Quotable Me 101

There is no intelligence.

We are all jokes... waiting for a punchline

Patents Pending

Come on guys... this is the age of light emitting diodes and fibreoptics...

..can somebody please invent the illuminated toothpick and let me know when you have done it.

Thank you. I'll be here.

The Price of Admission

I know it's wrong to dream of more CCTV, but I wish there was a camera on my local swimming pool.

Just on the pool mind, not as I recently read about the sort of cameras that are in changing rooms in thousands of schools around the UK.

It's not because it would be relaxing to see a local pool on my computer screen. 

Not even because it will be motivating.

I just want to know when there are the fewest possible people in so I can go.

Come on everybody.

 Let's live our life on camera.

Do I mind being peeped on myself?

No.

Let them look.

The Danger of Designer Babies

We are getting a lot of Frankenstein science nowadays... but to  artificially create offspring from Karl Lagerfeld and Mary Portas...really..is that wise?

The Choices You Have And the Choices You Don't.

I had an e-mail from a friend yesterday in Hollywood.

I had mentioned about the growth of anxiety in the UK, which worries me.#

It doesn't make me anxious. It just worries me.

Mainly because I'm thinking exactly what I can do about it.

But then that's me.

Not my job to solve the world's anxiety problems? 

Really?

Well, if it is not mine, whose is it?

I have a few solutions I won't trouble you with at the moment.

But she asked me what the cause of it was  - she notices the same thing on the far border of the Americas.

So I gave her three or four paragraphs of....well the sort of stuff that I do... the sort of stuff that if I speak out loud people often smile and dismiss. This sort of stuff.

So I won't cut and paste that here but she was kind enough to say in response... "Moving words...Sir my name"

Today though I will give you a one word answer to the same question.

What is causing the anxiety?

Not three paragraphs. But one word.

Okay then... three words. Here they are.

Safety. Loss of.

I think that's the secret to the cause of anxiety.

I'll get back to you with the answer.

You can choose your own on June 26.

But please...do so for the greater good.

Dell A. Meetree

One of the more active decisions that you make as you get older is to ascribe the numbers of your age to some other quality.

People may choose to typically ascribe it to "quality" but it certainly doesn't mean that. (I am meaning quality in a different sense to my previous use of the word when I was just using it as a category. Here I mean the quality that is "quality"...you know..merit... distinction... excellence...that sort of crap.

Many people had better qualities when they were 17 than 37. Or 47. Or 67.

They may typically ascribe the increasing number  to experience but I have spoken before about that being confused with longevity - a fairly empty and unuseful description of time passing. Experience may be of  something outdated, redundant, incorrect, stuck in its ways. If you're talking about providing maintenance on a steam engine... I'm with you. If not, you may find yourself out in the cold.

You may choose to ascribe this prime number to a vector... a direction.

In which case I will offer you two choices.

Get ready because here they come.

Go deeper.

Or go shallower.

In so many ways those are your principal options. There are no wrong answers.

So think about it freely.

In everything.

Ride that harmonic wave, feel the zeitgeist, dip in and surf, or wax your board and ready it carefully, shake the blanket.... 

Choose the timing of your own peaks.

And roll with it.

Boundaries

Why do we need to drink tea out of ceramic but water really must be out of glass?

Handles for hot things... yes.. but… even so, tried the other way round, it buffets our comfort zones.

Tuning Out

Even though there are stations on Freeview which can make ends meet even if they only sell healing crystals or paper for your craft project, we now know that the British Broadcasting Corporation can't or won't afford to run its channels and pay for Alan Yentob's inflated salary.

But then it's always good to have a new place not to watch BBC3.

Fru T Bunn

There's a bunch of people who have sold their soul to the devil.

A bunch of people who are never without immediate access to an agency which publishes sexism and racism and facilitates terrorism and sex crimes on a daily basis.

A bunch of people who became advertising space when the clock struck 13. 

These are the empty headed Facebook users of 2016.

And then there's a bunch of people who like a joke.

Enjoy a titter, a chuckle.

And a patiently elegant, retro-styled cartoon.

These are the Viz readers of 2016.

Mutually exclusive groups? 

Well...yes.

Because Facebook has deleted the Viz page.

Censored. 

Was it the flatulence-based feature "Donald Trump's World of Pumps" that did it? 

We just don't know.

Double entendre has been swapped for doublethink.

If you can laugh, then you can't feel angry.

Laughs flicker and breathe.

Poison lingers and bleeds.

A smile doesn't stain so laughs don't sell. 

Vitriol is forever.

"If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever".

I am not even asking you to look behind you.

I'm not asking you to look around you.

Just look straight ahead and open your eyes.

You didn't even see it coming. 

Look in the mirror and see the pricetag tucked into in your hat. 

See what you sold out for and guess how far down the rabbit hole you are.

Try to remember.

If satire wasn't silenced after Charlie Hebdo, what chance do think you have, Zuckerberg?

There is a group of people who have sold their soul to the devil.

Hello.

Do Cheese

I received a cheese making kit at Christmas.

I know. That's what I thought.

But unbelievably in a fit of unparalleled commitment, I actually did choose a cheese from the recipe booklet to make shortly after the festivities.

I chose a goat's cheese.

But I did make the error of not buying goat's milk.

Somehow hoping the process itself would add goat.

Perhaps with... I don't know...a shimmy of my muslin cloth. 

Or adding in the citric acid like Ainsley Harriet might add a little bit of Percy Pepper.

I decided to add a few herbs to make it look like a ricotta and I'm pleased to report that I managed to finish most of it before it the attractions of non-recyclable bin day came round.

That is all.

Quotable Me 25

You don't follow dreams - they follow you.

You drive dreams. 

Then they drive you.

I'm not claiming any meteorological prowess but

I've just seen on the news that the weather is brought to us by Bridgestone Tyres and nPower.

I'm pretty sure it's not.

Memo

Note to SKY TV:

When you offer people "a chance to see the programmes everyone's talking about... like True Detective Season 2" ...make sure they are not talking about them because they are crap.

WasHer DryHer

These new washing machines with baby cycles....I do not agree with it.

It's no way to wash a baby.

Although ....

...these engineers can't be idiots... I might give it a go ...maybe start on a Silks setting with a short spin.

That can't do any harm.

I assume they put the childproof lock on the inside. 

Yes I think I'm ready for a dry run...now where's that cat ?

Ten things that have arrived on my tits

• Anybody who eats anything in any cinema screening I attend (I'm not a maniac. I have no problem with the other 99.999% of screenings)
• Putting soap in the softener drawer (Clown!) 
• Chicken-flavoured crisps - hardly a sapictive phenomenon - they are the the waste of a taste bud, readied and primed for an experience.
• The response of the 999 operator when you tell them you have put soap in the softener drawer.
• People who say Happy Monday to you (or any other day of the week. This isn't 1984. I'm okay with any festival-related greeting though. I'm not a maniac)
• Lyme disease
• How irons are filled.
• Re-released albums (Pleeease! This isn't 1983)
• American Mother's Day (that's caused me more than it's fair share of confusion and guilt)
• People who don't take the door from you when you hold it open for them (usually pregnant women or utter bastards)

Changing Fashions

Look like I'm behind the times again... time to update my knicker drawer.

A4 Gone - Conclusion

Come on now...

I know you've raced to the sliding trapdoor.

You might even have reached for the mains source.

You might have pressed the red button or Cancel or anything for three seconds or more....

But...

Has anybody ever successfully cancelled a printing job...ever?

We should be told.

Advice

I am just writing my appraisal submission..

I am currently backing up the section on 'Communication, partnership and teamwork' with that highest level of evidence...the personal self-interested assertion.

You do lose your perspective after a while writing all this guff so just to check...there's nothing wrong with this sentence is there?

"I treat all patients as equals, even the women".

After a while you just not sure if your 'eye' is still in, if you are still riding the crest of that guff-writing flow state.

Now I see it written down it looks fine. 

I'm not going to even bother mentioning the Mexicans.

Wog on the Prog

The fashion for limited "event" series in the wake of our successes.. so here we are for a limited run.

For many of us, there wasn't a time when Terry Wogan wasn't a part of our lives.

An original who appeared to do things his own way retaining an edginess with a mattress of double entendre.

As useless on a TV chat show as he was brilliant on the radio, I spent time part of my childhood laughing in hysterics at the comic antics on Blankety Blank.

We are living in a time where the changing of the guard is more palpable every day.

I'm worried that the new uniforms don't fit the new incumbents particularly well. The material isn't quite made of the same quality and the texture is cheap.

A world which waits for tributes from Scott Mills and Nick 'Grimmy' Grimshaw is a sad, pathetic and desperate one.

Terry's Old Geezers represented the mature bunch who hadn't lost their sense of humour, who could still laugh at life while enjoying all of its rich tapestry and idiocy, keeping their brains alive with a generosity of spirit, a glass of port and strong core values, even as their body fails.

The simple overriding fact is a cliche.

We won't see their like again.

It's not that they got it all right.

I went to see Doug Richard in a theatre a couple of years ago talking about start-ups and business. He was a Dragon from California in the first two series of Dragon's Den.

I don't think he has even been required to sign up to the sex offender's list for having sex with a 13-year-old girl who weighed less than six stone, despite giving her money for it (not payment of course, a gift to reflect the good times they shared).

This is a legal loophole for sex with children known as "reasonable belief" [that she was 16, and therefore an ideal partner for 57-year-old "family" man]. 

Laws made by lawyers. Idiots running the asylum.

Don't you think he knew his defence before it was required?

Legal sexual abuse of children on our high street paid for my millionaire TV celebrities. And not just once in his case but hundreds of times.

There is no prison sentence for this. Not even a slap on the wrist.

He could still run for President.

But don't be alarmed. He's getting therapy to treat his addiction. 

Praise the Lord.

The guard is changing. Richard must've been flustered to see that his birthright to buy and sell children had been challenged. After all he had plenty of money. What could possibly be the problem?

Ethics and decency are squeezed every day by people who prize instant gratification above all things.

But at least once upon a time, there was Radio 2.

And we still have Ken.