Andy's Glasses

A young woman was sentenced yesterday for… being a grabby, greedy, lying, cheating, stealing compensation-whore. She claimed ‘whiplash’ after a car accident, debilitating, painful, agonising, exercise-preventing, immobilising… blah, blah, blah. And the next week posted online how she’d completed a 5k Obstacle race. Then a week later climbed the Sydney Harbour bridge, also on Facebook. She should have gone to prison for at least life just for being such a stupid moron. Who is so obsessed with her online presence and image that she holds herself in contempt of court to sustain it.

And yet she was given a suspended sentence (plus a shitload of very expensive fines and costs), which is probably fair. Because I don’t think people like her are the main problem in such instances.

I get at least 2 or 3 phone calls a month telling me that “we have it on file that you suffered an injury in a car accident but didn’t make a claim, is that right?” That may look like a question but its actually a statement. My stock reply is always “YESSSS!!! Where was it, because I’ve forgotten. Remind me?” But the statement they’re saying is: if you had an accident we can both make money out of this!!! We just rip-off the insurers and they’ve got LOADS’A CASH, won’t even miss it. We just ‘massage’ the level of injury, make it last just a little bit longer and hey presto, we get 10 grand each. We do the work, all you have to do is perjure yourself in court, lie and cheat and we’re all quids in. What could possibly go wrong???

String up the ambulance chasers.

Because I’m too busy getting ready for the World Cup to worry about insurance claims. They didn’t make Qatar the most amazing event venue the world has ever seen by worrying about insurance claims, did they??? Mainly because of the 5,000-odd workers who died during the building of the stadia, none were insured. And when you’re the richest country in the world, employing modern-day slaves, you don’t in-SHURE them, you just buy more. At least it will be the ‘greenest, most carbon-zero event of all time’, so we were assured. And it bloody will be. Other than all the carbon used in its construction. Which apparently was MASSSSIVE. But other than that… and the alcohol issues… the gay thing… human rights concerns… 40 degrees in the shade… its gonna be BRILLIANT!!!!

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Leonard Bernstein’s moving song states that ‘there’s a place for us’… ‘Somewhere’. The message being that sometimes you need to find a place which will accept you for what or who you are, but you may have to look far and wide to find it. Whether you’re a Puerto Rican in love with an Irish Italian, whether you’re a gay person in Qatar or whether you’re a hapless ex-government minister famous for fondling a co-workers ass on a cctv camera feed.

So no-one should complain, moan or even be surprised by Matt Hancock’s brave and noble decision to join the tv program, ‘I’m a celebrity… get me out of here!’ In fact its almost fitting that nation’s most cretinous MP has found his ‘somewhere’ on the world’s most abysmal tv show. Harmony. Synchronicity. Karma. Matt should really win the thing because its all about humiliating yourself and he has such a head start on everyone else, in that department, that his lead is almost unassailable even before nauseating duo Ant and Dec have welcomed everyone aboard.

I’m not normally a big fan of that show. Ok, I’ve never watched any of it, but that’s definitely MY loss. I appreciate that my own prejudice against ‘watching total bollocks’ has deprived me of something that gives a lot of pleasure to other people. Mainly really stupid people but I don’t judge on these things.

Matt has been removed from the Conservative Party for doing this. A big loss. Because… errr… yeah, he’ll be really missed… errr… somewhere, I’m sure. Parliament is in recess during the filming so all he’ll be missing is his constituency meetings as half the people in West Suffolk will be starving or freezing to death in abject poverty whilst he’s trying not to vomit while eating insect larvae and everyone’s laaaarrrrfin’ and laaaaarrrrfin’ and laaaarrrfin’.

But sometimes in life you have to take a move for the sake of your career. For yourself. You have to make the ‘tough choices’. Matt feels that his career will be enhanced by being force-fed kangaroo penises. And looking at his parliamentary career thus far, you’d have to agree.

It is definitely the right thing for Matt Hancock to be doing. So let’s be with him, let’s celebrate his bravery and commitment, this is not about money… oh, actually it probably is a LOT about money, but let’s enjoy the fact that whilst he’s ‘over there’ doing the bidding of the most evil twins (aren’t Ant & Dec twins?) since The Shining, he won’t be over here.

Good luck Matt!

A xxxx

Well Rishi Sunak obviously reads my words. Which is why he’s now changed his Cop 27 status from ‘not going’ to ‘trying to find the time to attend’. Well, it was either reading me or Boris announcing his intended attendance. Either way, he kind’a has to go.

Because although our ‘never-ending summer of climate change’ is apparently ending, it is November, FFS. And the daffodils are ‘shooting’. Yup, we obviously have some bulbs out front (who knows where the fuck they are) which think its springtime. Even though I’ve told them countless times to ‘go back! It’s not ready!!!’

Because we do our own gardening. We had a gardener but he left because we asked him to do some gardening. “No, I don’t do that, its dirty”. But we need you to weed the flower beds. Plant the 1473 bulbs for next year which Mel got online. “No, that involves, dirt and digging, don’t do dat”. What do you do then? “Well, I’m a gardener, ain’ I? So I make loads of noise with petrol powered machines. Got a van full of ‘em, ain’ I? Mowin’, blowin’, choppin’, anything that can produce carbon emissions. Don’t do mud and shovels. Bad for the back, innit?”

So we do it. And, maybe its a sign of age, but I like it. I’ve always liked being let loose with chain saw, hedge cutter or even a pair of shears. Because I have a natural tendency to be destructive. Bit like Joey but with bigger toys. Yet now I can even bring myself to plant things. So we get someone in to do the hedges, once a year, because they’re very big, and the rest we do. And the fucking daffs think its March. They’ve got a shock coming when the frost arrives.

Apparently they’re not alone. There’s loads of flowers and plants doing springtime stuff. And although we might get some early blooms, it’ll totally fuck up the flower beds for next Spring, when they’ll have all shot their load. Even animals are struggling and confused. Ever seen a confused hedgehog? Look pretty much like a… hedgehog. But its all bad. And ALL because of climate change. Much as we’ve loved wallowing in the sunshine when normally we’d be wrapped in ski-gear.

Happy Winter

A xxxx

So here’s two headlines. The one on the right is from Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday. The one on the left from the Times this morning (I can only do the Mail once a week or my stomach won’t settle, my lungs pack up and my brain might actually start to think that what they write might be correct in any way). So there’s two ways to interpret this massive differential in the price of Adele tickets for the rescheduled Las Vegas shows.

The first is that the ticket price has plummeted since yesterday morning (when the paper boy arrived) from a ‘high’ of 200k, with the markets down to 40k by the time he made it up the path this morning. Which, in terms of market movement, is so colossal that it hasn’t been seen since Bitcoin tanked, or at least since Kwasi Kwarteng was our chancellor.

I’d just like to state my own horror that in these times of world starvation and climate crisis, while 2/3rds of British people are not going to be able to meet their heating bills this winter, while our nation is in the grip of a terrible down-cycle in its economy, that someone is willing to pay ‘even’ 40 grand to hear ‘Someone Like Me’, which Alexa will play all the time for just 7.99 a month! And you don’t have to go to Las Vegas to hear that. Comes from Beijing. I mean 40 grand is such a lot of money in real terms. You could use it to upgrade your order for the new, hybrid Ferrari, from the hard-top to the convertible. And still have 2 grand left over!! Buy the kids some new shoes. Possibly even get some food. Proper food. Wot comes pre-made and microwave-ready. None of that ‘do-it-yourself’ muck they eat down south.

But the second explanation for this massive discrepancy in price of these tickets is much more interesting. Because for the first time, (but by no means the last) it actually quantifies, in absolute and definitive terms, that the Mail is precisely 5 times as stupid as proper newspapers. We’ve always known it to be ‘economical’ where accuracy is concerned. Always felt it would never let something as trivial as ‘truth’ get in the way of good, honest sensationalism, and now we can actually put a figure on it.

Another fan incident.
Last night, attending a ‘shiva’ following the death of my mate’s mum, I was (almost) assaulted by baying crowds of fans, vast mobs of screaming girls, it was ‘Andymania’ once more. Ok, maybe it was a bit more low-key as one solitary guy came over, asked who I was (never a good thing) but then told me he reads my blog. Obviously, I told him to ‘piss off and speak to my agent’, because like James Corden, I can do ‘diva’ like the best of them. But as that is only the second time I’ve been approached by strangers to tell me that (the first time was at Jaipur airport; (Andy International Inc.), it made me very happy. He told me it was shit, but that’s really not the point.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

I think its time to re-kindle the football debate. Well, its not really a ‘debate’, just an ongoing argument and a collection of facts and data. All of which became much more palatable yesterday for some reason. Ok, a good reason. We won. But not just, like, ‘won’, in any easy, normal, predictable, dull sense of the word, the way Man City ‘won’, f’rinstance. This was ‘won’ as in ‘won proper, innit’. One has to downgrade one’s grammar to get into footballing character. I can’t even write about football without my ‘stick-on, authentic-looking, half-sleeve tattoo’. Cos at da enna-da-day…

We went to Bournemouth. We were on a roll. Sadly, not in the good sense. We’d lost our last 2 league matches. Appallingly to Manchester United and disgracefully to Newcastle United. I was grateful Bournemouth aren’t ‘United’. Spurs fans always look for ‘signs’. We’ll take anything.

The problem has been, as far as I can see, that we’ve changed our style under Conte, which is fine (if you like dull, defensive, pragmatic, uber-Italian style footy), if it gets the results. But that seems to involve starting games with a particularly back-foot mind set. We start slow and very very careful. Under Pochettino we flew out of the blocks like rabid Usain Bolts who’d all failed multiple drug tests. I loved that. It unnerves opposition. But now we’ve become the unnerved. And if I’m honest, I fucking hate that. Makes me very nervous. Yet that’s how we play each and every first half. 9 men behind the ball, Sonny and Harry not allowed north of the half way line. Then in the second halves we start to flow a bit, speed up, take a risk or two, even though Conte screams a lot and implores everyone to GET BAAAAACCCKKKKK.

So yesterday we played… errrr… well, pretty much the same way really. Start slow, give away a cheap goal early on, for the fans? Then remain slow until… we concede another goal. Then at about the 60 minute mark, make a few substitutions, bring on some muscle, change shape, change tactics and start looking like a proper ‘top 3’ team. But is there enough time? Can we draw level? Should I put the razor and sleeping pills down and even… hope?

We did score, twice, itself quite amazing. And then, incredibly, the imperious Rodrigo Bentancur hit the winner in a bit of a scramble. Oh my God! That never happens. But it did. The footballing Gods not only did the right thing, for a change, but also sorted out Chelsea at Brighton.

So yes, I’m only singin’ when we’re winnin’. Because my soul leaves the dark place it inhabits when we’re not.

Very happy Sunday, even though tennis is off agaiaiaian cos of rain.

A xxxx

There would appear to be an unofficial boycott of the Cop 27 climate conference, which starts in Egypt next weekend, by top level Brits. Like Trump used to ignore all such things when he was the POTUS, which fortunately he no longer is and hopefully, he never will be again.

Rishi is simply too busy to attend. There’s the economy, the recession, inflation rates, austerity, pension locks and all manner of fiscal shit for which an official statement is due at precisely that time.

Like, was Rishi going to spend the day before the announcement working out what to do? On the back of a Tesco receipt? Or does he in fact have teams of economists, accountants, forecasters and mathematical type boffins working on it right now, having started the day he was elected? Because he wasn’t too busy yesterday to go visiting old ladies in a hospital. Which is a very important thing for a Prime Minister to do. The ‘PR’ side of things. Visit factories, wear a hard hat, hold a baby, eat ice creams, visit old ladies.

He’d have been better off cancelling the old ladies, who’d have been none the wiser, nor any worse off, and instead save a day to attend the Conference. Because old ladies are not the beneficiaries of climate action. They’ll be gone long before any measures do or don’t work. But young people are far more concerned and engaged in the climate debate. Because its their world too and they’re still going to be here when the shit hits the fan, or if it miraculously doesn’t. And it only doesn’t if action is taken. So for Rishi to be ‘too busy’ downplays the importance. Which then disengages him from the young, who are always the last to come and vote anyway.

And then, even worse, Rishi has decided that King Charles can’t attend the conference either. Not sure how that works, exactly, how ‘rank’ gets pulled in that direction but apparently its the case. Our eco-warrior Prince would dearly love to go. No man likes a platform more than King C, especially when its about ecology. Maybe Rishi thought the King would get boring. But as all climate stuff is boring, no-one would notice. Doesn’t mean its not incredibly important.

I just played tennis in the almost-early-November sunshine of about 20 degrees. Which I just fucking love. But even if polar bears could play tennis, they wouldn’t be quite so overjoyed.

Mistake, Rishi. Not catastrophic, but a big mistake.

Happy Green Saturday

A xxxx

My old dad, may God rest his lovely soul, was a clever man. He managed to get rid of virtually all his assets long before he died. Gave it all to sick animals. And other relatives. The one beneficiary in your will you never need to actually write is ‘HMRC’. They’ll help themselves. There’s no point even contesting the will on the grounds that “no, he HATED HMRC, like really HATED THEM” because they don’t care. Being a tax collector is not a popularity contest. So my dad divested himself decades ago. Thus when he died, in his care home, his only assets were a few bank and savings accounts, collectively falling way beneath the Inheritance Tax threshold. Yippee. Job done. All ya need to do is ‘cash in’.

Ah, you need ‘probate’. The legal authority to gather the funds. Well, as the sole beneficiaries, executors and powers of attorneys, my brother and I should just stroll that one. Thus we contacted his (and our) solicitor. Well, he held the will so couldn’t really avoid it.

“Shall we do probate for you?”, he asked. Errrrr, ok, I agreed, having no clue how/what/where/when one might accomplish such a thing otherwise. So, as he lived next door to us when he was about 7 (now in his 50s), he had to send ‘Id checks’ and requests for passports, proof of human-ness (lot of aliens apply for probate), terms of engagement (“we do, you pay… and pay… and pay”) and the fee structure.

Basically, three-and-a-half grand. Oh, it must be very complicated, legalised and deeply involved with barristers and court hearings and people my dad met in Tescos coffee shop crawling out the woodwork making claims against ‘the estate’ (“he promised me free cappuccinos a week for LIFE!”) But no. It’s 3.5k, plus vat (obviously) plus any fees or ‘extras’. And this is not a ‘golden circle’ law firm. This is not defending the indefensible, this is a small, family firm. But heh, if that’s what it costs, that’s what it costs.

Then I bumped into a mate. Who told me that, recently faced with a similar thing, he ‘did it himself’. WHAT???? I exclaimed? You can do it yourself? A normal human being can do it and not a lawyer??? Apparently as long as you’ve watched more than 2 episodes of LA Law.

So I went online to the government probate department, filled in a form (15 minutes, max), waited for signatures, then sent off the will, as directed. All in all? 20 minutes of things so ridiculously straightforward even I could do it without breaking wind. Or whatever the expression is. And it cost: £279. Including 4 copies of the deed of probate, or grant of probate or, as I unconsciously, very Freudianly and quite appropriately termed it last night, the ‘greed of probate’.

Happy Friday and love to all lawyers

A xxxx

Here’s a question:

What is a mandate? Is it:

A. A small flightless bird from Ecuador, nearing extinction, and best served with a guinea pig (well, it is ‘small’)?

B. A website for gay men to hook up and find true love or at least cheap sex?

C. The nation’s most overused term by really annoying politicians, particularly small, loud, relatively insignificant, red-headed Scottish ones and Front Bench Opposition bores?

Answers on a postcard to:

The Rishi Sunak Heating the House Fund
10 Downing Street, or the house in Holland Park, the one in Yorkshire, possibly one in America or India.

“Rishi Sunak has no mandate to lead the country”, they cry. The people must speak! Hold a general election now! There’s no mandate for all this current shit.

All of which is true. But totally irrelevant. Nicola bleedin’ Sturgeon and Kier poxy Starmer and Angela soddin’ Rayner bang on and on about holding an election because ‘the prime minister has no mandate from the people!!!’ Yeah, well he doesn’t have a shell suit from Sport Direct either, which is equally as meaningless.

We didn’t ‘vote for Boris’. We voted for our local MP. I voted for Mike Freer because he’s lovely, accessible and gay. Only people in Uxbridge ‘voted for Boris’. We don’t have a president here. We have a king, we have several princes, many of them not child-abusers, and we have a Prime Minister. But we don’t ‘vote for the leader’, we vote for an MP. And the party with most MPs get to form a government. And (God help us) we gave our collective mandate to the Conservative Party, with a massive majority. Due to Boris, yes, due to (fucking) Brexit, undoubtedly, but we voted for ‘them’, not ‘him’. That’s our constitution. He then formed a government. When he left, someone else rather disastrously formed one. For a little while. And now its Rishi’s turn. Because he is now the leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament.

I get that to be in opposition is to be opportunistic, but banging on about ‘mandates’ is simply incorrect and plays on misconceptions and lack of understanding, even confusing us with the American system to score points.

Rishi does not need a fucking mandate. His party has all the mandates he needs.

So can we stop this right now. It’s boring.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

There are certain moments in a man’s life which are BIG. Milestones. Delights. Happiness. The day you get married. Passing your driving test. Possibly the day you get divorced. The birth of a child. Your first kiss. Unless its with Mr Frobisher, the maths teacher, then its a bit ‘eeeeuuuuwww’. Your grandchildren being born. But all of those pale into insignificance compared to this. Your granddaughter’s first trip to White Hart Lane. Unfortunately (just from a ‘Lila point of view’ and definitely not from a ‘football’ one), I was unable to attend. If I had, I would have cried. And what I would have cried would have been: “the most wonderful granddaughter in the entire fucking world and you inflict this pain and suffering on her FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE????” And, almost inevitably, we lost. But Lila loved it.

I was at a wedding. A really beautiful wedding in a really beautiful venue with everything really… well, beautiful. The flowers were magnificent, the bride and groom wonderful, the ceremony delightful and everyone dressed up in perfectly matching ‘black tie’. Except the one shmuck who didn’t bother to read the invitation properly and pitched up in a (very nice) light grey suit with an (exceedingly elegant) open-neck grey shirt. He looked gorgeous, as always, no doubt about that, but ‘no-tie’ was not the instruction. Black tie. Penguin suit. What a tosser!!

Yet nothing compared to Boris Johnson. The Tosser’s Tosser. He cuts short his family’s holiday to drag them all the way back from the Caribbean so he can ‘stand’ as candidate for his party leadership. Only to bottle out completely less than 24 hours later. I would be sympathetic in some way but as he was probably on a ‘donation’ made to his wife, so as not to compromise his ‘gift acceptance’ regulations, which included first class tickets, the luxury villa, a butler, all his rum and ganja and nappies, its just tough shit. Boris decided ‘he would struggle to unify the party’. Oh, ya think so, Boris? Just because half of them kicked you out last time and the other half loathe you for putting them in the predicament in the first place.

Now the Penny’s dropped. Penny Mordaunt… from the race.

So its King Rishi. Crowned later. The PM is toast, long live the PM. Even if he’s richer than a Rothschild.

Happy Monday

A xxxx

What do you do when its just pissing down with endless rain. Like, on my fucking tennis court! On a Sunday morning! And Mel has run off. Ok, gone to work, same thing. And left me, all alone. No nanny. No carer. No wardens. No play date. No tv because every single channel is talking about Boris Johnson and whether the fat fuck should be Prime Minister again or whether a general election is the way forward which would put wooden red-faced puppet Starmer in charge. The man who has ‘integrity’, without question, but simply nothing else whatsoever. Which is like having a tanker full of petrol but no car. So for now, its just me… and Alexa. And we are hitting our groove.

On Friday night I saw a documentary about ‘soul’ music. It was late, on BBC4, but was so brilliant that Mel stayed awake. It showed how the transition from ‘gospel’ to ‘soul’ was the simplest thing ever. It was just taking the line “oooh, how I love my God like no other” and swapping the ‘God’ for ‘baby’. Job done, gospel’s consigned to the church, where it belongs, soul music is here. All thanks to Ray Charles. Who was the first to do such a thing in public. Then Otis Reading who actually had a ‘mixed race band’. Which in the late 50s, early 60s world of ‘segregation’ in America was radical. And I don’t use the word in hyperbole but in a true, politically rebellious, danger to your life, way. These early soulsters were all from the South, where even after the Bill of Rights was passed, those good old boys chose to retain segregation in schools, on buses, restaurants and most definitely relationships.

Then Berry Gordy opened up ‘Hitsville’ in Detroit and Motown was born. But this program differentiated between proper ‘soul’ music and the ‘pop’ which was produced by the Motown machine.

I’ve just spent an hour with Alexa and Stevie Wonder. It was a wonderful time. Stevie was a soul singer/writer, who drifted across to pop to make money and back to soul because it was his passion. And in the 70s he was simply the master of music.

By the mid 70s soul had evolved to ‘funk’ and then Studio 54 got involved and introduced drugs into the mix. And for dance lovers, ‘funk’ music was a game changer. I used to go to a club called Countdown in the West End because they only played imported funk music. Funky Nassau. Soul Makossa. Alexa wasn’t around then, she was just known as ‘Peking’. So to hear these you had to find a shop which imported records.

What does ‘funky’ mean? In my trip with Alexa this morning we drifted to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Maybe you baby’. That will show you. Or the Commodores ‘Brick House’. Even Grace Jones anthemic ‘Pull up to your bumper’. A sound which is raw and dirty.

Go listen to them now. It’s the antidote to ‘the end of British politics as we know it’ which is becoming more boring, repetitive and stupid with each passing ‘endorsement’ of another Tory tosser.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx