Curb Your Enthusiasm

The appeal of Curb Your Enthusiasm is largely down to the viewer's empathy with the central character Larry David. Sometimes he is perceived to be something he is not.

On the way home today, I was moaning to my wife in the car that Dj's on radio stations with Australian accents are nothing other than people with Australian accents. Simply having an accent does not make you cool. However, being the decendant of a Victorian criminal does make you cool - but they never like talking about that. We sent them our thieves, rapists and murderers, we get their radio presenters. A fair swap I guess...

Anyway I went on to add that everyone at the BBC is in someway related to someone else who also works at the BBC, hence they all have the same surname, i.e Dimbleby or Snow. At this point two people were crossing the road (in Vaughan Way) and talking an age to do so. Dressed like a chavs, one go across slightly before the other. We had to slow down for the second crosser, which was annoying. As I was mid-rant to my wife after a hard day at the office, and not paying attention, the red mist came down. I hit the horn of the car and wound down the window to shout "get out of the way you "F*****g P***k" (I am very brave in a moving vehicle). He looked at me, clearly hurt by what I had said, and then pointed at his legs. He was disabled and could not walk properly. His friend also started shouting abuse at me, words to the effect that I was an "Ignorant W****r", fair enough. However they should have waited for the traffic lights and crossed with the "green man". It was not my fault, yet I feel really bad. If he ever reads this blog, I hope he gets the message: "its your own stupid fault, you should have waited for the lights, especially if you cannot walk fast. But I am sorry for calling you a F*****g P***k." Larry David, sometimes I know exactly how you feel.

What's going on?

Two things:

1) I cannot believe there is now a singer called Jade, just weeks after the other famous Jade, not a singer, died. I am now going to take up acting and call myself Christopher Reeve - Superman II! What other dead people's names could we recycle??

And:

2) A TV show about the death of Marvin Gaye last night reminded me of a weird conversation I had with my mum when I was about 10 years old. On the way to a swimming lesson, the song, Sexual Healing, was on the radio. Clearly feeling uncomfortable about the song's content, and in order to distract me from the lyrics, my mum told me her theory of how Marvin died after being shot by his dad in a row about who loved Diana Ross the most. I later found out at school he was actually shot by his dad in a row over misplaced documents. Just to be sure, I have never lost any documents since, nor asked my dad if he fancies the Queen of Motown.

Twins

The most amazing thing to happen to me lately is finding out that I am going to be the dad of twins.
Currently I find myself in the “code red” area of my wife’s pregnancy, in that the births could happen any minute, or we could be waiting up to five weeks for the arrival.
It has been a bit difficult to explain this to people. With most pregnancies, the due day is set and the parents patiently wait.
With twins, a due date is also set, but you are simply told that it will not go that far.
Our official due date is June 30, but we have been told that doctors will induce the labour by mid-June at the latest, if it goes that far. This is presumably to protect the babies as they become short of space in the mother’s tummy.


My wife (pictured here this week, at 34 weeks) has had a difficult pregnancy to date. She has vomited every day with morning sickness, on the worst days up to ten times throughout the whole day, and suffered horrendous heartburn. She has actually lost weight. We are aware that this is not the normal experience of mums-to-be, who have cravings or enjoy the excuse for a few extra calories. It has been a long grind for her and I have felt a bit helpless, standing by and watching as she suffers her daily round of sickness on top of the usual aches and pains associated with pregnancy. All I can say is that I have done my best to be sympathetic to something that is pretty hard to imagine someone suffering day after day. So far I have made only few sacrifices, the notable ones being knocking my frequent trips to watch football on the head, and drinking less at weekends, if I go out, just in case its action stations.

To learn more about the birthing process I recently attended a special ante-natal class for twins at Leicester Royal Infirmary. One of the midwives talked us through all the likely outcomes, a glossary of terms and a blow-by-blow explanation of what is available to you and how the big day will unfold.
It included the pros and cons of natural birth versus a Caesarean section. The main thing I learned is that there is no easy way of getting them out. Men just need a bit of patience and calm. The women need an epidural.
After the class I felt fairly uneasy about what I had heard. I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea of just standing there as my wife went through the agony of childbirth. My male friends say as a man you do feel incredibly vulnerable, but let’s not forget all we have to do is stand there and be supportive.

So far, the most frustrating thing about my wife being pregnant with twins is that people do not know what to say when they hear the news. Well, they do know what to say, but it is usually positively negative. By this I mean stuff like: “That’s wonderful, get your sleep while you can” or “That’s fantastic news, you are going to have your hands full” or “Congratulations, your life is over.” Why can’t people simply say “that is great news”. That would do. I know my life will change beyond recognition, I know there will be two babies in a few weeks.
Frankly I am looking forward to it so much that I now find the idea of having a single baby a bit boring!

JUST WONDERED

IF I COULD WRITE

A BLOG AND MAKE

IT LOOK A BIT LIKE

THE OPENING SCENE

OF STAR WARS EPISODE

IV. A LONG, LONG TIME

AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR

AWAY...

REALLY NEED

A FLOATING IN

SPACE TYPE EFFECT

AND ALSO A STAR WARS

FONT...

HOWEVER THE

POINT OF THIS IS

SO THAT I CAN ASK

WHAT ORDER I NEED

TO SHOW THE STAR WARS

FILMS TO MY YET TO BE BORN

TWINS....

DO I START AT THESTART.

WHICH TO ME IS EPISODE IV,

OR WATCH IN NUMERICAL ORDER,

FROM EPISODE ONE...

THE THING IS, IF I

DO THAT, ALL THE

DROIDS AND THE SPACE

CRAFT ARE REALLY SHINY

AND DO NOT HAVE STRINGS

TO HOLD THEM...

WHAT DOES EVERYONE

THINK? MY GUT INSTINCT IS

TO "FORCE" THE FILMS ON TO

THEM IN THE ORDER THAT I HAD

TO WATCH THEM....

I REALISE THE FLOATING IN SPACE THING

DID NOT WORK...

The Old Romantics

Next week I mark 5 years as one of the Old Romantics, which is a newspaper column written by myself and comedian Stu Wilde for the Lincolnshire Echo.
We get to talk about the nostaligia of the 1980s. Frankly I'm amazed we have lasted so long. It was a bold move by the newspaper to publish us in the first place, because for some reason there is not much humour in local newspapers, in my opinion, and the readership tends to have a demographic of 50+.
Even so, the paper stuck with us through thin and thinner, the readers have loved or hated our brand of weekly nonsense in equal measure, and now we are five. When we started out I hated the whole idea of it and found it hugely frustrating that we could only talk about the 1980s. The style of the column is a conversation ( http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/oldromanticcolumns )and reads like I script, which I also hated. Now we are still doing it after more than 250 columns I think the idea is quite innovative!

I was six when the 80s started and 16 when they ended so half the time I didn't know what Stu, who is a couple of years older than me, was on about. I just wanted to talk about Oasis and Blur but readers soon corrected me if I/we did step into the wrong decade. Come to think of it readers have corrected me/us on a lot of things, including my knowledge of Star Wars, the release date of certain records and the standards of our humour.

We both got the gig writing the Old Romantics because we were both stand-up comics working in journalism. I gave up doing live stand-up soon after the column started, Stu still gigs three or four times a week. Our humour his quite different. When we started out I was always obsessed with Seinfeld and Larry David and just wanted to create clever storylines for our conversations. Eventually I/we realised there are enough stupid things going on in our lives in any given week to have to make stuff up, although we do exaggerate a fair bit...

Stu has a more scattergun approach to humour and if its funny he will just say it. He is a real gagmeister. Do not get stuck in a lift with him, or a car for that matter. He is very funny and never shuts up.
Last year we recorded our favourite columns to broadcast via podcasts (http://www.thisislincolnshire.co.uk/oldromanticspodcasts.html) on the Lincolnshire Echo's website. They sounded and went down far better than I imagined. We booked a studio at the University of Lincoln to create the sound files. Of course Stu sounded like a polished luvvie who had rehearsed his lines over and over and I sounded like a bloke reading from the back of a fag packet in a pub. In fact I sounded a bit nasal, like Melvyn Bragg. Anyway it was a great experience and hopefully we can do some more soon.

I guess I'm writing this because I am pleased that we have come this far. At the start I wished they would scrap the whole thing and let us do something else, now I am hugely proud of what Stu and I have achieved. Here's to another five years!

Where have all the English managers gone?

The article below was written before England played Germany in November 2008 for Hertha Unser. It questions why England cannot find a decent manager from er...England. The fact it was written in German makes it more ironic, I hope, as well as giving me an international feel to my blog.

We did beat Germany that night and I was there! I guess Capello (pictured here with his cat Jess) is alright for now!

Könnte die Deutsche Fußballnationalmannschaft einen fremden Trainer überhaupt beschäftigen?

England hat bereits einen schwedischen Mann beschäftigt – Sven Goran Eriksson. Und jetzt haben wir einen Italiener – Fabio Capello. Aber Deutschland hat immer sein eigenes Talent gefunden. Eine Tatsache, die Englands Fußballfans eifersüchtig werden lässt.

Unser letzter englischer Trainer war Steve McClaren – der Rest ist bekannt!

Nach dem Spiel gegen Kroatien konnten wir die EM abhaken. Sogar mit Beckham, Lampard und Gerrard hatte er keinen Erfolg. Also gingen unsere Verbandschefs nach Italien, Fabio Capello einzustellen.

Könnte ein englischer Mann diese Arbeit nicht erledigen? Wir bewunderten Jurgen Klinsmann während der WC2006 und Joachim Löw in Euro 2008, weil sie als Deutsche Trainer von Deutschland waren.> In England fragt man sich: warum bringen wir keine fähigen Trainer hervor?> Unser Premier League wird von Trainern aus anderen Ländern> beherrscht: Sir Alex Ferguson (Man Utd) aus Schottland, Phil Scolari (Chelsea) aus Brasilien, Benitez von (Liverpool) aus Spanien und Wenger (Arsenal) aus Frankreich. Die Frage ist: Wenn England gegen Deutschland im Olympiastadion in Berlin nächste Woche spielt, weiß Fabio Capello, was das Spiel für englische Fußballfans bedeutet? Wir möchten unsere alten Fußballrivalen schlagen. Wenn Capello verliert, heißt es "arrivederci" , wenn England gewinnt, wird er zum Ehrenengländer ernannt! In Berlin wird es entschieden.

Jack the Ripper

I have a bit of an obsession with the Jack the Ripper murders and will watch and read anything which throws up a theory. Recently the Leicester Mercury did a brilliant job laying claim that the killer was an aristocrat from Ashby called Frederick Bailey Deeming.

Recently I really enjoyed watching famous Mark Charlton lookalike Vic Reeves present a show investigating the Ripper murders on a dodgy Sky Channel (not Babecast).
He started out with six suspects (I once read somewhere there were eight, although I have just double checked that figure and found a list of 25 possibilities). He worked his way them through using former detectives and crime profilers and the like. I had forgotten that there were actually only actually five confirmed ripper murders, although he is linked to others. All the killings took place in Whitechapel, London.
Two of the killings were on the same evening, the theory being that Jack's first attack that night did not satisfy his blood lust and he struck again. After that night, it is said he never killed again. What I find interesting about this subject is not the gore and human tragedy, but people's obsession with it, including my own.
I think its the mystery of the whole thing and the lack of any evidence just adds to it. I found it fascinating that Victorian policing methods were such that when a murder occured, it was simply a major clean up operation so people did not have to see the mess.
Anything which could have helped modern day detectives or ripperologists via forensics and DNA, as they are known, were binned within hours of the murders.
Anyway, here is a list of Ripper suspects I ripped off Wikipedia.
My favourite suspect is Carl Feigenbaum (pictured above and taken from www.casebook.org/suspects/carl-feigenbaum.html) who later struck in New York, but was said to live in Whitechapel at the time of the ripper murders.
This is the Wikipedia list of suspects: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_Jack_the_Ripper_suspects
Suspects investigated by police:
· 1.1 Montague John Druitt
· 1.2 George Chapman
· 1.3 Aaron Kosminski
· 1.4 Michael Ostrog
· 1.5 John Pizer
· 1.6 Francis Tumblety
· 2 Other contemporary suspects
· 2.1 William Henry Bury
· 2.2 Thomas Neill Cream
· 2.3 Frederick Bailey Deeming
· 2.4 Carl Feigenbaum
· 2.5 Robert Donston Stephenson
· 3 Suspects named by later authors
· 3.1 Joseph Barnett
· 3.2 Lewis Carroll
· 3.3 David Cohen
· 3.4 William Withey Gull
· 3.5 George Hutchinson
· 3.6 James Kelly
· 3.7 James Maybrick
· 3.8 Alexander Pedachenko
· 3.9 Walter Sickert
· 3.10 Joseph Silver
· 3.11 Francis Thompson
· 3.12 James Kenneth Stephen
· 3.13 Prince Albert Victor
· 3.14 Sir John Williams

Let me know your Ripper theories!

National Beatles Day

Last week the Leicester Mercury carried a story about a man who was angry that 10 Downing Street refused to post an online petition calling for double killer Colin Pitchfork to be kept in prison for life, as it was "inappropriate".
I too have had an "inappropriate" petition rejected by Gordon Brown. Earlier this year I asked Number 10 if I could stick a petition on their website calling for a National Beatles Day, to recognise the contribution the Fab Four had made to the country and our place in the world. I added it would be a chance to dress as pop stars for the day and celebrate British music. Obviously I wanted everyone to have a day off in the form of a bank holiday. But Gordon Brown was having none of it.
This is probably because:

1) He is bitter that there are no decent bands from Scotland
2) And he has proper work to do, like learning to smile better when he is talking
or
3) He simply hates the Beatles

Listening to the Beatles makes us happy Gordon. Even my unborn twins like them.

On a slighty different note, I know talking about dreams is rubbish but I have to mention this. Last night I dreamt that I broke into a farm house on a hill after ditching my car, stole two cans of Fosters (which I never drink) and a can of Guinness (which I never drink) and put them in a bag to drink as I walked home, approxiately six dream miles.
What is that about then? I have googled it but the experts only deal in the ones where you go to work naked (fear of failure... to wear clothes) or the ones where you are falling (archaic memories from the time when we were tree-dwelling monkeys, apparently).

Finally, in a more lucid state, I told my wife that Lorriane Kelly of GMTV fame is less than four feet tall, which I know is a lie but I think is entirely believable, so tell everyone you know. I also wonder if there are any other decent lies we could put around?

Duck Hunting part II

Sepp Maier did go duck hunting, but at the Olympiastadion Munich. Hertha Berlin were not thought to be involved either. It makes my previous blog post somewhat redundant. I will post a meaningful blog at some point.

Duck hunting

I am planning on writing an article for the Hertha Unser website about Sepp Maier and his duck hunting incident. The story goes that in a Bayern Munich game in the late 70s against Hertha BSC at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, the goalkeeping legend became distracted by a duck he saw in the crowd. As the play was at the opposite end of the pitch he thought he would leave his goal and catch the duck. Apparently he disappeared for several minutes, but Hertha were typically poor in cashing in on his absence and never got the ball out of their half.