When you see how much time you spend looking at screens, it’s shocking. I see dads sitting in cafes with their kids, staring at their phone, probably scrolling through Facebook, and not talking – I’ve done it. And I dread to think how some kids are going to turn out, because while I can remember a time when the internet didn’t exist – and know it was perfectly fine – they don’t know any different. I went to a wedding recently and these kids on another table sat watching their iPads all the way through. It might have been all right if they’d all been watching the same thing on the same iPad, but they weren’t. I understand that parents need to have distraction tactics up their sleeves, but part of growing up should be learning to interact with people you don’t know, dealing with boredom or being places you don’t really want to be. But now I fear kids are growing up with no social skills and instead are being taught that it’s acceptable to zone out and ignore everything that’s going on around them. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that that’s promoting selfish, anti-social behaviour. And it’s why kids can’t hold a conversation and look you in the eye when they speak to you. Instead of sitting there on their iPads watching Finding Nemo again, they should be running around outside with a ball, getting muddy.
Mind you, I’ve not got much tolerance for other people’s misbehaving children, so maybe it was best they were watching Finding Nemo at the wedding. Luckily, most of the kids who come round my house are good, because if they do stuff I don’t like, I won’t hesitate to tell them. You have to, don’t you? Obviously, there’s not a lot you can do about crying babies. It’s a nightmare on trains, especially when they’re wriggling and kicking and punching things, but you just have to give the parent that little smile and nod that says, ‘Don’t worry, I understand.’ A few years ago, we were coming back from America and my middle lad, who must have been about 18 months at the time, started crying while the plane was getting off the ground. He must have been crying for ten minutes, tops, but the bloke behind us started getting all uppity and whinging to the steward. So I said to her, ‘If he carries on complaining, I’m going to say something to him.’ She pleaded with me not to and explained that she’d seen it before, that the bloke was planning to use my crying baby to get his money back for his business-class ticket. I felt like saying to him, ‘If you don’t want to pay for a business-class seat, go and sit in the back!’
Has social media made people angrier or does it just mean there are more platforms for the angry people who already existed to vent? I think social media has made it more acceptable to be angry, so that you’re almost seen as odd if you’re not. The attitude used to be, ‘Oh, no point getting het up. What good will it do?’ So you’d just keep it to yourself. But now people feel entitled to whinge and moan and bitch about everything. It’s almost become compulsory for people to vent. I don’t get it. If you don’t like someone or something on TV, don’t watch it. Just turn the channel over. If a company has provided you with poor service, get in touch with them privately and tell them how annoyed you are, don’t tell everyone else about it. Why do they want to know that the food on your flight from Manchester to Malaga was appalling or your internet has been running a bit slow? Recently, I came close to doing exactly that. I ordered some food from a local Japanese restaurant and only one katsu curry turned up instead of two. I was fuming, like you would not believe. So I phoned the restaurant up and said, ‘Look, bit of an issue, one of our katsu curries hasn’t turned up.’
‘Sorry, sir, we’ll refund you.’
‘No. I don’t want the nine quid back. One of my kids hasn’t got any dinner. I just want another katsu curry. Can you please just send it?’
‘Oh, we can’t do that. They’re not our drivers, they’re Deliveroo’s. You’ll have to phone them up.’
‘I’m going to stop you right there. Do you think that’s right? I’m here trying to eat my food before it gets cold and you’re telling me I’ve also got to chase Deliveroo because the food I ordered from you hasn’t turned up.’
‘We’ve had problems like this before, Deliveroo drivers eating the food . . . ’
‘Oh, come on!’
These people have the amazing ability to turn you into a sitcom character, like Basil Fawlty or Alan Partridge, getting incredibly angry about the most trivial of things. So I got straight on the phone to Deliveroo and tried not to rant at some poor bastard at the other end who had nothing to do with anything: ‘Have a word with Miso Tasty, they’re saying your driver has eaten our food. Send me my katsu curry!’ They agreed to send me another one, but I kept getting these messages every half an hour: ‘Your food will be with you at 8.30 . . . your food will be with you at 9.00 . . . your food will be with you at 9.30 . . . ’ By midnight, the katsu curry still hadn’t turned up. I was so livid, I very nearly took to social media to tell the world about my katsu curry disaster, before getting a grip and telling myself that there are wars going on in the world, famines, people dying of cancer and animals going extinct. And that’s the really sad part about social media: someone famous can post about their katsu curry not turning up and it will start trending in Wales, but when you’re trying to raise awareness about an important issue hardly anyone is interested. What does that say about society? It doesn’t say anything good, and I have done this in the past too.
I find the competitive element of social media – the ravenous desire for likes and retweets and thumbs up and smiley faces and emojis blowing kisses – just weird and incredibly needy. And why do people equate having lots of followers with being a good person or being successful? That’s a terrible message for kids to be absorbing, this idea that goodness or success is all to do with how many likes your posts get. I mean, Hitler had a lot of followers back in the day, but I don’t think anyone would argue that made him a good lad. And while he was successful in his own way for a while, things didn’t turn out great for him.
A lot of it is to do with entitlement. I see it all the time where I live. It’s about wanting to be rewarded for not really doing anything. If people can get followers and likes and attention and make money out of posing in a bikini or drinking a protein shake or a cocktail in some bar on Instagram, then they’ll do it. Why would they want to graft when they can ponce around all day doing nothing? That’s why it’s so irritating when you hear the government calling midwives, nurses and other NHS staff ‘low-skilled’ workers. Low-skilled? These are some of the most skilled people I’ve ever met, both technically and emotionally. When Rachael had our fourth child, the baby spent a couple of nights in the intensive care unit and I was in awe of these people. And I can only hope that they get so much satisfaction from doing their jobs, and are rewarded in ways most people can’t understand, that it trumps the money they’re paid. Because if they’re meant to be low-skilled, God knows what that makes the cast of Made in Chelsea, and they’re all loaded.
It makes no sense. Then again, and it would be remiss of me not to mention it, I am 42.
Why do people feel the need to be bothered about stuff? Something will happen on the other side of the world and everyone will be straight on social media, imploring everyone else to ‘pray for this’ and ‘pray for that’. If they want to say a prayer, why don’t they just say one in their bedroom? Or someone famous will die and people will be all over Twitter, telling him or her to rest in peace (why ‘rest in peace’? Why not ‘rest lively’ or ‘rest with a bit of vigour’?) or they’ll write very long tributes on Instagram, despite never having known them. Everyone feels the need to make themselves so busy nowadays. And then I’ll stumble onto Twitter, completely unaware of what’s gone on or who’s died, write something about Top Gear being on this Saturday, and people will start having a go at me for my lack of sensitivity: ‘How dare you talk about Top Gear at this time?’ Hang on a minute, I’ve never heard of this person who’s died. If social media is still around when I die, don’t bother paying any tributes. I’m not interested and you probably didn’t know me, so talk about something else.
; People I actually knew have died and I’ve thought, ‘I should probably say something, shouldn’t I? Shall I put an #RIP on Twitter?’ Of course, the right thing to do is call the person’s loved ones or send them a letter or an email. But if I don’t acknowledge their death on social media, I’ll get chastised for it. My grandpa was 92 during the coronavirus lockdown, so I was going to put a message on Instagram, wishing him a happy birthday and also saying, ‘If anyone knows him, do us a favour and give him a ring.’ But then I thought, ‘Why does anyone else need to see me wishing my grandpa happy birthday? And he’s 92, he’ll get pissed off with everyone phoning him all day.’ So I just phoned him up instead.
When Alastair Cook retired, the Professional Cricketers’ Association put a video together of players congratulating Alastair on a great career, and asked me to appear in it.
I said to them, ‘I’ve already sent him a video message.’
‘But what about appearing in our video as well?’
‘But I’ve already congratulated him, personally.’
‘Can we post your video message?’
‘No! I sent the message to him. Why do I need anyone else to see it?’
As far as I was concerned, I’d done what I needed to do. Why was it important for anyone else to know that I’d congratulated Alastair Cook? But I started questioning myself. Maybe it was important for other people to know that I’d congratulated Alastair Cook. Maybe, according to the modern rules, it made me a bad person that I didn’t want other people to see me congratulating Alastair Cook. And then Rob Key texted saying, ‘It’s only you and Kevin Pietersen who haven’t done it.’ I replied, ‘But I’ve sent him a message!’ Who was this message supposed to be for anyway? Me or Alastair? I was so confused. Kev probably did the same.
People sometimes say to me, ‘Why are you not on social media much?’ People think it’s weird that I don’t post every cough and spit of my life. But it’s not compulsory, you don’t have to do it. And I’ve done something like 12,000 tweets in the last 12 years – is that not enough? I’ve got mental health issues but compared to some of the people I see posting on Twitter who don’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with them, I’m right as rain. Social media highlights people’s need to be liked or noticed or, if they’re celebrities, stay relevant. I think for some people it’s a form of therapy, whether consciously or not. I don’t need or even want people to know what I think or what I’m doing.
When my fourth child was born, I didn’t tell anyone about it apart from family. I did an interview in Australia for Ninja Warrior and the bloke said, ‘I understand your wife is expecting your fourth child’, and I replied, ‘Yeah, it’ll be brilliant when it happens.’ The fact was, he was already about three months old. I just didn’t think that anyone apart from family needed to know about it.
The really strange thing about social media is that celebrities fought for privacy for years, and now they’re choosing to just give everything away. And when they post something on social media that gets them into trouble, they’re surprised. They don’t seem to understand that that was part of the reason why celebrities fought for privacy in the first place. People will hammer you if you say something you’re not ‘supposed’ to, do something you’re not ‘supposed’ to or look how you’re not ‘supposed’ to while out walking the dog. When it comes to social media, famous people can control the message to a certain extent but many of them have learned that they can’t have their cake and eat it.
The internet can be a nightmare for people with addictions, whether you’re addicted to gambling, sex or Nike Air Jordans. I recently did a documentary for the BBC about eating disorders in men, because I’ve had one since I can’t even remember. I interviewed this lad called Daniel and he told me about the evils of target marketing. Every time you go on the internet and log onto a new site, a banner will pop up and ask if you want to ‘accept cookies’. Most people just say yes, without even knowing what cookies are. What they should know is that these cookies store user data and behaviour information, which allows companies to target certain people with advertising. So when Daniel had bulimia, he’d get bombarded with adverts for diets and gyms, which for some people with eating disorders is a dangerous trigger. I think that’s the biggest issue with the internet, how it steals people’s privacy. People aren’t allowed to slip into your house uninvited and rifle through your letters and books while making notes of your interests.
On top of all that, what are all these radio waves doing to us? I know the links between 5G and radiation have been debunked, despite what Eamonn Holmes and David Icke said about it spreading coronavirus, but we don’t really know about the long-term damage that all these waves are doing to us. Everywhere you go now, you’re surrounded by electrical devices that must be giving things off. You sleep next to your phone, you sit in an office all day surrounded by computers or sit at home tapping away at a laptop. And where are those things that these devices are giving off going? They must be going through people. I reckon we’re a massive experiment, like frogs in boiling water, and that we won’t really know what all this invisible technology is doing to us until it’s too late. In 20 or 30 years, we’ll all be running around shouting, ‘Hellfire! Everyone’s dying of Wi-Fi!’ If not that, then it will be something else.
Has the internet improved my life? I’m sure it has in some ways, although I’m struggling to think of any. It basically makes it easier to do things that weren’t that difficult to do in the first place. Like walking to the shops or getting a map out of the glovebox. In fact, let’s not beat around the bush, the internet has been a bit of a nightmare for society. When it first came along, everyone was blown away by the fact that suddenly all this information was at your fingertips. But it’s gone too far the other way. I’ve realised that mankind’s thirst for information means that people feel the need to be connected to the internet for hours at a time. I’ll be on Instagram or Facebook and think to myself, ‘What am I doing? Why am I bothered that someone I don’t really know is having a barbecue?’ I’m genuinely not bothered, which is the really strange part about it. Sometimes before I go to bed, I check how much time I’ve spent looking at my screen and it’s horrifying. Some days, I’ll have spent four or five hours looking at my screen, and my life won’t be any better for it. I’ll even make excuses for my behaviour, like the fact I also use my phone as a remote control, but I’m just kidding myself. And if the internet is bad for adults, it’s far worse for kids. There’s so much on there that they really shouldn’t be seeing and you can’t get them off it. And it creates so much stress, because they’re constantly wanting to know if something they’ve posted on Instagram or Snapchat has been liked or commented on.
One thing the internet has done lately is give me a trainer addiction, to add to the Nutella addiction I’ve been unable to shake. I don’t know where it came from, but I suddenly found myself buying a pair of Nike Air Jordans. Then I bought another pair. And another. Now I can’t help myself. I must have bought 30 pairs of trainers in the first few months of 2020. I’m on loads of different websites, all of which send me alerts when a new pair drops. If you’re on the ball when there’s a drop, you might pay £150 for a pair. But because they might only be dropping a limited amount of that model, the following day sites will be selling them for four or five hundred quid. I’ve got a trainer mate called Howard, who cuts my hair. Whenever there’s a drop, we’ll text each other, because it’s likely that both of us didn’t manage to get a pair. Unfortunately, he’s only a size eight. Some of these trainers can go for thousands of pounds. And they’re not made of gold or anything, just leather and plastic. I’m telling you, these Nike and Adidas trainers are like the new modern art or fine wine.
Last year, I was filming A League of Their Own and Jamie Redknapp got this lad to come in and sell some trainers. I picked out a few pairs for me and my kids, thinking that they were maybe a hundred quid max. But when I got the bill through, they were a few hundred quid each, because apparently
they were designed by Kanye West. I’ve never worn mine. I want to wear them, but I like them too much. They’re still in boxes in my wardrobe, with the paper wrapping. Every now and again, I’ll take a pair out. I forget what I’ve got, so I’ll be holding them up to the light, turning them around as if they’re ancient relics and saying, ‘Oh, I forgot I had these ones. What a pair of beauties.’ And while I’m looking at them, I’ll be wearing a pair of shit trainers that I’ve had for years.
I did wear a pair of them once, when I was filming Ninja Warrior in Australia. What a mistake that was. I was standing on the sidelines, minding my own business, when one of the production executives stood on my pure white trainers and said, ‘Good luck.’
It reminds me of when my grandparents used to put plastic covers on their couches. I’d think, ‘Why would you keep the seats nice for the next person? Why don’t you just enjoy them yourselves?’ When I’m 70, either I’ll have a massive collection of valuable antique trainers to flog or I’ll be rocking about in these retro trainers, the coolest pensioner in England. That’s if my lads don’t go rogue and nick them in the meantime. One of them is nearly my size already and he’s only 14. I might have to get a padlock for my wardrobe.
Right, Said Fred Page 3