Wait... this might just work...

BBC Children In Need was once again broadcast this month for its annual telethon. I am not about to review the 2011 version here. That's a blog fraught with danger. I don't have the dexterity to negotiate that traverse successfully. Besides, it goes on for about 6 hours and that is a lot to take mental notes on to review later. If you had to push me how I would do it, then it would be through a "live blog" format. On Twitter. But then, what would that be like?


Terry Wogan has hosted this for 30 years yet hair doesn't look like it has aged one bit. What's his secret?

Oh - cut to a piece about helping unfortunate children. Best stop commenting for this bit.

Tess Daly looks like a glam grandmother in that dress.

Right - now there is a story about children living in poverty. Best stop commenting for this bit.

The newsreaders are doing something later in the show? Fingers crossed for a dance routine! #thatwasmebeingironicbecauseitisalwaysadance

Hang on - discussion about child illness. Best stop commenting for this bit.

Great! Regional round-up! Teachers wearing shoes on their hands all day to raise money. They are mental. Talking of mental, a mother is now on talking about... [well you get the idea]

No one wants to read that. That would be dreadful.

Watching the marginally antiquated variety/vaudeville format with cheapskate trailers of BBC Christmas episodes and slightly less entertaining than usual CIN themed "specials" of in-house shows whilst also discovering exactly why Londoners think they are the centre of Britain because all the regional shows are filmed in town halls regardless that they are on location in huge cities including Cardiff, Birmingham and Glasgow when the London studio, with it's celebrity guests, acts and pyrotechnics make it look like something from Bladerunner, let alone 200 miles away, [I mean, when the cameras are not tuned to the folk in Glasgow, do they sit and watch the London show on a TV wheeled in from the Fire Exit? Do they have to put up with Leon Jackson singing to pass their time? Is that why they are such a maniacal mob grabbing at the screen toward me by the third time we see them in the night - they are trying to escape through the transmission waves to my home where Leon Jackson can no longer harm them?] while it rattled up the donations into millions of pounds, I had an idea.

Could the Government not do this? You know, to raise some cash for all the services they say they can't afford? Now hear me out - if the UK will donate £26,000,000 to Children In Need, imagine what they would give to things that are more than kids?

The UK Government could come out on TV and explain that the British people could pledge money and it would result in extra policing, improved hospital care and school equipment and a dignified life for the elderly. Heck, they could even put some of the money raised towards proper services for children, too, into the bargain. "For just £27, 000 you could ensure the UK continues to have minor operations on the NHS for 2 more hours".

The Prime Minister could host the evening telethon and the British public could be entertained with the Cabinet doing a Grease medley. During the day, all the MP's could get involved by going back to their constituents, setting up UK Government In Need fetes with games and home baking and have people throw wet sponges at them for £1.50 a throw and then wave giant cheques from bank tellers who wore novelty MP bow-ties for the day at the camera when the telethon sweeps round the regions.

The more I thought about this, the more coherently good the idea of a Government charity became. Actually, it could be such a good idea, we could dispense with the inferior annual live TV telethon production all together and people could just donate throughout the year. The Government could even set up some sort of charitable omni-permeable direct debit procedure for everyone to be able to passively donate. No one would not want to, after all.

I was definitely onto something. But it would further require some form of memorable tag to remain in the public conscience if there was no annual Wogan hosted show to look forward to. It needs a cool nomenclature of an abbreviation.

Then I had it! How about: The Awesome Charity System. Or, TACS?

Ok... don't panic but I appear to have unwittingly taken us into [rather poor] political satire territory with this here... there is only one way to get out and end this blog with any kind of dignity for either one of us. Here is a picture of Tess Daly.

"Hello Sonny, want a Werther's Original?"

Who follows the followers?

I was surprisingly cheered when I noticed that I had... what's the right word I am after... "ensnared" a new follower to this blog recently. How marvellous. Not least because I have no idea how anyone actually becomes a follower to this blog. I guess that it has something to do with the "join" button in the box to the right. I have often considered it and hovered a mouse pointer over it and dared myself to click it to see what happens. Of course, I never have.

There is something instinctive, primal, at the back of my mind suggesting that following my own blog would not be good. Like the feeling we get when we know following the clown with razor teeth into the sewerage tunnels for the promise of a balloon, would not be good. Or little, jumpy spiders.

I know what you are thinking, I should get in touch with Stephen Hawking about this:
"Professor Hawking, Hi. Now, I was going to start following my own blog"
WHY DO YOU THINK THAT?
"Eh? Anyway, will that create some form of bad spacial vortex?"
WHAT DO YOU THINK IF IT WILL FORM A BAD SPACIAL VORTEX?
"What? Are you drunk?"
INTERESTING TELL ME MORE
[Is it wrong that all fantasy conversations I have with Stephen Hawking, I basically reduce to the conversations I had with ELIZA in computing class?]

But the important thing to remember is that I have not followed my own blog - but you have and that is truly great. Hello and welcome, I hope you enjoy it here!

Indeed, it is about time that I said hello and welcome to all my Readers! I really appreciate you all.

Please, if you are a frequent visitor to this little leaf of cyberspace feel free to join my official readership. It would make my day.

It is worth summarising with this well made and reassuringly contemporary, hip point that if Beyonce was mad for blogging she would undoubtedly sing: "If you read it then you should have put an RSS feed on it!" Naturally she would just be singing it through in the spare room to her husband, Jazzy Zee, as she wouldn't be an international singing mega-star, true bloggers never are. And he'd be all: READ IT ME? TELL ME MORE

Music fan

I was out this week at a work function. As most work functions go mine was no different, I knew the other people there but not well. The conversation was staid and often missing all together. It was this backdrop of shuffling and using wine glasses at metaphorical and actual defences against saying anything, which led to one of the work group asking me: “So… do you like music?”

I thought that people only asked this to highlight awkward moments when eating out with a Ben Stiller character in one of his chronic rom-coms.

Do I like music? Come to think of it – do I like food? Am I an appreciator of colour? Is the human notion of what we express as time passing, my bag?

Naturally, I like music. I am almost certain everybody likes some form of rhythmic noise. And those that don’t I would imagine look a lot like this:

Believe it or not, I would often hear some music and then a few days later go into a music store and buy a music cassette tape of it, back in the day. That was proper devotion to liking music – not simply downloading it from any mobile device that is in reach like the youth of today. And my music taste has changed from pre-teen bedroom playing of the latest Jean Michelle Jarre opus through teenage angst Elliott Smith and Radiohead and then into the broad musical church of high-energy techno.

In fairness it did lead on to an ice-breaker of conversation:
If you could choose any musician to give you a personal serenade – just the two of you, on a veranda overlooking a private, white Pacific beach under the pomegranate reddening late sunset of a warm summer’s night – who would it be?

For me it was easy, pop rocket of the moment: Lana Del Rey
Someone else said: Robbie Williams
A third went for: Christina Aguilera, singing Dirrty. Twice
Further round the group a vote went for: David Gray

I am sure, dear reader, you get the idea.

So when the question came steadily round to settle at one of the women and, after a further 15 seconds giving it serious thought, still went for: Whitesnake, it was not surprising that we all quickly resumed to nursing our drinks in silent contemplation of having perhaps revealed too much and trying once more not to catch one anothers’ eye.

Screwing the news

[Disclaimer – I never, ever read the News of the World and most of this blog is simply made up from an impression I have of what was in it from other news sources and The Daily Star].

The news of the screws, so called because of its high level of readership in the prison demographic, may have shut down but that is not the end of the story.

Sordid

Amid the investigations of the phone-hacking scandal sanctioned by the sensationalist and morally askewed tabloid paper, where as many as hundreds of mobile phone voice mail systems were illegally listened to by Screws journalists who would then quote any sordid, life ruining, details heard in a few forgettable column inches attributing them to “a source close to the reality TV star” – revelations recently emerged that former policeman and now private eye, Deek Webb was employed by the paper to tail upwards of 90 people from Princess Catherine of The Sister With The Nice Bottomshire and Wills, to Harry Potter’s Mum and Dad.

Saucy

Following these people as they went about their personal lives, Deek and so the Screws, hoped to unearth some saucy bit of detail or two to keep the paper shifting in-between the prison bars. Watching an interview on the BBC with the private eye, I heard him explain that he would sit in his car, tailing and filming all sorts of MPs, actors, other journalists and Richard Madeley. When Richard, during the same interview, was shown footage filmed of him in 2006 standing outside his London home he was disgusted. Richard dim-wittingly nailed it when he verbalised: “What is the phrase where what is happening is not illegal but that everyone knows is wrong? ‘It’s creepy’ – that’s it” [also simultaneously rather adeptly describing his marriage to his elderly, frail aunt]

Costume

When the cockney accented Webb elaborated on his techniques I began to realise just how far these Private Investigators go to film members of celebrity. “I normally followed behind at a distance in my car” he said, reasonably, “Boris Johnson thought that cycling would prevent the Screws following him, but when I turned up to the press offices I was handed over a bicycle and I would cycle behind him”, he went on, slightly more oddly. By the time he brought up the name of MP Blunkett I was over half convinced Deek was going to explain: “I turned up to the Screws offices and was handed a hired dog fancy-dress outfit and a hi-vis vest. Blunkett was unique in that regard as I had him following on my tail. It meant I could go where I wanted to go and get me messages and stuff while keeping an eye on him. And I could sh*t anywhere. Once, the hire shop didn’t have the dog costume, so I was just given a gorilla one instead. Blunkett didn’t have a fu**ing clue.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t say any of that. But the damage had already been done and it has heaped even more trouble onto Screws International.

Tongues

It was always going to end like this for the Screws. Over the years, their methods of reporting and journalism to keep convicts’ tongues hanging out their filthy criminal mouths were plumbing new depths. From publishing solitary photos of young, beautiful people with other young beautiful people on holidays using massive camera lenses, through to the ridiculous sub-editor means of grabbing attention to a story by pull quoting slightly ambiguously titillating words or phrases out of context from the subsequent paragraph of a story, the Screws of course went the extra distance in the name of the “public interest".

Two women… at the same time

Many of these “public interest” stories were not really, to my mind, all that interesting to the public. Grotty little video-phone images do not need to be printed for the public at large to inform us that people with money and a lot of time on their hands who have obscene egos can get into a vice or three when they think no one is looking. Two women on a bus may make a brief comment about the news that a former children’s TV presenter might like to do more adult activities when not talking to a glove puppet about a homemade birthday card, but the news will hardly cause other passengers to partake in mob-handed condemnation along with them. At the same time, the Screws were deciding developing “public interest” stories of their own would take out the middle man.

Once again whether these stories actually told us public anything is debatable. In the early days of this, the reporter would basically go to an actual brothel in all but name and report with surprise that women there offered private services for payment. The reporter would always decline with the get out sub-line “made my excuses and left”. It was not long before reporters made the step to dressing as wealthy sheiks and Russian mafia to offer someone an awful lot of money to do something either never before thought of or seemingly too good to be true – selling an audience with your ex-husband, missing the 5th red in a frame of snooker or throwing a no-ball. Perhaps no one should be surprised to find some people mistakenly accepted.

Besides entrapment, the Screws specialised in “public interest” security stories. A reporter would work as an attendant maid in Buckingham Palace for 4 months before revealing the awful truth that he was able to lie on the Queen’s bed during a shift. Perhaps this is of interest to people – but I can only think of the Milk Tray Ad Man who would find any bedroom security lapse worth noting.

The best example I can think of in the debate about if they really were reporting for the sake of “public interest”, was the occasion when a reporter, dressed as an airline pilot, infiltrated a long haul passenger aircraft cockpit shortly before take-off. Should the authorities have spotted him and shot his face clean off (which they would have been well within their rights to do) would the Screws have run the headline: AIRPORT SECURITY: SOUND AS A POUND or INNOCENT UNDERCOVER REPORTER GUNNED DOWN TRYING TO PROTECT UK PUBLIC INTEREST.

And I think we all know the answer to that.

Ultimately it appears that the screwspaper staff lost their perspective on reality. They began believing themselves to be movie secret agents for the forces of good when in fact they were working for Elliot Carver all along.

22 March, if you are wondering

Birthday parties when I was young were strange affairs. Too young to have a social circle of people with shared interests, you always had your school classmates at them instead and maybe a cousin or two who you didn’t really know. Some parties were held in fast food places or at a tailored children’s adventure centre. Most, however, were held at the parent’s house of the little school chum whose birthday it was.

The house parties always followed minor variations on the same format: Handing over presents and chatting/squealing/jumping on the way in/playing a couple of inclusive group games/party finger food of mini-sausage rolls and chocolate dipped marshmallows with smarties on top/a video of the latest rental film (not altogether age appropriate)/kicking a balloon about the sitting room/party bag given of a piece of cake wrapped in birthday paper napkin that the icing stuck to, 1 un-inflated balloon and pencil-topper figurine of a masters of the universe on the way out.

I must confess that I neither hosted nor attended many birthday parties in my extreme youth. Most of the games played at my birthdays were just me sitting with one of those plastic containers with little metal ball bearings games. In my new, birthday, jumper.

I was never one for going to parties either. So you will appreciate that I remember vividly Christine’s one that I attended. It was for her 7th birthday. I was shown to the sitting room, where many of my little classmates had already arrived. I remember thinking that her family must be rich with their white furniture and French windows.

I handed over the card and present, which were placed in the corner of the room with the others for the ceremonial unwrapping later. A Disney film was playing on the TV in the background. There was time to converse with my peers (about what, I cannot remember, maybe something about coloured pencils) and avoid the class bullies [who always seemed to get invited to parties by parents, totally ignoring the frightened pleas of their son or daughter]. Soon it was time for an enforced game – musical statutes to the song “superman” by Black Lace and then the meal, followed by the video, Beverly Hills Cop. And then hitting a balloon up in the air for a bit.

It was also at this same party where I told my first proper dinner table joke.

We were at the dinner table, some of us glad that the inclusive, enforced fun activities were over. Paper bowls of crisps and paper plates of cakes and mini-sausage rolls were being spilled and grabbed at, a cacophony of crumbs of pastry being tossed-up like shrapnel. I caught the group’s attention and said:
“I am boldly going where no man has gone before!” wait for it… “The ladies toilet!”
I possibly heard it on an episode of Russ Abbott. I know what you are thinking – this genre of comedy was a stretch to pull off at a birthday party of 7 year olds, Greville.

And, looking back, I am not sure, really, how many of my school chums watched repeats of 60’s Star Trek so suspect that the impression I gave of William Shatner while saying it was lost on most of them sitting that afternoon round the table with a She-Ra tablecloth. Jerking my body about in time to the phrasing: “I am… bodlygoing…. Where!!… noman… has…. Gonebefore… the!LADIEStoliet!”

And, analysing things forensically, being situated, as we were, at the girl’s house I would be astonished if it had both a gents and ladies separate WC’s available. Despite the inference with the French windows. In fact, I am almost certain it didn’t. I am certain, too, that I didn’t go to the bathroom after but rather, sat back down again after the punch line.

But I did say “Toilet” and did funny, stuttering movements like an electrified frog so the joke went down a storm. I would like to think that those 12 or so kids, most of whom I can no longer recall the names of or be able to pick out from a line-up, will remember that moment as fondly as I do.

All this recollecting has made me wonder: Did I not get invited to parties back when I was under 10 years old because I would turn up in a knitted jumper and reference Star Trek and Columbo for no appreciable reason or did I wear knitted jumpers and watch Star Trek and Columbo because I did not go to parties. It is the whole Nature Versus Nurture debate all over again.

The element of What doctors are for

They say you learn something everyday. They say a lot of things. But in this instance, they are right. Today I learnt that potentially in my lifetime there will be no more Helium on Earth. The human race will have wiped out an entire element. We have allowed it dissipate almost entirely unchecked in balloons that say "Happy 50th!" and what reserves we have are being sold off by the Americans (the primary source for the world's helium) who privatised Helium in the 1990's and are selling off their strategic reserves of the inert gas massively cheaply outside the Free Market.

A professor called Richardson has looked around and stated that Helium will no longer exist in 20-30 years time.

Children will never know it was ever on the periodic table. And they will grow up to be scientists - who also will not know that Helium was on the periodic table! What sort of madness is that? That I will know about Helium but scientists won't?

What about that bloke who could sing all the periodically ordered elements really fast? That's his party piece busted. It'll be more like a Proclaimers song in the future: "Bathgate No More, Helium No More, Lochaber No More".

That an element can simply disappear is mind positively blowing. It ranks, in my opinion, between finally laying waste to the rain forests and the impossibility to make gold. You know, it's like when the Panda goes extinct we might get lucky, find one preserved in amber and bring them back for them to take furious vengeance on us at the Rain Forest end of the scale and, although I realise that Helium is an element, it just feels like we should be able to make some more Helium easier than making gold, so it is just not quite at the, other, Gold Making end of the scale.

The thing is, Helium is hugely important in lots of things. It is a coolant for superconductors, medical equipment and solar telescopes. It could be the clean energy source that would revolutionise the planet's environmental issues. Frankly, we could be doing with loads of it.

Next time you go past a Clinton's you are perfectly within your rights as a Planeteer to rush in, spit at the teenage shop assistant, punch one of their inflated foil helium wasters and shout: "You solar telescope murderers!", I would have thought. No one would judge you for it.

Happily it appears these greeting card dwelling shops may yet be hoisted by their own petard. As Helium becomes more rare, the price is going to increase. Soon only the very rich will want their precious floating gold.

If you are clever, like me, you should buy your own underground helium containment lab and place one of the Helium canisters you can get for 30 balloons from ASDA in it. That baby will start paying for itself, and your pension, in 50 years. You could even have a foil balloon inflated to commemorate the anniversary.

All is not over, however. Scientists have been working on a solution. Masses of Helium has been discovered on the moon. We can mine the Helium there and bring it back in canisters or pods or whatever the space word for jars is.

Of course! The moon! Like most of science, it is all so simple when the answer is found. The moon is obviously full of Helium - that's how it stays up in the sky.