Eat Some More

Feeling good about yourself? No, didn't think so. Why would you? You probably think you're fat, or have a wonky face, or something else that is likely not to be true. This doesn't stop you thinking it though does it, and that is your right. Your priviledge. We are the free, and we celebrate our freedom with self-loathing. Hooray for how awful we think we are.

Channel 4 knows this, and strives to show us how much worse we could look. One example of this is 'Supersize Vs Super Skinny'. In this series, unsurprisingly, we compare the eating habits of a very fat person and a very thin person. Perish the thought that it's for the freak show value, that would be cruel, we are only comparing them to show that the fat one doesn't have to have their portions airlifted into their garden, and the thin one can...well...eat. It's presented by two people, one the kind of faceless presenter who may have done a property programme, been a Loose Woman, read the news, anything really, but as she has no discernable features it's hard to say. The other is Julian Sands lookalike Dr Christian Jessen, whom you may recognise from Channel 4's 'Embarassing Bodies' in which he reassures people with anal warts (or as I once heard them referred, 'speed bumps') that they just need some ointment and a bit of patience. He has a face (albeit someone elses) so we can listen to what he says without wondering if he was hatched from his pod prematurely.

In the most recent episode we compare a 'put the fork down' 27 stone DJ called Keith, and a 'risks blowing away' 6 stone poppet by the name of Tiffany (I should point out that for reasons best known to themselves, the Channel 4 website has increased her weight to 7 stone and his to 30). Keith is the kind of fat man that the word 'jolly' was invented for. He has legs like prehistoric oaks and forearms that look like they ought to be carved, crammed into a pitta and fed to drunks beneath chilli sauce, but has yet to suffer the inevitable leg-ulcers, heart disease, diabetes and eventual harpooning that comes as part of travelling the road more wobblesome. Instead he cheerily accepts that he needs to change, punctuating every sentence with hohos worthy of Father Christmas and wobbling his belly like a bowl full of jelly. His main problem seems to be that he works odd hours as a DJ, and is therefore forced to eat large quantities of fish and chips at 4am. I'm not entirely sure of his logic here, but he chuckled so it must be solid. Tiffany's problem is that she feels she is too busy to eat so only eats a couple of spoons of cornflakes then spends the rest of the day guzzling Red Bull. She is roughly the same height as Nick Nack so only needs to gain a stone or two in order to be a healthy weight. Keith on the other hand needs to literally halve himself, then keep going for two more stone.

The programme rolls toward a predictable conclusion, ending up with weight-loss/gain followed by happiness and cuddles. The fun aspect is in the 'versus' sections, where the featured supers swap eating habits. Keith stares despondantly at the two spoons of Shepherds Pie he has for his dinner, whilst Tiffany is dwarfed by a mound of chicken chow mein so tall it ought to have snow at its peak. My favourite moment was Keith openly salivating when he tells her, "scoop some on the prawn cracker...yeah...and have some sauce too...isn't that good? Ooh yes". He couldn't have been more obviously aroused if he had dropped his trousers, heaved up his stomach and masturbated onto the tablecloth.
"How long would it take you to eat all this?" tweets Tiffany,
"Er...a portion that size about five or six minutes" chortles Keith apologetically.

Concerned that the change of diet may not be enough to make Keith take himself in hand, Dr Sands takes him to watch a stomach-stapling operation. This seems to have the desired effect as, noticeabley upset by the drastic nature of the surgery, Keith resolves to make the life change. Not for himself, but for his six year-old daughter.
"My daughter is the light of my life" he says. At which point we cut to...no, not his daughter as you may think logical, we actually cut to earlier footage of Keith in a chip shop troweling deep-fried spud into his chops like he has a gun to his head. An unusual choice of edit, to be sure.

Now I love a freak show, but has my enthusiasm for pointing made these programme-makers lackadaisical? It seems impossible for modern documentaries to treat the subject of fat folk in a serious manner for longer than two minutes without reverting to stock footage of them waddling into a cafe and wheezily ordering two fried breakfasts as they tentatively lower themselves onto a double seat, or taking an hour to pick a pencil from the floor with their sausage fingers. An even lazier technique is the soundtrack. You could be forgiven for thinking that as soon as you reach 18 stone a small brass band appears on your doorstep and informs you that they will be following you, providing a soundtrack to your daily life until you lose weight. You feel obliged to invite them in and offer them a cup of tea, sighing as the tuba smugly parps your every footstep.

A bit like how Chris Martin follows you around incessantly warbling his wrist-cutting hit 'Yellow' if you suffer from depression and have private medical insurance.

Genocidal Tendencies

As with all sensible people, I am scared of spiders. Anyone that snorts ‘they are more scared of you than you are of them’, is quite frankly underestimating the level of fear that a human is capable of. We have created the technology to push ourselves beyond our planet’s atmosphere, shedding the chains of gravity and alighting on a lump of orbiting rock 238,857 miles from the nearest Tesco, are they honestly suggesting that our minds are incapable of competing? I’m not convinced.

The trouble with warm weather is that windows are flung open and forgotten about. You may as well advertise your property as an arachnid guest house. A few weeks ago I was sat on my sofa when a spider the size of a baby’s fist strutted in, posturing peacock-like.
“Alright” it said, nodding at my housemate and I.
“F***ing hell!” I yelped, my feet shattering the sound-barrier as they flew underneath me.
“What?” said my housemate.
Dribbling, I gesticulated at the cocky crawler.
“Oh don’t be a pussy” she said, popped a glass over it and slid a sheet of paper underneath. This is a popular method of catching a spider, placing a glass over it, sliding a piece of card beneath then taking it outside and disposing of it. That is, sliding a piece of card. Not paper. Card is rigid. Paper is not.

I smelled danger.

No sooner had she raised the glass that the paper buckled and the spider burst forth, shaking it’s fists and running directly…at…me.

“I’m coming for you!” it yelled, eyes burning with fires of hate fanned by self-loathing.

I knew I had to act, else I live out my days being steadily drained of life, trussed up in the rafters of our garage. I raised a Pythonesque foot high, and brought it down upon its charging form. I collapsed back on the sofa, and wept.

Ok I didn’t weep, but I did pant a bit. This experience was a book-token compared to the white-hot-poker-to-the-eye fright that yesterday morning brought me however, when, having stepped out of the shower I toweled myself off and pulled on my dressing-gown...

Something tickled my jawline, just below my ear.

I looked in the mirror.

A spider was sat on my shoulder stretching its arms and rubbing the sleep out of its eight-eyes.

“Morning” it said.

Now I have considered how to accurately represent the noise I made, however I have found myself at a loss. It wasn’t really high-pitched enough to qualify as a squeal or a scream, but it wasn’t deep enough to be a yell or a shout. It was essentially the noise you make if your jaw drops, your vocal folds tense and all the air in your body rushes out within half a second. Basically, “UH!” laced with more surprise than if Richard Dawkins found himself at the pearly gates.

My arms flailed and I swiped my towel at my shoulder with one hand whilst trying to shed the dressing gown with the other. With an audible ‘ptt’ the spider fell to the floor tiles and I stood pressed against the wall waiting for it to make its move. But it didn’t, it just sat there. Plotting. Time was clearly of the essence, so I opened the door and padded pathetically into the living room where a recently roused housemate was perched.

“What’s going on?” she said before cocking her head slightly to one side as a school nurse may do when asking ‘do you want me to call your mummy?’, and added “was it a spider?”

Nodding I pointed into the bathroom and in she went, a yawning Beowulf heading to the hills to do battle with a scuttling Grendel. I remain in her debt.

To exist in a world riddled with eight-legged peril is tricky. In the past I have purchased a battery-powered spider catcher, a sort of tubular vacuum cleaner, the idea of which being that you point the tube at the offending creature, press a button and an integrated fan sucks it off the wall and into a tube. You can then dispose of it outside, ‘humanely’. The trouble is, the fan was so feeble all it would succeed in doing is messing up the spider’s hair, which just pisses it off so it runs at you like a psychopath. This didn’t quite match the high-hope I had of it flying from the wall and landing headfirst on a honed steel fan, dicing it to marmite like a gremlin in a liquidizer. I have since bought one with a sliding trapdoor which has proved slightly more successful, although invariably a spindly leg gets caught by the mechanism and the horror contained within starts pushing the door open like a Jehovah’s Witness.

More afraid of me than I am of them?

"Doubtful" I yell, as an army of arachnids chase me over the horizon like the Pied Piper on a bad day, "very doubtful".

Smear today, gone tomorrow

Reading an interview with the fragrant Sugababes on The Guardian website, my interest was raised when they spoke about performing at Jade Goody's wedding:

"She had a wish list of things she wanted, and she asked us to perform," [Keisha...the black one]Buchanan says. "I'll never forget, we were performing, and she whispered to me, 'Can I come up there with you?' And she did, and so did [Goody's twattish husband] Jack... It made me go and get a smear test afterwards".

Now I'm no doctor, but even I know you can't catch cancer by standing next to a sufferer. Besides, surely there were kits on the reception tables?

Dusty Births

I was very excited to see a trailer on the tellybox last night for a programme about old Mums. Very old Mums. Mums that are in fact so old that they look like someone has discovered a way to allow babies to suckle on corpses.

The trailer first drops the bombshell that across the globe, "women as old as seventy are giving birth..." and then raises the question upon which I suspect the documentary hinges: can you be too old to be a Mum?

I'm no expert of course, but I would suggest that if the baby is being delivered on an episode of 'Time Team', then yes you might just be.

"I'll be your dog"

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: pets are great. Dogs are especially great since they actually care about you. Old ladies may sit and chuckle to themselves about the bond they have between themselves and 10 year-old Tiddles, but they are sadly deluded. In their dusty mind Tiddles is a warm, affectionate, loving companion who is never happiest than when she is cuddling up to her blue-rinsed owner. The knowledge that, to Tiddles, the tittering heap of knitwear is little more than a slow moving cat-food dispenser, is knowledge that waits at the entrance of her mind but has yet to be allowed in. It’s probably wearing trainers, so entry is anything but likely.

Dogs on the other had, are brilliant. We’ve all seen homeless people on the streets of London or Brighton, wearing grubby rags, clearly surviving on bin-scraps, and with a dog sat nobly beside them. It is fair to say that this is a dog that has a pretty shit life compared to, say, Lassie. Does it care? No. There he sits next to his snoring cider soaked partner, blinking apologetically for the rapidly expanding puddle of piss that passers by are huffily vaulting. “I’m sorry about my friend, he’s had a run of bad luck. He’ll be back on his feet soon enough though, just you wait” he says through watery eyes formed of rich loyal chocolate. A cat would have given him a golden shower, scratched his eyes out and sold them for catnip.

No surprise then that a Bristol Family are so keen for their runaway dog to come home, they’ve been peeing in the street. Not through distress-induced leakage, but through legitimate luring techniques. Techniques learned from a website I might add, so there is no doubting their validity. “It’s quite a normal way of doing it” said the Mum. Of course it is, you lose your dog you spray the drive with your first leak of the day. It’s obvious. “You just put a little bit in a bottle and then top it up with water” she goes on, confusing the contents of her bladder with the contents of a Kia-Ora bottle.

“You only have to do it once.”

Ok, maybe it’s not so bad.

“We've left two trails.”

Oh. Maths not as good as her research skills then.

Phil them up

It is a mixed blessing to be an actress on Eastenders, as it is only a matter of time before you have to snog Phil Mitchell. Like retarded moths their characters flap towards his glowing maw, an uninviting pothole in a ridiculous red light-bulb head that looks like it belongs hanging upside down in a prostitute's window rather than perched atop his lumbering thumbs-in-pockets body, squeezing air through its non-lips so he whispers like a sex pest. There it could hang, cheerlessly gurning down at her customers as they grimly thrust away their self-respect.

They are too far down this bumpy track to stop now, they have made their 'he's irresistable to every no-tail that drifts into the Vic' bed and now they must lie in it. But why did they even buy the sheets? Is it so that we ugly blokes can watch him munching through the faces of various underwear-clad FHM fodder and think "cor, if he can get a girl like that there is hope for me yet"? This is otherwise known as the Ron Jeremy theory. More convincing is the fact that he came into the show with his bruv, Grant Mitchell (played by Ross Kemp, Karl Pilkington's well built twin) and Phil was the more attractive romantic interest for the Albert Square ladies. But this was simply because he was the less psychotic of the two. Is that really how women choose their partners, on a least-worst basis?

'Was' is actually the key word here. You see, whilst Grant was plain old fashioned 'squadie can't handle being home from the war' mental, Phil had a lovely drink problem written for him. Every now and again the plot-lines will dry up and the writers will dust off the 'Phil falls off the wagon' story. That's the good thing about addiction, it's always there for you in times of trouble.

I love a soap alcoholic, partly because it invariably opens up the inner-ham in the relevant actor and we can enjoy their attempts to channel Oliver Reed's 'Wild One' appearance on Aspel and Co for a few minutes - special mention must go to The Bill's Jim Carver for providing a particularly delightful example of this. It is also partly because of the predictability of it all. No sooner has the wagon lightened its load but out comes the Smirnoff bottle full of tap-water or the Bells full of apple juice (depending upon budget). There will also be some ill-advised romantic entanglements. Which brings us back to Phil. During his most recent wagon-departure Mr Mitchell willingly stumbled down the dusty track of Queen Crow Shirley Carter.

Ouch.

Now sober he is currently laying siege to the sugar walls of lovely Dawn Swann. If ever one were required, you would struggle to find a better arguement for sobriety.

Sadly the actress who plays Ms Swann is due to be written out of the programme later this year. Presumably through having vomited herself inside out.

There's Something in the Water

I am currently on holiday. Well, actually I'm not any more. By now I will have returned home and uttered the phrase "very nice thanks" seventeen or eighteen times. But that's a future now. 'Now' is elastic like that. My current now involves me camping in Wiltshire, sat in my tent with a can of warm lager perched precariously on a beach towel in case of spillage.



See? Truth be told, it's not been much of a holiday for that towel, when it isn't braced for saturation it forms the basis of my pillow. I pity its return to the other towels.
"Alright Tattystripes, how was Wiltshire?"
"Which part, the mopping up of beer or the being squashed beneath a fat bloke's sweaty cranium for eight hours?"
It doesn't sound so bad now I look at it. Do you notice the can's white backdrop? That's the flyscreen. It's far too hot to zip the tent's main door shut. This is the first time I've slept in such a way and I've noticed that it provides both the benefit of allowing air to circulate about my nocturnal perspirations, but also imbues the camping with a (admittedly, small) sense of bold adventure. After all, there is mere netting between my slumbering heap of self and the horrors of the outside world. It's either 'bold adventure' or 'naked vulnerability', I forget which.

For a lot of people their main camping experience is as a (relatively) economical way of attending festivals, primarily because it gives you a base at which to leave both your clean clothes and any foolish intention towards clean living that may have stowed away in your rucsac. Of course, the festival cliche that sends many running to the hills is the distressing state that one may find the toilet facilities. A benefit of regulated campsites (such as the one upon which I currently find myself) is that bathroom terrors are rare. They are cleaned/fumigated/cleansed by fire every day so they can be used with some degree of justified optimism, unlike festival loos whose doors must be opened with trepidation, the knowledge that unpleasantness may lurk within that is so unspeakable as to force you to question the humanity and self respect of the previous resident. And make you poo behind a hedge instead.

Being a biologically functioning human who lacks a desire for floating teeth, I visted the campsite facilities earlier today (by 'today', I refer you back the previous discussion of 'now') and felt my heart sink as I followed a fellow camper through the door. "Balls" thought I, with the knowledge that there are only two urinals, "I'll have to use a cubicle". You see, urinals are complicated numerically. A single is fine, as are three or more, but two is horrible when they are both occupied. There's a feeling of teamwork that hangs between you which I'm not particularly comfortable with. It's like you've become Brothers in Piss. A manly nod is exchanged as if to say 'we're here to do the same job, together we can get this done [zzzip]', an acknowledgment which I would rather not be involved in. Therefore, to avoid sharing another man's hosedown, I dart into a cubicle. Locking the door, I raise the seat. I am confronted by something that resembles the decomposing thigh of a black bodybuilder. I shut the lid immediately, retching quietly to myself and wondering why there was no blood. Surely noone could birth something like that without splitting themselves in two? Disgusted, quizzical, and still needing a wee, I decamp to the next cubicle and shut the door.

I almost open it again to check whether I actually moved.

It is exactly the same, like someone has clumsily parked a brown camper van at a jaunty angle at the base of the u-bend, the owner having snorkelled off to phone the AA. Escaping again I find that within each of the five cubicles lurks a monstrous water-logged torpedo, each more intimidating than the last. This was ridiculous. Had a family of lumberjacks brought their work on holiday with them? I felt like a lion tamer realising he's out of his depth, realising that a whip and a chair won't come close to defending against the advancing horde of drooling beasts, eyes blazing with vindictive hunger and teeth glistening in perilous moonlight. Eventually, with a sense of grim resignation hanging on my shoulders like a drab overcoat you are obliged to wear because it cost your auntie a week's pension, I return to the first cubicle, lair of the smallest bowel-evacuee, taking care to fill the bowl with a large quanity of toilet tissue. If I had to share a room with it, at least I didn't have to look at it. I pulled the lever allowing the cistern to empty and vacated the cubicle to wash my hands. I'm certain that, as I left, I could hear a gurgly voice growl after me.

"I'm still here you fucker."