Is It Really Too Much to Ask? Read online

  In return for cash, the businesses would get their name on the cars, which, says the letter, will provide the ‘benefit of being associated with the constabulary brand’. Did you know the constabulary was a ‘brand’? Me neither. I thought it was just a lot of people in plastic shoes pretending to be Nigel Mansell. However, despite the upbeat nature of the letter, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to let Currys or DFS or Asda sponsor the police force. Or service. Or whatever silly name the government halfwits have dreamt up now.

  First, and this is a serious point, if a policeman in, say, a PC World jacket turned up in a car with PC World written down the side to investigate some wrongdoings at the company’s headquarters, many people, myself included, would assume he would emerge after a short while to say that everything was in order. In other words, there’d be a perception that fat cat bosses, as we must call them these days, are simply buying immunity from prosecution.

  There are other problems, though. A lot of people do not much care for the police. Some of these people are burglars and robbers, and a company might decide it’s not too bothered about alienating them by visibly supporting the force. But what about when the police run radar traps and fine you for driving a bit too fast? Certainly, if I were to be apprehended by a sergeant in a Burger King hat, I’d ensure that from that moment on I never ate another Whopper.

  My biggest problem with this sponsorship idea, though, is dignity. There was a time when British policemen looked good with their tall hats and shiny buttons. Today, they either look like everyone else with their silly high-visibility jackets or they look like cartoon characters from shoot-’em-up video games with their black overalls and their sub-machine guns.

  Neither outfit lends itself to sponsorship logos. I mean, seriously, can you imagine how the world would react should there be a televised gunfight in the middle of Hitchin and all the goodies were running about in jackets promoting a local garden centre? We’d be a laughing stock and rightly so.

  Plus, one of the less savoury jobs performed by officers is informing families that someone dear to them has been killed in some awful way. I don’t think they’d be able to achieve the right level of gravitas if they were dressed up as the Michelin man.

  We know that, as a rule, the government is completely useless at running anything and that Richard Branson and Sir Sugar will always do a better job. If I were in No. 10, I’d hand over pretty much everything to the private sector – starting with the forests – but even I would be forced to conclude that some aspects of government work must be run by public servants using public money. The armed forces are one of these things. GCHQ is another. And so are police.

  Besides. I pay half what I earn in tax.

  And it’s nice to think I’m getting at least something in return.

  27 February 2011

  Hello, reception. I’ve actually used my bed, please don’t be angry

  For the past few weeks I’ve been travelling the world, and once again I’m filled with a sense that no one knows how to run a hotel properly. For example, when you are staying at the top of a thirty-storey skyscraper, four lifts are not enough. Because at eight in the morning, when everyone is going downstairs for breakfast, you can be waiting until lunchtime for a car to arrive.

  And it’s even worse when you get back at night and you are busting for a pee and one of your colleagues, who’s staying on the fourth floor, decides it would be amusing to press all the buttons as he gets out.

  Mind you, the vertical nature of a hotel is nothing compared with those that are laid out horizontally. Because it can often take several days to get from the reception area to your room, where inevitably your electronic key card does not work so you must go back to the front desk and start all over again.

  At some hotels these days it’s best to book another room on the way to the actual suite you’ve been given so that you can store basic emergency supplies: pants, soap and some high-energy chocolate bars.

  Then we have the problems of learning how your room works. I realize, of course, that many hotels send a porter to explain everything when you arrive but you never listen because you are too busy rummaging surreptitiously through your wallet to find a suitable tip, and then doing mental exchange-rate maths to work out whether you are about to give him £2,000. Or, worse, 2p.

  The upshot is that, later on, when you want to turn out the lights, you have absolutely no clue how this might be achieved. And when you finally manage it, by hitting the light fittings with your shoe, you realize the air-con is still on and you must find the control panel in the dark.

  Then you wake up at two a.m. with jet lag and decide to watch television. Well, in every single modern hotel this is not possible because the remote-control device has 112 buttons, all of which are the size of a match head, and you can’t locate the switch to turn the light back on to find your glasses.

  So you stab away at what looks promising and all you get are messages from the Japanese engineer who designed the set to the man whose job it is to install it. Why can’t hotel managers understand that almost all of their guests need just three things: a button for volume, a button for news and a button for porn? I don’t want to adjust the contrast or the aspect ratio. I just want to find out what’s going on in Japan and see some ladies.

  Oh, and when I’m taking a shower, I am not wearing my spectacles, which means I cannot read the labels on all the little bottles in there. I’m therefore fed up with washing my hair with body lotion.

  The worst aspect of staying in a hotel, though, is trying to do your laundry. It shouldn’t be that difficult. You just bung it all in a bag and give it to someone at the reception desk.

  But no. There’s always a form on which you must say precisely what you are handing over. The form lists every possible item of clothing that anyone anywhere might want cleaning. Ball gowns. Scuba suits. Fencing masks. Ruffs. Doublet and hose. Army uniforms. G-trousers. All of this is intended to demonstrate what a wide and interesting clientele comes to the hotel but it’s a bit annoying when all you want is some clean underwear.

  You search and you scan for the right box to tick but it’s never there because, in hotel management-speak, ‘knickers’ is a rude word. Eventually, between ostrich feather hat and quilted smoking jacket, you find the word ‘pants’. But this, you then realize, means ‘trousers’.

  So the search begins again until eventually you work out that, in business land, shreddies are known as undershorts. With a sense of triumph you fill in the box called ‘guest count’, saying you have eight pairs you’d like to be cleaned – but wait, what’s this? It’s another column called ‘hotel count’. In other words, it’s a form in which you give the hotel your opinion on how many pairs of dirty pants you have and then it is given the opportunity to disagree.

  This says it all. In essence, the hotel guest these days is nothing more than a robber and a cheat. A person who has checked in to drink the gin and fill the empties with water, claim for underwear they don’t own and check out without paying. At best, we are a nuisance.

  Certainly, I felt that way while staying at the Palazzo Versace hotel on Australia’s Gold Coast. This is the place where contestants from ITV’s I’m Not a Celebrity come to vomit up the bugs they’ve eaten while living in ‘the jungle’. And I can see why. It is very Peter Andre. Here, I was not made to feel like a thief but I was made to feel very ugly. The corridors were full of pictures of beautiful, famous people in varying degrees of undress. None had a pot belly and a suitcase full of dirty shreddies. Downstairs there was a salon offering ‘eye couture’, and in the room a booklet ‘suggests’ what guests might like to wear at any given time of day. Jeans and a T-shirt didn’t get a mention.

  It’s also very clean. And to keep it that way, guests are constantly made to lift up their feet so that a tribe of former boat people can mop up bits of imaginary food that have been dropped on the floor. Then, at night, an army of yet more cleaners patrol the open spaces with factories on their backs, fumiga
ting and vacuuming and desperately trying to rid the building of any evidence that it might have people in it.

  But the best bit came one morning when the manageress came over to our table to announce that she’d reviewed the film from the previous day’s CCTV cameras and had noticed two of our party playing the piano in the reception area. It’s hard to think what else one might do with a piano but she was most insistent. It mustn’t happen again. Behind her, I couldn’t help noticing, there were two fully-grown men snogging.

  27 March 2011

  This kingdom needs a dose of Norse sense

  Every so often an organization with a bit too much time on its hands does a survey and concludes that Norway is the best country in the world. We’re told that no one has ever been murdered, the cod is superb and there are many dew-fresh meadows full of extremely tall blonde girls who have nothing to do all day except knit exciting underwear.

  Economically, we’re told, they are also better off. Thanks to all the oil, Norway is the second-wealthiest and most stable country in the world and has the second-highest GDP per capita, after the statistical anomaly that is Luxembourg.

  And, of course, we mock. We explain that it’s all very well living in a crime-free gated community where everyone seems to be out of a commercial for Ski yoghurt, but unless you occasionally step on a discarded hypodermic needle and catch AIDS, you aren’t really living life to the full.

  If none of your buses is full of sick, you become one-dimensional and boring. This is why so many Norwegians commit suicide. It’s also why, in all of human history, Norway has produced only a handful of people who’ve made it big on the international stage. One painted a figure screaming. One walked to the South Pole. And the other made a name for himself by suggesting that the sun only shines on TV. Which suggests that he only ever watches Teletubbies.

  And that, it seems, is what Norway’s all about. Designed by Playmobil and run along the lines of Camberwick Green, it’s the set for a children’s television show, with lots of rosy cheeks and a Midsomer Murders attitude to immigration. Lovely, but so far as the rest of the world’s concerned, there’s not much of a there, there.

  Well, for reasons that are not entirely clear, I’ve been to Norway quite a lot just recently and I’m sorry, but I can’t quite see what’s wrong with it. I suppose the speed limits are a bit low, and the only way you can enjoy a cigarette and a glass of wine at the same time is to buy a house. Also, it’s a bit chilly, but that just gives you an excuse to put on an excellent Kirk Douglas Heroes of Telemark jumper and some splendid woolly mittens.

  Let me give you one small example of why I like it there. When a British person asks for my autograph, the request always comes with a back-handed compliment: ‘I dislike your programme very much and I hate you on a cellular level but my son is a fan, so sign this or I’ll ring the Daily Mail and explain that you ruined a small boy’s life.’

  Russians explain that if you don’t stand still until they’ve gone back to their hotel room for a camera, they will kill you. Aussies slap you on the back a bit too hard and Americans get massively carried away. But in Norway, you get a ‘please’ and an ‘if it’s not too much trouble’ and a ‘thank you’. One man became so excited that I’d posed for his picture, he took out his penis and began to masturbate. I’ve never experienced gratitude like that anywhere.

  Then there’s the spirit of janteloven. It’s a tall-poppy thing that dictates you really mustn’t be a show-off, no matter how much money you have. Delightfully, there’s no such thing as Cheshire in Norway. It’s why 19 per cent of Norwegians who win the country’s lottery buy a Toyota. Only one has ever bought a Porsche.

  Politically, Norway is sort of communism-lite. Thirty per cent of the population are employed by the state, 22 per cent are on welfare, 13 per cent are too disabled to work and, as parents are given twelve months’ combined paid leave when they have a baby, the rest of the population is at home changing nappies. This is probably why there is absolutely nothing in your house bearing the mark ‘Made in Norway’.

  Interestingly, and contrary to what you’d expect, there is crime. An American was pickpocketed in 2008. And there are beggars. Mostly, though, they are from Romania and that does raise a question: why Norway? Why leave the warmth of your homeland and settle in a country where a glass of beer is £40 and if you sleep on the streets, you wake up with your face stuck to the pavement?

  Well, I asked, and the answer was surprising: ‘Because in Norway when you ask someone for money, they give it to you.’

  Can you see anything wrong with any of this? Kind-hearted souls in excellent jumpers giving away their money to those less fortunate than themselves. No Premier League footballers bombing about in Ferraris. No bankers smoking cigars the size of giant redwoods. No grime. No graffiti. And a range of first-class shops that aren’t full of anarchists weeing on the Axminster.

  And now we must ask ourselves: how could we achieve such a level of harmony here? We are northern European, just like the Nors. We like a drink, just like they do, and we like to have a fight afterwards. Which they do as well. I’m tall and have blue eyes so, probably, my great-great-grandad was a Viking. Just like yours. So why is Britain such a mess when Norway is the living embodiment of civilization?

  Some might say that Norway excels because almost no one there goes to church. They are the least religious people on earth. But we aren’t a nation of Bible-bashers, either. So it must be something else. Others say it’s the oil. But Norway has had one of the highest standards of living since the seventeenth century. So that’s not it either.

  No, I reckon the reason Norway is so nice is that the population is tiny. And countries with a small number of people in them – Iceland, Estonia and, er, the Vatican – work better than those that are filled to the gunwales.

  I’m afraid, then, the only way of getting the UK to match the Scandinavian model is to abolish the UK. Norway separated from Sweden in 1905, and we should follow suit by severing the knots that bind together the wildly disparate bits of Britain. In short, I think the sovereign state of Chipping Norton would work rather well.

  3 April 2011

  Big smile – and check me down below for ticks

  I wonder. Have we lost the ability in this country to rejoice in the good fortune of others? To be happy for someone else? Buy a big house and ‘it’s all right for some’. Have the big house taken away and ‘it serves you right’.

  Let us take the case of Kate Middleton’s mum. Her daughter is marrying a prince and so we should be happy for her. But we keep being told that she’s a social mountaineer who has been engineering this marriage since the days when Kate was a foetus. And that she used to be an air hostess. A bloody trolley dolly. Pushy cow.

  We saw the same sort of thing when Judith Keppel became the first person to scoop the big prize on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Because she lived in Fulham and said ‘bath’ properly, we were invited to despise her on a cellular level. Lucky cow.

  And woe betide the celebrity who dares to take a stroll on the beach while on holiday. Look at her! She may have fame, success, money and a pretty face but her swimsuit is disgusting and she has cellulite and we hope that very soon she catches cancer and dies a screaming, agonizing death.

  Have you ever looked at the comments left by readers on a newspaper’s website? They’re just a torrent of bile and vitriol. Protected by the anonymity of the internet and freed from the social niceties of physical contact, people go berserk. Lottery winners are particularly vulnerable, it seems. And Nigella Lawson? Fat cow.

  No one can earn more than the prime minister, no one can be better looking than Ena Sharples, and good luck to anyone who dares to appear on the television talking like Brian Sewell. Did your parents go to university? Well, you’ve had all the chances that life can afford, so you can clear off.

  This unwillingness to be happy for others is now so acute that we don’t even seem to be able to be happy for ourselves. I realize, of course, that peop
le in Birmingham have suffered from this for centuries. Joy is not a Brummie thing. Everything, even if you’ve made it yourself, is rubbish. There is no word in the West Midlands for ‘wow’.

  Now we’re all in the same boat, a point that was proved exquisitely on the BBC local news programme that was transmitted in my area on Tuesday evening. It had been an absolutely beautiful day: cloudless, warm and awash with the scent of blossom. The sort of day that made you glad to be alive.

  In the olden days, a local news programme would have shown us spring lambs frolicking about on their rickety legs and small children dribbling ice cream in the park. Not any more. Now you could see the news team desperately trying to persuade the water company that the good weather would mean a hosepipe ban very soon. And then when that failed, calling the local hospital to see if anyone had been admitted suffering from sunstroke. ‘Well, what about a malignant melanoma, then?’

  Doubtless they will have scanned the Daily Mail to see if there is a link between warm spring sunshine and the arrival of more immigrants, or a catastrophic fall in house prices. And then the Guardian to see if it was yet more conclusive proof of global warming and that soon we would all perish in terrible heathland fires.

  The news editor must have been tearing his hair out: ‘We can’t tell people that it’s been a lovely warm spring day. There must be some danger. Some terror. Some death. Get me some misery.’ And boy, oh boy, did one of the reporters come up trumps.

  We were told that the warm weather may appear to be lovely but that there is a hidden menace out there: the tick. A perfectly healthy-looking woman was brought in front of the cameras to explain that she had been bitten by a tick two years ago and her life had been ruined as a result. Then a professor was wheeled out to say that the long warm spell followed by a late Easter would cause many more people to be out and about in the countryside and that we were facing a … please say ‘perfect storm’. She didn’t. She said it was a ‘high-risk situation’.