Save the Panda!

I don't get this Strictly thing

Strictly is an amazing thing. It pulls the biggest audience in the country into an activity that it will never occur to nearly all of them to try.

And even more bizarrely it attracts 13 million people in America, to a country known perhaps for bootscootin'. But ballroom? What's going on?

Why can you interest somebody in something they will never do? It doesn't even exploit the human back story in the same way other reality shows do. It just sits alone and oozes joy.

Can it just simply be the triumph of human endeavour, mixed with colour, tunes and a little sparkle. What simpler ingredients could there be? Because the entertainment certainly doesn't depend on whether the thumbs are up or the heel turns are actually heel turns, because the camera doesn't catch that. It's not even transmitted. Nobody really cares.

It sells us a big, wet, slug of humanity. 

We get told the band is the best there is but we listen to mediocre backing singers chime out-of-tune cover versions of songs we would otherwise love, and still they can't kill the experience.

That you can feel such joy in the joy of near strangers, when you personally have nothing at stake. And feel personal pain or at least a sense of (in)justice on their elimination is an extraordinary thing. It dismisses the German (who else?) invention of schadenfreude. It makes it nonsensical.

Sometimes maybe you just need a reminder of how you can learn to.....feeel...

The Value of Things

I don't have many… things.

Not things of traditional value. Not things I could Bargain Hunt. Not things I could Flog It.

I don't miss them, I don't want them, I don't need them. They take up space. In my flat and in my head.

I have one thing I like. You might call  it a memorabilium. (OK, I might call it that). But it would be a memorabilium from an event I didn't technically attend. In fairness, pretty much nobody did.

It places a small and, to many, insignificant piece of magical history, in its moment. 

But what I like about it most is this. 

Intrinsically, it's worthless. 

It's tomorrow's chip paper, it's pulp, utterly without value.

OK, what's printed on it means something, at least in my eyes, but it's not diamond, it's not jade, it's not the world's largest cubic zirconia. It represents a connection, an impersonal connection perhaps, but to a very specific moment in time. 

And I don't want to sit here bleating that I'm not "material" because frankly, I probably am. I hadn't really thought about it and I don't intend to start now. 

And it's not just the vague idea of worthlessness I like. It's the pure, absolute poverty of  traditional market value. In other words, the more worthless it is, the happier I am. Charm seems to increase exponentially, based on the basic basis of of raw ingredients. 

Don't take my word for it. Ask any child who has his latest masterpiece magnetically secured to the front of an American fridge.

I have a lot of… things.

Ask me to do a minor task that I have never done before and there's a pretty good chance I may be able to find a thing, that will allow me to improvise. 

It won't be the right thing. But you know what? It just might be good enough.

Things. 

They are too close to clutter.

That's the good thing about Christmas. 

You can give things.

Away.

And worthless things, like the things I like, cost nowt.

So put away those giros. 

Give a worthless thing this Christmas. 

Or failing that...some thing of thingless worth.

12-12-12

Did the Earth move for you.... or am I on shaky ground?

The Moral Jungle

Is it wrong to buy a small remote control from eBay so that you can turn over the channel of the TV in the local gym without anybody realising it was you? 

Is it more wrong if you are switching from Nicky Minaj's latest booty shaking video to discussion of the Leveson enquiry?

If you hover for more than a few seconds over Dickinson's Real Deal, should you shrug your shoulders and look up to the heavens as though there's been some solar interference?

I know, I know. 

There are no right answers.

The First and the Last

First, do no harm. 

That is the mantra that, as doctors, we live by. 

If you are hearing that for the first time, it may look twee.

But for what it's worth, I've said it to myself every day of my working life.

Contrary to popular belief, we don't have to take oaths. There is no Hippocratic oath in the UK. There is no need for it. I suppose we must rely on principles that shouldn't require a signature. Rely on an idea of integrity that has become as ludicrously comic as it is anciently historical. And when it's present, it's never more pitiful. If it's a quality, for God's sake, never claim it. If it's challenged, for God's sake, never defend it. 

Accept it has no modern worth. 

Move on. 

Grow up.

We are not making medical schools for priggish, prickish over-rich American daddy-would-be-so-proud Harvard graduates here in the UK. We're doing the real thing. We are the real deal.

First, do no harm.

But in fact when you talk about life, death and legacy, there is a more important issue.

We are the thoughts that we leave in people's minds.

In the final analysis, we are nothing more.

So in your final reckoning, in your final legacy, in the way that you'd like to be remembered, give it some thought and take my advice.

Last, do no harm.

Tune In

I'm working on a new TV concept for Channel 4.

It's called 'Bring Back....Justin Lee Collins'

In Praise of the One-Liner

Words are great ways of communicating but they are imperfect. 

Some have peculiar origins, some are a little bit cross-wired. In English, in particular, there is a rich tapestry of history and misrepresentation has resulted in the constellation that is our lexicon.

If you place them together in a slightly odd order, you might become funny. Or erudite. Add a raised eyebrow and you are naughty, knowing or cheeky. Add a raised eyebrow and a wink and you're in danger of becoming unprofessional. Add  more than one wink, and you are an end-of-the-pier entertainer.

There are fine lines everywhere, and we are living in a time when  they are getting crossed and uncrossed faster than ever before.

On this 11–11–12, change and collision and bloodshed is everywhere and everywhence. See, that's an interesting way of putting it, isn't? I don't even know if it makes sense but it causes you to hover a little over that line and give it a little bit more thought. So the words have done their job. Focusing and misdirecting your thoughts so that the message I haven't even articulated in my own head yet creeps, poorly formed, into yours. Nothing wrong with that, I'm not telling you what to think.

It's an odd businesses isn't it?

And the one-liner distills it down to the smallest possible example of that. And it makes us laugh. 

Why? Because it's a verbal left turn, a neural short-circuit. We might laugh in admiration or confusion, or just enjoy being wrongfooted. The fact is we laugh at many other things as well: pain, tragedy, and the inner guilt we feel at enjoying off-colour gags. 

Human beings can and should laugh at everything. One-liners are a quick reminder that a joke is just a verbal tickle.

Writing a One Liner - No. 1

My doctor thinks I'm losing my peripheral vision.

I can't see it myself.