublin who really really really want some money from me.  Sorry I haven't written much lately, I must try harder.  If you'd like me to watch anything in particular and review it, please drop me a line at mrphammond@gmail.com                                                                                                                                            

                                                                                                                27^th February 2014

YOUR REFERENCE:                           1010065423

MY REFERENCE:                                UR 53177187714

Dear Hugh,

You don’t mind if I call you Hugh, do you?  It seems horribly impersonal to call you ‘Sir’ or ‘Mr Ward’, and I really do feel like we’ve got a relationship thing going, what with you chasing me for the massive sum of €83.41, and insisting that I call your office ASAP.  Or someone else’s office – to be honest, with all the exciting letters in bold and red writing, I’ve kind of lost track of who I’m supposed to be contacting.  First it was Vodafone, then it was Intrum Justitia, then CMOS LIMITED (who really like CAPS), and now it’s you Hugh. 

The thing is, I’m getting worried about Vodafone.  I thought they were a massive multinational company, whose Irish arm reported decent profits in 2012 of €114.5m.  But something’s gone terribly wrong hasn’t it?  If I were you Hugh, I’d be looking very carefully at Vodafone and making sure they pay you properly, and not in shares.  I mean, they’re so eager to recoup that €83.41 from me that they’re willing to pay Intrum Justitia €150 (plus VAT), AND pay CMOS, AND then pay you as well!  Geez, I knew times were tough for us all, what with the unemployment, the tax hikes and so on, but I never knew Vodafone could be so desperate.

Now look Hugh, you’ve got to stop throwing these silly threats around at us poor folk – we put up with the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries, and I’m fairly sure we can cope with a reduced credit rating.  And what’s the point of threatening legal action and fees (plus 8% interest per annum) when people are unable to pay the bills in the first place?

But I get it Hugh.  The tribunals have ended, the good times have gurgled away down the troika plughole, and you’re probably sitting in your cold negative-equity hovel, trying to keep warm next to a lightbulb and eating an expired Pot Noodle.  Like the rest of us.  That makes me sad Hugh.  I mean, I was directly responsible for the country shafting itself back into the dark ages, but you?  You went to law school and everything, driven by an inner desire to right the wrongs of the world, and you don’t deserve to be driven to cooking crystal meth or selling your body on the street corners of Dublin. 

So, in the spirit of brotherly love and compassion, I’d like to extend the hand of altruistic kindness and offer you a deal.  I reckon I can do without a couple of Pot Noodles a month, so how about I pay you €6.95 a month for the next year?  Or, if you and Vodafone really need some readies up front, I could give you €35 right now and we’ll call it quits?  Let me know what you think Hugh.

Stay strong brother.

Fear the apocalypse, especially if you haven't got a good supply of card and board games

I was glad to see The Walking Dead back on my screen after the Christmas break.  I do like a bit of hot zombie action, but, to be honest, there’s always been one thing that’s bothered me about the series since Season 1.  If a few hours of playing Fallout 3 have taught me anything, it’s that in an apocalyptic world you grab everything that isn't nailed down.  Ashtrays, empty cans, everything.  What you definitely don’t do is fight your way into the creepy pharmacy, bludgeoning the skulls of your former neighbours into mush with your sharpened crowbar, only to cherry-pick the one bottle of antibiotics you happen to need that very minute.  No, you sweep the entire contents of every shelf into an enormous sack, heave it over your shoulder and drive back to your fortified camp.  Hey presto! no more risky raids into town for pregnancy tests!

I suppose The Walking Dead has always made me feel a bit superior, like I’d know what to do better than the on-screen characters.  I’d have got rid of Sulky Shane a hell of a lot earlier, I’d have given the prison a lick of paint, I certainly wouldn't have relied quite so heavily on a chain-link fence to separate the ravening undead from my family.  Basically I reckoned I’d be pretty good in the face of the zombie onslaught and the end of civilisation.

Then Storm Darwin hit.  Trees came down, the power went off, and so did the water.  And I realised, I'm crap at this.  Without electricity I'm unable to cook, stay warm, or even amuse myself.  There have been a few programmes on recently that have looked at what society would become without electricity.  Revolution thought we’d all go a bit eighteenth-century, firing muskets at each other and ‘remembering’ how to sword fight.  Under the Dome had us all turning on each other in panic.  The Walking Dead just questions if we’d be able to hold onto our humanity.  I can’t think of a programme about an apocalyptic society without power that does quite well and learns to get along and grow apples.  So, by the middle of Day Two of the Storm I started to worry.  How long will it be, I thought, before the neighbours realise I have a phenomenally well-stocked larder?  And when the tins run out, how long before the fat bloke in No.6 starts to look like our food supply for the winter?  Even worse, how long before we start “playing at farmers”, to quote Carl, the stroppy, possibly psychotic, needs-a-haircut mother-killer from The Walking Dead?

By the time the lights came back on, I had a new respect for Rick, Michonne and the others.  Not for battling walkers, the Governor, and the worst case of the sniffles since 1918, but for coping with the boredom that comes with a lack of digital entertainment and a bedtime of whenever-it-gets-dark.  There’s only so much cribbage you can play…

On a side note, you have to feel sorry for Andrew Lincoln.  Some actors have forged successful careers out of limited talents; Keanu has done very well with his one expression, Harrison even better with none at all.  Andrew Lincoln seems to build his career almost entirely upon bewilderment.  In This Life (showing my age now) he played a lawyer who decided he didn't really want to be a lawyer.  In Teachers he played a teacher who decided he didn't really want to be a teacher.  In Love Actually he had a scene where he literally couldn't decide which way to walk.  In 2010 he finally landed a good solid job as a small-town sheriff in Georgia, only for his bewilderment to cross the Atlantic with him, and screw everything up again.  Now he plays a leader of a ragtag bunch of survivors who has decided he doesn't really want to be a leader of a ragtag bunch of survivors.  Someday I hope Andrew plays a man happy in his job.

Anyway, I'm quite bothered by my lack of ability to survive in an apocalyptic world without the amenities of running water or electrical power, so I'm going to go on a survival skills course up in Connemara.  I've looked it up on my iPhone, and apparently I can book it online.  

Happy Hugh Part Two

I’m enjoying Scandimania, the Channel 4 programme without any real discernible point.  This week Hugh went to Denmark, officially the Happiest Country in the World (as decided by the UN, so he kept telling us).  And then he talked to a bunch of happy Danes, who were definitely happy because they live in Denmark.  And not because they were the head chef of the best restaurant in the world, a successful architect, an actor so famous he gets his bum slapped by women when he visits London, a group of well-off teenagers in a country-retreat-school…..

Wait a minute.

You mean….Channel 4 got Hugh to interview a bunch of wealthy and successful middle-class Danes and determined that all Danish people are happy?? 

Next week he’ll be in Norway.  Bet you a fiver he talks more about the oil reserves, less about Anders Behring Breivik.

The Galloping Horde of Famous

Despite what ITV would have us believe, the human brain can only be subjected to so much crap before it turns on itself in disgusted horror and begins to self-destruct.  After 34 years, I have reached this point, and I don’t believe I’m alone.

I feel bewildered at the supermarket checkout.  All I wanted was some milk and a cabbage, and suddenly I’m being slapped with blaring magazine headlines that shriek out unintelligible lines like

“MAX HAS SHAFTED US SAYS TOM”

“DANIELLE SLAMS CHANTELLE OVER RELATIONSHIP SLURS”

“JASMINE’S BEAUTIFUL – I’VE NEVER FELT THIS WAY ABOUT ANYONE”

Something at the back of my mind tells me I should know who these people are.  They’re clearly famous enough not to need surnames.  I turn to my wife to see if she knows who the hell Danielle or Max might be, and she looks equally blank.  This is worrying.  This is a woman who can recall exactly how much she paid for every single item in her wardrobe, who can close her eyes 20 seconds after walking into a crowded room and tell me what every woman is wearing, who remembers every single conversation we’ve ever had – and she doesn’t know who these vacant-eyed grinning flesh mannequins are.  On one level it’s reassuring; if she doesn’t know, what possible chance did I ever have?  I have trouble remembering why I’m halfway up the stairs.  But then comes that nagging fear again.  These people are on magazine covers – they must be famous, and the fact that I haven’t a clue probably means that my brain has given up.

It was all so much simpler a century ago.  The only famous people you had to remember and care about were the royals, a few writers, artists and the earliest movie stars.  Now we’re confronted with a galloping horde of so-called ‘famous’ folks – stars of film, music, sports, TV, politics, reality shows, the arts.  We try and keep up with them all, knowing all about their love lives, their haircuts, their antics, because to fall behind and fall out of touch with the latest fad, the newest meme, today’s internet star, is to face ridicule and exposure as a fuddy-duddy.  It doesn’t help that everyone courts the same kind of celebrity status, the endless striving to be cool.  Prince Harry is desperate to show that he’s just one of the lads (albeit a very rich and annoying one), and as for the Dalai Lama’s cringeworthy appearance as a judge on Masterchef Australia (“they ALL taste wonderful”), the less said the better.

Surely there’s only so many ‘famous’ faces you can see before you start to get mixed up?  I had a truly terrifying moment in the doctor’s waiting room recently, watching a TV with the sound off, when I couldn’t figure out why Rolf Harris was addressing the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis.  I notice with delight that I’m not the only one suffering from this glut of celebrity we’re pummelled with on a daily basis.  If a US reporter, whose job it is to interview celebrities, can’t tell the difference on-air between Samuel L. Jackson and Laurence Fishburne, I feel a little excused. 

My theory?  I think the government has something to do with all the reality shows that keep relentlessly farting out new ‘stars’.  I think they have a plan to crush us underneath such a weight of celebrity and confusion that we’ll vote for whichever candidate reminds us of our childhood TV memories.  Of course, if that was Sinn Féin’s plan, they've ballsed that one up royally.

Cardboard Pugs. And Kevin Reynolds.

A couple of years ago I asked my friends to come up with suggestions to ‘spice up’ golf.  I don’t play golf, I don’t watch golf, I don’t understand golf.  For me, it’s a turgid, drawn-out, snobbish horrendous affair played by overweight middle-aged men who think ambling across a ridiculously manicured lawn somehow constitutes a form of exercise.  Of course, that’s only my opinion, but it’s the right one.  My suggestion for improvement was ‘Drunk Golf’, which I’d pay to see.  Imagine an angry and increasingly emotional Colin Montgomerie…  I also liked ‘Speed Golf’, which would see golfers given 60 minutes to complete the course.  My wife’s suggestion was combine this one with ‘Naked Golf’ which frankly put nightmarish images in my head for months afterwards.  Just think for a moment of a naked John Daly hurtling desperately down the fairway, sweat cascading off his corpulent folds as he starts to panic on the 17^th.  Now try and sleep tonight.

Funnily enough, it’s that last idea which gets to the heart of my hatred of golf.  It’s not the ludicrous clothes, the obscenely vast expanse of land it consumes, or the huge payouts for something I refuse to acknowledge as a real sport.  No, my problem is much more shallow than all that.  Golfers are ugly.  Horrible to look at.  Faces like cardboard pugs left out in a shower of piss.  The fact that Tiger Woods ever got into the lady trouble he did is only testament to the fact that money is the greatest lubricant.

Ugliness doesn’t seem to be an issue with snowboarders for some reason.  I’m a bit hooked on the Winter Olympics at the moment, and the snowboard slopestyle has been a real joy.  It’s fun, quick, immensely cool and very video-gamey, and the competitors are beautiful enough to make my tears themselves weep.  And that’s just the men.

There’s also something joyous about watching a sport you don’t understand, and the Winter Olympics are full of ‘em!  I don’t know a triple salchow from a double toe-loop and I enjoy figure-skating all the more because of it.  I love how ludicrously camp it all is, from the glam costumes to the looks on the skaters’ faces as they try and emote their way through their routines.  Most of all, I love how dangerous most of the sports are.  I’ve fallen on ice and it goddamn hurts.  Hurtling down an ice slide on a tea tray at 140kph is just insane, and I have nothing but respect for those gallant idiots.  Apart from the ones doing curling.  They’re just idiots. 

Oh, and I have to point out that my link between athletic ability and good looks doesn’t always ring true.  Just look up Kevin Reynolds, the Canadian figure skater, who has a face so hypnotically bizarre I can’t stop watching him.

Who's to go to Togo?

I was going to review Scandimania, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's holiday, sorry, inspiring and educational trip around Sweden, Norway and Denmark.  Apparently, those Scandinavians are happy.  Really happy.  So happy, in fact, they place 1st, 2nd and 5th in the latest league of happy countries, and old Hugh is going to see what's making them so happy.

I did say I was going to review it, but usually that involves actually watching the programme, and this was the week my satellite dish died.  So, no TV.  But why should that stop me?  I'll just use my creativity, my imagination, my innate wit to write about something I haven't seen.  Yes that's right, I'm going to guess.  Think of this as a Daily-Mail-knee-jerk-style kind of piece.

I could guess as to what Hugh got up to - I imagine, it being Channel 4, it was ridiculously stereotypical and just a bit sensationalist.  The first episode saw Hugh in Sweden, so I'm thinking he tucked into something messy and typically Swedish - crayfish? - before visiting IKEA and possibly an ABBA museum, and there was possibly a ridiculously gratuitous naked sauna scene.  Am I close?  Anyway, none of that's important because its not the content that bothers me, it's the concept.

It'd be all very well if Scandimania just wanted to entertain us, in a 'let's have a look at the funny foreigners' kind of way; "oooh, don't they like herrings!", and "gosh, don't they talk silly?"  But that's not what it says it's up to.  According to the summary I read, it wants to educate us about our happier, and apparently fascinating, European neighbours, to get to the heart of what makes them so bloody chirpy.

Why?

Are we meant to emulate them?  Is this a lesson in how to be happy?  If it turns out the secret of this boundless joy is their love of raw herrings, will we be straight down the fishmongers?  Will we all take up Swedish lessons?  Or, if it's the case that they have a good social protection system funded by copious and well-managed natural resources, which seems a bit more likely, are we really going to volunteer to pay more taxes ourselves so that we can tap into the Joy Parade?  I think the herrings idea stands more of a chance...
And that's my problem with it; it's typical Channel 4 stuff - naked entertainment masquerading as education.

I think it makes more sense to have a look at the poor miserable bastards at the other end of the league.  The miserable end.  The bottom three are, in descending order, the Central African Republic, Benin and Togo.  Instead of Hugh reminding us how awful our own lives are compared to those giddy Scandinavians, why not send someone to Togo, officially the most miserable place in the whole world?  I didn't see the programme, but I could think of a handful of facts about Sweden without even trying; I don't know anything about Togo, except they're fucking depressed.  I'd bet, after an hour of watching some wretched Togolese lad struggle to eat fufu, your own monochromatic life would seem as colourful and carefree as a jaunt through Oz.  Wouldn't that be a better use of Channel 4's purse?

And I wouldn't send Hugh.  Sure, he might have made a lot of programmes aimed at middle-class urbanites who like to see 'the country' as a nice quaint place populated by suspiciously hairy cider-drinkers, poachers and hippies, but you can't dislike him enough to send him to Togo!  Rwanda at a pinch, but not Togo.  No, if we're going to fly someone over to officially the saddest place on this planet, I want it to be someone who really deserves to have all the bubbliness and joy beaten out of them.  With pointy sticks if necessary.  I nominate the entire cast of Geordie Shore, although it's a toss-up between them and that wretchedly obnoxious kid from the 'Hello.ie' advert.  And if you don't know who I mean, I'm jealous of you.

In fact, just thinking about watching Togo Shore is cheering me up so much I can feel us moving up the league table right now.