Warning: this is a long and wordy one.


Natural's not in it
Let me tell you about Tom's Of Maine. I have been using Tom's lovely products for about eight years, in particular the excellent stick deodorant (pictured). This is a small company, based in, well, take a guess, who make natural, chemical-, preservative-, colour- and alcohol-free cosmetic products that are not tested on animals. Since ridding our house of chemical-based cleaners and cosmetics, we have come to rely on companies like this, such as Green People, Kingfisher, Ecover etc. It's good to support smaller companies anyway, even American ones, if they are ethical and care about the environment and human health and are prepared to stick by their principles.

I read in an excellent article in the financial pages of the Guardian about how companies like these are increasingly being bought out by larger, less-than-ethical corporations, and how it is affecting sales and ethical standing of the smaller companies. Green & Black's have been unapologetically swallowed up by Cadbury's. The Body Shop are now owned by L'Oreal. Ben & Jerry sold their arses to Unilever six years ago, making a mockery of the beardy stance that made them famous. And - you're ahead of me, here - as of last monght, Tom's Of Maine are 84 per cent owned by Colgate-Palmolive, who, on their own website, boast of being one of the biggest companies in the world.

This is how nice Tom and Kate, who set up Tom's 36 years ago for all the right reasons, announced the death of their company on their website:

Dear friends,

Over the years we've met many of you and been struck by our strong connection with you, and how much we have in common. We share many interests and values, like protecting the environment and giving back to the community, yet there is much diversity, too - lots of different types of people, just as we have many different types of friends in our everyday lives. Since our first letter to you on a package 36 years ago, we have shared a spirited and continuous dialogue. We want to thank you for your loyalty to Tom's of Maine, for your encouragement of us, and for your honesty in giving feedback about the products we make. We thank you also for helping us grow and succeed. More and more people are looking for safe and effective natural products from plants and minerals from a company that shares their values.

After much soul-searching, and many conversations with our children and trusted advisors, we realized that we cannot meet this growing demand alone. We decided to seek a partner to help us. It's been a quest that we entered with trepidation and excitement because we wanted to find a company that would honor our values, and we were unwavering in our commitment to stay intact in Maine as Tom's of Maine. We are happy to report to you that we did find a partner who has a deep understanding and respect for what we've done and wants to build on that with us.

Here is our good news: we have chosen to become part of the Colgate-Palmolive Company. We will keep a minority ownership in Tom's of Maine, and are looking forward to continuing as CEO and Vice President to ensure long-term sustainability. The agreement we have worked out succeeds in preserving the character, spirit, and values of our company as we grow.

What does this new partnership mean for you? You will continue to be able to rely on our tried and true Natural Care products based on our model of stewardship and sustainability. We will continue to make products without artificial preservatives, sweeteners, or dyes and without animal testing or animal ingredients. It will probably become easier for you to find more of our products in a variety of stores. You will still write or call us here in Kennebunk, Maine and we will still be called Tom's of Maine. We will continue our Common Good Partnerships, and to give 10% of what we earn to community efforts, and to support 5% of employee time for volunteering.

The things we have worked hard to create at Tom's of Maine will continue to be what makes our company tick. We can't be here forever to do this, so we look forward to passing on what we know. We will keep thinking about how to provide for you, to look for new ways to improve. Thanks again for your loyalty and support. As always, please let us know what you think.

This is what I think. I sent them an email:

This is a sad day indeed. I have just learned that you have sold out to Colgate-Palmolive and I'm afraid that after years of enjoying your products, I will no longer be buying them. I guess it happens to all the ethical companies in the end, but I had clung to the wishful notion that Tom's Of Maine would be somehow different. I was wrong.

I am sorry to withdraw my custom, as your deodorant in particular has been a fixture in my bathroom since I first banished chemicals from the house about eight years ago and embarked upon a truly ethical lifestyle. I will have to look elsewhere for a replacement. Ah well. Thanks for those eight years.

I was quite pleased with the "ah well." And this, promptly, is what somebody from Consumer Dialogue & Services wrote back.

Thank you for your e-mail. I can certainly understand your concern about our partnership with Colgate-Palmolive, and I'm glad you've provided us the chance to respond to your concern. Here are the facts. Colgate-Palmolive will own 84% of our company; but Tom's of Maine will remain an independent, stand-alone subsidiary based here in Maine. This means that we will still be doing business the same way we have for the last 36 years. Tom and Kate will continue to lead our company. Tom's of Maine products, formulations and ingredients will remain the same as they have always been. We will continue to make products that are natural, free of artificial preservatives, sweeteners and dyes. And we will continue to make safe, effective products without the use of animal ingredients and without the use of animal testing. Further, we will remain in Kennebunk, Maine, and our employees will remain in their jobs here in Maine.

So while we understand your concern, we are actually excited and confident in this agreement with Colgate-Palmolive. We see a growing number of consumers like you changing the rules of the economy and making natural mainstream. We hope you'll stay interested and in touch. Over time, we think you'll find that nothing you like about Tom's of Maine or our products has changed. As always we remain interested in hearing from you.

And this is what I wrote back:

Thank you so much for the full and prompt reply. I appreciate that Tom's of Maine products will remain as natural and ethical as they have always been, and expected as much. My problem is not about the quality of the products, it is with the fact that the company will be 84% owned by Colgate-Palmolive, which prides itself on being "a truly global company serving hundreds of millions of consumers worldwide", with "global brands sold in over 200 countries". This is exactly the kind of monolithic corporation that is despoiling the environment, filling the world with unnecessary chemicals and squeezing small businesses out of the market. Your association with them is clearly financially advantageous to your company, and I don't blame you for doing the deal. My point is that I will no longer feel inclined to support your business, as, despite your own commitment to avoiding animal-tested ingredients, Colgate-Palmolive make no such claims, and are the Ethical Consumer boycott list for this very reason. Will you still make the no-animal-testing claim on the side of the packaging? Or will you admit that your profits go to a company that test on animals as a matter of course?

If I buy a stick of Tom's deodorant, I am giving money to Colgate-Palmolive, whose products I otherwise studiously avoid. My efforts to, as you put it, "change the rules of the economy" do not include buying products whose profits go to Colgate-Palmolive. Change comes through independence (and I mean true independence), not submission.

You sound very upbeat about the partnership. I wish I could share that optimism. The fact remains, a once-proud local company is now 84% swallowed up by a huge global concern. What really irks me is the fact that, at the next Colgate-Palmolive stock holders meeting, the purchase of Tom's will be held up as advantageous in terms of improving the parent company's ethical image. It strikes me that, at the end of the day, your good work is being used to make an unethical conglomerate look better. I would be interested to hear you defend the merger on this count. Thanks again for writing back

You probably think I'm weird, I can sense it, but I can't help it. The Woodspice deodorant was a particular favourite. And the Calendula one. But the remaining two sticks in my house will be my last. It's hard to be principled, but you've got to have a go. Now, let's go and watch the World Cup ...

Oh woe is him

Some facts to chew over: Robbie Williams' most recent single Sin Sin Sin went into the Official UK Singles Chart two Sundays ago at number 22. Last week, it dropped out of the Top 40 altogether, after just one week, falling to 41. Since August 1996, when his first single Freedom went to number 2, his lowest chart placing, out of 25 consecutive Top 30 hits (six of them numbers ones), has been number 14 with South Of The Border in September 1997 (no, I can't hum that one either), which was, crucially, before Angels, when the world fell in Robbie's miserable lap. Not once has peaked outside the Top 10 since that date. To contextualise, his last single, Advertising Space (tum ti-tum ... der-der-der ... nope) reached number 8 in December, and Sexed Up (la-la-la-la) reached number 10 in November 2003. My conclusion? ROBBIE WILLIAMS IS ALL OVER.

Why aren't executives at EMI going up to the roof of the building and tossing themselves off? Robbie Williams! The man they paid fifty million quid for! The one who hasn't cracked America! The record-buying public have gone off him. Admittedly, Sin Sin Sin was shit. And I mean really shit. But so are other records he's put out and they've gone Top 10, wafted along by the warm current of goodwill that's supported him all these years, but not made him any happier. People in the country have loved Robbie. But they seem to have stopped. They heard his latest single, didn't much like it, and decided not to go and buy it in the shops. I repeat, and I do so because I haven't read this headline anywhere since Sunday: ROBBIE WILLIAMS IS ALL OVER. Knebworth suddenly seems a long time ago.

I am actually worried, because Robbie seems like a very delicate flower, emotionally, addicted to fame and yet so clearly ill-equipped to deal with it. Most of his songs are along the lines of woe-is-me-fame-hasn't-bought-me-happiness-what's-that-piece-of-fluff-in-my-millionaire-navel (latest album title: Intensive Care), but what kind of song will he write now? Are there words in the dictionary to express the kind of existential turmoil a number 22 hit and one week in the chart must spell? And can the great British public take it? The blood will be on our hands. Well, yours, if you ever bought one of his records and contributed to his unhappiness.

Did anyone else see self-loathing in all those tattoos?

Perhaps this would have made the papers if there wasn't a World War on. Sorry, World Cup.

Three-letter word reclaimed by homophobes
How do you feel about this? I don't wish to be a killjoy, but I'm uneasy. The facts are this: the BBC governors defended X Factor loser Chris Moyles' use of the word "gay" on his Radio 1 show in July last year (the complaints precedure certainly moves fast!). He described a ringtone on-air as "gay", implying it was bad. The governors, who are down with the kids, said the use of the word gay to mean "lame" or "rubbish" was widespread among young people, and it was "to be expected" that the Radio 1 DJ would use similar expressions. Groups like Stonewall and Beat Bullying don't agree that it's "expected" or acceptable. As a spokesman for the latter said: "While the BBC claims the word gay has evolved into meaning 'lame', this is only because people identify being called gay as undesirable, therefore giving power to that term." I have heard young people use the word "gay" to mean "rubbish", usually prefixed with "so" and I must admit it has always unsettled me a little. I accept that blanket usage has steered it away from any explicit homophobic meaning, but that doesn't make it any better. The new coinage still has its roots in homophobia, something I fought the Political Correctness Wars 1983-1990 to stamp out. Was it all for nothing? Perhaps I'm being very 80s about it. Perhaps gay people don't care in an age of more equality and civil unions and Little Britain, the gayest mainstream comedy ever. (By which I mean homosexual, not rubbish, young people.) But if it is expected to use gay as an insult, aren't we just ever so slightly sliding backwards, semantically speaking? What if the word "black" became twisted in the playground to mean "rubbish" and that entered the adult lexicon? Is that cool? Suppose "Northamptonian" became shorthand for "lame". That's so Northamptonian! Would I care? I sort of would, even if the use of it didn't actually injure me personally. I think I'd care in priniciple.

I know, the English language evolves and mutates the whole time, and that is a wonderful thing, but I don't think this matter is as cut and dried as the governors do. Surely it plays into the hands of those who think being gay actually is rubbish. I saw a documentary on Channel 4 the other night about a college in America for Christians who really do think it's rubbish. They think it's wrong and deviant and unnatural and dangerous. They must be rubbing their hands.

Discuss.

Other online communities are available
What have I done? At this point in my life, I need to concentrate. I have stuff to do, including a sitcom to finish. Of late, I have weaned myself off two online forums: Arctic Monkeys (now overrun by 12-year-olds who write in txt language about how how hot Alex Turner is!!!!!!!!!) and NotBBC's Comedy Forum (nobody seems to post on there for days at a time any more). I have even managed to control my own blogging habit, posting only when I have something to talk about and, more importantly, when I have time. My life was getting back on track. And then came MySpace. I know it's bollocks unless you're a band trying to get famous, and I know the word "friends" has become meaningless due to its proliferation, and I know that some people use it as a kind of dating agency, and I know this is the honeymoon period you enter in the first weeks of membership that simply cannot last for ever, but I am hooked.



Look at my friends! I have 166 friends! (It's probably more than that already.) Method Man out of the Wu-Tang Clan is my friend! (He isn't.) The Pixies are my friends! (They're not!) Morrissey has yet to become my friend! (He hasn't. And even if he does become it, he won't be.) I am friends with people I have never met! (I'm not.)



Richard Herring, my arch rival, is more popular than me. He has 352 friends! (No he doesn't. Actually, he does, in real life. He does gigs and goes out to nightclubs in Hereford and plays poker and attends parties thrown by the stupid men's magazine Maxim, so he does actually meet a lot of young women and old, poker-playing men, but are they his friends really?) Like me, Richard is supposed to be writing a sitcom at the moment, yet he's online at MySpace all the time. The reason I know this is because when I'm online, his "online now!" icon is always flashing. That means he is always online. I'm not.



The Day The Music Died - the reason, after all, we got sucked into MySpace in the first place - has 226 friends. This is actually more meaningful, as, you have to assumme, they're people who listen to and like our radio show. The page acts as a meeting point for these people, and gives us the chance to interact with them, which is great. (And something new and happening to talk about on the show.) I'm almost talking myself into thinking MySpace has its uses and that it's fine for me to keep checking for the "NEW FRIEND REQUESTS!" icon, even though I know that it means "NEW RANDOM PEOPLE REQUESTS!" At least I have now, one and a half weeks into my membership, stopped accepting every new random person request. There are two people I don't like the look of, both pseudonymous, and I haven't accepted them. I accidentally accepted Noel Edmonds, knowing it wasn't really him but thinking it was quite funny, and then I deleted him, as I decided posing as famous people, even jokily, is sad and pointless. That makes me discerning and grown-up about MySpace.

I feel better for having shared this with the group. I'm actually not having a mid-life crisis. I feel quite optimistic, I still get an enormous amount of pleasure from small things like birds and the occasional tradesman who actually turns up and does the job they have been paid to do, and I think I look alright in a t-shirt for a man of 41. Also, Method Man is my friend!!!!!!!!!

The X-Factor: Battle Of The Freaks



OK, so I got sucked into it, in the end. I'd heard that, of all people, Chris Moyles was doing well in the celebrity version of the unstoppable but easily avoidable talent show, and, during The Mummy last night, curiosity got the better of us and we switched over to see what his singing was actually like. And there he was, the wilfully irritating fat DJ doing a perfectly charming job of Wonderwall. You would need a heart of stone not to be charmed by the performance, and his dedication of it to his mum. The day the music died? Not quite.

By hopping aboard the bandwagon this late in the "journey" (oh, how they all endlessly talk of their "incredible journey"), it meant we had missed all the rubbish celebrities, weeded out early on, like the digraceful Rebecca Loos, the appalling James Hewitt and the miscast Gillian McKeith - all of whom were reintroduced in clip form on tonight's final, as well as in an excrutiating cast rendition of Thank You For The Music, a song chosen solely to supply a feed-line for self-conscious judge Simon Cowell. None of this bunch could sing. I have never watched The X Factor - it goes on for too long, and if it's anything like Pop Idol, which I have seen, and it is, then once the talentless, self-deluding idiots are dispatched in an exhibition centre somewhere, it loses its appeal. I can live without watching our next round of chart-dominating pop stars doing cover versions Saturday night after Saturday night until they're wittled down to three, then two, then one, not that it matters, as all three will have hits off the back of it. I actually do think that the popularity of this phone-vote format has destroyed the music industry and weakened the spine of the next generation. There's no mystery about where pop stars come from any more. The industry doesn't even have to bother its arse seeking them out - the ITV public actually choose them as if choosing a new pair of trainers in a shop, and will pay premium rates for the privilege. And kids tell careers teachers, when asked what they want to do when they grow up, that they want to "be famous", because it looks easy. Which is why the celeb version of the same process is less offensive. (Having said that, Dr Gillian doing It's In His Kiss looked pretty offensive from the clips. What new form of self-flaggellation is this?)

Net result: we actually sat down for tonight's final, just to see who would win out of freakish rugby player Matt Stevens and tiny ex-EastEnder Lucy Benjamin, a woman for whom I have actually written script! Not that she needs me anymore, now that she's a proper singer. (Moyles was inexplicably voted off last night. He seemed justifiably fed up and refused, showbiz-style, to cover with platitudes. He should have been in the final for, if nothing else, bringing some real personality to his karaoke. It's hard for me to admit this, by the way. I have dedicated my life to denouncing his smutty, oleaginous, self-pleasuring style of broadcasting and there he is on telly getting my vote.) So we were captive between 9pm and 10.30 and what do you know, we soon regretted this act of submission. With only two contestants left they had to really stretch the chewing gum to fill an hour and a half. By the final reckoning I had lost the will to live. JUST TELL US WHO'S WON FOR FUCK'S SAKE!

It was Lucy Benjamin, who I think said the word "journey" the most times in the course of the programme so she deserved it. Her cover of Donna Summer's Last Dance was spirited - and an unusual choice of number from her "mentor" Louis Walsh, who certainly likes a bit of gay disco - and she is three months pregnant, something we needed to know apparently. To her credit, she is not the kind of lady-shape that gets in Heat without a bitchy comment, so good on her for being glamorous against the strict codes of acceptance in our increasingly eugenic celebrity culture. And who wants a South Efrican rugby player to win? No neck, the face of a baby, nothing of note to say, never mind Matt Stevens' truly passable voice and much-better-than-it-ought-to-have-been renditon of New York, New York, he should get back to the rugby field where all the men look like that. The flaws in the X-Factor format became all to apparent by the end: the endless hawking of phone lines in order to make money for ITV (with a small sliver going to charity) and the sponsor, Nokia ("a new angle on music," or some such rot, according to Jo Whiley's voiceover); the hyperventilating audience with their "handmade" signs (I bet); the ludicrous pantomime of the judging, which has replaced wrestling as the new "fixed" entertainment of our age; and the unbearable self-promotion of Sharon Osbourne (she's there to sell the Sharon Osbourne BRAND and nothing else). It's low, noisy stuff. And if it hadn't been for Moyles, hooking me in with the genuine raw pig iron of spirit and personality he brought to bear, I'd be feeling less worn out right now.

Note to self: don't do it again.

Incidentally, she's down as "Donna Summers" on the official website. Not that it's been put together by 16-year-olds with no sense of pop history.