When I read this piece on the BBC website this morning, I thought it was incoherent and inadequately sourced. It quotes Michael McMahon of Nuffield Health, but offers no link to the interview or article in which he says what’s quoted. It says “Researchers found” and “The survey of over 2,000 individuals” without telling us which researchers and which survey. Without context, it’s impossible to hold Professor McMahon’s argument up to the light.
I forgot about it. Then, a couple of hours later, my friend Michael (who, if it matters, is as thin as a whippet) posted a link to the story on Facebook with the comment “Is it just me, or is this utter balls?” After a little discussion it was clear that it wasn’t just the rubbish reporting he objected to, but the hypothesis itself – which, if I’m reading aright, is that the presence of funny and talented fat people on TV makes it more acceptable to be fat.
Another commenter talked of fatism and ostracism. Another mentioned Friar Tuck, Fatty Arbuckle and Hattie Jacques. This story clearly irked some of my friends (and their friends).
There are a lot of factors that can reduce one’s life expectancy and quality of life. Three of them are achondroplasia, obesity and smoking. Achondroplasia, apparently, takes ten years off one’s life expectancy. And, obviously, there are difficulties involved in being a different size from the average. Of course, nobody lectures people with achondroplasia for being small. It’s not a lifestyle choice. It’s genetic. And media representations of dwarfs and midgets ought to be better – people are people first and foremost.
Smokers (I used to be one) are fools. Nobody is born a smoker. People choose to be smokers, and it is perfectly acceptable to point at them and laugh. Although if you love them you’re more likely to cry yourself to sleep. The media doesn’t glamourise smoking any more. The days when Bette and Bogart made smoking look cool are long gone.
So what about the fatties? McMahon, apparently (damn that stupid BBC post with no fucking links!) says that “fat stars are seen as role models, helping to make being overweight acceptable.” This is tricky because it’s not clear cut. On the one hand, people such as James Corden or Dawn French can make people who are overweight feel more assured about themselves (nothing new in this – William Conrad blazed that trail as Frank Cannon back in the Seventies). On the other hand, obesity is bad for your health and life expectancy. But it’s not like achondroplasia, and it’s not like smoking. Fat people aren’t necessarily fat because of their genes, and are not necessarily fat because they emulate that guy off Gavin and Stacey.
It doesn’t take long to walk the length of Royal Avenue. But if you stop to take a picture of every sign announcing retail and/or office space to let, it slows you down a bit.
[Something I wrote a while ago for Kabosh Theatre Co for a Titanic commemoration event. Character is a bored tour guide. Time: 2012]
Spirit of Harmony
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board for our Titanic Centenary tour. On this site just over a hundred years ago the White Star Liner R.M.S. Titanic was launched from Slip number three. She was 882 feet eight inches long and ninety-two feet wide. She had two steam reciprocating engines and one turbine engine, with a total horsepower of 51,000. She had 24 double ended boilers and 5 single ended boilers, for a total of 159 furnaces. The Titanic carried twenty lifeboats plus 3560 life belts and 49 life buoys. She also had a swimming pool, the first on a ship, plus a Turkish bath and a squash court.
The hull shell plating on Titanic was 1″ thick. The anchors weighed 31 tons in total. Over three million rivets were used in the construction of the ship, not counting six that were thrown at an unpopular foreman when his back was turned. The rudder weighed 101 tons and was made from six separate parts.
The ship was built by Harland and Wolff, which had a workforce of 14,000. Three of them were Catholic. All of them wore dunchers. Seventy-three percent ate fried soda farls at least five times a week; thirty-one per cent on any given day had jam in their piece, while only 4.2 per cent had egg and onion. Twelve per cent of those over thirty had their own teeth. They lived in humble and often insanitary conditions but had a strong community spirit. They never locked their doors except when commiting incest.
Nowadays, of course, the Titanic Quarter is a dynamic and imaginative, mixed use, city centre quarter for Belfast, providing employment for tour guides, baristas, estate agents and many more. A new dedicated berth for visiting cruise liners provides a highly attractive first impression of Belfast for tourists, delaying for up to an hour the unpleasantness of the second impression. Within the Quarter over six hundred litres of mocha latte are consumed every day. It has been estimated that all the paninis sold in a single week, if laid end to end, would stretch half way to Larne. The density of web developers per square mile is the highest in Ireland outside Rathmines. The Quarter now generates over fifty new logos and thirty-five Flash-based advertisements per week. It is estimated that by 2020, daily production of bullshit will have passed 100 cubic metres.
To celebrate the centenary of the Titanic’s launch, a massive project has been underway and is almost reaching fruition. If you look to your left you will see it just coming into view: what will, when it is complete, be a perfect symbol of the regeneration and rebirth of Belfast… the biggest cappuccino ever made. 882 feet eight inches high and ninety-two feet wide at the top. There is no truth – I repeat, no truth – in the rumour that it has been described as “undrinkable.”
I left my phone in the dressing-room last night, and I needed to check for voicemail today, about another job. So I rang my mobile number from the landline, pressed the star key, and entered the four-digit security code when prompted.
But I’d misremembered it. Bollocks. Tried again. Bollocks. I hadn’t needed to use this code for so long that I couldn’t remember it (yes, I know, I should write it down somewhere safe and private – noted for the future).
But, hey, they have customer service people, right? People whose professional raison d’être is to solve my klutzy self-inflicted problems and leave me with a rosy glow of well-being towards my fellow humans and the broad sunny uplands that technology will take us to. Or at least to give me back the information that I gave them when I registered my phone.
After the usual “If you’re losing the will to live, press 3″ hell, I got to talk to a human being. All the better, he had a lovely warm Scottish accent. He sounded like a nice guy, and I don’t doubt for a minute that he is. I’ll call him Andy (because that’s what he said his name was).
Andy: How can I help you?
Me: I’m trying to access my voicemail from a landline, because I don’t have my mobile with me, but I can’t remember my code number.
Andy: No problem, Mr Doherty, we’ll send you a new code.
Me: Great. Thanks. Oh, wait a minute – how will you send it to me?
Andy: I’m texting it to you now.
Me: To my mobile?
Andy: Yes.
Me: But I haven’t got my mobile. If I had my mobile, I wouldn’t need the code.
Andy: I’m sorry, that’s all I can do.
[The rest was just spluttering on my part].
So I’m heading for the theatre about three hours early just in case there’s a job-related voice message for me.
Once in a while I wake up with a slighty fuzzy head, set the coffee brewing and check my email – only to find a message from Amazon thanking me for my purchase. Seems I bought a boxed set of Peter Sellers DVDs at 2 a.m. So it goes.
Add instant gratification to the mix, and my impulse buying could escalate:
Screenshot from Amazon UK
You download a small app (about 1MB for the Mac OS X version; Windows and Linux versions are also offered) which downloads your purchases and adds them to iTunes (or Windows Media Player). First time I tried it, nothing seemed to be happening, but that was because I have turned off the “open ’safe’ files after download” option in Safari. No big deal: just go to the Downloads folder/stack and open the .amz file. Not quite as seamless as the iTunes experience, but close enough for jazz.
Files are encoded at 256 kbps in MP3 format, which is (I believe) not as good as the 256 kbps AAC offered by iTunes Plus, but my aging ears can’t tell the difference. Prices are variable: the first album I bought was Keynsham by the Bonzo Dog Band, which cost £4.89 – the same price as the CD. On iTunes it’s the standard £7.99. Looks like most albums cost the same as, or slightly less than, the CD versions. You can buy single tracks, of course. So far there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent of iTunes’ “complete my album” feature. The one drawback to my Bonzo purchase is that I don’t have the liner notes; I’ve bought several Bonzo CDs lately, and they come with extensive and interesting notes by Neil Innes.
Since I am not particularly interested in what’s new and cool, a lot of the music I buy is back-catalogue stuff and often cheaper on CD from Amazon than from iTunes. It could be that Amazon UK’s new offerings will mean that I never buy a CD again.
Carol Vorderman is leaving Countdown after umpty-six years. The Guardian’s report has the sub-head “Game show’s legendary co-host to quit quiz show .”
See? I am not making this up.
Ah, yes. In a future unimaginable to us now, when men, women and harthjiggata mutants huddle for warmth around camp fires on planets yet uncharted and wait for their dilithium crystals to recharge, they will while away the lonely night until the rise of the second sun with tales of the legendary co-hosts. They will talk of Ed “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” McMahon, of Anthea “Give us a twirl” Redfern, and of Gaby “pretending Chris Evans is funny” Roslin. But a hush will fall when the Vord is named. For she was the co-host’s co-host. The co-host who knew her seventy-five times tables; the co-host who could be in a studio with Ann Widdecombe, Paul Burrell or James Whittaker without vomiting on camera; the co-host whose picture was on everything from detox guides to Sudoku collections. She was Legend.
From the boilerplate garbage at the foot of an email:
This e-mail (and any attachments) is confidential and may contain personal views which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated.
If you have received it in error, please delete it from your system.
Do not use, copy or disclose the information in any way nor act in reliance on it and notify the sender immediately.
Please note that the BBC monitors e-mails sent or received.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.
Further communication will signify your consent to this.
So if I reply “I don’t consent to these terms” I am signifying my consent… Daisy, Daisy, give me youuuuuur aaaaansweeer dooooooooo…
