The Time Shop

Craig was late for his interview. It wasn't his fault.

He got to the station in good time, but It was only when he crossed the

footbridge to his platform  that he realised. 


An overrunning freight train had caused a delay at the previous station

so the passenger trains behind were halted to allow its passage,

all the while, eating up precious minutes and seconds, adding them onto

his own. He would never be there on time now.


He didn't have a lot of experience in his chosen field, PR, but he more

than made up for it with exhuberence, enthusiasm and what he liked to

call "Razzle Dazzle". He had various notes with him he planned to go

over on the train but now he was unnerved. He was always punctual but

he knew that the train couldn't make up the time and he would now be at

least ten minutes late for his interview. It would take all the Razzle

Dazzle in Las Vegas to make a good impression after such a bad start.


His interview was with a company in Soho and he vaguely knew where it

was. Down one of the many numerous alleyways and passages that make up

London's answer to Montmartre. Replete with rougish charm, as much for

the tourists as the edgy new media companies that set up there hoping

some of that dark stardust would rub off on them.


He sprinted up the stairs of Oxford Street tube station and bounded off

in the direction of Soho as quickly as his painful interview shoes

would allow. He turned left at a GOLF SALE sign and then right, left,

left again through the narrow arteries of the district. He glanced up to

check his barings and slipped on the greasy surface landing flat on his

back.


Winded, he regained his senses seconds later and glanced to his left at

a bright Victorian-style shop front.                                                       

                                       
The window was full of clocks, all varying styles, sizes, colours,

shapes and languages. Some displaying numbers, some spelling the time

in letters, some small watches, some digital appliances and a large

grandfather clock in the middle with such a stately presence that the

rest of the clocks appeared as if they were looking up at it.


That wasn't the most striking feature of the window. It took Craig a

good ten seconds to realise that all the clocks were telling dfferent

times and the hands and digits were moving at different speeds both

backwards and forwards.


Craig was stunned. Not just at the sheer number of clocks in what

looked like such a small space, but mainly because his brain was

refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him.


They were definately moving backwards, and forwards, and at different

speeds! He stepped backwards from the window and looked up at the sign

above the shop.


It said: "The Time Shop - We've always got time for YOU".

Craig looked down at his own watch. It had stopped.

Unlike certain other North East football fans, we can take a joke

The Return of This Life

BBC Two, 11.20pm, Monday to Friday from November 6th














1996; 1997; Miles, Milly, Egg, Anna, Ferdy, Warren, O'Donnell, Hooperman, Kira
, Moloko, Oasis, Blur, The Prodigy, Sexual Politics, Smoking, Drinking, Working, Living, Loving, Fighting, Surviving, Moving In, Moving Out, Moving On, Standing Still, My Life, Your Life, Their Lives, This Life.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2006/09_september/20/thislife.shtml

Sometimes someone else says it so much better

Comedy to the rescue

Want to know what's going on in politics? Forget the news. Armando Iannucci on how comedians are filling the gap where serious debate used to be

Wednesday October 18, 2006
The Guardian


The imagination at its most revolutionary ... Have I Got News For You, and Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Photographs: PA/Getty

I was watching Mastermind recently and found a contestant had chosen Alan Partridge as his subject. My reaction was a combination of being thrilled to be responsible for something that was being asked about on Mastermind, while thinking: "God, Mastermind's gone downhill a bit, hasn't it?" I sometimes find myself lowering my opinion of a body when it asks me to appear in front of it.

And yet comedy matters to a lot of people. Surveys show that a high proportion of people aged 18 to 36 get most of their information about British politics from Have I Got News For You. In America, similar figures show that Jon Stewart's topical comedy The Daily Show supplies a high percentage of 18 to 36-year-old Americans with their main news fix.

Why is comedy taking up so much space in our culture? Why is it so present, so dominant? There are things that should matter more - but at the moment they just aren't there.

I had a salutary experience of this around our breakfast table. The family were talking about jobs, what the children wanted to do when they grew up; all sorts of useful professions came up, teacher, nurse, doctor, anything really. I told my seven-year-old son: "You can always write jokes." "Daddy," he said, furiously. "That's not work."

It's what I suspect most of us who work in the creative arts occasionally feel: that what we're doing is interesting, it's fun, it's probably the only thing we can imagine ourselves doing. But is it a proper job? Is there a point to what anyone in the arts is doing? It's only recently that I've come to find out that it does - that spending one's life just imagining things, making things up, performs a crucial role today. It matters because it's an act of imagination, and imagination is one of the things that defines us as human beings rather than monkeys. It's an act of imagination that is just as valid, just as crucial, I think, as any serious competitor, like a drama or the novel. But I think we sometimes see comedy as an inferior art form.

This irks me. Comedy allows the imagination to be at its most revolutionary. Because, when you treat something comically, you can do anything. You can distort or exaggerate, you can break out of the form, you can be as real or as unrealistic as you like. You can invent, you can deny, hide or reveal, be as free or as controlling as you like. The most groundbreaking novels are usually comic. In return, though, you make a devastating pact with your audience. Because, though you can pour all your energy into doing any of these things, if they're not funny (worse still, if they're not instantly funny) then you're a failure. No court of appeal.

That's why, over questions of taste and taboo in comedy, my instinct is always first to ask: is it funny? That's why I probably would have had more sympathy with the Christian protest groups if Jerry Springer: The Opera had been less amusing, and would have had more sympathy with the Danish cartoonists if their efforts in depicting Muhammad had been more witty. And I'm sure the Labour MP Sion Simon - who parodied David Cameron's web diaries with a send-up of himself dressed as a yoof called Dave, inviting people to sleep with his wife, because that was cool - would have earned less derision if his material had been not so dire. Simon defended his efforts on the basis that it was "just satire". No, Sion, it was just bad.

I thank my lucky stars I'm not elected, like a politician, and don't have to arm myself daily with opinions, arguments and reactions that hang together and stand up to examination. I don't have to have a recognisable point of view or ideology; and, if all else fails, I can always change my mind. So long as it's funny. It's the privilege of being irresponsible.

But here is the confusing bit. Despite this, I still want comedy to matter a great deal. I want it to tackle big subjects. The idea that we are making someone laugh about something does not mean we don't take it seriously. Sometimes, we can take something so seriously that the only practical way to release the tension is to make a joke. Sometimes, we can be so appalled by someone's behaviour that the only effective way to run it again in our heads is as farce. Luckily, we do not live under tyranny, but those who do so know the creative freedom the joke gives them. You can ban writing, but you can't stop people finding things funny.

Similarly, being serious is not a sufficient reason for tastelessness or taboo-busting. A piece of television I found offensive recently was a documentary about Gorecki's Third Symphony. One movement contains a setting of words scrawled by an 18-year-old girl in a Gestapo cell. This music played over scenes from Auschwitz. I found myself getting angry at this, because what was happening was that images of real death and real trauma were being used as a background visual to illustrate and promote an already commercially successful piece of classical music. Regardless of the serious intent of the composition, I did find myself wondering what it is about "high art" that gives it the right to plunder our experiences in this way. If I had set those same scenes to, say, a Frank Sinatra classic, I would have an awful lot of explaining to do. So why not here?

I should be honoured that comedy plays such an influential part in cultural life. Look at politics. So much of it today is conducted in the form of a joke - not necessarily an amusing joke - that it's practically impossible for a professional jokesmith to go one better. After Sion Simon's "satirical" send-up of Cameron on YouTube, is there really any room for a comedian's more professional parody? When Gordon Brown has to get comic writers to supply him with some gags about the Arctic Monkeys and the Arctic circle, is there anything left for a comedian to say? When the only way a Prime Minister can get round his wife publicly calling his Chancellor a liar is with a joke, then what's left for a joke-writer to do? Comedy is so prevalent now, it's cool by association. So politicians speak and act according to the rhythms of comedy. Labour trying to portray Cameron as a chameleon - it's an attempted sketch.

This has come about for three reasons: politicians have stopped speaking to us properly, the media has stopped examining their actions in anything like a forensic way, and broadcast culture has become so watered down, so scared of fact, that people are less inclined to turn to anything other than entertainment for information.

Broadcast journalism today promotes itself not so much on what it talks about but on the method it uses: "Broadcasting 24 hours a day, correspondents in over 50 capital cities, giving you all the headlines every 15 minutes, up to six generations of journalists gathered in one newsroom, making you feel all the news you want to feel, even on Christmas Day." Hi-tech software and speedy transmission makes everything instant news, but we lose sight of the skilled individuals who can process this random unstoppable flow of information and somehow construct a meaningful examination of it. We need narrative.

I found myself hungry for narrative in the build-up to the war in Iraq. Here, surely, were facts - or, indeed, a glaring absence of facts - that required piecing together. Here, surely, it was clear that political debate was operating on a curiously surreal level. We were being asked to attack a country on the basis that the weapons we knew (but couldn't prove) it had would definitely be used against us, especially if we attacked it. This Alice Through the Looking Glass logic has continued after the invasion. Now, it seems, it was necessary to have invaded Iraq to rid the world of the terrorist cells who have flooded into the country since it was invaded. The terrorist attacks in London and mainland Europe since are, officially, unconnected with the invasion of a country that was invaded because it had links with terrorist attacks in mainland Europe.

My favourite quotation from the eminently quotable George Bush is a remark he made last year about the constant attacks on US troops in Iraq: "The insurgents are being defeated; that's why they're continuing to fight." It's a stunning reversal of all logic. Measuring success in terms of how far you are from success. An even stranger utterance came from Tony Blair at Labour's 2004 Conference when he defended his actions by saying: "Judgments aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I only know what I believe."

I only know what I believe. I find that one of the most chilling statements uttered by a seemingly rational politician. Apart from the fact that it overturns about 16 centuries of western philosophy and questions the entire principle of scientific inquiry, it's also, surely, how the Taliban get through their day.

Of course, I'm being selective in the way I have treated this logic. I have written my sentences with a deliberate aim of getting a laugh. I have treated it comically. But what else can I do? That's what I do. It was up to others to provide a more sober analysis. Except I just didn't see that happening. The media didn't stop to analyse the facts. Didn't comb Bush and Blair's speeches at the time to point out deficiencies in logic. And instead it was left for some of them to apologise much later for having trusted the PM too much, for having assumed that what he told the Commons about WMD was true. It's a shameful failure. The media didn't work. And it left a gap.

That's why I find myself stepping into that gap. Not just me, but many other humorists, satirists, comics, artists, people who make a virtue of the fact they distort logic for comic effect, but who still feel compelled to analyse that logic because no one else will. Everyone has analysed the result of the Hutton inquiry. But no one has analysed all the evidence given during it. Because the result, not the evidence, was deemed to have been the story.

But how can we expect the media to want to do anything more when the political debate they are meant to be reporting has become restricted to the point of non-existence? When politicians themselves want to debate image, postpone policy to the last moment, defer content until style has been sorted and sold, then there's a decreasing pool of ideas and arguments to analyse.

What amazes me is how much this has accelerated in the past five years or so; how much it seems to have gone past a tipping point where there's no longer anything factual left to talk about. Cameron sets up a webcam and a blog not because he has something new to say, but because he has a new medium in which to say something.

There is an emptiness in public argument waiting to be filled. That's where my lot come in again. If politicians fail to supply politics with content, is it any wonder people turn to other, more entertaining sources?

Given there is no absolute meaning, no hard, unquestionable kernel of truth at the centre of what we see, how can we take anything seriously ever again? Of course, we do, though, by turning to those who do offer narratives, even if they are fictional ones. Because they are better than no narrative at all. That's why I think comedy, and indeed any act of imagination, matters - and matters fundamentally. But this is not the sort of thing it should have been left to a comedian to say.

· This is an edited extract from the Tate Britain Lecture given by Armando Iannucci last night.

My Flabby Brain

As my phsyical body gets ever leaner and tighter from swinging golf clubs and lifting weights, so my mind sits on the settee and watches "You Are What You Eat".

Stay Tuned.

Torture OK'd by senators

From www.salon.com

The "scenic route" to torture

Despite all the legalistic obscurities surrounding the torture "compromise" between President Bush and Republican senators there is one critical fact of overarching significance that is now crystal clear. This entire controversy arose because the U.S. has been using "interrogation techniques" -- such as induced hypothermia, "long standing," threats directed at detainees' families and waterboarding -- that are widely considered to be torture, and therefore in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The only thing the president wanted was to ensure that the CIA could continue to use these techniques, and that, unquestionably, is precisely the outcome of this "compromise."

If anything, these torture techniques will enjoy greater legal protection under the "compromise" legislation reached by the leaders of America's ruling party because a) authorization of these interrogation techniques will now be grounded in a statutory scheme duly enacted by Congress (rather than in the shadowy, secretive "interpretations" of the Geneva Conventions promulgated by the executive branch) and b) judicial review of any type (i.e., the ability to have courts adjudicate the compatibility of these practices with the mandates of the Conventions) will be barred entirely.

Unlike most news accounts this morning, ABC News' Brian Ross, reporting on the Blotter blog, illustrates just how clear the resolution is (emphasis added): "The CIA director, General Michael Hayden, praised the deal reached in Congress today that, in effect, would permit CIA interrogators to use harsh techniques critics call torture ...

"As reported on the Blotter on ABCNews.com, in questioning certain high-value terror suspects, the CIA has used a series of six increasingly harsh interrogation techniques that begin with a slap to the face and end with a procedure called water boarding, in which a prisoner is made to feel he is drowning ... Today's congressional deal, if signed into law, would allow the CIA to continue the six techniques and to continue to run secret prisons overseas for select terror suspects."

From the beginning, the president made clear that the only objective he had with these "negotiations" -- the only outcome he cared about -- was ensuring that the CIA could continue to use these "aggressive interrogation techniques." As President Bush said in his Sept. 15 press conference: "I have one test for this legislation. I'm going to ask one question, as this legislation proceeds, and it's this: The intelligence community must be able to tell me that the bill Congress sends to my desk will allow this vital program to continue. That's what I'm going to ask."

The president got everything he wanted. What he calls the "program" -- and which much of the world calls "torture" -- will continue unabated, arguably even stronger, as a result of this legislative "compromise." In his celebratory statement Thursday night, the president was absolutely right when he said: "I had a single test for the pending legislation, and that's this: Would the CIA operators tell me whether they could go forward with the program, that is a program to question detainees to be able to get information to protect the American people. I'm pleased to say that this agreement preserves the most single -- most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks, and that is the CIA program to question the world's most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets."

The White House's Dan Bartlett put it best, and most accurately, when he said: "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there." Only the Bush administration could speak of taking a "scenic route" to torture. But Bartlett's description, creepy and chilling though it may be, is not mere spin designed to make a compromising president look triumphant. Bush, in fact, did triumph and did not compromise in any meaningful sense, because the only goal he had -- to ensure that his "alternative interrogation program" would continue -- was fulfilled in its entirety as a result of this "compromise" (with the added bonus that it will even be strengthened by legal authorization from Congress).

Marty Lederman, both here and here, provides the legal and statutory analysis as to why and how the "compromise" legislation legalizes the president's torture program, and I will have more on that later. But the bottom line should not be clouded. This debate was never about legalistic disputes concerning the wording of amendments to the War Crimes Act or what phrases would be used to statutorily define "torture." What was implicated by this controversy was something much more profound and fundamental: namely, what kind of country we choose to be, and whether we will adhere to or repudiate our defining national principles and values.

If this "compromise" legislation is enacted -- and it can now be stopped only by the invisible, impotent congressional Democrats -- the United States will be a country that has formally legalized torture, and the president's "interrogation program" will continue unimpeded, with firmer legal authorization than ever before. And the American people, through our representatives in Congress, will have embraced and approved of the use of torture. Far and away, it is the impact on our national character that will be the most significant and enduring result from this "compromise."

-- Glenn Greenwald

Days Like These

Like a spluttering car, things aren't going smoothly.

I finally finished the latest Irvine Welsh book "Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs" and I was left distinctly underwhelmed by the previously great author.

The winners of the Carling Cup in 2004 thought that for 2006 they would do something different and got knocked out at home to Notts County of the 3rd Division. Say what you like about Maclaren but we were never "giant killed" under him.

Also, my wonderful show "Battle of the Geeks" (see below) is up in the air because the host is in hospital in a serious but stable condition after crashing a rocket car during filming for "Top Gear".

Sometimes when your becalmed the best thing to do is to paddle furiously in a given direction. Sometimes it's to dangle your feet over the edge of the boat with a fishing line attached to your toe. Other times you sit and fret, not knowing what to do.

Worst Title Ever

In a nod to work - I am publicising the exciting scientific challenge show "Battle of the Geeks" to go out on BBC Two in the week beginning Monday 28th August.

Hosted by Richard Hammond, two teams of "geeks" have 48 hours to design, build, test and fly a craft across the second biggest canyon in the world with a precious cargo - an egg. The winners are the team that get their egg, unbroken mind, closest to a big X painted on the other side of the canyon.

It's actually quite good.

Craig Charles' Naughty Friday - the new fun game for Crackheads

Hi Kids! You too can create your own “naughty Friday” like me, star of Coronation Street and Robot Whores, whoops, I mean Wars!

You will need the following to play

• Six cans of stella
• Two rocks of crack
• A copy of Razzle
• Some tissues

Start at about 7pm and hop in the back of your limo with your chauffer driving – believe me, you’ll need your hands free!

Crack open the Stella’s and start drinking, remember to save at least one of the cans. Now your getting merry, pop one of your rocks into the can, light it and puncture the sides to start inhaling. Now we partying!

Keep smoking the crack and start flipping through your Razzle. Pretty soon you’ll be wanking like a little monkey so remember the tissues or “belly wipes” as I call them!

You’ll arrive back in London ready to rehearse your lines or to go out and smile for the photographers!

Write back and let me know how you enjoy your own “Naughty Friday”!

Love, Craig.

Guy's lifelong dream comes true

Mel in Trouble

"Your their king - can't you straighten this out for me?"

Guy’s Stag Do
“Pirates in Men’s Pants”

Fri 11th to Sun 13th August 2006
Manchester/Blackpool

“Prepare for a Jolly Rogering!”

Rogue State

Illegal activites outside it’s own borders? Check.

Attacked sovereign states and presents clear and present danger to neighbouring area and country’s? Check.

Systematic Subjugation of indigenous population? Check.

Refused UN weapons inspections? Check

Secret police participating in illegal training, missions and assassinations both inside and outside of state? Check

Bankrolled by foreign powers to further its aims? Check

Well done Israel. You pass the test.

I can't believe it's not Buddah

Whoever came up with the idea of rubbing Buddah's belly for luck doesn't know Jack.

I've been rubbing this chap for the best part of a week now and things are fair to middling to say the least. Bah!

My experience of Buddhism is limited to student experimentation with literature such as the Dhamapadda and "The Little Book of Zen" which was just a collection of trite sayings from the likes of Bob Dyland and Woody Allen and some brief biogs of Buddhist masters. This might seem sad and entirely transparent nowadays but if you were in college in the mid 90's and the lyrics of Echobelly and Republica were considered the new poetry then an authentic cultural coathook such as Buddhism had a lot more cred than the latest fad.

My Buddhist experimentation came to an end with the realisation that a) Buddhists can't drink and b) the main proponents of the text are dripping wet Richard Gere and Lisa Simpson.

I guess Hell has completed it's maximum security wing

Pinochet, Milosevic, Zarqawi, now Kenneth Lay

Clock must be ticking on Saddam Hussein and Margaret Thatcher.

Friendship Nisi

“Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce” – Voltaire

When do you end a friendship? Is there a legal process? Do you have to declare a “Friendship Nisi” or announce your separation? Do you take an ad in the paper or send out cards like that scene in “Eternal Sunshine” letting everybody know that you and X are no longer pals and shouldn’t mention them in your presence again?

The levels of friendship are varied and detailed but can be best surmised on the following scale:-

*

Cock

Twat

Prick

Whohellhe

Nodding acquaintance

Bloke

Mate

Friend

Crony

Best mate

Bumchum**

* - There is a worse level than Cock and we all know what it is but this is a family blog not The Guardian so it won’t be reprinted here.

** - Not usually literal. Usually used by spurned Cronies to comfort each other that they have not achieved alpha-friend status with said object of affection.

Bloke & Mate level tend to be reserved for work acquaintances and/or male partners of female friends/relatives. You might get a friend out of work but no more than one or two unless you are one of those creepy David Brentalikes who keep going back after you have left and confirm what everybody thought about you in the first place which may have led to you leaving.

People usually carry out internal friend audits and work out how many they have, who can be let go, space freed up for new one’s etc. The usual limit is one best mate or bumchum, two or three cronies, four or five friends, and approx. ten or more mates. It would be easier if there was a proper squad system implemented when people coud be allocated numbers according to their level and like the charts, can rise or fall according to their current status. This could even be publicised and could have a whole slew of spin-off programmes debating the reasons for changes and predictions for the future. Far more entertaining than Big Brother.

The above just relates to male friendships. As usual, women have far more complex, arcane and arbitary systems to decide standing and status. For instance, the concept of the “Frenemy” is as alien to a man as an A-line.

Ultimately, Friendship, Acquaintanceship, hanging out, whatever you want to call it, is a two-way street. You either do or you don’t want to hang with someone. Sometimes things change. Sometimes it’s because of you, sometimes it isn’t; and sometimes it’s because you would rather stay at home and watch Cheaters than shoot the breeze with a pinhead who you only know because your cousin went out with a bloke who worked in the same place as their sister to begin with.

The Bloggers Harsh Truth

"Pearls before Swine"
http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/index.html

The Home Straight beckons

Was it really April 3rd when I last posted on here? Guess "Gifted but Lazy" wasn't just a clever title then.

Stacey arrives on Sunday 2nd July and everything is now building up to it. I am nervous about itas anybody who has lived by themselves for three years would be, now turning over yourself and your place to the idiosyncracies of another person, no matter how much you cherish and revere them.

For a start, girls smelling abilities functions on a higher plane than mens. That is why they invest in candles, airwick fresheners etc. Because they can smell the filth that pervades your man-lair. What you consider an irresistably inviting mix of masculinity, pheromones and integrity merely registers as one up on cat pee to your average woman.

Similarly - the dust. What dust you cry?

Exactly. You just cannot see it for the life of you but like the bridge over the chasm at the end of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" it's an optical illusion. Once pointed out, there it is. A finger smear of shame, proving you are no more adept at keeping a clean house than one of the mentalists that Aggie and Kim rape-through-industrial-cleaning-and-abuse regularly.

To compound my sins, Stacey is an American. Which rightly or wrongly, brings with it a whole different level of unmeetable expectation. My perfectly adequate two bed semi now seems little more than an extravagent wendyhouse at the bottom of somebody's garden. The state-of-the-art British air-conditioning system (open windows) is now obsolete and the functional kitchen is revealed as little more than a fisher price playset writ large. Dumping my beloved George Foreman grill was merely a prelude to the nightmare of change and responsibility to come...

Talk to the Elbow

At Last! Someone from outside Sunderland and Teesside realises what we've been banging on about all these years and doesn't put it down to sour grapes!

And an etiquette author too no less...

Heroes & Villains

During Euro 96, Lynne Truss admired Alan Shearer so much she even dreamt about him. Now she sees only a 'waddling, sullen, dirty, immovable obstacle to beautiful football'

Sunday April 2, 2006
The Observer

I seem always to be telling the story of how, in 1996, I was lured into football writing by a rather fiendish sports editor at the Times. 'But I know nothing of football, sir!' I simpered in falsetto, arching my neck and fluttering a fan in front of my face; 'I am a lady, surely you can see that?' But they sent me to Wembley to see England v Switzerland, and it was rather exciting and interesting and oddly real, and then I kept going for four years, and my testosterone levels shot right up, and my voice got deeper, and I got incredibly opinionated and was always freezing - but in all conscience, good grief, I just can't repeat that story all over again.

Suffice to say, anyway, that it left me with some rather unfeminine vestigial reflexes - the most embarrassing of which is that I can't hear the name Alan Shearer without spitting on the floor. This can be a burden in polite society - especially among those who don't know that football support is as much about seething with irrational hatred for certain individual players as it is about blindly adoring them. When I first started attending England matches, it confused me to find that portions of the crowd actually booed substitutions, and that you weren't allowed to say, 'Good old Platt!' under any circumstances. It took me about two short weeks to absorb this tendency, however.

And now I just hate Alan Shearer - even though he has (obviously) never done anything to me. While others have recently celebrated the Newcastle captain's breaking of Jackie Milburn's club goal-scoring record, or noted with neutral interest a new book entitled Alan Shearer: Captain Fantastic, I have narrowed my eyes, noisily evacuated some phlegm, and then said: 'What? He's still getting away with it?'

Annoyingly, I have to admit that I started out admiring Shearer very much. In fact, in the second week of Euro 96 I informed my readers that I'd had a dream about him working in a furniture shop - which thankfully I didn't pause to analyse. Foolhardily, I added a week later: 'A month ago I had never heard of Alan Shearer. Now I want to have his babies.' I was so keen to accumulate detail that I even read that infamously dull book, Diary of a Season, in which Shearer celebrates Blackburn's league victory in 1995 by creosoting a fence.

But then I started to scrutinise the teamwork aspect of England games and I began to dislike nearly everything about the way he played. He would wait to be served perfect passes (with his hand raised) and sulk when they didn't come. He would foul defenders (with his elbow) and mysteriously get away with it. He would walk upfield (with his arm up) when everyone else was running. And as the team acquired younger, more dynamic players who kept their arms down, he started to seem like a big, waddling, sullen, dirty, immovable and permanently pointing obstacle to beautiful football.

Team strategy was apparently built round him, and this made me mad. True, at the World Cup in France, he got fitter and faster again, but it was his needless foul on the Argentinian goalkeeper (or so I said, thumping the table) that really lost us that fateful match at Saint-Etienne, after Sol Campbell's goal was disallowed as a consequence.

Here are the regular questions I would ask, out loud, in exasperation, at England matches during this period: How does he get away with it? Why is he walking? Why doesn't anyone notice that he raised his arm to appeal for that penalty before he artfully tripped over the keeper? Why doesn't he run? Why is he never rested? Why is he never substituted? Would you call that strolling or ambling? Why is he never sent off? Why is he never even booked? Who died and made him God? At a football writers' dinner one year I was lucky enough to sit next to Ted Beckham, and what did I do? Instead of angling for anecdotes of the infant David, I moaned on and on and on about Alan Bloody Shearer.

Now, many people (especially in the north-east) applaud Shearer for other qualities; I know that. According to a recent Swedish dissertation on his place in Newcastle legend, he is a true 'hero' in that he possesses 'a consistent capacity for action that surpasses the norm of man'. Even I can see that he is physically brave, unbelievably tough and fiercely committed. At a time when English football is a showcase for international mercenaries, Shearer is a home-grown, bullet-headed, hairy-kneed yeoman - and he knows where the goal is, which helps.

I think it wasn't Shearer himself that I hated most: it was the official blindness shown towards his limitations that exasperated me. His talismanic status made him exempt from question, and I couldn't accept that. Nowadays (except in the north-east), it seems there is generally more criticism of a) his 'manly' style of football, b) his inexplicable untouchability where refs are concerned, and c) his ability to intimidate managers, so that if they leave him off the team sheet, they get instant delivery of a P45. But it's a bit late now to help me with my spitting problem. Why would I still feel this strongly? It just goes to show what football does to you, once you let it inside your brain.

Falling out of Love

“Then you find your heart no longer flutters
And you no longer look through a lover's eyes
What's to see when the world falls down around you?
You simply can't believe it, but it comes as no surprise”

Falling out of Love by John Denver

I’ve seen us lose home and away to Grimsby.

The pinnacle of my maternal grandfathers Boro supporting career was reached by Charlton’s Champions. The other lived to see us get to Wembley for the first time but no further. I lived in house called Ayresome Lodge and once drove 1200 miles - (3 home games in 3 weeks) to see three 0-0 draws.

So why, albeit listening to the Boro at Man City as I write, am I not compelled to do so? Not 18 months ago, I’d be in the stand with the other die hards but why not now?

Because like a lot of other Boro and football fans I know and have spoken to, the love affair is over. The kids have left home and graduated in Cardiff; now we look at each other and realise that we’re two different people from when we met on that sunny afternoon in Hartlepool 20 years ago.

Saturday was and still is the most important day of the week for me. The traditional matchday has a rhythm all of its own – familiar meals and faces followed by familiar walks and pubs. The conversations have changed though. The bare excitement of anticipation has been replaced by something else. Like a visit to a relative you can’t stand but can’t get out of; thousands of people (less than before) walk to the Riverside with the resigned humour of the trenches and the broken ambitions of men passed over for promotion too many times. Football provides so many emotions I don’t need to tell you but whereas victory should provide the purest of these – now I feel the basest. Relief. Of course I’m happy when we win and disappointed when we lost but the sensations have been dulled to the point where the most basic – relief at avoiding defeat, humiliation, relegation – are the strongest.

The majority of the performances at home this season haven’t helped. I was at work for the watershed Villa match but managed to watch it and could feel the pure anger flow from the monitor speakers as I began to question the evidence of my eyes. That a highly paid professional football team were capable of acts of physical ineptitude that a trained circus troupe would be hard pressed to emulate.

Like a partner who feels their contribution to the relationship is being taken forgranted, I’m looking at my own unmatched efforts more and more. The money, the travel, the leave taken, the inconveniences, the potential for trouble. 20 years of mainly unrequited love, like following the support band on a tour.

I’m not the only one. The Championship and Division One resemble an Aircraft graveyard of burnt out husks of once mighty war engines – Leeds, Wolves, Derby, Forest and every single team in Yorkshire.

At the very least, we are at the zenith of the English game, the Premiership, and all the attention and profile that brings and maybe that’s the problem. World-wide exposure, Match of the Day, Sky, 23 non-Saturday Kick-offs, Asian TV, webcasts.

In the same way that teams have to get used to winning and success, maybe so do the supporters. 80’s nostalgia is all the rage and I look back at 1986 to 19889 as my rock n roll years. We were the best kept secret in football and I liked it like that. 10 bleach blond Teessiders and an Elvis look-alike who had almost as many hits as the other King. Every week, we turned up to back them and every week, or so it seemed, we were rewarded. We played well and more often or not, won.

As well all know, like a lot of relationships, success turned their heads. More glamorous suitors came knocking as we hit rocky times and took advantage as they left for, footballing, better times. I stayed, and despite a lot of other successful relationships, more successful than I could have hoped, I still haven’t forgotten, or got over, my first loves.

Maybe my ambitions are so narrow that I am a typical small-town small-timer. Don’t get ahead of yourself, settle for what you’ve got, don’t try so you won’t cry. Settle for survival and miss knocking around with our old mates Barnsley and Notts County who also didn’t risk it.

But in my own life I did break out. I moved away, reluctantly, but things worked out for me, and the Boro. I except in some ways we’ve both moved on and we’re both better for it but like the growing minority of Chelsea fans bemoaning the methods if not the achievements – we all know something is missing and it isn’t coming back.

I’ll be on my settee on Thursday night, physically in Oxfordshire but spiritually back home, cheering on the escape and while I want nothing more than Ayegbeni Yakubu to score a first half hat-trick; I have now come to reluctantly accept that I’ll never love him like I loved Archie Stephens.

Worst. Art. Ever

I was going to write a note about my return to Speedway – the UK equivalent of Drag Racing but as usual, events, dear boy, events, have overtaken me.

http://www.caplakesting.com/

Daniel Edwards statue of Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug entitled “Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston” is taking up the headlines and rightly so.

As a Middlesbrough season ticket holder I feel uniquely qualified to state that I’ve seen some horrendous shit masquerading as a thing of beauty over the years but this takes the cake, table and the whole WI tent.

The last time I saw an arse that big sticking in the air it was wallowing in the Nile with a crocodile about to take a bite out of it. Her hairstyle looks like she worked in the Slough town centre Wimpy’s in 1968 and as one wag has already pointed out – “this piece is more representative of conception than birth!”

It’s a good job the pictures on the site aren’t 360 degrees because the sight of a tiny-tears head poking out of her mimsy might be too much, even for dedicated fans. (That’s fans of Britney, not Mimsy’s but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive).

I’m not a big fan of Britney or K-Fed meself (who else would marry a man who names himself after an express courier service?) but surely even she deserves a little dignity.

You read that right. The words Dignity and Britney in the same sentence.

I wonder what his encore will be: “Monument to Pro-Choice” – a scale representation of Tracy Barlow performing a handstand while Charlie Stubbs takes aim six inches above the unkempt tee with a 3-wood in front of a horrified Blanche?

Me 

Genesis

"I'm Robert Downey Jnr to your Michael Douglas in 'Wonder Boys' " was how my friend put it.

He's right. That's the problem with people who think they are undiscovered and talented. The clue is in the description. Undiscovered. Life very rarely comes along and knocks on your door and offers you a great opportunity - unless you were actually thinking of getting double glazing or ordering from a brand new Indian restaurant on the estate. In which case you would dismiss it as an incredible coincidence.

In short, it's about time I got off my backside and started doing something with my newly acquired freetime. And that is by entering the blogosphere with my own rambling inputs. I am also aware of the irony of sitting firmly on my backside while I type so don't point it out.

Nobody likes a smart arse. Which is again a flawed assertion because that's exactly what I am.

You are most welcome.