Andy's Glasses

What work do you do, mummy?

Oh, I stand around in my underwear.

Is that ‘work’? Like being a fireman or a consultant anaesthesiologist or an aid worker in the Philippines??

Not quite like that, darling, not exactly. I earn more money than they do. Much, much more.

Oh. Can I get lots of money for standing round in my underpants too?

No my darling, that wouldn’t be appropriate.

And the objectification of women being drooled over in a state of near-total undress; that IS appropriate, is it mummy??

(precocious fucker)

So Victoria’s Secret, the upmarket lingerie and pornography store (depending on whether you’re a man or a woman), are having their annual ‘fashion show’. It will cost them $12 million. That’s a lorra knickers. Victoria’s Secret turns over billions each year in sales and so once a year they break out the ‘angels’ as their ‘models’ are called, and put on a ‘show’. The angels have to be 5 foot 10 minimum. So I could just make it. But the beard was a problem. They wanted to wax it; that’s what they do with hair at VS. And they don’t do grey hair at all. Nor cellulite, flab, spots, moles, warts, creases, wrinkles, ugly, plain, plain ugly, grotesque or constipated. Nothing even vaguely ‘real’.

I’m not here to debate the insanity of a world where lingerie models are paid as much as Wayne Rooney and they don’t even wear football boots. I’m here to complain that I don’t have a ticket for that show.

There’s no justice.

David Dimbleby, the world’s most clever, brilliant, lovely, cuddly, grand-daddy type political debate host ever, Mr Question Time, the poshest individual, all dignity and white hair and knowing smile and 75 years old, has had a tatoo. On his shoulder. Of a scorpion. A six-legged scorpion. Meaning either the tattooist couldn’t count proper or that scorpion in question stood on a land-mine before being pictured.

Either way this is the latest in a line of de-classifying the humble tattoo. It used to be the exclusive domain of the working classes, particularly scummy ones, and even more particularly, drunk scummy ones. Then up-market people started getting them and now a Dimbleby. Fucking aristocracy.

If I was any self-respecting builder or gangster, I’d be knocking on the door at the hospital to have all my ‘ink’ removed. My statement been hi-jacked by the posh.

Though why this ‘posh’ one did it so glaringly publicly remains a mystery.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

What does ‘the future’ hold for you?

What does ‘the future’ even mean?

Tomorrow?

Next week??

Next year???

Or 2275?

The problem is that the future is very big. I’m not talking about my personal future, that’s linked to my pension and my children’s willingness to change my nappies when the time comes. AS I DID FOR THEM (in case they need reminding). Not even the future for mankind because we may not be here to see it. We came close in the 60s to nuclear armageddon and we’ll doubtless be close again.

Visions of the future, which are all obviously fictional, cos we haven’t been there yet, take their models from the prevailing zeitgeist. So George Orwell’s ‘1984’ was written in 1949 and thus depicted a rather bleak and brutal ‘future’ based on the nazi rise in Germany and the totalitarian regime in Russia. And this ‘absolute model of state control’ carried on to the 70s with movies like Soylent Green in which you eventually realised, as did Edward G Robinson, that the ‘disappearing people’ were being recycled as food. Eeeeuuuww. I mean, I’d taste pretty damned good, but YOU????

Then, during the Cold War, the ‘future’ became accordingly a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which humanity had returned to its feral and savage origins. Deathrace 2000, all the Mad Maxes and loads more. Depressing tales of a world no-one would ever want to live in. Terminator too, same message. Someone pushed ‘the button’ and look what’s happened now. Oh dear. If only…

Stephen King wrote a story called The Running Man. And although just a short story in his ‘Richard Bachman’ pen-name period, it was a game changer. Or a game introducer.

The ‘hero’ is a convicted felon, released from his life/death (whatever) sentence to run away. Whilst chased by the full might of the state army, soldiers, tanks, helicopters, all on live tv for the enjoyment of the inevitably bloodthirsty and sadistic population. If he survives for 5 days he is ‘free’. And ‘no-one has ever done it!!!!!’ Until Schvartzenegger came along in the movie and showed how its done.

And that story was inspirational not in the format, which was fairly old and predictable, one man against a nation, but because it showed that sadistic voyeurism is one of our innate natural hobbies and that game shows are the future. All of the future if Saturday night tv is any guide.

And this week Hunger Games part 2 comes out. Another ‘ultimate’ game of life and death as viewed by a salivating general public on their tvs to keep the reality of the world’s grimness at bay. Its like ‘I’m a celebrity…’ without Ant and Dec.

I fucking hate sequels. I don’t like films with numbers in the title. Though the aforementioned ‘1984’ could be an exception. And Death Wish 9 isn’t.

So even though I’m madly in love with the divine Jennifer Lawrence, I shall miss this sad and sorry tale of how the entire future of humanity will become nothing more than a sodding great game show. Surely the game shows we have already are sufficiently dire that we really don’t need to waste time wondering about future ones.

Happy tomorrow. If there is one!!!!

A xxxx

Our mates Aussie Johnno and Billie-Sheila came over for lunch yesterday. We had to let them in because they’d come all the way from Australia. Even though Spurs were playing in a stupidly early, 12 o’clock, match.

Why would you have a match so early on a sunday? Those poor Newcastle fans must have been up at 4 to make the trek down in their horse-drawn carriages. Can’t imagine the weekend train service (or lack of) allows for such occurrences and its not like they’d come down on Saturday and stay over. They’re impoverished northern rabble, they don’t have the funds. Maybe they could have borrowed the money from their major sponsor, Wonga, and had a night at the Hempel. Where the contents of the mini-bar total more than the price of the average house in the far-north-east. Yet the great god of Sky tv must be appeased.

Anyway. Aussie Johnno has an analytical mind. Its his job. And his innate character. He questions things, looking for the ‘obvious’ solutions to any problem, the logical answer to the question. Which makes him a bit like a four year-old kid. ‘Why?’ He asks. Why do they do that? Why can’t they just do it better? Why not do it differently?

So watching football with the man, who has little in the way of footballing knowledge but a lot of questions, is a different experience.

Why can’t Spurs score when they’ve had 18 attempts on goal in the first half? Why can’t they practice scoring goals, what do they do all week??

Ahh, but other teams make it difficult; that’s their job.

Ok, so why can’t you work out how the other teams will defend and decide how to score goals anyway. Why can’t they play better, whey can’t they work out a plan which will enable them to score against this team. Why, why, whyyyyyy…

A six year old kid you can just slap. But not Johnno. Not least because I love him dearly but also because his footballing naivete gives him an objectivity that the more footballing obsessed lack. A new perspective. From a logical, scientific approach rather than one steeped in Motsonesque cliche.

Just ‘do it better’, is the way any normal, analytical mind would approach such a problem. Work out how to score and FUCKING DO ITTTTTTT!!!!! Its obvious. To him, even to me with a mind full of ‘playing a high line’ and ‘diamond midfield vs wingers’ and other dross.

Simple problem. Certainly simple players. The solution: SCORE MORE GOALS. Spurs have currently, at the last count, scored 9 in 10 league matches. Appalling. Abysmal. Pepto-bysmal.

So we frikkin’ lost. On the day when all the stars were aligned. Man City lost, Chelsea almost lost but cheated in that vile way they do, even Arsenal lost, and that never happens. It was all set, it was destiny. It was karma. It was ‘beshert’.

But they fucked up.

And so easy to see why. If you spend your life creating computer software solutions in the financial sector.

Sack Villas Boas, bring in Mark Zuckerberg. He should be a Spurs fan, surely.

Happy fucking Monday

A xxxx

Why do we do things that will bring us pain? Why are we (well, I bloody am) inherently masochistic in that we invite suffering constantly? I’m not referring to being a Spurs fan in this particular instance, though I feel that is yet another manifestation of the same principle.

Every Sunday morning I read the newspapers and I start with the Mail.

Why the fuck do I even buy such a sad and sorry rag, so full of venom, spite, reactionary clap-trap and right wing rubbish? Why?? Because I need to know what ‘they’ are thinking. I need to know what the massed suggestible ranks of middle England subject themselves to in the alleged interest of ‘the news’. When its filtered through the lens of sensationalist ultra-conservatism. As exemplified by Peter Hitchens.

Today he begs the question as to how the courts can remain true and proper to ‘morality’ when they’ve seemingly abandoned Christianity. What a tosser. Being a conservative he bemoans any changes or progression away from ancient practices. But the courts are not religious. Unless he’s talking about sharia courts and I’m going to take a guess that, knowing his views on such matters, that is not the case. He constantly makes the assumption that morality is solely the preserve of Christianity, without which we’d all be raping our own sisters, eating babies and even driving over the speed limit.

Morals change, subtly, to reflect changes. In 1847 (I’m guessing here; don’t quote me) adultery was a sin and a crime and they had fabulous words like ‘cuckold’ to invoke in such instances. 120 years later hippies introduced the ‘just have sex’ principle to the world and there was a fantastic moral shift, just in time for my teenage years. Bless those frikkin hippies.

And if religion is the sole upholder of morality, then why has it shown such flagrant abuse of that responsibility when confronted with the abusing priests (bad enough in itself) and (far worse) the attempted cover-ups of the practices? My blood doth boil.

So I turn over the page and find that rarest of rare things. Someone from Manchester who makes sense. Even rarer to find such a thing in the Mail on Sunday. But I can’t help but like Gary Neville. He’s no beauty, but that’s not what we pay him for. Gary wrote about how the young generation is essentially priced out of going to football matches. That whereas the demographic of football attendees was predominantly young, over 40 years (what we shall call ‘The Sky years’) that has shifted and crowds are, on average, much older. And mainly, much richer. Because going to football is seriously expensive. Tickets for a family of 4; 300 quid. Couple of programmes, two teas and a horse and rabbit pie, add another £40. Parking the Bentley, 20 quid plus an extra tenner for someone to make sure it doesn’t get scratched. Also phrased as ‘if you don’t give me a tenner I will scratch your car’. That comes to 2,486.93 plus vat. If you get arrested for fighting you have to add legal costs too. Possibly hospital bills as well.

In the 70s I used to go to Spurs for 7s and 6d. Don’t ask, I don’t really remember ‘old money either’, nor care really, its not the point. The point was I didn’t have to ask anyone for the money to go to football, it was manageable from my allowance or from some minor supplement from shop-lifting. We’d sometimes get in free as ‘old Reg’, or ‘young Ted’ would tell us just to jump over the turnstiles as he was rolling up his next fag. Bless him. (Sadly he died from lung cancer in 1969).

The upshot of all this is that people can’t afford to go and instead watch football on tv. Fab atmosphere in our lounge on matchdays. Its just like ‘being there’ but with the phone ringing and better tea.

Money has ruined our national game. And if its going to be watched on tv, why not go all the way and just use CGI facsimiles. Instead of showing real football, show people playing FIFA 2013. Its so realistic you can actually see which hair gel Christiano Ronaldo is using on that day. And you could save all those ridiculous salaries because the players would no longer be real. Thus buying a virtual Range Rover would cut costs dramatically.

There’s always a solution to every problem. You’re just not very likely to find it in the Mail on Sunday.

Happy days

A xxxx

Let me tell you about my pet hate. Well, one of them. I have so many I don’t think my hard drive is sufficient to even list them all in abbreviated form. But number one, numero uno, the Big One, the real thing is people walking along staring at their (ffaaaaarrrkkkin) phones.

THERE’S A WORLD OUT THERE, I want to shout at them, AND YOU’RE MISSING IT ALL, STARING AT THAT POXY PIECE OF TECHNO-SHIT. GET A FRIKKIN LIFE!!!!

But social norms dictate that I’m not allowed to say that, nor anything else. All I can do is push them when they’re walking down the crowded walkways at Charing Cross tube about to bump into me, tut a bit and mutter the odd, discreet expletive at them. But they’re oblivious to me. And to the rest of the real world. What’s happening in virtual space is far more important to them.

And now I know why.

They’re flirting. Chatting up. Having ‘relationships’. ‘Dating’. Because its all changed. The whole world. The whole ‘scene’. The whole ‘obscene’.

Meeting people used to involve going out and sort of, meeting people. Find someone you like the look of and work out the fastest way to get them naked. I’m being honest here. Honest to the horrible, single-minded, obsessed youth I once was.

The process would involve talking, humour, alchohol sometimes, meals bought, bars visited, Sunday walks, and generally very little football. Unless you were lucky enough to reach the ‘endgame’ during match of the day which was just visible over her left shoulder and hoping her parents movie was a long one. So you could whisper ‘I love you’, directing it at your favourite player so you didn’t have to cross fingers.

Today its different. Its more like pornography involving someone you ‘know’. But only really ‘know’ in the virtual world. Kids (according to a frightening article in the paper) talk and text whilst in their own homes. They send ‘selfies’ in various stages of undress and provocation, employ ‘sexting’ in place of ‘pillow talk’ and lead full and wonderful relationships without ever having to leave the solitude of their own locked bedrooms.

Fantastic. You don’t need to bother taking a shower before a date. Nor use make-up; you can photoshop. Its cold, its distant, remote and solitary. It lacks the sensation of ‘touch’ completely.

But this is all part of evolution. Started with the industrial revolution in… whenever that happened. First came the steam engine, then the printing press, next was the vibrating dildo and finally the i-phone. And all this bollox that passes for ‘social interraction’ in the post-millenial world.

The only problem is that evolution is totally dependent on procreation. The successful passing on DNA to the next generations. Survival of the fittest does not mean those who go to the gym more often. It refers to reproductive ‘fitness’. The more genes you pass on the more your own little quirks may be carried forward.

So unless children are to be born with a USB nob I really don’t know how far this current obsession can be taken. Its limited by its own stupidity. We can’t link the physical to the technical. Not yet anyway.

I’m off to the pub. Well, I’m going up to my bedroom to look at pictures of pubs on my ipad and texting my mates.

Happy saturday. Though not as happy as it was before rain stopped play on the tennis court.

A xxxx

Elvis Costello was never really a ‘proper’ punk rocker. He emerged at that time, in the late 70s, when Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious were spitting all over the place and piercing their ears on stage with broken bottles and being as outrageous as Malcolm McLaren (who, after all, was paying for all the drugs) told them to be.

The world was full of ‘disco’ at that time and Saturday Night Fever was a mission statement for a generation. But that generation couldn’t actually live up to the rather vapid and vacuous aspirations of all that glitter and glitz when the economy was for shit and half the nation was unemployed. So along came punk and, for the first time really, made music about ‘proper issues’. They politicised music. Ok, the Vietnam war had inspired protest songs but mainy these were sung by overweight moaning Americans so don’t carry such an impact.

Punk was British. It was ours. And it was nasty. It was rebellion, it was telling your parents and teachers to FUCK RIGHT OFF!!! Ok, it wasn’t necessarily ‘nice’ but really that was the whole point. Whass’a point of teenage anarchy if you have to be in bed by 10?

I was never a Sex Pistols fan, in fact, I fucking hated them and their attention-seeking, shreiking ways. But the Clash were something else. Classy but aggressive, strong and intelligent. A bit like me but without the glasses. Sham 69, the Stranglers, loads of bands, out of nothing, all loaded with talent and producing fab music. Which was relevant. Music had moved from teenagers in love to unemployment benefits and the deposed Shah of Iran.

And along came Elvis. The new Elvis. Elvis is dead; long live Elvis.

And this one didn’t sport a pompadour quiff like the previous incumbent of Elvis, nor a fluorescent blue mohican that everyone else wore. He looked like your bank manager in oversized specs. He wore a suit. And he sang like an angel. Albeit one who smokes 60 Lucky Strikes a day.

I heard ‘Alison’ from his first album and cried. It moved me in a way that I’m seldom moved unless Spurs are playing. Though generally then the tears are for a different reason.

And he was and still is prolific. Single after single, album after album, all brilliant, all evolving from the early punky roughness to something much more refined and elegant by the time Punch the Clock emerged. Then he got a bit up himself, started playing with string quartets and went all ‘classical’.

I first saw him play at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1980, when his Trust album came out. It was sensational. I saw him another 20 times between then and the late 80s. Always brilliant, always amazing value. As he only ever wrote sub-2-minute songs, over 3 hours he’d play 659 numbers. You never wondered what he’d play, he’d just play everything.

In 1981 I was in a record store on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, California, having a browse. I was wearing my ‘Elvis Costello: a tour to Trust’ t-shirt and he walked in. The man himself. He looked at me, looked at his face on the t-shirt, smiled and left. I was shell-shocked. Frozen. And never said a word. What would I have said anyway? I looooovvvveee youououou. Or I’m your biggest fan, honest. So perhaps for the best that I kept shtum. At least there’s some dignity in silence.

Tonight on BBC4 there’s one of their super documentaries about Elvis Costello’s life and music. Gotta be watched. There’s no football on so its a must see.

Happy friday

A xxxx

Its the end of an era. Life will never be the same again. A modern day tragedy.

McDonalds in Hampstead is closing.

Well who gives a shit? That’s what they serve; shit. Killer shit. Anyone who saw ‘Supersize Me’ knows that McDonalds peddle death to the masses. A quarter pounder with cheese weighs… er… well, about a quarter of a pound. But contains half a pound of fat. Normal laws of physics are suspended with that burger chain’s ability to sell fat, salt and sugar. They have produced a nation of fat bastards. In fact several nations. Heart attacks in waiting.

Yet it  tastes so good.

I stopped eating McDonalds years ago after the first ‘big cholesterol scare’. Well, it scared Mel, didn’t bother me much but I immediately stopped my serious McDonalds habit which was, at 3 or 4 visits a week, probably a bit excessive. Cholesterol came down, a bit, and all is well once more.

But Hampstead and McDonalds was never a good fit. Hampstead has serious pretentions and is filled with tofu-eating, champagne-socialist ‘liberals’, who are also full of shit. But a different kind of shit to that sold with fries. In paper containers which decimate rainforests and create endless litter. Such was the resistance to the store opening that it took 12 years of court battles before the first burger was ever sold there. The purchaser was pelted with organic tomatoes, free-range eggs and alphalpha sprouts.

I love hamburgers. I love food generally. But particularly messy food you eat with your hands. And although Maccy Ds do not produce the finest specimen of the genre, they do produce a pretty good facsimile that is cheap and available everywhere. Comforting at times even, when you emerge from a rainforest in deepest darkest Ecuador a thousand miles from civilisation to be greeted with those golden arches. So that immediately after your indignation about the ruination of the world’s natural beauty by corporate greed shitheads, you can wrap yourself round a Big Mac and enjoy its universal consistency.

But there’s a problem with the closure of McDonalds Hampstead. They sell ice cream. Really fantastic ice cream. Dirt cheap too. So rather than buy low-fat fro-yo type uber-vegan low-cal vegi-un-cream frozen desert, next door for just £14.65 a scoop, when Mel & I walk on  a summer’s day (remember summer?) over the heath into Hampstead village, that’s where we head. That in fact is our ‘carrot’, dangling in front of our sun-baked, sweaty foreheads as we trek. Ice cream. From Maccy D. And now its gone.

Fucking Hampstead tarts

Happy thursday, eat well

A xxxx

I’m a very ethical shopper. I only buy clothes made by unemployed, replenishable, single-parent transexuals paid a decent wage by a UK-based, tax-declaring company in a wonderful, bright, cheery environment with massages provided every hour to relieve any strain the workers may incur.

My socks alone cost £97.50 a pair. I’m saving up for a shirt. Maybe next year. With a mortgage.

Meanwhile Primark, the low-cost fashion outlets, declared sales up 22% and turnover now 4.6 billion. Primark. Who manufacture in sweatshops in Bangladesh, paying non-living wages to impoverished paupers in such unbelievably sordid conditions that one of their factories burned down last year and everyone died because there was no fire escapes and the cost of a fire extinguisher (£22.74) would have increased the market price of a t-shirt by 0.000000000000000003p. Unacceptable. They employ children, beat them with big sticks, abuse the women, keep them locked up for 19 hours a day and force them to watch x-factor re-runs.

So essentially, we all have a firm set of ethical beliefs and considerations we use, particularly at dinner parties in Hampstead. And we’re evangelical in our hatred of abusive practices and the companies who perpetrate them. But the next day the kids need loads of new clothes so off we trot to fucking Primark.

Ethics are just too expensive to put into practice.

Is diving to get a penalty for your football team ‘ethical’? Ashley Young, a famous swan impersonator, last night did that very thing. Again. No-one touched him but down he went as if his legs had been removed simultaneously below the knee by a chain-saw.

So a big debate today about the whole diving issue. How refs can’t see everything, how touches can have a big effect on a fast moving person, blah, blah, blah.

The upshot is really quite simple when it comes to whether a ‘simulated’ plummet to the ground is ‘acceptable’. If its done by one of your players its fine, when done by anyone else, he’s a fucking cheating scummy diving immoral bastard.

Simple. And elegant. Almost. Bit like me.

Happy wednesday

A xxxx

The opposite of good is bad.

The opposite of short is tall

The opposite of heroic is…

Well what? Cowardly? Sensible?? No schmuck???

We all love a hero. Every movie has a hero. Douglas Barder climbed back into his Spitfire are losing both his legs to fight the Hun once more. Gary Cooper faced the badies at High Noon because a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Clint Eastwood only played heroic characters. And we loved them all.

Sporting heroes are the stuff of legend. Bert Trautmann playing in the 1956 cup final with a broken bone in his neck. Why? What motivates such behaviour?  Because he was a German? Some Neitzean Ubermensch? Because he was stupid?? To prove what, exactly, and to whom?

JPR Williams, famous Wales fullback and doctor (ahhhhh, those days of amateur sport…) cut his face playing, went off, stitched himself up on the touch line (with a fountain pen and bootlace… ok, maybe not) and played the match out.

Maybe its a ‘man thing’ along with staring at legs on the high street; something so inbuilt, so innate, so hard-wired that we all have it, us Men. But we don’t. When Jesus famously ‘turned the other cheek’ he gave the less heroic a noble ‘out’. Bless him.

And so to Hugo Lloris, the Spurs goalie. Collides with Romelu Lukaku (that’s a footballer, not an asteroid) and gets whacked with the Ivorian’s knee so hard on the head that he loses consciousness. The collision was of sufficient power that Lukako then limped off to have an ice pack applied to his knee. Oh, that’s hard, ouch!

But Lloris pushed away the medics, laughed at the stretcher they’d brought onto the pitch, sent the now-raring-to-go substitute goalie back to the bench, told his manager to fuck off and insisted on finishing the game.

A brain scan performed the next day showed two things. That there was no damage and that Lloris was definitely French. But the French aren’t heroes? Never. They lie down and get invaded by everyone and anyone. French children are all given white flags by their godparents at their Christenings. Its a tradition.

Lloris should not have been allowed to play on. French or not. It was not about heroism or ‘manning up’ or any such knuckle-dragging bollocks. Its about common sense. He was concussed, therefore he was not in a fit state and he could have fucked up and let in a goal. And concussed people are famously not great at making judgments, particularly as to their own health. The manager should not have given Lloris a decision that was not his to make.

Thought the real crime was the referee booking Lukaku. What a nob. Accidents happen; its a physical game. A simple, unintentional collision on the pitch. And since when is it a crime to attack a Frenchman? Not in this country, thank you very much.

Happy heroic Tuesday

A xxxx

I’d like to make a plea on behalf of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Well someone’s gotta do it. That poor (well, in some ways) woman is reviled by the press, hated by her peers, ridiculed by her own mother (I made that bit up, just for effect), pilloried by anyone and everyone who eats normal food, doesn’t spend $14,000 on a ‘casual’ wear outfit and fails to perform yoga for 9 hours a day.

And its simply not fair.

I’d like to start by saying that my wife is the most perfect woman in the world. Totally and utterly (parallel parking aside) the personification of the perfectionist paradigm for something beginning with ‘p’. She is my soul mate, my partner, lover, best (and probably only) friend and the the most wonderful person ever, till death us do part, blah, blah, blah.

But I am allowed to look at other women. In the same way I can look at a beautiful car, a stunning house, a wonderful piece of art, or anything else I can’t afford. I can’t help looking, it comes with that pesky y-chromasome. And those women who’s appearance I most admire are generally dark. Sultry brunettes, olive-skinned and… and… and…

Nicole Scherzinger. Penelope Cruz. Selma Hayek.

Not so dark that facial hair becomes too much of a problem. Nor hair on the back. Moustaches are tolerated within reason.

But then along came Michelle Pfeiffer, so many years ago, all fabulously Baker Boying and amazing and I abandoned my favoured stereotype. Temporarily. Until along came Gwynnie herself. The movie Emma introduced her and by the time Shakespeare was in Love with her so was I.

But this is purely about looks. That divinely fragile, delicate, ultra-feminine outer-casing. I don’t care what’s inside. I’m not interested in character, personality, how much they do for charity, nuffink. This is strictly 2-dimensional adoration. I’ve got a wife, thanks very much, this is merely something to look at and admire. The ultimate objectification of women. Well someone’s gotta not only do it, but own up to it.

Gwynnie married her rock star, spawned 2 little Gwynettes (I don’t know their names but rather than look it up, I’ll guess at ‘Karma’ and ‘Daffodil’) and then totally went off the rails. Not the normal rails that other rock stars and movie icons go off, but the other one, the one less travelled. She went… healthy.

Rather than sex and drugs and twerking and drunken knicker-flashes falling into a taxi outside Nobu, Gwynnie instead opted for a life of purity, of a type of living so clean, so pure, so fucking sanctimoniously aggressive-vegan, that she has become a hate-figure. But why? Just because she refuses to give her children things to eat that actually have any taste? Is that so wrong? Because she avoids meat, eggs, gluten, dairy and some kinds of water? Because she drinks only green slime and is boringly evangelical about it? Because she does yoga for 6 hours a day? If she’s hungry she’ll eat a wind farm. She has devoted her life to tantric tedium and we should admire her, not bury her.

But now she’s moved back to her native California. The place where superficiality is all. Where you are judged purely on what you look like. Which is where she should be. Back in 2-Dimensionland. Where we can admire her without having to listen to or read about all her bollox.

So please, leave poor Gwyneth alone. She still looks fab. Just don’t speak to her.

Happy monday

A xxxx