Happily, I was slap bang in the middle of London, which is the world’s eighteenth biggest city and the largest shopping centre in Europe.
So you might imagine it would be easy to buy such a thing.
But where? I’m too old for the King’s Road, I’m too male for Sloane Street and, so far as I can tell, Marks & Spencer only sells pants to sensible girls who play the violin, and sandwiches. Dorothy Perkins didn’t sound too hopeful either and what can you buy in Bhs? Table lamps, I think.
My wife suggested I try Selfridges, and so, with the sleet reminding me that I have a big hole in the back of my hair, I trundled over to Oxford Street with a gold credit card and sticky-out nipples. I was freezing.
Initially, the first floor looked hopeful. It’s the size, apparently, of four football pitches, or maybe two double-decker buses. Or Wales. Anyway, it’s huge and rammed with every designer label I’d ever heard of, and about a million I hadn’t. All of which were selling T-shirts.
I’m not joking. Issey & Gabbana, Alexander Saint Laurent, Tommy Farhi, Ozwald Hackett, Joseph Boateng. One was all green and I couldn’t get out of the damn thing. Another was full of string. It was all terribly Tate Modern and jolly pleasing on the eye, but not one of them, on a day that Kent was cut off, could sell me a coat.
‘We’ve got this,’ said one cheerful woman, holding up something that travel agents advise you to pack for those chilly evenings you might encounter on a spring break in Rome. But I wasn’t going to Rome. The next day, I was going to the iced-up Top Gear test track, and I had every disease in the world.
Later, I was to be found on Bond Street, where it was the same story. Lots of shops stuffed full of linen, three-quarter-length trousers and endless poster-sized photographs of people playing with beach balls.
Now look. Those people who have catering concessions in the nation’s lay-bys are far from the brightest stars in the firmament. But not one of them would have woken up on that Siberian morning and thought: ‘Right. I’ll leave the tea urns at home today and take the Mr Whippy van instead.’
They know that when the thermometer is reading 1, people are disinclined to want a 99. And it was the same story with all the street stalls I passed. They were full of scarves and brollies, not sunglasses and swimming trunks. And these, remember, tend to be run by people who have more Asbos than O-levels.
On Friday morning, I opened my newspapers to be greeted with endless photographs of Stella McCartney’s new collection. There were lots of women in shawls and chunky polo neck jumpers, and I thought: ‘Aha. Here is someone who recognises that people want to buy clothes to suit whatever weather conditions happen to be prevailing at the time.’
But no. It turns out that these new outfits are for next winter and they’ll be in the shops for August.
I’m aware, of course, that women can plan ahead. In a supermarket, my wife will buy oven cleaner and new light bulbs because she’s aware we’re running low. But men cannot do this. In a supermarket I can buy only what I want at that moment, which is usually a packet of Smarties.
Now, I know that Britain’s fashion buyers are mainly women and homosexuals, but surely they recognise this. Surely, they know that half the population buy T-shirts when it’s hot and that when it’s not they want a coat.
I realise, of course, that each square foot of prime London real estate must be made to pay, and that running summer and winter collections alongside one another is messy, both aesthetically and financially.
But how’s this for an idea? Fashion is a global business and therefore the big names must be selling winter clothes in Australia at the moment. So why not simply switch them around? This way, I would not have come home that day having spent no money at all. And I would have had a coat. And that would have prevented the cancerous bird flu leprosy from being complicated still further with a dose of double pneumonia.
Which brings me on to Boots. The company announced last week that sales since January had been disappointing, and that demand for cough and cold remedies had been lower than expected.
Rubbish. I wanted to buy half a ton of Lemsip last week, and 5,000 packets of Solpadeine, but the store was chock-full of hay fever pills and sun cream.
Sunday 6 March 2005
Good riddance to green rubbish
When the humourless and stupid Earth Centre opened six years ago, Tony Blair hailed it as being ‘greater’ even than the dome. His views were echoed by Michael Meacher, then an environment minister, who went on to say that this lottery-funded eco-theme park would be a ‘living and breathing example of sustainability’.
Well, it wasn’t. Because last week a last-ditch attempt to save the centre failed. Which means it’s gone for good, taking £36 million of our money with it.
The Earth Centre encapsulated everything that is so wrong-headed about this government and its frizzy-haired, baggy-breasted advisers, huddled together, oblivious to the fact that all their eye-swivellingly daft ideas and initiatives are thousands of light years away from what anyone actually wants.
So when one of them mined a hitherto unimagined seam of idiocy and came up with the notion of a green theme park where people could actually watch their own excrement being converted into fertiliser and then sprayed on to the vegetable garden, which would produce food for the centre’s café, no one said: ‘Hang on a minute. Are you seriously suggesting that people will pay £14 to eat someone else’s shit?’
This is because they don’t like Alton Towers, which smacks of the Great Satan and commercial greed. They therefore end up believing that we’d much rather spend the afternoon tucking into one another’s faeces than have another go on the log flume.
So, in a blizzard of ignorance and naivety, the Earth Centre opened on the 400-acre site of my family’s old glassworks outside Doncaster and damn nearly drowned in a sea of effusive newspaper articles by yet more frizzy-haired, baggy-breasted women who’d dragged their utterly miserable children up to Yorkshire.
Unfortunately, hardly anybody else went at all. The idiots had reckoned on half a million turning up every year, but in 2004 only 30,000 went through the turnstiles. On the day I went, the place was deserted. And it wasn’t hard to see why.
Because if I want to know what it’s like to live in a green world, I don’t need to go to Doncaster. I could just strip naked and stand outside all day, gnawing on some bark. They had a yurt, which is a tent, and the guide wondered, out loud, what it would be like to live in such a thing. Not as nice as living in my house, love. They also had a big trumpet that allowed you to hear more clearly the sounds of nature.
But there weren’t any because, unfortunately, while they were making the place, they’d built an access road right through one of the most important wildlife reserves in the region. So all you could hear through the eco-trumpet was the sound of various yellow ants, little ringed plovers and marbled white butterflies suffocating to death under a million tons of slurry.
This, however, was only part of the hypocrisy. There was also a feature where visitors were reminded of the region’s flirtation with coal, and how much damage this had done to the environment. I bet that went down well with the locals.
And then there was the blurb that said the Earth Centre was bound to succeed because it was within ‘a two-hour drive’ for 20 million people. Yes, except, if you turned up in a car, you were charged £8.50 to get in, whereas if you turned up on a train or a bicycle it was only £4.50.
When will these buffoons realise that if you open an attraction without sufficient free parking, it is absolutely bound to fail? That’s what did for the dome. They deliberately made it inaccessible for motorists, because ‘I don’t have a car, and neither does anyone else I know.’
Unfortunately, 28 million people in this country do have a car, and I should imagine they didn’t take kindly to being herded into the Earth Centre’s unheated cinema and reminded that they were a pack of planet-murdering bastards.
It wasn’t the hypocrisy, though, that annoyed me mo
st about this terrible place, or the waste of money. It was the dour bossiness, the finger wagging and the concept that all fun in life must be balanced with guilt and rage. Their vision of a perfect world looked to me pretty much like the devil’s lecture theatre.
They even said that you could use the same solar-powered system as the Earth Centre at your home for ‘the price of a motorboat’.
I see. And how many people do you think would say, ‘No, I won’t buy a 40-foot Sunseeker. I shall use the money instead to buy some stupid power system that means my kettle won’t work whenever it’s cloudy.’ How many people do you think have the choice in the first place?
I am genuinely delighted that the Earth Centre has joined the dome as a shining example of why green issues, political correctness and multi-faith thinking have no place in a modern, civilised culture. And I hope it shows the dreary harridans that there’s another, bigger, more sensible world, away from their earnest and fun-free dinner parties.
What I hope most of all, though, is that the site of their latest failure is turned into a lap-dancing, paintballing racetrack. With discounts for those who turn up in a car. I reckon this could be achieved for half what the Earth Centre cost and that it really would be a shining example of sustainable business.
Because it would be packed.
Sunday 13 March 2005
Bury me with my anecdotes on
A study, reported in this newspaper last week, suggests that there’s no such thing as a midlife crisis. And that when people reach the age of 40, they become a symphony in corduroy: happy, contented and more popular than ever.
It all sounds very jolly, but I’m afraid it’s balderdash, because when I reached 40 I got the distinct impression that I’d outlived my biological purpose, that I would never again do anything worth doing for the first time and that there was nothing to look forward to, except maybe having my Labrador dognapped.
It may be true to say that middle-aged people stop being competitive and self-centred but that’s because, at some point in your forties, you reach the top of the ladder and realise there are no more worlds to conquer. So there’s no point stabbing colleagues in the back because it’s pointless. You know the only way is down.
The worst thing about becoming 40, though, is that your brain’s default setting changes from sex to death. We’re told that men in their twenties and thirties think about rumpy-pumpy every six minutes and never consider dying at all. Well, for me, it’s the other way round.
At 40, the big picture of Jordan’s breasts is erased from your human screensaver and replaced by a shadowy figure with a cloak and a scythe.
The other day, some celebrity was in the newspapers because she’d forgotten to wear any knickers. But I was more interested in the death of Ross Benson. He was 56, for God’s sake. That means I only have 11 years left. And while 11 years to a young person is 11 years, let me assure you that when you’re past 40, 11 years is about 15 minutes.
I wonder all the time about how I might die and when it might happen. Every morning when I wake up, I’m surprised. And what’s more, I’ve talked to several of my friends, all of whom admit that when they’re not really thinking about anything in particular, they think about death.
That’s why you see so many old men playing golf. They’re not doing this to stay fit. They’re sacrificing their dignity in a desperate bid to make the screensaver go away.
However, since death is preferable to golf, I’m not really bothered by the ‘when’.
I’m more concerned with the ‘how’. And I’ve decided I definitely don’t want to drown, or be murdered with an axe by someone who wants my watch. Most of all, though, I don’t want to meet the Reaper with a tube up my nose. I don’t want my last staging post on Earth to be a hospital ward full of old, grey people. Because that would be boring.
And I’m not alone. One chap I spoke to said he didn’t care how he died so long as it was in a fireball of some kind. Another said he dreamt of dying while doing some good. Charging a machine-gun nest perhaps, or rescuing a group of schoolchildren from a tiger. Me? Well, I’d like it to be the basis of a damn good anecdote.
Last week, for instance, I crashed a racing hovercraft. As is the way with these things, it all happened in slow motion. The front end dug into the ground and as I was catapulted from my seat, astride the fuel tank, I actually thought: ‘Ooh good. My wife should be able to turn this into a rip-roaring story on Parkinson. She’ll have them rolling in the aisles.’
I had a similar experience a few years ago while flying into Havana on board a 1950s Russian aeroplane that had seen service with the Angolan air force before being sold to the Cubans. It wasn’t in very good nick before the pilot flew right into the middle of a massive thunderstorm.
So anyway, there we were, upside down, with our ears being assaulted by that whining noise you always hear on films when a plane is crashing. And I thought: ‘Fantastic! My kids will be able to grow up saying their dad was killed in a Russian plane, in a tropical storm over Cuba. They’ll be the most popular kids in the class.’
Perhaps this is why 45-year-old men buy Porsches. It has nothing to do with testosterone’s losing battle with an ever-expanding waistline. And everything to do with a need to die while doing 180.
Certainly, I’m staggered that only 21,000 people have applied for a place on Richard Branson’s new Virgin Galactic spaceship. Of course, with each ticket costing around £100,000, the price is high. But the vast majority of those who can afford such a sum will be at the height of their powers, facing nothing but a steady spiral into incontinence and phlegm. So why don’t they sign up and go for the ultimate thrill: a ride into space.
It can only be a fear of death that’s holding them back; but what do you want instead? The carriage clock? The secateurs? The coach tour of north Wales? Or maybe 30 years on a golf course, and your last recollection of life on Earth being the burly paramedic’s tongue sliding down your throat.
No thanks. Being blasted to the heavens, quite literally, by a couple of tons of rocket fuel is almost certain to get your demise on the news. You’d bring a little excitement to the lives of millions and that’s even more selfless than saving schoolchildren from a tiger. It’d also be quick.
And that really is what I’m after most of all. I want to be drunk, and happy, and then I want to explode.
Sunday 20 March 2005
A screen queen ate my pork pie
I suppose we all dream about the day when George Clooney calls to say he’s in the area and would like to drop by for lunch. We fantasise about the Dover sole we’d make for starters, and the sparkling conversation we’d serve up with the coffee and mints. And we know it’s never going to happen.
Well, last week it sort of did. I was at a seaside holiday cottage when someone I’d invited for lunch rang to ask if they could bring a friend.
Who turned out to be my favourite actress in the world. I dislike the word ‘gobsmacked’, but that’s what I was. Utterly and absolutely bowled into a stuttering, quivering stupor.
And then the practicalities set in. She would be bringing her three children, which meant there’d be 22 for lunch and the Aga was broken. To make matters worse, it was a Sunday morning, which meant all the supplies would have to be bought at the local ShopRite.
And then there are my culinary skills to consider. Given time, and only three small children to satisfy, I can make a fairly decent fist of a Sunday roast. Providing no one wants gravy.
But we were talking here about catering for 22, including a Hollywood superstar, in a small back-up oven, and the only ingredients I could find initially were six bananas. And some ginger.
Is there anything so depressing as a small village shop on a Sunday morning, after the local dopeheads have been through the place with an attack of the munchies and there’s hardly anything left?
Well, yes there is, as it turns out. Being confronted with all those empty shelves when your heroine is due for lunch in two hours. It was a good time
to panic.
Happily, I’d been joined by the producer of Top Gear, who knows how to reduce a jus. But even he was stumped by what on earth could be achieved with nothing but bananas and ginger.
‘What about roast banana with ginger sprinkled on the top?’ I suggested imaginatively.
‘What about shutting up?’ he replied, and set off for the meat counter, where we hoped to find something she’d like: a swan, perhaps, or maybe a bit of peacock.
We were to be disappointed. All they had was a jumbo family pack of steak and kidney pie, and a quiche, which, according to a bright green starburst on the packaging came ‘with 26% less fat’.
Neither seemed appropriate. But there was a Pork Farms pork pie, and some sausages.
So, a grated pork pie on a reduction of sausage, garnished with a banana and ginger jus. Mmmm. And we also managed to find a jar of mustard, some Branston pickle, a tub of coleslaw, which was perilously close to its ‘best before’ date and some limes. We had the bones of a lunch here, we felt. If we had been in a Sudanese refugee camp. Rather than catering for a screen diva, a goddess, a globally recognised, Oscar-nominated, drop-dead gorgeous superstar.
Don’t you think this is odd? If it had been you turning up for lunch, I’d have invited you to eat whatever you could prise from the cracks in the kitchen table.
I certainly wouldn’t have spent the morning painting a mustard sauce on to the Wall’s sausages.
And nor would I have filled the fridge with the staple diet of all actresses: gently carbonated mineral water, into which I’d squeezed a bouquet of my ShopRite limes. You’d have had whatever was in the tap.
Fame sends us all into a complete tizzy. I even broke a golden rule and shaved on a Sunday. I think I may also have slipped out of my jeans, and into a smart pair of slacks.
And another thing--: the world according to Clarkson Page 16