"Ang Is A Sket"

This particularly informative piece of graffiti appeared on the road outside my house late last week. Applied with white aerosol paint the letters are about a foot high and each word has been rendered with a wobbly capital.

I have, I admit, been tempted to take a photo of it to publish it here for your delectation but, much as I love you all, being run over by a passing BMW or a souped-up moped doesn’t strike me as a suitable pay-off for my photographic skills so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

I had to Google the word "sket". I’m afraid I’ve long lost touch with street slang and youth speak but there are some bizarre resources available online which can bring one up to speed in no time at all (the Urban Dictionary being invaluable). Sket, for your information, means a loose woman of elastic morals. Or thereabouts. You get the picture I’m sure.

So basically some love-struck teen has discovered that his gal has been spooning some other chap behind his back and it’s soured his brandy somewhat to the point where he feels he must besmirch her good name in the nature of a painterly public broadcast announcement to warn all us other chappies to steer well clear of her unless we’re not averse to taking sloppy seconds.

How sweet.

I can’t help feeling sorry for Ang for all that she may be no angel. I can’t help but think of her every morning as the wife, kids and I pile into our little red Peugeot and inevitably drive over her name as we set off for our various destinations in town.

She’s been condemned without a fair trial. She may be innocent and of unblemished character but the tarmac now accuses her of base harlotry. She may even be guilty, may lie on her back nightly with a whole regiment of thrusting young bucks... but there may be mitigating circumstances. Maybe her "official" boyfriend is something of a sket himself or just plain nasty and she has sought comfort in the arms of someone more worthy and more understanding of her needs.

Whoever she is, I can’t help thinking how upset she must feel to see her name cast so indelibly to the dirt in this way. How awful if she lives in the same street (which presumably she does) and has to pass this graffiti every day with her parents or her siblings. What must they think? The shame must be burning her up inside.

I hoped, when I first saw the lettering, that a good rain shower or two might wash it all away. But no, Mr Paragon Of Virtue Himself saw fit to spray his snide little missive in permanent paint. Nearly a week later it’s still there, as bright and brazen as when it was first applied. Hester Prynne must be turning in her fictional grave.

Whoever you are, sir, I put it to you that there are worse things in life than being a sket.

Being petty and immature are two of them.

Birds, Bees And Tee-Hees

The funniest comedians are physically unattractive. Discuss.

We were talking about comedians at work this week and being a shallow lot the discussion quickly moved on from merely which ones we thought were funny to those we thought were attractive. And it quickly became apparent – certainly from the males – that if they found a female comedienne attractive they tended not to find her very funny. But this was OK. This lack of comedy skill was forgiven totally provided there was the redeeming presence of a nice face, or nice tits, or a nice arse. Eye candy made up for all the comedy shortcomings.

And yet those comedians we (the men) deemed to be masters of laughter were all unanimously declared – by male and female alike – to be Hound Headed Troglodytes From Planet Ugly.

Or at the very least Plain Janes and Joe Averages.

Such a judgment seemed rather sweeping.

And it got me to thinking. Is it true across the board?

On the face of it, it seems to be. A quick example: I think Frankie Boyle and David Mitchell are the funniest things on the comedy circuit period. Witty, sharp, intelligent and frequently thought provoking. Everything I could desire in a comedian. But attractive? To anybody?

Surely not (though some of you may prove me wrong). Frankie Boyle by his own admission looks like one of The Proclaimers (which isn’t a good look even for a corpse) and David Mitchell is, well, er, very funny.

As for comediennes I find attractive, Lucy Porter would be top of my list. Petite, brunette, curvy, vaguely elfin in an early Kate Bush kind of way... she’s hot hot hot. I like watching her.

But she doesn’t make me laugh. Much. She raises the occasional smile and something else but that’s about all.

Jo Brand, however, I think is much funnier and well, there you go. Argument proved.

Or is it?

I think the possible explanation for this rather sexist dissection of who is good and who is not good at comedy is centered around gender politics in a different way. Being heterosexual I don’t, by and large, find other blokes attractive. Sorry, I just don’t. Instead I seek out other admirable traits in men. Intelligence, wit, a certain coolness, etc. As for women, well, I know what I like and I gravitate towards it.

But women’s humour is just different from men’s. Stand-up comedy isn’t as broad as people think. It’s the old French & Saunders thing. Women (mostly) found them very funny while us men (mostly) just didn’t get the joke. Because it was from a strong female perspective. It just wasn’t meant or pitched for us.

Is the converse true though? Do women not get bloke jokes?

Plainly they do. So are male comedians pitching their gags to a more universal audience while female comediennes pitch theirs to a stronger female demographic?

I’m confused. Maybe there is no clearly defined right or wrong answer.

It was interesting to note, however, that some of my female colleagues found Frankie Boyle and co. not only “not funny” but also not very attractive as well. They lost out on both counts.

How funny.

I guess there’s no accounting for taste.

But as long as everybody is happy and getting their laughter injections somewhere, does any of it really matter?

Not Getting Any

A report on BBC News24 had me choking on my freshly dunked bourbon biscuit this morning. It seems that scientists in Newcastle have successfully bio-engineered their own sperm.

And by their own sperm I don’t mean, like, you know, their own sperm – cos, let’s face it, every bloke I know (with the possible exception of Michael Jackson) bio-engineers their own sperm on a regular day to day basis. It kind of comes naturally. Sorry. No pun intended.

No, these guys have bio-mechanically engineered a whole bunch (gaggle? shoal? flock?) of spermatazoa in a laboratory – possibly in a petri dish, possibly in a test-tube, certainly not in a tissue – from human stem cells.

Now, I know I’m being glib and flippant in my approach to this and I know that the impetus for this research is to help men with low sperm counts bestow the bounteous joy of children upon their female partners but my first thought was: are these scientists utterly mad? They are making men’s role in the procreation of the species totally totally redundant.

Yeah. I know. Some females among you will (quite rightly perhaps) say that we men have been a negligible ingredient in this endeavour for years. Let’s face it a dirty mag, a willing donor and a turkey baster is all a woman really needs to get a bun in her oven.

But where’s the fun in that – for anybody?

You see, my fear is that any kind of scientific research – no matter the honourable motivations that lie behind it – can ultimately be abused and used to the detriment of our species. And in fact probably will be.

I’m amazed this didn’t occur to the research scientists. I mean they have literally rendered the existence of men (except maybe for plumbers) completely unnecessary. Why would they willingly do this?

My theory is that the scientists involved are highly geeky and have never had and never will have girlfriends. They are being motivated by disenchantment and “rejection anger”. Because they are not getting any they’re going to see to it that the whole concept of any is totally removed from the equation of ongoing human life on this planet.

Now some of you women might shrug and say so what, who cares? But the heterosexual woman among you need to bear one thing in mind. If us straight men aren’t getting any. You’re not getting any either.

It’s time to resurrect the Luddites! It’s time to smash the machinery! Before our own machinery de-evolves into redundant protuberances of skin and tissue matter (like the appendix) through lack of use...

Au Naturale

Whilst looking for some nice pics of Jasmine Harman for my previous post (a very pleasant way to spend ten minutes) I came across this on-line "news" item – forgive the inverted commas but it is the News Of The World Magazine after all.

It seems Jasmine was given the opportunity to have a Photoshop makeover.

She gave a body beautiful wish-list to some computer graphics geek and - hey presto - he airbrushed and pixel-tweaked a picture of Jasmine to her own vision of perfection. The result can be seen above.

What is interesting about this "experiment" (‘cos it’s not just an excuse to publish a picture of a pretty woman in a bikini, no sirree, absolutely not) is that Jasmine didn’t like the results. She didn't like the perfect version of herself at all but preferred herself as she really is.

How refreshing, because I have to say that so do I. And for the same reasons that Jasmine cites. The perfect version looks unreal. Unnatural.

Now maybe this is just because the graphic artist was piss-poor at his job and his eye for (so called) perfection was as canted as most teenagers who only get to see a woman’s naked body when it has a couple of staples running through the navel or when it’s badly pixellated on porntube.

Or maybe some of us more enlightened folk just prefer the real deal?

There is after all something adolescent and immature about what constitutes (in men’s eyes at least) the “perfect” female body. Pneumatic breasts with nipples that forever point upwards no matter where gravity is pulling them. Washboard stomach as taut as a drum-skin. Thighs as smooth as fleshly applied plaster (by a professional obviously).

Women with those attributes only exist in top shelf magazines and the fashion glossies.

Literally. We all know they’ve been as airbrushed as Jasmine’s picture above (just more insidiously).

They don’t actually exist in the real world.

Such injudicious tweaking gives people – men and women – false expectations of themselves and each other. Well, this is hardly news.

But sadly we now live in a world where even the most outlandish expectation can be met if you have enough wonga to pay for it.

Which got me thinking. How many people who have plastic surgery to marry themselves up to some flawed idea of perfection end up secretly hating the result once the surgery and the healing process is over? Or wishing they could revert back to how they were before?

It’s a very expensive mistake to make. I bet Jasmine is pleased she merely went under a virtual knife than a real one.

As am I. I moved away from the airbrushed woman (homo-airbrushus) in my late teens early twenties. A real woman is always far more attractive and far sexier in my opinion – and yes that includes cellulite and boob-droop and a wobbly belly.

I just hope that all the women that sigh over chesty pin-ups like Daniel Craig and George Clooney secretly feel the same way about us men. Because believe you me, none of us are physically perfect either.

The airbrush doesn’t give a damn about gender… it just wants to sell a little more copy.

Trouser Arouser?

I must admit to being a little nonplussed by the new Subway advert that has hit UK television recently.

It features a young man walking down the High Street, minding his own business when, passing by a Subway “restaurant”, something rather bulbous and bulging erupts upwards out of his trousers and drags him closer to the Subway establishment like a magnet attracting a poker.

I confess I had to do a double take.

Turns out this animated trouser monster wasn’t his Geronimo at all but in fact his trouser pocket turned inside out and exposed to the air in its eagerness to drag the trouser wearer into the Subway premises.

See, such is the excellent value of their wares your own pockets will apparently beg, push and cajole you into spending some of your hard earnt moolah on one of their Meatball Marinara Subs.

Yeah right.

Surely the ad producers must have clocked that the poor guy merely looks like he is getting a great stonking erection at the thought of wrapping his tongue around a Subway Chicken & Bacon batch?

Well of course they did. Sex sells after all.

But I can’t think of anything less sexy than a Subway “restaurant”. It just doesn’t appeal. And mixing their corporate image with bulging erections just turns me off even more.

Urgh!

Hold the mayo?

You’re damned right.

I think I’ll just stick with my usual fish supper...

(Sorry...!)

;-)

Fun To Funky

The BBC managed to divide my loyalties last night.

Was it to be Heroes – now already half way through the much improved fourth series? Or was it to be the first episode of the brand new series of Ashes To Ashes?

In the end it was no contest. The twin allure of Keeley Hawes and “Gene Hunt” (possibly the finest fictional cop creation of the last 20 years) managed to knock Hayden Patisserie (or whatever her name is) and Silage into a cocked hat.

The Quattro beats the Petrellis as sure as rock beats scissors.

Apologies for those of you who don’t get this show but your loss enables the rest of us to feel smug. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Yes. My life is complete. The Gene Genie is back not only with a vengeance but also with a cracking soundtrack that featured The Human League, Duran Duran and The Thompson Twins (I used to love The Thompson Twins – it was so nice to hear them again).

Hawes’ “Alex Drake” character has been given something of a makeover – the New Wave makeup has been toned down, the perm has disappeared in favour of a flicky bob and her hot pants are now tighter than Hunt’s shoulder holster. In fact whereas a bullet from Hunt stands only a 99% chance of flooring you the arsenal Keeley is packing in those hot pants is guaranteed to a put a red blooded male on his back without fail 100% of the time and without leaving an unsightly exit wound. A definite plus for those of you who can’t afford dry cleaning bills. She can fire a few rounds in my direction any time.

Last night’s episode tipped us straight into the heart of Soho and endemic police corruption and featured a script that could cut diamonds. In turns both funny and moving it was virtually impossible to keep tabs on all the references that peppered the dialogue. But why bother even trying? Just sit back and enjoy the ride in the knowledge that the cops aren’t going to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt and won’t bang you up for sporting a mullet. Folks, good times are here again.

It’s time to roll those jacket sleeves up, loosen that leather pencil tie and whack some Dire Straits onto the tape deck.

Welcome back to the Eighties.

Home at last!

Jules Theft

This is probably a minority interest post so I apologize in advance but will carry on regardless.

Julia Bradbury.

Not a megastar. Not an A list UK celeb. But kind of always there. Grafting away. And in my opinion delivering some of the Beeb’s higher quality programmes. Lakeland Walks and the more recent Railway Walks spring to mind. If you’re an avid hillwalker – always out and about with your waterproofs and your mountain boots – these programmes are an invaluable source of ideas and inspiration. And if you’re a hillwalker who’s strapped for cash these shows offer the opportunity to enjoy the pastime vicariously from the comfort of your own armchair.

Julia also co-presented the Beeb’s Watchdog, a show that tracks down and grills wrong doers – particularly of the corporate kind – and gives a voice to the little man when he has been wronged.

Alas Julia disappeared from Watchdog a few weeks ago amid reports that a friend of hers in the air industry had been bunging extra air miles onto Julia’s account (either with or without her consent) as a way of doing “an old pal a favour”.

Or so rumour has it.

I don’t know the ins and outs of it and don’t rightly care. Julia immediately withdrew from Watchdog and is staying off the show until she has cleared her name.

Personally I reckon she’s innocent. Anybody who champions Wainwright has got to be a decent honest person in my opinion. Us hillwalkers have got to stick together (unless we’re actually hillwalking in which case a bit of solitude is the unstated prerequisite). She’s also a brunette. A fact sure to win my unswerving loyalty. And she has a great voice. Sort of smoky and chocolaty at the same time. That proves her innocence. No further evidence is needed.

More importantly though she’s a darn sight better looking than her Watchdog co-presenter, Nicky Campbell – a man who has no right to look so damned smug and constantly superior after presenting the God awful Wheel Of Fortune on TV in the previous century.

*Shudders*

But I’m digressing.

My point is this: do we expect our TV presenters to be totally squeaky clean all of the time? Absolutely 100% above board and bangs to rights?

Simple logic dictates that we should but – even though I don’t doubt Julia’s innocence in this case – wouldn’t we all have accepted a few extra air miles from a friend if we had one in the commercial flight industry? Wouldn’t we accept a favour from a friend whatever industry they work in? A discount on a pine dining table? Some hardback books at cost? A few pennies off a burger (hold the mayo)?

I mean a few air miles are hardly on the same par as Angus Deayton’s much publicized coke fuelled liaisons with some of London’s finest scarlet women a decade or so ago. Or Richard Bacon’s scarlet-women-less coke fuelled adventures a year or two before that.

And it’s not like Julia is a politician, wielding power enough to change the lives of every man, woman and child in the country. Does her character need to be as pure as a saint, impervious to all attempts of bribery and corruption?

Like our actual politician’s are that anyway...

It seems to be a lot of fuss over nothing. Or am I just being biased simply because I like Julia? I admit if it was Campbell accepting a “free gratuity” from the Bell’s Whisky company I’d be calling for his head on a pole. But who wouldn’t want to see that period?

Hmm.

So apologies for the nature of this post once again. This post has no point other than to register my demand with the BBC that Julia Bradbury be reinstated immediately to augment my television viewing pleasure.

And to demand that Nicky Campbell’s skull be surmounted on a brass topped spike and displayed over the gatehouse of Warwick Castle (I can’t afford the train fare to see it at the Tower Of London).

To be honest, part of me thinks that this air miles baloney is just a smokescreen created by Campbell and his other Watchdog cronies anyway and Julia is currently being held hostage in the boot of Campbell’s car, her smoky, chocolaty voice brutally muffled by Campbell’s sweat stained sporran.

Scotland Yard should be informed immediately. Interpol should be alerted. A cell should be swept clean (or unclean) at Guantanamo Bay ready for Campbell’s imminent arrival.

I pay my TV license fee for emergencies of this kind and I expect to be obeyed!

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.

Heroes And Villains

Taking the view that trivia often offers a modicum of light relief during a rough patch I present the following:

I caught the first episode of “Volume 3” of Heroes last night...

It’s never bothered me before but for some reason the whole “Volume” thing suddenly irritated me. I know it’s a reference to comics and books blah blah blah but it just felt a bit smug and pretentious when, Tim Kring, the writer / director bod was discussing his creation during the behind the scenes documentary. “In this volume yadda yadda yadda...” “Yeah in this volume we up the pace to breakneck speeds...” “In this volume it’s all sex and drugs and rock and roll...” etc.

Maybe I was just in a belligerent mood but I just kept shouting in my mind “Series! It’s a series – not a volume! It’s a series!”

Hmm. Maybe I need to get out more? Maybe I’m just transferring my current frustrations onto a safe non threatening target? Who knows?

By the way, sadly that last quote above was made up by me and isn’t at all real.

But as for the episode itself...

Totally back on form in my opinion. Straight in and no messing. The storyline engaged with several fast moving strands from the off and didn’t slow down, no, not once. And it worked. Gone is the stodgy, soap opera dialogue. Gone are the lengthy scene set-ups. Gone are the slow interminable journeys. Instead we move straight to the explosive arrivals. Instead the viewer is credited with some intelligence and some previous knowledge of the show and the plot simply drop-kicks you off a cliff and expects you to make your own way down to the bottom without complaining.

And I’m not. Well apart from the “volume” thing.

The good news is that Sylar is back and twice as nasty.

The other good news is that the affecting double act of Hiro and Ando is re-established and thus supplies the show with both its humour and its soul.

The best news of all is that Nikki is back although she’s now called Tracey and made her debut in this volume (grrr!) dressed in a white basque and suspenders (grrrowl!).

Er... I have no idea why that should stick in my mind more than the much improved post production effects that littered this episode like torn up Bradford & Bingley employment contracts but it just did, ok?

And something bigger is at stake in the Heroes' world now. Something bigger than a nancy global plague. Something bigger and nastier than a petty little nuclear explosion in NY.

We’re talking the destruction of the entire globe itself.

Or at least that’s what the hints dropped in last night’s episode have led me to believe.

There’s a darker feel to the show in this series. The intriguing darkness that was there initially at the show’s inception and then somehow got lost between the end of the first series and the start of this third has made a spectacular return. It’s back and it’s in a killer mood.

And I for one am glad that it’s back. The darkness really works for me. Save the cheerleader? Nah! Corrupt her. Twist her. Entertain us!

Heroes as villains...

Tim Kring, my man, you just may have got me hooked once more.

Big Brother Aside

I can't say that Big Brother has at all gripped me this year but with Karen wanting to watch the occasional episode it's been near impossible not to get a little bit sucked in...

This season had been remarkably unnoteworthy apart from the following:

The Good Points:

1) Rachel Rice is the winner. I'm genuinely pleased that for once an ordinary, decent, pleasant, nice, unaffected kid without any bizarre idiosyncrasies has won the show. Let's hear it for normalcy!

The Bad Points:

1) Rex: the man is a nasty, bullying, smug, control freak. When he came out he looked like Bryan Adams dressed as Freddie Mercury. The only good line he ever came out with was "I'd swap you for Scrabble." However as it was directed at the lovely Rachel he loses any kudos points that he might have accrued.

2) Mikey's voice: he sounded like an dying elephant trying to fart a speculum sideways out of its prolapsed anus. Sorry for the grossness but I just couldnae tek nae more!

3) Mo: just what was the point of Mo? Anyone?

The Worst Point Of All:

1) Mario's tea-based sexual innuendo directed toward his partner, Lisa. "I'm just dipping this custard cream into this cup of hot... juicy tea..." Oh please! Somebody should have pointed out to him that his custard cream didn't even touch the sides...

Sigh. I'm going back to bed.

Blofeld Is My Next Door Neighbour

It’s not often that my hometown makes the national news (winning Britain In Bloom for the umpteenth time running is never front page material) but when it does it does so with style.

You’ll all no doubt have heard the news of James Bond’s fabled Aston Martin taking an unnecessary nosedive into some picturesque Italian lake on route to the film set of “A Quantum Of Solace”...

Well, it’s with a quantum of pride that I reveal that the driver hailed from good old Leamington Spa... the small Midland’s spa town that brought forth such luminaries into the world as Aleister Crowley, Terry Frost and yours truly.

And now we can add Fraser Dunn to that list, the hapless driver who lost control on a steep mountainous Italian bend in wet weather and took out Bond’s trademark wheels big time.

Fraser escaped unharmed (naturally) and merely brushed off his tux as the car was craned out of the drink by Italian contractors. Reports that the lake was filled with remote-controlled sharks with lasers attached to their foreheads are so far unfounded.

Mr Bond himself was unavailable for comment being up to his hips in posh, busty totty but Blofeld was heard to scream a tirade of curses before pounding his pussy to death in angered frustration.

Er...

Or have I got that the wrong way round?

Cough Drop

I’m having a weird day today, probably aided and abetted by the fact I had a crap night’s sleep last night...

Baby Tom was fine, I can’t blame him at all – the sleep training has really paid off and any night time disturbance now tends to be very minimal. Instead, despite having eyes as heavy as John Prescott’s sick bag, I just lay awake into the small hours, wearing myself out with my many fruitless attempts to drop off.

The knock-on effect today is that I feel out of kilter with the rest of the world and totally benumbed. I feel like a cheap pair of 3D glasses – things aren’t quite lining up properly but I can still tell what they’re supposed to be.

If I was at home I could cope with that quite well. But I’m not. I’m at work and am required to be “on the ball” and capable.

None of which is actually in my job description but I feel too drippy to point that out.

So I’ve had a painful morning dealing with complaints of sexual harassment levelled against our cleaner (sorry, Hygiene Technician), meeting a lighting rep who has totally exhausted my fake interest in light bulbs, dichroics and barn-door shutters, running around trying to catch up on the paperwork that has been flapping around my desk since my day off on Friday and I have just shambled through the most bizarre office conversation ever which started off on the subject of new local authority gumf warning us about the dangers of the “employee terrorist” (the office bully by any other name), leapt onto the John Prescott bulimia bandwagon about halfway through and then finished off on the delightful subject of condensed milk sandwiches as eaten by Lenny Henry on Tiswas back in the early eighties.

My brain feels warped.

I feel like I’ve just coughed it out of my mouth like a dropped bollock in a fashion rather reminiscent of the Ood on Doctor Who on Saturday.

None of which bodes well for the afternoon...

John Wayne Is Big Leggy

I’m wearing corduroys today and as a consequence I sound like I have a small, hungry puppy strapped into the gusset every time I walk.

Yip yip yip yip yip...

Add a bit of tinder and I could start a forest fire.

To make it worse we are having a quiet day at work so the slightest noise is amplified a hundred times. I can sense people’s heads turning each time I cross and uncross my legs.

To combat this unwanted attention I have begun walking with my legs slightly further apart than is natural. I look like a cowboy who’s lost his chaps. A troupe of circus dwarves could ride a monkey bike – in formation and carrying flaming brands – between my legs without even touching the sides.

My kneecaps are protesting and it’s very bad for my posture. Plus I’m going to be hauled over the coals for sexual harassment if I’m not careful.

Tomorrow I will be wearing jeans.

Ecstasy

Ashes To Ashes made my night in a number of ways last night.

1) It featured XTC’s “Sergeant Rock”. A track that took me straight back to my school days and swapping football stickers in the playground.

2) It featured Killing Joke’s “Turn To Red” – a track from their little known first ever EP, released before they’d even been signed up by Malicious Damage records. You’d have to be a diehard fan to spot it. I am that fan.

3) DS Ray Carling, a man even more homophobic and chauvinistic than Gene Hunt himself, had to infiltrate a gay night club posing as a homosexual to get close to a target. He looks like a Village People reject at the best of times anyway and blended in remarkably well. He even looked to be enjoying himself until sweet nothings were whispered in his ear. His smile dropped faster than a nympho’s knickers at a swinger’s convention and the fists flew wild and hard. He looked like a rabbit caught between the headlights of a fast moving car. Hilarious.

4) Gene Hunt. Ploughing mercilessly through every single euphemism for anal sex and homosexuality known to man with a straight face (well, what else would he have) and his team laughing along with him... until an after footie match celebration of hugging and male bonding at their local boozer was cut abruptly short by DI Drake wondering if they were all closet homosexuals themselves. You sunk my battleship indeed. Anything that blasts homophobia and football clean out of the water is absolutely fine by me...

5) Keeley Hawes just because. But mostly because of the red, off-the-shoulder top that was so flimsy it accentuated every movement and jiggle underneath it. Officer I’ve been a naughty boy and need to be taken into police custody immediately. I may have to be restrained and frisked. Please, please don’t go easy on me...

Sheer ecstasy.

The Great Hunt

Don’t get me wrong, the previous episodes of Ashes To Ashes have all been brilliant but something about last night’s felt like they’d upped the ante to a new level. The dialogue was cracking and included some fantastic jokes (Gene Hunt: how many birds does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: two. One to run around screaming “What do I do? What do I do?” and the other one to shag the electrician.) The storyline was dark, dense and dynamically directed. The acting, as ever I have to say, was superb.

Definitely the best episode so far.

The relationship between Hunt and Drake is developing nicely and I like the fact the writer’s are not merely confining it to a simple will-they-won’t-they sexual stand off. Certainly the work based spats and the confrontational dialogue all hint at underlying sexual tension – and Hunt was certainly put to the test last night when, trapped in a sealed room, DI Drake stripped down to her red basque as the internal temperature soared. Standard police issue I assure you (the basque that is, not Hunt’s reaction). But in terms of physical expression Hunt’s feelings towards Drake appear to have an undeniably paternal edge. This is also backed up by Drake’s responses – teasing, simpering, pouting but ultimately deferential and seeking comfort. The naughty girl playing on her father’s affections. Knowledge that her parents are about to be killed by a car bomb – hence she grew up without a mother and a father – could also be feeding into Drake’s emotional responses towards Hunt of course but, whatever the reason, Hunt is unwittingly assuming a parental role in their stead.

The parent issue is, of course, one we’ve seen in the show’s previous incarnation – Life On Mars. There Sam Tyler returned to the 1970’s, a few weeks before his father mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again. Naturally the loss of a parent would impinge upon a child’s psyche hugely and maybe this provides the answer to why Tyler and Drake end up in their respective time periods. Who knows? But it does lend the psychology of the show a pleasing symmetry and consistency.

What is different about the two shows however is the ethos that drives the respective heroes. Unlike Sam Tyler DI Drake is very much “sexed up”. She’s flirty, knows how to use her looks and her physicality and is more than happy to do so – she’s already bedded a “Thatcherite wanker” in a previous episode – and seems unable to stop herself playing the breathy, slightly giggly Marilyn Monroe character around the boys in the office. Tyler on the other hand spent the whole two series’ of Life On Mars not getting into WPC Cartright’s knickers when it was clearly plain that he dearly wanted to. The poor boy lived like a monk. Drake on the other hand is living like a party girl and is up for absolutely everything.

And why the hell not? Drake after all represents the freedom and liberation of the modern woman which, while not being all that it should be in 2008, is still a lot better than it was in the 1980s. She’s intelligent, impulsive, intuitive, professional and sexual all at the same time. The same as her male colleagues in fact – so equality as near as damn it – though given the escapades of DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton we could possibly scrub intelligence from the male version of the list. Though to be fair, Carling and Skelton are in the show essentially to provide light relief.

The sexism of the boys aside it was interesting to see Drake’s 2008 behaviour juxtaposed with the women’s libbers of the 1980s. In comparison to Drake they were almost in denial of their own sexuality yet at the same time prepared to use it as a clumsy weapon to get what they wanted from men – one of them used sex to get someone to spy for them. Of course it ended badly – the guy wanted more and became aggressive; he attempted rape and was killed in the ensuing struggle. The question is though: is Drake’s behaviour actually any more sophisticated or worthy of celebration?

The easy answer is yes. She’s not using sex as a bartering device but as pleasure for herself in its own right. But the issue is nevertheless complicated. The lines are blurred. Is Drake fighting the cause for all women or is she merely colluding with the male dominated world she now finds herself immersed in to get what she wants – to survive, to get back home to her daughter? Is she merely fighting for herself rather than for any cause at all? Ultimately though all of this is meant to be inside Drake’s head and merely reflects her own internal conflicts. But as we all know, microcosms can often be useful mirrors to the bigger and badder macrocosms that contain them...

The easy answer therefore is that there is no easy answer. And that’s fine by me.

I look forward to seeing the next stage of Drake’s journey unfold next week.