69 for 1

by Alan Coren

  So then, what happens after May 1, when Nestlé will be offering not romance for chocs, but sex? If men are led to believe that there are dames out there eager to flash their underwear for just one Rolo, what will they expect from those prepared to take on the whole first eleven? Will it, as it so often did under the old regime, all end it tears? Maybe not: these are, after all, different times. Love is only a Rolo in the hay.

  Green Thoughts

  I THINK I have contracted compulsive–obsessive disorder, if it is called that. It may be called obsessive– compulsive disorder, or, indeed, something else entirely, but in order to pin down what it is, I should have to get up from the computer on which I am tapping this and go across to the bookshelves and try to look up whatever it is that it is, and that would mean putting the light on, because it is midnight as I write, and I can’t put the light on because of what I have contracted. I am tapping only by the light of the screen.

  I know how I contracted it, mind. I caught it off my carbon footprint. Or, rather, my carbon shadow, because it is not just under my shoe, it is stuck to me at all points. Like you, I never thought about it until very recently, but now I cannot think about anything else, which also means that I cannot do anything without thinking about it.

  This morning, I couldn’t think how to shave, because I have both a safety and an electric razor. Which is worse for the planet? The electric sucks from a fossily power station, the safety is made of steel and non-biodegradable plastic which will end up on a landfill site, possibly cutting a gull’s throat to boot, with God knows what ecological consequences.

  And when I recall cleaning my teeth, the tremors start all over again. I have an electric water pick for flushing old dinner out at dawn, but I daren’t use it any more. I would have to plant a tree. I do not know where you get these trees you have to plant every time you burn carbon, but I bet you have to drive there, and you would have to buy another tree to offset the petrol. I can’t do that every morning, especially as I have a very small garden. In less than a week, it would be a very small forest. Its roots would gobble up the water table and the house would fall over.

  Which leads me to my non-electric toothbrushing: it wasted ten times more water than the water pick would have done, because we had pork belly last night, and most of it was still wedged between my molars. The brushing also used a lot of energy (mine) and that doesn’t grow on trees: or, rather, does, given that I got the energy from the protein which Mrs Coren cooked last night with gas made from what might well have borne conkers, once.

  Mind you, I had already used most of that energy before bedtime. I had to take the rubbish out to umpteen different eco-categories of bin, but I wouldn’t put the garden lights on to do it, obviously, and the bottom fell out of one of the wet paper sacks we now use instead of planetocidal plastic, so I had to crawl around in the dark burning up precious pig, and when I finally got back indoors, Mrs Coren had turned off the telly standby light, and my disorder wouldn’t let me turn it on again to watch the cricket highlights.

  However, if England ever get another whiff of the Ashes – and how non-sustainable is that? – I think I could manage, just the once, to force one compulsive obsession to override another. Even if it cost a tree or two.

  Sea Fever

  MRS Coren and I have reached that happy point in life where we get asked out a lot. Fat glossy invitations plop daily to our mat. Some kind hosts want us to join them for an invigorating game of shuffleboard in the Bosporus, to be followed by a jolly sing-song in their candle-scented sauna; others insist we come with them to camcord penguins, and, when darkness foils the straining lens, foxtrot the night away to the internationally renowned melodies of Morrie Plunk and his Mandoliers. More yet beg us to island-hop with them from one Maldive to the next, tantalisingly dangling the promise of a dinghy whose transparent bottom will allow us, while sipping sundown cocktails shielded from gnats by titchy parasols, to gawp at turtles.

  Of course, there will be a price to pay. That is how cruises work. And they work better at it with every passing day as more and more OAPs pluck equity from the stratosphere into which their properties have soared and grope creakily for their cruisewear. It is why, last Sunday, the Liberty of the Seas, the hugest liner ever built, hove to off Southampton on its first promotional trip. Know what it was promoting? Not merely its malls, cinemas, casinos, pubs, ballrooms, swimming-pools, and all the other gewgaws of common or garden cruiseboats, but also its common or garden, which boasts a running-track, an ice-rink, a nine-hole golf course, a waterfall, and a cliff-face to enable rock-climbers to keep their hand, or at least their fingertips, in.

  Not, I’m afraid, my idea of a ship; my idea of Basingstoke. I write this because, yes, Mrs Coren and I did receive an invitation, and this piece will save us the bother of a formal reply. Thanks, but we shall not be sailing off to shop, filmgo, bet, booze, boogie, swim, sprint, skate, negotiate the tricky dog-leg fourth, go over the falls in a barrel, or up the north face of anything, because if we did want to do that we would not elect to do it on a prison-hulk, however swish; for that is not what ships are about.

  And they are about to be about even less. Soon, you may be sure, there will be a Diabolical Liberty of the Seas, ten times the size of this one, its lucky passengers living in thatched cottages, fishing the trout-lake, playing cricket, riding to hounds, and taking luxury trains to the afterdeck to watch Saracens v. Wasps; but Mrs Coren and I will not be sailing with them.

  If we ever accept an invitation to sail anywhere, it will have to come from a seafaring man with one leg we meet in an inn, whose lugger lies straining at its hawser, canvas furled, waiting to ship us and his parrot round the howling Horn for a few pieces of eight, weevils our only dining experience, rum our only sundown tipple, a concertina our only dance-band, and our only gamble the outside chance of finding an uncharted island where x marks the spot.

  And if our only fellow guests are fifteen men on a dead man’s chest, that’s fine with us.

  Anything Legal Considered

  THE Law Society is right to observe that ‘in our burgeoning blame culture, it is to be expected that some plaintiffs who become mired in litigation may have only themselves to blame.’ For who could blame the lawyers when, every day, my postbag sags beneath the weight of letters like this?

  Dear Mr Coren:

  In June 1994, a tree root from next door’s garden grew through the side of our new polystyrene pond, causing serious subsidence to a gnome. My neighbour refused compensation, so my solicitor sought counsel’s advice. He recommended I go to court, where the case took nine days, because of a number of what my counsel described as fascinatingly unforeseeable legal points, several dating back to 1326, and I lost. Costs ran to five figures.

  Being short of money, I sought time to pay, and took a second job as a nightwatchman, where I was laid out by a baseball bat. The company sacked me for incompetence, and counsel insisted I sue for unfair dismissal. At the hearing, evidence was admitted from the trial of the batter, who had been found not guilty on the grounds that I had shouted at him aggressively when he broke the door down and caused him the emotional distress for which I had been forced to compensate him, so the dismissal was upheld. Costs were given against me. They were also given against me in the case my solicitor advised me to bring against my other employer, who had dismissed me from my day job on the grounds that I had been off work for two weeks attending a hearing about being unfairly dismissed from my second job.

  Now unemployed, I could not find work due to pains in my batted head. My barrister sought compensation, but this was denied because a previous court had ruled that I had brought the injury on myself by aggressive shouting. To pay my lawyers’ bills for all this I had to sell my house, but I did not get as much as I hoped because of the legal fees involved, and since my wife did not fancy living over a chip shop, she sued for divorce.

  My lawyers recommended I defend the suit, which I lost, costs awarded to my wife, and as I left the court I
tripped on a broken kerb and dislocated my hip. My lawyers instantly initiated a negligence suit against Westminster Council, who not only won but also successfully counterclaimed for making the kerb worse than it was before.

  When my hip repair went wrong, the Medical Defence Union, acting for the surgeon I was advised to sue for negligence, employed three QCs, but I, being bankrupt, had to defend myself. The case took a month, due to all the hours I spent limping to and fro across the court as witness and counsel, until it was time to cash in my pension fund to pay the MDU costs.

  What I want to know is: if I could get a loan from those nice people who advertise on television, would you advise me to sue my lawyers?

  Dial M For Money

  NOW, viewers, before we go into the commercial break and the final part of this week’s riveting episode of Lewis, here is your chance to play Whodunnit? Calls on a landline cost £1. On a mobile, could be anything. Here is tonight’s prize question:

  In this episode of Lewis, who is in charge of the investigation? Is it: (a) Inspector Lewis (Kevin Whately)? (b) John Lewis (plc)? (c) Joe Louis?

  Lines will remain open until Tuesday week. The number to call is . . .

  . . . on this morning’s Today programme, John Humphrys – the noisy one with a bit of a Welsh accent – was talking to: (a) Margaret Beckett? (b) Mao Tse-Tung? (c) Rory Bremner?

  Ring 0207 580 4468 and ask to be put through to Cash For Questions. You will not be required to hang on for more than 30 minutes. Not many salesmen will call. If you are under ten years old, take the food out of your mouth before speaking, and . . .

  . . . thank you, Sian! Now it’s the moment all you weather-watchers have eagerly been waiting for, as the lines open for Umbrella or No Umbrella. Remember, it could be YOU enjoying a slap-up fish dinner on the Met Office roof with Esther Rantzen if you can correctly answer tonight’s teaser. Did the lovely Sian just forecast: (a) Tsunamis light to variable? (b) Sunny spells with the possibility of rain from the east later? (c) Meteorite showers? Ring the number on your screens right now. If you have any special dietary requirements, terms and conditions apply. Remember to put your tick in the Publicity Please box in this week’s Radio Times if you wish to be famous, and send it to us, enclosing £5 to cover, should you win, our registered reply . . .

  . . . which just about wraps up another fabulous Charlotte Church Show. Except of course for our big-money phone-in competition, Who Said F*** Tonight? Was it:

  (a) Nelson Mandela? (b) The Dalai Lama? (c) Everybody?

  The number to call is on the bottom of your screens right now. If numbers are not your thing, you are allowed to ask a smart friend to help, although in those circumstances you may be required to share tonight’s star prize, a month in Bangor and a really big cake, worth almost . . .

  . . . may just be time for tonight’s News Quiz. Did Huw say that the missiles were heading for (a) Rockall? (b) South Uzeira? (c) London?

  Ring the number on your screen, but do please make it sharpish, and here’s a handy clue: if you happen to live in South Uzeira or Rockall, you may well have an outside chance of collecting tonight’s . . .

  What Did Me In The Holidays

  TO all the thousands of you reading this in plaster, in traction, and in bitter self-reproach, you have my deepest sympathy. Particularly as you have just come back – or, rather, been brought back – from your first big holiday break of the season. Many of you, indeed, are limping on that break; a lousy pun, I agree, but I shan’t be deploying any really classy puns today, since the last thing I want is to have you in more stitches than you already are.

  I know all this because I have seen the RoSPA report stating that holiday injuries are increasing exponentially year on year, but only partly because people are annually taking ever more adventurous trips: while it is to be expected that those engaged in whitewater bungee-jumping or carrying an alligator up the north face of the Eiger may encounter a twinge or two, my concern is for the vast majority of holidaymakers who, according to RoSPA, hurt themselves by taking minor exercise to which they are not accustomed and for which they have not prepared.

  Since RoSPA therefore advocates basic pre-holiday training, let me offer a few tips. Pack your case a month before you leave, and practice throwing it into the boot of your car every day, so that when your Bulgarian mini-jalopy driver turns up to take you to Heathrow and stares at you while you lug your case out, your shoulder will be up to the task of chucking it on top of his filthy spare wheel. This exercise will also strengthen muscles required later when you have to get your hand-luggage into the overhead locker without cabin crew giggling themselves helpless at the new dent in your head.

  You would also be wise to suss out the route to Heathrow. Several per cent of all holiday cardiac arrests occur when a Bulgarian with a conked-out satnav arrives in Slough at the moment your plane is passing overhead.

  If you do get there on time, remember that you will have to stand on one leg to take your shoe off for the security joker. Practise this at home for as long as it takes, or risk falling against the thing rolling your jacket through X-ray. Also train yourself to bend, so that, when all your knick-knacks fall out of what has become your full metal jacket and you try to collect them from under the rolling thing where they have themselves rolled, you can stand up again. Flying is painful enough, without doing it on all fours.

  You will find that a few months’ hearty jogging will prepare you for what happens next, because nothing happens next. Much of your flight will be carried out on foot, since not only is your gate several kilometres away, but, pace Omar Khayyam, the moving walkway, having quit, moves not. And do be sure your marathon training was conducted while towing a wheeled bag under total control: a holiday wound is bad enough when you sustain it, but when someone else sustains it through your culpable ineptitude, an arm and a leg could cost you an arm and a leg. Because there’s no such thing as a good trip.

  Wrist Assessment

  OH, look at you, snuggled like a dormouse into a wobbling nest of twinkly Hodgson & Burnett wrapping paper torn off all your lovely presents; your new Smythson’s cream-laid notepad, hand-pulped from sustainable bing-bong trees by Samoan lovelies on your knee (the pad, not the lovelies), your new Gabassori Maestro fountain-pen fat and fluent in your grateful fingers, writing your Christmas thank-you letters.

  What a very good dormouse you are, to be writing so swiftly to all your hugely generous and irreproachably stylish donors! But, look again, is that not a furrow wrinkling your brow as you struggle to compose a suitable response to your extraordinarily bountiful Aunt Jocasta? You are thinking: Stone me, the last thing I wanted was a bloody Patek Philippe Calatrava! The old dear has forked out £24,000 for a solid gold albatross; it is not only around my wrist, it is around my neck.

  And goose-flesh rises on that neck now, as you suddenly sense that, while you were glancing at your wondrous new watch, someone was glancing at you. You turn your head quickly, just in time to spot your 12-year-old son retreating from the doorway behind, and you realise that he might well have seen the same advert his Great Aunt Jocasta saw. The kid has clocked the slogan: ‘You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.’

  Funny beggars, the Swiss: a unique mix of horology and cupidity, which, in Patek Philippe’s Geneva bunker, has hit its apogee; but, typically, without an instant’s reflection on the human consequences. How truly unsavoury the notion is that everything you own must perforce be a canny investment – do not put your money in rosebuds while ye may, do not come and kiss me, sweet and twenty, it’s diamonds that are forever. Why not tattoo your Grossanlegerbank account number on your left buttock to enable, should you suddenly clog-pop, your heirs and assigns to become our new clients as soon as possible?

  Oh, look yet again, the next generation has come into the room to ask if he may have a shufti at Daddy’s new watch. Is there a hint of Midwich Cuckoo in his covetous eyes? Do you perhaps hear the turn of the screw? Could
the little chap be calculating which of your less desirable assets he might one day have to flog in order to pay the Chancellor’s £9,600 cut of his inherited Calatrava? Worse yet, will you ever again be able to stand beside him on a railway platform with the old confidence, or drink the solicitous cocoa he has brought to your bedside, let alone show him how to load the Holland & Holland 12-bore over-and-under for which you were just about to write and thank your dearest chum at Goldman Sachs?

  Think about it, dormouse, right now. There is no present like the time.

  Any Old Iron

  DID you see the Daily Mail photograph of Ginette Pike? She was drying her hair. Big news? Yes, for the Mail: what she was doing it with was a 40-year-old dryer inherited from her grannie. Could be a record, apparently, so the paper invited any readers still using even older domestic appliances to write in. The Times missed out on this big story, but it doesn’t matter: The Times doesn’t need readers to write in. It’s got me.