30.12.17 Celebrity Or Not?

There are numerous television shows which feature "Celebrity" participants.  The definition of a 'celebrity' is quite simply laughable, and in 80% of cases, such a description is an obscenity.  This is brought home by various shows.  Anyone who has recently been bored by Celebrity Road Trip will know very well what I am talking about.

We are just into a new run of Celebrity Mastermind, so I will invite you to consider the participants whose celebrity status is, in my opinion, not so much "in doubt" as fucking flawed.  Yes, there are a few possibles, but there is one real test that in my opinion determines whether someone has no right whatsoever to be considered a celebrity - whether their name needs any sort of qualification, such as what they fucking do for a living.

Here are the entries in my TV guide, with extra notes on those whom you may not have heard of [instantly removing them from the category that has allowed them to participate!]

Jack Ashton
Rich Hall
Guy Mowbray
Pam Ayres
Philip Serrell (Antiques Expert)
Richard McCourt (Comedian)
Lemn Sissay (Poet)
Olivia Wayne (Sports Anchor)
John Bradley (Actor)
Crista Cullen (Hockey Player)
Nick Bright (Radio 1Xtra Presenter)
Anna Passey (Hollyoaks Actress)
Rachel Stevens,
Asim Chaudhry
Anita Anand
Andy Zaltman
Faisal Islam
Lloyd Langford
Ollie Locke
Yasmin Evans
Phil Williams (Radio Presenter)
John Robins (Comedian)
Lydia Bright (TOWIE star)
Tim Farron (MP)
Laurence Rickard (Actor)
Martin Hughes-Games (Springwatch Presenter)
Vogue Williams (Model and Presenter)
John Pienaar (BBC Political Editor)
Dane Baptiste (Comedian)
Grace Victory (Vlogger)
Annie Wallace (Holyoaks Actor)
Martin Bell (Ex MP)

A motley collection indeed.  Over on ITV, the culmination of a nauseating campaign to kill us all off with relentless trailers for Dancing On Ice has led us to next Sunday's commencement of the usual dross.  Here is the list of participants for this fayre.  Bearing in mind the 4-year absence of DOI, you would perhaps think a decent line-up should be offered.

Lemar
Kem Cetinay
Antony Cotton
Brooke Vincent
Max Evans
Perri Shakes-Drayton
Candice Brown
Stephanie Waring
Alex Beresford
Cheryl Baker
Jake Quickenden
Donna Air

I will leave you to assess.

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30.12.17 The Reason Is Because

People who can allegedly cook should do so without telling us about it, UNLESS they can cunting well speak English.  There is a muppet on TV as I type who repeatedly uses "the reason is because" which is simply horrendous.  If I were as useless, I'd be saying:

The reason you are a twat is because you cannot use the language.

However, I would not do so.  It is grammatically wrong - a howler.  Rather, I would go for one of the following two options to make my point to Mr Ainsworth.

The reason you are a twat is that you cannot use the language

You are a twat because you cannot use the language

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27.12.17 Festive Nonsense

As I have done in previous years, I have noted the excessive use of the word 'festive' in the TV Guide over the Christmas period.  The laziness adopted by the compilers of the TV Choice magazine is pathetic, and the gratuitous use of 'festive' in programme details is ludicrous.

The instances by day and channel have been collated, and are shown in the table below:

It is strangely the case that this year's results have in the main mirrored those of last year, in the general spread of usage.  See the graph below:

For comparison, here is the graph showing last year's results, which were taken over a slightly shorter time span.

I shall not attempt to analyse the full date, but a couple of points are:

a)  Channel 4 is again the most festive of the five main channels, strengthening its position with 36% of all appearances, up from 29% last year.

b)  The overall 'festive' count has increased, from 3.57 per day to 4.24 per day.

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10.12.17 Wetherby Junkies

The need to stop at the services was unfortunate, mainly because the place was mobbed.  Wetherby Services was, on this particular Saturday, the most popular venue in the north.  The degree of popularity only became truly apparent upon entering the building itself.  Mrs MWSC and I were amazed at the over-subscribed facility, and then suddenly dumbfounded by a queue for the toilets that stretched on and on.  With no exaggeration, there must have been well over 100 people waiting to shit and piss.

The double take changed nothing – there were indeed people everywhere, and loads of them clogging the walkway, most in the queue.  How could this be?  We joined through necessity, and inched forward at a snail’s pace.  In due course, it became apparent that the in/out area to the toilets was split by a roped barrier; in on the left, out on the right.  Men were going against the tide to get in to the corridor, dodging the outgoing empty-bladdered visitors.  It became clear that the male facilities were not oversubscribed, but the women were less well catered for.  The backlog was jiggling with the wait.

I resisted the urge to abandon Mrs MWSC, and we held our positions as we eventually rounded the corner, and kept left while getting to the corridor.  Another left turn revealed another 40 feet of females queuing.  I decided to veer right and sort myself out while Mrs MWSC was stuck in the queue.  As a complete aside, I ought to mention that the cashpoint machines (whose screens warned of a £1.99 charge for anyone withdrawing money) are located in the corridor.  The designers were clearly deranged, and anyone wanting twenty quid would have to tackle a dozen women wanting to spend a penny.

Out in the main area, I waited for a relieved wife, and considered the mayhem all around.  In the WH Smiths, people snaked around towards the till, ready to use plastic to buy non-essentials at higher than normal prices.  Coffee drinkers were getting their fixes, and takeaway food of low quality was being served at exorbitant prices.  I stood outside the main entrance to escape the oppressive atmosphere.  While taking in the view, I noted six coaches and realised that this was probably the cause of the madness.  Half a dozen coach drivers had deposited 300 people, each of whom wanted to make his or her own deposit.

A woman came from my right, and she adopted a strange posture.  This could have been linked to her need for the loo, and/or to her inability to cope with the high heels and very tight jeans.  The big arse formed the point in her profile that was a chevron.  She leaned forward as she walked, sticking her arse out behind her.  Mathematically, she was a ‘More Than’ symbol.  I deduced that she was not a visitor to the women’s toilets because she came out again just three minutes later, this time ‘Less Than’ (for her reverse journey to a car somewhere).

Mrs MWSC appeared through the crowds and we made haste, leaving behind the addicts.  I refer to the lunatics paying small fortunes for coffees, pasties, rolls and shite.  Wetherby Services is itself a metaphorical junkie, desperate for its own fix – the repeated injections of mad people intent on pissing, shitting and wasting loads of money on food, drink and non-essentials as part of a frenzy during an intermission in their journeys.

3.12.17 Rights of Passage

Before we got near a plane, an airport worker was on a mission to restrict passage.  The five-foot entrance to the airport via automatic doors was the first 'limitation' introduced to all those hoping to fly.  The next effort to restrict the flow of people was provided by a beskirted sales assistant in the meandering walkway through the shop.  The airport authorities had long ago decided we should all be made to run the gauntlet of the overpriced, pointless products emporium.

However, Miss Constrictor (let's call her Boa) was on a personal mission to further funnel people by blocking the 120cm wide walkway by talking to two cunts who had nothing better to do.  So it was, that passengers trying to make their way to the various airports of Europe were first required to squeeze through a gap no wider than 70 cunting centimetres!  This right of passage [pun intended] was a necessary step in the process of getting on any plane at all.  So, Yorkshire's gateway to the world was as wide as two-and-a-half fucking Toblerones.

The painful process of boarding was made so much worse by the lack of air; people sweated, and oxygen was in short supply.  If only masks could drop from the ceiling.  I found myself wishing we were board at gate number eight, a long walk from the main building, but it would have meant a walk in the open air, plus boarding via the back steps as well.  Instead, we were funnelled through a tunnel after a wait in the cramped area of gate number three, and with boarding at the front only, it took ages.  Inane thoughts came and went, as I stood vegetating in the queue.  The young kid in front of me must have been about 13; his tits were bigger than his mother's.  We shuffled forward.

In my seat I became reacquainted with the half-size arm rests provided by Jet2, arm rests that are no good to man nor beast - unless, that is, you have no arms, or at least nothing below the elbow.  [How strange that BELOW and ELBOW are anagrams]

The Jet2Shop magazine was full of the usual stuff; who exactly buys it?  The editor, Kirsty Calvert, gave her intro and left me all the worse for it.  Here is one small extract for your delectation:

Our Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream All-Over Miracle Oil is super popular.  It maximises on suitcase space too, as it rejuvenates face, body and hair!

I'm not sure which of the two sentences is the worst; make your own mind up.

I turned to considering more manly things, and in particular, why the various watches were being championed according to their resistance levels.  I am sorry, but whether a watch is resistant to water at 30 metres, 50 metres or 100 metres is rather immaterial.  Most people will never subject the things to more than a foot of water, if it falls into a bath or six inches, if if falls into a loo!

Who would choose to spend £41 on a plane when the alleged recommended price is £50.  Any problems and there is no easy return option.

The struggle to disembark via the front door was,as ever, an unhappy affair.  Eventually it was time to show passports to a disinterested, uniformed person and leave the airport.  BUT, nothing so slick or efficient was possible.  Instead, the mob was before us, a heaving mass of flesh, sweat and bad breath in front of passport control.  There were two routes, I came to realise, as we inched forward.  A chap was overseeing the splitting process; to the left was the ABC system for eye and fingerprint checks, while to the right was a queue for one of the two chaps in the conventional kiosk.

As we neared the kiosk, and airport worker guided an old chap with short white hair to the front of the queue, and he took up residency at the glass, resting his cane against the counter.  We waited.  The second passport checker was the target for the HOTWW.  Yes, the constant arrival of immobile people on our right meant the queue made only intermittent progress in getting shorter.  Helpers Of The Walking Wounded were nipping about and flashing the collected passports of the infirm.

The left hand counter was out of action for ages.  I suggested the bloke could be a returning Rudolph Hess and that could explain well over over five minutes at the passport control window.  There was no leeway from the officials.  It used to be more of a spot check, with some people simply being waved through, but despite the big crowd, everyone was getting attention.  With Rudolph at the left window, we had one single person in Malaga actually allowing people into Spain.

The ABC section, which I observed for a while as there was little else to do, was a mess.  The rabble was engaged in sorting out fingerprints and people were staring into screens to get eye recognition clearance.  It was all a palaver, and hardly efficient.  At each of the four machines was a member of staff, and all four of them could have been better employed in checking fucking passports!  Such a policy would have alleviated the wait, as the queues would have been tiny with all six of the airport staff checking passports instead of training thick travellers on how to use a shit system that takes twice as long.  The dogged adherence to a flawed policy and procedure was a demonstration of stupiduty worse than the cunts in charge at ASDA.  Whilst ASDA may well often offer just two manned (or womanned) checkouts, the self service area usually only has one member of staff overseeing the scanners rather than four!  Yes, I know that there are other wasters, such as the floor runner researching the price of a kumquat and two gossipers loitering, the one with the most keys being the more senior, but we have all learnt to ignore them as useful members of staff.

Leaving Rudolph behind (Hess, in case you've forgotten) I pocketed our passports and headed for the exit.  As ever, the exit from Malaga Airport was restricted to a five-foot wide gap, reduced by whatever coefficient had to be applied each minute based on encroachment and blockages.  Blokes holding cards got in the way, as did dithering fuckers who insisted in stopping in or just outside the doorway.  Leeds Airport granted us 70cm, and Malaga Airport matched this, just about, but not before some sidestepping and circum-cuntin-navigating.  Generally, there was no right of passage.

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