My Name Is Prince

Apparently Prince Harry gave himself the nickname "The Bullet Magnet" while serving in Afghanistan.

I think this is rather self-regarding. Proper nicknames are supposed to be insulting, but Harry's nickname makes him sound like some sort of super-hero, although a rubbish one.

I suspect he does not know his real nickname. I imagine it's Ginger, or James Hewitt's Lad, or Posh Spice, or Clive off Neighbours, or Knobhead. Something like that.

Busy

Goodness, I've been busy. Do you know how busy I've been? I'll tell you, I've been busier than the following COMBINED!!!!

• A sniffer dog at Creamfields;
• The man who picks up all the coins from the stage after a Jimmy Carr gig;
• The bloke who stands in front of Osama Bin Laden holding his coat and umbrella wide open to obscure him from American spy satellites when Osama's got the runs;
• The chap who Piers Morgan employs to tell him he's a cock every time he acts like a cock;
• A peanut collector at an all-you-can-eat peanut buffet.

So, as you can see, I've been quite busy. So busy that I've been completely unable to direct you to this website, which collects passive-aggressive notes like the one in my previous post. Thankfully, that's all over now.

Found On A Fridge In Work

Don't take people's chunks. That's what I was told, and that's how things should be.

Lovely Toasty Ears

I was surprised to see Kate O'Mara on my television last night. But not as surprised as she looked. My goodness, that's quite a facelift she's had.

It will have to stop soon lest she find herself in possession of a lustrous and curly beard. Or a little goatee if she's fastidious in the appropriate area.

Anyway, it was rather chilly when I ventured out this lunchtime and my hands soon developed a peculiar numbness, as if they had somehow grown to the proportions of those owned by the Kenny Everett character Brother Lee Love, making it impossible to grip small items like coins, thimbles or Tic Tacs. "Dang!" I thought, "If only I had remembered my gloves."

My ears, too, were cold as a Hitchcock blonde sitting in a freezer in the middle of the Antarctic. In the nip.

Of course, this was not a problem in my younger years, when my gloves were attached to each other by a long string which ran along one arm of my coat, across my shoulders and back down the other arm, and my ears were kept toasty warm by a balaclava. But I'm an adult now, I can't get away with that sort of fashion statement, no matter how sensible.

But maybe I can. Maybe we all can. All we need is one sacrifice. If Kate Moss or David Beckham would just pop a nice woolly balaclava and pair of elasticated mittens on, we'd all be able to wear them without fear of being picked on by bullies.

Perhaps if we all club together we could employ one of them to do the honours for a couple of minutes. Just long enough for them to be papped, and we'd all have nice warm ears.

And Kate O'Mara could pin her skin back with a bulldog clip, and mask it with her own balaclava, saving a fortune on plastic surgery and that.

Everyone's a winner. Send your money to me now.

Evil Mothercare

I had to buy a car seat for Bandage very minor, so Mrs Bandage and I sojourned to our local branch of Mothercare, which provides a wide range of such devices. That's why we went there.

Having chosen our preferred model, we asked the assistant who was serving us if we could see if it would fit in our car. A reasonable request, I think you'll agree.

Thankfully, you, the assistant and I are in full concord, and so she led us from the shop to the car park, carrying the seat herself. That was a relief as I had hurt my back playing Travel Twister (TM) (which I shall be marketing soon, it being a version I have invented of the popular game, designed to be played on long car journeys, like Travel Scrabble or Travel Cluedo).

But she didn't take us straightaway. Oh no. First she donned a high-visibility jacket and only then did she led us from the shop.

Why was she wearing a high-visibility jacket? Was it because she did not want the security guards to think she was stealing the car seat? But she was already wearing a Mothercare uniform. The jacket would only be of use if the security guards were visually impaired. But then, which company would take on blind security guards?

No, it was for her own protection in the car park.

Now I do not wish that assistant, nor any employee of Mothercare, harm. Far from it. But why should she get special protection from the vehicles using the car park? We weren't wearing high-visibility jackets. In a way, she was putting us in danger, while ensuring she alone was fully-protected.

In fact, she was putting us in more danger, as any cars which might have hit her would undoubtedly swerve to avoid her, alerted by her highly visible jacket, and hit me instead. A valued customer. Don't make me laugh. I mean, how dare she? How bloody dare she?

It wasn't her fault, of course. Company rules, she said, company rules that preserve a small clique of Mothercare employees and, effectively, kill their customers.

It's health and safety gone mad. And then evil. Mothercare? Mothermaim, more like.

PS It's all gone quiet on the Marathon front. Perhaps I should write Mars a letter and see if they will bring it back.

Phew

Only one bag today from Gregg's.

The powers-that-be obviously read this blog. Either that, or it was all a terrible error. And we all know how unlikely that is.

A Cornish pasty, since you ask.

Just Give Me My Money, Please. Thank You

I had occasion yesterday to draw money from a hole in the wall. I say a hole in the wall, but in fact it was nothing of the kind. In point of fact, it was an ATM in the lobby of an HSBC bank.

A great invention, by the way, but one which stopped my (borderline illegal) get-rich-quick scheme in its tracks. In the old days, before ATMs were so abundant, the quickest way to draw money from one's account was to write a cheque for the amount and make it payable to "Cash", before handing it over to counter staff for redemption.

So I was going to change my name to Clement Ash, enabling me to pay in any stray cheques which the wind might blow my way. No point now. I'd make a rubbish international super-criminal.

Oh yes, yesterday's ATM. I bashed in my PIN and waited for the magic screen to appear offering me my own money.

"But wait, what's this?" I thought. An advertisement giving me the chance to take on a credit card appeared instead. Now I don't want a credit card. I don't want to get into unnecessary debt, I don't buy books from Amazon, and I have never felt the need to subscribe to any pornographic websites, so why would I need one.

But at the bottom of the screen were two options. "Yes", and "Not at the moment, thank you." "How dare they?" I thought. "How bloody dare they?"

I'm keen to say please and thank you. I hold doors open for much longer than necessary (admittedly only to watch people do that special run they do when they realise someone is holding the door open for them). I don't duck under the ropes to get to the back of one of those curly queues they have in post offices. In short, I'm a polite chap.

But it really does get my goat when people are polite on my behalf. Especially as I was a smidgen annoyed to be offered credit when all I wanted was my own money. What on earth is wrong with 'no'?

I hate HSBC for doing this.

Girls Who Love Pies And The Gays Who Love Them

I wonder, are you familiar with the work of Gok Wan, the style expert who convinces ladies of advanced girth and/or years to rejoice in their voluptuous curves and frolic in the nip on the Channel Four series How To Look Good Naked?

You are? Well then, are you also familiar with the work of the pop singer Mika, who opined in favour of Big Girls?

These are just the latest moves in a vast homosexual conspiracy initiated by the late Farouk Bulsara, better known as Freddie Mercury, whose pop group Queen sang Fat Bottomed Girls (Make The World Go Round).*

This conspiracy is designed to turn all men into habitual other-bus passengers by taking out the competition, i.e. ladies, by either making them excessively porky, and therefore unattractive, or morbidly obese, and therefore dead.

Paranoid, you call me? Well, then, first let us examine the evidence.

First, the forms which ladies take is none of these gentlemen's business. As they say down at my local Royal British Legion, if you don't pay the subs, you can't complain about the rules. Yet they press their unhelpful advice on the fairer sex regardless.

Second, have you seen the gentlemen whose work I have cited? Snake-hipped svelte chaps every last man-Jack of them.

I think I've made my point. Now, the question is, how can we hit back?

First, we must ensure that women's and fashion magazines should only use slim, airbrushed models rather than so-called "real women." Make the fillies raise their game.

Second, we should release singles of our own to combat Bulsara and his Mini-Me impersonator Mika. I am looking for volunteers to record the following, which are bound to trouble the charts.

1) In The Navy (You Kill People With Big Guns. It's No Picnic)
2) Ugh, Moustaches Are Horrible
3) Testicles (Don't Wanna See Them Dangly Bits)

That should do it.

I am not a homophobe. I like Doctor Who.

* Not forgetting The Communards' hit Have Another Cake, Love (You Look Gorgeous), or the Kenneth Williams novelty record, which reached number three in 1967, Eat Eat Eat Bitch.

Excess baggage

Well, that was a concern.

I've just been to Gregg's for two sausage rolls. I was served by a polite young man, brisk but efficient. And, before I go on, can I just say how nice it was to see a man break through the glass ceiling at Gregg's and be promoted to the front counter. I've seen men at the back before in those white trilby things carrying trays, but it's rare to see one in the shop proper.

Anyway, he put the sausage rolls in the paper bag, as I was expecting. But then, and this is the killer, he put the paper bag in ANOTHER plastic bag.

Why did he feel it necessary to double the baggage? It's not like it was pornography (although they do have a similar arousing effect on my corpulent colleague Fat Brian). I wasn't ashamed of my purchase at the time, although in retrospect I do feel a bit queasy after eating two. I'll stick to one in future, or a steak slice/Cornish pasty if I'm feeling peckish.

Perhaps it wasn't for my benefit. Perhaps the health police want sausage rolls hidden away. If that's the case, how dare they? How bloody dare they?

But maybe that wasn't the reason. Now, the sausage rolls weren't very hot. In fact, they were lukewarm. Perhaps the Gregg's operative was hoping the rolls would retain their heat better in a double-bagging arrangement. But he was wrong. Dead wrong. For a start there was one of those little perfectly round holes which still had the punched-out bit of plastic attached at the bottom of the bag - a bit like Nearly-Headless Nick from the Harry Potter books. I'm never sure what those holes are for, by the way, a safety precaution for any primordial dwarfs who fall into them, perhaps, to stop them from suffocating? In any case, the holes stopped the bag acting as an impromptu vacuum flask.

The third reason, and by far the least likely, is that the Gregg's chap forgot that he was only dealing with one bag and placed the sausage rolls in a second bag in a reflex action. That would be like the time I bought a meat pie (no chips) from The Lobster Pot chip shop in Liverpool city centre and the nice lady behind the counter, unbidden, covered it in salt and vinegar (I'm not going to go on about this, I've visited this before on the Internet). But the likelihood that this would happen to me twice - and both involving pastry products - is so remote as to be almost impossible.

So I am left with three possible explanations, none of which are entirely satisfactory. You can see why I'm so perturbed.

Whatever happened to Marathons?

Does anybody remember the chocolate bar Marathon?

I used to be a big fan. They were a bit like Mars bars, but somehow the makers managed to squeeze in some peanuts. This was ideal for me, as I adore peanuts. Not to the extent that I have a peanut collection*, or anything like that. I just mean I like the taste of peanuts - aesthetically, they do nothing for me.

Anyway, Marathons. They were lovely, but they don't appear to make them anymore. I asked a local confectioner if she had any, but she just looked at me, slack jawed, as if I had asked her for a chocolate-covered anvil, or something equally unlikely, and pointed dumbly at her vast array of sweetmeats (In the event, I chose a Topic, but it wasn't the same).

Now, I am aware of a recent online campaign to bring back the Wispa bar, which was very successful in the sense that the Wispa bar was indeed brought back.

What say you? Will you join me in my campaign to bring back the Marathon?

* Thinking about it, I suppose peanuts would eventually go a bit mouldy. You'd have to lacquer them, I imagine, if you wanted to keep them in a collection. Just one more reason not to have one, I suppose, probably more trouble than it's worth.

Facebook Fatigue

You know, in this time-poor world, there is little more irksome than the constant demands by Facebook for one to update one's profile.

Thankfully, help is at hand. I shall soon be setting up an online service - FacebookFatigue.com. For a small monthly fee, FacebookFatigue.com will update your profile for you. Just send us an email explaining how you feel or outlining your programme for the day and we will ensure your friends receive a constant and up-to-date news service.

Even more pressed for time? Our Premium service will fill in your status entirely on your behalf. We have a number of packages specifically tailored for the person you are:

PartyAnimal (TM)
eg John Smith is tired/out on the razz/regretting having that twelfth tequila

Earnest'n'Thoughtful (TM)
eg John Smith is worried/disturbed by the latest news from Iraq/really annoyed by racism

ShowOff (TM)
eg John Smith is loved up/jetting off to the Maldives in seven hours. Can't wait!!/celebrating his new job as Angelina Jolie's bosom wrangler

QuirkyZany (TM)
eg John Smith is Monkfish/like Brian Blessed, only painted green/a bucket of cheese

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