Paying For Sex

It’s not an easy thing to admit to.

Most people, I believe, think about doing it at some point in their lives though most, of course, will never admit to it. Of those, only a fraction will have the immoral fortitude and sufficient appetite to see it through. To realize the desire.

It’s the stigma, you see?

And possibly the cost.

Or maybe just the psychological damage.

But I figured I was strong enough. That my previous good character could not only take it but also immure me against whatever brickbats and public crucifixion might follow. I’ve never been afraid of censure.

Not where cheap laughs are concerned anyway.

So. I finally did it.

I have self-published a new book – full of brand new, unseen before material – about having sex with various celebs and famous people and you can all download it from Amazon right now and read of these incredible psyche-shattering sexploits (is it worth copyrighting that word or have others beaten me to it?) and have your erotic world-view forever widened and enlarged. Possibly even engorged.

The blurb which I have also written clearly states:

"Ever wondered what it would be like to have sex with Nigella Lawson? To doubleteam both George R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien? To have your wicked way with Miley Cyrus, Bella Swan, George Lucas, Barack Obama, Darth Vader and Kurt Cobain? To maybe engage in a little post-coital badinage with Scooby-Doo, Simon Cowell and Wonga.com? Well now's your chance to experience the gory intimate details without having to remove a single item of your own clothing, invest in a bottle of rophipnol or risk unwanted pregnancy, crabs or cooties.

"Simply purchase this handy Kindle guide and the virtual experience of sex with your favourite star will be all yours. Not to mention the experience of sex with people you'd possibly not want to touch with a disinfected barge pole (Adolf Hitler, Jimmy Saville and Jeremy Clarkson to name but a few) but feel free to skip over those.

"Purchase, lie back, read and let me hit your e-spot with the celebrity lover of your choice."

And if you are still not sold on the idea then how about this… Rather than paying for it, if you download my book within the next 5 days you can do so for absolutely nothing! That’s right; I am offering you sex with the stars for absolutely free! Zero pounds and zero pence. Utterly gratis.

You just have to leave a review.

Just a tiny review on Amazon.

And some stars. 5 would be great.

It’ll take 10 minutes of your time and possibly help make me a household name. Like Jif or Mr Muscle.

I mean, come on, guys, this is pretty much all I ever ask for. It’s not like I’m fleecing you for tonnes of cash of anything. 9 times out of 10 times on this blog I throw you a freaking freebie* and I ask for so little in return.

Just look into my big [Dan] brown hound-dog eyes and buy the bloody book will you?

Right. Done. This marketing shit is piss-easy.

Next.



*I don't do frisbees. Ever.

Skivvy

The wife brought it up the other day. Just dropped it into the conversation like a self-cleaning grenade.

"Why don't we get a cleaner?"

A what?

I confess I initially recoiled. Who the hell had she killed? This is what comes of waving a handgun around in the back of the car with the safety catch left off. One speed bump and boom. Death by hair trigger and then you have to spend the rest of the day being nice to Harvey Keitel while he picks some dude's brains out of your furry dice. And no, that is not a euphemism for oral pleasure.

Turns out the wife actually meant get a cleaner. A Mrs Overall. A Mrs Doyle.

A skivvy.

Someone to come and do for us (though that still sounds a bit Pulp Fiction-esque to me).

The wife's argument is thus: she and I both work full time, when we have any free time we are battling a constant malaise of exhaustion that raising kids prevents you from ever giving in to so you keep pushing and pushing yourself with the end result that your effectiveness as a careerist / parent / homeowner shrivels down into a depressing spiral of endlessly diminishing returns.

Now I'm not saying that our home deserves to feature on a Channel 4 documentary fronted by the spectacularly fronted Jasmine Harman (though she's more than welcome to rifle through my Tallboy any time she likes) but, you know, sometimes things get left. For a few weeks. And I put it to you that having water cress growing out of your draining board is not a look that will entice Nigella Lawson around for an evening meal. And that's even before she negotiates the sometimes tacky floor of the bathroom on her way to powder her nose.

We do our best but our best isn't good enough. Our best certainly isn't up to the 1950's ideal that my Nan and mum embodied when I was growing up. But, of course, looking after the home was and is a full time job in itself (especially when you throw young kids and cats into the mix) and they lived in an age where a woman having a career and going out to work full-time was unusual and, outrageously from the modern perspective, a bit of a talking point. Neither of them worked full-time in the career sense. Though in terms of labouring to maintain a spotlessly clean home they never bloody stopped.

So. We - Karen and I - are considering hiring a skivvy.

I feel surprisingly ambivalent about it.

My first reaction was kind of an inverse snobbery borne of my thick overlay of working class ideals and a deep sense of class embarrassment: what the hell would my friends say? What would my mother say? My second reaction was to begrudge the money: are we really going to give away hard earned moolah to someone else so they can come into our home and do the jobs that we would and could do (albeit haphazardly) for free? My third was the English Man defending his castle stance: have some grubby faced dole-ite invading our home, pocketing our loose change and hijacking our wifi when we're not looking?

Was my wife utterly mad?

But as the idea has lain with me and snuggled up softly, gently pushed sugar kisses into my ear and raised its eyebrows suggestively I have started to see the positives.

(a) More free time and energy to do the things we really want to do. (b) A more hygienic, more healthy standard of living that the wife and I, the kids and even the cats would benefit from. (c) Someone who can scrub the bloodstains out of the backseat of the car for a lot less tin than Harvey Keitel asks for.

We shall ask for references naturally and have to think carefully about keeping any kind of monetary temptation out of view. My wife will be at home on the days the cleaner comes round. And my Lego sanctuary... er... "office" will be out of bounds to uninitiated duster-wielding hands.

With those provisos in place, I am slowly coming round to the idea.

So hello, Upper Middle Class.

Who knew that a slightly grubby lifestyle would lead so effortlessly to upwards mobility?

Crossing The Thin White Line

I've written frequent posts about Nigella on this blog. Originally because I quite like the cake-making queen of tease and then later because I was quite happy to acknowledge that she was good for my stats. Even now "Nigella Lawson hot" is one of my biggest referral terms and with her name once more in the headlines I'm receiving more hits than usual.

Are these new visitors seeking edification and information? Or just a nice picture of the curvy brunette spilling o-er her cups? I suspect the latter but that's by the by.

I kind of feel I owe Nigella's current predicament some kind of comment even though I'm sure she would rather I kept my nose out of it (no joke intended) as at the end of the day the accusations of cocaine abuse are nothing at all to do with me.

But of course this hasn't stopped the world and his dog offering a multitude of opinions on what are as yet unproven accusations by her embittered and estranged husband. Do you think he might be biased in his attempts to discredit her?

Part of me thinks that this story is not at all in the public interest. What goes on behind the closed doors of a marriage should stay behind those closed doors. But then I daresay Mr Saatchi would like to have used the same argument when the infamous throttling story hit the headlines. Though of course he did this in a public place not in the privacy of his own home. Or should that be "allegedly as well as"? And to be honest, domestic violence should never remain hidden away in the dark where it can be allowed to grow and spread like a virulent fungus.

But being a public figure, of course, makes almost anything at all that happens to a celeb "in the public interest". For me the idea of "public interest" has long taken on a moral dubiety but we'll leave that aside.

I hope the accusations of Nigella's cocaine use are false. I haven't read them, I must admit, or even watched the news. And yet somehow, via social media and gossip, the gist of the story has spread. I find it hard to believe that a ten year cocaine habit could have gone unnoticed and gone uncommented upon for so long. Mr Saatchi claims he has only just found out. What a truly dreadful husband he must be then. (1) Nigella turns to drugs (I surmise) to make life with him more bearable, (2) he's so dreadful he doesn't even notice and then (3) he increases his dreadfulness by bringing it to the attention of the tabloids and throws the kids into the mix at the same time. What a wonderful husband and father he must be. Even if we could waive aside the sundry acts of domestic violence.

Cocaine is a distasteful drug. It makes arseholes out of all who use it and bigger arseholes out of those who are already arseholes. Nigella has never struck me as being an arsehole. Of course, I could be wrong - I don't know her after all - and chasing the white rabbit could validate the myth of Nigella's constant munchie-runs to the fridge for midnight snacks as perpetuated by her many cookery programmes.

But I'm hoping Mr Saatchi just can't tell his icing sugar from his Esnortiar. Despite being married to Nigella for years he doesn't strike me as the kind of man who spends much time in the kitchen but would certainly have seen talcum powder being smudged across a glass topped coffee table from time to time. Any white powder at all is going to produce a big knee-jerk reaction from him.

Personally, next time I would recommend he try Tetramethylenedisulfotetramine.

After all, if Nigella has a rat in her kitchen, what's she gonna do?

Give Daddy Some Sugar

To be honest I probably haven't pimped myself as much as I should have but some of you will no doubt have seen that I have a new publication out on Kindle.

Please Sir, Kindly Take Receipt Of This $9 Million Dollars is the first in a (so far) 3 part series of my, ahem, selected writings that I am self publishing (and, quite possibly, self reading). For the startling cheap price of £1 you can lodge in your electronic bosom such literary gems as The Homeopaths Guide To Drinking, iClaudius, Better Than Marje Proops and, of course, the now legendary Sex With Nigella. Plus a whole glittering literati of other topics. This is quite simply the equivalent of a literary vajazzle.

You know you want one.

And you won't have to spend the next few days swilling sequins out of your toilet bowl.

For those of you who have already been kind / senile enough to purchase a copy please, please, please can I ask that you leave a review on Amazon. A product without any stars or endorsements just looks sad, orphaned and unwanted. And therefore undesirable. Please sex up my book with your kind hyperbole. Even if you have to lie in order to do it. I'm not proud.

For those of you considering a cheap humour book this year (or just considering a charitable donation) please give mine a go and, as above, please consider leaving a ringing endorsement to encourage others to do the same.

I must also here give thanks to the creative genius that is David Metcalfe-Carr for designing and producing the front cover.

The second book in the series, Anger Management Glasses, should be published some time in the New Year.

This has been a pubic disservice announcement.

You know, I think my spellchecker is broken...

How To Cynically Drive Traffic To Your Blog (And Don’t Forget To Mention The F Word)

So after stats revealed on Monday that my most popular post ever was Sex With Nigella a few of you (yes, you; not me) suggested I write a series of Sex With... blog posts. One of you (not naming names here) even suggested that I might like to write a series of blog post about Sex With... you lot.

Like I don’t push the comedy envelope out far enough as it is.

However, as cool and as ground breaking (cherry breaking for some of you) as this idea was I decided it would cost me loyal readers. I mean, once I’ve marked you all out of ten it’s only going to cause jealousy and chagrin.

(Yes, Rol, you scored a ten).

So now I’m thinking I ought to just play it safe. Stick to celebs and world leaders. ‘Cos let’s face it they’re all fair game and it would be quite believable that most of them at some time or other may have actually had sex with me.

In terms of politicians I have to say (and I never thought I’d ever say this) I now regret that George W Bush is no longer in power because it forever denies me the opportunity to write a post entitled Sex With Bush. Though thinking about it, it does create an opening to write a piece entitled Sex Without Bush. This would surely drive protagonists of the great depilatory debate my way and boost my stats no end.

As it is (and this is where the great blog traffic boost begins) I could at least produce blog posts with titles along the lines of Sex With Obama, Sex With Hilary Clinton, I Did Not Have Sex With Bill Clinton, Sex With Donald Rumsfeld (And His Weapon Of Mass Eruption) and not to leave out the British and European contingent: Double Teamed By David Cameron & Nick Clegg and Sex With Eric Pickles (Slap The Fat And Ride The Waves). I think I’d give Sex With Berlusconi a miss – he’d only take it as a compliment. And possibly encouragement.

Celeb wise I could easily direct my thoughts to Sex With Dr Alice Roberts (oh boy, my stats are going to go through the roof), Sex With Keeley Hawes and Sex With Alex Kingston. Just to confuse my audience I might throw in the odd curve ball too – Sex With Gene Hunt or even Sex With Jeremy Paxman.

Weirdly, Hollywood-wise nothing grabs me. The thought of Sex With Cameron Diaz or Sex With Nicole Kidman does not appeal though I might be persuaded by Sex With Natalie Portman. I daresay many of you ladies would like to see Sex With George Clooney or Sex With Daniel Craig feature rather heavily on this blog but I have to say I can only stretch my imagination so far (though girth-wise it is pretty damned impressive).

Cool. Job done. If I’m not in the blogging top twenty by the end of the week I am going to come round and screw every single one of you personally and very professionally.

Media whore?

Yup, that’s me.

How Much Do You Love Me?

See, I would have said most of you would gladly take a passing bullet for me. The rest of you, I’m sure, would hiss appropriately at the gun man and then mourn my passing forevermore. Undying, slightly unrequited love.

But no.

It seems I’ve been fooling myself. The stats are out and (unless you are a politician) you can’t lie with the stats.

945,249th.

I’ll say that again: 945,249th.

According to domaintrakker.com that is where my blog ranks in the list of most visited web sites on the internet. I’m at the fag end of the ‘top’ 1,000,000. Not even the top 100,000. Thanks a bunch. (And thanks for the correction, Nota Bene.)

And to make it worse (worse as in more demeaning) the site estimates that I earn about $3.47 daily. In pounds that works out as about £2.15. I’m hardly going to get onto the next series of The Apprentice with that now, am I?

Most telling of all though is the top incoming anchor link to my blog (yeah, like I even know what that shit means). Sex With Nigella.

Yeah. That’s right. You might not love me but you love the thought of sex with Nigella. You love it so much you keep coming back to my blog just to get yourself off on it. I’m just a marital aid. Not even that. Nigella is the marital aid; I’m just the... what? The pimp? The guy who cleans the sheets afterwards? It just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Well, fine. Have it your way. I know my place. Just don’t expect me to come round to your place anytime soon and leave a nice cheerful comment, OK?

945,249th.

Harrumph.

Sex With Nigella

I was thinking about it the other night and I’m not sure it would work.

It’s not that I don’t find the amazingly bosomy brunette chatelaine attractive. I do. She cooks (both literally and euphemistically). She’s hot. She’s brunette. She’s bosomy. And she can fellate a dessert spoon before the 9 o’clock watershed and it’s fine by absolutely everyone (except possibly the sexually uptight nerds in the Environmental Health sector).

And according to all of her cookery shows she seems to indulge in a lot of post / pre coital midnight snacking. At least that’s my interpretation of all her night time runs to the fridge to chow down on half a cow’s leg soaked in homemade plum sauce. Now that could be well useful. “While you’re there, love, you couldn’t bring me up a couple of cans, could you? No, not the cheap Tesco blue-line ones, the posh ones you had flown in from Bavaria...”

Night time appetites well sorted as we say in me ghetto, innit, homie?

But it’s the talking that puts me off. The language. The flowery hyperbole that seems to ooze from her mouth like salival secretions down the trembling shaft of a Cadbury’s Flake. I mean, just listening to her show is like trying to divine the meaning of a bit of Longfellow or even a bit of Wordsworth. It’s off putting. My problem with it is that it is plainly meant to be sensuous but just comes over as too literary.

And that ain’t sexy, not for any ho, you get me?

I mean, just imagine. You’re getting down and dirty with Nigella. She’s beating out the rhythm she’d like you to follow with a bloody great wooden spoon on your chest and just as you’re getting into the groove (cheers Madonna) she opens those luscious red lips and says:

“Oh yah, envelope my Rubens-esque proportions with your exquisite squidginess...!”

“Eh? What did you say?”

“The slightly caramel coloured patina of your skin – especially around the brisket area – is crying out for my homemade Italianate mulberry sauce...”

“Do what? Do you mean you’re nearly there...? Shall I speed up?”

“Oh deflower me like a ripe rosehip, crush my basil leaves over the hot pizza of your desire and layer the inner sanctum of my queen of puddings with an indulgent oozing of tangibly salty mozzarella...!”

“Erm... you’ve lost me there, love. Look, I’m not really in the mood now. You couldn’t pop downstairs and make me a cheese and pickle sandwich, could you?”

“Oh you foul mouthed ruffian! I love it when you talk dirty!”

*sigh*

See, all that high-falutin Oxford poetry-speak might be good for her but it would be absolutely crap for me.

Not unless I could gag her.

Oo-er. *thinks it over*

Now that could bloody well work...!

*face assumes pervy Rik Mayall-like expression*

Manners Maketh

None of you will be aware of this because I haven’t seen fit to tell you (don’t be offended, we all have our little secrets) but I started a British Sign Language course four weeks ago. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and, to cut a long story short, I’m doing it now because (by a weird confluence of events) my current novel features a Deaf character and my employers thought it would be jolly useful to have a member of staff trained in sign language and are thus paying for me to do it.

None of this is important (well, it is and I may blog about it all separately later). What is important is that the class runs from 7 – 9pm on a Tuesday. I simply don’t have time to eat a meal before the class so I’m usually famished when I come out.

And this is why, on the long walk home, I find myself frequenting the type of fast food establishment that normally in the cold light of day I wouldn’t touch with an 8ft baguette.

We’re talking greasy joes, truck driver cafes and kebaberies whose window lit meat racks seem to house the carcasses of household pets and the odd horse nicked from a Home County show ground.

I am ill at ease in these places. I’m used to fine wining and dining. Or at least a free plastic toy with my meal.

Take last Tuesday. It was a cold night and I felt like a short sharp unhealthy hit of cholesterol. So I nipped into one of Leamington’s more infamous chip-joints. The Sakarya (pronounced by the hoodies as Zachariah).

I ordered something suitable “street” and “down with the kids”. Cheesy chips.

Yes, I know. Not exactly overflowing with Nigella-esque nutrition or red blooded Gordon Ramsay protein. But, you know, it’s fuel for the fire. A naughty treat.

I order and I wait. The Turkish looking guy behind the counter is monosyllabic and seems to singularize absolutely everything. Cheesy chips becomes cheesy chip. This amuses me greatly but I don’t let this show on my face as his Turkish colleague, shaving great strips of flesh off the kebab spit, is giving me the evil eye. Actually, I say Turkish looking merely because of the kebab. In actual fact I could have easily said Greek looking, Portuguese looking or Eastern bloc looking. The typical unthinking Englishman’s casual racism. I haven’t a clue where they were from.

Could have been Peckham for all I know.

The guy who got served before me has his burger carton open on the counter in front of him and is troughing down his food with one hand and waving the other around as he demands more mayonnaise. Demands, mind, not asks. He makes to hold the mayonnaise bottle himself but the burly Turk / Greek / Yorkshire man behind the counter refuses to relinquish it. He squeezes the mayonnaise out until the chomping pig tells him to stop. “That’s enough, mate.” And off he trots into the cold night air.

When it’s my turn to get served I get offered all the usual relishes – salt, vinegar, ketchup and the ubiquitous mayonnaise. I answer to each “yes, please” or “no, thanks” as I see fit. Stavros hands my food over. I take it and offer one last thank you to the grease filled air.

Both Mr Turk and henchman Turk give me long evil stares.

I leave the building and continue walking home wondering what the hell I’ve done to offend them.

And then it hits me. I was polite. I was quite possibly too polite. In an industry where these guys must see the worst scum of the earth pass through their doors at all hours of the night in various states of advanced inebriation, to have someone – out of the blue and with no apparent reason – say please and thank you must seem like the biggest piss-take the world has ever seen.

They thought I was being sarcastic. They thought I was being patronizing. They thought I was taking the Michael.

Good grief. Is this what the world is coming too?

Well it was either that or the fact I told them that their fathers like to do goats up the arse in sign language... but I doubt it.

Here’s That Recipe For Hot Buns That I Was Telling You About...

It’s been a while since I’ve been tagged (police cut-backs, etc) but suddenly out of the blue, the US of A’s most superlative blogger, EmmaK, selected me from out of the many adoring dogs palpitating at her feet and hit me with a very large lipstick coated meme. Not content with co-writing the book that is currently taking Australia by storm – Cocktails At Naptime – Emma challenged me to list the top ten ingredients that would go together to comprise my ultimate Mrs Right. Or even my Mr Right if I ever fell out of love with breasts and instead found my libido ignited by a well-oiled six-pack and a Graham Norton boxed set.

Obviously, being married, I need to tread very carefully here. I’ve already forewarned my wife of the nature of this meme and she laughed that laugh that women laugh so well: outwardly lighthearted but with a hard nugget of explosive steel at the centre and ‘joked’: “so this is where you come home tonight and ask for a divorce when you’ve listed your top ten ingredients and realized that I don’t possess any of them... ha ha ha!” Which I heard as “if there is one ingredient on that list that isn’t already within my genetic make-up then you’ll be sleeping in the shed until Christmas.”

So without further ado (about nothing) here is my top ten ingredients that would, if Dr Frankenstein were alive today (or indeed, ever alive), enable him to create my dream femme fatale. Keeley Hawes, Alice Roberts, Katie McGrath, Lucy Griffiths, Nigella Lawson and Uma Thurman please take note: my wife already has all of these in spades. (Happy now, dear?)

1) Must find astigmatism sexy. I’ve worn glasses since I was 5 and will do so until the day I die (unless of course my death is caused by me not wearing them). Oh I’ve dallied with the idea of contact lenses but something in me is highly resistant to the idea. I’m a spectacle wearer and proud of it. It’s part of my identity. If the thought of gently caressing my spectacles with your tongue is a turn off then you and me is just not meant to be together, baby, innit?

2) Must be brunette. I know, I know, there are millions of gorgeous blondes and red heads out there and every now and then one of these breeds will turn my head and indeed I have been out with blondes and gingers in my time but it is the fabulous brunette who truly floats my boat. The darker the brunetteness the better. Eye colour is unimportant. Breast size is unimportant. Dress size is unimportant. It’s all in the hair. Must be black or dark brown and of a length that I can run my hand through. As a teen I dreamed of Goth / Emo girls but never did manage to go out with one (I simply wasn’t suicidal enough)... maybe I am just working through a vestige of that time?

3) Must not only give me space and time to write but also must make time to read what I have written and critique it sensitively. I admit this is a big ask and is liable to be the only serious component on this list. Writing has been my bag since I was 7 or 8. I have to write. I have to. My wife will back me up on this, I am sure, but I become a foul tempered swine if I am unable to write for any length of time.

4) Chocolate. I love chocolate. This love must be reciprocated in my perfect partner. But not too much. Not to the point where they have the last slice of chocolate cake. That must default to me. I know they say that love knows no selfishness but poppycock to that. This is chocolate we’re talking about.

5) Sex. Let’s not beat about the bush here (oo-er), physical compatibility is a must. Appetites must be matched. To have it otherwise leads to stress and trouble and heartbreak and a visit to Miss Sasa’s massage parlour and then a painful stagger to the STD clinic where your giggle-stick is scoured with a red hot poker. It just ain’t worth it. Make the right choice and you get to eat a McLove burger every night – mess it up and it’s a clap pizza to go. Don’t get me wrong, personality and spiritual compatibility are just as important but don’t underestimate or downgrade the important of the horizontal folk dance out of mere embarrassment or an erroneous sense of decency. We all need the right person to be indecent with.

6) Healthy gene pool. Yes, this one took me by surprise too. I’m not for one minute trying to give off the vibe that I am a neo-Nazi looking to breed the next master race but when it came time to settle down and I was thinking about having kids I cannot deny that people with leprosy, congenital disorders and genetic diseases suddenly became less attractive. I found myself seeking a field with good healthy soil in which I could drive my plough. Strong legs and child bearing hips also had a bearing but I can’t work them into the field analogy.

7) A good sense of humour. Or for those of you that use dating agencies: GSOH. Almost a cliché but it is the most common element that we all look for in a prospective partner (or even in an existing partner). In fact, I’m amazed that dour, miserable, humourless people are ever able to breed. I don’t mean that the perfect she should be able to deliver a 40 minute Frankie Boyle-esque routine full of rapier-like wit and gut puncturing satire but to be able to laugh uproariously at the same jokes is an absolute must. Or just to be able to recognize when I have told a joke and laugh at it regardless of how unfunny it is would be a help. Us men find even nervous giggles attractive.

8) The ability to not talk during films or TV programmes that I happen to be concentrating on. This is a real bugbear. If I’m watching something or listening to something I hate being interrupted or otherwise disturbed. The house is burning down? Throw a wet tea-towel onto it. The kids are falling out of the bedroom window? Throw a cushion onto the patio. These are not valid reasons to interrupt my viewing of Mock The Week.

9) Christ. 10? Why does it have to be 10? Why can’t it be 8, eh, Emma? I’m struggling here. OK. What other fine traits does my wife possess? Oh yes. Must appreciate / grant permission to whatever childish hobby I like to indulge. All males have a childish, slightly geeky hobby though we ourselves would never describe it as childish. Childish is a word used by the outside world, in particular the women who are not our partners. Be it comics, cigarette cards or, in my case, Lego, Mrs Right should be supportive and become appropriately interested in this hobby in order to maintain the relationship and ensure its continued stability. This interest may be faked. We men don’t really care as long as you leave us alone to play with our toys and don’t laugh in our faces about it.

10) Must not like Eamonn Holmes, Russell Brand, Cliff Richard, Sting, Timmy Mallet, the Conservative party, meatloaf, Meatloaf, rhubarb, runny fried eggs, gristly meat, country music, soap operas, documentaries about prolapsed orifices, The National Lottery Live, The X Factor et al, televised sport, football (especially the World Cup), Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Leonardo Di Craprio and anybody that dares to denigrate me.

I wasn’t going to tag anybody but then I thought sod being nice for a game of soldiers, I’ve put some considerable work into this why should you lot get off scot free? Hence, I hereby tag: Note From Lapland, Readily A Parent and Old Cheeser (let’s see if I can get you blogging again, OC)!

P.S. My wife has this evening pointed out that I have not adequately conveyed her utter saintliness and wishes me to make clear that she (mostly without complaint) puts up daily with my OCD about tidiness and health & safety. I wish to add at this juncture that any woman who finds herself affiliated to me can expect to live in a safe environment where she will never come to any harm and where everything will be tidied away for her. Sounds like a bloody good deal to me. Come and get me, girls!

400

What a momentous day this is. Ripe with glory and grandeur!

Forget Barrack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Forget the news that this is the first Official day of the UK recession.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my 400th blog post.

Yes. That’s right. 400!

Since this blog’s inception in late 2006 I have continuously and without mercy produced 400 blog posts of varying length and dubious quality, luxuriously peppered them with photographs slyly half-inched from the World Wide Web, and thrown them to you, the blog reading masses, as if they were high class crumbs from my overflowing banqueting table.

Such food for though has passed before your poor fatigued eyes! Subjects such as Nigella Lawson, politics, television, celebrity culture, music, Keeley Hawes, parenthood, Lego, work and even how to wash up a tea mug have all been righteously laid before you like the tenets of a new religion.

And how you have gorged yourselves, you lucky people!

No, no, please don’t bow or scrape, there really is no need.

But it has not all been bouquets and banners! Oh no! There were some – you know who you are – who thought this blog would never amount to anything. Thought it would die, bawling and howling in its infancy, a shrivelled negatively potentialled hybrid of overweening ambition and undergrasping ability. You thought I’d get bored within the first 6 months. You thought I’d get sidetracked by the flash-bang-wallop of hardcore internet porn and the gaudy lure of online Poker. You thought I’d be discovered by the Head of Writing at the BBC who would snap me up like the last green triangle in a tin of Quality Street and beg me, dry-humping my leg as the tears roll down his face, to co-write the next series of Doctor Who and officiate over the next batch of period dramas primed to emerge from the pen of Andrew Davies.... no, no, Steve, you must give up this blog writing malarkey immediately, Hollywood beckons for one such as you, don’t cast your pearls before swine, your seed onto barren ground (you must leave the internet porn alone)... you must step up to the plate, dear boy, scripts must be written, book deals signed, an e-book autobiography with Flash and interactive content must be penned (keyboarded)...

But I said “nay!” And lo I sayeth “nay!” again.

I am going nowhere. This blog shall not be moved. This blog shall stayeth forever. Yay e’en unto perpetuity and the electronic eternity (server functionality excepted). Have no fear that I shall desert you, dear reader. I shall turn my back on all offers of wealth, stardom, critical acclaim and cheap easy sex with breast heavy celebrities who present property shows on Channel 4. I shall keep the Bloggertropolis standard held aloft and rippling in the breeze and my mind purely on the blogging tasks at hand for now and for ever more.

No need to thank me. This is simply what I do. Be confident and assured. Rest easy, dear reader.

I am going nowhere.

Absolutely. Effing. Nowhere.

Whiner Diner

Apologies to my international readers (oh what a thrill to be able to say that) who won’t have seen the relevant programme but I’m greatly enjoying “Big Chef Takes On Little Chef” at the moment.

I don’t usually go overboard on cooking / food TV shows (unless they feature Nigella Lawson’s oscillating bosom as she hand whisks a soufflé) but this particular outing has reeled me in hook, line and sinker.

For those of you that don’t know, celebrity chef of international renown, Heston Blumenthal, has been engaged by the big boss of Little Chef to revitalize the company’s ailing fortunes by souping up (ahem) the old hackneyed menu and injecting a bit of dynamism into their geriatric “business model”.

Hmm.

Apparently, in its heyday, Little Chef was a motorway restaurant of world class reputation.

??!

Yes. I was surprised by this revelation too as, even in my childhood, Little Chef was only ever viewed as a toilet stop of the very last resort on long motorway journeys rather than as a place in which the human body could be effectively nourished – and, to be honest, you had to be faced with some pretty scummy hedgerows and embankments to prefer the dubious environs of the Little Chef latrine to spraying the contents of your bladder over the passing wildlife.

But I digress. The Little Chef boss – a man both improbably vacant and impossibly conniving whose name I have deliberately forgotten (let’s just call him David Brent) – has drafted in Heston to “blue sky think” his company back onto the fast track to fame, fortune and Michelin starred glory. Mr Brent – let’s not think of him as a company director, more of a chilled food entertainer – wants pizzazz; he wants culinary extravaganza, he wants the wild, the wacky and the wonderful. He wants some of the “out there” experimentation that has put Heston’s own restaurant – The Fat Duck – onto the global map. And he wants it all for under £10 a head in a greasy motorway restaurant who’s kitchen equipment doesn’t extend beyond a griddle and a microwave and staff who have no idea how to operate a saucepan (“where’s the effing button to turn it on?”).

Mr Brent’s utopian vision of culinary excellence ran into one or two fundamental obstacles right from the start.

1) The “out there” experimentation at The Fat Duck costs punters approximately £250 a head (to quote an unabashed Heston) which is a little out of the price range of the average Little Chef punter...

2) Heston did what Mr Brent should have done, i.e. some real actual market research which quickly confirmed what was bleeding obvious to everybody from day one: Little Chef customers don’t want to be chowing down on snail porridge or beef hotpot with oysters floating around in it. They want the legendary Olympic Breakfast. They want ice cream that’s cheap and cheerful. They want fish fingers and chips that look like fish fingers and chips. And they want baked beans with everything.

Heston, to his credit, realized immediately that his normal fare would never be acceptable in the kind of establishment that Little Chef epitomizes and reined in his humungously large creative flare to come up with stuff that was far more suitable and appropriate, i.e. ideas that stood a chance of actually being implemented by the socially lobotomized staff on the front line.

Good ingredients, fresh and nutritious, cooked well and served fast. Shazam!

The basics of any successful restaurant business surely?

Mr Brent didn’t seem to get it though. He was disappointed with Heston’s ideas. In fact he rather insultingly told him that “any celebrity chef could have come up with such a menu”. Cheeky get.

I won’t go on. Suffice to say that it is surprisingly addictive viewing: Heston trying to maintain his integrity in the face of political manoeuvring behind closed doors (and frequently off-camera) and soldiering on in the slow-dawning knowledge that the Little Chef upper echelons are merely using him as a marketing ploy without any real commitment to re-branding their product. And Mr Brent’s constant media speak and blue sky malapropisms.

The show highlights where the problem lies with most ailing businesses these days. Forget the Credit Crunch, the fault lies in the fact that they are invariably run by sad little egotists who are accountable to nobody but their own shareholders and who are obstinately out of touch with what their customers really want.

It’s no wonder that so many of them are going to the dogs.

And I have to say, the hedgerows of the M40 are looking better by the minute...

Nigella Revisited

I received something of a shock phone call yesterday afternoon. It seems a hack from the London Standard had found my Nigella Espresso post and wanted me to comment on a recent article in the newspaper that voiced the opinion that Nigella has become so verbose in her descriptions of recipes that her cook books were actually alienating the small percentage of the UK population who have a below average reading ability.

I was glad to oblige and managed to rustle up something quick during the afternoon, Steve Express style. I don’t know yet if it’s going to be used (I’ll keep you posted on that, naturally) but thought I’d post it here for your perusal.

First: a few excerpts from the original article:

“Nigella's recipes are a bit of a mouthful, say literacy experts: ‘Too many adjectives make her instructions difficult to follow’”

“A survey has found that the chef’s verbose style makes it harder for adults with poor literacy skills to follow the instructions.”

“According to the study, [Nigella] uses long sentences, too many adjectives, extra commentary and personal observations.”

“The survey, carried out by the Government's Get On campaign, looked at a variety of recipes from Smith, Lawson, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay.“

“It found that Slater was the easiest chef to follow, with all his recipes reaching the entry level three standard, or that expected of an 11-year-old.”

“Ramsay said: 'I'd hate to think there might be people who aren't giving cooking and new recipes a go because they are worried about the reading, writing or maths side of things. Brushing up on their literacy could make them a better chef, as well as improving their life.'”
And my pro-Nigella response:

Re: "Nigella's recipes are a bit of a mouthful, say literacy experts"

It's rather amusing to read that a survey has flagged up Nigella Lawson as being too literate for a small percentage of the UK working population and that "too many adjectives" apparently make her recipes difficult to follow.

Too many adjectives? What kind of a criticism is that? Isn't that like saying that Mozart's “The Magic Flute” contains too many notes? Will the removal of all adjectives suddenly render Nigella's cookery books readable by absolutely everybody regardless of their literary skills?

I think not. Poor literacy is as much to do with not understanding syntax, grammar, nouns, participles and verbs as teasing out the meaning of a hundred assorted adjectives though, I'll admit, if you find reading difficult, a wall of purple prose is hardly going to fill you with much enthusiasm.

The real criticism that can be levelled against Nigella then is one of style and I guess you either appreciate her yummy-mummy gastro-gushing or you don't. If you don't then you can always give Nigel Slater a go as, according to the same survey, he is infinitely easier to understand. I'm inferring it's because he uses less adjectives and his cook books are therefore more plainly and simply written. Dull and boring by any other name. Nigella's fans like her because she is so fulsome in her descriptions, because she does go OTT about the colour of cantaloupes and the odour of aubergines. She's sensuous, lush and evocative (which is obviously Nigella's schtick) and her verbal descriptiveness, whilst a sort of taste sensation in itself, actually adds an extra layer to our appreciation of her recipes. Her words enrich our tastebuds as much as the ingredients she uses. But most of all she's entertaining. This is rather an important quality in a TV chef. And it's practically impossible to be entertaining without flinging the odd adjective about...

So why should a small percentage of the population be denied access to this entertainment just because their literary levels fall below that of the national average? Surely the main problem is that 16 per cent of the adult working population have been failed by the Education system? More effort needs to be put into improving these people's literacy levels beyond that of an 11 year old and not in asking our TV personalities and celebrities to dumb down. For Heaven's sake there's enough dumbing down on our TV's as it is. We need to start smarting people up! Isn't it preferable to have our famous TV chefs - normally shrivelling the airwaves with language that would embarrass an East End porn star - actually pushing us to stretch our vocabularies as well as our culinary experiences?

As F word aficionado Gordon Ramsay himself says of people with reading difficulties: "Brushing up on their literacy could make them a better chef, as well as improving their life."

In the ineffable greyness of much of modern life, a bit of purple prose is surely the recipe for success?

Nigella Espresso

Baptitious kitchen chatelaine, Nigella Lawson, kicked off her new “good food fast” cookery TV series last night – “Nigella Express” and not, as I’d hoped, “Nigella Espresso”. Hmm. It seems that my idea for a raunchy bedroom-based dessert focused TV pilot has been turned down flat by the bosses of Channel 4... I can’t understand why. I mean if they’re happy to invest money in Gillian McKeith intimately examining other people’s poo why not fling a few tenners my way to buy a spatula and an industrial barrel of whipped cream?

Anyway, gripes aside, it was good to see the dusky voiced one back on the telly and doing her damnedest to insist that her plainly glamorous life is anything but and is, in fact, as humdrum as that of the rest of us. Hmm. I don’t think so Nigella. My entire family could live in your walk-in pantry and never have to go to the supermarket again. Ever.

But I think that’s part of Nigella’s appeal. The slightly embarrassed and guilty glamour-puss seductress coupled with the “oh I’m so dowdy really” yummy-mummy modesty. That and the cow-eyed looks over the garlic grater and the coquettish lip moistening as she manhandles the biggest sweet potato I’ve ever seen in my life. No wonder Nigella has one of the biggest male fan bases of all the TV chefs.

Apparently she’s horrified by accusations that she deliberately sexes up her cooking performances but I’m sure she’s also clever enough to not mess with a schtick that plainly works. Besides which the sensual element definitely adds an essential layer to the recipes and is an integral part of the Nigella ethos – whether it’s there deliberately or not. Nigella is all about pleasure: the pleasure of food and the pleasure of life. And it would be a sad individual indeed who objected to that.

The main thing though (as has been pointed out by a reader of this blog, Lucy) Nigella is smokin’ hot. At 47 she’s looking damn good. If that’s what big puddings do for you then I’ll take double helpings please.

Talking of which, last night saw Nigella tenderizing a couple of pork chops with a rolling pin. The way she moved was, ahem, mesmerizing to say the least.

Anthony Worrall Thompson – though he could easily emulate the upper body motion – would not have had quite the same effect...

Geeks?

Yesterday, terminal work boredom was relieved somewhat by a lovely email from my gorgeous wifey, Karen. Knowing I have a slight penchant for breakfast TV cleavage queen, Lorraine Kelly, Karen had supplied a link to a feature on MSN Entertainment about “Geek Chic”.

The feature, although not particularly in-depth, called us all to celebrate the oddballs and misfits of the celebrity world – the stars that we are “afraid to admit [we] fancy”. On the face of it this seems a great idea. Anything that bounces people out of the size zero hero-worship that taints modern society has got to be a good thing, right?

And yes, having scanned through the list of misfit celebrities there are plenty that can be termed geeks and misfits: David Gest, Louis Theroux, Jade Goody... I could go on.

But there are plenty on the list that I think are not geeks or misfits at all. They just don’t adhere to the stick-thin ethos of the media and fashion world. Lorraine Kelly, Fern Britton, Kirstie Allsopp – all highly attractive women (in my opinion) and eminently fanciable. Hubba hubba, etc.

So why does bucking the size zero trend automatically label you a geek? Or even a misfit? Why should I be ashamed to say that I think Lorraine Kelly or Kirstie Allsopp are attractive women? There are countless men (and women) out there who’d be glad to tickle Lorraine Kelly’s fancy on the GMTV sofa or give Kirstie Allsopp a quick look at their basement extension in the privacy of their own home... and they’d be damn proud to brag about it too.

And then it got me thinking about the rest of the list and at what point my opinion diverges from that of the author. Are David Gest, Louis Theroux and Jade Goody geeks just because I don’t fancy them? Or because the person who wrote the feature doesn’t? I mean I don’t fancy Catherine Zeta Jones or Keira Knightley either but does that make them geeks too?

If someone is attractive then they are attractive. End of story. There’s no shame in admitting this. And everybody is attractive to somebody. So who has the right to label somebody else a misfit?

If I get my kicks ogling Supernanny, Jo Frost or moist muffin maker, Nigella Lawson, shaking the bejasus out of a bawling brat or a homemade cocktail, so what? I like what I like. And that doesn't make anybody a misfit or even a non-misfit.

Wow. I actually started this entry with the intention of waxing lyrical about the impressiveness of Kirstie Allsopp’s commodious bosom and her rapier-like high heels but seem to have ascended instead into the higher realm of social comment...

Geez. Does this make me a geek?

Take The Back Rhodes

We’ve been watching a lot of cookery programmes at the moment as we’ve noticed that the boy is fascinated by them. Karen and I both love cooking ourselves so it’s no hardship to immerse ourselves in a spot of Nigella or Gordon every now and then.

One particular show that we’ve been watching has been UKTV Food’s "Rhodes Across India" which features celebrity chef, Gary Rhodes, hobnobbing around India sampling the wares of various street vendors and top Indian chefs.

The food, I admit, looks amazing but Karen and I are constantly irritated by Gary Rhodes’ arrogant and domineering attitude. He might dress it up under a jovial, easy going, I’m-your-best-mate-I-am manner but his condescension towards everyone he meets is plain.

What annoys me most is that he constantly meddles with the recipes that he’s been privy to. It’s like he can’t resist improving them or applying the smarmy Gary Rhodes stamp to them. On one episode we watched recently you could see the Indian chef visibly gritting his teeth in the background as Gary Rhodes totally trashed the simplicity of the original dish and pointlessly westernized it.

The point is: I’m watching this programme to see dishes and food prepared the Indian way. I want to see how the actual street vendors do it – how they prepare recipes that have been passed down to them through countless generations - and I object strongly to every single ingredient and measurement having to be passed through the crass dictatorial filter that is Mr Rhodes!

I don’t want to see Gary Rhodes’ take on Indian food. I just want to see the Indian food as it is!

Whether he realizes it or not, Gary’s attitude brands him a thief rather than a respectful explorer. And that leaves a very bad taste in my mouth.

The British Raj, it seems, is alive and cooking...

X Rated

Being a rainy Monday morning and having submitted to the burden of total and utter boredom, I have been lately musing on the way modern movies are certificated.

When I was a kid it was all very austere and straight forward. “12”, “15” and “18” told you all you needed to know and all the really good films were inevitably rated “X”. Hmm. You know, I never saw enough X rated movies as a kid. I feel heartily deprived.

Nowadays though it’s not enough to simply slap an age label onto a film. No. As a tiresome bonus we also get a load of PC-hogswhallop, soft-soap terminology thrown into the mix for free.

Stuff like:

• “May contain mild violence.”


• “Moderate language.”


• “Occasional sexual references.”

Der? What is moderate language anyway? Ecclesiastical Latin?

Anyway, it made me think how infinitely fuller and more rich our lives would be if such gradings were also applied to television programmes.

• Nigella Bites would be rated as “extreme vegetable peril of a sexual nature”.


• How To Look Good Naked would be “may contain immoderate baps and strong baptitular references.”


• Celebrity Big Brother would be “may contain nuts”


• The Apprentice would simply be “contains twats.”


• Deal Or No Deal would be “gratuitous boredom and beard.”

Hmm...

I’m sure you could think up loads more. But only if you’re bored.