If I thought the press killed my mum I probably wouldn’t invite them into every aspect of my life.

If I wanted to ‘get away’ from that same prying, hurtful, heartless, intrusive press, I would be even less inclined to share my every waking thought with the nearest reporter.

If I were an everyday bloke, former soldier, married to a mid-rate actress, I doubt Oprah would have me or my wife within a mile of her house unless I was there to empty the bins.

If I was a reporter, I wouldn’t be in...

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I’m a burger snob. I freely admit it. But you won’t find me droning on about age-matured wagyu beef and chunky seasonal relish on a steamed brioche bun. You also won’t hear me slagging off McDonalds like it’s a pedo ring on the dark web. Don’t get me wrong. I will go to great lengths for the perfect burger and good old Micky Donuts is way down the list of preferred vendors, but I’d take one over a gastro pub-gourmet burger any day.

Let’s cut to the chase, shall we? Here’s the...

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I remember, as a kid, watching American mafia movies or courtroom dramas where a lawyer would use the most tenuous little thing, reach for some unreasonable assumptions and dive on seemingly irrelevant tidbits to twist the facts to get his clearly guilty client off the hook:

“So, ‘Grandma Parsons’ do you drink alcohol?”
“Err… well, every Christmas Eve I have a nip of sherry to welcome Santa with the grandchildr…”
“The non-existent Santa?”
“Well, of course but…”
“S...

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The line in the title of this blog is from Queen Elizabeth in a scene from Blackadder II. It’s said with fondness, like she was talking about some cheeky urchins swiping apples from an orchard. It always stuck with me because it chimed with my own view of Americans.

This childlike boastfulness can be seen in any American game show where toughness and an iron will are needed.

From silly thrill shows like Fear Factor, American Ninja and Total Wipeout, right up to extreme survival shows li...

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Picture the scene. It’s mid 2000’s and I haven’t had a crap for ten days. I’m stood, crossed legged, clenching so hard it’s parting the hair on the back of my neck.

“With Dr. Atkins you can eat what you like and STILL lose weight!”

I was two weeks into the crazy new Atkins Diet. Brad Pitt had used it to get shredded for Fight Club and that was enough for me. I had lost weight, of course, but in those days the diet that would evolve into today’s Ketogenic lifestyle, which is ...

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I like porn. To deny it would be like Jamie Oliver denying he likes olive oil- the man probably drizzles it on his cornflakes. But, these days my libido has been overtaken by a general air of confusion when it comes to that oldest of the ‘dark arts’ because frankly, I’m not even sure if it’s dark at all anymore!

When I was a kid porn was illegal. No question about it.

Sure, there was ‘soft’ porn everywhere. The kind that jumped out at you from page three of a daily rag, alongsi...

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Up North we have a saying, “don’t be so nesh!”. It’s what my mum would say if I complained about being cold, or wet, or uncomfortable, or if something wasn’t very nice because it was a bit ‘ucky’ or I was being squeamish. Like a fear of spiders, “They can’t bloody hurt you! Stop being so nesh!” You’d be told to toughen up and ‘get on with it!’ so you did.

I used to hate that expression. I use it every day now… in my head.

When someone is being squeamish, or actin...

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I’m not Jeremy Clarkson. Let me make that absolutely clear. In fact I care not one bit for pretty much everything he says and does and his attitude, which can be summed up as, “Shut the fuck up, hippie, I’m talking,” makes me wish I was a short, black lesbian working-class aristocratic motorphobe, just to be as unlike him as possible.
I have gone to great pains to make the above distinction because I’m about to write some things that might, on the surface, look like they were written...
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In these times of penny-pinching, belt-tightening and hatch batten-downing we’re all suddenly obsessed with the price of things. Moreover, we’re turning into a population of individual price comparison services and I fear the day when we’re all Pseudo-Russian rodents may soon be upon us. My wife will automatically quote, and compare, the price of diesel at every petrol station we drive by like she’s got oil-based Tourette’s.

Eventually we all end up drawing the...

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I really don’t want to do this. It feels like telling your kids you just don’t love them any more, or stabbing a Labrador in the nose with a cocktail stick… yeah, well maybe not, that but it’s pretty gut-wrenching in any case.

There’s a sketch in ‘Kentucky Fried Movie’ called ‘Rex Kramer- Danger Seeker!’ We see Rex, a weedy white guy, put a crash helmet on and, after a brave ‘I’m going in’ wave to the camera he stands amongst a gang of big black gu...

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“Is it a good song? Well of course it is- don’t be stupid!”

That was me and me having our annual Christmas argument about  a song that is both rousing and poetically written, and that takes a different look at a holiday that’s normally so delicious, wobbly and sugar-coated it could pass for an M&S crème brulee.

I realize that the story of the less fortunate is one we all love at this time of year and it’s been wrung dry by every Christmas movie from ‘It’s ...

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I was right about The Darkness. Sorry, but while you were all hailing them as the new ‘Queen’ I was shaking my head and thinking, ‘That lad’s a ‘top C’ and a bag of chips away from disaster.’

I still feel I’m right about button flies. I stand there by the exit of public toilets, fiddling with myself and thinking, ‘This is how they came up with ‘The Cube’!’

I was wrong about Uggs- fair enough. I was wrong about Mark Wright- seems like a decent lad,...

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There’s been a lot of talk lately, mainly by comics, about the right to be offended. Think about that, it’s important: The right to be offended. What it means is that just because you think swinging cats by their tails is so ‘ hil-freakin-arious!’ You’re sure to be shortlisted for the Academy awards presenter’s job once Billy Crystal’s face has gone into spasm and he’s been rushed to hospital whispering in his own ears, I don’t have to. In fact I can be g...

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I’m not black. It’s something I’ve come to terms with over the years. Many hours huddled over an old tape machine working out what James Brown was saying haven’t altered the hue of my dermis one iota. I have, however, been the victim of racial abuse. My time living amongst the Catalans of Eastern Spain was spent mainly pouring drinks and waiting tables and, to a small degree, ducking flying dog pooh and watching my underwear burn on the washing line. The locals wer...

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I’ve just seen an ad for Littlewoods, or copses as they should be known. It’s your usual fare. Loads of cute kids on stage at a school and the proud parents beaming from the fold-up chairs below. It’s not a nativity of course, god forbid, it’s a singing tribute to how wonderful mums are. Nice? Well not really no, because the song- and there’s even a rap in there to keep it ‘street’, is all about how mum is wonderful for buying just about every consumer electr...

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Carlos the Jackal, the notorious terrorist and assassin of the latter part of the last century hasn’t got a nail clipper and he’s peeved. It’s mainly because he’s doing a lot of press and he wants to be presentable, after all, it’s a basic human right to have as much chance of meeting Louis Theroux as anyone else, right?

It always amazed me when people who have taken an oath to destroy an entire society or bring down a government that represents, to them, pure ...

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