Monday 15 March 2010

De slagwerker


Would you say I've got something wrong with me? I ask this because over the course of the last couple of weeks, three different people have said I've 'got problems'. All this stems from me constantly spraffing off about people on the telly/radio/in the public eye generally.
First up my gaffer insists on listening to Chris Moyles in his office, every time I go in there he says I moan about the guests he has on. He claims I 'have a problem'.
Secondly, I was at Forest last weekend and moaned to my mate about Gary Lineker appearing in the match programme promoting the Nottingham Sport Relief Mile. I think my words to him were "Why is this jug-eared Leicester c**t in my Forest programme?" to which he, quite rightly I suppose, replied "Jesus, it's for charity, calm down."
Thirdly I spent some time at my sister's house at the weekend when that Redknapp Thomas Cook ad came on the telly. That really got me riled up, to which she said "Are you all right? It's not worth getting stroppy about." Again, I guess she's right.
I think I can make a list of the people I've moaned about either on the internet or to other people in my day-to-day life over the past couple of weeks:


  1. Larry Lamb

  2. George Lamb

  3. Anvil

  4. Judas Priest

  5. Burke Shelley

  6. The entire cast of Married Single Other

  7. Graham Norton

  8. Jonathan Ross

  9. Alan Carr

  10. Fearne Rotten

  11. John Terry

  12. Frank Lampard

  13. Robbie Savage

  14. Nigel Clough

  15. Wogan

  16. Mark Owen

  17. Sue Perkins

  18. Kerry Katona

  19. Steve Claridge

  20. Martin Samuel

  21. Patrick Barclay

  22. Lady GaGa

  23. Florence off of Florence and The Machine

  24. Louise and Jamie Redknapp

  25. David Beckham

  26. Cheryl Cole

  27. Simon Cowell

  28. Amanda Holden

  29. Totimoshi

  30. Tom O'Connor

  31. Mike Dilger

  32. Jay Rayner

  33. James Martin

  34. That other prick off of Saturday Kitchen

  35. Lesley Joseph

  36. Lee Westwood

  37. Marcus Brigstocke

And they're just the ones I can remember. Perhaps I ought to stop wasting my time thinking about people I don't like and start concentrating on the people I do like. The people I do like are the sort of people who like Mastercrafts. I love Mastercrafts, have you seen it? It's not a very rock 'n' roll TV show I'm afraid, but it does feature Monty Don. A few years ago Monty Don might have appeared in that list above. That was until I saw him in a series where he let the local smackheads come and work on his smallholding, on the condition that they didn't bring any of The H with them. My opinion of him immediately changed from 'huh, another TV gardener' to 'hmm, what a patient and tolerant gentleman.' Anyway, Mastercrafts is a programme where three people each get the chance to try out different crafts each week, like carpentry, stonemasoning (?) or farriering (?). That's ordinary people, not so-called celebrities. And there's no grand prize, the prize is that you get your work exhibited somewhere, or you get six months work experience. This week's was particularly good on weaving. A bit of a dry subject, eh? But made a bit less dry by the fact that I totally fell in love with one of the ladies doing it, the improbably-named Holly Berry. She reminded me of a girl I used to go out with: made her own clothes in the way that art students do, always looked like she'd just got out of bed, a bit whey-faced, very good with her hands (she, me ex, knitted Van Gogh's Sunflowers for an end of year exhibition at college, it was very good), likes Tracey Chapman etc. Mastercrafts is a bit like a long soak in the bath - not much happens but it's extremely satisfying. It's nice people doing nice things.


And, in the spirit of Mastercrafts, I'm trying something new tonight when I go for my first drumming lesson. Some have already scoffed at the idea of drum lessons. Let them scoff is all I can say. I don't have much in life to look forward to or get excited about at the moment, so I thought I'd try something new to get enthusiastic about, and I'm very enthusiastic about this. What's wrong with self-improvement and picking up a new skill? I'll report back later in the week after I've find out if I'm going to be the next Buddy Rich or the next Meg White.



12 comments:

John Medd said...

Budgie's Burke Shelley? What can the Welsh mettler possibly have done to, dare I say, ruffle your feathers?

Bright Ambassador said...

Yes, Budgie's Burke Shelley - a) he slagged off Black Sabbath on telly the other week b)he's Burke Shelley.
I will award bonus points to him for co-writing Breadfan though.

Word verification: 'puncid', which sounds like a word you could associate with Burke Shelley.

Bright Ambassador said...

Welcome along, by the way, fellow citizen of Notts.

Louis Barfe said...

No, Monty Don's a tit. Sorry. 'Patient and tolerant'? How about 'keen to exploit free labour'?

People saying "It's nothing to get worked up about" are wind-up merchants, because they know that it works you up even further. That's their only pleasure in life, so I pity them. I also pity them for their mild cheddar outlook that means they don't actually care about anything. Bovine fuckers.

Bright Ambassador said...

Heh-heh. Well said. Shame about Monty Don though, ho-hum...

Jon Peake said...

Don't become all rational and nice. It's why we love you.

Hawkfall said...

Drumming Lessons! How cool is that?! Only wimps and jessies could scoff at the idea of Drumming Lessons.

Mind you, a Rush fan is probably enough to give drumming instructors nightmares: "So when do we get to play tunes on wooden blocks like Neil Peart does on A Passage to Bangkok?"

Bright Ambassador said...

My teacher said to me "Peart does stuff that even I don't know how he does it."

Louis Barfe said...

My attitude to Monty Don comes entirely from my wife, a keen gardener, who nearly stopped watching Gardeners' World because of his presence. She was saved from having to make that decision by his stroke. She had formed the view that the presenter of Britain's most prominent media vehicle for horticulturalists knew absolutely 2/10 of sod all about gardening. She claimed that you could see the hate and resentment simmering in Carol Klein and Joe Swift's eyes, as they thought "We're proper gardeners, not failed costume jewellers". In fairness, I should point out that my wife hates quite a lot of people on TV. Katy Ashworth, presenter of CBeebies' I Can Cook gets it in the neck for "looking like she might have a hare lip". And in Gardeners' World, she's taken a dislike to Don's replacement Toby Buckland because he's too cheery by half, and appears to be presiding over the programme's metamorphosis into Top Gear with nasturtiums.

Bright Ambassador said...

I think your wife sounds great. That's how I am with people on the telly but the 'glass half full types' constantly shout me down.
Currently hating Martin Lewis, that so-called 'money saving' prick.

Louis Barfe said...

Martin 'Money Saving Pigspurt' Lewis really is a cornish-faced bastard, isn't he? The value of his advice can be gauged by the way he promoted switching to Tiscali as a money saving exercise. False economies, old son. It might be cheap, but I prefer to pay a little more for broadband that works.

Bright Ambassador said...

Funny you should say that, I was talking to guy at work about him yesterday. He was saying that he'd heard Lewis spraffing off on Vine about free internet security and recommended an AVG package. When the colleague mentioned it to someone who knows about PCs he told him it might be free but it wouldn't offer much protection. I think that's called a 'false economy.'

I'd also like to know why he's allowed to go on national BBC radio once a fortnight and plug his website, which has, after all, made him quite a rich man.
He must be the only man to have made money out of the recession. Along with him who owns 99P Stores.