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One of my favourite pre- summer holiday activities is choosing a good book to read on the beach (and/or by the pool). This year my holiday read was bought for me by Karen, who had come into some Amazon vouchers at work.
In Bad Science the author Ben Goldacre — writer, broadcaster and doctor, with a column in The Guardian (and a blog) of the same name — debunks alternative therapy myths about Homeopathy, vitamin pills, fish oil capsules and many other “essential” food supplements, and exposes the pseudoscience used by “Nutritional Therapists” to convince us that all our problems can be solved by a little miracle pill. Well, their little miracle pill, to be precise.
This subject appealed to the Grumpy Old Man in me (some would ask what might be left if he were somehow removed). I can regularly be heard dismissing TV ads for the latest “active revitalising shampoo with natural plant extracts” as a load of sh***, and finally here is a book that agrees with me! Most of the proper evidence shows that, for example, homeopathic pills are no more effective than placebo, and Omega-3 fish oil capsules remain a best seller among parents, despite nobody having ever proved that they do actually help improve academic performance.
Every time I buy a “new & improved” midecine of toiletry product I feel a pang of doubt, a pang of being another sucker to fall for the bullshit. More and more we blindly accept what the ads, and “conventional wisdom” tell us about these products, and while the effects and benefits to me go largely unmeasured and unchallenged, the pharmaceutical companies continue to rake in the profits.
I am writing this sat on the beach in Grenada on day eight of our fifteen-day holiday. Every morning I spend ages smearing myself all over with Factor 30 sun screen and spraying myself with foul-smelling insect repellent, yet later at the beach I have to put my notebook down every couple of minutes to tend to my burnt shoulders or scratch one of my 33 (yes, I’ve counted) mosquito bites.So, I’ve seen the ads, believed the hype, handed over my cash, followed the instructions to the letter, and they haven’t worked. Neither of them. But of course I won’t learn from this. There’ll be no shirty letter to the manufacturers, no email to BBC Watchdog. No, instead I’ll do exactly the same next year and wonder why I get the same result. It must be my fault. Perhaps I have inferior skin or something. Reading Bad Science I wonder if I’d be any worse off had I saved myself the expense and gone “au naturelle”.
Goodacre stresses the differences between proper scientific trial methods and the subjective, almost rigged studies that the vendors us to show their product in the best light. What you need to conduct a proper trial are three test groups: one receives the treatment, the second gets a placebo i.e. a fake treatment like a sugar pill that does nothing physiological (although it does a great deal psychological), and the third — the “control” — which receives nothing. Right then, so next year when I hit the beach I think I’ll have the products applied up to my knees, a dual placebo of atomised water spray and single cream from head to belly button, and leave the middle bit untreated. Not sure if I’ll prove anything useful, in fact knowing my luck I’ll be stepping off the plane back in London looking like a giant melting Neapolitan ice cream.
I love going to the cinema. Even as a young kid I remember Saturday Moring Pictures being the highlight of my week. We’d take the train into Windsor, pocket money burning a hole in our pockets, and sit there slurping Kia Ora orange and cheering on Flash Gordon and Mighty Mouse in an auditorium packed with other kids. The noise was deafening. After 3 hours of pure escapism we’d leap back into the street from the cinema steps, acting out our hero’s escapades: “Die Ming!”, and shooting each other with finger ray guns.
The best moment of a cinema trip for me is the moment when the house lights fade to nothing indicating the start of the show. The first part would be just ads and trailers but that doesn’t matter. The extinguishing of the house lights sends a message to everyone to shut up, face the front, and lose yourself in the magic of cinema.
That feeling has stayed with me into adulthood. Until now…
I can’t remember the first incident but at some point in the last year I went to the cinema and the ads started with the house lights STILL UP. This immediately threw my peace of mind against the wall and the sales messages went right over my head as I sat there in a cold sweat, staring at the house lights and willing them to dim. Were they faulty? What if they’re faulty and can’t be switched off? That would be terrible! They must be faulty. No-one in their right mind would leave them on once the show’s started on purpose. Would they? And of course because the lights remained up the people around me carried on chatting and playing with their phones. NO! You’re ruining it! I guess it’s probably some new anal Health & Safety ruling or something:
“Ooh I know, let’s leave the house lights up during the ads so our customer safety and security is further protected by guiding latecomers to their seats.” Well we all managed fine for the last several decades thank you very much, so you can keep your patronising risk-averse attitude to yourself and leave our f***ing house lights alone!
After a few such incidents I began to calm down: it’s only the ads after all. But then it happened. One time I went and the house lights stayed up during… THE TRAILERS!
My family will tell you that at this point going to the cinema with me stopped being fun. I actually said out loud, “The lights are still on. The trailers have started and the lights are still on. They’d better turn those damn lights off quick. If these lights don’t go off soon I’m going to complain” Then of course you’re faced with the dilemma of missing the start of the film because you’re outside complaining to some disinterested spotty teenager who doesn’t even understand the problem, let alone give a shit. The cold sweats returned, I fidgeted in my seat and my blood pressure started bubbling.
Since then I’ve been to the cinema in the U.S. and noticed the same thing there — clearly there’s an international conspiracy sharing of “best practices” going on.
If they ever, EVER try leaving the house lights up during the actual movie there’s going to be trouble. In fact There Will Be Blood.
One of new London Mayor Boris Johnson’s first pieces of legislation in office was to ban the drinking of alcohol on public transport. Something that most normal people would never consider doing anyway but apparently there are some in London who need that spelling out for them. The ban came into effect yesterday, Sunday June 1st, and so on Saturday night there was a large party of revellers who wanted to celebrate their “last night of freedom” by getting totally paralytic on the London Underground and vandalising trains, throwing up and assaulting staff. Six stations had to be closed and there were seventeen arrests. I find it hard to believe I belong to the same species as these mindless idiots who can’t see further than their next Friday Night piss-up.
You may remember a while ago I had a go at writing an article for The London Paper, a free daily that is given out to homebound commuters every weekday afternoon. Copy for their The Columnist section is sent in by ordinary Londoners like me. Last time the piece I sent didn’t get published. I looked at those that did make the grade and, while they weren’t better written than mine, they were topical and had something to say about London, whereas mine was a bit more general. Clearly the Editor wants us Columnists to speak only on current London issues.
Well, what better current London issue to let off some steam about than this foolish swarm of prats who think their right to have a good time is more important than my right to use public transport in safety and peace? Here is the piece I sent in to The London Paper this morning. It went in at 0925 local time. No idea whether that has made it too late or not. Guess we’ll never know, unless it gets published of course.
CONFESSIONS OF A WELL-MANNERED DRINKER
Tube Boozers: help me out. I’ve clearly gone wrong somewhere down the road and I’m hoping you can set me straight. Oh, I like a drink, don’t get me wrong; I’m not a complete misfit. No no, I drink my fair share – sometimes more than. I like a pint, a G&T while cooking at the weekend and a glass or two of wine with dinner. But my problem is, I seem to know when I’ve had enough, and I stop, go home and sleep it off. When I crawl out of bed the next morning I might have gained a few pounds in weight and a splitting headache, but there is no torn tube map in my pocket, no puddle of vomit with my name on it in a tube train foot-well, and no transport worker nursing the black eye I gave him. But the weirdest thing is: I had a good time anyway.
I’m starting to feel like a stranger in my own country. I don’t know this place where it is a citizen’s right to be drunk and abusive in public, to deface public property and to assault any uniform that gets in the way exercising these civil liberties. I happen to think that Boris Johnson is quite a nice (if sometimes blundering) bloke who just wants to make London a nicer place for us all to live in. I appear to have missed some important memos on what it means to be an adult in Britain. Perhaps my friends forgot to invite me to that particular Facebook group.
So: Tube Boozers – please explain why your way is right and mine is wrong. I really want to understand. Ah, you’ve found me out. Yes OK I admit it, I’m Over 40. I’m Over The Hill and therefore have no clue what the younger generation of today have to face. That may be true, but then how come I have two teenage children who are impeccably behaved, liked by everyone they meet, and doing well at school? They have access to alcohol, knives, and drugs, yet they choose none of them. They’re living happy and wholesome lives and not hurting anyone else in the process. It must be the way they were brought up. It is you binge-drinking idiots — not Boris — who owe London an apology.
The top three loves of my life are my wife, my children and my scooter. I’m still working out the precise order. There are a multitude of things I love just beneath this top echelon: sights, sounds, smells, art, other scooters etc., and to this group has just been added the writing of Charlie Brooker.
I first discovered Charlie Brooker (real name Charlton. I’d change it too.) when I saw him on TV as a panelist on Have I Got News For You, shortly after we returned from Riyadh. Subsequent research revealed that he’s had his own TV show entitled ScreenWipe, and is a regular columnist on The Guardian newspaper. All of which we missed because we were in Saudi Arabia for the last two years and I don’t read The Guardian.
Charlie is grumpy. No, grumpy doesn’t say it properly; he’s angry, outraged, flabbergasted, spiteful, bullying, insulting. What does it take to get him going? Pretty much any aspect of life today really, but in his column (and TV show that was) it’s other TV shows that receive a good kicking.
Anyone can moan into a word processor — I’m living proof. But the true artist softens the blows by making you laugh. Charlie makes me laugh. Out loud. He’s pissed off with the world and lets you know in no uncertain terms, but he’s also aware of his own weaknesses and isn’t afraid to joke about them. Combine all this with a vivid imagination and an original, concise style of writing, and you’ve got… erm… imaginative, original and concise writing about stuff that pisses him off, that makes you laugh. Out loud.
Here is my gift to you. Read Charlie’s back catalogue of Guardian ScreenBurn and other articles, and buy his book Dawn Of The Dumb. I want to write like this.
There should be special planes for self-obsessed families like the one sat behind me the other day: a dirty, scruffy plane that hasn’t been checked in a while (in an ideal world).
I was on my way home from a short business trip to Nuremberg, and this final leg was Zurich – Heathrow. I was tired and all I wanted was some peace and quiet to read my book. Then on lurched this family of ignorant, curly-haired, corduroy-wearing Surbiton-dwellers. Dad — in a white T-shirt under a paisley tanktop and with green corduroy trousers and a mop like Harpo Marx — sits on the left-hand row with his two sons: roughly 8 and 12 and both equally springy-haired. The mother and two daughters sit opposite them, same row right, with the mother directly behind my aisle seat. The mother’s main problems were that her voice was very loud (and posh), and she seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact that there were other passengers on the aircraft, because she proceeded to bellow across the aisle to the men in her life as if they were on their own private jet. The main problem with the rest of the family seemed to be that they had inherited their mother’s loud voice and lack of social grace.
As we taxied, it began:
Ma (to Pa): SHALL WE SWAP SEATS SO I CAN HELP THEM WITH THEIR POSTCARDS?
Pa: No it’s OK, I can help them.
Younger boy aka “Mo-Mo”: “Mummy, can I have my postcards?”
Ma: “HERE YOU ARE DARLING. WRITE THEM NICELY WON’T YOU?”
The plane took off, closely followed by my blood pressure.
Then the Dad, who had refused the offer of a seat swap so he could help the boys, promptly nodded off, leaving Mamaa to bellow spelling and grammar advice across the aisle to her two pretty-damn-thick sons:
Mo-Mo: “Mummy, how do you spell ‘Nanny’?”
Ma: “NUH, AA, NUH, NUH, YUH.”
Twenty seconds later:
Mo-Mo: “Mummy, how do you spell ‘enjoy’?”
Ma: “EH, NUH, JUH, OH, YUH.”
With each new outburst one of the passengers on my row turned to glare at the offender, but very slyly — not so much as to allow the offender to notice of course. Having made this token gesture we then cheered each other up by exchanging resigned shrugs and raising our eyebrows.
Then the older boy, whom I learned was officially called Sam but was known to his siblings as “Strimmer” joined in the whole thick-postcard-writing spectacle, and a further spelling lesson ensued, including:
Ma: “CUH, OH, NUH, TUH, RUH, OH, LUH. WRITE SOMETHING NICE TO NANNY WON’T YOU DARLING? SAY YOU’VE HAD A REALLY LOVELY TIME SKIING AND YOU CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THEM AGAIN. SAY THEY ARE FANTASTIC GRANDPARENTS. YES, PUT THAT IN.”
Mo-Mo: “Mummy, I’m just going to have a drink.”
Ma: “OK, THAT’S GREAT MO-MO.”
I found two things hard to believe: that their kids could be that thick, and that they could be so insensitive to the privacy and personal space of their fellow passengers. If I were an American I’d have said something by now, but being British I just sat and fumed to myself. The only way I could complete the flight with my sanity intact was to take out my notebook and write about the horrible event as it happened:
It went on like this throughout the flight. The daughters got in on the act: “Mummy, how do you spell Switzerland?”, the Dad woke up and was about as much use as a chocolate teapot, and as we came in to land the boys decided it would be a good idea to start punching each other and shouting “OW!” very loudly. The parents, of course, just let this go on unchecked.
Towards the end of the flight I found myself casting hopefully around for a glance of a dark-skinned, bearded man with a turban and a lumpy jacket. I wish now that I had said something. It would doubtless have caused a scene, but it might have made me feel better and I’m sure all the other passengers in my row would have applauded.
Note to self: never travel without noise-cancelling headphones. Or an automatic weapon.
