Issue 13: Unlucky for some

If I ever make it as a professional footballer, which is increasingly unlikely, my first-choice squad number would be 13. As I’m not superstitious, I’ll gladly take that No.13 shirt to bypass any bun fight over the traditionally coveted No.7 or No.10 shirts. To me, superstition is a medieval ailment, antique fear born from an inability to rationalise. If you believe in bad luck from walking under ladders, cracking a mirror or flapping open an umbrella indoors, then you must also accept that pixies prance in forests, crocks of gold are buried at the foot of rainbows and dragons soar above steam locomotives in Wales. Thirteen is just a number, a necessary bridge between 12 and 14. I’d obviously be miffed if I was handed the 666 shirt, especially if there were only 30 players in the squad, but if I had to, I’d accept that number and put in a shift.

One of the most prolific net bulgers in the history of the game was the West German forward Gerd Müller, who scored 68 goals in 62 international appearances between 1966-74. His shirt number of choice for – as Stan Boardman referred to them – the “Jirmins”, was 13. “Der Bomber”, as Müller was known, simply shifted the onus of unluckiness onto the opposition. In Mexico ’70, the greatest World Cup in history, Müller scored ten times including a cruel extra-time winner against reigning world champions England. Eusebio of Portugal also opted for number 13 and it never did him any harm. In England ’66, the not imaginatively titled “Black Pearl” – because he’s black – scored nine goals, including four against a battling North Korea at Goodison Park. (FYI, Boardman played for Tranmere Rovers in his teens; this was obviously decades before his career-crushing racist stand-up routine at a Leeds United function in 2002.)

While BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme was gasping, “Some people are on the pitch! They think it’s all over! It is now! It’s four!” in 1966, Patrick McGoohan had already started scribbling notes about an exceedingly stylish ITV spy series, to be called The Prisoner. McGoohan would play a man who’d lost the right to a name and was titled, simply, “No.6”.

Interlude]

Now, I know what you’re thinking – that football quote doesn’t sound right! Wolstenholme recorded a revised commentary for Goal! The World Cup (1967), the official FIFA film of the England World Cup, where he spoke, “Some of the crowd are on the pitch! They think it’s all over! It is now!”, which was used on EnglandNewOrder’s No.1 smash “World In Motion” in 1990. It’s far more succinct, I think you’ll agree, but it isn’t the original commentary.

Anyway, I first came across The Prisoner in 1991, when a Southern college pal with a raver’s ponytail, who had a wide-ranging knowledge of avant-garde telly and films, sat me down and made me watch the entire series on video. In 1991, we had hectares of spare time, and I was instantly hooked on The Prisoner’s bizarre premise. Well, I was for the first six episodes. The other eleven flew over my head. But its stylishness, from the “Village” font seen on street signage (a derivative of the Albertus font family, apparently) to the crackingly cool outfits worn by the Village’s inhabitants, struck a deep chord. I’ve just bought the series on Amazon, so I’m going to give it another go over the coming weeks. We were drunk a lot in 1991, on beer, vodka and whatever else was on special offer, so maybe those frequent roaring hangovers did little to assist my comprehension of McGoohan’s later episodes. McGoohan was 39 when he filmed The Prisoner. He looked more like 51, but then again, men were men back then, rather than lagered-up Noddy-type figures. McGoohan was asked to be James Bond but turned it down – another stylish move.

I can’t fathom why No.6 was so keen to leave the Village. He had a flat with incredible views, a cleaner, great clothes and plenty of time to play chess down by the estuary. Plus, there were no kids ruining the day! If No.6 was so angry at having his freedom removed, imagine what he’d be like with the enforced slavery of becoming a parent! He’s got a pretty good deal from what I can see. Maybe he was missing his Lotus Seven.

My renewed interest in the exploits of McGoohan’s retired secret agent stems from Festival No.6, a Prisoner-themed music and literary jamboree held at Portmeirion in north Wales. It’s the actual location where The Prisoner was filmed and it’s a bonkers place, like nowhere else on the planet. You’re never at ease when you’re in Portmeirion, what with heads used as architectural embellishments and houses built on rocky promontories, which is why it works so well in the series. Festival No.6 is now in its second year. September is obviously Wales’ rainy season. In 2012, New Order played, dressed in Prisoner uniform. We slip-slapped along the mud’s glistening surface like Harold Lloyd just to reach the main stage.

This year, I returned as an artist (H-hmm, that’s right! – said in the style of No.6), having convinced FN6 organiser Luke Bainbridge, the former editor of Observer Music Monthly, that I ought to interview Declan Lowney, the director of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Father Ted, live, on-stage, in front of a real audience. I have to say, I prefer wearing wristbands that say “Artist” on them rather than “VIP”, “Press” or “No Frills”. Now, a Q&A in front of a crowd, leaning into a microphone, hearing your own voice blasting out, is a whole different ballgame to relaxing in a pub with a voice recorder running. Even before you’ve asked the first question onstage, you’ve waged war with yourself just to keep a lid on everything. On Sunday at Festival No.6, the day of the interview, we were hit by a storm that almost matched the intensity of the persistent anticyclonic Great Red Spot on Jupiter. As a result, our 2pm kick-off was put back to 6.30pm.

Those hours of delay were agony. You’re in a landing craft waiting to attack a beach on D-Day, but they won’t let the bloody ramp down. We didn’t even know if the Q&A was going to take place as the afternoon dragged on, because there was a knock-on effect with the later acts, but they managed to find alternative stages for that Cath Kidston ragdoll Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie, who, it was suggested to me, is starting to resemble Widow Twankey. Me, Declan, our wives and entourage filled the chasm of time drinking wine, which, as you know, slips past the clacker with incredible ease in the daytime. You’ve got to be really careful with wine. It’ll consume you if you drink it like ale. Three glasses is already taking you to your booze limit – any more than that and you’re booking a hangover. I had a few glasses, but once I’d drank a pail of water and walked around outside to test if my legs were still operating, I felt alright. As the clouds raced towards the Snowdonia National Park, leaving us with bright evening sunshine, Bainbridge arrived to say, “Fix bayonets, it’s show time!”

It’s a long walk to the stage – well it was on this occasion because the grass was wet and it was a gradually rising gradient. Declan’s missus Jenny insisted I wear her own, homemade Prisoner jacket, which matched her husband’s get-up. And so it was that I interviewed the Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Father Ted director in a woman’s Jigsaw jacket, size 12. The wife says the talk went down well and that we both looked pretty confident up on stage, so you’ll have to take her word for it. The full transcript will appear on GQ.co.uk very soon. Once it was over, I fancied doing another live Q&A, but I’m happy to wait for a year. I have to say, I enjoyed it. I might have to interview Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert from New Order next time – the band should have a fresh collection of tracks by then.

Of course, the Q&A was just one nail-biting aspect of that rain-lashed weekend. Before the festival, Bainbridge emailed and said, “I’ve been wondering whether I’ll get you and Ché to DJ the VIP bar.” Now, Ché’s half Mancunian, half Argentinian, and as a result is a hairier version of 10cc’s Kevin Godley. Ché’s existence is an epic cartoon, full of calamitous injury, Granadaland dialogue and Hanna-Barbera posturing. He wouldn’t look out of place on a Salford remake of Top Cat or Captain Caveman. So we turned up, separately, on Friday evening, got the tents up, went down to the VIP bar to see what was going on, and were told, “Right lads, you’re on tonight, have you got your music ready?” I’d barely sipped my first beer. At the moment, Ché’s only got one working eye because he keeps sleeping with his contact lenses in, so he’s unable to judge distances or see any detail. Although he found the general act of DJing troublesome, between the two of us, we put on a belting show for three hours and even had Widow Twankey dancing.

We don’t mix tracks together; we’re masters of the merge. I’ve never seen the point of all that knob twiddling, and even if I did, I don’t know how to do it. The musicians and engineers have already given us a decent track. Surely that’s their skill and expertise. DJs should let the track do the talking. It doesn’t need further faffing. My playlist was something along the lines of this…

“Lose Yourself To Dance” – Daft Punk; “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” – Saint Etienne; “Acceptable In The 80’s” – Calvin Harris; “Finest Dreams (Richard X Remix)” – Kelis; “Remember Me” – Blueboy; “Voodoo Ray” – A Guy Called Gerald; “NY Excuse” – Soulwax; “Get Up, I Feel Like Being A Sex Machine” – James Brown; “Think (It Takes Two)” – A.Skillz feat Lyn Collins; “Perfect (Exceeder)” – Mason vs Princess Superstar; “Blue Monday” – New Order; “Do Ya Wanna Funk” – Sylvester; “Hey Boy Hey Girl” – The Chemical Brothers; “Everybody Needs A 303” – Fatboy Slim; “Move Your Body” – Marshall Jefferson; “I Feel Love (Radio Edit)” – Donna Summer; “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” – Stevie Wonder; “Tainted Love” – Gloria Jones; “Can’t See Me (Bacon & Quarmby Remix)” – Ian Brown; “Step On” – Happy Mondays; “Bigmouth Strikes Again” – The Smiths; “Let’s Wade In The Water” – Marlena Shaw; “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” – Wayne McGhie; “Back By Dope Demand (Funky Bass Mix)” – King Bee; “Apache” – Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band; “I Want To Know” – Sugar Simone; “Do Your Stuff” – Sono Rhizmo; “The Only One I Know” – The Charlatans; “Over And Over” – Hot Chip; “Fools Gold” – The Stone Roses.

Ché came out his blurry blocks with “My Old Piano” by Diana Ross, a statement of intent and a solid dance track that was still echoing round my head during a severe hangover the following morning. He also played “Get Lucky (Michael Jackson Mix)” – Daft Punk (feat Pharrell Williams), which I’d never heard before, and caused much curiosity among the jiving throng. Interestingly, it was Friday 13^th when we performed. Nothing unlucky for us, but then again, I don’t believe in all that mumbo jumbo.

When the National Lottery started in the Nineties, my stepfather Keith kept an on-going record of the numbers and would explain, with biro clasped in hand, how he’d recognised a pattern and could now accurately predict the following week’s Lottery. I said, “If that’s the case, how come you’re still here in one of Doncaster’s poorer districts and not hanging out with Tom Cruise in Malibu?” He replied, “Well, that’s the thing, I’m always one or two numbers out – look, I’ll show you.” He’d often tell me that he was on the verge of “cracking the code”.

These insightful sessions would last an hour, and I have to say, if Keith had gone for 41 and not 40, and 15 instead of 16, and 35 instead of 34, he might now be discussing the future of Scientology with a group of notable Hollywood actors. “This is just nonsense, Keith,” I reasoned. “You’re attempting to unravel the mysteries of Chaos Theory. There’s no order to the Lottery numbers. You’re as likely to get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 coming out as the numbers your system is telling you to choose.”

Keith was convinced he was onto something and continued his Bletchley Park studies for a further two years before running out of patience. He remains estranged from Cruise et al, but there was a moment where, at the back of my mind, I wondered if Keith might end up as famous as Albert Einstein. Keith used to work at the plant works in Doncaster, making trains for British Rail, and once revealed how he’d lost his favourite screwdriver by sticking it in the back of sandwich-stealing rat. The rat then scampered off squealing with the screwdriver still upright in its hump, like a bizarre gear stick. I’ll bet Einstein never lost his favourite screwdriver that way!

Three years after I’d first watched The Prisoner, my Southern college pal visited me in my small London flat just off Fulham Road. Instead of sitting in watching videos, we went boozing round Covent Garden, supping “rock stars” – JD & Coke! We got a taxi back, like the rock stars we were, and when we opened the cab’s door, my college mate spilled into the road like that runny-metal shapeshifting robot from Terminator 2; Judgment Day. To be fair, this wasn’t like him – he could usually hold his liquor. I thought: "I'm more powerful than you now." My flat was on the third floor of a town house, and as we ascended, for some unknown reason, rather than navigate the final bend of the stairs to reach my door, my visitor continued in a straight line and marched straight through a large glass pane, falling headfirst into the night. Now, my flat was 250 feet above the ground, and it took some guts for me to peer through the jagged shards to see what had become of my sozzled companion. Incredibly, he was laid prostrate just six feet below the window ledge, on a small plastic roof shelter – the only one on the entire exterior of the building.

By rights, my mate's number should have been up. His biggest injury was a cut finger, which required four stitches at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Talk about spectacularly lucky – he did more than win the Lottery that night. The way I see it, life's too short for superstition and there are no ghouls, God or Herly Gherst either. There are people, animals, kids, toys, clothes, house-cleaning implements, MOTs, wine, work, telly, texts and great weekends away, like Festival No.6, with fantastic company. That should suffice. It does for me. You don't need foolish religious reverence. If you want magic, miracles and comedy occurrences caused by walking under ladders, just watch the Sooty Show. That's what I do.

Issue 12: Operating out of your depth

Although we “take” the Guardian in our house on Saturday, I often wonder if the wife puts the paper into our shopping trolley just to ensure that I have a rant, which I suspect she enjoys more than the rag itself. The Guardian’s Weekend magazine is the first section we turn to, but, sadly, for the wrong reasons. Its women’s fashion spread, “All Ages”, is as far removed from Vogue as you can imagine, a dreary serving of maladroit mishmash, where expensive clothes are thrown together with such little thought that you have to assume the stylist, Priscilla Kwateng, is blackmailing somebody in the Guardian boardroom. It’s criminally poor – I might call the police. This sort of ostentatious cluelessness is an anomaly in the newspaper world. Usually, if you’re not up to the job, you’re quickly found out. But Kwateng has an immunity that defies belief.

Although I’m a writer, I was once erroneously employed by the Mail On Sunday as a freelance designer. I stuck if out for three days before bailing. It remains the toughest freelance booking of my entire career. I’d just returned from a stint in Japan, writing gadget pieces for British magazines. It wasn’t the happiest time. I soon realised I’d made a dreadful mistake flitting to Tokyo – not helped by my arrest at Narita airport as a suspected industrial spy. Back in London, desperately in need of graft, a design pal called Kev asked if I fancied a few days at the Mail On Sunday as, I assumed, a sub-editor.

The cash was great – this was 1998, and it was a better day rate than I’m on in 2013. I walked into the Kensington office with a big smile, thinking I’d made it. I was met by Kev, who seemed anxious to have a quiet word. “Now Lee,” he said in low tones, “I’ve got you in as a designer, no, listen, all you need to do is sit next to me, do a bit of scanning, make lots of tea, and by the end of the week you’ll have enough cash to get a round of canny eeyels in.” Eeyels = ales; Kev’s a Geordie. He didn’t say canny, but I’m using artistic licence. Probably didn’t say eeyels, either.

I’ve never known minutes to tick backwards before. This was a newspaper, remember, where hard-boiled, extremely capable writers, subbers and designers plied their trade. No hiding places – this was the real deal. I felt like a child sitting next to my big, art Apple Mac and scanner. I’d never scanned anything in before, but quickly learnt – I wrote down instructions in my notebook. For the first two days, when Kev went to the toilet, I felt as exposed as a British soldier at Dunkirk, waiting in line to board a troopship. By Wednesday, I was a wreck. Just before dinnertime on Wednesday, Kev nipped to the lav, leaving me staring at a half-designed double-page spread on my massive computer screen. No sooner had he left the office than the angry editor, a furious woman, drifted with visible agitation in my direction like a glowing spectre from Poltergeist. “Please don’t come to me, please don’t come to me,” I said. My words were like a magnet to her.

“Oh, you’re the designer, aren’t you?” she cawed. “Could you get Lord Arlwood’s food column on the screen, because I want to make some severe, very tricky alterations to the layout that would take even a competent designer to the edge of his training and capability?”

At first, I thought I’d disregard the command or pretend that I was hard of hearing, but you can’t go around ignoring editors, so I replied, “Err.”

“The food page, the food page, be quick, I haven’t got all day.”

“I’ve been… told… by Kevin… to specifically… specifically not to touch that page, because he wasn’t… happy… with the final… typeface.”

“Typeface, there’s nothing wrong with the typeface! I’m the editor, let’s make a start and he can contribute when he gets back from lunch.”

Lunch? Had he buggered off for an hour and not told me? I glanced at the server, which was by now a jumble of words. I’d gone dyslexic. Your body can be your worst enemy in these situations. “Let’s have a little look,” I said slowly, stalling, stalling, stalling. With some agony, I managed to locate the file and just as I was about to click on it, which would have spelt personal disaster and a great deal of awkwardness and embarrassment, Kev rushed back to his desk.

“I’m just about to work on the cookery page,” I told him, “the page you told me not to touch.”

“Lee, go and take your lunch, mate, I’ll sort this.”

Outside, on Kensington’s wide pavements, I breathed like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption after he’d escaped from prison, taking in the sweet air of freedom. For an hour, I lay on some grass in a park, thinking, wondering what I was going to do. Pickles were alarmingly frequent during this time. When I returned to the office, I admitted to Kevin, “I can’t do this any more, I’m dying here – today will have to be my last day. I’ll be found out.”

Kev seemed to find the whole scenario amusing and said, “Orkee.”

“It’s getting to the point where I’m having to follow you to the toilet,” I added, “like I’m frightened, like a Mary Ann.”

“I’ll cover you if you can stick it out till Friday,” he said.

“The editor suspects I’m a halfwit,” I told him. “This is like representing Great Britain at swimming with armbands on – but I do appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

Kev let me leave at 5pm. I think I drank four pints in quick succession once I’d reached the nearest pub.

Is every working day like that for Kwateng? Has she become a shivering pigeon, terrified that the next email or phone call will spell the end? I somehow doubt it  – she’s been at the Guardian for donkey’s years. Kwateng’s either bone idle, doesn’t give a s***, or believes she has the Midas touch. I firmly suspect it’s the latter. Has anybody ever taken Kwateng to task, and had the guts to say, “By crikey, lady, you must think we’re tapped!” If I was the Guardian editor, I’d race towards Kwateng’s fashion cupboard, kick open the door, fling her keyboard, clothing rails and contacts book out into the hallway, and then holler, “Out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out! You’ve taken too much from this place already! What do you think you are, radged? Skedaddle!!” How is it that Kwateng can dress women in a series of car-crash fashion statements, yet be assured a stonking pay packet every month? It’s completely wrong in my book.

Well, that’s women’s fashion covered. On the subject of male dress sense, it’s a very troubling time for footwear. Unless you like brogues popularised by Messrs Silly, Noisy or Small, pointy estate-agent slip-ons, Dickensian chimney-sweep’s boots, Lord Fauntleroy dandy slippers or flimsy shoes with Wall’s ice-cream wafers for soles, you’re effectively left with the Tarzan option – wear nowt on your feet. Liking a shoe is difficult enough nowadays, but even in the rare instance that you can live with a style, the fit is often crippling. It’s said that you have to wear in decent shoes. Recently, I bought a pair of traditional Dr Martens 1461 shoes that, over the space of year, refused to yield. They had a lifetime guarantee, but ended up at the Red Cross shop on Green Lanes. No doubt they’re wringing some poor devil's feet in North London as I write.

Dr Martens 1461 shoes certainly look the business, but they chew your heel into a bloody pulp, like an inverted kicking from a skinhead! Walking down a street in 1461s is like stepping across an oak floor in bare, bruised feet. Basically, any DM with a heel gives me problems – I’ve learnt that the hard way. Stick with a wedge sole and you’ll be fine, because the weight is evenly spread. In 2011, DM sold a superb casual shoe in blue, black or red called the Valin Monkey. With a white wedge sole and white stitching on the Tectuff leather, they’re the most fantastic shoes I’ve ever worn. They lasted a year. Hugely comfortable and a real standout piece, as soon as DM knew of my love for the Valin Monkey, the varmints halted all production and burnt the instructions on how to make them.

I contacted Air Ware International, DM’s parent company in Northampton, pleading with them to re-start Valin Monkey production, but they told me they had no intention of ever making them again, that they were s***, that they were embarrassed they’d ever designed them, and that if they found any for sale on any website, they’ll buy them and destroy them. However, if you’ve got monstrous gorilla feet, you can still find the odd pair of size 12s or 13s on eBay or Amazon – but be quick, because DM want to wipe them from the face of the earth.

In London’s Fred Perry Laurel Wreath shops at the moment, there’s an interesting monkey-boot collaboration with George Cox, yours for a stiff £150. They’re menacingly cool, albeit well clear of my price bracket. But if you take a look in Sherry’s of London (sherrys.co.uk), just off Carnaby Street, there’s a very passable monkey boot on sale for £50 – and they’re pretty comfortable, too. I bought some on Monday. On the tube the next morning, with oxblood skinhead monkeys replete with yellow stitching and yellow laces and a copy of One Hundred Days: The Memoirs Of The Falklands Battle Group Commander by Admiral Sandy Woodward in my hand, I may have resembled an aggro merchant with much to say on the topic of immigration. At least I got some space in the carriage – and anyway, the rate of actual racist skinheads was pretty low, I’m led to believe.

I’m desperately short of round-neck T-shirts right now, so do let me know if you see anything I might like. Swedish fashion brand Fjällräven, my favoured north European outfitter for casual matters since 2005, with its exotic umlauts, seem to have stopped making tees completely – maybe Dr Martens has bought the company and specifically ceased production of the items I like. When it comes to fashion, it certainly pays to be a big fat bloater. If you’re XL and have feet that could easily fill out two canal barges, you can effectively cherry pick the best fashion and footwear from the last five years at knockdown prices. I might have to buy an 808 State or New Order T-shirt to see me through, or start stuffing my face with pies.

It was my magazine’s annual awards ceremony in a swanky Central London location earlier this week. It was a black-tie event, but I steer clear of dicky bows. You’ve got to be a man’s man to pull off a style like that – Daniel Craig’s James Bond looks fantastic in the full dinner-jacket ensemble, but it makes me feel like a fraud. A true alpha male will always wear an evening suit well; I noticed that Michael Douglas, Sir Bobby Charlton and Wilko Johnson from Dr Feelgood were perfectly at ease in their formal get-up, but if you show any fear or weakness, a dinner-jacket with dicky bow will wear you. Instead, I just get my funeral tie out of the drawer and that suffices.

Me and the wife got talking to artist Tracey Emin for 20 minutes, in which we covered such diverse topics as Margate beach, the swimming pool in her London studio, synth groups (“Oh, I love New Order,” Emin declared) and the meaning of feng shui. She was a dream conversationalist. And then, unlike almost any other star I’ve spoken to, Emin asked what me and the wife did for a living, and took genuine interest in our less-than-glamorous existences. At the end of the chat, Emin made her excuses – she had to mingle. But before she whipped off, she mentioned, “Do you know what, I don’t think I’ll meet more lovely people than you two tonight,” and with that she sauntered into the crowd. Now, that’s style.

Issue 11: Where's your caravan?

A stiff test of parenting skills is knowing what do when it’s raining and you’re sitting in a seaside caravan. We go away every August Bank Holiday and it always rains on Saturday, even though those lazy-get BBC weather presenters forecast otherwise. Instead of practising with hairbrushes in front of the mirror, dreaming of becoming the next Wogan or Parky, Carol Kirkwood et al should read the manual of the £15m weather supercomputer and figure out how the damned thing works. 

This year, we abandoned our usual retreat on Dungeness’ nuclear coast and decided we’d give Great Yarmouth a crack of the whip, following favourable reviews from my usually unimpressed brother. Alas, the Saturday weather curse followed us into East Anglia, but by lucky hap, when we checked in at Haven Wild Duck Caravan Holiday Park, I'd lunged at the leaflet display. A series of colourful pamphlets offered wet-weather refuge.

In East Anglia, animal worlds and safari adventures abound, but elephantine entrance fees means there’ll be no big cats or ungulates for us in this six-week holiday. It’d be cheaper to book a taxi to Africa. One of the leaflets looked most enticing – the East Anglia Transport Museum near Lowestoft. With its collection of half-cab buses, trolleybuses and trams, this would be a place that my two kids would no doubt love, but they haven’t been with us for this trip. I'm with the wife and her two kids, whose appreciation of transport only goes as far as Transformers.

Apart from ants in the kitchen and the defective guard on the gas fire, this year’s caravan, situated five miles south of Great Yarmouth, is more plush and better kitted out than most homes. I could have done with a couple of pieces of ice in my gin and tonic in the evenings, but that’s a small gripe. You can see why gypsies aren’t keen to move into houses. All children would rather live in a caravan than a house. The door’s always open, so they’re getting a taste of pre-1980 Britain, where you could run in any direction you wanted and not fear too many murdering strangers or internet paedo rings.

In the early Eighties, my younger brother used to tell me that strangers, who invariably drove vehicles made by British Leyland, carried garden canes in their car boot. Rather than an interest in nomadic gardening practises, my brother would explain, with some joy, that the canes were for “shoving up your a***”. This is when he was eight. As a public-information exercise, it proved a powerful tool on our estate.

He was very good at off-the-wall character sketches, was our kid, especially touch-feely family members, weaklings and our stepfather, who used to shout a great deal. He would mimic our stepfather like a mynah bird. When we had the house to ourselves, which was a lot of the time, my brother would stand at the bottom of the stairs and bawl as loudly as he could, “Ehhhhh! What do you think you're doing? What do you think you are, bloody radged?” Radged was a term localised to the railway plant works, meaning “simple”. He’d then thump upstairs, slam open the bedroom door, and proceed to give me and my sister an enraged good hiding. The good hiding was an improvised bolt-on for comedy effect; smacks were rare in our house. Our kid would also do a superb sketch in which our stepfather would playfully change a light bulb while tap-dancing. It was Vic Reeves entertainment five years before Big Night Out ever reached Channel 4. We didn't really need the telly on.

I expect my brother would be very good at building sandcastles, but I’m the master. Me, the wife and her two boys lead the world in sand-forged construction. We’ve become a very tight unit and, through years of practise, are able to build extremely complex islands in a short space of time. Typically, our sandcastles will feature a moat, several bridges, dominant castellated towers (with flags), roads, substantial sea wall, intricate tunnels and stone/shell trim. We could show Balfour Beatty or Clancydocwra a thing or two about effective urban planning. If I knew how, I’d wire up miniature street lighting.

Our latest projects, while staying in the caravan, have been typically avant-garde. For the first time ever there was a curved tunnel on one of the moats, while a road passage ducked beneath an entire island – it was a bit like the one in the Alps that has so many crashes and blazes. We’re also adept at three-way tunnels, and have been known to construct the odd viaduct. There’s very little in life that’s more exciting than building a fortress settlement when the tide is rushing in. It’s a vision of London’s future. The first extended wave will be effectively repelled by the sea wall, but you know that doom is close at hand. We have people gathering to witness the destruction of our St Michael’s Mounts. The sea eventually surrounds our islands, then engulfs the streets. All those hours of crafting reduced to soft slop-dob. I have to say, the quality of sand around Great Yarmouth is among the finest we’ve ever worked with.

I’ve never been a fan of 2p gambling games at seafront amusement arcades but if it’s raining, I can see that £5 thrown away in one of these mesmerising grottos of flashing lights and mirrors shouldn’t be knocked. Holiday time works in much the same way as a taxi’s meter. It charges by the minute, and an amusement arcade is just as cost effective as buying four ice creams and a couple of coffees. I’m not one for gambling, mind. I've only bet on the gee-gees twice, and that was at an actual racecourse. Mug’s game. However, once a year, we allow ourselves the thrill of hearing small coins crashing from a copper overhang, especially if there's drizzle and sea har. The wife becomes very focused on the 2p games. We won quite a few prizes during our gambling hour, including two tin soldiers, a "gold" bar and a one-eyed soft toy from Despicable Me.

Can fantasy football be described as gambling? I’ve been playing the original Pro Fantasy League since 2005 and now see it as an intrinsic part of my existence. I support my own fantasy football team more than I do any league side. I’m happy for Manchester United to run away with the Premier League title every season, but the reality is, if I’ve got a Manchester City striker in my squad of 15 overpaid poodles, I want him to score. In Pro Fantasy League, you play in a division of like-minded souls and hold an auction at the beginning of the season to determine who owns individual players. By the time the season kicks off, only one person will own, say, Rooney or Lampard. Added to this, your division of pals’ teams is interlinked with the rest of the country, so in January you’ll enter a nationwide cup or, if you did well in the previous season, a “European” competition. 

There are around 10,000 people playing Pro Fantasy League, and there’s a list of the top 100 players on the site. I once led the country for two weeks, a halcyon fortnight in 2007 where I could do no wrong. I’ve done little right from that point on. I didn’t even win the title in my own league of ten mates that season. Last May, I finished bottom of my division, putting too much emphasis on a Manchester United strike partnership that featured the usually net-clobbering Rooney, who’d decided his interests would be better suited on Fulham Road SW6, and Welbeck, who scored once in the entire season. Interestingly, now that I don’t own him, Welbeck netted twice in Man Utd’s opening game against Swansea. I wanted to kick the telly off the shelf.

Choosing a name for my fantasy football team takes on huge importance during the summer. Former titles have included Baldwin’s Casuals, Wimbledon Miners Welfare, MyPie 47 and VVV-Vimto, to name a few. This season I’ve opted for Rubbish Rovers. As usual, it works on two levels. Having grown up in Doncaster, I naturally started visiting my local club from 1980 onwards, and by the time I was in my 20s had become something of a regular. This was back when Donny were in the bottom division or the Conference. One of the most frequently uttered sentences I’d hear at Doncaster matches was, “Oh, that’s rubbish Rovers, absolute rubbish.” Back at the old Belle Vue ground on the opening day of one season, I timed how long it was before I heard “That’s rubbish Rovers!” and it was 30 seconds. Half a minute into a fresh season and the crowd were on the side’s back! As I finished bottom of my fantasy football league last season, it seemed apt to name my side Rubbish Rovers. Next season it’s going to be Ujpest Dozy.

I hope to finish mid-table. I’ve proven goalscorers in Fellaini, Cazorla, Ba and Aguero, but they’ve done bugger all so far. It comes to something when you’re looking at the crash-helmeted Chelsea keeper Petr Cech to provide the bulk of your season’s haul. I was watching Match Of The Day with the wife the other night. We usually catch the first game then drift to bed – the kids make us too tired. Last weekend, we commented on how slick the opening titles were, although she thinks the MOTD logo looks like a pair of metal underpants. Around ten years ago, I wrote a big story for a men’s mag about Match Of The Day. I had to interview Walker’s Gary Lineker, housewife’s choice Alan Hansen and Albert Sewell, who’d been the programme’s statistician since 1968. It was a feature that largely wrote itself, but the one difficult aspect was tracing Barry Stoller, who, in 1970, penned the Match Of The Day theme music. He proved spectacularly elusive.

After a month, I managed to track him down to Australia – by the sound of it, he’d moved to the other side of the world to escape the Match Of The Day theme. “My career was so much more than that,” he emailed, sounding somewhat agitated. “It’s because of this that I don’t want to be involved with your story.” I explained the excitement that the MOTD theme conveyed, how it had lit up Saturday evenings for generations of football enthusiasts, how it had bonded grandads, dads and sons, how it stood as a piece of music every bit as thrusting and evocative as a Bowie or Hendrix composition. He was having none of it. I’m led to believe that Grange Calvely, the writer of Roobarb, emigrated Down Under to escape incessant enquiries about his cult wobbly cartoon.

Maybe in ten years time, I’ll have to jump on a Qantas space rocket and hide out at Ayers Rock or Erinsborough to dodge lunatic interest about the humble beginning of Morning Warship. “I don’t want to talk about Morning Warship any more," I'll whine. "It was closed down in 2017, I lived at Moscow Airport for a year, then I took refuge in the Honduran embassy, and yes I'm pleased it has maintained cult status and eventually led to Peter Hook re-joining New Order – but nobody ever wants to discuss my fantasy football team, my DJing or the incredible sandcastles I’ve built. There's so much more to me than that blog!”

I suppose we’d better start packing. Checkout at Wild Duck is 10am prompt. After a final promenade along the beach, the Skylark leaves for London at midday. It’s blazing sunshine outside – always is when we’re leaving. My limbs ache from long jump, excessive spade use and skimming stones. These are all good strains to have. I think we’ll be back to Great Yarmouth next year. 

Issue 10: European culture

Lee Gale is away. Well, he’s been clocking up the miles, travelling between Budapest and Doncaster, Europe’s two great capitals of culture. I realised this week precisely why I loathe international travel and it’s more to do with airports and airlines rather than the countries themselves. Flying gets worse. The days of rawnging over three seats and sitting down in peace for your in-flight meal like a lord – Jack Lord, possibly, in a James Bond film – are already golden images of a past era. Nowadays, you’re lucky if you can sit next to the person you’re travelling with. When you fly with Wizz, the Hungarian carrier, the 1997 Nicolas Cage film Con Air looks like a promotional feature for business class. At airports, parking’s £85 for four days. Eighty-five pounds!

“Did you check in online?”

“No, I thought I’d cock it up – I wanted you, the experts, to do it for me. The flight’s £330, so I reckon I’ve paid for the privilege.”

“We’ll have to charge you £20.”

“What, £20 for clicking a button?”

“Why did you not check-in online before you left, sir?”

“Check-in online… I don’t actually know what that means. You check-in at the airport, surely. What if I was involved in a motorway pile-up on the way in?”

“Huh! Highly unlikely.”

Everyone at airports is in a state of confusion and panic, like there’s been an earthquake. You shuffle down queues, pay some money, get pointed to other queues, pay more money – these are spot fines for not logging on to the airline’s website – and you spend hours and hours being processed and numbered. You do at Luton anyway. No wonder we almost missed the flight.

Much as I appreciate Budapest and the Hungarians, getting there is a major headache, but as this was a work trip – I was covering the Sziget music festival – I didn’t have much choice. I suppose I could drive to Central Europe, but the road system in Budapest is completely alien and I’m sure I’d end up driving in the wrong direction on a busy stretch of highway, causing deaths, and then I’d be in prison for ten years. But when you factor in the industrialised mayhem of Luton, where you feel like a fish finger in a Findus plant, it’s a close call to make.

In its favour, you can get from London to Sziget quicker than it takes to travel from London to Glastonbury. I’ll not go into detail about the weekend right now because I’ve spent every spare moment of the last seven days writing about it. You can see it here: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2013-08/21/sziget-festival-2013-review.

Having found a new appreciation for Franz Ferdinand – I really like the new single, “Right Action”, and they were the stand-out group at Sziget ­– once back on familiar territory at Luton David Pleat International, I tried the new ePassport gate and realised that once you’d gone through the rigmarole of having your passport scanned, and your eyes scanned, and your hands scanned, and your shoes scanned, and your arse scanned, and your DNA scanned, and your soul scanned, you’re moving more slowly than the people queueing with old passports. So much for technology! I think I managed to convince the Sziget organisers to make an approach for New Order in 2014, so I’ll no doubt be heading to Budapest again next August. Next time, I’ll pay more for fast-track, longer legroom and preferential seating – anything to beat the system. And this is what they want you to do, to pay extra for every aspect of the flight. This is the same trick the banks were pulling with payment protection in the Nineties.

From Luton, I had two days in London then drove the kids up to Doncaster to see how real people live. Although Donny has its detractors down South, my two lads think this much-maligned district is like Disneyland, but better, because rather than losing money at every turn, people are pushing cash into your hands. They’ve learnt that Doncaster is a money-spinner. Pensioners can’t give ackers away quickly enough.

People that live in Doncaster refer to its central-business district, ie: shops, as “Town”. It’s not a bad town centre, although all the women look like Mutha from Viz. The recent addition of fairground rides on its streets has certainly hit the right note with the boys. They think that Town and Doncaster are different places but somehow twinned, the Castor and Pollux of northern industrial settlements, almost identical, but apparently Town just edges out Doncaster in terms of fun. I’m not sure how they weigh one up against the other. I used to think Spurs and Tottenham were different sides – when you’re seven, you’re still unravelling the complexities of the universe. “Right then, shall we go to Town or Doncaster this morning?” “TOWN!”

When we visit the North, we stay on the floor of my 90-year-old nana’s pensioner bungalow. It’s like sheltered camping for us. There isn’t really anywhere else for us to stay and she’s overjoyed to spend time with us. The arrival of the lads, age six and seven, creates much excitement among my nana’s group of wartime survivors. My two don’t realise how lucky they are to know a great-grandparent so well. People say Nana’s slowing up a bit and getting more forgetful, but she runs rings round most women 30 years her junior. She still goes to Town to get her shopping once week (or gets the bus to Doncaster if she wants slightly less fun).

Last Friday, having a glass of wine and discussing family matters from the late 19^th century onwards, Nana told me that she hadn’t long left but had enjoyed her life and wouldn’t change anything other than she wished my grandad hadn’t died when he was 57. Nana never re-married; you don’t when you’ve been truly in love. She still cries when she mentions him. Nana then asked if I’d do a reading at her funeral. I said I would and that it was something that I’d also been thinking about, but I didn’t want to start writing the passage until the deadline (literally) was approaching – after all, I’m a professional writer. It’s unusual discussing the funeral of somebody you love who’s still alive. I’m convinced she’ll be getting a letter from the Queen in 2022; the wartime diet worked wonders for Nana’s generation. One of the funniest things I ever read was in NME in 1999. The Fall’s Mark E Smith was asked what song he’d like played at his own funeral and he replied, “I’ll just get the organist to hold down the note of F.”

You may have frowned with some confusion in the opening paragraph of MW Issue 10, when you read the word “rawnging”. You won’t find it in the dictionary. It isn’t there. I think it’s a Manchester term – it’s the act of lazily sprawling, usually over furniture, especially a settee, often with your shoes on. Just to recap - we're a Manchester/Doncaster mix of a family. “Give over rawnging on the bloody settee.” Another term I’m very fond of is “monk on”, which is localised to Doncaster. It refers to the condition of being in a bad mood for no apparent reason. “What’s up with you, have you got monk on?”

Accusing somebody of having monk on only deepens the condition. It’s a state that can last for hours. It’s a morose ailment, usually associated with boredom, and tends to strike in the late morning or early afternoon. I’ve never suffered from monk on, but have certainly dated women with terminal cases, to the point where their mouth turns down permanently, a bit like that rabbit Miffy. The wife says that the north-west London word for monk on is “greuse”. “Are you in a greuse?” they’ll ask. “No, I’m not in a greuse!” will come the angry response… meaning they are in a greuse! Sufferers never admit to having monk on or a greuse. It’s a diluted, short-term depression, but asking somebody if they have monk on leads to a deep-seated gloom – their face turns grey, eyes become watery and they look like they want to kill you. It’s great to see.

I don’t get monk on, although the cost of the school holidays is certainly pulling at the corners of my mouth. It’s costing me a bomb. Remaining true to my part-Yorkshire heritage, I keep an eye on every penny that’s spent by noting figures into a red Silvine cashbook. There’ll have to be some seriously boring weekends in the run-up to Christmas if we’re going to balance the books. But if you’re a parent with boys and looking for something to do before that glorious Monday in September, the following places are highly recommended…

1.     Crich Tramway Village, Crich, Derbyshire: Stroll through a Twenties town and take a 1926 Blackpool tram along a mile of track. We went on a Thursday and it wasn’t overly full, although there were a lot of fat tourists and some of them didn’t like children very much, tutting at the slightest misdemeanour. Apart from that, my two felt truly alive here. I may have to take them to Blackpool. tramway.co.uk

2.     Skate King’s Cross, King’s Cross, London: This is a pop-up roller-skating park, not particularly big, but big enough to realise you are rubbish at roller skating, and haven’t improved since you last tried in 1984. Kids either instantly understand skating or get monk on, crawling around on all fours, shaking their head, saying they want to go home. Afterwards, let the kids cool off in the 1,000 fountains outside the nearby Granary Building. kingscross.co.uk/skate

3.     The View From The Shard, London Bridge, London: For two adults and four kids, this is over £100, Premier League money, but the 40-mile view is spectacular. However, kids get bored after just seven minutes at the Shard and are much happier running around at Coram’s Fields children’s playground near Russell Square tube. theviewfromtheshard.com

4.     National Railway Museum, York: It’s massive, and as much fun for dads as sons. The major problem is that boys get so excited that they naturally feel the urge to dash from locomotive to locomotive. Now, these engines have got very, very hard buffers, roughly at head height to a five- or six-year-old. Maybe visit when they’re ten. nrm.org.uk

5.     Imperial War Museum Duxford, Cambridgeshire: Again, huge – there’s much ground to cover, and you can even take a flight in a de Havilland Dragon Rapide from the Thirties if you’ve got birthday money to burn. I think it costs £35 per person to get airborne. You have to be careful at Duxford, though. My two got so giddy the last time we visited that when we were in the Battle of Britain hangar, my eldest, for some stupid reason, pushed a display cabinet with his hands, showing off, which then rocked as far back as it could without actually toppling over, then rocked forward, and continued this back-and-forth motion for an agonising 10-15 seconds, while furious World War II veterans looked on. By the time the cabinet was static, the memorabilia, model aeroplanes and artwork within looked like it had been strafed by a Messerschmitt Bf 109. We left instantly. iwm.org.uk

My final word this week concerns perceived Yorkshire tightness. It’s a male disease – most Yorkshire women can’t get the tenners out of the mattress quickly enough. A few years ago, my friend’s mam and dad went on holiday to Egypt. While nosing round a bazaar, the dad – a shopkeeper – thought he might forge a great deal on a new rug. The bartering between the Egyptian carpet salesman and Arkwright-type Yorkshire shopkeeper continued for a good two hours and by the end, a compromise had almost been reached. The Egyptian market trader was probably at the stage of making no profit at all, worn down, but at the point of sale, the Doncaster dad said, “I’ll tell you what, son, I’ll leave it for now,” and promptly walked off. Incensed, the Egyptian leapt into the air with his fist waving and shouted, “TIGHT YORKSHIRE B******!” I enjoy the fact that Yorkshire penny-pinching is so well known, even in Africa. 

Issue 9: Give over and lie down

When it comes to animals in the workplace, I don’t have a problem as long as you’re a farmer, a cowboy or a butcher, otherwise leave the poor bloody things at home. Where I work, swathes of the staff are upper crust and, having rarely heard the word “no”, they’ve developed a laissez-faire attitude to pets at the desk. At any one time, you’ll find dogs lying by the printer, dogs nosing through bins or dogs nudging your arm with their cold nose while you’re trying to eat a sandwich (or, as is my style, eating salad with a plastic teaspoon). On the odd occasion that a dog isn’t in the office, people are looking at JPEGs of dogs on their screens, discovering comedy dogs on YouTube or discussing the dogs they saw on other floors of our building a few days/weeks/years ago. It’s like a syndrome.

I’ve actually worked out why dogs have overrun the workplace – they give an opportunity to down tools and do anything except the job you’re being paid to do. For many metrosexual men, a hound is a baring of one’s soul – “I’m sensitive, ladies!” – when actually, it’s more of an Alan Partridge-type “let’s talk about meeee” ploy. Dogs provide a subject matter, a pristine opportunity to crack up a conversation with a dollybird whose bra straps are on show.

I don’t know what my grandad would have made of it all. In his day, dogs carried strict second-class status, but today’s dogs are lords. Dogs were different prior to 1980, more grown up, more sensible. Modern dogs never stop being puppies. I suppose hounds have always mirrored their owners, and people had a lot more on their minds in the Seventies. My grandad’s dog was Sheba, an Alsatian/Labrador cross. Sheba didn’t like children; dogs rarely did back then. I developed an unhealthy taste for dog biscuits when I was about four, and an approach towards Sheba’s bowl was always greeted with an “Rrrrrrrrr, rrrrrrrrrrrrr, rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” Sheba never snapped, but she was a bit like an old-bat teacher nearing retirement age. You knew you could only take pranks so far.

At my nana and grandads, the biggest crime a dog could commit was to whine. With my grandad, you had three strikes and you were – literally – out. The first whimper would be met with a fierce, “Give over.” The second cry would bring a furious, “Give over, and lie down!” If Sheba was bonkers enough to take her pleading further, she’d be grabbed by the collar and dragged, claws scraping, into the garden, whereupon she’d be “fastened up” in the “hut” – a black-painted, windowless cube made out of corrugated metal panels. It was quite Burma 1943 in its design. Sheba would remain under lock and key for anything up to four hours, whether it was snow, rain or shine. She’d also be fastened up when my nana was hoovering, which could sometimes be twice a day. In summer, moulting was another misdemeanour.

Apart from the frequent visits to the hut’s dark heart, Sheba would never be far from my grandad’s side. Grandad would only ever be seen by the hearth with a poker in his hand or out in the garden digging soil. I don’t think I ever saw him upstairs. Despite the fact that my grandad could easily have chinned a Nile crocodile or torn a poltergeist in two (and probably locked them in the hut), my nana says he was devastated when Sheba’s back legs finally gave way and the immobile dog had to be put down – or “destroyed”, as was the parlance of the day. When I heard that Sheba had been destroyed, I had images of the aged, bad-tempered creature being blown to bloody rags by a rattling war tank.

My mate’s grandad was a gamekeeper and kept numerous Alsatians. Out of the pack that lived in his kennels, only one was allowed into the house. For some reason, the dog – Gemma – had become fiercely protective of my mate’s nana, a fact that my pal’s lorry driving uncle enjoyed testing. Uncle Stuart would arrive, entice Gemma into the front garden, quickly shut the door and then pretend to give his mother an almighty beating by the front window. From the lawn, Gemma would watch with absolute disbelief as her kindly owner was thumped, slapped, shook and shouted at. “You don’t bloody learn, do you?” Uncle Stuart would blast. “I’ve had enough of you, ENOUGGGGHHH!” The dog would go crackers. Great entertainment. 

People don’t train dogs any more. Barbara Woodhouse was the end of the line. To train a dog properly, you had to take a few days off work, disappear into the countryside, repeatedly wallop the dog in woodland until all fight had left its body, then you’d return home with a pet that would sit, stand, beg, jump through flaming hoops and obey every order instantly. Around 1990, we became too lazy and passive to teach dogs basic rules of behaviour. It could explain the problem we now have with sharks on leads.

We had a fantastic Labrador called Whiskey. He was destroyed around the time of the Madchester movement, an era when my brother would pull his paisley Y-fronts as far up his pigeon chest as was possible, bound like a drunk towards our younger sister, and sing “Hal-lel-lujaaaah,” mimmicking Shaun Ryder. I think it proved too stressful for the dog – his nerves couldn’t stand it any longer. My sister would run off screaming and my brother would follow her like a zombie, still singing. Before Whiskey popped his paws in 1989, my mam, perhaps a little prematurely, ordered his replacement – another Labrador, called Benjaman (sic). Mam’s not a speller.  These two yellow animals were stark evidence that dogs were rapidly transforming from respectable pillars of society into cumbersome, greedy teddy bears with learning difficulties.

The characters of Whiskey and Benji were so dissimilar that it was like having Steve Ovett and Gazza in the same room. Whiskey was distinguished and statesmanlike, although he had some curious traits. He was a tough dog, and had many brawls with Alsatians, Dobermans and Rottweilers down the years, but he was frightened to death of field mice and for some reason he couldn’t look you in the eye. Benji, on the other hand, was like a clumsy child.

Me and our kid would take the dogs on long walks into the Doncaster outback, even when Whiskey had slowed to the pace of a Chelsea pensioner. Our kid used to get very vexed on these walks. Whiskey would approach a sapling to p*** his underpowered trickle down its stem, then Benji would appear like a Barnes Wallis bomb and absolutely banjax the near-disabled Whiskey. Benji would then hurtle off like a small van in a bank job with our kid sprinting after him, swinging the lead, shouting, “Get here!” Benji felt the leather of the lead a few times across his rump and the odd kick with a DM. Benji was so thick that sometimes when he went to p*** on a lamp-post, s*** would fall out of his arse. This would annoy my brother too.

This morning, I finished Danny Baker’s autobiography Going To Sea In A Sieve. I like the good-time banter of his radio show. It’s full of ideas. I particularly enjoyed his tales of being on a European tour with Ian Dury And The Blockheads in 1978, when Baker was writing for NME, specifically bits about Dury’s valet and minder, Fred “Spider” Rowe – “a real-deal hardnut”, as Baker describes him. During one tourbus conversation about the growing problem of mad dogs attacking people, Spider jumped in: “You make me die, you f***in’ hippies, straight you do. No such thing as a mad dog. It’s a myth. Thing is with a dog, if it comes at ya, you grab the nearest stick or newspaper or anything you can hold by both ends, even your keys. Then, just as it leaps at ya, you hold it out. A dog will always grab the middle of the stick, see. And as he does, you bring your knee up – bang! – on to its mouth and, because it’s open and weak, it’ll shatter its jaw like your old nan’s f***in’ glass fruit bowl. So don't talk to me about mad dogs, because it’s not a problem.”

I also liked how he dealt with a sozzled fan in Holland who’d outstayed his welcome:

Spider: “Sorry to interrupt, friend, but can I ask your name?”

Drunk: “My name is Andreas, what’s it to you?”

Spider: “Do you mind if I call you Superman?”

Drunk: “Why?”

Spider: “Because in about 30 seconds you’ll be flying straight out that f***in’ window. OK?”

I’m a sucker for a stylish hardcase. I don’t think Spider would have had need of a canine companion – he had too much going on. Perhaps the pinnacle of my experience with workplace fleabags came earlier this year when I was stood by the printer in the hallway. As I collected flapping pieces of A3 paper, a dog approached and whined. “Give over and lie down,” I growled, on autopilot. Just then, a female member of staff walked through a nearby door and said, “Helloooo!” I thought: “That’s friendly!” and in the traditional Northern way, I raised my eyebrows, smiled at 15 percent and replied, “Alright.” “Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she said, “I was talking to the dog.” I felt as flattened as Whiskey after a bouncing Benji bound-through. I quickly realised that my place in the office pecking order was lower than a lurcher. I may start eating dog biscuits at my desk with a plastic teaspoon to try and raise my status.

Issue 8: We need to talk about toilets

There’s something decidedly not nice about the male toilets in Marks & Spencer on London’s Oxford Street. It isn’t the fact that they’re grotty, it’s more to do with the clientele, who tend to be men of advancing years who, it seems, are suffering from tropical stomach ailments or amoebic dysentery. You should hear the noise. “Rrrrrrrr.” “Ahhhhh.” “Uggggghhh.” “No!” “Pleeeaaase!” And it’s every time! You feel like you’re in British Borneo during the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict of 1962-66. The smell’s not fantastic either. I think the grandads who use M&S’ facilities actually make a special journey, as part of their daily routine, so they don’t have to scrub the pan clean in their own homes. I’ll bet their wives are dead. John Lewis up the road is very similar in this respect. I don’t have a solution to this problem, I’m merely flagging it up.

Me and my brother used to play “paras” when we were kids. This involved dressing in camouflaged or muted shades, finding a rifle-shaped stick, venturing to the Women’s Institute hut near our school, hiding in long grass and mowing down church-going women in cold blood as they departed for home, carrying their knitting. The last time we played paras, I distinctly recall that I was wearing brown cords. Waiting for the WI door to open, I decided to get a better aiming position and shifted sidewards. In doing so, I was soon enveloped by a most terrible stench.

Like the coward of the county, I deserted my post, leaping into enemy view so I could investigate what the caustic pong was. There, in the grooves of my brown cords, another similarly toned material had attached itself, effectively smoothing out the fabric. It was a dirty booby trap. A nauseous time bomb. Corporal Gale – our kid – leapt out of the grass wondering if I’d taken leave of my senses, telling me he was now in a position to seize power of the entire unit. “Come here,” I said, “I want to give you a big hug.” Before he could bayonet me, I grabbed hold of him and pretty soon the pair of us were covered in dog muck. He found this unusually funny, but my view at the time must have been a problem shared was a problem halved, and we ran back home to get changed.

In the bathroom, we stepped out of our foul-smelling fatigues and left the battle-ravaged remains at the foot of the sink. We swiftly found alternative strides and stampeded downstairs, without washing our hands, to pour some icing sugar onto two plates, which we’d then lick in front of the television. Three licks in and we caught the sound of Mam retching upstairs. “Bwurr-bwurr-bwurr.” Then she called out – almost at screaming point – “GET UP HERE, YOU DIRTY PIGS!!!” We pretty much court martialled ourselves on that occasion. Alas, this tawdry tale is far from unique.

I’m often asked if I’ve ever sat in tramp’s urine, and the answer to that is an emphatic “yes”. It was Wednesday, 13 August 2003, at 12.55pm, and I was hungry. Many of my acquaintances are familiar with the basic outline of this grim episode, but there has been so much wagging of tongues, idle hearsay and unnecessary fabrication, that I feel I ought to set the record straight.

Summer 2003 was very, very hot. Even worse than this year. The previous Sunday – 9 August 2003 – was a fire-blast afternoon, when the temperature in South London weighed in at a hefty 37 degrees. It’s ridiculous for this country. I mentioned at the time that if it was equally hot the following day, I was going to kill myself. Thankfully, the screaming apex of indescribable heat was reached that Sunday, and my life spared. By “tramp’s-p*** Wednesday”, it was a more manageable 27 degrees.

In midweek, I used to meet up with former colleagues of the defunct VOX magazine at the Fifties-era New Piccadilly Café on Denman Street. Formica tables. Staff steeped in European football knowledge. Reliable fare. All this kept us returning each week until it closed in 2007. For the record, I always ordered cheese omelette and chips – fabulous stodge. The owner, Lorenzo, hadn’t taken had a day off since 1957, but regrettably informed us that he could no longer afford the spiralling rent. We were devastated. I brought my London-disliking younger brother – the paras’ veteran – to the Piccadilly one Saturday afternoon and after he’d eaten his fill, having been treated like royalty by top waiter Mario, he admitted, “It’s alright this place.” The café has since been erased to make room for air-conditioned offices or a little hotel. I forget which.

So I was heading down to the “Picc” on Wednesday dinnertime, but I was carrying an injury from Monday night’s eleven-a-side football match. I played in goal a lot at this point due to faltering stamina. I was on the p*** a lot. During the match, I’d made a typically scrambling save but managed to clank my head on the goalpost, whereupon I entered a two-day psychedelic trip. I couldn’t form thoughts, my vision was a sparkly kaleidoscope and I spent hours and hours asleep on the floor like a tired dog. Concussion. I quite enjoyed the peace, actually.  

As I was still a bit of a dreamy delight from the head injury, I decided to forego a 25-minute stroll to the café and instead caught the Bakerloo Line. All good so far! Got on the train and hey, look, a free seat, even though a lot of people are standing! I dutifully checked for pregnant women, then settled in like Mother Hen for a six-minute journey in relative comfort. These were the old Tube trains with sprung seats. People would regularly nod off on these upholstered relics because you’d sink back and be rocked to gentle kip, ending up at Elephantiasis & Castle. Not that sleep was an option on this journey.

I was getting my book out of my bag, probably a tome on heritage football hooliganism, when I realised in an instant that my backside wasn’t just wet, it was sopped through to the skin. I could tell it wasn’t rainwater or spilt elderflower cordial – the aroma was too strong and sweet for that. It smelt like Special Brew, but worse. The damaged synapses in my football-injured brain quickly fixed themselves and I added up the sums. Wet bottom + Special Brew-plus pong = tramp’s p***. I now faced a dilemma. Did I admit my predicament to the carriage and have them fall about in hysterics like the birds on Roobarb, or keep quiet and sit it out. I decided it would be best to register a complaint – someone must have known that the seat was soaked. It was as if an alcoholic blue whale had blasted out lager through its blowhole.

I leapt to my feet and looked at the faces of my fellow passengers. A man opposite seemed genuinely entertained by what was unfolding, and for a time, obviously fighting the urge to squeal with joy, he looked like he was urinating on his own seat. To him, life was an ongoing series of s***s’n’giggles. Now he could add p*** to the mix. I said, “You knew that seat was wet, but you let me sit in it?” He didn’t respond. “I bet you’d have let a child sit in that, or a 90-year-old nana, because that’s the level your humour works on.” He replied, “Norvern mankey.” Actually, he didn’t, but I wish he had. I’d reached a personal low. I egressed at Piccadilly Circus.

There was no question of omelette and chips by this point. I had to find clean, dry clothing, because the aroma was so intense. In Gap, I grabbed a three-pack of undercrackers as efficiently as the queue allowed, and then pace-strolled up Regent Street in search of emergency jeans. Browsing was off the agenda. I developed a guerrilla-shopping technique – straight in, check price, straight out, and no conversation can be entered into. Even in 2003, denim had drifted into the three-figure price bracket. My rule then, as it is now, is pay no more than £70 for leg coverings, but in London, even slacks made out of carrier bags set you back £120.

By the time I’d reached Oxford Circus, I was walking like a baby in a wet nappy. Then, out of nowhere, a Levi’s sale shop presented itself. I said: “Thank Christ.” Once past the shop’s threshold, I wasted no time, snapping up a pair of 501s for £65 – a Pyrrhic victory because 501s are an awful fit for my footballer’s thighs. They naturally corkscrew below the knee so the seams ends up central on my shins. The shop assistant removed the tags while I was standing at the till. I placed the sodden items in a carrier bag and stuffed them in the first bin I could find. Of course, my lads-mag work colleagues thought this was a hoot, and word quickly spread via email to the female/gay staff on the interiors magazine next door, and from there to the cycling titles, the accounts department, the CEO, and inevitably to our rival magazine companies. All in all, a really productive day.

Following my recent experiences at Marks & Spencer, I came up with the idea of running a sister site to Tripadvisor, whereby members of the public can give reviews of the toilets they’ve visited. Trapadvisor! It could make millions. I’m afraid M&S scores a lowly “1”, although I think London’s high-street shops should embark on a fact-finding mission to the Ceredigion coast in Wales if they want to learn the art of toilet management. You don’t just want to spend a penny in these immaculately maintained s***houses, you want to invest in them. The more I see of Wales, the more I think it’s a fantastic place. They’ve obviously realised that civic pride starts, literally, at the bottom and works it way upwards. We could learn a lot from Welsh toilets. If Wales can keep its restaurants serving food after 9pm and open its shops on Sunday, they’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

Issue 7: The green, green grass of home

I don’t like abroad. It’s too far away, the driving is treacherous and it’s too hot. Every possible pleasure you can experience is here, in Britain, on your doorstep – you’ve just got to get up and shape yourself. Beaches? We’re an island nation, we’re surrounded by sand. Hills? Have a trek through Snowdonia if you want life-affirming views. Wildlife? Have a shufti out of the window. We’ve got robins – the friendliest birds on the planet. They’re not afraid of humans and seem to be offering themselves up as the next logical candidate for domestication. You wouldn’t get an ostrich doing that, or a rhea.

Usually, when I’ve travelled abroad, I feel a sense of relief arriving back in Blighty. I like the order, the culture and the fact that our roads have defined edges. Apart from the odd housing estate in London, Belfast and Manchester, you can walk through UK’s thoroughfares largely unmolested. I’ve never understood this rabid desire to see the world. “Finding yourself”? You’re not going to do that backpacking in Burma. You’ve already found yourself – you live in your head. There isn’t a secret, dynamic you about to reveal themselves in Peru, Ecuador or Papua New Guinea. Be satisfied with who you are and what you’ve got. And if you must travel, to satisfy your internal hippy, keep the tales to yourself! We’re not interested hearing about lost Inca cities. They became lost for a reason. It’s because they’re boring and people wanted to forget about them.

I’ve always been satisfied taking holidays in Britain, but often, the people I’ve been with have insisted on booking flights to far-flung locations, where we’d stew in 40-degree temperatures and fall out with each other. It was as if the more miles the airliner clocked up, the more exotic the stay ought to be, but then you’d end up in a sweltering bar chatting to couples from Brighton or Leeds about lines of business. What used to annoy me was that the people I’d travel with would have an obsession of trying to find the locals’ hidden, not-in-the-guide-books, good-time hangouts. You’re taking your life in your hands wandering into a tropical shack, waiting for some steaming voodoo concoction to be poured into a cracked glass when you’d just asked for a lime and soda with a straw.

“I want the real experience,” I’d be told, “like a carnival atmosphere.” It’s never going to happen! For a start, the locals are living a subsistence level of hardship, and when you stride into their rotting booze shed, next to a banana plantation, the last thing they want to do on a Friday night is discuss your traffic problems on the South Circular or who your favourite DJ is.

The worst holiday I ever had was on the Caribbean paradise of St Lucia. Even with suntan lotion on, my legs burnt. I think the spray method was in its infancy back then. Maybe I didn’t rub it in properly. I had to wear jeans for four days. Most of the resorts in St Lucia are enclosed holiday prisons of excess. The walls are there to keep the locals out and the holidaymakers (and their cash) in. It’s a very crooked state of affairs, and you can see why the surrounding poor get so browned off. You’re living on an island idyll, where money from tourism could sort out so much grief, then you’ve got the holiday equivalent of Tescos buying up your beach and building ten-foot walls. Even so, on St Lucia, the locals did little to garner any sympathy from me, luxuriating in their hatred of Europeans. I can understand their anger – I get the root causes – but don’t invite somebody onto your premises and treat them like a rattlesnake.

I was in St Lucia for a week; it seemed to last months. Instead of staying at one of the high-class Sandals, it was decided beforehand that we’d share our holiday pennies with the community. The hotel was a 30-minute stroll from the beach, ie: a bus journey away. It wasn’t cheap, but the prostitutes who used the hotel must have sorted out special rates. What hits you about St Lucia is that everybody is trying to rip you off all of the time. You can see why rum is such a big hit in these parts. You need to down two stiff fingers before leaving the front door, because men walk around with machetes in much the same way that we might carry a newspaper in the UK. It’s a chastening experience having a 6’3” man approach with a meat cleaver in his hand, with his eyes rolling round the back of his head because he’s so off his face, asking if you’ll buy the coconut shell in his hand that he’s crudely hacked into the shape of a bird.

In the ludicrous heat, you’d traipse to the beach bar to grab a frosty beer and the barman would say, “$23.” You’d have to argue the toss on every single transaction. I went for the $18 fish option in our prostitute-friendly hotel restaurant one evening, expecting delicately cooked snapper, and had a plate of kippers with tinned veg clattered on the table in front of me. “I don’t feel comfortable paying £12 for kippers!” I argued. “You’re from a rich country, you can afford it!” the waitress shrieked. When she’d calmed down, I said, “Can we get two beers?” “$40.”

I counted the hours until the flight back. An Air France Concorde crashed in Paris while I was in the middle of that long, long week, so the upcoming homeward journey became fraught with fire-engulfed nerves. The few Brits who were staying at our hotel looked haunted. We’d have secret discussions about how awful the place was. Some of the poor buggers had paid for two weeks. You’d get a bus to town, which was more like a long van with windows, and all the pasengers would be asking you to pay their fare. You’d reply, “Sorry.” Then you’d face six or seven death threats, with everyone on the bus flashing machetes, even the driver.

With a day to go, and weary of the constant harassment, we paid to lounge in one of the Sandals holiday prisons. Once inside the protective hub, I headed dutifully to the bar and ordered two beers. “$30.” Everyone was at it, even staff in the plush beach resorts! I reported the barman. As far as I was concerned, he could sling his machete.

Apologies if you’ve just booked your honeymoon in the Caribbean. At least if you’re heading to St Lucia, you’ll be getting a break from the endless drone of British radio DJs. I’d certainly like a fortnight away from Gideon Coe and Mary Anne Hobbs at the moment. I’ve just seen on Google that “Gidz” went to Coventry University and used to be on Why Don’t You?. A child star! Why Don’t You? was one of only two kids TV programmes that were unwatchable because they were so dull. The other was Jackanory. Ooh, controversial! I’d rather be ploughing through maths homework than listen to Bernard Cribbins reading a long story.

I don’t mind 6Music. I love Marc Riley and Mark Radcliiffe, as you’d expect, but Gideon Coe is a first-generation Nick Grimshaw. Obviously, if you’re called Gideon, doors will be flung open for you in London, in case you’re the son of a Lord. “Are you related to Seb?” As I’m writing this, Gideon’s just come on the radio, with that stupid background music. By my radio, I have a writing pad, and on this, I write down tracks that I need to further investigate. I’ve never written anything down while Gideon’s Coe’s been on the radio.

Mary Anne Hobbs wants gobbing. She’s emerged out of nowhere on 6Music and, to my horror, I’ve discovered she’s filling in for Shaun Keaveny – who I’m not overly fond of either – on the breakfast slot. She speaks like a Seventies drip – probably still goes backpacking. “I feel really privileged that BBC Radio is allowing me to delve into the history of electronic music,” she’ll drawl, “to play the most amazing, most fantastic electronic music in the history of mankind, and that this amazing genre of music is at last getting the attention it deserves, through me, and I was at the Latitude Festival at the weekend, and Gideon Coe and I DJ’ed from 11pm till 4am, and we were so privileged to witness our own success, and it was so packed, and I’m from Lancashire, and everything was so amazing that they had to create a moshpit for us, because everyone loved us and everyone was going wild, cos we work for BBC radio, and I loved me, and Gids loved me, and Gids was spectacular, and Sandals in St Lucia loved us and have booked us up for the entire winter, then we’re going travelling in Vietnam,” etc.

I quite like Norway and Greece, and Hungary’s OK too. In fact, me and the wife are going to Budapest quite soon, covering the Sziget festival for work. Franz Ferdinand are playing. Hopefully it won’t be as roasting as London is at the moment, which is like being on Mercury, but it’ll no doubt be hovering around 37 degrees. I keep having visions of a black Labrador attempting to read the BBC London weather forecast, standing in for the boozy Wendy Hurrell, and all the dog can do is go, “Heheheheheheheheheh,” with its big tongue sticking out of its mouth, because it’s too hot. I was up at 3am ironing the other night with the sweat running off me in rivers. I couldn't sleep! No wonder I’m daydreaming about weather Labradors. Right, I’ve got some freelance work to finish off about autumn/winter high-street trends. Just looking at a heavy coat makes me feel exhausted. No wonder Italy and Spain can never lift themselves out of economic uncertainty. How can you do anything in the heat?