Amusing anecdotes & random ramblings
Funny
Doing content is easy, right?
Aug 26th
Judging by the worth by which journalists and writers are generally paid, you’d have thought writing would be an easy task, right? Something that any old mug can do on the cheap? Well, it seems that these days, some places are paying peanuts. But of course, when you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. One example I came across today:
You’re organising a week in which school children are encouraged to go to the cinema and watch films. The campaign is rather laboriously called National Schools Film Week – and you can visit their website at www.nsfw.org.
However, I’m pretty sure that most schoolkids will just giggle at the other meaning of NSFW – which is to today’s generation what the red triangle on the top-right of a film being shown on TV meant to my generation.
Working for the BBC….
Aug 16th
means a few surprises from time to time. Like telling people that it’s not a place where they shower you with money while you hang out backstage with Matt Smith or even Huw Edwards, for instance. Although there are a few fantastic non-financial bonuses, of course – like working on election night. Really must blog about that one day.
Anyway, it also makes for the occasional surprise in the rest of your life – like this ad I spotted on my Facebook page, basically begging for a job.
Suffice to say that most of the people that I know who are in a position to hire someone at the BBC don’t have Facebook accounts, as far as I know. Although I dare say the person who placed that advert would find such non-social-media people to be freaks of the highest order…
Can psychics see things coming?
Jun 18th
So psychic Derek Acorah’s had to cancel a few concerts at short notice. The pun writes itself. Which hasn’t stopped me in the past.
When I was flat-hunting in Cardiff, I saw an ad with a flat to rent above a psychic’s shop. So I called the number, and ended up speaking to the psychic’s son, who said that she’d fallen in a serious accident and was now in hospital.
I could see the joke coming towards me – and insensitive as it was – I just couldn’t escape the full-on headlights of the joke as it hurtled towards me.
And inevitably I uttered: “Sorry to hear that – did she see it coming?”
Surprisingly, the son carried on talking to me, and invited me round to see the flat. Although I shouldn’t have bothered. When there’s weird splatterings on the wall and floor covered with gay pornography, it’s not exactly a selling point for the flat.
Everybody loves a lesbian…
Jun 16th
At least according to BBC Three’s new comedy puppet show…
Then again, this shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to me. When I was living in Cardiff and hanging out with Miss H (naturally, a lesbian), I’d end up chatting to an intelligent, attractive, funny and uninhibited woman, only to find out from Miss H that she was, indeed, a lesbian. Hell, one night I was chatting up a lady who seemed inordinately keen and interested in me – and somehow, Miss H managed to pull her instead.
Also, when I look back at some of the celebrity ladies I fancied – as much for their wit or personality as their curly hair – they turned out to be lesbians. Cynthia Nixon, Sue Perkins, Donan McPhail to name but three.
To this day, five years on, my Cardiff friends will often remind me of the fact that I used to share a house with a lesbian couple, and give saucy nudgy winks about what must have gone on in the house. Indeed, one of my Cardiff colleagues once gasped with amazement at the stuff said lesbians left behind when they moved out – ignoring the fact that being a lesbian doesn’t mean automatic entry into the cool and fantastic division of people. Nor does being anything else for that matter.
What is the fascination with girls kissing girls anyway?
It's not like the Americans to claim victory prematurely…
Jun 13th
and for a bit of context on what that headline means…
All this hot weather is like making love to a beautiful (demanding) woman…
May 23rd
Sure, it looks nice, but once you get into it, it’ll drive you insane with bright lights and a pounding headache afterwards.
(inspired by Swiss Toni)
The Internet. It's full of chimpanzees.
Jan 29th
It’s amazing what you can cut together with rushes of interviews…
(The BBC documentary that was actually made partly from these rushes is The Virtual Revolution, presented by the divine Dr. Aleks Krotoski, Saturdays at 8.30pm on BBC Two)
Incidentally, it’s nice to know that I have finally achieved my ambition to have my name listed on a BBC network programme’s credits. Even if it’s only my netname, and it’s only listed on the website…
"How did I get into this mess?"
Jan 29th
Every so often, there comes a point when you look around, and you wonder how you got into a certain situation.
For instance, like driving a Ferrari on the wrong side of the road and into traffic islands across the city of Houston, at 3am on a Saturday night, a bit the worse for wear on a malt liquor beverage.
It was 1994, and I was an exchange student at Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, America. The friends I was hanging out with decided that since there apparently were no nightclubs in Baton Rouge, we should make a weekend of it and go to the next nearest major city. Alas, New Orleans (the logical choice) was nixed, and thus the destination was set for Houston. Six hours away. I hadn’t realised that the parents of my cohorts were so rich that they had tiny Ferraris, but they did, and I was in the back seat for six rumbling hours.
It was somehow decided that we didn’t have time to check into the motel that we’d organised, so instead we drove straight to the nightclub, arriving for about 9pm. Whereupon, with my training in British student bars, I headed straight for the bar and ordered a bunch of Zimas – then the coolest “malt liquor” drink being advertised on American TV.
Fast forward to 2am, and the group gradually assembled for the drive home, all of us a wee bit the worse for wear. Astonishingly, the main driver announced that he was too drunk to drive, and as I was the most sober person in the group, I should drive us home back to the motel. Even though I was still quite drunk, it was a sports car, and I pointed out that I was used to driving on the left side of the road. My objections were blithely over-ruled – and hey, how often do you get the chance to drive a sports car? – and I got in.
The group’s general assumption that i would be fine to drive were almost immediately quashed when I reversed the car, and turned it to the left – which is what you’d do in the UK. But apparently not in the US. The screams were almost comical, but fortunately we didn’t hit anything.
Unfortunately, over the next few minutes, I did scrape along the kerb, hit a traffic bollard, and mount a traffic island. In my defence, there’s not actually not much windscreen space in a tiny sports car – and of course, I’m not used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Fortunately, I was driving quite slowly, until I got the hang of things. After a while, the group calmed down enough to realise that I was asking for directions they didn’t have, so we all ended up looking around for signs to an Interstate or highway of some sort.
Eventually, we found one, I finally had the confidence to put some gas on the pedal, and somehow we managed to arrive at our designated motel. Why the hotel staff didn’t raise alarm bells at seeing a Ferrari pull in at 2am and four kids get out, clearly the worse for wear, is beyond me.
What was worse was the same six-hour journey back across a rumbling highway, crammed in the backseat, but this time all of us hungover.
Unsurprisingly, these days, when there’s an evening of drinking to be had, I get a taxi.
