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.

The BBC Trust, if that’s not an oxymoron (I personally find it difficult to find trust in anyone who puts Homes Under the Hammer on our television screens), have completed their latest Putting Quality First spending review. Putting Quality First is nothing to do with ensuring that Snog, Marry or Avoid? is in the latest possible scheduling slot, but in making sure that as the BBC tries to save money it puts its quality programmes first.

The main nugget of news that hit the headlines last week when this broke, was the decision to move children’s programming off BBC One and BBC Two, keeping it all on the CBBC and CBeebies channels. There’s a good logic to this decision, by the time the changes are made every television in the country will have access to the children’s channels, the vast majority of kid viewers already use CBBC and CBeebies. And critically the children’s department loses no funding, in fact by not having to provide content for the former terrestrial channels it has more money to spend on its main channels.

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.

All that said the decision is a little sad, but I am acutely aware it is sad as it represents the end of something I held in high esteem as a child, a tradition for my childhood not today’s children! Yes a sad, but logical decision. It’s a bit like the death of an elderly relative, it’s sad but you know logic is saying you can now sell their house and make lots of money.

For many people of my generation, a lasting memory of their childhood will be children’s programmes on BBC One (or ITV) in the afternoons, my incarnation being The Broom Cupboard, and the big Saturday morning shows – Going Live and Live & Kicking being the ones I most remember. And to me as a child, there was something special about those programmes being on BBC One, it was saying this is the time for kids. Afternoons were the kids’ version of the evening primetime, and Saturday mornings the big entertainment extravaganza mirroring Saturday nights. And the fact these were on the primary channels was part of the draw.

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.

However it still seems fitting to mark the passing of the children’s afternoons on BBC One for us children of the eighties! To do that, I’d like to have a quick nostalgic trip through some of my favourite children’s programmes of my time. The shows that made up the gaps between Phillip Schofield, Andy Crane, Andi Peters, Toby Anstis, Simon Parkin, Phillipa Forestter, Edd the Duck, Gordon the Gopher, Wilson the Butler and many more I’ve probably forgotten. So here is a non-exhaustive look at some great children’s telly shows!

Maid Marian & Her Merry Men – Essentially Blackadder for children, apparently this remains the most expensive children’s programme ever made in the UK. The 22½ residents of the muddy village of Worksop (an early Glastonbury) are protected from King John’s temper tantrums (modelled on myself after I’ve missed an edition of The Apprentice) by a cowardly Robin Hood.

Blue Peter – Everyone has a different generation of Blue Peter they remember, your parents probably remember Lulu pooing on the studio floor (the elephant not the singer) during a time when Blue Peter was presented by wholesome forty-somethings. Nowadays the presenters are so young, that the current ones are actual foetuses that would show you how to make a model of Tracey Island out of the placenta and the umbilical cord, if it weren’t the fact that they’re too young to remember Thunderbirds. My generation was Mark Curry – when he was busy knocking the heads of LEGO men and not dying a death on Catchphrase; Anthea Turner – between getting blown up in an explosion, and becoming annoying; John Leslie – before he allegedly starting showing the ladies “something he made earlier” whether they wanted to see it or not; and Caron Keating – who it’s very hard to write anything funny about.

The Girl from Tomorrow and Escape from Jupiter – Nowadays we’re used to American imports dominating our schedules, but these were two excellent Australian sci-fi dramas. The Girl from Tomorrow, which centred around a girl from the year 3000 who chose to travel back in time to the year 1990 (presumably to be niche, as everyone else was going back to 2000). Her time machine being the Crystal Dome stolen from Richard O’Brian. Escape from Jupiter featured an unlikely group of children (led by a ginger kid - controversial) escaping from a mining colony on Jupiter’s moon Io. I remember being particularly annoyed when an episode was taken off air to cut to a newsflash announcing Margaret Thatcher’s resignation ahead of a leadership challenge. I’m sure as an adult I’d be much more tolerant now if a programme I was enjoying was taken off-air to go to David Cameron doing something.

In my mind the special effects were better as a child than they appear now!

Newsround – Newsround has been, and continues to be, an amazing show for kids. I regret not appreciating it more as a child, and making it an appointment to view. The show’s never shied away from explaining the complex issues of quite an unpleasant world to younger viewers. A few years ago explaining the suicide of a CBBC presenter.

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.

I’m sure there’s many other highlights you remember. So here’s to the end of CBBC on BBC One. Whilst I totally understand the decision, the kids of today probably don’t realise the significance of the change. I for one will be a little sad at the passing of an institution of my childhood, that later went on to inspire what I laughably refer to as “proper” job and career!

And whilst I’ve sung the praises of programmes past, it goes without saying that today’s children programmes still feature some excellent content, particularly the programmes I’ve produced! As a final note I would like to say that all the programmes made and shown by my current employer and any future employers are excellent and well worth watching by children and adult alike – especially if you own a Barb box.

Is a Fascist Dictatorship really that Bad?

This week’s blog is entirely about the thorny subject of voting and democracy, I tried to write this in time for the London mayoral elections a fortnight ago, but failed. Voter apathy there, in action.

Two weeks ago many of you across the country will have been lucky enough to vote in one or more elections to choose councillors for your local area. Those of us in London were lucky enough to have three votes we didn’t care about – London Mayor, London Mayoral Assembly Members and our own local councillors. In fact in London there was more box ticking than in a United Colours of Benetton advert, well there would have been if we hadn’t been crossing boxes – but the gag about more box crossing than at a Noughts and Crosses convention didn’t seem as funny.

Fortunately for the BBC, exactly the same three main candidates ran for London Mayor, as in 2008. And the voters were kind enough to generate exactly the same result, so the Beeb were able to just put on a repeat of the election coverage from four years ago. While someone explained to Boris Johnson what “second term” meant, Ken Livingstone vowed never to return to politics (whilst plotting his 2016 election campaign) and Brian Paddick sweetly presumed his electoral demise was down to the unpopularity of Liberal Democrat coalition policies – no Brian, we’ve haven’t forgotten I’m A Celebrity… an appearance that puts you in a category alongside just George Galloway, though at least you weren’t meowing in a Lycra cat suit.

One of the big comments on modern elections is the poor voter turnout – according to some statistics I just googled now in a highly checked piece of research voter turnout was 31.8%, meaning just under seven in ten people didn’t vote. Commentators say this is a bad thing, but is it?

You see in my opinion, what is held up as the guiding principal of democracy is its biggest weakness – the fact everyone can vote. I’ll let that earth-shattering statement sink in as you judge me entirely. I should point out I don’t have a problem with allowing everyone to vote in principal, in a perfect world everyone casts a well-thought out vote for the party whose principals they truly believe in. However in the real world you allow people who have no idea what they are voting for a vote and you allow people to vote on spurious reasons. No one has to justify to anyone why they vote, so you can based your opinion on who has the best haircut, who seems like a nice person, or whose face doesn’t clash with your curtains.

I consider myself the perfect example, whilst I had a vague idea of the effect my box crossing would have in the London Mayoral vote (based largely on a significant proportion of the main candidates having already had a go), I had no idea what the other two ballot papers do. I couldn’t tell you what the position I was electing actually did, I knew nothing about the candidates, other than the party name scrawled next to them. Though as anyone with a passing familiarity with politics will know, a group of people representing one party is less unified mass with one vision, more bickering crowd of infighters who resemble a group of friends trying to decide which take-out menu to order. Despite all of this and my lack of background knowledge, I still diligently filled out each ballot paper, following the dictatorial anti-origami ruling and posting them in the voting box. I didn’t really know who or what I was voting for, but I did anyway, I voted on what felt right.

And that’s the problem with democracy anyone can vote without really thinking about it just based on image. It might sound draconian, but wouldn’t it arguably be a lot better to let the 10% of people who can be bothered to engage in politics to vote on our behalf and choose the best outcome. Why let the ignorant masses, who let’s be honest don’t really understand the minutia of fiscal policy, have an uneducated say? We certainly should react to the claims that the only way to counter poor voter turnout is to force everyone to vote. Forcing those who know nothing to choose a box at random in some kind of political lottery would be awful and inefficient. Surely best to have people pass a small politics quiz before they were allowed to enter the ballot box and have a say in who runs the country – it is after all an important decision.

Politics nowadays has reacted to the fact that most people aren’t properly scrutinising their actions, the main parties fighting not to give you any substance or policy but to just leave that instinctive feeling that you should vote for them. So that when average Matt public (i.e. me) heads to the polling station he feels the need to put the cross in the right box because it feels right. Not because he’s examined in depth the range of party lines and policies and knows it’s the right decision.

Image now for politicians is everything; take the last general election in 2010. Now while I’m not saying you couldn’t find potential fault in the previous Labour government’s policy, a lot of fault finding was taking place with the image of Gordon Brown. Admittedly the man’s smile looked like it had been generated via the use of strategically placed electrodes, but is this reason he shouldn’t be Prime Minister? I know I look awful when I pose for a smile in any photo – my Facebook album looks like a collection of Barbara Cartland’s death masks, but is that reason enough for me to lose my job? Shouldn’t we should be judging our politicians on slightly tougher criteria than facial expressions?

And then there’s the inevitable gaffs. Remember when Gordon Brown infamously left his microphone on as he left an interview and describing voter Gillian Duffy as a “bigoted woman”? OK a P.R. disaster, but there was something about the incident that made him ultimately more human. We saw fully through the (admittedly cracked) politician’s veneer and saw someone who ultimately makes the same mistakes we do. I know I say awful things when I think people have left the room, or when I’m reading something someone’s written. You’re probably reading this thinking “What an absolute t**t? Why do I give a toss what this needy spiky haired pillock is thinking about politics?” And that’s ok, you’re allowed to think this, because I guarantee I am thinking far worse about you dear reader as I type J

My point, and there is one in case you’re thinking that this is the literary equivalent of Where’s Wally?, is that surely for politicians ability is more important than both image, and even their own moral standards. If it’s a choice between, for example, a chancellor who is rubbish at running at the economy but who lives a squeaky clean life, or a chancellor who is excellent at the numbers stuff but routinely cheats on his wife with animals, then I know who I’m voting for. It’s Mr Goat-Shagger for office here. What?! Really you have a problem with that? Why would I be bothered? After all I’m neither his wife, nor a goat, just a citizen looking for a well-run economy.

So there we go let’s make a stand here, politicians should be elected on substance not style, by the 10% of people who have done their homework and know what they’re voting about. Not by people who know nothing like me. And certainly not by the same tedious people who consider “engaging with politics” to be e-mailing into BBC Breakfast. Outlining their pointless opinions on matters which are of no concern to them, like should NASA be dumping sofas on the Moon? Because stupid people always have an opinion, a stupid opinion. Stop asking for it, and certainly don’t let them choose the leader of the country.

Failing that we could always go for a fascist dictatorship. Don’t get me wrong the invasion of Poland was awful, but at least Hitler was able to get on do things. Under a democracy he’d be too busy worrying about which side to part his hair for his appearance on the Nazi equivalent of The One Show to get any conquering done. And that surely is a bad thing? I think.

The Prophet of Doom

In olden times there were always prophets of doom, people who foretold of the end of mankind, be it for religious or cultural reasons. Perhaps even the coming of war or disease, or maybe they correctly predicted that human civilization would reach its low point in the twenty-first century with the birth of The Jeremy Kyle Show.

Either way in the present day, we rarely see people wandering the streets chanting about the coming of the end of the world, the collapse of civilization or the death of all mankind. The main reason for this, is that their role in society has now been entirely replaced with Sky News. In fairness all twenty-four hour news channels have a fundamental flaw – on the vast majority of days there isn’t twenty-four hours of news to fill them with. So they have to be filled with repetition, speculation, deliberation and hypothesis, all the things banned on the Radio 4 show Just a Minute. However Sky News seems to be the worst for using this as an excuse to explore the worst case scenario in all possible situations in a desperate bid to keep panicked individuals watching across the break lest they miss out on a vital piece of information that would keep them alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eamonn Holmes actively told viewers to stay tuned because after the break they’ll be explaining how not watching the commercials can kill you. He probably already has, I’ve not see Sunrise.

Breaking news is Sky News’s big thing, their tagline is “First for Breaking News”. Obviously it doesn’t matter if the news isn’t quite right, exaggerated to the point where it is blown out of all proportion, or just plain wrong. The news is first and it broke here. Everything on Sky News is breaking news, in fairness every event is breaking news at some point – Christmas Day after all was breaking news at one point. But I strongly suspect the Three Wise Men and the Shepherds weren’t alerted to the birth of Jesus by a giant, colourful strap slapped across the bottom of their vision, followed by a “festive” expert discussing how the birth of the Son of God is likely to cause complete economic collapse and a rise in the value of house prices.

I remember a few weeks after the tragic London bombings, having my attention caught by a Sky News strap titled “Gas Attack” – panicked I looked up to see what terrible event had transpired. It turned out that gas prices had gone up, seemed a rather dramatic, misleading and dare I say it “factually incorrect” headline to me!

Last Friday represented an excellent example of this, when Tottenham Court Road (a road very close to my office) was briefly closed. For those of you unaware of this story, basically a man stormed an office on Tottenham Court Road, claiming to be armed with an explosive, and started throwing office furniture and computers out of the windows. The police, understandably, sent a large response force, closed the road evacuated the area and talked the man down with negotiators. Now without wishing to trivialise what would have understandably been a traumatic experience for those involved, as a news story my two line summary pretty much covered everything that happened. There was no more detail than that.

And that’s basically how the channel everyone calls News 24 that isn’t called News 24 reported it. The BBC simply mixed it into their rotation of stories, and on the BBC News website for a while it was even entitled “Man throws office furniture out of fifth floor window”, until the bomb threat aspect became clear.

Of course this wasn’t the case on Sky News where four hours of rolling coverage was leant to dissecting every single unperceivable nuance of this story. Under the title of “Armed Siege in London” we went live to various rooftop camera and helicopter shots of London, all of which showed absolutely nothing happening. It was bit like watching live coverage of the London Marathon the day after it had happened.

The only shot of any interest was when we saw a filing cabinet being thrown out of a window, on an extreme wide angle. And then the most gripping point of that shot, the point where the filing cabinet hit the street below, was completely obscured by the “Breaking News” strap. Meanwhile Kay Burley was busy in the studio discussing the impact of the “hostage” on the upcoming Olympics, clearly visibly creaming herself below the desk at the excitement that she would be the reporter on duty when London would be destroyed by a crazed terrorist – at least in Sky’s prophet of doom-esque mind anyway.

The climax of the discussion occurred when an “expert” came into the studio, labelled an expert presumably because he had the ability to use Google. He’d discovered a forum, where contributors had claimed that the company whose building had been stormed had been engaged in some disreputable behaviour over the issuing off HGV licences. Kay Burley then instantly announces “Well that explains the actions, it doesn’t excuse them, but it at least explains them.” Well thanks very much Kay Burley, who has instantly declared herself judge of all things moral. And whilst I’m sure her words were chosen carefully to avoid any form of litigation, she’s effectively bad-mouthed the reputation of a company entirely on the basis of something someone else has read on a random internet forum. It may be correct information, it may not, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Kay Burley doesn’t either, but at least she was first with the breaking “news”. The fact that most of this conjecture didn’t turn out to be correct, and the fact that the coverage seemed to do a better job of whipping everyone up into a panic than the actual event did seem to be secondary concerns. And surely that is not the point of news.

I hope you enjoyed this blog, if you did why not tell Sky News, I look forward the entirely plausible strap that reads “Breaking News: Some people like DraMattics – Al Qaeda links not ruled out.”, appearing on my television screen soon.

Please note any inaccuracies in the information contained in this blog entry are simply a tribute to Sky’s own newsgathering output!

The Fourth Decade

Welcome back to DraMattics, yes I’m sorry I’ve left you in the dark for a month. But, whilst it may sound as unbelievable as James Murdoch’s testimony at the Leveson inquiry, I have actually had a life for the last few weeks. You’ve probably noticed I have also made a few changes to the layout of the blog, I hope you like it. For some reason I thought the picture was appropriate. I choose to imagine the little girl in the raincoat is crying, I don’t know why, but somehow it works. For those of you following the blog by e-mail update, you probably won’t be able to see the new blog format, sorry but you are missing out – it’s actually a picture of Tulisa’s naked breasts. I say missing out, you’ve probably seen them before, if you’ve used the internet.

Enough discussion of Tulisa’s breasts, time instead to talk about what I’ve been up to whilst you’ve been sitting at your computer crying waiting for this blog to update. Well friends I have turned the ripe old age of thirty. Yes who’d have thought? Certainly not my mirror. Which currently is estimating my age, to be the average age of items shown on the Antiques Roadshow. Regular readers of blog, familiar with my tone being much like that of Victor Meldrew crossed with an angry goose, will expect me to have had a miserable 30^th birthday. Well in fact I had a good birthday, so there! You didn’t expect that did you?

The actual day was Easter Saturday, which was a little inconvenient as everyone tends to be busy across the Easter weekend. But it did give me the opportunity to spend the day itself with my family. Who organised this lovely birthday cake for me:

I was also lucky enough to receive a shout-out on Graham Norton’s radio show, organised by my flatmate. Despite actually working in the media industry I still found this deeply exciting, as if all the other listeners were wishing me a happy birthday, instead of ignoring it and sipping coffee like I do when I’m listening and hear other birthday messages. Anyway I played the whole thing very cool, and absolutely didn’t record the shout-out on my computer so I can play it back again and again. No I definitely did not do that.

The rest of the day was spent with my Dad constantly reminding me I was now thirty. I couldn’t work out if this was his way of getting his own back for all the times I called him “old” as a child, or just the worry dawning on him that he was now old enough to have a fathered a thirty year-old child. In hindsight the crying should have given away it was the latter option.

The next Saturday saw me have a birthday party, horray if you came, boo if you didn’t come and awkward if you’re reading this and weren’t invited. I blame Facebook which manages to have a message delivery system about twice as inefficient as Royal Mail, admittedly with a slight smaller queue than in the Post Office. Seriously where do those lost Facebook messages go? Maybe one day they will turn up and I’ll find out I missed my own wedding or something?

I should of course say thanks to my friends who made me wear this “30” balloon around my arm for the whole evening, like a modern day slave labourer’s ball-and-chain.

Effectively it’s like having a giant advertising hoarding strapped to you saying “Too old to date”, which you then have to take around on the Underground. This resulted in one memorable exchange on the way home with two rather drunken women, who first of all asked “Whose birthday is it?”. I resisted the urge to reply “Me, you daft cows. That’s why I’m holding the balloon.”. After explaining it was my birthday one of the women then went onto then say “Oh I just turned 30 myself, it’s really awful isn’t it?! Are you having a good night?”. To which I replied “I was…”.

I was then asked “Are you the oldest person in your group?”. “Do I look the oldest?”, I said. “Yes” came the reply. It was at that point when I pushed them under the train, so sincere apologies if your Northern line service was held up on Saturday 14^th of April. It was necessary.

I was lucky enough to receive quite a few birthday cards:

Thanks so much everyone who sent me one, sadly if I added up all the 30’s listed on the cards, I’d have an age of about 1,200. Fortunately no one was stupid enough to send me a “With Deepest Sympathy” card, probably realising that had they done so their nearest and dearest would be receiving similar cards very soon. I should at this point show you a card made by graphic designer friend, which is amazing:

So there you go, shocking as it seems I’ve actually written a happy blog – broadly. Bet you’re surprised.

Has anything changed since turning 30? Well not really, my face doesn’t seem to need more ironing than it already did, and no vital limbs have fallen off or anything. I have made a few life changes, I’ve lost three and a half  kilograms on a diet and have started driving lessons. Yes clear the streets of Clapham, I am learning to drive – more on that in a few weeks’ time (provided no one, especially me, dies in the process).

Is there anything I regret not doing before turning 30? Well veteran readers will remember that back in September I went through a list of 30 things I was “supposed” to have done before turning thirty:

30 Reasons to take Cyanide

And that I had achieved six of these things, I still have achieved six of these things. And do you know what? I don’t care. They are all stupid things I don’t wish I’d done anyway. Like having a meaningful relationship. Who wants to do that? I guess if I was to list one regret over the last thirty years, then it would probably be not having assassinated Katie Price. I’ve had two distinct opportunities to do this neither one I have taken up and I feel for the good of humanity I should have.

The first was when I interviewed her at the Brit Awards back when I was making student television. It was just after she launched her bid to represent the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest, you may remember her being dressed in a very tight pink PVC suit whilst heavily pregnant:

Apologies for sharing that photo with you. I asked her to tell me something about her Eurovision entry, which she said she would if I promised to vote for her in the UK selection process. I duly promised her my vote, and she then told me nothing. Well I got the last laugh bitch, because guess what? I didn’t vote for you. Hahahahahahahahahaha!

The second time was when I was working at The London Studios, ITV’s Southbank Headquarters, in an adjacent studio she was filming some tedious Katie & Peter-esque chat show for that highbrow channel, and home of thought provoking documentary ITV2. Humorously the show was cancelled a few episodes before the end of its run because Katie Price had booked herself a plastic surgery session out of the country and therefore couldn’t attend the last few episodes of her own show. I’m not even making it up, that actually happened! My regret is I missed a perfectly good opportunity to run into the studio armed with a flamethrower and melt her breasts into molten plastic. I would like to take this moment to point out to any security services monitoring this blog, that I in no way encourage or endorsee any kind of terrorist activity. Though I suspect any court in the land would let me off, when they heard my motivation.

So there we go, thirty and happy(ish) and bar sharing the earth with Katie Price, I think I am happy with my achievements. I look forward to a stream of comments and replies telling me why I shouldn’t be happy!

Bathing with the Masses

The other day I was going to the toilet – apologies for starting a blog with this sentence, but if you had any standards of taste and decency you’d surely by now know that you need to leave them at the door when dealing with this blog. Without wishing to be indelicate, I was having an extended visit to the bathroom, if you know what I mean. This particular visit was happening in a bathroom in a company I happened to be visiting, not one of my regular bathrooms. I promise this is all important information. It was then whilst “at stool”, that I glanced to the right, to notice a full length mirror. A full length mirror showing a reflection of myself on the toilet. Why on earth would you put a full length mirror in a toilet? I tried to look away, but like a horrific car crash, I was drawn back. There I was witnessing my body in the least flattering of circumstances, and as I glanced down I saw the hideous rolls of fat bulging over the rim of the toilet bowl.

You’re probably feeling somewhat nauseous reading that statement, so imagine how I felt seeing it in person. There at that moment it became clear why I was single, because I had the physique of an old bean bag, recently sat on by Heather from Eastenders (rest in peace). It was time to do something about it, and hence I have made a concerted effort to get back into swimming. Yes that’s right exercise, I know I am as surprised as you.

I’ve previously been a reasonably regularly swimmer, I wouldn’t say I was a good swimmer, but then I’ve never drowned so that must say something. My last regime of water-based exercise ended when I was unfortunate enough to read a set of rules printed on the wall of Brixton Leisure Centre. It was the final rule that got my attention:

“Rule Number 7: If you notice any discharges of bodily fluid into the pool, please inform a member of staff immediately.”

Then printed directly underneath it said:

“Enjoy your swim.”

Which is now impossible, given what you’ve just read. And thus I decided swimming wasn’t for me.

Anyway to mark my return to the swimming pool, just in time for the London 2012 Olympics – which is entirely coincidental I assure you, I thought I’d give you some of my rules of swimming. These rules, you’ll be pleased to know, primarily don’t involve bodily fluids. They simply represent a series of what I believe are socially acceptable ways to behave in a swimming pool – though it probably wouldn’t do any harm to make them law punishable by death.

Here’s the Draconian laws that I will now pass:

·       No affection in the swimming pool. Heavy petting in the deep end, holding hands across lane ropes and god forbid a naughty kiss near the diving board should all be banned. There’s just no need for it, save the hideous displays of affection for the escalators on the Underground (though if it could be banned from there too that would be nice).

·       My speed is the correct speed. The lanes in my pool are divided into Fast, Medium, Slow and an unnamed lane which presumably is for those so slow that they’d be considered static. I swim in the medium lane, if you are swimming faster than me go in the fast lane, and if you’re swimming slower than me get in the slow lane.

·       Don’t pull out in front of me. If I’m coming to the end of pool, and about to turn round, don’t suddenly pull out in front of me and force me to stop. You wouldn’t do it in a car because we’d up having a multi-car pile-up. And a multi-swimmer pile-up will make the least touchy-feely people feel very awkward.

·       Old men should not wear tight inappropriate swimming trunks. Self-explanatory really.

·       Good looking men should wear tight swimming trunks – I need a cheap thrill in my life, and a reason to do exercise. So do your civic duty and help out.

·       Get your hair wet. Anyone who isn’t prepared to get their hair wet should instantly be relegated to the slow lane. Bobbing about with your head above water, in the fast lane is annoying and not fast.

·       No talking at the ends of the pools. It’s not a bloody coffee shop, if you’re lucky enough to have a friend stop showing off and clogging up the end of the pool so no one can swim.

·       No diving over me. I don’t appreciate people diving over me, to get an athletic start in their lane swimming. I remember 999 with Michael Buerk, there’s every chance you could land on me and break my back into more pieces than the NHS will soon be in.

·       No backstroke. Backstroke is about as socially friendly, as releasing a combine-harvester into the swimming pool – only more people get injured. Until some special magic goggles that allow you to see where you are going are invented, no backstroke in the pool.

·       Don’t have more fun than me. Basically this is what all my rules are saying, and to be honest this one can be applied both in and out the pool. I am a grump, don’t have more fun than me, it makes me jealous.

There you go, ten rules that will make my life better in the swimming pool – well they would if I hadn’t shamed myself by choking on water the other day and the life guard coming over to check I was alright.

I’ll be issuing some rules for other life situations soon, so look out for them.

And that is it, it’s also it for a couple of weeks! Sorry guys, I won’t be updating for a little while, because I’m on a work trip to Los Angeles, yep I realise that even saying that makes me sound like an utter w**ker! But if it makes you feel better I’ll be turning 30 pretty much as soon as I get back, see karma giveth and then taketh! Don’t worry I won’t be going on about the LA thing too much – did I mention I’m flying business class. No? Oh I’m flying business class!

Have a great couple of weeks and yummy Easter, and I’ll be back blogging very soon!

“I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall” – and 101 other reasons why I won’t be appearing on The Apprentice

Don’t worry I won’t be revealing who lost or who was fired in this week’s episode so even you have a date with iPlayer booked you can read on.

In case you’ve somehow slipped into a coma, perhaps you watched the Budget, you won’t know that yesterday marked the return of The Apprentice. This is the eight outing for this now stalwart of the BBC One schedule. On the face of it this show shouldn’t be successful, after all on paper it’s an hour of watching a group of business people unsuccessfully selling printed T-shirts whilst being sneered at by the host of Countdown. Yet somehow The Apprentice is so much more than that, not just a reality show, but such a classy reality show that unlike with its ITV rivals you don’t feel like you need a wash even if you fully immerse yourself in it. I’m a full Apprentice fan, cancelling all my plans for 13 Wednesdays of the year (admittedly not that hard if like me you have no friends), and watching avidly through not only the main show but its excellent support show – The Apprentice: You’re Fired over on BBC Two. If I did this for any other reality show, I’d feel ashamed, I certainly would admit on this blog (even if it is read by approximately no people).

For me The Apprentice doesn’t feel like any of the other reality shows, I’m not quite sure why this is. Maybe it’s the high production values, maybe it’s the fact that there’s no telephone voting or begging for calls, perhaps it’s the fact that the contestants actually want a career that doesn’t make them a “celebrity” or perhaps it’s simply the fact that everyone is in a suit. I can’t be sure why but either way the format keeps me more glued to the telly than a documentary exposing how writers of excellent internet blogs make the best sexual partners. They do, it’s science fact.

Viewers of The Apprentice are much like armchair football fans or passengers on the London Underground, in that they arrogantly seem to think they could do a better job competing/playing/making all Londoners miserable than the people currently doing the job despite their obvious lack of experience, skill and qualifications. I take a different approach to the norm, I know full well that no matter how badly the contestants are performing I’d be doing worse. I’d be awful at The Apprentice, absolutely bloody awful, worse even than Germany is at World Wars. I’d fail at the first step, no not the first task, the first step – the purposeful group walk across The Millennium Bridge. The problem is in my head I’m sure I look like a purposeful power bastard strutting across the Thames, but in reality I look more like I’m power mincing across the bridge desperately trying to find the toilet.

The next step of failure is recording the cringe worthy sound bites, the bits where the candidates say something ridiculously stupid such as “I’m the reflection of perfection” or “I’m a business superstar”. In fairness the candidates are probably egged on by a t**t of a television producer – don’t you just hate television producers – right k**bs they are. However in my case I’d even fail here,  I’d oscillate between either saying something ridiculously meek like “I’m, alright at business, as long as I don’t do anything involving selling” or saying something so ridiculously over the top that even the usually bulls**t-immune other candidates would point and laugh such as “I’m so full of business, I’m pissing cash up the wall”. Mind you given what was said this week I’m not far off the mark.

All of this abject failure and we have even got to the instructions for the first task yet, the first time you face Lord Sugar in the boardroom. I don’t know about you but if Lord Sugar was my boss, I’d s**t myself so much that the boardroom would soon resemble a particularly grim sceptic tank accident with Nick and Karen clinging onto each other in a desperate bid to stay afloat. A grim image maybe but a true one. I strongly believe that if commanded to by Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer would don a pair of leather gloves and strangle any complete abject failure before tossing their lifeless body out of the nearest window – there wouldn’t even be a taxi or anything. And for good reason that image terrifies me. Though in fairness if Lord Sugar did start talking about solving a Where’s Wally? puzzle or locating Lord Lucan I am more likely to laugh at his insane madness rather than open up my bowels.

With suitably random task set, the teams have two important pieces of business to deal with, firstly naming the team. This always results in a series of potential answers so pretentiously wanky you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d tuned into a toff’s special of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?. I on the other hand would play it somewhat more downbeat “Team Disappointment”, “Team Utter Disaster” I think would be more realistic choices, at least that way your results in the boardroom can only be an improvement on Lord Sugar’s expectations. Or how about “Team Kittens”, even the cold heart of Lord Sugar would surely not be able to fire someone from Team Kitten? No?

Second on the to-do list is to select a project manager, a job which often has less willing volunteers than a Jeremy-Kyle-snog-a-thon. As admirably demonstrated by the boys this week if you asked for those willing to project manage to step forward, the entire room would shuffle back faster than a group of parents confronted by Mothercare’s new paedophilic range – don’t be disgusted, worse ideas have regularly been pitched on The Apprentice. In fairness to these people, they are right to be scared of project managing, in Week 1 it is invariably suicide to project manage – there simply isn’t enough time in that first week for anyone else to f**k up enough to out f**k up the simple fact that you project managed the losing team. If it was up to me, I’d vote Karen to be the project manager, how could we possibly lose?

Next it’s onto the project, this week saw the teams printing t-shirts, bags and teddy bears to sell. I am going to say something shocking here, unlike the millions of people sitting at home confident they could do better, I can exclusively reveal that I have no idea how to run a printing business – not a clue. By the end of Day 2 I’d most probably still be sitting in the introductory boardroom position, dribbling and burbling loudly whilst internally wishing I’d paid more attention in my reception class on potato printing. Mocking the actual candidates for missing the finer points of cost-benefit analysis, choosing the right location and harassing people in shops sounds funny now, but I would never have got anywhere near those. I’d still be wondering if a print of man entering his earlier thirties hanging himself would be appropriate on a baby’s T-shirt. Then there’s the selling part of the task, somewhere else where I wouldn’t excel. In a sales-based situation I have all the imposing dominance of a piece of belly button fluff, my sales’ pitch is something on the lines of “Would you like to buy this? No?! Ok.” – meekly whispered with all the authority of a struggling supply teacher who has just been locked in the stationery cupboard by a load of 17 year old bullies. I’m just not pushy enough, I’m exceptionally British, I could make awkward flailing an Olympic event – though I’d never be forceful enough to get to the top of the sport.

After a horrid two days, I’d return into the boardroom to have everything I’d done ripped apart by Lord Sugar – and fail to get any customer service support for my Amstrad computer I owned back in the 1980s when computer games had to be loaded off a tape over a period of approximately fourteen working weeks. Predictably the boardroom discussions on this week’s show turned into the shouting version of last year’s London Riots, where a selection of gibbering morons shouted at each other so well that they could probably replace the House of Commons and no one would notice. Again I wouldn’t contribute well here, I’d be sat in the corner, raising my hand politely waiting for my turn to speak. When confronted by an angry Lord Sugar wondering why I’d lost £600 of money that probably wasn’t his on a ridiculous task that would be a far less effective way of raising money than just begging on the street, I wouldn’t be able to robustly defend myself. I’d probably just mumble something about wishing I’d applied to be on Pointless instead of The Apprentice.

At this point understandably Lord Sugar would fire me, because let’s face it the boardroom chair I’m sitting on has done better in the task than me. Here at least I would have the common decency, unlike all the other applicants, to burst into tears throw a tantrum and slap Karen round the face. None of this “thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar” c**p from me – the biggest piece of bulls**t anyone on that show says. Though at this point Lord Sugar probably wouldn’t order me a taxi, and instead I would have to get the night bus home, and then get stabbed by a drunken man as I pathetically ranted about what a terrible mistake Lord Sugar had made and how one day he would regret it. He won’t.

I imagine none of this year’s contestants will do as badly as I would, though it would make a difficult interview for Dara O’Briain on The Apprentice: You’re Fired as he desperately tried to ask you where you think you went wrong as you bled out of several new orifices happily carved for you by a drunken man on the N67. And on that grim note I’m offer to hand my resignation into Lord Sugar just in case for some reason he does decide to hire me – apparently Nick Hewer is a known stapler thief and I can’t bear to work with people like that!

Oh my God there’s a Raging Inferno in the Kitchen – Oh no Wait it’s just the Candles on my Birthday Cake!

This week DraMattics is celebrating its 30^th blog entry, sadly I’m about to celebrate a similar anniversary, so it seems rather appropriate to tackle that thorny subject of age.

Ever had someone ask you how old you are, and then when you reply with you REAL age, they say the phrase “In your head maybe, go on what’s your real age?”. This is always a comforting reaction to admitting your age, in that sort of way that having an armed squad from the KGB smash in your windows and hold you at gun point is comforting.

To avoid the inevitable awkwardness of having to guess my real age is I can tell you now, that contrary to popular opinion it’s not 21, but I’m in fact 29 but not for much longer, 30 is looming like Eric Pickles looming over an all-you-can-eat buffet, hence the reason I feel this conversation is specifically pertinent.

As I get towards the age where the London Fire Brigade need to be called to put out the candles on my cake, I’m forced to question at what point am I old, and at what point is it ok to moan about being old? Is 30 old? It would be old for a cat but young for a cast member of Last of the Summer Wine, so I guess like all things its relative.

Which brings me to the next point, friends of mine who are closer to 40 have claimed that I have no right to moan about being old? Really? But what about a 50 year old, surely they would say the same to thing to the aforementioned 40 year old, if he moaned about being old. Extending this logic surely the only person allowed to moan would be the oldest person alive, as they bore the second oldest person alive with statements beginning “You think you’re old…”. But surely if you follow my earlier logic a two-year old can moan at a one-year old about how young they are, which to be honest I don’t mind if it’s done with appropriate wit and comic flare.

Clearly neither of the extremities I have detailed above are any more correct than the fact that Kerry Katona’s allowed to breed and she hasn’t been chemically sterilised for the good of the gene pool. So what age is it ok to moan about being old? To add to the evidence only a few weeks ago I was telling a friend who’d just turned 23 to “shut up” after they moaned about being old. If that’s the case what gives me the right a mere seven years later to do the same?

Well in fairness I think there’s one very good reasons why the mid-twenties (and by that I mean late-twenties, but at least it’s still the twenties), are the time to start moaning about your age. Because this is the first time in your life you start to realise you’re not the youngest any more. Fair enough people in their thirties are older, but it’s in your late twenties when you first realise you are at the top of a slippery slope. It’s here at the top of a hideous metaphorical helter-skelter ending in a pit of spikes somewhere around the eighties mark, that you realise thirties are your inevitable destiny, just as forties are the destiny of those in there thirties and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.

You see between 18 and 25 you can claim you’re young, because no one’s younger than you. Of course there are children, but there have always been children, and you’re used to children being younger than you from school. In school children are segregated entirely by age, and there was an advantage to being older, as older kids got to beat up younger kids/take their pick over who got anally bu**ered (dependent on whether you were state or private educated). No the late twenties are the first time there are genuine adults younger than you, and not even ones you can excuse away with the fact they are at university so there still kids really. I have two 25 year old people working in my office (who nominally I’m in charge of, though they have other ideas), they’ve been to uni, and whilst I think of them as kids, they’re proper genuine adults and they are clearly younger than me! Up until the mid to late twenties this has never happened before; people younger than me have always been children.

Additionally you spend the first twenty years of your life believing your body will never age, the most traumatic thing to drop out of your body are your teeth and your testis (but you get a new set of at least one of these). Now hair’s starting to fall out, except for my nose which is now sprouting hair so fast a team of landscape gardeners needs to be called in. Seriously if don’t do at least a weekly root around the nasal area with a shaver I start to look like that attachment you put on the vacuum cleaner when you want to do the skirting boards. I’m also coming to the inescapable conclusion that my face is slowly starting to slide down my head, there seems to be a build-up of excess skin around the chin area, at this rate by the time I’m fifty my face will look much like my scrotum. Though in fairness I’m less likely to get arrested for waving it around in a school playground.

And then there’s my health and physical fitness, gone are the days where I can eat what I want, no longer am I able to hide successive days of junk food binging without worrying. Now a pizza binge manifests itself so that under poor lighting I look like I could be a few months pregnant. And as for exercise, it becomes that much harder for that much less reward, gone are the days where a quick 5 mile jog started the day and got me off to a bouncy start. Now running for the Tube makes me more breathless than an asthmatic in the vacuum of space.

There’s also the worry about things you can’t do any more, as a child getting older meant there were more things you can do drinking, driving, lottery, buying pornography without the need for a step ladder. The only things you stopped being able to do was go to the under 8s ballet class, and then that was alright because you got to go the 9-12 year olds ballet class. As you get to the late twenties, you’re simply not allowed to do things any more, I’m questioning whether I should go on an 18-30 holiday now before it’s too late. Yet the concept of an 18-30 holiday utterly despises me, but what if on the day I turn 31 I suddenly decide that I really want to vomit all over beautiful areas of the Mediterranean, hang my undergarments off a lamppost and go to a foam party and have more inappropriate fun with bubbles than Michael Jackson ever managed?

So you see I admit that 30 is not that old in the grand scheme of things, but it’s the end of that crucial age where nature finally reminds you that you are going to be old. As superhuman and as invincible as you may have seemed during childhood, 25-30 is the age at which your body starts to rebel, at which the signs of age start to show you that soon you will look like a Colonel Gadaffi body double with exactly the same employment prospects. You may not be old yet, but you’re no longer young and no matter what you thought, your body is deserting you, it won’t be long before when you stand up your knees make a sound like an old dial-up modem connecting to the internet. Or put another way the late twenties-early thirties is the age where getting older starts turning s**t, under 25 and there’s usually a bonus to getting old, over 30 and you already know your life is s**t so you shouldn’t be surprised! There the perfect conclusion to an argument on why turning 30 is the worst age to be, I think it makes sense, but it might not – my brain is old now.

So there you go, the official point at which my mental breakdown at turning 30 starts is here. Don’t worry there’s a few more blogging opportunities between now and the big day for me to cry. And when I say big day, it will actually consist of me crying into a large tub of Ben & Jerry’s with a candle in, because I’ve dropped the spoon on the floor and my stiff old back won’t let me bend down and pick it up.