After the last bleak posting about the joys of dealing with big companies who don’t even get close to delivering on their customer service ‘promise’, I thought I’d better balance things up with news of a recent happy retail experience. And those are three words that don’t often spring from my lips.

We’d just moved into the new place and as it was unfurnished we were busy raiding stores like IKEA to get the house looking more like a home, quickly and without great expense. I’ve become quite a fan of the blue and yellow place and its fantastic products (and assembly instructions which are simply brilliant). But this day I was heading down to our local Homebase , which is a DIY superstore in the UK, because we needed some things like lightshades  and I wanted a pile of new tools and things to hang pictures, etc. All our stuff is still out in Italy of course. I’d got a trolley full of items when I went to check out a powerdrill. I didn’t really want to spend a fortune on one – I just needed a pretty basic thing to drill some holes for fixing curtain tracks, shelves etc. All the Black & Decker and Bosch power gear seemed really expensive. And then my eyes fell upon the box containing the PB Power Base 500W hammer drill, with keyed chuck, variable speed, forward and reverse functions, adjustable front handle and depth gauge and 12 month warranty. Made in the UK. Price £9.99. Whoa. That had to be a mistake but no, I kid you not, that was its special offer price. I know that in life you only get what you pay for and this was so cheap it had to be a pile of crap, but I figured I needed some 30 holes drilling and surely it could handle that. So up I trundled to the check-out counter with my trolley full of things we already  owned a 1000 miles away. Ah well.

The total bill came to just shy of £100. Blimey. But we needed all the stuff so… Then the young girl on the till asked me if I wanted a Homebase discount card. I just thought it was one of those loyalty cards or, worse still, a store credit card and rather dismissively just said ‘er, no thanks’. But she persisted and said it simply entitled the user to a 10% discount on all goods purchased during the month of October (of which there were still 26 days left). All I had to do was bring it back to the store for use on my next purchase.  For a second I thought I couldn’t be bothered but I cheekily asked her if she’d accept it for the pile of goods I was currently buying. She pondered for a second (I knew this wasn’t really how it was meant to operate) and said ‘OK, why not?’. Wey hey, she must like the fat old bald guys.  So I got the drill effectively for nothing with the discount. What a deal eh.  For once it felt like I was up on a retailer.

There’s a post-script  to the story. When I got the drill home it worked fine for about 5 minutes then started cutting in and out. Oh f**k it. It was as if the wiring was badly connected. You knew this was coming I dare say. But you know what, a few days later I had to head back to Homebase for some more stuff. I took the drill back to the service counter and they offered me my money back or a replacement drill (they have a 28 day no quibble return policy – great!). The guy assured me it was the first unit that had been returned with a problem, so I got another! And he even put the discount back onto my discount card, which I ended up using several more times  before the month was out. I have to tell you that the second drill has been faultless; it’s a bloody belter and I’ve been drilling holes for England with it.

I’m still smiling about what a great deal that was some weeks later. If I’d had any smarts stuff I should have written about this whilst the offer was still on so that you guys could have take advantage too. Sorry folks but it must be worth checking out from time to time because the store must repeat it at some stage (maybe they do it every month?). If you can top this story I’d be very happy to hear it shoppers.

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First serious posting for a while and it’s got to be a rant hasn’t it?  I just thought I’d share a few recent examples of what we amusingly call customer service – the way that companies treat you especially when things go wrong. That said it’s not all bad; just almost all. First things first, we recently moved to a new place in Teddington in SW London. It’s rented again ( I doubt we’ll ever be able or indeed wish to buy a property in  the UK again), and as the landlord didn’t really want to have a satellite dish on the roof we decided to get get a bundled deal for tv, broadband and phone line through Virgin Media’s cable service, as the previous tenants had done. Have you ever sampled the Virgin Media service installation and after sales care experience? It is almost as impressive as Gordon Brown’s handwriting.

It all started happily. The installation guy turned up within a few hours of his ETA on our first day in the new house. He started working on the phone connection (and please bear in mind that all he had to do was re-connect the service from the previous occupiers) whilst I got on with getting the new TV set unpacked and assembled. He proudly announced after a few minutes that the phone line was working AOK – I had no reason to question him, after all he was a qualified telecom engineer I thought and he got on with getting the TV working. Meantime I took the new BT telephone handset out of its package (fully compatible with Virgin Media) and got it plugged in so it could charge up – it would need several hours of charging the instructions said. Sigh. The TV burst into life – woo hoo – so he proceeded get the broadband line working. He asked what computer equipment we had – I told him an Apple macbook and desk top which caused him to sigh and ask if we had anything else. ‘Strangely no’, I said. ‘We only have the two pieces which we find sufficient for the two of us’. He harumphed a bit and with a huge blue lead connected up the mac laptop to the router/modem kit he’d brought in. The main broadband cabling was already in place. We actually hadn’t unpacked the desk-top by this stage but when I asked about this he said the wireless facility would be activated as soon as we installed the software onto both pieces of kit. Apparently Virgin don’t install the wireless bit – they leave you a CD to self-activate it. When you are a paid-up member of the Luddite Party like me, this wasn’t welcome news. He dashed off inside half an hour of arriving despite my but…but…but…protestations. Ah well the stuff was all working so why worry?

I had a quick wazz with the TV controller. The TV was fine although it became apparent that many of the ‘free’ channels available on Sky eg Paramount Comedy weren’t available on our VM package. Umm never mind. I tried the phone but it didn’t work – clearly the new handset hadn’t been sufficiently charged as yet (or so I thought).  The laptop worked fine but we were physically limited by the umbilical link into the flashing lights kit under the desk. I called my son-in-law who agreed to come over to install the wireless software etc in a couple of days. Good old E.

Next day we tried the phone again figuring the brand new handset would be fully charged by now. Nada, nothing, nowt. A non-operational pile of BT crap. Then C noticed from the instructions that it might take 24 hours for the phone’s batteries to charge up effectively. A day later we tried again and still nothing. For frig’s sake. We called VM and they scheduled a guy to come round in a couple of days. They suggested that it was almost certainly a handset problem. Umm. The guy turned up 48 hours later. He was an ex-BT guy who’d taken a package like me to leave, so we had something in common and over a cup of tea the reality dawned. It transpired that the fuc*kwit installer had only tested the line to the outside box. The VM line into the house was useless and wouldn’t have worked if we’d had the handset on charge for a million years. As it happened the handset (and separate BT line/junction point) was perfectly fine so I couldn’t even blame the old company. He replaced the VM line and inside box and told me that the installer guys weren’t VM employees as such, just resourced-in guys who worked piece-meal – they needed to sign-off dozens of jobs each day to get the on-target wages. So the quality control was laughable. It’s not reassuring news for a new customer is it? Ah well I liked his honesty and the phone was now working and I had secured a rebate for the lost service.

Son-in-law E came to install the wireless software. That’s when we found it wasn’t Apple compatible – it only worked for PCs. Oh for fuc*’s sake. E managed to find an over-air version which he downloaded, then got the laptop and desk-top to work wirelessly. I couldn’t have done this if I’d tried for 1000 years. Ah well, at last we now had the  full monty of VM’s services working – tv, phone and broadband. Except that the wireless service suddenly  disappeared after a few days. I called the VM customer service line many times and eventually got through to an agent who told me that VM had a lot of problems working with Apple kit (!) – strangely they didn’t mention that when we enquired about the service (you sense that this might be a problem they ought to address given that I’m told that there are a few other users of Apple computers in the London and SE region, especially amongst high-spending creative agencies/consultancies etc). Anyway she got me working by hooking up to the modem using the ethernet line again which meant we’d lost wireless  access. A few days later we’d lost the service altogether. Sigh.

I called the help-line several times to try and get the problem resolved only to be patronised endlessly – ‘try swapping the ends of the cable around’, ‘have you put the cable in the modem or in the router – they are different you know!’, ‘have you tried switching the computer off and on?’. At this point I lost it and started to rant like Victor Meldrew with piles. I eventually found a helpful soul who promised a further rebate and that an VM engineer (not a freelance installer) would turn up inside the next 48 hours. I was scheduled to head back to Italy the following day but C would be around during that period – albeit at work during the day. He took a note of C’s mobile number  - her office is a 5-10 minute walk away – and she could easily pop back to let the engineer in. Of course C got a call the next evening to say that  VM would be charging us a fee for wasted call-out as we weren’t at home as promised. C went loopy with them and asked why they hadn’t called her mobile as agreed. Sheepishly it was later admitted that the engineer  hadn’t read the second page of instructions with the mobile contact on. The engineer was re-scheduled for the following day – he turned up and got the broadband working again (hard-wired not wireless of course) by admitting that the power loading for the cable was heavier than normally acceptable for good service.

We still have no wireless service so the laptop isn’t functioning. It’s a real pain-in-the-arse. I’m so tempted to try out BT again but can’t bring myself to do it given the way they’ve dicked me about over my consultancy services in the last couple of years. I suppose there’s always Talk Talk but I’m told that if anything, its customer service is worse than Virgin Media’s. Unbelievable. Why is it so frigging hard to get decent service from the comm’s companies? Maybe because they are all too busy trying to pinch truckloads of customers from each other with ‘great deals’ instead of focusing on getting things 100% right first time with each new customer.

But it’s not just the utilities who are crap. We recently bought a large wooden train track on a raised base for our youngest grandson G who is nuts on Thomas the Tank Engine and his many wooden mates. It came in a huge box which we bought from Toys R Us store situated across the north circular from the dreaded Brent Cross shopping complex. I hadn’t expected to be back there so soon (fortunately the trip by car this time was less traumatic). We got it home and I spent hours assembling the base and track layout in preparation for a visit from out grandkids. It was around 2am when I discovered that there was a piece of wooden track missing  - a short straight piece measuring about 4” long. One piece out of around 1000 bits!  Sigh. Next morning I headed to our few local toy shops to see if any of them had any spare track parts (it’s all based on the Brio track system) but none of them sold spare bits. I was really not wanting to traipse around the north circ again back to TRUs but as I was heading into central London for some other shopping I thought I’d pop in to Hamley’s – one of the world’s best toy shops (they say) – as they’d almost certainly have some bits. I hadn’t been there for years and years and these days it’s staffed by a bunch of bored, unhelpful, disinterested kids. I headed for the right department, found the Brio track area and rooted around for a box of bits containing my missing piece. I found boxes containing long straight bits, short and longer curved bits and bits which sloped up/down. But not one box containing a short straight piece, apart from one which was a compendium box with over 100 pieces priced at nearly £30. I found this 17 year old fuc*wit member of staff and explained the situation. I didn’t mind forking out for a small box of spare bits of track but £30 was a bit steep for a 4” section. I thought he might offer to check the storeroom or something more imaginative, like offer me a piece of the shop display stuff. Nah. All he could say was ‘you’ll have to come back in few weeks time when the new stock arrives’. Yeh I’m sure my 2 year old grandson will understand why his granddad cannot make his Thomas track complete. ‘No kids eh son?’ was my grumpy response and I headed out of the shop.

I thought this was supposed to be the UK’s mother of all toy shops. Sigh. Next day I was heading down to Brighton and knowing there was a branch of Toys R Us there popped in, explained that I’d bought this track from another store but was disappointed to find a critical piece missing. The young shop manager asked to see the receipt of course but, satisfied that I wasn’t spoofing, called one of her colleagues to bring a new great big box down. When it arrived she proceeded to open it all up and after 10 minutes or so searching through the 100’s of bits we found the missing piece which she gave me and apologised for causing me such inconvenience. I was gob-smacked to be honest. I asked her what she would do with the now-opened box with 999 parts and a critical piece missing. She simply replied that it would go back to the suppliers with a stroppy note saying that they’d better get their quality control on packing sorted out. Blimey. Good on yer girl. Now that was more like it – customer service that actually means something to the company. And I’m writing to tell you about how good they are. This stuff matters.

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Well this is the first posting in a while. We’ve been so busy over the last few weeks – moving house within London, getting a new car sorted out, heading back to Italy to get the olive crop picked and any number of business issues tidied up and trying to make progress on my projects with existing and new clients. I’ve also tucked in a flying visit up north to see a client and catch up with my folks and we had a lovely week-end down in Cornwall with old friends Cindy and Keith plus spending any spare time with our grandkids and daughters and son-in-laws. I’ve got so much to write about I hardly know where to start but I think I’ll start with a rant (and some praise too conversely) about customer service standards. Not very sexy or stimulating I guess but a subject that’s really got me going recently. More in the next posting but in the meantime it’s good to be back in blogland again.

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Well if you’re a regular reader you’ll know my liking for all sorts of odd and amusing names given to the likes of special edition cars, quintessential English villages, celebrity babies etc. On my many recent visits to Brighton to see the grandkids (they actually live on the border of Rottingdean and Saltdean to the east of the town), I’ve come across another rich source of merry monikers. After dropping the boys off at their Hove schools I tend to head back to my daughter’s place by going through Kemptown rather than endure the crawl along the sea front. This is the old mews area behind the grand Regency terraces and squares that fronted the eastern edge of old Brighton town and it’s a lively area with loads of small shops, bars, restaurants etc. To say it has a bohemian reputation would be an understatement. You’d be hard-pressed not to have a gay old time down Kemptown. Anyway I like the buzzy atmosphere even early in the morning and I invariably stop here to buy a paper, cup of coffee, some provisions and the occasional sausage sandwich. Now the place where I park is on a narrow side road, George St, because local wardens seem to ignore it, right across from a pub which I’m sure is called the Queens Arms. It’s an appropriate name because as the notices outside show, it is the epicentre for cracking karaoke nights and the best drag acts that breezy Brighton can offer. But it’s the stage names of the acts that always catch my attention because of the outrageous puns, rude malapropisms and their general suggestiveness. Examples include the quite lewd Betty Swollocks, the rather catty Kitty Litter, the unfortunate Miss Hap and the tasty sounding Lola Lasagna. If you know of any other drag artists’ names that press the ooh matron button, please let me know.

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It’s not so much a funny old game as a money-hole game these days. Today’s football’s finances leave me mystified  to be honest. A family of lookie-likey leprechauns from Florida, the Glazers, take on Manchester United by saddling the club with over half a billion pounds of debt. And the American comedy duo, Gillett and Hicks, performed a similar trick down the East Lancs road at Liverpool FC. But instead of building a new stadium as promised, the now-feuding G&H spend all their time hawking the club around the Middle East’s idle rich or re-financing the debt with RBS or some other bank which has been rescued from collapse by the British taxpayer.

The group who have bought out the mighty Notts County and installed Sven Goran Ericsson as the messiah to turn them into the next powerhouse of European football (if only he could sign players to stay longer than one match) are a mystery consortium whose identities are being kept secret. But it seems that one of the investors may or may not be a former Pakistani Prime Minister and they tend to be the blemish-free pillars of society don’t they? A bit like that Thaksin Shinawatra bloke who bought and then sold his interest in Man City when he returned to Thailand to clear his name of those dreadful allegations of corruption, authoritarianism, treason, conflict of interest, muzzling the press, tax evasion, selling of national assets and the odd complaint from Amnesty International about his Government’s  poor human rights record. Yup, I can see how such a character would pass the Football League’s ‘Fit and Proper’  person’s criteria for club owners.

Today I’ve learned that Portsmouth have secured their 3rd overseas owner/chairman of the season now that that dodgy-looking Arab bloke  has decided to get rid of his troublesome kidney stones as well as his controlling stake in the club, by selling his interest to Saudi businessman Ali al-Faraj, having bought the club from Alexandre Gaydamak (isn’t he that meerkat?) less than 8 weeks ago. Just as in Liverpool none of them have delivered that promised new stadium  - much like the previous owner Milan Mandaric  - who’s now in charge of Leicester City of course. Fortunately they already have a new stadium, affectionately known as the Crisp Bowl, which seems fitting as ownership of football clubs seems like nothing more than a tit bit to these mega-rich foreign asset-collecting magnate/oligarchs.

Even at the quintessential traditionally-run club Arsenal where they’d have you believe the club is financially prudent and still under the control of the two old English families the Hill-Woods and the Bracewell Smiths, the reality is that two business behemoths from the big U’s – the US’s Stan Kroenke and the Uzbek Alisher Usmanove are fighting for overall control of the club with around 29% of the club’s shares apiece.  It can only be a matter of time until Danny Fiszman sells his critical share interest to one of these true fans of the beautiful game and then we’ll presumably see Arsenal’s admirable profits (unspent by the noble manager Arsene Wenger) repatriated to points very far East and West.

Can you give me one true example of where foreign ownership has been entirely beneficial to a major English club? It seems that Randy Lerner’s doing a really decent job of controlling Aston Villa. It’s certainly a more sophisticated operation than when deadly Doug Ellis was in control but I can’t help wondering if the club are that much further forward. Have they become more successful? It’s debatable – and is the soul of the club any stronger now? Even at Chelsea where Abramovich’s millions have delivered success domestically, there is a sense that the ultimate prizes escape the club because of their false sense of belief that it is their divine right to have them. And what if Abramovitch was to tire of the chase (and the cost!)? The club would be around half a £billion worse off than when old Ken Bates sold them to the ridiculously-roubled Roman. And having lost an estimated £3B in the recession is it likely that Abramovitch will generously write off his investment if he walked away bored, now? Would you?

I’m not making a xenophobic (or racist) point I hope but just a real concern about the way top level football in this country has been virtually highjacked by overseas profit strippers or ego merchants of the worst order. If Flavio Briatore has been banned from any future involvement in motor sport because of his deceitful and anti-sporting actions at the Singapore GP, can the football authorities here seriously continue to view him as an appropriate person to run a major London club? It kind of makes me hanker after the old-fashioned club chairmen; the local business-man with delusions of grandeur and a penchant for hiring/firing managers like Sam Longson at Derby and the much maligned but always enjoyable Peter Swales at Man City, who once sacked a poor manager for having no ‘repartee’ with the fans. Ah life was simpler then.

And to to complete this little rant how could I not  make reference to this week’s latest from Newcastle United which used to be a proud football club but thanks to the antics of the last two (home-grown!) chairmen has been turned into a marvellously entertaining circus. Wasn’t it reassuring to see former manager Kevin Keegan win his constructive dismissal case against the club and walk away with over £2m in compensation? You and I might think that’s quite a decent settlement for someone who suffered a bit of interference and delivered mediocre results. But little Kev was actually seeking more than £25m in compensation. Yes that’s right; he wanted in excess of £8m to cover the remainder of his contract plus more than £16m for ’stigma damages’. Apparently he reckoned that it would be reasonable (!!) to assume that he could realistically expect to work as a leading football manager for another 8 years at a minimum rate of £2m per year, except that his prospects had been ruined by the actions of NUFC in sacking him. I noticed that KK failed to suggest which of the leading clubs might employ his services (other than NUFC themselves I guess) and pay that kind of salary. Maybe Real Madrid Kev? You can imagine my shock when the tribunal dismissed this part of his claim out of hand.  Imagine that, a realistic decision about value in football.

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Well it’s not quite the season for  mists and mellow fruitfulness just yet but it’s definitely the time when misses (by strikers) and shallow ruthlessness (by club chairmen) strike fear in the hearts of Premiership managers. Yes the football season is only a few games old but the knives are already being sharpenned as chairmen’s sphincters start to squeak. Who’s going to be  winner of the annual race to be first manager to walk down the road clutching his P45 and £multi-million pay-off?

It’s understandable, after seeing his Portsmouth side lose their first 7 Premiership games on the trot, that Paul Hart is everyone’s favourite for the chop. After doing well last year to keep Portsmouth up, his side has been ransacked following the club’s take over by some dodgy Arab businessman who’s cashed in the club’s primary assets faster than Danielle Lloyd moves on to the next rich footballer and true ‘love of her life’. But I actually think there are a number of reasons why Hart might survive for a while yet at least;   a) he’s actually doing a decent job in the circumstances. He played no part in the sale of the club’s outstanding players and he was given a pittance in fees to recruit replacements. Despite all this the side aren’t playing bad football and have been really unlucky, from the highlights I’ve seen,  not to have drawn if not won several of their league matches b) he’s not likley to be on the highest managerial wages in the Premiership but the club’s finances are in such a state that it’s unlikely the club could afford to sack him and  make him a severance payment c) the charman looks like he knows as much about football as my auntie Betty but he’s a businessman and will be reluctant to get rid of an obvious scapegoat and put pressure back on himself by jettisoning the hapless Hart.

Before the week-end I would have put a little money on Megson losing his job as the miserable and unloved manager of the increasingly dour Bolton Wanderers. But an away-win at equally grim Birmingham City has seen the Trotters leapfrog ahead of the Blues into 13th place in the table and luckily for Megson, allowed him to keep his position for now.

My favourite for the chop is the manager for whom the words ‘ooh look at me’ could have been specially minted.  It’s Hull City’s Phil Brown of course, who this time last year was talking about taking the Tigers into the Champions League. Yeh right. Ever since Brown undermined his position of respect with the players by keeping them on the on the pitch last season to give them a half-time lambasting in full view of the crowd, they’ve barely drawn let alone won a game and they’re certs for the drop in my view. And if that piece of misplaced showmanship wasn’t bad enough, he continues to attract derision for his orange perma-tan, the dodgy leather jackets and pink sweaters worn frat boy style and, of course, for that ridiculous headset/mouthpiece he wears during matches. Just who is he talking and listening to?  I can only guess he’s asked his assistant to stand high up in the stands to comment on the game from a different perspective. It must have been fun on Saturday as Brown asked his assistant for his strategic assessment on the match with Liverpool…’Er, it’s a mess gaffer; we’ve losing 6 fuc*ing 1′. A loss against Wigan next up and I reckon Brown’s number’s up.

Best outside bet for a mutual consent departure to beat the first ruthless sacking – sadly the very admirable Gianfranco Zola at West Ham, another train crash club waiting to happen?

In the other leagues it’s hard to look beyond Paul Sturrock at Plymouth, Ipswich’s beleagured Roy Keane and that poor sap at Notts County, McParland, who is nailed on to be replaced by some  big time charlie of a manager any day now. Did I read over the week-end that Mancini was on his way to join the Sven revolution? It’ll no doubt be as successful as the  Sol Campbell experiment.

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Now those who know me well are well aware that my body shape isn’t as honed and cut as it was in my teens. Sadly that was more more than  40 years ago and time and the occasional glass of wine has added the odd inch to the waistline. Seven might be the appropriate uneven number. So I’m the last person fit to comment on somebody carrying a layer or two of surplus ‘energy’ reserves. But I feel unabashed about commenting when folks who should know better, dress in a way which not only fails to accentuate their better features but majestically succeeds, albeit unintentionally, in showcasing their chunky bits. Please step forward Miss Natalie Cassidy.

Now in case you don’t know Natalie’s  an ex-cast member of Eastenders who is appearing in the latest series of Strictly Come Dancing which started last night. Natalie’s one of these girls whose weight seems to fluctuate – when she’s on top form she’s shed it by the bucket load and somehow the paparazzi discovered her on some private beach in a skimpy bikini and took lots of flattering pictures of her which ended up on the front pages of the celebrity magazines. Incredibly this usually coincided with the release of her latest get fit video, usually entitled something profound like Natalie’s Not Fat – alie Any More, which sold (surprise, surprise) by the bucket load too.      

However it appears that Natalie has lots of those insecurity issues which just seem to afflict young soap actresses of fairly limited ability, and the pounds had a habit of piling back on again  pretty quickly. And the paparazzi were always there to take the Natalie’s Fatterly Again photos. Lots of them.

So it was a bold move for her to agree to appear on SCD where the female professional dancers have fantastically lithe figures (as indeed do most of the other female competitors and a few of the blokes too). You’d imagine she’d be totally prepared physically for the challenge. Ummn.

I couldn’t help but notice a media picture of her en route to the rehearsals a few days ago which was less than flattering. Bearing in mind this is a young woman who kind of understands how the paparazzi work, wouldn’t you imagine that she might tantalise them with a slightly more discreet outfit than this see-through leotard?

Maybe it was just an unfortunate moment I thought,  but when I watched last night’s show (where she only took part in a group dance sequence) I couldn’t believe that the show’s stylists had stuck her in the shortest outfit imaginable. To say she was carrying a bit of timber on her thighs would be kind. There’s no shame in that of course but I’m sure most women I know would choose an outfit a little less starkly revealing of their least good feature. Here’s a generous shot of the outfit:

What’s more she seemed to dance with all the grace of Ginger McCaine rather than Ginger Rogers and in an energetic  routine involving lots of lifts and twists you felt for her partner, Vincent Simone, probably the slightest of the pro dancers at 5′6″. Last year he was teamed up with  the diminutive Rachel Stevens and he’s quoted on the SCD website as saying she was ‘a dream come true’ and as a choice of partner he really ‘couldn’t have been happier’ with Rachel. There are no quotes from him  about this year’s event, surprisingly.

Well I hope he’s feeling up for it in 2009 because I’m sure he’s going to have a lot of fun exercising the biceps and triceps with the ‘multi-talented and universally-loved’ Ms Cassidy. But less might be more when it comes to exposing the flesh Natalie love. Please.

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It’s amazing the power that TV has to delight and infuriate in equal measure, and I’m not talking about the co-scheduling of X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing (though how a knackered old mule like Bruce Forsyth hasn’t been shot by now I’ll never know). But a few other things have caught my tv eye recently.

First up the sad news that one of my early tv heroes has sadly passed away. A renowned drinker and carouser with several failed marriages behind him; no it’s not that old soak Keith Floyd (who was an engaging chef but a rather nasty bit of work in private it seems). I’m not sure if many will remember but the guy I’m talking about is the great Aussie actor (if that’s not an oxymoron) Ray Barrett. He made his name in the original soap drama Emergency Ward 10 which, if I’m right, was my mum’s favourite programme in the very early 60’s. I’m not sure whether she actually liked Ray Barrett – he had a pockmarked face from childhood acne and always came across as  a gritty, hard-edged character. Just as an aside I know she did get a little doe-eyed whenever ‘Man in a Suitcase’ came on starring Bradford Dillman. This was before he became a little bloated in later years. I guess he was the sexy American equivalent to Patrick McGoohan’s Danger Man (cf James Coburn’s Derek Flint to Sean Connery’s James Bond  - good but not in the same league). What a brilliant theme tune though.

Anyway Barrett left a big impression on me in his subsequent role as globe-trotting deal-maker for a multi-national oil company in the series Mogul, which later became the Troubleshooters. I really admired his character’s worldliness and ability to clinch the great deal (often by being the last under the table). In fact I’ve been impressed by and envious of truly great salesmen, such as my dad, all my life. But  what I secretly also liked about the programme was the design of the Mogul logo which someone at the BBC had commissioned – clean, simple and impactful I thought. I guess this was the first time I’d taken an interest in such things and brand design still fascinates me. Here’s a shot of craggy Ray and that now rather dated logo (but who’d have thought a large ‘M’ could become iconic eh?):

Ray went on to become perhaps even more famous for his voice-acting work, becoming the unmistakable voice of Commander Shore who introduced the futuristic Gerry Anderson-produced puppet series ‘Stingray’ with the unforgettable words, “Stand by for action! We are about to launch Stingray….Anything can happen in the next half hour!’ It was dramatic stuff and has any kid’s programme ever opened with more thrill or panache?

To top that he became forever associated with the daddy of all TV puppet-shows, Thunderbirds, as the voices of both Thunderbird 5 astronaut John Tracy (OK not my favourite) and the show’s resident baddie, the villain known as The Hood , who was universally disliked for his glowing eyes and deep sinister voice. That was Ray my friends. Now Barrett had a long and very successful acting career when he returned to Australia but my key memories of him are firmly rooted  in those 60’s programmes. Takes you back eh, well it does me.    

Despite politicians telling us otherwise, we must still be in the middle of a recession because the second thing I’ve noticed is the plague of adverts beseeching viewers to cash in their meagre bits of jewellery box gold. There must be half a dozen firms at it including postalgold.com, gold2pounds, cashtogold and other similar-named horrors all offering exactly the same service it seems: send us your unwanted gold in our special envelopes and we’ll send you the cash equivalent in days. If you aren’t happy send the cash back and we’ll return your gold without quibble. They all claim to own their own foundries with no middle-men involved so they can all offer the keenest deals.

I don’t know why but it all seems a bit sad and faintly desperate, like walking down a road full of pawn shops with all the owners outside hassling the passing public for some trade. I don’t suppose any of those jangling envelopes might end up in the postie’s xmas tips sack rather than the smelter?  Of course not…. but I’m not sure I’d mail my gold off in the middle of a UK postal strike. 

Anyway  there’s one programme which has really grabbed me in recent months. You must have seen it; the totally engrossing  ’Come Dine With Me’. The format is incredibly simple; 5 strangers take turns to invite the other 4 guests to dinner at their homes over the space of a week and after each meal they get to score each other for the overall prize of £1000. The menus are circulated before each dinner party. On the night the hosts are encouraged to put on a bit of cheesey entertainment as well as a meal and guests are allowed to wander round bedrooms between courses etc to find those oh so amusing little personal effects. The TV guys are discreet enough not to show the bedside porno or packs of multi-flavoured johnnies or king-sized multi-ribbed vibrators etc. That said, the tv guys are clearly looking to expose the odd peccadillo and there’s as much focus on the social interaction between the guests – often looking for a saucy conversation based on the odd bedroom or wardrobe ‘find’ as on the quality of the cooking. 

There’s a celebrity version to match the enthusiastic amateurs but it’s a little predictable in my view. Who’d have thought that Roland Rivron’s a zany host or that Leslie Joseph is flirty over the dinner table or that Anneka Rice sounds like a dish, looks a dish but couldn’t cook a dish to save her life? But the reality is they are all television savvy. No the real beauty of the programme comes from watching the hapless tv virgins who aren’t aware of how their screen personna is coming across.  The best programmes are where the hosts have an inflated sense of their own cooking prowess (very occasionally it’s the nerdy geeky bloke/girl who turns out to be a surprisingly talented cook), or where the combination of personalities proves combustible.

Once in a while all the factors combine to make a truly awful social and gourmet experiment but a totally awesome televisual experience. Now I know you’re going to think I’m prejudiced but the best CDWM programmes are always the ones set in south Yorkshire. Ah my favourite source of whatever the opposite is of a humble, modest, self-deprecating personality.  

There was a recent programme where the main stand-out character was a ginger-coiffed employee of  Yorkshire Water who wondered about offering frout jouce or sowp as a starter. As with every Yorkshire male he was ultra confident that his talent would secure the main prize and we watched as he prepared a totally dreadful meal. He actually cried at its awfulness at the end of the night but this late and lame show of emotional sensitivity was derided by his hard-assed female Yorkie guests who awarded him crap points for a crap meal. Sowper stuff.

But the greatest CDWM programme was a few weeks ago involving a guy called Martin (I think) a dull middle manager whose ownership of an exciting Ferrari was just so incongruous with his boring, single, middle-aged life-style. But this was a Yorkshire special and his fellow cooking contestants were a lady of a certain age who rode very large stallions by day and wore very low tops by night. She had a thing for young Yorkshire meat which was just as well because the third contestant was a strapping young farmer. He was in his mid 20’s  and she made a drunken play for him on the first night which might have embarrassed Jodie Marsh with its subtlelty.  He escaped with barely a shirt button intact.

The 4th contestant was a nice curvy Yorkshire lass, again of a certain age, who without any sense of irony proudly announced that she ran a beauty salon. Also ‘currently unmarried’  she had a thing about animals and fell out big time with the man-eater when she cooked a meal consisting of a bird within a bird within a bird.  ’But why do you have a problem with it?’ asked the predator to the vegan. Four times the conversation took place and still she didn’t get it.

I can’t rember the the 5th person.

But our hero was Martin who was absolutely sure he’d win (as most men  and all Yorkshire blerks on the programme seem to believe). His meal was so-so OK but his table conversation was solely based on the performance stats for the Ferrari 434 (or whatever). The girls weren’t impressed and were less inclined to slip their hands into his racing undies once they discovered his hideous F1 knit wear. Probably knitted by his mom; the last woman whose breasts he’d probably seen. There was something hidden in Martin’s closet that needed to come out methinks (and it wasn’t his jumpers). He wasn’t even going to pull Miss Easy and Sleasy. 

He was just so supercillious, condescending, completely self-regarding and absorbed in his little world of yellow (!) Ferraris and of course he lost by a frigging mile.  But the dinner night was one of the great tv events in recent times. The young lad won the £1000 I think and as a double celebration managed to escape the clutches of the she-devil. 

If you ever get the chance check it out. And watch out for the moment when the guests ask Martin to prove he really owned a Ferrari. That look of ‘you-made-me-do-it-and-now-I’m-going-to-have-to-reluctantly-(sorry gleefully)-show-you -my-Ferrari’ on his face as he went to unlock the garage was just soooo blerk from t’dales. Reet belting.

pp

 
Some days things just don’t go according to plan; I had one of those last Saturday. I’d taken my Apple macbook out to Italy and connected it up with a mobile broadband connection which worked really well. However for some reason I lost the ability to open certain attachments and draft things in Word. I thought it was just a quirk of being abroad and would correct itself when we got back. But it didn’t. My son-in-law wasn’t able to resolve it so I decided to take the laptop to one of the Genius bars that they have within Apple’s stores. A friend had told me they were excellent help facilities and could cure most problems on any Apple product – mostly without charge.  It sounded just the thing.

First off it was necessary to reserve an appointment at one of the stores online. Because the car’s currently being repaired and at the garage (which is worthy of another posting) I was rather hoping to book a slot with an Apple expert at either the relatively nearby Kingston store or, if not that one, the main store on Regent St – the journey to which would be straightforward at least. But the only appointment  I could get was for 10am last Saturday morning at the Apple store in the bloody Brent Cross shopping precinct. Now for those not conversant with London store geography this is located way to the north of the centre of town out on the N Circular Rd beyond Golders Green. And we live in Staines, Middlesex close to the SW section of the M25. By car it’s about a 45 minute drive in Saturday morning traffic. By public transport it means a train journey into Waterloo and then a long trek up the northern line to Brent Cross tube station (and return of course).  With good connections I figured it would take around an hour an a half.

So early on Saturday morning off I trundled to Staines train station with my little macbook tucked in my grey (and rather gay) shoulder bag. To be honest the journey was OK – I’d read every page of my Independent newspaper en route and it was a few minutes to 10am as we pulled into Brent X station. Perfect timing. Er…not quite. I know it must sound like a mad man talking but I’d figured that I’d take the up escalator from the station and find myself stepping out into the concourse of the shopping precinct. It’s at least 20 years since I’d visited Brent X and I’d only been there in a car before but you’d expect the Underground station which serves the precinct and bears the same name, to be co-located wouldn’t you? Oh no. I exited the station to find myself somewhere in the suburbs – slap bang in the middle of rows of residential housing and no clues as to where the shopping complex lay. After a bit of a walkabout I spotted some heavy traffic at the bottom of one of the leafy roads which I figured had to be junction with the N Circular Rd. I walked briskly down to it and then could spot the complex over to my left – about three quarters of a mile away and over the other side of one of the capital’s busiest thoroughfares. Here’s the panoramic view that visitors face; pleasant eh! The shopping centre is beyond the furthest fly-over in the photo, which is about the halfway mark:

 
I walked the few hundred yards to pick up the pedestrian bridge to take me across. It was adapted for wheelchair access with shallow-rising slopes but there were no stairs so getting across the bridge required you to walk at least a quarter of a mile along the up and down slopes. At least I was on the right side of the road now. But there was more. It was now necessary to go alongside a foul-smelling drainage ditch, under two or three bleak underpasses, past a number of  upturned and abandoned shopping trollies as well as several once-pleasant houses which had been compulsorily purchased for the long-term widening scheme and were now boarded up and in ruins. I spoke to a young woman who it seemed was headed in the same direction to make sure I was taking the right route (oh how visitors to the UK must be impressed at making the visit to N London’s finest shopping facility). She confirmed that we were indeed on the main scenic route, the final bit of which required us to traverse a patch of scrubland which couldn’t have looked more like a mugger/rapist’s paradise if they’d had it designed by the Yorkshire Ripper. I was following and it must have been unnerving to hear my heavy footsteps behind her. I walked more quickly to try pass her and she almost jumped a mile as I turned to her to apologise as I drew alongside her shoulder. This was dreadful. Fortunately she was OK and the precinct was only about 250 yards away. It looked  like an oasis in an urban desert and the long day’s journey into hell and back was nearly over. Hats in the air, woo hoo!

The Apple store, of course, was at the very far end from where I entered the complex, sigh, and overall I reckon it must have been at least one mile’s hard walk  from the bloody tube station. The store was packed and I was hot and bothered and 20 minutes late for my appointment with an Apple genius. It didn’t matter because upon checking with the very pleasant concierge she informed me they were running at least half an hour late and I was third in line to be seen. Ah well she smiled sweetly as she called me Paul and apologised sincerely whilst pointing to my name on the big screen appointments list. I took a seat at the counter.

I have to say I was really impressed by the Apple crew; they were all polite, very patient and incredibly helpful sorting out all manner of seemingly difficult problems with various bits of Apple kit. I was very confident that they’d sort out my little difficulty in no time. And before long my expert came along, apologised again for the delay and asked me what the problem was. I powered up the machine and showed him the trouble opening attachments etc. I then heard the words you don’t want to hear after undertaking the Long March; ‘I’m really sorry Paul…(argh!)…the problem isn’t an Apple malfunction’. What? It seems the problem was a software issue with the Microsoft Office do dah and the Apple guys simply couldn’t do anything.

I understood perfectly and felt like I ought to be the one apologising for wasting their time. But I was still hot and bothered and now hugely disappointed and in need of a little rant at least. I couldn’t really go overboard like I normally do (check out the trip to Sicily posting) especially as they were so nice and reasonable and, well, just so Apple-pie wholesome. But I was hurting, not least because I’d just realised that I’d have to start the journey back through north London’s very own Helmand province in a few minutes. The only thing I could think of was that when I reserved an appointment online they asked for  some information on the specific problem. I rather lamely suggested that they could and maybe should have come back to me to say the problem wasn’t their responsibility, to save a wasted appointment and, you know,  save me from the trek from hell. He looked a little sheepish and apologised (again) admitting it was something they should look at. I had my little indignant victory  over the mighty corporation. 

I headed from the store and out of the ghastly complex vowing never to darken the doors to Brent Cross again. I can’t fault the Apple people at all to be honest and my good friend J has once again sorted the problem for me. But I got back home after a wasted journey lasting 4.5 hours and you can imagine my mood last Saturday. How TfL can possibly escape litigation under the Trades Description Act by calling this station ‘Brent Cross’ I’ll never know. I think they should call it something like ‘It’s the closest point in our system to the retail backwater which is Brent Cross but as it’s actually more than a mile away through a grim and desolate urban landscape, you’ll need stout boots, a can of mace to fend off the perverts and stick-up merchants and more true grit than John Wayne to brave the trek to it’ station. That’s what it ought to say on the frigging tin.

Grumpy old men? I invented the genre.

pp

Well hello again blogsite – it’s been quite a while since my last posting. We had a great (if busy) time back in our lovely home in Italy. We left there when the temperature was 38℃. And here we are back in the UK and it’s deep autumn. Sigh. 

Ok so what have we missed? Well the end of British summer time clearly (wasn’t this supposed to be the mother of all BBQ summers – ha!). And the Premiership season has already started whilst the transfer window has closed without a single posting from me. Must correct that soon. For now I can say that whilst it was a little disconcerting to realise that my team Man Utd had turned into a selling club, two items of football news have pleased me enormously. There can’t be many football fans who weren’t warmed to see that Chelsea have been found guilty of illegal transfer procedures by FIFA and have been banned from any transfer dealings until January 2011. Oh I know it’ll probably be reduced on appeal (and that Man Utd will probably be unlikely to be blameless when it comes to poaching young players) ….but it will be sooo gratifying to see one of the snakeoil twins, Kenyon or Arnesen, take the rap and say adios to life at the Bridgski. Ho, ho, ho. Secondly,  how welcome was the news that one of the Gooner divers par excellence (though nobody beats the King of the Cormorants, Robert Pires) has received a two-match European ban by EUFA for diving to win a penalty. Of course Arsenal and the Professor are enraged at the ‘flawed’ decision but can they really baulk at the ruling?  If Arsene didn’t see this one, he really does need to go see Specsavers.

What else? Well it was slightly alarming to return and find that Big Brother was still running. Has anyone really been watching this bunch of misfit wannabees? I checked in once to find some guy who looked like one of the fairground guys who collects fares on the Waltzer and makes the girls with big thighs scream by whizzing the carriage around wildly, walking around in nothing but skimpy shorts. Not a pretty sight. What a total shock to find C4 had cancelled the show eh. The thing is, tonight’s the final night of the current season and I have a horrible feeling I might not be able to resist having a sneaky look to see which of the losers wins. Sad.

Speaking of waste of spaces, I see that the porker Katona has finally been sacked from her role as the face of frozen food giants Iceland,  as news of her cocaine taking and erractic and abusive behaviour became public knowledge. Gosh you don’t say. Those folks at Iceland are sooo tuned in. Still it seems that life’s not all bad for that other Princess of Excess Katie Price. Following the unforeseen split from dopey and useless husband Pete (OMG who saw that coming?) the demur Katie has got back on that ‘horse’ and paired up with a sex-addicted cage fighter. Oh I can hear the sound of wedding bells already. The guys at Hello must be dusting down the pink carriage and the dashing white horses even as I write.

And in the wacky world of music it’s reassuring to know that Michael Jackson’s body has at last been buried. Ditto it seems the chances of Liam and Noel ever playing together again in Oasis. Never? Definitely…..maybe.  See what I did there? Hey don’t look back in anger fellahs. I’ll stop this now.

It’s good to be back.

pp