Richard Madeley’s ‘Nothing Fresh In It’

Richard Madeley was covering for Simon Mayo on Radio Two last week. As mentioned previously, I find him absolutely fascinating. He seems to be the most unembarassable person in the world. He’ll come out with some complete banality, inanity or drivel (and occasionally something interesting) and not be fazed at all.

He told the story about how he’d made a name for himself on the first day of his TV career at Yorkshire Television on the Calendar programme when he’d ‘broken’ a story involving the village of Penistone. Of course, in Yorkshire pronunciation it’s pretty inconceivable to avoid putting the emphasis on a short vowel sound on first syllable of the name: ‘Pen’. However, Madeley rushed on screen and did it the other way: ‘Pee-nis-stone’.  Apparently the story is so legendary in media circles that the traffic reporter had heard of it — but didn’t realise it was Madeley who’d done it. Anyone else would probably have been paranoid about the cock up and hence their career disappear without trace thereafter — but Richard Madeley takes these things in his stride.

On Thursday it was cooking night and the resident ‘gastronome’ Nigel Barden was challenged to make a tuna fish pasta bake of slightly more authentic provenance. In the end his painstakingly researched Italian version didn’t trounce Madeley’s chemical concoction by as much as might have been expected. It was pretty funny to hear him simulate the length of time taken to create his dish — about 50 seconds. I guess, scientifically, he may have had a point as well on flavour — plenty of his ingredients would have had enhancers like MSG. The thing that probably is most off-putting about the dish is the crisps — they’re such an anathema and, let’s face it, guilty pleasure for foodie types that it seems unthinkable to put them into any recipe.

Here’s his recipe as purloined from the programme’s website. I’ve also added Madeley’s Twitter feed to the sidebar, which seems to be as amusing as his DJing.

Richard Madeley’s ‘Nothing Fresh In It’ Tuna Fish Casserole.

INGREDIENTS

One medium tin mushroom/chicken soup

One medium tin tuna chunks in brine

Handful frozen peas

Handful frozen sweetcorn

One to two dozen frozen prawns

A palmful of dried mixed herbs (generous amount)

Two crushed bags of plain crisps

One uncrushed bacg of plain crisps

Dash of white wine

Pinch of salt and ground black pepper

METHOD

Set the uncrushed bag of crisps aside and mix all the other ingredients in a medium-sized casserole dish.

Now for the piece of resistance. Place the crisps evenly on top of the mixture.

Do not cover.

Place dish in oven at 200 or equivalent gas mark

Leave for 30 minutes.

Remove and serve with penne pasta and a chilled glass of dry white wine.

*NB Your ‘Nothing Fresh In It Tuna Fish Casserole is delicious cold, too!

Strangest Places to Camp?

I thought this was quite funny. Often shops pitch tents up in pseudo-idealistic scenes but I was quite surprised to see where they’d put this example in B&Q.

B&Q Tent
B&Q Tent

I thought it quite amusing to imagine there was some sort of squatter living on the tops of their shelves. Even without this anarchic interpretation I was quite puzzled as to why they’d pitch the tent there where most customers wouldn’t see it –the photo was taken from the recently-added mezzanine level which has the show bathrooms and kitchens.

A Majestically Local Selection

I had a pleasant surprise on going into my local Majestic. Large quantities of locally brewed

Majestic Cases
A Selection of the Interesting Ale at Majestic

beer were piled high at the back of the store behind the wine. They had beers from Tring (Side Pocket and Death or Glory), Loddon (Ferryman’s Gold and Hullaballoo), Rebellion (Blonde plus another one I’ve forgotten) plus others from within fairly local distances like Hook Norton. There are other unusual small breweries represented, such as Bath Ales, St. Peters and Hop Back. Bigger brewers’ beers are also there — Fuller’s London Porter was a nice discovery (if you forgive the pun).

I was talking to the manager there and he was saying that Majestic don’t want to compete with the 20 cans of Wifebeater for £10 at the supermarkets (loss leaders that our government seems so reluctant to curb) and so they really want to push the local beer angle — and that this is what their customers say they want. He’s hoping to get beers from Chiltern soon (that’s really LocAle to them) and Vale as well. He’s also wondering about stocking minipins and similar.

There’s a photo of a lovely selection of ale, not all local but I’m one of the people who still drinks local beers in the pub. There’s the exquisite Summer Lightning (still the hoppiest and best golden ale), Loddon Ferryman’s Gold, which is almost as good as Summer Lightning and a little less hoppy, Fuller’s London Porter, which is completely different (I don’t know it so well in bottle but it’s great on the occasions you can get it on draught) and a selection of Bath Ales beers, which is a consistent micro. I’d like to see Rebellion and Tring follow suit and do a selection pack like that as I like their beers but would find it difficult to opt for 12 of one (as you have to at Majestic) — particularly if it’s something like Tring Death or Glory (who says real ale brewers go for macho names?).

Charlie Brooker — A Little Bit of Politics

Interesting article from Charlie Brooker on his attitude to drugs and their reporting. It’s quite a good example of his style, which I saw critiqued a little unfairly in the Radio Times recently which said he tended to go after obvious targets and then pull his punches but that, sadly, he was about the best around at what he did.

What tends to be disappointing about Brooker is that while he sometimes seems to be on the brink of concluding something very idiosyncratic, his conclusions always seem to return to re-inforce the type of liberal orthodoxy that has atrophied in the values of his audience of Guardian readers for about the last 30 years (the big irony is they still see themselves as daring and progressive when, in fact, they now really represent the forces of inertia and conservatism). Maybe Brooker really shares these views — exemplified, for example, in the flawed logic that sees alcohol equated as an inherently more dangerous drug than many prohibited substances. (Of course it can be but most people don’t misuse it.) Yet even if he has leanings this way then his points would still be better made if he didn’t back so timidly away from questioning so many sacred cows — it’s almost like he has a little Ben Elton of the nauseous 80s sparking suit vintage (not the current sell-out Queen musical writer) barking inside his conscience.

Brooker seems pathologically scared of making general points that might offend these ingrained prejudices even when his real strength — his surreal self-deprecation — demolishes brutally many pompous,New Labour sensibilities. In this article he humorously describes his less-than-satisfactory experiences taking banned drugs and makes some very good points about the questionable motivations of the many people who still glorify a completely irrelevant and anachronistic 60s counter-culture (if it ever existed): ‘I don’t want to get out of my head: that’s where I live’.

All great stuff but then he diverts into safer territory by making an analogy about delusion peddled in newspapers which seems calculated to play to the Guardian reader gallery. Of course then his predictable targets are the tabloids who print pictures of Lady Ga Ga (though plenty supposed quality papers do too). It would be nice for a change if he took on the sort of mood-altering newspapers that print a diet of self-mythologising cant  which re-inforces the moral smugness of their readership — fulfilling similar fundamental psychological needs in the same sort of manner as those who are just satisfied by seeing whether Lady Ga Ga’s managed to keep her knockers from falling out of her dress today.

Smithy Izzard Isn’t He?

Sport Relief is an interesting concept. Someone must have thought ‘sports personalities are treated like celebrities these days, why not use them to do Comic Relief again without risking over-exposure’. The problem with this luvvie-PR approach is that the majority of sports personalities (although that phrase in itself is often an oxymoron) have less sense of humour than a set of goalposts.

The kind of selfless determination and motivation that’s required to get to the top in sport is almost, by definition, less receptive to many kinds of humour, particularly British self-deprecation. This is no doubt more true in individual events where there’s less social interaction than in teams. Also, the time needed to train and practice, particularly as a young person, means that many athletes are less likely to have spent time watching comedy on television.

This was comically apparent during James Corden’s ‘Smithy’ section on ‘Sports Relief’ last night. While I watch ‘Gavin and Stacey’ I wouldn’t class myself as a huge fan: it seems to be this year’s ‘Little Britain’ and seems to be similarly pumped up by the BBC hype machine, perhaps as evidence that not everything on BBC3 is total garbage. The appeal of the programme seems to come more from the engaging performances of Matthew Horne and the lovely Joanna Page (one of the recipients of Jonathan Ross’s loathsome lustings) plus good support from Alison Steadman and the ubiquitous Rob Brydon. The characters played by Corden and Ruth Jones seem to me to undermine the rest of programme.

Corden’s ‘Smithy’ character seems to be positioned by comedy opinion formers, such as Comic Relief, as a sort of mouthy, loveable slob England-supporting, sports following couch potato — sort of Loadsamoney with sport replacing the dosh. ‘Sport Relief’ showed a performance he must have done as a warm-up for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year last December which was a bit peculiar.

He started with a mock acceptance as Coach of the Year, then did a mock acceptance speech which veered at times into a serious rant and then followed, as if in apology, with a hammed up ‘let’s make Britain great’ conclusion. What was striking about the performance was that he picked on some of the sports celebrities in the audience in traditional stand-up fashion — and the looks on some of their faces were  of absolute thunder which said clear as day ‘I am a living legend. You can’t take the piss out of me.’

Fabio Capello probably didn’t know what the hell was going on so he laughed amiably throughout. Similarly, genuinely laid-back personalities like Ryan Giggs knew to laugh along at the (not very funny) suggestion he was about 45 by now. Also, politicians like Lord Coe knew that the worst thing to do in these circumstances was to look peeved or offended — though the Ovett remark seemed quite close to the bone. However, Freddie Flintoff’s face was a picture when Corden ridiculed his nickname and his injury record (pointing out that his drinking arm was always in good order). Kelly Holmes also seemed to be aggrieved when he said running 800m was nothing compared with Paula Radcliffe’s marathons — but Radcliffe suddenly looked rather serious when, in the most amusing of his jokes, Corden asked if anyone had shown her where the toilet was. I guess that some of these people wouldn’t have had a clue who this fat, scruffy oik in a tracksuit was — especially as he’d yet to join comedy royalty because this segment was recorded before he’d had the honour of having his show transmitted as a Christmas Day special

What was most striking, however, was when he went into tub-thumping, jingoistic mode — ‘We Can Win the World Cup, We Can Win Wimbledon’ and followed it up with a combination of sporting cliches about winning. The audience, having been fairly puzzled by the stand-up comedy, then got to its feet and cheered him to the rafters. While this was, no doubt, edited for effect, I’m sure that Corden was ridiculing himself (or his character) at this stage — a point that seemed to be lost on most of the audience. Steve Redgrave, sorry Sir Steve Redgrave, stood there wiping away a tear from his eye which, while it may have been staged, seemed to me to be the sort of reaction he’d make if that sort of speech was given straight. I suppose these sporting celebrities shouldn’t be criticised for reacting in this way — if they had the brains of comedians then we’d never win anything. (It reminds me of Clive Woodward’s, sorry Sir Clive, selection of records on ‘Desert Island Discs’ — it was the most unsubtle, two-dimensional list but, more than anything it was functional — uplifting, ‘euphoric’ anthems like ‘The Greatest Day’ by Take That or ‘Life is A Rollercoaster’ by Ronan Keating plus pumping, adrenaline releasing stuff of the sort they play on BBC Sport programmes incessantly by Eminem or Chicane. I guess his desert island life would be permanent reminiscing of the glory days of the world cup.)

Watching the thing a second time it seems that it was more edited than it may have appeared originally and certain personalities will have been prompted that they were going to get the Smithy treatment and may even have been told to try and keep a straight face (Kelly Holmes for example).  Nevertheless, most of the expressions looked quite transparently horrified that this tubby comedian could get on stage and say things that, taken out of the flimsy ironic context of supposedly been in character, were actually pretty insulting.

However, that re-inforces the paradox of Sport Relief — a comedy vehicle that features some of the straightest and least amusing people possible — although there was a fair amount of blokeish, dressing room humour in evidence when Lineker, Hansen and Lawrenson did Masterchef — sausage and mash, steak and chips and spaghetti a la carbonara — and all cooked quite well — such is the competitive nature of these people. I tend to think these fund raisers, laudable as they are for raising money, tend to be designed as a useful spin-off for celebrities to gauge their relative standing. Christine Bleakley got promoted to hosting a section this year, as did James Corden — so obviously they’re on the up. Obviously they’ll have taken the places of some fading personalities whose phones no longer ring with offers as much as they did when they were on the way up.

One person for whom I have unreserved admiration is Eddie Izzard. I watched the final ‘Marathon Man’ programme, which followed the end of his incredible 43 marathons in 51 days. I had expected him to have prepared thoroughly for such a masochistic challenge but I was amazed to see that he cut a very unathletic character, even with something of a pot belly after more than half the marathons. Even were he to have lost weight his heavy physique is not really one of a distance runner.

I do a bit of running myself but I’ve never gone near anything like marathon distance. The furthest I’ve done is the half-marathon, which is gruelling enough, and, at my pace, meant over two hours of continuous running. I lost a toenail for several months after that and was fatigued for a couple of days — even after having worked up to it for a few weeks. Eddie Izzard apparently only trained for five weeks and so ran at a pace that meant his marathons were taking around five hours — even ten hours in some cases when he was almost literally dead on his feet. To run for ten hours along roads and then do it all again the next day must take the most incredible willpower. I’m not a huge fan of his comedy but I can see how he must have had the determination to make a successful career (he returned to locations in Edinburgh where he’d started as a street perfomer during the programme). Of all the celebrity challenges that are performed for these fundraising events, Izzard’s must be metaphorically, if not athletically, way ahead of the field.

Spying on the Spies

Like most web users I’m an almost habitual user of Google search and I remember being one of its earliest adopters around 12 years ago when the likes of Yahoo and Alta Vista were the dominant search engines. I’m also quite an enthusiastic user of some of its derivative services, like Google News and Maps and I’m a tentative user of Google Scholar. However, I’ve thought for a while that its influence is far too dominant on the web to the extent that its famous motto ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is pretty meaningless — it’s almost irrelevant whether the people running this size of organisation are evil or not (and it would be very surprising if they were) as the fact of its very pervasiveness and power is inherently a ‘bad thing’.

I’m particularly suspicious of its plans to ‘digitise the world’s information’ because of its potentially disastrous effect on intellectual property rights — potentially creating much more widespread damage than Google News is currently wreaking on newspapers. Showing that these principles are generally as old as the hills it’s a classic case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg. It’s amazing how many people’s considered judgement is disregarded by puerile ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ arguments because Murdoch’s News International is the biggest critic of Google in this area. If Google undermines intellectual property principles then it will be the viability of the small, niche publishers which vanishes first — not the Digger’s empire.

I also find Google’s arguments that it is a mere directory and conduit for other content to be completely disingenuous. It could make a lot more effort to remove links to illegal material — it’s just a cost that it doesn’t want to pay. After all, when it came to a question of making money or not in China it was happy to side with the censors then. Moreover, Google’s business strategy is primarily now devoted to loading content on to its site — either through user e-mails, videos or blogs or by uploading cheaply sourced material like scanning books (out of copyright ones for the time being). One of these sources of cheap content that I’m not convinced about is Google Street View so I was very interested to see the spy camera car in action today around Princes Risborough. It was happily cruising around taking six photos at once of everyone and everything on the road around it so I followed it for a while in my car with the objective of taking a picture of the spy vehicle itself.

Google Street View Car
Google Street View Car on Station Road, Princes Risborough

When the driver realised I was following him he seemed to get quite agitated — quickly pulling over to let me past but I then stopped in front. After all what’s wrong with trying to take a photograph of someone who’s literally taking thousands of photographs with the sole intention of publishing them so everyone in the world can see them? I got a couple of photos but decided not to follow too long as I didn’t want every photo of Princes Risborough to also feature me. As far as Street View goes, I can see it may have some limited value in very public places like city and town centres but I can see no benefit whatsoever of it taking photographs of residential streets. They just do it because they can — and if an organisation has that sort of ethos then it’s on the slippery slope to becoming what some people may term ‘evil’.

Google Spy Car
Google Street View Camera Car on Poppy Road, Princes Risborough

Google should learn the lessons of other companies who have tried to dominate a platform — Microsoft has arguably inflicted more damage on itself with disasters like Vista which no doubt had root causes in the company becoming too big for mistakes to be spotted and rectified by competent managers — maybe managers whose time was being taken up fighting anti-trust suits. In desktop terms Microsoft really fulfilled what customers wanted with XP and late 90s/early 200os versions of Office. It’s a feature of global capital that it demands ever more growth but the pursuit of this is problematic when your company’s products have met about 95% of what any customer will ever need. Perhaps Google is in the same position now. It should stop expanding its empire — concentrate on what it does well — boring old search and leave the intrusive, customer-alienating expansion alone?

The Bizarre HS2 Route — How Was It Decided?

Last week the government published its preferred route for the proposed high speed railway line between Euston and Birmingham. It seemed to take almost everyone by surprise by avoiding the two existing high(ish) speed rail routes through the north-west home counties and ploughing a completely new route through the Chilterns, following roughly, in part the old Metropolitan Line to Aylesbury — now the Chiltern Railways commuter stopping service.

There are plenty of maps available on the DfT website. There’s an interesting one of the whole route and there are many detailed sub-maps which show the route in supposed detail. However, I get the feeling that these have been fairly hurriedly drawn up as no provision has been made to preserve public rights of way and only fairly obvious features like roads and flood plains are taken into account by the route (the latter probably being based on the Environment Agency website rather than actual surveying).

The route seems to have made concessions to the environment when it first sets out — even burying itself in a tunnel when near the tranquil M25. Yet when it emerges from the tunnel just west of Amersham then all thought of blending into the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural beauty seems to disappear — odd because these is some of the most scenic parts of the Chilterns. Incredibly, the route is planned to soar on a viaduct when it approaches south of Wendover and then it’s due to squeeze next to the A413 Wendover by-pass — which is less than a hundred yards or so from the start of Wendover high street and many houses.

A slight concession to noise is made by planning to have the railway be buried in a tunnel when it passes under the road towards Butler’s Cross but this will be a cheap ‘cut and cover’ construction so will require the demolition of a row of houses. These are pictured below.

Route of HS2 Next to A413 in Wendover
High Speed Line Will Plough Through Houses to the Right
Houses to be Demolished on Railway Route
Houses in Wendover to be Demolished on Railway Route

The line will then stretch from Wendover across the relatively flat ground of Aylesbury Vale — see below.

Route of HS2 at South Of Aylesbury Vale
The HS2 Line will be built just to the left of the road

From Wendover the line slices through the edge of Stoke Mandeville, just by the Goat Centre, and then passes very close to the Aylesbury outskirts of Hawkslade Farm, Southcourt, Walton Court and Fairford Leys before heading towards Waddesdon and Quainton — where it will cut across some maize fields that I found difficult to negotiate on the Aylesbury Ring last year. It’s about the only good thing about the route that instead of clearing a metre wide strip from his crops then the farmer will have a 75m wide railway run through them — no doubt farmers will be some of the few who will be reasonably compensated.

Maybe the government would like to have local residents believe that its highly paid consultants have been poring over various route options for the proposed High Speed 2 rail line in painstaking detail, carefully balancing environmental considerations against engineering requirements.

There is an alternative view. Consider that, as the route carves chunks out of the Chiltern chalk and then rises on high viaducts and embankments to dominate Aylesbury Vale, how close its alignment is to an existing disfiguration of the local landscape: the high-voltage electricity lines that stretch from the substation near Amersham, through Wendover, past Aylesbury and through Quainton. The routes align to within a couple of hundred yards for almost all their lengths.

Perhaps the planners took one look at the rows of hundred foot pylons and thought ‘if they can put up with those then maybe we can sneak in a 250mph railway line?’ Wrong. While visually obtrusive the electricity wires do not create the massive environmental disturbance, both permanently by despoiling the countryside and operationally by inflicting massive noise pollution.

Such is the scandalous lack of environmental consideration in the current plans that it’s easy to believe the planners have performed such a casual and perfunctory assessment of the route as to stand on Coombe Hill and play join up the pylons. Here’s a view of how the pylons march through the pass from Missenden into Wendover and perhaps encouraged the railway to follow.

Wendover Pass
The Pass Through the Chilterns at Wendover

Overall, high speed rail is a good idea and the route has to go somewhere but this seems like the cheapo option that avoids towns like High Wycombe and Watford that would require extensive tunneling to pass — and cheapo means it goes through unspoilt countryside and skirts a large population centre, neither of which currently has any existing mass transit corridor. The lack of consideration of deep tunnelling near Wendover and in the Chilterns and when the line is near Aylesbury is scandalous.

He Scores Goals

Sky Sports put together a 30 minute compilation of the 100 goals that Paul Scholes has scored in the Premiership — all, of course, for Manchester United. It was accompanied to a bit of music from the times — which go back to 1994 when he scored his first goal.

While it’s been said that several other players have reached their century a little more quickly, I doubt whether any has done so with a higher ratio of spectacular shots. Around 20 per cent of the goals must have come from going-on for 30 yards from goal and all the long-range efforts (at least half the total, though I know I stand to be corrected on this) were hit with such a ferocity that it almost seemed impossible — more like a shot coming off a tennis racquet at speed. The quality was utterly compelling. The prize pieces were the volleys from outside the area including the famous one (against Bradford I think) direct from Beckham’s corner which might be one of the best goals ever, technically.

Scholes is a model professional and has a totally refreshing contempt for spin and presentation — when he did an interview after his 100th goal it was fascinating to hear him speak. Another great thing about him is that while he’s supremely gifted at most footballing skills, there are some which he is pretty poor at, notably his tackling, but it doesn’t stop him trying. He’s the opposite of the saccharine, showbiz mediocrity who excels at nothing but presentation and having the rough edges removed. For that everyone should be thankful.

The current Manchester United team possesses arguably the two best English players of the last 20 years when both the Ginger Price and the Big Man are in town.

Pub of the Year Time

It’s time to vote on our local POTY (Pub of the Year). Despite the hostile economic climate and the particularly vindictive and cynical attitude from the government, it’s amazing that we had so many good pubs to choose from when we did our recent Good Beer Guide 2011 selection (yes, we think it’s crazy too that we have to select them so early — and no, I can’t give clues as to which we chose — although the list is likely to change due to landlord changes and so on before the book goes to press).

We had something quite unexpected turn up in the middle of last year when the Cross Keys in Thame, formerly mainly known for being a forbidding looking place to enter (you never really knew if it was open) and also for its occasional strippers, suddenly became a six-real-ale beer paradise. It then followed up by opening a brewery in its outhouses. However, as it only opened in its new incarnation halfway through the year then it might not be fair to the other pubs to include it in the running for POTY. An award of Most Improved Pub would be well-deserved, although it’s latterly had competition for that from the Bootleggers’ (formerly Flint Cottage) near High Wycombe station.

We had a worthy winner in the Whip at Lacey Green last year — a pub that had been runner-up a few times and so especially deserved its win. Last year’s runners-ups are still going strong.

The Wheel in Naphill is a great example of a community local — running several beer festivals a year and having four good real ales. It also has some of the best provision for smokers in the local area. It’s rumoured that Mark, the landlord put a sign up last year saying ‘Local CAMRA Pub of the Year’ and in small letters ‘Finalist’!

The Eight Bells is a picture postcard village local — and as the village is the incredibly photogenic Long Crendon then it’s very much the sort of pub you can picture Inspector Barnaby from Midsomer Murders visiting (although, to our knowledge it’s not one of the many local pubs that have featured in the programme so far). The pub is 400 years old and has plenty of ancient features and associations with the likes of the Morris Men. However, the landlady, Helen Copleston, has done a great job in promoting real ale. A stillage has been built behind the bar from which three beers are normally dispensed on gravity and two regulars on handpump — Wadworth Henry IPA and their own house brew — Hell’s Bells (get it?), brewed by Ringwood.

The 2004 winner, the Shepherd’s Crook in Crowell, was in the running again last year and it will be joined this year by the 2005 winner — the Three Horseshoes at Burroughs Grove, Marlow, which is the defacto brewery tap for Rebellion. We’ve canvassed the membership by e-mail for any other pubs which may be worthy of consideration.

The winners for the last four years are all ineligible:  the Royal Standard, Wooburn Common; the King’s Head and the Hop Pole in Aylesbury; and the above mentioned Whip. Many other CAMRA branches don’t have this type of re-election rule and, consequently, tend to make the same pub their POTY year after year, which seems most unfair to the rest of the pubs in their areas. It’s probably politically motivated in many cases in order to get that pub through to the regional and national POTY competitions. If so, one imagines that the landlords concerned might scratch the backs of the local branch committee for the persistent publicity and exposure. Rest assured that, as far as I’m aware, all our POTYs are chosen completely on their merits — though I must declare that Helen at the Eight Bells gave me a nice cup of tea when I surveyed it for the GBG 2011!

A Welcome Report Against the Tide

The tide of scare stories in the press about alcohol has been temporarily stemmed by reports, first mentioned in the Sunday Times, of a study in Boston (the US one) that suggested that alcohol isn’t actually as fattening as commonly assumed — for women anyway. Alcohol contains a lot of energy and it had been assumed that any excess in the body was converted into fat, as with any other foodstuff. However, it’s now hypothesised that regular drinkers’ livers process energy from alcohol in a more complex way than previously thought and that much excess energy is turned to heat, not fat. So the argument goes that alcohol is not as fattening as its calorie count might suggest.

A couple of pieces of anecdotal evidence might support this. One is that while there are many CAMRA types who have large beer bellies, they’re probably not as large as their calorie intake might lead one to believe. A moderately heavy ale drinker might drink twenty pints a week — at a couple of hundred calories a go that’s four thousand extra calories — almost the equivalent of two days worth of energy for an adult male — or about 15 Mars bars a week. Most drinkers in this category take a surprisingly long time — several years — to develop a belly. I’ve also been on an alcohol reduction drive recently and have expected the weight to fall off. Even allowing for my new found substitute of chocolate digestives, I’ve not seen my weight plummeting to the extent that the shortfall in calories might suggest. And also there are plenty of women wine drinkers, as the study suggests, who aren’t anorexics but don’t put on the vast amounts of extra weight that the calorie content alone of the wine might suggest.

However, I don’t subscribe to the point of view that’s current in some drinking circles that beer is entirely unfattening and it’s the fondness for curries and takeaways that it creates which is wholly responsible for bellies.

This article in the Daily Mail summarises the various healthy effects that have been scientifically proven for a number of drinks — from red wine to beer via Baileys, gin, cider and others. It has to be added that the overall negative health effects of alcohol aren’t included but these generally tend not to be pronounced at moderate levels anyway. Beer is revealed as being a particularly nutrient-rich drink, with four pints giving an adult’s complete daily intake of folate.  There’s even a study that purports to dismiss the causative effect of beer on large bellies.

Bumblebees

I saw my first bumblebee of the spring today — fortunately in our garden buzzing around the snowdrops and crocuses I’ve planted. The second came hot on its heels  — in the garden of the Carriers’ Arms, Watlington, attracted again by crocuses. The Carriers’ Arms is a lovely, friendly little pub — stuffed full of old, country types on a Friday lunchtime. It’s out of our CAMRA branch area, unfortunately, but we always pitch up there on a Wednesday in mid July to have our traditional Aunt Sally practice. It’s usually a lovely balmy evening — now the evenings are becoming lighter I’m more easily able to imagine it after this miserable, cold winter.

(At this time of year, when we’re getting close to the equinox the day length changes much more rapidly than nearer either solstice — so we’ll see a huge change over the next few weeks in light evenings even discounting the clocks going forward.)

Snogging BBC3, Avoiding 6 Music, Marrying Cynicism or Idiocy

Either the top BBC management are incredibly stupid or they’re trying to be too clever by half — and, quite possibly, they’re both. Why on earth do they think that axing BBC Radio 6 and the Asian Network is a strategic course of action?

By its charter, the BBC has to primarily cover public service obligations that commercial broadcasters arguably won’t undertake but it also feels it can’t be too elitist if it’s levying a regressive tax of £130 per household for its services. Interestingly, the range of programming on channels like Sky Arts and, to a lesser extent, Classic FM and many US cable channels like HBO shows that it’s possible to produce commercial broadcasting that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. In fact the most crass, dumbest programming that can be viewed on any remotely mainstream channel (such as on Freeview) is BBC3 — inspiration of gems like ‘F*ck Off I’m Ginger’, ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’, patronising rubbish snippets of news presented by ‘cool’ presenters who no doubt got the job through their father’s connections down the lodge, repeats of ‘Eastenders’, various programmes where people film their genitals for an hour, ego-trip hagiographies of BBC programme makers (‘Dr Who Confidential’) and where the only half-decent programming is destined for BBC2 anyway. It’s almost entirely absolute total rubbish but is considered inviolable by the idiotic BBC management as it’s targeted at the sacred Yoof market — people who the BBC commissioners completely fail to understand despite their obsessive pursuit of the demographic. You have to end up watching Stag Party Channel on Sky at midnight on a Friday to see anything equivalently witless to the general rubbish pumped out by BBC3.

So this expensive pile of insulting crap remains untouchable whereas a couple of cheap radio stations that serve less fashionable demographics are to be wiped from the schedules. I’m not sure what the Asian Network has done to offend the BBC management so much. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it but it appears to be a more public service orientated station than its untouched equivalent — 1Extra. This would appear from its publicity to be focused on the sort of music that Radio One provides quite a substantial outlet for and pirate stations in London even more so — and it seems to address a far narrower audience than something generic like the Asian Network. 6 Music falls down because it’s meant to serve those too grown up for Radio One (surely anyone over about 13?) and those not old enough for Radio 2 (over 35s apparently). I thought the targeting of those two stations was simpler — Radio One is for single people and Radio 2 for marrieds or equivalents (just listen to any dedication that comes in on Radio 2 — it always mentions a wonderful spouse).  At heart it’s a fairly serious music station, despite being hijacked by the egos of ‘look at me I’m a rising star’ merchants like George Lamb or that Lauren Laverne,  6 Music is playing the sort of slightly less commercial music that a public service broadcaster ought to play and the last thing that should happen is it to be closed down. Radio One is far harder to justify, as is Radio Two.

People have speculated the whole thing is a cynical exercise in creating a grass-roots movement to ‘save’ 6 Music — perhaps the BBC realised that the crass stations they want to preserve like Radio One and BBC3 wouldn’t generate such almost universal sympathy and goodwill? Yet, if they’ve been cynical enough to do this, they’ve only just drawn further attention to the rubbish that they’ve been too weak to consider touching.

All I can say is that they’d better not even hint that they’re threatening BBC4.

I Get What the BBC Is For Now

…it’s a job creation scheme for gold medal winning athletes from years ago. The Winter Olympics is a case in point. The main qualification seems to be respectable and middle-class rather than to know anything much about the sport. I’m used to people like Sue Barker and Gary Lineker presenting programmes and the likes of Steve Cram do a reasonable job presenting and Matthew Pinsent makes a relatively enthusiastic reporter but this Winter Olympics seems to have the medal winning presenters and reporters crossing the liminal zone into commentator and pundit territory. Therefore Matthew Pinsent has been volunteering his expertise on both curling and ice hockey. He’s a nice chap (I’ve even held one of his gold medals at a corporate event) but I wonder how much more he knows about these sports than any viewer who’s read the papers and watched a bit of it on television. I guess the BBC would argue that he has a unique insight into the psychologyof the medal winning athletes — but that argument is utterly self-defeating because if none of the audience thought they had an ability to try and imagine what it’s like to win gold then the viewing figures would probably be cut by about 95%.

How To Clean Up Football

In the ultimate expression of Blair’s victim culture (C)Ashley Cole is apparently now feeling ‘victimised’ after Chelsea have threatened to fine him a whole two weeks wages (a paltry £200k for him) for tarnishing the club’s image according to the Telegraph. Someone close to Cole seems to have responded by ‘linking’ Cole with Real Madrid and Barcelona — the implication being, as he revealed in his autobiography, that Chelsea ought to be grateful that he deigns to stay with them.

He’s apparently upset that the club has supported Terry in his marital problems when he’s been fined. Terry appears to have got his wife’s backing (in public at least) whereas Cole can’t really be surprised that his high-profile spouse doesn’t particularly like being made to look a fool in public. He should also remember how he’s not exactly worked hard to cultivate respect from the public either — with his famously greedy reaction reported in his autobiography to being offered ‘only’ £55,000 a week by Arsenal.

Apparently Abramovic is not too impressed with Cole’s effect on PR.

Cole isn’t even particularly popular with Chelsea fans either. Most probably wouldn’t be sad to see the back of him. Maybe the the Premier League should consider how the wider reputation of footballers has been tarnished and fine clubs in this position with a points deduction. As it’s not a first offence for either Cole or Chelsea then a 6 points would be fairly reasonable.

The Clerk’s Well

The Clerk's Well, Farringdon
The Clerk's Well, Farringdon

I’ve recently become quite fascinated by the hidden geography of London — one of the most interesting aspects of which is the concealment of various rivers that flow through the capital. The largest of these is the River Fleet (as in Fleet Street) which rises on Hampstead Heath and flows via Camden, King’s Cross, Clerkenwell and Farringdon to meet the Thames at Blackfriars. For almost all its length the Fleet is now culverted into a storm-relief sewer. Nevertheless, the shape of the valley is quite distinct from various vantage points. One is from near the British Library, looking down towards King’s Cross station. Another is from Farringdon Road, just north of Farringdon station where a wide river valley can easily be imagined — and apparently two or three hundred years ago this was an area that was still fairly rural on the edge of the City and was used as a place to water livestock that were driven to Smithfield Market.

This is now the very trendy area of Clerkenwell, which takes its name from access to the water found in the Fleet Valley. The name derives from a well, known as ‘the Clerk’s Well’ which dates back to 1140. The well can still be seen as it’s incorporated into a modern office building (14-16 Farringdon Lane) which has a very discreet display that can be seen through some plate glass windows. A pump was added to the well in 1800 and this is commemorated in a plaque which still can be seen on the wall above the well. I got a grainy photo of the plaque. It was a bit too dark to photograph the well but its stone rim can be clearly seen.