Blowing smoke

I see the good burghers of Top Gear are in trouble again. Not Jeremy Clarkson this time, but James May, for a fabricated sequence in which he's blocked in traffic by a bunch of learner drivers whilst trying to road-test a classic Ferrari. It turns out this was actually filmed more than two years ago and it was instructors, not learners, driving the cars. Was anyone surprised?

I have long been a fan of Top Gear but who still takes it seriously? As far as I can see, it's a sitcom. Any resemblance to a motoring programme past or present is purely coincidental. The presenters have become parodies of themselves: the brash, opinionated head of the household; the young, preening one; and the slow, arts-loving boffin. Even their hairstyles play along: Clarkson is clearly a man stuck in the 70s, May is a free thinker and doesn't care who knows it, Hammond could advertise grooming products. All this is blended with the petrolhead view of cars as representing freedom, far detached from the tax-motorists-till-they-bleed reality of modern Britain. Speed is king, which is why the testosterone-overloaded threesome often head to the open roads of mainland Europe to let rip in shiny supercars - that, and the consequent suntans, and possibly the opportunity to mock their own Britishness and their hosts' foreignness.

Some of the scripting is utterly brilliant. Give a medal to the man (somehow I don't think it was a woman) who wrote the lines by which Stig was introduced each week. And the imagination that lies behind some of the trio's adventures, is right up there with some of the great sitcom scenarios. The cross-channel challenge was excellent, so to the attempt to cross the Bering Sea. James May attaching a caravan to a hot air balloon? Genius. Richard Hammond building his own steam train replacement? I loved it.

My problem is that the programme too often crosses the line into clear "that's made up" territory. I haven't seen the driving lesson episode - it's among a backlog of recordings on my digital box - but recently Hammond and Clarkson filmed themselves directing the second unit of the film The Sweeney. They blew up a mobile home, destroyed several cars, argued about the finer points of traction control, crudely edited the rushes into a ridiculous chase scene (and plugged the film). They also met Ray Winstone and he had no idea who Hammond was. This is a man who, as a recent Pointless question highlighted, was The Star in a Reasonably Priced Car not so long ago. He was thus revealed as an actor, acting. This does beg the question: how many of the other "unwitting participants" in Top Gear are following instructions? Was the impressive train stunt in the India special completely fabricated? Is any of it real? I suspect the answer is that, like many great (and some dire) comedies it is improvised to a loose script, not spontaneous and uncontrolled as they would have us believe.

James May sells us a vision of freedom and ends up constrained, as part of a humorous construct? That seems an apt metaphor for Top Gear itself. Stop thinking so deeply about it, people; just sit back and enjoy the insults and the tyre smoke.

The soundtrack to my life

I have a confession to make: I used to be a fan of Michael Bolton. In my defence, I was a teenager and Soul Provider was a classic soft-rock album. On the scale of crimes against good taste, I'm someone who delinquently nicked a few sweets from the corner shop, not a bank robber.

This guilty secret came back to me while I was waiting for a Sunday roast in the pub yesterday. Over the muzak dispenser came the unmistakeable strains (in more ways than one) of the classic "How am I Supposed to Live Without You". Somewhere in the back of my mind it stirred an anguish. You might think that as I leave a broken marriage I would naturally be moved by such a heart- (and ear-) rending song, but the lyrics are clearly about unrequited longing. That is much more a teenage experience and I know that at some point this particular song meant a great deal to me. But I couldn't recall at whom my particular unrequited longing was directed. It set me thinking – and service was so slow, I had plenty of time to think.

I’m not a great music lover. There are things I enjoy listening to but I don’t need a constant background sound. Nonetheless I realised during my lunchtime reverie that certain tunes are very meaningful to me. I can never hear “Thank You for the Music” without thinking back to a mundane childhood memory of sitting on the landing while Mum cleaned the bathroom; she must have had the radio on and it just stuck. My German exchange partner loved A-ha and “Take On Me” evokes homesickness in a crammed bedroom in the Ruhr. “It’ll Be Lonely This Christmas”, apart from being surely the most miserable festive song ever, always reminds me of a desperately awkward time in my life, when I wanted to be with someone who I knew didn’t want me. Many years have passed but I don’t think I will ever hear that song without a twinge of sadness.

“When You Say Nothing At All” takes me back to the funeral of my brother’s best friend, who died in a car accident before he’d really lived. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house when that was played – and not just because it was the Ronan Keating version. I’ve had the song on my iPod more recently; I must be mental. On a happier note, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba puts a smile on my face every time I hear it. The stadium DJ played it straight after Gillingham beat Wigan in the 2000 play-off final and it was an inspired choice. “I get knocked down but I get up again/You ain’t never gonna keep me down” caught perfectly the mood of the fans that day, a year after heartbreaking defeat to Manchester City. Elation, exhilaration, defiance – the occasion feels like yesterday.

While I was lost in memories in the pub, Mr Bolton faded away to be replaced by Jon Bon Jovi singing “Bed of Roses”. It was an incredible coincidence, because this is a song that’s very much in the present: it was being played by a covers band at the very moment when I realised my marriage was over. Doubly cruel is that it has long been one of my favourite songs, by one of my favourite bands.

Sarah and I got together partly because of a shared love of Bon Jovi - I lent her my Slippery When Wet album and accidentally got her attention. Any similarity between the long-term survival prospects of a cassette tape and our marriage is entirely coincidental. One of the last really good nights we had together was watching Jon and his crew at the O2, and so for "Bed of Roses" to wrap it up was probably fitting.

I am now in search of a song to reflect the next stage of my life. These lyrics seem apt:

Gonna break from these chains around me
Gonna learn to fly again
May be hard, may be hard
But I'll do it
When I'm back on my feet again
Soon these tears will all be dryin'
Soon these eyes will see the sun
Might take time, might take time
But I'll see it
When I'm back on my feet again

Dare I admit they are from a song by, er, Michael Bolton? 

I wonder why

First things first, I'd like to wish a Happy New Year to both my readers.

Today, like Curtis Stigers, I've been doing a lot of wondering why. Here are a few of the things I've been wondering...

Why people think the stairs at London Bridge station in rush hour are a suitable place for a friendly natter.
Why any man would consider even for a second that jeans with elasticated bottoms could be a fashion worth adopting.
Why Ruth Jones has gone blonde for her new TV series.
Why the Shard was built.
Why Essex is The Only Way and why no one has yet thought of another way.
Why the brunette who I used to see on the train every day is no longer there to brighten up my evenings.
Why my front door lock is working perfectly again now the weather is milder, after keeping me outside for five freezing minutes at the weekend.
Why trains on the northern branch of the Kent Coast line take 10 minutes longer on the journey out of London than the journey in; and apparently take longer than they did before the Second World War.
Why I wasted three minutes of my life trying to recognise the participants of "Celebrity" Big Brother last night.
Why mango smells like cat urine.

Answers on a postcard please, or failing that the comments section at the bottom.

Why the beautiful game is still beautiful

Almost 30 years after I saw my first live match, I probably ought to have got over my love of football. It just hasn’t happened though. All through my life the "beautiful game" has been there, in the foreground as much as the background. I vividly remember the excitement of Friday afternoon shopping at the Co-op because it meant more cut-out cards for the 1982 World Cup album, and shortly after that Panini stickers entered my life. Then I became an avid reader of Shoot! magazine. When I wasn’t fortunate enough to go to a match, Saturday afternoon was about “guess the goals” competitions and score updates on local radio.


Pre-puberty I didn’t have an imaginary friend, I had an entire imaginary football league complete with hand-drawn squad posters, a carefully-typed magazine whose pictures were traced from real-life action shots; and an Amstrad Basic computer program for calculating results. I dripped on my exercise books after sweaty kickarounds in the junior-school playground. I also played occasionally and haplessly in goal for school teams until the move to 8’ goalposts added a decisive lack of height to my long list of weaknesses. As a teenager I spent hours on coaches visiting a few thousand grass-and-concrete square yards of England’s less impressive provincial towns and accumulated books full of notes, lineups and match reports from games I saw live or on TV. I collected probably hundreds of matchday programmes and eventually (briefly) had a job producing one. Many mementos have been discarded over the years but a pictorial record of the Mexico World Cup remains one of my favourite books, alongside a history of Gillingham FC which is worth more than ten times what I paid for it.


I still find myself distracted by under-10s matches when I’m supposed to be supervising my sons in the park and if there’s a game on TV I’ll watch it, even Spurs’ C team in the Europa League. It’s crazy. Everyone knows that football is rotten pretty much from top to bottom. This isn’t new, just more prominent than before. FIFA executives have been taking backhanders (allegedly) for decades. In the '80s stadia were decrepit, full of thugs in and out of police uniform. Now they are more family-friendly, if families aren’t priced out. Cynical fouls, fixed matches, robotic referees, trigger-happy chairmen and ranting autocratic owners were ever thus; even the oligarchic Premier League and its TV-controlled scheduling is now old hat. On top of that we have inarticulate, respectless, mercenary millionaires shagging and swearing their way from the back to the front pages. And raving, win-at-any-cost parents standing on the Sunday-morning touchlines aspiring for their sons to follow in their tabloided footsteps – the millionaire part at least. And inane barracking from the stands. (Mercifully racism has been banished but wit also seems to have gone; I hope that’s a coincidence.) But every now and again something happens in football to warm the soul – and I’m not thinking only about Gillingham’s three victories in seven-goal thrillers this season.


Two weeks ago the Doncaster Rovers striker Billy Sharp lost his two-day-old son Louis. After missing one game, he wanted to play against Middlesbrough, was made captain and scored early in the game with a brilliant volley. At that point he revealed a T-shirt tribute to his son. Normally that would have brought him a booking but the referee overlooked it. Either he was human or, more likely, with tears in his eyes he couldn’t find his pencil. Last Saturday Sharp played away at Ipswich, who twice tried to sign him in the summer. He scored again to give Doncaster a 2-0 lead and wreck the home fans’ hopes of winning a crucial game. Yet those same fans’ response was not abuse, but an immediate standing ovation for Sharp as he celebrated the goal. And that moment when thousands engage spontaneously in appreciation of something more important than the result, is why I still love football.

Dale Farm - a question of semantics

Sky News ran a poll today:

Should the Dale Farm travellers be forcefully evicted?

The results were perhaps unsurprising: 92% Yes, 8% No.

What I found more interesting was the wording of the question. Most coverage of this story has talked about "forcible" evictions. According to an online dictionary, forcible means "done or effected by force: forcible entry into a house" while forceful means "full of force; powerful; vigorous; effective". To me, forceful implies a degree of force beyond that which is strictly necessary to achieve the goal. I wonder whether Sky's choice of word was accidental or deliberate - and whether the 92% of respondents were actually enthused by the idea of police and bailiffs going just a bit too far.

Of course, the more obvious semantic question about the whole story is why these people label themselves travellers but want to stay put. Unfortunately I'm about the two millionth person to pose the question and no one has yet managed to answer it.

Booze, part 2

Speaking as the person who usually sticks with soft drinks at parties, I was interested to see this article on the BBC website yesterday. An eminent anthropologist suggests that many of the behaviours associated with alcohol are nothing to do with the physical effects but the result of personal or social expectations around drinking.

This comes as no surprise to me. I've long believed that in many cases inebriation is more psychological than physical. Of course balance, reaction times and the like are impaired; you won't catch me arguing that it's safe to drive or perform open-heart surgery when under the influence of alcohol. But there's nothing in a bottle to make someone become verbally or physically aggressive, jump into bed with a stranger, or do any of the other things that tend to be explained away with "I'd had a few drinks". I'm convinced that what really happens is the drinker sees an opportunity to act outside established social norms without having to take full responsibility, because society has allowed alcohol to be an acceptable scapegoat.

I know a person who when drinking becomes argumentative, opinionated, generally obnoxious. From the very first sip. This behaviour wouldn't be considered acceptable in many other countries where drinking is just as deeply ingrained. In Spain and Italy for example, many people drink a large amount over the course of a week but it isn't seen as extraordinary and doesn't lead to extremes of behaviour. Try convincing a magistrate there that it wasn't your fault, it was the drink. I suspect you wouldn't get far.

Alcohol is a depressant yet we're told some people become dependent, which seems a strange state of affairs. I can understand addiction to a stimulant, but how often do you hear someone say "I had to take more and more to get the same low"? I suspect that alcohol addiction is more about freedom from social norms than anything physical. And maybe there are others out there like me, who can enjoy the taste of a drink without turning into lager louts.

So, back to the subject of alcohol on the coach. Perhaps these secret G&T drinkers aren't bound to misbehave and it's all a storm in an Irish coffee cup.

Booze, part 1

Earlier this week I received an email from my coach company:

It has been reported ... that alcohol is being consumed on a number of the commuters coaches on both the morning and evening journeys.

And that's just the drivers. Boom-tish.

The email warned that anyone found drinking may be thrown out at the next stop. But what caught my eye was the word morning. Although it's not my cup of tea, I can understand a tinny to unwind on the way home from work - and on what I call the party coach there's certainly a pub-like atmosphere at times, with or without booze. But really, if you need a drink before you even get to work, it's time to look for another job, or some help.