Ask Graham

by Graham Norton

  Given my age and the fact that the industry I work in, banking, is on its knees, I’m not optimistic I’ll find a new job soon. Any advice?

  David L (not his real name), Surrey

  Dear David,

  If only ‘older and wiser’ was more than just an expression. Whatever chance you have of finding a new job, I’m pretty sure you won’t stumble on it in Windsor Great Park unless you’ve always longed for a career involving a lawnmower.

  It is time to face up to the difficult situation you find yourself in. Your attractive wife will eventually notice that you have been living a lie. Who knows what might give it away: pockets full of Tesco receipts, deer poo on your tyres? Much better that you control how she hears the news and then you may discover that she actually loves you and not just your credit cards.

  I feel it is my duty to point out that, charming as it is that you find her so attractive, at 35 you wife isn’t exactly one of the Pussycat Dolls. She may have fewer options than you think, but if she does choose to leave you because you are no longer a cash cow, is that such a bad thing? You don’t have children and clearly her wedding veil was so thick it impeded her ability to hear the marriage vows.

  Let’s not prejudge your wife, though. The best-case scenario is that you discover she has hidden strengths and a deep love for you, and together you face your uncertain future. The worst-case scenario is that you get to read Wodehouse in your kitchen instead of the car. Good luck!

  Dear Graham,

  Why are men so rubbish at talking on the phone? My fiancé is working in Houston for six months and, whenever we speak on the phone, it always feels as if I’m rabbiting on while he’s not really there at all. He tends to just grunt, rather than want a proper two-way conversation. Normally, we talk for hours without running out of conversation, but that’s when we’re in the same room, rather than thousands of miles apart.

  We do email and send texts but it’s not the same as hearing the voice of the person you love. Can you train a man to be more phone-friendly?

  Alex B, Kent

  Dear Alex,

  Progress can be made but you may as well accept right now that no straight man will ever be as good on the phone as you’d like. The training is simple – ask questions that require more than one-word answers. Chat about things that you know will provoke a response. Never ask him, for instance, if you think you should get your hair cut, instead just tell him how much it is going to cost.

  Deliberately say something ill-informed about a subject he is very knowledgeable about. If he sees a movie or reads a book, then make sure you do too so you can talk about it. Above all, though, the golden rule is to shut up. The more you speak the less he will feel the need to. Also, don’t worry if conversations are very short. All you really need to do is remind him you are alive and that he still loves you.

  Remember, people rarely fall in love with someone who works in a call centre. Love is meant to be physical and he’ll be home before you know it.

  Dear Graham,

  This is the third New Year in a row I’m spending on my own, with a couple of bottles of excellent Médoc, a fine ready-meal (partridge or wood pigeon from Waitrose) and a rather good book, all accompanied by some Handel. To my annoyance, some friends of mine have got wind of my unfashionably solitary celebrations and keep badgering me about going to a small dinner they’re holding on New Year’s Eve.

  Fond of them as I am, I can’t face the prospect of drinking cheap Prosecco with them and their very dull neighbours, Sue and Colin. On any other day of the year I would be willing to be the sacrificial lamb – and haul myself over to their grim house in Willesden – but New Year can really get me down in the dumps if I’m with the wrong people.

  I wonder how I can refuse their invitation without causing offence?

  Rupert L, north London

  Dear Rupert,

  I fully understand your hermit tendencies during the holiday season. A good time is all very well but the forced jollity of events such as New Year’s Eve can be as much fun as a walking holiday in the Brecon Beacons with a vegetarian. Does anyone really enjoy looking around a room at midnight wondering if they are having a good time?

  I must admit, however, that the evening you have planned for yourself does sound duller than puréed cardboard, but each to their own. Not going to the dreaded dinner party couldn’t be simpler – you just need to hold your nerve.

  The most straightforward plan is to accept the invitation, and then cancel because of illness on the day. This is incredibly rude, but it gets the job done.

  The other option is to decline the invitation because you already have plans. Assure your friends that you would much prefer to spend the evening with them, but some obscure family member has suddenly insisted that you attend their party – maybe throw in an aunt visiting from Australia or Canada. Job done.

  Just remember to draw your curtains very firmly and don’t answer the phone. May auld acquaintance be ignored. Happy New Year!

  Dear Graham,

  Do all women want children? I’m a single guy of 35 and find the dating scene has really changed since my twenties and early thirties, when parties were rife with stunning available girls, none of them intent on marriage and motherhood.

  Now that so many of my university contemporaries are hitched, there’s a small but vocal pool of single girls in my circle, all apparently desperate to have a baby. Every time I go out I feel as if I’m being sized up for my breeding potential.

  The truth is that I don’t want children of my own, but it’s not something you can say to a woman, is it? I broke up with my last girlfriend over this very thing. She wanted them, I didn’t. Every now and then she rings me – drunk – in the middle of the night to tell me what a bastard I am.

  Next time I meet someone I like, what’s a delicate way to indicate that I’m not on for kids to avoid any awkwardness later on?

  Andy, London

  Every time I go out, I feel as if I’m being sized up for my breeding potential.

  Dear Andy,

  You have every right to not want kids but you must accept that it’s not something that will endear you to many. You don’t make it clear what is so great about your life that having a child would spoil, and maybe you would change your mind if you met the right woman.

  It strikes me that the internet and small ads were designed for this very situation. You are interested in niche dating so it makes sense to set out your stall immediately rather than waste a second of any woman’s ticking womb clock.

  Alternatively, you could wait 10 years before you settle down and all the clocks will have stopped.

  Dear Graham,

  I’m spending the Easter holidays in a Landmark Trust house with a group of friends, all single and in their early thirties. None of us has been in a relationship for years and – to put it mildly – we’ve all become a bit eccentric. The problem is that the host is the stingiest person I know. He is famous for disappearing whenever there’s a cash till in sight in case he might be required to open his wallet. He’s insisting on organising the food and I’m worried that we’ll all starve – or worse – find ourselves miles from a shop or pub, forced to eat the mouldering contents of his London fridge.

  What can I do to gently prise this job from his iron grip?

  Anna M, Glos

  Dear Anna,

  Bring food! Pack lots of things that you can take home again if your friend turns around and surprises you all with a feast worthy of Delia before she discovered the microwave. Ham, pâté, vegetables, cheese and crackers all travel very well. I do not advise packing eggs or fish.

  Encourage your other friends to do the same. Oh, and just a thought, you say that you have all become slightly eccentric. Do you think the others refer to you as the one who is obsessed with not having enough to eat? You are spending Easter in a Landmark Trust property, not on the moon – I promise you won’t starve or start having to eat each other.

  If all else fails, fill up on chocol
ate!

  Dear Graham,

  I am heavily pregnant, I feel fat, bloated and ugly and I find I just cry all the time, especially when people are rude. The other day I got on to a crowded bus heaving with schoolchildren and tourists and asked a man if he would mind giving up his seat for me. ‘Why?’ he said, staring at my bump rudely, as if it was the most disgusting thing he’d ever seen. ‘Because I’m seven months’ pregnant,’ I replied. ‘But isn’t that just like being fat?’ he said.

  By the time he gave up his seat I was sobbing uncontrollably. Nobody said a thing – they all hid behind their newspapers and pretended nothing was happening. When things like that happen, I feel as if I don’t want a child any more. What sort of world will our baby be born into when people are so cold and heartless? Whenever I try to tell my boyfriend how upset I get by these encounters, he just laughs and makes a mocking reference to my ‘crazy hormones’.

  Lottie I, Chelsea

  “It is probably an inappropriate thing to say to a woman who is seven months’ pregnant, but I do think you need to grow some balls.”

  Dear Lottie,

  Hopefully, most of this is to do with hormones, otherwise it is quite hard to justify blaming all the ills of humanity on one very rude man riding a bus. I understand it can’t be nice being spoken to in such a manner, but, rather than give up on the entire human race, perhaps just make sure that you do a better job raising your child than that man’s mother did of raising hers.

  It is probably an inappropriate thing to say to a woman who is seven months’ pregnant, but I do think you need to grow some balls. If you think things are bad now, just wait till you try breastfeeding in public. You need to learn to stick up for yourself.

  The truth is, no one will ever be as interested in your pregnancy, or indeed your baby, as you’d like them to be.

  People on the bus didn’t react to the huge drama because it was in fact a tiny incident in their lives. All they saw was a man being rude but then giving up his seat. The end.

  They weren’t to know that you were experiencing the end of civilisation as we know it.

  I understand that your new baby is your whole world. I hope that you have a great birth and that your new family is everything you hoped it would be. Just don’t expect anyone else to care. Harsh but true.

  Dear Graham,

  I am a very happily married lady with an urge to be spanked by an older man, but not by my husband. I am not interested in anything sexual with these men (who are queuing up to do it), just the spanking. Do you think that this is being unfaithful or would you say just enjoy it? Would anything be gained by telling my husband, who is very liberal in all sorts of ways?

  Marjorie M, Leeds

  Dear Marjorie,

  Why not try shoplifting in Singapore and see how much you like being spanked by a strange man in a non-sexual way? Fantasies are fine but imagine the reality of you bent over the arm of the sofa, Noel Edmonds on Deal Or No Deal talking in the background, while some bored neighbour slaps your bum. You have to admit that there is something depressingly Channel 5 about the idea.

  Is there no way that your husband can satisfy your spanking desires? Maybe he could wear a disguise? It seems crazy to risk your marriage for what you describe as a non-sexual urge. You may have other men ‘queuing up’ to spank you but, trust me, if you act on your urges, they will expect some sort of sexual gratification eventually. You are playing with fire and if you continue on this path more than your bottom will get burned.

  Dear Graham,

  I am blessed, or should I say cursed, with the figure of a Page 3 girl, despite the fact that I am a very serious person and have a PhD in physics. For all my adult and part of my teenage life, I have had to endure the wolf whistles, jokes and building-site mockery that no normally shaped woman encounters. Men always expect me to be a party girl – big breasts mean fun – and when I’m introduced to people I don’t know, they always talk to my boobs, not my face.

  A friend advised me to go to Rigby & Peller, the lingerie shop, but, since I got fitted out there, my bosom has become more buoyant, rather than less.

  Needless to say, I try to keep my cleavage under wraps, but, however primly I dress, it is almost impossible for me to walk down the street or enter a pub without being met with a volley of leery stares and inappropriate remarks. It seems that nature has played a cruel joke on me. The combination of a vast poitrine and the height of a leprechaun (5 ft 3 in) makes me pure pornography in men’s eyes.

  I have always despised plastic surgery, but now I’m starting to wonder: should I go under the knife?

  Lucy N, Tunbridge Wells

  Dear Lucy,

  You may have a PhD, but I’m guessing you are not nearly as smart as you like to think you are. The reality is that your bosoms are bigger than either your brain or personality, so they are what people will respond to first, but that doesn’t mean that, given a little time, they won’t see the rest of you.

  I do understand the frustration you feel as people constantly judge your book by its very fleshy cover. Try to see this as a plus rather than a negative. Your true persona is your secret and you should savour it as others make fools of themselves whistling and dribbling down their ties.

  Plastic surgery seems like a very extreme step to take, especially since you’d be radically changing your body for other people rather than for yourself. In this instance, going under the surgeon’s knife is closer to expensive self-harming than cosmetic self-improvement.

  Why don’t you start showing a little cleavage? If you give people permission to enjoy your body, maybe you will begin to as well. Having breasts just makes you a woman, not Jodie Marsh.

  Dear Graham,

  My wife and I took my 91-year-old widowed grandmother on holiday to Seville recently. At 12.20pm at Gate 20 she announced she was peckish (no matter that our flight had been called) and said she wouldn’t board the plane unless she had a proper lunch first. Spotting a Garfunkel’s, she insisted on going there and promptly took over the whole establishment, complaining loudly about the plastic menus and paper napkins and quizzing the waiter about the ‘fish of the day’.

  While our flight was on last call, the saintly Brazilian waiter served her salmon – where he found it I don’t know. We did catch the plane but the holiday was a failure as no hotels met her exacting Edwardian standards.

  My grandmother has now announced she would like to move in with us. My wife says she’ll divorce me if I agree. Even though I get just as irritated as she does, I feel responsible for the old girl and we do live in a large house. What would you do in my shoes?

  Dominic L, Cheshire

  Dear Dominic,

  If I were in your shoes, I’d look down and wonder where my trousers were because clearly you aren’t wearing them in your house. Which idiot thought it would be a good idea to take a 91-year-old woman to Seville for the weekend? And how hard is it to say no to an old lady when there’s a plane to catch? If she wants a sit-down lunch after a flight has been called, there is only one appropriate response – tell her she can’t. This woman is your grandmother, not the Queen.

  The thing about old ladies like your grandmother is that most of their pleasure in any given situation is derived from telling other people what’s wrong with it. Think of her constant moaning as the purring of a cat.

  The idea of your grandmother moving in is of course much more complicated than surviving a weekend in Spain. I do wonder why this has all fallen into your lap and not your parents’, but maybe they’ve already made it clear they won’t have her.

  If your wife is serious about divorce, then you just have to decide which woman you prefer to live with. Your house may be large but having someone of your grandmother’s age move in is very different from having a lodger. Perhaps you think you’re being kind, but, if you aren’t equipped to care for her, then is it really for the best?

  I understand your dilemma, but isn’t living with guilt easier than living with someone who is older
than most of your furniture?

  Dear Graham,

  Why do all the single men left in Britain work in IT? I have been internet-dating energetically for about six months now (without success) and find that every man I meet works in this dreary, dandruff-laden profession. There are no doctors, lawyers, bankers, publishers or indeed anyone on the net with the sort of job I can relate to. Or, if there are, I haven’t found them.

  If a man tells me he’s in IT, I’m afraid I get put off instantly. I want a boyfriend who’s socially skilled, not a geek who prefers talking about bytes and links and URLs to having a normal conversation. Is that too much to ask?

  A friend says you never know, the man might end up founding something like Google. Perhaps I’d even get to live in California. Or Seattle. But I’d so much rather stay at home with a nice, handsome publisher who loves dogs and Jane Austen.

  Have I missed the boat? (I’m 33.)

  Sarah-Jane N, Bradford on Avon

  Dear Sarah-Jane,

  You are looking for love via a computer and wonder why you keep meeting people who like computers? You cannot figure out why this should be? It’s the equivalent of trying to buy a kitten by flicking through the small ads in Dogs Today.

  I wonder if it’s really a boyfriend you want or a different life, where you are played by someone else – a young Jane Asher perhaps.

  Try living the life you actually have and see who turns up. It’s unlikely that you’ll meet the hero from a Joanna Trollope novel if you don’t even own an Aga.