Where were you when ITV Play died?

There are many important moments in global history that for the rest of your life you’ll almost certainly remember where you were, when you first heard about them.

Where were you when The Berlin Wall fell? – I don’t know, I was only seven at the time. Though I do seem to remember hearing about it on Newsround and wondering why the people didn’t just walk around the wall to get to the other side of Berlin (simpler times).

Where were you when Princess Diana died? – At home sitting on my bed annoyed that the news was on when it was supposed to be CBBC.

Where were you when the Queen Mother died? – At home, where I’d just finished watching Auntie’s Bloomers, the outtake programme hosted by Terry Wogan. Problem with watching outtake programmes is you get in the mind-set that whatever you’re watching is about to go wrong. So as I was watching Peter Sissions break the news of the Queen Mother’s death I kept expecting him to fall of his chair – as it was the only thing that went wrong on that day was when he decided to leave his burgundy tie on.

Where were you when September the 11^th happened? – On my first trip to America, unashamedly shi**ing myself as my holiday seemed to be turning into Armaggedon – obviously now with hindsight I wasn’t really affected by those events, certainly compared to the thousands that were, but sadly that logic still doesn’t pay for the resultant rather expensive dry cleaning bill.

This is rather roundabout way of filling up some blog inches before I ask you the key question of this blog, where were you when ITV Play died? You probably don’t remember, the reason I ask is because today the 6^th of March is the fifth anniversary of the day ITV Play said goodbye – and they say I can’t be topical. I believe to mark the occasion ITV are burning Brian Dowling on a giant bonfire consisting of your cash. If you want to be part of this event all you have to do is call 08845 600 9000, and answer this simple question, what is the name of the main street on which Coronation Street is set?

A.      Coronation Street

B.      Baghdad High Road

C.      Cheryl Cole’s Driveway

Calls cost £85 per minute and you almost certainly won’t be picked to be put through to the studio but your call will still be charged.

For those of you who don’t remember ITV Play it was one channel, amongst a plethora of other digital and satellite offerings which showed back to back phone-in quizzes. Where suspiciously attractive looking presenters, and Brian Dowling (I should at this point apologise to Brian Dowling for being the only quiz show presenter I unfavourably compare throughout this blog, but it’s your own fault being the only quiz show presenter who has reinvented their career and thus remains in my consciousness) asked a series of apparently deceptively simple quiz  questions. Each question was worth a not unreasonable cash prize, and as caller after caller rang into the studio only to give the wrong answer the average viewer was left increasingly confident that their answer was the correct one, until eventually they called in.

Television call-in quizzes got in trouble back in 2007 after a number of high profile programmes, across many channels, had been found to be conducting their quizzes unfairly with callers not being selected equitably or production team members standing in for callers, amongst some of the complaints. ITV Play itself got in trouble when viewers complained about the question “What items might be found in a woman’s handbag?”, to which two of the answers were “Rawplugs” and a “Balaclava”. As the numbers of scandals across the industry increased the Press eagerly started a campaign against television for not being 100% honest, thus making the revelations back in 2011 that the press weren’t 100% honest all the more shocking. Eventually, with public opinion mounting, ITV suspended all quiz channels and interactive quizzes within programmes on the 5^th of March 2007 pending an independent audit with ITV Play broadcast its final shows in the early hours of the 6^th of March. On the 13^th March ITV announced ITV Play would not return, and on the 16^th of March ITV replaced the ITV Play channel with ITV2 + 1 making the channel about 96% less watchable.

Of course television has changed lot since then, after it went through another scandal as viewers realised that television lied to them about other things to. The scandal had many sorry chapters including the revelation that EastEnders wasn’t a documentary, the discovery that Gordon the Gopher wasn’t real and the outrageous disclosure that Dale Winton was actually straight.

The reason why I bring all of this up and focus specifically on ITV Play, yes there is a point – you’ll be shocked to discover, is that I once auditioned for ITV Play. Many years ago when I began my career in television when I was 18, (don’t question the fact that according to this blog I was seven in 1989 and eighteen in 2007 – that would be rude), I was on many websites where television jobs were appearing and I often applied for all kinds of different entry level jobs in order to get myself more experience. One such job was as an assistant presenter on an ITV Play programme called “The Debbie King Show”. The job involved being taking over during the show when quiz-show royalty Debbie King was having a break, clearly it’s exhausting ripping off the general public for three hours straight.

Despite my MAJOR reservations about doing this kind of job, let alone the moral and ethical issues, I was convinced by friends that applying would be an experience – they weren’t wrong! After sending off my application I was contacted by a researcher from the programme, for the purposes of storytelling let’s call him Gavin. Gavin informed that they would like me to come in for an audition and provided me with the time and location for where to attend. It was at this point it first became clear that Gavin had all the intellect of a Findus Crispy Pancake. I quickly Googled the provided address only to find it was several miles away from the nearest station that Gavin had told me to go to, something smelled odd. I e-mailed Gavin to confirm that the address provided was correct, only for him to reply with “No! That’s not the correct address” in a tone that seemed to suggest I’d volunteered the location, rather than was querying the address that he’d sent me in the first place. It turned out that Gavin hadn’t sent me a different address, he’d just manage to make a typo in the correct address. Easily done you may think, except Gavin had managed to make a mistake on three lines of a four a line address! An impressively moronic feat even before you remember the fact that this address was the location of where he worked, his office, a place he visits every day! It’s almost if Gavin had got the address of his workplace through an elaborate game of Chinese whispers in the office.

Despite Gavin’s best attempts I managed to turn up at the company’s offices, where I was shown in by Gavin who impressed even himself by being able to successfully operate a door. It also turned out that Gavin was not only a cretin, but had an annoying habit of just laughing moronically in response to whatever was said. I introduced myself as Matt, Gavin laughed. I thanked him for showing me in, Gavin laughed. I think the response would have been the same if I’d have produced a surface-to-air missile launcher from my bag and threatened to fire the entire salvo directly into his genitalia.

Inside I found myself in an office so ridiculous trendy that it was almost a caricature of itself, if Edina and Patsy had stumbled out from one of the doors I wouldn’t have been surprised. I wandered in between desks, avoiding the office’s resident dog – which apparently was necessary for a “creative department”. Gavin headed towards a room named the “creative room”, which given what I’d already seen, concerned me that it might be a wing of Battersea Dogs Home. Fortunately I wasn’t set upon by a pack of ravenous hounds, Gavin ushered me to one of the chairs, but being a “creative room” these weren’t normal chairs, instead I was asked to sit on a Perspex chair which was artily designed so that the seat of the chair was approximately one inch off the floor. This major design feature essentially made the chair impossible to use for its primary purpose of sitting, as I was forced to squat down in a ridiculously low position looking about as graceful as I imagine I would if I was trying to climb onto a camel. Once in the seated position, I now had the strange problem of what to do with my legs, with my bottom only an inch off the ground my legs were completely obscuring my face to Gavin as he tried to brief me. In the end my legs ended up sort of splayed out across the floor, making it look as if I’d fallen off a high balcony and landed on the chair breaking my back in the process. These ridiculous transparent Perspex chairs were accompanied by an equally stupid clear Perspex table which to match the chairs was only two inches high, thus representing an almost invisible trip hazard. I started to seriously consider the possibility that Gavin had designed this furniture himself.

After a quick briefing I was taken over to stand in front of a camera and do my audition piece, I wasn’t too nervous about this, primarily because Gavin was operating the camera so I suspected the chances of it actually being filmed were minimal. I was given a question, a fictitious phone number and a celebrity gossip story to talk about. The twist on The Debbie King Show, was that as well as playing the competition she would also be discussing topical celebrity news stories, which viewers would be able to call in about and offer their opinion on (for the nominal fee of 75 pence a call). My celebrity gossip story was about Heather Mills’ appearance on the American version of Strictly Come Dancing. As I preceded to “host” the competition, Gavin played the role of a series of moronic callers giving ridiculous answers to the set question and asking me whether I thought Heather Mills would be able to dance with only one leg, a role which he seemed suited to, were it not for the moronic laugh he gave every time I told him he had the wrong answer.  Once I completed my audition Gavin laughed, unsurprisingly, and then told me I’d been very “technical”.  Technical? Really? The only technical thing I did was read out the question and phone number, a question and phone number he had invented?! Perhaps reading out 11 consecutive digits is technical to Gavin, either that or in my tedium I’d accidentally told the audience how to go about changing a carburettor in your car engine. It could have happened.

I never saw my audition tape, according to Gavin it was sent to the ITV Bosses for review, which I sincerely hope is a different postal address than submissions for You’ve Been Framed. So rather fortunately that tape will never see the light of day again, though this is ITV so there is a chance it will be played out during England’s next World Cup goal or broadcast on their current affairs programme after being described as IRA training footage.

As I went to leave the audition room an unbelievably camp drip of a man burst through the door in a manner so ridiculously over the top that even Julian Clary would have thought it a tad effeminate. He introduced himself as JC, presumably because he shares all the personality of two-thirds of a digger. And then with his camp lisp, excitedly disgorged the information that Britney Spears had just shaved her head and walked into the path of oncoming traffic. This revelation that a celebrity and mother was having a full scale mental breakdown caused both Gavin and JC to burst into hysterics, something that I felt was rather distasteful. I left at this point, worried that my Gaydar was going to explode in the presence of such a highly refined source of pure homosexuality.

I never heard back from The Debbie King Show, which I presumed meant I hadn’t been successful in my audition, though it may have been and Gavin simply rung the speaking clock in error confusing our similar phone numbers. To be honest I was quite relived not to have been selected, if anything the audition process had cemented my views on the hideousness of the genre. I did decide to watch the launch night of The Debbie King Show, in that sort of morbidly curious way you watch a car crash. I was strangely intrigued to see if JC had got the job, though the bit I managed to stomach solely featured Debbie King. Based on my snapshot of the programme, it would appear that the production company had hoped to recover the entire outlay spent on the set with the first phone call!

Unfortunately for The Debbie King Show its first transmission date was the 5^th of March 2007, and if you remember way back at the beginning of this blog, you’ll know that on the early hours of the 6^th of March, ITV Play ceased transmission permanently. That’s right after all that effort there was only ever one addition of The Debbie King Show – poor Debbie, Gavin and JC, they must have been devastated.

If you take one thing from this blog, let it be the theory that if you turn me down for a job your channel gets pulled the very next day! If enough people think it’s true, the myth will enter folklore and I’ll never be looking for work again! 

Abercrombie & Bitch

I look and feel like a tramp, no really I do. Recently I’ve noticed that my favourite clothes and shoes are starting to resemble a novelty colander, there’s so many holes in them that I look like a cartoon representation of Wile E. Coyote after he’s been savaged by a pack of hungry tigers. This means it’s time to go clothes shopping. Problem is I’m sure clothes shopping is supposed to be fun, after all I’m a gay man I’m supposed to find purchasing new garments at least 168% as much fun as throwing around a selection of scatter cushions in an artistic fashion. Sadly stereotypes aren’t always correct, though I do like a good scatter cushion.

Middle age must be beckoning, because now when I go around clothes shops I find myself saying horrendous comments that I believed only my parents were capable of uttering such as “These don’t look very practical”, or “They’ll be a bugger to iron.”. It’s all really quite upsetting, I blame modern fashion. How on earth are you supposed to wear jeans whose legs taper to an infinitesimally small point at your ankle, so that they only really fit the triangular Mr Rush from Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Men books? Or trousers that have a seam that spirals around your legs like a rampaging anaconda desperate on sucking the life force out of every vein your body. See they don’t look very practical, and they would be a bugger to iron.

Frustrated by my inability to find anything I like in my regular shopping haunts, which whilst boasting an impressively large shop floor space seem to be laid out much like an episode of Scooby Doo. In that if you run for long enough it turns out you’re just passing the same three T-shirts and one style of chino as that is all the animators could be bothered to draw. I decided to take the plunge and head to some more “designer” shops, shops that have been recommended by my friends, who whenever I meet them seem to be wearing clothes that look fashionable but not so outlandish fashionable, that they look like thye were dressed by a blind flamingo. So with expectations riding high, and a need to get some clothes that don’t make me look like I’ve been attacked by Edward Scissorhands I headed for the “designer” shops.

The first thing I notice upon entering such stores, is it’s not immediately obvious where the gender divide runs. Shops I’m used to like Next and River Island and even the department stores my mother used to take me to, are usually split with male and female departments on different floors. Which for men always means a trudge up and down a flight of stairs, I sometimes think it’s a miracle that disabled men actually own any clothes and don’t have to wheel around naked all the time. However in the new-fangled designer stores of my new fashionable lifestyle, it’s not to so obvious. An arbitrary wiggly line runs down the middle of the shop with all the definition of a hotly dispute international border. It’s easy to accidentally stray into hostile waters and find yourself looking at a T-shirt that looks really nice, except upon checking the price you realise it’s a Size 8. With disgust you throw back the T-shirt horrified that someone might have seen you and instantly presumed you’re a transvestite, rather than coming to the far more logical conclusion that you were shopping for someone else. Some shops make it even more complicated, Gap for example has pictures of androgynous models all around the store so you can’t be sure if their male or female pictures near the clothes you are looking at. They’re beautiful definitely, but every single model has a smooth face is clean shaven and sports suspiciously short hair. It takes just as long to judge their gender as it does to judge the gender of the clothes beneath them. Other stores go to more random extents, I’m sure my recent visit to Superdry was confused by them having a large men’s department surrounded by various satellites of ladieswear, with no clear frontiers between the two. The other problem with this kind of stylish fashion, is even the garments that look obviously feminine could be for men, perhaps plunge neck T-shirts have become fashionable for the man about town, or maybe Culottes are now a unisex item, you can never be sure.

Of course complex segregation of male and female stores isn’t the only potential pitfall for the unwary shopper. I recently visited a store called Abercrombie & Fitch for the first time, despite sounding like the name of two particularly ostentatious cats (“come down from the worktop Abercrombie”), it’s actually a high-end designer clothing store. On arrival you’re not met by the usual shop system that we’re used to, the one that’s served us well for the rest of our lives. No rather than being faced with the traditional door that you enter the shop through surrounded by windows displaying what the shop actually sells. You instead come face to face with a store with no windows, because it’s too exclusive to actually display its wares, and a queuing system that would make Chessington World of Adventures envious. Yep that’s right you have to queue outside the store just to make the store look more desirable so that more people join the queue, in a vicious cycle that couldn’t be more British unless whilst waiting you were served tea and scones and got to say something deeply xenophobic. In my mind this doesn’t make Abercrombie & Fitch look designer, it makes it look like the Post Office but with less old people.

Once you’ve meandered your way through the queuing system, there’s a veritable team of people to great you at the door. Firstly, in order to give you the entirely false impression that the store is actually a five-star hotel, a number of smartly dressed men open the doors for you. Because you are clearly too important to open the door for yourself, as an aside (and I don’t wish to do people out of jobs, especially in these tough economic times) but if not having to open the door is that important, why not just fit automatic doors – it works for Poundland. Up next there’s a woman employed solely to say “Hello”, that seems to be all she does, just says “Hello” – I could do that job…, if I was woman, wasn’t a grumpy s**t and didn’t have all the looks and charm of a rancid plate of semolina. Then there’s an unfeasibly attractive half dressed man, with a ripped torso who you can pose and take a photo with. If that is you’re mad. No one in their right mind gets their photo taken next to an unfeasibly attractive person, because in the resultant photo their beauty will make you like Quasimodo on a particularly unpleasant visit to the Burns unit. Upload that photo to Facebook and people won’t be thinking about how attractive the man looks, or how much of a fun time you’re having, but instead on how old you’re looking or that they didn’t realise you’d got fat. This is why sensible people only ever agree to get their photo taken with their ugly friends, because it makes them look that much better. And if you can’t work out who the ugly person in your group is, then it’s you. And before you make a smart a**e comment, I am fully away of my place in the food chain of looks, what can I say? I appreciate the plight of the plankton. Apparently you have to pay for the photos, again another connection between Abercrombie & Fitch and Thorpe Park, though at least in this photo you won’t look like you are vomiting your dinner up (sadly the same cannot be said about your friends viewing the photo making unfortunate comparisons between you and the model).

All this and you haven’t even entered the store properly, in fairness it has to be said Abercrombie & Fitch looks pretty plush. Where Primark at the end of a busy day looks like the aftermath of a particularly bloody explosion at a Bring and Buy sale, Abercrombie & Fitch still looks elegant and tidy. Primarily this is because the minute you do so much as even breathe in the direction of one of the display racks a team of highly trained professionals rush to rearrange all the tops lest you upset the karma of the store. The shop’s wears are, as you’d expect from a designer clothing label, perfectly bog standard t-shirts, hoddies and jumper swhere the inclusion of a designer logo has led to the decimal point, on the price ticket, jumping one place to the right. Aside from the clothes, the most bizarre thing I discovered in the store was a dance floor complete with dancers. No, not some professional dance act recruited in from a swanky London performing arts college, but actual members of staff, in the staff “uniform” dancing away. As if to show that working for this company is soooo amazing, all we get to do is dance all day because we’re that cool, and our lives our wonderful because we work for Abercrombie & Fitch and we’re only employed because we’re beautiful. All us mortals can do is hope that they all spend the work Christmas party crying in the corner because they realise just how fake all their work friends are, that they’ll be forced to wear a branded paper bag over their head the minute they hit 25 in case they make people wretch, and that their lives are meaningless pawns in a sea of commercialised bulls**t. As I say, all we can do is hope, because actually they’re having a great time. To**ers.

Despite the clear abundance of staff in the store, with enough spare people to dance next to the racks of clothes and fold out every micro-crinkle that the displaced air caused as you moved your fat body through the store. Despite all this, when I visited there was only one till open, and a massive queue. Would it have killed the brand image if for one moment the dance floor had been emptied and some people manned the tills? Apparently it would have. Unfortunately for some ridiculous reason the problem of the large queue was magnified by the fact that the till area was decked out with more mirrors than the average swanky hair salon. Resulting in thousands of copies of the same row of frustrated sand bored faces being visible on every surface wherever you looked, much like a Girls Aloud concert.

Obviously the big question is did I buy anything? Of course not, I was just confused by the array of unknown shopping experiences I hadn’t expected. Like Henry VIII wandering through a modern shopping centre for the first time, both appalled and intrigued at what I saw with equal measure. Which coincidentally is the same set of facial reactions you see if ever I’m forced to watch The Only Way is Essex. Instead I simply walked out of the store, empty handed only to pass the “Hello” lady again, except this time she said “Goodbye” – but in a tone that really said “I knew this shop wasn’t really for you, but I didn’t say anything as you came in.’

On that note I’ll bid you adjure, except to say you can now follow my tedious ramblings on Twitter just “connect with” @mattymatician #goonyouknowyouwantto – see look at me down with the kids. And incidentally if anyone has any decent second hand clothes they wish to send me, they’ll be welcome. The situation is getting quite desperate. I claim to be a size Small, but in reality unless it’s at least a big Medium, the fabric will be pulled across my body tighter than the skin on Anne Robinson’s face.

The Cycle of False Hope - The Horrors of Online Dating Part 2

Welcome back to DraMattics the blog you’ll be wishing was stopped halfway through by James Corden. If you read yesterday’s entry you know that we’re halfway through a two-part special on the pitfalls of online dating. With your profile finally constructed it’s now time to meet that special someone online. Slightly nervous, you log online and start the search...

Initially you start browsing through the profiles carefully reading all the text, as you know that compatibility and shared interests are far more important than looks. Within 15 minutes you just start flicking through the photos and dismissing people based on the slightest blemishes. Eventually after a lot of searching, you find the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, there’s not a flaw in any of their photos, they are the one. You even read their profile and convince yourself you’re a perfect match “They like watching television, going to the cinema and socialising as well, what are the chances?”. So you go to write them the perfect message, the message that’s going to get them as excited about you as you are already about them. Problem is it turns out that just because you’re not face to face with them, doesn’t stop you being awkward, which makes writing an opening message rather tricky. You start with “Hi”, after hours of thinking of something witty to say your message still reads “Hi”, eventually you send a message reading “Hi, how are you?”.

The minutes pass, they’ve not replied, why not? Your opening message was so good. Finally an e-mail pops up, someone has messaged you – it must be them, you log on with excitement. What can they have possibly said? You open up your messages, it’s not from them, it’s from someone 20 years older than you with a face that looks like it’s been attacked by a cheese grater. Additionally they have a bizarre penchant for typing their messags in capital letters SO IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE SHOUTING AT YOU LIKE A PSYCHO. Disappointed you reply to the sender, “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. And then the questioning begins, they ask you “why aren’t I what you are looking for?” no matter how polite you try to be in fobbing them off they continue to reply to you. It as if their emotional self-worth has a death wish that it’s desperately trying to fulfil and won’t be sated until they hear the words “Your face looks like a scrotum that’s been in a hot bath too long”. Finally they stop e-mailing you, you can’t be sure they haven’t taken their own life but by this point you don’t care, just desperate stop the never-ending torrential barrage of questioning. It represents the most pointless conversation you’ve ever been in, since you last got stopped in the street by a charity worker, knowing full well that as soon as they pause to take breath in their opening spiel you’re going to say “no”. You soon learn it’s better to ignore those who message who you clearly want nothing to do with.

It then dawns on you, that maybe the reason your true love hasn’t replied is that they, didn’t get your message – that’s the only logical answer left clearly. You best send them a new message, however if you thought the first message was awkward, you soon realise that trying to explain in words that “you’re not sure if they got the first message” only serves to make you appear desperate. You send the message, and wait. Suddenly a new message pings in your inbox, you open it excited, you were right they didn’t get the first message. Turns out the message is an automated message from the site, telling you about an exciting new feature, where you answer a series of mind-numbing questions in attempt to match your pathetically vague answers to other people’s pathetically vague answers on the site.

Finally you accept that the true love, isn’t going to reply. In fact you don’t actually know if they want to reply but are unable to. The clever thing about the strategy that allows you to join a dating website without paying is that there can be a number of profiles online at any one time, of people who haven’t paid up. So you can send these people messages (the site wants this, to encourage those people to join to read your messages), but you will never know if you were ignored because of your face or because they weren’t prepared to part with their cash. You decide to move on, knowing the reply rate of dating messages is about the same as letters to Santa Claus, or CVs sent in Wolverhampton, you send a number of messages to different people. Lowering the standards of your potential suitor as you go. Again you wait for replies. Nothing.

Eventually you get a reply, to your dismay, it’s from one of the least worst choice options you e-mailed, someone you messaged on a particularly lonely night home alone when your standards were so low you’d have considered dating a jar of Bovril. Now in the cold light of day, you realise that their hobbies include murdering babies, strangling squirrels and watching Loose Woman and their picture makes them look like a less attractive version of a Crimewatch photo fit. You feel awkward now you have to fob them off, and you initiated first contact. You try hinting in your e-mails that you have socially unacceptable hobbies, like developing your own deadly strains of body odour and kleptomania – sadly they find this endearing. Eventually the only option is to tell them you’re dead, or convince them that you’re seeing someone else. All the more difficult a lie to spin when you’re still regularly logging onto the dating site, as most sites have an annoying feature that lists when you last logged on, on your profile. After this loop completes itself a number of times you decide to give up, online dating clearly isn’t for you. Your membership is going to expire today, there’s no point in wasting any money and renewing it. Oh well there’s more to life than being happy you reason.

One hour after your subscription expires, a new message pops in, you can’t read it but you check the sender. It’s your true love, they’ve finally replied. But now you can’t read the message, your subscription has expired. Hurriedly you reach for your debit card, eager to tap in the 16-digit card number, just so you can read the marriage proposal you’ve clearly received. You go for the worst value for money option, the one-month subscription, you won’t need a longer subscription – this is the love of your life after all. With your payment approved you hurriedly open their message, your heart is racing with excitement as you read the words “Sorry you seem like a nice person, but you really aren’t what I am looking for. Thanks”. Your world collapses in on itself, you experience the kind of disappointment usually reserved solely for opening Christmas Crackers and discovering the “prize” was a novelty one-piece jigsaw. Convinced there must have been some terrible mistake you reply “why aren’t I what you are looking for?”. A number of messages are exchanged before they block your profile and report you to the site administrator.

Still your disappointment has been slightly tempered, one of the other people you messaged a few weeks back has replied. You’ve agreed to meet up for a meal, that should be nice. It’s only a few days until your date and you keep looking back at their profile. You realise actually you’ve got a lot in common, they’re pretty attractive and you’re sure something special is going to happen between the two of you. Finally it’s the day of the date, you’ve made a supreme effort, much to the mocking of friends and colleagues, you’re wearing your best clothes, your smart shoes and you’ve spent ages getting your hair to look just perfect. What could possibly go wrong?

You turn up at the pre-arranged meeting point, eager to find your date you look around, there’s lots of attractive looking people but you can’t see the person shown in the pictures you’d been looking at. Finally you spot them amongst the crowd, except it’s not them as you expected, it’s a hideous cartoon parody of the pictures you’ve seen on their profile. You approach them, not sure whether you should make contact or run, but too late they’ve spotted you, and you realise the awful truth it is them. In that three seconds the extent of their “being economical with the truth” unravels as you realise that the photos they uploaded of themselves were taken at least seven years ago, before they put on six stone, before they developed male pattern baldness (even if they aren’t male), before they decided to have a tattoo across their face and before they suffered a terribly disfiguring car crash. Additionally their description of age and build are so wildly unbelievable that even Hans Christian Anderson wouldn’t have attempted to write such fanciful bulls**t.

Reluctantly you proceed to dinner with them, cursing yourself for not suggesting any other dating activity that would have been shorter such as a pint, a coffee or even a group suicide pact. As you begin dinner they suggest doing the full starter, main course, dessert option, whereas you’d hope you could have taken one bite out of your meal said your full and then left. As the conversation continues you realise that you have nothing in common, the only thing they can talk about is how exciting Lady Gaga’s latest video is, which you haven’t seen. They find it incredulous that you haven’t seen it, they’d be less shocked if you told them that you were a Mermaid and had to return to the ocean in the next five minutes before you dehydrate and die. The only other thing they can talk to you about is The Only Way is Essex, you realise that you are essentially on a date with a copy of Heat Magazine, except it’s costing you a lot more than one pound fifty and doesn’t have the one redeeming feature that you can wipe you’re a**e with it if you’ve run out of loo roll.

Worse still they haven’t asked a single question about you, instead they’ve spent the last hour babbling along about their pointless life, a life so disinteresting you want to rip your own windpipe out and fashion into a crude trombone just to give yourself something to relieve the boredom. When they do finally let you speak, no matter what you say their only response is to laugh inanely, like a hyena on nitrous oxide. Regardless of whether you utter a simple reply to what they’ve said, tell a joke, say a statement of fact, or even commenting that you have megalomaniacal tendencies and one day hope to destroy the world, all they can do is reply with that inane pathetic laugh. Despite all your best efforts to wrap up the meal as quickly as possible you can’t they wait out for dessert, don’t get any of your hints about having to leave soon or be up early the next day. Not only that but you’ve got food down your best clothes, they’re ruined, like your life. Finally the meal comes to the end; they have forgotten their credit card, so you end up paying. They then suggest going for a drink afterwards, inexplicably you lose your mind and say “yes”, what the hell were you thinking?

Five hours later, five hours of utter torture with someone you wouldn’t even want to spend ten seconds in a lift with, let alone a tedious evening of pathetic prattle about topics so low brow even ITV2 would turn its nose up at them you crack. You inform that you have to go and that you’ve had an awful night. They simple inanely laugh at you. As you leave you stupidly give the automatic response “See you soon” cursing your own idiocy. They then move in for a goodbye kiss, which you spot and try and manoeuvre yourself to force it into a goodbye hug, but you end up knocking a table over and embarrassing yourself. Still you’ve left, you’ve escaped the hell.

There are four potential outcomes of a first date, providing you didn’t kill either them or yourself during the initial encounter.

1. You both like each other – this is so unlikely to have happened that we won’t bother discussing any further.
2. You both hate each other – given the remoteness of option 1, this is the best option you can hope for.
3. You like them and they don’t like you – you send them a nice text saying you’d like to meet again, they politely tell you how awful it was and explain they never wish to see you again. You cry lots.
4. They like you and you don’t like them – this is the worst option, as then you have to send the awkward message saying you don’t want to meet. At least in option 3 you had the comfort of being bitter, now you have to be the ba****d, and there’s no comfort in that.

Clearly your date ends in option 4, but you speak to some friends about it, and they convince you it’s worth giving this person another try. After all maybe a spark will grow. Reluctantly you agree. The above scenario plays out again, except you feel even more guilty sending the text in Option 4 as now you’ve strung them along for two dates. At the end of it all, you’re poorer, bitterer and just as single. You continue trawling the website looking for more dates, but they all end as above, before long you’ve been on the website for six months, and all the profiles that pop up are just the same faces as before. All of you locked into a cycle of loneliness, depression, and false hope fuelled by the dating website’s empty promises.

And that’s how internet dating works, happy hunting!

If Argos did Romance… - The Horrors of Online Dating Part 1

Have you ever been online dating? If the answer is no, then you’re probably a good-looking, confident, humorous, approachable person who enjoys the company of others. If not then you probably fall short or one or more of these traits, or like in my case all of them.

As the most socially awkward person in the Western hemisphere with all the confidence and small-talking ability of a British-Argentinean state dinner, I have succumbed to the potential pitfalls of online dating. There’s a number of online dating sites all keen to collect the loneliness tax from you and add you to their books, but broadly speaking they all work in a similar way (not that I’ve been on many – awkward), from the mainstream, heavily advertised dating sites to the niche Velcro fetish ones (not that I’ve been on any of those at all – awkwarder still).

Anyway after last week’s Valentine’s hell, many people have suggested I be more proactive and try and find myself a boyfriend, so for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the process of internet dating, here’s my two part guide to the potential horrors you face in searching for your soul mate, which will hopefully convince you it’s not worth trying. Today we’ll look at setting yourself up on a dating website, and tomorrow we’ll go through the exciting carnage of interacting with other people online and arranging that all important date.

The first step is creating yourself a profile, so that prospective suitors can find a good reason to dismiss you and save both of you the cost and inconvenience of a date. Many sites will ask you to choose a unique username, rather than just allowing you to call yourself by your own name – which would be arguably a lot more helpful. The trick here I’ve found is to be broadly non-emotive and not try and use this to sell yourself. Overconfident usernames such as HornyDogXXX and BigBreasts49 generally make you come across as a knob, ironically trying the reverse and using under-confident usernames like EssexWeedyBoy and LonelyGirl2 actually just come across as truthful and plastered immediately above a photo of you leave a strange psychological imprint that makes other users instantly close your profile.

Next up you’ll need to fill out a short questionnaire to give a summary of you and what you are looking for. Questions that usually come up include age and location – which provide a helpful way to filter out a large proportion of the online community. Also things like occupation, education (for some unknown reason), eye colour (just in case Hitler himself is indulging himself in a spot of online dating) and the important question “do you drink?” – I think if you select no to the drinking option, a pop-up box appears warning that you need to start, in order to meet the level of tolerance required to survive on-line dating.

I’ve noticed a handful of questions that particularly stick out, first is Height – not necessarily an odd thing to ask, but am I the only person who doesn’t actually know their own height? This has come up in other situations and I haven’t a clue, the last time I measured myself was when I was 12 and my parents routinely stood me next to a height chart. This seemed to serve no practical purpose other than to give family members an opportunity to tut loudly and moan about how fast your growing, and how you’d probably need a fortune worth of new clothes soon. Then there’s increasingly common question of “Do you take Drugs?” – for the avoidance of doubt I don’t, I’m simply not cool enough. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure why the police’s anti-drugs team don’t get themselves a profile and round up all those who tick the “yes” box to this question. As a side note to the people who leave this box empty or select “prefer not to say”, you aren’t really creating any mystery – even the stupidest of people can read through your elaborate avoidance of the question. Lastly there’s the question on “Build”, this is the first real opportunity to be creative with the truth, unless you’ve been trying to cover up your red satanic eyes in the eye-colour question. Options here usually range from “very skinny”, through “muscled”, “average” or “a few extra pounds” right through to “have been mistaken for a bouncy castle”. The general rule seems to be always class yourself one category better than you actually are, anything more is a blatant lie, and may result in a visit from trade’s descriptions.

Next up you’ll need to write a short essay on your interests, broadly speaking this will go one of two ways. Either people struggle to write this and up putting down a lame set of interests that include “watching television, going to the cinema and socialising” as if they’re fleshing out their CV circa the age of 14. Sometimes given how obvious the choices are, you wonder if the people considered listing things like breathing and defecating just to fill up the character count. Though this at least feels like it has a sense of refreshing honesty, unlike the other option, which is to go crazy and make your entire life seem like one long gap year. Contenders for this need to list white-water rafting, abseiling, kayaking and travelling, lots of travelling – if they haven’t listed The Moon as one of their top tourist destinations they’re not even trying. The primary problem with this is that all the non-liars won’t want to date you as they feel they will be shown up as exceptionally boring in your company. And all of this is rather arbitrary as the average forum browser will select you solely based on your picture and won’t read any of the torturous c**p you spent seven hours writing.

This leads us nicely onto the final thing you need to do – select at least one, preferably a number of, photographs. As a quick note here if you don’t select a photograph you will not be appear like a mysterious romantic stranger – instantly people will correctly presume you are ugly. Photo selection is always fraught with quandary, particularly if like me you are about as photogenic as an explosion in a septic tank. Clearly you don’t want to show a picture that actually features an accurate representation of yourself, because quite frankly if you looked naturally attractive in all your photos you wouldn’t be needing online dating in the first place. The question here is always how much to lie, a flattering photo taken at a good angle seems reasonable, one taken a few years ago possibly less so, a photo of someone else seems definitely morally questionable. But you’ll be surprised at the lengths some people will take “bending the truth” hoping you won’t notice the extra 50lbs when they have subsequently put on when you meet them in person.

Up to this point you won’t have had to pay a thing, all dating websites allow you to create a profile and search for matches for free. But the minute you want to send or read a message, is where the cash comes in. Incidentally setting up your profile counts as joining the website, being able to read messages is considered an “upgrade” even though there’s no way to use the site without it! This is why many website list themselves as “free to join” even though just joining them is about as much use as voting for the Liberal Democrats historically was.

At this point you can receive messages, but not read them so the temptation to part with your cash increase all the more in order to view these mystery messages. The pricing strategies of dating websites follow an interesting model, despite adverts suggesting you’ll be finding your true love very soon, the price list encourages you to sign up long term – as let’s face it you’re destined to be single. Just one month’s membership comes in at a hefty thirty pounds on average, but if you’re prepared to part with upward of a hundred pounds you can join for a year. Which if you do certainly implies you don’t have much faith in your own ability.

With credit card worn out, you’ve finally joined, you can start browsing the website, flicking through the pages like your glancing through the Argos catalogue looking for a flat pack wardrobe. Although sadly should you meet up with anyone from the dating website they won’t be delivered to you down a conveyer belt – which would make the whole thing a lot more fun.

By this point you’re exhausted, to get this far has taken you all weekend and now you can’t be bothered to look at all the other profiles. With any luck you’ll forget about the whole project and not bother arranging any dates. Just cut your losses here, because the actual dating part will be awful.

Join me tomorrow when I’ll explain the fate that you are destined to fulfil when you start browsing those online profiles.

Anti-Valentine’s Day – The Business Pitch

If you read yesterday’s blog you may have seen a tiny hint of bitterness that I have on Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure, it might not have come through, the writing was quite subtle. Oh and for the curious, no I didn’t get any Valentine’s cards - no surprises there.

Well today, the 15^th of February I propose to turn into Anti-Valentine’s Day. I know I am not the first, and probably not the last, to propose this celebration by any means, but I may the first to actually have made a full range of products – so dear readers I am looking to you for an investment of up to £250,000.

Just in case you’re the kind of annoying happy person who has never thought about launching this kind of event, here’s a quick overview. Anti-Valentine’s Day is the celebration where we celebrate failed and unrequited love, bitterness and singledom. I think it’s only fair when we already have Valentine’s Day, and indeed represents a massive marketing opportunity, which in these harsh economic times can only be a good thing for the country.

First job is to get Clinton Cards onside, given they’d happily push “I am a Child Molester Day” if they thought it would flog them a few cards and some of those stupid grey teddy bears (though I would be interested to see the versions of that teddy that would be produced for I’m a Child Molester Day), they surely would be happy to jump on the bandwagon. Especially given there are lots of greeting cards opportunities for Anti-Valentine’s Day. In fact arguably a single individual would be able to send a whole range of cards, rather than just one card to their only true love, because there’s a whole range of unfortunate relationships you could, and probably, have had.

First up you’d be able to send cards to people who you hold an unrequited love for. For example the card could have the message on the front “Why Won’t You Go Out With Me?” and inside read:

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
You’re responsible for the unfortunate stains on my bed,
And I’m outside your house watching you”

Touching.

Or for the person who dumped you, a card that simply reads “You Ruined My Life” and inside:

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I can’t get the thoughts of you out my head,
I’d do anything for one last screw”

Or my favourite for the person who cheated on you a card that reads “Remember Me?” and inside:

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I want you dead,
And your new boyfriend too”

Like Valentine’s Day cards these should all be anonymously signed for proper stalkerish effect, and to reduce the likelihood of the relevant authorities finding you. Personally I think this would be a genius marketing ploy for retailers because as we all know love may last forever but only bitterness is eternal.

But why stop at cards? Like Valentine’s Day there’s a full range of tatty merchandise that could be released for Anti-Valentine’s Day, and the good news is you don’t even have to imagine them because I’ve actually made them.

For the last few years I have been embracing Anti-Valentine’s Day with my own Anti-Valentine’s Day meal where I have cooked for a selection of my single friends on Valentine’s Day, forcing my housemates in couples to go out for the evening and spend an inordinate amount of money on their partners – ha ha ha.

The below photos from my Anti-Valentine’s Day meals show the full range of potential investment opportunities, in a whole wealth of tatty Anti-Valentine’s merchandising:

Just as the heart is the symbol of Valentine’s Day the shattered heart is the symbol of Anti-Valentine’s Day with broken hearts everywhere.

To remind us why it’s better to be single than in a couple, pictures of famous celebrity break ups are scattered around the dining room:

Always good to see Les Dennis and Heather Mills featured in the same vein.

Even the menu can be themed:

With the starter being Bitter Paté, main course being Broken Chicken Hearts and dessert being Date-Free Cake – see what I’ve done there? Additionally shots are only available as singles. Oh come on that’s clever!

It’s important to make sure the door into the event is appropriately themed:

Incidentally this image makes a great R.S.V.P. to wedding invites that your more successful friends send you. The bastards.

No Anti-Valentine’s Party would be complete without a touch of burnt rose petals for the smell of your hopes and dreams burning:

Just in case it gets too much an appropriate emergency sign is placed on the balcony:

Of course you need some table decorations. Here’s Valentine’s Doggy holding a lovely heart and with a knife sticking through his chest, and blood dripping out of his body:

And Valentine’s Teddy whose head has unfortunately been ripped off – the smug smiling turgid bear:

I’d like to say no Valentine’s Teddies were hurt in the making of these products, but I can’t.

So there you go potential investors, the perfect celebration to get your backing. It’s a sure fire way to make money. Make your offers, except Deborah Meaden, you clearly don’t actually have any money.

At this point you’re likely to be backing away from the computer, and thinking to yourself I probably shouldn’t approaching the person who wrote this blog if they’re holding a sharp instrument. And to be honest any good psychologist would probably agree with you.

Now to those of you, who think this is unhealthy and I probably shouldn’t spend Valentine’s night hosting Anti-Valentine’s parties. I have tried. Last year there was no Anti-Valentine’s night, primarily as my regular group of single friend invitees had pretty much all found partners, and those that hadn’t, responded to the above paragraph. So in an effort to be positive and take control of the situation I signed myself up to a Valentine’s network and socialising event, the idea being that as it was on Valentine’s Day only single people would go. Thus you could all meet up get laid and live happily ever after – well that’s what the brochure said.

The problem is that any event in which romance is being attempted to be artificially orchestrated will only attract social retards, like myself, because clearly those who aren’t social retards can meet people they like in normal situations and ask them out without the need of some grand "shag me" event. Also I failed to realise the key plan that everyone else would do at this events, they’d bring at least one other single friend along, so they had someone to talk to. I didn’t. So now we had a room full of social retards, no one talking to anyone, except within the pre-existing groups of friends. And the individual singletons, like myself, standing there in a corner on their own, either acting excited by a coat hook or pretending to read texts on their mobile. Seriously I ran out of things to do on my phone, I’d cleared out the drafts text message folder and reorganised my phone book all whilst pretending to read a text. In fact it was this kind of social awkwardness that encouraged to get a smart phone, at least now I can use Google whilst pretending to read texts to escape awkward social situations.

Anyway having spent £10 for this “exciting” event and drunk my free glass of wine, I decided, after an hour of avoiding making eye contact with the creepy looking people, I should abandon this lost cause. So my Valentine’s evening consisted of wasting £10, feeling depressed about being unable to pull in what by all accounts should have been a dead cert – room full of desperate singletons on Valentine’s Day. Then I went home binge ate a pizza and two cheesecakes and completed a level on Mario Kart. So there we go Anti-Valentine’s is the way forward, and I look forward to reintroducing it.

Before I go and calm down and let my vein stop throbbing, I should impart to any couples out there the three golden rules that you should always obey when trying to comfort single people on or around Valentine’s Day:

1. Don’t tell us that Valentine’s Day is worse for couples. If it that’s bad leave them, you are miserable by choice, we are miserable despite our best efforts not to be. Your level of pain pales in comparison to our own, don’t try and trivialise it.

2. Don’t tell us that you and your partner aren’t doing anything for Valentine’s Day. How could this possibly help? What you are effectively saying is that you have a ticket to the Happiness Party we're not allowed to go to, but your life is so happy you don’t need to go to the Happiness Party – this makes us hate you.

3. Don’t tell us that "don’t worry you’re bound to meet someone perfect soon". Quite frankly I’m too old for this Disney bullshit - it’s perfectly possible that I will spend the rest of miserable life sad and lonely with my only companionship provided by a group of dismembered Valentine’s Day teddies. Fate has nothing to do with it, don't patronise me!

On that cheery note I bring this post to a close. I wonder if anyone will still approach me in public without a canister of pepper spray.

Happy I Have a Job Day

Why don’t we have a nationwide celebration, one day a year where we celebrate having jobs? That’s right everyone who has a job sends one other person who has a job a card congratulating them on having a job. Giant displays would go up in windows two months before hand reminding people that they must buy chocolates, flowers and other themed tat to show those people who have a job just how lucky they are. Then on the big day all those with jobs would go out and have the best night of their life, enjoying a nice meal, a trip to the cinema, or even a holiday to Paris. Meanwhile those without jobs would stare forlornly at the festivities, cursing the unfairness of it all that they cannot attend. No matter how much they tried to avoid thinking about “I have a Job Day – Ha Ha Ha” (as it would be known) they wouldn’t be able to escape seeing the merchandising, advertising and general hubbub about the day.

Of course we can’t do this because this would be inhuman and insensitive. It’s just one step away from locking up the unemployed in a giant animal enclosure, forcing them to dance for us naked whilst we throw scraps of food at them and cheer as they fight each other for every morsel. Though please don’t suggest that idea to George Osbourne, I can already see Her Majesty’s Government putting in a bulk order for chicken wire as I type.

No kind and thoughtful person would want to rub their current employment status in the face of a less fortunate individual. And no right-minded society would allow a national day in which this kind of behaviour happened. Except that they do, not in the case of jobs but in the case of romance. Yes that’s right Valentine’s Day is here again. In actual fact, I hadn’t noticed, over recent weeks I’ve managed to navigate my supermarket blind so haven’t noticed the large heart shaped displays hovering above every isle like an extract from the Ladybird Book of Autopsies.

Obviously it’s still before three in the afternoon, so the postman hasn’t been and I have no way of knowing yet if I’ve received thousands of Valentine’s cards or if I have strained the Royal Mail to breaking point. For the sake of reality let’s assume I haven’t, in fact let’s assume that my letter box has been opened less today than a branch of Lloyds TSB after 12pm on a Saturday. In fact the only way I am managing to get through today is by routinely placing pictures of happy couples in my handy home office-sized shredder.

I wouldn’t really shred the nation’s sweethearts Wills and Kate would I?

Turns out I would, there goes my knighthood.

Over the years that I’ve come to accept that I will never know the love of another human, and that at death my genitalia will able to be auctioned in eBay under the description “Mint in original packaging”, that or very soon I will be getting myself a cat. But despite my apparent grumpiness on the issue, I have come to happily take my position at the bottom of the romantic food chain along with the other socially retarded individuals such as the Go Compare tenor and Justin Bieber fans. I am content in life, knowing that no matter how lonely I am, I will never have to share my dessert in a restaurant with someone who didn’t want one at the point of ordering. I’ll always be able to wrap a full double duvet around myself on cold winter nights. And the only awkward conversations about children I’ll have to have, are if I’m caught abducting a baby from the local hospital’s maternity ward.

I say I am content being single, I am content when I am allowed to wallow in my own self pity and masturbatory juices free from reminders of my own inadequacies. Valentine’s Day does not allow this, a national celebration where the nation gathers together to point, laugh and throw stones at the single people. As if the knowledge that their genetic material is being removed from the gene pool isn’t punishment enough. Rational humans, and I do realise I’m not one of those, may say, “Well it’s just a day, ignore it!”. Really try! Everyone under the sun wants to remind me that today is Valentine’s Day. Just a walk along the High Street will lead you to pass a thousand different window displays filled with giant red hearts starring down on you like the Eye of Sauron, only marginally more satanic. I appreciate restaurants, chocolate shops and perfumeries need to advertise and rely on the Valentine’s day business, but really do toy shops, chemists and estate agents need to fill their windows with hearts. I swear I passed the funeral director’s last week and they had a giant heart-shaped coffin in the window. Is it me or does that seem a bit much?

Sorry please excuse me I need to shred another happy couple…

Sorry where was I? Oh yes, even if you lock yourself in your house you’ll be constantly reminded of Valentine’s Day what with television adverts telling you all about the special Dine in For 2 offer at your local supermarket. Mind you I did take that up – mainly so I could eat both meals at home tonight and get fat. Well it’s that or cry. There’s no escape even if you turn your television off, I clearly hadn’t set my spam filter correctly as a number of Valentine’s offers managed to get e-mailed to me. Including, and I’m not making these up, a Valentine’s e-mail suggesting you buy your loved one something from eBay – I mean nothing says I love you, like second hand goods. Plus I also received this e-mail…

Yes that’s right First Hull Trains want me to book a special romantic getaway to London, this is wrong on so many levels, it’s virtually become the Empire State Building of awkwardness. Surprisingly the most difficult problem to overcome is not my singledom, but the fact that I would have to move to Hull to take advantage of this offer. I am not saying anything bad about Hull but I’d rather jump into the bath with a live three-bar electric fire under my arm than move to Hull. Apologies to anyone living in Hull. No seriously you have my condolences, still on the plus side if you want to move First Hull Trains have got some good special offers on. And if e-mailing and television advertising offers weren’t enough my weekly trip to Sainsbury’s was largely ruined by a repeated tanoy announcement beginning “Did you know it’s Valentine’s Day this week?...” – no how could I have possibly noticed what with the fact you’ve played the same bloody announcement every five minutes for the last half hour and the store has more pink bunting up, than at Elton John’s wedding? Plus of course the cashier who upon receiving payment wished me a “Happy Valentine’s Day”, which is creepy A) because the cashier actually spoke to me and B) because f**k off, you’re intervention into my life is about as welcome as those old school friends who haven’t spoken to you for the last 20 years but decide it would be really good idea to upload an old class photo to Facebook and tag you in it. Piss off.

Sorry the vein is throbbing again…

Ahhh, that’s better.

At this point some rational people will probably be suggesting that all this is due to the unwanted commercialisation of Valentine’s Day, well no, normal people are bloody annoying as well – and they have no commercial need to cause vitriolic bile to rise to my throat. Public displays of affection are never welcome within my eyeline, but especially not on or around Valentine’s Day. The escalators on the London Underground are not an appropriate place to do a quick dental inspection of your partners pre-molars using only your tongue – even if the staggered staircase corrects a rather awkward height difference that otherwise blights your happy relationship. And as for the couple in the queue in the supermarket this week, who had their tongues wedged so far down each others throats they were practically popping out of each other’s anuses. Is it really necessary to also make a noise wallpaper paste being slopped around a bucket? I nearly had to run them both through with a frozen Be Good To Yourself garlic baguette.

Oh and please don’t bring Valentine’s Day into the workplace, if a loved one sends 24 red roses to your office. When all the single people say “isn’t that lovely”, what we’re actually thinking is “Bitch” and wondering if we’d get fired for feeding the flowers into the shredder. One year, a girl genuinely arrived into my office on Valentine’s Day and started moaning at me about how awful it was she had to come into work so early, because she had missed the post and would have to wait until she got home to receive her boyfriend’s card. She moaned about this to me. Yes that’s right to me. It’s the equivalent of complaining to a person who has had both legs amputated that the shoe shop is closed. By the way if anyone is wondering what happened to the aforementioned girl, and why she stopped coming to work, you’ll find her bloodied body hidden behind the photocopier. For some reason I felt the need on that Valentine’s Day to repeatedly slam her head in the lid of the photocopier, that will also explain what the red mess on the glass plate was – just in case the police are reading this I didn’t actually do this (except in my mind).

Oh and if you even think of commenting on this blog that Valentine’s Day is just as bad for people in couples, it’s not. Otherwise logically you would dump them, to make yourself happier, and you haven’t – although if you have I would like to hear about that it would make me feel better.

See told you Valentine’s Day was anti-social, inappropriate and unjust. In fact I’ve decided it would be less awful to rename this day “I Have a Job Day”. So Happy “I Have a Job Day”, unless of course they do find that body behind the photocopier in which case I may no longer be joining in with this celebration either.

On that note it’s time for another trip to the shredder, bloody happy couples.

I’m coming out – scores 54 on a triple word score!

Warning this blog contains some grim imagery, you have been warned!

I’m having a baby. I’m dumping my girlfriend. A pet died in my care. I’m ginger. I have an unnatural love for royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell. What do all those sentences have in common? That’s right they can be quite difficult to tell your nearest and dearest.

I think everyone in their life at one point or other has had difficulty telling people a particular statement, with the possible exception of Katie Price – who could perhaps do with developing the ability to not routinely tell us all about her private life. Get a super injunction woman, we’re not interested.

The statement I’ve struggled with telling some people over the years is that I am gay. There I’ve said it. Though in fairness at this point I am only telling my computer, and given it’s been the sole observer of my pornography collection, it has probably already guessed. Apologies by the way if you didn’t already know this news, as you will discover I probably wasn’t keeping from you for any bad reason, extra apologies if you were a woman and was hoping that one day I’d be your husband – I realise that this post may be a bitter pill to swallow.

For some of you, mainly those who have met me, you may be wondering how I ever managed to keep it a secret from anyone. Well you’re quite rude. Certainly in recent years I’ve never really had a problem in people finding out my sexuality, although if they come towards me waving a placard marked “Burn in Hell Faggots” I’ve found it best not to choose that moment to begin a sentence “By the way…”. As it turns out whilst I’m reasonably adept in defending myself with some cuttingly witty remarks, these count for little against pitchforks and flaming torches in the Top Trumps situation that is an angry mob.

One of the main problems of sharing this secret is how you go about working it into the conversation? I don’t consider my sexuality to be an issue, but it can be tricky to tell people without making it an issue. For example last time I started in a new job, where I didn’t know anyone in the office, I had no problem on the face of it of telling my colleagues I was gay, but how do you go about it? I mean if I burst into the room, bounding between the desks shouting “I am a homosexual” that might seem a little inappropriate. And you wouldn’t expect any of your heterosexual colleagues to confess their sexuality in a similar way. I could of course wolf-whistle at a passing male colleague and shout “Phwoar” but again that feels indelicate and may mean that the Human Resources department find out I am gay quicker than I’d anticipated.

I always figured it would be easier to tell people if I had a boyfriend, then you could at least answer the natural office question “What are you doing at the weekend?” with “I’m spending it with my boyfriend” which feels like a subtle way of announcing the news. Sadly, as anyone who has read even one addition of this blog will be able to tell you, I am not with boyfriend. My Facebook status has been displaying “Single” for longer than a branch of discount store Madhouse’s window has been displaying “Closing Down Sale”. It becomes less discreet and office friendly if you answer the question “What are you doing at the weekend?” with “I am out in pubs desperately trying to get a boyfriend. I am looking for a man by the way, that’s right looking for a MAN! Get the hint”. Not so subtle. So typically I’ve had to wait for colleagues to ask me the question, and this inbuilt waiting time only suggests to them, that I may have an issue with said subject prompting them not to feel it’s appropriate to ask. A vicious circle of secrecy ensues.

Now if telling people you’ve only just met seems difficult, telling people you’ve known a long time always feels much harder. I probably realised I was homosexual at the age of about 16, after spending the last four years of my puberty wondering when the oft-mentioned childhood phrase, recited by elderly relatives, of “one day you won’t mind it when girls kiss you” would come true (it still hasn’t), whilst in the meantime vigorously pleasuring myself to the thought of male boyband members. Seemingly unaware of the actual implications of what I was doing. It then took until I started university at the age of 20 to be comfortable telling selected other people about it, (I am referring to the sexuality aspect, not the “vigorous pleasuring” aspect which you’re probably wishing I’d been more coy about). The main reason it seemed fine was because, these were new people to my life if they didn’t like it then we would simply not be friends – no real loss. As it turned out, no one I’ve told has ever had an issue with my confession, in fact I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve only ever bumped into a very small number of homophobic people. And usually this has been in the company of a much larger number of right minded thinking individuals, which meant that the homophobic idiot has ended up being the one shunned by the group – which I actually find quite fun. In fact I often like to vigorously pleasure myself thinking about homophobic people I’ve met, simply because you know it would really annoy them. Sorry too much information I know!

Whilst it might seem good that I came out at the age of 20, and now am happy telling people going forward, this does present a back log of two decades worth of acquaintances and family members that you need to update with the news. And this to me is the hardest part. It’s not really that I expected any of these people to react badly to the news, it’s more that the longer I’ve known them, the longer it feels like I’ve been keeping a secret from them, which makes telling them all the harder in another vicious cycle of secrecy. There comes a point when you wonder if it would just be easier to publish a pamphlet to all your loved ones, with a series of questions answering what they’re likely to ask, with a small tick box at the bottom asking whether you wish to receive any more direct mail from the author.

Anyway I’ve finally broken the secret pact, over the last few months, I’ve managed to tell some key school friends, and my immediate family. Apologies if this blog is how I got round to telling you. It wasn’t that I thought you’d object, it was just I didn’t really know how to bring it up.

The biggest trauma was of course telling the parents, I sort of had an attempt at this a few years ago, I built myself up to telling them and my sister all in one go at the end of a birthday. Sadly at the point I was about to speak, my dad decided to go to bed, ruining the plan and I ended up half-heartedly muttering it under my breath to my mum and sister. Obviously they heard, but I can only describe the situation for me as feeling wrong, so utterly wrong, like I’d told them an untellable secret such as the fact I’d been vigorously pleasuring myself on their bed – for the avoidance of doubt I haven’t, but it felt like I’d revealed something THAT wrong. Apologies that is the third time I’ve used the phrase “vigorously pleasuring myself”, I promise not to do it again. Anyway the upshot was that in my mind I hadn’t really told them and I certainly didn’t go on to tell my dad.

As 2012 dawned I finally resolved I really need to tell the family, it would be awful if I never got round to doing it, and if my mum and sister knew it might break their heart that I didn’t talk about it more or tell my father. So it was when I was at home over New Year that I decided that the 2^nd of January would be the day I’d tell them.

As with all such things, the more time you spend worrying about the potential permutations of outcomes that might occur when you tell someone some big news, the less likely it is that there will be any discernable reaction. I finally managed to blurt out the phrase “by the way there’s something I should tell you, I’m gay” over an evening game of Scrabble. The result of this was odd. My mum said “Why are you telling us this now?” as if the news had ruined her placement of a key word, my sister said “Is this relevant to the move you’re about to make?” as if somehow I was desperate to place the word “Butmuncher” on a triple word score – just in case you were planning on using that word it’s not in Chambers Dictionary, I checked. In response to the general reaction of this being inappropriate time I replied, “I thought it was about time I told you”. To which my mother and sister replied “We already knew!” and my dad said “I didn’t!”

So there we go I managed to tell all my family I’m gay, and create family tension as my dad now knows he didn’t get told first, all over a single game of Scrabble Oops! Despite all my worries about what they might say, they said nothing. On the face of it this is the best reaction “I’m gay”, “Yeah and…” but still whilst I’m sure it’s for good reasons I find it odd they had nothing to say no questions, nothing. As if there’s still an elephant in the room and one day we’re going to have the awkward questions. Or maybe they just realise how terminally single I am, and figure it doesn’t matter whether he fancies women or men, he’s not getting any.

Oh well there you go even the biggest drama of my life - coming out, turned out to be dull beyond belief. Still it filled some virtual pages of this blog. On that note I’m off to check the family will… just in case.