Remember DraMattics has moved, so if you want to check out all my musings on the Olympics head here:
http://dramattics.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/olympic-memories/
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Olympic Memories
Posted by Matt at 13:28 0 comments
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
The First Night of the Proms
Guess what
I am back!! I know shocking isn’t it? But before you get too engrossed a little
public service announcement – DraMattics is moving website, to a brand new much
more exciting (hopefully) blog and layout. All the old posts, and this brand
new one are there already so click now and head over to:
Posted by Matt at 08:49 0 comments
Wednesday, 20 June 2012
You Can with the Dukan
Apologies if
you’ve had the misfortune of speaking to me in the last couple of months, because
I have officially turned into one of those
people. Yeah I’ve started doing a “fad” diet and it is now all I can talk
about, all I can tell you is what I can eat, what I am going to eat, how much
weight I’ve lost, how much weight I have to lose and how regular my bowels are.
Though in fairness I always talk about how regular my bowels are so you
probably haven’t noticed the difference! So far I’ve managed to keep diet talk
off this blog, but no more I must break free and speak my mind, as I have
nothing else to talk about. Though I am hoping that I will contain all the diet
talk in one blog-sized burst and not bore you incessantly for weeks to come.
But apologies if this article does read like a copy of Woman’s Own.
Google any fad diet and you’ll find
articles about how it does work, how it doesn’t work, how it will give you
cancer and how it is responsible for the death of Diana, Princess of Wales –
but then that’s your own fault for reading the Daily Express’ website. The diet I chose to embark upon is called
the Dukan diet, named after it’s French creator Dr Dukan, and not chosen for
some clever alliterative pun such as the one I have used to name this blog
entry. Though that is helpful.
I embarked
on the Dukan lifestyle, as he likes to refer it (lifestyle being that you can
now only talk about dieting and annoy waiters by asking for special things from
the menu), after seeing a colleague at work follow the same plan and rapidly
disappear in front of my very eyes. Now I know I am hardly obese (don’t
disagree that’s rude). I haven’t had to be taken to London Zoo’s elephant house to be weighed, I don’t have to be positioned
correctly on a plane in order to keep the plane aerodynamic nor do I need to be
hoisted out of a Piccadilly line carriage chair at the end of my daily commute.
Though sadly that last statement is only true because I live on the Northern
line. However, I have noticed a little bit of tummy, an annoying bit that even
with a token amount of exercise and broadly healthy eating won’t go away. Every
now and again it occasionally grows, at Christmas or bingey weekends, like a
plant you occasionally get round to watering. Given enough time and slices of
cake my tummy was sure to develop its own postcode if left unchecked. And with
the recent 30th anniversary celebrations of my birth I felt now was
the time to get in check before middle-aged spread, like a virulent fungal
infection, took hold. Also I’ve never really felt comfortable being topless
anywhere, I don’t look obese but if I lie down people have mistaken my belly
for a speed hump. When I tend to get changed for swimming I find myself holding
a towel around at nipple height to cover my modesty, like a pregnant women. But
enough was enough, no more would I be ashamed of my body it was time for a
change.
It looks lovely and fluffy on the outside, but the inside is like the culinary edition of Mein Kampf a strict list of rules and regulations that need to be adhered to in order to achieve weight loss. Dr Dukan takes great pleasure in reminding you every step of the way that even one false move will result in you being a fat bastard.
I’ll give you a quick overview of how the diet works, but on a serious note (for once) if you are following any weight loss plan make sure you do it sensibly and check you are following all the rules. Don’t just follow some half-baked summary some idiot has written on a blog – get what I mean? Good, now I’ve finished being your disapproving mother I can get on.
Dukan is primarily a high protein diet, by feeding your body just protein it’s forced to raid its fat stores to supplement your carbohydrate and sugar deficiency – like a crooked builder raiding a pensioner’s bank account. The diet is broken up into phases, Phase 1 is called The Attack Phase, this doesn’t involve any attacking, unless you actually unleash the pent up rage you will find quickly builds up against Dr Dukan when you’ve been following the diet for any length of time. In Phase 1 you can only eat lean proteins (poultry, lean beef or ham, fish, eggs etc.), 0% fat dairy products (skimmed milk, yoghurts, cottage cheese etc.) and a few selected condiments, and that is it. Drinks can only be coffee or tea (skimmed milk and sweetener only), non-fruit based diet fizzy drinks, water and skimmed milk. Sounds about as an appetising as a bowl of sawdust!
Personally I don’t find anything on that list actually disgusting. The main problem, I found, is what your tummy craves that it can’t have rather than having to eat horrid things. Though saying that mention “cottage cheese” enough and bystanders do seem to have a terrible affliction where they spontaneously projectile vomit in your face. And I soon learnt that bringing prawns into the office was about as welcome, with my colleagues, as if I’d brought a plague of locusts in, or turned up for the day with the rotting corpse of Bernard Manning.
Another delightful meal was this one, which I arranged into the shape of a bearded face simply to add some excitement to dinner:
During Phase 1 you can eat as much of the above foods as you like, but only them. This is a rapid weight loss phase, I lost 2kgs (4lbs) in just three days, this weight lost I suspect was almost entirely made up of taste buds jumping off my tongue in a bid to kill themselves. However this phase is only a temporary phase, up to a week and then you have to move to Phase 2, or you will die (possibly – almost certainly from taste boredom).
I found Day 1 of the Phase 1 wasn’t too bad, I was detoxing from the 40kgs of birthday cake I gorged on the day before. By Day 2 I wanted to kill people, slowly and painfully. Day 2 was awful and there was lots of grumpiness (apologies to those in the office that day). By Day 4 the worst was over my stomach surrendered even if now again I would start hallucinating about chocolate and pizza.
The Dukan book helpfully provides some recipes for this stage to turn the bland range of foods into a selection of bland meals.
It was primarily fat-free fromage frais, mixed with sweetener, green food colouring and peppermint flavouring. And tasted like you’d accidentally inhaled the contents of a dentist’s hoover bag. It had the consistency and flavour of what you spit out of your mouth when brushing your teeth. No matter how bored I was of fat free vanilla yoghurts I never became so bored that I had a second one of these, and most of the contents of the above photo went in the bin (except the ramekins which have to be destroyed).
After a few days you advance to Phase 2 – The Cruise Phase. In order to stop your gastric system completely collapsing, Phase 2 alternates the protein days from Phase 1 with days where you can add in most vegetables and a few more condiments. As long as you do the same number of protein days as protein and veg days you’re fine, so you can do this in any combination you like. Given that protein and veg days are a little easy to do when eating with friends or being cooked for by other people, I tended to mix up the pattern to get the protein and veg days to fall favourably.
At this point the Dukan book happily provides some top tips to get you through the challenging times. First tip is that it’s really easy to order off a restaurant menu on Phase 2. Just choose something like salmon or an omelette or a salad and avoid dessert. Dukan is lying. It’s bloody impossible to find any menus you can eat anything off. I looked through five before going out for a meal with friends, pretty much every salad required four things to be taken off – breadsticks, oil, cheese, avocado etc. By the time I’d gone through all those changes with any waitress she’d already start lining up a massive turd to drop into my dinner. I found that the simplest thing to order, in terms of least changes, was to go to Pizza Express and order the Goat’s Cheese Salad – without any Goat’s Cheese. Which is about as exciting as rushing out and buying a brand new games console, without buying any games for it.
His next top tip, is if you wish to avoid the embarrassment of explaining to family members your new diet. Then just dip pieces of chicken in your boiled egg instead of toast soldiers, they’ll never know. Really?! How much does Dukan think toast and cooked chicken look the same? Or how far away does he think family members sit at the breakfast table? Is there about 100 meters distance between the chairs in his dining room, strategically placed so no one can clearly identify the foods going into their fellow diner’s mouths? Of course your family will notice, they probably won’t mention it in front of you. Mainly because they’ll be discussing the fact that you madly started dipping bits of chicken in your boiled egg, behind your back for fear that any moment you’re going to crack and start killing them. Even if your family did fall for your rouse, and believed the chicken you were dipping in your egg was toast, that’s the only “secret” meal Dukan recommends. After how many meals of just boiled eggs and toast do you think your family will think you’ve gone bloody mad anyway?
Another problem is Dukan isn’t really very portable. Eating on the move doesn’t really work as meats and dairy products aren’t really that travel friendly. Recently I went on a week filming with work, where I was on the road all day and found that while the crew were sitting eating lunch in a pub I was sat in the van in the pub car park eating luke warm vanilla yogurt and fish sticks. A more tragic site could not be imagined, well not without the death of a well-loved family pet or the cancellation of The Apprentice or something.
That said Dukan is an effective diet, after the first month I lost an impressive 7kgs (15lbs), and a large number of invites to dinners out – which for the social reclusive like me, can only be a good thing! I’ve tried a couple of Dukan’s other recipes namely the Iced Chocolate Soufflé and the Tofu Choc Cream, and they’re ok. Don’t get me wrong they’re not amazing chocolate desserts, if you went to Hotel Chocolait and got those, you’d piss in the shop assistant’s face in disgust. But when your taste buds are crying out for variation and new flavours they seem to do the job. If you’re wondering how they can be on the list, they’re primarily made with zero fat fromage frais, egg whites and a low fat cocoa powder. In fact the whole dessert is so low fat, it’s like the anti-matter version of Vanessa Feltz, put them in the same room and the resultant explosion will destroy of all BBC London Radio station. Which isn’t necessarily the worst idea ever?
After 50 days I lost a total of 11 kgs (or 24 lbs) and reached my final target weight, a healthy slim
Matty not afraid to bare his new svelte chest – though don’t worry I won’t be doing it in the office or on the Underground or anything. From my experience Dukan worked for me, if you can put up with the tough rules, and the taste boredom oh and the bad breath – ketosis takes hold in the first week and if you don’t use regular mouth wash your breath could be used to cut through steel. I’m now in Stage 3: Consolidation, where I start introducing normal foods again slowly, so I don’t balloon up instantly like the deployment of a car airbag. I am allowed things like cheese and bread again, which when you’ve not had anything tasty for 50 days is amazing:
Most excitingly I can have two “Celebration Meals” a week where I can eat anything I like – as long as I don’t go silly with quantities.
Followed by this:
Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Finally I’ll be back to a normal diet after this phase, and hopefully I’ll never need to write another blog about tedious dieting. And if you’re lucky you’ll never need to read another blog about tedious dieting!
Sadly, for you, I’m off filming in a glamorous and secret location for the next week so no blogs for a little while but I will be back soon!
Posted by Matt at 08:34 0 comments
Monday, 11 June 2012
I’m Not a Football Fan Get Me Out of Here
http://dramattics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/its-just-easier-to-hate-football.html
Anyway with England’s first game tonight, against France (see I know stuff), you may find that you are forced to watch the game against your will, even if you are supposed to be working. For some reason you’re allowed time off work to watch England play, but not to watch Cash in the Attic – it hardly seems fair. If you do find yourself in this football watching predicament, here’s some my top survival guide to how to get through the game:
Oh and of course good luck for tonight England!
Posted by Matt at 07:28 0 comments
Thursday, 7 June 2012
Where's the Jubi-Glee?
In case you’ve managed to miss all media outlets for the last few weeks, you may have seen all the bunting and incorrectly deduced that the BNP have swept to power and Lenny Henry has been put to death. Don’t worry that hasn’t happened, it was just the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Though having seen his performance at the concert I can’t guarantee the safety of Lenny Henry.
Televisual coverage aside, the main problem for me with the Diamond Jubilee is that it’s another opportunity for “organised fun” or by that I mean forced fun. I have no problem with the monarchy, Queen, Jubilee or anyone who wants to celebrate it. But like all socially retarded people, I’m never quite sure what to do at these events that are designated “fun”. I get the sense that I should be having fun, and that I should be enjoying myself. Yet I can’t work out how I’m supposed to enjoy the event, and what I am supposed to be doing. For instance, if I went to the river pageant, what am I supposed to do? It’s nice to see all the boats, but I’d be crammed in with a million other people trying to do the same, briefly glimpsing the boats as they sailed past. A bit like being crammed on the Victoria Line trying to crank your neck to see the station sign through the window. Logically it seems a lot more sensible to watch it on television. Apparently you are supposed to “soak up the atmosphere”, what the hell does that mean? And how do I do that? Was I off sick the day they taught this skill at school? Judging by the bedraggled spectators on the TV coverage, some people had done a very effective job of soaking up the atmosphere – but I don’t think that’s what people mean.
Posted by Matt at 09:06 0 comments
Thursday, 31 May 2012
Born in the UK
In a desperate bid to try and make money from my blogs and retire in a
sunshine paradise with a harem of prostitutes all coated in mint chocolate chip
ice cream, here’s my attempt to become a travel writer. Enjoy.
The main thing that struck me about America is the scale on which everything is done. And I’m not just talking about people’s waistlines before you misinterpret for comedy effect, though by this point you’ve probably started added in your own jokes just to keep yourself from slitting your wrists in this barren wasteland bereft of humour. Try sitting opposite me at work, if you want to know true tedium. Everything in America is done on a huge scale, where in London land and space has to be conserved to such an extent that I spent my entire university career folded away in the space occupied by an edition of travel Yaztee. In America space is abundant, why have terraced houses when you can put a kilometre of space between each building? Even in smaller towns and suburbs large buildings dominated the skyline, only dwarfed by the humungous advertising hoardings. It’s if the latest movies have sponsored the very sky itself, to be honest I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d seen clouds formed in the shape of the McDonald’s golden arches wafting across the horizon.
In Britain this kind of building would be reserved only for the town’s mayor, and only then if they’d fiddled the public accounts to get it built. For comparison here’s the Post Office in Clapham:
It’s not quite the same is it?
The same principal of course applies to American food, the food is lovely but the concept of portion control couldn’t be less American if it was daubed in a Taliban flag and burnt live on Fox News. Why have a Lasagne for one, when you can have on the size of a double bed. You could quite easily slip between the layers of pasta sheets and have 40 winks in a nice tomato base. America is probably the only nation whose lasagne is available in a 13.5 tog rating. The average American breakfast, in the hotel I was staying at, required the lifetime’s work of several chickens and the death of an extended family of pigs. Looking for a light option, I thought I’d try out the pancakes with banana choice on the menu. This will be light. I was wrong.
It was less a stack of pancakes more a skyscraper, each pancake could have been an individual storey, and I was tempted to install an elevator through the centre (look at me with the American lingo!). In fact here’s the same picture but with an average-sized human shown to scale:
Although of course that said, some types of food are always welcome in extra large scale:
I was in Los Angeles, apparently the most westerly major city in the world. There you go fact fans impress your mates down the pub with that gem, I would but I have no mates and the idea of socialising appals me.
Of course the major attraction of Los Angeles is the Hollywood sign, and here’s some photos I took of it, which to you will be at least 3% more exciting than seeing any other photo you’ve seen of it anywhere else. Why? Because I took it, I was there.
And to prove that I am vaguely intellectual here’s the famous Griffith’s Observatory:
And to destroy any respect I gained from that last sentence, I’ll tell you that the observatory is very exciting because it featured in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager (hashtag geek).
Another key site of Hollywood is Hollywood Boulevard:
I wasn’t really sure what I was expecting Hollywood Boulevard to look like, I think I imagined it would be a gold plated street with impressive marble film studios all along it. And in fairness some bits are like that, well maybe not gold-plated. But there are few plush looking film studios, swanky hotels and amazing restaurants. However large sections are stars just outside tatty souvenir shops and rundown cafes.
While we are talking about Hollywood Boulevard, I should give a mention to the amazing Cirque du Soliel which I saw in the Kodak Theatre (after fighting my way through a number of street entertainers wearing suspiciously bad costumes, such as Darth Vader in a blue cloak – presumably because the factory reject costume was so much cheaper). The Cirque du Soliel performance was absolutely amazing, well at least I imagine it was. Problem was I’d worked through the previous night and only had three hours sleep, so as soon I sat down in a darkened theatre my eyelids dropped faster than Katie Price’s underwear. Still I imagine it was really good. If you’re ever in Los Angeles I urge you to go sleep through it.
And with that I think covered every single aspect of the fifty states of America, you can’t possibly have any more questions. Though I should imagine reading this blog you’ll soon be expecting to me get my own travel blog. I for one and am all for the prospect of free trips. Like all good travel writers I will sign off with a summation line encapsulating the whole American experience. “If you like America, go to America.”
Posted by Matt at 07:50 0 comments
Wednesday, 23 May 2012
At Least There's Somewhere Now to Keep the Brooms
This week please
indulge me on a topic that is both close to my heart and has kept me clothed
and fed for seven years, as I discuss my passion for children’s television –
that’s my passion for children’s TELEVISION you dirty minded selective readers.
This decision has come under a lot of fire, from those who believe this is some kind of snub to children, that this somehow is a sad day for the children of the nation. Actually it isn’t. Children’s programmes in the afternoon on BBC One are traditional in your childhood, because then that was the only option for children’s programming – we didn’t have dozens of 24 hour children’s channels, we didn’t have DVDs and an endless supply of on demand programming. To children today the end of children’s programmes on BBC One means a little less choice in quite a busy programming landscape. Kids aren’t going to get lost and not find the CBBC and CBeebies channels, they’re more across remote controls than the average adult! For the majority of today’s children the concept of four channels is something studied in history alongside the Vikings and the Romans. In actual fact the terrestrial channels to children are the odd channels, channels that sometimes show news, sometimes kids’ programmes, sometimes entertainment and sadly sometimes Dickenson’s Real Deal.
Of course such nostalgia doesn’t concern today’s kids, and it’s important than children’s television evolves for today’s kids – not old f**ts like myself. I’d love to be making massive Saturday morning children’s shows like Live & Kicking, but today’s children don’t want them. The idea of sitting in front of three hours of Saturday morning television is as arcane to them as sending in an answer on the back of a postcard. Kids today are busy, they can’t give up their precious time to watch several hours of a phone-in with Judi Dench and Phillip Schofield laugh his way through a cookery item with his puppet sidekick. And in fairness if they did want to see that, they could just watch This Morning – apologies to Holly Willoughby.
Around the World with Willy Fog – Around the World Willy Fogg was the cartoon serialisation of the Jules Verne novel Eighty Days Around the World, with one minor plot point – Willy Fog was a lion and the world was populated by animals. This excellent cartoon, conveyed the excellence of the story, whilst including the fun and excitement required to keep it suitable for kids. Although the cartoon never did explain why no one ever complained about Fog smelling – despite the fact he wore the same suit for eighty days, nor why Transfer had a disco ball for an eye, or why the Governor of the Bank of England was allowed to gamble away all his wealth (fortunately today’s politicians could never be that irresponsible). I remember sending off for a song sheet with all the words to the theme song, from then broom cupboard presenter Andy Crane. Ahh how easily I was pleased back then.
Posted by Matt at 08:37 0 comments