Shiny Happy People

Usually when I am on a flight, I hear from the captain and the flight crew during the course of the flight. These fine people speak to the passengers in a professional and informative manner and we all understand what they say and are happy, informed and reassured.

Some flight companies adopt a slightly different approach. I recently returned from a holiday in Croatia with one of them (I’m not saying which).

Rather than letting the flight crew speak, we were subjected to messages pre-recorded by what I can only describe as “shiny happy people”.

The messages alternated between a man who seemed high on euphoria and a women totally immersed in rapture. I can kind of sense why these recordings exist and what they are meant to achieve but I get the feeling, looking around at my fellow passengers, that their goals weren’t quite met.

The airline is a budget airline that is striving to get people in the mood for their holiday while at the same time trying to raise their spirits about the two and a half hour flight ahead. It worked better on the journey out but not so well on the journey back.

I heard one guy say “What do they mean welcoming us home as if it is the best thing since sliced bread? I don’t WANT to come home! I was on holiday and I want to STAY THERE!”

It didn’t bother me too much because deep down I prefer happy people to miserable buggers (even though I can be a bit of a miserable bugger myself sometimes).  However, it got me thinking – always a dangerous thing.

What if the plane had a fault and both engines failed? What would happen as the aircraft started to dive towards the sea? Do they have a pre-recorded message for that?

Happy Man:  “Hey holiday makers! We hope you are enjoying our AMAZING flight but we do have a slight problem. Nothing to worry about but the aircraft is now plummeting towards the Atlantic Ocean as a rate of knots.”

Happy Woman: “Yes – the water is REALLY WARM at this time of year and to make sure that you fully enjoy it, please BRACE now! If you don’t know how to BRACE, our WONDERFUL flight crew will help you. IF you hear your fellow passengers SCREAMING, rest assured that they are screams of EXCITEMENT at a plunge into the warm wonderful water!”

Happy Man: “And after impact we will do our very best to get any survivors out of the aircraft as quickly as possible!”

Okay – that’s a bit extreme, I admit, but there are a lot of shiny happy people around, particularly on the radio and our telly boxes.

I no longer listen to the radio, apart from the news channel when I wake up, but in the past I recall overly happy DJs laughing at – well – nothing - in such a forced way that I thought they were all having a seizure.

I know things haven’t changed because this morning I saw an advert for the breakfast show on a local bus with pictures of demented looking DJs guffawing at something that was out of shot with a line that explained that their show was a mixture of music and “banter”. 

I assume that "banter" means lots of in-jokes from the DJ team that result in bouts of hysterical laughter at their own expense that the general public don't really find funny at all, especially while stuck in traffic, driving to a mundane job on a miserable, cold, dark Manchester Monday morning in the middle of January.

Similarly light entertainment programmes on TV are full of presenters who seem to have taken some form of drug to make them laugh hysterically at dull items and equally dull celebrity guests that I have never heard of as they try to plug their latest projects.

I am sure that you are now reading this thinking “You miserable bastard! Why don’t you just lighten up?”

The truth is that I provide my own form of entertainment on a daily basis at work by ranting mercilessly about things like reality TV, music, politics and shiny happy celebrities, causing joyous merriment amongst my co-workers as they realise that I am just a cantankerous old git who doesn’t understand modern culture.

And they are right.

But at least their laughter is genuine.

I’ll leave you with the song that inspired the title of this post.

I’m the grumpy git peddling at the start of the video.

Please don’t laugh.

The Malignant Narcissist

"Look how GREAT I am!"

It’s that time of the year when I take a close look at the world of celebrity. As a rule, I hate the Cult of Celebrity but I am deeply fascinated by it – mainly because I don’t understand it. However, roughly this time every year, I watch a TV programme that lists the most shocking celebrity moments from the previous year.

I do this for two reasons.

First of all, I love it when certain arseholes make complete fools of themselves in public and show their true colours to the world. I realise this is a bad thing, and I sometimes wish that I were more understanding but ultimately the truth is that most of these villains in the world of celebrity are so self-obsessed that they actually deserve the wrath of their fans for their terrible behaviour.

Second, there are certain celebrities who actually have no talent whatsoever yet are totally obsessed with appearing on every form of media available, from your television set to the tabloid press via social media. I don’t know who half of these people are and frankly I don’t care. However, I like to know who people are talking about when they mention these people – just so that I don’t look like an archaic old git when people ask me about them.

To me, a true celebrity is somebody who is very talented at what they do and humble enough to accept fame and its consequences while at the same time recognising the people who put them on the pedestal in the first place – their fans.

The rest are basically malignant narcissists, i.e. self-obsessed fools who care nothing for their fans and are only interested in one thing – themselves.

The other day, on my daily walk, a song popped up on my iPod that summed up malignant narcissism perfectly. It was Earth Song by Michael Jackson. The truth is that I actually like the song because it is a well written pop tune with a useful message.

However, if you have seen the video then you begin to see where Michael Jackson’s self-obsession is totally evident. He portrays himself as a lone figure walking sadly in a scorched world. It’s difficult to tell whether the emotion in his voice is because of the damage done to Earth or whether he is so sad because he no longer has any fans to love him. As the video progresses you see forests being destroyed, factories spewing out pollution, elephants being killed for ivory, towns and villages being destroyed in war and people crying and falling to their knees in despair.

“Good old Michael,” you say. “The message is strong – he cares for our planet.”

And then the video becomes something else.  As Michael gets upset and starts pouring his heart out, suddenly the world fights back. As he screams and sings in anger in a raging wind, all of the terrible things we have done are reversed; fallen trees suddenly rise up again, soldiers retreat as villages are restored, people shot in war come back to life, factories suck in the polluting smoke, stolen ivory from dead elephants grows back and the elephants are resurrected.

And Michael the Messiah whoops in joy as if he is somehow responsible for this reversal of fortune.

Here is the video if you haven’t seen it.

You may think I’m being harsh on Michael Jackson but my viewpoint was confirmed when he performed the song at the Brit awards in 1996, surrounding himself by adoring children, holding his hand like some kind of saviour as the stage was filled with worshippers, before shedding his black tatty clothes to reveal a sparkling white suit with his arms outstretched and being revered as if he were the reincarnation of Jesus himself.

The incident was famous because Jarvis Cocker the lead singer of Pulp who, alongside a few others, found Jackson’s act distasteful, and decided to invade the stage and show his feelings innocently enough, by bending over and flapping his backside as if he had just farted.

Jackson was hurt because somebody had mocked his brilliance and a lot of people in the UK loved Jarvis Cocker for what he did. Jackson’s reaction was one of pain and he poured his heart out about how humiliated, hurt and upset he was that somebody had dared to intervene in his wonderful performance.

Ultimately Michael Jackson was just one example of malignant narcissism and when you see the antics of some of the other celebrities you can see many more.

So what is a malignant narcissist? Basically it is somebody who is so self-obsessed that they consider themselves to be the centre of the known universe and if anybody disagrees then they will willingly lash out and attempt to destroy them with absolutely no remorse. Even jokes at the expense of a malignant narcissist are taboo.

Prime examples are Mariah Carey, Madonna, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber. There are many more.

 Kanye West for example, thinks nothing of taking attention from a winner at an award ceremony because he disagreed with the result.

Of course the biggest and best example of malignant narcissism in the world at the moment is Donald Trump, a man who is so self-obsessed that he actually lives in a fantasy land about how great he is. Reports suggest that he will dismiss anything that comes across his desk unless it mentions him by name or shows him in a great light. He has invented lies to make everyone believe that “the Donald” is the greatest human being that exists at the moment. 

He dismisses anything that criticises him as fake news, even when his lies are exposed. He attempts to ruin anybody who speaks out against him and constantly lies to make himself appear to be the greatest living human being.

You just have to read his tweets and listen to his spoken words.

Trump will support people until they speak out against him, when he will either sack them or say extremely nasty things to twist the truth of the matter.

Here are some examples:

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. I would qualify as not smart, but genius ... and a very stable genius at that!”

“Nobody’s ever been more successful than me.”

“No one reads the Bible more than me.”

“Nobody knows banking better than I do.”

There is so much evidence to prove his words wrong but he simply dismisses it as fake. Anybody who dares to show him in a bad light is savaged. He builds himself up and tears down those who oppose him:

“Meryl Streep [is] one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood." - The fact that Meryl Streep is probably the most successful actress of our generation seems to have escaped him. How many Oscar nominations, Oscars, Golden Globes etc. has she won Donald?

“[He’s a] totally overrated clown who speaks without knowing facts.” - Note - Trump wasn't talking about himself.

“If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?”

“Ariana Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”

“If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’”

I apologise again for mentioning Donald Trump but in this case, it illustrates the points I am making about malignant narcissism.

Thankfully, the majority of people recognise such people and speak out against them.  As long as there are celebrities, there will be malignant narcissists.

I am so glad that I haven’t met one personally yet.

Progressive Thoughts - Day 27

Today’s song is Incommunicado by Marillion.

The song is about fame, specifically somebody who wants to be famous but isn’t too happy about all that being famous entails.

I know for a fact that I would be a terrible celebrity and I have absolutely no desire to be famous in any way. I would definitely not want people to stop me on the street and ask for my autograph, nor would I like to be disturbed while having a meal in a restaurant or while travelling on holiday.

I would definitely not want paparazzi to stalk me relentlessly in order to capture me on photo in an embarrassing pose or situation, resulting in my face (and possibly worse) being splashed over the internet or in the tabloid news.

Worse, I wouldn’t want people from my past selling terrible stories about me to the press for money and their own fame.

It would be a nightmare.

And, to be honest, I can’t believe that people crave fame so much, Do they know what they are letting themselves in for?

I laugh when certain celebrities constantly seek the spotlight, prostituting themselves for recognition and then, when they have had enough, lash out at the very people they are trying to impress when caught at a low point.

I’ve seen so many celebrity meltdowns when a paparazzo has caught them off guard or when a shy fan catches them in a bad mood. It’s a paradox I can’t explain.

I realise that everybody deep down has an introverted part of themselves that needs solace in their own company but surely if you are the kind of person who throws yourself out there for adoration and fame, you must realise that this part of you will rarely get a chance to surface.

I also don’t understand why somebody should be famous for absolutely nothing, that is the kind of person who has nothing in their portfolio other than making an arse of themselves on a reality television show like Big Brother. These people are mostly just arses who are willing to humiliate themselves to gain fans but have absolutely no discernible talent.

And what of the fans who love these sad attention seekers?

Why would anybody be a fan of Kim Kardashian????

It is beyond belief.

In my view, a true celebrity is somebody who should be celebrated for having done something worthwhile – even better if they did so without even trying. Musicians who make people happy through their music, actors who whose talents move people in movies and plays, authors who write brilliant books, comedians who make everybody laugh; there are many more examples of people whose work should be celebrated – that’s the origin of the word “celebrity”, for crying out loud.

What I really hate are those celebrities who assume that they are better than normal people like me. You know the kind I mean; the kind of person who walks up to restaurants and say:

 “Get me a table now! Do you know who I am?”

There are many examples of “divas” who seem to think that the rest of us are sub-human. Here are some examples of laughable diva behaviour:

Justin Timberlake has one of his staff disinfect every doorknob he comes into contact with every two hours.

Britney Spears threatened to sue a London venue $5000 if the phone rang in her dressing room.

Any chauffeur who drives Kanye West must wear cotton clothes. Man-made fibre is not allowed.

Adele sent hotel staff on a 140 mile round trip to fetch pizza from her favourite pizzeria at 11pm. When it arrived finally a few hours later, she was asleep so it remained uneaten.

Mariah Carey had to be lowered onto a sofa on a TV show so that she wouldn’t crease her dress.

Jennifer Lopez has to have everything white including flowers, tables and tablecloths, candles, settees and curtains.

There are hundreds more if you care to look.

Personally, I rate myself higher than each of these bozos.

Why?

Because I am a nice guy – and that’s probably why I would be the world’s worst celebrity.

Stop Feeling Guilty

Today I’m going to talk about a subject that really irks me and has made me rant a lot over the years.

The idea comes from a comedian called Dave Gorman, a very funny and clever man. On his latest show, called “Modern Life Is Goodish”, he discusses the term "guilty pleasure”, used by just about everybody, myself included, to describe something that you really like but that you feel guilty about. In fact, I have written a couple of posts about my own musical guilty pleasures that took some doing because, in it, I mentioned songs that I felt embarrassed about. These songs are in my musical collection and I love them, despite people laughing at me or deriding me because of them.

I’ve also discussed the pseudo-intellectual, a person who mocks people like me for not appreciating high-brow items across a variety of disciplines. These people utter complete bullshit and show faux-emotion with feigned enthusiasm about their subject matter, dismissing normal everyday folks for being too thick to appreciate where they are coming from.

There are lots of examples.

Imagine a conversation between such a person (PS) and myself.

PS: I’m currently reading “Dystopian Attitudes To Philosophy” by the renowned philosopher Archibald St-John-Smythe, a professor of applied philosophy at Oxford University. It was reviewed very positively in The Sunday Times last week by the acclaimed critic Theodore Rymplethrope. It is a fascinated read. What are you currently reading?

PM: I’m reading “Alien Immortal”, a science fiction novel by Dirk Prawn. It’s not well known and is about an alien invasion in the near future just when …

PS: Let me stop you right there. That’s your guilty pleasure. It has to be because otherwise you would be ashamed to admit to reading cheap nonsense like that! You need to challenge yourself cerebrally and a cheesy sci-fi novel is no way to do that!

PM: Pardon?

PS: St-John-Smythe discusses the possibility of the existence of an alternative reality, where we are canine beings being held captive as pets by super-intelligent felines and the relevance of this alternate concept to the thought paradigms … Where are you going?

PM: To read my cheesy science fiction book. It’s more interesting than talking to you.

Do you see what I mean? There are certain people who deem themselves to be far superior to the likes of me who say that I should be utterly ashamed about my choice of book, movie or music, my hobbies, the art I like to look at and my lifestyle choices.

If it has not been positively reviewed by a well-respected critic in a high brow newspaper then it is simply a guilty pleasure that you should feel ashamed about admitting to loving.

These are the kind of people who will read anything by Salman Rushdie and criticise those of who don’t as beneath molluscs on the evolutionary scale. They try to make me feel guilty about reading a cheesy horror story over a book that is critically acclaimed by a famous book critic.

I started a Salman Rushdie book once then put it down - it was absolutely dreadful.

These people try to make me feel guilty about choosing to watch a Superhero movie over an Oscar-winning snooze-fest.

They try to make me feel guilty about choosing to watch The Big Bang Theory over a documentary about the evolution of contemporary art in Western Europe in the 20th century.

They simply cannot understand why I would choose to buy a progressive metal CD instead of a critically acclaimed CD by a singer-songwriter that gets a five star review in a high brow newspaper and is advertised on television as “the greatest album you will hear this year”.

I say this; never ever answer the question “what is your guilty pleasure?” with anything other than:

“I don’t have any guilty pleasures!”

The truth is they are simply “pleasures” and there is absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.

Why should you feel guilty?

Is it possibly because you are effectively admitting to being guilty of dumbing down and are too ashamed to admit that you are an avid fan of the latest soap opera and much prefer it to a critically acclaimed series about how opera music changed the style of classic music in the last two hundred years?

It is nobody’s business but my own whether I choose to “dumb down” and watch tacky television.

I like what I like and I don’t care whether it is considered stupid, immature or dreadful by the pseudo-intellectual or those who think they are superior in some way to us all.

By way of research, I just asked Mr Google to tell me about “guilty pleasures” and one of the first things I found was an article with the title “Celebrity Guilty Pleasures Prove Stars Are Just Like Us!”

How dare they? How bloody DARE they imply that so-called celebrities are somehow above the rest of us. It’s almost as if the tabloids and newspapers are implying that in order to evolve, you need to become famous. And when you are famous, the way you connect with the plebeian class (i.e. the rest of us) is by letting your guard down and admitting that you have guilty pleasures in common with them.

One of the so-called celebrities actually surprised me with his answer to the question. It was Russell Brand. He said:

 “I don’t have guilty pleasures. If something gives you pleasure, don’t feel guilty about it as long as you’re not harming anybody else!”

I totally agree with that.

To summarise, dear reader, my message to you is this:

Stop feeling guilty!

I Wanna Live Forever

I have stopped trying to give up ranting as a New Year’s resolution because usually, within a day, I have exploded when confronted with the fallout from the Cult of Celebrity from the previous year.

I have just watched Most Shocking Celebrity Moments as I always do at the end of each year. You may ask me why I torture myself with this banal nonsense. I do so, simply to educate myself when my peers, and others who are stupidly obsessed with celebrity, start a conversation about their bizarre antics. I have been chastised in the past for being oblivious to people like Kim Kardashian, Cheryl Fernandinho-Vermicelli and Miley Billy-Ray Cyrus and in order to at least appear to feign interest, I research the antics of these show-offs by struggling through a televisual experience, with the aid of my soapbox, that highlights how deep they will plummet into depravity to maintain their status as newsworthy icons.

Kim Kardashian? No - this is Kym Cardassian

I know you can’t wait to hear what I have learned from last year’s Hall of Shame. I shall begin.

The first thing I discovered was that there is such a thing as a "professional reality star”. These are people who degrade themselves on national television in a variety of bizarre and humiliating ways in order to expose themselves to sad fans who love to watch car crash television.

Shows like I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here, Big Brother, Celebrity Big Brother, Geordie Shore and Keeping Up With The Kardashians are full of these self-important and talentless show-offs whose only purpose in life seems to be is to expose everything about themselves to their baying audience.

These people have no talent, only the balls to make themselves look like the idiots they are. Yes, I know that they are paid a lot of money for doing this but I would not want to show my true self to a thick audience of punters who will watch them spread their vile vitriol all over social media sites like Twitter.

Some people will do anything to get into the news, either celebrity or otherwise.

Who are these people?

Katie Hopkins is one such celebrity wannabe who, in order to annoy religious types, this year declared herself to be “The new Jesus”. Is she that desperate for publicity? She’s not original (John Lennon said something similar years ago). Personally, I was more irritated by her referring to refugees as “plague of cockroaches” and advocating using gunships to send them back where they came from. I hope that in 2016 you get your comeuppance, little Miss Nasty.

Others include the Kardashians, who miraculously have somehow wormed their way into the hearts of an audience of people who I thought had some intelligence. I learned that Bruce Jenner, a former gold medal Olympian, married the widow of Robert Kardashian, the father of the Kardashian women, and has now become a woman called Caitlyn in the second most shocking moment of 2015.

I don’t care!

If he wants to be a woman that’s up to him. What I don’t understand is why anybody else outside the Kardashian family would even consider this to be a newsworthy item.

Another thing I learned was that some so-called A-List celebrities consider themselves to be far more important than anybody else. In their minds, they are gods and we, the plebs, are meant to worship them. Now I like the character Iron Man and I love Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of his eccentric alter-ego, Tony Stark. Yet when he was interviewed by a Channel 4 news reporter called Krishnan Guru-Murthy about the latest Avengers film, there were rules about the questions that could be asked. Of course, being a news reporter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy deviated from the rules and started asking more personal questions about the actor’s rather controversial past and, like a diva, Robert Downey Jr. stormed out and later referred to the reporter as a “syphilitic parasite”.

I also learned that Mariah Carey has entered the world of online dating, presumably because she cannot find a man who will surrender to her diva demands. Whether or not the myths about her are true or not, I can’t imagine any sane man wanting to enter a relationship with her.

Here are a couple of the most outrageous demands she is alleged to have made:

• She wanted eleven bodyguards to surround her table in a restaurant so that the plebs could not see her eating.
• She only drinks soft drinks through a straw, the glass having to be held by one of her minions.
• She rented every single penthouse in a luxury London hotel “for privacy” and demanded a red carpet lined with white candles so that she could make a dramatic arrival.

I wouldn’t mind – her music is absolutely shockingly bad and she has done nothing to deserve such wanton acts of greed and egomania.

Talking of egomania, the next diva is one of my favourite persons of ridicule, Mr Kanye West who, this year at Glastonbury, declared himself to be “the greatest living rock star on the planet” having just absolutely murdered Bohemian Rhapsody. Worse, at a later event, he declared that he is going to run for President of the United States in 2020. I have to say, this man has either got balls of steel of is genuinely deluded and should seek help.

In other lowlights of 2015, there were a couple of high profile separations and divorces, most notably Ben Affleck who allegedly left Jennifer Garner for a babysitter and Gwen Stefani whose husband, coincidentally, left her for a babysitter.

This is one of the main reasons I would not want to be famous. If you seek fame and fortune you have to sacrifice your privacy and, in my opinion, your love life. If you think about how long the average celebrity marriage lasts, you would never want to enter into such a relationship. I may mock Mariah Carey’s diva attitude but the truth is that I feel sorry for her, as I do any famous person whose life is there for public scrutiny. It’s like a double-edged sword. You have the adoration of your fans (no matter how sad some of them are) but the moment you make a fool of yourself in public or your life starts to fall apart, then your downfall is plastered over all the rags all over the world for all to enjoy.

Have people really enjoyed watching Charlie Sheen self-destruct over the years? Are they happy now that he has admitted being HIV positive? What about all the speculation about Cheryl Ferdinand-Vavavoom and her body size? If she is losing weight because of stress, what do you think seeing terrible stories written in tabloid media are going to do for that stress?

The poor woman cannot win.

Such a lifestyle stinks. If I were famous, I would be a recluse – which kind of defeats the object really.

I wouldn’t even want to be a politician. David Cameron was in hot water because, allegedly, he did something disgusting in his youth, as an initiation to become a member of a posh Oxford Dining Club, involving an intimate part of his anatomy and a dead pig’s head. If you want more information, please watch the following video (it’s a bit rude so reader discretion is advised):

Worse, in my view, were the words of Donald Trump, a man who wants to be President of the United States of America. He wasn’t mentioned in the shocking moments programme but some of the outrageous claims and promises he is making scare me to death.

Please, please, please don’t give this man any power.

And if he stands, please, please, please don't give Kanye West any power.

Anyway, enough negativity.

Some celebrities have shone this year. The first I would like to mention is Barry Manilow. Okay, he has made an arse of himself over the years with plastic surgery, but this year he got married – to a man! After all this time, and presumably to the horror of every Fanilow, he has admitted his sexuality.

Good for him!

The other celebrity who continues to prove that he is the nicest guy in rock is Dave Grohl. Madonna was the most shocking moment according to the TV programme because she was dragged off stage at the Brit Awards.

People praised Madonna for continuing but Dave Grohl surpassed that. He fell off the stage in Sweden and broke his leg. However, instead of cancelling the show, his band mates in the Foo Fighters carried on playing cover versions until Dave Grohl returned, his leg now in plaster and apparently in a lot of pain, to finish the concert.

That’s not all. Over a thousand people in the city of Cesena in Italy recorded a version of Learn To Fly in an attempt to persuade the Foo Fighters to play a concert there:

Dave replied in Italian and promised to visit and play a gig:

And he made good his promise (complete with broken leg) – excuse the rather fruity language:

Now that’s what I call celebrity, not despicable diva behaviour, nasty controversial vitriol or professional humiliation.

Anybody who wants fame for the right reasons, look at the example of somebody like Dave Grohl, not the egomania of Mariah Carey and Kanye West or the nastiness of Katie Hopkins and scary rhetoric of wannabe politicians like Donald Trump.

The Meaning of Life - Who Am I?

I know myself completely and there is no human being on the planet that is exactly the same as I am.

At the time of writing, the population of Earth is 7,379,260,713 but this is changing every second. People are being born and dying every single second. The population is increasing because the number of births is over twice as big as the number of deaths.

You can monitor the numbers for yourself by visiting this page.   

I am still overawed by the fact that I am completely different from the other 7,379,260,712 human beings with whom I share this world.

 Isn’t that amazing?

Statistically speaking, there must be somebody out there who is the same age as I am, looks like me and acts like me with the same philosophy on life, the same skills and the same logical mind. The curious part of me would like to meet that person but, to be honest, I think it would scare me a little bit. 

I kind of like the idea that I am unique. 

Nevertheless, sometimes I ask myself who I really am. 

I can answer the easy questions, such as my name, age, nationality, description and even some of the more difficult questions about where I have been, what I have achieved, what I still want to achieve. I can also talk a lot of nonsense about my own philosophies and opinions on a variety of subjects, both banal and controversial. 

Does that tell people who I am? Well, I guess it does partially.

Mrs PM knows me more than anybody else on planet Earth and if asked, I’m sure that she would claim to know me inside and out. 

But she’s wrong and I think she knows that.

For example, she reads this blog and quite often expresses amazement at the things I write. On my post about mosquitos, she wrote a comment on the blog saying:

“I had no idea all of this was going through your mind!”

I think she reads the blog to learn more about the person she lives with. 

Equally, I know a lot about Mrs PM but I would never claim to know everything about her. 

Every person , no matter how much in love they are or how open they are with other people, keep part of themselves hidden to protect them. Imagine for a second how terrible it would be if you were in the same room as a person who could read your mind completely.

It would be absolutely unbearable.

That’s one reason I would love to able to read people’s minds, particularly those I know. My curiosity would know no bounds. What are people really thinking? Are they telling the truth or brilliantly concealing their true thoughts and intentions?

Actually, thinking about it, perhaps it wouldn’t be such a good idea to delve into the inner mind of your friends. You may discover something you don’t like about their thoughts. Perhaps it’s best to maintain an air of mystery.

You may feel that you have an insight into who I am, dear reader, thanks to the tripe that I continue to write on this blog. You certainly know that I am a 53 year old man called Dave who works in IT, lives in Manchester, likes rock music and is keen on travel. I may have revealed other things about myself inadvertently but that was almost certainly more by accident than design.

I masquerade as a guy who calls himself Plastic Mancunian, a cyber-identity that initially I wanted to use to remain anonymous, until a couple of work colleagues spent the time searching for it. In fact, they used their knowledge of me to actually find the blog because even though I wanted to create a different persona on the blog, I couldn’t help revealing who I was, albeit with a little subtlety. 

No matter how much I tried to remain anonymous, I was betrayed because I allowed the Plastic Mancunian to become a caricature of Dave, the ranting old git, allowing my true self to be revealed in the rambling posts.

That was a shame. I really wanted to remain anonymous so that I could allow the anarchist within me to surface and take on a persona of its own.

The colleague who finally exposed me apologised but I’ve forgiven him because ultimately I’m proud of my own little corner of cyberspace. 

I said earlier that there are people in the world who look like us. Having done a little research, apparently there are seven such people in the world and they are known as twin strangers. 

There is actually a website you can use to find your twin strangers and some of the examples they have are amazing. 

You can check it out here.

I am contemplating having a go myself. There must be a Plastic Mancunian Doppelganger out there.

In the meantime, here are a couple of my celebrity lookalikes (according to friends, colleagues and cheeky buggers). 

A Plastic Mancunian called Dave

Keith  "Cheggars" Chegwin

Jerry Springer

Charlie and Craig Reid (aka The Proclaimers)

Garth Algar

Joe 90

Benjamin Button

Do you think I look like these guys?

As Mrs PM says, I do have two clones in the world – my sons are the spitting image of me – poor buggers!

The Clone Show (presented by Mrs PM)

How about you, dear reader.

Do you consider yourself to be unique?

Would you like to meet a person who thinks exactly the same as you?

Who are your lookalikes (celebrity or otherwise).

Little Miss Nasty

I sometimes wonder why people feel they have the right to cause offence and be just downright nasty.

If I offend people, usually by accident I hasten to add, I feel absolutely terrible about it and I am usually overcome by guilt. Even if I genuinely dislike the person, I will apologise profusely, although sometimes I also wonder what good an apology actually does.

I mean if I were to say something along the lines of “I’m sorry I’ve just squashed run over your cat.”

The apology isn’t going to bring the cat back is it? A better alternative would be to try to replace the cat and offer some other form of compensation, surely?  Not that such things stops me. British people apologise for everything anyway – even if it’s the fault of the other person.

You may wonder why I’m talking about nastiness. Well a certain person has been at it again. I am talking about none other than Katie Hopkins, a woman I first mentioned in my post earlier this year: A Celebrity Rant.

A national tabloid has given her a column which gives her a stage to write offensive comments about anything that takes her fancy. And recently she seems to have cranked up her game.

If you are not aware, there are currently hundreds of people trying to flee from war torn places like Libya and Syria to seek sanctuary in the European Union and paying large amounts of money to unscrupulous traffickers who pile them in huge numbers into useless boats that simply cannot accommodate them. These boats then set sail for southern Europe on treacherous seas and hundreds of people have drowned as a result.

Katie Hopkins wrote an article describing these poor people as “cockroaches” and “feral humans” and that she did not care that these people were dying.

This isn’t all she has said. Recently she had a pop at depression basically saying that these people need to pull themselves together and “get some running shoes and some fresh air”.

She is basically trying to seek attention but is going about it in totally the wrong way. Some people try to claim the moral high ground by “telling it as it is” and don’t care who is upset as a result of their outburst.

In their view, it is a good thing to offer such appalling opinions, saying things like “It’s my opinion – just deal with it.”

The truth is that these people have no clue how hurtful their words can be. Nastiness is something I simply cannot understand. Why would you want to hurt the feelings of a fellow human being in any way?

Katie Hopkins is just the celebrity face of such nastiness (though I use the word “celebrity” in its loosest possible term – actually by saying that, am I being nasty to her?). In my opinion she says the things she says just for attention. In other words, she had a taste of fame on The Apprentice and now she wants more of the same, even if it means becoming one of the most hated people in Britain.

She is like a keyboard warrior, or internet troll – except she’s worse because everyone knows who she is and she actually says bad things in front of the camera too.

Australian comedian Adam Hills sums her up perfectly:



Of course, she won’t listen.

Nevertheless, she might think again thanks to recent events. Such is her ego that she thinks she can go to a TV channel with a proposition for a show where she interviews celebrities as a form of entertainment for the rest of us, the majority of whom really do not want to hear her utter a single word more. Unsurprisingly, when agents were approached to put forward their celebrities for a cosy chat with Ms Hopkins, nobody would do it, citing her controversial opinions and nastiness as the reason – and a pretty valid reason it is too. I know that if I were famous I wouldn’t want to even be in the same building as the woman, let alone the same room.

The one thing I could use Katie Hopkins for would be the unit in scale of nastiness. For example, if somebody were to say something nasty in front of me, I could chastise them by suggesting that they had reached a certain level on this scale.

The unit would have to be a centiHopkins (or cH)  because the top of the scale would be a Hopkins, i.e. the pinnacle of nastiness, with 0 cH being really nice (just like me) and 100 cH (or 1H) being really nasty.

The Hopkins Scale of Nastiness

Seriously, though, such nastiness is rife in the UK but it’s not limited to the shores of our small island. I’ve seen and heard similar things in other parts of the world too. People being nasty too or about other people based on wealth, religion, skin colour, nationality and even something as ridiculous as the sports team you support.

I’m not built that way and I simply do not understand  those who are.

The chances of Katie Hopkins ever reading my words are tiny if not impossible. 

But, if you DO stumble across this blog post, by accident, Katie, then all I have to say is this.

Please stop being nasty to people. 

As human beings we need to love and be loved and I think you are capable of both. 

If you want to be famous, the general public will hate you for uttering outrageous statements under the pretence that “these things need to be said”. 

The truth is that they do NOT need to be said. 

What you need to do is be a kind, generous and caring person who uses her fame for good rather than spouting bile and vitriol in the direction of everything that displease or annoys you.

There’s no need for it. 

Despite what I’ve said above, I will be nice to you because nastiness is not in my nature. I’m sure if you try you can eliminate this and people will warm to you.

I hope you care enough to listen to me, because although you wind me up with your outrageous and offensive comments, I can’t bring myself to stoop to your level and write a truly nasty post about you.

Being hated for being nasty is not a good thing - and nobody will love you for it.

Peace!

A Celebrity Rant

Do you mind if I have a good rant?

Well, I don’t care – I’m going to have one anyway.

At the end of every year, I watch a TV programme called Most Shocking Celebrity Moments simply to learn a little about the so-called celebrities that made the news in the past year for the wrong reasons, mainly so that I know who the bloody hell people are talking about. To be honest, it’s a knee-jerk response to people saying things like:

“What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Kim Kardashian? Have you been living under a rock?”

Thanks to this programme, I now know who Kim Kardashian is but the cost of knowing that has made me dust off my soapbox. The programme was a countdown of the most outrageous behaviour of these people in 2014 and I for one was almost apoplectic; as you would expect, the higher the number in this chart of disgrace, the more outrageous the deed.

For two hours, I screamed at the cats, asking questions like:

“Who is this person?”

“What on Earth was she bloody well thinking?”

“Why do people humiliate themselves so much just to get noticed?”

The cats were equally incredulous.

Here are the lowlights for me.

Robin Thicke (by name and nature) who, not content with writing a song that was a misogynistic pile of crap and allowing Miley Cyrus to thrust her arse into his groin on an awards show, managed to get caught being a very naughty boy, so much so that his wife left him – understandably so. What does he do? He releases an album dedicated to her, in a futile attempt to win her back. It bombed – and I’m glad.

I discovered who Kim Kardashian was because she had a photo shoot in a magazine showing her huge naked arse under the heading “Break the Internet”. As far as I can tell all she is famous for is having a rich father and starring in a terrible reality TV show. Apparently she has an army of fans and it makes me wonder – what in the name of all that is weird do these people see in her? The famous “arse” photo has been seen all over the internet (and I am not going to reproduce it here because the last thing I want to do is give her any more publicity, however, microscopic it would be) and it goes to show that this woman (and sadly many other so-called celebrities) will plumb new chasms in order to add a little more infamy and win more idiotic fans. And the worst thing I discovered about her, is that she is married to Kanye West – arguably the most arrogant and egocentric musical celebrity ever to stagger onto my television screen. He has claimed to be God, the new Shakespeare and the best rock star in the world.

Yeah, Kanye, yeah!

Moving on swiftly (because I could spend an entire post ranting about Kanye West), have you heard of media troll Katie Hopkins? She first hit the headlines on the UK version of The Apprentice and even then her arrogance stood out a thousand miles. It was clear back then, when the post-mortem on her exit from The Apprentice was shown:

That was back in 2006, and since then, particularly recently, she has said outrageous things on Twitter and on TV. Here’s an example where she annoyed the host of a TV show because she judges who her kids can play with based on their names. This is unbelievable:

She’s insulted fat people, other celebrities and even wrote a nasty tweet about a Scottish nurse, who after catching Ebola while treating people in Africa, was transported for treatment from Glasgow to London. She wrote: "Sending us Ebola bombs in the form of sweaty Glaswegians just isn't cricket."

I, personally, would sign a petition to get this woman removed from all forms of media. Is she so desperate for fame that she is happy to offend as many people as possible? Perhaps not because she has just joined “Celebrity Big Brother” and will spend a few weeks in a house with a whole bunch of other celebrities desperate to revive their ailing careers.

Finally, of course, we have Justin Bieber, a kid with the arrogance of Kanye West who considers himself to be above the law and is so consumed by himself that he is oblivious to all of his crimes and misdemeanours.

I simply cannot connect with these people in any way whatsoever. It is almost as if they are a totally different species. They are so consumed by themselves that they simply do not seem to be able to understand the effect of their actions or behaviour. I don’t understand either.

For example, why on earth would a person take a naked photo of themselves and store them on a medium (in this case “the cloud”) that can be hacked and published on the internet? I would never take a photograph of myself naked – not even if I were drunk.

Even when something bad happens in a celebrity’s relationship, it seems to be like a media explosion or, in the case of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, a breakup can be veiled in the most idiotic phraseology to disguise what it really means in an attempt to sugar coat the event and portray the breakup as something sweet.

I mean, what the flump does the phrase “conscious uncoupling” even mean? If I were to go to Mrs PM and say “I want to consciously uncouple”, I think she would rip out my spine and parade it on a huge spike in the centre of Manchester with the banner:

The Plastic Mancunian and his spine have been consciously uncoupled

And, do you know what? I wouldn’t blame her.

My final part of the rant (and it is the final part – I promise) is this obsession with nips, tucks and plastic surgery.

Why do celebrities feel the need to alter their appearance? Why can’t they just grow old gracefully? Actresses in particular should be aware that they can’t play a young sex siren at the age of 50. Instead, we find that they convert themselves to fish by pumping their lips up like balloons. Surely they are aware that as they get older they can play more mature parts? Think about it – movies need older actors and actresses to play older people.

And if you are a pop or rock star, why do you have to be weird (and yes I do mean you Lady Gaga) or kill yourself to still look like a 20 year old at the age of 50? I like the music, not the looks of the bands who play it.

Phew! I’m all ranted out now!

What do you mean “Thank God!”?

I will, of course, punish myself in December 2015 by finding out which celebrities have made complete and utter arses of themselves in the coming twelve months.

It confirms to me at least that I am a happy normal every day person.

Oh – and dear reader – if I somehow become really famous in 2015 and make an arse of myself in public you have my permission to come to Manchester and give me a good slap – although I will be so ashamed I will probably use my new found wealth to exile myself on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

Airbrush Strokes

The other night, I caught the Nutty Bus for the first time for a couple of years. The Nutty Bus is basically the late night bus servicing South Manchester and the usual passengers are either drunk, tired, students or a combination of all three. You can read about it here.

I had just been to see one of my favourite bands, The Wildhearts, at the Manchester Academy and was looking forward to my bed. I wasn’t interested in the usual amusing conversations and shenanigans that occur on the Nutty Bus.

I was upstairs, had my trusty iPod serenading me and was hoping for an event free journey back home.

And then I looked out of the window and saw a sign that caught me unawares. It said:

HD Airbrush Makeup

I had a temporary moment of insanity when I forgot where I was, who I was with and what I was actually doing.

I blurted out the words: “HD Airbrush Makeup? What in God’s name is that?”

Sadly, after my moment of madness, I realised that I was not with anybody I knew and the music in my ears had made me shout out the words at a volume that was quite loud.

About twenty pairs of eyes suddenly turned to look at me and, feeling rather embarrassed, I said “Sorry” and pulled out my phone to make believe that I had something important to do. Some people chuckled; some people winced; some people gave me withering and disgusted looks because they assumed I was drunk.

I wasn’t drunk at all and I could feel the shame manifesting itself in the form of a fairly major blush.

I actually used my phone to look up the term HD Airbrush Makeup and was astounded that it actually exists. If you are a female reader,I am absolutely certain that you know exactly what it means. For male readers, HD Airbrush Makeup is basically a powerful formula that you can apply to your skin (on you face and body) that is used to seamlessly cover blemishes for those people who work in High Definition television, a medium that is so crystal clear that it will seek out any warts and imperfections that conventional makeup can only conceal on Standard Definition.

And this got me thinking.

Why on earth do women bother to use makeup in the first place? 

And why would magazines bother to airbrush photographs of people who we know are full of imperfections?

Generally men do not use makeup. There is no need. Okay, vain men, metrosexuals and those appearing on TV will want to pretend that people don’t know about their blotchy skin. 

But nobody is fooled really.

For women, however, wearing makeup is an absolute must, an essential part of their daily routine. I have looked at Mrs PMs makeup collection and, while she is not as bad as some women I know, she has a fairly large collection of goo and substances, the names of which I simply do not understand and the purpose even less so.

I would like to ask any female readers this: 

If you wear makeup to impress a man and make him believe that you have perfect skin, luscious lips, enthralling eyes and wonderful hair, how do you think he will react when the inevitable happens and he eventually sees you as you really are, sans makeup, lipstick and all manner of goo that makes you look absolutely radiant?

Do you really think he will change his mind about you when he wakes up and sees you next to him devoid of makeup and looking clearly as nature intended? If you fear that or the man loses interest when he sees you as God intended, then the man is simply not worth knowing.

Recently, there was a Facebook campaign were ladies tagged their friends to take a selfie with no makeup all in aid of a fantastic cause: cancer awareness.

Some female friends of mine actually did it, which amazed me. On those rare occasions when I logged onto Facebook, I found myself staring at photos of female friends as I had rarely seen them – a fresh face completely sans makeup showing warts and all.

And for a while it was very refreshing to see women breaking free of the bonds of makeup incarceration. I was happy to see blemishes I didn’t know existed. Okay I got a little bored after a while but at least I knew that women can actually dare to reveal their true selves.

Of course, I have seen Mrs PM without her makeup and the truth is I don’t care whether she wears it or not. I am sure when she reads that last sentence she will cry out “ARE YOU INSANE??” and she will not understand where I am coming from at all.

Celebrities can actually get away with looking good simply because most if not all photos in dreadful magazines such as Hello! are totally airbrushed. Airbrushing photos makes me laugh, particularly when the tabloids obtain photographs of famous people caught unawares, displaying all of their flaws. If I were to meet, say, Madonna, I would be happy to chat to her whether or not she was covered in expensive makeup. I would think nothing less of her if I spotted that she really does have wrinkles that we never ever see in magazines or on the television.

She’s 55 years old, for God’s sake. 

Of course she will have wrinkle.

I also have a confession to make. I have an airbrushed photo of myself. Now before you start calling me a hypocrite, I didn’t want it to be airbrushed.

A couple of years ago, we went on a cruise with Mrs PM’s dad and on one night we all had to dress up in penguin suits (well the guys did anyway). Mrs PM’s dad insisted on buying a proper studio photograph of the four of us and while I was sceptical I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I reluctantly agreed.

When the photo came back a day or two later, I was quite shocked.

“I know I look quite young for my age,” I said to Mrs PM, “but that photo is bloody ridiculous! What on earth have they done to it?”

The cruise was from Seattle to Alaska, with 90% of the passengers being American, a nation that seems obsessed with looking young having the body beautiful.

Here are two photos. The one on the left was taken on my own camera, about ten minutes before the one on the right, which was taken by a professional photographer and then airbrushed, without my permission.

As you can see, I have no wrinkles, no blemishes and even my horrible hair has been tweaked to look only mildly abnormal. I barely recognise myself and I am certain that if I were to suddenly achieve overnight fame, then the whole world would think I looked like a plastic dummy with mad hair; somebody like this:

Or perhaps I could revisit the beauty shop I spotted on the Nutty Bus and ask for a regular HD airbrush makeup makeover every week until I reach the age of 90, at which time no amount of makeup will stop me looking like this:

Here Is The News

On Friday somebody genuinely asked me:

“What planet are you from?”

There was a valid reason for the question and it made me realise something about myself: I have changed.

Let me tell you a story. On Friday, a group of us hired a minibus and drove to Nottingham to watch day two of the test match between England and Pakistan. I usually try to take in at least one day’s cricket during the summer, heading to Nottingham, Birmingham or, of course, Manchester for a day of sun, cricket and beer (which sometimes involves just beer if the unpredictable British weather decides scupper our plans).

On Friday we enjoyed almost a full day’s cricket and one or two beers with it. In the minibus on the way back, I noticed that one of our fellow travellers had purchased a newspaper, so I thought I would pass the time by reading it.

The newspaper was The Sun.

I use the word “newspaper” when in reality I should use the word “comic”.

The Sun (or to give it the full title The Super Soaraway Sun) is one of three major tabloid newspapers that are driven by the cult of celebrity, strange sensationalist stories and perhaps one or two items of news.

If I had been totally sober I would have read the newspaper shaking my head in disbelief and tutting at the absurdity of the articles. Alas, my brain was under the influence of several pints of the finest ale in Nottinghamshire so the first thing I unleashed on my unsuspecting fellow passengers was my soapbox (which I always carry in my back pocket in case of emergency).

My eyes widened as I read the tales of woe – it took about thirty seconds for this newspaper to unlock the ranting box.

“Who the bloody hell are these people?” I yelled.

A couple of people who had dozed off were suddenly jarred awake by my outburst. A couple of my closest mates looked at each other and as their eyes met, a silent message passed between them:

“Right – get the popcorn out. This should be fun.”

There were absurd stories about celebrities who I had never heard of. I read outlandish headlines describing the antics of these unknown goons with tales that were about as interesting to me as the fly that was crawling on the window next to me:

Somebody from X Factor had snogged somebody else I had never heard of.

A Z-list nobody from the current series of Big Brother had apparently once been arrested for some minor offence.

An unknown wannabe had argued with another unknown wannabe in a night club.

“Who ARE these people?” I cried.

One guy in the minibus, the guy who had bought the newspaper, then asked me what planet I was from. He read this rag regularly and was therefore totally familiar with these people who, to me at least, spent all of their time trying to do controversial things just so that The Sun could report on them.

I disregarded the question and continued to read. When I had exhausted “the news” I drifted into the problem page where an agony aunt answered questions that actually made me laugh out loud, I started to read them aloud and, fuelled by alcohol, giggled like an insane extraterrestrial. I was in tears, howling at the problems some people write in about.

“It’s made up,” I cried amidst gales of laughter. “Who would write in with problems like these?”

In the end, somebody took the paper off me because I was quite literally on the brink of bursting.

The next day the question came back to haunt me. I switched on the TV to watch the news and it all came back to me just before reality kicked in: I am out of touch.

In my younger days, I used to watch soap operas and occasionally read tabloid newspapers, so I had an inkling who most of the stars of tabloid news were. A few years ago at work a group of us used to pop off to the pub for lunch on Friday afternoons and read the three main tabloids, giggling at the stories and trying desperately to find something worth reading.

We used to have a competition called “Pun of the Week” where we would search for the most ridiculous sensationalist headline in all three papers and then vote for the best. I knew who these characters were – I didn’t care for them at all but I had a vague notion.

I no longer read them and haven’t done so for a good fifteen years or so. Occasionally a tabloid crosses my path but within five minutes I have thrown it down in disgust.

I think this is the reason that I am so out of touch. I should perhaps read this crap.

Many years ago, I remember reading about a judge who hadn’t heard of one such wannabe celebrity and he was absolutely pilloried for being so out of touch with society and youth. I joined in the derision; at the time I watched soap operas, listened to the pop charts and watched dreadful Saturday night television and all of those crappy talk shows and light entertainment programmes. I knew who these people were and could not understand why a stuffy old git in a wig would never have heard of them.

Then I came to my senses and my choices changed. Pop music gradually became dreadful. I realised that soap operas were rubbish; my ex-wife used to watch them all the time and I learned to appreciate that there was more to life – so I simply stopped watching them with her. Equally, I saw that most TV on Saturday night, what people would call light entertainment, was actually utter shit. One or two gems surfaced but the majority of it was mind-numbingly tedious and about as entertaining as watching paint dry.

And now I am just like that stuffy old judge; I have no idea who these people are. I have absolutely no idea why they are so fascinating. I simply cannot see why anybody would even be vaguely interested in the lives of these people at all.

Is that wrong?

Am I in the minority here, dear reader?

Am I really a stuffy old git?

Should I get involved in the cult of celebrity?

Don’t worry, dear reader, I am not asking you to be an agony aunt for me. I have already answered these questions and I simply don’t care that I have never heard of a Z-list ex Big Brother wannabe. I don’t care that I regard magazines like OK! and Hello! where readers are invited into celebrity homes to see how the other half lives.

However, there is a part of me that is curious and reading The Sun had stimulated my interest a little. I have done a little research.

I’m not an anthropologist by any means (in fact I might just be a massive challenge to an anthropologist) but I have delved a little into this.

Last night, I was alone in the house with my two cats; Mrs PM had gone out with friends. This gave me the opportunity to watch Saturday night TV to see if I could gain any insight into why people watch this bilge.

First up was Hole In The Wall where a bunch of celebrities have to get through a funny shaped hole in a rapidly moving wall. If they can’t do it, they end up in a pool of water. They can win money for charity apparently. It was awful. The music was irritating, the jokes were unfunny. Even when they celebrities hit the water I didn’t laugh once. It was utter bilge.

Next was 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow where a bunch of real people compete against each other, with contestants being eliminated in bizarre ways, like being dragged off by a Formula one car, being dropped fifty feet into a pool of water, dropped through a trapdoor or, in last night’s show, being turned over in a stock car with a massive ball of flames. Now I actually enjoyed this – simply because people who fail to answer questions are eliminated in bizarre ways. Okay – the contestants were egotistical maniacs who wanted their fifteen minutes of fame but they were brought crashing down to earth as they were dragged from the show in increasingly terrifying ways (my favourite was the ejector seat).

At this point, however, I had had enough. I’m sorry, dear reader, but there is only so much crap I can take.

But if you are one of those people who love this kind of bland mind-numbing bilge then fear not – I believe there is a new series of The X Factor coming soon which will satisfy the needs of those who crave crap TV and have musical taste that is so shallow, that they wet themselves over the latest dreadful karaoke singers.

And there is more, dear reader. In the interests of research, I have bought two newspapers today instead of just the usual one.

The first is The Sunday Times, which is the flagship Sunday newspaper. It is a serious broadsheet and a bargain at £2. It is vast and enormous. It has eight sections, each of which is a newspaper in its own right and comes with three magazines.

It is so huge that you could use it to wallpaper each house in my street.

As you would expect from such a newspaper, it focuses on the news, covering current affairs, politics, sport, business, health, money, travel, culture and style. There is talk of celebrity but only when these celebrities actually do something newsworthy or are in the news because of their art.

The other newspaper is a tabloid called The Sunday People. You might think that is better value for money at a cost of 95p but that’s where it ends. It is not serious at all, not by any stretch of the imagination. It is just one single newspaper with three little magazines – one of which is a “special” in preparation for the start of the football season next week, listing the fixtures of every club in England and Scotland.

What newsworthy items are contained within these papers then?

The Sunday Times talks about a British killing squad in Afghanistan, 11 year old girls on the pill, a row in the Home Office about a controversial aide to the Home Secretary, Naomi Campbell giving evidence in the Hague at a war crimes trial, more news on the new Conservative government’s cuts, the drop in ratings of the Liberal Democrat Party since the election and the Navy’s attempts to save £10billion. All of this appears on the first two pages and is the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the newspaper contains actual news from home and abroad and not just the antics of the latest supermodel on her Caribbean holiday.

The Sunday People has the following.

The first page is divided into three bits – the first (taking up almost three quarters of the page) is an advert for the fixtures magazine that comes free with the paper. The second, just below that under the headline “Dead Duck” is a taster for the impending death “in a bloodbath” of one of the characters, Jack Duckworth (Dead Duck - Get it?), in the soap opera Coronation Street. Finally right at the top of the page is a picture of a woman’s backside under the headline “Move over J-Lo”.

Let’s turn over to page two.

Ah – some news. Apparently we are going to be attacked by Al-Qaeda because of David Cameron’s views on Pakistan and a couple of other minor stories about the Labour Party leadership elections and some landmines found in Afghanistan.

Page Three? We learn the identity of the owner of the arse on page one – none other than Scary Spice. This takes up almost the entire page. There is also a small story about Frank Lampard, the footballer, buying a £4million house.

So what? Am I alone in thinking that this kind of stuff is not worth the paper it is printed on?

But it gets better. On pages four and five, they expand on the Dead Duck headline from page one, with a double page spread about something that is going to happen in a fictional soap opera on TV some time in the future.

The rest of the paper is pretty much the same with a story about “SuBo” (aka Susan Boyle, the Scottish woman who sang like an angel), Simon Cowell (again) is apparently “stressed”, Cheryl Cole has fallen out with one of her bandmates (who cares?), Charlotte Church wants to fall in love again, David Beckham giving his son a kiss and various other sensationalist stories about other celebrities and nasty people who have done despicable things to each other.

It is truly awful and I can’t think why anybody would buy this thing week in week out.

Am I alone?

There is one thing worth having a look at though: “Dear Rachel” who is “Britain’s Most Straight-Talking Agony Aunt”.

I am absolutely convinced that the people who write letters to agony aunts are simply making it all up. I am sorely tempted to do this myself – for a laugh. And the “sex tips” are even better.

Maybe I should become an internet agony uncle, specialising in people who have problems separating celebrity culture from real life, for example:

People who regard themselves as Kerry Katona’s best friend because they watch a reality TV show about her.

People who think that Katie Price’s new reality TV show is worthy of anything more than the “off” button on a remote control.

People who think that “Jack Duckworth” is a real person.

My advice will be simple:

Get a life!