Nice. Somebody filmed part of Collings & Herrin Podcast number 31 - live at the Cross Kings in Kings Cross, London. Just look at what you missed by not being there: two men sitting down on a stage, being light-hearted about sweat shops while helping to raise money to stop sweat shops. For some reason, this clip comes part way through me explaining that the most interesting thing that had happened to me that week was emailing the company who make the cat food my cat no longer likes.
Ha ha. It says "Herrin Knob", and it's in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. (Thanks to Paul Kerensa, stand-up comedian and writer on the hit BBC1 sitcom Not Going Out, for passing on this snap from his month-long trek "with chums" across America. Watch out for falling bankers, Paul.)
Some story about billions in British investments being lost in the Icelandic banking crisis and the Dow Jones plummeting are the main stories on the cover of today's Guardian, but all is not lost in the global downturn just yet. Above the title, thus far more importantly, you will see: Be A Style Goddess - Kate Moss's 10 Golden Rules Of Fashion.
To save you the trouble of turning to page 18 in G2, here are those "golden rules", which I have helpfully annotated.
In Collings & Herrin Podcast Number 33, we cut a languid, mid-afternoon swathe through Alistair Darling's £500bn TV-screen bailout, the nude "twit" on the wall of the Japanese emperor's palace [pictured], Polly the tortoise in Bristol Zoo with the "stretchy bandage" [also pictured], Lily Cole's alien face and translucent alien skin, Johnny Rotten's butter-based betrayal of everything we fought for, and Google's lunch policy. Richard was all tired.
Hey, clever computer people! Of late, I have been inundated with this kind of spam: ie. Undeliverable Mail emails, which are clearly triggered by spam that elicits automatic replies from my computer. (I have no knowledge of anything I've switched on that sends out an automatic reply, by the way.) I am, as Mac users will have spotted from the grab, using Mac Mail. The email address they're coming to is this one, the wherediditallgoright.com one, which is why I have to trawl through the Junk inbox, for actual emails from actual people using this site to get in touch, which happens a lot. How do I stop the bad spam from happening? I had bloody hundreds of these yesterday, and I'm getting bored of ploughing through them. However, I am a little man, technically, and some of you, I know from experience, are giants. (Don't advise me to stop using a Mac. I love them and will never change.) Thank you in advance.
I am, as you may know, a big fan of Jamie Oliver. When public opinion veered back in his direction after Jamie's Kitchen, the series about setting up his Fifteen restaurant and training urchins, I was already onside. But even the most hardened hater of his barrow-boy persona and now-curtailed use of the word "pukka" (oh, and by the way, he's not a "mockney", he was born and raised in Essex, where the people talk in a sort of extreme version of the East End accent - "mockney" is a fun word, but it never applied to Jamie Oliver) must admit he's trying to do some good with his millions and his reputation. School Dinners was a noble attempt to change public opinion and flick the nose of intransigent government. And Ministry Of Food is another game effort to make a difference, this time on a cash-strapped generation who can't cook.
But there's a fucking problem, and fuck me, it's his fucking swearing. From the first fucking line of the first fucking show, he was fucking swearing ("This is fucking Great Britain"), and the fucking swearing hasn't fucking stopped. He's up there in fucking Rotherham, trying to fucking get ordinary fucking people on poor fucking wages and fucking benefits to fucking knock up a fucking stir-fucking-fry, and it's no fucking picnic. Fucking hell, he's really fucking up against fucking it. I personally don't give a fuck whether he fucking swears or not, but a lot of other fucking people do, and it's a fucking complaint that fucking comes up again and a-fucking-gain. Why does he fucking swear so much? Firstly, because, I imagine, he fucking swears in real life, and this is fucking supposed to be a fucking documentary. Secondly, because he's a fucking duck out of fucking water up there in the fucking north, I fucking think he's fucking trying to ease into fucking working class life by showing that he's not a fucking ponce from the south, even though he fucking is - if anyone was unlucky enough to see the new, Lancashire-set Steve Coogan vehicle Sunshine last night, there was a scene in the pub where a TV weather forecast announced rain in London and a cheer went up. (He is a fucking millionaire, and one fucking woman has already fucking accused him of fucking "living in a bubble", but oddly fucking enough, she didn't say "fucking", as I guess she's fucking comfortable in her skin and might even fucking have the fucking decency to mind her language when the cameras are rolling.)
Anyway, it's not spoiling my enjoyment of the show, but it's putting a lot of other people off, and it's certainly not ideal for kids, who might get something out of it too. Hey, it's fucking in the can, it's not going to fucking change, but fuck me, it might be a bit of a fucking own goal. I still love him.*
*It's not unconditional love though. If the big supermarkets, like the one he works for and helps to greater profits, didn't secretly want people to buy "value-added" foods, ie. processed, because there's a greater return on things that have been industrially produced, maybe people would buy less crap and more whole ingredients. You know, the ones that supermarkets put at the front of the shop to show off about, but are only there to lure you into the more profitable aisles of things in boxes and cans and jars and sachets. The day Jamie Oliver stops taking the fucking Sainsbury's shilling will be a happy day indeed. Sorry, did I just swear?
Here's me banging on about social networking on the website of research company (I don't really know what they do) Tamar. Thanks to Henry for asking the questions and putting me up there; he's the non-stalker who set up my FaceBook "fan page", which I can't access and have no interest in accessing.
I'm not sure how long it's been since I was allowed to write a cover story. But thanks to Word, I am a journalist again! What a tremendous day I spent in Manchester with Elbow a couple of weeks ago, and how cheering to see Guy Garvey's face on the front of a magazine in a world of chiselled youngsters.
Here's a great line I caught on Sky News this morning: "Peter Mandelson is expected to make an unexpected return to government." I love 24-hour rolling news.
Without warning, we did Collings & Herrin Podcast 32 last night. But not in a pub in Kings Cross, nor to members of the Socialist Worker party. It should be up this morning. In our 32nd, unedited podcast, back in the teetotal, audience-free safety of Richard's attic (except with darkness falling), we solve the credit crunch, dream of a Utopian future where there is no racism, berate Sharon Stone, deify Bruce Parry, mock a three-year-old boy for having a permanent tattoo of Bart Simpson and alight, once again, upon Richard's Jigsaw fantasy (see: hard evidence of story in the accompanying pic). We have both been working very hard this week, on various separate projects it would be inappropriate to detail at this stage, and it was nice, as ever, to break away and do some voluntary work.
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