February 2008 Archives

I am hoping to interview Chris Rea in the next few days prior to his concert in Birmingham next month so if anybody has any questions they would like to ask I will try to slip them in.

I only want sensible questions though, none of your green Biro stuff or stuff you can find with a five minute search on the internet.

His new release, The Return Of The Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes, is pretty good by the way. Three CDs made to look like old 78s or 45s in a substantial, well designed 50s style book. You get a CD of The Delmonts, a late 50s guitar band who evolve through the 60s into the Hofner Bluenotes on the next two CDs. All Chris Rea of course but great fun and with some quality tracks and not a filler in sight. All in all it is really classy package and provides some good listening.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Sir Richard Knowles. For years in the 70s and early 80s I was the Post Municipal man dealing with him on an almost daily basis. He was gruff, outspoken, fun, honest and above all, he was a gentleman.

His description of the new wave of Labour activist coming through among university lecturers and professionals rather than the traditional routes of party worker, shop floor or unions has stuck with me for more than 30 years. He dismissed them as "parlour Bolsheviks".

May you rest in peace, comrade, you deserve it.

What is this problem people have in distinguishing between trolleys and baskets and counting up to 10 in supermarkets - apart from the fact they don't see why they should queue with the peasants when there is a fast checkout available?

If the sign says baskets only and your basket is waist high with wheels and you push it, then the chances are it does not mean you.

Equally signs which say 10 items or fewer do not mean give or take a couple of dozen bits of shopping or alternatively whatever you can fit in a basket, including those on wheels. Ten is fairly specific and probably selected as it is easy for most people to manage.

If in doubt, if you get beyond the fingers and thumbs on both hands when you count your items then, unless you have suffered amputation in some terrible accident or have extra digits as a result of inbreeding, the chances are you have too many items and should join a regular queue.

Perhaps the reason they are fast checkouts could be because only people with baskets or 10 items or fewer use them - just a thought.

I went to review Paul Potts at Symphony Hall this week so first did a trawl of the internet for some background on the lad.

It was a bit of a shock. I just could not believe the vitriol out there from some of opera's very own republican guard. Potts' cultural crime, apparently, is to dare to sing opera when he is neither the next Pavarotti nor someone who can point to two decades of voice training under some Italian singing maestro while living in a garret above La Scala. Get a life.

Potts seems a nice, very ordinary bloke who can sing better than most of us and people want to listen to him. He had a bit of good fortune and is enjoying every minute of it. Good luck to him.

New Labour, I see, is considering ethnic minority only shortlists for winnable seats.

I just wonder when our politicians and their meddling advisors will finally realise that there is no such thing as positive discrimination?

If one particular group is favoured over another then that is discrimination, plain and simple. It is unfair, causes resentment and no matter how you dress it up, there is nothing whatsoever positive about it.

Even the winners lose because even if they are the best the world has ever known no one ever believes they got the job on merit or ability.

I see President Bush is calling on Zimbabwe to have free and fair elections next month. Sadly there is slightly more chance of this year's FA Cup Final being played on the moon between Blues and Villa than free and fair elections in that strife-torn land.

Still it was a nice try George and you can always point President Mugabe in the direction of Florida in the 2000 Presidential election as an example of what you mean.

Anyone noticed that YouTube seems to be awash with party political broadcasts being churned out from the Ministry of Truth at Downing Street at the moment? Either that or it is a very dull and remarkably unfunny group of impressionists.

Wisely the powers that be in Whitehall have disabled comments - too much like a referendum I suppose if the people are allowed to have their say.

But, if you want to add your two pennyworth, good or bad, to whatever Downing Street are selling us, feel free to post it here - just think of me as your equal opportunities blogger.

I see former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the man who drafted the EU Constitution we now have to pretend is really a treaty, wants a latter day George Washington to be the first fixed EU President under the treaty that isn't a constitution. Front runner it seems is our own Tony Blair.

Presumably this is a different George Washington to the one that said:"I cannot tell a lie".

A curse on all zip manufacturers. I am doing my bit for amateur dramatics with Vesey Players in Sutton Coldfield this week in the role of the tragic heroine Widow Twanky in that multi-cultural melodrama Aladdin.

At one point I flounce off, rather well I might say, and have 30 seconds to get back on in a new wig and flash dress. With the new frock on, wig in place and, on stage, the sentence that ends in my cue line already started the helpful dresser announces: "The zip's bust".

There is a certain challenge to completing a scene without turning around, holding up a rather heavy, multi-layered frock and trying to control balloon boobs which are determined to escape - oh and remember the odd line at the same time.

What have we let them do to our bacon?

Once was that frying bacon left you with tasty fat to first fry eggs and then bread for a full English.

Now even good quality bacon shrinks to an apologetic, insipid pink and oozes some unidentifiable white puss along with gallons of milky water once it hits the pan leaving you with more of a boil-up than a fry-up.

Don't give me any cobblers about cholesterol and healthy eating or, as one supermarket told me with a straight face, that added water makes the bacon more succulent and customers prefer it.

The water is only there for one reason - it is a lot cheaper for manufacturers and supermarkets than bacon and they are more than happy to charge you £3.50 a pound or whatever for what comes out of the tap.